IAN SAMPLE, Science Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Within 50 years there will be species created to do a specific tasks, just as dog species were created to the same end. But as our knowledge of how to do this expands it will inevitably get to human animal mixes, and a great ethical chasm will yawn before us.
Scientist have created an artificial jellyfish that uses heart cells from a rat to propel itself though the water.
No bigger than a 1p coin, the bioengineered machine mimics the swimming style of a baby jellyfish by contracting its synthetic body into a bell shape to generate forward thrust.
Researchers at California Institute of Technology and Harvard University built the ‘medusoid’, named after medusa, a historic name for jellyfish, as a stepping stone towards a much grander aim: the construction of hearts to replace those damaged by disease.
Writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, Kit Parker at Harvard and Janna Nawroth at Caltech, describe how they designed the medusoid after studying the movement of juvenile moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita).
Rather than the familar bell-shaped body of a mature jellyfish, the baby creatures have eight lobes that spread out from the centre like arms. To make the artificial jellyfish, the scientists copied this design in silicone rubber and coated one side with living heart cells from rats. The surface of the silicone was patterned with proteins to ensure the heart cells took up the right positions. To make the medusoid swim, the scientists put it in a water bath and pulsed an electric current across […]
No Comments
Stephan: If you have read SR for very long you know my view: Water is destiny. This reality is beginning to emerge into our consciousness, even though this is early days. It's going to get much worse, and it is going to lead to massive social upheaval.
Fresh water supplies are unlikely to keep up with global demand by 2040, increasing political instability, hobbling economic growth and endangering world food markets, according to a U.S. intelligence assessment released on Thursday.
The report by the office of the Director of National Intelligence said that areas including South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa will face major challenges in coping with water problems that could hinder the ability to produce food and generate energy.
The report said that a ‘water war’ was unlikely in the next 10 years, but that the risk of conflict would grow with global water demand likely to outstrip current sustainable supplies by 40 percent by 2030.
‘Beyond 10 years we did see the risk increasing,’ a senior U.S. intelligence official told reporters. ‘It depends upon what individual states do and what actions are taken right now to work water management issues between states.’
The official declined to discuss the risks for specific countries, but in the past water disputes have contributed to tensions between rivals including nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, Israel and the Palestinians, and Syria and Iraq.
The report, drafted principally by the Defense Intelligence Agency and based on a classified national intelligence estimate, said that water […]
No Comments
COLIN WOODARD, Correspondent - The Christian Science Monitor
Stephan: I have always been a supporter of tidal power because it seems such a logical way to go. All that energy predictably available. Maybe something is finally happening.
EASTPORT, MAINE — Eastport is used to being on the fringe of things – the easternmost city in the United States, a remote outpost of Maine’s poorest county, and one of the westernmost communities of the Bay of Fundy, home to the world’s most dramatic tidal swings.
But in recent years, this community of 1,600 has found itself at the center of an industrial enterprise that its people thought had abandoned them for good: harnessing the tides to generate electricity. Amid Eastport’s abandoned sardine factories and often-empty storefronts, engineers have been testing a new generation of tidal turbines that could power the region’s homes and businesses without having an adverse effect on the environment, fisheries, or the beautiful views of the forested islands of neighboring Canada.
‘It’s the Kitty Hawk of tidal energy,’ says Chris Sauer, president of the Maine-based Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC), which has been testing its turbines in the surrounding waters for four years. ‘You can go anywhere in the world and people know about Eastport.’
Tidal power used to be extremely disruptive to the marine environment, as it involved damming a waterway and forcing the currents – and marine life – through conduits housing turbines. Under President Franklin […]
No Comments
SARAH JAFFE, Associate Editor - The Raw Story/AlterNet
Stephan: We used to speak of corrupt central and South American nations as banana republics which was understood to mean run by corrupt oligarchies, that served only their own interests. You could make the case that the U.S. has become just that -- as this report demonstrates. It is a measure of the corruption that virtually no one has been held accountable for any of this.
Countrywide Financial was one of the subprime lenders at the heart of the financial crisis; its predatory lending practices resulted in disgustingly large payouts for executives while sticking low-income borrowers with explosive mortgages they hadn’t a hope of paying back. The New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson called Countrywide, ‘Exhibit A for the lax and, until recently, highly lucrative lending that has turned a once-hot business ice cold and has touched off a housing crisis of historic proportions.
No Comments
BILL MCKIBBEN, - Rolling Stone
Stephan:
If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven’t convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.
Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the ‘largest temperature departure from average of any season on record.’ The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet’s history.
Not that our leaders seemed to notice. Last month the world’s nations, meeting in Rio for the 20th-anniversary reprise of a massive 1992 environmental summit, accomplished nothing. Unlike George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn’t even attend. It was ‘a ghost […]
No Comments
