Once again the time has come for one and all to gather around. Science talk is here. New discoveries, new takes on old knowledge, and other bits of news are all available for the perusing in today's information world. Over the fold are selections from the past week from a few of the many excellent science news sites around the world. Today's tidbits include heavy metal hardens battle, Enceladus rains water onto Saturn, unique volcano complex discovered on Moon's far side, warming climate could give exotic grasses an edge over natives, dramatic carbon release from Arctic wildfire, how bats stay on target despite the clutter, ongoing global diversity loss unstoppable with protected areas alone, and eco goats are the latest craze in Maryland. Gather yourselves around. Pull up that comfy chair and bask in the sunshine. There is plenty of room for everyone. Get ready for one more session of Dr. Possum's science education and entertainment.
Featured Stories
From the department of no real surprise comes the observation that heavy metal armor hindered soldiers in battle.
...soldiers carrying armour in Medieval times would have been using more than twice the amount of energy had they not been wearing it. This is the first clear experimental evidence of the limitations of wearing Medieval armour on a soldier's performance. During warfare in the 15th century, soldiers wore steel plate armour, typically weighing 30-50kg. It is thought this may have been a contributing factor in whether an army won or lost a battle.
The mystery of water in the upper atmosphere of Saturn is solved at last.
Enceladus expels around 250 kg of water vapour every second, through a collection of jets from the south polar region known as the Tiger Stripes because of their distinctive surface markings.
These crucial observations reveal that the water creates a doughnut-shaped torus of vapour surrounding the ringed planet.
The total width of the torus is more than 10 times the radius of Saturn, yet it is only about one Saturn radius thick. Enceladus orbits the planet at a distance of about four Saturn radii, replenishing the torus with its jets of water.
“These crucial observations reveal that the water creates a doughnut-shaped torus of vapour surrounding the ringed planet. The total width of the torus is more than 10 times the radius of Saturn, yet it is only about one Saturn radius thick.”
Despite its enormous size, it has escaped detection until now because water vapour is transparent to visible light but not at the infrared wavelengths Herschel was designed to see.
A 'hot spot' on the far side of Earth's moon has been found to be an unusual volcano complex.
The hot spot is a concentration of a radioactive element thorium sitting between the very large and ancient impact craters Compton and Belkovich that was first detected by Lunar Prospector’s gamma-ray spectrometer in 1998. The Compton-Belkovich Thorium Anomaly, as it is called, appears as a bull’s-eye when the spectrometer data are projected onto a map, with the highest thorium concentration at its center.
Recent observations, made with the powerful Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) optical cameras, have allowed scientists to distinguish volcanic features in terrain at the center of the bull’s-eye. High-resolution three-dimensional models of the terrain and information from the LRO Diviner instrument have revealed geological features diagnostic not just of volcanism but also of much rarer silicic volcanism.
As the climate continues to warm many changes may be on the horizon.
California’s native grasses, already under pressure from invasive exotic grasses, are likely to be pushed aside even more as the climate warms, according to a new analysis from the University of California, Berkeley.
(snip)
They (researchers) concluded that many of the traits that now make exotic grasses more successful than many natives also would allow them to adapt better to increased temperature and likely expand their ranges.
The effects of an Arctic wildfire were just described in a paper.
The 2007 blaze on the North Slope of the Alaska’s Brooks Mountain Range released 20 times more carbon to the atmosphere than what is annually lost from undisturbed tundra.
As wildfires increase in frequency and size along Alaska’s North Slope, the team contends the disturbances may release large amounts of the greenhouse gas CO2 to the atmosphere and accelerate the transformation of the frozen, treeless tundra of today into a different kind of ecosystem less capable of storing carbon. Together, the impacts could have profound implications on atmospheric carbon and climate.
Arctic tundra landscapes store huge amounts of carbon in cool, wet soils that are insulated by a layer of permanently frozen ground, or permafrost. Fire has been almost nonexistent in Alaska’s North Slope for thousands of years and the effect of fires on the carbon balance of tundra ecosystems is largely unknown. However, with warming temperatures over the past half-century, the climate in the region is in transition, spurring more thunderstorms, lightning, and wildfires.
Bats manage to stay on target despite obstacles in the way.
The key lies in bats’ neural response to echoes from their sonar pulses: Differences in delay as short as 3 microseconds between parts of an echo is enough to tell the bat the object may not be its target.
As global diversity continues to decline protected areas alone may not be enough to halt the loss.
Despite impressively rapid growth of protected land and marine areas worldwide -- today totalling over 100,000 in number and covering 17 million square kilometers of land and 2 million square kilometers of oceans -- biodiversity is in steep decline.
Expected scenarios of human population growth and consumption levels indicate that cumulative human demands will impose an unsustainable toll on Earth's ecological resources and services accelerating the rate at which biodiversity is being loss.
Current and future human requirements will also exacerbate the challenge of effectively implementing protected areas while suggesting that effective biodiversity conservation requires new approaches that address underlying causes of biodiversity loss -- including the growth of both human population and resource consumption.
Goats are known to eat various sorts of vegetation including weeds and unwanted brush.
One group of 30 goats can clear 100 square meters of brush per day, according to Eco-Goats. Because the animals are agile and good climbers, they can often get to hard-to-reach vegetation.
When the work is finished, the goats have left behind their droppings which serve as fertilizer, said Eco-Goats, which charges about $5,750 for 2.5 acres.
Other Worthy Stories of the Week
The fungus farming beetles
Polar dwellers have bigger eyes, brains
Planetary nebula discovered by amateur astronomer
A new way to measure the size of the universe
Nibbling by herbivores has a large effect on tree rings
Glacier loss detailed following the collapse of Antarctic ice shelves
Reforestation's cooling influence--a result of farmer's past choices
Climate-change-induces wildfires may alter Yellowstone's forests
Researchers expose online tracking service that cannot be dodged
Motorcycle helmets hard on hearing
Vicious snails hunt crabs
NASA's Chandra observatory images gas flowing toward a black hole
Graphene composite a bridge to better batteries
History's normal rate of species disappearance is increasing
Discovery of a new magnetic order
For even more science news:
General Science Collectors:
Alpha-Galileo
BBC News Science and Environment
Eureka Science News
LiveScience
New Scientist
PhysOrg.com
SciDev.net
Science/AAAS
Science Alert
Science Centric
Science Daily
Scientific American
Space Daily
Blogs:
A Few Things Ill Considered Techie and Science News
Cantauri Dreams space exploration
Coctail Party Physics Physics with a twist.
Deep Sea News marine biology
Laelaps more vertebrate paleontology
List of Geoscience Blogs
ScienceBlogs
Space Review
Techonology Review
Tetrapod Zoologyvertebrate paleontology
Science Insider
Scientific Blogging.
Space.com
Wired News
Science RSS Feed: Medworm
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe--a combination of hard science and debunking crap
At Daily Kos:
This Week in Science by DarkSyde
Overnight News Digest:Science Saturday by Neon Vincent. OND tech Thursday by rfall.
Pique the Geek by Translator Sunday evenings about 9 Eastern time
All diaries with the DK GreenRoots Tag.
All diaries with the eKos Tag
A More Ancient World by matching mole
Astro Kos
SciTech at Dkos.
Sunday Science Videos by palantir
NASA picture of the day. For more see the NASA image gallery or the Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive
Ring Galaxy, NASA, Public Domain