Desalination Closer to Reality in California

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California is closer to hosting the largest desalination plant in the country, but not everybody thinks it's a good idea.

Some environmental groups remain concerned about the impacts of the plant on the coastal environment, despite attempts to mitigate these concerns by Poseidon Resources of Stamford, Conn., the company that wants to build the plant. The plant would turn seawater into drinking water and provide a drought-proof water supply for about 300,000 people.

Whether or not the plant goes forward may have an impact on similar proposals around the country. There are, for example, an estimated 17 other proposed desalination plants just in California. Interest in desalination is likely to grow as pressure increases on the nation's water supply, especially in the West.

Late last week the California State Land Commission granted the last remaining permit that Poseidon needed to go ahead with construction of the 50-million-gallon-per-day facility in Carlsbad, Calif., near San Diego, which they aim to have running by 2011.

But Marco Gonzalez, an attorney representing the Surfrider Foundation, a non-profit environmental group based in Encinitas that focuses on waves and beaches, said Surfrider would continue to work to block the plant's construction by following up with lawsuits.

"We recognize that desalination is a likely part of our future water supply portfolio," he told Discovery News. "But our concern is that its time has not yet arrived."

The environmental concerns with desalination are threefold.

The first concern is that the desalination process produces one gallon of super-salty water -- twice as saline as normal seawater -- for every gallon of drinking water. Discharging this hypersaline water back into the sea would create a zone of extra salty water that could harm marine organisms.

To get around this, Poseidon plans to locate their facility in the same spot as a power plant that uses seawater for cooling. The power plant uses several times as much water as Poseidon needs, so Poseidon can dilute the salty water with the water from the power plant before returning it to sea.

However, there are concerns with the environmental impacts of such power plants, too, and several sources suggest that the lifetime of this plant is limited. Poseidon has agreed to maintain the lagoon where the plant would be located if the power plant leaves, and to continue to dilute the water before releasing it.

The second environmental concern is perhaps the biggest, according to Jeffrey Graham, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who consulted with Poseidon on the project. "I think the major issue that still is a bone of contention is the extent to which organisms are killed by the process of withdrawing seawater."

Sucking up large amounts of seawater brings with it tiny fish larvae and plankton that are killed as they pass through the desalination process. The need to dilute the saltwater means larger quantities of water must be pulled through the system, increasing the larvae and plankton losses.

"It was dealt with by Poseidon agreeing to pay for the reestablishment of 55 acres of wetland, which is a big commitment," Graham said.

However Surfrider finds this tradeoff unacceptable. He argues the company should draw water from beneath the sand, rather than from the open ocean since that would prevent the entrainment of marine life. Such intakes are more expensive.

Finally, desalination is an energy-intensive process, so Poseidon will purchase carbon offsets for the difference in energy between pumping the equivalent amount of water in from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the amount needed for desalination.

This is also controversial, because introducing new water from the desalination plant may not actually reduce the amount of water taken from the Delta. "The problem is, well, maybe people are going to want to do both," Graham noted. "That's the whole issue of growth."

"We clearly have an emerging water crisis here in California," said Scripps oceanographer Scott Jenkins, who also consulted with Poseidon. "Excessive requirements for mitigation could render these plants infeasible. It's a fine line between avoiding a water crisis versus coming up with a rational balance of protection for the environment."

Coming up with realistic regulations for such plants now, Graham and Jenkins argue, will make it easier to construct environmentally appropriate plants down the line as the water crisis deepens.

"When we get into emergency situations, it's easy to suspend the normal rules that apply," Graham added. "We quickly get into a situation where we're making a decision to solve a problem without thinking about the long-term effects."

Gonzales disagrees and Heather Cooley of the Pacific Institute in Oakland argues it's not yet time to cede conservation-minded restrictions.

"My sense is that in California there are still a lot of other alternatives at lower cost with fewer environmental impacts," said Cooley. "We have made some progress on water conservation and efficiency, but we still have a long way to go."

Recovering storm water and recycling municipal water for non-potable or potable use are other options, she noted.

The controversey around the Poseidon plant may be an emblem of what's to come. Cooley notes that there are 17 other proposed desalination plants in California and, as she said, "Many have been waiting to see what happens with this plant."

Motorcycles Designed to Run on Air

We may be driving on air in the next few years. That is, we may be driving vehicles powered by compressed air, instead of gasoline or diesel fuel.
Researchers Yu-Ta Shen and Yean-Ren Hwang of the National Central University in Taiwan have developed an air-powered motorcycle, which uses the energy in compressed air, rather than gas, to drive the motor.
"In Taiwan, air pollution is a very serious problem in the city," Hwang said. Twenty percent of all air pollution comes from motorcycles, he added, especially carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons. These emissions are worse from motorcycles and scooters than cars.
Since the only thing coming out of the new motorcycle's tailpipe is air, large-scale adoption of the new technology could take a big bite out of air pollution in Taiwan, where motorcycles are the most popular form of transportation, or in other places where motorcycles represent a large proportion of traffic.
The motorcycle would still require energy to compress the air needed to power the engine. The amount of pollution associated with that energy will depend on what kind of a power plant provides electricity to the area in question.
The current prototype can hold a little more than two and a half gallons of compressed air, which would carry the bike and driver about three-quarters of a mile.
In the future, the tank size will be increased three to four times, and the maximum pressure the tank can hold will be increased so that the motorcycle could go almost 20 miles without a refill, Hwang said, "which would be adequate for usage in the city. We would need an air compressor to refuel, most likely at a fueling station."
They published their work in the journal Applied Energy.
Other air-powered vehicle experts are not convinced that a motorcycle is the best use of the technology.
"We don't think it's a viable product because you're talking about a very, very limited amount of compressed air you can put on a bike," said Shiva Vencat, Executive Vice President of MDI, Inc. in Newport, N.Y., and CEO of Zero Pollution Motors, who has licensed MDI's air vehicle technology."We have a vehicle that will address that market, but it's not a motorcycle," Vencat added. He can't release more information about that yet, but it will be a smaller vehicle that would fill a similar niche in countries like Taiwan where motorcycles are prevalent.
Zero Pollution Motors plans to bring a six-seater air-powered car to the U.S. market after competing in the Automotive X Prize race in September 2009. The X Prize offers $10 million prize to a marketable vehicle that exceeds a fuel economy of 100 miles per gallon.
The ZPM car runs on compressed air only when traveling under 35 miles per hour. At higher speeds, the car burns fuel to warm up the air, expanding it and allowing the vehicle to travel on less air per mile. Some of the expanded air also goes back to the air tank, recharging the compressed air supply.
This system can operate at more than 100 miles per gallon, Vencat said. With an eight- or 10-gallon fuel tank, the cars should have a range of 800-1,000 miles.
The motor can also be plugged in and operated as a compressor to refill the air tank.
Vencat expects that fueling stations will arise as the car gains popularity.
"The good thing is you could put a compressed air station on campuses, in malls," he said. "You don't have the security situation that you do with gasoline."
ZPM plans to start a plant to manufacture the cars by late 2010 or early 2011.

Ocean Dead Zones Going Global

Like a chronic disease spreading through the body, "dead zones" with too little oxygen for life are expanding in the world's oceans.
"We have to realize that hypoxia is not a local problem," said Robert J. Diaz of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. "It is a global problem and it has severe consequences for ecosystems."
"It's getting to be a problem of such a magnitude that it is starting to affect the resources that we pull out of the sea to feed ourselves," he added.
Diaz and co-author Rutger Rosenberg report in Friday's edition of the journal Science that there are now more than 400 dead zones around the world, double what the United Nations reported just two years ago.
"If we screw up the energy flow within our systems we could end up with no crabs, no shrimp, no fish. That is where these dead zones are heading unless we stop their growth," Diaz said in a telephone interview.
The newest dead areas are being found in the Southern Hemisphere -- South America, Africa, parts of Asia -- Diaz said.
Some of the increase is due to the discovery of low-oxygen areas that may have existed for years and are just being found, he said, but others are actually newly developed.
Pollution-fed algae, which deprive other living marine life of oxygen, is the cause of most of the world's dead zones. Scientists mainly blame fertilizer and other farm run-off, sewage and fossil-fuel burning.
Diaz and Rosenberg, of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, conclude that it would be unrealistic to try to go back to preindustrial levels of runoff.
"Farmers aren't doing this on purpose," Diaz said. "The farmers would certainly prefer to have their (fertilizer) on the land rather than floating down the river."
He said he hopes that as fertilizers become more and more expensive farmers will begin seriously looking at ways to retain them on the land.
New low-oxygen areas have been reported in Samish Bay of Puget Sound, Yaquina Bay in Oregon, prawn culture ponds in Taiwan, the San Martin River in northern Spain and some fjords in Norway, Diaz said.
A portion of Big Glory Bay in New Zealand became hypoxic after salmon farming cages were set up, but began recovering when the cages were moved, he said.A dead zone has been newly reported off the mouth of the Yangtze River in China, Diaz said, but the area has probably been hypoxic since the 1950s. "We just didn't know about it," he said.
Some of the reports are being published for the first time in journals accessible to Western scientists, he said.
Nancy N. Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, said she was not surprised at the increase in dead zones.
"There have been many more reported, but there truly are many more. What has happened in the industrialized nations with agribusiness as well that led to increased flux of nutrients from the land to the estuaries and the seas is now happening in developing countries," said Rabalais, who was not part of Diaz' research team.
She said she was told during a 1989 visit to South America that rivers there were too large to have the same problems as the Mississippi River. "Now many of their estuaries and coastal seas are suffering the same malady."
"The increase is a troubling sign for estuarine and coastal waters, which are among some of the most productive waters on the globe.

First Greek Mummy Once Led Privileged Life

The Perks of Privilege

The first evidence of artificial mummification in ancient Greece lies in a lead coffin at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, according to a Swiss-Greek research team.

Dating to 300 A.D., when the Romans ruled Greece, the partially mummified remains belong to a middle-aged woman. Her Roman-type marble sarcophagus was unearthed in 1962 during archaeological excavations in the eastern cemetery of Thessaloniki, which was used from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine Periods for burials and other rituals.

Wrapped in bandages and covered with a gold-embroidered purple silk cloth, the woman lay on a wooden pallet.

"Besides the clothes, remnants of soft tissue as well as the individual's original hairstyle and eyebrows were exceptionally well preserved," Christina Papageorgopoulou of the University of Zurich and colleagues wrote in a paper to be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science shortly.

Using scanning electron microscopy, X-ray analysis, gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, the researchers discovered the probable means of mummification.

"The embalming technology was quite sophisticated," said study co-leader Frank Röhli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project. "We found different chemical components, mostly originating from oils. There were also spices. It looks like the embalming technique was partially taken over from the Egyptians."

Up to now, only written historic sources referred to embalming in ancient Greece. For instance, Alexander the Great is reported to have been preserved in beeswax.

The analysis of the mummified remains showed the presence of various substances including myrrh, fats and resins.

"This is the first time that such substances were identified in material from this specific geographical and temporal setting," the researchers concluded.

Although there are no written accounts describing the practice of mummification in ancient Greece, it is known that the Greeks were familiar with the extraction of essential oils and resins from the plants and were aware of their antimicrobial and bactericidal properties.

The researchers believe the lead coffin might have helped protect the mummy. However, since no lead -- a natural disinfectant -- was found within the tissues, the coffin did not play a key role in the preservation process.

Made specifically for this corpse, the lead coffin indicates a high social status. "This is also confirmed by minimum osteoarthritic lesions and complete lack of musculoskeletal stress markers. It suggests less intense labor activities during life," Röhli told Discovery News.

Analysis of the mummified remains revealed that the woman was between 50 and 60 years of age and 5 foot 3 inches tall. She had brown hair and good oral hygiene and did not suffer from infectious disease, inflammation or malnutrition. Some mystery, however, remains.

Intact Mastodon Skeleton Unearthed in Romania

Artist's Conception

Miners in Romania have unearthed the skeleton of a 2.5 million-year-old mastodon, believed to be one of the best preserved in Europe, a local official said Friday.

They stumbled on the remains of the mammoth-like animal during excavations in June at a coal mine in the village of Racosul de Sus, around 100 miles northwest of Bucharest, according to Laszlo Demeter, a historian.

"This is one of the most spectacular finds in Europe," paleontologist Vlad Codrea, who examined the skeleton, said. "For Romania it is unique."

The mastadon became extinct in Europe two to three million years ago. Codrea, of Babes Bolyai University in Cluj, said 90 percent of the skeleton's bones were intact, with damage to the skull and tusks.

He also said that he hoped the find would help paleontologists to form a better image of the animals and vegetation present in the area 2.5 million years ago.

"(This find) will open up an area of (paleontological) research in the area," said Alexandru Andresanu, a professor at the Bucharest Geology Faculty in a telephone interview.

"It is sensational. To discover a near complete skeleton (like this) is unique in Romania and a rarity in the world," said Marton Wentzel, a researcher of vertebrates at the Three Rivers Land museum in Oradea, western Romania. "It is important because it can give us complete information about the flora and fauna or the era."

The animal -- 10 feet high and 23 feet long -- was a forefather of today's elephants. It is related to the mammoth, but fed on leaves instead of grazing and had straight tusks, instead of curved ones. The reason it died out was probably due to climate change, said Codrea.

The skeleton will be fully dug out in two months' time, Demeter said. Research will be conducted on the bones and the skeleton will then be displayed in the nearby museum of Baraolt.

Phoenix Lander Tastes Martian Water

Phoenix From Above | View More Phoenix Images

Exposed

Aug. 1, 2008 -- The Phoenix spacecraft has tasted Martian water for the first time, scientists reported Thursday.

By melting icy soil in one of its lab instruments, the robot confirmed the presence of frozen water lurking below the Martian permafrost. Until now, evidence of ice in Mars' north pole region has been largely circumstantial.

In 2002, the orbiting Odyssey spacecraft spied what looked like a reservoir of buried ice. After Phoenix arrived, it found what looked like ice in a hard patch underneath its landing site and changes in a trench indicated some ice had turned to gas when exposed to the sun.

Scientists popped open champagne when they received confirmation Wednesday that the soil contained ice.

"We've now finally touched it and tasted it," William Boynton of the University of Arizona said during a news conference in Tucson on Thursday. "From my standpoint, it tastes very fine."

Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25 on a three-month hunt to determine if it could support life. It is conducting experiments to learn whether the ice ever melted in the red planet's history that could have led to a more hospitable environment. It is also searching for the elusive organic-based compounds essential for simple life forms to emerge.

The ice confirmation earlier this week was accidental. After two failed attempts to deliver ice-rich soil to one of Phoenix's eight lab ovens, researchers decided to collect pure soil instead. Surprisingly, the sample was mixed with a little bit of ice, said Boynton, who heads the oven instrument.

Researchers were able to prove the soil had ice in it because it melted in the oven at 32 degrees -- the melting point of ice -- and released water molecules. Plans called for baking the soil at even higher temperatures next week to sniff for carbon-based compounds.

The latest scientific finding is the first piece of good news for a mission that has been dogged by difficulties in recent weeks.

An electrical short on one of Phoenix's test ovens threatened the instrument, but scientists said the problem has not recurred. The lander, which spent the past several weeks drilling into the hard ice, also had trouble delivering ice shavings into an oven until the success this week.

NASA said Phoenix has achieved minimum success thus far. The space agency on Thursday announced that it would extend the mission for an extra five weeks until the end of September, adding $2 million more to the $420 million price tag, said Michael Meyer, Mars chief scientist at NASA headquarters.

Unlike the twin rovers roaming near the Martian equator, Phoenix's lifetime cannot be extended much more because it likely won't have enough power to survive the Martian winter.

The science team also released a color panorama of Phoenix's landing site using more than 400 images taken by Phoenix. The view "was painstakingly stitched together," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, who headed the effort.

The portrait revealed a Martian surface that was coated with dust and dotted with rocks.

First Star in Universe Grew Fast

Star Light, Star Bright, First Star...

Aug. 1, 2008 -- Star light, star bright. The first star grew fast, but began slight. The first cosmological object formed in the universe was a tiny protostar with a mass of about 1 percent of our sun, according to U.S. and Japanese researchers who spent years developing a complex computer simulation of what it was like after the Big Bang that formed the universe.

This protostar was surrounded by a giant mass of gas and it grew to 100 times the sun's mass over about 10,000 years, according to Naoki Yoshida of Nagoya University in Japan. That is very rapid growth on a cosmic scale.

"The first stars were very different from stars like the sun," explained Harvard astronomy professor Lars Hernquist, co-author of a paper describing the findings in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

While the sun is mostly hydrogen, it also contains oxygen and carbon, he said. The early stars were primarily hydrogen and helium, and were much more luminous and had a shorter life.

"These differences have important implications for what happened afterward," he said at a teleconference.

"This general picture of star formation, and the ability to compare how stellar objects form in different time periods and regions of the universe, will eventually allow investigation into the origins of life and planets," Hernquist said.

The study may prove to be a "Cosmic Rosetta stone" suggested Volker Bromm, an assistant astronomy professor at the University of Texas.

Bromm, who was not part of the research team, said in a commentary that the findings could help researchers finally unlock the problem of understanding star formation, much as the Rosetta stone led to the understanding of ancient Egyptian writing.

The typical lifetime of these early stars was a million years or so, while a star like the sun can continue for 5 billion years.

Because of their short lifespan, none of the first generation of stars is still around, Hernquist said. But "we do see stars in our galaxy that have very different properties than our sun, and it's possible these are second-generation stars."

In the simulation, gravity acted on tiny variations of the density of matter, gases and the so-called "dark matter" of the universe after the Big Bang, forming the early stage of a star. That protostar would evolve into a massive star capable of synthesizing heavy elements, not just in later generations of stars, but soon after the Big Bang, according to the analysis.

Hernquist said the "abundance of elements in the universe has increased as stars have accumulated, and the formation and destruction of stars continues to spread these elements further across the universe."

"Dr. Yoshida has taken the study of primordial star formation to a new level with this simulation, but it still gets us only to the halfway point toward our final goal. It is like laying the foundation of a skyscraper," Bromm said. "We must continue our studies in this area to understand how the initially tiny protostar grows, layer by layer, to eventually form a massive star."

The research was funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology of Japan and the Mitsubishi Foundation.