New innovations in Saving energy

Hotel offers free meal to guests who are willing to generate electricity >





The Crown Plaza Hotel in Copenhagen , Denmark , is offering a free meal to any guest who is able to produce electricity for the hotel on an exercise bike attached to a generator. Guests will have to produce at least 10 watt hours of electricity - roughly 15 minutes of cycling for someone of average fitness. They will then be given meal vouchers worth $36 (26 euros).

Disco pub gets electricity produced by people dancing at specially modified dance floor




All the flashing strobes and pounding speakers at the dance club are massive consumers of electrical power. So Bar Surya, in London, re-outfitted its floor with springs that, when compressed by dancers, could produce electrical current that would be stored in batteries and used to offset some of the club's electrical burden. The club's owner, Andrew Charalambous, said the dance floor can now power 60 percent of the club's energy needs.

Company creates a desktop printer that doesn't use ink nor paper


Who says printers only use paper to print documents? It's time for you to meet the PrePeat Printer then. Different from conventional printers, PrePeat adopts a thermal head to print on specially-made plastic sheets. These plastic sheets are not merely water-proof, but could be easily erased, just feed the sheets through the printer again, and a different temperature will erase everything or just write over it. Also claimed by the manufacturer, such one sheet could be used up to 1,000 times so that you'll reduce your expenses on paper for sure.

University constructs a green roof as a gathering place


Green design is an enormously popular trend in modern architecture, just take a look at this amazing green roof at the School of Art , Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore . This 5-story facility sweeps a wooded corner of the campus with an organic, vegetated form that blends landscape and structure, nature and high-tech and symbolizes the creativity it houses. The roofs serve as informal gathering spaces challenging linear ideas and stirring perception. The roofs create open space, insulate the building, cool the surrounding air and harvest rainwater for landscaping irrigation. Planted grasses mix with native greenery to colonize the building and bond it to the setting.

Designer creates a sink that uses wasted water to grow a plant



Made of polished stained concrete, the Zen Garden Sink has a channel that allows the water used while washing your hands to water a plant. Created by young Montreal designer Jean-Michel Gauvreau the sink comes in single or double basin model. The sink is designed in a way you won't get your plants all soapy. There is a main drain at the bottom of the basin for soapy grime. Your little plant friend just gets whatever you choose to dole out.

Designer creates a shower that forces you to leave when you've wasted too much water







20% of our total domestic energy usage is from hot water for showering and bathing. That's over 6 times the energy usage of domestic lighting. So designer Tommaso Colia came up with his eco-friendly shower design that will force you to get out when you take too long and waste much water. The eco_drop shower features beautiful concentric circles that will rise to force you to stop showering when you take too long, and accordingly save water.

Designer creates light-switch that changes colors to teach children how to save energy




Teaching the importance of energy conservation is the goal of this design from Tim Holley. He calls it Tio, and it's a ghost-shaped light switch that gives kids a visual reminder of how much energy they've used by leaving lights on. Tio starts out green and smiling. If the light is left on for more than four hours, he turns yellow and looks shocked. And if you dare to leave that light on for more than eight hours, sweet little Tio turns into a raging red hulk, complete with frowny mouth and angry eyes. But he won't just visually remind your kids about their energy habits; information from the light switch is sent to Tio's computer program so the entire family can see how they're doing. In a brilliant piece of visual positive reinforcement, Holley's program lets kids grow a virtual tree which gets bigger and healthier the more energy they save.

Environmental company creates a staple-free stapler to avoid staple pollution


Staples are supposed to be so bad to the environment that a company decided to create a staple-free stapler. This product promises to make collation eco-friendly. Instead of using those thin metal planet-killers, the staple-free stapler "cuts out tiny strips of paper and uses the strips to stitch up to five pieces of paper together." You can even order them customized with your corporate logo so you can, you know, brag about what your company is doing to stop the staple epidemic.


Designer creates an iPhone charger powered by a hand grip

Traditional Inuit Knowledge Combines With Science to Shape Weather Insights

April 2010:

Using skills passed down through generations, Inuit forecasters living in the Canadian Arctic look to the sky to tell by the way the wind scatters a cloud whether a storm is on the horizon or if it's safe to go on a hunt.

Thousands of miles away in a lab tucked in Colorado's Rocky Mountains, scientists take data measurements and use the latest computer models to predict weather. They are two practices serving the same purpose that come from disparate worlds.

But in the past 20 years, something has run amok with Inuit forecasting. Old weather signals don't seem to mean what they used to. The cloud that scatters could signal a storm that comes in an hour instead of a day.

Now researchers are combining indigenous environmental knowledge with modern science to learn new things about what's happening to the Arctic climate.

"It's interesting how the western approach is often trying to understand things without necessarily experiencing them," said Elizabeth Weatherhead, a research scientist with the University of Colorado at Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "With the Inuit, it's much more of an experiential issue, and I think that fundamental difference brings a completely different emphasis both in defining what the important scientific questions are, and discerning how to address them."

For years, researchers had heard reports of unpredictable weather coming in from Arctic communities. But the stories didn't seem to match up with the numbers. By scientific measurement, weather around the world appeared to be growing more persistent with less variation. The disparity left scientists scratching their heads, said Weatherhead.

"I had been hearing about this problem from other environmental statisticians for a number of years," said Weatherhead, who also works closely with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., and who is chief author on a new study on the subject. "But the Inuit used a different language than what we statisticians used, and none of us could really figure out what matched up with their observations."

That's where Shari Gearheard, a scientist with CU-Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center, also part of CIRES, comes in. Gearheard lives in Clyde River, Nunavut, Canada, an Inuit community on eastern Baffin Island, and for the past 10 years has been working with Inuit hunters and elders to document their knowledge of the environment and environmental change.

Weather has a special importance in Arctic environments, where a reliable forecast can mean the difference between life and death. There are members of the Inuit community who possess the skills to predict the weather, but that knowledge is dying off as both the culture and climate change, according to the scientists.

"The impacts of that are a loss of confidence in those forecasters and concerns about incorrect forecasts," said Gearheard. Forecasters don't want to send somebody out to go hunting if they're going to be unsafe and be in poor weather conditions."

Gearheard meticulously collects the stories told to her by the Inuit and makes systematic records of indigenous environmental knowledge. Through this, patterns begin to emerge, she said.

Of special importance were changes experienced by the Inuit during the spring, a time of transition for many environmental processes. During spring, the Inuit would notice that the top layer of the snow melted during the day and then would refreeze at night, forming a crust.

"In fact, in a lot of places, the season is named after a particular process by the Inuit," said Gearheard. "In cases like this where the Inuit are not seeing that process anymore, it is an indicator to them that something had changed."

Gearheard's records created a resolution of detail for Arctic weather observation that, by bringing the two studies together, gave Weatherhead the information she needed to bridge indigenous knowledge with scientific knowledge. "What was incredibly helpful was Shari's detailed description of what they were experiencing on what sort of timescales," said Weatherhead. "That really allowed us to start focusing on our statistical tests and try to find exactly what matched their observations."

Statistical analysis of day-to-day temperatures at Baker Lake, Nunavut, showed that in May and June the persistence of temperature had recently declined, matching Inuit reports of greater unpredictability at that season. "People hadn't previously looked at persistence in this way," said CIRES fellow Roger Barry, also director of the World Data Center for Glaciology at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at CU-Boulder and a study co-author along with Gearheard.

What they found was a scientific story more in line with what people were witnessing on the ground. Weather along the Arctic latitudes was behaving more unpredictably than in other parts of the world.

"That's an incredibly important parameter to care about," said Weatherhead. "The way I try to describe it to some people is if we get an inch of rain out at my house in the month of July, I don't need to turn on the sprinklers. But if we get an inch of rain on July 1, and no rain after that, my lawn is dead.

"Ecosystems have evolved under a certain type of pattern. So if that is changing, that could be just as important as a small increase in temperature or some of the other changes we're talking about," Weatherhead said.

The new study helps scientists refine and test climate models, while also providing such models with a new category of information to consider, said Weatherhead. And Gearheard's work with the Inuit is demonstrating the value of indigenous environmental knowledge to modern climate science.

"When we first started talking about this, indigenous knowledge didn't have the place it does now in research," Gearheard said. "It's growing. People are becoming more familiar with it, more respectful of it."

Weatherhead and Gearheard said they are intrigued by the insights that incorporate indigenous knowledge and climate studies, but they don't want to stop there. The new study has sparked an interest in the type of environmental knowledge other communities could provide to climate scientists, from ranchers and farmers to indigenous groups. "When you treat these perspectives as different forms of evidence or knowledge and see where that takes you, that is when exciting stuff happens," said Gearheard.

The study appears this month in the journal Global Environmental Change. The National Science Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada provided funding for the study.

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder.

Journal Reference:

1. Weatherhead et al. Changes in weather persistence: Insight from Inuit knowledge. Global Environmental Change, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.02.002

Massive Arctic Ice Cap Is Shrinking, Study Shows; Rate Accelerating Since 1985

Close to 50 years of data show the Devon Island ice cap, one of the largest ice masses in the Canadian High Arctic, is thinning and shrinking.

A paper published in the March edition of Arctic, the journal of the University of Calgary's Arctic Institute of North America, reports that between 1961 and 1985, the ice cap grew in some years and shrank in others, resulting in an overall loss of mass. But that changed 1985 when scientists began to see a steady decline in ice volume and area each year.

"We've been seeing more mass loss since 1985," says Sarah Boon, lead author on the paper and a Geography Professor at the University of Lethbridge. The reason for the change? Warmer summers.

The High Arctic is essentially a desert with low rates of annual precipitation. There is little accumulation of snow in the winter and cool summers, with temperatures at or below freezing, serve to maintain levels. Any increase of snow and ice takes years.

This delicate equilibrium is easily upset. One warm summer can wipe out five years of growth. And though the accelerated melting trend began in 1985, the last decade has seen four years with unusually warm summers -- 2001, 2005, 2007 and 2008.

"What we see during these warm summers is the extent of the melt is greater," says Boon about the results of a five-year remote sensing study that ran between 2000 and 2004.

The white surfaces of snow and ice reflect heat -- a process known as the albedo effect. Retreating ice exposes dark soil and gravel, which absorb heat and increase the melt rate of ice along the periphery of the cap. But it's not only the edges of the cap that are losing ice. At lower altitudes the ice is thinning as well.

Changes to the Devon ice cap, which covers approximately 14,400 sq. km, could have multiple impacts on everything from ship traffic to sea level.

There has already been an increase in the number of icebergs calving off from outlet glaciers that flow into the ocean. Boon explains that melt water runs between the bottom of the glacier and the ground, creating a slippery cushion that allows the glacier to slide forward more rapidly than it would in colder conditions.

"There are a lot of things we need to consider. One is the iceberg calving and its implications for shipping. These things don't just go away, they float out into the ocean," says Boon. A second area of concern is the contribution of increased glacier melt to rising sea level.

The work of Boon and her colleagues demonstrates the importance of long-term research. Work on Devon Island began in 1961 with researchers from the Arctic Institute of North America, including long-time Arctic scientist Roy 'Fritz' Koerner, who was part of the current study until his death in 2008. This ongoing research, which is continuing thanks to federal International Polar year funding, has created a comprehensive dataset that contributes to the understanding of the complex play between the ice cap, the atmosphere and the ocean.

"We all know long-term studies are important but they are really hard to pay for."

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by Arctic Institute of North America, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

New Material for More Ecological, Efficient and Economic Refrigeration Systems

Two teams based at the Barcelona Knowledge Campus, one from the University of Barcelona (UB) and one from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), have worked with a group from the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany) to develop a new solid material that produces a caloric effect under hydrostatic pressure (solid-state barocaloric effect). The work was carried out using a high-pressure system developed by the UPC, which is the only one of its type in Spain.



he research is described in an article published in the scientific journal Nature Materials and was inspired by guidelines in the Kyoto protocol on renewing current refrigeration systems based on the compression of harmful gases.

Research into materials showing large caloric effects close to room temperature is one of the areas currently being explored to develop new refrigeration systems. Until recently, the most promising materials for applications in this field were giant magnetocaloric materials, which change temperature under the influence of an external magnetic field. The authors of this new study show that application of a moderate hydrostatic pressure to a nickel-manganese-indium alloy (Ni-Mn-In) produces results comparable to those achieved with the most effective magnetocaloric materials.

According to Lluís Mañosa, a professor with the Department of Structure and Constituents of Matter at the UB and principal investigator of the study, "the aim of this field of research is to identify materials that are efficient, economic and environmentally respectful, and the advantages of the alloy used in this study is that all of the component materials meet these requirements."

In addition, Antoni Planes, a professor with the same UN department, explains that, "this type of material can produce much greater caloric effects with only slight variations in pressure, which makes it ideal for domestic refrigeration systems (refrigerators, air conditioning, etc.)." When these alloys are submitted to an external field, either magnetic or pressure, the material undergoes a solid-state phase transition, and Lluís Mañosa explains that, "this phase change generates a considerable latent heat exchange." The physical principle involved is the same as the effect observed when an ice cube is placed into a glass of water: the ice absorbs heat from the water, lowering its temperature.

The experiments were carried out using a unique high-pressure system developed by the Materials Characterization Group at UPC, directed by Josep Lluís Tamarit, a professor with the Department of Nuclear Physics and Engineering. The system was designed to measure the temperatures during state changes according to the pressure and heat exchanged in the process.

According to the researcher Maria Barrio, who works for the same UPC department and co-authored the study, "studying the behaviour of materials under different pressures has a wide range of uses in many fields," and applications include various types of refrigeration systems, such as domestic refrigerators and air-conditioning systems, food storage facilities, industrial machinery and supercomputers. Scientists have understood the magnetocaloric effect for some time, and it has been used extensively in work requiring extremely low temperature, but it was not until the 1990s that experts discovered materials capable of producing a large magnetocaloric effect close to room temperature, or giant magnetocaloric effect.

In 2005, an article in Nature Materials presented the inverse magnetocaloric effect, under which the temperature of a material submitted to an external magnetic field decreases instead of increasing, which is the standard response of most magnetic materials.

The study, carried out as preparation for the doctoral thesis of Xavier Moya, under the direction of Lluís Mañosa (UB), was awarded the 2009 Ramon Margalef Prize by the UB Board of Trustees.

In addition to the barocaloric effect described above, the Ni-Mn-In alloy also exhibits the inverse magnetocaloric effect. As such, the magnetic field can be combined with exertion of hydrostatic pressure to produce the caloric effect, which can be modulated with a series of parameters to control the temperature. With this new material it is possible to observe the pressure and the magnetic field to control the state change at a desired temperature.

Calculating Agriculture's Phosphorus Footprint

Balancing phosphorus levels in crop lands is a key factor that is often overlooked in discussions of global food security, according to a paper published in the International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology.

Current global issues include carbon footprints, water resources and climate change. However, the non-renewable element phosphorus for plant growth is often overlooked in the global context.

Biologist John Lott of McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues there and at the University of Sydney, Australia, point out that when food scarcity increases, instability in society increases. Given that the majority of the food we eat is from cereals and legumes, the phosphorus cycle is a critical element of food security. Phosphorus is essential for crop plant growth, but soils become depleted as it is removed from the land when the grain and seeds are harvested.

The researchers have analysed nine years of data on total dry cereal grain and total dry legume seed production, production of barley, maize, rice, soybean and wheat grains/seeds, yields, area farmed, the tonnage of phosphorus and phytic acid removed in these crops and the elemental phosphorus applied as mineral fertilizers to all plant crops.

The world estimate of the elemental P removed with the dry seed/grain and fleshy fruit crops that contain seeds is in the range of 56-71% of the elemental phosphorus applied as mineral fertilizer for all purposes worldwide. Depending on the soil type, considerable amounts of phosphorus may become unusable by plants, the team explains.

An analysis of the phosphorus data by the team reveals several significant imbalances in the agricultural cycling of phosphorus that could seriously affect global food security. For instance, Asia consumes significantly more mineral phosphorus fertilizer in proportion to crop production than any other region, which could represent a potential environmental, economic and social problem for that part of the world.

"This is a particularly relevant and important topic in the light of the increasing global population since high quality P reserves are diminishing and the cost of fertilizers are escalating rapidly with few options available to increase fertilizer phosphorus use efficiency," the team says.

There are various approaches to improving the position of phosphorus in food production and security, Lott and colleagues suggest. More effort must be made to combine all possible factors to increase the supply of our most important cereal and legume grain/seed crops in an efficient and environmentally sustainable way, they explain. That means optimising the use of phosphorus fertilizers, using selective breeding and genetic modification to produce crops that require less phosphorus depending on whether they are destined for animal feed or human consumption. Most of all, improving agricultural and governance practices can all play important roles in improving food security, in general.

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by Inderscience Publishers, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

1. John Lott et al. A review of the phosphorus content of dry cereal and legume crops of the world. Int. J. Ag

Newest Material for More Ecological, Efficient and Economic Refrigeration Systems

An Extract from ScienceDaily dated Apr. 21, 2010 — Two teams based at the Barcelona Knowledge Campus, one from the University of Barcelona and one from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, have worked with a group from the University of Duisburg-Essen to develop a new solid material that produces a caloric effect under hydrostatic pressure (solid-state barocaloric effect). The work was carried out using a high-pressure system developed by the UPC, which is the only one of its type in Spain.




This research was described in an article published in the scientific journal Nature Materials and was inspired by guidelines in the Kyoto protocol on renewing current refrigeration systems based on the compression of harmful gases.
Research into materials showing large caloric effects close to room temperature is 1 of the areas currently being explored to develop new refrigeration systems. Until recently, the most promising materials for applications in this field were giant magnetocaloric materials, which change temperature under the influence of an external magnetic field. The authors of this new study show that application of a moderate hydrostatic pressure to a nickel-manganese-indium alloy (Ni-Mn-In) produces results comparable to those achieved with the most effective magnetocaloric materials.
According to Mañosa, a professor with the Department of Structure and Constituents of Matter at the UB and principal investigator of the study, "the aim of this field of research is to identify materials that are efficient, economic and environmentally respectful, and the advantages of the alloy used in this study is that all of the component materials meet these requirements."
In addition, Antoni Planes, a professor with the same UN department, explains that, "this type of material can produce much greater caloric effects with only slight variations in pressure, which makes it ideal for domestic refrigeration systems (refrigerators, air conditioning and other cooling systems)." When these alloys are submitted to an external field, either magnetic or pressure, the material undergoes a solid-state phase transition, and Mañosa explains that, "this phase change generates a considerable latent heat exchange." The physical principle involved is the same as the effect observed when an ice cube is placed into a glass of water: the ice absorbs heat from the water, lowering its temperature.
The experiments were carried out using a unique high-pressure system developed by the Materials Characterization Group at UPC, directed by Josep Lluís Tamarit, a professor with the Department of Nuclear Physics and Engineering. The system was designed to measure the temperatures during state changes according to the pressure and heat exchanged in the process.
According to the researcher Maria Barrio, who works for the same UPC department and co-authored the study, "studying the behaviour of materials under different pressures has a wide range of uses in many fields," and applications include various types of refrigeration systems, such as domestic refrigerators and air-conditioning systems, food storage facilities, industrial machinery and supercomputers. Scientists have understood the magnetocaloric effect for some time, and it has been used extensively in work requiring extremely low temperature, but it was not until the 1990s that experts discovered materials capable of producing a large magnetocaloric effect close to room temperature, or giant magnetocaloric effect.
In 2005, an article in Nature Materials presented the inverse magnetocaloric effect, under which the temperature of a material submitted to an external magnetic field decreases instead of increasing, which is the standard response of most magnetic materials.
The study, carried out as preparation for the doctoral thesis of Xavier Moya, under the direction of Lluís Mañosa (UB), was awarded the 2009 Ramon Margalef Prize by the UB Board of Trustees.
In addition to the barocaloric effect described above, the Ni-Mn-In alloy also exhibits the inverse magnetocaloric effect. As such, the magnetic field can be combined with exertion of hydrostatic pressure to produce the caloric effect, which can be modulated with a series of parameters to control the temperature. With this new material it is possible to observe the pressure and the magnetic field to control the state change at a desired temperature.

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by Universidad de Barcelona, via AlphaGalileo.
Journal Reference:
1.Lluís Mañosa, David González-Alonso, Antoni Planes, Erell Bonnot, Maria Barrio, Josep-Lluís Tamarit, Seda Aksoy, Mehmet Acet. Giant solid-state barocaloric effect in the Ni-Mn-In magnetic shape-memory alloy. Nature Materials, 2010; DOI: 10.1038/nmat2731

Carbon, Nitrogen Link May Provide New Ways to Mitigate Pollution Problems

Carbon, Nitrogen Link May Provide New Ways to Mitigate Pollution Problems

(Apr. 21, 2010) — A new study exploring the growing worldwide problem of nitrogen pollution from soils to the sea shows that global ratios of nitrogen and carbon in the environment are inexorably linked, a finding that may lead to new strategies to help mitigate regional problems ranging from contaminated waterways to human health.



A new CU-Boulder study shows that ratios of nitrogen and carbon in soils, rivers and oceans are closely linked, a finding with potential implications for mitigating pollution and health problems. (Credit: Casey A. Cass, University of Colorado)

The University of Colorado at Boulder study found the ratio between nitrates -- a naturally occurring form of nitrogen found in soils, streams, lakes and oceans -- and organic carbon is closely governed by ongoing microbial processes that occur in virtually all ecosystems. The team combed exhaustive databases containing millions of sample points from tropical, temperate, boreal and polar sites, including well-known, nitrogen-polluted areas like Chesapeake Bay, the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

"We have developed a new framework to explain how and why carbon and nitrogen appear to be so tightly linked," said CU-Boulder doctoral student Philip Taylor, lead author on the new study. "The findings are helping us to explain why nitrate can become so high in some water bodies but remain low in others."

A paper by Taylor and CU-Boulder ecology and evolutionary biology Professor Alan Townsend is being published in the April 22 issue of Nature. The study was funded in part by the National Science Foundation. Both Taylor and Townsend also are affiliated with CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

While the vast majority of nitrogen gas is abundant in the atmosphere, it is nonreactive and unavailable to most life, said Townsend. But in 1909 a process was developed to transform the nonreactive gas into ammonia, the active ingredient of synthetic fertilizer. Humans now manufacture more than 400 billion pounds of fertilizer each year -- much of which migrates from croplands into the atmosphere, waterways and oceans -- creating a suite of environmental problems ranging from coastal "dead zones" and toxic algal blooms to ozone pollution and human health issues.

Taylor said the new study indicates that in virtually every area of Earth's environment where there is substantially more dissolved organic carbon than nitrates, the nitrogen is sucked up by microbial communities. "But most of these nitrates are probably not locked away forever," said Taylor. "Instead, they are passed on to other ecosystems, essentially just moving pollution problems elsewhere in the environment."

The consistent relationship between nitrogen and carbon detected in the study was surprising, said Taylor, a doctoral student in CU-Boulder's ecology and evolutionary biology department. "The microbial communities that are controlling this link are found across the globe, whether in pristine environments or in areas of heavy pollution."

Taylor said the CU-Boulder team looked at available data from virtually every ecosystem type, ranging from high-altitude tundra and tropical forests to riparian areas and estuaries. "We looked at a large number of data sets, from sites as small as an office table to as large as entire oceans," said Taylor. "We saw the same correlation between nitrogen and carbon wherever we looked."

"The bottom line is that if there is sufficient organic carbon present, it keeps the nitrates at a low level," said Townsend. "By using available data, we can now make more accurate evaluations of when and where nitrate pollution may pop up." In the February 2010 issue of Scientific American, Townsend and co-author Robert Howarth of Cornell University wrote that "a single new atom of reactive nitrogen can bounce its way around these widespread environments, like a felon on a crime spree."

Nitrogen pollution is increasing globally in part because of fertilizer-intensive activities like biofuel synthesis and meat production that relies on the growth and cultivation of grains used to feed animals. In addition, the burning of fossil fuels -- which releases nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide -- causes ground-level ozone pollution. Some scientists have ranked nitrogen pollution as one of the top threats to global biodiversity, Townsend said.

High nitrate concentrations in drinking water also is a potential hazard to human health and may cause several types of cancer and elevate risks for Alzheimer's disease and diabetes, while atmospheric nitrogen pollution can elevate cardiopulmonary ailments, said Townsend. In addition, studies also have shown elevated nitrogen concentrations may increase the risks of several other human and wildlife diseases.

Taylor said the new study showed that "downscaling" from a global analysis of the carbon-nitrogen link to system-specific scenarios indicates the relationship between the elements typically becomes even stronger. "Analyzing the problem using these methods at smaller scales could allow ecosystem management teams to better predict and influence the fate of nitrates in the environment," Taylor said.

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder.

Journal Reference:

1. Philip G. Taylor, Alan R. Townsend. Stoichiometric control of organic carbon%u2013nitrate relationships from soils to the sea. Nature, 2010; 464 (7292): 1178 DOI: 10.1038/nature08985

Long-Distance Journeys out of Fashion? Global Warming May Be Causing Evolutionary Changes in Bird Migration

The results of genetic studies on migratory birds substantiate the theory that in the case of a continued global warming, and within only a few generations, migratory birds will -- subject to strong selection and microevolution -- at first begin to fly shorter distances and at a later stage, stop migrating, and will thus become so-called "residents."



The locomotory activity (restlessness) of migratory birds can be recorded quantitatively in environment-controlled chambers. Such cages are equipped with movable perches, which are coupled to micro-switches. (Credit: Max Planck Institute for Ornithology)

In a selection experiment with blackcaps from southwest Germany, Francisco Pulido and Peter Berthold at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell were able to show that first non-migratory birds are to be found in a completely migratory bird population after only two generations of directional selection for lower migratory activity. The strong evolutionary reduction in migration distance found in this study is in line with the expected adaptive changes in bird migration in response to environmental alterations caused by climatic change.

The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (April 5, 2010).

For generations, humans have been watching flocks of migrating birds flying to their winter quarters in the autumn, and awaiting their loud songs announcing their happy return in the spring. The timing of their migration is adjusted to the availability of resources, such as food and habitats, in the stopover areas as well as in the non-breeding and breeding areas. For migratory birds it is essential to be in the right place at the right time.

For some years, it has been possible to demonstrate using data collected in the wild that some species of migratory birds respond to the increase in temperature and to the subsequent changes in the environment. The blackcap is one of the species where changes in migratory behaviour have been most consistent. Today, blackcaps return to their breeding sites earlier, lay their eggs earlier, and leave us later in the autumn. One population even established a new wintering area in the British Isles, instead of flying all the way to Spain. Because of its large genetic variation, the researchers expected rapid adaptation to altered environmental conditions in this species, which is a model for investigating the evolution of bird migration.

The scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology wanted to find out what the mechanisms were for adjusting to global warming, whether there were measurable changes in migratory behaviour within a period with a strong temperature increase, and whether these changes, above all the reduced migratory distance, were an individual adjustment to altered environmental conditions, or whether the genetic composition of the populations would change.

During the period 1988 -- 2001, which were years with particularly high temperatures, blackcap nestlings were taken from their nests each year (757 birds in total) and reared by hand in the lab. The seasonal changes in light-dark transition were simulated and the migratory restlessness of the inexperienced young birds was measured in autumn. The duration of their restless behaviour during the night, i.e. the fluttering and hopping along the perch corresponded approximately to the duration of the flight to their winter quarters.

The birds that were taken from their natural habitat during these 14 years showed a significant reduction in their migratory activity. In their natural habitat this would be equivalent to a shortening of flying distance. This reduction, as the researchers were able to prove, was based on a change in the genetic composition of the population, i.e. evolution.

In a second experiment, the scientists simulated the selection process they had observed in nature in the laboratory, but in "time lapse." The birds with the least migratory activity and their offspring were paired over four generations. In order to avoid inbreeding, the researchers paired 50% of this line with birds in their natural habitat that showed a particularly weak migratory restlessness. After two generations, the first "resident" birds were already to be found in this population. Hence, directional selection for lower migratory activity leads to the evolution of partial migratory populations and, finally, to populations that do not leave their breeding areas at all.

The advantages for the birds are obvious: The shortening of migration distance saves energy and time. Moreover, because shorter days, as experienced in more northern wintering areas, induce an advancement of migratory activity and reproduction, birds migrating shorter distances will occupy the best breeding territories and may produce multiple broods in a year. "We assume that the reduction in migration distance is the first and most significant evolutionary mechanism that migratory birds have for adapting to changed climatic conditions," explains Francisco Pulido. "For birds that migrate short to average distances of approximately 1,000 km, and in which migratory behaviour is genetically determined, as is the case with most songbirds, this can be a successful strategy for survival. However, for long-distance migrants, for which successful migration will depend on overcoming ecological barriers such as desert or sea, this mechanism of adaptation cannot work, as a reduction of migration distance would mean spending the winter in a hostile environment, in which they cannot not survive."


Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.

Journal Reference:

1. Francisco Pulido and Peter Berthold. Current selection for lower migratory activity will drive the evolution of residency in a migratory bird population. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0910361107

Computer Model Helps Biologists Understand How Coral Dies in Warming Waters

April 2010

Cornell University researchers have developed a new tool to help marine biologists better grasp the processes under the sea: mathematical models that unveil the dynamics of bacterial communities behind afflictions that bleach and kill coral.

Warming waters are triggering coral bleaching and disease in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast. The new models explain for the first time how beneficial bacteria on coral suddenly give way to pathogens when waters warm.

"Before this study, we just had observations but little understanding of the mechanism" for what causes coral disease and bleaching, said Laura Jones, Cornell senior research associate in ecology and evolutionary biology and a co-author of a paper that appears in PLoS Biology, published by the Public Library of Science.

Justin Mao-Jones '08, who conducted the research as an undergraduate in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, is the paper's lead author. Stephen Ellner, Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, is the paper's senior author.

The model reveals how a healthy, normal microbial community in the coral surface-mucus layer protects corals from disease by preventing the invasion and overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria. But when corals are stressed by warmer temperatures (a heat spell), for example, the community of microbes suddenly switches. Species associated with a healthy coral organism -- "resident species" -- decline as pathogens associated with coral disease take their place.

The researchers used models to simulate bacterial community dynamics within the surface coral mucus under normal conditions and under warmer conditions.

"There's a critical threshold where the system jumps to a pathogen-dominated state," said Jones.

They also found that the models replicated a pattern others have observed: Once the disease-causing microbes establish themselves, they persist even if the water cools down enough to favor the beneficial bacteria. The coral is then often too damaged to recover, and the reefs begin to die.

Preventing oceans from warming will require people to curb climate change, and may be unavoidable in the short term, said Jones. But reducing poor water quality, which stresses the coral and makes the oceans more hospitable to pathogens, could perhaps ward off the sudden shift to pathogens dominating the coral surface, she added.

Kim Ritchie, a marine biologist at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., also co-authored the paper.

The study was funded by an Emerging Infectious Diseases grant from the National Science Foundation.


Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by Cornell University. Original article written by Krishna Ramanujan.

Journal References:

1. Justin Mao-Jones, Kim B. Ritchie, Laura E. Jones, Stephen P. Ellner. How Microbial Community Composition Regulates Coral Disease Development. PLoS Biology, 2010; 8 (3): e1000345 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000345
2. Elizabeth Whiteman. A Fatal Switch for Corals? PLoS Biology, 2010; 8 (3): e1000346 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000346

Ice Age Climate Change Did Not Pose Significant Challenges to First Americans, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2010) — Paleoindian groups -- the first people to enter and subsequently inhabit the American continent during the final glacial episodes of the Pleistocene period -- occupied North America throughout the Younger Dryas interval, which saw a rapid return to glacial conditions approximately 11,000 years ago. Until now, it has been assumed that cooling temperatures and their impact on communities posed significant adaptive challenges to those groups.

David Meltzer from the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, USA, and Vance Holliday from the University of Arizona in Tucson, USA, suggest otherwise in their review of climatic and environmental records from this time period in continental North America, published in Springer's Journal of World Prehistory.

From their analysis, they conclude that on the Great Plains and in the Rocky Mountains, conditions were in reality less extreme and therefore may not have measurably added to the challenge routinely faced by Paleoindian groups, who during this interval, successfully dispersed across the diverse habitats of Late Glacial North America.

Meltzer and Holliday question whether the impact of cooling on Pleistocene North Americans was actually that pronounced or widespread and, if it was, whether it was similarly abrupt and severe, and in the same direction, across North America. Their comprehensive review of the climate and environment of North America during that time and its possible impact suggests that the Young Dryas age cooling was not as sudden, extensive, or severe as has previously been suggested and the notion that these conditions may have taken the Paleoindians by surprise is questionable.

The authors conclude: "All things considered, it is likely that across most of North America, south of the retreating ice sheets, Paleoindians were not constantly scrambling to keep up with Younger Dryas age climate changes. After all, adapting to changing climatic and environmental conditions was nothing new to them -- it was what they did."

Deepest Core Drilled from Antarctic Peninsula; May Contain Glacial Stage Ice

Science Daily: April 2010;

Researchers here are hopeful that the new core they drilled through an ice field on the Antarctic Peninsula will contain ice dating back into the last ice age. If so, that record should give new insight into past global climate changes.

The expedition in early winter to the Bruce Plateau, an ice field straddling a narrow ridge on the northernmost tongue of the southernmost continent, yielded a core that was 445.6 meters (1,462 feet) long, the longest yet recovered from that region of Antarctica.

And while remarkably successful, the field work tested the researchers' resilience more than most of their previous expeditions.

"It was the field season from hell," explained Ellen Mosley-Thompson, professor of geography at Ohio State University and leader of the project. "Everything that could go wrong did, and almost everything that could break did."

Bad weather delayed their transport to the remote drill site and snowstorms were a recurrent problem, preventing support flights in to the team. Twice, their drills became stuck deep in the ice, a drill motor broke and all three of the drill gearboxes failed, causing them to cannibalize those devices to construct a new one.

Their ice core drilling effort was part of the much larger Larsen Ice Shelf System, Antarctica (LARISSA) project, designed to unravel past climate conditions in this part of the continent and monitor current ocean and atmospheric processes to better understand what likely caused portions of the massive Larsen Ice Shelf to disintegrate in 2002.

This large, interdisciplinary National Science Foundation project involved experts in the oceanography, biology and geology of the region, in addition to the ice core effort. The goal is to build a climate history of the region, hopefully determining if the ice shelf break-up was part of a long-term natural cycle or linked to the recent warming in this part of the world.

After an earlier team of LARISSA researchers had used ground-penetrating radar to map the bedrock under the ice field, and identified a suitable drill site, the six-person team was flown to the Bruce Plateau from the British research station, Rothera, on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Arriving at the location, the team set up sleeping tents, a cook tent and the large geodesic dome that protected the drilling and core processing operations. The team began drilling on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2009.

Two days later, the team had drilled 140 meters (459 feet) when the drill became stuck in the ice. Leaving that drill in the ice, they began drilling a second hole and by January 21, they had retrieved 383 meters (1,256 feet) of core before that drill also became stuck.

They modified a device normally used to bale water from the drill hole to carry ethylene glycol (antifreeze) down to the top of the stuck drill. After several days, the drill broke free and drilling resumed.

"The guys on our team, Victor Zagorodnov and Vladimir Mikhalenko, engineered through each problem that arose and were really very creative," explained Mosley-Thompson, a researcher with Ohio State's Byrd Polar Research Center.

On January 28th, the team reached the bedrock at the bottom of the ice sheet. The same day, they recovered the first drill that had become stuck in early January. Both ice cores were cut into roughly 1-meter-long segments that were packaged in plastic sleeves and cardboard tubes and stored in a snow pit adjacent to the drilling dome.

Periodically, as weather allowed, the planes would come pick up the ice-filled tubes, packed in insulated boxes, and return them to freezers at Rothera. Still stored at the Rothera station, the cores will be transferred to the U.S. research ship Nathaniel B. Palmer, shipped to the U.S. West Coast and brought to Columbus by refrigerated truck. The cores are expected to reach Ohio State by mid-summer.

When the ice arrives, researchers here will begin their analyses, measuring oxygen-isotopic ratios -- a proxy for temperature, and concentrations of dust and various chemicals -- including volcanic tracers, that collectively will reveal past climate conditions.

They're hoping for answers to some specific questions:

* Have the climate trends around the Antarctic Peninsula been similar or dissimilar to those experienced by the rest of the continent? Some evidence has suggested conditions have been considerably different;
* Was the climate on the peninsula warm during the early Holocene period, some 8,000 to 6,000 years ago, as it was elsewhere around the globe?
* Can evidence trapped in the ice cores shed light on what caused the Larsen Ice Sheet to begin to disintegrate in recent years?
* Do the cores contain ice formed during the last glacial stage, or "ice age"? If so, it might yield clues to what caused the change from those earlier, much colder climate conditions.

"My gut feeling is that the ice at the Bruce Plateau site might have built up during the latter part of the last glacial stage," Mosley-Thompson said.

"But to date, only two cores drilled in the Antarctic Peninsula, one in 2007 to 363 meters depth by the British Antarctic Survey, and ours, have the potential to answer that question and neither has been analyzed yet to make that determination."

Along with Mosley-Thompson, Zagorodnov and Mikhalenko, other members of the team included Roberto Filippi, Thai Verzone and Felix Benjamin Vicencio Maguina.

'Black Box' Plankton Found to Have Huge Role in Ocean Carbon Fixation

Scientists at the University of Warwick and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton have opened "the black box" of eukaryotic phytoplankton and discovered that they actually account for almost half the ocean's carbon fixation by phytoplankton.

Carbon fixation by phytoplankton in the open ocean plays a key role in the global carbon cycle but is not fully understood. Until now researchers believed that cyanobacteria overwhelmingly accounted for phytoplankton's role in carbon fixation in the open ocean. But now scientists at the University of Warwick and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton have opened "the black box" of eukaryotic phytoplankton and discovered that they actually account for almost half the ocean's carbon fixation by phytoplankton.

Blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, grow in vast numbers in the sunlit surface waters of the oceans, the photic zone. They use sunlight to 'fix' carbon by converting carbon dioxide into sugars and other organic compounds through photosynthesis.

Cyanobacteria belong to the 'picophytoplankton', the tiniest phytoplankton. Until now they have been thought to dominate carbon fixation in the open ocean, with species belonging to the genera Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus being particularly abundant.

Like all bacteria, cyanobacteria are prokaryotes, distinguished from eukaryotes by the absence of a cell nucleus. However, although much less abundant than cyanobacteria, the photic zone also has a high biomass of small eukaryotic phytoplankton capable of carbon fixation.

"The eukaryotic phytoplankton community has long been a 'black box' in terms of its composition as well as contribution to carbon fixation," says Professor Dave Scanlan of the University of Warwick; "Determining how much carbon different groups fix into biomass is required for a full understanding of the Earth's carbon cycle," adds Professor Mikhail Zubkov of the National Oceanography Centre.

In research, published April 15 in the Journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology, the scientists report how they measured carbon fixation by dominant phytoplankton groups in the subtropical and tropical northeast Atlantic Ocean, using samples collected from surface waters during a research cruise aboard the Royal Research Ship Discovery.

They discovered that eukaryotic phytoplankton actually fix significant amounts of carbon, contributing up to 44% of the total, despite being considerably less abundant than cyanobacteria. "This is most likely because eukaryotic phytoplankton cells, although small, are bigger than cyanobacteria, allowing them to assimilate more fixed carbon," says Zubkov.

Two groups of eukaryotes were distinguished, 'EukA' cells being more abundant but smaller than 'EukB' cells. Molecular techniques revealed that EukB largely comprised photosynthetic organisms called prymnesiophytes, most of which have never been cultured in the laboratory. Many of these are probably previously unknown species.

"Prymnesiophytes accounted for up to 38 per cent of total primary production in the subtropical and tropical northeast Atlantic Ocean," says Scanlan: "This suggests that they play a key role in oceanic carbon fixation, but this needs to be confirmed by widespread sampling from the world's oceans."

Zubkov recently showed that small eukaryotic phytoplankton can obtain carbon by feeding on bacteria, supplementing carbon fixed through photosynthesis.

It is likely that some of the organic carbon of prymnesiophytes and other eukaryotic phytoplankton is eventually exported from the photic zone to the deep ocean, rather than being returned to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide.

"Given their clear importance, it is crucial that we now go on to understand the factors controlling growth of small eukaryotes in the oceans," concludes Scanlan.

Solutions to Climate Change: Using Trees and Grasses to Capture Carbon and Produce Energy

(Jan. 29, 2010) — A unique £1.1 million research project is investigating how coppiced trees and grass crops can be used both to generate renewable energy and to trap carbon in the soil over the long term.

Led by Professor Gail Taylor, an expert on plants and the environment at the University of Southampton, a team of scientists across the UK will track the path of carbon, captured by plants and grasses through the process of photosynthesis, as it flows through the plant to the soil, which is inhabited by micro-organisms, before becoming locked into organic matter in the soil in which the plant is growing.

The team will also compare the process with that of arable food crops, such as wheat, and will test the idea that the 'bioenergy' crops are better at stimulating long-term retention of soil carbon.

Unlike existing food crops that are harvested after just a few months, trees and grasses can spend decades growing before they are harvested and release their trapped CO2, making the process more effective.

"Scientists now believe that CO2 is an important greenhouse gas and a major cause of climate change, so it's vital we develop ways of removing it from the atmosphere," comments Professor Gail Taylor, of the University's School of Biological Sciences.

"Using trees and grasses is an efficient and cost-effective way of doing this, whilst providing a source of energy and off-setting CO2 emissions from equivalent fossil fuels. Our research has already shown that bioenergy crops could potentially reduce carbon emissions by several million tonnes in the UK over the next decade."

'Carbon opportunity' maps will be developed to identify the optimum areas of the countryside in which bioenergy crops could most effectively be grown. The crops could then be combusted alongside coal in power stations to produce electricity, producing fewer CO2 emissions than fossil fuels, or used in heating systems.

"In the future, bioenergy crops could be turned into liquid fuels such as bioethanol, avoiding the conflict between food and fuel when grain crops are used for these purposes," adds Professor Taylor.


Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by University of Southampton.

Microbes galore in seas; "spaghetti" mats Pacific

Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentPosted April 2010

OSLO, Apr. 18, 2010 (Reuters) — The ocean depths are home to myriad species of microbes, mostly hard to see but including spaghetti-like bacteria that form whitish mats the size of Greece on the floor of the Pacific, scientists said on Sunday.

The survey, part of a 10-year Census of Marine Life, turned up hosts of unknown microbes, tiny zooplankton, crustaceans, worms, burrowers and larvae, some of them looking like extras in a science fiction movie and underpinning all life in the seas.

"In no other realm of ocean life has the magnitude of Census discovery been as extensive as in the world of microbes," said Mitch Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, head of the marine microbe census.

The census estimated there were a mind-boggling "nonillion" -- or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (30 zeroes) -- individual microbial cells in the oceans, weighing as much as 240 billion African elephants, the biggest land animal.

Getting a better idea of microbes, the "hidden majority" making up 50 to 90 percent of biomass in the seas, will give a benchmark for understanding future shifts in the oceans, perhaps linked to climate change or pollution.

Among the biggest masses of life on the planet are carpets on the seabed formed by giant multi-cellular bacteria that look like thin strands of spaghetti. They feed on hydrogen sulphide in oxygen-starved waters in a band off Peru and Chile.

"Fishermen sometimes can't lift nets from the bottom because they have more bacteria than shrimp," Victor Gallardo, vice chair of the Census Scientific Steering Committee, told Reuters. "We've measured them up to a kilo (2.2 lbs) per square meter."

GHOSTLY MATS

The census said they carpeted an area the size of Greece -- about 130,000 sq km (50,000 sq miles) or the size of the U.S. state of Alabama. Toxic to humans, the bacteria are food for shrimp or worms and so underpin rich Pacific fish stocks.

The bacteria had also been found in oxygen-poor waters off Panama, Ecuador, Namibia and Mexico as well as in "dead zones" under some salmon farms. They were similar to ecosystems on earth that thrived from 2.5 billion to 650 million years ago.

Overall in the oceans, up to a billion microbe species may await identification under the Census, an international 10-year project due for completion in October 2010.

Tiny life was found everywhere, including at thermal vents with temperatures at 150 Celsius (300F) or in rocks 1,626 meters (5,335 ft) below the sea floor. Many creatures lack names or are hard to pronounce like loriciferans, polychaetes or copepods.

One major finding was that rare microbes are often found in samples where they can be outnumbered 10,000 to one by more common species. Isolated microbes may be lying in wait for a change in conditions that could bring a population boom.

Ann Bucklin, head of the Census of Marine Zooplankton that include tiny transparent crustaceans or jellyfish, said the seas were barely studied even by the census.

"Seventy percent of the oceans are deeper than 1,000 meters," Bucklin, of the University of Connecticut, told Reuters. "The deep layer is the source of the hidden diversity."

Paul Snelgrove, of Memorial University in Canada, said one sample in the South Atlantic in an area the size of a small bathroom -- 5.4 square meters -- turned up 700 species of copepod, a type of crustacean, 99 percent of them unfamiliar.

Just finding Latin names for each find will be hard. Scientists had rejected the idea of raising funds by letting people pay to have a marine "bug" named after them.

Geography of Human Disease: Environment Has Much to Do With Surrounding Pathogens

If your home region has a hot, wet climate and a lot of different kinds of birds and mammals living in it, there's a really good chance the region will also contain numerous kinds of pathogens that cause human diseases.

A new study examining the geography of human disease, led by Dr. Rob Dunn at North Carolina State University alongside an international team of biologists and social scientists, shows that that one can predict the number of kinds of disease-causing pathogens in a region just by knowing its climate or the number of birds and mammals found there. Multiple things, Dunn says, might influence the diversity of pathogens in a region: human population size and density, the amount of time people have lived there or expenditures on disease control. Each of these undoubtedly has some influence, but the environment is dominant.

"We imagine that we have nature under control, but nobody seems to have told nature," Dunn says. "The environment and, in its broadest sense, nature determines the number of kinds of diseases in different regions of the world in much the way that it has influenced the number of kinds of birds, mammals, ants or bees."

But while the environment determines how many diseases one finds in a region, it does not determine how common they are. The researchers also examined the factors correlated to the prevalence, or commonness, of human pathogens across the globe and discovered that the most important factor is health-care spending, specifically expenditures on disease control.

"On the one hand, we are not very effective at altering the numbers of kinds of pathogens present, as those numbers are strongly correlated with environmental conditions. The vagaries of climate and life over which we have little control determine which diseases you are at risk of contracting in any given place," Dunn says. "But on the other hand, we can control the prevalence of pathogens by spending money on disease-control efforts. It is that prevalence that influences human health and well-being."

A paper describing the research appears online in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: B, a leading peer-reviewed biology journal.

The study examined a host of factors thought to be involved in the global distribution of disease-carrying organisms. Climate and geographic variables, population data, disease-control data, pathogen data and human history data were all factored into statistical models that attempted to show which factors had stronger correlations to disease.

Geographic regions with lots of different kinds of birds and mammals are correlated with the presence of lots of pathogens. The most likely explanation for this relationship is simply that the same environmental factors have influenced patterns in diversity of human pathogens that have patterns in the diversity of the rest of life, including the birds and mammals. Reducing bird and mammal diversity will not remove the diseases, Dunn asserts. In fact, making wild birds and mammals more rare seems likely to increase the diversity of human diseases, with diseases on rare mammals and birds all too eager to jump from their sinking ships.

But all is not lost if you live in hotter and wetter climes with lots of birds and mammals around. Dunn points to life in the United States as one example. Malaria is present but is rare and relatively insignificant because of the country's historic effort at controlling disease. In short, the United States has a large number of different kinds of pathogens, Dunn says, but pathogen prevalence is low because of a strong history of disease-control and health-care spending.

The researchers also suggest ways to optimize future spending. In particular, places where current spending is low and populations are large are likely to be places where the most people will be saved by additional efforts -- notably India, Pakistan and East African nations along the equator. "Current health-care spending is quite low, prevalence of pathogens is quite high, and human populations are large in these areas, so it makes sense to target efforts there," Dunn says.

Measuring Global Water Vapor and Formaldehyde

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2010) — Atmospheric water vapour (H2O) is the most important natural greenhouse gas, accounting for about two-thirds of the natural greenhouse effect. Despite this importance, its role in climate and its reaction to climate change are still difficult to assess.

Many details of the hydrological cycle are poorly understood, such as the process of cloud formation and the transport and release of latent heat contained in the water vapour. In contrast to other important greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, water vapour has a much higher temporal and spatial variability.

Global monitoring of H2O by Metop-A -- Europe’s first polar-orbiting meteorological satellite -- is therefore a key to understanding its impact on climate.

Formaldehyde (HCHO) is one of the most abundant hydrocarbons in the atmosphere and is an important indicator of so-called non-methane volatile organic compound (NMVOC) emissions and photochemical activity. As such, it is an indicator of the presence of volatile organic compounds in the atmosphere, which in turn play an important role in the formation of toxic ozone close to the surface and also have an important influence on climate through the formation of large aerosol particles. HCHO is a primary emission product from biomass burning and fossil fuel combustion, but its principle source in the atmosphere is the photochemical oxidation of methane and non-methane hydrocarbons. Metop-A measurements of HCHO can be used to constrain NMVOC emissions in current state-of-the-art chemical transport models used in the forecasting and analysis of pollution events and also in modelling climate change.

Operational GOME-2 H2O and HCHO data are being produced by the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), the German Aerospace Center, a partner of EUMETSAT's Ozone and Atmospheric Chemistry Monitoring SAF (O3M-SAF) coordinated by the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The H2O and HCHO retrieval algorithms for GOME-2 have been developed by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, and the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA/IASB) in Brussels, respectively.

GOME-2 H2O and HCHO as well as other operational products can be ordered via the O3M-SAF site. DLR provides near-real-time and historical maps of GOME-2 total column (ozone, nitrogen dioxide, tropospheric nitrogen dioxide, bromine oxide, sulphur dioxide, H2O, HCHO) and cloud products.

Vital Role for Bacteria in Climate-Change Gas Cycle

Isoprene is a Jekyll-and-Hyde gas that is capable of both warming and cooling the Earth depending on the prevailing conditions. It is an important industrial gas, necessary for the manufacture of important compounds such as rubber and vitamins, but very little is known about how isoprene is cycled in the environment.

At the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting in Edinburgh, Dr Terry McGenity revealed the identity of some crucial players in the gas cycle; isoprene-degrading bacteria that are able to intercept the release of isoprene into the atmosphere.

After being released by plants and algae, isoprene reacts with molecules in the atmosphere to produce ozone. It can also prolong the lifetime of methane in the air. Both ozone and methane are potent greenhouse gases that lead to global warming. Conversely, in certain conditions, isoprene can undergo chemical reactions to form aerosols that can increase cloud cover leading to cooling of the Earth.

Together with colleagues at the University of Essex, Dr McGenity discovered that that there are numerous types of bacteria able to consume isoprene before it even enters the atmosphere. These bacteria were found concentrated around coastal zones that are known to be hot spots of marine isoprene production by algae.

"The discovery will improve models that help us to predict how climate change and other environmental factors affect isoprene flux and vice versa," said Dr McGenity. "Until now modelling the overall flow of isoprene from the sea to the atmosphere has been hampered by inadequate understanding of the main producers and consumers," he explained.

Interestingly, many of the isoprene-degrading bacteria can also break down alkanes (a major component of crude oil). "This suggests that algal-derived isoprene may help important oil-degrading microbes to survive between spills," explained Dr McGenity.

An understanding of how isoprene is naturally cycled in the environment could have important applications across different industries. "Currently the chemical industry relies on isoprene derived from crude oil as a building block for the manufacture of compounds like vitamins and rubber, whereas algae could potentially provide a sustainable supply of isoprene for these uses." suggested Dr McGenity. "Equally, studying the enzymes involved in bacterial isoprene metabolism may lead to applications in the synthesis of important pharmaceuticals," he said.

Flights Over Arctic Provide Data for Investigating Ozone Hole Depletion

An international team of researchers is investigating ozone depletion in the polar stratosphere using data gathered during flights over the Arctic region at elevations of up to 20 kilometers.

he team of atmosphere researchers -- among them Stephan Borrmann, Professor at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute of Chemistry in Mainz -- hopes to discover how long the processes that result in the formation of the hibernal holes in the ozone layer at the polar caps actually take. It is also expected that the data collected during the flights undertaken with the high-altitude aircraft "M55 Geophysica" will provide insight into what effect climate change is having on the physical and chemical processes that influence the ozone layer. This would make it possible to extrapolate the future development of the ozone layer under the conditions obtained during on-going changes.

The chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) released by humans on the surface of the earth are gradually transported into the stratosphere. Here the CFCs are exposed to powerful ultraviolet radiation which decomposes the chlorofluorocarbons to finally release chlorine. This chlorine usually reacts with other chemicals and is bound in substances such as hydrogen chloride vapor and chlorine nitrate, which are not detrimental to ozone. However, in the stratospheric clouds located over the poles, the clorine from CFCs can form aggressive ozone-destroying chlorine monoxide radicals (CIO).

Analysis of these clouds is thus essential to the research being conducted by the Mainz team under Stephan Borrmann. And it is these extraordinary but natural clouds that are formed only in the stratosphere over the Arctic and Antarctic regions during the cold of the polar winters that are implicated in the formation of the holes in the ozone layer.

"As the warming of the atmosphere attributable to climate change also has a direct effect on the physical and chemical processes associated with the ozone layer, we urgently need to conduct new research into this aspect," explains Professor Borrmann.

The scientists are able to directly analyze the properties of the particles making up these polar stratospheric clouds -- frozen droplets of ice and nitric acid with an approximate diameter of 3-20 micrometers -- using instruments attached to the aircraft. In order to be able to determine the rate and extent of ozone depletion, the scientists need to find out exactly what size these droplets are and how many of them are present in these polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs). The Mainz team is using additional instruments to evaluate the characteristics of ultrafine airborne aerosol particles that are also present in the stratosphere and play a role in the relevant processes.

Remarkably, the presence of meteoric dust was even detected in the stratosphere during the data-gathering flights conducted between mid-January and mid-March 2010. It has also proved possible to collect significant amounts of data directly from PSCs. "We were amazed to discover that there were surprisingly large particles present in polar stratospheric clouds. These has a diameter of up to 30 micrometers, and they were rapidly precipitated thanks to their weight. This causes the substances contained in them to be irreversibly removed from the stratosphere, thus promoting the process of ozone depletion," Borrmann explains.

Originally a Russian spy plane, M55 Geophysica is one of only three aircraft worldwide that are able to reach the stratosphere -- and it can do this while carrying a payload of nearly one ton of metering instruments and other equipment. Such flights are the only way in which the atmospheric researchers can collect the information they still need to understand the correlations between ozone depletion and climate change.

Researchers from nine countries are taking part in the measuring flights, which start from Kiruna, located in the Arctic Circle in northern Sweden. The campaign is part of the EU project "RECONCILE" (reconciliation of essential parameters for an enhanced predictability of arctic stratospheric ozone loss and its climate interactions) that is being coordinated by scientists of the Jülich Research Center.


Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by Universitaet Mainz.

Northwest Lava Flows Could Have Altered Earth’s Climate, Wiped out Species, New Evidence Suggests

(Apr. 7, 2010) — New research suggests the volcanic birth of the Northwest's Columbia Plateau happened much more quickly than previously thought and with an intensity that may have changed the earth's climate and caused some plants and animals to go extinct.



"What you're looking at are lava flows that repeat fairly quickly," said Steve Reidel, research professor of geology at Washington State University Tri-Cities. "Not decades or centuries, but months or years."

Reidel is a co-author of a paper in the recent issue of the journal Lithos refining the time frame of the Grande Ronde lava flows, which produced enough molten basalt to sink the earth's crust and created the vast Columbia River Plateau of Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

Just one of the 100 or so lava flows would have blanketed much of Washington State in 10,000 cubic kilometers of lava -- 10,000 times the volume of ash produced by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

The flows moved at walking speed, enough time for the horses and other animals of the region to get out of their path. But a single flow could reach as far as Portland, be more than 2,000 degrees Fahrebheit and take half a century to cool. In the process, it would have generated monsoons across the Northwest and emitted enough heat and sulfur to alter the earth's climate, said Reidel.

Substantial evidence has implicated other lava flows in the extinction of species. Siberian flows coincided with the epic Permian-Triassic "mass dying" that wiped out 96 percent of the earth's marine species 250 million years ago. A mass extinction at the end of the Triassic Period 200 million years ago coincided with lava coming out of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province between what is now northeastern South America and eastern North America. Gases from flows on India's Deccan plateau started a mass extinction some 65 million years ago, with the dinosaur-killing coup de grâce coming from a meteoroid that hit Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.

To date the Grande Ronde flows, lead author Tiffany Barry of Britain's Open University obtained basalt samples from Hanford, Wash., and outcrops between Vantage, Wash., and Lewiston, Idaho. With some of the most precise equipment in the world, she compared argon isotopes in the oldest, deepest levels and younger, shallower levels and used the element's decay rate to determine the rocks' relative ages.

Barry, Reidel, WSU Professor Emeritus Peter Hooper and other colleagues estimated the Grande Ronde flows took place between 15.6 and 16 million years ago, give or take 150,000 to 200,000 years. The youngest and oldest rock samples were only 420,000 years apart at the most. With a margin of error of 180,000 years, the rock may have been created over an even faster time frame of 240,000 years.

With less accurate equipment, Reidel and others previously estimated the flows occurred over a period of 1.5 to 2 million years. And because the Grande Ronde had so many flows, with some much larger than others, they likely had a far greater impact on the climate of their era than previously thought.

Some flows, wrote the researchers, "may have, at times, been simultaneous and, if confirmed, would have significant implications for potential environmental effects."

"It's an interesting piece of work and definitely a contribution," said John Wolff, a WSU professor in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, who was not involved in the paper. Both Wolff and the paper's authors note that the argon dating conflicts with dates established by looking at how changes in the earth's magnetic field affected the rock.

If the argon dating holds up, Wolff said, it will coincide with changes in the life forms and chemistry in the Atlantic Ocean. Just last summer, British researchers writing in the journal "Geology" described evidence of such changes off the west coast of Africa and singled out the Grande Ronde basalt flows as a possible cause.

CryoSat-2: ESA's Ice Mission Delivers First Data

(Apr. 2010) —

Europe's first mission dedicated to studying variations in our planet's ice cover entered polar orbit just minutes after launch April 8, marking the start of three days intense activity. Mission controllers at ESOC, ESA's European Space Operations Centre, monitored CryoSat-2 around the clock to ensure the satellite's systems and payload were functioning normally.

The CryoSat-2 satellite was launched at 15:57 CEST (13:57 UTC), 8 April, on a Dnepr rocket provided by the International Space Company Kosmotras from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The signal confirming that it had separated from the launcher came 17 minutes later from the Malindi ground station in Kenya.

By the morning of April 11 -- with the mission progressing exceptionally well -- ESA's Flight Director Pier Paolo Emanuelli declared that the formal Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) was complete and said, "The satellite is in excellent condition and the mission operations team quickly resolved the few problems that came up. It's been a very smooth entry into orbit, precisely as planned."

Later on, CryoSat-2's primary instrument, the Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Radar Altimeter (SIRAL), was switched on for the first time and stared gathering the first radar echo data.

SIRAL's first data were acquired at 16:40 CEST and were downloaded and processed at ESA's Kiruna ground station.

"We switched SIRAL on and it worked beautifully from the very start. Our first data were taken over the Antarctic's Ross Ice Shelf, and clearly show the ice cover and reflections from underlying layers. These are excellent results at such an early stage and are a tribute to the hard work of the entire CryoSat community," said Professor Duncan Wingham, CryoSat's Lead Investigator.

The satellite is in a polar orbit, reaching latitudes of 88°. This is orbit brings it closer to the poles than earlier Earth observation satellites, resulting in an additional area of about 4.6 million sq km being covered -- an area larger than all 27 European Union member states put together.

CryoSat-2's sophisticated instruments will measure changes at the margins of the vast ice sheets that overlie Greenland and Antarctica and marine ice floating in the polar oceans. By accurately measuring thickness change in both types of ice, CryoSat-2 will provide information critical to scientists' understanding of the role ice plays in the Earth system.

"The combined ground teams proved the value of months of extensive training and preparation and the satellite has shown to be a high-quality machine with very few problems. The launch and orbit injection have been almost flawless and we are looking forward to an extremely productive mission," said Richard Francis, ESA's Project Manager for CryoSat-2.

With LEOP complete, ground experts will now pace CryoSat-2 through an exhaustive commissioning phase lasting several months, during which the systems on board the satellite and on the ground will be optimised to provide the best-ever ice thickness data from space.

"We are very happy with the first calibration results from the SIRAL. The data is now being processed and made available almost immediately to the commissioning teams. We are now in the process of optimising the data processing system and results will be released once we have accumulated enough data," said Tommaso Parrinello, ESA's CryoSat mission Manager.

Marking a significant achievement for ESA's Earth observation programme, CryoSat-2 is the third of its Earth Explorer satellites to be placed in orbit, all within a little over 12 months. CryoSat-2 follows on from the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission, launched in March 2009, and the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, launched last November.