Image: MIT Could Store Power at 100x More Energy/Weight Than Lithium-Ion A team of scientists at MIT has discovered a new way to generate power with carbon nanotubes. In a paper titled "Chemically driven carbon-nanotube-guided thermopower waves" published in Nature Materials, they describe how they made "thermopower waves" flow through the nanotubes, generating a significant amount of power relative to the size of the nanotubes. This opens up new areas of research in energy gener...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: Lloyd Alter Between the upgrading of existing systems and the licencing of new carriers, the rooftop landscape of Toronto, Canada is changing rapidly as new antennae are added daily. While TreeHugger has discussed the question of cell phone safety many times, we are usually talking about the phone itself, where users have some control, rather than the base stations, where residents in apartment buildings with base stations on the roof do not. Is this exposure dangerous? A recent installation raises some questions....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image from Mail online There can hardly be a town without Tesco in Britain. The supermarket controls 30% of the business in the country and has stores everywhere. As it expands relentlessly it often wipes out small local businesses in its way. Sheringham, a resort town of 7,500 people has held out for 14 years against Tesco. Instead it has butchers and bakers and fishmongers along its main road. Tesco applied for planning permission to build on the main street and met with opposition by the loca...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: Knossos Induction Lights Are Close, But No Cigar Most people who have been following lighting tech seem to be convinced that light-emitting diode (LED) lights are the future, but it's always good to see new research being done on them. The more sure we are that they're the way to go, the better. It always sucks to invest a lot of time and money into something only to later realize that it's not nearly as good as we were first led to believe (*cough* corn ethanol *cough*). Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have conducted the first cradle-to-grave assessment of LED streetlights, and the...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image via Amazon The viral video phenomenon The Story of Stuff has made a big impact on audiences worldwide. Since its release in 2007, it's been viewed over 10 million times, showing we're as fascinated by learning about our Stuff as we are with the items themselves. The short movie with its fun and idea-clarifying animations lays out how stuff is made, distributed and discarded - the take-make-waste cycled as creator Annie Leonard calls it. It sums up our processes and problems in a smart, tidy package that has been a source of controver...Read the full story on TreeHugger