Scientists at the Ames Laboratory on the Iowa State University campus hope to improve on magnetic refrigeration to replace traditional air conditioners, refrigerators and other household staples in the near future.

A Professor Salt of Purdue University said that metal-accumulating plants have the potential to improve people's diets or even to be used to create foods that fight cancer.

Selenium is known to be a potent anti-carcinogen. Although selenium supplements are already available, most are of little use because the human body can only absorb and use selenium in certain chemical forms.

There are wild plants that accumulate selenium naturally. An example is Locoweed (Astragalus bisulcatus), which has the extraordinary ability to make the anti-carcinogenic form of selenium. New foods could be created to have anti-cancer properties if the gene that causes Locoweed to pull selenium from the soil could be moved into crop plants. Salt is working to clone the gene from Locoweed. These genes can used to create plants that could be used as nutritional supplements.

A lot of sunshine reaches building exteriors such as facades, roofs, walls, and other components throughout the day. Many builders therefore are looking at integrating photovoltaic (PV) cells into building 'envelopes' as a way to generate electricity.

To facilitate this integration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) started a programme to develop performance data on this relatively new but promising technique. The project involves three components:

1. A mobile tracking PV test facility to record the effects of the angle, temperature and solar spectrum on the electrical performance of various PV panels;
2. A meteorological station to measure solar radiation, wind and temperature conditions during the performance monitoring of building-integrated PV panels; and
3. A building-integrated PV testbed that conducts parallel comparisons of four different types of PV panels - crystalline, polycrystalline, silicon film and amorphous silicon.

Ford Motor Co. has unveiled a retrofitted gasoline engine that can run on cheaper, clean-burning hydrogen gas.

Ford said hydrogen improves the internal-combustion engine's efficiency by 25 to 30 percent. They hope to use hydrogen, in place of gasoline, as a near-term "greener" technology until hydrogen-powered fuel cells become practical.

The prototype engine develops about half the power of a regular Zetec engine and the vehicle fitted with the engine can travel 62 miles on a tank of fuel. It emits only a fraction of the carbon dioxide produced by a gasoline-powered engine.

Researchers have found that black carbon aerosols, which are produced from burning fossil fuel and vegetation, are cooling the Earth's surface but warming the atmosphere. This effect is changing the global climate and rainfall patterns.

The carbon aerosols are tiny particles suspended in the Earth's atmosphere. They absorb solar radiation and reflect it back into space. The absorption process makes the atmosphere warmer while the reflection resulted in less sunlight hitting the planet's surface, thus making it cooler. These particles are found to exert a regional cooling influence on Earth's surface about three times greater than the warming effect of greenhouse gases.

New York is poised to establish the first business park in the country devoted to promoting the development of new, clean-energy technologies.

The new business park, located near Albany, will provide companies with technology development support through the University of Albany, and funding from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

The project will address New York officials' concerns of a growing need for energy technologies that produce less emission than the combustion of coal, oil and natural gas.

A new legislation aimed at increasing the possibilities of using renewable fuels in the U.S. was introduced. This legislation has gained the support of many businesses investing in green energy solutions by promising loans to them. The US$750 million loan programme will augment the accessible capital for investing in renewable energies. This loan programme is seemingly effective, as it will please the American taxpayers while being beneficial to the environment.

Japan implemented the Home Appliance Recycling Law in Apr 2001. Under the law, manufacturers, retailers and consumers share the burden of recycling four types of appliances used in homes: air conditioners, televisions, refrigerators and washing machines.

Specifically, manufacturers have a legal obligation to recycle their products. Retailers have an obligation to provide collection and transportation services for the appliances to be recycled. Consumers, on the other hand, bear a predetermined cost for recycling the appliances, as well as the costs incurred in collecting and transporting them.

Incinerator ash from the waste burning incinerators could be hazardous and contain toxic substances such as dioxins, furans, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and other products from incomplete combustion. Startech Environmental Corp, an American company dealing in plasma waste remediation and recycling technology, produces the Plasma Converter that can safely destroy these hazards and turn the ash into a safe, inert, glassy stone that can be used in the abrasives and construction industries. PCBs will be completely and safely destroyed and converted into a clean synthesis fuel.

The Plasma Converter is essentially an electrochemical system that converts wastes into useful and valuable commodity products. The company claims that its Plasma Converter does this economically, efficiently, with relatively few moving parts, and without combustion. The prime mover in the Plasma Converter process is the chemical dissociation (decomposition) of the feed materials after which their elemental components (atoms) are reformed into useful commodities.