Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, energy, and the environment.
This week's featured story comes from Nature.
2010 Review of the Year
The Deepwater Horizon went up in flames in the Gulf of Mexico and a US court unexpectedly suspended all federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. Meanwhile, the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, unveiled a 'synthetic cell' and reports of arsenic-based life sparked controversy. Nature looks back at a dramatic year in science.
More on the year in science and other science-related stories after the jump.
The Year 2010 in Science
See Tip Jar #1
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
DarkSyde: This week in science
dnpvd0111: Can Thorium Replace Oil?
Slideshows/Videos
National Science Foundation: Disappearing Red Shrimp
These legendary creatures may have something to teach us about survival, even as the clock is ticking on their habitats
Astronomy/Space
Massachussetts Institute of Technology: Earth's Twin
This is a three-part series about exoplanets--"Building a list of Earth candidates," "Learning from hot Jupiters," and "The final frontier."
Massachussetts Institute of Technology: Earth’s final growth spurt
NASA team suggests that massive projectiles added mass to Earth, Mars and the Moon during final phase of planet formation
Morgan Bettex, MIT News Office
What led to water on the interior of the Moon or the formation of the Borealis basin that covers 40 percent of the surface of Mars? And what caused at least some of Earth’s tilt — without which there would be no change of seasons?
New research from NASA’s Lunar Science Institute points to the same culprit: rocky bodies known as planetesimals that populated the solar system billions of years ago and eventually clumped together to form planets. As the planets and the Moon (which was created by a massive impact between a Mars-sized body and the young Earth) continued to cool several hundred million years after their formation, planetary scientists believe that planetesimals struck them again.
Now scientists are one step closer to pinpointing the size of those rocky bodies that hit at the end of planet formation, a process known as accretion. Knowing this detail is important for understanding the evolution of Earth’s surface and interior, and for understanding how Earth developed an environment that encouraged life. As Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the Mitsui Career Development Assistant Professor of Geology in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and researchers from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), the University of Maryland and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, suggest in a paper published last week in Science, the last bits of mass delivered by planetesimals to Earth, the Moon and Mars during the final stage of their formation did not consist of lots of tiny bodies, but rather, a handful of massive objects.
National Science Foundation: NSF/NASA Scientific Balloon Launches From Antarctica
This season's annual scientific balloon campaign, which is held by NSF and NASA, will conduct varied experiments using ultra-sophisticated instrumentation
December 21, 2010
NASA and the National Science Foundation launched a scientific balloon on Monday, December 20, Eastern Standard time, to study the effects of cosmic rays on Earth. It was the first of five scientific balloons scheduled to launch from Antarctica in December.
The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM VI) experiment was designed and built at the University of Maryland. CREAM is investigating high-energy cosmic-ray particles that originated from distant supernovae explosions in the Milky Way and reached Earth. Currently, CREAM VI is floating 126,000 ft above Antarctica with nominal science operations.
Two smaller, hand-launched space science payloads have already been launched, flown and successfully terminated. They carried the Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses (BARREL) experiment designed and constructed at Dartmouth College. BARREL will provide answers on how and where Earth's Van Allen radiation belts, which produce the polar aurora, periodically interact with Earth's upper atmosphere. These test flights will help scientists prepare for similar flight experiments scheduled for launch in 2013 and 2014.
Evolution/Paleontology
University of Bristol (UK) via physorg.com: Long recovery from the largest extinction in history revealed in China's new fossil site
December 22, 2010
A major new fossil site in south-west China has filled in a sizeable gap in our understanding of how life on this planet recovered from the greatest mass extinction of all time, according to a paper co-authored by Professor Mike Benton, in the School of Earth Sciences, and published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The work is led by scientists from the Chengdu Geological Center in China.
Some 250 million years ago, at the end of the time known as the Permian, life was all but wiped out during a sustained period of massive volcanic eruption and devastating global warming. Only one in ten species survived, and these formed the basis for the recovery of life in the subsequent time period, called the Triassic. The new fossil site – at Luoping in Yunnan Province – provides a new window on that recovery, and indicates that it took about 10 million years for a fully-functioning ecosystem to develop.
"The Luoping site dates from the Middle Triassic and contains one of the most diverse marine fossil records in the world," said Professor Benton. ‘It has yielded 20,000 fossils of fishes, reptiles, shellfish, shrimps and other seabed creatures. We can tell that we’re looking at a fully recovered ecosystem because of the diversity of predators, most notably fish and reptiles. It’s a much greater diversity than what we see in the Early Triassic – and it’s close to pre-extinction levels.’
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Massachussetts Institute of Technology: Scientists decipher 3 billion-year-old genomic fossil
By Denise Brehm
Civil & Environmental Engineering
About 580 million years ago, life on Earth began a rapid period of change called the Cambrian Explosion, a period defined by the birth of new life forms over many millions of years that ultimately helped bring about the modern diversity of animals. Fossils help palaeontologists chronicle the evolution of life since then, but drawing a picture of life during the 3 billion years that preceded the Cambrian Period is challenging, because the soft-bodied Precambrian cells rarely left fossil imprints. However, those early life forms did leave behind one abundant microscopic fossil: DNA.
Because all living organisms inherit their genomes — the entire package of hereditary information existing in their DNA and RNA — from ancestral genomes, computational biologists at MIT reasoned that they could use modern-day genomes to reconstruct the evolution of ancient microbes. They combined information from the ever-growing genome library with their own mathematical model that takes into account the ways that genes evolve: new gene families can be born and inherited; genes can be swapped or horizontally transferred between organisms; genes can be duplicated in the same genome; and genes can be lost.
The scientists traced thousands of genes from 100 modern genomes back to those genes’ first appearance on Earth to create a genomic fossil telling not only when genes came into being but also which ancient microbes possessed those genes. The work suggests that the collective genome of all life underwent an expansion between 3.3 and 2.8 billion years ago, during which time 27 percent of all presently existing gene families came into being.
Biodiversity
Wildlife Extra: Leaked US memo discloses that pesticide may be responsible for bee decline
December 2010. In a leaked memo US government scientists warn that bees and other non-target invertebrates are at risk from a new neonicotinoid pesticide licence and that tests in the approval process are unable to detect environmental damage. This has reignited concerns raised in a 2009 scientific report by UK charity Buglife - The Invertebrate Conservation Trust.
Risk to bees and aquatic insects
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists flagged up the risks to honey-bees and aquatic insects that would result if the US Government approved the request from Bayer to expand the use of the neonicotinoid clothianidin to include cotton and mustard.
Hat/Tip to Progressive Congress News for this link.
San Francisco Chronicle via Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's Blogspot: Avian enthusiasts brave rain for annual bird count
Ed Vine's tan baseball cap reads: "Life is Simple. Eat. Sleep. Bird."
But on Sunday, that wasn't the clearest sign of the Berkeley resident's enthusiasm for the unconventional hobby of birding. It was the fact that - despite the wind and rain and cold, and even with flooded, muddy trails that threatened to swallow boots whole - he got out at the crack of dawn to take part in the East Bay's annual Christmas Bird Count.
"We tend to say 'wow' a lot," admitted Vine, 60, a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, after a chorus of appreciation was offered up for a great blue heron that lived up to its name.
High Country News: Super mouse to the rescue
Emilene Ostlind | Dec 20, 2010 05:00 AM
What's three inches long and can leap tall buildings in a single bound?
It's a bird. It's a really, really small plane. No! It's the Preble's meadow jumping mouse!
Well, maybe it can't leap over a building, but the little rodent can jump a foot and a half up in the air, cover twice that distance horizontally, and swivel its 6-inch-long whip of a tail to change direction mid-flight. Its most supernatural feat, however, is not vaulting over buildings, but stopping them from being built in the first place. The mouse, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, has achieved the seemingly impossible: protecting some areas from sprawl on Colorado's ever-urbanizing Front Range.
Science: Researchers Split African Elephants Into Two Species
by Virginia Morell on 21 December 2010, 5:37 PM
It would be hard to confuse Africa's forest elephants and savanna elephants. Forest elephants, found in dense West African forests, have longer, straighter tusks and round, not pointed, ears. They're also 1 meter shorter and weigh half as much as the savanna elephants, which range from South to East Africa. Yet for years, scientists have classified the two as the same species, arguing that they were slightly different populations that mingled on the edges of the forest. A new genetic analysis, however, finds that forest and savanna elephants are as different from each other as modern Asian elephants are from ancient mammoths. The findings, which split the elephants into two species, could improve the conservation of African elephants overall, say researchers.
Biotechnology/Health
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Learning to Read the Genome
The most detailed annotation yet of the fruit-fly genome points the way to understanding the genomes of all organisms
December 22, 2010
In the past decade researchers have made astonishing progress in the rapid and accurate sequencing of genomes from all realms of life. Yet the listing of chemical base pairs has gotten far ahead of understanding how the information they contain becomes functional. Even the best-understood genomes conceal mysteries.
Genetic information carried by DNA and RNA operates together with the patterns and physical organization of chromosomes to produce a working organism. Major advances in understanding these complex relationships are published this week by the "model organism Encyclopedia of DNA Elements" (modENCODE) project, funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Human Genome Research Institute. These new insights into reading the genome apply not only to the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, modENCODE’s two model organisms, but will apply to human beings and many other organisms as well.
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"Drosophila may be the single most thoroughly studied model organism; it allowed us to discover, a century ago, that chromosomes are the carriers of genetic information," says Celniker, whose group studies the transcriptome. The transcriptome is the totality of RNA forms that transmit genetic information to the cellular machinery which constructs functioning proteins, as well as the noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expression, splicing, RNA stability, and metabolism. Yet, says Celniker, "there’s still a lot of undiscovered territory."
University of California: Imaging advance captures lung's immune response
SAN FRANCISCO — Fast-moving objects create blurry images in photography, and the same challenge exists when scientists observe cellular interactions within tissues constantly in motion, such as the breathing lung. In a recent UCSF-led study in mice, researchers developed a method to stabilize living lung tissue for imaging without disrupting the normal function of the organ. The method allowed the team to observe, for the first time, both the live interaction of living cells in the context of their environment and the unfolding of events in the immune response to lung injury.
The finding impacts disease research, the authors say, because the ability to image the lung and other organs with minimum tissue disruption allows scientists to look deeper into the many physiological aspects of injury and diseases like diabetes or cancer.
"The nature of disease is complex, so if scientists can observe in real-time what's happening in tumors or immune responses as they occur, we can find new ways to intervene," said senior author Max Krummel, UCSF associate professor of pathology, whose lab developed the new imaging technique for seeing minute details of cellular interaction in tissues.
"We figured out a method for holding cells still enough to image them without interrupting their normal processes. This enabled us to observe cellular events as they happen naturally rather than the usual way, which is to stop the motion of cellular processes in order to photograph them."
University of California: Human immune system has backup plan
SAN DIEGO — New research by scientists at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences reveals that the immune system has an effective backup plan to protect the body from infection when the "master regulator" of the body's innate immune system fails. The study appears in the Dec. 19 online issue of the journal Nature Immunology.
The innate immune system defends the body against infections caused by bacteria and viruses, but also causes inflammation which, when uncontrolled, can contribute to chronic illnesses such as heart disease, arthritis, type 2 diabetes and cancer. A molecule known as nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kB) has been regarded as the "master regulator" of the body's innate immune response, receiving signals of injury or infection and activating genes for microbial killing and inflammation.
Led by Michael Karin, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, the UC San Diego team studied the immune function of laboratory mice in which genetic tools were used to block the pathway for NF-kB activation. While prevailing logic suggested these mice should be highly susceptible to bacterial infection, the researchers made the unexpected and counterintuitive discovery that NF-kB-deficient mice were able to clear bacteria that cause a skin infection even more quickly than normal mice.
University of California: Asthma disproportionately hits low-income groups
Almost 5 million Californians have been diagnosed with asthma, and those living in poverty suffer more severe consequences from the condition than those in higher income brackets, according to a new report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
Low-income Californians with asthma experience more frequent symptoms, end up in the emergency room or hospital more often, and miss more days of work and school, researchers found.
Of the more than 600,000 Californians who experience frequent — daily or weekly — symptoms that can signal uncontrolled asthma, a significant proportion (39.1 percent) earn less than 200 percent of the federal government's poverty standard (FPL). In 2007, 200 percent of the FPL for a family of four was $41,300. By contrast, 19.3 percent of those with incomes of 400 percent of the FPL or higher suffer frequent symptoms from their asthma.
University of California: SIDS spikes on New Year's Day
SAN DIEGO — Not a happy holiday thought, but an important one: The number of babies who die of SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome, surges by 33 percent on New Year’s Day. The suspected reason? Alcohol consumption by caretakers the night before.
Led by sociologist David Phillips of the University of California, San Diego, the study documenting the dramatic rise in SIDS deaths on New Year’s is published in the journal Addiction. The spike, write Phillips and his coauthors, is beyond the normal winter increase in SIDS.
The study examined 129,090 SIDS cases from 1973 to 2006 using three multiyear nationwide datasets: computerized death certificates, the linked birth and infant death dataset, and the Fatality Analysis Reporting System. The authors say it is the first, large-scale U.S. study to explore possible connections between alcohol and SIDS.
Climate/Environment
National Science Foundation: Ocean Acidification Changes Nitrogen Cycling in World Seas
New results indicate potential to reduce certain greenhouse gas emissions from oceans to atmosphere
December 20, 2010
Increasing acidity in the sea's waters may fundamentally change how nitrogen is cycled in them, say marine scientists who published their findings in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Nitrogen is one of the most important nutrients in the oceans. All organisms, from tiny microbes to blue whales, use nitrogen to make proteins and other important compounds.
Some microbes can also use different chemical forms of nitrogen as a source of energy.
One of these groups, the ammonia oxidizers, plays a pivotal role in determining which forms of nitrogen are present in the ocean. In turn, they affect the lives of many other marine organisms.
National Science Foundation: Global Rivers Emit Three Times IPCC Estimates of Greenhouse Gas Nitrous Oxide
Waterways receiving nitrogen from human activities are significant source
December 20, 2010
What goes in must come out, a truism that now may be applied to global river networks.
Human-caused nitrogen loading to river networks is a potentially important source of nitrous oxide emission to the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and stratospheric ozone destruction.
It happens via a microbial process called denitrification, which converts nitrogen to nitrous oxide and an inert gas called dinitrogen.
When summed across the globe, scientists report this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), river and stream networks are the source of at least 10 percent of human-caused nitrous oxide emissions to the atmosphere.
That's three times the amount estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
University of California: 2010 Livable Buildings Awards salute UCSF, Kavli projects
By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 17 December 2010
BERKELEY — The top 2010 Livable Buildings Award from the University of California, Berkeley's Center for the Built Environment (CBE) goes to UC San Francisco for its transformation of the shell of a former manufacturing plant near UCSF's new Mission Bay research campus into environmentally and user friendly offices.
The CBE's fourth annual Livable Buildings Awards were announced today (Friday, Dec. 17), following voting on award entries by a team of judges assessing excellence of design, operation and occupant satisfaction. They are the only awards to include the preferences of building occupants in selection criteria. Award entries are open only to the top scorers in CBE's Occupant Indoor Environmental Quality Survey, which is used to study occupant satisfaction in terms of air quality, lighting, thermal comfort and overall building satisfaction and has been implemented in more than 860 buildings in North America and Europe.
The use of sustainable finish materials, reduced water usage and high-performing mechanical and lighting systems earned UCSF's redesigned space at the three-story, 645 Minnesota St. address a Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) certification.
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Meanwhile, the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, Calif., received the 2010 Livable Building Award honorable mention.
University of California: Researchers find proximity to freeway linked to autism
SACRAMENTO — Living near a freeway may be associated with increased risk of autism, according to a study published by a team of researchers from Children's Hospital Los Angeles, the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) and the UC Davis MIND Institute.
The paper will appear online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives this week.
"Children born to mothers living within 309 meters of a freeway appeared to be twice as likely to have autism," said Heather Volk, the study's first author. Volk holds joint appointments at the Community, Health Outcomes & Intervention Research Program at the Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles, the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute and the Department of Preventative Medicine at USC.
Geology
University of California, Berkeley: First measurement of magnetic field in Earth's core
By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 16 December 2010
BERKELEY — A University of California, Berkeley, geophysicist has made the first-ever measurement of the strength of the magnetic field inside Earth's core, 1,800 miles underground.
The magnetic field strength is 25 Gauss, or 50 times stronger than the magnetic field at the surface that makes compass needles align north-south. Though this number is in the middle of the range geophysicists predict, it puts constraints on the identity of the heat sources in the core that keep the internal dynamo running to maintain this magnetic field.
"This is the first really good number we've had based on observations, not inference," said author Bruce A. Buffett, professor of earth and planetary science at UC Berkeley. "The result is not controversial, but it does rule out a very weak magnetic field and argues against a very strong field."
The results are published in the Dec. 16 issue of the journal Nature.
Psychology/Behavior
Massachussetts Institute of Technology: A new way to evaluate dyslexia
Neuroscientists show that brain scans can predict whether children’s reading ability will improve.
Anne Trafton, MIT News Office
Brain scans may be able to predict which children with dyslexia are likely to improve their reading skills over time, according to a new study led by MIT and Stanford researchers.
Some 5 to 17 percent of U.S. children suffer from dyslexia, a learning disorder that makes it difficult to read. Many dyslexic children are able to make substantial improvements in reading ability, but how they do so is not well-understood, and standardized reading tests cannot predict which children are likely to become stronger readers.
If the findings are confirmed in larger studies, brain scans could be used as a prognostic tool to predict reading improvement in dyslexic children. They could also help scientists and educators develop new teaching methods that take advantage of the brain pathways that dyslexic children appear to use to compensate for their disability, says John Gabrieli, MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences. Such strategies may be able to help dyslexic children regardless of which brain patterns they show.
University of California, Berkeley: Emotional intelligence peaks as we enter our 60s, research suggests
By Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations | 16 December 2010
BERKELEY — Older people have a hard time keeping a lid on their feelings, especially when viewing heartbreaking or disgusting scenes in movies and reality shows, psychologists have found. But they're better than their younger counterparts at seeing the positive side of a stressful situation and empathizing with the less fortunate, according to research from the University of California, Berkeley.
A team of researchers led by UC Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson is tracking how our emotional strategies and responses change as we age. Their findings – published over the past year in peer-review journals – support the theory that emotional intelligence and cognitive skills can actually sharpen as we enter our 60s, giving older people an advantage in the workplace and in personal relationships.
"Increasingly, it appears that the meaning of late life centers on social relationships and caring for and being cared for by others," Levenson said. "Evolution seems to have tuned our nervous systems in ways that are optimal for these kinds of interpersonal and compassionate activities as we age."
Archeology/Anthropology
National Science Foundation: Genome of Extinct Siberian Cave-dweller Linked to Modern-day Humans
Sequencing of ancient DNA reveals new hominin population that is neither Neanderthal nor modern human
December 22, 2010
Researchers have discovered evidence of a distinct group of "archaic" humans existing outside of Africa more than 30,000 years ago at a time when Neanderthals are thought to have dominated Europe and Asia. But genetic testing shows that members of this new group were not Neanderthals, and they interbred with the ancestors of some modern humans who are alive today.
The journal Nature reported the finding this week. The National Science Foundation's Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences Division partially funded the research.
An international team of scientists led by Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, used a combination of genetic data and dental analysis to identify a previously unknown population of early humans, whom the researchers call "Denisovans." The name was taken from Denisova Cave in southern Siberia where archaeologists from the Russian Academy of Sciences recovered a bone in 2008.
The Local (Sweden): Swedish scientists study ice man bacteria samples
A team of scientists are currently examining specimens of stomach bacteria from Ötzi the Iceman, who lived about 5,300 years ago, at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute (KI).
Ötzi was discovered by two Germans tourists in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps, near Hauslabjoch in Italy close to the Austria border.
His body is usually kept frozen, but he has been thawed recently to allow experts to examine him, among them Swedish infectious disease control professor Lars Engstrand at KI.
Engstrand hopes that the samples will reveal whether Ötzi had gastric ulcer and resistant bacteria.
Syfy.com (India): 3400-yr-old Bronze Age man who broke his neck but survived, found in Spain
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a Bronze Age man that lived more than 3,400 years ago in Spain and suffered a broken hyoid bone, likely caused by a blow to his neck.
The hyoid bone is a horseshoe shaped object located at the root of the tongue. Amazingly enough the injury healed and the man lived be in his 40's. He was five and a half feet and had a "moderate" build.
"This injury is extremely rare apart from hanging and strangulation, and it is even rarer since the individual survived this injury to his neck. This injury was probably produced by a direct impact to the neck," the Unreported Heritage News quoted the research team that made the discovery, as saying
Read Write Web: Digital Tools Unlock Ancient Medical Mystery
By Curt Hopkins
Under the auspices of the Smithsonian, the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions has been digitizing and "databasing" the contents of ancient medical treatises for decades. Having done so, they were well positioned to help scholars understand the discovery of a lifetime: 2,000-year-old pills found in a shipwreck, the only ancient medicines ever discovered intact.
The Roman ship, excavated in Tuscany's Bay of Baratti in the Eighties, contained a host of medical implements, including 136 boxwood vials and tin containers. One of the latter was recently found to contain pills and those pills were in tact, the metal having held the water off for over 20 centuries.
BBC: Anglo-Saxon settlement unearthed in Northumberland
Investigations also revealed a number of other sites
The remains of an Anglo-Saxon settlement have been discovered at a surface mine in Northumberland.
Buildings and artefacts dating from the 6th to 8th centuries have been uncovered at Shotton Surface Mine, on the Blagdon Estate, near Cramlington.
The site had been investigated by archaeologists before the start of open-cast mining work.
South Bend Tribune: Marshall County roadwork digs up some history
Archaeological surveys show no major finds.
By VIRGINIA RANSBOTTOM
Tribune Staff Writer
While conducting an environmental survey for a new 7th Road corridor linking Plymouth with the new U.S. 31 in Marshall County, consultants said two right-of-way routes have previously recorded archaeological sites.
One site is still in the archaeological study phase, and the other site was a scattering of material reported by a member of the public in 1959 but of no historical significance, said Jim Pinkerton, Indiana Department of Transportation's LaPorte District communications specialist.
What the archaeological sites actually contain is confidential for fear the public could start digging around, looting and potentially destroying any significant find, he said.
Saginaw News via MLive.com: Saginaw's Castle Museum artifacts could be from Great Fire of 1893
By Bob Johnson | The Saginaw News
SAGINAW — The jumbled pile of artifacts doesn’t seem like much. There’s charred wood, a slate pencil, porcelain doll parts, ashes and fragments of a 19th-century plate.
But the objects unearthed during an archaeology dig at a lot at 1005 S. Jefferson may be evidence of an important event in Saginaw County history.
Jeffrey D. Sommer, curator of archaeology at the Castle Museum, believes the items found in late fall have ties to Saginaw's Great Fire of 1893.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
University of California: Engineers take plasmon lasers out of deep freeze
By Sarah Yang, Media Relations | 19 December 2010
BERKELEY — Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new technique that allows plasmon lasers to operate at room temperature, overcoming a major barrier to practical utilization of the technology.
The achievement, described Dec. 19 in an advanced online publication of the journal Nature Materials, is a "major step towards applications" for plasmon lasers, said the research team's principal investigator, Xiang Zhang, UC Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering and faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
"Plasmon lasers can make possible single-molecule biodetectors, photonic circuits and high-speed optical communication systems, but for that to become reality, we needed to find a way to operate them at room temperature," said Zhang, who also directs at UC Berkeley the Center for Scalable and Integrated Nanomanufacturing, established through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Nano-scale Science and Engineering Centers program.
National Science Foundation: NSF, University of Wisconsin-Madison Complete Construction of the World's Largest Neutrino Observatory
Antarctica's IceCube is among the most ambitious scientific construction projects ever attempted
December 17, 2010
Culminating a decade of planning, innovation and testing, construction of the world's largest neutrino observatory, installed in the ice of the Antarctic plateau at the geographic South Pole, was successfully completed December 18, 2010, New Zealand time.
The last of 86 holes had been drilled and a total of 5,160 optical sensors are now installed to form the main detector--a cubic kilometer of instrumented ice--of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located at the National Science Foundation's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
From its vantage point at the end of the world, IceCube provides an innovative means to investigate the properties of fundamental particles that originate in some of the most spectacular phenomena in the universe.
Chemistry
University of California: Nanomaterials biomagnify in food chain shown
SANTA BARBARA — An interdisciplinary team of researchers at UC Santa Barbara has produced a groundbreaking study of how nanoparticles are able to biomagnify in a simple microbial food chain.
"This was a simple scientific curiosity," said Patricia Holden, professor in UC Santa Barbara's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the corresponding author of the study, published in an early online edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology. "But it is also of great importance to this new field of looking at the interface of nanotechnology and the environment."
Holden's co-authors from UC Santa Barbara include Eduardo Orias, research professor of genomics with the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; Galen Stucky, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and materials; and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and staff researchers Rebecca Werlin, Randy Mielke, John Priester and Peter Stoimenov. Other co-authors are Stephan Krämer from the California Nanosystems Institute, and Gary Cherr and Susan Jackson from the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory.
Massachussetts Institute of Technology: Frost-free planes: back to the drawing board
Research from MIT and GE demonstrates that a proposed passive solution for preventing ice on wings won’t work — but suggests an alternative.
David L. Chandler, MIT News Office
The buildup of ice on surfaces can cause problems in many situations: On airplane wings or on their engine turbine blades, ice can both add weight and interfere with a wing’s lift, which can make it impossible to take off; on high-voltage electrical lines, the weight of ice can cause lines to snap, causing blackouts and endangering people nearby; and on structures such as oil-drilling rigs, it can make even basic operations treacherous for people trying to work on slippery surfaces. Preventing these icy buildups usually means using deicing materials (salt or glycol), sprinkled or sprayed on a surface, or activating heating coils embedded in the surface material.
Deicing chemicals can be toxic, and require constant application, and heating coils waste energy, so researchers have been looking for better ways of handling the problem, ideally through a passive method — one based on chemical or physical properties of the surface, and requiring no ongoing input of energy or work. But one such proposed solution — the use of a super-hydrophobic (water-repellent) coating — has been shown by new research from MIT and a team at General Electric to have serious problems.
The reason such a coating would not work has to do with frost — ice that forms on a surface directly from a vapor state, or by freezing of condensed droplets. The formation of frost, according to a study published this month in Applied Physics Letters, could completely defeat the water-repelling properties of a surface that normally would inhibit ice buildup — and, in fact, could actually promote ice formation. But the study also suggests that a more complicated, patterned surface might still work.
Energy
Business Green: Scientists hail plant-mimicking solar technology
Paper published in Science details how rare earth metal could harness the sun's power to produce fuel from CO2
By BusinessGreen staff
24 Dec 2010
A group of US and Swiss scientists have this week unveiled details of an innovative new solar technology that promises to mimic plant life by harnessing the sun's energy to turn carbon dioxide or water into usable fuels.
According to a paper published in the journal Science, the researchers have developed a prototype system that uses a metal oxide called ceria to break down carbon dioxide and water to produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen respectively.
EU sets sail for solar-powered space travelThe hydrogen could then theoretically be used to power fuel cells while a combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen could be used to create a syngas that can be burnt to generate energy.
Business Green: Scotland generates quarter of electricity from renewables
Second upbeat renewables report in as many days brings Christmas cheer to clean tech sector
By BusinessGreen staff
Scotland is already generating more than a quarter of its electricity from renewable sources, according to new figures released this week that underline the country's position as one of Europe's leading clean tech hubs.
Statistics published yesterday show that renewables contributed to more than 27 per cent of Scotland's electricity use in 2009, as total electricity consumption decreased by four per cent.
The figures show that the amount of electricity from renewables increased by 20 per cent, while wind, wave and solar energy capacity rose by 37 per cent year on year.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Columbia Missourian: The atlatl's first season in Missouri comes to a close
BY Regina Wang
COLUMBIA — Gripping an atlatl made from his father’s old cherry tree, Eric Smith held his breath in the woods, motionless. He held up his arm, ready to pierce the heart of a deer with his spearlike weapon.
He saw a deer coming at him.
Fifteen feet away, an eight-point buck stood right behind a cedar tree. Smith thrust his atlatl at the buck. The dart landed right by its feet. The thickness of his gloves, he soon discovered, prevented him from having precise and total control over the atlatl. He decided to remove his glove.
Smith was close to being the first person in Missouri to capture a deer with the atlatl, a primitive weapon that became legalized for deer hunting in the Show-Me State this year.
I think this is the first story about deer hunting that I've posted.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
N.Y. Times: EPA Agrees to Limit Emissions From Power Plants, Refineries
By GABRIEL NELSON of Greenwire
Published: December 23, 2010
Threatened with lawsuits from environmental groups, the Obama administration has agreed to issue another round of greenhouse gas limits for both power plants and refineries -- this time through a provision of the Clean Air Act that allows U.S. EPA to require pollution controls at both new and existing facilities.
The agreement suggests the administration plans to press forward with its efforts to address climate change, despite the failure of the cap-and-trade bill in the Senate this year and the expectation of a backlash in Congress once regulation-averse Republicans seize control of the House next month.
Under today's deal with several states and environmental groups, EPA plans to issue a "modest" set of performance standards for two sectors that produce about 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, air chief Gina McCarthy told reporters this morning.
High Country News: Wilderness creates jobs too!
Judith Lewis Mernit | Dec 23, 2010 02:10 PM
If you were to submit today’s Department of Interior press conference to a Facebook word ranking game, it would probably look something like this:
JOBS
ECONOMY
BILLION
DOLLARS
WILDERNESS
The conference, which took place at an REI store in Denver, was called to announce that the Bureau of Land Management would once again start taking inventory of lands in the West that have "wilderness characteristics," ending a seven-year-old policy that emerged from a 2003 out-of-court settlement between Bush-era Interior Secretary Gale Norton and the state of Utah. That "No More Wilderness" policy opened up unprecedented swaths of land for oil and gas and nullified citizen-inventoried wilderness proposals, (see Matt Jenkins' 2004 HCN story: "Two Decades of Hard Work, Plowed Under"). "It should never have happened and was wrong in the first place," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said during the press conference.
More to the point, it cost some people their jobs.
Hat/Tip to Progressive Congress News for these links.
Business Green: China rejects US accusation of wind energy protectionism
US calls for talks at the World Trade Organisation over Chinese clean tech subsidies
By BusinessGreen staff
China's Ministry of Commerce yesterday rejected allegations from the US that its support for wind turbine manufacturers breaches trade rules, after the Obama administration filed a complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
In a statement on its web site the ministry said it would study the US request for talks and seek to resolve the dispute in line with WTO rules.
However, it categorically rejected US allegations that rules requiring wind turbine manufacturers to use parts made in China violate trade rules.
High Country News: Merry Christmas, small farmers and all eaters
Stephanie Paige Ogburn | Dec 24, 2010 09:55 AM
The U.S. Congress gave the American public -- and small farmers and ranchers -- a bit more than a lump of E. coli-tainted coal this year. Their 2010 stocking stuffer is a freshly-passed food safety bill that gives the Food and Drug Administration additional powers to help keep our food supply safer. One important provision in the Food Safety Modernization Act, as it's formally called, gives the FDA power to enforce mandatory recalls of tainted food. Prior to this, the agency could only "ask nicely" when it found evidence of contaminated products on the shelves. The blog Obama Foodorama does a nice job of summing up all the different parts of the bill.
The law (which does not apply to meat and poultry products regulated by the USDA, a separate agency) also makes food producers come up with detailed plans to keep their products safe and ups the number of inspections the agency does, particularly at high-risk facilities.
High Country News: In the zones
Judith Lewis Mernit | Dec 17, 2010 04:25 PM
You’ve got to hand it to Ken Salazar: Never before has an Interior Secretary been so methodically driven to make U.S. public lands safe for renewable energy development. Unlike the men and women who have held his position in previous administrations, especially the last one, Salazar has put solar, wind and their attendant transmission needs on their own pedestal, right up there with oil and gas drilling.
Up until now, however, the solar projects permitted in the last three months – eight nine so far, to generate nearly 4,000 megawatts – were all put in motion while renewable energy development was still in Wild West mode, without any focused discussion about responsible siting of utility-scale solar. That wasn’t working for anybody – not for developers wanting certainty, not for environmentalists sinking their funds into litigation to protect what they thought were already protected landscapes.
Thursday afternoon, Interior released the first documented evidence that Salazar is making good on his promise to rectify that situation: An environmental impact study from the Bureau of Land Management establishing "solar energy zones" (SEZs) in six Western states, places where the sun shines hard and rare desert species won’t be unduly disturbed by concentrating solar power towers, mirrors and the bulldozers that clear their way. It comes just as Congress managed to extend renewable energy grants in the tax bill, preserving precious funds for start-ups too new for tax credits to matter.
Business Green: Obama signs off clean energy tax break extensions
Controversial tax bill approved, extending support for wind, solar and biofuel industries
By BusinessGreen staff
20 Dec 2010
President Barack Obama signed a controversial new tax bill into law on Friday, extending key incentives for the biofuel and renewable energy industries as part of a package of measures that also included tax cuts for all Americans.
After weeks of wrangling between Democrats and Republicans over the content of the new tax package, the bill passed through the Senate and the House of Representatives last week despite opposition from some Democrats furious at the extension of tax cuts for top earners.
Crucially for the renewable energy industry, the package includes a one-year extension of the Department of Treasury Section 1603 grant program, which provides up-front grants to renewable energy developers in lieu of a 30 per cent tax break.
AAAS: Historical Lessons Suggest Ways to Retool the Toxic Substances Control Act
The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), enacted by Congress in 1976, is the primary federal statute regulating industrial chemicals in commerce. But the law has not accomplished as much as its authors intended, and reauthorization by Congress has been stalled.
"Much of the agenda remains unaccomplished after nearly 35 years of implementation," Jessica Schifano, a policy analyst for the Chemicals Policy and Science Initiative at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, said at a recent seminar at AAAS. "Many critics argue that the core provisions of TSCA itself are to blame for this failure, but this perspective does not tell the whole story."
Inadequate implementation of the law also is a key factor, Schifano said. "Our research really did focus on the document trail that EPA has left behind" during its rule-making, she said. The agency has been hampered by a lack of clear deadlines and time frames in the law, she said, as well as no clear criteria on what constitutes a "chemical of concern" under the law.
Science Education
National Science Foundation: NSF Partners with NBC Learn to Bring Science to Life for Nation’s Students
Partnership will make available high-quality educational resources cost-free
December 17, 2010
In an innovative partnership, NBC Learn and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are teaming up to bring science to life for students across the country. This collaboration between two of the nation's leading supporters of science in the classroom aims to further the understanding of science by providing engaging, high-quality educational resources to teachers cost-free.
Partially funded by NSF, the joint projects break down complex scientific laws and principles by matching them to well-known, everyday objects or activities--from the chemistry behind cheeseburgers and soap, to the physics of football and Olympic ice-skating.
Under this partnership, NBC Learn--the educational arm of NBC News--oversees all production of the learning packages and contributes unique video from NBC News that includes historic news coverage, documentary materials and current news broadcasts. Made available on NBCLearn.com, the NBC News franchise also offers primary source materials, lesson plans and classroom planning resources from other content partners.
Meanwhile, NSF provides access to NSF-sponsored scientists who contribute to the NBC Learn videos through video interviews or by providing background knowledge on the various scientific topics.
University of California: Partnership to revitalize marine research in L.A.
LOS ANGELES — UCLA has entered into a collaboration with the Southern California Marine Institute (SCMI) that will streamline marine research operations and expand research opportunities for UCLA students and faculty, Joseph Rudnick, dean of the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences, has announced.
UCLA joins the SCMI at the onset of a bold initiative to build a new research and clean-technology facility at the Port of Los Angeles that may become the largest marine research institute in an urban setting in the world, Rudnick said.
Through the new partnership, UCLA will share resources with 10 local universities to operate a facility at the port that provides waterfront access for oceanographic and marine biology studies, maintenance for scientific vessels, and a formal channel for cooperation among researchers in the Los Angeles area.
"We are eager to join the Southern California Marine Institute to help reinvent the way we conduct marine research in Los Angeles," Rudnick said. "We do so at a critical point for the Earth's oceans, when questions related to issues such as pollution and climate change can be tackled only through this kind of interdisciplinary framework."
University of California: Engineering students put bugs to weather test
SAN DIEGO — UC San Diego engineering students recently sent a weather balloon up 80,000 feet to near space to study the effects of solar power, climate change and even the survival rate of anti-freeze beetles. The launch, sponsored by the California Space Grant Consortium, is the fifth of its kind for UC San Diego since 2008.
For the most recent launch, the students headed for the Salton Sea in the Southern California desert at 4:30 a.m. on a Saturday to release the balloon and its various payloads, which included a 360-degree panoramic camera they designed; CO2, ozone and temperature sensors; small solar panels; a GPS system; cockroaches; and beetles.
"We have a unique region for a weather balloon launch," said Tim Wheeler, one of the balloon launch leaders who is in his second year as a UC San Diego aerospace engineering student. "We have Mexico to the south, the Salton Sea to the north and bombing and mountain ranges around us."
Science Writing and Reporting
University of California, Berkeley: Scientist's new book will make you an instant physicist (maybe)
By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 20 December 2010
BERKELEY — Richard Muller is a guy who thinks spouting fun physics facts will make you the life of the party. And his new book, "The Instant Physicist: An Illustrated Guide," may just convince you he's right.
Who knew, for example, that liquor, by law, must be radioactive? Or that you really can get your clothes whiter than white? Or that the earth is travelling through space at a million miles per hour?
These are some of the astonishing facts Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, explains with the help of witty cartoons by illustrator Joey Manfre.
Science is Cool
New Scientist (UK): Zoologger: Away in a vermin-infested manger
By Michael Marshall
The scene is familiar to billions the world over: a ramshackle but warm stable, a newborn baby lying in a manger, and a collection of livestock standing peacefully in the background. But was it really like that? What animals would actually have there been in a Bethlehem stable 2000 years ago, and what else was lurking in the shadows and dirt?
There are no first-hand accounts of the birth of Jesus. Nevertheless, the archaeology of the region has given us a wealth of information on the history of domestic animals, and veterinary science allows us to make educated guesses about the animals likely to have witnessed such an event. Our sketch of the Nativity scene is in no way definitive, but it represents a best guess at what might have been around.
University of Leicester (UK) via Science Daily: Learning from Leftovers: A History Drawn from Turkey Bones
Brooklynne Fothergill will have a very different view of Christmas dinner from most people, because the University of Leicester PhD student is researching the history of turkey domestication by examining old turkey bones.
Fothergill's PhD is in palaeopathology, the study of disease in ancient remains. By studying the health of turkeys from different countries and different historical periods, she is able to draw conclusions about the people who farmed, cooked and ate them.
"As unimportant as animal bones may seem compared to beautiful ceramics or metal, they have the potential to reveal aspects of human life in the past that no other form of material can show us," says Fothergill, a Canadian-Irish student who has come to Leicester to study in the University's School of Archaeology and Ancient History.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
University of California: 'The 13 Bugs of Christmas'
DAVIS — Forget "The 12 Days of Christmas."
It's "The 13 Bugs of Christmas."
The Department of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, came up with a song at its annual holiday party that drew roaring applause — and attention to bugs that either please or plague people.
The song, written by honey bee specialist Eric Mussen and communications specialist Kathy Keatley Garvey, included a psyllid in a pear tree, six lice a'laying, 10 locusts leaping and 11 queen bees piping.
"We attempted to keep the wording as close as possible for ‘The 12 Bugs of Christmas' and then we opted to spotlight some new agricultural pests in the next stanza," said Mussen, an Extension apiculturist and member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty since 1976.