Tag: earth

‘Sinking’ Pacific Nation Tuvalu Is Actually Getting Bigger

mi shares a report from Phys.Org: The Pacific nation of Tuvalu — long seen as a prime candidate to disappear as climate change forces up sea levels — is actually growing in size, new research shows. A University of Auckland study examined changes in the geography of Tuvalu’s nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, using aerial photographs and satellite imagery. It found eight of the atolls and almost three-quarters of the islands grew during the study period, lifting Tuvalu’s total land area by 2.9 percent, even though sea levels in the country rose at twice the global average. Co-author Paul Kench said the research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, challenged the assumption that low-lying island nations would be swamped as the sea rose. It found factors such as wave patterns and sediment dumped by storms could offset the erosion caused by rising water levels. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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‘Sinking’ Pacific Nation Tuvalu Is Actually Getting Bigger

NASA will test a key deep space navigation tool this year

The Deep Space Atomic Clock (DSAC) is finally ready for testing, and NASA’s JPL has begun preparing it for launch this year after working on it for two decades. Current space vehicles and observatories already use atomic clocks for navigation — they are, after all, some of the most accurate timekeeping devices ever. However, the way they work isn’t ideal for use in vessels going beyond Low-Earth Orbit. See, the atomic clocks space agencies and companies use today need to be paired with ground-based antennas. The antenna sends signals to a spacecraft, and the vessel sends them back to Earth. Current clocks use the difference in time between sending and receiving a signal to calculate a space vehicle’s location, path and velocity. It then relays commands to the spacecraft based on those calculations. While signals travel at the speed of light, that process can still take hours — the farther the spacecraft is, the longer it has to wait for a signal. Deep Space Atomic Clock solves that issue by being onboard the spacecraft itself, which means it doesn’t need to rely on two-way tracking. It can use the signal sent from Earth to calculate for its host’s position and velocity without having to toss that signal back. That means vehicles can move and change course more quickly than current ones can, and they can focus on completing mission objectives rather than spend time readjusting antennas. In addition, DSAC will allow ground-based antennas to keep track of multiple satellites in one area — say the Martian orbit — since they don’t need to wait for vehicles to respond. DSAC will launch this year attached to General Atomic’s Orbital Test Bed spacecraft, which will blast off aboard the US Air Force Space Technology Program mission. It can head to space as a hosted payload , because it’s about the size of a four-slice toaster, much smaller than current fridge-sized atomic clocks — the agency could shrink it down even further for future missions. JPL’s ultimate goal is achieving a .03 nanosecond accuracy, but it’ll call the upcoming test a success if the prototype can maintain time accurately to within two nanoseconds. Source: NASA

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NASA will test a key deep space navigation tool this year

A Beautiful Solution: UK, Switzerland Experiment With Using Strips of Wildflowers as Natural Pesticides

Pesticides are bad for humans, and they’ve been linked to everything from birth defects to cancer. They’re not much better for the environment: In “Sustaining the Earth, ” textbook author G. Tyler Miller–the man who literally wrote the book on environmental science–points out that over 95% and 98% of sprayed herbicides and pesticides, respectively, land on something other than what they’re trying to kill. They then contaminate and pollute the air, water and soil. We need to shift towards a natural and eco-friendly way to protect crops, and the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology may have the solution: Wildflowers. As it turns out, wildflowers are a breeding ground for parasitic wasps and hoverflies–which doesn’t sound pleasant, until you consider that those are the natural predators of cereal leaf beetles and aphids, which are both persistent and destructive crop pests. Thus the CEH is running a five-year trial in England on 15 farms, planting strips of wildflowers that run directly through crop fields. (As a side bonus, wildflowers also host bees , which help with pollinating crops.) The wildflower tactic is based on science backed up in a 2015 study published by the Royal Society’s Biological Sciences journal. “Our study demonstrates a high effectiveness of annual flower strips in promoting pest control, ” reads the report, “reducing CLB (cereal leaf beetle) pest levels below the economic threshold. Hence, the studied flower strip offers a viable alternative to insecticides.” Some farmers had previously planted wildflowers on the periphery of a field of crops, but this only protected the crops nearest the periphery. Thus CEH’s trial has been planting six-meter-wide wildflower strips 100 meters apart inside the crop fields, allowing the insect predators a convenient commute. Because harvesters are now precisely guided by GPS, the crops can be reaped while the flower strips are left intact. “The flowers planted include oxeye daisy, red clover, common knapweed and wild carrot, ” The Guardian reports. “Similar field trials are also underway in Switzerland , using flowers such as cornflowers, coriander, buckwheat, poppy and dill.” If the CEH trial turns out to be a success, the next step will be to convince farmers. “The majority of crop protection advice given in the UK, ” explains Bill Parker, director of research at the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, “is from agronomists tied to companies who make their money from selling pesticides.”

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A Beautiful Solution: UK, Switzerland Experiment With Using Strips of Wildflowers as Natural Pesticides

Bitcoin Jumps Another 10% in 24 Hours, Sets New Record at $19,000

An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica: Bitcoin’s price set a new record on Saturday as the virtual currency rose above $19, 000 for the first time on the Bitstamp exchange. The gains came just hours after the currency crossed the $18, 000 mark. Bitcoin’s value has doubled over the last three weeks, and it’s up more than 20-fold over the last year. Bitcoin’s value keeps rising despite a growing chorus of experts who say the currency value is an unsustainable bubble. One CNBC survey this week found that 80 percent of Wall Street economists and market strategists saw bitcoin’s rise as a bubble, compared to just two percent who said the currency’s value was justified. Another survey reported by The Wall Street Journal this week found that 51 out of 53 economists surveyed thought bitcoin’s price was an unsustainable bubble. Less than a month ago, Bitcoin was selling for $8, 000. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Bitcoin Jumps Another 10% in 24 Hours, Sets New Record at $19,000

John Scalzi’s ‘Old Man’s War’ sci-fi series is headed to Netflix

Award-winning science fiction author John Scalzi famously chose military SF for his Old Man’s War series because it was a marketable sub-genre . Lucky for us that he did, as the eventual six-book series has been a critical and commercial success. According to a report from Deadline , Netflix has just acquired the first novel with intentions to make it into a film. In the Old Man’s War universe, set hundreds of years from now, older people are given a loaded choice. Either age and die on Earth or get healthy young bodies that are conscripted into the military to fight space aliens. Protagonist John Perry makes the obvious choice and becomes a high-octane space marine who ends up being pretty good at leading troops into battle. Of course, all is not as it seems, and Perry begins to piece together what’s really going on. The engaging story will likely make a good movie, provided it’s done right (looking at you, Ender’s Game ). The film is being produced by John Shestak Productions ( Air Force One , Dan in Real Life ) and Madhouse Entertainment . Source: Deadline

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John Scalzi’s ‘Old Man’s War’ sci-fi series is headed to Netflix

Almost All Bronze Age Artifacts Were Made From Meteorite Iron

dryriver shares a report from Science Alert: According to a new study, it’s possible that all iron-based weapons and tools of the Bronze Age were forged using metal salvaged from meteorites. The finding has given experts a better insight into how these tools were created before humans worked out how to produce iron from its ore. While previous studies had found specific Bronze Age objects to be made from meteoric metal — like one of the daggers buried with King Tutankhamun — this latest research answers the question of just how widespread the practice was. Albert Jambon, from the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, studied museum artifacts from Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and China, analyzing them using an X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer to discover they all shared the same off-world origins. “The present results complementing high quality analyses from the literature suggest that most or all irons from the Bronze Age are derived from meteoritic iron, ” writes Jambon in his published paper. “The next step will be to determine where and when terrestrial iron smelting appeared for the first time.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Almost All Bronze Age Artifacts Were Made From Meteorite Iron

Hole In The Ozone Layer Smallest In 29 Years

An anonymous reader quotes the Weather Channel: The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is the smallest it’s been since 1988, NASA said. According to a press release, the hole in the Earth’s ozone layer is 1.3 million square miles smaller than last year and 3.3 million square miles smaller than 2015… This year, the hole grew to 7.6 million square miles. NASA and NOAA scientists said warmer temperatures and a stormier upper atmosphere helped keep damaging chemicals chlorine and bromine from eating ozone from the layer that protects the Earth’s surface from harmful ultraviolet rays… The hole that hovers over Antarctica has been slowly recovering, scientists say, due to an international ban on harmful chemicals that were previously used in refrigerants and aerosols. The hole was its largest in 2000 and measured 11.5 million square miles. Although recovery is underway, the size of the hole remains large compared to the 1980s, when the hole was first detected, NASA noted. And while there has been significant healing of the ozone layer in recent years, some scientists say full healing is a slow process and will not occur until sometime in the 22nd century, Yale Environment 360 reports. Others expect the Antarctic ozone hole to recover back to 1980 levels around 2070, NASA said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hole In The Ozone Layer Smallest In 29 Years

How a Stone Quarry Cuts Perfectly Rectangular Blocks Using a Ride-able Machine

As industrial designers, most of us are keenly aware of how plastic, metal, wood and glass are manipulated into objects. But stone is a lesser-used and more mysterious material; how exactly does a quarry turn what’s in the earth into a slab, and turn that slab into rectangular blocks? In this video shot at a stone quarry in Malta, we see that it requires first surfacing the top of the slab and then performing a series of “rip cuts” (we don’t get to see these two steps), then setting up a dolly track perpendicular to the initial cuts, something like the track of a tracksaw. Then a ride-able machine goes along the track making two cuts at once, while a trailing splitter separates the blocks and helps a second worker set them vertically: More Examples of How to Work Stone: How to Hand Drill Holes in Stone and Concrete How to Quickly Carve Stone Using Cheap Tools Ben Uyeda’s DIY Stone Bench CNC Wire Machines Can Cut Stone Into Crazy Shapes

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How a Stone Quarry Cuts Perfectly Rectangular Blocks Using a Ride-able Machine

Returning to Second Life

Seriously, this once happened. A decade ago, dozens of media outlets and technologists discovered “The Next Internet.” An original cyberspace science fiction fantasy had finally come to fruition as the world gained a second digitized reality. In a short period of time, countries  established embassies , media companies  opened bureaus , one of Earth’s biggest rock bands played a concert , political campaigns took to its streets, and people became real-world millionaires plying their skills in this new arena. That much hyped “Next Internet?” You may remember it better by its official name—Second Life. For many modern Internet users, the platform has likely faded far, far from memory. But there’s no denying the cultural impact Second Life had during the brief height of its popularity. Explaining Second Life today as a MMORG or a social media platform undersells things for the unfamiliar; Second Life became an entirely alternative online world for its users. And it wasn’t just the likes of Reuters and U2 and Sweden embracing this platform. Second Life boasted 1.1 million active users at its peak roughly a decade ago. Even cultural behemoth Facebook only boasted 20 million at the time. Read 38 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Returning to Second Life

Mind-Altering Cat Parasite Linked To a Whole Lot of Neurological Disorders

schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: The brain-dwelling parasite Toxoplasma gondii is estimated to be hosted by at least 2 billion people around the world, and new evidence suggests the lodger could be more dangerous than we think. While the protozoan invader poses the greatest risk to developing fetuses infected in the womb, new research suggests the parasite could alter and amplify a range of neurological disorders, including epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s, and also cancer. “This study is a paradigm shifter, ” says one of the team, neuroscientist Dennis Steindler from Tufts University. “We now have to insert infectious disease into the equation of neurodegenerative diseases, epilepsy, and neural cancers.” The findings are part of an emerging field of research looking into how T. gondii, which is usually transmitted to humans via contact with cat faeces (or by eating uncooked meat), produces proteins that alter and manipulate the brain chemistry of their infected hosts. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Mind-Altering Cat Parasite Linked To a Whole Lot of Neurological Disorders