Clues about Black Hole’s Diet

Andrea Merloni and members of his team, from the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, near Munich, were exploring the huge archive of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in preparation for a future X-ray satellite mission. The SDSS has been observing a large fraction of the night sky with its optical telescope. In addition, spectra, where light is dispersed across wavelengths, allowing astronomers to deduce properties like composition and temperature, have been taken of distant galaxies and black holes.

For a variety of reasons, some objects got the spectra taken more than once. And when the team was looking at one of the objects with multiple spectra, they were struck by an extraordinary change in one of the objects under study, with the catalogue number SDSS J0159+0033, a galaxy in the constellation of Cetus. The huge distance to the galaxy means that we see it as it was 3.5 billion years ago.

"Usually distant galaxies do not change significantly over an astronomer's lifetime, i.e. on a timescale of years or decades," explains Andrea Merloni, "but this one showed a dramatic variation of its spectrum, as if the central black hole had switched on and off."

This happened between 1998 and 2005, but nobody had noticed the odd behaviour of this galaxy until late last year, when two groups of scientists preparing the next (fourth) generation of SDSS surveys independently stumbled across these data.

Luckily enough, the two flagship X-ray observatories, the ESA-led XMM-Newton and the NASA-led Chandra took snapshots of the same area of the sky close in time to the peak of the flare, and again about ten years later. This gave the astronomers unique information about the high-energy emission that reveals how material is processed in the immediate vicinity of the central black hole.

Gigantic black holes are at home in the nuclei of large galaxies all around us. Most astronomers believe that they grew to the enormous sizes that we can observe today by feeding mostly on interstellar gas from its surroundings, which is unable to escape its gravitational pull. Such a process takes place over a very long time (tens to hundreds of millions of years), and is capable to turn a small black hole created in the explosion of a heavy star into the super-heavyweight monsters that lurk at the center of galaxies.

However, galaxies also contain a huge number of stars. Some unlucky ones may happen to pass too close to the central black hole, where they are destroyed and eventually swallowed by the black hole. If this is compact enough, the strong, tidal gravitational forces tear the star apart in a spectacular way. Subsequently bits and pieces swirl into the black hole and thus produce huge flares of radiation that can be as luminous as all the rest of the stars in the host galaxy for a period of a few months to a year. These rare events are called Tidal Disruption Flares (TDF).

Merloni and his collaborators quite quickly realized that "their" flare matched almost perfectly all the expectations of this model. Moreover, because of the serendipitous nature of the discovery, they realized that this was an even more peculiar system than those which had been found through active searches until now. With an estimated mass of 100 million solar masses, this is the biggest black hole caught in the act of star-tearing so far.

However, the sheer size of the system is not the only intriguing aspect of this particular flare; it is also the first one for which scientists can assume with some degree of certainty that the black hole was on a more standard "gas diet" very recently (a few tens of thousands of years). This is an important clue on which sort of food black holes mostly live on.

"Louis Pasteur said: 'Chance favour the prepared mind' -- but in our case, nobody was really prepared," marvels Merloni. "We could have discovered this unique object already ten years ago, but people did not know where to look. It is quite common in astronomy that progress in our understanding of the cosmos is helped by serendipitous discoveries. And now we have a better idea of how to find more such events, and future instruments will greatly expand our reach."

In less than two years' time a new powerful X-ray telescope eROSITA, which is currently being built at MPE, will be put into orbit on the Russian-German SRG satellite. It will scan the entire sky with the right cadence and sensitivity needed to discover hundreds of new tidal disruption flares. Also, big optical telescopes are being designed and built with the goal of monitoring the variable sky, and will greatly contribute to solving the mystery of the black hole eating habits. Astronomers will have to be prepared to catch these dramatic last acts of a star's life. But however prepared they'll be, the sky will be full of new surprises.

Read More

Brain Network for Observed Social Threat Interactions Revealed

The research, conducted by Naotaka Fujii and colleagues at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan, answers the long-standing question of whether the memory of an observed social encounter can be formed and recalled via the same neural pathway. To test this idea, the authors overlaid a 128-channel large-scale recording array on a monkey cortex to record electrical activity while the subject watched videos of one monkey threatening another. In control studies, the videos showed non-threatening interactions.

The researchers recorded the brain activity data to a server and used Big Data analytical techniques to calculate a multidimensional value called ERC (Event Related Causality) that indexed the continuous evolution of brain activity in time, space, and the direction of communication between brain areas during the task. The ERC in turn was decomposed to identify hotspots of network activity the team called "modules" that pinpointed specific epochs in the observed social threat interactions.

The modules revealed a rich dynamic flow of information in the brain network at unprecedented resolution. One module encoded the formation of a memory of the observed social interaction revealing a flow of information from sensory perception areas to higher brain structures. Conversely, animals presented with the cues that were observed in the initial threat encounters, while the threatening monkey was hidden from view, showed the same network with reversed communication flow, suggesting that the same network was used for perceiving and recalling the event.

The results open a window into the structure of brain networks for cognitive processes such as observing the behavior of others. The methods used in the study are generalizable to other situations requiring mental processing. The findings also have implications for the mapping of brain activity by large federal brain projects including the US BRAIN initiative and EU Human Brain Project indicating that technologies that measure brain activity should aim to monitor not only large populations of neurons but also their network communication structures.

Read More

Increased Internet Access led to a Rise in Racial Hate Crimes

Their study, the first of its kind to document the relationship between the Internet and hate crimes, sourced data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to FBI data, almost two-thirds of reported hate crimes arose from racial bias, making it by far the most typical form of bias-motivated crime in the U.S.

Using a large-scale data set from 2001-2008, the authors show:

An increase in the number of broadband providers led to an increase in racial hate crimes, particularly among lone-wolf perpetrators.

The addition of one broadband provider in every county in the U.S. would have caused 865 additional incidents of racially driven crimes on an annual basis.

Yet the Internet's impact on hate crime was not uniform and was predominantly present in areas with higher levels of racism, identified by the amount of racial segregation present and the proportion of racially charged search terms used.

Greater Internet access did not cause an increase in the formation of off-line hate groups. However, it may have enhanced the efficiency with which extremists could spread hate ideology and spur like-minded individuals to carry out lone-wolf attacks.

Furthermore, the authors consider the effectiveness of current Internet regulations and reflect on future policy implications. "Technologically driven solutions fall short in addressing an issue that is inherently social in nature," argues Professor Ghose. "Instead of engaging in a technological rat race with extremists, we should consider incorporating critical literacies -- including digital media, anti-racism and social justice -- into school curricula as an alternative strategy."

"The positive relationship between broadband providers and the number of hate crimes is mainly found in places that have high levels of racism," says Professor Chan. "The likely reason behind this is the Internet facilitates this specialization of interest. That is to say users will search out content online that is congruent to their beliefs or preferences and are not as likely to look up content that is counter to what they believe in."

Read More

Communities with Beautiful Scenery, Weather have Lower Rates of Religious Affiliation

"Beautiful weather, mountains and waterfronts can serve as conduits to the sacred, just like traditional religious congregations," said lead author Todd W. Ferguson, a doctoral candidate in sociology in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences.

But the research is not necessarily a measure of whether enjoying the great outdoors tempts people away from going to a place of worship on a lovely weekend, Ferguson said. And "we're not claiming that residents in areas richer with natural amenities are more likely to create a 'Church of nature,'" he said.

The study -- "The Natural Environment as a Spiritual Resource: A Theory of Regional Variation in Religious Adherence" -- is published in the journal Sociology of Religion.

Just as natural amenities may be an economic commodity to attract tourists, new residents and development, they also may be spiritual resources for a portion of the population -- and compete with traditional local religious organizations.

For some, nature may enhance what they find in membership or identification with a religious organization -- and many traditional religious groups are likely to encourage people to use the environment for spiritual expression.

Then there are the religious "nones" -- those who do not identify with any religious tradition but are not necessarily atheists or agnostics -- who may find something of the divine in forests, lakes and mountains.

"When a person hikes in a forest to connect with the sacred, that individual may not feel a need to affiliate with a religious group because spiritual demands are being met," Ferguson said.

Some "nones" even may adhere to a nature-based spirituality.

Regardless of why people may turn to nature, it does not have time constraints, while many congregations or other organizations meet only specific hours of the week, researchers said.

In their study, researchers analyzed data from the Religious Congregations and Membership Study, United States Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Census Bureau. They examined cross-sectional differences in religious adherence rates among 3,107 U.S. counties, using the county-level rates per 1,000 people. Adherence was defined as all members of religious organizations, including full members, their children and the estimated number of other participants who are not considered members -- for example, the baptized, those not confirmed, those not eligible for communion and those regularly attending services.

Researchers also analyzed data from the USDA about environmental qualities people prefer, including warm winter, winter sun, temperate summer, low summer humidity, topographical variation and water area, said co-author Jeffrey A. Tamburello, a doctoral candidate in sociology in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences.

Ferguson and Tamburello noted that scholars are beginning to explore how activities that use natural amenities -- such as surfing, backpacking or SCUBA diving -- may be viewed as religious experiences. Among them is Susan Bratton, Ph.D., professor of environmental science in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences. She is the author of the book "The Spirit of the Appalachian Trail: Community, Environment and Belief."

"Scholars also need to explore whether the relationship between natural amenities and religion adherence rates is just an American phenomenon, or whether it also exists in areas such as Western Europe, which have lower rates of religious adherence," Ferguson said.

Read More

Security Tools for Software Developers

"Our work is focused on understanding the developers who are trying to identify security vulnerabilities in their code, and how they use (or don't use) tools that can help them find those vulnerabilities," says Murphy-Hill, an associate professor of computer science at NC State University. "The one thing that ties all of our work together is that we want to help give programmers the best possible tools and help them use those tools effectively."

In the first of three related papers being presented next week at the Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, a team of computer science and psychology researchers from NC State and Microsoft Research surveyed more than 250 developers on their experiences with security tools. The goal was to determine what influences a developer's use of these tools -- and the findings were somewhat surprising.

For one thing, developers who said they worked on products in which security was important were not much more likely to use security tools than other programmers.

Instead, "the two things that were most strongly associated with using security tools were peer influence and corporate culture," Murphy-Hill says. Specifically, people who said they had seen what others do with security tools, and people whose bosses expected them to use security tools, were most likely to take advantage of the tools.

"This research gives software development companies and managers information they can use to effectively influence the adoption of security tools by developers," Murphy-Hill says.

But these tools aren't completely accurate. For example, they can tell programmers there's a problem where no problem actually exists. And the tools aren't always user-friendly. In short, the characteristics of the tools themselves can affect whether programmers choose to use them.

To shed light on how security tools support developers in diagnosing potential vulnerabilities, Murphy-Hill's team and collaborators from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte devised a separate study, effectively asking: do tools give developers the information they need to determine if there's a real problem and how to fix it?

In this study, the researchers gave 10 developers of varying backgrounds a specific security tool and a substantial chunk of open-source code to examine. The code contained known security vulnerabilities, which were identified by the security tool. Each of the study participants was asked to use the tool, inspect the source code, and say whether each security notification from the tool was real and how they would address the vulnerabilities.

"In many cases, the tool presented multiple possible fixes for a problem, but didn't give programmers much information about the relevant advantages and disadvantages of each fix," Murphy-Hill says. "We found that this made it difficult for programmers to select the best course of action."

The tool would also give developers multiple notifications that seemed to be related to each other -- but the notifications didn't give developers information on exactly how the problems related to each other.

"This can be confusing for programmers, and lead to problems if developers don't fully understand how various problems are related to each other or how potential fixes might affect the overall code," Murphy-Hill says.

"More research is needed to really flesh these findings out -- we need to expand this study to incorporate more programmers and more security tools," Murphy-Hill says. "But overall, we're hoping that this and related work can help programmers create more effective tools for use by the software development community."

One concept that Murphy-Hill and colleagues from NC State propose in a third paper is the idea of "bespoke" tools. The basic idea is to create tools that developers use -- including security tools -- that are capable of evolving over time as they are used, adapting to each programmer's particular areas of expertise.

"For example, programmers with expertise in addressing security vulnerabilities won't need a security tool that offers extensive information on all of the potential fixes for a given vulnerability -- wading through that might slow them down," Murphy-Hill says. "So a bespoke tool might learn to offer only basic information about potential fixes for them. But the tool could also recognize that it needs to leave in that additional information for less security-savvy programmers, who may need it to make informed decisions."

These bespoke tools could learn about a programmer's strengths through both the programmer's interactions with the tool and by analyzing the programmer's code itself, Murphy-Hill says.

The Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering is being held Aug. 30 to Sept. 4 in Bergamo, Italy. Lead author of "Quantifying Developers' Adoption of Security Tools" is Jim Witschey, a former computer science graduate student at NC State. The paper was co-authored by Olga Zielinska, Allaire Welk, Murphy-Hill, and Chris Mayhorn of NC State and Thomas Zimmerman of Microsoft Research. Lead author of "Questions Developers Ask While Diagnosing Potential Security Vulnerabilities with Static Analysis," is Justin Smith, a Ph.D. student at NC State. The paper was co-authored by Brittany Johnson and Murphy-Hill of NC State and Bill Chu and Heather Richter Lipford of UNC-Charlotte. Johnson is also lead author of "Bespoke Tools: Adapted to the Concepts Developers Know." Co-authors are Rahul Pandita, Murphy-Hill and Sarah Heckman of NC State.

Read More

First optical Rectenna-- Combined Rectifier and Antenna -- Converts light to DC Current

Based on multiwall carbon nanotubes and tiny rectifiers fabricated onto them, the optical rectennas could provide a new technology for photodetectors that would operate without the need for cooling, energy harvesters that would convert waste heat to electricity -- and ultimately for a new way to efficiently capture solar energy.

In the new devices, developed by engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the carbon nanotubes act as antennas to capture light from the sun or other sources. As the waves of light hit the nanotube antennas, they create an oscillating charge that moves through rectifier devices attached to them. The rectifiers switch on and off at record high petahertz speeds, creating a small direct current.

Billions of rectennas in an array can produce significant current, though the efficiency of the devices demonstrated so far remains below one percent. The researchers hope to boost that output through optimization techniques, and believe that a rectenna with commercial potential may be available within a year.

"We could ultimately make solar cells that are twice as efficient at a cost that is ten times lower, and that is to me an opportunity to change the world in a very big way" said Baratunde Cola, an associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. "As a robust, high-temperature detector, these rectennas could be a completely disruptive technology if we can get to one percent efficiency. If we can get to higher efficiencies, we could apply it to energy conversion technologies and solar energy capture."

The research, supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center and the Army Research Office (ARO), is scheduled to be reported September 28 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Developed in the 1960s and 1970s, rectennas have operated at wavelengths as short as ten microns, but for more than 40 years researchers have been attempting to make devices at optical wavelengths. There were many challenges: making the antennas small enough to couple optical wavelengths, and fabricating a matching rectifier diode small enough and able to operate fast enough to capture the electromagnetic wave oscillations. But the potential of high efficiency and low cost kept scientists working on the technology.

"The physics and the scientific concepts have been out there," said Cola. "Now was the perfect time to try some new things and make a device work, thanks to advances in fabrication technology."

Using metallic multiwall carbon nanotubes and nanoscale fabrication techniques, Cola and collaborators Asha Sharma, Virendra Singh and Thomas Bougher constructed devices that utilize the wave nature of light rather than its particle nature. They also used a long series of tests -- and more than a thousand devices -- to verify measurements of both current and voltage to confirm the existence of rectenna functions that had been predicted theoretically. The devices operated at a range of temperatures from 5 to 77 degrees Celsius.

Fabricating the rectennas begins with growing forests of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes on a conductive substrate. Using atomic layer chemical vapor deposition, the nanotubes are coated with an aluminum oxide material to insulate them. Finally, physical vapor deposition is used to deposit optically-transparent thin layers of calcium then aluminum metals atop the nanotube forest. The difference of work functions between the nanotubes and the calcium provides a potential of about two electron volts, enough to drive electrons out of the carbon nanotube antennas when they are excited by light.

In operation, oscillating waves of light pass through the transparent calcium-aluminum electrode and interact with the nanotubes. The metal-insulator-metal junctions at the nanotube tips serve as rectifiers switching on and off at femtosecond intervals, allowing electrons generated by the antenna to flow one way into the top electrode. Ultra-low capacitance, on the order of a few attofarads, enables the 10-nanometer diameter diode to operate at these exceptional frequencies.

"A rectenna is basically an antenna coupled to a diode, but when you move into the optical spectrum, that usually means a nanoscale antenna coupled to a metal-insulator-metal diode," Cola explained. "The closer you can get the antenna to the diode, the more efficient it is. So the ideal structure uses the antenna as one of the metals in the diode -- which is the structure we made."

The rectennas fabricated by Cola's group are grown on rigid substrates, but the goal is to grow them on a foil or other material that would produce flexible solar cells or photodetectors.

Cola sees the rectennas built so far as simple proof of principle. He has ideas for how to improve the efficiency by changing the materials, opening the carbon nanotubes to allow multiple conduction channels, and reducing resistance in the structures.

"We think we can reduce the resistance by several orders of magnitude just by improving the fabrication of our device structures," he said. "Based on what others have done and what the theory is showing us, I believe that these devices could get to greater than 40 percent efficiency."

Read More

Facebook effect: Research Shows Comments about Candidates have Impact on Potential Voters

That influence occurred even though the research participants weren't Facebook friends or even acquaintances of the commenters. In fact, the commenters -- like the candidate himself -- didn't even exist.

The research team, consisting of faculty and students from the departments of Communication and of Political Science and International Relations, created a Facebook page for a fictitious candidate using general and nonpartisan "information" about him.

Delawareans selected as a test group were sent an online survey, asking them to look at the page and then rate their impressions of the candidate. Some of the recipients saw a page with two fictitious supportive comments, while others saw two challenging comments.

"A social media campaign is practically obligatory for candidates today, and the key to social media is that it's interactive; it's not one-way like traditional political advertising," said Paul R. Brewer, professor of communication and of political science and international relations and director of UD's Center for Political Communication (CPC). "We wanted to test this interactivity between the candidate and citizens."

The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Political Science, found that those who saw positive comments or "likes" had a more favorable perception of the candidate and were more likely to support him, while those who saw the negative comments had more unfavorable perceptions.

Whether the candidate responded to the comments had no effect on how he was perceived.

"This showed that people trust comments from their peers more than they trust self-generated comments from the candidate," Brewer said. "It's the idea that what other people say about you is genuine, perhaps unlike what you say about yourself. So comments from some random person on the Internet do shape citizens' perceptions."

Calling the study a first step in researching the effect of social media interactivity in political campaigns, Brewer said that it may have been easier to influence viewers looking at the "blank slate" of a fictitious candidate rather than at a real candidate with whom they may already be familiar. He also noted that the survey group was asked to look at the Facebook page, while in real campaigns, citizens decide for themselves whether to check out a candidate on social media.

Still, Brewer said, "I was surprised that no one had done this kind of study before, at least not in published research. Campaigns invest heavily in social media, and this is something that will play out in 2016."

Campaigns already sometimes try to influence social media by removing negative comments from their pages or encouraging staffers and supporters to post positive comments. This is nothing new, Brewer said, recalling a pre-social-media campaign in which he worked as an intern and was instructed to write positive letters to the editor at newspapers.

"Candidates have long used carefully orchestrated social cues, from endorsements to photo opportunities to stage-managed public events, in their efforts to persuade voters that they are riding a wave of popular support," the researchers concluded in their journal article. "The increasing use of [social networking sites] by voters provides candidates and other actors with new tools for projecting images of popularity or unpopularity in ways that may carry electoral consequences."

Read More

Nearly Half of U.S. Seafood Supply is Wasted

The findings, published in the November issue of Global Environmental Change, come as food waste in general has been in the spotlight and concerns have been raised about the sustainability of the world's seafood resources. In the U.S. and around the world, people are being advised to eat more seafood, but overfishing, climate change, pollution, habitat destruction and the use of fish for other purposes besides human consumption threaten the global seafood supply.

"If we're told to eat significantly more seafood but the supply is severely threatened, it is critical and urgent to reduce waste of seafood," says study leader David Love, PhD, a researcher with the Public Health and Sustainable Aquaculture project at the CLF and an assistant scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The new study analyzed the food waste issue by focusing on the amount of seafood lost annually at each stage of the food supply chain and at the consumer level.

After compiling data from many sources, the researchers estimated the U.S. edible seafood supply at approximately 4.7 billion pounds per year, which includes domestic and imported products minus any exported products. Some of the edible seafood supply is wasted as it moves through the supply chain from hook or net to plate. They found that the amount wasted each year is roughly 2.3 billion pounds. Of that waste, they say that 330 million pounds are lost in distribution and retail, 573 million pounds are lost when commercial fishers catch the wrong species of fish and then discard it (a concept called bycatch) and a staggering 1.3 billion pounds are lost at the consumer level.

The researchers found the greatest portion of seafood loss occurred at the level of consumers (51 to 63 percent of waste). Sixteen to 32 percent of waste is due to bycatch, while 13 to 16 percent is lost in distribution and retail operations. To illustrate the magnitude of the loss, the authors estimate this lost seafood could contain enough protein to fulfill the annual requirements for as many as 10 million men or 12 million women; and there is enough seafood lost to close 36 percent of the gap between current seafood consumption and the levels recommended by the 2010 U.S. Dietary Guidelines.

The 2010 U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommended increasing seafood consumption to eight ounces per person per week and consuming a variety of seafood in place of some meat and poultry. Yet achieving those levels would require doubling the U.S. seafood supply, the researchers say.

Waste reduction has the potential to support increased seafood consumption without further stressing aquatic resources, says Roni Neff, PhD, director of the Food System Sustainability & Public Health Program at CLF and an assistant professor with the Bloomberg School of Public Health. She says that while a portion of the loss could be recovered for human consumption, "we do not intend to suggest that all of it could or should become food for humans."

"It would generally be preferable for the fish that becomes bycatch to be left alive in the water rather than eaten, and due to seafood's short shelf life, it may be particularly challenging compared to other food items to get the remaining seafood eaten or frozen before it decays," she says. Instead, focusing on prevention strategies involving governments, businesses and consumers can reduce seafood loss and create a more efficient and sustainable seafood system.

The researchers offer several approaches to reduce seafood waste along the food chain from catch to consumer. Suggestions range from limiting the percent of bycatch that can be caught at the production level to packaging seafood into smaller portion sizes at the processing level to encouraging consumer purchases of frozen seafood. Some loss is unavoidable, but the researchers hope these estimates and suggestions will help stimulate dialogue about the significance and magnitude of seafood loss.

Read More

Ice Samples provide Clues to Past, Future Climate Change

They have also found that increased levels of dust were being deposited during warmer periods when the Arctic Oscillation -- changes in the prevailing wind direction centered on the Atlantic -- was at its strongest.

The scientists carried out their research by studying two ice-cores collected from ice-caps more than 6000km apart, one from Greenland, the other from Kamchatka, in eastern Russia. Ice cores have revolutionized the study of past climates because of the array of evidence that they preserve, including trapped bubbles of gas such as carbon dioxide and methane. However this is the first time that scientists have used organic molecules originating from terrestrial plants, soils and biomass burning to study past climate change recorded by ice-cores. Deposits can be dated very accurately by studying the annual layers within the cores -- similar to tree rings -- which allow scientists to examine deposits going back many years.

Studying meteorological records over the last 450 years, the researchers found that the concentrations of the organic dust were at their highest during periods when the Arctic Oscillation was stronger.

Dr James Bendle, lead investigator from the University of Birmingham's School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, said: 'We are applying a new type of measurement to ice cores for the first time, and have successfully obtained information on past climate change from measurement of organic biomarkers in the cores -- molecules from plants and soils -- which have been transported thousands of miles by the wind to the Greenland and Kamchatka ice-caps where the cores are extracted from. The similarity of the ice core records is remarkable considering the geographical separation between the two sites. This gives us confidence that our records represent broad scale changes in the northern Hemisphere and not just local factors.

'Climate models predict that the Arctic Oscillation will increasingly move into its positive mode of wetter and windier weather in the North as a response to increases in greenhouse gases and global warming. If this is the case, our research suggests that there could be increased transport of dust and carbonaceous aerosols to the Arctic. As these organic-rich dusts are dark in colour, they could start to lower the reflectance of the snow and ice covered surfaces in the Arctic, leading to an even warmer regional climate.

Read More

Agri package: Old Wine in New Bottle

 

The agriculture sector — which contributes over 21pc to the country’s GDP, employs 45pc of the national labour force, makes up around 60pc of our exports and yet fails to meet its targets — deserved a big push.

Agricultural growth has been moving in a narrow band of 1.8-3.5pc over the last decade.

For the current fiscal, the government is expecting it to improve by 3.9pc to help boost the GDP growth rate to 5.5pc.

Ahead of local government polls in two major commodity-producing provinces (Punjab and Sindh) in two weeks time, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced a Rs341bn relief package for the farm sector to facilitate its revival.

---

Even finance ministry officials acknowledge that the numbers had been jacked up to Rs341bn by putting many past and future plans together

---

The package has attracted political criticism from opponents, who have termed it the ‘biggest pre-poll rigging’. Yet only a few have noticed that most of the measures announced by the prime minister at the farmers’ convention last week had already been announced by his finance minister in his two consecutive budget speeches for 2014-15 and 2015-16.

Sadly, a large number of these initiatives remained unimplemented for the two years. In fact, this was also acknowledged by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in his 2015-16 budget speech.

“Despite the resource constraints and the gigantic economic challenges, out of 34 new initiatives announced in the previous budget, 20 have been fully implemented while the work on the remaining is continuing,” he had reported to the parliament this June.

Even those in the finance ministry acknowledge that the numbers had been jacked up to Rs341bn by putting many past and future plans together and that they would come down to a pittance when seen in the context of the number of beneficiaries.

They point out that even if budgetary provisions for the current fiscal were taken into account, the total package announced by the prime minister would amount to Rs85bn spread over four categories.

This includes a direct cash support of Rs5,000 per acre to all cotton farmers with ownership/cultivation of an area of less than 12.5 acres. The subsidy will be shared by the federal and provincial governments on a 50/50 basis. It will cost Rs20bn and the food ministry is already consulting the provinces over the disbursement procedure.

Another Rs20bn worth of direct cash support — Rs5,000 per acre — is for all rice farmers with holding sizes of less than 12.5 acres, with the cost to be equally shared by the federal and provincial governments. Over the past three months, the provincial and federal governments have been working on its disbursement modalities.

The second portion of the package relates to reducing the cost of production, with an estimated expenditure of Rs45bn. Of this, Rs20bn has been allocated for the creation of a fund (with equal contribution by the federal and provincial governments) to provide DAP fertiliser to farmers on reduced rates as a one-time intervention.

The ministries of food and industries and production are still working on its implementation mechanism. This would provide Rs500 per bag subsidy on the imported product, which would be distributed through the National Fertiliser Marketing Ltd. The cost of a DAP bag is around Rs5,000. How many farmers benefit from this will need to be seen.

Also, Rs25bn has already been budgeted by the federal government to provide subsidised imported urea to farmers. The Trading Corporation of Pakistan had been authorised a couple of months ago to import the fertiliser and three tenders of 150,000 tonnes of urea have already been floated, with one ship having arrived and two on their way.

Here, too, the Saudi facility for fertiliser support seems to be already on a declining mode and the quantities would need to be procured from the open market. Its distribution mechanism also needs to be overhauled so that farmers in the field get the benefit instead of a few influential landlords or middlemen.

While the government has focused on cotton and rice, the long-term policy problems have mostly remained unaddressed. The country has substantially higher surplus stocks of rice and wheat but is finding it really hard to get international buyers in view of the price disadvantage. Over Rs100bn are reported to be stuck up in these stocks, without any tangible solution to liquidate them.

The higher support price for wheat (at around Rs1,300 per 40kg) has offered little benefit to the farmers, who have been finding it hard to get a miller to buy the produce even at Rs1,100 as international prices have stayed below local prices.

A major part of the package — worth over Rs185bn — involves loans to be extended by the Zarai Taraqqiati Bank Ltd to landholders with less than 12.5 acres of land and would benefit around 60,000 farmers. But the specialised bank is charging mark-up as any other scheduled bank.

Interestingly, a few major schemes, like the credit guarantee scheme for small and marginalised famers, insurance schemes for crop loans and livestock, and the agriculture credit scheme were announced by the finance minister in his 2014-15 budget speech. These were then repeated in the 2015-16 budget speech, with the addition of a scheme for interest-free loans for solar tube-wells. These have now again been announced by the prime minister.

Similarly, the flat electricity tariff of Rs10.35 per unit for agricultural tube-wells was announced and signed by Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif in Islamabad last year; this was again repeated by the prime minister

 

Read More

Small-scale nuclear fusion may be a new energy source

 

Fusion energy may soon be used in small-scale power stations. This means producing environmentally friendly heating and electricity at a low cost from fuel found in water. Both heating generators and generators for electricity could be developed within a few years, according to research that has primarily been conducted at the University of Gothenburg.

Nuclear fusion is a process whereby atomic nuclei melt together and release energy. Because of the low binding energy of the tiny atomic nuclei, energy can be released by combining two small nuclei with a heavier one. A collaboration between researchers at the University of Gothenburg and the University of Iceland has been to study a new type of nuclear fusion process. This produces almost no neutrons but instead fast, heavy electrons (muons), since it is based on nuclear reactions in ultra-dense heavy hydrogen (deuterium).

"This is a considerable advantage compared to other nuclear fusion processes which are under development at other research facilities, since the neutrons produced by such processes can cause dangerous flash burns," says Leif Holmlid, Professor Emeritus at the University of Gothenburg.

No radiation The new fusion process can take place in relatively small laser-fired fusion reactors fueled by heavy hydrogen (deuterium). It has already been shown to produce more energy than that needed to start it. Heavy hydrogen is found in large quantities in ordinary water and is easy to extract. The dangerous handling of radioactive heavy hydrogen (tritium) which would most likely be needed for operating large-scale fusion reactors with a magnetic enclosure in the future is therefore unnecessary.

" A considerable advantage of the fast heavy electrons produced by the new process is that these are charged and can therefore produce electrical energy instantly. The energy in the neutrons which accumulate in large quantities in other types of nuclear fusion is difficult to handle because the neutrons are not charged. These neutrons are high-energy and very damaging to living organisms, whereas the fast, heavy electrons are considerably less dangerous."

Neutrons are difficult to slow down or stop and require reactor enclosures that are several meters thick. Muons -- fast, heavy electrons -- decay very quickly into ordinary electrons and similar particles.

Research shows that far smaller and simpler fusion reactors can be built. The next step is to create a generator that produces instant electrical energy.

 

Read More

Oklahoma man discovers he was shot twice after celebrating birthday

An Oklahoma man who had consumed large amounts of alcohol at his birthday party at a pool hall discovered when he returned home that he had been shot twice, police said on Tuesday. The man, who was not identified, was shot in the shoulder and the buttock, and the wounds were not life-threatening, Tulsa police said.

The man and his brother called a friend to drive them home because they were drunk after celebrating his birthday at Sharky’s Pool Hall on Monday, police said.

 They said they heard popping noises while driving. After arriving home, they noticed there were bullet holes in the car and the birthday boy was bleeding, police said.

 "It was soon discovered that the victim had a bullet hole entrance in his left rear shoulder and an exit wound in his left front shoulder," according to the Tulsa police report.The victim's mother drove him to a hospital where doctors found a second bullet lodged inside his buttock.

Police said they do not have any suspects in the case.

Read More