For decades, dozens of forgotten Navy and merchant ships have been corroding in Suisun Bay, 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. These historic vessels—the Mothball Fleet—served their country in four wars: WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Desert Storm. After a decade of impasse, the ghost fleet is slowly dwindling as the ships are towed out one-by-one for scrapping. About 15 retired ships are already gone; by 2017, the entire fleet will be just a memory.
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Australia is considering awarding carbon credits for killing feral camels as a way to tackle climate change. The suggestion is included in Canberra’s “Carbon Farming Initiative”, a consultation paper by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, seen Thursday.
Adelaide-based Northwest Carbon, a commercial company, proposed culling some 1.2 million wild camels that roam the Outback, the legacy of herds introduced to help early settlers in the 19th century. Considered a pest due to the damage they do to vegetation, a camel produces, on average, a methane equivalent to one tonne of carbon dioxide a year, making them collectively one of Australia’s major emitters of greenhouse gases.
In its plan, Northwest said it would shoot them from helicopters or muster them and send them to an abattoir for either human or pet consumption.
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It seems hard for many to believe, but one air travel industry study has found that there may be some merit to the idea that small electronics could interfere enough with airplane navigation to cause a safety problem.
According to a confidential study unearthed by ABC News, a study by the International Air Transport Association trade group found some 75 incidents of potential interference reported between 2003 and 2009. The involved interference with everything from flight controls, to navigation to communications systems. The type of device suspected of causing interference varied, though the most commonly cited likely troublemaker was the cell phone.
Cell phone use is, of course, banned by the FAA during flights, though many people forget to turn off their devices or willingly ignore the warnings. It is increasingly common to hear a cell phone ring or an alert chirp well after take-off.
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The researchers report that they were able to create bright laser pulses that lasted a few nanoseconds with a single cell. Amazingly the cells were not damaged during the production of the laser light but were able to withstand hundreds of pulses.
The project took place at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine in Massachusetts. The key to this breakthrough involved the use of the widely studied protein known as green fluorescent protein. This protein, which was first discovered in jellyfish, has (as the name implies) the property of generating light.
Although there are no immediate plans to use this technology, the erosion of the barrier between optical technologies and biology could open many doors in therapy and research.
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