New projection shows global food demand doubling by 2050

Global food demand could double by 2050, according to a new projection by David Tilman, Regents Professor of Ecology in the University of Minnesota’s College of Biological Sciences, and colleagues, including Jason Hill, assistant professor in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences.

Producing that amount of food could significantly increase levels of carbon dioxide and nitrogen in the environment and cause the extinction of numerous species. But this can be avoided, the paper shows, if the high-yielding technologies of rich nations are adapted to work in poor nations, and if all nations use nitrogen fertilizers more efficiently.

“Agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions could double by 2050 if current trends in global food production continue,” Tilman said. “Global agriculture already accounts for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions.” Much of these emissions come from land clearing, which also threatens species with extinction.

The article shows that if poor nations continue current practices, they will clear a land area larger than the United States (two and a half billion acres) by 2050. But if richer nations help poorer nations improve yields to achievable levels, that could be reduced to half a billion acres.

The research, published Nov. 21 online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that adopting nitrogen-efficient “intensive” farming can meet future global food demand with much lower environmental impacts than the “extensive” farming practiced by many poor nations, which clear land to produce more food. The potential benefits are great. In 2005, crop yields for the wealthiest nations were more than 300 percent higher than yields for the poorest nations.

“Strategically intensifying crop production in developing and least-developed nations would reduce the overall environmental harm caused by food production, as well as provide a more equitable food supply across the globe,” said Hill.

via New projection shows global food demand doubling by 2050 : UMNews : University of Minnesota.

Reliable nuclear device to heat, power Mars Science Lab

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, which is scheduled to launch this week, has the potential to be the most productive Mars surface mission in history. That’s due in part to its nuclear heat and power source.

When the rover Curiosity heads to space as early as Saturday, it will carry the most advanced payload of scientific gear ever used on Mars’ surface. Those instruments will get their lifeblood from a radioisotope power system assembled and tested at Idaho National Laboratory. The Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator is the latest “space battery” that can reliably power a deep space mission for many years.

The device provides a continuous source of heat and power for the rover’s instruments. NASA has used nuclear generators to safely and reliably power 26 missions over the past 50 years. New generators like the one destined for Mars are painstakingly assembled and extensively tested at INL before heading to space.

“This power system will enable Curiosity to complete its ambitious expedition in Mars’ extreme temperatures and seasons,” said Stephen Johnson, director of INL’s Space Nuclear Systems and Technology Division. “When the unit leaves here, we’ve verified every aspect of its performance and made sure it’s in good shape when it gets to Kennedy Space Center.”

The power system provides about 110 watts of electricity and can run continuously for many years. The nuclear fuel is protected by multiple layers of safety features that have each undergone rigorous testing under varied accident scenarios.

The INL team began assembling the mission’s power source in summer 2008. By December of that year, the power system was fully fueled, assembled and ready for testing. INL performs a series of tests to verify that such systems will perform as designed during their missions. These tests include:

Vibrational testing to simulate rocket launch conditions.

Magnetic testing to ensure the system’s electrical field won’t affect the rover’s sensitive scientific equipment.

Mass properties tests to determine the center of gravity, which impacts thruster calculations for moving the rover.

Thermal vacuum testing to verify operation on a planet’s surface or in the cold vacuum of space.

INL completed its tests in May 2009, but by then the planned September 2009 launch had been delayed until this month because of hurdles with other parts of the mission. So INL stored the power system until earlier this summer, when it was shipped to Kennedy Space Center and mated up with the rover to ensure everything fit and worked as designed.

The system will supply warmth and electricity to Curiosity and its scientific instruments using heat from nuclear decay. The generator is fueled with a ceramic form of plutonium dioxide encased in multiple layers of protective materials including iridium capsules and high-strength graphite blocks. As the plutonium naturally decays, it gives off heat, which is circulated through the rover by heat transfer fluid plumbed throughout the system. Electric voltage is produced by using thermocouples, which exploit the temperature difference between the heat source and the cold exterior. More details about the system are in a fact sheet here: http://www.inl.gov/marsrover/.

Curiosity is expected to land on Mars in August 2012 and carry out its mission over 23 months. It will investigate Mars’ Gale Crater for clues about whether environmental conditions there have favored the development of microbial life, and to preserve any evidence it finds.

NASA chose to use a nuclear power source because solar power alternatives did not meet the full range of the mission’s requirements. Only the radioisotope power system allows full-time communication with the rover during its atmospheric entry, descent and landing regardless of the landing site. And the nuclear powered rover can go farther, travel to more places, last longer, and power and heat a larger and more capable scientific payload compared to the solar power alternative NASA studied.

“You can operate with solar panels on Mars, you just can’t operate everywhere,” said Johnson. “This gives you an opportunity to go anywhere you want on the planet, not be limited to the areas that have sunlight and not have to put the rover to sleep at night.”

via Reliable nuclear device to heat, power Mars Science Lab.

Snapper flips out over ‘dolphin’ starling flock

Millions of starlings in the dusk skies above Gretna Green , morph into a distinctive shape of a dolphin being which is being chased across the sky by a whale with it mouth open. ” />Amateur photographer Paul McGreevy was amazed when he snapped thousands of starlings — in the shape of a whale chasing a dolphin.

The 55-year-old had gone to photograph the huge flocks of starlings — an annual attraction every autumn near Gretna Green, Scotland.

But it was only when he got home and checked his snaps that he realised he had caught the birds in these stunning shapes.

As well as the whale chasing the dolphin he also captured the birds looking like a squid, then an octopus and another whale.

Gardener Paul, of Carlisle, Cumbria, said: “It wasn’t until I got home and started putting the images on my computer that I saw all these shapes.

“I was really surprised to see the dolphin, then what looked like a killer whale chasing it. …

via Snapper flips out over ‘dolphin’ starling flock | The Sun |Features.

Darth Vader claims land plot in Ukraine

Welcoming the local authorities’ move to the dark side, Darth Vader has asked for a land plot in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa to park his space ship.

An Odessite dressed as the Star Wars villain visited the mayor’s office this week to claim a free land plot citing Ukrainian legislation which grants every citizen the right to own 1,000 square meters of land.

His visit followed a decision by city authorities to grant attractive land plots along the sea coast to a group of people for free, prompting public concerns about corruption, according to local media.

The mayor’s office has since said the move was a mistake but has not yet canceled it, according to local news website Dumskaya.net.

“I am Darth Vader, the right hand of Emperor Palpatine,” the man introduced himself to amused policemen, as seen in a video posted on YouTube (here) and accompanied by the Imperial March music.

“…Knowing that many (local legislature) deputies and the mayor have switched to the dark side… I have come for a land plot… for my space cruiser.”

Officials accepted the man’s application after he showed his passport and removed the black helmet equipped with a voice-distorting device.

“The application has been registered and will be considered,” a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office told Reuters.

“We are not on the dark side, we are light-side people,” she added. …

via Darth Vader claims land plot in Ukraine | Reuters.

Neanderthals Vanished Because of Their Own Success, Suggests Study

Using data obtained from the archaeological record, a team of researchers at Arizona State University and the University of Colorado, Denver, conducted experiments using complex computer modeling to analyze evidence of how human hunter-gatherers responded culturally and biologically to the dramatic changes that took place during the last Ice Age. The results showed, among other things, that the Neanderthals, thought by many scientists to have become extinct at least in part because of their inadaptability and inability to compete with the expanding presence of modern humans, may have actually been victims of their own success.

The researchers used the archeological record to track human behavioral changes in Late Pleistocene (126,000 – 10,000 B.P.) Western Eurasia over a period of 100,000 years and across the equivalent of 1,500 generations of human hunter-gatherers. They applied computer modeling to determine the evolutionary consequences of cultural and biological changes, which included how changes in the movements of modern humans and Neanderthals caused them to interact and interbreed with each other. The results showed that human mobility during the environmental changes associated with the Ice Age increased over time, likely in response to those environmental changes. The modeling suggested that the last Ice Age caused the ancestors of modern humans — and Neanderthals — to widen their ranges across Western Eurasia in search of new resources as the climate shifted.

According to study co-author Julien Riel-Salvatore of the University of Colorado, Denver, this provided new evidence that Neanderthals were more adaptable and resourceful than previously thought. Moreover, the study results suggested that the Neanderthals were gradually absorbed within the expanding modern human populations until they eventually disappeared as a distinctly separate human population and phenotype.

Says Riel-Salvatore, “It’s been long believed that Neanderthals were outcompeted by fitter modern humans and they could not adapt. We are changing the main narrative. Neanderthals were just as adaptable and in many ways, simply victims of their own success. Neanderthals had proven that they could roll with the punches and when they met the more numerous modern humans, they adapted again. But modern humans probably saw the Neanderthals as possible mates. As a result, over time, the Neanderthals died out as a physically recognizable population.”

via 201111187566 | Neanderthals Vanished Because of Their Own Success, Suggests Study.

The Neanderthals are still here, in our DNA… unless you are from Africa.

Mysterious Symbols in China Desert Are Spy Satellite Targets, Expert Says

Newfound Google Maps images have revealed an array of mysterious structures and patterns etched into the surface of China’s Gobi Desert. The media — from mainstream to fringe — has wildly speculated that they might be Chinese weapons-testing sites, satellite calibration targets, street maps of Washington, D.C., and New York City, or even messages to (or from) aliens.

It turns out that they are almost definitely used to calibrate China’s spy satellites.

So says Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, which operates many of the cameras used during NASA’s Mars missions. Hill works with images of the Martian surface taken by rovers and satellites, as well as data from Earth-orbiting NASA instruments.

The grids of zigzagging white lines seen in two of the images — the strangest of the various desert structures — are spy satellite calibration targets. Satellite cameras focus on the grids, which measure approximately 0.65 miles wide by 1.15 miles long, and use them to orient themselves in space.

via Mysterious Symbols in China Desert Are Spy Satellite Targets, Expert Says | LiveScience.

 

 

Oops, Jonathon, you just gave away the real purpose of many crop circles.  ; -)

Antikythera mechanism in a wristwatch

Swiss luxury watch company Hublot has announced a version of the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical calculator, that is incorporated into a wristwatch. The mechanism is to be displayed at the 2012 Baselworld expo before moving to a permanent exhibit at Musée des arts et métiers in Paris.

via Antikythera mechanism in a wristwatch – Boing Boing.

Military To Find You by Your Heartbeat

The U.S. military can see you breathing on the other side of that wall. It can even see your heartbeat racing while you crouch behind the door. But if you think running farther away or hiding in a crowd will make you invisible to the Defense Department’s sensors, you might be in for a surprise. The Pentagon’s geeks are looking to tweak their life-form finder so they can spot your tell-tale heart no matter what you do.

Darpa, the Pentagon’s mad-science shop, announced last week that it’s looking to improve on technologies that sniff out biometric signatures like heartbeats from behind walls. Dubbed “Biometrics-at-a-distance,” the program seeks to build sensors that can remotely identify humans from farther away and tell them apart in a crowd.

Seeing or “sensing” human life through walls can be a pretty helpful trick. For troops that have to clear houses in search of terrorists or insurgents, it’s always nice to know what’s on the other side of that door. Picking up “life-form readings” may sound like science fiction straight out of Star Trek, but the Defense Department has been able to do it for years now.

In 2006, Darpa developed Radar Scope,which used radar waves to sense through walls and detect the movements associated with respiration. A year later, the Army invested in LifeReader, a system using Doppler radar to find heartbeats. More recently, the military’s been using devices like the AN/PPS-26 STTW (“Sense Through the Wall“) and TiaLinx’s Eagle scanner, which can sense the presence of humans and animals through walls.

Handy though these gadgets may be, Darpa wants to one-up them with some new and better capabilities.

First off, Darpa wants its biometric device to be able to work from farther away. Right now, it says the accuracy of most systems taps out at around eight meters. And while some see-through devices can see through up to eight inches of concrete, they don’t do as well in locations with more or thicker walls. So Darpa’s looking for the next system to push that range past 10 meters, particularly in cluttered urban areas.

Finding humans hiding in a particular room is nice, but being able to tell them apart is even better. Like your fingerprints, irises and even your veins, your heartbeat can be a unique biometric calling card to distinguish you in a crowd. Darpa’s hoping its sensor can capitalize on this by using electrocardiography — the analysis of the heart’s electrical activity — to identify and track up to 10 different individuals.

But don’t be too scared of Darpa’s heart hunter. There are plenty of non-terrifying applications that the Pentagon’s geek shop envisions for the device. For instance, being able to sniff out life signs at longer distances and behind thick concrete slabs could be very useful in disaster scenarios. In the aftermath of an earthquake, rescue workers could use Darpa’s longer-range biometric sensors to find survivors trapped under rubble.

via Follow Your Heart: Darpa’s Quest to Find You by Your Heartbeat | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Astronauts falling on the moon

Astronauts falling on the moon – YouTube.

Quantum theorem shakes foundations

At the heart of the weirdness for which the field of quantum mechanics is famous is the wavefunction, a powerful but mysterious entity that is used to determine the probabilities that quantum particles will have certain properties. Now, a preprint posted online on 14 November1 reopens the question of what the wavefunction represents — with an answer that could rock quantum theory to its core. Whereas many physicists have generally interpreted the wavefunction as a statistical tool that reflects our ignorance of the particles being measured, the authors of the latest paper argue that, instead, it is physically real.

“I don’t like to sound hyperbolic, but I think the word ‘seismic’ is likely to apply to this paper,” says Antony Valentini, a theoretical physicist specializing in quantum foundations at Clemson University in South Carolina.

Valentini believes that this result may be the most important general theorem relating to the foundations of quantum mechanics since Bell’s theorem, the 1964 result in which Northern Irish physicist John Stewart Bell proved that if quantum mechanics describes real entities, it has to include mysterious “action at a distance”.

Action at a distance occurs when pairs of quantum particles interact in such a way that they become entangled. But the new paper, by a trio of physicists led by Matthew Pusey at Imperial College London, presents a theorem showing that if a quantum wavefunction were purely a statistical tool, then even quantum states that are unconnected across space and time would be able to communicate with each other. As that seems very unlikely to be true, the researchers conclude that the wavefunction must be physically real after all.

David Wallace, a philosopher of physics at the University of Oxford, UK, says that the theorem is the most important result in the foundations of quantum mechanics that he has seen in his 15-year professional career. “This strips away obscurity and shows you can’t have an interpretation of a quantum state as probabilistic,” he says.

via Quantum theorem shakes foundations : Nature News & Comment.