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Friday, December 19, 2003
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 Johnjoe McFadden writes: What prompted Good King Wenceslas to look out on that feast of Stephen? And why should he have cared that the poor man was gathering winter fuel? Modern evolutionary theory agrees with market economics that we are inherently selfish and unlikely to give if we don't expect to receive. But new research challenges that model. The origin of altruism goes to the heart of the gene/culture debate that was launched in 1975 with the publication of EO Wilson's Sociobiology and, a year later, Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene. Sociobiology claims that human nature - and by extension human society - is rooted in our genes: we are, according to Dawkins, "lumbering robots" created "body and mind" by selfish genes. This is anathema to social scientists and biologists such as Steven Rose, who see human nature as far more malleable. Altruism is not confined to humans, but when animals give presents it is nearly always to close kin. The mathematical biologist JBS Haldane is credited with discovering the mechanism known as kin selection, when he declared that he would lay down his life for two brothers or eight cousins. Haldane's familial benevolence was based on the fact that two of his brothers or eight of his cousins would carry just about all his genes. So helping your relatives ensures that your (shared) genes live on. Kin selection may account for pack behavior, but it fails to account for human benevolence, which is often extended well beyond the family. It is not only Blanche DuBois who can depend on the kindness of strangers. Codes of hospitality are a common feature of human societies - from the desert-dwelling Bedouin to the Arctic Inuit. To explain non-kin-directed altruism, an assortment of gene-based mechanisms has been proposed, ranging from reciprocal altruism (you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours) to signaling theory (conspicuous kindness to attract mates). But none can fully explain human generosity. What did Good King W hope to gain from bringing flesh and wine when the frost was so cruel outside? He could hardly have expected the poor man to reciprocate. And tramping about in all that crisp and even snow was unlikely to improve his mating options. Kindness and cooperation underpin much of human society. From the Kyoto agreement to arms controls or the state of public toilets, they all depend on individual willingness to commit resources to a common good. But no one has come up with a satisfactory evolutionary explanation of why we do it. (12/19/03)
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 What do you mean by the term "biomimicry"? Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a new science that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example. I think of it as "innovation inspired by nature." The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth. This is the real news of biomimicry: After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival. Like the viceroy butterfly imitating the monarch, we humans are imitating the best and brightest organisms in our habitat. We are learning, for instance, how to harness energy like a leaf, grow food like a prairie, build ceramics like an abalone, self-medicate like a chimp, compute like a cell, and run a business like a hickory forest. The conscious emulation of life's genius is a survival strategy for the human race, a path to a sustainable future. The more our world looks and functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone. Can you give us an example of the kinds of problems we can solve through biomimicry? Biomimics are looking to nature for specific advice: How will we grow our food? How will we harness energy? How will we make our materials? How will we keep ourselves healthy? How will we store what we learn? How will we conduct business without drawing down nature's capital? Let's take a look at one of these categories: materials. Right now, we use what's called "heat, beat, and treat" to make materials. Kevlar, for instance, the stuff in flak jackets, is our premier, high-tech material. Nothing stronger or tougher. But how do we make it? We pour petroleum-derived molecules into a pressurized vat of concentrated sulfuric acid, and boil it at several hundred degrees Fahrenheit. We then subject it to high pressures to force the fibers into alignment as we draw them out. The energy input is extreme and the toxic byproducts are odious. Nature takes a different approach. Because an organism makes materials like bone or collagen or silk right in its own body, it doesn't make sense to "heat, beat, and treat." A spider, for instance, produces a waterproof silk that beats the pants off Kevlar for toughness and elasticity. Ounce for ounce, it's five times stronger than steel! But the spider manufactures it in water, at room temperature, using no high heats, chemicals, or pressures. Best of all, it doesn't need to drill offshore for petroleum; it takes flies and crickets at one end and produces this miracle material at the other. In a pinch, the spider can even eat part of its old web to make a new one. Imagine what this kind of a processing strategy would do for our fiber industry! Renewable raw materials, great fibers, and negligible energy and waste. We obviously have a lot to learn from an organism that has been making silk for some 380 million years. The truth is, organisms have managed to do everything we want to do, without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting the planet, or mortgaging their future. What better models could there be? (12/19/03)
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 BBC Environment -- As much as 10 tonnes of African bushmeat may be reaching London every day, according to a British film on the trade. It says the extent of the killing has already left some countries with few animals to poach. The effort to save the great apes, it says, now stands at one second to midnight. ... The rate at which Africa is devouring its wildlife is entirely unsustainable, Cameroon's Environment Minister says. He is demanding international action to control the trade, which produces as much as five million tonnes of bushmeat from the Congo basin alone every year. The trade threatens the survival of several already endangered species, including elephants and great apes. The minister, Chief Clarkson Oben Tanyi-Mbianyor, is visiting London to address a Bushmeat Campaign conference. The campaign says Mr Tanyi's call for international cooperation is the first time any African leader has made such a proposal. The aim of the conference is to secure agreement on how to tackle the unsustainable bushmeat trade, in which London plays a prominent part. ... Mr Tanyi told BBC News Online: "I am calling on our partners to try to help our efforts in fighting the bushmeat trade. What we are saying is that we cannot go on selling bushmeat, because people believe in looking after the environment. It's not local consumption that's the problem, but the wider trade, taking the meat into the towns and out of the country. So we're calling on our partners to fight the trade by helping us to recruit and train eco-guards, and by providing local people with alternative ways of earning a living that will keep them out of the forest." (12/19/03)
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 BBC Technology -- Scientists involved in the next step to harness nuclear fusion - the power of the Sun - are meeting to decide where to put the $5bn fusion reactor. It will take a decade to build the fusion machine which releases energy in a similar way to the Sun's furnaces. Scientists say the new reactor will be the first such prototype to give out a lot more power than it consumes. Two venues are in contention, Cadarache in southern France and front-runner Rokkasho-mura in Japan. Competition between the two sites has been intense. The winner is expected to be announced on today or tomorrow at a meeting in Washington, DC. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter) is the boldest nuclear initiative since the Manhattan Project - the effort to build the first atom bomb. In a conventional nuclear power station the splitting atoms inside radioactive material take place in a controlled chain reaction whose by-product is heat, which is used to generate electricity. Nuclear fusion takes a different approach, seeking to emulate the Sun. Two atoms of deuterium - a heavy form of hydrogen - are forced together under extremely high temperatures - tens of millions of degrees. When they fuse they release fast neutrons which can be used to heat a thermal blanket which in turn is used to generate electricity. Advocates of fusion power point out there is an almost limitless supply of deuterium available as it can be derived from seawater. ... Scientists say that Iter will be the first fusion device to produce thermal energy at the level of an electricity-producing power station. Its goal will be to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for 500 seconds or longer during each individual fusion experiment and in doing so demonstrate essential technologies for a commercial reactor. But they are all agreed that taming the power of the Sun will not be easy. The superhot gas in which the fusion takes place is notoriously difficult to control. The gas, termed a plasma, has to be kept hot and contained for fusion to take place. So far no one has achieved a prolonged self-sustaining fusion event. (12/19/03)
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 BBC Environment -- EU fishing ministers have reached agreement on further drastic cuts to avoid the collapse of cod stocks. The deal on fishing quotas came after all-night talks in Brussels aimed at saving threatened species. The compromise plan was hailed by UK Fisheries Minister Ben Bradshaw who said it was a good deal for Britain. The 15 EU nations reached a unanimous decision on the long-term recovery plan, but 2004 catch quotas were agreed despite some opposition. The ministers had been struggling to find agreement on the long-term plan to stave off disaster for dwindling stocks of several fish species, especially cod. ... The new quotas include a near doubling of the amount of haddock that fishermen are allowed to catch, while cod and hake catches are frozen at last year's level. ... The deal falls short of the total fishing ban recommended for affected areas by scientists, but environmental groups hope they could be a first step in reversing decades of overfishing in European waters. Scientists say cod stocks in the North Sea have fallen to one-tenth of their 1970 levels. (12/19/03)
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 BBC Environment -- A familiar feature of Christmas in many British families, the Brazil nut, faces a threat from too-intensive harvesting. A report in the journal Science says populations of trees picked heavily over many years produce very few young trees, threatening the species' future. The authors say it may be necessary to control the numbers of animals which rely on the nuts, including the agouti. But they say people should not stop eating Brazil nuts, because the trade helps to protect the Amazon rainforest. Brazil nuts, strictly, are not nuts at all, but seeds, up to 25 of which are packed tightly inside a hard woody fruit the size of a large grapefruit. They are the only seed crop traded internationally which have to be collected from the wild. Attempts to grow Brazils in artificial plantations have failed, because the trees produce fruit only in the forest. They can reach 50 metres (164 feet) in height and 16.5 m (54 ft) in circumference at breast height. The authors of the Science report studied 23 Brazil nut tree populations in Amazonia, in Brazil, Bolivia and Peru. They found populations extensively harvested over some decades were dominated by older trees, with very few younger trees in evidence, suggesting the normal regeneration cycle had been disrupted. When they ran computer models to predict population trends for the next two centuries, the patterns they found were "highly consistent" with their observations. The report's main author is Dr Carlos Peres, a tropical conservation biologist in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, UK. He says: "The clear message is that current Brazil nut harvesting practices at many Amazonian forest sites are not sustainable in the long term." (12/19/03)
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6:59:41 AM 
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Timothy Wilken.
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