A better kind of lightbulb?

This week, the lighting start-up company vu1 is beginning to ship a new type of lightbulb that could displace compact fluorescents and LED lamps as the energy-saving bulb of choice. The technology, known as cathodoluminescence or electron-stimulated luminescence (ESL), offers similar energy savings, but provides a more natural quality of light.

My life in the past several years has been a living lightbulb joke. I’ve changed, re-changed and re-re-changed the bulbs in my house trying to find replacements that save money but don’t make our skin look like zombie flesh. Compact fluorescents and LED lamps save energy, last longer, and emit less heat than incandescent bulbs. But their light is ickier, versions advertised as "dimmable" often dim only over a limited range, and CFLs take maddeningly long to come to full brightness. No single type works everywhere. LEDs are great for desk lamps, but their narrow beams fail to fill larger spaces. In darkly painted rooms, I went with cold-cathode fluorescents with alow brightness temperature. I’ve filled a big box in the basement with all the bulbs I’ve tried and rejected. So much for saving money.

The color quality has to do with how these bulbs work. The white(ish) light you see is given off by a phosphor coating. In a CFL, the phosphor glows when backlit by ultraviolet light from mercury vapor; in an LED bulb, it soaks up light from a pure-blue LED. (The mercury is why you can't just throw a CFL in the trash when it dies.) On the left is a graph showing the spectra of incandescent, CFL, and LED bulbs; the x-axis is the wavelength in nanometers. Although this particular graph was provided to me by vu1, which has a certain self-interest in showing its competitors in their worst light, it matches information from other sources such as the lighting control company Lutron and the RPI Lighting Research Center. The CFL spectrum is a series of spikes, reflecting the combination of phosphors used to approximate white light; CFLs therefore accent certain colors and fail to render others.

LED bulbs, which use a different type of phosphor, have a smoother spectrum, but the blue LED that drives the phosphor creates a sharp peak in the blue, short-wavelength range of the spectrum, which might pose a "blue light hazard." Ignacio Provencio of the University of Virginia will have an article in our May issue about how our eyes have a special class of photoreceptor that doesn't form images; instead it absorbs blue light to synchronize our body clock with the day/night cycle. Too much blue light coulddisrupt your sleep cycle. I've also seen claims that excessive blue light might fry your retina and increase your chances of developing macular degeneration. The French counterpart to OSHA issued a report last November warning that children are at particular risk, although Physics World quoted other experts who thought the claims overblown.

The new ESL bulbs use a phosphor, too, but one that does not absorb light at all—instead, it absorbs electrons. Roughly speaking, ESLs are cathode-ray tubes repurposed as lamps. The electrons stream off a metal cathode plate and are pulled by an electric field toward an anode, a thin layer of metal on the backside of the phosphor. Charles Hunt of University of California at Davis, who helped to develop the phosphor, explained to me that ESLs differ from the CRTs used in old TV sets by virtue of their lower electron densities and energies.

Because they use a different phosphor, ESLs provide a somewhat more natural light; see the spectrum at left. The company claims all sorts of other advantages, too: the bulb turns on faster, shines omnidirectionally rather than in a narrow beam, dims over a wider range, and contains no mercury. I've been trying out a demo, an R30 spotlight for a recessed fixture in my kitchen. When you flip the switch, it comes to full brightnesss in a second or two. My wife judges the light to be yellower and milder than a CFL's. Measured with a Kill-a-Watt, the bulb draws 16 watts, about as much power as a CFL of the same brightness, roughly equivalent to a 60-watt incandescent. I'm able to dim it down to, or up from, 20 percent of maximum brightness. The main downside is that the bulb is much heavier than any other I've ever tried—nearly a pound.

Since vu1 first announced the bulbs last year, people on Internet discussion groups have worried about x-ray emission, since the technology is similar to that of an x-ray tube. Hunt said ESLs do produce some x-rays, but at levels below the ambient background dose. The company says that UL-certification included x-ray safety testing.

The R30 begins shipping this week, for $20. The company says it'll introduce an A19 standard bulb shape in the summer, followed by decorative and vanity lighting.

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New ATM Designed For Semi-Literate and Illiterate Populations

Given the ubiquity of automated teller machines (ATMs) in most Western countries, it may be difficult to envision places in the world where people have never set foot in a bank nor touched an ATM. Efforts to change this are often stymied not only because locals are unfamiliar with the concept of financial services but also because they are semi-literate or illiterate, making the use of an ATM challenging.

But where is it written that an ATM must have a screen or display monitor? The long-time cash register manufacturer NCR Corp. is developing a new type of freestanding ATM, shaped like a pillar and featuring a fingerprint biometric sensor, preset cash buttons, a cash dispenser and receipt printer. A user would simply press his thumb on the sensor, push the appropriate, color-coded button for desired denominations and walk away with cash and a receipt.

The pillar ATM, which NCR is designing for rural areas in developing countries such as India and China, is waist high and could be secured to the ground with bolts or weights. The cylindrical shape is designed to minimize places where a crowbar might be applied to pry open the ATM. As an added measure of security, the machine's cash box is designed to collapse in on itself if the ATM is breached.

The pillar ATM's form and function are the result of considerable socioeconomic research in low- and middle-income countries—including how and when residents in rural areas use money, the utility of ATMs to people whose clothing often lacks pockets and the practicality of delivering modern banking services to a population literally unable to read the fine print. "The invention of this unit was based on our examination of the underbanked in India, particularly in the neighborhoods of Mumbai," says Lyle Sandler, NCR's vice president of Design and Consumer Experience. "We're talking about a community with a high level of illiteracy, so clearly the typical ATM that someone would approach would be impossible to maneuver."

Instead NCR designed its pillar ATM to resemble the post office boxes used in India. NCR researchers also found that the users they queried wouldn't consider a transaction complete without some form of receipt, "which is how and why NCR built the first cash register, so some things never went away," Sandler says.

NCR and any financial institutions that install its pillar ATMs in developing nations face a number of hurdles. In addition to dealing with illiteracy and a lack of savvy (or even interest) when it comes to financial services, regional bank branches would be responsible for fingerprinting new customers, a move that many Westerners would find intrusive as a condition for banking. Still, Sandler and his team are convinced that bank accounts and ATMs could become an alternative for rural populations in need of cash quickly, freeing them from making deals with local loan sharks.

NCR is building five prototype pillar ATMs that will be tested in the U.S. by financial services companies. Sandler declined to name these institutions but added that, if all goes well, the ATMs could be in use in their target markets within a year. If the ATMs are widely accepted—NCR indicates there's been interest beyond use in developing nations—future designs could enable bank customers to conduct transactions via mobile phones with near-field communications capabilities. In this way, customers would use their phones as a "dislocated interface" with the ATM, he adds. Not a stretch, considering how well mobile devices have flourished in African nations and India, where landline infrastructures are unreliable and computers are expensive.

It wouldn't be surprising for pillar ATMs to make their way to India's urban centers, regardless of their success in rural areas. The number of conventional ATMs in the country increased by 29 percent to 69,324 in the 12 months from January 2010 to January 2011, according to a March article in the Hindustan Times. (The U.S. had about 290,000 stand-alone ATMs as of 2009, although online banking is diminishing the demand here for ATMs.)

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Dry onion skin has a use

More than 500,000 tonnes of onion waste are thrown away in the European Union each year. However, scientists say this could have a use as food ingredients. The brown skin and external layers are rich in fibre and flavonoids, while the discarded bulbs contain sulphurous compounds and fructans. All of these substances are beneficial to health. Production of onion waste has risen over recent years in line with the growing demand for these bulbs. More than 500,000 tonnes of waste are generated in the European Union each year, above all in Spain, Holland and the United Kingdom, where it has become an environmental problem. The waste includes the dry brown skin, the outer layers, roots and stalks, as well as onions that are not big enough to be of commercial use, or onions that are damaged.

"One solution could be to use onion waste as a natural source of ingredients with high functional value, because this vegetable is rich in compounds that provide benefits for human health", Vanesa Benítez, a researcher at the Department of Agricultural Chemistry at the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain), tells SINC.

Benítez's research group worked with scientists from Cranfield University (United Kingdom) to carry out laboratory experiments to identify the substances and possible uses of each part of the onion. The results have been published in the journal Plant Foods for Human Nutrition.

According to the study, the brown skin could be used as a functional ingredient high in dietary fibre (principally the non-soluble type) and phenolic compounds, such as quercetin and other flavonoids (plant metabolites with medicinal properties). The two outer fleshy layers of the onion also contain fibre and flavonoids.

"Eating fibre reduces the risk of suffering from cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal complaints, colon cancer, type-2 diabetes and obesity", the researcher points out.

Phenolic compounds, meanwhile, help to prevent coronary disease and have anti-carcinogenic properties. The high levels of these compounds in the dry skin and the outer layers of the bulbs also give them high antioxidant capacity.

Meanwhile, the researchers suggest using the internal parts and whole onions that are thrown away as a source of fructans and sulphurous compounds. Fructans are prebiotics, in other words they have beneficial health effects as they selectively stimulate the growth and activity of bacteria in the colon.

Sulphurous compounds reduce the accumulation of platelets, improving blood flow and cardiovascular health in general. They also have a positive effect on antioxidant and anti-inflammatory systems in mammals.

"The results show that it would be useful to separate the different parts of onions produced during the industrial process", explains Benítez. "This would enable them to be used as a source of functional compounds to be added to other foodstuffs".

Source: FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology

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What Activates a Supermassive Black Hole? Galaxy Collisions Not the Culprits, Even in the Jam-Packed Early Universe

ScienceDaily (July 13, 2011) — A new study combining data from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory has turned up a surprise. Most of the huge black holes in the centres of galaxies in the past 11 billion years were not turned on by mergers between galaxies, as had been previously thought.

This very deep image shows the COSMOS field imaged by the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). Huge numbers of very faint galaxies are visible. A new study of this field, combining data from ESO's Very Large Telescope and ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory has turned up a big surprise. Most of the huge black holes in the centres of active galaxies in the past 11 billion years were not turned on by mergers between galaxies, as had been previously thought. Some of the active galaxies with supermassive black holes at their centers that were used in the new study are marked with red crosses on this picture. (Credit: CFHT/IAP/Terapix/CNRS/ESO)

At the heart of most, if not all, large galaxies lurks a supermassive black hole with a mass millions, or sometimes billions, times greater than that of the Sun. In many galaxies, including our own Milky Way, the central black hole is quiet. But in some galaxies, particularly early on in the history of the Universe [1], the central monster feasts on material that gives off intense radiation as it falls into the black hole.

One unsolved mystery is where the material comes from to activate a sleeping black hole and trigger violent outbursts at a galaxy's centre, so that it then becomes an active galactic nucleus. Up to now, many astronomers thought that most of these active nuclei were turned on when two galaxies merge or when they pass close to each other and the disrupted material becomes fuel for the central black hole. However, new results indicate that this idea may be wrong for many active galaxies.

Viola Allevato (Max-Planck-Institut fur Plasmaphysik; Excellence Cluster Universe, Garching, Germany) and an international team of scientists from the COSMOS collaboration [2] have now looked in detail at more than 600 of these active galaxies in an extensively studied patch of the sky called the COSMOS field [3]. As expected, the astronomers found that extremely brilliant active nuclei were rare, while the bulk of the active galaxies in the past 11 billion years were only moderately bright. But there was a surprise; the new data showed that the majority of these more common, less bright active galaxies, even looking back far into the past, were not triggered by mergers between galaxies [4]. The results will appear in The Astrophysical Journal.

The presence of active galactic nuclei is revealed by the X-rays emitted from around the black hole, which were picked up by ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory. These galaxies were subsequently observed using ESO's Very Large Telescope, which was able to measure the distances to the galaxies [5]. When combined, the observations allowed the team to make a three-dimensional map showing where the active galaxies lie.

"It took more than five years, but we were able to provide one of the largest and most complete inventories of active galaxies in the X-ray sky," said Marcella Brusa, one of the authors of the study.

The astronomers could use this new map to find out how the active galaxies were distributed and compare this with predictions from theory. They could also see how the distribution changed as the Universe aged -- all the way from about 11 billion years ago to almost the present day.

The team found that active nuclei are mostly found in large massive galaxies with lots of dark matter [6]. This was a surprise and not consistent with the prediction from theory -- if most active nuclei were a consequence of mergers and collisions between galaxies it had been expected that they would be found in galaxies with moderate mass (about a trillion times the mass of the Sun). The team found that most active nuclei reside in galaxies with masses about 20 times larger than the value predicted by merger theory.

"These new results give us a new insight into how supermassive black holes start their meals," said Viola Allevato, who is lead author on the new paper. "They indicate that black holes are usually fed by processes within the galaxy itself, such as disc instabilities and starbursts, as opposed to galaxy collisions."

Alexis Finoguenov, who supervised the work, concludes: "Even in the distant past, up to almost 11 billion years ago, galaxy collisions can only account for a small percentage of the moderately bright active galaxies. At that time galaxies were closer together so mergers were expected to be more frequent than in the more recent past, so the new results are all the more surprising."

Notes

[1] The brightest active galaxies were most common in the Universe about three to four billion years after the Big Bang and the less brilliant objects rather later, peaking at around eight billion years after the Big Bang.

[2] The new study is based on two large European astronomical programmes: the XMM-Newton survey of the COSMOS field led by Professor Gunther Hasinger and ESO's zCOSMOS led by Professor Simon Lilly. These programmes are part of the COSMOS initiative, an international endeavour to observe a patch of sky using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, ESA's XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra X-ray space telescopes as well as NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope in addition to observations by ESO's Very Large Telescope and other ground-based facilities.

[3] The COSMOS field is an area about ten times that of the full Moon, in the constellation of Sextans (The Sextant). It has been mapped by a multitude of telescopes at different wavelengths so that a series of studies and investigations can benefit from this wealth of data.

[4] Work published last year from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (heic1101:http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1101/) had shown that there was no strong link between active nuclei in galaxies and mergers in a sample of relatively close galaxies. That study looked back about eight billion years into the past but the new work pushes this conclusion three billion years further to a time when galaxies were packed even closer together.

[5] The team used a spectrograph on the VLT to split the faint light from the galaxies up into its component colours. Careful analysis then allowed them to determine the redshift: how much the light has been stretched by the expansion of the Universe since it emerged from the galaxies and hence how distant they are. Because light travels at a finite speed this also tells us how far back in time we are seeing these distant objects.

[6] Dark matter is a mysterious substance that forms an invisible component of most, if not all, galaxies (active or not) -- including our own Milky Way. The authors have estimated the amount of dark matter mass in each galaxy -- which indicates its total mass -- from the distribution of the galaxies in the new study.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by European Southern Observatory - ESO

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Brainy Lizards Pass Test for Birds

ScienceDaily (July 12, 2011) — Tropical lizards may be slow. But they aren't dumb. They can do problem-solving tasks just as well as birds and mammals, a new study shows

Puerto Rican anoles, Anolis evermanni, were tested on a food-finding apparatus normally used on birds. The lizards showed they could solve a novel problem, remember solutions and "unlearn" incorrect approaches. (Credit: Manuel Leal, Duke University)

A Duke University experiment tested Puerto Rican anoles on several cognitive tasks and found they can learn and remember to solve a problem they've never faced before. The results challenge the scientific stereotype that reptiles have limited cognitive abilities and methods for finding food.

The lizards' success on a worm-based test normally used on birds was "completely unexpected," said Duke biologist Manuel Leal, who led the study.

He tested the lizards using a wooden block with two wells, one that was empty and one that held a worm but was covered by a cap. Four lizards, two male and two female, passed the test by either biting the cap or bumping it out of the way.

The lizards solved the problem in three fewer attempts than birds need to flip the correct cap and pass the test, Leal said. Birds usually get up to six chances a day, but lizards only get one chance per day because they eat less. In other words, if a lizard makes a mistake, it has to remember how to correct it until the next day, Leal said. He and Duke graduate student Brian Powell describe the experiment and results online in Biology Letters.

Leal's experiment "clearly demonstrates" that when faced with a situation the lizards had never experienced, most of them were able to devise a way to solve the problem. Their ability to "unlearn" a behavior, a skill that some mammalian species have difficulty in, is the mark of a cognitively advanced animal, said Jonathan Losos, a biologist at Harvard who was not involved in the study.

The results "should cause researchers to re-evaluate what they think they know about the evolution of animal cognition," Losos said.

Leal tested the cognition of the Puerto Rican anole, Anolis evermanni, after seeing sparrows flip a cap to get a worm and wondering if lizards could do the trick, too.

"They'd put their snout under the little plastic chip and then quickly bump it," Leal said. "They don't do this in the wild."

Even when Leal covered both wells, the lizards chose to flip the cap covering the well with the worm. They had learned to associate the color or brightness of the chip with their reward.

To see if the lizards could reverse this association, Leal next placed the worm under the other cap. At first, all the lizards bumped or bit the formerly lucrative blue cap. But after a few mistakes, two of the lizards figured out the trick. "We named these two Plato and Socrates," Leal said.

The lizards' performance doesn't necessarily mean that reptiles are smarter than birds, said McGill University biologist Louis Lefebvre, who studies learning and behavior in birds and was not involved in the new study. He said a better way to use these new results would be to compare cognitive abilities among reptile species, rather than between reptiles, birds and mammals.

"We know birds and mammals have bigger brains and that within bird species and within mammal species, the bigger the brain is, the higher the chance of that larger-brained species making it when moving to a new environment," Lefebvre said. "It may be the same with lizards."

Research has shown that large-brained lizards are better than small-brained lizards at colonizing new areas. "My guess would be that the lizard genus in which Manuel Leal has shown fast learning would be among the larger-brained lizards," Lefebvre said.

Compared to other lizards, anoles are better at exploiting diverse habitats and they exhibit complex behavior, factors that may favor the evolution of higher-level mental processing. The lizards' ability to perform on the lab tests may also be an indication of the traits that allowed the group to successfully spread across the tropics, Leal said.

He plans to test other species of lizards and compare their brain to body size later this year.

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Gene Therapy Hope for HIV: Engineered Stem Cells Hold Promise

Gene Therapy Hope for HIV: Engineered Stem Cells Hold Promise

 

 

When it comes to research on HIV and AIDS treatments, it can be hard to know when to celebrate a small advance–everyone wants to see progress, but so many experimental avenues that seemed promising have turned out to be dead ends. Still, a new study that tried a sophisticated form of gene therapy as an HIV treatment seems cause for cautious optimism. If it bears out under further testing, the technique could lead to a one-shot, long-lasting treatment that could replace the punishing regimen of daily medications.

Treating HIV currently comes down to controlling the viral load with a mixture antiretroviral drugs, but over time, this drug cocktail becomes less effective. Researcher John Rossi and his colleagues tried to craft a more permanent treatment by genetically modifying the HIV-infected patients’ own blood stem cells and increasing the cells’ ability to fight off the virus. The researchers weren’t able to truly combat the virus in this experiment–the patients’ viral loads remained the same–but their work moved beyond previous attempts in two ways: They successfully modified blood stem cells by giving them anti-HIV genes, and those cells survived for two years in patients.

Earlier clinical studies the group conducted with the same strategy made little headway, but now the researchers have overcome two key obstacles, says Rossi, a molecular geneticist. One is that they managed to stitch the anti-HIV genes into a high percentage of the appropriate stem cells. The other is that the cells lived for a long time. “If we could increase the number of modified cells by 10- or 100-fold, we might be able to stop the virus itself,” says Rossi. [ScienceNow]

The small study published in Science Translational Medicine tested the safety of the technique for HIV-infected patients, and served as a proof of concept. The four patients in this study were undergoing therapy for AIDS-related lymphoma at City of Hope cancer center in California. Part of the usual treatment for this condition is to remove blood stem cells (found in bone marrow) before cell-damaging chemotherapy, and to then return them after treatment. Researchers wanted to test their virus-fighting cells’ survival skills, so with each patient’s normal blood stem cells, the researchers also reintroduced a small number of modified cells.
They modified the cells in three ways: They boarded up the cells’ doors to keep the HIV virus out, and made two genetic changes to the cells’ internal defenses so that the virus would have a harder time copying itself if it made it through.

[T]he team added three genes to the immune stem cells’ DNA: one that cripples the CCR5 receptor that HIV exploits to enter the cell (this mimics a successful transplant recently done in Berlin with a much discussed patient who apparently was “cured” of his HIV infection), and two others that disable viral genes and prevent HIV from copying itself. This makes it increasingly difficult for HIV to find new targets and mops up any new virus produced [ScienceNOW].

As a safety precaution, the researchers didn’t implant enough of these novel cells to test how well they might fight the virus, but they did get a glimpse of how long the modified cells could stay in a person’s system. Up to two years after the treatment, patients still had low levels of these special cells.

“That’s a major finding,” Rossi added. While the number of cells expressing those genes was too low to provide any therapeutic benefit, it’s “proof of principle” that gene therapy may provide long-term HIV treatment, he said. [The Scientist]

As a next step, researchers hope to implant a greater number of modified cells in patients, to see how well they can fight and how long their defenses hold.

 

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Zero-Energy Fridge Uses Gel to Preserve Food

Zero-Energy Fridge Uses Gel to Preserve Food

Written by Megan Treacy on 16/06/10

This one's a weird one, kids, but still cool.  A new concept for a zero-energy refrigerator uses an odor-free, gel-like substance to cool and preserve food items.
The Bio Robot Refrigerator was designed by Yuriy Dmitriev and is currently a semifinalist in Electrolux's Design Lab competition.  The Bio Robot has no motor, compressor or other electrical components, but it does contain a green biopolymer gel that uses luminescence to preserve food.
To store food, you press the item into the gel, which then envelopes it, creating a "separate capsule" for each product.
The designer highlights its benefits as being:  zero-energy and silent operation, four times smaller than a traditional fridge, but maximized storage space and the absence of doors allows horizontal or vertical placement and displays food in plain view.
I'm not sure how you'd go about cleaning this refrigerator, or how it'd handle storing, say, a pot of soup, but any zero-energy concept is OK by me.
via EcoFriend

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2013 Solar Storm Expected To Cause Trouble

(Telegraph) - National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years.

Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.

Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.

Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa's Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph....

read full story here

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NASA: Moon may have more water than the Great Lakes

NASA: Moon may have more water than the Great Lakes 

 

 

 

 

The fight to keep Great Lakes water in the Great Lakes isn’t just regional anymore. Things just got global, if not interplanetary.
That’s because new NASA-funded research suggests that the amount of water locked up in Earth’s longtime orbital nemesis — the moon — could exceed the volume of the Great Lakes.
So unless the region conserves every drop it can, I’ll have to listen to my grandkids prattle on about how “The Great Lakes were cool until their volume was marginalized by the discovery of hydroxyl indigenous to lunar apatite, a water-bearing mineral.”
For over 40 years we thought the moon was dry,” said Francis McCubbin of Carnegie and lead author of the report published in Monday’s Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “In our study we looked at hydroxyl, a compound with an oxygen atom bound with hydrogen, and apatite, a water-bearing mineral in the assemblage of minerals we examined in two Apollo samples and a lunar meteorite.

 

 

 

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Planes Punch Holes in Clouds and Create Rain

Look up in the sky near an airport and you might see some unusual cloud formations. The one on the left is called a “hole-punch,” and meteorologists have been speculating on the cause. They suggested that the holes may have been the result of shock waves from jets or warming of the air by jets.
Researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and elsewhere now say that the odd-shaped clouds can be caused by either turboprop or jet aircraft as they pass through a particular type of cloud layer. Their study appears in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
On average, about 7.8 percent of the Earth is covered by midlevel liquid-layer topped stratiform clouds (those are the ones that look like a flat layer of cloud). The liquid is super-cooled, at a temperature below freezing but still in liquid form. When a plane passes nearby, pressure changes from the spinning turboprop or air passing over wings can cool the liquid even further, turning it into ice. That ice becomes the “seed” for precipitation. More water droplets condense and freeze on these seeds, forming snow. If the air below is warm enough, if melts into rain. The same process is also responsible for canal clouds, which are just a long and thin versions of the hole-punch.
The cloud layer needed for this phenomenon is especially common in the Pacific Northwest and western Europe. I’m off to Seattle this weekend; I think I’ll have to check out the skies. (HT: Greg Laden)

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NASA Discovers 300 Planets outside Solar system

NASA has proclaimed that it has discovered as many as 300 planets surrounding the solar system. As per their estimations, these planets are as large as the size of Earth.

The observations have been made from Kepler orbiting telescope, which was placed in the orbit in March, last year. The spacecraft has identified the indications of a planet crossing nearly 700 stars.

The lead author of the current study, William Borucki, said that the existence of the planets has not been given any approval from other scientists, as there are rooms for mistakes in identifying them.

In order to confirm, more detailed studies are to be conducted by the team. Kepler has been noting the intensity of as many as 156,097 stars in Cygnus and Lyra. They are trying to identifying any reduction in their brightness due to the presence of any planet in front of them.
The planets discovered in the current study have been termed as `candidate planets'.
The report was compiled on May 25 and presented on June 14. Kepler researchers observed the stars and the spotted planets for nearly 33.5 days.
The team observed as many as 12,000 stars losing brightness with the progress in their motion.

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The future of summer: Air conditioners that are 90 percent more efficient

Air conditioners are a pain. They use an incredible amount of energy, reflected in incredibly high electricity bills in the summer months. But in some places, like Texas and Arizona, it’s hard to go without them. Now, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory may have an answer to the problem: A brand new air conditioning design that could make AC units 90 percent more efficient than they are today.
This is not just a new spin on the traditional design. NREL has ditched major components of today’s AC units, including their condensers and compressors. It generates colder air by evaporating water off a wet surface with a built-in fan. There is a desiccant included to make sure the air is dry.
In addition to slashing the amount of energy needed to run a typical AC unit, the NREL model, called the DEVap, also eliminates the need for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), toxic chemicals used in many of today’s air conditioners that pollute the atmosphere.
Previously, this evaporative air conditioning process only worked in dry, hot climates, because the cool air generated would otherwise contain too much moisture. The addition of the desiccants has made it functional in a range of climates, even very humid environments, NREL says.
The challenge now will be to make the NREL air conditioner cost competitive with those already on the market. It might be as many as five summers before consumers can get buy the units to cool their houses, the laboratory says. It will be licensing the deign for commercial distribution.
Steeply reducing the amount of energy sucked by air conditioners could have a major impact on overall energy use in the U.S. and abroad. After all, air conditioners account for 5 percent of energy used in the U.S. every year.

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Seventh Graders Find a Cave on Mars

Seventh Graders Find a Cave on Mars

June 17, 2010










 
Enlarge

Sixteen seventh-grade students at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., found the Martian pit feature at the center of the superimposed red square in this image while participating in a program that enables students to use the camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

(PhysOrg.com) -- California middle school students using the camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter have found lava tubes with one pit that appears to be a skylight to a cave.

They went looking for lava tubes on Mars -- and found what may be a hole in the roof of a Martian cave.
The 16 students in Dennis Mitchell's 7th-grade science class at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, California, chose to study lava tubes, a common volcanic feature on Earth and Mars. It was their class project for the Mars Student Imaging Program (MSIP), a component of ASU's Mars Education Program, which is run out of the Mars Space Flight Facility on the Tempe campus.
The imaging program involves upper elementary to college students in Mars research by having them develop a geological question about Mars to answer. Then the students actually command a Mars-orbiting camera to take an image to answer their question. Since MSIP began in 2004, more than 50,000 students have participated to varying extents.
"The students developed a research project focused on finding the most common locations of lava tubes on Mars," says Mitchell. "Do they occur most often near the summit of a volcano, on its flanks, or the plains surrounding it?"
To answer the question, the students examined more than 200 images of Mars taken with the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), an instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. Philip Christensen, a Regents' Professor of geological sciences in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, is the instrument's designer and principal investigator. The students chose for their targeted THEMIS image (plus a secondary backup image) areas on Pavonis Mons volcano that had yet to be photographed by THEMIS at highest resolution (18 meters, or 59 feet, per pixel).
On their two targeted images the students found lava tubes, as they had hoped. And on the backup image, they also found a small, round black spot. Many Martian lava tubes are marked by aligned chains of collapse pits, which typically have flat floors and sloping sides. The spot they students found, however, appears to have vertical sides.
Such features made a stir in the news in 2007, when Glen Cushing, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist, published a paper showing several Martian examples, which had been located using the heat-sensing capability of THEMIS. He argued that these holes were anomalous as compared to the usual chain pit crater, being smaller and resembling a relatively straight-sided shaft going down into the ground.


Cushing proposed that these anomalous pit craters are "skylights" — places where a small part of the roof of a cave or a lava tube has collapsed, opening the subsurface to the sky. They typically appear cooler than the ground surface by day, but warmer than it by night. This is exactly what would be expected, given that Martian surface temperatures have a large diurnal range, while subsurface temperatures hold fairly even.
"This pit is certainly new to us," Cushing told the students. "And it is only the second one known to be associated with Pavonis Mons." He estimated it to be approximately 190 by 160 meters (620 x 520 feet) wide and 115 meters (380 feet) deep at least.
In addition, he said, the spot appears clear against the background surface of Pavonis Mons. "It sticks out like a sore thumb in THEMIS predawn thermal observations."
The students have submitted their site as a candidate for imaging by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. HiRISE can image the surface at about 30 centimeters (12 inches) per pixel, which may allow a look inside the hole in the ground.

"The Mars Student Imaging Program is certainly one of the greatest educational programs ever developed," says Mitchell. "It gives the students a good understanding of the way research is conducted and how that research can be important for the scientific community. This has been a wonderful experience."

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Human Race "Will Be Extinct Within 100 Years," Claims Leading Scientist

Human Race "Will Be Extinct Within 100 Years," Claims Leading Scientist

Professor Frank Fenner has warned that the human race can not surviveAs the scientist who helped eradicate smallpox he certainly know a thing or two about extinction.


And now Professor Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, has predicted that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years.


He has claimed that the human race will be unable to survive a population explosion and 'unbridled consumption.'


Fenner told The Australian newspaper that 'homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years.'


'A lot of other animals will, too,' he added.


'It's an irreversible situation. I think it's too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.'


Since humans entered an unofficial scientific period known as the Anthropocene - the time since industrialisation - we have had an effect on the planet that rivals any ice age or comet impact, he said.


Fenner, 95, has won awards for his work in helping eradicate the variola virus that causes smallpox and has written or co-written 22 books.


He announced the eradication of the disease to the World Health Assembly in 1980 and it is still regarded as one of the World Health Organisation's greatest achievements.


He was also heavily involved in helping to control Australia's myxomatosis problem in rabbits.


Last year official UN figures estimated that the world's population is currently 6.8 billion. It is predicted to exceed seven billion by the end of 2011.


Fenner blames the onset of climate change for the human race's imminent demise.


He said: 'We'll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island.


'Climate change is just at the very beginning. But we're seeing remarkable changes in the weather already.'


'The Aborigines showed that without science and the production of carbon dioxide and global warming, they could survive for 40,000 or 50,000 years.


'But the world can't. The human species is likely to go the same way as many of the species that we've seen disappear.'

A map of the world from an atlas which concentrates on population rather than land mass released last year. The Earth's population is due to hit 7bn by next year.

Retired professor Stephen Boyden, a colleague of Professor Fenner, said that while there was deep pessimism among some ecologists, others had a more optimistic view.


'Frank may well be right, but some of us still harbour the hope that there will come about an awareness of the situation and, as a result the revolutionary changes necessary to achieve ecological sustainability.'


Simon Ross, the vice-chairman of the Optimum Population Trust, said: 'Mankind is facing real challenges including climate change, loss of bio-diversity and unprecedented growth in population.'


Professor Fenner's chilling prediction echoes recent comments by Prince Charles who last week warned of 'monumental problems' if the world's population continues to grow at such a rapid pace.


And it comes after Professor Nicholas Boyle of Cambridge University said that a 'Doomsday' moment will take place in 2014 - and will determine whether the 21st century is full of violence and poverty or will be peaceful and prosperous.


in the last 500 years there has been a cataclysmic 'Great Event' of international significance at the start of each century, he claimed.


In 2006 another esteemed academic, Professor James Lovelock, warned that the world's population may sink as low as 500 million over the next century due to global warming.


He claimed that any attempts to tackle climate change will not be able to solve the problem, merely buy us time.

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