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Wednesday, October 08, 2003
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 I am revisiting some of the writings of R. Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was truly a man ahead of his time. His lifelong goal was the development of what he called “Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science”–the attempt to anticipate and solve humanity’s major problems through the highest technology by providing “more and more life support for everybody, with less and less resources.” Fuller was a practical philosopher who demonstrated his ideas as inventions that he called “artifacts.” Some were built as prototypes; others exist only on paper; all he felt were technically viable. He was a dogged individualist whose genius was felt throughout the world for nearly half a century. Even Albert Einstein was prompted to say to him, “Young man, you amaze me!” In 1927, at the age of 32, Buckminster Fuller stood on the shores of Lake Michigan, prepared to throw himself into the freezing waters. His first child had died. He was bankrupt, discredited and jobless, and he had a wife and new-born daughter. On the verge of suicide, it suddenly struck him that his life belonged, not to himself, but to the universe. He chose at that moment to embark on what he called “an experiment to discover what the little, penniless, unknown individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity.” Over the next fifty-four years, he proved, time and again, that his most controversial ideas were practical and workable. During the course of his remarkable experiment he: •was awarded 25 U.S. patents, •authored 28 books, •received 47 honorary doctorates in the arts, science, engineering and the humanities, •received dozens of major architectural and design awards including, among many others, the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects and the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, •created work which found itself into the permanent collections of museums around the world, •circled the globe 57 times, reaching millions through his public lectures and interviews. Buckminster Fuller is best known for the invention of the geodesic dome–the lightest, strongest, and most cost-effective structure ever devised. (10/08/03)
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 CNN World -- The world's oil reserves are up to 80 percent less than predicted, a team from Sweden's University of Uppsala says. Production levels will peak in about 10 years' time, they say. "Non-fossil fuels must come in much stronger than it had been hoped," Professor Kjell Alekett told CNN. Oil production levels will hit their maximum soon after 2010 with gas supplies peaking not long afterwards, the Swedish geologists say. At that point prices for petrol and other fuels will reach disastrous levels. Earlier studies have predicted oil supplies will not start falling until 2050. Alekett said that his team had examined data on oil and gas reserves from all over the world and we were "facing a very critical situation globally. The thing we are surprised of is that people in general are not aware of the decline in supplies and the extent to which it will affect production. The decline of oil and gas will affect the world population more than climate change." ... The conclusions of the Uppsala team were revealed in the magazine New Scientist Thursday. (10/08/03)
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 The New Scientist -- The controlled burning of vast swathes of bushland in northern Australia every year is damaging biodiversity, not protecting it, according to the results of an eight-year experiment. Between 30 and 40 million hectares of bush are burned annually in the Northern Territory. About half of this area is torched maliciously or by accident, but the other half is burnt intentionally by fire managers. These fires are usually set early in the dry season, when the landscape is still relatively damp. The idea is that these low-intensity fires will reduce the extent of fast-burning, high intensity wildfires later in the season. High intensity wildfires were thought to be more devastating to populations of plants and animals. "But we found that for many species it doesn't really matter how intense the fire is - but how frequent it is," says Alan Anderson at CSIRO, Australia's national research organisation. "This was a surprise." Anderson's team surveyed biodiversity on land and in water across 250 square kilometres of bushland in the Kakadu National Park. They found that numbers of a range of small animals, such as forest birds, bandicoots and possums, dropped severely in land that was burnt annually - whether at a high or low intensity. These animals required three to five years of no burning for their populations to plateau at high densities. "They will persist in the landscape during frequent burning, but only at very low population densities. This means they're susceptible to local extinctions if things go wrong," Anderson says. (10/08/03)
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 The New Scientist -- A male contraceptive treatment has achieved a 100 per cent success rate in trials involving 55 couples, Australian scientists have reported. The treatment was fully reversible and the men suffered no undesirable side-effects. The research was led by David Handelsman, director of the ANZAC Research Institute in Sydney, and involved treating 55 men in heterosexual relationships for year-long periods. None of the men's partners became pregnant during the trial, but when the treatment was stopped, normal fertility returned within a few months and some of the couples went on to conceive. Handelsman believes it is "the first time a male contraceptive that suppresses sperm production reliably and reversibly has been fully tested by couples". Other experts described the work as a "very significant step forward". The combination treatment involves three-monthly injections of progestin - a synthetic version of the female sex hormone progesterone, used in the female contraceptive pill - and an implant of the male sex hormone testosterone renewed every four months. The scientists hope that pharmaceutical companies will be able to develop the research into a useable drug, first combining the two hormones into a single injection and even one day, a pill. ... But Anna Glasier, at Edinburgh University's Centre for Reproductive Biology, says it remains to be seen how acceptable couples find such treatment. She and her colleagues carried out an international survey of men and women's attitudes to male contraception. "We found that the majority of men would prefer a pill [rather than injection or implant], but testosterone cannot currently be made in this form. So, I am not sure how successful the Australian treatment would be." (10/08/03)
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 BBC Science -- A new era in the accuracy of climate prediction has come closer with the presentation of the first results from the largest supercomputer in the world. The Earth Simulator, housed in Japan, has produced what scientists are calling "very exciting" information. It is being presented at a three-day climate workshop in Cambridge, UK. The computer's results hold out the prospect of better predictions of the likelihood of increasing hurricanes, prolonged heavy rain, and heatwaves. The Earth Simulator, which began work in March 2002, is the world's biggest and fastest supercomputer, and has the job of solving some of the thorniest problems facing the Earth in the decades ahead. It is ten times more powerful than anything available at the moment to scientists in the UK. The simulator consists of 640 nodes (the equivalent of individual computers) linked together by 83,000 high-speed cables: the building which houses it has a floor space the size of four tennis courts. Professor Julia Slingo, director of the NCAS Centre for Global Atmospheric Modelling, said: "These results are very exciting. They show that, for the first time, our climate models can be run at resolutions capable of capturing severe weather events such as intense depressions, hurricanes and major rainstorms. This means that we potentially have the capability to predict whether storms like Hurricane Isabel will be on the increase in future. Importantly for the UK, we will be able to predict with more confidence increases in damaging storms and extremes of temperature, and what their regional impacts will be." (10/08/03)
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 BBC Science -- The world must act far more urgently to save thousands of threatened wild plants, three British botanists say. They say part of the answer is seed banks, which can be richer in higher plants than any location on Earth. The cost would be a tiny fraction of the amount spent on particle physics, and would pay huge dividends, they say. Even seeds from rainforest plants and trees can be saved in banks, some of them for centuries, provided the conditions are carefully controlled. The argument for seed banks is made in Biologist, the journal of the Institute of Biology, by three scientists from the UK's Royal Botanic Gardens, housed at Kew Gardens in west London. The three, Simon Linington, Clare Tenner and Roger Smith, are all involved in the development of the Millennium Seed Bank Project at Wakehurst Place, Kew's country garden in southern England. They say many seeds probably have the potential to stay viable for two centuries, so seed banks can be significant in conserving genetic wealth for future generations. The need for conservation is stark. At least 34,000 plant species are globally threatened, the authors say, and they cite a 2002 estimate by the eminent US scientist E O Wilson, who said as many as 50% of plant and animal species could be on the brink of extinction by 2100. (10/08/03)
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7:11:49 AM 
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
11/3/2003; 6:43:14 AM.
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