Day: January 2, 2019

New research shows that garbage piles produced by leaf-cutter ants emit significant amounts of nitrous oxide—a potent greenhouse gas.

Chemical reactions within the organic waste piles produced by leaf-cutter ants create copious amounts of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, according to new research published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. These industrious insects aren’t contributing to global warming on the scale of human activities, but their behaviors are fundamentally altering the composition and function of tropical forests—including the way nutrients are transported and recycled.

Leaf-cutter ants are dominant herbivorous insects that are ubiquitous throughout Central and South America. These insects can suck out the sap from leaves for a quick energy boost, but the real purpose of harvesting leaves is to the feed the fungus that grows in their nests. Leaf-cutter ants are insectoid farmers, growing fungus to feed their colonies. Incredibly, leaf-cutter ants can remove up to 8 percent of living forest foliage each year, making them true movers and shakers of the environment, influencing both forest structure and function.

But like any industrial-scale process, this farming activity results in waste. Leaf-cutter ants don’t like to leave garbage lying around, so they’ve developed a system whereby dead fungus, rotting leaves, and the remains of dead ants are plopped atop a dump away from the colony. This behavior creates a kind of compost heap filled with organic matter, setting the table for some complex chemistry. The carbon and nitrogen packed within these churning clumps of waste interact to produce a surprising amount of nitrous oxide, as the new research shows.

For the new study, entomologist Fiona Soper from the University of Montana (now at Cornell University in New York) and her colleagues travelled to a tropical rainforest in southwest Costa Rica. Soper’s team studied the garbage piles produced by Atta colombica, a species of leaf-cutter ant. In total, the researchers measured the emissions from 22 colony refuse dumps across a 4 square kilometer area.

Results showed that each pile was a nitrous oxide hot spot in the tropical forest. Individually, these waste sites don’t produce a huge amount of greenhouse gas, but collectively they do. The team estimates that 350 grams of nitrous oxide are produced per hectare each year, which surpasses “background emissions by more than three orders of magnitude,” the researchers wrote in the study, adding that the levels were comparable to “engineered systems such as wastewater treatment tanks.” These nitrous oxide hot spots produce gas at rates far greater than anything that could be produced without the intervention of ants, such as topography or soil moisture, the researchers wrote.

It’s important to point out that the study was limited to a small geographical area; the amount of gas produced at other leaf-cutter ant sites may vary. In the future, scientists should conduct similar surveys in other parts of Central and South America to learn more, and to calculate the total global contribution of nitrous oxide emissions made by leaf-cutter ants. As the researchers wrote in the study, leaf-cutter ants “may represent an unrecognized greenhouse gas point source throughout the Neotropics.”

As noted, the amount of nitrous oxide produced by these ants isn’t likely to affect global climate, but it’s clear from this study that ants, despite their small size, are a veritable force of nature.

[Proceedings of the Royal Society B via New Scientist]

As playing retro games on modern consoles has become more popular, so has the accessories market dedicated to reviving classic controllers that promise to make the retro gaming experience feel more authentic. But why buy the same hardware again when there are clever ways to repurpose your old controllers? This cartridge even turns the original Game Boy into a wireless gamepad.

I realize Tetris existed well before Nintendo’s Game Boy hit the market, but the portable version of the classic tetromino-stacking game that shipped with every Game Boy still feels like the defacto version to me, and playing Tetris with that familiar hardware in hand magically increases my stacking skills by ten-fold. That’s probably why I’m so impressed by this hack from Alex Iannuzzi of insideGadgets. Without having to modify or upgrade the original Game Boy or GBA hardware in any way, he managed to design and build a game cartridge that turns the handhelds into wireless controllers for other consoles and computers.

Iannuzzi has documented the design and engineering of this custom cartridge on his website, including links to the code he developed, and the schematics of the actual hardware. Someone with similar hacking skills could probably recreate this cartridge themselves, but for simpletons like myself, Iannuzzi also sells pre-assembled versions on his site.

The current version of the Gameboy TX Cart, which sells for $23, uses the larger cartridge designs that the Game Boy and Game Boy Color relied on. They can also be used in the Game Boy Advance or GBA SP consoles, but the cartridge will stick out of the top. A smaller GBA version of the Gameboy TX Cart is en route, but it will reduce the range of its wireless antenna from about 26 feet down to just 13 feet. You’ll also need to cough up $14 for an accompanying wireless receiver that either connects to a computer’s USB port, or the controller ports on the Nintendo GameCube and Wii. Iannuzzi has also promised a version of the receiver for the Super Nintendo, so it might time to dig out and dust off your Super Game Boy cartridge.

[insideGadgets via Hackaday]

Netflix has removed an episode of comedian Hasan Minhaj’s show Patriot Act from the streaming platform in Saudi Arabia amid pressure from the Saudi government. The episode, which was first made available around the world on October 28, 2018, criticized government leaders over the murder of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, the war in Yemen, and the billions of dollars flowing from Saudi coffers into Silicon Valley.

The decision by Netflix to remove the episode was first reported by the Financial Times, but the episode is still reportedly available on YouTube in the country. YouTube is owned by Google and it’s not immediately clear whether YouTube has received a request to remove the episode as well.

Google did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment but Netflix told NPR, “We strongly support artistic freedom and removed this episode only in Saudi Arabia after we had received a valid legal request—and to comply with local law.”

What local law? Saudi officials have cited a law about, “production, preparation, transmission, or storage of material impinging on public order, religious values, public morals, and privacy, through the information network or computers.” So, pretty much anything that the government deems unacceptable. Saudi Arabia has previously threatened anyone spreading “fake news” with five years in prison.

The episode of Patriot Act is extremely critical of the Saudi government’s murder of Khashoggi, who was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on October 2. Khashoggi, who had been critical of the government in many of his writings, was lured to the consulate by government agents who reportedly drugged the reporter and chopped his body up into pieces while his fiancee was waiting outside. His remains have never been found, though the Turkish government believes it has video of the dismembered body being removed from the building in several bags.

But the controversy around the episode isn’t just about Khashoggi. Minhaj also dives into the Saudi government’s connections to power in the United States, including with many in the tech industry. And Minhaj makes plenty of jokes at Silicon Valley’s expense along the way.

“The Saudis effectively own 10 percent of Uber, which makes complete sense,” Minhaj says in the episode. “Saudi Arabia and Uber are both places women drivers don’t feel safe.”

“Tech companies are swimming in more Saudi cash than a Bugatti dealership in Beverly Hills,” Minhaj continued.

“All of these companies have taken Saudi investment, through a Japanese company called Softbank,” Minhaj explains, as the logos for companies like Slack, WeWork and DoorDash appear behind the host. Minhaj goes on to explain that Saudi’s crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, (commonly referred to as MBS,) has invested roughly $11 billion in Silicon Valley since 2016.

So, yes, leaders in Saudi Arabia are probably pissed off that the episode discusses the war in Yemen and the killing of Khashoggi, but there’s also probably a lot of concern about new scrutiny involving the blood money that’s currently being pumped directly into American tech companies. A number of high-profile American CEOs, including the CEO of Uber, pulled out of a big Saudi tech conference last October, though it’ll be interesting to see how long the aversion to Saudi money really lasts.

For its part, the American government doesn’t seem to have any real problem with Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that American intelligence agencies believe MBS directly ordered the killing. In fact, President Donald Trump takes no issue with murder committed by the Saudis as long as his financial interests are met.

“It’s a very simple equation for me. I’m about make America great again and I’m about America first,” Trump said last month about America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.

It should probably be noted that President Trump has never released his tax returns and there’s no way of knowing if he currently has any personal financial interest in the Saudi kingdom. Critics of President Trump have largely focused on his possible financial relationship with Russia, but there are countless other countries with which he may have conflicts of interest.

The Canadian news site Global News has a pretty good summary of what we already know:

The president’s links to Saudi billionaires and princes go back years, and appear to have only deepened.

In 1991, as Trump was teetering on personal bankruptcy and scrambling to raise cash, he sold his 282-foot Trump yacht “Princess” to Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal for $20 million, a third less than what he reportedly paid for it.

Four years later, the prince came to his rescue again, joining other investors in a $325 million deal for Trump’s money-losing Plaza Hotel.

In 2001, Trump sold the entire 45th floor of the Trump World Tower across from the United Nations in New York for $12 million, the biggest purchase in that building to that point, according to the brokerage site Streeteasy. The buyer: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Shortly after he announced his run for president, Trump began laying the groundwork for possible new business in the kingdom. He registered eight companies with names tied to the country, such as “THC Jeddah Hotel Advisor LLC” and “DT Jeddah Technical Services,” according to a 2016 financial disclosure report to the federal government. Jeddah is a major city in the country.

“We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi,” Trump said in his statement late last year. “In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran.”

[Financial Times]