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.
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.
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 positiveintegersa, 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.
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
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”.
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.
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 JordanBeing 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.
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.”
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 (
which provides syntax for RDF; Web Ontology Language (
Using PubChemRDF, one can download the desired RDF formatted data files from the PubChem 
