Daily Archives: November 20, 2024

Bam! Scientists study wind farm construction noise impacts on lobsters… by making big noises

Thirteen feet below the surface of Woods Hole harbor, a lobster shelters under a plastic shield in a wire cage. An experiment is happening: every seven seconds on the dock above, a pile driver pounds a long, steel post deeper into the muddy harbor bottom nearby.Each strike creates an underwater boom. Above the water, the noise is even more piercing. Andria Salas, a marine biologist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), spends the day with ear protection always at the ready.Part of her job is to handle the 50-odd lobsters involved in the experiment. She’s collecting data about the animals’ heart rates and movements every time the pile driver strikes. To do that, she must outfit each lobster with a specialized tag. “It’s a lobster saddle,” she says, demonstrating how the tags are strapped around a lobster’s middle. Salas says she woke up with the idea for the wearable tags. Each one is made using a snorkel mouthpiece, custom circuit board, and Velcro belt. “It’s worked pretty well,” Salas says. “We’ve never had one fall off.”Aran Mooney, the lead scientist on the project, puts it this way: “They’re basically Fitbits for lobster.”Read all of CAI’s reporting on offshore wind hereThe experiment happening here at this dock is designed to replicate, at small scale, the pile driving necessary to construct an offshore wind farm. The goal is to understand how a variety of marine creatures — not only lobsters, but other fish-market-friendly species like scallops, flounder, black sea bass, and squid — respond to the noisy, intensive work of building an offshore wind farm.It’s something fishers and regulators are especially interested in. “No one’s analyzed lobster heart rate data in respect to sound exposure or these stress responses,” Mooney says. “So this is kind of completely new.”

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More research needed as offshore wind industry faces challenges The steel pole Mooney’s team uses is only one foot in diameter, compared to massive 30-foot-wide piles used by offshore wind developers. But the data the team is gathering can be scaled up, Mooney said. “Being 5 or 10 meters away from our piling here is the equivalent to being about 200 or 300 meters away from an offshore wind farm [under construction, as far as] the sound levels that you would receive,” Mooney said. This experiment is funded by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. It comes at a time when the offshore wind industry faces numerous challenges, including rising costs and a skeptical president-elect. At a rally in May, Donald Trump vowed to end offshore wind on “day one” of his second term.

Eve Zuckoff

Researcher Youenn Jezequel gets in the water to check on some of the study subjects.

For his part, Mooney said he’s not working for — or against — offshore wind. He’s a scientist studying animals; for him it’s all about tracking heart rates and signs of stress.“We don’t know if these lobsters are responding to sound,” he said. “We don’t know if that response is negative. It could be positive. Or it could be no response at all.”Underwater species show mixed response to pile-driving noiseAlready, the WHOI team’s earlier studies have shown that squid, which detect sound through vibration, responded dramatically to pile-driving noise — at least, at first.“They ink, they jet,” Mooney said. “They color-change and respond to this noise. But they habituate quickly. They’re not getting deafened, and they kind of go back to their normal behavior of feeding and trying to mate really quickly. So with that data, you can kind of say, ‘Okay, I think the squid fishery is probably going to be okay.’”

Eve Zuckoff

Marine biologist Sierra Jarriel handles a flounder before it’s outfitted with a tag, placed in a cage, and dropped underwater.

But it’s a different story for scallops, one of the highest value fisheries in the U.S. As soon as scallops were exposed to pile driving noise, they clammed up.“[With] every strike, they close a little, and then they try and open, and they close a little, and then try and open. And they don’t habituate to that sound,” Mooney said. “That’s very, very exhausting for the scallop.”As far as lobsters go, Salas said they may find that the noise is making the crustaceans’ hearts skip a beat. “We’re looking at things called cardiac pauses that crustaceans can have,” she said. “They can do that when they sense something in their environment is startling or a stressor.” Earplugs for lobsters? Scientists look for sound mitigation ideas

Eve Zuckoff

Lobsters and other study subjects are placed in underwater cages, 15 feet away from the pile driver.

Offshore wind developers are already aware of problems that construction noise may create for marine life. To absorb pile-driving sound and protect whales, Vineyard Wind is using “bubble curtains” — walls of air bubbles, released from the ocean bottom. It’s a good start, Mooney said, but not targeted for the entire ecosystem. “A lot of the mitigation measures are not designed for animals on the bottom, the fishery species that are detecting the vibratory component of sound,” he said. “That’s really just so fundamentally different.”The WHOI team ultimately hopes to identify best practices to make construction noise less harmful to the bottom-dwellers. For instance, they’re looking at how lobsters respond when the pile driving is ramped up slowly.Analyzing the data they collected will take about a year. The researchers hope to be back here in Woods Hole Harbor, running more experiments — and wearing ear protection — next fall.

Scientists reveal why some people CHEAT on their partners – and it could explain why Kris Jenner, Bill Gates, and Bill Clinton had affairs

By SHIVALI BEST FOR MAILONLINE Published: 06:59 EST, 20 November 2024 | Updated: 06:59 EST, 20 November 2024

Scientists reveal why some people CHEAT on their partners – and it could explain why Kris Jenner, Bill Gates, and Bill Clinton had affairs

By SHIVALI BEST FOR MAILONLINE Published: 06:59 EST, 20 November 2024 | Updated: 06:59 EST, 20 November 2024

Trump allies want to resurrect ‘red teams’ to question climate science

The second Trump administration may take a page out of military strategy to challenge established climate science.
Some former administration officials are hoping President-elect Donald Trump resurrects an idea that never came to fruition in his first term: a red team/blue team exercise that pits climate scientists against the handful of researchers who argue climate change fears are overblown.
“If there’s an honest review that is done honestly, and the people who are worried about the climate make a good case, they’ll be even stronger afterwards, because they stood up to the best criticism that exists in the world, and they’re still whole,” said Will Happer, a former adviser on Trump’s National Security Council and an emeritus physics professor at Princeton University.

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Happer pushed the first Trump administration to organize the effort, but he said it was ultimately scuttled by political appointees who were worried it would affect Trump’s electoral chances. But Trump, he said, promised him that it would be revived in his second term.
The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.
The idea assumes there is significant debate among scientists that humans are driving the planet to dangerous levels of warming through the burning of fossil fuels. There isn’t. Most of the researchers who question the reality of climate change have connections with the fossil fuel industry or conservative groups that oppose climate regulations.
Military strategy has no relevance for climate science, said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.
Dessler called the red team idea a “political process to try to slow down action on climate change.” The few researchers who deny climate change have already been repeatedly proven wrong by an overwhelming amount of peer-reviewed research, he said. He predicted that a red team effort would consist of cherry-picked data paired with unfounded claims of doubt around climate modeling.
“They’re not credible climate scientists,” Dessler said. “They’re not guys who are just asking questions. These are people who have been wrong a lot.”
The effort would also further diminish the standing of the United States within the global community, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist and director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania.
“At a time when we’re seeing devastating and deadly consequences of inadequate climate action, to continue to deny the reality and threat of climate change — as these clowns are doing — will make us a global pariah,” he said. “But maybe that’s the point.”
Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and long mocked global warming research, but his first administration generally stayed out of meddling with federal climate research.
That restraint is highly unlikely this time around.
Project 2025 — the blueprint Trump allies wrote for his second term — lays out plans to cut out entire sections of the government’s climate work, particularly at NOAA and EPA. The proposal includes offering the public incentives “to identify scientific flaws and research misconduct” in the studies backing federal regulations, which would allow industry-funded researchers to sow doubt about peer-reviewed science.
The red team/blue team exercise was crafted during Trump’s first term by a group of researchers critical of climate policy. For the effort to work properly and have merit, it needs a blue team of climate scientists who argue that the established research holds up, said Steve Koonin, a New York University physicist and architect of the red team plan in Trump’s first term.
Koonin said the effort would require four or five researchers on each side. Koonin, a former chief scientist at BP, argued that the case for an adversarial review has only grown in the last four years.
“I think we’ve got more data, more understanding, more misrepresentation in the media,” Koonin said. “But the essential mechanism is to get a credible blue team lined up.”
Koonin said he expects that climate scientists would be hesitant to participate in such an effort. That’s why he wants the Trump administration to compel the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to put together a team of researchers. They would then have to review the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report or the National Climate Assessment.
“I think the right way to do it is to take a prior document — it could be the most recent National Climate Assessment — and simply go through that point by point,” Koonin said.
The National Academies did not respond to a request for comment.
The scientific research published in the last four years has continued to show the myriad ways global warming is shaping and threatening the planet. The scientific consensus has long held that the best solution is to cut carbon emissions as quickly as possible. That’s why world leaders are meeting in Azerbaijan this week to hash out a deal on climate finance — and set the stage for the next round of countries’ emissions reduction plans under the Paris agreement. Trump has said he will withdraw from the agreement, though the Biden administration still plans to submit its 2035 emissions target by February.
Dessler, the climate scientist, said he expects the next Trump administration to prompt a number of attacks on research from people with a vested interest in tearing down climate policy. Whether it does any lasting damage to the field of science remains to be seen, he said.
“I think what we’re going to see is a lot of climate grifters coming out of the woodwork, mediocre intellects who see this as their way to advance their own career,” he said.

Trump allies want to resurrect ‘red teams’ to question climate science

The second Trump administration may take a page out of military strategy to challenge established climate science.
Some former administration officials are hoping President-elect Donald Trump resurrects an idea that never came to fruition in his first term: a red team/blue team exercise that pits climate scientists against the handful of researchers who argue climate change fears are overblown.
“If there’s an honest review that is done honestly, and the people who are worried about the climate make a good case, they’ll be even stronger afterwards, because they stood up to the best criticism that exists in the world, and they’re still whole,” said Will Happer, a former adviser on Trump’s National Security Council and an emeritus physics professor at Princeton University.

Advertisement

Happer pushed the first Trump administration to organize the effort, but he said it was ultimately scuttled by political appointees who were worried it would affect Trump’s electoral chances. But Trump, he said, promised him that it would be revived in his second term.
The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.
The idea assumes there is significant debate among scientists that humans are driving the planet to dangerous levels of warming through the burning of fossil fuels. There isn’t. Most of the researchers who question the reality of climate change have connections with the fossil fuel industry or conservative groups that oppose climate regulations.
Military strategy has no relevance for climate science, said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.
Dessler called the red team idea a “political process to try to slow down action on climate change.” The few researchers who deny climate change have already been repeatedly proven wrong by an overwhelming amount of peer-reviewed research, he said. He predicted that a red team effort would consist of cherry-picked data paired with unfounded claims of doubt around climate modeling.
“They’re not credible climate scientists,” Dessler said. “They’re not guys who are just asking questions. These are people who have been wrong a lot.”
The effort would also further diminish the standing of the United States within the global community, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist and director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania.
“At a time when we’re seeing devastating and deadly consequences of inadequate climate action, to continue to deny the reality and threat of climate change — as these clowns are doing — will make us a global pariah,” he said. “But maybe that’s the point.”
Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and long mocked global warming research, but his first administration generally stayed out of meddling with federal climate research.
That restraint is highly unlikely this time around.
Project 2025 — the blueprint Trump allies wrote for his second term — lays out plans to cut out entire sections of the government’s climate work, particularly at NOAA and EPA. The proposal includes offering the public incentives “to identify scientific flaws and research misconduct” in the studies backing federal regulations, which would allow industry-funded researchers to sow doubt about peer-reviewed science.
The red team/blue team exercise was crafted during Trump’s first term by a group of researchers critical of climate policy. For the effort to work properly and have merit, it needs a blue team of climate scientists who argue that the established research holds up, said Steve Koonin, a New York University physicist and architect of the red team plan in Trump’s first term.
Koonin said the effort would require four or five researchers on each side. Koonin, a former chief scientist at BP, argued that the case for an adversarial review has only grown in the last four years.
“I think we’ve got more data, more understanding, more misrepresentation in the media,” Koonin said. “But the essential mechanism is to get a credible blue team lined up.”
Koonin said he expects that climate scientists would be hesitant to participate in such an effort. That’s why he wants the Trump administration to compel the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to put together a team of researchers. They would then have to review the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report or the National Climate Assessment.
“I think the right way to do it is to take a prior document — it could be the most recent National Climate Assessment — and simply go through that point by point,” Koonin said.
The National Academies did not respond to a request for comment.
The scientific research published in the last four years has continued to show the myriad ways global warming is shaping and threatening the planet. The scientific consensus has long held that the best solution is to cut carbon emissions as quickly as possible. That’s why world leaders are meeting in Azerbaijan this week to hash out a deal on climate finance — and set the stage for the next round of countries’ emissions reduction plans under the Paris agreement. Trump has said he will withdraw from the agreement, though the Biden administration still plans to submit its 2035 emissions target by February.
Dessler, the climate scientist, said he expects the next Trump administration to prompt a number of attacks on research from people with a vested interest in tearing down climate policy. Whether it does any lasting damage to the field of science remains to be seen, he said.
“I think what we’re going to see is a lot of climate grifters coming out of the woodwork, mediocre intellects who see this as their way to advance their own career,” he said.

Scientists raise the alarm over record-breaking coral death in the Great Barrier Reef – as they warn we’re inching closer to an irreversible tipping point

By JONATHAN CHADWICK FOR MAILONLINE and AFP Published: 06:48 EST, 20 November 2024 | Updated: 06:48 EST, 20 November 2024

Scientists raise the alarm over record-breaking coral death in the Great Barrier Reef – as they warn we’re inching closer to an irreversible tipping point

By JONATHAN CHADWICK FOR MAILONLINE and AFP Published: 06:48 EST, 20 November 2024 | Updated: 06:48 EST, 20 November 2024

‘Quantum hard drives’ closer to reality after scientists resolve 10-year-old problem

Scientists say they have cracked a decade-old problem that could bring the concept of a “quantum hard drive” closer to reality.The solution involved developing a new type of error-correction system for stabilizing qubits — the building blocks of quantum information — against interference, overcoming a major hurdle facing the development of practical quantum computers.If successfully scaled, the technique could pave the way for highly efficient quantum memory systems capable of storing huge volumes of quantum data, researchers claimed in a new study published Nov. 4 in the journal Nature Communications.”This advance is crucial for the development of scalable quantum computers, as it allows for a more compact construction of quantum memory systems,” the researchers said in a statement. “By reducing the physical qubit overhead, the findings pave the way for the creation of a more compact ‘quantum hard drive’ — an efficient quantum memory system capable of storing vast amounts of quantum information reliably.”Related: Will we ever have quantum laptops?One of the biggest challenges in quantum computing lies in managing errors that disrupt calculations.Quantum computers rely on qubits, tiny units of quantum information akin to bits in classical computers, that are incredibly sensitive to environmental disturbances like temperature changes and electromagnetic interference. Even minuscule disruptions to a qubit’s delicate quantum state can result in lost data and errors in quantum systems.Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter nowGet the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.For years, researchers have worked on ways to keep these qubits, and the quantum data they hold, stable. Error correction in quantum systems is typically achieved by organizing qubits in a lattice structure that follows a topological “code.” The aim is to win an “arms race” by using as few physical qubits as possible to manage errors as they arise, the researchers explainedHowever, current 3D error-correction methods can only handle errors along a single line of qubits, limiting how much error they can manage as the system grows. The researchers overcame this problem by developing an error-correction architecture that uses a 3D lattice of qubits organized by a topological code that enables errors to be corrected across two-dimensional surfaces within the 3D structure, rather than just in a single dimension.This structure can handle more errors as the system grows by correcting them over broader, two-dimensional surfaces within the 3D lattice, allowing it to scale more efficiently, the researchers said”There remain significant barriers to overcome in the development of a universal quantum computer. One of the biggest is that we need to use most of the qubits — quantum switches at the heart of the machines — to suppress the errors that emerge as a matter of course within the technology,” lead author Dominic Williamson, researcher at the University of Sydney Nano Institute and School of Physics, said in the statement.”Our proposed quantum architecture will require fewer qubits to suppress more errors, liberating more for useful quantum processing.”Prof. Stephen Bartlett, quantum theorist and director of the University of Sydney Nano Institute, added in the statement: “This advancement could help transform the way quantum computers are built and operated, making them more accessible and practical for a wide range of applications, from cryptography to complex simulations of quantum many-body systems.”