The country's first auction of emissions permits set the price of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at $3.07 per ton. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a consortium of 10 states in the Northeast, held the first U.S. cap-and-trade auction last week and announced the results today, the Associated Press reports. Under the program, companies buy permits to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases, and if they reduce their emissions they can sell the permits to other companies for a profit.

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Not all of the fossil fuel we use goes to power our cars or heat our homes: Some is used to make plastic. The Discovery Channel tells us that researchers at Genomatica, a company in San Diego, CA, say they've developed bacteria that make an important ingredient of the plastic that's used in products from Spandex to car bumpers. The company says it can go into production as early as next year, and that its product will be cheaper even if the cost of oil drops as low as $50 a barrel.

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Aircraft manufacturer Boeing has teamed up with 10 airlines, including Air France, Continental, and Virgin Atlantic, to form a Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group. Flightglobal reports that the group will look for ways to make renewable jet fuel, with the goal of at least partially replacing fossil fuel used in airplanes with biofuel by 2013. Boeing is funding two studies on making jet fuel from algae or the plant jatropha, being done at the Natural Resources Defense Council and Yale.

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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has released an 11-page "plan for science and innovation." Nature reports that the plan calls for doubling the funding of the National Institutes of Health over 10 years, and spells out science policies in more specific details than had been released previously.

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Google has announced a project to solicit ideas that can have a positive impact on humanity, and to fund those it deems most promising. The project, dubbed 10^100 (10 to the hundredth power), will dole out up to $10 million to the winning idea or ideas. As CNN reports, Google is open to any sort of idea that helps people in some way, from providing food and shelter to promoting clean energy.

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The British science journal Nature posed 18 questions related to science and policy to the two presidential candidates, but received written answers only from Democrat Barack Obama. Nature prints his answers, along with statements on the topics from Republican John McCain when they could be found from other sources. Among the issues: appointing a science advisor, how to address climate change, and what to teach children about evolution.

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A new online game called Superstruct started running this week, and challenges players with "superthreats" such as disease pandemics, refugees displaced by global warming, and evil computer hackers, that threaten civilization. As Discover magazine reports, the game, from the Institute for the Future, hopes to harness the so-called wisdom of crowds to predict doomsday scenarios and come up with ways to deal with them.

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Solar panels are becoming increasingly popular, with thieves who resell them on eBay, according to the New York Times. Although no one's compiled statistics, police departments in California say they're seeing a rash of such crimes. Outside of California, where fewer panels have been installed, thefts are rarer, but growing, the paper says.

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All those billions of plastic bottles you're drinking your designer water and energy drinks out of could be recycled into a biodegradable plastic that could replace the cellophane in food packaging, Science News reports. The trick is to heat the plastic so it breaks down into constituent parts, including an acid. Feed the acid to the right kind of microbes and they turn it into a new, biodegradable plastic.

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Here's yet another way the presidential campaigns are using new technologies in their quest for the White House. Both campaigns are using Google's AdWords program to link their ads to particular searches, says Wired. For instance, the McCain campaign bought the term "Joe Biden" so that users searching for the Democratic vice presidential candidate will see an ad that links to a video of Biden criticizing Barack Obama. The Obama campaign, meanwhile, linked "economic crisis" to an ad that criticizes McCain as being "out of touch."

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Surgeons are working on new experimental techniques to avoid of scarring by working with the openings that already exist in the human body. The Washington Post says doctors have started using flexible endoscopes to, for instance, remove gallbladders through the mouth, and are experimenting with appendectomies and stomach surgery. Some, though, question the need for new procedures, when there are already safe and minimally invasive practices in use.

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Computer chips have become more powerful by cramming more and smaller transistors into the same space, and the industry right now is moving from technology where the key size measurement is 65 nanometers to 45-nanometer technology. But as CNET News reports, IBM is looking a couple technology generations ahead, to 22-nanometer devices. The challenge they're tackling: Technology to produce such small features doesn't yet exist, and it's not obvious how to create it.

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The City of Chicago wants to cut its emission of greenhouse gases to three-quarters of 1990 levels by 2020, and one-fifth of 1990 levels by 2050. The Associated Press reports that the plan includes updating the city's building code to improve insulation and heating and cooling systems in all buildings, increasing recycling and carpooling, and promoting alternative fuels. Chicago emits 34.6 metric tons of greenhouse gases each year.

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The National Academy of Sciences has issued a report advising the presidential candidates on how to deal with science-related issues. According to Ars Technica, the NAS says that most major issues for government, including climate, healthcare, and intelligence gathering, have some science and technology components. The group is calling for the next president to appoint a personal science advisor in his early days in office.

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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign tells Wired that the candidate is getting science advice from five noted scientists. Wired has profiles of: Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate and former head of the National Institutes of Health; Gilbert Ommen, a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Peter Agre, a Nobel laureate and ardent critic of the Bush administration; NASA researcher Donald Lamb; and Stanford University plant biologist Sharon Long.

The magazine/website said Republican nominee John McCain has ignored repeated requests to identify his science advisors.

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Methane holds a lot of promise as a fuel source---there's enough in two deposits off the coast of South Carolina to power the United States for a century---but it's difficult to store and transport. Now chemists in England have come up with a simple way to turn the natural gas into a sugar-like powder that would be cheaper and easier to store than current methods allow, the Discovery Channel reports. The researchers turned the gas to a powder simply by mixing it with water filled with fine particles of silica.

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The effort to provide free WiFi connections for low-income residents of San Francisco is proceeding apace, the city says. Mayor Gavin Newsom and wireless router company Meraki said this week they're adding wireless coverage to 12 low-income housing projects in the Tenderloin neighborhood, CNET News says. Meraki says about 150,000 of the city's 860,000 residents are on its network, and it will be a few more years before the entire city is covered.

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Republican presidential candidate John McCain has answered a series of questions posed to him by a group called Science Debate 2008. The New York Times summarizes his positions, along with those of Democratic candidate Barack Obama, who answered them in late August. Not surprisingly, Obama's answers stress the role of government while McCain focuses on business in addressing some of the nation's main science-related challenges.

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A group of MBA students has developed a Broadband Quality Score for 42 countries and found that the only country with enough bandwidth capacity to meet its needs in the next three to five years is Japan. Ars Technica reports that the score includes upload and download speeds and other measures. The United States, the study found, has slightly more capacity than it needs right now, but not enough to handle future demands, which will include visual networking, high-density streaming, consumer telepresence, and large file sharing.

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Airlines have started providing Internet hookups on their flights, but at least one says that passengers won't be allowed to use voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) to make telephone calls over the connections. The New York Times says that service-provider Aircell and American Airlines block Skype, Vonage, and similar programs, because they worry the conversations will annoy other passengers. No airline so far plans to allow phone calls.

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With gas prices rising and more people looking to share rides to work, governments and iPhone apps are offering ride-matching services to link riders with drivers. BusinessWeek tells us that a number of companies are springing up that use Web 2.0 interactivity to do a better job of match-making, with some even offering to verify users' identity to make the process safer.

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Wind power is booming, with capacity last year growing by 45 percent and wind power companies being bought and sold. The Atlantic displays an interesting map showing where the wind and the windmills are, but worries that the current optimism in the wind market may turn sour. It cites two problems: the poor capacity of transmission lines to carry the electricity from the sparsely inhabited, windy areas where it's generated to the big cities that need it, and the variability in supply caused by changes in the weather.

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San Francisco and its neighbors, Oakland and San Jose, are working together to develop a regional climate change compact. The agreement, not yet done, will include pledges to use more renewable energy and generate more "green" jobs, reports the San Jose Mercury News. Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

The public policy debate on what research, if any, to perform with embryonic stem cells is heating up. The New York Times reports that Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden is going on the offensive against a Republican Party platform that opposes any form of such research, even that approved by the Bush administration. The McCain campaign accuses Biden of using the issue to attack vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose youngest son was born with Down syndrome.

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Researchers at MIT are testing new software that uses vast amounts of information to guide officials in planning how and when to evacuate a city if a hurricane is coming. After Katrina, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency started using software that estimates how long it would take to evacuate a city. But according to Technology Review, the new MIT computer model goes much further, combining information about current weather conditions and projected hurricane paths with data on how many elderly, hospital patients, and tourists have to be moved, and makes recommendations based on those inputs.

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Google is one of a group of investors pouring $60 million into a startup company that hopes to use satellites to deliver Internet access to developing countries. O3b Networks, based in the U.K.'s Channel Islands, plans to launch up to 16 satellites by the end of 2010, according to the Wall Street Journal. The satellites could provide service to Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Latin America.

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People who use Twitter to comment about Kodak or General Motors might be surprised when the companies Twitter back at them. BusinessWeek reports that those businesses, as well as others such as JetBlue, Dell, Comcast, and Whole Foods, have started to monitor the microblogging service for mentions of their companies. When they see a mention, their customer service departments respond to the sender, asking if there's anything they can do to help.

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Both the Democratic and Republican nominees for president have made energy security and environmental issues part of their campaign, leading Reuters to ask who is best equipped to turn the White House green. Barack Obama, who wants higher fuel efficiency standards for automobiles and calls offshore drilling a stop-gap measure, has the endorsement of most environmental groups. John McCain wants to develop technologies that reduce American dependence on foreign oil, and told his party's convention last week, "We will drill new oil wells off-shore, and we'll drill them now."

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Solar power has the potential to provide for all the world's energy needs, the research director of a Paris-based institute told a European energy conference, according to Agence France Presse. Daniel Lincot, research director for the Institute for Research and Development of Photovoltaic Energy, says solar energy is so far providing only a negligible contribution to the global energy supply, but there's enough sunlight striking the Earth to cover all the planet's needs. Scientists at the conference called on governments around the world to speed up the deployment of solar power.

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In a likely first for presidential campaigns, Barack Obama and John McCain have staked out positions on plug-in electric vehicles. CalCars takes a look at where the two stand. Obama would support more tax credits for consumers and companies for plug-ins and switch the White House fleet to all plug-in vehicles within a year. McCain has something called the "Clean Car Challenge" which also includes some consumer tax credits and a $300 million prize for advanced batteries that deliver a 70 percent improvement at 30 percent of their current cost. He has specifically supported Chevrolet's electric Volt.

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Republican presidential candidate John McCain opposes subsidies, earmarks, and heavy regulation regarding energy, while Democrat Barack Obama wants a stronger federal role in developing renewable energy, according to a report from the research firm New Energy Finance. CNET News reports that the firm dug through voting records and public statements to determine each candidate's positions on energy policy. It found, for instance, that McCain wants to scale back the government's role in promoting ethanol, while Obama would continue it.

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Barack Obama and John McCain have provided answers to 17 questions related to healthcare and medical research posed by a group promoting health care as a higher national priority. Science News reports several similarities in the candidates' responses to questions from Research! America, of Alexandria, VA. Both believe in funding for the National Institutes of Health, support stem cell research, and let in more foreign workers with medical skills. The site links to the complete set of answers, and is seeking answers from third party candidates such as Ralph Nader and Bob Barr.

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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has responded to 14 questions about science and technology policy, posed by a group that had been calling on candidates to debate science issues. Wired summarizes his answers, which include a promise to increase funding for basic research and to lift the Bush administration's restrictions on stem-cell research. Republican candidate John McCain has said he will answer the same questions, but has not yet done so.

In an effort to identify more potential voters, both the Obama and McCain campaigns are engaging in online behavioral research, trying to target voters, donors, and volunteers by their individual interests. BusinessWeek says that neither campaign will discuss its strategy in detail, but that the effort is sophisticated enough in its tracking to raise concerns among privacy advocates.

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A report by several security researchers identifies Atrivo, a network provider in Concord, CA, as a major host for web services that make it easy for even novice hackers to commit cybercrimes. According to the Washington Post, the company has long been a source of spyware, adware, viruses, and fake antivirus programs. The company's founder tells the paper that he can't control the content on servers, although he's trying to clean up the company's image.

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Chemists at Brandeis University in Massachusetts have found a way to separate fluorine from carbon compounds, opening the door to eliminating one of the most potent types of greenhouse gas. Science News reports that, so far, the scientists only have a proof of their concept, but hope to develop it into a practical process for breaking up hydrofluorocarbons. The volume of HFCs is much lower in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, but they trap more heat and do not break down easily.

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A $2.3 billion biomass-burning plant in East Texas has won approval from the Austin city council. Earth2Tech says the 100-megawatt facility will burn woody waste, such as sawdust and tree trimmings, and sell the power to Austin Energy.

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