Science: On a program that could generate power for the world, halt climate change, and bring rain for the Sahara
Wind and solar farms offer a major pathway to clean, renewable energies. However, these farms would significantly change land surface properties, and, if sufficiently large, the farms may lead to unintended climate consequences. In this study, we used a climate model with dynamic vegetation to show that large-scale installations of wind and solar farms covering the Sahara lead to a local temperature increase and more than a twofold precipitation increase, especially in the Sahel, through increased surface friction and reduced albedo. The resulting increase in vegetation further enhances precipitation, creating a positive albedo–precipitation–vegetation feedback that contributes ~80% of the precipitation increase for wind farms. This local enhancement is scale dependent and is particular to the Sahara, with small impacts in other deserts.
A combination of wind farms and solar farms scattered across the Sahara would both generate tremendous amounts of electricity and increase rain in the region. This is a region that is: sparsely inhabited, has a very high level of wind, has a very high level of sun. The study from a US and Chinese team considers a massive program to generate enough power for the entire world. And in the process, it could save the world by reducing the carbon that’s driving global warming.
What’s amazing is … this is possible. In fact, in a good, hard science fiction novel this would make an excellent plot: Civilization facing existential threat pulls together in a coordinated effort to meet the challenge of their day, save the planet, enhance the lives of people around the world, and create a platform on which their world can grow into the future without warring over unequally distributed resources and refugees running before rising seas.
That’s as opposed to the kind of story where this sort of possibility is ignored because of short term thinking, petty power struggles, and the endless hunt for immediate profit.
Our results obtained from experiments performed with a climate model suggest that, for installations of wind and solar farms with current conversion efficiency in the desert at a scale large enough to power the entire world, the impacts on regional climate would be beneficial rather than detrimental, and the impacts on global mean temperature are still small compared with those induced by CO2 emission from fossil fuels. If carefully planned, these farms could also trigger more precipitation, largely because of a previously overlooked vegetation feedback.
Signal the rising inspirational music. Roll credits.
In 1962, an Alemannic burial site containing human skeletal remains was discovered in Niederstotzingen (Baden-Württemberg, Germany). Researchers at the Eurac Research Centre in Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, and at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, have now examined the DNA of these skeletal remains.
This has enabled them to determine not only the sex and the degree of kinship of those people but also their ancestral origins, which provides new insights into societal structures in the Early Middle Ages. The results of this study demonstrate that genetic research can complement research made by archaeologists and anthropologists through more conventional methods. The research was featured on the front cover of the academic journal Science Advances.
Astronomy
PNAS: Yes, darn it, there is ice on the moon.
After lots of conjecture, and a lot of “good evidence of ...” style articles in the last couple of years, the doubts seems to be answered.
We found direct and definitive evidence for surface-exposed water ice in the lunar polar regions. The abundance and distribution of ice on the Moon are distinct from those on other airless bodies in the inner solar system such as Mercury and Ceres, which may be associated with the unique formation and evolution process of our Moon. These ice deposits might be utilized as an in situ resource in future exploration of the Moon.
So … there. That’s water. That’s fuel. That’s one helluva boost to the idea of making a base on the moon.
Robotics and … other stuff
PNAS: On how grasshoppers come to grips with the ground.
We seek to understand and extract the morphological adaptations of animal feet that contribute to enhancing friction on diverse surfaces, such as the desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria), which has both wet adhesive pads and spines. A buckling region in their knee to accommodate slipping, slow nerve conduction velocity (0.5–3 m/s), and an ecological pressure to enhance jumping performance for survival further suggest that the locust operates near the limits of its surface friction, but without sufficient time to actively control its feet. Therefore, all surface adaptation must be through passive mechanics (morphological intelligence), which are unknown.
In other words, desert locusts are constantly slipping or at the brink of slipping, and how they move their feet and legs to avoid this isn’t something they have to consider, but is engineered into the structure of their feet, legs, and local feedback that doesn’t require coordination from the locust-brain. It’s a system that the scientists want to engineer into robots … but if they’re giving them locust-powers, they may want to leave out the swarming.
Biology
PNAS: Using DNA to track invasive snakes in the Everglades.
It’s no secret that Florida has a snake problem. The Burmese python, which can reach up to 200 pounds and stretch to more than 20 feet, first became common in the Everglades in the late 1990s, likely as escaped pets. The snake quickly settled into its new home, breeding and taking down rabbits, bobcats, and other native animals in its path.
Wildlife managers in Florida turned to expert snake hunters, electronic tracking devices, and search dogs to wrangle the pet-turned-ecosystem-wrecker and had little success. The snakes, although massive, are hard to find in the south Florida habitat. “They’re well camouflaged, secretive, and often slow moving,” says geneticist Margaret Hunter of the US Geological Survey, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center.
But their DNA … not so camouflaged from tests that can trail them through the undergrowth by the genetics they leave behind.
Medicine and Health
PNAS: A definitive sign of the post-antibiotic age.
The outer membrane (OM) of … “gram-negative” class of bacteria is an essential organelle and a robust permeability barrier that prevents many antibiotics from reaching their intracellular targets. … New antibiotics against gram-negative bacteria are urgently needed. Rates of antibiotic resistance continue to rise unabated, while the last truly novel antibiotic effective against gram-negative bacteria was discovered in the 1960s. The hope is that treatments interfering with OM biogenesis will offer new lethal therapeutics or will help permeabilize gram-negative bacteria to existing drugs.
The outer membrane, which selectively protects the interior of bacteria from the surrounding environment, has evolved increasing resistance to passing along the type of molecules involved in antibiotics.
PNAS: Genetics suggests there could be more “malarias” ready to infect us.
Wild-living African apes are endemically infected with parasites that are closely related to human Plasmodium vivax, a leading cause of malaria outside Africa. This finding suggests that the origin of P. vivax was in Africa, even though the parasite is now rare in humans there. To elucidate the emergence of human P. vivax and its relationship to the ape parasites, we analyzed genome sequence data of P. vivax strains infecting six chimpanzees and one gorilla from Cameroon, Gabon, and Côte d’Ivoire. We found that ape and human parasites share nearly identical core genomes, differing by only 2% of coding sequences.
But the diversity of P. vivax was much higher among apes. Also, many species of this protozoal parasite are catholic when it comes to finding an ape host. They can infect chimps, bonobos, or gorillas. All of this suggests that the ape-related relatives of our malarial pest represent a pool of potential infection that could jump to people. On the other hand, vivax is very human specific, so at least are endangered relatives aren’t endangered by that one.
Meta-Science
Nature: Google’s new science toolset.
Google has unveiled a search engine to help researchers locate online data that is freely available for use. The company launched the service on 5 September, saying that it is aimed at “scientists, data journalists, data geeks, or anyone else”.
Dataset Search, now available alongside Google’s other specialized search engines, such as those for news and images — as well as Google Scholar and Google Books — locates files and databases on the basis of how their owners have classified them. It does not read the content of the files themselves in the way search engines do for web pages.
Nature: A plan to end the journal system and make science “radically open.”
Research funders from France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and eight other European nations have unveiled a radical open-access initiative that could change the face of science publishing in two years — and which has instantly provoked protest from publishers.
The 11 agencies, who together spend €7.6 billion (US$8.8 billion) in research grants annually, say they will mandate that, from 2020, the scientists they fund must make resulting papers free to read immediately on publication (see ‘Plan S players’). The papers would have a liberal publishing licence that would allow anyone else to download, translate or otherwise reuse the work. “No science should be locked behind paywalls!” says a preamble document that accompanies the pledge, called Plan S, released on 4 September.
Not only would this make the world of science much more open, it would make my annual expenditure on these journals much lower, and make it easier to pass along articles the bulk of which are now hiding behind pay walls. So … yes, it’s a good thing.
Image
As usual, this week’s image comes from Andy Brunning at Compound Interest. Head for his site for a larger, easier to read version.