Thursday, January 30, 2014

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.

A Medley of Potpourri

Search This Blog