VOA Radiogram 5745 AM 0230 UTC 3/27/16

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Program #156 with MFSK32 image and screenshot of VOA ID in FLDigi waterfall.





Before RSID: <<2016-03-27T02:31Z MFSK-32 @ 100000+1499>>
Welcome to program 156 of VOA Radiogram from the Voice of
America.

I'm Kim Andrew Elliott in Washington.

Here is the lineup for today's program, all in MFSK32:

 1:34  Program preview (now)
 2:39  Efficient internal combustion engine*
 9:00  Crop wild relatives for food security*
15:05  Rare flower blooms at US Botanic Garden*
19:49  Urban birds are smarter*
24:10  Closing announcements*

* with image


Please send reception reports to radiogram@voanews.com.

And visit voaradiogram.net.

Twitter: @VOARadiogram


VOA NEWS

This Internal Combustion Engine is 50% More Efficient

George Putic, KI4FNF
March 22, 2016

Internal combustion engines in cars may be on their way out, but
experts agree it will take a few decades before electric-powered
vehicles become dominant. Meanwhile, the existing gas and diesel
engines can be made more efficient and less polluting. With a $9
million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, a U.S.-based
company is using an old technological concept to build a power
train that is 50 percent more fuel-efficient and just as powerful
as conventional engines.

This little engine looks like it has only three pistons, but in
fact, it has six, sharing only three cylinders.

With the help of modern technology California-based Achates Power
has given new life to the concept of the opposed-piston engine,
mostly abandoned after the second World War.

"With the opposed-piston engine, you're able to achieve the
efficiency of a much larger engine in a much smaller package,"
said Fabien Redon of Achates Power.

An opposed-piston engine is a two-stroke engine with separate oil
flow. It has no cylinder heads and no valves, both sources of
considerable loss of heat and power in conventional combustion
engines.

Two pistons move against each other in the cylinder, compressing
a fuel-air mixture, which self-ignites, pushing the pistons
apart, generating power.

Exhaust gases escape through ports in the cylinder walls.

Stripped of many conventional engine parts, the opposed-piston
engine is inexpensive and simple to manufacture.

"We make sure that we do not over scavenge and achieve a very
good combustion efficiency, so that hydro nitro-carbons and the
emissions are reduced to a great extent," said Redon.

Larger opposed-piston engines have long been used for military
and other applications. But developing them for consumer
vehicles was not easy.

"This combustion strategy has some difficulties and weaknesses at
low loads, because it needs a certain level of temperature inside
the combustion chamber to make sure that the gasoline gets
ignited," said Redon.

Achates Power, together with Argonne National Laboratory and
Delphi Automotive, say they are sure they will overcome the
obstacles, and by 2018 will have a 50 percent more efficient
three-liter three-cylinder engine that will be suitable for
passenger cars and trucks.

http://www.voanews.com/content/this-internal-combustion-engine-is-50-percent-more-efficient/3250128.html

Image: Screen capture from the accompanying video ...





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Please send reception reports to radiogram@voanews.com.


Study: 'Collect Crops' Wild Relatives for Future Food Security'

VOA News
March 21, 2016

Many wild relatives of important food crops, which could be used
to help those crops adapt and thrive in an environment impacted
by climate change, are missing from the world's genebanks.

Researchers with the Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change
project mapped more than 1,000 crop wild relatives (CWR) of rice,
potato, maize, wheat and 77 other important crops, and found
significant gaps in the species that have been collected, and the
geographic regions represented in genebanks.

Plant breeders tap the genetic diversity of CWR to develop crops
that can handle higher temperatures, increased soil salinity and
more severe disease outbreaks. For example, genes from a wild
rice species were used to make domestic rice varieties resistant
to a virus that cost Asian farmers hundreds of millions of
dollars in crop losses in the 1970s. A wild tomato species
provided genes that boosted the global tomato industry by $250
million per year.

Missing from collections are wild relatives of banana, cassava,
sweet potato, pineapple, spinach and more. The research,
published in the journal Nature Plants, shows that more than 70
percent of essential CWR species are in urgent need to collection
and conservation. Some species identified as high priorities are
in war-torn regions, or areas threatened by deforestation.

According to report co-author Colin Khoury, a scientist at the
International Center for Tropical Agriculture, "The world's food
supply is in a precarious position of depending on too few crop
plant species."  The project's findings, he added, give
scientists the first comprehensive global overview of which
plants are missing and where collectors need to search for them.

http://www.voanews.com/content/study-collect-crops-wild-relatives-for-future-food-security/3247621.html

See also: http://www.cropwildrelatives.org/



tR Rot




Image: An example of a crop wild relative is the Prunus
divaricata of Armenia ...



tQ

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This is VOA Radiogram from the Voice of America.

Please send reception reports to radiogram@voanews.com.


Rare Flower Blooms at US Botanic Garden

Julie Taboh
March 22, 2016

Visitors at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington got a rare
treat recently when they learned about the surprise appearance of
a rare bloom.

In the 20 years it's been on display, the Jade Vine, also known
as Emerald Creeper, has only bloomed once before, says Devin
Dotson, the Garden's public affairs and exhibit specialist.

Standing on a high walkway in the hot and humid "Jungle Room" of
the Garden, Dotson pointed out that the flower starts "high up in
the canopy and works its way down."

"Its blooms are going to just grow and grow and grow," he said.
"The vines will go all the way down to the ground, so visitors
even down below  in another few weeks  are going to be able to
see this magnificent color."

The striking blue-green shade of the flower clusters "look almost
fake," Dotson remarked, adding that it's totally natural. "We
don't have to dye it, and we're really excited to share this with
our visitors."

The flower, officially known as Strongylodon Macrobotrys, is
closely related to legumes, such as kidney beans and runner
beans. It's normally found in the tropical forests of the
Philippines, and for a short time only, blooming in all its glory
at the U.S. Botanic Garden.

http://www.voanews.com/content/rare-flower-blooms-us-botanic-garden/3250083.html

See also:
https://www.usbg.gov/

Image:  The Jade Vine flower U.S. Botanic Garden ...


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This is VOA Radiogram from the Voice of America.

Please send reception reports to radiogram@voanews.com.


Urban Birds Smarter Than Rural Counterparts

VOA News
March 22, 2016

Those pigeons you see by the tens in many cities, may be smarter
than their less urban counterparts, according to a new study.

Writing in the journal Behavioral Ecology, researchers from
Canadas McGill University say that may be because theyve had to
adapt to city life by learning to take advantage of new sources
of food and other life-sustaining needs.

For the study, the researchers compared urban and rural
bullfinches in Barbados, looking for "differences in
problem-solving abilities such as opening drawers to access
food," and city birds had a bolder temperament.

"We found that not only were birds from urbanized areas better at
innovative problem-solving tasks than bullfinches from rural
environments, but that, surprisingly, urban birds also had a
better immunity than rural birds," says Jean-Nicolas Audet, a
Ph.D student in the Department of Biology and first author of the
study.

He added that his team expected to see a trade-off, "just because
we assumed that you can't be good at everything. It seems that in
this case, the urban birds have it all."

http://www.voanews.com/content/mht-urban-birds-smarter-than-rural-counterparts/3249159.html
Wt
Image: A bullfinch opening a container ...
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Please send reception reports to radiogram@voanews.com.

And visit voaradiogram.net.

Twitter: @VOARadiogram

Thanks to colleagues at the Edward R. Murrow shortwave
transmitting station in North Carolina.

I'm Kim Elliott. Please join us for the next VOA Radiogram.

This is VOA, the Voice of America.
8

The magnolia tree provides the earliest blossoms of spring in
Washington DC ...

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Before RSID: <<2016-03-27T02:58Z MFSK-32 @ 100000+1500>>
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