Fake poop helps evicted owls settle into new neighborhood

By CHRISTINA LARSON

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This photo provided by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance shows a burrowing owl in a habitat at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in 2014. (Ken Bohn/San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance via AP)

Settling into a new home can be tough for anyone. So scientists have come up with some tricks to make transplanted burrowing owls feel like they are not alone in their new digs, playing owl sounds and scattering fake poop.

The owls’ grassland homes are often prime real estate, and they’ve been losing ground to development in fast-growing regions like Silicon Valley and Southern California. Biologists have tried moving the owls to protected grasslands but the challenge has been getting the owls to accept their new homes.

Just dropping off the owls in prime habitat wasn’t enough, prior attempts showed. In a pilot program, scientists took pains to create the impression that owls already lived there so they’d stick around. And it worked.

“They like to be in a neighborhood, to live near other owls,” said Colleen Wisinski, a conservation biologist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, which launched the experiment with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The scientists played recordings of owl calls before and after the new arrivals were released at four locations in Southern California. Wisinski used a syringe to squirt around fake owl poop — in reality, white paint.

Their results were published Thursday in the journal Animal Conservation.

Burrowing owls are the rare extroverts of the raptor world. These long-legged owls with slightly cross expressions actually love company. They nest in underground burrows with many owls nearby.

Such colonies provide protection from predators, such as coyotes or hawks, that may try to snack on the robin-sized, yellow-eyed birds. When one owl sounds an alarm, the others fly away.

Federal law prohibits the killing of the birds but their habitat is not protected. Typically, they are flushed from their burrows before properties are built.

“If after eviction there’s nowhere for these guys to go, it’s basically a death sentence,” said Lynne Trulio, an ecologist at San Jose State University who has studied burrowing owls for three decades. She was not part of the study.

The population of western burrowing owls — the subspecies that lives in California — has declined by one-third since 1965. It is considered a “species of special concern” in the state.

For their experiment, the scientists transplanted 47 burrowing owls during 2017-2018. Twenty were outfitted with GPS devices to track their movements, and the scientists also returned to the sites to check on them.

Most successfully settled into their new homes and established breeding colonies. At the primary site, Rancho Jamul Ecological Reserve in southwestern San Diego County, there were about 50 owl chicks in 2020.

The researchers also monitored owls that were left on their own to find new homes. Those owls didn’t fare as well.

“These scientists are leading the pack in advancing our understanding of how to relocate burrowing owls,” said David H. Johnson, director of the Global Owl Project, who was not involved in the paper.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Mexican town protects forest from avocado growers, cartels

By MARK STEVENSON

January 27, 2022

CHERAN, Mexico (AP) — Regular citizens have taken the fight against illegal logging into their own hands in the pine-covered mountains of western Mexico, where loggers clear entire hillsides for avocado plantations that drain local water supplies and draw drug cartels hungry for extortion money.

In some places, like the Indigenous township of Cheran in Michoacan state , the fight against illegal logging and planting has been so successful it’s as if a line had been drawn across the mountains: avocados and cleared land on one side, pine forest on the other. But it has required a decade-long political revolt in which Cheran’s townspeople declared themselves autonomous and formed their own government.

Other towns, bullied by growers and drug cartel gunmen, struggle on but are often cowed by violence.

David Ramos Guerrero, a member of the self-governing farmers board, says farmers here have agreed on a total ban on commercial avocado orchards, which he contends only bring “violence, bloodshed.”

“People are allowed to have three, four or five, or at most 10 avocado plants to supply food, but commercial planting isn’t allowed,” he said.

The reason is clear. On a patrol, Ramos Guerrero looks out across an almost deforested valley in a neighboring township. Rows of young avocado trees stand in lines up the denuded slopes that once held pine and fir trees.

“This is an island, all around Cheran there has been an invasion of avocados,” he notes.

Anyone who has walked through the cool mountain forest of pine and fir trees in Michoacan knows that the pine canopy protects against heat and evaporation; the thick mat of fallen pine needles acts like a sponge, soaking up and storing humidity; the roots of the pines prevent water and soil from running off the slopes.

But the first thing avocado growers do is dig retaining ponds to water their orchards, draining streams that once were used by people further down the mountain. And then drug cartels extort money from the avocado growers.

“We have realized the only thing avocados do is soak up all the water that our forests produce,” Ramos Guerrero said.

Cheran, which began its experiment in self-rule in 2011 by blocking roads used by illegal loggers, now digs trenches across logging roads with backhoes. As far as avocados, Ramos Guerrero says: “We start in a friendly way, by talking (to farmers). If we don’t reach an agreement, then we use force, we tear up or cut down the avocado trees.”

If farmers still don’t agree to stop logging or planting avocados, that’s when Cheran’s forestry patrols swing into action.

Riding a pair of pickups through the woods, a community patrol of men armed with AR-15 rifles stop and seize an axe, and then a chainsaw from two men cutting up trees. The men will probably get them back with a caution to seek permission next time. The patrols find already cut pine logs hidden in the brush along the road and seize them, heaving them onto one of the trucks.

Salvador Ávila Magaña, 65, remembers how it was before the Cheran uprising in 2011. He was scared off his land by threats from loggers, who then clear-cut his land.

“The last threat was that if we showed up there (at his land) again, they were going to kidnap us, we were going to be found in bags,” Ávila Magaña said. “Several people were killed and they were found in pieces, burned.”

But even though his 45-acre (18 hectare) plot had been completely logged, Ávila Magaña decided to plant back pine trees, hoping “to leave something for my children or grandchildren,” who he hopes can resume what had once been a sustainable forestry practice of extracting pine resin for turpentine or cosmetics.

“We reached an agreement among the communal farmers that we weren’t going to plant avocados, we were going to only plant trees that produce good oxygen,” he said.

Avocados have been nothing short of a miracle crop for thousands of small farmers in Michoacan. With a few acres of well-tended avocado trees, small landholders can send their kids to college or buy a pickup truck, something no other crop allows them to do.

But because of the immense amount of water they need, the expansion of avocados has come by moving into humid pine forests, rather than disused corn fields.

Neither the growers nor exporters have made any serious effort to ensure their avocados come from sustainable orchards. The Mexican Avocado Growers Association did not respond to requests for an interview.

If the battle has been temporarily won in Cheran, it is still being fought in other towns in Michoacan that haven’t had a citizen takeover of local government.

About 60 miles away in the town of Villa Madero, activist Guillermo Saucedo tried to institute the kind of farmers’ patrols used in Cheran to detect illegal logging and unauthorized avocado orchards. He got as many as 60 or 70 people to participate in the patrols, starting in May 2021.

But by Dec. 6, Saucedo says he had perhaps spoken too forcefully at meetings or angered the powerful allies of the loggers and avocado growers: he ran up against drug cartel gunmen.

“A white SUV with tinted windows cut me off,” Saucedo recalled a month later. “Three people got out with pistols and rifles and they cocked their guns and pointed them at me ... they started hitting me and forced me into the vehicle.”
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Along the ride, they tossed a jacket and a ski mask over his head and kept hitting him in the head with the rifle stocks and the butts of their pistols. Later at a safe house, they repeatedly asked him about a detained cartel boss, but Saucedo thinks that was a cover for their real interest — his community organizing.

“They kept beating me until they got tired,” he said. Hours later, they abandoned him on a dirt path in a distant township, and instructed him to blame a rival cartel for his abduction.

The patrols ceased and Saucedo has been forced to lay low in his home village of Zangarro. His requests to the federal government for protection have so far gone unheeded, in a country where, over the last three years, 96 community, environmental or rights activists have been murdered.

Saucedo and environmentalist Julio Santoyo are unsure what the exact links between the drug cartel and the loggers and avocado growers in Villa Madero are.

Santoyo believes the gangs could be directly investing in avocado plantations. It would not be beyond belief in Michoacan, where in 2010 another cartel, The Knights Templar, actually took over the business of mining iron ore and exporting it to China.

Saucedo thinks the cartels are protecting the loggers and growers.

“They are acting as Godfathers for them, protecting them,” Saucedo said. Certainly, avocado growers in other parts of the state have often complained that drug cartels were demanding payment for each shipment of fruit, and it’s easy to see why the gangs would want more production.

In Villa Madero, which was once surrounded by solid pine forests, Santoyo recently used Google Earth to count about 360 retention ponds that avocado growers have dug to feed their thirsty groves. Saucedo says now that many of the pine forests have been cut down, avocado growers are resorting to deep wells, further depleting the water table.

Santoyo says he has also received indirect threats from a cartel to “tone it down” with his activism. But he says local farm families are already being affected by the avocado plantations.

“People in this area have traditionally been able to get water from the streams for their animals, goats, cows or sheep,” Santoyo said. “They can’t find water anymore, sometimes even for themselves, and now they have to haul it in pickup trucks or on foot or with horses.”

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AP journalist Fernanda Pesce contributed to this report
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Russian roar on Ukraine rings hollow to Latin America allies

By JOSHUA GOODMAN

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FILE - Russian Navy Admiral Gorshkov frigate arrives at the port of Havana, Cuba, June 24, 2019. When the Admiral Gorshkov sailed into Havana in 2019 shortly after entering into service, it was billed as Russia's most advanced battleship, the largest built in two decades, armed with cruise missiles, air defense systems and other weapons. But it was tailed on the goodwill tour by a Russian rescue tugboat — a sign to many that Moscow had little faith in the warship's reliability. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File)


MIAMI (AP) — It was a classic Russian power play with echoes of Cold War gamesmanship.

Shortly after entering into service in 2019, Russia’s most advanced warship made a goodwill tour of the Caribbean, armed with cruise missiles, air defense systems and other weapons.

But when the Admiral Gorshkov sailed into the port of Havana, it was closely tailed by a Russian rescue tugboat — a sign to many that Moscow doubted the vessel’s reliability and the visit was nothing more than a feeble effort to project power.

Russia is once again rattling its saber amid rising tensions over Ukraine, hinting that the U.S. refusal to heed its demands could spur closer military cooperation with allies in Latin America. In recent days, several senior Russian officials have warned Moscow could deploy troops or military assets to Cuba and Venezuela if the U.S. and NATO insist on meddling on Russia’s doorstep.

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan quickly dismissed Russia’s tit-for-tat threats. On the heels of its massive troop buildup on its border with Ukraine, Russia’s ability to mobilize troops in the Western Hemisphere, thousands of miles away, is limited at best, experts contend.

“This is pure misdirection and it’s not fooling anyone,” said Kevin Whitaker, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia who also served as a diplomat in Venezuela, Nicaragua and as head of the Office of Cuban Affairs in Washington. “It’s not real power projection. It’s a showpiece and nothing more.”

But even if talk of troop deployments is mostly bluster, Russia’s strategic buildup in Latin America is real, posing national security threats in what generations of U.S. policy makers have referred to as “Washington’s backyard.”

In the past decade, as the U.S. influence in the region has waned, Moscow — and to a lesser extent other far-flung adversaries like China and Iran — have quietly cemented ties with authoritarian governments in Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela through a mix of weapons sales, financing deals and intense diplomatic engagement.

Moscow helped Venezuela design a cryptocurrency, forgave a $35 million Cuba debt and runs a high-tech anti-narcotics compound in Nicaragua that many believe is a covert beachhead for spying across the region.

Time and again, Russia has shown a willingness to leverage its sizable military whenever it has felt threatened by the U.S.

In 2008, Moscow sent a pair of Tu-160 nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela amid tensions with the U.S. over Russia’s brief war with Georgia, a deployment followed that year by the arrival of the “Peter the Great” warship.

Russia sent more Tu-160s in 2018 as relations with the West plunged to post-Cold War lows over Ukraine, and the military even hinted it was considering setting up an air base on tiny La Orchilla Island, so small that landing military aircraft there would have been nearly impossible.

Even in countries friendlier to the U.S., like Mexico and Colombia, Russia has been accused of spying or engaging in disinformation campaigns to shape elections. A senior Colombian military official recently traveled to Washington to brief U.S. officials on Russian attempts to penetrate the communications of the country’s top military command, a person familiar with the visit told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.

On social media, the Spanish-language arm of the Russian state-controlled RT television network has more than 18 million followers on Facebook, 10 times as many as the Spanish-language affiliate of Voice of America, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a think tank that tracks the rise of authoritarianism around the world. It also outperforms most other Spanish-language media on the platform, though it’s still dwarfed by CNN en Espanol.

It’s all a far cry from the height of the Cold War, when Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 briefly placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, the Kremlin maintained a listening post less than 100 miles from Florida and the Sandinista government that was fighting a U.S.-backed right-wing insurgency in Nicaragua was building an air base to accommodate Soviet fighter jets.

Nicaragua’s Punta Huete airfield is today semi-abandoned and President Vladimir Putin closed the spy station in Cuba two decades ago. With the collapse of its communist sponsor in the early 1990s, Cuba spiraled into a depression marked by widespread hunger known as the “Special Period.”

But Russia’s more limited support has bought it friends. Recently Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega named a consul in the Crimean peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. It’s also allowed Putin to restore some of Russia’s former glory in a region that has long resented Washington’s far longer history of meddling.

As Putin now looks to repel NATO from what he calls Russia’s “near abroad” in Ukraine, he’s likely to take at least a symbolic poke at the U.S. in its own sphere of influence, said Evan Ellis, a researcher at the U.S. Army War College who specializes in Russian and Chinese influence in Latin America.

“I’m sure Putin will do something to project toughness on the cheap as he always does,” Ellis said. “But he’s not going to do anything that costs him a lot of money or get him into deeper trouble down the line like deploying nukes. He knows there are limits.”

Russia’s closest ally is Venezuela, which has spent billions over the past two decades of socialist rule building up its air defense with Russia’s help — everything from Sukhoi fighter jets and attack helicopters to sophisticated radar and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers.

Such an arsenal gives Nicolás Maduro an ability to inflict serious damage in the event of any conflict with neighboring Colombia, the top U.S. ally in the region, said Gen. Manuel Cristopher Figuera, who was the Venezuelan president’s spy chief until fleeing to the U.S. in 2019 after a failed putsch against his former boss.

“It’s not an ideological relationship. It’s a commercial one, but it provides Maduro with a certain amount of protection,” said Figuera, who received training in Cuba and from Putin ally Belarus.

As the U.S. and its allies have taken steps to isolate the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — what Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton called the “troika of tyranny”— Putin has tried to fill the void.

In recent days, he’s spoken to Maduro, Ortega and Cuba’s Miguel Díaz Canel to explore ways to deepen strategic cooperation. He’s also sent a planeload of medical supplies to Cuba to help it fight the coronavirus pandemic.

But the leaders, although expressing gratitude for Russia’s continued aid, have so far remained silent on Ukraine — a sign they may be reluctant to be drawn into another geopolitical tussle.

“One of the fundamental legacies for Latin America from the Cold War is that they don’t want to be treated as a pawn in someone else’s game,” said Whitaker, the former ambassador to Colombia. “What Russia is doing shows enormous disrespect for the sovereignty of governments that are supposedly their allies.”

It’s something even Putin loyalists are starting to acknowledge.

“Cuba and Venezuela are the countries that are close to us, they are our partners,” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said in an interview with Russian media.

“But we can’t just deploy things there,” added Medvedev, who served as Russian president in 2008-2012 when Putin had to shift into the premier’s post because of term limits. “There can’t be any talk about setting up a base there as happened during the Soviet times.”

—

AP writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow, Andrea Rodriguez in Havana and Frank Bajak in Boston contributed to this report.

Follow Goodman: @APJoshGoodman

Meet Methuselah, the oldest living aquarium fish

By HAVEN DALEY

January 26, 2022

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Senior biologist Allan Jan feeds Methuselah, a 4-foot-long, 40-pound Australian lungfish that was brought to the California Academy of Sciences in 1938 from Australia, in its tank in San Francisco, Monday, Jan. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Meet Methuselah, the fish that likes to eat fresh figs, get belly rubs and is believed to be the oldest living aquarium fish in the world.

In the Bible, Methuselah was Noah’s grandfather and was said to have lived to be 969 years old. Methuselah the fish is not quite that ancient, but biologists at the California Academy of Sciences believe it is about 90 years old, with no known living peers.

Methuselah is a 4-foot-long (1.2-meter), 40-pound (18.1-kilogram) Australian lungfish that was brought to the San Francisco museum in 1938 from Australia.

A primitive species with lungs and gills, Australian lungfish are believed to be the evolutionary link between fish and amphibians.

No stranger to publicity, Methuselah’s first appearance in the San Francisco Chronicle was in 1947: “These strange creatures — with green scales looking like fresh artichoke leaves — are known to scientists as a possible ‘missing link’ between terrestrial and aquatic animals.”

Until a few years ago, the oldest Australian lungfish was at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. But that fish, named Granddad, died in 2017 at the age of 95.

“By default, Methuselah is the oldest,” said Allan Jan, senior biologist at the California Academy of Sciences and the fish’s keeper. Methuselah’s caretakers believe the fish is female, although it’s difficult to determine the species’ sex without a risky blood draw. The academy plans to send a tiny sample of her fin to researchers in Australia, who will try to confirm the sex and figure out the fish’s exact age.

Jan says Methuselah likes getting rubbed on her back and belly and has a “mellow” personality.

“I tell my volunteers, pretend she’s an underwater puppy, very mellow, gentle, but of course if she gets spooked she will have sudden bouts of energy. But for the most part she’s just calm,” Jan said. Methuselah has developed a taste for seasonal figs.

“She’s a little picky and only likes figs when they are fresh and in season. She won’t eat them when they’re frozen,” said Jeanette Peach, spokeswoman for the California Academy of Sciences.

Organic blackberries, grapes and romaine lettuce are rotated into her daily diet, which also includes a variety of fish, clams, prawns and earthworms, said Charles Delbeek, curator of the museum’s Steinhart Aquarium.

The academy has two other Australian lungfish that are younger. Named for their sizes, “Medium” arrived at the museum in 1952 and “Small” in 1990, both from the Mary River, in Queensland, Australia, said Delbeek. They weigh about 25 pounds (11 kilograms) and 15 pounds (7 kilograms), respectively.

The Australian lungfish is now a threatened species and can no longer be exported from Australian waters, so biologists at the academy say it’s unlikely they’ll get a replacement once Methuselah passes away.

“We just give her the best possible care we can provide, and hopefully she thrives,” Jan said.

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Associated Press writer Jocelyn Gecker contributed to this report.

COVID hits one of the last uninfected places on the planet

By NICK PERRY and SAM METZ

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 In this March 30, 2004, file photo, Tarawa atoll, Kiribati, is seen in an aerial view. Kiribati and several other small Pacific nations were among the last on the planet to have avoided any virus outbreaks, thanks to their remote locations and strict border controls. But their defenses appear no match against the highly contagious omicron variant. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — When the coronavirus began spreading around the world, the remote Pacific archipelago of Kiribati closed its borders, ensuring the disease didn’t reach its shores for nearly two full years.

Kiribati finally began reopening this month, allowing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to charter a plane to bring home 54 of the island nation’s citizens. Many of those aboard were missionaries who had left Kiribati before the border closure to spread the faith abroad for what is commonly known as the Mormon church.

Officials tested each returning passenger three times in nearby Fiji, required that they be vaccinated, and put them in quarantine with additional testing when they arrived home.

It wasn’t enough.

More than half the passengers tested positive for the virus, which has now slipped out into the community and prompted the government to declare a state of disaster. An initial 36 positive cases from the flight had ballooned to 181 cases by Friday.

Kiribati and several other small Pacific nations were among the last places on the planet to have avoided any virus outbreaks, thanks to their remote locations and strict border controls. But their defenses appear no match against the highly contagious omicron variant.

“Generally speaking, it’s inevitable. It will get to every corner of the world,” said Helen Petousis-Harris, a vaccine expert at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. “It’s a matter of buying enough time to prepare and getting as many people vaccinated as possible.”

Only 33% of Kiribati’s 113,000 people are fully vaccinated, while 59% have had at least one dose, according to the online scientific publication Our World in Data. And like many other Pacific nations, Kiribati offers only basic health services.

Dr. Api Talemaitoga, who chairs a network of Indigenous Pacific Island doctors in New Zealand, said Kiribati had only a couple of intensive care beds in the entire nation, and in the past relied on sending its sickest patients to Fiji or New Zealand for treatment.

He said that given the limitations of Kiribati’s health system, his first reaction when he heard about the outbreak was, “Oh, my lord.”

Kiribati has now opened multiple quarantine sites, declared a curfew and imposed lockdowns. President Taneti Maamau said on social media that the government is using all its resources to manage the situation, and urged people to get vaccinated.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based in the U.S. state of Utah, has a strong presence in many Pacific nations, including Kiribati, where its 20,000 members make it the third-largest Christian denomination. The church has about 53,000 missionaries serving full time around the world, working to convert people.

The pandemic has presented challenges for their missionary work, which is considered a rite of passage for men as young as 18 and women as young as 19.

As the pandemic ebbed and flowed, the church responded. It recalled about 26,000 missionaries who were serving overseas in June 2020, reassigning them to proselytize online from home before sending some back out into the field five months later.

When COVID-19 vaccines became widely available in many countries in April 2021, church officials encouraged all missionaries to get inoculated and required it of those serving outside their home countries.

Church spokesperson Sam Penrod said the returning missionaries remained in quarantine, were cooperating with local health authorities and would be released from their service upon completion of their quarantine.

“With Kiribati’s borders being closed since the onset of the pandemic, many of these individuals have continued as missionaries well beyond their 18 to 24 months of anticipated service, with some serving as long as 44 months,” he said.

Before this month’s outbreak, Kiribati had reported just two virus cases: crew members on an incoming cargo ship that ultimately wasn’t permitted to dock.

But the Kiribati charter flight wasn’t the first time missionaries returning home to a Pacific island nation tested positive for COVID-19.

In October, a missionary returning to Tonga from service in Africa was reported as the country’s first — and so far only — positive case after flying home via New Zealand. Like those returning to Kiribati, he also was vaccinated and quarantined.

Tonga is desperately trying to prevent any outbreaks as it recovers from a devastating volcanic eruption and tsunami earlier this month. The nation of 105,000 has been receiving aid from around the world but has requested that crews from incoming military ships and planes drop their supplies and leave without having any contact with those on the ground.

“They’ve got enough on their hands without compounding it with the spread of COVID,” said Petousis-Harris, the vaccine expert. “Anything they can do to keep it out is going to be important. COVID would be just compounding that disaster.”

In the long term, however, it is going to be impossible to stop the virus from entering Tonga or any other community, Petousis-Harris said.

Nearby Samoa, with a population of 205,000, is also trying to prevent its first outbreak. It imposed a lockdown through until Friday evening after 15 passengers on an incoming flight from Australia last week tested positive.

By Thursday, that number had grown to 27, including five front-line nurses who had treated the passengers. Officials said all those infected had been isolated and there was no community outbreak so far.

While the incursion of the virus into the Pacific has prompted lockdowns and other restrictions, there were signs that not all traditional aspects of island life would be lost for long.

“Government has decided to allow fishing,” Kiribati declared on Thursday, while listing certain restrictions on times and places. “Only four people will be allowed to be on a boat or part of a group fishing near shore.”

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Metz reported from Salt Lake City.

Toyota heading to moon with cruiser, robotic arms, dreams

By YURI KAGEYAMA

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This graphic illustration provided by Toyota Motor Corp. shows a vehicle called "Lunar Cruiser" to explore the lunar surface. Toyota is working with Japan's space agency on the Lunar Cruiser to explore the lunar surface, with ambitions to help people live on the moon by 2040 and then go live on Mars, company officials said Friday, Jan. 28, 2022. (Toyota Motor Corp. via AP)


TOKYO (AP) — Toyota is working with Japan’s space agency on a vehicle to explore the lunar surface, with ambitions to help people live on the moon by 2040 and then go live on Mars, company officials said Friday.

The vehicle being developed with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is called Lunar Cruiser, whose name pays homage to the Toyota Land Cruiser sport utility vehicle. Its launch is set for the late 2020’s.

The vehicle is based on the idea that people eat, work, sleep and communicate with others safely in cars, and the same can be done in outer space, said Takao Sato, who heads the Lunar Cruiser project at Toyota Motor Corp.

“We see space as an area for our once-in-a-century transformation. By going to space, we may be able to develop telecommunications and other technology that will prove valuable to human life,” Sato told The Associated Press.

Gitai Japan Inc., a venture contracted with Toyota, has developed a robotic arm for the Lunar Cruiser, designed to perform tasks such as inspection and maintenance. Its “grapple fixture” allows the arm’s end to be changed so it can work like different tools, scooping, lifting and sweeping.

Gitai Chief Executive Sho Nakanose said he felt the challenge of blasting off into space has basically been met but working in space entails big costs and hazards for astronauts. That’s where robots would come in handy, he said.

Since its founding in the 1930s, Toyota has fretted about losing a core business because of changing times. It has ventured into housing, boats, jets and robots. Its net-connected sustainable living quarters near Mount Fuji, called Woven City, where construction is starting this year.

Japanese fascination with the moon has been growing.

A private Japanese venture called ispace Inc. is working on lunar rovers, landing and orbiting, and is scheduled for a moon landing later this year. Businessman Yusaku Maezawa, who recently took videos of himself floating around in the International Space Station, has booked an orbit around the moon aboard Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Starship.

Toyota engineer Shinichiro Noda said he is excited about the lunar project, an extension of the automaker’s longtime mission to serve customers and the moon may provide valuable resources for life on Earth.

“Sending our cars to the moon is our mission,” he said. Toyota has vehicles almost everywhere. “But this is about taking our cars to somewhere we have never been.”

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Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

GOING GREEN
Tesla-beating battery discovery could finally give us QUIET electric planes – reducing both noise and CO2 pollution


Charlotte Edwards, 

Technology and Science Reporter
26 Jan 2022


A BATTERY breakthrough could lead to electric planes that produce significantly less pollution and noise.

Researchers in Japan have created a world-leading battery that achieves more than double the density of Tesla batteries.

1The electric planes that exist right now are tiny because we don't have electric batteries that are light but powerful enough to provide energy for long-distance air travelCredit: AFP

This means the battery can stay small but provide a lot of power.

It could be a breakthrough for electric planes as the battery would be light enough to let the aircraft fly while still providing enough energy for long-distance travel.

The NIMS lithium-air battery has an energy density 500Wh/kg.

Elon Musk's Tesla vehicles contain lithium-ion batteries but they have an energy density of 260Wh/kg.

The new battery could also be used in smaller appliances.

It's said to be safe to use in the household because it can be charged and discharged at a normal temperature.

A NIMS release stated that the battery “shows the highest energy densities and best life cycle performance ever achieved”

It also claimed: "Lithium-air batteries have the potential to be the ultimate rechargeable batteries: they are lightweight and high capacity, with theoretical energy densities several times that of currently available lithium-ion batteries."

The researchers will now conduct new experiments on the battery to see if its life cycle can be increased significantly.

Electric planes do exist right now but they're small and can't carry a lot of people over a long distance.

Long haul electric planes could help to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

They could also make air travel a lot quieter.

Without fuel-burning energy, planes would make less noise.

Right now, a lot of airports have to be built in areas with low populations because of the noise pollution issue.

Aircraft noise is currently a major barrier to airport expansions.

Japanese researchers develop high energy density lithium-air battery

MINING.COM Staff Writer | January 26, 2022 

Electric vehicles charging. (Reference image by Ivan Radic, Flickr).

Researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Materials (NIMS) and Softbank Corp. have developed a lithium-air battery with an energy density of over 500Wh/kg, which is significantly higher than current lithium-ion batteries.


In a paper published in the journal Materials Horizons, the scientific team behind the development explains that this battery can be charged and discharged at room temperature and shows the highest energy densities and best cycle life performances ever achieved.

Lithium-air batteries are metal-air electrochemical cells or battery chemistries that use oxidation of lithium at the anode and reduction of oxygen at the cathode to induce a current flow.

Scientists believe the devices have the potential to be the ultimate rechargeable batteries: they are lightweight and high capacity, with theoretical energy densities several times that of currently available lithium-ion batteries.

Once the technology reaches commercial stage, the batteries could be used in drones, electric vehicles and household electricity storage systems.

Despite their very high theoretical energy densities, only a small number of lithium-air batteries with high energy densities have actually been fabricated and evaluated. This limited success is attributed to the fact that a large proportion by weight of lithium-air battery contains heavy inactive components such as separators and electrolytes that do not directly participate in actual battery reactions.

With the goal of advancing the technology, NIMS and Softbank sought funding from the Japan Science and Technology Agency and in 2018, co-founded the Advanced Technologies Development Center. The ultimate objective is to put lithium-air batteries into practical use in mobile phone base stations, the Internet of Things, high altitude platform stations and other systems.

Thus, they started developing original battery materials that significantly increased the performance of lithium-air batteries. Then, they came up with a technique to fabricate high-energy-density lithium-air cells and finally, the group created a new lithium-air battery by combining these new materials and the fabrication techniques.

The resulting battery exhibited energy density over 500 Wh/kg—substantially higher than currently lithium-ion batteries. Notably, the repeated discharge and charge reaction proceeds at room temperature. The energy density and cycle life performance of this battery are among the highest ever achieved.

To continue building on this success, the team is currently developing higher-performance battery materials and plans to integrate them into the newly created lithium-air battery with the aim of greatly increasing the battery’s cycle life.

Offshore wind farms could help capture carbon from air and store it long-term – using energy that would otherwise go to waste


The U.S. had seven operating offshore wind turbines with 42 megawatts of capacity in 2021. The Biden administration’s goal is 30,000 megawatts by 2030. 

AP Photo/Michael Dw

January 25, 2022

Off the Massachusetts and New York coasts, developers are preparing to build the United States’ first federally approved utility-scale offshore wind farms – 74 turbines in all that could power 470,000 homes. More than a dozen other offshore wind projects are awaiting approval along the Eastern Seaboard.

By 2030, the Biden administration’s goal is to have 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy flowing, enough to power more than 10 million homes.

Replacing fossil fuel-based energy with clean energy like wind power is essential to holding off the worsening effects of climate change. But that transition isn’t happening fast enough to stop global warming. Human activities have pumped so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that we will also have to remove carbon dioxide from the air and lock it away permanently.

Offshore wind farms are uniquely positioned to do both – and save money.

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Most renewable energy lease areas off the Atlantic Coast are near the Mid-Atlantic states and Massachusetts. About 480,000 acres of the New York Bight is scheduled to be auctioned for wind farms in February 2022. BOEM

As a marine geophysicist, I have been exploring the potential for pairing wind turbines with technology that captures carbon dioxide directly from the air and stores it in natural reservoirs under the ocean. Built together, these technologies could reduce the energy costs of carbon capture and minimize the need for onshore pipelines, reducing impacts on the environment.
Capturing CO2 from the air

Several research groups and tech startups are testing direct air capture devices that can pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. The technology works, but the early projects so far are expensive and energy intensive.

The systems use filters or liquid solutions that capture CO2 from air blown across them. Once the filters are full, electricity and heat are needed to release the carbon dioxide and restart the capture cycle.

For the process to achieve net negative emissions, the energy source must be carbon-free.

The world’s largest active direct air capture plant operating today does this by using waste heat and renewable energy. The plant, in Iceland, then pumps its captured carbon dioxide into the underlying basalt rock, where the CO2 reacts with the basalt and calcifies, turning to solid mineral.

A similar process could be created with offshore wind turbines.

If direct air capture systems were built alongside offshore wind turbines, they would have an immediate source of clean energy from excess wind power and could pipe captured carbon dioxide directly to storage beneath the sea floor below, reducing the need for extensive pipeline systems.

Climeworks, a Swiss company, has 15 direct air capture plants removing carbon dioxide from the air. Climeworks

Researchers are currently studying how these systems function under marine conditions. Direct air capture is only beginning to be deployed on land, and the technology likely would have to be modified for the harsh ocean environment. But planning should start now so wind power projects are positioned to take advantage of carbon storage sites and designed so the platforms, sub-sea infrastructure and cabled networks can be shared.

Read more: These machines scrub greenhouse gases from the air – an inventor of direct air capture technology shows how it works
Using excess wind power when it isn’t needed

By nature, wind energy is intermittent. Demand for energy also varies. When the wind can produce more power than is needed, production is curtailed and electricity that could be used is lost.

That unused power could instead be used to remove carbon from the air and lock it away.

For example, New York State’s goal is to have 9 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2035. Those 9 gigawatts would be expected to deliver 27.5 terawatt-hours of electricity per year.

Based on historical wind curtailment rates in the U.S., a surplus of 825 megawatt-hours of electrical energy per year may be expected as offshore wind farms expand to meet this goal. Assuming direct air capture’s efficiency continues to improve and reaches commercial targets, this surplus energy could be used to capture and store upwards of 0.5 million tons of CO2 per year.

That’s if the system only used surplus energy that would have gone to waste. If it used more wind power, its carbon capture and storage potential would increase.
Several Mid-Atlantic areas being leased for offshore wind farms also have potential for carbon storage beneath the seafloor. The capacity is measured in millions of metric tons of CO2 per square kilometer. The U.S. produces about 4.5 billion metric tons of CO2 from energy per year. U.S. Department of Energy and Battelle

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that 100 to 1,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide will have to be removed from the atmosphere over the century to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial levels.

Researchers have estimated that sub-seafloor geological formations adjacent to the offshore wind developments planned on the U.S. East Coast have the capacity to store more than 500 gigatons of CO2. Basalt rocks are likely to exist in a string of buried basins across this area too, adding even more storage capacity and enabling CO2 to react with the basalt and solidify over time, though geotechnical surveys have not yet tested these deposits.
Planning both at once saves time and cost

New wind farms built with direct air capture could deliver renewable power to the grid and provide surplus power for carbon capture and storage, optimizing this massive investment for a direct climate benefit.

But it will require planning that starts well in advance of construction. Launching the marine geophysical surveys, environmental monitoring requirements and approval processes for both wind power and storage together can save time, avoid conflicts and improve environmental stewardship.

Author

David Goldberg
Lamont Research Professor, Columbia University
Disclosure statement
David Goldberg receives funding from the US National Science Foundation; Climateworks Foundation, US Dept of Energy, and the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions
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PHYSICS

Wild New Paper Suggests Earth's Tectonic Activity Has an Unseen Source

DAVID NIELD

26 JANUARY 2022

Earth is far from a solid mass of rock. The outer layer of our planet – known as the lithosphere – is made up of more than 20 tectonic plates; as these gargantuan slates glide about the face of the planet, we get the movement of continents, and interaction at the boundaries, not least of which is the rise and fall of entire mountain ranges and oceanic trenches.

Yet there's some debate over what causes these giant slabs of rock to move around in the first place.

Amongst the many hypotheses put forward over the centuries, convection currents generated by the planet's hot core have been discussed as an explanation, but it's doubtful whether this effect would produce enough energy.

A newly published study looks to the skies for an explanation. Noting that force rather than heat is most commonly used to move large objects, the authors suggest that the interplay of gravitational forces from the Sun, Moon, and Earth could be responsible for the movement of Earth's tectonic plates.

Key to the hypothesis is the barycenter – the center of mass of an orbiting system of bodies, in this case that of Earth and the Moon. This is the point around which our Moon actually orbits, and it's not directly in the center of mass of our planet, which we call the geocenter.

Instead, the location of the barycenter within Earth changes over the course of the month by as much as 600 kilometers (373 miles) because the Moon's orbit around Earth is elliptical due to our Sun's gravitational pull.

"Because the oscillating barycenter lies around 4,600 kilometers [2,858 miles] from the geocenter, Earth's tangential orbital acceleration and solar pull are imbalanced except at the barycenter," says geophysicist Anne Hofmeister, from Washington University in St. Louis.

"The planet's warm, thick and strong interior layers can withstand these stresses, but its thin, cold, brittle lithosphere responds by fracturing."

Further strain is added as Earth spins on its axis, flattening out slightly from a perfect spherical shape – and these three stresses from the Moon, Sun, and Earth itself combine to cause the shifting and the splitting of tectonic plates.

"Differences in the alignment and magnitude of the centrifugal force accompanying the solar pull as Earth undulates in its complex orbit about the Sun superimpose highly asymmetric, temporally variable forces on Earth, which is already stressed by spin," the researchers write.

What's happening underneath the surface is that the solid lithosphere and the solid upper mantle are being spun at different speeds because of these stresses and strains, the researchers report – all due to our particular Earth-Moon-Sun configuration.

"Our uniquely large Moon and particular distance from the Sun are essential," says Hofmeister.

Without the Moon, and the shifts it causes between the barycenter and the geocenter, we wouldn't see the tectonic plate activity we get on Earth's surface, the researchers argue. As the Sun's gravitational pull on the Moon is 2.2 times greater than Earth's pull, it will get drawn away from our planet over the next billion years or so.

That said, the gravitational forces at play still need Earth's hot interior for all this to work, the researchers argue.

"We propose that plate tectonics result from two different, but interacting, gravitational processes," they write. "We emphasize that Earth's interior heat is essential to creating the thermal and physical boundary layer known as the lithosphere, its basal melt, and the underlying low-velocity zone."

To further validate the hypothesis outlined in their study, the researchers apply their analysis to several rocky planets and moons in the Solar System, none of which have had confirmed tectonic activity to date. 

Their comparison between Earth and the other major celestial bodies in the Solar System reveals a potential explanation for why we haven't detected tectonic activity on any of the major moons or rocky planets so far. The one closest to Earth in all the necessary parameters, however, is Pluto.

"One test would be a detailed examination of the tectonics of Pluto, which is too small and cold to convect, but has a giant moon and a surprisingly young surface," says Hofmeister.

The research has been published in GSA Special Papers.

Island Obliterated: Dramatic Changes at Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai

By ADAM VOILAND, NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY JANUARY 25, 2022

April 10, 2021

NASA scientists have been closely watching the evolution of the volcanic island near Tonga since 2015.

When a volcano in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga began erupting in late-December 2021 and then violently exploded in mid-January 2022, NASA scientist Jim Garvin and colleagues were unusually well positioned to study the events. Ever since new land rose above the water surface in 2015 and joined two existing islands, Garvin and an international team of researchers have been monitoring changes there. The team used a combination of satellite observations and surface-based geophysical surveys to track the evolution of the rapidly changing piece of Earth.

The digital elevation maps above and below show the dramatic changes at Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai, the uppermost part of a large underwater volcano. It rises 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) from the seafloor, stretches 20 kilometers (12 miles) across, and is topped by a submarine caldera 5 kilometers in diameter. The island is part of the rim of the Hunga Caldera and was the only part of the edifice that stood above water.

Now all of the new land is gone, along with large chunks of the two older islands.

January 17, 2022

“This is a preliminary estimate, but we think the amount of energy released by the eruption was equivalent to somewhere between 4 to 18 megatons of TNT,” said Garvin, chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “That number is based on how much was removed, how resistant the rock was, and how high the eruption cloud was blown into the atmosphere at a range of velocities.” The blast released hundreds of times the equivalent mechanical energy of the Hiroshima nuclear explosion. For comparison, scientists estimate Mount St. Helens exploded in 1980 with 24 megatons and Krakatoa burst in 1883 with 200 megatons of energy.

Garvin and NASA colleague Dan Slayback worked with several researchers to develop detailed maps of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai above and below the water line. They used high-resolution radar from the Canadian Space Agency’s RADARSAT Constellation Mission, optical observations from the commercial satellite company Maxar, and altimetry from NASA’s ICESat-2 mission. They also used sonar-based bathymetry data collected by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, in partnership with NASA and Columbia University.

For the past six years, researchers from NASA, Columbia, the Tongan Geological Service, and the Sea Education Association worked together to determine how the young terrain was eroding due to the ongoing churn of waves and occasional battering by tropical cyclones. They also noted how wildlife—various types of shrubs, grasses, insects, and birds—had moved from the lush ecosystems of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha‘apai and colonized the more barren landscapes of the newer land.

October 11, 2019

Things changed dramatically in January. For the first few weeks of 2022, the volcanic activity seemed typical enough, with intermittent, small explosions of tephra, ash, steam, and other volcanic gases as magma and seawater interacted at a vent near the middle of the island. The ongoing Surtseyan eruptions were reshaping the landscape and enlarging the island by adding new deposits of ash and tuff to the growing volcanic cone.

“By early January, our data showed the island had expanded by about 60 percent compared to before the December activity started,” said Garvin. “The whole island had been completely covered by a tenth of cubic kilometer of new ash. All of this was pretty normal, expected behavior, and very exciting to our team.”

But on January 13-14, an unusually powerful set of blasts sent ash surging into the stratosphere. Then explosions on January 15 launched material as high as 40 kilometers (25 miles) in altitude and possibly as high as 50 kilometers, blanketing nearby islands with ash and triggering destructive tsunami waves. An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photo of ash over the South Pacific.

January 16, 2022

Most Surtseyan style eruptions involve a relatively small amount of water coming into contact with magma. “If there’s just a little water trickling into the magma, it’s like water hitting a hot frying pan. You get a flash of steam and the water burns burn off quickly,” explained Garvin. “What happened on the 15th was really different. We don’t know why — because we don’t have any seismometers on Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai — but something must have weakened the hard rock in the foundation and caused a partial collapse of the caldera’s northern rim. Think of that as the bottom of the pan dropping out, allowing huge amounts of water to rush into an underground magma chamber at very high temperature.”

The temperature or magma usually exceeds 1000 degrees Celsius; seawater is closer to 20°C. The mixing of the two can be incredibly explosive, particularly in the confined space of a magma chamber. “This was not your standard Surtseyan eruption because of the large amount of water that had to be involved,” said Garvin. “In fact, some of my colleagues in volcanology think this type of event deserves its own designation. For now, we’re unofficially calling it an ‘ultra Surtseyan’ eruption.”

For a geologist like Garvin, watching the birth and evolution of a “Surtseyan island” like this is fascinating, partly because there have not been many other modern examples. Aside from Surtsey—which formed near Iceland in 1963 to 1967 and still exists more than a half-century later—most new Surtseyan islands get eroded away within a few months or years.

What also interests Garvin about these islands is what they may teach us about Mars. “Small volcanic islands, freshly made, evolving rapidly, are windows in the role of surface waters on Mars and how they may have affected similar small volcanic landforms,” he said. “We actually see fields of similar-looking features on Mars in several regions.”

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using elevation data courtesy of Dan Slayback/NASA/GSFC. Astronaut photograph ISS066-E-117965 was acquired on January 16, 2022, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 50 millimeters. NASA ground photo by Dan Slayback.