Reconciling predictions of climate change

Harvard University researchers have resolved a conflict in estimates of how much the Earth will warm in response to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

That conflict - between temperature ranges based on global climate models and paleoclimate records and ranges generated from historical observations - prevented the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from providing a best estimate in its most recent report for how much the Earth will warm as a result of a doubling of CO2 emissions.

The researchers found that the low range of temperature increase - between 1 and 3 degrees Celsius - offered by the historical observations did not take into account long-term warming patterns. When these patterns are taken into account, the researchers found that not only do temperatures fall within the canonical range of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius but that even higher ranges, perhaps up to 6 degrees, may also be possible.

The research is published in Science Advances.

CO2 in Earth's atmosphere if half of global-warming emissions are not absorbed (NASA simulation). By NASA/GSFC [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

It's well documented that different parts of the planet warm at different speeds. The land over the northern hemisphere, for example, warms significantly faster than water in the Southern Ocean.

"The historical pattern of warming is that most of the warming has occurred over land, in particular over the northern hemisphere," said Cristian Proistosescu, PhD '17, and first author of the paper. "This pattern of warming is known as the fast mode - you put CO2 in the atmosphere and very quickly after that, the land in the northern hemisphere is going to warm."

But there is also a slow mode of warming, which can take centuries to realize. That warming, which is most associated with the Southern Ocean and the Eastern Equatorial Pacific, comes with positive feedback loops that amplify the process. For example, as the oceans warm, cloud cover decreases and a white reflecting surface is replaced with a dark absorbent surface.

The researchers developed a mathematical model to parse the two different modes within different climate models.

"The models simulate a warming pattern like today's, but indicate that strong feedbacks kick in when the Southern Ocean and Eastern Equatorial Pacific eventually warm, leading to higher overall temperatures than would simply be extrapolated from the warming seen to date," said Peter Huybers, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and of Environmental Science and Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and co-author of the paper.

Huybers and Proistosescu found that while the slow mode of warming contributes a great deal to the ultimate amount of global warming, it is barely present in present-day warming patterns. "Historical observations give us a lot of insight into how climate changes and are an important test of our climate models," said Huybers, "but there is no perfect analogue for the changes that are coming."

For more information visit:- 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170705164530.htm

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=gastube-carbon-dioxide-lr-013-6&Id=11736

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide

The chemistry of the environmental effects of fireworks

Who doesn’t love fireworks at New Year? Yet whilst fireworks are undoubtedly a spectacle, they can also have a negative effect on the environment. Take a look at the graphic below, to discover some of the issues that they can cause.

Source: Compound Interest

So that’s the science, but what about the history? Who first invented the firework?

The earliest documentation of fireworks dates back to 7th century China (time of the Tang Dynasty), where they were invented. The fireworks were used to accompany many festivities. It is thus a part of the culture of China and had its origin there; eventually it spread to other cultures and societies.

The art and science of firework making has developed into an independent profession. In China, pyrotechnicians were respected for their knowledge of complex techniques in mounting firework displays. Chinese people originally believed that the fireworks could expel evil spirits and bring about luck and happiness.

During the Song Dynasty (960–1279), many of the common people could purchase various kinds of fireworks from market vendors, and grand displays of fireworks were also known to be held. In 1110, a large fireworks display in a martial demonstration was held to entertain Emperor Huizong of Song (r. 1100–1125) and his court. A record from 1264 states that a rocket-propelled firework went off near the Empress Dowager Gong Sheng and startled her during a feast held in her honor by her son Emperor Lizong of Song (r. 1224–1264). 

Rocket propulsion was common in warfare, as evidenced by the Huolongjing compiled by Liu Bowen (1311–1375) and Jiao Yu (fl. c. 1350–1412). In 1240 the Arabs acquired knowledge of gunpowder and its uses from China. A Syrian named Hasan al-Rammah wrote of rockets, fireworks, and other incendiaries, using terms that suggested he derived his knowledge from Chinese sources, such as his references to fireworks as "Chinese flowers".

With the development of chinoiserie in Europe, Chinese fireworks began to gain popularity around the mid-17th century. Lev Izmailov, ambassador of Peter the Great, once reported from China: "They make such fireworks that no one in Europe has ever seen." In 1758, the Jesuit missionary Pierre Nicolas le Chéron d'Incarville, living in Beijing, wrote about the methods and composition on how to make many types of Chinese fireworks to the Paris Academy of Sciences, which revealed and published the account five years later. His writings would be translated in 1765, resulting in the popularization of fireworks and further attempts to uncover the secrets of Chinese fireworks.

For more information visit:-

http://www.compoundchem.com/2017/01/05/fireworks-environment/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireworks

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=lead-1000ppm-for-icp&Id=60146

Researchers reduce climate-warming CO2 to building blocks for fuels

Turning carbon dioxide into stored energy sounds like science fiction: researchers have long tried to find simple ways to convert this greenhouse gas into fuels and other useful chemicals. Now, a group of researchers led by Professor Ted Sargent of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering have found a more efficient way, through the wonders of nanoengineering.

Drs. Min Liu and Yuanjie Pang, along with a team of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in University of Toronto Engineering, have developed a technique powered by renewable energies such as solar or wind. The catalyst takes climate-warming carbon-dioxide (CO2) and converts it to carbon-monoxide (CO), a useful building block for carbon-based chemical fuels, such as methanol, ethanol and diesel.

The frozen version of CO2, small pellets of dry ice sublimating in air. By Richard Wheeler (Zephyris) at en.wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

"CO2 reduction is an important challenge due to inertness of the molecule," says Liu. "We were looking for the best way to both address mounting global energy needs and help the environment," adds Pang. "If we take CO2 from industrial flue emissions or from the atmosphere, and use it as a reagent for fuels, which provide long-term storage for green energy, we're killing two birds with one stone."

The team's solution is sharp: they start by fabricating extremely small gold "nanoneedles" - the tip of each needle is 10,000 times smaller than a human hair. "The nanoneedles act like lightning rods for catalyzing the reaction," says Liu.

When they applied a small electrical bias to the array of nanoneedles, they produced a high electric field at the sharp tips of the needles. This helps attract CO2, speeding up the reduction to CO, with a rate faster than any catalyst previously reported. This represents a breakthrough in selectivity and efficiency which brings CO2 reduction closer to the realm of commercial electrolysers. The team is now working on the next step: skipping the CO and producing more conventional fuels directly.

Their work is published in the journal Nature.

"The field of water-splitting for energy storage has seen rapid advances, especially in the intensity with which these reactions can be performed on a heterogeneous catalyst at low overpotential - now, analogous breakthroughs in the rate of CO2 reduction using renewable electricity are urgently needed," says Michael Graetzel, a professor of physical chemistry at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and a world leader in this field. "The University of Toronto team's breakthrough was achieved using a new concept of field-induced reagent concentration."

"Solving global energy challenges needs solutions that cut across many fields," says Sargent. "This work not only provides a new solution to a longstanding problem of CO2 reduction, but opens possibilities for storage of alternative energies such as solar and wind."

For more information visit:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160803140144.htm

https://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=gastube-carbon-dioxide-hr-05-20&Id=11735

On this day...

After the end of World War II on October 24, 1946 and a good while before the Sputnik satellite opened the space age, a group of soldiers and scientists in the New Mexico desert saw something new and wonderful—the first pictures of Earth as seen from space.

The White Sands rocket (official name V-2 No. 13) was the first man-made object to take a photograph of the Earth from outer space.   Launched from the White Sands Missile Range in White Sands, New Mexico, the rocket reached a maximum altitude of 107.5 miles (173 km), well above the commonly accepted boundary of space at 100 kilometres.

The famous photograph was taken from an altitude of 65 miles (104 km) with an attached 35 mm black-and-white camera.

Snapping a new frame every second and a half, the rocket-borne camera climbed straight up, then fell back to Earth minutes later, slamming into the ground at 500 feet per second. The camera itself was smashed, but the film, protected in a steel cassette, was unharmed.

It was one of many firsts for the V-2 research program of the late 1940s, during which the Army fired dozens of captured German missiles brought to White Sands in 300 railroad cars at the end of the war. While the missileers used the V-2s to refine their own rocket designs, scientists were invited to pack instruments inside the nosecone to study temperatures, pressures, magnetic fields and other physical characteristics of the unexplored upper atmosphere.

Earth from Space in colour

For more information visit
http://www.airspacemag.com/space/the-first-photo-from-space-13721411/#ixzz3D70AhqTN

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_No._13

1000mph - along the ground - Bloodhound SSC.

BLOODHOUND SSC is a SuperSonic Car.  It's supersonic because it is designed to go faster than the speed of sound and it's a car because it has four wheels and is under full control of its driver.

BLOODHOUND SSC is a jet and rocket powered car designed to go at 1,000 mph (just over 1,600 kph). It has a slender body of approximately 14m length with two front wheels within the body and two rear wheels mounted externally within wheel fairings. It weighs over 7 tonnes and the engines produce more than 135,000 horsepower - more than 6 times the power of all the Formula 1 cars on a starting grid put together!

The Car is a mix of car and aircraft technology, with the front half being a carbon fibre monocoque like a racing car and the back half being a metallic framework and panels like an aircraft.

Runway testing of up to 200 miles per hour (320 km/h) is scheduled to take place early 2016. Bloodhound SSC will then be tested on the Hakskeen Pan in the Mier area of the Northern Cape, South Africa where a track 12 miles (19 km) long, 2 miles (3.2 km) wide has been cleared.

The car is an amazing feat of engineering.  A prototype Eurojet EJ200 jet engine developed for the Eurofighter and bound for a museum, was donated to the project. This will take the car to 300 mph (480 km/h), after which a bespoke hybrid rocket designed by Nammo will boost the car up to 1,000 miles per hour (1,609 km/h). A third engine, a 750 hp (560 kW) 2.4 Litre Cosworth CA2010 Formula 1 V8 petrol engine, is used as an auxiliary power unit and to drive the oxidiser pump for the rocket. The jet engine will provide nine tonnes of thrust and the rocket will add another 12. The supersonic car will have roughly the same power as 180 F1 cars.

The Bloodhound SSC project has a comprehensive website as below:-
http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/project/car

They are on Twitter and regularly post updates.  An example is the fascinating infographic below - 10 astounding facts about Bloodhound SSC.

Be sure to keep up to date and follow the Bloodhound SSC project.
http://www.twitter.com/BLOODHOUND_SSC
http://www.facebook.com/BLOODHOUNDSSC

On this day......

On March 7th 2009, the Kepler space observatory, designed to discover Earth-like habitable planets orbiting other stars, is launched.  The spacecraft is named after the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler who is best known for his laws of planetary motion.

Kepler is designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way to discover dozens of Earth-size extrasolar planets in or near the habitable zone and estimate how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets.

Kepler uses a photometer that continually monitors the brightness of over 145,000 main sequence stars in a fixed field of view. This data is transmitted to Earth and analysed to detect periodic dimming caused by extrasolar planets that cross in front of their host star.

As of July 2013^[update], Kepler had found 134 confirmed exoplanets in 76 stellar systems, along with a further 3,277 unconfirmed planet candidates. In November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy.  11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars.  The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away, according to the scientists.

For more information visit:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_(spacecraft)
http://kepler.nasa.gov/

14th Febrauary 1978

36 years ago on this day, Texas Instruments patented the first "micro on a chip".

It was actually the first speech synthesizer chip and was used in TI's famous Speak and Spell toy.

In 1976 TI began a feasibility study memory intensive applications for bubble memory then being developed. They soon focused on speech applications. This resulted in the development the TMC0280 one-chip Linear predictive coding (LPC) speech synthesizer which was the first time a single silicon chip had electronically replicated the human voice.

An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small plate ("chip") of semiconductor material, normally silicon.

Integrated circuits are used in virtually all electronic equipment today and have revolutionised the world of electronics. Computers, mobile phones, and other digital home appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies, made possible by the low cost of producing integrated circuits.
ICs can be made very compact, having up to several billion transistors and other electronic components in an area the size of a fingernail. The width of each conducting line in a circuit can be made smaller and smaller as the technology advances; in 2008 it dropped below 100 nanometres and in 2013 it is expected to be in the tens of nanometres.

 

ICs have consistently migrated to smaller feature sizes over the years, allowing more circuitry to be packed on each chip. This increased capacity per unit area can be used to decrease cost and/or increase functionality.

Chips are used in everything now from Kettles and toasters to mobile phones and TV's.  They are an incredible invention which continue to develop and evolve.

Back in 1984

On this day in 1984....

The first untethered spacewalk was made by American Bruce McCandless II on February 7, 1984, during Challenger mission STS-41-B, utilising the Manned Maneuvering Unit. He was subsequently joined by Robert L. Stewart during the 5 hour 55 minute spacewalk. Such a self-contained spacewalk was first attempted by Eugene Cernan in 1966 on Gemini 9A, but Cernan could not reach the maneuvering unit without tiring.

Untethered U.S. astronaut Bruce McCandless uses a manned maneuvering unit. photo taken by Robert "Hoot" Gibson

The Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) is an astronaut propulsion unit that was used by NASA on three Space Shuttle missions in 1984. The MMU allowed the astronauts to perform untethered EVA spacewalks at a distance from the shuttle. The MMU was used in practice to retrieve a pair of faulty communications satellites, Westar VI and Palapa B2. Following the third mission the unit was retired from use. A smaller successor, the Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER), was first flown in 1994, and is intended for emergency use only.

While orbiting around the Earth at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour, McCandless floated from the cargo bay into outer space, 150 nautical miles above Earth, an experience he described as "a heck of a big leap." Mission specialist Robert L. Stewart, an Army lieutenant colonel, also flew the MMU on shuttle mission 41-B.

While flying the MMU, these men were in a journalistic phrase of the time "human satellites." They checked out the equipment, maneuvered within the cargo bay, flew away from and back to the orbiter, performed docking exercises, recharged the MMU nitrogen tanks, and collected engineering data. The MMU, according to Martin Marietta's post mission report, "performed as expected and no anomalies were reported.

Gaseous nitrogen was used as the propellant for the MMU. Two aluminium tanks with Kevlar wrappings contained 5.9 kilograms of nitrogen each, enough propellant for a six-hour EVA depending on the amount of manoeuvring done. Typical MMU delta-v (velocity change) capability was about 80 feet per second (24.4 m/s).

There were 24 nozzle thrusters placed at different locations on the MMU. To operate the propulsion system, the astronaut used his fingertips to manipulate hand controllers at the ends of the MMU's two arms. The right controller produced rotational acceleration for roll, pitch, and yaw. The left controller produced translational acceleration for moving forward-back, up-down, and left-right. Coordination of the two controllers produced intricate movements in the unit. Once a desired orientation was achieved, the astronaut could engage an automatic attitude-hold function that maintained the inertial attitude of the unit in flight. This freed both hands for work.

Yet the MMU has not been used since 1984. There are several reasons for this. First, most extravehicular activities were effective without use of the MMU. Tethers, safety grips, hand bars, and other restraints allowed astronauts to work in the open cargo bay. Furthermore, the maneuverability of the Space Shuttle itself and the utility of the shuttle's robotic manipulator arm had proved capable of rescuing satellites-the primary function for which the MMU had been designed.



For more information visit:-
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4219/Chapter13.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Maneuvering_Unit

18 years ago today - the Kobe Earthquake - Japan

Eighteen years ago to the day the Kobe earthquake shook Japan.  The Great Hanshin earthquake occurred on Tuesday, January 17, 1995, at 05:46 JST in the southern part of Japan. It measured 6.8 on the moment magnitude scale (USGS), and Mj7.3 (adjusted from 7.2) on JMA magnitude scale.  The tremors lasted for approximately 20 seconds. The focus of the earthquake was located 16 km beneath its epicentre, on the northern end of Awaji Island, 20 km away from the city of Kobe.

An earthquake is a quick release of energy in the Earth’s crust, creating seismic waves. The Earth’s crust is made up of tectonic plates. The tectonic plate edges move against each other all the time, but sometimes they get stuck. When this happens energy builds up to a point of rupture and the seismic energy is released.

The depth of an earthquake is very important.  If it is shallow it will cause much more structural damage to buildings than a deep one. On the Earth’s surface an earthquake will manifest itself by shaking buildings and the ground moving. If an earthquake occurs at sea it can move and displace the seabed. The water on the seabed of an ocean or large lake is normally very still, with waves only occurring near the surface, but if the seabed moves it can cause a deep and harmful that can result in a tsunami as happened in Japan in 2011.

In the Kobe earthquake, approximately 6,434 people lost their lives (final estimate as of December 22, 2005); about 4,600 of them were from Kobe.

A section of the Nojima Fault

The Great Hanshin earthquake belonged to a third type, called an "inland shallow earthquake". Earthquakes of this type occur along active faults. Even at lower magnitudes, they can be very destructive because they often occur near populated areas and because their hypocenters are located less than 20 km below the surface. The Great Hanshin earthquake began north of the island of Awaji, which lies just south of Kobe. It spread toward the southwest along the Nojima Fault on Awaji and toward the northeast along the Suma and Suwayama faults, which run through the center of Kobe. Observations of deformations in these faults suggest that the area was subjected to east-west compression, which is consistent with previously known crustal movements.

The earthquake proved to be a major wake-up call for Japanese disaster prevention authorities. Japan installed rubber blocks under bridges to absorb the shock and rebuilt buildings further apart to prevent them from falling like dominoes. The national government changed its disaster response policies in the wake of the earthquake, and its response to the 2004 Chūetsu earthquake was significantly faster and more effective.  The earthquake and tsunami of 2011 though was much larger than anything that had been seen before causing almost 16,000 deaths.  There was little that could be done to stop such a force of nature.

A large amount of data was collected after the tsunami of 2011 that provides "the possibility to model in great detail what happened during the rupture of an earthquake." The effect of this data is expected to be felt across other disciplines as well, and this disaster will "provide unprecedented information about how buildings hold up under long periods of shaking – and thus how to build them better.

Earthquakes can strike at any time and are unpredictable in their nature.  Fortunately these types of earthquake are not that common.  Early warning systems are in place for many countries around earthquake hot spots so as to try and give people time to get to safety.

See also:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_tsunami
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_earthquake
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/a-geological-explanation-of-earthquakes/6736.html

The Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis

The Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis

An aurora is a natural light display in the sky particularly in the high latitude (Arctic and Antarctic) regions, caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere (thermosphere). The charged particles originate in the magnetosphere and solar wind and, on Earth, are directed by the Earth's magnetic field into the atmosphere. Most aurorae occur in a band known as the auroral zone, which is typically 3° to 6° in latitudinal extent and at all local times or longitudes. The auroral zone is typically 10° to 20° from the magnetic pole defined by the axis of the Earth's magnetic dipole. During a geomagnetic storm, the auroral zone expands to lower latitudes.

 

In northern latitudes, the effect is known as the aurora borealis (or the northern lights), named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for the north wind, Boreas, by Pierre Gassendi in 1621.

Auroras seen near the magnetic pole may be high overhead, but from farther away, they illuminate the northern horizon as a greenish glow or sometimes a faint red, as if the Sun were rising from an unusual direction. Discrete aurorae often display magnetic field lines or curtain-like structures, and can change within seconds or glow unchanging for hours, most often in fluorescent green.

Its southern counterpart, the aurora australis (or the southern lights), has features that are almost identical to the aurora borealis and changes simultaneously with changes in the northern auroral zone. It is visible from high southern latitudes in Antarctica, South America, New Zealand, and Australia.

Aurora timelapse:-

 

What is happening?

The auroras, both surrounding the north magnetic pole (aurora borealis) and south magnetic pole (aurora australis) occur when highly charged electrons from the solar wind interact with elements in the earth's atmosphere. Solar winds stream away from the sun at speeds of about 1 million miles per hour. When they reach the earth, some 40 hours after leaving the sun, they follow the lines of magnetic force generated by the earth's core and flow through the magnetosphere, a teardrop-shaped area of highly charged electrical and magnetic fields.

­As the electrons enter the earth's upper atmosphere, they will encounter atoms of oxygen and nitrogen at altitudes from 20 to 200 miles above the earth's surface. The colour of the aurora depends on which atom is struck, and the altitude of the meeting.

• Green - oxygen, up to 150 miles in altitude
• Red - oxygen, above 150 miles in altitude
• Blue - nitrogen, up to 60 miles in altitude
• Purple/violet - nitrogen, above 60 miles in altitude

All of the magnetic and electrical forces react with one another in constantly shifting combinations. These shifts and flows can be seen as the auroras "dance," moving along with the atmospheric currents that can reach 20,000,000 amperes at 50,000 volts.

Structure of the Magnetosphere

For more information visit:-

http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/atmospheric/question471.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_borealis

Using digital SLRs to measure the height of Northern Lights

Scientific research doesn’t often start from outreach projects. Yet, Ryuho Kataoka from the National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo, Japan, came up with an idea for a new method to measure the height of aurora borealis after working on a 3D movie for a planetarium. Kataoka and collaborators used two digital single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras set 8 km apart to capture 3D images of Northern Lights and determine the altitude where electrons in the atmosphere emit the light that produces aurora. The results are published today in Annales Geophysicae, a journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

“We had initial success when we projected the digital SLR images at a planetarium and showed that the aurora could be seen in 3D. It was very beautiful, and I became confident that it should be possible to calculate the emission altitude using these images,” recalls Kataoka, who also works at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (Sokendai) in Hayama, Japan. He teamed up with other Japanese researchers and an American scientist to do just that.

The separation distance between the human eyes is what allows us to see in 3D. When we look at an object, the images captured by the left and right eyes are slightly different from each other and when combined they give the brain the perception of depth. But because the distance between our eyes – about 5 cm – is small, this only works for objects that are not very far away.
Since aurora extend between about 90 and 400 km in altitude, a much larger separation distance is needed to see them in 3D. The researchers used two cameras, mimicking the left and right eyes, separated by 8 km across the Chatanika area in Alaska. Their two digital SLRs, equipped with fisheye lenses and GPS units, captured two simultaneous all-sky images that the researchers combined to create a 3D photograph of the aurora and measure the emission altitude.

“Using the parallax of the left-eye and the right-eye images, we can calculate the distance to the aurora using a [triangulation] method that is similar to the way the human brain comprehends the distance to an object,” explains Kataoka. Parallax is the difference in the apparent position of an object when observed at different angles.

Scientists have obtained altitude maps of aurora before. They are useful because they provide information about the energy of the electrons that produce the lights. But this is the first time the emission height of Northern Lights has been measured using images captured with digital SLR cameras. As the authors explain in the new Annales Geophysicae paper, the altitude maps obtained in this way are consistent with previous observations.
The technique is low cost and allows researchers to measure the altitude of small-scale features in the aurora. Further, it opens up the door for citizen scientists to get involved with auroral research.

“Commercially available GPS units for digital SLR cameras have become popular and relatively inexpensive, and it is easy and very useful for photographers to record the accurate time and position in photographic files. I am thinking of developing a website with a submission system to collect many interesting photographs from night-sky photographers over the world via the internet,” says Kataoka.

The researchers believe this may lead to new scientific findings, while working to engage the public in auroral research. After all, it was the beauty of 3D imaging of auroras that inspired Kataoka to develop a new tool for scientific research in the first place.

For more information, the scientific article is available online, free of charge, at http://www.ann-geophys.net/31/1543/2013/angeo-31-1543-2013.html.

Distilled or Deionised Water? What's the difference?

Many laboratory staff ask for purified water and use the terms distilled and deionised interchangeably.  However the actual products are different and are produced differently.

Most commonly now deionised water is supplied when people ask for purified water.

Purified water is water that is mechanically filtered or processed to be cleaned for consumption. Distilled water and deionised (DI) water have been the most common forms of purified water, but water can also be purified by other processes including Reverse osmosis, carbon filtration, microfiltration, ultrafiltration, ultraviolet oxidation, or electrodialysis.

Distilled water is produced by a process of distillation and has an electrical conductivity of not more than 11 µS/cm and total dissolved solids of less than 10 mg/litre.  Distillation involves boiling the water and then condensing the vapour into a clean container, leaving solid contaminants behind. Distillation produces very pure water. A white or yellowish mineral scale is left in the distillation apparatus, which requires regular cleaning. Distillation alone does not guarantee the absence of bacteria in drinking water unless containers are also sterilized. For many procedures more economical alternatives are available such as deionised water and, is used in place of distilled water.

Double distillation - Double-distilled water is prepared by double distillation of water. Historically, it was the de facto standard for highly purified laboratory water for biochemistry and, by the method of trace analysis until combination methods of purification became widespread.

A water still (Stuart Merit W4000)

Deionisation - Deionised water, also known as demineralised water, is water that has had its mineral ions removed, such as cations like sodium, calcium, iron, and copper, and anions such as chloride and sulfate. Deionisation is a chemical process that uses specially manufactured ion-exchange resins which exchange hydrogen ion and hydroxide ion for dissolved minerals, which then recombine to form water. Because the majority of water impurities are dissolved salts, deionisation produces a high purity water that is generally similar to distilled water, and this process is quick and without scale buildup. However, deionisation does not significantly remove uncharged organic molecules, viruses or bacteria, except by incidental trapping in the resin. Specially made strong base anion resins can remove Gram-negative bacteria. Deionisation can be done continuously and inexpensively using electrodeionisation.

Purite Labwater Deioniser

Outside of the laboratory deionised or distilled water is used to top us lead-acid car batteries although many units are now sealed.  Purified water is also used in freshwater and marine aquariums. As it doesn't contain impurities such as copper and chlorine, it helps to keep fish free from diseases and avoids the build-up of algae on aquarium plants due to its lack of phosphate and silicate.

Deionised water is available from P&R Labpak in small through to large containers!  We can also supply equipment if you need to make your own.

To read more on water:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deionised_water
http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=ANALYST-40-WITH-BOOST-PUMP&Id=40933
http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=STILL-MERIT-MODEL-W4000&Id=45943

 

 

Sprites!

Sprites are a fleeting, ethereal and a relatively unknown aspect of lightning storms.
 
Since the 1960s, and probably before then, pilots have been seeing but seldom reporting what have become known as sprites and elves above the clouds. Sprites are electrically-charged lightning funnels which shoot up from the top of a cloud as much as 60 miles into the atmosphere. These charges are vivid red and usually occur in clusters of three or more but are only visible for nanoseconds. They are sometimes preceded by lower altitude red flashes known as elves, and can have striking blue tendrils which are easily mistaken for blue jets. While they are a similar visual phenomenon, blue jets are less powerful than the sprites and travel neither as quickly nor as far.

 

Because 'everyone knows' lightning goes to ground, pilots were naturally reluctant to report this phenomenon in case they found themselves grounded for hallucinating. As a result, serious research was delayed until the last 15 years or so.

While sprites are more common during positively-charged lightning storms, this is not due to any preference on the part of the sprite, but rather due to the greater internal energy of a positively charged storm. It was not until 1999 that the first sprites of a negatively-charged storm were recorded.

 

During a powerful storm it is possible to see red sprites, elves and blue  jets, but the exact atmospheric conditions which create such a show are uncertain.
 
As sprites are relatively new to the science world there is still a lot more to learn about them.

It is only with the advent of high speed photography that the existence of these light shows could be confirmed, and even with that they were first photographed by accident in 1989. Amazingly, there have since been more than 10,000 confirmed sightings. They are also known to create a very low-frequency thunder which was only recently captured with the use of specialist listening equipment.

 

As their energy is spread more thinly than the traditional thunderbolt due to the cone like dispersal from cloud to atmosphere, they are thought to be relatively weak. Sprites are cold plasma phenomena that lack the hot channel temperatures of tropospheric lightning, so they are more akin to fluorescent tube discharges than to lightning discharges.

The effects of sprites are currently being investigated by various agencies including NASA who seriously addressed them as a possible cause for the tragic loss of the space shuttle Columbia, which was, incidentally, on a mission to record data about the very same sprite phenomenon.
 
The link below shows footage from the ISS and shows a red sprite over East Asia at around 0:06.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Red_Sprite.ogv

Sprite Halos
Sprites are sometimes preceded, by about 1 millisecond, by a sprite halo, a pancake-shaped region of weak, transient optical emissions approximately 50 kilometres (31 mi) across and 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) thick. The halo is centred at about 70 kilometres (43 mi) altitude above the initiating lightning strike. These halos are thought to be produced by the same physical process that produces sprites, but for which the ionization is too weak to cross the threshold required for streamer formation.

Recent research carried out at the University of Houston in 2002 indicates that some normal (negative) lightning discharges produce a sprite halo, and that every lightning bolt between cloud and ground attempts to produce a sprite or a sprite halo.

For more information visit:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(lightning)
http://h2g2.com/approved_entry/A13492398
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap990616.html

The humble Dandelion. What is it good for?

The Dandelion is known by it's latin name of Taraxacum officinale.  There are a number of similar plants labelled false dandelions but we'll look at the one we all know.

They are native to Eurasia and North and South America, and two species, T. officinale and T. erythrospermum, are found as weeds worldwide. Both species are edible in their entirety. The common name dandelion comes from the French dent-de-lion, meaning "lion's tooth".  They have very small flowers collected together into a composite flower head. Each single flower in a head is called a floret. Many Taraxacum species produce seeds asexually by apomixis, where the seeds are produced without pollination, resulting in offspring that are genetically identical to the parent plant

Lions tooth leaves

 

Dandelions are tap rooted biennials or perennial plants.The tap root on a dandelion can reach up to a foot and a half in length.  This is why they are so hard to remove.  If some root is left behind after pulling them up they will regrow.

A Beneficial Weed
The dandelion plant can be a beneficial weed, with a wide range of uses, and is even a good companion plant for gardening. Its taproot will bring up nutrients for shallower-rooting plants, and add minerals and nitrogen to soil. It is also known to attract pollinating insects.  Taraxacum seeds are also an important food source for certain birds

As a noxious weed
The Dandelion is considered to be a nuisance in residential and recreational lawns. It is also an important weed in agriculture and causes significant economic damage because of its infestation in many crops worldwide.

However Dandelion has many medicinal uses.

Medicinal uses
Historically, dandelion was prized for a variety of medicinal properties, and it contains a wide number of pharmacologically active compounds. Dandelion is used as a herbal remedy in Europe, North America and China. It has been used in herbal medicine to treat infections, bile and liver problems, and as a diuretic.

The Dandelion is actually full of full of vitamins A, B, C, and D, as well as minerals such as iron, potassium, and zinc. Dandelion leaves are used to add flavour to salads, sandwiches, and teas. The roots are used in some coffee substitutes, and the flowers are used to make wines!

For more information visit:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taraxacum
http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/herb/dandelion

What Is the Fastest Articulated Motion a Human Can Execute?

Humans are amazing throwers. We are unique among all animals, including our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, in our ability to throw projectiles at high speeds and with incredible accuracy.

 

This trait was critical to the survival and success of our ancestors, aiding their hunting and protective skills, according to National Science Foundation- (NSF) funded research featured on the cover of this week’s journal Nature.

Harvard University researchers supported by NSF’s Biological Anthropology Program discovered that humans are able to throw projectiles at incredible speeds by storing and releasing energy in the tendons and ligaments crossing the shoulder. This energy is used to catapult the arm forward, creating the fastest motion the human body can produce and resulting in very rapid throws.

"Our research demonstrates that the ability to store energy in the shoulder is made possible by three critical changes in our upper bodies that occurred during human evolution," said Neil Roach, lead researcher currently at the Centre for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology at The George Washington University. "The expansion of the waist, a lower positioning of the shoulders on the torso, and the twisting of the humerus (the bone in the upper arm) are the key morphological changes that first appeared together nearly two million years ago in the species Homo erectus."

Two million years ago is also the time at which the archaeological record suggests that our hominin ancestors began to hunt more intensely. "We think that throwing was probably most important early on in terms of hunting behaviour, enabling our ancestors to effectively and safely kill big game," said Roach. "Eating more calorie-rich meat and fat would have allowed our ancestors to grow larger brains and bodies and expand into new regions of the world---all of which helped make us who we are today."

To discover how and why humans throw so well, Roach and his team used a 3-D motion-capture camera system--similar to those used to make video games and animate movie characters--to record the throws of collegiate baseball players. They analysed these data using simple physics that breaks down complex movements into the individual motions occurring at each joint and determined velocity and estimated the forces needed to create each motion.

The authors found that humans are able to throw with such velocity by storing elastic energy in their shoulders. This energy storage occurs in the "cocking" phase of the throw, when the arm is pulled backward away from the target.
"The cocking of the arm stretches the tendons, ligaments and muscles crossing the shoulder and stores elastic energy, like a slingshot," said Roach. "When this energy is then released, it powers the very rapid rotation of the upper arm, which is the fastest motion the human body produces. This rapid rotation also causes the elbow to quickly straighten and the projectile to be released at very high speeds."

The team also used therapeutic braces to limit the throwers' movements. "The braces allowed us to mimic our ancestral anatomy in modern throwers, giving us the opportunity to see how anatomical changes that occurred during our evolutionary past would have affected our ability to throw," said Roach.

Roach's study is the first to suggest a link between human's incredible throwing ability and the critical evolutionary shifts made possible by our ancestors' increased hunting. It is also the first to demonstrate the use of elastic energy in the human arm. Next, Roach and his colleagues plan to build on their work by determining what type of objects our ancestors actually threw.

For more information:-
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=128399

The Petri Dish!

Google is commemorating today the achievements of the scientist Julius Richard Petri with a Google Doodle that shows his invention - the Petri dish - in action.

Today would have been the German bacteriologist's 160th birthday. In the animation on the Google homepage, the word "Google" is replaced with a series of the dishes in the Google colours. A hand appears, swabbing each of them, then you can watch as the bacteria grow.

 

Julius Richard Petri (May 31, 1852 – December 20, 1921) was a German microbiologist who is generally credited with inventing the Petri dish while working as assistant to pioneering bacteriologist Robert Koch.

 

Petri dishes are often used to make plates that are used for microbiology studies. The dish is partially filled with warm liquid containing agar, and a mixture of specific ingredients that may include nutrients, blood, salts, carbohydrates, dyes, indicators, amino acids and antibiotics. After the agar cools and solidifies, the dish is ready to receive a microbe-laden sample in a process known as inoculation or "plating." For virus or phage cultures, a two-step inoculation is needed: bacteria are grown first to provide hosts for the viral inoculum.

Often, the bacterial sample is diluted on the plate by a process called "streaking": a sterile plastic stick, or a wire loop which has been sterilized by heating is used to take the first sample, and make a streak on the agar dish. Then a fresh stick, or a newly-sterilized loop, passes through that initial streak, and spreads the plated bacteria onto the dish. This is repeated a third, and sometimes a fourth time, resulting in individual bacterial cells that are isolated on the plate, which then divide and grow into single "clonal" bacterial colonies.
Petri plates are sometimes incubated upside down (agar on top) to lessen the risk of contamination from settling airborne particles and to prevent water condensation from accumulating and disturbing the cultured microbes.

P&R Labpak supply a wide range of petri dishes - glass and disposable plastic in various diameters.  If you need any, why not contact us?

We also supply various agars and media from all leading brands.

 

For more information visit:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Richard_Petri

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-doodle-celebrates-work-of-julius-richard-petri--the-scientist-widely-credited-with-inventing-the-petri-dish-8638084.html