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Walking octopus inspires robot design

In the vein of marine animals inspiring design, I offer today the octopus-cum-robot. I kid not.

After discovering in March that some octopus species use two of their eight arms to "walk" along the seafloor bipedal style (it's true! see footage here and here), scientists at the University of California at Berkeley were inspired to develop an entirely new field of robotics involving soft, muscle-like machines that would walk much like the octopus.

"Each arm rolls along the suckers and pushes the animal back, and then the other arm touches down, rolls along the suckers, and pushes the animal back again," says biologist Chrissy Hufford.

"They flatten part of their arm like a tank tread, and roll backwards on it. They make a functional foot, even though they don't have an anatomic foot."

Scientists are hoping they will be able to mimic this fluid movement and flexibility in robots built without hard parts, and a prototype -- essentially a tube with a spring inside -- has already been constructed. The advantage of soft robotics, says biologist Bob Full, is that the robot could squeeze through tiny spaces, much like the octopus, and could function in a search-and-rescue capacity, moving into tight areas no other robot could reach.

Pretty cool, though the idea of robots in general kinda freaks me out.

Commencement speech

Good God.

Barack Obama. That's all I can say.

Barack Obama.

Tender Loving Scare

Babies in intensive care endangered by hormone-altering plastics Infants in hospital intensive care units have much higher levels of a hormone-altering chemical in their bodies than other newborns, according to a new study. The chemical, a phthalate called DEHP, is often added to vinyl — including some medical devices commonly used in natal intensive care […]

Acres and Pains

Senate panel recommends tighter regulation of land conservancies A two-year investigation by the Senate Finance Committee may lead to big changes in federal regulation of America’s land conservancies. The panel’s report recommends that the IRS “consider revoking the tax-exempt status of a conservation organization that regularly and continuously fails to monitor and enforce conservation easements” […]

McClellan has his feet held to the climate change fire

The New York Times article yesterday detailing Philip Cooney's creative writing skills has been bouncing around the world as well as the blogosphere. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan had his feet held to the fire yesterday at the press briefing. One of his more interesting assertions:

Q: In every example that we have seen, and Mr. Cooney's emendations and deletions from these reports have been to the effect of making them less critical, less stringent, less apparently in need of immediate action. In other words, he's done everything in the examples we've seen to pull back from worst-case scenario. He is not a scientist.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, that's your opinion, and I think your opinion is wrong.

It seemed the press corps sensed that McClellan was on the ropes with this topic, which led to zingers such as this one:

MR. McCLELLAN: Like I said, there are policy people and scientists who are involved in this process, in the interagency review process. And he's one of the policy people involved in that process, and someone who's very familiar with the issues relating to climate change and the environment.

Q Because of his work lobbying for the oil industry?

It's fun to read; even better to watch [RealPlayer]. Fun in a depressing, upsetting kind of way.

Yesterday's press briefing was also the most time spent on an environmental topic in a White House press briefing in a long time.

A link dump.

Is there some sort of news and commentary deluge this week? It's enough to overwhelm a blogger, I tell you.

Anyway, since there are 50 new things to blog about, I'll leave the subject of peak oil behind for a while, with a final round-up of links.

• Despite my critique of his positive proposals, Kevin Drum really did do a public service with his peak oil series. Read it.
• Also worth reading -- though much of the material overlaps -- is Drum's review of Twilight in the Desert, by Matthew Simmons, wherein he makes the following points: a) most of the reasonably optimistic forecasts of our oil future rest on Saudi Arabia's spare capacity; b) Saudi Arabia doesn't actually have much spare capacity (the subject of Simmons' book), and thus, c)
  

  ... it's likely that we're now in a permanent state of near zero spare capacity, which in turn will lead to an increasingly unstable world. As we enter an era in which even Saudi Arabia has no spare capacity to smooth out supply disruptions elsewhere in the world, any blip in supply, whether from political unrest, terrorism, or merely unforeseen natural events, will cause prices to carom wildly. A world with $100 per barrel oil is bad enough, but a world in which a single pipeline meltdown could cause prices to skyrocket to $300 per barrel for a few months and then back down is far worse.

• Speaking of Simmons, The Agonist has an excellent three-part interview with him. Simmons says: "The current model is not sustainable. It is not sustainable but it is insatiable."
• Speaking of Drum (ha ha), The Oil Drum has an excellent rundown of the many ways that cheap oil undergirds our food production system.
• There's not much new in this E Magazine piece, but, well, there it is.
• And in the Macon, GA, Daily of all places, James Kunstler does that thing he does.

Oil industry compares fuel prices to liquor.

Methinks the oil barons might be getting desperate. Either that, or they're doing their brainstorming in, uh, new locations. A new industry "study" makes the following startling announcement: Gas is cheaper than booze!

Here's what the study said: "On a per-barrel basis, gasoline is America's bargain liquid: 10 percent cheaper than bottled water, a third the cost of milk, a fifth the cost of beer, and less than 2 percent the cost of a bottle of Jack Daniels."

I guess that whole "you're only paying half as much as they do in Europe" argument didn't work. Thanks, guys, for bringing it to a level we can all comprehend.

Debunking the rainforest myth.

Henry Chu writes in the LA Times this morning on the myth that the Amazon rainforests are the "lungs of the world." June is the start of the burning season in the Amazon, which sends up "inky billows" of smoke every year. Some tidbits:

"It's not the lungs of the world," said Daniel Nepstad, an American ecologist who has studied the Amazon for 20 years. "It's probably burning up more oxygen now than it's producing."

But setting those inky billows aside:

Even without the massive burning, the popular conception of the Amazon as a giant oxygen factory for the rest of the planet is misguided, scientists say. Left unmolested, the forest does generate enormous amounts of oxygen through photosynthesis, but it consumes most of it itself in the decomposition of organic matter.

Chu still implies that treaties like Kyoto need to provide incentives to discourage rainforest destruction.

Regarding the resilience of the perception that the rainforests are the lungs of the earth, I'm reminded of that infamous framing guru and the aphorism, "If the facts don't fit the frame, the frame stays and the facts bounce off."

Inside the Bush-Blair ‘working dinner’

While I don't know exactly what is being discussed when President Bush and Prime Minister Blair meet, sources indicate that the two items on Blair's agenda ahead of the G8 Summit are aid to Africa and climate change. Item one has taken the front seat at the moment, but it also seems to be nearing a resolution.

Blair has his work cut out for him on the second one though. Even the "working dinner" failed to bring the two any closer on the issue.

For all his inaction, I think Bush does realize that it would be good to reduce emissions, all other things being equal. And maybe he honestly believes the tradeoffs that may come with reducing emissions will be too great to justify taking action.

So what's a prime minister to do? If I might be so bold as to offer a one sentence suggestion on strategy (aside from drilling home the point that the choice is not the economy or the environment), it would be to engage Bush on his own terms.

Further instructions for Mr. Blair below the fold.

Using lilacs (and other plants) to study climate change

If you're still looking for ways that you can do your part to stop climate change but you've already cut all the carbon emissions you possibly can, check out the National Phenology Network. They use data collected from lilacs (and other plants) around the country to determine global patterns in climate, by recording when plants at different latitudes go thorugh different cycles of blooming. Send in your request for lilacs and then report when your plants go through different phenological events.

(Thanks to Tammy for the link!)