Inside Story of the Telescope That Nearly Wasn’t Built

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Don Morton

LEGACY Lyman S. Spitzer Jr., a Princeton astronomer, is known as the father of the Hubble telescope.

Behind every pretty picture of the universe there is a lot of dirty work that had to be done to capture it.

When I was covering the space program in the 1980s, at some point during every space mission a NASA public affairs officer would corral a few science reporters and ask what to do when the space telescope was finally launched.

The space agency wanted to make sure its long-awaited and astronomically expensive telescope — soon to be launched into orbit above the turbulent fog of the atmosphere — made an appropriately cosmic splash. The advice from those of us in the press peanut gallery was always the same and simple: pictures — cosmic postcards like the live pictures of other planets being transmitted from the Viking and Voyager spacecraft — early and often. Little did I know how mortified the astronomers were by these suggestions. Having spent a decade or more of their lives building the telescopes and their instruments, they were terrified that somebody, some outsider, would take a ruler to one of those pictures and scoop them on some discovery — something that had actually happened to one of the Voyager scientists.

“If you look at those objects before I do, I’ll kill you,” John N. Bahcall, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study, once told Eric J. Chaisson, now at Tufts University, who was then in charge of public outreach and wanted to take some pretty pictures.

That tale was news to me. It is recounted in “The Universe in Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It” (Princeton University Press), a breezy behind-the-scenes account by Robert Zimmerman, a freelance writer and space historian.

We hear all the time about the great science Hubble is doing, orbiting high above the murky, turbulent atmosphere, and the astronomers using it to stalk dark energy or planets around other stars. This fall astronauts from the space shuttle Atlantis will be in the spotlight as they perform one last maintenance call on the telescope.

But there is a group less well known: people like C.R. O’Dell, known as Bob, who gave up his research career to manage the space telescope project at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.; Nancy G. Roman, who championed space astronomy to the agency and her colleagues; Lyman S. Spitzer Jr., the Princeton astronomer who thought up the telescope way back in 1946 and then was frozen out of using it; Frank J. Cepollina, the Goddard Space Flight Center engineer who designed Hubble’s servicing missions.

These people spent years trudging the corridors of Congress and NASA, fighting bureaucratic battles, defending budgets, hassling with contractors, making hard decisions that alienated their friends, devising fantastical fixes for fantastical problems, skirting the edge of the law and generally growing old without glory. Isaac Newton once said that if he saw farther than most people, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. If Hubble sees farther, it is because of these men and women, who come to life, warts and all, in Mr. Zimmerman’s book, and of the process, messy and uncomfortable as it may be, by which dreams are turned into legacies in a democratic society.

It should be noted that Mr. Zimmerman himself is standing on the shoulders of giants, notably “The Space Telescope: A Study of NASA, Science, Technology, and Politics,” by the historian Robert W. Smith (Cambridge University Press, 1993). Drawing on Dr. Smith’s files and other archives, as well as personal interviews, Mr. Zimmerman has brought the story up to the present, and it’s a great story.

The Hubble has been called the most productive telescope in history and has hypnotized us all with its cosmic postcards, but it’s a wonder it was ever built. Many astronomers feared that its enormous cost would drain resources from ground-based astronomy and may not work anyway. NASA was preoccupied with building the space shuttle and was on a short financial leash in the inflation-ridden post-Apollo era.

Astronomers did not trust the scientific expertise at Goddard, which got the job of developing instruments for the telescope, and they were wary of the bureaucracy at the Marshall center, better known for developing rocket engines than science. But Marshall needed work and so got the job of managing the telescope development, its scientific credentials burnished when Dr. O’Dell agreed to leave his dream job at the University of Chicago to move to Huntsville and run the project.

Congress deleted the telescope from NASA’s budget in 1974, almost killing it. The NASA administrator Noel W. Hinners, in a calculated move, eliminated the telescope from its 1976 budget, but the news was leaked (illegally) to astronomers ahead of time and they were able to have an intense lobbying campaign in place. The telescope moved ahead, shrunken to two-thirds its original size and hobbled by an arbitrary decree by Dr. Hinners’ predecessor, James C. Fletcher, in 1972 that it not cost more than $300 million.

Dr. Spitzer suffered a double loss. Hoping to build the camera for the telescope, he bet on the wrong technology and lost out to a pair of California Institute of Technology gadgeteers, James A. Westphal and James Gunn, who is now at Princeton. Then Princeton lost to Johns Hopkins in its bid to host the telescope operations center.

All this, of course, was just prelude to the sickening discovery, after its launching in 1990, that the telescope’s mirror was misshapen, with a spherical aberration — an amateur’s mistake that Mr. Zimmerman attributes to a make-no-waves look-the-other-way attitude formed by the need to stay under Mr. Fletcher’s original budget ceiling. His description of how the mirror was bungled and the agonizing days when astronomers struggled to understand what was wrong and how to fix it takes up a quarter of the book and is worth the price of admission by itself.

Along the way there are nice human touches. After Dr. O’Dell stepped down as project scientist, his colleagues chipped in telescope observing time to give him a full share of Hubble time. He turned around and gave half of it to Dr. Spitzer, allowing the father of the telescope to harvest some of its fruits.

Hubble was restored to its full glorious potential by the original astronaut servicing crew in 1993, and was hitting its stride when NASA was hammered by the loss of the Columbia space shuttle in 2003. The agency’s administrator, Sean O’Keefe, an admitted bean counter confronted with death and issues of serious rocket science, canceled the final servicing mission on the grounds that it was too risky. That ignited a national outcry and a whole new round of lobbying reminiscent of the old days in the ’70s.

Eventually Michael Griffin, Mr. O’Keefe’s successor, reversed that call. The saga continues this fall. Like I said, it’s a great story.

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NASA Scientist: Reports of Mars Life Finding Are 'Bogus'

By Andrea Thompson

Rumblings in the media suggest some intriguing findings from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission that relate to the question of life, specifically whether it could have survived on Mars in the past.

The issue bubbled up when it was reported Friday that some interesting results from Phoenix's wet chemistry laboratory, part of the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) suite of instruments, were mentioned in a White House briefing.

Not so, says Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona, who denied that any details of the MECA findings had been shared and called the reports "bogus and damaging information."

The Aviation Week & Space Technology report came on the heels of the Thursday NASA announcement that Phoenix had confirmed the presence of water ice at its landing site in Mars' arctic regions, first detected in 2002 by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. MECA team members were not present at the press briefing at which the water-ice announcement was made.

"The goal [of having no MECA team members present] was to prevent them from being asked any questions that could reveal information before NASA is ready to make an announcement, sources say," the Aviation Week article said, adding that, "The Bush Administration's Presidential Science Advisor's office, however, has been briefed on the new information that NASA hopes to release as early as mid August."

But Smith told SPACE.com that this was "not true, MECA results have not been discussed at the White House."

"There is no one who knows either on the [Phoenix] project in Tucson or at [NASA] HQ who knows where this information came from," Smith said in a subsequent email.

Smith also said that the MECA team was not present at the Thursday briefing because "they had nothing new to report, the story was about water ice."

When the writer of the Aviation Week story, Craig Covault, was contacted by SPACE.com, he attributed much of the confusion and media hubbub to other news outlets picking up his story and mistakenly reporting that his article said that NASA had discovered life on Mars.

"Note the [Aviation Week] story said very, very clearly three times or so, NO life on Mars detected and Phoenix can NOT [detect life] in the first place," Covault wrote in an email.

Smith added that the results from the analysis of the second soil sample in MECA's wet chemistry lab didn't have any bearing on the question of Mars' past habitability "in any direct way."

"We are attempting to assess the chemicals and minerals that make up the soil composition," he explained. "We are now about half way through the process and there are several conflicting points of view. This is not a good time to go public with half the story."

Covault said that he stands by his story and noted that his piece mentioned the ongoing review of MECA data.

The wet chemistry laboratory has four teacup-sized beakers, each used only once. Samples of the Martian dirt are place in a beaker and mixed with water brought from Earth.

Sensors on the inner surface of the beakers act like electronic tongues and "taste" the dirt to detect salts that can dissolve in water. The sensors can also detect the pH of the surface.

All of this information gives scientists a picture of what the surface layer of dirt looks like now and whether or not it might have been a habitable area at some point in the planet's past.

MECA's first analysis showed that the Martian regolith contained several soluble minerals necessary for life, including potassium, magnesium and chloride. The surface also had an alkaline pH, which on Earth is suitable for growing some plants, such as asparagus. The second sample, currently being analyzed, was delivered to the instrument on July 7.

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New Data Suggest Mars Soil Not As Life-Friendly As Thought

By Andrea Thompson

New results from NASA's Phoenix Mars lander suggest that the surface layers of the Martian arctic region may not be as friendly to life as initial results suggested, NASA said today.

Two samples analyzed within the last month by Phoenix's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) suggest that the Martian dirt may contain perchlorate, a highly oxidizing substance, which would create a harsh environment for any potential life.

The findings stand against the results from MECA's first analysis, which indicated the dirt was Earth-like in certain respects, including its pH and the presence of certain minerals.

"Initial MECA analyses suggested Earth-like soil. Further analysis has revealed un-Earthlike aspects of the soil chemistry," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith.

The news came today on the heels of a report on Friday that MECA had found intriguing results that had been shared with the White House. In correspondence with SPACE.com, Smith denied that any briefing with the White House had been held.

And the findings are inconclusive as yet, Smith indicated. "We are committed to following a rigorous scientific process," he said. "While we have not completed our process on these soil samples, we have very interesting intermediate results."

NASA will hold a press briefing tomorrow to further discuss the new MECA findings.

The Phoenix team had been waiting for results from Phoenix's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) to see if it also detected perchlorate in dirt samples. TEGA's tiny ovens heat the samples and then "sniffs" the vapors given off to determine their composition.

Sunday's TEGA experiment, which analyzed a sample taken directly above the ice layer, found no evidence of perchlorate.

"This is surprising since an earlier TEGA measurement of surface materials was consistent with but not conclusive of the presence of perchlorate," Smith said.

The team is working to rule out the possibility that the perchlorate readings could be contamination brought from Earth.

"When surprising results are found, we want to review and assure our extensive pre-launch contamination control processes covered this potential," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

MECA's wet chemistry laboratory mixes samples of Martian dirt with water brought from Earth. Sensors on the inner surface of the beakers act like electronic tongues and "taste" the dirt to detect salts that can dissolve in water. The sensors can also detect the pH of the surface.

All of this information gives scientists a picture of what the surface layer of dirt looks like now and whether or not it might have been a habitable area at some point in the planet's past.

MECA's first analysis showed that the Martian regolith contained several soluble minerals necessary for life, including potassium, magnesium and chloride. The surface also had an alkaline pH, which on Earth is suitable for growing some plants, such as asparagus.

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Missing Rocket, Missing Remains

By John Schwartz

When a spacecraft headed for Earth orbit was lost Saturday night, the small satellites for NASA and the Department of Defense were on board. But something else went missing as well from the SpaceX flight: portions of the cremated remains of 208 people who were being sent into orbit by Celestis, a company that offers “Explorer Flight” space burial services. Two of the people whose remains had been on the flight of the SpaceX Falcon 1 were Gordon Cooper , the Mercury astronaut, and James Doohan, the actor who played the wily engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott on the original Star Trek series.

One of Mr. Doohan’s seven children spoke to the Web site BoingBoing in an item posted on Monday to say that having a parent’s remains shot into space may not be as glamorous as you think. Mr. Doohan died in 2005. His son, who goes by Ehrich Blackhound — Blackhound, he says, is a translation of Doohan from the Irish — said in the post on BoingBoing that there have already been several attempts “to send my father on his way,” and that “I’d like to finish saying goodbye.” Every launch attempt, he said, “is like reliving his funeral.”

Reached by phone, Mr. Blackhound, who is 31, said that he does not speak for his entire family, and that he bears Celestis no ill will. But, he added, the long process has “turned into this very strange, drawn-out ordeal.” He joked grimly that “I think only Lenin’s funeral lasted longer.” The unanticipated emotional consequence of a space burial, he said, is this sense of incompleteness, “just a strange part of the territory.”

Susan Schonfeld, a spokeswoman for Celestis, said in a telephone interview that the failed launch was a disappointment, but “that’s why not too many people go into the rocket business. It’s very difficult.” She said her company retained full confidence in Mr. Musk and his company. “We’re looking forward to many successful launches with SpaceX,” she said.

Her company will make good on its commitments, she said. “We are re-flying everybody.” If the remains are not recovered from this launch, the company has backup supplies that it arranges when it acquires the remains. “We always tell our families that we would like more, in case there is a problem,” she said.

As for the families, Ms. Schonfeld said that she and others in the company had been reaching out to those who placed the remains of loved ones on the rocket, and that they had all been understanding and enthusiastic. She added that Mr. Doohan’s widow, Wende, had said: “If you think about it, Susan, in the old Star Trek episodes there was always a problem. So you go and fix the problem, and the next time you’re successful.”

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Dogs 'may be able to read their owner's minds'

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Evidence that dogs may be able to read the mind of their owners comes today with a study that shows that dogs can "catch" human yawns. Scientists have known for decades that yawns are infectious among people, so much so that simply reading or thinking about them can trigger a chain reaction of gaping mouths in what they call "contagious yawning". A dog yawn is triggered in the study after their owner yawns Yawns can spread in a similar way among chimpanzees and macaques too, though not among people with autism, and is thought to be linked with empathy and the ability to read the thoughts of another individual. Now the first ever study to report that human yawns induce yawning in dogs is published today in the journal Biology Letters by a team led by Dr Atsushi Senju of Birkbeck College, University of London. They presented 29 dogs with yawning humans and also with a control movement, where people just opened their mouths. Even though a wide variety of breed was represented, such as Dobermans, Yorkshire Terriers, Dachshund, Spaniels, Labradors and more besides, they found that 21 of the dogs yawned in response, showing that "dogs possess the capacity for a rudimentary form of empathy." This supports recent research, said Dr Senju. "Other studies also demonstrated that dogs follow human pointing, more likely to tell humans the location of hidden objects when they didn't see the object being hidden, and tend to steal food when the humans are looking away or closing their eyes." The reason that dog and man are best friends is that they were domesticated 15,000 or more years ago when our ancestors started to produce more food than they could consume and befriended wolves, probably animals that liked to spend time in human company. Fido's great-great-grandmother was a grey wolf who took more interest in humans than her peers did. Subsequent selection of those dogs that were more communicative and aware of human emotions probably helped them to be so empathic. "As the dog's amazing skills to read human communication cues are thought to have been selected by human over last 15,000 years, it is also possible that the same evolutionary process affected their skills to empathise with humans," he said. But he said more work must be done to prove this conjecture. "Another possibility is that contagious yawning (and possibly empathy) could be a more widespread characteristics among mammals." The former explanation, that they are empathic, would back other work that shows that ill and elderly people do better with pets. "It is possible that such contagion coordinate the mood status between the dogs and humans. We may even feel like that "(my) dog understand my feelings" based on their contagious behaviour." But surprisingly little is known about the mechanisms underlying this common expression of tedium, with some arguing it is a mere reflex and others that it shows we empathise with another person. The yawn is primal, being present in a vast range of creatures: mammals and most other animals with backbones yawn as well as fish, turtles, crocodiles and birds. But the fundamental reason we yawn remains mysterious. It does not always mean an individual is tired - it could help increase the state of alertness, may help keep the brain cool and is linked with being nervous too. Original here

Lost world frozen 14m years ago found in Antarctica

A lost world has been found in Antarctica, preserved just the way it was when it was frozen in time some 14 million years ago.
The fossils of plants and animals high in the mountains is an extremely rare find in the continent, one that also gives a glimpse of a what could be there in a century or two as the planet warms.


Mt Boreas in the western Olympus Range, Dry Valleys (left) and moss mat (right),
the Dry Valleys climate prevented decomposition

A team working in an ice-free region has discovered the trove of ancient life in what must have been the last traces of tundra on the interior of the southernmost continent before temperatures began to drop relentlessly.

An abrupt and dramatic climate cooling of 8°C in 200,000 years forced the extinction of tundra plants and insects and brought interior Antarctica into a perpetual deep-freeze from which it has never emerged, though may do again as a result of climate change.

An international team led by Prof David Marchant, at Boston University and Profs Allan Ashworth and Adam Lewis, at North Dakota State University, combined evidence from glaciers, from the preserved ecology, volcanic ashes and modelling to reveal the full extent of the big freeze in a part of Antarctica called the Dry Valleys.

The new insight in the understanding of Antarctica's climatic history, which saw it change from a climate like that of South Georgia to one similar to that seen today in Mars, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We've documented the timing and the magnitude of a tremendous change in Antarctic climate," said Prof Marchant.

"The fossil finds allow us to examine Antarctica as it existed just prior to climate cooling at 13.9 million years ago. It is a unique window into the past. To study these deposits is akin to strolling across the Dry Valleys 14.1 million years ago."

The discovery of lake deposits with perfectly preserved fossils of mosses, diatoms and minute crustacea called ostracods is particularly exciting, noted Prof Lewis. "They are the first to be found even though scientific expeditions have been visiting the Dry Valleys since their discovery during the first Scott expedition in 1902-1903," he said.

"If we can understand how we got into this relatively cold climate phase, then that can help predict how global warming might push us back out of this phase. For the vast majority of Earth history there was no permanent ice like is common today at the poles and even the tropics at high elevation. There's been a progressive cooling going on for 50 million years to get us into this permanent-ice mode; the formation of a permanent ice sheet on Antarctica plays a big role in that cooling.

"Studies like ours that establish when and how climate thresholds were crossed along the way can be used to predict climate thresholds going the opposite direction, from cool to warm.

"Although, to be fair, we're looking at one that is very far away; warming would have to be greater than what is predicted for the next one or two centuries to cause a melting of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The west Antarctic Ice Sheet is much more vulnerable.

Prof Ashworth is struck by how species of diatoms and mosses are indistinguishable from living ones. Today they occur throughout the world - except Antarctica.

"To be able to identify living species amongst the fossils is phenomenal. To think that modern counterparts have survived 14 million years on Earth without any significant changes in the details of their appearances is striking. It must mean that these organisms are so well-adapted to their habitats that in spite of repeated climate changes and isolation of populations for millions of years they have not become extinct but have survived."

What caused the big freeze is unknown though theories abound and include phenomena as different as the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and tectonic shifts that affected ocean circulation.

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Amazing Gorilla Find In The Congo

Researchers have found what they are labeling the 'mother lode' of western lowland gorillas in the Republic of Congo. The gorillas have been found in an isolated forest known by researchers and scientists alike as the "Green Abyss" because the forest is nearly impossible to navigate on foot because of all the swamps. No roads exist in this forest, and it has been void of humans because of its harsh traveling conditions. The forest has not been logged, and these gorillas have not been exposed to human disease, which is why the population has been allowed to grow to a whopping 120,000 gorillas!

Western Lowland Gorillas are critically endangered animals with worldwide numbers ranging from around 50,000 to 70,000 total. This new discovery more than doubles the worldwide number of western lowland gorillas. In 2007 Western Lowland Gorillas were labeled as Critically Endangered because their numbers were projected to decline more than 80 percent over three generations due to the Ebola virus, poachers and leopards

Efforts by conservationists and environmentalists are already being rallied to make the forest a protected park so that this habitat remains intact and the gorilla numbers are not threatened in the future.

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Diesel-Producing Grass? Researcher Thinks it’s Possible

Written by Nick Chambers

Imagine a grass crop, grown on marginal, non-food bearing land without pesticides or much fertilizer, that, when harvested, produces an oil that needs almost no processing to be substituted for diesel fuel.

Much attention has been given to producing ethanol from non-food crops like grasses, but the ability to produce something indistinguishable to diesel from grass could be a game-changer. It would require almost no infrastructure change and could fuel all of the existing long-haul trucks on the road without modification.

Chhandak Basu, a researcher at the University of Northern Colorado, has received a grant to study the feasibility of taking the oil-producing genes from the tropical copaiba tree, also known as the “diesel tree,” and inserting them into other types of plants, like grasses, to induce those plants to produce the diesel-like oleoresin.

“The agricultural aspects of oleoresin have been studied extensively, but not the molecular biology part, not the genes responsible for this type of synthesis,” Basu said.

Oleoresin has been known for a long time to be easily substituted for diesel fuel, and the copaiba tree produces copious amounts of these oleoresins — each tree producing 40 liters per year.

The problem is that trees grow relatively slowly and the copaiba tree requires a tropical environment to flourish. A wholesale shift of large portions of the tropics to growing monocultures of these trees could have a devastating effect on tropical habitats and global warming through deforestation.

To get around this, Mr. Basu suggests that genetically modifying other types of plants to do the same thing that copaiba trees do could be part of the solution to attaining energy independence.

“This can be a tool in the toolbox,” Basu said of his research. “There’s so much wealth in this country that we should find a homegrown solution to address energy concerns. And if I’m successful here, we can spread the technology to the developing nations.”

The whole idea of a grass that produces diesel fuel is pretty cool — enough so that I’m a bit skeptical. Right now it’s just an idea on paper, but after thinking it over, the basic concept seems feasible to me.

The real sticking point is not the actual genetic modification, but the potential for cross-contamination of other types of grasses and related plants through wind-blown pollen. Once that gene is out in the environment, there’s no getting it back into a contained state.

If this issue can be addressed, a whole host of other genetic modifications for increasing biofuel production from grasses could also be implemented in the future.

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Kites Could Become Major Source Of Wind Power

Written by Ariel Schwartz

The idea to use kites for wind power is nothing new, but a development at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands reminds us that we haven’t even begun to tap the potential of these flying contraptions.

A recent experiment performed by a team at the university used kites to create 10 kW of energy—enough to power 10 homes. This is a not a major breakthrough in and of itself, but the researchers plan to build a larger version of the project called “Laddermill” that would create 50 kW of energy. They eventually want to build a 100 MW version of their project. If successful, the expanded project would create enough power for 100,000 homes.

The kites are attached to a generator by a string. Power is created when the string is pulled and the generator turns as winds lift it into the sky.

According to Laddermill project leader Wubbo Ockels, kites are a cheap way to use energy higher up in the air, where winds carry more power due to high speeds (7 meters/sec). In contrast, turbines harvest energy closer to the ground, where wind speed is slower (5 meters/sec).

Unfortunately, Ockels predicts that the technology might not be brought to the market for a long time unless a large amount of money is made available. But if the kite generators do make it out of the lab, they may silence critics who complain about wind power’s detrimental effects on birds and scenery.

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Brazil Wants $21 Billion to Protect the Amazon Rainforest with No Strings Attached

On Friday, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva headlined an event to officially launch a new international fund that will raise money to protect the Amazon Rainforest. “We are conscious of what the Amazon represents for the world… It’s better for the country’s image to do things right, so we can walk in international forums with our heads high,” Lula pontificated.

It is hoped that the fund will raise up to 21 billion dollars over the next 13 years from nations around the world. Norway has already chipped in, pledging 100 million dollars to kick things off. Brazil has made it clear though that donations are only being accepted with a condition of no strings being attached. In other words, countries that donate money will have no say over how the money is used.

This stringent policy has its roots in resentment. Some Brazilians feel that they have been unfairly criticized by other countries for the deforestation of the Amazon. They claim that these nations often sit back and provide little in the means of help, or have their own environmental peccadilloes that make these slights toward Brazil’s conservation efforts hypocritical. Brazil’s Minister for Strategic Affairs, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, voiced this sentiment at the press conference: “The fund is a vehicle by which foreign governments can help support our initiatives without exerting any influence over our national policy. We are not going to trade sovereignty for money.”

According to one source, when carbon emissions from deforestation are included in the equation, Brazil ranks 4th worldwide in greenhouse emissions, only behind China, the United States, and Indonesia. The Amazon deforestation rate in Brazil has also increased somewhat this year. While Brazil is not the only country that contains the Amazon Rainforest within its borders, with 60% it does possess the largest single tract of the forest’s span. Eight other countries also contain parts of the Amazon, with Peru having the next largest piece of the pie at 13%. The difference percentage wise between the 1st and 2nd countries shows just how big of a player Brazil truly is when it comes to protecting the Amazon Rainforest.

The fund will be administered by a Brazilian bank owned by the government. The money will be used to support sustainable development projects like making condoms from rubber in trees, scientific research, and also to combat illegal logging. Whether or not the fund can attract donations remains to be seen– as well as Brazil’s ability to properly use the funds to sponsor legitimate efforts and research that will help to protect the Amazon. But the creation of the fund should be praised without doubt as an unequivocal step in the right direction for Brazil as leaders of conservation efforts in South America.

The Amazon Rainforest has been in the news quite a bit this year for several other reasons. The first photographs of a long-isolated tribe that live in the forest were released earlier this year, causing a media frenzy and false rumors of a hoax. The Brazilian Government’s plans to construct several new hydroelectric dams in the Amazon also came under scrutiny from numerous Brazilian tribes who claim they would be affected negatively by the dams.

Are we heading for a human-powered future?

Would you still watch your favorite television program if you had to cycle for an hour before you could view it?

Couch potatoes will be horrified, but fresh advances in human-powered technology -- where users power appliances through their own motion -- could one day see a 'workout-to-watch' scenario become reality.

Human power is rapidly gaining in popularity worldwide as businesses seek 'greener' methods of operating.

The profile of the technology is set to receive a further boost this month when a human-powered gym opens in Portland, Oregon, and again in September when the human-powered 'sustainable dance club', Club Watt, opens its doors in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Human power is already being used to run the 'California Fitness' gym in Hong Kong, and to power the recently opened 'Club Surya' in London.
iReport.com: Can you predict what the future will be like?

Beyond all of this, further concepts have been developed for human-powered 'river gyms' for the waterways of New York.

But, how does your sweat and strain turn into power for lights, music and machines?

The general concept is known as energy harvesting, which simply refers to the gathering of energy from one source and applying it to power an object.

Italian inventor Lucien Gambarota, who designed California Fitness's method of storing energy and using it to power lights and music in the gym, told CNN the concept is straightforward.

"One of the oldest types of energy used by people is muscular energy -- so this is nothing new."

Gambarota said machines such as exercycles created a load, used as a counter-force by means of a resistor.

"I disconnected the resistor and started storing the energy into a battery... that is then used as power. It was a way to show there can be very simple solutions. It doesn't always have to be high-tech," he said.

Portland's 'green' gym will have spinning bikes connected to wind-generator motors. The users should generate enough electricity to power the gym's music system or run personal DVD players on the machines, the gym's manager Adam Boesel predicts.

While harnessing the energy from people working out at a gym seems logical, utilising the movement of clubbers at dance clubs is a little more complex.

Two methods have developed -- the first of which is piezoelectricity, used by Club Surya, where crystals in blocks under the dance-floor rub together with the assistance of dancers on the floor. This generates an electrical charge which is then fed into batteries.

A second method using wheels to generate energy under a slightly moving floor will be used at the soon-to-be-opened Club Watt. This model involves coils and magnets which move under the dance-floor to create a charge.

Vera Verkooijen, spokeswoman for Sustainable Dance Club, the company which is behind the floor for Club Watt and produces smaller, portable floors, said the human power would be enough to power about 30 percent of the club's requirements.

Verkooijen admitted the first floors were not very efficient, and said the designers were already working on new models to improve the amount of energy captured.

"This is just the first version. We are willing to take it further," she said.

At Club Surya the power shortfall is made up by solar panels and a wind turbine.

Putting the current buzz aside, how far could this human-powered technology develop? And how widely can it be applied?

Verkooijen told CNN she already had some indications of where the technology was heading.

"We receive a lot of requests from other companies for people who want to use the floors. We get many of these for bus and train stations -- places where there are lots of people."

Lights and display boards at those spaces could be powered applying the same concept as that being used in Club Watt, she said.

Evert Raaijen, technical director of energy conversion company Exendis, felt the technology could have a number of different applications. From pedal-powered computers on bicycles, to self-powered soldiers in militaries, Raaijen predicted human power would be developed widely in coming years.

"I think it's a science field which will be one of the future," he said.

Gambarota believed there were ways human power could be brought into practical use in the home.

He had generated an idea of using human-powered batteries for television or portable video game consoles.

"With so many kids not exercising enough, a battery could be created for these devices so they had to create the energy to use them. The same could be done for television sets.

"We could get the situation where people have to cycle so they can use it," Gambarota said.

Despite these potential developments, human-power is attracting its share of criticism.

Although he shows enthusiasm for the battery project, Gambarota, who now spends much of his time developing micro wind turbines, is sceptical about the future of human-power on a mass-scale.

He raises doubts about the efficiency of human power and questioned its economic viability.

The average amount of power one person could produce going about normal activities on any given day was about one kilowatt-hour (kWh), which only amounted to about € 0.10 worth of electricity, Gambarota said.

"It's a very good marketing tool for businesses, but in terms of economics it does not make sense at all."

The main reason it was being used was because companies wanted to "look green, taste green and smell green", he said.

Raaijen, who was consulted on the Sustainable Dance Floor project, agreed that opting for human-powered technology at present was not a financially-based decision.

"The project (dance floor) in itself doesn't save a lot of energy. It's more of a statement than anything."

Observing recent trends, the sustained drive for 'green energy' should continue to push human-powered technology forward, and despite the limitations to development, human-powered gyms, dance clubs, and maybe even video game consoles are likely to feature strongly in our immediate future.
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