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Beetle Naturally Builds Photonic Crystals
esocid writes "Impeding the dream of ultrafast optical computers, we've been unable to build an ideal 'photonic crystal' to manipulate visible light, until now. University of Utah chemists have discovered that nature already has designed photonic crystals with the ideal, diamond-like structure: They are found in the shimmering, iridescent green scales of a beetle from Brazil. The beetle is an inch-long weevil named Lamprocyphus augustus. Bartl and Galusha now are trying to design a synthetic version of the beetle's photonic crystals, using scale material as a mold to make the crystals from a transparent semiconductor. The scales can't be used in technological devices because they are made of fingernail-like chitin, which is not stable enough for long-term use, is not semiconducting and doesn't bend light adequately. Ideal photonic crystals could be used to amplify light and thus make solar cells more efficient, to capture light that would catalyze chemical reactions, and to generate tiny laser beams that would serve as light sources on optical chips."
Good luck with that. They're experiencing a population boom, and need food badly. They use that as the excuse to cut down the trees to sell to lumber mills for their ever-expanding market (China, India) and ever-dwindling supply. Also, keep in mind most of the nutrients from the jungles are all stored up in the trees. The same trees which are shipped off, and what isn't shipped off, is burned and blows away as smoke. Then they let cattle graze the grasses down to nothing and all the soil washes away, and then they obviously need to cut down more forest. This will continue until there is nothing left to cut down, the land is barren, and everyone starves.
The only ways I know of to stop this particular out of control locomotive is to educate the poor farmers in basic soil retention and agricultural techniques the Europeans discovered hundreds of years ago and to convince the lumber mills to stop imports (I.E. Go out of business). Since 1 may well happen (In fact there are efforts to ensure it) but 2 will not, I don't see how anything will change.