Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

We’ll start this week’s news stories with a little item from the cold end of the world.  Humans have been living and working in Antarctica for 100 years now, and our impact on the ice-bound continent is beginning to show.  Although most countries monitor their Antarctic stations, the pristine ice is still littered with our fuel drums, dead equipment and junk.  Although the Belgians may be in the middle of an incipient civil war, they’ve still managed to do something about this.  They’ve constructed the Princess Elisabeth Station, a self-contained research base designed to minimize the human ‘footprint’ on the fragile Antarctic ecosystem.

3D computer rendering of the Princess Elisabeth Station. (Credit: Image courtesy of Belgian Antarctic Research)

The Princess Elisabeth Station is unique because it’s the first Antarctic research station designed to run entirely on renewable energy.  The engineering team used an evolving design instead of a fixed one, constantly re-adjusting the design according to the outcomes of energy efficiency simulations they ran.  The station features specialized building design and materials, a passive heating system, an energy control system, energy efficient appliances, and sound insulation techniques.

The station is also unique because it’s not built by any government.  It’s a joint public-private venture.  The Princess Elisabeth was designed and built by the Brussels-based International Polar Foundation (a private sector non-profit organization) with assistance from its technical partners and the financial support of corporate sponsors and individual donors.

The Princess Elisabeth Station and its construction crew are being transported to the coast of Antarctica.  Once it arrives at the beginning of December (summer in Antarctica) the segments of the Princess Elisabeth will be unloaded and transported (over several weeks) 120 miles inland to a ridge near a mountain in the Queen Maud Land segment of the continent.  There, the team will assemble the station in January and February of 2008.

After undergoing several checks in Belgium, the functional systems of the base (water treatment, control systems and ventilation systems) will be shipped to Antarctica and installed during the following austral summer in 2009.

Sustainable research.  What a novel idea!  I’ll bet it would even have some applications to living on the Moon or Mars!  And now we’ll move on from the ecosystem to chemistry.

HOW NOT TO HAVE A BLAST
Although we hear all about plastic explosives, dirty bombs and other exotic weapons in the terrorist arsenal, probably the most deadly explosive is perhaps, the easiest to obtain.  Timothy McVey used it to kill 167 innocent men, women and children in the Oklahoma City bombings.  What is it?  Plain old garden variety (pun intended) fertilizer; ammonium nitrate.  When you mix ammonium nitrate with fuel oil you get an explosive of astonishing power.

Darrel Taulbee, a researcher in Kentucky is trying to find ways to defuse the power of ammonium nitrate.  He’s been coating it with coal combustion by-products—fly ash from electric power plants (120 million tons are produced yearly at coal-burning power plants)—to make it less deadly.  He coats ammonium nitrate pellets with fly-ash, packs them into metal canisters, and takes them deep into the Kentucky hills. Then he blows them up. He’s learned that a mix of 20 percent coal ash to 80 percent ammonium nitrate keeps an explosion from burning all its fuel, which makes the blast far less violent.  Since you can’t stop farmers from using fertilizer (nor would you want to if you want to keep eating), there are no commercially available options that are totally effective in preventing ammonium nitrate from being used as an explosive.

Darrel Taulbee has discovered that coal ash won’t stop the blast from initiating, but it will stop it from propagating.  As an extra benefit, the ash is classified as non-toxic by the EPA and just could have some beneficial effects for crops.  It’s inexpensive and easily coats the ammonium nitrate particles, forming a hard outer layer that’s difficult to remove.

Kudos to Darrel Taulbee.  At least Homeland Security is spending some of its money right!

ON THE RIGHT TRACK
So . . . . where does YOUR food come from?  The clothes you wear?  The toys your kids play with?  You might know the answers to some of those questions but here’s an easier one.  How did it get here?  And if you live on an island, there are only two answers (unless the item in question is produced locally).  It got here on an airplane or on a ship.  And most of it arrived in container ships.

We’re all familiar with the big container ships but did you ever wonder how they keep track of all those containers.  In this world of terrorism, the answer is, scarily enough, sometimes they don’t.
In what can be a very murky world of shadowy ship registry offices, lengthy manifests, and dockhands who change out faster than Barbosa's crew, how all these ships come by their cargo, how that cargo is loaded, by what polyglot seamen and in what untamed ports, can be an amazingly scrambled and trackless story rivaling the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Scenario:  A single ship starts out in Singapore with containers filled with electronics, passes through Indonesia where it picks up spices, sails to Calcutta to load cotton, Port Said where it boards an Egyptian crew, Piraeus where it stops for fuel, Tangier where it picks up leathers, Scotland where it packs in woolen sweaters, and finally sets sail for Newark, New Jersey.  Eleven million containers packed with such goods reach U.S. ports every year.

At any point in a merchant ship's journey, pry open container XYZ mid-ocean, and what might you find?  When you can't be sure, that spells danger.  The possibility that a single container has gone purposefully astray and might now be packed with explosives, or loaded with a virulent biologic weapon, is not a fictional scenario.  (In 1988, it was an Al Qaeda merchant ship that delivered the materials needed to bomb U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. That same ship was never seen again.)

Given lots of time, customs agents could find all contraband. But, in the world of maritime shipping, time is the enemy.  Try delaying a delivery, and you may face some rough characters down at the docks (think On the Waterfront).  What's more, anything that slows the swift transit of goods around the world can have a rippling effect on the world's economy.

There’s some good news in the form of some new electronics.  The Marine Asset Tag Tracking System or MATTS is a miniature sensor, data logging computer, radio transceiver, and GPS tracking system integrated into a compact and inexpensive black box, about the size of a deck of cards.  When it’s stuck to a shipping container, MATTS can use its on-board GPS chip to estimate its location if the GPS signal is lost.  And, in the final version of the system, containers outfitted with MATTS tags will be able to transmit through shipboard communications systems, even if they are placed deep below deck.  The tag's signal will "jump" from container to container until it finds a path it can use. 

Even better, this ‘black box’ stores its location history and reports it back when in range (up to 1 km) of an Internet equipped ship, container terminal, or a cell phone tower.  At any point in a container's journey, its history can be examined, and if anything has gone amiss, authorities know instantly to scrutinize that particular container.  Wow!!  I feel safer already!!

NOT IN THE PINK
And now for a couple of health items.  Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have made a surprising discovery.  They’ve found that gamma globulin, a type of antibody isolated from blood samples that used to be routinely given to health care workers and international travelers to protect them from infectious diseases, is a highly effective treatment for pinkeye with little apparent toxicity.  This is wonderful news for those of us who suffer or have suffered from this annoying and highly contagious disease in the past because there has never really been any effective treatment for it.  You were just told to let it run its course and try not to infect anyone else.

Pinkeye (the medical term is conjunctivitis), is an inflammation of the conjunctiva, the clear membrane that covers the white part of the eye and the inner surface of the eyelids.  Although typically a mild, self-limiting disease in children and adults, newborns are particularly susceptible to pinkeye and can be more prone to serious health complications, even blindness, if it goes untreated.

Because conjunctivitis is so contagious, the researchers believe that applying gamma globulin topically (placing the gamma globulin in the eye) may be of value in many settings, including ophthalmology units in hospitals, pediatric units, community clinics and in global public health programs.  Furthermore, due to its broad spectrum of antimicrobial properties, they believe that topical ocular application of gamma globulin may be effective against other viral and bacterial causes of conjunctivitis.

EXERCISE IN SURPRISING PLACES
So, you’re overweight and your doctor has told you to lose weight.  But you can’t afford the gym and you’re too tired and too busy to exercise after work.  So what’s a body to do?  That’s simple, exercise at work.

“Are you nuts?” I hear you saying.  “My boss would go ballistic if I start doing jumping jacks in the office!
But there’s an easier way.  Stop using the elevator and the escalator!  Stairs are one of the fastest ways to get a real cardio workout.  Researchers in Britain found that posting messages on stair risers like “Take the Stairs” and “7 Minutes of Stair Climbing Daily Protects Your Heart” increased climbing on the staircase by 190 percent and boosted climbing on a nearby staircase with no messages by 52 percent.
So you don’t want to arrive at the meeting hot and sweaty?  Just walk one or two flights up to begin with and then walk all the way back down.  We don’t have any super tall buildings here in the Marianas, and there’s no excuse for not taking the stairs.

Take a little control of your overweight body.  Take the stairs today!!