What I Didn’t Know At The Time Was That This Is What Time Is Like For Most Women: Fragmented, Interrupted

An isochronic map showing how many days it took to travel to the furthest corners of Britain’s Empire in 1914 [1,400 x 908] CLICK HERE FOR MORE MAPS! thelandofmaps.tumblr.com

A Mesmerizing 3-D Vision of New York as Pure Data

Climate Change Signal Emerges from the Weather

Scientists begin to detect the influence of global warming on extreme weather

From Hawaii’s flurry of hurricanes, to record high sea ice in Antarctica, and a heat wave that cooked the Australian Open like shrimp on a barbie, 2014 saw some wild weather. How much of that was tied to climate change is what scientists around the world tried to answer in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society’s annual attribution report, which was published Thursday.

What they discovered was that the clearest impacts of warming could be found in heat-related events, from heat waves on land to unusually hot ocean waters. Other events, like droughts in East Africa and the Middle East, California’s intense wildfires, and winter storms that continually swept across the eastern U.S., were harder to pinpoint. In part this is because such events are inherently complex, with a multitude of factors influencing them.

For example, while the East African drought was found to be both more likely and more intense because of warming, the situation in the Middle East was less clear, with no discernable climate change connection to the various factors that influenced it. Likewise, no direct push from climate change could be found in California’s wildfire activity, though it is clear that it is increasing the overall wildfire risk there.

And while some events, like the U.S. winter storms and the record high Antarctic sea ice extent, could be pinned to a particular cause, that cause could not be linked to climate change. For other events, like the drought in Brazil and flooding in the Canadian prairies, humans influenced the likelihood in other ways besides the greenhouse gases that continue to be emitted into the atmosphere.

What was clear, though, is that the fast-growing field of what is called extreme event attribution is gaining momentum. Researchers are casting a wider net for extreme events to examine and continually refining their methods. Attribution work has traveled a considerable distance since its inception just over a decade ago.

“Extreme event attribution” is a new topic for me. Very cool science right thar.

Arctic Warming Produces Mosquito Swarms Large Enough to Kill Baby Caribou

Lauren Culler's study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that Arctic warming is producing larger and larger mosquito swarms, which can kill caribou.

Apparently, because of the earlier thawing of the permafrost, and the increasing amount of permafrost that is melting each, each because of climate change, the Alaska state bird, aka the mosquito, is swarming in unprecedented numbers. The article tells us that mosquitos can kill a baby caribou calf by draining its blood, because the calf is already weakened by the scarcity of food sources also attributable to climate change.

Here’s a video, showing mosquitos swarming in Alaska and annoying a baby owl and a herd of caribou.

Check out these photos, taken by scientists in Alaska. If mosquitos make you squirm, close your eyes:

Brain, Bone and Blood Vessels Coming Hot Off the Press

Could the days of custom clavicles and bespoke bladders produced just in the knick of time for suffering patients be around the corner?

While keeping an eye on tissue engineering studies, we’ve been seeing some significant wins in the lab that are bringing the sci-fi future of on-demand 3-D printed organs, bone and blood vessels closer. 

Harvard and Brown bioengineers are taking their own routes to build complex tissues in customized 3-D printers. And just the other week, we reported on newly unveiled work at the University of Florida to print complex soft structures in baths that could one day birth replacement human parts along with soft robots.

Now, Carnegie Mellon engineers reported on Friday that they had successfully printed simplified proof-of-concept anatomical structures like mini femurs, blood vessels and brains suspended in soft gelatin. Learn more and see a video below.

Keep reading

Africa, still covered in large swathes of pristine wilderness, is likely to lose much of its biological wealth if dozens of new massive development projects—from highways to railroads to pipelines—get the green light, according to a new study. Most of the projects are designed to increase agricultural production and ease the transport of minerals such as iron and coal. Yet if all are built, they’ll create a spider web of some 53,000 kilometers of corridors through deserts, forests, and savannas—and a host of environmental disasters, scientists say. Even worse, they contend, most won’t help the continent feed its people, even though this is the primary justification behind many of the projects.

“Africa is undergoing the most dramatic era of development it’s ever experienced,” says William Laurance, an ecologist at James Cook University, Cairns, in Australia, and the study’s lead author. “No one disputes its need for food and economic development. But these corridors need to be built without creating environmental crises.”

The scientists’ study is a follow-up to aprevious one they published last year inNature warning about the unprecedented number of road and transportation projects being planned globally. 

Traditional secrets to keeping cool—investigating Okinawan textiles

When Yoko Nomura moved from warm, dry California to the subtropical island of Okinawa, she was struck by the stifling heat and humidity. Searching for ways to survive the Okinawan summer months, Nomura, from the Science and Technology Group at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), discovered a traditional secret to keeping cool: a material called Basho-fu.

Basho-fu is an Okinawan textile fabric made from banana plant fibers. Originating from the 13th or 14th century, Basho-fu was used to make traditional Okinawan kimonos. Basho-fu kimonos were popular among all classes of people in the Ryukyu Kingdom, which ruled Okinawa from 1429 to 1879. Basho-fu textiles were highly durable for hard labor such as farming and fishing, and were comfortable to wear in the hot and humid subtropical climate of Okinawa.

The expertise required to make Basho-fu textiles has been passed down through generations of craftspeople in Okinawa. However, the traditional craft is now under threat from a shortage of banana plant materials and an infiltration of modern methods.

In an effort to rescue and document this important part of Okinawan folk culture, researchers from OIST, in collaboration with the University of the Ryukyus and the Kijoka Basho-fu Association, used scientific techniques to characterize Basho-fu materials and to compare traditional and laboratory Basho-fu production processes.

Read more.

An Urbanizing Planet

The video, entitled An Urbanizing Planet, takes viewers on a stunning satellite-viewed tour around our planet. By combining more than 10 datasets, and using GIS processing software and 3D graphic applications, the video shows not only where urbanization will be most extensive, but also how the majority of the expansion will occur in areas adjacent to biodiversity hotspots.

The video was produced to present the framework of a new book Global Urbanization, Biodiversity, and Ecosystems: Challenges and Opportunities — A Global Assessment. The scientific foundation of the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook project, the book presents the world’s first assessment of how global urbanization and urban growth impact biodiversity and ecosystems. It builds on contributions by more than 200 scientists worldwide.

Power-pylons that look like looming giants

Choi + Shine, an architecture firm, has proposed modifying Iceland’s existing power-transmission pylons to turn them into looming giants whose arms are poised to reflect their positions – pylons ascending a hill will be posed as though they were scaling its slopes.

The designers claim that it can be made cost-effective through clever engineering, and that the resulting aesthetic experience will be monumental. I agree with the latter statement and am unqualified to assess the former, though Iceland has a weird and cool relationship with power, as it is ia carbon-neutral country whose electricity comes from geothermal sources.

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