Monday, 2 May 2022
Friday, 12 November 2021
EU Airlines Carbon Tax Stirs Resentment
Airlines flying into Europe must pay for 15 percent of the polluting rights accorded to them in 2012. Countries can avoid the tax by developing plans to reduce harmful emissions. Cathay Pacific CEO and Singapore Airlines CEO criticized the plan at the Singapore Airshow, one of Asia's largest aviation trade fairs.
World aviation bosses warned on Monday of a potential trade war over a carbon tax imposed by the European Union, which expressed readiness to compromise while insisting on its environmental agenda.
In a conference on the eve of the Singapore Airshow, one of Asia's largest aviation trade fairs, representatives of the airline and plane manufacturing sectors expressed concern over a potential political and economic standoff.
ANALYSIS: Controversy Over EU Airport Carbon Credits
"I have to say I'm really worried, also as a manufacturer, about the consequences," said Airbus Chief Executive Thomas Enders.
"I have seen the position in China, in Russia, in the US, in India, and what started as a scheme to present a solution for the environment has become a source of potential trade conflict," he added.
The EU imposed its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) on airlines flying into the continent on January 1 despite opposition from over two dozen countries including India, Russia, China and the United States.
The EU says the scheme was designed to reduce carbon emissions blamed for climate change, and will help the 27-nation bloc achieve its goal of cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020.
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China, the world's fastest-growing aviation market, has barred its airlines from complying with the requirement.
EU transport commissioner Siim Kallas, who also spoke at the Singapore conference, said Europe was committed to reducing carbon emissions.
"We don't have enough reasons or ground to suspend the legislation," he said at the forum.
But he added that Europe was "sincere" in expressing readiness to achieve a "multilateral solution" through the UN airline watchdog, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).
Speaking later to reporters, Kallas said it was difficult to predict the likely fallout if China and other countries refused to comply with the ETS.
"We don't know what exactly are they concretely planning to do," he said.
"I think that to avoid trade war is really very important for us, we are ready to compromise but the question is to which extent."
Tony Tyler, director-general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents airlines, warned the Singapore forum that "aviation can ill-afford to be caught in an escalating political or trade conflict over the EU-ETS."
ANALYSIS: France to Boast World's Biggest Tidal Energy Farm
While Europe deserves credit for being at the forefront of efforts to reduce emissions, Tyler said "non-European governments see this extra-territorial tax collection as an attack on their sovereignty, and they are taking action."
Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong said that "we are objecting to the principle of how it is being applied, that it is applied to flights outside of Europe, to airspace outside Europe."
John Slosar, CEO of Cathay Pacific of Hong Kong, said that "when people go it alone whether for good reasons or bad, troubles come and difficulties arise."
Airlines opposed to the system say it would cost the industry 17.5 billion euros ($23.2 billion) over eight years.
But the head of the European Low Fares Airline Association said last week that the United States and other opponents should work harder to develop their own plans to reduce harmful emissions to gain exemptions from the tax.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, argues that the cost for airlines is manageable, estimating that the scheme could prompt carriers to add between four and 24 euros ($5 to $32) to the price of a round-trip long-haul flight.
Some 655 million people flew within Europe last year.
The EU launched the ETS in 2005 in a bid to reduce carbon emissions of power stations and industrial plants.
It decided to include airlines, held responsible for three percent of global emissions, in the absence of a global agreement to cap aviation emissions.
Under the EU scheme, airlines will have to pay for 15 percent of the polluting rights accorded to them in 2012, the figure then rising to 18 percent between 2013 and 2020.
Wednesday, 31 March 2021
On the Hunt for Black Holes
The NuSTAR X-ray telescope is scheduled to launch on March 14. The telescope will look at X-rays coming from black holes, supernova and other high-energy objects. The telescope complements existing telescopes that image lower energy X-rays.
A new X-ray telescope being prepared for launch will be able to ferret out hiding places of black holes by peering into the dusty centers of distant galaxies.
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, is the first space observatory to focus on what is known as "hard X-rays" -- the type used in dental X-rays to see inside teeth.
Objects that give off this type of radiation are among the most active and violent in the universe, including galaxy clusters, supernova explosions, high-temperature gas and regions where particles are being accelerated close to the speed of light.
NEWS: Black Holes May Turboboost Super-Civilizations
"There's a whole variety of phenomenon from very extreme neutron stars to remnants of old stellar explosions we haven't discovered yet," lead scientist Fiona Harrison, with the California Institute of Technology, told Discovery News.
One of the telescope's first jobs will be to conduct a sky survey, which will give astronomers an idea about how galaxies formed. They are also eager to study supernova -- the exploded remains of giant stars -- to look for the telltale chemical fingerprints of radioactive titanium.
"Different models of how a supernova explosion happens imply very different observables of how the titanium would be distributed, both spatially and in velocity. With these observations we'll get a better idea of the physics of supernova explosions," NuSTAR project scientist Daniel Stern, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News.
Supernovas are an important measuring stick for determining the universe's rate of expansion. Because astronomers believe they give off basically the same amount of light, measuring their brightness has been used to determine how distant they are, much like how a standard 100-watt light bulb appears dimmer if it is farther away.
"Cosmologically, we'd like to understand supernova a little bit better since we're giving Nobel Prizes using them as cosmologically probes," Stern said.
Studying high-energy X rays, which can pass through obscuring gas and dust, also should reveal the locations of black holes.
"We're pretty sure that every big galaxy has a super-massive black hole in its center and the models predict that most of the ones that are actively accreting material and get very bright are being hidden by gas and dust around them," Stern said.
NEWS: Hungry Black Hole Snacking on Asteroids?
NuSTAR will be able to pin down how many black holes are hidden, how big they are and where they are located.
Another target of study is the sun. Hard X-rays coming from micro-flares could help resolve a long-standing mystery of how the sun's corona gets heated to 1 million degrees.
NuSTAR complements NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory and Europe's XMM-Newton telescope, both of which image the X-ray sky in lower energy wavelengths.
"There won't be these beautiful pictures like what Hubble takes, but for an X-ray astronomers they will be because they'll be much sharper than anyone has ever done before," Stern said.
NuSTAR will be put into a low-Earth, near-equatorial orbit by an air-launched Pegasus rocket flying from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Launch is targeted for March 14.
The telescope consists of two sets of 133 concentric shells of mirrors, made from flexible glass, such as what is used in laptop computer screens. Because X-rays need a large area to focus, NuSTAR has a 33-foot mast that will unfold after launch.
The mission is expected to last at least two years.
Wednesday, 23 September 2020
Estrogen Turns Male Snakes into Same-Sex Charmers
Estrogen is key to a female's release of pheromones and thus, reproduction. After one year of estrogen supplements, male snakes started secreting a pheromone that seemed to cause other males to swarm to them. The finding has implications for the possible effects of some chemicals and pesticides that mimic the effects of estrogen.
Give a male garter snake a taste of estrogen and watch out, as the hormone turns these lads into the sexiest thing on the block, attracting dozens of other males eager to mate.
The finding, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, has implications for understanding the environmental impact of compounds that mimic the effect of estrogen, found in some chemicals and pesticides.
NEWS: Snakes Methodically Kill Prey
Estrogen, the researchers found, is key to a female's release of pheromones and thus, reproduction.
Here's how it works: For the red-sided garter snake, picking up a mate takes but a second and a flick of the tongue. When a male detects a possible mate nearby, he licks the female with a quick flick of his tongue. The chemical cues, called pheromones, exuded by the females are so strong it takes but an instant, the researchers say, for the male to determine the other snake's species, sex, population, reproduction condition, size and age. In fact, the males are totally dependent on these pheromones for snake reproduction.
Every spring, tens of thousands of these garter snakes emerge from their limestone caves north of Manitoba, Canada, for mating. Intense competition ensues, as males swarm (and tongue) female snakes in an effort to be the first to mate with her. The frenzy appears as twisting balls of snakes called mating balls.
NEWS: Giant Snake Preyed on Baby Dinosaurs
The males tend to choose the larger, more mature gals, because these females can produce more babies; they also have a slightly different chemical signature in their pheromones. While young, small females do get action, they aren't the preferred mates.
Once they mate, the females emit a different pheromone, confirming "no more sex," causing other males to lose interest and leave the area.
In the new study, the researchers implanted male garter snakes in their natural environment, each with a capsule that raised their estrogen levels to approximately match those of female snakes. After one year of these estrogen supplements, the male snakes started secreting a pheromone that seemed to cause other males to swarm to them, forming clumps of writhing snakes tangled together. Apparently, the estrogen caused the males to secrete "female" pheromones.
"We thought this might work, but we were surprised the results were so compelling," study researcher Robert Mason, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University, said in a statement. "The amount of estrogen the male snakes received was nothing unusual, just about what a normal female would produce."
The other males, in fact, preferred the male snakes with boosted estrogen levels to the small female snakes, the researchers found.
When the researchers stopped giving the males estrogen, they reverted back to their normal behaviors.
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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Thursday, 25 June 2020
Video Service Streams Live Reports From Syria
We've seen how new technology has helped reporters get stories out of the Middle East before – Alex Crawford was able to set up a mobile satellite unit with a laptop and the power from a car's cigarette lighter.
Now the same thing is happening in Syria, though in this case it's many ordinary people uploading cell phone video.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Life Inside Damascus, Fear, Shame and Normalcy
Ustream, a video sharing site, has a channel called the Occupy Network (which also has its own site here). It isn't clear if it has any relation to the Occupy Movement that took over Zucotti Park in New York for two months (though that movement also has made use of mobile technologies and social networks). The channel has a number of videos from Syria, showing in one case, what looks like a street in Homs, Syria and a scene of injured people being carried away after an attack by the military.
Syria is in the middle of what amounts to a low-level civil war, with the military attacking protesters in several cities, and facing a "Free Syrian Army." The government has mounted military attacks in several cities around the country over the last several months, including Homs and Hama, and there have been bombings in other cities such as Aleppo.
NEWS: Are Revolutions Contagious?
Unlike Youtube, Ustream focuses on live content – much of it is streaming in real time, though that can vary according to the way users set up their channels.
The videos from Syria look like they might be from a smartphone or small camera. The videos' captions say they are from Homs, but it isn't clear from the images.
Suzanne Tran, head of marketing, confirmed that much of the video from Syria is coming from mobile devices, and that it is possible for the technical staff to confirm where they are coming from by their IP addresses, though they had not done so yet. That said, one of the things that Ustream has is an easy interface for uploading video quickly, and that makes it a natural home for people who want to get images out as fast as possible – and in places where it is important to bypass local governments.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Wednesday, 1 April 2020
Challenger Deep Bridges and New Depth Record
The deepest place on Earth is the next holy grail for the deep-sea exploration community. Only two humans have ever been down to the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean off the coast of Guam, and that was well over 50 years ago.
Now a recent University of New Hampshire survey of the area shows that Challenger Deep, the deepest point on the planet, is actually even deeper than was previously thought. Earlier measurements had marked Challenger Deep between 10,902 and 10,916 meters (about 35,767 to 35,813 feet). The new depth reading shows Challenger Deep to be closer to 10,994 meters (36,069 feet), plus or minus 40 meters (131 feet).
Four bridge-like features spanning the massive trench were also discovered, each rising more than 8,000 feet above the seafloor. These bridges were likely formed from seamounts compacted when the older Pacific crust got pushed below the Philippine tectonic plate.
ANALYSIS: Volcanoes Slide Silently To Their Death
UNH marine geologist James Gardner told the Daily Mail that there might even be life on these bridges that's adapted to the harsh, cold, and high-pressure environment.
The UNH team used multibeam echo sounders mounted underneath a hydrographic U.S. Navy ship, the USNS Sumner. The instruments send out sound waves and record depth based on the echo bounced off the seafloor, the university reported. The mission was led by Gardner and affiliate ocean engineering professor Andrew Armstrong at UNH’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/UNH-NOAA Joint Hydrographic Center.
In a process oceanographers call "mowing the lawn," the ship made overlapping passes over the trench while the instruments sent out their dolphin-like signals to map the seafloor. The topographic perspective built with the multibeam echo sounders provided a 3-D model of the trench's terrain at one pixel for every 100 meters -- a far higher resolution than systems used in the past.
PHOTOS: Ocean Artists Convey Horror and Magic
The UNH team used thousands of readings to correct for the way the water column can alter echo sounding signals.
Meanwhile, several teams worldwide are still developing underwater vessels in a bid to return to the depths of the Mariana Trench. Now the pressure is even greater to reach this goal.
Submarine Tech Reaches for Ocean Record
Image: A new map of the Mariana Trench with an arrow showing the deepest echo sounding there in meters. Credit: University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping Joint Hydrographic Center.
Friday, 6 September 2019
January 2012 Physics Books
Every month, I get physics books from all over the place. I only get an opportunity to review a fraction of these books, though I feel bad about each one that I have to pass up. Plus, it's kind of hard to remember which books came out in a given year when I'm working on my "Best of the year" posts in December.
To help streamline things, I will now offer a monthly post that lists the upcoming physics books I feel are the most relevant to readers of this blog. I've posted my first one, collecting a list of the major physics books for January 2012. Don't worry, reviews will still come ... but this post will include books that I know won't get a full review but are still worth getting out there.
Leave a comment if you know of any upcoming books that I've missed!
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