Life in the Dark - Deep Sea Ecosystems

Biologists always thought life required the Sun's energy, until they found an ecosystem that thrives in complete darkness.

Dr. Cindy Van Dover manoeuvres her robotic craft closer to the strange, rocky landscape below. It's totally dark, except for lonely circles of light where she points her flood lamps. Back on the mother ship her monitor reveals tall, thin towers of craggy rock billowing black smoke from their peaks. Very strange!

All around the towers stand dozens of red-and-white, tube-like organisms. These bizarre, 3-foot-long, wormish creatures have no mouth, no intestines, and no eyes. Stranger still, they derive their energy from the planet itself, not from the light of the nearby star -- a feat most biologists didn't believe possible until these creatures were found.

She steers toward the worms and uses the robotic arm to reach out and take a sample for later examination.

Is this a science fiction tale? No. Is the intrepid Dr. Van Dover truly exploring another world? Yes!

Van Dover is as real as is the alien world she's discovering. And both are right here are Earth!

Cindy Van Dover, a marine biology professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is one of some 60 scientists, technicians and sailors who sailed aboard the research vessel Knorr from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution between March 27th and May 5th 2001. This 40-day expedition sent a 1-ton robotic submarine named JASON 2,000 metres down to explore the peculiar sunless world of deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

Images courtesy Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

"I really never thought that one could be an explorer in this day and age," said Van Dover, chief scientist for the expedition and a member of NASA's Astrobiology Institute. "But in the ocean, it's absolutely true," she added. "You're going places that nobody's ever been before!"

A view of a "chimney" vent (top photo) captured by the deep-sea submersible JASON. The superheated black water pouring from the vent provides high-energy chemicals that sustain the tubeworms (bottom photo) and other organisms that thrive in this unlikely habitat.

The hydrothermal vents - which are essentially geysers on the sea floor - support exotic chemical-based ecosystems. Some scientists think the vents are modern-day examples of environments where life began on Earth billions of years ago. And the vents might also hold clues to life on other planets.

The thriving communities of life that surround these hydrothermal vents shocked the scientific world when the first vent was discovered in 1977.

Before 1977, scientists believed that all forms of life ultimately depended on the Sun for energy. For all ecosystems then known to exist, plants or photosynthetic microbes constituted the base of the food chain.

In contrast, these vent ecosystems depend on microbes that tap into the chemical energy in the geyser water that billows out from the sea floor -- energy that originates within the Earth itself.

Because they offer an alternative way for life to meet its fundamental need for energy, these vent ecosystems have piqued the interest of astrobiologists - scientists who study the plausibility of life starting elsewhere in the universe.

"It's the only system we know of on Earth where life can thrive in the complete absence of sunlight," said Bob Vrijenhoek, senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California. Vrijenhoek will conduct DNA analysis on the samples gathered by the expedition.

One chore that astrobiologists have struggled with for years is to define the range of conditions (temperature, salinity, irradiation, chemical composition, etc.) in which "life as we know it" could exist. The discovery of hydrothermal vent ecosystems expanded that range.

Images courtesy Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The Study Area

"It (the life around the vents) was the first discovery of 'life as we don't know it,'" Vrijenhoek said.

Hydrothermal vents form along mid-ocean ridges, in places where the sea floor moves apart very slowly (6 to 18 cm per year) as magma wells up from below. (This is the engine that drives Earth's tectonic plates apart, moving continents and causing volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.) When cold ocean water seeps through cracks in the sea floor to hot spots below, hydrothermal vents belch a mineral-rich broth of scalding water. Sometimes, in very hot vents, the emerging fluid turns black -- creating a "black smoker" -- because dissolved sulphides of metals (iron, copper, and several heavy metals) instantaneously precipitate out of solution when they mix with the cold surrounding seawater.

Deep-sea bacteria form the base of a varied food chain that includes shrimp, tubeworms, clams, fish, crabs, and octopi. All of these animals must be adapted to endure the extreme environment of the vents -- complete darkness; water temperatures ranging from 2°C (in ambient seawater) to about 400°C (at the vent openings); pressures hundreds of times that at sea level; and high concentrations of sulphides and other noxious chemicals.

The ability of life to tap such geothermal energy raises interesting possibilities for other worlds like Jupiter's moon Europa, which probably harbour liquid water beneath its icy surface. Europa is squeezed and stretched by gravitational forces from Jupiter and the other Galilean satellites. Tidal friction heats the interior of Europa possibly enough to maintain the solar system's biggest ocean. Could similar hydrothermal vents in Europa's dark seas fuel vent ecosystems like those found on Earth? The only way to know is to go there and check.

Images courtesy Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

A variety of animals live near these hydrothermal vents, including the shrimps, crab, and anemone in this picture taken at the Indian Ocean vent. So far, the hallmark red and white tubeworms have not been spotted at this vent.

Astrobiologists are increasingly convinced that life on Earth itself might have started in the sulphurous cauldron around hydrothermal vents. Vent environments minimise oxygen and radiation, which can damage primitive molecules. Indeed, many of the primordial molecules needed to jump-start life could have formed in the subsurface from the interaction of rock and circulating hot water driven by hydrothermal systems.

If this idea proves true, then the next time Van Dover gazes through the submarine's camera at the vents on the floor of the Indian Ocean, she may be seeing both a portrait of life's genesis in Earth's distant past - and a glimpse of alien life yet to be discovered.

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Herbal Remedies Reviewed

Herbal remedies can be a more natural alternative to treating medical problems, but they also have their dangers.

Photo courtesy of Luke Hansen

A herbal solution? Many people are now choosing to treat their medical problems with herbal remedies.

Many people are now choosing to cut out the middleman by treating their medical problems themselves with herbal supplements. The face of herbal medicine, once dominated by patchouli-scented hippies and gauzy New Age types, is changing. Soccer moms are treating their children's colds with chicken soup and echinacea and college students fuel all-night study sessions with energy drinks boasting ginkgo and ginseng. Even in your local convenience store, snacks and drinks touting herbal ingredients are slowly encroaching on traditional junk food territory.

Every year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conduct a health survey of American households and a variety of other groups may request supplemental surveys as well. In 2002, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which studies everything from yoga to acupuncture, sponsored a supplemental survey to measure herbal and dietary supplement use.

What the Survey Said

Jae Kennedy of Washington State University used this information to provide the first detailed national portrait of herbal medicine in the U.S., which was published in Clinical Therapeutics in January 2006. He found that echinacea, ginseng, ginkgo and garlic were, in that order, the most common herbs regularly taken by Americans. Nearly one fifth of Americans (38.2 million people), regularly took at least one type of herbal or dietary supplement. This number had doubled in only three short years since the previous survey in 1999 and is likely to be even higher now.

Kennedy found that regular herbal and dietary supplement use was higher among women, middle-aged adults, and college graduates. People with multi-racial, Asian, or Native American backgrounds also reported a higher usage. Using herbs and dietary supplements seems to be part of a concerted effort to improve health: generally, herbal supplement users exercise regularly, no longer smoke cigarettes, and report being in good or excellent health.

Kennedy's findings also show that most people use herbal medicine to complement conventional medicine, not to replace it. "For some conditions like depression and chronic pain, herbs might be a less toxic, less extreme kind of solution," says Kennedy. "These kinds of conditions are tough to treat effectively with conventional drug treatment."

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Life at the Extremes

Some living species are able to thrive in inhospitable environments. How do they do it?

Life has flourished here on Earth. Typically, living things are found in warm, wet, sunlit zones, at pressures similar to those at sea level and in conditions that are neither acidic nor alkaline. But living cells have also been found in areas that seem inhospitable to life: in hot springs, lying dormant buried in ice, in acid-filled caves and in the depths of the ocean. By exploiting new environments, these pioneering organisms gain a competitive advantage that allows them to proliferate. How are they able to tolerate these conditions?

Credit:www.carleton.ca/~kbstor ey

Wood frogs survive cold winters by freezing solid and thawing out in the spring. They have developed 'antifreeze proteins' that control the shape of ice crystals that form, and minimise the physical damage caused by its expansion.

Normal versus extreme

Life is inextricably linked to water and is usually found within the range of temperature and pressure where liquids can exist. Organisms that live on land tend to favour a temperature range of 10 degrees C to 48 degrees C, while life in the ocean exists at around 2 degrees C year round. At higher temperatures, vital long chain carbon molecules acquire too much energy from their surroundings and lose their important 3D shapes. At lower temperatures, chemical reactions slow down, making it difficult to sustain metabolism. At subzero temperatures, water inside living organisms can form ice crystals which damage the delicate internal architecture of cells.

Low pressure environments are rare, even at the top of the tallest mountain ranges. High pressure is a much more common stress factor, particularly at the bottom of oceans where the weight of the water generates a crushing force up to 1,100 times the pressure at the surface. There is also a lot of pressure inside rocks and sediments beneath the surface of the Earth where some bacterial species have been found.

In addition to these physical constraints, chemical stress factors like salt concentration and pH, a measure of how acid or alkali an environment is, also affect what can survive in an environment. All living things separate themselves from the outside world with a cell membrane. This allows them to control the concentrations of important or dangerous chemicals within their cells. In very salty conditions, cells struggle to retain their water as it floods out to dilute the salt outside the cell. Many of the problems associated with salty environments are due to lack of water.

The pH of an environment also has many consequences for cells. Since most biological processes occur in the neutral range of the pH scale, biological molecules lose their function in both acid and alkali environments (low and high pH respectively).

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Tall Tales: Giant Squid

Are the oceans hiding monsters of epic proportions? And will they survive long enough for us to track them down?

Hemmed in on all sides by two metre-long, tentacled sea demons, Scott Cassell must have thought he’d breathed his last...

30 minutes later he emerged from what would have been his watery grave, just off the coast of Mexico, saved only by his armour-plated diving suit.

A veteran deep sea film maker, Cassell was on a mission to get an image on camera of the Mexican Rojo Diablo, the 'red demon' or Humboldt squid. At up to 50 kilograms, these vicious sea beasts can throw enough weight to do some serious damage to an unprotected diver. Cassell was anything but unscathed after his own terrifying encounter. “I later discovered bruises on me the size of oranges, as well as several scratches in my anti-squid armour suit,” he says.

Undeterred, Cassell has returned to squid-infested waters on numerous occasions since his lucky escape. Most recently, in November 2007, the History Channel aired his new documentary in which he and his team manage to saddle a Humboldt squid with an underwater camera. The images they return hint at something much, much larger lurking in the deep. A squid, perhaps, of such epic proportions that it would dwarf anything previously hauled in by squid hunters.

What haunts the deepest, darkest recesses of the ocean has alternatively fascinated and terrified our sea-faring ancestors for centuries. Writing in 1755, the bishop of Bergen in Norway, painted a picture of a monster a mile long, which he called a ‘Kraken’. And in 1770, the Royal Society heard Charles Douglas’ account of “an animal of 25 fathoms long”, related to him by a Norwegian sea captain. Among the fables and fabrications, however, there may just lie an inkling of the truth.

The one that got away

Cassell’s giant, which he claims may have measured anything up to 30 metres in length – as big as a blue whale – was most likely a cousin to his old enemy, the Humboldt. So-called giant and colossal squid belong to the same family of backboneless sea creatures, falling under the general umbrella of cephalopods. It is only relatively recently, however, that scientists have begun to understand anything about the lives of these much larger cephalopods, which are notoriously elusive. “With giant squid, we catch so few - it’s not like working on something like an earthworm where you can dig up a million and compare them all,” says Louise Allcock, a cephalopod expert at the University of Aberdeen. “We’re getting a couple a year if we’re lucky.”

It may not be so difficult to appreciate why such enormous entities should be so difficult to run into. Firstly, they dwell far below the water’s surface, sometimes as deep as a kilometre. And secondly, they don’t easily fall for our tricks. “They are very smart, very fast, they hunt, they live in mid-water and they rarely come to you,” says Alan Jamieson, a researcher developing deep sea observation systems at the University of Aberdeen.

Jamieson spent part of last year with the Japanese Marine Science and Technology Center (JAMSTEC) in Tokyo, where researchers shot the first ever footage of a live giant squid in its home environment in 2005. But they had to try every trick in the book to get it, eventually resorting to an elaborate system of buoys, cables and hooks, dangling a camera and some shrimp bait. Squid like their prey alive and tend not to be drawn by the static observation vehicles often deployed by scientists. “Short of catching a live fish and strapping some poor guy in front of a camera like a sacrificial lamb, they are only seen as chance encounters,” says Jamieson.

These encounters have been so rare that even basic information about larger species of squid is missing from the marine biologist’s manual. “There is much we have to learn about these animals,” says Steve O’Shea, Director of Auckland University of Technology’s Earth and Oceanic Sciences Research Institute in New Zealand. “Life cycle, growth rate, distribution and abundance all have yet to be determined.” According to O’Shea thereis enough work to be done to occupy squid specialists for generations.

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Fruit Flies Unravel Brain Mysteries

Scientists are investigating the genetic system of the Drosophila fruit fly to discover how humans perceive the world and make choices

For almost a century, scientists have used the fruit fly (scientifically known as Drosophila melanogaster) as a model organism for investigating various biological systems. Today it remains the most studied organism in biological research.

The fruit fly's robust genetic system makes it an invaluable tool for scientists studying inheritance. Drosophila is being used as a genetic model for several human diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's disease. Researchers are also using the fly to study mechanisms underlying ageing, immunity, diabetes, and cancer.

Other scientists are using the fruit fly to test some basic ideas about how we - and other animals - see the world around us. Visual information is clearly important for many organisms. An animal's visual system is what allows it to see, by interpreting the information from light to build up a representation of the world surrounding its body.

Whilst researchers know the functional architecture of the brain and eye of the Drosophila in great detail, they don't know much about the route that the visual information takes, and how it's processed in the nervous system. By using electrophysiological and imaging experiments, scientists can learn a lot about how individual neurons - or groups of neurons - process visual signals. But it's only through experiments studying the behaviour of flies that hypotheses about visual processes can be proved or abandoned.

Why use Drosophila?

Drosophila (pictured) is a small fly about 3mm long that lives for only around two weeks. Researchers can speed up or slow down their life cycle, by varying the temperature they are kept in. Fruit flies are also cheap, and easy to keep in large numbers. They are easy to handle, are well-understood and their entire genome has recently been sequenced (completed in 2000).

Scientists can also study mutant flies, with defects in any of several thousand genes. A mutant fly is one that has a change in the sequence of the nucleotides in the DNA of a particular gene, which could mean that it can't produce a particular enzyme or protein properly. By using Drosophila mutants, scientists can look at the role of a specific part of a cascade or pathway in the fly.

Similarly, scientists can increase the number of enzymes or proteins in the fly to investigate its effect. They can compare a mutant fly with a missing enzyme to a normal fly, and thus shed light on the function of that missing enzyme.

The Drosophila has a big advantage over human genetic material, as it has only four pairs of chromosomes, compared to humans who have 23 pairs - so there is less genetic information for researchers to deal with. Scientists can effectively breed the flies to contain the genes or mutant genes they require, to study anything from very precise mechanisms to general behavioral responses.

The Drosophila genome shares many similarities to the human genome. Of 289 genes known to cause disease in humans - including cancer, neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases - researchers discovered about 175 in Drosophila.

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Superbugs that Dine on Antibiotics

There's something lurking about your garden, weaving in and out of your vegetables and making itself at home. You can't see it, but it's there. Deep down under the soil lies a ravenous 'ultrabug', a bacterium able to survive only on antibiotics - the very drugs that are supposed to kill it.

Recently, while hunting for soil bacteria that can turn plant waste to biofuels, a team of microbiologists led by George Church of Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, found a strain of Pseudomonas bacteria (right) that could survive on antibiotics. The researchers collected soil bacteria from many places such as farms, forests and parks around the northeast United States and Minnesota.

They used antibiotics as an experimental control; and discovered that these bacteria were able to survive on many different antibiotics, both natural and manmade, including frequently used antibiotics for childhood illnesses. In all cases, not only did the bacteria just survive but they flourished while eating the antibiotics.

How could this happen? Should we be concerned? And is this the next superbug?

Beneficial Germs

Most people think of bacteria as "germs," invisible creatures that can invade our bodies and make us sick.

However, not all bacteria are harmful; in fact, many bacteria are quite useful. There are over a thousand types of bacteria in the normal human intestines that make vitamins such as folic acid and vitamin K, and can also help digest milk proteins such as lactose. Other bacteria help clean up oil spills by devouring the oil as food. Some bacteria decompose compost, garbage and sewage and help make methane which is used as fuel. It's difficult to imagine our life without some of these bacteria.

Interestingly, bacteria can also be found everywhere from soil, water, acidic hot springs and radioactive waste (left), to locations deep in the Earth's crust, as well as in plants and animals. These bacteria are essential for the stable ecosystem in which we live.

Bacteria also play a major role in scientific research and drug development. Bacteria in the lab can be genetically engineered to make proteins that are useful for humans, such as insulin and human growth hormone. Certain human genes that are responsible for making proteins such as insulin are inserted into bacteria like E. coli, to produce synthetic 'human' insulin in large quantities.

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Tardigrades: The World's Toughest Critters

The humble water bear has been the subject of some pretty nasty experiments lately. Scientists have boiled them in pure alcohol, exposed them to pressures six times greater then on the deepest ocean floor, and even frozen them to near absolute zero.

"Why?" I hear you cry. Well, scientists are testing the limits of the toughest creatures on Earth, with an incredible ability to survive the harshest conditions we can dream up. These little guys are more impressive endurance artists than David Blaine, and better survivors then even the mighty Ray Mears.

In September 2008 a crew of water bears were subjected to the most imaginative test yet; they were launched into orbit and exposed to the intense radiation and frigid vacuum of space before returning to Earth. Many were found to have survived the trip intact, and produced healthy offspring as though they had just been on vacation .

Introducing the Water Bear...

Water bears (also known as tardigrades) are arguably the cutest microscopic invertebrates ever discovered. They are short and plump with eight podgy legs and a smooth "gummy bear" complexion. They walk with big, lumbering strides and each foot has up to eight claws. Their mouse-like snout contains a tube which they use as a drinking straw to pierce their food and suck nutrients like out of a juice carton.

They are usually less then 1.5 mm long, so can only just be seen with the naked eye, but photos taken using microscopes reveal them to be a vivid red colour.

Although not many people have heard of them, these fantastic beasts actually live among us; in fact there is probably a water bear within 10 meters of you right now! These tough little creatures have been found all over the globe, from 6000m high in the Himalayas to depths of 4000m at the bottom of our oceans. Scientists have studied them on hot sand dunes at the equator, and 5m below the ice in Antarctica. Although they are known to inhabit some of the most extreme environments on Earth, they are happiest living on damp moss. They are aquatic animals and thrive in lakes, ponds, and moist patches in stone walls and roofs.

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FACTS ABOUT ASTEROIDS

The largest asteroid is Ceres, is about the size of Texas.
Asteroids can contain water, iron, silicates, and some heavy metals - like gold, lead, and uranium.
The vast majority of asteroids are grouped in the asteroid belt.
Even if there are 1000 times more asteroids than we know of today, then on average each asteroid would have over one million km2 to itself.
The best estimate is that there are 1,500-2,000 asteroids one and one-half mile in diameter or larger.
Due to a relatively unknown NASA directive, 23% of all asteroids are named ‘Steve’.
Most asteroids are covered in dust. This dust is called regolith.
The distinction between asteroids and comets is fuzzy—comets tend to have more chemical compounds that vaporize when heated, such as water, and more elliptical (egg-shaped) orbits than asteroids do.
A group of asteroids orbit the sun called Near-Earth Asteroids because they are somewhat close to the Earth and occasionally may cross Earth’s orbit.

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Ban to travel to Arctic Circle

UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would travel to Austria, Norway, Arctic Circle and Switzerland later this week, his spokesperson
has announced.

Ban's visit to Norway comes amidst controversy surrounding a leaked official memo by a Norwegian diplomat that was highly critical of the Secretary General. The UN has dismissed it as internal matter of Norway and has refused to comment on it.

After leaving the UN headquarters in New York Thursday, Ban would travel to Austria where he would will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Vienna International Centre and meet with Vienna-based UN organisations and staff.

He will deliver the keynote address at the Opening of the Political Symposium of the European Forum Alpbach, besides meeting with the Federal President and Foreign Minister of Austria and with the Prime Minister of Liechtenstein.

Ban will then go to Oslo, Norway for an official visit where he is scheduled to meet the Norwegian Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister on August 31.

He then will travel to Svalbard, in the Arctic Ocean, to see firsthand the impact of climate change in the Arctic. Over the course of his two-day trip, he will visit polar research stations and the Global Seed Vault, get the latest updates on issues relating to the thinning ice and make his way to the Polar Ice Rim, UN spokesperson Michele Montas has said.

Geneva would be his last stop where he will participate in the high-level meet of World Meteorological Organization's Third World Climate Conference on September 3.

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No-pollution three wheelers unveiled in New Delhi

NEW DELHI: With the unveiling of eco-friendly three wheelers powered by non-polluting hydrogen, India will soon have 'no pollution' vehicles running
on roads.

Union minister of new and renewable energy, Farooq Abdullah, drove a hydrogen-run trial-based auto ushering in an era where vehicles running on the road with the renewable and non-polluting fuel will be a common sight.

The vehicles were showcased on the sidelines of the first day of the three-day World Hydrogen Technologies Convention being held at India Habitat Centre here.

These three wheelers powered by hydrogen fuel will run on the speed of 50-70 kilometres per hour and can ply in sub-zero temperature up to minus 30 degree Celsius.

About 20 scientists and engineers worked for seven years to develop these vehicles.

"Today we are working at experimental and research level so the prices are high. The world over, the research is going on how to reduce the cost of production of hydrogen yet reduce the carbon footprint of production of hydrogen. I'm very sure the cost will become comparable in next 5 to 10," said Anand Kumar, Director, R&D, Indian Oil Corporation.

Kumar added that to make hydrogen fuel easily available and affordable for commercial purpose, government should subsidise it.

India hopes that one million hydrogen fuelled vehicles, mostly two and three wheelers will ply on the road by 2020.

The three wheelers have been developed by automobile makers Sonalika Group in cooperation with Banaras Hindu University.

A vehicle run on fossil fuel can be changed into the hydrogen one by using hydrogen conversion kits.

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Climate change may pose risk to country's security: Study

NEW DELHI: Climate change may pose a risk to the country's security as the impending rising sea-level and melting of glaciers threaten to redraw the
world map, a study has warned.

Conducted by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) working group, the study, released by union environment minister Jairam Ramesh, delves into the possible adverse impact of climate change on the strategy and tactics of the armed forces.

"The glacier meltdown may become very rapid, which has its own military implications.

"Flash floods in the shared rivers and spread of vector borne diseases may further fuel mutual suspicion between not-so-friendly upstream and downstream countries besides having negative impact on the capability of the military," the study said.

Trying to establish a link between climate change and national security, the study says that climate change is not about wars and is more about gradual build-up stresses, tensions and sometimes violent conflicts due to breakdown of physical and environmental systems.

"The study goes into detail about the influx of migrants due to increasing sea level and its growing impact on the capability of the armed forces from the perspective of sea, air and land," Arvind Gupta, a team member, said.

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19 new species of flora and fauna in Sikkim

GANGTOK: Sikkim continues to maintain its pole position as the country's richest state in terms of bio-diversity with the World Wildlife Foundation
(WWF) saying that 19 new species of flora and fauna has been found in the state in the last 10 years.

Of the 353 species of flora and fauna discovered in the eastern Himalayan range between 1998 and 2008, Sikkim has generated 19 species comprising plants and fish, the WWF said in its report.

The WWF surveyers also discovered 21 new species of orchids in the range of which five have been found in Sikkim, the report said.

The new variety orchid - coelogune pantlingii (pure white) - has been found in several parts of Sikkim, it said adding of 14 fish varieties found Sikkim has contributed three varieties - Pseudopoda abnormis, Pseudopoda hingstoni and Pseudopoda minor.

Meanwhile, the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), carrying out a survey work in Sikkim for the proposed integrated forest development programme to be funded by the agency, has complimented the state for being a reserve of a number of flora and fauna which are not found in other parts of the world

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Trash Or Treasure? Discarded US Computers Often Get A Second Life

ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2009) — More computers discarded by consumers in the United States are getting a second life in developing countries than previously believed, according to a new study –– the most comprehensive ever done on the topic –– reported in ACS' semi-monthly journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The findings may ease growing concerns about environmental pollution with toxic metals that can result from dismantling and recycling computer components in developing countries.

In the study Ramzy Kahhat and Eric Williams focused on the situation in Peru, where Kahhat was born. They used a Peruvian government database that tracks importation of new and used computers and computing equipment. The researchers found that at least 85 percent of computers imported into Peru are reused, rather than going directly into recycling.

The finding challenges the widespread belief that the trade in e-waste was mainly about dumping unusable junk or recycling components is inaccurate, at least for Peru. The U.S. is the source of up to 76 percent of used computers imported to Peru from 2003-2007, the researchers indicated. They note uncertainty on whether the same holds true for other, much larger countries like China and India

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Methane Gas Likely Spewing Into The Oceans Through Vents In Sea Floor

ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2009) — Scientists worry that rising global temperatures accompanied by melting permafrost in arctic regions will initiate the release of underground methane into the atmosphere. Once released, that methane gas would speed up global warming by trapping the Earth’s heat radiation about 20 times more efficiently than does the better-known greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.



Greenhouse effect
An MIT paper appearing in the Journal of Geophysical Research online Aug. 29 elucidates how this underground methane in frozen regions would escape and also concludes that methane trapped under the ocean may already be escaping through vents in the sea floor at a much faster rate than previously believed. Some scientists have associated the release, both gradual and fast, of subsurface ocean methane with climate change of the past and future.

“The sediment conditions under which this mechanism for gas migration dominates, such as when you have a very fine-grained mud, are pervasive in much of the ocean as well as in some permafrost regions,” said lead author Ruben Juanes, the ARCO Assistant Professor in Energy Studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

“This indicates that we may be greatly underestimating the methane fluxes presently occurring in the ocean and from underground into Earth’s atmosphere,” said Juanes. “This could have implications for our understanding of the Earth’s carbon cycle and global warming.”

Juanes explains that some of the naturally occurring underground methane exists not as gas but as methane hydrate. In the hydrate phase, a methane gas molecule is locked inside a crystalline cage of frozen water molecules. These hydrates exist in a layer of underground rock or oceanic sediments called the hydrate stability zone or HSZ. Methane hydrates will remain stable as long as the external pressure remains high and the temperature low. Beneath the hydrate stability zone, where the temperatures are higher, methane is found primarily in the gas phase mixed with water and sediment.

But the stability of the hydrate stability zone is climate-dependent.

If atmospheric temperatures rise, the hydrate stability zone will shift upward, leaving in its stead a layer of methane gas that has been freed from the hydrate cages. Pressure in that new layer of free gas would build, forcing the gas to shoot up through the HSZ to the surface through existing veins and new fractures in the sediment. A grain-scale computational model developed by Juanes and recent MIT graduate Antone Jain indicates that the gas would tend to open up cornflake-shaped fractures in the sediment, and would flow quickly enough that it could not be trapped into icy hydrate cages en route.

“Previous studies did not take into account the strong interaction between the gas-water surface tension and the sediment mechanics. Our model explains recent experiments of sediment fracturing during gas flow, and predicts that large amounts of free methane gas can bypass the HSZ,” said Juanes.

Using their model, as well as seismic data and core samples from a hydrate-bearing area of ocean floor (Hydrate Ridge, off the coast of Oregon), Juanes and Jain found that methane gas is very likely spewing out of vents in the sea floor at flow rates up to 1 million times faster than if it were migrating as a dissolved substance in water making its way through the oceanic sediment — a process previously thought to dominate methane transport.

“Our model provides a physical explanation for the recent striking discovery by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of a plume 1,400 meters high at the seafloor off the Northern California Margin,” said Juanes. This plume, which was recorded for five minutes before disappearing, is believed not to be hydrothermal vent, but a plume of methane gas bubbles coated with methane hydrate.

The Jain and Juanes paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research also explains the short-term consequences of injecting carbon dioxide into the ocean’s subsurface, a method proposed by some researchers for reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas. Juanes found that while some of the CO2 would remain trapped as a hydrate, much would likely spew up through fractures just as methane does.

“It is important to keep both methane and carbon dioxide either in the pipeline or underground, because the consequences of escape can be quite dangerous over time,” said Juanes.

This research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

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G-20 demands emission cuts from India

NEW DELHI: The G-20 finance ministers' meet has become the new forum for cornering India and other developing countries into taking climate change
commitments. An overview paper distributed by the G-20 secretariat has ignored India's submissions and demanded that the latter impose carbon taxation and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by `deviating significantly from business as usual' scenario.

The document, while putting little onus on industrialised nations to provide substantial funding to developing and poor countries, has recommended steps that would break the existing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and hurt India's economic growth, the government has contended.

The overview paper has been provided by the G-20 secretariat as a base for a report that the member countries' finance ministers are expected to agree to before the crucial final round of negotiations under the UNFCCC in December.

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is attending the G-20 meet at London.

The G-20 climate change finance report originates out of the controversial Major Economies Forum statement that India signed on to recently in Italy. Signing the statement, India had significantly deviated from its `non-negotiable' positions on climate change negotiations. Later, at the UN meet held in August in Bonn, India had to fight hard to keep the Italy declaration from influencing the formal negotiations.

The G-20 has yet again opened a front against developing countries outside the UN process, with the industrialised countries hoping to achieve here what they have been unable to so far in the more democratic UNFCCC.

But unlike the case at Italy, the Indian government has strongly opposed provisions in the G-20 document that stand contrary to its positions.

The G-20 secretariat had earlier sent three base documents to the member countries that were prepared without any consultation with Indian and most other developing world officials. The base documents contained several proposals and recommendations that India has for years successfully opposed at the UN climate negotiations. Even though India was given merely a week to reply, it strongly opposed the base documents and along with Brazil, South Africa and China, presented a more `developing country' view to be included in the G-20 report.

"Despite strong opposition from key developing countries, including India, the G-20 secretariat has sent this overview which more or less mimics the base papers we had rejected as not representative of the views and concerns of all G-20 member countries," a senior Indian official told TOI.

The government has yet again countered the latest overview document, which demands that developing countries too should take strong mitigation action, impose carbon taxes, reduce subsidies and look primarily at only market-driven solutions to climate change.

Indian officials have also noted how the G-20 document does not demand any firm commitments from the industrialised nations to provide funds to compensate for the excess carbon budget they occupy.

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New climate forceasting system to be created

GENEVA: The World Climate Conference has approved the creation of a new climate forecasting system to help countries adapt to climate change and
enable them to better prepare for natural disasters, officials said Friday.

Delegates from around 150 nations attending the conference adopted the declaration by consensus on Thursday, and the UN weather agency predicted the new Global Framework for Climate Services would be up and running by 2011 to improve climate forecasts and share that information around the world.

Rich countries such as the United States already have systems that provide climate forecasts, but only in the short term and not coordinated with the rest of the world, said Thomas Karl, director of the National Climate Data Center at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"Climate services is a new concept,'' he said in an interview. He said even climate information from Mali or Malaysia is important to the U.S., and that the new framework will provide that and have experts from around the world regularly meet to coordinate their analysis of climate change information.

The price of creating the new system was not given, but Karl said it would probably cost twice as much as the world currently spends on climate prediction.

The Global Framework for Climate Services will provide forecasts on weather patterns months or even years ahead, Karl said. In the next few months, the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization's members will meet to set up a task force to help implement the framework.

African countries said Friday they hoped the new system would help their farmers prepare for droughts and floods, and make agriculture, the cornerstone of most of their economies, more resilient to climate change.

Guinea's minister of transport, El-Hadj Mamady Kaba, said the Global Framework would send climate information out faster to the people who need it and help authorities plan for disasters.

"Extreme climate events are being seen more and more frequently,'' he told the conference, citing severe droughts, floods, cyclones, wind and dust storms, as well as heat waves.

John Njoroge Michuki, Kenya's environment minister, said: “Dried up water bodies and wetlands, and drastic changes to rainfall patterns, have resulted in flooding, rising epidemics and severe and prolonged drought and famine'' in his country.

Of the 11 glaciers on Mount Kenya at the beginning of the last century, five have melted, Michuki told the conference, adding that there is an “urgent need'' for more climate information.

Rich nations should support the installation of more weather and climate observation stations in Africa, Michuki said.

The five-day World Climate Conference, which was ending Friday, tried to find ways for the world to cope with global warming that will occur because of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, regardless of what climate negotiations achieve in a December meeting in Copenhagen. Delegates said the Geneva conference will provide useful scientific information for the Copenhagen negotiations, which aim at forging a new accord to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reducing the gases blamed for global warming.

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Environment Report, 2009

The MoEF's assessment of the environment, which should be the foundation for strategic planning in the ministry, is highly inadequate, and is a poor second to similar efforts by environmentalists themselves, writes Shripad Dharmadhikary.

25 August 2009 - "Presently, more than 45 per cent of the average annual rainfall, including snowfall in the country, is wasted as natural run-off to the sea." Reading this statement, one would guess it is made by a promoter of large dams proposing to build more of those, or wanting to link rivers to use this 'wasted' water. Indeed, this statement reflects the basic philosophy that has governed water resource development in the country for decades, namely, that every drop of water from rivers and water bodies has to be extracted for human use.

In recent years, there has been increasing acknowledgement that this philosophy is deeply flawed, and that significant water needs to be maintained in rivers as environmental flows. Therefore, it is somewhat shocking to find that the above-quoted statement is from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), the very institution that is meant to protect rivers. This also explains why the MoEF has been completely unsuccessful in protecting the environment in this country, and has instead been reduced to a rubber stamp for clearing "developmental" projects. What is of equal concern is that this statement is being made by the MoEF in the latest edition of its State of Environment Report. (prepared by Development Alternatives in active collaboration of the MoEF and published by the MoEF. Available at this link).

According to the preface written by Secretary, MoEF to this recently released report, "The State of Environment Report India 2009 presents an overview of the environmental scenario of our country. Its objective is to serve as a baseline document to help assist decision making and policy formulation." This makes it a document of considerable importance. But many flaws combine to render this report highly inadequate for meeting these stated objectives. This article mainly discusses the water related sections, but in general the conclusions apply to the rest of the report too.

Over-exploitation of rivers: The section presenting the status and trend of the aquatic environment misses out on many key points, or presents them inadequately. A major issue of environmental concern is the drying up of large number of rivers in the country due to over-extraction of water, building of cascades of dams and massive diversions of water. Some of the large basins have become closed basins - that is, the river water no longer meets the sea. This issue has not even been mentioned in the report.


The MoEF has been completely unsuccessful in protecting the environment in this country, and has instead been reduced to a rubber stamp for clearing 'developmental' projects.


• The other side of the dam
• Dam plans for Arunachal


Groundwater loss: Groundwater is the source of drinking water for a significant majority of India's population, and meets substantial requirements of irrigation. Over-exploitation of ground water in many parts of the country has emerged as one of the most serious problems. India's major food producing areas like Punjab and Haryana are most severely affected. Yet, the issue of groundwater over-use is not highlighted in the report, though there are references to it scattered in the report. But in the main Status and Trends section, the report says that "the figure for net draft of groundwater considering the present utilization indicates that a substantial portion of the total potential (about 68 per cent) still remains untapped". (Page 41) This gives a misleading picture of the groundwater situation in the country.

Bad data: Another flaw in the report is the use of data that is old and from secondary sources. This is the case even for parameters that the MoEF itself is supposed to monitor. For example, in the section on Water Pollution, the report mentions that central and state pollution control boards have identified 1532 grossly polluting industries in India. But the source for this information is a World Bank publication, and that too of 1999. In fact, the MoEF should be the primary source of information on such parameters, since pollution is something the ministry itself is supposed to monitor! And its State of Environment reports should be presenting latest figures. But having fallen down on the job of tracking pollution properly, it is forced to rely on whatever little it can source externally.

Contradictions within the report

One important problem in reading the report is that at various places, differing or even contradictory figures are found for the same parameter. For example, the Climate Change chapter states at one place that a 20 per cent rise in all-India summer monsoon rainfall is projected (Page 74), but at another place says that scientists at IIT Delhi have warned that by the 2050s, India will experience a decline in its summer rainfall. (Page 78)

In the chapter on water security, it is stated that the total water requirement for the country for various activities will reach 1450 cubic kms per year by 2050. This, it is pointed out, is significantly more than the current estimate of utilisable water potential, at 1122 cubic kms per year. (Page 104). Yet, after a page, a table sourced from Central Water Commission puts the water requirement in 2050 between 973 and 1180 cubic kms per year. The difference is huge - it is the difference between whether we will have water or not!

It is true that sometimes estimates and predictions are difficult, and subject to many assumptions; hence we can have differing figures. This is especially true of areas like climate change. But the point to emphasise is that the report cannot present two differing figures without commenting on them and the difference. But this is exactly what it does.

Discussing each issue in a silo

The last serious issue that needs to be pointed out is the "compartmentalisation" of the chapters. While the structure of the report is good, cross linkages between sections - the essence of environmental analysis - are inadequate. Also, the report should have made stronger connections between the environment and specific components of current plans for 8-9 per cent economic growth.

For example, the chapter on Biodiversity mentions that India has two of the world's biodiversity hotspots. It also mentions that "deforestation due to hydropower and mining projects are perhaps the greatest threats to biodiversity of India." But considering that one of the two global hotspots in India is the eastern Himalayan region, it would have been important to specifically refer to the massive dam building program in the North-east, and in Arunachal in particular, where MoUs have been signed by just that one state for more than 100 hydropower project totaling 30,000 MW. Unless this is done, it will not reflect in the policy recommendations. Ironically, the hydropower program of North-east finds mention in the Climate Change section, as a part of the response to combat it, but without referring to its devastating impact on biodiversity.

Highly inadequate

And all of this is compounded by another problem with the report. This relates to the basic report-writing issues like proof-checking and referencing. In places, its figures seem disproportionate. For example, the quantity of waste-water generation from industries is given as 55,000 million cubic meters per day, or 55 billion cu m per day. This means that in the whole year the discharge would be 5 times more than the entire water received by India. So clearly, this is a typo. But all the references to and discussions about India's Water policy refer to the 1987 Water Policy. Is this also a typo? The country adopted a new water policy in 2002; hasn't MoEF heard of this? Other inadequacies include improper or inadequate referencing, wrong usage of units, etc.

All in all, this report, which should be the foundation for strategic planning in the Environment ministry, is highly inadequate. A comparison of this report with the first and second State of India's Environment reports brought out by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) is inevitable. The CSE reports broke new ground and set the standards with the high quality of their assessments, with the depth of their analysis and the extensiveness of participation. It is important for the MoEF to work towards, if not actually reach, the benchmarks set by CSE reports.

For this, it will be necessary for MoEF to rework its report extensively. The new Minister, Jairam Ramesh, has shown some quick and important initiatives in responding to civil society concerns. He must look at the lacunae in this document and initiate a process to address them and bring out a report that can truly be the basis for balancing "economic growth with environmentally sustainable practices" and for tempering "growth with environmental equity, sustainability and social justice" - the objectives articulated by him in his Foreword to the report.

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Climate risks, and how to limit damage

A 155-nation conference in Geneva agreed on a plan to improve climate information to help people cope with ever more droughts, floods, sandstorms

and rising sea levels projected this century.
The plan for a "Global Framework for Climate Services" includes the appointment of a task force of high-level, independent advisors within four months.

This task force will prepare a report within another 12 months with recommendations for elements and implementation of the framework.

Among examples of risks and solutions from around the world given by U.N. agencies:

DISASTER RISKS

Between 1991 and 2005, natural disasters killed 960,000 people and economic losses totalled $1.19 trillion. Nine out of 10 natural disasters in the past 50 years have been caused by extreme weather and climate events.

* The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) supplies early warnings of disasters including cyclones and dust storms. Vietnam is replanting mangroves along the Mekong River delta to help protect low-lying areas from floods as seas rise.

HUMAN HEALTH

Water-borne diseases may become more frequent because of climate change -- for instance, warmer oceans can lead to toxic algal blooms and cholera epidemics. A heatwave in Europe in 2003 caused 70,000 more deaths than normal.

* Botswana is using seasonal rain forecasts to help predict malaria outbreaks. The forecasts give time to deploy resources against mosquitoes and provide nets to keep the insects at bay.

TRANSPORT AND TOURISM

Tourism generated $735 billion in revenue in 2006, of which $221 billion was in developing nations. Projected sea level rise this century would worsen coastal erosion and lead to the loss of beaches on tropical islands that depend on tourists.

* Some ski resorts are using temperature projections for coming decades to site ski lifts. In Vermont, one ski resort has built a reservoir to feed water to snow-making machines.

MANAGING WATER

More than 1 billion people worldwide lack access to clean water. Drought and desertification worldwide threaten the livelihoods of 1.2 billion people.

* Countries in the Himalayas are working to assess risks of floods from lakes, now held in behind glaciers. A thaw of the glaciers could lead to an "outburst flood".

ENERGY

In 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed more than 100 offshore oil and gas platforms off the United States. Energy industry losses from hurricanes in 2005 were estimated at $15 billion.

* Developing countries such as India and Mali are turning to jatropha, which grows with little rain on wasteland and does not compete with crops. Jatropha can be burnt as fuel, helps store carbon in the ground and slows desertification.

SECURING FOOD SUPPLIES

Climate change will disrupt farming and fishing just as the world population rises to a projected 9 billion by 2050 from more than 6 billion now.

* Farmers in the Ningxia region of China are trying to work out better ways to allocate water during droughts and think how crops will change in the next 70 years.

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Save Tigers

Did you know that in South East Asian countries, tiger bones are used to make traditional medicines. In this way, the existence of the tiger on this planet is being endangered. So, the Bali tiger, the Javan tiger and the caspian tiger have become extinct and the Sumatran tiger, the Royal Bengal tiger and the South China tiger are endangered.

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