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 Space.com via MSNBC.
Water discovery fuels hope to colonize moon
By Jeanna Bryner
Hopes, dreams and practical plans to colonize or otherwise exploit the moon as a source of minerals or a launch pad to the cosmos got a boost today with NASA's announcement of significant water ice at the lunar south pole.
The LCROSS probe discovered the equivalent of a dozen 2-gallon buckets of water in the form of ice, in a crater at the lunar south pole. Scientists figure there's more where that came from.
More on this and other science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
DarkSyde: This Week in Science
RLMiller: The Value of a Mangrove Swamp: Climate Costs & Benefits
Troubadour: Space Tech Photo Diary, Part 2: Experimental Rockets
Slideshows/Videos
MSNBC: Moon river: NASA finds water on the moon
Nov. 13: NASA say the experiment to slam a spacecraft into the moon has found a substantial amount of water. Could that lead to a base camp for astronauts?
MSNBC: Houston, we have a puddle
Nov. 13: Bill Nye, the science guy joins Rachel Maddow to explain the significance of NASA's discovery of water on the moon.
MSNBC: Thomas J. O'Malley, NASA engineer, dies
MSNBC: The world will not end in 2012, NASA says
Nov. 13: NASA is reassuring the public that the world will not end in 2012, despite theories based on the Mayan calendar and a new fiction disaster film called "2012." NBC’s Tom Costello reports.
LiveScience via MSNBC: 10 failed doomsday predictions
By Benjamin Radford
LiveScience.com
With the upcoming disaster film "2012" and the current hype about Mayan calendars and doomsday predictions, it seems like a good time to put such notions in context.
Most prophets of doom come from a religious perspective, though the secular crowd has caused its share of scares as well. One thing the doomsday scenarios tend to share in common: They don't come to pass.
Here are 10 that didn't pan out, so far.
Astronomy/Space
MSNBC's Cosmic Log: TRIPLE DELIGHT IN THE MILKY WAY
by Alan Boyle
NASA has blended three views of our home galaxy's turbulent core to produce a picture filled with scientifically significant snap, crackle and pop. And the deeper you go into the image, the more you learn.
The composite picture of the Milky Way's center draws upon near-infrared data from the Hubble Space Telescope (shown in yellow), infrared readings from the Spitzer Space Telescope (shown in rich red) and the X-ray vision of the Chandra X-ray Observatory (shown in shades of blue and violet)
The result is an amazingly detailed, and amazingly colorful, multiwavelength view of our galaxy's core, 26,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. Among the highlights are Sagittarius A*, the bright knot of material that surrounds the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, and the "light echo" left behind by black hole blasts that faded away long ago.
Space.com via MSNBC: ‘White dwarf’ stars may signal missing link
By Clara Moskowitz
How stars end their lives depends on how massive they are.
Large stars are thought to die in explosive fits and collapse into the densest objects in the universe — black holes and neutron stars. Small stars languish as dim objects called white dwarfs. But what happens to stars right on the border is not certain. Now astronomers have observed two peculiar white dwarfs that may represent the end point for these objects.
White dwarfs can be about the size of Earth, but contain roughly the mass of the sun. They have already burned up most of their fuel and shine weakly by releasing heat. Most white dwarfs are made of compacted carbon and oxygen, with small amounts of a few other elements.
Space.com via MSNBC: Stuck Mars rover to begin moving
By Andrea Thompson
Months of planning are finally coming to fruition: NASA engineers are ready to begin trying to maneuver the plucky rover Spirit out of its sandy trap on Mars.
Mission managers are sober about the prospects for freeing Spirit. They will send the first commands to the rover to try to move on Monday, "but this process could take quite a while if it's possible at all," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
The new plan will command Spirit to try to backtrack and make its escape using the tracks that were left in the dirt before the rover got stuck.
MSNBC's Cosmic Log: MARVELOUS VIEW ... AND A MYSTERY
by Alan Boyle
Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft is making its final flyby past Earth on its way to an asteroid and a comet – a close encounter that should yield beautiful pictures of our home planet, and perhaps the answer to a cosmic mystery as well.
Rosetta was launched five years ago and has already made two gravitational flybys past Earth, plus one past Mars. Friday's flyby represents the final boost, slingshotting the probe past the asteroid Lutetia for a quick look next year, and then pushing it along to the main event at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014.
When Rosetta arrives at its destination, it will send a small lander down to the comet's 2.4-mile-wide (4-kilometer-wide) icy nucleus and spend two years in orbit, studying Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it approaches the sun. Rosetta's 11 scientific instruments will record how the comet is transformed by the sun's warmth.
MSNBC's Cosmic Log: SPACE ROCK BUZZES PAST EARTH
by Alan Boyle
Asteroid-watchers say a space rock about as big as a garage came within 9,000 miles (14,000 kilometers) of Earth last Friday, just 15 hours after it was detected.
Experts quickly determined that the asteroid 2009 VA would miss us - and even if it came directly at us, it wouldn't have caused a catastrophe. Nevertheless, the close encounter serves as a reminder that someday a much bigger rock may well hit us and that it's best to be prepared.
In this week's recap of the event, NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office reported that 2009 VA came well within the moon's orbit - so close, in fact, that the asteroid's orbital path was bent by Earth's gravitational pull.
Space.com via MSNBC: Get the most from a promising meteor show
By Joe Rao
When people hear about an impending meteor shower, their first impression may be of a sky filled with shooting stars pouring down through the sky like rain. Such meteor storms have actually occurred with the annual Leonid meteor shower of November, such as in 1833 and 1966, when meteor rates of literally tens of thousands per hour were observed.
In more recent years, most notably 1999, 2001 and 2002, lesser Leonid displays of up to a few thousand meteors per hour thrilled skywatchers.
This year will not set any records, but the Leonids — set to peak early Tuesday morning, Nov. 17 — should offer a better-than-average display.
Space.com via MSNBC: New research module arrives at space station
By Tariq Malik
Astronauts on the International Space Station welcomed the arrival of a brand-new Russian module Thursday, an orbital room adds more research space and an extra parking spot for visiting spacecraft.
The unmanned module Poisk, which means "explore" in Russian, docked smoothly at a berth on top of the space station as they flew 222 miles (357 kilometers) over northern Kazakhstan in Asia.
"The arrival of this new module for the Russian segment went great," Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suarev radioed Mission Control in Moscow after the docking. Suarev and fellow cosmonaut Roman Romanenko were poised to take remote control of the automated Poisk if the craft strayed off-course, but it flew true as expected.
Space.com via MSNBC: Broken urine recycler may affect space mission
By Tariq Malik
A broken device that recycles astronaut urine into clean drinking water on the International Space Station may have a slight impact to life onboard next week when NASA's shuttle Atlantis arrives to boost the number of people there to 12.
Any impact would likely pertain to things such as digging into supplies of spare urine bags (to hold stuff that would normally have been recycled), or determining how many astronauts can use the two bathrooms on the station, or the one on Atlantis, NASA spokesperson Kelly Humphries told Space.com. The space station has plenty of water to support its six astronauts through next spring with or without the recycler, he added.
"If we can't get it running again, yes it will have an impact because there are no spare parts manifested for the shuttle mission," Humphries said.
Space.com via MSNBC: All systems go for space shuttle launch
By Clara Moskowitz
NASA cleared the space shuttle Atlantis to launch toward the International Space Station on Monday on a delivery mission.
Atlantis is set to lift off at 2:28 p.m. ET on Monday from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to carry six astronauts and two cases of large spare parts to the station.
The weather outlook is optimistic for Monday, with a 90 percent chance of clear skies predicted.
Time: The Best Invention of the Year: NASA's Ares Rockets
By JEFFREY KLUGER
Metal has no DNA; machines have no genes. But that doesn't mean they don't have pedigrees — ancestral lines every bit as elaborate as our own. That's surely the case with the Ares 1 rocket. The best and smartest and coolest thing built in 2009 — a machine that can launch human beings to cosmic destinations we'd never considered before — is the fruit of a very old family tree, one with branches grand, historic and even wicked.
There are a lot of reasons astronauts haven't moved beyond the harbor lights of low-Earth orbit in nearly 40 years, but one of them is that we haven't had the machines to take us anywhere else. The space shuttle is a flying truck: fine for the lunch-bucket work of hauling cargo a couple of hundred miles into space, but nothing more. In 2004, however, the U.S. committed itself to sending astronauts back to the moon and later to Mars, and for that, you need something new and nifty for them to fly. The answer is the Ares 1, which had its first unmanned flight on Oct. 28 and dazzled even the skeptics.
This is part of a list of what Time considers The 50 Best Inventions of 2009. SpaceX's Falcon 1 didn't make Time's list, but it did make Popular Science's. For their best of what's new for 2009, click here.
Evolution/Paleontology
Science Magazine via MSNBC: Can evolution make things less complicated?
By Becky Ham
We’ve all seen the popular cartoon of evolution’s march from an ancient sea, beginning with a single floating cell that morphs into increasingly complicated creatures, on the way to the punch line of Weekend Man slumped in his armchair.
It’s just a joke, but the idea that life starts simple and gets more complex over time persists even in scientific circles. Yet one of the biggest events in evolutionary history — the origin of the cells that make up every tissue in our bodies — may be a case of life getting less complicated, according to recent research.
These types of cells are called eukaryotes, and they're found in organisms from fungi to humans. They look like the souped-up versions of simpler cells such as bacteria and their distant cousins called archaea. Many researchers think eukaryotes are the descendants of either bacteria or archaea, or some combination of the two. But genetic and protein evidence do not support this view, researchers report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.
LiveScience via MSNBC: Humans still evolving as our brains shrink
By Charles Q. Choi
Evolution in humans is commonly thought to have essentially stopped in recent times. But there are plenty of examples that the human race is still evolving, including our brains, and there are even signs that our evolution may be accelerating.
Comprehensive scans of the human genome reveal that hundreds of our genes show evidence of changes during the past 10,000 years of human evolution.
"We know the brain has been evolving in human populations quite recently," said paleoanthropologist John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Biodiversity
Discovery News via MSNBC: Scientists develop ‘super’ bee to battle parasite
By Cristen Conger
In an effort to stem a massive bee die-off, government scientists have developed a population of honeybees that can root out a main culprit in the epidemic — a parasite that feeds on pupae in nests and spreads viruses within hives.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists hope the population of Varroa mite-detecting honeybees could potentially improve the health of the overall honeybee population.
Domestic honeybee stocks have been waning since 2004 because of a mysterious illness scientists call colony collapse disorder, which causes adult bees to forsake their broods. During the winter of 2007, the disorder wiped out around 1 million colonies in North America.
LiveScience via MSNBC: Monkey business: Baboon may have been mate
By Jeanna Bryner
One of Africa's rarest monkeys likely interbred with baboons in its past, new genetic research suggests.
The large monkey called Rungwecebus kipunji, or kipunji for short, was only discovered in 2003, and in 2006 it was found to be an entirely new primate genus, the first such addition since 1923. The shy tree-dwelling monkey, with a black face and long brown fur, resides in two forest patches in Tanzania totaling just 7 square miles.
Scientists aren't sure when baboons, which include several species in the Papio genus, diverged from Rungwecebus. But the two look different, with baboons sporting a long flat nose not found in kipunji, and male baboons typically boasting a much larger body size, reaching up to about 65 pounds. Male kipunji can weigh up to about 30 pounds.
Biotechnology/Health
The Economist: Holy shit!
AS THE world’s fatties clock up the kilos, their excuses for being that way have piled up, too. Big bones, junk foods, genes or poor parenting—there are plenty of directions in which to point a chubby finger. In the past few years, a new potential culprit has emerged: gut bacteria. Human guts are full of bugs that help digestion and also stop their disease-causing counterparts from invading. In this age-old symbiosis, some bacteria are better than others at providing food to their human hosts—and also seem, by mechanisms yet unknown, to encourage those hosts’ bodies to store that energy as fat and to keep the fat on.
In the past, when food was in limited supply, these bacteria would have been valuable allies. In an era of plenty, though, they are problematic. In particular, work on mice suggests obesity is associated with having a high proportion of bacteria called Firmicutes, whereas the lean favour another group, the Bacteroidetes. Such work has also raised the suggestion that transplanting "lean mouse" microbes to fat mice can make them thinner—for a while.
The Economist: Athlete's foot
IS ATHLETIC prowess attained or innate? Those who have suffered the tongue-lashing of a tyrannical games master at school might be forgiven for doubting the idea that anyone and everyone is capable of great sporting achievement, if only they would put enough effort into it. Practice may make perfect, but not all are built in ways that make it worth bothering in the first place.
The latest evidence of this truth has been gathered by Sabrina Lee of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and Stephen Piazza at Pennsylvania State University. They have looked at the anatomy of sprinters and found that their feet are built differently from those of couch potatoes.
Dr Lee and Dr Piazza already knew that sprinters tend to have a higher proportion of fast-twitching muscle fibres in their legs than more sedentary folk can muster. (These fibres, as their name suggests, provide instant anaerobic pulling power, rather than the sustained, oxygen-consuming effort that is needed by longer-distance runners.) They suspected, though, that they would find differences in the bone structure as well. And they did.
Climate/Environment
Discovery News: Northern Forests Crucial Carbon Sink
By Jessica Marshall
High latitude forests store more carbon than tropical rainforests, making them an underappreciated player in the future of global climate change, according to a new report.
Recent studies suggest that there may be as much as two to three times more carbon sequestered there than previously thought, the report said.
The boreal forest -- composed mainly of evergreen trees and blanketed in deep peat -- encircles the globe across Canada, Alaska, Siberia and Scandinavia, from near the U.S.-Canada border north above the Arctic Circle.
MSNBC: Warning sign: Record highs are double the lows
Climate scientists normally are wary of associating daily weather events to longer term climate change, but new research does just that by showing that daily record high temperatures across the continental U.S. occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade.
"Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather," Gerald Meehl, a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in a statement announcing the research. "The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting."
Moreover, that 2:1 ratio is likely to increase dramatically if greenhouse gas emissions keep rising, the experts said.
MSNBC: South, north poles and Everest in one year?
By Miguel Llanos
So here's the challenge: be the first person to ever trek to the South Pole, North Pole and top of Mount Everest in one year. It's not so much the "first-ever" label that Eric Larsen is after, but attention for his favorite cause: saving the ice.
Satellite and on-the-ground measurements show that the Arctic is quickly losing its sea ice in the summer, while some parts of Antarctica, particularly the Antarctic Peninsula, are melting fast.
As an ice addict, Larsen, 38, already has first-hand experience at both ends of the Earth. He completed a 41-day South Pole trek last January, and a North Pole trip in 2006. The latter was particularly hazardous due to shifting sea ice.
Newsweek: Environmental Economics
By Daniel Stone
With its legs buried underwater, the mangrove is a case study in evolutionary biology. Found mostly in coastal areas in the tropics, mangroves are essentially low-growing trees that blanket shallow waters with their roots. To small animals, the structures provide a haven and a food source. To the coastlines, they reduce the impact of raucous waves that could wash away beaches. Calculating what they do for humans, however, is a more dubious pursuit. They're nice to look at and cushion the impact of tsunamis, but if they disappeared, would there be a net loss?
From an economic standpoint, what mangroves or other local fauna contribute has long been considered about equal to what they take away: roughly, nothing. Rarely is there a calculus of wider ecosystem services, like water purification or, on a larger scale, carbon emissions that affect agriculture, medicinal research, and global fisheries. But a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme identifies the economic contribution of ecosystems and biodiversity as significant—and lucrative. Mangroves in Vietnam, it turns out, save annual expenditures on dike maintenance of more than $7 million. And in another example: it would cost $200 million to replicate the services provided by natural springs in New Zealand.
Geology
New Scientist: Mini ice age took hold of Europe in months
by Kate Ravilious
JUST months - that's how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age. The scenario, which comes straight out of Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, was revealed by the most precise record of the climate from palaeohistory ever generated.
Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or "Big Freeze". It was triggered by the slowdown of the Gulf Stream, led to the decline of the Clovis culture in North America, and lasted around 1300 years.
Until now, it was thought that the mini ice age took a decade or so to take hold, on the evidence provided by Greenland ice cores. Not so, say William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Psychology/Behavior
New Scientist: Signature of consciousness captured in brain scans
by Anil Ananthaswamy
A telltale signature of consciousness has been detected that takes us a step closer to disentangling the brain activity underlying conscious and unconscious brain processes.
It turns out that there is a similar pattern of neural activity each time we become conscious of the same picture, but not if we process information from the image unconsciously. These contrasting patterns of activity can now be detected via brain scans, and could one day help determine if patients with brain damage are conscious. They might even be used to probe consciousness in animals.
"It's very exciting work," says neuroscientist Raphaël Gaillard of the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the work. "The use of a reproducibility measure to disentangle conscious and non-conscious processes is genuinely new." Gaillard has previously shown that coordinated activity across the entire brain is one of the signatures of consciousness.
Archeology/Anthropology
The Telegraph (UK): Archaeologists believe they have discovered the palace of Japan's "Boadicea" – the warrior Queen Himiko.
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo
The building covering nearly 300 square metres was located close to the city of Sakurai and the former Japanese capital of Nara, 300 miles south-west of Tokyo.
Built on stilts, the structure was found beside three other aligned buildings, leading archaeologists to believe it is the site of Himiko's Yamatai palace.
"A building cluster that is placed in such a well-planned manner is unprecedented in Japan at that period in time," Hironobu Ishino, director of the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Archaeology, told Kyodo News.
BBC: Roman ruins found under theatre
An ancient Roman ruin has been discovered by builders working on the £25.6m redevelopment of the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury.
The townhouse, thought to date from between the late second and early third Centuries, is believed to have belonged to a wealthy citizen.
Archaeologists found the remains of the building's under-floor heating, leather shoes, seeds and a plate.
The Macon Telegraph: Excavation finds in Telfair could rewrite history on DeSoto
A Telfair County archaeological site has yielded the largest number of early Spanish artifacts ever found outside Florida, prompting its lead archaeologist to conclude that it – and not Macon – was a location visited by Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto.
"It really is a big deal," said Dennis Blanton, a Fernbank Museum archaeologist who presented a paper on the findings at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference last week. "Some went so far as to use the words ‘slam dunk.’ But those who have devoted their careers to the topic want to see more. I’ve joked: What’s it going to take, monogrammed cuff links?"
Knoxville News Sentinel: Remnants of fort along Trail of Tears yield relics, unique look at history
COKER CREEK, Tenn. - It has been more than 170 years since the dark days of the Cherokees' forced removal from their lands in Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas.
Twenty-nine forts were used by the U.S. government to gather and temporarily house the migrating Cherokee, along with their families and slaves.
Cities with names like Hayesville and Murphy in North Carolina, Calhoun in Georgia, Charleston in Tennessee, and Fort Payne in Alabama have been built over most of these sites, so most of the physical fortifications have disappeared.
But remnants of one fort have been discovered in East Tennessee.
KARE-11 (Minneapolis): Archaeological dig happening in the middle of Saint Paul
SAINT PAUL -- Built in 1900, an old church once stood here at the corner of Englewood and Asbury in Saint Paul, but burned down Christmas night in 1925. United Methodist stands now, but the old church's foundation was untouched.
"The original church was right here," said Brian Hoffman, Professor.
Now, a small number of students can participate in an archaeological study at Hamline University, Minnesota's oldest University.
Physorg.com: Submersibles discover top-secret Japanese submarines
Two World War II Japanese submarines, designed with revolutionary technology to attack the U.S. mainland, have been discovered off the Hawaiian coast of O'ahu. They are the I-14, which carried two aircraft while submerged; and the I-201, one of the fastest attack subs of WWII. The submarines are widely believed to have been intentionally sunk by the U.S. Navy at the end of the war to keep the technology from the Soviet Union.
The announcement of the discovery was made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Undersea Research Lab at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa and by National Geographic Channel.
The subs, intended as part of a top-secret plan by the Imperial Japanese Navy to attack the U.S. mainland, including New York City and Washington, D.C., were last seen in 1946 when the American Navy intentionally sunk them, reportedly to keep their advanced technology out of Soviet hands during the opening chapters of the Cold War.
The Guardian (UK): UK scholars linked to 'stolen' bowls of Babylon
Vanessa Thorpe and James Doeser
A secret report on the chequered history of priceless Aramaic bowls loaned to a leading university has exposed an apparent attempt to cover up UK academic connections to a potentially deadly trade in stolen Iraqi antiquities.
The findings of the study, which was suppressed by a controversial legal agreement in 2007, have at last solved a long-standing archaeological mystery.
Commissioned by University College London in 2005, it confirms the expert view that the bowls were stolen from the historical site of Babylon and should be returned to Iraq or handed over to the police. The report was completed in 2006 but suppressed a year later in a legal settlement made between the university and the putative owner of the bowls, the multimillionaire Norwegian collector, Martin Schøyen.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
MSNBC's Cosmic Log: HOW THE MAYA LIVED
by Alan Boyle
Murals found on a buried Mexican pyramid reveal how the average Maya lived about 1,350 years ago - shedding light on aspects of Maya society that are "virtually unknown," researchers say.
Almost all of the artifacts associated with the ancient Maya civilization have to do with the ruling class and religious life: the secrets of the Maya's ritual blue paint, or their monumental religious panels, or the arrangement of their temples, or even their controversial calendar.
In contrast, precious little has remained from the everyday lifestyles of ordinary Maya. Some hints have emerged in recent years. For example, archaeologists analyzed the chemical residues of Classic Maya settlements to determine that the Maya had a functioning market economy. But when it comes to visualizing how that market worked, the murals found at Mexico's Calakmul site provide the best picture yet.
Physics
MSNBC's Cosmic Log: BIRD VS. BIG BANG MACHINE
by Alan Boyle
The world's biggest and most expensive particle-smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, is all warmed up (and cooled down) for a fresh start after a few snags, including an unfortunate incident that involved a bird and a baguette.
Fourteen months ago, the LHC began operating in the middle of a media spotlight fit for a rock star - but broke down after only nine days. A faulty electrical interconnection between the underground collider ring's high-powered magnets, coupled with a helium leak, caused significant damage to the ring - and the LHC has been closed for repairs ever since.
Those repairs included the installation of a magnet protection system that would automatically shut down the collider if anything similar should happen again. The LHC is now undergoing its final checkouts, including a test last weekend that involved sending beams of protons halfway around the ring.
The Economist: The skeleton of water
THE connection between an 18th-century savant called Joseph-Louis Lagrange and the problem of landing safely at Hong Kong International Airport may not, at first, be obvious. But there is one. Hong Kong airport is notorious for rocky and sometimes aborted landings caused by the disturbed air flow from nearby mountains. Though laser technology is deployed alongside its runways to monitor changes in wind speed and thus forewarn pilots, that is often not enough. What is needed is a better understanding of the theory of the winds themselves.
And this is where Lagrange comes in. He was a pioneer of the study of moving fluids (among many other things), but his ideas outran the computational tools of his day. Only now, with supercomputers available to help with the calculations, is it possible to explore those ideas completely. What is emerging is a picture of fluid dynamics more subtle and more complex than anything dreamed of even a decade ago. The atmosphere and the ocean are, it seems, dominated by invisible barriers that have come to be known as Lagrangian coherent structures. They govern the movement of everything from the trajectories of aircraft to the distribution of pollution, the migration of jellyfish and the tracks taken by hurricanes. They are, as it were, the skeletons of the sea and the air.
Chemistry
Discovery News via MSNBC: Snail goo may turn out to be a lifesaver
By Eric Bland
The next time you bungee jump off a cliff, new materials developed in the United States and Canada may be able to provide you with a smoother ride.
Based on mermaid's necklace, a gooey, stringy material snails use to protect their growing embryos, the synthetic substance could have a range of applications, from bounce-less bungee cords to replacement, artificial ligaments for knees and other joints.
"These delicate little critters are tossed around for months and months by very large breakers and manage to survive," said Herbert Waite, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and co-author of a new paper in the journal Nature Materials who is studying the mermaid's necklace.
The Economist: Seeing clearly
FAMILIAR friends can nevertheless sometimes surprise people. Such has been the case with a compound used to make the first solid-state batteries some 40 years ago. Researchers have now found that it can also be used to build transistors that are transparent and hence suitable for use in electronic books and head-up displays.
Sodium beta-alumina was discovered in the 19th century when the process of extracting aluminium from its ore, bauxite, was being developed. It is formed of alternating layers of aluminium oxide and sodium ions. In 1967 researchers at the Ford Motor Company discovered that it conducts these ions as though it were a liquid. That spawned the first solid-state batteries.
For two decades or so, the stuff was the darling of battery engineering. Then better ionic conductors and more promising designs emerged, and its popularity waned. Now a team of researchers led by Howard Katz of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, has discovered that sodium beta-alumina has other interesting electrical properties which make it suitable for building transistors.
Energy
Physorg.com: Switching Gears to Greener Transportation
by Michael Mullaney
Automakers around the world continue to slowly infuse their cars and trucks with greener, more efficient technology, but researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute contend that technology alone will not solve the puzzle of sustainable transportation. Through incentives for nighttime deliveries, real-time traffic reporting, and improved safety, professors William Wallace and José Holguín-Veras are seeking to address the critical human elements of where, when, and how we drive.
"Sustainability is a multifaceted monster that we simply cannot tackle from any one single perspective. The problem is so vast, and so complex, that solving it is going to require a comprehensive, systematic, holistic approach. And at the end of the day, we’re going to have to do more with less," said Holguín-Veras, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rensselaer. "The importance of the transportation sector in terms of energy and the environment is undeniable."
Take, for example, the statistics that show transportation accounts for nearly 30 percent of the total energy consumed in the United States, and up to 54 percent of emissions of different greenhouse gasses. Pair this information with Holguín-Veras’ research findings that current freight practices are highly inefficient and, on average, delivery trucks utilize only 20 percent of their cargo space - and one-fourth of trucks you see driving around are completely empty. The need for change, and the rampant waste of fuel and energy, Holguín-Veras said, are readily apparent.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
The Economist: A matter of faith
"A BELIEF in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperatives is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations."
Those were the words of an English High Court judge, Mr Justice Burton, on November 3rd as he ruled that green beliefs deserve the same protection in the workplace as religious convictions. A person’s right to believe in anthropogenic climate change, and not be hounded out of his job because of it, is now enshrined in law.
The case on which the judge ruled was that of Tim Nicholson, who used to be "head of sustainability" for a residential-property firm called Grainger. Mr Nicholson was relieved of his duties at Grainger in July 2008 and in March of this year was told by a tribunal that he could pursue an unfair-dismissal case, believing, as he did, that he had been sacked on the grounds of his eco-minded beliefs.
Science Writing and Reporting
Wired: Underdog Planet: Why We Love Pluto
By Betsy Mason
For such a small member of the solar system, about which relatively little is known, Pluto has an impressive following. When the news that the ninth planet had been stripped of its planethood got out, the public outcry was immediate. From school children to space enthusiasts, and many in between, people leapt to Pluto’s defense.
How did it inspire so much support from so many corners? Why did the International Astronomical Union decide to demote Pluto to a dwarf planet? Is there any hope the popular celestial object will regain its planetary status?
To find out, Wired.com spoke with MSNBC.com science editor Alan Boyle, who reported on the events that culminated in Pluto’s ouster for his blog Cosmic Log as they unfolded. Now Boyle has reported the rest of the intriguing story in his new book "The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference," which comes in an appropriately endearing little package.
Wired.com: The Fight for the Ninth Planet
by Alan Boyle
If there’s still someone out there who thinks science and politics never mix, the story behind the Battle of Prague should change your mind.
Some have cast the debate that took place in the Czech capital during the summer of 2006 as a battle against American scientists who wanted to keep the only planet discovered by an American on an unreasonably high pedestal. On the other side of the argument, there are those who suspect that the rest of the world wanted to see Pluto demoted to punish America for its unpopular foreign policy.
But we’re not talking about that kind of politics. We’re not even talking about a battle between the fans and foes of Pluto per se. Instead of thinking in terms of Republicans versus Democrats, or Plutophiles versus Plutoclasts, you have to think in terms of planetary conservatives versus liberals — or, more accurately, dynamicists versus geophysicists. The skirmishes over the definition of planethood that took place in Prague weren’t so much about poor little Pluto, but about two different ways of seeing the solar system.
MSNBC's Cosmic Log: SCIENCE STORIES THAT SOAR
by Alan Boyle
This summer's animated movie "Up" and last month's weird tale of the balloon boy may have given you your fill of high-flying fiction - but if you're looking for factual sagas that soar, check out this year's winners of the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards. There's even a story about a kid with a balloon.
Every year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science convenes independent panels of science journalists to select the top stories in several categories of science writing and broadcasting. The winners in each category will receive $3,000 and a plaque in February at the AAAS' 2010 annual meeting in San Diego.
I was lucky enough to receive the award for online journalism in 2002, for a series of stories about genetic genealogy, and the recognition ranks among the highlights of my career. This year's winners raise the bar incredibly high.
Science is Cool
Discovery News via MSNBC: World not ending in 2012, says NASA
By Irene Klotz
Contrary to what you may read on the Internet, the world is not going to end in 2012. A rogue planet named Nibiru is not on a collision course with Earth. And a solar flare won't toast the planet.
It's all fiction, though the makers of the film "2012" may lead you to think otherwise.
"I don't have anything against the movie. It's the way it's been marketed and the way it exploits people's fears," NASA scientist David Morrison at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., told Discovery News.
LiveScience via MSNBC: Friday the 13th: Your luck is about to change
If Friday the 13th is unlucky, then 2009 has been an unusually unlucky year. But your luck is about to change. Today is the last of three Friday the 13ths you'll have to endure this year.
The other two were in February and March. Such a rare triple-threat occurs only once every 11 years.
The origin of the link between bad luck and Friday the 13th is murky. The whole thing might date to Biblical times (the 13th guest at the Last Supper betrayed Jesus). By the Middle Ages, both Friday and the number 13 were considered bearers of bad fortune. In modern times, the superstition permeates society.