Tag: science

Density of forests increasing

2:21 pm

The benefits of CO2 increase: The density of the world’s forests has been increasing as they act as a carbon sink.

The authors say most regions and almost all temperate nations have stopped losing forest and the study’s findings constitute a new signal of what co-author Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller calls “The Great Reversal” under way in global forests after centuries of loss and decline. “Opportunities to absorb carbon and restore the world’s forests can come through increasing density or area or both.”

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Social Sciences Face Uphill Battle Proving Their Worth to Congress

11:59 am

Some squealing from the journal Science: NSF faces uphill budget battle in Congress.

When he asked the witnesses for ideas on shrinking the government’s $1.6 trillion deficit, Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) [chairman of the research panel of the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee] made it clear he was talking about possible cuts to NSF’s entire $7 billion budget, not simply its SBE directorate.

Note that in 2008 the NSF budget was a $6.1 billion. Cutting it back to that number would hardly destroy social science research in this country.

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Mars 500 mission passes one year

9:03 am

The Russian/ESA Mars 500 mission has completed a year of its 520-day simulated flight to Mars.

The crew, who spent 250 days working on maintenance and scientific experiments before a 30-day stint performing tasks on a simulated Martian surface, are currently on their “return trip” to Earth.

This simulated all-male flight is going better than the last:

In 1999, an experiment in the same Moscow warehouse fell to pieces after a Russian team captain forced a kiss on a Canadian woman, and two Russian crewmembers had a bloody fistfight.

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First sale for quantum computing

9:53 am

Lockheed Martin buys the first commercial quantum computer. More here on the science of quantum computing.

Quantum computers could revolutionize the way we tackle problems that stump even the best classical computers, which store and process their data as ‘bits’ — essentially a series of switches that can be either on or off. The power of quantum bits — or qubits — is that they can be on and off simultaneously. Connect enough qubits together using quantum entanglement and a computer should be able to zip through a multitude of calculations in parallel, at astonishing speed.

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Progress in the study of the algae Didymo

9:32 am

Good news for trout fisherman: A new study of the evasive algae Didymo has figured out why the algae blooms in places it shouldn’t.

The result may help managers identify water bodies susceptible to Didymo blooms, and develop management strategies. “It also has the potential to lead to discoveries that may stem this organism’s prolific growth in rivers around in the world,” says [P.V. Sundareshwar of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City].

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Russian greenhouse on ISS ungoes upgrade

1:37 pm

The Russian greenhouse on ISS underwent an upgrade today.

The onboard greenhouse was dismantled in April last year, as a need arose to replace the outdated control unit, recalled head of the Rasteniya-2 (Plants-2) experiment, chief of the laboratory of the Institute of Medico-Biological Problems (IMBP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Vladimir Sychev. In early 2010, the crop area of the orbital garden was extended twice – the second leaf chamber was delivered to the ISS in which the crew managed to harvest the Mizuna lettuce, before the greenhouse was dismantled. Now, the cosmonauts will plant in these two chambers different cultures – super-dwarf wheat and dwarf tomatoes.

As I described in detail in Leaving Earth, the Russians have decades of experience in growing plants in space, with the goal of not only providing a natural system to recycle the station’s atmosphere, but also giving the astronauts a morale-boosting activity (gardening) that also gives them something tasty to eat. Though the engineering has still not made it possible to germinate seeds in weightlessness and then have grow there, this will be an absolute requirement if humans are ever to travel to the planets and beyond to the stars.

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New York Metropolitan Opera stars, fearing radiation, skip Japan tour

9:43 am

Cowards: Two New York Metropolitan Opera stars, fearing radiation, have backed out of a Japanese tour in the cities of Tokyo and Nagoya. This, despite the documented lack of radiation:

Tokyo briefly registered nominally higher radiation levels in its air and water, but they have subsided to pre-tsunami levels. There was never any scientific concern of a radiation impact on Nagoya, which is much farther away.

Meanwhile, the efforts to stabilize the reactors in Fukushima are proceeding.

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Asteroid sample return mission on slate for 2016

11:13 pm

Asteroid sample return mission on slate for NASA in 2016. The asteroid chosen in 1999 RQ36, which is significant.

The space rock has been classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid, since its orbit brings it close to Earth in the year 2182. There is an extremely remote chance (a recent study pegs it at about 1-in-1000) that the 1,900-foot-wide (579-meter) asteroid could pose a threat to Earth.

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