JUST LIKE HERTZ

Elon Musk Confirms PepsiCo Will Not Get Semis This Year

14 Nov 2021, 08:47 UTC

by Gustavo Henrique Ruffo 

When Ramon Laguarta told CNBC PepsiCo would get its first set of Tesla Semi on Q4 2021, we mentioned it looked like something Elon Musk would later deny on Twitter. It took only four days to confirm that. When asked about it, the Tesla CEO said it would not happen.

 9 photos

When a Tesla fan asked Musk about Semi deliveries, the executive said that the “company is constrained by chip supply short-term, cell supply long-term.” That said, it would not be “possible to produce additional vehicles in volume until both constraints are addressed.” Ironically, Musk did not mention the issue with batteries is even more profound than just supply. It relates to achieving mass production of 4680 cells.

As we have said over and over, Tesla has based all its new products on the new battery format. It built two new factories expecting to produce vehicles conceived around it. Yet, the company has not finished developing that crucial element for both the factories and the cars they will make. That is a precarious thing to do, to say the least.

If the 4680 tabless cells were ready, then Musk could talk about a supply constraint. At this point, there’s not even a 4680 cells supply: it is yet to be created. This is what made it so evident that the Semi, the Cybertruck, and the Roadster will not arrive anytime soon, as optimistic as Tesla customers such as PepsiCo may be.

With Musk’s public dismissal of Semi deliveries in 2021, all that is left is to see what PepsiCo will do about that. Laguarta may admit he was wrong. He may also just avoid talking about it in hopes that people will eventually forget about it. A more extreme measure would be to cancel PepsiCo’s Semi orders and buy anything the competition can deliver right now. Volvo already sells the VNR Electric, and there are plenty of competitors about to hit the market.

 

Tesla

Pepsi Says Their Tesla Semi Trucks Are Arriving This Year—But Elon Musk Says Production Starts In 2023

The company ordered the electric big rigs in 2017.

November 12, 2021 by Clint Davis

Ever since they were announced in 2017, Tesla’s electric semi trucks have been highly anticipated additions to America’s supply chain. While the eco-friendly big rigs have yet to hit the road, they may be very close — depending on whom you decide to believe.

Ramon Laguarta, the top executive at PepsiCo, which initially placed the biggest public order for Tesla’s semis, recently said he expects to see his company’s trucks by the end of 2021. Considering it’s been four years since the order was placed, that doesn’t seem out of the question, but it doesn’t exactly match the timetable laid out by the automaker.

“We’re getting our first deliveries this Q4,” Laguarta told CNBC on Nov. 8 during an interview at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Scotland. Q4 would refer to the final quarter of 2021, which ends on Dec. 31.

AP Photo/Bill Kostroun

Laguarta didn’t specify how many Tesla trucks he was expecting by the end of the year but a press release from PepsiCo in March stated that the company would have 15 electric semis deploying before 2022. That doesn’t sound like too many vehicles, but the order might be difficult to fill when Tesla hasn’t even put them into production yet.

According to CNBC, Tesla CEO Elon Musk initially expected his company to begin making the rigs in 2019 but that has since been pushed back several times. He has blamed current raw materials shortages for further delays. Fortune has reported that Musk most recently stated that they will go into production in 2023, which obviously puts Laguarta’s plans of shipping soda and snacks in them in a matter of months way off the mark.

AP Photo/Chris Carson

The investment in Tesla’s exciting new tech was likely a major one for PepsiCo. The company pre-ordered 100 of the electric vehicles at an estimated total price of $2 million. It’s unclear whether the soda giant will be leasing or buying the trucks outright, adding another unknown to this entire enterprise for PepsiCo stockholders.

Tesla

While 100 new semi trucks sounds like a big deal, it will really just be a drop in a bucket of Mountain Dew for PepsiCo, which operates one of the largest private fleets of any American company. In 2019, Pepsi’s senior director of transportation global procurement Rodney Noble told a Congressional subcommittee that the company had 36,000 trucks.

Iceland Trolls Mark Zuckerberg and His Meta Vision in Tourism Video

Heralding “enhanced actual reality without silly-looking headsets.”

Uncategorized
18 Hrs ago
TEXT BY James Buttery

Iceland’s tourism board has mercilessly trolled Facebook’s new Meta-verse strategy with a video mocking both Mark Zuckerberg and augmented reality.

The two-minute video on the “Inspired by Iceland” YouTube channel introduces the Icelandverse, a “revolutionary approach on how to connect our world without being super weird” calling it “enhanced actual reality without silly-looking headsets.”

The concept is explained by “Chief Visionary Officer” Zack Mossbergsson, whose haircut, overly enthusiastic application of sunscreen and awkward mannerisms all point to Facebook’s billionaire founder.

The film reveals Iceland’s completely immersive “open world environment” where “everything is real,” from its aurora borealis and its volcanic landscape, to its “really big geysers” to the “birds you can watch,” all the while drawing attention to the country’s many epic, cinematic landscapes which will be familiar to anyone who has watched “The Vikings.”

THE ORIGINAL METAVERSE ANNOUNCEMENT

A 300,000-year-old child is helping this LSU professor study the origins of humanity

BY CAROLINE SAVOIE | STAFF WRITER
NOV 14, 2021 -

Juliet Brophy, LSU biological anthropology professor, worked with a team of international researchers to analyze bone fragments from early human ancestors who lived over 300,000 years ago.
Provided by LSU



Guy Berger, who led a team through the Rising Star cave system in South Africa, held a reconstructed model of an early human ancestor’s skull. No bigger than an orange, the skull belongs to a child between the ages of 4 and 6 years old who died approximately 250,000 years ago.
Provided by LSU

Juliet Brophy, LSU biological anthropology professor, worked with a team of international researchers to analyze bone fragments from early human ancestors who lived over 300,000 years ago.

Provided by LSU

Archaeologists and paleoanthropologists had to carefully navigate the Rising Star cave system in South Africa, a hotbed for early human ancestors’ remains. One researcher, Juliet Brophy, said the narrow tunnels and crevices within the cavernous system calls for creative methods to excavate fossils.
Provided by LSU

When recreational cave explorers stumbled upon fossils on the surface of the Rising Star caves in South Africa, they unknowingly introduced archaeologists to an anthropological gold mine.

In the years since their discovery, researchers spent countless hours excavating and studying remains from the cave. What they found helps fill in the blanks about how the early human ancestor Homo naledi lived over 300,000 years ago.

LSU biological anthropology professor Juliet Brophy published details about how this early human species behaved, matured and evolved in the scientific journal PaleoAnthropology earlier this month. Her team made a rare discovery: the skull and teeth of a Homo naledi child who died 250,000 years ago somewhere between age 4 and 6.

She said researchers named the child Leti, short for “Letimela” which means “the lost one” in Setswana, a language spoken in the region.

Brophy was one researcher on a team of 21 international archaeologists and paleoanthropologists who examined the child’s 28 skull fragments and six teeth.

“This is the first partial skull of a child of Homo naledi ever recovered, and this begins to give us insight into all stages of life of this remarkable species,” she said.

Brophy said researchers found the fossils in a remote part of the cave, 39 feet away from other Homo naledi remains, which suggests someone placed the child’s body there on purpose. Because Leti’s remains have no signs of carnivore or scavenging damage, the team had to hypothesize how Leti’s skull came to rest, alone, in such a narrow, inaccessible part of the cave.

“We believe that members of the same species, of the same community, put Leti that far into the cave,” Brophy said.

Guy Berger, a professor at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, led the team through the cave system.

“The discovery of a single skull of a child, in such a remote location within the cave system adds mystery as to how these many remains came to be in these remote, dark spaces of the Rising Star Cave system,” Berger said. “It is just another riddle among many that surround this fascinating extinct human relative.”

Brophy was 34 years old when Berger hired her to analyze the first Homo naledi remains in 2014 with a team of early career scientists. They determined the fossils needed to be classified as a new species.

“Naming a newfound species was simply incredible,” she said. “We saw such an interesting mix of features in these remains that we couldn’t classify them as any known species. It was like putting a puzzle together.”

The initial discovery, first announced in 2015, comprises 1,550 specimens belonging to at least 15 different individuals spanning several age groups. Brophy said finding a skull like Leti’s is extremely rare, as juvenile remains are notoriously thin and fragile.

Berger said studying the ancestral remnants raises questions about the current understanding of human history.

“Homo naledi is clearly a primitive species, existing at a time when previously we thought only modern humans were in Africa,” he said. “Its very presence at that time and in this place complexifies our understanding of who did what first concerning the invention of complex stone tool cultures and even ritual practices.”

Brophy said the Rising Star cave system is one of the richest sites of discovery for hominin fossils in the world. She said researchers are still navigating and excavating the cave system in hopes of figuring out whether or not the caves were used as Homo naledi’s burial grounds.

She said Leti, along with the 15 other individuals they’ve found, unlocks a view into the world before modern humans, a world that might include rituals like the ones still practiced today.

Child Skull of Enigmatic Ancient Human Found in South African Cave

Scientists are struggling to understand how the 250,000-year-old fossil ended up in such a remote, hard-to-reach part of the cave system.

By George Dvorsky
11/04/21 

Reconstructed child skull of H. naledi. Dark portions are inferred portions of the skull. 

Image: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

It’s tiny, incomplete, and undeniably awesome. Named “Leti,” this is the first known skull belonging to a Homo naledi child—a fossil that’s shedding new light onto this mysterious group of extinct humans.

The skull fragments, all 28 of them, were found in a tight passage measuring just 5.9 inches (15 cm) wide and 31.5 inches (80 cm) long. So narrow was this passage that researchers had to lie flat and perform a “superman crawl” to pull themselves through, the AFP reports. The cranial remnants and six associated teeth were resting on a limestone shelf located an arm’s reach from the cave floor. Less than 40 feet (12 meters) from this spot is the Dinaledi Chamber—the area within the Rising Star cave system where anthropologists uncovered the first traces of Homo naledi back in 2013.

The cave has since yielded over 2,000 H. naledi fossils, from all stages of life, yet there’s still much to learn about this extinct group of hominins. They date back to an interesting time in human evolution—about 250,000 years ago—when modern humans shared this planet with several other Homo species, such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus.

This view of the reconstructed skull, held by a human hand, provides a sense of scale. Image: 

Image: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

“Homo naledi remains one of the most enigmatic ancient human relatives ever discovered,” Lee Berger, an anthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand and a co-author of one of two papers describing the new fossil, both published in PaleoAnthropology, explained in a press release. “It is clearly a primitive species, existing at a time when previously we thought only modern humans were in Africa.”

Scientists aren’t sure how modern humans are related to H. naledi, but we likely share a common ancestor. It’s also not known if H. naledi ventured far beyond the Rising Star cave system, a 1.2-mile (2-kilometer) complex of passages and chambers located near Johannesburg, South Africa. These hominins may have been a small group that branched off the human family tree, or they might’ve been widespread across much of Africa. We don’t know.

The discovery of the first H. naledi child skull is significant, as it could tell us new things about this species, including their rates of growth and development. Anthropologist Juliet Brophy from Louisiana State University, a co-author of both studies, said it’s important to learn about our ancestors and the rates at which they matured because it speaks to a host of anatomical and behavioral changes. Trouble is, we don’t really know a whole lot when it comes to this.

“We have a rough idea,” Brophy explained. “We know the rates are not as fast as a chimpanzee and not as slow as a modern human. With the small number of non-adults in the fossil record, it is very hard to reconstruct,” she said. The rare data being collected in the Rising Star cave system—and now the partial child skull of H. naledi—could allow for the reconstruction of their various life stages.

A selection of the recovered skull fragments. 

Image: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

The scientists found the fossil in 2017, and they’ve named it “Leti,” which is short for Letimela—the Setswana word for “the lost one.” Cause of death could not be determined, as no signs of injury or disease were found on the skull fragments or teeth. Leti was perhaps between four and six years of age when they died, but this estimate assumes a dental growth pattern consistent with modern humans. Sex could not be determined, nor the height or weight of the child. Surprisingly, the team did not date the fossil, prompting me to ask Brophy why.

“The fossil wasn’t dated because we would have to date the fossil itself and dating is destructive. We did not want to lose any of the fossils,” she replied. “We also do not have any reason to suggest that the fossils are from a radically different time than the Dinaledi or Lesedi Chamber fossils. In fact, we hypothesize that they are from a similar time frame as the nearby remains.”

For these reasons, the scientists are content to say that the fossil is somewhere between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago, but Brophy added that the fossil could still potentially be dated in the future.


Multiple views of a molar belonging to the skull. 

Image: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

As the first known skull belonging to a H. naledi child, the scientists could only compare it to other adults of the same species, but it did match in some important respects. Same for the teeth in terms of shape, size, and form. The volume of Leti’s brain was estimated at around 450 to 610 cubic centimeters, which, based on the presumed age, is approximately 90% to 95% the size of an adult H. naledi brain.

One of the more interesting aspects of the discovery is where the fossil was found—a hard-to-reach section of the cave. In the press release, biological anthropologist Marina Elliott, who participated in the initial discovery of H. naledi, said it was “one of the more challenging sites with hominin fossils we have had to get to in the Rising Star system.” How Leti’s skull ended up on that spot remains a mystery.

“However, there is no visible predator or scavenger damage on any parts of the skull, nor is there any evidence that suggests that the sediments surrounding Leti have been moved by water or other means that may have resulted in the depositing of the skull into this remote location,” Brophy told me. “Therefore, we hypothesize that Leti was placed in the passage by another individual.”

The reason for such a particular placement may have something to do with the way ancient peoples treated the dead. Early hominins are known to have placed bodies deep inside of caves, either as some kind of death ritual or to keep them away from animals (or a combination of both, or for reasons unknown). Interestingly, the placement of Leti’s skull is similar to the treatment of an adult H. naledi, nicknamed Neo, whose remains were found in Lesedi Chamber of the Rising Star cave complex.

Looking ahead, the team is hoping to learn more about Leti, such as their diet, an explanation for why some teeth were chipped, and possible relation to other specimens found in Rising Star cave complex

New Hubble Photo Shows A Baby Star Covered In Beautiful Blue Gas

The creation of a new star is an intense and powerful process. As this latest Hubble photo reveals, it can also be absolutely beautiful.

BY JOE MARING

PUBLISHED 3 DAYS AGO


Photo credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Stapelfeldt (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

The wonders of space are constantly fascinating, and thanks to photos like this from NASA's Hubble telescope, we get to see all the beauty it has to offer without ever leaving Earth. For the vast majority of people alive today, visiting space won't be possible. Space exploration is gradually becoming more commoditized and available to more people, but it'll still be a long time before it's widely accessible to everyone.

Until that day comes, instruments like Hubble are essential for bringing the beauty of space to folks who can't see it for themselves. In 2021 alone, Hubble's shared some truly jaw-dropping photos. We've seen pictures of dying stars, a 'star factory' galaxy, strange 'golden rings,' and plenty more. With the James Webb Space Telescope set to launch this December, these images and discoveries will be even more plentiful than they are today.

RELATED: This Amazing Hubble Photo Shows A Star Dying Before Our Eyes

On November 12, NASA shared one of the latest Hubble findings. The image above shows a few bright stars lingering in space. Nothing unusual, right? That's true until you notice the stunning blue gas floating all around them. It's whispy, appears incredibly prevalent in this chunk of space, and has a deep blue color that's absolutely mesmerizing. Just when you think you've seen everything space has to offer, Hubble comes back with something like this and proves you wrong.

What's Causing This Gorgeous Blue Color

Photo credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Stapelfeldt (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

As NASA explains, this strange blue gas (also known as a 'reflection nebula'), is the result of a protostar. A protostar is a very young star that's building up mass from a molecular cloud. Protostars have an incredibly dense and hot core, can last anywhere between 100,000 and 10 million years, and are best thought of as 'baby stars.' If the protostar gathers enough mass over the years, it then starts the nuclear fusion process and eventually generates its own starlight/energy.

While all of this is happening, protostars accumulate an enormous amount of gas and dust. When nearby stars shine their light on this gas, it creates the reflection nebulae seen in the photos above. For this particular protostar, NASA says, "Because of the way light scatters when it hits the fine dust of the interstellar medium, these nebulae are often bluish in color." In other words, it's nothing short of impressive. Here we have a star in its earliest days, generating tremendous heat, and gathering all of this gas that's then turned into a dazzling spectacle. If that's not impressive, we aren't sure what is.

Hubble gets in the festive mood with an image of the Snowman Nebula


By Georgina Torbet

November 14, 2021 

With the holidays approaching and winter closing in in the northern hemisphere, the Hubble Space Telescope is getting into a festive mood with this week’s image of the Snowman Nebula.

This nebula, located in the constellation of Puppis, is around 6,000 light-years away from Earth. It is a type called an emission nebula, which is a shape formed from ionized gas. As stars are born within the nebula, they give off energy in the form of radiation. This radiation interacts with the gas around them, ionizing it and making it glow. It is this ionization that gives nebulae their beautiful colors and shapes.

The Snowman Nebula is an emission nebula that resides in the constellation Puppis in the southern sky, about 6,000 light-years away from Earth. Emission nebulae are diffuse clouds of gas that have become so charged by the energy of nearby massive stars that they glow with their own light.NASA, ESA, and J. Tan (Chalmers University of Technology); Processing; Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

If you’re wondering why this nebula is named the Snowman when it doesn’t look very recognizable in this image, it’s because this particular picture only captures a fraction of the nebula’s total shape. To see this image in its larger context of the nebula, the Hubble scientists also shared the bonus image below:

The Hubble Space Telescope captured just a small segment of the larger Snowman Nebula.NASA, ESA, J. Tan (Chalmers University of Technology), and DSS; Processing; Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

The smaller image on the left shows the nebula in its entirety. It has a dual-lobe shape, with one round lobe being considerably larger than the other. It is this configuration that gave the nebula its name, with the appearance of a snowman on its side.

“From a telescope on Earth, the Snowman looks a bit like a dual-lobed ball of gas, but this Hubble Space Telescope image captures the details of sweeping curves of bright gas and dark knots of dust in a small section of the nebula,” the Hubble scientists write. “The Snowman is also known as Sharpless 2-302, one of the objects in a catalog of mostly emission nebulae that was compiled by astronomer Stewart Sharpless as he sought to identify areas of interstellar ionized hydrogen, or HII regions.”

Scientists Find Warming Temperatures Increasingly Alter Atmosphere's Structure

A new international study shown that climate change is having an 

increasing impact on the structure of the Earth's atmosphere.

Agency News ANI| Nov 14, 2021 11:06 PM IST

Representative Image

Washington [US], November 14 (ANI): A new international study shown that climate change is having an increasing impact on the structure of the Earth's atmosphere.

The research, published in Science Advances, draws on decades of weather balloon observations and specialized satellite measurements to quantify the extent to which the top of the lowest level of the atmosphere is rising. That region, the tropopause, is pushing up the boundary with the stratosphere by about 50-60 meters (about 165-195 feet) per decade.

The rising is caused by warming temperatures near Earth's surface that are causing the lower atmosphere to expand.

"This is an unambiguous sign of changing atmospheric structure," said Bill Randel, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and co-author of the new study. "These results provide independent confirmation, in addition to all the other evidence of climate change, that greenhouse gases are altering our atmosphere."

The international research team was led by scientists at Nanjing University in China. The study was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, which is NCAR's sponsor.

The height of the tropopause, an atmospheric region that divides the dense and turbulent troposphere from the overlying and more stable stratosphere, ranges from about 5 miles above Earth's surface at the poles to 10 miles at the equator, depending on the season.

The location of the tropopause is of interest to commercial pilots who often fly in the lower stratosphere to avoid turbulence, and it plays a role in severe thunderstorms, whose overshooting tops sometimes drive the tropopause higher and drawdown air from the stratosphere.

The steadily increasing height of the tropopause in recent decades does not significantly affect society or ecosystems, but it illustrates the wide-ranging impacts of greenhouse gas emissions.

Previous scientific studies have shown that tropopause is rising. This was not only because of climate change but also because of cooling in the stratosphere associated with ozone depletion. The 1987 Montreal Protocol and subsequent international agreements to restrict emissions of ozone-destroying chemicals, however, have successfully reversed the loss of ozone and stabilized temperatures in the lower stratosphere.

Randel and his co-authors pulled together newly available data to analyze how much tropopause is continuing to rise now that stratospheric temperatures are no longer have a significant impact.

They turned primarily to two sources of information. One was a recently updated archive of observations from radiosondes, which have been lofted high into the atmosphere for decades on weather balloons to measure atmospheric properties.

Because the radiosonde data is most detailed over land areas of the Northern Hemisphere between 20 and 80 degrees in latitude, the new study focused on the rising height of the tropopause in that region.

The scientists also analyzed observations from specialized satellite instruments dating back to 2002 that probe the atmosphere by measuring the degree to which Global Positioning System (GPS) radio signals bend and slow as they pass through the atmosphere.

This innovative technique, known as GPS radio occultation, was pioneered in part by an array of satellites known as COSMIC (now COSMIC-2), whose data is processed and disseminated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which manages NCAR.

The research team then applied statistical techniques to account for the impact of natural events that temporarily change atmospheric temperatures and affect the tropopause, such as volcanic eruptions and the periodic warming of surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean known as El Nino. This enabled them to isolate the role of human-induced warming.

Their analysis of radiosonde observations showed that the tropopause has increased in height at a steady pace since 1980: about 58-59 meters per decade, of which 50-53 meters per decade is attributable to human-induced warming of the lower atmosphere.

This trend has continued even as the influence from stratospheric temperatures has waned, demonstrating that warming in the troposphere is having an increasingly large impact.

The satellite observations taken since 2000 verified that the height of the tropopause has increased over the past two decades.

"The study captures two important ways that humans are changing the atmosphere. The height of the tropopause is being increasingly affected by emissions of greenhouse gases even as society has successfully stabilized conditions in the stratosphere by restricting ozone-destroying chemicals," Randel said. (ANI)

Antarctic bacteria live on air and make their own water using hydrogen as fuel

Date11/14/2021 9:00:59 PM
(MENAFN- The Conversation) Humans have only recently begun to think about using hydrogen as a source of energy, but bacteria in Antarctica have been doing it for a billion years.

We studied 451 different kinds of bacteria from frozen soils in East Antarctica and found most of them live by using hydrogen from the air as a fuel. Through genetic analysis, we also found these bacteria diverged from their cousins in other continents approximately a billion years ago.


These incredible microorganisms come from ice-free desert soils north of the Mackay Glacier in East Antarctica. Few higher plants or animals can prosper in this environment, where there is little available water, temperatures are below zero, and the polar winters are pitch-black.

Despite the harsh conditions, microorganisms thrive. Hundreds of bacterial species and millions of cells can be found in a single gram of soil, making for a unique and diverse ecosystem.
The freezing soil of Antarctica makes a surprising home for a diverse community of microbes that have adapted to life in the harsh conditions. Ian Hogg, Author provided

How do microbial communities survive in such punishing surroundings?A dependable alternative to photosynthesis

We discovered more than a quarter of these Antarctic soil bacteria create an enzyme called RuBisCO, which is what lets plants use sunlight to capture carbon dioxide from air and convert it into biomass. This process, photosynthesis, generates most of the organic carbon on Earth.

However, we found more than 99% of the RuBisCO-containing bacteria were unable to capture sunlight. Instead, they perform a process called chemosynthesis.


Rather than relying on sunlight to power the conversion of carbon dioxide into biomass, they use inorganic compounds such as the gases hydrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide.

Read more: Extremophiles: resilient microorganisms that help us understand our past - and futureLiving on air

Where do the bacteria find these energy-rich compounds? Believe it or not, the most reliable source is the air!

Air contains high levels of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide, but also trace amounts of the energy sources hydrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide.


They are only present in air in very low concentrations, but there is so much air it provides a virtually unlimited supply of these molecules for organisms that can use them.

And many can. Around 1% of Antarctic soil bacteria can use methane, and some 30% can use carbon monoxide.

More remarkably, our research suggests that 90% of Antarctic soil bacteria may scavenge hydrogen from the air.
Only a tiny fraction of air is hydrogen, but there's so much air it makes an unlimited supply of fuel for bacteria that can harvest it. Ian Hogg, Author provided

The bacteria gain energy from hydrogen, methane and carbon by combining them with oxygen in a chemical process that is like a very slow kind of burning.

Our experiments showed the bacteria consume atmospheric hydrogen even at temperatures of -20°C, and they can consume enough to cover all their energy requirements.

What's more, the hydrogen can power chemosynthesis, which may provide enough organic carbon to sustain the entire community. Other bacteria can access this carbon by“eating” their hydrogen-powered neighbours or the carbon-rich ooze they produce.Water from thin air

When you burn hydrogen, or when the bacteria harvest energy from it, the only by-product is water.

Making water is an important bonus for Antarctic bacteria. They live in a hyper-arid desert, where water is unavailable because the surrounding ice is almost permanently frozen and any moisture in the soil is rapidly sucked out by the dry, cold air.

So the ability to generate water from“thin air” may explain how these bacteria have been able to exist in this environment for millions of years. By our calculations, the rates of hydrogen-powered water production are sufficient to rehydrate an entire Antarctic cell within just two weeks.

By adopting a“hydrogen economy”, these bacteria fulfil their needs for energy, biomass, and hydration. Three birds, one stone.Could a hydrogen economy sustain extraterrestrial life?

The minimalist hydrogen-dependent lifestyle of Antarctic soil bacteria redefines our understanding of what is the very least required for life on Earth. It also brings new insights into the search for extraterrestrial life.

Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, making up almost three-quarters of all matter. It is a major component of the atmosphere on some alien planets, such as HD 189733b which orbits a star 64.5 light-years from Earth.

If life were to exist on such a planet, where conditions may not be as hospitable as on much of Earth, consuming hydrogen might be the simplest and most dependable survival strategy.

“Follow the water” is the mantra for searches of extraterrestrial life. But given bacteria can literally make water from air, perhaps the key to finding life beyond Earth is to“follow the hydrogen”.

Read more: Hydrogen-breathing aliens? Study suggests new approach to finding extraterrestrial life
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LUMA Energy’s C.E.O., Wayne Stensby, Is Under Arrest Warrant

Judge Orders Arrest of Puerto Rico Power Company Chief Executive

Puerto Rico’s troubled history with its electrical service took a dramatic turn when the head of a private company that took over the power grid was held in contempt.

November 10, 2021


Puerto Rico’s troubled history with its electrical service took a dramatic turn when the head of a private company that took over the power grid was held in contempt.

The president and chief executive of LUMA Energy, Wayne Stensby, at a news conference with the executive director of the Electric Power Authority, Efran Paredes, in San Juan in June.

Credit…Thais Llorca/EPA, via Shutterstock

By Patricia Mazzei
Nov. 10, 2021Updated 2:25 p.m. ET

MIAMI — Puerto Rico’s troubled electrical system suffered through decades of mismanagement and corruption, bankruptcy and then Hurricane Maria, which wrecked power lines and plunged the island into darkness. Six months ago, the government privatized the grid in an attempt to leave past problems behind and rebuild.

But the first few months of privatization led to more power outages. And now, the head of the new electrical company is under an arrest warrant.

On Wednesday, a judge in Puerto Rico issued an order to detain the chief executive of the electrical company, LUMA Energy, accusing him of failing to comply with a court order to provide documents to lawmakers.

In a dramatic escalation that caused a frenzy on the island, Judge Anthony Cuevas Ramos of the Court of First Instance in San Juan issued the arrest order for Wayne Stensby, the head of LUMA Energy, the private Canadian American consortium that began operating the power transmission and distribution system in June.

The judge held Mr. Stensby in contempt of court a day after he had ruled that the company had until 5 p.m. on Tuesday to submit the documents requested by the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, where critics of the company are examining whether company executives are being paid high salaries at the expense of hiring more — and more experienced — line workers.

Among the documents sought are details regarding the salaries of top company executives; how many employees are needed to run the system; and receipts and time sheets filed by employees, consultants and contractors.

“Unjustified delays cannot be sponsored or blessed by this Court,” the judge wrote in his strongly worded order. “We consider them a mockery to our judicial system.”

“Nobody is above the Law,” he added. “NOBODY.”

A spokeswoman for the company did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment. Local news outlets in Puerto Rico aired video of deputies arriving at the company’s headquarters. It was unclear if Mr. Stensby was inside.

Puerto Rico privatized its electrical grid after decades of mismanagement and corruption at its public utility, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. The bankrupt utility still handles power generation for the island’s 1.5 million electrical customers. After the private company took over the rest of the grid in June, outages became longer and more frequent. Puerto Ricans took to the streets in protest and demanded that the company’s contract be canceled.

Gov. Pedro R. Pierluisi told reporters on Wednesday that the company should comply with the court order.

“As I have said before, the law applies to everyone equally and it must be followed,” said Mr. Pierluisi, of the New Progressive Party. He maintained that he saw no need to cancel the contract, a move that he said would put Puerto Ricans’ electrical service at risk.

Mr. Stensby argued in hearings before both the Puerto Rico Legislature and Congress that his company did not have to disclose certain information, such as executive salaries, because it is a private business. But lawmakers countered that the fragile grid — and the money allocated to pay the company’s $115 million annual fee and modernize the system — is public. Congress set aside nearly $10 billion to rebuild the system after Hurricane Maria wrecked the grid in 2017, leaving the entire island in the dark.

The company lost repeated attempts in court to avoid providing the documents.

After the arrest order for Mr. Stensby, lawyers for the company said in a court filing that they had submitted the records. But lawyers for Representative Luis Raul Torres, the lawmaker who sued for the documents, said in a counter-filing that the submission appeared to be incomplete. The judge gave Mr. Torres’s office an hour to figure out if any documents were missing. The company had turned over some documents on Tuesday.

Mr. Torres, of the Popular Democratic Party, said in a news conference held in the Capitol that he had asked the court for more time to review the documents, which were thousands of pages long. The judge then gave lawyers for both sides three hours to meet and go over the documents, keeping the arrest order in place.

The order was issued at 9:17 a.m. local time, the filing by Mr. Torres’s lawyers said. The company handed over a USB drive with the documents at 9:48 a.m.

In the news conference, Rafael Hernandez Montanez, the House speaker, called Mr. Stensby a “fugitive.”

Puerto Rico debt deal highlights the dilemma of pension liabilities

Puerto Rico’s five-year old bankruptcy was blundering to a conclusion in court this week. As is now customary in US courts, bondholders are being handed deep haircuts on their face value whilst pensions for retired public sector employees are left intact.

And as is the case with other restructurings, working employees face the burden of meeting those retirement costs, both broadly in economic costs and specific benefits.

Under the plan, currently working judges and teachers have their defined benefit pension rights frozen in place, and are now shifted to defined contribution plans.

Meanwhile, the island faces population loss and a contracting economy. This echoes what has happened elsewhere when governments become insolvent and the demographics spiral down.

The old age dependency burden on young and productive workers gives them a big incentive to move to countries with lower wage deductions to pay for pensions and national debt service.

In Puerto Rico’s case, the numbers are clouded by the complex structure of the territory’s outstanding debt, estimated at $70bn in 2015, and $49bn of unfunded pension liabilities.

The deal before the court will cut annual debt service from a (suspended) $3.9bn today to no more than $1.1bn. It will cut some of the $33bn of outstanding bonds to $7.4bn.

Some US bond investors will be attracted to the prospect of receiving US tax-free interest payments on those new bonds from the newly de-levered territory. But they will be hostages to hurricanes and the government’s $2.3bn in annual retirement costs. “Structural reforms” to the economy have little local support, and Congress long ago lost interest in Puerto Rico.

Whatever the detailed terms and initial interest rate of territory’s new bonds, buyers should remember that, when pushed to the wall, governments care about politics, not documentation. And while US law formally favours creditors, that is not how events have played out.

In the case of Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy, unsecured bondholders took a 26 per cent haircut on their claims, while pensioners gave up no more than 4.5 per cent of their month payments and agreed to a voluntary restructuring of their health plan.

California’s state pension manager, Calpers, has refused to agree in municipal bankruptcies to any cuts in pensions that its funds manage. Bankrupt cities such as Stockton and Vallejo have defaulted on bonds, restructured health benefits and cut services, but Calpers-managed pensions are still intact.

Calpers’ obduracy has an influence on US investors even larger than its $469bn in assets. As the largest public pension fund in the US, it will always get the attention of its fellow state funds, as well asset managers and major corporations.

Still, basic law, documentation precedent and economics do not entirely explain the endurance of pensions over other claims. More fundamental, I believe, is the reality that creditors depend on officials who are pensioners themselves.

However, officials cannot extract pension or debt service payments from a people who are no longer there. The employment to population ratio for Puerto Rico peaked in 2006, and the US as a whole may have just reached that point.

Using figures from the OECD, a multilateral economic agency, the US working age population appears to have topped in May 2020 at 207.3m. This would suggest that future US growth will become more dependent on net immigration.

The EU is already in that position, although you might not think so given recent violent images of Belarus regime’s contrived border crisis, or the public’s reaction to the 2015 migrant surge. According to report issued this week by Scope Ratings, a Berlin sovereign rating agency, even today’s unpopular levels of migration are below those needed to maintain member countries’ future creditworthiness.

According to Alvise Lennkh, an analyst with Scope, “restrictions on migration are a huge problem and a huge mistake. We need elevated migration in Europe. That definitely influences our view on sovereign credit, and we cannot sustain our welfare without that migration.”

That “welfare”, according to Lennkh and his colleagues, includes pensions and old age care. “We are concerned that assumptions for the sustainability of state level pensions in Europe are highly optimistic.”

Scope Ratings’ analysis of Europe eerily recalls the 2011 sovereign Greek debt haircuts and 2015 IMF payment default. Even before the Greek sovereign defaults, cuts in pension payments to then-current retirees had begun in 2010 and became severe for most between 2012 and 2013. This had all been preceded by a decline in the working age population after 2008.

Yet the rest of Europe does not see this coming. Neither did Puerto Rico.

Try, try and try again: why did modern humans take so long to settle in Europe?

Homo sapiens migrated to the continent in waves – but the reasons for their early failures to overcome Neanderthals are a mystery

Depiction of a Homo sapiens, or modern human. Photograph: Science Picture Co/Alamy


Robin McKie Science editor
Sun 14 Nov 2021 

Modern humans made several failed attempts to settle in Europe before eventually taking over the continent. This is the stark conclusion of scientists who have been studying the course of Homo sapiens’s exodus from Africa tens of thousands of years ago.

Researchers have recently pinpointed sites in Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic where our ancestors’ remains have been dated as being between 40,000 to 50,000 years old. However, bone analyses have produced genetic profiles that have no match among modern Europeans.

“These early settlements appear to have been created by groups of early modern humans who did not survive to pass on their genes,” said Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London. “They are our species’ lost lineages.

“The crucial point is that the demise of these early modern human settlers meant Neanderthals still occupied Europe for a further few thousand years before Homo sapiens eventually took over the continent.”

Modern humans first appeared in Africa around 200,000 years ago and slowly evolved across the continent before moving into western Asia around 60,000 years ago. Our ancestors then spread across the globe until every other species of hominin on the planet had been rendered extinct, including the Denisovans of east Asia and Homo floresiensis, the “hobbit folk” of Indonesia.

Neanderthals in Europe were one of the last hominin species to succumb, dying out around 39,000 years ago. However, recent studies – outlined at a meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution earlier this year – have shown that this takeover by Homo sapiens was not straightforward. On several occasions, groups of early settlers perished as they moved into the continent.

The Bacho Kiro cave, northern Bulgaria, where remains of the some of the earliest modern humans in Europe have been found. 

Photograph: Nikolay Doychinov/Getty Images

In one study, international researchers re-examined a partial skull and skeleton of a woman found in the Zlatý Kůň cave in the Czech Republic. Originally thought to have been 15,000 years old, this new analysis indicated it was probably at least 45,000 years old, making her one of the oldest members of Homo sapiens found in Europe. However, the study also found she shared no genetic continuity with modern Europeans.

As one of the research team – Cosimo Posth, of the Institute for Archaeological Sciences, Tübingen University, Germany – put it: “This woman did not contribute genetically to present-day Europeans.”

Other sites where early modern human remains from around this period have been found include Peștera cu Oase in Romania and Bacho Kiro cave in Bulgaria. And again, neither has produced genetic profiles that left a significant trace in Europe.

Stone artefacts, including pointed blades, found in the Bacho Kiro cave, Bulgaria. Photograph: Tsenka Tsanova/Reuters

The discovery of these lost outposts of modern human expansion suggests that Homo sapiens dispersed into Europe in pulses, and raises critical questions for scientists. In particular, why did modern humans’ later forays into Europe succeed when earlier ones failed? The impact of this success on our world has been significant, after all. Some scientists argue that environmental factors played a key role in the Neanderthals’ demise. Possible triggers include the reversal in Earth’s magnetic poles that occurred around 42,000 years ago. Known as the Laschamps event, it could have increased cosmic radiation levels across the planet for several centuries.

There was also a cooling of the climate that affected the North Atlantic at this time, as well as a major volcanic eruption of the Campanian ignimbrite caldera in central Italy. All of these would have put stress on populations.

But some researchers question whether these events were damaging enough to lead to Neanderthal extinction. They would have been just as challenging to modern humans, they argue, yet we survived.

Others have proposed that Homo sapiens were simply better at exploiting the landscape and hunted more effectively, a point backed by Stringer, who argues that minor changes in human behaviour at this time could have been enough to lead to the accumulation of significant improvements in the lives of men and women.


Human species who lived 500,000 years ago named as Homo bodoensis

“The behaviour of Homo sapiens was a big factor in our ‘success’, I think. Maybe we networked better, or accumulated knowledge more effectively, and so learned how to extract resources more intensively than Neanderthals did. Any slight advantage would have been critical. You’ve only got to increase survival of your babies by 1% and that is a huge advantage in a stone-age world.”

However, there is another factor that has been put forward for modern humanity’s success in Europe. Genetic studies have made it clear that interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals occurred many times. As a result, men and women of non-African origin today have genomes that are around 2% Neanderthal. That figure would have been much higher 40,000 years ago.

“As numbers of Homo sapiens grew and we spread ever wider across Europe, it is quite possible that we ‘absorbed’ some of the other species – in particular, the Neanderthals – out of existence,” said Stringer. “If prime-age Neanderthals were entering the modern human breeding pool, whether voluntarily or otherwise, those individuals were no longer contributing to the survival of their own species. The end result would have been straightforward extinction for the Neanderthals – although, as a species, they still survive in the DNA of men and women today.”

British astronomer says he found a ninth planet in the Solar System

2021-11-14

Discovery of Planet 9 The finding was made through the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), which was launched in 1983 as the first orbiting observatory to analyze the entire night sky in the infrared region. For ten months, the mission detected more than a quarter of a million infrared sources in the sky, testing its warmth against the cold background of the sky.

 In this way Rowan-Robinson analyzed hundreds of sources in the data. Addressed three IRAS observations, carried out in June, July and September 1983, and that they had shifted slightly during that time.

Planet 9 data In a research paper that detailed his search for the Planet 9, the teacher admitted that the observations are not of high quality and that they were made in a region of the sky filled with filaments of galactic gas known as cirrus clouds for their cloudy nature.

The main reason for the change of position of a planetary candidate with respect to the cosmic background would be due to parallax, as the Earth orbits close to the Sun allowing IRAS to observe from a different angle. Professor Rowan-Robinson, 79, at the time of finishing his doctorate in astrophysics in 2007, he decided to re-analyze the IRAS data, in order to check if there was anything undiscovered in the data. He was specifically interested in finding objects that had moved slowly between an observation. That would rule out more distant sources, such as galaxies, and also faster-moving bodies, such as comets and asteroids within our Solar System.

He noted that a recent and comprehensive study of the night sky by telescopes Pan-STARRS from Hawaii did not register the object, suggesting that it is not real. Planet 9, if it really exists, is in the constellation Cepheus, far removed from the orbits of other planets.