Dec. 12, 2012 ? It may be possible to stop the spread of can toads into new areas of Australia according to new research published December 12 in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
One of the lead authors of the study, James Cook University's Dr Ben Phillips, said that their work, which involved an international team of scientists, showed that artificial waterbodies installed by graziers acted as critical stepping-stones for the toad invasion.
"By removing these waterbodies in key locations it is possible to halt the spread of toads," he said.
Cane toads are currently spreading into the vast Kimberley region of north-western Australia and will likely completely occupy this region within ten years.
"This conquest has not gone unchallenged, but massive efforts by community groups over the past five years have done nothing to stop or even slow the invasion of toads," Dr Phillips said.
"The reason for this failure is that toads produce 10-30 thousand eggs at a time and can move very large distances, so removing enough individuals to slow their invasion is effectively an impossible task."
Dr Phillips said that "by removing around 100 artificial waterbodies, toads can be prevented from occupying 268,000 square kilometres of their potential range in Western Australia, which is an area larger than Great Britain."
Stopping the invasion of toads into Australia's Pilbara region would protect numerous species, including northern Quolls (an endangered cat-sized marsupial carnivore) and many species of goannas and snakes, which are badly affected when toads invade.
"While we have shown that it is possible to stop toads, actually doing so is going to require a lot of community support as well as serious financial compensation to any graziers that are affected by modifications to their stock watering systems," Dr Phillips said
"We have shown that stopping toads is possible, but the exact details of how to implement our plan are still to be worked out."
Cane toads, one of the world's worst invasive species, have proved difficult to stop. In Australia, where they were introduced in 1935, they have spread to occupy more than 1.3 million square kilometres and have had major impacts on many native species. Their spread continues across northern Australia at an accelerating rate.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by British Ecological Society (BES).
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Reid Tingley, Benjamin L. Phillips, Mike Letnic, Gregory P. Brown, Richard Shine and Stuart J. E. Baird. Identifying optimal barriers to halt the invasion of cane toads Rhinella marina in arid Australia. Journal of Applied Ecology, 2012; DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.12021
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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Defense Secretary Leon Panetta talks to reporters while on board his plane headed to Kuwait, Monday, Dec. 10, 2012. Panetta will meet with troops as part of a visit to thank the troops for their service. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta talks to reporters while on board his plane headed to Kuwait, Monday, Dec. 10, 2012. Panetta will meet with troops as part of a visit to thank the troops for their service. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, second from left, is welcomed upon his arrival at Kuwait International Airport in Kuwait City, Kuwait, Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012. Kuwaiti Defense Minister Sheik Ahmad Al-Khaled Al Sabah, right, escorts Panetta, who is scheduled to meet with troops during his visit as part of a holiday visit to thank the troops for their service. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, right, talks to reporters while on board his plane headed to Kuwait, Monday, Dec. 10, 2012. Panetta will meet with troops as part of a visit to thank the troops for their service. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)
KUWAIT CITY (AP) ? The Syrian government seems to have slowed preparations for the possible use of chemical weapons against rebel targets, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday.
Last week, U.S. officials said there was evidence that Syrian forces had begun preparing sarin, a nerve agent, for possible use in bombs.
Speaking to reporters flying with him from Washington to Kuwait, Panetta suggested the threat was no longer escalating, although he was not specific about any Syrian military preparations.
"At this point the intelligence has really kind of leveled off," he said. "We haven't seen anything new indicating any aggressive steps to move forward in that way."
Panetta was in Kuwait to visit U.S. troops at the start of a four-day trip. The U.S. has about 13,500 troops in this country; they are a remnant of the 1991 Gulf War in which a U.S.-led coalition force evicted Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
Asked whether he believed Syrian President Bashar Assad was heeding Western warnings against using chemical weapons, Panetta said: "I like to believe he's got the message. We've made it pretty clear. Others have as well."
He noted that the Assad regime is coming under increasing pressure from rebel forces.
"Our concern is that if they feel like the regime is threatened with collapse, they might resort to these kinds of weapons," he said.
Syria is believed to have a formidable arsenal of chemical weapons, including sarin and mustard gas, although its exact dimensions are not known. Syria is not a signatory to the 1997 Convention on Chemical Weapons and thus is not obliged to permit international inspection.
In the interview with reporters on his flight from Washington, Panetta also said he expects Obama administration decisions in the next few weeks on what military missions and forces the U.S. will seek to keep in Afghanistan after its combat mission ends Dec. 31, 2014.
The U.S. now has about 66,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of an international coalition that has been fighting the Taliban for more than 11 years.
Panetta said he would consult further with Marine Gen. John Allen, the top coalition commander in Kabul, before making further recommendations to President Barack Obama on a post-2014 military presence.
Panetta also said he is encouraged by what he called a downward trend in the number of attacks on U.S. and coalition forces by their Afghan partners. These so-called insider attacks accelerated for much of 2012, threatening to disrupt the U.S.-Afghan military partnership.
Panetta said the number of such attacks fell from 12 in August to two in November.
"Steps that were put in place to try to deal with that threat I believe have been effective," he said. He did not mention specific steps, but they include more rigorous vetting of Afghan army and police recruits and a requirement that U.S. troops carry loaded weapons at all times, even when on coalition or Afghan bases.
A newfound asteroid gave Earth a close shave early today, zipping between our planet and the moon just two days after astronomers first spotted it.
The near-Earth asteroid?2012 XE54, which was discovered Sunday (Dec. 9), came within 140,000 miles (230,000 kilometers) of our planet at about 5 a.m. EST (1000 GMT) Tuesday (Dec. 11), researchers said. For comparison, the moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 240,000 miles or so (386,000 km).
Astronomers estimate that 2012 XE54 is about 120 feet (36 meters) wide ? big enough to cause substantial damage if it slams into Earth someday. An object of similar size flattened 800 square miles (2,000 square km) of forest when it exploded above Siberia's Podkamennaya Tunguska River in 1908.
Asteroid 2012 XE54 also passed through Earth's shadow a few hours before its closest approach, generating an eclipse on the space rock's surface, researchers said. [Video: Asteroid 2012 XE54 Flies Closer Than Moon]
"Asteroids eclipsing during an Earth flyby are relatively rare," astronomer Pasquale Tricarico, of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., wrote in a blog post Monday?(Dec. 10).
The first known case, Tricarico?added, was "asteroid?2008 TC3 which was totally eclipsed just one hour before entering Earth's atmosphere over Sudan in 2008, and asteroid 2012 KT42 experiencing both an eclipse and a transit during the same Earth flyby in 2012."
2012 XE54 will be coming back to Earth's neighborhood before too much longer. The asteroid completes one lap around the sun every 2.72 years.
Scientists have discovered about 9,000 near-Earth asteroids to date, but perhaps a million or more such space rocks are thought to exist.
And some of them are potentially dangerous. Observations by NASA's WISE space telescope suggest that about 4,700 asteroids at least 330 feet (100 m) wide come uncomfortably close to our planet at some point in their orbits.
So far, researchers have spotted less than 30 percent of these large space rocks, which could obliterate an area the size of a state if they slammed into Earth.
But there are much bigger asteroids out there, such as 4179 Toutatis, a 3-mile-wide (5 km) behemoth that's in the process of flying by Earth now. Toutatis will remain 4.3 million miles (7 million km) away during its closest approach Wednesday morning, but it may come closer on future passes.
Toutatis would inflict devastating damage if it slammed into Earth, perhaps extinguishing human civilization. The asteroid thought to have killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was about 6 miles (10 km) wide, researchers say.
Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall?or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook?and?Google+.?
Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Rice cultivates green batteries from plantPublic release date: 11-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Extract of madder plant works as environmentally friendly lithium-ion cathode
HOUSTON (Dec. 11, 2012) Here's a reason to be glad about madder: The climbing plant has the potential to make a greener rechargeable battery.
Scientists at Rice University and the City College of New York have discovered that the madder plant, aka Rubia tinctorum, is a good source of purpurin, an organic dye that can be turned into a highly effective, natural cathode for lithium-ion batteries. The plant has been used since ancient times to create dye for fabrics.
The discovery is the subject of a paper that appears today in Nature's online, open-access journal Scientific Reports.
The goal, according to lead author Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, a research scientist in the Rice lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan, is to create environmentally friendly batteries that solve many of the problems with lithium-ion batteries in use today.
"Green batteries are the need of the hour, yet this topic hasn't really been addressed properly," Reddy said. "This is an area that needs immediate attention and sustained thrust, but you cannot discover sustainable technology overnight. The current focus of the research community is still on conventional batteries, meeting challenges like improving capacity. While those issues are important, so are issues like sustainability and recyclability."
While lithium-ion batteries have become standard in conventional electronics since their commercial introduction in 1991, the rechargeable units remain costly to manufacture, Reddy said. "They're not environmentally friendly. They use cathodes of lithium cobalt oxide, which are very expensive. You have to mine the cobalt metal and manufacture the cathodes in a high-temperature environment. There are a lot of costs.
"And then, recycling is a big issue," he said. "In 2010, almost 10 billion lithium-ion batteries had to be recycled, which uses a lot of energy. Extracting cobalt from the batteries is an expensive process."
Reddy and his colleagues came across purpurin while testing a number of organic molecules for their ability to electrochemically interact with lithium and found purpurin most amenable to binding lithium ions. With the addition of 20 percent carbon to add conductivity, the team built a half-battery cell with a capacity of 90 milliamp hours per gram after 50 charge/discharge cycles. The cathodes can be made at room temperature, he said.
"It's a new mechanism we are proposing with this paper, and the chemistry is really simple," Reddy said. He suggested agricultural waste may be a source of purpurin, as may other suitable molecules, which makes the process even more economical.
Innovation in the battery space is needed to satisfy future demands and counter environmental issues like waste management, "and hence we are quite fascinated by the ability to develop alternative electrode technologies to replace conventional inorganic materials in lithium-ion batteries," said Ajayan, Rice's Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and of chemistry.
"We're interested in developing value-added chemicals, products and materials from renewable feedstocks as a sustainable technology platform," said co-lead author George John, a professor of chemistry at the City College of New York-CUNY and an expert on bio-based materials and green chemistry. "The point has been to understand the chemistry between lithium ions and the organic molecules. Now that we have that proper understanding, we can tap other molecules and improve capacity."
Recent work by the Ajayan Group combines silicon and a porous nickel current collector in a way that has proven effective as a high-capacity anode, the other electrode in a lithium-ion battery. That research was reported recently in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.
But Reddy hopes to formulate completely green batteries. The team is looking for organic molecules suitable for anodes and for an electrolyte that doesn't break the molecules down. He fully expects to have a working prototype of a complete organic battery within a few years. "What we've come up with should lead to much more discussion in the scientific community about green batteries," he said.
Co-authors of the paper are visiting scholar Porramate Chumyim and former graduate student Sanketh Gowda of Rice; postdoctoral researcher Subbiah Nagarajan, facilities manager Padmanava Pradhan and graduate student Swapnil Jadhav of the City College of New York; and Madan Dubey of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
The research was funded by the Army Research Office.
###
Read the paper at http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121211/srep00960/full/srep00960.html
This news release can be found online at news.rice.edu.
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews
Related Materials:
Three dimensionally engineered porous silicon electrodes for Li ion battery: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl302114j
Purpurin, left, extracted from madder root, center, is chemically lithiated, right, for use as an organic cathode in batteries. The material was developed as a less expensive, easier-to-recycle alternative to cobalt oxide cathodes now used in lithium-ion batteries. (Credit: Ajayan Lab/Rice University)
Scientists at Rice University and City College of New York are making organic elements for lithium-ion batteries from the root of the madder plant, historically used as a red dye. (Credit: Creative Commons/Wikipedia)
Arava Leela Mohana Reddy. (Credit Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Rice cultivates green batteries from plantPublic release date: 11-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Extract of madder plant works as environmentally friendly lithium-ion cathode
HOUSTON (Dec. 11, 2012) Here's a reason to be glad about madder: The climbing plant has the potential to make a greener rechargeable battery.
Scientists at Rice University and the City College of New York have discovered that the madder plant, aka Rubia tinctorum, is a good source of purpurin, an organic dye that can be turned into a highly effective, natural cathode for lithium-ion batteries. The plant has been used since ancient times to create dye for fabrics.
The discovery is the subject of a paper that appears today in Nature's online, open-access journal Scientific Reports.
The goal, according to lead author Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, a research scientist in the Rice lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan, is to create environmentally friendly batteries that solve many of the problems with lithium-ion batteries in use today.
"Green batteries are the need of the hour, yet this topic hasn't really been addressed properly," Reddy said. "This is an area that needs immediate attention and sustained thrust, but you cannot discover sustainable technology overnight. The current focus of the research community is still on conventional batteries, meeting challenges like improving capacity. While those issues are important, so are issues like sustainability and recyclability."
While lithium-ion batteries have become standard in conventional electronics since their commercial introduction in 1991, the rechargeable units remain costly to manufacture, Reddy said. "They're not environmentally friendly. They use cathodes of lithium cobalt oxide, which are very expensive. You have to mine the cobalt metal and manufacture the cathodes in a high-temperature environment. There are a lot of costs.
"And then, recycling is a big issue," he said. "In 2010, almost 10 billion lithium-ion batteries had to be recycled, which uses a lot of energy. Extracting cobalt from the batteries is an expensive process."
Reddy and his colleagues came across purpurin while testing a number of organic molecules for their ability to electrochemically interact with lithium and found purpurin most amenable to binding lithium ions. With the addition of 20 percent carbon to add conductivity, the team built a half-battery cell with a capacity of 90 milliamp hours per gram after 50 charge/discharge cycles. The cathodes can be made at room temperature, he said.
"It's a new mechanism we are proposing with this paper, and the chemistry is really simple," Reddy said. He suggested agricultural waste may be a source of purpurin, as may other suitable molecules, which makes the process even more economical.
Innovation in the battery space is needed to satisfy future demands and counter environmental issues like waste management, "and hence we are quite fascinated by the ability to develop alternative electrode technologies to replace conventional inorganic materials in lithium-ion batteries," said Ajayan, Rice's Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and of chemistry.
"We're interested in developing value-added chemicals, products and materials from renewable feedstocks as a sustainable technology platform," said co-lead author George John, a professor of chemistry at the City College of New York-CUNY and an expert on bio-based materials and green chemistry. "The point has been to understand the chemistry between lithium ions and the organic molecules. Now that we have that proper understanding, we can tap other molecules and improve capacity."
Recent work by the Ajayan Group combines silicon and a porous nickel current collector in a way that has proven effective as a high-capacity anode, the other electrode in a lithium-ion battery. That research was reported recently in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.
But Reddy hopes to formulate completely green batteries. The team is looking for organic molecules suitable for anodes and for an electrolyte that doesn't break the molecules down. He fully expects to have a working prototype of a complete organic battery within a few years. "What we've come up with should lead to much more discussion in the scientific community about green batteries," he said.
Co-authors of the paper are visiting scholar Porramate Chumyim and former graduate student Sanketh Gowda of Rice; postdoctoral researcher Subbiah Nagarajan, facilities manager Padmanava Pradhan and graduate student Swapnil Jadhav of the City College of New York; and Madan Dubey of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
The research was funded by the Army Research Office.
###
Read the paper at http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121211/srep00960/full/srep00960.html
This news release can be found online at news.rice.edu.
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews
Related Materials:
Three dimensionally engineered porous silicon electrodes for Li ion battery: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl302114j
Purpurin, left, extracted from madder root, center, is chemically lithiated, right, for use as an organic cathode in batteries. The material was developed as a less expensive, easier-to-recycle alternative to cobalt oxide cathodes now used in lithium-ion batteries. (Credit: Ajayan Lab/Rice University)
Scientists at Rice University and City College of New York are making organic elements for lithium-ion batteries from the root of the madder plant, historically used as a red dye. (Credit: Creative Commons/Wikipedia)
Arava Leela Mohana Reddy. (Credit Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
A Michigan sixth-grader will put aside her nerves and get her ears pierced on her 12th birthday. Two law-enforcement officials will exchange wedding vows at 12:12 p.m. in Pittsburgh's federal courthouse. And gamblers can take advantage of promotions some casinos are using to lure in patrons who want to test their luck.
With a once-a-century date arriving Wednesday, some people across the United Stated are betting on good fortune for 12-12-12.
In New England, Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut will offer $12 in free slots play to rewards cards members who sink $12 into the slots.
A southwestern Michigan casino is also betting that 12-12-12 is going to be a lucky day for opening its new hotel. A ribbon-cutting is planned for 12:12 p.m. Wednesday for the eight-story, 242-room hotel at FireKeepers Casino near Battle Creek.
Hours later, Anna Gandy, of Battle Creek, Mich., will head to the Lakeview Square Mall after school lets out. She realized last year that she would turn 12 on 12-12-12, her father Bryan Gandy said Tuesday. But between her sports team commitments and nerves, Anna decided to wait until Wednesday to get her ears pierced.
"She's been looking forward to it for a year," he said of the special birthday. "She obviously likes the number 12."
Fans of some of music's biggest names will feel lucky to see them share a stage Wednesday in New York's Madison Square Garden. The charity show for Superstorm Sandy victims has been dubbed the "12-12-12" concert and will include Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Eric Clapton, Billy Joel, Kanye West, Alicia Keys and Bon Jovi.
For Green Bay Packers fans, Wednesday's date also will carry special meaning.
Quarterback Aaron Rodgers wears No. 12, and the Wisconsin state Legislature has designated the day Aaron Rodgers Day in honor of the Super Bowl winner and last year's MVP. Some businesses are encouraging employees to wear Rodgers jerseys and make $12 donations to a charity fund.
According to Vicki MacKinnon, who practices numerology ? the study of the occult significance of numbers ? Wednesday's date represents two energies merging, including masculine and feminine energies.
MacKinnon, of Calgary, Alberta, author of "Please Take a Number: Numerology for Real Life and Everyday Success," said Tuesday that those kinds of energy are good news for couples planning to marry on 12-12-12.
Among them are Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Johnson and Deputy U.S. Marshal Brian Allen. A federal judge in Pittsburgh will marry the couple at 12:12 p.m. as they exchange 12-word vows.
Johnson, 34, said the couple had been planning a small ceremony until word leaked out of their numerically unusual plans.
"A lot of people started thinking it was interesting and intriguing that we chose this day. Prior to that it was going to be a very small venture, but it's kind of spiraled into something," Johnson said.
Officials at the Milwaukee County Courthouse also expect the hallways to be bustling with brides and grooms. At least 27 couples are getting hitched on the 12th day of the 12th month of 2012, compared with about six on a typical Wednesday.
In Las Vegas, MGM Resorts spokeswoman Yvette Monet says most of the six casino wedding chapels the company has along the strip are close to fully booked for Wednesday.
But weddings aside, MacKinnon, said her reading of the date shows good fortune can come to anyone who demonstrates good intentions in whatever they do on 12-12-12.
"I just believe that as long as we conduct our lives with the highest intentions for ourselves and others, we can make very good use of the energy tomorrow for manifestation of what we want to bring into our lives."
___
Murphy reported from Boston. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Joe Mandak in Pittsburgh, Dinesh Ramde and Gretchen Ehlke in Milwaukee, David Runk in Detroit, and Hannah Dreier in Las Vegas.
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Public release date: 11-Dec-2012
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