There are quite a few recorded instances of earthquakes that have been caused by human activity, some with devastating consequences.  Current research points to 5 sources of man-man earthquakes:

1. Fluid injection in to the earth
2. Mining
3. Fluid extraction from the earth
4. Construction of dams and reservoirs
5. Nuclear testing

Some of the earliest recorded fluid injection earthquakes happened in the Denver area between 1962 and 1965 when waste fluids were being injected deep in to the earth.  There are recent fears that carbon sequestration may cause similar types of earthquakes near major metropolitan areas.  

One of the largest dams in the world, the Three Gorges Dam, has been blamed for the recent earthquake in China, though no official proof has been submitted.  There is plenty of evidence for reservoir based earthquakes though.  We suggest you take a look at the reservoir induced earthquake bibliography. 

The earthquakes that are caused by Nuclear testing are often used to detect nuclear explosions.  The recent detonation by North Korea was inferred through the use of seismic analysis.  Nuclear testing by Russia was also discovered through the use of seismic analysis. 

Mining has been the cause of of some huge earthquakes.  Take a look at the $3.5 billion worth of damage done by coal mining in Australia.

Your next roof may not actually be made of ceramic or asphalt tiles, but instead of energy-creating photovoltaics!  In Europe there has long been a trend in what is called building-integrated-photovoltaics (BIPV), in which solar-cells are integrated in to the design or materials of a building.  This technology has just begun to be applied in the US, and the future of BIPV is quite exciting. 

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory recently made an announcement outlining flexible rooftop solar panels, made to replace the large, bulky panels that we currently see on roofs around the world. 

The research team is using the same technology currently used to wrap LCDs with protective coatings to potentially wrap solar-cells.  Interestingly enough, the research is focused on mass-production and bringing the cost of solar cells down to $1 per watt of power, which is very competitive for solar-cells. 

There have been a number of recent rumors surrounding another exciting technology, photovoltaic “paint” that can be applied to steel sheets used on the outside of buildings, potentially generating many gigawatts of electricity.  A few really good links to information about this exciting technology:

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2008/10/solar-paint-on-steel-could-generate-renewable-energy-soon-53714

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/03/24/solar-power-without-a-solar-panel/

When Henry found his prize-winning research for assessing crack damage to nuclear reactor vessels, potentially saving thousands of lives and money, was taken over by his University, his inventive mind looked around for the next project, and latched onto using new state of the art low carbon technology to convert an old silk mill into sustainable luxury apartments.

Next thing was to gain credibility for his designs, so after a lengthy and gruelling application process, his project was entered for the Low Carbon Building grant programme, up against over 100 seriously tough applicants. Henry sailed through into the final 16 along side other major corporations such as Oxford Brookes.

At Dandridge’s Mill, he is converting an old silk mill, adapting centuries-old technology, and using an Archimedean Hydro screw to generate power from the flowing mill race. The screw will generate 4KW of electricity which will be distributed to the apartments. This is all neatly designed to be backed up in the summer months, when flows are lower, by a solar PV array installed on the roof.

Lurking under the mill stream’s water surface, collector loops for a Water source Heat-pump are laid low on the river bed so they can’t be seen, but are designed to provide 100% of the underfloor heating, on-demand hot water, and “another little carbon free bonus”, according to Henry, “In summer time the system will provide under-floor cooling to lower the temperature to around 17° taking the edge off hotter days.”

Step inside each of the converted luxury apartments, and a sophisticated lighting system starts up. Henry is using light bulbs that will last 30 years before they need changing and consume a mere 7W in comparison to your every day power hungry 50W halogen. “The lighting is seriously clever stuff” tackling advanced lighting technology that has been ignored so far Henry has again been praised for “pursuing where others have given up” to really benefit from the low energy, high power LED technology available today.

Doing nothing by halves, he looked over the specs for energy saving in new buildings, and decided what they asked for was too low, so has gone for 25% above the regulations on insulation. Rainwater (of course) is channelled into the river to be turned into electricity, and the system he has put in will allow every householder to key into a home page of their own home, neatly displaying their individual energy consumption for all utilities against what has been produced by the renewable sources. “The savings will happen in front of their eyes, people need to see and feel how effective these technologies can be if we are ever going to get away from this oil crisis”

With his mobile phone playing “we’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz” – Henry firmly believes in harnessing wonders and liberating energy.

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As most readers will know, the hope for stem cells is that these kind of cells can be transformed in to any type of tissue, such as being grown in to tissue needed for a transplant.  In 2007 a major announcement was made announcing the concept of cell transformation, specifically by groups at Kyoto University and University of Wisconsin – Madison.  This new, major development builds on that work by using proteins instead of genes to reprogram skin cells in to more embryonic-like cells. 

This new  development now means that scientist are one step closer to using existing cells rather than embryonic sourced stem cells for research.   

Normal stem cells are harvested from embryo’s and come with a host of scientific, political and ethical objections.  Newer techniques are beginning to quell some of these objections, such as the announcement of a technique to harvest stem cells without destroying the host embryo.  You can read more about that here.  The new approach announced April 23, involves a significant change in the transformation method of acquiring stem cells – by using proteins instead of genes. 

The traditional approach for turning existing cells in to embryonic-like cells is risky because genes are used to reprogram a cell.  These genes are transported by using a virus that may cause unwanted side effects, such as undesired genetic changes in the target cell.  This new method achieves the same results as prior methods, but uses proteins to cause the changes in the target cell, rather than genes.  This is considered much safer because there is a lower risk of unwanted genetic side effects in the target cells. 

Sheng Ding of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA led the research and specifically “engineered these four proteins so that they can penetrate the cell.” 

While this is a significant development, the science of cell reprogramming is at an early stage of development.  This new development was done on a certain type of skin-cell from mice, and researchers are hopeful, but not currently, of replicating these kind of results with human cells. 

There are also large problems and questions surrounding the efficiency of systems and methods that transform cells.  Much work needs to be done to improve the performance of the cell reprogramming methods, and it will be years before these kinds of cell-reprogramming systems are available for clinical use, much less there being used to treat patients. 

Currently there is a race to commercialize the technique for updating cells.  Several deals have been struck between bio-tech startups and universities, such as the one announced last month between start-up iZumi Bio, Inc. of South San Francisco and Kyoto University, the developers of the original cell reprogramming techniques. 

Journal Article Link: http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(09)00159-3

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The millet group of plants, like rice and wheat, are grasses that produce small, edible seeds. Archaeologists have long known that they were domesticated very early in China and India; the earliest known noodles, which are 4000 years old and were reported by a Chinese team in 2005, were made of millet. Although rice was domesticated in China’s warm and humid south, millet was domesticated in the north of the country, where conditions were much colder and drier. Yet archaeologists have debated whether these developments were independent or whether rice farmers from the south migrated north and began to cultivate wild millet–which grows much better than rice does in cold and dry conditions–thus transforming it into domesticated varieties.

A Chinese-American team led by Loukas Barton, an archaeologist at the University of California, Davis, and Seth Newsome, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C., tackled the debate at the early farming village of Dadiwan in northwest China. Dadiwan, which was first settled about 8000 years ago and produced China’s earliest known painted pottery, was excavated in the 1970s and again in 2006. The site contains some fossilized fragments of millet, which is the main plant found there, but not enough to elucidate its domestication.

So the team looked instead at the remains of dogs, pigs, and humans who appear to have consumed the grain. Millet is a so-called C4 plant, which has a very efficient photosynthetic system for capturing carbon dioxide, whereas most other plants that grow in northern China are less efficient C3 plants. Because C4 plants concentrate more of carbon’s heavier isotopes compared with C3 plants, a technique called stable isotope analysis–which measures the relative concentrations of isotopes in animal bones–can often detect which plants predominate in the diet.

The team found that the isotopic signature of bones located at the site changed over time. In the first phase of occupation at Dadiwan, between 7900 and 7200 years ago, pigs ate only C3 plants, whereas most of the dogs had C4 signatures, meaning that they ate millet. (Human bones from this phase were not available for analysis.) But during the second occupation phase, 6500 to 4900 years ago, all human and dog bones, and the great majority of pig bones, showed strong C4 signatures, indicating that all of their diets contained a lot of millet.

The team, which reports its results online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that millet was farmed at Dadiwan in its earliest phases but not by rice farmers from the south. Rather, the presence of pigs with C3 signatures implies that they were wild; the early dogs with C4 signatures, on the other hand, were probably domesticated and being fed millet by humans. That means Dadiwan was likely settled by local hunters who were farming on the side. Later, when millet farming intensified, it became the mainstay of an integrated agricultural system that included millet-eating domesticated pigs and dogs. These findings, the team says, suggest that millet farming helped fuel the rise of the Yangshao culture, one of north-central China’s most important early civilizations.

Dorian Fuller, an archaeologist at University College London, calls the report “an important new study” that “provide[s] a novel methodology for thinking about the development and intensification of agriculture.” Moreover, Fuller says, domestication of millet was apparently under way in northern China at a time when farmers in the south were just beginning to cultivate wild rice. The study provides definitive evidence “for millet agriculture developing earlier than full-fledged rice agriculture.”

In a macabre discovery fit for Indiana Jones, archaeologists in Spain unearthed a 14th century brick oven with a unique role — to bake bones. Scientists report that the animal bones were burnt in the oven and mixed with other materials to produce a protective coating to strengthen the grand medieval walls of what is today Granada, Spain. Scientists now describe how they found these materials thanks to a powerful new testing method.

Carolina Cardell and colleagues point out that ancient decorative and protective layers, or patinas, covering the outside of very old buildings have been subject of many analyses in archaeology, conservation and chemistry. Patinas have been a popular finishing for building exteriors and walls for aesthetic and protective reasons since ancient times. “However, the results of this work are significant for archaeologists since this is the first report of burnt bones in a patina on a Muslim monument, as well as the archaeological artifacts — the oven and raw materials — used to produce them,” says Cardell.

Using a novel new method to identify the components of historical artifacts, the team found hydroxyapatite, the main component in bone pigments and animal bones, in the patina of Granada’s medieval walls. Their new test is inexpensive, identifies chemicals more accurately and — most importantly — does not harm the historical artifacts.

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According to the study, the testes stem cells have different patterns of gene expression and regulation and they do not proliferate and differentiate as aggressively as human embryonic stem cells.

The findings, published in the January issue of the journal Stem Cells, are in contrast to those reported in a recent Nature paper, which concluded that the cells were, in fact, as pluripotent as embryonic stem cells. Pluripotent cells can become any cell in the body and form tumors called teratomas when transplanted into mice.

“It’s time to reinterpret the data,” said Renee Reijo-Pera, PhD, professor of obstetrics & gynecology at Stanford, “and to accept that we’re beginning to discover many different types of stem cells. Although they are all related to each other, they also all have unique therapeutic applications in which they surpass other family members.”

Reijo-Pera, who is the director of Stanford’s Center for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Education, collaborated with male infertility specialist Paul Turek, MD, a professor of urology at UCSF and the director of The Turek Clinic in San Francisco, to conduct the research. Reijo-Pera and Turek are co-senior authors of the study.

The stem cells from the testes seem to hover in a gray area between true pluripotency and the more limited, tissue-specific multipotency exhibited by many types of adult stem cells. They termed the cells “multipotent germline stem cells.” Germ cells are those cells in the body that differentiate to make sperm and eggs.

Playing to these cells’ strengths — in this case, their likely ability to differentiate into cells involved in male reproduction — may be a wiser choice than trying to pigeonhole them as embryonic-stem-cell-wannabes, said Reijo-Pera.

“These cells could potentially treat infertility or other diseases in men,” Turek said.

But the lure of pluripotency is strong. An easily accessible source of unmodified, pluripotent human cells would allow physicians and researchers to create cell lines and tissues identical to others in the donor’s body. Theoretically such cells could be used as a perfectly matched therapy for that particular donor — perhaps to generate new cartilage to repair a knee injury or new neurons to treat nerve damage. Alternatively, the technique could be used to derive cell lines carrying specific disease-causing mutations — from a man with Parkinson’s, for example—on which to conduct research.

Coaxing specialized, or differentiated, adult cells to regress back into a more malleable, embryonic-stem-cell-like state (a process called “induced pluripotency”) would also allow scientists to realize the therapeutic benefits of embryonic cells without the thorny ethical problems that plague cells derived from embryos. Until recently, however, the reprogramming of differentiated cells required the use of viruses to introduce specific genes into the cells, which may limit their therapeutic usefulness.

The researchers used cells obtained via biopsies conducted to diagnose male infertility in 19 of the clinic’s patients. Each patient’s cells were cultured in a manner similar to human embryonic stem cells; two of the 19 samples yielded cell lines with many characteristics of the pluripotent cells. One of the two patients from whom the cell lines were derived withdrew from the study and his samples were discarded.

Further study on the remaining cell line indicated that it expressed many, but not all, genes associated with pluripotency. The cells could also be induced to differentiate into decidedly non-testicular neural cell precursors and they expressed the telomerase enzyme essential to keep pluripotent cells young and unspecialized. However, when the researchers examined the cells’ patterns of methylation — a modification to DNA that affects gene expression — they found that the newly derived cell line was less-thoroughly methylated as compared to human embryonic stem cells in one region and more heavily methylated than human embryonic stem cells in another region.

Finally, when the researchers injected the human stem cells into mice with compromised immune systems, they showed only a limited ability to form a teratoma — a kind of tumor formed of many cell types. Teratoma formation resulting from the aggressive proliferation and differentiation of transplanted stem cells is a hallmark of true pluripotency. Together, the results suggest that the stem cells isolated from male testes have some, but not all the characteristics of true pluripotent cells.

“It’s not yet possible to completely re-create human embryonic stem cells from germline cells,” said Reijo-Pera, “These cells differ in gene expression, methylation and in their ability to form teratomas. But it’s the fact that they are different that makes them so interesting. Suggesting otherwise would do a disservice to the research community by overlooking the fact that these cells are a unique cell type that could be really useful in the study of human germ cell formation.”

Other Stanford collaborators on the research include graduate students Nina Kossack and Cory Nicholas; research assistant Ha Nam Nguyen; and postdoctoral scholar Shawn Chavez, PhD. The research was funded by the Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz Foundation, the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.

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“This forecast bleaching episode will be caused by increased water temperatures and is the kind of event we can expect on a regular basis if average global temperatures rise above 2 degrees,” said Richard Leck, Climate Change Strategy Leader for WWF’s Coral Triangle Program.

The bleaching, predicted to occur between now and February, could have a devastating impact on coral reef ecosystems, killing coral and destroying food chains. There would be severe impacts for communities in Australia and the region, who depend on the oceans for their livelihoods.

The Coral Triangle, stretching from the Philippines to Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, is home to 75 per cent of all known coral species. More than 120 million people rely on its marine resources.

“Regular bleaching episodes in this part of the world will have a massive impact on the region’s ability to sustain local communities,” said Leck. “In the Pacific many of the Small Island Developing States, such as the Solomon Islands, rely largely on the coast and coastal environments such as coral reefs for food supply. This is a region where alternative sources of income and food are limited.

“Time is crucial and Australia needs to step up to the plate. Following the government’s lack of resolve to seriously reduce future domestic carbon emissions, Australia has a huge role to play in assisting Coral Triangle countries and people to adapt to the changes in their climate.“

The Australian government this week announced a 2020 target for reducing its greenhouse gas pollution by 5 per cent, which WWF criticised as completely inadequate. Reductions of at least 25 per cent by 2020 are needed to set the world on a pathway to meaningful cuts in greenhouse pollution.

Australia’s Coral Sea, which will also be affected by coral bleaching and climate change, is a pristine marine wilderness covering almost 1,000,000 square kilometres and is extraordinarily rich in marine life, including sharks and turtles, with a series of spectacular reefs rising thousands of metres from the sea floor.

WWF is urging the Australian government to declare the Coral Sea a marine protected area, as well as working to establish a network of marine protected areas that will assist ocean environments to adapt to the changes caused by rising temperatures, and to absorb the impacts from human activity.

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