tingilinde

echolocation and bats

fascinating piece on BBC's In Our Time podcast  (42 minutes audio .. it's lovely that so many of the BBC's podcasts are 42 minutes long. Douglas would approve.)

 

 

 

 

build well or don't build at all

We can't afford damaging infrastructure projects  (via Nature)

snip

...

Esteemed Brazilian scientist Eneas Salati once said that the best thing that could be done for the Amazon was to blow up all the roads. By 2050, Earth could accumulate another 25 million kilometres of paved roads, according to the International Energy Agency — enough to encircle the planet more than 600 times. When a new road penetrates intact forest, it can facilitate illegal deforestation, poaching, fires and land investors bent on encouraging a building boom — factors that are rarely considered in cost–benefit analyses of planned infrastructure projects.

Around nine-tenths of new infrastructure is slated for developing nations, which contain nearly all of the world’s tropical and subtropical forests — biologically, the richest real estate on the planet. Yet many ‘greening’ measures, such as adding rope-bridges or underpasses to help species cross roads, bring relatively trivial benefits, akin to treating cancer with a Band-Aid.

...

 

quantum accelerometers as a gps backup

navigation skills

Bats v dolphins

of course there are a number of species of bats and with their own echo location variations.

 

 

growing plants with led lights

Agriculture that tries to optimize photosynthesis is gong commercial. 

I had no idea horticulturalists look at the power of a light in terms of the number of photons per second (usually micro moles) across an area.   They convolve it with what the think is a useful spectral range, so it's messy, but curious...

 

 

 

lagrange point dust moons

They've been speculated about for a long time .. ghost moons made of dust clouds.  Perhaps they're real.   A fascinating paper on the suspect at L5. appears in the Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

 

Celestial mechanics and polarization optics of the Kordylewski dust cloud in the Earth–Moon Lagrange point L5 – I. Three-dimensional celestial mechanical modelling of dust cloud formation

Judit Sl ́ız-Balogh^,1,2 Andra ́s Barta^2,3 and Ga ́bor Horva ́th²‹

¹Department of Astronomy, ELTE Eo ̈tvo ̈s Lora ́nd University, H-1117 Budapest, Pa ́zma ́ny se ́ta ́ny 1, Hungary²Environmental Optics Laboratory, Department of Biological Physics, ELTE Eo ̈tvo ̈s Lora ́nd University, H-1117 Budapest, Pa ́zma ́ny se ́ta ́ny 1, Hungary³Estrato Research and Development Ltd, H-1124 Ne ́metvo ̈lgyi u ́t 91/c, Budapest, Hungary

 

more fun from physics girl

an interesting clue for incurable diseases

Amyloids appear to be important in accelerating neuromuscular diseases, but they also may be important in healthy muscle regeneration.  This may be one of those very important clues.

snip

...

Toxic protein assemblies, or “amyloids,” long considered to be key drivers in many neuromuscular diseases, also play a beneficial role in the development of healthy muscle tissue, CU Boulder researchers have found.

“Ours is the first study to show that amyloid-like structures not only exist in healthy skeletal muscle during regeneration, but are likely important for its formation,”

...

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

children and air pollution

A serious problem worldwide ... particularly in the developing world

snip

...

Newborns and young children are also more susceptible to household air pollution in homes that regularly use polluting fuels and technologies for cooking, heating and lighting

“Air Pollution is stunting our children’s brains, affecting their health in more ways than we suspected. But there are many straight-forward ways to reduce emissions of dangerous pollutants ,” says Dr Maria Neira, Director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at WHO.

“WHO is supporting implementation of health-wise policy measures like accelerating the switch to clean cooking and heating fuels and technologies, promoting the use of cleaner transport, energy-efficient housing and urban planning. We are preparing the ground for low emission power generation, cleaner, safer industrial technologies and better municipal waste management, ” she added.

...

Reducing this sort of pollution is something the Trump administration is fighting tooth and nail... in the US as well as slashing US involvement around the world.

 

 

dealing with drought in west africa

Parts of West Africa are drought-prone.  It turns out a local shrub, when grown next to some grains, dramatically improves grain production. 

snip

...

The new study has found that certain woody shrubs – notably one called Guiera, after the Latin name Guiera senegalensis – can effectively share their water with millet plants below the surface of the soil. Millet, a grain crop, along with sorghum, is an essential food source in Senegal.

...

a tip of the hat to Sukie