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It was announced this week that McDonalds will be closing hundreds of stores worldwide, as global sales continue to decline. To begin the year of 2015, the infamous fast food chain will be closing at least 700 of its locations, which is double the number that was planned for closure earlier this year.

In the first 3 months of 2015, McDonalds saw a 2.3% decrease in sales and a 28% drop in operating revenue, continuing a trend of loss that the company has been experiencing for years.

Speaking in a conference call with the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, the company’s new CEO, Steve Easterbrook said that massive changes will be needed to improve McDonald’s struggling reputation.

“I think there is a hunger and an interest in our business to embrace change. McDonald’s management team is keenly focused on acting more quickly to better address today’s consumer needs, expectations and the competitive marketplace,” Easterbrook said.

Over 100 of the recent closures happened in Japan, where McDonalds has faced a number of scandalds relating to the quality of their food.

It is not hard to see that decline of McDonalds is happening, even in your own local neighborhood. Where once there were lines wrapped around the parking lot at multiple McDonalds locations in every town, there are now very sparse crowds at the restaurant, even in high traffic areas and during busy times.

In recent months, we have been paying close attention to how McDonalds and other popular junk food brands are falling out of favor as people become more conscious about their diets. GMO food in general is also quickly losing trust among consumers.

Several months ago, it was reported that organic food sales in the United States had risen to over $35 billion per year. This number is expected to climb as interest in organic food continues to grow exponentially.

Recently, we reported that junk-soda giant Coca-Cola is facing major financial challenges as sales steadily decline. Some fast food restaurants, such as Burger King, have been removing sodas from their kids meals, in an attempt to seem more concerned with health.

John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. This article (McDonalds Shuts Down Hundreds Of Stores Worldwide As Sales Decline) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and True Activist. .

Rock and roll has always been steeped in defiance of authority, and it has also been used as a tool for social change and protest for decades as well.

While most musicians choose to protest topics like illegal wars and occupations, or specific problems and injustices in certain songs, rarely if ever do they devote an entire album to protesting a single corporate entity.

But that’s exactly what one legendary rock star is planning to do by mid-June 2015 with the release of a new album titled ‘The Monsanto Years.’

Neil Young Boycott Against Monsanto Continues

First dipping his toes into the water by announcing a switch to organic cotton t-shirts and a boycott of GMO cotton ones, Neil Young, the rock star in question, is now going all-in with his new LP.

The album will feature Willie Nelson’s sons Lukas and Micah as well according to this report from Rolling Stone, and it will be released on June 16 ^th with an accompanying tour set to kick off on July 5 ^th at the Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wis., titled the Rebel Content Tour.

Nelson is a co-founder of Farm Aid, a concert series which helps support small farmers, the very kind that have been under attack from Monsanto via lawsuits and false promises attached to their genetically modified seeds and agricultural chemicals.

Nelson’s sons currently are members of a band called Promise of the Real, which will join Young for the album.

Among the Promise of the Real’s newest tracks are titles like ‘Seeds,’ ‘Rock Starbucks,’ and ‘Monsanto Years,’ which Rolling Stone reported could be part of the joint album especially considering their titles which seem to be hand-crafted for inclusion on ‘The Monsanto Years.’

Previously, Young has also called for a boycott against Starbucks for being a part of the Grocery Manufacturers Association which sued the state of Vermont over its GMO labeling law.

The Starbucks boycott was met by a considerable amount of media coverage, showcasing yet again the power of the celebrity in finally bringing certain issues to the mainstream.

For more information or for Young’s upcoming tour dates, you can check out the article here. Also, check out the video below of a secret show Young played with Promise of the Real in California on April 16, via the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

SOUTH SACRAMENTO –

In the darkness of the early morning hours protesters gathered at the driveway of the Nestlé water bottling plant.

Armed with signs and props like torches and pitch forks they made their position known.

Environmental and water rights activists blockaded all truck entrances to the plant.

This is a similar scene to a protest back in October of last year. The plan this morning was to shut down the company’s operations.

At issue: the amount of water the company uses to sell for profit, especially during a drought.

But Nestle says they are in compliance, and pay the same rate for water as any other metered business or manufacturer in the city of Sacramento.

Nestlé’s spokesperson went on to say the company believes in people’s right to protest and that like all businesses in California they are looking at ways to conserve.

In 2014 Nestlé says it used 50 million gallons from the Sacramento Municipal Water Supply, which they say is a fraction of one percent of total water demand within the city of Sacramento.

Mr Sigurjonsson said the problem each time arose from ballooning credit during a strong economic cycle.

^{Frosti Sigurjonsson’s report, entitled A Better Monetary System For Iceland}

He argued the central bank was unable to contain the credit boom, allowing inflation to rise and sparking exaggerated risk-taking and speculation, the threat of bank collapse and costly state interventions.

In Iceland, as in other modern market economies, the central bank controls the creation of banknotes and coins but not the creation of all money, which occurs as soon as a commercial bank offers a line of credit.

The central bank can only try to influence the money supply with its monetary policy tools.

Under the so-called Sovereign Money proposal, the country’s central bank would become the only creator of money.

“Crucially, the power to create money is kept separate from the power to decide how that new money is used,” Mr Sigurjonsson wrote in the proposal.

“As with the state budget, the parliament will debate the government’s proposal for allocation of new money,” he wrote.

^{Iceland’s three largest banks collapsed}

Banks would continue to manage accounts and payments, and would serve as intermediaries between savers and lenders.

Mr Sigurjonsson, a businessman and economist, was one of the masterminds behind Iceland’s household debt relief programme launched in May 2014 and aimed at helping the many Icelanders whose finances were strangled by inflation-indexed mortgages signed before the 2008 financial crisis.

The small Nordic country was hit hard as the crash of US investment bank Lehman Brothers caused the collapse of its three largest banks.

Iceland then became the first western European nation in 25 years to appeal to the International Monetary Fund to save its battered economy.

Its GDP fell by 5.1pc in 2009 and 3.1pc in 2010 before it started rising again.

Researchers at the University of Alabama recently published a study suggesting that Corexit EC9500A, the primary oil dispersant used in the Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is causing major harm to the local eco-system.

According to the study, Corexit damages epithelium cells in both humans and marine animals.

The study was published in PLOS ONE this week and studied the effect that the chemical had on the bodies of humans, zebrafish, and blue crabs.

“There were some 48,000 workers involved in the cleanup operations, and it is possible that workers were exposed to Corexit via inhalation. Cough, shortness of breath and sputum production were among symptoms expressed by workers, ” Veena Antony, one of the researchers said.

According to the study, “The evidence that Corexit causes structural and functional abnormalities in airway tissue includes dispersant-induced cell detachment, edema, contraction in cell diameter and increased permeability.”

” Corexit exposure led to an increase in NOX4 activation, and there is evidence that the increase of NOX4 is tied to increased apoptosis. On the other hand, HO-1 was also activated following Corexit exposure. We also noted that the introduction of HO-1 following injury served to remediate the effects of that injury,” Antony added.

At the time of the spill, many activists had spoken out against the use of Corexit, but it was used indiscriminately anyway, as if it was the only option. It is possible that these new studies could help to prevent this toxic chemical from being used in the future.

” In summary, our results indicate that respiratory epithelial surfaces across phylogenetic species are sensitive to injury by Corexit. However, the enzyme HO-1 protects against inflammation and cell death induced by Corexit. Unfortunately, the likelihood of another oil spill is high, and the need to use dispersal agents will remain. We propose that upregulating HO-1 may offer a novel therapeutic approach for treating dispersant-induced injury and apo’ptosis by enhancing the antioxidant and anti-apoptotic ability of the epitheliu m,” Antony said.

The video below is several years old, but it shows a prior independent study conducted by engineer Marco Kaltofen, which also shows the effects of Corexit.

John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war.

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PHILLIPS, Calif. – Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday ordered mandatory water use reductions for the first time in California’s history, saying the state’s four-year drought had reached near-crisis proportions after a winter of record-low snowfalls.

Mr. Brown, in an executive order, directed the State Water Resources Control Board to impose a 25 percent reduction on the state’s 400 local water supply agencies, which serve 90 percent of California residents, over the coming year. The agencies will be responsible for coming up with restrictions to cut back on water use and for monitoring compliance. State officials said the order would impose varying degrees of cutbacks on water use across the board – affecting homeowners, farms and other businesses, as well as the maintenance of cemeteries and golf courses.

While the specifics of how this will be accomplished are being left to the water agencies, it is certain that Californians across the state will have to cut back on watering gardens and lawns – which soak up a vast amount of the water this state uses every day – as well as washing cars and even taking showers.

“People should realize we are in a new era,” Mr. Brown said at a news conference here on Wednesday, standing on a patch of brown and green grass that would normally be thick with snow at this time of year. “The idea of your nice little green lawn getting watered every day, those days are past.”

Owners of large farms, who obtain their water from sources outside the local water agencies, will not fall under the 25 percent guideline. State officials noted that many farms had already seen a cutback in their water allocations because of the drought. In addition, the owners of large farms will be required, under the governor’s executive order, to offer detailed reports to state regulators about water use, ideally as a way to highlight incidents of water diversion or waste.

Because of this system, state officials said, they did not expect the executive order to result – at least in the immediate future – in an increase in farm or food prices.

State officials said that they were prepared to enforce punitive measures, including fines, to ensure compliance, but that they were hopeful it would not be necessary to do so. That said, the state had trouble reaching the 20 percent reduction target that Mr. Brown set in January 2014 when he issued a voluntary reduction order as part of declaring a drought emergency. The state water board has the power to impose fines on local water suppliers that fail to meet the reduction targets set by the board over the coming weeks.

The governor announced what amounts to a dramatic new chapter in the state’s response to the drought while attending the annual April 1 measuring of the snowpack here in the Sierra Nevada. Snowpacks are critical to the state’s water system: They store water that falls during the wet season, and release it through the summer.

In a typical year, the measure in Phillips is around five or six feet, as Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Survey Program, indicated by displaying the measuring stick brought out annually. But on Wednesday, Mr. Brown was standing on an utterly dry field after he and Mr. Gehrke went through the motions of measuring a snowpack. State officials said they now expected the statewide snowpack measure to be about 6 percent of normal.

“We are standing on dry grass, and we should be standing on five feet of snow,” Mr. Brown said. “We are in an historic drought.”

Water has long been a precious resource in California, the subject of battles pitting farmer against city-dweller and northern communities against southern ones; books and movies have been made about its scarcity and plunder. Water is central to the state’s identity and economy, and a symbol of how wealth and ingenuity have tamed nature: There are golf courses in the deserts of Palm Springs, lush gardens and lawns in Los Angeles, and vast expanses of irrigated fields of farmland throughout the Central Valley.

Given that backdrop, any effort to force reductions in water use could be politically contentious, as Mr. Brown himself acknowledged. “This will be somewhat of a burden – it’s going to be very difficult,” he said. “People will say, ‘What about the farmers?’ Farmers will say, ‘What about the people who water their lawns?’ “

Within hours of Mr. Brown’s announcement, Representative Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who is the House majority leader, announced plans to renew efforts in Congress to pass legislation requiring the building of two huge water facilities in the state. The efforts had been blocked by Democrats concerned that the water projects would harm the environment and damage endangered species of fish.

“The current drought in California is devastating,” Mr. McCarthy said. “Today’s order from the governor should not only alarm Californians, but the entire nation should take notice that the most productive agriculture state in the country has entered uncharted territory.”

“I’m from the Central Valley, and we know that we cannot conserve or ration our way out of this drought,” he said.

The newly mandated 25 percent cut is in relation to total water use in the state in 2013. Cuts will vary from community to community, reflecting that per capita water use reduction has been better in some areas than others. In addition, the state and local governments will offer temporary rebate programs for homeowners who replace dishwashers and washing machines with water-efficient models.

Mr. Brown said the state would impose water-use restrictions on golf courses and cemeteries and require that nonpotable water be used on median dividers.

Lawns consume much of the water used every year in California, and the executive order calls for the state, working with local governments, to replace 50 million acres of ornamental turf with planting that consumes less water.

The order also instructs water authorities to raise rates on heavy water users. Those pricing systems, intended to reward conservers and punish wasters, are used in some parts of this state and have proved effective, state officials said.

Felicia Marcus, the chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, said that California would leave it to local water providers to decide how to enforce the reductions on homeowners and businesses. She said she anticipated that most of the restrictions would be aimed at the outdoor use of water; many communities have already imposed water restrictions on lawns and gardens, but Ms. Marcus suggested they had not gone far enough.

“We are in a drought unlike one we’ve seen before, and we have to take actions that we haven’t taken before,” she said. “We are not getting the level of effort that the situation clearly warrants.”

Mark W. Cowin, the director of the California Department of Water Resources, said the state would tightly monitor compliance, in the hope that would be enough to accomplish the 25 percent reduction. If it is not, the order authorizes water suppliers to penalize offenders.

“We are looking for success, not to be punitive,” Mr. Cowin said. “In the end, if people and communities don’t comply, there will be repercussions, including fines.”

while speaking in Utah, President Obama announced a new program that will combat climate change while training 75,000 veterans for jobs in the solar industry.

The President said:

I am announcing a new goal to train 75,000 workers to enter the solar industry by 2020. As part of this, we’re creating what we’re calling a solar ready vets program that’s modeled after some successful pilot initiatives that have already been established over the last several years.

It’s going to train transitioning military personnel for careers in this growing industry at ten bases including right here at Hill, and as part of this effort we’re also going to work with states to enable more veterans to use the post-9/11 GI Bill for solar job training.

It’s one of the many steps we’re taking to help nearly 700,000 military veterans and spouses get a job. In fact, about thirty percent of the federal workforce is now made up of veterans. I’ve said it before, and I think employers are starting to catch on if you really want to get the job done, hire a veteran.

The plan is smart because it trains tens of thousands of transitioning military personnel and spouses for a civilian job in an industry that is growing ten times faster than the national average. The president also pointed out the military bases that get a substantial percentage of their energy from the sun save money that can applied towards other goals and missions.

The nation has undergone a dramatic shift from a president who fought a foreign war for oil (Bush and Iraq) to a forward thinking president who is using growing clean energy industry industries to train veterans of the Bush wars for good paying jobs.

The plan that the President unveiled isn’t just good politics. It’s also common sense. No veteran should have to take a low-paying service industry job because they can’t find anything else. It is part of our national obligation to everything possible to help those who served succeed when they return home.

President Obama is creating opportunities for today’s veterans to acquire the jobs of tomorrow.

The MIT Climate CoLab has announced 22 contests that seek high-impact ideas on how to tackle climate change.

A project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Collective Intelligence, the Climate CoLab seeks to harness the knowledge and expertise of thousands of experts and non-experts across the world to help solve this massive, complex issue.

“As systems like Linux and Wikipedia have shown, people from around the world – connected by the Internet – can work together to solve complex problems in very new ways,” says MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Thomas Malone, director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and principal investigator for the Climate CoLab project. “In the Climate CoLab, we’re applying this approach to one of the world’s most difficult problems – climate change.”

The Climate CoLab has a rapidly growing community of over 30,000 members from across the world. Anyone is welcome to join the platform to submit their own ideas, or comment on and show support for other proposals on the site.

Together, the contests cover a broad set of sub-problems that lie at the heart of the climate change challenge, including: decarbonizing energy supply, shifting public attitudes and behavior, adapting to climate change, geoengineering, transportation, waste management, reducing consumption, and others.

The popular U.S. Carbon Price contest is returning this year, seeking innovative policy and political mobilization strategies on how to implement a carbon price in the United States. Serving as advisors for this contest are former U.S. Secretary of State, George P. Shultz; former U.S. Rep. (R-SC) and current director of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative Bob Inglis; and former U.S. Rep. (D-IN) and current president of Resources for the Future, Phil Sharp.

A number of contests are run in collaboration with organizations such as the World Bank Negawatt Challenge ( Urban Energy Efficiency), the MIT Sloan Latin America Office ( Energy Solutions for Latin America), and the City of Somerville, Massachusetts ( Atypical Solutions for Going Carbon Neutral).

In addition, this year the Climate CoLab team announced a new set of contests in which people can create climate-action plans for major countries and for the whole world. In these contests, members combine proposals that have been submitted in other contests and use a suite of climate modeling tools to project the real-world climate impacts of the plans they create.

All contest winners will have an opportunity to present to people who can support the implementation of their ideas, including policy makers, business executives, and NGO and foundation officials. They will also be invited to showcase their proposals at MIT this fall, where a $10,000 grand prize will be awarded. See highlights from last year’s Climate CoLab conference at climatecolab.org/conference2014.

In addition to submitting ideas, the Climate CoLab also welcomes people from around the world to offer feedback and support proposals they find the most promising.

Submissions are due by May 16 at 11:59:59 p.m. EDT. Enter soon to receive feedback from Climate CoLab community members and the experts who are overseeing the contests. To submit a proposal, or read and comment on other proposals, visit climatecolab.org.

Ignoring the World Health Organization’s (WHO) conclusion that the crop chemical glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans,” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved the glyphosate-containing herbicide Enlist Duo for agricultural use in nine more states. It had previously been approved for use on genetically engineered crops in six states.

Enlist Duo’s active ingredients are glyphosate and 2,4-D, both of which have been shown to increase the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“This poorly conceived decision by EPA will likely put a significant number of farmers, farm workers and rural residents at greater risk of being diagnosed with cancer,” said Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at Environmental Working Group. “The agency simply ignored a game-changing new finding from the world leading cancer experts, and has instead decided the interests of biotech giants like Dow and Monsanto come first.”

Last month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the WHO, elevated its risk assessment of glyphosate to “probably carcinogenic to humans” based on a review of the evidence by a panel of 17 leading oncology experts.

Glyphosate is the most used pesticide in the U.S. The bulk of it is applied to genetically engineered corn and soybean crops. It is also the main ingredient in Monsanto’s signature weed killer RoundUp.

EPA’s decision will allow Enlist Duo to be sprayed on fields of genetically engineered corn and soybeans in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and Oklahoma. It was previously approved for use in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

“Instead of taking steps to protect the public from toxic chemicals, the EPA has only sped up the pesticide treadmill that will now put millions more people at risk,” added Faber. “These toxic herbicides easily make their way off farm fields and into the air and water we and our children breathe and drink.”

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TransCanada on Thursday announced a two-year delay to its plans to move the Canadian tar sands. The company is cancelling its plans to build a controversial export terminal in Quebec, citing environmental concern over the endangered beluga whale. This means a delay to plans for finishing the Energy East pipeline, now set for 2020. In the meantime, TransCanada will search for a new location for its port.

For once, then, Canadian oil news isn’t about the TransCanada-owned Keystone XL, which has faced a six-year delay as the Obama administration sits on a decision to issue a permit. At least not directly, anyway. Energy East, once completed, would be even bigger than Keystone XL, delivering 1.1 million barrels of crude oil per day, compared to Keystone’s 800,000 barrels. As its name implies, the pipeline would run from the Alberta tar sands eastward to the shipping lanes of the Atlantic coast.

Not only are Keystone and Energy East similar battles, but proponents (and opponents) often tie the two pipelines’ fates together. Keystone opponents say building that pipeline would ensure tar sands extraction continues at a rapid pace, setting the world on track for severe climate change. Proponents argue that Keystone doesn’t matter either way, because other pipelines like Energy East make tar sands development inevitable. If the United States doesn’t build its pipeline, they say, Americans will miss out on the economic benefits. “We don’t think there’s any way that the oil will stay in the ground,” Matt Letourneau, a spokesperson for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said last year. “Certainly the market will find a way.”

But so long as there are delays, tar sands development isn’t inevitable because Energy East’s future, like Keystone’s, is far from settled. Oil companies are still in the middle of working out how to get the landlocked tar sands to the coasts for refining and shipment, and during their delays on multiple fronts, Keystone isn’t a futile fight.

The delay could provide a boost to organizers trying to delay other tar sands projects. Each of these pipelines face a similar environmental playbook: Delay as long as possible in the hopes that it becomes unprofitable or impossible for companies to pursue their plans. Keystone has faced years of delay, and now Energy East faces its own uncertain future. Environmentalists weren’t the only reason for TransCanada’s change of plans. Because oil prices are low right now, companies have little incentive to pursue their plans to extract costly tar sands for little profit.

TransCanada still has a strong incentive to find a new port and finish construction. Oil prices surely will rebound eventually, making the tar sands profitable once again.

“I don’t think you can look at this as a major impediment to the future of oil sands development but it certainly speaks to the opposition to pipelines, the anxiety about shipments of oil and, of course, to the increasing importance of environmental protection to the public,” Andrew Leach, an economist with the University of Alberta, said. “The beluga is an iconic species, so I think the writing was on the wall for this once the risk to habitat was made clear, in particular in Quebec.”

In the short-term, however, this is a win for environmentalists. And it may even help them in their fight against Keystone.

Rebecca Leber is a staff writer for The New Republic.

PASADENA, California, April 1, 2015 (ENS) – Inspired by a chemical process found in leaves, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed an electrically conductive film that could lead to devices that harness sunlight to split water (H2O), safely creating hydrogen fuel.

When applied to semiconducting materials such as silicon, the nickel oxide film facilitates an important chemical process in the solar-driven production of fuels such as methane or hydrogen.

“We have developed a new type of protective coating that enables a key process in the solar-driven production of fuels to be performed with record efficiency, stability, and effectiveness, and in a system that is intrinsically safe and does not produce explosive mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen,” says Nate Lewis, a distinguished professor of chemistry at Caltech and coauthor of a new study that describes the film.

The development could lead to safe, efficient artificial photosynthetic systems – also called solar-fuel generators or “artificial leaves.”

Such a system would replicate the natural process of photosynthesis that plants use to convert sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into oxygen and fuel in the form of carbohydrates, or sugars.

The artificial leaf that Lewis’ team is developing in part at Caltech’s Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) consists of three main components: two electrodes – a photoanode and a photocathode – and a plastic membrane.

The photoanode uses sunlight to oxidize water molecules to generate oxygen gas, protons, and electrons, while the photocathode recombines the protons and electrons to form hydrogen gas.

The membrane keeps the two gases separate to eliminate any possibility of an explosion, and lets the gas be collected under pressure to safely push it into a pipeline.

All previous attempts have failed for various reasons.

“You want the coating to be many things: chemically compatible with the semiconductor it’s trying to protect, impermeable to water, electrically conductive, highly transparent to incoming light, and highly catalytic for the reaction to make oxygen and fuels,” says Lewis, who is also JCAP’s scientific director.

“Creating a protective layer that displayed any one of these attributes would be a significant leap forward, but what we’ve now discovered is a material that can do all of these things at once,” he said.

The team has shown that its nickel oxide film is compatible with many different kinds of semiconductor materials, including silicon, indium phosphide, and cadmium telluride.

When applied to photoanodes, the nickel oxide film exceeded the performance of other similar films – including one that Lewis’s group created just last year.

“After watching the photoanodes run at record performance without any noticeable degradation for 24 hours, and then 100 hours, and then 500 hours, I knew we had done what scientists had failed to do before,” said Ke Sun, a postdoctoral fellow in Lewis’s lab and the first author of the new study.

The team’s nickel oxide film works well with the membrane that separates the photoanode from the photocathode and staggers the production of hydrogen and oxygen gases from water (H2O), which consists of the two gases.

“Without a membrane, the photoanode and photocathode are close enough to each other to conduct electricity, and if you also have bubbles of highly reactive hydrogen and oxygen gases being produced in the same place at the same time, that is a recipe for disaster,” Lewis explains.

“With our film, you can build a safe device that will not explode, and that lasts and is efficient, all at once,” he said.

Lewis cautions that scientists are still far from developing a commercial product that can convert sunlight into fuel. Other components of the system, such as the photocathode, also need to be perfected.

“Our team is also working on a photocathode,” Lewis says. “What we have to do is combine both of these elements together and show that the entire system works. That will not be easy, but we now have one of the missing key pieces that has eluded the field for the past half-century.”

The study, “Stable solar-driven oxidation of water by semiconducting photoanodes protected by transparent catalytic nickel oxide films,” was published the week of March 9 in the online issue of the journal “The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

Additional authors on the paper include scientists from the University of Southampton and King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia, and Bruce Brunschwig, the director of the Molecular Materials Research Center at Caltech.

Funding for this research was provided by the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Beckman Institute, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2015. All rights reserved.

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