It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, June 07, 2022
Exclusion of countries from Americas Summit a 'mistake,' says Chilean president
Canada's PM Trudeau greets Chile's President Boric in Ottawa
Mon, June 6, 2022
OTTAWA (Reuters) -The Biden administration's decision to exclude Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba from the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week was a "mistake," Chilean President Gabriel Boric said on Monday.
The U.S. decision, announced earlier on Monday, was taken due to concerns about human rights and a lack of democracy in the three nations, according to a senior official in the administration of President Joe Biden.
Talking to reporters in Ottawa, Boric said the U.S. move was "reinforcing the position that these other countries take in their own countries. We think it's an error, a mistake, and we're going to say that during the summit."
Boric, a leftist and former student protest leader who took power in March, was speaking alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the two signed a memorandum to coordinate efforts to advance gender equality and empower women. Boric is scheduled to head to the summit after his Canada visit.
Boric's comment was the latest rebuke from a Latin American leader, highlighting how some are pursuing an increasingly independent foreign policy from Washington.
Earlier, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he would not attend the summit because not all countries from the region were invited.
Trudeau did not say whether or not he disagreed with the exclusion, but said Canada looked forward to participating fully in the summit.
"It's extremely important that we have an opportunity to engage with our fellow hemispheric partners, some like-minded, some less like-minded, but talking about important issues that our people have in common," he said.
(Reporting by Ismail Shakil and Steve Scherer in Ottawa, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
Plugging old oil and gas wells is
helping the climate and creating
new green jobs
Carey L. Biron Tue, June 7, 2022
Curtis Shuck of the Well Done Foundation places a fitting in an old gas well pipe during preparations for plugging in Cleveland, Ohio last month.
This article was originally published by Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — For years, the smell of gas wafting through the grounds of the Franciscan Village senior housing facility in Cleveland was a joke among its residents, although they did not realize where the odor was coming from. A few months ago they found out.
An old gas well left unused since the 1950s had broken its clay plug, and methane and other chemical compounds were seeping out, just a few dozen feet from the three apartment buildings making up the 176-unit independent living facility.
“There were a couple of chairs back there, and I’d just sit around and read or listen to the birds, and it was beautiful. And all of a sudden, you’d go, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to leave,’” said Susie Black, a resident for nearly eight years, recalling the nasty smell.
This year, construction at the facility uncovered the leaking well — and prompted quick action. Curtis Shuck, chairman of the nonprofit Well Done Foundation that has been plugging the well, pointed to two nearby buildings, both just 30 feet away.
He was squatting under a large rig that would be used to drill out the culprit: a shallow hole with an old, 6-inch metal pipe going down perhaps as far as 2,700 feet — no one was sure, he said.
For the first time, the U.S. government is giving such old wells major attention in an effort to curb environmental pollution, reduce climate-heating emissions of methane, and create green jobs.
In November, it allocated $4.7 billion to tackle the problem of the orphan wells nationally.
This month officials released final guidance on how states could start applying for the money. Already 26 states — almost every one with documented orphan wells — have indicated they intend to apply for the grants, according to the Interior Department.
There are tens of thousands of old wells on federal lands nationwide, and at least another 130,000 on state and private lands, according to department official Steven H. Feldgus.
A map indicates the location of an old gas well amid a cluster of buildings including an assisted living facility, a church and a school in Cleveland, Ohio.
But, he told a congressional hearing last month, "the actual number is probably much higher".
The full number is unknown because for decades energy companies were not required to maintain or even record where their capped wells were located.
Adam Peltz, a senior attorney with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), said there could be up to a million in total across the country.
Government officials, green groups, oil service workers and others are now expecting a stampede of action throughout the coming decade, with implications for local economies, groundwater contamination and climate change.
A federal program to plug a half-million wells could create as many as 120,000 specialized oil and gas industry jobs, according to 2020 research from Columbia University and Resources for the Future, a think-tank.
The Well Done Foundation has already been doing this work for a few years, pioneering a funding approach that uses carbon credits linked to curbing the wells’ methane emissions.
That morning, it had received its plugging permit for the Cleveland site — a process that would probably take a small crew a week or two.
Shuck, who set up the foundation in 2019 after three decades in the oil and gas industry, wrapped a large bag around the top of the pipe and timed how long it took to quickly inflate with escaping gases.
“This one is averaging about 5,000 cubic feet per day — a lot of impact to the environment,” he explained.
Back to the future in Pennsylvania
Oil and gas development in the United States began in the mid-19th century in Pennsylvania, noted Peltz of the EDF, and since then about 4 million wells have been drilled.
Operators have long been required to plug wells once finished, but “the system hasn’t worked right", he added.
Most of the new federal money will now go to the known backlog of orphan wells, but some will also help track down lost wells using drones, landowner reports and more, said Peltz, who helped write the new legislation.
“These wells are everywhere, in every kind of urban, suburban and rural setting. Around 9 million people live within a mile of these documented orphaned wells,” he said.
Other funds will seek to bolster preparations for plugging the 1 million wells still active today, up to three-quarters of which are already producing low volumes, Peltz said.
Energy production is today one of the largest drivers of changing land use in the United States, said Matthew D. Moran, a biology professor at Hendrix College.
Most oil and gas wells are on private land, so companies typically lease the rights to drill, and after the wells run out, the rights revert to the owner, he said.
“In many cases, an abandoned pad might be an acre in size, and nothing is going on. It’s an abandoned piece of land, and restoring it costs money,” he explained.
Last year he and other researchers estimated it would cost about $7 billion to restore 430,000 well sites on 800,000 hectares nationally — but found the financial benefits of doing so would be about three times higher.
Factoring in harder-to-quantify effects such as rising property values and attractiveness would yield even more — altogether adding up to probably five or six times the cost, the team estimated.
“We think that’s pretty concrete and direct to the economies in these places,” Moran said. “We consider this an investment.”
'We un-drill them'
Back in Cleveland, Keith Moore was getting ready to do what his family has done for decades: drill oil and gas wells.
He has not drilled any new wells since 2014, however, with changing economics making small-scale operations unprofitable, he said.
Instead, for years, he and his crews have been doing the complicated work of plugging old wells.
“We un-drill them, that’s the best way to describe what we do,” he said, standing next to his equipment at the Franciscan Village site.
There was no formal record of the well here, said Donnald J. Heckelmoser Jr., chief executive of LSC Service Corporation, which manages the property.
“We always knew something was there, but never knew it was an orphan well,” Heckelmoser said.
Its discovery halted the construction of a new atrium that will cover the landscaped yard area, but with the capping underway, Heckelmoser felt the project was getting back on track.
As someone who oversees multiple properties and seeks to develop more affordable housing in the Cleveland area, he now knows what to do should the situation arise again.
“There’s a solution, and luckily we were able to find that,” he said.
After drilling out the well to its full depth, the hole is filled with concrete, which can take a few days to weeks, said Moore, who will do 15 to 20 such projects this year.
He recalled plugging wells in some crazy places, including a highway and a school gymnasium.
“If you took a shotgun and shot a map, that’s how many wells are left to be capped,” he said. "They’re anywhere and everywhere.”
Three abortion activists strip to underwear in protest during Joel Osteen church service
Scott Gleeson, USA TODAY
Three abortion activists stripped down to their underwear in protest to interrupt a Sunday service at pastor Joel Osteen's Texas megachurch.
After Osteen had finished leading a prayer and congregants began to sit down, the women stood up and began chanting, "my body, my (expletive choice)." Two of the women removed their dresses, with one shouting, "Overturn Roe, hell no!"
The video footage of the protest quickly went viral over Twitter and the 11 a.m. service's live stream has since been taken down.
The activists, a trio from Texas Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, were wearing white sports bras with green hand prints on them to symbolize the color representing the pro-choice movement. Security promptly escorted the three women out of the church as many congregants began to cheer at their dismissal.
The women said they opted to protest in Osteen's megachurch, which draws upwards of 50,000 people regularly, arguing that anti-abortion protesters show up in their safe spaces – doctors' offices and clinics – to make them feel uncomfortable.
"I know it seems very outrageous to do it in a church in a private space," activist Julianne D'Eredita told local Houston television station KPRC 2 of the protest, which continued outside the Lakewood Church afterwards. "However, the people who are enforcing these laws have no qualms coming up to women in private spaces such as doctors' offices and medical clinics to harass them and call them murderers.
"Joel Osteen has an international audience and silence is violence when it comes to things like these. We have a very unprecedented and very short amount of time to garner the attention that we need to get millions of people on the streets, millions of people doing actions like we were today."
"My body, my f—ing choice," one activist with Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights is heard shouting in the church as she took off her dress, leaving her wearing only underwear, according to a video posted to social media on Sunday.
"Overturn Roe, hell no," another activist screams as she removes her clothing. A total of three women took part in the protest by stripping down to their underwear on Sunday in the church and shouting, according to Chron.
The women were escorted out of the church, allowing Osteen to continue preaching, which garnered cheers and applause from churchgoers.
Joel Osteen, the pastor of Lakewood Church, stands with his wife, Victoria Osteen, as he conducts a service at his church as the city starts the process of rebuilding after severe flooding during Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Getty Images
Outside, however, the activists continued their protest and were joined by other supporters, according to the outlet.
The activists are part of Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, which has condemned the possibility of the Supreme Court overturning Roe. v. Wade following a leaked draft decision last month.
"I know it seems very outrageous to do it in a church in a private space," activist Julianne D'Eredita told KPRC 2 of the protest. "However, the people that are enforcing these laws have no qualms coming up to women in private spaces such as doctors' offices and medical clinics to harass them and call them murderers."
The video of the disruption has since gained thousands of views. A representative for Osteen’s Lakewood Church did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
A long line of cars wait to get into the Lakewood church which was designated as a shelter for Hurricane Harvey victims in Houston, Texas August 29, 2017. REUTERS/Rick Wilking REUTERS/Rick Wilking
"Joel Osteen has an international audience and silence is violence when it comes to things like these," D'Eredita added. "We have a very unprecedented and very short amount of time to garner the attention that we need to get millions of people on the streets, millions of people doing actions like we were today."
IMAGE: A RED PAINT SAMPLE TAKEN FROM A 1,000-YEAR-OLD MASK EXCAVATED FROM A SICÁN TOMB IN PERU CONTAINS HUMAN BLOOD AND BIRD EGG PROTEINS, IN ADDITION TO A RED PIGMENT.view more
CREDIT: ADAPTED FROM JOURNAL OF PROTEOME RESEARCH 2021, DOI: 10.1021/ACS.JPROTEOME.1C00472
Thirty years ago, archeologists excavated the tomb of an elite 40–50-year-old man from the Sicán culture of Peru, a society that predated the Incas. The man’s seated, upside-down skeleton was painted bright red, as was the gold mask covering his detached skull. Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research have analyzed the paint, finding that, in addition to a red pigment, it contains human blood and bird egg proteins.
The Sicán was a prominent culture that existed from the ninth to 14th centuries along the northern coast of modern Peru. During the Middle Sicán Period (about 900–1,100 A.D.), metallurgists produced a dazzling array of gold objects, many of which were buried in tombs of the elite class. In the early 1990s, a team of archaeologists and conservators led by Izumi Shimada excavated a tomb where an elite man’s seated skeleton was painted red and placed upside down at the center of the chamber. The skeletons of two young women were arranged nearby in birthing and midwifing poses, and two crouching children’s skeletons were placed at a higher level. Among the many gold artifacts found in the tomb was a red-painted gold mask, which covered the face of the man’s detached skull. At the time, scientists identified the red pigment in the paint as cinnabar, but Luciana de Costa Carvalho, James McCullagh and colleagues wondered what the Sicán people had used in the paint mix as a binding material, which had kept the paint layer attached to the metal surface of the mask for 1,000 years.
To find out, the researchers analyzed a small sample of the mask’s red paint. Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy revealed that the sample contained proteins, so the team conducted a proteomic analysis using tandem mass spectrometry. They identified six proteins from human blood in the red paint, including serum albumin and immunoglobulin G (a type of human serum antibody). Other proteins, such as ovalbumin, came from egg whites. Because the proteins were highly degraded, the researchers couldn’t identify the exact species of bird’s egg used to make the paint, but a likely candidate is the Muscovy duck. The identification of human blood proteins supports the hypothesis that the arrangement of the skeletons was related to a desired “rebirth” of the deceased Sicán leader, with the blood-containing paint that coated the man’s skeleton and face mask potentially symbolizing his “life force,” the researchers say.
The authors do not acknowledge any funding sources.
The abstract that accompanies this article is available here.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.
Human Blood and Bird Egg Proteins Identified in Red Paint Covering a 1000-Year-Old Gold Mask from Peru
Growing wildfire threats loom over the birthplace of the atomic bomb
Los Alamos National Laboratory says it’s prepared, but an audit in 2021 suggests it’s not
By James R. Riordon Guest Writer At one point, the Cerro Pelado fire in New Mexico came within about six kilometers of Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb. Here, smoke from the fire is seen on April 29. ROBERT BROWMAN/THE ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL VIA AP
There are things I will always remember from my time in New Mexico. The way the bark of towering ponderosa pines smells of vanilla when you lean in close. Sweeping vistas, from forested mountaintops to the Rio Grande Valley, that embellish even the most mundane shopping trip. The trepidation that comes with the tendrils of smoke rising over nearby canyons and ridges during the dry, wildfire-prone summer months.
There were no major wildfires near Los Alamos National Laboratory during the year and a half that I worked in public communications there and lived just across Los Alamos Canyon from the lab. I’m in Maryland now, and social media this year has brought me images and video clips of the wildfires that have been devastating parts of New Mexico, including the Cerro Pelado fire in the Jemez Mountains just west of the lab.
Wherever they pop up, wildfires can ravage the land, destroy property and displace residents by the tens of thousands. The Cerro Pelado fire is small compared with others raging east of Santa Fe — it grew only to the size of Washington, D.C. The fire, which started mysteriously on April 22, is now mostly contained. But at one point it came within 5.6 kilometers of the lab, seriously threatening the place that’s responsible for creating and maintaining key portions of fusion bombs in our nation’s nuclear arsenal.
That close call may be just a hint of growing fire risks to come for the weapons lab as the Southwest suffers in the grip of an epic drought made worse by human-caused climate change (SN: 4/16/20). May and June typically mark the start of the state’s wildfire season. This year, fires erupted in April and were amplified by a string of warm, dry and windy days. The Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon fires east of Santa Fe have merged to become the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history.
Los Alamos National Lab is in northern New Mexico, about 56 kilometers northwest of Santa Fe. The lab’s primary efforts revolve around nuclear weapons, accounting for 71 percent of its $3.9 billion budget, according the lab’s fiscal year 2021 numbers. The budget covers a ramp-up in production of hollow plutonium spheres, known as “pits” because they are the cores of nuclear bombs, to 30 per year beginning in 2026. That’s triple the lab’s current capability of 10 pits per year. The site is also home to radioactive waste and debris that has been a consequence of weapons production since the first atomic bomb was built in Los Alamos in the early 1940s (SN: 8/6/20).
What is the danger due to fire approaching the lab’s nuclear material and waste? According to literature that Peter Hyde, a spokesperson for the lab, sent to me to ease my concern, not much.
Over the last 3½ years, the lab has removed 3,500 tons of trees and other potential wildfire fuel from the sprawling, 93-square-kilometer complex. Lab facilities, a lab pamphlet says, “are designed and operated to protect the materials that are inside, and radiological and other potentially hazardous materials are stored in containers that are engineered and tested to withstand extreme environments, including heat from fire.”
What’s more, most of roughly 20,000 drums full of nuclear waste that were stored under tents on the lab’s grounds have been removed. They were a cause for anxiety during the last major fire to threaten the lab in 2011. According to the most recent numbers on the project’s website, all but 3,812 of those drums have been shipped off to be stored 655 meters underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
But there’s still 3,500 cubic meters of nuclear waste in the storage area, according to a March 2022 DOE strategic planning document for Los Alamos. That’s enough to fill 17,000 55-gallon drums. So potentially disastrous quantities of relatively exposed nuclear waste remain at the lab — a single drum from the lab site that exploded after transport to Carlsbad in 2014 resulted in a two-year shutdown of the storage facility. With a total budgeted cleanup cost of $2 billion, the incident is one of the most expensive nuclear accidents in the nation’s history.
Since the 2011 fire, a wider buffer space around the tents has been cleared of vegetation. In conjunction with fire suppression systems, it’s unlikely that wildfire will be a danger to the waste-filled drums, according to a 2016 risk analysis of extreme wildfire scenarios conducted by the lab.
But a February 2021 audit by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General is less rosy. It found that, despite the removal of most of the waste drums and the multiyear wildfire mitigation efforts that the lab describes, the lab’s wildfire protection is still lacking.
According to the 20-page federal audit, the lab at that time had not developed a “comprehensive, risk-based approach to wildland fire management” in accordance with federal policies related to wildland fire management. The report also noted compounding issues, including the absence of federal oversight of the lab’s wildfire management activities.
A canyon on lab grounds that runs alongside the adjacent city of Los Alamos (two spots shown) was called out in an audit by the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General because it was packed with about 400 to 500 trees per acre. The ideal number from a wildfire management viewpoint is 40 to 50 trees per acre.
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY’S WILDLAND FIRE PREVENTION EFFORTS AT THE LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Among the ongoing risks, not all fire roads were maintained well enough to provide a safe route for firefighters and others, “which could create dangerous conditions for emergency responders and delay response times,” the auditors wrote.
And a canyon that runs between the lab and the adjacent town of Los Alamos was identified in the report as being packed with 10 times the number of trees that would be ideal, from a wildfire safety perspective. To make matters worse, there’s a hazardous waste site at the bottom of the canyon that could, the auditors wrote, “produce a health risk to the environment and to human health during a fire.”
“The report was pretty stark,” says Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “And certainly, after all the warnings, if they’re still not doing all they need to do to fully mitigate the risk, then that’s just foolishness.”
A 2007 federal audit of Los Alamos, as well as nuclear weapons facilities in Washington state and Idaho, showed similar problems. In short, it seems little has changed at Los Alamos in the 14-year span between 2007 and 2021. Lab spokespeople did not respond to my questions about the lab’s efforts to address the specific problems identified in the 2021 report, despite repeated requests.
The Los Alamos area has experienced three major wildfires since the lab was founded — the Cerro Grande fire in 2000, Las Conchas in 2011 and Cerro Pelado this year. But we probably can’t count on 11-year gaps between future wildfires near Los Alamos, according to Alice Hill, the senior fellow for energy and the environment with the Council on Foreign Relations, who’s based in Washington, D.C.
The changing climate is expected to dramatically affect wildfire risks in years to come, turning Los Alamos and surrounding areas into a tinderbox. A study in 2018 in Climatic Change found that the region extending from the higher elevations in New Mexico, where Los Alamos is located, into Colorado and Arizona will experience the greatest increase in wildfire probabilities in the Southwest. A new risk projection tool that was recommended by Hill, called Risk Factor, also shows increasing fire risk in the Los Alamos area over the next 30 years.
“We are at the point where we are imagining, as we have to, things that we’ve never experienced,” Hill says. “That is fundamentally different than how we have approached these problems throughout human history, which is to look to the past to figure out how to be safer in the future…. The nature of wildfire has changed as more heat is added [to the planet], as temperatures rise.”
Increased plutonium pit production will add to the waste that needs to be shipped to Carlsbad. “Certainly, the radiological assessments in sort of the worst case of wildfire could lead to a pretty significant release of radioactivity, not only affecting the workers onsite but also the offsite public. It’s troubling,” says Lyman, who suggests that nuclear labs like Los Alamos should not be located in such fire-prone areas.
The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (shown in March of 2019), a key facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was evacuated in March 2019 when power lines sparked a nearby wildfire. It could be damaged or even destroyed if a high-intensity wildfire burned through a nearby heavily forested canyon, according to an audit by the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General.
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY’S WILDLAND FIRE PREVENTION EFFORTS AT THE LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
For now, some risks from the Cerra Pelado wildfire will persist, according to Jeff Surber, operations section chief for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forestry Service’s efforts to fight the fire. Large wildfires like Cerra Pelado “hold heat for so long and they continue to smolder in the interior where it burns intermittently,” he said in a May 9 briefing to Los Alamos County residents, and to concerned people like me watching online.
It will be vital to monitor the footprint of the fire until rain or snow finally snuffs it out late in the year. Even then, some danger will linger in the form of “zombie fires” that can flame up long after wildfires appear to have been extinguished (SN: 5/19/21). “We’ve had fires come back in the springtime because there was a root underground that somehow stayed lit all winter long,” said Surber.
So the Cerro Pelado fire, and its occasional smoky tendrils, will probably be a part of life in northern New Mexico for months still. And the future seems just as fiery, if not worse. That’s something all residents, including the lab, need to be preparing for.
Meantime, if you make it out to the mountains of New Mexico soon enough, be sure to sniff a vanilla-flavored ponderosa while you still can. I know I will.
James R. Riordis a freelance science writer who covers physics, math, astronomy and occasional lifestyle stories.
Ancient zircons offer insights into earthquakes of the past
New research could improve understanding of how today’s tremors release energy These rocks at the Devil’s Punchbowl geologic formation near Los Angeles were uplifted by movement along the Punchbowl Fault, a now-inactive portion of the larger San Andreas Fault. NYARTSNWORDS/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Earthquakes have rocked the planet for eons. Studying the quakes of old could help scientists better understand modern tremors, but tools to do such work are scarce.
Enter zircons. Researchers used the gemstones to home in on the temperatures reached within a fault during earthquakes millions of years ago. The method offers insights into the intensity of long-ago quakes, and could improve understanding of how today’s tremors release energy, the researchers report in the April Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.
“The more we understand about the past, the more we can understand what might happen in the future,” says Emma Armstrong, a thermochronologist at Utah State University in Logan.
Armstrong and colleagues focused on California’s Punchbowl Fault. That now-quiet portion of the larger San Andreas Fault was probably active between 1 million to 10 million years ago, Armstrong says.
Heat from friction is generated in a fault when it slips and triggers an earthquake. Previous analyses of preserved organic material suggested that temperatures within the Punchbowl Fault peaked between 465° Celsius and 1065° C. The researchers suspected that zircons in rocks from the fault could narrow that broad window.
Zircons often contain the radioactive chemical elements uranium and thorium, which decay to helium at a predictable rate (SN: 5/2/22). That helium then builds up in the crystals. But when a zircon is heated past a temperature threshold — the magnitude of which depends on the zircon’s composition — the accumulated helium escapes.
Measuring the amounts of the three elements in zircons from the fault suggests that the most intense earthquake generated temperatures lower than 800° C. That roughly halves the range previously reported. The finding provides clues to the amount of heat released by quakes, something difficult to measure for modern tremors because they often occur at great depths.
Armstrong plans to continue studying zircons, in the hopes of finding more ways to exploit them for details about ancient quakes.
Curiosity Has Found Some Truly Weird-Looking, Twisty Rock Towers on Mars
The Curiosity rover has found an outstanding rock formation piercing the alien landscape of Mars. Amongst the shallow sands and boulders of the Gale Crater rise several twisting towers of rock – the spikes of sediment look almost like frozen streams of water poured from an invisible jug in the sky.
In reality, experts say the columns were probably created from cement-like substances that once filled ancient cracks of bedrock. As the softer rock gradually eroded away, the snaking streams of compact material remained standing.
The rock formations were snapped by a camera on board the Curiosity rover on May 17, but the image was only shared last week by NASA and experts at the SETI institute (which stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), as part of SETI's planetary picture of the day initiative.
As alien as the structures might look, they aren't without precedent.
In Earthly geology, a 'hoodoo' is a tall and thin spire of rock formed by erosion. It can also be called a tent rock, fairy chimney, or earth pyramid.
Hoodoos are usually found in dry environments, like the canyons of Utah or southern Serbia, and the columns can sometimes tower as high as ten-story buildings.
A hoodoo in Bryce Canyon, Utah. (Don Graham/Flickr/CC BY SA 2.0)
The natural structures are formed by hard rock layers that build up within softer sedimentary rock. As the rest of the rock erodes away from rain, wind or frost, you're left with a magnificent mould of an ancient fracture in the bedrock.
Hoodoos East Coulee, Alberta, Canada. (Darren Kirby/CC BY SA 2.0)
The two towers of rock on Mars look like they are about to topple over compared to the ones we see on Earth, but clearly they are solid enough to withstand the lighter surface gravity experienced on the red planet.
Another strange rock formation found by Curiosity earlier this year might have been created in a similar way, albeit with very different results.
This other, smaller rock looks sort of like a piece of coral or a flower with numerous little petals stretching up towards the sun.
"One theory that has emerged is that the rock is a type of concretion created by minerals deposited by water in cracks or divisions in existing rock," a press release from NASA explained at the time.
"These concretions can be compacted together, can be harder and denser than surrounding rock, and can remain even after the surrounding rock erodes away."
A flower-shaped rock found on Mars. (NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS)
The Gale crater isn't wholly flat, but the alien spires discovered by Curiosity stand out from the rest of their environment, although no height measurements accompany the image.
The towering tombstones of rock might look lifeless now, but their formation speaks volumes about ancient conditions on Mars and whether life could have once thrived there billions of years ago.
Planting more crops isn't the only way to feed a growing population. Cutting air pollution could go a long way towards increasing crop production while saving precious land and money, according to new research.
If the world cuts the emissions of just one type of air pollutant in half, estimates suggest winter crops could yield about 28 percent more in China and up to 10 percent more in other parts of the world.
The pollutants in question are oxides of nitrogen, a family of invisible, poisonous gasses produced by car exhaust and industrial emissions that include nitrogen dioxide.
Nitrogen oxide emissions are some of the most widely distributed air pollutants in the world, and it's suspected that if plants are exposed to higher levels of these gasses, their leaves can be damaged and their growth stunted, although experts are still figuring out exactly how.
At the same time, nitrogen oxides are also precursors to the formation of ozone and tiny aerosols in the atmosphere, which can dim sunlight and reduce crop productivity in turn.
Last year, research by some of the same authors found that reductions in ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide caused a 20 percent increase in corn and soybean yields in the United States between 1999 and 2019.
That's around US$5 billion dollars worth of crops saved each year by reducing just four types of air pollutants.
Nitrogen dioxide is one of the easier pollutants to measure regionally, and directly compare to crop growth. When emitted into the atmosphere, nitrogen dioxide interacts with ultraviolet light in a way easily detected by satellites.
"Nitrogen oxides are invisible to humans, but new satellites have been able to map them with incredibly high precision," explains agricultural ecologist David Lobell from Stanford University.
"Since we can also measure crop production from space, this opened up the chance to rapidly improve our knowledge of how these gasses affect agriculture in different regions."
Comparing nitrogen dioxide emissions in various regions of the world with the greenness of cropland, the team found a consistently negative effect.
The loss of greenery was especially noticeable in China and for wintertime crops like wheat. Using this correlation, researchers estimate that cutting nitrogen dioxide emissions by 50 percent would improve winter crop yields in China by roughly 28 percent. In summer, yields could improve by 16 percent.
In India, researchers predict nitrogen dioxide reductions could increase crop yields by up to 8 percent for winter, and 6 percent for summer. Meanwhile, in western Europe the yields for summer and winter crops could increase by 10 percent.
When yield rates typically fluctuate around a percent every year, the effects of cutting air pollution could be immense for some parts of the world.
"The main take-home from this study is that the agricultural benefits of these actions could be really substantial, enough to help ease the challenge of feeding a growing population," says environmental scientist Jennifer Burney from the University of California San Diego.
We might not yet know how nitrogen oxides directly impact plant growth, but the strong relationship found in the current research suggests air pollution is contributing to crop losses around the world.
Iconic Siberian Tundra Is on Track to Entirely Vanish Off The Face of The Planet
STEPHANIE PAPPAS, LIVE SCIENCE
7 JUNE 2022
The Siberian tundra could disappear by the year 2500, unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced.
Even in the best-case scenarios, two-thirds of this landscape – defined by its short growing season and cover of grasses, moss, shrubs and lichens – could vanish, leaving behind two fragments separated by 1,553 miles (2,500 kilometers), scientists recently predicted.
And as the tundra's permafrost cover melts away, it could release vast quantities of stored greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, potentially accelerating warming worldwide.
"This was stunning for us to see how quickly the tundra will be turned over to forest," said ecologist and forest modeler Stefan Kruse of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany.
The loss of the tundra will not only be a blow for biodiversity and human culture, but might also worsen Arctic warming, Kruse told Live Science.
Warming in the Arctic has advanced rapidly in recent decades, about twice as fast as warming in the rest of the globe. Between 1960 and 2019, air temperatures rose nearly 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) across the Arctic region, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). This heat reduced sea ice cover and is affecting the Arctic's land as well. One of those implications is the northward march of Siberian larch forests.
How quickly these forests will replace the grassy, shrubby tundra ecosystem is unknown. Treeline changes in response to climate aren't consistent around the globe, Kruse said.
In some areas, treelines have advanced northward. In others, they have remained static; in still others, they've even retreated. Previous research in the Siberian tundra has focused on small areas, but there can be a lot of variability from location to location.
Now, Kruse and his colleague, AWI professor Ulrike Herzschuh, have created a new computer model that evaluates the full 2,485-mile-long (4,000 km) expanse of the Siberian tundra.
The model takes into account the life cycles of individual trees: from how far they can disperse their seeds, to how well they grow when faced with competition from other trees, to growth rates based on temperature, precipitation and depth of the summer thaw of permafrost that occurs in tundra regions.
The researchers found that once the trees start marching northward in response to warming, they do so quickly – and they are not likely to retreat again should temperatures cool. Under a scenario in which carbon emissions are reduced to zero by 2100 and global temperature rise remains below 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C), only 32.7 percent of today's tundra would remain by 2500.
This fraction would be split into two mini-tundras: one in Chukotka in the far east and one on the Taymyr Peninsula in the far north.
Cascade of change
But even that bleak scenario may be impossible to achieve without very quick action, meaning that the outcome for the tundra could easily be far worse.
In an intermediate scenario in which carbon emissions don't start declining until 2050 and are cut by half by 2100, larch trees would cover all but 5.7 percent of the current tundra by 2500, essentially annihilating the ecosystem.
In the warmer global scenarios, trees could spread northward by as much as 18.6 miles (30 km), the researchers reported on May 24 in the journal eLife.
When Kruse and Herzschuh tested what would happen if temperatures cooled after the tundra became a forest, they found that the treeline did not retreat as quickly as it had advanced. Once mature trees are established, they can withstand a lot, Kruse said.
The study didn't directly model what might happen to tundra dwellers, such as reindeer, Kruse said, but splitting populations into two regions, where they are cut off from interbreeding, is typically bad for the survival of species.
Reindeer (known as caribou in North America) migrate from north to south and back again throughout the year, and it's not known how forest expansion may affect their migration and life cycles.
The impacts are likely to be felt by humans, too. Indigenous cultures such as the Nenets people of northwestern Siberia both herd and hunt reindeer.
"The culture is dependent partly on tundra," Kruse said. "If this gets lost, it will be a major loss for humanity."
How the loss of the tundra may affect future warming is also uncertain, but covering the mossy, scrubby grasslands with tall trees could make matters worse. Snow-covered tundra is lighter in color than larch forest canopy; the forests will therefore absorb more heat than the tundra does, potentially making the Arctic hotter, faster, Kruse said.
This additional heat could hasten and deepen the melting of the tundra's permafrost, which stores massive amounts of greenhouse gases – up to 1,400 gigatons globally, according to the NSIDC. Permafrost thaw could release these gases as well as long-frozen microbes and viruses.
Change will likely go beyond the replacement of tundra with larch trees, Kruse added. As warmer summers thaw deeper and deeper layers of permafrost, evergreen trees can then move in as well.
These trees remain leaf-covered year-round, potentially absorbing even more heat than larch do. The southern side of the taiga, where temperatures are already higher than in the north, will likely heat up even more, leading to drought and wildfires – which release still more carbon into the atmosphere.
The findings present compelling reasons to push for the ambitious reduction of fossil fuel emissions.
The model used in the study, however, can also be used to identify the most resilient portions of the Siberian tundra, Kruse said. These resilient areas could be prioritized for conservation investments.
"The best option would be to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the pressure," he said. "But nevertheless, if we cannot do that, one needs to do species conservation."
A bumper crop of curse tablets was retrieved from a bathhouse well in the Athenian Kerameikos in 2016, where they had sat undiscovered since the late-4th to early-3rd-century BCE. Curse tablets discovered in the region have typically been from the 5th and 4th century BCE and were mostly found in tombs – so why were these items found in a well?
Researchers involved in the discovery believe that a change in law may be to blame, as guards blocked people’s access to tombs in Athens where they probably would have preferred to commit their curses. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
People seeking vengeance, therefore, had to get creative as to where they could dispel their curse tablets, and a public well may have presented the perfect opportunity. Furthermore, the fact that wells plunge into the ground may have led those in need of a good curse to think that this was an alternative route to the underworld while the tombs were out of action.
“The findspot in a bathhouse well can be related to the fact that curse tablets, which were in earlier times preferably deposited in certain kinds of tombs, were now dropped into wells that were seen as another possibility of access to the underworld,” said Dr Jutta Stroszeck from the German Archaeological Institute, Athens (DAI), to IFLScience.
“The change occurs after the reorganisation of the Athenian necropolis by Demetrius of Phaleron in 317/307 BCE, widely impeding the performance of magic at tombs.”
This liver-shaped curse tablet was retrieved from the bathhouse well.
Image courtesy of Dr Jutta Stroszeck / German Archaeological Institute
Tombs were a favorite for curses as certain groups of dead people were believed to be the best curse bearers. In her paper, Stroszeck references another group of curse tablets dating to the 3rd century CE from Kourion, an ancient site on the south coast of Cyprus, which came with detailed instructions as to where to put a curse tablet within a necropolis. They included:children and others who “died before their time” (ἄωροι) poor people who were “without proper burial” (ἄποροι ταφῆς) people who were “violently killed” (βιαιοθάνατοι), such as murder victims criminals who had been “axed” to death (πεπελεκισμένοι) people who were “in a mass grave” (πολυάνδριοι), such as war casualties
It seems when these preferred curse bearers were in short supply, the plunging depths of a well had to make do for people to plop their curses into. The 30 curse tablets they found there were interesting in their diversity, as they included new forms such as one that looked like a liver, and another made to look like a knife.
“The new pieces teach us that there was a variety of forms created for this purpose,” said Stroszeck. “Apart from the more common tablet or stripe form that both go back to ancient writing utensils.”
Curse tablets from Athens were often used against opponents in law to stop the cursed from being able to talk, move or even think, giving the curse-caster the advantage. They were also used by love rivals, says Stroszeck, and Haaretz reports that a curse from someone jealous of a newlywed's marriage made special mention of the cursed bride's vulva.
Even charioteers would resort to curses ahead of athletic contests as a way of besting their competitors. Underworld? More like unsporting.
