The winter chill is upon us, and holiday songs put us all in the mood to snuggle by a warm fire with our loved ones... but in this new "environmental age", what should we be using to fuel our roaring fires?  Tradition generates images in our minds of a large stone fireplace, ablaze with a fiery tower of wood>

Sewage sludge, green waste, even animal excrement can be utilized for energy recovery with  the biobattery modular concept. Biogas plants are an important element for decentralized energy supply. They produce electricity from renewable resources and can compensate for highly fluctuating wind and solar energy>

The recent slowdown in climate warming is due to natural oscillations in the climate, according to a team of climate scientists, who add that these oscillations represent variability internal to the climate system. They do not signal any slowdown in human-caused global warming.  The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation>

Credit: Image of map courtesy of the USGS and composite image by Patricia WaldronBy: Patricia Waldron, Inside Science(Inside Science) -- People living in Afghanistan have mined precious gems from their land, such as lapis lazuli, since the times of the Egyptian pharaohs. But modern analyses of the country's mineral>

Reefs are made up of many coral species that live in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship with microscopically small algae hosted in their tissue. These symbiont algae produce sugars that contribute to the diet of the coral in return for shelter and nutrients that are vital for algal growth. A symbiotic>