Kenyan paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey dies at 77

Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, known for his fossil-finding and conservation work in his native Kenya, has died at 77

By The Associated Press
2 January 2022

The Associated Press
FILE - Richard Leakey, Kenyan wildlife conservationist, places a rhino horn to be burned...

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, known for his fossil-finding and conservation work in his native Kenya, has died at 77, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta announced Sunday evening.

The cause of death was not announced.

Leakey, the son of globally known anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, also held a number of public service leadership roles including director of the National Museums of Kenya and what became the Kenya Wildlife Service, Kenyatta’s statement said.

“We are deeply saddened to learn about the news of the death of our founder,” the conservation group WildlifeDirect said.

The group’s CEO, Paula Kahumbu, said Leakey had “a natural sense of leadership, old-fashioned but straightforward. His memory was super sharp and his ability to hold many ideas in the air at once to find common threads was phenomenal. He will be dearly missed.”

Richard Leakey, fossil hunter and defender of elephants, dies aged 77

Sun, 2 January 2022

Legendary paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey remained energetic into his 70s despite health problems 

(AFP/Yasuyoshi CHIBA)


World-renowned Kenyan conservationist and fossil hunter Richard Leakey, whose groundbreaking discoveries helped prove that humankind evolved in Africa, died on Sunday at the age of 77, the country's president said.

The legendary paleoanthropologist remained energetic into his 70s despite bouts of skin cancer, kidney and liver disease.

"I have this afternoon... received with deep sorrow the sad news of the passing away of Dr Richard Erskine Frere Leakey," President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a statement late Sunday.

Born on 19 December, 1944, Leakey was destined for palaeoanthropology -- the study of the human fossil record -- as the middle son of Louis and Mary Leakey, perhaps the world's most famous discoverers of ancestral hominids.

Initially, Leakey tried his hand at safari guiding, but things changed when at 23 he won a research grant from the National Geographic Society to dig on the shores of northern Kenya's Lake Turkana, despite having no formal archaeological training.

In the 1970s he led expeditions that recalibrated scientific understanding of human evolution with the discovery of the skulls of Homo habilis (1.9 million years old) in 1972 and Homo erectus (1.6 million years old) in 1975.

A TIME magazine cover followed of Leakey posing with a Homo habilis mock-up under the headline "How Man Became Man". Then in 1981, his fame grew further when he fronted "The Making of Mankind", a seven-part BBC television series.

Yet the most famous fossil find was yet to come: the uncovering of an extraordinary, near-complete Homo erectus skeleton during one of his digs in 1984, which was nicknamed Turkana Boy.

At Kenya's national museum in Nairobi, school children look at the nearly complete skeleton of "Turkana boy", today 1.6 million years old but aged about eight when he died. 

(AFP/TONY KARUMBA)

- Battling ivory poachers -

As the slaughter of African elephants reached a crescendo in the late 1980s, driven by insatiable demand for ivory, Leakey emerged as one of the world's leading voices against the then legal global ivory trade.

President Daniel arap Moi in 1989 appointed Leakey to lead the national wildlife agency -- soon to be named the Kenya Wildlife Service, or KWS.

That year he pioneered a spectacular publicity stunt by burning a pyre of ivory, setting fire to 12 tonnes of tusks to make the point that they have no value once removed from elephants.

He also held his nerve, without apology, when implementing a shoot-to-kill order against armed poachers.

In 1993, his small Cessna plane crashed in the Rift Valley where he had made his name. He survived but lost both legs.

"There were regular threats to me at the time and I lived with armed guards. But I made the decision not to be a dramatist and say: 'They tried to kill me.' I chose to get on with life," he told the Financial Times.

Leakey was forced out of KWS a year later and began a third career as a prominent opposition politician, joining the chorus of voices against Moi's corrupt regime.

His political career met with less success, however, and in 1998 he was back in the fold, appointed by Moi to head Kenya's civil service, putting him in charge of fighting official corruption.

The task proved impossible, however, and he resigned after just two years.

In 2015, as another elephant poaching crisis gripped Africa, President Kenyatta asked Leakey to again take the helm at KWS, this time as chairman of the board, a position he would hold for three years.

Deputy President William Ruto said Leakey "fought bravely for a better country" and inspired Kenyans with his zeal for public service.

Softly-spoken and seemingly devoid of personal vanity, Leakey stubbornly refused to give in to health woes.

"Richard was a very good friend and a true loyal Kenyan. May he Rest In Peace," Paula Kahumbu, the head of Wildlife Direct, a conservation group founded by Leakey, posted on Twitter.

tmc/fb/nb/hmw/np

DEMOCRACIES ELECT THE LEFT

Chile's election 'powerful example' for world, Biden tells president-elect Boric

Reuters

Publishing date: Dec 30, 2021 •

WASHINGTON — Chile’s free and fair elections set a “powerful example” for the region and the world, U.S. President Joe Biden told leftist leader Gabriel Boric, who won election this month as the country’s youngest-ever democratically elected president.

Biden called Boric on Thursday to congratulate him and the two leaders discussed their shared commitment to social justice, democracy, human rights and inclusive growth, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.

“The President applauded Chile’s free and fair elections as a powerful example to the region and the world,” she said.

Boric’s win marked another advance for Latin America’s left, bolstering talk of a new “pink tide” in the region, as raging poverty fanned by the COVID-19 pandemic sways voters toward those who promise economic overhauls to favor bigger government and higher social spending.

Biden underscored the importance of U.S.-Chile cooperation to promote a green and equitable recovery from the pandemic and to address the existential threat posed by climate change, she said.

Biden also offered his condolences on the death of a 14-year-old Chilean girl, Valentina Orellana-Peralta, who was inadvertently shot dead in a North Hollywood store on Dec. 23 when a police officer opened fire on a man who was attacking another shopper.

Orellana-Peralta was born and raised in Chile’s capital, Santiago, and came to the United States six months ago with her mother to visit an older sister, the Los Angeles Times reported. 

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by Grant McCool)

UK

Mary Anning: Lyme Regis statue of fossil-hunting pioneer approved

IMAGE SOURCE,SPL/MARImage caption,

The statue will stand on a spot overlooking Black Ven, where Anning made many of her discoveries

A charity's plan for a statue of fossil hunter Mary Anning, which will stand close to the cliffs where she made her discoveries, has been approved.

Dorset Council passed Mary Anning Rocks's plan for the Lyme Regis statue.

Born in 1799, Anning made numerous groundbreaking discoveries on the Dorset coast, which are still displayed in museums around the world.

The campaign for the statue began in 2018, led by schoolgirl Evie Swire, and raised about £100,000.

She set about fundraising with her mother after realising the resort had no statue marking Anning's achievements.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service said the charity hopes to unveil the statue on 21 May, which would be the 223rd anniversary of the fossil hunter's birth.

MARY ANNING ROCKS
Evie Swire started the campaign for a statue of Mary Anning in Lyme Regis

The planning application stated that despite coming from a poor background and having no formal training, Anning's finds changed the way scientists thought about how life evolved.

"Her achievements have largely gone unacknowledged with her name having been eradicated from the historic archives due to her being an uneducated, working-class woman and an outsider to the polite and scientific community," it said.

The proposed life-size bronze statue by Denise Dutton will be placed in a spot overlooking Black Ven, where she unearthed many of her finds.

Anning, whose life inspired the Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan-led film Ammonite and Tracy Chevalier's novel Remarkable Creatures, was never fully credited for her discoveries due to her gender and social status.

She was born to a poor, working-class family, but made a name for herself unearthing never-before-seen specimens from the cliffs near her home, including a 5.2m (17ft) ichthyosaur when she was 12 years old.

Twelve years later, she found the first complete fossil of a plesiosaur, a marine reptile that seemed so bizarre to the scientists of the day that they initially thought it was a fake.

 

B.C. author Gurpreet Singh explores roots of Hindutva influence on Bollywood and trolling of Kareena Kapoor Khan

January 3, 2022 

Something strange happened when a 34-year-old Bollywood star was found dead at his home in Mumbai on June 14.

Police alleged that Shushant Singh Rajput committed suicide due to mental health issues, allegedly related to nepotism in the film industry.

Suicide is an extremely complex event involving everything from brain biochemistry to family history to a desire to escape from the self to immediate life circumstances. That makes any direct linking of suicide to a single event a foolish message at best.

But in the case of Rajput’s sad ending, the storyline was set up by the police, despite claims from his own family that it was caused by a girlfriend who stole his money. And that set the internet trolls loose on those who allegedly took advantage of nepotism in Bollywood.

Their main target was Kareena Kapoor Khan, an incredibly successful actor with a glorious 20-year career, who happened to be married to a Muslim star, Saif Ali Khan.

The right-wing trolls were relentless in making accusations about Kapoor Khan, whose family played a pivotal role in the development of the Indian film industry dating back to before Partition in 1947.

This deeply upset BC writer and Georgia Straight collaborator Gurpreet Singh because he has long admired Kapoor Khan’s work. Moreover, he saw the insults heaped on her as yet another symptom of the growing intolerance and illiberal mentality that was infecting Bollywood.

To him, it symbolized what is happening in India under the ruling Bharatjiya Janata Party, who want to turn the country into a Hindu state.

But Singh was not only outraged by India’s ongoing war against secularism and freedom of religious expression. He decided to do something, write the book By Nazneen To Naina: 20 years of Kareena Kapoor Khan in Bollywood and what that means for India and the rest of the world. The 143-page account of her career was published by the Ludhiana-based by Chetna Parkashan.

In Agent Vinod, Kareena Kapoor Khan plays a British-Pakistani spy opposite her husband, Saif Ali Khan, in the title role.

For fans of Bollywood and Kapoor Khan, there is a comprehensive analysis of her films and her performances. But this is a Bollywood book with a twist: it also provides heaps of historical context behind the roles she played and shows how far the political pendulum has swung in Bollywood over the course of her career.

Such is her debut film Refugee, targeting the hardships faced by stateless Bihari Muslims. It featured Kapoor Khan as Nazneen M. Ahmed, a Muslim in search of a homeland.

“Nazneen’s parents had to leave the Indian state of Bihar when Muslim Pakistan was separated from Hindu-dominated India, sparking community violence,” Singh wrote. “Hindu and Muslim fanatics fought battles in the streets. The bloodshed had led to massive population transfers.

“The fundamentalists on both sides murdered innocent Hindus and Muslims, causing unrest among those who found no alternative to save themselves but to leave their homes and migrate elsewhere.”

However, Singh adds in the book, “the liberation of Bangladesh forced them to flee for the second time due to cultural reasons and discrimination against Bangladeshi-speaking Muslims”.

“Bangladesh was mainly separated from Pakistan because of the persecution of Bengali Muslims who were forced by the rulers of the theocratic Islamic Republic to adopt Urdu and not Bengali as their language,” Singh continues. “Since Bihari Muslims identified with Urdu and not Bangladeshi, their loyalty was questioned by many Bangladeshis who forced them to migrate again.”

This contextualization of real history helps explain how the parents of the character Nazneen fell into the trap of people smugglers. Singh also points out that Refugee was made while India was ruled by a BJP-led coalition under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who had a love-hate relationship with Pakistan.

Nazneen gives birth to a baby, becoming “a symbol of peace between the warring nations,” Singh said.

“When I heard the news, [the parents] congratulate each other and wonder what country the baby is from,” Singh notes. “They both agree that he should grow up as a global citizen of a country without borders.”

From Nazneen to Naina also pays a lot of attention to Agent Vinod, a 2012 thriller starring her husband. The theme was unity again, with Kapoor Khan playing a British-Pakistani spy opposite her husband, an Indian spy.

Singh writes that this film had “an important theme about how the two countries should unite and fight against those involved in global terrorism and the arms industry”.

In another Kapoor Khan movie, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, she plays a Hindu woman who helps a Pakistani Muslim girl separated from her mother on a railway platform. It also carried a positive Indo-Pak message with it, so naturally the religious fanatics on both sides of the border called for the film to be banned.

Kareena Kapoor Khan spoke out in 2018 against Hindu extremists who use rape as a weapon against an eight-year-old Muslim girl.

Kareena Kapoor Khan

In 2018, BJP-supported trolls were again outraged after Kapoor Khan posted a photo of herself calling for justice over the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl, Asifa Bano, by Hindu fanatics in Kathua. At this time, Singh writes, Kapoor Khan was characterized as an apologist for Muslims.

But Singh points out that Kapoor Khan was not intimidated. She has continued to speak out on various other issues unlike so many other Bollywood A-listers. Examples include her public comments about the Black Lives Matter movement and the police murder of Minneapolis resident George Floyd.

Not only that, she denounced racism and bigotry within India against Muslims and so-called untouchables. She also made a statement against the killing of father and son by police in Tamil Nadu and made repeated calls to help artisans and migrant workers suffering under the lockdown.

The nepotism controversy is just the latest in a string of fabricated episodes designed to tarnish Kapoor Khan. It carries a double sting because her husband, another big star, is the son of famous Bollywood star Sharmila Tagore.

The reality, as Singh reports, is that the couple’s ancestors were leaders in the struggle against British colonial rule. Kapoor Khan’s great-grandfather and patriarch of the family, Prithviraj Kapoor, inspired young people to participate in the independence movement through his plays.

Saif Ali Khan’s mother is the grandniece of the Nobel laureate and poet Rabindranath Tagore, who denounced the British Raj and called for India’s independence.

Singh is clearly disgusted that the people now attacking Kapoor Khan support a party that traces its lineage to a fascist movement that did not participate in the Quit India movement that seeks independence.

“Among those accusing Kareena of favoritism today are right-wing trolls and commentators, who constantly bring up her marriage to a Muslim man and leave no opportunity to brand her and her husband as Pakistani agents,” Singh wrote.

Singh rightly emphasizes that there is no way Kapoor Khan has been able to thrive in Bollywood for so long just because of nepotism. Yet another female star, Kangana Ranault, has no qualms on this subject in incendiary language that no doubt delights the BJP leadership.

The reality is that if actors don’t connect with the audience, they don’t generate receipts. As proof of that, there is the somewhat checkered acting career of Abhishek Bachchan, the only son of Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan.

Another example is Kapoor Khan’s own father, Randhir Kapoor, who never came close to the career success of her grandfather, Raj Kapoor, or her uncle, Rishi Kapoor, or her sister, Karisma Kapoor, or her cousin, Ranbir Kapoor.

In writing From Nazneen to Naina, Singh has not only shed light on a much-loved Bollywood star’s film, but also raised awareness of the impact of the growing religious community spirit on one of India’s defining characteristics: the Bollywood film industry.

The pernicious influence of Hindutva ideology on movies coming out of Mumbai is becoming increasingly apparent – ​​and it’s something Singh has been tracking for a while in his articles on Straight.com.

Who knew that writing about Bollywood would become a job for a veteran political beat reporter? Unfortunately, that has become a necessity in Narendra Modi-ruled India.

 

Twitter bans personal account of U.S. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

January 2, 2022 by editor

Twitter banned the personal account of U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on Sunday for multiple violations of its policy on disinformation about COVID-19, according to a company statement.

Greene’s account was permanently suspended under the “strike” system launched by Twitter in March. It uses artificial intelligence to identify messages about the coronavirus that are misleading enough to harm people. Two or three warnings will result in a 12-hour account ban, four warnings will result in a weeklong suspension, and five or more warnings can result in a person being permanently removed from Twitter.

In a statement on messaging app Telegram, Greene called Twitter’s move un-American. She wrote that her account was suspended after tweeting statistics from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a government database that contains unverified raw data.

“Twitter is an enemy of America and cannot handle the truth,” said the Republican. “That’s fine. I’ll show America that we don’t need them and that it’s time to defeat our enemies.”

Twitter had previously suspended the account for periods ranging from 12 hours to a full week.

The ban applies to Greene’s personal account, @mtgreenee, but does not affect her official Twitter account, @RepMTG.

A tweet from Greene posted shortly before her week-long suspension in July claimed the virus is “not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65”.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people under the age of 65 are responsible for nearly 250,000 of U.S. deaths from COVID-19.

Greene called a week earlier suspension a “Communist-style attack on free speech.”

Bellwether's gorgeous Volar eVTOL begins flight testing at half-scale

By Loz Blain
December 30, 2021

The Bellwether Volar: a flying hypercar for private owners
Bellwether Industries

The UK's Bellwether Industries has built and flown a half-scale prototype of its stunning Volar eVTOL, and is preparing to release footage. It's the most brazenly futuristic design we've ever seen, a flying hypercar for a utopia even sci-fi doesn't dare dream up.

I mean, look at the thing. It looks like it's doing 200 miles an hour sitting still. The lines are graceful, even sensual. The profile razor-sharp. The slanted louvers give it a rib cage and warn of frightening velocities. The stubby vee of the tailfins evokes the threat of a fighter jet, but the layered bodywork and its sumptuous, gleaming finish tell us this is a design of peace, hope and ambition.

This is a design to stir the imagination and the passions. You can picture it knifing into a cloud bank, leaving gently swirling vortices of vapor as the only calling card of its silent visit. You can see it gently touching down on an impossibly high-rise vertipad, its sleek glass roof retracting to let a lady and a gentleman out, dressed for the opera and right on time.

A stunningly-designed flying supercar for a sophisticated and genteel utopian future
Bellwether Industries

It's not only the most beautiful eVTOL concept we've ever seen, it might be the most beautiful we're likely to see for a long time. So take one last magical gaze through the image gallery before we look any closer, eh?

VIEW 13 IMAGES

The Volar, from what we can tell, is effectively a big multicopter. Its electric propulsion system, in the form of ducted fans, is hidden from view by all that sumptuous bodywork. A couple of these images appear to suggest that there are only four propulsion units, which appear to be fixed and incapable of gimbaling thrust. There does not appear to be any kind of cruise propulsion, nor redundancy unless those ducts each contain more than one fan mounted coaxially.

The renders look like a tandem two-seat vehicle, and indeed this is the mocked-up configuration for the prototype that's just been flown. Bellwether seems keen to sell this as a privately owned aircraft for inner-city travel, but told eVTOL.com's Jen Nevans that the final design will have four to five seats, an addition that will make it some 3.2 m (10.5 ft) wide, considerably bigger than a car, and probably similarly empty most of the time.


The half-scale Volar Antelope prototype was shown off at this year's Dubai Air Show
Bellwether Industries

The team also said it's aiming for top speeds around 220 km/h (135 mph) and an endurance of 60-90 minutes. So, double the speed and several times the range that real-world multicopter designs like the VoloCity, Jetson One and eHang 218 are getting with just one or two seats. This implies either the existence of magical batteries running unicorn-tear electrolytes, or some kind of hybrid fuel system. It also implies that the bodywork won't restrict the airflow to the fans or impact efficiency, which seems optimistic.

Apparently, the final vehicle is also shooting for a maximum takeoff weight of 600 kg (1,320 lb), including an hour's worth of battery and everyone on board. So you and your passengers had best start dieting now to be ready to fly in 2028, when Bellwether says it wants to get this thing to market for around the price of a private jet. According to Air Charter Service, the cheapest private jet on the market today is the cheerful little Cirrus Vision Jet, which will hollow out your piggy bank to the tune of US$2 million.

BLADERUNNER ANYONE

We love a beautiful design as much as anyone, but the Bellwether Volar is so long on style and so short on substance that we've gotta call it like we see it: a designer's wet dream and an engineer's sticky problem. When flight footage of the half-size prototype, flying untethered, drops in January, we may learn more and change our tune, but if it turns out to be a big quadcopter with a pretty shell on it, it'll be hard to get too excited.

Check out a video below.
Source: Bellwether Industries

Life on Venus? MIT study says Venusian clouds may have habitable pockets

“We do not know what kind or type of life we will find. If there is life we do expect it to be simple single-celled life forms," says Dr. Sara Seager

The corresponding author of the study Dr Sara Seager, from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains in an email to indianexpress.com: “We do not know what kind or type of life we will find. If there is some life we do expect it to be simple single-celled life forms…Life may have originated on Venus as it did on Earth, assuming that Venus had water oceans early on. As Venus heated up and lost its oceans, life would have had to migrate to and evolve to live in the clouds.”

She adds that we need targeted missions to search for signs of life and life itself. “We need missions that drop probes or balloons in the Venus atmosphere directly to study the cloud particles as if there is life it likely resides inside the cloud droplets,” Dr Seager says.

The team is currently working on a privately-funded focused mission to Venus with a targeted launch date of 2023 as well as MIT’s Venus Life Finder missions which aim to study Venus’ cloud particles and continue where the previous missions from nearly four decades ago left off.

A 238-YEAR-OLD INVENTION COULD HELP US SURVIVE VENUS' HELLISH ATMOSPHERE

According to multiple lines of evidence, Venus was once a much different planet than it is today.

MATT WILLIAMS
12.31.2021 

ACCORDING TO multiple lines of evidence, Venus was once a much different planet than it is today. But roughly 500 million years ago, a massive resurfacing event triggered a runaway greenhouse effect that led to the hot, poisonous, and hellish environment we see there today. Therefore, the study of Venus presents an opportunity to model the evolution of planetary environments, which can serve as a reference for what could happen in the future.

In the coming years, NASA plans to send lighter-than-air missions to Venus to explore the atmosphere above the cloud tops, where temperatures are stable and atmospheric pressure is comparable to that of Earth. With support from NASA, engineers at West Virginia University (WVU) are developing software that will enable balloon-based aerial robots (aerobots) to survey Venus’ atmosphere in small fleets. (The first hot air balloon flight took place in 1783.)

The research is led by Guilherme Pereira and Yu Gu, two associate professors with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at WVU. They were joined by Bernardo Martinez Rocamora Jr., Chizhao Yang, and Anna Puigvert i Juan, two doctoral students in aerospace and mechanical engineering and a master’s student in mechanical engineering (respectively). Their research is supported by a $100,000 grant from NASA’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

EXPLORING THE CLOUD TOPS OF VENUS

Part of what makes Venus fascinating to scientists is its similarities with Earth. In fact, Venus is colloquially known as Earth’s “Sister Planet” because it is also a rocky body composed primarily of silicate minerals and metals differentiated into a metallic core and a silicate mantle and crust. Venus’ atmosphere, however, is a much different story. In addition to being hot enough to melt lead — with an average temperature of 464 °C (867 °F) — and an atmosphere that’s over 90 times as dense as Earth’s.

But at an altitude of 50-70 km (30-45 mi) above the surface, the temperature and pressure of Venus’ atmosphere are similar to that of Earth. This presents opportunities for atmospheric research using lighter-than-air vehicles. Proposals include NASA’s High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC), a series of concepts for a 30-day crewed mission that would explore Venus’s upper atmosphere using large lighter-than-air craft.

While this project is no longer active, it inspired subsequent proposals, like the Venus Atmosphere Maneuverable Platform (VAMP), a hybrid airship under development by NASA and its commercial partner, Northrop Grumman. These concepts rely on buoyancy and aerodynamic life to control their altitude, allowing them to fly like a plane during the daytime (using solar energy to power their batteries) and float at night to save energy.

Until now, though, no efforts have been mounted to create software that would allow these craft to act autonomously. As Prof. Pereira explained in a recent WVU Today press release:
“The main goal of the project is to propose a software solution that will allow hybrid aerobots to explore the atmosphere of Venus. Although hybrid vehicles were proposed before this project, we are not aware if any software has been created. One of the ideas of our project is to extend the battery life of the vehicle by planning energy-efficient paths, thus allowing it to fly during the night as well.”

NAVIGATING VENUS’ ATMOSPHERE

The software suite Pereira and Gu are currently working on will have three main goals: Optimize travel routes, localize the aerobots in Venus’ atmosphere, and coordinate fleets of aerobots to work together. The first goal involves the creation of a “motion planer” that will run on the aerobot’s computers and allow for optimized travel. As the NASA science team commands the aerobots to travel from one position to another, the software will select routes that minimize the amount of energy used and take advantage of the local winds.

“The motion planner will be created by understanding the dynamics of the aerobot, the properties of its solar panels and batteries and the properties of Venus atmosphere,” said Pereira. With the dynamics of the vehicle, the planner will only consider movements that are feasible given certain inputs to the aircraft, such as thrust coming from the propellers or deflections of the control surfaces.”

To this end, the software must account for the interoperability of the craft’s solar panels, batteries, and solar intensity. This will allow it to determine how much charge the vehicle needs to power its systems and what the recharging rate will be like. With these models, Pereira explained, the motion planner will calculate the most energy-efficient routes for the aerobot to take:
“The understanding of the atmosphere provides the robots quantities like wind direction and magnitude, pressure, temperature and solar intensity. We are trying to come up with an optimal energy strategy. This is important since the vehicle will be orbiting the atmosphere of Venus in around four days. It will be exposed to long periods without light on the dark side of the planet and it needs to have enough energy to survive these periods.”

The motion planner will also compare information on the position of the aerobot, its desired goal location, and information about the atmospheric conditions between these two positions. If, for example, the wind is blowing in the same direction as the aerobot’s path to its destination, it will select this route over another that would present wind resistance.

“Starting from the initial position, the planner will simulate different movements the aerobot could make and associate costs for each of them depending on the quantities mentioned before,” Pereira added. “After that, the motion planner will keep propagating the movements of the aerobot with a smaller cost, creating a tree of possibilities until we reach our destination.”

The second goal, localizing the aerobots in Venus’ atmosphere, is more complicated. Currently, there are no GPS satellites in orbit around Venus, making localization difficult. As such, Pereira and Gu are designing their software suite to be able to use information from other vehicles and maps of the planet. This will allow several aerobots to keep track of their positions as they navigate the cloud tops of Venus.

The third goal is to coordinate the vehicles to provide improved localization so they can better estimate Venus’s atmospheric conditions. To this end, Pereira and Gu relied on wind models of Venus’ atmosphere created by NASA from data obtained by missions like the Pioneer Venus missions, Cassini–Huygens, MESSENGER, and the ESA’s Venus Express. They also plan to equip each aerobot with wind sensors to estimate local wind speed and direction.

By sharing data from multiple locations, said Pereira, a fleet of aerobots will have a better idea of the overall wind patterns and their spatial distribution in the atmosphere:
“The importance of the wind flow is related to the fact that it can be exploited to take the aerobot to desired locations. Just as with sprinters in the Olympics when they get better marks if they are experiencing tail-wind. If the wind is directed towards the goal of the aircraft, the aerobot movement will be aided by the wind and, by consequence, the path will be more energetically efficient.”

Looking ahead, Pereira and Gu plan to develop a Venus atmosphere simulator to evaluate their software and the aerobots’ functionality. “Several exploratory missions to Venus collected data of wind, temperature, pressure, and air density,” Pereira said. “This information was then used to create a simulator where, given the latitude, longitude, and altitude of the vehicle, we compute all the forces acting on the vehicle.”

Pereira and Gu estimate that the vehicle’s buoyancy will prevent it from descending below an altitude of 50 km (31 mi) and will have a lifespan (at cruise altitude) of several months to a year. The data obtained by this and other missions to Venus are expected to shed light on the evolution of the planet’s atmosphere, the possibility that Venus is still volcanically active, and provide clues for dealing with the greenhouse effect here on Earth.

This article was originally published on Universe Today by Matt Williams. Read the original article here.

UK
Final Turbines Head to World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm

December 31, 2021, by Adnan Durakovic

DEME Offshore’s jack-up Sea Installer has left the Port of Hull loaded with the last batch of turbine components to be installed at the 1.32 GW Hornsea Two – soon to be the world’s largest offshore wind farm in operation.

Sea Installer and Sea Challenger have been transporting the wind farm’s 165 Siemens Gamesa 8.4 MW turbines from Siemens Gamesa’s facilities in Hull and installing them at the site some 89 kilometres north-east of Grimsby, the UK, since May.

Sea Installer is expected to reach the installation site at around 3 pm UTC, Friday, 31 December. Sea Challenger is currently at the installation site.

Seeing that these will be the final runs for both vessels on the project, it is safe to assume that Hornsea Two has already claimed the top spot in terms of the installed capacity from its sister project – the 1.2 GW Hornsea One.

Hornsea Two is being developed by Ørsted and is scheduled to be fully commissioned in the first half of 2022.

The wind farm delivered first power to the UK grid earlier this month.

Technion develops eco-friendly method of harvesting energy from seaweed

Idea comes to doctoral student Yaniv Shlosberg while swimming at the beach. "It is a wonder where scientific ideas come from," he says.

By ILH Staff
01-02-2022 1

Seaweed is grown for a variety of industries, including food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. | File photo: Reuters/Mal Langsdon


Researchers from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed a method that harvests an electrical current directly from seaweed in an environmentally friendly and efficient fashion.

The research, the idea for which came to doctoral student Yaniv Shlosberg while swimming at the beach, has been developed by a consortium of researchers from three Technion faculties and has been presented in the peer-reviewed Biosensors and Bioelectronics scientific journal.

The research was led by Professor Noam Adir and Shlosberg in cooperation with researchers from the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research Institute and others.

The use of fossil fuels results in the emission of greenhouse gases and other polluting compounds, which have been found to be connected to climate change. Pollution due to the use of these fuels starts from their extraction and transportation around the globe, to be used in centralized power plants and refineries.

These problematic issues are the driving force behind research into methods of alternative, clean and renewable energy sources. One of these is the use of living organisms as the source of electrical currents in microbial fuel cells. Certain bacteria have the ability to transfer electrons to electrochemical cells to produce electrical current. The bacteria need to be constantly fed and some of them are pathogenic. A similar technology is Bio-PhotoElectrochemical Cells, the source of electrons can be from photosynthetic bacteria, especially cyanobacteria.

Many different species of seaweed grow naturally on the Mediterranean shore of Israel, especially Ulva which is grown in large quantities at IOLR for research purposes.

After developing new methods to connect Ulva and BPEC, currents a thousand times greater than those from cyanobacteria were obtained. Adir noted that these increased currents are due to the high rate of seaweed photosynthesis, and the ability to use the seaweed in their natural seawater as the BPEC electrolyte – the solution that promotes electron transfer in the BPEC. In addition, the seaweed provides currents in the dark, about 50% of that obtained in light. The source of the dark current is from respiration – where sugars made by the photosynthetic process are used as an internal source of nutrients. In a fashion similar to the cyanobacterial BOEC, no additional chemicals are needed to obtain the current. The Ulva produce mediating electron transfer molecules that are secreted from the cells and transfer the electrons to the BPEC electrode.

Fossil fuel-based energy-producing technologies are known as "carbon positive." This means that the process releases carbon into the atmosphere during fuel combustion. Solar cell technologies are known as "carbon-neutral", no carbon is released into the atmosphere. However, the production of solar cells and their transportation to the site of use is many times more "carbon positive". The new technology presented here is "carbon negative". The seaweed absorbs carbon from the atmosphere during the day while growing and releasing oxygen. During the harvesting of the currents during the day, no carbon is released. During the night, the seaweed releases the normal amount of carbon from respiration. In addition, seaweed, especially Ulva, is grown for a variety of industries: food (Ulva is also considered a superfood), cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.

"It is a wonder where scientific ideas come from," Shlosberg said. "I had the idea one day when I went to the beach. At the time I was studying the cyanobacterial BPEC when I noticed seaweed on a rock that looked like electrical cords. I said to myself – since they also perform photosynthesis, maybe we can use them to produce currents. From this idea came the collaboration from all the Technion and IOLR researchers which led to our most recent paper. I believe that our idea can lead to a real revolution in clean energy production."

Technion and IOLR researchers built a prototype device that collects the current directly in the Ulva growth vat.

Professor Adir added: "By presenting our prototype device, we show that significant currents can be harvested from the seaweed. We believe that the technology can be further improved leading to future green energy technologies."

 

Space junk orbiting Earth such as crystallised human wee could become our biggest pollution disaster

More than half a million pieces of debris are zooming around the planet, with even small items able to destroy a satellite. Scientists warn it could cause a catastrophe

A computer-generated image released by the European Space Agency shows trackable objects in orbit around Earth (Photo: ESA/AFP via Getty)

By Taz Ali

December 31, 2021 

Space junk is becoming one of the biggest pollution disasters faced by mankind, with experts warning it could take a human catastrophe before the issue is taken seriously.

More than half a million pieces of debris are zooming around the earth at about 17,500mph, 10 times the speed of a bullet – although some estimates say it could be upwards of about 900,000.

The junk includes defunct and broken bits of satellite and items lost by spacewalking astronauts including a spatula, tool bag, camera and glove, and even crystallised human urine.

This has been floating around from the days before waste recycling systems were introduced that convert urine it into clean, drinkable water.

An artist’s impression from 1978 depicting existing and possible future satellites, highlighting the danger or an overcrowded orbit (Photo: Space Frontiers/Getty)

Experts told i that the rubbish threatens future missions, and if humans continue to throw more trash into orbit then it could make space inaccessible – or worse.

“I don’t think people are going to take it as seriously as they should until a human gets hurt in space,” said John Crassidis, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Buffalo in New York, who works with Nasa and the US Air Force on the issue.

“It’s going to get to a point where in low earth orbit the probability of collision is going to be so big that putting something up there is going to be useless.”

Carolin Frueh, associate professor at the School of Aeronautics & Astronautics at Purdue University in Indiana, likened the issue to the pollution of our oceans where debris “is just floating around”.

She said: “I think it (space debris) is becoming one of the biggest pollution disasters, knowing what we do on earth and knowing how big the problems are here.”

Nasa is tracking about 28,000 objects larger than 10cm that are currently orbiting the earth, but much of the debris is too small to follow.

Despite the small size of these items, they are large enough to cause serious damage if they were to collide with other objects, as they travel at extremely high speeds. “It doesn’t take much to wipe out a satellite,” Professor Crassidis said.

Last month, Russia came under fire for launching a missile at one of its defunct Soviet-era satellites at about 500km altitude, which resulted in the creation of more than 1,500 pieces of debris, according to the US Space Command, and potentially hundreds of thousands of smaller fragments.

The fallout from the anti-missile test now threatens the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), according to US officials.

“Needless to say, I’m outraged. This is unconscionable,” Nasa administrator Bill Nelson said at the time. “It’s unbelievable that the Russian government would do this test and threaten not only international astronauts, but their own cosmonauts that are on board the station.”

Professor Frueh said it could take a decade before those pieces come down naturally. “The higher the altitude, the longer the pieces stay in orbit,” she added. “It’s unnecessary, and creating that much debris at 500km altitude, it just made me sad.”

Anti-satellite tests have been done before. They were common during the Cold War era, which was followed by a period of tranquillity until a Chinese test in 2007, at about 850km altitude, created countless pieces of debris. The ISS had to dodge one that came dangerously close just last month.

India launched anti-satellite missiles in 2019 destroying a test satellite at 300km altitude, although it caused less debris than the Chinese event.

An anti-satellite weapon displayed at the 2020 Republic Day Parade in New Delhi, India (Photo: Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times via Getty)

These missions have been used by nations to show off their capabilities, Professor Crassidis said, adding: “People like to flex their muscles, I think it’s incredibly irresponsible and incredibly stupid.”

There are no international treaties to stop these kinds of missions, and no penalties for nations that trash space. Space agencies have made some efforts to remove debris, but experts point out that these are only at a testing phase and there is currently no feasible method to get rid of the junk in any meaningful way.

Professor Frueh said existing removals only deal with about “three or four pieces a year”.

The problem is growing worse with the rise of commercial and scientific space-faring, and developing nations adding more satellites into orbit. With more planned missions to the moon, there is a risk of trashing the cislunar region, between the Earth and the moon.

Scientists say the best thing the world can do now is to track and detect the debris and limit how much is thrown into space. As with climate change, it will fall on future generations to come up with the technology to solve the problem.

“It’s just our nature, right? ‘Let’s just put this off to our children’, that’s the classic way we think,” said Professor Crassidis. “I actually believe in 50 years if nothing is done we’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”