Week Ten Course Update

Some Things That Captured Our Attention

The Iron Law of Climate: If it comes to living standards vs. the planet, the planet does not win. Ever. “Brazilian authorities say they addressed housing shortage for climate talks, defend oil drilling”

Should We (Have) Stockpiled Rare Earths? “This is a very big deal. China has asserted sweeping control over the entire global semiconductor supply chain, putting export license requirements on all rare earths used to manufacture advanced chips. If enforced aggressively, this policy could mean "lights out" for the USA!” A Different Take on Rare Earths

Sonic Boom! Can we reduce some climate change for the equivalent cost of $1 per ton?

“Overall, I argue that interwoven empirical findings across outcomes are aligning to paint an increasingly coherent picture of a future global economy impacted by climate change. Taking the literature as a whole, the global consequences of unmitigated climate change are likely to be substantial, unequal, negative in net economic value and potentially destabilizing.” over two decades, less than Of 1,500 climate policies adopted in 41 countries5% have resulted in any reduction of emissions.

Bad Bezos! “A $1.8 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund will help the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics develop acoustic sensors and artificial intelligence analytics to identify real-time threats to forests from illegal activities and provide insights into ecosystem health.”

Birding Culture:

Historic Hedonics:“Property values increase 9–12 % after National Register listing but substantially decline after local district designation. New National Register districts see increased sales volume, new construction and subdivision, and construction financing.”

Seneca Lake’s Burping Booms? “The native Seneca people attributed the sounds to a deity furious with a warrior who violated sacred hunting grounds. American folklore spun a different tale: The booms were the drumbeat of a ghost of a Revolutionary War soldier in search of his regiment.” U of R’s own Professor Andreatta reports on the mysteries in the NY Times. ““They were a surprise to everyone,” Mr. Morin said. “But if these craters, or what we call pockmarks, are formed like we think, methane or other geologic gases are penetrating the ground surface and bursting like a big pimple.”

Dematerialization, 3D Aluminum Alloy Edition: “MIT engineers have developed a printable aluminum alloy that can withstand high temperatures and is five times stronger than traditionally manufactured aluminum.

Farmers Love to Hate “Moneycrisp” Apples: “But the apple had problems. It was too big, too fragile and a magnet for disease. The farmers who sampled it were quick to dismiss the finicky tree. “She’s a diva, an absolute diva,” fourth-generation Washington apple farmer Kait Thornton said of the Honeycrisp.

Thornton’s family has been farming in the same valley 20 minutes south of the Canadian border for nearly a century, and their yearly Honeycrisp crop is a painstaking ordeal. The same qualities that make the variety so delicious leave farmers griping. Its thin skin is easily punctured by its own stem, which means workers must hand-clip the fruit from the tree, cutting productivity in half. The tree tends to produce more apples than it can handle, so growers must thin out the fruit. The Thorntons spray the trees frequently to treat an endemic calcium deficiency.

And to coax the apple into developing its signature red-pink hue, workers lay out sheets of reflective material by hand. Even a healthy apple is susceptible to bitter pit, a disorder that marks the skin with black splotches and ruins the fruit’s flesh.

That, Thornton said, is just the work required to get it off the tree. The fall apple harvest supplies the market for the entire year, so shelf-life is crucial. The apple’s signature foamy texture means it is an easy bruiser and doesn’t store as well as other varieties. If in January, nine out of 10 Honeycrisps survived storage, a farmer might only get seven out of 10 by the summer.

The new printable metal is made from a mix of aluminum and other elements that the team identified using a combination of simulations and machine learning, which significantly pruned the number of possible combinations of materials to search through. While traditional methods would require simulating over 1 million possible combinations of materials, the team’s new machine learning-based approach needed only to evaluate 40 possible compositions before identifying an ideal mix for a high-strength, printable aluminum alloy”

Outfoxed, Rambo Edition: “Until then, eradicating predators in an enclosed area, while difficult, was a standard process. But Rambo was not a standard fox. It’s believed he became incredibly wary after losing his mother to a trap and his sibling to poison bait. Over four and a half years, he evaded 10,400 traps, 3,500 poison baits, 73 stakeouts, and 55 days of scent-tracking dogs. This was more than just an animal’s struggle for survival; it was a victory of wits and instinct over technology. Rambo’s impact was much bigger than just his own

survival. This single fox single-handedly delayed a multi-million dollar conservation project for years. Because of him, scientists had to change their plans and create a smaller, second safe zone inside the main area. He wasn’t just a predator; he had become a strategist dictating the project’s terms.”