Archives: February2010

• Bloom Box Launch Is “Big Hype”–Invention Nothing New?

  How Bloom Energy’s mini, green power plant works—and why its press conference today had some experts seeing red, or just plain underwhelmed.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Fraxinus americana

  
  

  Continuing the “biodiversity and sports” series today, Lindsay is again the author. Today’s photographs are both via forestryimages.org, the first by Richard Webb (image | Creative Commons License) and the second by Keith Kanoti (image | CC License). Thank you!

  Before starting today’s entry, next month’s International Year of Biodiversity theme at UBC Botanical Garden is “Biodiversity and the North”. For BPotD, we’re going to be looking for images of plant species that live in arctic or subarctic conditions. I know there are some potential photographs in the Flickr pool, but if you are a photographer on Flickr and know some of your own images that would be appropriate, please tag them with “iybmar”, so we can quickly locate them. I have some photographs to share, but they will be from southern Alaska and Yukon. It’d be good to have some from Scandinavian countries or elsewhere (Siberia, anyone?).

  Lindsay writes:

  Snowshoes are thought to be one of the earliest and most important innovations in transportation technology, with evidence of a kind of primitive “ski shoe” being used in Asia around 6000 BCE. Composed of slabs of wood lashed onto the bottoms of feet, this early technology is also believed to have diverged with human dispersement. Peoples that settled in present-day Scandinavian countries developed the early design into the Nordic ski. Those peoples that moved eastward into North America created snowshoes resembling those seen today (link has photographs). It is believed that the crossing of the Bering Strait was made possible by the invention of the ski shoe.

  Due to the manufacturing process and use, wood used in the fabrication of wooden snowshoes must be both tough and pliable. The wood of choice for First Nations in eastern North America was Fraxinus americana (or white ash), though birch, larch and willows are among the types of trees also sometimes used. Also commonly known as American ash, this large deciduous tree is found in mesophytic hardwood forests from Nova Scotia west to Minnesota and south to northern Florida. Unfortunately, the wood of white ash is susceptible to rot, so First Nations had to use the resin of several spruce species (red, white and black) mixed with animal fat to seal the wooden frame.

  There are several traditional styles of snowshoes whose origin depended on locale and activity. Begining in the 1830s, the first recreational snowshoe clubs were established. In the 1970s, snowshoes began to make extensive use of synthetic materials and lightweight metals to replace natural materials (e.g., those developed by the Sherpa Snowshoe Company). This has led to a resurgence in the popularity of snowshoe recreation in the past couple decades, with events such as the Yeti Snowshoe Series.

• Star “Eating” Superhot Planet’s Atmosphere

  The hot Jupiter known as WASP-12b is so puffed up by its star that it’s losing mass, according to a new study that suggests the missing matter is forming a ring around the star.