Radar could save bats from wind turbines

These images are of the noseleaf of a typical horseshoe bat species (left) vs. that of Bourret’s horseshoe bat, the Rhinolophus paradoxolophus (right). Computer modeling indicates the extreme nose is used to create a highly focused sonar beam.

Bats use sonar to navigate and hunt. Many have been killed by wind turbines, however, which their sonar doesn’t seem to recognize as a danger. Surprisingly, radar signals could help keep bats away from wind turbines, scientists have now discovered.

Although wind power promises to be a clean source of energy, some researchers have raised concerns that wind turbines inadvertently kill bats and other flying creatures. For instance, in 2004, over the course of six weeks, roughly 1,764 and 2,900 bats were killed at two wind farms in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, respectively. The bats might not be killed by the wind turbine blades directly, but instead by the sudden drop in air pressure the swinging rotors induce, which in turn cause their lungs to over-expand and burst surrounding blood vessels.

“Given the growing number of wind turbines worldwide, this is going to be an increasing problem, no question about that,” said researcher Paul Racey, a bat biologist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

Scientists have tried keeping birds from colliding into wind turbines by making their rotors easier to see. And to discourage bats away from wind farms, researchers have tried white noise generators as deterrents. However, these “acoustic scarecrows” have not worked well, Racey said, probably because these sound systems are not strong enough to influence bats within the entire space that rotors sweep through.

A student at the University of Aberdeen first noticed that bats shied away from radar installations while driving past them. He was holding a bat detector out the window to scope out bat activity on the drive back home from out in the field. (Bat detectors are gadgets that scan for ultrasonic bat calls.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32034204/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Tiny Drizzle Wreaks Havoc In Desert City

SANTIAGO, Chile — In one of the driest regions on earth, even a drizzle can cause an emergency.

Less than 100th of an inch (about 0.2 millimeters) of rain fell on the Chilean port city of Iquique Monday afternoon, accompanied by moderate winds of about 10 mph (17 kph), according to the country’s weather service. That was enough to knock out power to several neighborhoods and to damage the roofs of 4,000 houses, said Gov. Miguel Silva.

Schools were closed Tuesday so that officials can repair the damage.

The city of 170,000 people in northern Chile is in the heart of the barren Atacama Desert, squeezed between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. It averages about 0.02 inch (0.6 millimeter) of rain a year, according to University of Chile meteorologists.

Houses in the region are not built to resist rain and their roofs often have no slope for runoff.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/21/tiny-drizzle-wreaks-havoc_n_242057.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Desert

NOAA Reports Record Ocean Surface Temperatures for June

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported findings of preliminary analysis from the agency’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina that shows global ocean surface temperatures for June broke the previous record set in 2005.

The combined average global/land and ocean surface temperature for June was the second warmest on record, 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average of 59.9 degrees F.

Ocean surface temperatures for June ‘09 were the warmest on record, 1.06 degrees F (0.59 degrees C) above the 20th century average of 61.5 degrees F.

The global land surface temperature for June was 1.26 degrees F above the 20th century average, and the sixth warmest June on record.

http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/40239

http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/blog/2009/07/20/noaa-reports-record-ocean-surface-temperatures-for-june/

Mapping America’s giant trees

There an estimated 30,000 trees in the area

Scientists in California have set up a unique experiment to track the life histories of some of the world’s oldest and tallest trees.

 

The project is designed to follow up research, in the Yosemite National Park, which suggests that giant trees are perishing as a result of climate change.

An analysis of data collected over 60 years has led scientists from the University of Washington and the Yosemite Field Station of the US Geological Survey, to conclude that the density of large diameter trees fell by 24% between the 1930s and 1990s.

“We want to identify the reasons for tree mortality and if those are changing,” says Dr James Lutz, a research associate at the university’s College of Forest Resources.

Little research has been done on a long-term basis to monitor the lives of large trees. Unlike studies with smaller plants and almost all animals, no individual scientist is able to track a forest giant for its entire lifespan – from germination to death. They live for hundreds of years and play a vital role in the ecosystem long after they have died.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8159025.stm

China dust cloud circled globe in 13 days

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Dust clouds generated by a huge dust storm in China’s Taklimakan desert in 2007 made more than one full circle around the globe in just 13 days, a Japanese study using a NASA satellite has found.

When the cloud reached the Pacific Ocean the second time, it descended and deposited some of its dust into the sea, showing how a natural phenomenon can impact the environment far away.

“Asian dust is usually deposited near the Yellow Sea, around the Japan area, while Sahara dust ends up around the Atlantic Ocean and coast of Africa,” said Itsushi Uno of Kyushu University’s Research Institute for Applied Mechanics.

“But this study shows that China dust can be deposited into the (Pacific Ocean),” he told Reuters by telephone. “Dust clouds contain 5 percent iron, that is important for the ocean.”

In a paper published in Nature Geoscience, scientists described how they used a NASA satellite and mathematical modeling to track and measure the movement of the dust cloud, which formed after the dust storm on May 8-9 in 2007.

The desert is in the Chinese northwestern region of Xinjiang.

The researchers, led by Uno, found that the dust clouds were lifted 8-10 km (5-6 miles) above the earth’s surface, and transported more than one full circle around the earth.

“The most important achievement is that we tracked this through one full circuit round the globe, nobody has done this before. After half a circuit, usually the dust concentration gets very low and you can’t track it,” Uno told Reuters.

“This means that dust concentration, dust lifetime is very long, more than two weeks.”

The dust cloud measured about 3 km (1.9 miles) vertically and up to 2,000 km horizontally and it stayed that way even after one full trip around the globe.

“The reason why the cloud structure was very well maintained was because the dust was uplifted … where the atmosphere is very stable,” Uno said.

Researchers believe dust particles trigger the formation of high-altitude cirrus clouds — although experts have no idea whether such clouds warm or cool the earth.

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE56J3YH20090720?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

US Companies Deserve Level Playing Field With Chinese Firms: Commerce Secretary

photo: Jurvetson via flickr

When last week Commerce Secretary Gary Locke made a statement to the effect that US consumers should pay for the carbon content of goods produced overseas, it seemed a good thing — a recognition that the full environmental impact of goods ought to be incorporated into the price. At the time I had a suspicion that he was really speaking to US companies about leveling the playing field between them and their counterparts in the developing world, rather than greater eco-principles. Reuters reports that Locke has since clarified his position:

A spokesperson for Locke said that the Secretary was not supporting any specific carbon tariff on goods imported to the US (which would put him at odds with President Obama) or any other policy option regarding lowering the carbon footprint of imported products — the main thing is that US companies not get penalized by domestic action to reign in carbon emissions.

The spokesperson added,

There’s an obvious concern that US companies compete on a level playing field. As the voice in the cabinet for American business, that’s the concern the secretary was trying to convey.

 

China Should Step Up & Reduce Emissions
Locke also made clear that he thought that China should “step up” and “pay for the cost of complying with climate change,” improving their energy efficiency and reducing their carbon emissions.

A Carbon Tariff Would Do Just What the Secretary Wants
The interesting thing is that a method for directly incorporating the carbon content of goods into their price, regardless of where they were produced, would go a long way towards leveling the playing field for US companies — like Locke originally suggested. Goods shipped from China and produced through more energy-intensive means would rise in price and make locally made products that much more attractive.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/us-companies-deserve-level-playing-field-with-chinese-commerce-secretary-says.php

The Federal government finally wants to crack down on feeding antibiotics to farm animals

After years of warnings that carelessly feeding antibiotics to farm animals would create drug-resistant superbugs, the federal government finally wants to crack down. The farm industry, however, has other plans.

Under the proposed Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, or PAMTA, newly-developed antibiotics couldn’t be given to farm animals unless they were sick. The casual use of already-established drugs would be restricted.

For people, that’s simple common sense. Doctors don’t hand out antibiotics as preventive measures, to be popped like vitamin C, because that would accelerate the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Having a few tough bugs survive in a patient who needed the drug is an inevitable downside, but cultivating those bugs in millions of already-healthy people is foolish.

But that’s not how it works on industrial U.S. farms, where antibiotics are routinely added to animal feed in order to encourage growth and prevent infections exacerbated by overcrowding and stress. About 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to healthy farm animals.

That’s turned U.S. farms into disease incubators for things like MRSA ST398, a new strain of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Other types of drug-resistant staph infections already kill 18,000 Americans every year. The new strain, which appears to have evolved on Dutch farms and is spreading through U.S. pigs and into people, will only add to the toll.

Last year, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production concluded that “the present system of producing food animals in the United States is not sustainable and presents an unacceptable level of risk to public health.” Five of their 24 recommendations — including the top two — involved antibiotic use in farm animals. The Pew Commission was composed of national experts, not marginal activists. Other advocates of cutting back on farm antibiotics include the World Health Association, American Medical Association, American Public Health Association and the American Association of Pediatrics.

The Obama administration is taking their advice. On July 13, a Food and Drug Administration official testified in support of PAMTA at a Congressional committee. According to Truth About Trade and Technology, a farm industry-produced news site, that support was vetted by the White House.

In the same article, the consensus that exists among public health experts is described as “years of debate on the risk” of emerging drug resistance, and the agriculture industry was left “nearly speechless with surprise.” The latter might be true, given the reluctance of past administrations to confront the issue. But surprised or not, as the New York Times reported of PAMTA last Monday, “the farm lobby’s opposition makes its passage unlikely.”

If they win, the farm lobby will have proved itself more powerful than the public interest.

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

California’s Channel Islands Hold Evidence Of Clovis-age Comets

Here are hexagonal nanodiamonds discovered on Santa Rosa Island. (Credit: James C. Weaver)

A 17-member team has found what may be the smoking gun of a much-debated proposal that a cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago ripped through North America and drove multiple species into extinction.

In a paper appearing online ahead of regular publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Oregon archaeologist Douglas J. Kennett and colleagues from nine institutions and three private research companies report the presence of shock-synthesized hexagonal diamonds in 12,900-year-old sediments on the Northern Channel Islands off the southern California coast.

These tiny diamonds and diamond clusters were buried deeply below four meters of sediment. They date to the end of Clovis — a Paleoindian culture long thought to be North America’s first human inhabitants. The nano-sized diamonds were pulled from Arlington Canyon on the island of Santa Rosa that had once been joined with three other Northern Channel Islands in a landmass known as Santarosae.

The diamonds were found in association with soot, which forms in extremely hot fires, and they suggest associated regional wildfires, based on nearby environmental records.

Such soot and diamonds are rare in the geological record. They were found in sediment dating to massive asteroid impacts 65 million years ago in a layer widely known as the K-T Boundary. The thin layer of iridium-and-quartz-rich sediment dates to the transition of the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, which mark the end of the Mesozoic Era and the beginning of the Cenozoic Era.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090720190719.htm

Growing Sea Lamprey Embryos Dramatically Alter Genomes, Discard Millions Of Units Of DNA

Close-up of the adult sea lamprey’s jawless, suction-cup like mouth and its circles of rasping teeth and toothed tongue. (Credit: Image courtesy Great Lakes Fishery Commission.)

Researchers have discovered that the sea lamprey, which emerged from jawless fish first appearing 500 million years ago, dramatically remodels its genome. Shortly after a fertilized lamprey egg divides into several cells, the growing embryo discards millions of units of its DNA.

The findings were published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The lead author is Jeramiah Smith, a postdoctoral fellow in genome sciences at the University of Washington (UW) working in the Benaroya Research Institute laboratory of Chris Amemiya, who is also a UW affiliate professor of iology.

Theirs is believed to be the first recorded observation of a vertebrate — an animal with a spinal column — extensively reorganizing its genome as a normal part of development. A few invertebrate species, like some roundworms, have been shown to undergo extensive genome remodeling. However, stability was thought to be vital in vertebrates’ genomes to assure their highly precise, normal functioning. Only slight modifications to allow for immune response were believed to occur in the vertebrate genome, not broad-scale rearrangements.

Smith, Amemiya and their research team inadvertently discovered the dynamic transformations in the sea lamprey genome while studying the genetic origins of its immune system. The researchers were trying to deduce how the sea lamprey employs a copy-and-paste mechanism to generate diverse receptors for detecting a variety of pathogens.

The researchers were surprised to notice a difference between the genome structure in the germline — the cells that become eggs and the sperm that fertilize them — and the genome structure in the resulting embryonic cells. The DNA in the early embryonic cells had myriad breaks that resembled those in dying cells …but the cells weren’t dying. The embryonic cells had considerably fewer repeat DNA sequences than did the sperm cells and their precursors.

“The remodeling begins at the point when the embryo turns on its own genes and no longer relies on its mom’s store of mRNA,” said Smith.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090720163734.htm

‘Invisibility Cloak’ Could Protect Against Earthquakes

Heavily damaged school in Sichuan, China, where an earthquake killed tens of thousands of people on May 12, 2008. New research suggests that it may be possible to develop an ‘invisibility cloak’ to protect buildings from earthquakes. (Credit: iStockphoto/Rui Pestana)

Research at the University of Liverpool has shown it is possible to develop an ‘invisibility cloak’ to protect buildings from earthquakes.

The seismic waves produced by earthquakes include body waves which travel through the earth and surface waves which travel across it. The new technology controls the path of surface waves which are the most damaging and responsible for much of the destruction which follows earthquakes.

The technology involves the use of concentric rings of plastic which could be fitted to the Earth’s surface to divert surface waves. By controlling the stiffness and elasticity of the rings, waves travelling through the ‘cloak’ pass smoothly into the material and are compressed into small fluctuations in pressure and density. The path of the surface waves can be made into an arc that directs the waves outside the protective cloak. The technique could be applied to buildings by installing the rings into foundations.

Sebastien Guenneau, from the University’s Department of Mathematics, who developed the technology with Stefan Enoch and Mohamed Farhat from the Fresnel Institute (CNRS) in Marseilles, France, explained: “We are able to ‘tune’ the cloak to the differing frequencies of incoming waves which means we can divert waves of a variety of frequencies. For each small frequency range, there is a pair of rings which does most of the work and these move about a lot – bending up and down – when they are hit by a wave at their frequency.

“The waves are then directed outside the cloak where they return to their previous size. The cloak does not reflect waves – they continue to travel behind it with the same intensity. At this stage, therefore, we can only transfer the risk from one area to another, rather than eliminate it completely.”

He added: “This work has enormous potential in offering protection for densely populated areas of the world at risk from earthquakes. The challenge now is to turn our theories into real applications that can save lives – small scale experiments are underway.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090720105125.htm