conservation

For most people, conserving energy means turning off lights in empty rooms. But for the researchers at Bell Labs, the massive energy savings lurk in the 1's and 0's of the code that regulates the Internet. Based on a new study from the lab, communications networks could use 99 percent less energy with only a few simple code changes. Bell Labs also estimates that those savings would prevent the emission of 300 million tons of carbon.

In April, a team from Glasgow School of Art will shoot lasers at the heads of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson. And they will do it all in the name of preservation.

The Scottish artists have perfected a system of laser scanning giant monuments, ensuring the digital preservation of even their finest nooks and crannies. They have already completely digitized Scottish landmarks like Rosslyn Church and Stirling Castle. The team is also working in conjunction with CyArk, a non-profit dedicated to laser scanning 500 UNESCO world heritage sites.

A new "genomic zoo" has launched, with the goal of sequencing the genomes of 10,000 vertebrate species. The project aims to help researchers understand recent and rapid adaptive changes among the species. It could also allow predictions of how certain species might respond to climate change, pollution, new diseases and competitors.

The Genome 10K Project will scour zoos, museums and universities worldwide for thousands of specimens. An international coalition of more than 68 scientists has outlined their plans in a paper that will appear tomorrow in the Journal of Heredity.

According to a new report from the prestigious London School of Economics, birth control is a less expensive way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions than most green energy strategies.

About halfway through our cover story on the next generation of manned submarines, you'll find a provocative dispute between two legendary figures over the respective merits of manned and unmanned exploration of the ocean.

Going green makes military sense to the U.S. Army. Self-sufficient vehicles and base camps require fewer supply convoy runs that stretch logistics lines thin across hostile territory. The Army's new "zero-footprint" concept for a camp includes a package of very cool technologies.

Soldiers could eventually obtain their drinking water from vehicle exhaust, based on water-purification technologies being developed by the U.S. Army's TARDEC and DARPA labs. Garbage and waste produced by camps could also become new sources of energy.

Click Here for last month's entry - Stage #1: Build the Box

Stage #2: Solar Water Boiler

Overfishing has endangered the grey nurse shark, but it’s the animal’s bizarre, cannibalistic embryos that are making it difficult for the species to rebound. The gestating shark pups need a ‘time out,’ says Nick Otway, an Australian fisheries biologist at the Port Stephens Fisheries Institute in New South Wales. As a last-ditch effort to keep the species from eating itself into extinction, he built an artificial uterus, a souped-up fish tank that will give each unborn baby its own womb.

Trees are great absorbers of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and inhibitors of climate change -- that's why treehuggers hug them so much. But leave it to humanity to engineer a better tree. A synthetic tree, currently being tested as a prototype, ensnares carbon about 1,000 times faster than a real tree.

The water toilet is truly one of the greatest miracles of modern life, a frothy disappearing act; now you see it… now you don’t. But washing human waste away requires huge sewage treatment infrastructures in cities, and extensive home septic systems for rural dwellers. Compost toilets, though in their essence as old as human civilization, have evolved to a point of technological sophistication whereby they tackle the minutiae of composting details to create optimal conditions for recycling human waste.

Take a look at the compost toilet tech out there for the non-flushers among us.

Hara Woltz's clients don't say much -- mostly just ribbit. A landscape architect and biologist at Columbia University, Woltz has undertaken the daunting task of creating road-crossing tunnels for amphibians and reptiles, based on different animals' preferences for different tunnel attributes. Building herpetological crosswalks might seem absurd, but the stakes are high: nearly one-third of the world's amphibian species and many of its reptiles are spiraling toward extinction due to habitat loss and fragmentation from human development.

PopSci is celebrating Earth Day in all kinds of green ways! Check out our gallery to see what we're doing for the planet today, and to discover the science behind our decisions.

Earth Day is a big deal here at PopSci. It's a time for admiring our incredible planet, and for giving back-- to the Earth, and to our readers (that means you). We've teamed up with the BBC to bring you a gallery of stunning images from the popular Planet Earth series, video clips (so you can appreciate the full affect), and our most extravagant giveaway yet.

A recent study of dingoes in the Blue Mountains challenges the postcard image of dingoes as only being white pawed and sandy coloured.

Brad Purcell, a PhD candidate in the University of Western Sydney's School of Natural Sciences, closely followed dingoes using GPS tracking and infra red cameras in the remote Southern Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, approximately 80 kilometres from the centre of Sydney.

Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) are making a major contribution of science, information and underwater images to the site – launched globally today – which is designed to enable internet users worldwide to explore more fully the two thirds of the planet covered by water.

The GBR is one of a number of focal locations chosen by Google to highlight different aspects of the ocean. Others include the Galapagos, the Antarctic, the Gulf of Mexico, Hawaii, Bermuda, the West Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.