Tag: Environment

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Can faux meat produce meaty profits?

Josh Balk and cookies
Josh Balk, a co-founder of Hampton Creek Foods, grins over a spread of cookies made with Hampton Creek’s vegan cookie dough. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Is there money to be made by going meatless? Substitutes for meat, dairy and eggs have been around for decades, as demonstrated by the success of Seattle-based Field Roast Grain Meat Co., but new technologies may well give what’s now known as “clean meat” a boost.

“I don’t know of any companies that are true innovators in this space that are flailing,” said Chris Kerr, investment manager at New Crop Capital, a D.C.-based venture capital firm that specializes in the food frontier.

Kerr was among the experts speaking at a survey of the marketplace for clean meat – that is, meat products that are essentially grown from cells in a vat rather than animals in a feedlot – as well as for plant-based proteins like Field Roast. The May 22 presentation was organized by the University of Washington’s CoMotion Labs in collaboration with the Good Food Institute, a clean-meat advocacy group.

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Tunnel collapse sparks emergency at Hanford

Hanford tunnel collapse
This picture shows the 20-by-20-foot area where soil has caved in over a storage tunnel at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. (Hanford via Twitter)

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation says a 20-foot section of a tunnel system where it stores contaminated material and equipment collapsed today, sparking an emergency alert and restrictions on workers’ movements. No injuries were reported.

A remotely operated TALON robot surveyed the scene and detected no release of contamination, Hanford said in its online update on the emergency.

Hanford said workers conducting routine surveillance this morning discovered the 20-by-20-foot hole in the roof of one of the two storage tunnels at the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant, or PUREX Plant, in the site’s central 200 East Area.

The tunnels were constructed of wood and concrete during the Cold War, and covered with about 8 feet of soil. They’ve been used for decades to store contaminated equipment from plutonium production operations at the site in southeastern Washington state.

The cave-in occurred in the 200 East Area, around a spot where the two tunnels join together, Hanford said.

The workers on the surveillance team were evacuated, and thousands of employees sheltered in place for hours. As of this afternoon, all non-essential employees at the Hanford site have been released, officials said in a tweet.

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Study confirms aviation biofuel’s benefits

Contrails
During flight tests led by NASA, a DC-8 research jet’s four engines burned either JP-8 jet fuel or a 50-50 blend of JP-8 and renewable alternative fuel of hydro processed esters and fatty acids produced from camelina plant oil. (NASA / SSAI Photo / Edward Winstead)

A NASA-led study demonstrates that airplanes powered by biofuels can emit up to 70 percent less particulate pollution – providing a potential boost for technologies that are being pioneered at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

The study, published today by the journal Nature, was conducted in the skies over NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California. But the findings could be applied at Sea-Tac, where the Port of Seattle, Alaska Airlines and Boeing are partnering to work toward having biofuel available for every flight.

NASA’s flight tests in 2013 and 2014 were part of a series of experiments known as the Alternative Fuel Effects on Contrails and Cruise Emissions Study, or ACCESS.

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Suburban sprawl drives songbirds apart

Pacific wren
The Pacific wren is an “avoider” bird species. (UW Photo / John Marzluff)Bir

Researchers at the University of Washington report that suburban development is forcing lovebirds in the Seattle area to split up and miss their best chance to raise a family.

We’re not just talking figuratively here: These are real birds – specifically, a category of songbirds called “avoiders” that tend to form monogamous relationships.

Such birds include the Pacific wren and Swainson’s thrush in the Pacific Northwest. They’re generally shy of humans, and rely on groundcover and brush for breeding locales.

A team of UW researchers led by wildlife biologist John Marzluff tracked the movements and mating patterns of six common bird species at 26 forested sites east of Seattle over the course of a decade, from 2000 to 2010. Some of the sites experienced rapid development during that time frame.

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Scientists mourn the loss of the oldest orca

Granny the orca
The orca known as J2, or Granny, hasn’t been seen for months. (Center for Whale Research / 1998)

No body has been sighted, but after months of missing her, researchers have declared that the oldest orca in Puget Sound’s J pod is presumed dead.

The loss of J2, better-known as Granny, marks a turning point for the small community of southern resident killer whales in Puget Sound and its environs. Orca communities are centered around older females, which made Granny the leader of J pod.

It’s not known precisely how old Granny was, but Ken Balcomb, executive director and principal investigator at the Center for Whale Research, said estimates put her likely age at 76 back in 1987.  That would make her 105 years old now.

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China’s ivory ban marks big step for elephants

Elephant
The Great Elephant Census documents a decline in the species. (Great Elephant Census via YouTube)

China’s pledge to shut down commercial trade in ivory within a year comes as welcome news to conservationists who have been fighting for years to save endangered elephants – including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

The Chinese government’s announcement on Friday laid out a plan to close domestic trade in elephant ivory by the end of 2017, following up on a commitment made by President Xi Jinping in 2015. The ban will be phased in starting in March, and will apply to physical sales as well as online transactions.

China already has been taking steps to counter the illegal trade, including widely publicized ceremonies during which authorities have crushed down tons of elephant tusks and carved ivory. The country is nevertheless considered the home of the world’s largest ivory market.

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Arctic Report Card heats up climate concern

Arctic warming
From October 2015 to September 2016, the Arctic region recorded its warmest temperatures on record. Shades of red indicate how much warmer the temperature was compared to the 1981-2010 average. (NOAA / NCEP Graphic)

The latest update on Arctic climate shows that temperatures at the top of the world are increasing at twice the global rate, setting an assortment of records and near-records.

“Rarely have we seen the Arctic show a clearer, stronger or more pronounced signal of persistent warming and its cascading effects on the environment than this year,” Jeremy Mathis, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic Research Program, said in a news release.

The Arctic Report Card, issued annually by NOAA, was released today in conjunction with the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco. The annual report brings together peer-reviewed findings produced by 61 scientists from 11 nations.

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Scientists worry about Trump’s climate views

Stephen Hawking
British physicist Stephen Hawking delved into the mysteries of the solar system and beyond in a Discovery Channel series titled “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.” (Credit: Discovery Channel)

An open letter from 375 scientists is voicing concern about GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s views on climate change – and urging the United States not to cancel its commitment to last year’s Paris climate agreement, as Trump has said he would do.

Among the signers of the letter published today are British physicist Stephen Hawking, billionaire philanthropist James Simons, 30 Nobel laureates and nine University of Washington professors.

The Paris pact was adopted by the United States and more than 190 other nations last December, and formally ratified by President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping this month. It lays out commitments to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and keep average global temperatures from rising by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).

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DNA points to lots of marine life near cities

Image: Redondo Beach
Washington state’s Redondo Beach is one of the urbanized sites where environmental DNA samples were taken. (Credit: Joe Mabel via Flickr / CC BY-SA 3.0)

A novel method for analyzing the DNA left behind in the waters of Puget Sound shows that urban shorelines tend to harbor a wider array of marine life than less developed shorelines.

That outcome came as a surprise to the researchers from the University of Washington, Seattle’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Oregon State University. In a study published this week by the journal PeerJ, they reported that bivalves and gastropods – clams and snails – were particularly widespread.

“Clams and other things that live in mud seem to like living near cities, which is really interesting,” lead author Ryan Kelly, a UW assistant professor of marine and environmental affairs, said in a news release.

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Arctic sea-ice study is bad news for polar bears

Image: Polar bear
A polar bear tests the strength of thin Arctic sea ice. (Credit: Mario Hoppmann via Imaggeo.EGU.eu)

Scientists have long known that Arctic climate change is bad news for bears, but University of Washington researchers quantify just how bad it is in a study published today.

The study in The Cryosphere, a journal of the European Geosciences Union, is said to be the first to assess the impact of sea ice changes for 19 different populations of polar bears across the entire Arctic region, using the metrics that are most relevant to polar bear biology.

“This study shows declining sea ice for all subpopulations of polar bears,” Harry Stern, a researcher with UW’s Polar Science Center, said in an EGU news release.

The analysis draws upon 35 years’ worth of satellite data showing daily sea-ice concentration in the Arctic. There’s a consistent trend toward earlier thawing in the spring, and later freezing in the winter. Between 1979 and 2014, the total number of ice-covered days declined at the rate of 7 to 19 days per decade. Over the course of 35 years, seven weeks of good sea-ice habitat were lost.

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