For decades, the moon was thought to be bone dry; drier than Earth's own desolate Atacama Desert. Not even the most sanguine lunar water advocates expected to find significant quantities of the liquid on or beneath the lunar surface. As a result, this dearth of water has always been a nagging obstacle for permanent lunar habitation, as Miller-McCune noted last month in reviewing progress toward space colonization. So, the recent detection of surface water by the Indian space agency's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft completely rattled the lunar science community. Chandrayaan-1 detected evidence ... Read More
2 BD, 1 Bath, Nice View of Earth
September 9, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
The week that NASA celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, a multidisciplinary conference on working and living beyond low-earth orbit convened in the colonial city of Savannah, Ga. Whether the 300-some conference attendees considered the symbolism of meeting to plan the first outposts on the moon and Mars in one of the new world's first settlements is hard to know. They were, nonetheless, dealing with the same issue that bedevils tentative steps beyond the horizon in any age: sustainability. While the weeklong SAE-sponsored International Conference on ... Read More
Tea Leaves a Sweet Taste In Doctor’s Mouth
September 3, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Iced tea has long been the lubricant that greases the wheels of hot Southern afternoons. But it's not just a healthy summer cooler; the Southern love of iced tea is a full-blown, year-round affair. Strongly-brewed black iced tea not only contains natural fluoride — good for the bones and teeth, but is rich in antioxidant flavonoids (plant pigments). Flavonoids in tea are thought to prevent the onset of certain kinds of cancer as well as naturally dilate arteries, thus lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease. A recent peer-reviewed paper summarizing tea's effects on older adults ... Read More
Colonizing Space, 40 Rats at a Time
July 20, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Early next spring, an all-female "crew" of middle-aged Wistar rats will find themselves beginning one long Barcelona holiday. But instead of trolling the Ramblas for tapas scraps, these unwitting rodents may help ensure their human brethren have the chance to pack up and move off world. In June, the European Space Agency, along with outside European and Canadian research partners, announced the inauguration of an ecological pilot plant that will test closed-loop ecological technologies for eventual use in lunar habitats and colonies on Mars. Managed by ESA at Spain's University ... Read More
It’s a Crazy, Mixed-Up World Inside Our Planet
July 6, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Geomagnetic pole reversals have long provided fodder for late-night-radio doomsayers and Sony Pictures. But these magnetic flip-flops are nothing new. Our magnetic poles have flipped continually; perhaps some 10,000 times over Earth's storied 4.5 billion-year history. In truth, our magnetic fields are so dynamic, they change from year to year in a kind of self-contained chaos. Next year, the European Space Agency plans to take advantage of new technology to get a better handle on the chaos, and its effects on such global concerns as climate, weather and space radiation. During a magnetic ... Read More
Under Pressure
May 8, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
The American Automobile Association consistently finds that a fifth of all vehicles have at least one under-inflated tire. That may be because motorists are three times more likely to give their cars a monthly wash than a tire check. As a result, the U.S. Department of Energy reports that such under-inflation causes a loss of some 2 million gallons of fuel per day. But proper inflation isn't just a matter of fuel economy and tire longevity — under-inflation can also cause deadly blowouts. Instead of sidling up to the nearest air hose, why not consider pumping them full of nitrogen ... Read More
Veni, Vidi, Polluti: The Long Arm of Pollution
April 3, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
An isolated salt marsh on the coast of contemporary Iceland is the last place most people would think of looking for Roman-era air pollution. But traces of atmospheric lead pollution found in the sedimentary cores of an Iceland salt marsh, most likely originated from first- and second-century C.E. Roman mining and metal-working operations, a new study reports. The research, which appeared in the April 1 issue of the journal Science of the Total Environment, indicates that the lead most likely found its way aloft from what is now Somerset in Britain. William Marshall, a research ... Read More
Joules Before Swine
March 25, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Family pig farms used to be as much a part of the old South as homemade sausage and red-eye gravy. What's left of swine farming in the Southeast today, however, has gone corporate — generating larger profit margins, but also a flood of new wastewater. Recently, all in the name of bioenergy, a portion of that effluent has been used to fertilize and irrigate an experimental stand of Southeastern coastal Bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon L.). Normally used as livestock forage, these particular grass swaths were cut and dried for analysis as bioenergy-rich hay. The details are in a paper to ... Read More
Space Probe to Measure How Sloshed Mother Earth Is
March 16, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
What do the fates of the tiny Pacific island nations of Tuvalu, Tonga, Kiribati and the Russian launch of a gleaming new European gravity satellite have in common? Gravity itself. Variations in Earth's gravity field — which is a reflection of how Earth's mass is distributed around the planet — is as subject to the constant motions of the world's oceans as it is from massive mountain chains. And in how those seas slosh around the globe lies the fate of some 600 million people living in low-lying nations and coastal areas around the world. Their futures are linked inextricably to ... Read More
Better Bug for Algae Fuels Likes Salt
March 10, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
To most, it's mere bio-gunk; the stuff that fouls fishing lines and destroys deck shoes. For many bio-researchers algae smells more like our energy future. As part of its natural process of photosynthesis, algae thrives on carbon dioxide and efficiently converts CO2 into energy-rich natural oils known as triacylglycerols (TAGs). From there, via a process known as transesterification, researchers can chemically convert TAGs into a green-energy substitute for fossil diesel. Researchers acknowledge that the quest for a cost-effective, carbon-neutral diesel fuel is just a small slice of the ... Read More
