L.A. Moves Closer to Banning Single-Use Plastic and Paper Bags

The Board of Public Works votes unanimously to urge the mayor and city council to adopt a citywide ordinance banning single-use carryout bags. Story continues:

Plants, algae and cyanobacteria alter our planet in a way that only life can. They use photosynthesis to completely change the composition of the Earth's atmosphere.

Photosynthesis Re-Genesis I Aromatix 2007

Photosynthesis Re-Genesis II Aromatix 2007
Photosynthesis maintains Earth's habitability for life as we know it, and shapes the way we search for habitable worlds around distant stars. Scientists have discovered a microbe that can use low-energy light to perform photosynthesis. This discovery could alter theories about the types of stars that could support Earth-like worlds. Everyone knows that we as humans literally owe the air we breathe to the greenery around us. As school children we learned that plants (as well as algae and cyanobacteria) perform the all-important biological 'magic trick' known as photosynthesis, which helps generate the atmospheric oxygen we take in with every breath.

Without photosynthesis or oxygen, basically all recognizable life that we see in our landscape would be gone|

New way to store light could prove useful for optical communication:

Due to its high data carrying capacity and low loss, light can serve as an ideal information carrier. However, due to the high speed at which it travels, light is difficult to store. Because the ability to store light is important for optical networks as well as long-distance quantum communication networks, researchers have been investigating various light storage techniques. While previous studies have demonstrated that light can be stored as acoustic excitations, spin excitations, and atomic excitations, scientists have now added storing light as mechanical excitations to this list.

The team of physicists, who are from the University of Oregon and the University of California-Merced, have published their study on storing optical information as mechanical excitations in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters. Read More: