Bud-dhists?

Nitrogen pollution is giving carnivorous plants on Swedish bogs so many nutrients that they don’t need to catch as many flies, new research by Loughborough University shows.

The common sundew Drosera rotundifolia grows in rain-fed bogs across much of northern Europe.  These habitats have few nutrients, so the plant needs to boost its nitrogen intake by trapping midges and other insects with its sticky leaves.

But human activities involving burning fossil fuels for transport and industry have greatly increased levels of nitrogen deposited by rainfall over these bogs, disturbing the specialised ecosystems that have grown up there.

A study published in New Phytologist shows that this artificial rain of fertiliser is now making carnivorous plants lose interest in insect prey.  Plants in lightly-polluted areas got 57 per cent of their nitrogen from insects; in areas that receive more nitrogen deposition, that figure fell as low as 22 per cent.

Study here.

[via Gizmodo]

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Wired:

An annular solar eclipse will be visible May 20 from eastern Asia, the Pacific Ocean, and much of the North American West Coast.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, casting a shadow that blocks out the sun’s light. But in an annular eclipse, the moon is too far from the Earth and the sun’s light isn’t completely blocked. Instead, a thin ring of glowing fire will be visible around the black circle that is the moon’s shadow.

Times:

If you are planning to see the skyward event yourself, it will begin shortly after 3 pm PDT over southern China, quickly sweeping across Japan. Just before 5 p.m. PDT the eclipse will reach its point of greatest occultation over the central Pacific. By 6:30 PDT it will be visible from Northern California and Nevada, eventually reaching as far as Texas.

Live video by Ustream

More views to choose from at the link.

Goosebump time:

Cathy Hutchinson imagined picking up her coffee from the table. She thought about bringing the red bottle toward her lips and taking a drink, without any assistance. Then, for the first time since a stroke left her arms and legs paralyzed 15 years earlier, she did it.

This is a really good video about the technology from Nature. Check it out:

Hmm. I sense an Entmoot in the near future:

Researchers led by MIT professor Daniel Nocera have produced something they’re calling an “artificial leaf”: Like living leaves, the device can turn the energy of sunlight directly into a chemical fuel that can be stored and used later as an energy source.

The artificial leaf — a silicon solar cell with different catalytic materials bonded onto its two sides — needs no external wires or control circuits to operate. Simply placed in a container of water and exposed to sunlight, it quickly begins to generate streams of bubbles: oxygen bubbles from one side and hydrogen bubbles from the other. If placed in a container that has a barrier to separate the two sides, the two streams of bubbles can be collected and stored, and used later to deliver power: for example, by feeding them into a fuel cell that combines them once again into water while delivering an electric current.

That is pretty darn amazing.

Video:

So maybe someday the Nissan Leaf will be powered by a…leaf?

Graphic from here.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, has an announcement out right now:

March 28, 2012

The F-1 rocket engine is still a modern wonder — one and a half million pounds of thrust, 32 million horsepower, and burning 6,000 pounds of rocket grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second. On July 16, 1969, the world watched as five particular F-1 engines fired in concert, beginning the historic Apollo 11 mission. Those five F-1s burned for just a few minutes, and then plunged back to Earth into the Atlantic Ocean, just as NASA planned. A few days later, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.

Photo credit: NASA
Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration. A year or so ago, I started to wonder, with the right team of undersea pros, could we find and potentially recover the F-1 engines that started mankind’s mission to the moon?

I’m excited to report that, using state-of-the-art deep sea sonar, the team has found the Apollo 11 engines lying 14,000 feet below the surface, and we’re making plans to attempt to raise one or more of them from the ocean floor. We don’t know yet what condition these engines might be in – they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years. On the other hand, they’re made of tough stuff, so we’ll see.

Perty cool.

More at The Atlantic.

* This post has been edited to correct a truly boneheaded typo in the title. Sigh.