Cloud Seeding in China

By: Jamie Campbell

In an effort to end a decade long drought in the Beijing area, the Chinese government has been experimenting with weather manipulation, with mixed results. While the government’s actions do seem to be having an effect, bringing some of the earliest snows on record to Beijing, they are both good and bad. The practice of cloud seeding, adding chemicals to the clouds that make them produce rain more readily, can increase precipitation by up to 20%. The chemicals, in most cases silver iodide, dry ice or liquid propane, can be delivered in a variety of fashions, from planes to China’s preferred method, rockets or artillery. But the results of this manipulation are not all good. The snowstorms have wreaked havoc on the people, traffic and infrastructure of Beijing. The snow causes roads to close, halting business, flights and classes. China is not the only government to experiment with these techniques. As of now, 24 countries practice some kind of cloud seeding, including the USA.

Cloud seeding and weather manipulation in general could have an enormous impact on our lives and our environment. Used responsibly, it could end droughts, stop floods, and redirect hurricanes and other dangerous weather to places where it won’t hurt humans. Unfortunately, this technology could be a most destructive weapon. Imagine, redirecting a hurricane towards an enemy, a hurricane that will release the energy of multiple atomic bombs. And even more, there would be zero accountability. There would be almost no way to prove who, or even if someone had attacked you.

At this point, I support weather manipulation. The benefits, if perfected would be enormous. Weather causes huge amounts of suffering, and used responsively, we can stop a large portion of it. While this technology could theoretically be used as a weapon, our skill is much too low to use it effectively. I feel that the befits of weather manipulation far out way the potential risks.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/chinas-weather-manipulation-brings-crippling-snowstorm-beijing

Getting Social...With a Virtual Homo Sapien?

Getting Social...With a Virtual Homo Sapien?

By: Lindsey Elizabeth Horton

Usually autistic kids aren't very involved with the enviroment around them. They can be incredibly smart, and have talents that non-autistic people wouldn't have, but they don't socialize very much. Yet, psychologist Justine Cassell and her collegues found that there was a solution that could possibly make autistic kids more socialable.

There was an exmperiment that was done with 12 pairs of children, ranging from ages seven to eleven. In the experiment, six pairs of children were put together where there was one autistic child per pair, with another child with no developmental complications. The other six pairs were all made of children with no developmental complications also. The challenge presented to the youngsters was to use a toy castle to show a story. First, with their actual partner, then with a virtual partner. The virtual partner was a 3-D version of a child who was designed for typcial conversation and reactions for that age group. The virtual kids were also designed to be patient with their partners, pause for responses, and give feedback to their partners. 

The results? Amazing! Autistic kids actually participated in making the story, and they also took turns in conversations, as well as thought of new story ideas with their virtual partners. They did all of this much better with their virtual friends, rather than their here and now, real partners. 

Cassell suggests that further investigation should be taken into regular exposure of autistic kids to virtual friends. The centeral idea here is that the regular exsposure would build skills in the autistic children that would then transfer to real people, and real relationships with other humans. I think that the impact on society would be very influental. It is observed that autistic people often have very neat talents. If these talents were paired with socialization skills, perhaps autistic people in general, especially youth, that are fresh with new ideas on the world, could show the rest of us, who don't all have access to unique minds such as they do, new and better ways to be inventive and smart in our lives. The world could be a better place, perhaps led into a new era by a different type of thought, inspired by the social relationships with autistic people, young and old alike. This significant future would be made possible by new experiments and edge breaking technology such as the one described above. 

I choose this article because I have met autistic people, who as kind and smart as they are, usually don't socialize with me much. I would love to be able to have a very in depth conversation with them on their thoughts of the world, and on day to day things in general. Such as school, homework, and modern technology. I love the thought of using all of a brain's potential, I mean after all, I do parshily want to be a cognative scientist! I think that autistic people really have something on unlocking areas that normal people can't. Can you imagine being able to unlock that potential in yourself? I sure can! They say that we only use about a percent of our brain, and look we have accomplished! Why not got another percent?!

Penguins and Sea Lions Help Produce New Atlas

By Samuel Mann

Atlases are usually made and used by people for navigation in parts of the world. They provide accurate information on latitudes, longitudes, water features like lakes and shorelines and terrain features like mountains and valleys that are important for pilots, sailors, or even simple hikers. What you wouldn't expect from an atlas is that is was not made by humans (so-to-speak). The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and BirdLife International have released a new atlas of the Patagonian sea using data that was collected from 16 species of marine animals and produced 280,000 data entries! The Patagonian Sea is a huge body of water from southern Brazil to southern Chile.

The atlas contains the most accurate maps ever assembled for this ecosystem revealing key migratory corridors that span from coastlines to deep-sea feeding areas off the continental shelf hundreds of miles away. The project took 25 scientists 10 years to complete! The list of species tracked for the atlas includes five species of albatross, three species of petrel, four varieties of penguin, two fur seal species, the South American sea lion, and the southern elephant seal.

The significance of this new atlas is that not only was it written by the wildlife that inhabit the area, but it also records marine animal migrations and breeding patters that are important to take into consideration for conservation. This data will be important for managing fisheries and routes for oil tankers that protect important habitats for the marine animals. Conservation is an ever growing concern in life due to the degradation of the ecosystem. What better to preserve the ecosystem than to know just which habitats are the most crucial? This way mariners can plot courses through waters that aren't as vital or fragile.

I think that it is really creative to use the animals that live in an area to plot the land features such as deep water and shorelines. Various animal behaviors require that they travel to certain land features such as deep water feeding, coastal nesting, or perhaps breed grounds. Using GPS on marine animals not only shows their behavioral patterns but also maps out certain geographic features of previously unknown or unfamiliar locations. I think it is ingenious.