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What space explorers might live in once they get to Mars

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NASA just got an extra $1.3 billion added to its budget for 2016. Part of this budget is set to be used to develop a deep space habitation module. The deep space dwelling would be a ship that a crew could live and work out of — perhaps even on a journey to Mars.

The deadline for the prototype is 2018, giving NASA just two years to develop the technology. 

Bruce Lieberman, a freelance science writer based in San Diego, California, says the habitation module will likely be something inflatable, made from a certain type of fabric. 

“These are not party balloons. ... You might think of astronauts bouncing around in these giant party homes but that's not that's not what it is,” Lieberman says. “It’s a rigidised, inflatable habitat that has numerous layers of protection and a thermal blanket covering. This is something that could be conceivably attached to a propulsion system that would give astronauts a lot of living space on their way to a destination, whether it's an asteroid or Mars or the moon.”

No one is sure exactly what the prototype will look like. The construction is proprietary, meaning NASA and Bigelow Aerospace, the company working on the technology, are keeping its design under wraps. Lieberman, however, says it will likely be made from a Kevlar-like fabric that has several advantages. 

“It's relatively cheap compared to other modules, it's lightweight, it’s compact, and it has some advantages to aluminum pressure vessels as far as radiation protection,” Lieberman says, “[The] Kevlar-like fabric would help protect astronauts from orbital debris that's orbiting the Earth and also micrometeoroids.” 

Other researchers have been working on using materials natural to other planets to come up with ways of building habitats for future astronauts. Gianluca Cusatis, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University, says he and his students have come up with a way to make cement from Martian soil. 

“The idea came from previous research in NASA where they were exploring cement on the Moon and because you don't think about shipping the cement and wood and water and gravel, which are the main components of concrete here on Earth, they explored using sulfur to bind and to glue together the lunar soil,” Cusatis says. “The technology's really very simple. You melt the sulfur and then it becomes liquid and then you mix with the martian soil and then it hardens and it is a solid and possible construction material.”

The advantage to using concrete is that it makes a good shield against radiation, as well as debris from any meteorites on Mars. And using sulfur in the mix means that Martian concrete would be about twice as strong as the concrete regularly used on Earth. There are drawbacks, however: “Being still sulfur-based, it melts back to liquid if you heat it up. So in a case of fire or high temperature, definitely that is not something that you want to have in your house,” Cusatis says. 

Cusatis and his team have not yet been contacted by NASA about their experiments with making concrete from Martian soil. Building skyscrapers or concrete homes on Mars is still far in the distant future. There are, however, a number of other projects that the new NASA funding is making a possibility. 

One in the near future is building the necessary components needed to launch astronauts into space from US soil. 

“NASA had been saying it was on track to do that by the end of 2017,” Berger says. “It said if it did not get full funding for commercial crew this time, that that date was going to slip into 2018 or beyond. So basically it was putting Republicans in the House and the Senate in the position of, if they didn't fund it, they were going to look like they were willing to spend money on the Russian defense program.”

Other exciting projects on NASA’s horizon? A possible launch for a trip to Jupiter’s moon, Europa by 2022 or 2023. 

“Europa is fascinating place,” Berger says. “It's covered in ice it's bathed in radiations from Jupiter’s surface ... but beneath the surface is an ocean. There's more water on Europa than there is on Earth and there's a heat source, because you have this tidal flexing of the core of Europa and so if you're going to look for life that's living now in the solar system today, it's probably the best place to look.”

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Science Friday.


Just how big is the natural gas leak in California?

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It’s been more than two months since inspectors uncovered a colossal natural gas leak in California’s Aliso Canyon, and it will take at least another month, possibly two, to plug it up, according to Southern California Gas Company’s latest estimates.

“On a scale of of actual emissions, of the size of the leak, this is dwarfing anything that's happened like that before in this area or really almost in any other area in this country,” says Stanford University environmental scientist Rob Jackson, “This is very unique and very unusual.”

The invisible methane plume, captured on infrared camera by the Environmental Defense Fund, has driven thousands of nearby residents out of their homes, shut down two schools, and cancelled out a chunk of the state’s greenhouse gas reduction efforts.

The Aliso Canyon storage field is one of about 420 underground storage places for natural gas. Jackson says most gas storage fields are old oil and gas fields, more similar in structure to enormous subterranean honeycombs than to actual hollowed-out caverns. 

“You can think of these underground storage fields as a balloon underground,” Jackson says, “They just keep pumping gas into it and it gets to a very, very high pressure. And if the knot on that balloon comes untied, then the gas jets out and it takes a long time for that air to finish. It just keeps jetting out and that's what's happening at Aliso Canyon.”

So far the Southern California gas company has tried using mud and brines to counterbalance the pressure of the leaking gas, but their efforts so far have failed. Now the gas is bubbling down and out around the cement sheath. 

“At this point, it's an uncontrolled release ... that's just belching natural gas — about 2.5 million pounds of methane every day,” Jackson says. 

Some have called this the worst environmental disaster since the B.P. oil spill. Jackson says it’s unprecedented. 

“This leak is bigger than the methane that's emitted by all industrial activities in California, including the entire oil and gas industry. It's huge,” Jackson says. 

In terms of global methane emissions, though, Jackson says this leak is not that big of a concern. 

“You're not going to see a massive spike in the atmosphere because of this leak. It's huge, but it's not that huge,” Jackson says. 

The leak is also not likely to cause too much bad interaction with the ozone in Los Angeles.  

“The ozone in Los Angeles is catalyzed by hydrocarbons, rather than nitrogen oxides, but it's not typically catalyzed by light hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane. And it's also winter. And it's rainy. So that would only likely be an issue if this went into the summer — and even then it might not be the biggest issue,” Jackson says. 

The really big concern? There may perhaps be other traces of toxic gases in the leak that could cause devastating health effects to people in the area. 

“The thing that people are most concerned about are the trace gases,” Jackson says. “What else is in that air at low concentrations that could cause health effects long term?”

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Science Friday.

4 things you wanted to know about gene editing

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Regulators in the UK today approved research on human embryos using CRISPR-Cas9, a controversial form of gene editing that has been exciting scientists and alarming bioethicists around the world.

In a groundbreaking move, the Human Fertilisation and Embryonic Authority has granted approval to a group of researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London. The UK is the first country to grant such authority.

The UK has been on the forefront of regulatory policy in this area, having recently approved the use of“three-parent embryos” through mitochondrial donation, and has previously been a haven for embryonic stem cell and other kinds of controversial research that faced roadblocks in the US.

Here’s what you need to know about CRISPR and gene editing.

What is it?

Gene editing is a controversial technology that scientists and doctors hope can be used to eliminate genes that cause serious genetic diseases, like sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia, for example. The simplest and newest form of this therapy is an enzyme called CRISPR-Cas9, which operates like a pair of scissors aimed at cutting DNA in a directed place. CRISPR can remove targeted genes out of strands of DNA, and then also either put in a new gene, or simply fuse the strands back together.

It has revolutionized the world of genomics, to say the least.

Pharmaceutical companies are betting that investing in CRISPR-reliant medicine and start-ups will pay off, ethicists are clamoring for more oversight of its use, and scientists around the world have been using it to research treating a plethora of diseases, with new breakthroughs coming at a remarkable pace.

Is it legal in the US?

Not necessarily. Gene editing is not yet regulated medicine, although older methods like TALENs and zinc finger nucleases have been successful. So far, CRISPR has only been allowed to be used on other kinds of mammalian cells, like pigs.

The regulatory body in the UK is the first governmental body to approve CRISPR research on human embryos — but the scientists there won’t be the first to actually perform this research.

Chinese scientists edited a human embryo last April, and ended up causing more genetic defects than they started with — proof that CRISPR can produce unintended side effects if used improperly.

But the Chinese experiments were not actually sanctioned by a regulatory agency, and those experiments also flew in direct opposition to a voluntary moratorium (not a legally enforceable one) undertaken globally by scientists last March.

The UK decision is groundbreaking because it comes less than two months after an international group of scientists gathered in Washington, D.C. in December to discuss how they should proceed, a significant event in itself. The group decided to not continue a moratorium on research and to proceed with experimentation of CRISPR.

So, when can I use it?

First, there may be a red tape roadblock. There is a patent war afoot, and two groups of scientists (one on the West Coast at University of California, Berkeley, and one on the East Coast at the MIT Broad Institute), each claim to have pioneered the use of CRISPR-Cas9 in gene editing. Until that is resolved, it is unlikely that the FDA will look into medical applications of CRISPR in the US.

As it stands, the FDA has not yet approved gene editing therapy, and the US Congress has threatened to ban the kinds of experiments that the UK approved today.

So it’s unlikely that CRISPR will be available to the mainstream medical community any time soon.

That said, because CRISPR is very easy to use, Do It Yourself gene editing kits are actually available online. These are only for kitchen table experiments with yeast and simple bacteria, of course, but they are already widely available to the biohacking community.

Is it ethical?

There are serious ethical concerns, including the question of whether changes made to certain kinds of cells (like reproductive cells, for example) could be inherited, and fundamentally change the makeup of the human genome, which is called “germline editing.” Researchers are not yet interested in moving toward germline editing just yet.

Plus, scientists working with gene editing on embryos must destroy them after 14 days. The embryos are not allowed to be implanted, and they are being provided knowingly by patients undergoing IVF treatments.

However, there is the matter of “somatic cell” gene editing, which is the process of making changes to an adult cell – changes that could not be inherited and which would be undertaken by a consenting adult.

Scientists are very wary of the possibility that access to CRISPR will be limited to those who can afford it, creating an inequality gap of gene-edited wealthy individuals who want to use the technology to enhance themselves and practice eugenics.

However, these advances are years away.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this stories misidentified the California university where a group of scientists are working on this. It is the University of California, Berkeley.

 

Activists keen to keep momentum on climate change, post-Paris

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Every Monday evening for more than a year, demonstrators have stood in protest at an intersection in Boston’s West Roxbury neighborhood. Holding signs and singing protest songs at the cars passing by, they’ve stood in rain, sleet and snow to oppose a planned new natural gas pipeline near their homes.

The new pipeline would bring more natural gas to Boston from Pennsylvania and points west.

Neighbor and protestor Nancy Wilson’s initial concern with the project was about safety, but as she got more and more involved with the grassroots groups formed to oppose the pipeline, she has thought more about the impact of projects like this beyond her backyard.  

“Everyone knows that we have to end our dependence on fossil fuels, everyone knows this, and this commitment to the build-out of infrastructure that we don’t need and we don’t want flies in the face of logic at a critical inflection point for our climate future and our state’s future,” Wilson said.

Nearly 200 countries pledged to limit carbon emissions in the Paris agreement, but the text doesn’t specify how they have to do it.  And once the agreement is officially adopted, it doesn’t kick in until 2020. Wilson and others worry that building new fossil fuel projects before then could lock the country into a future of dirty energy. As a result, projects like new pipelines are increasingly seen as major front lines of the climate movement, both in Massachusetts and around the world.  

Protesting against these new projects are just one way activists who have returned home from the UN summit in Paris are trying to keep the momentum toward a greener future going at home.

Chuck Collins, one of the Boston protest’s organizers, draws inspiration from a sense of collective mission.  

“I kind of feel like we’re part of ‘Blockadia,’ a global movement trying to stop fossil fuel infrastructure, whether it’s First Nations groups in Canada, or people in India, or here in West Roxbury, we’re like part of a global citizens movement,” Collins said.

“I think that activists are looking at ways that we can fight locally but connect globally,” said Jamie Henn, with the climate action group 350.org.

Henn said bolstering local protests is at the core of 350.org’s post-Paris strategy. They’re planning a week of coordinated global protests this spring.    

“People in different countries will be taking on the worst fossil fuel projects where they are, so in Australia people standing up to a major coal mine, in Canada people taking on the tar sands, etcetera,” Henn said. “I think people realize that there’s strength in connecting internationally, but that the real work has to be done at the local level.”

Engaging in decision-making closer to home

Fighting to shift the balance away from fossil fuels isn’t the only battle line for activists after the UN summit. They aren’t just protesting, but pushing for a seat at the table where leaders will decide how they will achieve the goals laid out in Paris. 

“From 2009 til last year in Paris, the focus was more of trying to get the world into an agreement,” said Krishneil Narayan, coordinator of the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network.

“Now, what comes after Paris is that the NGOs and civil societies will continue to hold their governments accountable to implement this agreement,” Narayan said, “at our own particular regions, our national level, and more specifically at the grassroot level.”

A priority for Narayan is making sure island nations get their fair share of the billions of dollars pledged by developed countries to help poor and vulnerable ones adapt to higher temperatures and rising seas.

“Trying to streamline the funding mechanisms that come through the Green Climate Fund and ensuring that the Pacific has access to that funding is going to be a priority for us,” Narayan said.

Meanwhile, for some activists in Brazil, the focus today is on engaging with local governments. Debora Leao co-founded a group called Engajamundo to give young people a voice in global forums like the Paris conference. Now the group is looking for ways to speak up closer to home.

“What we are looking toward is how to get young people involved and engaged in local governments decisions and strategies toward adaptation, toward bringing renewable energy into their energy matrix, and all those things that will need to be implemented locally in the future,” Leao said.  

The Paris agreement gives the world a landmark target: keep global warming well under 2 degrees Celsius. Now it is up to individual countries to meet those goals, and many activists see it as their mandate to make sure they do.

Apple is said to be considering upending the headphone market — by changing the ubiquitous jack

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Innovative new ideas slowly move society forward. When a new product hits the market, an older technology becomes obsolete.

And if there's one company that's famous for forcing obsolescence on itself, it's Apple. The iPod became the iPhone. The iPhone 5 required a new charger that didn't work on older models. And now it's rumored that the iPhone 7 won't have the usual headphone mini-jack. Instead, the ear buds will plug into the lightning port (where the charger goes now).

Many consumers are wondering if this a big ploy by Apple to get us to buy their headphones — and their headphones only. But is it possible that the headphone jack is just a natural casualty of genuine innovation?

“It dates back to the 1880s — it was originally in the old telephone switchboards; it was the jack that the operators used to use to switch phone calls,” says Leander Kahney, editor and publisher of the blog Cult of Mac. “Sony miniaturized it in the ‘50s with the transistor radio, so this dates back to the ‘50s and ‘60s — the 3.5mm jack as we know it today.”

Kahney, author of "Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products," argues Apple’s plan is actually a good thing.

“I remember there was huge howls of protest with the first iMac in the late ‘90s, when it didn’t have a floppy drive,” says Kahney. “People said that it was going to be doomed because people wouldn’t buy a computer that they couldn’t use their old floppies with. It happened with the first iPhone because it didn’t have a physical keyboard, like the Palm Pilots and the Blackberry. People said no one would buy an iPhone without a keyboard.”

Kahney says Apple has done consumers a favor by ditching the floppy drive and pioneering the touch screen. But rumors about the proposed change have brought loud protests: Nearly 300,000 people have signed a petition asking Apple to keep the headphone jack.

“[It’s] because this is one of the oldest outstanding connections, and there are millions — maybe hundreds of millions — of headphones that will be rendered obsolete overnight,” says Kahney.

Though Kahney admits Apple will likely introduce an adapter for new models that don’t have the standard headphone jack, he says they will likely be expensive, just like Apple’s many other cables and adapters.

“They’re famous for charging $60, $70, or $80 for what seems like a simple wire, but they actually include some very sophisticated chips and circuitry,” he says. “You’ll be able to get some cheap knockoffs, but they probably won’t be very good.”

But the tech company may not stop there.

“Apple may be getting rid of the lighting connector too if it moves to wireless charging,” Kahney says. “You already have wireless charging in the Apple Watch. If they bring that to the phone, it’s conceivable that it will have no wires coming out of it at all. Apple has long led the technology industry, and they see that, to move on, you’ve got to jettison some of the old stuff.”

Apple likes to create trends, not follow them. And if innovation was left it up to other computer companies, Kahney says we all might be surfing the web today with large, bulky monitors.

“I think it’s a tradeoff worth making — it’s inconvenient in the short term if there are things that you’re used to doing,” he says. “But in the long term, this is the way technology works, and the way that it should work.”

This story first aired as an interview on PRI's The Takeaway, a public radio program that invites you to be part of the American conversation.

A new coloring book highlights the visual beauty of mathematics

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If you’ve ever felt intimidated by math, or consider it a daunting labyrinth of numbers and equations in a textbook, open up Patterns of the Universe: A Coloring Adventure in Math and Beauty.

Flipping through this new coloring book is a mesmerizing journey. From perfect hexagonal tilings to luscious sine waves to nautilus shell spirals, every line illustration by mathematical artist Edmund Harriss (and a handful of others) brings a hypnotic sense of harmony.

“We think this is something that you can appreciate, knowing nothing about math,” says math writer Alex Bellos, who conceived the idea for the book and worked with Harriss to choose the designs. “To me, it’s like an encyclopedia of amazing mathematical images that can be enjoyed for their aesthetic appeal — but can also be enjoyed to learn stuff."

A deformation is a tiling in which the tiles slowly change while keeping the same underlying pattern. The earliest deformations, seen in the work of the Dutch mathematical artist M. C. Escher, morphed in a single dimension: from left to right, or from top to bottom. In this image, the deformation is two-dimensional. Edmund Harriss has created four different non-periodic tilings, one in each corner, that morph into each other from left to right and from top to bottom. Deformations are the nearest geometry gets to a “temporal” art form. You only get a feel for the pattern by following how the shapes shift across the page.

 

Credit:

© Edmund Harriss

The drawings in the book are based on mathematical concepts, such as prime numbers, fractals and tessellations. Readers are encouraged to color as they please — “you should do it exactly as you want to do it; there are no rules,” encourages Bellos — though some drawings offer prompts based on the math at hand.

One page in the book, for example, instructs you to color by the numbers on a Sudoku grid. For another drawing, called “Coin Hex” in a section on randomness, you choose two colors, assign each to a side of a coin, and then flip the coin to determine which color you’ll shade in each of the hexagons in a full-page hexagonal grid. The resulting color scheme is in fact random. “Most people think that math is pattern, but it’s also the absence of pattern,” says Bellos. When it’s all colored in, this page is “rather beautiful,” he muses.

For each hexagon, toss a coin to determine the color. Choose one color for heads, one for tails. The point here is that you will have colored the hexagons totally randomly. But stare at it and you will see patterns. It’s a reminder that we find randomness very difficult to comprehend.

Credit:

© Edmund Harriss

 

Bellos first came up with the concept for his book after noticing a friend had a famous mathematic image, the Ulam spiral, on a wall in his home. “And I thought, well, it actually works really well as art,” he says. “Art is supposed to provoke you, and to have this kind of deeper meaning.” Bellos was inspired.

He realized that exposing aesthetically pleasing mathematical images like the Ulam spiral might be a good way to communicate math to a broader audience. He had also noticed a recent boom in the popularity of coloring books for adults, which are often marketed as a way to relieve stress and anxiety.

The best-known and most geometrically complex Hindu mandala: nine interlocking triangles with a dot, or bindu, in the middle. The Sri Yantra has many metaphysical interpretations and is used for meditation and worship.

 

Credit:

© Edmund Harriss

And math itself could be considered a form of stress relief. Centuries ago, mathematical concepts were used in a lot of religious imagery to induce contemplation, says Bellos. For instance, the first drawing in Patterns of the Universe is a Sri Yantra, a Hindu symbol that’s long been used for meditation and worship, and which happens to be a basic geometric composition of nine interlocking triangles with a dot in the middle.

“You can look at all these images in this book, and you can contemplate them, you can meditate on them,” says Bellos. “It fits in really, really well with this whole idea of coloring as art therapy.”

Plus, you might gain some mathematical insight in the process. “It’s a bit wacky, and geeky,” Bellos says. “But it’s kind of cool.”

Teachers and educators can request a printable classroom packet via the book’s page here.

This story was first published by Science Friday with Ira Flatow.

Images excerpted from Patterns of the Universe: A Coloring Adventure in Math and Beauty © Alex Bellos, 2015. Reprinted with permission from the publisher, The Experiment. Available wherever books are sold.

Luxembourg hopes to spur the next 'gold rush' in space

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The government of Luxembourg says it will work with space entrepreneurs to open up access to a wealth of rare minerals and resources in space.

To do this, it plans to partner with and invest in futuristic research projects to develop both new space mining technology and to build on existing technology such as autonomous robots and auto navigation systems.  

"In the long-term, space resources could lead to a thriving new space economy and human expansion into the solar system," Etienne Schneider, Luxembourg's economy minister, told a press conference.

Asteroid mining could potentially make deep space exploration missions easier as supplies of materials wouldn't have to be blasted into space from Earth.

“Luxembourg is taking first steps to make sure that resources will be available in outer space for supporting and building up those manned missions to planets beyond Mars to new territories,” says Yves Elsen of the Luxembourg Space Cluster. “The reason is that there are a lot of raw materials to be found on asteroids — for example, water under the surface in the form of ice -- but if you have water you can split out hydrogen and oxygen, which you need for rocket propulsion systems,"

More than 13,000 asteroids have so far been identified moving close to Earth. Scientists believe that many of them are rich in highly valuable metals like platinum and palladium. As expected these potentially abundant asteroid resources are luring some American start-up companies to compete to be the first to visit these asteroids.

 “This is the beginning of the gold rush in space, and we’re delighted to see Luxembourg’s leadership,” says Chris Lewicki, the CEO of Planetary Resources, one of several US companies hoping to ramp up to actual asteroid mining operations. Lewicki says that by the decade of the 2020s, it will likely be possible to land autonomous spacecraft on asteroids, to drill into their surfaces, and extract very profitable quantities of special ores to bring back to Earth.

Asteroid mining missions will undoubtedly be technologically complicated and exceedingly difficult, but Lewicki sounds confident.

“We can use robotic technology, the same technology that helped Rovers land and drive on Mars, the same technology that’s helping autonomous cars drive around, is something that we can actually do, without ever needing to have a human go, we can explore and develop these resources on asteroids.” 

He notes that a robotic asteroid mission has certain advantages over a manned lunar mission. 

“The moon’s got a lot of gravity that you have to fight in order to land on it and come back from it, but asteroids have very little gravity, so you dock with them, and that makes them much more attractive targets for rocket scientists going out to look for resources in space.”

As futuristic as it all sounds, Planetary Resources can already point to successes. Its Arkyd 3 Reflight spacecraft deployed successfully from the International Space Station last year and carried out a 90-day mission that featured some of the avionics, control systems and software, which the company plans to incorporate into future spacecraft to prospect for resource-rich near-Earth asteroids.

Another space mining company hopeful is preparing as well.

In a press release, the California-based Deep Space Industries praised Luxembourg for its “unique foresight and their deep understanding of the future of the space industry. This initiative shows they are uniquely positioned to be a major player in the next space economy that is currently gaining traction around the world. DSI is proud to see the leadership of our friends and partners as they help pave the critical path to a future of unlimited resources.”

Rick Tumlinson, who heads DSI, said “The future is built by the bold, and once again, as it did in telecommunications and other areas of technology, Luxembourg is showing the sort of boldness that moves the world forward.”

Where human life is precarious, Haitians look out for a rare Iguana

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On a Saturday morning on Haiti’s south coast, just over the border from the Dominican Republic, Pierre Richard Sanon and Tinio Louis scratch around in the dry, sandy soil in the dappled light beneath some small trees. They’re local youth conservation workers, and they’re pointing out the nesting spot of a Ricord’s Iguana.

The mother iguana buries her eggs here, they explain, and after three months, the little hatchlings emerge from the earth.

The babies would be impressive-looking, with grey-green armor, spikes along their backs, and menacing claws. As adults, they could grow to be three feet long.

The Ricord’s Iguana lives only on Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but even here you’re not likely to see one. It’s critically endangered on the whole island, and it was thought to be extinct here in Haiti, until a nest was found right here eight years ago, on a hilly stretch of sand and rock in the town of Anse-a-Pitres, running along a cliff overlooking the Caribbean Sea.

The small population of Ricord's iguanas on this isolated stretch of scrubland in Anse-a-Pitres, Haiti, is one of only three remnant populations of the species on the entire island of Hispaniola. Since the population was discovered, volunteer conservation

The small population of Ricord's iguanas on this isolated stretch of scrubland in Anse-a-Pitres, Haiti, is one of only three remnant populations of the species on the entire island of Hispaniola. Since the population was discovered, volunteer conservation workers have tried to improve the reptiles' habitat by planting shrubby trees and cacti bearing fruit they call "iguana candy."

Credit:

Bahare Khodabande

As they walk, Sanon and Louis point out hidden caves, birds, tiny iridescent lizards, a giant caterpillar, shrubby trees and cacti bearing fruit they call "iguana candy." Many of these trees were planted by the two young men themselves, as part of a reforestation program designed to protect what it turns out could be a local population of up to 500 Ricord’s Iguanas.

Today, the iguanas might face a greater chance of survival thanks to a young Haitian American woman named Masani Accimé, who was leading a very different life in Manhattan before moving here.

“I was working as an emergency veterinarian, treating dogs and cats with Gucci collars, and in the Prada bag,” Accimé says. “And then I received an email from Ernst Rupp, who actually discovered the sub-population of iguanas here, inviting me to come here to work in this community where there’s no electricity.”

Accimé had worked with iguanas in a zoo, and had been interested in wildlife work. But she says the real draw was the opportunity to do something positive for a country she still considered home.

She landed a grant from a foundation and began recruiting volunteers, such as Louis and Sanon, to patrol the area, plant trees, and speak with local residents about threats like hunting the iguana for meat, and cutting trees for charcoal. She also convinced local politicians to set aside almost 20 square miles for protected iguana habitat.

Accimé also had eager collaborators in a conservation organization across the border in the Dominican Republic, called Grupo Jaragua— with whom Ernst Rupp works. Accimé says that collaboration was remarkable given how bad relations have gotten between the two neighbors.

“They haven’t been willing to see a border,” she says of her Dominican partners. “They’ve been willing to see that the species actually don’t have a border, and they need to survive, and that’s it.”

Project director Masani Accimé on a walkway crossing between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where she has formed a rare cross-border relationship with a partner organization. Relations between the two countries have long been strained but Accimé says h

Project director Masani Accimé on a walkway crossing between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where she has formed a rare cross-border relationship with a partner organization. Relations between the two countries have long been strained but Accimé says her Dominican partners recognize that "the species actually don’t have a border.”

Credit:

Bahare Khodabande

In a country like Haiti, where environmental destruction seems an intractable problem in the face of unrelenting human misery, the accomplishments by Accimé and collaborators on behalf of a lizard are impressive. But they hardly guarantee long-term success, and the challenges are huge, from unrelenting poverty and superstition about reptiles, to distrust of NGOs, and Haiti’s political chaos.

Accimé says what’s needed most is a national law protecting the iguana. But the government in Port-au-Prince is barely functioning, and similar dysfunction locally makes it worse. A while ago she was close to convincing the mayor of Anse-a-Pitres to push the cause in the capital, but then the mayor was ousted, Accimé says.

She says a new mayor came in four months later and told her, "‘well, I don’t know anything about your work, there’s nothing in the office that shows you’ve been working here.’ And I’ve been bringing documents and holding meetings and workshops for years.”

Accimé regrouped, and she seems to have made progress with the town’s new interim mayor, Mikellange Morland.

“Personally, I would like to see the iguana habitat protection put into law,” Morland says. “And I believe the government wants to as well.”

But Morland also thinks a new law can only go so far.

“You have to look at the feasibility,” the mayor says. “If I say I’m going to arrest anyone who cuts trees, but today there are people cutting trees to survive, how can I give them a way to survive without cutting trees?”

Cutting trees for charcoal production is an impoprtant livelihood in Haiti but also a major threat to its environment, including the the habitat of the Ricord's iguana.

Cutting trees for charcoal production is an impoprtant livelihood in Haiti but also a major threat to its environment, including the the habitat of the Ricord's iguana.

Credit:

Bahare Khodabande

But Morland believes Accimé’s efforts have helped improve public understanding of the benefits of protecting the iguana and its habitat.

Accimé explains that the iguana can help restore the local forest by spreading and fertilizing seeds through its scat. She also hopes it could help foster eco-tourism here. Meanwhile, her volunteers are ready to give training and supplies to help locals switch from chopping trees and selling charcoal to new sources of income, like beekeeping.

Still, Accimé is growing weary of the challenges.

“I don’t know whether or not this will work,” she says, “because as we’ve seen, many, many, many projects have been failing in Haiti.”

After working in Anse-a-Pitres for the better part of seven years, the Haitian American veterinarian is now planning to turn the iguana project over to her protégés and hope for the best.

“The only way that I think it will take hold is if individual people have an interest in it,” Accimé says. “I think these young people do. So hopefully they’re stakeholders now, this is their work."

“I think there’s a high likelihood that this could fail, but a small chance that it could succeed. It’s been worth a try.”

Youth conservation worker Tinio Louis points to the boundary of the 20 square-mile protected iguana habitat in Anse-a-Pitres, Haiti. Project leader Masani Accimé says she's planning to turn the reins over to Louis and other local residents. "Hopefully the

Youth conservation worker Tinio Louis points to the boundary of the 20 square-mile protected iguana habitat in Anse-a-Pitres, Haiti. Project leader Masani Accimé says she's planning to turn the reins over to Louis and other local residents. "Hopefully they’re stakeholders now. This is their work.”

Credit:

Bahare Khodabande


The water crisis in Flint is 'an entirely preventable man-made disaster'

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The drinking-water disaster in Flint, Michigan, occurred not just as a result of mistakes and bad decision-making — it was the result of lies, falsified science and a deliberate coverup.

“What's happened is an entirely preventable man-made disaster that started out by not following federal law that requires addition of a corrosion control chemical to the water supply to protect the iron and lead pipes from corrosion,” says Virginia Tech water treatment and corrosion expert Marc Edwards.

Lead, a powerful neurotoxin, began leaching into the municipal water supply of Flint Michigan in April 2014, when the city switched its water supply from the Detroit water it had been using for decades to Flint River water, which runs through the town. This water is saltier and a little more corrosive, Edwards explains. And once it was put into the system, a “perfect storm of corrosion was unleashed.”

“Red water — iron rust falling off of pipes — was coming out of people’s taps at very, very high levels. Lead was leaching into the water supply from the earliest days and pipes were breaking, literally in the streets, due to the high corrosion,” Edwards says.

Residents complained that their tap water suddenly smelled and looked bad, but local officials insisted it was safe. General Motors, which has a plant in Flint, noticed that the water was corroding car parts and stopped buying Flint water. Still, the state continued to claim there was nothing wrong with the water.

Even when local officials started detecting high lead levels in the water, rather than admit that they were breaking the law — which they and the EPA regional office knew as far back as April of 2015 — they didn't tell anyone.

“Outside people were figuring out these problems, while the very agencies that we pay to protect us from lead in water were lying to each other in writing,” Edwards says. “They were telling the public that the water was completely safe. If anyone said anything to the contrary, as we did when we started working with the residents, we were attacked. In fact, had outside people not gotten involved and exposed this, Flint kids would be drinking that water to this day.”

When Edwards arrived in Flint, after being contacted by LeeAnne Walters — the ‘hero Mom’ of this story— he helped sample the water supply and found the worst lead levels in water he had seen in 25 years in the field.

“The World Health Organization recommends that the most you ever drink in water is 10 parts per billion, and the water coming out of LeeAnne Walters’ tap was 13,500 parts per billion,” Edwards says. “This is more than 1,300 times higher than recommended levels — two times higher than hazardous waste levels.”

Even after flushing her pipes for 20 minutes to try to clean out the pipes, the lead levels remained in the thousands of parts per billion.

“Lead is the best-known neurotoxin. It adversely affects every system in human body,” Edwards says. “For that reason, we pay people, and pay them well, to protect us from this hazard, so that a situation like Flint would never happen — and unfortunately they failed miserably at doing their job.”

Ironically, the EPA could have been the hero of this story, Edwards said. An EPA worker named Miguel Del Toral had reached out to LeeAnne Walters and was the first one to work with her and to figure out that something was amiss in Flint, Edwards explained.

Del Toral wrote a damning report: It said that Flint was not following federal corrosion control laws, that one child had already been poisoned and that the entire city was in imminent peril. Del Toral leaked his report to the press. But instead of taking it seriously, Edward says, “the Michigan State Department of Environmental Quality and, even worse, his boss — a political appointee — buried the report, told Del Toral he could not talk to anyone about the Flint situation and actually went on a campaign to discredit him.”

“What's happened here is a complete failure of our government,” Edwards says. “In this case, the EPA could have and should have been the heroes. Their employee did this amazing thing to protect the population, even put his job on the line to do so, and his boss ... covered this up and sat silently by for about eight or nine months while the city was on the verge of civil unrest.”

Edwards, unfortunately, has seen this happen before. In Washington, DC, from 2001 to 2004, EPA changed the disinfectants in the city’s water supply. They were trying to do something good, Edwards says, but the unintended result was a massive lead contamination event — the worst in modern US history.

Emails uncovered as result of an investigation showed that EPA knew about the contamination and hid it from the public for three years, until the Washington Post uncovered the story.

Ten years later, officials now know that thousands of children were lead poisoned and there was a higher incidence of miscarriages and fetal death, which is an expected impact of lead in water exposure, Edwards says.

“Unfortunately,” Edwards says, “the US Centers for Disease Control and EPA colluded to completely cover this problem up. They wrote a report at the height of the media outcry that said not a single man, woman or child had blood lead elevated over the level of concern and that this was all much ado about nothing.”

That false statement stood for five years until Edwards wrote a paper in 2009, which was followed by a Congressional hearing that “just reamed the CDC for their indefensible scientific reporting,” Edwards says.

“What you're seeing unfold in Flint is exactly the same thing that we saw before in Washington, DC,” Edwards laments. “And no one was ever held accountable for covering up the problem and no one was held accountable for writing falsified scientific reports. And because no one was held accountable, what these agencies learned is — nothing.

This story is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Living on Earth with Steve Curwood.

How music can affect your sense of taste

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Eating engages all of the senses. Including hearing.

But did you know that sound can enhance your meal? Dan Pashman, host of WNYC’s The Sporkful podcast, says the way food sounds has a huge effect on how much we enjoy it. 

“We now know that the people who designed potato chip bags didn't make them noisy for the sake of the chips. They made them noisy for the sensory experience,” Pashman says, “They understood that a noisy food was better complemented with a noisy package. And in fact research has shown that if people hear the sound of that packaging being crumpled while they're eating the chips, they will think that the chips are crisper, crunchier, fresher, better only because that sound is being played in the background."

One chef in London has begun taking advantage of this hearing-tasting connection and now serves up an iPod with ocean background noise along with his shellfish. 

Different sounds, or even different sound levels, have different ways of enhancing or detracting from taste experiences. 

“Research shows that when you're surrounded by very high decibel level, your taste perception goes down. So loud music means the food will have less flavor. It also it works the same in an airplane where you have a high decibel level. And that's one of the reasons why you get less taste perception on an airplane,” Pashman says. 

Listening to food also clues you in on important information when you’re preparing food. Some chefs can tell whether food is being properly cut by the sound of the knife on a cutting board. And even amateur cooks can tell whether or not a piece of bacon is cooking by the sound of a sizzle in a pan. Pashman says sound can also give you information about the quality of certain ingredients. 

“You can also learn a lot about a chocolate bar by the sound it makes when you break it in half,” Pashman says, “You want a thud. You want to deep strong noise with a bit of base to it. You don't want a thin sound. And that is an indication of how well tempered the chocolate is, because you when you make chocolate, there are different crystal forms that it can take. And the more desirable ones will make a lower sound.”

Sound isn’t the only sense that adds to an eating experience. 

“The whole idea of taste and flavor is a construction of our mind and it is all kind of an illusion that we think we taste food and all with our mouth, when in fact most of the interesting stuff is happening in our nose,” says researcher Charles Spence. “There are certain smells that you will describe as sweet things like caramel and vanilla and maybe strawberry smells that do not actually have a taste. But I can use those sweet smells to almost trick your brain into tasting sweetness.”

Different types of music can also change the way the tastes of complicated types of food are perceived. 

“When you have a food like a dark chocolate or a coffee that has a lot of varying and complementary or even contrasting notes like sweetness and bitterness, it can be hard for your brain to make sense of it all and to latch on to something. And these different pitches of sounds and of music sort of act as ways to highlight certain features of a food,” Pashman says. 

Take a test to see how sound can change the sweet and bitter notes in food:

Take a piece of chocolate or a sip of coffee and register how sweet or bitter it is. Then take a second bite or sip, and hold it in your mouth.

Listen to clip #1. Do you notice sweet or bitter flavors more while listening?

Now listen to clip #2 with that same bite or sip. What flavors can you detect now?

In a study conducted by Charles Spence, sweet flavors are associated with higher-pitched sounds and bitter flavors correspond to lower-pitched sounds. Did your results match up?

This story is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Science Friday.

These scientists are drilling a deep hole into the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Here’s why.

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Deep in the Indian Ocean, far off the southeast coast of South Africa, there is a drill digging its way into the ocean floor of the underwater Atlantis Bank. 

A team of scientists aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution has been operating the drill since December, and they’re hoping to eventually break through the Earth’s crust and bore down into the mantle.

“We're about a half mile down and drilling ahead,” says geologist Henry Dick, co-chief scientist of the expedition. 

Dick and his colleagues are hoping to collect samples of the crust and eventually of the mantle, opening the door to a huge lack of scientific knowledge about what actually lies beneath the Earth’s crust. 

“The ocean crust comprises three-fifths of the Earth's crust,” Dick says. “And yet in all that crust most of it is lower crust and we only have two holes into it — one in the Atlantic and one into the Indian Ocean — that are of any significance at all. And we haven't drilled more than about a third of the way through it. And, you know, when you're talking about the composition of three-fifths of the Earth's crust, that's kind of a big gap in our learning.”

They’re also hoping to figure out whether there’s anything alive buried deep in the high-pressure environment under the Earth’s crust. 

“We've got a couple of bio geochemists on board who are busy assessing the rocks for microbes and fungi and other things and they do find a few,” Dick says, “But the hope is, the thought is, that if we have a lot of altered metal rock down there that creates hydrogen gas which in turn reacts with sea water to form methane — and bugs can live off of methane -— we're thinking that there may be a hidden planetary biosphere beneath the Earth's crust out in the oceans.”

The expedition is also challenging long-held textbook ideas about what exactly the earth’s crust and mantel may look like. 

“Since we've been working here in the Indian Ocean now for the last 15 years, we’ve discovered that large parts of the sea floor have no crust,” Dick says, “The mantel's directly exposed to the sea floor.”

The scientists hope to continue drilling for another 100 meters during their current expedition. In another two to five years, they want to come back and drill another mile deeper.

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Science Friday.

Why there aren't more minorities working in tech

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A few years ago, we looked at why there aren’t more women in tech, and how to fix it. We thought the story ended there, but one of our listeners set us straight.

Not only are minorities (including women) underrepresented in tech; even when they get great jobs, they don’t stay.

Just check out this study in the Harvard Business Review: 52 percent of qualified women working in tech end up leaving

So how do we fix the problem? First of all, says Karen Schoellkopf, chief product officer at Vote Run Lead and creator of hiremorewomenintech.com, we need to take a hard look at the language companies use. Job descriptions that mention weekly keg parties, kite boarding and a company Ping-Pong table might be doing more harm than good.

“The technology sector has a bad reputation,” says Schoellkopf. “If you’re trying to recruit for a more diverse staff, you have to show why you don’t play into those tropes.”

“Hiring and promoting, these are not quantitative processes,” adds Kipp Bradford, research scientist at the MIT MediaLab. Study after study has shown promotion and hiring biases against names that "sound" African American, and favor Asian names. Women too are less likely to be considered for promotions.

The kicker? People who believed they're unbiased tend to be the most biased of all.

And homogeneity in the tech industry isn’t just bad for minorities; it’s bad for the bottom line, too.

“I’m not winning any hearts and minds by saying [hiring a more diverse staff] isn’t the right thing to do,” says Schoellkopf. Instead, she insists, “It has a direct outcome.” Diversity can help companies make more money

“It’s really about diversity of ideas more than diversity of people,” explains Bradford.

For example, imagine a tech company made up of mostly high-income people who hang out in high-income circles. That company might have more of a laptop culture. But they might also miss the growing shift toward cell phones as a cheaper computing device, too.

Schoellkopf points out that it’s a bit ironic that companies who build themselves around diversity of ideas in products rarely embody that in their internal practices. But she remains hopeful. “I think that in the next five to ten years, we’ll see dramatic changes.”

This story first aired as an interview on PRI's Innovation Hub. Subscribe to the Innovation Hub podcast.

The current El Niño may hold lessons for how to deal with a warming planet

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The extreme weather events unfolding around the world as a result of El Niño may give nations an opportunity to learn how to plan for the expected effects of global warming.

“In some sense, what we're seeing around the world right now is an advanced view of the sort of things that we'll see more of in the future — all of the weather systems being somewhat more vigorous than they have been in the past, the risk of both droughts in some regions and flooding in other regions,” says climate scientist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

El Niño is essentially a “mini global warming" event, Trenberth explains. It arises from a build-up of heat in the waters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The warm ocean waters and higher sea levels begin in the western tropical Pacific and then spread to the central and eastern Pacific. The warm tropical ocean releases additional water vapor into the atmosphere through evaporation.

When warm air rises from the oceans to higher levels of the atmosphere, the moisture in the air “rains out,” in a process called “latent heating of condensation.” As that moisture gets released, it leads to additional warming of the air and invigorates weather systems around the world, especially in the eastern Pacific. What’s more, changes in ocean temperature become amplified over dry land, according to one study.

The effects of an El Niño can be overwhelming: The summer of 2015 saw a record number of hurricanes and typhoons in the Philippines, Japan, China, Taiwan and Vietnam — the largest number of Category Four and Five storms on record by a substantial amount, according to Trenberth.

Changing weather patterns also brought a major drought to Indonesia, with a tremendous number of wildfires, while here in the US, major flooding occurred along the Mississippi River, especially in the state of Missouri. In fact, Trenberth says, during November and December the state of Missouri had three times its normal rainfall. The previous record had been about twice the normal amount of rainfall.

All of this means that countries around the world and some states in the US need to take lessons from this relatively short-term surge in temperatures and begin planning to cope with the more persistent, long-term changes likely to arise from climate change, Trenberth says. 

Heavy rainfall in California, for example, will bring substantial relief to agriculture and help restore the parched soil in many parts of that state. But unfortunately — in this case — California has a well-developed system of flood protection, which means a lot of the water now flowing back into Southern California runs into the Los Angeles River and back out to sea, instead of going back into the earth to replenish groundwater supplies.

So now, Trenberth says, the issue uppermost in people’s minds is the storage of water in reservoirs, rivers and lakes.

“This relates to how we work with water in the United States,” Trenberth says. “There is one group that is designed to prevent floods, but there's another group who deals with droughts, and these two need to get together so that they save the water from the times when there’s too much for the times when there isn’t enough — and that's the thing which is really missing at the moment.”

Improvements in climate science now give the world much more notice than ever before about the likelihood of El Niño occurring. Scientists predicted this El Niño more the 18 months ago. This would have been a good time to have mechanisms in place to capture all of this year’s extra rain or to plan for the increased risk of wildfire in Australia, Trenberth says.

Some places in the world are indeed making changes. “They actually change the crops they grow, the seeds they plant, the fertilizer strategy, the irrigation strategy, [how they] manage hydroelectric power — all of these kinds of things,” Trenberth says.

Trenberth believes the current El Niño may have peaked in November in terms of the magnitude of the unusual sea surface temperatures out in the tropical Pacific, so its effects may begin to subside soon.

“It's certainly going to be with us through March, but by about April it's expected that it will be fading quite substantially and it'll be basically gone by about June,” Trenberth says.

“This is the transition. It’s the normal length of time for an El Niño to last, so exactly how this plays out in the next few months, given that it's already beginning to fade a little bit, will be interesting to see — but often some of the biggest effects do occur around February across North America,” Trenberth cautions.

This story is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Living on Earth with Steve Curwood

This professor says Flint's water crisis amounts to environmental racism

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“Environmental racism is real,” says professor Robert Bullard, considered the father of environmental justice. “It’s so real that even having the facts, having the documentation and having the information has never been enough to provide equal protection for people of color and poor people.”

Bullard is dean of the School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and the author of the 1990 book "Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality."

He says lead poisoning in Flint, Mich., and the long delays in addressing it form a classic case of environmental racism. The working class and communities of color, like those in Flint, are far more likely than their white counterparts to be exposed to toxic substances like lead, Bullard says. Recently published studies support his claim.

“Environmental problems, pollution, disasters and health threats often take longer to be acknowledged," Bullard says. "It takes longer for the response and it takes longer for the recovery in communities of color and low-income communities.”

Bullard says “the Flint case fits the example of what's happening with environmental justice across the board." 

He compares the response to the water crisis in Flint, a majority-black city, with the response to the ongoing natural gas leak in predominantly white Porter Ranch, Calif., just outside of Los Angeles: State officials in Michigan and regional EPA officials responded to the Flint crisis first with an attempt at a coverup and then defensively — either trying to avoid responsibility or minimizing the extent of the damage. In California, on the other hand, the public utility and state officials have been much more responsive to the concerns of local citizens.

And in Eastern Tennessee, Bullard says he witnessed all levels of government come together to clean up a coal ash spill in Roane County, which is predominantly white. He says local citizens then opposed of disposing waste anywhere in their county or even state.

“Decision-makers... decided to ship the waste 300 miles south to Perry County, Ala., to Uniontown, a predominantly black county and predominantly black city that is very poor,” Bullard says.

“If it's too poisoned for Eastern Tennessee — mostly white — why isn’t the same consideration given to a poor black area?” Bullard asks. “[Y]ou’re taking waste from white areas and shipping it to black areas. We say that is environmental racism.”

Now, on top of these local health threats and crises, poor communities and communities of color are going to have to start dealing with climate change, which "is the global environmental justice issue,” Bullard says.

“The communities that have contributed least to global warming and climate change will feel the impacts first, worst and longest. The environmental justice movement and the climate justice movement speak to this issue not just in terms of parts per million and CO2 and greenhouse gases, but also in terms of the equity of climate-change impact.”

The professor thinks real solutions will come about when communities that have historically been left out of environmental decision-making are given a seat at the table.

To help make that happen, Bullard and Dr. Beverly Wright of Dillard University formed the Historically Black College and University Consortium on Climate Change and brought 50 students and some faculty mentors to the Paris climate summit last year.

“What was decided in December in Paris in 2015 will impact these young people going forward,” Bullard says. “So they needed to be in Paris to show that African-Americans are concerned about climate change, we are in solidarity with other people around the world and that the issues that impact people of color and people in the developing world are the same in our own country, as they relate to climate justice.”

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Living on Earth with Steve Curwood.

A Supreme Court speed bump could signal big trouble for Obama's signature climate plan

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"Not so fast there, Mr. Obama." 

That’s the message the Supreme Court sent to the president Tuesday night, when it pushed the pause button on his plan to scrub a huge amount of climate-warming pollution out of the country’s electric power system.

The decision is an unexpected victory for 27 states and a coalition of energy industry parties. They had challenged the Obama administration's plan to cut carbon pollution from power plants by more than 30 percent below their 2005 levels by the year 2030.

It may prove just a temporary speed bump for the plan. But if the decision foreshadows bigger trouble, one of the president's signature policy goals could go down in flames, with perhaps even bigger consequences for global cooperation on the climate crisis.

The Clean Power Plan was announced with great fanfare last summer. It put coal-fired power plants squarely in its cross-hairs as one of the biggest sources of climate pollution. It also kicked off political and legal battles over its impact and legitimacy. But supporters have since argued that it's on solid legal footing, based largely on other recent Supreme Court decisions.

Ten years ago, the court ruled in a landmark case that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide under the 46-year-old Clean Air Act. The court later affirmed that the EPA can also regulate air pollutants that cross state boundaries.

These are key legal underpinnings of Obama's CPP, which is in turn a key part of the emissions-cutting commitments the US made at last December’s climate summit in Paris, at which the US and the rest of the world committed to taking much stronger action to address the climate crisis.

And those previous rulings are the main reason the court’s move to put the plan on hold is so surprising — it suggests a willingness by the court to rein in some of the leeway it’s given the EPA in recent years on climate and air pollution.

The procedural ruling specifically addresses a lower-court decision to allow the plan to stay in place while the legal challenge is being adjudicated.

Here's how it happened:

The challengers argue that the plan exceeds the EPA’s authority to dictate big changes in how states must handle their energy mix. They also argue the CPP isn't cost-effective because, they say, it would cost thousands of jobs in the coal industry and push up the price of electricity.

A federal court in Washington agreed to hear the case, but turned down a request to issue a stay on the plan pending a ruling, essentially rejecting the challengers’ argument that they would suffer irreparable harm in the meantime if the plan were eventually struck down. The administration argued that there would be no such harm because of the long timelines before the plan would actually go into effect.

The challengers appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, and Tuesday night the court issued a one-paragraph ruling in their favor, imposing a stay “pending disposition of the applicants’ petitions for review” — in other words, until the case is ultimately resolved.

The ruling by the court’s five conservative judges included no reasoning and was not a decision on the merits of the challengers’ case. But it was essentially a statement by a majority of the court that the challengers have at least a reasonable chance of succeeding. And reading the tea leaves suggests a wariness of the administration’s plan on the part of one key justice — frequent swing vote Anthony Kennedy.

Kennedy voted with the majority in those two earlier EPA rulings. But he has also been a frequent defender of states' rights arguments. This case pits the two interests against each other.

And it’s likely that Kennedy's will be the decisive vote, as it has been in so many important cases during his long tenure on the court.

For now, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in the case in June, with a ruling expected by fall. Whatever the outcome, the losing side will almost certainly appeal to the Supreme Court, and given its ruling on the question of the stay, the justices are likely to accept the case for its 2016-17 term.

All of which means that this key piece of President Obama's efforts to beat back climate change almost certainly won’t take effect before he leaves office next January, and may be scuttled altogether, with possibly far-reaching global consequences.


Listen to the collision of two black holes. Einstein was right.

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Gravity. You know it as what holds things together — it holds us to the Earth, holds the Earth in orbit around the sun. But what exactly is gravity?

More than 300 years ago, Isaac Newton said that any two objects that have mass are attracted to each other and held together by a force.

And that force is what Newton called gravity. He could calculate it, but he couldn’t explain where gravity came from.

And, says Priya Natarajan, an astrophysicist at Yale, that’s how things stayed for more than 200 years. Until Albert Einstein showed up.

"Einstein thought about gravity in a fundamentally different way," Natarajan says.

Related: Gravitational waves found in 1.3 billion year old black hole collision (NOVA)

Here’s where things get fun. I want you to close your eyes. Imagine a large rubber sheet, like a trampoline. Now drop a large metal ball onto it. The ball causes the sheet to bend beneath it, forming a dimple. The bigger the ball, the bigger the dimple.

OK, scale it up. Now the ball is the Sun, and it’s sitting not on a rubber sheet, but rather in a four-dimensional fabric — what Einstein called space-time.

"Masses like the Earth or the Sun bend the space-time around them, and by bending the space-time around them, they effectively attract nearby objects," says MIT physicist Matthew Evans.

He says that's how Einstein understood gravity — gravity is what happens when objects bend space-time.

Einstein saw it as one of the four fundamental forces of our universe — including electromagnetism and the two forces at work inside atoms.  But even though gravity is the force that is most obvious in our lives, it turns out that gravity is the weakest. So to see its effect, you need something dramatic — something that creates massive ripples in space-time, like waves moving out from a rock dropped in a pond. In fact, Einstein called these gravity waves.

"If you were to turn up the amplitude of a gravitational wave beyond anything which we think is reasonable to expect, eventually you would feel it as something which would stretch you from head to toe while squishing you from side to side, and then reverse in polarity and squish you from head to toe and stretch you from side to side," Evans says.

But while Einstein predicted gravity waves, he never observed them. The tools just didn't exist. Until today.

This morning, a team of some 1,000 researchers from the US and around the world announced the first ever direct detection of gravity waves.

"It's just exhilarating," says Gabriela Gonzalez, a physicist at Louisiana State University and a spokesperson for the project called LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory). "Here, we detected the space-time around us wobbling, getting distorted, compressed and stretched for a fraction of a second. There’s so much to learn now!"

And how these gravity waves were detected is nothing short of incredible.

Aerial view of LIGO Hanford Observatory.

Credit:

LIGO

The LIGO team built two giant L-shaped detectors in Louisiana and Washington state. The arm of each L is two-and-a-half miles long.

"The arms of this L are these concrete bunkers," Evans says. (He's one of the researchers on the project.) "And under the concrete bunker, we have a tube so that we can suck all the air out — it’s a vacuum tube."

Evans and his team have tested equipment for the LIGO project in their lab at MIT. Before entering the facility, he runs his shoes through a machine that sucks off any dirt.

The lab is about the size of a basketball court, and a giant metal tube with a laser in it travels its length. A lot of what’s here and inside the real bunkers is meant to keep the apparatus absolutely still. You can't have any shaking because the lasers measure the precise lengths of those two-and-a-half mile arms.

Physicist Matthew Evans at his lab at MIT in Cambridge, Massashusetts.

Credit:

Ari Daniel

"So if there were no gravity waves, they would have the same length," astrophysicist Priya Natarajan says. "But if it turns out, because of gravity waves causing a jiggle, one of the arms is going to have a slightly different length than the other."

And that difference in length is really small.

"We are talking about a fraction of the diameter of a proton," Natarajan says. "It’s that tiny."

They’re trying to detect less than a proton difference across 2.5 miles — that’s why it’s so challenging.

"Yeah, it is kind of crazy — when it comes right down to it, it is sort of a crazy thing," Evans says.

And yet despite the crazy, Evans and his colleagues did it. The LIGO team used those L-shaped buildings to detect gravity waves that were produced by a collision of two black holes more than a billion light years away. It's the first time we’ve observed this violent phenomenon in the universe — ever.

"It’s as if we had an enormous hearing aide, which let us pick up the sounds that the universe has been producing — we just have been deaf to these sounds up until now," Evans says.

In fact, you can actually convert a gravity wave into a sound wave. This is the sound, sped up, of the two black holes spiraling toward each other until they collide.

The collision sent gravity waves rippling outwards at the speed of light. More than a billion years later, they passed through the Earth and made the arms of the detectors in Louisiana and Washington change their lengths ever so slightly.

OK, this is all cool to think about — bending space-time, shooting lasers down vacuum tunnels, colliding black holes — but beyond proving Einstein right, what’s the big deal?

Natarajan says, "It’s like opening a new window into the universe."

You see, up until now, we’ve studied the stars and outer space using light or something related to it — radio waves, X-rays, microwaves.

"But gravitational waves are the first step away from that to some completely new way of looking at the universe," Evans says. "It’s not a way of looking at things through light any more. It’s a way of listening to things through the disturbances they make in space-time."

"It reveals an entire new side to the cosmos," Natarajan adds.

For instance, we might now be able to directly observe black holes. Because while black holes don't emit light, they do emit gravity waves.

"If you look at the universe just using gravitational waves, you’re likely to see all these jiggling black holes," Natarajan says. 

And here’s the other reason this is a big deal.

"Because gravity waves are not obscured by anything, we can see right through to the edge of the universe," Natarajan says.

And that means we might be able to get closer than ever to observing the earliest moments of time, just after the big bang — and closer than ever to understanding how the universe came to be, and how it works.

"I actually never imagined that in my lifetime that window would open," Natarajan says.

With that window now open, Natarajan says it may boost interest in another international collaboration — a joint NASA/European Space Agency project to look for different kinds of gravity waves. All kinds of exciting possibilities lie ahead.

But let’s return to today. Because it’s not every day that we get to hear (literally) the universe confirm something we first conjured up on paper a hundred years ago.

"It is really hard not to be completely in awe of Einstein," Natarajan says. "Just to think that this theory came completely out of his pure thought."

Thursday we got new proof for that theory. It’s a day worth celebrating. And when the confetti falls — we now have a little better idea of why.

Want to find a meteorite? Antarctica might be the best place to look.

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Nina Lanza knows space rocks. In her day job as a staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, she operates the Curiosity Rover’s ChemCam, using a rock-vaporizing laser to analyze the Martian surface.

But recently, Lanza was having a very different kind of encounter with space rocks: She was picking them up off of the Antarctic ice.

“I've done a lot of winter camping, but this is much colder and more sustained than anything I've ever done before,” Lanza says during an audio broadcast from the southernmost continent in the world. “I forgot to take my contact lenses and solution into my sleeping bag with me before going to bed and this morning I woke up and they were frozen solid.”

This winter, Lanza has been a rookie member of the ANSMET (the Antarctic Search for Meteorites) field team. For 40 years, the project has sent teams of scientists to the bottom of the globe to recover meteorites from all over the solar system, including chunks of the moon, comets, even Mars.

On this trip? Lanza and her colleagues recovered a total of 569 meteorites. 

“They are just waiting for us to come and find them,” Lanza says. “You can imagine that blue ice ... and then you just look and there's some dark spots on them. And those are rocks and frequently those rocks are from space.”

Meteorites fall to Earth all the time, but Antarctica is a particularly good place to find them.

“We're lucky with Antarctica,” Lanza says. “It's this big white sheet covered in glaciers. And so these meteorites just become embedded in the ice and start flowing with the glacier. And in some places the glacier will run into something — like the mountain range that we were in — the Miller range. It will slow down and then the winds ... will start to remove some of that ice and that acts to concentrate the meteorites in these locations. So we can actually go there and find many more meteorites than you might imagine would fall in a single location.”

Scientists can tell meteorites apart from Earth rocks by analyzing them for certain characteristics. 

“You want to look for rocks that have what's called a fusion crust,” Lanza says. “That's a very thin, shiny outer coating which forms when the rock falls into the atmosphere of the earth and heats up the little bit so it'll have this very shiny exterior. And then sometimes it'll break in half when it hits the ice or something and you can often see what are called chondrules, which are these very round grains of material.”

Now the 569 meteorites that Lanza and her team have recovered are on a container ship where they will be kept frozen until they get to Johnson Space Center. Eventually the rocks will be slowly thawed in a dry atmosphere to keep water from altering their geology in any way. The team of scientists who eventually analyzes them will hope to learn a lot from the finds.  

“We're learning all about the origin of our solar system,” Lanza says, “What were the building blocks, and then how the solar system evolves. And not just even the solar system but the specific bodies within the solar system…there’s nothing like having a rock in your hand and being able to analyze it in a laboratory repeatedly and with different techniques and over time because that really gives you a lot more information…that's really telling us a lot about planets that we that we are studying right now.”

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Science Friday.

An obscure clause in an old law could help regulate US carbon emissions

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A little-used provision in the Clean Air Act may give the EPA the authority to institute broad, market-based mechanisms such as cap and trade to combat climate change.

The provision, known as Section 115, was reportedly discussed by the State Department and international negotiators as part of the president’s statutory authority to regulate CO2 and meet the pledges the US made in Paris at COP21.

Michael Burger, the executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, recently wrote that Section 115 would be useful to execute plans that would curb emissions like the US agreed to during the climate summit — plans that have been challenged by a coalition of states and fossil fuel interests and have just been put on hold by the Supreme Court pending the outcome of the challenge.

“Section 115 of the Clean Air Act is titled 'International Air Pollution,' and it was included in the Clean Air Act in order to allow the executive branch to cooperate with foreign countries to solve international air pollution problems,” Burger explains.

A couple of requirements must be met in order to allow the EPA to invoke Section 115, Burger says. First, the EPA must find that sources of air pollution in the United States are endangering the public health and welfare of people in other countries. This is called the "endangerment finding requirement."

The second requirement, known as the "reciprocity determination," says the EPA must also find that other countries provide the US with the same rights to air-pollution reduction as the US is providing to them. Even before the Paris agreement, this second requirement was already met, Burger says.

The recent Paris agreement makes the case for reciprocity “absolutely rock solid,” Burger says.

Here’s why: There are two different elements to the reciprocity requirement — a procedural element and a substantive element.

The Paris agreement satisfies the procedural element by providing for an "enhanced transparency mechanism" through which countries can examine and comment upon other countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions — that is, their plans and pledges for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The plans themselves satisfy the substantive element, because they address the international air pollution, known as CO2 emissions.

This could mean that Section 115 of the Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to work with states to regulate emissions via cap and trade.

Under this system, EPA would establish a nationwide cap for greenhouse gas emissions and then give each state a target to meet in relationship to that national target, Burger says. Each state would then go through a revision process to develop a mix of measures, regulations and incentives that would achieve that state-based target.

“[It] gives states broad authority to use any mix of measures that they deem appropriate, including market-based mechanisms,” Burger says. “So, our view is that Section 115 authorizes EPA to, in effect, invoke a nationwide... market-based mechanism to deal with climate change — and when you talk about nationwide market-based mechanisms, a cap and trade system seems like a great answer.”

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Living on Earth with Steve Curwood.

Is there such a thing as octopus sign language?

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The octopus has been said to be asocial, not interacting much with others of its kind. But Current Biology published new research recently that says at least one species of octopus uses its changing coloration and shifting postures to send clear signals to others of its species, particularly in times of potential conflict.

David Scheel, a professor of marine biology at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, Alaska, spends a lot of time studying the communication habits of octopuses. 

“They're kind of flashy, actually,” Scheel says.

One communication behavior he’s noticed is that sometimes an octopus will turn dark, stand up very tall, spread its arms and web very wide, and then raise its body sac up above its eyes. 

“We think that means, ‘I'm not going to back down. I'm big and I'm here. So watch out,'” Scheel says.

There are other forms of communication as well. A common one that Scheel has observed involves a sort of handshake. When one octopus approaches another, it will often reach out an arm to the other octopus, and the other octopus will reciprocate by reaching its arm back. Sometimes they touch, but not always. 

“We don't really understand what that is yet,” Scheel says. 

Scheel and his colleagues believe they’ve found hints that there might be social interactions in at least 12 species of octopuses. Now they want to figure out how the octopuses’ sign language or signals function in different contexts. 

“We established that there is some signaling going on, but we didn't establish what kind of context it occurs in,” Scheel says. “We're going to look at their mating system, their forging behavior and try to understand what's the context in which this signaling is most common.”

While Scheel still has research to do, these findings are already surprising.

“We do tend to think of octopuses as solitary. If they're going to get together it's either for mating, or the big one's going to eat the little one,” Scheel says, “It's a surprising site that we're working at.”

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Science Friday.

Why the long-lost planet Vulcan holds lessons for Planet Nine

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In the late 1800s, French mathematical astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier announced he’d discovered a new planet. He didn’t find it with the help of a telescope, however.

His discovery was based on a series of mathematical calculations. He decided to name the new planet Vulcan.

The only problem? Vulcan didn’t exist. 

There was nothing wrong with Le Verrier’s math. In fact, a few decades before, Le Verrier had conjured up Neptune using Newtonian physics to predict the exact location of our eighth planet, before ever observing it.

“Nature,” says Thomas Levenson, professor of Science Writing at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “has many more ways to fool us than we have ways to figure things out.”

It wasn’t until Albert Einstein came along that someone was able to explain the physics behind why Le Verrier’s math did not prove Vulcan’s existence.

Now, with the recent announcement from Caltech astronomers Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin that there is likely a ninth planet beyond Neptune, astronomers, physicists and mathematicians are reviewing just what cautionary lessons the story of Vulcan may hold for today’s planet-hunters.

“I really hope they're right and if I were a betting man I'd bet at least lunch money that they are,” says Levenson, who has written a book called “The Hunt for Vulcan ... And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe.”  

Levenson knows that our understanding of the laws of physics is constantly changing, evolving. And, in the case of Vulcan, Le Verrier's mistake came from the fact that the understanding of the laws of phsyics was not as advanced as it is now. The French mathemetician had observed a slight wobble in Mercury's orbit that, according to Newtonian physics, could be caused by the presence of Vulcan. 

“Everything made sense. Newton's theory had worked in every application. The calculations that Le Verrier did everybody knew,” Levenson says. “But in science a single brute fact is powerful enough to overturn the most beautiful theory.” 

It wasn’t until many decades later that a physicist came up with a theory that could explain the wobble in Mercury’s orbit. 

“Finally, along comes this, you know, a patent clerk. He's still a patent clerk when he gets started on this problem — Albert Einstein,” Levenson says, “And he starts working on a different problem. Not the problem of explaining Mercury's orbit, but the problem of reconciling Newton's whole theory of of motion with his then Special Theory of Relativity.”

Einstein applied his theory to the real world problem of Mercury’s orbit. “Mercury’s orbit behaved exactly as Le Verrier said it did, but ... it was just rolling down the shortest path it could travel in curved space-time,” Levenson says. “You didn't need another planet, you didn't need some mysterious effect on the sun, you didn't need to play with the fundamental constants of nature. That's just the way it was. And it was a revelation.”

Levenson is excited about the possible existence of Planet Nine. But he’s a bit more hesitant than some to believe it's out there. 

“The thing that's beautiful about Planet Nine is, you know science advances, people do things differently now than they did in the 1850s. The mathematics that Batygin and Brown brought to bear ... are much more sophisticated mathematics than Le Verrier had at his disposal. Just as Le Verrier had much more sophisticated mathematics than Newton had at his disposal,” Levenson says. “But underneath it all, the argument is exactly the same. There's stuff out there in the universe that is doing something that we can't quite fully explain.”

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Science Friday.

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