Where there’s oil, there’s a way. This summer the federal government showed that it is willing to approve drilling operations in U.S. waters off Alaska. In addition to legislation, other barriers to Arctic development are disappearing: summers at the North Pole could be ice-free as soon as 2020, reducing the need for ice-breaking vessels and opening the way for faster and cheaper trading routes. An increase in shipping across the top of the world, however, could have “significant regional impacts by accelerating ice melt,” according to a recent government report by the Canadian Northwest Territories. And that aggravated melting could raise global sea levels. Continue reading A Sooty North Pole Ahead
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The Ice Stuff
There is no visible horizon in the waters beneath the Ross Ice Shelf. So electrical engineer Jim O’Sullivan built an artificial one for the pilot of the submersible remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that he and a team of scientists were testing there in 2008. The team didn’t lack for data: The ROV’s orientation, speed, and depth were numerically displayed on the pilot’s screen. But it is difficult to convert numbers into spatial awareness. The ROV was at risk of crashing into the delicate creatures, such as sea spiders, that it was supposed to be observing.
Fortunately, O’Sullivan had come across a similar problem in a different setting: aviation. As a pilot, he had an instrument rating, “which was useful for understanding how to navigate without being able to see,” he recalls. When flying blind, pilots use half a dozen different instruments to maintain their situational awareness, including an artificial horizon. O’Sullivan found open-source software that could convert the ROV’s telemetry data to display an artificial, underwater horizon. This example of engineering on (and under) “the Ice,”—as Antarctica is known—demonstrates the need for ingenuity and improvisation beyond anything training can provide. Continue reading The Ice Stuff
Emissions Testing Tech Puts Pressure on Carmakers
In late September, Volkswagen admitted to using software that activated hardware to scrub nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions during required emissions tests, but not during normal driving. The deception improved the cars’ gas mileage at the cost of emitting between 10 and 40 times the legal limit of NOx, a precursor gas to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ammonia (NH3), and other gases that cause respiratory problems. In the last few years, newly maturing instruments of several kinds have converged on a single message: diesel exhaust in the real world is far higher than what carmakers advertise and what is permitted by the law in many countries.
Continue reading Emissions Testing Tech Puts Pressure on Carmakers
The cultivation of weed
Packets of cannabis seeds line the shelves of legal grow shops in Madrid. Many carry labels reporting the percentage of sativa and indica, two types of cannabis. Breeders often label plants that produce a more exciting high as sativa and plants that provide a more mellow feeling as indica, suggesting that cross-breeding tailors that buzz. The conceit is widespread. Botanist Jonathan Page at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, says he sees the same at local grow shops.
For reasons that go beyond assessing the quality of the user experience, botanists such as Page are investigating the evolution and present-day diversity of cannabis. To do this, they must confront centuries-old taxonomic questions, including whether cannabis is one species, Cannabis sativa, with several subspecies or varieties, or if it is several distinct species, such as C. sativa, Cannabis indica and Cannabis ruderalis. “It’s complicated taxonomically because of its intimate relationship with humans for long periods of time,” Page says. People have long bred cannabis as a source of fibre, food and oil — as well as for its mind-altering effects (see page S10). As governments relax cannabis laws, commercial growers want more clarity about the chemical properties and capabilities of the herb’s many varieties. In parallel, regulatory bodies trying to establish a legal framework want to be able to classify whether a given type of plant is for fibre (hemp) or recreational or medical use (marijuana).