Cómo los lobos son capaces de cambiar el curso del río

Cuando los lobos fueron reintroducidos en el parque nacional de Yellowstone en los Estados Unidos después de haber estado ausentes casi 70 años, ocurrió una "cascada trófica". ¿Qué es una cascada trófica? ¿Cómo pueden transformar los lobos el curso de un río? George Monbiot te lo explica en este video (traducido).

La recuperación de la población de lobos en el Parque Nacional de Yellowstone, en Estados Unidos, ha favorecido a todo el ecosistema. Se demuestra así la importancia de cualquier ser vivo en la naturaleza, desde los máximos depredadores hasta los más pequeños insectos. Hay que proteger la biodiversidad en cualquier región del planeta.

Según un estudio de la Universidad Estatal de Oregon, la población de alces ha sido controlada por los lobos, lo que, a su vez, ha provocado que formaciones de árboles y arbustos en las cercanías de los ríos se hayan recuperado, ya que los alces no se han comido todos los ejemplares, arrancándolos de raíz.

Los lobos, indirectamente, han beneficiado aún más al ecosistema. Como las veredas de los ríos han mejorado, también ha mejorado el hábitat de la nutria y los peces, lo que supone más alimento para aves y osos. Han pasado quince años desde que los lobos fueron reintroducidos en el Parque de Yellowstone, después de haber desaparecido el siglo pasado. En el norte, las poblaciones de alces se han reducido de más de 15.000 en la década de los noventa del siglo pasado hasta cerca de 6.000 el pasado año 2011, según un estudio publicado en la revista Biological Conservation. 

En 2006, algunas especies de árboles, como los álamos, habían crecido hasta una altura suficiente a la que los alces ya no podían llegar. Los álamos estaban a salvo de los alces gracias a los lobos. De este modo, a lo largo de cuatro de los arroyos de la cuenca del río Lamar, un 20% de los brotes de álamos jóvenes sobrevivieron. 

En la naturaleza, todo ser vivo es necesario. Los ecosistemas se mantienen en equilibrio y sanos mientras la biodiversidad se conserve. Ahora, en Yellowstone, hay una centena de lobos que vigilan que el parque se mantenga bien conservado. Aunque, para ello, algún alce tenga que servir como alimento.

ORIGINAL: Yo soy amigo del lobo

Why we need to talk about science

Image: Scientist prepares solutions for tests. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett

In this presidential election season, one thing is certain: candidates will rarely – if ever – be asked what they would do to keep the United States at the forefront of science and innovation.

That’s a shame.

The public dialogue about science is perhaps the most vital and most fraught national conversation not taking place in the US, and the ramifications are profound.

Ultimately, the way we address science and innovation will determine what our children learn in school, what college graduates bring to the larger world, how public lands and natural resources are cared for and whether people receive adequate health care. And the list goes on.

As the president of one of our country’s leading research university systems, I believe it is now incumbent on the academic community to ensure that the work and voices of researchers are front and center in the public square.

Calling all scientists

When the voices of scientists are not heard in the dialogue, there is a price to pay.

As Stanford University’s Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs made clear in her recent excellent biography, Jonas Salk, A Life, the fanfare brought Salk the everlasting disdain of some of his scientific colleagues, but it proved to serve the greater public good.

It is important that scientists be seen as regular people asking and answering important questions.

Our country needs more scientists who are willing and able to step out in the public arena and to weigh in, clearly and strongly – such as atmospheric physicist Veerabhadran Ramanathan of UC San Diego, who discovered the greenhouse effect of halocarbons in 1975.

Dr Ramanathan is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that influenced Pope Francis to speak out on global climate change.

We need more scientists who can explain what they are doing in language that is compelling and understandable to the public – for example, astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson, whose use of television and social media earned him the US National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare medal this year for “exciting the public about the wonders of science.”

Those of us in the academic community who are not scientists should also be prepared to support public engagement by scientists, and to incorporate scientific knowledge into our public communications.

I know from conversations I have had with other higher education leaders that I am not the only one who believes this is important.

Understanding mysteries of research

Too many people in this country – and that includes some among our elected leadership – still do not understand how science works or why robust, long-range investments in research vitally matter.

The truth is in the numbers. In the 1960s, the United States devoted nearly 17% of discretionary spending to research and development, reaping decades of economic growth from this sustained investment. By 2008, the figure had fallen into the single digits. This occurs at a time when the private sector has cut back on its research investment and other nations have made significant gains in their own research capabilities.

China, for example, is projected to outspend the United States in research within the next decade. East Asia as a whole already does.

At the University of California, we pride ourselves not only on the quality of our research, but also on its contribution to improving aspects of the world we live in.

It is UC’s research, for example, that has made California among the most robust agricultural regions of the world.

To hasten the development of science from the lab bench to the market place, UC is investing our own money in our own good ideas.

This past summer, we launched the first primeUC competition, which will award US$300,000 to winning start-ups in the health sciences. And last year, our Board of Regents approved the creation of a new $250 million fund, designed to provide seed money for direct investment into student and faculty inventions.

It also is possible to have some fun in demonstrating the broad, societal significance of research.

Introducing Grad Slam

Last May, I had the opportunity to emcee the first-ever University of California system-wide Grad Slam.

The Grad Slam asked UC graduate students to take their years of academic toil and research, and present their work to an audience in just three minutes, free of jargon or technical lingo.

Think of these presentations as TED talks on steroids or the ultimate in elevator speeches. Each of our 10 campuses held a local competition, and the finals took place at our system-wide headquarters in Oakland. Several of those finalists are featured on The Conversation’s website.

While it was a fun event, the purpose was very serious.

Good, sound science depends on hypotheses, experiments and reasoned methodologies. It requires a willingness to ask new questions and try new approaches. It requires one to take risks and experience failures.

But good, sound science also requires 

• clear explanation, 
• succinct presentation and 
• contextual understanding. 

Telling the story is half the battle, and Grad Slam is perfect practice.

‘An eternal guide to truth’

On the flip side, the US needs more politicians who understand science and recognize it as more than window dressing for photo ops at school science fairs or opportunities to come before the cameras in white lab coats.

Scientists, of course, should not lose their focus on conducting research in the lab or the field, sharing knowledge with their peers, and supervising the postdocs and graduate students who will serve as the scientists of tomorrow.

In today’s world, however, society will benefit from scientists who also are able to raise the profile of science in the public dialogue.

In the rim of the dome of the National Academy of Sciences, there is an inscription that reads:

To science, pilot of industry, conqueror of disease, multiplier of the harvest, explorer of the universe, revealer of nature’s laws, eternal guide to truth.

This is a fine, noble and trenchant statement of what science is all about. It is a statement that must be made to come alive in the nation’s public conscience, and in the public and political narrative.

For more than 200 years, science and research have been the source of our country’s greatest strengths, and the promise of its bright future.

Now more than ever, it is incumbent on scientists to put their knowledge on the table, and for others in the academic community to support them in that endeavor.

This article is published in collaboration with The Conversation. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Janet Napolitano is the 20th president of the University of California.

ORIGINAL: World Economic Forum

By Janet Napolitano

Oct 14 2015

The story of the invention that could revolutionize batteries—and maybe American manufacturing as well

This black goop is what will be at the heart of the next generation of batteries.(Kieran Kesner for Quartz)

The world has been clamoring for a super-battery.
Since about 2010, a critical mass of national leaders, policy professionals, scientists, entrepreneurs, thinkers and writers have all but demanded a transformation of the humble lithium-ion cell. Only batteries that can store a lot more energy for a lower price, they have said, will allow for affordable electric cars, cheaper and more widely available electricity, and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In the process, a lot of gazillionaires will be created.

But they have been vexed. Not only has nobody created a super-battery; a large number of researchers have lost faith in their powers to do so—perhaps ever. Entrepreneurs such as Tesla’s Elon Musk continue to tinker with off-the-shelf batteries for luxury electric cars and home power-storage systems, but industry hands seem generally to doubt that their cost will drop enough to attract a mass market any time soon. Increasingly, they are concluding that the primacy of fossil fuels will continue for decades to come, and probably into the next century.

This is where Yet-Ming Chiang enters the picture. A wiry, Taiwanese-American materials-science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Chiang is best known for founding A123, a lithium-ion battery company that had the biggest IPO of 2009. The company ended up filing for bankruptcy in 2012 and selling itself in pieces at firesale prices to Japanese and Chinese rivals. Yet Chiang himself emerged untainted.

In 2010, having rounded up $12.5 million from Boston venture capital firms and federal funds, Chiang launched another company. Again, it was in batteries. And today, after five years in “stealth mode,” he is going public. There may be a way to revolutionize batteries, he says, but right now it is not in the laboratory. There may be a way to revolutionize batteries, but right now it is not in the laboratory. Instead, it’s on the factory floor. Instead, it’s on the factory floor. Ingenious manufacturing, rather than an ingenious leap in battery chemistry, might usher in the new electric age.

When it starts commercial sales in about two years, Chiang says, his company will slash the cost of an entry-level battery plant 10-fold, as well as cut around 30% off the price of the batteries themselves. That’s thanks to a new manufacturing process along with a powerful new cell that adds energy while stripping away cost. Together, he says, they will allow lithium-ion batteries to begin to compete with fossil fuels.

But Chiang’s concept is also about something more than just cheaper, greener power. It’s a model for a new kind of innovation, one that focuses not on new scientific invention, but on new ways of manufacturing. For countries like the US that have lost industries to Asia, this opens the possibility of reinventing the techniques of manufacture. Those that take this path could own that intellectual property—and thus the next manufacturing future.

This is the story of how that came about.

24M batteries.(Kieran Kesner for Quartz.)

Manufacturing, the new frontier of innovation
Traditionally, big innovations have happened at the lab bench. A discovery is made and patented, then is handed off to a commercial player who scales it up. With luck, it turns out a blockbuster product.

But, according to a report published in February by the Brookings Institution, researchers are increasingly skeptical of the delineation between innovation and production. Breakthrough-scale invention, they say, happens not only in the lab, but also in factories.

This is not a new idea. Until 1856, for instance, steel was an ultra-expensive niche product. It was far more robust than iron, but no one knew how to make it economically. Its use was confined to specialty hand tools and eating utensils for the rich. But then British inventor Henry Bessemer, stirred by French gripes about the fragility of cast-iron cannons, devised a process that reduced the cost of steel by more than 80%, roughly equivalent to iron. Steel—along with oil—went on to propel the latter part of the Industrial Revolution, along with the gargantuan 20th century economic boom.

If Bessemer had made his breakthrough today, it would be called “advanced manufacturing”—a label that has been broadly applied to next-generation fabrication methods such as

• 3D printing, 
• modular construction of skyscrapers, and 
• robotics. 

There is some hype around this term: The Brookings report identifies 50 industries in the US alone as “advanced,” and historic factory hubs such as the English city of Sheffield are renaming themselves as variants of “advanced manufacturing cluster.”
Nonetheless, entrepreneurs who develop genuinely novel manufacturing processes can enjoy the advantage of a patent and standing ahead of the crowd. While others will inevitably copy them, it will be a race to catch up. To the degree that such authentic advanced manufacturing moves forward, and can offer the US a chance to reinstate its prowess as a manufacturing hub, it’s led in part by a few clean energy companies like Yet-Ming Chiang’s.

Yet-Ming Chiang, 24M’s founder.(Kieran Kesner for Quartz)

The birth of an idea

At 57, Chiang has short-cropped, gray-flecked black hair, and almost always wears blue, long-sleeved check shirts. He speaks in a soft, even cadence, and is prone to finishing his sentences with a disarming, open-jawed grin.

But if unassuming, Chiang is also tremendously driven. His science-centered business sense has earned tens of millions of dollars for his investors. He and his family live on a farm on the affluent outskirts of Boston, where he raises bees and chickens, and hunts and fishes nearby.

CoLab climático: El aprovechamiento de la mente colectiva para mitigar el cambio climático

ORIGINAL: FastCoexist

Image: Iakov Filimonov/Shutterstock

Ciertamente, no parece que nadie a su cargo tiene alguna idea sobre cómo detener el cambio climático, así que vamos a abrirnos a todo el mundo. Un proyecto de crowdsourcing del MIT ha encontrado las mejores soluciones que provienen del resto de nosotros - como medios de transporte personal rápidos o convencernos a todos a comer menos carne.

A la vista de la crisis planetaria, no deben ser descartada ninguna opinión, no se sabe quién podría llegar a la próxima gran idea. Esto es especialmente cierto con el cambio climático - un dilema que tiene pocas respuestas definitivas.

En 2010, el Colab Climático MIT - el brazo de crowdsourcing sobre clima del Centro para la Inteligencia Colectiva de MIT - trató de aplicar crowdsourcing al próximo acuerdo internacional sobre el clima, con las ideas arriba presentadas a las Naciones Unidas, el Congreso y el Departamento de Energía. Aunque las ideas aportadas nunca han contribuído a un acuerdo importante sobre cambio climático, el CoLab de clima está de vuelta otra vez con sus 2.011 ganadores del concurso. En esta ocasión, los participantes se les dio una tarea diferente: descubrir cómo la economía del siglo 21 debe evolucionar para responder a los riesgos del cambio climático. Nuestros equipos favoritos ganar, todos los cuales llegarán a presentar sus ideas ante las Naciones Unidas y el Congreso a finales de este mes, están a continuación.

REDUCIR EL CONSUMO DE CARNE DE MUNDIAL

Propuesto por un equipo afiliado con el blog liberal Daily Kos, la idea ganadora sugiere reducir el consumo de carne para aliviar nuestra carga del planeta. El equipo trabaja a través de estadísticas contundentes: Se estima que

• el 80% a 90% de los terrenos despejados en el Amazonas brasileño se puede atribuir a los pastos o la ganadería, 
• la deforestación en los trópicos representa hasta un 20% de las emisiones de CO2 de la actividad humana, y 
• el aumento de ganado y aves de corral es responsable del 51% de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero (en parte porque el metano es liberado a partir de gases digestivos de los animales).

Esto no quiere decir que todos deben dejar de comer carne hoy en día. El equipo propone "una rápida aceleración de la educación a través de las organizaciones existentes, con énfasis en las instituciones más grandes y con más énfasis en las crecientes economías de China e India", así como el aumento de presión "por la influencia de la Ley Agrícola de EE.UU. de 2012, para tratar de reducir los subsidios del gobierno de EE.UU. para el maíz y la soja, que contribuyen a la cultura de la fábrica de ganado. " No hay necesidad de eliminar la carne por completo, simplemente que lo disminuyamos como un alimento básico diario puede hacer una gran diferencia en las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero.

PERSONAL REDES Rapid Transit

Christopher Fry, un investigador del Media Lab del MIT, propone la instalación generalizada de un sistema personal de tránsito rápido (PRT) en las áreas urbanas y suburbanas más densas que contienen el 50% de la población de EE.UU.. Fry dice: "Podemos eliminar los coches, autobuses, metros y aviones de corto alcance de nuestras áreas urbanas con una malla de células de 1 milla cuadrada de mag-lev guías, 20 pies por encima de una ciudad en la que módulos para dos personas están a la espera para los clientes a una distancia media de 1 / 4 milla de cada punto de la red. Estos módulos utilizarán menos energía y dinero por pasajero por milla que cualquier otro coche eléctrico práctico, autobús o tren (ligero o no) y son más seguros y más rápidos. "

El PRT ya existe. La NASA, por ejemplo, está probando actualmente SkyTran, un sistema de móculos para dos personas pendientes de guías sobre las calles y carreteras. Los módulos pueden parar cada media milla más o menos para cualquiera que necesite bajar.