Denmark aims to get 50% of all electricity from wind power

The Danish government has stepped up its green energy and carbon reduction targets for 2020, hailing the plan as the "broadest, greenest, and most long-term energy agreement" it has ever reached.The deal aims to see Denmark cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 34% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels and decrease energy consumption by more than 12% compared to 2006."Denmark will once again be the global leader in the transition to green energy," said Lidegaard. "This will prepare us for a future with increasing prices for oil and coal. Moreover, it will create some of the jobs that we need so desperately, now and in the coming years."It also aims to supply 35% of its total energy from renewables, with half of its electricity delivered by wind farms. 

Viruses Recruited as Killers of Tumors

Dr. Mohr and a doctoral student, Matt Mulvey, then engineered a way for their virus to evade the immune system, making it an even more potent cancer-killing agent. Unlike chemotherapy, which can diminish in effectiveness over time, oncolytic viruses multiply in the body and gain strength as the infection becomes established. In addition to attacking cancer cells directly, some also produce an immune response that targets tumors. Today, several potential cancer-fighting viruses are in trials, including two in Phase 3 trials. An engineered form of vaccinia, the viral agent that helped eradicate smallpox, is being tested against advanced liver cancer, the third leading cause of cancer deaths globally. In a recent trial, survival for patients treated with high doses of the virus, called JX-594, doubled to 14 months from 7, compared with that of patients treated with low doses.

Salamanders Learn to Live With Pollution

Steven P. Brady found that Salamanders can evolve fairly rapidly, in 10 to 20 generations, in response to the chemical runoff found in many roadside ponds. In New England, where Mr. Brady did his work, much of this runoff is from the salt used to break up ice and snow as well as chemicals thrown off by cars like gasoline and oil. Salamanders whose parents lived in these surroundings were 25 percent more likely to survive if they found themselves in a polluted pond than salamanders whose forebears had been used to cleaner water. Mr. Brady pointed out that some analogous data has been collected in fish populations, some of which are better able to process chemical compounds like PCB’s.

Cardboard rolls aid Dounreay clean-up

The sludge mixer stirs radioactive material dredged from the Dounreay Fast Reactor in Caithness, with cement, inside 200 litre steel drums.Workers were having difficulty fitting the machine's motor drive to the spindle of its mixing paddle.They have been using the tubes to make it easier to access the spindle.By cutting the cardboard rolls into equal sized pieces they have been able to raise the paddle off the bottom of the drums.The spindle can then be easily reached because it pokes above the top of the drums.The cardboard easily squashes down and mixes with the sludge and cement without risking any damage to the device. Dounreay worker Ross Murray came up with the idea to use the cardboard rolls, the latest in a series of household items used in the £2.6bn clean-up of the plant.Domestic cleaning product Cillit Bang has been used to help clean plutonium stains.A design engineer at site also used the castors off his own living room couch to stop a machine dubbed the "hedgehog" from toppling over.The device was built to probe radioactivity levels and shoot video inside Dounreay's Prototype Fast Reactor.In tests, the device kept toppling over when turning corners.However, senior design engineer Calder Bain used the castors to stabilise the machine.