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.
Meteor Blade’s Green Diary Rescue celebrates Daily Kos eco diarists 6 days a week!
H/T to Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse for this phrasing.
This week's featured story comes from Reuters.
Obama: U.S. to lead on climate so China, India follow
President Barack Obama said on Thursday the United States would "lead by example" in combating climate change so that developing nations such as India and China would follow suit.
Speaking at the G20 meeting of major economies, he used his presidential debut on the world stage to contrast his policies with those of former President George W. Bush, who had twinned U.S. action to curb climate greenhouse gases with pressure on emerging economic powerhouses.
More science, space, and environment news after the jump.
Slideshows/Videos
Wired: 10 Gory Surgical Triumphs on YouTube
By Alexis Madrigal
Who needs medical school anymore? You can now watch the world's surgeons do their thing from the comfort of your parents' basement.
From open-heart surgery to amputations, sex-change operations to autopsies, the operating rooms of the world have gone online. One website, OR-Live, regularly broadcasts live from the O.R. For example, tune in next week to watch a hysterectomy. These broadcasts, and dozens of other videos posted to YouTube, draw hundreds of thousands of viewers. We've got four words for you: advertising-supported health care.
And to jump-start the movement, we've curated 10 of the best surgical videos we could find. Be forewarned, though, be very forewarned: Some of these are grisly, and all of them are graphic. The autopsy and sex-change operation, in particular, are very not-safe-for-work and not-safe-for-the-squeamish.
Reuters: New robots think like scientists
Apr 2 - Researchers say they have created machines that could reason like scientists and discover scientific knowledge on their own, marking a major advance in artificial intelligence.
Such robo-scientists could work on unraveling complex biological systems, designing new drugs, modeling the world's climate or understanding the cosmos.
Science welcomes its new robot overlords.
Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/...
Apr 3 - Following the launch of the Italian print edition of Wired in February, a new UK version of the magazine launches amid a dire economic situation for many print publications.
Reuters: Japan's dream machine
Apr 3 - Japanese scientists try to record people's dreams.
Reuters: MIT prepares for solar race.
Apr. 2 - Students at MIT unveil their latest solar car design, a technology packed racer that can sustain speeds of 80MPH.
Reuters: Photos fight terror, infections
A U.S. researcher says a 17th century technology may be a valuable weapon against the spreading of airborne infections and terrorism.
It may look like art but for Dr. Gary Settles of Penn State University's gas dynamics laboratory, schlieren photography offers a view of the invisible.
Reuters: Making faces to control electronics
Facial expressions from winking to sticking out one's tongue, using a new invention, can control electronic devices such as an iPod.
The Japanese inventor of the "Mimi Switch" or "Ear Switch", can make faces to change music on his iPod, with help from the headphone-like device containing tiny optical sensors that pick up subtle muscles movements in the ear canal, and translates the readings to electronic signals that play, stop or skip the music.
Reuters: Water woes spark marriage drought
Apr. 3 - Water shortage problems lead to marital woes in an Indian village
Reuters: MMC to up electric car output
Apr 3 - Mitsubishi Motors' shares jumped Friday on a report the Japanese automaker would double its annual electric car output plan.
Reuters: Proof of massive sea monster
Apr 3 - Just 800 miles (1287 km) from the North Pole, paleontologists believe they have found the fossilized remains of a massive sea monster that lived 150 million years ago.
Reuters: The green business of pig poop
Apr 3 - Pig farmers in Sweden are trialing a new network to sell the combustible gasses emitted by their fertilizer, raising cash and helping the environment.
Eighteen Swedish farmers and the 130,000 tonnes of excrement produced at their farms each year are part of a pilot bio-gas project in which methane gas is extracted from the pig by-product before it is put out in the fields as fertilizer.
Astronomy/Space
Wired: Astronomers Find Hidden Exoplanet in Hubble's Dustbin
Astronomers Find Hidden Exoplanet in Hubble's Dustbin
An exoplanet hidden in the Hubble Space Telescope's archival images has been revealed by data miners using a new technique for spotting the satellites of distant stars.
In search of more information about a known exoplanet orbiting the star HR8799 about 130 light-years from Earth, astronomers turned to the catalog of images Hubble has been amassing for more than 15 years. Using an algorithm that can block the bright light of observed stars allowing the much fainter exoplanets circling them to be seen, the team spotted the planet in an image from 1998.
The same technique could be used on 200 similar datasets from Hubble, as well an unknown number of archival images from ground-based telescopes.
Reuters: Hubble-bound shuttle arrives at Florida launch pad
By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The space shuttle that will carry NASA's last crew to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope was moved to its Florida launch pad on Tuesday in preparation for liftoff on May 12.
Shuttle Atlantis and its crew of seven astronauts were due to launch six months ago, but the failure of a computer aboard Hubble prompted NASA to delay the flight.
Replacing the computer, which prepares data from Hubble's science instruments to be relayed back to Earth, was added to the long list of chores the astronauts will tackle during five days of spacewalks.
Reuters: U.S. unveils Orion spacecraft to take crew to Mars
By Jasmin Melvin
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA gave visitors to the National Mall in Washington a peek at a full-size mock-up of the spacecraft designed to carry U.S. astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars one day.
The U.S. Navy-built Orion crew exploration vehicle will replace the space shuttle NASA plans to retire in 2010, and become the cornerstone of the agency's Constellation Program to explore the moon, Mars and beyond.
"We're just very proud to build this, do some testing and demonstrate to America that we're moving beyond the space shuttle onto another generation of spacecraft," said Don Pearson, project manager for the Post-Landing Orion Recovery Test or PORT.
Reuters: Six embark on 105-day simulated trip to Mars
By Dmitry Solovyov
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Six European men embarked on a 105-day simulated trip to Mars at a Russian space institute on Tuesday to test how humans would cope with the long isolation.
The volunteer crew of four Russians, one German and a Frenchman smiled and waved to cameras before sealing themselves in the maze of cramped compartments in an imitation spaceship.
A padlock was clamped on the giant metal hatch of the warren, the focus of a project which space officials said was a small step toward eventually sending people to Mars.
Reuters: U.S. space industry not yet seeing economic slowdown
By Andrea Shalal-Esa
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (Reuters) - The U.S. economy is in recession, but the satellite industry's prospects are still flying high -- at least for now, military officials and industry executives said on Tuesday.
A report released by the Space Foundation at its annual symposium here showed that the space industry boosted revenues by $6 billion to $257 billion in 2008, up from $187 billion three years ago.
"Generally the space business has been fairly resilient," Marty Hauser, vice president of the nonprofit Space Foundation, told reporters.
Reuters: Bad weather delays return of U.S. space tourist
by Dmitry Solovyov
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Billionaire U.S. space tourist Charles Simonyi will return to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) one day later than scheduled due to bad weather on earth, a Russian space official said on Friday.
Simonyi, 60, who made history by becoming the first space tourist to visit the International Space Station twice, will touch down in Kazakhstan on Wednesday in a Russian Soyuz space craft, the official said.
"The landing has been shifted by one day to April 8 due to bad weather," Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said.
Reuters: Space tours still open despite downturn
By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The U.S. company that has arranged for six tourists to fly in space said on Friday it is staying open for business despite the economic crisis and a lack of confirmed flight opportunities.
Space Adventures has been setting up flights aboard Russian Soyuz capsules when there are spare seats available. The tourists have paid up to $35 million for the trip.
Charles Simonyi, 60, who made a fortune as Microsoft's lead software developer, is now on his second voyage to the International Space Station.
Reuters: U.S., satellite operators discuss better tracking
By Andrea Shalal-Esa
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - U.S. military officials and commercial satellite operators Thursday discussed better tracking of satellites to avert collisions like the one that destroyed a Russian and U.S. satellite in February, creating more space debris.
The meeting, on the sidelines of the Space Foundation's National Space Symposium, is part of the U.S. Air Force's drive to improve tracking of objects in space.
The Air Force said this week it would work with U.S. Strategic Command to expand satellite tracking by October 1 to all 800 maneuverable spacecraft now operating.
Reuters: N.Korea rocket launch could be imminent: report
By Jack Kim and Kim Yeon-hee
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has removed the cover from the top of a long-range rocket and started a radar needed to track its flight, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said on Sunday, indicating a launch is imminent.
"My understanding is the cover of the rocket has been removed and radar tracking has been spotted as operating continuously," Yonhap quoted an unnamed South Korean government source familiar with the preparations as saying.
"Given these conditions, a launch is likely to occur as early as this morning."
Evolution/Paleontology
National Geographic: Ancient Deformed Children Not Always Killed by Parents
James Owen
for National Geographic News
The discovery of the oldest known infant born with a skull deformity hints that, contrary to popular belief, early humans might not have immediately abandoned or killed their abnormal offspring, a new study says.
Many mammals are known to reject newborns with severe deformities. Scientists had therefore assumed that ancient humans behaved likewise.
But a new study shows that a 530,000-year-old fossil skull belonged to a child who lived to around the age of ten despite being born with a rare birth defect known as craniosynostosis, in which the skull segments close too early, interfering with brain development.
BBC: Clues to ancient invasion in DNA
Scientific evidence of an ancient invasion of Scotland from Ireland may have been uncovered by DNA techniques.
Researchers from Edinburgh University said studies of Scots living on Islay, Lewis, Harris and Skye found strong links with Irish people.
Early historical sources recount how the Gaels came from Ireland about 500 AD and conquered the Picts in Argyll.
Scientists said the study was the first demonstration of a significant Irish genetics component in Scots' ancestry.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above two articles.
Biodiversity
Reuters: Genes tell butterflies to head south
by Ben Hirschler
LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have uncovered a group of 40 genes that appear to make North America's monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles south each autumn.
It is the first time that researchers have honed in on the exact genes driving migratory behavior in any animal.
Reuters: China pays deer price for condor protection
by Ben Blanchard
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese conservationists are in a fix over endangered condors eating large numbers of a protected species of deer in a reserve in the north of the country, state media said on Friday.
More than 100 young spotted deer have been eaten by the condors so far this spring at the Luanhe River National Nature Reserve in Hebei province, near Beijing, the official Xinhua news agency said, becoming an "unanticipated" part of the food chain.
Nationally, the condor is considered far more endangered than the deer.
There are new true condors in China; the two condor species are only found in the Americas. However, there are several species of large vultures that might be the ones meant by "condor."
Aegypius monachus Cinereous Vulture
Gypaetus barbatus Lammergeier
Gyps bengalensis White-rumped Vulture
Gyps fulvus Eurasian Griffon
Gyps himalayensis Himalayan Griffon
Sarcogyps calvus Red-headed Vulture
Source
N.Y. Times: Asian Dolphin, Feared Dying, Is Thriving
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Countering their expectations, biologists working in Bangladesh have found a thriving population of 6,000 Irrawaddy dolphins, a species restricted to brackish bays and rivers from southern Asia to northern Australia that marine mammal experts had worried was vulnerable to extinction.
The population, many times larger than any other known regional groups of the dolphins, was revealed in 2004 in the first systematic survey for marine mammals along Bangladesh’s coast of waterways, bays and mangrove-fringed islands. The full results were described Wednesday in Hawaii at the first international conference on protected areas for marine mammals and in a paper in the winter issue of the Journal of Cetacean Research and Management.
Biotechnology/Health
Wired: From Nuke Bomb Tests, Evidence of New Hearts
By Brandon Keim
Twentieth-century nuclear bomb tests had an unexpected side effect: revealing the resilience of the human heart.
By measuring heart tissue levels of a carbon isotope absorbed by all living creatures after above-ground atom bomb tests during the 1950's, researchers found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, heart cells slowly replace themselves over the course of a lifetime.
Regeneration rates fall from about 1 percent per year at age 25 to .45 percent at age 75 — incremental, but sufficient over a lifetime to replace about half the cells in a heart. Though children and adolescents constantly produce new heart cells, researchers didn't know whether replenishment continued in adults, or how rapidly it might occur.
Wired: Robot Makes Scientific Discovery All by Itself
By Lizzie
For the first time, a robotic system has made a novel scientific discovery with virtually no human intellectual input.
Scientists designed "Adam" to carry out the entire scientific process on its own: formulating hypotheses, designing and running experiments, analyzing data, and deciding which experiments to run next.
...
Adam's British designers, led by Ross King at Aberystwyth University in Wales, acknowledge that the robot's discoveries have been "of a modest kind" thus far. Its proving ground as a scientist has been the genome of baker's yeast, a popular laboratory species. Baker's yeast is one of the best understood organisms, but 10 to 15 percent of its roughly 6,000 genes have unknown functions. The scientists hoped Adam could shed light on some of these mystery genes.
Wired: Old, Brutal Surgeries Inspire Elegant Modern Devices
By Alexis Madrigal
By combing through old scientific journals, medical-device companies are finding effective, but brutal treatments for common diseases that could be transformed by modern technology into safer, noninvasive procedures.
Pairing a century's worth of surgical history of glaucoma treatment with recent advances in materials design, a California company called The Foundry developed a highly engineered device that can drain fluid out of the eye just like a nasty early-20th-century procedure that involved cutting a hole in the eye.
Other diseases such as hypertension and emphysema may also benefit from modernization of antiquated surgical procedures, potentially opening up a lucrative market for medical-device companies.
Reuters: Stem cells may offer cure for deafness
By Ben Hirschler
LONDON (Reuters) - Stem cells may help deaf people hear again, according to early stage research by British scientists.
A team at the University of Sheffield said on Thursday they had discovered how to turn stem cells into ones that behave like sensory hair cells or auditory neurons, which could then be surgically inserted into the ear to restore lost hearing.
Lead researcher Marcelo Rivolta said the approach, which is being tested on animals, held significant potential but was a long way from being offered to patients.
Climate/Environment
Reuters: Ice bridge holding Antarctic ice shelf cracks up
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) - An ice bridge which had apparently held a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place during recorded history shattered on Saturday and could herald a wider collapse linked to global warming, a leading scientist said.
"It's amazing how the ice has ruptured. Two days ago it was intact," David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, told Reuters of a satellite image of the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.
The satellite picture, from the European Space Agency (ESA), showed that a 40 km (25 mile) long strip of ice believed to pin the Wilkins Ice Shelf in place had splintered at its narrowest point, about 500 meters wide.
Reuters: Wordie Ice Shelf has disappeared: scientists
by Maggie Fox
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, U.S. and British government researchers reported on Friday.
They said the Wordie Ice Shelf, which had been disintegrating since the 1960s, is gone and the northern part of the Larsen Ice Shelf no longer exists. More than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) have broken off from the Larsen shelf since 1986.
Climate change is to blame, according to the report from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey, available at pubs.usgs.gov/imap/2600/B.
Reuters: Japan's CO2 emissions may rise despite economic slump
By Risa Maeda
TOKYO (Reuters) - The outage at Japan's biggest nuclear power station was likely to have pushed up manufacturers CO2 emissions in the year ended last month, despite a slowdown in economic activity, a government official said on Friday.
Carbon dioxide emissions from manufacturers, Japan's main polluters, rose 1 percent in the year to March 2008, a nationwide survey on top greenhouse gas emitting factories and offices showed on Friday. That was far slower than a 12 percent rise in the utility sector.
Japan's greenhouse gas emissions in the year just ended are being closely watched as 2008/2009 was the start of the country's five-year period of the Kyoto Protocol, the current U.N.-led global climate pact under which many nations aim to reduce emissions.
Reuters: Climate change may cost California billions
By Peter Henderson
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Climate change may cost California tens of billions of dollars annually in coming years as sea levels rise and hot days cause people to turn up the air conditioning, a draft report from the state said on Wednesday.
Thirsty cities may be able to buy water from farmers and high-altitude forests are expected to benefit for most of the century as trees enjoy the warmer weather, but a long-term effort to understand the details of climate change suggests costs will be higher than expected.
Much depends on whether global efforts to slow the Earth's heating are successful.
Reuters: Fetid swimming pools: the mortgage meltdown’s latest collateral damage
by: Dan Whitcomb
The subprime meltdown, housing market crash and tough economic times have left behind more than broken dreams and empty bank accounts in California.
It has also meant a growing number of neglected or abandoned backyard swimming pools across Southern California – either because the homes are in foreclosure or because owners can’t afford to maintain them anymore.
Those pools quickly turn stagnant, fetid and foul, bad for summer swim parties or barbecues but perfect as swampy breeding grounds for disease-carrying mosquitoes.
Reuters: Is geoengineering the climate a policy option?
by: Ed Stoddard
The current issue of the American magazine Foreign Affairs has a thought-provoking piece that asks if the geoengineering option shouldn’t be used as a last resort in the battle against climate change. You can see the introduction to the article here (but will need to be a registered user to read all of it online).
Climate geoengineering is a thinly explored branch of science which to date has seen little in the way of peer-reviewed research. Some of its advocates envision global systems which would launch reflective particles into the atmosphere or position sunshades to cool the earth.
Another approach is to dump iron dust into the sea to spur the growth of algae that absorb heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the air. When algae die, they fall to the seabed and so remove carbon.
Geology/Geophysics
Reuters: Eastern Congo volcanoes show eruption warning signs
by Joe Bavier
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Two volcanoes may erupt in heavily populated eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where years of fighting have already forced 1 million people from their homes, scientists and aid agencies said.
Scientists in Goma, capital of the border province of North Kivu, have in recent weeks registered high levels of seismic activity, considered an early warning sign of an impending eruption, around the Nyiragongo and Nyamulagira volcanoes.
"There is heavy activity around Nyiragongo, but it's more centered on Nyamulagira, around 13 km (8 miles) away," Dieudonne Wafula, lead scientist at the Volcanological Observatory of Goma, told Reuters on Monday.
Psychology/Behavior
Wired: Poverty Goes Straight to the Brain
By Brandon Keim
Growing up poor isn't merely hard on kids. It might also be bad for their brains. A long-term study of cognitive development in lower- and middle-class students found strong links between childhood poverty, physiological stress and adult memory.
The findings support a neurobiological hypothesis for why impoverished children consistently fare worse than their middle-class counterparts in school, and eventually in life.
"Chronically elevated physiological stress is a plausible model for how poverty could get into the brain and eventually interfere with achievement," wrote Cornell University child-development researchers Gary Evans and Michelle Schamberg in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Reuters: Computer exercise helps stroke victims "see" again
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Millie Sauer did not even know she had suffered a stroke until she tried to read a book as she recovered from surgery and saw only a gray blur for part of the page.
Hours or even days had passed since the stroke had damaged part of her brain responsible for vision and Sauer, 69, was far past the point for any effective treatment.
"I was told I would have to live with my situation," Sauer, who lives in Sun City West, Arizona, said in a telephone interview.
Reuters: Talking in color: imaging helps social skills
By David Lawsky
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Karrie Karahalios can show a child with Asperger's Syndrome when he's lost in a conversational riff or a taciturn spouse when he doesn't speak very much.
Their voice appears on a computer terminal as vibrant colors -- red, yellow, blue, green -- the image growing in size if the voice gets louder, overlapping another color as it interrupts or abruptly narrowing with silence.
They are talking in color.
Archeology/Anthropology
Daily Star: Iraqi archaeologists find ancient Babylonian relics
BAGHDAD: Iraqi archaeologists have discovered 4,000 artifacts, most of them from ancient Babylonian times, including royal seals, talismans and clay tablets marked in Sumerian cuneiform - the earliest known form of writing.
The treasures came to light, the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said, after two years of excavations across 20 different sites in the regions between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the land ancient Greeks referred to as "Mesopotamia."
In addition to Babylonian artifacts, the finds included artifacts from the ancient Persian Empire and more recent medieval Islamic cities.
National Geographic: Nefertiti's Real, Wrinkled Face Found in Famous Bust?
March 30, 2009—Researchers may have finally come face-to-face with the real—and wrinkled—Nefertiti, thanks to sophisticated CT scanning technology.
A carefully carved limestone face in the inner core of the Egyptian queen's famous bust (above, right) has emerged in new images, a new study says.
The object, currently on display in Berlin's Altes Museum, was discovered in 1912 during an excavation of the studio of Egyptian royal sculptor Thutmose. The artist had sculpted Nefertiti—wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten—more than 3,300 years ago.
Agence France-Presse: French dig uncovers 18th-century mass graves
PARIS—Archaeologists in northern France have stumbled upon two mass graves dating back to the years of civil strife unleashed after the French Revolution of 1789, officials said Monday.
Located in a park in the city of Le Mans, the graves contain the bodies of some 30 people including several women, two male teenagers and a child, the INRA archaeology institute said in a statement.
All were identified as victims of a massacre that took place on December 12 and 13, 1793, as republican forces repelled royalist Catholic rebels from the city of Le Mans, during the first War of the Vendee.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
Wired: Computer Program Self-Discovers Laws of Physics
By Brandon Keim
In just over a day, a powerful computer program accomplished a feat that took physicists centuries to complete: extrapolating the laws of motion from a pendulum's swings.
Developed by Cornell researchers, the program deduced the natural laws without a shred of knowledge about physics or geometry.
The research is being heralded as a potential breakthrough for science in the Petabyte Age, where computers try to find regularities in massive datasets that are too big and complex for the human mind.
Wired: Preponderance of Positrons Points to Dark Matter
By Lisa Grossman
An orbiting observatory may have found the first indirect evidence of dark matter particles colliding in space and disappearing, as if in a puff of smoke.
The "smoke" in this case consists of positrons, the antimatter counterpart of electrons. The constant rain of energetic particles that bombards the Earth’s surface, known as cosmic rays, contains many more positrons than scientists expected, according to a study in Nature Wednesday.
All theories agree that dark matter must give this signal, an increasing of number of positrons," said Piergiorgio Picozza of the University of Rome, leader of the study.
Wired: World's Largest Laser Ready to Fire Up
By Betsy Mason
The Department of Energy's $3.5 billion laser, designed to simulate the energy of a nuclear explosion, is ready to fire up all of its 192 beams, AP reported Tuesday.
After more than a decade, that included several delays and cost overruns (it was initially supposed to cost $700 million), the world's most powerful laser has been certified by the DOE and is ready to begin experiments, some of which physicists hope could lead the way to fusion energy.
The National Ignition Facility, located in a building with a footprint the size of three football fields at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, was designed to help the DOE ensure the country's aging nuclear weapons stockpile remains reliable without detonating any bombs.
Chemistry
Wired: Scientists Make Blackest Material Ever
By Brandon Keim
Scientists have fashioned what may be the blackest material in the universe: a sheet of carbon nanotubes that captures nearly every last photon of every wavelength of light.
The substance absorbs between 97 percent and 99 percent of wavelengths that can be directly measured or extrapolated. It's the closest that scientists have yet come to a black body, a theorized state of perfect absorption whose closest analogue is believed to be the opening of a deep hole.
Energy
Reuters: Gene-engineered viruses build a better battery
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers who have trained a tiny virus to do their bidding said on Thursday they made it build a more efficient and powerful lithium battery.
They changed two genes in the virus, called M13, and got it to do two things: build a shell made out of a compound called iron phosphate, and then attach to a carbon nanotube to make a powerful and tiny electrode.
Such an electrode could conceivably make more powerful memory devices such as MP3 players or cellular telephones, and are far more environmentally friendly than current battery technologies, said Angela Belcher, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology materials scientist who led the research.
Reuters: Italy to double solar capacity to 900 MW in '09
by Svetlana Kovalyova
MILAN (Reuters) - Sunny Italy expects to more than double its installed photovoltaic capacity used to turn sunlight into power to 900 megawatt (MW) by the end of 2009 on the back of government incentives, state-run agency GSE said on Friday.
Italy saw 338 MW of photovoltaic (PV) capacity installed in 2008 alone, the third-biggest annual rise in PV capacity in the world, on a par with the United States and behind Spain and Germany, the power management agency said in a statement.
Italy's PV market got a boost after the government approved new incentives for the sector in 2007. The incentives, considered by experts among the most generous in Europe, lured investors ranging from families to sports car maker Ferrari.
Reuters: Slum cooker protects environment, helps poor
By Barry Moody
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's huge and squalid slums don't have much of anything, except mountains of trash that fill rivers and muddy streets, breeding disease.
Now Kenyan designers have built a cooker that uses the trash as fuel to feed the poor, provide hot water and destroy toxic waste, as well as curbing the destruction of woodlands.
After nine years of development, the prototype "Community Cooker" is close to being rolled out in overcrowded refugee camps as well as slums around the country where the filth encourages diseases including cholera.
Reuters: South Africa says still facing major energy crisis
By James Macharia
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's energy minister said on Thursday the country was still in the grip of a major power crisis despite being able to keep the lights on since a series of blackouts early last year.
Voluntary energy savings had failed to meet the required levels, and the country was risking new power cuts, the Minister of Minerals and Energy, Buyelwa Sonjica said in a statement.
State-owned utility Eskom, which provides 95 percent of the country's power, has rationed electricity since early last year, but has not cut power since last April.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Reuters: Obama signs landmark U.S. conservation bill
by Jeff Mason and Thomas Ferraro
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama signed sweeping land and water conservation rules into law on Monday, setting aside millions of acres as protected areas and delighting environmentalists.
The measure, a package of more than 160 bills, would designate about 2 million acres -- parks, rivers, streams, desert, forest and trails -- in nine states as new wilderness and render them off limits to oil and gas drilling and other development.
The House of Representatives approved the measure on a vote of 285-140 a week after it cleared the Senate, capping years of wrangling and procedural roadblocks.
Reuters: Executives concerned about U.S. dominance in space
By Andrea Shalal-Esa
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (Reuters) - The United States may lose its competitive edge in space unless it improves how it buys equipment, shores up its industrial base, and makes a firm commitment to human spaceflight, industry executives warned at a conference this week.
At the same time, companies must become more innovative and flexible to respond to rapidly evolving threats, industry executives and military officials said.
U.S. commercial and military space has grown dramatically as a sector in recent years and in 2008 generated revenue of $257 billion, but tighter defense budgets and the global recession are likely to pose challenges in coming years.
Reuters: U.S. space programs need better oversight: group
By Andrea Shalal-Esa
COLORADO SPRINGS (Reuters) - U.S. government spending on unclassified satellites and space programs is out of control and soared 42 percent to $16.9 billion in fiscal 2009 from $11.9 billion in 2005, the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense said on Tuesday.
The group, which compiled the first independent database of federal space programs, said billions of dollars in space-related programs for national security were spread over the three military services and other agencies with no central authority to track spending.
"Without this bird's-eye view on spending, those who determine our space and national security policy -- in the White House, on Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon -- do not have a crucial tool for setting spending priorities," said the group.
Reuters: Economic hurdles slow greening of CD packaging
By Ed Christman
NEW YORK (Billboard) - During the past few years, many record labels devoted considerable resources to creating CD packaging that has less of an impact on the environment. Suddenly, it's no longer as high a priority.
"We're thinking about another kind of green right now," says Duncan Browne, COO of the 27-unit, Brighton, Mass.-based Newbury Comics chain. "We're seriously committed to green of the dead president kind."
That's because U.S. album sales continue to fall. As of the end of first-quarter 2009, album sales are down 7 percent from the corresponding year-earlier period, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Reuters: Obama climate plans face long route for passage
By Ayesha Rascoe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate vote this week rejected an effort to put climate-change legislation on a fast track, making it harder for Congress to put limits on greenhouse gas emissions this year.
Democratic leaders and the Obama administration had floated the idea of using the federal budget to move cap-and-trade legislation through Congress. Making the plan part of the budget would enable it to pass with a simple majority.
But the Senate on Wednesday voted 67-to-31 in favor of a measure blocking lawmakers from attaching a cap-and-trade bill to the federal budget.
Reuters: Wind power pushes Congress to tackle grid issue
by Eileen O'Grady
HOUSTON (Reuters) - The push to boost U.S. electric generation from wind and other renewable energy sources is forcing U.S. lawmakers to address the contentious issue of whether states or the federal government should have final authority to site new power lines, industry officials said on Friday.
Denise Bode, head of the American Wind Energy Association, said national oversight of transmission development is critical to exploit the country's abundant wind energy resources.
Thousands of miles of new high-voltage lines will be needed to move electric generation from the windiest regions in the center of the country to power-hungry cities.
Reuters: Small islands urge deep CO2 cuts, fear rising seas
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
BONN, Germany (Reuters) - Small island states have sharpened their calls for the rich to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, saying low-lying atolls risk being washed off the map by rising ocean levels.
An alliance of 43 island states, backed by more than a dozen nations in Africa and Latin America, urged developed countries at U.N. climate talks in Bonn on Thursday to cut greenhouse emissions by "at least 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2020."
"The scientific findings about climate change are frightening," M.J. Mace, a legal advisor to the Federated States of Micronesia who presented the demands at the March 29-April 8 meeting, told Reuters.
Reuters: Environmental groups see snub at G20 summit
By Gerard Wynn
LONDON (Reuters) - World leaders at the G20 summit disappointed environmental groups on Thursday who said their commitment to fight climate change had been vague.
The leaders reaffirmed a previous commitment to sign a U.N. climate deal this year, a step the U.N. climate-change chief said was useful, though action would be better.
The London summit had focused on averting a financial meltdown, pledging a $1 trillion package to save the world economy and boost fragile consumer and business confidence.
Reuters: Final offshore wind rules in months: U.S. Interior
by Ayesha Rascoe
ARLINGTON, Va (Reuters) - U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Thursday he expects his department to finalize rules for offshore renewable energy in a few months.
"I expect that because we have done so much work on these rules that a good time horizon is within the next couple of months that we will have these rules finalized," Salzar told reporters at energy forum.
Reuters: EU says U.S. emissions plan to help in climate deal
by Marcin Grajewski
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union's executive arm welcomed on Wednesday a new U.S. plan on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, saying the proposal would facilitate a global deal late this year on fighting climate change.
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives launched a sweeping effort on Tuesday to control emissions of gases blamed for global warming and at the same time help industries that will struggle to meet the proposed environmental requirements.
"We welcome this. It is really very encouraging," European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told a news conference.
Reuters: U.S. groups say vast areas off-limits to clean energy
by Peter Henderson
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Environmental groups on Wednesday released maps of the U.S. West with vast areas that they said should be off-limits for renewable energy projects.
President Barack Obama backs plans to ramp up the country's renewable energy infrastructure, but environmentalists fear that a boom in solar and wind energy could endanger wildlife.
By showing where development should not go, The Path to Green Energy project "is intended to be very favorable to mapping the path to green energy," said Phil Kavits, spokesman for the National Audubon Society, which issued the maps along with the National Resources Defense Council.
CNET has a very good article with colorful maps in Google maps draw a line in sand for clean energy.
Reuters: U.S. says climate plans do not signal protectionism
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
BONN, Germany (Reuters) - U.S. plans to step up the fight against climate change and revive the economy will not mean a slide toward protectionism, Washington's delegation told United Nations climate talks on Wednesday.
Developing nations at the 175-nation U.N. meeting in Bonn say that exports, of everything from Chinese steel to African flowers, would suffer if rich states put up import barriers to penalize their emissions from burning fossil fuels.
"We certainly do not see it that way," U.S. deputy special envoy for climate change Jonathan Pershing told delegates at the March 29-April 8 meeting in Bonn, Germany, working on details of a U.N. climate pact due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.
Reuters: Senate panel debates energy efficiency bills
By Ayesha Rascoe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee began debate on Tuesday on measures that would strengthen appliance efficiency standards and help U.S. manufacturers use less energy.
The proposed legislation would revamp the Energy Department's program that develops efficiency rules for household appliances by allowing individuals to petition the department to revise standards or test procedures. The department would be required to respond to these requests.
The bill would also set new efficiency standards for table and floor lamps based on rules adopted in California--saving the amount of electricity needed to power 350,000 homes by 2020.
Reuters: Democrats launch push for climate change bill
By Richard Cowan and Ayesha Rascoe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives launched a sweeping effort on Tuesday to control greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time help industries that will struggle to meet the proposed environmental requirements.
The draft legislation, which will be considered by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in coming weeks along with other panels, marks the latest attempt by Congress to bring the United States into a global effort to curtail emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.
Many scientists think the growing amounts of pollutants are contributing to extreme weather, melting polar ice and threats to humans, animals and plant species.
Wired: Clean Tech Understimulated, Venture Money Down 48%
By Alexis Madrigal
After a banner 2008, clean tech funding took a nasty dive in the first three months of 2009, dropping to under $1 billion, according to two research firms.
Though comparable numbers are not yet available for other venture capital sectors like software and biotechnology, both The Cleantech Group and GTM Research calculated drops in green tech funding to $1 billion and $836 million, respectively. The Cleantech Group says that's a 48 percent drop over last year.
The differing numbers reflect the slightly different methodologies and types of companies that are included in their analyses, but the main takeaway of both reports is the same: Green tech is getting hit by the broad economic downturn and lack of investment money, and not even the stimulus money pouring into the field has been able to stem the tide.
Science Education
Wired: Reporting From the Front Lines of the Texas Evolution Debate
By Juli Berwald for Wired Science
Just hours before the Texas State Board of Education held its final hearings on the science education standards that would be put in place for the next decade, I set my kitchen timer for three minutes. I practiced my testimony among open jars of peanut butter and jelly strewn about from making kids' lunches. Ding. I still had my conclusion to read. What could I cut?
For months I had been slinking around the controversy in Texas. I had gone to every public hearing, sitting on the floor in the back of the packed room. Behind rows of folding chairs, I had gotten to know the voices, if not the faces, of the board members.
At issue was the wording of a science standard that states students must be taught the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. Since Kansas passed similar legislation in 2005 and Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2006, scientists have viewed these three words as a means for inserting the creationist theology that goes under the name "intelligent design" into science classes.
Science Reporting/Writing
Wired: Save Mind Uploading From Wikipedia Doom
By Brandon Keim
The entry for mind uploading — one of the cooler concepts of modern life — may be deleted from Wikipedia if it's not improved.
Involving the transference of a mind from biological brain to computer hardware — or, for that matter, any other substrate; a character in Charles Stross' Accelerando embodies himself in a flock of seagulls — mind uploading is a tenet of transhumanist hopes and science fiction.
It's been postulated by such artificial intelligence luminaries as Ray Kurzweil, Marvin Minsky and Hans Moravec; is a central plot device of The Matrix and Battlestar Galactica; and figures prominently in the work of Stross, Iain Banks, Charles Platt and Gene Wolfe.
This was posted on April 1st, but was not a joke. The article was nominated for deletion, but the decision was to keep the article.
Science is Cool
Reuters: NASA in Colbert conundrum over Space Station
By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA's outreach to the public to drum up interest in the International Space Station started innocently enough with an online contest to name the station's new living quarters.
But Stephen Colbert, a comedian who poses as an ultra right-wing news commentator on cable television's Comedy Central, nosed into the act with a grass-roots appeal that has backed the staid U.S. space agency into a corner.
The comedian's supporters cast 230,539 write-in votes to name the new module at the $100-billion space outpost "Colbert." The top NASA-suggested name, "Serenity," finished a distant second, more than 40,000 votes behind.
CNET: NBA players to pimp their Priuses?
by Chris Matyszczyk
He hasn't twittered it yet, but I am suddenly full of belief that Shaquille O'Neal is about to buy a Smart car.
What has driven me to this "yes, we can" moment? Why, the first-ever NBA Green Week.
Launched Thursday, this is the NBA's attempt to reduce its carbon footprint (size 45).
Reuters: 2010 Games officials eye global warming costs
By Allan Dowd
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Organizers of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games said on Monday they are confident they can find sponsors to help with the estimated C$4.5 million ($3.6 million) cost of keeping the event from adding to global warming.
The Winter Games in Vancouver are expected to create about 300,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, including those from airplanes bringing thousands of athletes and spectators to the western Canadian city.
The Vancouver Organizing Committee said it is in talks with carbon offset management companies it hopes will help sponsor the cost of buying credits, which it said is running between C$10 and C$20 a tonne.
Reuters: Brazilian forest conservationist Silva wins Norway prize
by John Acher
OSLO (Reuters) - Brazilian senator and former environment minister Marina Silva won Norway's $100,000 Sophie Prize for her work to protect the Amazon rainforest, the prize foundation announced on Wednesday.
The Sophie Prize is awarded annually for environmental protection and sustainable development. It was set up in 1997 by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder and is named after the main character of his book "Sophie's World."
Silva, who was environment minister in 2003-2008, clamped down on illegal activity in the forest, the Sophie Foundation said in its citation.