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In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of researchers and scientists show that the gains that have been made in stabilizing CO2 emissions in developed or "rich" countries since the signing of the Kyoto agreement, have been neutralized by the increase in CO2 emissions from developing nations as they produce goods for trade, primarily to developed countries. Because of this disparity, many groups are calling for a change to the Kyoto agreement practice of only counting CO2 emissions that are produced in-country, rather than the CO2 footprint of those products that are consumed.

Collectively, malaria, TB & HIV/AIDS cause more than five million deaths per year - nearly the entire population of the state of Washington - and represent one of the world's major public health challenges as we move into the second decade of the 21st century. In the May 26, 2011, edition of scientific journal Nature, Seattle BioMed Director Alan Aderem, Ph.D., along with Rino Rappuoli, Ph.D., Global Head of Vaccines Research for Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics, discuss recent advances in vaccine development, along with new tools including systems biology and structure-based antigen design that could lead to a deeper understanding of mechanisms of protection. This, in turn, will illuminate the path to rational vaccine development to lift the burden of the world's most devastating infectious diseases.

The Deakin University invention uses waste heat to reduce friction by warming the engine oil. A prototype has been built and tested and the inventors are now talking to the car manufacturers and developing an aftermarket conversion kit. The system, which can be retrofitted, works by diverting waste heat to bring engine oil up to its optimal operating temperature. It was developed by researchers at Deakin University led by Mr Frank Will of the School of Engineering during his PhD project.

In an attempt to mimic the photosynthetic systems found in plants and some bacteria, scientists have taken a step toward developing an artificial light-harvesting system (LHS) that meets one of the crucial requirements for such systems: an approximately 100% energy transfer efficiency. Although high energy transfer efficiency is just one component of the development of a useful artificial LHS, the achievement could lead to clean solar-fuel technology that turns sunlight into chemical fuel.

Scientists at the NRL Materials Science and Technology Division are providing solid evidence that there is a new route towards developing novel, lightweight energy storage devices. By moving away from centuries of caustic, hazardous aqueous-based battery cells and instead using non-volatile, thermally-stable ionic liquids, scientists predict multiple new types of batteries. Rather than depend on highly acidic electrolytes, ionic liquids are used to create a solid polymer electrolyte composed of an ionic liquid and polyvinyl alcohol, developing novel types of solid state batteries with discharge voltages ranging up to 1.8 volts.

Children from homes that experience persistent poverty are more likely to have their cognitive development affected than children in better off homes, reveals research published ahead of print in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

A number of threatened species in the developing world are entirely dependent on human agriculture for their survival, according to new research by the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Plastic may compete with paper in the grocery line, but it doesn't have to compete with the world's food supply, according to University of Florida researchers. They've developed a way to produce plastic that doesn't use valuable natural resources, such as food or fuel, for raw materials. The new method uses a strain of bacteria to create bioplastic from discarded plant material, such as yard waste.

Researchers are testing different ways of improving rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles and nanotechnology plays an important role in the development. The aim is to offer batteries that have fast charge and discharge rates as well as high stored energy per mass. This can make electric vehicles a competitive alternative to petrol-powered vehicles.

Researched and designed by technologist Michell Zappa, Envisioning Technology is a speculative and subjective overview of potential future technologies. Based on personal research and observations, this map is intended to facilitate predictions of where the technium is going, as well as provoke thought and stimulate debate. Due to the intrinsic difficulty of speculation, the visualization is not to be interpreted as a roadmap, but rather as a point of reference for those investigating (or designing) the future of technology. Each hub represents an important area of development to which actual technologies (shown as nodes) belong. The center of the map marks where we are today, and the further out points indicate how far into the future each technology is predicted to become mainstream. The visualization also attempts to distinguish the predicted importance of each area, shown by the relative size of the nodes

David Keith is Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. The award-winning scientist, who was named one of TIME magazine's Heroes of the Environment in 2009, has worked near the interface of climate science, energy technology, and public policy for twenty years. He divides his time between Boston and Calgary, where he serves as president of Carbon Engineering-a start-up company developing industrial-scale technologies for capture of CO2 from ambient air. Here, Keith answers questions about his research and ideas for reducing climate change using innovative and sometimes controversial methods.

Technology for making an "artificial leaf" holds the potential for opening an era of "fast-food energy," in which people generate their own electricity at home with low-cost equipment perfect for the 3 billion people living in developing countries and even home-owners in the United States. That's among the prospects emerging from research on a new genre of "electrofuels" described in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the American Chemical Society's weekly newsmagazine.

Scientists studying populations of gray wolves in the USA's Yellowstone National Park have developed a way to predict how changes in the environment will impact on the animals' number, body size and genetics, amongst other biological traits.

Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels and the cement industry scaled a record high in 2010, rocketing by 5.9 percent over 2009 in a surge led by developing countries, scientists reported on Sunday.

Indonesia has the potential to realize major reductions in national greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, and simultaneously earn significant new income for national and regional governments, if policies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) are developed with strong and specific economic incentives, said scientists in a new paper published in the leading scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

UCLA researchers have developed a new transparent solar cell that is an advance toward giving windows in homes and other buildings the ability to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside. Their study appears in the journal ACS Nano.   The UCLA team describes a new kind of polymer solar cell (PSC) that produces energy by absorbing mainly infrared light, not visible light, making the cells nearly 70% transparent to the human eye. They made the device from a photoactive plastic that converts infrared light into an electrical current

A Binghamton University computer scientist with an interest in "green" software development has received the National Science Foundation's most prestigious award for young researchers.

A new intelligence test, which can be taken by any living creature is being developed that will enable comparison of intellect between humans and animals.

A team of researchers, led by Dr. Yi Cui, of Stanford and Dr. Bruce Logan from Penn State University have succeeded in developing an entropy battery that pulls energy from the imbalance of salinity in fresh water and seawater. Their paper, published in Nano Letters, describes a deceptively simple process whereby an entropy battery is used to capture the energy that is naturally released when river water flows into the sea.

For more than 20 years, theoretical mathematical models have predicted that a delay built into a negative feedback system is at the heart of the molecular mechanism that governs circadian clocks in mammalian cells. Now, the first experimental proof of this theory has been provided by an international research team led by molecular biologists and information scientists from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe. The demonstration of the feedback delay should lead to a better understanding of how cellular clocks function, and therefore how mammals adjust to the regular daily and seasonal changes in their environment. The work could also open the way to the development of treatments for circadian disorders, such as seasonal affective disorder, jet lag and even bipolar disorder.