A Green Office is a Productive Office

Workplaces aren’t associated with fun, but there are certain designs of places that can make places more enjoyable. It turns out that buildings designed with sustainability in mind tend to be a better, more productive place to work. You should convince your boss that you should move to a green building.

Until that happens here’s a solution that you can put into action rather quickly:

3. A PLANT OR A VIEW OF NATURE WILL IMPROVE YOUR WORK

Windows also help by providing views–something that’s especially helpful if you’re looking at nature. Looking at trees or a park is proven to make employees less frustrated, more patient, healthier, and more focused on work. Indoor plants, too, help make people more efficient and better able to concentrate. If you don’t have a view or a plant, even pictures of nature can help.

Read more.

In Plant Photosynthesis, Scientists See Clues for Improving Solar Energy Cells

Solar cells optimized to suit local light conditions, or made more efficient by using a broader part of the solar spectrum, are among the imaginative applications foreseen from ground-breaking new insights into plant photosynthesis pioneered in Canada.

Indeed new, more fully detailed knowledge of how plants and other living organisms convert sunlight into energy and carbon dioxide into biomass may offer clues to addressing both the global energy crisis and global warming, says Dr. Gregory Scholes, among the world’s most renowned scientists in plant photosynthesis.

Dr. Scholes, distinguished professor of Chemistry at the University of Toronto and 2012 recipient of the John C. Polanyi Award from Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), will describe his work in a special public lecture Nov. 26 supported by the Royal Canadian Institute (RCI) for the Advancement of Science, NSERC, and Toronto’s Ryerson University.

“This new bio-inspired understanding will help scientists devise artificial light gathering systems that can far exceed existing solar cells in functionality, and so pave the way to new, environmentally-friendly energy technologies,” says Dr. Scholes.

“We can imagine, for example, solar cells that optimize themselves to suit the local light conditions or that make better use of the solar spectrum by efficiently capturing and processing light of different colours.”

Studies of nature’s “photosynthetic machines” have involved such organisms as fronds in kelp forests (which can grow 15 cm – 6 inches – in a single day), algae growing 20 meters – 60 feet – underwater even in winter when over 1 metre of ice covers the water – and bacteria from the South Andros Black Hole, Bahamas, which have evolved to short circuit photosynthetic light harvesting and thereby warm their local environment.

All have helped science identify some fascinating chemical physics and determine that a chain of reactions involved in photosynthesis starts with hundreds of light-absorbing molecules that harvest sunlight and ‘concentrate’ the fleetingly stored energy at a biological solar cell called a “reaction center.”

And that happens with incredible speed. After sunlight is absorbed, the energy is trapped at reaction centers in about one billionth of a second.

New understanding of the photosynthetic process can also help alleviate the biggest looming threat to humanity — climate change — since photosynthesis makes use of the sun’s energy to convert the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) into useful biomass.

More than 10 quadrillion photons of light strike a leaf each second. Incredibly, almost every visible photon (those with wavelengths between 400 and 700 nanometers — 1 nm equalling 1 billionth of a metre) is captured by pigments and initiates the steps of plant growth.

Says Dr. Scholes: “Photosynthetic solar energy conversion occurs on an immense scale across the Earth, influencing our biosphere from climate to oceanic food webs. Energy from sunlight is absorbed by brightly coloured molecules, like chlorophyll, embedded in proteins comprising the photosynthetic unit.”

“While photosynthesis does not generate electricity from light, like a solar cell, it produces energy – a “solar fuel” – stored in molecules,” he adds. “Solar powered production of complex molecules is foreseen as an important contribution to energy management in the future.”

Concludes Dr. Scholes: “Nature has worked out with astonishing efficiency some the riddles of fundamental importance that vex our species today,” he adds. “If we are hunting for inspiration, we should keep our eyes open for the unexpected and learn from the natural sciences.”

Via the Royal Canadian Institute for the Advancement of Science.

Organic Farming is Better than Factory Farming for Carbon Capture

It turns out that not only is eating organic food better for you than processed foods, growing organic food is better for everyone. Organic farms (and likely home gardens) are better at capturing and retaining carbon than farms that are focused on mass production.

Last year, researchers reexamined all 74 studies that had looked at organic farming and carbon capture. After crunching the numbers from the results of these studies they concluded that, lo and behold, organic farms are carbon sponges.

Recently, a team of scientists decided to compare the microbes in organic and conventional plots (plus one “low intensity” field that was somewhere between organic and conventional) at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station in Michigan. They noticed that there was a much lower diversity of microbes in the conventionally farmed plot [PDF]. Perhaps the more complex community is better at exchanging the carbon among themselves, rather than releasing it to the atmosphere.

Read more at Grist.

Vegetarians Live Longer

If you’re not vegetarian yet, this may change your mind: vegetarians live longer than meat eaters. A plant-focused diet is fantastic at helping people with all sorts of ailments from diabetes to heart disease. This is great news for all of us as a vegetarian diet puts very little pressure on the environment whereas modern meat production is absolutely destructive.

More than 20 years ago, Dr. Dean Ornish showed that heart disease could not just be stopped but actually reversed with a vegan diet, arteries opened up without drugs or surgery. Since this lifestyle cure was discovered, hundreds of thousands have died unnecessary deaths. What more does one have to know about a diet that reverses our deadliest disease?

Cancer is killer number two. Ah, the dreaded “C” word — but look at this hopeful science. According to the largest forward-looking study on diet and cancer so far performed, “the incidence of all cancers combined is lower among vegetarians.” The link between meat and cancer is such that even a paper published in the journal Meat Science recently asked, “Should we become vegetarians, or can we make meat safer?” There are a bunch of additives under investigation to suppress the toxic effects the blood-based “heme” iron, for example, which could provide what they called an “acceptable” way to prevent cancer. Why not just reduce meat consumption? The meat science researchers noted that if such public health guidance were adhered to, “Cancer incidence may be reduced, but farmers and [the] meat industry would suffer important economical problems…” Hmmm, so Big Ag chooses profit over health; what a surprise.

Diabetes is next on the kick-the-bucket list. Plant-based diets help prevent, treat, and even reverse Type 2 diabetes. Since vegans are, on average, about 30 pounds skinnier than meat-eaters, this comes as no surprise; but researchers found that vegans appear to have just a fraction of the diabetes risk, even after controlling for their slimmer figures.

Read more at The Huffington Post.

Thanks to Kathryn!

Bamboo is Super!

Bamboo grows quickly and so to is the market for bamboo. The plant can be used for many different things from building to bicycles, but what’s so great about it today is that more construction sites are aware of how great bamboo is. Bamboo can be used to build stand-alone structures or be used as scaffolding at a construction site – either way bamboo also acts as a carbon sink.

The fast growing rugged grass has “unrivaled capacity to capture carbon” the article claims.

The bamboo industry hails the crop’s other environmental benefits. Because it shoots up quickly – as much as a meter (over 3 feet) in a day – it is highly renewable.

According to the Bamboo Clothing website, it thrives without fertilizers or pesticides, requires little water, grows on slopes too inhospitable for other crops, and has a 10 times higher yield per acre than cotton. Want more? It does not uproot soil (harvesting involves cutting it as it’s a grass) and it’s 100 percent biodegradable, the website notes.

The World Bamboo Organization says today’s bamboo market is $10 billion and could double in five years. China produces about 80 percent of the world’s supply, but other nations are turning to it as a cash crop.

Read more here.

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