max facts
Using Biofuels From
Plant Fibers to Battle
Climate Change
Scientists, corporations,
and government agencies
are working hard to
decrease greenhouse gas
emissions. When it comes to
fighting global warming, a study
from Colorado State University
(CSU) finds new promise
for biofuels produced from
switchgrass, a non-edible grass
growing in many parts of North
America. Scientists used modeling
to simulate various growing
scenarios and found a climate
footprint ranging from -11 to 10 grams
of carbon dioxide per megajoule. In comparison, the impact
of using gasoline results in 94 grams of carbon dioxide per
megajoule. The study was published in Nature Energy. John
Field, research scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology
Lab at CSU, noted what the team found is huge. “What we
saw with switchgrass is that you’re actually storing carbon
in the soil,” he says. “You’re building up organic matter and
sequestering carbon.” His research team works on second-
generation cellulosic biofuels made from non-edible plant
material such as grasses.
—eurekalert.org
Gardening Helps Philly Fight Crime
The best tool to fight crime may be a lawnmower. That’s the
conclusion of a new three-year study, which shows sprucing
up vacant lots by doing as little as picking up trash and
cutting the grass curbed gun violence in poor neighborhoods
in Philadelphia by nearly 30 per cent. Charles Branas, an
epidemiologist at Columbia University, took aim at the
dilapidated spaces that can lead to and spread violence
and crime. Restoring vacant land was a potential solution
that hadn’t been tested on a citywide scale with low-income
residents. To find out whether renovating neglected lots
could lower crime, Branas and his colleagues coordinated
with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and Philadelphia
Division of Housing and Community Development to enlist
contractors to clean up hundreds of the more than 44,000
vacant lots across Philly. Some lots were turned into park-like
settings by clearing trash and debris, leveling the land, and
planting new grass and a few trees. In other lots, contractors
only picked up litter and mowed the existing lawn.
—sciencemag.org
26
tapped in