Zark's

The Invasion of the Asian Tiger Shrimp

Shrimp
Image Credit: US Fish and Wildlife

In 2011, there was a tenfold increase in Asian Tiger Shrimp sightings along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts.

Truly jumbo cannibal shrimp are invasive, but also tasty tells the critters can grow to 13 inches in length.  Scientists are concerned because of the usual displacement of native species, but also because the tiger shrimp is very disease-prone.  (They are nicknamed cannibal because they eat the native shrimp.) The MSN article says there is one positive aspect - they are good-eating.

 The USGS website tells that during the 70s and 80s, the tiger shrimp were fish-farmed and like the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, escaped into the wild.  Wikipedia tells that the tiger shrimp is the most cultivated prawn species.  (Currently though, there are no known tiger shrimp aquaculture facilities in the U.S.)  Their susceptibility to disease is particularly alarming to scientists because they also pass along their diseases to the native population. 

Scientists hasten to acknowledge there is no direct evidence that the shrimp have established a sustainable breeding population in U.S. waters.  It possible the shrimp have drifted in tidal currents after being released from ship ballast waters.  Fisherman however, are reporting much larger numbers, somewhat debunking the ballast water theory.

 

Drug-Resistant Malaria

Malaria-Carrying Mosquitoes
Image Credit: NIH

World health officials are cautiously watching the emergence of drug-resistant malaria. 

Unlike most infectious diseases, malaria is not caused by either bacteria or even a virus.  Instead, parasites develop in the victim's red blood cells.  Spread primarily by Anopheles mosquitoes, the insect becomes infected after dining upon an infected human.  It is still a serious disease, infecting about 200 million yearly resulting in 0.5 million deaths.

Wikipedia reminds us that only female mosquitoes feed on blood, because male mosquitoes subsist on plant nectar.  Blood transfusions can also spread malaria. 

Clues to Emerging Drug-Resistant Malaria tells that researchers have discovered genetic clues to the drug resistance to the new malaria strain.  The new malaria is resistant to the latest drug, artemisinin, popularized only ten years ago. 

Teaching an Old Oil Field New Tricks

Producing oil well in Oklahoma
Image Credit: Department of Energy

Successful Pilot Project Improves Recovery by more than 300 Percent in Mature Illinois Oilfield explains that 13 percent of the nation's oil production uses enhanced oil recovery (EOR). 

Enhanced Oil Recovery can allow between 40 and 50 percent additional petroleum to be pumped out of a reservoir.  Generally only 20 to 40 percent of a reservoir's oil can be pumped out with conventional pumping.  Gas injection using carbon dioxide, natural gas, or nitrogen is the most common technique.  It is frequently described as CO2 flooding, in which the gas "sweeps" the remaining oil toward the pumping well as illustrated in the graphic below.

Image Credit: National Energy Technology Laboratory

But back to the Energy Department's News Release.  A new EOR technique using an alkaline surfactant polymer (ASP) floods the field instead of carbon dioxide.  This test field is 106 years old, but possibly 130 million barrels of oil remain if they can be extracted.  To date, 410 million barrels have been extracted from the field in over a century of pumping.  With ASP, this old well has been increased to 65 - 75 barrels a day from the pre-ASP production of 16 barrels a day. 

 

UK in a Double-Dip Recession

The BBC explains the UK economy is officially in a double-dip recession.  A recession is declared after two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.  The UK economy was last in recession in 2009.  This doesn't surprise many economists, because the economy has been bumping along the bottom with output still 4 percent less than in 2008. 

Double-Dip UK has few options for growth adds the government doesn't have many levers left to pry the economy off the bottom.  Perhaps increasing the difficulty is that new the slowdown is because of external factors.  Economists see ominous similarities with Japan's lost decade and hope the economy will not take that long to correct itself.

Construction has fallen substantially and surprisingly the services sector has fallen as well.  Analysts have been concerned the UK was too dependent upon consumer spending and there had not been a real economic recovery. Manufacturing is also 5 percent lower than 2007.

Why is the UK Double Dipping? provides some interesting observations.  Number 1 - fiscal austerity doesn't fix anything unless you export more product to maintain the GDP.  Number 2 - The Bank of England has inadequately stimulated growth.  Number 3 - the UK's primary export partners are also falling into recession. 

One thing for certain, despite the austerity that the European bankers are forcing upon Greece, it isn't working at home. 

 

Will the Electric Car Make It?

Chevrolet Volt
Image Credit: General Motors

GE CEO says electric car disappointment will fade says that acceptance, or even more important - sales, of all-electric vehicles has been underwhelming.  General Electric is committed to the long game, since it has ten percent of the content invested in electric vehicles.  He admits that the cost is the biggest barrier.  The battery alone in Ford's Focus Electric costs between $12,000 and $15,000.  For most American customers, the return on investment for a $39,000 to $45,000 all-electric is not convincing.

Real Electric Car Battery Costs Remain Elusive explains this time last year, batteries were costing $800 per kWh, and they have dropped to about $689 per kWh. 

Wikipedia reminds us that between 1850 and 1920, the electric car was preferred transportation.  It wasn't until the electric starter was invented that internal combustion cars captured market share.  The problem is - while batteries have improved since 1920, they have not improved enough.  Electric Cars Cost $1,200 a Year Less to Run, Study Says that a driver averaging 11,000 miles a year with gasoline at $3.50 a gallon (all of those in California, grit your teeth - it is running about $1 more a gallon in the Golden State) would save a driver $1,200 a year.

 Battery-powered autos proving a tough sell adds that last year, 17, 425 electric vehicles were sold, less than 0.1 percent of the nation's car and light truck market.  But in March of this year, car dealers sold almost 4,000 electric vehicles, so the product isn't dead - just too expensive. 

Mmm.  Remember the Tata Nano - the really cheap inexpensive car being manufactured in India that would wear out its wheel bearings if you drove too fast?  Tata Nano picks up some speed tells that sales of the $1,200 car are finally up to 10,000 a month.  It seems that Tata perhaps focused too much on cost - sacrificing safety, convenience, and comfort.  They are coming out with an improved version, perhaps even a battery-powered version.

Methane Surprisingly Escaping from Cracks in the Ice

A new airborne study with NASA contributions measured surprising levels of the potent greenhouse gas methane coming from cracks in Arctic sea ice and areas of partial sea ice cover.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Methane has the simple chemical formula - CH4.  It is arguably the most abundant organic compound on Earth.  Natural Gas Spill:  How Bad is Methane for the Environment explains that natural gas is primarily methane.  The Time article also tells about a natural gas leak expected to take over six months to plug, and the leak has the environmental impact of 300,000 cars for a year. 

Methane is a particularly absorptive greenhouse gas, perhaps 25 times more than carbon dioxide.  (Recall air primarily composed of nitrogen does not trap heat, whereas carbon dioxide and methane trap the Earth's heat.  But if you think greenhouse gases are an abomination, the Earth's surface would be around 0 degrees C without any greenhouse gases.  Moderation in everything seems to be a secret of life, but I digress.)

Study finds surprising Arctic methane emission source explains the Arctic has large known geologic reservoirs of methane.  But a new surprising source is the ocean itself.  Previous measurements had detected higher than expected methane levels in the Arctic, but researchers could not identify the source.  Additional field work has revealed the methane only present near cracks in the ice - solid ice cover does not yield higher methane levels. 

The actual source is a mystery.  Could it be biological organisms?  Scientists don't know.  Only that it is escaping from cracks in the ice.

 

 

Installing Generators On the Nation's Unpowered Dams

Garrison Dam between Riverdale and Pick City, North Dakota
Image Credit: Stacey L. Gerhardt, USGS

Energy Department Report Finds Major Potential to Increase Clean Hydroelectric Power explains a new perspective on existing waterways.

The U.S. has 2,500 dams that generate 78 GW of conventional hydroelectric power.  They also contribute 22 GW of pumped storage, which surprises me, considering today's cost of building such facilities.

The number of hydroelectric dams is small though, compared to the 80,000 non-powered dams in the nation. 

The Department of Energy analyzed 54,391 of those dams to assess their ability to host hydroelectric generators.  (Many of the 80,000 are less than 5 feet high, and other negative factors.)  The study finds that without building an additional dam, the nation has 12 GW of additional capability. As shown in the graphic below, navigation locks on the Ohio River, Mississippi River, Alabama River, and Arkansas River have major potential.  In fact, the top ten sites could add 3 GW by themselves - that is the equivalent of three nuclear power plants. 

Unfortunately, the report does not estimate the costs for adding generators to these sites.  Clearly though, it should be less than a single nuclear plant which are running $6B ++ these days.  I wish there was a single energy solution for the nation, but there isn't one.  We need to just do a lot of smart things.

 

Has the Higgs Been Found and is it What we Expected?

Pre-Higgs Event Photograph
Image Credit: CERN

Physicists hope to find the Higgs boson, key to unified field theory, this year explains some of the hyperbole concerning the Higgs boson.  Scientists do not know why mass exists.  After all, photons are very real, interact with known matter and energy, but have no mass.  A physicist named Peter Higgs reasoned that in the beginning, there was no mass, but as the big bang cooled down, particles began to exhibit mass through a field called the Higgs field, which permeates the universe. 

If the Higgs boson exists, it has some yet unexplained interaction with particles such as electrons and protons to give them mass.  They don't actually contain a Higgs boson, because it is much heavier than any of these elementary particles.  So far, scientists from Tevatron and LHC think there is a particle around 125 billion electron volts.  In comparison, an ordinary proton is about 1 billion electron volts.  Yet somehow the Higgs boson interacts with elementary particles to give them mass - at least that is the theory.

So far, some researchers have been surprised at the discovery of the particle in the 125 range.  According to the theory, that is is incredibly light - perhaps by a factor of six.  But something that has been bugging me - how do we know that this 125 billion electron volt particle is what gives the world mass? 

Ten Things you may not know about the Higgs boson has been produced by the U.S. Department of Energy and is interesting to an armchair scientist such as myself.  Number 10 on their list is that finding a new particle does not mean that it is the Higgs particle and is responsible for giving mass to elementary particles.  It simply means that they have found another particle and much analysis and testing remains even if it is verified that there is a previously unidentified particle in the 125 billion electron volt range.

Number 7 in their list is - Standard particle theory will be incomplete even if the Higgs particle is discovered reminds us that we still don't understand gravity even after all these years of watching Isaac Newton's apple fall from the tree.  That is good news - we need to keep all the particle physicists employed!

 

Don't Let the Space Shuttle be an Inflection Point for the Nation

NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft with the space shuttle Discovery mated on top rolls into position for demating at Washington Dulles International Airport, Wednesday, April 18, 2012, in Sterling, VA.
Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

If you are around the National Mall this weekend, I encourage you to check out Earth Day's 42nd anniversary. 

If you have been reading the Washington Post this week, you have no doubt seen pictures and photographs of the space shuttle Discovery taking its last trip.  Instead of ferrying astronauts and equipment into space, it will become a history piece at the National Air and Space Museum.

I was hit hard by Charles Krauthammer's Discovery's interment symbolizes America's self-driven decline.  With sharp imagery, he compares Discovery's display in the museum to the display of Vladimir Lenin's embalmed body in Red Square.  History.

To be certain, there is hand wringing with every retirement.  But as Krauthammer writes, there is nothing scheduled to replace it.  In his words, "... we stop the production of the most complex machine ever made by man - and cancel the successor meant to return us to orbit." 

The budget cutters insist we must cut all investment and only spend what the nation collects.  Probably nothing wrong with that, except they also insist on reducing taxes.  In additional imagery, Krauthammer recalls the painting of "The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, 1838."  Was that the inflection point of the British empire? 

Mmm.  If you cannot tell, I encourage national investment, even if it means higher taxes and I won't be able to afford a new iPad this year. 

 

 

Is Another Theory Needed for Dark Matter?

The distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a violent collision of massive galaxy clusters.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis), and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University)

Dark matter seemed to be a theory that filled in gaps between empirical data and our laws of the universe.  It explains why light bends in the middle of empty space and why starts at the edge of a cluster can rotate at the same speed as the inner stars.

It is described as dark, because it cannot be seen, or nothing is known about it, much like the dark side of the moon prior to first lunar rockets in the early 1960s.  But dark matter is really dark - it has only one relationship to normal matter - mass.  But otherwise you could not hold a clump of dark matter in your hand because it would pass through it.  Likewise you could not take a picture of it or even shine a light on it, because it does not respond to electromagnetic radiation.

Some physicists understand the absence of interaction with the known universe, but they also remember the story of the Emperor's New Clothes.  In other words, if we cannot find it or see it, does it really exist?

Serious Blow to Dark Matter Theories? New Study Finds Mysterious Lack of Dark Matter in Sun's Neighborhood tells that astronomers have meticulously measured the volume and mass of the universe within 13,000 light years of the sun.  They discovered the mass is exactly what we can see and measure, meaning there is not any dark matter hiding in this volume of space.  But dark matter theory says that 83 percent of all 'stuff' is dark matter, not ordinary matter.  Hence, there is big hole in the theory that this volume of the universe does not have dark matter.

But even if the theory of dark matter is wrong, we still have the two mysteries I noted above - light bending and the stars rotating at speeds defying the theory of gravity.  It is a mystery!