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)
Saturday, August 26, 2023
Oil companies sue U.S. over Gulf auction changes meant to protect whale
Reuters Thu, August 24, 2023 FILE PHOTO: Unused oil rigs sit in the Gulf of Mexico near Port Fourchon, Louisiana
(Reuters) - An oil and gas industry trade group, the state of Louisiana and Chevron on Thursday sued the Biden administration over its decision to withdraw acreage from an upcoming oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico to protect an endangered whale.
The suit is the latest dispute between the oil and gas industry and the administration of President Joe Biden over leasing federal lands and waters for energy development.
Biden paused federal drilling auctions shortly after taking office in 2021 as part of his climate change agenda, but the year-old Inflation Reduction Act requires that the government hold the Gulf of Mexico lease sale planned for next month.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court for the Western District of Louisiana, comes after the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Wednesday finalized plans to conduct the lease sale. The final sale notice included new restrictions on development meant to protect the endangered Rice's whale.
"Today we're taking steps to challenge the Department of the Interior's unjustified actions to further restrict American energy access in the Gulf of Mexico," American Petroleum Institute Senior Vice President and General Counsel Ryan Meyers said in a statement.
The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The new lease stipulations removed more than 6 million acres (2.4 million hectares) originally intended to be offered at the auction and require vessel operators maintain a vigilant watch for the whales and abide by speed restrictions in the whale's habitat.
API argued that the changes were unjustified and unlawful.
The changes stem from an agreement earlier this month between federal agencies and environmental groups that sued in 2020 alleging the government did not provide adequate safeguards for the whales. That lawsuit is now paused.
Lease Sale 261 will be held on Sept. 27 and will offer approximately 12,395 blocks on approximately 67 million acres (27 million hectares) on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf in the Western, Central, and Eastern Planning Areas in the Gulf of Mexico.
(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey and Nichola Groom; Editing by Michael Perry)
Decapitated skulls — full of cavities and gems — from ancient Maya uncovered in Mexico
Brendan Rascius Fri, August 25, 2023 Photo from INAH
Over 1,000 years ago, multiple Mayan men were decapitated at a temple in modern-day Mexico.
Now, archaeologists have unearthed their skulls, shedding light on the culture and health of the Mayans, a people who once inhabited a wide swath of Latin America.
The remains were uncovered at the Moral-Reforma Archaeological Site in the jungle of southeastern Mexico, according to an Aug. 23 news release from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
Five skulls, in addition to fragments of other bones, were found buried under less than a foot of soil. All of them belonged to males between 17 and 45 years of age.
Based on observed cut marks, archaeologists determined at least two of the men had been decapitated at a nearby temple during the Late Classic Period, which lasted from 600 to 900 A.D.
Additionally, all five skulls were elongated, indicating the men had their heads artificially deformed at a young age. The practice, which would have been accomplished through splinting, was typically associated with the upper echelons of Mayan society.
Cranial modification may have been done to prevent infants from falling ill and to emulate Mayan gods portrayed as having long heads, according to a study published in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences.
Three of the skulls also contained dental cavities, indicating the men regularly consumed carbohydrates, likely from corn, archaeologists said. One of the skulls also contained a jade stone embedded in a tooth.
Dental modification was common among the Mayans and was practiced among people of varying social status, according to the book “Ancient Maya Teeth.” People polished, filed and drilled their teeth, sometimes attaching decorated pieces of pyrite and jade.
The remains of more than 40 Mayans have been uncovered at the archaeological site during the most recent excavation season, archaeologists said.
Texas nuclear waste storage permit invalidated by US appeals court
Fri, August 25, 2023 FILE PHOTO: William F. Buckley Program at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut
By Clark Mindock
(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday canceled a license granted by a federal agency to a company to build a temporary nuclear waste storage facility in western Texas, which the Republican-led state has argued would be dangerous to build in one of the nation's largest oil basins.
A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission lacked the authority under federal law to issue permits for private, temporary nuclear waste storage sites.
The license, which was issued in 2021 to project developer Interim Storage Partners LLC, was challenged by Texas as well as west Texas oil and gas interests that opposed the facility.
U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, writing for the court, agreed with Texas that the Atomic Energy Act does not give the agency the broad authority "to license a private, away-from-reactor storage facility for spent nuclear fuel."
Ho, an appointee of Republican President Donald Trump, said a license for that kind of a facility also conflicts with a U.S. law called the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which prioritizes permanent storage solutions and otherwise allows temporary storage of nuclear waste only at reactors themselves or at federal sites.
Representatives for the NRC, Texas Governor Greg Abbott's office and the developer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Abbott and other state officials had petitioned the court in 2021 to review the order by the agency authorizing Interim Storage Partners to receive and store up to 5,000 metric tons of spent fuel and about 230 metric tons of low-level radioactive waste for 40 years at a planned repository in Andrews County, Texas.
Abbott opposed the plan, saying he would not let Texas become "America's nuclear waste dumping ground."
The plan for a temporary facility was devised in order to address a growing nuclear waste problem in the United States. The Andrews County site was chosen after efforts to build a permanent storage facility in Nevada fell apart amid fierce local opposition.
(Reporting by Clark Mindock in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
Did the Tonga eruption cause this year's extreme heat?
Patrick Pester Fri, August 25, 2023
Maxar overview satellite imagery shows the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano.
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption in January 2022 was one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in recorded history. Detonating underwater with the force of 100 Hiroshima bombs, the blast sent millions of tons of water vapor high into the atmosphere.
Some commentators have speculated in recent weeks that the volcano is to blame for searing summer temperatures and are even using the volcano to cast doubt on the role humans are playing in climate change, as reported by The Hill.
So is the gigantic eruption responsible for this summer's sweltering conditions?
"The short answer is no," Gloria Manney, a senior research scientist at NorthWest Research Associates and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and Luis Millán, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Live Science together in an email.
"Even though El Niño has made the global temperature higher and the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption might have affected some regions for a short time, the main culprit is climate change," they said.
And numerous studies show that the massive eruption isn't causing this climate change — human activites such as the burning of fossil fuels are the driving factor.
Massive volcanic eruptions usually reduce temperatures because they spit out vast amounts of sulfur dioxide, which form sulfate aerosols that can reflect sunlight back into space and cool Earth's surface temporarily, the researchers explained.But the Tonga eruption had another effect because it occurred underwater.
"The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption is peculiar because, in addition to causing the largest increase in stratospheric aerosol in decades, it also injected vast amounts of water vapor into the stratosphere," Manney and Millán said.
Water vapor is a natural greenhouse gas that absorbs solar radiation and traps heat in the atmosphere. The aerosol and water vapor impact the climate system in opposing ways, but several studies have proposed that, due to its larger and more persistent water vapor plume, the eruption could have a temporary net surface warming effect, Manney and Millán said.
A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change in January estimated that the eruption increased the water vapor content of the stratosphere by around 10% to 15% — the biggest increase scientists have ever documented. Using a model, they calculated that the water vapor could increase the average global temperature by up to 0.063 degrees Fahrenheit (0.035 degrees Celsius), Eos magazine reported in March.
Some commentators linked the eruption to warming because of this finding, and other studies suggesting a potential warming effect, but researchers involved in these studies have been clear that the volcano isn't a major factor in our wild weather.
"It's probably fair to say that the influence of [the volcano] on this year's extremes is quite small," Stuart Jenkins, a climate scientist and postdoctoral researcher at Oxford University in the U.K. and lead author of the January study, told The Hill.
The underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption on Jan. 15, 2022.
The bigger climate picture
Earth's warming trend predates the eruption. July may have been the hottest month on record for global temperatures, but the five hottest Julys have all been recorded in the past five years, according to NASA.
Manney and Millán said that more detailed models are needed to reveal how much impact the eruption had on global temperatures relative to burning fossil fuels and the El Niño, but the effects are expected to be much smaller than those from burning fossil fuels.
"Last July's record-breaking global temperatures are just a preview of what may happen if we do not take more bold and ambitious climate action," they said.
In May, the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization warned there's a 66% chance that annual mean global surface temperatures will likely cross a dangerous 2.6 F (1.5 C) warming threshold at some point in the next five years.
At 2.6 F of warming, extreme heat waves will become more widespread, with higher chances of droughts and reduced water availability, according to NASA.
Woods Hole, Mass. (August 23, 2023) -- Scientific exploration of the deep ocean has largely remained inaccessible to most people because of barriers to access due to infrastructure, training, and physical ability requirements for at-sea oceanographic research.
Now, a new and innovative framework for oceanographic research provides a way for shore-based scientists, citizen scientists, and the general public to seamlessly observe and control robotic sampling processes.
The Shared Autonomy for Remote Collaboration (SHARC) framework “enables remote participants to conduct shipboard operations and control robotic manipulators” – such as on remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) –“using only a basic internet connection and consumer-grade hardware, regardless of their prior piloting experience,” according to a paper in Science Robotics, “Enhancing scientific exploration of the deep sea through shared autonomy in remote manipulation.” The framework has been developed by a research team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC).
The SHARC framework enables real-time collaboration between multiple remote operators, who can issue goal-directed commands through simple speech and hand gestures while wearing virtual reality goggles in an intuitive three-dimensional workspace representation.
Through SHARC, “we can open up the operational aspects of deep sea exploration to citizen scientists, whether they be kids in a classroom or people who can’t be present on a ship because of logistical or physical requirements,” said co-author Richard Camilli, a principal investigator for the project and scientist in WHOI’s Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Department. “Citizen scientists can interact with the ROV’s robotic manipulator arm in a virtual world, somewhat analogous to the science fiction ‘holodeck’ holographic system used on Federation starships on Star Trek.”
The human-robot interaction—sometimes referred to as shared autonomy—that SHARC enables, delegates responsibilities between the robot and the human operator based on their complementary strengths. The robot, for instance, can handle kinematics, motion planning, obstacle avoidance, and other low-level tasks, while human operators take responsibility for high-level scene understanding, goal selection, and task-level planning. In addition, SHARC allows for parallel, rather than sequential operation.
“We just give the robot its goal, and it finds a solution,” said Camilli. “People and the robot can collaborate together, where we’re not waiting for one thing to happen in order to do the next thing. While the robotic arm is executing a task, we can be focusing on the next goal.”
In September 2021, during the height of the Covid pandemic, scientists successfully tested SHARC. During an oceanographic expedition in the San Pedro Basin of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, SHARC team members operated WHOI’s Nereid Under Ice (NUI) hybrid ROV from thousands of kilometers away using SHARC’s virtual reality and desktop interfaces. The team members – physically located in Chicago, Boston, and Woods Hole – collaboratively collected a physical push core sample and recorded in-situ X-ray fluorescence measurements of seafloor microbial mats and sediments at water depths exceeding 1000 meters.
“This paper really highlights shared autonomy's potential to help democratize access to the deep sea,” said lead author Amy Phung, who is a student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering, graduate degree program. Phung was one of the scientists operating the NUI vehicle during the 2021 test of SHARC. “With SHARC, our shore-side team was able to collect seafloor samples from over 4000 kilometers away without specialized hardware or extensive prior training. In the future, I believe that further advancements in robotics and autonomy research can someday enable shore-side scientists, students, and enthusiasts to actively participate in and contribute to deep-ocean exploration operations as they occur, which in turn can help to foster ocean literacy among the general public.”
“Whether it is on land, air, or in the ocean, most robots that operate today do so in one of two distinctly different ways: full autonomy or full remote control by highly trained pilots, with the latter being standard for settings like underwater manipulation that involve complex interactions between robots and their environment. This paper describes a new framework that enables robots to operate in between these two extremes in a way that takes advantage of the complementary capabilities of robots and humans,” said co-author Matthew Walter, associate professor at TTIC. Walter also currently is a WHOI guest investigator; previously, he was a student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program. “SHARC allows people with little-to-no training to perform sophisticated tasks with deep-sea robots, with pilot oversight, from the comfort of their homes and offices through a combination of speech and virtual reality and, in turn, promises to redefine how we use robots for marine science and engineering.”
In addition, SHARC is not dependent on a specific kind of ROV, manipulator arm, or other factors. “We can apply the same SHARC technology with totally different robotic arms and vehicles in completely different contexts,” said Camilli. The SHARC framework “is flexible and hardware-agnostic.”
“By using the SHARC framework for scientific exploration in the deep sea – which is a very challenging and unstructured environment – it highlights that this technology can be transferable to many different operational contexts, as well, potentially including subsea scientific infrastructure maintenance, deep space operations, nuclear decommissioning, and even unexploded ordnance remediation,” Camilli added.
Funding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Robotics Initiative, NASA’s Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research (PSTAR) program, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and the Link Foundation. The NOAA Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute provided in-kind support with ship and robotic vehicle operations during 2021 Pacific Ocean demonstrations in the San Pedro Basin.
The Shared Autonomy for Remote Collaboration (SHARC) framework enables remote participants to conduct shipboard operations and control robotic manipulators, according to a new study in Science Robotics.
Authors: Amy Phung1,2, Gideon Billings2, Andrea F. Daniele3, Matthew R. Walter3, Richard Camilli2 *
Affiliations:
1Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Cambridge, MA
2Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Falmouth, MA
3Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago; Chicago, IL
*Corresponding Author
About Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate an understanding of the ocean’s role in the changing global environment. WHOI’s pioneering discoveries stem from an ideal combination of science and engineering—one that has made it one of the most trusted and technically advanced leaders in basic and applied ocean research and exploration anywhere. WHOI is known for its multidisciplinary approach, superior ship operations, and unparalleled deep-sea robotics capabilities. We play a leading role in ocean observation and operate the most extensive suite of data-gathering platforms in the world. Top scientists, engineers, and students collaborate on more than 800 concurrent projects worldwide—both above and below the waves—pushing the boundaries of knowledge and possibility. For more information, please visit www.whoi.edu
Key takeaways:
• Scientific exploration of the deep ocean has largely remained inaccessible to most people because of barriers to access due to infrastructure, training, and physical ability requirements for at-sea oceanographic research. Now, a new and innovative framework for oceanographic research provides a way for shore-based scientists, citizen scientists, and the general public to seamlessly observe and control robotic sampling processes, with pilot oversight.
• The Shared Autonomy for Remote Collaboration (SHARC) framework “enables remote participants to conduct shipboard operations and control robotic manipulators” – such as on remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) –“using only a basic internet connection and consumer-grade hardware, regardless of their prior piloting experience,” according to a new paper in Science Robotics.
• The SHARC framework enables real-time collaboration between multiple remote operators, who can issue goal-directed commands through simple speech and hand gestures while wearing virtual reality goggles in an intuitive three-dimensional workspace representation.
• “SHARC’s ability to relax infrastructure requirements enables remote scientists and other novice shore-side users to participate without requiring additional bandwidth from the ship or specialized hardware. Thus, SHARC provides a promising avenue for democratizing access to deep-ocean science and expanding scientific engagement to a broader audience, including classrooms and the general public.”
JOURNAL
Science Robotics
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Experimental study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Not applicable
ARTICLE TITLE
Enhancing scientific exploration of the deep sea through shared autonomy in remote manipulation
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
23-Aug-2023
The right combo: Getting the most health benefits from fruit smoothies
Researchers find adding a banana decreased the level of flavanols in smoothies
Smoothies can be a tasty and convenient way to get the important fruits and vegetables you need for a healthy diet. But is a banana and blueberry smoothie the best combo? Researchers at the University of California, Davis, suggest that blending certain ingredients in smoothies can influence whether your body is getting a nutritional boost.
The study, published today in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal Food and Function, used smoothies to test how various levels of polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme in many fruits and vegetables, affects the levels of flavanols in food to be absorbed by the body. Flavanols are a group of bioactive compounds that are good for your heart and cognitive health and are naturally found in apples, pears, blueberries, blackberries, grapes and cocoa — common smoothie ingredients.
“We sought to understand, on a very practical level, how a common food and food preparation like a banana-based smoothie could affect the availability of flavanols to be absorbed after intake,” said lead author Javier Ottaviani, director of the Core Laboratory of Mars Edge, which is part of Mars, Inc., and an adjunct researcher with the UC Davis Department of Nutrition.
Slice an apple or peel a banana and the fruit will quickly turn brown. That happens because of polyphenol oxidase, or PPO, an enzyme naturally present in those foods. The browning occurs when the food containing that enzyme is exposed to air, cut or bruised. The researchers wanted to know whether consuming freshly prepared smoothies made with different PPO-containing fruits impacted the amount of flavanols available to the body.
Bananas versus berries
The researchers had participants drink a smoothie made with banana, which has naturally high PPO activity, and a smoothie made with mixed berries, which have naturally low PPO activity. Participants also took a flavanol capsule as a control. Blood and urine samples were analyzed to measure how much flavanols were present in the body after ingesting the smoothie samples and capsule. The researchers found that those who drank the banana smoothie had 84% lower levels of flavanols in their body compared to the control.
“We were really surprised to see how quickly adding a single banana decreased the level of flavanols in the smoothie and the levels of flavanol absorbed in the body,” Ottaviani said. “This highlights how food preparation and combinations can affect the absorption of dietary compounds in foods.”
Last year, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics issued a dietary recommendation, advising people to consume 400 to 600 milligrams of flavanols daily for cardiometabolic health. Ottaviani said for people who are trying to consume those flavanols, they should consider preparing smoothies by combining flavanol-rich fruits like berries with other ingredients that also have a low PPO activity like pineapple, oranges, mango or yogurt.
He also said bananas remain a great fruit to be eaten or consumed in smoothies. For those who want to consume smoothies with bananas, or other high PPO activity fruits and vegetables such as beet greens, the suggestion is to not combine them with flavanol-rich fruits such as berries, grapes and cocoa.
The findings of this study could spur future research into how other foods are prepared and the effects on flavanols, for example, Ottaviani said tea is a major dietary source of flavanols and depending on how it is prepared, a different amount of flavanols would be available for absorption.
“This is certainly an area that deserves more attention in the field of polyphenols and bioactive compounds in general,” said Ottaviani.
Jodi Ensunsa, Reedmond Fong, Jennifer Kimball and Alan Crozier, all affiliated with the UC Davis Department of Nutrition and researchers affiliated with the UC Davis Department of Internal Medicine, University of Reading, King Saud University and Mars, Inc. contributed to the research.
The study was funded by a research grant from Mars, Inc., which collaborates with researchers to study potential benefits of cocoa flavanols for human health.
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Aug. 23, 2023 — Mathematical modeling can show how to safely blend hydrogen with natural gas for transport in existing pipeline systems. A secure and reliable transition to hydrogen is one of the proposed solutions for the shift to a net-zero-carbon economy.
“Mixing hydrogen into a natural gas pipeline changes how the gases flow, which will create new conditions for operators,” said Anatoly Zlotnik, a co-author of a new paper on the modeling in the journal PRX Energy. Zlotnik, a mathematician at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has expertise in modeling, designing and controlling energy-transmission systems. “Our modeling shows that injecting hydrogen gradually into a natural gas pipeline network allows safe, predictable operations.”
Using nonlinear partial differential equations, Zlotnik and his Los Alamos colleagues developed the model for transporting heterogeneous mixtures of natural gas and hydrogen through pipeline systems. The infrastructure modeling includes compressor and regulator units, supply stations that inject gas into the network at defined pressure and hydrogen blends, and flow stations that withdraw the mixture from the network, according to the paper.
Solving challenges to pipeline operation
Transporting hydrogen in existing natural gas pipeline networks enables operators to maximize the utility of these extensive and expensive facilities as part of a strategy to reduce carbon-emitting fossil fuels. Hydrogen is much lighter than natural gas, which is mostly methane, so blending them challenges pipeline operation in new ways.
The Los Alamos team’s mathematical modeling determined that limiting the rate of change of hydrogen injection into a natural gas pipeline will prevent large, rapid changes in pressures. The team’s methods for simulating a pipeline network could allow operators to develop standards on injection rates.
Hydrogen offers several advantages as a clean fuel that doesn’t emit carbon dioxide. In a fuel cell, hydrogen plus oxygen create electricity to power cars, trucks and facilities. Hydrogen can also be blended with natural gas for use in appliances such as household furnaces and dryers, or it can be burned to power manufacturing facilities or generate electricity.
The paper: “Transitions from Monotonicity to Chaos in Gas Mixture Dynamics in Pipeline Networks.” PRX Energy. DOI: 10.1103/PRXEnergy.2.033008
The funding: U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Grid Modeling (AGM) and Laboratory Directed Research and Development at Los Alamos National Laboratory
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL, CONSUMER AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
IMAGE: DRAWING FROM 27 YEARS OF PROPRIETARY INDUSTRY DATA, A NEW UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AND USDA-AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SERVICE STUDY PINPOINTS FACTORS RELATED TO SWEET CORN YIELD VARIABILITY ACROSS U.S. GROWING REGIONS. AMONG SEVERAL ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS, SEED COMPANY WAS A STRONG PREDICTOR OF YIELD VARIABILITY, SUGGESTING AT LEAST ONE VARIABLE IS WITHIN PROCESSORS' CONTROL.view more
CREDIT: LAUREN D. QUINN, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.
URBANA, Ill. — A new analysis from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the USDA-Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has identified the top factors accounting for yield variability in processing sweet corn (used for canned and frozen products), including one within the control of processors.
“We used a very robust approach to account for sweet corn yield with field-level data across some 16,000 fields and 27 years. Year and production region were the two most important variables, which makes logical sense. But the third was seed source: the company that developed the hybrids. That's interesting because it’s actually something the industry has a choice over,” said senior study author Marty Williams, ARS ecologist and affiliate professor in the Department of Crop Sciences, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at U. of I.
The analysis drew from confidential industry data on 67 variables relating to crop genetics, management, weather, and soil factors from fields in the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest, where most of the nation’s processing sweet corn is grown. Williams and co-author Daljeet Dhaliwal, who completed his doctorate in the Department of Crop Sciences, used machine learning techniques to narrow down which of the dozens of factors correlated most strongly to yield across nearly 30 years.
Williams said the top two — year and production area — reflect big-picture environmental conditions affecting the crop over time and space. The third, seed company, came as a surprise because the researchers grouped hybrids into nine companies out of necessity. Without grouping the 100-odd hybrids in some way, the already unwieldy dataset would have been even more challenging to analyze and impossible to interpret.
However, the million-dollar question doesn’t have a satisfying answer, as the analysis doesn’t differentiate or rank the seed companies. Williams said there is a reason for that outside the confidentiality agreement.
“We don't know that every company’s hybrids were grown under conditions identical to their competitors,” Williams said. “One company may have higher yields, but it may also be that their hybrids were grown only in more favorable conditions. We know that processors prefer hybrids that perform well under all conditions, particularly less-than-ideal conditions. Still, it’s interesting that seed source linked highly to yield. We can't say exactly why, but seed source is the one thing processors can choose.”
Another striking variable, ranking just below seed company, was high nighttime temperature. Warmer-than-usual nights increase respiration, which offsets gains made during daytime photosynthesis. According to the analysis, sweet corn yield starts taking a hit above 16 degrees Celsius (61 Fahrenheit). Field corn yield, by contrast, doesn’t start declining until nighttime temperatures exceed 21 C.
“Sweet corn is a shallower rooted crop. It's a smaller plant, and it’s more delicate overall than field corn. So that makes some sense,” Williams said. “It could be concerning, because, at least in the Midwest, we are projected to have warmer nighttime temperatures. It's a correlation, but it's a concerning one.”
The same dataset already signaled sweet corn may be in trouble under a warming climate, but the current analysis gives Williams some hope, with at least one variable under processors’ control.
The study, “Sweet corn yield prediction using machine learning models and field-level data,” is published in Precision Agriculture [DOI:10.1007/s11119-023-10057-1].
At a time of nature crisis driven by unparalleled rates of biodiversity loss, a new interconnected system to monitor biodiversity around the world is urgently needed to direct and focus conservation action.
"The lethal combination of habitat loss, the exploitation of natural populations, pollution, and climate change is causing species extinction rates not seen since the last mass extinction 65 million years ago," said Prof. Andrew Gonzalez, Liber Ero Chair in Conservation Biology at McGill University, and co-Chair of GEO BON. "We lack the means to monitor these impacts fast enough across most areas of the planet."
Operating much like the existing global network of weather stations that monitor climate change and its impacts, the Global Biodiversity Observing System (GBiOS), is a proposal developed by scientists from the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), and its partners, that will combine technology, data, and knowledge from around the world to foster collaboration and data sharing among countries and to provide the data urgently needed to monitor biodiversity change and target action.
GBiOS can galvanize collaboration on the critical issue of biodiversity data access, sharing, and equitable use. "It can provide the information we need at the pace we need it to support countries as they make progress towards their biodiversity goals", said Prof. Alice Hughes, Associate Professor at The University of Hong Kong, and one of the dozens of scientists who collaborated to develop the proposal for GBiOS.
GBiOS is a missing piece of the science-policy puzzle needed to support the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed upon at the COP-15 conference in Montreal last year, contributing to a representative and inclusive understanding of biodiversity change and supporting effective implementation of policies that are designed to reverse biodiversity loss and achieve the global goals for nature in the coming decades.
Saudi Arabia is considering a bid from a Chinese state firm to build a nuclear power plant, which could give the Kingdom leverage in possible talks for U.S. assistance for establishing a civil nuclear industry, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, quoting Saudi officials with knowledge of the matter.
Saudi Arabia has been actively seeking help with expertise in nuclear energy to develop its own civil nuclear generation capacity. The U.S. has been an obvious first choice among potential partners, but Washington has taken a cautious approach. The United States has made it clear that it would only help Riyadh develop nuclear generation capabilities if any agreement includes preventing the enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of plutonium from the reactors, to prevent the weaponization of nuclear power.
Now Saudi Arabia is evaluating a bid from China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) to build a nuclear power plant in an Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, close to the border with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Saudi officials told the Journal.
China Likely Tapped Its Crude Inventories In July
Those officials also admitted to the WSJ that the idea to consider the Chinese bid was an attempt to gain leverage in talks with the U.S. about its help for Saudi Arabia’s civil nuclear program, and potentially extract some compromise on the non-proliferation issues.
The Middle East is not known for its nuclear power generation capabilities. With all its oil wealth, the region has traditionally relied on fossil fuels to meet its electricity needs.
In 2020, the first nuclear power plant in the Arab world began operating in the UAE. Plans are to expand it to a facility that would meet a quarter of the country’s electricity demand.
However, observers warn any expansion of nuclear capabilities in the sensitive Middle Eastern region could lead to a nuclear arms race that could end in disaster.
