Alaska to ban firing stun guns at wild animals (Reuters)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters Life!) ? Officials in the state of Alaska are moving to outlaw the use of stun guns to zap wild animals in America's last frontier.

It's not clear whether anyone in Alaska is wielding stun guns against wild beasts, but the regulation approved at a state Board of Game meeting last week is aimed at stopping a problem before it starts.

"This was a proactive measure," Larry Lewis, a wildlife manager with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said on Tuesday. "With new, emerging technology, there's always potential for misuse."

The regulation, which applies to stun guns such as Tasers and other electronic devices, will go into effect July 1.

Among other things, the new rule seeks to prevent what Lewis called "catch-and-release hunting," a potential use of the devices on animals.

"It is conceivable that, as this technology evolves and becomes more and more available, someone could do that," he said.

He added that an animal which has been hit with a Taser might react in surprising ways.

The pending ban will not apply to trained professionals doing field research or to certain emergency situations.

"This does not prohibit somebody from using an electronic control device as a defensive tool," Lewis said.

Since 2005, when state biologists started using electronic control devices in Alaska, they have found wild beasts usually flee when hit with the current, he said.

"However, there's no guarantee," he said.

(Reporting by Yereth Rosen: Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Jerry Norton)

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Atomic Gardens, the Biotechnology of the Past, Can Teach Lessons About the Future of Farming

When radioactive tomatoes were the crop of the future

One look at the wedge-shaped rows of plants and anyone could tell the circular garden was not grown under normal conditions. Plants sown in concentric circles displayed wildly different vitality and viability.

The innermost circle of plants, gathered around a central pole, were dead; slightly farther away, the plants were stunted and tumor-ridden; and past that, the plants may have looked right, but possessed strange new mutations.

It was the latter part of the archetypal ?gamma garden? that most interested plant researchers in the 1950s and 1960s. The central pole contained a radioactive source, commonly cobalt-60, so that scientists could see how the gamma rays affected plants.

Before scientists learned how to modify genes, they induced mutations with radiation. It was a sincere effort to feed the world, and amaze home gardeners, by modifying plants to have desirable traits.

Nanotechnologist Paige Johnson shares the history of atomic gardening on her blog, Garden History Girl. Writer Alexander Trevi interviewed Johnson for his own blog, Pruned.

?If we think of modern GM as taking a scalpel to the genome, mutation breeding by irradiation was a hammer,? she says. The full interview is well worth a read; click through to it here.

It?s an interesting tale in light of radiation and food safety concerns after the Japanese nuclear disaster. But there are also some interesting parallels between atomic gardening and 21st-century biotechnology, which also promises to feed the world by modifying plants to have new traits. The promises, and the controversies, feel very familiar.

Back in the 1960s, scientists bombarded plants with gamma radiation hoping to see beneficial changes in the plants? structure and yield. Advocates included entrepreneur C.J. Speas and Englishwoman Muriel Howorth, who started the Atomic Gardening Society to promote mutated varieties. Johnson describes a dinner party in which Howorth served ?NC 4x,? North Carolina 4th generation X-rayed peanuts that were produced from seeds exposed to 18,500 roentgen units of X-rays. After the party, Howorth planted the irradiated seeds and they grew like magic beanstalks.

Journalists and sightseers came to visit the mutant plant; garden writer Beverley Nichols called the peanut the ?most sensational plant in Britain.?

?To me it had all the romance of something from outer space. It is the first ?atomic? peanut. It is a lush, green plant and gives you a strange, almost alarming sense of thrusting power and lusty health. It holds a glittering promise in its green leaves, the promise of victory over famine,? she wrote, as recounted on Johnson?s blog.

As with modern biotechnology, industry was the main driver behind the new plant modifications. Two modern cultivars are the result of atomic gardening, Johnson says ? most of the world's mint oil, used in toothpaste, chewing gum and more, comes from the ?Todd's Mitcham? peppermint cultivar, which is resistant to a fungus. It was produced in radiation gardens at Brookhaven National Laboratory. And the ?Rio Star? grapefruit varietal, which Johnson says accounts for three-fourths of grapefruit production in Texas, is another atomic mutant bred for its dark red flesh and juice.

Gamma garden research was conducted in the U.S., Sweden, India and other countries in the 1960s, leading to untold numbers of new plant varieties. But s far as Johnson can tell, the entrepreneur Speas was the only source for home gardeners to buy irradiated seeds. Seed packets depicted robust flowers and vegetables, calling them ?atomic-energized? and offering an interesting definition of what radiation does ? ?gamma rays tend to shake up the normal balanced system of the embryo inside the plant.?

Eventually, as scientists and the public grew to understand the dangers posed by radiation exposure, gamma gardens fell out of favor. The notion of irradiated plants feeding a hungry world soon wilted, too.

Decades later, scientists would figure out how to make much more precise mutations, inserting new genes and switching them on to make plants do things they couldn?t do before. But this method has its own detractors, some of whom would argue genetic modification is just as bad for health and the environment as radioactivity research.

We know much more about biology today than we did in the 1960s. But will future generations look back on genetic modification like we reflect on atomic gardens, with an amused sense of nostalgia illuminated by hindsight?

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"How It Works" Throughout History, In Pictures

Some of the greatest moments ever in figuring out how stuff works

Darwin's Famous Finches Wikimedia Commons

Here at PopSci, there's nothing we love more than figuring out how something works, be it the latest technology, or a scientific breakthrough. That moment of discovery - let's call it a "how it works moment" - is almost as exciting for us buffs as it is for the researchers.

Here, we take a look back at some of history's most fascinating "how it works moments" and the images that define them. It's not always a cutaway or a teardown, but our desire to see how things work with our own eyes hasn't changed over the years.

Click to launch a gallery of historical "how it works moments."

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Scientists map volcanic plume under Yellowstone (AP)

HELENA, Mont. ? Scientists using electric and magnetic sensors have mapped the size and composition of a vast plume of hot rock and briny fluid down to 200 miles below Yellowstone National Park's surface, according to a new study soon to be published.

The so-called "geoelectric" imaging of a plume to this extent is a first, giving researchers a clearer picture of the material that feeds Yellowstone's volcanic features, said Robert B. Smith, the study's co-author, a University of Utah professor emeritus and a coordinating scientist of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.

The information will help scientists better understand the evolution of these hot spots that are an integral part of continental drift and are active in 20 places around the world from Hawaii to Iceland, he said.

"This is the first time that an electrical image has been made of a plume anywhere in the world, period," Smith said. "We're getting much more information on the composition and evolution of the earth."

The plume is made up of solid rock, partly molten rocks and briny fluid that conducts electricity like seawater, said Smith and principal author Michael Zhdanov, a University of Utah geophysics professor. The plume rises from the earth's depths at a 40-degree angle and extends 400 miles from east to west, the data found. The image of the plume reaches a depth of 200 miles, the limit of the technology.

A previous study by Smith using seismic waves measured the plume's depth to at least 410 miles below the Montana-Idaho border.

The study will be published in Geophysical Research Letters within the next few weeks, according to the American Geophysical Union.

The new data, which measured the plume's electrical conductivity to create the image, supplements Smith's seismic data that gave scientists their first detailed look at the plume in 2009. Both seismic and electrical conductivity are imaging technologies that reveal different things.

Together, the data reveal a plume that is larger and contains more brine and fluid than previously believed.

"All this is very important to better understand the physics of this plume," Zhdanov said. "We are just learning. It's a very new phenomenon and now we've got another tool to get an image and better understanding of the composition and geographical shape."

That tool may help lead one day to developing a way to better forecast eruptions and other volcanic activity, he said.

Derek Schutt, an assistant professor at Colorado State University, said others have used the geoelectric technology but not to these proportions. The technology is a useful supplement to seismic measurements and will lead to a better understanding of how the earth is forming, he said.

"I think what this will be particularly useful for is we can understand much better the magma distribution of what's under Yellowstone," he said.

The research says nothing about the chance for a large eruption happening at Yellowstone, which draws millions each year to see its bubbling pots and spouting geysers. Yellowstone's caldera, a 37-by-25-mile volcanic feature at the center of the park, has erupted three times since the North American continent drifted over the hot spot. The last eruption was 642,000 years ago.

The plume stops rising about 60 miles below the surface. Some of that melted rock then leaks up, possibly through a series of rock fractures, to a chamber about five miles below the surface of the Yellowstone caldera, Smith said. That magma chamber feeds the volcanic activity on the surface.

If enough of the plume breaks off and rises to the chamber, an eruption could happen. But that accumulation happens very slowly over thousands of years and there is no indication of when an eruption could occur, Zhdanov said.

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NASA spared cuts in US spending bill passage (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) ? NASA breathed a sigh of relief on Friday after Congress approved a government spending bill that secured $18.5 billion for the US space agency, sparing it from the prospect of cuts.

"We appreciate the work of Congress to pass a 2011 spending bill," NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement after the passage of the bill Thursday, adding that it "gives us a clear path forward to continue America's leadership in human spaceflight, exploration and scientific discovery."

The bill, which was only passed after months of partisan bickering and negotiations, "lifts funding restrictions that limited our flexibility to carry out our shared vision for the future," Bolden noted.

The funding means NASA will "continue to aggressively develop a new heavy lift rocket, multipurpose crew vehicle and commercial capability to transport our astronauts and their supplies on American-made and launched spacecraft," he said.

The space agency is currently working on securing a robust US-funded and operated spaceflight program, as the end of the space shuttle program in June means astronauts will be relying on Russia's Soyuz craft for access to the International Space Station for years to come.

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Testing the Goods: Eye-Fi Direct Mode Gives Your DSLR a Ubiquitous Internet Connection

Eye-Fi's new Direct Mode wirelessly shoots photos right from your camera to your smartphone, so your Twitter photos will be faster and sharper than ever

Eye-Fi Direct Mode in Action Like pointing two mirrors at each other, this is a photo of an app that's uploading the photo I'm taking of the app that's uploading the photo I'm taking. And so forth. Dan Nosowitz

Why are we reviewing an SD card? Usually, SD cards are just there--these days, high-capacity cards are dirt-cheap and nearly disposable. They're essential, but in the same way shoelaces are essential--you replace them when you need to, but you don't give them a lot of thought. Eye-Fi's new Direct Mode for its X2 line of SD cards, though, is different. Its main hook: The card wirelessly transfers photos from your camera to your iPhone or Android phone, from which you can upload to Facebook or Twitter, or do whatever you want. Basically, it gives your DSLR all the connectivity and power of your smartphone.

What's New

Eye-Fi cards are wireless-enabled SD cards, meant to be used with digital cameras (note: while SD is the overwhelming memory card standard, some high-end DSLRs use CompactFlash, and some older Sony cameras use the irritatingly proprietary MemoryStick format. Check before buying!). Prior to the release of Direct Mode, Eye-Fi cards were used to beam photos from a camera to a computer, a photo uploading service (like Flickr or Picasa) or to social networking sites, but those cards always required you to sync with a Wi-Fi hotspot, like in your home or a coffeeshop. That's kind of a pain: You'd have to enter the network name and password of every hotspot you wanted to use in the Eye-Fi program on your computer, and then find one of those when you wanted to upload photos. Not fun! But since many of us now carry permanent wireless networks with us all the time, in the form of smartphones, why not just use that, and never have to worry about hotspots at all?

Direct Mode is a free firmware upgrade for all X2-branded Eye-Fi cards, of which there are several (either 4GB or 8GB), and it comes baked right into the new Eye-Fi Mobile X2 card. That's accompanied by a new, free app for iPhone and Android, which essentially creates an ad-hoc wireless network between your phone and your SD card. It uses Wi-Fi, but you don't need to be in a wireless hotspot or anything--this is just a simple device-to-device connection and can be done anywhere, anytime. The card sends its photos to your phone, so you can upload them to your social network, photo service, or email client of your choice. Or you can edit them, or use them in games, or set them as your wallpaper, or whatever else you do with photos on your smartphone.

Eye-Fi Connect X2 SD Card: Probably the cheapest option to snag Direct Mode, and our recommendation. 4GB is plenty of space when you're constantly backing up photos to the cloud. �Dan Nosowitz

What's Good

Direct Mode, once it's set up (no easy task--see the next section), works very well. Photos transfer automatically as you take them, and you've got the option to upload them to a photo hosting service like Flickr or Picasa on the fly. Smartphone cameras might be getting better and better, but they're not, and probably will never be, as capable as a decent DSLR. So it's a pretty great feeling to shoot a crystal-clear, properly lit photo with your expensive DSLR, then upload it to Twitter right then and there, without having to run home to sync with your computer.

It's also nice that Direct Mode is available as a free upgrade to many existing Eye-Fi cards--those things aren't cheap, and it's good that users who just dropped $80 on an SD card won't have to do it again for Direct Mode.

What's Bad

I should start by saying that I tried out Direct Mode immediately following the release of the app, and that most of the problems I had with setup won't be shared by anyone who's using the app now. But setup was, to be honest, pretty awful. The Android app had some odd problem that wouldn't allow many users, including me, (I was using an HTC Thunderbolt) to log in, which makes using Direct Mode impossible. Eventually I talked with someone from Eye-Fi who advised me to first connect my phone to my home Wi-Fi network, which somehow un-broke it, so when I disconnected from my home network, it finally let me log in via 4G. Eye-Fi is doing their best to sort out the problem, so hopefully this won't affect future users, but I can't in good faith ignore the difficulties I had.

But even working properly, setup is kind of confusing. You have to sync the card with your computer, download the new firmware, download software for your Mac or PC, sync your card with your phone while it's plugged into your computer, and only then can you start actually using the card. I'm not sure why the computer has to be involved at all--why can't the smartphone app just discover the Eye-Fi card on its own?

Eye-Fi Center Mac Software: This is the software used on your computer to set up Direct Mode. It's slightly more confusing than it needs to be. �Dan Nosowitz

The Android app is not thrilling--sort of tricky to set up, and for some reason it imports every photo and video on your phone, rather than just the stuff imported from an Eye-Fi card. Makes things unnecessarily cluttered, especially if you have a lot of album art. Just do Eye-Fi, Eye-Fi App! The sharing options are also confusing; you can only share to the services you've previously set up on your computer, so you can't just share to Facebook unless you've put some forethought into it. I ended up avoiding the sharing options in the app altogether, and just using Android's Gallery app to upload to my Twitter and Facebook account. It all works okay, but it's not particularly elegant.

The Price

Free upgrade for existing X2 users--cards range from around $45 for the 4GB Connect X2 to $100 for the 8GB Pro X2. It's expensive, considering you can get a non-wireless 8GB SD card for about twelve bucks, but given the extra features, I think the $45 Connect X2 is fairly price. $100 for an 8GB SD card is lunacy, though.

The Verdict

I can't ignore the difficulties I had setting up Direct Mode, but it did all get taken care of and Eye-Fi's technical folk were very proactive in getting things sorted. Now that it's all set up, I don't want to ever use a non-connected Wi-Fi card: My DSLR has never felt so versatile, and my smartphone has never felt so powerful (at least, as a camera). If you don't have a DSLR, I'd say it's probably not worth the admittedly steep entry price--most modern smartphone cameras are nearly as good as your average point-and-shoot camera, anyway. But if you take a lot of photos on the go, a Direct-Mode-enabled Eye-Fi would be a great addition to your toolkit.

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Rocket launches from California coast (AP)

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. ? A rocket carrying a national security payload has been successfully launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's central coast.

The Atlas 5 rocket blasted off shortly before 9:30 p.m. Thursday. Vandenberg officials said the satellite was carrying a classified payload from the National Reconnaissance Office, which oversees the nation's constellation of spy satellites.

The rocket appeared as a brilliant light streaking across a clear Southern California night sky.

A live video feed of the launch showed exhaust pouring out of the engines and lingering in the atmosphere as the rocket climbed.

The launch, which was scheduled for Tuesday, had been delayed because of a problem with the rocket's avionics that has since been fixed.

After liftoff, the rocket, flying with a single solid rocket booster, headed south on 1 million pounds of thrust ? equal to the energy of about two dozen Hoover Dams.

The mission is classified and no other details are available about the satellite's purpose or cost.

United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of rocket builders Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., said it's the fifth defense payload it has launched for the reconnaissance office in the past seven months.

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"How It Works" Throughout History, In Pictures

Some of the greatest moments ever in figuring out how stuff works

Darwin's Famous Finches Wikimedia Commons

Here at PopSci, there's nothing we love more than figuring out how something works, be it the latest technology, or a scientific breakthrough. That moment of discovery - let's call it a "how it works moment" - is almost as exciting for us buffs as it is for the researchers.

Here, we take a look back at some of history's most fascinating "how it works moments" and the images that define them. It's not always a cutaway or a teardown, but our desire to see how things work with our own eyes hasn't changed over the years.

Click to launch a gallery of historical "how it works moments."

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Congress votes to lift federal wolf protections (Reuters)

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) ? The gray wolf will become the first creature ever taken off the U.S. endangered species list by an act of Congress, rather than by scientific review, under legislation sent to the White House on Thursday.

The measure, attached to a budget deal given final congressional passage by the Senate, would lift federal safeguards for more than 1,200 wolves in Montana and Idaho, placing them under state control and allowing licensed hunting of the animals.

It also bars judicial review of the de-listing. The measure, which essentially restores a 2009 U.S. Fish and Wildlife decision struck down in court last August, would take effect within 60 days of being signed into law.

It was not immediately clear how many wolves would be subject to licensed hunting. But state management plans now sanctioned by Congress would allow wolf numbers in Montana and Idaho to fall to 150 each, said Gary Power, a member of the Idaho Fish and Game Commission.

"In all likelihood, I doubt it would go that low," he told Reuters in speaking of the wolf population in Idaho. That state has an estimated 700 wolves. Montana has over 550.

President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill, which contains funding to keep the entire federal government operating through the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

The de-listing is being hailed by ranchers who see the growing wolf population in the Northern Rockies as a threat to their herds. Cattle producers, hunters and state game wardens say wolf packs in some places are preying unchecked on livestock and other animals such as elk.

"This provision is the responsible thing to do to address a very specific problem," U.S. Senator Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat and a chief sponsor of the measure, told reporters shortly before the budget bill passed on a vote of 81-19.

De-listing the wolf through legislation was generally opposed by environmentalists, who say it takes the process of determining the health of a species out of the hands of biologists and puts it in the hands of politicians.

The wolf is the first animal to be de-listed through legislation, as opposed to a process of scientific review established under the Endangered Species Act.

"This rider is not sound science, it's political interference," said Sierra Club wildlife expert Matt Kirby.

The Obama administration had sought to quell the dispute by urging wildlife advocates to accept management plans of Montana and Idaho as adequate to keep wolf numbers healthy -- without federal protections -- now that they exceed recovery targets.

A number of conservation groups reluctantly embraced that approach, in part to avert congressional action they saw as setting a bad precedent.

But a federal judge in Montana blocked the plan as recently as last Saturday. An earlier version put in place by the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2009 was thrown out last August.

In both instances, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy ruled that de-listing violated the Endangered Species Act because it treated wolves in Montana and Idaho separately from those in Wyoming. Because scientists consider all wolves in the Northern Rockies to be part of a single population, they cannot be listed or de-listed on a state-by-state basis, Molloy said.

Wyoming was left out of the de-listing because that state would have let most of its 300-plus wolves be shot on sight.

Under the bill passed Thursday, Wyoming's wolves will remain federally protected for the time being. But the Fish and Wildlife Service is required to consider a revised management plan Wyoming is expected to present soon.

(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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