Thursday, January 30, 2014

Meet Borophene, a Two-Dimensional Nanomaterial that Could Rival Graphene

Borophene is made of boron atoms, arranged in a flat disk with a hexagonal hole. Image via Wang Lab/Brown University

After all the hubbub around graphene, the race is on to find more wonder materials—ones that might be even more promising than the Nobel Prize-honoured, 2D carbon lattice.

Earlier this month we reported on a type of sodium bismuthate that had earned itself the nickname “3D graphene” and pointed toward a future of hard drives with ten times their current capacity. Now, another long-theorized nanomaterial looks set to take on graphene on the 2D plane: borophene.

To be clear, borophene hasn’t actually been made yet. But physical chemists at Brown University have made one unit of a boron cluster, called B36, and detailed its interesting structure on a supercomputer. The university claims this demonstrates “that a boron-based competitor to graphene is a very real possibility.”

Boron is next to carbon (which graphene is made of) in the periodic table, but no one has previously demonstrated experimentally how it could be arranged in a similar one-atom-thick sheet.
Professor Lai-Sheng Wang and lead author Zachary Piazza headed up a team that assembled experimental evidence of how borophene might work, and published their findings in Nature Communications.

Graphene is well-known for its honeycomb, or “chicken wire” structure. “However, boron cannot form graphene-like structures with a honeycomb hexagonal framework because of its electron deficiency,” the researchers explained. “Computational studies suggest that extended boron sheets with partially filled hexagonal holes are stable; however, there has been no experimental evidence for such atom-thin boron nanostructures.”

Until now; they showed a two-dimensional boron lattice can be made out of a triangular pattern with hexagonal holes. Their results, they wrote, present “the first experimental evidence that single-atom layer boron sheets with hexagonal vacancies are potentially viable.”

So what does it mean? They only physically made one of the symmetrical 36-boron-atom clusters, not yet a whole graphene-like sheet. But if this precursor structure could be extended into borophene, it’s expected to be a material to rival graphene in terms of the qualities it will possess. It would be strong and two-dimensional, and possibly even more conductive than graphene. As CleanTech reports, “That quality means that borophene could find itself being of more use, in some regards, than graphene.”

Before it can steal graphene’s crown, of course, it actually has to get made. But thanks to this research, that prospect is looking ever more feasible.

When Homeschool Parents Call Other Parents “Selfish”

January 30, 2014 By Libby Anne Leave a Comment

I was raised in the homeschool movement. I grew up on its ideas and its rhetoric. And yet, I send Bobby to daycare and Sally to preschool and will be sending both to public school when they are old enough. This runs smack up against the ideals of good parenting I was raised with, and in the eyes of some homeschool parents, it de facto makes me selfish. I was reminded of this by a facebook comment by a homeschool parent I noticed in the discussion of Virginia’s HJ 92.

I highlight this comment because it so fully encapsulates everything I heard growing up about parents who send their children to public school. I learned that public school is “free babysitting” and that parents who send their kids to public school can’t wait to “get rid of” their kids. And there was the same derision about parents freaking out over snow days and delays—were they really so eager to shuffle their kids off on someone else? What was their problem! They must hate their children! I fully agreed with this reasoning.

I now am that parent.

We’ve been having delays for the weather, and it sucks. Sean and I look at each other and begin to haggle. “How important is your meeting? Can you miss your meeting so that I can make my class, or should I skip class?” School delays are difficult not because we can’t “get rid of” our kids sooner, they’re difficult because we have work, and when there is a delay one of us has to skip work. Snow days are worse. We’ve had days where we shift the kids back and forth all day, taking turns so that we can both get our most important things done—the things we can’t skip. And even for families with a stay at home parent, delays throw off the schedule, and enough of them make everyone cranky.

And now I am horrified at the things I used to think, to say.

But even as I am now horrified that I used to deride parents like myself for being so annoyed at delays and snow days, I’m absolutely boggled that fully grown homeschool parents do so. When I thought those things, I was a child. I didn’t know what it was like to be a parent with so many responsibilities to handle. But the homeschool parents who say those things? They know that most parents work. They know that things like delays and snow days throw of people’s schedules and sometimes mean taking an unpaid day off of work or missing important meetings or scheduled appointments. They have no excuse.

But it’s more than this. It’s also this all-pervading idea that parents who send their children to school are just sending them for “free babysitting,” and that anyone who sends their children to school must simply not be able to stand being around their children. This idea that the parents who de facto win the parent of the year award are the ones who are home with their kids homeschooling 24/7, that parents who send their kids away for 6 or 8 hours a day must be bad parents.

So let me break this down for them really simply.

Most parents work. While there are stay at home parents who send their kids to school, most parents work. In 2010, over 70% of all families with children under 18 were headed by either two working parents or a single parent. Parents don’t generally send their children off to school and then spend those hours watching Netflix. Most parents spend those hours working, and even those who don’t have things to do—errands to run, laundry to fold, etc. And yes, some parents work when they technically could afford to stay home, but there are quite a few good reasons for that—things like putting aside money for the future, trying to provide their children with the best childhood possible, or building a resume toward the future.

Parents generally send their kids to school to learn. Parents really do send their children to school to get an education, not because they don’t like them and can’t stand to get rid of them. School is not “free babysitting.” I dare any homeschool parent to say that to a school teacher’s face. Public schools may not be perfect, but a lot of them are very good, and even those that have their problems generally do manage to provide at least some education. Most parents also see the school experience itself as a positive thing for their children, including social activities and extracurriculars and the feel of community. There are a whole plethora of good reasons for sending children to school that have nothing to do with wanting to get rid of your kids because you can’t stand them.

But even as parents generally send their children to school both to get their children an education and because they themselves have to work, it’s important to bear in mind that wanting a break is healthy.
This idea that if you really love your children you will want to spend twenty-four hours a day with them seven days a week is not only a lie, it is also toxic. If you are a parent, you need time off from your children, and they need time off from you—and this is not a bad thing. It is natural and good. I love my husband Sean dearly, and yet, he and I still go to work each day, headed in separate directions. To date, I have never heard anyone accuse me of not loving Sean because we part ways every day instead of spending every second of every day together.

I am in a moms group on facebook, and every so often a stay-at-home mom of small children posts there saying she that is about to lose her sanity, asking for someone to tell her it gets better, or considering taking a part time job so she can have a break from the kids. She loves her kids dearly, she explains, but she’s going crazy at home with them and needs time to recharge. And then everyone in the group offers her support and encouragement, because we understand. She is not a bad mother, she is just overwhelmed. Would homeschool parents like the one who left the comment at the beginning of this post tell mothers like this that they are selfish, unloving, bad mothers for wanting a break? I certainly hope not.

It’s also as though homeschool parents who trash talk public school parents as selfish for sending their children to school away all day forget that even they need—and take—breaks. I know my own homeschooling mother did. When I was very little, she would go shopping with a good friend at night after the children were in bed. She and her friend would go up and down the aisles at Walmart, enjoying the bliss of being alone together—just them, chatting and catching up. Sometimes they would stay out for hours, getting home well past midnight, tired but refreshed. When I was older, mom would call up another homeschool mom and they would go out for a lengthy lunch together at Olive Garden or somewhere similar while we older children fed the younger ones sandwiches and carrots and put them down for their nap. Our homeschool community even held “moms’ night out” activities for mothers like mine, with tea and chatting.

This idea that parents who send their children off to public school are t he selfish ones also ignores the fact that the choice to homeschool itself can, for some parents, be a selfish one. There are parents out there who homeschool for bad reasons, and who don’t put their children’s needs and interests first. Being a homeschool parent does not de facto make one selfless—and I have seen the idea that it does get in the way of efforts to prevent abusive parents from using homeschooling to isolate their children and hide their abuse—because, homeschool parents tell me, abusive parents would never homeschool. Homeschooling involves being home with your kids all day! Abusive parents would do the easy, lazy, selfish thing, and ship their kids off to public school each day!

Are there parents who send their children to public school who are selfish and continually put themselves first at the expense of their children? Certainly—and there are homeschool parents for whom the same is true. Both homeschool parents and public school parents can be selfish and uncaring, and both homeschool parents and public school parents can be devoted and loving.
Creating a “homeschool parents good / public school parents selfish” dichotomy helps no one.

Stop Legitimizing the Loony Anti-GMO Voices

By Keith Kloor | January 30, 2014 4:56 pm

A hypothetical:

You are a journalist who has written a great deal about the anti-vaccine movement and you have been asked to participate in a panel on the safety of childhood vaccines. This panel was organized by professional medical and health journalists.

Also on this hypothetical panel would be a prominent scientist, such as Paul Offit, who has authored numerous books rebutting myths and misinformation about vaccines (and more recently, alternative medicine practices). The third panelist would be a persistent anti-vaccine activist, perhaps someone from the group Age of Autism.

I’m guessing that Paul Offit and the science journalist (say, Seth Mnookin) would not want this panel to be derailed or hijacked by an anti-vaccine activist spouting loads of misinformation.

For this reason, maybe they would decline to participate in such a forum. I’m only speculating.

I raise this hypothetical because I just turned down an opportunity to participate in an upcoming panel on GMOs. The organizer initially asked if I would moderate a panel that included scientists and advocates “pro- and con-GMO.” I expressed interest after hearing that the objective was “to foster a lively and factual discussion on GMO’s with a well-rounded panel.”

And then I learned that Jeffrey Smith was one of the invited panelists.

Just to be clear: I am in favor of a robust discussion on any topic, especially one with a diversity of perspectives. (For the anti-GMO side, I suggested the organizer invite representatives from the Union of Concerned Scientists.) But I don’t think that someone with fringe views and assertions wholly unsupported by science can help “foster a lively and factual discussion on GMOs.” And make no mistake, Smith is as fringe as they come. As I have previously discussed here, he has asserted that autism and Alzheimer’s disease, among many other medical problems, can be attributed to GMOs. Did I mention that he has no expertise?

That Smith has become a go-to person for the anti-GMO movement speaks as much to his marketing skills as it does to the kind of forums he is regularly invited to and the lack of vetting by those (who should know better) who invite him to participate in otherwise well-meaning events. It’s unfortunate (but not surprising) that Dr. Oz has irresponsibly given Smith a huge forum (twice!). Science-minded organizers who confer legitimacy on Smith with speaking invitations should ask themselves if they would similarly invite anti-vaccine cranks to expound on the health and safety of vaccines.

CATEGORIZED UNDER: biotechnology, genetically modified foods, GMOs, science communication, science journalism, select

MORE ABOUT: anti-GMO movement, anti-vaccine movement, biotechnology, GMOs, Jeffrey Smith, science journalism, vaccines

Vestas says record powerful wind turbine in operation

A photo taken on June 29, 2012 shows a Vestas wind turbine near Baekmarksbro in Jutland

Danish wind technology giant Vestas said on Thursday that the world's most powerful wind turbine has begun operating, sweeping an area equivalent to three football fields. [DJS -- that's almost three or four per sq. kilometer of space the turbines take, not to mention the pollution in a poor part of southern China where all the "dirty and toxic" industrial and mining work is done to build them -- but what do we care about China?]

A prototype for the group's first V164 8 megawatt offshore wind turbine has successfully produced its first electricity, the Aarhus-based group said.

"We expect that it will reduce the cost of energy for our customers," spokesman Michael Zarin said.[Only if you don't count the massive tax breaks and direct subsidies they get -- nobody pays for that, right?]

"You can have fewer turbines to have the same amount of electricity. ... You can save a lot of the expense on things like the foundations, the cabling or the substation," he added.[To produce the same amount of electricity as what? A 1,000,000 megawatt standard nuclear or fossil plant? I -- well, there's just this thing called lying, which you can away with here because so many of us are so scientifically illiterate, and too lazy to check facts before rousing up opinions.]

The 8 megawatt turbine, which will be the flagship product for a joint venture between Vestas and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, has the capacity to produce electricity for 7,500 European households.[Let's see. 7500 households is a very small town. A single, decent sized city -- we're not even close to the entire country -- will have some 100 times that many households, plus industry and business of all sides, and public transportation. So we will need 100-200 of these behemoths, using up to a total 25-60 sq kilometers worth of land, or a square 5-8 kilometers on side. Actually more, because you will need space between them. With all that spare land Europe has, especially kilometers and kilometers of flat, windy, unpopulated country, this should be no problem. Even when you scale it to national and continental levels. Oh, and those poor Chinese workers don't mind dying and suffering at the 1-200 times rate -- much more, in the end -- they did for one turbine. And once again, with all that infinite taxpayer money, no problem with finances.

It's been installed on land at the Danish National Test Centre for Large Wind Turbines in Oesterild in northwestern Denmark. Vestas said serial production could begin in 2015 if there is enough demand.

The most powerful onshore wind turbine on the market is currently the 7.5 megawatt E-126 by Germany's Enercon, while the largest offshore turbines are the 6 megawatt models produced by Germany's Siemens and France's Alstom.[Interesting, Germany is. Although lauded for the greatest use of wind power and other "recyclables", they are still, year after year, among the top CO2 emitters of the West, especially per capita, because of all the coal and oil they have to burn to sustain their lifestyle and security. Even with their nuclear plants helping -- I know, they're all so dangerous, we have to get rid of them! -- as the people who know nothing about the history, science, and technology of nuclear will holler; even those don't help much. Perhaps trying to support thousand of utterly stupendous, economically unsustainable turbines will collapse the German -- and then European -- economy, and they can make work tearing down the plants that actually served her electricity needs. Brilliant!]

Competition in the sector is fierce: South Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries installed a 7 megawatt offshore wind prototype turbine in Scotland last year.

France's Areva and Spain's Gamesa said last week they were holding talks on combining their offshore wind turbine activities, and that they planned to accelerate development of an 8 megawatt turbine.

Explore further: Spain launches first offshore wind turbine

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-vestas-powerful-turbine.html#jCp

PubChemRDF is Launched

PubChem Blog

News, updates and tutorials about PubChem

Posted on January 30, 2014 by PubChem by Peter Murray-Rust ‏@petermurrayrust

http://pubchemblog.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2014/01/30/pubchemrdf-is-launched/

Introducing PubChemRDF!
The PubChemRDF project encodes PubChem information using the Resource Description Framework (RDF). One of the aims of the PubChemRDF project is to help researchers work with PubChem data on local computing resources using semantic web technologies. Another aim is to harness ontological frameworks to help facilitate PubChem data sharing, analysis, and integration with resources external to the National Center for Biotechnology (NCBI) and across scientific domains.

What is RDF?
RDF stands for resource description framework and constitutes a family of

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specifications for data interchange on the Web. RDF breaks down knowledge into machine readable discrete pieces, called “triples.” Each “triple” is organized as a trio of “subject-predicate-object.” For example, in the phrase “atorvastatin may treat hypercholesterolemia,” the subject is “atorvastatin,”

the predicate is “may treat,” and the object is “hypercholesterolemia.” RDF uses a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) to name each part of the “subject-predicate-object” triple. A URI looks just like a typical web URL.

RDF is a core part of semantic web standards. As an extension of the existing World Wide Web, the semantic web attempts to make it easier for users to find, share, and combine information. Semantic web leverages the following technologies: Extensible Markup Language (XML),

which provides syntax for RDF; Web Ontology Language (OWL), which extends the ability of RDF to encode information; Resource Description Framework (RDF), which expresses knowledge; and RDF query language (SPARQL), which enables query and manipulation of RDF content.

How can PubChemRDF help your research?
PubChem users have frequently expressed interest in having a downloadable, schema-less database. PubChemRDF enables the NoSQL database access and query of PubChem databases.

Using PubChemRDF, one can download the desired RDF formatted data files from the PubChem FTP site, import them into a triplestore, and query using a SPARQL query interface. There are a number of open-source or commercial triplestores, such as Apache Jena TDB and OpenLink Virtuoso (a list of triplestores can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triplestore).
Other than triplestores, PubChemRDF data can also be loaded into RDF-aware graph databases such as Neo4j, and the graph traversal algorithms can be used to query the RDF graphs. At last but not least, the ontological representation of PubChem knowledge base allows logical inference, such as forward/backward chaining.

The RDF data on the PubChem FTP site is arranged in such a way that you only need to download the type of information in which you are interested, so you can avoid downloading parts of PubChem data you will not use. For example, if you are just interested in computed chemical properties, you only need to download PubChemRDF data in compound descriptor subdomain. In addition to bulk download, PubChemRDF also provides programmatic data access through REST-full interface.

Where can you learn more about this?
To get an overview of the PubChemRDF project, please view this presentation. To learn more about detailed aspects of PubChemRDF and how to use it, please view this presentation. The PubChemRDF Release Notes provide additional technical information about the project.

Additional blog posts will follow on PubChemRDF project topics, including: the FTP site layout, the REST-full interface, and ways to utilize PubChemRDF for research purposes including using SPARQL queries.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Extending Fermat to Other Powers

January 29'th, David Strumfels, A Medley of Potpourri blog

We all know Fermat's famous Last Theorem, solved almost 20 years ago (!) by Andrew Wiles (using mathematical techniques the Fermat did not have, so his proof remains a mystery to history). The theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ for any integer value of n greater than two. Examples: 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2, and 12^2 + 5^2 = 13^2.

I'd been toying around with variations of combining various integers raised to various powers for some time (when you enjoy doing something you don't notice how much time), when I observed that:
3^3 + 4^3 + 5^3 = 6^3. In other words, here I had found (undoubtedly not for the first time in history) a group of four positive integers, a, b, and c, can satisfy the equation a^n + b^n + c^n = d^n whenever n = three.

But does Fermat's modified Theorem apply here too? Can n never exceed three? Could a similar method be used to prove this Theorem? And furthermore, does the fact of squares and cubes having these relationships, mean they keep on going up the line, infinitely. E.g., can five integers, raised to the fourth power, be found with this relationship? And on and on? (The 5/4 set is false for 2,3,4,5,6, if you are curious; try it.)

Now I am no mathematician, but a little math instinct tells me something interesting is going on here. A very large theorem, encompassing Fermat's and our third power analogue and possibly beyond feels ... well, like a genuine mathematical conjecture at least, if I use the word correctly. First, I shall look for a fourth power analogue, for if it doesn't exist then I am blowing smoke (I have to assume it will be found, if at all, with fairly small integers, as with the second and third powers.)

I will work on this, and feel free to give it your all too, if you want to. That's all for now.

David J. Strumfels

Abuse of Statistics in Obscuring ~2000-2013 Warming Plateau

David J Strumfels Again, note the plateau over the last 10-12 years. For that period we are told and shown that this decade+ is the hottest period for centuries, and is the result of over a centuries' worth of warming. Almost any peak in it, like 2013, 2010, or 2005 will be among the hottest years over those centuries, but just due to statistics. Clearly, from ~2000 onwards however, the warming has plateaued for some reason, possibly a ~30 year cycle in global temperature (this can also be seen 1880-1910 and 1940-1975 cooling periods, interspersed among stronger warming trends). It is nowhere near a straight warming line throughout the last century and into this, although AGWs and others often try to fit lines. It has been mathematical sign wave combined with a straight line describes the warming much better -- and even predicted the (albeit, perhaps temporary) hiatus in worming in the 21'st century; all supportive of this particular model (also, the straight line, starting at 1975-80 would predict a world today ~0.2C warmer, while the sine-modified line is right on target).

Wriiten in response to:

Asteroid Initiatives @AsteroidEnergy 12m
RT @EarthVitalSigns 2013 global surface temp tied for 7th warmest year on record http://1.usa.gov/Mg6Pe7 ‪#‎NASA‬ pic.twitter.com/aygxwowGA0

climate.nasa.gov

Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. Visualizes current measurements of carbon dioxide concentration, global surface temperature, Arctic sea ice extent, Antarctic and Greenland land ice extent, and sea level rise.

First Weather Map of Brown Dwarf

ESO’s VLT charts surface of nearest brown dwarf

29 January 2014

ESO's Very Large Telescope has been used to create the first ever map of the weather on the surface of the nearest brown dwarf to Earth. An international team has made a chart of the dark and light features on WISE J104915.57-531906.1B, which is informally known as Luhman 16B and is one of two recently discovered brown dwarfs forming a pair only six light-years from the Sun. The new results are being published in the 30 January 2014 issue of the journal Nature.

Brown dwarfs fill the gap between giant gas planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, and faint cool stars. They do not contain enough mass to initiate nuclear fusion in their cores and can only glow feebly at infrared wavelengths of light. The first confirmed brown dwarf was only found twenty years ago and only a few hundred of these elusive objects are known.

The closest brown dwarfs to the Solar System form a pair called Luhman 16AB [1] that lies just six light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail). This pair is the third closest system to the Earth, after Alpha Centauri and Barnard's Star, but it was only discovered in early 2013. The fainter component, Luhman 16B, had already been found to be changing slightly in brightness every few hours as it rotated — a clue that it might have marked surface features.

Now astronomers have used the power of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) not just to image these brown dwarfs, but to map out dark and light features on the surface of Luhman 16B.

Ian Crossfield (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany), the lead author of the new paper, sums up the results: “Previous observations suggested that brown dwarfs might have mottled surfaces, but now we can actually map them. Soon, we will be able to watch cloud patterns form, evolve, and dissipate on this brown dwarf — eventually, exometeorologists may be able to predict whether a visitor to Luhman 16B could expect clear or cloudy skies.”

To map the surface the astronomers used a clever technique. They observed the brown dwarfs using the CRIRES instrument on the VLT. This allowed them not just to see the changing brightness as Luhman 16B rotated, but also to see whether dark and light features were moving away from, or towards the observer. By combining all this information they could recreate a map of the dark and light patches of the surface.

The atmospheres of brown dwarfs are very similar to those of hot gas giant exoplanets, so by studying comparatively easy-to-observe brown dwarfs [2] astronomers can also learn more about the atmospheres of young, giant planets — many of which will be found in the near future with the new SPHERE instrument that will be installed on the VLT in 2014.

Crossfield ends on a personal note: “Our brown dwarf map helps bring us one step closer to the goal of understanding weather patterns in other solar systems. From an early age I was brought up to appreciate the beauty and utility of maps. It's exciting that we're starting to map objects out beyond the Solar System!”

Notes

[1] This pair was discovered by the American astronomer Kevin Luhman on images from the WISE infrared survey satellite. It is formally known as WISE J104915.57-531906.1, but a shorter form was suggested as being much more convenient. As Luhman had already discovered fifteen double stars the name Luhman 16 was adopted. Following the usual conventions for naming double stars, Luhman 16A is the brighter of the two components, the secondary is named Luhman 16B and the pair is referred to as Luhman 16AB.

[2] Hot Jupiter exoplanets lie very close to their parent stars, which are much brighter. This makes it almost impossible to observe the faint glow from the planet, which is swamped by starlight. But in the case of brown dwarfs there is nothing to overwhelm the dim glow from the object itself, so it is much easier to make sensitive measurements.

More information

This research was presented in a paper, “A Global Cloud Map of the Nearest Known Brown Dwarf”, by Ian Crossfield et al. to appear in the journal Nature.

The team is composed of I. J. M. Crossfield (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy [MPIA], Heidelberg, Germany), B. Biller (MPIA; Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom), J. Schlieder (MPIA), N. R. Deacon (MPIA), M. Bonnefoy (MPIA; IPAG, Grenoble, France), D. Homeier (CRAL-ENS, Lyon, France), F. Allard (CRAL-ENS), E. Buenzli (MPIA), Th. Henning (MPIA), W. Brandner (MPIA), B. Goldman (MPIA) and T. Kopytova (MPIA; International Max-Planck Research School for Astronomy and Cosmic Physics at the University of Heidelberg, Germany).

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world's largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning the 39-metre European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world's biggest eye on the sky”.

Contacts

Ian Crossfield
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
Heidelberg, Germany
Tel: +49 6221 528 406
Email: ianc@mpia.de

Richard Hook
ESO Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: rhook@eso.org

Is Industrial Hemp The Ultimate Energy Crop?

By Thomas Prade, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Bioenergy is currently the fastest growing source of renewable energy. Cultivating energy crops on arable land can decrease dependency on depleting fossil resources and it can mitigate climate change.
But some biofuel crops have bad environmental effects: they use too much water, displace people and create more emissions than they save. This has led to a demand for high-yielding energy crops with low environmental impact. Industrial hemp is said to be just that.

Enthusiasts have been promoting the use of industrial hemp for producing bioenergy for a long time now. With its potentially high biomass yield and its suitability to fit into existing crop rotations, hemp could not only complement but exceed other available energy crops.
Hemp, Cannabis sativa, originates from western Asia and India and from there spread around the globe. For centuries, fibres were used to make ropes, sails, cloth and paper, while the seeds were used for protein-rich food and feed. Interest in hemp declined when other fibres such as sisal and jute replaced hemp in the 19th century.

Abuse of hemp as a drug led to the prohibition of its cultivation by the United Nations in 1961. When prohibition was revoked in the 1990s in the European Union, Canada and later in Australia, industrially used hemp emerged again.

This time, the car industry’s interest in light, natural fibre promoted its use. For such industrial use, modern varieties with insignificant content of psychoactive compounds are grown. Nonetheless, industrial hemp cultivation is still prohibited in some industrialised countries like Norway and the USA.

Energy use of industrial hemp is today very limited. There are few countries in which hemp has been commercialised as an energy crop. Sweden is one, and has a small commercial production of hemp briquettes. Hemp briquettes are more expensive than wood-based briquettes, but sell reasonably well on regional markets.

Large-scale energy uses of hemp have also been suggested.

Biogas production from hemp could compete with production from maize, especially in cold climate regions such as Northern Europe and Canada. Ethanol production is possible from the whole hemp plant, and biodiesel can be produced from the oil pressed from hemp seeds. Biodiesel production from hemp seed oil has been shown to overall have a much lower environmental impact than fossil diesel.

Indeed, the environmental benefits of hemp have been praised highly, since hemp cultivation requires very limited amounts of pesticide. Few insect pests are known to exist in hemp crops and fungal diseases are rare.

Since hemp plants shade the ground quickly after sowing, they can outgrow weeds, a trait interesting especially for organic farmers. Still, a weed-free seedbed is required. And without nitrogen fertilisation hemp won´t grow as vigorously as is often suggested.

So, as with any other crop, it takes good agricultural practice to grow hemp right.

*Hemp has a broad climate range and has been cultivated successfully from as far north as Iceland to warmer, more tropical regions. Flickr: Gregory Jordan*

Being an annual crop, hemp functions very well in crop rotations. Here it may function as a break crop, reducing the occurance of pests, particularly in cereal production. Farmers interested in cultivating energy crops are often hesitant about tying fields into the production of perennial energy crops such as willow. Due to the high self-tolerance of hemp, cultivation over two to three years in the same field does not lead to significant biomass yield losses.

Small-scale production of hemp briquettes has also proven economically feasible. However, using whole-crop hemp (or any other crop) for energy production is not the overall solution.
Before producing energy from the residues it is certainly more environmentally friendly to use fibres, oils or other compounds of hemp. Even energy in the fibre products can be used when the products become waste.

Recycling plant nutrients to the field, such as in biogas residue, can contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions from crop production.

Sustainable bioenergy production is not easy, and a diversity of crops will be needed. Industrial hemp is not the ultimate energy crop. Still, if cultivated on good soil with decent fertilisation, hemp can certainly be an environmentally sound crop for bioenergy production and for other industrial uses as well.

Thomas Prade receives funding from the Swedish Farmers’ Foundation for Agricultural Research, the EU commission, the Skåne Regional Council and Partnership Alnarp.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.

Read the original article.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Study examines the development of children’s prelife reasoning

Boston University / January 28, 2014 / Cognition

Most people, regardless of race, religion or culture, believe they are immortal. That is, people believe that part of themselves–some indelible core, soul or essence–will transcend the body’s death and live forever. But what is this essence? Why do we believe it survives? And why is this belief so unshakable?

A new Boston University study led by postdoctoral fellow Natalie Emmons and published in the January 16, 2014 online edition of Child Development sheds light on these profound questions by examining children’s ideas about “prelife,” the time before conception. By interviewing 283 children from two distinct cultures in Ecuador, Emmons’s research suggests that our bias toward immortality is a part of human intuition that naturally emerges early in life. And the part of us that is eternal, we believe, is not our skills or ability to reason, but rather our hopes, desires and emotions. We are, in fact, what we feel.

Emmons’ study fits into a growing body of work examining the cognitive roots of religion. Although religion is a dominant force across cultures, science has made little headway in examining whether religious belief–such as the human tendency to believe in a creator–may actually be hard-wired into our brains.

“This work shows that it’s possible for science to study religious belief,” said Deborah Kelemen, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Boston University and co-author of the paper. “At the same time, it helps us understand some universal aspects of human cognition and the structure of the mind.”

Most studies on immortality or “eternalist” beliefs have focused on people’s views of the afterlife. Studies have found that both children and adults believe that bodily needs, such as hunger and thirst, end when people die, but mental capacities, such as thinking or feeling sad, continue in some form.
But these afterlife studies leave one critical question unanswered: where do these beliefs come from? Researchers have long suspected that people develop ideas about the afterlife through cultural exposure, like television or movies, or through religious instruction. But perhaps, thought Emmons, these ideas of immortality actually emerge from our intuition. Just as children learn to talk without formal instruction, maybe they also intuit that part of their mind could exist apart from their body.
Emmons tackled this question by focusing on “prelife,” the period before conception, since few cultures have beliefs or views on the subject. “By focusing on prelife, we could see if culture causes these beliefs to appear, or if they appear spontaneously,” said Emmons.

“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” said Paul Bloom, a Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale who was not involved with the study. “One persistent belief is that children learn these ideas through school or church. That’s what makes the prelife research so cool. It’s a very clever way to get at children’s beliefs on a topic where they aren’t given answers ahead of time.”

Emmons interviewed children from an indigenous Shuar village in the Amazon Basin of Ecuador. She chose the group because they have no cultural prelife beliefs, and she suspected that indigenous children, who have regular exposure to birth and death through hunting and farming, would have a more rational, biologically-based view of the time before they were conceived. For comparison, she also interviewed children from an urban area near Quito, Ecuador. Most of the urban children were Roman Catholic, a religion that teaches that life begins only at conception. If cultural influences were paramount, reasoned Emmons, both urban and indigenous children should reject the idea of life before birth.

Emmons showed the children drawings of a baby, a young woman, and the same woman while pregnant, then asked a series of questions about the child’s abilities, thoughts and emotions during each period: as babies, in the womb, and before conception.

The results were surprising. Both groups gave remarkably similar answers, despite their radically different cultures. The children reasoned that their bodies didn’t exist before birth, and that they didn’t have the ability to think or remember. However, both groups also said that their emotions and desires existed before they were born. For example, while children generally reported that they didn’t have eyes and couldn’t see things before birth, they often reported being happy that they would soon meet their mother, or sad that they were apart from their family.

“They didn’t even realize they were contradicting themselves,” said Emmons. “Even kids who had biological knowledge about reproduction still seemed to think that they had existed in some sort of eternal form. And that form really seemed to be about emotions and desires.”

Why would humans have evolved this seemingly universal belief in the eternal existence of our emotions? Emmons said that this human trait might be a by-product of our highly developed social reasoning. “We’re really good at figuring out what people are thinking, what their emotions are, what their desires are,” she said. We tend to see people as the sum of their mental states, and desires and emotions may be particularly helpful when predicting their behavior. Because this ability is so useful and so powerful, it flows over into other parts of our thinking. We sometimes see connections where potentially none exist, we hope there’s a master plan for the universe, we see purpose when there is none, and we imagine that a soul survives without a body.

These ideas, while nonscientific, are natural and deep-seated. “I study these things for a living but even find myself defaulting to them. I know that my mind is a product of my brain but I still like to think of myself as something independent of my body,” said Emmons.

“We have the ability to reflect and reason scientifically, and we have the ability to reason based on our gut and intuition,” she added. “And depending on the situation, one may be more useful than the other.”

The Strategic Sourceror: 3 strategies for boosting sustainability across company operations

3 strategies for boosting sustainability across company operations

Strategic Sourceror on Friday, January 24, 2014

Segregating sustainable product sourcing practices from the larger company strategy and culture can be an easy mistake to make. However, businesses that have long been working to decrease the environmental impact of their procurement processes are well aware that isolated attempts at sustainability are often left behind or discredited over time. What many companies find they need is an emphasis on eco-friendliness that is central to their operations rather than peripheral.
While each firm's approach will differ based on its unique supplier network, some tried and true principles can be adapted and applied across the board. Here are three strategies that can help ensure sustainable sourcing is as effective and fully integrated as possible.

1. Increase communication

In order to avoid sustainability initiatives taking place in a vacuum, they need to be understood across the company. Visibility and communication have been a critical part of the success that Campbell Soup has enjoyed with its green initiatives. Dave Stangis, the company's vice president of public affairs and corporate responsibility, recently gave Sustainable Brands an instructive example of this principle.
"Someone in our communications department aims to tell a better sustainability story from our plant level; he's taken this objective to understand what sustainability work is happening in our 30 manufacturing plants around the world and help communicate that better externally," Stangis told the news source.

Without a solid understanding of sustainable practices internally, it's extremely difficult to communicate these efforts to the public in a cohesive way.

2. Make strategic partnerships

Firms also need to bear in mind that consumers will judge them based on the business relationships they foster. Growing companies looking to make acquisitions, for instance, need to do so with sustainability in mind. According to Sustainable Brands, Campbell chose to acquire Plum Organics, a well regarded company with a reputation for its green mission and employees' involvement in those goals.

3. Consider supplier practices

Lastly, it's key that companies consider the processes of their distribution and sourcing partners as an extension of their own operations. Suppliers need to be factored in when firms calculate their environmental impact and plan for improvements. Sustainability consultant Bill Barry recently began working with book publisher Macmillan to lower carbon emissions across the company's production chain, GreenBiz reported. Barry helped the firm calculate and plan to reduce its direct and indirect environmental impacts by 65 percent over the next five years. He did this by helping Macmillian restructure its paper milling, transportation and other partnerships.

Sustainable supplier management is critical, rather than optional, for companies that are serious about green procurement.

What Killed the Woolly Mammoth?

Professor finds some evidence to support a comet collision as the trigger for the Younger Dryas, which may have contributed to megafauna extinction

By Julie Cohen

Monday, January 27, 2014 - 11:30

Santa Barbara, CA

Could a comet have been responsible for the extinction of North America’s megafauna — woolly mammoths, giant ground sloths and saber-tooth tigers? UC Santa Barbara’s James Kennett, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Science, posited that such an extraterrestrial event occurred 12,900 years ago.
Originally published in 2007, Kennett’s controversial Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) hypothesis suggests that a comet collision precipitated the Younger Dryas period of global cooling, which, in turn, contributed to the extinction of many animals and altered human adaptations. The nanodiamond is one type of material that could result from an extraterrestrial collision, and the presence of nanodiamonds along Bull Creek in the Oklahoma Panhandle lends credence to the YDB hypothesis.

More recently, another group of earth scientists, including UCSB’s Alexander Simms and alumna Hanna Alexander, re-examined the distribution of nanodiamonds in Bull Creek’s sedimentological record to see if they could reproduce the original study’s evidence supporting the YDB hypothesis. Their findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

“We were able to replicate some of their results and we did find nanodiamonds right at the Younger Dryas Boundary,” said Simms, an associate professor in UCSB’s Department of Earth Science.
“However, we also found a second spike of nanodiamonds more recently in the sedimentary record, sometime within the past 3,000 years.”

The researchers analyzed 49 sediment samples representing different time periods and environmental and climactic settings, and identified high levels of nanodiamonds immediately below and just above YDB deposits and in late-Holocene near-surface deposits. The late Holocene began at the end of the Pleistocene 11,700 years ago and continues to the present. The researchers found that the presence of nanodiamonds is not caused by environmental setting, soil formation, cultural activities, other climate changes or the amount of time in which the landscape is stable. The discovery of high concentrations of nanodiamonds from two distinct time periods suggests that whatever process produced the elevated concentrations of nanodiamonds at the onset of the Younger Dryas sediments may have also been active in recent millennia in Bull Creek.

“Nanodiamonds are found in high abundances at the YDB, giving some support to that theory,” Simms said. “However, we did find it at one other site, which may or may not be caused by a smaller but similar event nearby.”

A “recent” meteorite impact did occur near Bull Creek but scientists don’t know exactly when. The fact that the study’s second nanodiamond spike occurred sometime during the past 3,000 years suggests that the distribution of nanodiamonds is not unique to the Younger Dryas.

Contact Info:

Julie Cohen
julie.cohen@ucsb.edu
(805) 893-7220

- See more at: http://www.news.ucsb.edu/node/013899/what-killed-woolly-mammoth#sthash.Y5CsZSPd.dpuf

Sensitivity of carbon cycle to tropical temperature variations has doubled

Sensitivity of carbon cycle to tropical temperature variations has doubled
Jan 26, 2014
Earth

The tropical carbon cycle has become twice as sensitive to temperature variations over the past 50 years, new research has revealed.

The research shows that a one degree rise in tropical temperature leads to around two billion extra tonnes of carbon being released per year into the atmosphere from tropical ecosystems, compared with the same tropical warming in the 1960s and 1970s.

Professor Pierre Friedlingstein and Professor Peter Cox, from the University of Exeter, collaborated with an international team of researchers from China, Germany, France and the USA, to produce the new study, which is published in the leading academic journal Nature.

Existing Earth System Model simulations indicate that the ability of tropical land ecosystems to store carbon will decline over the 21st century. However, these models are unable to capture the increase in the sensitivity of carbon dioxide to tropical temperatures that is reported in this new study.

Research published last year by Professors Cox and Friedlingstein showed that these variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide can reveal the sensitivity of tropical ecosystems to future climate change.
Taken together, these studies suggest that the sensitivity of tropical ecosystems to climate change has increased substantially in recent decades.

Professor Cox, from the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences said "The year-to-year variation in carbon dioxide concentration is a very useful way to monitor how tropical ecosystems are responding to climate.

"The increase in carbon dioxide variability in the last few decades suggests that tropical ecosystems have become more vulnerable to warming".

Professor Friedlingstein, who is an expert in global carbon cycle studies added: "Current land carbon cycle models do not show this increase over the last 50 years, perhaps because these models underestimate emerging drought effects on tropical ecosystems".

The lead author of the study, Xuhui Wang of Peking University, added: "This enhancement is very unlikely to have resulted from chance, and may provide a new perspective on a possible shift in the terrestrial carbon cycle over the past five decades".

Explore further: Lungs of the planet reveal their true sensitivity to global warming

More information: A two-fold increase of carbon cycle sensitivity to tropical temperature variations, DOI: 10.1038/nature12915

Picture of how our climate is affected by greenhouse gases is a 'cloudy' one -- ScienceDaily

Date:

January 26, 2014

Source:

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Summary:

Recent studies have revealed a highly complicated picture of aerosol-cloud interactions.

[Click to enlarge image]

Recent studies have revealed a highly complicated picture of aerosol-cloud interactions.Credit: © Maksim Shebeko / Fotolia

The warming effect of human-induced greenhouse gases is a given, but to what extent can we predict its future influence? That is an issue on which science is making progress, but the answers are still far from exact, say researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the US and Australia who have studied the issue and whose work which has just appeared in the journal Science.

Indeed, one could say that the picture is a "cloudy" one, since the determination of the greenhouse gas effect involves multifaceted interactions with cloud cover.

To some extent, aerosols -- particles that float in the air caused by dust or pollution, including greenhouse gases -- counteract part of the harming effects of climate warming by increasing the amount of sunlight reflected from clouds back into space. However, the ways in which these aerosols affect climate through their interaction with clouds are complex and incompletely captured by climate models, say the researchers. As a result, the radiative forcing (that is, the disturbance to Earth's "energy budget" from the sun) caused by human activities is highly uncertain, making it difficult to predict the extent of global warming.

And while advances have led to a more detailed understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions and their effects on climate, further progress is hampered by limited observational capabilities and coarse climate models, says Prof. Daniel Rosenfeld of the Fredy and Nadine Herrmann Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of the article in Science. Rosenfeld wrote this article in cooperation with Dr. Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Dr. Robert Wood of the University of Washington, Seattle, and Dr. Leo Donner of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. .

Their recent studies have revealed a much more complicated picture of aerosol-cloud interactions than considered previously. Depending on the meteorological circumstances, aerosols can have dramatic effects of either increasing or decreasing the cloud sun-deflecting effect, the researchers say. Furthermore, little is known about the unperturbed aerosol level that existed in the preindustrial era. This reference level is very important for estimating the radiative forcing from aerosols.

Also needing further clarification is the response of the cloud cover and organization to the loss of water by rainfall. Understanding of the formation of ice and its interactions with liquid droplets is even more limited, mainly due to poor ability to measure the ice-nucleating activity of aerosols and the subsequent ice-forming processes in clouds.

Explicit computer simulations of these processes even at the scale of a whole cloud or multi-cloud system, let alone that of the planet, require hundreds of hours on the most powerful computers available. Therefore, a sufficiently accurate simulation of these processes at a global scale is still impractical.
Recently, however, researchers have been able to create groundbreaking simulations in which models were formulated presenting simplified schemes of cloud-aerosol interactions, This approach offers the potential for model runs that resolve clouds on a global scale for time scales up to several years, but climate simulations on a scale of a century are still not feasible. The model is also too coarse to resolve many of the fundamental aerosol-cloud processes at the scales on which they actually occur. Improved observational tests are essential for validating the results of simulations and ensuring that modeling developments are on the right track, say the researchers.

While it is unfortunate that further progress on understanding aerosol-cloud interactions and their effects on climate is limited by inadequate observational tools and models, achieving the required improvement in observations and simulations is within technological reach, the researchers emphasize, provided that the financial resources are invested. The level of effort, they say, should match the socioeconomic importance of what the results could provide: lower uncertainty in measuring human-made climate forcing and better understanding and predictions of future impacts of aerosols on our weather and climate.

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

D. Rosenfeld, S. Sherwood, R. Wood, L. Donner. Climate Effects of Aerosol-Cloud Interactions. Science, 2014; 343 (6169): 379 DOI: 10.1126/science.1247490

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