Nuclear accidents can have devastating consequences for the people and animals living in the vicinity of the damaged power plants, but they also give researchers a unique opportunity to study the effects of radiation on populations that would be impossible to recreate in the lab.
Tim Mousseau, who directs the Chernobyl Research Initiative at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, together with an international team, is studying the long-term ecological and health consequences of the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. Mousseau has been studying Chernobyl since 1998 and his latest work, carried out with colleagues in France and published in Oecologia last month, finds that bird species with orange feathers living in the fallout zone seem to be more susceptible to radiation than their drabber gray and black fellows. They suggest that production of the more colourful pigments consumes antioxidant molecules that would otherwise confer protection against radiation damage, and that this molecular trade-off is shaping bird populations around the former nuclear power plant. Continue reading When being colourful doesn’t pay→
Where some people hear noise, Jeong Ho You hears energy. “Acoustic energy is everywhere,” he says. And with the help of a tiny resonating chamber, he wants to trap some of that energy and convert it into a low-amperage current for use in small electronic devices. You, a mechanical engineer at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, will be presenting the results of a computer simulation of a resonating chamber design at next month’s Acoustical Society of America meeting in Seattle. He then plans to build a device to see how his idea holds up in the lab. Continue reading Acoustic Energy Harvesters Gaining Volume→
Well, I hope it wasn’t my last visit to Madrid, but next time I’ll have little claim to calling it home. After returning our van to the agency I still had a set of keys to a rented flat and a half-used metrocard in my pocket. Next time I visit I’ll have a return ticket to Zurich, instead.
With little to do except wait for our flights out, George and I indulged in tourism. He showed me a used bookstore on c/Lope de Vega and I guided us through a culinary tour that ended at the same champagne bar where we’d toasted the start of our trip. Maybe it was good practice for future visits, when I’ll go back to exploring the city as a guest. Now, in addition to my extensive and welcoming family here, I’ve also got a growing network of friends and colleagues in the city. Living in Madrid this last year just gave me more reasons to visit.
It was only minutes before I was due to board my flight to Switzerland that I discovered that my flight did not go to Switzerland. The so-called Basel airport is actually located just west of the border with France. Getting to Zurich from there will require another overland border crossing into Switzerland, though this time I’m hoping to avoid the close scrutiny of Swiss border control we experienced outside Geneva last week.
How much jamon serrano am I allowed to bring in, anyway?
Journalist covering global development by way of science and technology.
Nuclear accidents can have devastating consequences for the people and animals living in the vicinity of the damaged power plants, but they also give researchers a unique opportunity to study the effects of radiation on populations that would be impossible to recreate in the lab.