Fertility // Current

Stem cell findings could lead to new infertility treatments

U.S. researchers have found a way to coax human embryonic stem cells to turn into the... more

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Octomom Doctor Michael Kamrava Expelled From Society For Reproductive Medicine

The Beverly Hills doctor who gave fertility treatments to octuplets mom Nadya Suleman... more

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Croats seek medically-assisted reproduction in Slovenia

Croatian couples with fertility problems have been going to clinics in neighbouring... more

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Tunisian Woman Pregnant with 12 Babies!

If you thought the Octomom was crazy, listen to this - a woman in Tunisia is pregnant... more

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Silence shrouds fertility treatment in China

Although infertility treatment is becoming more and more popular in China, finding a... more

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Unlocking The Key To Human Fertility

Drs David Miller and David Iles from the University of Leeds, in collaboration with Dr... more

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The best 5 sex foods

There are different opinions about what food makes you desire sex more. We looked... more

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First Human Sperm Created from Stem Cells

Researchers at the Northeast England Stem Cell Institute have created human sperm... more

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4 months ago
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More Creepy Ads: Fertility is our Birthright

"The moment we pass from womanhood to motherhood, we cross a threshold. For many of... more

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The bright prospect of biochar

Enthusiasts say that biochar could go a long way towards mitigating climate change and bring with it a host of ancillary benefits. But others fear it could do more harm than good. Kurt Kleiner reports.

Tilling charcoal into the soil can promote lush plant growth as well as sequestering carbon, say biochar enthusiasts.

Jim Fournier wants to help save the planet, though in a most unlikely way: by burning biomass. At the forefront of a carbon-sequestration technology that proponents say offers a rare 'win-win-win' environmental opportunity, Fournier's company Biochar Engineering in Golden, Colorado, manufactures machines that turn biomass into charcoal, or biochar.

Spread on soil, biochar can keep CO2 out of the atmosphere while improving soil fertility and boosting productivity. In addition, gases released in the charcoal-making process can be used to make biofuels that are more sustainable than those currently on the market. "Char happens to be the one thing that represents a solution to all of these factors together. It's a unique opportunity," Fournier says.

But while enthusiasts are pushing to have biochar recognized as an official means of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions, others remain cautious. At best we know too little, say critics, and at worst using biochar to sequester carbon could ultimately lead to unintended consequences, including the destruction of virgin forests to make way for plantations.

"Biochar certainly has potential," says David Wardle, a soil scientist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala. "But it's premature to be already including it in carbon accounting. Maybe it really is an answer. But we don't know that yet."

Though the idea of using biochar for climate change mitigation is relatively new, its origins extend back to the pre-Columbian era, when humans first made terra preta — in Portuguese, dark earth — soils in the central Amazon basin. According to archaeologists, the rich, black and fertile terra preta was created by adding a mixture of bone, manure and charcoal to the otherwise relatively infertile soil over many years. The charcoal – believed to be the key ingredient – is 70 times more concentrated in terra preta than in surrounding soils and is formed by heating biomass in an oxygen-poor or oxygen-free environment. Some of the charcoal in Amazon terra preta soils has persisted for thousands of years, back to when people first started this practice. Its persistence has attracted the attention of research scientists who think that it could be used to lock away carbon for a similarly long time in the future, keeping it out of the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas.

end of excerptEnthusiasts say that biochar could go a long way towards mitigating climate change and... more