{"id":474716,"date":"2010-03-22T17:13:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T21:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16432059.post-5824545712511516177"},"modified":"2010-03-22T17:34:17","modified_gmt":"2010-03-22T21:34:17","slug":"frogs-and-fuels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/474716","title":{"rendered":"Frogs and Fuels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>by Richard T. Stuebi<\/em><br \/><em><\/em><br \/>Thanks to my friend and fellow blogger <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ufto.com\/edbeards-cv.html\">Ed Beardsworth<\/a> for making me aware of this gem:<\/p>\n<p>As discussed in overview in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rdmag.com\/News\/2010\/03\/Environment-Carbon-Converting-solar-energy-into-something-sweet-with-the-help-of-frogs\/\">this article<\/a>, researchers at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uc.edu\/\">University of Cincinnati<\/a> have found that frogs of a certain species, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tungara_Frog\">Tungara frog<\/a> to be exact, secrete a foam that seems to turbocharge the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Photosynthesis\">photosynthetic effect<\/a> &#8212; thus offering the tantalizing prospect of removing carbon dioxide in the air while increasing the productivity of converting organic matter into biofuels.<\/p>\n<p>The paper, <a href=\"http:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1021\/nl100550k?journalCode=nalefd\">&#8220;Artificial Photosynthesis in Ranaspumin-2 Based Foam&#8221;<\/a> in the journal <em><a href=\"http:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/journal\/nalefd?cookieSet=1\">Nano Letters<\/a><\/em>, cannot be found at your local newsstand and is not likely to become a bestseller.  But, maybe some synthetic foams with the same properties as the Tungara frog&#8217;s might become commercially-interesting in both carbon sequestration and biofuel production.<br \/><em><\/em><br \/><em>Richard T. Stuebi is a founding principal of <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nortechenergy.org\/\"><em>NorTech Energy Enterprise<\/em><\/a><em>, the advanced energy initiative at <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nortech.org\/\"><em>NorTech<\/em><\/a><em>, where he is on loan from <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.clevelandfoundation.org\/\"><em>The Cleveland Foundation<\/em><\/a><em> as its Fellow of Energy and Environmental Advancement. He is also a Managing Director in charge of cleantech investment activities at <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.esplp.com\/\"><em>Early Stage Partners<\/em><\/a><em>, a Cleveland-based venture capital firm.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">Content provided by and all rights reserved to CleantechBlog.com.  Also check out http:\/\/www.cleantech.org<img width='1' height='1' src='https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/16432059-5824545712511516177?l=www.cleantechblog.com' alt='' \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Richard T. StuebiThanks to my friend and fellow blogger Ed Beardsworth for making me aware of this gem: As discussed in overview in this article, researchers at the University of Cincinnati have found that frogs of a certain species, the Tungara frog to be exact, secrete a foam that seems to turbocharge the photosynthetic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6422,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}