The Standard Bro:

This is the most common type of bro found around college campuses. No matter how hard you try to evade them, it is impossible to avoid this sect of bro culture. They’re not only the most abundant of this species, but the most obvious to spot. Their foods of choice include Buffalo Wild Wings, Chipotle, spaghetti, and sandwiches made by very-to-moderately attractive women of relatively similar age (whether or not the sandwiches taste good is not important to them). When it comes to liquid nourishment, they enjoy Natty Ice, energy drinks, and Muscle Milk. When at a bar, the “Standard Bro” will only order one thing besides a “Bud,” “Natty,” or “your cheapest whiskey.” And that is a White Russian, and only because they saw it in The Big Lebowski and for unknown reasons feel a strong connection to this film.

The “Standard Bro” is easily spotted by his clothing choices, which tend to include U of M apparel, North Face/Columbia fleeces, T-shirts or tanks that say anything involving athletics, chinstrap beards, socks with sandals/Birkenstocks, and colored sunglasses that resemble Wayfarers but were actually picked up at a KDWB or 96.3NOW sponsored event. The “Standard Bro” rarely strays more than a mile off campus but knows the location of every Buffalo Wild Wings in a 20 mile radius (there are 14). Because of their centralized roaming area, many specimens utilize mopeds as a means of transportation when not walking in packs. Although, the subjects refer to them as “Bropeds.” According to our calculations, a “Broped” is a moped emblazoned with U of M insignia, usually with another bro riding on back which is, as they say, “No homo.”

The Carlson Bro:

The hardest working bro in the frathouse, the Carlson bro is first and foremost driven by the almighty dollar. Attending class on days that projects and papers are due or tests are given, even taking Chinese to fulfill his language requirement because “dude, it looks fuckin good on a resume and besides,  Asian chicks are hot, brah.”

Usual attire includes at least one polo shirt, moderately distressed jeans, and a backwards Twins hat. Wrap around sunglasses can be seen during the summer months, but are molted after the first snow. Winter attire may include a puffy down jacket, and if close enough to the West bank, flip flops can be seen throughout the year.

A Carlson Bro is also recognizable as the only member of the Bro species that exhibits a behavior known as “suiting up,” which is used as a means of social stratification in the Brociety. A “suited up” Carlson Bro is judged upon the quality of his garments by other Bros to determine feeding and mating order. Alpha CB’s exhibited tendencies towards high-threadcount wools and silk ties, while lower-level Corpbros tended to choose Polyester.

The Carlson bro usually has an internship at any given time, generally something handed down to them from their fathers, who often hold an MBRah degree themselves. Favorite mode of transportation is rollerblades, followed by the long board. Can usually be found in the new Hanson Hall Starbucks, the super block, or a corporate intern mixer.

The Hipster Bro:

The Hipster Bro (or, Broster) tends towards the West Bank during the day, but at night you will inevitably find him at his Uptown bachelor pad or one of the surrounding hipster bars (CC Club quesadillas three nights a week were a common occurrence among members of this study). He drinks PBR as a rule, even when it’s priced the same as a Surly Furious, and still can’t figure out why the brakes on his bike don’t work, even though the guys at One-On-One say it’s a perfectly operational fixed gear.

A bit more sartorial than some of our other subjects, the Broster takes a great interest in his clothing. While he will attempt to “mimic” the style of the local Hipster population and therefore can blend in quite adeptly with his surroundings, the Broster can be easily identified by his evolutionary tendency towards a “popped” collar when he becomes excited.

This species was noted for strong tendencies towards Philosophy, Music Therapy, and Cultural Studies majors because they allow individuals to “express [their] true feelings about life’s struggle.” When asked about graduation plans, however, this Bro is unsure whether or not College is right for him, and he may elect to drop out in order to do some “serious traveling brah.”

The Wanksta Bro:

Sometimes confused with the “Standard Bro,” the “Wanksta Bro” separates himself by keeping himself at a distance from frat culture. Although voted “Most Likely to Join a Fraternity” at his suburb high school in “Maplehood” or “Hoodbury” (some Wankstas will also rep “WisCompton”), he feels that taking part in one of these institutions of privilege would damage his “street cred.”

A “Wanksta Bro” can be spotted longboarding around campus. To distinguish them from other longboarders, look for an awkward stance, frequent dismounts, carrying the longboard, and skater shoes. Other signs of this species of bro include flat-brimmed hats, professed ability to rap and/or make beats, wearing a coat with a fur-lined hood, and being unfit, despite his never-ending comments about how he could “smoke” people at certain sports.The “Wanksta Bro” is also the last Bro of the Species to shed his “summmer coat” of basketball shorts during the winter season. Certain WB’s will even resist their nature and refuse to shed the basketball shorts or longboards all winter, although this behavior is becoming rarer as a result of natural selection.

Another means of identifying the Wanksta Bro is by checking out their Facebook profile. If he frequently changes his profile picture to a picture of him playing some manly sport in high school (like lacrosse, basketball, hockey, or football), has ever changed his profile picture to a photo of an African American sports player, his favorite musicians include 2pac, Bob Marley, Eminem, and Maroon 5, or has an entire album dedicated to pictures of his “sick” Audi with “blinged-out” rims and body-kit, then chances are he is a “Wanksta.”

The Intellectual Bro:

The Intellectual Bro can be difficult to identify in the wild, since he mimics the clothing patterns of actual intellectuals. This usually includes a button-up coat and some sort of scarf in winter. In certain cases, the Intellectual Bro may also decide to wear a hat that he thinks makes him look Interesting. Glasses are an important fashion accessory for the Intellectual Bro, regardless of whether or not he has poor eyesight, as they are a sign of intelligence to mates.  This bro species can be found in coffee shops around campus trying to rope people into long conversations about Noam Chomsky. When startled, the Intellectual Bro may blurt out “God is dead” and then ask you if you know who Nietzsche (pronounced Neech-ee) is.

The Intellectual Bro’s main mode of transportation is walking because, as he enjoys telling anyone who will listen (and a lot of people who won’t), it makes him “feel closer to nature.” However, this bro may also take the bus, where he will pull out a book to read (generally something from the Barnes & Noble Classic Thinkers series), then discreetly look around to see if anyone is impressed. In the classroom environment, this type of bro will ask “questions” designed to secretly reveal how intellectual he is and will laugh too loudly at the professor’s jokes.

The mating rituals of the Intellectual Bro are somewhat peculiar. He and other Intellectual Bros engage in a competition known only as “Ultimate” to impress females. This type of bro has also been known to discuss feminism around women to try to attract a mate. If a potential mate engages an Intellectual Bro in conversation, the bro will tell the potential mate how much he loves Paris and wants to move there after graduate school.

It is important to note that most Intellectual Bro’s are not members of Fraternities, but the ones that do chose to go greek will defend their chosen house with claims of “academic goals” and “community outreach work” (volunteering at their girlfriend’s Sorority fundraiser).

The Intellectual Bro:

There are ways to differentiate the Intellectual Bro from other bro species. The Intellectual Bro’s drink of choice is usually wine or scotch rather than Natty Ice. This bro will always insist that drinking game rules are followed to the letter. Noticeable traits include a proclivity towards “science-projects” such as attempting to brew bathtub-Four Loko (the conductors of this study strongly recommend against consuming this beverage). This bro will also say he enjoys classical music and poetry, both of which a typical bro would dismiss as “gay.” If you overhear someone saying “Dude, The Waste Land, bro? The Waste Land is sick,” you are probably in the presence of an Intellectual Bro.

This inclusive categorization of the Bro species is only scratching the surface of the University Bro. Further publications will include the mating habits, habitat and migration patterns, and evolution of the Bro as observed by scientists and anthropologists affiliated with this study, funded by the coffers of Spring Jam as a means of garnering information on one of the largest student contingents after the terrible street riots of 2009.

AMONG THE BROS:

In order to conduct the rigorous research required to bring you this sterling piece of journalism, The Wake sent several intrepid reporters into the field to collect the necessary data. Bros were monitored in their natural habitats with strict attention to the scientific method. No Bros were harmed in the process of this study.

In addition to our observational research, our magazine also dispatched several audacious reporters to go undercover and live “among the Bros” in their environment by joining local frathouses.

We advise readers to exercise caution and discretion around Bros in the wild. Researchers were provided safety equipment including Natty-proof garments and earplugs. We especially urge readers who are interested in Bro-watching to be aware of the risk of being “iced.” This can be an unpleasant experience (“hella lame” in Bro parlance), and Bro-watchers should maintain a safe distance at all times.

Known as OIOO, the Wii dildo is a device with capabilities far beyond what can be seen by the naked eye. No more will society be subjected to movies lamenting the horrors of the long-distance relationship (I’m looking at you, Justin Long). No more will lonely nerds have only their right (or left) hand to keep them company. No longer will tech-savvy lovers be at a loss when cyber sex loses its appeal. The OIOO has broken the last barrier to a truly global society; using Skype, the OIOO can recognize the motions one user is making with their dildo-equipped device and replicate the vibrations on a different user’s wiimote on the other side of the world.

OIOO is not the only wiibrator on the market; a company called Mojowijo has a similar device that is currently in the beta-testing phase. Mojowijo promises on its website that the wiibrator will be ready by the 2010 holiday season. Both devices have similar designs: a long, cylindrical attachment for one remote, and a similar attachment for the other remote with a conveniently placed hole in the end, designed for the male participant. The Mojowijo is gaining a surprising mass-market popularity and was featured in widely circulating magazines such as Wired, San Francisco Weekly, and French Elle.

The possibilities arising from the development of such a product are endless. Repurposing wiimotes for sex is only the beginning; cell phones, laptops, even normal vibrators could all be repurposed or redesigned for erotic stimulation. Programs like iTunes could be integrated so as to change songs as the tempo of the vibrations increase or decrease; pay-shows via web camera could use the remotes to add a physical aspect.

The use of a wiimote for sexual stimulation is really not so surprising. As technology has developed, so has pornography. What do you think the first camera with a focusable lens was used for? Film cameras? How about the vibrate setting on your Blackberry, in a pinch? Even in ancient times, after paper was invented it was quickly used for the dissemination of pornography. If one thing is true about the human race, it is that any new technology can be sexualized.

Good ol’ Benjamin Franklin once said, “The only things certain in life are death and taxes.” Modern technology has yet to defy this statement but a minuscule little jellyfish may be proving Mr. Franklin wrong—dead wrong. The Turritopsis nutricula has come to be known as the immortal jellyfish. This little hydrozoan has the ability to revert back to its polyp form after becoming sexually mature, essentially restarting its life cycle. It is able to do this through the cell development process called transdifferentiation, which alters the differentiated state of cells and transforms them into completely different, new cells.

Scientific studies have confirmed the specimen’s ability to restart its life and also found no limitations on the amount of times the jellyfish is able to do this, rendering the creature theoretically immortal. Although under perfect conditions this Samson-esque creature could potentially live on and on and on, most Turritopsis nutricula eventually fall victim to the standard hazards of ocean dwelling, such as being eaten by predators or disease.

When a Turritopsis nutricula has passed its embryonic stage and is released from its mother, it eventually settles on a stationary object such as a rock. At this stage, it is transformed into a polyp and begins to grow multiple, identical polyps until it forms a colony. The colony of polyps then begins to grow many horizontal grooves. The grooves eventually mature and break free from the colony as free-swimming jellyfish. Once a jellyfish has reproduced, it starts the process over. The umbrella reverts itself, the tentacles get reabsorbed, and a new colony of polyps begin to take shape. It’s like getting married, having kids, and then going back to college to find a new mate to have babies with.

The jellyfish is believed to have originated in the Caribbean but has now spread throughout most of the world’s tropical oceans. It’s a tiny bell-shaped creature with a maximum diameter of 4.5 millimeters and is typically as tall as it is wide. Young specimens have eight tentacles that are evenly spaced out around its edges and adult specimens have as many as 90 tentacles.

Don’t go burning your wills just yet, as it seems Franklin’s assertion will still be applicable to humans for the time being. None of the work done by marine biologists and geneticists has found any sort of way to bring the cell recreation ability of the Turritopsis nutricula to the human race. Sadly, our understanding of this rare and bizarre creature will not yet allow us to cheat death.

The process by which the jellyfish transforms its cells and “starts over” has not been observed in nature nor have we developed a way to distinguish a newly spawned polyp from a jellyfish that has recently reverted back to polyp form. The process is so thorough and so instantaneous that it prohibits us from being able to estimate the age of a jellyfish that has perhaps lived many lives.

None of this seems to matter to the Obama administration, however. Earlier this year, Congress voted to cut the Constellation program, a NASA project that would have returned United States astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972. Though seen as a mostly symbolic gesture to past exploration at the time, new discoveries of usable materials on the moon, specifically usable water that could support lunar settlements, have made this project all the more necessary.

Professor Roberta Humphreys, a professor at the University of Minnesota for nearly 30 years, says she is frustrated and deeply disappointed with the Obama administration’s take on space missions. The administration has also abandoned the most recent shuttle program, forcing U.S. astronauts to buy seats on other countries’ shuttles, a practice Humphreys calls “disgusting.”

“In most peoples views, NASA “wastes” too much money on manned space flight,” says Humphreys. Robots have become increasingly popular, sent to Mars on numerous missions to gather information about the planet. There are times when humans are still required, however, particularly in situations where a “human decision” is necessary. When robots encounter problems, the controllers on Earth are forced to quickly reprogram the robot and hope that the next time around goes better, a tedious and sometimes ineffective process. Humphreys own service to the Space Telescope Institute Council has added to her opinion on robotic space missions, “Could we have done the servicing mission on the Hubble (Space Telescope) with robots? I don’t think so.”

According to Humphreys, manned space flight is still a worthwhile investment, “Ninety percent of the time a project doesn’t need humans, but when it does, you’re glad they are there.” Another solution to the funding problem is allowing private companies to develop new technology for use by NASA. But this too poses a problem. As Humphreys points out, “The advantage of NASA is that it is a government entity and not for profit. The primary mission is to work safely.” Humphreys worries that private companies allowed to work without the oversight of NASA will be more interested in profit than in the safety of the astronauts using their creations. Implementing NASA oversight would cost a similar of money as maintaining the program proper, however, which makes it an unlikely solution.

With Canada, the European Union, and even China developing new space technology and continuing to fund manned space flight, the United States needs to follow suit or be left in the moon dust.

Earlier this month these galaxy candidates resurfaced when a group of European astronomers successfully measured the distance to the most remote galaxy detected yet. The team of astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s oh so accurately named Very Large Telescope (VLT) to analyze the faint glow. The light collecting capabilities of VLT were combined with the infrared spectroscopic instrument known as SINFONI. After 16 hours of observation and two months of meticulous data analysis, the team confirmed that it was viewing the galaxy known as UDFy-38135539 13.1 billion years ago when the universe was a mere 600 million years old.

Measuring the distance of galaxies is an extremely difficult process that is done using spectroscopy, which is, in Layman’s terms, quantifiable measurement gathered from the study of wavelengths and frequency. An in depth report on the discovery was published in Nature, the highly acclaimed international journal of science, on Oct. 21st.

Beyond the fact that it is pretty rad to have made the discovery of a galaxy that is, relative to the life span of the universe, “a four-year-old boy in the life span of an adult,” there are also intriguing scientific implications. The universe was not transparent in its earliest stages due to a hydrogen fog that was able to absorb ultraviolet light. This fog was cleared out by the expansion of young galaxies. The measurement of UDFy-38135539 confirms the fact that we are now studying one of the galaxies that was integral to the clearing of the hydrogen fog. The exponential expansion of technology is now allowing us to understand more and more the very beginning of our universe.

Nearly ten years later, on June 18, 2009, the Lunar Crater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was launched from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas V rocket with the sole mission of finding out once and for all whether or not the moon was actually home to some of that liquid gold, water.

After orbiting the earth for several months, LCROSS swung its way past the moon and shot a rocket into the Cabeus crater before slamming itself down next to it. Back on Earth, amateur astronomers were unimpressed when the dual impact failed to produce a visible debris plume, but scientists observed the crash using spectroscopic telescopes that measure the various properties of light to identify different materials.

By November, the LCROSS team was able to confirm that there was indeed water on the moon. This October, LCROSS also confirmed the presence of several other compounds in the plumes, which suggest that the Cabeus crater is actually the site of a comet impact.

“These days we are finding water in a number of interesting places in the solar system, heretofore thought to be devoid of interesting material,” said University of Minnesota Professor, Dr. Charles Woodward, part of the ground-based observation team working on the LCROSS project.

Woodward said the implications of finding water on the moon are interesting in more than one way. According to Woodward, the findings of the LCROSS project suggest that in the future astronauts may be able to build permanent self-sustaining lunar habitats. In addition, LCROSS members found an abundance of other materials in the plume that suggest that the moon may actually go through some sort of active water cycle. If this is true, it is not too much of a stretch to assume that the same processes are taking place on other moons in our galaxy, like on Jupiter and Saturn’s moons, Europa and Enceladus respectively. This theory opens up several new areas of research and exploration.

Ultimately, if able to understand the different processes and environments that allow water to form in space, scientists can plan for far larger space missions in the near future. In turn, the moon, which previously served no other purpose than to adorn the night sky, may very well become the stepping stone to a new age of space exploration.

Google Voice does more than just voice mail transcription; it will give you one number to ring all or a select number of your phones, free SMS and can record and store your calls online. It all sounds terribly convenient and there may be many users of Google Voice who utilize all these functions. Apple was considered innovative with their “visual voicemail”—which iPhone owners could use to see the name or number of the person leaving a voicemail and selectively listen or playback sections of the voicemail. With Google voice integration (available on any phone) users can opt to receive e-mails or text messages with a transcription of the voicemail along with a link for audio playback. The use of Google voice’s service disables the iPhone’s native visual voicemail functions but provides its own App providing a similar function.

Google’s transcription software is fairly accurate and places guesses for words it has a difficult time understanding (this is denoted by underlined and faded text in their online service). So exactly how useful is Google’s transcription services?

Very useful. For your health at least. I don’t mean that you no longer have to raise your personal radiation piece to your brain to access your voice mail either. I mean previously innane voicemails of old roommates announcing they will be visiting soon turn into hilarity-ensuing texts:

“Hey bruise, Joe calling. Yeah, I just left Somalia up to the cities. Then dot Canadian Jeff at Starbucks. I wasn’t here, so ah I don’t know if you’re not. But if you cool to hang out. Lemme in the city. Talk to you later. Bye.”

Aside from the dotting Canadian Jeff at Starbucks, myself knowing the context of this voicemail, this transcription was useful for me. With a glance at my phone during a concert I could decipher that a) my old roommate was now a crack addict and therefore did not have to leave the show to return his call. Google Voice saves the day.

Here are some other excerpts from my personal voice mail, to give you an idea of how valuable this service is.

“Hello areas. Well, I stopped a the top of the still, but man I got that I’d right after that. I know where you are. Where are you? Give me a call back. Okay bye.”

This transcription was useful because I know I have to call this person back. And they may or may not know where I am.

“I think 2741.”

Cool, I was thinking the same.

“Hey dude, this at church. Hey babe, but I think I’m gonna go out in the remains see if you know on. But give me a jingle. Bye”

I didn’t return this call because I thought it was rude to make a call during church. And to call me babe. And the vague reference to bodily remains.

“Hey Eric. Tatem. Haiti and I are gonna go get some breakfast. Yeah. Anyway, let me give me a call back.”

No action required on my part thanks to Google Voice: this person will call themself back. Unfortunately by this point the transcription software has learned my name and now leaves out otherwise great name changes like “areas” and “bruise” and once, Mark? Fortunately, it has yet to learn my friends names: Tatem and Haiti.

Adspecs, an invention of a Professor Joshua Silver at Oxford University, utilizes a clear oil to fill the eyeglasses lenses, thus making the prescription adjustable for any individual. Silver hopes to distribute a billion pairs of his glasses around the world by 2020 to combat the millions of individuals with debilitating eyesight problems.

Because Adspecs are not meant for the eager consumer who demands the latest style from his or her eyewear they don’t appear in the most attractive forms. They could be considered ‘timeless’ in that Harry-Potter-wore-them-for-seven-years sort of way. As of now, the technology used limits the lenses to being round and cost about $19 a pair to be manufactured.

Several other groups are working on distributing similar glasses throughout the world for a similar price. U-specs and Focusspec eyewear are designed using the Alvarez lens system in their glasses: two lenses of varying thickness that are capable of sliding past one another to change the prescription. Manufacturers using this system can produce about four pairs of glasses for the cost of every single pair of Adspecs.

Despite the discrepancy in cost, the groups maintain there is little competitiveness in the industry. With enough glasses being made at once by either group, the unit cost would go down drastically. Yet everyone maintains their system is the best: Adspecs because of their optical range and quality; Alvarez for simplicity and durability.

Politics and science aside, both groups want the same thing. To make an indiscriminate, tax-deductible donation and help provide eyesight for the world visit www.vdw.ox.ac.uk.

The miniature-scale replication of the big bang had caused many ill-informed people of apocalyptic bents to predict that the miniature black holes that should be created by the crashing protons would grow and envelop the solar system. Obviously this has not happened. The predicted miniature black holes, which consume themselves more or less instantly, are, theoretically, created by the entry of light through the ozone layer regardless of human creations.

The Large Hadron Collider has been in the works for roughly 25 years. It uses about three and a half times as many electron volts as its now-obsolete competitor, Fermilab, operating near Chicago. As if this unprecedented and semi-incomprehensible quantity of energy (a tera-electron volt is a million million electron volts) weren’t already adequately over-the-top, by 2013 the facility hopes to up this number to 14.

Still, no matter how fast it can throw things into other things, physics isn’t totally sexy yet. Data will be compiled and analyzed for months, and scientific discoveries, regardless of how they’re sensationalized, will proceed slowly from long laborious analysis.

It may also shock readers to know that anybody who would build a thoroughly magnetized, hyper-sensitive 27 kilometer underground racetrack would ever let the word “practical” enter their stream-of-consciousness. Never fear; it does little more than that. The discoveries scientists are hoping to make at CERN pertain to completing the Standard Model of particle physics. That is to say, even if you could understand what these people are doing (apologies to our readers who are physics professors) you would probably have trouble figuring out how it will be useful. Yet the theoretical importance of actually completing this body of research is hard to understate and will justify years of accumulated theory if validated. Analysis regarding the validity of string theory, which hopes to reconcile modern quantum theory and Einstein’s general theory- the two grand and incompatible frameworks for contemporary physics- should proceed. The big gun is the Higgs boson, a particle thought to imbue all other particles with mass. If it exists, it will complete the Standard Model of particle physics. If it doesn’t, then the more serious discussion of eleven dimensions and parallel universes will begin. In spite of the gratification of completing the standard model of particle physics, science is always more fun when it leads to more questions. So now that we’re $10 billion into CERN, the best thing for the amateur science-reader to do is hope things keep getting weirder.

Researchers are working on a Chlamydia vaccination for the koalas, but other options, like medication to treat KIDS, are not a top priority. Researchers worry that attempting to give daily medication to koalas still living in the wild is not a feasible solution, and are not even sure whether or not the medication will have an effect on the koalas. Surgeries are being performed on koalas to remove growths caused by Chlamydia on reproductive organs. Many koalas never recover from these surgeries.

The attempts to improve and save the lives of these koalas is certainly admirable, but where does it stop? Are we going to end up curing KIDS before curing AIDS? We don’t even know whether or not human AIDS drugs will have any effect on the koala immune system. It’s interesting though, that humans do not have a Chlamydia vaccine in any form, yet now koalas are top priority for such a vaccine. It is possible that koala DNA is just easier to deal with compared to human DNA? Protecting and preserving animal species and habitats are important to keep diversity on the planet, but just because something is cute does not mean that it deserves to be saved before actual human lives are saved.

The same thing is happening with pandas in both their wild habitats and in zoos around the world. The giant panda’s diet is made up of 99 percent bamboo, which it needs to eat constantly because of its low nutritional value. They usually give birth to one cub every two years, with the help of panda porn and Viagra because they are not all that interested in mating. If the mother gives birth to more than one cub at a time, it will abandon the other one, who then dies a short while later. Zoos and conservation areas around the world are working tirelessly to save a species that even without habitat loss would probably be on the endangered species list, solely from its own lifestyle.

However serious these diseases are, koalas will not be extinct any time soon. Like their lazy panda friends, koalas bring tourists and their money to Australia. According to CNN.com, koalas bring in $1 billion U.S. to the island. Pandas brought in almost $2 billion dollars in one small province of China alone. While the cost of treating KIDS and koala Chlamydia is unknown, the amount of money that Australia stands to make on tourism by saving the fuzzy creatures is a good enough reason to save them.

If it is true that the infection rates have increased because of deforestation, then by all means we should work to increase the living space of the koala and preserve the species. But we can only do so much. We can’t operate on every koala infected by KIDS and Chlamydia, and we certainly can’t force pandas to mate any more than we already do.

The IREE was founded in 2003 at the point when the climate change discussion broke into mainstream consciousness and became our prevailing zeitgeist. In the face of the immensity of the climate change claims that began pouring through America’s countless media outlets, the populace splintered into a number of clear cut, politically-charged groups: some thought the whole thing was a lie, some were dumbfounded by the implication of our civilization’s power and unintended effect, some were indifferent or dimly hailed the warmer weather and others began planning how to facilitate a flow of money and human resources into an attempt to mitigate or even avoid a significant climate change scenario.

The IREE has proven to be one of the most effective local institutions at not only addressing climate change concerns, but also fueling progress in research and development that will one day, hopefully, have some part in stemming the tide of rising CO2 levels and diminishing oil reserves. Their annual report for 2009 states that they have awarded more than $24 million to research projects and leveraged an additional $47.8 million from other sources. As their mission statement makes clear, the money goes towards projects which:

“…promote statewide economic development; sustainable, healthy and diverse ecosystems; and national energy security through development of bio-based and other renewable resources and processes. “

Though the projects that are funded by the IREE span the gamut from utilizable biomass produced from algae to polymers that are not constructed from fossil fuels, it should not come as a surprise that the big bucks are being put toward wind energy. The DOE grant that was just awarded is part of a federal funding blitzkrieg that is aiming to achieve the goal of meeting 20 percent of the nation’s electricity demand through wind energy by 2030.

The renewable energy movement has blossomed under the shadow of the apocalyptic scenario of worldwide climate change. Accordingly, it is a field that has always been imbued with the urgency of both dwindling oil supplies and rising CO2 levels and has all too often seemed to be defined by this failure of oil instead of as a potential for a different way to live and prosper within the various ecosystems that exist on this planet.

That is why these $8 million dollars will be better spent on researching wind turbines instead of buying ones that can start pumping energy into the war for a sustainable alternative to oil.

It boils down to a matter of brains over brawn. Fighting energy issues with brawn alone is what has got us into this problem in the first place. Fossil fuels provided the requisite amount of energy, but now with the benefit of hindsight it is clear that, as an energy source, fossil fuels were not thoroughly thought out.

So, as renewable and alternative energy are struggling under the bulk of the decaying body of oil energy, renewable energy reliance is an endeavor that needs to separate itself first and foremost as a field that depends on research, ingenuity and long-term consideration. It cannot simply replace the oil industry, but must head in a different direction. If this does not happen, what could be the result?

We already can see a microcosm of what a brawn-based energy solution looks like: Oil sands. That monstrous last ditch effort to squeeze every last bit of fossil fuel out of the earth. At what cost? Extreme land destruction, lower production of utilizable oil and significantly higher amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Renewable energy needs to differentiate itself not only in its sources, but in the philosophy of the approach to how it will be integrated into human and natural climate.

The situation of money being spent on brawn before brains is not too uncommon, especially in an industry that needs to work the other way around. A recent Star Tribune article, “As the turbine blades turn…” highlighted the myriad issues The Minnesota Municipal Power Agency was having with 11 of its turbines that were purchased from a California wind farm. They stood motionless for months because of unforeseen technical issues, such as thickened liquids due to low temperature, and in-fighting between contractors and maintenance companies. The investigations and research that will be undertaken by the team making use of the grant funds are planning on addressing some of these various concerns directly.

With Minnesota already ranked fourth nationally in wind energy generation, the couple of megawatts that the planned wind turbine could produce won’t be missed. The opportunity for research, however, is sorely needed as new innovations and better designs are paramount in bringing about the full realization of the potential found in the wind.

Greens, naturally, aren’t the only ones attacking mountaintops. The tentative emergence of wind energy in states such as North Carolina is in some ways a response to mountaintop removal, which essentially destroys hilltops in search of coal. This practice tends to cause pollution, erosion, and all kinds of things that don’t sound that bad unless you live by something that used to be a river.

By this yardstick, the proposals of environmentalists really don’t seem like an assault at all. Lining hill crests with windmills actually seems like common sense, if you want windmills to be where wind is. Ridges in rural Oregon are being leased out in 105-megawatt parcels. To put this in comprehensible terms, one megawatt of wind energy can supply 200 to 300 households with energy for a year. That is to say that windmills in Oregon won’t solve everything, but they certainly won’t hurt. North Carolina ridges average wind speeds of 25 miles per hour, where the overwhelming majority of the North American continent sees average speeds of well under 20 miles per hour. Even if the continent as a whole averaged 20 miles per hour the difference is still far from marginal – the energy in wind is proportional to the cube of wind speed. This means that an area with average wind speeds of 25 miles per hour offers, on average, about twice as much electricity as an area with wind speeds of 20 miles per hour. Windmills don’t quite take in all the extra available energy, but the difference is still very significant. In context of this it seems flat-out stupid to put windmills anywhere but the windiest conceivable areas.

Even this qualification is not simple, however. Areas on the continent with a large amount of wind also tend to have large numbers of birds riding that wind. According to one study, in California’s Altamont Pass, 2,000 to 5,000 birds annually get hit by the windmills occupying the pass. Proposals to build windmills along the Appalachian Ridge have been met with skepticism by naturalists, concerned about similar phenomena on a larger scale there, due to birds’ notorious tendency to migrate. Of course, what with climate change and all, a lot of people think renewable energy is sort of important. More important, for instance, than some dumb birds that don’t even look where they fly. But the issue is complicated by emerging prototypes for offshore windmills. Since in the ocean there isn’t wildlife to disturb (this is why we can use it as a dump for plastic) and because of science, the possibility of offshore windmills is moving rapidly toward realization.

There are several advantages to offshore windmills. The first is that, due to the relative ease of moving things on the sea versus on land, significantly bigger windmills can be used offshore, with rotor diameters of up to 110 meters (the length of the blades from top to bottom). The largest diameters seen on land these days are about 90 meters. Intuition tells us that bigger is better and science probably verifies. However, the second and probably more important thing is that average wind speeds of up to 30 miles per hour in parts of the North Atlantic are typical, which again means a roughly twofold increase in energy in the wind. And no dead birds.

Of course, real people don’t care about things like this, and it certainly hasn’t colored discussion of the issue. People care about money, and a warm reception of windmills in Steens County, Oregon is probably flavored by the $1.25 billion dollar investment that comes with it. The county’s jobless rate was 18 percent in December. Similarly in North Carolina concerns about windmills on mountaintops reflect the touristic appeal of the state’s Appalachian ridge lines. The State Senate is still mulling over a bill to ban construction of windmills along the ridges, concerned, in the words of state senator Martin Nesbitt, about “destroy[ing] our crown jewel.” While it is hard to believe that anyone goes to North Carolina for scenery, it’s even harder to believe people go there for any other reason, and so perhaps Nesbitt has a valid point.

As with all real issues, of course, there’s no simple solution. Birds are pretty and fun, and the truth is that wind energy does not yet have the capacity to, independently, move us sufficiently toward sustainable energy. North Carolina has so little going for it that to take away its scenic views is a bit like kicking a cancer patient, but the truth is that someone has to be kicked. Failing to move toward sustainable energy will have disastrous consequences. The problem is deciding whether it’s worthwhile to invest in baby steps like ruining scenery and killing birds when the truth is that we have yet to find a plausible mechanism of getting sustainable energy. Without this most crucial element, all other discussion seems at least a little bit futile.

Scientists in Germany have been working for the past five years on accurately sequencing a Neanderthal genome, from which a possible next step would be the re-creation of a living, breathing Neanderthal.

But what exactly is a Neanderthal? The term seems to have become little more than an insult to be thrown around on the playground by ten-year-olds with a penchant for multi-syllabic words. In fact, the Neanderthal is an extinct species of the Homo genus that existed from up to 600,000 to 30,000 years ago, and broke apart from the human line somewhere around 450,000 years ago. From physical and genetic remains we have been able to put together some semblance of their appearance. Shorter and stockier than humans, they boasted larger brains—due to differently shaped heads and bones—and demonstrated early use of stone tools, organized burial rights, and recognizable language, indicating early cultural organization. Neanderthal remains have been found throughout Europe and parts of Asia, and are perhaps one of the earliest examples of Homo sapiens driving an arguably evolutionarily valid species to distinction. Or maybe not so evolutionarily valid. After all, they’re all dead.

Encino Man’s entrance to the modern world is by no means imminent. The sequencing of the genes is itself a daunting task. Hours after the death of an organism cells begin to break down, to fragment and transform, making the DNA increasingly difficult to read correctly. Over the thousands of years since the death of the last Neanderthals their genes have morphed to barely intelligible hieroglyphics, painstakingly pieced together by scientists to form a coherent sequence. But even the completion of the sequencing does not immediately translate to the physical recreation of the Neanderthal. As there exist no living cells belonging to a Neanderthal, artificial cells would have to be created or vast modifications would have to be made to living cells of another species (presumably Homo sapiens). Should this theoretical cloning take place there remains the issue of creating a specimen that is able to survive, as cloned organisms are especially prone to sickness and death. There is to date no successful precedent in the cloning of extinct species.

Considering the great effort required to clone a Neanderthal the question of its utility comes to mind. What exactly would the re-creation of the Neanderthal contribute to the scientific community besides a whole mess of ethical and legal issues? As a test-tube creation a Neanderthal individual would not have the cultural history and context that would make any anthropologist giddy, and contribute to our understanding of cultural evolution. Though useless for furthering our understanding of ancient Neanderthal society, cloning would allow for biological testing on an organism with significant similarities to and distinct differences from human DNA that could lead to significant medical discoveries.

Here the ethics become slightly murky. Because Neanderthals are so genetically close to humans, to create them with the ultimate function of being our life-sized lab rats would set a precedent that could eventually translate to a form of biological slavery. We would be bringing a basic, undeveloped species into a complex world that it would be physically and mentally ill-equipped to handle, for the sole purpose of experimentation. One solution could be to refrain from cloning a Neanderthal and instead clone only parts of it. Arguably testing could be performed on cloned Neanderthal parts (a cell, an arm, an eye) rather than a cloned individual. While this turns the biology lab into a bit of a chop-shop, with its own set of ethical grey areas, there seems to be something fundamentally different between reproduction of cells or body parts and creating an actual consciousness. While it would certainly be interesting to see a living, breathing Neanderthal, here such an undertaking seems to be little more than man’s love of spectacle, and endless hubristic need to prove himself god (let us all dust off our high school copies of Frankenstein to see how this one plays out).

The human genome contains about 23,000 coding genes, each of which can be regulated by multiple others. There is no ‘depression gene’ that determines a person’s susceptibility to the disorder. People become depressed for different reasons or for no reason at all, and to different extents. The array of genetics and environment makes it quite difficult to predict why, if and when depression will hit. Some scientists have ideas, but no particular theory holds up to skepticism.

Symptoms of depression include difficulty in concentrating, feelings of guilt, helplessness, social withdrawal, and general loss of interest in life. Why do these severe manifestations of normal emotions persist, and what evolutionary advantage could they possibly offer? A trait must confer a reproductive fitness advantage in order to arise by natural selection, and it is this premise that underlies the claim that depression itself is an adaptation. The social navigation hypothesis proposes that depression evolved to help deal with social problems by allowing the individual to focus their energy on an issue at hand. Also, it could serve as a signal to friends and family to give the depressed one attention, which would increase care giving traits of the loved ones.

Depression affects 10% of the American population – if it improves survival fitness, should it not be more prevalent? However, an adaptive trait does not necessarily have to be expressed unless a particular environment triggers the required response. Therefore, the adaptation can be widespread in the population but expressed only in a minority of individuals. Since depression is highly costly, it should occur in the most crucial cases.

A big problem with this speculation is that depressed patients report causes of their illness to be life events such as death, divorce, or a layoff – things that most people deal with without developing the severe symptoms of depression. What makes some more prone than others? Susceptibility for depression varies among individuals, reflecting the way a certain personality trait, say neuroticism, is variable in different people. Many supposedly negative behavioral traits are thought to have an evolutionary purpose. For example, jealousy informs of a social competitor, eliciting actions to fight the threat. Also, neurotic individuals are more likely to stress over mistakes or low test scores, and as a result try harder to reach a goal. Neuroticism is highly correlated with depression and both are considered good predictors of marital failure. Seeing that marital failure does not necessarily solve social problems like it should under the social navigation hypothesis, the adaptation theory does not explain the disorder as much as regular bad moods.

In order for depression to serve an adaptive purpose, we need to examine whether its absence reduces fitness. Just as the inability to feel physical pain is detrimental and can lead to death, depression also impairs physical and mental health. But does it really have a greater benefit? As mentioned, depression can be thought of as an effort to increase performance when faced with a social dilemma, but more often than not, the non-depressed individuals do just as well. People cope, remarry and find new jobs. Adaptation theories have trouble describing the benefits of severe depression.

In the search to determine why evolution did not wipe depressive traits off the face of the earth, we can contemplate other negative, seemingly ineffective behaviors. As is the case with neuroticism, the spectrum of personalities does include unhealthy outliers. If milder forms of neurotic features are advantageous for competition and achievement, the trait is still fitness-enhancing and selected for. Since variability and degree of a trait largely depend on one’s genes and environment, the extremes are bound to occur.

There are plenty of other evolutionary forces (and maybe adaptations, too) that together interact to create predispositions to depression. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to account for the myriad of factors that play the game of chance to produce individual differences and likelihood for disease. But as we can see, trying to discern what some of them are is still an exciting endeavor.

Christian Bök, an experimental poet native to Canada, is intent on creating poetry that can withstand any natural nightmare—he is coding his work into a genetic sequence and translating it onto the world’s most resistant bacteria, Deinococcus radiodurans. Listed as the toughest bacterium in The Guinness Book of World Records, it is known specifically for its resistance to radiation. To put this in perspective, this bacterium can withstand radiation exposure 3,000 times what would kill a human being. Not only that, it can thrive and multiply under constant exposure to radiation—which has caused scientists to speculate whether or not it originated on Mars, where levels of radiation are considerably higher.

Whether this bacterium is alien or not, Bök’s poem is going to be coded, assembled into a genetic sequence, and then carefully implanted into the bacteria. This gave rise to a question: did Christian Bök just achieve the first foolproof way to ensure immortality through his art? It’s said that ink fades, buildings crumble, and people die. But who ever said anything about radiation resistant bacteria?

Though Bök seems to have finally realized every artist’s fantasy, he certainly is not the first to try. Artists have been hell-bent on achieving immortality through art since the dawn of time. There is a reason the Ten Commandments were said to be carved into stone—they were intended to outlast anything. But humans romanticize that their legacy will live on and on for more selfish reasons: to leave the world without really leaving it. Through time, many poets, painters and sculptors have added to the dialogue of the undying.

“Art is a man’s distinctly human way of fighting death,” Leonardo Baskin once said. William James wrote, “The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” Though many artists have vanished like sand in the wind, some have managed to form a legacy that lives on today. Sistine Chapel, anyone? The Mona Lisa? Art fanatics agree that these great works must be protected, revered, and carefully cared for to ensure their memory does not fade, along with their paint. But as for Bök’s poetry? We could strap it to an atomic bomb and it would probably still be there. Whether we like it or not, this poem is not going anywhere. In the instance of an atomic bomb, Deinococcus radiodurans would simply repair its DNA. Humans can reconstruct maybe three to five broken DNA connections. Deinococcus radiodurans can reconstruct 200.

So here’s a thought: Bök accomplished the first foolproof method of immortality through art—his poem is expected to outlast humankind, after all—but no one will be able to read it. Unless, of course, you are one of the few with extensive knowledge of DNA coding (or, in this case, decoding). But by blowing through all barriers and introducing this new alternative to paper, Bök gave rise to a very Brave New World method of sticking around after death. Using radioresistant bacteria from Mars as a vessel for artistic expression is something straight out of science fiction. But it’s not expected to become the new external hard drive for every artist’s prose and poems.

Bök’s work indicates his experimentation is just that. An experiment. The coding process constrains his palate of vocabulary to only 200 words. But keep in mind that whichever 200 he chooses, these words could likely outlive mankind. Cool. Even cooler, they are also a parasite residing in another life form. It is essentially a tattoo on a very small, very durable person. A small, durable person that is capable of withstanding a dosage of gamma rays three thousand times more lethal than what it would take to kill a human being.

Though we are unaware of what Bök’s poetry will bring for our future, we do know that what it has given our past. Bök states, “Even though poets may pay due homage to the ‘immortality’ of their heritage, few of us have ever imagined that we might actually create a literary artifact capable of outliving the existence of our species—an artifact that might testify to our cultural presence upon the planet until the very hour when, at last, the sun explodes.” So maybe this is it—and we should all invest in some Deinococcus radiodurans, just in case.

Perhaps the internet is not the last frontier—DNA is. Bök is right, “DNA is the true Library of Babel.”

So you’ve eaten an entire bowl of cake frosting—why would you do such a thing? You weren’t that hungry. Now we’re at an impasse. The frosting is gone. It’s behind (or within) you now. Are you satisfied? Was it worth it? You have no answer for what you did, of course. You’re a rat.

Professionals are trying to find answers to this question. While you were eating cake frosting, highly paid researchers were analyzing your tiny rat brain in an effort to figure out what made that cake frosting so darn appetizing. Like many things, it turns out it’s mostly in your head.

Professor Allen Levine is the Dean of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resources Sciences at the U of M. He’s spent more than 20 years researching neural regulation of food intake and he knows more than a little about the science of eating. He held a seminar recently titled “Why Can’t We Stop Eating?” over on the St. Paul campus, Minneapolis’ agrarian little brother. So why can’t we stop eating?

Levine says that there’s not one answer; hunger, taste, and compulsivity, among other things, each have their parts to play. The brain’s perception of these things produces a cocktail of natural chemicals that influence eating habits. Levine notes that this is the reason America’s obesity problem hasn’t been “solved,” despite massive research on the subject: there is no cure-all for being hungry, being stressed, and acting compulsively. People, unfortunately, will be people.

To get a sense of the desire to eat, let’s first address the idea of taste. Things taste good not because they’re healthy for you, but because your brain thinks they’re a source of vital nutrients. Your brain doesn’t want to be “in good health” in the future, it wants to be full and happy now. You eat a jelly doughnut and your brain thinks “om nom nom delicious fats!” because it wasn’t so long ago that humanity subsisted on bread, rice, and the occasional famine. To your brain, fats in any form are welcome. On the flipside, when you try to choke down a few brussel sprouts, your brain thinks “what the heck is this ridiculousness?” You may know that brussel sprouts are healthy, but to your brain, brussel sprouts are gross.

This ties in with the concept of hunger, a straightforward idea if there ever was one. You, no longer a rat for the purpose of this example, eat when you’re hungry. You might eat when you’re not hungry too, but you definitely eat when you’re hungry. You’ll eat brussels sprouts, or jelly doughnuts, or human flesh if the circumstances are particularly dire. Your stomach says “feed me!” and your brain says “feed it!” so you obey or you die. That’s the reality of hunger.

Hunger isn’t the reason people eat too much, though. For that, we have to get into some brain chemistry. Imagine you just had a big meal with your best friends, Perkins style. Texas Roadhouse style. International House of Pancakes style. Now you’re completely full and somebody (probably somebody very strange, all things considered) offers you a big bowl of unflavored oatmeal to top off the meal. Do you eat the oatmeal? Unlikely. You’re full. But what if, instead of unflavored oatmeal, this decidedly strange person offered you a slice of your favorite chocolate Bundt cake? Do you eat that? Quite possibly. So what’s the difference between unflavored oatmeal and chocolate Bundt cake at the end of a meal, besides the obvious?

The Bundt cake triggers the release of endorphins in your brain while the oatmeal does not. Endorphins, also known as opioids, are basically feel-good chemicals. Endorphins are your brain’s way of saying “damn, that was delicious, I’d best have some more,” so even though you know you’re full, you still gain endorphin-derived pleasure by eating the Bundt cake. Temporary happiness via endorphins often wins over future discomfort at having had too much Bundt cake.

Simply put, your brain knows what it likes, whether that be Bundt cake, potato chips, or chocolate ice cream. It doesn’t always know what it needs. Your brain just wants to be happy, and that means it wants endorphins easily acquired from today’s readily available foods.

That’s where you stand, you and your brain and your stomach together. This meager text you just read through is only a short primer on the daily activity of eating. The Wake is not the ideal medium for explanations about the neurochemistry involved in human food consumption. If you, the rat or the meal-taker or the person with a brain, want more information about the craziness that is human desire for food, you’d best do the research and put in the time. Or enroll in CFANS.

So I suppose everyone’s entitled to their own interests, but let me tell you, algae do it for me, and I’m going to tell you why. First, algae were among the earliest forms of life. Rather than killing and eating other organisms to power their growth and reproduction like some other assholes do, algae harness the sun’s energy. By providing food and oxygen, algae set the table so that more complex life forms could come to the dinner party. Today, algae remain the most important primary producers (organisms that can harness the sun’s energy, thereby inserting it into the food chain). If providing the basis for all of life on earth isn’t enough, we care about algae now since we’ve discovered that we can use it (that’s what science is for, right?). Algae are being used in some of the latest biodiesel research going down at the University of Minnesota and many other institutions. In addition, algae are important indicators of biological problems—changes in algae growth are often the first signs of environmental disturbance in a certain area.

Now, my personal relationship with algae is based on one such unusually changing individual, Didymosphenia geminata (Didymo, for short). Didymo is a diatom—its cell wall is composed of silica, an element rarely found in organisms outside of Los Angeles. Didymo is the mother of all river algae—its cells are about ten times as big as most other diatoms, and it sometimes blooms in mats so thick and wide that people call the authorities. The media have even coined a tacky nickname: “rock snot.”

The particularly onerous blooms that inspired such reactions have been a relatively recent (5 – 10 years) phenomenon. But are these blooms being caused by some external environmental change (i.e. global climate change) or by an internal change in the organism’s genetic make up by mutation or hybridization? This was the question guiding my research at the University of Alaska’s Environmental and Natural Resources Institute, where I spent this past summer, playing with goop in the stream.

Didymo in Campbell Creek, Anchorage, Alaska, did not seem to be exhibiting the kind of problematic, out-of-control growth that disturbed people in some places like New Zealand and British Columbia. To see whether the Didymo exhibited other characteristics typical to invasive species, I monitored Didymo blooms in relation to rainfall and river flow. In addition, I placed clean rocks in the river and scraped and identified the types of algae growing on the rocks every week, in order to observe how Didymo colonized a fresh environment, in relation to other diatoms.

I found that Didymo was very sensitive to rainfall, and experienced severe die-backs when flow fluctuated much. In addition, Didymo appeared to colonize very slowly, appearing only weeks after many other species of diatoms were growing on the rocks. Both findings were not typical for nuisance and invasive species, which are typically characterized as quickly growing, pioneers with a very broad range of conditions in which they can succeed.

The Didymo found in Campbell Creek did not seem to be acting in the same way as Didymo in New Zealand and British Columbia, suggesting the geographically separate Didymo are perhaps different strains. This points to an internal change, rather than global climate change as the cause of invasive and nuisance Didymo blooms. The next step is to compare genetic analysis of Didymo from different parts of the world. And that’s how science is done—rarely with trumpets announcing monumental discoveries, but bit by bit, link by link. Alright, that’s it, hope you learned something.

Perhaps contrary to intuition, the utilization of satellite imagery is not an exact science. Farmers and industry specialists have learned to “interpret” color shades in order to effectively judge parameters such as insect presence, diseased crops, and the aforementioned pesticide contamination. Earth Observatory information is of much higher resolution than lower-cost methods, like aerial surveillance. Traditional surveillance has an equivalent resolution in true color formats, but when it comes to infrared it simply can’t cover the same spread effectively enough. It may only resolve to sixty square foot chunks, according to National Geographic, which it notes is roughly the size of a small barn. Infrared photography is not strictly necessary, as a rule of thumb, but may be instrumental in detecting yield-destroying maladies such as Rhizomania in the Red River Valley’s sugar beet crop. Other commonly detectable crop disorders diagnosed from space are an over abundance of clay in the soil, over fertilization, overwatering, and a whole range of crop diseases that sound horrible out of context.

Thanks in large part to responsive state governance, most Minnesota counties with significant agricultural dependence can provide support at all levels to ensure quality control. In fact, the usage of proprietary GIS informatics has been steadily increasing over the course of the decade, and the usage of orthophotography (top-down aerial photography) has been bolstered by the wave of digitization. Minnesota has long-standing policies on a state level to foster newer, more accurate solutions to long-standing growing problems.

It would be disingenuous to not mention that a range of industries now use GIS technology for a variety of purposes. City-dwellers may associate rural areas with diminished 3G service and roaming charges, but it has been a true revolution on all levels of resource management.

The GIS industry has grown largely unseen by those outside of applicable industries, but its input is crucial for diverse projects: from tracking herds of reintroduced timberwolves to recreating murder scenes (unfortunately bolstering CSI’s claim that images of every level can be “enhanced” ad infinitum). The Department of Natural Resources and virtually every county use this technology and the resources are surprisingly available in the mainstream. It doesn’t mean much to urbanites directly, but the organic farming movement is based on trust that standards are upheld, and this technology is of vital importance to the green movement at large.

Scientists recently shot a bus-sized rocket into the moon in a search for evidence of ice and water on the moon.

The moon bombing commenced at 6:31 a.m. central time, and did not deliver the explosion that was expected by NASA, and that most of the amateur astronomers were watching for.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS, began by orbiting around the earth, then shooting a rocket into the Cabeus crater of the moon. The first rocket was followed by a second that slammed into the same area of the moon. The Cabeus crater is 60 miles wide, and situated near the south pole.

A large plume of debris was expected after the collision, and was supposed to be visible from earth through a 10-inch or larger telescope. This led many home-astronomers to wake up very early for a bit of a disappointment.

The reason for a lack of visible debris is unclear. It is possible that the rocket hit a slope or a rocky area and that the debris was not tossed high enough to reach sunlight.

Though many watching the moon attack were disappointed, scientists were very excited about the initial findings. The LCROSS used spectrometers, apparatuses that take light and break it down into wavelengths to then analyze these wavelengths for changes caused by microscopic vapor and particles. These spectrometers collected data before and after the crash and observed changes. It is possible for the spectrometers to have identified water and other elements, but it will take weeks to be fully analyzed.

The true highlight of the launch was to happen afterward. While watching the live launch on the NASA channel, amateur astronomer Bob Foucault observed, “After the rockets went, everyone was celebrating and talking to each other, except this one guy who was packing up his computer. He walked over near these other two young-ish guys and put his hand out, like for a hand shake or something. The younger guy then put his hand up, you know, like a high five. But the old guy just looked at him funny and then grabbed his computer cord and left. And the two guys just kind of looked at each other like ‘What’s his problem?’”

The Boston Retinal Implant Project was founded in the 1980s as a collaboration of the Harvard Medical School, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its initial goal aimed to better understand retinal transmission of information to the brain. As time passed, BRIP focused on a new goal: to develop a prosthetic eye. A new optic implant developed by the consortium aims to achieve just this.

Experiments done with pigs have sometimes failed because their bodies rejected the foreign prosthesis.
Thinner than a strand of hair, the elastic microchip contains 30,000 stimulating transistors that receive wireless information from a coil on a pair of eyeglasses. Meanwhile, a camera on the glasses records its surroundings. Using radiofrequency transmission, the coil converts visual data into a specific pattern of electrical impulses that it sends to a corresponding coil implanted behind the eye. This small electrical current passed on by electrodes transmits stimulation to retinal ganglion cells, which process input to the brain, thus creating the perception of vision.

The BRIP has yet to receive full approval from the Federal Drug Administration and carry out successful implants in humans. So far experiments involving people have been limited to low electrical stimulations of the retina for a few hours at a time. Consequently, blind subjects have reported spotting glimpses of light. Due to the invasive nature of the surgery, researchers are aiming to create the most long-lived prosthesis that utilizes the lowest voltage necessary to reach the stimulation threshold of nerve cells without harming any surrounding tissue.

The delicate retina also contains fluid that could interfere with the positioning of the microchip. Biocompatibility is another point of difficulty – experiments done with pigs have sometimes failed because their bodies rejected the foreign prosthesis. The current vitreoretinal approach involves an ab externo procedure – to create space for the implant, fluid is injected into a pore behind the eye to separate the retina from its surface. Then, the implant is wedged into this spot from the external side of the eye where the flap has been made.

The development of this device is far from completion. Human testing experiences a lag behind the experimental tinkering on the bleeding edge of technology. Research is still needed on how blindness affects neural pathways and brain plasticity – the development and reorganization of the brain in the wake of trauma or disability. It may be a while before blind patients can experience normal vision, but progress is being made at an astonishing rate.

Radio Frequency Identification refers to cheap, ubiquitous tags attached to objects that emit a distinct radio wave. Businesses use them frequently for tracking various products along the supply line, but their use has expanded drastically. These tags can not be read from anywhere; whatever reads them has to be relatively close, yet privacy concerns are largely focused on how easy it is for anyone to design a reader. For instance, RFID chips in passports usually contain the passport’s information, meaning anyone who can receive an RFID signal can counterfeit a passport.

However, its full potential remains untapped, and the Vice President of Systems Architecture for Sony Ericsson, Hakan Djuphammar, expects every mobile phone sold in 2010 to contain an RFID chip. From there, it’s not difficult to envision corresponding developments. RFID may be embedded in keys for cars or homes, or the use of IP (Internet Protocal) mapping combined with mobile user location data to prevent credit card fraud by determining card location at all times. Real-time traffic mapping using RFID could also be sold to GPS companies to provide detailed dynamic information. Djuphammar, who describes these scenarios as “win-win” made no comments about the possibility of opting out of having an RFID-enabled phone. 

American Express, which is designing an “ExpressPay” system using RFID tags in its credit cards, so the card just has to be tapped against a reader for a purchase to be made, has also speculated about RFID applications. According to Spychips.com, an advocacy website against the proliferation of RFID tags, an American Express patent application suggested using the technology to monitor consumer movements within a store- what items they picked up, how long they spent in certain aisles, whether or not they paused to observe specific promotions. American Express met with one of the most prominent anti-RFID groups, CASPIAN, and agreed to review their patent application about this technology, and to take more steps to ensure consumers are aware if they have an RFID-enabled card and could opt out of it.

It seems hard to argue that they should. The Vice President of InformationWeek blogged about RFID technology, “In a world jammed with surveillance cameras, cell phone cameras and imminent smart-grid brains that will scold you for using more electricity than some bureaucrat thinks you should, this paranoia over RFID goes beyond silly to absurd.” While this could be an overstatement, we do live in an era where companies continue to blur the lines between market research and invasive voyeurism. RFID technology has too much unexplored potential to simply be ignored -both for simple curiousity as well as profit-driven utilizations.

Some industries are more immune to consumer backlash than others. American auto manufacturers, for example, were arguably done in because they consciously produced an inferior product than foreign competitors. Warranty information is increasingly verbose and difficult to navigate in products of all sectors. In modern iterations, ensuring rapid obsolescence can be as simple as denying access to the workings of a product with standard, non-proprietary tools. Companies like Apple, Inc. have long been cited for their proprietary hardware practices – in essence leveraging their products’ customizability with intangibles such as a consumer’s relative demand. They are not alone, obviously: the centerpiece of «hi-tech» plans for obsolescence is the lithium ion battery. 

Lithium batteries are ubiquitous and cheap enough that they can be tailored to virtually any hardware configuration. They are light in weight and recharge quickly. They also require a near-constant supply of AC power if their chemical lattice is to be kept intact. Other battery mixtures may favor total discharge before optimal recharge, but these batteries lose their charging potential rapidly when they are used batteries-only. Since each battery is more or less tailored to the specific shape of its hardware, replacement is either very expensive or simply impossible. On top of this, there are forces in advertising media that may prompt a consumer to ditch their old devices prematurely. Consumer usage patterns fuel the perpetuation of marginal design, and it comes to a point where literally every consumer product has been tailored for a quick and orderly demise.

Has this changed in the wake of the worst economy in eighty years? It’s difficult to say. Advertisers have made a marked point of returning to old-timey, unsubstantiated claims about mileage. The rise of Twitter and blogs has provided a new outlet for consumer advocacy and feedback. The axioms of a world without scarcity have been put on hold for re-evaluation for the time being. Consumer culture has some serious soul-searching to do. While it may be unreasonable for a company’s bottom line to design products with flexibility and encouraged consumer workarounds to failure, it may be worth considering some kind of industry standard. Consumer spending may be cyclical, but where there is a tangible product involved, there will be tangible waste. Eventually there won’t be anything left to re-brand for consumption.

Kurzweil has penned several books, notably 2005′s The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. An interesting 650 page read, Kurzweil has framed a steppingstone for fresh debate and a manifesto for a line of thinking known as Transhumanism. Adherents to this line of thought believe humanity will reach a “singularity” of innovation—a point at which each new technological boundary is overcome by an even newer technology. In a nutshell, it is that “good tools beget better tools.” The ultimate goal of this is the physical supplantation of the human body itself.  Kurzweil has recently claimed that every person alive who is under 40 can expect to live for hundreds of years, due to advances in nanotechnology and tissue fabrication.

Criticisms of Kurzweil are easy to synthesize. Even the uninitiated will observe that technology has done very little, so far, to address the core of human aging. Advances in world life expectancy are primarily centered around the elimination of life-threatening conditions, rather than any proven assault on the vague parameters governing “natural aging.” Modern agriculture, septic systems and antibiotics are among advances that have minimized traditional causes of mortality in humans. A victory for statistics rather than fundamental overcoming of natural boundaries. The bottom line: even under ideal conditions, human quality of life tapers off around 80 years of age.

The assertion that humanity will overcome its lifespan asymptote seems like a lofty prediction. Advances in tissue fabrication and biological “reprogramming” are cited, but heretofore unproven. At worst, it’s an idealistic pipe dream of a man who clings to the possibility of his own immortality, even at odds with empirical evidence. This is the burden of the futurist. As technology accelerates societal absorption, bold claims have come and gone as their authors’ biologically normal lifespans remain unchanged. Technology has continued to “zig” when its vanguards expected it to “zag.”

The driving force of recent advances has been profit, and it seems absurd to assume that technologies such as artificial tissue generation or programmable, biologically-driven nanomachines will be deployed in any way that clashes with increasingly constricted intellectual property rights. In short, the process by which future life-extending technologies will become ubiquitous cannot be predicted, and those alive today cannot expect to reap the benefits of a scientific arms race that has not yet come to pass.

When sexually mature, these jellyfish are about 5 mm in diameter, or about as big as a human pinky nail. They have anywhere from eight to twenty-four tentacles when they are young and up to 90 tentacles as mature adults. Shaped like a bell, their external walls are transparent and their stomachs are large and have a distinctive red color.

Turritopsis revert from sexually mature to colonial though two processes: cell transformation and cell transdifferentiation, or the ability of one cell to transform into a completely different type of cell. By transdifferentiating, these cells are able to change their entire make-up, much like the much-publicized stem cells. After sexually reproducing, the jellyfish reabsorbs all of its external parts and turns into a cyst, which looks like an ameba-esque blob. The cyst then attaches to the ground and grows into a stalk-shaped polyp colony. These polyps begin a new cycle, where they form into mature jellyfish – all genetically identical. They then break away to perpetuate this cycle again and again, ad infinitum.

The application of a study of the Turritopsis nutricula could be boundless, as stem-cell research appears at the forefront of many medical studies on organ reproduction, cancer treatments, and brain injury treatments to name a few. By using the cells of the jellyfish, which transdifferentiate, scientists can continue to research solutions for these problems without mucking about in the moral dilemmas that come with researching embryonic stem cells. The jellyfish’s cells are also similar in make to cancer cells, which are able to affect the order and process of genetic systems. By studying these cells, scientists may be able to gain insight in the never-ending search for a cure for cancer. These jellyfish, rumored to be plotting world-domination, are in fact spreading in droves. What some scientists now refer to as a “widespread invasion” could affect the structure and functionality of the oceanic ecosystem. It is believed that they spread when the jellyfish stow away in the ballast tanks of large ships and are carried from place to place. This is a major pathway for the global spread of “invasive” species. Native to the Caribbean, these jellyfish are now being found in waters surrounding Italy and Spain, Japan, Panama, and even Florida. It’s anyone’s guess where they end up next.

Topping the list of new views are colorful pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, a “pillar of creation,” a “butterfly” nebula, and other super-metal formations in space, which is already super metal. Hubble’s suite of new instruments allows it to study the universe across a wide light spectrum, from ultraviolet all the way to near-infrared. In addition, scientists released spectroscopic observations that slice across billions of light-years to probe the cosmic-web structure of the universe and map the distribution of elements that are fundamental to life as we know it.

“This marks a new beginning for Hubble,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The telescope (…) is significantly more powerful than ever, well-equipped to last into the next decade.”

“I fought for the Hubble repair mission because Hubble is the people’s telescope,” said Mikulski, chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA. “I also fought for Hubble because it constantly rewrites the science textbooks. It has more discoveries than any other science mission.”

Regardless of your scientific interest, the new Hubble means, first and foremost, awesome images to admire. Enjoy.

For more, check out hubblesite.org.

Simply put, electric cars sputtered and died because the technology was completely outpaced by advances in internal combustion engines. The latter produce forces unrivalled in electric motors to this day, and the burgeoning commercialization that accelerated consumer absorption only sealed the stall of this power source. Battery technology just had too many barriers to remain competitive, and oil derivatives were relatively cheap and easy to grow in a network. If the history of technology has taught us anything, it’s that rapid change doesn’t always recognize externalities such as the toxic auto emissions we are saddled with today.

In all fairness, cars have cleaned up their act a great deal – simultaneous advances in materials production, engine design, auto profile, and emissions sequestration have ensured that today’s cars bear only a thematic resemblance to the cars of yesteryear. However, the same technological advances have placed electric cars in a better position than ever to finally make an impact in the American market. The advent of lighter materials and lithium ion batteries have ensured more forgiving allowances and specifications for design, and a range of diverse-use electric cars are poised to take up the lost market-share of conventional cars.

Despite the weight of history, electric cars have been increasing at a rate of nearly 30 percent every year over the last decade. While electric cars seemed much more certain to become commonplace when crude oil was pushing $150 per barrel, there is a larger movement which is propelling massive growth in this sector. It is tied in with other popular initiatives and has become a potent cultural force, although it still exists largely in advertising campaigns and private discourse. However, all trends seem to lead to an increase in this particular set of infrastructure, and it is worthwhile to profile emerging trends in the market.

Chevrolet, and by extension General Motors, has a decades-long history of promising prototypes and concept cars which quickly die along with consumer demand. In fact, most major car companies have made forays into this territory. Chevrolet, however, publicly staked its future on the release of the Volt, a much-hyped production sedan set to arrive in 2010. The Volt pushes the limits of what can be called an electric car, since it maintains a battery-only range of only 40 miles, and supplements the rest of its functionality with an internal combustion engine. This is hardly uncommon or a strike against GM if one is an advocate of all-electric vehicles, however. The drawbacks of electric cars are well documented, and so numerous that they promoted the rise of fossil-fuel cars in the first place. Hybrid cars bridge the gap and can operate within the massive extant fuel infrastructure. While lithium ion batteries maintain larger capacities and recharge-ability for longer than ever before, they remain at best a refinement of traditional problems. Hybrids seem likely to remain dominant as a transitional element, and their greatly increased fuel efficiency will bring a compromise in every sense of the word. Hybrid technology – for its part – has attained rapid absorption among those who see it as a personal statement of character, as well as transit lines around the world who wish to reach out to a cynical public.

The most important media darling start-up company in the electric car market is undoubtedly Tesla Motors. The company has run an aggressive marketing campaign and is targeting wealthy urban dwellers as its core demographic. Since electric car functionality on highways can be difficult to deliver, sale models of electric autos run the gambit across various uses and price ranges. Most feature less space than traditional cars, and two-seater models are commonplace. All seem to be tailored to inner city residents, and often include restrictions from freeway use. Tesla Motors’ main drive in the marketplace was the production of attractive, full sedans with battery ranges of more than 200 miles, rapid acceleration capabilities, and ostensibly many of the same features to which drivers have become accustomed.

Most, if not all, automakers today have a wide range of electric-capable cars; which have stalled in various stages of production. The old reasoning is still in effect. In fact, electric cars cannot perform the same tasks as those with fossil fuels. Without the use of internal combustion engines, the landscape of the world would be shockingly different from today, and would undoubtedly demand a decrease in the amount of materials we could transport over land. Fearing reliance on often-unreliable electric cars, the American public would not have expanded as it has, geographically or numerically. A denser style of living such as the cities of one hundred years ago would dominate the landscape, and suburbs would not exist as we know them.

Without upholding specifications catering to our new demographic layout, any change in technologies will be stilted at best. As relevant inputs remain cheap, it preserves “old” technology in a realm devoid of the necessity to change. Will electric cars ever become truly mainstream and stop being status symbols for the wealthy? Only time will tell. Looking at the history of technological development, it seems that any change will require a catalyst to provide disincentives to alternatives. The span of history is littered with “good” ideas and technologies that never found relevance. Technological absorption is not judgmental or cognizant of externalities before they are made glaringly obvious, and the same will hold for electric cars. The only sure thing is that people will not back down to lesser amounts of creature comforts – assign that prediction accordingly.

Sex is typically viewed as a low carbon dioxide emitting activity. In lieu of some heavy breathing, which equates to about the same carbon dioxide output of an average American scaling a couple flights of stairs, sex doesn’t appear to be an industry that requires reinvention to be sustainable. Nonetheless, every market seems to have potential for a sustainable-revamp.

This revamping has taken numerous forms for the sex industry. From natural lubricants and vegan condoms to solar-powered vibrators and hemp rope for bondage play. While some of these items may seem extraneous, the ideas that support the green sex movement are the same ideas of improved human and environmental health that founded the encompassing green movement.

Common sex toys are known to contain potentially toxic chemicals known as phthalates. These chemicals are used to soften plastics such as PVC for bedroom use. Because phthalates are not chemically bound to PVC, they can break apart from one another with use. Other toys may contain blends of silicone that can degrade under a similar process. While it is unlikely that any of the degradation would be harmful enough to cause adverse health effects, studies of high concentrations of phthalates presented to animals has shown potential for negative side effects.

In response, the European Union has banned many phthalates from children’s toys. Many sex toys are sold for “novelty purposes only,” which allows companies to bypass many regulations and continue to manufacture and distribute their products. Even though there are methods of softening plastics without the use phthalates, manufacturers maintain their current production methods because the alternative is more costly.

While much of the industry is avoiding health-related concerns, non-toxic products have been continuously available for the conscious consumer. With regard to sex toys, the industry is being driven by consumer-oriented advertisements from green organizations. These organizations encourage buyers to seek alternatives and purchase toys made from glass or materials that have not undergone the softening process by use of phthalates.

Is there even a market for sustainable products in the sex industry? The carbon footprint reduction achieved when replacing a battery-powered vibrator with one powered by the sun is trivial compared to choices in transportation or heating a home. Even with companies such as Dreamscapes, which sponsors a sex toy-recycling program, there is little opportunity for the business of business to be business-worthy. There exists, more likely, a market for items that are naturally replaced in the course of sex-related activity, such as lubricants or condoms.

Natural and organic lubricants are promoted by eco-groups while simultaneously advising consumers to avoid petroleum-based products and those containing parabens, glycerin, hormones or silicon. Conventional lubricants contain toxins that have been associated with proliferation of cancerous cells. Condoms are offered free of animal-derivatives for vegan lovers. The availability of natural lubricants feels like a more legitimate attempt at propagating the idea of healthy societies and environments in the sex market. The greening of the condom, on the other hand, seems excessive when the product already helps prevent reproduction – a felony in the world of eco-crimes.

The revamping of the sex industry is just one example of “green” spinning out of control. While some choices may be useful in preventing harmful side effects, the idea that ecologically sound sex paraphernalia mitigates burning oil to power a daily routine is senseless. Even if change were required in every aspect of one’s lifestyle, a market that exploits a trend should be approached with caution. As with many other aspects of sex, it boils down to a personal choice: Is the hemp rope really necessary or will your old rope do the trick?

Solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are explosions of energy on the Sun, usually from regions called sunspots, that produces radiation that bombards the Earth’s magnetosphere. The frequency of this bombardment increases and decreases with the sun’s magnetic activity or solar cycle, fluctuating between solar maximums and minimums on average in 11-year cycles.

NASA expects the next solar maximum to take place around 2012. Some solar research physicists believe the next solar maximum will be stronger than more recent maximums – rivaling in intensity of a CME that took place more than 50 years ago. The Earth’s magnetosphere protects the planet from these streams of energy by rerouting them to the poles of the planet. The connection of the stream on the night-side of the earth is responsible for auroras observed near the Northern and Southern poles. In the case of the CME taking place in 1956, the aurora borealis was visible as far south as Florida.

While the beauty of the auroras baffle anyone who has had the opportunity to witness them, it seems the Sun has a greater agenda than merely mesmerizing those at high latitudes. Solar weather can cause disruption in communications satellites and is capable of knocking out electric power grids. In 1989, the city of Quebec was forced into darkness for several hours by a solar storm. While Quebec was the only city that faced a blackout, power grids across the United States were affected. Over 200 power grids were interrupted or encountered problems from the solar storm.

Storms of this intensity are relatively infrequent and must be must be in alignment with the Earth to produce power or communication problems. In efforts to predict these events, solar physicists have several facilities that monitor and measure the sun’s activity. While there is a still much to be discovered about the origins of solar flares to the point of accurate prediction, these monitors are capable of informing physicists of the arrival of a powerful CME hours before. Whether this is enough time to prepare for the potential failure of GPS navigation satellites, cellular phones and all things that depend on the power grid for power (most homes, water and sewage treatment, financial markets, electric transportation, et cetera) is yet to be determined.

The media runs in synchrony with the solar cycle – every few years before the approaching solar maximum – highlighting our unpreparedness in a technology-driven society for a large-scale solar flare. The 1859 Carrington event, consisting of eight days of severe solar weather, is frequently referenced as the storm powerful enough to shut down electric power grids and communications. However, the upcoming solar cycle is separated from other in that it coincides with the ill-conceived 2012 apocalyptic hysteria.

Give into the hype. We’re all going to die.

These chemicals are also referred to as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) or “hormone disruptors” because of their ability to “de-rail the body’s chemical messenger system.” Effects of exposure include altered hormone levels, reduced sperm count, and genital deformities, among others. In egg-laying species, males are seen to produce Vitellogenin, the protein that precedes the laying of eggs.

The bottom-line effect for most of these species is reduced reproduction and, thus, risk of extinction. Affected species include birds, amphibians, fish, reptiles, otters, deer, bears, antelopes and others. The report also cites “several laboratory studies” that suggest effects of these feminizing chemicals across different generations.

While the extent of water pollution and the various mixtures it produces make it hard to identify exactly which chemicals are the culprits, the report urges that greater caution is taken with all varieties of EDCs that could end up in the water supply. One interesting chemical singled out by the report is bisphenol A, a chemical found in numerous household product and food containers. It also suggests that more time and resources should be dedicated to monitoring wildlife at risk for feminization.

The study does not directly reference the effect of EDCs on humans but does state that since, “All vertebrates have similar sex hormone receptors… observations in one vertebrate wildlife species may serve to highlight pollution issue concerns for other vertebrates, including humans.”