cronackicity.lab

Coloriver

2011-01-13T15:38:00.002+01:00

DYE POWDER: sodium fluorescine
1 lb-120.000 gallons of water
1 kg- 1.000.000 litri di acqua
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescein

Un altro Green River di Olafur Eliasson?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WftvdZV-jY&feature=related
il guardiaboschi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaNHo6QEeZc&feature=related
la giovane ambientalista

: due personaggi perfetti per il prossimo documentario di Herzog

from yuppies to DJs

2010-11-27T20:59:00.008+01:00

Re-..................(2010)
From yuppies to DJs
di Enrico Forestieri

Quali sono i nostri margini e strumenti operativi nel contesto attuale?
Quali sono le strategie di progetto oltre il mito delle avanguardie e delle utopie, del progresso infinito, della crescita illimitata e della sovrabbondanza di risorse materiali?
Novità, Creatività, Qualità, Eccellenza e Sostenibilità sono (ancora) paradigmi validi per la progettazione futura o sono ormai compromessi dalla stretta relazione con i “miti” recentemente sepolti?
Se siamo pessimisti non ci resta che accogliere la proposta di Hawking (http://bigthink.com/ideas/21570) e abbandonare definitivamente la Terra.

Potrebbe sembrare paradossale eppure, se accettiamo come liberatorio il superamento della condizione oggettuale della nostra disciplina e dell’ansia creativa ad essa associata, viviamo una situazione estremamente favorevole.
- Disponiamo di un repertorio formale pressochè infinito, ampliatosi a ritmo esponenziale con il superamento della condizione di necessità e con il consolidarsi della società iperconsumista.
- Possiamo accedere pubblicamente e manipolare un numero sempre crescente di banche dati sempre più dettagliate fino ad arrivare al livello di informazione non aggregata.
- Si stanno consolidando prassi inclusive, tese all’estensione di diritti ben oltre i gruppi canonici; per questo, sta rapidamente sfumando il limite tra umano e non umano.

Tre punti che al contempo ampliano campi di attuazione, ricalibrano strumenti di indagine e ridefiniscono strategie d’intervento.
Traslando Bourriaud [Postproduction (2004); Adriana Hidalgo editora] al nostro ambito, il movente architettonico non è più il valore di novità, ma l’uso che possiamo attribuire alla massa caotica di oggetti, nomi e referenze che costituiscono il nostro intorno.
Un’attitudine postproduttiva consiste nell’invenzione di protocolli di uso per le strutture formali esistenti. Si tratta di entrare in possesso di tutti i codici culturali, di tutte le formalizzazioni della vita quotidiana, di tutte le opere del patrimonio mondiale e farli funzionare.
La finalità di tale operazione non è interrogarsi retrospettivamente su forme e significati passati, quanto mettere a punto strategie per abitare le stesse forme producendo effetti completamente differenti. In una frase, “appropiandosi” di Wittgenstein: Don’t look for the meaning, look for the use.

Con leggero ritardo rispetto a DJ Shadow e al suo interamente “sintetico” Endtroducing, ci siamo convertiti anche noi in DJ, in semionauti, che immaginano vincoli e relazioni coerenti tra ambiti lontani ed eterogenei.
Ci concentriamo sulla messa a punto dell’ordine e della modalità in cui i frammenti risuonano nel nuovo contesto e in come scivolano uno nell’altro, rappresentando allo stesso tempo un prodotto, uno strumento e un supporto.
É un approccio fondamentalmente infrastrutturale nella misura in cui accorda alla riprogrammazione e rifunzionalizzazione delle transizioni la gestione della risignificazione dell’insieme dei frammenti selezionati.

Ancora sicuri di voler seguire Hawking?

At German Airports, Bees Help Monitor Air Quality

2010-10-07T12:45:00.006+02:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/business/29airports.html?_r=1

By TANYA MOHN

Published: June 28, 2010

Germany have come up with an unusual approach to monitoring air quality. The Düsseldorf International Airport and seven other airports are using bees as “biodetectives,” their honey regularly tested for toxins.

“Air quality at and around the airport is excellent,” said Peter Nengelken, the airport’s community liaison. The first batch of this year’s harvested honey from some 200,000 bees was tested in early June, he said, and indicated that toxins were far below official limits, consistent with results since 2006 when the airport began working with bees.

Beekeepers from the local neighborhood club keep the bees. The honey, “Düsseldorf Natural,” is bottled and given away as gifts.

Biomonitoring, or the use of living organisms to test environmental health, does not replace traditional monitoring, said Martin Bunkowski, an environmental engineer for the Association of German Airports. But “it’s a very clear message for the public because it is easy to understand,” he added.

Volker Liebig, a chemist for Orga Lab, who analyzes honey samples twice a year for the Düsseldorf and six other German airports, said results showed the absence of substances that the lab tested for, like certain hydrocarbons and heavy metals, and the honey “was comparable to honey produced in areas without any industrial activity.” A much larger data sampling over more time is needed for a definitive conclusion, he said, but preliminary results are promising.

Could bees be modern-day sentinels like the canaries once used as warning signals of toxic gases in coal mines?

Assessing environmental health using bees as “terrestrial bioindicators“ is a fairly new undertaking, said Jamie Ellis, assistant professor of entomology at the Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory, University of Florida in Gainesville. “We all believe it can be done, but translating the results into real-world solutions or answers may be a little premature.” Still, similar work with insects to gauge water quality has long been successful.

Many experts say aircraft are not the only, or even main, source of pollution at airports. Cars, taxis, buses and ground activities as well as local industry are often major polluters.

Not surprisingly, Nancy Young, vice president of environmental affairs at the Air Transport Association of America, an airline trade group, defended the air quality at airports. “Airports are not significant contributors” to local air pollution, she said, adding that aviation emissions represent “less than 1 percent of the nation’s inventory and typically only a few percentage points in any given metropolitan area with a major airport.” She said the United States had improved the air quality at its airports through more stringent standards and improved monitoring techniques.

Internationally, there have been similar improvements, said Steven Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association. Since the 1960s, carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, smoke and nitrogen-oxide emissions have been substantially reduced, he said. Standards for most of them are set by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations body.

“It’s a challenge for an industry that continues to grow,” Mr. Lott said. But the industry has invested in developing cleaner aircraft engines and ground-support equipment and vehicles as well as improvements in how equipment is operated. Initiatives like its Green Teams, for example, allow industry consultants to visit airlines to identify and share ways to reduce fuel burn and emissions. More than 105 airlines have participated, he said.

Still, some community groups are not persuaded that air quality at airports has improved.

“It’s way worse than people think,” said Debi Wagner, a board member of Citizens Aviation Watch USA, who lives in Seattle. Some emissions are not adequately sampled and measured, Ms. Wagner said, and other potentially dangerous ones are not monitored at all. She said she was concerned particularly about the health of people living within three miles of commercial airports.

Two recent studies also raise questions about the quality of air at airports. Both focus on small general aviation airports, like the one in Santa Monica, Calif., which was studied in both reports.

“The traditional pollutants did not seem to be a local issue,” said Philip Fine, atmospheric measurements manager for the South Coast Air Quality Management District, an air quality regulatory agency for most of Southern California. “However, there were issues for ultrafine particles and lead.”

Dr. Fine, who oversees a network of air-monitoring stations, was a lead researcher on a study financed by the Environmental Protection Agency that is to be released in the next few weeks.

The lead levels from non-jet aircraft emissions did not exceed federal limits, but were significantly elevated, Dr. Fine said. Elevated levels of ultrafine particles, primarily from jet aircraft, were also a concern. The particles are short-lived, but because they are in high concentration down wind during takeoff, they are particularly worrisome for people who live close to small airports or who are repeatedly exposed, he said.

Most large airports are farther from residential communities, and also have buffer zones separating them.

The health implications of ultrafine particles are not yet known, but some medical research suggests they could pose a serious risk because the extremely fine particles pass through cell walls easily and are able to penetrate far into the brain and circulatory system.

Epidemiological studies have shown there are health risks from elevated levels of these particles emitted by cars and trucks, a concern for people who live near or frequently travel on busy highways, said Suzanne E. Paulson, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. But “we know next to nothing about the health effects of aircraft emissions” of these particles, Dr. Paulson said. She was a lead researcher on another study, published late last year in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The federal government sets standards for pollutants like ozone and particulate matter, Dr. Fine said, “but ultrafine particles are not currently regulated.”

Europe has limits on ultrafine particles from vehicle emissions, Dr. Fine said. But Emanuel Fleuti, head of environment services for Zurich Airport, said there were concerns in Europe as well. Meanwhile, he said, he is confident about the biomonitoring work the German airports are doing with bees, as the results are consistent with traditional air quality monitoring in Europe.

“If you look at the honey, it’s perfectly fine,” Mr. Fleuti said, adding that he often gets jars of it when he visits Germany. “It’s good honey.

España aprueba el mapa que lanza la energía eólica marina

2009-04-21T17:20:00.005+02:00

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Espana/aprueba/mapa/lanza/energia/eolica/marina/elpepisoc/20090421elpepisoc_4/Tes/

Los molinos de viento que jalonan sierras y llanuras por casi toda España llegarán al mar. El Gobierno anunció ayer que ha aprobado el estudio estratégico para la energía eólica marina. Este mapa es el elemento clave para que las empresas puedan presentar proyectos, ya que señala las zonas aptas y las que, por su impacto ambiental o por su afección con el tráfico marítimo o la pesca, quedan excluidos. Las empresas tienen ya proyectos por unos 8.000 megavatios (casi la mitad de la que hay en tierra), en lugares como el golfo de Cádiz, el Delta del Ebro o la costa gallega, que el Gobierno deberá sacar a concurso.

Desde 2007, los ministerios de Industria y Medio Ambiente preparan el estudio que define las zonas aptas para molinos en el mar. La elaboración del mapa no ha sido sencilla, ya que ha generado airadas protestas en las zonas con más potencial, como Cádiz o Galicia. Los alcaldes temen por el turismo y los marineros por la pesca. El mapa final amplía las zonas sin molinos frente al Estrecho.
Estos temores no se han cumplido en países como Dinamarca, que lideran esta tecnología y donde acudió en junio de 2008 Zapatero a visitar el parque eólico que hay frente al puerto de Copenhague.
Los más de 4.000 kilómetros de costa hacen de España un lugar envidiable para esta tecnología. El problema de España es que la profundidad del mar aumenta rápidamente al alejarse de la costa, lo que aumenta el coste de la instalación. Sin embargo, la eólica marina es imprescindible para cumplir el 20% de renovables que la UE exige en 2020. El viento en el mar es más constante que en tierra y la prima prevista -alcanza el doble de lo que se paga por un molino en tierra- la hace viable.
Ahora, el Ejecutivo deberá sacar a concurso las zonas en los que hay proyectos, para que las empresas oferten sus condiciones y a qué prima están dispuestos a construir el parque. Félix Avia, del Centro Nacional de Energías Renovables (Cener), explicó que pasará "un mínimo de dos años" hasta que puedan estar en marcha los trabajos.

computer generated identikit

2009-01-31T15:11:00.004+01:00

Reversing the Life Cycle: Medusae Transforming into Polyps and Cell Transdifferentiation in Turritopsis nutricula (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa)

2009-01-31T14:45:00.004+01:00

http://www.biolbull.org/cgi/content/abstract/190/3/302

S. Piraino, F. Boero, B. Aeschbach and V. Schmid Istituto Sperimentale Talassografico CNR "A. Cerruti," Via Roma 3, I-74100 Taranto,and Laboratorio di Ecologia de1 Benthos, Stazione Zoologica di Napoli "A. Dohm, " 80077 Ischia Porto (Naples), Italy

Organisms develop through a series of stages leading to sexually mature adults. In a few cases ontogeny reversal is possible, but it does not occur typically after the onset of sexual reproduction. All stages of the medusa Turritopsis nutricula, from newly liberated to fully mature individuals, can transform back into colonial hydroids, either directly or through a resting period, thus escaping death and achieving potential immortality. This is the first metazoan known to revert to a colonial, juvenile morph after having achieved sexual maturity in a solitary stage. Selective excision experiments show that the transformation of medusae into polyps occurs only if differentiated cells of the exumbrellar epidermis and part of the gastrovascular system are present, revealing a transformation potential unparalleled in the animal kingdom.

'Immortal' jellyfish swarming across the world

2009-01-31T14:41:00.002+01:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/4357829/Immortal-jellyfish-swarming-across-the-world.html

The Turritopsis Nutricula is able to revert back to a juvenile form once it mates after becoming sexually mature.
Marine biologists say the jellyfish numbers are rocketing because they need not die.
Dr Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute said: "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion."
The jellyfish are originally from the Caribbean but have spread all over the world.
Turritopsis Nutricula is technically known as a hydrozoan and is the only known animal that is capable of reverting completely to its younger self.
It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation.
Scientists believe the cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it potentially immortal.
While most members of the jellyfish family usually die after propagating, the Turritopsis nutricula has developed the unique ability to return to a polyp state.
Having stumbled upon the font of eternal youth, this tiny creature which is just 5mm long is the focus of many intricate studies by marine biologists and geneticists to see exactly how it manages to literally reverse its aging process

HDVB: High Density Vertical Bioreator

2009-01-27T22:14:00.003+01:00

http://www.valcent.net/s/Ecotech.asp?ReportID=182039

The Holy Grail in the renewable energy sector has been to create a clean, green process which uses only light, water and air to create fuel. Valcent's HDVB algae-to-biofuel technology mass produces algae, vegetable oil which is suitable for refining into a cost-effective, non-polluting biodiesel. The algae derived fuel will be an energy efficient replacement for fossil fuels and can be used in any diesel powered vehicle or machinery. In addition, 90% by weight of the algae is captured carbon dioxide, which is "sequestered" by this process and so contributes significantly to the reduction of greenhouse gases. Valcent has commissioned the world's first commercial-scale bioreactor pilot project at its test facility in El Paso, Texas.Current data projects high yields of algae biomass, which will be harvested and processed into algal oil for biofuel feedstock and ingredients in food, pharmaceutical, and health and beauty products at a significantly lower cost than comparable oil-producing crops such as palm and soyabean (soybean).The HDVB technology was developed by Valcent in recognition and response to a huge unsatisfied demand for vegetable oil feedstock by Biodiesel refiners and marketers. Biodiesel, in 2000, was the only alternative fuel in the United States to have successfully completed the Environmental Protection Agency required Tier I and Tier II health effects testing under the Clean Air Act. These tests conclusively demonstrated Biodiesel's significant reduction of virtually all regulated emissions. A U.S. Department of Energy study has shown that the production and use of Biodiesel, compared to petroleum diesel, resulted in a 78.5% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.Algae, like all plants, require carbon dioxide, water with nutrients and sunlight for growth. The HDVB bioreactor technology is ideal for location adjacent to heavy producers of carbon dioxide such as coal fired power plants, refineries or manufacturing facilities, as the absorption of CO2 by the algae significantly reduces greenhouse gases. These reductions represent value in the form of Certified Emission Reduction credits, so-called carbon credits, in jurisdictions that are signatories to the Kyoto Protocol. Although the carbon credit market is still small, it is growing fast, valued in 2005 at $6.6 Billion in the European Union and projected to increase to $77 Billion if the United States accepts a similar national cap-and-trade program.Valcent's HDVB bioreactor system can be deployed on non-arable land, requires very little water due to its closed circuit process, does not incur significant labor costs and does not employ fossil fuel burning equipment, unlike traditional food/biofuel crops, like soy and palm oil. They require large agricultural acreage, huge volumes of water and chemicals, and traditional farm equipment and labor. They are also much less productive than the HDVB process: soybean, palm oil and conventional pond-grown algae typically yield 48 gallons, 635 gallons and 10,000 gallons per acre per year respectively

El Internet rural se apaga

2009-01-24T15:12:00.007+01:00

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Internet/rural/apaga/elpepisoc/20090117elpepisoc_2/Tes

Municipios sin acceso a la banda ancha desconectan sus 'telecentros' - El Estado financió hace tres años su lanzamiento, pero el contrato ha expirado

La brecha digital no se cierra. Los intentos del Gobierno por extender la sociedad de la información a los pequeños y despoblados territorios rurales han chocado con una barrera: la de la crisis. Muchos municipios que se acogieron al programa de telecentros (un plan oficialmente conocido como Puntos de Acceso Público Rural y financiado por el Ministerio de Industria) han echado el cierre a estos locales públicos que abrían la puerta a las nuevas tecnologías de forma gratuita. La banda ancha de Internet se ha apagado justo cuando las subvenciones se han agotado. La placa - Entra y navega- colocada por la entidad estatal Red.es, ha desaparecido de muchas fachadas.

El programa Internet Rural, impulsado por los ministerios de Agricultura e Industria y por la Federación Española de Municipios y Provincias (FEMP) perseguía "garantizar el acceso a Internet en condiciones óptimas" a los ciudadanos del medio rural. Iba dirigido a poblaciones que tenían cobertura mediante las tecnologías de acceso a Internet de banda ancha más extendidas (ADSL o cable). La alternativa fue el satélite.
El plan fue diseñado en 2003 y desde entonces, Red.es, organismo adscrito a Industria, ha invertido 34,8 millones de euros en la instalación de 2.964 telecentros. A éstos se unen los que nacieron al amparo de las administraciones autonómicas y locales. En total, más de 5.400 pueblos -la mayoría situados en zonas remotas y poco pobladas- de los que se han beneficiado alrededor de 600.000 personas. Estos centros de acceso a Internet han estado funcionado durante los tres años de vigencia del contrato de Red.es con los ayuntamientos. Transcurrido este plazo, el 58% de los casi 3.000 telecentros siguen activos. Han sido traspasados y ahora es la administración autonómica la que ha asumido los costes. La dirección general de Telecomunicaciones, dependiente de Industria, calcula que "en los próximos días" se van a traspasar otros 190, con lo que el porcentaje de telecentros que seguirán enganchados a Internet será de 64,4%. ¿Y el resto? Algunos municipios han optado por apagar los ordenadores. Aseguran que no tienen recursos para asumir su coste. Y nada hace suponer que vayan a recibir en breve financiación. Se han quedado sin terminales y ha desaparecido incluso la antena parabólica que permitía acceder a Internet a través del satélite. Aunque algunos municipios consultados no han dado cifras sobre lo que costaría mantener viva la conexión, Industria estima que el coste mensual de un telecentro oscila entre 100 y 130 euros.
Además del acceso a Internet, el convenio con Industria garantizaba el equipamiento del centro, su control y gestión, la instalación y el mantenimiento, clases de formación y portales de servicios para poblaciones rurales. "Red.es no cierra los telecentros", sostiene Industria. "Estamos en un proceso de traspaso ordenado, hablando con las comunidades autónomas, las diputaciones y los cabildos para que se hagan cargo de la conexión. Nuestra idea es traspasar el 100% de las instalaciones".
Internet Rural aspiraba a limar la brecha digital, es decir, la discriminación de los ciudadanos según la calidad de su acceso a Internet. Tener a su alcance banda ancha era una puerta abierta a las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación (TIC). Además de la barrera económica, la exclusión digital tiene un componente geográfico. Poblaciones ubicadas fuera del área de cobertura de las redes de ADSL caían de lleno en la zanja digital.
Los telecentros vinieron a mitigar estos desequilibrios. A principios de 2005, poco después de la puesta en marcha del programa estatal, el municipio soriano de Miño de San Esteban había marcado tendencia. El 53% de la población censada (47 habitantes sobre 90) utilizaba la banda ancha, un porcentaje similar al de Corea del Sur, un país paradigmático en el mundo de las telecomunicaciones, según apuntaba entonces el Gobierno.
Hoy, Miño de San Esteban sigue conectado, pese a que ha expirado el acuerdo con Red.es. José Peñalba, su alcalde, es un convencido de las ventajas de Internet. Incluido en el Programa Internet Rural, el municipio se conectó hace cinco años. El Ayuntamiento habilitó un local público para la instalación de los equipos (seis ordenadores, impresora) conectados a una antena parabólica que facilitaba el acceso a Internet vía wi-fi. "Los ordenadores cada vez se utilizan menos. Ahora, cada uno se lleva su portátil", comenta Peñalba, que ha apostado por mantener vivo Internet para los 74 habitantes que tiene ahora el pueblo. Aunque el coste de llevar la señal (alrededor de 500 euros al año) no corra a cargo del Estado sino de sus propias arcas.
"Al principio la gente lo recibió con mucho ánimo, pero luego ya no acudían al telecentro", cuenta Peñalba. Una de las cosas que peor llevaban era adaptarse a los horarios para acudir a los cursillos de formación. Peñalba, que trabaja en una empresa de electricidad, no duda de que Internet es "una herramienta muy útil", aunque admite que hace cinco años lo veía como "algo difícil y complicado, casi imposible". Ahora utiliza la Red para enviar planos o para conectarse con su partido (el PSOE).
La extensión de la banda ancha ha sido meteórica. En 2003, cuando se puso en marcha el plan de Acceso Público Rural, sólo un 20% del territorio español tenía cobertura de ADSL. Ahora llega al 98,8%, según Industria. Las zonas rurales están más castigadas, ya que el porcentaje se queda en el 87%, según el informe sobre la Sociedad de la Información 2008 elaborado por la Fundación Telefónica. De los 7,7 millones de hogares que tenían acceso a Internet el año pasado, 6,6 utilizaban la banda ancha (una gran mayoría gracias al ADSL). El Gobierno ha declarado "servicio universal" este tipo de conexión, independientemente del tipo de tecnología y la ubicación geográfica. Pero la España rural navega a una velocidad inferior.

joshua silver adaptive glasses

2009-01-10T21:11:00.004+01:00

http://www.adaptive-eyecare.com/index.htm

Around one fifth of any group of people will need vision correction to get the best acuity (ie. image sharpness or accuracy) their eyes can achieve. As a population get older, this fraction also rises, as a condition known as presbyopia develops. Presbyopia is caused by a diminution in the power of accommodation of the crystalline lens. For example, it has been estimated that around 89 million people in the USA are presbyopic, and this number rises as the average age of the population increases.
The starting point for the development of Adaptive Eyecare's technology was the astonishing statistic that according to the World Health Organization there are currently around one billion people - including 10% of school children - in the world who would benefit from vision correction, but are as yet uncorrected. Most of these people live in the developing world, and the problem arises principally because the numbers of personnel trained to deliver vision correction in the conventional way are simply inadequate to meet the needs of the people. These statistics have profound implications - they mean that hundreds of millions of adults do not have the vision correction they need to be socially and economically active, and many children are educationally and socially disadvantaged.
The approach of Adaptive Eyecare has been to develop a completely new ophthalmic lens technology which permits us to manufacture revolutionary new spectacles which are universal, in the sense that one pair may be used to correct the vision of over 90% of people requiring correction. The special feature is that the wearer can adjust the power of each lens to his or her own requirements - this is particularly useful for developing world populations in areas which do not have adequate numbers of those specially trained personnel normally associated with the provision of vision correction.
The lenses in Adaptive Eyecare's spectacles operate in a manner which is somewhat similar in its optical function to the crystalline lens in the human eye - our lenses have the feature that the curvature of the lens surfaces is under the control of the wearer of the spectacles, and a simple manual adjustment is all that is needed to vary the power of each lens. In use, the wearer adjusts each lens so as to get clearest vision. This process takes less than a minute for both eyes. Having found the best setting, the lenses are then set, and the ancillary device used for lens adjustment is removed and discarded.
Adaptive Eyecare's adaptive lenses are fluid- filled and the power is changed by varying the amount of fluid in the lens. The power range of our lenses is +6 to -6 Dioptres, and the optical quality is similar to that of the typical human eye.

S Korean group to lease farmland in Madagascar / Daewoo unsure of Madagascar deal

2008-12-08T20:05:00.002+01:00

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/22ccaa98-b5d9-11dd-ab71-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38cf416a-c26e-11dd-a350-000077b07658.html

Daewoo Logistics of South Korea has secured a huge tract of farmland in Madagascar to grow food crops to send back to Seoul, in a deal that diplomats and consultants said was the largest of its kind.
The company said it had leased 1.3m hectares of farmland - about half the size of Belgium - from Madagascar for 99 years. It planned to ship the corn and palm oil harvests back to South Korea. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The pursuit of foreign farm investments is a sign of how countries are seeking food security following this year's food crisis, which saw record prices for commodities such as wheat and rice and food riots in countries from Egypt to Haiti.
Agricultural commodities prices have tumbled by about 50 per cent from their record levels this year but countries remain concerned about long-term supplies.
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation warned this year that the race by agricultural commodity-importing countries to secure farmland overseas risked creating a "neo-colonial" system.
Those fears could be heightened by the fact that Daewoo's farm in Madagascar represents about half the African country's arable land, according to estimates by the US government.
Shin Dong-hyun, a senior manager at Daewoo Logistics in Seoul, said the company would develop the arable land for farming over the next 15 years, using labour from South Africa. It was intended
to replace about half South Korea's corn imports.
South Korea, a resource-poor nation, is the world's fourth-largest importer of corn and among the 10 largest buyers of soyabean.
Carl Atkins, of consultants Bidwells Agribusiness, said Daewoo Logistics' investment in Madagascar was the largest it had seen. "The project does not surprise me, as countries are looking to improve food security but its size it does surprise me."
Concepción Calpe, a senior economist at the FAO in Rome, said the investment came after this year's food crisis. "Countries are looking to buy or lease farmland to improve their food security," she said.
Al-Qudra Holding, an Abu Dhabi-based investment company, said in August it planned to buy 400,000 hectares of arable land in countries in Africa and Asia by the end of the first quarter of next year.
Meles Zenawi, the prime minister of Ethiopia, said this year its government was "very eager" to provide hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land to Middle Eastern countries for investment.

Daewoo unsure of Madagascar deal
Daewoo Logistics of South Korea has not received approval from Madagascar for a plan to farm maize and palm oil in an area half the size of Belgium, contrary to statements by company officials, it has emerged.
Daewoo managers told the media last month the company would develop 1.3m hectares on the island to secure stable food supplies for South Korea under a 99-year lease, joining a flurry of Asian and Middle Eastern companies seeking to tap Africa's agricultural export potential.
A Daewoo official told the Financial Times that the company understood it would not have to pay to lease the land, given the investment involved and the jobs to be created.
But in a statement attributed to the company and posted on the website of the Malagasy president, Daewoo said: "There is not yet a contract on the land between Daewoo Logistics and [the] Madagascar government."
Echoing that, the Malagasy land reform ministry told the FT: "There has been no contract at regional or central government level. They [Daewoo] have prospected for land and now the central government is waiting for the prospecting reports."
The ministry said an environmental investigation would be required as well. Marius Ratolojanahary, the land reform minister, confirmed to a Malagasy newspaper that Daewoo still had several hurdles to clear.
"Every request must be examined by a commission before being supported by the cabinet," he said. "So Daewoo was free to file an application in line with the procedure but that does not mean it will get the land."
Daewoo declined to confirm or comment on the statement on the government website.
Responding to initial reports of the deal, critics said the welfare of Malagasy people and global food security would be better served by islanders being helped to manage their own farms.
They stressed the trickle-down effect of Daewoo's plan would be marginal and noted the company's focus on exporting food from a country in which about 600,000 people rely on relief from the United Nations World Food Programme.
South Korea is the world's fourth biggest maize importer and wants to wean itself off US shipments.

Paradise almost lost: Maldives seek to buy a new homeland

2008-12-08T18:05:00.006+01:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/10/maldives-climate-change

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2008/nov/10/randeep-ramesh-maldives-climate-change

The Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country's billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland - as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees, the country's first democratically elected president has told the Guardian.
Mohamed Nasheed, who takes power officially tomorrow in the island's capital, Male, said the chain of 1,200 island and coral atolls dotted 500 miles from the tip of India is likely to disappear under the waves if the current pace of climate change continues to raise sea levels.
The UN forecasts that the seas are likely to rise by up to 59cm by 2100, due to global warming. Most parts of the Maldives are just 1.5m above water. The president said even a "small rise" in sea levels would inundate large parts of the archipelago.
"We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere. It's an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome. After all, the Israelis [began by buying] land in Palestine," said Nasheed, also known as Anni.
The president, a human rights activist who swept to power in elections last month after ousting Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the man who once imprisoned him, said he had already broached the idea with a number of countries and found them to be "receptive".

He said Sri Lanka and India were targets because they had similar cultures, cuisines and climates. Australia was also being considered because of the amount of unoccupied land available.
"We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades," he said.
Environmentalists say the issue raises the question of what rights citizens have if their homeland no longer exists. "It's an unprecedented wake-up call," said Tom Picken, head of international climate change at Friends of the Earth. "The Maldives is left to fend for itself. It is a victim of climate change caused by rich countries."
Nasheed said he intended to create a "sovereign wealth fund" from the dollars generated by "importing tourists", in the way that Arab states have done by "exporting oil". "Kuwait might invest in companies; we will invest in land."
The 41-year-old is a rising star in Asia, where he has been compared to Nelson Mandela. Before taking office the new president asked Maldivians to move forward without rancour or retribution - an astonishing call, given that Nasheed had gone to jail 23 times, been tortured and spent 18 months in solitary confinement.
"We have the latitude to remove anyone from government and prosecute them. But I have forgiven my jailers, the torturers. They were following orders ... I ask people to follow my example and leave Gayoom to grow old here," he said.
The Maldives is one of the few Muslim nations to make a relatively peaceful transition from autocracy to democracy. The Gayoom "sultanate" was an iron-fisted regime that ran the police, army and courts, and which banned rival parties.
Public flogging, banishment to island gulags and torture were routinely used to suppress dissent and the fledging pro-democracy movement. Gayoom was "elected" president six times in 30 years - but never faced an opponent. However, public pressure grew and last year he conceded that democracy was inevitable.
Upmarket tourism had become a prop for the dictatorial regime. Gayoom's Maldives became the richest country in South Asia, with average incomes reaching $4,600 a year. But the wealth created was skimmed off by cronies - leaving a yawning gap between rich and poor. Speedboats and yachts of local multimillionaires bob in the lagoon of the capital's harbour, while official figures show almost half of Maldivians earn less than a dollar a day.
Male is the world's most densely populated town: 100,000 people cram into two square kilometres. "We have unemployment at 20%. Heroin has become a serious social issue, with crime rising," Nasheed said, adding that the extra social spending he pledged would cost an immediate $243m. He said that without an emergency bailout from the international community, the future of the Maldives as a democracy would be in doubt. To raise cash, his government will sell off state assets, reduce the cabinet and turn the presidential palace into the country's first university.
"It's desperate. We are a 100% Islamic country and democracy came from within. Do you want to lose that because we were denied the money to deal with the poverty created by the dictatorship?" he said.
At a glance
• The highest land point in the Maldives is 2.4 metres above sea level, on Wilingili island in the Addu Atoll
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea levels could rise by 25-58cm by 2100
• The country comprises 1,192 islands grouped around 26 Indian Ocean atolls. Only 250 islands are inhabited. The population is 380,000
• The main income is from tourism, with 467,154 people visiting in 2006

Los costes del transporte naufragan

2008-12-07T14:48:00.003+01:00

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/economia/costes/transporte/naufragan/elpepueconeg/20081207elpnegeco_1/Tes

Pese a la gravedad de la crisis, el mundo no se ha parado. Cada día, millones de empresas envían de un lugar a otro del planeta sus productos y materias primas, que siguen engrasando -aunque sea lentamente- la máquina de la economía. Sólo que hace apenas seis meses contratar un buque de transporte era una misión casi imposible [¡y millonaria!] y ahora el sector empieza a hablar de un exceso de capacidad que ha hundido sus tarifas.

El indicador más conocido, el índice de contratación de fletes (Baltic Dry Index), ha perdido este año más del 90% de su valor [ver gráfico], desde el máximo histórico alcanzado en mayo pasado cuando rozó los 12.000 puntos. En este momento cotiza en su nivel más bajo desde 1986, a poco más de 600 puntos. Y bajando.
Este índice mide la cantidad de contratos de envío de mercancías que se cierran en las principales rutas marítimas mundiales. En la medida en que la economía mundial está en crisis, los contratos de transporte se reducen y el índice baja. De ahí que haya sido utilizado durante mucho tiempo como un indicador adelantado de las perspectivas del comercio y el crecimiento mundial.
Los expertos ponen ahora en duda esta teoría. "El índice había alcanzado niveles poco creíbles. Detrás de los máximos registrados en mayo pasado había mucha especulación, y ahora todo eso ha estallado", asegura Roberto Ruiz-Schlotes, director de estrategia del banco suizo UBS.
De hecho, el Dow Jones y los principales índices bursátiles mundiales alcanzaron su máximo en octubre de 2007. Para finales de ese año, la economía estadounidense, según han certificado las autoridades esta semana, ya había entrado en recesión. El Baltic Dry Index (BDI) no alcanzó su pico hasta mayo, lo que daría al traste con su capacidad de anticipar un punto de inflexión en la economía. O no tanto. El estallido de la burbuja en las materias primas se produjo unos meses después, en julio. Fue entonces cuando el petróleo alcanzó su máximo de 146 dólares por barril. Pero también la soja, el acero o el cobre registraron los precios más altos de su historia. Ahí sí que se le puede atribuir al BDI su condición de indicador adelantado.
La caída del índice se ha acelerado en las últimas semanas. Ahora cabe saber si esa tendencia apunta a una desaceleración más intensa de la producción y la inflación en todo el mundo, o si esconde otras razones. De todo hay.
Deutsche Bank calcula que, con la economía mundial encaminada a una recesión, el exceso de capacidad del sector oscila entre el 20% y el 10%, "una situación tan funesta como la del mercado de tanques en los años ochenta, cuando las tarifas cayeron por debajo del nivel de equilibrio y se alcanzaron en algunos casos tasas a cero dólares diarios". Caso muy distinto es el del petróleo y el gas, transportes que se mantendrán a flote mientras coticen entre 30 y 40 dólares por barril, dice el banco.
La Agrupación de Industrias Marítimas de Euskadi (Adime) y la propia Asociación de Navieros de Españoles (Anave) coinciden en parte con esta tesis. Aseguran que buena parte de la caída de los fletes se debe al fuerte aumento de la oferta de buques. Lo que parecía el imparable ascenso del precio de las materias primas, sobre todo del petróleo, llevó a muchas empresas a encargar buques de carga que se están entregando ahora. Pero aún quedan muchos pendientes. Adime asegura que los astilleros vascos y del resto del Estado mantienen carga de trabajo para los próximos tres años "con una cartera de buques firmados y con la financiación aprobada". Aunque ya empiezan a ver reducidas sus carteras de pedidos con cancelaciones sobre todo de países asiáticos, como Corea, China o India.
Eso es lo que más preocupa al sector. Y al mundo entero.
El último informe trimestral del Banco Mundial sobre China advierte de un deterioro de su economía mayor del inicialmente previsto y cuyas causas atienden más a razones internas que a la crisis internacional. La construcción de viviendas se ha frenado en seco, al pasar de un crecimiento del 20% a cero. Eso significa que China produce ahora más cemento y acero del que necesita, lo que explica a su vez las cancelaciones de pedidos de este metal que se han producido en los últimos meses.
Sólo en octubre, los precios del acero han caído un 12,4% respecto a un año antes y un 6,9% respecto a septiembre. La producción industrial creció en octubre al menor ritmo en siete años y el consumo de electricidad cayó (-4%) por primera vez en una década.
Los analistas también apuntan a una derivada directa de la crisis financiera sobre el comercio en todo el mundo, financiado en un 90% a través del crédito. La industria explica que algunas cargas se han quedado en los muelles porque es difícil encontrar bancos dispuestos a financiar el movimiento de los bienes. Los bancos están mostrando reticencias a proporcionar letras de crédito para operaciones de importación y exportación, hasta tal punto que el propio Banco Mundial ha ampliado sus programas de financiación de estas operaciones (1.500 millones de dólares) para evitar el colapso del comercio mundial. Según sus cálculos, por primera vez en 27 años el comercio mundial puede registrar un descenso el año que viene después de registrar un crecimiento del 6% en 2007 y del 8,5% en 2006.
"Nadie en activo en el sector ha pasado por una situación parecida, no tenemos precedentes y no sabemos qué pasará", admite Manuel Carlier, director general de Anave. "Evidentemente, los tres últimos años han sido excepcionalmente buenos y las empresas cuentan con un pequeño margen, pero las compañías no podrán aguantar mucho así", concluye Carlier.

Cambio ladrillo por huerto solar

2008-12-07T14:42:00.004+01:00

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Cambio/ladrillo/huerto/solar/elpepisoc/20081207elpepisoc_1/Tes

Millones de paneles solares han germinado en el paisaje español con la voracidad de una plaga. Donde antes había cultivos o terreno baldío han surgido 29.000 instalaciones dotadas de la última tecnología fotovoltaica. Ni siquiera el boom inmobiliario ha registrado un crecimiento parecido (900% en dos años) en sus tiempos dorados. Alguna cifra es elocuente. Se necesitó todo el año 2004 para alcanzar 8 megavatios de potencia de origen solar: en 2008, bastaban cuatro días. El Plan de Energías Renovables confeccionado por el Gobierno socialista para la energía solar preveía la instalación de un total de 371 megavatios en el periodo comprendido entre 2005 y 2010. Pues bien, el objetivo previsto para un quinquenio se alcanzó en cuatro meses durante el año 2008. El fenómeno puede ser contradictorio si se confirma que una energía limpia tiene un origen sucio.

A lomos de esa expansión sin freno ha surgido un potente sector industrial que ha generado 24.000 empleos, con fuertes inversiones en I+D+i y plena capacidad exportadora, pero también la sospecha de un fraude que puede tener grandes proporciones y causar dolores de cabeza en varias comunidades autónomas, tanto socialistas como populares. Detrás del caso hay dos viejos conocidos, la especulación y el tráfico de influencias. La explicación es bien sencilla: algunos hábitos perversos del boom inmobiliario han cambiado de domicilio. El Estado deberá desembolsar durante los próximos 25 años unos 18.500 millones de euros en subvenciones comprometidas.
Un repaso a la prensa regional sirve para describir qué tintes alcanzó la peculiar competición entre comunidades autónomas por el liderazgo en el sector solar. Mes a mes se fueron reproduciendo escenas parecidas en puntos diferentes del mapa.
Septiembre de 2007. La prensa de Castilla y León daba cuenta de la inauguración de "la planta solar fotovoltaica más grande del mundo" entre las localidades salmantinas de Zarapicos y San Pedro del Valle sobre una superficie equivalente a 100 campos de fútbol. El vicepresidente de la Junta, Tomás de Villanueva, declaraba en el acto que "Castilla y León es la región más avanzada en el desarrollo de energías renovables".
Dos meses después. La localidad alicantina de Beneixama celebraba la puesta en marcha de la planta solar "más grande del mundo" sobre una superficie de 418.515 metros cuadrados, equivalente, según la prensa local, a 70 campos de fútbol. Francisco Camps, presidente de la Generalitat valenciana, proclamaba que su comunidad "se convierte en un ejemplo para todo el mundo del aprovechamiento de una fuente energética inagotable".
Enero de 2008. Murcia. Jumilla. Durante el acto inaugural de una planta considerada como la "más eficiente de Europa", Benito Mercader, consejero de Desarrollo Sostenible de Murcia, declaraba que Murcia es un "referente nacional para la producción de energías limpias", al tiempo que sentenciaba que "el Sol es el petróleo de Murcia". La nota de prensa no dejaba escapar la comparación: la planta está ubicada sobre una extensión aproximada a "100 campos de fútbol".
Unos días después, José María Barreda, presidente de la Junta de Castilla la Mancha, visitaba las obras de la planta solar de El Calaverón, calificada como "la mayor planta solar del mundo en su género" por ser de doble eje. "Con una potencia de 20 megavatios, se ubica sobre una extensión equivalente a 90 campos de fútbol" rezaba la nota de prensa. Barreda bautizó a Castilla-La Mancha como la "rosa de los vientos" en materia de energías renovables.
Su colega Guillermo Fernández Vara, presidente de la Junta de Extremadura, no se quedó atrás en mayo de este año durante la presentación de la planta solar de Abertura (Cáceres). Aprovechó el momento para anunciar eufórico que "uno de cada cuatro proyectos en energía solar se desarrollan en Extremadura". Meses después, en octubre, visitó la planta situada entre Mérida y Don Álvaro (Badajoz), de 30 megavatios, bautizada en ese momento como "la planta solar de dos ejes más grande del mundo". Toda la prensa regional se hizo eco del mismo dato: la superficie ocupada equivale a 390 campos de fútbol.
En las mismas fechas, Aragón vivió su inauguración particular en Figueruelas (Zaragoza). No hubo discursos oficiales en este caso, pero sí otro dato para el Guinness autonómico: el estreno de la "planta solar más grande del mundo sobre tejado" con 85.000 módulos instalados sobre 183.000 metros de techo en la fábrica de General Motors.
Manuel Chaves, el presidente andaluz, inauguró en tres días dos plantas solares en un septiembre especialmente fructífero. La de El Coronil (Sevilla) el 23, y la de Lucainena de las Torres (Almería) el 26. Chaves declaró a Andalucía como "la mayor superficie de energía verde de Europa" tras haber multiplicado por ocho en un solo año la potencia solar instalada. En este caso no hubo comparación futbolística.
¿Qué estaba pasando en España para esta alocada competición solar entre comunidades autónomas? ¿A qué venía esta eufórica conversión a la fe renovable, proclamada con tanto entusiasmo por dirigentes políticos sin distinción de ideologías? Las notas de prensa, además de la alusión inevitable a la relación entre hectáreas y campos de fútbol, abundaban en otras consideraciones positivas sobre la obra recién inaugurada, tales como inversión económica, puestos de trabajo creados, toneladas de dióxido de carbono ahorradas al medio ambiente y algunos datos técnicos de difícil digestión. Pero ninguna ponía sobre el papel otros datos significativos: la identidad de los beneficiarios (o propietarios) de esas instalaciones y las entidades bancarias que habían participado en la concesión de créditos que cubrían hasta el 80% de la inversión efectuada por esos particulares, a quienes probablemente no les movió un impulso ecologista sino una mera operación contable: amortización de la inversión en diez años, retornos económicos asegurados durante un mínimo de 25 años, además de exenciones fiscales. Total, rentabilidad asegurada de un 12% como poco. Detrás de cada planta solar había un producto financiero. La otra cara de la sostenibilidad ocultaba algunos hábitos muy conocidos del boom inmobiliario: el tráfico de influencias y la especulación.
Ningún otro sector productivo ha registrado un crecimiento del 900% en España durante los dos últimos años. Expertos del propio sector fotovoltaico no han dudado en calificar esta expansión como "irracional". España ha pasado a ser de golpe una potencia mundial en energía solar por el total de la potencia instalada, que equivale a casi tres centrales nucleares de tipo medio. Como consecuencia de ello, el Estado tendrá que abonar una cantidad próxima a los 1.000 millones de euros anuales durante un cuarto de siglo a los propietarios de dichas instalaciones en concepto de subvención. Sin embargo, hay serias dudas de que una parte de esas plantas solares esté funcionando correctamente en la actualidad. Hay evidentes sospechas de fraude y de la existencia de auténticos caza-primas. La sombra de la sospecha afecta a buena parte de las comunidades autónomas que emprendieron con tanto entusiasmo la veloz carrera por el liderazgo solar.
Durante el último Gobierno de Aznar se establecieron una serie de primas a la producción eléctrica de procedencia solar y eólica para estimular ambos sectores. El arranque de la solar fue más tardío. Disposiciones posteriores del Gobierno terminaron por facilitar su despegue hasta cotas insospechadas.
La inclusión de una prima muy generosa de 0,44 euros por kilovatio hora para pequeñas instalaciones no superiores a los 100 kilovatios de potencia con la idea de "democratizar" la fuente de energía fue el detonante. La planta solar dejó sitio al huerto solar, convertido en un producto financiero. El mecanismo era muy simple: divide la planta solar en parcelas (huertos solares) y ponlas en el mercado. Cualquier inversor podía adquirir su huerto solar en unas condiciones ideales: rentabilidad asegurada superior al 10% durante los primeros 25 años. Ni el mejor de los planes de pensiones podía garantizar un beneficio de ese tipo.
Numerosos constructores, los especuladores de rigor, empresarios que buscaban diversificar sus actividades, volvieron la vista hacia la energía solar. Hubo inmobiliarias e incluso agencias de viajes que crearon divisiones solares. No fue una conversión hacia el ecologismo, sino pura ingeniería financiera. Aparecieron ciertos síntomas muy conocidos en el mundo inmobiliario: compra de terrenos rústicos que no necesitaban recalificación, y obtención de permisos para instalación de una planta solar, entre ellos el denominado permiso de conexión.
¿Cómo se obtenían esos permisos? Cada comunidad autónoma era soberana a la hora de establecer los requisitos y conceder dichas autorizaciones. ¿A quiénes se les concedió permisos? Ahí aparece la sombra de la sospecha: no han existido concursos públicos ni decisiones transparentes. Las primeras evidencias de un tráfico de influencias surgieron en Castilla y León, donde media docena de funcionarios han cesado por existir pruebas de que concedieron permisos a familiares. No hay posibilidad de acceder a los listados de permisos concedidos en Castilla y León (de hecho, el Gobierno autónomo rechaza la creación de una comisión de investigación al efecto), pero esa misma opacidad se reproduce en Castilla-La Mancha, Valencia, Murcia, Andalucía y Extremadura, las regiones donde más se ha expandido este sector. Por otro lado, el número de sociedades que aparecen ligadas a una planta solar es tan grande que dificulta la identificación de sus propietarios reales.
Durante el periodo de expansión se divulgaron anuncios de particulares que vendían puntos de conexión (600.000 euros por megavatio), de forma que quien tuviera un permiso en vigor lo vendía obteniendo sustanciosas ganancias con una inversión previa que apenas superaría los 60.000 euros. Y algo parecido sucedió con los permisos de instalación. El terreno estaba sembrado para el pelotazo solar.
Vinieron entonces algunos efectos indeseables: los precios de los componentes adquirieron precios desorbitados por exceso de demanda. Pero no importaba: España consumía buena parte de la producción china de paneles solares. "Se han dado casos de barcos mercantes procedentes de China que pusieron la carga a subasta antes de tocar puerto", reconoce un empresario.
El fenómeno sorprendió a un Gobierno que no acertaba a regular lo que estaba pasando. La sucesión de tres ministros de Industria en poco tiempo (Montilla, Clos y Sebastián) tampoco contribuyó a poner orden. El sector acusa al Gobierno socialista de ir por detrás de los acontecimientos.
La cuestión es que España creció en 2008 tanto como Alemania, la primera potencia mundial, pero el perfil de su crecimiento era bien distinto. Mientras el 45,4% de las instalaciones solares en Alemania se han hecho sobre tejado (el 36% en Francia, Italia y Grecia) esa cifra en España se sitúa en un modesto 8,8%. "Mientras en Alemania se ha democratizado la energía solar beneficiando a los particulares, en España se ha favorecido a los de especuladores de siempre, entre ellos a demasiada gente del sector inmobiliario", dice un experto, responsable de la página web Jumanji.bogspot.com considerada como la más independiente del sector.
La sospecha de fraude está servida. La del tráfico de influencias también. La Comisión Nacional de la Energía (CNE) acaba de terminar una inspección de 30 instalaciones. No tiene muchos medios, apenas 10 inspectores. El resultado final no es concluyente pero si premonitorio: sólo 13 de esas 30 instalaciones cumplen con todos los requisitos y están vertiendo electricidad a la red. Comunidades como Castilla y León, Andalucía y Castilla-La Mancha van a tener que dar algunas explicaciones. Y lo que antes era una competencia totalmente descentralizada ha cambiado de signo: ahora el Gobierno ha creado un registro central. Un Gobierno que puede verse obligado a imponer fuertes sanciones a las Comunidades Autónomas si se confirma el fraude.

Desolacion en los caladerosdel planeta

2008-12-04T23:18:00.009+01:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/weekinreview/16bittman.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

According to many scientists, it may be the way of the future: most of the fish we’ll be eating will be farmed, and by midcentury, it might be easier to catch our favorite wild fish ourselves rather than buy it in the market.
It’s all changed in just a few decades. I’m old enough to remember fishermen unloading boxes of flounder at the funky Fulton Fish Market in New York, charging wholesalers a nickel a pound. I remember when local mussels and oysters were practically free, when fresh tuna was an oxymoron, and when monkfish, squid and now-trendy skate were considered “trash.”
But we overfished these species to the point that it now takes more work, more energy, more equipment, more money to catch the same amount of fish — roughly 85 million tons a year, a yield that has remained mostly stagnant for the last decade after rapid growth and despite increasing demand.
Still, plenty of scientists say a turnaround is possible. Studies have found that even declining species can quickly recover if fisheries are managed well. It would help if the world’s wealthiest fish-eaters (they include us, folks) would broaden their appetites. Mackerel, anyone?
It will be a considerable undertaking nonetheless. Global consumption of fish, both wild and farm raised, has doubled since 1973, and 90 percent of this increase has come in developing countries. (You’ll sometimes hear that Americans are now eating more seafood, but that reflects population growth; per capita consumption has remained stable here for 20 years.)
The result of this demand for wild fish, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization, is that “the maximum wild-capture fisheries potential from the world’s oceans has probably been reached.”
One study, in 2006, concluded that if current fishing practices continue, the world’s major commercial stocks will collapse by 2048.
Already, for instance, the Mediterranean’s bluefin tuna population has been severely depleted, and commercial fishing quotas for the bluefin in the Mediterranean may be sharply curtailed this month. The cod fishery, arguably one of the foundations of North Atlantic civilization, is in serious decline. Most species of shark, Chilean sea bass, and the cod-like orange roughy are threatened.
Scientists have recently become concerned that smaller species of fish, the so-called forage fish like herring, mackerel, anchovies and sardines that are a crucial part of the ocean’s food chain, are also under siege.
These smaller fish are eaten not only by the endangered fish we love best, but also by many poor and not-so-poor people throughout the world. (And even by many American travelers who enjoy grilled sardines in England, fried anchovies in Spain, marinated mackerel in France and pickled or raw herring in Holland — though they mostly avoid them at home.)
But the biggest consumers of these smaller fish are the agriculture and aquaculture industries. Nearly one-third of the world’s wild-caught fish are reduced to fish meal and fed to farmed fish and cattle and pigs. Aquaculture alone consumes an estimated 53 percent of the world’s fish meal and 87 percent of its fish oil. (To make matters worse, as much as a quarter of the total wild catch is thrown back — dead — as “bycatch.”)
“We’ve totally depleted the upper predator ranks; we have fished down the food web,” said Christopher Mann, a senior officer with the Pew Environmental Group.
Using fish meal to feed farm-raised fish is also astonishingly inefficient. Approximately three kilograms of forage fish go to produce one kilogram of farmed salmon; the ratio for cod is five to one; and for tuna — the most beef-like of all — the so-called feed-to-flesh ratio is 20 to 1, said John Volpe, an assistant professor of marine systems conservation at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

Industrial aquaculture — sometimes called the blue revolution — is following the same pattern as land-based agriculture. Edible food is being used to grow animals rather than nourish people.

This is not to say that all aquaculture is bad. China alone accounts for an estimated 70 percent of the world’s aquaculture — where it is small in scale, focuses on herbivorous fish and is not only sustainable but environmentally sound. “Throughout Asia, there are hundreds of thousands of small farmers making a living by farming fish,” said Barry Costa-Pierce, professor of fisheries at University of Rhode Island. But industrial fish farming is a different story. The industry spends an estimated $1 billion a year on veterinary products; degrades the land (shrimp farming destroys mangroves, for example, a key protector from typhoons); pollutes local waters (according to a recent report by the Worldwatch Institute, a salmon farm with 200,000 fish releases nutrients and fecal matter roughly equivalent to as many as 60,000 people); and imperils wild populations that come in contact with farmed salmon.
Not to mention that its products generally don’t taste so good, at least compared to the wild stuff. Farm-raised tilapia, with the best feed-to-flesh conversion ratio of any animal, is less desirable to many consumers, myself included, than that nearly perfectly blank canvas called tofu. It seems unlikely that farm-raised striped bass will ever taste remotely like its fierce, graceful progenitor, or that anyone who’s had fresh Alaskan sockeye can take farmed salmon seriously.
If industrial aquaculture continues to grow, said Carl Safina, the president of Blue Ocean Institute, a conservation group, “this wondrously varied component of our diet will go the way of land animals — get simplified, all look the same and generally become quite boring.”
Why bother with farm-raised salmon and its relatives? If the world’s wealthier fish-eaters began to appreciate wild sardines, anchovies, herring and the like, we would be less inclined to feed them to salmon raised in fish farms. And we’d be helping restock the seas with larger species.
Which, surprisingly, is possible. As Mr. Safina noted, “The ocean has an incredible amount of productive capacity, and we could quite easily and simply stay within it by limiting fishing to what it can produce.”
This sounds almost too good to be true, but with monitoring systems that reduce bycatch by as much as 60 percent and regulations providing fishermen with a stake in protecting the wild resource, it is happening. One regulatory scheme, known as “catch shares,” allows fishermen to own shares in a fishery — that is, the right to catch a certain percentage of a scientifically determined sustainable harvest. Fishermen can buy or sell shares, but the number of fish caught in a given year is fixed.
This method has been a success in a number of places including Alaska, the source of more than half of the nation’s seafood. A study published in the journal Science recently estimated that if catch shares had been in place globally in 1970, only about 9 percent of the world’s fisheries would have collapsed by 2003, rather than 27 percent.
“The message is optimism,” said David Festa, who directs the oceans program at the Environmental Defense Fund. “The latest data shows that well-managed fisheries are doing incredibly well. When we get the rules right the fisheries can recover, and if they’re not recovering, it means we have the rules wrong.”
(The world’s fishing countries would need to participate; right now, the best management is in the United States, Australia and New Zealand; even in these countries, there’s a long way to go.)
An optimistic but not unrealistic assessment of the future is that we’ll have a limited (and expensive) but sustainable fishery of large wild fish; a growing but sustainable demand for what will no longer be called “lower-value” smaller wild fish; and a variety of traditional aquaculture where it is allowed. This may not sound ideal, but it’s certainly preferable to sucking all the fish out of the oceans while raising crops of tasteless fish available only to the wealthiest consumers.

made in Tokyo / made in Palermo

2008-11-23T15:58:00.007+01:00

Scoperto un bunker a Palermo nel quartier Zen

http://www.repubblica.it/2008/09/sezioni/cronaca/mafia-5/bunker-palermo/bunker-palermo.html

PALERMO - Aria condizionata, lettore dvd, un comodo divano: era arredato di tutto punto il bunker, rigorosamente abusivo, ricavato da Antonino Grimaldi, pregiudicato di 29 anni arrestato dalla polizia a Palermo, in uno dei padiglioni del quartiere Zen 2, feudo dei capimafia Salvatore e Sandro Lo Piccolo, ora detenuti. All'interno del bunker sotterraneo era stato realizzato un poligono di tiro. Nella stanza, ampia circa 20 metri quadrati, sono state trovate, oltre alle munizioni, 100 dosi di cocaina confezionata per la vendita per un valore di 10mila euro e 7000 euro in contanti. Secondo gli inquirenti, il locale avrebbe ospitato latitanti di mafia che potrebbero essere riusciti a sfuggire alla cattura. Il poligono di tiro, ricavato a 10 metri di profondità, lungo una decina di metri, veniva utilizzato secondo gli investigatori per testare le armi. Sulle pareti c'erano buchi di proiettili e a terra bossoli esplosi da pistole di diverso calibro, dalla 22 alla 9x21. Il locale, a cui si accedeva attraverso una rete di cunicoli collegati al bunker, era completamente insonorizzato. Al rifugio gli agenti del commissariato San Lorenzo sono giunti seguendo le tracce di Grimaldi, pregiudicato con precedenti per detenzione e spaccio di sostanze stupefacenti e per reati contro il patrimonio. Gli agenti hanno atteso il weekend, momento in cui gli spacciatori si riforniscono di stupefacenti, e hanno organizzato un blitz nella sua abitazione. Durante la perquisizione è stato scoperto il passaggio segreto che portava al locale, cui si accedeva attraverso gli scantinati di uno dei tanti palazzoni del rione popolare palermitano. Nell'appartamento è stata trovata anche la chiave: l'ingresso al rifugio era impossibile per gli estranei che dovevano superare prima un cancello azionabile solo attraverso un telecomando e poi una porta blindata.

made in Tokyo

stazione dei taxi, uffici della compagnia dei taxi, centro allenamento golf,

Made in Palermo

bunker, rifugio, poligono di tiro, laboratorio stupefacenti, cantina,...

evolutionary myths

2008-11-22T00:31:00.008+01:00

Economics of Industrial Ecology: Materials, Structural Change, and Spatial Scales

2008-11-19T22:40:00.013+01:00

http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Industrial-Ecology-Materials-Structural/dp/0262220717/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227130817&sr=8-2

http://books.google.com/books?id=VGzfMtfhIZMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=economics+of+industrial+ecology&hl=it

Product Details
Hardcover: 396 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press (January 1, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0262220717
ISBN-13: 978-0262220712

Editorial Reviews
Review"As the first text focused on this subject, Economics of Industrial Ecology fills a big hole in the literature of the field. It moves the interdisciplinary claim of industrial ecology a long way forward."—John R. Ehrenfeld, Executive Director, International Society for Industrial Ecology"

There have long been calls for the integration of economics and industrial ecology. This book assembles a number of important works—especially on integrated modeling of physical and economic systems—that form an important contribution to the industrial ecology literature."—Reid Lifset, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, editor, Journal of Industrial Ecology"

This is one of the first books that focuses primarily on the economics of industrial ecology, without ignoring the scientific and analytical treatment of its problems."—Arpad Horvath, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley

The use of economic modeling techniques in industrial ecology research provides distinct advantages over the customary approach, which focuses on the physical description of material flows. The thirteen chapters of Economics of Industrial Ecology integrate the natural science and technological dimensions of industrial ecology with a rigorous economic approach and by doing so contribute to the advancement of this emerging field. Using a variety of modeling techniques (including econometric, partial and general equilibrium, and input-output models) and applying them to a wide range of materials, economic sectors, and countries, these studies analyze the driving forces behind material flows and structural changes in order to offer guidance for economically and socially feasible policy solutions.After a survey of concepts and relevant research that provides a useful background for the chapters that follow, the book presents historical analyses of structural change from statistical and decomposition approaches; a range of models that predict structural change on the national and regional scale under different policy scenarios; two models that can be used to analyze waste management and recycling operations; and, adopting the perspective of local scale, an analysis of the dynamics of eco-industrial parks in Denmark and the Netherlands. The book concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of an economic approach to industrial ecology.

Europeana porta online tutto il sapere del Vecchio Continente

2008-11-19T22:33:00.003+01:00

http://www.corriere.it/cultura/08_novembre_19/europeana_di_pasqua_0714ed20-b63c-11dd-909d-00144f02aabc.shtml

http://www.europeana.eu/portal/index.html

MILANO – «Facciamo questo per non abbandonare del tutto l'Europa nelle mani dei motori di ricerca americani»: nelle parole di Jean Noel Jeanneney, presidente della Bibliothèque nationale de France, c'è lo spirito di Europeana, troppo facile da paragonare a Google Books eppure diversa e, forse, persino migliore. L'Europa risponde dunque con un minimo scarto temporale alla provocazione di Google che, con la sua nuova icona Google Preview, permette di accedere a tutti i volumi indicizzati dal suo servizio di ricerca libri all'interno di pagine web esterne. E se Mountain View, con il suo instancabile fermento, regala una versione embedded dei volumi (con possibilità di consultazione online nel caso di diritti d'autore scaduti), il Vecchio Continente sfida il colosso americano con un progetto altrettanto ambizioso, anche considerata la tradizione culturale europea.
EUROPEANA – Opere letterarie, foto, film, libri, dipinti, mappe, giornali: in Europeana (o meglio nel suo prototipo) in sostanza sarà accessibile un patrimonio culturale finora conservato gelosamente (e già digitalizzato) dalle biblioteche e dai musei europei, tra cui la Divina Commedia di Dante, i manoscritti e le registrazioni di Beethoven, Mozart e Chopin, i quadri di Vermeer, la Magna Carta britannica e le immagini della caduta del muro di Berlino. E per il 2010, quando il sito sarà molto di più di un prototipo, la mole di materiali dovrebbe sfiorare i sei milioni di documenti e minacciare seriamente il rischio di una privatizzazione della conoscenza.
TUTTO HA AVUTO INIZIO QUANDO.... – Del resto l'Europa aveva deciso di mettere online il suo sapere già da tempo e il primo passo dell'iniziativa è stato scandito dalla decisione del Parlamento Europeo di dare sostegno al progetto, accordando i finanziamenti necessari all'interno dell'eContentplus Programme (finalizzato a migliorare l'accessibilità e l'uso dei documenti digitali europei). La precedenza alla messa online verrà data mano a mano ai documenti di ciascuna cultura considerati più espressivi e prioritari. E intanto a battezzare la neonata Europeana sarà l'inossidabile Viviane Reding, commissario Ue alla Società dell'informazione, che ha spiegato l'iniziativa con un esempio semplice e illuminante: «Uno studente d'arte irlandese potrà ammirare la Gioconda senza andare a Parigi».

Emanuela Di Pasqua19 novembre 2008

Prishtina European Grand Prix 2009

2008-11-16T20:06:00.005+01:00

workshop Ecologies of Identities [UBT Prishtina, Politecnico di Milano]- Novembre 2008

prima presentazione video

in collaborazione con Alberto Clerici

ringraziamo Autosalloni Prishtina, Lanti, Virusi, Rrebeli, Plusi, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, 50 cent, Euronews, Sokolekrajes, Skillz, Mergim e Selim

POST - Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking

2008-11-02T23:38:00.008+01:00

http://www.postcoml.org/

http://explore.noaa.gov/abstract-and-bio-pacific-ocean-shelf-tracking-project-dr-david-welch

Dr. David Welch reviews the technical operation of the Pacific Ocean Tracking Project (POST) and reviews its performance in addressing key policy questions.
Abstract
Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking (POST) array, currently operates as the world’s largest telemetry system for studying the movements and survival of marine fish. It will provide the exemplar for the Ocean Tracking Network (OTN), the subject of the May 18th talk by Ron O’Dor. OTN shall form “an array of POST arrays," sitting on the continental shelves of all the continents on the planet. As such, it provides a prime example of what the evolving Ocean Observation System (OOS) system might look like.One of the Census of Marine Life’s (CoML's) original field projects, POST made a natural fit given the CoML’s focus on distribution, diversity, and abundance of marine life. However, POST has begun to prove itself in addressing key US policy questions for fisheries, and thereby demonstrating the fundamental linkage between these biological questions and vexing high-level policy issues. POST thus forms an interesting example of how the development of a highly quantitative tool looking at basic biological processes can inform and reinvigorate the science of fisheries management—and ocean research.The operational considerations involved in developing POST include the need for:
Developing large-scale and high volume methods for conducting surgery on thousands of test animals while ensuring the highest ethical standards of fish handling and surgical procedures are met.
Developing technical methods for deploying and maintaining a very large scale permanent tracking array on the seabed.
Ensuring that the data are recovered in very high yield to validate the array concept and provide meaningful scientific results to justify the support for building (and expanding) the array.
Dr. Welch reviews the technical operation of POST from the twin perspectives of ethical animal use and technical operation of a large-scale engineering system. In the final section of the talk, he reviews the performance of the array in addressing key policy questions concerning the management of Columbia & Fraser R salmon populations.
Biography
David Welch received a B.Sc. in Biology and Economics from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia) in 1985.
He started and led the Canadian government’s High Seas Salmon Program at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) in 1990, after a quarter century of governmental hiatus in ocean research on salmon. During the next decade he studied the ocean biology of Pacific salmon, and provided some of the first compelling evidence for a potentially profound impact of global warming on Pacific salmon in the ocean.
Dr. Welch serves as the chief architect of the Census of Marine Life’s project POST and President of Kintama Research. Welch started Kintama in 1990 to develop the pioneering technology platform necessary for delivering data from a permanent ocean array capable of directly measuring survival of migrating fish in the ocean.
We can measure the success of POST from three perspectives:
It is the largest and most complex marine tracking array under single management anywhere in the globe, with a current geographic span of almost 2,500 km;
The Canadian Government committed $45M Cdn starting in 2007 to champion the globalization of the POST array as the Ocean Tracking Network;
The array is now capable of measuring the movements and survival of fish as small as 12.5 cm year-round, and may be capable of tracking fish as small as 10 cm by 2008.
As a result, the marine science community stands on the brink of having the ability to conduct direct quantitative experimental studies in the ocean on fish of the kind that transformed chemistry and physics one and two centuries ago.
Dr Welch has previously acted as scientific spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund on the issue of global warming, and received an invitation to testify on the results of his research on the ocean biology of Pacific salmon in the U.S. Senate. Dr Welch speaks fluent Japanese and lives on Vancouver Island in Nanaimo, British Columbia.

In Texas, Weighing Life With a Border Fence

2008-11-01T20:56:00.009+01:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13border.html

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: January 13, 2008
GRANJENO, Tex. — Rafael Garza, a former mayor of this small border city, stood steps from the back door of his simple brick house and chopped the air with a hand. “This is where the actual fence would be,” he said.And the federal property line, he said, would be at his shower.
Mr. Garza, 36, a Hidalgo County sheriff’s sergeant who traces his family here to 1767, was imagining what life would be like in the shadow of the Proposed Tactical Infrastructure — the wall, to many outraged South Texans — that the Department of Homeland Security has committed to build by the end of the year.
Although federal officials say its location and design are still in flux, official maps of the Texas third of the 370-mile intermittent pedestrian barrier from Brownsville to California have provoked widespread alarm among property owners fearful of being cut off from parts of their own land or access to the Rio Grande for livestock and crops.
In the Rio Grande Valley last week, yards were plastered with signs demanding “No border wall,” raising the prospect of a protracted legal, if not physical, standoff, although Congress has recently taken steps to review the original plan. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas is under fire from some fellow Republicans for amendments to a financing bill last month that they say scale back the fence.
At the same time, local concern was heightened by letters in December from the United States Army Corps of Engineers to property owners in the Southwest — 71 of them in Texas — who had refused access to their land for up to a year of survey work and were given 30 days to comply or face a federal lawsuit.
One was Dr. Eloisa G. Tamez, a nursing director at the University of Texas, Brownsville, at Texas Southmost College, who owns three acres in El Calaboz, the remnant of a 12,000-acre land grant to her ancestors in 1747 by the King of Spain. The barrier would rise within feet of her backyard, as well.
“It’s all I have,” said Dr. Tamez, 72, a widow who served for years as a chief nurse in medical centers of the Department of Veterans Affairs. “Who do they think we are down here? Somebody sitting under a cactus with a sombrero taking a nap?”
Her deadline expired last Monday with no legal action.
But Laura Keehner, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said Friday, “We will begin that process as early as next week.”
Ms. Keehner said that of 135 letters sent seeking access for surveys, 30 local landowners had so far agreed. “They recognize that a fence will help fight drug trafficking and human trafficking,” she said.
The government would have to pay for any private land acquired or condemned for the fence, at a price set by federal evaluators. But landowners would not be compensated for allowing surveys, except for cases of damage.
Not all residents vowed resistance. Juan Hernandez, 43, a poultry farmer in Los Indios, sounded resigned. “I don’t know how they’re going to do it, but they’re going to do it,” said Mr. Hernandez, who complained about rampant drug trafficking.
He said, “if it helps my kids” he could go along with a fence. “I’m probably having to move,” he said, “but if they pay for it, O.K. ”
Valley officials and residents who denounced the fence said they were not soft on illegal immigration or blind to the dangers of drug smuggling and terrorism. “Who doesn’t want security?” said Mayor Richard Cortez of McAllen. “Our fight with the government is not over their goals, it’s how they go about them.”
“You can go over, under and around a fence,” he said, “and it can’t make an apprehension.”
Instead, he said, the government should deepen the river, clear the land for better surveillance and create a legal Mexican worker program.
Up and down the border, his fellow mayors agree, banding together in the Texas Border Coalition with rare unanimity to oppose the fence, calling instead for increased electronic measures like sensors and more Border Patrol agents.
Stirring particular concern was the plan to run the fence north of the levees built decades ago to hold back the Rio Grande, now flowing in many places a mile or more to the south. So the fence would in effect cut off swaths of American soil — including range and farmlands — between the barrier and the international boundary of the river.
To build the fence as originally conceived, in two parallel rows with a road for the Border Patrol between them, some local officials were told, the government would need to acquire a strip of land at least 150 feet from the levee. That would take it into the backyards of Mr. Garza in Granjeno, Dr. Tamez in El Calaboz and other property owners.
But Ms. Keehner of the Homeland Security Department said the agency was reviewing its options. “That’s why we need the surveys,” she said.
Local officials have been told that there would be some kind of gates through the fence, but what kind and where have yet to be specified.

The last maps also show wide gaps between segments of fence, setting the barrier in more developed areas where the risk was greater that illegal immigrants could more easily melt into the population, and leaving open desolate tracts that could be more easily monitored.

But that raised other concerns for residents like Aida Leach of River Bend Resort, a golf community outside Brownsville that the maps show getting partly fenced.
“The wall stops at part of the houses and starts again,” leaving her house exposed, Ms. Leach told a meeting of concerned property owners that was convened Wednesday night at the San Ignacio de Loyola Roman Catholic Church in El Ranchito by lawyers from Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. “So I guess they’ll be coming to our house.”
“Good question,” said Corinne Spenser-Scheurich, one of the lawyers. Ms. Spenser-Scheurich said landowners should not feel intimidated by the government’s requests to survey. “To sign or not is a personal choice,” she said.
Another landowner, H. R. Jaime, attending with his 90-year-old mother, Frances Wagner Quiñones, whose forebears settled nearby Landrum, asked, “What happens to water rights, if we can’t get to the water and pump it out?”
Emily Rickers, another of the lawyers, said the government might have to compensate him for that as well.
At the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge to Reynosa, Mexico, George Ramon, the bridge director for McAllen, questioned the value of a border fence considering how brazenly the fences at the heavily patrolled crossing were regularly breached, aided by “spotters” who hang around the bridge communicating with cellphones and hand signals like baseball coaches.
“They form a human pyramid and leap the fence,” Mr. Ramon said. “I’ve seen them pay a guy who helps them over.” Others, known as “port runners” just make a dash for it past the toll takers and agents and melt into the crowd. “It’s a constant, daily occurrence” he said.
He kept five police cars lined alongside the fence as a deterrent, but they proved worthless, he said, “as soon as they figured out no one was in them.”
He stopped at a hole in a chain-link fence, where cars were lining up to enter the United States. “Well,” he said, “it’s cut again.”

Acclaimed Colombian Institution Has 4,800 Books and 10 Legs

2008-10-31T11:58:00.004+01:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/world/americas/20burro.html

LA GLORIA, Colombia — In a ritual repeated nearly every weekend for the past decade here in Colombia’s war-weary Caribbean hinterland, Luis Soriano gathered his two donkeys, Alfa and Beto, in front of his home on a recent Saturday afternoon.

Sweating already under the unforgiving sun, he strapped pouches with the word “Biblioburro” painted in blue letters to the donkeys’ backs and loaded them with an eclectic cargo of books destined for people living in the small villages beyond.
His choices included “Anaconda,” the animal fable by the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga that evokes Kipling’s “Jungle Book”; some Time-Life picture books (on Scandinavia, Japan and the Antilles); and the Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language.
“I started out with 70 books, and now I have a collection of more than 4,800,” said Mr. Soriano, 36, a primary school teacher who lives in a small house here with his wife and three children, with books piled to the ceilings.
“This began as a necessity; then it became an obligation; and after that a custom,” he explained, squinting at the hills undulating into the horizon. “Now,” he said, “it is an institution.”
A whimsical riff on the bookmobile, Mr. Soriano’s Biblioburro is a small institution: one man and two donkeys. He created it out of the simple belief that the act of taking books to people who do not have them can somehow improve this impoverished region, and perhaps Colombia.
In doing so, Mr. Soriano has emerged as the best-known resident of La Gloria, a town that feels even farther removed from the rhythms of the wider world than is Aracataca, the inspiration for the setting of the epic “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez, another of the region’s native sons.
Unlike Mr. García Márquez, who lives in Mexico City, Mr. Soriano has never traveled outside Colombia — but he remains dedicated to bringing its people a touch of the outside world. His project has won acclaim from the nation’s literacy specialists and is the subject of a new documentary by a Colombian filmmaker, Carlos Rendón Zipaguata.
The idea came to him, he said, after he witnessed as a young teacher the transformative power of reading among his pupils, who were born into conflict even more intense than when he was a child.
The violence by bandit groups was so bad when he was young that his parents sent him to live with his grandmother in the nearby city of Valledupar, near the Venezuelan border. He returned at age 16 with a high school degree and got a job teaching reading to schoolchildren.
By the time he was in his 20s, Colombia’s long internal war had drawn paramilitary bands to the lawless marshlands and hills surrounding La Gloria, leading to clashes with guerrillas and intimidation of the local population by both groups.
Into that violence, which has since ebbed, Mr. Soriano ventured with his donkeys, taking with him a few reading textbooks, encyclopedia volumes and novels from his small personal library. At stops along the way, children still await the teacher in groups, to hear him read from the books he brings before they can borrow them.
A breakthrough came several years ago when he heard excerpts over the radio of a novel, “The Ballad of Maria Abdala,” by Juan Gossaín, a Colombian journalist and writer. Mr. Soriano wrote a letter to the author, asking him to lend a copy of the book to the Biblioburro.
After Mr. Gossaín broadcast details of Mr. Soriano’s project on his radio program, book donations poured in from throughout Colombia. A local financial institution, Cajamag, provided some financing for the construction of a small library next to his home, but the project remains only half-finished for lack of funds.
There is little money left over for such luxuries on his teacher’s salary of $350 a month. Already the family’s budget is so tight that he and his wife, Diana, opened a small restaurant, La Cosa Política, two years ago to help make ends meet.
Even among the restaurant’s clientele, mainly ranch hands and truck drivers with little formal education, the bespectacled Mr. Soriano sees potential bibliophiles. On the wall above tables laid out with grilled meat and fried plantains, he posts pages from Hoy Diario, the region’s daily newspaper, and prods diners into discussions about current events.

“We can take political talk only so far, of course,” he said, referring to the looming threat of retaliation from the paramilitary groups, which have effectively defeated the guerrillas in this part of northern Colombia. “I learned that if I interest just one person in reading a mundane news item — say, about the rising price of rice — then that’s a step forward.”

Such victories keep Mr. Soriano going, despite the challenges that come with running the Biblioburro.
He fractured his left leg in a fall from one of his burros in July, leaving him with a limp. And some of his readers like the books they borrow so much that they fail to return them.
Two books that vanished not long ago: an illustrated sex education manual, and a copy of “Like Water for Chocolate,” the Mexican writer Laura Esquivel’s novel about food and love in a traditional Mexican family.
And there are dangers inherent to venturing into the backlands around La Gloria. Two years ago, Mr. Soriano said, bandits surprised him at a river crossing, found that he carried almost no money, and tied him to a tree. They stole one item from his book pouch: “Brida,” the story of an Irish girl and her search for knowledge, by the Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho.
“For some reason, Paulo Coelho is at the top of everyone’s list of favorites,” said Mr. Soriano, hiding a grin under the shade of his sombrero vueltiao, the elaborately woven cowboy hat popular in Colombia’s interior.
On a trip this month into the rutted hills, where about 300 people regularly borrow books from him, he reminisced about a visit to the National Library in the capital, Bogotá, where he was stunned by the building’s immense collection and its Art Deco design.
“I felt so ordinary in Bogotá,” Mr. Soriano said. “My place is here.”
At times, on the remote landscape dotted with guayacán trees, it was hard to tell whether beast or man was in control. Once, Mr. Soriano lost his patience, trying to coax his stubborn donkeys to cross a stream.
Still, it was clear why Mr. Soriano does what he does.
In the village of El Brasil, Ingrid Ospina, 18, leafed through a copy of “Margarita,” the classic book of poetry by Rubén Darío of Nicaragua, and began to read aloud.
She went beyond where the heavens are
and to the moon said, au revoir.
How naughty to have flown so far
without the permission of Papa.
“That is so beautiful, Maestro,” Ms. Ospina said to the teacher. “When are you coming back?”

An Eye on the Swarm

2008-10-08T00:04:00.002+02:00

http://www.princeton.edu/~icouzin/

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=RbxDLjcosss

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=RVvcX8HWghA

From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm 1-2

2008-10-07T23:49:00.009+02:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/science/13traff.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

If you have ever observed ants marching in and out of a nest, you might have been reminded of a highway buzzing with traffic. To Iain D. Couzin, such a comparison is a cruel insult — to the ants.
Americans spend a 3.7 billion hours a year in congested traffic. But you will never see ants stuck in gridlock.
Army ants, which Dr. Couzin has spent much time observing in Panama, are particularly good at moving in swarms. If they have to travel over a depression in the ground, they erect bridges so that they can proceed as quickly as possible.
“They build the bridges with their living bodies,” said Dr. Couzin, a mathematical biologist at Princeton University and the University of Oxford. “They build them up if they’re required, and they dissolve if they’re not being used.”
The reason may be that the ants have had a lot more time to adapt to living in big groups. “We haven’t evolved in the societies we currently live in,” Dr. Couzin said.
By studying army ants — as well as birds, fish, locusts and other swarming animals — Dr. Couzin and his colleagues are starting to discover simple rules that allow swarms to work so well. Those rules allow thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism.
Deciphering those rules is a big challenge, however, because the behavior of swarms emerges unpredictably from the actions of thousands or millions of individuals.
“No matter how much you look at an individual army ant,” Dr. Couzin said, “you will never get a sense that when you put 1.5 million of them together, they form these bridges and columns. You just cannot know that.”
To get a sense of swarms, Dr. Couzin builds computer models of virtual swarms. Each model contains thousands of individual agents, which he can program to follow a few simple rules. To decide what those rules ought to be, he and his colleagues head out to jungles, deserts or oceans to observe animals in action.
Daniel Grunbaum, a mathematical biologist at the University of Washington, said his field was suddenly making leaps forward, as math and observation of nature were joined in the work of Dr. Couzin and others. “In the next 10 years there’s going to be a lot of progress.”
He said Dr. Couzin has been important in fusing the different kinds of science required to understand animal group behavior. “He’s been a real leader in bringing a lot of ideas together,” Dr. Grunbaum said. “He has a larger vision. If it works, that’ll be a big advance.”
In the case of army ants, Dr. Couzin was intrigued by their highways. Army ants returning to their nest with food travel in a dense column. This incoming lane is flanked by two lanes of outgoing traffic. A three-lane highway of army ants can stretch for as far as 150 yards from the ant nest, comprising hundreds of thousands of insects.
What Dr. Couzin wanted to know was why army ants do not move to and from their colony in a mad, disorganized scramble. To find out, he built a computer model based on some basic ant biology. Each simulated ant laid down a chemical marker that attracted other ants while the marker was still fresh. Each ant could also sweep the air with its antennas; if it made contact with another ant, it turned away and slowed down to avoid a collision.
Dr. Couzin analyzed how the ants behaved when he tweaked their behavior. If the ants turned away too quickly from oncoming insects, they lost the scent of their trail. If they did not turn fast enough, they ground to a halt and forced ants behind them to slow down. Dr. Couzin found that a narrow range of behavior allowed ants to move as a group as quickly as possible.
It turned out that these optimal ants also spontaneously formed highways. If the ants going in one direction happened to become dense, their chemical trails attracted more ants headed the same way. This feedback caused the ants to form a single packed column. The ants going the other direction turned away from the oncoming traffic and formed flanking lanes.
To test this model, Dr. Couzin and Nigel Franks, an ant expert at the University of Bristol in England, filmed a trail of army ants in Panama. Back in England, they went through the film frame by frame, analyzing the movements of 226 ants. “Everything in the ant world is happening at such a high tempo it was very difficult to see,” Dr. Couzin said.
Eventually they found that the real ants were moving in the way that Dr. Couzin had predicted would allow the entire swarm to go as fast as possible. They also found that the ants behaved differently if they were leaving the nest or heading back. When two ants encountered each other, the outgoing ant turned away further than the incoming one. As a result, the ants headed to the nest end up clustered in a central lane, while the outgoing ants form two outer lanes. Dr. Couzin has been extending his model for ants to other animals that move in giant crowds, like fish and birds. And instead of tracking individual animals himself, he has developed programs to let computers do the work.
The more Dr. Couzin studies swarm behavior, the more patterns he finds common to many different species. He is reminded of the laws of physics that govern liquids. “You look at liquid metal and at water, and you can see they’re both liquids,” he said. “They have fundamental characteristics in common. That’s what I was finding with the animal groups — there were fundamental states they could exist in.”
Just as liquid water can suddenly begin to boil, animal swarms can also change abruptly thanks to some simple rules.
Dr. Couzin has discovered some of those rules in the ways that locusts begin to form their devastating swarms. The insects typically crawl around on their own, but sometimes young locusts come together in huge bands that march across the land, devouring everything in their path. After developing wings, they rise into the air as giant clouds made of millions of insects.
“Locusts are known to be around all the time,” Dr. Couzin said. “Why does the situation suddenly get out of control, and these locusts swarm together and devastate crops?”
Dr. Couzin traveled to remote areas of Mauritania in Africa to study the behavior of locust swarms. Back at Oxford, he and his colleagues built a circular track on which locusts could walk. “We could track the motion of all these individuals five times a second for eight hours a day,” he said.
The scientists found that when the density of locusts rose beyond a threshold, the insects suddenly began to move together. Each locust always tried to align its own movements with any neighbor. When the locusts were widely spaced, however, this rule did not have much effect on them. Only when they had enough neighbors did they spontaneously form huge bands.
“We showed that you don’t need to know lots of information about individuals to predict how the group will behave,” Dr. Couzin said of the locust findings, which were published June 2006 in Science.
Understanding how animals swarm and why they do are two separate questions, however.
In some species, animals may swarm so that the entire group enjoys an evolutionary benefit. All the army ants in a colony, for example, belong to the same family. So if individuals cooperate, their shared genes associated with swarming will become more common.
But in the deserts of Utah, Dr. Couzin and his colleagues discovered that giant swarms may actually be made up of a lot of selfish individuals.
Mormon crickets will sometimes gather by the millions and crawl in bands stretching more than five miles long. Dr. Couzin and his colleagues ran experiments to find out what caused them to form bands. They found that the forces behind cricket swarms are very different from the ones that bring locusts together. When Mormon crickets cannot find enough salt and protein, they become cannibals.
“Each cricket itself is a perfectly balanced source of nutrition,” Dr. Couzin said. “So the crickets, every 17 seconds or so, try to attack other individuals. If you don’t move, you’re likely to be eaten.”
This collective movement causes the crickets to form vast swarms. “All these crickets are on a forced march,” Dr. Couzin said. “They’re trying to attack the crickets who are ahead, and they’re trying to avoid being eaten from behind.”
Swarms, regardless of the forces that bring them together, have a remarkable ability to act like a collective mind. A swarm navigates as a unit, making decisions about where to go and how to escape predators together.
“There’s a swarm intelligence,” Dr. Couzin said. “You can see how people thought there was some sort of telekinesis involved.”
What makes this collective decision-making all the more puzzling is that each individual can behave only based on its own experience. If a shark lunges into a school of fish, only some of them will see it coming. If a flock of birds is migrating, only a few experienced individuals may know the route.
Dr. Couzin and his colleagues have built a model of the flow of information through swarms. Each individual has to balance two instincts: to stay with the group and to move in a desired direction. The scientists found that just a few leaders can guide a swarm effectively. They do not even need to send any special signals to the animals around them. They create a bias in the swarm’s movement that steers it in a particular direction.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean you have the right information, though,” Dr. Couzin pointed out.
Two leaders may try to pull a swarm in opposite directions, and yet the swarm holds together. In Dr. Couzin’s model, the swarm was able to decide which leaders to follow.
“As we increased the difference of opinion between the informed individuals, the group would spontaneously come to a consensus and move in the direction chosen by the majority,” Dr. Couzin said. “They can make these decisions without mathematics, without even recognizing each other or knowing that a decision has been made.”
Dr. Couzin and his colleagues have been finding support for this model in real groups of animals. They have even found support in studies on mediocre swarmers — humans.
To study humans, Dr. Couzin teamed up with researchers at the University of Leeds. They recruited eight people at a time to play a game. Players stood in the middle of a circle, and along the edge of the circle were 16 cards, each labeled with a number. The scientists handed each person a slip of paper and instructed the players to follow the instructions printed on it while not saying anything to the others. Those rules correspond to the ones in Dr. Couzin’s models. And just as in his models, each person had no idea what the others had been instructed to do.
In one version of the experiment, each person was instructed simply to stay with the group. As Dr. Couzin’s model predicted, they tended to circle around in a doughnut-shaped flock. In another version, one person was instructed to head for a particular card at the edge of the circle without leaving the group. The players quickly formed little swarms with their leader at the head, moving together to the target.
The scientists then sowed discord by telling two or more people to move to opposite sides of the circle. The other people had to try to stay with the group even as leaders tried to pull it apart.
As Dr. Couzin’s model predicted, the human swarm made a quick, unconscious decision about which way to go. People tended to follow the largest group of leaders, even if it contained only one additional person.
Dr. Couzin and his colleagues describe the results of these experiments in a paper to be published in the journal Animal Behavior.
Dr. Couzin is carrying the lessons he has learned from animals to other kinds of swarms. He is helping Dr. Naomi Leonard, a Princeton engineer, to program swarming into robots.
“These things are beginning to move around and interact in ways we see in nature,” he said. Ultimately, flocks of robots might do a better job of collecting information in dangerous places. “If you knock out some individual, the algorithm still works. The group still moves normally.” The rules of the swarm may also apply to the cells inside our bodies. Dr. Couzin is working with cancer biologists to discover the rules by which cancer cells work together to build tumors or migrate through tissues. Even brain cells may follow the same rules for collective behavior seen in locusts or fish.
“One of the really fun things that we’re doing now is understanding how the type of feedbacks in these groups is like the ones in the brain that allows humans to make decisions,” Dr. Couzin said. Those decisions are not just about what to order for lunch, but about basic perception — making sense, for example, of the flood of signals coming from the eyes. “How does your brain take this information and come to a collective decision about what you’re seeing?” Dr. Couzin said. The answer, he suspects, may lie in our inner swarm.

From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm 2-2

2008-10-07T23:44:00.003+02:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/science/13traff.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Growing Pains for a Deep-Sea Home Built of Subway Cars

2008-10-01T00:49:00.003+02:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/us/08reef.html

http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/showpix?bmxpbmU9MTc3fDB8NHwyMHx8UD0vY2Fycy9yZWRiaXJkLXNjcmFwLmh0bWx8YWRkZGF0ZSBkZXNj

SLAUGHTER BEACH, Del. — Sixteen nautical miles from the Indian River Inlet and about 80 feet underwater, a building boom is under way at the Red Bird Reef.

One by one, a machine operator has been shoving hundreds of retired New York City subway cars off a barge, continuing the transformation of a barren stretch of ocean floor into a bountiful oasis, carpeted in sea grasses, walled thick with blue mussels and sponges, and teeming with black sea bass and tautog.
“They’re basically luxury condominiums for fish,” Jeff Tinsman, artificial reef program manager for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said as one of 48 of the 19-ton retirees from New York City sank toward the 666 already on the ocean floor.
But now, Delaware is struggling with the misfortune of its own success.
Having planted a thriving community in what was once an underwater desert, state marine officials are faced with the sort of overcrowding, crime and traffic problems more common to terrestrial cities.
The summer flounder and bass have snuggled so tightly on top and in the nooks of the subway cars that Mr. Tinsman is trying to expand the housing capacity. He is having trouble, however, because other states, seeing Delaware’s successes, have started competing for the subway cars, which New York City provides free.
Crisscrossing over the reef, commercial pot fishermen keep getting their lines tangled with those of smaller hook-and-reel anglers, and the rising tension has led the state to ask federal marine officials to declare the area off limits to large commercial fishermen.
As the reef has become more popular, theft and sabotage of fishing traps and pots has more than doubled in the last several years, said Capt. David Lewis of the Delaware Bay Launch Service. “People now don’t just steal the fish inside the pots out here, they’ve started stealing the pots, too,” he said.
The reef, named after New York City’s famous Redbird subway cars, now supports more than 10,000 angler trips annually, up from fewer than 300 in 1997. It has seen a 400-fold increase in the amount of marine food per square foot in the last seven years, according to state data.
Mr. Tinsman said his department was doing everything it could to expand the capacity, noting that last year, when subway cars were unavailable, he sank a 92-year-old tugboat and the YOG-93, a 175-foot decommissioned Navy tanker built in 1945 for the planned invasion of Japan. Fifty subway cars are due this month, he said.
“The secret is out, I guess,” said Michael G. Zacchea, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority official in charge of getting rid of New York City’s old subway cars.
Mr. Zacchea added that Delaware’s prospects for expanding the reef looked grim because New York State has said it wanted all of the city’s retired subway cars once the United States Army Corps of Engineers updates the state’s reef permit this summer. Mr. Zacchea said he would soon stop shipments out of state, saving perhaps $2 million in transport costs. As a good faith gesture, the city probably will provide about 100 cars to Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey before out-of-state deliveries are halted.
While New York State works to get its permit in place, other states are pushing hard to get what they can from the city, Mr. Zacchea said.
Last month, for example, New Jersey, which stopped taking the cars in 2003 because of environmental concerns, asked the city for 600 of them.
Tim Dillingham, the executive director of the American Littoral Society, a coastal conservation group based in Sandy Hook, N.J., said natural rock and concrete balls were far safer and more durable materials for artificial reefs.
“Those materials also cost more, and we’re sensitive to the realities of budget crunches in many states,” Mr. Dillingham said.
The American Littoral Society and other environmental groups opposed the use of the Redbird cars because they have small levels of asbestos in the glue used to secure the floor panels and in the insulation material in the walls.
State and federal environmental officials approved the use of the Redbirds and other cars for artificial reefs in Delaware and elsewhere because they said the asbestos was not a risk for marine life and has to be airborne to pose a threat to humans.
Mr. Dillingham said his group had pushed New Jersey to use only New York City’s cars, which have only stainless steel on the outside, contain less asbestos and are more durable. Delaware, which oversees nine artificial reef sites in state waters and five, including Red Bird Reef, in federal waters, was the first state to get subway cars from New York City, in August 2001.
In the last several years, the reefs have drawn swift open-ocean fish, like tuna and mackerel, that use the reefs as hunting grounds for smaller prey. Sea bass like to live inside the cars, while large flounder lie in the silt that settles on top of the cars, said Mr. Tinsman, the Delaware official.
States have experimented with other types of artificial reef materials, including abandoned automobiles, tanks, refrigerators, shopping carts and washing machines.
Mr. Tinsman particularly favors the newer subway cars with stainless steel on the outside to create reefs. “We call these the DeLoreans of the deep,” he said.
Subway cars in general, he said, are roomy enough to invite certain fish, too heavy to shift easily in storms and durable enough to avoid throwing off debris for decades.
“The one problem I see with them,” Mr. Tinsman said, “is that just like the DeLoreans, there are only a limited number.”

España, bajo el estrés del agua

2008-10-01T00:14:00.003+02:00

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Espana/estres/agua/elpepisoc/20080929elpepisoc_2/Tes

http://reports.eea.europa.eu/eea_report_2008_4/en/

Un informe de la Agencia Europea de Medio Ambiente afirma que el país vivirá sus próximos años entre inundaciones y sequías

El estrés del agua quiere decir sequía y desertificación. Significa que en el futuro, a nuestra lista de preocupaciones, se añadirá la falta de agua. Pero también el exceso: inundaciones y crecidas de ríos. Es la expresión que utiliza la Agencia Europea de Medio Ambiente (EEA) para calificar lo que va a sufrir en las próximas décadas España y todos los países de la cuenca del Mediterráneo.

La Unión Europea ha publicado un informe llamado Impactos del cambio climático en Europa que especifica las convulsiones que vivirá el viejo continente por el calentamiento global. El estudio analiza la cantidad del agua que el hombre ha necesitado entre 1975 y 2006 y, por otro lado, muestra la evidencia de que las lluvias serán muy intermitentes en Europa. Lloverá poco y se necesitará más agua. "En el mismo período ha habido un significativo incremento en la demanda de agua en España (entre el 50% y el 70%) y en las áreas mediterráneas", asevera el informe. Y las predicciones de futuro van en línea ascendente. "La demanda crecerá cada vez más, especialmente en el sur donde la necesidad de agua para la agricultura es mayor. Con ella, se desarrollará una competición por este bien entre los distintos sectores (turismo, agricultura, energía) y usos".
En promedio, la exigencia de agua en todos los países de Europa ha crecido al rededor de 50 milímetros cúbicos por hectárea al año pero, en algunos casos como en el centro de España, Italia, Grecia, el Magreb, el sur de Francia y Alemania la cifra oscila entre 150 y 200 metros cúbicos por hectárea al año. Y, como se prevé que las lluvias, se reducirán se necesitará regar más. Por eso la falta de agua causará un impacto negativo tanto en términos económicos como en ecológicos. Además, en el Mediterráneo se ha observado un creciente déficit del agua en los últimos 32 años.
Aunque el informe vaticina desertización para España, el estudio tampoco nos libra de los desbordamientos de los ríos. Habrá un incremento porque la alternancia entre períodos de sequía y precipitaciones torrenciales hace a España más propensa a estas inundaciones. Para 2080 pronostica que entre 2000 y 4000 personas se verán afectadas por las inundaciones en las zonas costeras por la subida del nivel del mar en Andalucía, Galicia, las Islas Baleares y Asturias. La región más afectada será el País Vasco: entre 4000 y 8000 personas podrán ser víctimas de la subida del mar. Países como Reino Unido, Sicilia o Grecia podrán ver afectada a gran parte de su población (entre 8000 y 50.000 personas). El planeta ya está experimentando una subida de las temperaturas de 0,8 grados centígrados por encima de los niveles preindustriales y el nivel del mar ha crecido 3,1 milímetros al año en los últimos 15 años.
Para mitigar todos estos problemas el informe apuesta tanto por la reducción del CO2 como por la adaptación a las consecuencias del cambio que ya no se pueden remediar. "El 90% de todos los desastres que han sucedido en Europa desde 1980 están directa o indirectamente relacionados con el clima y representan el 95% de las pérdidas económicas causadas por catástrofes", señala el informe.
Para evitar estas pérdidas se pone tres metas: la primera, una mayor vigilancia, monitorización y estudio de los cambios a nivel internacional; la segunda, estabilizar el clima para 2020 por debajo de los dos grados centígrados con respecto a los niveles pre industriales "para evitar consecuencias irreversibles en la sociedad y en los ecosistemas". Por último, hace hincapié en la adaptación.
Afirma que uno de los grandes retos de España de todo el Mediterráneo en adaptación es la diversificación del turismo en otros sectores. El estudio asegura que la subida de la temperatura hará marcharse a los turistas más al norte, en busca del mismo clima que antes se gozaba en España. Por eso, para no perder dinero, será imprescindible invertir en otros sectores.

Pirahã Exceptionality: a Reassessment

2008-09-21T22:07:00.001+02:00

http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000411

Andrew Nevins (Harvard)
David Pesetsky (MIT)
Cilene Rodrigues (Universidade Estadual de Campinas)

March 2007
Everett (2005) has claimed that the grammar of Pirahã is exceptional in displaying "inexplicable gaps", that these gaps follow from an alleged cultural principle restricting communication to "immediate experience", and that this principle has "severe" consequences for work on Universal Grammar. We argue against each of these claims. Relying on the available documentation and descriptions of the language (especially the rich material in Everett (1986; 1987b)), we argue that many of the exceptional grammatical "gaps" supposedly characteristic of Pirahã are misanalyzed by Everett (2005) and are neither gaps nor exceptional among the world's languages. We find no evidence, for example, that Pirahã lacks embedded clauses, and in fact find strong syntactic and semantic evidence in favor of their existence in Pirahã. Likewise, we find no evidence that Pirahã lacks quantifiers, as claimed by Everett (2005). Furthermore, most of the actual properties of the Pirahã constructions discussed by Everett (for example, the ban on prenominal possessor recursion and the behavior of wh-constructions) are familiar from languages whose speakers lack the cultural restrictions attributed to the Pirahã. Finally, following mostly Gonçalves (1993; 2000; 2001), we also question some of the empirical claims about Pirahã culture advanced by Everett in primary support of the "immediate experience" restriction. We are left with no evidence of a causal relation between culture and grammatical structure. Pirahã grammar contributes to ongoing research into the nature of Universal Grammar, but presents no unusual challenge, much less a "severe" one.

Format:
[ pdf ]

Reference:
lingBuzz/000411(please use that when you cite this article, unless you want to cite the full url: http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000411 )

La tribù che sa contare fino a due

2008-09-21T21:43:00.004+02:00

http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2007/aprile/03/tribu_che_contare_fino_due_co_9_070403121.shtml

Una popolazione isolata dell' Amazzonia accende il dibattito sull' esistenza di una grammatica universale innata

Il linguaggio: dipende dai modi di vita o esiste una matrice mentale?

In questi ultimi anni, la lingua, la cultura e le credenze di un' isolata popolazione dell' Amazzonia, i Piraha, circa trecento individui distribuiti su otto villaggi lungo le sponde del fiume Maici, parevano aver tenuto in scacco la linguistica e l' antropologia. La vicenda aveva presto straripato ben oltre i confini accademici, trovando vasta eco anche sulla stampa. Il motivo di tanto scalpore è presto detto. Il linguista americano Daniel Everett, adesso professore all' Università dell' Illinois, dopo aver vissuto per lunghi anni a contatto con i Piraha, aveva riportato, nella sua tesi di dottorato e poi in vari articoli specialistici, alcuni dati sbalorditivi. Stando a quanto afferma Everett, la lingua dei Piraha avrebbe il più ristretto repertorio di suoni linguistici mai registrato (appena dieci fonemi), due sole parole per i colori (chiaro e scuro), nessuna parola per i numeri oltre uno e due (ma anche questi con un significato solo approssimativo), una sola parola per padre e madre, nessuna possibilità di esprimere una frase che contiene una frase subordinata, come «Ti ho detto che il bambino ha fame». La lista di queste radicali povertà linguistiche è lunga. I Piraha adulti sono strettamente monolingui e incapaci di apprendere qualsiasi altra lingua. Ma c' è ben di più. I Piraha non si curano di tracciare relazioni di parentela oltre quella con i propri fratelli e fratellastri, non hanno alcuna concezione che il mondo sia esistito prima che fossero nati i più anziani del villaggio, che una piroga e i suoi occupanti continuano ad esistere anche dopo aver svoltato la curva del fiume, sparendo dalla vista. Secondo Everett, gli stretti confini dell' esperienza immediata e diretta racchiudono il loro intero mondo mentale. OGNI SERA - Inoltre Everett racconta che, insieme alla moglie Keren, anch' essa linguista, ogni sera, per mesi e mesi, su richiesta esplicita dei Piraha, ha tentato pazientemente di insegnare loro i numeri da uno a nove in portoghese brasiliano, dato che la loro lingua non ha i numeri. Dopo mesi di tale volontaria scuola serale, i Piraha adulti avrebbero dichiarato, con grande rammarico: «La nostra testa è troppo dura». I bimbi Piraha riescono ad imparare i numeri, ma non gli adulti. Nei loro scambi in natura con occasionali mercanti brasiliani i Piraha adottano criteri volubili. Uno stesso individuo, talvolta esige molta merce in contraccambio, ma talvolta si accontenta di molto meno, per prodotti identici. I Piraha hanno la netta sensazione che i mercanti si approfittino di loro, e vorrebbero poter imparare a far di conto, ma si sono rassegnati a non riuscirvi. Questi racconti degli Everett sono in netto disaccordo con moltissimi dati di altri linguisti ed antropologi, su popolazioni che anch' esse parlano lingue prive di un sistema di numeri (uno, due, tre, molti è il caso tipico). Il compianto linguista Kenneth Hale, del Mit, esperto di lingue aborigene australiane senza incertezza, raccontava, invece, che i parlanti di quelle lingue non hanno difficoltà ad imparare un sistema numerico estratto da altre lingue e poi riescono a far di conto, come tutti noi. MESI - Lo psicologo Peter Gordon, della Columbia University, dopo aver passato alcuni mesi con i Piraha e aver sondato la loro ridotta capacità di stimare le quantità numeriche, ha pubblicato su «Science», nel 2004, un articolo intitolato «La vita senza i numeri». Gordon dichiara che, come i piccioni e i bimbi molto piccoli, i Piraha adulti non sanno contare oltre tre e stimano solo grossolanamente la differenza tra gruppi grandi e gruppi piccoli di oggetti. La loro lingua, del resto, stando agli Everett e a Gordon, non avrebbe nemmeno parole per esprimere i comparativi (tanto quanto, più di, meno di). In una recente intervista al «New Scientist», Everett non ha lesinato le parole: «La lingua dei Piraha è l' ultimo chiodo nella bara della teoria Chomskiana secondo la quale esisterebbe una grammatica universale innata». A dispetto dell' immenso seguito conquistato dalle teorie di Chomsky, alle quali lui stesso dice di essersi ispirato nel passato, Everett presenta i Piraha come prova vivente che la lingua e il pensiero sono interamente plasmati dalla cultura, dall' esperienza dei sensi e dai modi di vita. Una netta reazione a queste sue tesi non ha tardato a farsi sentire. In questi giorni, un illustre linguista del Mit, David Pesetsky (titolare delle cattedra precedentemente occupata da Noam Chomsky, ancora attivissimo, ma ufficialmente in pensione), un giovane e valente fonologo di Harvard, Andrew Nevins e una linguista brasiliana, Cilene Rodrigues, esperta di sintassi comparata, hanno reso disponibile su Internet un testo di 60 dense pagine nelle quali confutano tutte le conclusioni di Everett, punto per punto (http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000411). Passando al setaccio i dati spesso contraddittorii dello stesso Everett, questi studiosi mostrano che alcune pretese limitazioni della lingua dei Piraha risultano puramente illusorie, mentre altre sono reali, ma presenti anche in lingue molto distanti dal Piraha, e distanti tra di loro, come il tedesco, il cinese, l' ebraico, il bengalese, la lingua degli indiani Wappo della California e quella parlata dai Circassi del Caucaso. Trattandosi di popoli con culture e stili di vita diversissimi, queste particolarità linguistiche comuni non possono certo, con buona pace di Everett, essere state plasmate da fattori ambientali e sociali. Nessun chiodo e nessuna bara, bensì un' accurata nuova rivendicazione dell' ipotesi che le variazioni tra le lingue umane riflettono variazioni di una comune profonda matrice mentale, la quale, ovviamente, interfaccia con la cultura, ma non viene da essa plasmata. IDEA SEDUCENTE - Pesetsky, Nevins e Rodriques giustamente insistono su una lezione centrale: ciò che è universale e comune a tutte le lingue, compreso il Piraha, non sono l' una o l' altra specifica forma linguistica, bensì un menu fisso forme linguistiche alternative, menu dal quale ciascuna lingua sceglie quanto le aggrada. Nevins in particolare insiste su un punto: «La nostra analisi conferma il grande interesse del caso Piraha, non lo sminuisce certo. Molti trovano intuitivamente seducente l' idea che le lingue siano plasmate dalla cultura e dagli stili di vita. E' interessantissimo mostrare, invece, una volta di più, proprio con una lingua insolita e per noi remota come quella dei Piraha, che esistono profonde somiglianze sintattiche tra lingue di culture molto diverse». L' antropologo brasiliano Marco Antonio Gonçalves ha raccolto tra i Piraha varie elaborate narrazioni. Eccone una, in sintesi: il demiurgo Igagai ha rigenerato il loro mondo dopo un diluvio e poi ha dato alle donne il fuoco per cuocere. Il mondo ha molti livelli, è sempre esistito, ma viene anche ricostruito ogni giorno. Forse non sono miti in senso stretto, questi dei Piraha, forse sono semplici novelle. Ma come non fare paralleli con Noè, Sisifo, Prometeo, Eraclito. Forse anche per i miti esiste un menu fisso, dal quale tutta l' umanità via via sceglie ciò che (come diceva Claude Lévi-Strauss) «è buono da pensare».

Industrial Metabolism

2008-09-21T14:04:00.005+02:00

http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80841e/80841E00.htm

Edited by Robert U. Ayres and Udo E. Simonis
©The United Nations University, 1994

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations University.
United Nations University PressThe United Nations University53-70 Jingumae 5-chome, Shibuya-kuTokyo 150, JapanTel.: (03) 3499-2811. Fax: (03) 3406-7345.Telex: J25442. Cable: UNATUNIV TOKYO.
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UNUP-841ISBN 92-808-0841-9United Nations Sales No. E.93.III.A.303500 P

Riconoscere un naso da pochi pixel un software ricrea i volti nascosti

2008-09-20T00:46:00.002+02:00

http://www.repubblica.it/2008/09/sezioni/scienza_e_tecnologia/software-volti-nascosti/software-volti-nascosti/software-volti-nascosti.html

Un algoritmo traduce i pixel attingendo da un database di volti umaniTra le possibili applicazioni l'identificazione di criminali e persone scomparse

IN aeroporto, al supermercato, mentre guidiamo: telecamere e webcam sono dappertutto e registrano i nostri movimenti proprio come aveva previsto Orwell nel suo capolavoro 1984. Ma forse neanche il visionario scrittore inglese avrebbe immaginato che un giorno saremmo riusciti a identificare un volto prendendo spunto da un fotogramma di pochi pixel. A segnare il sorpasso del presente su un futuro immaginato ha pensato l'equipe del professor Pablo Hennings-Yeomans, ricercatore della Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, che ha messo a punto un software capace di ricostruire i tratti del viso basandosi su immagini in bassissima risoluzione. Un'applicazione che potrebbe essere usata in mille modi, dall'identificazione di criminali e persone scomparse al recupero di video e foto sul web. Al di là dei risvolti pratici, ciò che gli studiosi hanno annunciato con orgoglio all'International Conference on Biometrics 2008 è che in materia di identificazione facciale è stato fatto un bel passo avanti. "I sistemi usati oggi - spiega Hennings-Yeomans - tengono conto di luce, angolazione del viso e tipo di telecamera usata, ma non fanno che trasformare un'immagine in bassa risoluzione in un'altra che non esiste. Da una foto sfocata, il computer ricostruisce un volto riconoscibile all'occhio umano ma spesso diverso da quello di chi si sta cercando". Il software progettato dai ricercatori della Pennsylvania utilizza invece un algoritmo che traduce i pixel in bassa risoluzione in immagini reali, ricavando le informazioni necessarie proprio da un database di 300 volti umani. Da ogni faccia, il sistema "estrae" le caratteristiche lineari e le codifica, creando un'associazione immediata tra immagine digitale in bassa risoluzione e tratti del viso.
Insieme all'ingegnere informatico B. Vijaya Kumar e al ricercatore Simon Baker della Microsoft Research, Hennings-Yeomans ha programmato un software che unisce la precisione di un algoritmo di alta risoluzione alla gamma di informazioni dell'altro, programmato per la catalogazione dei lineamenti. "In questo modo - continua il ricercatore - si evitano distorsioni che, specie in campo forense, possono essere pericolose". Il progetto "Recognition of low-resolution faces using multiple still images and multiple cameras" è stato già sperimentato con successo e funziona ancora meglio se si utilizzano immagini provenienti da videocamere diverse. Naturalmente, mettono in guardia gli autori, il software è migliorabile. "Ma presto cercherete e troverete le cose su Google inserendo un frammento di immagine, invece che un testo. Presto anche le immagini più irriconoscibili non avranno segreti", conclude Hennings-Yeomans. Attenzione, dunque, perché il grande occhio non solo ci guarda, ma è anche capace di riconoscerci da lontano. Con gran sollievo di avvocati, pm e forze dell'ordine. Anche se l'intimità del cuore, come scriveva Orwell, resta imprevedibile.

BlackBox Project in an abandoned coal mine

2008-09-18T22:10:00.016+02:00

http://www.techworld.com/green-it/news/index.cfm?newsID=10667

Sun and a consortium of other businesses are going to lower Blackbox self-contained computing facilities into a Japanese coal mine to set up an underground datacentre, using up to 50 percent less power than a ground-level datacentre.

The coolant will be ground water and the site's temperature is a constant 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) all year, meaning no air-conditioning will be needed outside the containers. This reduces the energy required for the water chillers, used with surface-level Blackbox containers.
The group estimates that up to $9 million of electricity costs could be saved annually if the centre were to run 30,000 server cores.
Sun is working with eleven other companies, including Internet Initiative Japan - an ISP, BearingPoint, Itochu Techno-Solutions and NS Solutions. They will form a joint venture with Sun. NTT Communications and Chuo University are also involved.
The disused coal mine is located in the Chubu region on Japan's Honshu island. Sun will build 30 Blackbox self-contained datacentres containing a total of 10,000 servers (cores). This can be increased to 30,000 cores if there is the demand for it.
The containers will be lowered 100m into the mine and linked to power, water cooling and network lines via external connectors.
Sun has been developing its Blackbox concept for three years and a typical one has 250 servers mounted in seven racks inside a standard 20-foot shipping container. Sun says that With T-series processors, a single Blackbox can hold up to 2,000 cores, providing 8,000 simultaneous processing threads.
Such a subterranean datacentre will be easier to secure against unauthorised entry and terrorist attacks. The Blackbox containers are robust enough to withstand earthquakes, being capable of withstanding a quake of magnitude 6.7 on the Richter scale. The Nihonkai-Chubu earthquake shook the region in 1983.

The project has been initially costed at $405 million and the site should start offering datacentre services to public and private sector customers in April, 2010.

Sun to set up datacentre in coal mine

2008-09-18T22:10:00.013+02:00

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/tech/130A0033BBD4A53ACC25739B006DF606

Sun Microsystems and a consortium of other organisations are going to lower an enclosed self-contained datacentre into a Japanese coal mine. The goal is to set up an underground datacentre, using up to 50% less power than a ground-level one.
The coolant will be ground water and the site's temperature is a constant 15 degrees Celsius all year, meaning no air-conditioning will be needed outside the containers. This reduces the energy required for the water chillers.The self-contained datacentre will be housed in a shipping container and comes courtesy of Sun, which sells the enclosed datacentres, called Blackboxes.It is estimated that up to US$9 million (NZ$13 million) of electricity costs could be saved annually if the centre were to run 30,000 server cores.Sun is working with eleven other companies, including ISP Internet Initiative Japan, BearingPoint, Itochu Techno-Solutions and NS Solutions. They will form a joint venture with Sun. NTT Communications and Chuo University are also involved.The disused coal mine is located in the Chubu region on Japan's Honshu island. Sun will build 30 Blackbox self-contained datacentres containing a total of 10,000 servers (cores). This can be increased to 30,000 cores if there is the demand for it.The containers will be lowered into the mine and linked to power, water cooling and network lines via external connectors.Sun has been developing its Blackbox concept for three years and a typical one has 250 servers mounted in seven racks inside a standard 20-foot shipping container. Sun says that with T-series processors, a single Blackbox can hold up to 2,000 cores, providing 8,000 simultaneous processing threads.Such a subterranean datacentre will be easier to secure against unauthorised entry and terrorist attacks. The Blackbox containers are robust enough to withstand earthquakes, being capable of withstanding a quake of magnitude 6.7 on the Richter scale. The Nihonkai-Chubu earthquake shook the region in 1983.The project has been initially estimated to cost US$405 million and the site should start offering datacentre services to public and private sector customers in 2010. -->

Water-Based Data Center

2008-09-17T15:35:00.002+02:00

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220080209234%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20080209234&RS=DN/20080209234

Water-Based Data Center

28 Agosto 2008

Google Eyes Offshore, Wave-Powered Data Centers

2008-09-17T01:25:00.003+02:00

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/09/09/google-planning-offshore-wave-powered-data-centers/

Google data centers may someday float on the ocean. The search giant recently filed a patent for a “water-based data center,” which uses ocean surface waves to power and cool the facility. The patent also confirms Google’s development of “crane-removable modules,” a container-based data center, writes Rich Miller on Data Center Knowledge.
According to the patent, these floating data centers will be located 3 to 7 miles off-shore and reside in 50 to 70 meters of water. The data centers will incorporate Pelamis Wave Energy Converter units that can turn ocean surface waves into electricity and can be combined to form “wave farms.”
“If perfected, this approach could be used to build 40 megawatt data centers that don’t require real estate or property taxes,” writes Miller. But he questions which laws would govern the consumer data managed from the offshore location.
Back in January, according to Miller, International Data Security (IDS) said it was planning to build up to 50 data centers on cargo ships moored at piers, with data center space below-deck and container-based data centers being housed above deck.
In August, IBM announced it’s planning to build a $360 million data center. Although it will not be floating in the sea, the data center will also take a modular approach to construction, which the company says can defer significant capital costs and slash energy use by 50 percent.
Sun has also been working in the modular data center space. It has launched Project BlackBox, an energy efficient modular data center with eight racks in a shipping container.

Google search finds seafaring solution

2008-09-17T01:18:00.004+02:00

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article4753389.ece

Google may take its battle for global domination to the high seas with the launch of its own “computer navy”.
The company is considering deploying the supercomputers necessary to operate its internet search engines on barges anchored up to seven miles (11km) offshore.
The “water-based data centres” would use wave energy to power and cool their computers, reducing Google’s costs. Their offshore status would also mean the company would no longer have to pay property taxes on its data centres, which are sited across the world, including in Britain.
In the patent application seen by The Times, Google writes: “Computing centres are located on a ship or ships, anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat away.”
The increasing number of data centres necessary to cope with the massive information flows generated on popular websites has prompted companies to look at radical ideas to reduce their running costs.
The supercomputers housed in the data centres, which can be the size of football pitches, use massive amounts of electricity to ensure they do not overheat. As a result the internet is not very green.
Data centres consumed 1 per cent of the world’s electricity in 2005. By 2020 the carbon footprint of the computers that run the internet will be larger than that of air travel, a recent study by McKinsey, a consultancy firm, and the Uptime Institute, a think tank, predicted.
In an attempt to address the problem, Microsoft has investigated building a data centre in the cold climes of Siberia, while in Japan the technology firm Sun Microsystems plans to send its computers down an abandoned coal mine, using water from the ground as a coolant. Sun said it could save $9 million (£5 million) of electricity costs a year and use half the power the data centre would have required if it was at ground level.
Technology experts said Google’s “computer navy” was an unexpected but clever solution. Rich Miller, the author of the datacentreknowledge.com blog, said: “It’s really innovative, outside-the-box thinking.”
Google refused to say how soon its barges could set sail. The company said: “We file patent applications on a variety of ideas. Some of those ideas later mature into real products, services or infrastructure, some don’t.”
Concerns have been raised about whether the barges could withstand an event such as a hurricane. Mr Miller said: “The huge question raised by this proposal is how to keep the barges safe.”

Ernst Haeckel 1899-1904

2008-09-15T21:38:00.003+02:00

http://caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/~stueber/haeckel/kunstformen/natur.html

img 300 dpi

Ernst Haeckel

Kunstformen der Natur

1899-1904

Is wind the new ethanol?

2008-09-15T21:20:00.006+02:00

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200810/world-in-numbers

Blowback

by Matthew Quirk

These are boom times for wind power. T. Boone Pickens, the wildcatter turned oil baron, is building the world’s biggest wind farm, in the dry scrub of the Texas Panhandle—a $10 billion bet on wind’s future. Twenty-eight states have set ambitious mandates for renewable energy, with wind power shouldering most of the load; many compel electric utilities to get at least 20 percent of their supply from wind and other renewable sources between 2015 and 2025.
Those requirements, along with a generous federal subsidy (20 percent of wind energy’s costs), have fostered a turbine-building frenzy. Overall capacity grew by 45 percent last year alone. Several wind-power companies have been snapped up in recent years in a string of multibillion-dollar deals. In May, Jim Cramer talked up wind stocks on Mad Money while assembling a model turbine in the studio.
And why not? Wind power seems to promise zero emissions and an endless supply of cheap power.
Still, it’s hard to ignore the parallels to the recent ethanol boom, which was also fueled by mandates and subsidies, and which is now viewed almost universally as a disaster. Wind power is unlikely to cause a global food crisis. But heedless investment in it may provoke blowback of a different sort.
Though wind advocates say that we can reliably and economically use wind for 20 percent of our power needs, the experience of Texas, which leads the nation in wind power—2.9 percent of its electricity comes from wind—highlights two big problems: transmission and variability.
Pickens’s windmills (like most of Texas’s) will be in the west, where the wind blows the most. The big cities are in the east. This problem plagues wind power nationally: people typically don’t live where the wind blows hardest, so you have to send power from, say, upstate to downstate New York, or from the Dakotas to the cities of the Midwest.
Texas expects to max out its east-west transmission lines by the end of the year. More wind power means new transmission lines, which will cost between $3 billion and $6.4 billion. Accommodating wind power on the scale foreseen nationally may require 12,000 to 19,000 miles of new high-power lines crisscrossing the country (by way of comparison, the interstate highway system runs 46,837 miles), plunging large parts of America into NIMBY hell.
Wind variability presents a more fundamental problem. Texas’s experience, at less than 3 percent wind power, is again instructive. In February, an unexpected cold front calmed the state’s wind farms. As power ran out and backup generation proved inadequate, grid operators were forced to call on large industrial and commercial users to power down.
Wind farms tend to produce the most energy when it’s not needed—at night and in the spring and fall, when demand is low. The hottest, highest-demand days of the year are the days when wind’s contribution is likely to be near zero. So wind, if it is to meet demand reliably, must be backed up, typically by (emissions-spewing) natural-gas plants that can ramp up and down quickly.
Powering plants up and down is inefficient, and when backup power is included, wind energy costs 10 to 30 percent more than fossil-fuel energy, even without factoring in the cost of new power lines. (Wind-energy costs have risen, not fallen, in recent years.) And once you include backup power, the cost of averting carbon-dioxide emissions by building a wind plant rises to $67 a ton, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Less sexy emissions-reduction strategies, such as increasing efficiency at current electrical plants, cost between $10 and $30 a ton.
Wind is indisputably a promising source of renewable energy—today, in fact, it looks like the most promising and practical source. But many kinks remain to be worked out. It would be a tragedy if wind power were killed in the cradle by overeager requirements that bring hidden costs, unreliable operations, and higher energy prices, inviting a backlash.
The way to address our greenhouse-gas problems is not to champion wind or any other “silver bullet.” It’s to pass a national carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, and let the market find the most efficient way to cut emissions and reduce our dependence on oil.

Matthew Quirk is an Atlantic staff editor

Human geography is mapped in the genes

2008-09-11T22:40:00.003+02:00

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14631-human-geography-is-mapped-in-the-genes.html?DCMP=ILC-arttsrhcol&nsref=specrt13_head_Gene%20geography

The genes of a European person can be enough to pinpoint their ancestry down to their home country, claim two new studies.
By reading single-letter DNA differences in the genomes of thousands of Europeans, researchers can tell a Finn from a Dane and a German from a Brit. In fact a visual genetic map mirrors the geopolitical map of the continent, right down to Italy's boot.
"It tells us that geography matters," says John Novembre, a population geneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who led one of the studies. Despite language, immigration and intermarriage, genetic differences between Europeans are almost entirely related to where they were born.
This, however, does not mean that the citizens of each European nation represent miniature races. "The genetic diversity in Europe is very low. There isn't really much," says Manfred Kayser, a geneticist at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, who led the other study.
One-letter differences
Kayser's and Novembre's teams uncovered the gene-geography pattern only by analysing hundreds of thousands of common gene variants called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the genomes of people from about two dozen countries. SNPs are places in the genome where one person's DNA might read A, while another's T.
Though the teams worked independently, they used some of the same DNA samples, which were gathered by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline to help hunt for genes linked to drug side effects. The researchers recorded the results alongside the country of origin for each subject as well as that of their parents and grandparents when possible.
For each subject, the researchers decoded half a million SNPs. However, to get an overall assessment of the difference between any two genomes, the researchers used a mathematical trick that scrunched the hundreds of thousands of SNPs into two coordinates, with each person's genome represented by a point. The greater the distance between two points, the greater the difference in their genomes.
When both teams plotted thousands of genomes on a single graph along with their country of origin, a striking map of Europe emerged. Spanish and Portuguese genomes clustered "south-west" of French genomes, while Italian genomes jutted "south-east" of Swiss.
These cardinal directions are artificial, but the spatial relationships between genomes are not. In general, the closer together two people live, the more similar their DNA. The same is known to be true of animals .
Predicting origins
The map was so accurate that when Novembre's team placed a geopolitical map over their genetic "map", half of the genomes landed within 310 kilometres of their country of origin, while 90% fell within 700 km.
Both teams found that southern Europeans boast more overall genetic diversity than Scandinavians, British and Irish.
"That makes perfect sense with the major migration waves that went into Europe," says Kayser, noting Homo sapien's European debut 35,000 years ago, post-ice age expansions 20,000 years ago, and movements propelled by the advent of farming 10,000 years ago. In each case, members of established southern populations struck north.
"A pattern in which genes mirror geography is essentially what you would expect from a history in which people moved slowly and mated mainly with their close neighbours," says Noah Rosenberg, a geneticist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Correlation between Genetic and Geographic Structure in Europe

2008-09-11T22:35:00.002+02:00

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VRT-4T5BRBK-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=abb22e14103043204d5356530350cfd9

Understanding the genetic structure of the European population is important, not only from a historical perspective, but also for the appropriate design and interpretation of genetic epidemiological studies. Previous population genetic analyses with autosomal markers in Europe either had a wide geographic but narrow genomic coverage [1] and [2], or vice versa [3], [4], [5] and [6]. We therefore investigated Affymetrix GeneChip 500K genotype data from 2,514 individuals belonging to 23 different subpopulations, widely spread over Europe. Although we found only a low level of genetic differentiation between subpopulations, the existing differences were characterized by a strong continent-wide correlation between geographic and genetic distance. Furthermore, mean heterozygosity was larger, and mean linkage disequilibrium smaller, in southern as compared to northern Europe. Both parameters clearly showed a clinal distribution that provided evidence for a spatial continuity of genetic diversity in Europe. Our comprehensive genetic data are thus compatible with expectations based upon European population history, including the hypotheses of a south-north expansion and/or a larger effective population size in southern than in northern Europe. By including the widely used CEPH from Utah (CEU) samples into our analysis, we could show that these individuals represent northern and western Europeans reasonably well, thereby confirming their assumed regional ancestry.

The Genetic Map of Europe

2008-09-11T22:25:00.006+02:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/science/13visual.html

Biologists have constructed a genetic map of Europe showing the degree of relatedness between its various populations.

All the populations are quite similar, but the differences are sufficient that it should be possible to devise a forensic test to tell which country in Europe an individual probably comes from, said Manfred Kayser, a geneticist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
The map shows, at right, the location in Europe where each of the sampled populations live and, at left, the genetic relationship between these 23 populations. The map was constructed by Dr. Kayser, Dr. Oscar Lao and others, and appears in an article in Current Biology published online on August 7.
The genetic map of Europe bears a clear structural similarity to the geographic map. The major genetic differences are between populations of the north and south (the vertical axis of the map shows north-south differences, the horizontal axis those of east-west). The area assigned to each population reflects the amount of genetic variation in it.
Europe has been colonized three times in the distant past, always from the south. Some 45,000 years ago the first modern humans entered Europe from the south. The glaciers returned around 20,000 years ago and the second colonization occurred about 17,000 years ago by people returning from southern refuges. The third invasion was that of farmers bringing the new agricultural technology from the Near East around 10,000 years ago.
The pattern of genetic differences among present day Europeans probably reflects the impact of these three ancient migrations, Dr. Kayser said.
The map also identifies the existence of two genetic barriers within Europe. One is between the Finns (light blue, upper right) and other Europeans. It arose because the Finnish population was at one time very small and then expanded, bearing the atypical genetics of its few founders.
The other is between Italians (yellow, bottom center) and the rest. This may reflect the role of the Alps in impeding free flow of people between Italy and the rest of Europe.
Data for the map were generated by gene chips programmed to test and analyze 500,000 sites of common variation on the human genome, although only the 300,000 most reliable sites were used for the map. Dr. Kayser's team tested almost 2,500 people and analyzed the data by correlating the genetic variations in all the subjects. The genetic map is based on the two strongest of these sets of correlations.
The gene chips require large amounts of DNA, more than is available in most forensic samples. Dr. Kayser hopes to identify the sites on the human genome which are most diagnostic for European origin. These sites, if reasonably few in number, could be tested for in hair and blood samples, Dr. Kayser said.
Genomic sites that carry the strongest signal of variation among populations may be those influenced by evolutionary change, Dr. Kayser said. Of the 100 strongest sites, 17 are found in the region of the genome that confers lactose tolerance, an adaptation that arose among a cattle herding culture in northern Europe some 5,000 years ago. Most people switch off the lactose digesting gene after weaning, but the cattle herders evidently gained a great survival advantage by keeping the gene switched on through adulthood.

Met Police launch electronic crime mapping trial

2008-09-04T22:01:00.005+02:00

http://maps.met.police.uk/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/15/digitalmedia.ukcrime

The Metropolitan police force has introduced its first trial crime map showing burglary, robbery and vehicle crime for the whole of London.
The Met online crime mapping project, which uses data up to the end of June this year, is an initiative launched by the London mayor, Boris Johnson.
The crime mapping project uses Google Maps technology combined with Met Police crime data, highlighting London boroughs with above- or below-average crime rates and comparing rates for different months and years.
Southwark scores worst on crime levels, which increased by more than 100 individual incidents between May and June this year.
Another four of London's 32 boroughs, including Westminster and Hackney, were above the overall average crime rate across the capital in June.
Seven outlying boroughs, including Richmond, all saw below-average rates of crime for London in June.
Users can zoom in on the map to see specific rates for their neighbourhood, or search by postcode.
"The Mayor made crime mapping a key manifesto commitment and it is an integral part of our strategy to make London safer, " said Kit Malthouse, deputy mayor for policing.
"It is a proven technique for increasing public safety and putting extra resources into crime hotspots where they are most needed."
A Met spokesman emphasised that this version of the map is a test phase and will be subject to a technical review.
"The software development will enhance the service that we currently provide regarding the number, rate and geographical location of defined crime types within the capital," the spokesman said.
"The electronic crime maps will sit alongside the crime statistics that are published monthly on a ward, borough and pan-London basis."
He added that the initial version will be limited to burglary, robbery and vehicle crime data and that the software will be enhanced before a formal launch in September.
Malthouse said the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, had "recently converted" to the crime mapping programme following the work by the mayor's office, consequently announcing a project to introduce maps for police forces around the country.
Police forces in Hampshire, Lancashire, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire are all conducting trials of their own crime maps. The government hopes the initiative will increase public confidence in the police and keep them more informed on local crime problems

trashmap

2008-08-29T22:16:00.003+02:00

Maps by Jim Ingraham, NOAA-Fisheries

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/1103/1103_feature.html

Ocean Surface Current Simulator (OSCURS) model developed by W. James Ingraham Jr., an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), predicts the trajectory of drift originating along the coasts of the North Pacific rim. Drift from Japan is shown in red; drift from the United States, in blue. The diagrams show the position of drift after 183 days (top), three years (middle), and ten years (bottom).

The world's rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan

2008-08-29T22:08:00.004+02:00

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbish-dump-a-garbage-tip-that-stretches-from-hawaii-to-japan-778016.html

A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.
The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.
Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States."
Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: "It moves around like a big animal without a leash." When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added.
The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land.
Mr Moore, a former sailor, came across the sea of waste by chance in 1997, while taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. He had steered his craft into the "North Pacific gyre" – a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it.
He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of miles from land. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by," he said in an interview. "How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?"
Mr Moore, the heir to a family fortune from the oil industry, subsequently sold his business interests and became an environmental activist. He warned yesterday that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade.
Professor David Karl, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, said more research was needed to establish the size and nature of the plastic soup but that there was "no reason to doubt" Algalita's findings.
"After all, the plastic trash is going somewhere and it is about time we get a full accounting of the distribution of plastic in the marine ecosystem and especially its fate and impact on marine ecosystems."
Professor Karl is co-ordinating an expedition with Algalita in search of the garbage patch later this year and believes the expanse of junk actually represents a new habitat. Historically, rubbish that ends up in oceanic gyres has biodegraded. But modern plastics are so durable that objects half-a-century old have been found in the north Pacific dump. "Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere," said Tony Andrady, a chemist with the US-based Research Triangle Institute.
Mr Moore said that because the sea of rubbish is translucent and lies just below the water's surface, it is not detectable in satellite photographs. "You only see it from the bows of ships," he said.
According to the UN Environment Programme, plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food.
Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic,
Dr Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles – the raw materials for the plastic industry – are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple," said Dr Eriksen.

Le vacche tedesche inquinano come i Suv

2008-08-29T01:09:00.005+02:00

http://www.ioew.de/home/downloaddateien/foodwatch_report.pdf

http://www.corriere.it/esteri/08_agosto_28/vacche_tedesche_inquinanti_aae9817a-750c-11dd-b47d-00144f02aabc.shtml

Thilo Bode, numero uno dell'organizzazione Foodwatch: «Sono una bomba climatica»

Non la scampa più nessuno, questa battaglia sui cambiamenti del clima. Ora, è il momento delle vacche tedesche: inquinano quanto i Suv e «sono una bomba climatica», sostiene Thilo Bode, numero uno di Foodwatch, organizzazione di difesa dei consumatori della Germania. Solo che – aggiunge – la lobby agricola è finora riuscita a tener il fatto nascosto, al contrario di quanto non hanno saputo fare acciaierie, produttori di energia, industria dell’automobile, compagnie aeree.
LO STUDIO - Foodwatch, dunque, ha effettuato uno studio, insieme all’Istituto per la ricerca sull’economia ecologica (Ioew), e i numeri che ne sono usciti sono assolutamente interessanti. L’agricoltura tedesca (ma ovviamente il discorso in varie misure vale per tutti i Paesi) manda nell’atmosfera ogni anno l’equivalente di 133 milioni di tonnellate di anidride carbonica, poco meno di quella emessa da tutto il traffico sulle strade della Germania (152 milioni di tonnellate). Mentre alle automobili stanno per essere applicate norme europee piuttosto severe per ridurre le emissioni, l’agricoltura è però praticamente assente dai programmi di abbattimento dei livelli di gas serra del governo tedesco e della Ue. Invece, dice Foddwatch, la questione non va sottovalutata e, anzi, dovrebbe spingere tutti a consumare meno carne, “a tornare al rito dell’arrosto domenicale”, ha detto Bode al settimanale Spiegel.
I NUMERI - Produrre un chilo di carne bovina con metodologie intensive (le più usate) equivale, in termini di emissioni, a un viaggio di 70,6 chilometri in utilitaria. Ancora peggio se il chilo di carne è prodotto con metodologia biologica: l’equivalenza è di 113,4 chilometri. Un chilo di formaggio emette quanto un’auto che viaggia per 71,4 chilometri. È necessario ridurre i consumi di carne, dicono dunque gli scienziati. Il calcolo delle missioni agricole e zootecniche tiene conto di una varietà di fattori: l’uso di fertilizzanti, di diserbanti, di pesticidi e il costante uso agricolo di zone umide, che provoca il rilascio nell’atmosfera di grandi quantità di anidride carbonica. Ma considera anche le emissioni corporee di ogni singolo animale: i ruminanti, per dire, emettono costantemente metano, un gas serra 23 volte più potente dell’anidride carbonica. Il ministero dell’Agricoltura tedesco, finora, ha evitato di affrontare il problema. Ma il ministero dell’Ambiente di Berlino ha preparato un documento (riservato) nel quale si sostiene che non ha senso lottare contro i cambiamenti climatici se poi si danno, attraverso la Politica agricola comunitaria, miliardi di euro a un settore che finora non si è nemmeno posto il problema dell’effetto serra. Ovviamente, c’è già chi propone di mettere una tassa “ecologica” sulla carne e sul latte.

Gut Reactions /1

2008-08-24T14:05:00.006+02:00

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809/termites

The termite’s stomach, of all things, has become the focus of large-scale scientific investigations. Could the same properties that make the termite such a costly pest help us solve global warming?

by Lisa Margonelli

Lisa Margonelli is an Irvine Fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank (2007).

MOLECULAR WRECKING YARD: Electron-micrograph images of the termite's third gut, where food is turned into fuel(Images by Falk Warnecke, Phil Hugenholtz, Doe Joint Genome Institute and Manfred Auer, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

For more than a hundred million years, termites have lived in obscurity, noticed only by the occasional hungry anteater or, more recently, by dismayed homeowners. Other social insects, such as bees and ants, are celebrated for their industriousness and engineering feats, but popular culture has not gotten around to cheering on termites for theirs—even though they build mounds as tall as 20 feet, which may be oriented north-south as accurately as if plotted with a compass, in order to maximize heat from the sun. The extraordinary powers evolution has bestowed on termites—some protect the mound by spraying chemicals from nozzles on their heads at intruders, while others have snapping mandibles that can decapitate invading ants—have similarly failed to elevate their status. On the contrary: last year, scientists at the London Natural History Museum called termites “social cockroaches” and proposed reclassifying them, in a paper brusquely titled “Death of an Order.”
The more closely one examines the termite, the more mysteries one finds. In some species, if a termite discovers a contamination in the mound, it alerts everyone else, and a hygiene frenzy begins. As a disease passes through a mound, the survivors vaccinate the young with their antennae. When a mound’s queen is no longer capable of reproduction, the workers may gather around her distended body and lick her to death.
The greatest mystery of all is found in the worker termite’s third gut, which is delineated by an intricately structured stomach valve, as unique from species to species as individual snowflakes are and, in its way, just as lovely. The size of a sesame seed, the third gut contains a dense mush of symbiotic microbes. Many of these microbes live nowhere else on Earth; they depend on adult termites to pass them on to the young by means of a “woodshake,” a microbial slurry.
This microbial mush may be a treasure trove for the human race. Recently, sophisticated genetic sequencing produced an inventory of more than 80,000 genes, spanning some 300 microbial species, from the guts of Costa Rican termites. These findings, published last November in the journal Nature, got a lot of attention, not for the quantity of microorganisms—after all, the human mouth contains 600 species of bacteria—but for their complexity, and in particular for the fact that among them are 500 genes for enzymes able to break down the cellulose in wood and grasses.
With oil prices at historic highs, the quest is on to turn such plant materials into a replacement for gasoline—call it grassoline. Since 2007, U.S. energy policy has been shaped by the premise that we can brew enough biofuels to replace 35 billion gallons of gasoline by 2017, and 60 billion by 2030. Corn ethanol has been a bust, blamed for wasting water, exhausting croplands, and causing tortilla shortages in Mexico and rice shortages in Asia. For all these problems, it currently contributes the equivalent of only about 4.2 billion gallons of gas a year. And the carbon dioxide emitted in the process of growing and fermenting corn and then distilling and burning ethanol is nearly as much as that emitted by extracting, refining, and burning gasoline.
Wood and grasses seem to hold more promise. They contain chains of thousands of glucose molecules that could be made into so-called cellulosic ethanol and then burned like gasoline, while releasing just 15 percent of gasoline’s greenhouse-gas emissions. But there’s a catch. Wood has evolved to keep its sugars to itself, covering them with lignin—a substance that gives cell walls rigidity—and then locking them in a matrix of cellulose and hemicellulose protected by complex chemical bonds. Because these sugars are so hard to get at, our output of cellulosic ethanol is still, after decades of research, just 1.5 million gallons a year—less than 1 percent of one day’s gasoline consumption.
But where humans have failed, the termite succeeds—spectacularly. A worker termite tears off a piece of wood with its mandibles and lets its guts work on it like a molecular wrecking yard, stripping away sugars, CO2, hydrogen, and methane with 90 percent efficiency. The little biorefineries inside each termite allow the insects to eat up $11 billion in U.S. property every year. But some scientists and policy makers believe they may also make the termite a sort of biotech Rumpelstiltskin, able to spin straw—or grass, or wood by-products—into something much more valuable. Offer a termite this page, and its microbial helpers will break it down into two liters of hydrogen, enough to drive more than six miles in a fuel-cell car. If we could turn wood waste into fuel with even a fraction of the termite’s efficiency, we could run our economy on sawdust, lawn clippings, and old magazines.
And so the termite may be poised for its moment in the sun. Speaking last year about moving toward a biofuel economy, Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman pointed to the termite-to-tank concept, asserting, “We know this can be done.” Another official called it a promising “transformational discovery.” Suddenly the termite is everywhere, from Popular Science to Congressional Quarterly Today to Wired. With the audience for energy speeches and articles so small and wonky, it’s too soon to say that the little bug has exactly become a celebrity (although it did recently rate a footnote in Vanity Fair). But in some circles, it has attained a certain status as the pest that could solve our energy problems, transforming geopolitics and agriculture in the process. “Deus ex termita,” you might say.

Gut Reactions /2

2008-08-24T14:04:00.006+02:00

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809/termites

Perhaps—but it won’t be easy. Last year, in an initiative that has been compared to the Manhattan Project, the Department of Energy founded three Bioenergy Research Centers, which collectively house scientists from seven government labs, 18 universities, and several private companies, and are aimed at making cellulosic ethanol competitive with gasoline within five years. The effort, which has $375million in funding, is focused on plumbing the structures of woods and grasses and learning how various creatures break them down; genetic modifications, scientists hope, could then enable us to make cheaper fuels. The centers are expected to come up with ideas that can be commercialized—actually making them more like Bell Labs, say, than like the Manhattan Project.
Started two years earlier, the termite project described in Nature is based on the same model of public and private collaboration, and is now an important part of the bioenergy initiative. Indeed, termites might be seen as an “indicator species” for the larger effort—and, as scientists are learning, they are full of devilish details and vexing complications.
In 2005, the microbial ecologist Falk Warnecke, of the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute, traveled with researchers from Caltech and the San Diego biotech company Diversa to Costa Rica, where they opened up a termite nest in a tree. The group dissected 165 worker termites, freezing the contents of their third guts in liquid nitrogen and shipping them to Diversa’s lab. After extracting the DNA from the microbial cells, Diversa sent a sample to the institute to be sequenced.
Housed in a low brick building in Walnut Creek, California, the Joint Genome Institute is sequencing the genes of hundreds of plants and microbes that might be useful for energy production and environmental cleanup; it is a key part of the Bioenergy Research Centers. Originally formed as part of the Human Genome Project in the late 1990s, the institute has its roots in the Department of Energy’s decades-long interest in tracking genetic mutations in atomic-bomb survivors and nuclear workers. The scale of its current mission becomes evident as soon as you enter the lobby, where a TV screen displays a ticker that tallies sequences by the minute, day, month, and year. When I arrived at about 10 o’clock one morning last spring, the day’s total stood at 25,555,288 DNA base pairs, the twinned nucleotides that are the building blocks of genes. Every second, another thousand base pairs joined the tally. Employees call this incessant data stream the “fire hose.” The institute now sequences as much DNA in an hour as it did in all of 1998, and the pace is planned to double by the end of the year.
Even for people accustomed to avalanches of data, the effort to map the contents of the termite’s third gut is extraordinary. “A disgusting mess of a data set,” says Phil Hugenholtz, the head of the institute’s Microbial Ecology Program. An angular Australian in his 40s, he speaks in rapid bursts, like a human fire hose. Traditional genomic analysis sequences one organism at a time, but Hugenholtz is a leading practitioner of metagenomics—the new science of sequencing genes from whole environments of microbes at once, and sorting out the resulting jumble of loose DNA code with the aid of computer science, statistics, and biochemistry. Metagenomics is not only breathtakingly fast; it allows us to catalog genes that were previously unknowable because so few types of microorganisms—fewer than 1 percent of all species of bacteria—can be cultured in a lab. Many biologists regard metagenomics as a scientific revolution akin to the invention of the microscope. In practice, though, it’s a sloppy art.
When the sequencers finished, they had 71 million letters of DNA code in tiny fragments. They sorted the fragments, assembled them into longer chains of genes, and scanned the genes to determine their likely functions and which of the 300 microbes they might have come from. Scientists then looked for combinations of chemicals that might be enzymes, comparing the results to enzymes known to work on cellulose. The metagenomic picture of the termite’s third gut that has so far emerged is a portrait of codes and probabilities—more sophisticated than a photograph from an electron microscope, but less satisfying, because so much remains indefinite.
Next, the scientists set about the long process of figuring out how all the parts work. “It’s like trying to learn about a house when someone’s given you nothing but the blueprints—and they’re all ripped up,” Hugenholtz says. Still, the blueprints were stunning. The termite gut contained much more than enzymes involved in breaking down wood into sugars: for example, there were a hundred species of spirochetes closely related to syphilis but here devoted to, among other things, producing hydrogen. There were also 482 appearances of a mysterious giant protein that Warnecke says looks like the international space station. He drew me a picture of a long, Lego-like scaffold with different enzymes plugged into it, hypothesizing that the protein might help strip sugars out of wood. But that was only a guess: “One of the disadvantages of finding so much is that you don’t know what it all means,” he told me.
Hugenholtz and Warnecke began sifting through the questions raised by the metagenome. Why do termites have 300 microbes and 500 different genes to degrade cellulose? How do you go about deciding which microbe is the most important? Do some termite species have stronger guts than others? And what on Earth was the space station doing? To tackle these questions, they needed more termites. They took some from cow patties on a Texas farm, surprising the elderly landowners by asking for a signed waiver on whatever intellectual property might develop.
One afternoon I watched Warnecke dissect 50 of the new termites. He worked at a rapid clip, pulling the insects’ heads and anuses in opposite directions with a microscopically violent yank; each termite’s gut unwound into a short, lumpy string. He showed me an electron-micrograph image of the inside of the gut. It looked like an undulating carpet. On it were rod-shaped bacteria; Warnecke pointed out pimple-like structures on the sides of a few, which he thought might be the space-station-like giant proteins. He speculated that the proteins work something like a Swiss Army knife, holding an array of tool-like enzymes and catalysts outside the cell to grab pieces of wood and whittle away, allowing the cell to slurp up the sugars thus released. If this hypothesis is correct, the proteins could be a great fit for biofuel production, because those loose sugars could be fermented into ethanol.
But the magnified images were far from conclusive. Hugenholtz slumped in front of the screen and complained that he saw no wood in the gut—were the termites starving? He impatiently made a list of tests he wanted done. Hugenholtz is confident that the team will eventually figure out what the proteins do. “You really see the science flailing around blindly here—but then things crystallize out of the darkness,” he told me.
One morning when I met Hugenholtz and Warnecke at a coffee shop, they began to riff on how the gut might work. “You get the feeling the microorganisms are more dominant than the termite. They must have a way to control the insect,” Warnecke said. Hugenholtz interrupted, quoting a colleague: “Maybe the termite is just a fancy delivery system for the creatures in the gut.” We tend to assume that the larger organism in a symbiotic relationship is in charge, but relationships like the one between the termite and the microbes involve constant two-way chemical communications. Even human beings, Hugenholtz said, are subconsciously eavesdropping on chemical conversations between the inhabitants of our guts; this leads us to crave, say, potato chips when our microbes want salt. His eyes fell warily on his coffee. “Do you think our stomach bacteria have trained us?”
History suggests that science follows its own timetable, often producing results long after the politicians who approved the funding have left office. Yet curiosity without the prospect of imminent practical application is something biotech investors are increasingly loath to pay for. When the Nature study began, Diversa was on the cutting edge of “ethical bioprospecting”—searching the world for novel environments and enzymes. After merging with a biofuels company, it became Verenium last year, and shifted to the more prosaic task of making commercial enzymes involved in the development of products including animal feed, paper, and fuels.
David Weiner, the assistant director of enzyme technology at Verenium, gave me a tour of the labs, showing me what he calls the “giant funnel”—the process the company uses to sift through nature’s intellectual property for enzymes that can be converted to profits. “We’re not really interested in DNA,” he said, meaning that the focus is on an enzyme’s performance, not its origins.
Whereas the Joint Genome Institute began by sequencing the termite-gut DNA—learning about its underlying structure—and only then tried to identify what might be useful, Weiner’s colleagues threw all the material from the Costa Rican expedition directly into testing, using the funnel approach to separate the most-useful enzymes from the millions of useless ones. Researchers inserted gene fragments into lab bacteria that had been genetically “tamed” to produce whatever enzyme the fragments were programmed to make. They then tested those enzymes on cellulose, to see if they would attack it. Only the winners made it to sequencing. You might think of the Joint Genome Institute as a group of diligent librarians, studying every step along the way. In contrast, a Verenium senior researcher told me, the company takes a “Julia Child approach”—once it has thrown together the ingredients (like termite guts and cellulose), it turns its attention to the final product, with far less focus on the stages in between.
Much of the action takes place in a machine—a type of robot, really—called the GigaMatrix. Clad in steel, the GigaMatrix looks like a copier from the late 1980s, with two flat TV monitors on top and a door on the side. It can screen up to a million enzymes at a go, easily exceeding in a single day the lifetime performance of a human lab tech. The GigaMatrix and other machines took the 500 or so most interesting enzymes from the termite gut and narrowed them down to fewer than 100 with potentially practical applications. Those were then tested for their effects on cellulose, modified, and inserted into “factory” bacteria trained to produce large quantities of enzymes while dining on cheap food, such as corn syrup. As the enzymes made their way through the process, every parameter of their growth and efficacy was measured. Only a small percentage proved powerful enough to merit continued investigation; these were stirred into multiple-enzyme “cocktails” to evaluate their speed and efficiency in combination. By the end, Weiner said, just a few enzymes remained in the running for further testing.
Geoff Hazlewood, a former senior vice president and now a consultant to Verenium, told me that the company has currently put aside studying termites for biofuels and has moved on to other potentially lucrative efforts. “You could screen ad nauseam,” he said, “but you can’t commit an infinite amount of resources.” Whatever the termites are doing may be too complicated and fragile to be useful in a large industrial process. There may be genius in the termite gut—Weiner calls it, admiringly, “a whole town”—but the wonders of symbiosis, in themselves, mean little to companies focused on the bottom line. “We want faster, cheaper, more efficient,” Weiner told me.

Gut Reactions /3

2008-08-24T13:33:00.007+02:00

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809/termites

And it’s too early to tell whether the termite will ever provide genes or information that will enable biofuel production. Termite research could instead provide a cautionary tale about the difficulties of replicating nature on a political schedule. It may be faster and easier to come up with a comprehensive energy policy—investing in energy efficiency, changing personal behavior, and working with other large oil consumers to control prices—than to create a cellulose economy out of the termite gut. Termites certainly have their critics. One is Harvey Blanch, a professor of chemical engineering at UC Berkeley and the chief science and technology officer at the Department of Energy’s Joint Bio-Energy Institute, in Emeryville, California (where Hugenholtz also conducts research). “Those microbes eat pâté!” Blanch said. By the time wood reaches the termite’s third gut, he explained, it has been chewed to a fine consistency and soaked in the highly alkaline second stomach; the gut microbes don’t have to work very hard to break it down. Pretreating wood in similar ways on an industrial scale would be ridiculously expensive, he believes. He thinks the termite has been overhyped, and sees this as a reflection of unrealistically high hopes for quick, painless replacements for gasoline. Blanch has experienced the pitfalls of research driven by political goals. In the early 1970s, he worked on creating faux meat products from petroleum, which was then thought to be a cheap way to feed the world. For example, single-celled “chicken” proteins were produced by yeasts that fed on oil by-products, and then draped around plastic bones. But when the 1973 oil crisis hit, the cost of the raw material soared, effectively ending the petroprotein business. Blanch then shifted to cellulosic ethanol; the project was progressing until President Reagan killed it, in the mid-1980s. Now, he’s at once hopeful that we will one day be able to engineer novel organisms and make better fuels, and wary of putting too much faith in quick technological solutions. “Given the scale at which we need to operate, it’s hard to imagine any magic organism that will do the trick,” he told me. Several years ago, government labs set a goal of producing cellulosic ethanol for $1.33 a gallon by 2012, but Blanch cautions that the retail price could be $6 or $8 a gallon if the cost of the raw materials rises, and he thinks a realistic deadline is at least 10 years away. Perhaps because of his earlier experiences, he fears that projects that fail to deliver quickly are at risk, which puts a lot of pressure on both the Bioenergy Research Centers and individual researchers.
These concerns speak to an important tension underlying the termite research: the often competing agendas of work aimed at producing quick results, and of the slower, more methodical approach known as basic science, which tries to discover the fundamental logic of natural processes. Again, Julia Child (or maybe the more commercial Wolfgang Puck) versus the librarians. Some of the scientists—and even venture capitalists—I spoke with voiced fears that the race to harness nature for fuel production may cause us to neglect basic science and thus jeopardize potential long-term gains. Consider this: half of the 80,000 genes inventoried from the Costa Rican termites remain unidentified, and each of those 40,000, Warnecke imagines, could require a Ph.D. thesis to figure out. Hugenholtz says that metagenomics is grappling with the problem of having too much information and too few references. “Sequencing is far outstripping our ability to characterize the genes,” he explains, adding that this can lead to “genome rot”—a chain of errors created when one scientist gets a gene wrong, and then the mistake is multiplied across other genomes. The popular model of science is based on “eureka” moments, but right now, metagenomics is more like a big 3-D puzzle, where every new piece of knowledge—and every mistake—affects the whole. Trying to solve just one part of the puzzle for a quick commercial breakthrough may be as tricky as solving the entire thing. It could also cause us to give short shrift to alternative solutions. Eric Mathur was one of the Diversa executives who helped set up the Costa Rican expedition; he now works for Synthetic Genomics, a company founded by the scientific impresario Craig Venter to search for biology-based fuels and methods to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Mathur says the Nature paper is just the beginning of a long process of understanding how symbiotic creatures deal with wood and carbon. He thinks that searching for individual enzymes in the termite will be a dead end, but that harnessing the power of whole environments might yield results. The challenge, he says, is to learn how these environments’ overall metabolisms work, and then use the tools of synthetic biology to engineer the organisms in them to evolve—creating a “slave organism” that focuses all of its resources, down to its last electron, on processing carbon. “Metabolic engineering is a very powerful method for productivity,” he told me. But the strongest argument for more basic research may be the termite itself. Jared Leadbetter, an associate professor of environmental microbiology at Caltech, remembers feeling “like an ecotourist in Alice in Wonderland” the first time he looked at a magnified termite gut, 18 years ago. Leadbetter has pioneered the study of the metabolism of a few of the spirochetes in the gut. Like Mathur, he believes scientists might put the termite’s gut to work against global warming by using it to understand and possibly alter the carbon cycle—the biogeochemical give-and-take of greenhouse gases between the Earth and its atmosphere. Leadbetter says one of the extraordinary things about termites is not how much ethanol they might make, but how little methane they produce. Cows lose 20 percent of the energy in the grass they eat, because the microbes in their stomachs combine hydrogen and carbon dioxide from the grass to make methane, a greenhouse gas that traps 20 times as much heat in the atmosphere as CO2. In 2006, the greenhouse gases produced by U.S. farm animals exceeded the emissions of the iron, steel, and cement industries combined. Termites lose less than 2 percent of their nutrients to methane production, because the spirochetes in their guts transform hydrogen and carbon dioxide into acetate, which the termites use as fuel. If we understood this process, perhaps we could put new microorganisms into the stomachs of cows and reduce their production of methane. We’re a long way from changing the chemistry of cows’ stomachs, but the process of adapting and commercializing the termite’s role in the carbon cycle has already yielded success on a small scale. The Virginia-based company ArcTech trained termites to eat coal, and then rummaged through their guts to find the microorganisms best at turning coal into methane. It cultured those microorganisms and now feeds them coal; the company plans to use the methane they produce to make electricity, and is already selling the by-products, including one used by farmers as a soil additive. ArcTech says this method eliminates virtually all greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-based electricity production. Other companies are trying to engineer similar organisms that could be sent into abandoned mines and oil wells to scavenge fuel that goes unused because it is so hard to get at. Such efforts could have a dramatic effect on both the environment and geopolitics: experts estimate that increasing the yield of oil wells from the current average of 35 percent of the oil in a reservoir to 40 percent would be the equivalent of discovering a new Saudi Arabia. Who knows what other answers may lurk in the termite? Elizabeth Ottesen, a graduate student doing research in Leadbetter’s lab, dissected a termite and put it under a microscope to give me a tour of its gut. At first glance, the dark mass of the gut was immobile, the organisms apparently packed too tightly to move, but as Ottesen added water, a menagerie of blobby Trichonympha, whizzing spirochetes, and other creatures materialized, all supported by gangs of bacteria too small to see. The inhabitants here are arranged in hierarchies more elaborate than Manhattan real estate, she said: Those at the edges use oxygen, while those in the middle are anaerobes. Many are high-speed commuters, outfitted with complicated sensing and swimming apparatus that helps them find hydrogen and other gases. Among the creatures in the termite’s gut, and especially among those creatures’ genes, exist redundancies that suggest the system has been overengineered to survive the worst (including being force-fed coal). A spirochete’s flagella, for example, are between the layers of a double skin, enabling the organism to drill through the most viscous environments. Leadbetter expects it will take at least 25 years to unravel what he calls the “teleological questions” about the termite’s complexity. Along the way, the termite will likely provide clues to solving climate change, but Leadbetter thinks its greatest value may be as a repository of biological wisdom gathered over the course of more than 100 million years of survival on Earth. “When you look at a termite and its gut,” he says, “you’re looking at a long line of winners.”

testi antichi salvati dal metodo antispam

2008-08-21T23:15:00.004+02:00

http://www.repubblica.it/2007/10/sezioni/scienza_e_tecnologia/libri-web/testi-antichi/testi-antichi.html?ref=search

Avete presente quei test in cui, per accedere alla risorsa contenuta in una pagina web o per intervenire in un blog, si deve scrivere una sequenza di parole o numeri che appaiono sfocati e sembrano buttati lì sullo schermo? Sono i Captcha, test inventati per contrastare le sofisticate tecniche degli spammer. Ebbene, quando riportate le parole di questi Captcha, potrebbe darsi che stiate dando un contributo alla digitalizzazione di testi antichi. E quindi alla loro salvezza. Da un anno, infatti, le cronache, le riflessioni, le poesie e i racconti conservati nelle biblioteche hanno milioni di nuovi alleati, che lavorano senza saperlo. Finora, grazie ad un'idea semplice ma innovativa, sono state tradotte in formato digitale 440 milioni di parole, l'equivalente di 17.600 volumi. I progetti di digitalizzazione dei libri sono moltissimi, perché trasformare l'inchiostro in bit consente di preservare i loro contenuti e di renderli disponibili on line. Di solito si passano le pagine allo scanner e si sottopongono le immagini ad un software di riconoscimento ottico dei caratteri (OCR), che trasforma i testi in un formato riconoscibile dai computer. Il problema è che spesso la carta è ingiallita e le lettere sono poco leggibili, quindi il programma ha bisogno dell'aiuto di un essere umano. E l'intervento di un operatore, ovviamente, costa e rallenta enormemente il procedimento. Un gruppo di ricercatori della Carnegie Mellon University ha avuto un'intuizione. Ogni giorno, attraverso i Captcha, decine di milioni di persone decifrano su internet delle parole distorte per dimostrare di non essere dei software automatici che cercano di diffondere spam. Perché non sfruttare questa enorme forza lavoro gratuita per dare una mano ai software OCR?

È stato dunque messo a punto reCaptcha, una versione "intelligente" del sistema antispam. Quando una parola è interpretata in modo diverso da due software OCR è identificata come "sospetta". A quel punto viene unita ad una di quelle conosciute dal sistema. L'accoppiata è sottoposta agli utenti e, se un umano interpreta correttamente la parola di controllo, si presume che anche l'altra sia stata decifrata. Quando la stessa soluzione viene fornita da tre persone è considerata corretta e la parola è archiviata. La sperimentazione è stata avviata da circa un anno, con l'apertura di un sito dal quale chiunque può scaricare gratuitamente reCaptcha per inserirlo nelle proprie pagine web. Il successo dell'iniziativa è stato sorprendente. Nei primi dodici mesi i visitatori di circa 40mila siti web hanno decifrato 440 milioni di parole con un'accuratezza del 99%. "Attualmente vengono tradotte 4 milioni di parole al giorno - dice Luis Von Ahn, uno dei ricercatori coinvolti nel progetto - Per ottenere i risultati che raggiungiamo in una settimana, più di 1.500 persone dovrebbero lavorare per 40 ore a testa ad un ritmo di 60 parole al minuto". ReCaptcha collabora con l'Internet Archive, un'organizzazione non profit che digitalizza i libri di 70 biblioteche e università statunitensi, e con il New York Times, che intende così salvaguardare il suo archivio. Secondo i suoi creatori, che hanno presentato il progetto sull'ultimo numero di Science, questo è solo l'inizio. Attualmente viene tradotto l'equivalente di 160 libri al giorno, ma la diffusione del nuovo sistema potrebbe far lievitare queste cifre, salvando intere biblioteche. Anche lo spam, in un modo o nell'altro, alla fine può rivelarsi utile. (19 agosto 2008)

I comunisti mangiano i conigli. Giant Rabbits Hit the Big Screen

2008-08-17T20:38:00.010+02:00

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,535596,00.html

http://sxswclick.com/watch/szmolinsky/#

A German breeder of huge hares has hit the big time. A short film about a plan to send monster bunnies to North Korea for food was part of the Berlin Film Festival. It seems that Communist functionaries ate the rabbits before they could benefit the poor.

A German pensioner who made headlines last year (more...) for breeding giant rabbits -- and selling a batch to North Korea with the idea of easing hunger -- is the subject of a short documentary by an American director in the the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. Director Julius Onah made the five-minute film -- a clip can be seen by clicking on the video below -- after reading about Karl Szmolinsky on SPIEGEL ONLINE. And in doing so, he learned that the rabbits may have been eaten by North Korean functionaries instead of the starving people for whom they were intended.

Szmolinsky is a 68-year-old German living in Eberswalde, near Berlin, who won a prize for breeding a 10.5-kilogram (23.1 pound) rabbit named Robert in 2006. Robert was the size of a small dog. When North Korean leaders saw photos of him they contacted Szmolinsky through a breeding federation, hoping to purchase a line of "German Giant Grays" to alleviate hunger in their hermetic Communist state.
Szmolinsky grew up in East Germany, and he agreed to help. He sold a dozen to the North Koreans at a cut rate -- 80 euros instead of the going rate of 200 or 250 euros -- and told SPIEGEL ONLINE in early 2007 that the 12 rabbits could produce 60 babies a year. Each animal, he estimated, would feed about eight people. "They'll be used to help feed the population," he said at the time. "I've sent them 12 rabbits so far; they're in a petting zoo for now. I'll be travelling to North Korea in April to advise them on how to set up a breeding farm. A delegation was here and I've already given them a book of tips."
After reading about Szmolinsky during a visit to Germany in January 2007, Onah assembled a film crew. He visited Szmolinsky in the wake of worldwide publicity about his anti-hunger scheme, on a day when the rabbit breeder was fielding phone calls from complete strangers who objected to his deal with the North Koreans.

"We actually didn't spend that much time talking about the rabbits," said Onah. "We spent most of our time talking about conditions in East Germany, both before and after the fall of the Wall." But concerned strangers had started complaining to Szmolinsky for sending live animals to North Korea, where animal-rights standards aren't up to snuff.
The resulting short, called "Szmolinsky," concentrates on the harassing phone calls.
Onah, 25, is a graduate student at New York University's film school and he made "Szmolinsky" to fulfill a class assignment. The film is evocative but not detailed; Onah spent a total of four hours with Szmolinsky and only later learned what became of his project to feed North Korea.

"In April of '07 Szmolinsky was supposed to go to North Korea himself and oversee the breeding of the rabbits," Onah told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "But some time between January and April he found out that the rabbits he sent got eaten (by senior officials). All 12 of them. So he refused to cooperate (more...) with the North Koreans."
Meanwhile the South Korean government has contacted Szmolinsky. "The South Koreans would like him to send his rabbits there," said Onah, "and they sent this letter which even apologized for the behavior of their neighbors in the north."
Szmolinsky himself attended the Berlinale premiere of the film with one of his giant rabbits on February 8. Onah said he might make a longer film about the story, given funding and time -- he's interested in the parallels between a divided Cold-War Germany and a divided Korean peninsula -- but right now other projects are crowding his schedule.

Big German Bunnies May Help Feed N. Korea

2008-08-17T19:58:00.009+02:00

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6865800

January 16, 2007 · A faded sign on the front door says beware of the dog, but the rabbits caged in Karl Smolinsky's backyard in Eberswalde, Germany, could be a little frightening, too — if you aren't expecting 22-pound bunnies with ears eight inches long.
After Smolinsky's rabbit Robert won the title of biggest rabbit in Germany last year, the North Korean government came to take a look. Last month, for just over $100 a head, Smolinsky shipped four big bucks — including Robert — and eight huge hares to Pyongyang to start a government sponsored breeding program.
The Koreans weren't at all interested in the smaller breeds — only the big ones. The minister who was here didn't want any rabbits that were under 10 kilograms.
He says a rabbit that size can provide seven kilos — about 15 pounds — of meat.
"You can eat all the parts of a rabbit," Smolinsky says. "Everything but the intestines. Lungs, liver... from the stomach, you can make a roulade, a stuffed meat dish. There's lots of meat in the head. You can take it out and make liverwurst. Every part of the rabbit is good except the bones — those are for the dog!"
Smolinsky's rabbits munch a pellet mix that includes oats, apples and oil. They also eat greens, including fresh kale from his garden. Smolinsky says a giant rabbit needs to eat about two pounds of food a day. That's twice as much as the North Korean government distributes to many of its people to survive. But Smolinsky isn't worried the rabbits will starve. He's heard German potatoes grow there.
"I don't feed them raw potatoes, but cooked potatoes, steamed potatoes are OK," he says. "And rice, during communist times here, we didn't have so much available as now, so we also bought rice for them. But when you feed them rice they must also have a lot of liquids, so they don't get bloated or stopped up."
The North Korean embassy in Berlin told NPR there is enough food for the rabbits. Michael Dunford, deputy director in North Korea of the United Nations' food aid program says at this point there is just enough food for people.
"We haven't seen evidence of starvation," Dunford says. "We are concerned that the food insecurity is worsening, and given the amount of food that arrived in the country last year it will have an impact in what we call the lean season."
The lean season is this spring, when last year's harvest will start to run out. International contributions to feed North Korea dropped dramatically after Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon last fall. Major supporters — the U.S., Japan and South Korea — suspended food aid entirely.
Smolinsky says he's not worried about helping a dictatorship. He's thinking about hungry children.
"During Hitler's time and afterward, I remember how hard it was on everyone," he says. "I lived it as a child and wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. I hope through the rabbits I can help a little bit, and that Korea might wake up and start caring more for its people than for the bomb."
Even if international sales grow, Smolinsky is keeping his favorite rabbit, the 18-pound Robert the Second, son of the first. He's hoping this spring to go visit his dozen already breeding at an agricultural enterprise near Pyongyang.

La ecología, otra gran víctima de la crisis

2008-08-17T19:16:00.002+02:00

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/ecologia/gran/victima/crisis/elpepiopi/20080722elpepiopi_12/Tes?print=1

La necesidad de dar respuesta política a los precios del petróleo y los alimentos amenaza las causas ecologistas. Muchos Gobiernos piensan en nucleares, transgénicos y otras soluciones poco o nada verdes
PAUL KENNEDY 22/07/2008

Hay muchos perdedores en nuestro nuevo mundo de gasolina y alimentos caros: los pobres en casi todas partes, las clases medias bajas, las compañías aéreas, las empresas de importación de alimentos... Y ahora aparece una nueva víctima: el sueño ecologista de conseguir un mundo más sostenible, equilibrado y equitativo. Esa visión de una Tierra armoniosa está amenazada por todas partes.
A algunos puede extrañarles esta conclusión. ¿Acaso los elevados precios del petróleo no recortan nuestras costumbres gastadoras? ¿No es positivo que entremos en un mundo sin Hummers? ¿No se nos está empujando a tomar medidas de ahorro energético? ¿No se nos está obligando a buscar fuentes de energía alternativas y más inteligentes: la energía solar y la térmica, la energía eólica y la de las olas?
Sí, todo eso es verdad. Pero, al mismo tiempo, también se está obligando a la población y las autoridades a adoptar políticas a las que el movimiento ecologista se ha opuesto, a menudo con éxito, desde hace 40 años. Desesperados por amortiguar el golpe que supone un petróleo a 130 dólares o más el barril y por prevenir el descontento popular, los Gobiernos están tomando medidas que dejan helados a casi todos los ecologistas.
La lista de retrocesos es larga. Mientras en el norte hay familias que vuelven a las estufas de leña, en los trópicos hay comunidades que talan bosques con más intensidad que nunca, y en India los más pobres queman estiércol y un queroseno de dudosa procedencia. Aún más, el Congreso de Estados Unidos recibe fuertes presiones para incrementar las perforaciones y extracciones en plataformas marinas delicadas desde el punto de vista ambiental, como el norte de Alaska y una franja del norte del Estado de Nueva York. Muchos Gobiernos quieren volver a la energía nuclear y preven construir decenas de nuevos reactores, que se unirán a numerosas nuevas plantas alimentadas por carbón.
Como es natural, los ecologistas se oponen, pero es dudoso que puedan oponerse en estos tiempos turbulentos a las presiones, los argumentos y las campañas en contra. Los argumentos sobre la seguridad nacional y la necesidad de reducir la dependencia de fuentes energéticas extranjeras e inseguras, las presiones para aumentar los subsidios a los combustibles en los países en vías de desarrollo y las campañas para reducir los impuestos sobre el petróleo y el gasóleo para los pescadores, los camioneros y las pequeñas empresas en los países industrializados.
Hasta hace poco, era posible alegar que una gran subida de los impuestos sobre el combustible podía ayudar a reducir nuestra afición a los todoterrenos devoradores de gasolina (además de incrementar las arcas del Gobierno). Hoy día, salvo entre las poblaciones más progresistas y acomodadas, sería imprudente el político que propusiera una cosa así.
Y luego está la decisión, muy controvertida, de incrementar la energía alternativa de moda, el etanol, sobre todo en su modalidad menos sensata, que es la de producir el combustible a partir de maíz. No sólo es mucho menos eficaz que el proceso a partir de caña de azúcar, y no sólo beneficia de forma desproporcionada a determinados intereses especiales agrarios y empresariales, sino que -al menos en el caso de Estados Unidos- ha tenido un efecto de sustitución negativo. Ahora que los agricultores del Medio Oeste de EE UU se han pasado al monocultivo y han convertido miles de hectáreas de soja y trigo en maíz, el precio de los primeros ha subido.
Esto nos lleva al derrumbe de la esperanza ecologista en que avancemos hacia una producción de alimentos más benigna con el medio ambiente (es decir, "orgánica"), con unos agricultores locales que cobran precios decentes (es decir, "comercio justo") a unos consumidores agradecidos y más sanos. No sólo la crisis energética está colocando a muchos agricultores y pescadores contra las cuerdas, sino que el aumento de los costes de los alimentos en general y la demanda creciente de 1.000 millones más de asiáticos están reavivando los llamamientos a tomar unas medidas que los ecologistas siempre han detestado.
Así que no tengo la menor duda de que los argumentos en favor de la producción de alimentos transgénicos tienen muchas más posibilidades de ser aceptados hoy que hace 10 años; si hay que escoger entre las necesidades dietarias de 6.500 millones de personas (en 2050, quizá 9.000 millones) y los temores sobre los alimentos transgénicos, el resultado parece claro.
La demanda de alimentos permitirá vencer las aprensiones sobre el método de producción. Lo mismo ocurrirá probablemente con los llamamientos de algunas empresas agroquímicas para que se utilicen más fertilizantes y pesticidas. Cada lado asegurará tener la ciencia de su parte y recurrirá a sus propios expertos. Pero, al final, es muy posible que las consideraciones políticas y de seguridad pesen más que las preocupaciones ecológicas y de salud.
Las inseguridades sobre el abastecimiento de alimentos ya han hecho que los grupos agrarios de presión de tipo proteccionista, desde Francia hasta Japón, afirmen que sus políticas de altos aranceles sobre las importaciones de alimentos han estado muy justificadas, porque sólo con el mantenimiento (o incluso el refuerzo) de esas barreras pueden los países tener garantizada la presencia en la mesa de pan y manzanas en momentos de crisis.
Estas afirmaciones interesadas preocupan a los economistas del desarrollo, que dicen que la mejor forma de que Europa ayudara a África a prosperar sería permitir la importación de alimentos y, de esa forma, mejorar el nivel de vida de millones de cultivadores africanos de frutas, aceite de oliva, cereales, vino y otros productos. Pero por sólido que sea este argumento, las posibilidades de que se haga realidad y de que se establezca un régimen de libre comercio agrario mundial han disminuido.
Y aún no hemos hablado de las posibilidades de agitación política y social como consecuencia del encarecimiento del combustible y los alimentos, algo de lo que el Banco Mundial y la Organización Mundial de Alimentos llevan tiempo advirtiendo.
Se podría escribir otra media docena de artículos sobre todos los aspectos del problema. Lo único que hemos hecho aquí es señalar que las nuevas tendencias, con sus repercusiones tanto en los países ricos como en los pobres (salvo unos cuantos exportadores de petróleo), están erosionando, y van a erosionar aún más, muchas de las victorias conseguidas y de las teorías sostenidas por el movimiento ecologista.
La intensificación de las perforaciones de petróleo en zonas delicadas, el regreso de la energía nuclear, las presiones sobre los bosques tropicales y boreales, la preferencia por el etanol procedente de maíz, la posibilidad creciente de que se recurra a la agricultura transgénica y a un mayor uso de fertilizantes y el impulso dado al proteccionismo agrario del Primer Mundo son elementos que suscitan pesimismo entre los amigos de la tierra. Y deberían suscitarlo entre nosotros también.
Por supuesto, los ecologistas resistirán y, a largo plazo, es incluso probable que los desorbitados precios energéticos sirvan de aliciente para crear fantásticas tecnologías alternativas. A los lectores que vivan en comunidades con alto nivel de educación y de conciencia ecológica (y de renta), desde Seattle hasta Estocolmo, y que ya disfruten de las nuevas tecnologías inteligentes, este artículo puede parecerles demasiado sombrío. Pero es posible que no se den cuenta de lo privilegiada que es su situación en comparación con la mayor parte de la humanidad. En estos momentos, los tremendos aumentos de los costes del combustible y los alimentos están haciendo que muchos reclamen una rebaja de las exigencias en muchos frentes. Si esa tendencia prevalece, es muy probable que nuestro mundo se aleje cada vez más del sueño ecologista sobre una humanidad capaz de ordenarse de otra manera.
Quizá ese sueño no podía hacerse realidad ante nuestra continua expansión demográfica, el increíble aumento de la demanda de bienes y servicios que la acompaña y el agotamiento de varias reservas clave de materias primas. Sea o no así, la desagradable realidad actual es que las cosas no están mejorando, sino todo lo contrario, para los defensores de un planeta más limpio y acogedor.
© 2008, Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Paul Kennedy es director del Instituto de Estudios sobre Seguridad Internacional de Yale.

Scientists mimic essence of plants' energy storage system

2008-08-01T15:48:00.002+02:00

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.

Daniel Nocera describes new process for storing solar energyView video post on MIT TechTV
Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.
Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."
Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.
The key component in Nocera and Kanan's new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity -- whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source -- runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.
Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.
The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it's easy to set up, Nocera said. "That's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement," he said.
'Giant leap' for clean energy
Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world's energy problems, said Nocera. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet's energy needs for one year.
James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.
"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London. "The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem."
'Just the beginning'
Currently available electrolyzers, which split water with electricity and are often used industrially, are not suited for artificial photosynthesis because they are very expensive and require a highly basic (non-benign) environment that has little to do with the conditions under which photosynthesis operates. More engineering work needs to be done to integrate the new scientific discovery into existing photovoltaic systems, but Nocera said he is confident that such systems will become a reality. "This is just the beginning," said Nocera, principal investigator for the Solar Revolution Project funded by the Chesonis Family Foundation and co-Director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. "The scientific community is really going to run with this."
Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.
The project is part of the MIT Energy Initiative, a program designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today's energy systems. MITEI Director Ernest Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, noted that "this discovery in the Nocera lab demonstrates that moving up the transformation of our energy supply system to one based on renewables will depend heavily on frontier basic science." The success of the Nocera lab shows the impact of a mixture of funding sources - governments, philanthropy, and industry. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years.

Who Studies Gas Hydrate

2008-07-15T23:43:00.001+02:00

http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/hydrates/who.html

U.S. Government
USGS
Woods Hole
Deborah Hutchinson - dhutchinson@usgs.gov - (project chief)
Carolyn Ruppel - cruppel@usgs.gov
Bill Winters - bwinters@usgs.gov
Bill Waite - wwaite@usgs.gov
Dave Mason - dmason@usgs.gov
John Pohlman - jpohlman@usgs.gov
Bill Dillon - bdillon@usgs.gov - (emeritus)
Menlo Park
Keith Kvenvolden - kk@octopus.wr.usgs.gov - (emeritus)
Steve Kirby - skirby@usgs.gov - (sub-project chief)
Tom Lorenson (tlorenson@usgs.gov)
Laura Stern (lstern@usgs.gov)
Jim Hein (jhein@usgs.gov)
Denver
Tim Collett - tcollett@usgs.gov - (sub-project chief)
Department of Energy
Ray Boswell - Ray.Boswell@netl.doe.gov - (National Energy Technology Lab - principle)
Naval Research Lab
Joseph Gettrust - gettrust@nrlssc.navy.mil - (project chief)
Warren Wood - wwood@nrlssc.navy.mil
Rick Coffin - rcoffin@ccs.nrl.navy.mil
Minerals Management Service
Jesse Hunt - jesse.hunt@mms.gov
Bill Shedd - william.shedd@mms.gov
Non-Governmental-Organizations and Private Institutions
Oil Companies
Emrys Jones - emry@chevron.com - (Chevron)
Klass Bil - k.j.bil@siep.shell.com - (Shell International, Netherlands)
Renato Kowsmann - kowsmann@petrobras.com.br- (Petrobras, Brazil)
Martin Hovland - mhovland@statoil.com - (Statoil)
Universities
Ben Clennell - Clennell@cpgg.ufba.br - (University of Bahia, Brazil)
Bruce Buffett -buffett@geop.ubc.ca - (University of British Columbia)
Satish Singh - singh@esc.cam.ac.uk - (Cambridge University, United Kingdom)
James Kennett - kennett@magic.geol.ucsb.edu - (University of California. Santa Barbra)
Dendy Sloan -esloan@gashydrate.mines.edu - (Colorado School of Mines)
Wenyue Xu - xu@epr10.eas.gatech.edu - (Georgia Tech)
Harry Roberts - harry@antares.csi.lsu.edu - (Louisiana State University)
Tom McGee - tmm@mmri.olemiss.edu - (University of Mississippi)
Bob Collier - rcollier@oce.orst.edu - (Oregon State University)
Anne Trehu - trehu@oce.orst.edu - (Oregon State University)
Gerald Holder - holder@engrng.pitt.edu - (University Pittsburgh)
Miriam Kastner - mkastner@ucsd.edu - (Scripps Institution of Oceanography)
Ian MacDonald - ian@gerg.tamu.edu - (Texas A@M University)
Roger Sassen - sassen@gerg.tamu.edu - (Texas A@M University)
Ryo Matsumoto - ryo@tsunami.geol.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp - (University of Tokyo)
Karin Andreassen - Karin.Andreassen@ibg.uit.no - (University of Tromso, Norway)
Ross Chapman - chapman@uvic.ca - (University of Victoria)
W. Steven Holbrook - steveh@uwyo.edu - (University of Wyoming)
Private Research Institutions
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Charles Paull - paull@mbari.org - (MBARI)
Peter Brewer - brpe@mbari.org - (MBARI)
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Jean Whelan - jwhelan@whoi.edu - (WHOI)
Marine Desalination Systems, L.L.C.
Michael Max - mmax@mdswater.com
John Osegovic - josegovic@mdswater.com
Shelli Tatro - statro@mdswater.com
Hydrate Energy International
Michael Max - xeres@erols.com - (HEI, Washington D.C.)
Bill Dillon - dillon@cape.com - (HEI, Woods Hole, Massachusetts)
Arthur Johnson - artjohnson51@hotmail.com - (HEI, New Orleans)
Other Nations
Canada
Geological Survey of Canada
Roy Hyndman - hyndman@pgc.emr.ca - (GSC, Pacific Geoscience Center)
Scott Dallimore - SDallimo@NRCan.gc.ca - (Geological Survey of Canada)
National Research Council
John Ripmeester - John.Ripmeester@nrc.ca - (NRC)
University of Victoria
Michael Whiticar - whiticar@uvic.ca - (School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria)
France
Laboratoire de Genie Chimique de Toulouse
Jean-Pierre Monfort - jeanpierre.monfort@ensigct.fr
Germany
GEOMAR
Erwin Suess - esuess@geomar.de - (GEOMAR)
Nina Kukowski - nkukowski@geomar.de - (GEOMAR)
GFZ (GeoForschungsZentrum)
Michael Weber - mhw@gfz-potsdam.de
Italy
Institute of Geophysics, Trieste (in Italian)
Emanuele Lodolo -elodolo@ogs.trieste.it - (Institute of Geophysics, Trieste)
Umberta Tinivella - utinivella@ogs.trieste.it - (Institute of Geophysics, Trieste)
Japan
Geological Survey of Japan
Yoshihisa Okuda - okuda@gsj.go.jp - (Geological Survey of Japan)
New Zealand
Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences
Stuart Henrys - s.henrys@gns.cri.nz - (Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences)
Ingo Pecher - i.pecher@gns.cri.nz - (Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences)
People's Republic of China
Ministry of Land and Resources
Liu Shou-Quan - ygzhou@qingdao.cngb.com - (Director-General of QIMG)
Russia
Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation Institute for Geology and Mineral Resources of the Ocean
Valery A. Soloviev - soloviev@gashyd.spb.ru - (Head of Gas Hydrate Laboratory)

Peculiarities of Methane Clathrate Hydrate Formation and Solid-State Deformation, Including Possible Superheating of Water Ice

2008-07-15T23:38:00.001+02:00

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;273/5283/1843

Laura A. Stern, * Stephen H. Kirby, William B. Durham
Slow, constant-volume heating of water ice plus methane gas mixtures forms methane clathrate hydrate by a progressive reaction that occurs at the nascent ice/liquid water interface. As this reaction proceeds, the rate of melting of metastable water ice may be suppressed to allow short-lived superheating of ice to at least 276 kelvin. Plastic flow properties measured on clathrate test specimens are significantly different from those of water ice; under nonhydrostatic stress, methane clathrate undergoes extensive strain hardening and a process of solid-state disproportionation or exsolution at conditions well within its conventional hydrostatic stability field.
L. A. Stern and S. H. Kirby, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA. W. B. Durham, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA.

idrati di metano

2008-07-15T23:21:00.005+02:00

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Hay/sustituto/petroleo/todo/va/bien/elpepisoc/20080706elpepisoc_1/Tes

El mar guarda reservas de metano que duplican la energía de todos los combustibles fósiles

Parecen trozos de hielo, pero echan a arder al acercarles una llama. Se ocultan bajo el suelo marino junto a los litorales continentales, y los investigadores acaban de descubrirlos en el mar de Alborán que baña el oriente andaluz.

Se llaman hidratos de gas, y "pueden convertirse en una de las principales fuentes de energía si se desarrollan técnicas económicamente rentables para extraer su metano", según el Departamento de Interior norteamericano.
"En colaboración con un buque oceanográfico ruso, acabamos de confirmar la presencia de abundantes depósitos de hidratos de gas en el mar de Alborán", explica Menchu Comas, investigadora del Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra (CSIC) y delegada española en el comité científico del Programa Integrado de Perforación Oceánica (IODP), un consorcio internacional dedicado a explorar las altas profundidades del subsuelo marino.
"Los hidratos de gas son probablemente una de las principales reservas de hidrocarburos que quedarán disponibles a largo plazo", prosigue Comas. "Ya sabíamos que había hidratos de gas en el Golfo de Cádiz, así que ya podemos afirmar que todo el litoral meridional español abunda en reservas"
El más común de estos compuestos, tanto en España como en el resto de los depósitos marinos que se han hallado en el mundo, es el hidrato de metano. Su estructura es bien curiosa: 20 moléculas de agua se disponen en los 20 vértices de un dodecaedro, formando una auténtica jaula que atrapa a una molécula de metano. Es una especie de hielo que ocupa los poros de los sedimentos oceánicos, y sólo es estable a profundidades de más de 500 metros (de agua).
Los científicos calculan que los hidratos de gas del planeta contienen más de 10 billones de toneladas de carbono (en forma de metano), entre el doble y el triple que la reserva mundial de combustibles fósiles (donde el carbono está en forma de petróleo, carbón y gas natural). En rigor, los hidratos de gas son también combustibles fósiles, porque su metano proviene de la actividad de antiguas bacterias.
Los depósitos de esta posible fuente energética están repartidos por los sedimentos oceánicos de los litorales continentales -a veces enterrados 1.000 metros bajo el suelo marino-, y también en las regiones polares.
El Congreso norteamericano aprobó en 2000 un programa de investigación sobre los hidratos de gas, y el departamento de Energía de ese país financia actualmente cinco proyectos científicos para evaluar "su potencial energético, su seguridad y el impacto ambiental de su exploración y desarrollo". Al frente de uno de ellos está Stephen Kirby, del Geological Survey del Gobierno estadounidense (USGS). ¿Cuáles son los principales problemas técnicos que quedan por resolver para plantearse la explotación industrial de estas reservas?
"Hay tres problemas principales", responde Kirby a EL PAÍS. "El primero es encontrar depósitos de hidratos de gas que estén lo bastante concentrados como para ser comercialmente viables. Hasta ahora, los depósitos terrestres de la región ártica son los únicos que presentan una saturación de hidratos en el sedimento lo bastante alta como para considerarlos un objetivo industrial a día de hoy. Ciertas estructuras oceánicas en el mar de Bering, llamadas vamps [por 'anomalías de velocidad y amplitud'], también pueden revelarse como un objetivo con fines prácticos".
"En segundo lugar", prosigue el investigador norteamericano, "necesitamos aprender cómo se puede operar de manera económicamente rentable en condiciones de alta profundidad, más de 500 metros, que es donde están la gran mayoría de los depósitos de hidratos. Y en tercer lugar hay que desarrollar mejores técnicas para extraer gas natural de la descomposición de los hidratos de gas". Hasta el momento se han probado dos métodos de extracción en condiciones reales, utilizando un depósito experimental en el delta del río Mackenzie canadiense. El primero es la "despresurización". Se taladra un agujero en la capa de sedimentos que contiene los hidratos de gas para reducir la presión.
Los dodecaedros que forman la jaula son un modo especial de congelación del agua, que se forman a temperaturas superiores a los 0ºC, pero sólo gracias a las altas presiones reinantes en las profundidades. Al bajar la presión, por lo tanto, la jaula se disgrega y deja escapar la molécula de metano. El gas sube entonces por una tubería. El segundo método se llama "inyección térmica" y consiste en bombear agua caliente dentro del sedimento en cuestión. Como pasaba antes con la reducción de la presión, también el aumento de la temperatura desestabiliza la estructura del hidrato de gas, el metano se libera y es recogido por una conducción.
Un tercer método se ha probado útil, pero sólo en condiciones de laboratorio. Consiste en inyectar dióxido de carbono para intercambiarlo por el metano en el interior de las jaulas. Si este método llegara a generalizarse, tendría la ventaja añadida de servir como una trampa para secuestrar bajo el mar el dióxido de carbono atmosférico, el principal gas de efecto invernadero que está detrás del cambio climático.
Las petroleras Chevron, Shell, Petrobras y Statoil también colaboran en las investigaciones, aunque no aspiran a una aplicación industrial inmediata.
"El principal problema para la utilización industrial de los hidratos de gas es que ocurren como menas finamente dispersas por los sedimentos del suelo oceánico", dice a EL PAÍS Martin Hovland, investigador de la petrolera de origen noruego Statoil. "Es sabido lo difícil que resulta extraer menas dispersas de tierra firme, por ejemplo en las minas abiertas de oro y cobre. Si uno tiene que procesar grandes cantidades de sedimentos en aguas profundas, el gasto energético no compensa realmente".. "Por lo tanto", prosigue Hovland, "mi opinión es que los hidratos de gas seguirán siendo una destacada oportunidad de investigación para los científicos académicos durante mucho tiempo. Del mismo modo, hay un montón de oro y aluminio en este planeta, pero cuesta demasiada energía extraerlo y refinarlo".
También investigan en hidratos de gas los servicios geológicos de los gobiernos de Canadá, Alemania, Rusia y Japón. Australia abrió el mes pasado una instalación especial de alta presión dedicada a investigar la formación y la transportabilidad de los hidratos de gas. También el mes pasado, los ministros de energía de Japón y Estados Unidos firmaron un convenio con el mismo fin, que incluye estudios de campo en las reservas del norte de Alaska.
A finales de la década pasada, investigadores de la Universidad de Moscú y el Instituto Tecnológico Geominero de España, a bordo de un buque oceanográfico ruso, descubrieron abundantes depósitos de hidratos de metano en el golfo de Cádiz, a una profundidad de 900 metros. Repsol tiene plataformas en la zona, pero a sólo 100 metros de profundidad. A estos depósitos se unen ahora los recién descubiertos bajo el suelo del mar de Alborán.
Los hidratos de gas pueden liberar al mar grandes burbujas de metano (a veces llamadas volcanes de fango), lo que les ha procurado una publicidad no solicitada. "Las burbujas de metano procedentes del suelo oceánico", anunció en 2003 el servicio de noticias del Discovery Channel, "pueden ser responsables de los misteriosos naufragios en el Triángulo de las Bermudas, según ha confirmado una investigación australiana".
La investigación australiana se queda en realidad muy lejos de confirmarlo, pero la historia ha calado lo bastante como para merecer un desmentido oficial del USGS norteamericano. Bill Dillon, geólogo del USGS, afirma: "La evidencia indica que el colapso y la liberación abrupta de metano, debida a la disgregación de los hidratos de gas, ocurrió hacia el final del último periodo glacial, hace unos 15.000 años, cuando mucha agua oceánica estaba retenida en forma de grandes hojas de hielo continentales, y por tanto el nivel del mar bajó mucho. El menor nivel del mar implicó menores presiones sobre los sedimentos, lo que desestabilizó los hidratos y liberó el metano en forma de burbujas".
Es cierto que las aguas del sureste de Estados Unidos, que forman el vértice occidental del Triángulo de las Bermudas, son particularmente ricas en sedimentos con hidratos de gas. Pero, cuando salieron de allí las burbujas de metano capaces de causar naufragios, "el barco más avanzado técnicamente era un tronco de árbol hueco", como señala Dillon.
Las burbujas de metano, en cualquier caso, tienen interés para los científicos del clima, porque el efecto invernadero del metano supera en 21 veces al del dióxido de carbono. Y los hidratos de gas almacenan una cantidad de metano 3.000 veces mayor que el disuelto en la atmósfera. Los futuros métodos de extracción, por tanto, deberán poner un especial cuidado en evitar fugas a la atmósfera.
Los hidratos de gas se conocían como curiosidades académicas desde el siglo XIX, aunque no recibieron la atención de la industria hasta los años treinta, cuando se comprobó que causaban atascos en las conducciones de gas natural, que por entonces empezaban a extenderse a latitudes relativamente frías. La capacidad del agua para congelarse en jaulas dodecaédricas por encima de los 0ºC fue conocida originalmente como un engorro para la industria energética. Pero esa misma capacidad puede convertirse en el petróleo del futuro.

Google lancia HealthMap

2008-07-14T22:36:00.009+02:00

http://www.corriere.it/salute/08_luglio_14/google_healthmap_33a32a76-518f-11dd-a6b4-00144f02aabc.shtml

http://www.healthmap.org/about.php

http://www.healthmap.org/

Realizzato in collaborazione con l'oms, harvard e il boston children's hospital

Il nuovo servizio interattivo disponibile su Internet mostra la diffusione delle epidemie

WASHINGTON - Dopo Google Map, arriva HealthMap un nuovo servizio interattivo disponibile su Internet che mostra la diffusione delle epidemie. Si tratta di una mappa interattiva, creata da Google e da un gruppo di ricercatori del Boston Children's Hospital e dell'Università di Harvard. Il sistema è accessibile a tutti, è gratuito ed è stato descritto sulla prestigiosa rivista scientifica «opena access» Plos Medicine. HealthMap è stato creato con lo scopo di monitorare le emergenze e facilitarne la gestione.
LE FONTI - Il sistema raccoglie i dati da 14 fonti (che riassumono informazioni da più di 20 mila siti) ed è in contatto diretto con l'Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità (Oms). La ricerca può essere effettuata per malattia, oppure per sintomo e aiutandosi con alcune parole chiave. Un software provvede anche ad eliminare automaticamente gli articoli con informazioni i ridondanti.
UTILITÀ- «Il Web può giocare un ruolo molto importante nella scoperta di nuove epidemie o nel monitoraggio di quelle già in corso», ha detto John Brownstein, responsabile del progetto. «Molte informazioni utili - ha continuato - possono essere ricavate dalla rete grazie a siti governativi, ma anche forum e blog». Da un primo utilizzo è risultato evidente come la frequenza di dati riguardanti alcune malattie sia direttamente proporzionale a una situazione economica instabile. Si sta cercando ora di migliorare il sistema in termini di copertura geografica, che per il momento arriva solo a livello di regione e stato. Il motore, inoltre, monitora e organizza i dati in tempo reale anche in zone geografiche poco coperte dai sistemi sanitari locali. Sarà però necessario sviluppare contatti con persone residenti nei luoghi meno 'nominatì in Rete, soprattutto in Africa e Sud America.

http://library2.usask.ca/~fichter/blog_on_the_side/2007/03/healthmap-global-disease-alert-map.html

HealthMap was created by Clark Freifeld, a Research Software Developer at the Children's Hospital Informatics Program and John Brownstein, PhD, an Instructor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Affiliated Faculty at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology