Unlike many other countries, Sweden has traditionally been blessed with the absence of dangerously venomous spiders, snakes and similar critters, but this might be about to change as more and more new species establish themselves in Scandinavia. One of the latest additions to the Swedish fauna is the Black widow spider, according to Naturhistoriska riksmuseet (Swedish Museum of Natural History) in Stockholm.

“This year about 10 black widows have been sent to me, but I will of course only find out about a small fraction of all discovered specimens”, says Bert Gustavsson, assistant curator at Naturhistoriska riksmuseet, to Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT). He also adds that a lot of the spiders that reach Sweden as cargo stowaways manage to avoid discovery altogether.

According to Bert Gustavsson, it is safe to assume that the black widow has now established itself in Sweden for good. “One example is the guy in Värmland who imported a car from the U.S. The car was stored in a garage for three years. When he was about to move the car, spiders emerged from it. This means that they had been reproducing in the garage for three years.”

A protective garage is however not necessary for these spiders to thrive and the Swedish climate is not a problem for them since black widow spiders can be found in parts of Canada and northern United States subjected to even colder winters and warmer summers than Sweden.

Swedish hospitals do not hold black widow anti-venom and will instead focus on handling the various symptoms that can appear when a person has been bitten, such as muscle spasms and changes in blood pressure. “Fatalities have occurred around the world, but that depends on how much venom that is injected and the location of the bite” says Dr Anna Landgren at the Swedish Poisons Information Centre to TT. “In 80 percent of the cases the bitten person will only develop mild symptoms in the form of sweating and ache.”

Facts about the Black Widow:

The name black widow spider is used for three different spider species within the genus Latrodectus: Southern black widow (Latrodectus mactans), Northern black widow (Latrodectus variolus), and Western black widow (Latrodectus hesperus). The Southern black widow is native to south-eastern United States, the Northern black widow hails from north-eastern United States and south-eastern Canada, and the Western black widow lives in the western parts of the United States, the south-western parts of Canada, and in much of Mexico.

In an earlier post, we wrote about President Bush’s proposal to create the largest protected marine area in the world in the Pacific Ocean.

A group of scientists, environmental groups, and former members of Australia’s navy are now calling for the creation of another reserve that would ban fishing in a whopping 400,000 square mile area off Australia’s northeast coast.

Coral at the Great barrier reef, Australia

It will sure be interesting to see if these two suggestions will become a reality, and if so, which of the protected areas that will ultimately become the largest protected marine area in the world. When discussing protected areas it is also important to keep in mind that the term “protected” can mean very different things.

The proposed protected area off of Australia’s northeast coast is known as the Coral Sea. It is a so called marginal sea, which means that it is a part of an ocean partially enclosed by land, e.g. by archipelagos and peninsulas. The Coral Sea is bordered by the east coast of Queensland to the west, by the Vanuatu archipelago and New Caledonia to the east, and by the Solomon Islands to the north.

The Coral Sea Basin is believed to have been formed between 58 and 48 million years ago when the Queensland continental shelf was lifted up by tectonic forces. The sea is not only famous for its rich biodiversity; it is of cultural significance as well and was for instance the location of a famous battle during World War II.

The effort to create a no-take marine park in the Coral Sea is headed by the Pew Environment Group. You can find more information about the initiative on their site.

During the last week of August, Gary Owen, a Charles County sheriff’s corporal, discovered 167 snakeheads swimming in two puddles off Sharpersville Road near Mattawoman Creek in Maryland. Mattawoman Creek is a tidal tributary of the Potomac River located in Prince George’s and Charles Counties. The sheriff’s corporal was not actually on the look-out for invasive species when he did his unexpected discovery; he was leading a news crew to a location where a homicide victim was found almost 30 years ago.

The group of 167 snakeheads, who inhabited two puddles under a tree stump, consisted of two adult fish and 165 youngsters. The two adults were a male and a pregnant female. When the finding was reported to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, they decided to kill all fishes and take them to their laboratory for further examination.

Mattawoman Creek is considered one of the best creeks for bass fishing on the East Coasts and anglers now worry that snakeheads might cause injury to the bass populations by competing for the same prey or by preying on smaller bass.

Snakeheads are not a natural part of the Maryland fauna; they hail from Africa and South East Asia, and conversationalists fear that these skilled predators could disrupt native ecosystems if there were allowed to establish themselves in the U.S. Snakeheads became the centre of quite a media frenzy when they were discovered in Maryland in 2002 as the first known examples of a breeding population of wild snakeheads in the U.S. You can read more about it in our article “Environmental effects of Snakeheads”. You can see how widespread sakeheads have become in parts of the Potomac river in this video.

Since 2003, it is illegal to import snakeheads to the United States.

Tidal movements involve immense amounts of energy and are as reliable as, well, the tide. If we could find an efficient way of harnessing these mammoth forces, tidal action might become an important source of renewable energy for populations world wide. With this in mind, a team of engineers from Oxford University have worked together to develop a new and more robust turbine design that will make it both easier and more cost-effective to take advantage of this natural resource.

The turbines developed by the research team have been labelled “second generation” tidal turbines since they are less expensive to build and maintain compared to traditional tidal turbines, and capable of harnessing more energy. Unlike today’s underwater turbines – which are built like underwater windmills with blades that turn at right angles to the flow of water – these second generation tidal turbines are centred on a cylindrical rotor which rolls around its long axis as the water ebbs and flows. The Oxford team calls their new creation Thawt, short for Transverse Horizontal Axis Water Turbine.

Producing enough energy for 12,000 average UK family homes using traditional turbine design would today require 10 generators and five foundations. With the new Thawt, only one generator and three foundations would be enough, according to estimates done by the Oxford team.

Steph Merry, head of marine renewable energy at the Renewable Energy Association welcomed the new design but also cautioned against the costs of environmental monitoring to safeguard the ecology of tidal areas. “We have to get it in proportion, you can’t have an unlimited budget for environmental monitoring when every engineering company has to work to a budget for any project. At the moment, there is no limit to the monitoring that can be imposed.”

A carbon capture and storage facility has been built at the Schwarze Pumpe coal-fired power plant in Germany. The facility is built as a test to see how well the technology work and will be ran as a pilot project over 3 years. Another test facility will be built in France next year.

The carbon capture and storage facility uses a technique where coal is burned in pure oxygen and CO2 instead of regular air. This results is a by product of almost pure CO2 that can be collected and stored underground. The test facility in Germany is expected to capture up to 100,000 tons of CO2 each year. The CO2 is to be stored in a nearby gas field. The power plant the new carbon capture and storage facility has been built at produces 12 MW of electricity and 300 MW of thermal power which sustain about 1000 homes. The potential capture of 100,000 tons CO2 from this power plant alone might show the effect carbon capture and storage facilities might have on global CO2 emissions if they are found to be effective. Experts do however expect it to take a long time, at least 10 years, before this technology gains widespread use. Some experts also raise security concerns about the technology and the practice of burying large pure CO2 deposits underground.

It is claimed that this is the first carbon capture and storage facility in the world but I am unsure about this as Norway supposedly have been depositing CO2 underground for years. Anyone that can shedd some light on this is welcome to comment.

I usually don’t like to write about rumours and speculations but sometimes they are interesting enough to warrant a few rows here in the news section. There is a growing speculation and fear among tuna fisherman that tuna fishing will be strictly regulated or banned before the end of the year.

The speculations state that a complete ban on Tune fishing in the entire Atlantic Ocean will be announced in November during the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna meeting in Morocco. This would be a result of plummeting tuna populations and increased pressure from environmental organisations. American fishermen are believed to be among those supporting a complete ban which might be true as the US have a very small tuna fishing industry. The only exception from the ban would be sport fishing.

There is also a rumour that the tuna fishing ban won’t be limited to the Atlantic but that a global tuna fishing ban might be close to being announced. It is unclear whether the ban would include all tuna species or only the blue fin tuna but the later seems more likely.

Personally I find the announcement of a global or even an Atlantic tuna fishing ban very doubtful even if I would appreciate the imitative. (Despite the fact that I love grilled tuna) A tuna fishing ban in the Mediterranean seems more likely but might also meet more resistance due to large fishing operations present there. It is also doubtful if such a ban would be respected in the Mediterranean as the fishermen there have a history of breaking the rules such as in this incident I reported about earlier this year.

What do you guys think? Will we see a Tuna ban before the end of the year? Is one needed?

A lot of fish have died following poor event planning before the Cairns triathlon. The organiser strung jellyfish nets across the Marlin Marina in cairns as a part of the event planning for the triathlon Authorities decided to leave the nets in during the night but forgot about the tide. Large schools of fish were caught in the net and when the tide rolled out the fish ended up above water and died. The nets were placed to prevent swimmers from being stung by jellyfish.

Event organisers and the Department of Fisheries and Primary Industries last night defended the event planning and use of the nets and said it was an “unusual” accident. The net was approved by DPIF and marine parks is of the same type the use around beaches to protect beach goers against jellyfish. DPIF is going to investigate the accident.

Officials also defended not taking down the nets immediately after the fish kill was discovered.

One of the involved believes the fish were chased into the net by a predator.

Paul Johnston, a local boat owner was shocked by the scene. He seem to have less faith in the event planners and says that “There will be another low tide and it’s all going to happen again”

Video from the accident

Researchers at Arizona State University have received a $3 million grant to further develop their aviation fuel derived from algae. The development of algae jet fuel is already progressed quit far and researchers have already moved past the laboratory stage and are working on a pilot project to scale the process. They hope to be able to create large quantities of economically competitive jet fuel as soon as possible. The research team says that cost reduction benefits are greater than with kerosene produced from petroleum.

The breakthrough in the research to create algae jet fuel came when the researchers identified algae strains that can convert pieces of their cellular mass into oil containing high concentrations of medium chain fatty acids. The hydrocarbon chains that are created when the oil is deoxygenated are very similar to those created when regular kerosene goes through the same process.

Researchers hope that this type of jet fuel might end up being cheaper than regular kerosene based jet fuel as an expensive process (thermal cracking) isn’t necessary to make jet fuel from algae oil.

The new fuel can be used in most jet planes when mixed with a small amount of fuel additives.

I will post a more complete introduction to algae oil before the end of this week. (I Hope)

Regular salmon

Biologists keeping track of the sockeye salmon populations in central Idaho (Sawtooth Mountains) have good news to report. More sockeye than in any other year in the last two decades have made their way pass the eight dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers and returned to idaho. 507 fish have been counted so far. That might not sound much but considering that the number has been in the single digits each of the last five years and that only 16 wild sockeye returned between 1991 and 1998 it is a large improvement. It might however be too early to start celebrating as 257 sockeye returned in 2000 followed by a number of bad years.

The improvement is believed to be due to the fact that 180,000 smolts were released in Idaho lakes in 2006. Some of the returning fish are likely artificially spawned at the Eagle Fish Hatchery in Southwestern Idaho as part of a program to help boost the sockeye populations around the Sawtooth Mountains.

The 507 returning fish might be a better number than in many years but it is still no where near the historical levels of Sockeye salmon that once wandered the 900 miles from the Pacific Ocean to Idaho lakes like Redfish, Pettit and Alturas. As many as 35,000 sockeye used to return each year. The population decline is believed to be primarily due to four dams along the lower Snake River in Eastern Washington.

Cement is one of the largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions in the world. About 5% of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted into the atmosphere can be traced back to cement production. When 1 metric ton of cement is produced one ton carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere: The carbon dioxid is emitted when the limestone used in the cemented is created. 2.5 billion tons of cement is manufactured each year.

Now Stanford Professor Brent Constantz have created a new type of cement that can be created without any carbon dioxide at all being emitted. If Constantz can get the product into the market quickly (he has one pilot factory now), on a big scale and at a decent price this might allow us to eliminate 5% of the worlds carbon dioxide emissions in one swift action taking an important step towards fighting global warming.

Sounds too good to be true? Then you in for a surprise, it gets better; the new type of cement is not only carbon emission neutral it will actually help reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released in the atmosphere. Regular cement emits carbon dioxide when it is created this new type binds carbon dioxide. When one ton of this new type of cemented is manufactured it binds 500 kg carbon dioxide that otherwise would end up in the atmosphere.

Early calculations show that this new type of cement can be provided about 10% cheaper than regular cement aka. Portland cement. Exactly how all this is achieved will remain a secret until the patent has been approved but in broad terms it is achieved by bubbling exhaust gas from power plants through sea water to create the ingredients for the new cement. It is when the exhaust gas is bubbled through the sea water the carbon dioxide that otherwise would get emitted into the atmosphere is bound in the new cement. Producing this type of cement will in other words reduce the CO2 emissions from power plants. The process was inspired by the way coral grow and form their exoskeletons.

The same process might also be used to create CO2 neutral concrete and asphalt further reducing global carbon dioxide emissions.

Stanford Professor Brent Constantz has had a distinguished career and this new cement is only his latest discovery. He has over 60 cement based patents and 22 years ago he revolutionized bone fracture repair when he created high-tech medical cement. When Constantz learned about the problems caused by the high CO2 emissions levels, he thought he could do better.

He says that: The reason no one invented it before now is that people didn’t truly understand the dangers of CO2 until less than a decade ago.

He has venture capital backing to bring this product to the marketing and a team is looking for U.S. locations where new production facility can be built in cooperation with power plants but no formal agreements have been reached yet. Professor Brent Constantz suggest that the new type of cement initially should be used in a mix with regular Portland cement to make contractors used to using it before switching over to using exclusively this new type of cement. He says that he thinks this is one of the most important discoveries he made and that “Climate change is the largest challenge of our generation,”

There is however skeptics that is not yet convinced by the product. They state that they hope the new cement will live up to the hype but that tests has to be done before they are going to feel that this new cement will be able to replace the over 100 year old Portland cement.

If this product will be a game changer dramatically reducing global carbon dioxide emissions remain to be seen but if this cement really turns out to be a good replacement that is both carbon dioxide neutral and cheaper than Portland cement it is great news. Great news indeed.