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Biofuels pollute more than oil, leaked data show

Arthur Neslen
EurActiv
Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:59 UTC
Image
Greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels such as palm oil, soybean and rapeseed are higher than those for fossil fuels when the effects of Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) are counted, according to leaked EU data seen by EurActiv.

The default values assigned to the biofuels compare to those from Canada's oil sands - also known as tar sands - according to the figures, which should be released along with long-awaited legislative proposals on biofuels in the spring.

A spokesperson for the European Commission said she could "not comment on leaked documents, such as impact assessments which have not been published."

But industry and civil society sources described the data as credible and in line with other studies. One said it would sound a death knell for the biodiesel industry, if published.

"I think the science has proved clearly that because of the link to deforestation in places such as South East Asia, a lot of the biodiesels have significantly negative impacts on the climate," Robbie Blake, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth, told EurActiv.

Comment: So the net effect is that the 'green measures' put into place to 'save the planet' will cost us more and speed up destruction of the planet.

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Nebula

Previously elusive 'cold plasma' low-energy ions now found to be abundant in Earth's surrounding space


American Geophysical Union
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:33 UTC
Cluster Satellite
© European Space Agency
A rendering of the Cluster satellite, designed to measure electric fields, which Andre and Cully used to detect low-energy ions high above the Earth.
Washington, DC - Cold plasma has been well-hidden. Space physicists have long lacked clues to how much of this electrically charged gas exists tens of thousands of miles above Earth and how the stuff may impact our planet's interaction with the sun. Now, a new method developed by Swedish researchers makes cold plasma measurable and reveals significantly more cold, charged ions in Earth's upper altitudes than previously imagined.

At these lofty elevations, storms of high-energy charged particles - space weather - roil the atmosphere, creating auroras, buffeting satellites, and sometimes wreaking havoc with electronic devices and electric grids on Earth. The new evidence of abundant cold (i.e. low-energy) ions may change our understanding of this tumultuous space weather and lead to more accurate forecasting of it, scientists say. The finding might also shed light on what's happening around other planets and moons - for instance, helping explain why the once robust atmosphere of Mars is so wispy today.

Comment: Can we say it already?! We live in an ELECTRIC UNIVERSE!

Electric Universe: Which Came First?

Electric 'Creation' in an Electric Universe

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Info

Brain's 'Cheat Sheet' Makes Moral Decisions Easier

Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:05 UTC
Stop Sign
© Alita Bobrov, Shutterstock
The brain's "rule book" keeps us from having to weigh the pros and cons of unthinkable moral decisions.

How much would someone have to pay you to switch from drinking coffee every morning to drinking tea? How about to rescind the almost-universal belief that murder is wrong and then kill an innocent person?

Most likely, your brain processed those two questions in very different ways, a new study finds. People weigh questions of sacred values - such as "don't murder" - in different brain regions than they do mundane preferences. These special brain regions seem to be those associated with recalling rules, suggesting that we don't weigh the costs and benefits when asked to do something against our most firmly held values. Instead, we fall back on a mental "cheat sheet" of right and wrong.

"If you had to do cost-benefit calculations for everything you do in your daily life, you wouldn't be able to come to any decisions at all," said study researcher Gregory Berns, director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University. "So rules actually have the benefit of making decision-making much easier ... you just look up in your own personal 'rule table' how to act."
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Laptop

Paramount First to Sell UltraViolet Movies Directly

Kevin Parrish
The Verge
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:00 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Paramount is selling UltraViolet movies without forcing a hard copy purchase, but comes with strict limitations.

Following news that Amazon will sell codes for UltraViolet movies without forcing consumers to purchase physical discs, Paramount Pictures will be the first studio to offer digital movie purchases directly from its website. What does this mean for consumers? A movie or TV episode that can be played across multiple devices, not just one specific hardware set or operating system.

Or maybe not. The purpose of UltraViolet is to offer consumers one digital copy that can be accessed on Android and iOS mobile devices, desktops, notebooks, Blu-ray players and other compatible devices. Introduced in October 2011, select Blu-ray movies like The Smurfs and Green Lantern contained a code that essentially "unlocked" the digital version via UltraViolet. Consumers simply needed to create an UltraViolet account, enter the code, and bam! There's your movie in a virtual locker.
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Phoenix

Geothermal Test Will Pour Water into Volcano to Make Power

Jeff Barnard
USA Today
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press/Ryan Brennecke
A test well is drilled for a geothermal project at Newberry volcano in 2010.
Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of a dormant volcano in central Oregon this summer to demonstrate technology they hope will give a boost to a green energy sector that has yet to live up to its promise.

They hope the water comes back to the surface fast enough and hot enough to create cheap, clean electricity that isn't dependent on sunny skies or stiff breezes - without shaking the earth and rattling the nerves of nearby residents.

Renewable energy has been held back by cheap natural gas, weak demand for power and lack of political concern over global warming. Efforts to use the earth's heat to generate power, known as geothermal energy, have been further hampered by technical problems and worries that tapping it can cause earthquakes.

Even so, the federal government, Google and other investors are interested enough to bet $43 million on the Oregon project.

They are helping AltaRock Energy of Seattle and Davenport Newberry Holdings of Stamford, Conn., demonstrate whether the next level in geothermal power development can work on the flanks of Newberry Volcano, about 20 miles south of Bend, Ore.
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Satellite

Is The Air Force's X-37B Space Plane Spying On A Chinese Satellite?


Huffington Post
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:27 UTC
The X-37B
© Boeing
The X-37B is shown here after landing at 1:16 a.m. Pacific time on December 3, 2010, concluding its more than 220-day experimental test mission. It was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., on April 22, 2010.
The U.S. Air Force's classified X-37B space plane should have returned to Earth in December.

But the top-secret unmanned spacecraft continues to glide along its unusually low orbit nearly one year after it was launched in March 2011, leading Spaceflight magazine to suggest the vehicle is spying on a Chinese spacelab called Tiangong-1, the BBC reports.

The X-37B, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), is a 29-foot solar-powered craft NASA has been developing since 1999. In that time, the vehicle has been launched twice, including the most recent mission from which it has yet to return.

According to the Air Force, the craft's purpose is to test "reusable spacecraft technologies for America's future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth."

Since the Air Force took over operations of the shuttle in 2006, the Pentagon has remained mute on the program's overall budget and plans, compelling amateur astronomers to keep an eye on its movements, The New York Times reported in May of 2010. They noticed the shuttle orbited over "global trouble spots" like Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea.
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Magnify

Science Rewrites Assumptions About Pre-Historic Animals

Ed Struzik
Calgary Herald
Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
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University of Alberta technician Clive Coy sometimes spends a year or more cleaning up newly-uncovered fossils.
Paleontologist Phil Currie was walking along the sandstone cliffs of the badlands in southern Alberta when he spotted something sticking out of the side of the hill.

It appeared to be the fossil of an ancient turtle. But as he began to clear away the sand, he could see that it was the skull of a dinosaur.

There is nothing extraordinary about finding fossils in Dinosaur Provincial Park. In fact, there is no better place to find the remains of these so-called "terrible lizards" that walked the earth for more than 165 million years.

But in the days that followed in that summer of 2010, Currie suspected he may have found something extraordinary indeed. This specimen appeared to be so rare and so exquisitely preserved that he instructed his students and colleagues to go slow with the excavation when he had to leave base camp for a few days.

"I just didn't want to miss out on this one," he recalls. "It's extremely rare to find a dinosaur such as this, and almost as rare to find one that is so complete. I wanted to be there to see what we had by the time we were done with it."

Currie likes to say that building a dinosaur from fossils found in sand or embedded in rock is both an art and a science. Having a skull and a nearly complete skeleton such as this one, which he plans to reveal to the public in a year or two, makes it relatively simple.
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Snowflake

US, Russia to Conduct Joint Antarctica Inspection


Agence France Presse
Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo/Philippe Siuberski
A village of tents, where scientist sleep, is seen in front of the Belgian Princess Elisabeth polar station in Usteinen, Antarctica in 2009.
The United States and Russia will jointly inspect foreign facilities in Antarctica to make sure environmental and other responsibilities under the 1959 Antarctica Treaty are being met, the State Department said Saturday.

A US-Russian team will travel to Antarctica January 23-28 to check foreign stations, installations and equipment, it said.

"The US-Russian team will review adherence by treaty parties to their obligations, including with respect to limiting environmental impacts, ensuring that Antarctica is used only for peaceful purposes and that parties honor the prohibition on measures of a military nature," it said.
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Info

Motor Made of DNA Runs on Tracks

Jesse Emspak
Discovery News
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:11 UTC
DNA Motor
© Adrian Neal/Getty Images

DNA has been made into tiny robots and self-replicating machines. Now it's been made into a tiny motor.

A team at Kyoto University and the University of Oxford has used DNA as the building blocks for a motor that runs along tiny tracks. The tracks all have switches and the network is programmable -- just like a computer.

The DNA is manipulated with a technique called "DNA origami." Just like its paper counterpart, this method uses DNA to fold structures into two and three dimensions. The folding of the molecules is done via sequencing in such a way that the DNA naturally self-assembles into the desired shape. The tiny tracks were laid down on top of tiles, also made of DNA.

The DNA "motors" run along the tracks, and since you can program the way the tracks are laid down, the whole system can carry information the same way electrons do in a computer's circuits. Essentially it's a DNA-powered computer.
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Info

How Neutrons Might Escape Into Another Universe


Technology Review, MIT
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:11 UTC
Universe Jump
© Technology Review, MIT

The idea that our universe is embedded in a broader multidimensional space has captured the imagination of scientists and the general population alike.

This notion is not entirely science fiction. According to some theories, our cosmos may exist in parallel with other universes in other sets of dimensions. Cosmologists call these universes braneworlds. And among that many prospects that this raises is the idea that things from our Universe might somehow end up in another.

A couple of years ago, Michael Sarrazin at the University of Namur in Belgium and a few others showed how matter might make the leap in the presence of large magnetic potentials. That provided a theoretical basis for real matter swapping.

Today, Sarrazin and a few pals say that our galaxy might produce a magnetic potential large enough to make this happen for real. If so, we ought to be able to observe matter leaping back and forth between universes in the lab. In fact, such observations might already have been made in certain experiments.

The experiments in question involve trapping ultracold neutrons in bottles at places like the Institut Laue Langevin in Grenoble, France, and the Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics. Ultracold neutrons move so slowly that it is possible to trap them using 'bottles' made of magnetic fields, ordinary matter and even gravity.
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