Jesse Ausubel’s short essay,Methane Hydrates and the Deep Carbon Observatory, about the recently published Frozen Heat report, has been posted on the DCO website.
News
AGI Fort Worth methane economy report
The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) released the short report from the November 2014 Fort Worth meeting on America’s Increasing Reliance on Natural Gas: Benefits and Risks of a Methane Economy. Jesse Ausubel served on the organizing committee, chaired by Chris Cameron.
UNEP methane hydrates report
The full UNEP report on methane hydrates, Frozen Heat: UNEP Global Outlook on Methane Gas Hydrates, Volume 1 & 2 as well as Executive Summary, has been published.
PHE alumna Nadejda Victor and Jesse Ausubel contributed to Chapter one of Volume 2.
Meyer Sound in New Yorker magazine
The 23 February 2015 New Yorker magazine features the acoustic company of our long-time research associate, Perrin Meyer, in a fascinating article about controlling sonic microenvironments, such as individual tables in restaurants, in Wizards of Sound.
Baltimore Aquarium Lecture 28 April
A Peek into our Past: A Century of Oceanic Changes
Tuesday, rescheduled from April 28, 2015 to 3 June.
Jesse Ausubel will give a lecture 6:30-8:30 pm at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Learn More
Long Now video
Jesse Ausubel’s Nature Rebounds January 2015 seminar for the Long Now Foundation is now available as:
Full-length Video on Long Now Public Website.
Also on YouTube.
The audio podcast is availabe at iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/salt-seminars-about-long-term/id186908455
And through the SoundCloud page: https://soundcloud.com/longnow/nature-rebounding-land-and-ocean-sparing-through-concentrating-human-activities
Iddo eicc PAPER
Working with colleagues at National Taiwan University, PHE researcher Iddo Wernick coauthored a paper, published in the journal Sustainability, on environmental evaluation of supply chains. The full citation is:
Corngrowers outperform professors
In a 2011 lecture at Iowa State University, Prof. Thomas Sinclair (North Carolina State) concluded from models and projections of yields of maize that maximum US corn yields would be in the neighborhood of 254 bushels per acre, that is, 16 metric tons per hectare.
Between 2009 and 2012 the national average corn yield has been 123 to 165 bushels per acre, about half Sinclair’s maximum of 254. Because Sinclair was speaking of maximum and the US Department of Agriculture reported actual yields for the vast US crop, the excess of Sinclair’s maximum over an actual average is not surprising and shows the opportunity for agronomist scientists is considerable.
Fortunately other reports, these of actual experience, show an even greater opportunity than that between Sinclair’s projected maximum and averages over the entire USA.
For 50 years the National Corn Growers Association has conducted a national contest, and in 2014 the NCGA reported seven participants beat 400 bushels per acre. One participant, Randy Dowdy of Valdosta, Georgia produced 503.
Thus, actual yields of corn show that farmers and suppliers have plenty of room to raise the US average yield from about 150 bushels per acre toward a maximum of 503.
And that performance that professors conclude impossible in theory can happen in practice.
Iddo Breakthrough
PHE’s Iddo Wernick was named a Senior Fellow of the Breakthrough Institute for his work on the decoupling of resource use from the environment. This continues our connection with the Institute, as PHE was recognized last year with the award of the Breakthrough Paradigm Prize to Jesse for his work on harnessing technology to lighten the human footprint.
Cockroach
PHE’s Mark Stoeckle co-authored the first large-scale study of an important urban wildlife denizen, the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana). This work demonstrates that genetically divergent lineages of American cockroach, likely from different parts of the globe, have emigrated to New York City where they now live together and interbreed–a lot like people!  Co-authors include Chris von Beeren and Daniel Kronauer in the Rockefeller Laboratory  of Insect Social Evolution; Joyce Xia, a Rockefeller Summer Program student; and Griffin Burke, a Bard College undergraduate.  The report appeared on February 6, 2015 in Nature’s open access journal Scientific Reports (link to article). This paper is the culmination of PHE’s National Cockroach Project  which enticed 85 citizen scientists to contribute nearly 300 cockroach specimens from mostly from New York City, but also from 16 other U.S. states and 6 countries. Thanks to all contributors!