Washington State University biologist Mechthild Tegeder has developed a way to dramatically increase the yield and quality of soybeans. Her greenhouse-grown soybean plants fix twice as much nitrogen from the atmosphere as their natural counterparts, grow larger and produce up to 36 percent more seeds.

Tegeder designed a novel way to increase the flow of nitrogen, an essential nutrient, from specialized bacteria in soybean root nodules to the seed-producing organs. She and Amanda Carter, a biological sciences graduate student, found the increased rate of nitrogen transport kicked the plants into overdrive.

Their work, published recently in Current Biology, is a major breakthrough in the science of improving crop yields. It could eventually help address society’s critical challenge of feeding a growing human population while protecting the environment.

A lament:  When I have entered into discussions about the greenhouse effect, global warming, climate change, I have been routinely criticized as not understanding science and/or its method by those on both sides of the controversies.  And John O’Sullivan, editor of PSI, has recently shared with me:  “As you correctly identify, the main complaint I get about your articles is that they seem rambling and confusing. Best to keep to simple points and remember that most readers have shorter attention spans. Few are retired with time on their hands and prefer to come here to get neat ‘packets’ of information.” 

I conclude these critics might not be familiar with the science of chemistry, and if they once were, maybe they have forgotten.  I have this forgetting problem all the time.  But I consider this is not the entire answer because I know as a chemist I was not the scientist I am today.  For near the end of my career as a chemistry instructor at a small community college I began to read the classic books written by the founders of what I term—modern science.  These authors were Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton.

Arctic could become ice-free for first time in more than 100,000 years, claims leading scientist | The Independent

Every year we are told by Nobel Prize winners, climate scientists and environmental activists that the Arctic will be ice-free that year. They are flat-earthers.

It is impossible for the Arctic to be ice-free under current climate conditions, because the Earth is round. Because of the high albedo of clouds and ice and the low angle of the sun, north of 80N they don’t get enough solar energy to melt that much ice. The prevailing winds also jam the ice up against the Canadian Coast, and make it very thick.

European scientists found parts of a huge glacier that once covered most of Mars. High-resolution photos captured by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express probe show that much of the glacier has now been covered by wind-blown dust and erosion.The underlying sheet of glacial ice seems to be retreating, which may have contributed to a planet wide altitude difference equivalent to several miles. Mars Express has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2003.

Terrain surrounding the area has ridges and troughs that ESA geologists suspect are associated with the glacier. Scientists suspect that Mars was mostly covered in glaciers multiple times within the past several hundred million years.

This discovery of the glacier on Mars is more evidence that the Red Planet may contain habitats that could potentially support life.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to show the public solar cosmic rays irradiated the early solar system after its birth five billion years (5 Ga) ago, still do, and influence Earth’s climate today. Cosmic rays are one of many ways the Sun’s pulsar core maintains invisible contact with atoms, lives and planets in the solar system. Cosmic rays produce tracks of ion pairs (charge separation) on traversing Earth’s atmosphere. The attractive force of water vapor condensation into water droplets along ion tracks produces electrically charged clouds, rain, lightning and thunder as frequent reminders a solar pulsar controls human destiny. 

[This paper  appears in International Journal of Advanced Research, IJAR-12995, accepted for publication 13 Oct 2016 ]

According to a recently published paper in the journal Science, (Cook et al., 2016, “Ocean forcing of glacier retreat in the western Antarctic Peninsula”), between 1945 and 2009 the mean ocean temperature warmed at depths of 150 to 400 meters for about 3/4ths of the waters surrounding the western Antarctic Peninsula (AP).  The other 1/4th of the ocean waters at those depths (150 to 400 m) cooled (by -1°C ) during  those 65 years.

As the authors point out, and as the graph above shows, in the areas where the waters warmed (light red shaded), glacier retreat was observed to be most pronounced (blood red points).  In the regions (Bransfield Strait) where the ocean waters cooled (blue shaded), glaciers were in balance and even advanced (blue points).  Citing this strong correlation between regional ocean warming/cooling and regional glacier retreat/advance, the authors concluded that the long-held assumption that atmospheric and surface  warming (presumably driven by greenhouse gases) was what primarily caused Antarctic glaciers to recede is not supported by the evidence.  Instead, it is the temperature of the ocean waters that “have been the predominant control on multidecadal glacier front behavior in the western AP.”

NASA finally began preparing the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) for testing Thursday, but the project is way behind schedule and over budget.

New video shows the telescope being moved onto a mobile stand for testing, but the project was slated to be in space by 2011. NASA announced last December that the JWST was halfway completed, but the project is currently $7.2 billion over its initial budget and seven years behind the original schedule. The JWST was initially projected to cost $1.6 billion.

The Government Accountability Office now estimates the final cost at $8.8 billion, and NASA has now scheduled the telescope for an October 2018 launch, adding to the telescope’s long history of major cost overruns and delays.

At one time, math teachers everywhere answered the age-old, “but when am I ever going to NEED this?” question by remarking that we wouldn’t carry around calculators in our pockets for the rest of our lives.

And yet, every smartphone (and many remaining “dumb” phones) have calculators built in as one of the simplest apps.

So, does that mean we no longer have to memorize our multiplication tables?

Machines have always existed to make our life easier, but that can have unintended consequences. For example, after the Industrial Revolution, when machines took over much of the manual labor, there was a noticeable increase in weight gain, obesity, and obesity-related diseases.  That has only increased as our jobs have moved us towards even more sedentary lifestyles, sitting at a desk all day.

My wife Mary and I live in central Florida. Hurricane Matthew was expected to hit us around 8am Friday morning. Around 5pm Thursday, I decided to pick up a few groceries. It was too late. Every supermarket was closed. Streets were empty. It felt like I was driving on the set of a sci-fi movie.

We lost power 10pm Thursday night. Mid-morning Friday, the worst of the storm had passed us. Thank God we only lost one tree, which missed our house, and one section of our fence.

Mary and I took a ride to assess neighborhood damage. The streets were empty. A picture window was smashed at the corner food mart/gas station. We suspected it was the result of thug damage rather than hurricane damage. We saw three young black guys with their pants below their butts approaching. Accuse me of profiling, but my instincts told me they were up to no good. Sure enough, they spotted the broken window and made a beeline to it. I told Mary to video them with her phone. My foot hovered above the gas pedal for a fast getaway. When the thugs saw Mary shooting them, they wandered away. Mary called the emergency number posted on the store window.

Experts say California is in a permanent drought, caused by global warming and disappearing Arctic ice.

Precipitation there was above normal over the past 12 months, and there has been no trend over the past 120 years.

Climate at a Glance | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

Five to ten inches of rain forecast this week for Northern California.

10-Day Precipitation Outlook for the Conterminous U.S.

Governor Brown was also hysterical about drought in 1977, which was followed by several years of California flooding.

Brown Warns of Drought Disaster – Says Hard Choices’ Face California – View Article – NYTimes.com

The 1977 drought was blamed on global cooling and expanding Arctic ice.

9 Jun 1977, Page 1 – at Newspapers.com

Nothing ever changes, expect that climate scientists periodically rename their scam as either global cooling or global warming.

Read more at realclimatescience.com

When Elon Musk isn’t outlining plans to use his massive rocket to leave a decaying Planet Earth and colonize Mars, he sometimes talks about his belief that Earth isn’t even real and we probably live in a computer simulation.

“There’s a billion to one chance we’re living in base reality,” he said at a conference in June.

Musk is just one of the people in Silicon Valley to take a keen interest in the “simulation hypothesis”, which argues that what we experience as reality is actually a giant computer simulation created by a more sophisticated intelligence. If it sounds a lot like The Matrix, that’s because it is.

According to this week’s New Yorker profile of Y Combinator venture capitalist Sam Altman, there are two tech billionaires secretly engaging scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation. But what does this mean? And what evidence is there that we are, in fact, living in The Matrix?

An Historical, not Hysterical Perspective: Much of the hysteria over atmospheric CO2 arises from dismissing the past, and thus losing the context for interpreting the present.  Recently, one scientist suggested that climate researchers should be schooled in geology before commenting on climate change.  Instead of that, of course, most of them are based in environmentalism.  So as a public service this post presents some excellent and time-tested evidence produced by Dr Guy LeBlanc Smith.  h/t Jeff Hayes

… and, perhaps, also radishes, snow peas, chard, and tomatoes – all for your balanced diet when dining on Mars.

Those are the plants that the current investigators at NASA think that you may be able to grow on planet Mars, provided these plants can be grown there at all. That’s why NASA is studying the subject at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Of course, they have high level backing from the White House that is fostering this week’s conference on “White House Frontiers: Robots, Space Exploration, and the Future of American Innovation.” The conference has five main themes, one of which is “Interplanetary Frontiers.” What could possibly be wrong, or go wrong?