What’s the News: President Obama gave a major address outlining his plan for U.S. energy security yesterday. His major goal is quite ambitious: to cut American oil imports by one-third by 2025. And towards that goal, he listed a number of initiatives that many news organizations see as a rehashing of old ideas, however good they might be. According to The Economist, “it is hard to see his recycled list of proposals as anything more than a reassurance to the environmentally minded, and to Americans fretting about rising fuel prices, that the president feels their pain.”

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What’s the News: While the Kepler spacecraft is busy finding solar system-loads of new planets, other astronomers are expanding our idea where planets could potentially be found. One astronomer wants to look for habitable planets around white dwarfs, arguing that any water-bearing exoplanets orbiting these tiny, dim stars would be much easier to find than those around main-sequence stars like our Sun. Another team dispenses with stars altogether and speculates that dark matter explosions inside a planet could hypothetically make it warm enough to be habitable, even without a star. “This is a fascinating, and highly original idea,” MIT exoplanet expert Sara Seager told Wired, referring to the dark matter hypothesis. “Original ideas are becoming more and more rare in exoplanet theory.”

How the Heck:

• Because white dwarfs are much smaller than our Sun, an Earth-sized planet that crossed in front of it would block more of its light, which should make these planets easier to spot. So astronomer Eric Agol suggests survey the 20,000 white dwarfs closest to Earth with relatively meager 1-meter ground telescopes.
• And because white dwarfs are so cool, a planet in a white dwarfs habitable zone would be very close, meaning its transit would happen very fast. Agol says we’d only need to watch a star for 32 hours to pick up on any transiting, habitable planets.
• One leading theory about dark matter is that it’s made of theoretical particles called WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles). It’s thought that when WIMPs collide (if, of course, they exist), they would explode. Astronomers think that these WIMP explosions could possibly heat a planet enough to make it habitable.
• There are no immediate plans to test the dark matter hypothesis, which is quite theoretical, and any plan to find dark matter-fueled planets would need to look far from here: our part of the universe doesn’t have nearly enough dark matter to bring a planet to habitability.

What’s the Context:

• In other white dwarf news, astronomers have discovered a red dwarf in an extremely tight orbit with a white dwarf.
• And others are still wrangling over what dark matter really is.
• As for exoplanets, astronomers have actually seen one—as in, with visible light—orbiting its star.

Not So Fast:

• It’s not at all clear if white dwarfs have any planets, and if so, whether any of them could possibly support water or life as we know it. For one thing, planets in the habitable zone would be tidally locked with the star—permanent scalding daylight on one side; permanent frozen nighttime on the other.
• Taking 32 hours to find a planet orbiting a white dwarf may seem like a short time, but when you’re looking at tens of thousands of stars, it adds up. Agol told UW Today, “This could take a huge amount of time, even with [a network of telescopes].”
• And just like star-orbiting planets have their Goldilocks zones (not to hot or too cold), dark matter-containing planets would need the right amount of dark matter to be habitable. “It’s not something that’s likely to produce a lot of habitable planets,” Fermilab researcher Dan Hooper told Wired. “But in very special places and in very special models, it could do the trick.” 

References: Eric Agol. “TRANSIT SURVEYS FOR EARTHS IN THE HABITABLE ZONES OF WHITE DWARFS.” doi: 10.1088/2041-8205/731/2/L31

Dan Hooper and Jason H. Steffen. “Dark Matter And The Habitability of Planets.” arXiv:1103.5086v1

Image: NASA/European Space Agency

What’s the News: Scientists have developed a new carbon nanotube device (pictured above) that’s capable of detecting single cancer cells. Once implemented in hospitals, this microfluidic device could let doctors more efficiently detect the spread of cancer, especially in developing countries that don’t have the money for more sophisticated diagnostic equipment. Any improvement in detecting cancer’s spread is important, says MIT associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics Brian Wardle, because “of all deaths from cancer, 90 percent are … from tumors that spread from the original site.”

What’s the Context:

• The researchers’ original microfluidic device from four years ago featured tens of thousands of microscopic silicon posts coated with tumor-sticking antibodies: when cancer cells bumped into the posts, they’d stick. But if cancer cells didn’t bump into a silicon post, they’d go undetected. The group says their new version is eight times better.
• When cancer cells migrate, there are “usually only several [cancer] cells per 1-milliliter sample of blood” containing billions of other cells, making cancer exceedingly difficult to detect.
• This new dime-sized microfluidic machine works in the same way, but the solid silicon tubes were switched out for highly porous carbon nanotubes. This allows the blood to actually flow through the tubes instead of just around them, increasing the likelihood of catching a cancer cell.
• In other cancer detection news, some are using dogs to sniff out cancer and others use genetic tests to figure out cancer risks.
• Combating cancer ranges from new cancer-fighting drugs to just ignoring cancer (sometimes).

Not So Fast: The process of commercializing a technology like this takes quite a while; the previous version from four years ago is being tested in hospitals now and is may be commercially available “within the next few years.”

Next Up: The scientists are currently tweaking the device to try to catch HIV.

Reference: Grace D. Chen et al. “Nanoporous Elements in Microfluidics for Multiscale Manipulation of Bioparticles.” Small. DOI: 10.1002/smll.201002076

Image: Brian Wardle/MIT

What’s the News: DARPA wants to fund research into technologies that could be built into the genome of microorganisms and keep track of any changes made to the organism’s genes, according a call for proposals the agency made earlier this month. In other words, DARPA wants to “turn on Track Changes” in certain viruses and bacteria.

What’s the Context:

• This genetic surveillance technology would help safeguard intellectual property, DARPA says. (See this PDF for the full description of the request.) Patenting genes has proven controversial enough on its own, so high-tech policing of these patents is unlikely to go down easy.
• Second, this technology could be used for “providing secure access” to dangerous pathogens or “proprietary microorganisms.” In other words, they want it to password-protect bugs, for reasons of health and/or commerce.
• DARPA isn’t shy about asking for proposals that are more than a bit off the wall: how to make a cannon that can fire people onto a tall roof, for instance, or a Jestons-esque flying car.

How the Heck: No idea. And, judging by its description, DARPA isn’t too sure either. The agency is asking for “multidisciplinary research proposals” and gives a nod to “possibly utilizing a cryptographical or complex mathematical approach.”

Image: Wellcome Images / Peter Artymiuk

What’s the News: Based on early Kepler data, astronomers say that the Milky Way galaxy may house at least two billion Earth-like planets—one for every several dozen sun-like stars. As NASA researcher Joseph Catanzarite told Space.com, “With that large a number, there’s a good chance life and maybe even intelligent life might exist on some of those planets. And that’s just our galaxy alone — there are 50 billion other galaxies.” But while 2 billion sounds like a lot, it’s actually far below many scientists’ expectation; Catanzarite says his teams’ findings actually show that Earth-like planets are “relatively scarce.”

How the Heck:

• Using mathematical models to plot the size and orbital distance for all the potential planets spotted during four months’ worth of Kepler data, astronomers extrapolated the data and calculated that 1.4 to 2.7% of the Milky Way’s sun-like stars may have an Earth analog.
• Two percent of the Milky Way’s roughly one hundred billion sun-like stars means that “you have two billion Earth analog planets in the galaxy,” Catanzarite told National Geographic.

What’s the Context:

• The Kepler team recently announced a mother lode of 1,200 potential alien worlds (68 of them about Earth size), a tightly scrunched-up mini solar system, and a bizarro “styrofoam” world; unfortunately, the “most Earth-like planet” planet it found so far got a major demotion: it’s not actually habitable.

Not So Fast:

• MIT astronomer Sara Seager says that the team “completely underestimates the frequency of Earths.” The calculations are based on only four months of Kepler data—too early to be making an accurate projection.
• There’s also the fact that Kepler can only detect the size and orbital distance (and occasionally the masses) of planets, which doesn’t tell you whether life as we know it could actually live there; Venus, for example, would roughly like Earth to aliens peering at us from many light-years away, but because of its atmosphere’s runaway greenhouse effect, it’s way too hot to be habitable.

Next Up: The astronomers plan on calculating an even more accurate number once all of Kepler’s data is in.

Reference: Joseph Catanzarite and Michael Shao. “The Occurrence Rate of Earth Analog Planets Orbiting Sunlike Stars.” arXiv:1103.1443v1 Image: Kepler/NASA

What’s the News: Scientists have created the first rechargeable battery that uses seawater and freshwater to generate electricity. If installed into every ocean-discharging river in the world (that’s not a realistic scenario—just a frame of reference), the process could produce 2 terawatts, or about 13% of worldwide electricity use. As the researchers write, this battery is “simple to fabricate and could contribute significantly to renewable energy in the future.”

How the Heck:

• Dubbed the “mixing entropy battery,” this gadget generates current by harnessing the salinity difference between salt and freshwater.
• Freshwater is first funneled into the battery, which houses a positive and negative electrode.
• After the battery is charged by an external energy source, the freshwater is switched out for seawater, whose added ions increase “the electrical potential, or voltage, between the two electrodes. That makes it possible to reap far more electricity than the amount used to charge the battery,” according to Stanford News.

What’s the Context:

• Several research teams have looked into new ways of extracting energy from water in recent years. For example, in 2003, scientists created an electrical current by pumping water through glass microchannels, creating “the first new way to produce sustainable electricity in 160 years,” according to University of Alberta scientist Larry Kostiuk.
• 80beats covers a lot of news in green energy, from the first practical artificial leaf (which works by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen) to offshore wind turbines to a little known (but high-impact) energy law.
• While Discoblog covers weird energy alternatives, such as the clock that feeds on flies.

Not So Fast:

• As a major energy source, the battery is limited by supply of and access to freshwater.
• While the researchers say that the process has little environmental impact, future ocean-river batteries need to proceed with caution because estuaries, where freshwater and seawater combine, are “environmentally sensitive areas.”
• Another limiting factor is the negative electrode, which is made of expensive silver.

Next Up: Noting the limited supply of freshwater on Earth, lead author Yi Cui says that “we need to study using sewage water … If we can use sewage water, this will sell really well.”

Reference: Fabio La Mantia et al. “Batteries for Efficient Energy Extraction from a Water Salinity Difference.” Nano Letters. doi: 10.1021/nl200500s

Image: Nano Letters

What’s the News: Amazon has launched a fully working music locker and playback system this week. The cloud system allows users to upload digital music to the Web and play it on their computers and Android phones, giving Amazon a decided edge over its rivals. “Amazon has won the race of the big three to deliver a fully cloud-supported music option,” writes Tech Crunch’s MG Siegler.

Why the Hype:

• Dubbed “Cloud Drive,” Amazon’s cloud storage service not only stores music, but also videos, photographs, and other documents.
• Users receive the storage space equivalent of 1,200 tracks (5GB), though you can upgrade, paying as much as $1,000 for 1 TB of storage space, enough for about 70 hours of HD video.
• Amazon provides free storage for every album purchased via Amazon MP3.
• You’ll also get 20 free gigabytes for a year when you buy an album on Amazon MP3.
• The playback service is called “Cloud Player,” and according to TechCrunch, “will let people listen to, download and make playlists from the music they store on Cloud Drive from any Web browser or from an app on Android devices.” It also works with Blackberry and Palm mobiles.

What’s the Context:

• As  Amazon music director Craig Pape told the New York Times, “The functionality is the same as an external hard drive,” which means that Amazon’s service is similar to other cloud music companies like AudioBox and mSpot. The major achievement here is that Amazon is the first heavyweight in the ring.
• This launch comes on the heals of Amazon’s recent App Store launch.
• Gene Expression’s Razib Khan covers cloud computing, from why Google’s cloud services crashed in the past to why they might crash more in the future.

Not So Fast:

• Amazon’s cloud service doesn’t stream music to iOS devices, which means you won’t see it on your iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. (You can download music to iOS devices—not nearly as smooth an interface.)
• Although Cloud Player works on Chrome, Safari IE 8 and above, and Firefox 3.5 and above, it doesn’t work on Opera.
• It’s only for U.S. users right now.
• And you can’t use mobile devices to upload music.

Next Up: Amazon may be first, but it’s not going to be the only major company with cloud music storage for long: Both Apple and Google are expected to launch their own locker systems soon.

Image: Amazon

What’s the News: Scientists have identified three gene mutations that lead to acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that afflicts white blood cells, which may lead to better cancer drugs in the future. As Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute hematologist George Vassiliou told the BBC, his team’s study “found critical steps that take place when the cancer develops. Identifying the biological steps … means we can look for new drugs to reverse the process.”

How the Heck:

• The researchers discovered the major mutation by switching on the Npm1 gene in mice: They observed that about one third of the mice went on to develop leukemia.
• They knew some other genes were involved because not all the mice contracted cancer. So next, they randomly mutated mouse genes, and then analyzed the mutations in the ones that developed cancer, identifying two other mutations in the process. The second mutation affected cell growth and division and the third affected the cell’s environment.

What’s the Context:

• Acute myeloid leukemia occurs when the body develops an abnormal amount of undeveloped white blood cells. It’s the most common type of acute leukemia, accounting for more than 6,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.
• The scientists chose to work on this kind of leukemia because “there had been little progress in developing new drugs.”
• 80beats has covered acute myeloid leukemia in the past, including its link to a possible HIV cure, and more on leukemia in general, from whether the cancer can be passed on from mother to child to decoding a cancer patient’s genome.
• In 2005 Discover covered the news of a possible vaccine for leukemia.

Not So Fast: Researchers caution that it could take decades before new cancer-fighting drugs based on this study come on the market. This present study only used mice as subjects.

Reference: George S Vassiliou et al. “Mutant nucleophosmin and cooperating pathways drive leukemia initiation and progression in mice.” Nature Genetics. doi:10.1038/ng.796

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Bruce Wetzel

What’s the News: Physicists have worked out a new method of storing information in the quantum states of atoms in diamond crystals. The scientists linked the spin of individual nitrogen atoms in the diamond—impurities at the jewelry counter, but boons in the physics lab—to the spin of nearby electrons. They could form a quantum link between the spin of the nitrogen atom and the spin of a nearby electron, letting the electron store information more stably than if it were spinning on its own.

How the Heck:

• When a nitrogen is next to an empty spot in a diamond’s carbon framework, it lets off an extra electron, leaving that electron free to have its quantum played around with.
• Using what they call “intense microwave fields” [PDF], the physicists were able to link the spin of a nitrogen atom to a neighboring electron, a pairing sparked by magnetic fields.

What’s the Context:

• Scientists have been looking at diamonds—with and without nitrogen impurities—as a quantum computing material for several years, in part because it can store quantum memory at room temperature, not the far-below-freezing temps required by some other materials.
• Some have even proposed the idea of diamond supercomputers, which would store millions of times as much data as today’s machines.
• One hurdle in quantum computing is getting the information to last long enough to use it. In the recent study, the nuclear spin stayed coherent for more than a millisecond—enough time for a ten petaflop supercomputer to do ten trillion operations.

Not so Fast:

• Don’t start rooting around in your hard drive for a rock just yet; diamond-based quantum computing is still a long way off.

Reference: “Quantum control and nanoscale placement of single spins in diamond.” David D. Awschalom, invited talk, American Physical Society March Meeting 2011

Image: Flickr / Swamibu

What’s the News: This week, scientists say that they’ve passed a chemistry milestone by creating the world’s first practical photosynthesis device. The playing-card-sized photosynthetic gadget uses sunlight to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, which can then be used to produce energy, and is reputedly 10 times more efficient than a natural leaf. Researchers say they expect it to revolutionize power storage, especially in remote areas that don’t currently have electricity. “A practical artificial leaf has been one of the Holy Grails of science for decades,” says lead researcher Daniel Nocera, who’s presenting this research at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society this week.

How the Heck:

• The artificial leaf uses nickel and cobalt as catalysts to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen by facilitating oxygen-oxygen bonding.
• Oxygen and hydrogen molecules are then sent to a fuel cell that can produce electricity. If the device is placed in a one-gallon bucket of water in bright sunlight, it can reportedly produce enough electricity to power a house in a developing nation.

What’s the Context:

• The very first artificial leaf was created by John Turner of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, over a decade ago. The device lasted for only one day and was made of expensive metals, making it impractical.
• This new artificial leaf uses nickel and cobalt, which are relatively cheap, and has so far operated continuously for at least 45 hours, making it the first practical artificial leaf.
• In 2008, Nocera announced a way of splitting water using cobalt and platinum, a breakthrough at the time. Now, by using nickel instead of the more expensive platinum, he’s made the entire process economically feasible, in addition to combining everything into a working prototype.
• Nocera has appeared in Discover before, including his National Science Foundation briefing on energy storage.
• Many more labs are also working on artificial photosynthesis.
• 80beats has covered other green energies, from wind turbines to natural gas.

Next Up:

• Scientists are working to increase the device’s efficiency still higher.
• Tata Group, an Indian conglomerate, plans on creating a power plant based on this research within the next year and a half.

Reference: Daniel Nocera et al. 241^st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. March 27-31, 2011 Anaheim, California, USA

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Daniel Schwen

What’s the News: By videotaping sleepwalkers as they got some shut-eye (with their permission, of course), French and Swiss researchers caught on tape what other studies have deduced through brain recordings and memory tasks: As we sleep, our brains seem to replay what we learned during the day. See an example of a a sleepwalker’s re-enactments here:

How the Heck:

• The researchers recruited 19 sleepwalkers and 20 people with sleep behavior disorder, who physically act out their dreams, plus 18 people without any sleep disorders.
• All the subjects learned a physical skill: hitting particular buttons arrayed around them in response to different prompts from a computer.
• The researchers then videotaped each person as they slept. One of the sleepwalkers lifted her arms during REM sleep and started moving her hands in a familiar pattern: an “obvious and accurate re-enactment of a short fragment of the recently learned sequence of movements,” the researchers wrote.

What’s the Context:

• A whole lot of research has suggested that a good night’s sleep can improve memory not just for physical tasks like this one, but for words, facts, pictures, and spatial information.
• Most of these studies have compared how sleep-deprived and well-rested people performed on memory tests, or looked at how closely brain activity during sleep resembled brain activity as people learned something new.  Watching people who act out their thoughts as they sleep provides a more direct view of what the brain’s up to.

Not So Fast:

• Some scientists think that sleep’s impact on memory isn’t as simple as locking down everything we’ve learned. Sleep may only solidify memories when we know we’ll be tested, or may actually help us prune unimportant memories rather than fortify the important ones.
• Others aren’t convinced that sleep helps us solidify memories at all; they argue that, at best, we can cement what we’ve learned while sleeping just as well as we can while we’re awake.

Reference: “Evidence for the Re-Enactment of a Recently Learned Behavior during Sleepwalking” Delphine Oudiette et al. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018056

Image: WikimediaCommons / Chad Fitz

What’s the News: Archeologists have discovered thousands of stone tools in Texas that are over 15,000 years old. The find is important because it is over 2,000 years older than the so-called Clovis culture, which had previously thought to be the first human culture in North America. As Texas A&M University anthropologist Michael Waters says, “This is almost like a baseball bat to the side of the head of the archaeological community to wake up and say, ‘hey, there are pre-Clovis people here, that we have to stop quibbling and we need to develop a new model for peopling of the Americas’.”

How the Heck:

• At a site on Buttermilk Creek in central Texas, Archeologists discovered 15,528 items, ranging from chert flakes to blades and chisels.
• The first indication that the tools were older than anything previous seen on North America came from their stratigraphic horizon: The excavated layer was underneath a layer of classic Clovis tools. (The sediments showed no indication of mixing after the tools were dropped.)
• The most conclusive evidence came from a dating technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating, which indicates how long minerals have been underground. Over 60 OSL dates revealed the tools to be about 15,500 years old, much older than the up-to-13,500-year-old Clovis culture.

What’s the Context:

• For the past 80 years, some archeologists have argued that the Clovis culture represented the first human foray into North America, migrating across Siberia and into Alaska.
• But over the past several years, a number of archeologists have challenged this idea based on sites that seem to have tools that are older than the Clovis migration. What’s special about this particular find is that the sheer number of well-dated tools is thought to finally settle the debate.
• 80beats has covered the history of the first Americans, from their migrations after crossing the Bering Land Bridge to their habit of eating dogs.
• Some argue that the first American cultures came from Australia.
• And that many might have been wiped out by an asteroid.

Not So Fast:

• Some anthropologists say that the “Clovis first” theory went out of style years ago, and that this study only puts the nail in the Clovis coffin.
• Others are skeptical about this present finding, noting that OSL dating is less reliable than radiocarbon dating and that the site’s deposits are “potentially problematic” because they’re located on an old floodplain and could have been transported by water.

The Future Holds: Now it’s time for archeologists to rethink the North American narrative of migration: How did humans first populate the continent? As James Adovasio, the executive director of the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute, told NPR, “Everything we’re learning now, from genetics, from linguistic data, from geological data, from archaeological data, suggests that the peopling process is infinitely more complicated than we might have imagined 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago.”

Reference: The Buttermilk Creek Complex and the Origins of Clovis at the Debra L. Friedkin Site, Texas. By Michael R. Waters et al. DOI: 10.1126/science.331.6024.1512

Image: Courtesy of Michael R. Waters

What’s the News: For the first time in medical history, scientists have successfully grown mouse sperm in a laboratory. As Northwestern University cell biologist Erwin Goldberg told New Scientist, “People have been trying to do this for years.” It’s hoped that being able to grow sperm outside the testes will lead to improved fertility treatments for men.

How the Heck:

• The concept is simple: Combine the right dosage of chemicals that will provide nourishment to testes in a petri dish. Actually finding the magic amount is a tedious process of trial and error.
• First, the team genetically engineered mice “so that a protein only present in fully grown sperm would fluoresce green.”
• Next, the scientists extracted germ cells (which produce sperm) from the newborn mice testes, and put them in a bath of agarose gel, fetal bovine serum, testosterone, and other chemicals.
• After about a month, they discovered that virtually half of the lab-grown sperm were glowing, indicating that they were fully grown.
• They then used in vitro fertilization to impregnate female mice, who eventually gave birth to fertile mice themselves.

Context:

• Past attempts at lab-grown sperm weren’t very successful. Many of the sperm cells from a  2006 study, for example, died before developing fully.
• Ed Yong has written about sperm, including the barbed sperm of the flatworm and the sperm wars between ants and bees.
• 80beats has covered how plastics decrease sperm counts, the secret of the sperm’s wild dash, and the shared 600-million-year-old sperm gene between humans, fish, and flies.

Not So Fast:

• The researchers developed offspring using only 100 sperm cells; doctors would like to see “millions if possible” to make successful fertility treatments in humans.
• Scientists may have observed “healthy and reproductively competent offspring,” but they don’t delve into the possible long-term side effects of creating people from sperm developed off the traditional route. In vitro sperm creation could be compared to IVF, a technique that leads to greater risk of diabetes and some other conditions. Researchers still aren’t sure why this is, though they have made some headway, discovering that the DNA of IVF-babies actually differs from other children.

Next Up: This technique still needs to be proved in humans, and if it is, it could have wide-ranging effects. For example, in the future, doctors might be able to extract testicular tissue from young boys—who haven’t yet developed mature sperm—and then grow sperm in the lab. Or for infertile men, doctors could extract germ cells, produce sperm, and then find out what’s wrong with them.

Reference: “In vitro production of functional sperm in cultured neonatal mouse testes” Takuya Sato et al. doi:10.1038/nature09850

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Bobjgalindo

What’s the News: In a much-ignored speech last week (not ignored by Grist), Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) argued that the U.S. could become less vulnerable to spiking oil prices if we used less of it (surprise!). The crux of the talk was a graph he showed of our country’s estimated petroleum imports, and specifically, the significant change inprojection between 2008 and 2011 (blue and red lines above). Our now-declining gas and oil imports are in part a result of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

How the Heck:

• Our petroleum imports are projected to decline because the Energy Act included strategic changes to biofuel and fuel efficiency policies. For example, automakers are required to increase fleetwide gas mileage to 35 miles per gallon by 2020 and more money is being funneled into biofuel production.
• As Bingaman said in his speech, the act will save the U.S. billions of oil barrels—more than the 23 billion that we now have in U.S. proven oil reserves.
• The bottom line is that by including more biofuels into our gasoline and supporting alternative energies, we’ll require less petroleum and thereby rely less on the petrostates. The concept is simple, but it carries a wallop once you actually see the graph.

What’s the Context:

• This entire process was a bi-partisan initiative. Part of the Democratic Party’s 100-Hour Plan, the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act was introduced to the House by Nick Rahall and President Bush signed it into law as part of his “Twenty in Ten” challenge.
• The graph and its projection is a non-partisan product because it’s created by the EIA, which is charged with disseminating “independent and impartial energy information.”
• From offshore drilling to false promises of energy independence, 80beats and Cosmic Variance has fossil-fuel news covered.
• While Discoblog explores inventive ways of getting petroleum from plastics.

Not So Fast: Some green-tech writers think the EIA’s predictions are more fiction than fact. According to Chris Nelder at Green Chip Stocks, the EIA’s predictions often “present a picture of the future that looks like a continuation of the best parts of the past, with none of the bad parts.” The assumption that our oil imports will keep on declining hinges partly on technologies that haven’t been invented yet and the hope that all the policies included in the Energy Act come to fruition. The only thing you can’t argue against is that petroleum demands right now are much lower than we had expected, thanks in due part to the Energy Act. What’s more, the economy has largely sputtered since 2008, which tends to tamp down demand for energy. The graph might be more valuable if it showed oil consumption per unit of economic activity.

Image: EIA

What’s the News: The reproductive life of a cuckoo is both easy—it lays its eggs in others birds’ nests, and lets them feed the young—and difficult: cuckoos are involved in an “evolutionary arms race” with other birds, finds a new study. Even as cuckoos improve their counterfeiting skills—producing eggs that look more like others birds’—the host birds get better and better at identifying the forged eggs.

How the Heck:

• Knowing that birds have four types of color-sensitive cone cells in their eyes, allowing them to see ultraviolet wavelengths, researchers used a spectroscope to measure the amount of light reflected from hundreds of cuckoo and host-bird eggs. They then fed this data into models to produce images showing how birds see the different types of eggs.
• They discovered that while cuckoo and redstart eggs have a high degree of color overlap, cuckoo eggs targeted for dunnock nests did not.
• Here’s the kicker: Redstarts and dunnocks don’t spot forgeries equally. Redstarts are more discerning of foreign eggs and readily kick out cuckoo forgeries, while the dumb dunnocks accept even the most mismatched eggs. So these findings suggest that cuckoos targeting redstarts evolved the ability to create better forgeries because the redstart has such a good eye. With dunnocks, that evolutionary force wasn’t at play because the birds are so accepting of forgeries; why bother?

What’s the Context:

• What sets this research apart from previous work is how the researchers used UV-sensing equipment to mimic bird vision. (Past research relied merely on human inspection.)
• Not Exactly Rocket Science covers a lot of cuckoo news, from how some host birds have an evolutionary advantage to take care of cuckoo eggs to how grown cuckoos actually mimic hawks to fool small birds.
• Carl Zimmer in The Loom touches on how humans are like cuckoos.

The Future Holds: Scientists still aren’t sure why some hosts, like the dunnock, are so accepting of cuckoo eggs. Some scientists argue that this is because the risk in mistakenly rejecting a real egg outweighs the cost of raising a cuckoo egg. The jury’s still out.

Reference: “AVIAN VISION AND THE EVOLUTION OF EGG COLOR MIMICRY IN THE COMMON CUCKOO” Mary Caswell Stoddard and Martin Stevens. DOI: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2011.01262.x

Image: NHM