Speakers speculated on topics ranging from virtual realities, cybernetics, and what post-carbon life would be like for mankind.
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None of the alien planets detected so far appear suitable for conventional carbon-based life as known on Earth.
In contrast, it took carbon-based life forms (us) four billion years to evolve from the humble amoeba to a species capable of imagining and creating Watson.
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Astronomers call the most promising of these places "Goldilocks planets, " because they orbit in a temperate zone not too hot and not too cold to support liquid water essential for carbon-based life as we know it.
It also said it expected the plant to create 70 long-term jobs and save the country nearly three million tonnes of carbon over its 20 year life, compared to a traditional coal fired power station.
The EU has launched a campaign aimed at showing how low-carbon solutions can improve quality of life.
In a briefing, Nasa scientists announced that Curiosity had detected organic compounds - complex molecules containing carbon, without which no known life can develop.
The spectrometers can catalog potential life signature gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor.
Life Gem estimates that the carbon from one cremated human body can yield up to 50 stones of varying sizes.
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As environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg notes, manufacturing and charging electric cars over their life cycle can produce more carbon than small, gas-powered vehicles.
However, beyond the smokestack, looking at the full life-cycle accounting for carbon of various biomass feedstocks, other reports have found that the source of the feedstock matters.
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Equally initiatives such as REDD and other attempts to pay tree growers to absorb carbon usually have a pretty short shelf life as donors tend to move on to focus on other priorities.
In time, the five gyres will kick debris onto their shores, at low cost or no cost, low carbon footprint, and no death to marine life in the process.
Because it uses organic materials, any carbon dioxide released during the generation of energy is offset by that absorbed during the plant's life, so the process as a whole is broadly balanced, or "carbon neutral".
One key element in searching for life on Mars is the presence of methane in the Martian atmosphere As a simple carbon compound, methane is often a precursor to the formation of the complex organic chemicals that make life possible.
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It's less useful, of course, for people who made their teeth before bomb testing started in 1955, and it will become ever less useful as more of the bomb carbon is absorbed by oceans and plant and animal life.
The four-seat passenger compartment the "Life" module comprises a discrete carbon-reinforced plastic structure bolted and glued on top of the Drive section.
Older alarm devices and panels are prone to failure and life-safety sensors such as smoke and carbon monoxide detectors must be periodically replaced to work reliably.
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Within their bodies they harbor highly productive algae -- a form of marine plant life -- that can "fix" carbon, use the energy of the sun to conduct photosynthesis and produce sugars.
The Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella got sustained applause when she presented the carbon tax as a threat to the Australian way of life: "We don't want to de-industrialise our country, " she bellowed.
Some of the data it gathered about the abundance of phytoplankton - plant-like organisms that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and provide food for other sea life - could already be monitored by satellite.
There was even speculation about a dark material on the tiny planet that could conceivably contain the same organic molecules being hunted on Mars, the carbon-based building blocks that are essential to all life.
In the 1960s, realizing that only livestock could reverse desertification, I developed a consistently successful grazing planning process that mimics nature using livestock so that both carbon and water move from atmosphere to soil and soil life is more able to break down methane.
It might also boast signs of organic carbon, thought to be one of the building blocks of life.
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By contrast, modest black-hole activity can stir things up and encourage the formation of the kinds of elements (carbon, oxygen and so on) that are essential for life as we know it.
All life forms on earth use six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur.
Although life is, in essence, a complicated form of carbon chemistry, living creatures cannot process carbon in its elemental form.
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The manner in which we have managed livestock for centuries results in both carbon and water moving from soil to atmosphere, and to soil life being less able to break down methane.
Some large life and annuity companies have investment products aimed at low-carbon technologies.
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