Hubble’s ‘Weird’ Crumbling Comet Was Also Seen By Ancient Egyptians, Say Scientists

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August 20, 2021

This pair of Hubble Space Telescope images of comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS), taken on April 20 and April … [+] 23, 2020, reveal the breakup of the solid nucleus of the comet. Hubble photos identify as many as 30 separate fragments.  NASA, ESA, Quanzhi Ye (UMD) IMAGE PROCESSING: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

About 5,000 years ago, the first humans were settling in what would become Egypt in the Nile River valley may have seen a spectacular comet in the early morning night sky that later split into two.

How could scientists possibly know that? After all, there is no written record of such an event. It’s because both fragments of that comet have since returned—one in 1844 and the other just last year—and we can track their orbital paths backwards through time.

That’s the claim by a new paper published today in the Astronomical Journal. Using observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomer Quanzhi Ye of the University of Maryland in College Park reports that comet ATLAS (C/2019 Y4)—imaged by Hubble in 2020—is likely to be a piece of the same larger comet that caused the 1844 comet.

The New Comet, drawn at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1844. From “Illustrated London News”, … [+] 1844, Vol V. Artist Unknown. (Photo by The Print Collector/Heritage Images via Getty Images)

The bright fragment from 1884 won’t return until the 50th century, but at least it will return. In 2020, Comet ATLAS famously disintegrated on camera when still 100 million miles from the Sun.

Comets are fragile lumps dust and ice that hang out in the farthest reaches of the Solar System, but they orbit the Sun, so swing into the inner Solar System once in a while.

The “Great Comet” of 1844 is reported to have shone as bright as Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Comet ATLAS, is seems, followed the same orbital path.

Trace their motions back in time and, claims Ye (along with amateur astronomer Maik Meyer), Comet ATLAS and the 1844 comet are likely to be two parts of a much larger comet last in the Solar System 5,000 years ago.

It would have swept just 23 million miles from the Sun. That’s closer than the orbit of the planet Mercury.

Comet Neowise, over a silhouetted Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England, UK on the 12th July 2020.

If that’s the case, then Comet ATLAS really was “weird,” according to Ye. “If it broke up this far from the Sun how did it survive the last passage around the Sun 5,000 years ago? This is the big question,” he said. “It’s very unusual because we wouldn’t expect it … this is the first time a long-period comet family member was seen breaking up before passing closer to the Sun.”

Comet ATLAS was first detected by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), operated by the University of Hawaii. Its untimely demise remains a mystery.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes. 

 

Increased snowfall will offset sea level rise from melting Antarctic ice sheet

by University of Bristol

The Jakobshavn Glacier, Greenland. Credit: Thomas Overly

A new study predicts that any sea level rise in the world's most southern continent will be countered by an increase in snowfall, associated with a warmer Polar atmosphere. Using modern methods to calculate projected changes to sea levels, researchers discovered that the two ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica respond differently, reflecting their very distinct local climates.

The paper, published today in Geophysical Research Letters, is based on the new generation of climate models which are used in the newly published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, reviewing scientific, technical, and socio-economic information regarding climate change.

The project brought together over 60 researchers from 44 institutions to produce, for the first time, process-based community projections of the sea level rise from the ice sheets. This particular paper focusses on one aspect of the overall project which is how the new generation of climate model projections used in the current IPCC assessments differ from the early generation in their impact on the ice sheets.

Professor Tony Payne, Head of Bristol's School of Geographical Sciences said the team were trying to establish whether the projected sea level rise from the new generation of climate models was different from the previous generation. "The new models generally predict more warming than the previous generation but we wanted to understand what this means for the ice sheets." he said. "The increased warming of the new models results in more melt from the Greenland ice sheet and higher sea level rise by a factor of around 1.5 at 2100.

"There is little change, however, in projected sea level rise from the Antarctic ice sheet. This is because increased mass loss triggered by warmer oceans is countered by mass gain by increased snowfall which is associated with the warmer Polar atmosphere."

The recent findings suggest that society should plan for higher sea levels, and match with virtually all previous estimates of sea level rise, in that scientists expect sea levels to continue to rise well beyond 2100, most likely at an accelerating rate.

Prof Payne added: "Predicting the mass budget of the ice sheets from estimates of global warming is difficult and a great many of the processes involved require further attention.

"Discovering that warmer climates do not affect Antarctic mass budget, in particular, warrants further examination because this is based on large changes in snowfall and marine melt balancing."

"One of the main things to take away from this, interestingly, is that the response of two ice sheets and what impact global heating has on them is different and depends heavily on their local conditions," said Prof Payne.1.5C warming cap could 'halve' sea level rise from melting ice

More information: Antony J. Payne et al, Future sea level change under CMIP5 and CMIP6 scenarios from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, Geophysical Research Letters (2021). DOI: 10.1029/2020GL091741

Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters 

Provided by University of Bristol 

 

Understanding enzyme evolution paves the way for green chemistry

by University of Bristol

Laboratory evolution of a designer enzyme makes it into a much better catalyst . 

Simulations show that evolution does this by introducing networks of amino acids. 

These networks promise to be templates for catalyst design. Credit: Dr. Adrian Bunzel

Researchers at the University of Bristol have shown how laboratory evolution can give rise to highly efficient enzymes for new-to-nature reactions, opening the door for novel and more environmentally friendly ways to make drugs and other chemicals.

Scientists have previously designed protein catalysts from scratch using computers, but these are much less capable than natural enzymes. To improve their performance, a technique called laboratory evolution can be used, which American chemical engineer Frances Arnold pioneered and for which she received the Nobel Prize in 2018. Directed evolution imitates natural selection, allowing scientists to use the power of biology to improve the ability of proteins to carry out tasks such as catalyzing a specific chemical reaction.

But although the research team had recently used laboratory evolution to improve a designed enzyme by more than 1,000 fold, it was unknown how evolution boosts its activity. Until now.

Lead author Professor Adrian Mulholland of Bristol's School of Chemistry said: "Evolution can make catalysts much more active. The thing is, evolution works in mysterious ways: for example, mutations that apparently improve catalysis often involve changes in amino acids far from the active site where the reaction happens."

"We wanted to understand how evolution can transform inefficient designer biocatalysts into highly active enzymes.", the first author of the study, Dr. Adrian Bunzel, said.

To do so, the international research team from Bristol, the ETH Zurich and the University of Waikato (NZ) turned to molecular computer simulations. "These show that evolution changes the way the protein moves—its dynamics. Put simply, evolution 'tunes' the flexibility of the whole protein," he added.

The team also identified the network of amino acids in the protein responsible for this 'tuning'. These networks involve parts of the protein that are changed by evolution.

Dr. Bunzel said: "After evolution, the whole protein seems to work together to accelerate the reaction. This is important because when we design enzymes, we often focus only on the active site only, and forget about the rest of the protein."

Prof Mulholland added: "This sort of analysis could help to design more effective 'de novo' enzymes, for reactions that previously we could not target."

The research, published in Nature Chemistry, reveals how evolution makes designer enzymes more powerful, paving the way to tailor-made catalysts for green chemistry.

The researchers will now use their findings to help design new protein catalysts.

Rise of the mutants: New research to improve enzyme design methodologies

More information: Evolution of dynamical networks enhances catalysis in a designer enzyme, Nature Chemistry (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-021-00763-6 , www.nature.com/articles/s41557-021-00763-6

Journal information: Nature Chemistry 

Provided by University of Bristol 

Satellite sensor EPIC detects aerosols in Earth's atmosphere

by Sarah Stanley, American Geophysical Union

A smoke plume rises and spreads over California during the 2018 Ranch Fire. New 

research demonstrates the ability of the satellite-based sensor EPIC to accurately 

monitor smoke plumes like this one, as well as other aerosols suspended in Earth’s

 atmosphere. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY 2.0

Aerosols are small, solid particles that drift aloft in Earth's atmosphere. These minuscule motes may be any of a number of diverse substances, such as dust, pollution, and wildfire smoke. By absorbing or scattering sunlight, aerosols influence Earth's climate. They also affect air quality and human health.

Accurate observations of aerosols are necessary to study their impact. As demonstrated by Ahn et al., the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) sensor on board the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite provides new opportunities for monitoring these particles.

Launched in 2015, DSCOVR's orbit keeps it suspended between Earth and the Sun, so EPIC can capture images of Earth in continuous daylight—both in the visible-light range and at ultraviolet (UV) and near-infrared wavelengths. The EPIC near-UV aerosol algorithm (EPICAERUV) can then glean more specific information about aerosol properties from the images.

Like other satellite-borne aerosol sensors, EPIC enables observation of aerosols in geographic locations that are difficult to access with ground- or aircraft-based sensors. However, unlike other satellite sensors that can take measurements only once per day, EPIC's unique orbit allows it to collect aerosol data for the entire sunlit side of Earth up to 20 times per day.

To demonstrate EPIC's capabilities, the researchers used EPICAERUV to evaluate various properties of the aerosols it observed, including characteristics known as optical depth, single-scattering albedo, above-cloud aerosol optical depth, and ultraviolet aerosol index. These properties are key for monitoring aerosols and their impact. The analysis showed that EPIC's observations of these properties compared favorably with those from ground- and aircraft-based sensors.

The research team also used EPIC to evaluate the characteristics of smoke plumes produced by recent wildfires in North America, including extensive fires in British Columbia in 2017, California's 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire, and numerous North American fires in 2020. EPIC contributed to the observational proof of smoke self-lofting via the tropopause by solar absorption–driven diabatic heating in 2017. EPIC observations successfully captured these huge aerosol plumes, and the derived plume characteristics aligned accurately with ground-based measurements.

This research suggests that despite coarse spatial resolution and potentially large errors under certain viewing conditions, EPIC can serve as a useful tool for aerosol monitoring. Future efforts will aim to improve the EPICAERUV algorithm to boost accuracy.

Improved algorithms help scientists monitor wildfires from space

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More information: Changwoo Ahn et al, Evaluation of Aerosol Properties Observed by DSCOVR/EPIC Instrument From the Earth‐Sun Lagrange 1 Orbit, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (2021). DOI: 10.1029/2020JD033651

Journal information: Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres 

Provided by American Geophysical Union 

 

Scientists dig deep to understand the effects of population pressure on violence levels

Researchers look to the past to understand whether a growing human population is related to a rise in violence levels

Date:

August 18, 2021

Source:

Okayama University

Summary:

A continuous rise in global population has led to fears that conflicts and war will become more frequent as resources dwindle. But this widespread belief has not been quantified based on actual Japanese archaeological data, until now. Researchers have now examined the skeletal remains of people living in the Middle Yayoi period of Japan to set the record straight on the relationship between population pressure and the frequency of violence.

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The human capacity for warfare and whether it is an inescapable part of human nature is a hot button issue at the heart of various disciplines like anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, and so on. Researchers have posited a range of ideas about why humans engage in war, and the running list of various triggers for inter-group violence is long, be it the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, the development of weapons, ecological constraints, or population pressures.

Among these, the population pressure hypothesis has become more prominent recently as people globally experience climatic changes and environmental breakdown. The hypothesis states that population increase can result in resource scarcity, leading to competition and conflict over resources. While there is wide acceptance of this claim, there are very few studies that have quantitatively backed up the origin of inter-group violence due to population pressure based on actual archaeological data.

To correct this gap, Professor Naoko Matsumoto from Okayama University and her team surveyed the skeletal remains and jar coffins, called kamekan, from the Middle Yayoi period (350 BC to AD 25 CE) in northern Kyushu, Japan. This region has been the focus of inter-group violence investigations because the skeletal remains in the Yayoi period indicate a significant increase in the frequency of violence compared to those living in the preceding Jomon period.

"The inhabitants of the Yayoi period practiced subsistence agriculture, in particular wet rice cultivation," says Professor Matsumoto. "This was introduced by immigrants from the Korean peninsula along with weapons such as stone arrowheads and daggers, resulting in enclosed settlements accompanied by warfare or large-scale inter-group violence. However, those living during the Jomon period were primarily pottery-makers who followed a complex hunter-gatherer lifestyle and had low mortality rates caused by conflict."

Professor Matsumoto and her team inferred demographic changes using the numbers of well-dated burial jars as a proxy for population size, and estimated population pressure from the ratio of population to arable land. The team calculated the frequency of violence by using percentages of injured individuals identified within the skeletal population, followed by a statistical analysis between population pressure and the frequency of violence.

The results of the investigation were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. The researchers uncovered 47 skeletal remains with trauma, in addition to 51 sites containing burial jars in the Itoshima Plain, 46 in the Sawara Plain, 72 in the Fukuoka Plain, 42 in the Mikuni Hills, 37 in the east Tsukushi Plain, and 50 in the central Tsukushi Plain, encompassing all six study sites. They found that the highest number of injured individuals and the highest frequency-of-violence levels occurred in the Mikuni Hills, the east Tsukushi Plain, and the Sawara Plain. Interestingly, the Mikuni Hills and the central Tsukushi Plain also showed the highest overall values for population pressure. Overall, statistical analyses supported that population pressure affected the frequency of violence.

However, the peak population did not correlate with the frequency of violence. High levels of population pressure in the Mikuni Hills and the central Tsukushi Plain showed low frequency-of-violence values, while the relatively low population pressures of the east Tsukushi Plain and Sawara Plain were linked to higher frequency-of-violence levels.

Professor Matsumoto reasons there may be other factors that could have indirectly influenced such high levels of violence in the Middle Yayoi period. "I think that the development of a social hierarchy or political organization might also have affected the level of violence. We have seen stratified burial systems in which certain members of the ruling elite, referred to as 'kings' in Japanese archaeology, have tombs with large quantities of prestige goods such as weapons and mirrors," she says. "It is worth noting that the frequency of violence tends to be lower in the subregions with such kingly tombs. This suggests that powerful elites might have a role in repressing the frequency of violence."

The evidence collected by Professor Matsumoto and her team undeniably confirms a positive correlation between population pressure and higher levels of violence and may help devise mechanisms to avoid seemingly never-ending conflicts in motion today. Further research based on these insights could identify other variables at play in determining the root causes of inter-group violence and actively prevent them.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Okayama University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Tomomi Nakagawa, Kohei Tamura, Yuji Yamaguchi, Naoko Matsumoto, Takehiko Matsugi, Hisashi Nakao. Population pressure and prehistoric violence in the Yayoi period of Japan. Journal of Archaeological Science, 2021; 132: 105420 DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2021.105420

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Okayama University. "Scientists dig deep to understand the effects of population pressure on violence levels: Researchers look to the past to understand whether a growing human population is related to a rise in violence levels." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 August 2021. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210818130517.htm>

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More Sustainable Conversion of Sunlight and Luminescent Materials With Manganese

TOPICS:CatalystsEnergySolar EnergySustainabilityUniversity Of Basel

By UNIVERSITY OF BASEL AUGUST 18, 2021

For the first time, Manganese complexes show the types of luminescent properties and photocatalytic behavior that were primarily associated with noble metal compounds until now. Credit: Jakob Bilger

University of Basel researchers have reached an important milestone in their quest to produce more sustainable luminescent materials and catalysts for converting sunlight into other forms of energy. Based on the cheap metal manganese, they have developed a new class of compounds with promising properties that until now have primarily been found in noble metal compounds.

Smartphone screens and catalysts for artificial photosynthesis – to produce fuels from sunlight, for example – often contain very rare metals. Iridium, for instance, which is used in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), is rarer than gold or platinum. Ruthenium, used in solar cells, is also one of the rarest stable elements. These metals are not only very expensive, by virtue of their scarcity, but also toxic in many compounds.

Now, a team led by Professor Oliver Wenger and his doctoral student Patrick Herr from the University of Basel have for the first time succeeded in producing luminescent manganese complexes in which exposure to light causes the same reactions to take place as in ruthenium or iridium compounds. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Chemistry. The advantage of using manganese is that the element is 900,000 times more abundant in the Earth’s crust than iridium, as well as being significantly less toxic and many times cheaper.

Rapid photochemistry

At present, the new manganese complexes perform worse than iridium compounds in terms of their luminous efficiency. However, the light-driven reactions that are needed for artificial photosynthesis such as energy- and electron-transfer reactions take place at high speed. This is due to the special structure of the new complexes, which leads to an immediate charge transfer from the manganese toward its direct bonding partners on excitation with light. This design principle for complexes is already used in certain types of solar cells, although until now it has mostly featured noble metal compounds, and sometimes complexes based on the less noble metal copper.

Preventing unwanted vibrations

The absorption of light energy normally causes greater distortion in complexes made of cheap metals than it does in noble metal compounds. As a result, the complexes begin to vibrate and a large part of the absorbed light energy is lost. The researchers were able to suppress these distortions and vibrations by incorporating tailor-made molecular components into the complexes in order to force the manganese into a rigid environment. This design principle also increases the stability of the resulting compounds and their resistance to decomposition processes.

Until now, no one has succeeded in creating molecular complexes with manganese that can glow in solution at room temperature and that have these special reaction properties, says Wenger. “Patrick Herr and the involved postdocs really made a breakthrough in this respect – one that opens up new opportunities beyond the field of noble metals.” In future research projects, Wenger and his group want to improve the luminescent properties of the new manganese complexes and anchor them on suitable semiconductor materials for use in solar cells. Other possible refinements include water-soluble variants of the manganese complexes that could potentially be used in place of ruthenium or iridium compounds in the photodynamic therapy used to treat cancer.

Reference: “Manganese(i) complexes with metal-to-ligand charge transfer luminescence and photoreactivity” by Patrick Herr, Christoph Kerzig, Christopher B. Larsen, Daniel Häussinger and Oliver S. Wenger, 2 August 2021, Nature Chemistry.
DOI: 10.1038/s41557-021-00744-9

'Worst year I've ever witnessed': Drought withers Western Canada's spring wheat

'Some are harvesting about 25 per cent of what they would typically expect. The conditions are terrible'

Author of the article: Laura Brehaut
Publishing date: Aug 19, 2021 •

"It's going to be an interesting season because we're seeing lowered (wheat) production across major exporters globally," says Daniel Ramage, Cereals Canada's director of market access and trade policy. PHOTO BY DAVID GRAY /Getty Images

Overlooking the Bow River as it winds from the Rockies through Southern Alberta, Hannah Konschuh farms wheat, canola, barley and yellow peas. “It’s really brown right now, but our farm is actually in a beautiful spot,” she says, taking a break from harvesting wheat in the 33 degrees Celsius heat.

Due to the drought and unprecedented temperatures across Western Canada, her county of Wheatland has declared a state of emergency. On day five of this year’s wheat harvest at her family farm, Generation Land & Grain Co. Ltd., the effects were obvious.

Their Canadian Prairie Spring, which yielded 65 bushels an acre in 2020, has dwindled to 12. Usually more drought-tolerant, their hard red spring is also suffering; as is their barley, yielding 10 to 15 bushels per acre compared to last year’s more than 100.

Hard year or not, Konschuh takes pride in growing grain. “It’s pretty remarkable to say that this wheat I’m growing right now is going to end up all over the world and in someone’s kitchen. It’s a pretty special thing to get to say that I’m growing wheat in Alberta.”

They’re fortunate, Konschuh adds. Last year’s growing season was fruitful, which created a buffer. They have crop insurance, manage their expenses and choose farm upgrades carefully. Even still, the implications of the drought are many. Unable to fulfil the “conservative” amount of grain they pre-sold to some of their buyers, they had to pay the replacement costs. As grain plants wither, grasshoppers thrive, putting increased pressure on already struggling crops.

“In the middle of the summer, I was feeling pretty stressed about it. And you do what you can,” says Konschuh. “We’re going to be fine for next year. But what really contributes to my stress levels is that it’s been said that droughts come in three- and five-year cycles. So if we do find ourselves in a prolonged drought cycle, it will have impacts on our ability to keep doing this.”

Throughout Western Canada — from Vancouver Island to Northwestern Ontario — Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Drought Monitor map paints a stark picture. The three Prairie provinces especially are mottled brown, red, orange, tan and yellow, indicating a sliding scale of abnormal dryness.

Because of the record-breaking temperatures and lack of rain, harvest started seven to 14 days early in the Prairies, says Daniel Ramage, Cereals Canada’s director of market access and trade policy. And though there’s regional variation, yields are lower across North America.

“It’s going to be an interesting season because we’re seeing lowered production across major exporters,” says Ramage. In addition to lower yields in North America, countries including Russia and Kazakhstan have also trimmed production estimates. “So the supply available globally is shorter than it has been in previous years.”

Article content

“We had a really good growing season last year (pictured), so that’s going to buffer us a bit,” says Hannah Konschuh, who farms near Cluny, Alta.

 PHOTO BY HANNAH KONSCHUH

The latest USDA estimate forecasts 24 million tonnes of Canadian wheat production; a 32 per cent decrease from 2020. Despite the drop, Ramage doesn’t expect shortages in Canada: “Our domestic consumption in a normal year would be around eight million tonnes — (24 million tonnes is) more than enough.”

With grain in shorter supply, however, prices may rise; according to the 2021 Food Price Report, bread prices could increase by as much as 6.5 per cent by the end of the year.

Harvest is underway in the Prairies, but the full effect of the severe weather on the quantity and quality of grain is yet to be determined. Farmers in some areas are faring well, says Erin Gowriluk, executive director of Grain Growers of Canada, but in others, harvest could be as low as 50 per cent.

While it may not be unprecedented, Gowriluk adds, the drought is unique in how widespread it is. In the past, provinces may have seen pockets of drought where wheat quality would drop, but 80 per cent would remain good, very good or excellent. Now, the situation is inverse: In Alberta, for example, 80 per cent of the crops are of lesser quality.

Whether it’s drought, excess moisture or early snowfall, farmers are on the front line of climate change, says Gowriluk. “I think what’s becoming increasingly challenging, especially for young farmers who are just coming into this and facing some pretty significant expenses, is not knowing. It’s the uncertainty of what impact climate change is going to have on their ability to viably farm.”

Tony Van Den Tillaart, co-founder of Fieldstone Organics in Armstrong, B.C., has been farming for 45 years and grows a variety of grain (such as emmer, spelt and an assortment of wheats) in the Spallumcheen area. “This is the worst year I’ve ever witnessed,” he says. “Since the snow left this spring, we haven’t had enough rain that would wet your T-shirt.”

Disheartened, Van Den Tillaart watched his grain plants wither as the weeds kept growing. “Even in my garden, I had cherry trees that looked like I was going to get a nice crop and the heat just fried them. They shrivelled up to nothing. It was just so hot. Apples were burnt on one side, little green apples. It’s like someone took a torch to them.”

On top of the drought and heat, his area is also under a wildfire evacuation alert. “These fires have just made it worse because you don’t get the sunlight. It affects plants that are trying to ripen.”

The farmers Van Den Tillaart works with at Fieldstone have reported varying challenges, depending on their region of B.C., type of soil and moisture levels. Some are harvesting 75 per cent of what they did in 2020; others 50, 25 and even 10 per cent. As a result of this shortfall, he’s prepared to prioritize smaller orders in the coming year: “We might not be able to fill some bigger orders.”

Janna Bishop, co-founder and CEO of Flourist — a mill and bakery in Vancouver, which sources dry goods directly from Prairie growers — has been in close contact with their farming partners over the past few months.

“Some are projecting almost no harvest at all, or just enough to maybe replace the seed that they planted in the ground so they can get seed planted next summer. Some are harvesting about 25 per cent of what they would typically expect,” says Bishop. “The conditions are terrible.”

Flourist will rely on 2020 grain harvests for as long as possible, and is considering diversifying suppliers by expanding to other regions such as Ontario or B.C. Since Bishop and Shira McDermott founded the company in 2014, traceability has been a priority. The names and faces of their farming partners appear on their packaging and website, and Bishop says they empathize when they’re struggling.

“We will feel the effects in a few months when grain reserves start to really dwindle, and we’re scrambling to find (grains) and we’re probably paying much higher prices,” says Bishop. “The farmers are the people on those first lines. They see it every single day that there’s no rain in the forecast, and it’s awful to witness. But it’s important to be connected to our food in that way.”

At his Saskatoon bakery, The Night Oven, Bryn Rawlyk also strives to create connections between his customers and the food they eat. Since he dumpster dived for the components of his first wood-fired oven, which he built with friends in Montreal’s parc sans nom (park without a name) in 2005, he’s engaged in improving community access to food.

Early in the farm-to-table movement, he began to question why flour wasn’t considered in the same way as other local produce, and set out to change that perception. Today, he makes loaves such as his Saskatoon Sourdough with Red Fife wheat flour milled from grain grown within a two-hour radius of the city.

Rawlyk grew up on an acreage outside of Saskatoon where grain wasn’t just a local food but a local activity. “People in Saskatchewan are always once or twice removed from a farmer,” he says. “Here in the Prairies, we’re known as the breadbasket of North America. That’s shown in the product, but also just the livelihoods of so many of the people, and the people connected with those activities and families and forums.”

This is the worst year I've ever witnessed. Since the snow left this spring, we haven't had enough rain that would wet your T-shirt.

Every farmer he knows has been affected by the drought, and some of those he works with have enough stock set aside from 2020 to meet his bakery’s needs for the coming year. But like Konschuh, he worries about what will happen if the drought continues: “Everyone’s been on edge.”

In terms of the 2021 harvest, the question of quality remains: How will wheat grown under drought and heat stress perform for bakers? At The Night Oven, Rawlyk prioritizes using local flour and buys it regardless of the challenges presented during a given season.

“We try to find different uses for it within the bakery,” he says. If a grain isn’t suitable for making a lofty loaf of bread, they might make crackers or flatbreads instead. “That’s what I think is a nice thing about the dynamic nature of what we’re allowed to do, and those skills as bakers in the bakery — of taking a product and being more nimble with it.”

Baker Dawn Woodward, co-owner of Evelyn’s Crackers in Toronto, works predominantly with Ontario-grown grains such as rye, Red Fife wheat, spelt and barley, but buys einkorn from the Prairies. Contrary to the Western Canadian experience this year, many Ontario farmers faced drought followed by a long stretch of rain, rogue hail storms and high winds.

Woodward is accustomed to adapting to the needs of different grains and suspects that with climate unpredictability, variability in their quality and quantity will grow. “A lot of what I make is tailored to fluctuation,” says Woodward. “I make a pan loaf, so it doesn’t matter if the bread’s a little on the soupy side this week. It’s a pan loaf. A cookie is a cookie, maybe I’ll bake it frozen instead of bringing it to room temperature.”

Flavour is her focus, Woodward adds, which often comes down to the farmer and variety of grain versus year-to-year weather fluctuations. “I feel very lucky in that I’m not producing 1,000 baguettes, where if there’s a change in the flour, you’re screwed.”

At Flourist’s bakery, they’re also used to responding to the specific requirements of each grain. But part of the company’s task is conveying information to their home baking customers, so they can make the kinds of loaves they desire.

“Because we’re extremely committed to our farming suppliers and milling our own grain, we have to let the grain tell us how to make the bread,” says Bishop.

They’ve seen a drop off after the initial surge of baking enthusiasm in 2020, but expect increased interest in the fall. “This is bad timing to be coming off of a really terrible harvest,” she adds. “But I hope it serves as an opportunity to help illustrate to people the challenges of growing food.”

 

Steel made without fossil fuels delivered for 1st time

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Swedish venture HYBRIT aims to replace coking coal with fossil-free electricity and hydrogen

Thomson Reuters · Posted: Aug 19, 2021 

Swedish venture HYBRIT aims to replace coking coal, traditionally needed for ore-based steel making, with fossil-free electricity and hydrogen. Hydrogen is a key part of the EU's plan to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. (HYBRIT)

Swedish green steel venture HYBRIT said on Wednesday that it had made the world's first customer delivery of steel produced without using coal as it looks to revolutionize an industry that accounts for around eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

HYBRIT, owned by SSAB, state-owned utility Vattenfall and miner LKAB, said it would deliver the steel to truck-maker Volvo AB as a trial run before full commercial production in 2026.

"I'm happy to be minister for enterprise and energy in a country where industry is bubbling with energy for a [green] reset," Minister for Business, Industry and Innovation Ibrahim Baylan told a press conference on Wednesday.

HYBRIT started test operations at its pilot plant for fossil-free steel in Lulea, northern Sweden, a year ago.

It aims to replace coking coal, traditionally needed for ore-based steel-making, with fossil-free electricity and hydrogen. Hydrogen is a key part of the EU's plan to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

HYBRIT said on Wednesday that it had made the world's first customer delivery of steel produced without using coal. (Jan Lindblad Jr/HYBRIT)

SSAB, which accounts for 10 per cent of Sweden's and seven per cent of Finland's carbon dioxide emissions, said the trial delivery was an "important step towards a completely fossil-free value chain."

"The goal is to deliver fossil-free steel to the market and demonstrate the technology on an industrial scale as early as 2026," it said in a statement.

Another green steel venture, H2 Green Steel, is planning to build a fossil-fuel-free steel plant in the north of Sweden, including a sustainable hydrogen facility, with production starting in 2024.

Volvo said in April it would start production this year of prototype vehicles and components from the green steel.