Category: Science

This is very cool:

The folks at GreenWood Resources are working on poplar hybrids that will boost volume and wood quality even more. Its experimental station here has 53 commercial elite-hybrid varieties.

“This marries traditional agriculture to forestry,” says Brian Stanton, GreenWood’s plant geneticist, who quickly notes there’s nothing Dr. Frankenstein about this. It’s easy to see why. Believing GreenWood was doing genetic engineering, eco-terrorists bombed its facilities in 2001. In fact, the company uses traditional cross-breeding. It just does so at a state-of-the-art level.

Of course, there’s nothing new about poplar farms. They were originally developed as a bio-mass source for energy production. When that didn’t work out, poplar was used for wood chips and paper production, but there’s little money in that today. GreenWood’s goal: create fast-growing, high-quality hybrid poplars for furniture stock, veneer, paneling and cabinetry.

Poor little Barbra Streisand has lost her suit against TGV founder Ken Adelman’s California Coastline Project:

Superior Court Judge Allen J. Goodman threw out the $10 million-dollar lawsuit, requesting Adelman to remove an aerial photo he snapped of Streisand’s bluff-top estate from among the 12,700 photos posted on his Web site, www.californiacoastline.org. In a tentative 46-page ruling, Goodman wrote Streisand’s privacy had not been invaded by the retired software engineer who began photographing the California coastline to aid in its preservation.

Tough break for the Democratic Party’s lead strategist.

This is a follow-up on a previous article on aquarium stands.

Here are some pictures of an aquarium stand with puzzle-piece joints. The theory is that these joints are stronger than the butt joints commonly used with screw-and-glue for aquarium stands, especially when exposed to salt water. The aquarium loads the joints and makes them stronger, while butt joints are prone to pulling apart under load.

This stand supports a flat-back hex tank which looks like a conventional rectangular tank with softened edges in the front and a normal back. The stand sits on a sheet of 3/4″ fir plywood, which is supported by 4×4 fir legs and 2×4 cedar crosspieces. All of that sits inside a bottom tray of 3/4″ fir ply, which will be sealed and painted with epoxy to make it completely water-tight. The tray extends 3 1/2″ behind the tank, and the back support members extend up the back of the tank in order to support the canopy that houses the lights and fans. The back support pieces hide the plumbing and electric wires on the back of the tank.

Here’s the tray at the bottom, which also spreads the tank’s load across the floor boards.

Attached to the tray we have the legs, 4×4’s trimmed with 122 and 148 degree angles to follow the tank.

The cross-pieces at the top of the legs are notched to overlap each other, and the legs are notched to carry them. These are the puzzle-pieces, but they’re easy to cut with a table saw or a miter saw.

This is what a front leg looks like. The back legs are longer since they go all the way to the top.

And here we have the assembled frame, less the veneered plywood skin that will wrap around the whole assembly and give it some lateral strength.

All the joints are screwed and glued once you’ve test-assembled and made sure it all fits.

Next time I’ll walk through the veneering and skinning.

UPDATE: Here’s a teak veneer stand.

The whole world is going to be like Portland soon, according to scientists who study declining solar radiation:

It turns out that Ohmura was the first to document a dramatic effect that scientists are now calling “global dimming”. Records show that over the past 50 years the average amount of sunlight reaching the ground has gone down by almost 3% a decade. It’s too small an effect to see with the naked eye, but it has implications for everything from climate change to solar power and even the future sustainability of plant photosynthesis. In fact, global dimming seems to be so important that you’re probably wondering why you’ve never heard of it before.

The Mossback recommends 10K Metal Halide lamps for combatting emotional problems related to a lack of sunlight, and surmises that much of the world’s recent conflict may be related to Portlandization.

CNN.com is pitching The Fat Guy Scott Chaffin’s weekend bidness:

Buck’s on the Brazos — located in Rainbow, Texas, on the banks of the Brazos River — offers two-room canvas tents secured on wooden platforms. Each $100 a night tent has a ceiling fan, electricity and a queen sized bed. The site provides grills, utensils, charcoal, towels, linens, chairs and tables.

Scott Chaffin, who owns and operates Buck’s on the Brazos, said that popular outings like antiquing, golfing and visiting the nearby Fossil Rim Wildlife Park delight the luxury campers who visit his year-round facility.

Better check out Buck’s before he gets uppity and starts putting on airs.

A sewage machine company warns the little chilluns about flushing their fishies:

“In truth, no one would ever find Nemo and the movie would be called ‘Grinding Nemo,”‘ wrote the JWC Environmental company, which makes the trademarked “Muffin Monster” shredding pumps.

Nemo’s a Percula clownfish (in center), which as we all know is a saltwater variety, but I’m willing to bet a lot of these dudes are going to end up dead in goldfish bowls before it’s all over. Sad.

More on Nemo and fish-keeping, and more on fish-keeper reactions to Nemo.

Three fish, saltwater, rock, and a couple of corals doesn’t make a reef.

But it’s a start.

This is the bottom part of the stand.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Study reveals plunge in big fish numbers

Fully 90 percent of each of the world’s large ocean species, including cod, halibut, tuna, swordfish and marlin, has disappeared from the world’s oceans in recent decades, according to the Canadian analysis — the first to use historical data dating to the beginning of large-scale fishing, in the 1950s.

Fish stocks are down, but fishing isn’t necessarily the culprit. There’s been a huge increase in the whale population since prohibitions on whaling took effect a decade ago, and whales eat massive numbers of fish. Responsible whale harvesting will restore part of the fish population, and responsible fishing will keep it stable.

In US waters, the trend is “steady, incremental improvement.”

This blog is too mean. Please enjoy this inspiring pitcher of the way things can be if we all visualize Whirled Peas: