Japan planning space-based solar power plant

Via KurzweilAI.net — Space-based solar collection gets a lot of ink and now it looks like it might even get a test run.

apan eyes solar station in space as new energy source

AFP, Nov. 8, 2009 The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to collect solar power in space and send it to Earth by 2030 using laser beams or microwaves, and has created a consortium (the Institute for Unmanned SpaceExperiment Free Flyer) that includes Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Fujitsu and Sharp. (Japan Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer)   Read Original Article>>

Texting and driving just don’t mix — even hands-free

An interesting blog post from Dan Ariely, a visiting professor at MIT’s Media Library on the “tiny irregularities” of texting while driving:

Sad story out in the New York Times describing growing concerns about texting while driving. In Britain, a woman was sentenced to a 21-month sentence after it was found that she had been texting while driving, which resulted in the death of a 24-year old design student. In many ways, texting while driving illustrates a case in which tiny, individual irrational decisions can accumulate and cause widespread suffering, not only for the individuals who are texting, but their unsuspecting victims. Unlike cases of drunk driving, in which the driver’s decision making abilities are impaired, drivers who text are at their full wits to wait until they’ve pulled over to check their texts, and yet in the process they routinely underestimate the risk they impose to themselves and others.

The professor was quite wrong, however, on one aspect of the issue:

… we can hope that cell phone companies are continuing to explore voice activation technologies that can read text messages aloud and also transcribe them from voice — thereby by-passing the problem altogether.

In researching web content I created for an insurance website, I came across this research that finds hands-free listening  to mobile devices is not much safer than hands-on cell phone use because the issue is the distraction of the usage, not merely taking eyes off the road ahead (all bold text my emphasis):

Five states currently ban the use of hand-held cell phones in favor of hands-free devices while driving. However, several studies have shown that there is little difference between the two when it comes to minding the road ahead. Both hand-held and hands-free devices involve listening. The act of listening is what distracts drivers from paying attention to the road. A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University placed participants in a functional MRI scanner that allowed researchers to observe brain activity while the subjects “drove” on a computerized roadway. Without distractions, the area of the brain that lit up most was the area involved in spatial perception (knowing where you are and what’s around you). When the same subjects were tasked with listening to and correctly answering a series of questions as they drove, the area of the brain that lit up most was the area involving language comprehension, while activity in the spatial perception area of the brain decreased by as much as 37 percent. Multitasking places high demands on the brain.

Solar energy and the artificial leaf

Very interesting solar breakthrough, or near to it at least. Plus more on the state of the solar industry.

The release:

Chemists describe solar energy progress and challenges, including the ‘artificial leaf’

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5, 2009 — Scientists are making progress toward development of an “artificial leaf” that mimics a real leaf’s chemical magic with photosynthesis — but instead converts sunlight and water into a liquid fuel such as methanol for cars and trucks. That is among the conclusions in a newly-available report from top authorities on solar energy who met at the 1st Annual Chemical Sciences and Society Symposium. The gathering launched a new effort to initiate international cooperation and innovative thinking on the global energy challenge.

The three-day symposium, which took place in Germany this past summer, included 30 chemists from China, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was organized through a joint effort of the science and technology funding agencies and chemical societies of each country, including the U. S. National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society. The symposium series was initiated though the ACS Committee on International Activities in order to offer a unique forum whereby global challenges could be tackled in an open, discussion-based setting, fostering innovative solutions to some of the world’s most daunting challenges.

A “white paper” entitled “Powering the World with Sunlight,” describes highlights of the symposium and is available along with related materials here.

“The sun provides more energy to the Earth in an hour than the world consumes in a year,” the report states. “Compare that single hour to the one million years required for the Earth to accumulate the same amount of energy in the form of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are not a sustainable resource, and we must break our dependence on them. Solar power is among the most promising alternatives.”

The symposium focused on four main topics:

• Mimicking photosynthesis using synthetic materials such as the “artificial leaf”
• Production and use of biofuels as a form of stored solar energy
• Developing innovative, more efficient solar cells
• Storage and distribution of solar energy

   

The scientists pointed out during the meeting that plants use solar energy when they capture and convert sunlight into chemical fuel through photosynthesis. The process involves the conversion of water and carbon dioxide into sugars as well as oxygen and hydrogen. Scientists have been successful in mimicking this fuel-making process, termed artificial photosynthesis, but now must finds ways of doing so in ways that can be used commercially. Participants described progress toward this goal and the scientific challenges that must be met before solar can be a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

Highlights of the symposium include a talk by Kazunari Domen, Ph.D., of the University of Tokyo in Japan. Domen described current research on developing more efficient and affordable catalysts for producing hydrogen using a new water-splitting technology called “photocatalytic overall water splitting.” The technology uses light-activated nanoparticles, each 1/50,000 the width of a human hair, to convert water to hydrogen. This technique is more efficient and less expensive than current technologies, he said.

Domen noted that the ultimate goal of artificial photosynthesis is to produce a liquid fuel, such as methanol, or “wood alcohol.” Achieving this goal would fulfil the vision of creating an “artificial leaf” that not only splits water but uses the reaction products to create a more usable fuel, similar to what leaves do.

Among the “take-home messages” cited in the report:

• There’s no single best solution to the energy problem. Scientists must seek more affordable, sustainable solutions to the global energy challenge by considering all the options.
• Investing in chemistry is investing in the future. Strong basic research is fundamental to realizing the potential of solar energy and making it affordable for large-scale use.
• Society needs a new generation of “energy scientists” to explore new ways to capture, convert, and store solar energy.

   

“The meeting was an experiment worth trying,” said Teruto Ohta, executive director of the Chemical Society of Japan.

Conference organizers expressed hope that the symposium will be the first of several to tackle “the global challenges of the 21st century and the indispensible role that the chemical sciences play in addressing these issues,” said Klaus Mullen, president of the German Chemistry Association.

“Building on the success of this first symposium, we’re now gearing up for the future, convening top chemical scientists to address other, equally pressing global challenges,” said Julie Callahan of the ACS Office of International Activities and principal investigator on the project. “It is an exciting time to be a chemist!”

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The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 154,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Here’s one way to work out health care solutions

Via KurzweilAI.net – I’d say the X Prize has moved private space travel a good ways down the path to commercial viability.

Peter Diamandis: the joy of taking risks

New Scienist Space, Nov. 4, 2009 Peter Diamandis, CEO of the X Prize Foundation, wants to use our competitive instincts to make the world a better place–his latest: a heath care prize.   Read Original Article>>

Genome 10K Project

Via KurzweilAI.net — Interesting. And it is just amazing to think DNA sequencing costs are expected to go down by an order of magnitude or more over “the next couple of years.”

Genome 10K: A new ark

Science News, Nov. 4, 2009 The Genome 10K Project aims to collect tissues or cells from at least 10,000 vertebrate species, enough to catalog DNA sequences from about every vertebrate genus. Its designers have decided to wait for sequencing costs to drop by a factor of 10 or more — probably in the next couple years — before launching their analytical program.   Read Original Article>>

Gamma ray astronomy

A weird, and in ways growing more weird, branch of astronomy. Gamma bursts are insanely intense, as this bit from the link attests, ” … they release in a few seconds, the energy equivalent to the rest mass of the Sun.” They are also becoming more mysterious as we learn more about them. I don’t subscribe to the idea, but I’ve heard it posited that what we as gamma bursts are evidence of alien races battling it out with unimaginably destructive weaponry.

China dominating solar manufacturing

If you follow the solar cell industry at all that fact should be very readily apparent. The Chinese government has put great emphasis o0n and money into solar. One major advantage Chinese firms have over U.S. and European competitors that’s not going away any time soon is labor costs.

From the link:

Solar companies presenting business plans to investors at a National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conference this week devoted particular attention to how they hope to compete with Chinese manufacturers. The audience at the NREL Industry Growth Forum in Denver consisted largely of venture capitalists and partners from private equity firms.

Stellaris, a company that assembles solar modules in Lowell, MA, has already received $6.1 million in funding to develop techniques for packaging silicon and thin-film cells. The company, represented at the conference by CEO James Paull, is seeking further financing in 2010.

Breakthrough in large-scale nanotube processing

Via KurzweilAI.net — These manufacturing breakthroughs aren’t as exciting and sexy as a groundbreaking medical application or replacing copper wiring with carbon nanotubes or graphene, but they are key to turning nanotechnology into a viable industry.

Breakthrough In Industrial-scale Nanotube Processing

ScienceDaily, Nov. 3, 2009 Rice University scientists have unveiled a method for high-throughput industrial-scale processing of carbon-nanotube fibers, using chlorosulfonic acid as a solvent. The process that could lead to revolutionary advances in materials science, power distribution and nanoelectronics.   Read Original Article>>

Printable electronics from Xerox

Via KurzweilAI.net — The entire concept of printable electronics is incredibly cool.

Xerox Claims Printable Electronics Breakthrough

PC magazine, Oct. 27, 2009   Xerox has announced a new silver ink that is apparently a breakthrough in printable electronics. The possibilities range from printing on flexible plastic, paper and cardboard, and fabric, to printing RFID tags on almost anything. Read Original Article>>

Improving dye-sensitized solar cells

Efficiencies are going up and costs and holding steady or falling. All this bodes well for the future of solar power.

From the link:

Dye-sensitized solar cells are flexible and cheap to make, but they tend to be inefficient at converting light into electricity. One way to boost the performance of any solar cell is to increase the surface area available to incoming light. So a group of researchers at Georgia Tech has made dye-sensitized solar cells with a much higher effective surface area by wrapping the cells around optical fibers. These fiber solar cells are six times more efficient than a zinc oxide solar cell with the same surface area, and if they can be built using cheap polymer fibers, they shouldn’t be significantly more expensive to make.

The advantage of a fiber-optic solar-cell system over a planar one is that light bounces around inside an optical fiber as it travels along its length, providing more opportunities to interact with the solar cell on its inner surface and producing more current. “For a given real estate, the total area of the cell is higher, and increased surface area means improved light harvesting and more energy,” says Max Shtein, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan who was not involved with the research.

Solar on fiber: An optical fiber (left) is covered in dye-coated zinc-oxide nanowires (closeup, right). Both images were made using a scanning electron microscope.
Credit: Angewandte Chemie

High-res panorama image of the Milky Way

I just wish this image was larger …

Caption: This is a full sky panorama of the Milky Way.

Credit: Dr. Axel Mellinger

Usage Restrictions: None

Related news release: Physicist makes new high-res panorama of Milky Way

Einstein-1, physicist detractors-0

I’ll let this release speak, so to speak, for itself:

Gamma-ray photon race ends in dead heat; Einstein wins this round

		IMAGE: In this illustration, one photon (purple) carries a million times the energy of another (yellow). Some theorists predict travel delays for higher-energy photons, which interact more strongly with the proposed… Click here for more information.

Racing across the universe for the last 7.3 billion years, two gamma-ray photons arrived at NASA’s orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope within nine-tenths of a second of one another. The dead-heat finish may stoke the fires of debate among physicists over Einstein’s special theory of relativity because one of the photons possessed a million times more energy than the other.

For Einstein’s theory, that’s no problem. In his vision of the structure of space and time, unified as space-time, all forms of electromagnetic radiation – gamma rays, radio waves, infrared, visible light and X-rays – are reckoned to travel through the vacuum of space at the same speed, no matter how energetic. But in some of the new theories of gravity, space-time is considered to have a “shifting, frothy structure” when viewed at a scale trillions of times smaller than an electron. Some of those models predict that such a foamy texture ought to slow down the higher-energy gamma-ray photon relative to the lower energy one. Clearly, it did not.

Even in the world of high-energy particle physics, where a minute deviation can sometimes make a massive difference, nine-tenths of a second spread over more than 7 billion years is so small that the difference is likely due to the detailed processes of the gamma-ray burst rather than confirming any modification of Einstein’s ideas.

“This measurement eliminates any approach to a new theory of gravity that predicts a strong energy-dependent change in the speed of light,” said Peter Michelson, professor of physics at Stanford University and principal investigator for Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT), which detected the gamma-ray photons on May 10. “To one part in 100 million billion, these two photons traveled at the same speed. Einstein still rules.”

Michelson is one of the authors of a paper that details the research, published online Oct. 28 by Nature.

Physicists have yearned for years to develop a unifying theory of how the universe works. But no one has been able to come up with one that brings all four of the fundamental forces in the universe into one tent. The Standard Model of particle physics, which was well developed by the end of the 1970s, is considered to have succeeded in unifying three of the four: electromagnetism; the “strong force” (which holds nuclei together inside atoms); and the “weak force” (which is responsible for radioactive decay, among other things.) But in the Standard Model, gravity has always been the odd man out, never quite fitting in. Though a host of theories have been advanced, none has been shown successful.

But by the same token, Einstein’s theories of relativity also fail to unify the four forces.

“Physicists would like to replace Einstein’s vision of gravity – as expressed in his relativity theories – with something that handles all fundamental forces,” Michelson said. “There are many ideas, but few ways to test them.”

The two photons provided rare experimental evidence about the structure of space-time. Whether the evidence will prove sufficient to settle any debates remains to be seen.

The photons were launched on their pan-galactic marathon during a short gamma-ray burst, an outpouring of radiation likely generated by the collision of two neutron stars, the densest known objects in the universe.

A neutron star is created when a massive star collapses in on itself in an explosion called a supernova. The neutron star forms in the core as matter is compressed to the point where it is typically about 10 miles in diameter, yet contains more mass than our sun. When two such dense objects collide, the energy released in a gamma-ray burst can be millions of times brighter than the entire Milky Way, albeit only briefly. The burst (designated GRB 090510) that sent the two photons on their way lasted 2.1 seconds.

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NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.

ARPA-E

Government funded skunk works for energy.

From the link:

Its mission is to identify “revolutionary advances in fundamental sciences,” then translate these advances into “technological innovations,” particularly in areas where industry won’t do this on its own because the technology is considered too risky. In some ways ARPA-E is supposed to be for energy technologies what DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is for the military. That agency had its hand in the development of a number of revolutionary new technologies, including Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet.

The first batch of ARPA-E projects is certainly fascinating. It includes projects that could improve the performance of current energy technologies by many times, slashing the cost of solar panels and batteries, for example. If they succeed, the world could be a different place. Renewable energy could out-compete fossil fuels without the help of subsidies and long-range electric cars could become widely affordable, challenging the dominance of the internal combustion engine.

 

Zinc-air batteries in the wild

These rechargeables  are expected to triple the storage of lithium-ion batteries.

From the link:

A Swiss company says it has developed rechargeable zinc-air batteries that can store three times the energy of lithium ion batteries, by volume, while costing only half as much. ReVolt, of Staefa, Switzerland, plans to sell small “button cell” batteries for hearing aids starting next year and to incorporate its technology into ever larger batteries, introducing cell-phone and electric bicycle batteries in the next few years. It is also starting to develop large-format batteries for electric vehicles.

The battery design is based on technology developed at SINTEF, a research institute in Trondheim, Norway. ReVolt was founded to bring it to market and so far has raised 24 million euros in investment. James McDougal, the company’s CEO, says that the technology overcomes the main problem with zinc-air rechargeable batteries–that they typically stop working after relatively few charges. If the technology can be scaled up, zinc-air batteries could make electric vehicles more practical by lowering their costs and increasing their range.

The latest in military robots

Anyone remember BigDog, the four-legged military robot from Boston Dynamics that many found a bit creepy?  Meet Petman, the two-legged cousin of BigDog.

From the Technology Review link:

The company that created BigDog–a headless robotic pack mule with an impressively realistic gait–recently released a video of another robot, Petman.

This bipedal bot walks on two legs and can recover from a push, using the same balancing technology that allows BigDog to recover from a kick or keep its balance when walking on ice.

While BigDog was designed to carry payloads for soldiers in the field, Petman will be used for military chemical suit research. In the final version, which should be ready in 2011, Petman will have a range of motions. According to the company:

Unlike previous suit testers, which had to be supported mechanically and had a limited repertoire of motion, PETMAN will balance itself and move freely; walking, crawling and doing a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics during exposure to chemical warfare agents.

Nanoparticle self-assembly news

Via KurzweilAI.net — here’s the latest in nanotech news.

New Route To Nano Self-assembly Found

ScienceDaily, Oct. 25, 2009 Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found a way to induce nanoparticles to assemble themselves into complex arrays, using block copolymers with surfactants as mediator molecules. Read Original Article>>

Comprehending time

Via KurzweilAI.net –

Timewarp: How your brain creates the fourth dimension

New Scientist Life, Oct. 21, 2009 By understanding the mechanisms of our brain’s clock, researchers hope to learn ways of temporarily resetting its tick. This might improve our mental speed and reaction times, and since time is crucial to our perception of causality, a faulty internal clock might also explain the delusions suffered by people with schizophrenia. Read Original Article>>

Nanoantennas and high-speed optical data networks

Via KurzweilAI.net — Looks like this nanotech has applications in communications, medicine and alternative power, to name three.

Nanoantennas allow for high-speed optical data networks

KurzweilAI.net, Oct. 22, 2009 Gold nanoantennas smaller than 100 nm that transmit and receive light have been developed by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology researchers. The antennas could be used in new optical high-speed data networks and in chip manufacturing and photovoltaic devices, and for the study of individual biomolecules. (LTI) More info

Solar costs are dropping

Interesting news from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The release:

Installed cost of solar photovoltaic systems in the US fell in 2008

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) released a new study on the installed costs of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the U.S., showing that the average cost of these systems declined by more than 30 percent from 1998 to 2008. Within the last year of this period, costs fell by more than 4 percent.

The number of solar PV systems in the U.S. has been growing at a rapid rate in recent years, as governments at the national, state, and local levels have offered various incentives to expand the solar market. With this growth comes a greater need to track and understand trends in the installed cost of PV.

“A goal of government incentive programs is to help drive the cost of PV systems lower. One purpose of this study is to provide reliable information about the costs of installed systems over time,” says report co-author Ryan Wiser.

According to the report, the most recent decline in costs is primarily the result of a decrease in PV module costs. “The reduction in installed costs from 2007 to 2008 marks an important departure from the trend of the preceding three years, during which costs remained flat as rapidly expanding U.S. and global PV markets put upward pressure on both module prices and non-module costs. This dynamic began to shift in 2008, as expanded manufacturing capacity in the solar industry, in combination with the global financial crisis, led to a decline in wholesale module prices,” states the report, which was written by Wiser, Galen Barbose, Carla Peterman, and Naim Darghouth of Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division.

In contrast, cost reductions from 1998 through 2007 were largely due to a decline in non-module costs, such as the cost of labor, marketing, overhead, inverters, and the balance of systems.

The study—the second in an ongoing series that tracks the installed cost of PV—examined 52,000 grid-connected PV systems installed between 1998 and 2008 in 16 states. It found that average installed costs, in terms of real 2008 dollars, declined from $10.80 per watt (W) in 1998 to $7.50/W in 2008, equivalent to an average annual reduction of $0.30/W, or 3.6 percent per year in real dollars.

Costs Differ by Region and Type of System

Other information about differences in costs by region and by installation type emerged from the study. The cost reduction over time was largest for smaller PV systems, such as those used to power individual households. Also, installed costs show significant economies of scale—small residential PV systems completed in 2008 that were less than 2 kilowatts (kW) in size averaged $9.20/W, while large commercial systems in the range of 500 to 750 kW averaged $6.50/W.

Installed costs were also found to vary widely across states. Among systems completed in 2008 and less than 10 kW in size, average costs range from a low of $7.30/W in Arizona, followed by California, which had average installed costs of $8.20/W, to a high of $9.90/W in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Based on these data, and on installed cost data from the sizable German and Japanese PV markets, the authors suggest that PV costs can be driven lower through large-scale deployment programs.

The study also found that the new construction market offers cost advantages for residential PV systems. Among small residential PV systems in California completed in 2008, those systems installed in residential new construction cost $0.80/W less than comparably-sized systems installed in rooftop retrofit applications.

Cash Incentives Declined

The study also found that the average size of direct cash incentives provided by state and local PV incentive programs declined over the 1998-2008 study period. Other sources of incentives, however, such as federal investment tax credits (ITCs), have become more significant. For commercial PV systems, the average combined after-tax value of federal and state ITCs, plus direct cash incentives provided by state and local incentive programs, was $4.00/W in 2008, down slightly from its peak in 2006 but still a near-record-high. Total after-tax incentives for residential systems, on the other hand, were at an historic low in 2008, averaging $2.90/W, their lowest level within the 11-year study period.

The drop in total after-tax incentives for both commercial and residential PV from 2007 to 2008 more than offset the cost reduction over this period, leading to a slight rise in the net installed cost, or the installed cost facing a customer after receipt of financial incentives. For residential PV, net installed costs in 2008 averaged $5.40/W, up 1% from the previous year. Net installed costs for commercial PV averaged $4.20/W, a 5% rise from 2007.

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The report “Tracking the Sun II: The Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the U.S. from 1998�,” by Ryan Wiser, Galen Barbose, Carla Peterman, and Naim Darghouth may be downloaded from http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/emp/re-pubs.html. The research was supported by funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (Solar Energy Technologies Program) and by the Clean Energy States Alliance.

Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit our website at http://www.lbl.gov.

Wednesday video — Bill Maher on the H1N1 flu vaccine

Maher, typically a voice of skeptical realism spent considerable time in the last two episodes of this year’s “Real Time” run ranting against the H1N1 flu vaccine.

Watch him really dig that hole in this clip:

The clip was found at this Hot Air post:

Deep thoughts about swine flu and the mercury in your fillings from an anti-vaccination crank of longstanding. If anyone took him seriously, his peddling of this stuff would be worrisome. Fortunately, no one does.

Mr. Maher questioned letting someone stick “a disease into your arm,” wrongly implying that the flu shot contains a live virus. The flu shot is a killed vaccine. (Only the nasal mist vaccine contains a weakened live virus.)

Are we still evolving?

Of course.

The release:

Are humans still evolving? Absolutely, says a new analysis of a long-term survey of human health

Durham, NC – Although advances in medical care have improved standards of living over time, humans aren’t entirely sheltered from the forces of natural selection, a new study shows.

“There is this idea that because medicine has been so good at reducing mortality rates, that means that natural selection is no longer operating in humans,” said Stephen Stearns of Yale University. A recent analysis by Stearns and colleagues turns this idea on its head. As part of a working group sponsored by the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC, the team of researchers decided to find out if natural selection — a major driving force of evolution — is still at work in humans today. The result? Human evolution hasn’t ground to a halt. In fact, we’re likely to evolve at roughly the same rates as other living things, findings suggest.

Taking advantage of data collected as part of a 60-year study of more than 2000 North American women in the Framingham Heart Study, the researchers analyzed a handful of traits important to human health. By measuring the effects of these traits on the number of children the women had over their lifetime, the researchers were able to estimate the strength of selection and make short-term predictions about how each trait might evolve in the future. After adjusting for factors such as education and smoking, their models predict that the descendents of these women will be slightly shorter and heavier, will have lower blood pressure and cholesterol, will have their first child at a younger age, and will reach menopause later in life.

“The take-home message is that humans are currently evolving,” said Stearns. “Natural selection is still operating.”

The changes may be slow and gradual, but the predicted rates of change are no different from those observed elsewhere in nature, the researchers say. “The evolution that’s going on in the Framingham women is like average rates of evolution measured in other plants and animals,” said Stearns. “These results place humans in the medium-to-slow end of the range of rates observed for other living things,” he added. “But what that means is that humans aren’t special with respect to how fast they’re evolving. They’re kind of average.”

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Additional authors on the study were Sean Byars of Yale University, Douglas Ewbank of the University of Pennsylvania, and Diddahally Govindaraju of Boston University.

The team’s findings were published online in the October 19th issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

CITATION: Byars, S., D. Ewbank, et al. (2009). “Natural selection in a contemporary human population.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(42). doi: 10.1073_pnas.0906199106.

The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) is an NSF-funded collaborative research center operated by Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University.

This is quite the publicity stunt

Getting the ISS involved in the marketing for “Planet 51.”

I’ll let the release hot from the inbox explain:

The International Space Station Discovers ‘Planet 51′

Upcoming Animated Comedy Hitches Ride on Space Shuttle

The Milky Way Galaxy, Oct. 19 /PRNewswire/ — To celebrate the Solar System Premiere of Columbia Pictures’ new animated comedy Planet 51, which will be released in theaters on Earth November 20, 2009, the film is currently orbiting the planet on the International Space Station!

(Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20091019/LA94833)

The film was launched into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on August 28, 2009, and was transferred to the space station by the astronauts a few days later.  The film is now cruising high above Earth at 17,500 miles per hour and orbiting the planet every 90 minutes, which is the exact running time of the movie, so it will make a full Earth orbit as the movie premieres on the ground.

In a joint statement, producers Guy Collins and Ignacio Perez said that, “Planet 51 is a fun film for all the family and one of its strong messages, particularly for children, is to not be afraid of the unknown. That is what NASA has been showing the world for 50 years and I hope that our film will encourage children to increase their understanding of the Universe and NASA’s work.”

Joshua Ravetch, a Senior Vice President at HandMade Films who arranged for the movie to get to the space station said, “What’s really amazing about this is that the movie will open day and date domestically, internationally and now, even a copy of the film will be available ‘orbitally’ circling the Earth for the astronauts to view at their leisure.”

In a photo accompanying the announcement, a disc of the film can be seen floating weightlessly in space, observing Earth as it floats by a Space Station window.  The photo mimics a shot from the film, in which Lem, an alien from Planet 51, observes his home planet from the window of a spaceship for the first time.

About the film:

Planet 51 is a galactic sized animated alien adventure comedy revolving around American astronaut Captain Charles “Chuck” Baker, who lands on Planet 51 thinking he’s the first person to step foot on it. To his surprise, he finds that this planet is inhabited by little green people who are happily living in a white picket fence world reminiscent of a cheerfully innocent 1950s America, and whose only fear is that it will be overrun by alien invaders…like Chuck! With the help of his robot companion “Rover” and his new friend Lem, Chuck must navigate his way through the dazzling, but bewildering, landscape of Planet 51 in order to escape becoming a permanent part of the Planet 51 Alien Invaders Space Museum.  The film is directed by Jorge Blanco, written by Joe Stillman, and produced by Guy Collins and Ignacio Perez Dolset.

About Sony Pictures Entertainment

Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) is a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America (SCA), a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation. SPE’s global operations encompass motion picture production and distribution; television production and distribution; digital content creation and distribution; worldwide channel investments; home entertainment acquisition and distribution; operation of studio facilities; development of new entertainment products, services and technologies; and distribution of filmed entertainment in more than 130 countries.  Sony Pictures Entertainment can be found on the World Wide Web at www.sonypictures.com.

About HANDMADE FILMS INTERNATIONAL

HandMade is a UK public company quoted on the English Stock Exchange with offices in London and Los Angeles.  HandMade’s group activities include film production, sales and financing, and the license and exploitation of existing HandMade assets which includes ownership of a library of over 100 films.  HandMade Films International is the sales & marketing arm of the Group and is a wholly owned subsidiary.

Current films on the HandMade slate include animated CG feature Planet 51, which features the voices of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Jessica Biel and Seann William Scott.  The film is released across the US on Thanksgiving weekend in November on 3,500 screens and will roll out from day & date across the rest of the world.  Cracks starring Eva Green, Juno Temple and Imogen Poots.  Executive Producer Ridley Scott’s daughter Jordan directs the film.  Other titles include 50 Dead Men Walking starring Sir Ben Kingsley and Jim Sturgess, and 2010’s remake productions of The Long Good Friday and Mona Lisa.

HandMade also owns and exploits the rights to Eloise, one of the best known and much-loved fictional characters in the United States.  A live action feature film to be directed by Charles Shyer  and featuring the mischievous character, Eloise In Paris, will shoot in Early 2010 starring Uma Thurman.

About ILION ANIMATION STUDIOS

Ilion Animation Studios was founded in 2002 to create state-of-the-art computer animated movies for worldwide theatrical release using its own purpose-built cutting-edge technology. Ilion Animation Studios and companies Zed and Pyro Studios, were founded and are run by Ignacio Perez Dolset (CEO of Ilion and Pyro) and Javier Perez Dolset (CEO of Zed).  Zed develops and markets entertainment and community products and services for mobile and the Internet. The company is the leading mobile value-added services (MVAS) player in the world in terms of revenue and geographical footprint, operating in 53 countries across 5 continents.  Pyro Studios, creator of the international best-seller video game saga Commandos is dedicated to latest generation video game development for the international market.

Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20091019/LA94833
http://photoarchive.ap.org/
AP PhotoExpress Network:  PRN20
PRN Photo Desk photodesk@prnewswire.com
Source: Columbia Pictures

Web Site:  http://www.sonypictures.com/

Pollution and ET

Via KurzweilAI.net — An interesting and novel idea on searching for extraterrestrial life.

To spot an alien, follow the pollution trail

New Scientist Space, Oct. 19, 2009 Light pollution from cities and the presence of CFCs and other artificial compounds in the atmosphere (indicated by absorption at characteristic wavelengths) could be signs of intelligent life on alien planets. Read Original Article>>

A beautiful nanotech image

I regularly have blog posts that feature nanotech images, and sometimes I just run a nanotechnology image because it is so beautiful. This is one of those times –

2004: Quantum dot nanocrystals deposited on a silicon substrate (200x), Polarized reflected light. / Seth A. Coe-Sullivan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Courtesy of Nikon Small World. The 2004 runners up.

IBEX finds solar system surprise

This release is from Friday and I’ve read this news a few different places and caught several releases, but this one is pretty comprehensive and contains a multitude of citations and external links.

Surprises in any scientific research are interesting, and often they are pretty cool.

The release:

Satellite reveals surprising cosmic ‘weather’ at edge of solar system

		IMAGE: Priscilla Frisch, Senior Scientist in Astronomy & Astrophysics, and member of the science team, Interstellar Boundary Explorer. Collaborating with former UChicago astronomer Thomas F. Adams, she made the first spectrum… Click here for more information.

The first solar system energetic particle maps show an unexpected landmark occurring at the outer edge of the solar wind bubble surrounding the solar system. Scientists published these maps, based mostly on data collected from NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer satellite, in the Oct. 15 issue of Science Express, the advance online version of the journal Science.

“Nature is full of surprises, and IBEX has been lucky to discover one of those surprises,” said Priscilla Frisch, a senior scientist in astronomy & astrophysics at the University of Chicago. “The sky maps are dominated by a giant ribbon of energetic neutral atoms extending throughout the sky in an arc that is 300 degrees long.” Energetic neutral atoms form when hot solar wind ions (charged particles) steal electrons from cool interstellar neutral atoms.

IBEX was launched Oct. 19, 2008, to produce the first all-sky maps of the heliosphere, which reaches far beyond the solar system’s most distant planets. Extending more than 100 times farther than the distance from Earth to the sun, the heliosphere marks the region of outer space subjected to the sun’s particle emissions.

The new maps show how high-speed cosmic particle streams collide and mix at the edge of the heliosphere, said Frisch, who co-authored three of a set of IBEX articles appearing in this week’s Science Express. The outgoing solar wind blows at 900,000 miles an hour, crashing into a 60,000-mile-an-hour “breeze” of incoming interstellar gas.

Revealed in the IBEX data, but not predicted in the theoretical heliosphere simulations of three different research groups, was the ribbon itself, formed where the direction of the interstellar magnetic field draping over the heliosphere is perpendicular to the viewpoint of the sun.

		IMAGE: Image from one of the IBEX papers published in the Oct. 16, 2009, issue of Science showing a map of the ribbon of energetic neutral atoms (in green and yellow)… Click here for more information.

Energetic protons create forces as they move through the magnetic field, and when the protons are bathed in interstellar neutrals, they produce energetic neutral atoms. “We’re still trying to understand this unexpected structure, and we believe that the interstellar magnetic forces are associated with the enhanced ENA production at the ribbon,” Frisch said.

IBEX shows that energetic neutral atoms are produced toward the north pole of the ecliptic (the plane traced by the orbit of the planets around the sun), as well as toward the heliosphere tail pointed toward the constellations of Taurus and Orion. “The particle energies change between the poles and tail, but surprisingly not in the ribbon compared to adjacent locations,” Frisch said.

###

BEX is the latest in NASA’s series of low-cost, rapidly developed Small Explorers space missions. Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, leads and developed the mission with a team of national and international partners. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the Explorers Program for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Citations: N. A. Schwadron, M. Bzowski, G. B. Crew, M. Gruntman, H. Fahr, H. Fichtner, P. C. Frisch, H. O. Funsten, S. Fuselier, J. Heerikhuisen, V. Izmodenov, H. Kucharek, M. Lee, G. Livadiotis, D. J. McComas, E. Moebius, T. Moore, J. Mukherjee, N.V. Pogorelov, C. Prested, D. Reisenfeld, E. Roelof, G.P. Zank, “Comparison of Interstellar Boundary Explorer Observations with 3-D Global Heliospheric Models,” ScienceExpress, Oct. 15, 2009.

H.O. Funsten, F. Allegrini, G.B. Crew, R. DeMajistre, P.C. Frisch, S.A. Fuselier, M. Gruntman, P. Janzen, D.J. McComas, E. Möbius, B. Randol, D.B. Reisenfeld, E.C. Roelof, N.A. Schwadron, “Structures and Spectral Variations of the Outer Heliosphere in IBEX Energetic Neutral Atom Maps,”Science Express, Oct. 15, 2009.

D.J. McComas, F. Allegrini1, P. Bochsler, M. Bzowski, E.R. Christian, G.B.Crew, R. DeMajistre, H. Fahr, H. Fichtner, P.C. Frisch, H.O. Funsten, S. A. Fuselier, G. Gloeckler, M. Gruntman, J. Heerikhuisen, V. Izmodenov, P.J anzen, P. Knappenberger, S. Krimigis, H. Kucharek, M. Lee, G. Livadiotis, S. Livi, R.J. MacDowall, D. Mitchell, E. Möbius, T. Moore, N.V. Pogorelov, D. Reisenfeld, E. Roelof, L. Saul, N.A. Schwadron, P.W. Valek, R. Vanderspek, P. Wurz, G.P. Zank, “Global Observations of the Interstellar Interaction from the Interstellar Boundary Explorer-IBEX”, ScienceExpress, Oct. 15, 2009.

Related links:

Animation shows how energetic neutral atoms are made in the heliosheath when hot solar wind protons grab an electron from a cold interstellar gas atom. The ENAs can then easily travel back into the solar system, where some are collected by IBEX. Credit: NASA/GSFChttp://www.swri.org/temp/ibexscience/DM/SP_draft1.mov

Solar Journey: The Significant of Our Galactic Environment for the Heliosphere and Earth, Priscilla C. Frisch, editor.http://www.springer.com/astronomy/practical+astronomy/book/978-1-4020-4397-0

IBEX Web page at Southwest Research Institute http://ibex.swri.edu/

NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer mission http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/index.html

To view a video related to this research, please visit http://astro.uchicago.edu/%7Efrisch/soljourn/Hanson/AstroBioScene7Sound.mov

If you’re dying for more on the topic, here’s another press release.

Magnetricity

Via KurzweilAI.net — Interesting.

‘Magnetricity’ observed for first time

New Scientist Physics & Math, Oct. 14, 2009 The magnetic equivalent of electricity, dubbed “magnetricity,” has been demonstrated experimentally for the first time, led by London Centre for Nanotechnology researchers. Just as the flow of electrons produces electrical current,individual north and south magnetic poles have been observed to roam freely, generating magnetic “current.” The result could lead to the development of “magnetronics,” including nanoscale computer memory. Read Original Article>>

Barnard’s Galaxy image

More cool space imagery:

Astronomers obtained this portrait of Barnard’s Galaxy using the Wide Field Imager attached to the 2.2-m MPG/ESO telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile. Also known as NGC 6822, this dwarf irregular galaxy is one of the Milky Way’s galactic neighbors. The dwarf galaxy has no shortage of stellar splendor and pyrotechnics. Reddish nebulae in this image reveal regions of active star formation, wherein young, hot stars heat up nearby gas clouds. Also prominent in the upper left of this new image is a striking bubble-shaped nebula. At the nebula’s center, a clutch of massive, scorching stars send waves of matter smashing into surrounding interstellar material, generating a glowing structure that appears ring-like from our perspective. Other similar ripples of heated matter thrown out by feisty young stars are dotted across Barnard’s Galaxy. The image was made from data obtained through four different filters (B, V, R, and H-alpha). The field of view is 35 x 34 arcmin. North is up, East to the left.

If you care to read the press release that accompanies this image, here you go.

TDRS-1 communications satellite, RIP

Well, technically it isn’t dead — and to get real technical about it, it never was actually alive — but the TDRS-1 communications satellite is being decommissioned after 26 years of circling the Earth working for NASA, scientists, the military and intelligence.

From the link:

Although it was never advertised, the biggest users of the TDRS constellation weren’t NASA astronauts and scientists, but the military and the National Reconnaisance Office, who had priority use of the system for keeping in touch with their spy satellites. This occaisonally caused frustration for scientific users of the system, especially during tense geopolitical moments–in his book on the Hubble Space Telescope, The Hubble Wars, Eric Chaisson writes about the difficulty of scheduling telescope observations during the first Gulf War.

If the Large Hadron Collider worries you …

… just hit this link for a status report.

(Hat tip: Hit & Run)

Imaging single biomolecules

Yes, yes, yes — the scientific and practical applications are awesome, but I’m still not past the incredible images:

From the link:

Now Matthias Germann and buddies at the University of Zurich have a different approach. Instead of high energy electrons, they’ve created holograms of DNA strands using a coherent beam of low energy electrons (although why this approach hasn’t proved fruitful in the past isn’t clear).

Their results show that at certain energies, DNA strands are remarkably robust to low energy electrons. “DNA withstands irradiation by coherent low energy electrons and remains unperturbed even after a total dose of at least 5 orders of magnitude larger than the permissible dose in X-ray or high energy electron imaging,” say the team.

Yep, that’s five orders of magnitude more.

What this suggests is that if you choose electron beams of just right energy–Germann and co say 60eV does the trick–then it becomes possible to take decent snapshots of DNA molecules without destroying them.