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 Wired.
Obama Budget Strong in Science
By Alexis Madrigal
President Barack Obama unveiled his fiscal year 2010 budget Wednesday — and it's full of good news for scientific research.
Funding for the National Institutes of Health, Department of Energy, NASA, and the Environmental Protection Agency will all increase substantially, although details remain scarce. Combined with the billions doled out in the stimulus package, government scientific agencies will be better funded than they have been in recent memory, if Congress doesn't change Obama's plans too much.
More science, space, and environment news after the jump.
Slideshows/Videos
Wired: NASA's Carbon Satellite Fails, See Video of Launch
By Betsy Mason
NASA's new Orbiting Carbon Observatory, which was designed to map sinks and sources of carbon in Earth's atmosphere, failed to reach orbit after its launch from Vandenburg Air Force Base in California early Tuesday morning.
According to a statement from NASA, a protective clamshell covering the satellite on the unmanned Taurus rocket failed to separate. The extra weight kept the satellite from reaching orbit.
Wired: Video: Nanotechnology is Ready for Sesame Street
By Aaron Rowe
Nanotechnology will someday change the world, but in the meantime, it may shake things up on Broadway.
Dancing nanotube puppets, and grouchy nano-hating monsters, take center stage in an adorable video made students at UC Berkeley.
Wired: Eagle Cam: It's No Puppy Cam, But Good Enough for Friday Afternoon
By Brandon Keim
For everyone who'd rather be watching eagles than working, the Nature Conservancy brings you the Eagle Cam.
Installed next to a nest on California's Santa Cruz island, the Eagle Cam is a window onto the lives of two bald eagles named K-10 and K-26.
Reuters: Row over body parts show
It's not a sight for the squeamish -- a grisly display of human corpses that has been showcased around the world for the past three years.
Reuters: Rare cheetah photographed
Photographs capture the critically endangered Saharan cheetah in Algeria.
National Geographic Video on YouTube: Hybrid Whale
Testing on a meat sample found in a Japanese market reveals a one-of-a-kind hybrid whale.
National Geographic Video on YouTube: Earth's First Rocks
An ancient rock from the earliest days of Earth's existence reveals the presence of water.
National Geographic Video on YouTube: Fish With Transparent Head Filmed
For the first time, a large Pacific barreleye fish - complete with transparent head - has been caught on film by scientists using remotely operated vehicles at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. The deep-sea fish's tubular eyes pivot under a clear dome.
TED on YouTube: Captain Charles Moore on the seas of plastic
Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- an endless floating waste of plastic trash. Now he's drawing attention to the growing, choking problem of plastic debris in our seas.
Discovery Networks on YouTube: Alien Speculation
Will the real ET be little green men or little green bacteria? SETI Institute Senior Astronomer Seth Shostak theorizes what our first alien encounter might be like.
Discovery Networks on YouTube: DNA Reveals Dog Heritage
A new DNA test solves the questions of what's in your mixed-breed dog. Kasey-Dee Gardner reports.
Discovery Networks on YouTube: Dave's Space Disco - Feb. 23, 2009
This week in space: Comet Lulin, Kepler Mission and Kepler Spaceship, Milky Way Galaxy Rings
Discovery Networks on YouTube: Pregnant Robot Trains Students
Medical students at Johns Hopkins University are getting a real-life birthing experience when a robot goes into labor. Kasey-Dee Gardner reports.
University of Minnesota on YouTube: Science of Watchmen
University of Minnesota physics professor James Kakalios discusses how he was tapped to add a physics perspective to the upcoming Warner Brothers movie, Watchmen. Kakalios discusses how quantum mechanics can explain Dr. Manhattan's super human powers in the film, and how he came to become an expert on the topic of the physics of superheroes.
Astronomy/Space
Reuters: Botched launch ends U.S. satellite's mission
By Irene Klotz
The U.S. government's first attempt to map carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere from space ended early on Tuesday after a botched satellite launch from California, officials said.
The $278 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory blasted off aboard an unmanned Taurus rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 4:55 a.m. EST (0955 GMT), headed for an orbital perch about 400 miles above the poles.
The 986-pound (447-kg) spacecraft was tucked inside a clamshell-like shroud to protect it during the ride into space. But three minutes into the flight, the cover failed to separate as expected, dooming the mission.
Reuters: NASA aims for March 12 launch of space shuttle
By Irene Klotz
After four delays, NASA on Wednesday set March 12 as the target date for the next launch of the space shuttle Discovery.
The flight, the first of five planned for this year, has been on hold due to concerns that a fuel valve could crack and critically damage the spaceship. Three valves keep the pressure in the shuttle's fuel tank controlled during the ship's 8.5-minute climb into orbit.
Discovery will carry the final set of solar wing panels to the space station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations that has been under construction for more than a decade.
Reuters: China opens bidding on moon probe technology
by Yu Le
China will open competitive bidding so that domestic schools and institutions can help build crucial parts of the country's moon exploration craft, an official newspaper said on Wednesday.
In October 2003, China became the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket, after the former Soviet Union and the United States. And the government has made expanding the nation's presence in space, and eventually reaching the moon, a cornerstone of its bid to rise as a technological power.
But the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense has decided contributions from the country's universities, institutes and other "qualified" institutions are needed for crucial parts of the lunar effort, which aims to put an unmanned buggy on the moon by 2012, the Guangming Daily reported.
Reuters: U.S. satellite shootdown debris said gone from space
By Jim Wolf
No debris remains in space from the U.S. destruction a year ago of an errant spy satellite loaded with toxic hydrazine fuel, the head of the Pentagon's Strategic Command said.
By contrast, some of the debris caused when China used a ground-based ballistic missile to destroy one of its defunct weather satellites will stay in orbit for another 80 or 90 years, said Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, the command's chief.
"Every bit of debris created by that (U.S.) intercept has de-orbited," Chilton told a symposium on air warfare hosted by the U.S. Air Force Association in Orlando, Florida, on Thursday.
Reuters: China plans to master space docking: report
by Chris Buckley
China aims to dock two craft in outer space by as early as 2011, a government spokesman told Xinhua news agency on Saturday, part of its plans to secure its footing in space.
Docking two craft in space is a skill needed to run orbiting stations and send vehicles to the moon.
China hopes to launch an unmanned craft by the end of 2010 that will lock into place with the Shenzhou VIII, another unmanned craft, scheduled to be launched in 2011, the official news agency reported, citing an unnamed space official.
Wired: 5 of the Worst Space Launch Failures
By Wired Science
Space flight is a tough business. In the 52 years since the beginning of American efforts to reach space, more than 160 launches, including that of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory on February 24, have failed. Here are some of the most devastating failures.
Wired: Mini Plasma Thruster Way Better Than Rockets
By Wired Science
Is gravity getting your satellite down? Too bad it doesn’t have a Mini-Helicon Plasma Thruster on board.
The aeronautics minds at MIT have developed this new propulsion system as a lighter, more fuel-efficient way to give satellites the boost they need.
Powered by electrically charged nitrogen gas, the Mini-Helicon is an alternative to the rockets maneuvering most satellites today, which get their kick from chemical reactions. About 10 times more efficient, this new, shoebox-sized technology would also have the advantage of being significantly cheaper, Oleg Batishchev, a principal research scientist in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, said in a press release.
Evolution/Paleontology
Wired: HIV Evolution Outpaces Vaccines
By Brandon Keim
The AIDS virus is rapidly evolving to recognize and evade human immune systems, making the development of a vaccine even less likely than it already is.
Researchers already knew that HIV adapts on a person-by-person basis, but they didn't know if those changes were passed to the viral population at large. Gene sequencing of HIV samples taken from 2,800 people show that changes have spread throughout the world.
The adaptations involve genes responsible for coding proteins that are recognized by white blood cells. Troublingly, the most rapidly-evolving HIV genes appear to be those used by the human immune system to identify its enemies.
Reuters: Prehistoric fish pioneered sex
By Ben Hirschler
Sex has been a fact of life for at least 380 million years, longer than previously thought. Internal fertilization was widespread among prehistoric fish living on ancient tropical coral reefs in the Devonian period, research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday showed.
The discovery sheds new light on the reproductive history of all jawed vertebrates, including humans.
"It shifts how we think about how reproduction evolved. You're a jawed vertebrate and I'm a jawed vertebrate, so this is our own history," said Zerina Johanson, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
Reuters: Fossil of 10 million-year-old bird found in Peru
by Marco Aquino
Paleontologists working in Peru have found a fossil from a bird that lived 10 million years ago, scientists said on Friday after returning from the dig site on the country's desert coast.
The species of bird had a wing span of 19.7 feet and fed mostly on fish from the Pacific Ocean. It first appeared 50 million years ago and was extinct about 2.5 million years ago because of climate change, paleontologist Mario Urbina of Peru's Natural History Museum said.
Wired: Walk Like Us: 1.5 Million-Year-Old Footprints Look Modern
By Brandon Keim
The second-oldest human footprints ever found show that mankind's ancestors walked out of Africa on feet indistinguishable from our own.
The 1.5 million-year-old footprints, found in sediment deposits in northern Kenya, are the oldest identified since Mary Leakey found 3.75 million-year-old tracks preserved in volcanic ash in northern Tanzania. Those prints belonged to Australopithecus afarensis, and provided clear evidence of bipedalism.
Though the short-legged, long-trunked A. afarensis was able to walk upright, its feet were still apelike, possessing a telltale splayed-out big toe. Because the early fossil record contains no foot bones, scientists didn't know when modern feet — a defining human characteristic necessary for long-distance running — evolved.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who alerted me to the above story.
Biodiversity
Wired: Your Spit Is Special
By Michael Wall
Mothers around the world have got it right: every one of us is special. We all have our own unique talents, skills . . . and mouth bacteria.
More than 600 microbe species live in our saliva. Few of these are shared from person to person, and your neighbor's mouth is likely to be just as different from yours as the mouth of someone on the other side of the Earth, according to a study Thursday in the journal Genome Research
...
The scientists took saliva samples from a total of 120 people in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. By sequencing and analyzing genes in the saliva, they identified 101 known bacterial genera, including 39 that had never been found in the mouth before. In addition, the researchers found at least 64 unknown genera.
Reuters: Florida tests using magnets to repel crocodiles
By Jane Sutton
Florida wildlife managers have launched an experiment to see if they can keep crocodiles from returning to residential neighborhoods by temporarily taping magnets to their heads to disrupt their "homing" ability.
Researchers at Mexico's Crocodile Museum in Chiapas reported in a biology newsletter they had some success with the method, using it to permanently relocate 20 of the reptiles since 2004.
"We said, 'Hey, we might as well give this a try," Lindsey Hord, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's crocodile response coordinator, said on Tuesday.
Guardian (UK): British conservationist shot dead in Ecuador
A British conservationist was shot dead in South America while researching a threatened species of monkey, it emerged today.
Ben Samphire, from Bristol – described as a "very bright" young man who "ploughed his own furrow" – died on Monday afternoon, close to the village of El Palmar, near Pedernales, in Ecuador.
Samphire, 31, who completed a PhD at University College London's institute of archaeology, was learning about a rare monkey species in readiness for a career in primate conservation, his former supervisor said.
Hat/tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above article.
Biotechnology/Health
Wired: Brain-Machine Interfaces Make for Tricky Ethics
By Brandon Keim
Direct connections from brains to computers may someday help free paralyzed people from the constraints of their bodies. They're already used to reverse deafness and blindness. But as they become more refined, brain-machine interfaces will almost certainly be used for non-therapeutic purposes — and with that expansion comes profound ethical questions.
"Whether these technologies are used in a way that's in harmony with — or an affront to — human dignity is the main question," said Adam Keiper, director of the Ethics and Public Policy Center's program on science, technology and society.
First-generation neuroelectronics are already on the market in the form of hearing aids — 150,000 people have straight-to-brain cochlear implants — and deep-brain stimulators are used to treat Parkinson's, epilepsy and even depression. Retinal implants to replace damaged eyes are in development, as are systems that enable paraplegics to control computers by thinking.
Wired: "Pig Brain Mist" Disease Mystery Concludes
By Brandon Keim
More than a year after developing a mysterious neurological disorder eventually linked to their inhalation of aerosolized pig brains, 24 pork plant workers have regained their health.
Their recovery, described Tuesday in a presentation scheduled for the American Academy of Neurology's annual conference, ends a story that began in November 2006, when three workers at a Quality Pork Processors plant in Austin, Minnesota reported strange and similar symptoms: fatigue, numb and tingling legs, pain, difficulty walking.
Doctors didn't know what caused the problem, but tests found severe spinal cord inflammation, suggesting an autoimmune disorder: the patients' immune systems no longer recognize their bodies' nerves, and attacked them.
Reuters: Shoulder problems? It may be all in your genes
By Anthony J. Brown, MD
People may inherit a genetic predisposition to rotator cuff injury, according to a study presented Thursday at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons meeting in Las Vegas, which found that rotator cuff injury seems to run in families.
Heredity is likely to "play a strong role in determining whether people are at risk for the development of a rotator cuff tear," study chief Dr. Robert Zaray Tashijian, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, told Reuters Health. "Consequently, individuals may use this information in implementing a preventative program."
According to Tashijian, only one previous study looked at the heredity component of rotator cuff problems. That study, however, only looked at first degree relatives (such as mothers, sisters or brothers) and thus the findings may have been confounded by environmental factors.
Reuters: Research reveals some of Alzheimer's secrets
By Julie Steenhuysen
Scientists are unraveling some of the mechanisms behind the plaques in the brain that are a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, offering new leads for drugs to treat the fatal brain-wasting disease.
A team at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston reported on Thursday in the journal Science that amyloid plaques agitate a type of brain cell called an astrocyte needed for normal brain function.
On Wednesday, a team at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, reported in the journal Nature that prions -- proteins known to wreak havoc on the brain in mad cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseases -- appear to kick-start the toxic effects of amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's disease.
Climate/Environment
Reuters: Polar regions found warming fast, raising sea levels
The Arctic and Antarctic regions are warming faster than previously thought, raising world sea levels and making drastic global climate change more likely than ever, international scientists said on Wednesday.
New evidence of the trend was uncovered by wide-ranging research in the two areas over the past two years in a United Nations-backed program dubbed the International Polar Year (IPY), they said.
"Snow and ice are declining in both polar regions, affecting human livelihoods as well as local plant and animal life in the Arctic as well as global atmospheric circulation and sea-level," according to a summary of a report by the researchers.
CNet: Study: Global shipping pollution ain't pretty
by Jennifer Guevin
Cars might get a lot of the press surrounding air pollution, but commercial shipping puts out a hefty amount of pollution as well. Cargo ships, tankers, and cruise ships spew almost half as much particle pollution as the world's cars, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Geophysical Union.
Researchers analyzed the exhaust of more than 200 commercial ships in the Gulf of Mexico and shipping channels near Galveston, Texas, in the summer of 2006. Specifically, researchers focused on sulfates, a kind of particulate pollution produced by diesel-fueled cars and trucks, but which is also found in ship exhaust.
Ships likely release 0.9 teragrams (about 2.2 million pounds) of particulate pollution globally each year, according to the study, which is the first to give an estimate for particle pollution emissions produced by the world's shipping fleets.
Reuters: "Gaia" scientist says life doomed by climate woes
By Peter Griffiths
Climate change will wipe out most life on Earth by the end of this century and mankind is too late to avert catastrophe, a leading British climate scientist said.
James Lovelock, 89, famous for his Gaia theory of the Earth being a kind of living organism, said higher temperatures will turn parts of the world into desert and raise sea levels, flooding other regions.
His apocalyptic theory foresees crop failures, drought and death on an unprecedented scale. The population of this hot, barren world could shrink from about seven billion to one billion by 2100 as people compete for ever-scarcer resources.
Geology/Geophysics
Science Daily: Carbon Dioxide Drop And Global Cooling Caused Antarctic Glacier To Form
Global climate rapidly shifted from a relatively ice-free world to one with massive ice sheets on Antarctica about 34 million years ago. What happened? What changed? A team of scientists led by Yale geologists offers a new perspective on the nature of changing climatic conditions across this greenhouse-to-icehouse transition — one that refutes earlier theories and has important implications for predicting future climate changes.
Detailed in the February 27 issue of Science, their data disproves a long-held idea that massive ice growth in the Antarctic was accompanied by little to no global temperature change.
Science Daily: Locations Of Strain, Slip Identified In Major Earthquake Fault
Deep-sea drilling into one of the most active earthquake zones on the planet is providing the first direct look at the geophysical fault properties underlying some of the world's largest earthquakes and tsunamis.
The Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment (NanTroSEIZE) is the first geologic study of the underwater subduction zone faults that give rise to the massive earthquakes known to seismologists as mega-thrust earthquakes.
"The fundamental goal is to sample and monitor this major earthquake-generating zone in order to understand the basic mechanics of faulting, the basic physics and friction," says Harold Tobin, University of Wisconsin-Madison geologist and co-chief scientist of the project.
Psychology/Behavior
Wired: A Sketchy Brain Booster: Doodling
By Brandon Keim
Good news, doodlers: What your colleagues consider a distracting, time-wasting habit may actually give you a leg up on them by helping you pay attention.
Asked to remember names they'd heard on a recording, people who doodled while listening had better recall than those who didn't. This suggests that a slightly distracting secondary task may actually improve concentration during the performance of dull tasks that would otherwise cause a mind to wander.
"People may doodle as a strategy to help themselves concentrate," said study co-author Jackie Andrade, a University of Plymouth psychologist. "We might not be aware that we're doing it, but it could be a trick that people develop because it helps them from wandering off into a daydream."
Wired: Immorality a Lot Like Rotten Food
By Brandon Keim
Immorality is literally disgusting: it appears to provoke an ancient brain system designed to identify rotten food.
Disgust was observed in test subjects who, given an unfair offer in a money-splitting game, literally turned up their noses. The response was the same as to foul-tasting drinks and disgusting pictures.
"Our idea is that morality builds upon an old mental reflex," said study co-author Adam Anderson, a University of Toronto psychologist. "The brain had already discovered a system for rejecting things that are bad for it. Then it co-opted this and attached it to conditions much removed from something tasting or smelling bad."
Wired: Antidepressants May Thwart Quest for True Love
By Brandon Keim
Antidepressant drugs, already known to cause sexual side effects, may also suppress the basic human emotions of love and romance.
That SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors — the most common type of antidepressant — cause sexual dysfunction is common knowledge. Of the 31 million adults in the United States who take the SSRIs, about 30 percent are believed to experience sexual dysfunction.
But a new theory suggests that SSRI antidepressants may also subtly alter the fundamental chemistry of love and romance, snuffing the first sparks between two people otherwise destined to become lovers, and preventing couples from bonding.
Wired: Without Tears, Is There Still Sadness?
By Alexis Madrigal
Now you see sadness, now you don't.
A new study has found that removing just the tears out of pictures of people crying reduces the sadness that viewers perceive in the photos, even though the rest of the expression remains intact. The research subjects said when the tears were digitally erased, the faces' emotional content became ambiguous, ranging from awe-filled to puzzlement.
"One of the startling things is that the faces not only look less sad but they don't look sad at all. They look neutral," said Robert Provine, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County neuroscientist who led the work. "Any photograph you see, you can put your finger on the screen and block out the tears. It's like the face is transformed."
Wired: Cooperation Beats Selfishness, at Least in Theory
By Brandon Keim
In these dark days, science brings a glimmer of hope: even in a world that rewards selfishness, cooperation can emerge and ultimately prevail.
That world happens to be a computer simulation, but I'll take good news anywhere I can get it.
"We report the sudden outbreak of predominant cooperation in a noisy world dominated by selfishness and defection," write Swiss Federal Institute of Technology sociologists Dirk Helbing and Wenjian Yu in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Wired: Beauty Affects Men's and Women's Brains Differently
By Brandon Keim
Beauty is famously in the eye of the beholder; but it's also in the beholder's brain, and may work differently in the brains of men and women.
In men, images they consider to be beautiful appear to activate brain regions responsible for locating objects in absolute terms — x- and y-coordinates on a grid. Images considered beautiful by women do the same, but they also activate regions associated with relative location: above and behind, over and under. The difference could be the result of evolutionary pressures on our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
The findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are preliminary and based on a small number of people, but intriguing nonetheless.
As you can see, this was a great week for psychology news on Wired.
Archeology/Anthropology
Eureka Alert: 13,000 Clovis-era tool cache unearthed in Colorado shows evidence of camel, horse butchering
More than 80 stone implements discovered together in Boulder city limits by landscapers
A biochemical analysis of a rare Clovis-era stone tool cache recently unearthed in the city limits of Boulder, Colo., indicates some of the implements were used to butcher ice-age camels and horses that roamed North America until their extinction about 13,000 years ago, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder study.
The study is the first to identify protein residue from extinct camels on North American stone tools and only the second to identify horse protein residue on a Clovis-age tool, said CU-Boulder Anthropology Professor Douglas Bamforth, who led the study. The cache is one of only a handful of Clovis-age artifact caches that have been unearthed in North America, said Bamforth, who studies Paleoindian culture and tools.
The Clovis culture is believed by many archaeologists to coincide with the time the first Americans arrived on the continent from Asia via the Bering Land Bridge about 13,000 to 13,500 years ago, Bamforth said.
Reuters: Wooden sarcophaguses found in Egypt tomb
by Jonathan Wright
Japanese archaeologists working in Egypt have found four wooden sarcophaguses and associated grave goods which could date back up to 3,300 years, the Egyptian government said on Thursday.
The team from Waseda University in Tokyo discovered the anthropomorphic sarcophaguses in a tomb in the Sakkara necropolis, about 25 km (15 miles) south of Cairo, the Supreme Council for Antiquities said in a statement.
Sakkara, the burial ground for the ancient city of Memphis, remains one of the richest sources of Egyptian antiquities. Archaeologists say much remains buried in the sands.
National Geographic: Ancient Shipwreck's Stone Cargo Linked to Apollo Temple
Helen Fields
For a few days back in July 2007, it was hard for archaeologist Deborah Carlson to get any work done at her site off the Aegean coast of western Turkey. She was leading an underwater excavation of a 2,000-year-old shipwreck, but the Turkish members of her crew had taken time off to vote in national elections. So things were quiet at her camp on an isolated cape called Kizilburun.
The shipwrecks' main cargo was 50 tons of marble—elements of a huge column sent on an ill-fated journey to a temple, Carlson thought. But she didn't know which temple, so she used all her days off to drive around the area looking at possibilities.
Hereford Times: Body discovered by Border Archaeology in Stretton Grandison coming home to Herefordshire
ONE of the UK’s oldest residents is coming back to Herefordshire thanks to a team of county archaeologists.
The remains of Lucius – a Roman civilian found near Ashperton in summer 2007 – should go on show in Hereford later this year.
Beaumont Enterprise (Texas): Civil War era shipwreck discovered during search for Ike debris
By SARAH MOORE
Like a toy surprise in a box of Cracker Jacks - er, slightly water-logged Cracker Jacks, that is - a Civil War era shipwreck turned up among Hurricane Ike debris.
The discovery, thought to be previously uncharted, was made by crews last week scanning the bays around Galveston to chart debris.
While the find came as a kind of fun surprise to the contractors doing the work, State Marine Archeologist Steve Hoyt was pleased - but not terribly surprised.
Great Depression spurred ‘amazing’ period of creativity
The hardships of the Great Depression spurred a period of unparalleled creativity according to a University of Manchester historian.
Dr Charlie Wildman says the modern high street and great architecture are a lasting legacy of one of the most traumatic times in British economic history.
According to her study of archives in Liverpool and Manchester from the 1920s and 30s, councils invested massively in public transport, civic and commercial architecture as well civic exhibitions and official celebrations.
If history repeats itself, the findings may provide a crumb of comfort for people enduring current economic woes.
Lake County Leader (Montana): Human remains found in area
By Ty Hampton
WOODS BAY — On the afternoon of Feb. 12, skeletal remains dating back to before World War II were probably the last thing that crews putting in new water lines near Woods Bay expected to come across.
The call came in to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office at 3:56 p.m. last Thursday from water district personnel who believed they had come across human remains while working on a project in the area. Undersheriff Jay Doyle and Lt. Mike Sargeant responded to the scene along with Tribal authorities to transport the remains to pathologist Dr. Willy Kemp, who determined the remains were indeed human.
On Friday afternoon, the remains were examined by Missoula archaeologists at the University of Montana who determined that the remains were most likely: From a boy of Native American origin, 13-14 years in age, and of historic magnitude dating back to before the second World War.
BBC: Recession leaves history in past
Daniel Thomas
BBC News, Bristol
Professor Horton fears about a quarter of jobs in archaeology will be lost
"It's been the most difficult three to four months of my career," archaeologist Roland Smith said.
And he is not the only archaeologist to feel the knock-on effects of the cutbacks in the construction industry.
Cyber Diver News Network (CDNN): Scuba looters destroying Greece's submerged cultural heritage
by Lefteris Papadimas and Daniel Flynn
For centuries they have lain forgotten and untouched in the murky depths of the Mediterranean. But the sunken glories of Greece are now threatened by modern treasure hunters, who are targeting their riches since the lifting of a ban on coastal scuba-diving.
At risk, say archaeologists, is an unseen part of the country's cultural patrimony, comprising thousands of shipwrecks dating from Classical, Hellenic, Roman, Byzantine and early modern times and their priceless cargoes of coins, ingots, weapons and gold.
"Greek waters are some of the richest in antiquities in the world," said the marine archaeologist Katerina Dellaporta. "Thanks to very stringent controls over underwater exploration shipwrecks have been extremely well preserved."
In 2003, Greece's Conservative government opened up more of the country's coast to scuba divers in an effort to boost tourism. Looting of shipwrecks soared.
Guardian (UK): Trawlers are 'destroying history on the seabed'
Britain's love of seafood is helping to destroy the nation's maritime heritage. That is the stark warning of marine archaeologists who say hundreds of sunken ships, from Elizabethan warships to second world war submarines, are being torn apart by trawlers - fishing for scallops and flatfish - dragging chains and cables across the seabed.
Investigations using robot submarines have revealed that serious damage has been inflicted on vast numbers of the 32,000 pre-1945 ships whose wrecks litter Britain's coastal waters. Examples include the recently discovered 18th-century warship HMS Victory, which led Britain's fleet before Nelson's flagship of the same name. In 1744, Victory sank with all hands near the Channel Islands. Cannon hauled from the wreck showed it had suffered severe damage from trawlers.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Reuters: Ancient statue found buried at Egypt Giza pyramids
by Cynthia Johnston
Maintenance workers at Egypt's Giza Pyramids have found an ancient quartzite statue of a seated man buried close to the surface of the desert, the culture ministry said on Tuesday.
The statue, about life-size at 149 cm (five feet) tall, was found north of the smallest of Giza's three main pyramids, the tomb of the fourth dynasty Pharaoh Mycerinus, who ruled in the 26th century BC, the ministry said in a statement.
Physics
Reuters: U.S. scientists build computer model for snowflakes
by Andrew Stern
The random, symmetrical beauty of snowflakes has been recreated in a computer program, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
It took four years for two mathematicians from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of California, Davis, to develop the computer model's theory and perform the computations.
Chemistry
Physorg.com: An impossible alloy now possible
What has been impossible has now been shown to be possible - an alloy between two incompatible elements. The findings are being published in this week's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA.
A research team led by Professor H.K. Mao from Carnegie Institution of Washington and Professor Rajeev Ahuja from UU have used high pressure experiments and theoretical calculations to study the behaviour of Ce3Al under high pressure.
"We were surprised to find that Cerium and Aluminium formed a so called substitutional alloy under high pressure. Forming these alloys has been limited to elements close in atomic radii and electronegativity up until now", sais Professor Rajeev Ahuja of Uppsala University.
Physorg.com: Cross-Dressing Rubidium May Reveal Clues for Exotic Computing
Neutral atoms--having no net electric charge--usually don't act very dramatically around a magnetic field. But by "dressing them up" with light, researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute, a collaborative venture of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland at College Park, have caused ultracold rubidium atoms to undergo a startling transformation.
They force neutral atoms to act like pointlike charged particles that can undergo merry-go-round-like "cyclotron" motions just as electrons do when subjected to a suitable magnetic field. This extreme makeover for ultracold atoms promises to give physicists clues on how to achieve an exotic form of computation that would rely upon special "fractionally charged" particles dancing around on a surface.
Energy
Wired: Utilities Jumping into the Solar Game
By Alexis Madrigal
In the last 24 hours, two power producers ordered up a gigawatt of solar power. That's twice the total solar capacity the United States had installed in 2007.
PG&E, a California utility, and NRG, a national independent power producer, announced plans to build 500 megawatts of solar power each. NRG is partnering with Google.org-backed eSolar, a startup incubated by the legendary venture capital firm, Idealab, that is pursuing solar thermal power which uses mirrors to turn liquid into steam that drives a turbine. Meanwhile PG&E will be investing in photovoltaics, which directly convert light into electricity.
CNet: Smart-grid project matches wind to electric cars
by Martin LaMonica
IBM is joining a Danish project to optimize wind turbine energy for plug-in electric vehicles, the latest sign of the growing interest among policy-makers in smart-grid technologies.
The EDISON (Electric Vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated Market using Sustainable Energy and Open Networks) research consortium will seek to match power generation from wind turbines on the island of Bornholm, Denmark, with the power consumption of charging plug-in electric cars.
The long-term goal is to boost the percentage of plug-in electric cars to 10 percent in the country while maximizing the use of wind energy in Denmark, which already gets 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources like wind. The project is partly funded by the government of Denmark.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
CBS News: Transcript: Obama's Speech To Congress
The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don't lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and our universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more.
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It begins with energy.
We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy-efficient. We invented solar technology, but we've fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.
Well, I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders -- and I know you don't, either. It is time for America to lead again.
N.Y. Times: Climate bill needed to 'save our planet,' says Obama
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN
President Obama lent his voice last night to the push for a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions, using his first speech to a joint session of Congress to lobby for controversial legislation sure to spark a heated debate during tight economic times.
Obama campaigned for president last year with climate change and energy issues atop his agenda. And he returned to those themes yesterday, saying that a cap-and-trade bill would help spark economic recovery by giving U.S. companies greater incentive to start producing more wind turbines, solar panels, biofuels and battery-powered automobiles.
"To truly transform our economy, to protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy," Obama said in his address (pdf) to Congress. "So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. That's what we need."
N.Y. Times: Obama’s Backing Raises Hopes for Climate Pact
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Until recently, the idea that the world’s most powerful nations might come together to tackle global warming seemed an environmentalist’s pipe dream.
The Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, was widely viewed as badly flawed. Many countries that signed the accord lagged far behind their targets in curbing carbon dioxide emissions. The United States refused even to ratify it. And the treaty gave a pass to major emitters in the developing world like China and India.
But within weeks of taking office, President Obama has radically shifted the global equation, placing the United States at the forefront of the international climate effort and raising hopes that an effective international accord might be possible. Mr. Obama’s chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, said last week that the United States would be involved in the negotiation of a new treaty — to be signed in Copenhagen in December — "in a robust way."
L.A. Times: 'Green' energy needs a big leap
By Jim Tankersley
Reporting from Washington -- When Energy Secretary Steven Chu talks about how Americans can break their addiction to oil and coal, he starts with his hi-fi amplifier. It's so old that the on-off light burned out long ago. But inside lies a technology that -- in its day -- was as revolutionary as the changes needed to solve the nation's energy problems.
Radios, telephones and other electronics once depended on fragile vacuum tubes the size of small light bulbs. Then scientists pioneered a smaller, cheaper and more durable replacement called the transistor, opening the way to trans-Atlantic phone calls and a host of other marvels, including Chu's stereo.
Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, and other experts say similar scientific breakthroughs are needed to make renewable power sources such as wind, solar and biofuels as cheap and easy to use as costly, environmentally damaging oil and coal. Toward that end, President Obama's stimulus package contains $8 billion for energy research, including $400 million targeted for game-changing technology.
CNet: White House budget boosts Energy Department
by Martin LaMonica
The Obama administration's proposed budget will increase investments in renewable energy and fuel efficiency, while projecting billions of dollars in revenue from carbon regulations.
The budget blueprint, published on Thursday, bumps up the Department of Energy's 2009 spending by 40 percent with more basic science research and loan guarantees for energy technologies that reduce or sequester greenhouse gases.
Specifically named are smart-grid technologies to modernize the power grid and $3.4 billion in research for "low-carbon coal technologies," such as pumping carbon dioxide underground at coal power plants.
Reuters: Obama budget has more money for space exploration
by Maggie Fox and Andrea Shalal-Esa
U.S. President Barack Obama's budget plan for fiscal year 2010 gives more money to NASA and spends more on space overall, officials said on Thursday.
It gives the U.S. space agency $18.7 billion, a rise of $2.4 billion over 2008 when money from the economic stimulus package is included, and stresses research into climate change and space exploration.
Like his predecessor George W. Bush, Obama wants to return people to the moon and send robots further into space. He will also, as planned, retire the space shuttle in 2010, adding perhaps one extra flight between now and then if possible to help complete the International Space Station.
Reuters: Stem cell research supporters offer Senate bill
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
Two prominent supporters of stem cell research said on Thursday they had reintroduced a Senate bill that would allow federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, in anticipation of President Barack Obama's support for the work.
Senators Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, and Arlen Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said their bipartisan measure would allow federal funding for research using stem cells taken from human embryos left over from fertility treatments.
"It is the same bill that both houses of Congress approved in 2007, but was vetoed by President Bush," they said in a statement.
Reuters: U.S. urged to lead China into carbon emission cuts
By K.T. Arasu
The United States should take the lead in reducing carbon emissions to be able to enlist China in the global campaign to curb global warming, an expert told an annual USDA conference on Friday.
The United States and China, the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels stoking global warming, have often been icy rivals over trade and security.
"China is unlikely to make any reductions until the United States takes action," Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University told the USDA annual Agricultural Outlook Forum here.
Reuters: India lauds Obama climate plan but sees concerns
By Krittivas Mukherjee
India's chief climate envoy said on Friday he welcomed President Barack Obama's policy on climate change but warned there would be no global deal if rich nations insisted on emission targets for all.
"There is no doubt that Obama has brought a renewed focus," Shyam Saran, the Indian prime minister's special envoy on climate change, said in his first comments on Obama's policy speech.
But Saran said negotiations at a key Copenhagen climate summit in December would not yield any results if Western nations linked any cut in their emissions to targets accepted by developing countries.
Reuters: Obama budget realistic on climate revenue: analysts
By Deborah Zabarenko and Ayesha Rascoe
President Barack Obama's estimate of $646 billion in revenue for the first years of a carbon-capping program to curb climate change is realistic or possibly a little low, policy analysts said on Thursday.
Obama's budget for 2010 projects this revenue, from 2012 through 2019, will fund $150 billion in clean energy technology investments over 10 years and a tax credit to help Americans make the transition to a less carbon-intensive economy.
"I don't think it's overly optimistic at all," said Brian Murray, director for economic analysis at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.
Reuters: Alaska senator offers compromise bill on ANWR oil
By Yereth Rosen
A bill introduced Friday by U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska would permit oil production in the ecologically sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but only from directional wells that are drilled outside the refuge's borders.
Murkowski, a Republican who first announced her plan last week during an address to the Alaska legislature, characterized the bill as a compromise that addresses environmentalists' concerns about impacts within the refuge while allowing for some of the oil beneath it to be tapped.
"Everybody wins with this bill. America improves its energy security and the conservation community is ensured that there will be no visible impact on the refuge," she said in a statement.
Reuters: California declares drought emergency
By Peter Henderson
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday declared a state emergency due to drought and said he would consider mandatory water rationing in the face of nearly $3 billion in economic losses from below-normal rainfall this year.
As many as 95,000 agricultural jobs will be lost, communities will be devastated and some growers in the most economically productive farm state simply are not able to plant, state officials said, calling the current drought the most expensive ever.
Schwarzenegger, eager to build controversial dams as well as more widely backed water recycling programs, called on cities to cut back water use or face the first ever mandatory state restrictions as soon as the end of the month.
CNet: Inventor: Gadgets need green design revolution
by Martin LaMonica
NEW YORK--The solution to climate change boils down to industrial design, contends entrepreneur and inventor Saul Griffith.
Griffith gave the keynote speech at the Greener Gadgets conference here on Friday where he ran through a flurry of numbers on energy and climate change to argue that the consumer electronics and IT industry needs to make drastic changes to curb its significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.
...
"This is a lot like retooling for World War II when the U.S. made 300,000 aircraft from 1939 to 1945," he said, adding that refrigerator and auto factories were converted during the war effort. "The reality is that we can do it. We made 10 terawatts of power generation over the last 40 years. We need to do it again, a little quicker, but we have to do it radically different--not with pipelines and fossil fuels this time."
Wired: To Save Animals, Put a Price on Them
By Brandon Keim
Rather than relying on warm, fuzzy feelings to protect animals, conservationists suggest appealing to something more reliable: greed.
By selling financial contracts pegged to species health, the government could create a market in the future of threatened animals, making their preservation literally valuable to investors.
"The incentive to conserve would increase as the likelihood of species survival decreases," said Cornell University biologist James Mandel. "If a species declines, investors have a bunch of paper that's now worthless."
Science Education
Reuters: "Bodies" exhibition probed in Poland
By Gabriela Baczynska
Polish prosecutors are investigating whether a controversial exhibition displaying human cadavers amounts to desecration of the human body, a spokesman said Friday.
"Bodies... the exhibition," which has toured a number of countries, consists of 13 corpses and around 250 body parts which have undergone a process known as "plastination" which preserves human tissue permanently using liquid silicone rubber.
"We are investigating this case to check whether the corpses were not desecrated and whether all procedures needed to mount such an exhibition in Poland were carried out," a spokesman for the Warsaw prosecutors' office, Mateusz Martyniuk, told Reuters.
Science Reporting
Reuters: Wall Street Journal of Atmospheric Sciences
by: Stuart Gaffin
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial page occupies a uniquely obnoxious place in commentary on global warming. Over the many years that I have read with trepidation what they write, I have yet to see accurate presentation of the science issues.
They have fed their readers so much misinformation and confusion one can only conclude they consider complete fabrication fair play in the discussion.
The Director of the Columbia University Earth Institute, Jeff Sachs, has in the past invited the WSJ editorial board, along with any scientists they wish to bring, to discuss the science at the University — an invitation they assuredly have not accepted even though it’s a short subway ride away.
Science is Cool
Wired: Obamas' Pick for First Dog Solidly Scientific
By Michael Wall
One more sign that President Obama is serious about prioritizing science: his pick for First Dog is a breed that's an important model organism in genetics research.
In an interview with People magazine that hits newsstands Friday, Michelle Obama revealed that the family is going to adopt a Portuguese water dog in April. This curly-coated canine was chosen partly because it's hypoallergenic, meaning it shouldn't send little Malia into fits of coughing and sneezing.