Edmonton  bat monitoring program aims to explore natural pest control

Story by Emily Williams • CBC

T he easiest way to find a bat roosting site is to look for traces of guano — or bat droppings — underneath a bridge. Especially during the summer period when bats are raising their pups.

The City of Edmonton is undertaking this work with a new bat monitoring program this year. It's the first time the city has done an official assessment of what bats are in the city, and where.

Initiated due to a shift in the city's Mosquito Control Program, the bat monitoring program can help support species that serve as natural pest control.

The city wants to decrease pesticide use and reduce habitat suitable for mosquitoes, said Sarah McPike, senior biological sciences technologist at the city's Pest Management Lab.



Guano, a telltale sign that a bat roosting site is nearby. (Emily Williams/CBC)© Provided by cbc.ca

A bat's diet is more than just mosquitoes, however.

"While bats do use mosquitoes as part of their diet and we want to help support them in continuing to eat mosquitoes, they also eat a lot of other things like beetles and some aquatic bugs and moths — things that are big and juicy," McPike said.

"So all of that helps to contribute to a healthy ecosystem and we want to help support that within the city limits."



Cory Olsen, Nikqueta Mazur, and Sarah McPike looking under a bridge for bats. (Emily Williams/CBC)© Provided by cbc.ca

Nikqueta Mazur, biological science technologist at the Pest Management Lab, said the city is looking to see if there is anything they can do to encourage bats to be in the city. One way of doing that is looking at what habitats they prefer.


Martha Stewart Living   How to Attract Bats to Your Yard—and Why You Want To
0:44

"Currently our best way of monitoring them is to do evening exit surveys," Mazur siad.

"We'll go to either a bridgeside or a bat box that we want to know if it's being used. And we will sit there in the evening for about an hour and see if we can see the bats exiting as they're coming out to feed."

Bats tend to nestle themselves into tight sheltered spots. While a bridge isn't a natural habitat for bats, they are a popular choice for roosts.

Bat boxes are artificial roosts, typically made out of wood and placed up high. The city installed several of them across the city this year.



Thermal cameras can be used to see bats nestled in bridge crevices. (Emily Williams/CBC)© Provided by cbc.ca

Cory Olson, program co-ordinator for the Alberta Bat Program, says another way to see how active an area is for bats is recording echolocation calls using specialized equipment.

These calls are at a frequency that cannot be heard by humans and are used for navigation. The sounds that bats make that we can hear are the social calls.

"You can imagine that if you're in a group with hundreds of other bats that you might get upset every now and then," Olson said. "So they emit this squeaking sound that kind of tells their roommate to back off."

Olson said if people stumble upon a bat roosting site, the best thing to do is leave it alone.

The bats in the city are fairly healthy for the time being, he said.

But white-nose syndrome is just starting to enter Alberta and may impact the province's bat population. Guano samples can be taken for testing to determine if the fungus that causes this disease is present.


A guano sample, collected to be tested for the fungus which causes white-nose syndrome. (Emily Williams/CBC)© Provided by cbc.ca

Another threat to bats in the city is cats, Olson said.

"The majority of the bats that get brought to wildlife rescue centres are bats that have been injured by cats. Keeping cats indoors is one of the most important things that we can do to help bats in the city."

What you need to know about solar storms, the extreme weather of space

Story by Chris Knight • National Post 

An artist's conception of a solar storm that hit Earth in 1989, knocking out Quebec's power grid.© Provided by National Post


This week it was reported that a solar storm had struck the Earth a day ahead of schedule , for unknown reasons. Some speculated that the coronal mass ejection (CME) that was the cause of the storm was moving faster than expected. Others suggested it was an entirely different CME that had escaped our notice. Here’s what to know about solar storms.

What is a solar storm?

A solar storm is a disturbance on the surface of the sun, usually in the form of a large explosion called a solar flare, or a burst of plasma known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME. When the charged particles from the storm reach the Earth they interfere with our planet’s magnetic field in what’s known as a geomagnetic storm.
Are they dangerous?

Solar storms pose no direct risk to humans, as long as they’re shielded by the Earth’s atmosphere. So if you’re not in space, you’re fine. In fact, they make for great viewing of the Northern Lights, as the Earth’s auroral displays become brighter and are visible farther south than usual.

However, they can pose great risks to electrical and electronic equipment. On March 13, 1989, Hydro-Quebec experienced a complete blackout of its system due to a powerful solar storm. The solar particles couldn’t easily pass through the Canadian Shield and instead found an outlet through transmission lines. The province subsequently invested billions of dollars in toughening up its systems against future storms.

Even more powerful was the Carrington Event, a solar storm that hit the Earth in 1859 and remains the strongest one recorded to date. Telegraph operators reported sparking and even small fires in their equipment, while some disconnected their power sources and were still able to receive and transmit messages just by using the current passing through the atmosphere.

A solar storm in February of 2022 caused 40 SpaceX Starlink satellites to fail and fall back to Earth during launch, not because their electronics were fried, but because the storm caused Earth’s outer atmosphere to heat up and expand slightly, meaning the small satellites didn’t have enough fuel to reach orbit.

That said, it should be noted that solar storms tend to affect large-scale infrastructure such as power lines, and not individual devices like a cellphone, computer or car. In a recent interview with Scientific American , heliophysicist Erika Palmerio advised caution, not panic.

“As a person who works with this every day, I am way more scared of a ‘doomsday’ derived from terrestrial weather like forest fires, hurricanes and extreme weather,” she said. “We have to monitor, and we have to be prepared. But we do not have to lose sleep over this.”


A sunset on Mars. NASA’s rovers on the Red Planet have been used to observe parts of the sun not visible from Earth.© NASA

Can we predict solar storms?

Much like terrestrial weather, solar storms are unpredictable. But, like the weather, we can make forecasts and educated guesses. Solar flares and storms tend to reach their peak roughly every 11 years, as the sun goes through what’s known as a solar cycle. Solar cycle 1 started in 1755. We’re near the peak of solar cycle 25 now, expected to reach its maximum sometime between now and 2025. So the next few years are likely to see more and stronger solar storms.

It’s also worth noting that solar flares release energy at the speed of light, so there’s no advance warning for the eight minutes it takes their energy to reach us from the sun. Coronal mass ejections can take several days to reach Earth, so some warning is available.

Spacecraft like the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (launched in 2006) and the Parker Solar Probe (launched in 2018) are studying the sun and its corona to help scientists better understand their behaviour.

We’re also getting assistance from other planets. Currently, Mars is on the opposite side of the sun from the Earth, and so scientists have asked the Perseverance rover there to periodically take a peek at the sun and report back on any sunspot activity not visible from Earth. The Curiosity rover performed a similar task in 2015, near the previous solar maximum, although its cameras were not as sensitive.

The sun was 'smiling' in a NASA photo. It might be a warning

Solar Orbiter mission shares closest ever images of the sun

As water reuse expands, proponents battle the "yuck" factor

When Janet Cruz lost an April election for a Tampa City Council seat, she became a political casualty of an increasingly high-stakes debate over recycled water.

During her time in the Florida Legislature, Cruz had supported a new law allowing the use of treated wastewater in local water systems. But many Tampa residents were staunchly opposed to a plan by their water utility to do just that, and Cruz was forced to backtrack, with her spokesperson asserting she had never favored the type of complete water reuse known as "toilet to tap." She lost anyway, and the water plan has been canceled.

Tampa's showdown may be a harbinger of things to come as climate change and drought cause water shortages in many parts of the country. With few alternatives for expanding supply, cities and states are rapidly adding recycled water to their portfolios and expanding the ways in which it can be used. Researchers say it's safe — and that it's essential to move past the 20th century notion that wastewater must stay flushed.

"There is no reason to only use water once," said Peter Fiske, director of the National Alliance for Water Innovation at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "We've got to be more clever with the water we've got."

But proponents are still fighting an uphill battle to overcome the "yuck" factor. A recent study found that reused water is not only safe but that it's actually cleaner than conventionally sourced water — yet acceptance is "hindered by perceptions of poor water quality and potential health threats."

Several projects were canceled in California in the 1990s because of such worries. In San Gabriel, Miller Brewing Company opposed a water reclamation project when people started joking about "beer aged in porcelain."

"You have to have a lot of education in a community to say why [recycled water] is needed" and what experts are doing to ensure the safety of the water, said Noelle George, the Texas managing director for the trade association WateReuse.

Many forms of water reuse have long been routine. Water from yard sprinklers, for example, soaks into the groundwater. Or, if it is processed in a treatment plant, it goes into a river or lake, where it's used again. Municipalities and others often use treated wastewater known as gray water for irrigation.

But in the world of water reuse, the gold standard is known as direct potable reuse — cleaning wastewater, including sewage, to drinking water standards.



Epic Cleantec operations director Ryan Pulley holds a beaker of treated wastewater, known as gray water, from a San Francisco apartment tower (left). It's cleaned to drinking water standards (right) and reused for the building's toilets, laundry, and irrigation. / Credit: Ted Wood© Provided by CBS News

THIS WAS ALSO DEVELOPED IN CANADA AND TESTED IN AN APARTMENT BUILDING IN TORONTO IN 1975 ACCORDING TO A DOCUMENTARY DONE BY THE NFB

With DPR systems, the water from showers, sinks, and toilets first goes to a conventional treatment plant, where it is disinfected with chemicals and aeration. Then it gets a second scrubbing in a multistage process that first uses a bioreactor to break down nitrogen compounds, then employs microfiltration to clean out particles and reverse osmosis to remove viruses, bacteria, and salts. Finally, hydrogen peroxide is added and the water goes through an ultraviolet light processing, which is supposed to kill any contaminants that are left.

Experts say the water that emerges at the end of this process is so clean it has no taste, and that minerals must be added to give the water flavor. It's also free of a little-known health hazard; chlorine, often used to disinfect conventional water, can react with organic material in the water to create chloroform, exposure to which can cause negative health effects.

Big Spring, Texas, is the only place in the country with a DPR municipal water system, in which all wastewater is treated and sent back to the tap. Another notable DPR system is the Changi Water Reclamation Plant in Singapore, which cleans 237 million gallons each day.

In Tampa, intense opposition focused on the high cost of the water treatment and the possible presence of pharmaceuticals, hormones, and so-called forever chemicals, known as PFAS.

"We have never thought that it was necessary to drink wastewater," said Gary Gibbons, the vice chair of the Tampa Bay Sierra Club, in September 2022. He said the project, which the city referred to by the acronym PURE, would result in contaminants in the drinking water and the groundwater aquifer.

Experts reject these concerns as uninformed and say properly treated wastewater is safer than a lot of conventional drinking water sources.

"I would almost rather have an advanced treatment plant of the type used for potable water recycling than water that comes from a river that has several cities and farms and industries upstream that are discharging into it," said David L. Sedlak, an expert on potable reuse at the University of California-Berkeley.

With higher temperatures and long-term pressure on water sources including aquifers and mountain snowpacks, a lot more water reuse is coming.

In Texas, the state permits DPR plants on a case-by-case basis, and the city of El Paso is building one that's slated to be online by 2026. Colorado last year began allowing DPR. In California, regulations spelling out the approach to DPR should be ready by the end of this year, with some cities setting goals of recycling all water by 2035. Florida and Arizona are also moving to expand direct potable reuse.

There's also a lot of activity around what's known as indirect potable reuse. Orange County, California, has the world's largest IPR facility, which cleans 130 million gallons of water a day to irrigation standards, passes it through advanced purification, and finally injects it into groundwater, which serves as an environmental buffer. The water is then piped to all municipal users.

San Francisco is pioneering another approach. Since 2015, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which operates the dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts that deliver water from the Sierra Nevada to the city, has required all buildings over 100,000 square feet be equipped for recycling gray water. The downtown Salesforce Tower has its own recycling plant: Sinks, laundry machines, and showers drain into the basement recycling system, and the water is then reused for flushing toilets and irrigation, saving about 30,000 gallons a day.

"We don't need to flush toilets with drinking water," said Fiske, noting that toilets make up about 30% of all water use.

San Francisco water officials are studying the feasibility and safety of cleaning all wastewater to potable standards at the building level. The headquarters of the water utility has a blackwater system called the Living Machine that uses engineered wetlands in the sidewalks around the building to treat wastewater, cutting water use by two-thirds. (Blackwater systems recycle water from toilets; gray water systems reuse water from all other drains.)

Some experts see a day when buildings will not have to be hooked up to external sewer and water systems at all, with advanced recycling systems augmented by rainwater. For the moment, though, educational campaigns are still needed to bring recycled water into the mainstream.

Epic Cleantec, which created a recycling system for a new San Francisco apartment tower, thought beer might help. The company last year teamed up with a local brewery to produce beer from recycled water. The Epic OneWater Brew by Devil's Canyon Brewing isn't sold; rather, it's a demonstration product, given away and served at events.

While people might not want to drink recycled water, they will usually try the beer.

"We made beer out of recycled water, because we're trying to change the conversation," said Aaron Tartakovsky, CEO of Epic Cleantec. "We're fundamentally trying to help people rethink how our communities handle water."

This article was produced by KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism. KFF Health News is the publisher of California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

American Airlines pilots' union accepts sweetened labor deal

Story by Leslie Josephs • CNBC

American Airlines' pilots union has accepted a sweetened labor deal.

The union had a preliminary agreement but a richer deal at United Airlines derailed voting.

Pilots at both United and American still need to vote on their tentative agreements.

American Airlines plane© Provided by CNBC

American Airlines pilots' union said Thursday that they agreed to a sweetened offer for a new labor contract, less than two weeks after a richer deal at rival United Airlines derailed voting at American.

The new preliminary agreement includes pay matching with United, whose pilots are on track to get about 40% raises over four years, and at Delta Air Lines, whose aviators approved their contract in March, as well as other improvements. American CEO Robert Isom last week increased the company's offer by about $1 billion.

"We appreciate the Allied Pilots Association for its collaborative work to reach an updated agreement on a four-year contract for American's pilots," American said in a statement. "It's a contract we're proud of and one our pilots deserve."

American's pilots would start voting on the new deal in August.

The deal is the latest in the transportation industry where workers are seeking, and getting, higher wages. A shortage of pilots has emboldened unions to seek bigger raises and other improvements after the pandemic stalled negotiations.

UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters earlier this week struck a preliminary labor agreement to raise pay for more than 300,000 workers, a deal that averted a massive strike that could have rippled throughout the U.S. economy. Workers will vote on that deal next month.

What it was like to live at the Los Alamos lab site during the Manhattan Project


Jenny McGrath
Tue, July 25, 2023

The Los Alamos Ranch School buildings in 1942, which became part of the Los Alamos Project Y site.

National Security Research Center

In 1943, hundreds of people converged on a desert in New Mexico to work on the Manhattan Project.


Building the atomic bomb required a furious working pace and the utmost secrecy.


It also forever changed the landscape of Los Alamos and the lives of its residents.

Though Los Alamos was just one of many sites dedicated to the Manhattan Project, it was the most remote, and the most secret.

Located in the desert, it has mountain views and vivid sunsets. It's where scientists prepared the bomb for the Trinity Test.

Initially, J. Robert Oppenheimer thought he'd only need a few dozen scientists to complete the job. The number quickly rose, and Los Alamos became a boom town.

By 1945, the population had grown to over 8,000 and included military personnel, engineers, technicians, and scientists' families.

Heading it all was Oppenheimer, an enigmatic figure who inspired loyalty but was difficult to know.

Physicist Abraham Pais wrote, "In all my life I have never known a personality more complex than Robert Oppenheimer," which may explain, he thought, "why different people reacted to him in such extremely varied ways."

Some loved him. Some loathed him.

He personally recruited a number of scientists to come to Los Alamos, which was known as Project Y. It wasn't easy.

"The notion of disappearing into the New Mexico desert for an indeterminate period and under quasi-military auspices disturbed a good many scientists and the families of many more," Oppenheimer later wrote.

But, he said, they knew that their work could determine the outcome of the war and that "this job, if it were achieved, would be a part of history."

Over two dozen Nobel Prize winners, current and future, contributed to the Manhattan Project.

But there were also local people who worked as janitors, construction workers, house cleaners, and child-care workers. They experienced a very different Los Alamos after the scientists' and military's arrival.
The allure of the landscape

Many accounts include nostalgia-tinged reminiscences of the landscape.

The school was located "on a mesa high above the valley, with steep, straight sides streaked with gold and red, with a pale-green top, the color of pine trees covered by the dust that the wind whirls up from the desert below," Laura Fermi, Enrico Fermi's wife, wrote in her autobiography.

Physicist Robert Wilson wrote that he "never tired of that view."

The main campus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1998.

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Situated 7,300 feet above sea level and roughly 35 miles from Santa Fe, the Los Alamos site seemed ideal for a secret laboratory. In addition to being isolated, the school was difficult to reach, accessible only by a twisty gravel road.

But there was plenty of space and weather suitable for year-round construction. Thus, it met the criteria stipulated by Gen. Leslie Groves, the project's director.

The government paid $424,971 for the Los Alamos Ranch School and nearly 50,000 acres of surrounding land. It also displaced 32 homesteaders in the surrounding areas who were paid far less for their land.

Constant construction

Compared to the Chicago labs, where some of the work on the Manhattan Project was being done, Los Alamos was starting from scratch.

Its scientists needed to ship in a cyclotron, accelerators, generators and other necessary equipment from various universities. Initially, the theoretical physicists had to set up in a makeshift chicken coop.

John Henry Manley, a physicist, later wondered that if Oppenheimer had known that experiential physics is "really 90% plumbing," if he would've decided to set up the lab at such a secluded site.

The commissary is where many Los Alamos residents did most of their grocery shopping during the Manhattan Project.

National Security Research Center

Construction was nearly constant to keep up with the influx of people. Trucks rumbled down the roads, and building materials lay heaped in piles around the site, Laura Fermi wrote. She recalled how easy it was to get lost because all the buildings looked alike, painted the same green, and there were no street names.

Over the course of the Manhattan Project, workers would construct over 600 housing units, including dozens of dormitories and barracks for unmarried personnel and the military. There were also dorms for married couples whose jobs weren't as well-paid as the scientists'.

The most coveted houses were originally part of the school. They came to be nicknamed "Bathtub Row" because the newer houses only had showers.

"They were attractive, well-built cottages, far more desirable than any later building," Laura Fermi wrote.

The homes' residents, including Oppenheimer, lent a certain caché to the area, too.

Creating a small city required more than just housing. Schools, courts, stores, a post office, a fire department, and a hospital all eventually appeared. Los Alamos also needed veterinarians for the Military Police's horses, dentists, doctors, and garbage collectors.

The "Technical Area" was a top-secret space that required workers to show a special badge at the guard house. Administrative buildings, labs, and warehouses clustered around a pond where the school's students used to ice skate. All were sequestered behind a chain-link fence.

Physicist McAllister Hull described it as "fences within fences" because the entire site was enclosed.

Secrecy was paramount

Part of adjusting to life at Los Alamos was getting used to all the secrecy. New arrivals were fingerprinted and photographed. They received New Mexico driver's licenses. Their names were listed as numbers, signatures weren't required, and instead of an address, they read, "Special List B."

The entrance to the Los Alamos lab's Tech Area in 1951.

National Security Research Center

Both incoming and outgoing mail went through censors. Correspondents had to address letters to P.O. Box 1663. Residents' mail was routed through another town before being sent to friends and family.

Richard Feynman's wife sent him a letter complaining about the censors watching. Officials told him to ask her not to mention censorship. When he did, they returned his letter and said he had to inform her without mentioning censorship himself.

"How in the heck am I going to do it?" he asked them.

The average age of Los Alamos' residents was mid-20s. For the 80 babies born in the project's first year, the same P.O. box number where their mail was sent was also put on their birth certificates.

A poem poked fun at Groves' annoyance at the number of newborns: "He thought you'd be scientific / Instead you're just prolific."

In the early days, physicist Robert Serber delivered an orientation lecture to about 30 people about the project. Carpenters and electricians were hard at work. When Serber mentioned the bomb, Oppenheimer instructed John Manley to tell Serber to say "gadget" in case the workers overheard.

Fatigue and fighting

In their memoirs and interviews, some scientists' wives claimed not to have known what their husbands were working on.

Leon Fisher brought red and green detonator casings home for his child to play with. Phyllis, his wife, used them to trim a Christmas tree. Later, she reflected on the irony of decorating an evergreen, a symbol of renewal, with "messengers of death."

"Ignorance had sanctioned that strange combination," she wrote.

The secrecy, the stress, and the long hours all contributed to a tense atmosphere that could set everyone on edge.

"Rank, housing assignments, the part of town in which one lived, social invitations, administrative assignments, everything became important, occasionally in a childish way," Emile Segré later wrote.

The atmosphere also strained marriages. "In the past, Leon had always patiently described his scientific projects or research to me," Phyllis Fisher wrote. "But this time he made it absolutely clear that I wasn't to ask and, if I did, he wasn't about to answer."

It was especially difficult when their husbands wouldn't come home at night, Ruth Marshak later said. "The Tech Area was a great pit which swallowed our scientist husbands out of sight, almost out of our lives," she wrote.

Someone told Elsie McMillan that the scientists were working on a weapon. It helped, she said, because "I could better understand when my husband left me" and why they all "looked so drawn, so tired, so worried."

A life of 'hectivity'

For Los Alamos's wealthier citizens, the rustic conditions took some adjustment.

Water was always in short supply, and residents were supposed to only shower for a couple of minutes.

Some of the houses had wood-burning stoves that were tricky to get used to. Some preferred to use hot plates, though those wouldn't work during the frequent power outages.

Physicist Enrico Fermi, second from right, took advantage of the area's mountains to ski.

National Security Research Center

Many other conveniences were lacking, as well. "No mailman, no milkman, no laundryman, no paper boy knocked at our doors," wrote Jane Wilson, the wife of physicist Robert Wilson. "There were no telephones in our homes."

In May 1943, Charlotte Serber, who worked in the secret library, Kitty Oppenheimer, and other wives, coordinated the busing in of indigenous and Hispanic women from the surrounding areas. They cleaned houses and provided childcare for $1.50 per half-day.

As Los Alamos grew, the need for technicians and other personnel increased, and many of the women went to work in labs or administration.

In her book "Land of Nuclear Enchantment: A New Mexican History of the Nuclear Weapons Industry", Lucie Genay notes that residents often felt they'd entered a "devil's bargain… torn between employment issues and the negative effects of the industry."

To relieve some of the pressure, scientists and their families would go on picnics or hikes, ski, or ride horses.

Physicist Edward Teller joked it was like a wildlife reserve for physicists. The number of parties, dances, concerts, and other events were so plentiful that Bernice Brode, wife of physicist Robert Brode, referred to the packed schedule as "hectivity."

One of the women who worked as a "computer," doing computations, Jean Bacher, wrote that "Quiet evenings at home, then, were the exception rather than the rule," and they found much-needed "release in alcohol and fresh air."

Shangri-La

Many memoirs and reminiscences of Los Alamos during this era refer to it as Shangri-La, a kind of mystical utopia in the mountains.

Phyllis Fisher wondered if they were more like the patients in Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain," philosophizing and secluded from the rest of the world.

"As they argued, the countries below their mountain were preparing for World War I, which suddenly exploded all around their sanctuary," Fisher wrote. "Were we doing the same thing?"

The site's residents couldn't shut out the world in August 1945, after the US dropped the atomic bombs, which were tested and assembled at Los Alamos, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 100,000 people instantly. Tens of thousands more died from illnesses related to radiation exposure in the decades that followed.

New Mexicans living around the Trinity Test site say they too have suffered ill effects from radiation.

Mary Palvesky is the daughter of Harry Palevsky and Elaine Sammel, who both worked at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. For her book, "Atomic Fragments," Palvesky spoke with some of the Manhattan Project's prominent scientists, including Edward Teller, Robert Wilson, and Joseph Rotblat, about their complicated feelings about the bomb.

Many scientists in the Chicago Met Lab, another location working on the bomb, had signed a petition opposing its use, especially without warning Japan about its destructive power.

But Hans Bethe told Pavlevsky that he felt that demonstrating the bomb beforehand would not have led to the country's surrender. Yet decades later, he also wrote an open letter asking other scientists not to develop, improve, or manufacture any type of weapon of mass destruction.

Using nuclear weapons now, Bethe told Palvesky in 1995, would be entirely different from using them during World War II.

"It would not be the end of the war," he said. "It would be the beginning," and would lead to the destruction of multiple countries.

After the US dropped the bombs, the site became the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Many of the scientists moved away, back to Chicago or Berkeley or New York.

But some former residents couldn't return home. In 1975, security guards accompanied Marcos and Maria Gómez to their former ranch they sold to the US government. It was then a detonator testing ground.

"Both of us cried," they recalled. "We spent some of our best years there."

Read the original article on Business Insider

SHARK WEEK 

Massachusetts ‘one of largest shark hotspots in world,’ study finds



Frank O'Laughlin
Thu, July 27, 2023

The findings of a landmark population study of great white sharks off Cape Cod indicated that Massachusetts is “one of the largest shark hotspots in the world,” with hundreds upon hundreds of the apex predators visiting local waters in recent years.

A team of scientists from the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology, and the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries conducted an intensive mark-recapture survey to estimate the size of the newest white shark hotspot, which represents the first estimate of white shark abundance ever produced in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Great white shark jumps out of water off Cape Cod to snatch striped bass on fishing line

Researchers, utilizing the mark-recapture methods, determined that about 800 sharks visited the waters off the Cape from 2015 to 2018, according to a new publication in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.

“Mark-recapture methods use repeated surveys of uniquely marked animals to estimate population size. In the case of white sharks, individuals can be distinguished based on unique markings and notches in their dorsal fins,” researchers noted in the study.

A total of 339 individual white sharks were identified by experts who combed through nearly 3,000 videos captured over the course of 137 research trips to Cape Cod beaches.

Whale watch group captures video of shark devouring seal off Cape Cod

“The estimate provides an important baseline that can be used to monitor the performance of conservation measures for the broader population, which declined by as much as 80% as fishing pressure increased in the 1970s and 1980s,” said Megan Winton, lead author of the study. “Cape Cod is the only area in the region where researchers can feasibly monitor the population, and our estimates suggest that the Cape is among the larger white shark hotspots worldwide, which is good news from a conservation standpoint.”

The researchers also found that white shark numbers along Cape Cod peaked in the late summer and early fall, when water temperatures are warmest, and declined as sharks migrate out of the area for the winter.

While the risk of a negative encounter with a shark is low, the increased presence and population of white sharks off Cape Cod underscores the need for ongoing research, public safety initiatives, and education programs in the region, researchers stressed.

Boeing and NASA partner with Alaska and other airlines on eco-friendly X-66A aircraft

Alan Boyle
Tue, July 25, 2023 

An artist’s conception shows the planned livery for the X-66A research aircraft. (Boeing Illustration)

Boeing and NASA say they’ll collaborate with Seattle-based Alaska Airlines and four other major airlines on the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, which aims to put Boeing’s innovative X-66 braced-wing aircraft design through flight tests in the 2028-2029 time frame.

The X-66A makes use of a concept known as the Transonic Truss-Braced Wing, or TTBW, which features ultra-long, ultra-thin, drag-reducing wings that are stabilized by diagonal struts.

The demonstrator aircraft will also incorporate parallel advancements in propulsion systems, materials and system architecture. When all those factors are combined, the single-aisle X-66A should reduce fuel requirements and carbon emissions by up to 30% relative to today’s domestic airplane fleet.


In January, NASA announced that it would invest $425 million in the project over the course of seven years under the terms of a Space Act Agreement. Boeing and its partners would contribute the remainder of the funding covered by the agreement, estimated at about $725 million.

Under the partnership announced today during the EAA Adventure Oshkosh air show in Wisconsin, Boeing will receive input relating to operational efficiencies, maintenance, handling characteristics and airport compatibility from Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines.

The X-66A demonstrator aircraft is an MD-90 airliner that’s undergoing modifications at a Boeing facility in Palmdale, Calif. Airline operations and management teams will have a chance to assess the airplane while it’s being modified. Airline pilots will be able to check the X-66A’s handling characteristics virtually, using a flight simulator.

Eventually, the innovations pioneered by the X-66A are expected to become incorporated into the designs for future commercial airliners.

Fashion statements for electric airplanes

An artist’s conception shows the planned liveries for the hybrid electric demonstrator aircraft being developed by GE Aerospace and magniX with funding from NASA. (NASA Illustration)

Boeing and NASA unveiled the livery for the X-66A today at EAA Adventure, but that wasn’t the only sneak peek provided in Oshkosh. GE Aerospace and Everett, Wash.-based magniX showed off the paint schemes for the hybrid electric aircraft they plan to fly as part of NASA’s Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration project.

MagniX is partnering with Seattle-based AeroTEC and Canada’s Air Tindi to test its hybrid electric powertrain on a modified DeHavilland Dash 7 airplane in Moses Lake, Wash. In 2021, NASA awarded $74.3 million to magniX to support development of the powertrain.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati-based GE Aerospace is working with Boeing and Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing subsidiary, to develop a megawatt-class powertrain for a modified Saab 340B demonstrator aircraft. GE received a $179 million award from NASA for the project.

NASA is targeting at least two flight demonstrations within the next five years, with the intention of helping to bring electrified aircraft propulsion systems to the U.S. commercial fleet in the 2030-2035 time frame.
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Watch drone delve into Siberia's growing 'gateway to the underworld,' the largest permafrost depression in the world

Jennifer Nalewicki
Tue, July 25, 2023 

A giant crater in Siberia covered in snow and ice.

A massive crater in Siberia dubbed the "gateway to the underworld" by locals is continuing to grow larger, new drone footage reveals.

The footage, which was released on July 12, offers viewers a bird's-eye view of the Batagay (also spelled Bagatayka and Batagaika) crater, considered to be the largest permafrost depression in the world, according to Ruptly.tv.

Covering approximately 0.3 square miles (0.8 square kilometers) — equivalent to the area of about 145 football fields — the deep scar cutting through the east Siberian woodlands was likely triggered by deforestation during the 1940s. This led to erosion, which then exacerbated seasonal melting of the permafrost and created a "megaslump," or the massive crater in the ground. Because the permafrost in this region is comprised of 80% ice, the large amounts of melting forced sediment on the hillside to collapse, revealing what looks like a giant gash slashing through the landscape in Russia's Sakha Republic.

Related: Zapotec 'entrance to the underworld' discovered under Catholic church in Mexico

And it's not just drone imagery that shows that the crater continues to expand. Over the years, satellite imagery has also confirmed that the megaslump has grown in size. As the land has retreated, it has revealed "tens of thousands of years of frozen remains," dating as far back as the Middle Pleistocene, which ended 126,000 years ago.

In one study, the melt allowed scientists to access bison meat that had been frozen for roughly 8,000 years, giving researchers new insight into animals and plants that once inhabited the region.

Scientists aren't sure exactly how quickly the crater is expanding. However, locals claim that in the last several years, it has grown between 66 feet and 98 feet (20 and 30 m) at certain points, according to NDTV, a TV station in New Delhi.

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"This is something very rare," Alexey Lupachev, a senior researcher at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Ruptly.tv. "This is a unique object of nature, which allows us to see the history of Earth over a period of half a million years preserved in permafrost."

Car companies like Honda, BMW, and Hyundai are banding together to build an EV-charging network bigger than Tesla's Supercharger empire

Tim Levin
Wed, July 26, 2023 

Charging anxiety is one of the biggest factors keeping Americans from buying electric cars.

Seven automakers plan to build an electric-vehicle charging network to take on Tesla.


Tesla's Supercharger network is by far the largest in North America.


The automakers aim to install 30,000 fast-charging plugs in North America, more than Tesla currently has.

Seven car companies are making their own charging network to take on Elon Musk's Tesla Superchargers.

BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, and Stellantis (the European goliath that owns Jeep, Fiat, Dodge, and many others) announced a joint venture on Wednesday aimed at blanketing North America with thousands of fast-charging plugs. They hope the move will make EV charging more convenient and get more people into electric cars, trucks, and SUVs.

The coalition of brands aims to install 30,000 fast-charging plugs, more than Tesla (by far North America's largest provider of fast charging) currently has. Tesla operates around 22,000 Supercharger stalls in the region. Electrify America, the charging company established by Volkswagen as part of the Dieselgate scandal, is the next biggest with 3,592 plugs.

The automakers didn't specify how long building out the network will take, but said the first stations are scheduled to open in the summer of 2024.

Car companies have clear interest in beefing up the continent's charging infrastructure: Worries about where to charge and how long it takes are some of the biggest things turning people off from buying electric cars. The more convenient, accessible, and quick charging becomes, the more EVs car companies can expect to sell. Most current EV owners charge at home in their garages or driveways, and public charging will be key for getting new buyers — particularly those who live in buildings without private parking — on board.

Up until now, most carmakers apart from Tesla turned their buyers loose on a patchwork of third-party public-charging stations. Tesla, by comparison, has spent over a decade building out a vast network of charging stations specifically for its owners. And that network, which historically only allowed Tesla owners to plug in, has been a huge driver of Tesla sales. (Tesla recently began opening up parts of its network to drivers of non-Tesla cars and sharing its charging-plug design with rivals.)

Tesla's chargers are renowned for their reliability and ease of use. For example, Tesla owners don't need to swipe a credit card to pay — they just pull up and plug in, and their car identifies itself to the network. If a Tesla owner goes on a long trip, the car's navigation system will automatically route to Superchargers along the way as needed.

That's a level of convenience and seamlessness other EV owners don't get. Moreover, non-Tesla chargers are notorious for poor reliability and for often being out of order.

It sounds like the planned charging network aims to mimic some of the things Tesla got right, and add some extra conveniences. The automakers said their network will allow owners to reserve charging spots, plan routes with charging stops, and pay for charging just by plugging in. The stations will also include rain awnings wherever possible, something missing from most current locations.

The stations will offer both major charging plugs: The CCS standard that most automakers have used, along with Tesla's NACS plug that's gaining popularity in the industry.

Texas Issues Emergency Order as Chronic Wasting Disease Cases in Deer Breeding Facilities Soar

Katie Hill
Wed, July 26, 2023

Texas is home to more deer breeders than any other state, according to the National Deer Association.

Texas is seeing an “unprecedented” increase in Chronic Wasting Disease cases in deer breeding facilities. This uptick has led to a new emergency order expanding mandatory live CWD testing statewide, TPWD reports. Since 2012, TPWD has recorded 504 confirmed cases of CWD in whitetails and mule deer, both free-range and captive. Sixty percent of the 504 positive tests—300 cases—have occurred since 2021, and breeder deer comprised 258 of them. In other words, 51 percent of all positive CWD tests recorded in Texas have come from breeder deer in the last two and a half years.

Per the new emergency order, a negative CWD test is now required for any captive deer transfer in the state—whether the originating facility is known to harbor CWD or not. The order, signed on July 24, builds on previously enacted emergency regulations that mandated testing for specific breeding facilities that were known to either house CWD-infected deer or receive deer from CWD-positive facilities.

“Since 2021, we have seen an increase in CWD detections from breeder deer at an unprecedented rate,” Silovsky, TPWD’s wildlife division director, said in a press release announcing the new rule. “It’s our hope that these emergency rules will strengthen our surveillance and reduce the number of CWD positive detections across the state.”

TPWD initiated this crack-down after the ninth facility in less than eight months produced a positive test last week. A captive five-year-old whitetail doe from Brooks County tested positive after being transferred from a CWD-positive facility in Frio County in 2022, TPWD reported on July 21. Facilities in three counties—Brooks, Frio, and Zavala—have tested positive since June, bringing the total number of infected counties in the state to 24.

The emergency order will remain in effect for 120 days. If necessary, TPWD can tack on another 60-day extension once the initial period ends.
CWD and Texas Deer Breeding

One explanation for the uptick in CWD cases is that monitoring has also increased substantially in recent years. Cases will likely continue to grow now that every deer transferred between any facility in the state will have to be tested first. (There’s no mention of who will foot the bill for such tests in the emergency order, either.)

Texas has the most known captive deer facilities in the country—858 as of 2021, according to a report from the National Deer Association. Those facilities are the driving force behind a roughly $1.6 billion industry.

Some whitetail managers and conservation groups have long pointed to these breeding operations as hotspots for CWD, since they concentrate animals in pens and make it easier for the prion disease to spread. Texas deer breeders, meanwhile, have fought against this perception and argued that the state will find the disease wherever it looks for it the most. The Texas Deer Association, which represents the state's deer breeders, points out out that roughly 75 percent of their captive deer have been tested for CWD within the past two years, compared to the .27 percent of the state's wild deer that have been tested over the same period of time.

Read Next: In the War Against CWD, Deer Breeders in Texas Are Being Cast as Both the Enemy and the Answer

Still, while it's true that this disparity in testing could lead to a bias in results, it's become abundantly clear that the transfer of captive whitetails throughout the state is allowing the disease to spread. This is what TPWD hopes to tamp down on as it works to protect the state's wild deer herds.

“Deer breeding itself is not the problem. It’s the movement of live deer between and among facilities,” NDA’s chief conservation officer Kip Adams told OL in February 2023. “It’s crystal clear in Texas that the movement of these animals is greatly elevating the spread of the disease in the state.”

Dac Collins contributed reporting to this story.