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 Trick or Vote.
According to a 2001 Yale study, face-to-face interaction is the single best way to get someone to vote. Knocking on doors increases voter turnout by a whopping 8-12%, more than any other method.
If knocking on doors is the best way to get out the vote, what is the one day each year people expect a knock on their door? Halloween.
And when does Halloween happen to fall on the calendar? Always a few days before the election.
So, while you may be too old to Trick or Treat, you’re never too old to Trick or Vote.
This week's science, space, energy, and environment stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
Watch this space!
DarkSyde: This week in science
matching mole: Climate Change and Debating Science: Why It's Hard
thinkingblue: DST Ends More Darkness Begins
Slideshows/Videos
CTV: Major archaeological find unearthed in Kitchener
CTV Southwestern Ontario
An aboriginal village, including about ten longhouses and a number of other artifacts, has been found along Strasburg Creek in Kitchener.
The site of the First Nations settlement spans the space of two soccer fields at the south end of the Huron Natural Area.
Dave Schmitt, an environmental manager with the City of Kitchener, says it was discovered when planning began to expand the area's trail system.
Space.com via MSNBC: Comet Hartley 2 looks like ... a pickle?
When a NASA probe takes a close look at Comet Hartley 2 next week, it will find the icy wanderer to be curiously pickle-shaped, new radar images reveal.
Comet Hartley 2 will be visited by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft on Nov. 4 in a close flyby. To prepare for the event, astronomers used the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to take new radar observations that revealed the comet's pickle shape.
The series of radar images was taken between Oct. 25 and Oct. 27. The images show Comet Hartley 2 as an elongated cylindrical object.
MSNBC: Month in Space: October 2010
Astronomy/Space
Space.com via MSNBC: Mysterious Mars gullies likely carved by carbon dioxide
Researchers previously believed melting water might be source of changes
Some of the mysterious gullies on Mars are likely carved by frozen carbon dioxide, not melting water, a new study finds.
Researchers tracked recent changes in sand dune gullies in seven different locations on southern Mars. They found that these changes which occurred over the past 15 years or so popped up most often in winter, which is consistent with the buildup of carbon dioxide frost, not runoff from melting water.
"Gullies that look like this on Earth are caused by flowing water, but Mars is a different planet with its own mysteries," said study lead author Serina Diniega of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The timing we see points to carbon dioxide, and if the mechanism is linked to carbon dioxide frost at these dune gullies, the same could be true for other gullies on Mars."
Space.com via MSNBC: Virgin's SpaceShipTwo completes 2nd glide flight
By Leonard David
Virgin Galactic's private SpaceShipTwo suborbital spacecraft has completed its second glide test at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.
The sleek vehicle built by Mojave-based Scaled Composites was lifted off the ground Oct. 28 by its huge WhiteKnightTwo mothership. In midair, the craft was released and completed a nearly 11-minute glide under the controls of Scaled Composites test pilot Mark Stucky and copilot Mike Alsbury.
The spacecraft is Virgin Galactic's bid to carry space tourists to suborbital space for a brief view of the Earth below and a few minutes of weightlessness. The company is helmed by founder Sir Richard Branson, an entrepreneur famous for creating Virgin Records and the Virgin airline.
Space.com via MSNBC: Shuttle launch again delayed, now to Wednesday
Second postponement gives engineers time to deal with Discovery leaks Advertisement | ad info
By Denise Chow
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The final launch of the space shuttle Discovery has been delayed another 24 hours to Nov. 3 to allow engineers more time to address troublesome leaks that were found on the orbiter late Thursday.
Engineers have been scrambling to fix leaky helium and nitrogen seals in one of Discovery's twin aft-mounted engine pods. The leaks are in seals used to pressurize fuel line plumbing in one of the shuttle's orbital maneuvering system pods.
NASA managers met this morning and made the decision to delay the shuttle's launch, after it was deemed impossible to meet Tuesday's window. The Nov. 3 liftoff is now targeted for 3:52 p.m. EDT (1952 GMT).
History Channel: This Day in History: 10/29/1988 John Glenn Returns to Space
Nearly four decades after he became the first American to orbit the Earth, Senator John Hershel Glenn, Jr., is launched into space again as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery. At 77 years of age, Glenn was the oldest human ever to travel in space. During the nine-day mission, he served as part of a NASA study on health problems associated with aging.
...
Out of a reluctance to risk the life of an astronaut as popular as Glenn, NASA essentially grounded the "Clean Marine" in the years after his historic flight. Frustrated with this uncharacteristic lack of activity, Glenn turned to politics and in 1964 announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate from his home state of Ohio and formally left NASA. Later that year, however, he withdrew his Senate bid after seriously injuring his inner ear in a fall from a horse. In 1970, following a stint as a Royal Crown Cola executive, he ran for the Senate again but lost the Democratic nomination to Howard Metzenbaum. Four years later, he defeated Metzenbaum, won the general election, and went on to win reelection three times. In 1984, he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president.
In 1998, Glenn attracted considerable media attention when he returned to space aboard the space shuttle Discovery. In 1999, he retired from his U.S. Senate seat after four consecutive terms in office, a record for the state of Ohio.
Evolution/Paleontology
Aspen Daily News: Mastodon, more mammoths found
by Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Daily News Staff Writer
Friday, October 29, 2010
Construction crews excavating the Ziegler Reservoir just outside of Snowmass Village uncovered a mastodon tooth Thursday, as well five large tusks in three different locations.
While much more will learned when scientists from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science arrive on scene today, it appears that bones from at least four different mammoths have now been uncovered at the site, plus the signs that a mastodon took its last steps there.
"Mastodons are very rare in Colorado, so that makes it very exciting," said Laura Holtman, the director of public relations for the Denver museum.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Discovery News: Skeleton of dino ancestor unearthed
By Larry O'Hanlon
The first complete skeleton of an early sauropod has been found in China, providing a glimpse of the ancestor of all those colossal, four-legged dinosaurs that came later.
The sauropod, tentatively named Yizhousaurus sunae, lived 200 million years ago on the plains of what is today the Yunnan Province of southern China. Yizhousaurus was 30 feet long and already had the signature sauropod long neck, heavy-duty skeleton and four-legged stance.
But what really makes the case for its pivotal role in the evolution of sauropods is its intact skull, which is an extremely rare find, explained paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University.
Live Science via MSNBC: Fossils hint at Asian origin for higher primates
By Charles Q. Choi
The ancestors of monkeys, apes and humans were thought primarily to have originated in Africa, but now what may be the oldest examples of such fossils discovered yet on the continent suggest these primates might have originally arisen in Asia, researchers suggest.
The dating of the newfound fossils is controversial, however.
The origin of anthropoids — the simians, or "higher primates" — has been hotly debated for decades among scientists. Although a series of fossils unearthed in Egypt have long suggested that Africa was the cradle for anthropoids, other bones revealed in the last 15 years or so raised the possibility that Asia may be their birthplace.
Now paleontologists have revealed the earliest known African anthropoids found to date — three previously unknown kinds of the primates from Dur At-Talah in central Libya that apparently date back 38 million to 39 million years ago.
Biodiversity
The Daily Telegraph (UK): Biodiversity loss is not evidence that climate change isn't real. I can't believe I have to say this
Tom Chivers
Here’s an odd thing. A major new study by the Zoological Society of London has suggested that vertebrate species are going extinct left, right and centre, with as many as one in five vertebrate species under threat. A separate, United Nations-backed study earlier this month found that the rate of extinctions is the fastest since the end of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, and we haven’t even had a small asteroid impact to help us. Species are dying out 1,000 times faster than at any other time in human history. Generally, it’s fairly bleak news.
Yet, somehow, this has been taken in some quarters to mean that man-made climate change isn’t happening.
I can’t quite understand the reasoning behind this: it’s rather like saying that, because the fuel light on your car is blinking, your brakes don’t need servicing.
Live Science via MSNBC: The 'monster' behind Chupacabra mystery
By Wynne Parry
Sightings abound of a four-legged, hairless, fanged monster that kills and sucks the blood, and sometimes milk, from livestock in the United States and Latin America. Its name chupacabra literally means "goat sucker."
There is, in fact, a real monster behind the sightings, but it has eight legs, measures at most 0.02 inches long and burrows into skin, rather than sucking blood. Its name: Sarcoptes scabiei,the mite that causes scabies in humans ... and coyotes.
The chupacabras themselves are actually coyotes with severe infections by these mites, called sarcoptic mange, according to Barry OConnor, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan.
I know Barry from my days at U of M. He's as good a person as he is a scientist--and he's a very good scientist.
Biotechnology/Health
History Channel: This Day in History: 10/26/1984 Infant Receives Baboon Heart
At Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, California, Dr. Leonard L. Bailey performs the first baboon-to-human heart transplant, replacing a 14-day-old infant girl's defective heart with the healthy, walnut-sized heart of a young baboon.
Discovery News via MSNBC: Blood of King Louis XVI may be hidden inside gourd
Decorated squash was apparently used to store blood-soaked handkerchief after French monarch was beheaded
By Jennifer Viegas
Carved pumpkins abound this Halloween season, but a decorated gourd dated to 1793 may be the spookiest of them all. New research determines it may contain the blood of Louis XVI, who was executed by guillotine that same year.
The research, accepted for publication in the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics, shows how genetic analysis can provide new historical evidence independent of other traditional sources of information.
The gourd, originally used to store gunpowder, was extensively decorated on the outside with a flame tool. Burned into its surface is the text: "Maximilien Bourdaloue on January 21st, dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his beheading."
Climate/Environment
Reuters: Analysis: Climate phenomenon may grip Europe this winter
By Daniel Fineren
LONDON | Fri Oct 29, 2010 9:02am EDT
Weather and renewable energy supplies across much of western Europe could be hit this winter by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a phenomenon that can exert a powerful influence over temperature and rainfall.
Meteorologists say a negative NAO usually points to colder, calmer and drier winters in northern Europe and wetter, windier weather across the Iberian Peninsula and Italy as westerly winds from the Atlantic are pushed south.
The NAO has been negative since last autumn, pointing to a possible repeat of last year's winter with wind and hydro dampening Spanish gas demand, cold weather stoking UK gas use, and reduced German wind power lifting fossil fuel demand.
"We are in the midst of the longest streak of negative NAO on record," Todd Crawford, chief meteorologist at Weather Services International (WSI), said.
Geology
Reuters: Haiti may be primed for another quake
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO | Sun Oct 24, 2010 1:04pm EDT
The earthquake that devastated Haiti's capital and killed as many as 300,000 people in January may have been caused by an unseen fault and pressure could be building for another quake, seismic experts said on Sunday.
Two papers, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, take different approaches but both conclude the fault originally blamed for the quake was not the real source, and that it remains a threat.
"As the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault did not release any significant accumulated elastic strain, it remains a significant seismic threat for Haiti and for Port-au-Prince in particular," Eric Calais of Purdue University in Indiana and colleagues wrote.
"Much work remains to be done to identify and quantify potential earthquake sources in and around Hispaniola, an island where vulnerability to earthquake shaking will probably remain high in the near future," they said.
Psychology/Behavior
MSNBC: How your brain handles terror scares
Alan Boyle
Today's reports of suspicious packages sent from Yemen can add a real-life fear factor to the fictional scares that folks typically experience during Halloween weekend. Whether the scares are make-believe or real, neuroscience provides some strategies for channeling our fear response in the right way.
Millions of years of evolution have optimized our brains' hard wiring to cope with immediate threats -- such as the predators that crossed paths with our ancestors in Africa, said Andreas Keil, a psychologist at the NIMH Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention at the University of Florida.
"Today, we rarely experience the lions that want to eat us, or snakes that want to kill us ... but we respond a lot to cues where somebody tells us through a newspaper article or a Twitter tweet that a threat is around," Keil told me. "The brain's response to those cues is a lot like the response to the real thing."
Discovery News via MSNBC: Superstitious beliefs getting more common
By Emily Sohn
It's that time of year again. Ghosts, goblins and other spooky characters come out from the shadows and into our everyday lives.
For most people, the thrill lasts for a few weeks each October. But for true believers, the paranormal is an everyday fact, not just a holiday joke.
To understand what drives some people to truly believe, two sociologists visited psychic fairs, spent nights in haunted houses, trekked with Bigfoot hunters, sat in on support groups for people who had been abducted by aliens, and conducted two nationwide surveys.
Archeology/Anthropology
The Daily Mail (UK): Stone Age DIY: How Neolithic man decorated his house with homemade paint
Neolithic men were house-proud people who enjoyed doing DIY, new research has revealed.
Archaeologists have unearthed evidence that shows our ancestors from 5,000 years ago painted the insides of their Stone Age homes to brighten the place up.
As well as decorating the stone walls, they also painted designs like chevrons and zig-zags on their interiors.
They used red, yellow and orange pigments from ground-up minerals and bound it with animal fat and eggs to make their paint, the new research has found.
It is the earliest ever example of man using paint to decorate their properties in Britain, if not in Europe.
The Guardian (UK): David Attenborough's big dig
Silbury Hill is as ancient and enigmatic as Stonehenge. David Attenborough tells Jonathan Jones why he set out to crack it
"The past," says David Attenborough, "is a haunting and fascinating place." The great naturalist is revealing a little-known side of himself: his love of archaeology – and his fascination with Silbury Hill in Wiltshire. The tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe, Silbury Hill rises to a height of 37 metres, making it comparable with the Egyptian pyramids and the ziggurats of Mesopotamia.
In a new English Heritage book about the hill, Attenborough tells how, in 1968 as controller of BBC2, he commissioned a programme that involved tunnelling into its depths to discover why it was there. At the time, the programme was judged a flop, since it found no treasure, no tomb, no real answers at all.
Attenborough is now seeking to set the record straight. He argues that, far from failing, TV's first live dig triggered an unlikely chain of events that recently led to the tunnel being reopened and re-examined, using modern techniques. "They did not unearth any material treasure either," he writes, but instead "added more details to our knowledge and understanding." And this, you could say, is the true purpose of archaeology. In fact, the reopening of the tunnel vindicated the project Attenborough is so proud of: it revealed perhaps as much as will ever be known about this most mysterious of ancient monuments.
St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN): The mummy has no name — and, possibly soon, few secrets
At 5 feet 6 inches tall, the mummy was only a bit longer than the young patients who usually lie on the CT scanning bed at Children's Hospital in St. Paul. His wizened body was the color of black coffee, half-wrapped in crumbling brown linen. He lay absolutely straight, palms resting on his thighs, as the bed slid toward the circular opening of the scanning machine.
He looked less than human, until you noticed the sheen on his fingernails and white teeth peeking from between shriveled lips. And he smelled ... like honeycomb, from the resins and perfumes used to embalm the body 3,500 years ago.
Just in time for Halloween, the mummy owned by the Science Museum of Minnesota headed to Children's Hospital for a CT scan. Museum staff hope to discover something about their nameless mummy and acquire new images to highlight alongside the Feb. 18 opening of the exhibition "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs."
"Perhaps we'll notice something we didn't notice before," said museum curator of archaeology Ed Fleming. "I hope so. We're going into this with the attitude of 'We'll scan it and see what we'll see.'"
Physorg.com: Garden of Eden: Paradise lost -- and found
October 28, 2010
Ancient gardens are the stuff of legend, from the Garden of Eden to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with Heidelberg University in Germany, have uncovered an ancient royal garden at the site of Ramat Rachel near Jerusalem, and are leading the first full-scale excavation of this type of archaeological site anywhere in the pre-Hellenistic Levant.
According to Prof. Oded Lipschits and graduate student Boaz Gross of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology, this dig is an unparalleled look into the structure and function of ancient gardens. "We have uncovered a very rare find," says Prof. Lipschits, who believes that this excavation will lead to invaluable archaeological knowledge about ancient royal gardens in the Middle East.
The discovery, which dates back to the 7th century B.C.E., was recently reported in Quadmoniot, the journal of the Israel Exploration Society, and another paper on the dig is forthcoming in Near Eastern Archaeology.
Sofia News Agency: Bulgarian Police Seize Aphrodite Statue from Archaeology Criminals
Bulgarian police have shattered a crime group trafficking archaeological finds, including breath-taking items such as 2-meter marble statue of Aphrodite.
The organized crime group carried out illegal archaeological digs at the ancient Roman city of Ulpia Oescus on the Danube, close to the village of Gigen, Pleven District.
The five busted men had been watched by the police for five months.
The Independent (UK): The First Emperor's Terracotta Army recruited outside China
By Owen Jarus
Acrobats from Burma, workers from Central or West Asia, and a mausoleum design inspired by work in the Middle East – the Mausoleum of China’s First Emperor was a cosmopolitan place says Dr. Duan Qingbo, the man in charge of excavating it.
The mausoleum was created about 2,200 year ago and served as a tomb for Qin Shi Huang – the first emperor of China. While the emperor’s tomb is largely unexcavated, archaeologists have found thousands of life-size terracotta figures nearby. It’s believed that this army was created to serve the emperor in the afterlife.
Dr. Duan discussed the cosmopolitan nature of the complex at a lecture at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, which is currently hosting a Terracotta Warriors exhibition. He doesn’t speak English so his words were translated by Dr. Chen Shen, museum curator and Chinese archaeology expert.
China People's Daily: Archaeologists discover seafood on menu of ancient emperor who lived 1,000 miles from the sea
16:27, October 30, 2010
Ancient Chinese emperors in inland China may have dined on seafood that came from the eastern China coast more than one thousand miles away, archaeologists said Friday, after investigating an imperial mausoleum that dates back 2,000 years.
"We discovered the remains of sea snails and clams among the animal bone fossils in a burial pit," said Hu Songmei, a Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology researcher.
"Since the burial pit appears to be that of the official in charge of the emperor's diet, we conclude that seafood must have been part of the imperial menu," Hu said.
The discovery was made in the Hanyang Mausoleum in the ancient capital of Chang'an, today's Xi'an City in northwest China's Shaanxi Province.
Edinburgh Daily News (UK): Skeletons halt work on clinic
28 October 2010
By ADAM MORRIS
The discoveries, among the most impressive made in Scotland, include several sets of human remains from the Roman era as well as 5000-year-old tools
But it is decapitated skeletons and 2000-year-old forts rather than red tape and swelling costs that have caused the hold-up for the new health centre in Musselburgh.
Progress on the site has been delayed by at least six months after significant Roman remains were discovered.
Now architects have revealed the extent of their discoveries, which include human remains, the bones of horses and weapons and culinary tools.
The Columbus Dispatch: Archaeology: Materials dispute Woodland decline
Sunday, October 24, 2010 03:00 AM
By Bradley T. Lepper
Ohio's Late Woodland period, circa A.D. 900 to 1100, traditionally has been considered to be a time of marked cultural decline following the remarkable achievements in art and architecture that characterized the Hopewell culture, circa 100 B.C. to A.D. 400.
Hopewell people built elaborate and monumental earthworks, such as those at Newark and Chillicothe, and sought exotic raw materials from the ends of their world. They obtained copper from the upper Great Lakes, mica from the Carolinas, shells from the Gulf of Mexico and obsidian from Wyoming, which artisans crafted into marvelous works of art.
Around A.D. 400, however, the Hopewell culture appears to have suffered a collapse. The people ceased building monumental earthworks and no longer made extraordinary efforts to bring exotic goods into Ohio.
Norwich Evening News 24 (UK): Norfolk Romans led way in recycling - 1,500 years ago
by DAN GRIMMER Wednesday, 27 October, 2010
11:00 AM
Recycling might be all the rage in the 21st century, but finds in Norfolk suggest the Ancient Romans had gone green thousands of years before us.
Archaeologists studying glass fragments unearthed at Caister-on-Sea say they have found evidence that the Romans were recycling glass 1,500 years ago, way before councils were providing green bins.
According to a study co-authored by Harriet Foster, from Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service, large quantities of glass were recycled in Britain during the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.
Fragments of glass from excavations at the Roman fort at Caister-on-Sea were among glass which was examined in the study, along with other glass from the Norfolk Museums collection.
Japan Times: Swords lost since 760 'found' at Todaiji
NARA (Kyodo) Two swords found under the Great Buddha of Todaiji Temple in the Meiji Era have been identified as sacred swords that had been missing for some 1,250 years since around 760 after Empress Komyo, the wife of Emperor Shomu, who built the Buddha, dedicated them along with other items to the temple, the temple said Monday.
The swords, decorated with gold, silver and lacquer, appear on the top of about 100 swords in the weapon list of the Kokka Chimpo Cho (book of national treasures to Todaiji) kept at the Shosoin repository at the temple. They are considered important historical materials.
Times of Malta: Britain’s oldest known hospital site may have been discovered
Martin Halfpenny, PA
A site which may house Britain’s earliest known hospital has been uncovered by archaeologists.
Radio carbon analysis at the former Leper Hospital at St Mary Magdalen in Winchester, Hampshire, has provided a date range of AD 960-1030 for a series of burials, many exhibiting evidence of leprosy, on the site.
A number of other artefacts, pits and postholes also relate to the same time including what appears to be a large sunken structure underneath a mediaeval infirmary.
Before this new claim, most historians and archaeologists thought that hospitals in Britain only dated from after the Norman conquest of 1066.
Montgomery Advisor: Historians still search for mysterious Mabila
October 24, 2010
Some explorers looking for gold in the "New World" had fateful endings, but none quite as dramatic as Hernando de Soto during his meanderings through what would become known as Alabama.
The Spanish conquistador's 1540 exploration began to unravel at a south Alabama village where his well-armed troops had the advantage and slaughtered thousands of Indian defenders. Little did de Soto realize at the time, but the toll taken on his men at Mabila eventually would end his quest as well as his life.
Illness, not an Indian arrow or lance, did him in two years later and his weighted body was dumped into the Mississippi River.
His mission may have been a bust, but it also produced one of history's most enduring mysteries -- Where was Mabila?
Discovery News via MSNBC: Pocahontas' wedding site found
Church located in previously unexplored area of Jamestown settlement
By Liz Day
A team of archaeologists believe they may have finally discovered Pocahontas' wedding site, a mystery that has long vexed scholars.
Her matrimonial location may sound more modern than one would expect for a 1614 marriage between a 19-year-old daughter of an American Indian chief and her tobacco farmer husband.
Archaeologist Bill Kelso and his team discovered the church in a previously unexplored area of the fort in Jamestown, Va. During a dig, they unearthed a series of deep holes. They believe the holes were once filled with wood columns that supported the fort's first church, built in 1608.
Vancouver Sun: Signature on Lake Stuart shore was likely left by Simon Fraser, experts say
A signature etched in red ochre on the rocky shore of a British Columbia lake was almost certainly left 204 years ago by the famed explorer Simon Fraser, two Parks Canada archeologists have concluded after a detailed probe of the mysterious scrawl.
By Vancouver Sun October 22, 2010
A signature etched in red ochre on the rocky shore of a British Columbia lake was almost certainly left 204 years ago by the famed explorer Simon Fraser, two Parks Canada archeologists have concluded after a detailed probe of the mysterious scrawl.
The faint inscription-- "Simon F. 1806" -- has been hailed as an iconic and intimate link to a towering figure in the history of Western Canada, where Fraser was instrumental in extending the fur trade to the Pacific Ocean during his pioneering career as an explorer and fort builder in the future British Columbia.
But the simple message, discovered in 1975 by an RCMP officer patrolling Stuart Lake in the central Interior, had never been subjected to a comprehensive scholarly analysis.
The Washington Post via Seattle Times: Navy in hunt for John Paul Jones' famous sunken ship, the Bonhomme Richard
By Annys Shin
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Captain Ahab had Moby Dick. Bob Neyland's white whale is the Bonhomme Richard.
For decades, thrill-seekers, archaeologists and professional treasure hunters have searched for the wreckage of the USS Bonhomme Richard, a Continental Navy ship captained by John Paul Jones during the Revolutionary War that sank on Sept. 25, 1779 off the coast of Yorkshire, England, following a fierce sea battle where Jones answered a British captain's call for surrender by uttering the now-immortal words, "Sir, I have not yet begun to fight!"
But the ship is legally the property of the U.S. Navy, which is responsible for preserving whatever may be left of it. A big part of that job falls to Neyland, chief archaeologist for the Navy's Underwater Archaeology Branch, based at the Washington Navy Yard. The tiny unit is responsible for identifying and preserving sunken and historically important Navy vessels from colonial-era warships to World War II fighter planes.
Red Orbit: Citizen Scientists Explore Ancient Mongolia from Afar
Posted on: Friday, 29 October 2010, 10:55 CDT
"Citizen archaeologists" helped researchers find Bronze Age burial sites and other Mongolian antiquities as part of a new National Geographic-supported expedition this summer. The groundbreaking "Field Expedition: Mongolia — Valley of the Khans Project" invited Web users around the world to join a field expedition online in real time as "citizen scientists" from the comfort of their homes. The online expedition continues at http://exploration.nationalgeographi...
The field expedition, headed by National Geographic Emerging Explorer Albert Yu-Min Lin of the University of California, San Diego, in collaboration with professors Shagdaryn Bira and Tsogt-Ochiryn Ishdorj of the International Association for Mongol Studies, and National Geographic Archaeology Fellow Fredrik Hiebert, is using modern, noninvasive tools to explore and map parts of Mongolia including the "forbidden precinct" — the homeland of Genghis Khan, which has gone unexplored for 800 years. The project is searching for archaeological sites that shed light on the country’s rich cultural history and heritage while maintaining respect for local customs and beliefs.
BBC: Israeli archaeologist dies after fall at King Herod dig
Ehud Netzer, the Israeli archaeologist credited with discovering the tomb of the biblical King Herod, has died after falling during a dig. He was 76.
The Hebrew University professor died on Thursday from injuries sustained when a railing gave way at the Herodium archaeological site in the West Bank.
Prof Netzer had worked at the Herodium site for more than 30 years before he located King Herod's palace in 2007.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
Reuters via Yahoo! News: CERN scientists eye parallel universe breakthrough
By Robert Evans Robert Evans – Wed Oct 20, 11:16 am ET
GENEVA (Reuters) – Physicists probing the origins of the cosmos hope that next year they will turn up the first proofs of the existence of concepts long dear to science-fiction writers such as hidden worlds and extra dimensions.
And as their Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva moves into high gear, they are talking increasingly of the "New Physics" on the horizon that could totally change current views of the universe and how it works.
"Parallel universes, unknown forms of matter, extra dimensions... These are not the stuff of cheap science fiction but very concrete physics theories that scientists are trying to confirm with the LHC and other experiments."
Chemistry
North Carolina State University via Science Daily: 'Goldilocks' of DNA Self-Assembly Discovered
ScienceDaily (Oct. 28, 2010) — Researchers from North Carolina State University have found a way to optimize the development of DNA self-assembling materials, which hold promise for technologies ranging from drug delivery to molecular sensors. The key to the advance is the discovery of the "Goldilocks" length for DNA strands used in self-assembly -- not too long, not too short, but just right.
DNA strands contain genetic coding that will form bonds with another strand that contains a unique sequence of complementary genes. By coating a material with a specific DNA layer, that material will then seek out and bond with its complementary counterpart. This concept, known as DNA-assisted self-assembly, creates significant opportunities in the biomedical and materials science fields, because it may allow the creation of self-assembling materials with a variety of applications.
But, while DNA self-assembly technology is not a new concept, it has historically faced some significant stumbling blocks. One of these obstacles has been that DNA segments that are too short often failed to self-assemble, while segments that are too long often led to the creation of deformed materials. This hurdle can lead to basic manufacturing problems, as well as significant changes in the properties of the material itself.
Energy
CNN: Alaska's untapped oil reserves estimate lowered by about 90 percent
The U.S. Geological Survey says a revised estimate for the amount of conventional, undiscovered oil in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is a fraction of a previous estimate.
The group estimates about 896 million barrels of such oil are in the reserve, about 90 percent less than a 2002 estimate of 10.6 billion barrels.
The new estimate is mainly due to the incorporation of new data from recent exploration drilling revealing gas occurrence rather than oil in much of the area, the geological survey said.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Reuters: California unveils greenhouse gas trading plan
By Peter Henderson
SAN FRANCISCO | Fri Oct 29, 2010 7:52pm EDT
California unveiled on Friday its final blueprint of a market system to curb greenhouse gases, relaxing expected rules in the face of a weak economy in a measure that could set the tone for the nation's climate policy.
By agreeing to give away virtually all necessary permits to factories and power plants when the program starts in 2012, rather than sell them at auction, the U.S. state with the biggest economy and population is acknowledging the challenges of double-digit unemployment -- and the reality that pollution decreases as the economy slows.
California aims to cap total emissions of gases linked to global warming and let factories and power plants trade for an ever-decreasing number of permits to emit gases. In theory, market forces will drive efficiency in the system, known as cap and trade.
Science Education
Brown Daily Herald: Square by square, class is digging up Brown's dirt
Tiffany Zabludowicz
Contributing Writer
Krysta Ryzewski, postdoctoral fellow in archaeology, and her class meet every Monday afternoon on the lawn of the John Brown House — to dig.
The class, ARCH 1900: "The Archaeology of College Hill," aims to bring archaeology home, looking deeper at the sites on the Brown map. Class begins as the students walk across Power Street, clad in Wellington boots with shovels in hand. Once they reach the site, they quickly get to work on square patches of dirt. What initially seems like random digging soon reveals itself as a very serious task, as students begin their arduous calculations and decide where and how to dig.
The Daily Telegraph (UK): British museums fear putting skulls on display because of protests
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Already museums around the country have been forced to close coffin lids, remove skeletons and respectfully replace the shroud on mummies in order to placate protesters. There are fears such artefacts could be banned altogether.
Small groups such as the Pagan Organisation Honouring the Ancient Dead claim that it is against the religious beliefs of our ancestors to put bodies on show.
Museums are becoming increasingly nervous about displaying human remains. Seventeen have drawn up guidelines advising curators to warn the public and only display photographs of mummies with a shroud.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
Science Writing and Reporting
Science News: Book Review: Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions
By Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, with Sandra Blakeslee
Review by Laura Sanders
November 6th, 2010
Magic wands, fake drop boxes and invisible thread may be fun gimmicks, but a magician’s most valuable tool weighs about three pounds and sits in the skull of the spectator.
In their illuminating book, brain experts Martinez-Conde and Macknik make the case that magicians are some of the most skilled neuroscientists around. No mere hucksters, magicians deftly manipulate brains by sculpting attention, perception and memory so that the outrageous seems possible.
Science is Cool
The Daily Pennsylvanian: Demystifying the history of vampires
The Penn Museum hosted a discussion on monsters in the Ancient World
by Kyle Hardgrave | Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 11:04 pm
These days, when an event is billed as vampire related, one might expect the target audience to be mostly made up of adolescent girls.
Not so for the considerable crowd that turned out to the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’s Rainey Auditorium on Thursday evening. The program, "Vampires, Demons and Mystical Creatures in the Ancient World," was organized by Young Friends, a group of active volunteers that seeks to encourage Museum membership and participation among young professionals and students in the 21 through 45-year-old range — though Thursday’s crowd ranged from children to older adults.
The evening began with two speakers who presented on magic and monsters from ancient times. The first, associate professor of Classical Studies Peter Struck, spoke about the prevalence of magic in ancient Greece — and, indeed, throughout the ancient world.
"In Greece, everyone used magic, and believed it worked," Struck said. The most prevalent method, he explained, was to "enlist the untimely dead" — young people who died early, violent deaths — to do one’s bidding by dropping spells into their graves.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
The Daily Telegraph (UK): Is 'the liberal gene' nonsense? No, but the jokes on the subject are
Tom Chivers
I have a problem. I have no sense of humour when it comes to science. None. If you make a joke, and the punchline is, say, people who catch swine flu turning into pigs, I will stare flatly at you and say "that’s not how it works. It’s just a virus that originated in pigs." It puts severe constraints on the sort of parties I can go to.
With that in mind, imagine how I feel at the moment, as dozens of japesome Right-wingers in the press make hilarious jokes about the "liberal gene" apparently found by researchers at Harvard and the University of California. So: does the joke stand up to scrutiny?