NASA/JPL-Caltech/Kreck
News this week from the rarified realm of science research is both interesting and far-reaching. And no, by far-reaching I’m not talking about discovery that the planet Saturn has a huge, invisible ring nobody noticed before.
In the field of physics, some may have heard of Paul Dirac’s postulated magnetic monopoles – the quantum of the magnetic force, with a single pole instead of two. Dirac postulated that these must exist, and led to his famous ‘strings’ (which eventually led to some current GUT models). But nobody has ever actually ‘seen’ a monopole, so it’s been an open question of whether such beasties exist. Now, an NIST research team believe they’ve found the next best thing, monopoles the size of molecules!
They of course aren’t real monopoles, but apparently behave the same predicted way. Thus these synthetic compounds could allow scientists to do further research in the lab rather than just on paper napkins. They will be testing monopole predictions with these spin ice molecules, such as whether the postulated particles obey Coulomb’s Law. Stay tuned, this could get fascinating quickly!
Next up is a study about the ubiquitous BPA body burdens 93% of us carry around these days. BPA is a common chemical found in some plastics and epoxy resins. A paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives this week from researchers at Simon Fraser University, UNC-CH and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital linked prenatal BPA exposure to unusually aggressive, hyperactive behavior in 2-year old girls.
Neurodevelopmental disorders – ADD, ADHD, the Autism spectrum, etc. – have been most prevalent in young boys, who represent some 80% of the diagnoses. Further research on this environmental contaminant should be watched, as if the connection is solid, we can expect more and more young girls to suffer the same sorts of problems. BPA has also been linked to fertility problems, growth retardation and learning disorders as well as permanent changes to DNA in mice.
Speaking of Autism’s spectrum of neurodevelopmental disorders, researchers from MIT and the Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital have discovered that a single letter change in DNA may be indicative of Autism. This is known as a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism [SNP], and researchers tied it to chromosomes 5, 6, 20. The gene on chromosome 5 is associated with neuron development and autistic children showed lower expression.
This is just one piece of what researchers expect is a highly complex genetic puzzle, but it might lead to tests that can identify those at risk of producing autistic children, and identifying it in children very early. It also could help lead to specific treatments in the future. Progress is being made at last in dealing with this spectrum as a real medical condition and not just an indicator of lousy parenting skills. Which has been one of the most hurtful urban myths ever propagated by people who had no idea what they were talking about. That some of them were psychologists and physicians is sad, so we can all be thankful that some real answers are coming in.
The USGS researchers also documented that the highest prevalence of TO came attached to areas with the highest human populations and most intensive farming activity. This type of birth defect is connected to environmental exposures to endocrine disrupters (hormone precursors that affect the endocrine system), which are found in most agricultural pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, and in many human/animal drugs. The prevalence of intersex had been at that time documented in other wild fish populations, including spot-tail shiners in the St. Lawrence, white suckers in Colorado, shovelnose sturgeon in the Mississippi, white perch in the Great Lakes, and in several species in the UK, Europe, Africa and Japan.
Intersex associated with endocrine disrupters in wastewater and farm runoff is nothing new, as reproductive anomalies in amphibians has been on the rise especially in farming regions for decades. Now the USGS has published new results of research on intersex in bass in the journal Aquatic Toxicology. They found that a third of all male smallmouth bass and a fifth of all male largemouth bass tested were intersex. The fish came from many different rivers and basins, including the Apalachicola, Colorado, Columbia, Rio Grande, Savannah, Pee Dee and Yukon. The Yukon is the only river basin where researchers found no intersex fish.
The Pee Dee river basin appears to have the biggest problem, though intersex bass are prevalent throughout the agricultural southeast. Relatively high incidence of intersex was also found in the lower Rio Grande basin, the Colorado and Gila in Arizona, and the Colorado basin. Lead author and USGS biologist Jo Ellen Hink suggested that “the widespread occurrence of intersex in fish would be a critical environmental concern.”
Well, duh. Any prognostications on when (or if) EPA and the USDA might get around to being critically concerned about it? Will “Intersex” become the new macho?
In the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere plans for fire prevention have included the idea of fuel reduction. This means thinning the forests and eliminating much of the understory growth. A recent study from Oregon State University sought to quantify the carbon sequestration and CO2 impacts of such a plan, and how these things affect global climate change.
Forest Fire Prevention Efforts Could Lessen Carbon Sequestration, Add to Global Warming details the issues and the report. The report’s authors came to a somewhat surprising conclusion:
“If fuel reduction treatments are effective in reducing fire severities in the western hamlock, Douglas-fir forests of the west Cascades and the western hemlock, Sitka spruce forests of the Coast Range, it will come at the cost of long-term carbon storage, even if harvested material are used as biofuels.”
The idea of using the plants and trees removed from the forest to lessen fire severity as raw material for biofuels was previously thought to offset the carbon sequestration costs of taking those trees. But it turns out that the production of biofuels isn’t very fossil fuel efficient and that the amount of energy returned doesn’t add up to the amount of energy used.
The kind of material at issue that would be harvested from the forests doesn’t produce good biodiesel fuel, which is better produced from oil-crops and such. Woody trees and shrubs are best used to make ethanol, but that process isn’t yet efficient enough to offset itself.
Another recent OSU study concluded that if the old forests of the Pacific Northwest were left alone or managed exclusively to promote carbon sequestration, they could double the amount of sequestration in many areas, even triple it in some other areas.
Bottom line then appears to be that if you build your house or vacation cabin in the old growth forests of the PNW, you shouldn’t expect to have the state or feds manage that forest so your property isn’t at risk from forest fires. Still, to many people the time spent in such abundant natural surroundings is worth the risk.
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There have been some interesting events going on in our solar system since the turn of the new millennium, just coming up on being 8 years old (when counted as the New Year’s transition 2000 to 2001). And the most recent situation here on planet earth bodes ill for sunbathers and electronic communications.
Our sun (Old Sol) has a predictable 11-year cycle of magnetic pole-flipping – with accompanying sunspots and coronal mass ejections [CMEs] of high-energy ions. The most recent pole-flip occurred between 2000 (north pole) and 2002 (south pole). Our planet has also been known to flip its poles, but on a much longer period cycle that averages ~500,000 years. It’s been about 780,000 years since this last occurred, so it’s probably not too surprising that by 2004 scientists were noticing that our field was fading fast.
Back then scientists were fairly convinced that the process of field reversal takes hundreds or thousands of years to accomplish, so the panic level wasn’t high. Earth’s magnetic field produces a “magnetosphere” that shields the surface and lower atmosphere from incoming solar wind, CMEs and cosmic rays by directing them around the planet. Occasional solar radiation does break through and wreak temporary havoc to our electrical grids and communications technologies. And some birds, turtles and bees rely on the magnetic field of the earth in order to navigate.
In February of 2007 NASA launched five satellites collectively called THEMIS to study the earth’s magnetic field, and by May of that year rumors started appearing in the press that our field flip was imminent. That could present issues due to the likelihood that the magnetosphere may essentially disappear during the period of the flip, leaving the sunny side of the planet exposed and vulnerable. There are of course ample caveats in the scenarios for such an event, given the fact that modern humans have never actually experienced one. Obviously, there is good reason to keep an eye on the process, as 5 satellites aren’t cheap to invent and deploy just for the purpose…
Just this past week we have finally been informed by NASA that indeed, the five THEMIS satellites flew through a ‘hole’ in the magnetosphere’s sun-side bow wave just as it was opening on June 3 of 2007. The hole, NASA tells us, is now 10 times larger than any such hole previously believed to exist, 4 times wider than the diameter of the planet. NASA’s description of this newly released but known for more than a year news is… colorful:
The event began with little warning when a gentle gust of solar wind delivered a bundle of magnetic fields from the Sun to Earth. Like an octopus wrapping its tentacles around a big clam, solar magnetic fields draped themselves around the magnetosphere and cracked it open. The cracking was accomplished by means of a process called “magnetic reconnection.” High above the Earth’s poles, solar and terrestrial magnetic fields linked up (reconnected) to form conduits for solar wind. Conduits over the Arctic and Antarctic quickly expanded; within minutes they overlapped over Earth’s equator to create the biggest magnetic breach ever recorded by Earth-orbiting spacecraft.
Worse, what’s going on bears little to no resemblance to sciences theories about such things. In fact, what’s happening is completely opposite to predictions!
Bottom line for our ‘interesting times’? Stock up on sunscreen, back up your hard drive regularly…
The years ahead could be especially lively. Raeder explains: “We’re entering Solar Cycle 24. For reasons not fully understood, CMEs in even-numbered solar cycles (like 24) tend to hit Earth with a leading edge that is magnetized north. Such a CME should open a breach and load the magnetosphere with plasma just before the storm gets underway. It’s the perfect sequence for a really big event.”
Links:
Sun does magnetic flip
Earth’s Magnetic Field is Fading Fast
A Giant Breach in Earth’s Magnetic Field
As the economy slips ever farther down the black hole of imaginary values and criminal greed, the looming necessity for using this crossroads of history to re-make our energy future has moved the issues up on the To-Do list. America’s automakers are lining up, hats in hand, to obtain enough funding to keep their (union) workers employed, and the funds they want may come attached to serious strings that require more gas-efficient cars, hybrids, flex-fuel and even new lines of plug-in electric cars to help get us off our addiction to other nations’ oil.
Which then begs questions about what sources of electrical energy we need to develop that do not spew greenhouse gases into the air, leave us with millions of tons of toxic or radioactive industrial waste, and cause serious detrimental health effects (and death) to the population. Following on the issue of our choices for future development is the antiquated state of our electrical grid, which is both inefficient and dangerously likely to fail altogether without much trouble.
Fact is, energy use conservation could make a more serious dent in our consumption without doing anything at all. This is what happened this past summer when gasoline prices climbed to around $5 per gallon, and diesel prices became inverted. Millions of people limited their driving, pooled for shopping excursions, and stayed home instead of driving long distances for vacation. Petroleum usage plummeted, which informs us that we don’t really have to use as much as we do. Changing light bulbs and turning off lights and appliances and turning down the thermostat can save quite a bit of our generation capacity too, but that will of course jump when we have to charge our cars at night.
But the inefficiency of the grid system itself wastes ~30% of what we already do generate. In order to diversify our sources, we are going to need to modernize the grid to lose less of the available ‘trons between the wind or wave farm and our refrigerators. The Obama transition team is already looking into a possible massive CCC-type project to modernize the grid, and with a genuine scientist at the head of the Department of Energy (Steven Chu), we might expect more forward-looking options for how to do that than the old-timers in the outgoing administration could ever have offered.
Meanwhile, many states and industrial concerns are planning for the alternative energy sources that the new grid will rely upon for generation capacity. Since there’s no such thing as “Clean Coal,” many planners would dearly love to get away from coal and nuclear plants (that take decades to bring on-line and are increasingly expensive). Wind, wave, geothermal, hydroelectric, there are many possibilities to be developed that not only don’t emit greenhouse gases, but also don’t emit waste heat into the environment like boiler and heat transfer systems do.
The Industrial Wind Action Group understands the grid issue better than many, as the siting of industrial-strength wind farms in regions of the country that enjoy steady winds enough to achieve peak performance is going to need transmission accessibility from parts of the country that managed to get electrified mostly as an afterthought. There are even some fairly radical ideas out there about concentrating wind farms in the midwest by swapping-out government-owned land in the far west for a huge reserve in the heartland. Even the investor class is getting in on the action, as Great Ideas: Where the Buffalo Roam… Turbines Spin from the Common Sense Investor demonstrates.
We’ll keep up with developments in all areas of alternative power research and development as well as initiatives to modernize the grid. Stay tuned!
Links:
US Electric grid needs modernization
A Vision for a Modernized Electric Grid: Clean Infrastructure for a 21st Century Economy
Industrial Wind Action Group
Great Ideas: Where the Buffalo Roam… Turbines Spin
What is an Intelligent Grid?
Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama has submitted his Answers to the Top 14 Science Questions facing America. Drawing on the expertise of a squadron of science, economic, foreign policy and educational advisors that includes several committed Nobel Laureates, many will be happy to get the religious and political ideology out of the way and really start addressing these issues.
Please go to the ScienceDebate 2008 website, take a hard look at Obama’s answers for our future, and don’t forget to drop the crew a dime (or ten) on your way out. These folks have been hard at it since November of last year, and have gathered some very impressive institutional support. The future is important to all of us – and our children – and the future needs the very best science we can possibly field to meet it head-on.
University of Illinois crop sciences researchers released results of the largest-ever field trial of its kind in the US for growing a giant perennial grass Miscanthus x giganteus, reporting that this crop could significantly reduce the acreage necessary to meet government biofuels production goals.
Rather than re-dedicating a full 25% of US cropland to biofuels – something that would put a serious dent in food production and increase the price of everything grown – Miscanthus would require re-dedication of just 9.3% of current agricultural acreage. The findings were reported in the August issue of the journal Global Change Biology.
Researchers were judging raw amount of biomass generated each year from this perennial (meaning it regrows itself every season from roots without reseeding), and you can see from the accompanying photo that this grass takes up some vertical room. Even better, Miscanthus requires fewer chemical and mechanical inputs than corn, which is a consideration for water quality and soil fertility. Moreover, in many parts of the country farmers could reap two or more ‘crops’ a year (by mowing, as with hay). Highest productivity, in fact, came from the south in the poorest of agricultural soils. Thus Miscanthus may be a very good crop for marginal land and land not even used for crop production at present, which would lower its demand on food producing cropland further.
Miscanthus also serves as a ‘carbon sink’, accumulating and binding carbon in the soil at greater efficiency than any annual crops, such as the great biomass annual industrial hemp. Which is also a good biomass crop for fuels, fiber, oil and land conservation.
Perhaps some combination of alternatives may yet allow independence from fossil fuels, and that comes with improvements in global warming, general civilizational peace and prosperity, etc. If we were to plan ways to power our homes, churches, community buildings and businesses while at the same time developing biofuels for transportation and shipping, we might find the world economy and standards of living rising quickly instead of falling fast.
It would seem that we do still have some useful scientific creativity and inventiveness to offer the world in these trying times. All we need to do now is see to it that Big Oil doesn’t shove it all under the rug, and that we get the necessary government investments in these technologies.
Links:
Giant Grass Miscanthus Can Meet US Biofuels Goal Using Less Land
Hemp: Our Original Industrial Crop
MIT Scientist Offers Solar Revolution
• Nearly 50% of the bacteria in your body (and humans harbor 3 times more bacterial cells than human cells) live on the surface of your tongue, which (by the way) is the strongest muscle in your body. Probably a good reason why Mommy-Kisses work better than Mommy-Licks on boo-boos.
• The incidence of immune system diseases has increased more than 200% in the last five years. Yikes! Is that environmental?
• By the time a person is 35 years old, s/he begins losing about 7,000 brain cells a day which are never replaced. Whoa. I’d say something profound about that, but I forgot what the subject was…
• A moderate sunburn damages blood vessels in the skin so seriously that it takes between four and fifteen months for them to heal. The reason I keep SPF 50 on hand all summer.
• Right-handed people live an average of nine years longer than left-handed people. Need I remind readers that correlation does NOT equal causation?
Go on over to One Big Health Nut and read the rest for yourself!
The 2007 Farm Bill – now the 2008 Farm Bill, was passed by both chambers of Congress, vetoed by President Bush, then the veto was overridden by both houses and is now the ‘Law of the Land’. Politically, the bill isn’t perfect, there is still too much pork and payments to rich agribusiness concerns for their poor farming practices, and not enough clarifying guidelines for biofuels production and organic farming.
But it’s a lot better than no bill at all, which would have kept the last support bill in place for the foreseeable future. The new bill has incentives to clean up residue discharges in important watersheds, and supports for best practices in crop rotations, cover crops and low-chemical input farming. It’s still strong on commodity production (corn, wheat, rice), but does put some real support into farmer’s market promotions and expansion of organic markets. It does somewhat limit subsidies to near-millionaire commodity farmers, requires more fresh fruit and vegetables to be available in schools, increases food stamp benefits as tied to the price of food, allots priority funding to research into the bee die-off situation, and supports rural enterprise and microenterprise investments.
Research into the “typical American diet” and its relationship to serious health issues and obesity informs us that Americans eat way too much junk and not nearly enough healthy food. Which, in a country that rations health care by income level and allows insurance companies to exclude people who actually need health care, would seem to be an important issue to address with education and real food availability in public institutions such as schools.
In 2005 the University of Michigan’s Integrative Medicine Clinical Services published a new food pyramid based on “healing” foods. Which emphasized fresh, unprocessed fruits and vegetables over grains, legumes (beans) and the more fatty foods at the top. The Agricultural Research Service published this past weekend a study that showed alkaline-producing fresh fruits and vegetables help preserve muscle mass in older men and women.
And researchers from USDA’s Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory have released findings that demonstrate organic farming methods including crop rotation complexity can offer a 30% greater yield than simple corn-soybean rotations.
As demand for organic meat, milk and basic commodities rises about 20% per year in this country, improvements in the technology of organic production will serve to increase availability. It has long been known that reduced use of herbicides, pesticides and chemical fertilizers (most with highly questionable ‘inert ingredients’ such as toxic waste from industry) will also improve water quality and the general fertility of our ‘breadbasket’ agricultural base land. It is hoped that the new farm bill, by emphasizing changes that need to be made in these directions, will speed America’s switch to sustainable practices and improve citizen’s health significantly.
ScienceNews reported last week that research on mice suggests these new fullerene-based wonder-fibers may be as dangerous as asbestos in the environment. The study showed that multi-walled (rigid) nanotube fibers longer than 15 micrometers cannot be removed from sensitive organic tissues by microphages, and that this causes inflammation that could lead to asbestos-like diseases including mesothelioma, a fatal form of cancer.
The study was published in the May 20 online edition of Nature Nanotechnology, and according to the Washington Post serves as a preliminary warning that there may be serious issues with the technology that warrant very careful planning to protect industrial workers, the public and the environment as nanotube fibers become more common in consumer and industrial products.
Companies around the world produce thousands of tons of nanomaterials a year, not all of them in the form that poses the threat identified by these researchers. Nanotubes alone are expected to become a multi-billion dollar industry within the next few years. While the government pumps about $1.5 billion a year into R&D for nanotechnology, only about 5 percent of that goes into health and safety concerns.
It would be quite refreshing if, for a change, we incorporated the lessons of history as we develop this promising new technology to forestall issues related to health, safety and environmental pollution before they become just more grim statistics attached to greed over due caution. And for this reason the situation bears watching to see if identified areas of concern are simply denied and swept under a profit rug, or rationally dealt with as if humans could accept responsibility – and minimize risks – per the less than hopeful side-effects of our intelligent designs.