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Sugar-Based Plastic Can Be Tossed in the Compost Alongside Banana Peels BY   DAN NOSOWITZ Fri Feb 19, 2010 It's not yet the norm here in the States, but if this new sugar-based plastic actually takes off, composting might become as widespread as it is elsewhere--because this stuff, unlike current "biodegradable" plastics, breaks down in a matter of months, instead of centuries. This is a big deal. There are biodegradable plastics on the market now, and some retailers actively use it instead of normal plastic bags. But even though it's made of natural materials like corn, it still takes as long as a few hundred years to decompose--better than vinyl, sure, but not exactly ideal. This new type of plastic, developed by researchers at Imperial College London, is created from glucose polymers extracted from trees and grasses. Not only is it faster to decompose, but it would halt dependency on fossil fuels, which are used to make 99% of today's plastics, and it's s...

February 21, 2010 OP-ED COLUMNIST The Fat Lady Has Sung By  THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN A small news item from Tracy, Calif., caught my eye last week. Local station CBS 13 reported: “Tracy residents will now have to pay every time they call 911 for a medical emergency. But there are a couple of options. Residents can pay a $48 voluntary fee for the year, which allows them to call 911 as many times as necessary. Or there’s the option of not signing up for the annual fee. Instead they will be charged $300 if they make a call for help.” Welcome to the lean years. Yes, sir, we’ve just had our 70 fat years in America, thanks to the Greatest Generation and the bounty of freedom and prosperity they built for us. And in these past 70 years, leadership — whether of the country, a university, a company, a state, a charity, or a township — has largely been about giving things away, building things from scratch, lowering taxes or making grants. But now it feels as if we are entering a new era, “where ...

Make it right Brad Pitt poses for a photograph in Kellogg Park, a technologically advanced playground in the Lower 9th Ward that uses solar energy to run its electronic wireless game system in New Orleans. The playground sits among homes being built through Pitt's Make It Right Foundation. Helping Darfur In May 2007, Jolie and Pitt enjoyed an intimate dinner in Prague, where Jolie filmed a role in "Wanted," a comic book adaptation. While there, the couple announced that they were donating $1 million from their Jolie-Pitt Foundation to groups assisting more than four million people affected by the crisis in Darfur. Traveling to Panama Pitt talked with an unidentified man outside of a handicraft market in Panama City on Dec. 29, 2006. Besides touring the capital, Pitt and Jolie visited a former U.S. military base and the construction site of Panama's new Biodiversity Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, at the entrance of the canal in the Amador district. Visiting Vietn...

More 'Bang' for your buck Star Jim Parsons arrives at "An Evening with 'The Big Bang Theory'" at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles on Thursday, Feb. 18. Together again Leonardo DiCaprio, left, and director Martin Scorsese attend the premiere of "Shutter Island" at The Ziegfeld Theatre in New York on Wednesday, Feb. 17.

ROOM WITH A VIEW: Judges peer through windows during the Ski Jumping Individual Qualification Round at Whistler Olympic Park. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Seoul (Suh Myong-gon / Yonhap / February 17, 2010) A South Korean man searches for his shoes among a pile of recovered footwear that had been stolen by a thief. Investigators nabbed the thief earlier this month. He had stolen about 1,200 pairs of luxury-brand shoes from funeral halls at large hospitals and stored them at a warehouse, aiming to become a street vendor. Venice, Italy (Luigi Costantini / Associated Press / February 16, 2010) Actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt walk with children Maddox, right, Zahara, front right, and Pax, left. Jolie is in Venice to film the movie "The Tourist."

Small is beautiful "Save Our Earth, Let's Go Green" won first place for photography in the 2009 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, sponsored by the journal Science and the National Science Foundation. The annual contest highlights visuals that reveal the hidden meaning and intricate details of our world. This picture shows how tiny plastic fibers, each with a diameter of 250 nanometers, wrap themselves around a plastic ball when immersed in an evaporating liquid. The process provides a new way to control the self-assembly of polymer hairs. The image was produced with a scanning electron microscope and was digitally enhanced for color. Image courtesy of Sung Hoon Kang, Boaz Pokroy and Joanna Aizenberg, Harvard University.       Math meditation "Kuen's Surface: A Meditation on Euclid, Lobachevsky and Quantum Field" is a highly symbolic work that suggests the history of the 2,000-year-old failed effort to prove that the Parall...