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.
When it is posted, the Green Diary Rescue & Open Thread front page diary often links to that evening's OND - consider this reference as returning the kind favor. Or, creating an infinite loop.
This week's featured story comes from CNN.
Lights go out across planet for Earth Hour
Lights went off across the world Saturday as millions of homes and businesses went dark for one hour in a symbolic gesture highlighting concerns over climate change.
Organizers expected more than 2,800 cities and towns worldwide to dim their lights at 8:30 p.m. local time for the third annual Earth Hour -- a day-long energy-saving marathon spanning 83 countries and 24 time zones.
Major cities in the United States, Asia, the Middle East and Europe had already gone dark for the event by Saturday night on the U.S. East Coast.
More science, space, and environment news after the jump.
Slideshows/Videos
CNN: Lights out tonight
Millions to participate in Earth Hour at 8:30 tonight.Betty Nguyen talks to Edward Norton and Carter Roberts.
Reuters: China goes dark for Earth Hour
Buildings in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong city centres turn off their lights in support of Earth Hour 2009.
This is the first year China has participated officially in the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) initiative, aimed at highlighting the issue of climate change.
Wired: Photos of Alaskan Volcano's Eruption
By Betsy Mason
The U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Volcano Observatory finally released a batch of photos from of Mount Redoubt Volcano, which has erupted explosively six times since Sunday evening.
Wired: Top 10 Time-Lapse Videos Show Nature at Work
By Aaron Rowe
The world is filled with sluggish spectacles. Watching them would be painful were it not for time-lapse photography, which can make those long stories short and remarkably entertaining.
When a phenomenon happens very slowly, viewing accelerated footage helps scientists take a step back and see the big picture: At higher speeds, things that we regard as fixed take motion — even the dullest scenes spring to life.
Here are Wired Science's picks of the best time-lapse videos of nature at work.
Reuters: Obama jokes with astros
U.S. President Barack Obama makes a phone call to congratulate astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Reuters: U.S. space tourist goes up for more
U.S. billionaire Charles Simonyi roars into space aboard a Russian rocket, making history as the first tourist to make the epic journey twice.
Reuters: Japan's hybrid battle
The battle for car consumers on the eco-highway is heating up, with world No.1 Toyota and Honda going at it with new hybrid models.
Reuters: 100-year flood drowns upper Midwest
Hundreds of residents in the upper Midwest are fleeing their homes as flood waters hit levels not seen in over a hundred years.
Reuters: Eruption in Alaska
Ash continues to rise from the erupting Mount Redoubt volcano in Alaska.
Reuters: New oil spill technology urged
Twenty years after the devastating Exxon Valdez oil spill, the technology for oil spill cleanup is barely changed.
Reuters: Whales die after second beaching
Six whales have died after beaching themselves again not far from they were released in Western Australia.
Reuters: Tesla unveils Model S sedan
Tesla Motors looks for new sedan to put more drivers behind the wheel of the electric car.
Reuters: Igniting debate about e-cigarettes
Billed as a healthier alternative to tobacco cigarettes, electronic cigarettes are coming under fresh scrutiny in the U.S.
Reuters: Climate change ticking in China
Greenpeace project a giant ticking clock on Beijing's old city gate in a bid to bring climate change back onto the nation's agenda.
Reuters: Whale shark satellite study
World's biggest fish is being studied in a tagging expedition by marine scientists in Kenya.
Reuters: Fossil "cemetery" in Antarctica
Scientists have discovered in Antarctica a "cemetery" of gigantic ammonites, a marine creature that went extinct with the dinosaurs.
Reuters: Final spacewalk to fix platform
Astronauts from the space shuttle Discovery embark on their final spacewalk to fix an improperly installed cargo platform.
Reuters: Robot takes to Tokyo runway
Japan's latest female humanoid robot opens Japan Fashion Week.
Astronomy/Space
Wired: NASA Planetary Images Get Microsoft Makeover
By Alexis Madrigal
One hundred terabytes of high-resolution images of our planetary neighbors will become easier to access, thanks to a new partnership between NASA and Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope.
The new agreement, announced today, will push images from NASA's Planetary Data System into Microsoft's easier-to-navigate product. NASA's system is great for researchers looking for complete datasets, but the FTP front-end could scare off non-nerds.
"Making NASA's scientific and astronomical data more accessible to the public is a high priority for NASA, especially given the new administration's recent emphasis on open government and transparency," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, in a press release.
Wired: How to Defend Earth Against an Asteroid Strike
By Brandon Keim
In troubled economic times, it's often hard to convince the government to fund space science. Heck, at least those much-studied fruit flies live on our planet. But there's one field of research that the public should be happy to support: keeping the Earth from being pummeled by asteroids. And there is no shortage of ideas for how to do this.
Earlier this month, a skyscraper-sized asteroid passed within 50,000 miles of Earth — a galactic hair's breadth separating the planet from an impact like one that flattened 800 square miles of Siberian tundra in 1908.
Then there's an asteroid spotted in 2004 and called Apophis. Astronomers originally thought it might hit Earth in 2029. Then they decided that it couldn't. Finally they moved back the clock to 2036.
Wired: First-Ever Asteroid Tracked From Space to Earth
By Betsy Mason
For the first time, scientists were able to track an asteroid from space to the ground and recover pieces of it. The bits are unlike anything ever found on Earth.
The asteroid was spotted entering Earth's atmosphere over Sudan in October and was believed to have fully disintegrated, but an international team found almost 280 pieces of meteorite in a 11-square-mile section of Sudan's Nubian Desert. The largest was the size of an egg. Lab analysis showed that the rocks belong to a rare class of asteroid that has never been sampled in such a pristine state, so it could fill some gaps in our understanding of the solar system's early history.
"It's the first time we've been able to track something through the air and watch it fly apart and then find pieces of it," microbial ecologist Rocco Mancinelli of SETI, a co-author of a study on the meteorite pieces Wednesday in Nature, told Wired.com.
Reuters: NASA halts test of space station urine recycler
By Irene Klotz
HOUSTON (Reuters) - NASA called off tests of the International Space Station's urine recycler on Sunday after problems developed and revamped plans for Monday's spacewalk to fix an improperly installed cargo platform attachment.
Flight directors also repositioned the station and the visiting space shuttle Discovery to avoid a piece of space junk, which was expected to come too close during Monday's spacewalk, the last of three during Discovery's mission.
The primary goal of Discovery's flight was to deliver and install the station's last set of solar panel wings, which was accomplished on Thursday. The shuttle blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center on March 15 for a 13-day mission.
Reuters: U.S. billionaire roars into space history
By Shavkat Rakhmatullayev and Shamil Zhumatov
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - U.S. billionaire Charles Simonyi roared into space aboard a Russian rocket on Thursday, making history as the first tourist to make the epic journey twice.
The Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft blasted into the leaden skies from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on schedule at 1149 GMT and is due to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) two days later.
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Hungarian-born Simonyi, 60, who made much of his fortune developing software at Microsoft, traveled into space in the cramped interior of the Soyuz rocket alongside Padalka and U.S. astronaut Michael Barratt.
Reuters: Russian spaceship docks despite engine failure
By Simon Shuster
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Astronauts on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft were forced to manually dock with the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday after an engine failure knocked out the automatic docking system, Russian space officials said.
The shuttle is carrying U.S. billionaire and Microsoft developer Charles Simonyi, who may become one of the last civilians to be taken to the ISS as the financial crisis hampers efforts to expand the space fleet, Vitaly Lopota, head of space corporation Energiya, told a briefing.
The malfunction, which occurred when the ship was less than 100 meters from the ISS, will force Energiya to review the algorithms behind the docking system it programs into its ships, Lopota said.
Reuters: Space shuttle Discovery lands safely
By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The U.S. space shuttle Discovery flew through partly cloudy skies to land safely at its home port in Florida on Saturday, wrapping up a successful 13-day mission to the International Space Station.
Commander Lee Archambault guided Discovery onto a canal-lined runway at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, touching down at 3:13 p.m. EDT (1913 GMT) a few miles from the site of its March 15 blast-off.
"Welcome home Discovery after a great mission to bring the International Space Station to full power," astronaut George Zamka radioed to Discovery's crew from Mission Control as Archambault gently braked the shuttle to a stop after a 5.3 million-mile (9 million-km) journey. "Great job everybody."
Evolution/Paleontology
Physorg.com: Fossil fragments reveal 500-million-year-old monster predator
The fossil fragments puzzled together come from the famous 505 million year old Burgess Shale, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in British Columbia, Canada. Uppsala researchers Allison Daley and Graham Budd at the Department of Earth Sciences, together with colleagues in Canada and Britain, describe the convoluted history and unique body construction of the newly-reconstructed Hurdia victoria, which would have been a formidable predator in its time.
Although the first fragments were described nearly one hundred years ago, they were assumed to be part of a crustacean-like animal. It was not then realised that other parts of the animal were also in collections, but had been described independently as jellyfish, sea cucumbers and other arthropods. However, collecting expeditions from in the 1990s uncovered more complete specimens and hundreds of isolated pieces that led to the first hints that Hurdia was more than it seemed. The last piece of the puzzle was found when the best-preserved specimen turned up in the old collections at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC. This specimen was first classified as an arthropod in the 1970s and 80s, and then as an unusual specimen of the famous monster predator Anomalocaris.
Physorg.com: Was Triceratops a social animal?
Until now, Triceratops was thought to be unusual among its ceratopsid relatives. While many ceratopsids—a common group of herbivorous dinosaurs that lived toward the end of the Cretaceous—have been found in enormous bonebed deposits of multiple individuals, all known Triceratops (over 50 in total) fossils have been solitary individuals. But a new discovery of a jumble of at least three juveniles the badlands of the north-central United States suggests that the three-horned dinosaurs were not only social animals, but may have exhibited unique gregarious groupings of juveniles.
"This is very thrilling," says Stephen Brusatte, an affiliate of the American Museum of Natural History and a doctoral student at Columbia University. "We can say something about how these dinosaurs lived. Interestingly, what we've found seems to be a larger pattern among many dinosaurs that juveniles lived and traveled together in groups."
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above two articles.
Biodiversity
Reuters: Deadly nerve toxin affecting deep ocean creatures
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A nerve toxin produced by marine algae off California appears to affect creatures in the deep ocean, posing a greater threat that previously thought, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.
Surface blooms of the algae known as Pseudo-nitzschia can generate dangerously high levels of domoic acid, a neurotoxin blamed for bizarre bird attacks dramatized in Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film "The Birds."
"It's a natural neurotoxin. It is produced by a diatom, which is a phytoplankton. As other animals eat this phytoplankton, like sardines or anchovies, this toxin can be transferred up the food chain," said Emily Sekula-Wood, a doctoral student at the University of South Carolina whose study appears in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Reuters: New species found in Papua-New Guinea
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jumping spiders, a striped gecko and a chirping frog are among more than 50 new species discovered in Papua-New Guinea, the environmental group Conservation International reported on Tuesday.
Wired: Unique Killer-Whale Pod Doomed by Exxon Valdez
By Brandon Keim
Most of Prince William Sound's animal populations will someday recover from the lingering effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. One, however, will not: a community of killer whales unlike any other in the world.
"It's a separate population. Their genetics, their acoustics, are different from any other killer whales that we see in the North Pacific," said Craig Matkin, director of the North Gulf Oceanic Society, who has studied the region's whales for three decades.
Known to researchers as the AT1 pod, the whales' home range fell within the 11,000 square miles of crude oil dumped by the ship when it ran aground March 24, 1989. Nine of the pod's 22 whales subsequently died, likely from oil ingestion — a blow from which the group, already struggling to cope with pollution and declining populations of the seals which they need for food, never recovered.
Biotechnology/Health
Reuters: Scientists find safer way to make human stem cells
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. researchers said on Thursday they have found a safer way to coax human skin cells into becoming powerful embryonic-like stem cells, taking a step closer to their potential use as treatments for diseases.
A team at the University of Wisconsin said they made the so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, from human cells without using viruses or exotic genes, which leave behind genetic material that might pose risks if the cells were used as medical therapies.
James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, whose study appears in the journal Science, said the finding represents the first time researchers have made human induced pluripotent stem cells without inserting potentially problematic new genes into their DNA.
Reuters: Single embryo best for fertility treatment: study
by Michael Kahn
LONDON (Reuters) - Implanting a single embryo is the cheapest and most effective way for women to have a healthy baby through fertility treatment, Finnish researchers said on Wednesday.
The findings from the long-running study counter fears that relying on just one embryo could drive up treatment costs and reduce a woman's chances of giving birth to a full-term baby, the researchers said in the journal Human Reproduction.
"At a time when there is an intense debate in many countries about how to reduce multiple pregnancy rates and provide affordable fertility treatment, policy makers should be made aware of our results," said Hannu Martikainen of the University of Oulu in Finland, who led the study.
Reuters: Red meat raises risk of all kinds of death
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who eat the most red meat and the most processed meat have the highest overall risk of death from all causes, including heart disease and cancer, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
The National Cancer Institute study is one of the largest to look at the highly controversial and emotive issue of whether eating meat is indeed bad for health.
Rashmi Sinha and colleagues looked at the records of more than 500,000 people aged 50 to 71 who filled out questionnaires on their diet and other health habits.
Reuters: Let sunshine in to fight tuberculosis, WHO says
By Laura MacInnis
GENEVA (Reuters) - Ventilation and some sunshine could go a long way to reduce tuberculosis risks in hospitals and prisons, two strongholds of the contagious lung disease, the World Health Organization said.
In its latest Global Tuberculosis Control report, released on Tuesday, the United Nations agency also doubled its estimate of how many HIV-infected people catch and die from tuberculosis, and warned especially deadly strains are continuing to spread in all corners of the world.
Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO's Stop TB department, said that because tuberculosis bacteria thrive in stagnant air, "simply opening the doors" can reduce the chances that patients, inmates and others will become infected with the disease that killed about 1.8 million people in 2007.
Reuters: Malaria map shows where to target the disease
By Michael Kahn
LONDON (Reuters) - Eliminating malaria in many parts of the world where risk of the disease is high may be less difficult than previously thought, international researchers said on Tuesday.
Using data collected from nearly 8,000 local surveys of infection rates, the team built a global map pinpointing areas where malaria remains the biggest threat.
They found that in many areas transmission rates are below the level at which controlling the disease with things such as bed nets is a real possibility, Simon Hay of Oxford University in Britain, who led the study, said.
Two sidebars--(Q+A: What can be done about drug-resistant TB? and FACTBOX: U.N. revisions to global disease tolls--accompany the above two articles on world health.
Reuters: Study finds 10 genes that raise sudden death risk
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Researchers have found nine new gene variations that can make a person vulnerable to sudden cardiac death and confirmed the role of another, international researchers said on Sunday.
"Almost half were surprising new genes that no one would have guessed as being involved in cardiac biology," said Dan Arking of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, whose team was one of many working on the study in the journal Nature Genetics.
Last month, Arking's group reported in the journal Circulation that it had found a single gene that raises the risk of cardiac death. The new study identifies that gene plus nine new ones that modify the timing of heart contractions, a measure known as the QT interval.
Reuters: Super Bowl loss may cause fans more than heartache
By Lewis Krauskopf
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Passionate football fans take heed: watching your team lose in the Super Bowl could be hazardous to your health.
Researchers have found that overall and circulatory death rates in Los Angeles rose significantly after a crushing defeat for the Rams in the 1980 Super Bowl. Four years later, deaths declined after the city's other team -- the Raiders -- triumphed in the U.S. football championship game.
"The emotional stress of loss and/or the intensity of a game played in a high profile rivalry such as the Super Bowl can trigger total and cardiovascular deaths," said Dr. Robert Kloner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California, who presented the study at the American College of Cardiology scientific meeting in Orlando.
Wired: A Yogurt a Day May Keep the Ulcers Away
By Aaron Rowe
SALT LAKE CITY — Antibodies in two yogurt products could protect people from a common bacterium that causes ulcers.
Both products have been on the market in Asia for years, but scientists did not have much evidence that they can fight Helicobacter pylori — until now.
"Our data indicates that the suppression of H. pylori infection in humans could be achieved by taking functional yogurt," Hajime Hatta, an antibody expert who led human trials of the yogurt at Kyoto Women's University, said here at the American Chemical Society meeting on Sunday.
Climate/Environment
Reuters: Sydney summers by 2060 could be deadly: scientist
By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The forecast for Sydney in summer 2060 is hot, polluted and deadly to the elderly.
Rising summer temperatures due to global warming, drier weather and smog from transport and bushfires will make Australia's lifestyle capital a health hazard, a scientist told a major climate change conference on Wednesday.
Most at risk will be the increasing number of elderly from heat stress and anyone with asthma or heart complaints, said Martin Cope of the state-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
Reuters: African weather center to help Red Cross
By Joe Penney
DAKAR (Reuters) - A pan-African weather center will help the Red Cross respond faster to floods and drought by feeding it weather forecasts tailored to its needs, the aid group said on Tuesday.
The African Center of Meteorological Application for Development (ACMAD), funded by the United Nations and based in Niger, works with forecasting agencies in 53 countries.
"While large-scale disasters like those in Asia, Ghana and Togo in 2007 get more media and donor attention, 800,000 people have been affected by small-scale floods in West and Central Africa in the last year," said Youcef Ait-Chellouche, disaster management coordinator for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies for West and Central Africa.
Wired: The Exxon Valdez Spill Is All Around Us
By Brandon Keim
The final legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill is not a pristine ecosystem's defilement, or the destruction of millions of animals. It's the accumulation of scientific knowledge about oil in our environment.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom of 1989, oil isn't just a problem in a the immediate aftermath of a spill, when coastlines and wildlife are covered in a hideous, highly photogenic slick. It wreaks a subtle, long-term havoc, as toxic chemicals enter ecological cycles and take decades to break down. That's not only true in Prince William Sound, but around the United States, where millions of gallons of oil spill every single year.
"Most of the oil that runs off roads and parking lots doesn't go into sewage treatment plants," said Mary Kelly, co-director of the Environmental Defense Fund's land, water and wildlife program. "It just runs off into waterways."
Geology/Geophysics
Wired: Alaska Volcano Erupts
By Betsy Mason
Alaska's Redoubt Volcano is erupting explosively for a fifth time since 10:38 p.m. local time Sunday evening (2:38 a.m. Eastern time).
The U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Volcano Observatory estimates the initial explosion sent ash up to 50,000 feet in the air. The ash appears to be heading north away from Anchorage.
Alaska Airlines has canceled flights, according to the Associated Press.
Psychology/Behavior
Wired: Given "Expert" Advice, Brains Shut Down
By Brandon Keim
A brain-scanning study of people making financial choices suggests that when given expert advice, the decision-making parts of our brains often shut down.
The problem with this, of course, is that the advice may not be good.
"When the expert's advice made the least sense, that's where we could see the behavioral effect," said study co-author Greg Berns, an Emory University neuroscientist. "It's as if people weren't using their own internal value mechanisms."
Wired: The Kenny Rogers Effect: Music Helps Stroke Victims
By Brandon Keim
Music was the best medicine for four stroke victims whose cognitive impairments lessened while listening to songs they loved.
The music stimulated neurological pleasure centers adjacent to damaged brain regions, apparently producing a therapeutic crossover effect.
"There seems to be a strong coupling in the brain between emotional and attentional areas," said study co-author David Soto, an Imperial College London neuroscientist. "When emotional areas light up and are activated, the attentional system seems to be more effective as well."
Reuters: Group says 5.3 million in U.S. have Alzheimer's
by Maggie Fox
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An estimated 5.3 million Americans have Alzheimer's, and each patient on average costs Medicare three times more than patients without the disease, the Alzheimer's Association reported on Tuesday.
In its annual report on the brain-wasting illness, the group projected that by 2010, nearly a half-million new cases of Alzheimer's will develop each year as the population ages and by 2050 a million new cases will be diagnosed annually.
"Direct and indirect costs of Alzheimer's and other dementias amount to more than $148 billion annually," the group said in a statement.
Reuters: Brain differences mark those with depression risk
by Maggie Fox and Xavier Briand
CHICAGO (Reuters) - People who have a high family risk of developing depression had less brain matter on the right side of their brains on par with losses seen in Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
Brain scans showed a 28-percent thinning in the right cortex -- the outer layer of the brain -- in people who had a family history of depression compared with people who did not.
"The difference was so great that at first we almost didn't believe it. But we checked and re-checked all of our data, and we looked for all possible alternative explanations, and still the difference was there," said Dr. Bradley Peterson of Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Archeology/Anthropology
Physorg.com: Researchers find the earliest evidence of domesticated maize
Maize was domesticated from its wild ancestor more than 8700 years according to biological evidence uncovered by researchers in the Mexico's Central Balsas River Valley. This is the earliest dated evidence -- by 1200 years -- for the presence and use of domesticated maize.
The researchers, led by Anthony Ranere of Temple University and Dolores Piperno of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, reported their findings in two studies -- "The Cultural and chronological context of early Holocene maize and squash domestication in the Central Balsas River Valley, Mexcio" and "Starch grain and phytolith evidence for early ninth millennium B.P. maize from the Central Balsas River Valley, Mexico" -- being published in the PNAS Early edition, March 24.
China Daily: Fresh proof of China being cradle of rice cultivation
By Lin Shujuan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-03-27 10:16
Several archaeologists, once split over when human beings turned from nut collectors into rice farmers, seem to have solved their differences after collaborating on a project using methodologies agreed upon by both parties.
Dorian Fuller from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, joined by Zheng Yunfei from Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Antiquity and Archaeology and a few other Chinese archaeologists, investigated rice remains at the Neolithic excavation site of Tianluoshan, part of the local Hemudu Neolithic Culture that goes back 7,000 years in Zhejing province.
Fox News: Egyptian Queen's Perfume May Be Recreated
She may have ruled like a man, but Egyptian queen Hatshepsut still preferred to smell like a lady.
The world may be able to get a whiff of that ancient royal scent when researchers complete their investigation into the perfume worn by Hatshepsut, the powerful pharaoh-queen who ruled over ancient Egypt for 20 years beginning around 1479 B.C.
Analyzing a metal jar belonging to the famous queen , the team from the Bonn University Egyptian Museum in Germany recently found residue thought to be leftovers from Hatshepsut's own perfume.
AP via Physorg.com: Greek fisherman nets 2,200-year-old bronze statue
(AP) -- A Greek fisherman must have been expecting a monster of a catch when he brought up his nets in the Aegean Sea last week. Instead, Greek authorities say his haul was a section of a 2,200-year-old bronze statue of a horseman.
New Kerala: Third-century palace may belong to legendary Japanese queen
Tokyo, March 24 : A team of researchers has claimed to have found evidence of what may be an early third-century palace that could have been part of the Yamatai kingdom ruled by Himiko, the legendary Japanese queen.
According to a report in The Asahi Shimbun, excavations at the Makimuku ruins in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture, show there were as many as three buildings facing the same direction in a line, dating back to the late second century to early fourth century.
Researchers also uncovered evidence of fortified barriers stretching 40 meters.
Philadelphia Inquirer: Bones may be from 19th-century gravesite
By Kristin E. Holmes
Inquirer Staff Writer
Clues to the mysterious deaths of 57 Irish immigrants came first from a secret file that had been locked in a vault until 1970.
The men, who sailed from Ireland in 1832, arrived in Chester County to work on the railroad. They died about eight weeks later, most of cholera.
Until the file was read six years ago by two brothers, both historians, the immigrants were the stuff mostly of legend and ghost tale. On Friday, another milestone in their story was found in East Whiteland Township.
An archaeology research team based at Immaculata University in Chester County uncovered 90 human bones that they believe are part of a mass grave containing the workers' remains.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
National Geographic: Lost Crusaders' Tunnels Found Near Palace on Malta
James Owen
For centuries it's been said that the crusading Knights of Malta constructed an underground city on the Mediterranean island of Malta, sparking rumors of secret carriageways and military labyrinths.
Now a tunnel network has been uncovered beneath the historic heart of the Maltese capital of Valletta, researchers say. But the tunnels—likely from an ahead-of-its-time water system—may render previous theories all wet.
The newfound tunnels are said to date back to the 16th and early 17th centuries, when the knights—one of the major Christian military orders of the 11th- to 13th-century Crusades—fortified Valletta against Muslim attack.
Hat/Tip to palantir, who sent in the above article.
Reuters: Italian dig uncovers "oldest" temple in Cyprus
NICOSIA (Reuters) - An Italian archaeologist says she has discovered what is believed to be the oldest site of religious worship in Cyprus, a temple which is about 4,000 years old.
The find at the Pyrgos-Mavroraki site close to the southern city of Limassol predates any other discoveries in Cyprus by about 1,000 years, Italian archaeologist Maria Rosaria Belgiorno said.
"This is the first evidence of religion in Cyprus at the beginning of the second millennium BC," she was quoted as telling the Cyprus Weekly newspaper from Rome.
Physics
Science Daily: Underground Subatomic-particle Measurements Yield Meteorological Clues
ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2009) — When high-energy cosmic rays interact with molecules in the atmosphere, they produce muons, negatively charged elementary particles that can be detected at ground level or underground. The rate of these muons detected by underground detectors has been found to correlate strongly with temperature changes in the upper air.
Reporting in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Osprey et al. compare cosmic ray muon rates from the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) underground neutrino detector in Soudan, Minnesota, with upper air temperature data from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts during the winters from 2003 to 2007. They find a strong positive correlation between muon rate and temperature.
Science Daily: Why Is There More Matter Than Antimatter In The Natural World?
ScienceDaily (Mar. 27, 2009) — A team of researchers from Perimeter Institute, Cambridge University, and Texas A&M has for the first time estimated, from mathematical symmetry arguments, the size of a fundamental imbalance pervading the subatomic world.
Science Daily: Atomic Fountain Clocks Are Becoming Still More Stable
ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2009) — Caesium fountains are more accurate than "normal" atomic caesium clocks, because in fountains the caesium atoms are cooled down with the aid of laser beams and come ever slower – from a rapid velocity at room temperature to a slow "creep pace" of a few centimetres per second at a temperature close to the absolute zero point.
Thus, the atoms remain together for a longer time so that the physicists have considerably more time to measure the decisive property of the caesium atoms which is required for the "generation of time": their resonance frequency. When a maximum of atoms has changed into an excited state, the frequency of the exciting signal is measured - those approximately nine billions of microwave oscillations which must elapse until exactly one second has past.
Science Daily: Flatland Physics Probes Mysteries Of Superfluidity
ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2009) — If physicists lived in Flatland—the fictional two-dimensional world invented by Edwin Abbott in his 1884 novel—some of their quantum physics experiments would turn out differently (not just thinner) than those in our world. The distinction has taken another step from speculative fiction to real-world puzzle with a paper from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) reporting on a Flatland arrangement of ultracold gas atoms.
The new results, which don’t quite jibe with earlier Flatland experiments in Paris, might help clarify a strange property: "superfluidity."
Chemistry
Science Daily: New Family Of Molecules For Self-assembly: The Carboranes
ScienceDaily (Mar. 26, 2009) — To be useful in real-world applications, a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of molecules on a surface must have a stable and controllable geometry. Researchers at Penn State and the Sigma-Aldrich company have found a way to control geometry and stability by making SAMs out of different carboranethiol isomers, which are cage-like molecules. The research results will be published in the March 2009 issue of the journal ACS Nano.
Science Daily: Periodic Table's Blank Spaces Filled In By Solving A Subatomic Shell Game
ScienceDaily (Mar. 26, 2009) — Physicists at Michigan Technological University have filled in some longtime blank spaces on the periodic table, calculating electron affinities of the lanthanides, a series of 15 elements known as rare earths.
"Electron affinity" is the amount of energy required to detach an electron from an anion, or negative ion (an atom with an extra electron orbiting around its nucleus). Elements with low electron affinities (like iron) give up that extra electron easily. Elements with high electron affinities (like chlorine) do not.
"I remember learning about electron affinities in 10th grade chemistry," said Research Associate Steven O'Malley. "When I began working as a grad student in atomic physics, I was surprised to learn that many of them were still unknown."
Wired: Hair Bleach Turns Green
By Alexis Madrigal
A new hair bleach derived from a forest soil fungus could provide a natural alternative to the hydrogen peroxide that's now used to turn anyone into a blonde.
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The new enzyme, described Tuesday at the American Chemical Society meeting in Salt Lake City by Kenzo Koike of the Kao Corporation's Beauty Research Center in Tokyo, accomplishes the same bleaching task, but it's produced by a forest soil fungus and is gentler on the hair.
Wired: Bottled Water Sexes Up Snails
By Brandon Keim
Polycarbonate water bottles have received plenty of bad press for releasing potentially toxic compounds into unsuspecting drinkers, but there may be another culprit: everyday plastic packaging.
A German study of commercially-available bottled water found contamination by chemicals that mimic natural sex hormones. When the researchers raised snails in the water, they bred with extreme rapidity — a warning sign that the chemicals were active. Contamination levels were twice as high in brands packaged in plastic instead of glass, suggesting that plastic was the culprit.
Energy
Reuters: Tesla unveils four-door electric sedan
By Nichola Groom
HAWTHORNE, California (Reuters) - Electric car start-up Tesla Motors Inc unveiled its newest, cheapest vehicle on Thursday, a four-door sedan that can carry five adults and could travel up to 300 miles per charge.
The Model S will cost $49,900, after a U.S. government tax credit of $7,500, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said at the car's unveiling. It is slated to go into production in 2011 and will be manufactured in Southern California.
In his remarks, Musk billed the Model S as the first mass-market, highway-ready electric vehicle. And, he said, the price is comparable to that of a $35,000 gasoline-powered car such as a Ford Taurus, assuming gas prices of about $4 a gallon.
Reuters: Toshiba, Sharp say may work together in solar power
by Sachi Izumi
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Toshiba Corp and Sharp Corp said on Friday they are considering working together in the solar power business amid growing demand for cleaner energy, sending their shares higher.
The financial crisis has shut off much of the funding for new projects since late last year, but solar power firms are still hurrying to boost capacity as governments worldwide support expansion of the clean-power systems to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Chinese government said on Thursday it would launch a generous new subsidy for solar power systems, lifting shares in U.S.-listed solar companies.
Reuters: Venice seaport eyes algae to fuel energy needs
by Deepa Babington
ROME (Reuters) - Venice's seaport plans to become self-sufficient in its energy needs by building a power plant fueled by algae, in what would be the first facility of its kind in Italy, the port authority said.
The plant will be operative in two years and produce 40 megawatts of electricity, Venice's port authority said, adding that an emissions-free energy source would help preserve the historic lagoon city's delicate ecological balance.
The plant -- only the third of its kind being planned in Europe -- will be built in collaboration with renewable energy services company Enalg at a cost of 200 million euros ($272.6 million), a port authority spokeswoman said.
Reuters: Tesla unveils four-door electric sedan
By Nichola Groom
HAWTHORNE, California (Reuters) - Electric car start-up Tesla Motors Inc unveiled its newest, cheapest vehicle on Thursday, a four-door sedan that can carry five adults and could travel up to 300 miles per charge.
The Model S will cost $49,900, after a U.S. government tax credit of $7,500, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said at the car's unveiling. It is slated to go into production in 2011 and will be manufactured in Southern California.
In his remarks, Musk billed the Model S as the first mass-market, highway-ready electric vehicle. And, he said, the price is comparable to that of a $35,000 gasoline-powered car such as a Ford Taurus, assuming gas prices of about $4 a gallon.
Wired: Bad News: Scientists Make Cheap Gas From Coal
By Alexis Madrigal
Electric cars have been getting a lot of buzz lately, but a more immediately viable transportation fuel of the future could be liquid derived from coal. Scientists have devised a new way to transform coal into gas for your car using far less energy than the current process. The advance makes scaling up the environmentally unfriendly fuel more economical than greener alternatives.
If oil prices rise again, adoption of the new coal-to-liquid technology, reported this week in Science, could undercut adoption of electric vehicles or next-generation biofuels. And that's bad news for the fight against climate change.
The new process could cut the energy cost of producing the fuel by 20 percent just by rejiggering the intermediate chemical steps, said co-author Ben Glasser of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. But coal-derived fuel could produce as much as twice as much CO2 as traditional petroleum fuels and at best will emit at least as much of the greenhouse gas.
Wired: Hamsters Get Nanotechnology Now But We Could Be Waiting for Ten Years
By Aaron Rowe
SALT LAKE CITY — Bend, stretch, or shake a zinc oxide nanowire and it will generate a tiny electrical pulse. Link several of them together, and they could crank out enough juice to power microscopic gadgets.
As machines get smaller, their demand for power decreases drastically, says Zhong Lin Wang, a nanotechnology expert from Georgia Tech. Nano-devices would require so little energy that they could be powered by sound waves and muscle twitches.
To prove his point, Wang attached a single nanowire to the back of a hamster and then hooked it up to an oscilloscope. As the rodent it scurried around, it generated 70 millivolts. When the critter stopped to lick itself, the power levels decreased.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Reuters: U.S. mileage standards for cars up for first time
By John Crawley
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government on Friday imposed the first increase in mileage standards for passenger cars and boosted the floor for sport utilities and pickups beginning with model year 2011 vehicles.
The modest increase of less than 1 mile per gallon for the fleet over current targets for the fleet represents an abbreviated approach by the Obama administration as it confronts industry distress and pressure from California and other states to set their own goals.
"These standards are important steps in the nation's quest to achieve energy independence," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who added that work on future mileage programs must take into account the health of U.S. manufacturers.
Reuters: FDA told to reconsider morning-after pill
By Susan Heavey and Bill Berkrot
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration must reconsider its decision under the Bush Administration to limit access to emergency contraception, a U.S. court ruled on Monday, saying the agency allowed politics to interfere with its usual decision-making.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, in a 52-page ruling, also ordered the FDA to allow 17-year-olds to buy the drug, called Plan B, without a prescription.
"The FDA repeatedly and unreasonably delayed issuing a decision on Plan B for suspect reasons," the court said.
Reuters: Antibiotic ban on livestock may hurt U.S. food safety
By Christopher Doering
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bill that would ban the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animals would hurt the health of livestock and poultry while compromising efforts to protect the safety of the country's food supply, the leader of the largest U.S. farm group said on Tuesday.
Bob Stallman, president of the 6 million-member American Farm Bureau Federation, said in a letter to Congress that its members "carefully, judiciously and according to label instructions" use antibiotics to treat, prevent and control disease in animals.
"Antibiotic use in animals does not pose a serious public health threat," said Stallman, who urged lawmakers to oppose the bill. "Restricting access to these important tools will jeopardize animal health and compromise our ability to contribute to public health through food safety" he added.
Reuters: Obama starts climate change forum for big economies
By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Saturday invited 16 "major economies" including the European Union and the United Nations to take part in a forum on climate change to facilitate a U.N. pact on global warming.
Obama, a Democrat who has taken a more aggressive stance on climate change than his predecessor, Republican George W. Bush, invited the group to a preparatory session on April 27 and 28 in Washington.
The White House made clear that Obama's new initiative would aim to augment U.N. talks that are meant to culminate in an agreement in Copenhagen in December.
Reuters: Recession dampens Obama negotiators' climate debut
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's negotiators make their debut at U.N. climate talks on Sunday but U.S. promises of tougher action are unlikely to brighten prospects for strong treaty now overshadowed by recession.
Up to 190 nations meet in Bonn from March 29-April 8 to work on plugging huge gaps in a pact due to be agreed in December. Some industrial nations -- Japan, Russia and Ukraine -- have not even set goals for key 2020 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
The U.N.'s climate chief said the mood in Bonn, the first climate negotiations since December, would be helped by U.S. plans for stronger action but cautioned against expecting too much from Obama, struggling with the economic downturn.
Reuters: Obama names Zoi to renewable energy post at DOE
by Tom Doggett
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama intends to nominate Cathy Zoi to be the Energy Department's assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, the White House said on Friday.
Zoi has a long career in promoting renewable energy and fighting climate change.
Reuters: SolarWorld eyes big slice of Obama boom
By Christoph Steitz - Analysis
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German renewable energy giant SolarWorld could come out of the industry's crisis stronger than it was before, outshining its peers, as it becomes one of the big winners of the "Obama boom" in the United States.
The company is among very few players in Europe's second-biggest solar market to have remained relatively unscathed by the financial crisis so far and analysts are buoyant about the company's growth prospects in the United States.
"The fact that SolarWorld is the only listed German solar company with fully-owned production facilities in the United States could soon be a major advantage given the expected photovoltaic (PV) demand boom triggered by the economic stimulus program signed by president Obama," Merck Finck analyst Theo Kitz wrote.
Reuters: China chases cleantech jobs
By Gerard Wynn and Christoph Steitz - Analysis
LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A surprise China solar power subsidy will prop up domestic factories and shows how a battle against climate change may shift from "after you" diplomacy to a race for jobs.
Recession is intensifying support for a green economy expected to emerge fast from recession, contrasting with international bickering on how to split the cost of cutting carbon emissions in UN-led climate talks.
U.S. President Barack Obama has embraced the clean energy sector as a key area of growth for the US economy, in a sharp shift from former president George W. Bush.
Reuters: Group wants oil, gas drillers to follow rules in U.S. West
by: Bernie Woodall
An environmental group this week issued a report saying oil and gas companies have enjoyed exemptions to common sense anti-pollution federal rules that govern companies in other industries. This has led, the Environmental Working Group claims, to fouled groundwater, creeks and acres and acres of formerly pristine land in the U.S. West.
The report, "Free Pass for Oil and Gas in the American West," contains county-by-county maps of what it says are examples of mismanagement of the oil and gas industry.
Reuters: Is California really banning black cars?
by: Dan Whitcomb
Has it come to this in California? Is the Golden State really banning black cars from its famous freeways, as reported in various auto industry blogs – and even The Washington Post – on the grounds that they require more air conditioning to cool?
The answer, a slightly exasperated spokesman for air quality regulator the California Air Resources Board tells Reuters, is an emphatic "NO."
CARB spokesman Stanley Young calls the story a "very unfortunate case of misinformation from the blogosphere" stemming from proposed draft regulations that have since been put on the back burner by the agency. But even those draft regulations, he says, never contemplated a ban on black cars.
Science Education
Loveland Reporter-Herald (CO): Girls can discover cool careers
By Kathryn Dailey
Loveland Reporter-Herald
In fourth and fifth grades, girls may dream of becoming an actress, a model or an artist.
But this Saturday, girls can look into careers they may not have originally considered at the 17th annual Exploration Seminar, sponsored by Gender Equity in Math and Science of Colorado Inc., known as GEMS.
"A lot of girls at this age start to think math and science isn’t cool, so they start to steer away from those careers," said Lori Hvizda-Ward, who is in charge of registrations for the event.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above article.
Wired: Lone Star Scientists Posse Up to Defend Evolution in Schools
By Brandon Keim
A debate over evolution education in Texas could shape science classes in the southern United States for years to come.
The Texas Board of Education will vote Thursday and Friday on amendments to the state's proposed science curriculum. The amendments convey doubt about evolution that, according to scientists, simply does not exist.
"They haven't mentioned creationism or the age of the Earth," said Steve Schafersman, president of Texas Citizens for Science, a nonprofit science education and policy watchdog. "It's not openly creationist, but it's anti-science. It demeans and devalues science."
Wired: MIT Backs Free Access to Scientific Papers
By Alexis Madrigal
Scientific publishing might have just reached a tipping point, thanks to a new open access policy at MIT.
Following a more limited open-access mandate at Harvard, the legendary school's faculty voted last week to make all of their papers available for free on the web, the first university-wide policy of its sort.
Hal Abelson, who spearheaded the effort, said that these agreements went beyond providing a repository for papers, they changed the power dynamics between scientific publishers and researchers.
Science Writing and Reporting
Wired: Your Webside Seat to the Texas Evolution Showdown
By Brandon Keim
Over the next two days, the Texas Board of Education will decide whether to dilute its science education standards, and you can hear it all from the comfort of your very own seat.
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The Texas Freedom Network and Texas Citizens for Science are liveblogging the hearings, which start Thursday at 10 a.m. Central time. You can also listen to them live on the Texas Board of Education website.
Reuters: Archives shed light on Darwin's student days
By Peter Griffiths
LONDON (Reuters) - With someone to polish his shoes, make his bed and stoke the fire in his spacious rooms, Charles Darwin enjoyed the sort of pampered university life that today's debt-laden British students can only dream about.
Two hundred years after his birth, academics have uncovered new details of his comfortable existence at the University of Cambridge before he embarked on the grueling five-year voyage that would transform science's view of the world.
Six leather-bound ledgers unearthed in the university archives reveal how he lived in the most expensive rooms available to a student of his rank from 1828 to 1831.
Science is Cool
Reuters: Obama quizzes astronauts about life in space
By Chris Baltimore
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Astronauts aboard the International Space Station took a break from construction tasks on Tuesday to answer questions from schoolchildren and U.S. President Barack Obama about the rigors of space life.
Speaking to the crew of the space station and shuttle Discovery on the telephone from the White House along with about a dozen school children, Obama peppered astronauts with questions.
"Do you guys still drink Tang up there?" Obama asked, referring to the powdered, orange-flavored drink consumed by earlier U.S. astronauts.