ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

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• Engineers design 'living materials': Hybrid materials combine bacterial cells with nonliving elements that emit light
• Southeast England most at risk of rising deaths due to climate change
• Off-rift volcanoes explained
• Shifting evolution into reverse promises cheaper, greener way to make new drugs
• Study on element could change ballgame on radioactive waste
• New way to make muscle cells from human stem cells
• Ancient clam gardens nurture food security

Engineers design 'living materials': Hybrid materials combine bacterial cells with nonliving elements that emit light Posted: 23 Mar 2014 12:21 PM PDT Inspired by natural materials such as bone -- a matrix of minerals and other substances, including living cells -- engineers have coaxed bacterial cells to produce biofilms that can incorporate nonliving materials, such as gold nanoparticles and quantum dots. These "living materials" combine the advantages of live cells, which respond to their environment, produce complex biological molecules, and span multiple length scales, with the benefits of nonliving materials, which add functions such as conducting electricity or emitting light.

Southeast England most at risk of rising deaths due to climate change Posted: 23 Mar 2014 12:20 PM PDT Warmer summers brought on by climate change will cause more deaths in London and southeast England than the rest of the country, scientists predict. In the most vulnerable districts, in London and the southeast, the odds of dying from cardiovascular or respiratory causes increased by over 10 per cent for every 1C rise in temperature. Districts in the far north were much more resilient, seeing no increase in deaths at equivalent temperatures.

Off-rift volcanoes explained Posted: 23 Mar 2014 12:19 PM PDT Rift valleys are large depressions formed by tectonic stretching forces. Volcanoes often occur in rift valleys, within the rift itself or on the rift flanks as e.g. in East Africa. The magma responsible for this volcanism is formed in the upper mantle and ponds at the boundary between crust and mantle. For many years, the question of why volcanoes develop outside the rift zone in an apparently unexpected location offset by tens of kilometers from the source of molten magma directly beneath the rift has remained unanswered. Scientists have now shown that the pattern of stresses in the crust changes when the crust thins due to stretching and becomes gravitationally unloaded. As a consequence of this stress pattern, the path of the magma pockets ascending from the ponding zone is deviated diagonally to the sides of the rift. Eventually, the magma pockets emerge at distances of tens, sometime hundreds of kilometers from the rift axis, creating the so-called off-rift volcanoes.

Shifting evolution into reverse promises cheaper, greener way to make new drugs Posted: 23 Mar 2014 12:17 PM PDT By shifting evolution into reverse, it may be possible to use "green chemistry" to make a number of costly synthetic drugs as easily and cheaply as brewing beer. Normally, both evolution and synthetic chemistry proceed from the simple to the complex. Small molecules are combined and modified to make larger and more complex molecules that perform specific functions. Bioretrosynthesis works in the opposite direction. It starts with the final, desired product and then uses natural selection to produce a series of specialized enzymes that can make the final product out of a chain of chemical reactions that begin with simple, commonly available compounds.

Study on element could change ballgame on radioactive waste Posted: 23 Mar 2014 12:17 PM PDT Groundbreaking work by a team of chemists on a fringe element of the periodic table could change how the world stores radioactive waste and recycles fuel. The element is called californium -- Cf if you're looking at the Periodic Table of Elements -- and it's what researchers called "wicked stuff."

New way to make muscle cells from human stem cells Posted: 21 Mar 2014 01:46 PM PDT As stem cells continue their gradual transition from the lab to the clinic, a research group has discovered a new way to make large concentrations of skeletal muscle cells and muscle progenitors from human stem cells. The new method could be used to generate large numbers of muscle cells and muscle progenitors directly from human pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells, such as embryonic (ES) or induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, can be made into virtually any adult cell in the body.

Ancient clam gardens nurture food security Posted: 20 Mar 2014 02:34 PM PDT A three-year study of ancient clam gardens in the Pacific Northwest has led researchers to make a discovery that could benefit coastal communities' food production. The researchers discovered that ancient clam gardens made by Aboriginal people produced quadruple the number of butter clams and twice the number of littleneck clams as unmodified clam beaches.

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