• NASA’s Fermi to Reveal New Findings About Pulsars
  NASA will hold a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Nov. 3, to discuss new discoveries about pulsars by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
• Philadelphia Eagles To Honor NASA Astronaut Chris Ferguson During Monday Night Football Nov. 7
  NASA astronaut Chris Ferguson will return to his hometown on Nov. 7 to serve as the Philadelphia Eagles’ Honorary Captain during the NFL’s “Monday Night Football” game.

A human population of seven billion has a lot of zeros, but not any more than in 1804 when the first billion was reached. Besides, all those zeros could fit in Texas, leaving the rest of the world with only seven of us.

Seriously though, this reasoning is barely more absurd than other attempts to convince ourselves that we can keep on growing like there’s no day after tomorrow.

Cartoon courtesy of VHEMT and Nina Paley. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

A popular dismissal of our population increase goes something like this: wealthy regions’ fertility rates are at or below replacement level, so our breeding is not a problem. In regions where fertility rates are high, poverty prevents them from generating much carbon, so their excessive breeding isn’t a problem either.

With population density out of the way, we can focus on reducing consumption in wealthy regions and promoting economic development in poor regions. Best of all, we can continue procreating—as long as we stop at two. The first two just replace ourselves and have zero environmental impact.

These convenient untruths don’t stand up to much scrutiny, which may be why they’re generally accepted without question.

True, excessive consumption and production of toxic waste by us wealthy folks has to be reduced: for everyone to live as we do would require three Earths. However, if everyone in the U.S. did everything recommended in the movie An Inconvenient Truth, carbon emissions would be reduced by an insufficient 22%.

To make a significant difference, we would have to radically simplify our lifestyles, something we’re not inclined to do voluntarily. Nearly all of humanity constantly strives for more—most with darn good reason. In over-exploited regions, where a billion are hungry, increasing consumption remains a constant struggle.

As we try to reduce our ecological impact while improving conditions for humanity, our best efforts at both are thwarted by our rampant breeding. A mental blind spot prevents us from seeing this sacred cow in our living room. Instead, we imagine all kinds of inadequate solutions: carbon offsets, personal conservation of resources… even economic growth, paradoxically.

Really, at this point the intentional creation of one more of us by anyone anywhere can’t be justified–not economically, ecologically, nor ethically. Instead of stopping at two, we need to stop at once.

Choosing to avoid creating more offspring than we already have is our single greatest opportunity to benefit people and planet. In wealthy regions, each new person we don’t bring into our world preserves an average 6.1 hectares (15 acres) of potential wildlife habitat for a lifetime.[2] In poor regions, each person not created leaves more resources for existing people.

Social improvements are needed for this choice to be universal. Gender inequality denies hundreds of millions of women their right to determine when, with whom, and if they procreate. Couples often want to avoid pregnancy, but a lack of reproductive freedom denies them this basic human right. Coerced conceptions and mandatory motherhood harm the family, society, and the unwanted child.

Where we’re allowed the choice, we would do well to think before we breed. Do we really want to follow the default life? Why? Could those desires be satisfied in more ecological and humane ways? Amazingly, most people have never even considered not creating an offspring with their genetic material.

Every digit in that 7,000,000,000 represents a unique human being, equally worthy of the right to live and prosper. It would be a lot easier to care for everyone in our human family with fewer zeros.

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Les U. Knight is a volunteer in the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, for which he maintains a website, http://vhemt.org.

Torch of the Statue of Liberty on display at the Philadelphia International Exhibition, 1876. Photo credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

The Statue of Liberty was dedicated 125 years ago today, on October 28, 1886. More than a decade after construction began in France, U.S. President Grover Cleveland formally accepted the the 225-ton copper-and-steel behemoth from the people of France on behalf of the United States. The statue had been disassembled in January 1885 and arrived in May of that year in pieces stored in over 200 crates. Its pedestal on Liberty Island (actually Bedloe’s Island until the 20th century) was not complete until April of 1886, at which point construction began on its steel skeleton. Attachment of the copper panels comprising the exterior of the figure began in August and by early October, preparation of the site for the dedication (headed by Frederick Law Olmsted) had begun. On the morning of the 28th, a parade of some 20,000 walked through Manhattan toward the harbor, observed by several million more. Two thousand accompanied Cleveland to the island from which the [still veiled] statue would survey the harbor. That afternoon, in a moment of overexcitement, the statue’s designer, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, dropped the French flag covering her face while one of speakers at the ceremony was still talking. Ever since, her stoic features have gazed southward onto the Atlantic, welcoming visitors and immigrants alike to the “teeming shore.” (The monument will be closed for a year of renovations as of tomorrow.)

Britannica describes the colossus:

Standing 305 feet (93 metres) high including its pedestal, it represents a woman holding a torch in her raised right hand and a tablet bearing the adoption date of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) in her left. The torch, which measures 29 feet (8.8 metres) from the flame tip to the bottom of the handle, is accessible via a 42-foot (12.8-metre) service ladder inside the arm (this ascent was open to the public from 1886 to 1916). An elevator carries visitors to the observation deck in the pedestal, which may also be reached by stairway, and a spiral staircase leads to an observation platform in the figure’s crown. A plaque at the pedestal’s entrance is inscribed with a sonnet, “The New Colossus” (1883) by Emma Lazarus. It was written to help raise money for the pedestal, and it reads:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Detail of the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island, New York City. Photo credit: © Getty Images

The Statue of Liberty, on Liberty Island, New York. Photo credit: © Goodshoot/Jupiterimages

Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island, Upper New York Bay. Photo credit: © Digital Vision/Getty Images

Zebra crossing for Pedestrians in London. Credit: ©Yevgenia Gorbulsky/Fotolia.

The end of October is set to see a significant milestone for a ubiquitous road marking; on the 31^st October 2011, the zebra crossing will celebrate its 60th anniversary of aiding pedestrians.

In 1951 the level of motor vehicle traffic was a small percentage of what it is today, but post-war Britain faced the same road based problems as we do. In particular pedestrian accidents, and fatalities from such, were beginning to rise. Metal studs were the only things marking pedestrian crossings at this time, which were visible to the crossers themselves, but difficult to discern by drivers and only felt under the wheels when it was largely too late to stop.

So began a series of visibility and road marking experiments—first with scale models, before moving on to test a variety of designs at a thousand different locations in the UK. From these tests, one pattern in particular proved itself effective—the one with which all pedestrians are now familiar, the black and white stripes stretching across the width of the road.

It is believed that, during a visit to the experiments in the late 1940s, it was member of Parliament (and later Prime Minister) Jim Callaghan who remarked on the resemblance to the striped animal with which it would become linked. He himself said that he could not remember doing this, but somewhere the name zebra crossing stuck thereafter.

In 1951 the crossings were officially introduced, with a new measure added into law. The first one appeared in Slough (borough in Berkshire, England, and whose name rhymes with now) before being spread throughout the rest of the country. The alternating stripes increased visibility dramatically; an empty zebra crossing told drivers to slow their speed in the event of crossing pedestrians, and the walkers themselves were now much clearer against the black and white background.

There are a surprising number of different crossings, all of which continued the animal theme:

Pelican crossing: a crossing that involves button-operated traffic lights to direct pedestrians and cars alike (little green man appears on the opposite side of the road).

Puffin crossing: button-operated lights and curb-side sensors for pedestrians (little green man appears in the box on the near side of the road).

Toucan crossing: a crossing that lets bicycles cross the road as well as pedestrians (two-can cross).

Pegasus crossing: a crossing specially designed for horse riders. A separate button is placed two-metres above the ground for mounted riders and has a little green horse and rider instead (named after the mythical winged horse).

Tiger crossing: A yellow and black striped crossing that allowed pedestrians and cyclists to cross. A few were tried in the UK but replaced with toucan crossings.

Some crossings in the UK, particularly those near school buildings, are monitored by a lollipop person. These adults, who work during the busy hours when children are going to and from school, have the power to halt traffic when children wish to cross the road. They are often dressed in fluorescent clothing to aid visibility and carry a large round sign on a stick, which gives them their name.

The famed zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios, made famous by the Beatles. Credt: ©C./Shutterstock.com.

The humble zebra crossing was thrown into the limelight in 1969 due to the famous Abbey Road album cover by the Beatles. The crossing still reaches across the width of Abbey Road and has become a much visited photo-opportunity site, with people stopping to parody the album cover, even though the road itself is a busy thoroughfare for vehicles. So popular is the crossing that it was given a grade II listed status in December 2010, due to its ‘cultural and historical importance’.

This article was written while researching motoring law for a client who specialises in Access Legal services.

The simple striped design of the zebra crossing is now used, recognised and understood all over the world, and as the number of motor vehicles continues to increase, it remains an important feature in road safety everywhere.

At the end of October 2011, the world officially crosses the 7 billion mark in global population. In recent decades, population has increased by a billion people approximately every 13 years. The UN projects that the next billion will be added by 2024 and that world population will reach 9.3 billion by the middle of the century. Fertility rates, however, are declining in most countries and overall world population growth should slow considerably. But this trend masks considerable differences among countries. Many countries have already gone through a demographic transition from high fertility and high mortality to low fertility and smaller family size. Forty-two percent of the world’s population lives in countries where the fertility rate is below replacement level. Another forty percent lives in countries with slow-growing populations. The remaining eighteen percent are in high fertility countries, mostly in Africa and South Asia. It is these countries that will account for almost all population growth in years to come.

A family planning clinic in Afghanistan. Photo credit: Isobel Coleman

How quickly these high fertility countries transition to lower fertility will determine the world’s overall population. UN projections are highly sensitive to small changes in fertility. The difference between its medium projection and its high projection is just half a child more on average per woman, yet the result is a world population of nearly 16 billion by 2100, versus 10 billion under the medium variant. For countries with high fertility rates, women’s empowerment, female education, and access to voluntary family planning will determine the difference between these population projections.

Access to voluntary family planning is critical for enabling women to make decisions about the size of their families and the spacing of their pregnancies. In recent decades, use of modern family planning by women of reproductive age in developing countries has from less than 10 percent in 1965 to 53 percent in 2005. This represents an expansion of users from 30 million in 1960 to 430 million in 2008. Despite these gains, an estimated 215 million women globally still experience an unmet need for family planning. The vast majority lives in high fertility countries.

Ob-gyn clinic in rural Afghanistan. Photo credit: Isobel Coleman

Low rates of contraception use are linked not only to high fertility, but also to high rates of maternal and child mortality. Afghanistan, for example, has the highest rate of under-five mortality in the world and a contraceptive prevalence of only 10 percent. Many of the highest fertility countries today are also among the world’s most fragile states, with pressing economic, security and environmental challenges and the lowest levels of human development. They are the least able to provide opportunities for their burgeoning youth populations. High fertility rates can lead to a vicious cycle of poverty at the community, regional and national levels. The quality and availability of family planning services is instrumental in interrupting this cycle and creating stronger families and communities. Increasing access to voluntary family planning is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve health and reduce poverty while giving parents the tools to make critical decisions about the size of their families.

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Dr. Isobel Coleman is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where she directs the Council’s Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy initiative and the Women and Foreign Policy program. Her areas of expertise include democratization, civil society, economic development, regional gender issues, educational reform, and microfinance. 

The following is a post by reintroduction biologist Alison Sacerdote that originally appeared on the Lincoln Park Zoo’s Conservation Field Diaries blog. It is the latest in a series about the effort by the zoo’s Urban Wildlife Institute to reintroduce the smooth green snake (Opheodrys vernalis) to forest preserves in Illinois’ Lake County. The species, though widespread in the United States, has declined in the area due to habitat loss. Links to earlier posts are provided at the bottom of the page.

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This week, we released the third group of head-started smooth green snakes into a Lake County Forest Preserve to help populations of this native snake recover.

Two smooth green snakes ready for release. Photo courtesy of Lincoln Park Zoo.

Head-starting the smooth green snakes—letting them hatch, grow and mature at Lincoln Park Zoo before release—has been very successful. We had great hatching success and phenomenal growth rates. Being larger at the time of release gives these little snakes a better chance of surviving changes in temperature—especially the cold Chicago winters.

With this last release of the summer, it was very exciting to watch snakes that I saw hatch last summer head out into nature to fend for themselves. Because smooth green snakes are so good at blending into their grassland environment, the moment I set them down on the ground, they quickly disappeared.

Now I will try to follow the snakes to see if they survive in the field. I have a few methods for locating these cryptic snakes after release. A passive method is placing cover objects, such as pieces of plywood, in the area of the release. Snakes use cover objects for shelter. In addition to the snakes I’m seeking, I typically find red-bellied snakes, common gartersnakes and plains gartersnakes beneath the cover objects.

Smooth green snakes are challenging to spot under the boards because they blend in with the plant roots and stems. You do occasionally find some surprises under the boards. This week, I found a newly metamorphosed tiger salamander making its way from a pond into the upland habitat!

A surprise sighting: a tiger salamander! Photo courtest of Lincoln Park Zoo

For active tracking, I use a telemetry receiver to follow radio transmitters taped to the snakes. The transmitters emit signals that can be detected with a directional antenna and the receiver. Once I have the direction of the snake, I use the receiver alone to pinpoint its location. When I hear a strong pulse from the receiver with the volume turned low, I can identify the patch of grass where the snake is located. I then carefully sift through the dried grasses with my hands to catch the snakes.

When I find a snake, I weigh and measure it to examine changes in body condition, and to see if it is close to shedding. The transmitters will only stay on the snakes for about three weeks, or until the snake sheds. I look forward to following them during this time as they establish new homes!

Earlier posts:
Smooth Green Snake Recovery
Restoring Smooth Green Snakes to the Region
Tracking the Smooth Green Restoration
Snake Signals Slideshow

On Oct. 27, 1961, Saturn I, the first U.S. rocket designed specifically for spaceflight, was launched. Part of the manned Apollo Moon-landing program, the event marked a major advance in U.S. efforts to send humans to the Moon and back by the end of the 1960s. That goal was achieved in July 1969 with the Apollo 11 flight, which was made possible by the development of Saturn V, a successor of Saturn 1.

A Saturn I booster model is set up for testing in NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center's 8'x6' Supersonic Wind Tunnel in 1960. The model had eight working rocket engines with 250 pounds of thrust each. The tests simulated actual flight conditions, providing valuable information to optimize vehicle stability and air pressure distribution. Credit: NASA

Apollo 15 spacecraft during liftoff from Cape Kennedy, Florida, U.S., atop a Saturn V three-stage rocket, July 26, 1971. A camera mounted at the mobile launch tower’s 110-metre (360-foot) level recorded this photograph. Credit: NASA

(Boston College) Many think of the liberal arts as synonymous with the humanities. This event will explore the vital contributions of science to a liberal arts university.

(University of Houston) Space City’s first native Houstonian astronaut to launch into space is coming to the University of Houston Nov. 8. Shannon Walker, who is the daughter of the founding dean of UH’s College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, will give a lecture and present a memento honoring her father that she carried with her on this 163-day mission. The event is free and open to the public.

(Academy of Finland) New information has been published about the Lutetia asteroid that was observed in 2010 and its properties.