Smart Economy

Magneto-seismic techniques developed to forecast space storms

Yesterday,  we explore the impacts of solar storms or solar flares that periodically bombard the earth. A team from the University of Alberta has develped an early warning system for such storms...like an advanced  geiger counter for space or "space seismology". Specifically they are exploring magnetic disturbances that help predict the arrival of a space storm.

A  team of researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton Canada has broken new ground in outer space by pinpointing the impact epicentre of an earthbound space storm as it crashes into the atmosphere and giving an advance warning that it's on the way...a key capability that wasn't available before. In 1989, a powerful solar storm knocked out power in the Canadian povince of Quebec for 9 hours.

The studies, using data from the NASA THEMIS mission, reveal that magnetic blast waves can be used to pinpoint and predict the location at the edge of space where space storms dissipate their energy. The technique can be considered as the seismology of space, the epicentre marking the location where the energy equivalent to 50 gigawatts of power, or the output of 10 of the world's largest power stations, is dumped into the atmosphere.

Physicists Jonathan Rae and Ian Mann are leading the U of A research team that has found the epicenter of impact. Their team is using ground stations spread across northern Canada and the five satellites of the THEMIS project to pick up magnetic disturbances as the storm crashes into the atmosphere. With information from the "space seismology" the researchers look for the eye of the storm, hundreds of thousands of kilometres above the Earth.

"We see the benevolent side of space storms in form of the northern lights," said Mann. "When electrically charged particles speed towards Earth and buffet the atmosphere, the result is often a dancing shimmering light over the polar region."

The U of A team has also determined that the magnetic tremors show that the space storm impact into the atmosphere has a unique epicentre. The eye of the storm is in deep space, far past the orbits of most communication satellites. Guided by the earth's magnetic field, the magnetic tremors rocket through space towards the planet. These disturbances trigger magnetic sensors on the ground as they impact the atmosphere at the edge of space. The space storm's effects, and the most spectacular displays of the northern lights, follow a few minutes later. The earth is protected from the most damaging direct effects of the radiation from these space storms by its atmosphere, but in space there is nowhere to hide. High-energy electrically charged particles released in space storms can disable spacecraft, interrupt radio communications and GPS navigation, and damage electric power grids.

Probing the eye of a space storm and recognizing the advance warning signs are crucial for researchers trying to understand space weather. Key questions about when and how space storms start are still challenging researchers on the THEMIS team. Like forecasters on Earth who predict severe weather, the University of Alberta researchers are now using these magneto-seismic techniques to investigate methods to forecast space storms.

Source: University of Alberta

Walter Derzko              

When will the recession end? Part 27 The Sun could create a double dip depression

New Solar Cycle 24 Prediction: Fewer Sunspots, But Severe Mass Coronal Ejection (MCE) Activity possible.

 

In the past, human populations have survived 7 climate change-related mass extinction events...James Lovelock reminds us...but are we more vulnerable now and less resilient as a society?

 

Now privately, some scientists are quietly predicting two imminant wild card possibilities-a mini ice age, that could punctuate global warming,  if sun spots do not pick up in the next solar spot cycle and the distinct possibility of severe solar storms. At the extreme, both events could cause billions of deaths in a worst case scenario that we looked at last month.

 

Publically, an  international panel of experts has released a new prediction for the next solar cycle, stating that Solar Cycle 24 will peak in May 2013with a below-average number of sunspots. Led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and sponsored by NASA, the panel includes a dozen members from nine different government and academic institutions. Their forecast sets the stage for at least another year of mostly quiet conditions before solar activity resumes in earnest [..they hope].

 

 

This plot of sunspot numbers shows the measured peak of the last solar cycle (Solar Cycle 23) in blue and the predicted peak of the next solar cycle (24) in red. Credit: NOAA/Space Weather Prediction Center.

 

"If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78," says panel chairman Doug Biesecker of the NOAA Space Prediction Center, Boulder, Colo.

 It is tempting to describe such a cycle as "weak" or "mild," but that could give the wrong impression. "Even a below-average cycle is capable of producing severe space weather,"says Biesecker. "The great geomagnetic storm of 1859, for instance, occurred during a solar cycle of about the same size we’re predicting for 2013."

The 1859 storm -- named the "Carrington Event" after astronomer Richard Carrington who witnessed the instigating solar flare -- electrified transmission cables, set fires in telegraph offices, and produced Northern Lights so bright that people could read newspapers by their red and green glow. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause $1 to 2 trillion in damages to society’s high-tech infrastructure and require four to ten years for complete recovery. For comparison, Hurricane Katrina caused $80 to 125 billion in damage.

 

 

The latest forecast revises a prediction issued in 2007, when a sharply divided panel believed solar minimum would come in March 2008 and would be followed by either a strong solar maximum in 2011 or a weak solar maximum in 2012. Competing models of the solar cycle produced different forecasts, and researchers were eager for the sun to reveal which was correct.

"It turns out that none of the models were really correct,"says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. NASA’s lead representative on the panel. "The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way."

Yearly-averaged sunspot numbers from 1610 to 2000. Researchers believe upcoming Solar Cycle 24 will be similar to the cycle that peaked in 1928, marked in red. Credit: NASA/MSFC

Astronomers first noted the solar cycle in the mid-1800s. Graphs of sunspot numbers resemble a roller coaster, going up and down with an approximately 11-year period. Predicting the peaks and valleys has proven troublesome because cycles vary in length from 9 to 14 years. Some peaks are high, others low. The valleys are usually brief, lasting only a couple of years, but sometimes they stretch much longer. In the 17th century, the sun plunged into a 70-year period of spotless quiet known as the Maunder Minimum (mini ice age) that still baffles scientists.

At a recent climate change symposium at Monash University in Australia, David Archibald, an expert in solar cycles stated:

“You haven’t seen any sign of the end of Solar Cycle 23 yet and the cooling over Solar
Cycle 24 as a consequence may be as much as 2.8 degrees centigrade. We are due for a de Vries cycle cooling event every two hundred and ten years, and actually even a Bond event because the last one of those was in the Dark Ages. And severe cooling over the next twenty years is now a certainty.” 

Right now, the solar cycle is in a valley--the deepest of the past century. In 2008 and 2009, the sun set Space Age records for low sunspotcounts, weak solar wind, and low solar irradiance. The sun has gone more than two years without a significant solar flare.

"In our professional careers, we’ve never seen anything quite like it," says Pesnell. "Solar minimum has lasted far beyond what we predicted in 2007."

 

 

In recent months, however, the sun has begun to show signs of life. Small sunspots and "proto-sunspots" are popping up with increasing frequency. Enormous currents of plasma on the sun’s surface ("zonal flows") are gaining strength and slowly drifting toward the sun’s equator. Radio astronomers have detected a tiny but significant uptick in solar radio emissions. All these things are precursors of an awakening Solar Cycle 24 and form the basis for the panel’s new, almost unanimous forecast.

 

 

According to the forecast, the sun should remain generally calm for at least another year. From a research point of view, that’s good news because solar minimum has proven to be more interesting than anyone imagined. Low solar activity has a profound effect on Earth’s atmosphere, allowing it to cool and contract. Space junk accumulates in Earth orbit because there is less aerodynamic drag. The becalmed solar wind whips up fewer magnetic storms around Earth’s poles. Cosmic rays that are normally pushed back by solar wind instead intrude on the near-Earth environment. There are other side-effects, too, that can be studied only so long as the sun remains quiet.

 

Meanwhile, the sun pays little heed to human committees. There could be more surprises, panelists acknowledge, and more revisions to the forecast.

"Go ahead and mark your calendar for May 2013," says Pesnell. "But use a pencil."

Source: Marshall Space Flight Center

Walter Derzko

Neural mechanisms of strategic decision making; Go or No-Go?

New research demonstrates that when faced with a difficult decision, the human brain calls upon multiple neural systems that code for different sorts of behaviors and strategies.

The study, published by Cell Press in the May 28th issue of the journal Neuron, provides intriguing insight into the mechanisms that help the human brain rise to the formidable challenge of adaptive decision making in the real world.

"When faced with a complex decision, many individuals engage in simplifying strategies, such as choosing based on the probability of a positive outcome," explains senior study author Dr. Scott Huettel from the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center at Duke University. "Although we now know much about how the brain encodes specific decision factors like risk and reward, much less is known about the brain selects among multiple strategies for managing the computational demands of a complex decision-making task."

To distinguish brain regions that predict specific choices from those areas that predict an individual's preferred strategy, Dr. Huettel and colleagues used behavioral tests and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study participants engaging in a complex risky choice task. The task involved economic gambles with multiple outcomes ranging from large monetary losses to large monetary gains. Subjects chose between different ways of changing the gambles: they could maximize the best possible gain, minimize the worst possible loss, or increase the overall probability of winning.

 

Choices that maximized gains or minimized losses were predicted by fMRI activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex or anterior insula, respectively, whereas probability-maximizing choices were associated with activation in the parietal and lateral prefrontal cortices. However, individuals differed in their strategic bias: some people were very focused on gains and losses, while others were very focused on the probability of winning.

Whether an individual expressed these biases in a particular decision was predicted by activation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which exhibited functional connectivity to the regions associated with specific choices.

 

Further, the intrinsic strategic bias of each person—whether they were focused on rewards or probabilities—was predicted by an independent measure of how strongly their brain responded to unexpected gains and losses.

 

Importantly, decision parameters estimated using traditional economic models of risky choice were poor predictors of choices in this new experimental paradigm, supporting the idea that individuals indeed engaged in simplifying strategies.

 

"Our findings indicate that the neural mechanisms of choice reflect more than competition between decision variables; they additionally involve strategic influences that guide decisions differently across individuals," offers Dr. Huettel.

 

Walter Derzko

Smart Economy

Toronto

Nowcasting (vs Forecasting); NASA uses satellite to unearth innovation in crop forecasting

Soil moisture is essential for seeds to germinate and for crops to grow. But record droughts and scorching temperatures in certain parts of the globe in recent years have caused soil to dry up, crippling crop production. The falling food supply in some regions has forced prices upward, pushing staple foods out of reach for millions of poor people.

NASA researchers are using satellite data to deliver a kind of space-based humanitarian assistance. They are cultivating the most accurate estimates of soil moisture – the main determinant of crop yield changes – and improving global forecasts of how well food will grow at a time when the world is confronting shortages.

 

During a presentation this week at the the Joint Assembly of the American Geophysical Union in Toronto, NASA scientist John Bolten described a new modeling product that uses data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite to improve the accuracy of West African soil moisture. The group produced assessments of current soil moisture conditions, or "nowcasts," and improved estimates by 5 percent over previous methods. Though seemingly small and incremental, the increase can make a big difference in the precision of crop forecasts, Bolten said.

The modeling innovation comes at a time when crop analysts at agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are working to meet the food shortage problem head on. They combine soil moisture estimates with weather trends to produce up-to-date forecasts of crop harvests. Those estimates help regional and national officials prepare for and prevent food crises.

 

"Many developing countries are relying on limited and highly variable water resources," said researchers. "And typically those same regions don't have adequate ground station data or crop-estimating agencies capable of making reliable production forecasts."

By definition, the severity of agricultural drought is determined by root-zone soil water content. So Bolten's satellite-driven boost to root-zone soil moisture prediction also directly improves drought monitoring. And Bolten says results from AMSR-E are just a precursor to dramatic new improvements in data and prediction accuracy researchers expect from the Soil Moisture Active and Passive satellite, slated to launch in 2013.

Food reserves are at their lowest level in 30 years, according to the United Nations World Food Program, putting the world's 1 billion poorest people most at risk. Prices for wheat, rice, and corn have more than doubled in the last 24 months, hitting countries like Haiti, Bangladesh, and Burkina Faso

the hardest. And the U.S.is not unaffected -- drought in 2008 led to an estimated $1.1 billion in crop losses in Texas alone.

"This advance is making it possible for us to do our job in a more precise way," said Curt Reynolds, a crop analyst for the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service in Washington. "We plan to make NASA's soil moisture information available to commodity markets, traders, agricultural producers, and policymakers through our Crop Explorer Web site."

 

 

Full story here >>

 

 

Walter Derzko,

Smart Economy,

Toronto

Author of the soon-to-be-published book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression featuring 45 opportunity scenarios.

 

 

Study finds that multivitamin use linked to younger ‘biological age’

The cells of multivitamin users may have a younger biological age than cells from non-users, according to new research led by Honglei Chen, MD, PhD from National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

 

Researchers looked at the length of telomeres, DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes that shorten as cells replicate and age.  The ageing and lifespan of normal, healthy cells are linked to the so-called telomerase shortening mechanism, which limits cells to a fixed number of divisions. During cell replication, the telomeres function by ensuring the cell's chromosomes do not fuse with each other or rearrange, which can lead to cancer. Elizabeth Blackburn, a telomere pioneer at the University of California San Francisco, likened telomeres to the ends of shoelaces, without which the lace would unravel.

With each replication the telomeres shorten, and when the telomeres are totally consumed, the cells are destroyed (apoptosis). Previous studies have also reported that telomeres are highly susceptible to oxidative stress.

Dr Chen and his co-workers noted that telomere length may therefore be a marker of biological ageing, and that multivitamins may beneficially affect telomere length via modulation of oxidative stress and chronic inflammation.  According to results published in the new issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the telomeres of daily multivitamin users may be on average 5.1 per cent longer than in non-users.

 

“To our knowledge, this was the first epidemiologic study of multivitamin use and telomere length,” wrote Dr Chen . “Regular multivitamin users tend to follow a healthy lifestyle and have a higher intake of micronutrients, which sometimes makes it difficult to interpret epidemiologic observations on multivitamin use."

According to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) State-of-the-Science Panel, half of the American population routinely use dietary supplements, with their annual spend estimated at over $20 billion.

Recent results of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey showed that 35 per cent of the US adult population regularly consumes one or more types of multivitamin products (Am. J. Epidemiol., 2004, Vol. 160, Pages 339-349).

 

Source: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; June 2009, Volume 89, Number 6, Pages 1857-1863, doi:10.3945/ajcn.2008.26986"Multivitamin use and telomere length in women" Authors: Q. Xu, C.G.Parks, L.A.DeRoo, R.M. Cawthon, D.P. Sandler, H. Chen

Walter Derzko

Smart Economy

Toronto

 

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression featuring 45 opportunity scenarios.

Most people, by nature are all universally optimistic

Study indicates people by nature are universally optimistic

Despite calamities from economic recessions, wars and famine to a flu epidemic afflicting the Earth, a new study from the University of Kansas and Gallupindicates that humans are by nature optimistic.

The study, to be presented Sunday, May 24, 2009, at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in San Francisco, found optimism to be universal and borderless.

Data from the Gallup World Poll drove the findings, with adults in more than 140 countries providing a representative sample of 95 percent of the world's population. The sample included more than 150,000 adults.

Eighty-nine percent of individuals worldwide expect the next five years to be as good or better than their current life, and 95 percent of individuals expected their life in five years to be as good or better than their life was five years ago.

"These results provide compelling evidence that optimism is a universal phenomenon," said Matthew Gallagher, a psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas and lead researcher of the study.

At the country level, optimism is highest in Ireland, Brazil, Denmark, and New Zealand and lowest in Zimbabwe, Egypt, Haiti and Bulgaria. The United States ranks number 10 on the list of optimistic countries.

Demographic factors (age and household income) appear to have only modest effects on individual levels of optimism.

Source: University of Kansas Press Release

Walter Derzko. Smart Economy, Toronto

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression featuring 45 opportunity scenarios.

World's most powerful, highest-resolution, commercial satellite: GeoEye-1

World's most powerful, highest-resolution, commercial satellite- GeoEye-1

Since the early 1960s, super powerful spy satellites have been the stuff of the military and intelligence communities. Now two U.S. companies have launched commercial imaging satellites that offer the same sort of space-based images of the Earth to the public. One of these companies, GeoEye of Dulles, Va., launched a multi-million dollar satellite last year, and it's the highest-resolution commercial imaging satellite in the world.

From its vantage point of 425 miles in space, the 4,300-pound GeoEye-1 satellite orbits the Earth and focuses its powerful lens on the surface below, snapping electronic images that can resolve objects on the ground as small as 41 cm across (16 inches). That's approximately the size of home plate on a baseball diamond. These images are typically processed and sold to the military for mapping and to companies like Google, which makes them available to the public through its platform Google Earth. (Because of federal regulations, the publicly-available images are slightly lower resolution -- approximately 50 cm).

In Baltimore at next week's CLEO/IQEC, GeoEye's Systems Engineering Director Michael Madden will describe some of the satellite's key features, such as the fact that it's the first commercial satellite with military-grade star trackers, which along with GPS makes the imagery from the satellite very accurate -- an important aspect for making precise maps. He will also preview the satellite GeoEye-2, which is expected to be launched around 2012 and would have a ground resolution twice as fine as GeoEye-1.

These powerful public eyes in the sky have already had an impact. Madden says for instance, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego is using satellite imagery to search for the tomb of Genghis Khan in Mongolia. A few months ago, one of the enduring photos taken during U.S. President Barack Obama's inauguration was the image captured by GeoEye-1 of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which showed throngs of people crowded together. In March 2009, the GeoEye-1 satellite captured a close-up image of a North Korean missile sitting on the launch pad just 25 minutes before launch. GeoEye-1 also provided a look at the annual Cherry Blossom Festival held in Washington, D.C.

From the space photo, details were clear enough to resolve individual trees, ripples on the Potomac River, and people and cars crowded along the Tidal Basin, the area in downtown Washington, D.C.where the festival takes place.

Source: 2009 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics/International Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/IQEC) May 31 to June 5 at the BaltimoreConvention Center in Baltimore. Presentation PWB4; Wednesday, June 3, 6:15 – 6:45 p.m.

Walter Derzko, Smart Economy, Toronto.

Healing injuries with laser light -photonic scaffolds a.k.a Star Trek?

Remember those Star Trek scanners from the 1960's TV show, that fix injuries with beams of light? Well, they  may not be science fiction after all. A new optical technology that lines up living cells and controls their movements has opened the door to better artificial tissues and wounds that heal faster with less scarring.

For years, scientists have used the energy in laser light to drill microscopic holes or as tweezers or traps to direct and maneuver small pieces of matter. Guiding entire cells, though, has proven difficult because the lasers used for manipulation tend to damage the structural units of living organisms.

Now Aristide Dogariu and colleagues at the University of Central Florida in Orlando have developed an optical procedure that does not harm cells, but affects their skeletons – an ensemble of slender rods made out of an abundant protein called actin. The actin rods are constantly growing and shrinking inside of cells. The direction in which they grow changes the cell's membrane shape and dictates where the cell moves.

Dogariu and colleagues use the polarization of optical waves to create a field around the cells in which the growing actin rods line up like a compass in the Earth's magnetic field. These optical fields can be used to guide large groups of cells to line up and move in the same direction.

The technique could be useful for cancer assays, which test the motility of cells, or as a non-invasive, non-toxic boost for regenerative medicine. Though cells have complicated and intriguing mechanisms to sense and communicate where an injury occurs, the possibility of using photonic scaffolds to stimulate and guide cells' motility to accelerate tissue repair, is now quite promising.

Source: 2009 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics/International Quantum Electronics Conference, May 31 to June 5 at the Baltimore Convention Center.Presentation CMMM2; Monday, June 1, 4 – 4:15 p.m.