Ocean Conveyor Belt

Warming Could Slow Ocean Currents Larry O’Hanlon, Discovery News March 1, 2007 — There is both good and bad news about the conveyor belt of heat-moving currents in the North Atlantic Ocean.A new study of 17 different climate models concludes that the thermohaline circulation, which drives the Gulf Stream and helps warm Europe, won’t stop dead and abruptly change regional climates anytime this century. That’s the good news. “Abrupt climate change in this century is unlikely,” said climate researcher Andrew Weaver of Canada’s University of Victoria.   The thermohaline circulation is seen as one of the few climate switches that could be flipped quickly and morph climates worldwide — at least in theory. In the 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow, the large-scale circulation came to a speedy halt, hurling Europe into another ice age in a matter of days — a wildly exagerated scenario. But despite Hollywood’s over-the-top version, abrupt climate change over years or decades is a genuine concern. And now for the bad news. Many experts have thought it would take something dramatic, like the complete meltdown of Greenland’s ice sheet (and subsequent dumping of buoyant freshwater into the ocean) to throw a wrench into the thermohaline circulation. The models show that may not be the case. The warming of ocean surface temperatures alone may be enough to slow the circulation. All of the models showed a reduction in the conveyor belt-like thermohaline circulation over time, said Weaver. “But it turns out it’s not the freshwater that’s driving it,” he added.   More [ 1 . 2 ] next » Get More from Discovery News: Tue 04 Mar 2008 Dirty Laundry, Clean Thyself! Tue 04 Mar 2008 BLOG: I’m…Where? Musings From the Field Tue 04 Mar 2008 Mars Avalanche Caught on Camera Tue 04 Mar 2008 Whooping Cranes Threatened by Wind Farms Tue 04 Mar 2008 Climate-Cooling Plan Goes Up in Dust Mon 03 Mar 2008 Six-Legged ‘Hexapus’ Could Be World’s First Mon 03 Mar 2008 Blogging’s Good For Your Health Mon 03 Mar 2008 Water on Mars Theory Debunked? Mon 03 Mar 2008 Rare New Zealand Frog Found in Sanctuary Mon 03 Mar 2008 China’s Yellow Sand Hits Japan, S. Korea

Microsoft’s Telescope

A source close to Microsoft says theThe service will be accessed through a downloadable application - Windows only for now is what we hear. Users will be able to pan around the nighttime sky and zoom as far in to any one area as the data will allow. Microsoft is said to be tapping the Hubble telescope as well as ten or so earth bound telescopes around the world for data. When you find an area you like, you can switch to a number of different views, such as infrared and non-visible light.

Dan Farber posted his own educated guess that the project might be WorldWide Telescope, based on the fact that Curtis Wong and Jonathan Fay were involved, and he’s right. Last year Fay gave a presentation called “”The WorldWide Telescope, bringing the Universe to a PC near you.” In 1993, Wong started a project called “John Dobson’s Universe,” a virtual sky tour on a CD-ROM, narrated by John Dobson. The two began working together at Microsoft in 2005.

From what we hear, WorldWide Telescope will be significantly better than Google Sky, which launched last August as part of Google Earth, and the open source Stellarium (which is hugely better than Google Sky already). The key is the user interface, which is seamless as you move around the sky and zoom in and out. Much of the Photosynth technology is said to have been used for the project. And the sheer amount of data Microsoft is accessing, said to be measured in the terabits, gives that great user interface something to show off.

Look for an announcement at TED, and more at Microsoft’s upcoming TechFest in early March.

Interesting Books on Urban Studies

there are some interesting books which i came across

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Agrobiodiversity and Germplasm Preservation

Agrobiodiversity
The genetic base of the world’s food crops is shrinking as genetic resources are being lost to changing tastes, industrialization, urbanization, mechanization of farming, and commercialization of agriculture. Conservation and use of biodiversity is central to research on the improvement of food crops and the development of sustainable systems of farming for increased food production. Genetic and functional diversity of plants are the building blocks of improved agricultural performance and production. Genetic diversity can introduce useful new traits and create new heterotic combinations. These in turn can contribute to more crop yields and enhance adaptability of finished varieties by providing appropriate and useful genetic stocks for breeding programs.

The wild relatives of crop plants are a reservoir of untapped, potentially important genes for crop improvement. This is especially true of genes for tolerance or resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, but also for genes for other important adaptive traits. However, wild relatives are underrepresented in IITA collections. For the future, there is a need to collect, conserve, evaluate, characterize, document, and distribute plant genetic resources of a wide range of crops and their wild relatives. There is also a need to conserve and enhance the contribution of neglected and underutilized genetic resources to enhance the future income, health, and nutrition of the poor.

In the short term, germplasm of vegetatively propagated crops is usually maintained as tubers, roots, bulbils, cuttings, and in the field as living collections. Maintaining germplasm collections in the field is expensive in terms of labor, land, and space, and there is also the risk of losing valuable genetic material to pest attack and other unforeseen problems. In vitro reduced-growth storage methods being used routinely at IITA offer the solution for short- to medium-term storage of germplasm of yams, cassava, plantain, and banana. However, there are issues relating to genetic stability,
risk of contamination, or accidental loss. Cultures require routine subculturing; there is a sizeable workload in maintaining a large collection. Cryopreservation could increase considerably the efficiency of the long-term conservation of IITA’s vegetatively propagated germplasm.

Advances in biotechnology enable molecular marker-aided analyses of genetic diversity to aid management of ex situ germplasm collections, planning for conservation of biodiversity and guiding selection of accessions for use by breeders. Germplasm is of greatest value to plant breeders and other scientists when they are characterized and evaluated. The recent advances also provide molecular tools and techniques for detecting pathogens and for mining genes from the collections. Use of new diagnostic tools, particularly for viruses, is of high priority for ensuring efficiency and confidence of indexing of germplasm for international distribution.

The key objectives of this project are the efficient long-term conservation and use of genetic resources of staple and underutilized crop species, and increased efficiency and effectiveness of research aimed at exploiting their potential.