Risk of asteroid hitting Earth higher than thought

CAPE CANAVERAL-The chance of a city-killing asteroid striking Earth is higher than scientists previously believed, a non-profit group building an asteroid-hunting telescope said on Tuesday.
A global network that listens for nuclear weapons detonations detected 26 asteroids that exploded in Earth’s atmosphere from 2000 to 2013, data collected by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization shows. The explosions include the Feb. 15, 2013, impact over Chelyabinsk, Russia, which left more than 1,000 people injured by flying glass and debris.
‘There is a popular misconception that asteroid impacts are extraordinarily rare that’s incorrect,’ said former astronaut Ed Lu, who now heads the California-based B612 Foundation. The foundation on Tuesday released a video visualization of the asteroid strikes in an attempt to raise public awareness of the threat.
Asteroids as small as about 131 feet (40 meters) - less than half the size of an American football field - have the potential to level a city, Lu told reporters on a conference call. ‘Picture a large apartment building - moving at Mach 50,’ Lu said. Mach 50 is 50 times the speed of sound, or roughly 38,000 mph (61,250 kph).
NASA already has a program in place that tracks asteroids larger than 0.65 mile (1 km). An object of this size, roughly equivalent to a small mountain, would have global consequences if it struck Earth. An asteroid about 6 miles (10 km) in diameter hit Earth some 65 million years ago, triggering climate changes that are believed to have caused the dinosaurs - and most other life on Earth at the time - to die off. ‘Chelyabinsk taught us that asteroids of even 20-meter (66-foot) size can have substantial effect,’ Lu said. City-killer asteroids are forecast to strike about once every 100 years, but the prediction is not based on hard evidence. B612 intends to address that issue with a privately funded, infrared space telescope called Sentinel that will be tasked to find potentially dangerous asteroids near Earth.
The telescope, which will cost about $250 million, is targeted for launch in 2018. B612 takes its name from the fictional planet in the book ‘The Little Prince,’ by French author and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

A Deadly Virus Is Breaking Out In Saudi Arabia

A new spike in cases of a deadly respiratory virus in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is prompting new fears of an outbreak when the area's population spikes during the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

The syndrome, called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), is caused by a relatively new-to-humans virus that's a close cousin of SARS, a virus that infected thousands of people worldwide in 2002-2004.

Millions of Muslims from around the world make pilgrimages to Mecca, and reports yesterday of the first confirmed case in the holy city raised concerns that MERS could spin out from the Middle East and spread more widely as people move into and out of the city.

Saudi Arabia has already sacked its health minister, a move that was widely interpreted as a response to his mismanagement of the growing outbreak.

Here's what you need to know about MERS, which currently has no vaccine and no cure.

1. The recent spike in cases is alarming.

The first confirmed cases of MERS in humans — scientists believe it jumped from camels — were reported in 2012. In 2013 — and it seems again this year — cases of the disease peaked in March/April. But this year's outbreak seems more severe.

"It took two years since those first cases for the global tally to hit the 200 mark. That happened in late March [2014]," Helen Branswell explains. "Now the combined total announced by the WHO (World Health Organization) and affected countries is over 360 cases." There have been 80 new cases in Saudi Arabia in the last week alone, Branswell reports.

2. We don't know exactly how many people are infected.

Branswell came to the 360 number by adding up all officially reported cases, but the number of cases confirmed by the World Health Organization is still just 254, with 50 in the last week. There is some lag in the WHO's numbers given their process to confirm diagnoses that have been reported by individual countries. Saudi Arabia, for example, reports 297 cases in their country alone.

Furthermore, these are just the severe cases — some people may be asymptomatic, and some symptoms may be so mild that they are not reported. Still, even the most conservative estimates show a significant jump in the number of cases in the past month and the past week.

3. MERS is considered a more deadly, but less contagious cousin, of SARS.

Like SARS, MERS is caused by a coronavirus — a class of viruses that cause respiratory illnesses of varying severity and, under a microscope, look like they have spiky crowns. SARS killed fewer than 10% of the estimated 8,000 people infected; MERS has killed about 30% of those with confirmed infections, although those whose health is already compromised seem more likely to be infected.

MERS starts out a bit like a cold, but can escalate into pneumonia, organ failure, and death. The onset of MERS is faster than SARS and generally requires closer contact to be transmitted. In the past, MERS has appeared to be easier than SARS to contain and fight off (for healthy people).

"While MERS is a bad actor, it is no SARS and most likely will not cause a pandemic," writes microbiologist Jason Tetro at Popular Science.

4. MERS might be more contagious now than in previous years.

Scientists suspect (but don't yet know for sure) that MERS cases in humans tend to come from contact with camels. But the WHO reports that as many as 75% of the recent cases have been transmitted from human to human, generally in hospital settings.

"There's a major change occurring that cannot just be attributed to better case detection," Dr. Michael Osterholm, Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told NPR. "Something's happening."

This could be because the virus has changed into something more contagious, or because methods of infection control have been inadequate.

Fortunately, it seems that while infected person A can spread MERS to person B, person B is highly unlikely to then be contagious enough to spread it further, say, to person C. There have only been two such cases of this so-called "tertiary" transmission so far.

Still, because the virus seems to be spreading between humans more than it did in the past, the WHO is on alert: "Urgent investigations are required to better understand the transmission pattern of this virus."

5. MERS will continue to spread beyond the Middle East.

The recent spike in cases is primarily in Saudi Arabia (especially in Jeddah) and the UAE, but — as with other recent outbreaks — it is expected to spread beyond those countries. "The spike in cases, especially among health-care workers, could be a signal that the virus has reached a tipping point and could be ready to spread out of the region," NPR reports.

Since 2012, MERS has been confirmed in Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the United Kingdom, Tunisia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Cases that have been "exported" from the current outbreak centered in Saudi Arabia have not spread beyond the infected travelers, but MERS will probably crop up in more far-flung places soon.

"It is very likely that cases will continue to be exported to other countries," WHO predicts. "Whether these cases will [spread further] will depend of the capacity of the receiving country to rapidly detect, diagnose and implement appropriate infection prevention and control measures."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-mers-new-middle-east-coronavirus-2014-4#ixzz2ztf2sXpf

17 Emerging Energy Technologies That Will Change The World

Policy Horizons Canada worked with futurist and data visualizer Michell Zappa of Envisioning to produce a report called MetaScan 3: Emerging Technologies and accompanying infographics. We are reproducing the summary for emerging energy technologies.

NASA

Space-based solar power could be scientifically viable by 2025.

Below are technologies related to energy under three key areas of accelerating change: Storage, Smart grid and Electricity generation. Energy storage involves new, cost-effective ways of storing energy, either in improved batteries, as new fuels or other ways. A smart grid is a set of technologies that pairs information with moving electricity around, enabling more efficient generation and use of energy. Electricity generation is characterized by technologies that generate power from unused sources and that more efficiently produce electric power or fuels from sources in use today.

We have included predictions based on consultation with experts of when each technology will be scientifically viable (the kind of stuff that Google, governments, and universities develop), mainstream (when VCs and startups widely invest in it), and financially viable (when the technology is generally available on Kickstarter).

Storage

Fuel cells: Unlike batteries, fuel cells require a constant source of fuel and oxygen to run, but they can produce electricity continually for as long as these inputs are supplied. They inherently displace the need for natural gas turbines, and are ideally used for stationary power generation or large passenger vehicles such as buses (especially at energy-dense future iterations of the technology).

Scientifically viable in 2013; mainstream in 2015; and financially viable in 2016.

Lithium-air batteries: Advances in materials technology is enabling the advance of high energy Li-air batteries which promise an energy density that rivals gasoline, offering a five-fold increase compared to traditional Li-Ion batteries. By using atmospheric oxygen instead of an internal oxidizer, these batteries could dramatically extend electric vehicle range.

Scientifically viable in 2017; mainstream in 2018; and financially viable in 2020.

Hydrogen energy storage & transport: Hypothetical evolution of existing power grids, transporting and storing hydrogen instead of electricity. Could be used in combination with various kinds of energy transformation methods, minimizing loss and maximizing storage capacity.

Scientifically viable in 2019; mainstream in 2021; and financially viable in 2022.

Thermal storage: Often accumulated from active solar collector or from combined heat and power plants, and transferred to insulated repositories for use later in various applications, such as space heating, domestic or process water heating.

Scientifically viable in 2022; mainstream in 2024; and financially viable in 2027.

Smart Grid

First-generation smart grid: Electrical meters that record consumption of electric energy in real time while communicating the information back to the utility for monitoring and billing purposes. Can be used for remote load-balancing such as disabling non-essential devices at peak usage

Scientifically viable in 2014; mainstream in 2015; and financially viable in 2016.

Distributed generation: Generates electricity from many small energy sources instead of large centralized facilities. Centralized power plants offer economies of scale, but waste power during transmission, and are inefficient in rapidly adapting to grid needs.

Scientifically viable in 2017; mainstream in 2021; and financially viable in 2022.

Smart energy network: Speculative global energy & power infrastructure and set of standards which can be used interchangeably. Could theoretically mimic characteristics of the Internet in channeling heat, energy, natural gas (and conceivably hydrogen) from local and distant sources depending on global demand.

Scientifically viable in 2019; mainstream and financially viable in 2020.

Electricity Generation

Tidal turbines: A form of hydropower that converts tidal energy into electricity. Currently used in small scale, with the potential for great expansion.

Scientifically viable in 2015; mainstream and financially viable in 2017.

Micro stirling engines: Micrometer sized power generators that transform energy into compression and expansion strokes. Could hypothetically be 3D-printed on the fly and cover entire heat-generating surfaces in order to generate power.

Scientifically viable in 2020; mainstream in 2026; and financially viable in 2027.

Solar panel positioning robots: Small-scale robots able to re-position solar panels depending on weather conditions. More efficient than attaching each panel to motorized tracking assemblies.

Scientifically viable in 2014; mainstream in 2016; and financially viable in 2017.

Second-generation biofuels: New biofuel technologies, such as cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel from microalgae, promise to produce conventional fuel-compatible energy at low or zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Scientifically viable in 2016; mainstream in 2017; and financially viable in 2021.

Photovoltaic transparent glass: Glass with integrated solar cells which converts IR and some visible light into electricity. This means that the power for an entire building can be supplemented using the roof and façade areas.

Scientifically viable in 2017; mainstream in 2020; and financially viable in 2021.

Third-generation biofuels: Moving beyond today's organisms, 3rd generation biofuels involve genetic modification of organisms to produce new fuels by unconventional means. Examples include direct production of hydrogen from highly efficient algae, and production of energy-dense furans for automotive use.

Scientifically viable in 2022; mainstream in 2024; and financially viable in 2025.

Space-based solar power: Collecting solar power in space, beamed back as microwaves to the surface. A projected benefit of such a system is much higher collection rates than what is possible on earth. In space, transmission of solar energy is unaffected by the filtering effects of atmospheric gasses.

Scientifically viable in 2025; mainstream in 2027; and financially viable in 2028+.

Micro-nuclear reactors: A small, sealed version of a nuclear reactor (approximately a few tens of meters in length) capable of being shipped or flown to a site. Currently able to provide 10 MW of power, plans are for 50 MW capacity in the near future.

Scientifically viable in 2022; mainstream and financially viable in 2023.

Inertial confinement fusion (break-even): An approach to fusion that relies on the inertia of the fuel mass to provide confinement. To achieve conditions under which inertial confinement is sufficient for efficient thermonuclear burn, a capsule (generally a spherical shell) containing thermonuclear fuel is compressed in an implosion process to conditions of high density and temperature.

Scientifically viable in 2013; mainstream and financially viable in 2021.

Thorium Reactor: Thorium can be used as fuel in a nuclear reactor, allowing it to be used to produce nuclear fuel in a breeder reactor. Some benefits are that thorium produces 10 to 10,000 times less long-lived radioactive waste and comes out of the ground as a 100% pure, usable isotope, which does not require enrichment.

Scientifically viable in 2025; mainstream in 2026; and financially viable in 2027.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/17-emerging-energy-technologies-2014-4#ixzz2ztdDO2wz

It's Official: Apple and Facebook Are Phone Companies Now

AP

Apple is a phone company.  Yes, it makes other screens and products for other screens—iPads, iPods, Apple TV, iTunes. But now about 60 percent of its revenue comes from the iPhone, and all of its new revenue comes from selling phones, mostly to people overseas. The rest of the company is actually shrinking.

The Atlantic

Facebook is a phone company, too. Yes, it makes products for desktop. But about 60 percent of its ad revenue now comes from mobile, up from 30 percent just a year ago. Like Apple, it's an American tech company whose future is (literally) in the hands of foreigners. For Apple, every $1 of American growth in the last year corresponds with $8 of growth from overseas. For Facebook, every new daily active user in the U.S. and Canada is swamped by more than 12 new users overseas. And, like Apple, if you take out mobile, the company isn't growing at all.

The Atlantic

Mobile is the future, and the future looks like an oligopoly. Apple and Samsung (powered by Android) account for 96 percent of all smartphone shipments. Facebook and Google account for about 60 percent of global mobile ad spending right now and they're projected to account for for 70 percent of mobile ads in 2015.

Google is still arguably the king of mobile. Its Android software powers the most phones and it sells the most mobile ads. But Facebook and Apple have something Google would really, really like to have. Apple has profits. Apple commands 87 percent of the profit in the smartphone industry. Facebook has growing mobile ad prices. While Google's cost-per-clicks have tumbled quarter after quarter, Facebook's price per ads actually doubled in the last year, growing by 118 percent, thanks to more ads appearing in your News Feed, which dominates the mobile experience. For more on why Facebook's News Feed is a perfect home for mobile ads, here's my 2013 magazine column.

All of Facebook's growth is coming from mobile and international. All of Apple's growth is coming from mobile and international. Basically, smartphones are the future of tech right now, and no more than four companies account for basically the entire mobile device and ad business

Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/its-official-apple-and-facebook-are-phone-companies-now/361192/#ixzz2ztGxzNXw

There is no better team than Real Madrid, admits Guardiola

The ex-Barcelona boss was unable to continue his excellent record at Santiago Bernabeu but insists he was proud of his players despite their defeat

Bayern Munich head coach Pep Guardiola claims there is "no better team than Real Madrid" after his side were beaten 1-0 in the Champions League at Santiago Bernabeu.

The Spaniard had never lost as a coach at Madrid's stadium until Wednesday, when Karim Benzema's strike was enough to put the reigning European champions to the sword in the opening leg of their semi-final clash.

Guardiola insists he was proud of the way his players approached the game but acknowledged their lack of cutting edge ultimately cost them against Carlo Ancelotti's side.

"We lost," Guardiola said to Sky after the match. "It was a difficult game, but there is still a second leg and we will try to get every player in shape for that.

"Madrid have always played like this. They are so quick. They let you play and wait for you to lose the ball. You have to be very neat and very organised, and we did that. I am very, very proud of my team.

"There is no better team than Madrid and we just lacked a goal. Now we have to score two or three and we will work towards that."

There was a late shout for a penalty in Bayern's favour from Thomas Muller when the German forward went down under a challenge from Xabi Alonso as he tried to turn inside the area in the dying minutes.

However, the former Barcelona boss responded "no, I don't think so," when asked if a spot kick should have been given.

The Bavarians will aim to turn the tie on its head when they host Madrid in the return leg next Tuesday.

Alexis Sanchez would suit Juventus, says former coach Marino

The trainer, who helped to nurture the Chilean's talent at Udinese, believes a switch to Turin would solve the club's lack of width in attack

Barcelona star Alexis Sanchez would be a perfect fit for Juventus, according to his former coach Pasquale Marino.

The 25-year-old has been linked with a move from Camp Nou to the reigning Scudetto holders in recent weeks as Antonio Conte looks to bolster his attacking ranks in the summer.

Marino coached Alexis during two stints with Udinese before the winger joined the Blaugrana in a €37 million deal in 2011 and believes the Chilean, Fernando Llorente and Carlos Tevez could form a strong attacking trio in Turin.

"I think Alexis could fit very well into Conte's gameplan," the trainer told Tuttomercatoweb. "He can cover both the role of second striker or as a winger in a trident.

"His versatility makes Alexis a factor that can helps him solve many coaching headaches. You need balance but a trident of Tevez-Llorente-Alexis is feasible as Alexis and Tevez know how to work in the defensive side of things.

"This past year Alexis has had several fitness problems, but this season he has improved a lot despite little continuity. When playing at clubs like Barcelona, it is normal to have problems playing all of the time but his performances have always been positive.

"He's a great professional with a great work ethic and this will help him keep growing."

Juve midfielder Arturo Vidal, who plays alongside Alexis for Chile, urged his compatriot make the move from Spain back to Italy last month.

Klopp: There are 1000 reasons to stay at Dortmund

The 46-year-old has rejected reports suggesting he will leave the club and insists he is "super happy" at Signal Iduna Park

Jurgen Klopp says there are "1000 reasons" for him to stay at Borussia Dortmund and reject the advances of Manchester United.

The German coach has been repeatedly linked with the role at Old Trafford since the departure of David Moyes on Monday, but Klopp dismissed the speculation, adding that he has had no contact from the United hierarchy.

"It's a bit uncomfortable to give someone a rejection if no request has come,” said Klopp, talking to a press conference. “But it must indeed be made apparent anyway.”

Klopp, who coached Mainz before taking over at Dortmund in 2008, signed a new contract in October that commits him to the club until 2018, and the 46-year-old was clear-cut about his future despite labelling Manchester United as a “really great club”.

“There are about 1000 reasons why I am super happy to work with this club,” Klopp said.  

Dortmund take on Bayer Leverkusen at the BayArena on Saturday, with BVB currently sitting in second place in the Bundesliga, 17 points behind champions Bayern Munich