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 The Capital Times.
Campus Connection: 260 UW faculty ink petition backing unions
TODD FINKELMEYER
Some 260 faculty members at UW-Madison have signed a letter expressing concern about Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to deprive public workers in Wisconsin of the right to collectively bargain.
The letter reads, in part: "Collective bargaining has been critical to providing decent standards of living to millions of Americans, playing a central role in the creation of this nation's large middle class. Unions have also been crucial vehicles for democracy, giving workers a voice in their places of employment and in society as a whole. Curtailing workers' ability to form unions and to bargain collectively can only diminish the economic and political benefits that the practice has brought to our state."
More stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
Watch this space!
The Daily Bucket: please do feed the animals?
by Mark Sumner
Science, deception, and China: A bizarre case of a job offer that wasn't
by xgz
I'll list all the science diaries, even the bad ones.
SciTech Diaries -- Feb 12 to 18
by palantir
A Laser Only Has One Point
by Im a frayed knot
Ridiculous Provisions of H.R. 1
by captainlaser
Republican Contract ON America
by Drawline
In Defense of Mockery
by weaponsofmassdeception
This week in science
by DarkSyde
So, the Azaleas are saved...
by cliffenz
Slideshows/Videos
Watch this space!
From Batman to Spider-Man, we love our superheroes. And whether they're busting bad guys in comic books or flying around on movie screens, they're more popular than ever. Jorge Ribas finds out why.
How does this drooping, wilted houseplant spring back to life so quickly after a little watering? Jorge Ribas gets the explanation.
Orangutans are clever - using their hands and leaves they can make intimidating kissing sounds causing listeners to think they're bigger than they actually are.
Forty-four years after the debate about how fleas jump began, researchers say they've solved the mystery thanks to high-speed cameras that show the insects pushing off with their toes rather than with their knees. Jorge Ribas reports.
Got a minute? Then watch the entire 2010 Atlantic hurricane season blow by at lightning speed! Earl! Danielle! Igor! Otto! They're all in there!
All of the above videos from Discovery Networks on YouTube.
Astronomy/Space
Science News: ‘Deep Impact’ comet revisited
NASA takes pictures of Tempel 1 five years after shooting it with probe
By Ron Cowen
Web edition : Wednesday, February 16th, 2011
NASA’s Stardust spacecraft got a close-up view of Comet Tempel 1 during a flyby on February 14. Tempel 1 is the only comet that has been photographed in detail by two different spacecraft: NASA’s Stardust and Deep Impact.JPL-Caltech/NASA, Cornell Univ.What a difference five years makes. New portraits of Comet Tempel 1 reveal pitting, erosion and other surface features that weren’t there in July 2005, the last time the comet was photographed at close range.
The new images, recorded during a Valentine’s Day encounter with NASA’s Stardust spacecraft, mark the first time any comet has had two separate sets of close-ups. Tempel 1 has completed a full passage around the sun since its visit by Deep Impact, another NASA craft. Researchers unveiled the new images during a press briefing on February 15 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Reuters: Here comes the sun: Solar flares make way to Earth
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO | Thu Feb 17, 2011 7:31pm EST
Radiation from the largest solar flare in four years is expected to reach Earth late on Thursday or Friday.
Such events can cause radio blackouts and interfere with communication satellites, but the most likely outcome this time will be brilliant Northern Lights displays, U.S. scientists said.
NASA scientists on Monday reported an X-class solar flare, the first in more than four years. X-class flares are the most powerful of all solar events that can trigger radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms.
It was one of a series of three solar flares and prompted speculation that a new solar cycle may be ramping up.
Reuters: NASA readies for next week's space shuttle launch
By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Fri Feb 18, 2011 7:41pm EST
NASA will launch the first of three final space shuttle missions next week, sending the shuttle Discovery on its last flight on a long-delayed cargo run to the International Space Station, officials said Friday.
Liftoff of the Discovery, NASA's senior spaceship, is targeted for Thursday at 4:50 p.m. (2150 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center.
Problems with the ship's fuel tank have kept the mission on hold since November. An unrelated hydrogen leak forced NASA to cancel a launch attempt on November 5.
Technicians then discovered a crack in the insulating foam that covers the shuttle's fuel tank, a potentially serious safety issue.
Reuters: Ariane rocket to supply International Space Station
By Franck Leconte
KOUROU, French Guiana | Thu Feb 17, 2011 9:35am EST
An unmanned Ariane rocket successfully launched from French Guiana late on Wednesday to supply cargo to the International Space Station (ISS), space officials said.
The modified Ariane launcher blasted off at 6.51 pm (2151 GMT) from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America carrying a 20 metric ton cargo vessel.
Over an hour after launch the vessel separated from the rocket, which was followed by a successful deployment of the vessel's solar panels.
It was the heaviest payload ever launched aboard an Ariane rocket.
Evolution/Paleontology
University of Notre Dame via physorg.com: New dinosaur dating technique paper released
February 16, 2011
By William G. Gilroy Enlarge
Antonio Simonetti, a research associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, is the coauthor of an important new paper describing a novel method for age dating dinosaur fossils.
Simonetti and colleagues from the University of Alberta used a U-Pb (uranium-lead) dating technique to analyze a fossilized dinosaur bone discovered in New Mexico. In a paper in the prestigious journal Geology, the researchers discuss their method and reveal that it determined that the femur bone from a giant hadrosaur dinosaur was 64.8 million years old.
The finding has caused a significant stir in scientific circles. There has been wide agreement among paleontologists that dinosaurs became extinct roughly 65.5 million years ago. Various theories as to the cause of this extinction have been suggested, ranging from a huge asteroid striking the earth to changes in global sea levels and climate to sustained periods of volcanism.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
University of Wisconsin: Leafcutter ant genome reveals secrets of fungus farming ways
Feb. 10, 2011
by Terry Devitt
Leafcutter ants, signature denizens of New World tropical forests, are unique in their ability to harvest fresh leaves to cultivate a nutrient-rich fungus as food.
Leafcutter ants scurry with their harvest of leaves, which they use to fuel huge underground fungus farms. (Video courtesy: College of Agricultural and Life Sciences -- view longer version.)
Now, this mutualism — a complicated interplay of ants, fungi and a suite of bacteria — is coming into sharper focus as a team of UW-Madison researchers has published the complete genome of the leafcutter ant, Atta cephalotes.
The study, published today (Feb. 10) in the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) Genetics, by an international team led by UW-Madison bacteriology professors Cameron Currie and Garret Suen, illustrates how lifestyle can remake an animal's genetic blueprint over the course of evolutionary history.
Biodiversity
University of Wisconsin: Curiosities: How high can bugs fly?
Feb. 15, 2011
“We can pick up insects at 5,000 or 6,000 feet,” says Phil Pellitteri of the UW-Madison insect diagnostic lab. “But wind is a big factor in insect movement, and it’s hard to know whether they are flying or drifting.”
Some insects are wingless, and in general, they make a living near the ground, and so have no reason to move higher into the atmosphere.
But many insects use wind as a migration strategy, Pellitteri says. “We have leaf hoppers and aphids blowing up from Louisiana, and moths from Central America that often arrive after a big storm front comes through. Nothing surprises me anymore.”
Reuters: Monarch butterfly count bounces back from bad year
by Patrick Rucker
MEXICO CITY | Mon Feb 14, 2011 7:00pm EST
Monarch butterfly colonies in Mexico more than doubled in size this winter after bad storms devastated their numbers a year ago, conservationists said on Monday although the migrating insect remains under threat.
Millions of butterflies make a 2,000-mile journey each year from Canada to winter in central Mexico's warmer weather but the size of that migration can vary wildly.
Fewer of the orange and black insects arrived in Mexico last year than ever before, researchers said, but the butterfly colonies increased by 109 percent this year to cover roughly 10 acres of forest. Researchers estimate the size of the butterfly colonies based on the area they occupy in a forest.
Biotechnology/Health
Reuters: Scientists question U.S. anthrax attack evidence
WASHINGTON | Tue Feb 15, 2011 2:25pm EST
A panel of scientists on Tuesday cast doubt on FBI scientific evidence that a U.S. Army researcher, Bruce Ivins, committed a series of deadly anthrax attacks in 2001.
A National Research Council committee report released on Tuesday questioned the link between a flask of anthrax bacteria in Ivins' laboratory in Maryland and the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and sickened 17 others.
The committee found it impossible to reach any definitive conclusion about the origins of the anthrax in the letters, based solely on the available scientific evidence.
University of Wisconsin: Asthma through the eyes of a medical anthropologist
Feb. 18, 2011
by David Tenenbaum
Asthma diagnosis and management vary dramatically around the world, said David Van Sickle, an honorary associate fellow at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, during a presentation today (Feb. 18) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Asthma affects an estimated 8 percent of Americans, and about 300 million people around the world, but varying practices in diagnosis and treatment have global implications in understanding a widespread, chronic condition, says Van Sickle, who applies an anthropological approach to medicine.
"Since the major way to learn how many people have asthma is to ask them, external factors that alter those estimates have a major impact on our understanding of how widespread asthma is," he says. "Yet local culture and conditions make these estimates subject to a great deal of error."
University of Wisconsin: Thyroid Removal is Safe and Effective for Graves' Disease
Feb. 15, 2011
Madison, Wisconsin - Surgical removal of the thyroid isn't usually considered as the first option in treating Graves' disease, but a new University of Wisconsin-Madison study suggests that in experienced hands maybe it should be.
Graves' disease, also called hyperthyroidism, occurs when the thyroid gland at the base of the neck produces excessive hormones and speeds up the metabolism.
Graves' is one of the most common autoimmune diseases. Women are seven times more likely to develop Graves', which affects about 13 million people in the United States.
University of Wisconsin: Electronic stent-deployment system wins top prize at 2011 Innovation Days
Feb. 14, 2011
by Sandra Knisely
A system that could widely expand stent treatments for patients with diseased arteries won the top prize and $10,000 in the Schoofs Prize for Creativity, one of a pair of competitions that make up Innovation Days, an event that rewards University of Wisconsin-Madison students for innovative and marketable ideas.
For the first time in the competition's 17-year history, the winning inventor has claimed first place in the Schoofs Prize two years in a row. Mechanical engineering senior Tom Gerold created the MicroMag Stent Deployment System after watching his grandfather struggle with arterial disease. He subsequently learned more about the medical device industry at a summer internship and combined that experience with his engineering coursework to develop a system that could make a significant difference for cardiovascular patients.
MicroMag is an electromagnetic system to deploy self-expanding metal stents and retract the catheter that inserts those stents. This system would allow surgeons to place stents, the wire mesh tubes used to inflate blocked arteries, in smaller blood vessels than currently is possible. Now, surgeons must physically maneuver catheters, which can cause stents to deploy early or not at all.
University of Wisconsin: New induced stem cells may unmask cancer at earliest stage
Feb. 4, 2011
by Terry Devitt
By coaxing healthy and diseased human bone marrow to become embryonic-like stem cells, a team of Wisconsin scientists has laid the groundwork for observing the onset of the blood cancer leukemia in the laboratory dish.
"This is the first successful reprogramming of blood cells obtained from a patient with leukemia," says University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell researcher Igor Slukvin, who directed a study aimed at generating all-purpose stem cells from bone marrow and umbilical cord blood. "We were able to turn the diseased cells back into pluripotent stem cells. This is important because it provides a new model for the study of cancer cells."
Climate/Environment
University of Wisconsin: World phosphorous use crosses critical threshold
Feb. 14, 2011
by Terry Devitt
Recalculating the global use of phosphorous, a fertilizer linchpin of modern agriculture, a team of researchers warns that the world's stocks may soon be in short supply and that overuse in the industrialized world has become a leading cause of the pollution of lakes, rivers and streams.
Writing in the Feb. 14 edition of the journal Environmental Research Letters, Stephen Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Elena Bennett of McGill University report that the human use of phosphorous, primarily in the industrialized world, is causing the widespread eutrophication of fresh surface water. What's more, the minable global stocks of phosphorous are concentrated in just a few countries and are in decline, posing the risk of global shortages within the next 20 years.
"There is a finite amount of phosphorous in the world," says Carpenter, a UW-Madison professor of limnology and one of the world's leading authorities on lakes and streams. "This is a material that's becoming more rare and we need to use it more efficiently."
University of Wisconsin: Report assesses climate change impacts, adaptation strategies
Feb. 7, 2011
A statewide collaborative of scientists and diverse stakeholders is proposing a multitude of measures to help protect and enhance Wisconsin's natural resources, economic vitality, and public well-being as the state's climate becomes warmer and wetter.
Their report, "Wisconsin's Changing Climate: Impacts and Adaptation," was released today by the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI). It is available online here.
"This report is the first comprehensive survey of climate change impacts in Wisconsin, and it provides information that will help decision-makers begin to plan for the kinds of changes we're likely to see in the years ahead," says Lewis Gilbert, associate director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and member of WICCI's science council.
The Capital Times: Forecasters upgrade warnings for winter storm set to hit region tonight
Posted: Saturday, February 19, 2011 2:45 pm
Iowa, Dane, Lafayette, Green and Rock counties are under a winter storm warning until 6 p.m. Monday, as a complex storm is set to start pounding the area late Saturday night, according to the National Weather Service.
The Madison area could see up to 9 inches of snow and perhaps a quarter-inch of ice, with less snow falling to the south and more to the north.
Geology
National Science Foundation via physorg.com: Relationship found between ancient climate change and mass extinction
February 18, 2011
By Ellen Ferrante
In the Late Ordovician Period of Earth's geologic history, about 450 million years ago, more than 75 percent of marine species perished and Earth scientists have been seeking to discover what caused the extinction. It was the second largest in Earth's history.
Now, using a new research method, investigators believe they are closer to finding an answer.
Employing a new way to measure ancient ocean temperatures, a team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) recently discovered a link between ancient climate change and the Late Ordovician mass extinction. The team found the extinction event occurred during a glacial period when global temperatures became cooler and the volume of glacial ice increased.
Both the changes in temperature and the increase of continental ice sheets are factors that could have affected marine life in these ancient waters, said Woodward Fischer, an assistant professor of geobiology at Caltech.
Centre national de la recherche scientifique vis physorg.com: Earthquake's early warning signals detected for the first time
February 18, 2011
The 1999 Izmit earthquake in Turkey is one of the best recorded in the world. For the first time, researchers from CNRS, Kandilli Observatory (Istanbul) and the Tubitak research center observed that the earthquake was preceded by a preparatory phase that lasted 44 minutes before the rupture of the fault. This phase, which was characterized by a distinctive seismic signal, corresponds to slow slip at depth along the fault. Detecting it in other earthquakes might make it possible to predict some types of earthquakes several tens of minutes before fault rupture. These findings are published in the 18 February 2011 issue of the journal Science.
Psychology/Behavior
Discovery News: Reporter's Gibberish Reveals Migraine's Complexity
Analysis by Amanda Onion
Fri Feb 18, 2011 12:22 PM ET
KCBS-TV reporter Serene Branson's now infamous garbled on-air appearance during last week's Grammy Awards is revealing how migraines can be so much more than headaches.
After speculation roiled for days about what may have caused the Los Angeles-based reporter to start speaking in jumbled nonsense during her live on-air report from the Grammys last week (Was she drunk? Did she suffer a stroke?), Branson said in a TV interview with her station that the cause was most likely migraine.
That night, she said, she started to get "a really bad headache," and things got strange from there.
Archeology/Anthropology
New York University via physorg.com: Biological anthropologists question claims for human ancestry
February 16, 2011
"Too simple" and "not so fast" suggest biological anthropologists from the George Washington University and New York University about the origins of human ancestry. In the upcoming issue of the journal Nature, the anthropologists question the claims that several prominent fossil discoveries made in the last decade are our human ancestors. Instead, the authors offer a more nuanced explanation of the fossils' place in the Tree of Life. They conclude that instead of being our ancestors the fossils more likely belong to extinct distant cousins.
"Don't get me wrong, these are all important finds," said co-author Bernard Wood, University Professor of Human Origins and professor of Human Evolution Anatomy at GW and director of its Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology. "But to simply assume that anything found in that time range has to be a human ancestor is naïve."
The paper, "The evolutionary context of the first hominins," reconsiders the evolutionary relationships of fossils named Orrorin, Sahelanthropus and Ardipithecus, dating from four to seven million years ago, which have been claimed to be the earliest human ancestors. Ardipithecus, commonly known as "Ardi," was discovered in Ethiopia and was found to be radically different from what many researchers had expected for an early human ancestor. Nonetheless, the scientists who made the discovery were adamant it is a human ancestor.
The Star (Malaysia): A find that could change history
By JOSEPHINE JALLEH
WORLD archaeology history could be rewritten due to several discoveries at the prehistoric settlement of Bukit Bunuh in northern Perak’s Lenggong Valley.
For over a decade, a team of researchers from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) had been working in uncovering evidence which showed that it was inhabited from time to time since more than 1.83 million years ago.
USM Centre for Archaeological Research Malaysia director Assoc Prof Dr Mokhtar Saidin said the nomadic theory of the Paleolithic Age settlers was questioned with the discovery of over 200 stone tools including choppers and hand-axes in the terraced oil palm plantation in Bukit Bunuh.
“At least 1,000 people could have settled here based on the number of tools found. These findings show that the early settlers were not nomadic as most of their basic needs were available here,” he said during a media tour at the plantation in Bukit Bunuh on Sunday.
Reuters: Ancient Britons ate dead and made skulls into cups
By Madeleine Cowley
LONDON | Thu Feb 17, 2011 12:52pm EST
Ancient Britons devoured their dead and created gruesome goblets from the skulls of their remains, according to new research published on Wednesday.
Researchers from London's Natural History Museum discovered 15,000-year-old human bones in southern England which showed signs of cannibalism and skulls made into drinking cups.
The skulls -- found in Gough's Cave in the Cheddar Gorge in the southwestern English county of Somerset -- had been meticulously cleaned of soft tissue, cut to remove the base and facial bones, and had their rough edges smoothed to create skull-cups or bowls, paleontologist Silvia Bello wrote in a study in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.
Red Orbit: Oetzi The Iceman Had Brown Eyes, Not Blue
Posted on: Thursday, 17 February 2011, 07:09 CST
A more-than-5,000-year-old mummified body found frozen in the Oetzal Alps in South Tyrol on September 19, 1991 will receive a new face for the 20th anniversary of its discovery.
Two Dutch experts -- Alfons and Adrie Kennis -- have made a new model of the Iceman Oetzi (also known as Ötzi) with brown eyes. It will be part of a new exhibit at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano.
Recent research has shown the Iceman, nearly 5,300 years old, did not have blue eyes as once believed.
The Virginian-Pilot: Well-preserved ship remnants found in Outer Banks
By Erin James
HATTERAS, N.C.
The powerful winds of a blustery winter have uncovered the rusted metal and weathered wood of a previously unknown shipwreck on an isolated soundside beach of Hatteras Island.
The 20-foot mystery vessel has emerged from the side of an eroded dune, where recently uprooted trees attempt to shield the exposed wreck from curious eyes. Evil-looking spikes - presumably the bolts that once held the vessel together - reach upward from their former tomb of sand and seaweed.
Definitive answers about the vessel's age and origin will have to wait for historians and scientists to analyze the find. In the meantime, there's no shortage of excited speculation.
Washington Daily News: House likely a stop on Underground Railroad
By EDWIN MODLIN II
Published: Wednesday, February 16, 2011 2:09 AM EST
Plymouth has a new historical house, one more than likely used as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Noted historian Carl Westmoreland, during his visit to Plymouth on Thursday, said the Armistead House, although currently in a dilapidated condition, probably was part of the system used to move slaves from the South and northward to freedom, with many slaves ending up in Canada. Westmoreland is senior historian for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. He inspected the house to determine if it had a connection to the Underground Railroad.
“When you walk in, you literally walk into (a) living museum of how the black middle class lived back then,” Westmoreland said of the 1800s. “The big question is whether it was used in the Underground Railroad or not. I’ll just say this ... it’s an open invitation to more exploration.”
San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. construction site discovery: 2 old ships
Kelly Zito
When engineers working near Candlestick Park last March drilled deep into the ground for soil samples, they pulled up chunks of wood and figured it was an old pier.
They had no idea it was a century-old ship, let alone two.
But that became clear this week when the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission uncovered what maritime experts believe are a pair of scow schooners, 90-foot-long workhorse vessels that plied the bay shallows in the late 1800s to deliver hay, salt, bricks, pork, coal, lumber and other cargo. Buried under more than 14 feet of sand and fill dirt, the 45-foot-long hull sections came to light at the mouth of an enormous trench that will house a new overflow sewage pipe for the Visitacion Valley neighborhood.
Star News: Underwater archaeology team helps preserve N.C. maritime history
By Amy Hotz
On Good Friday of 1962, just as the nation’s collective thoughts reflected on the Civil War after 100 years of hindsight, a storm approached the Cape Fear. Sand shifted, as it always does along the Graveyard of the Atlantic. But this time grains scattered to reveal the wreck of a blockade runner, the Modern Greece.
The steam-powered ship had run aground near Fort Fisher on June 27, 1862, while trying to deliver supplies to the Confederacy. This was the first time any human being had seen it in decades. And it was nearly full of cargo.
Channel News Asia (Singapore): Battlefield archaeology project at Adam Park uncovers more artefacts
By Alvina Soh | Posted: 19 February 2011 2119 hrs
SINGAPORE: Singapore's first battlefield archaeology project at Adam Park has uncovered more World War II artefacts.
About S$128,000 has so far been pumped into the project, a collaboration between the Singapore Heritage Society (SHS) and the National Heritage Board (NHB).
Bullets, buttons and belt buckles are just some of the 1,200 artefacts discovered since excavation works at Adam Park began in May last year.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
University of Wisconsin: Ancient Mesoamerican sculpture uncovered in southern Mexico
Feb. 14, 2011
by Jill Sakai
With one arm raised and a determined scowl, the figure looks ready to march right off his carved tablet and into the history books. If only we knew who he was — corn god? Tribal chief? Sacred priest?
"It's beautiful and was obviously very important," says University of Wisconsin-Madison archaeologist John Hodgson of the newly discovered stone monument. "But we will probably never know who he was or what the sculpture means in its entirety."
The man is the central figure on a stone monument discovered in 2009 at a site called Ojo de Agua in far southern Mexico in the state of Chiapas along the Pacific coast. Hodgson, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at UW-Madison, describes the new monument in the cover article of the current issue (December 2010) of Mexicon, a leading peer-reviewed journal of Mesoamerican studies. The article, titled "Ojo de Agua Monument 3: A New Olmec-Style Sculpture from Ojo de Agua, Chiapas, Mexico," is co-authored with John E. Clark, of Brigham Young University, and Emiliano Gallaga Murrieta, director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Chiapas.
Physics
University of Wisconsin: Engineering atomic interfaces for new electronics
Feb. 17, 2011
by Sandra Knisely
Most people cross borders such as doorways or state lines without thinking much about it. Yet not all borders are places of limbo intended only for crossing. Some borders, like those between two materials that are brought together, are dynamic places where special things can happen.
For an electron moving from one material toward the other, this space is where it can join other electrons, which together can create current, magnetism or even light.
A multi-institutional team has made fundamental discoveries at the border regions, called interfaces, between oxide materials. Led by University of Wisconsin-Madison materials science and engineering professor Chang-Beom Eom, the team has discovered how to manipulate electrons oxide interfaces by inserting a single layer of atoms. The researchers also have discovered unusual electron behaviors at these engineered interfaces.
Chemistry
Penn State via physorg.com: Mimicking photosynthesis path to solar-derived hydrogen fuel
February 19, 2011
Inexpensive hydrogen for automotive or jet fuel may be possible by mimicking photosynthesis, according to a Penn State materials chemist, but a number of problems need to be solved first.
"We are focused on the hardest way to make fuel," said Thomas Mallouk, Evan Pugh Professor of Materials Chemistry and Physics. "We are creating an artificial system that mimics photosynthesis, but it will be practical only when it is as cheap as gasoline or jet fuel."
University of York (UK): Green chemistry offers route towards zero-waste production
February 18, 2011
Novel green chemical technologies will play a key role helping society move towards the elimination of waste while offering a wider range of products from biorefineries, according to a University of York scientist.
Professor James Clark, Director of the University's Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, will tell a symposium at the Annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that the use of low environmental impact green chemical technologies will help ensure that products are genuinely and verifiably green and sustainable.
He says the extraction of valuable chemicals from biomass could form the initial processing step of many future biorefineries.
Energy
Reuters: Toyota to launch home electric car chargers in 2012: report
by Chisa Fujioka
TOKYO | Sat Feb 19, 2011 9:43pm EST
Toyota Motor Corp will launch home battery chargers for electric and plug-in hybrid cars next year as it starts selling new models of environmentally friendly cars, the Nikkei business daily reported on Sunday.
The chargers, which will be compatible with non-Toyota cars, will come in two types, the Nikkei reported, citing company sources. One would extend from the exterior wall of a home and the other would be for setting up in a garage.
The company expects to sell 20,000 to 30,000 units in the first year, with each costing about several tens of thousands of yen to 200,000 yen ($2,405) including installation costs, the Nikkei added.
Science, Space, Environment, Health, and Energy Policy
University College Dublin via physorg.com: Irish medieval fishing site will be 'lost to the tide'
February 18, 2011
One of Europe’s best preserved medieval fishing structures located on the Fergus Estuary in County Clare, Ireland, will be washed away by tidal flows before archaeologists can reveal its secrets.
A team of University College Dublin archaeologists who have been visiting the remote 700 year old fishing site will no longer be able to conduct their scientific recording and analysis, due to recent budget cuts experienced by the Irish Heritage Council.
“There is little we can do to preserve the medieval fishing structures because they are totally exposed to the forces of nature on the mudflats, after being buried for centuries beneath the mud,” explains Dr Aidan O’Sullivan, UCD School of Archaeology, University College Dublin.
“They are likely to be entirely destroyed within the next ten years.”
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Reuters: U.S. budget ups support for commercial space flight
By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Mon Feb 14, 2011 5:20pm EST
The Obama administration wants to step up support for commercial space flight and start work on a next-generation launch system for missions beyond the International Space Station under an $18.7 billion NASA budget unveiled on Monday.
The proposed spending plan boosts spending for fledgling commercial human spaceflight projects to $850 million for the year beginning October 1, while maintaining overall NASA's overall spending at its current level.
"Because these are tough fiscal times, tough choices had to be made," NASA administrator Charlie Bolden told reporters. "Our No. 1 priority is safely flying out the shuttles and maintaining the safety and well-being of our American astronauts currently living and working in space."
Of course, this is the president's budget, not
the one that defunds NOAA, the EPA, and the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change while continuing to subsidize big oil that was passed last night by the House. Republican War on Science, indeed!
Reuters: Anti-fracking bill gets Oscar hopeful's support
By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON | Thu Feb 17, 2011 5:46pm EST
Hoping success rubs off, a U.S. lawmaker had the director of the Oscar-nominated film "Gasland" near when announcing he will reintroduce a bill making companies reveal chemicals used in natural gas drilling.
"Before this country embraces natural gas as the solution to our energy needs ... we need to take every step possible to ensure our water is not contaminated, our air is not polluted, and our communities are not irrevocably harmed," Representative Maurice Hinchey of New York, who will reintroduce the bill, said at a press conference.
Natural gas is considered cleaner than coal, its biggest competitor, because it emits less of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide when burned for generating electricity.
University of Wisconsin: Humans and the clean-energy debate: Lectures to address carbon emissions, solutions
Feb. 18, 2011
by Renee Meiller
In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama called for a clean-energy standard, increased funding for clean-energy technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the ambitious goal of generating 80 percent of the country's electricity from clean-energy sources by 2035.
Yet, those clean-energy technologies are still widely up for debate, and the path for reducing carbon emissions is by no means clear.
Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Energy Institute and the WAGE Governing Global Energy Collaborative, lectures from February through late-April will generate discussion about climate change, energy innovation, and global environmental policy.
On Thursday, Feb. 24, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, founders of the liberal think-tank the Breakthrough Institute, will present the lecture, "Why Left and Right Can Agree on Energy Innovation." With the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the non-partisan Brookings Institution, the two are urging partisans to abandon long-held views on carbon caps and federal involvement in energy research. Rather, Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that now is the time for bipartisan action on energy innovation.
University of Wisconsin: Forums to focus on ethics of animal research
Feb. 11, 2011
by David Tenenbaum
Three forums on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus will highlight the ethics of animal research, Eric Sandgren, an associate professor of pathobiological sciences, announced today.
"We want these talks to be discussions with the community on the costs, benefits and ethics of animal research," says Sandgren, who directs the Research Animal Resource Center. "More transparency, more communication and better information help everyone involved in this emotional debate."
The forums, in response to interest in the ethics of animal research among some members of the Dane County Board, were proposed last year by UW-Madison Provost Paul M. DeLuca Jr. and Graduate School Dean Martin Cadwallader. The goal is to increase public discussion and understanding of issues surrounding animal research.
Science Education
University of Texas via physorg.com: 'Universal standards' for research integrity may have unintended consequences
February 19, 2011
The global scientific community is capable of policing its own behavior and should resist creation of a central oversight body to enforce 'universal standards' that may have unintended consequences, a renowned physicist and director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin said Saturday.
Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Without Borders meeting in Washington, D.C., Raymond L Orbach, Ph.D., singled out several elements contained in the "Singapore Statement of Research Integrity" approved last July at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity.
"While it is appropriate for scientists and researchers to examine the governance of international collaborations in science, the Singapore Statement conveys a 'top down' approach that holds strong potential for unintended consequences," Orbach said.
The Daily Pennsylvanian: Mummies exhibit reopens at museum
by MK Kleva | Friday, February 18, 2011 at 4:33 pm
At the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, all systems are go.
At 1 p.m. Friday, the "Secrets of the Silk Road" exhibit finally opened to East Coast audiences after artifacts were initially pulled in what Chinese Language and Literature professor Victor Mair described as a “horrible bureaucratic snafu.”
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
University of Wisconsin: Chemist focuses on education for real-world sustainability challenges
Feb. 18, 2011
by David Tenenbaum
Introductory college science classes need to improve their coverage of issues related to sustainability, a noted chemistry educator told the American Association for the Advancement of Science today.
"Across the nation, we have a problem," says Catherine Middlecamp, a distinguished faculty associate in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "We are using a 20th-century curriculum, and this is the 21st century."
Students, she says, want a curriculum that will prepare them for upcoming challenges related to climate change, pollution and environmental health. "You can see, from the questions they ask, the volunteer projects they undertake and the papers they write, that they are intensely concerned about the fate of the planet and the living realm. And because many of our students will not be taking another science course, it's vital that our introductory courses prepare them for their future."
University of Wisconsin: UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee renew program offering grants for joint research projects
Feb. 14, 2011
by Stacy Forster
Wisconsin's two doctoral universities will continue their partnership promoting collaborative research projects involving faculty and academic staff at both institutions.
Biddy Martin, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Michael R. Lovell, interim chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, are renewing the Intercampus Research Incentive Grants Program, which will award funds to support research projects undertaken jointly at the two campuses.
The grants program was started in early 2010 and awarded nearly $400,000 in intercampus grants to support such efforts as the development of new materials to combat air pollution to the use of algae to clean wastewater and generate energy.
University of Wisconsin: Program merges dual interests in science and policy
Feb. 8, 2011
by Jill Sakai
Melding of mind and policy matters is all in a day's work for the graduate students in the Neuroscience and Public Policy program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The program, the only one in the country, offers students the chance to explore the intersection of science and society while working toward graduate degrees in both neuroscience and public affairs. The goal, according to program director Ronald Kalil, is to train a cadre of scientists well versed in the realms of both scientific research and policy, able to inform conversations in both areas.
"I was aware that there were lots of scientists — neuroscientists even more than others — who really wanted to do something to influence policy but they didn't know how to go about it," says Kalil, a professor of neuroscience.
Science Writing and Reporting
Science News: Book Review: Blowout in the Gulf: The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy in America
By William R. Freudenburg and Robert Gramling
Review by Janet Raloff
February 26th, 2011
For a century, America was the world’s biggest producer — and user — of petroleum. Today, the country remains the biggest user while supplying less than 7 percent of world demand. Although this book is nominally about the 2010 BP oil spill, it’s really a primer on the oil industry: where it started, the companies and regulations it spawned, and how it has seduced nations everywhere to think and act as if they can’t live without it.
The authors sifted through mountains of news accounts, reports and transcripts of hearings on the BP spill. They’ve woven statistics, quotes and observations into a riveting account of the accident, as well as the track record of the principal parties and the largely unfettered environment in which they were allowed to operate. Taken together, the evidence suggests that the April 20 blowout — or one like it — was just waiting to happen.
Science is Cool
The Guardian (UK): Wroxeter house recreation adds colour to Roman site
Bright yellow and red house built using real Roman techniques – and a few illicit wheelbarrows – can be seen a mile off
Maev Kennedy
Good taste is not a feature of a new Roman house that has risen, with much sweat and cursing, from a flat Shropshire field at the genuinely ancient Roman town site of Wroxeter: painted bright yellow and oxblood red, the building can be seen a mile off,
...
"Colour, bling, excess – that's what they liked," said Dai Morgan Evans, visiting professor of archaeology at Chester University, who dreamed up the elaborate experiment yet attempted in Britain in recreating a building using genuine Roman techniques. "I always had the hope that a Roman would come here and not see anything too funny. I reckon we got it about 80% right."
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
University of Wisconsin: Art from above: Satellites see Wisconsin
Feb. 7, 2011
by Terry Devitt
Few know that the genesis of observing the Earth's weather from space is a Wisconsin idea.
The late Verner Suomi, the atmospheric scientist and professor who founded the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center in the 1960s, is considered by many in the know to be the father of weather satellite meteorology. He, along with Wisconsin engineer Robert Parent, invented the technologies that made it possible to take continuous pictures of our planet from a satellite positioned in geosynchronous orbit. Suomi also devised a system to process, manipulate and display those images for the benefit of forecasters and anyone who has ever watched the weather on television or the Internet.
Those pictures from space have practical value, certainly, as we plan our days and decide what to wear and can be lifesavers when severe weather looms. But woven into the pixels of the innumerable images satellites of all kinds constantly transmit is the natural beauty of our planet as viewed from space.
Reuters: Malaysia turn to science for golden breakthrough
by Alastair Himmer
KUALA LUMPUR | Fri Feb 18, 2011 1:15am EST
Malaysia's sports officials have opted for the appliance of science in their quest to achieve the country's first Olympic gold medal in London next year.
The National Sports Institute (NSI) has brought in 46 sports science specialists under their "Road to London 2012" program, Malaysian media reported.
The seven sports to receive the high-tech support are badminton, soccer, cycling, archery, diving, shooting and hockey.