“Map of Life” shows global wildlife distribution

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New York Times: Researchers from Yale University and the University of Colorado Boulder have released a demo version of their Map of Life, an online tool that maps the distribution of plant and animal life on Earth, writes Joanna Foster for the New York Times. Unlike previous global biodiversity databases, the Map of Life pulls together many different data sources and may help expose information gaps. Although the map is not yet finished, its database already includes more than 25 000 different species of terrestrial vertebrates and North American freshwater fish. Its creators hope that as the project continues to grow, it could become an invaluable resource for making better decisions on land management and conservation and a means of studying disease transmission in wildlife populations.

Manhattan Project revisited

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Nuclear Diner: The Santa Fe Institute recently brought together physicists, historians, and social scientists to discuss the long-term legacies of the Manhattan Project. Among the participants at the 12–13 May conference were Harold Agnew, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and scientific observer on a plane that escorted the Enola Gay; Murray Gell-Mann, recipient of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics; Stan Norris, a historian and author of Racing for the Bomb; Gregg Herken, author of Brotherhood of the Bomb; and Gino Segrè, a nuclear physicist and author of several books on the history of science, including Faust in Copenhagen. Alex Wellerstein, a historian at the American Institute of Physics (which publishes Physics Today), writes about the event on his blog Restricted Data.

Iranian physics grad student sentenced in Tehran

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Nature: Omid Kokabee, who has been imprisoned in Tehran since February 2011, was sentenced on Sunday to 10 years for alleged conspiracy. A graduate student in the physics department at the University of Texas at Austin, Kokabee was reported missing last year when he failed to return to Texas from a trip home to Iran over winter break. Although his friends maintain that no proof was presented at the trial, he was found guilty of “communicating with a hostile government” and “illegal earnings,” writes Michele Catanzaro for Nature. He plans to appeal the sentence.

How to handle an ever-warming Earth

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New Yorker: In an extensive article for the New Yorker, Michael Specter ponders the question of geoengineering the planet to mitigate the effects of global warming. Two distinct schemes exist: reducing the impact of the Sun, or removing carbon from the atmosphere. The former is riskier, whether it involves such proposals as “seeding clouds, spreading giant mirrors in the desert, or injecting sulfates into the stratosphere.” The latter method is safer, but it is also more expensive and would require significant technological advances. And because the warming is a global problem, a number of questions arise, including, Who will do what? And what if the other countries don’t agree? The best solution, most scientists concur, would be to stop burning fossil fuels. Unfortunately, Specter writes, “that fact has been emphasized in virtually every study that addresses the potential effect of climate change on the earth—and there have been many—but none have had a discernible impact on human behavior or government policy.“

Virus used to power tiny generator

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BBC: Seung-Wuk Lee at the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues have built a small generator that consists of a postage stamp–sized electrode coated with specially engineered viruses. When the electrode is tapped by a finger, the viruses convert the mechanical energy of the tap into an electric charge. Unlike the materials used in most piezoelectric devices, the viruses are natural materials that are nontoxic and benign to humans. Also, they self-assemble into sheets, a desirable quality in the field of nanotechnology. Although the power generated by the device amounted to only a quarter of the voltage of a AAA battery, the scientists hope the technique will one day lead to devices powered by such everyday tasks as shutting a door or climbing the stairs. The team’s results were published online 13 May in Nature Nanotechnology.

Making the “real” kilogram obsolete

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IEE Spectrum: Last October delegates from the 55 member countries that define our basic measurement standards agreed unanimously on a tentative plan to base the kilogram on a fundamental constant of quantum mechanics instead of a lump of metal held in Paris. The move, which will also change the basis of three other core units—the ampere, the mole, and the kelvin—is the result of decades of work in trying to measure mass. One approach attempts to pin down the exact electromagnetic force needed to balance the gravitational tug on an object. The other counts the number of atoms in extremely round balls of ultrapristine silicon. For years the two approaches have produced starkly conflicting results. However, over the past few months, metrologists have been excited to find glimmers of convergence, and the effort to pin down mass once and for all is beginning to pick up steam, says IEE Spectrum‘s Rachel Courtland.

Envisat lost, declared dead

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European Space Agency: The Envisat satellite has observed and monitored Earth’s land, atmosphere, oceans, and ice caps over the past 10 years, providing invaluable data about Earth’s climate and our influence on it. Just weeks after celebrating the satellite’s 10th year in orbit, on 8 April, communication with Envisat was suddenly lost. After numerous failed attempts to reestablish contact, ESA has declared the mission over. The loss is a setback to ESA, which is without a major climate satellite until the launch of the Sentinel missions next year. Among Envisat‘s less well-known duties was monitoring floods and oil spills to help civil protection authorities manage natural and anthropogenic disasters.

 

Bending light beyond 10 degrees

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New Scientist: Light normally travels in straight lines, but physicists have known for years that superimposing a pattern on a laser beam can make it bend. The pattern is designed to cause the beam’s individual light rays to interfere with each other in a way that makes the beam curve. Past experiments suggested that the maximum amount a beam could be bent was 10 degrees, but in theory one could be bent to 180 degrees. A group led by John Dudley at the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon, France, has now found a way to go beyond the 10-degree limit. The researchers have bent beams just a few micrometers across by up to 60 degrees using a spatial light modulator to superimpose the interference patterns (Optics Letters, in press). The technique could be used to develop new micro instruments for surgery or for manipulating nanoparticles.

UK to deploy sonic weapon for Olympics

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BBC: Although the London police will be providing most of the security for the London Olympics this summer, the UK’s armed forces will be providing some support. The US-made Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) is among the weapons being deployed. The device can be used to send verbal warnings over a long distance or to emit a beam of pain-inducing tones. The equipment was spotted fixed to a landing craft on the Thames river at Westminster this week, reports the BBC. The manufacturer denies it is a weapon, and the Ministry of Defence said it would be used “primarily in the loud hailer mode.” The LRAD has been used in Iraq and aboard ships to repel Somali pirates.

 

Norway facility experiments with carbon capture

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Economist: Norway has opened the largest and newest experimental facility to date for carbon capture and storage (CCS). According to a 2012 report from the International Energy Agency, “CCS technology is of fundamental importance in the effort to reduce global emissions and avert dangerous effects of climate change.” Unfortunately, CCS has proven to be quite expensive—ironically because it requires a lot of power that would not otherwise have had to be generated. As a result, although many projects were proposed in the late 2000s, several have since been cancelled. The new facility at Mongstad, a billion-dollar development owned jointly by the Norwegian government and three oil companies, consists of two carbon dioxide capture plants with more than 4000 instruments to monitor the process. Its operators will experiment with different flow rates, carbon dioxide concentrations, and the capture technology itself in order to improve the process and minimize the cost.