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The teeming plant world could become a virtual mystery in the coming decades as college students increasingly shy away from studying botany and universities across the U.S. shutter their long-standing herbaria. Since 1988, the number of research universities offering botany degrees has dropped by half, according to National Science Foundation research funding statistics. And the National Center for Education Statistics reports that fewer than 400 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral botany degrees were awarded in 2012. Educators say that’s because students are being pushed into more modern, technology-related majors. Current botanists fear that will lead to a dearth of people able...

The KAZ (Keio Advanced Zero-Emission Vehicle) is a Japanese-designed Italian-built limousine prototype with eight wheels. The KAZ is not your average limo though. The all-electric KAZ can travel at 300kph and it handles more like a sports car than a 6.7m-long whale thanks to its computer-controlled eight-wheel drive train and low centre of gravity for added stability and handling around curves. On top of that, four-wheel steering in front is augmented by the two extreme wheels angling in the opposite direction making the KAZ more nimble around corners than one would expect for a vehicle of its size. But are...

Energy Mandates Fuel a Rift Bush's Proposal Pits Coal Interests Against Environmentalists By JOHN J. FIALKA January 26, 2007 WASHINGTON -- Raising the federal mandate for using renewable and alternative energy sources may mean bigger government incentives for efforts to turn coal into diesel-engine fuel. But President Bush's push for domestic alternatives to imported oil has ignited a battle between coal interests and environmentalists -- and underscored tension between the goals of increasing U.S. energy security and curbing global warming. Greater use of liquid fuels made from coal, the nation's most plentiful energy source, would reduce reliance on imported oil....

Why Our Gas Is Great for Hybrid Vehicles Aquygen™ Gas is capable of storing tremendous amounts of energy that can be released under certain specific conditions. Under these conditions, Aquygen™ Gas will release an estimated 3.1 times the energy levels released by pure Hydrogen or traditional Hydrogen & Oxygen mixtures. Denny Klein and his prototype car The Hybrid Hydrogen Oxygen System ("HHOS") can generate sufficient Aquygen™ Gas to enrich a vehicle's traditional fuel supply (gasoline or diesel) so that a net power increase in engine horsepower ("HP") occurs. In the prototype vehicle, it has been estimated that the heavy-duty alternator...

On the search for alternative fuels, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Vinod Khosla says the answer is clear as gin. Delivering the keynote address at a Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research forum, titled "Prosperity Despite Expensive Oil: Energy Solutions for California, America and the World," on April 21, Khosla endorsed ethanol technologies, which produce "biofuels" out of switchgrass, wood chips, corn and recycled fast food oil. "Within the next five years, we can be irreversibly down a trajectory that doesn't need any petroleum in this country," Khosla said. "We can do this in all of the United States for less than...

By now, I'm sure everyone is familiar with the commercial that appeared following the October 4th accusations. In this rather ridiculous commercial, the sheriff negates all accusations against Janet Napolitano. Yet he does nothing to assure Arizona's people that the accusations are truely false; he does not offer any evidence that negates the accusations. He only requests that Arizonians join him in refusing the accusations.

The Attorney General claims she had no involvement in this financial disaster. However, the documents included here reveal the involvement of the office of the Attorney General as far back as October 1999. Memoranda from the Attorney General's office early in the implementation of the alt-fuels laws show that concerns surfaced about the actual prices of the vehicles.

Chrysler's concept van gives new meaning to "clean fuel."by Dan Carney Borax may prove useful in a lot more than laundry detergent. DaimlerChrysler engineers believe a variant of the innocuous white powder provides a safe, compact way to contain hydrogen. The lack of such storage for the notoriously flammable gas has been a key obstacle to the development of fuel-cell-powered cars. Borax's first performance is in a concept minivan called the Chrysler Town & Country Natrium (Latin for sodium, an element in borax). A fairly simple chemical process joins borax and hydrogen in a manner that renders the gas nonflammable....