Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.
When it is posted, the Green Diary Rescue & Open Thread front page diary often links to that evening's OND - consider this reference as returning the kind favor. Or, creating an infinite loop.
This week's featured story comes from Wired.
'She lives! Let's go find planets!': Telescope Launch Successful
By Alexis Madrigal
A new telescope that will be able to detect earth-like planets around other stars successfully launched Friday night from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida at 10:49 p.m. Eastern time.
The Kepler Space Telescope is the first human tool that will be able to find planets capable of supporting life as we know it.
Its trip into orbit went exactly as planned, with the @NASA twitter feed declaring it, "A perfect launch!"
More science, space, and environment news after the jump.
Slideshows/Videos
Reuters: Is anybody out there?
Mar. 7 - NASA launches Kepler telescope to seach for Earth-like planets capable of sustaining life.
Reuters: Clinton: "Never waste a good crisis"
Mar 06 - The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offers an upbeat message while talking to young Europeans in Brussels.
Reuters: Gel may offer AIDS protection
March 4 - An ingredient found in ice cream and cosmetics might work to protect women against the AIDS virus, researchers say.
The compound, called glycerol monolaurate, or GML, appears to stop inflammation and helps keep away the T-cells the AIDS virus usually infects, the researchers say.
Reuters: The power of green technology
Mar 5 - From the 'zero watt PC' to a smart electricity meter that allows consumers to monitor their power consumption in real-time, Green IT is getting much attention at CeBIT.
Reuters: CeBIT previews future tech
Mar 4 - A robot who makes tea for astronauts, a ‘magic’ mirror and a new mini-PC design are among the standout innovations on display at Europe’s largest technology fair.
Reuters: Carvings threaten mammoth research
Mar 5 - The tradition of making figurines from mammoth bones is threatening the number of bones left for scientific research.
Reuters: Elusive Javan rhino filmed
Mar 5 - The WWF has released new footage showing the elusive Javan rhino - one of the most endangered mammals in the world.
Reuters: China renews attack over art sale
Mar 4 - China's Foreign Minister adds his voice to the row over the sale of relics Beijing says were looted in the 19th Century.
Astronomy/Space
Reuters: Shall we dance? Two big black holes found together
By Will Dunham
Two colossal black holes appear to be orbiting one another in sort of a cosmic minuet at the center of a faraway galaxy formed when two separate galaxies collided, U.S. astronomers said on Wednesday.
These two so-called supermassive black holes, which are celestial objects with enormous gravitational pull, are locked in orbit about 5 billion light years away from Earth, the scientists said. A light year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km), or the distance light travels in a year.
Data from Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico provided the best evidence to date of two black holes orbiting each other, according to astronomer Todd Boroson of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.
Wired: NASA's Planet-Hunting Space Telescope to Launch Friday
By Alexis Madrigal
Scientists have found more than 300 planets circling other stars, but none of them look like our pale blue dot. Most of them are gas giants like Jupiter. Others are small but very close to their stars and likely too hot to support life. Current telescopes can't see with quite enough resolution or sensitivity to detect the tiny change in a star's brightness that would indicate the presence of an Earth in an orbit in what is known as the habitable zone.
Kepler will change all that.
"We won't find E.T." said Bill Borucki, the Kepler mission's principal investigator. "but we might find E.T.'s home looking at all these stars."
Wired: Martian Volcano Could Be Reservoir for Life
By Michael Wall
Scientists searching for extraterrestrial life might want to start digging under a Martian mountain three times as high as Mount Everest.
Liquid water likely once sloshed beneath the 15-mile-high Olympus Mons, and may still be there today. Because the mountain is volcanic, the water could be warm and friendly to life.
"Olympus Mons is a favored place to find ongoing life on Mars," said geophysicist Patrick McGovern of Houston's Lunar and Planetary Institute, lead author of a study in Geology in February. "An environment that's warm and wet, and protected from adverse surface conditions, is a great place to start looking."
Reuters: China's lunar probe ends mission
by Emma Graham-Harrison
China's lunar probe has ended its 16-month life with a planned crash into the moon, the official Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.
Named for a moon goddess, the Chang'e-1 rammed into the lunar surface in the mid-afternoon Beijing time, after orbiting the moon thousands of times to map its surface.
Reuters: Japan considers putting robot on moon
By Yoko Kubota
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan is considering putting a robot on the moon by 2020 and an astronaut by 2030, a report from a government office showed on Friday, amid fears that the country will be left behind in Asia's space race.
The plans follow China's first space walk and India's launch of their first unmanned moon mission last year. Beijing officials have said that China is looking to eventually put astronauts on the moon, though the government has not revealed any schedule.
The robot and the astronaut would probe the moon to see how its resources could be used, the report showed.
Reuters: NASA clears Discovery for liftoff on Wednesday
By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA managers on Friday cleared the space shuttle Discovery for launch Wednesday on a construction mission to the International Space Station.
Liftoff of the 125th shuttle mission, the first of five planned for this year, is scheduled for 9:20 p.m. ET from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission had been on hold to resolve safety concerns with the ship's fuel pressure valves.
"We're feeling really, really good," shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach told reporters at a press conference. "It's great to have a launch date."
Evolution/Paleontology
Wired: Organism Sets Mutation Speed Record, May Explain Life's Origins
By Brandon Keim
An uber-primitive plant pathogen made from naked strands of genetic material mutates faster than any other known organism — and it might just illuminate the origins of life.
Called hammerhead viroids, their mutation rates are orders of magnitude more rapid than those of viruses, the next-most-primitive organisms, which are orders of magnitude more rapid than lowly bacteria.
...
Such accelerated mutation could have been useful four billion years ago, after a few quirky chemicals assembled into ribonucleic acid, or RNA — DNA's single-stranded forerunner.
Salt Lake City Tribune: Hands down, fossil find an important one
By Mark Havnes
Scientists have discovered rare fossilized handprints of a meat-eating dinosaur that 198 million years ago roamed the shores of a prehistoric lake in today's southwestern Utah.
As the dinosaur sat along the ancient shoreline, it pressed its hands on the muddy shoreline. Left for humans to discover is a pair that is one of the most pristine prints in the world, giving scientists a clearer understanding of how the meat eater used its hands.
That's not all. The dinosaur also left an impression of its buttocks where it sat in the primordial ooze.
Hat/Tip to jlms qkw, who sent in the above article.
Wired: Freed From Hand of Man, Animals Could Rise Again
By Brandon Keim
Animals shrunken by the evolutionary pressures of hunting and fishing could someday recover their lost splendor.
After being left alone for just twelve generations, a population of experimentally stunted fish regained most of their original size — suggesting that the real-world dwarfism produced by continually killing the largest specimens may not be permanent.
"There's a fair amount of evidence now that in lots of hunted or harvested populations, there's a trend towards smaller body sizes or earlier ages at maturation," said Stephan Munch, a marine ecologist at Stony Brook University. "There's been relatively little evidence for what happens after you stop."
Biodiversity
Wired: Life Thrives in Earth's Most Mars-Like Environment
By Brandon Keim
A region of Earth so barren and desolate that it's often compared to Mars is home to simple but thriving ecosystems, suggesting that life could indeed survive on the red planet.
"If you have just a few basic things," said Steven Schmidt, a microbiologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, "you can get a complex ecosystem going, even in one of the harshest places on the planet."
Schmidt's team studied soil from the upper flanks of the Socompa volcano, high in the Andes mountains. Straddling Chile and Argentina, the volcano is surrounded by the Atacama desert, one of the few spots on Earth to contain regions devoid of any life form.
Reuters: WITNESS: Wildlife and radiation in evacuated Chernobyl zone
By Vasily Fedosenko
We venture out at dawn from a dilapidated shack nestled in a forest to see the animals, although rising early is not always necessary.
Still inhospitable to humans, the Chernobyl "exclusion zone" -- a contaminated 30-km (19 mile) radius around the site of the nuclear reactor explosion of April 26, 1986 -- is now a nature reserve and teems with wolves, moose, bison, wild boars and bears.
Boars, which generally confine their sorties to dusk, plunder what remains of gardens in the daytime, strolling down empty village streets, wandering into farms and settlements in search of food.
Reuters: Development takes toll on Chesapeake crabs
By Andy Sullivan
REEDVILLE, Virginia (Reuters) - It doesn't look like a disaster area.
Crab boats dart back and forth on this inlet of the Chesapeake Bay as they have for generations. On the shore, million-dollar vacation homes catch the morning sun.
But watermen aren't pulling blue crabs out of the Bay this winter. After years of decline, the U.S. Commerce Department declared the fishery a federal disaster last September and Maryland and Virginia shut it down until spring.
Reuters: Quarter of antelopes under threat: report
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) - A quarter of the world's antelope species is under threat of extinction due to hunting and human damage to their habitats from the Sahara to Tibet, a study showed on Wednesday.
The South African springbok was the only antelope whose numbers were rising, bucking a dwindling or at best stable trend for all the 91 types of gazelles and other antelopes worldwide.
Twenty-five of 91 antelope species, or about a quarter, were rated "endangered" in a review by experts for the "Red List" of threatened species run by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Reuters: Japan may cut back on future whale hunts: report
by Yoko Kubota
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan is considering reducing the number of whales it catches each year, the Asahi newspaper reported on Thursday, as an international body fights to bridge a divide between nations for and against whaling.
Japan, which carries out what it calls research whaling despite an international ban on commercial hunting, currently aims to catch about 900 of the creatures a year Antarctic waters.
Reuters: Dozens of dolphins wash up on Pakistani beach
by Augustine Anthony
KARACHI (Reuters) - Dozens of dolphins washed up on a Pakistani beach on Friday to the amazement of villagers who frolicked with them in the shallows, but wildlife officials warned that mishandling the mammals could endanger them.
The dolphins came ashore at Gadani beach, about 40 km (25 miles) west of the city of Karachi, on the Arabian Sea.
"They were most probably pushed toward the beach by a high tide," wildlife official Hussain Baksh Bhagat told Express News television.
Biotechnology/Health
Wired: Turning Skin Cells to Stem Cells, Without Cancer
By Brandon Keim
Like hackers one-upping each others' code, stem cell scientists keep finding better ways to turn flakes of skin into stem cells. And the latest technique could avoid the cancer-causing side effects of previous methods.
By reprogramming skin cell DNA with a virus that literally removed itself afterwards, researchers have made a versatile, near-embryonic stem cell nearly free from glitches left by other manufacturing methods.
"The virus steadily integrates into the cell's genome. It does the miracle of reprogramming," said Rudolf Jaenisch, a Whitehead Institute cell biologist. Activating a gene in the virus "takes the virus back out, leaving a minimal trace in the human genome."
Wired: Radical Approach to Block HIV Gets Some Results
By Brandon Keim
Faced with the continued failure of HIV-targeting microbicides, scientists have devised a radically different approach to preventing transmission of the killer virus: ignoring it.
Instead of aiming at the virus itself, they're focusing on the body's response to HIV's initial attack. By muting distress signals sent by HIV's first cellular victims, researchers hope to prevent the white blood cells on which HIV preys from responding and becoming infected themselves.
This cutting-fuel-to-the-fire approach is highly experimental, and has only been tried with a single compound. But it prevented infection in four of five macaque monkeys exposed to a close relative of HIV, signifying a potentially new direction in the fruitless search for a microbicide.
Reuters: Common ingredient offers AIDS protection
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A cheap ingredient used in ice cream, cosmetics and found in breast milk helps protect monkeys against infection with a virus similar to AIDS and might work to protect women against the virus, researchers reported on Wednesday.
The compound, called glycerol monolaurate, or GML, appears to stop inflammation and helps keep away the cells the AIDS virus usually infects, the researchers said.
While it does not provide 100 percent protection, it might greatly reduce a woman's risk of being infected, and she could use it privately and without hurting her chances of pregnancy, the researchers reported in the journal Nature.
Wired: HIV Hack Lets Scientists Study Human AIDS in Monkeys
By Brandon Keim
A genetically engineered strain of HIV will allow scientists to study a human version of the disease in monkeys.
Until now, AIDS researchers used monkeys infected with simian immunodeficiency virus, or SIV. The virus is similar to ours, but it's far from a perfect research tool.
...
The new HIV strain, described Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could eventually make it easier to test drugs and vaccines for the incurable virus.
Wired: Night Shift Makes Metabolism Go Haywire
By Brandon Keim
By closely monitoring people with disrupted sleep patterns, researchers have documented the metabolic disarray produced by working at night and sleeping during the day.
As soon as their circadian rhythms became separated from a day-night cycle, test subjects' levels of key metabolic hormones went haywire — the most compelling evidence yet that shift work isn't just an inconvenience, but an occupational hazard.
"Normally, the body clock prepares the body for certain activities at a certain time of day," said study co-author Frank Scheer, a Harvard Medical School neuroscientist. "But when it's out of synchronization, it doesn't prepare it properly."
Wired: How the Smell of Rotten Eggs Could Lead to a New Viagra
By Alexis Madrigal
Viagra. Levitra. Hydrogen sulfide?
The compound responsible for the smell of rotten eggs could be a new way to treat erectile dysfunction, based on an early study in rats by a team featuring the UCLA Nobel laureate pharmacologist, Louis Ignarro.
Ignarro's team injected the penile smooth-muscle of rats with hydrogen sulfide, which relaxed them, allowing more blood to flow in — just like Viagra.
Reuters: Experts fight H5N1 bird flu using smallpox vaccine
By Tan Ee Lyn
Scientists in Hong Kong and the United States have developed an experimental H5N1 bird flu vaccine for people by piggybacking it on the well-tested and highly successful smallpox vaccine.
Initial tests on mice showed the vaccine to be highly effective, they told a news conference in Hong Kong on Sunday.
"It produced a lot of (H5N1) antibodies and the speed of antibody response was far higher with this strategy than the Sanofi one," said Malik Peiris, a microbiologist and bird flu expert at the University of Hong Kong.
Reuters: Overexposed: Imaging tests boost U.S. radiation dose
By Julie Steenhuysen
Americans are exposed to seven times more radiation from diagnostic scans than in 1980, a report found on Tuesday as experts said doctors are overusing the tests for profit and raising health risks for patients.
The findings, issued by National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement, add to already mounting evidence that doctors are ordering too many diagnostic tests, driving up the cost of healthcare in the United States and potentially harming patients.
While diagnostic scans give doctors valuable information and many times are necessary, doctors fear too much radiation exposure can cause cancer, especially in younger people.
Climate/Environment
Reuters: Has recession trimmed CO2 output? We'll know by 2010
By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The financial crisis has slashed industrial output and trade but it will be months before there is an accurate picture of how much the downturn has curbed greenhouse gas emissions, two leading scientists said on Friday.
Preliminary data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows carbon dioxide levels rose last year to a global average of 384.9 parts per million, an increase of 2.2 ppm over 2007.
But since then, the financial crisis has deepened, and analysts have been hoping the long-term growth in emissions will slow or stall now that many big economies are in recession.
Reuters: Arctic summer ice could vanish by 2013: expert
By David Ljunggren
The Arctic is warming up so quickly that the region's sea ice cover in summer could vanish as early as 2013, decades earlier than some had predicted, a leading polar expert said on Thursday.
Warwick Vincent, director of the Center for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec, said recent data on the ice cover "appear to be tracking the most pessimistic of the models", which call for an ice free summer in 2013.
The year "2013 is starting to look as though it is a lot more reasonable as a prediction. But each year we've been wrong -- each year we're finding that it's a little bit faster than expected," he told Reuters.
Reuters: Amazon's 2005 drought created huge CO2 emissions
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
A 2005 drought in the Amazon rainforest killed trees and released more greenhouse gas than the annual emissions of Europe and Japan, an international study showed on Thursday.
The report said rainforests from Africa to Latin America may speed up global warming if the climate becomes drier this century. Plants soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide as they grow and release it when they die and rot.
"The Amazon forest was surprisingly sensitive to drought," said Oliver Phillips, a professor of tropical ecology at Leeds University in England who led the study by 68 scientists.
Reuters: Rich nations revise up greenhouse gas problem
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) - Industrialized nations have added greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to the annual totals of France or Australia to a 1990 baseline against which cuts required by U.N. climate treaties are measured.
Emissions reported by 34 nations for the 1990 base year that underpins U.N. efforts to rein in global warming have risen 3.5 percent overall to 17.6 billion tons in the most recent annual data from 17.0 billion in the first U.N. compilation in 1996, a Reuters survey showed on Wednesday.
That difference -- adding about 600 million tons of gases emitted mainly by burning fossil fuels to the problem -- is more than the current annual emissions of countries such as Italy, Australia or France.
Reuters: Emissions exchange trading volumes soar in 2009
By Michael Szabo
LONDON (Reuters) - Exchange-traded volumes for European Union emissions permits and Kyoto Protocol carbon offsets traded so far in 2009 are double last year's average, data from the exchanges showed.
Nearly 700 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), or more than the annual CO2 emissions of Canada, were traded over six European exchanges in February, according to the data.
At a weighted average price of 9.68 euros per metric ton, this represents a trade value of 6.71 billion euros ($8.49 billion).
Reuters: California snow not enough to overcome drought
by Bernie Woodall
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California's mountain snowpack is only at 80 percent of normal, despite recent snowstorms, and is far from enough to ease a prolonged drought, making water conservation measures a necessity, state officials said on Monday.
The drought is forcing municipal water rationing and sharp cutbacks in irrigation supplies to farmers.
"Although recent storms have added to the snowpack, California remains in a serious drought," said Lester Snow, director of the state's Department of Water Resources.
Geology/Geophysics
Reuters: Scientists map U.S. rocks that soak up CO2
By Timothy Gardner
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Certain rocks abundant on the U.S. East and West coasts may one day be coaxed to absorb emissions of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at a rate that could slow climate change, scientists say.
"One day this could be an incredibly useful tool to help fight global warming," said Sam Krevor, the lead author of a new study by scientists at Columbia University's Earth Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey that maps such rocks in the United States.
Scientists have long known that rocks naturally absorb carbon dioxide over thousands of years by binding it with minerals to form solids like calcium carbonate, a common substance found in rocks and the main component of snail shells and eggshells. When their surfaces are dissolved by weathering and natural cycles, the rocks absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as it recrystallizes.
Psychology/Behavior
Wired: Rewiring the Brain: Inside the New Science of Neuroengineering
By Quinn Norton
Dr. Ed Boyden is showing off his lab's equipment with naked delight. We've whizzed past a laser table, a 3-D printer and some rattling biological shakers, and come to rest beside a water cutter.
Boyden picks up a piece of scrap metal and demonstrates how the cutter uses a powerful stream of water and fine bits of garnet (nearly as hard as diamond) to slice precisely through almost any material. It can be used to build nearly anything. He pauses, and considers. "We're probably the only lab in the world that uses a water cutter to build neural interfaces."
Boyden directs MIT's Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Lab, part of the MIT Media Lab. He explains the mission of neuroengineering this way: "If we take seriously the idea that our minds are implemented in the circuits of our brains, then it becomes a top priority to understand how to engineer brains for the better."
Wired: Dial H for Happiness: How Neuroengineering May Change Your Brain
By Quinn Norton
Sci-Fi author Philip K. Dick may have best anticipated neuroengineering in his most famous work, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the basis of the movie Blade Runner. The main character and his wife get up in the morning and select their moods on what Dick called a Penfield mood organ.
We're a long way from building a Penfield mood organ, but we already have ways of prodding our brains. Sometimes we achieve miracle cures, sometimes just trim the edge off the pain, but even the little tweaks can mean the difference between the livable and unlivable life.
Archeology/Anthropology
N.Y. Times: Identity-Theft Arrest in Dispute Over Dead Sea Scrolls
By JOHN ELIGON
For decades, the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been intensely debated.
The prevailing theory is that these ancient documents, which include texts from the Hebrew Bible, were written over the three centuries before 100 A.D. by a Jewish sect known as the Essenes, who were based in Qumran, a settlement at the northwest shore of the Dead Sea near the caves where the scrolls were found between 1947 and 1956.
An alternative theory, passionately proffered by a University of Chicago professor, is that the scrolls’ authors were not Essenes, and that the scrolls themselves were kept in various libraries in Jerusalem until they were hidden in the caves around Qumran for safekeeping during the Roman war of A.D. 67 to 73. Qumran, he has said, was not an Essene monastery but a fortress, one of several armed defensive bastions around Jerusalem.
So, what, you say? Well, things got so heated that the son of the U of Chicago professor was arrested for identity theft and other charges. From the New York County (Manhattan) District Attorney's office's news release.
Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau today announced the
arrest of a 49-year-old man for creating multiple aliases to engage in a
campaign of impersonation and harassment relating to the Dead Sea
Scrolls and scholars of opposing viewpoints.
The defendant, RAPHAEL HAIM GOLB, was arrested on charges of identity
theft, criminal impersonation and aggravated harassment. The crimes in
the Criminal Court Complaint occurred during the period of July to
December of 2008.
The investigation leading to today’s arrest revealed that GOLB engaged
in a systematic scheme on the Internet, using dozens of Internet
aliases, in order to influence and affect debate on the Dead Sea
Scrolls, and in order to harass Dead Sea Scrolls scholars who disagree
with his viewpoint. GOLB used computers at New York University (NYU) in
an attempt to mask his true identity when conducting this Internet
scheme. He gained access to NYU computers by virtue of being a graduate
of the university, and having made donations to its library fund.
Who says archeology is boring? Not me!
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who led me to the above articles.
Reuters: Horses first ridden - and milked - 5,500 years ago
By Ben Hirschler
Horses were first domesticated on the plains of northern Kazakhstan some 5,500 years ago -- 1,000 years earlier than thought -- by people who rode them and drank their milk, researchers said on Thursday.
Taming horses changed human history, influencing everything from transport to agriculture to warfare. But experts have struggled to pinpoint when and where it first happened.
Now archaeologists think they have the answer, after finding the world's oldest horse farm among the Kazakh people of the ancient Botai culture.
Reuters: Archaeologists find statues of ancient Egypt king
by Alaa Shahine
CAIRO (Reuters) - A team of Egyptian and European archaeologists have discovered two statues of King Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt roughly 3,400 years ago, the Supreme Council for Antiquities said Thursday.
Reuters: Archaeologists rediscover lost Egyptian tomb
by Alaa Shahine
CAIRO (Reuters) - Belgian archaeologists have rediscovered an ancient Egyptian tomb that had been lost for decades under sand, Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said on Sunday.
In 1880 Swedish Egyptologist Karl Piehl uncovered the tomb of Amenhotep, the deputy seal-bearer of the Pharaoh King Tuthmosis III, in the city of Luxor, about 600 km (375 miles) to the south of the capital Cairo.
Physics
Wired: Metal Bits Self-Assemble Into Lifelike Snakes
By Alexis Madrigal
ARGONNE, Illinois — In the basement of a nondescript building here at Argonne National Laboratory, nickel particles in a beaker are building themselves into magnetic snakes that may one day give clues about how life originally organized itself.
These chains of metal particles look so much like real, living animals, it is hard not to think of them as alive. [...] But they are actually bits of metal that came together under the influence of a specially tuned magnetic field.
"It behaves like some live object," says physicist Alex Snezhko. "It moves. It crashes onto free-floating particles and absorbs them."
Science Daily: 'Spooky Action At A Distance' Of Quantum Mechanics Directly Observed
ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2009) — In quantum mechanics, a vanguard of physics where science often merges into philosophy, much of our understanding is based on conjecture and probabilities, but a group of researchers in Japan has moved one of the fundamental paradoxes in quantum mechanics into the lab for experimentation and observed some of the 'spooky action at a distance' of quantum mechanics directly.
Hardy's Paradox, the axiom that we cannot make inferences about past events that haven't been directly observed while also acknowledging that the very act of observation affects the reality we seek to unearth, poses a conundrum that quantum physicists have sought to overcome for decades. How do you observe quantum mechanics, atomic and sub-atomic systems that are so small-scale they cannot be described in classical terms, when the act of looking at them changes them permanently?
Chemistry
Science Daily: Peptides-on-demand: Radical New Green Chemistry Makes The Impossible Possible
ScienceDaily (Mar. 7, 2009) — McGill University chemistry professor Chao-Jun (C.J.) Li is known as one of the world leading pioneers in green chemistry, an entirely new approach to the science which eschews the use of toxic, petrochemical-based solvents in favour of basic substances like water and new ways of making molecules.
The environmental benefits of the green approach are obvious and significant, but following the road less travelled is also paying off in purely scientific terms. With these alternative methods, Li and his colleagues have discovered an entirely new way of synthesizing peptides using simple reagents, a process that would be impossible in classical chemistry. Their results will be published Feb. 27 in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Science Daily: Chemists Find Secret To Increasing Luminescence Efficiency Of Carbon Nanotubes
ScienceDaily (Mar. 6, 2009) — Chemists at the University of Connecticut have found a way to greatly increase the luminescence efficiency of single-walled carbon nanotubes, a discovery that could have significant applications in medical imaging and other areas.
Increasing the luminescence efficiency of carbon nanotubes may someday make it possible for doctors to inject patients with microscopic nanotubes to detect tumors, arterial blockages and other internal problems. Rather than relying on potentially harmful x-rays or the use of radioactive dyes, physicians could simply scan patients with an infrared light that would capture a very sharp resolution of the luminescence of the nanotubes in problem areas.
UConn's process of increasing the luminescence efficiency of single-walled carbon nanotubes will be featured in the journal Science on March 6, 2009. The research was performed in the Nanomaterials Optoelectronics Laboratory at the Institute of Materials Science at the University of Connecticut, in Storrs, CT. A patent for the process is pending.
Science Daily: Potential On-off Switch For Nanoelectronics
ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2009) — As electronic circuits shrink from finely etched lines in silicon wafers to nearly elusive proportions, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Columbia University are studying how electrons flow through a molecular junction-a nanometer scale circuit element that contacts gold atoms with a single molecule.
Their findings reveal the electrical resistance through this junction can be turned ‘on’ and ‘off’ simply by pushing and pulling the junction-a feature that could be used as a switch in nanoscale electronic devices.
Science Daily: Indoor Air Pollution? Samples From Couch Cushions And Drywall Reveal Chemicals Used In House
ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2009) — Most college students will admit to searching their couch cushions for extra coins to do laundry. But Jon McKinney's cushion hunt isn't about finding money. He wants to help epidemiologists identify what's triggering diseases like asthma in children, and he's got the backing of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Working with Dr. Glenn Morrison, associate professor of environmental engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, the junior is developing the science behind "building forensics," an emerging field that lies at the outer edge of environmental engineering.
"Our goal is to identify what's happened inside a home based on the 'unique fingerprints' of the chemicals we find," McKinney says.
Energy
Wired: 5 Huge Green-Tech Projects in the Developing World
By Alexis Madrigal
Any solution to global climate change will eventually have to involve the whole globe, not just the richest countries.
That's why deals like the one announced Tuesday between Pasadena's eSolar and the Indian conglomerate Acme Group are essential to any truly green global future. ESolar will sell Acme 1,000 megawatts worth of solar thermal technology, so that the latter can build a network of solar power plants in India's northern state of Haryana.
"India is an enormous electricity market with enormous demand for growth," said Rob Rogan, vice president of corporate communications for eSolar. "We see this as our chance to be part of a long-term renewable energy solution in India."
Reuters: Investors like clean energy, growth dips: survey
By Gerard Wynn
LONDON (Reuters) - Half of institutional investors plan to increase their funding of clean energy compared with 12 months ago, but that will not be enough to drive global growth in the sector this year, a survey published on Wednesday said.
Shares in clean energy companies under performed other stocks in 2008 because of their dependence on growth, technology advances and high oil prices. More expensive debt has curbed installation of clean energy projects, for example in wind and solar power.
But investors told a London conference, where the survey was published, they expected measures to fight climate change and secure energy supplies would help lift the low-carbon sector out of recession before others.
Reuters: Electric vehicles to dominate Ford lineup: CEO
By Nichola Groom
SANTA BARBARA, Calif (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co expects electric vehicles will represent a "major portion" of its lineup a decade from now as the automaker breaks away from a recent reliance on pickup trucks and SUVs, Chief Executive Alan Mulally said on Wednesday.
"In 10 years, 12 years, you are going to see a major portion of our portfolio move to electric vehicles," Mulally said at the Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, California.
Ford has outlined plans for a range of battery-powered and hybrid vehicles over the next several years but the comments by Mulally represented one of the clearest indications of the automaker's longer-term plans for electric car technology.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Reuters: Never waste a good crisis, Clinton says on climate
By Pete Harrison
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience Friday "never waste a good crisis," and highlighted the opportunity of rebuilding economies in a greener, less energy-intensive way.
Highlighting Europe's unease the day after Russia warned that gas flows via Ukraine might be halted, she also condemned the use of energy as a political lever.
Clinton told young Europeans at the European Parliament that global economic turmoil provided a fresh opening. "Never waste a good crisis ... Don't waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security," she said.
Reuters: U.S. needs to do more on climate: EU official
by Michael Szabo
The United States must make deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions than proposed by President Barack Obama if the world is to stand a chance of avoiding devastating climate change, an EU official said.
Jos Delbeke, the European Commission's deputy director-general of the environment, said a goal of bringing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020, set by Obama last month, will probably not be enough.
"I doubt whether that will bring us to the average required by developed countries," he told Reuters on Friday. "We in Europe would hope the U.S. will do more than stabilization of 1990 levels. I will not hide that."
Reuters: U.S. energy secretary pledges to fight global warming
By Tom Doggett and Ayesha Rascoe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. energy secretary Steven Chu on Thursday pledged to work with Congress to pass legislation that would impose a cap-and-trade system to curb greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming.
"Such legislation will provide the framework for transforming our energy system to make our economy less carbon-intensive, and less dependent on foreign oil," Chu said at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.
The Obama administration wants to cap carbon emissions from U.S. power plants, oil refineries and other industrial sites, then auction permits to exceed those limits. Plants that then lower their emissions could in turn sell their permits to other facilities that pollute more.
Reuters: Total-auction U.S. climate bill unlikely: lawmaker
By Ayesha Rascoe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Any climate bill that passes the Senate is unlikely to adhere to an Obama administration plan that the government auction all of the permits to emit greenhouse gases because it would be too harsh on big industry, a key democratic lawmaker said on Thursday.
Instead, Senator Jeff Bingaman said any system capping and trading emissions developed by Congress will likely include a mix of carbon allowances that are given to polluters -- like cement factories and coal-burning power plants -- and the sale of permits.
President Barack Obama promised during his presidential campaign that he would support a so-called cap and trade system that would put a price on carbon emissions that cause global warming. Obama's plan would require companies that emit more than the limit to purchase all emission permits, to help raise funds for clean energy technology.
Reuters: Obama, auto industry favor single fuel standard
By John Crawley
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration and automakers favor maintaining a single national standard for fuel efficiency, officials said on Wednesday as a bid by California to set its own requirement revs up.
Separately, Congress is close to setting a June 30 deadline for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to decide whether California can proceed with its politically charged initiative that would improve efficiency by sharply reducing tailpipe emissions.
The provision is included in must-pass spending legislation now before the U.S. Senate. The House of Representatives has already acted on the measure.
Reuters: U.S. Energy Dept to fund $84 million for geothermal energy
by Ayesha Rascoe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department on Wednesday said it plans to provide up to $84 million in funding for geothermal energy projects.
The department said it plans to award as much as $35 million for 20 or 30 research proposals addressing development of advanced geothermal technology.
In addition, up to $49 million will be provided for five to 10 domestic projects demonstrating enhanced geothermal systems that generate at least 5 megawatts of electricity a year.
Reuters: U.S. looking at interim options for nuclear waste
by Ayesha Rascoe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Thursday that his department is now considering short-term options for storage of nuclear waste since President Obama does not support moving forward with the planned nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.
The department will consider solidifying liquid radioactive waste that is currently held at 121 locations across the nation, as the government works to develop a permanent solution for safe nuclear waste disposal. Chu said the department could solidify waste at current sites without environmental risk.
"The interim storage of waste with solidification is something we can do today," Chu told lawmakers at a hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Reuters: House to weigh nearly $15 billion for water, sewers
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives' infrastructure committee approved a sweeping water and sewer bill on Thursday that would add more than $15 billion to the dollars already sent to states under the recently-enacted stimulus plan, but could face a bump when the full body votes on it.
The Water Quality Investment Act of 2009 combines five water bills that the House approved last year, but which stalled in the Senate, including one that would authorize $13.8 billion of federal grants for clean water state revolving funds.
Under the economic recovery bill signed into law last month about $2 billion will go to the revolving funds, which makes low-cost loans and grants to water authorities for building and repairs. President Barack Obama has also included $3.9 billion for the funds in the budget he proposed last week.
Reuters: Obama to sign stem cells order on Monday
by David Alexander and Maggie Fox
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, who opposes limits on federal funding of stem cell research, will sign an executive order about stem cells on Monday, an administration official said on Friday.
The official could not confirm the details of what Obama would sign, but advisers had previously said he favored lifting the eight-year limitation on funding of human embryonic stem cell research imposed by his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
...
The official also said Obama would make an announcement about a broader initiative to restore scientific integrity to government processes.
Reuters: Obama rolls back Bush rules on endangered species
By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday directed U.S. government agencies to consult with scientists before taking action that could harm endangered species, rolling back last-minute rules put forward by former President George W. Bush.
Obama, a Democrat who has spent much of his first six weeks in office undoing policies of his Republican predecessor, signed a memo urging agencies such as the Department of Transportation to consult with government scientists before pursuing projects that could hurt threatened animals.
The Bush administration had proposed to let those agencies decide on their own whether their activities, such as building highways and dams, posted such a threat.
I hope all of you are enjoying reading good science policy news out of Washington as much as I am enjoying posting it. :-)
Reuters: N.Y. Gov considers change in 10-state carbon pact
By Timothy Gardner
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York's governor is considering giving, rather than auctioning, a greater amount of permits that allow power plants to emit carbon dioxide in a regional climate pact and environmentalists charge it would cut millions of dollars in revenues to develop clean energy.
"Like with all new complex programs, we reserve the right to make changes to the program once we have actual experience with implementation," said Governor David Paterson's deputy press secretary Morgan Hook.
New York was the founding member of the 10-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which early this year became the first pact in the country to regulate emissions of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.
Reuters: China pledges $2 billion for Tibet environment
by Emma Graham-Harrison
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has pledged to spend 15 billion yuan ($2.19 billion) over two decades to protect the environment in Tibet, which is at serious risk from global warming, the official China Daily reported on Friday.
The cash would fund projects to preserve grasslands, woods and wetland, protect endangered animals, grow "forest shelter belts" to protect against gales, and expand clean energy, the paper quoted the region's governor, Qiangba Puncog, as saying.
It was not clear if the "Ecological Protection Plan of Tibet" covered a series of hydropower projects planned for the region's rivers, which are the source for many of Asia's great waterways.
Reuters: World Bank okays $1.3 billion for Brazil environment
by Lesley Wroughton in Washington and Raymond Colitt in Brasilia
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Bank on Thursday approved a $1.3 billion loan to help Brazil's environmental management and climate change efforts.
The loan "will support Brazil's ongoing efforts to improve its environmental management system and integrate sustainability concerns in the development agenda of key sectors such as forest management, water and renewable energy," the World Bank said.
Brazil has one-third of the world's tropical rain forests and largest reservoir of fresh water.
Reuters: South Africa energy sector reform central in climate talks
By Agnieszka Flak
MIDRAND, South Africa (Reuters) - Reform of its coal-dependent energy sector is central to South Africa's climate change debate, but consensus on the best way forward is still elusive, a climate conference concluded on Friday.
Representatives from the government, unions, industry and environmental groups met at the four-day event to help shape South Africa's climate change policy, to be wrapped into a fiscal, regulatory and legislative package by 2012.
"Strong consensus on making the transition to a climate resilient and low-carbon economy and society will underpin our future work," said Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk.
Science Blogs: While Exploring The Cosmos, A Look Back At Earth
by Sheril R. Kirshenbaum
In 2009, we need to balance budgets so that we're doing a better job to foster the next the generation of scientific leaders who are going to pursue the coming decades' BIG ideas. And we must additionally put a fair share of support into the projects that will preserve what we've got at home on Planet Earth. As I wrote recently, in a climate of limited budgets, I'd rather see funding for more immediate global concerns like improving agricultural yield, preparing for climate change, and mitigating the impacts of ocean acidification. And no, it's not comparing apples and oranges. It's dollars and a collective future. A glance at the number of digits in NOAA's budget and you'll understand what I'm getting at--something's wrong when such a vital agency is so overlooked that it's never even been authorized by Congress.
I want more than most anyone to explore the cosmos, it's just not our highest priority from my perspective. That said, with Kepler's Friday launch set to examine more than 100,000 sun-like stars in the Swan and Lyre constellations, you bet I'll be watching and listening with great interest.
H/T to wader for the article above.
Science Reporting
Reuters: Wall Street Journal of Atmospheric Sciences: Reply to Jenkins
by: Stuart Gaffin
Mr. Jenkins replies that the clarification of his perplexing column is reiteration of his original sentence "...We don’t really have the slightest idea how an increase in the atmosphere’s component of CO2 is impacting our climate, though the most plausible indication is that the impact is too small to untangle from natural variability..."
He still doesn’t say where his ‘most plausible indication’ comes from except for his reference to some unnamed : " ... many scientists who have pursued empirical results [that] show the human contribution [has] been ...maddeningly elusive or indeterminate."
By contrast, I have no hesitation to say I was referring to IPCC when quoting the 90% confidence attribution of warming to human activities.
Science is Cool
Wired: Researchers Want to Add Touch, Taste and Smell to Virtual Reality
By Alexis Madrigal
Virtual reality schemes have long tantalized geeks with unrealized visions of holodecks and long-distance cybersex.
Now, a group of British researchers want to round out the experience with virtual touch, taste and smell. To simulate the real world, they argue, all five of your senses must be stimulated. Toward that end, they've mocked up a "Virtual Cocoon" with a separate glove that — at least in theory — could tickle your tongue as it, uh, nukes your nose.
To differentiate themselves from virtual reality schemes that have come and gone, the researchers are re-branding their effort as "real virtuality."
Reuters: Filmmaker plans "Eyeborg" eye-socket camera
by Bate Felix
Canadian filmmaker plans to have a mini camera installed in his prosthetic eye to make documentaries and raise awareness about surveillance in society.
Rob Spence, 36, who lost an eye in an accident as a teen-ager, said his so-called Project Eyeborg is to have the camera, a battery and a wireless transmitter mounted on a tiny circuit board. www.eyeborgblog.com/
"Originally the whole idea was to do a documentary about surveillance. I thought I would become a sort of super hero ... fighting for justice against surveillance," Spence said.