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 the New York Times.
Salute of the Stars, Cosmic and Otherwise
By JAMES R. OESTREICH
Published: June 3, 2010
As the host of the opening-night gala performance of the World Science Festival at Alice Tully Hall on Wednesday evening, Alan Alda promised a trip through the cosmos "at the speed of art." And on this occasion, at least, art stepped lively.
Just as well. The evening was presented in honor of the British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who — though by now rendered physically immobile by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease — took the trouble to appear in person, upstaging even the likes of the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
More science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
Slideshows/Videos
New Scientist: Would the real Indiana Jones please stand up?
Arthur Demarest, the leading Mayan archaeologist, has had a career worthy of Indiana Jones. And when you get compared to Indy you know you've made it as a popular archaeologist. But who does the hat really fit? New Scientist has put a line-up together so that you can decide.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
National Geographic: Video: Frogs Shake Booties Before Fights
In behavior never before recorded by scientists, male red-eyed tree frogs are shown shaking their rumps and entire bodies to show dominance. The shaking often precedes wrestling between the two males.
Astronomy/Space
Discovery News: How to Make a Bigger Black Hole Jet
Analysis by Nicole Gugliucci
Sat Jun 5, 2010 08:33 PM ET
Active galaxies have bright and sometimes chaotic central region powered by a supermassive black hole that is millions or billions of times the mass of our sun. Astronomers from NASA and MIT think they have found a way to explain the vast zoo of jets coming from the black holes in some of these active galaxies.
But wait! (I know you are saying to yourself) nothing can escape a black hole, how can it have jets?! Although nothing can escape from inside a black hole -- not even light -- once it has crossed the event horizon, it's the region just outside that is really interesting to astronomers.
Discovery News: Massive Hydrogen Clouds Surround the Milky Way
Analysis by Nicole Gugliucci
Mon May 31, 2010 11:30 PM ET
Our galaxy contains more than just a spiral disk of stars and gas. Like most galaxies there is a large extended halo of material containing stars and dark matter. In the last few years, astronomers have been studying a rarer component in between, wispy hydrogen clouds that lie outside the disk. Now, astronomers have discovered their origin.
H. Alyson Ford led this research as part of her PhD thesis using the Galactic All-Sky Survey taken with the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia. She, along with Felix J. Lockman of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Naomi Mclure-Griffiths of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science looked at the populations of such clouds in two different regions of the Milky Way.
Discovery News: New Robotic Fleet Would Support Space Missions
By Irene Klotz
Thu Jun 3, 2010 10:50 AM ET
The road to Mars begins with robots practicing landings on an asteroid, tests of new rocket engines and prototype orbital fueling depots, among other technologies.
So says NASA, which has put out a call to industry, academic and other potential partners to flesh out its new exploration blueprints, released last week in response to President Barack Obama's decision to nip the moon-centered Constellation program.
"If all we wanted to do was send some humans to the moon, have them walk around and return them safely to Earth, then the previous program may have been enough," Robert Braun, NASA's new chief technologist, told Discovery News.
"That's not enough for me. I want to send humans beyond Earth. I want a NASA that tries things that have never been done before," he said.
Evolution/Paleontology
Physorg.com: Palaeontologists solve mystery of 500 million-year-old squid-like carnivore
May 26, 2010
A study by researchers at the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum sheds new light on a previously unclassifiable 500 million-year-old squid-like carnivore known as Nectocaris pteryx.
"We think that this extremely rare creature is an early ancestor of squids, octopuses, and other cephalopods", says Martin Smith of U of T's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) and the Department of Natural History at the ROM. "This is significant because it means that primitive cephalopods were around much earlier than we thought, and offers a reinterpretation of the long-held origins of this important group of marine animals."
The new interpretation became possible with the discovery of 91 new fossils that were collected by the ROM from the famous Burgess Shale site (Yoho National Park) in the UNESCO World Heritage Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, British Columbia over the past three decades, and examined by PhD student Martin Smith along with U of T EEB and Geology assistant professor and ROM palaeontologist Jean-Bernard Caron.
Physorg.com: Some sauropods really did hold their long necks high
June 3, 2010 by Lin Edwards
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study suggests the long necks of sauropod dinosaurs really were held high, in spite of theories suggesting they were more likely to keep their necks low because of the very high blood pressure resulting from the long distance from heart if they lifted their heads.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
National Geographic: Mammoth-Belch Deficit Caused Prehistoric Cooling?
Anne Casselman for National Geographic News
June 4, 2010
When mammoths and other Ice Age "megafauna" disappeared from the Americas about 12,800 years ago, the animals took with them their planet-warming burps—spurring the mysterious cooling period known as the Younger Dryas, a new study says.
And because humans are thought to have killed the creatures off, the deaths hint that we've been changing the climate since long before the first Model T chugged out of Mr. Ford's factory.
Biodiversity
Discovery News: New Antarctic Animals Look Like Plants
Analysis by Jennifer Viegas
Tue Jun 1, 2010 04:26 PM ET
These marine invertebrates were discovered during expeditions carried out over the past two decades.
Two of the new species were found in the Eastern Weddell Sea in the Antarctic region.
The new species are all gorgonians, also known as sea whips or sea fans. Different types of these unusual organisms are found throughout the oceans of the world, especially in the tropics, making the latest Antarctic finds all the more unusual.
Discovery News: One Gecko Turns Out to Be Four Different Species
Analysis by Jennifer Viegas
Wed Jun 2, 2010 01:25 AM ET
The West African forest gecko needs an "s" at the end, because scientists have just determined it's not just one species but four. DNA detective work made the determination possible, according to a report in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
These secretive, yet widely distributed, reptiles live in forest patches from Ghana to the Congo.
Researchers believe the four distinct species evolved over the past 100,000 years due to the fragmentation of a belt of tropical rain forest.
Biotechnology/Health
Med City News: Cleveland Clinic breast cancer vaccine could conquer disease
5.30.10 | Mary Vanac | Cleveland, Ohio
A vaccine to prevent breast cancer being developed by Cleveland Clinic researchers has shown "overwhelmingly favorable results" in animals and could be on its way to conquering the disease that kills more than 40,000 American women each year.
Researchers led by Vincent Tuohy, an immunologist at the Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, have found that a single vaccination with the antigen alpha-lactalbumin prevents breast cancer tumors from forming in mice and inhibits the growth of existing tumors.
Enrollment in human trials could begin next year. If successful, the vaccine would be the first to prevent breast cancer and could point the way to vaccines for other cancers. It also could be a huge commercial success for the Clinic, which typically licenses or spins off its discoveries to companies that take them to market.
Climate/Environment
Physorg.com: Anthropologists Look to Early Evidence of Salmon for Global Warming Insight
(PhysOrg.com) -- University of Maine anthropologist Brian Robinson and colleagues are looking at archaeological evidence of Atlantic salmon to better understand the effects of global warming.
The researchers found traces of Atlantic salmon from 400, 3,000 and 6,000 years ago, with the earliest periods being warmer than present and relatively wet. New England climate predictions are for increased year-round temperatures, greater late-summer evaporation and increased precipitation in the spring, winter and fall.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
N.Y. Times: Disaster in the Amazon
By BOB HERBERT
BP’s calamitous behavior in the Gulf of Mexico is the big oil story of the moment. But for many years, indigenous people from a formerly pristine region of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador have been trying to get relief from an American company, Texaco (which later merged with Chevron), for what has been described as the largest oil-related environmental catastrophe ever.
"As horrible as the gulf spill has been, what happened in the Amazon was worse," said Jonathan Abady, a New York lawyer who is part of the legal team that is suing Chevron on behalf of the rainforest inhabitants.
It has been a long and ugly legal fight and the outcome is uncertain. But what has happened in the rainforest is heartbreaking, although it has not gotten nearly the coverage that the BP spill has.
Geology
Discovery News: Don't Call The Guatemala Sinkhole a Sinkhole
Analysis by Michael Reilly
The giant sinkhole that opened beneath downtown Guatemala City over the weekend is all the rage right now. There's just one problem: it isn't a sinkhole.
"Sure, it looks a lot like a sinkhole," geologist Sam Bonis told Discovery News from his home in Guatemala. "And a whale looks a lot like a fish, but calling it one would be very misleading."
Instead, Bonis prefers the term "piping feature" -- a decidedly less sexy label for the 100-foot deep, 66-foot wide circular chasm. But it's an important distinction, he maintains, because "sinkholes" refer to areas where bedrock is solid but has been eaten away by groundwater, forming a geological Swiss cheese whose contours are nearly impossible to predict.
The situation beneath the country's capital is far different, and more dangerous.
Discovery News: San Andreas-Like Fault Found in Eastern U.S.
by Larry O'Hanlon
For 30 years geologists have been puzzled by a remarkably straight magnetic line that runs between New York and Alabama along the Appalachians.
A more recent aerial magnetic survey of the Alabama end of the line suggests that it's probably a 500-million-year-old San Andreas-style fault that appears to have slipped 137 miles (220 kilometers) to the right in the distant past.
If so, it's no surprise that the most dangerous part of the eastern Tennessee seismic zone is right next to part of this magnetic line and has the second-highest earthquake frequency in the eastern United States.
Psychology/Behavior
N.Y. Times: What Pets Can Teach Us About Marriage
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Do you greet each other with excitement, overlook each other’s flaws and easily forgive bad behavior? If it’s your pet, the answer is probably yes. But your spouse? Probably not.
In an article on PsychCentral, clinical psychologist Suzanne B. Phillips of Long Island University explores what our relationships with pets can teach us about our relationship with a spouse or romantic partner.
"What is interesting in my work with couples is that although couples may vehemently disagree on most topics, they usually both soften in manner and tone to agree that the dog, cat, bird or horse is great," Dr. Phillips writes.
Archeology/Anthropology
Physorg.com: Researchers Link Tooth Chipping in Fossils With Diets of Early Humans
(PhysOrg.com) -- George Washington University researchers have discovered a new method of linking tooth chips in fossils of early humans with their eating habits. Based on chip and tooth size, the research of anthropologists Paul Constantino and Peter Lucas suggests that early humans consumed large, hard foods such as seeds and nuts and occasionally used high bite forces to do so. Together with researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Drs. Constantino and Lucas examined modern human teeth to help link chip characteristics to the diet and eating behavior of early humans as well as great apes, monkeys and forest pigs.
BBC: Artefacts hint at earliest Neanderthals in Britain
By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News
The flints date to a time when no humans were thought to be in Britain
Archaeologists have found what they say is the earliest evidence of Neanderthals living in Britain.
Two pieces of flint unearthed at motorway works in Dartford, Kent, have now been dated to 110,000 years ago.
The finds push back the presence of Neanderthals in Britain by 40,000 years or more, said Dr Francis Wenban-Smith, from Southampton University.
The Daily Telegraph (UK): British archaeologists fight with Italian farmer to save ancient aqueduct
British archaeologists are battling with an Italian farmer to save the site of an ancient aqueduct which provided Rome with fresh water 1,900 years ago.
By Nick Squires in Rome
Published: 10:00PM BST 03 Jun 2010
In January father and son team Edward and Michael O'Neill discovered the headwaters of the aqueduct, which was built by the Emperor Trajan, hidden beneath a crumbling 13th church north of Rome.
A sophisticated example of Roman hydraulic engineering, the aqueduct, known as the Aqua Traiana, was inaugurated in 109AD and carried fresh water 35 miles to the imperial capital.
But since the discovery was publicised, the archeologists claim that the farmer on whose land it stands has begun a crude excavation of the site in the hope of finding valuable Roman treasure.
Telluride News (Colorado): A peek into the past
Cortez archaeologist discusses the Mesa Verde migration
By Katie Klingsporn
Associate Editor
Published: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 8:30 PM CDT
Long before Europeans explored North American soil, a population of people flourished in the Mesa Verde area of southwestern Colorado, erecting elaborate stone structures, farming the fields and making pottery.
The Ancestral Puebloans are believed to have lived in this pocket of the southwest for more than 700 years, with a population that may have reached several thousand.
But then, somewhere around the year 1280, the population suddenly crashed.
In the world of archaeology, that much is agreed upon. What isn’t so clear is how, why or what happened to the people who once inhabited Mesa Verde.
The Press and Journal (Aberdeen, Scotland, UK): Archaeologists drafted in to search for ancient college
By Stephen Christie
Published: 01/06/2010
Archaeologists could be drafted in to oversee work at a proposed housing development in a north-east town over fears the development could disturb the former site of an ancient college.
Plans have been lodged with Aberdeenshire Council to build four properties on land in Fraserburgh’s College Bounds which could once have been home to Fraserburgh University.
Science News: Jamestown settlers' trash confirms hard times
Analyses of discarded oyster shells chronicle deep drought during Virginia colony’s early years
By Sid Perkins
Oyster shells dumped into an abandoned well by the early settlers of Jamestown, Va., chronicle a lengthy, deep drought the colonists faced during their first decade in America.Preservation Virginia
Oyster shells excavated from a well in Jamestown, Va., the first permanent British settlement in North America, bolster the notion that the first colonists suffered an unusually deep and long-lasting drought.
The shells reveal that water in the James River near the colony, where many of those oysters were harvested, was much saltier then than along that stretch of the estuary today, says Howard Spero, a geochemist at the University of California, Davis. For the water to have been so brackish, river flow must have been slacker compared to today, a sign that precipitation was dramatically lower when those oysters were growing. Spero and his colleagues report their findings online May 31 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Agence France Presse via Yahoo! News: Excavation throws up 1980s lunch
JOUY-EN-JOSAS, France (AFP) - An avant-garde offal-heavy art banquet laid for 100 that literally wound up underground is giving new depth, three decades later, to "garbage archaeology".
Pigs' ears, smoked udders, veal lungs and other assorted offal tidbits left over from the luncheon are under the scrutiny of a team of French archaeologists working hand-in-hand with anthropologists, art historians and the organiser of the banquet himself.
On April 23, 1983, Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri, a key figure of post-war European art and inventor of the Eat-Art concept, invited artists, gallery-owners and critics for a lunch-cum-performance where guests buried the remains of the banquet underground.
One of the findings so far? "Plastic it seems lasts longer than aluminium."
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: The dig cook returns
By Pam MacIntosh
It was hard work but it was worth it.
Her work as a dig cook has taken her to some fascinating places around the world.
She's worked in a mountain village in Greece, in mud-brick houses in the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus, in England at the ancient stone circle at Avebury and in Australia at Lake Mungo in the Flinders Ranges.
And now Myocum resident Annie Evans has just returned from her 12th archaeology dig working for several weeks as chief cook for a team of archaeologists in the Syrian desert.
The Times of London: From the might of Rome to beach football for Circus Maximus
Richard Owen, Rome
Once famed for staging Ben Hur-style chariot races, the Circus Maximus in Rome is about to suffer the ultimate humiliation: a beach football tournament featuring players in centurion gear.
The three-day event pitting the best of Europe’s beach footballers against one another has been denounced as a vulgar misuse of the arena.
Andrea Carandini, a professor of archaeology at the University of Rome, said that the tournament, for which the turf surface will be covered by sand, was an "improper and degrading use for a key Roman archaeological site".
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
Discovery News: Particle Physics Pops Up in New York
Analysis by Jennifer Ouellette
Mon May 31, 2010 10:20 PM ET
Last week the New York Academy of Sciences hosted a packed house in its auditorium overlooking Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, to celebrate the release of Voyage to the Heart of the Matter, a pop-up book by writer Emma Sanders that illustrates the inner workings of the ATLAS experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. There was a panel discussion and a reception/book-signing, where attendees could mingle with the guests of honor.
It's no doubt gratifying to the NYAS that there were so many hard-core particle physics fans in New York willing to spend part of their Tuesday evening listening to a panel discussion about the ATLAS experiment. It helped, of course, that the view is spectacular. Also, the moderator was none other than actor Alan Alda -- a longstanding advocate for science -- and the panel featured Harvard physicist and author Lisa Randall (Warped Passages), as well as Sanders herself. Rounding out the panel was Columbia University's Michael Tuts, US operations program manager for ATLAS.
Discovery News: Foucault's Pendulum Snaps, Crashes To Paris Museum Floor
Analysis by Jennifer Ouellette
Mon May 31, 2010 10:59 PM ET
In 1851, French scientist Leon Foucault gave a sensational demonstration in the Paris Pantheon proving that the Earth revolved around its axis -- known as diurnal motion -- before a group of dignitaries that included Napoleon III. He suspended a heavy brass bob by a wire from the Pantheon's ceiling to create a pendulum and let it swing freely in any direction along its vertical axis (a key feature).
As time passed, the swings rotated in response to the Earth's rotation. Quod erat demonstratum. Einstein's theory of general relativity further buttressed the phenomenon by provided an explanation of "why the oscillation plane of the pendulum does not remain fixed in absolute space, as expected by Foucault, but is slowly dragged by the presence of the rotating Earth."
Chemistry
Science News: Vodka's bonds may influence taste
By Rachel Ehrenberg
A certain secret agent’s preference for martinis that are shaken — not stirred — might be all about the bonds. Scientists who have zoomed in on the molecular structure of several brands of vodka propose that differences in water-ethanol interactions may account for drink preferences.
Some of vodka’s water molecules form cagelike structures around molecules of ethanol, a research team reports online May 21 in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Disrupting these cages — via impurities or perhaps even shaking — may affect taste, says study coauthor Dale W. Schaefer of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio.
Schaefer cautions that no data link such structural differences to brand preferences. But with more research, a measure of vodka’s microstructure could serve as an all-purpose quality control measure, he says.
Energy
Science News: Quantum photocells might cheat efficiency limits
By Laura Sanders
Atoms in a solar cell coaxed into a curious simultaneous quantum state may convert sunlight into electrical energy more efficiently than previously believed possible, a new study proposes.
The laws of thermodynamics set the upper limit of solar cell efficiency at around 80 percent, says the work’s author, Marlan Scully of Texas A&M University in College Station and Princeton University. But this estimate doesn’t take certain quantum effects into account. Scully’s new model shows that the ultimate energy efficiency can be pushed even higher, depending on the particulars of the system.
"I think it’s always important to know what the ultimate efficiency is," says physicist Ting Shan Luk of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, who was not involved in the study. "Without knowing the limit, you don’t know what to shoot for."
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Bernama (Maylasia): Heritage Heroes Keep Nation's Treasures Gleaming
By Ummi Nadiah Rosli
The first of two parts
KUALA LUMPUR, June 2 (Bernama) -- The word itself may have come to sound like dusty shelves or stagnant water, but 'heritage' is not only about the blast from the past.
Whether it is an ancient archaeological site, a nostalgic building or a traditional art form, Malaysia's rich heritage are stories and memories that have shaped our identity.
And resonating with the past is not about being sentimental. In a country where ancient temples, mosques and churches can exist side by side, to turn our backs on a great and noble heritage is a great loss.
With the tapestry of local treasures, the Department of National Heritage (JWN) has been busy keeping our heritage trail alive.
Established four years ago, JWN's mission is to empower and champion heritage as the core identity of the Malaysian people's legacy.
If you click on the link, be sure your anti-virus software is on. McAfee does not like the site.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Science Education
South Bend Tribute: IUSB class conducts archaeological dig near site of former South Bend synagogue
By MARGARET FOSMOE
Tribune Staff Writer
SOUTH BEND — Rebecca Gibson gives the sifting screen a firm tug and a shower of soil rains down on the ground below.
Gibson runs her fingers through the larger bits captured in the screen, pointing out pieces of metal, glass and old brick. She scoops them up and deposits them in a plastic bag.
"I love this. I never thought I could be this happy," says Gibson, a senior at Indiana University South Bend. "It's the process of looking. You never know what you're going to find."
Gibson and others in a summer field school course are undertaking an archaeological dig in the land surrounding the vacant former Sons of Israel synagogue at 420 S. William St., just beyond the left field wall of Coveleski Stadium.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Science is Cool
NPR: http://www.npr.org/...
by Jon Hamilton
In the 55 years since Albert Einstein's death, many scientists have tried to figure out what made him so smart.
But no one tried harder than a pathologist named Thomas Harvey, who lost his job and his reputation in a quest to unlock the secrets of Einstein's genius. Harvey never found the answer. But through an unlikely sequence of events, his search helped transform our understanding of how the brain works.
How that happened is a bizarre story that involves a dead genius, a stolen brain, a rogue scientist and a crazy idea that turned out not to be so crazy.
Ars Technica: Kavli prizes awarded for telescope tech, nerve cell signaling
By John Timmer
In conjunction with the opening of the World Science Festival in New York City, the Kavli Foundation announced the winners of this year's Kavli Prizes, which honor researchers in fields that really didn't exist as organized disciplines when the Nobel Prizes started: astrophysics, neuroscience, and nanoscience. The prizes are handed out every other year, and were first awarded in 2008. The first time around, it was hard to escape the impression that they were simply given to people who did significant work in the three fields, but this year's prizes seem to have focused on a single, coherent area where significant advances have been made.
This is most evident in the prizes for astrophysics and neuroscience. The Kavli Prize in Astrophysics went to a trio that did the tough engineering work that has let us overcome what once seemed like hard physical limits on the construction of telescopes. Instruments based on their work have allowed us to overcome the obstacles that made building bigger primary mirrors a practical impossibility and, in the process, enabled us to better observe the objects that are governed by the rules of astrophysics.
Discovery News: Battling Bots in Saturn's Biggest Ring
Analysis by Jennifer Ouellette
Sun May 30, 2010 09:12 PM ET
Those wacky folks at the Spitzer Science Center's IRelevant Astronomy site are at it again. Last year they wowed us with a fantastic satirical video starring The Guild's Felicia Day giving an inept video director a crash course in colliding galaxies. (And if you're not watching The Guild, why not?)
Now they're back with another amusing take on the latest findings of the Spitzer Space Telescope, featuring The Guild's Amy Okuda (who plays Tinkerballa) and the voice of actor/author/blogger Wil Wheaton.
Discovery News: Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson Plan High Frequency Concert for Dogs
Analysis by Jennifer Viegas
Tue Jun 1, 2010 07:26 PM ET
Lou Reed will be taking a dog walk on the wild side later this week, as the singer and his composer wife, Laurie Anderson, will be holding a high frequency recital for dogs and their human companions at the Sydney Opera House.
Discovery News: Animal Screams Manipulate Movie Audiences
Analysis by Jennifer Viegas
Tue Jun 1, 2010 12:07 PM ET
From screaming meerkats to roaring lions, animal distress calls and other animal vocalizations are being included, or copied by instruments, in film soundtracks to influence human emotions on a primal level.
The musical manipulation works because humans and other vertebrates are predisposed to be emotionally affected by animal yells, human baby cries, and other noises that may sound harsh and are unpredictable, according to a new study published in the latest Royal Society Biology Letters.
As a result, snakes, lions, hippos, birds, whales, dolphins and even fish are now being recorded for film soundtracks, or are being emulated by musicians. In the future, more such sounds will likely be included in movie scores, which will probably do a better job at influencing audience emotions since the science behind the process is coming to light.