South Africa is further advancing its strategy of developing commercial activities in hydrogen and fuel cell technologies with the launch of the Hydrogen South African (HySA) Centre of Competence (CoC) in the North West province. The HySA Infrastructure CoC is co-hosted by the North-West University and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research at the university’s Potchefstroom campus and is mandated to deliver technologies for renewable hydrogen production, storage and distribution.
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South Africa’s first radio telescope array, the seven dish KAT-7 located in the Karoo, which was originally intended to be mainly an engineering prototype for the much larger MeerKAT array, has now established itself as an effective scientific instrument. The first scientific paper produced from research using KAT-7 was released online on Thursday by the UK journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (which is one of the oldest and most prestigious scientific journals in the world, and has been in continual publication for some 186 years).

A team of local and overseas astronomers used KAT-7 in parallel with the 26 m dish at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) west of Pretoria to observe the Circinus X-1 binary star system. The two instruments observed Circinus X-1 at the same time but at different frequencies.

This binary star system is composed of a star similar to our sun and a neutron star (which is the extremely compact – about 20 km in diameter – but incredibly dense remnant of a massive star that exploded into a supernova). They orbit each other in an elliptical orbit, with a period of 16.5 days
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The Department of Science and Technology (DST) has allocated R232-million in funding for the development of the new ZA-ARMC1 satellite this year, Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom has indicated.

“This satellite will greatly enhance Africa’s ability to monitor and manage its precious natural resources. The process of transferring the capabilities and intellectual property of SunSpace [South Africa's specialist microsatellite and related systems manufacturing company] into an ongoing satellite programme is continuing, through the services of a business rescue plan,” he said in his 2013/14 Budget Vote on Thursday.
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An international team of astronomers have reported the first scientific results from the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT-7) in South Africa, the pathfinder radio telescope for the $3 billion global Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project.

The results appear in the latest issue of the prestigious international astronomical journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society(MNRAS).

Using the seven-dish KAT-7 telescope and the 26 m radio telescope at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO), astronomers have observed a neutron star system known as Circinus X-1 as it fires energetic matter from its core into the surrounding system in extensive, compact `jets’ that flare brightly, details of which are visible only in radio waves.

Circinus X-1 is an X-ray binary (or two-star system) where one of the companion stars is a high-density, compact neutron star (a neutron star is an extremely dense and compact remnant of an exploded star and only 20km in diameter.) The two stars orbit each other every 16.5 days in an elliptical orbit. When the two stars are at their closest the gravity of the dense neutron star pulls material from the companion star. A powerful jet of material then blasts out from the system.

During the time astronomers, including a team from the University of Southampton, observed Circinus X-1 (13 December 2011 to 16 January 2012) the system flared twice at levels among the highest observed in recent years. KAT-7 was able to catch both of these flares and follow them as they progressed. This is the first time that the system has been observed in such detail during the full flare cycle.

“One way of explaining what is happening is that the compact neutron star gobbles up parts of its companion star and then fires much of this matter back out again,” explains Dr Richard Armstrong, an SKA SA Fellow at the University of Cape Town and lead author of the paper. “The dramatic radio flares happen when the matter Circinus X-1 has violently ejected slows down as it smashes into the surrounding medium.”

Professor Rob Fender, Head of the Astronomy Research Group at the University of Southampton, says: “Circinus X-1 continues to reveal new aspects of its behaviour, and is arguably the best laboratory for relativistic jet astrophysics in the southern hemisphere. It is furthermore an excellent control to the large population of jets associated with accreting black holes.”

Dr Armstrong adds: “These types of observations are crucial for understanding the processes of both accretion of matter onto extremely dense systems, such as neutron stars and black holes of both about the sun’s mass, and also the so-called supermassive variety we now know to be at the centre of most galaxies.”

KAT-7 is the world’s first radio telescope array consisting of composite antenna structures. It is the test array for MeerKAT, a much larger radio array, which is itself in turn a precursor for the dish-based component of the SKA.

The MNRAS study was carried out as part of the development for the ThunderKAT project on MeerKAT, which will find many more of these types of systems in the galaxy and search for new types of radio systems that change rapidly with time.

Professor Fender, who is co-leader of the MeerKAT project, adds: “This project will test the extremes of physics, density, temperature, pressure, velocity, gravitational and magnetic fields, and are beyond anything achievable in any laboratory on Earth. It provides a unique glimpse of the laws of physics operating in extraordinary regimes. Nearly all such events are associated with transient radio emission. By studying radio bursts from these phenomena, we can pinpoint the sources of explosive events, probe relativistic accretion and understand the budget of kinetic feedback by such events in the ambient medium.”

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University of Louisville researchers have uncovered how to create nanoparticles using natural lipids derived from grapefruit, and have discovered how to use them as drug delivery vehicles. UofL scientists Huang-Ge Zhang, D.V.M., Ph.D., Qilong Wang, Ph.D., and their team today (May 21, 2013), published their findings in Nature Communications.

Lipids (right panel first three tubes) derived from grapefruit. GNVs can efficiently deliver a variety of therapeutic agents, including DNA, RNA (DIR-GNVs), proteins and anti-cancer drugs (GNVs-Drugs) as demonstrated in this study.

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Experts in Bonn to detail how science can help people mitigate or adapt to major global human-induced water system changes

A suite of disquieting global phenomena have given rise to the “Anthropocene,” a term coined for a new geologic epoch characterized by humanity’s growing dominance of the Earth’s environment and a planetary transformation as profound as the last epoch-defining event — the retreat of the glaciers 11,500 years ago.

And in Bonn, Germany May 21-24, world experts will experts will focus on how to mitigate key factors contributing to extreme damage to the global water system being caused while adapting to the new reality.

“The list of human activities and their impact on the water systems of Planet Earth is long and important,” Anik Bhaduri, Executive Officer of the Global Water System Project (GWSP).

“We have altered the Earth’s climatology and chemistry, its snow cover, permafrost, sea and glacial ice extent and ocean volume—all fundamental elements of the hydrological cycle. We have accelerated major processes like erosion, applied massive quantities of nitrogen that leaks from soil to ground and surface waters and, sometimes, literally siphoned all water from rivers, emptying them for human uses before they reach the ocean. We have diverted vast amounts of freshwater to harness fossil energy, dammed major waterways, and destroyed aquatic ecosystems.”

“The idea of the Anthropocene underscores the point that human activities and their impacts have global significance for the future of all living species — ours included. Humans are changing the character of the world water system in significant ways with inadequate knowledge of the system and the consequences of changes being imposed. From a research position, human-water interactions must be viewed as a continuum and a coupled system, requiring interdisciplinary inquiry like that which has characterized the GWSP since its inception.”

Among many examples of humanity’s oversized imprint on the world, cited in a paper by James Syvitski, Chair of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and three fellow experts (in full: http://bit.ly/Yx4COp), and in a new “Water in the Anthropocene” video to debut in Bonn May 21 (available at gwsp.org and http://www.anthropocene.info):

• Humanity uses an area the size of South America to grow its crops and an area the size of Africa for raising livestock
• Due to groundwater and hydrocarbon pumping in low lying coastal areas, two-thirds of major river deltas are sinking, some of them at a rate four times faster on average than global sea level is rising
• More rock and sediment is now moved by human activities such as shoreline in-filling, damming and mining than by the natural erosive forces of ice, wind and water combined
• Many river floods today have links to human activities, including the Indus flood of 2010 (which killed 2,000 people), and the Bangkok flood of 2011 (815 deaths)
• On average, humanity has built one large dam every day for the last 130 years. Tens of thousands of large dams now distort natural river flows to which ecosystems and aquatic life adapted over millennia
• Drainage of wetlands destroys their capacity to ease floods—a free service of nature expensive to replace
• Evaporation from poorly-managed irrigation renders many of the world’s rivers dry — no water, no life. And so, little by little, tens of thousands of species edge closer to extinction every day.

Needed: Better water system monitoring and governance

The water community stresses that concern now extends far beyond ‘classic’ drinking water and sanitation issues and includes water quality and quantity for ecosystems at all scales.

Says GWSP co-chair Claudia Pahl-Wostl: “The fact is, as world water problems worsen, we lack adequate efforts to monitor the availability, condition and use of water — a situation presenting extreme long term cost and danger.”

“Human water security is often achieved in the short term at the expense of the environment with harmful long-term implications. The problems are largely caused by governance failure and a lack of systemic thinking in both developed and developing countries. Economic development without concomitant institutional development will lead to greater water insecurity in the long-term. Global leadership is required to deal with the water challenges of the 21st century.”

“Humanity changes the way water moves around the globe like never before, causing dramatic harm,” says Bonn conference keynote speaker Joe Alcamo, Chief Scientist of the UN Environment Programme and former co-chair of the GWSP. “By diverting freshwater for agricultural, industrial and municipal use, for example, our coastal wetlands receive less and less, and often polluted, freshwater. The results include decreased inland and coastal biodiversity, increased coastal salinity and temperature, and contaminated agricultural soils and agricultural runoff.”

Adds Charles Vörösmarty, co-Chair and a founding member of the GWSP, which receives input from more hundreds of international scientists: “By throwing concrete, pipes, pumps, and chemicals at our water problems, to the tune of a half-trillion dollars a year, we’ve produced a technological curtain separating clean water flowing from our pipes and the highly-stressed natural waters that sit in the background. We treat symptoms of environmental abuse rather than underlying causes. Thus, problems continue to mount in the background, yet the public is largely unaware of this reality or its growing costs.”

Aims of the Bonn meeting

Featuring 60 special topic sessions, “Water in the Anthropocene” is a capstone event for the GWSP, which is developing “Future Water,” the water-related component of the emerging new multi-dimensional international collaborative environmental research framework, Future Earth.

A goal of the meeting is to synthesize major global water research achievements in the last decade and help assembling the scientific foundations to articulate a common vision of Earth’s water future.

It will recommended priorities for decision makers in the areas of earth system science and water resources governance and management.

And it will constitute a scientific prelude to October’s Budapest Water Summit, a major objective of which is to elevate the importance of water issues within the UN General Assembly negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals — a set of globally-agreed future objectives to succeed the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2015.

Observers expect adoption of “water security” as a Sustainable Development Goal

Water expert Janos Bogardi, Senior Advisor to GWSP, says the absence of defined global water quantity and quality standards for personal use, agriculture and healthy ecosystems are critical gaps as the world community develops its next set of shared medium-term objectives.

“These definitions constitute a cardinal challenge today for scientists and politicians alike. It is important to reach consensus in order to make progress on the increasingly important notion of ‘water security’,” says Dr. Bogardi, stressing that changing terminology will not in itself solve problems. “Replacing the word ‘sustainability’ with ‘security’ is not a panacea.”

With respect to quantity, less than 20 liters daily for sanitary needs and drinking is deemed “water misery” while 40 to 80 liters is considered “comfortable.” (Current US per capita average daily consumption is over 300 liters; daily usage in urban Germany is about 120 liters per capita and in urban Hungary, where water is relatively expensive, the figure is 80 liters.)

Missing also are authoritative scientific determinations of how much water can be drawn without crossing a “tipping point” threshold into ecosystem collapse. While there is no general rule, GWSP scientists say withdrawals of 30% to 40% of a renewable freshwater resource constitutes “extreme” water stress, but underline scope to continue satisfying needs if water is returned and recycled in good quality. Mining fossil groundwater resources is by definition non-sustainable.

The GWSP is developing water quality guidelines for people, agriculture and ecosystems in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals.

“The urgency of formulating the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals and a tracking system for their success means that quite soon the SDG negotiators must offer-up water targets,” says Dr. Vörösmarty. “Whether they focus predominantly on continuing the Millennium Development Goals (narrowly on drinking water and sanitation for human health) or formulate a more comprehensive agenda that simultaneously optimizes water security for humans as well as for nature remains an open question. The water sciences community stands ready to take on this challenge. Are the the decision makers?”

Definitions of water security

In 2007, World Bank expert David Grey and Claudia Sadoff of IUCN, defined water security as “The availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks to people, environments and economies.”

Their use of the term “acceptable” acknowledges that water security has relative, negotiable meanings.

In March, another formulation was set out by UN-Water, the United Nations’ inter-agency coordination mechanism for all water-related issues.

It defined water security as: “The capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of and acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability.” (see http://bit.ly/1864vMG)

***

About the Global Water System Project (gwsp.org)

The Global Water System Project seeks to answer the fundamental, multi-faceted question: How are humans changing the global water cycle, the associated biogeochemical cycles, and the biological components of the global water system and what are the social feedbacks arising from these changes?

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The SKA Organisation officially opened its new international head office on Tuesday. It is located at the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics in Cheshire, England. This is one of the world’s leading radio astronomy observatories and home to the famous 76-m-diameter Lovell radio telescope, first commissioned in 1957.

The new building is a state-of-the-art design, which cost £3.34-million and was funded by the University of Manchester. It was opened by UK Universities and Science Minister David Willetts.
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Four young South African entrepreneurs have made it to the final round of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) International Space Apps Challenge, becoming one of 133 international teams to reach this stage. The challenge was an international mass collaboration focused on space exploration that took place over 48 hours in cities around the world, and which saw the submission of nearly 800 apps.
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South African missiles and unmanned air vehicles company Denel Dynamics unveiled a new missile technology development programme on Tuesday. The new programme, designated Marlin, is focused on technology for a new family of all-weather air defence missiles.

The intent is to produce both air-to-air missile (AAM) and surface-to-air missile (SAM) versions of the Marlin. The AAM model would be in the beyond-visual-range category while the SAM would come in naval and army versions.

South Africa is currently investing in risk-reduction technology for the programme. This could lead to a missile demonstrator. However, these activities are intended to form the basis of a joint development programme with a friendly country, inspired by the successful A-Darter programme with Brazil. Investment from a partner country will allow the Marlin initiative to become a full-scale weapon development programme.
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Ten schools in the Cape Town area have been connected to the Internet at speeds of 4 MB/s using unused ultra-high frequency spectrum between 480 MHz to 690 MHz reserved for television broadcasting, says Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Meraka Institute manager Dr Ntsibane Ntlatlapa. The ten schools are participating in the first trial in South Africa to study the effects of and potential to connect underserviced regions to the Internet using television white spaces (TVWS), which encompass the currently unused frequencies reserved for television broadcasting. Unused frequencies vary depending on regions, channels and time of day.
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South African missiles and unmanned air vehicles company Denel Dynamics has unveiled a new missile technology development programme. The new programme, designated Marlin, is focused on technology for a new family of all-weather air defence missiles. The intent is to produce both air-to-air missile (AAM) and surface-to-air missile (SAM) versions of the Marlin. The AAM model would be in the beyond-visual-range category while the SAM would come in naval and army versions.
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The second flight of the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) small satellite launch rocket, Vega, currently scheduled for April, will be supported by a mobile telemetry tracking station and two specialists from South Africa’s Denel Overberg Test Range (OTR). The OTR is situated near Bredasdorp in the Western Cape province. The mobile station is being deployed to French Guiana, in the north east of South America, which is the location of ESA’s space launch centre. It will be used to strengthen ESA’s coverage of the telemetry from the rocket following its launch.
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IN JOURNALISM, cynics suggest, three data points are enough for a trend. As of March 4th, AIDS researchers hope two might be sufficient. On that day Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University announced to the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, in Atlanta, Georgia, that a patient under her care had been cured of HIV infection. The announcement was hedged with caveats (“functionally cured” was the exact term used). But the bottom line was clear. Dr Persaud thinks her patient, a two-and-a-half-year-old girl, has joined Timothy Brown, a man known to many as the “Berlin patient”, as a human who was once infected with HIV and now no longer is.The girl was born infected because her mother was infected but was not under treatment at the time (which would normally prevent mother-to-child transmission). She was given standard anti-retroviral drugs almost immediately and for 18 months afterwards. Doctors then lost track of her for five months and when she returned to their attention, they found the virus had vanished. Half a year later, despite the fact that she is no longer taking anti-AIDS medicine, there is no sign of HIV having returned.This is a…

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Energy – not even fossil-fuel energy – isn’t in short supply for the short-term future, globally speaking. Liquid fuel for transport, on the other hand, is a concern. And it’s hard to imagine a global economy functioning for long without transport.

Could algae ultimately provide the solution other biofuels (corn ethanol, especially) have failed to deliver?

Several fossil fuel developments in recent years have led some commentators to declare that peak oil is dead, and the world is awash in energy … particularly from “new” sources like Canada’s oil sands, the US Bakken shale deposits and hydrofracturing-derived natural gas. But most of today’s cars don’t run on natural gas, and increases in unconventional oil might not be enough to make up for aging, depleting conventional sources and increasing demand from a growing global population of first-time car owners.

Commenting on heavily publicized pronouncements that the US could soon become energy-independent, for example, petroleum geologist and consultant Arthur E. Berman recently wrote, “But the problem for the US is not total energy. We have always had an abundant endowment of coal and natural gas. The problem is liquid fuel for transport and that comes from crude oil.”

Or, one day – possibly – from algae.

Corn ethanol, while it’s been affordable (when subsidized), interferes with food production and has been shown to have a questionable environmental impact on top of that. And cellulosic ethanol has started to resemble fusion energy … perpetually “a few years away” from being ready for prime time.

Algae-based biofuels, on the other hand, show promise. In 2012, the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Biomass Program estimated the market price of open-pond-grown algal biofuel to be $9.28/gallon – still prohibitive by US gas-pump standards. With projected improvements and the addition of high-value co-products, however, the DOE forecast the price could eventually drop to $2.27/gallon.

We’re not close to the point yet, though. A report from the National Research Council in late 2012 found that algae-based biofuel production technology as it stands today remains unsustainable at a large scale. Producing just 5 percent of the US’s transport fuel supply from algae, it concluded, would require at least 123 billion gallons of water, 6 million to 15 million metric tons of nitrogen and 1 million to 2 million metric tons of phosphorus. Those nutrient levels would represent anywhere from 44 to 107 percent of today’s total nitrogen use in the US, and 20 to 51 percent of current phosphorus use.

Algal fuel FAQ

Q: Is algae-based biofuel available on the market? A: It has been, but only on a limited test basis and not in pure form. In November 2012, a few service stations in Northern California offered an algal biofuel blend (20 percent algae, 80 percent petroleum) at the pump as part of a pilot project with renewable fuel company Propel and algal fuel developer Solazyme. The alternative fuel was sold for about $4.25/gallon, about the same price as regular diesel.

Q: Is algal biofuel in regular use anywhere? A: The US military – one of the country’s biggest users of transport fuel – has been testing algae-based fuels in various capacities for a few years. Working with companies like General Atomics and SAIC, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been investigating the use of algal fuels for aviation. And the Navy inked a deal with Solazyme for algae-based jet fuel back in 2010.

Q: Is algal fuel used much outside the military sector? A: Not much yet, but that is changing. Commercial airline companies are playing a big role in testing alternative fuels.  Airbus, for example, is working with China to scale up the use of alternative fuels in commercial aviation, and expects to begin flight tests this year. United Airlines made the first algal-fuel-based commercial flight in late 2011, using a blend of about 60 percent petroleum-based jet fuel and 40 percent biofuel from Solazyme. Qantas has also been working with Solazyme.

Who’s who in algal fuel?

Algae-tec – On Jan. 14, 2013, Australia-based Algae.tec received a AU$12.15 million cash award from the Australian government for funding at least three algae bioreactor facilities in Australia, Asia and the US. Algae-tec’s enclosed system is designed to grow non-genetically modified algae for fuel. It opened its first algae-to-biofuels facility, designed to produce aviation fuel, in New South Wales in August 2012. The company is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the ADR market in the US.

Algenol Biofuels – Florida-based Algenol aims to commercialize its patented DIRECT TO ETHANOL algae technology, and is currently developing a pilot-scale biorefinery in Fort Myers. It has targeted commercial production rates of 6,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year at an eventual production cost of less than $1/gallon.

HDS International Corp. – Headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, HDS International provides technology for algal biomass production, carbon capture and biosequestration.

OriginOil – Based in Los Angeles, OriginOil is working to develop not only algae-based liquid fuel but to use algae as a way to clean waste water generated while producing oil from oil sands. A pure technology company rather than a producer or service provider, OriginOil is publicly traded.

Sapphire Energy – Headquartered in San Diego, Sapphire Energy recently partnered with the Institute of Systems Biology to “further the scientific research and development of algae biofuels”. Sapphire recently began a 300-acre commercial demonstration in New Mexico that is projected to be able to produce about 100 barrels of algae-based “Green Crude” per day by the end of 2014. Its Green Crude fuel has already been tested by Continental Airlines and Japan Airlines.

SEE Algae Technology – Like OriginOil, SEE Algae is not an algal-based fuel producer. Instead, the Vienna-based firm specializes in developing the infrastructure for commercial algae production operations, whether for livestock feed, fuel or other purposes. The company recently won the Brazilian Bioenergy Innovation of the Year 2012 Award.

Solazyme – Based in San Francisco, the publicly traded Solazyme is working to develop not only algal-based fuels and chemicals, but personal-care products and nutritional products. It recently announced the ground-breaking achievement of reaching commercial-scale production levels and aims to produce 20,000 metric tons of oil a year starting in early 2014.

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[SciDev.Net]Cotonou -Researchers in Benin say they have developed an improved method for detecting malaria parasites in mosquito vectors that could help yield better estimates of malaria transmission intensity in different settings.
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