Month: November 2016

Alevtina Nekrasova vists the grave of her father, Vasily Ivanov , who was one of the first victims of the 1979 anthrax outbreak in the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk. (credit: UCLA | LA Times)

In early April of 1979, a mysterious plague wafted through the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk, now known as Ekaterinburg. At least 66 people and an unknown number of animals were struck with a vague illness and then swiftly died. Soviet officials blamed tainted meat sold on the black market. But a 1992 investigation by a Harvard researcher finally aired the real killer: a plume of anthrax spores accidentally released from a clandestine bioweapons plant in town, known as Compound 19.

It was one of the largest inhalation anthrax outbreaks in history—and one of the few traces of the Soviet’s secret dabbling in bioterror research—all thanks to botched air filter maintenance. The slow-moving death cloud that seeped from the compromised ventilation system left a trail of carnage 30 miles downwind of Compound 19. If the breeze had blown directly toward the center of town, which sits about 230 miles north of Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, thousands could have been killed.

Despite the devastation, many details about the accident remain murky—along with what else might lurk within the Ministry of Defenses’ Compound 19. Such facilities and research should have been shut down in 1975, after the international Biological Weapons Convention. But the Sverdlovsk accident and other hushed accounts suggest that covert Soviet bioterror research continued in the following decades. In fact, reports from Soviet defectors in the 1990s tell of a vast, highly funded program involving tens of thousands of researchers working on biological weapons to lob at America and other targets. Russian officials have refused outside access to lingering facilities, and there’s no guarantee that research has completely stopped.

Enlarge / Cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, a veteran flier shown here after a 2010 mission to the space station, will be Russia's only flier next March. (credit: NASA)

The International Space Station has usually been home to six astronauts since May 29, 2009, when Roman Romanenko, Frank de Winne, and Bob Thirsk arrived on the station, expanding the crew to its full complement for the first time. But that will change in March, as Russia scales back its involvement in the partnership by flying two fewer cosmonauts to the station per year.

NASA announced Tuesday that a March launch of its Expedition 51/52 to the station will contain just two crew members, NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian space agency, instead of the more typical three. They will join the crew of Peggy Whitson, Thomas Pesquet, and Oleg Novitskiy aboard the station to make for a semi-permanent crew complement of five.

Russia has scaled back its crew complement to save expenses, as sending fewer of its Progress supply ships to the orbiting laboratory will help Roscosmos close a budgetary hole. Roscosmos has said the reduced crew complement will be "temporary" but has not said when it might resume full staffing. For this year, rookie cosmonauts Nikolai Tikhonov and Ivan Vagner appear to have been pulled from their flights in favor of veterans.

Enlarge (credit: Frank Friedrichs)

Even before the international Paris Agreement was completed last December, we had some encouraging news about greenhouse gas emissions. Despite an increase in global GDP, emissions were basically unchanged from 2014 to 2015. Previously, only recessions interrupted the relentless year-over-year rise of emissions. Now, an early projection for 2016 looks just about as good.

Keeping the books on global emissions and the rising concentration of atmospheric CO₂ is an incredibly complex undertaking—it’s not as easy as checking your electric utility statement. The overall carbon budget for our atmosphere involves all the carbon exchanged with land ecosystems and the oceans, and there are lots of human emissions beyond energy. In the end, you can figure out how much human activities released and how much ended up in the atmosphere.

In a new paper, a huge team of researchers led by the University of East Anglia’s Corinne Le Quéré has published the latest update to the state of Earth’s carbon budget. This effort involves many sources of information, including tracking fossil fuel use for power, industry, and in homes, as well as items like the production of cement (which releases CO₂ directly) and global trade. On top of that, there are data and models used to monitor the world’s ecosystems.

Enlarge (credit: LQD WiFi)

Verizon could soon be making its presence known nearby with beacon-like smart hubs. The company announced it has acquired the NYC-based startup LQD WiFi, which makes a kiosk system called Palo that delivers free Wi-Fi, community and location information, and emergency alerts to city dwellers. Palo renderings appear similar to the Link NYC kiosks that are slowly infiltrating the five boroughs to provide similar kinds of information to New York City residents.

Both Palo and Link NYC have established roots. LQD WiFi's founder and CEO Randy Ramusack worked at Microsoft Switzerland and Microsoft UK before starting the company, and Link NYC came out of the Intersection project of Google’s Sidewalk Labs. Currently, there are Link NYC kiosks throughout Manhattan and parts of Queens, and more have been planned for the metro area in the coming months. We tested one of the kiosks out a few months ago and it worked pretty well, providing directions via Google Maps and free Wi-Fi. However, Link NYC recently had to disable the Web-browsing feature on its kiosks due to reports of "lewd acts" committed by users.

Palo appears to differ slightly from Link NYC in its design. Link NYC kiosks have a tablet installed on one side where users can search for the information they need. Palo kiosks, on the other hand, have 46-inch LCD touchscreens with interactive transit maps, real-time schedules, public safety information, and more. "We designed Palo, from day one, to be part of the community, offering Wi-Fi, public safety features and a unique, interactive community engagement platform," Ramusack wrote in the statement. "Palo's human-scale touch screen lets users explore and connect with the local community creating multiple ways to engage, through an innovative, purposeful and curated experience."