The lunar surface: The Sea of Rains (lower plain) and Sea of Cold (upper plain) on the Moon's surface. Early astronomers may not have been completely wrong thinking the Moon's mare were oceans of water.
Courtesy NASAThree separate sources have confirmed finding water on our Moon, according to a report in the journal Science. Although the Moon is still much dryer than any desert on Earth, the possibility of extracting water from the lunar surface could provide astronauts with a source of drinking water and fuel.
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Nano housing
Courtesy chappie
First a $2000 car, next $7,800 housing
TATA, the manufacturing company that is selling the world's cheapest car, is now planning to provide thousands of affordable housing units for people living in India. While not affordable to India's poor or even lower middle class, these apartment units are within reach by India's middle class who make between six and ten thousand dollars a year.
Only 218 sq. ft.
The living units are tiny but built within living communities that include its own garden, post office, meeting hall, schools, and hospital. The smallest units will be 218 square feet. The largest units would be about 373 square feet. Click this link to see floor plans.
An integrated township ecosystem
TATA Housing Development Company Ltd. is engineering a community and neighborhood concept with its first development near Mumbai named Shubh Griha. Their website proudly lists components included within Shubh Griha complex:
- Community spaces for socio-religious gatherings
- Rain Water Harvesting
- Balanced mix of buildings and open spaces – best quality lighting & ventilation for all apartments
- Large vegetated area to ensure fresh environment for living
- Vermiculture – to make eco-friendly natural fertilizer
- Neighborhood Retail spaces, specified Hawkers zones
- Recreational facilities
Click this link for more news about TATA's housing
Source: Business Week
Tata Nano: solution or pollution?
Just like Ford's Model-T, Tata motor's Nano will make owning an automobile possible for several hundred million families. Use this link to Wired Magazine to learn more about India's 50-MPG Tata Nano.
Test driving the Tata Nano
Huge demand the $2000 Tata Nano
Demand for the Tata Nano is so high the company is using a lottery system to select the first 100,000 lucky owners.
At the moment, the Nano will be offered only overseas, but the company insists a version could be headed to North America in three years. Wired
Will the Tata Nano lead to $5 gas?
If hundreds of millions of poor families can now afford to drive a car, won't that demand raise the price of gas? Millions of new automobile users will surely emit additional carbon dioxide into the world's atmosphere.
The Nano supposedly emits 30 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer, well below the 160 g/km average of Europe's cars and far less than the 130 g/km standard the European Union will adopt in 2012. Wired (click link to learn more)
What impact will the Nano car have?
Antibiotics
Courtesy billadayWhen we think of water quality, we generally assume that all is well in the United States. Sure, we have trace amounts of undesirable stuff here and there. But overall, you tend to be ok.
What about the rest of the world?
Well, recently Joakim Larsson, an environmental scientist from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, found that there is a particular area in India where you may want to think twice about drinking the water, or even bathing in it.
And why is this?
The water leaving the wastewater treatment facility wins the prize of having the highest known levels of pharmaceuticals in the world. As it turns out, almost 100 Indian drug companies dump their various drug residues into this particular stream. For example, ciproflozacin , an antibiotic, is dumped in this stream with high enough concentrations to treat 90,000 people a day.
But wait, aren't antibiotics good for you?
When you actually need them, yes, antibiotics are useful. However, if these antibiotics and floating around willy nilly, running into bacteria here and there in the environment, they are actually allowing the bacteria to become more antibiotic resistant with these casual encounters. As if making stronger bacteria were not enough, these various drugs are also damaging the reproductive systems of fish and amphibians in the water.
Where do we figure into this mess?
Although this is not water in the United States, we are involved in two ways. First, all water resources in the world are connected. There is no "our" water and "their" water. It is water that we all share. Secondly, many of the drugs made by these Indian companies are sold in the United States.
And so we are left with a question asked by Joakim Larsson, "Who has a responsibility for a polluted environment when the Third World produces drugs for our well being?"
India has landed an unmanned probe on the Moon. It's the first probe to land on the Moon since 1976, and is expected to explore the lunar surface for two years.
A goral goat: Nice trick, goat, but we saw through it. Feeling a little sheepish now, huh?
Courtesy OpencageDo y’all remember that exhilarating and frightening moment in late July when some fresh “Yeti” hair was found? Oh, come on—you remember. Think back. You probably had some bowel spasms. I posted about it.
If you’re not into checking out links, the basic story was this: a man in a heavily forested region of northeast India had collected some strange hairs from an area where there had been several sightings in the last few days of a large, Bigfoot-like creature. The hairs couldn’t immediately be identified, but they looked a little like the “yeti hair” collected by Sir Edmund Hilary on his famous yeti hunt (I’m using quotation marks there because the “yeti” hair came from a “deer” and Hilary probably knew it). So the hairs were sent to a lab for DNA testing.
And the results are in.
It was a goat. Not a huge, hairy man-beast. Not a jovial, crook-legged goat-boy. A Himalayan Gray Goral (goat).
This might be a disappointment for the Bigfoot enthusiasts of India’s Garo Hills region (although they insist that the creature is still out there, even if it isn’t leaving its own hair around), but, in its own way, it’s an interesting discovery. The goral was never thought to roam that far south in India—it was believed to only live in the Himalayas, at elevations above 1,000 meters.
So, while we haven’t uncovered indisputable genetic evidence of a South Asian ape-man, our time on the cryptocouch hasn’t been a total waste—we’ve come out with a more practical (if less spectacular) discovery about a mundane animal.
Elephant junkie: Beats heroin addiction after three years of rehab
In search of poppy plants: How much heroin does it take to get an elephant high, anyway?
Courtesy KjrajeshSo you think you have a bad job? How would you like to run a drug rehab unit for elephants? Here's the story of how an elephant addicted to heroin has gone clean after three years of rehab. That's a lot of methadone to be shooting into some pretty tough skin.
Then let them eat rat!
in Life Science, Interdependence of Life, Flow of Matter and Energy, and Human Organism
"He wouldn't make a mouthful": said William, who had already had a fine supper, "not when he was skinned and boned."
Courtesy Radha BlossomHey, everybody! Remember yesterday?
I sure don’t. The last thing I remember is TGIF programming, and feeling really angry about something (it wasn’t the TV I was upset with, that much I know), and the next thing I’m aware of is waking up under the sink…in the yard! It was my yard, but not my sink. Weird.
Anyway, the last week is a little blurry, to say the least. What happened in this week? I only have a few clues to go on: new tattoos (did I get my own name tattooed on me, or the name of someone else called JGordon?), a new t-shirt (it smells like burned hair, and it says “Try me, Lincoln!”), and some Science Buzz blog entries.
Bloody noses? Bigfoot? I thought this was supposed to be a science blog! I was clearly out of my gourd—there’s not a test tube or a lab coat to be seen in those posts.
And then there’s the kangaroo meat post. I might have been on to something there: it’s about the environment, and animals, and Paul Hogan. Whatever was going on in my head, I seem to have momentarily surfaced near enough to lucidity to string several paragraphs of real words together. Words about eating animals and environmental impact. And stuff.
Wherever I was (geographically) yesterday, I like where I was going (mentally), and I have decided to pursue that train of thought.
The word, then, is “patal-bageri.” I mean “words.” Words.
The Indian state of Bihar, unwilling to be out-crazied by Australia, may be pursuing a new meat industry of its own: rat, or “patal-bageri.”
Like the Aussies, the welfare ministry of this state is hoping to kill two birds with one stone (except one of the birds will actually be a rat, and they probably won’t use a stone—maybe a hammer instead). Hunting rats would reduce the amount of grain lost to the rodents (naturally) as well as provide a cheap and plentiful supply of meat. Rat meat.
The minister of welfare has pointed out that the Musahar caste, of which there are 2.4 million members, have traditionally eaten rats for a very long time (“Musahar” roughly translates to “rat eaters” in Hindi), hunting them in their rice fields. If the Musuhars—one of the poorest castes in the country—can eat rats, says the minister, why can’t everybody else?
Someone got to this rat already!: Nuts.
Courtesy erik langnerThe ministry plans to set up rat meat stalls in rural fairs, to give people a taste of the protein-rich meat, and hopes to eventually have “rat meat centers” in urban areas. The Musahars could be engaged to start rat farms, hopefully empowering them socially and economically (I have a feeling, though, that some people might still look down on rat farmers).
The eating of rats obviously has kind of a stigma to it, but it’s certainly not unheard of—in cultures that don’t specifically forbid eating them (Islam and Judaism, for instance, have strict taboos against consuming rat meat), rats may be eaten as a crisis food, or regularly with other bush meats. Cane rats make up fully half of the locally produced meat in Ghana (check out this picture of a soon to be delicious cane rat).
I might eat rat meat, but it’s good that I don’t have to eat rat meat (it’s nice to have control over that decision). Should anyone be unable to wait for the patal-bageri industry to arrive on American shores, however, here are some recipes for rats (and mice):
The friendly gift shop Bigfoot: Know it. Know it well.
Courtesy quaziefotoBigfoot and his kin are everywhere these days—in the last couple months I’ve written about Australia’s bipedal cryptid, the Yowie, Borneo’s giant, questionable footprints, and the original abominable snowman, Nepal’s Yeti. But we’re not done yet.
I mean, what if you were at a party, and an attractive member of the opposite (or the same) sex started chatting you up about huge, hairy forest creatures?
Thanks to me, you’d be all: “Oh, you mean Yowie, Yeti, Bigfoot? C’mere, thing, and let’s talk.”
And he or she would be all: “Mmm, hmm. But what about the mande barung?”
And you’d be all: “¿Que?”
And that’d be it; sweet thing would be off to find a one-night-stand who’s a little better versed in cryptids of the subcontinent. Another night watching Stargate by yourself. The cryptocouch should never be a lonely place.
Well don’t sweat it. I’m here to help, and so is the BBC, with Tuesday’s hard-hitting piece on the mande barung, India’s own giant apeman.
As usual, the English say it best, so you might as well read the original piece, and check out the video there while you’re at it, but here are the basics:
Mande barung: approximately 10 feet tall, long black and grey fur, herbivorous, makes its home in the West Garo hills of north-eastern India.
The Garo hills are an area of dense, hot, hot jungle, leading some to wonder why a hairy man-beast would want to hang out there, but many locals are convinced of its existence, and sightings are frequently reported by folks who spend much time in the forest. There’s also some thought that the mande barung stories are played up a little bit to give tourists a reason to check out that hot, sticky corner of India. But we’ll pay no mind to that—anything for the pursuit of knowledge.
Because you’ll be all: Hairy biped of the West Garu hills? What do you want to know?
And they’ll be all: Show me.
Whatever that means.
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Science Buzz is supported by the National Science Foundation.Copyright © Science Museum of Minnesota, 2004-2010, except where noted.
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