Despite all the hot air, the world’s leaders have failed to cobble together any meaningful climate deal as negotiations broke down at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen earlier this month. If binding emission targets cannot be agreed in the coming year then governments may look increasingly to a “third way” – engineering the climate such as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In September, the UK’s Royal Society published a report that looks at different geoengineering options, including constructing giant sunshades in space that can reflect the Sun’s rays and introducing iron into the world’s oceans to rapidly increase the amount of phytoplankton that consume carbon dioxide. 2009 in pictures – physicsworld.com

Despite all the hot air, the world’s leaders have failed to cobble together any meaningful climate deal as negotiations broke down at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen earlier this month. If binding emission targets cannot be agreed in the coming year then governments may look increasingly to a “third way” – engineering the climate such as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In September, the UK’s Royal Society published a report that looks at different geoengineering options, including constructing giant sunshades in space that can reflect the Sun’s rays and introducing iron into the world’s oceans to rapidly increase the amount of phytoplankton that consume carbon dioxide.

http://www.springer.com/physics/mechanics/book/978-3-642-03084-0?detailsPage=toc

Advances in Turbulence XII

Proceedings of the 12th EUROMECH European Turbulence Conference, September 7-10, 2009, Marburg, Germany
Series: Springer Proceedings in Physics , Vol. 132

2010, XXVII, 913 p. 900 illus., Hardcover

Acquiring 3D Flying Trajectories of Large Numbers of Fruit Flies

from http://www.harrywoo.com/homepage/main.htm

Quote Details: Thomas H. Huxley: The great tragedy of… – The Quotations Page

The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Thomas H. Huxley
English biologist (1825 – 1895)

http://news.cnet.com/1606-2_3-50081131.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Video: Deep-sea volcanic explosion–part 2 (video)

Technology Review: Artificial Red Blood Cells for Drug Delivery

Scientists from University of California, Santa barbara created like-a-blood-cell particles. Use the link above to get more info.

Volumetric Velocimetry World Premiere at the PIV ‘09 Conference

Eventually the commercial vendors – ALL: Dantec, TSI and Lavision, realized that Particle Tracking Velocimetry is the real future.

from Dantec

from: Lavision

and TSI’s V3V:
http://www.efluids.com/efluids/pages/TSI_Application_Notes/AppNote_V3V-004_Propeller-Wake-5001128B.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/05/butterflies-in-space-stat_n_380690.html

Butterflies in Space,Painted lady, Flight, Wide Angle, 12-2-09, BioServe

Fish inspire wind farm configuration – physicsworld.com

Now, Robert Whittlesey and John Dabiri of the California Institute of Technology have worked out how best to arrange such closely spaced turbines by drawing on the work of aeronautical engineer Daniel Weihs, who showed in the 1970s how fish save on energy by swimming within schools. Such fish form a series of offset rows, and Weihs found that fish get carried forward by the vortices created by the swimming motion of their two closest companions in the row immediately in front of them. Whittlesey and Dabiri wondered whether the relative spacing of vortices produced by an individual fish might serve as a good template for the arrangement of vertical-axis turbines within a wind farm and set up a computer model to test this idea.

Read the full story …

Just happy to say that we have a great opportunity to work with Daniel Weihs on bird’s aerodynamics project. The work focuses on aerodynamics of an osprey

From Picasa Photo Albums of Abram Fleishman (All rights reserved)

Nanoparticles sink or swim in sewage – physicsworld.com

Scientists in the UK have used neutron scattering studies to develop a new way of separating silica nanoparticles from wastewater — which could prevent millions of tonnes of nanoparticles entering waterways every year.

Just a few tens of nanometres in diameter, such spheres of silica are being used in an increasing number of consumer products including cosmetics, medicines, cleaners and even food. As a result, sewage treatment plants have become a major gateway for nanoparticles entering the environment as treated effluent, sludge or both. Although there is no evidence that such nanoparticles pose an environmental threat, their ultimate fate is a mystery, because monitoring their presence in sewage has so far been impossible.

Now, scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) and the ISIS neutron source have overcome this obstacle using small angle neutron scattering (SANS) — a technique that has been used to study a wide range of nanometre-sized structures. SANS involves firing a beam of low–energy neutrons through a sample and measuring the intensity of neutrons at small deviations from the transmitted beam.

Read more …