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America's dream of oil independence coming true
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UPFRONT
Brazil to clone jaguars COPY, then save. Eight threatened species in Brazil, including jaguars, have been earmarked for cloning. The clones will be kept in captivity as a reserve in case wild populations collapse. Brazil’s agricultural research agency, Embrapa, already has 420 wild tissue samples. Within a month it hopes to begin cloning the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), which is classed as “near threatened” on the IUCN Red List of endangered species. Embrapa also hopes to clone the black lion tamarin, bush dog, coati, collared anteater, grey brocket deer and bison. Conservationists have welcomed the plan, but say the priority should always be to preserve species in the wild by maintaining their habitats. “While cloning is a tool of last
resort, it may prove valuable for some species,” says Ian Harrison of Conservation International in Arlington, Virginia. “Experimenting with it now, using species that are not at immediate risk, is important.” Rare animals have been cloned before, including the ox-like gaur, the mouflon, a wild sheep, and even an extinct mountain goat called the Pyrenean ibex, although the only ibex clone died at birth in 2009. Cloning techniques have improved since then, increasing the chances of success. “The key is foresight, to just save a little piece of skin, blood or other living cells before the genes from these individuals are lost from the planet forever,” says Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology in Marlborough, Massachusetts.
–Hopefully not an ex-type jaguar?–
Obama’s moon shot JUST a day after US President Barack Obama was re-elected, rumours began to fly that he will back NASA plans to build a moon base. This lunar outpost would be parked about 60,000 kilometres from the moon’s far side, in a gravitational haven called a Lagrange point. There, the combined gravity of Earth and the moon would tug on a spacecraft with exactly the force needed for it to hover near the moon without spending fuel. Putting a spaceport at the Earthmoon Lagrange point 2 (EML-2) might assist human missions to an asteroid or to Mars – both on the list of NASA goals Obama announced in 2010.
“With all these rumours, I haven’t heard anybody at NASA who’s denying it. I think that says a lot” NASA has probably cleared plans for the base with the Obama administration, space policy expert John Logsdon of George Washington University in 4 | NewScientist | 17 November2012
Washington DC told Space.com on 7 November, and has been waiting until after the election to announce them. Asked about the spaceport, NASA officials would only say the agency is working towards sending a capsule to loop around the moon in 2017 and a manned mission to lunar orbit in 2021. The moon base plan sounds plausible, although NASA will probably wait until the new federal budget is announced to confirm anything, says Dan Lester of the University of Texas at Austin, who has served on NASA policy committees. “With all these rumours, I haven’t heard anybody at NASA who’s denying it. I think that says a lot,” he says. EML-2 is farther from Earth than humans have ever ventured and is not shielded from radiation by Earth’s magnetic field. That makes it a good testing ground for deep space life-support systems, Lester says. It is also close enough to the moon for radio signals to reach the surface with little delay, so astronauts on the base could explore the moon using robots controlled in real time.
American oil dream THE US is poised to realise its cherished dream of oil independence, although not until around 2035, the International Energy Agency says in a report published this week. US presidents going back to the 1970s have made freedom from oil imports a key target. “Most of us went away laughing when they used to say this but now it looks a real possibility,” says Paul Stevens, an energy researcher at London policy institute Chatham House.
US energy consumption has probably peaked, while oil and gas supplies have been massively boosted by the extraction of previously uneconomic deposits. This has been made possible through the new technologies of fracturing oil-bearing rocks and extracting gas from loose shale rock by drilling into it horizontally. The IEA says the US will become a net exporter by 2030 and selfsufficient by 2035. The agency also predicts the US will overtake Saudi Arabia in the mid-2020s as the world’s largest oil producer.
Ash hopes pinned on hardy trees WE NEED better ash. To combat the fungus that is killing ash trees in the UK, government scientists are counting on finding trees with natural resistance to the disease. A new survey suggests chalara ash dieback may have been in the UK for several years, despite only being spotted in the wild last month. The disease spreads in leaf litter, so destroying infected wild trees will not stop it. Instead, the government will hunt for resistant trees, both in
the UK and in mainland Europe, where the disease originated. “By next spring, we could have resistant forms of ash growing in this country,” says Ian Boyd, chief scientist at the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The government is also identifying and destroying infected trees and saplings in nurseries, and imports have been banned for now. About 100,000 nursery trees have already been destroyed.
UPFRONT
Brazil to clone jaguars COPY, then save. Eight threatened species in Brazil, including jaguars, have been earmarked for cloning. The clones will be kept in captivity as a reserve in case wild populations collapse. Brazil’s agricultural research agency, Embrapa, already has 420 wild tissue samples. Within a month it hopes to begin cloning the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), which is classed as “near threatened” on the IUCN Red List of endangered species. Embrapa also hopes to clone the black lion tamarin, bush dog, coati, collared anteater, grey brocket deer and bison. Conservationists have welcomed the plan, but say the priority should always be to preserve species in the wild by maintaining their habitats. “While cloning is a tool of last
resort, it may prove valuable for some species,” says Ian Harrison of Conservation International in Arlington, Virginia. “Experimenting with it now, using species that are not at immediate risk, is important.” Rare animals have been cloned before, including the ox-like gaur, the mouflon, a wild sheep, and even an extinct mountain goat called the Pyrenean ibex, although the only ibex clone died at birth in 2009. Cloning techniques have improved since then, increasing the chances of success. “The key is foresight, to just save a little piece of skin, blood or other living cells before the genes from these individuals are lost from the planet forever,” says Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology in Marlborough, Massachusetts.
–Hopefully not an ex-type jaguar?–
Obama’s moon shot JUST a day after US President Barack Obama was re-elected, rumours began to fly that he will back NASA plans to build a moon base. This lunar outpost would be parked about 60,000 kilometres from the moon’s far side, in a gravitational haven called a Lagrange point. There, the combined gravity of Earth and the moon would tug on a spacecraft with exactly the force needed for it to hover near the moon without spending fuel. Putting a spaceport at the Earthmoon Lagrange point 2 (EML-2) might assist human missions to an asteroid or to Mars – both on the list of NASA goals Obama announced in 2010.
“With all these rumours, I haven’t heard anybody at NASA who’s denying it. I think that says a lot” NASA has probably cleared plans for the base with the Obama administration, space policy expert John Logsdon of George Washington University in 4 | NewScientist | 17 November2012
Washington DC told Space.com on 7 November, and has been waiting until after the election to announce them. Asked about the spaceport, NASA officials would only say the agency is working towards sending a capsule to loop around the moon in 2017 and a manned mission to lunar orbit in 2021. The moon base plan sounds plausible, although NASA will probably wait until the new federal budget is announced to confirm anything, says Dan Lester of the University of Texas at Austin, who has served on NASA policy committees. “With all these rumours, I haven’t heard anybody at NASA who’s denying it. I think that says a lot,” he says. EML-2 is farther from Earth than humans have ever ventured and is not shielded from radiation by Earth’s magnetic field. That makes it a good testing ground for deep space life-support systems, Lester says. It is also close enough to the moon for radio signals to reach the surface with little delay, so astronauts on the base could explore the moon using robots controlled in real time.
American oil dream THE US is poised to realise its cherished dream of oil independence, although not until around 2035, the International Energy Agency says in a report published this week. US presidents going back to the 1970s have made freedom from oil imports a key target. “Most of us went away laughing when they used to say this but now it looks a real possibility,” says Paul Stevens, an energy researcher at London policy institute Chatham House.
US energy consumption has probably peaked, while oil and gas supplies have been massively boosted by the extraction of previously uneconomic deposits. This has been made possible through the new technologies of fracturing oil-bearing rocks and extracting gas from loose shale rock by drilling into it horizontally. The IEA says the US will become a net exporter by 2030 and selfsufficient by 2035. The agency also predicts the US will overtake Saudi Arabia in the mid-2020s as the world’s largest oil producer.
Ash hopes pinned on hardy trees WE NEED better ash. To combat the fungus that is killing ash trees in the UK, government scientists are counting on finding trees with natural resistance to the disease. A new survey suggests chalara ash dieback may have been in the UK for several years, despite only being spotted in the wild last month. The disease spreads in leaf litter, so destroying infected wild trees will not stop it. Instead, the government will hunt for resistant trees, both in
the UK and in mainland Europe, where the disease originated. “By next spring, we could have resistant forms of ash growing in this country,” says Ian Boyd, chief scientist at the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The government is also identifying and destroying infected trees and saplings in nurseries, and imports have been banned for now. About 100,000 nursery trees have already been destroyed.