Timelapse Nature
Amazing…a bit creepy, but amazing.
Ice Ice Baby
Water expands when it freezes. Anyone who has ever left a can of pop or bottle of water in the freezer too long has witnessed this first hand. The water in living cells will do the same. Instead of exploding the ice crystals in cells bust out of the cells causing massive cellular damage (frost bite). So how do plants and animals survive sub-freezing temperatures? If you are warm blooded (like us humans) you use your mitochondria to produce energy (and heat) from the food you eat, but what if you are an insect?
Insects exposed to subzero temperatures can adapt to the extreme climate to survive freezing temperatures, but until now, antifreeze molecules had not been isolated from freeze-tolerant animals. The NSF-supported study, published in the November 24 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes a brand new type of antifreeze molecule isolated from a freeze-tolerant Alaskan beetle by Kent Walters and colleagues at the University of Notre Dame.
Interestingly, the antifreeze molecule described by the research team differs from previously described factors in that it is not a protein, but a combination of saccharides and fatty acids, which are other types of biomolecules. What does that mean? Size is one big difference. The exact size of this particular molecule is unknown, but the fact that it is small could prove beneficial. The chemical composition of the molecule could prove amenable to commercial production because small chains of sugars can be readily synthesized in the laboratory, making them cheaper and easier to manufacture than biologically assembled molecules.
Antifreeze molecules are present in many organisms including fish, insects, plants, fungi and bacteria. “The most active known antifreeze proteins had been described in freeze-avoiding insects, allowing certain insects to survive temperatures below -60 C (-76 F)” said Walters. However, this is the first reported isolation of antifreeze from a freeze-tolerant insect (those able to survive freezing).
One reason is that the antifreeze molecules are not always present. Dropping temperatures serve as a signal that the insects respond to by activating a host of adaptive responses including expression of antifreeze molecules. Researchers can artificially stimulate this response by conditioning the insects before they perform experiments.
Ever read a scifi story about people who freeze themselves for the long journey between the stars? These small beetles may hold the secret to that future. Current methods used to cryopreserve tissues result in low viability after thaw, in part because existing solutes must be used at concentrations that are often toxic to cells or tissues. Basically the current methods use nasty chemicals to avoid the damage done from freezing, that are deadly to the flesh being frozen. Out of the pan into the fire so to speak, if the pan and fire where really really cold. Because the new antifreeze molecule exhibits activity at relatively low concentrations in insects, it is possible researchers may be able to use them at low concentrations in the lab too.
According to Walters, “Potential applications for this new class of antifreeze molecules are abundant. In terms of cryopreservation, we may be able to increase viability and enhance survivorship of cells and tissues from other organisms under freezing conditions.”
Obama Will Attend Copenhagen, Will Propose Reductions
This is actually kind of surprising and awesome. Lets hope that this turns out to have some sort of actual real effect.
from the White House
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The White House announced today that President Obama will travel to Copenhagen on Dec. 9 to participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference, where he is eager to work with the international community to drive progress toward a comprehensive and operational Copenhagen accord. The President has worked steadily on behalf of a positive outcome in Copenhagen throughout the year. Based on the President’s work on climate change over the past 10 months – in the Major Economies Forum, the G20, bilateral discussions and multilateral consultations – and based on progress made in recent, constructive discussions with China and India’s Leaders, the President believes it is possible to reach a meaningful agreement in Copenhagen. The President’s decision to go is a sign of his continuing commitment and leadership to find a global solution to the global threat of climate change, and to lay the foundation for a new, sustainable and prosperous clean energy future.
The White House also announced that, in the context of an overall deal in Copenhagen that includes robust mitigation contributions from China and the other emerging economies, the President is prepared to put on the table a U.S. emissions reduction target in the range of 17% below 2005 levels in 2020 and ultimately in line with final U.S. energy and climate legislation. In light of the President’s goal to reduce emissions 83% by 2050, the expected pathway set forth in this pending legislation would entail a 30% reduction below 2005 levels in 2025 and a 42% reduction below 2005 in 2030. This provisional target is in line with current legislation in both chambers of Congress and demonstrates a significant contribution to a problem that the U.S. has neglected for too long. With less than two weeks to go until the beginning of the Copenhagen conference, it is essential that the countries of the world, led by the major economies, do what it takes to produce a strong, operational agreement that will both launch us on a concerted effort to combat climate change and serve as a stepping stone to a legally binding treaty. The President is working closely with Congress to pass energy and climate legislation as soon as possible.
Underscoring President Obama’s commitment to American leadership on clean energy and combating climate change, the White House also announced today that a host of Cabinet secretaries and other top officials from across the Administration will travel to Copenhagen for the conference. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson are all scheduled to attend, along with Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley, Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren, and Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner.
For the first time, the U.S. delegation will have a U.S. Center at the conference, providing a unique and interactive forum to share our story with the world. In addition to working with other countries to advance American interests, U.S. delegates will keynote a series of events highlighting actions by the Obama Administration to provide domestic and global leadership in the transition to a clean energy economy. Topics will range from energy efficiency investments and global commitments to renewables policy and clean energy jobs. The following keynote events and speakers are currently scheduled:
- Wednesday, December 9th: Taking Action at Home, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson
- Thursday, December 10th: New Energy Future: the role of public lands in clean energy production and carbon capture, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar
- Friday, December 11th: Clean Energy Jobs in a Global Marketplace, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke
- Monday, December 14th: Leading in Energy Efficiency and Renewables, Energy Secretary Steven Chu
- Tuesday, December 15th: Clean Energy Investments: creating opportunities for rural economies, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
- Thursday, December 17th: Backing Up International Agreement with Domestic Action, CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley and Assistant to the President Carol Browner
These events will underline the historic progress the Obama Administration has made to address climate change and create a new energy future. In addition to passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act in the House of Representatives this summer, Administration officials will highlight an impressive resume of American action and accomplishments over the last 10 months, including:
DOMESTIC LEADERSHIP
- Recovery Act: The U.S. is investing more than $80 billion in clean energy through its Recovery Act – including the largest-ever investment in renewable energy, which will double our generation of clean renewable energy like wind and solar in three years.
- Efficiency Standard for Automobiles: President Obama announced the first ever joint fuel economy/greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks in May. The new standards are projected to save 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the life of the program with a fuel economy gain averaging more than 5 percent per year and a reduction of approximately 900 million metric tons in greenhouse gas emissions.
- Advancing Comprehensive Energy Legislation: Passing comprehensive energy and climate legislation is a top priority for the Administration and significant progress has been made. In June, The U.S. House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act that will promote clean energy investments and lower U.S. greenhouse gas emissions more than 80 percent by 2050. The Senate continues to advance their efforts to pass comprehensive legislation and move the U.S. closer to a system of clean energy incentives that create new energy jobs, reduce our dependence on oil, and cut pollution.
- Appliance Efficiency Standards: The Obama Administration has forged more stringent energy efficiency standards for commercial and residential appliances, including microwaves, kitchen ranges, dishwashers, lightbulbs and other common appliances. This common sense approach makes improved efficiency a manufacturing requirement for the everyday appliances used in practically every home and business, resulting in a significant reduction in energy use. Altogether, about two dozen new energy efficiency standards will be completed in the next few years.
- Offshore Energy Development: Within the Administration’s first 100 days, a new regulatory framework was established to facilitate the development of alternative energy projects in an economic and environmentally sound manner that allows us to tap into the vast energy potential of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). The National Renewable Energy Lab estimates that development of wind energy alone on the OCS may provide an additional 1,900 gigawatts of clean energy to the U.S.
- Emissions Inventory Rule: For the first time, the U.S. will catalogue greenhouse gas emissions from large emission sources – an important initial step toward measurable and transparent reductions.
INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP
- The Major Economies Forum (MEF): President Obama launched the MEF in March 2009, creating a new dialogue among developed and emerging economies to combat climate change and promote clean energy. At the July L’Aquila summit, MEF Leaders announced important new agreements to support the UN climate talks and launched a new Global Partnership to promote clean energy technologies.
- Eliminating Fossil Fuel Subsidies: The President spearheaded an agreement at the Pittsburgh G20 summit for all G20 nations to phase out their fossil fuel subsidies over the medium term and to work with other countries to do the same. Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation nations followed the G20 lead at their summit in Singapore, expanding the number of countries committing to these subsidies. According to the International Energy Agency, this measure alone could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent or more by 2050.
- Bilateral Energy and Climate Partnerships: The U.S. is accelerating its collaboration with China, India, Mexico, Canada and other key international partners to combat climate change, coordinate clean energy research and development, and support the international climate talks.
- Energy and Climate Partnership for the Americas: President Obama proposed a partnership with our neighbors in the western hemisphere to advance energy security and combat climate change. An early product of this cooperation is Chile’s Renewable Energy Center, which receives technical support from the U.S. Department of Energy.
- Phasing Down HFCs (Hydrofluorocarbons): The U.S. joined Canada and Mexico in proposing to phase-down HFC emissions, a very potent greenhouse gas, in developed and developing countries under the Montreal Protocol. This represents a down payment of about 10% of the emission reductions necessary to cut global greenhouse gas emissions to half their current levels by 2050.
Tiny Robot Swarms To Explore The Ocean
I love robots, especially the kind that do science (not so much the kind that rise up to throw off their human overlords). Which is why I was happy to see that robots are being used to do some very interesting science. In an effort to plug gaps in knowledge about key ocean processes, the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s division of ocean sciences has awarded nearly $1 million to scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. The Scripps marine scientists will develop a new breed of ocean-probing instruments. Jules Jaffe and Peter Franks will spearhead an effort to design and deploy autonomous underwater explorers, or AUEs. AUEs will trace the fine details of oceanographic processes vital to tiny marine inhabitants. In other words, tiny robots, doing science, deep underwater, awesome.
While oceanographers have been skilled in detailing large-scale ocean processes, a need has emerged to zero in on functions unfolding at smaller scales. By defining localized currents, temperature, salinity, pressure and biological properties, AUEs will offer new and valuable information about a range of ocean phenomena.
“We’re seeing great success in the global use of ocean profiling floats to document large-scale circulation patterns and other physical and chemical attributes of the deep and open seas,” said Phillip Taylor of NSF’s division of ocean sciences. “These innovative AUEs will allow researchers to sample the environments of coastal regions as well, and to better understand how small organisms operate in the complex surroundings of the oceans.”
The miniature robots will aid in obtaining information needed for developing marine protected areas, determining critical nursery habitats for fish and other animals, tracking harmful algae blooms, and monitoring oil spills.
For marine protected areas, AUEs will help inform debates about the best areas for habitat protection. With harmful algal blooms and oil spills, the instruments can be deployed directly into outbreak patches to gauge how they develop and change over time. In the case of an airplane crash over the ocean, AUEs should be able to track currents to determine where among the wreckage a black box may be located.
“AUEs will fill in gaps between existing marine technologies,” said Jaffe. “They will provide a whole new kind of information.”
AUEs work through a system in which several soccer-ball-sized explorers are deployed with many tens–or even hundreds–of pint-sized explorers. Collectively, the entire “swarm” of AUEs will track ocean currents that organisms at a small-scale, such as tiny abalone larvae, for example, experience in the ocean.
“AUEs will give us information to figure out how small organisms survive, how they move in the ocean, and the physical dynamics they experience as they get around,” said Franks. “AUEs should improve ocean models and allow us to do a better job of following ‘the weather and climate of the ocean,’ as well as help us understand things like carbon fluxes.”
Franks, who conducts research on marine phytoplankton, says that “plankton are somewhat like the balloons of the ocean floating around out there. With AUEs, we’re trying to figure out how the ocean works at scales that matter to plankton.
“If we place 100 AUEs in the ocean and let them go, we’ll be able to look at how they move to get a sense of the physics driving current flows.”
During the pilot phase of the project, Jaffe and colleagues will build five to six of the soccer-ball-sized explorers and 20 of the smaller versions. An outreach component of the project will enlist school children in building and ultimately deploying AUEs.
In a related funding award, the researchers have also been given $1.5 million from NSF’s Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation initiative to design and develop the systems necessary to control the movement of AUEs.
That aspect brings Jaffe and Franks together with researchers at the Cymer Center for Control Systems and Dynamics at the University of California at San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
Burning Fossil Fuels Negatively Impacting Alpine Ecosystems
Burning fossil fuels does a lot more than warm up the earth. The impact of airborne nitrogen released from the burning of fossil fuels and widespread use of fertilizers in agriculture is much greater than previously recognized, according to research results published in this week’s issue of the journal Science.
It extends even to remote alpine lakes.
Examining nitrogen deposition in alpine and subalpine lakes in Colorado, Sweden and Norway, James Elser, a limnologist at Arizona State University (ASU) and colleagues found that, on average, nitrogen levels in the lakes were high, even in those lakes far from urban and agricultural centers.
The paper, “Shifts in lake N:P stoichiometry and nutrient limitation driven by atmospheric nitrogen deposition,” presents experimental data from more than 90 lakes.
The results also show that nitrogen-rich air pollution has already altered the lakes’ fundamental ecology.
“These findings reveal that nitrogen enrichment of the atmosphere, caused by humans, is altering global patterns of lake chemistry and productivity in ways likely to impact the structure and functioning of these ecosystems,” says Alan Tessier, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s division of environmental biology, which funded the research.
Plant plankton or phytoplankton, like all plants, need nitrogen and phosphorus for growth. “Inputs from pollution in the atmosphere appear to shift the supplies of nitrogen relative to other elements, like phosphorus,” says Elser.
The increase in the availability of nitrogen means that phytoplankton growing in lakes with high nitrogen deposition are now limited by how much phosphorus they can acquire.
“And phosphorus-limited phytoplankton are a poor food source,” says Elser. “They’re basically ‘junk food’ for zooplankton, which in turn are food for fish.
“Such a shift could potentially affect biodiversity. However, we don’t know the extent because, unlike in land-based ecosystems, the impacts of nitrogen deposition on aquatic systems have not been widely studied.”
Elser’s collaborators include researchers Tom Andersen and Dag Hessen from the University of Oslo; Jill Baron of the United States Geological Survey and Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University; Ann-Kristin Bergström and Mats Jansson with Umeå University, Sweden; Koren Nydick of the Mountain Studies Institute in Colorado; and Marcia Kyle and Laura Steger at ASU.
By combining studies from several researchers, Elser says, “we were able to achieve a more global picture of how nitrogen is affecting a range of lakes, and come to firmer conclusions about the effects of its deposition.”
Elser and Hessen hope to expand on these findings. In addition, Elser hopes to perform similar studies in China “where atmospheric nitrogen pollution is extremely high,” he says, “but is as yet unstudied.”
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