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First public global database of fossil fuels launches

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By: Associated Press, September 20, 2022

A first-of-its-kind database for tracking the world’s fossil fuel production, reserves and emissions launches on Monday to coincide with climate talks taking place at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The Global Registry of Fossil Fuels includes data from over 50,000 oil, gas and coal fields in 89 countries. That covers 75% of global reserves, production and emissions, and is available for public use, a first for a collection of this size.

Until now there has been private data available for purchase, and analysis of the world’s fossil fuel usage and reserves. The International Energy Agency also maintains public data on oil, gas and coal, but it focuses on the demand for those fossil fuels, whereas this new database looks at what is yet to be burned. The registry was developed by Carbon Tracker, a nonprofit think tank that researches the energy transition’s effect on financial markets, and the Global Energy Monitor, an organization that tracks a variety of energy projects around the globe.

Corporations, investors and scientists already have some level of access to private data on fossil fuels. Mark Campanale, founder of Carbon Tracker, said he hopes the registry will empower groups to hold governments accountable, for example, when they issue licenses for fossil fuel extraction.“Civil society groups have got to get more of a focus on what governments are planning to do in terms of license issuance, both for coal and oil and gas, and actually begin to challenge this permitting process,” Campanale told The Associated Press.

The release of the database and an accompanying analysis of the collected data coincide with two critical sets of climate talks at the international level — the U.N. General Assembly in New York beginning on September 13, and COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, in November. Data like what’s being released in the registry could arm environmental and climate groups to pressure national leaders to agree to stronger policies that result in less carbon emissions.

And we’re in dire need of carbon reductions, Campanale said. In their analysis of the data, the developers found that the United States and Russia have enough fossil fuel still underground untapped to exhaust the world’s remaining carbon budget. That’s the remaining carbon the world can afford to emit before a certain amount of warming occurs, in this case 1.5 degrees Celsius. It also shows these reserves would generate 3.5 trillion tons of greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than all of the emissions produced since the Industrial Revolution.

“We already have enough extractable fossil fuels to cook the planet. We can’t afford to use them all — or almost any of them at this point. We’ve run out of time to build new things in old ways,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist who was not involved with the database.“I like the emphasis on transparency in fossil fuel production and reserves, down to specific projects. That’s a unique aspect to the work.”Jackson compared the global carbon budget to a bathtub.“You can run water only so long before the tub overflows,” he said.

When the tub is close to overflowing, he said, governments can turn down the faucet (mitigating greenhouse gas emissions) or open the tub’s drain more (removing carbon from the atmosphere).The database shows that we have much more carbon than we need as a global community, Campanale said, and more than enough to overflow the bathtub and flood the bathroom in Jackson’s analogy. So investors and shareholders should be holding decision makers at the world’s largest oil, gas and coal companies accountable when they approve new investments in fossil fuel extraction, he said.

Campanale said the hope is the investment community, “who ultimately own these corporations,” will use the data to begin to challenge the investment plans of companies still planning to expand oil, gas and coal projects. “Companies like Shell and Exxon, Chevron and their shareholders can use the analysis to to really begin to try and push the companies to move in a completely different direction.”

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NASA Panel Studying Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, UFO Sightings to Hold First Public Meeting Ahead of Report

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A SpaceX Falcon 9, with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken in the Dragon crew capsule, lifts off from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Saturday. David J. Phillip/AP
The panel was formed last June to examine unclassified UFO sightings and other data collected from various sectors.
By Reuters | Updated: 31 May 2023

A NASA panel formed last year to study what the government calls “unidentified aerial phenomena,” commonly termed UFOs, was due to hold its first public meeting on Wednesday, ahead of a report expected in coming weeks.

The 16-member body, assembling experts from fields ranging from physics to astrobiology, was formed last June to examine unclassified UFO sightings and other data collected from civilian government and commercial sectors.

The focus of Wednesday’s four-hour public session “is to hold final deliberations before the agency’s independent study team publishes a report this summer,” NASA said in announcing the meeting.

The panel represents the first such inquiry ever conducted under the auspices of the US space agency for a subject the government once consigned to the exclusive and secretive purview of military and national security officials.

The NASA study is separate from a newly formalised Pentagon-based investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, documented in recent years by military aviators and analysed by US defense and intelligence officials.

The parallel NASA and Pentagon efforts — both undertaken with some semblance of public scrutiny — highlight a turning point for the government after decades spent deflecting, debunking and discrediting sightings of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, dating back to the 1940s.

The term UFOs, long associated with notions of flying saucers and aliens, has been replaced in government parlance by “UAP.”

While NASA’s science mission was seen by some as promising a more open-minded approach to a topic long treated as taboo by the defense establishment, the US space agency made it known from the start that it was hardly leaping to any conclusions.

“There is no evidence UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin,” NASA said in announcing the panel’s formation last June.

In its more recent statements, the agency presented a new potential wrinkle to the UAP acronym itself, referring to it as an abbreviation for “unidentified anomalous phenomena.” This suggested that sightings other than those that appeared airborne may be included.

Still, NASA in announcing Wednesday’s meeting, said the space agency defines UAPs “as observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena from a scientific perspective.”

US defense officials have said the Pentagon’s recent push to investigate such sightings has led to hundreds of new reports that are under examination, though most remain categorized as unexplained.

The head of the Pentagon’s newly formed All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has said the existence of intelligent alien life has not been ruled out but that no sighting had produced evidence of extraterrestrial origins.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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A Third of Milky Way’s Planets Orbiting Most Common Stars Could Hold Water, Harbour Life: Study

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The most common stars in our galaxy are considerably smaller and cooler, sporting just half the mass of the Sun at most.
By Press Trust of India | Updated: 30 May 2023

One-third of the planets orbiting the most common stars across the Milky Way galaxy may hold onto liquid water and possibly harbour life, according to a study based on latest telescope data.

The most common stars in our galaxy are considerably smaller and cooler, sporting just half the mass of the Sun at most. Billions of planets orbit these common dwarf stars.

The analysis, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that two-thirds of the planets around these ubiquitous small stars could be roasted by tidal extremes, sterilising them.

However, that leaves one-third of the planets—hundreds of millions across the galaxy—that could be in a goldilocks orbit close enough, and gentle enough, to be possibly habitable.

“I think this result is really important for the next decade of exoplanet research, because eyes are shifting towards this population of stars,” said Sheila Sagear, a doctoral student at the University of Florida (UF) in the US.

“These stars are excellent targets to look for small planets in an orbit where it’s conceivable that water might be liquid and therefore the planet might be habitable,” Sagear said in a statement.

Sagear and UF astronomy professor Sarah Ballard measured the eccentricity of a sample of more than 150 planets around M dwarf stars, which are about the size of Jupiter.

The more oval shaped an orbit, the more eccentric it is. If a planet orbits close enough to its star, at about the distance that Mercury orbits the Sun, an eccentric orbit can subject it to a process known as tidal heating.

As the planet is stretched and deformed by changing gravitational forces on its irregular orbit, friction heats it up. At the extreme end, this could bake the planet, removing all chance for liquid water.

“It’s only for these small stars that the zone of habitability is close enough for these tidal forces to be relevant,” Ballard said.

The researchers used data from NASA’s Kepler telescope, which captures information about exoplanets as they move in front of their host stars.

To measure the planets’ orbits, they focused especially on how long the planets took to move across the face of the stars. Their study also relied on new data from the Gaia telescope, which has measured the distance to billions of stars in the galaxy.

“The distance is really the key piece of information we were missing before that allows us to do this analysis now,” Sagear said.

The team found that stars with multiple planets were the most likely to have the kind of circular orbits that allow them to retain liquid water.

Stars with only one planet were the most likely to see tidal extremes that would sterilise the surface, according to the researchers.

Since one-third of the planets in this small sample had gentle enough orbits to potentially host liquid water, that likely means that the Milky Way has hundreds of millions of promising targets to probe for signs of life outside our solar system, they added.

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New Low-Cost Smartphone Attachment, Custom App to Monitor Blood Pressure at User’s Fingertip

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The researchers estimate that the cost of the clip could be as low as 10 cents (Rs. 0.7) apiece when manufactured at scale.

By Press Trust of India | Updated: 30 May 2023

Scientists have developed a simple, low-cost clip that uses a smartphone’s camera and flash to monitor blood pressure at the user’s fingertip. The clip developed by researchers at the University of California (UC) San Diego, US, works with a custom smartphone app and currently costs about 80 cents (Rs. 5.6) to make.

The researchers estimate that the cost could be as low as 10 cents (Rs. 0.7) apiece when manufactured at scale.

The technology, described in the journal Scientific Reports, could help make regular blood pressure monitoring easy, affordable and accessible to people in resource-poor communities, they said.

It could benefit older adults and pregnant women, for example, in managing conditions such as hypertension, according to the researchers.

“We have created an inexpensive solution to lower the barrier to blood pressure monitoring,” said study first author Yinan Xuan, a Ph.D. student at UC San Diego.

“Because of their low cost, these clips could be handed out to anyone who needs them but cannot go to a clinic regularly,” said study senior author Edward Wang, a professor at UC San Diego and director of the Digital Health Lab.

“We have created an inexpensive solution to lower the barrier to blood pressure monitoring,” said study first author Yinan Xuan, a Ph.D. student at UC San Diego.

“Because of their low cost, these clips could be handed out to anyone who needs them but cannot go to a clinic regularly,” said study senior author Edward Wang, a professor at UC San Diego and director of the Digital Health Lab.

“Our is a calibration-free system, meaning you can just use our device without touching another blood pressure monitor to get a trustworthy blood pressure reading,” Wang said.

To measure blood pressure, the user simply presses on the clip with a fingertip. A custom smartphone app guides the user on how hard and long to press during the measurement.

The clip is a 3D-printed plastic attachment that fits over a smartphone’s camera and flash. It features an optical design similar to that of a pinhole camera. When the user presses on the clip, the smartphone’s flash lights up the fingertip.

That light is then projected through a pinhole-sized channel to the camera as an image of a red circle. A spring inside the clip allows the user to press with different levels of force.

The harder the user presses, the bigger the red circle appears on the camera.

The smartphone app extracts two main pieces of information from the red circle. By looking at the size of the circle, the app can measure the amount of pressure that the user’s fingertip applies.

By looking at the brightness of the circle, the app can measure the volume of blood going in and out of the fingertip.

An algorithm converts this information into systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings.

The researchers tested the clip on 24 volunteers from the UC San Diego Medical Center. Results were comparable to those taken by a blood pressure cuff.

“Using a standard blood pressure cuff can be awkward to put on correctly, and this solution has the potential to make it easier for older adults to self-monitor blood pressure,” said study co-author Alison Moore, from UC San Diego School of Medicine.

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China to Send First Civilian Into Space on Tuesday as Part of Crewed Mission to Its Space Station

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Until now, all Chinese astronauts sent into space have been part of the People's Liberation Army.
By Agence France-Presse | Updated: 29 May 2023

China will send its first civilian astronaut into space as part of a crewed mission to the Tiangong space station on Tuesday, its Manned Space Agency announced, as Beijing pushes ahead with its extra-terrestrial ambitions.

The world’s second-largest economy has invested billions of dollars into its military-run space programme, trying to catch up with the United States and Russia after years of belatedly matching their milestones.

Until now, all Chinese astronauts sent into space have been part of the People’s Liberation Army.

“Payload expert Gui Haichao is a professor at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,” China Manned Space Agency Spokesperson Lin Xiqiang told reporters Monday.

Gui will be “mainly responsible for the on-orbit operation of space science experimental payloads”, Lin said.

The commander is Jing Haipeng — on his fourth mission into space, according to state media — and the third crew member is engineer Zhu Yangzhu.

They are set to take off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China on Tuesday at 9:31 am (0131 GMT), the Manned Space Agency said.

Gui’s university, known as Beihang University in English, said he hailed from an “ordinary family” in western Yunnan province.

He “first felt the attraction of aerospace” listening to the news of China’s first man in space, Yang Liwei, on campus radio in 2003, the university said in a post on social media.

‘Space dream’

Under President Xi Jinping, plans for China’s “space dream” have been put into overdrive.

China is planning to build a base on the Moon and the country’s National Space Administration said it aims to launch a crewed lunar mission by 2029.

The final module of the T-shaped Tiangong — whose name means “heavenly palace” — successfully docked with the core structure last year.

The station carries a number of pieces of cutting-edge science equipment, state news agency Xinhua reported, including “the world’s first space-based cold atomic clock system”.

Once finished, Tiangong is expected to remain in low Earth orbit at between 400 and 450 kilometres (250 and 280 miles) above the planet for at least 10 years — realising an ambition to maintain a long-term human presence in space.

It will be constantly crewed by rotating teams of three astronauts, who will conduct scientific experiments and help test new technologies.

While China does not plan to use Tiangong for global cooperation on the scale of the International Space Station, Beijing said it is open to foreign collaboration.

It is not yet clear how extensive that cooperation will be.

China has been effectively excluded from the International Space Station since 2011, when the United States banned NASA from engaging with the country.

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Elon Musk’s Neuralink Says It Has FDA Approval for Study of Brain Implants in Humans

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The FDA nod "represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people," Neuralink said in a tweet.
By Reuters | Updated: 26 May 2023

Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink on Thursday said the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had given the green light to its first-in-human clinical trial, a critical milestone after earlier struggles to gain approval.

The FDA nod “represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people,” Neuralink said in a tweet. It did not elaborate on the aims of the study, saying only that it was not recruiting yet and more details would be available soon.

Neuralink and the FDA did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Musk envisions brain implants could cure a range of conditions including obesity, autism, depression, and schizophrenia as well as enabling web browsing and telepathy. He made headlines late last year when he said he was so confident in the devices’ safety that he would be willing to implant them in his children.

On at least four occasions since 2019, Musk predicted Neuralink would begin human trials. But the company only sought FDA approval in early 2022 and the agency rejected the application, seven current and former employees told Reuters in March.

The FDA had pointed out several concerns to Neuralink that needed to be addressed before sanctioning human trials, according to the employees. Major issues involved the lithium battery of the device, the possibility of the implant’s wires migrating within the brain, and the challenge of safely extracting the device without damaging brain tissue.

Neuralink, founded in 2016, has been the subject of several federal probes.

In May, US lawmakers urged regulators to investigate whether the makeup of a panel overseeing animal testing at Neuralink contributed to botched and rushed experiments.

The Department of Transportation is separately probing whether Neuralink illegally transported dangerous pathogens on chips removed from monkey brains without proper containment measures.

Neuralink is also under investigation by the US Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General for potential animal-welfare violations. This probe has also been looking at the USDA’s oversight of Neuralink.

Neuralink has not responded to requests for comment on the probes.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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NASA Partners With Blue Origin to Build Spacecraft for Moon Mission

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NASA's decision will give the agency a second ride to the moon under its Artemis program.
By Reuters | Updated: 20 May 2023 

A team led by Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin won a coveted NASA contract to build a spacecraft that will send astronauts to and from the moon’s surface, NASA’s chief announced on Friday, capping a high-stakes contest.

NASA’s decision will give the agency a second ride to the moon under its Artemis program, after it awarded Elon Musk’s SpaceX $3 billion (nearly Rs. 24,850 crore) in 2021 to land astronauts on the moon for the first time since the final Apollo mission in 1972.

Those initial missions using SpaceX’s Starship system are slated for later this decade.

The Blue Origin contract is valued roughly $3.4 billion (nearly Rs. 28,150 crore), NASA’s exploration chief Jim Free said, with Blue Origin privately contributing “well north” of that amount, Blue Origin’s lunar lander head John Couluris said.

“Honored to be on this journey with @NASA to land astronauts on the Moon — this time to stay,” Amazon.com billionaire founder Bezos said in a tweet after the announcement.

Blue Origin plans to build its 52-foot (16-meter) tall Blue Moon lander in a partnership with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, spacecraft software firm Draper, and robotics firm Astrobotic.

SpaceX’s Starship lander is poised to conduct the first two astronaut moon landings under NASA’s Artemis program, sending a pair of astronauts to the lunar surface for each mission. The Blue Moon landing, planned for 2029, is also expected to ferry two astronauts to the surface.

“Our partnership will only add to this golden age of human spaceflight,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said. He added that having a second moon lander for the agency’s Artemis mission promotes commercial competition, echoing a trend in recent years that reduces costs for NASA.

Friday’s announcement in Washington was a long-awaited outcome for Blue Origin, which had unsuccessfully had competed for past contracts. The space company overcame a rival bid from Leidos-owned defense contractor Dynetics Inc, the head of a partnership with Northrop Grumman.

Those companies lost out to SpaceX for the 2021 contract, part of an initial moon lander procurement program. NASA under that program said it could pick up to two companies, but blamed budget constraints for only going with SpaceX.

This new contract is a boost for Bezos, who since founding Blue Origin in 2000 has invested billions into the company to compete for high-profile commercial and government space contracts with SpaceX, a dominant force in satellite launches and human spaceflight.

After losing in 2021, Blue Origin unsuccessfully fought to overturn NASA’s decision to ignore its Blue Moon lander, first with a watchdog agency and then in court.

Blue Origin and lawmakers had pressured NASA to award a second lunar lander contract to promote commercial competition and ensure the agency has a backup ride to the moon. NASA in early 2022 announced the program for a second lander contract.

Couluris, who will lead Blue Origin’s development of the moon lander, said Friday’s award was hard fought outcome.

“We’ve been working for some time, and we’re still ready to go,” he said.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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