Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew, consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors jlms qkw, maggiejean, wader, Oke, rfall, and JML9999, alumni editors palantir, Bentliberal, and ScottyUrb, guest editor annetteboardman, and current editor-in-chief Neon Vincent, along with anyone else who reads and comments, informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.
This week's featured story comes from Discovery News.
The Ocean Is In Danger!
Tomorrow is World Oceans Day. Anthony looks at the dire state of perhaps the most interesting and diverse part of our planet.
The Discovery News website hosts the accompanying slideshow,
World Ocean Day Awesomeness.
June 8 is World Oceans Day, and in recognition thereof, groups and individuals around the world are holding events - from cleaning up a wetland in Cape Town, to "creature observation" on the tidal flats of Japan's Shiba City, to a day-long festival in Santa Barbara - of oceanic celebration and education.
It's great that the ocean has a day all of its very own, of course, and even better that the United Nations has given the day its official imprimatur. But there's a case to be made that, frankly, every day should be ocean day. After all, Earth is the only planet known to have liquid water on its surface and the only planet known to have life. These facts are not coincidental.
More videos and a personal reflection on World Ocean Day are in the tip jar. The rest of this week's science, space, health, environment, and energy stories follow over the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
My First Diary: Why I Felt Compelled to Create an Account Here
by rcbouch
Living with worms in a small apartment.
by futurebird
The Future of Storm Chasing - Ethical or Carnival?
by JPax
Green diary rescue: Protesting Keystone XL, remembering and restoring Native agricultural methods
by Meteor Blades
The Daily Bucket: Night Sounds of Summer
by matching mole
This week in science: Chasing dragons
by DarkSyde
Slideshows/Videos
Princeton University: Art of Science 2013 Gallery
Hat/To jlms qkw for this story.
Discovery News: The Dinosaurs You Love Are Fake
A huge triceratops skeleton was found in Wyoming! But now researchers are saying it's not a triceratops--that dinosaur never existed. And this isn't the first time for this to happen! Trace has all the details on the fates of our beloved dinosaurs in the crazy world of paleontology.
Discovery News: How To Stop a Tornado
As those living in America's heartland have long known- tornados are not a force to be reckoned with, or are they? Trace looks at whether drastic measures actually stop a killer tornado in it's tracks.
Space.com: Oklahoma's EF-5 Tornado Scar Seen From Space | Video
The May 20, 2013 tornado that ripped through Moore, Oklahoma was 1.3 miles wide at its peak and had winds that reached 210 mph. The NASA Terra satellite took imagery of the tornado track and NOAA's GOES-13 captured the storm from over head.
Discovery News: Why Electric Cars Won't Solve the Pollution Problem
Electric cars are billed as a solution to the Earth's pollution problem. But as Anthony shows us, the majority of pollution actually comes from places you'd least expect.
ABC News: Tropical Storm Andrea Drenches North East.
Massive storm causes flooding as it barrels up eastern seaboard.
The Weather Channel: Is It Irresponsible to Predict Entire Hurricane Season?
Dr. Jeff Masters with Weather Undergound talks about forecasting the hurricane season and the difficulties involved.
Space.com: Superstorm Sandy's Track, Winds Intensity Visualized By Supercomputer | Video
In the most accurate assessment to date, the changing wind speeds are seen over a 5-day time-lapse (Oct. 26 to Oct. 31, 2012). NASA GOES-5 atmosphere model computer was used to create the simulation.
NASA Television: Space Weather Enterprise Forum on This Week @NASA
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden delivered the keynote address for this year's Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Auditorium and Science Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. The annual forum includes researchers, policymakers and forecasters discussing space weather and how to mitigate its effects on communications, navigation and national security. Space weather involves conditions and events on the sun and in near-Earth space that can affect critical systems, such as electric power grids and communications and navigation systems. Also, Upcoming Solar Mission Briefed, Orion Update, New Adapter for Engine Test , Opportunity on The Move, Astronomical Announcements, "Einstein" Launched to ISS, Imagine and Build and more!
NASA Television: NASA Mars Curiosity Rover Report -- June 7, 2013
A NASA Mars Curiosity rover team member gives an update on developments and status of the planetary exploration mission. The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft delivered Curiosity to its target area on Mars at 1:31:45 a.m. EDT on Aug. 6, 2012 which includes the 13.8 minutes needed for confirmation of the touchdown to be radioed to Earth at the speed of light. The rover will conduct a nearly two-year prime mission to investigate whether the Gale Crater region of Mars ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life.
Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking rocks' elemental composition from a distance, are the first of their kind on Mars. Curiosity will use a drill and scoop, which are located at the end of its robotic arm, to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into the rover's analytical laboratory instruments.
Science at NASA: ScienceCasts: An Early Start for Noctilucent Clouds
Glowing electric-blue at the edge of space, noctilucent clouds have surprised researchers by appearing early this year. The unexpected apparition hints at a change in the "teleconnections" of Earth's atmosphere.
Space.com: Garbage Truck-Sized Asteroid To Give Earth Close Buzz | Video
Asteroid 2013 LR6 -- a small chuck of cosmic trash -- makes its closest approach on June 8th, 2013, coming with 68,350 miles (110,000 km) of Earth.
Discovery News: Listen To This! X-rays From Stars Make Music
The stars are a beautiful thing to look at, but they can also make some beautiful sounds... with the help of scientists that is. Anthony gives us a listen to an interstellar orchestra.
Discovery News: Why Gravity Fluctuates on the Moon
We need gravity: it anchors us. But the gravity we experience on earth is very different from the gravity on the moon, and both, it turns out, can fluctuate due to a number of things! Looking at new research announced by NASA, Trace upends our notions of gravity.
Astronomy/Space
BBC: Comet Lovejoy flies into Sun to reveal solar secrets
By Rebecca Morelle
A comet's close encounter with the Sun has given scientists a look at a solar region that has never been visited by spacecraft.
In 2011, comet Lovejoy hurtled deep into the Sun's violent atmosphere - an area called the solar corona.
Telescope images have revealed how the comet's tail was pulled about by an intense magnetic field, allowing scientists to characterise this force for the first time.
The study is published in Science.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
NBC News: Opportunity rover finds traces left by 'water you can drink' on ancient Mars
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
Nearly 10 years after its launch, NASA's Opportunity rover has found its first evidence that Mars once had non-acidic water — the kind of water that could easily sustain the life we typically see on Earth.
"This is water that you can drink," Cornell astronomer Steve Squyres, principal investigator for Opportunity's long-lived Mars mission, told reporters Friday.
The water isn't there anymore, but the minerals left behind bear an aluminum-rich chemical signature that suggests they were formed through interaction with neutral-pH water. That's different from the previous evidence that Opportunity found, pointing to more acidic water. Some extreme forms of life on Earth could tolerate that environment, but it wouldn't have been as friendly an environment for prebiotic chemistry — the chemistry that's thought to have given rise to life on Earth.
Climate/Environment
BBC: Ancient Irish texts show volcanic link to cold weather
By Matt McGrath
Researchers have been able to trace the impact of volcanic eruptions on the climate over a 1200 year period by assessing ancient Irish texts.
The international team compared entries in these medieval annals with ice core data indicating volcanic eruptions.
Of 38 volcanic events, 37 were associated with directly observed cold weather extremes recorded in the chronicles.
The report is published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
BBC: Study finds shipwrecks threaten precious seas
By Matt McGrath
A new report identifies the world's most dangerous waters for shipping and says accidents pose a particular danger for some of the most ecologically important areas.
The research says the worst accident hotspots are in the South China Sea, the Mediterranean and North Sea.
Losses are more likely in the future as the number of ships is expected to double, the authors warn.
The study has been carried out for WWF International.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
Climate Nexus via LiveScience: Deadly Heat Waves Intensify as Summers Sizzle (Op-Ed)
Marlene Cimons, Climate Nexus
Date: 07 June 2013 Time: 06:38 PM ET
No one ever should die from heat. But every year, about 650 Americans do — a death toll greater than tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and lightning combined. And, in a deadly harbinger of what is worse to come, a new study shows that heat deaths are on the rise.
An analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released this week reported that between June 30 and July 13 of last year — the hottest year on record — excessive heat killed 32 people in four states: Maryland, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. That statistic was four times what has been typical for those states (when compared to the same two-week period averaged over the decade beginning in 1999).
Most of those who perished were at home and alone, and lacked air-conditioning.
LiveScience: Africa's Worst Drought Tied to West's Pollution
Becky Oskin, LiveScience Staff Writer
Date: 07 June 2013 Time: 03:01 PM ET
The biggest drought to hit the planet in the 20th century, the Sahel drought sucked Central Africa dry from the 1970s to the 1990s. The severe famines that resulted killed hundreds of thousands of people during this period and gained worldwide attention.
A new study blames the dry spell on pollution in the Northern Hemisphere, primarily from America and Europe. Tiny particles of sulfate, called aerosols, cooled the Northern Hemisphere, shifting tropical rainfall patterns southward, away from Central Africa, according to research published April 24 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
"Even changes from relatively far away spread into the tropics," said Dargan Frierson, a study co-author and climatologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.
LiveScience: Tropical Caves Fill Gap in Climate Record
Becky Oskin, LiveScience Staff Writer
Date: 06 June 2013 Time: 02:00 PM ET
Slick towers in a tropical island cave provide a 100,000-year climate record rivaling Greenland's pristine ice cores, scientists say.
The rare view into past rainfall patterns in the tropics fills a gap in global climate history during a crucial period. Ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica have revealed rapid swings in Earth's climate in the last 100,000 years in the high latitudes. By studying stalagmites in Borneo, in the western Pacific Ocean, researchers at Georgia Tech now know how the tropics responded to the sudden climate shifts. The team discovered some of the abrupt changes did not affect the region, according to a study published today (June 6) in the journal Science Express.
"We found [some] of these events were captured in our stalagmites, but most them, especially the abrupt shifts toward warming called Dansgaard-Oeschger events, we do not see," said Stacy Carolin, lead study author and a geochemistry doctoral student at Georgia Tech. "There's something going on that's not reaching the tropics, or the tropics are doing something that is causing the response to be different," she said.
Biodiversity
LiveScience: 'Extinct' Frog Reappears in Israel
Douglas Main, Staff Writer
Date: 06 June 2013 Time: 11:22 AM ET
The Hula painted frog was declared extinct in 1996, the first time any amphibian had been declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a conservation group.
The decision was guided by the best available scientific data at the time: Nobody had seen any sign of the creature since its sole known habitat, the Hula Valley wetlands in northern Israel, had been drained in 1955. Then, in October 2011, a routine patrol turned up an adult male of the species. Further searching uncovered another 10 Hula painted frogs.
It's a remarkable case of a species reappearing, said Rebecca Biton, a paleontologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and co-author of a study describing the reappearance of the frog published this week in the journal Nature Communications.
LiveScience: Light Pollution Deters Nesting Sea Turtles
Elizabeth Howell, LiveScience Contributor
Date: 07 June 2013 Time: 01:42 PM ET
Light pollution along the Mediterranean is changing the nesting habits of sea turtles in Israel, according to new research.
Orbital pictures of the region, coupled with sea turtle nesting data from Israel's National Parks Authority, revealed that the species of turtles in that area cluster their nests in darker spots.
"The two species of sea turtle in our study are nocturnal nesters. It is thought that the light pollution along the coast at night could disrupt visual cues. Visual cues are important for sea turtles for other functions, such as finding the sea after nesting or hatching," lead researcher Tessa Mazor, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Queensland, told LiveScience.
Biotechnology/Health
BBC: Neanderthal clues to cancer origins
By Helen Briggs BBC News
A Neanderthal living 120,000 years ago had a cancer that is common today, according to a fossil study.
A fossilised Neanderthal rib found in a shallow cave at Krapina, Croatia, shows signs of a bone tumour.
The discovery is the oldest evidence yet of a tumour in the human fossil record, say US scientists.
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany) via Science Daily: Malaria Protection in Chimpanzees
May 29, 2013
In malaria regions the parasite prevalence in the human body as well as malaria-related morbidity and mortality decrease with age. This reflects the progressive mounting of a protective immunity. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Robert Koch-Institute now present a study which addresses the age distribution of malaria parasite infection in a group of wild chimpanzees.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
NBC News: Supergrapes could make good wine despite climate change
By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News
Experts say "terroir" — the geography, geology and climate of grapes' native soils — defines the difference between good vintage and bad. But the plants' sensitivity to their environment also means that climate change presents a massive threat to the industry and that delicate balance. However, new genetic research may stave off those worries, even as the planet warms.
Working with Corvina grapes, a team of Italian geneticists identified genes that help protect the fruit from the vagaries of the weather and could serve as a platform "for breeding new cultivars with improved adaptation to the environment," the team reports Friday in the journal Genome Biology.
The team grew the grapes in 11 vineyards across the Verona region and harvested berries at various stages of ripening for three years to analyze which genes were expressed under what conditions — finding genes, for example, associated with a wine's taste, color and mouth-feel.
LiveScience: US Births Remain Steady in 2012
Rachael Rettner, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 06 June 2013 Time: 12:00 AM ET
In 2012, there were 3,958,000 babies born in the United States, according to early estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's about the same as the number of births in 2011, the report says.
The number of U.S. births has been declining since 2007, when a record-breaking 4,316,233 babies were born —more births than at the height of the baby boom in the 1950s.
LiveScience: Is Genetically Modified Wheat Safe?
Rachael Rettner, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 05 June 2013 Time: 11:23 AM ET
Genetically modified wheat has mysteriously turned up in an Oregon field, and while there's no evidence that the crop is in the food supply, experts say it would be safe to consume.
The strain of GM wheat found in Oregon was developed by the biotechnology company Monsanto, officials confirmed. The finding was a surprise because as far as anyone knew, GM wheat has never been grown anywhere in the world outside of experiments. While other GM crops have been approved for cultivation, GM wheat has not.
Following the announcement, Japan and South Korea suspended some imports of U.S. wheat, and the European Union said it was testing U.S. wheat shipments to make sure they did not contain GM wheat.
Psychology/Behavior
NBC News: Baby apes and humans teach lessons about evolution of language
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
When it comes to communication, a human infant starts out with hand gestures, much as baby chimps and bonobos do, and all three of those species shift to using more symbols as they grow up. But the shift to symbols is more pronounced for the human and relies more on vocalization. That pattern may well suggest how human language evolved.
These are the lessons drawn from more than a year's worth of observations of a chimp, a bonobo and a young girl. The results were published Thursday in Frontiers in Psychology, an open-access journal.
"It's a new kind of evidence in favor of the gestural origins of language, and it's also a new kind of evidence in favor of the co-evolution of gesture and speech," said one of the study's authors, Patricia Greenfield, a psychology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.
LiveScience: Psychiatric Treatments May Change Personality
Rachael Rettner, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 07 June 2013 Time: 03:11 PM ET
Some doctors balk at the idea of trying to change a patient's personality, but a new study suggests that they're doing it already.
The results show that talk therapy or psychiatric medications can change personality in healthy people and those with psychological disorders. What's more, changes can be relativity rapid, occurring over a four- to seven-month period, and long-lasting, continuing years after therapy, according to the study.
Most mental health professionals don't think about psychiatric treatments as a means of changing personality — they view treatments as a way to change behavior, said study researcher Brent Roberts, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Archeology/Anthropology
LiveScience: Did Humans Really Eat Neanderthals?
Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor
Date: 04 June 2013 Time: 09:40 AM ET
No clear evidence suggests modern humans ate Neanderthals, much less that they did so enough to drive Neanderthals to extinction, despite recent claims from scientists in Spain.
Neanderthals were once the closest living relatives of modern humans, ranging across a vast area from Europe to western Asia and the Middle East. Their lineage went extinct about the same time modern humans expanded across the world, leading to speculation that modern humans wiped them out.
Scientists Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro and Policarp Hortolà at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in Tarragona, Spain, noted the migration of modern humans across the globe may have played a role in the extinction of more than 178 of the world's largest mammal species or megafauna, such as woolly mammoths. Homo sapiens can essentially be considered "a worldwide pest species," they write in the May 8 issue of the journal Quaternary International. "No other species has ever developed such a killing potential."
The University of Cologne (Germany) via Science Daily: 'Tracking in Caves': On the Trail of Pre-Historic Humans
June 3, 2013
In remote caves of the Pyrenees, lie precious remnants of the Ice Age undisturbed: foot and hand prints of prehistoric hunters. The tracks have remained untouched for millennia and are in excellent condition. Dr. Tilman Lenssen-Erz of the Forschungsstelle Afrika (Research Centre Africa) at the University of Cologne and Dr. Andreas Pastoors from the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann are going on expedition to encode the secrets of the trails. Their idea: to involve the best trackers in the world in the project in order to learn even more about the tracks. San hunters from Namibia, also known as Bushmen, will be investigating the tracks. The scientific expedition will span two continents and seven weeks.
The Guardian (UK): Eight bronze age boats surface at Fens creek in record find
3,000-year-old fleet discovered in a Cambridgeshire quarry on the outskirts of Peterborough
Maev Kennedy
The Guardian, Monday 3 June 2013
A fleet of eight prehistoric boats, including one almost nine metres long, has been discovered in a Cambridgeshire quarry on the outskirts of Peterborough.
The vessels, all deliberately sunk more than 3,000 years ago, are the largest group of bronze age boats ever found in the same UK site and most are startlingly well preserved. One is covered inside and out with decorative carving described by conservator Ian Panter as looking "as if they'd been playing noughts and crosses all over it". Another has handles carved from the oak tree trunk for lifting it out of the water. One still floated after 3,000 years and one has traces of fires lit on the wide flat deck on which the catch was evidently cooked.
Asahi Shimbun (Japan): 2nd-century wooden mask unearthed in Nara, oldest yet found
May 31, 2013
By KAZUTO TSUKAMOTO/ Staff Writer
SAKURAI, Nara Prefecture--Once used to hide a face, a wooden mask fragment recently discovered here and currently on public display hints at ancient cultural links between this part of western Japan and China, archaeologists said May 30.
According to the Sakurai city board of education, the mask unearthed at the Daifuku archaeological site likely dates to the latter half of the second century in light of accompanying finds.
LiveScience: New North America Viking Voyage Discovered
Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor
Some 1,000 years ago, the Vikings set off on a voyage to Notre Dame Bay in modern-day Newfoundland, Canada, new evidence suggests.
The journey would have taken the Vikings, also called the Norse, from L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of the same island to a densely populated part of Newfoundland and may have led to the first contact between Europeans and the indigenous people of the New World.
LiveScience:
Shaman 'Rainmaking' Center Discovered in South Africa
Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor
May 30, 2013
A towering "rain control" site, where shamans would have asked the gods to open up the skies centuries ago, has been discovered in South Africa.
Located in a semiarid area of the country, near Botswana and Zimbabwe, the site of Ratho Kroonkop (RKK) sits atop a 1,000-foot-tall (300 meters) hill and contains two naturally formed "rock tanks." These tanks are depressions in the rock created when water weakens the underlying sandstone. When the scientists excavated one of them, they found over 30,000 animal specimens, including the remains of rhinoceros, zebra and even giraffe.
"What makes RKK special is that every piece of faunal material found at RKK can in some way be linked to rain control," researcher Simone Brunton, a doctoral candidate at the University of Cape Town, wrote in an email to LiveScience.
LaCrosse Tribune: Team to excavate Griffin, Lake Michigan shipwreck
By JOHN FLESHER
June 04, 2013 3:41 pm
An organization that believes it has discovered the wreckage of the oldest known shipwreck in the Great Lakes has received a state permit to conduct a test excavation at the site in northern Lake Michigan, officials said Tuesday.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the state archaeologist's office approved a plan by Great Lakes Exploration Group, which hopes to identify the vessel as the Griffin, also known by the French equivalent Le Griffon. Legendary explorer Rene-Robert Sieur de La Salle built and commanded the ship on behalf of King Louis XIV.
During its maiden voyage in September 1679, the Griffin departed from the area near present-day Green Bay, Wis. Carrying a crew of six and cargo of furs, the ship was never seen again.
Maine Public Broadcasting Network: Archaeologists Unearth Remains of 18th Century Maine Fort
Reported By: Jennifer Rooks
06/05/2013
Right near the banks of the Kennebec River, on Front Street in Richmond, more than a dozen people are wielding shovels, brushes, sifters, and trowels, combing through wet clay.
They're uncovering the remains of an 18th century fort called Fort Richmond. And they have to work fast, at least by archaeological standards.
"We are certainly racing against time," says Leith Smith. "It's been sort of rescue archeology, which is a term that's been around since the 60s. This is very much a rescue project trying to gather as much information as we can.
Can You Dig It? on Blogspot.com: "Ginger": the armless nude goddess in Brooklyn
When excavating urban sites, the team from Historical Perspectives, Inc. (HPI), is used to discovering a variety of features and artifacts during the course of fieldwork. Generally, archaeologists in urban contexts expect to recover an array of historical resources and can become jaded until a particularly unusual artifact is uncovered. Over the last few decades however, the HPI archaeologists have encountered many interesting sites and artifacts that have led the field team on numerous journeys of discovery.
The Daily Mail (UK): The ghost fleet of Chuuk Lagoon: World's biggest ship graveyard lies at site of WW2 battle where US crushed Japanese fleet
• Over three days in 1944, more than 60 Japanese warships and 200 aircraft sank after an attack by Allied forces
• During the Second World War Chuuk Lagoon was Japan's main base in the South Pacific
• American bombardment of the base wiped out their supplies and reduced Japanese threat
• The lagoon is now considered one of the top wreck diving destinations in the world
• The site, formally known as Truk Lagoon due to a mispronunciation, offers scuba divers a chance to explore
By Daily Mail Reporter
It may look like a tropical paradise, but this stunning lagoon masks a dark secret... under the clear blue waters lies the biggest graveyard of ships in the world.
In the Second World War Chuuk Lagoon was Japan's main base in the South Pacific, but in 1944, American forces launched an attack and over a two day bombardment more than 60 warships ended up on the floor of the lagoon.
Years later the Japanese still pay their respects at the watery graves each year, but now the site, formally known as Truk Lagoon due to a mispronunciation, offers scuba divers a chance to explore a piece of living history.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
Evolution/Paleontology
BBC: Study reveals how birds lost their penises
New research sheds light on why some birds have lost their penises over the course of evolution.
Land fowl, such as chickens, have normally developing penises as early embryos, but only have rudimentary organs as adults.
A study in Current Biology shows that these birds initiate a genetic "programme" during development that stops the budding penises from growing.
Nature (UK): Oldest primate skeleton unveiled
Near-complete remains of tiny creature support early origin for lineage that led to humans.
Sid Perkins
05 June 2013
The near-complete fossil of a tiny creature unearthed in China in 2002 has bolstered the idea that the anthropoid group of primates — whose modern-day members include monkeys, apes and humans — had appeared by at least 55 million years ago. The fossil primate does not belong to that lineage, however: it is thought to be the earliest-discovered ancestor of small tree-dwelling primates called tarsiers, showing that even at this early time, the tarsier and anthropoid groups had split apart.
The slender-limbed, long-tailed primate, described today in Nature1, was about the size of today’s pygmy mouse lemur and would have weighed between 20 and 30 grams, the researchers estimate. The mammal sports an odd blend of features, with its skull, teeth and limb bones having proportions resembling those of tarsiers, but its heel and foot bones more like anthropoids. “This mosaic of features hasn’t been seen before in any living or fossil primate,” says study author Christopher Beard, a palaeontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
Forbes via Yahoo! News: How The Human Face Might Look In 100,000 Years
By Parmy Olson | Forbes
Fri, Jun 7, 2013 1:12 PM EDT
We've come along way looks-wise from our homo sapien ancestors. Between 800,000 and 200,000 years ago, for instance, rapid changes in Earth climate coincided with a tripling in the size of the human brain and skull, leading to a flattening of the face. But how might the physiological features of human beings change in the future, especially as new, wearable technology like Google Glass change the way we use our bodies and faces? Artist and researcher Nickolay Lamm has partnered with a computational geneticist to research and illustrate what we might look like 20,000 years in the future, as well as 60,000 years and 100,000 years out. His full, eye-popping illustrations are at the bottom of this post.
Lamm says this is "one possible timeline," where, thanks to zygotic genome engineering technology, our future selves would have the ability to control human biology and human evolution in much the same way we control electrons today.
Geology
OurAmazingPlanet via LiveScience: Earthquake Creep is Shallower Than Thought
Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer
Date: 07 June 2013 Time: 12:10 PM ET
Along the San Andreas Fault between San Juan Bautista and Parkfield in central California, scientists issue no dire warnings of future bridge-collapsing earthquakes. This section of the 800-mile-long (1,300 kilometers) fault produces no strong earthquakes at all.
Instead of sticking and locking together and breaking in occasional big temblors, the fault creeps, steadily releasing strain through thousands of tiny microquakes. One of the big puzzles in geology is understanding why faults like the San Andreas creep, and how the process links to large earthquakes elsewhere on the fault.
OurAmazingPlanet via LiveScience: Earthquake Ruptures Faster Than Thought
Charles Q. Choi, OurAmazingPlanet Contributor
Date: 06 June 2013 Time: 02:02 PM ET
Ruptures from earthquakes could zip faster along Earth's surface than previously thought, new research detailed in the June 7 issue of the journal Science suggests.
When faults in the Earth rupture to generate earthquakes, so-called shear waves are generated deep below Earth's crust. Generally, these ruptures move along the surfaces of faults more slowly than shear waves do. (Shear waves travel at about 7,800 mph (12,600 km/h)).
However, in recent decades, seismologists have identified a handful of large quakes where the ruptures move faster than the shear waves, traveling at speeds of up to nearly 13,000 mph (20,900 km/h). The result is a sonic boom-like effect in the rock similar to that seen from supersonic jets zipping across the sky.
Energy
LiveScience: Calif. Nuclear Power Plant Set for Retirement
Megan Gannon, News Editor
Date: 07 June 2013 Time: 06:01 PM ET
Southern California's embattled San Onofre nuclear plant will be permanently shut down, its operators announced today (June 7).
The facility, which sits on a beachfront stretch between Los Angeles and San Diego, will be the largest to be retired in the United States in the last five decades, the Associated Press reports. Its two reactors had not been in operation since this past January, when a small radioactive leak was discovered, prompting a string of expensive repairs, investigations and political pushback.
Physics
NBC News: This 'invisibility cloak' could conceal satellites — or hide your kids
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
Scientists have been slaving over the development of exotic materials that can serve as invisibility cloaks for small objects in specific wavelengths, but father-and-son researchers are showing off a type of invisibility that's done with simple sets of mirrors, lenses or tanks of water.
In a paper submitted to the American Journal of Physics, University of Rochester physicist John Howell and his 14-year-old son, J. Benjamin Howell, say such cloaking devices can conceal high-flying satellites. Or Harry Potter. For real.
Advertise | AdChoices
MIT Technology Review's Physics ArXiv Blog calls the approach "head-slappingly simple." There are caveats, however. These methods are basically funhouse-mirror tricks, which rely on precise placement of the apparatus to make objects disappear when seen from a specific vantage point. Howell & Howell admit as much. "Invisibility with mirrors has been done and are YouTube hits," they say. "The point we wish to emphasize is not the novelty but the ease of scaling to nearly arbitrary size."
Chemistry
U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory via Science Daily: Roman Seawater Concrete Holds the Secret to Cutting Carbon Emissions
June 4, 2013
The chemical secrets of a concrete Roman breakwater that has spent the last 2,000 years submerged in the Mediterranean Sea have been uncovered by an international team of researchers led by Paulo Monteiro of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
Analysis of samples provided by team member Marie Jackson pinpointed why the best Roman concrete was superior to most modern concrete in durability, why its manufacture was less environmentally damaging -- and how these improvements could be adopted in the modern world.
"It's not that modern concrete isn't good -- it's so good we use 19 billion tons of it a year," says Monteiro. "The problem is that manufacturing Portland cement accounts for seven percent of the carbon dioxide that industry puts into the air."
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Science Crime Scenes
Sunshine State News: Do These Photographs Reveal More Bodies Buried at Dozier?
By: Eric Giunta
Posted: June 3, 2013 3:55 AM
As a team of University of South Florida archaeologists wait to receive a special permit explicitly authorizing them to exhume bodies from the state's infamous Dozier School for Boys, one former inmate tells Sunshine State News there's more than just one gravesite, and he's got pictures to prove it.
According to the official story, the now-closed state reform school has only ever had one cemetery, named “Boot Hill” and located in what, back in the days of segregation (1900, when the school was opened, to 1968, when segregation was outlawed), used to be the African-American section of the Marianna campus.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Agence Presse France via The Daily Telegraph (UK): Iraq targets tourists with restoration
Iraqi authorities are planning to restore an ancient arch in an attempt to increase the country's appeal to tourists.
3:20PM BST 30 May 2013
The Arch of Ctesiphon, which lies to the south of Baghdad, is the world’s largest brick-built arch, and the last structure still standing from an ancient Persian imperial capital of the same name.
According to Agence Presse France, a large slab of the arch fell off last year as a result of damage caused by heavy rain.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
NBC News: Wolves slated to lose protection under endangered species act
By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News
The gray wolf population has recovered to the point that it can be safely removed from the federal list of threatened and endangered species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday in a proposal that environmental groups suggest is premature.
Under its proposed delisting plan, the wildlife service would return management of gray wolves to the states where they dwell. Federal protections for wolves have been in place since 1978.
In a second proposal, the service would maintain protections and expand recovery efforts for the Mexican gray wolf in the Southwest, where it remains endangered.
Science Education
Smithsonian Magazine: The Path to Being a Scientist Doesn’t Have to Be So Narrow
A radical new college model could change the rigged obstacle course of the world’s education system, expanding opportunity for millions of students
By Kevin Carey
Smithsonian.com, June 07, 2013
When Anant Agarwal was a young man, he entered the most competitive college admissions tournament in the world. Every year, nearly half a million students compete for only 10,000 spots in the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology. Agarwal was one of the victorious few, and earned a bachelor’s degree from IIT Madras. From there he climbed further up the mountain of science achievement, earning a PhD from Stanford and eventually becoming the director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. It was the pinnacle of his profession and a model for how scientists have traditionally been selected and trained.
Then, last year, he walked away from it all and became president of a new organization, edX, that could upend many of that model’s assumptions. EdX is a nonprofit coalition of universities, led by Harvard and MIT, that is developing high-quality online courses in science, math, law, humanities and much more–and then giving them away, for free, to anyone in the world with an Internet connection and a desire to learn.
The classes offered by edX are known, colloquially, as MOOCS, or massive open online courses. Other MOOC providers include the Silicon Valley startup Coursera, which has enrolled 3.6 million students over the last year in courses created by a range of elite universities, and Udacity, founded by Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award Winner Sebastian Thrun, a former Stanford professor and artificial intelligence pioneer who also leads the Google team designing self-driving cars.
Science Writing and Reporting
Smithsonian Magazine: How Kids’ Television Inspires a Lifelong Love of Science
Television shows for preschoolers are teaching a whole new audience about science—their parents
By Lisa Guernsey
Smithsonian.com, June 06, 2013
For years, people have worried about television having a negative impact on little kids. Books such as The Plug-In Drug and Endangered Minds ask whether TV, as a monolithic entity, is doing something “toxic” to children’s developing brains. Meanwhile, science is not often considered a preschool subject. The National Science Teachers Association, for example, does have a blog for Pre-K to second-grade science, but the website is organized by sections that start with elementary school.
“Sid the Science Kid,” a production of the Jim Henson Company and now broadcast on PBS stations around the country, is overturning both of these assumptions. Other television and digital media programs for children are making the same bet. The science, technology, math and engineering subjects—known as STEM—are showing up in many children’s TV programs, including “Curious George” (science and engineering), “Peep and the Big Wide World” (science), “The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That” (science), “Dinosaur Train” (life science and literacy) and “Sesame Street” (math and a new science curriculum that revolves around scraggly bearded Murray Monster and his science experiments).
Meanwhile, child-development experts stress that children need to be able to learn using all of their senses, instead of just watching something unfold in front of their eyes. They learn best, according to guidelines from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, “when they can safely encounter and explore many interesting things in their environment.” Shouldn’t children be outside observing ants in the crevices of the sidewalk and testing what happens when a chocolate bar is left on mommy’s car seat?
Science is Cool
Nature (UK): Chemical forensics confirm French wine had early roots
Ancient jars hold residue of 2,500-year-old vintage.
Mark Peplow
03 June 2013
France is renowned for its mastery of winemaking, but when did the country begin its love affair with the vine? A chemical analysis of archaeological artefacts finds evidence that wine was being produced in the south of France by the fifth century BC.
“It’s the earliest evidence we have of winemaking by the Gauls,” says Patrick McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who led the study.
NPR: 'Atari Dump' Will Be Excavated, After Nearly 30 Years
by Bill Chappell
The New Mexico landfill or "Atari Dump" where the game console maker buried its mistakes — the biggest being the game E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial — will be dug up by game developer Fuel Industries, which hopes to make a documentary about the project.
Also known as the "Atari Graveyard" or the "E.T. Dump", the desert landfill is the spot where Atari decided to permanently off-load tons of games that were sitting unsold in a warehouse in El Paso, Texas, in 1983. So they went to a dump in Alamogordo, N.M. This week the city council voted to allow Fuel to excavate.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
Open Magazine: Ignobel Indians
BY Priyanka Pulla
31 March 2012
Several Indians have collected Ig Nobel prizes over the years, awarded for seemingly ridiculous scientific research.
Hat/To jlms qkw for this story.
NBC News: Innovation vs. cheating on the battleground of golf science
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
Golf might not look like a sport for science geeks, but there's actually a lot of physics and engineering that goes into playing the game right — and making sure it doesn't get played wrong.
"Anything that could be detrimental to the game of golf is important for us to rule on," Steve Quintavalla, senior research engineer at the U.S. Golf Association, told NBC News.
The USGA Research and Test Center, where Quintavalla works, focuses on "finding the best technology and tools for measuring the performance of golf equipment, and doing the best research in the interest of the game of golf," he said. That task involves promoting innovations that improve the game — but it also involves cracking down on some technological twists.