Scientists highlight the resurrection of extinct animals as both a strong possibility and a major potential conservation

Dec 24, 2013  Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-12-scientists-highlight-resurrection-extinct-animals.html#jCp

          

  Thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. Credit: E.J. Keller Baker     

(Phys.org) —Scientists from across the world have "scanned the horizon" in order to identify potentially significant medium and long-term threats to conservation efforts.

Resurrection of several extinct species, the increasingly accelerated loss of wild rhinoceroses and a disastrous financial response to unburnable carbon are just some future global conservation issues flagged up in this year's Horizon Scan, recently published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Professor William Sutherland and Dr Mark Spalding are amongst the 18 scientists who took part in this year's Horizon Scan, seeking to identify potential future conservation issues in order to reduce the "probability of sudden confrontation with major social or environmental changes".

One such plausible issue is the resurrection or re-construction of extinct species, such as the woolly mammoth, passenger pigeon or the thylacine (a carnivorous marsupial). However, though there may be many benefits to the restoration of these animals, such a high-profile project could lead to attention and resources being diverted from attempts to thwart current threats to non-extinct species' survival.

Professor Sutherland said 'There has been discussion of this idea for some time but it is now looking more practical and the idea is being taken seriously. A key issues is whether this is really a conservation priority'.

Though the last woolly mammoth died around 4000 years ago, methods such as back-breeding, cloning and genetic engineering may lead to their resurrection. Not only could these extinct animals, and others such as the thylacine and the passenger pigeon, be re-constructed and returned to their native environments, they could potentially be used to "provide tools for outreach and education".

However, though this would be a conservational triumph, it could also hamper efforts to protect animals that are currently facing extinction, as both attention and resources would be diverted from preserving existing species and their habitats. Furthermore, there has not been any investigation into the "viability, ethics and safety of releasing resurrected species", nor the effect their presence may have on indigenous flora and fauna.

Another potential conservational issue identified by the Horizon Scan further highlights the problems facing species today. The loss of wild rhinoceroses and elephants is set to reaccelerate within the next few years, partially stimulated by a growing desire for ivory and horn.

In 2013, it is estimated that over 600 rhinoceroses were poached for their horn in South Africa alone, out of a total global population of less than 26,000. Though an increased human population and proximity to growing infrastructure is partially responsible, organised crime syndicates and intensive hunting carry the weight of the blame. In the Asian countries that use it, rhinoceros horn is more expensive than gold. Demand for the precious horn is ever increasing, resulting in elevated levels of poaching. If attention and resources are diverted from the protection of these majestic animals, we may have yet more candidates for resurrection in the future.

Altogether, this group of scientists identified the top 15 potential conservation issues (out of an initial group of 81 issues). In addition to the above topics, extensive land loss in southeast Asia from subsidence of peatlands, carbon solar cells as an alternative source of renewable energy, and an emerging fungal disease amongst snakes, have also been voted as plausible threats that need to be stopped before they can be realised.

Explore further: Scientists identify top conservation threats and opportunities

More information: William J. Sutherland, Rosalind Aveling, Thomas M. Brooks, Mick Clout, Lynn V. Dicks, Liz Fellman, Erica Fleishman, David W. Gibbons, Brandon Keim, Fiona Lickorish, Kathryn A. Monk, Diana Mortimer, Lloyd S. Peck, Jules Pretty, Johan Rockström, Jon Paul Rodríguez, Rebecca K. Smith, Mark D. Spalding, Femke H. Tonneijck, Andrew R. Watkinson, "A horizon scan of global conservation issues for 2014," Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Volume 29, Issue 1, January 2014, Pages 15-22, ISSN 0169-5347, dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2013.11.004.
Journal reference: Trends in Ecology and Evolution

Provided by University of Cambridge 

Researchers team up on potential fuel cell advance from Phys.Org

Dec 19, 2013 by Lori Ann White @ http://phys.org/news/2013-12-team-potential-fuel-cell-advance.html

          
SLAC researchers Hernan Sanchez Casalongue (left) and Hirohito Ogasawara tune the custom fuel cell built for SSRL Beam Line 13-2. Credit: Brad Plummer/SLAC

Scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory put together clues from experiments and theory to discover subtle variations in the way fuel cells generate electricity – an advance that could lead to ways to make the cells more efficient.
As reported today in Nature Communications, researchers focused powerful X-rays from SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) on one half of a tiny but functional fuel cell and watched it combine oxygen and hydrogen to make water. They saw something they didn't expect.
"We were surprised to find two possible routes for this reaction to take place," said Hirohito Ogasawara, a staff scientist at SSRL and with the SLAC/Stanford SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis. What's more, one route uses less of the fuel cell's energy to complete – leaving more energy to power a car, for example.

However, the news wasn't a surprise to SUNCAT theorists, who had already proposed the existence of such variations in fuel cell chemistry. These variations are important because fuel cells turn chemical energy to electricity, and even a subtle difference can add up to a considerable amount of electricity over time.

On one side of a fuel cell, hydrogen gas is split into protons and electrons, which travel to the other side of the cell along different paths, providing electricity along the way. There they combine with oxygen gas to form water, a process that requires a catalyst to propel the reaction along. The most commonly used catalyst is platinum, a metal more costly than gold; research has focused on ways to decrease the amount of platinum needed by making the catalyst as efficient as possible. This has been a difficult task without tools that show each reaction as it takes place, step by step.

Ogasawara and colleagues used a technique called ambient pressure photoelectron spectroscopy (APXPS) at SSRL to watch the reactions taking place on the surface of the platinum catalyst in minute detail, and under realistic conditions.

"At first, what was new was the technique, and that we could see what was happening under working conditions," said Hernan Sanchez Casalongue, a graduate student in chemistry who designed and built the miniature fuel cell used to help test the efficacy of APXPS in this research. "But as we analyzed our results, we saw there were two different kinds of hydroxide on the surface of the platinum."

Hydroxide is an "intermediate species" that briefly forms on the way to the creation of water. It consists of one hydrogen nucleus bonded to one oxygen atom – O-H instead of H2O. In the fuel cell the researchers found that one type of hydroxide is "hydrated," or loosely bonded with a water molecule, and the other is not, and the one that's not hydrated requires less energy to take that final step to becoming H2O.

Ogasawara and Sanchez Casalongue took their discovery to SUNCAT theorists, who had already theorized that a change in the voltage applied to the fuel cell could affect the formation of hydroxide.

"This led us to the insight that tuning the hydration of hydroxide may lead to more efficient catalysis, but at the time there was no experimental evidence to back that up," said Venkat Viswanathan, then a graduate student at SUNCAT and now a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon.

Ogasawara's experiment, possible only with APXPS, provided Viswanathan and the other SUNCAT theorists with their experimental evidence. It also gives scientists another tool for improving fuel cells: Figure out how to make more of the non-hydrated hydroxides, and the fuel cell efficiency will improve.

Anders Nilsson, deputy director of SUNCAT and a co-author on the paper, said, "This represents a real breakthrough in electrocatalysis. These intermediate chemical species have long been speculated on but have never before been directly observed. This discovery could lead to more efficient catalysts."

Ogasawara said the researchers can't give any firm numbers on how much this can boost energy production from fuel cells – "This was a proof-of-concept experiment" – but it's an encouraging development, and they are looking at reactions involving other catalysts for similar phenomena.
They're also going to use APXPS to study the other side of the fuel cell reaction – splitting water to make hydrogen and oxygen.

Explore further: New catalyst for fuel cells a potential substitute for platinum

More information: "Direct observation of the oxygenated species during oxygen reduction on a platinum fuel cell cathode." Hernan Sanchez Casalongue, Sarp Kaya, Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan, Daniel J. Miller, Daniel Friebel, Heine A. Hansen, Jens K. Nørskov, Anders Nilsson, Hirohito Ogasawara. Nature Communications 4, Article number: 2817 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3817

Journal reference: Nature Communications
Provided by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory 

If Your Holy Book Tells You How to Treat Your Slaves ...

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_tsunami   

Tsunami strikes Ao Nang, Thailand.
Date	00:58:53, 26 December 2004 (UTC) (2004-12-26T00:58:53Z)[1]
Magnitude	9.1–9.3 Mw[1]
Depth	30 km (19 mi)[1]
Epicenter	3°18′58″N 95°51′14″E / 3.316°N 95.854°E / 3.316; 95.854Coordinates: 3°18′58″N 95°51′14″E / 3.316°N 95.854°E / 3.316; 95.854[1]
Type	Undersea (subduction)
Countries or regions	Indonesia (mainly in Aceh) Sri Lanka India (mostly in Tamil Nadu) Thailand Maldives Somalia
Tsunami	Yes
Casualties	230,210 – 280,000 deaths[2][3][4]

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC on Sunday, 26 December 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The quake itself is known by the scientific community as the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake.^[5][6] The resulting tsunami was given various names, including the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, South Asian tsunami, Indonesian tsunami, the Christmas tsunami and the Boxing Day tsunami.^[7]

The earthquake was caused when the Indian Plate was subducted by the Burma Plate and triggered a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts of most landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing over 230,000 people in fourteen countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 30 meters (98 ft) high.^[8] It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. Indonesia was the hardest-hit country, followed by Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand.

With a magnitude of M_w 9.1–9.3, it is the third largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph. The earthquake had the longest duration of faulting ever observed, between 8.3 and 10 minutes. It caused the entire planet to vibrate as much as 1 centimetre (0.4 inches)^[9] and triggered other earthquakes as far away as Alaska.^[10] Its epicentre was between Simeulue and mainland Indonesia.^[11]
The plight of the affected people and countries prompted a worldwide humanitarian response. In all, the worldwide community donated more than $14 billion (2004 US$) in humanitarian aid.^[12]

Earthquake characteristics

The earthquake was initially documented as moment magnitude 8.8. In February 2005 scientists revised the estimate of the magnitude to 9.0.^[13] Although the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center has accepted these new numbers, the United States Geological Survey has so far not changed its estimate of 9.1. The most recent studies in 2006 have obtained a magnitude of M_w 9.1–9.3. Dr. Hiroo Kanamori of the California Institute of Technology believes that M_w 9.2 is a good representative value for the size of this great earthquake.^[14]
The hypocentre of the main earthquake was approximately 160 km (100 mi), in the Indian Ocean just north of Simeulue island, off the western coast of northern Sumatra, at a depth of 30 km (19 mi) below mean sea level (initially reported as 10 km (6.2 mi)). The northern section of the Sunda megathrust, ruptured; the rupture having a length of 1,300 km (810 mi).^[11] The earthquake (followed by the tsunami) was felt simultaneously in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore and the Maldives.^[15] Splay faults, or secondary "pop up faults", caused long, narrow parts of the sea floor to pop up in seconds. This quickly elevated the height and increased the speed of waves, causing the complete destruction of the nearby Indonesian town of Lhoknga.^[16]

 

Indonesia lies between the Pacific Ring of Fire along the north-eastern islands adjacent to New Guinea, and the Alpide belt that runs along the south and west from Sumatra, Java, Bali, Flores to Timor.

Great earthquakes such as the Sumatra-Andaman event, which are invariably associated with megathrust events in subduction zones, have seismic moments that can account for a significant fraction of the global earthquake moment across century-scale time periods. Of all the seismic moment released by earthquakes in the 100 years from 1906 through 2005, roughly one-eighth was due to the Sumatra-Andaman event. This quake, together with the Good Friday Earthquake (Alaska, 1964) and the Great Chilean Earthquake (1960), account for almost half of the total moment. The much smaller but still catastrophic 1906 San Francisco earthquake is included in the diagram below for perspective. M_w denotes the magnitude of an earthquake on the moment magnitude scale.

Since 1900 the only earthquakes recorded with a greater magnitude were the 1960 Great Chilean Earthquake (magnitude 9.5) and the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake in Prince William Sound (9.2). The only other recorded earthquakes of magnitude 9.0 or greater were off Kamchatka, Russia, on 4 November 1952 (magnitude 9.0)^[17] and Tōhoku, Japan (magnitude 9.0) in March 2011. Each of these megathrust earthquakes also spawned tsunamis in the Pacific Ocean. However, the death toll from these was significantly lower, primarily because of the lower population density along the coasts near affected areas and the much greater distances to more populated coasts and also due to the superior infrastructure and warning systems in MEDCs (More Economically Developed Countries) such as Japan.

Other very large megathrust earthquakes occurred in 1868 (Peru, Nazca Plate and South American
Plate); 1827 (Colombia, Nazca Plate and South American Plate); 1812 (Venezuela, Caribbean Plate and South American Plate) and 1700 (western North America, Juan de Fuca Plate and North American Plate). All of them are believed to be greater than magnitude 9, but no accurate measurements were available at the time.

Is the Cambrian Explosion View Outdated? (With thanks to John Hunter)

Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion

The fossil record as Darwin knew it seemed to suggest that the major metazoan groups appeared in a few million years of the early to mid-Cambrian, and even in the 1980s this still appeared to be the case.^[15][16]

However, evidence of Precambrian metazoa is gradually accumulating. If the Ediacaran Kimberella was a mollusc-like protostome (one of the two main groups of coelomates),^[20][61] the protostome and deuterostome lineages must have split significantly before 550 million years ago (deuterostomes are the other main group of coelomates).^[94] Even if it is not a protostome, it is widely accepted as a bilaterian.^[65][94] Since fossils of rather modern-looking Cnidarians (jellyfish-like organisms) have been found in the Doushantuo lagerstätte, the Cnidarian and bilaterian lineages must have diverged well over 580 million years ago.^[94]

Trace fossils^[59] and predatory borings in Cloudina shells provide further evidence of Ediacaran animals.^[95] Some fossils from the Doushantuo formation have been interpreted as embryos and one (Vernanimalcula) as a bilaterian coelomate, although these interpretations are not universally accepted.^[48][49][96] Earlier still, predatory pressure has acted on stromatolites and acritarchs since around 1,250 million years ago.^[44]

The presence of Precambrian animals somewhat dampens the "bang" of the explosion: not only was the appearance of animals gradual, but their evolutionary radiation ("diversification") may also not have been as rapid as once thought. Indeed, statistical analysis shows that the Cambrian explosion was no faster than any of the other radiations in animals' history.^{[note 5]} However, it does seem that some innovations linked to the explosion – such as resistant armour – only evolved once in the animal lineage; this makes a lengthy Precambrian animal lineage harder to defend.^[98] Further, the conventional view that all the phyla arose in the Cambrian is flawed; while the phyla may have diversified in this time period, representatives of the crown-groups of many phyla do not appear until much later in the Phanerozoic.^[53] Further, the mineralized phyla that form the basis of the fossil record may not be representative of other phyla, since most mineralized phyla originated in a benthic setting. The fossil record is consistent with a Cambrian Explosion that was limited to the benthos, with pelagic phyla evolving much later.^[53]

Ecological complexity among marine animals increased in the Cambrian, as well later in the Ordovician.^[5] However, recent research has overthrown the once-popular idea that disparity was exceptionally high throughout the Cambrian, before subsequently decreasing.^[99] In fact, disparity remains relatively low throughout the Cambrian, with modern levels of disparity only attained after the early Ordovician radiation.^[5]

The diversity of many Cambrian assemblages is similar to today's,^[100][91] and at a high (class/phylum) level, diversity is thought by some to have risen relatively smoothly through the Cambrian, stabilizing somewhat in the Ordovician.^[101] This interpretation, however, glosses over the astonishing and fundamental pattern of basal polytomy and phylogenetic telescoping at or near the Cambrian boundary, as seen in most major animal lineages.^[102] Thus Harry Blackmore Whittington's questions regarding the abrupt nature of the Cambrian explosion remain, and have yet to be satisfactorily answered.^[103]

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

 

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

Epigenetics enigma resolved: First structure of enzyme that removes methylation

Epigenetics enigma resolved: First structure of enzyme that removes methylation
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-12-epigenetics-enigma-enzyme-methylation.html#jCp

       

This is the structure of the Tet enzyme with DNA. Note the purple ball at the active site, close to which one DNA base is flipped out of the double helix. Also note the degree to which the double helix is bent. Credit: Xiaodong Cheng, Emory University

The finding is important for the field of epigenetics because Tet enzymes chemically modify DNA, changing signposts that tell the cell's machinery "this gene is shut off" into other signs that say "ready for a change."

Tet enzymes' roles have come to light only in the last five years; they are needed for stem cells to maintain their multipotent state, and are involved in early embryonic and brain development and in cancer.

The results, which could help scientists understand how Tet enzymes are regulated and look for drugs that manipulate them, are scheduled for publication in Nature.

Researchers led by Xiaodong Cheng, PhD, determined the structure of a Tet family member from Naegleria gruberi by X-ray crystallography. The structure shows how the enzyme interacts with its target DNA, bending the double helix and flipping out the base that is to be modified.
"This base flipping mechanism is also used by other enzymes that modify and repair DNA, but we can see from the structure that the Tet family enzymes interact with the DNA in a distinct way," Cheng says.

Cheng is professor of biochemistry at Emory University School of Medicine and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. The first author of the paper is research associate Hideharu Hashimoto, PhD. A team led by Yu Zheng, PhD, a senior research scientist at New England Biolabs, contributed to the paper by analyzing the enzymatic activity of Tet using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry.

Using oxygen, Tet enzymes change 5-methylcytosine into 5-hydroxymethylcytosine and other oxidized forms of methylcytosine. 5-methylcytosine (5-mC) and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC) are both epigenetic modifications of DNA, which change how DNA is regulated without altering the letters of the genetic code itself.

5-mC is generally found on genes that are turned off or on repetitive regions of the genome. 5-mC helps shut off genes that aren't supposed to be turned on (depending on the cell type) and changes in 5-mC's distribution underpin a healthy cell's transformation into a cancer cell.

In contrast to 5-mC, 5-hmC appears to be enriched on active genes, especially in brain cells. Having a Tet enzyme form 5-hmC seems to be a way for cells to erase or at least modify the "off" signal provided by 5-mC, although the functions of 5-hmC are an active topic of investigation, Cheng says.
Alterations of the Tet enzymes have been found in forms of leukemia, so having information on the enzymes' molecular structure could help scientists design drugs that interfere with them.
N. gruberi is a single-celled organism found in soil or fresh water that can take the form of an amoeba or a flagellate; its close relative N. fowleri can cause deadly brain infections. Cheng says his team chose to study the enzyme from Naegleria because it was smaller and simpler and thus easier to crystallize than mammalian forms of the enzyme, yet still resembles mammalian forms in protein sequence.

Mammalian Tet enzymes appear to have an additional regulatory domain that the Naegleria forms do not; understanding how that domain works will be a new puzzle opened up by having the Naegleria structure, Cheng says.

Journal reference: Nature

Provided by Emory University


 

How Rare Am I? Genographic Project Results Demonstrate Our Extended Family Tree

Posted by Miguel Vilar on December 24, 2013  

 

Most participants of National Geographic’s Genographic Project can recite their haplogroup as readily as their mother’s maiden name. Yet outside consumer genetics, the word haplogroup is still unknown. Your haplogroup, or genetic branch of the human family tree, tells you about your deep ancestry—often thousands of years ago—and shows you the possible paths of migration taken by these ancient ancestors.  Your haplogroup also places you within a community of relatives, some distant, with whom you unmistakably share an ancestor way back when.

DNA Molecule

Haplogroup H1, Genographic’s most common lineage.
Let’s focus here on mitochondrial DNA haplogroup is H1, as it is the Genographic Project’s most common maternal lineage result. You inherited your mitochondrial DNA purely from your mother, who inherited it from her mother, and her mother, and so on. Yet, unlike often is the case with a mother’s maiden name, her maternal haplogroup is passed down through generations. Today, all members of haplogroup H1 are direct descendants from the first H1 woman that lived thousands of years ago. Most H1 members may know their haplogroup as H1a or H1b2 or H1c1a, etc, yet as a single genetic branch, H1 accounts for 15% of Genographic participants. What’s more, in the past few years, anthropologists have discovered and named an astonishing 200 new branches within haplogroup H1; and that number continues to grow.

Haplogroup H3, sister branch to H1

The origin of haplogroup H1 continues to be a debate as well. Most researchers suggest it was born in the Middle East between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago, and spread from there to Europe and North Africa. However, ancient DNA studies show that its ancestral haplogroup H first appears in Central Europe just 8,000 year ago. Its vast diversity and high concentration in Spain and Portugal, suggests H1 may have existed there during the last Ice Age, and spread north after glaciers melted. Yet others postulate that its young age and high frequency indicate it spread as agriculture took shape in Europe.
Any of the scenarios is possible. As technology improves, more DNA is extracted and sequenced from ancient bones, and more people contribute their DNA to the Genographic Project, we will keep learning about H1, and all other haplogroups.  It is because of participants contributing their DNA, their stories, and their hypotheses to science that we can carry forward this exciting work uncovering our deep genetic connections.

Happy Haplogroups!

What does it mean to be conscious?

   

Image courtesy of University of Cambridge

By Patricia Salber

A study published today (10/31/2013) in the online open source journal, NeuroImage:  Clinical, further blurs the boundaries of what it means to be conscious.  Although the title, Dissociable endogenous and exogenous attention in disorders of consciousness, and the research methodology are almost indecipherable to those of us not inside the beltway of chronic Disorders of Consciousness (DoC) research, University of Cambridge translates for us on their website.

Basically the researchers, lead by Dr. Srivas Chennu at the University of Cambridge, were trying to see if patients diagnosed as either in a vegetative state (VS) or minimally conscious state (MCS) could pay attention to (count) certain words, called the attended words, when they were embedded in a string of other randomly presented words, called the distracting words.  Normal brain wave responses were established by performing the word testing on 8 healthy volunteers.  The same testing was then applied to 21 brain damaged individuals, 9 with a clinical diagnosis of vegetative state and 12 with a diagnosis of minimally conscious state.  Most of the patients did not respond to the presentation of words as did normal volunteers.  But one did.

The patient, described at Patient P1, suffered a traumatic brain injury 4 months prior to testing.  He was diagnosed as “behaviorally vegetative,” based on a Coma Recovery Score-Revised (CRS-R) of 7 (8 or greater = MCS).  In addition to being able to consciously attend to the key words, this patient could also follow simple commands to imagine playing tennis.

Dr. Chennu was quoted as saying, “we are progressively building up a fuller picture of the sensory, perceptual and cognitive abilities in patients” with vegetative and minimally conscious states.  Yes, this is true.  But what does it mean if someone previously diagnosed as vegetative can now be shown to perform this sort of task?  Dr. Chennu hopes that this information will spur the development of “future technology to help patients in a vegetative state communicate with the outside world.”

I think this is fascinating research and it sheds new insights into how the brain functions, but it also raises a number of important questions.   For example, if I can attend to words, does it change my prognosis?  Patient P1 was found to have minimal cortical atrophy.  Perhaps he is just slow to transition from a vegetative to a MCS.  If attending to words is associated with a better prognosis, should that make me a candidate for intensive and expensive rehabilitation?  If so, who should pay for this?  If I have an advanced directive that says I don’t want to continue to live in a persistent vegetative state, will this level of awareness mean I am not really vegetative.  As more and more resources are poured into care for folks with severe brain damage, does it come at a societal cost?
 What trade offs are we making, what services are we forgoing, as we spend money developing tools to improve communication in vegetative states

Of course no one has the answer to these questions and I suspect as researchers like those at Cambridge continue to learn more about the functioning of the severely injured brain, the more difficult it will be to clearly say what is really means to be “aware.”

Atheists, Work With Us for Peace, Pope Says on Christmas

   

Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Pope Francis waved from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican after his Christmas blessing.

 

By REUTERS

Published: December 25, 2013 at 7:47 AM ET                  

 

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis, celebrating his first Christmas as Roman Catholic leader, on Wednesday called on atheists to unite with believers of all religions and work for "a homemade peace" that can spread across the world.

  

Speaking to about 70,000 people from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, the same spot where he emerged to the world as pope when he was elected on March 13, Francis also made another appeal for the environment to be saved from "human greed and rapacity".

 

The leader of the 1.2 billion-member Church wove his first "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and world) message around the theme of peace.

 

"Peace is a daily commitment. It is a homemade peace," he said.

 

He said that people of other religions were also praying for peace, and - departing from his prepared text - he urged atheists to join forces with believers.

 

"I invite even non-believers to desire peace. (Join us) with your desire, a desire that widens the heart. Let us all unite, either with prayer or with desire, but everyone, for peace," he said, drawing sustained applause from the crowd.

 

Francis's reaching out to atheists and people of other religions is a marked contrast to the attitude of former Pope Benedict, who sometimes left non-Catholics feeling that he saw them as second-class believers.

 

He called for "social harmony in South Sudan, where current tensions have already caused numerous victims and are threatening peaceful coexistence in that young state".

 

Thousands are believed to have died in violence divided along ethnic lines between the Nuer and Dinka tribes in the country, which seceded from Sudan in 2011 after decades of war.

 

The pontiff also called for dialogue to end the conflicts in Syria, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq, and prayed for a "favorable outcome" to the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.

 

"Wars shatter and hurt so many lives!" he said, saying their most vulnerable victims were children, elderly, battered women and the sick.

 

PERSONAL PEACEMAKERS

The thread running through the message was that individuals had a role in promoting peace, either with their neighbor or between nations.

 

The message of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was directed at "every man or woman who keeps watch through the night, who hopes for a better world, who cares for others while humbly seeking to do his or her duty," he said.

 

"God is peace: let us ask him to help us to be peacemakers each day, in our life, in our families, in our cities and nations, in the whole world," he said.

 

Pilgrims came from all over the world for Christmas at the Vatican and some said it was because they felt Francis had brought a breath of fresh air to the Church.

 

"(He) is bringing a new era into the Church, a Church that is focusing much more on the poor and that is more austere, more lively," said Dolores Di Benedetto, who came from the pope's homeland, Argentina, to attend Christmas Eve Mass.

 

Giacchino Sabello, an Italian, said he wanted to get a first-hand look at the new pope: "I thought it would be very nice to hear the words of this pope close up and to see how the people are overwhelmed by him."

 

In his speech, Francis asked God to "look upon the many children who are kidnapped, wounded and killed in armed conflicts, and all those who are robbed of their childhood and forced to become soldiers".

 

He also called for a "dignified life" for migrants, praying tragedies such as one in which hundreds died in a shipwreck off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa are never repeated, and made a particular appeal against human trafficking, which he called a "crime against humanity".

 

(Editing by Pravin Char)

An Ultracold Big Bang: A successful simulation of the evolution of the early universe

Posted on From Quarks to Quasars December 25, 2013 at 9:00 am by Joshua Filmer                

This schematic diagram of Lambda-Cold Dark Matter, accelerated Expansion of the Universe Via Alex Mittelmann, Coldcreation

In August of 2013, physicists made a major breakthrough in our understanding of the early universe in an experiment that successfully reproduced a pattern resembling the cosmic microwave background radiation. This experiment was conducted at the University of Chicago with the aid of ultracold cesium atoms.


“This is the first time an experiment like this has simulated the evolution of structure in the early universe,” according to physics professor Cheng Chin, one of the authors on this project. The goal of the experiment was to simulate the big bang using ultracold atoms in an effort to understand how the universe evolved at the earliest timescales. Tentatively, their experiment seems a tremendous success

The image reveals 13.77 billion-year-old temperature fluctuations—shown as color differences—that correspond to the seeds that grew to become the galaxies. via NASA

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is one of the only things we have left to analyze the early structure of the universe, and this CMB is a kind of window, allowing us to go back in time to that most volatile period in our universe’s history. Ultimately, it allows us to pull a fingerprint of the universe when it was only 380,000 years old. This pervasive radiation has been mapped over the last few decades. The most recent and most detailed mapping of the CMB comes from the Planck Space Observatory and was completed earlier this year.

Chen-Lung Hung, the lead author on the project, described the methodology of the experiment as follows, “…under certain conditions, a cloud of atoms chilled to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero (-459.67 degrees Fahrenheit) in a vacuum chamber displays phenomena similar to those that unfolded following the Big Bang. At this ultracold temperature, atoms get excited collectively. They act as if they are sound waves in air.” That sound wave action can be observed in the CMB.

The echoing and rippling of spacetime created in the big bang was exaggerated in the period of the universe’s rapid inflation. These ripples reverberated back and forth and interacted with each other creating the foundation for the complicated patterns we see in the universe today. This phenomenon is known as “Sakharov acoustic oscillations” after the scientists who first described them.

The simulated universe comprised of a cloud of 10,000 cesium atoms, chilled to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero. This caused the atoms to form an exotic state of matter called two-dimensional atomic superfluid. This simulated universe measured about 70-microns in diameter, or about the size of a human hair. Even though the universe had a diameter of about 100,000 light-years when emitted the pattern we recognize today as the CMB, the much smaller simulated universe behaved in exactly the same fashion as a large universe would.

Asimov's 'I, Robot' Soon To Be Reality, No Longer Fiction

(International Business Times By Cameron Fuller) -- Scientists have created what may become the future of prosthetics, a robot “muscle” that can throw something 50 times its own weight five times its length in a surprisingly fast 60 milliseconds. While it’s easy to envision what this means for the future, a Hollywood image of robot arms crushing steel bars with ease comes quickly to mind, don’t fear just yet, the new muscle is currently the size of a microchip.

 

A schematic for Berkeley Lab's new torsion muscle Care of the DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

 

“We’ve created a micro-bimorph dual coil that functions as a powerful torsional muscle, driven thermally or electro-thermally by the phase transition of vanadium dioxide,” said Junqiao Wu, the project’s lead scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (Berkeley Labs).

 

The strength of the new robotic muscle comes from the special property that vanadium dioxide possesses. VO2 changes physical state when heated or cooled. The muscle, coincidentally in the shape of a V, is heated causing one dimension to contract while the other two dimensions expand, creating a torsion spring. Think catapult, but on a much smaller scale.
While in its current state the muscle demonstrates the potential for what may be the future of artificial neuromuscular systems.  Wu’s device functions in a way that creates a proximity sensor, which is very similar to the way biological muscles work.  This torsion spring and proximity sensor features “allow the device to remotely detect a target and respond by reconfiguring itself to a different shape. This simulates living bodies where neurons sense and deliver stimuli to the muscles and the muscles provide motion,” according to Wu.

The micro-muscle requires a way of heating to actuate. As it stands, Wu thinks “electric current is the better way to go because it allows for the selective heating of individual micro-muscles and the heating and cooling process is much faster.” However, Berkeley Labs is working on a way for heat from the sun to trigger the device.

This announcement comes just three months after Dr. Adrian Koh of the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Faculty of Engineering announced a similar muscle able to carry 80 times its own weight in September of this year. Both of these devices are at the forefront of more human-like robotics.

Dr. Koh suggests how these micro-muscles will change the game of humanoid robotics. “Our materials mimic those of the human muscle, responding quickly to electrical impulses, instead of slowly for mechanisms driven by hydraulics. Robots move in a jerky manner because of this mechanism. Now, imagine artificial muscles which are pliable, extendable and react in a fraction of a second like those of a human. Robots equipped with such muscles will be able to function in a more human-like manner – and outperform humans in strength.”

Robots like those seen the big budget Hollywood film “I, Robot” may no longer be an Asimovian dream, finding reality instead through people like Wu and Dr. Koh.

What You Believe About Homosexuality Doesn’t Matter

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Tyler

Today, there are 2 news stories that have been circulating all over my Facebook and Twitter news feeds. One you are probably aware of, the other maybe not. The two, though, are closely related. The first news story is the indefinite suspension of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson due to the comments he made during an interview with GQ magazine. The second news story is about the “defrocking” of Pennsylvania UMC pastor Frank Schaefer after he performed the marriage for his gay son and subsequent refusal to submit to church law regarding this action. The link between these two stories is clear. The church’s views (or, in the case of Duck Dynasty, a certain understanding of the Christian faith’s views) regarding homosexuality.

The reaction to both of these stories has been…emphatic, to say the least. The debate over the “rightness or wrongness” of homosexuality has once again been fired up. The appeals to the Biblical passages have been made. The academic rebuttals to the interpretation of those passages has no doubt been referenced. The calls for freedom and tolerance (from both sides) have been shouted…or at least typed out with great gusto. The theological debate (and I am using that term VERY generously here) has been raging all day long, and no doubt will continue to rage in the weeks to come.

But I refuse to engage in it. The way I see it, the time for that debate has long since passed. The stakes are too high now. The current research suggestions that teenagers that are gay are about 3 times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. That puts the percentage of gay teens attempting suicide at about 30-some percent. 1 out of 3 teens who are gay or bisexual will try to kill themselves. And a lot of times they succeed. In fact, Rev. Schaefer’s son contemplated suicide on a number of occasions in his teens.

The fact of the matter is, it doesn’t matter whether or not you think homosexuality is a sin. Let me say that again. It does not matter if you think homosexuality is a sin, or if you think it is simply another expression of human love. It doesn’t matter. Why doesn’t it matter? Because people are dying. Kids are literally killing themselves because they are so tired of being rejected and dehumanized that they feel their only option left is to end their life. As a Youth Pastor, this makes me physically ill. And as a human, it should make you feel the same way. So, I’m through with the debate.

When faced with the choice between being theologically correct…as if this is even possible…and being morally responsible, I’ll go with morally responsible every time. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian during World War II. He firmly held the theological position of nonviolence. He believed that complete pacifism was theologically correct. And yet, in the midst of the war, he conspired to assassinate Adolf Hitler; to kill a fellow man. Why? Because in light of what he saw happening to the Jews around him by the Nazis, he felt that it would be morally irresponsible not to. Between the assassination of Hitler and nonviolence, he felt the greater sin would be nonviolence.

We are past the time for debate. We no longer have the luxury to consider the original meaning of Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church. We are now faced with the reality that there are lives at stake. So whatever you believe about homosexuality, keep it to yourself. Instead, try telling a gay kid that you love him and you don’t want him to die. Try inviting her into your church and into your home and into your life. Anything other than that simply doesn’t matter.

How effective are renewable energy subsidies? Maybe not effective as originally thoughts, finds news study

How effective are renewable energy subsidies? Maybe not effective as originally thoughts, finds news study

(Phys.org) —Renewable energy subsidies have been a politically popular program over the past decade. These subsidies have led to explosive growth in wind power installations across the United States, especially in the Midwest and Texas

But do these subsidies work?

Not as well as one might think, finds a new study from Washington University in St. Louis' Olin Business School.

The "social costs" of carbon dioxide would have to be greater than $42 per ton in order for the environmental benefits of wind power to have out weighed the costs of subsidies, finds Joseph Cullen, PhD, assistant professor economics and expert on environmental regulation and energy markets.

The social cost of carbon is the marginal cost to society of emitting one extra ton of carbon (as carbon dioxide) at any point in time.

The current social cost of carbon estimates, released in November and projected for 2015, range from $12 to $116 per ton of additional carbon dioxide emissions. The prior version, from 2010, had a range between $7 and $81 per ton of carbon dioxide. The estimates are expected to rise in the coming decades.

Cullen's findings are explained in a paper titled "Measuring the Environmental Benefits of Wind-Generated Electricity" in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.

"Given the lack of a national climate legislation, renewable energy subsidies are likely to be continued to be used as one of the major policy instruments for mitigating carbon dioxide emissions in the near future," Cullen says. "As such, it's imperative that we gain a better understanding of the impact of subsidization on emissions."

Since electricity produced by wind is emission free, the development of wind-power may reduce aggregate pollution by offsetting production from fossil fuel generated electricity production. When low marginal cost wind-generated electricity enters the grid, higher marginal cost fossil fuel generators will reduce their output.

However, emission rates of fossil fuel generators vary greatly by generator (coal-fired, natural gas, nuclear, hydropower). Thus, the quantity of emissions offset by wind power will depend crucially on which generators reduce their output, Cullen says.

The quantity of pollutants offset by wind power depends crucially on which generators reduce production when wind power comes online.

Cullen's paper introduces an approach to empirically measure the environmental contribution of wind power resulting from these production offsets.

"By exploiting the quasi-experimental variation in wind power production driven by weather fluctuations, it is possible to identify generator specific production offsets due to wind power," Cullen says.

Importantly, dynamics play a critical role in the estimation procedure, he finds.

"Failing to account for dynamics in generator operations leads to overly optimistic estimates of emission offsets," Cullen says. "Although a static model would indicate that wind has a significant impact on the operation of coal generators, the results from a dynamic model show that wind power only crowds out electricity production fueled by natural gas."

The model was used to estimate wind power offsets for generators on the Texas electricity grid. The results showed that one mega watt hour of wind power production offsets less than half a ton of carbon dioxide, almost one pound of nitrogen oxide, and no discernible amount of sulfur dioxide.

"As a benchmark for the economic benefits of renewable subsidies, I compared the value of offset emissions to the cost of subsidizing wind farms for a range of possible emission values," Cullen says. "I found that the value of subsidizing wind power is driven primarily by carbon dioxide offsets, but that the social costs of carbon dioxide would have to be greater than $42 per ton in order for the environmental benefits of wind power to have out weighed the costs of subsidies."

Explore further: NREL calculates emissions and costs of power plant cycling necessary for increased wind and solar
 

More information: Cullen, Joseph. 2013. "Measuring the Environmental Benefits of Wind-Generated Electricity." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 5(4): 107-33.

Provided by Washington University in St. Louis 

Jeffrey D. Sachs proposes a new curriculum for a new era. - Project Syndicate

Jeffrey D. Sachs proposes a new curriculum for a new era. - Project Syndicate

Earth's orbit about the sun is not perfectly circular.  Like all planets, it is an ellipse with at least a little eccentricity, for Earth this being 0.0167.  This means that our planet's distance from the sun ranges from 94,509,460 miles to 91,402,640 miles.  This difference results in an almost seven percent difference in solar energy reaching us between periapsis and apoapsis.

Oddly, the northern hemisphere summer occurs when the sun is furthest away, and its winter when the sun is closest.  The effects of our 23.5 degree axial tilt clearly overwhelms the orbital eccentricity effect, although it factors into the Milankovitch cycles, developed by  Milutin Milanković.

Many pseudoscientists and other quacks have abused these facts to put forth their own "theories" about the seasons; for example, in his book Your Right to Know by the then living Master of ECKANKAR, "Sri" Darwin Gross, we are told that Earth's magnetic forces are pulled by the sun's greater distance, causing internal terrestrial heat to well up and "cause" summer.  Gross was apparently unaware of the elementary fact that when it is summer in the northern hemisphere it is winter in southern, and so forth.

I confess that the reason I know this so well is because at that time I was a member of ECKANKAR.  This issue probably did more to drive me back to my scientific childhood than anything else (though there were many other factors) and into a career and lifelong devotion to science and reason.  I suppose, ironically, I owe an intellectual debt to Darwin Gross (who died not long ago) and ECKANKAR for demonstrating how distressing the irrational life is and, consequently, how rewarding the rational life can be. ECKANKAR, by the way, is still with us, still strong and, yes, profitable and tax-exempt, with tens of thousands of followers.  They keep a pretty low profile, but are rather like Scientology in their tactics, from what I've recently read.

The Age of the Universe: Revised

By Joshua Filmer in Quarks to Quasars, http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/the-age-of-the-universe-revised/

               

The Plank Space Observatory has recently aided scientists by making the most detailed map ever seen of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This image shows a ‘baby picture’ of the universe and revises the age of the universe making it a little older than scientists have previously thought.

 

The CMB is background radiation (pictured above) left over from the early stages of the universe, showing the universe as it was about 380,000 years after the big bang. At that time, the universe was still a dense soup of basic particles such as electrons, photons, and protons – all ‘boiling’ at a temperature of 2700 Celsius. Here, the protons and electrons started to combine into hydrogen atoms, this processed released the photons. As the universe continued to expand, the light redshifted to the microwave side of the electromagnetic spectrum, today, we can detect those microwaves, which give the universe an equivalent temperature of 2.7 degrees above absolute zero.

One of the many benefits of observing the CMB is the ability to see tiny temperature fluctuations (corresponding to different densities) of the very early universe. This naturally affects the large scale construction of today’s stars and galaxies. Thus, understanding the early universe is pivotal to understanding what we see today.

This is where the Plank Observatory comes it. Plank was originally designed to map the fluctuations that are seen in the CMB that occurred in the inflation period of the universe that happened shortly after the big bang. In addition to clarifying our current understanding of cosmology, this new map confirms the standard model of cosmology and helps to prove the models accuracy. There are also some new, as-yet unexplained features seen on the new CMB map that some scientists believe will need new physics to understand.

Jean-Jacques Dordain, the ESA’s director general, puts it best by saying, “the extraordinary quality of Planck’s portrait of the infant Universe allows us to peel back its layers to the very foundations, revealing that our blueprint of the cosmos is far from complete.”

 

Of course, after I praise the accuracy of the standard model of cosmology, now I’ll turn right around and rebuke it. There are several features seen in this map that don’t match up with our current models. One such feature is the specific fluctuations seen in the CMB at large angular scales. Here, scientists see signals much weaker than we had previously expected. In attrition, the average temperature of the northern hemisphere of the universe differs from that of the southern, which is contrary to the prediction that the universe should be very similar despite the direction we look.

Another anomaly is a confirmation in the existence of a rather large, asymmetric, cold spot seen in the map taken by the WMAP mission from NASA. The cold spot was originally regarded as an artifact WMAP’s sensors and thus thought of more-or-less as an error. Now, with better, more concrete, and more accurate information, the reality of these anomalies is coming home.

As far as the asymmetric and non-uniformity seen in the temperatures is concerned, scientists have a few ideas. It’s possible the light rays seen in the CMB take a more complicated route through the universe than we currently understand, or, perhaps the universe is not the same in all directions on a scale larger than we can observe. Either way, Professor Efstathiou of the University of Cambridge says, “Our ultimate goal would be to construct a new model that predicts the anomalies and links them together. But these are early days; so far, we don’t know whether this is possible and what type of new physics might be needed. And that’s exciting.”

 

 

Even with the kinks in our models, the Plank map goes a long way to confirming our expectations – at least revealing that we are on the right track. In addition, the map goes to revise our understanding of what the universe is made of, the ratios between normal matter, dark matter, and dark energy. Here, Plank shows us a universe made of 4.9% normal ‘visible’ matter (in contrast to 4.5% seen in WMAP), 26.8% dark matter (in contrast to 22.7%), and 68.3% dark energy (in contrast to 72.8%). The Plank measurements also place the age of the universe at 13.81-billion years old, in contrast to the 13.7-billion seen in the WMAP mission.

One of the most exciting thing about all of that data is that the revised numbers are within the margins of error of the old numbers – so, we’re very much on the right track to understanding the universe at large.