Concern Voiced About Media Repression in Middle East

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Advocates of press freedom are concerned about recent moves by some governments to arrest journalists and restrict Internet access to their citizens. Freedom House is a Washington-based group that supports democracy and free speech activists. The group says these restrictions on freedom of expression undermine both human rights and the foundation of democratic societies.

Charles Dunne is director of Middle East and North Africa programs at Freedom House. He says reports that journalists in Egypt are being harassed and arrested and that a proposed law in Turkey will increase restrictions on Internet access are an alarming turn toward repression in the Middle East and other countries where democracy is not firmly established.

Our annual Freedom of the World Report that was released in January did find a trend of authoritarian pushback, certainly in many Arab spring countries, but elsewhere in repressive countries, focusing not only on journalists but on bloggers, even Tweeters in many cases. So this is something that is very concerning to us," said Dunne.

The proposed law to restrict Internet access in Turkey has sparked public protests. The government says the new restrictions are to protect peoples privacy, but Turkish free speech advocate Selin Kaledelen says the purpose is to protect government officials from media scrutiny.

So for me, it's dictatorship of the authorities in terms of law. It's a censorship law, and we don't recognize it," said Kaledelen.

In Egypt, the arrest of journalists with Al Jazeera on charges of aiding a terrorist group has been condemned by UN Human Rights spokesman Rupert Colville.

It is extraordinary to find this being put into the kind of terrorist dialogue that journalists are supporting terrorists. This is really an alarming development and we hope it changes very quickly," said Colville.

U.S. State Department Spokesperson Jennifer Psaki says the U.S. government is also troubled by reports of journalists being arrested in Egypt.

Any journalist, regardless of affiliation, must not be targets of violence, intimidation or politicized legal action. They must be protected and permitted to freely do their jobs in Egypt," said Psaki.

She said the United States government advocates freedom of the media and freedom of the press as something that should be respected and valued.

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Concern Voiced About Media Repression in Middle East

Old Christmas trees used to help P.E.I. National Park dune system

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Its beginning to look at lot like Christmas at certain times of the year in Prince Edward Island National Park.

Kim Riehl, resource management officer with Parks Canada Prince Edward Island Field Unit, was happy to receive a shipment of gently used Christmas trees from Island Waste Management Corporation that will be used for dune restoration projects.

Thats because Parks Canada has partnered with Island Waste Management Corporation (IMAC) to use some of the Christmas trees collected at curbsides after the holiday season to shore up some of the fragile dune system within the national park.

Its a bonus that were able to recycle some trees to use to restore the dunes, says Kim Riehl, resource management officer with Parks Canada Prince Edward Island Field Unit, whose job focus is the coastal eco-system.

Dune erosion is widespread throughout the park due to foot or vehicle traffic in undesignated beach access areas in the past, which has destroyed the delicate balance of the dune system.

It ends up destroying the vegetation that is on the dunes. It can take fewer than 10 passes through an area to kill a marram grass colony. They are very fragile, Riehl says.

So once that happens it leaves the bare sand, and the prevailing winds start blowing that sand. It (can start) as a very small depression and can turn into a very large dune blowout.

To combat that, for its dune restoration program, Parks Canada picked up a load of gently used Christmas trees from IWMCs post-holiday collection in January 2013 to use in dune systems at Ross Lane, Shaws Beach and Gregors Lane.

The idea is to use these coniferous trees as a natural product (for dune restoration) . . . . So we erect these trees and they act as a natural catchment for the sand so the prevailing winds wont blow sand, and it would give the dune some structure, (much) like the marram grass would normally provide, Riehl says.

So it will collect this sand and build it up in the dune. Also, because its a natural product it will provide nutrients that will allow for marram grass to build back up.

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Old Christmas trees used to help P.E.I. National Park dune system

Cyborg insect created using fuel cell powered by own body fluid

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One day were going to have robot drones that are no bigger than a mosquito, but weve got a long way to go on the miniaturization front before that happens. In the meantime, weve got real insects to work with as long as we figure out a good way to control them.

Insect control isnt a new idea, but it is pretty gruesome. It usually involves inserting a needle or two into their bodies and sending electrical pulses into their brain, forcing a change in direction. Even if such a system is perfected, the useful life of the insect is limited by how long it can survive, and if it isnt carrying out normal behavior and eating, that wont be for long.

The other problem with using real insects is they dont have batteries, so any electronics attached to them, e.g. a camera, also requires a battery be attached. That adds weight and ultimately severely limits how long such a device can work for.

Combined research coming out of Osaka University and the Tokyo University of Agriculture may have solved the energy source problem, though. But its just as gruesome as the brain control mechanism.

What the research team has done is to develop a fuel cell that can be attached to an insect and is powered by the insects own body fluid. A small tank is fitted inside the insect that takes in the body fluid, which contains a type of sugar called trehalose. That is broken down by enzymes in the tank to produce glucose, which in turn is used to power the fuel cell.

Such a system is taking energy away from the insect, so it will need to be fed regularly, but it could form a sustainable way to power other components attached to an insect without requiring a battery. That in turn means the potential for a cyborg insect being created with a relatively long life span.

So if you see a cockroach or similar sized insect hanging around while you have a conversation, give it a closer look and see if theres anything unusual on its back. If so, put the poor thing out of its misery.

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Cyborg insect created using fuel cell powered by own body fluid

Two sharks caught off Perth beaches within minutes of each other

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Drum lines similar to those placed along the WA coastline. Photo: Aleisha Orr

Two sharks have reportedly been caught off the Perth coast within half an hour of each other on the first morning the government's shark kill-zones have been operational.

Baited hook lines were deployed off Perth beaches on Thursday morning, a week after drum lines were set in the South West about a week ago.

Channel Ten reporter Aleisha Banner has tweeted that the first shark caught on a drum line was a one-metre tiger shark that was caught and released.

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The drum line is believed to be off Cottesloe beach.

A second shark, a 2.6 metre tiger shark, was caught on the lines soon after.

Channel Seven reporter Geof Parry spoke to Radio 6PR as the second shark was hooked.

He said the shark was "thrashing around" and was tangled in ropes.

Parry said it was possibly "of size".

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Two sharks caught off Perth beaches within minutes of each other

Green sky thinking: Astronomy’s dirty little secret

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Astronomy's carbon footprint is the strangest problem you've never thought about (Image: G. Hdepohl/ESO)

Astronomy produces a lot of carbon emissions, but it could be one of the greenest sciences if observatories harness their solar and wind resources

IF YOU were to draw up a list of the most pressing issues in science, it's unlikely that astronomy's carbon footprint would be on it. If it were, it would probably end up somewhere between effective male birth control and how to fold headphones to stop their wires getting tangled in your pocket.

Ueli Weilenmann, deputy director of La Silla Paranal Observatory in Chile, would disagree with that assessment. Recently, while grappling with the costs of running the place, he was shocked to discover the scale of the observatory's carbon emissions (see diagram). A bit of further digging revealed that the problem is not limited to Paranal: many other observatories exude more greenhouse gas than their size betrays.

This shouldn't be the case. By dint of their location, most observatories enjoy access to clean energy sources, but for various reasons they have been unable to exploit them. Now observatories all over the world are looking beyond obvious solutions, enlisting ingenious workarounds in their quest to go green. The possibilities for doing so run from the inspired to the mundane to the highly speculative. The potential carbon cutbacks won't save the world, but the people running these experiments are determined to prove that big science can be clean too.

The bigger telescopes get, the further they can peer into our universe, and the better the resulting images. But the barbed spiral galaxies and weather on distant exoplanets that have been captured by Paranal's Very Large Telescope (VLT) come at a high cost. Astronomy is an energy-intensive endeavour. "We are in a very isolated place and everything we do here has an associated energy cost," Weilenmann says. Paranal is so remote that even the water needs to be trucked in, not to mention food, staff and fuel.

The lion's share of the energy use, however, comes from running an instrument like the VLT and cooling its sensitive electronic equipment. Every day it sucks up 27 megawatt-hours of energy, or nearly 10 gigawatt-hours per year the annual consumption of 1000 US households.

But unlike those homes, Paranal is too far from the national grid to connect, so it must produce its own power. It does this using generators that burn butane. Fuel prices are volatile, and with observatories hardly swimming in cash, Weilenmann was investigating Paranal's energy use to try to keep expenses under control. It was then that he discovered its carbon footprint, 22,000 tonnes a year, equivalent to 46 tonnes of carbon dioxide for every peer-reviewed scientific paper produced there. It's equivalent to the emissions of a small town.

In a world where the energy budget of a data centre can rival that of a medium-sized city, those numbers won't raise many eyebrows, but for Weilenmann it was a matter of principle: the problem should not have existed in the first place. After all, the ideal locations for observatories happen to be green-energy sweet spots. "We never faced a situation where there was no sun and no wind for more than a day," says Rolf Chini of Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. Chini runs the observatory at Cerro Murphy which, like Paranal, sits on a peak in the Atacama desert, with 320 cloudless days a year on average and buffeted by strong winds.

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Green sky thinking: Astronomy's dirty little secret

Show some love on Valentine’s Day … for astronomy

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Burlington Post

Join the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers on Valentines Day and share their love of the night sky.

Guest speaker will be McMaster astronomer Robert Cockcroft, who will discuss ancient Egyptian astronomy.

He will give an overview of ancient Egyptian astronomy and then focus on one particular representation of the night sky: the diagonal star tables. He also will discuss a recent expedition to Egypt.

Cockcroft is a post-doctoral research fellow at McMaster University, where he is also the McCallion Planetarium manager and a first-year undergraduate lecturer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

His graduate research centred on observational astronomy, where he looked at globular clusters in the nearby Triangulum and Andromeda galaxies; his current focus is the history of astronomy.

The meeting and talk is on Friday, Feb. 14, from 7:30-9:30 p.m.,

At the Hamilton Spectator Building, 44 Frid St., Hamilton.

Admission is free and open t the public with door prizes. An optional donation of non-perishable items for local food banks will be collected.

Hamilton Amateur Astronomers is a non-profit club that meets the second Friday of each month except in July and August.

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Show some love on Valentine's Day ... for astronomy