Nuclear fusion offers millions of years of energy with virtually no carbon impact. The problem is that, until now, no one has worked out how to do it reliably.

The “Holy Grail” of clean energy that could clean up our planet is nearer than we think, an international nuclear-fusion conference of more than 100 scientists agreed in Canberra last week.

The first stage towards success was already under way in Europe with an international effort to stabilise a doughnut-shaped plasma (the fourth state of matter) at a temperature of 100 million degrees with a giant version of a microwave oven.

No problems there, the scientists agreed: fusion has no safety problems compared with nuclear fission plants, producing less than a hundredth of radioactivity in incidental processes.

Nuclear fission is our dangerously dirty and accident-prone method of producing energy at the expense of radioactive waste by splitting atoms. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is based on fusing the nuclei of two atoms. It produces more energy and is radioactively clean. It produces limitless energy (electric power) from seawater or lithium. Nuclear fusion offers millions of years of energy with virtually no carbon impact. The problem is that, until now, no one has worked out how to do it reliably.

Professor Boyd Blackwell, director of Australia’s Plasma Research Facility, said the great problem of the fusion programme was that magnetic fields could break into chaotic shapes.

When you need a reactor that is economical and can be maintained remotely, then you must have perfect symmetry of the plasma formation. Magnetic fields can break into chaotic shapes, especially when you are trying to make them in a three-dimensional reactor.

We use waves carrying energy to the plasma and make these waves resonate with the plasma particles by choosing the right frequency. The trick is to make a force field which holds the particles in place without letting the heat escape.

The “doughnut” problem was that a perfect formation of its plasma is two-dimensional. The programme has to make it work in a three-dimensional world in practical terms and, said Blackwell, this should be achieved within 20 years after producing 500 million watts from the first-stage machines.

This “serious amount of power” would give development investors confidence in the demonstrator reactors – which will have a potential of developing two to 10 times greater watts capacity. At this stage mass-production of clean and reliable fusion reactors can be expected.

The replacement of the world’s coal-powered and nuclear plants would begin. This would have to be a gradual effect because we now have so many coal-powered plants. So a second stage of perhaps another 20 years to accomplish effective replacements with fusion energy would take place.

What we had to keep in mind, Blackwell said, was this was the biggest pay-off you could imagine in cleaning up our world, with damage causing immense climate-change costs. This is, more or less, free energy from the point of view of fusion power stations in the long-term. The fuel cost is near zero to power stations in the long-term. But creating the machines to use it is not and they will be similar in cost to the already escalating price of producing fossil fuel energy and solar energy.

But eventually the world will achieve freedom from the causes of climate change and the appalling costs of nuclear fission disasters.

The world could then lessen much of the damage already done by cleansing its energy production and, agreed the Canberra conference: the means is in sight. - Sunday Tribune

They may be tiny, but hummingbirds have a huge memory, say researchers.

London - They may be tiny, but hummingbirds have a huge memory, researchers have found.

Their hippocampus – the area of the brain responsible for learning and memory – is up to five times bigger than that in songbirds, seabirds and woodpeckers.

This might explain why hummingbirds are such skilled foragers.

The birds can remember where every flower in their territory is and how long it takes to refill with nectar after they have fed.

A team led by Dr Andrew Iwaniuk, of the University of Lethbridge in Canada, dissected hummingbird brains and found their hippocampus showed an “exceptional” memory.

Their study is published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. - Daily Mail

Its similarity to other bacteria means this deadly new strain has existed until now without being identified.

London - A type of bacteria in the mouth may cause serious disease or even kill if it enters the bloodstream via bleeding gums, scientists warned on Tuesday.

They identified Streptococcus tigurinus for the first time after carrying out tests in which they isolated it from the blood of patients suffering inflammation of the heart, meningitis and inflammation of the spine.

Its similarity to other bacteria means it has existed until now without being identified.

Dr Andrea Zbinden, of the University of Zurich, who led the study, published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Micro-biology, said: “This bacterium seems to have a natural potential to cause severe disease. The next step is to work out how common this bacterium is in the oral cavity.” - Daily Mail

Engineers have built a cost-effective prototype for floating, rotating solar panels.

San Giuliano, Italy - Rays of the winter sun bounce off gleaming mirrors on the tiny lake of Colignola in Italy, where engineers have built a cost-effective prototype for floating, rotating solar panels.

“You are standing on a photovoltaic floating plant which tracks the sun, it's the first platform of its kind in the world!” said Marco Rosa-Clot, a professor at Florence University, proudly showing off his new project.

Rosa-Clot and his team say they are revolutionising solar power and that their floating flower-petal-like panels soaking up the Tuscan sun have already attracted a lot of interest from international buyers.

Standard solar panels on buildings or in fields have been criticised for taking up valuable agricultural land, being unsightly and losing energy through overheating - issues the floating plants would resolve.

The Floating Tracking Cooling Concentrator (FTCC) system is designed to exploit unused areas of artificial reservoirs or disused quarries.

While the water keeps the panels at low temperatures, reflectors are positioned to maximised solar capture at different times of day, making it more efficient than a traditional installation, Rosa-Clot said.

The head of Scintec, a small family business which produces a variety of renewable energy and industrial devices, Rosa-Clot said the pilot plant set up on the lake near Pisa, Tuscany, was a model of efficiency.

“It's a small-scale design, 30 kilowatts, which would suffice for a dozen or so families. The standard is set at 3kW per apartment,” he said.

At an estimated price of around 1,600 euros per kW including installation, a plant the size of Colignola could cost some 48,000 euros (about R500 000).

Scintec says its system costs 20 percent less than ground-based structures.

The flat panels are winged by reflectors and sit on raft-like structures which are anchored to the lake bed with a pylon.

Decked out in jeans and jacket, the engineer explained the benefit that a place like sun-kissed Sicily with its 75 square kilometres (29 square miles) of artificial reservoirs and lakes could draw from the system.

“If we covered just 10 percent of that area with floating photovoltaic panels, we would have one gigawatt of power installed,” he said Ä enough to power 10 million 100-watt light bulbs.

Engineer Raniero Cazzaniga, who works on the project, said that some people think classic solar installations are spoiling the landscape.

“Our system is designed for low-lying quarries. The installation is only about a metre (three feet) high and usually you can't see it until you get to the water's edge. It is not at all intrusive,” he said.

Their cost-efficient project has sparked international interest.

Rosa-Clot said: “Reactions from abroad have been very positive. Some Koreans came to Pisa to see us and we signed a three-year contract giving them a license to build this sort of installation in South Korea.”

The Korean company Techwin has built a floating photovoltaic plant using the FTCC technology, and in Italy the Terra Moretti group has installed one on an irrigation reservoir at its winery near Livorno.

Rosa-Clot and his team are in talks with “Germans, French and Italian companies” hoping to stay ahead of the curve on water-based solar energy.

“There is no miraculous solution to the energy problem,” he said. “Our project will make it possible to have a far greater number of photovoltaic installations at an ever lower cost.” - Sapa-AFP

Researchers say they have identified an entirely new kind of planet, dominated not by rock, gas or other common materials, but water.

New York - An astronaut attempting to visit recently discovered planet GJ1214b would land in hot water - literally, US scientists say.

Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics said they have identified an entirely new kind of planet, dominated not by rock, gas or other common materials, but water.

The planet is “a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere,” they said in a statement, after scrutinising the planet with Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope.

“GJ1214b is like no planet we know of,” astronomer Zachary Berta said. “A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water.”

GJ1214b was discovered in 2009 by the ground-based MEarth Project. Described as a “super-Earth,” it is about 2.7 times Earth's diameter and weighs almost 7 times as much.

Further studies in 2010 led to scientists suspecting that the planet, where the temperature is some 450 degrees Fahrenheit (232 Celsius), was largely covered in water. This was confirmed by Berta and his co-authors using Hubble to study the planet when it crossed in front of its host star.

The light of the star, filtered through the planet's atmosphere, gave clues to the mix of gasses, backing up the water vapour theory.

“The Hubble measurements really tip the balance in favour of a steamy atmosphere,” Berta said.

Further measurements and estimates led scientists to conclude that the planet has much more water than Earth and much less rock. That, together with high temperatures and pressure, likely produce some highly exotic results, including “hot ice,” scientists say.

Our solar system contains three basic planet types: rocky, like Earth; gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn; and ice giants like Uranus. - Sapa-AFP

Researchers have discovered a new family of legless amphibians in north-east India that have ancient links with Africa.

New Delhi - Researchers have discovered a new family of legless amphibians in north-east India that have ancient links with Africa, it was announced on Wednesday.

The discovery of the tailless burrowing caecilians was made by a team of international scientists led by Professor SD Biju from Delhi University, the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London reported.

The scientists conducted soil surveys at 238 sites, beginning in 2006.

The caecilians, said to superficially resemble earthworms, are one of the three categories of amphibians. They live hidden in the ground and are among the least explored orders of the amphibians.

“Scientists performed DNA analysis of the specimens and confirmed that it is an entirely new family,” Biju said.

The new family has been named Chikilidae and the new species, Chikila, derived from Garo, a tribal language spoken in the region.

Researchers estimate that the newly discovered caecilians evolved separately from other species of caecilians more than 140 million years ago.

The new family is of ancient lineage whose closest relatives occur in Africa, a relationship established hundreds of millions of years ago before India broke away from Africa and collided with Asia creating the Himalayan mountain range.

“The work is a significant contribution to the understanding of vertebrate evolution and biogeography,” Biju said.

Scientists also said the discovery highlighted north-east India as a poorly studied region likely to harbour additional ancient lineages of organisms found nowhere else on earth. - Sapa-dpa

Monkeys suffering from Parkinson's disease show a marked improvement when human embryonic stem cells are implanted in their brains.

Tokyo - Monkeys suffering from Parkinson's disease show a marked improvement when human embryonic stem cells are implanted in their brains, in what a Japanese researcher said on Wednesday was a world first.

A team of scientists transplanted the stem cells into four primates that were suffering from the debilitating disease.

The monkeys all had violent shaking in their limbs - a classic symptom of Parkinson's disease - and were unable to control their bodies, but began to show improvements in their motor control after about three months, Kyoto University associate professor Jun Takahashi told AFP.

About six months after the transplant, the creatures were able to walk around their cages, he said.

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurological illness linked to a decrease in dopamine production in the brain. There is currently no medical solution to this drop off in a key neurotransmitter.

The condition, which generally affects older people, gained wider public recognition when Hollywood actor Michael J. Fox revealed he was a sufferer.

Takahashi said at the time of the implant about 35 percent of the stem cells had already grown into dopamine neuron cells, with around 10 percent still alive after a year.

He said he wants to improve the effectiveness of the treatment by increasing the survival rate of dopamine neuron cells to 70 percent.

“The challenge before applying it to a clinical study is to raise the number of dopamine neuron cells we can implant and to prevent the development of tumours,” he said.

Takahashi said so far he had used embryonic stem cells, which are harvested from foetuses, but would likely switch to Induced Pluripotent Stem cells, which are created from human skin, for the clinical trial.

Scientists say the use of human embryonic stem cells as a treatment for cancer and other diseases holds great promise, but the process has drawn fire from religious conservatives, among others.

Opponents say harvesting the cells, which have the potential to become any cell in the human body, is unethical because it involves the destruction of an embryo.

The Japanese government currently has no guidelines on the use of human stem cells in clinical research. - Sapa-AFP

Dolphins are so intelligent that they should be thought of as “non-human persons” and given their own bill of rights, says a group of scientists.

London - Dolphins are so intelligent that they should be thought of as “non-human persons” and given their own bill of rights, it is claimed.

A coalition of scientists, philosophers and animal welfare groups have come up with a declaration of dolphin rights which they hope will one day be enshrined in law.

This would stop them being kept in zoos and waterparks, and being attacked by fishermen.

Whales would also be elevated above other animals by the list of rules, leading to whalers being classed as murderers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference heard in Vancouver.

Whale watching trips would be subject to regulations which would respect the creatures’ privacy and developers and oil companies would have to give huge consideration to the effect their projects would have on the animals’ life and culture.

Philosopher Thomas White said: “Scientific evidence is now strong enough to support the claim that dolphins are, like humans, self-aware, intelligent beings with emotions and personalities. Accordingly, dolphins should be regarded as ‘non-human persons’ and valued as individuals. From an ethical perspective, the injury, deaths and captivity of dolphins are wrong.”

Those who drew up the bill of rights are known as the Helsinki Group and include UK members of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

They say that thanks to advances in science, it is now clear that dolphins are extremely intelligent, complex and sensitive mammals.

The bill of rights states that every individual member of the cetacean order – whales, dolphins and porpoises – has a right to life. It also says that no one has the right to own the creatures or to do anything that undermines their rights, freedoms or norms.

Its authors are using the Vancouver conference to try to get more scientists and members of the public on their side. They believe this is a step towards eventually persuading governments to enshrine the principles in law.

When brain weight is compared with body weight, the dolphin has the second-largest brain on the planet after humans.

The conference heard that dolphins are self-aware – they can recognise themselves in the mirror.

There are also examples of them grieving for lost calves, feeding ailing pod mates and co-operating with fishermen when there is a meal in it for them.

In Laguna, Brazil, when a shoal of fish enters the lagoon, the dolphins herd it towards the fishermen. Any fish that escape their nets provide an easy meal.

At Dingle, south-west Ireland, a bottlenose nicknamed Fungie regularly entertains sightseers in boats. Perhaps the most striking example of dolphin intelligence involves Kelly, a member of a pod at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi which were rewarded with fish for clearing up litter from their pool.

Each piece of litter equated to one fish. To raise her intake of fish, Kelly tore the litter into pieces and presented them one by one. One day, she caught a gull and was given a large haul of fish for her efforts.

She then started to use the fish she won for litter picking to lure gulls into her jaws. She also taught the tactic to her calf, which passed it on to other youngsters in the pod.

AND THEY WATCH TELEVISION TOO …

Given the opportunity, dolphins will watch TV and follow instructions delivered on the screen. Chimps do this only after months of training.

Dolphins can be taught to understand human words, sentences and demands.

Like humans, dolphins are altruistic and there are examples of them going to the aid of swimmers and surfers attacked by sharks.

They use body language. The “side-flop”, jumping clear of the water and landing on their side, is thought to mean: “I want to go now.”

They have regional accents, with the whistles made by those off Wales different to those living off the Irish coast.

They have a form of adult onset diabetes but are able to turn it on and off. Learning how they do this could lead to new treatments for the human form of the condition.

Males woo females by presenting them with gifts from bouquets of weed to sticks and lumps of marine debris. - Daily Mail

A team of scientists have managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species.

Moscow - It was an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species.

The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds.

The experiment proves that permafrost serves as a natural depository for ancient life forms, said the Russian researchers, who published their findings in Tuesday's issue of “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” of the United States.

“We consider it essential to continue permafrost studies in search of an ancient genetic pool, that of pre-existing life, which hypothetically has long since vanished from the earth's surface,” the scientists said in the article.

Canadian researchers had earlier regenerated some significantly younger plants from seeds found in burrows.

Svetlana Yashina of the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy Of Sciences, who led the regeneration effort, said the revived plant looked very similar to its modern version, which still grows in the same area in northeastern Siberia.

“It's a very viable plant, and it adapts really well,” she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from the Russian town of Pushchino where her lab is located.

She voiced hope the team could continue its work and regenerate more plant species.

The Russian research team recovered the fruit after investigating dozens of fossil burrows hidden in ice deposits on the right bank of the lower Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia, the sediments dating back 30,000-32,000 years.

The sediments were firmly cemented together and often totally filled with ice, making any water infiltration impossible - creating a natural freezing chamber fully isolated from the surface.

“The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber,” said Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of the study, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel burrows. “It's a natural cryobank.”

The burrows were located 125 feet (38 meters) below the present surface in layers containing bones of large mammals, such as mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, bison, horse and deer.

Gubin said the study has demonstrated that tissue can survive ice conservation for tens of thousands of years, opening the way to the possible resurrection of Ice Age mammals.

“If we are lucky, we can find some frozen squirrel tissue,” Gubin told the AP. “And this path could lead us all the way to mammoth.”

Japanese scientists are already searching in the same area for mammoth remains, but Gubin voiced hope that the Russians will be the first to find some frozen animal tissue that could be used for regeneration.

“It's our land, we will try to get them first,” he said. - Sapa-AP

Spain will send hulking military transport planes to Florida to retrieve 17 tons of treasure that US undersea explorers found but ultimately lost in courts.

Madrid - Spain will send hulking military transport planes to Florida to retrieve 17 tons of treasure that US undersea explorers found but ultimately lost in American courts.

The Civil Guard said on Monday that agents would leave within hours to take possession of the booty, worth an estimated 380 million euros, and two Spanish Hercules transport planes will bring it back.

A federal judge has ordered Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration to give Spanish officials access to the silver coins and other artefacts beginning Tuesday.

Odyssey found them in a Spanish galleon in 2007 off Portugal. Spain argued successfully in court it never relinquished ownership of the ship or its contents. - Sapa-AP