In The News

[Iaangus]

Originally Posted by GordMay

The vast majority (≈80%) of corn ethanol in the United States is produced by dry milling. In the dry milling process, the entire corn kernel is ground into flour, or "mash," which is then slurried by adding water.
➥ https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol_production.html

Even in dry milling the remaing product after fermentation is a valuable feed source for livestock that is nearly as valuable at whole corn because most of the corn is still there, just the starch is used.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Iaangus

Even in dry milling the remaing product after fermentation is a valuable feed source for livestock that is nearly as valuable at whole corn because most of the corn is still there, just the starch is used.

"most"?


Maize in human nutrition - Chemical composition and nutritional value of maize
"The major chemical component of the maize kernel is starch, which provides up to 72 to 73 percent of the kernel weight."

[GordMay]

27-kilogram 'Giga Pearl' appraised at between $60M and $90M
The pearl weighs 27.65 kilograms, four times the weight of the Lao-Tzu Pearl, also called the Pearl of Allah, which until recently was thought to be the world's largest.
➥ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toron...giga-1.5073708

552-carat yellow diamond found at Diavik Diamond Mine northeast of Yellowknife
➥ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north...-nwt-1.4946571

[GordMay]

More People Than Ever Accept Climate Change Is a Threat to Them Personally
Americans who think global warming is happening, outnumber those who think it isn’t by more than a 5 to 1 ratio. About six in ten Americans (62%) understand that global warming is mostly human-caused.

Around three-quarters (73%) of Americans are on board with climate change, but that doesn't mean they're all willing to do something about it. Almost 70 percent of Americans say they wouldn’t pay $10 every month to help cool the warming planet. Forty percent would oppose a $1 monthly expense.

“Climate Change in the American Mind: December 2018" ~ by Anthony Leiserowitz et al.
➥ Climate Change in the American Mind: December 2018 - Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

This report documents a continued upward trend in Americans’ concern about global warming, as reflected in several key indicators tracked since 2008, including substantial increases in Americans’ certainty that global warming is happening and harming people in the United States now. The proportion of Americans who are very worried about global warming has more than tripled since its lowest point in 2011. Increasing numbers of Americans say they have personally experienced global warming and that the issue is personally important to them.

“Is the Public Willing to Pay to Help Fix Climate Change?”
➥ Is the Public Willing to Pay to Help Fix Climate Change? | APNORC.org | APNORC.org

[Iaangus]

Originally Posted by StuM

"most"?


Maize in human nutrition - Chemical composition and nutritional value of maize
"The major chemical component of the maize kernel is starch, which provides up to 72 to 73 percent of the kernel weight."

Yes, Most of the good stuff that is not starch. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, I understand there is a contrary point of view for any topic you can think of but just because most of the google hits on the first page are anti ethanol dosen’t prove it’s is the devils creation is certain to destroy the earth. Maybe most of the hits on google are there because most of the wealthiest companies on earth are being forced to add a competing product to thier own. It’s not much but 220 billion income is better than a lousy 200 billion income.

[GordMay]

Canada warming at twice the global rate, leaked report finds
Canada is, on average, experiencing warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world, with Northern Canada heating up at almost three times the global average, according to a new government report.
The study — Canada's Changing Climate Report (CCCR)* — was commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada. It says that since 1948, Canada's annual average temperature over land has warmed 1.7 C, with higher rates seen in the North, the Prairies and northern British Columbia.
In Northern Canada, the annual average temperature has increased by 2.3 C.
According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), since 1948, global average temperatures have increased by about 0.8 C.
Read the "Canada's Changing Climate Report 2019"
* ➥ https://changingclimate.ca/CCCR2019/

Editorial ➥ https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/clim...port-1.5079886

[GordMay]

Paleontologists discover Arctic's 1st-ever lambeosaur fossil in Alaska

Paleontologists have discovered (in 2014) the remains of the Arctic's first-ever lambeosaur, a crested, duck-billed dinosaur, on the Liscomb Bonebed (Colville River), in Alaska's North Slope.

Based on this new finding, scientists say the lambeosaur roamed the Arctic about 70 million years ago during the late Cretaceous Period, according to a new study, published Friday (March 29/19), in the journal Scientific Reports.

“The First Definite Lambeosaurine Bone From the Liscomb Bonebed of the Upper Cretaceous Prince Creek Formation, Alaska, United States” ~ by Ryuji Takasaki, et al.
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41325-8

[GordMay]

Shell urges Canada's oil lobby group to support carbon tax

A new report by Royal Dutch Shell is urging Canada's largest oil and gas lobby group to start supporting carbon tax policies in the country.
Shell's position on climate change is different than about half of the trade associations it's a part of around the world that it reviewed, including the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP).
Shell said it is pulling out of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers because its climate policies are too misaligned with the company. Shell might also leave nine other trade groups, including CAPP, if further changes aren't made. Shell is saying that they actually want to embrace regulation, and that means taking on a carbon tax.
"We will continue to engage further with these industry associations to promote climate-related policies that support the goal of the Paris Agreement," states the report.

“Industry Associations Climate Review” ~ Royal Dutch Shell plc
➥ https://www.shell.com/sustainability...pril1-2019.pdf

[GordMay]

Ancient four-legged whale from Peru walked on land, swam in sea
Scientists have unearthed fossils, in a coastal desert of southern Peru, of a four-legged whale that thrived both in the sea and on land about 43 million years ago, in a discovery that illuminates a pivotal stage in early cetacean evolution.
The four-meter-long mammal, named Peregocetus pacificus, represents a crucial intermediate step before whales became fully adapted to a marine existence, the scientists said on Thursday.
A quadrupedal whale is described based on a skeleton from the middle Eocene of Peru.
It combines terrestrial locomotion abilities, and use of the tail for swimming. This is the first record of an amphibious whale for the whole Pacific Ocean. It supports early dispersal of cetaceans to the New World across the South Atlantic
“An Amphibious Whale from the Middle Eocene of Peru Reveals Early South Pacific Dispersal of Quadrupedal Cetaceans” ~ by Olivier Lambert, et al.
➥ https://www.cell.com/current-biology...822(19)30220-9

[GordMay]

An entire year trapped in the Arctic ice
The international MOSAiC expedition with the German research icebreaker 'Polarstern' will launch in autumn 2019
MOSAiC ➥ https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/servi...rctic-ice.html

For decades, scientists have been using satellite images, and other data, to measure the steadily declining area of summer ice cover over the Arctic ocean, and how it's been disappearing at a rate of around 12 per cent per decade, since 1979. The big question is how long do we have before it is gone completely?
Beginning next September, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany will embark on the largest expedition in history to the Arctic, to try and answer that question. The international project, called MOSAiC, involving 17 countries and 600 scientists, will intentionally trap a ship in the ice for a year to follow its movement.
Ice, in the Arctic Ocean, is constantly circulating (in a clockwise direction) from Siberia, across Greenland, Northern Canada and back again. Along the way, some of it ages and becomes permanent pack ice, that can remain for years, while other ice eventually flows south into the Atlantic, along the coasts of Greenland.
A recent report* from the institute has shown that one source of new ice in Siberia is faltering, so it is melting before it completes the entire journey. This means that not only is there less ice, but the ice that is there is thinner. And thin ice melts faster.
The MOSAiC mission will embed the German research icebreaker Polarstern into the drifting ice. That will carry it around the Arctic, which is otherwise virtually inaccessible in the winter. The ship will act as a base for a network of scientific observation posts that will attempt to better understand the dynamics of the ice, in real time, and to get a better estimate on how soon the Arctic Ocean will be completely ice-free during the summer.
That turning point, which could arrive suddenly, will accelerate climate change as the dark ocean absorbs more sunlight than white ice. A warmer north will increase permafrost melt, which releases methane, another greenhouse gas. Weather patterns and ocean currents could change, affecting not only people and animals in the north, but also regions to the south.
As we saw, last week, from a report by Environment and Climate Change Canada (post #126), those effects are already happening as our country warms faster than the rest of the planet. When the ice is gone, change could come even faster.

"The Transpolar Drift is faltering – and sea ice is now melting before it can leave the nursery"
New AWI sea-ice study reveals the extreme scale of sea-ice melting in the Arctic.
➥ https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/servi...e-nursery.html

* The Report:
“Arctic warming interrupts the Transpolar Drift and affects long-range transport of sea ice and ice-rafted matter” ~ by Thomas Krumpen et al.
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41456-y

[GordMay]

First Image of a Black Hole

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an eight-telescope project, was switched on in April 2017. Its mission: to peer out into space and attempt to snap the first-ever image of a black hole. This is M87*, and this the first image of a black hole! Mass is 6.5 Billion suns within size of a solar system.
Here ➥ https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/blackholes/
Or ➥ https://www.space.com/17933-nasa-tel...-space-tv.html

[Connemara]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Researchers Show Parachutes Don't Work

Research* published in a major medical journal concludes that a parachute is no more effective than an empty backpack at protecting you from harm if you have to jump from an aircraft.
In all, 23 people agreed to be randomly given either a backpack or a parachute and then to jump from a biplane on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts or from a helicopter in Michigan.
Oh, there's one important detail here. The drop in the study was about 2 feet total, because the biplane and helicopter were parked.
Nobody suffered any injuries. Surprise, surprise. So it's technically true that parachutes offered no better protection for these jumpers than the backpacks.

* The study's findings were published in the medical journal, “BMJ” ➥ https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

Gord:
The BMJ has a Christmas spoof edition every year. This report was part of that.
Connemara

[Cheechako]

Thanks Gord!

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Connemara

Gord:
The BMJ has a Christmas spoof edition every year. This report was part of that.
Connemara

Indeed.
“The Best of the British Medical Journal’s Goofy Christmas Papers”
Every year, the journal publishes a series of papers that aren't exactly spoofs—the science in them is real—but they're on topics that an esteemed journal like the BMJ wouldn't normally touch. "The essence of the Christmas BMJ is strangeness," the editors wrote in 2000. "It's our left brain issue. We want everything to be not as it seems."
➥ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...ers-180948177/

[StuM]

Originally Posted by GordMay

First Image of a Black Hole

Today's XKCD https://xkcd.com/2135/