Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.
This week's featured story comes from CBS News.
Partial Lunar Eclipse Comes and Goes
by Charles Cooper
A partial eclipse took place early Saturday when the earth passed between the sun and the moon.
The event , which was visible to many in western stretches of North America and parts of the Asia-Pacific region, began at 3:17 a.m. PDT (1017 GMT) and ended about three hours later.
There will be a total solar eclipse on July 11.
More science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
Watch this space!
DarkSyde: We're from space and we're here to help
DarkSyde: This Week in Science
David Kroning II: A Crime against Nature
jamess: A Key Strand in the Web of Life: PhytoPlankton
Pakalolo: Before it arrives; A Sub-tropical Barrier Island's story
Slideshows/Videos
BBC: Bionic feet for amputee cat
A cat that had its back feet severed by a combine harvester has been given two prosthetic limbs in a pioneering operation by a UK vet.
The new feet are custom-made implants that "peg" the ankle to the foot. They are bioengineered to mimic the way deer antler bone grows through the skin.
The operation - a world first - was carried out by Noel Fitzpatrick, a veterinary surgeon based in Surrey.
The White House: Inside The White House - Bees!
This beehive on the South Lawn is a first for the White House. The busy bees pollinate the kitchen garden, flora all over Washington and provide honey for the White House kitchen. Take a look at this year's colony, estimated at about 70,000 bees, and listen to how the idea for a beehive on the South Lawn came about.
Astronomy/Space
Discovery News: Smaller Planets Rule the Galaxy
by Ray Villard
Like Indiana Jones opening a new vault of buried treasure, the much-awaited first year treasure trove of NASA Kepler space telescope observations of distant planets went public last week.
Or at least some of the data have, as reported by Nicole Gugliucci regarding the dilemma of long-sought exoplanet detections being released to everyone after a one-year propriety period.
BBC: 'Superstorm' rages on exoplanet
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News
Astronomers have measured high-speed winds in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star.
Data on carbon monoxide gas in the atmosphere show that it is streaming at fierce speeds from the planet's hot day side to its cool night side.
Writing in Nature, a team detected longitudinal winds of roughly 2km/s (7,000km/h) in the atmosphere of a "hot Jupiter" planet.
Discovery News: Very Complex Interstellar Pre-Biotic Molecules Discovered
by Nicole Gugliucci
So, I've been teaching a class at our university called "Life Beyond Earth." In addition to taking up all of my time (in a good way), it has reminded me that the "stuff of life" is all around us in the galaxy, and in the universe. It helps when I see that, just this week, a new and complex molecule has been discovered in the interstellar gas in our galaxy.
Astronomers from the Instituto Astrofísica de Canarias and the University of Texas identified anthracene, the most complex organic molecule discovered to date in the interstellar medium.
With a molecular backbone of carbon rings, this molecule, discovered in absorption along the line of sight to a star 700 light-years away, is pre-biotic. Although it is not quite an amino acid, the building blocks of proteins, given time and a bit of energy, pre-biotic molecules can assemble into amino acids.
Evolution/Paleontology
National Geographic: Fungi, Feces Show Comet Didn't Kill Ice Age Mammals?
John Roach
for National Geographic News
Published June 22, 2010
Tiny balls of fungus and feces may disprove the theory that a huge space rock exploded over North America about 12,900 years ago, triggering a thousand-year cold snap, according to a new study.
The ancient temperature drop, called the Younger Dryas, has been well documented in the geologic record, including soil and ice core samples.
The cool-down also coincides with the extinction of mammoths and other Ice Age mammals in North America, and it's thought to have spurred our hunter-gatherer ancestors in the Middle East to adopt an agricultural lifestyle.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Discovery News: World's Largest Dinosaur Graveyard Found
by Jennifer Viegas
The world's largest dinosaur graveyard has been discovered in Alberta, Canada, according to David Eberth of the Royal Tyrrell Museum and other scientists working on the project.
The Vancouver Sun reports that the massive dinosaur bonebed is 1.43-square miles in size. Eberth says it contains thousands of bones belonging to the dinosaur Centrosaurus, which once lived near what is now the Saskatchewan border.
Biodiversity
Discovery News: Is Lake Michigan Being Invaded?
by Zahra Hirji
A single male of the feared and loathed invasive Asian carp was caught 6 miles from Lake Michigan. Great Lakes conservationists are dreading the worst: a massive carp invasion.
To keep out invasive species, including the Asian carp, officials set up electric barriers along the canals connecting to Lake Michigan.
But somehow, this conniving carp still sneaked into the Chicago watershed...
Biotechnology/Health
BBC: 'No foetal pain before 24 weeks'
By Branwen Jeffreys
Health correspondent, BBC News
Abortions are permitted after 24 weeks on medical grounds There is no new evidence to show foetuses feel pain in the womb before 24 weeks, and so no reason to challenge the abortion limit, UK doctors say.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' review said foetuses are "undeveloped and sedated".
Brain connections are not fully formed, and the environment of the womb creates a state of induced sleep, like unconsciousness, they add.
Anti-abortion campaigners challenged the reports.
Climate/Environment
The Australian: Frank Fenner sees no hope for humans
Cheryl Jones
FRANK Fenner doesn't engage in the skirmishes of the climate wars. To him, the evidence of global warming is in. Our fate is sealed.
"We're going to become extinct," the eminent scientist says. "Whatever we do now is too late."
Fenner is an authority on extinction. The emeritus professor in microbiology at the Australian National University played a leading role in sending one species into oblivion: the variola virus that causes smallpox.
Let's hope he's wrong.
Geology
Discovery News: Nano-coated Rocks Keep Earthquakes From Creeping Up
by Michael Reilly
It should come as no surprise to learn that the big, bad San Andreas fault is capable of pulverizing rocks into such tiny bits that scientist have to other recourse than to call them "nanoparticles." We've seen what it can do to elevated highways and buildings dozens of miles away from one of its earthquakes...being a rock right in the fault when it convulses has got to be, um, uncomfortable to say the least.
The awesome display of tectonic obliteration comes with a nice side effect: as the San Andreas grinds away, it creates its own lubricant. Ben van der Pluijm of the University of Michigan and a team of researchers analyzed rocks retrieved from the fault two miles down in Earth's crust -- part of a unique scientific drilling project call SAFOD.
The fault is relatively quiet in this section of the San Andreas, near Parkfield, California, creeping along steadily instead of moving in violent fits and starts like it does elsewhere. The team found out why: a coating of smectite clay minerals less than 100 nanometers thick acts like grease in fault's broken-up rocks.
Psychology/Behavior
Discovery News: Touch Affects How People Feel
By Emily Sohn
Sitting on a hard chair, carrying a heavy bag, or leaning against the rough bark of a tree can subconsciously affect the way we feel about other people and the decisions we make about how to act in completely unrelated situations, suggests a new study.
The study was one of the first to probe metaphors about the sense of touch -- such as a heavy subject or a rough day -- and to find that those metaphors have real-world consequences in what we think and do.
The findings might help people learn how to influence the thoughts and behaviors of others. Giving a potential employer something heavy to hold, for example, could make her take you more seriously.
Archeology/Anthropology
Science News: Lucy fossil gets jolted upright by Big Man
Partial skeleton suggests ancient roots for humanlike walking
by Bruce Bower
An older guy has sauntered into Lucy’s life, and some researchers believe he stands ready to recast much of what scientists know about the celebrated early hominid and her species.
Excavations in Ethiopia’s Afar region have uncovered a 3.6-million-year-old partial male skeleton of the species Australopithecus afarensis. This is the first time since the excavation of Lucy in 1974 that paleoanthropologists have turned up more than isolated pieces of an adult from the species, which lived in East Africa from about 4 million to 3 million years ago.
Eureka Alert: Separation between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens might have occurred 500,000 years earlier
The separation of Neardenthal and Homo sapiens might have occurred at least one million years ago, more than 500.000 years earlier than previously believed after DNA-based analyses. A doctoral thesis conducted at the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana) associated with the University of Granada, analysed the teeth of almost all species of hominids that have existed during the past 4 million years. Quantitative methods were employed and they managed to identify Neanderthal features in ancient European populations.
The Guardian (UK): Bones from a Cheddar Gorge cave show that cannibalism helped Britain's earliest settlers survive the ice age
New carbon dating techniques reveal that 14,700 years ago humans living in Gough's Cave in the Mendips acquired a taste for the flesh of their relatives, and not just for ritual reasons
Scientists have identified the first humans to recolonise Britain after the last ice age. The country was taken over in a couple of years by individuals who practised cannibalism, they say - a discovery that revolutionises our understanding of the peopling of Britain and the manner in which men and women reached these shores.
Research has shown that tribes of hunter-gatherers moved into Britain from Spain and France with extraordinary rapidity when global warming brought an end to the ice age 14,700 years ago and settled in a cavern – known as Gough's Cave – in the Cheddar Gorge in what is now Somerset.
Winona Daily News: Archaeologists hunt for Native American relics
TREMPEALEAU, Wis. - Seeing a backhoe rip up a well-maintained front lawn might bother some people. For Dana Jackson, the pastor at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church, it's an opportunity.
"I think its pretty exciting," Jackson said. "There's all this history on the church property. We walk over it every day and don't even think about that."
Jackson - whose home is owned by her church - can sit at her front window and watch as archaeology experts uncover a culture 1,000 years old.
BBC: Archaeologists make 'spectacular' discovery at Delancey
A Neolithic burial site in the parish of St Sampson has yielded pottery fragments and flints that date back 4,500 years.
They were discovered in a gallery grave, which lies within Delancey Park.
Sify.com: Evidence of St Peters' underground prison found
Archaeologists have discovered proof of the theory that St Peter was imprisoned in an underground dungeon by the Emperor Nero before being crucified.
Italian archaeologists have found frescoes and other evidence that indicate that it was associated with St Peter as early as the 7th century.
"It was converted from being a prison into a focus of cult-like worship of St Peter by the 7th century at the latest, maybe earlier.
The Independent (UK): Discovery of babies' skeletons exposes the dark side of life in Roman Britain
By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent
Saturday, 26 June 2010
One of Roman Britain's darkest secrets is close to being laid bare by modern science. Experts from English Heritage
are examining dozens of infant skeletons buried 17 centuries ago in a quiet valley just north of the River Thames in Buckinghamshire.
The remains were unearthed almost 100 years ago by a local archaeologist – and modern specialists in Roman history had assumed that the bones had been reburied. Instead, while examining hundreds of boxes of archaeological material stored in Buckinghamshire's county museum in Aylesbury they rediscovered the remains of each tiny individual, neatly packed into old tobacco boxes and shotgun cartridge containers.
Another on the same topic from The Daily Mail here.
Reuters via The Globe and Mail (Canada): Archaeologists find oldest paintings of apostles
Philip Pullella
Rome
Archaeologists and art restorers using new laser technology have discovered what they believe are the oldest paintings of the faces of Jesus Christ’s apostles.
The images in a branch of the catacombs of St. Tecla near St. Paul’s Basilica, just outside the walls of ancient Rome, were painted at the end of the 4th century or the start of the 5th century.
Archaeologists believe these images may have been among those that most influenced later artists’ depictions of the faces of Christ’s most important early followers.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via twincities.com: Ship discovered almost 112 years after disappearing in Lake Michigan
By Meg Jones
For almost 112 years, the steamship rested in ghostly silence at the bottom of Lake Michigan, unknown and unseen until a group of divers kicked their way down to the deck and solved a perplexing maritime mystery.
The deckhouses were gone, the smokestack was tipped over and a wheelbarrow used to move cargo lay on the boat's surface. Though the name couldn't be seen on the stern, the length of the vessel and unusual characteristics pointed to only one ship — the L.R. Doty. Until last week, it was the largest wooden ship that had been unaccounted for in Lake Michigan.
The Portable Antiquities Scheme
The Portable Antiquities Scheme is a voluntary scheme to record archaeological objects found by members of the public in England and Wales. Every year many thousands of objects are discovered, many of these by metal-detector users, but also by people whilst out walking, gardening or going about their daily work. Such discoveries offer an important source for understanding our past.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
Discover Magazine: Fermilab Particle Physicists Wonder: Are There 5 Higgs Bosons?
If the Higgs boson is the "God Particle," then some particle physicists just turned polytheistic. To explain a recent experiment, they wonder if five Higgs bosons give our universe mass instead of one.
Last month, we discussed a curious experiment at the Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab near Chicago. Colliding protons and antiprotons, the Tevratron’s DZero group found more matter than antimatter.
This agrees well with common sense–if the Big Bang had really churned out equal amounts of matter and antimatter, the particles would have annihilated each other, and we wouldn’t be here. Unfortunately, the physics for this matter favoritism doesn’t make sense.
Chemistry
Science Daily: Chemists Find an Easier Way to Synthesize New Drug Candidates; New Method Could Have a Big Impact on Pharmaceutical Business
Some drugs may be more effective the longer they last inside the body. To prevent such drugs from being broken down too rapidly, pharmaceutical manufacturers often attach a fluorine-containing structure called a trifluoromethyl group. However, the processes now used require harsh reaction conditions or only work in a small number of cases, limiting their usefulness for synthesizing new drug candidates for testing.
Now, MIT chemists have designed a new way to attach a trifluoromethyl group to certain compounds, which they believe could allow pharmaceutical companies to create and test new drugs much faster and potentially reduce the cost of drug discovery. The new synthesis, reported in the June 25 issue of Science, could have an immediate impact.
MIT Chemistry Professor Stephen Buchwald, who led the research team, says achieving the synthesis has been a long-standing challenge for chemists. "Some people said it couldn't be done, so that's a good reason to try," says Buchwald, the Camille Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry at MIT.
Energy
Discovery News: Plastic Bags Into Power?
By Jessica Marshall
Rather than languishing in landfills or littering roadsides, plastic bags could make their way into useful products like toner, lubricants, or rechargeable cell phone or laptop batteries, if new research becomes commercialized.
Plastic recycling is limited by the fact that different types of plastic cannot be mixed. The quality of the resulting recycled plastic may also be poor. "That's why recycling is not very successful," said study author Vilas Pol of Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill.
"I was thinking why not go beyond this," he said. "Take it and degrade it. You can take the different kinds of plastics together."
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Agence France Presse via Mother Nature Network: 'Aboriginal subsistence whaling' to meet nutritional and cultural needs is the only kind allowed under a 1986 ban on commercial whaling.
Greenland's indigenous peoples won the right Friday to hunt 27 humpback whales, capping three years of acrimonious debate within the 88-nation International Whaling Commission.
The self-ruled Danish territory can now kill and consume nine of the giant marine mammals each year through 2012, with its existing quota of more than 200 minke and fin whales cut by the same number.
The decision — greeted with applause — came on the closing day of the IWC's annual meeting in Agadir, Morocco, where a big-tent compromise deal between pro- and anti-whaling nations collapsed earlier in the week.
Science Education
Miller-McCune: The Real Science Gap
It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career.
By Beryl Lieff Benderly
For many decades, and especially since the United States attained undisputed pre-eminence in science during World War II, a parade of cutting-edge technologies has accounted for much of America’s economic growth. Countless good jobs now ride on whether the Next Big Thing — and the several things after that — will be developed in America and not, as many fear, in China, India, the European Union, Japan, Korea or another of the powers now producing large numbers of scientists and engineers.
Brilliant advances and the industries they foster come from brilliant minds, and for generations the United States has produced or welcomed from abroad the bulk of the world’s best scientists, engineers, inventors and innovators. But now, troubling indicators suggest that — unlike the days when the nation’s best students flocked to the challenges of the space race, the war on cancer, the tech boom, and other frontiers of innovation — careers in science, engineering and technology hold less attraction for the most talented young Americans. With competitors rapidly increasing their own supplies of technically trained personnel and major American companies outsourcing some of their research work to lower-wage countries, an emerging threat to U.S. dominance becomes increasingly clear.
Hat/tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Science is Cool
Discovery News: Doctor Who's 'Crack in the Universe' is Real?
by Nicole Gugliucci
The Doctor: "Must be a hell of a scary crack in your wall."
Those of you who have been following this season of Doctor Who know that a literal crack in the universe has been reappearing with the same shape, causing all kinds of havoc for our favorite time traveler. Wouldn't it be creepy to see it out there for real?
Agence France Presse via Discovery News: Whale-Watching a Booming Business
Marlowe Hood
Whale-watching revenue topped $2 billion in 2009 and is set to grow 10 percent a year, according to a new study.
The findings boost arguments that the marine mammals are worth more alive than dead, the researchers said.
They also coincide with a decision by the 88-nation International Whaling Commission (IWC), meeting in Agadir, Morocco, to move forward with a "five year strategic plan" exploring the economic benefits and ecological risks of whale-watching.