Temperate forests may worsen global warming, tropical forests fight higher temperatures

At this week's climate conference in Montreal there have been a number of proposals to plant trees for the purpose of absorbing carbon emissions and helping mitigate climate change. However, a new study from the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says that careful consideration should be given as to where these forests are planted. Planting trees in temperate regions could actually contribute to global warming.

The study, using complex climate modeling software to simulate changes in forest cover and then measuring the impact on global climate, found that northern forests tend to warm the Earth because they absorb a lot of sunlight without losing much moisture. The situation is different in the tropics where higher temperatures result in higher rates of evapotranspiration, the process by which forests release water into the atmosphere. Tropical forests may have a net cooling impact relative to northern forests.

The research has important implications for the greenhouse gas debate. The United States wants any future agreement on climate to include provisions for tradable carbon credits whereby industrial countries could exceed emissions limits by planting forests and exchanging carbon allotments with forested countries. These new findings suggest that reforestation programs should focus on planting trees in the tropics and not in temperate or boreal regions.

Papua New Guinea has made just such a proposal at the UN conference. The plan calls for wealthy countries to pay developing countries to preserve their rainforests arguing that these ecosystems store massive amounts of carbon dioxide as well as providing important ecological services and serving as a repository for most of the planet's biodiversity.

Head-to-head record, Nov 2005

Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday have met a total of 116 times in league and cup, stretching back to the very first meeting on 16 October 1893. The Blades hold the edge, with 42 wins to the Owls' 37, and 37 draws.

The very first match - in the old Division One - ended with honours even after a 1-1 draw, but it was the Blades who notched the first derby win in the second meeting just a month later, with a 2-1 victory on 13 November 1893.

The Owls had to wait until 7 September 1895 to post a first win over their city rivals, beating the Blades 1-0 in a league clash.

But their joy at getting one over the Blades was short-lived as the Owls would have to wait until the turn of the century and 11 matches before their next victory - a 1-0 success on 29 April 1901.

The teams have met six times in the FA Cup - with the Blades winning the first three meetings (1900, 1925, 1928) and the Owls the last three clashes (1954, 1960, 1993).

The very first meeting in the FA Cup was a second-round clash in 1900, which the Blades won 2-0 in a replay after a 1-1 draw in the first game.

The most recent FA Cup meeting - and perhaps the most famous Sheffield derby of them all - was the 1993 semi-final at Wembley, won 2-1 by the Owls after extra time.

Israeli agent inside Pentagon pleads guilty to spying on USA

Pentagon man guilty in spy probe

A former Pentagon analyst has pleaded guilty to passing classified information to pro-Israel lobbyists. Larry Franklin said he had been unhappy with aspects of US foreign policy and hoped the lobbyists would use their contacts to get things changed. Franklin, 58, said he had also given information to an Israeli diplomat, but played down its importance. He has agreed to help prosecutors, which means his sentence could be reduced when it is decided in January.

Israel has denied any involvement.

'Nothing new'

Franklin told the Virginia court on Wednesday that he had given defence information to two officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) from 2002 to 2004. Franklin also said he had met the political officer from the Israeli embassy at least nine times during the same period. But he said he believed the Israeli government was already in possession of the information.

"He gave me far more information than I gave him," he said.

"It was never my intention to harm the United States, not even for a second."

He did not specify what US policy he was particularly frustrated with.

The two Aipac officials have pleaded not guilty to conspiring to communicate the information given to them by Franklin.

NASA Finds Evidence Some Comets May Have Become Asteroids

Some asteroids that have comet-like orbits may actually be comets that have lost gases and other easily vaporized substances, according to a NASA research team.

The team will present its findings at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences annual meeting in Cambridge, England, on Sept. 5.

"Several objects classified as asteroids have orbits that are dynamically similar to those of comets," said Dale Cruikshank, an astronomer at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley and a member of the research team. These asteroids may be comets that have lost gases and other materials by repeated passages through the inner solar system, according to Cruikshank.

The team studied infrared light from 55 asteroids using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to "better understand possible links between asteroids and comets," according to the authors. In addition to co-author Cruikshank, Joshua Emery who also works at NASA Ames and is an employee of the SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif. is the principal author; and Jeffrey Van Cleve of Ball Aerospace, Boulder, Colo., is the other co-author.

"The suggestion that some asteroids originated as comets has been made before, but the new Spitzer Space Telescope observations provide the first chance to really test this suggestion," Emery noted. "Most of the objects observed in our program appear to be typical asteroids, but a few have surface compositions and textures that are more similar to comets," Emery added.

"The infrared light we are studying gives us information about the composition and surface textures of solid bodies in the solar system." Cruikshank said.

The research team reports that some of the asteroids have very fine-grained surfaces. "We think this fine-graininess is a characteristic of comets," Cruikshank explained.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Robert Moog, Ph.D. '64, inventor of the music synthesizer, dies of brain cancer

Robert Moog, Cornell University Ph.D '64, whose name became synonymous with the many forms of the music synthesizer he originally invented and manufactured in a Trumansburg, N.Y., storefront from 1964 to 1971, died Aug. 21. He was 71.

The Beatles, Mick Jagger and jazz bandleader-composer Sun Ra were among the first customers for Moog's then-$11,000 instrument. In 1969, the album "Switched on Bach," performed by Walter (later Wendy) Carlos on a Moog synthesizer, became a Grammy winner and one of the best-selling classical albums in history. Today the once-cumbersome synthesizer fits on a microchip. Car alarms, computer chimes and the sound signatures of products like Maxwell House coffee are all sonic concatenations of Moog's original works.

"His invention is ubiquitous and has had as much if not more impact than the invention of the piano," said David Borden, former director of the Cornell Digital Music Program. "He's probably one of the most important musical instrument makers in history."

Borden worked alongside Moog in his Trumansburg studios and later founded Mother Mallard, the first live synthesizer ensemble. The ensemble premiered in 1969 at Barnes Hall on campus under the name Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co., brandishing some of the latest musical technology engineered by Moog. In 2000 Mother Mallard performed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., in an event honoring Moog called "The Keyboard Meets Modern Technology." Keith Emerson, formerly of the rock music trio Emerson, Lake and Palmer, also performed.

Borden recalls helping Moog "idiot-proof" some of his early machines, which resembled banks of old-fashioned telephone switchboards, with ganglia of patch cords and circuit boards connected to a keyboard. Moog made improvements that led to the compact Minimoog, precursor of the Micromoog.

"With the Minimoog, he took the synthesizer out of the studio and put it into the concert hall," said Borden.

Moog set up his first company, R.A. Moog Co., in the old Baldwin furniture building on Main Street in Trumansburg in 1963. But the business went belly-up just as Moog was becoming a household name. In 1971 the company name was changed to Moog Music Inc., which became a division of Norlin Music Inc. in 1973. In 1978 Moog moved to North Carolina, where he founded Big Briar Inc., which designs and builds novel electronic music equipment.

Moog was born in Flushing, Queens; his father was an electronics hobbyist, and Moog enthusiastically followed suit. Moog's mother taught her son to play the piano, but in a Cornell Alumni Magazine article in 2000, he said, "You wouldn't pay money to hear me." At 14 he built his own theremin -- the first electronic instrument, named for its inventor, Leon Theremin -- based on descriptions in a hobby magazine. Moog attended the Bronx High School of Science, Queens College and Columbia University's engineering school. He ran his synthesizer business while pursuing a Cornell doctorate in solid state physics. In an interview with the Cornell Chronicle in 2000, Moog recalled his parallel efforts as a businessman trying to finish his Ph.D.

"I really tried the patience of Dr. Henri Sack, my thesis adviser. One evening in July 1965, several of us were working overtime [in the Trumansburg shop] on a custom project and it was going badly."

The phone rang. It was Sack. Moog described the call: "'Moog,' he said to me, 'Whatever's not on my desk by 10 a.m. tomorrow morning is not going in your thesis. Goodbye.' I worked all night and handed in what got done the next morning."

But then Moog almost missed his dissertation defense. Trevor Pinch, Cornell professor of science and technology studies, who got to know Moog while writing his book "Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer," described the rest of the story.

"As Bob rode the elevator up [to his defense] he wasn't thinking about solid state physics ... he wondered what the resonance of the elevator was, and he literally jumped up and down to find it."

The elevator lurched to halt between the fourth and fifth floors of Clark Hall. Moog was four hours late for his defense. He passed.

Moog had no idea how big his invention would become.

"When I opened the T-burg shop, I thought I was going into the electronic kit business," Moog told the Chronicle. "Then I met a composer who wanted to make electronic music on tape. We got together just for fun."

He elaborated: "The Moog synthesizer is not a single invention, activity or achievement, but rather a whole selection of related products. I've designed dozens of instruments."

Pinch said Moog's true gift was his willingness to bring performing musicians of every caliber into the process of refining his invention. From the outset, he wanted a user-friendly instrument.

That, and much more, he certainly achieved.

London bombings

The 7 July 2005 London bombings (often referred to as 7/7) were a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks in London which targeted civilians using the public transport system during the morning rush hour.

On the morning of Thursday, 7 July 2005, four Islamist home-grown terrorists detonated four bombs, three in quick succession aboard London Underground trains across the city and, later, a fourth on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. Fifty-two civilians and the four bombers were killed in the attacks, and over 700 more were injured.

The explosions were caused by homemade organic peroxide-based devices packed into rucksacks. The bombings were followed exactly two weeks later by a series of attempted attacks.

London Underground

Further information: Timeline of the 2005 London bombings

See also: Attacks on the London Underground

At 8:50 am, three bombs were detonated on board London Underground trains within fifty seconds of each other:

The first exploded on a Circle line sub-surface train, number 204, travelling eastbound between Liverpool Street and Aldgate. The train had left King's Cross-St. Pancras about eight minutes earlier. At the time of the explosion, the third carriage of the train was approximately 100 yards (90 m) along the tunnel from Liverpool Street. The parallel track of the Hammersmith and City line between Liverpool Street and Aldgate East was also damaged in the blast.

The second device exploded in the second carriage of another Circle line sub-surface train, number 216, which had just left platform 4 at Edgware Road and was travelling westbound toward Paddington. The train had also left King's Cross-St. Pancras about eight minutes previously. There were several other trains nearby at the time of the explosion; an eastbound Circle line train (arriving at platform 3 at Edgware Road from Paddington) was passing next to the bombed train and was damaged, along with a wall that later collapsed. There were two other trains at Edgware Road: an unidentified train on platform 2, and a southbound Hammersmith & City line service that had just arrived at platform 1.

A third bomb was detonated on a Piccadilly line deep-level Underground train, number 311, travelling southbound from King's Cross-St. Pancras and Russell Square. The device exploded approximately one minute after the service departed King's Cross, by which time it had travelled about 500 yards (450 m). The explosion occurred at the rear of the first carriage of the train, in car number 166, causing severe damage to the rear of that carriage as well as the front of the second one. The surrounding tunnel also sustained damage.

It was originally thought that there had been six, rather than three, explosions on the Underground network. The bus bombing brought the reported total to seven; this was clarified later in the day. The erroneous reporting can be attributed to the fact that the blasts occurred on trains that were between stations, causing wounded passengers to emerge from both stations, giving the impression that there was an incident at each. Police also revised the timings of the tube blasts: initial reports had indicated that they occurred during a period of almost half-an-hour. This was due to initial confusion at London Underground (LU), where the explosions were initially believed to have been caused by power surges. One initial report, in the minutes after the explosions, involved a person under a train, while another described a derailment (both of which did occur, but only as a result of the explosions). A code amber alert was declared by LU at 09:19, and LU began to cease the network's operations, ordering trains to continue only to the next station and suspending all services.

The effects of the bombs are understood to have varied due to the differing characteristics of the tunnels in which they occurred:

The Circle line is a "cut and cover" sub-surface tunnel, about 7 m (21 ft) deep. As the tunnel contains two parallel tracks, it is relatively wide. The two explosions on the Circle line were probably able to vent their force into the tunnel, reducing their destructive force.

The Piccadilly line is a deep-level tunnel, up to 30 m (100 ft) below the surface and with narrow (3.56 m, or 11 ft 8¼ in) single-track tubes and just 15 cm (6 in) clearances. This confined space reflected the blast force, concentrating its effect.

Claims of responsibility

Even before the identity of the bombers became known, former Metropolitan Police commissioner Lord Stevens said he believed they were almost certainly born or based in Britain, and would not "fit the caricature al-Qaeda fanatic from some backward village in Algeria or Afghanistan". The attacks would have required extensive preparation and prior reconnaissance efforts, and a familiarity with bomb-making and the London transport network as well as access to significant amounts of bomb-making equipment and chemicals.

Some newspaper editorials in Iran blamed the bombing on British or American authorities seeking to further justify the War on Terror, and claimed that the plan that included the bombings also involved increasing harassment of Muslims in Europe. 

Cornell researcher offered grant funding to study mosquitoes that carry dengue fever

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Laura Harrington, a medical entomologist at Cornell University, is a member of a global team of scientists that has been offered a $19.7 million grant from the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. The team is working on devising and deploying novel genetic strategies to control the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits dengue fever.

The project is among 43 groundbreaking research projects to improve health in developing countries that are supported by $436 million from the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, which was launched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2003 in partnership with the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

"Dengue fever is a socioeconomic disease that targets people in the tropics in developing nations," said Harrington, an assistant professor of entomology at Cornell. "Its incidence is on the rise. Our goal is to render the mosquito incapable of transmitting the disease." The illness causes severe joint and back pain, fever and a rash.

Harrington, who has been fascinated with mosquitoes since she was an undergraduate at St. Lawrence University, says the World Health Organization reports 500,000 dengue fever cases each year, and estimates that as many as 50 million people are infected annually. In some parts of the world, the economic impact of dengue fever in terms of disruption to quality of life and economic productive rivals the burden of HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis. In Southeast Asia, where Harrington has conducted research on arthropod behavior since 1995, it is public-health enemy number one.

The team, which is under the leadership of vector biologist Anthony James at the University of California, Irvine, expects to develop control methods that target larvae and adult mosquitoes, alter the mosquito's abilities to transmit dengue viruses, and test and compare the efficacy of the vectors inside secure field cages at international sites approved by local communities and relevant government bodies.

Harrington has experience in both the laboratory and the field. For her $750,000 share of the five-year grant, she will conduct a series of "survivor" and "dating" games on wild and modified mosquitoes by conducting laboratory assessments of mating competition and fitness, establishing field sites and characterizing wild mosquito populations in the field.

The Grand Challenges initiative is a major international effort to achieve scientific breakthroughs against diseases that kill millions of people each year in the world's poorest countries. It was launched with a $200 million grant from the Gates Foundation and NIH to the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), which was created by Congress to provide private-sector funds for NIH. It is funded with a $450 million commitment from Gates Foundation, $27.1 million from the Wellcome Trust and $4.5 million from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Global health experts at the FNIH, the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and CIHR manage the initiative.

The ultimate goal of the initiative is to create "deliverable technologies" -- health tools that are not only effective, but also inexpensive to produce, easy to distribute and simple to use in developing countries.

"Some day we may be able to eliminate dengue as a human illness," says Harrington. "That is the ultimate goal."

Chemistry of cinema snacks

Food chemists in the US - a nation with a term for the hard bits of popcorn that don't go pop - have discovered a way to maximise pop-ability. 'We now have a better understanding of the science behind why unpopped kernels occur and how we can use this knowledge to go about reducing their number,' said group leader Bruce Hamaker, director of Purdue University's Whistler Center for Carbohydrate Research.

Unpopped kernels are called 'old maids' in the US; they reportedly crack teeth, destroy fillings and cause choking.

The secret to maximizing pop-ability lies in the chemistry of the corn kernel, says Hamaker. He has identified a crystalline structure in popcorn that appears to determine pop-ability.

His team tested a variety of popcorn brands, and found the most poppable ones share a characteristic chemical structure of the outer hull (pericarp).

Popcorn kernels contain a drop of water stored in starch, enveloped by the pericarp. With heating, the water expands, and pressure causes the pericarp to split. The starch inside the popcorn becomes inflated and bursts, turning the kernel inside out. Finally, the steam inside the kernel is released, and the popcorn is popped.

Moisture loss increases the number of unpopped kernels, so Hamaker's team analysed pericarp properties to study moisture-loss rate during microwave heating.

'Differential scanning calorimetry profiles of ground pericarp displayed a notable exothermal event, and hybrids with superior microwave popping performance (fewer unpopped kernels) exhibited significantly higher enthalpies,' write the authors.

X-ray analysis showed that cellulose and arabinoxylan are the major structural components of the pericarp. Structural changes in cellulose were induced by moisture and heat, and crystallinity was greatly enhanced when the pericarp was heated in the presence of water.

The data suggest that cellulose in the pericarp is responsible for the development of exothermal events and increased crystallinity. 'The propensity of cellulose to form crystalline structures in the popcorn pericarp during microwave heating improves moisture retention and hence popping performance,' they write.

Improving pop-ability - by breeding varieties with optimal crystalline structure; by chemical modification of corn kernels; or by genetic modification - could result in a better product in 3-5 years, predicts Hamaker.

Capill pleads guilty to sex abuse

Well, it's good that former CHP leader Graham Capill pleaded guilty today to sexually abusing a minor several times, understood to be aged eight at the time. The eight- year-old girl was in bed in her pyjamas on some occasions. (See earlier comments below) The confession means that we can finally name him as suppression is lifted. However the person he abused will never be named. I have heard a couple of accounts of the relationship between the two. I was also aware that Capill worked as a Police prosecutor. His job seems stuffed now.

Brainfade actually broke the suppression order by naming him on Sunday.

Watch for those in the gay community to gloat. The CHP website is getting a few more hits today - and the party has has already deleted just about everything on its site referring to him. I guess its time the CHP deleted Capill's name as the admin contact name for the CHP site at the New Zealand Domain Name Registry Limited.

2005 Sumatra earthquake

The 2005 Sumatra earthquake, referred to as the Nias Earthquake by the scientific community, was a major earthquake on 28 March 2005, located off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. Approximately 1300 people were killed by the earthquake, mostly on the island of Nias. The event caused panic in the region, which had previously been devastated by the massive tsunami triggered by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, but this earthquake generated a relatively small tsunami that caused limited damage. It was the third most powerful earthquake since 1965 in Indonesia.

The earthquake occurred at 16:09:36 UTC (23:09:36 local time) on 28 March 2005. The hypocenter was located at 2°04′35″N 97°00′58″E, 30 kilometres (19 mi) below the surface of the Indian Ocean, where subduction is forcing the Indo-Australian Plate to the south-west under the Eurasian plate's Sunda edge. The area is 200 kilometres (120 mi) west of Sibolga, Sumatra, or 1,400 kilometres (870 mi) northwest of Jakarta, approximately halfway between the islands of Nias and Simeulue. Seismic recordings give the earthquake a moment magnitude of about 8.6 and effects were felt as far away as Bangkok, Thailand; over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) away.

Work in the sex Industry or lose your benefit

Germany legalised prostitution a couple of years ago. The British Telegraph reported that a waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit

According to the BT, under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Can you imagine how a 54-year-old unemployed women would react if she was told to work in the sex industry?

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars.

At least here in New Zealand, officials are able to distinguish brothels from bars.

The interesting thing about the BT article is that the news is more than 18 months old and apparently, the job wasn`t for sexual services, it was for bar work at a brothel.

The article seems to have been scratched together by a variety of sources, and although officials can legally make long term unemployed women work in brothels they are not currently pushing them to do so.

The interesting thing that the prostitution debate has again raised is that social morals and legal morals are seen as quite distinct. Some want legal morals to reflect social morals and oppose reform of prostitution and abortion laws, and laws relating to homosexuality, while others may consider that, for example, prostitution is "abhorrent" but should be legalised.

Tsunami and debt relief

United Nation Secretary-General Kofi Annan has welcomed New Zealand's contribution to the tsunami disaster relief fund

That's unsurprising since most of it is channeled through the United Nations, whereas Australia's contribution is channeled to those directly in need in Indonesia. It is well known that Miss Clark would like a job at the UN if she loses the election and being on Kofi Annan's good books is a step in the right direction. Helen Clark would rather be chummy with Kofi than with John Howard or Dubya, which is why there is no coordinated Australasian effort. Australia doesn’t need NZ's comparative paltry aid effort and NZ likes the UN rather than Australia.