Green energy reaches record level

7 July 2011 Last updated at 13:12 GMT By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News India saw a 25% increase in renewables spending, with investment reaching $3.8bn in 2010 Global investment in renewable energy sources grew by 32% during 2010 to reach a record level of US$211bn (?132bn), a UN study has reported.

The main growth drivers were backing for wind farms in China and rooftop solar panels in Europe, it said.

It also found that developing nations invested more in green power than rich nations for the first time last year.

The Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2011 report was prepared for the UN by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

"The continuing growth in this core segment of the green economy is not happening by chance," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme.

"The combination of government target-setting, policy support and stimulus funding is underpinning the renewable industry's rise and bringing the much needed transformation of our global energy system within reach."

In 2010, developing economies spent more on "financial new investment", pumping $72bn into renewable projects compared with the $70bn outlay by developed economies.

China topped the table of investors again, spending $48.9bn - up 28% from 2009. There were also sizeable increases in investment from other developing or emerging economies:

South and Central America: up 39% (from 2009 levels) to $13.1bnMiddle East and Africa: up 104% to $5bnIndia: up 25% to $3.8bn

However, the report stated, there was not growth in all sectors. There was a 22% decline in the investment in large-scale projects - such as windfarms - within Europe, where the funding fell to $35bn.

But there was a surge in small-scale projects, such as photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, especially within Germany, where investment in a "micro-solar boom" had increased by 132% to $34bn compared with 2009 figures.

As the renewable technologies continued to mature, the report added, the cost per megawatt (MW) continued to fall. It said that the cost of PV modules had fallen on a per-MW basis by 60% since 2008.

The authors forecasted: "Further improvements in the... cost of energy for solar, wind and other technologies lie ahead, posing a bigger and bigger threat to the dominance of fossil-fuel generation sources in the next few years."

Mr Steiner said that there was a number of key gatherings coming up over the coming 12 months that would help maintain the momentum towards renewables.

He said: "The UN climate convention meeting in Durban, South Africa, later in the year, followed by the Rio+20 summit in Brazil in 2012, offer key opportunities to accelerate and scale-up this positive transition to a low-carbon, resource-efficient green economy."

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Bug makes record noise with penis

30 June 2011 Last updated at 01:51 By Ella Davies Reporter, BBC Nature Tiny bugs make huge sounds with a surprising organ A tiny water boatman is the loudest animal on Earth relative to its body size, a study has revealed.

Scientists from France and Scotland recorded the aquatic animal "singing" at up to 99.2 decibels, the equivalent of listening to a loud orchestra play while sitting in the front row.

The insect makes the sound by rubbing its penis against its abdomen in a process known as "stridulation".

Researchers say the song is a courtship display performed to attract a mate.

Micronecta scholtzi are freshwater insects measuring just 2mm that are common across Europe.

In a study published in the journal PLoS One, the scientists discovered that the small animals make a mighty sound.

The team of biologists and engineering experts recorded the insects using specialist underwater microphones.

On average, the songs of M. scholtzi reached 78.9 decibels, comparable to a passing freight train.

"We were very surprised. We first thought that the sound was coming from larger aquatic species such as a Sigara species [of] lesser water boatmen," said engineering expert Dr James Windmill from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

"When we identified without any doubt the sound source, we spent a lot of time making absolutely sure that our recordings of the sounds were calibrated correctly."

Continue reading the main story Stridulation is the act of rubbing two body parts together to produce a soundResonating sounds are made when a ridge is rubbed across a finely ridged surfaceIt is most commonly associated with grasshoppers and crickets but some beetles, bugs and even spiders are known to chirp, chirrup and hiss in this wayOnly one species of mammal, the streaked tenrec, is known to stridulate by rubbing its quills togetherDr Windmill explained that the reason the insects don't deafen us is down to the bug's underwater lifestyle.

Although 99% of the sound is lost when transferring from water to air, the songs were still loud enough to be audible to the human ear.

"The song is so loud that a person walking along the bank can actually hear these tiny creatures singing from the bottom of the river," said Dr Windmill.

The majority of the loudest animals on Earth are also the biggest, with blue whale songs reaching 188 dB and elephants' rumbling calls measuring 117 dB.

Although remarkable acoustic signals are made by a range of invertebrates, including the miniature cricket and preying mantis, and by large mammals, none compare to M. scholtzi once body size is taken into account.

"If you scale the sound level they produce against their body size, Micronecta scholtzi are the loudest animals on Earth," said Dr Windmill.

Researchers believe that sexual selection could be the reason why the insects' songs reach such high amplitude.

"We assume that this could be the result of a runaway selection," biologist and co-author Dr Jerome Sueur from the Museum of Natural History, Paris, told the BBC.

"Males try to compete to have access to females and then try to produce a song as loud as possible potentially scrambling the song of competitors."

Dr Sueur explained that the competition could have exaggerated the volume of males' songs over time.

In many insects, the song volume is limited because predators would hear them, but observations suggest that M. scholtzi lack auditory predators.

Modifications

To produce the intense sound, the water boatmen "stridulate" by rubbing a ridge on their penis across the ridged surface of their abdomen.

"There is at least another one insect producing sound with its genitalia. This is a pyrallid moth, Syntonarcha iriastis, that uses highly modified genitalia to produce ultrasonic signals," explained Dr Sueur.

The tiny bugs belong to a family known in the UK as lesser water boatmen

"Insects seem to be able to use any part of their body to generate sound. Some of them use their wings, others their legs, abdomen, head, wings, thorax etcetera."

What makes M. scholtzi extraordinary is that the area they use to create sound only measures about 50 micrometres across, roughly the width of a human hair.

"We really don't know how they make such a loud sound using such a small area," said Dr Windmill.

Without any obvious adaptations to amplify the sound, the question of how the animals physically make such a loud call remains a mystery.

"These very small bugs create sound at very high level, and it could be very useful for future ultrasonic systems to learn how they do that," said Dr Windmill.

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Pitch-sized tree is a UK record

7 June 2011 Last updated at 15:50 GMT The branches of the vast 250-year-old tree are completely unsupported An Oriental plane the size of a football pitch has been identified as the "most spreading" tree in the UK.

The plane at Corsham Court, near Chippenham in Wiltshire, was planted by master landscape gardener Lancelot "Capability" Brown in 1760.

With an average spread of 210ft (64m) it has been identified in a study by the Tree Register of the British Isles as the country's vastest tree.

The research included 200,000 of the UK's most "superlative" trees.

The Oriental plane has been singled out as having the "largest single spread".

It is so vast that its lowest branches rest on the ground and some have taken root.

'Confusing tree'

"Several trees rest their branches on the ground, but it's the most impressive of these and it's the most spreading tree that we know of," said Owen Johnson, registrar at the Tree Register.

"It extends in each direction with branches like elephant trunks snaking across the ground - it's a very confusing tree."

Originating in the Middle East, the plane was planted as a specimen at the privately-owned stately home.

"It's a massive tree with long horizontal branches which have no supports at all," said James Methuen-Campbell, the current occupant of Corsham Court.

"It's extraordinary that it's standing without falling down.

"We recruited a tree surgeon a few years ago who suggested taking 3m off all the branches around the tree for health and safety.

"But it's such a huge, old tree I wanted to leave it to age naturally."

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Cosmic distance record 'broken'

25 May 2011 Last updated at 18:12 GMT By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News The blast may have occurred a mere 520 million years after the Big Bang A cataclysmic explosion of a huge star near the edge of the observable Universe may be the most distant single object yet spied by a telescope.

Scientists believe the blast, which was detected by Nasa's Swift space observatory, occurred a mere 520 million years after the Big Bang.

This means its light has taken a staggering 13.14 billion years to reach Earth.

Details of the discovery will appear shortly in the Astrophysical Journal.

The event, which was picked up by Swift in April 2009, is referred to by astronomers using the designation GRB 090429B.

The "GRB" stands for "gamma-ray burst" - a sudden pulse of very high-energy light that the telescope is tuned to find on the sky.

These bursts are usually associated with extremely violent processes, such as the end-of-life collapse of giant stars.

"It would have been a huge star, perhaps 30 times the mass of our Sun," said lead researcher Dr Antonino Cucchiara from the University of California, Berkeley.

"We do not have enough information to claim this was one of the so-called 'Population III" stars, which are the very first generation of stars in the Universe. But certainly we are in the earliest phases of star formation," he told BBC News.

Swift, as its name implies, has to act quickly to catch gamma-ray flashes because they will register for only a few minutes.

Record breaker

Fortunately, an afterglow at longer wavelengths will persist sometimes for days, which allows follow-up observations by other telescopes that can then determine distance.

It was this afterglow analysis that established another burst in the week previous to GRB 090429B to be at a separation from Earth of 13.04 billion light-years, making it temporarily the "most distant object in the Universe".

The event was picked up in April 2009 by Nasa's Swift telescope

This other event (GRB 090423) was reported fairly soon after its occurrence, but it has taken astronomers two years to come back with a confident assessment that an even greater expanse lies between Earth and GRB 090429B.

There are other competing candidates for the title of "most distant object". Hubble, for example, was given much more powerful instruments during its final astronaut servicing mission in 2009, and teams working on new images from the famous space telescope have seen galaxies that look not far short of GRB 090429B - and potentially even further out.

It should be stated, of course, that in these sorts of observations, there is always a degree of uncertainty.

Hubble's targets were galaxies - collections of stars; and GRB 090429B is the signature of a single event, a single star. So, in that sense, it might be considered apart.

Scientists are very keen to probe these great distances because they will learn how the early Universe evolved, and that will help them explain why the cosmos looks the way it does now.

They are particularly keen to trace the very first populations of stars. These hot, blue giants would have grown out of the cold neutral gas that pervaded the young cosmos.

Brilliant but brief

These behemoths would have burnt brilliant but brief lives, producing the very first heavy elements.

Their intense ultra-violet light would also have "fried" the neutral gas around them - ripping electrons off atoms - to produce the diffuse intergalactic plasma we still detect between nearby stars today.

Continue reading the main story Models assume GRBs arise when giant stars burn out and collapseDuring collapse, super-fast jets of matter burst out from the starsCollisions occur with gas already shed by the dying behemothsThe interaction generates the energetic signals detected by SwiftRemnants of the huge stars end their days as black holesSo, apart from its status as a potential record-breaker, GRB 090429B is of intense interest because it is embedded directly in this time period - the "epoch of re-ionisation", as astronomers call it.

Whether GRB 090429B was one of the very first stars to shine in the Universe is doubtful, as Dr Cucchiara states. There may be several generations before it.

But Swift will keep looking, and it is ideally suited for the purpose, explains co-researcher Dr Paul O'Brien from the University of Leicester, UK.

"By finding the most distant objects we get an estimate, of course, of when the first objects formed," he told BBC News. "But then if you can find a location on the sky - in this case of a single star - you can go and look for the galaxy this object is presumably in, and you can start to study the very first galaxies.

"Because gamma-rays can get right through dust, this gives you a good, unbiased way of finding those first galaxies. One could just find very bright galaxies, whereas Swift means we can find the smaller galaxies, too. It was all of these objects that grew up to form the Universe we see around us today. If you think in terms of a human lifespan, it's about understanding what the Universe was like as a toddler."

The Swift mission was launched in 2004. It is a US space agency-managed venture but has a big UK and Italian contribution.

Britain's major input has been to provide an X-ray camera and core elements of the satellite's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope.

Observations made at longer wavelengths - as in this infrared image of GRB 090429B taken by the Gemini North Telescope - are used to work out the distance Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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