Johnald's Fantastical Daily Link Splurge

---

Think Koalas Are Cute? Thank Eucalyptus and Evolution Posted: 22 Dec 2009 02:37 PM PST Modern koalas are known for their cuteness, nearly exclusive eucalyptus-leaf diet, and the unexpectedly weird noises they make. Now, new research into their ancient ancestors shows that the koalas' odd appeal arose through the evolutionary interplay between an increasing reliance on an odd food supply and the need to maintain distinct ear structures for hearing each others' bellows. By studying the skulls of koala predecessors that lived five to 24 million years ago in the Miocene, an Australian team argues that evolution reshaped the animals faces to enable them to eat the tough leaves while maintaining their specialized communication anatomy. "The unique cranial configuration of the modern koala is therefore the result of accommodating their masticatory adaptations without compromising their auditory system," write the researchers, led by Mike Archer, a paleontologist at the University of New South Wales, in a paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The koalas communicate across the Australian forests by making low-frequency calls that are shockingly uncute (listen to the embedded video). The upside to the sounds is that they can travel longer distances — they act like the long waves of AM radio instead of the shorter waves of FM. The researchers hypothesize that the ancient koalas evolved their communication system at a time when the Australian continent was drying out and the koala habitat becoming less dense. By lowering the frequency of their calls, they were able to maintain communication in the sparser forests. To hear the lower frequencies, they evolved an ever larger apparatus in the middle ear. Modern koala bellows can travel more than 2,500 feet. Meanwhile, as the Miocene wore on, those same forests were increasingly dominated by the eucalyptus, which became the koalas' main food source. To make use of that resource, though, they had to add chewing power to deal with the tough leaves. And it's that combination of evolutionary quirks that yielded the strange skull of Phascolarctos cinereus, the modern koala. Citation: "Cranial Anatomy of Oligo-Miocene Koalas (Diprotodontia phascolarctidae): Stages in the Evolution of an Extreme Leaf-Eating Specialization" by Julien Louys, Ken Aplin, Robin M.D. Beck, and Michael Archer in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29(4):981–992, December 2009 Image: Dorothy Dunphy. WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Reactor Drawings Make Nuclear History Beautiful Posted: 22 Dec 2009 11:07 AM PST << previous image | next image >> Not all nuclear reactors are built alike. Power plant designs can vary in their fuels, coolants and configurations, a fact beautifully illustrated by a series of reactor wall charts originally published in issues of Nuclear Engineering International during the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, the charts have been lovingly collected by Ronald Knief, a nuclear engineer at Sandia National Laboratory. Recently, he completed his collection with help from the Idaho National Laboratory library and began to digitize the drawings. The first eight out of more than 100 have now been permanently archived online by the University of New Mexico libraries. "This is not a CAD/CAM-type thing," Knief said. "This really is art." Like the maps that accompanied many issues of National Geographic, the charts were inserts that could be pulled out and tacked up like a poster. They also served as teaching aids for Knief during his tenure at the University of New Mexico, and served to illustrate his books. "He saved most of them, and it turns out that hardly anyone else saved them, including the publisher," said Donna Cromer, a librarian at the University of New Mexico, who has worked with Knief on the project. Drawn from reactors built in different nations, the cutaways direct attention to the variety that exists in reactor design. Knief chose these eight as a cross-section of the industry. "Each of them is representative somewhat of the state-of-the-art version of a particular reactor type," Knief said. Douglas Point, pictured above, is a boiling-water reactor. In this type of plant, the coolant water flows directly through the fuel, boils and becomes steam, which drives a turbine. "It's a direct cycle," Knief said, "similar to a standard coal plant." Boiling-water reactors are a common form of American reactor. Story via Bibliodyssey Image: Nuclear Engineering International/University of New Mexico

You are subscribed to email updates from Johnus Morphopalus's Facebook notes To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Johnald's Fantastical Daily Link Splurge

---

Feathered Dinosaurs Were Venomous Predators Posted: 21 Dec 2009 12:43 PM PST Early dinosaurs weren't just covered in feathers. They were also poisonous. Analysis of skulls belonging to different species of Sinornithosaurus, a group of feathered predatory theropods that lived 125 million years ago in what is now northeast China, shows skeletal features reminiscent of modern rear-fanged snakes and lizards. Sinornithosaurus' rear teeth were long, with grooves connected to ducts running under their fangs to a pocket that could have housed a venom gland. "These features are all analogous to the venomous morphology of lizards," wrote paleontologists in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers speculate that Sinornithosaurus' long teeth could have penetrated the feathers of its avian prey, penetrating just far enough to release their poison. Like most modern rear-fanged reptiles, the venom probably wasn't lethal, but instead shocked prey into immobility. Short front teeth were probably used "to pluck the feathers off their victims," wrote the researchers, who suggest that other members of Sinornithosaurus' family, including the velociraptors of Jurassic Park fame, had the same venomous capabilities. Images: 1. Sinornithosaurus skull at left and illustration at right/PNAS 2. A rear-fanged hognose snake scull/WikiMedia See Also: Paleontologists Find Dinosaur Protofeather 4-Winged Fossil Bridges Bird-Dinosaur Gap Fancy Feathers Predated Flight in Dinosaur-Bird Hybrid Citation: "The birdlike raptor Sinornithosaurus was venomous." By Enpu Gonga, Larry D. Martin, David A. Burnham, and Amanda R. Falk. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106 No. 51, December 22, 2009. Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecosystem and planetary tipping points.

East Coast Blizzard Seen From Space Posted: 21 Dec 2009 11:09 AM PST The snowstorm that blanketed the East Coast this weekend was so big, it is even impressive from space. NASA's Aqua satellite took this image centered on Washington, D.C., on Sunday with its MODIS instrument. The blizzard shut down the federal government, stranded travelers, left hundreds of thousands without power and crushed the hopes of many retailers hoping for big sales during the weekend before Christmas. The image covers 300 miles lengthwise. The two big rivers near the center are the Susquehanna (to the north) and Potomac rivers, which run into Chesapeake Bay. Washington, D.C., sits alongside the Potomac, just north of the river's hook-shaped curve. The inlet to the north is Delaware Bay. Higher-resolution image from NASA See Also: Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space Eclipse Shadow on Earth Seen From Space Sydney's Apocalyptic Dust Storm Seen From Space Asteroid Impact Craters on Earth as Seen From Space Erupting Volcanoes on Earth as Seen From Space Huge Holes in the Earth: Open-Pit Mines Seen From Space Out of the Blue: Islands Seen From Space Follow us on Twitter @betsymason and @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

You are subscribed to email updates from Johnus Morphopalus's Facebook notes To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Johnald's Fantastical Daily Link Splurge

---

DIY Bed-Bug Detector Posted: 21 Dec 2009 07:35 AM PST INDIANAPOLIS — After trying some 50 arrangements of household objects, researchers have come up with a new low-cost, homemade bed-bug detector. To lure the bugs out of hiding, Wan-Tien Tsai of Rutgers University in New Brunswick put dry ice into an insulated, one-third-gallon jug, the kind available at sports or camping stores. Adding 2.5 pounds of dry ice pellets and not quite closing the pour hole allowed carbon dioxide to leak out at a bug-teasing rate for some 11 hours at room temperature, she said. She stood the jug in a plastic cat food dish with a piece of paper taped on the outside of the dish as a bug up to the rim. The bowl's steep, slippery inside, with an added dusting of talcum powder, kept bugs from crawling out again. In tests in real apartments, the homemade setup detected bed bugs as well, or better, than did two brands of professional exterminating equipment, Tsai said December 16 at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America. The parts, including the dry ice, cost $15 and don't require any special skills for assembly. "Everyone can do it," she said. These days a growing number of people might want to. The tiny, night-crawling bugs that draw blood and can leave itching welts had dwindled to rarity in North America during most of the last century. But since the 1990s, outbreaks have surged. The bugs flatten themselves into crevices in furniture, fabric and even electrical devices, and can prove difficult to eradicate. Many of today's bed bugs are resistant to pyrethroid insecticides, which account for much of indoor pest treatments. Tsai worked with Changlu Wang, also at Rutgers, for six months on designing homemade devices that lure bed bugs out into a trap so residents can tell whether a home is infested. Like many insects that search for blood, bed bugs are attracted to plumes of concentrated carbon dioxide, good clues that an animal filled with liquid dinner is breathing somewhere nearby. In lab tests, carbon dioxide beat heat and several chemical attractants in drawing the bugs out of hiding, Wang reported at the meeting. He has published on low-tech ways to attract bed bugs with carbon dioxide. For example, setting out dry ice in insulated travel mugs can work. Apartment dwellers don't need research supply companies for dry ice. Beverage companies, for example, may sell it by the pound. To design a new low-tech detection system, Tsai experimented with various setups but says her breakthrough came when she discovered the one-third-gallon insulated jugs. They performed well in lab tests, so she decided to test them in apartments that had low levels of bed-bug infestation. She searched for bed bugs herself to confirm that apartments were suitable. Then she set either her homemade detector or a commercial one in each apartment near a typical bug haven, such as the sofa. Designing and testing a low-cost detector is a substantial contribution to the field, comments entomologist Stephen Kells of the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. During decades of low bed-bug infestations, scientists didn't study them much. "We have literally skipped a generation of knowledge with this pest," he says. Studies from early in the last century may not describe today's bed-bugs well, says entomologist Andrea Polanco-Pinzón of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Older generations of bed bugs weren't resistant to pesticides and lived in tougher environments: houses without central heating. On the bright side though, Polanco-Pinzón reported at the meeting that her survival tests found that a pesticide-resistant strain she collected from Richmond, Va., lived at most two months without feeding. That record, set by the fifth stage of the immature bugs, falls far short of the year and a half reported in the old literature. Image: Flickr/Richard_Pluck See Also: Scent of Fear Keeps Male Bed Bugs From Mating With Each Other DIY Home Sleep Research With Cameras, Accelerometers, EEGs

You are subscribed to email updates from Johnus Morphopalus's Facebook notes To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Johnald's Fantastical Daily Link Splurge

---

• Dark Liquor Makes For Worse Hangovers
• Video: The Asteroid That Will Almost Hit Earth
• Increase in Shining Clouds Highlights Climate ‘Weirding’
• Why Geologists Love Beer

Dark Liquor Makes For Worse Hangovers Posted: 18 Dec 2009 03:21 PM PST A new study may help drinkers pick their poison. In a head-to-head comparison, bourbon gave drinkers a more severe hangover than vodka, report Damaris Rohsenow of Brown University and colleagues in an upcoming issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. But vodka drinkers aren't off the hook: Drinkers' sleep suffered equally with both drinks, as did their performance on tasks requiring attention and quick responses. Understanding the lingering effects of alcohol after a night of heavy drinking is important for people who engage in safety-sensitive tasks, such as driving, while hung over Rohsenow says. The researchers recruited 95 healthy young adults, ages 21 to 33, and gave them caffeine-free cola mixed with bourbon, vodka or tonic water. The drinking ended when participants' breath-alcohol concentrations hit an average of 0.11, well over the legal intoxication limit. Participants were then hooked up to sleep monitors, which record brain activity, and allowed to sleep it off. At 7 a.m. the next day, the researchers roused the subjects from bed (a wake-up that did not include coffee or aspirin) and asked them to rate the severity of their hangovers. Overall, bourbon drinkers reported feeling worse than vodka drinkers, rating higher on scales that measure the severity of hangover malaise, including headache, nausea, loss of appetite and thirst. It should come as no surprise that alcohol drinkers said they felt much worse than those who had drunk only tonic water. One reason for the different effects of vodka and bourbon, Rohsenow says, could be that bourbon contains 37 times more toxic compounds than vodka does, including nasty organic molecules such as acetone, acetaldehyde, tannins and furfural. A good rule of thumb for liquors, she says, is that the clearer they are, the less of these substances they contain. Both the bourbon drinkers and vodka drinkers slept poorly compared to the nondrinkers, the team found. The next morning, when the participants performed cognitive tests that required attention and quick reaction times, the drinkers performed worse than the nondrinkers, but the type of alcohol had no effect on performance. Both groups of drinkers were impaired equally. Image: Experiment_33/Flickr

Video: The Asteroid That Will Almost Hit Earth Posted: 18 Dec 2009 11:51 AM PST SAN FRANCISCO — Any number of undiscovered near-Earth objects could one day careen into the Earth, and there is a lot of talk here at the American Geophysical Union meeting about tracking them. So far, though, only one discovered object has seemed even mildly likely to hit our planet. That asteroid is Apophis, a 900-foot asteroid. Calculations released on Christmas Eve 2004 appeared to show that there was a greater than 2 percent chance the asteroid would hit the Earth in 2029. The asteroid appeared ready to give the Earth its closest shave since astronomers began looking for such things. It was judged a 4 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale for a short time, the highest rating any near-Earth object has received. As it turned out, more precise observations brought the risk of collision down to just 1 in 250,000, but the scare sparked greater interest and study in the fields of asteroid detection and defense. Even though the asteroid doesn't look like it's going to hit Earth, on April 13, 2029, it will come closer to Earth than any other near-Earth object that we know of. It will pass just 18,300 miles above the planet's surface. Here, we see an exclusive animation created by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of what that approach will look like from the perspective of the asteroid. And whoo boy, does it seem close. Video: NASA/JPL. See Also: Saving Earth From an Asteroid Will Take Diplomats, Not Heroes To Deflect an Asteroid, Try a Lasso, Not a Nuke Giant Asteroid Impact Could Have Stirred Entire Ocean Asteroid Impact Craters on Earth as Seen From Space Hunting Arctic Asteroid Impact With Hovercraft Anatomy of an Asteroid First-Ever Asteroid Tracked From Space to Earth WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Increase in Shining Clouds Highlights Climate ‘Weirding’ Posted: 18 Dec 2009 11:17 AM PST SAN FRANCISCO — Shining clouds at the edge of space are growing in number and brightness. For years, scientists have puzzled over the observed increase in these noctilucent clouds. Now two groups modeling the behavior of the atmosphere have found new support for the idea that human-induced climate change is the cause. Their models, presented here at the American Geophysical Union meeting, accurately reproduced both the variability induced by the solar cycle and the intensification trend. The intensification is driven by changes in the atmosphere below the clouds, triggered by increasing amounts of greenhouse gases. "They are showing that it's largely due to change farther down in the atmosphere," said John Plane, an atmospheric chemist at University of Leeds who was not involved with the work. "That's a really good thing because a lot of the rationale for studying these clouds is that you can use them as an early warning of climate change elsewhere in the atmosphere." Noctilucent clouds are one of the atmosphere's strangest visible phenomena. As the sun goes down, these wispy clouds in the northern latitudes appear to glow as the ice particles in the clouds reflect the sun's rays. They aren't as dramatic as aurorae, but they are a distinct and mysterious phenomenon that's much more common now than it was when our great grandparents bought their first cars and switched on the lights for the first time. The new work comes from two separate groups of scientists using different models of the atmosphere. One group, led by Daniel Marsh of the National Center for Atmospheric Research used the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model, which simulates how the various layers of the Earth's atmosphere respond to changes in chemistry and solar radiation. They were able to model the increasing amounts of ice mass at the level in the atmosphere where noctilucent clouds and a close cousin, polar mesospheric clouds, form. "My model does reproduce the trend, and its drivers are the increasing methane and increasing CO2," Marsh said. Marsh's work broadly agrees with that of Franz-Josef Lübken, an atmospheric physicist at the Leibniz Institute for Atmospheric Physics in Kühlungsborn, Germany. Lübken used the Leibniz Institute Middle Atmosphere Model, which looks just at the specific layer of the atmosphere where the glowing clouds appear. Lübken's also reproduced the variability and long-term increase in noctilucent clouds. His model implicitly takes increasing carbon dioxide into account because it's "nudged" by activity in lower layers where carbon dioxide is causing changes in atmospheric chemistry. In 2003, a scientist at Lübken's own institution questioned whether noctilucent clouds [pdf] were a good indicator of global change. Physicist Gary Thomas, who had been one of the first to float the idea, concluded in a review of noctilucent cloud data that "longer time series and more comprehensive models are needed before the link with global change can be established." And that's exactly what Marsh and Lübken presented here this week. "The new thing is that we have this consistency between the models and observations as far as the [upward] trend is concerned, which had not been the case," Lübken said. "The past models hadn't been able to reproduce the trends because the microphysics that goes into them was not good enough." The increase in noctilucent clouds appears to result from a decrease in temperature at the altitude where the clouds form along with an increase in water vapor. Warming in the in the layers of the atmosphere below the clouds actually causes the cloud layer to cool. The clouds only form under very specific circumstances, so small changes in the atmosphere can lead to large changes in the observed occurrence of the phenomenon. "A very small temperature decrease, just 0.08 Kelvin per year, together with an increase in water vapor, causes a substantial increase in occurrence rates and brightness," Lübken told scientists here Wednesday. There are still differences between the two models and details to be worked out. In Lübken's model, the temperature decrease is driven by the cooling of the stratosphere, which has long been a predicted impact of climate change induced by increasing carbon dioxide emissions. The increase in water vapor is a dynamic process caused by increased freeze drying of water particles a couple of miles up from where noctilucent clouds form. The atmospheric dynamics push more humidity to exactly the altitude at which the clouds form. Marsh's model includes the dynamics of methane, which, as it breaks down in the upper atmosphere, creates more water vapor at higher altitudes. Lübken's does not, but the trend is still apparent, so it's unclear how important methane's role in the increase in noctilucent clouds is. The clarity and similarity of the pattern coming from these two different models gives the greenhouse-gas hypothesis an edge over other explanations for the increase in noctilucent clouds, like an increase in water vapor driven by Space Shuttle launches. Up next, Marsh will try to explain one of the most persistent and strange mysteries associated with noctilucent clouds. While historical astronomers and sky watchers reported seeing many of the phenomena we now know and understand, there are isn't a single account of a noctilucent cloud before 1885. It's unclear whether they just weren't there or people just weren't looking hard enough. The first descriptions of the clouds come two years after the eruption of Krakatoa, which caused spectacular sunsets and may have encouraged people to look up more often. Marsh plans to run his model back in time to see if it can reproduce the appearance of the clouds in the 1880s solely in response to the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere caused by coal-powered industrialization. Images: 1) The sky over Omaha on July 14th./ Mike Hollingshead, Extreme Instability. 2) NASA. See Also: Mysterious, Glowing Clouds Appear Across America's Night Skies Weird, Rare Clouds and the Physics Behind Them Baffling Patterns Form in Scientific Sandbox Dry-Ice Clouds Shade Martian Landscape Lie on Mars, Look Up and Watch the Clouds Go By Brown Clouds are Increasing High Altitude Melting UAVs Search For Scientific Silver Lining in Beijing Pollution WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Why Geologists Love Beer Posted: 18 Dec 2009 03:00 AM PST SAN FRANCISCO — Fact: Geologists love beer. There is abundant proof of this here at the American Geophysical Union meeting, the largest collection of earth scientists in the world. The talks, workshopsand poster sessions go from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., but at 3:30 p.m. every day, for five days, kegs of beer are rolled out into the meeting. The beer flows nonstop for an hour and a half at around 10 different stations, and AGU organizers tell me they go through about 175 kegs during the week. "Every other convention assumes that if you have a beer, your brain goes soft," said Kathy Sullivan, who has been serving beer at the AGU meeting for 26 years."But not the geophysicists. They think if you have a beer, you can still learn things. So they do." At the Thirsty Bear, the closest brewpub to the Moscone Convention Center where the annual meeting is held every December, the waitstaff claims this is the busiest week of the year for them.I heard from the Borehole Research Group at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory thatone server at the Thirsty Bear said the staffcan't take vacation days during the AGU meeting"because the geologists are coming." So the real question is why the bond between geologists and beer is so strong. I decided to do some research this week to get to the bottom of the phenomenon.So, beer in hand,I asked a sampling of the16,000 or sogeologists, geophysicists, hydrologists and atmospheric scientists at the meeting and got some very interesting responses. (Full disclosure: I am also a geologist, and I like beer.) The most popular theory was that itmust havesomething to do with the amount of time spent outside doing fieldwork. "When it's hot, and you've been hiking all day carrying 50 pounds of rocks, do you want a Merlot?" asked thermochronologist Jim Metcalf of Syracuse University. "No." "It goes down a lot easier than water because a lot of the places we go, we can't drink the water," said structural geologist Jonathan Gourley of Trinity College. Geologists have been known to go to great lengths to chill their beer in the field, as well. A cold stream, a glacier or a patch of snow is handy, but many field areas are hot, dry and dusty. While doing field work in Mongolia, geologist Cari Johnson of the University of Utahand her colleaguescooled their beer with evaporationby wrapping the cans in toilet paper,pouring water on the paper and setting them out in the persistent wind to dry over and over until the beer was cold. Another theory is that beer makes for better science. I think this hypothesis has some merit, but requires further investigation (as long as I'm not in the control group). "Science doesn't work when people keep secrets and don't share their data," said Daniel Jaffe of the University of Washington."And what could be better to help with the free flow of information?" Rick Saltus of the U.S. Geological Surveyexplained that because geologists often don't have enough data to say definitively what went on millions of years ago, creativity is needed to fill in the gaps. "You have to think outside the box, you've got to release your inhibitions, and beer is one way to do that," Saltus said."Anything that helps you get to that epiphany, that realization of what's there in the rocks and not easy to see but there to spin a story from." A third theory offered up in various forms is that beer is simply part of the culture, something that has been handed down from advisor to student for generations. "It's accepted and encouraged to drink beer," said geologist Cindy Martinez of the American Geological Institute. "Other scientists like beer, but it's not necessarily socially acceptable to have your scientific meetings revolve around beer." "I started getting on to wine and other stuff for a while, but I became an outcast among my geology friends," said geologist Laura Webb of the University of Vermont."So I had to retrain myself to drink brew." Supporting the culturetheory is the observation that earth science departments at academic institutions across the world almost invariably have a weekly get-together of some sort that revolves around beer. At Stanford University, it's called Friday Beer, and I hear that at UCLA it's known as Liquidus. On Twitter, Iconfirmed that earth scientists at CalTech, The Borehole Research Group and the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil also have a weekly beer congregation. "I've been to a few geo departments around the world, and most of them have Friday Beer," said Stanford biogeochemist Sharmini Pitter. "We have three weekly beer gatherings," saidChristopher Harrisonof the University of Miami. None of the theories can be ruled out by this preliminary study, and neither can the possibility that all three are correct.Certainly, more research is needed. But one thing is clear: The love affair between geoscientists and beer is one for the eons. Video: Michael Lennon/Wired.com See Also: How Wired.com Built Beer Robot, Our DIY Kegerator Gallery: The Making of a Prehistoric Brew Barley + Space = Space Beer! Beer, Vitamins, and Jessica Simpson: Get the Facts An Emptied Flask Makes for Empty Promises Better Beer Through Chemistry: The Search For Noble Hop Aroma Follow us on Twitter @betsymason and @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

You are subscribed to email updates from Johnus Morphopalus's Facebook notes To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Johnald's Fantastical Daily Link Splurge

---

• Photo: Shining Lake Confirms Presence of Liquid on Titan
• First Ever Video of Deep-Sea Volcanic Eruption
• Mysterious Collapse of Reindeer Herd Blamed on Freak Storms

Photo: Shining Lake Confirms Presence of Liquid on Titan Posted: 17 Dec 2009 03:13 PM PST SAN FRANCISCO — A glint of light from a large lake confirms the presence of surface liquid in Titan's northern hemisphere. This image, released Thursday here at the American Geophysical Union meeting, was captured on July 8, using the Cassini spacecraft's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer. "This one image communicates so much about Titan — thick atmosphere, surface lakes and an otherworldliness," said Cassini project scientist Bob Pappalardo, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a press release. "It's an unsettling combination of strangeness yet similarity to Earth." Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has a dense nitrogenous atmosphere and is the only place, other than earth, containing stable pools of liquid on its surface. In 2008, Cassini confirmed liquid methane lakes in Titan's southern hemisphere using infrared data. Cassini has been looking for this mystical glint since reaching Saturn in 2004, but winter had shrouded the northern half of Titan. The sun began shining on this area, which contains more lakes than the southern hemisphere, in August 2009 during the moon's spring equinox. The glint comes from the southern shoreline of the sprawling Kraken Mare lake, which covers about 400,000 square kilometers of Titan's surface. The image proves the lake has been stable for at least three years, indicating that Titan cycles liquid methane to its surface, said Ralf Jaumann, Cassini team member at the German Aerospace Center in Berlin, Germany. "These results remind us how unique Titan is in the solar system," Jaumann said in a press release. "But they also show us that liquid has a universal power to shape geological surfaces in the same way, no matter what the liquid is." Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/DLR See Also: Titan's Strange Shape May Explain Polar Lakes The Lagoons of Titan: Oily Liquid Confirmed on Saturn Moon First-Ever Photo of Liquid on Extraterrestrial World Cassini Sends Back More Images of Titan's Lakes Titan's Organic Hydrocarbons Dwarf Earth's Oil Reserves

First Ever Video of Deep-Sea Volcanic Eruption Posted: 17 Dec 2009 01:03 PM PST SAN FRANCISCO — Molten lava has been observed flowing on the seafloor for the very first time, by a robotic rover exploring the deepest erupting volcano yet discovered. In high-definition video released Thursday here at the American Geophysical Union meeting, lava bubbles explode as the eruption's deep rumble fills the bass end of the spectrum. "We thought we could just show the video over and over and not say anything," joked oceanographer John Resing of the University of Washington, who led the expedition. But the new video is more than just spectacular to look at, it also provides scientists with their first look at the geological process that creates the seafloor. "On our very own home planet, we haven't seen lava flowing on the seafloor," said Resing. "We haven't seen new ocean crust being made." And now they have. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency had been sponsoring submarine volcano research for more than two decades without ever observing lava on the seafloor. "This is historic," Resing said. The new footage was captured in May about 4,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean near Samoa, at an underwater volcano called West Mata. Scientists on a University of Washington research vessel gathered around monitors to watch the Jason remotely operated submarine as it approached the volcano. As the sub neared the summit, warm water, which shimmers like a highway on a hot day, began to stream out of the rocks. "We turned and saw this willowy, wispy white smoke-like fluid coming up off the side of the steep volcano. We knew we were at the right site," said Bob Embley, a marine geologist with NOAA who co-led the expedition. "Then it was up to the pilot to very skillfully maneuver down to the site then turn to look at it. When we turned around, we started to see the red flashes of light, and we knew we were seeing the primordial eruption on the sea floor that we'd never seen before." They named the spot Hades. And now, you can see what they saw in the videos posted here. (Editor's tip: put on your headphones and turn up the bass.) The discovery came in part because of NOAA's effort to do more ocean exploration to simply find out more about the vast, largely mysterious oceans that cover 70 percent of the Earth. "When we go exploring, we make discoveries," said Steve Hammond, chief scientist at NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. In fact, West Mata is the second underwater volcano discovered by NOAA, in conjunction with the National Science Foundation. The previous one was discovered in much shallower water in the Mariana Arc. See Also: Photos of Alaskan Volcano's Eruption Alaska Volcano Erupts Martian Volcano Could Be Reservoir for Life Life Thrives in Earth's Most Mars-Like Environment 8 Hot Volcanic Eruptions Massive Volcanic Eruptions Could Have Killed Off the Dinosaurs Erupting Volcanoes on Earth as Seen From Space WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Mysterious Collapse of Reindeer Herd Blamed on Freak Storms Posted: 17 Dec 2009 11:53 AM PST SAN FRANCISCO — On a remote island in the Bering Strait during World War II, a tiny band of Americans ran a radar station. Twenty-nine reindeer were placed on St. Matthew Island with them, to be eaten in case of emergency. The emergency never came, and population biologist Dave Klein counted 6,000 reindeer on the island by 1963, spread out over just 50 square miles of land. Then, sailors started to report seeing bleached reindeer skeletons dotting the island. When Klein returned in 1966, there were only 42 left and no males with the ability to reproduce. The herd dwindled and eventually went extinct. There this strange mystery sat for decades until extreme weather specialist John Walsh of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and University of Nebraska climatologist Martha Shulski teamed up with the now 80-year-old Klein to solve it. They announced their findings this week here at the American Geophysical Union meeting. It turns out that a series of winter cyclones comparable in intensity to a Category 2 hurricane buffeted the island in early 1964. Overpopulated and isolated as the island was, the reindeer herd proved vulnerable to the extreme storms, which brought much heavier than normal snowfall, stronger winds, and lower temperatures. The question that remains is why these extra-strong storms occurred. For reasons that still aren't understood, a series of weather systems sweeping across the Pacific from Japan intensified just east of the dateline and then headed north. Over that winter, the closest weather station to reindeer's home, St. Paul Island, got more than six and a half feet more snow than normal. The barometric pressure differential between the low of the strongest storm and the regional high in Siberia was the highest in the 60-year period for which measurements are available. The reindeer were no match. See Also: Roman Coin Hoards Show More War Means Fewer Babies Hidden Orangutan Population Discovered China: The Wrong Way to Do Population Control Dung Fungus Provides New Evidence in Mammoth Extinction ID Error Leaves Fish at Edge of Extinction Google Algorithm Predicts When Species Will Go 404, Not Found A New Explanation for Ancient Mass Extinction WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

You are subscribed to email updates from Johnus Morphopalus's Facebook notes To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Johnald's Fantastical Daily Link Splurge

---

• Star Trek Stops Women From Becoming Computer Scientists
• Saving Earth From an Asteroid Will Take Diplomats, Not Heroes
• Name the New Super-Earth
• Most Earth-Like Extrasolar Planet Found Right Next Door

Star Trek Stops Women From Becoming Computer Scientists Posted: 17 Dec 2009 03:00 AM PST The gender gap in computer science may have been widened by Star Trek, a new study suggests — but it could be bridged with a less geeky image. New research published in the December Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that the stereotype of computer scientists as unwashed nerds may be partially responsible for the dearth of women in the field, as shown by National Science Foundation statistics. "What this research shows is that the image of computer science — this geeky, masculine image — can make women feel like they don't belong," says lead author Sapna Cheryan of the University of Washington. "I think this is an important contribution to the literature," says Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton of the University of California, Berkeley. He says it raises questions about how much conscious control people have over their choices. Previous research has found that a person can get a good sense of what another individual is like just from spending a few minutes perusing that person's bedroom. Cheryan wondered if the same was true of classrooms. "You can get a message about whether you want to join a certain group just by seeing the physical environment that that group is associated with," Cheryan says. "You walk in, see these objects and think, 'This is not me.'" Cheryan and colleagues tested this idea by alternately decorating a computer science classroom with objects that earlier surveys pegged as stereotypically geeky—Star Trek posters, video games and comic books — or with objects that the surveys found to be neutral— coffee mugs, plants and art posters. Thirty-nine college students spent a few minutes in the room, then filled out a questionnaire on their attitudes toward computer science. Women who spent time in the geeky room reported less interest in computer science than women who saw the neutral room. For male students, however, the room's décor made no difference. In follow-up tests, a total of 215 students were asked to imagine they were joining either a geekily decorated or a neutrally decorated company after graduation. For every possible scenario, women preferred the non-geeky space. "It's a consistent effect," Cheryan says. "The environment can communicate a sense of belonging, but it also communicates a sense of exclusion, or a sense that this is not a place where I would fit in." Cheryan acknowledges that the geeky classroom setup is a caricature of computer science. But, she points out, people respond to that stereotype whether it's true or not, and study participants found the nerdy room believable. "There's this idea that people develop interest in their major or their chosen career through some kind of internal passion they have," Mendoza-Denton says. "These studies show that in fact the spaces that you walk into can have those kinds of effects. Those are very subtle things that we can miss." Cheryan suggests that nonstereotypical depictions of computer science, in the media and in classrooms, could help update the field's image. Mendoza-Denton adds that the results can be put to use in other fields in which minorities are underrepresented. But first, he says, "People have to begin to take it seriously." "The scientific basis for making the case that the décor of a particular room matters is very clear," he says. "But whether institutions or companies or universities decide to take those steps to increase diversity really is up to people listening to the research." Image: Flickr/TACD See Also: Star Trek Gallery: Then and Now Star Trek: A Military Analysis Trekker Re-Creates Classic Star Trek Scenes With Legos

Saving Earth From an Asteroid Will Take Diplomats, Not Heroes Posted: 16 Dec 2009 03:29 PM PST SAN FRANCISCO — In the movie version of stopping an asteroid from hitting Earth popularized by Armageddon, a few brave Americans quickly head out to the near-Earth object and blow it up. The reality will be far less dramatic, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart told scientists at the American Geophysical Union meeting here Wednesday. Asteroid-deflection efforts will have to start years before a prospective impact and will have to be essentially international. "Whether or not the international community, within or outside the United Nations, can rise to the demands of such a challenge in advance of an impact … is problematic," Schweickart summarized. Two general strategies for deflecting asteroids are currently on the table. The first is some type of impactor or blast, possibly nuclear, that would knock the asteroid off the collision course. The second is a longer-term "shepherding" operation that would slowly morph the asteroid's trajectory in space so that it misses Earth. Both schemes would have major international implications. Nuclear weapons have been explicitly outlawed in space since the Partial Test Ban Treaty was negotiated in 1963. Sending a nuclear weapon into space to hit an asteroid would require modifying the treaty, which could have unforeseen negative repercussions. "Many of us have expressed our concern about nuclear effects because of political options," said David Morrison, an astronomer at NASA Ames Research Center who organized a session at the AGU meeting about near-Earth objects. Schweickart's group, The B612 Foundation, has advocated a different approach to asteroid deflection, but one that will require an equally difficult international negotiation. They propose to bump or tow an asteroid "in a controlled manner" so that it misses Earth. The only problem is that such a process would take time and as the asteroid's trajectory changed, it would be "pointed" at different places along a horizontal plane on Earth called the risk corridor. That's a major geopolitical problem, Schweickart said, because it requires temporarily increasing the risk to one population — in the example above, Venezuela, or Russia — to eventually eliminate the risk for the entire Earth. "It's going to be slowly dragged across the Earth. That is a binary decision," Schweickart said. "You don't have the option of dragging it down through the Antarctic." Who gets to decide which way the asteroid is dragged away from an impact with Earth? The United Nations? The United States? Russia? Some independent body of astronomers and space agencies? "What deflection technologies are OK and who says they are OK?" Schweickart asked. "Who accepts liability? How do you decide that it's OK to endanger the people of Venezuela or the people of Kazakhstan?" He called figuring such questions out a "geopolitical decision of the first order." Earlier this year, the Association of Space Explorers presented a report to the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space recommending that some international decision-making bodies be created to evaluate and respond to near-Earth object hazards. The U.N. committee could bring some options before the General Assembly by 2012, although Schweickart has some doubts that people are politically prepared to deal with the tough decisions that humanity could face to deflect an asteroid. "You're going to have to make that decision when the probability is less than one, 10 or 20 years ahead of time," he said. "That's not easy for anyone, let alone the United Nations." Images: 1) A gravity tug./NASA. 2) Association of Space Explorers. See Also: Space Rocks: NASA Asleep at the Switch The Real Twitpocalypse: Asteroid Alerts Come to Twitter NASA Falling Short of Asteroid Detection Goals Meteor Predicted to Hit Earth's Atmosphere Tonight Asteroid to Pass By Earth Tonight, Visible Though Home 'Scopes Asteroid Will Miss, Not Hit Mars This Month How to Defend Earth Against an Asteroid Strike WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Name the New Super-Earth Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:57 AM PST Astronomers have spotted the most Earth-like planet to date, a massive ocean world that probably has an atmosphere and — though it's highly unlikely — may support life. And it needs a better name. For now, GJ 1214b is tagged according to standard exoplanetary nomenclature: the technical name of the star it orbits, plus a letter to signify the order of its discovery. (The letter "a" is reserved for the star itself.) It's a name only a committee could love, and hardly appropriate to the discovery's emotional resonance. "We've been finding exciting planets for 50 years, and we're still calling them by these terrible catalog names," said David Charbonneau, a Harvard University astronomer who helped discover GJ 1214b, but doesn't even have a nickname for it. "I have three young daughters, and I think they might be inspired by a better name." To help David out, we're asking you to submit your own names for this watery super-Earth. Jump in! Submit your own name: Image: Nature. See Also: Most Earth-Like Extrasolar Planet Found Top 5 Bets for Extraterrestrial Life in the Solar System Top 5 Most Extreme Exoplanets Astronomers Closer to Exoplanet 'Holy Grail' At Last! First Real Evidence for a Rocky Exoplanet Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecosystem and planetary tipping points.

Most Earth-Like Extrasolar Planet Found Right Next Door Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:45 AM PST Meet GJ 1214b, the most Earth-like planet ever found outside our solar system. It's not exactly Earth's twin: It's about six times bigger, a whole lot hotter and made mostly of water. But compared to the giant gas balls that account for nearly every other extrasolar planet ever found, it's pretty darn close. And through a fortunate happenstance of cosmic geometry, astronomers will be able to study GJ 1214b in great detail. "If you want to describe in one sentence what this planet is, it's a big, hot ocean," said Harvard University astronomer David Charbonneau. "We can even study its atmosphere. This planet will occupy us for years. That's part of what's so exciting about it." Described by Charbonneau and 17 other astronomers in a paper published Wednesday in Nature, GJ 1214b is the latest of roughly 400 planets detected by earthly telescopes. Of these, 28 are considered "super-Earths" — planets with a mass roughly comparable to our own. The super-Earths themselves are too distant to be seen. Instead, astronomers infer their presence from subtle distortions in starlight, caused when photons travel through the super-Earths' gravitational fields. Depending on the degree of distortion, astronomers can even calculate a planet's mass. That's how Corot-7b, a rocky planet with roughly twice the heft of Earth, was spotted in February. Ditto Gliese 581c, identified two months later, and orbiting its star at a distance consistent with human notions of habitability. Unfortunately, not much more will ever be known about those planets. Corot-7b is 500 light-years away, too distant for our telescopes to discern more detail. And from our viewing angle, Gliese 581c never quite crosses directly in front of its sun, causing photons to warp in ways that would reveal its atmospheric character. GJ 1214b does pass in front of its sun. Separated from Earth by a distance of just 42 light years, it's close enough to be studied. Scientists will finally get to look at another Earth-like world. "Only rarely does a long-sought scientific frontier loom so prominently just beyond the horizon, that the next generation of instruments seems sure to reach it," wrote Geoffrey Marcey, a University of California, Berkeley astronomer, in a commentary accompanying the findings. "They provide the most-watertight evidence so far for a planet that is something like our own Earth, outside our solar system." Based on its radius and mass — about 2.7 and 6.6 times that of Earth's — Charbonneau and the other astronomers have calculated GJ 1214b's density. It appears to be composed of extraordinarily deep oceans, surrounding a rocky core. The planet's atmosphere and precise composition remain a mystery, but it's likely composed of many of the same elements found elsewhere at sites of planetary formation, in swirling disks of dust and gas that have yet to accrete: hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, magnesium, oxygen, carbon. That list of ingredients raises at least the possibility of life. With an estimated temperature of 370 degrees Fahrenheit, GJ 1214b is an unlikely incubator (Earth's toughest extremophile, a microbe that lives in deep-sea volcanic vents, maxes out at 284 degrees) but it's not impossible. "I don't want to imply that there's any indication of life as we know it. It might have life, but it would have to be a strange kind of life," said Charbonneau. The telescopes sure to be trained on GJ 1214b in the near future will try to answer that question. But even if it proves barren, other planets await. The telescopes that spotted GJ 1214b were custom designed to find Earth-like planets around nearby stars, and had only operated for a few months before striking water. "We only look at a handful of stars before finding this planet, said Charbonneau. "Either we got lucky, or the planets are very common." Image: Nature Help give GJ 1214b a better name. See Also: Smallest Exoplanet Is Most Earth-Like Yet Astronomers Closer to Exoplanet 'Holy Grail' Top 5 Bets for Extraterrestrial Life in the Solar System Extreme Life Thrives Where the Livin' Ain't Easy Citations: "A super-Earth transiting a nearby low-mass star." By David Charbonneau, Zachory K. Berta, Jonathan Irwin, Christopher J. Burke, Philip Nutzman, Lars A. Buchhave, Christophe Lovis, Xavier Bonfils, David W. Latham, Stephane Udry, Ruth A. Murray-Clay, Matthew J. Holman, Emilio E. Falco, Joshua N. Winn, Didier Queloz, Francesco Pepe, Michel Mayor, Xavier Delfosse & Thierry Forveille. Nature, Vol. 462 No. 7275. Dec. 16, 2009. "Water world larger than Earth." By Geoffrey Marcy. Nature, Vol. 462 No. 7275. Dec. 16, 2009. Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecosystem and planetary tipping points.

You are subscribed to email updates from Johnus Morphopalus's Facebook notes To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610