JD Rucker: September 2014

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Global warming may have fueled 2013’s heatwave epidemic

In a collection of 22 peer-reviewed analyses on 16 extreme weather and climate events that occurred last year, which were published as a nearly 100-page report yesterday, international teams of researchers found clear ties between global warming and the extreme heat events that plagued areas from Australia to China in 2013.

Altogether, 9 of the 16 extreme heat events were at least partially attributed to manmade global warming. There were also some signs that the ongoing drought in California, the worst one in the state’s history, may have been caused by global warming as well.

Links between global warming and extreme weather and climate events were not obvious, but connections were clearest with extreme heat. n analysis of five extreme heat events overseas “overwhelmingly showed that human-caused climate change is having an influence,” according to the report.

“It’s a granted that climate change is influencing all manner of weather,” according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research meteorologist Martin Hoerling. “This report looks not if climate change influenced weather, but how it did, trying to quantify the influence.”

“This annual report contributes to a growing field of science which helps communities, businesses and nations alike understand the impacts of natural and human-caused climate change,” said Thomas Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. “The science remains challenging, but the environmental intelligence it yields to decision-makers is invaluable and the demand is ever-growing.”

Read more about the story at National Geographic.

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Gap bans the sale of animal fur following public outcry

If you’re looking for a nice, comfy fur sweater for the fall season, then Gap isn’t the place you want to look. Two weeks ago, Sarah Maddox launched a Change.org petition against Gap, denouncing the retailer for selling products which contained real animal fur for its upscale Piperlime label.

Maddox was outraged that the retailer was selling items that were made from animal fur, which is often harvested in an incredibly cruel manner. “These innocent creatures are beaten, electrocuted, or have their heads and necks stepped on,” she wrote in the text of the petition. “Animals killed for the fur industry are often skinned alive!”

In response to outrage regarding the use of animal fur, Gap issued this statement: “our opinions and views matter to us. That is why, effective immediately, Piperlime will no longer sell real fur products, whether they are made by our company or not. This is an expansion beyond our existing policy of prohibiting real fur in our branded products. We are committed to the ethical sourcing of our products, which includes the humane treatment of animals. We are also committed to our customers and welcome your feedback.”

Gap isn’t the only retailer that’s facing problems surrounding animal fur sourcing issues. Kohl’s was recently in the news for selling a faux fur jacket that was actually made from the pelts of raccoon dogs. The retailer cited vending issues as the reason for the mix-up, essentially saying that their vendors told them they were purchasing faux fur.

Read more about the story at The Chicago Tribune.

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Evidence suggests that dolphins are sensitive to magnetism

Scientists have been interested in magnetoreception, the ability of living organisms to perceive magnetic fields, for the quite some time. Ever since its discovery, numerous different species have been identified which possess the ability to sense direction and navigate using Earth’s magnetic field.

Sea turtles, honeybees, spiny lobsters, and several migratory birds all possess a built-in magnetic compass that enables them to perceive and utilize information from Earth’s magnetic field. What’s even more interesting is that our planet’s magnetism can even act as a map for some animals.

New research by Dorothee Kremers and her colleagues at the Ethos unit of the Université de Rennes in France provides experimental behavioral proof that dolphins are among the animals that are magnetoreceptive. Various observations have suggested that this was the case, but there was previously no evidence to back up these assumptions.

In order to investigate further, the team of French researchers examined the behavior of six captive bottlenose dolphins that were being kept at the Planète Sauvage safari park in France. The researchers recorded the response of the dolphins to the presentation of two devices that were contained within boxes.

One of the devices was strongly magnetized, and the other was a demagnetized control. The blocks were identical in shape and destiny and were therefore indistinguishable by echolocation. During the experiments, the dolphins were allowed to swim around the pool as they pleased.

What the researchers found was that the dolphins were much quicker to approach the magnetized block than the control block, although they did not interact differently with the two barrels, suggesting that the dolphins may have been more intrigued by the magnetized block, rather than physically drawn to it.

“Dolphins are able to discriminate between objects based on their magnetic properties, which is a prerequisite for magnetoreception-based navigation,” lead author of the recently published Naturwissenschaften study Dorothee Kremers said in a news-release. “Our results provide new, experimentally obtained evidence that cetaceans have a magnetic sense, and should therefore be added to the list of magnetosensitive species.”

New study finds that cowbells actually make cows miserable

Cowbells have long been associated with green pastures and herds of happy cows, especially in Switzerland, where the cowbell is a natural cultural symbol. However, according to new research from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, cows actually despise those bells, and can actually sustain permanent hearing damage from them.

The researchers studied more than 100 cows who wore 12-pound cowbells at 25 farm across Switzerland. What they found was that the cowbells could actually lead to deafness in the cows that wear them.

Cowbells create noise levels between 100 and 113 decibels, which is somewhere close to the noise level of a jackhammer. The legal sound limit in Switzerland is just 85 decibels. In addition to the hearing damage that the cows sustained, the cows who wore the cowbells actually shewed their food less than those that weren’t wearing cowbells.

Farmers have been using cowbells to track down cows that have escaped from their farm for centuries. Some farmers have expressed a reluctance to replace cowbells with GPS chips, as many researchers have suggested, as it could harm the country’s image, since cowbells are a symbol of Swiss heritage.

“It would be the end of a myth, of an image of Switzerland,” Swiss Tourism spokesperson Véronique Kanel told The Local, a national newspaper. “However, our mountains also have other assets, including silence, which is what people are also seeking when they go to the Alps.”

Read more about the story at The Huffington Post.

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Monday, September 29, 2014

You make me want to be a better street artist.

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Sunday, September 28, 2014

Leatherback sea turtles use “sunroofs” on their head to track seasons

Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea), swim all along the cool temperate waters of the western and eastern margins of the North Atlantic during the summer, foraging for jellyfish and other food. These giants turtles have a strange-looking, non-pigmented punk spot on their head called the pineal which, new research suggest, functions like a skylight in their skull, which enables the turtles to sense subtle changes in sunlight.

Once summer comes to an end, the turtles stop foraging and leave their feeding grounds, which can be thousands of miles away from their breeding grounds, and head south. How they know when to start this journey has long puzzled researchers. In order to investigate this, team led by John Davenport from University College Cork examined a database of leatherback sightings in waters around Great Britain and Ireland.

After comparing the sightings to historical data for sea surface temperatures and day lengths to see if the levels or periodicity of either environmental triggers would prompt foraging turtles to turn south and leave their feeding grounds at summer’s end, the team found that sea surface temperatures were too variable and slow to change to be useful of a trigger. Instead, it was the shortening of day length as the late summer equilux approaches provides a credible cue to the changing seasons.

Read more about the story at Smithsonian.

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Some of Earth’s water is older than the solar system itself

Earth’s abundance of water is what sets our planet apart from other planets in our solar system. It’s what makes life possible, but where the hell did it all come from? According to a new study, somewhere between 30% and 50% of the water on Earth was created more than 4.5 billion years ago, meaning that some of the water on Earth actually predates the sun, as well as the solar system itself.

The study, which was published in Science earlier this week, claims that the distinct chemical signature of the water found on Earth and throughout the solar system could only occur if some of that water was formed before the swirling ring of dust and gas eventually gave birth to the planets, moons, comets, and asteroid that make up our solar system.

“It’s pretty amazing that a significant fraction of water on Earth predates the sun and the solar system,” said study leader Ilse Cleeves, an astronomer at the University of Michigan.

What these findings suggest is that water, one of the key ingredients of life, may be common in young planetary systems across the universe. It’s widely believed that the protoplanetary disk in which our planet formed was too hot for liquid or ice water to exist, and so the planet was born dry. So how did water come to Earth? Unfortunately, this new finding raises just as many questions as it potentially answers.

MIT has developed a submersible, contraband-sniffing robot

Smugglers have been transporting contraband over the sea for centuries, and it’s become a favored transportation method for many reasons. For starters, it’s easier to transport goods across the sea than it is by land, but more importantly, it’s hard to patrol and entire coastline. However, thanks to MIT, it’s about to become much harder to smuggle contraband through a port thanks to a tiny, submersible robot.

The robot was designed by an MIT grad student and her professor. The robot, which is slightly smaller than a football, uses ultrasound to inspect ships, looking for false hulls and props shafts that smugglers often use to hide illegal imports from regular, human-powered inspections. The robot uses a unique pump-powered propulsion system that makes it almost impossible to detect, so smugglers won’t even now that they’re being inspected.

“It’s very expensive for port security to use traditional robots for every small boat coming into the port. If this is cheap enough – if I can get this out for USD 600, say – why not just have 20 of them doing collaborative inspection? And if it breaks, it’s not a big deal. It’s very easy to make,” said Sampriti Bhattacharyya, the grad student who designed the robot with her adviser Ford Professor of Engineering Harry Asada.

Africa is issuing $1 billion in climate change bonds

Africa may only be responsible for a small portion of the world’s carbon emissions, but the continent is also considered by many to be one of the most vulnerable to the planet’s changing climate. Weather-related disasters are already undermining the record growth in the nations of Africa and is threatening their hard-won gains in development.

In order to combat this, African states have announced a strategic move to leverage available capital for climate change adaption with the Called the African Risk Capacity (ARC) Extreme Climate Facility (XCF), a multi-year funding mechanism that will issue climate change catastrophe bonds.

“Africa needs solutions. The XCF will offer African nations a new financing mechanism to manage climate risks by providing direct access to new private capital and by leveraging development partner contributions. We are leading the way in innovative climate finance,” said Doctor Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Chair of ARC’s Governing Board, ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit in New York.

“XCF will ensure that African countries and the international community appropriately monitor climate shocks and will be financially prepared to implement specific adaptation measures in an effective and accountable manner, leveraging ARC’s existing public-private infrastructure,” says Dr. Richard Wilcox, founding Director General of ARC. “The XCF allows us to leverage private capital against the risk of increased frequency of severe climate events, while using public money to fund immediate and certain adaptation requirements,” said Doctor Richard Wilcox, founding Director General of ARC.

Even in high-pressure situations, if a friendly cat walks by, you must pet it.

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Senators are urging President Obama to regulate methane emissions

Fifteen senators are pressuring President Barack Obama to begin regulating methane emissions that come from the production of oil and gas, arguing that methane is a “key component” of curbing the emission of greenhouse gases and combating climate change.

“Ton for ton, methane causes at least 80 times more warming than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period,” wrote the 13 Democratic senators and two Independents, led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, in a letter addressed to President Obama on Friday. “Voluntary standards are not enough. Too many in the oil and gas sector have failed to adopt sound practices voluntarily, and the absence of uniform enforceable standards has allowed methane pollution to continue, wasting energy and threatening public health.”

The Obama administration issued a methane strategy back in March, which included undertaking new studies and implementing voluntary measures for oil and gas companies. The White House has previously touted the growing use of natural gas in the energy sector as a goof thing for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as natural gas burns much cleaner than other fossil fuels.

Environmentalists, on the other hand, are concerned that the amount of methane, which is the primary component of natural gas, that leaks during both the extraction and transportation of the fuel could be incredibly damaging to the environment.

Read more about the story at The Washington Examiner.

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Stone tool-making may have arisen independently outside of Africa

According to a new study, early humans may have developed an advanced way of crafting stone tools, something once thought to have only originated in Africa, independently in other places. The researchers behind the study suggest that their finding provide evidence that this ancient technology didn’t spread across the globe solely as a result of humanity’s exodus from the African continent.

The researchers analyzed about 3,000 stone tools from a 325,000-year-old archaeological site outside of Nor Geghi in the Kotayk Province of Armenia. What they found challenges the theory that many scientists have held that the so-called Levallois stone tool-making technique originated in Africa and then spread across the world as human populations began to expand.

Levallois technology, named after the site where it was first discovered in France, involves knocking stone flakes of specific shapes and sizes off of a lump of stone, called a core. The resulting flakes are then refined into knives or various other tools. They were relatively small items that would have been easy to carry, which is an important consideration for the nomadic hunter-gatherers of the era.

Researchers have long argued that Levallois technology originated in Africa, and then spread to Eurasia as humans began their exodus from Africa. However, investigators have discovered the earliest known use of Levallois technology in Eurasia, a discovery which serves as the first clear evidence that the technology was discovered independently outside of Africa.

Read more about the story at Discovery News.

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IBM’s new solar concentrators can produce electricity and fresh water

Climate change caused by global carbon emissions has spawned a massive international effort to begin generating electricity from clean, renewable sources, such as the sun. A smaller, but equally important international effort has been spawned by the growing demand for water caused by global population growth. These may seem like two entirely separate issues, but IBM has found a way to solve both of these problems at the same time.

In partnership with Airlight Energy, IBM has developed a 30-foot solar concentrator is shaped like a sunflower and is capable of not only generating electricity, but also desalinating water to make it drinkable. This kind of technology would be incredibly useful in hotter climates, deserts in particular, where there is an abundance of sunlight and a scarcity of fresh water.

Called a High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system, each one is a parabolic dish that’s comprised of 36 mirrors that are made of recyclable, silver-coated plastic. All of the mirrors concentrate sunlight onto photovoltaic chips that convert a whopping 80% of the sunlight harvested into useful energy.

On a sunny day, each chip is capable of producing up to 57 watts, and an entire array could, with the entire dish generating up to 12 kilowatts of electrical power and 20 kilowatts of heat, provide more than enough energy and heat to supply several average homes.

The problem is that the chips become extremely hot as a result. In order to combat this issue, a liquid cooling system was added to the array which could, with proper modifications, also work to produce fresh water.

“For example, salt water can pass through a porous membrane distillation system, where it is vaporized and desalinated,” said an IBM researcher. “Such a system could provide 30 to 40 liters of drinkable water per square meter of receiver area per day…a little less than half the amount of water the average person needs per day according to the United Nations, whereas a large multi-dish installation could provide enough water for a town.”

Scientists have found a complex organic molecule in interstellar space

Scientists have discovered a new kind of organic molecule in a giant gas cloud all the way out in interstellar space, indicating that more complex molecules, which are the core building blocks of life, can potentially form outside of Earth, and could even be widespread in space.

The discovery came after the scientists analyzed a star-forming gas cloud that is around 27,000 light years away from Earth. In the gas cloud, they detected an iso-propyl cyanide molecule with a unique structure that is common in life-forming molecules, such as amino acids.

Finding a simple organic chemical in space is not exactly new, but a carbon-bearing molecule with a branched structure is new, indicating that biologically crucial molecules can form not only on Earth, but in deep space too.

“Amino acids on Earth are the building blocks of proteins, and proteins are very important for life as we know it. The question in the background is: is there life somewhere else in the galaxy?” Doctor Arnaud Belloche of the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy told the BBC.

“The enormous abundance of iso-propyl cyanide suggests that branched molecules may in fact be the rule, rather than the exception, in the interstellar medium,” stated Robin Garrod, an astrochemist at Cornell University and a co-author of the paper, according to astrobiology.com.

“There seems to be quite a lot of it, which would indicate that this more complex organic structure is possibly very common, maybe even the norm, when it comes to simple organic molecules in space,” Professor Matt Griffin, head of the school of physics and astronomy at Cardiff University said.

Rabies could potentially be eliminated with mass dog vaccinations

Earlier this week, rabies experts revealed a blueprint for potentially eliminating the malignant disease, which is caused by bites from rapid dogs the vast majority of the time and results in the deaths of tens of thousands of people across the globe every year. The plan would involve a series of mass dog vaccinations in certain regions.

The routine vaccination of pet dogs has made the viral disease rare in developed nations, but it still kills around 69,000 people across the globe every year, mostly in impoverished and rural parts of Asia and Africa. India alone is home to around one third of all rabies-related deaths.

Vaccines for both humans and dogs have existed for quite some time, but rabies has persisted due to the lack of a concentrated effort to wipe it out. The international team of experts has proposed what they call a cost-effective and achievable strategy for ending the spread of the viral disease through dogs.

Successful efforts in Latin America, as well as pilot projects in Africa and Southeast Asia, have shown that mass dog vaccination programs can prevent humans from being infected by rabies in low-income nations, as well as more wealthy ones. The team noted that vaccinating around 70% of dogs in a given region is the threshold.

“There is now convincing evidence that vaccination of dogs would eliminate greater than 98 percent of the rabies health burden globally,” said Guy Palmer, director of Washington State University’s Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health.

“Rabies is an ancient plague. Descriptions of human suffering and death can be seen since the earliest times of recorded history. Even today, rabies is the most consistently fatal infectious disease of humans,” added Palmer, noting that virtually every person who develops symptoms dies.

Read more about the story at The Huffington Post.

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Hebrews 1:9 – anointed thee with the oil of gladness

Hebrews 1:9 (KJV)

Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.

This is a passage of great importance to both Christians and Jews. The entire first chapter of Hebrews is a strong announcement of Yeshua’s dominance over all in heaven and on earth, that even the angels are below Him in stature. It is important to understand this, particularly for non-believers, because Jesus is often spoken of as a prophet or a wise man when in reality he is the Christ, Yeshua Ha’Mashiach, the Messiah.

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Space bubbles may have killed three soldiers in Afghanistan

On the morning of March 4, 2002, military officers in Afghanistan radioed a Chinook helicopter that was heading towards the snowcapped peak of Takur Ghar to warn the passengers that the peak was under enemy control. However, the message never reached the helicopter, and shortly after daybreak, the helicopter crash-landed on the peak, killing three men.

More than a decade later, scientists have taken a closer look at why the warning wasn’t able to reach the helicopter. It has been speculated that this was a result of human error, but scientists have discovered that this isn’t the case. Instead, the radio interference may be explained by something called a “plasma bubble”, which is essentially an interruption by space weather.

Plasma bubbles are giant, wispy clouds of electrically charged gas particles. These bubbles form just after dark in the upper atmosphere and are usually around 62 miles wide. These bubbles have been known to bend and, in the process, disperse radio waves which results in communication interference.

The plasma is usually kept stable by sunlight during the day, but at night, the charged particles recombine to form electrically neutral atoms and molecules again. This recombination happens more quickly at lower altitudes which makes bubbles rise up through the denser plasma above.

The scientists examined data from the Global Ultraviolet Imager (GUVI) instrument aboard NASA’s TIMED mission, which studies the composition and dynamics of Earth’s upper atmosphere. What they found was that there was a plasma bubble directly between the helicopter and the communications satellite, which blocked the warning.

Read more about the story at Discovery News.

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Three Irish teenagers are taking on global hunger with bacteria

Google has announced the winners of its annual international science fair, which features the work of students between the age of 13 and 18. However, this is nothing like your usual science fair where a bunch of kids make a low-power battery, the Google Science Fair is prestigious and attracts teenagers with some pretty amazing projects.

This year’s Grand Prize went to a team of three 16-year-old girls from Ireland: Ciara Judge, Émer Hickey, and Sophie Healy-Thow. The group’s project, called “Combating the Global Food Crisis: Diazotroph Bacteria as a Cereal Crop Growth Promoter”, explored how different bacterial strains could be used to shorten the germination time of cereal crops like oats and barley.

The world is quite possibly on the precipice of a global food crisis due to a number of factors, such as climate change threatening several food crops and the increasing demand for food thanks to rapid population growth. In order to combat these threats, improving both the durability and the output of our food crops is becoming much more important.

As a reward for winning the prize, the three girls will spend 10 days in the Galapagos Islands from National Geographic Expeditions, receive a $50,000 scholarship, a behind-the-scenes tour of Virgin Galactic Spaceport, a prize pack from LEGO, and one of three experiences offered by LEGO, NatGeo, and Google.

Read more about the story at National Geographic.

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Even Bill Maher Finds Hypocrisy in Liberal Tolerance of Violent Muslim Practices

Outspoken atheist liberal talk show host Bill Maher has been on our list of the least likely people that we would agree with, but there’s one topic that he finally discussed accurately and in a relatively unbiased light: the liberal tolerance of Islam as contrasted with their outrage over sillier matters.

His delivery into the topic was poor, utilizing an offensive image of desecration on a Christian-inspired statue as a “light” segue into his rant, but once he actually started the rant, he made some strong points. Liberals have shown that they cannot tolerate anything that hints of intolerance, but they become silent, apologetic, or even defensive when the topic of Muslim atrocities around the world comes up. They’ll often point to the Crusades, to Adolf Hitler’s pseudo-faith, or other examples of how Christians are just as violent, but the numbers are clear and the atrocities are unique.

Maher’s fuel for this rant was to promote a truer liberal and atheist ideology; there was no hint of conservatism in his monologue. However, he is at least intelligent enough to point out that the evils perpetrated in Muslim countries around the world are not isolated to a handful of radicals. As he points out, the majority of Muslims worldwide believe in the inferiority of women, the harsh punishments handed down to those who break the law, and the concept that Islam is the top level of government. He even bashes President Obama for trying to separate ISIS from Islam.

As condemn Americans condemn movie stars, athletes, talk show hosts, and other celebrities for minor lapses in judgment, they tend to turn a blind eye to anything that even hints at criticism on Muslim countries and individuals that force unspeakable pain, suffering, and death on those that they choose to persecute.

We may not agree with the delivery, the motivations, or the end goals of his words, but the concepts match reality and for that, we have to give kudos to him for speaking out against “his” people. Here’s the video:

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Saturday, September 27, 2014

Kurt Cobain's home town...

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Genesis 1:27 – in the image of God

Genesis 1:27 (KVJ)

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

It seems like one of the most obvious verses in the Bible – can it be more straightforward? The repetition is the part that catches us. Is there more to the story or is it simply reiterating?

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Friday, September 26, 2014

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Liquid metal batteries could help bring renewable energy to the grid

The biggest problem with renewable energy sources such as wind or solar power is that they’re sporadic and don’t provide consistent amounts of energy. Whereas fossil fuel-burning power plants can adjust the amount of electricity that they generate to fit the current demand, electricity gathered from the wind or sun is intermittent.

Storing the excess electricity that’s generated could allow national electric grids to meet demand much more consistently, but the limitations of current battery technology make this not a viable option. Fortunately, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may have found a way to solve this problem.

Donald Sadoway, an electrochemist at MIT, and his colleagues have devised a stationary energy storage solution based on a liquid lithium negative electrode, a molten salt electrolyte and a liquid antimony–lead alloy for the positive electrode. Most other battery types have solid electrodes and sometimes even a solid electrolyte.

“The invention of this three-level liquid metal battery is unique,” says Stanford University’s Robert Huggins. “It is leading to the development of an entirely different type of energy storage device for large-scale applications, in which size, weight and portability are not critical parameters. Instead, cost, high rate performance, safety and lifetime are most important.”

This a public pop-up toilet ,it emerges an 10pm and disappears at 3am. To prevent alcohol-induced public urination.

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New study confirms that the Arctic is continuing its melting trend

The level of ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean continued its below-average trend this year as the ice declined to its annual minimum last Wednesday, according to the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

“Arctic sea ice coverage in 2014 is the sixth lowest recorded since 1978,” said Walter Meier, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The summer started off relatively cool, and lacked the big storms or persistent winds that can break up ice and increase melting. Even with a relatively cool year, the ice is so much thinner than it used to be. It is more susceptible to melting.”

The summer sea ice has actually covered more of the Arctic Ocean in the last two years than in the record low summer of 2012, however, this doesn’t indicate that the Arctic is returning to its average conditions, according to Mr. Meier. This minimum extent this year is still in line with the current downward trend in which the Arctic Ocean loses around 13% of its ice every decade.

Read more about the story at Click Green.

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Thursday, September 25, 2014

When in Boston... #FishAndChips

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You know you're in a bad neighborhood when they lock up the Orbit.

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Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Suntan vending machine, 1949

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Monday, September 22, 2014

Sloth... love... Frodo

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Toyota and Shift Digital have put on an amazing event here at #DD17. #WineIncluded

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Sunday, September 21, 2014

This is not Alec Baldwin.

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Obama will tout America’s fight against climate change at the UN summit

The Obama administration intends to strongly emphasize its efforts to combat climate change at the United Nations climate summit in New York next week, said government officials. About 120 world leaders will be attending the United Nations General Assembly session on climate change on Tuesday, which will be hosted by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

“We are taking this summit seriously both to show the world that the U.S. is leading on climate change, and to call on other leaders to step up to the plate,” John Podesta, who serves as a counselor to President Barack Obama, said Thursday in a call with reporters. “Expect to hear about tremendous progress that the U.S. has made under the Climate Action Plan,” he said, referring to the steps Obama laid out last year to cut domestic emissions.

“This gathering of global leadership in one place at one time is unprecedented,” Bob Orr, assistant secretary-general for policy coordination and strategic planning in the executive office of the United Nations Secretary-General, said Wednesday in Washington. He echoed the hope that the involvement of high-level officials next week will improve the negotiation process. “They can assert their leadership before negotiators go into a room to ink a big deal,” said Orr.

Read more about the story at The National Journal.

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Scientists have used gene therapy to improve the health of sick mice

A team of researchers from the University of Tokyo has, using gene therapy, managed to improve the strength, motor skills, and life span of mice with two different neuromuscular diseases. The study has raised hopes that, one day, similar therapies could be used to treat humans with a range of muscular disorders such as muscular dystrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

The term neuromuscular disorder is an umbrella term that refers to several different diseases that either affect the muscle directly, resulting from problems with the muscle structure, or indirectly, resulting from faulty signaling between nerves and muscle. This signaling occurs at the neuromuscular junction, which is the interface between neurons and muscle fibers.

Previous work in this area has shown that a certain protein, known as Dok-7, is essential for the proper formation of the neuromuscular junction. Certain neuromuscular diseases, such as familial limb-girdle myasthenia, are known to be caused by a defective DOK7 gene. This mutant gene results in the production of a faulty Dok-7 protein, which prevents the neuromuscular junction from forming properly.

As a result of this, patients experience progressive muscle wastage that often causes the individual to be wheelchair-bound and have breathing difficulties. Sometimes, the muscle loss can be so severe that patients die from a weakened heart. Similarly, mice missing a functional DOK7 gene are severely underweight and die at a young age.

Read more about the story at Science Magazine.

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Comprehensive analysis finds GMOs to be safe

Genetically modified crops have been used to feed livestock since the mid 1990’s, and now it accounts for around 90% if all the animal feed in the United States. Ever since its introduction, there has been massive controversy surrounding the safety of this practice.

Unfortunately, the conversation has been polluted by anecdotal evidence and “studies” in journals that are not subjected to peer review which claim that genetically modified food causes numerous physical ailments, even cancer.

However, according to a comprehensive new analysis of studies led by Alison Van Eenennaam of the University of California, Davis, genetically modified food has no negative effects on the animals that are consuming them, at least no more so than animals who are fed the same type of food, but not genetically modified.

The analysis took into account over 100 billion animals collectively eating trillion of genetically modified meals between 1983 and 2011, and it isn’t the first of its kind. Alessandro Nicolia of the University of Perugia in Italy published a review last fall of 1,783 papers over a 10 year period that sought to understand the risk of genetically modified crops on the environment. Ultimately, there was no evidence showing genetically modified food poses a significant risk.

Ancient art reveals the extinct animals of Egypt

Scientists have been able to use detailed depictions of animals on ancient Egyptian artifacts to assemble a detailed record of the large mammals that lived in the Nile Valley over the past 6,000 years. A new analysis of this record shows that the ecosystem in the region has become progressively less stable due to the extinction of certain species, most likely due to the drying climate and the growth of human settlements.

The study, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that many extinctions of local mammal species have led to a steady decline in the stability of the animal communities in the Nile Valley. Back when there were many species in the community, the loss of a single species had little impact on how the ecosystem functioned, whereas now it is much more sensitive to such alterations.

This is according to Justin Yeakel, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. Around six thousand years ago, there were 37 species of large-bodied mammals in Egypt, but that number has declined to a mere eight in modern times. Among the species recorded in the ancient artifacts were lions, wild dogs, elephants, oryx, hartebeest, and giraffe.

“What was once a rich and diverse mammalian community is very different now,” Yeakel said. “As the number of species declined, one of the primary things that was lost was the ecological redundancy of the system. There were multiple species of gazelles and other small herbivores, which are important because so many different predators prey on them. When there are fewer of those small herbivores, the loss of any one species has a much greater effect on the stability of the system and can lead to additional extinctions.”

Read more about the story at International Business Times.

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India is looking to become the world leader in renewable energy

India is looking to attract somewhere around $100 billion in the renewable energy sector in the next five years, increasing its solar target to 15 gigawatts, which is five times the nation’s current capacity. This speculation comes after two separate announcements by India’s Power, Coal, and Renewable Energy Minister Piyush Goyal and advisory company “Bridge to India”.

In an interview that was released to The Economic Times, Minister Goyal expressed India’s intention to become the world leader in renewable energy in the next four years by strengthening its Renewable Purchase Obligations, an instrument to transition the electricity sector toward low carbon production, but alone it’s not enough.

“We’re far ahead of other countries,” says Goyal proudly, “and our perspective is to encourage our industry and do even better. China subsidized the whole business in a very massive way, but India can’t afford to do that.”

Growing economies like India and China, which are expected to contribute more than half of the global increase in carbon emissions in the next 25 years or so, will play a critical role in any effort to combat climate change. With India’s ambitious plans to become the world leader in renewable energy, the future is starting to look a lot less grim.

Read more about the story at The Economic Times.

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Saturday, September 20, 2014

I'll take it if you're not hungry

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Friday, September 19, 2014

Wrong on every level.

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Boeing is going to be offering spaceflights for paying tourists

When NASA first announced its new partnership with Boeing and SpaceX, many people thought that space travel for the average citizen is one step closer to reality, and apparently they were right. The “space taxi” that the two companies are developing won’t just be for astronauts, it will also contain a seat for paying tourists.

That’s right, as part of Boeing’s proposal with NASA, the CST-100 vehicle will have a seat that is reserved for a regular citizen who is willing to pay to go up into space and float around in the International Space Station with trained professionals.

“Part of our proposal into NASA would be flying a Space Adventures spaceflight participant up to the ISS,” John Mulholland, Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program Manager, tells Reuters. Space Adventures is a Virginia-based space tourism company founded in 1998. Since 2010, they have been offering a number of spaceflight-related experiences, including spacewalks, suborbital spaceflights and launch tours.

Mr. Mulholland added that the price of the seat would be high enough to be competitive with what the Russian space agency is charging space tourists, which is a hell of a lot. According to Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures, British singer Sarah Brightman is currently training for a 10-day stay at the station. In January, she’ll become the eighth paying passenger to visit the ISS, hitching a ride on the Russian Soyuz rocket, and it looks like the trip is going to cost her roughly $52 million.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

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Ronald started in rodeo

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Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Japan is replacing nuclear power with floating solar power islands

Japan has historically been at the forefront of nuclear power, with more nuclear power plants and a higher nuclear energy output than almost any other country. However, ever since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, the country has decided to wean itself off of nuclear power in favor of other alternative energy sources, the most promising of which is solar energy.

The island nation has a land area of around 146,000 square miles, which is roughly the size of the state of Montana. However, whereas Montana is only home to about 1 million people, Japan is home to more than 128 million. With all of those people squeezed together there’s not very much space available, so where can Japan’s ambitious solar energy projects be built? Well, according to Kyocera and Century Tokyo Leasing, they can be built on the water.

The two companies have joined forces to build a couple of massive solar power islands which will float on two reservoirs and generate somewhere around 2.9 megawatts of clean energy. The combined capacity of the two power plants would be enough to power anywhere between 483 and 967 American households. Work on this project is set to begin in September, with a target finish date of April 2015.

One of the “water-mounted mega solar power plants” will float on the surface of Nishihira pond and will generate about 1.7 megawatts of energy, which would make it the world’s largest floating solar plant. The second floating solar power plant will be built on Dongping pond, and will generate about 1.2 megawatts of clean energy.

Read more about the story at The Ecologist.

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Cell-like structure found on meteorite suggests Mars was once habitable

A collaborative investigation of a fragment of a 1.3 billion-year-old Martian meteorite by scientists from the United Kingdom and Greece has brought forth more information that suggests that the Red Planet may have been habitable at some point.

Doctor Elias Chatzitheodoridis of the National Technical University of Athens found an unusual feature embedded within the fragment, known as Nakhla, and they found a “cell-like” structure, which investigators now know once held water.

Professor Lyon, based in Manchester’s School of Earth, Atmospheric, and Environmental Sciences, said that this resembles a fossilized biological cell from Earth in several ways but it was intriguing because it was undoubtedly from Mars.

“Our research found that it probably wasn’t a cell but that it did once hold water – water that had been heated, probably as a result of an asteroid impact,” said Professor Lyon. “It’s not too cold, it’s not too harsh. Life as we know it, in the form of bacteria, for example, could be there, although we haven’t found it yet. It’s about piecing together the case for life on Mars – it may have existed and in some form could exist still.”

Read more about the story at IFL Science.

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MIT’s robo-cheetah can now run around without a tether

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has improved its cheetah-like robot by enabling it to jump and run around outside without being tethered. MIT researchers are continuing to upgrade the robot and improve its skills. The robo-cheetah has come a long way since its first treadmill test, during which it was tethered up.

MIT released a demonstration video of the robo-cheetah running across an open field and then bounding upwards to show off its new jumping skills. This is all thanks to a new algorithm that the researchers have developed which allows the robo-cheetah to run around while navigating the terrain of the open field without being tethered.

Sangbae Kim, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, compares the electric motors of the cheetah-bot to other heavier, louder quadruped robots that use gasoline motors. “Our robot can be silent and as efficient as animals. The only things you hear are the feet hitting the ground,” he told MIT News. “This is kind of a new paradigm where we’re controlling force in a highly dynamic situation. Any legged robot should be able to do this in the future.”

Contaminated drinking water may not be caused by fracking after all

$Contaminated drinking water may not be caused by fracking after all$

Numerous drinking-water wells across the country have been contaminated by natural gas in recent years, and many people have blamed hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking. However, a new paper which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday suggests that fracking may not be the cause.

A team of researchers at Duke University, Stanford University, Dartmouth University, and the University of Rochester recently devised a new method of geochemical forensics to trace how methane migrates under the earth. The study identified eight collections of drinking-water wells that had been contaminated by natural gas in Pennsylvania and Texas.

What the team found was that neither horizontal drilling nor hydraulic fracturing of shale deposits in the area seemed to have caused any of the natural gas contamination. Rather, the contaminations seem to be cause by poorly built and cemented gas wells, rather than the process of fracking itself.

“There is no question that in many instances elevated levels of natural gas are naturally occurring, but in a subset of cases, there is also clear evidence that there were human causes for the contamination,” said study leader Thomas Darrah, assistant professor of earth sciences at Ohio State. “However our data suggests that where contamination occurs, it was caused by poor casing and cementing in the wells,” Darrah said.

Read more about the story at The New York Times.

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Cow shoes used by Moonshiners in the Prohibition days to disguise their footprints, 1922

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Japan is facing intense scrutiny for its attempts to resume whaling

Japan’s intentions to resume hunting whales in the Antarctic, despite a ruling by the top United Nations court, was at the top of the agenda of an international whaling conference that opened on Monday in the Adriatic Sea resort Portoroz, Slovenia.

The international ban on whaling that was put in place in 1986 had small allowance for whaling that was done for research purposes. Japan has insisted that the hunts that it is conducting, which will likely lead the slaughter of hundreds of whales, will be done on that basis.

However, back in March, it was ruled by the International Court of Justice that Japan’s program produced little in the way of actual research, and therefore was not scientific. Japan also drew criticism for failing to explain why it needed to slaughter so many whales.

While Japan doesn’t need approval from the International Whaling Commission’s scientific committee to continue whaling, any attempt to resume whaling in the Antarctic after a one-year pause would likely face intense scrutiny from countries across the globe.

Australia and New Zealand, both of whom are close to the waters that Japanese whalers have been active in, are especially against the resumption of whaling. Australia’s environment minister, Greg Hunt, has reiterated his government’s opposition to whaling, and has used the international conference in Slovenia to fight off any attempt by Japan to resume whaling.

“Australia’s opposition to all forms of commercial whaling remains unchanged,” Hunt told the meeting in Portoroz, Slovenia. “Australia is of the view that lethal scientific research is not necessary. All information necessary for the contemporary conservation and management of whales can be obtained non-lethally. The commission’s southern ocean research partnership is delivering valuable, best-practice, non-lethal whale research and demonstrates that whales do not need to be killed in the name of science.”

Read more about the story at The Huffington Post.

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