November 23, 2011

Good Morning,

Researchers with the U.N. say a chemical, which claims to be "ozone-friendly," used often in fridges and air conditioners may have an equal impact on the ozone as the world's transportation emissions. Learn more in the fourth article.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Computers can 'read' callers' emotions

MADRID - Spanish researchers say a computer system can be "taught" to recognize the emotional state of a person orally communicating with it. Scientists at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the Universidad de Granada say their system can automatically adapt the computer dialogue to the user's situation, so that the machine's response is appropriate to the person's emotional state, a UCM release said Monday. The scientists said they focused on negative emotions of anger, boredom and doubt that can make talking with an automatic system frustrating. To automatically detect these feelings, acoustic parameters such as the tone of voice, the speed of speech, the duration of pauses, the energy of the voice signal and 60 others were used. It is important that the machine be able to predict how the rest of the dialogue is going to continue, the researches said. "To that end, we have developed a statistical method that uses earlier dialogues to learn what actions the user is most likely to take at any given moment," the researchers said. For example, if the caller has doubts, more detailed help can be offered, whereas if the caller is bored, such an offer could be counterproductive, they said. If the system did not correctly recognize what the caller wanted to say several times, or if it asked the user to repeat information already given, these factors could anger or bore the user when interacting with the system.


System for assessing alien planets pushed

PULLMAN, Wash. - An international research group, including U.S. scientists, has proposed the first system for assessing the odds of life on other worlds. Many scientists believe our own planet serves as the best model of conditions best suited to the existence of life on other worlds, and while there's a certain logic in seeking life in the same sort of conditions in which you already know it to be successful, some researches say that kind of thinking may be limiting. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Washington State University, and his international colleagues say the search for life on other planets is really driven by two questions. "The first question is whether Earth-like conditions can be found on other worlds, since we know empirically that those conditions could harbor life," Schulze-Makuch said. "The second question is whether conditions exist on exoplanets that suggest the possibility of other forms of life, whether known to us or not." Schulze-Makuch and his co-authors -- an international working group representing NASA, SETI, the German Aerospace Center and four universities --propose a new system for classifying exoplanets using two indices, a Washington State release said Monday. The first is an Earth Similarity Index for categorizing a planet's more Earth-like features. The second has been dubbed a Planetary Habitability Index for describing a variety of chemical and physical parameters that are theoretically conducive to life in more extreme, less Earth-like conditions. "Habitability in a wider sense is not necessarily restricted to water as a solvent or to a planet circling a star," the researcher group said. "For example, the hydrocarbon lakes on Titan could host a different form of life." Failure to take such possibilities into account is to is to risk overlooking potentially habitable worlds by using overly restrictive assumptions, they said.


Aircraft volcanic ash system in testing

MESSINA, Sicily - Research aircraft are flying through the ash clouds of Mount Etna in Italy to test a volcanic ash warning system for commercial airliners, scientists said. The system uses an infrared camera intended to give pilots 10 minutes notice of encroaching volcanic ash clouds, NewScientist.com reported Monday. The technology is designed to save airlines the millions of dollars lost when hundreds of aircraft were grounded following an Icelandic volcanic eruption in spring 2010 that sent a plume of ash over much of Europe. With volcanic Etna in Sicily currently emitting plumes of ash, it's a perfect time to test the camera, dubbed the Airborne Volcanic Object Imaging Detector or AVOID, researchers said. "Etna emits large amounts of gases like sulfur dioxide, and frequently has explosive eruptions that emit volcanic ash particles to the atmosphere," Adam Durant of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research said. "So AVOID simultaneously makes measurements in different regions of the thermal infrared spectrum to distinguish ash from sulfur dioxide and regular clouds." The infrared sensing technology has already taken up by European budget airline EasyJet, NewScientist.com reported.


'Ozone-friendly' chemicals worry experts

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. - A rise in the use of "ozone-friendly" hydrofluorocarbons has raised concerns the potent greenhouse gases could be a problem in the future, a U.N. report says. The report says that HFCs, many times more potent than CO2 and used in refrigerators and air conditioning, could account for up to 20 percent of emissions and hamper efforts to curb climate change, the BBC reported Monday. The report by the U.N. Environment Program estimated the global warming potential of HFCs in 2050 could be equal to the current emissions from the global transport sector. HFCs are a popular choice for refrigeration manufacturers as a replacement substance for chlorofluorocarbons and hydrofluorochlorocarbons, banned since 1989 for creating a "hole" in the ozone layer of the atmosphere, which protects life below from harmful levels of ultraviolet light from the sun. While HFCs don't harm the ozone layer, experts said their growing popularity could lead to an accumulation that could hold back efforts to limit human-induced global warming. "While these 'replacement for replacement' chemicals cause near zero damage to the ozone layer, they are powerful greenhouse gases in their own right," Achim Steiner, U.N. Environment Program executive director, said.


Researchers: Ecotourism a positive force

CUSCO, Peru - Ecological tourism can protect the biodiversity of areas not officially protected but important to the ecology of the Peruvian Amazon, researchers said. A study of the Manu Biosphere Reserve by researchers from Spain and the United States, published in the Mammalian Biology journal, explored the debate over the benefits of ecotourism, which has been promoted as a way of protecting the environment without resorting to its economic exploitation. The four-month assessment of the presence of large mammals in Bonanza -- a private estate used for ecotourism within the Manu Biosphere Reserve -- shows "not only is ecotourism harmless to the biological richness of the area but it could even have a positive effect on the biodiversity of surrounding areas," the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology said Tuesday in a release.

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