If you simply skim over the facts regarding the U of M’s latest blockbuster grant you will see that the Department of Energy has awarded the U with 8 million dollars to construct a wind turbine that doesn’t produce any viable power. In the logic of money and energy it is no doubt unusual, even risky, for a $ sign and a large string of 0’s to not be tied to a guaranteed usable, sellable megawatt output. However, the U of M institute which has leveraged the acquisition of the grant money, The Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment (IREE), has entirely different and more critical plans for the new wind turbine to take residence in the UMore Park: research.

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.

The split between conservationists and environmentalists is upon us. Across the country (and beyond it) our beloved national scenery is being threatened by the greens, of all people. More precisely, greens are attacking mountaintops. With windmills.

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.

Cloning has been one of those “hot topics” for years. One of the things you find round-table discussions about late at night when flipping between PBS and the science channel or on the slate for high school debate class. Should we clone sheep? People? Babies? Well here’s a new one: soon we may be able to clone our ancient rival/ancestor, the Neanderthal.

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).

Although depression was classified as a disorder over 50 years ago, it existed long before the advent of modern classification methods. According to these scientific methods that now characterize the disease, nearly 121 million people worldwide are affected by depression. Many of these cases are left untreated. Unlike modern diseases such as cancer, obesity), depression’s origin has been contemplated since the time of philosophers Plato and Aristotle. Depression remains a prevalent and troublesome disorder despite the changes in social and environmental conditions over human history. Thus, it is important to ask: why has natural selection not culled it out through the course of evolution?

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.

There is poetry all around us—in the way we walk, the way trees shiver snow off their branches, and even the way we slip and fall on a patch of unforeseen ice—it is easy to overlook the rhythmic beauty of our world. But there is one place poetry is far from expected: in bacteria. And in this case, we’re not talking about metaphoric poetry.

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.”

Hypothetical situation: you are a rat. There is a bowl of cake frosting in front of you. Do you eat it? The answer is yes. You eat it all.

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.

And I beheld the frost upon their skin
Hollow and adherent to none
Aimless
Their porcelain dead decorated the holes in the floor
I know not what I felt
For I know not what I saw
The ice that gleamed in the midday sun
Did not affect my judgment
And this surely a sign of ill-fated footsteps
Walls stripped as bare as its inhabitants
A duet of chanting resounded from the corner
Something remained.
Pained I am that these words have faded
However I fear their importance
And I beheld the raging storms
Multitudes of twisting winds
No matter where I perch or hide
I am found.
Blades of obfuscation
Whipping through my mind
Mundane affairs rendered irrelevant
For not all storms are of this world

So you say you’re sick of all the bullshit on TV. Pets that can talk, progress on the bill on drying paint, that kind of thing? Well, sink your ass into that booth, Mr. PBR, because I’ve got some cool stuff for you to read. It’s got intrigue, adventure, and oh, also, it’s about algae.

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.

Farmers in the Upper Midwest, and Minnesota in particular, are on the forefront of technology today with widespread implementation of satellite data to allow for better crop management. Far from the satellite images used by Google Maps et al., which may be several years old and out of season, farmers have access to new data continuously throughout the growing season. NASA’s Earth Observatory reports that an ever-increasing proportion of farmers have found themselves dependent on monthly updates from satellite imagery. They are of particular interest in the organic farming community. Organic farmers, while making a concerted effort to maintain yields without the use of pesticides, must also take into account other factors of the local environment. Since nearby operations on other farms may not necessarily be organic, even true-color satellite imagery can pick out irregularities associated with pesticide contamination.

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?’”