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16 February 2013 | NewScientist | 5 NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS GOODBYE billowy smoke, hello swishing blades. Thanks to better design, it is increasingly cheaper for countries to build wind farms than coal or gas power stations. Figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance show that this is already the case in Australia. Any wind farms built now would generate electricity for between A$80 (US$82) and A$113 per megawatt-hour, whereas new coal plants would cost A$176/MWh. Coal’s high cost is partly due to the nation’s carbon tax, but new coal power stations would still cost A$126/MWh without the tax. Better designs, including longer blades and taller turbines, have boosted efficiency. And firms now use fluid dynamics to organise their farms to circumvent the fact that wind becomes turbulent in the lee of turbines, decreasing the efficiency of others behind them. Staggered turbines create higher wind speeds and less turbulence than straight rows (Boundary- Layer Meteorology, doi.org/kgd). Wind is the latest renewable energy source to become competitive, after the price of solar energy fell 75 per cent between 2008 and 2011. Cheap wind IT IS a case of the bottom line before our health. This year, a million Americans are likely to succumb to salmonella poisoning. Several hundred may die. Yet in Europe, a vaccine for chickens has slashed the number of cases. Vaccination in Iowa shows US lives can be saved too – but meat producers are resisting a vaccine that doesn’t boost their profits. Salmonella causes more deaths than any other food-borne germ, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, with poultry and eggs the biggest source. This can be prevented. In 1998, UK supermarkets started buying eggs only from vaccinated hens. Human cases plummeted – from more than 18,000 diagnosed in 1993 to just 459 in 2010. In the US, a recall of eggs due to salmonella in 2010 led to tighter hygiene rules for chicken farms. But the US Food and Drug Administration declared there was “insufficient data on efficacy” to make vaccination compulsory. Still, about a third of US egg producers have started to vaccinate. The number of infected hen houses is down fivefold in Iowa, the biggest US egg producer, in the past two years. But meat firms aren’t keen, although there is salmonella on 13 per cent of supermarket chicken breasts, says Lance Price of George Washington University in Washington DC. It doesn’t hurt the birds, so there’s no profit in prevention. REUTERS/MIKE BLAKE Bacteria training camp Pig farms in China may be unleashing a tsunami of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Industrial-scale pig farming there is growing, and there are no regulations on the use of antibiotics in animal feed. A study by Chinese and US researchers of bacterial samples from three large Chinese pig farms has found that the microbes collectively carry 149 genes that could help resist all classes of antibiotics (PNAS, doi.org/kgq). Name that moon Hercules or Orpheus? You decide. The team that discovered Pluto’s fourth and fifth moons – in 2011 and 2012, respectively – wants your help naming the satellites. They have whittled the options down to a dozen, which are traditionally taken from Greek or Roman mythology. Visit www.plutorocks.com to vote. More fish in the sea The European Union is proposing radical reforms to its Common Fisheries Policy, in the hope of restoring exhausted fisheries by 2020. The plan is a big step forward, but experts are concerned that politicians could still set quotas that are too high to be sustainable. Landsat aloft Landsat 8, the newest addition to a 40-year-long mission monitoring Earth from space, was successfully placed in orbit on Monday. It will take pictures in visible and infrared light, and track changes in the Earth’s temperature, providing data for everything from Google Maps to climate science. Prickly customers The vast majority of online sales of endangered cacti are illegal. Only 10 per cent of international trades on internet auction sites could be linked to official permits. This suggests that laws governing trades in endangered species are being circumvented on a massive scale (Conservation Biology, doi.org/kgp). –We want vaccination now– Poultry poisoning North Korea’s bomb “Wind is the latest renewable energy source to become competitive with fossil fuels” “Salmonella doesn’t hurt the birds so there is no profit for the chicken producers in prevention” SOME earthquakes just aren’t natural. North Korea’s third nuclear test on 12 February registered as a magnitude 4.9 quake on monitors operated by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test- Ban Treaty Organization. The CTBTO calls it a “suspicious event” as North Korea has low seismic activity. Meanwhile, the nation’s official news agency says North Korea tested a smaller nuclear device than previously, with “greater explosive force”. NORSAR, the Norwegian part of the CTBTO monitoring network, puts the test bomb at 10 kilotons, an increase from tests in 2006 and 2009. The bomb dropped in Hiroshima in 1945 was 16 kilotons. Barack Obama called the act “highly provocative”. As New Scientist went to press, he was expected to propose significant cuts to the US’s nuclear arsenal in his State of the Union address. 60 SECONDS –Curiosity made a hole-in-one– For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
