Journey to the Center of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Pacific Garbage Patch is drawing in quite the rush of explorers and scientists, from David de Rothschild to Project Kaisei and the research team’s efforts to explore clean-up options. It’s also drawing in Algalita Marine Research Foundation’s research vessel the Alguita. The crew is on a two-month mission to get to the center of the vortex, and they’re already having some amazing, and sometimes worrisome, experiences. Thanks to updates from Drew Wheeler who is on board, we get to follow along.

Drew Wheeler, underwater videographer traveling aboard the vessel, is keeping everyone apprised of the going-ons of the voyage via his blog SCUBA Drew’s Trash Voyage. His most recent post that appeared on Scientific American details some of the highlights so far.

It’s amazing to read some of the random plastic items they’re finding. But more interestingly, they’re finding shallow water fish are starting to take to deeper waters within the flotsam.

The trip isn’t all fun and games, though. For instance, ghost nets are posing a serious problem as they can get caught up in the ship’s props. They’ve managed to avoid some, but not all. The crew had to take a nearly 2-hour time out to cut itself free from one such net.

Stop in at Wheeler’s blog to check up on the progress of the research exploration, which hopes to not only document the vortex and what’s in it, but also learn more about its impact on marine life.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/alguitas-journey-to-the-center-of-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch.php

Desert Rhubarb – The First Plant Shown to Organise its Own Irrigation?

Scientists from the University of Haifa have shown that Desert Rhubarb, has evolved to ensure that it makes more of the limited rainfall in the Negev Desert than other competitor plants.

Desert Rhubarb (Rheum palaestinum) grows in Israel and Syria, but was studied in the Negev desert by the University of Haifa. Desert Rhubarb is a perennial hemicryptophyte, that grows during the rainy winter in mountainous desert areas where the average annual rainfall is only 75 mm (just under 3 inches).

The basis of Desert Rhubarb’s advantage are the one to four large round leaves that are tightly attached to the ground and cover a circular areas of up to 1 m² (around 11 ft²). This is very different to many desert plants which have small leaves to minimise moisture loss. The leaves have a “unique 3D morphology” that when photographed in close up, reminds avid hobby photographer Lev-Yadun, of the stark, rugged topography in the mountainous regions in which the Desert Rhubarb grows.

The scientists explain that these deep and wide depressions in the leaves create a “channeling” mountain-like system by which the rain water is channeled toward the ground surrounding the plant’s deep root.

The scientists showed, that even in the slightest rains, water flows through this channel system to the leaf’s base where it irrigates the vertical root. A typical plant harvests more than 4 litres (over a gallon) of water per year which is 16 times greater than normal small leafed plants use. This means its water regime is equivalent to about 427 mm a year (around 17 inches a year), which is similar to the water supply in a Mediterranean climate.

Additional research into the mechanics of the plant finds that the plant not only funnels the water to its roots, but the water is able to penetrate 10 cm into the soil, 10 times deeper than if the rain landed by itself on the desert sand. A tough waxy surface on the leaves, lends additional support in funneling the water to the roots where it is needed.

This is the first example of self-irrigation by large leaves in a desert plant, creating a leaf-made mini oasis.

http://ecoworldly.com/2009/07/09/desert-rhubarb-the-first-plant-shown-to-organise-its-own-irrigation/

Plantagon Develops Vertical Farm That Can Go Anywhere

Plantagon is more than just another vertical farm. We learn from PSFK that it “will dramatically change the way we produce ecological and functional food. It allows us to produce ecological with clean air and water inside urban environments, even major cities, cutting costs and environmental damage by eliminating transportation and deliver directly to consumers. This is due to the efficiency and productivity of the Plantagon® greenhouse which makes it economically possible to finance each greenhouse from its own sales.”

Do domes make good greenhouses?

There are no specifications on the site, but it appears to be a spiral ramp inside a geodesic dome. The amount of sunlight that penetrates glass varies according to the angle of incidence, so much is reflected away from steep angles. In a dome, a portion of the glass will always be pretty close to perpendicular to the sun, but it will fall off pretty quickly.

In winter when the sun angles are low, it will penetrate deep into the building, but will it reach the ramps on the north side? One would have to see the numbers.

The animation shows a different picture than the rendering, a wide, flat series of ramps without too much clearance, connected to some conventional greenhouse forms. It appears to be robotically controlled.

Is it “economically possible to finance each greenhouse from its own sales.”?

They show it sitting on some pretty prime real estate, and all those robots cost a lot of money. It has been pointed out on a number of our other vertical farm posts that the economics of vertical farms are questionable.

But they make a case for it below:

Hans Hassle, founder and CEO of Plantagon, is quoted on Engineering firm SWECO’s website:

While the global population continues to expand at a rapid rate, 80% of all land suitable for crop production is already being used for other purposes. With traditional farming practices, the Earth’s arable land will not be sufficient to produce enough food for this growing population. In response to this challenge, Plantagon has collaborated with the consulting engineering company Sweco to develop a vertical greenhouse for the urban environment

“We need to find alternative ways to farm locally and space-efficiently. By the year 2050, 80% of people on Earth will live in urban centres,”

We have therefore developed a greenhouse that enables us to farm ecologically in the middle of an urban environment. Sweco has helped us to study the technical systems that will make the greenhouse work. Within three years we plan to have the first facility up and running in a major city.”

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/urban-greenhouse-plantagon.php

Binary Star Discovery Allows Scientists To Detect Invisible “Gravity Waves”

Stars in the early universe probably formed in pairs, like the ones in this simulation created by a group of American astrophysicists. Their finding also has staggering implications: We may detect gravity waves, which has never been possible before.

According to a release about the study:

Most simulations of the early universe, in which clouds of primordial gas collapsed to form the first luminous objects, suggest that early stars formed separately from each other. Matthew Turk and colleagues now show that it is possible for single primordial clouds to break up into two dense cores. The authors’ three-dimensional calculations followed the evolution of primordial gas and dark matter, starting from conditions that are likely to have existed in the early universe. The results suggest that these cores may evolve to form binary star systems. These findings may also have implications for detecting both gravity waves — disturbances predicted by general relativity, which haven’t yet been detected directly — and the ultra-energetic explosions known as gamma ray bursts, since binary systems are thought to be at the origins of both of these phenomena.

http://io9.com/5311084/binary-star-discovery-allows-scientists-to-detect-invisible-gravity-waves

http://www.scienceexpress.org/

Experimental Diet a Fountain of Youth for Monkeys

The results of a 20-year-long study on caloric restriction in rhesus monkeys provides the strongest evidence yet that a low-calorie diet produces life-extending metabolic changes in primates — even, perhaps, in people.

Fed a diet that provided adequate nutrition on 30 percent fewer calories than is considered normal, the monkeys have largely escaped the ravages of heart disease, cancer and other age-related diseases.

“We’ve published before on some of the positive effects, but this is the big picture that says it works,” said Ricki Colman, a gerontologist at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center. “This gives us what we need to look at what caloric restriction is doing to the aging process.”

Caloric restriction came to scientific attention in the mid-1930s, when Cornell researchers showed that it extended the lives of mice by about 40 percent. The feat was subsequently duplicated in many other animals, from roundworms to dogs, but until now had not been conclusively demonstrated in primates.

Despite the uncertainty, it’s estimated that several thousand people already practice caloric restriction, with several hundred doing so within carefully monitored studies. But such dietary limitation may prove undesirable or impossible for most people. Instead, scientists want to find drugs that mimic the effects of caloric restriction, and over the last decade have described some of its underlying biology.

Caloric restriction appears to trigger energy-saving metabolic changes, activating metabolic pathways involved in regulating cell growth and repair. These pathways are targeted by several drugs currently under development, including resveratrol, which has protected animals from age-related diseases and is now being tested as a diabetes treatment. Another intriguing drug is rapamycin, an immune system suppressor that — though unproven and likely unsafe for human use as a longevity enhancer — has dramatically extended the lives of elderly mice.

Research on these experimental drugs is validated by today’s findings, which suggest that effects observed in animals may be similar in people.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/monkeylongevity/

Mass attacks on government, financial sites continue

An ongoing distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is affecting a number of U.S. and South Korean government websites, along with financial institutions, such as the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ sites, as well as various military sites and the Washington Post.

The attack may have started during the July 4 weekend, but seemed to have peaked yesterday, Rick Howard, intelligence director for VeriSign iDefense, told SCMagazineUS.com on Wednesday.

One of the hardest hit government sites was at the Federal Trade Commission, but other U.S. government sites have been able to mitigate the effect.

“Most of the U.S. government sites have handled it without too much of a problem,” Howard said. “But there have been problems on the South Korean side.”

The code itself is not new or particularly sophisticated. It seems to be a variant of the MyDoom worm that first hit in 2004.

http://www.scmagazineus.com/Mass-attacks-on-government-financial-sites-continue/article/139752/

Spontaneous Assembly: A New Look At How Proteins Assemble And Organize Themselves Into Complex Patterns

PALM is an an ultrahigh-precision visible light microscopy technique that enables scientists to photo-actively fluoresce and image individual proteins. This PALM composite of an E.coli bacterial cell shows the organization of proteins in the chemotaxis signaling network. (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Self-assembling and self-organizing systems are the Holy Grails of nanotechnology, but nature has been producing such systems for millions of years. A team of scientists has taken a unique look at how thousands of bacterial membrane proteins are able to assemble into clusters that direct cell movement to select chemicals in their environment. Their results provide valuable insight into how complex periodic patterns in biological systems can be generated and repaired.

Researchers with Berkeley Lab, the University of California (UC) Berkeley, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Princeton University, used an ultrahigh-precision visible light microscopy technique called PALM – for Photo-Activated Localization Microscopy – to show that the chemotaxis network of signaling proteins in E.coli bacteria is able to spontaneously form from clusters of proteins without being actively distributed or attached to specific locations in cells. This simple organizational mechanism – dubbed “stochastic self-assembly” – is related to the self-organizing patterns first described in 1952 by the British computer scientist Alan Turing.

“It is not widely appreciated that complex periodic patterns can spontaneously emerge from simple mechanisms, but that is probably what is happening here,” said Jan Liphardt, the biophysicist who led this research.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090708132820.htm

Language Skills In Your Twenties May Predict Risk Of Dementia Decades Later

People who have superior language skills early in life may be less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease decades later, despite having the hallmark signs of the disease, according to research published in the July 9, 2009, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

“A puzzling feature of Alzheimer’s disease is how it affects people differently,” said study author Juan C. Troncoso, MD, with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “One person who has severe plaques and tangles, the telling signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brains, may show no symptoms affecting their memory. Another person with those same types of plaques and tangles in the same areas of the brain might end up with a full-blown case of Alzheimer’s disease. We looked at how language ability might affect the onset of symptoms.”

Researchers examined the brains of 38 Catholic nuns after death. The participants were part of the Nun Study, an ongoing clinical study of Catholic sisters of the School Sisters of Notre Dame congregation living in the United States. Scientists determined two groups: women with memory problems and Alzheimer’s disease hallmarks in the brain and women with normal memory with or without signs of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain.

The researchers analyzed essays that 14 participants wrote as they entered the convent in their late teens or early 20’s. They studied the average number of ideas expressed for every 10 words. The analysis also measured how complex the grammar was in each essay.

The study found that language scores were 20 percent higher in the women without memory problems compared to those with memory problems. The grammar score, however, did not show any difference between the two groups.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090708181153.htm

“The DNA Code” – New Research Shows Life Hardwired in the Universe

A recent mathematical analysis says that life as we know it is written into the laws of reality.  DNA is built from a set of twenty amino acids – the first ten of those can create simple prebiotic life, and now it seems that those ten are thermodynamically destined to occur wherever they can.

For those unfamiliar with thermodynamics, it’s the Big Brother of all energy equations and science itself.  You can apply quantum mechanics at certain scales, and Newtonian mechanics work at the right speeds, but if Thermodynamics says something then everyone listens.  An energy analysis by Professors Pudritz and Higgs of McMaster University shows that the first ten amino acids are likely to form at relatively low temperatures and pressures, and the calculated odds of formation match the concentrations of these life-chemicals found in meteorite samples.

 

 

They also match those in simulations of early Earth, and most critically, those simulations were performed by other people.  The implications are staggering: good news for anyone worried about how we’re alone, and bad news for anyone who demands some kind of “Designer” to put life together – it seems that physics can assemble the organic jigsaw all by itself, thank you very much, and has probably done so throughout space since the beginning of everything.

The study indicates that you don’t need a miracle to arrive at the chemical cocktail for early life, just a decently large asteroid with the right components.  That’s all.  The entire universe could be stuffed with life, from the earliest prebiotic protein-a-likes to fully DNAed descendants.  The path from one to the other is long, but we’ve had thirteen and a half billion years so far and it’s happened at least once.

The other ten amino acids aren’t as easy to form, but they’ll still turn up – and the process of “stepwise evolution” means that once the simpler systems work, they can grab the rarer “epic drops” of more sophisticated chemicals as they occur – kind of a World of Lifecraft except you literally get a life when you play.  And once even the most sophisticated structure is part of a replicating organism, there’s plenty to go round.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/the-dna-code-new-research-show-life-hardwired-in-universe.html

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/thermodynamino/

Countdown for Superconducting-Plasma Rockets

Superconducting plasma rockets might sound like something Buck Rogers blasts the Infini-Cruiser into the Nth dimension with, but this isn’t throwaway technobabble.  It’s the result of years of work, and the prototype space engine is currently powering through testing.

The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) is a form of ion drive.  All ion drives are designed for use in space (so we’ll still need to set fire to gigantic tanks of propellant to get there), but once there they allow us to use fuel far more efficiently.  Instead of relying on chemical reactions to push propellant out of a thruster, imparting an equal and opposite force on the the craft, ion drives magnetically accelerate the particles out the exhaust – so you can get far more thrust from the same mass of fuel, and since you’re in (near-Earth) space solar power means you don’t need to carry big batteries.

The VASIMR is an upgrade to the ion engine idea, with the latest model using superconducting magnets to massively increase the strength of the magnetic field driving the output without increasing the weight.  First stage testing at the Ad Astra Rocket Company has already been completed, with second-staging testing – ramping up the power output by a factor of ten – scheduled for next week. 

Getting improved engines off the drawing and into action is essential for mankind’s space plans.  Reducing the launch mass of any craft yields massive savings in launch costs, making it more likely that more will happen.  You know, until we evolve past the stupidity where exploring the universe itself has to be approved by a balance sheet.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/countdown-for-superconducting-plasma-rockets-buck-rogers-lives.html

http://spacefellowship.com/2009/07/06/vx-200-demonstrates-superconducting-first-stage-at-full-power/