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 NPR.
Scientists Find Bacterium That Survives On Arsenic
by Jon Hamilton
Researchers say they have found a bacterium that defies scientific dogma: It's able to use the deadly poison arsenic in place of an element previously considered essential for life. The finding appears to expand the range of places where life could exist — both on Earth and elsewhere in the universe.
The discovery comes from a young NASA astrobiologist who likes to find exceptions to rules. Felisa Wolfe-Simon says she was fascinated by crustaceans because they don't use iron to carry oxygen around their bodies the way most species do. Instead, they use copper.
Wolfe-Simon thought this sort of chemical substitution might go even further.
More science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
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Slideshows/Videos
NBC Montana: New UM Research To Emerge On Donner Party
By Heidi Meili
MISSOULA, Mont. -- University of Montana archaeologists are using DNA technology to get to the bottom of the Donner Party's deadly migration to the West.
The surviving travelers are rumored to have resorted to cannibalism, but recent research has turned up no proof.
Local scholars tell me many questions still remain.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Las Vegas Sun: Mammoth tusk discovered near North Las Vegas
By Erin Dostal
Friday, Dec. 3, 2010 | 2:05 a.m.
A paleontologist revealed Thursday the discovery of a seven-foot-long Columbian Mammoth tusk in an area near North Las Vegas rich with fossils.
Thousands of fossils have been found in the area of the proposed Tule Springs National Monument, including many Columbian Mammoths — 14-foot-tall creatures that roamed the Nevada desert thousands of years ago.
The process of unearthing the tusk began earlier this year after the Bureau of Land Management approved the excavation, said Eric Scott, a paleontologist with the San Bernardino County Museum. The tusk was found, Scott said, because part of it was sticking out of the desert dirt.
Yale Environment 360: When The Water Ends: Africa’s Climate Conflicts
For thousands of years, nomadic herdsmen have roamed the harsh, semi-arid lowlands that stretch across 80 percent of Kenya and 60 percent of Ethiopia. Descendants of the oldest tribal societies in the world, they survive thanks to the animals they raise and the crops they grow, their travels determined by the search for water and grazing lands.
These herdsmen have long been accustomed to adapting to a changing environment. But in recent years, they have faced challenges unlike any in living memory: As temperatures in the region have risen and water supplies have dwindled, the pastoralists have had to range more widely in search of suitable water and land. That search has brought tribal groups in Ethiopia and Kenya in increasing conflict, as pastoral communities kill each other over water and grass.
"When the Water Ends," a 16-minute video produced by Yale Environment 360 in collaboration with MediaStorm, tells the story of this conflict and of the increasingly dire drought conditions facing parts of East Africa. To report this video, Evan Abramson, a 32-year-old photographer and videographer, spent two months in the region early this year, living among the herding communities. He returned with a tale that many climate scientists say will be increasingly common in the 21st century and beyond — how worsening drought in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere will pit group against group, nation against nation. As one UN official told Abramson, the clashes between Kenyan and Ethiopian pastoralists represent "some of the world’s first climate-change conflicts."
Discovery News: Animals: Crows vs Cat vs Cat Street Fight Explained
Birds attacking cats! Cats attacking each other! What's going on in this viral video? James Williams gets the explanation.
UCLA: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/...
In this edition of UCLA News Week, Dr. Erik Dutson of the David Geffen School of Medicine shows how new technology has expanded the possibilities of minimally invasive surgery. Computers and the Internet let him take part in surgeries far away from his base at UCLA.
Astronomy/Space
MSNBC: See what's hot on Saturn moon
Alan Boyle writes:Temperature readings from the Cassini orbiter support the view that warmth is welling up through cracks in the icy surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn's most intriguing moons.
The readings were taken by the 6.4-ton spacecraft's infrared spectrometer and high-resolution camera during an August flyby, and discussed today in a series of news releases and advisories. In an e-mailed alert, Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco said a "phenomenal amount of heat is emerging" through the south polar fractures known as tiger stripes.
The hot spots might not sound all that hot: The warmest areas registered surface temperatures of 120 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, or 190 Kelvin. But Porco said that's staggeringly higher than the coldest temperatures in the south polar terrain, which dip as low as 365 degrees below zero F (52 Kelvin). She called particular attention to a warm fissure known as Damascus Sulcus.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Examiner.com: Number of stars in universe is tripled by astronomer's discovery
By Anna Sanclement, Space News Examiner
Astronomers have discovered that the number of stars in the universe is triple what was previously thought, reports Space Daily. Until recently, red dwarf stars were not detectable in galaxies outside our own nearby cluster because they are relatively small and dim. Thus, researchers were not able to comprise a total number of red dwarfs present in the universe.
However, astronomers are now able to observe nearby elliptical galaxies using powerful telescopes at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. These instruments were able to detect the faint signatures of red dwarf stars in eight massive ellipticals that lie about 50,000 and 300 million light-years away.
In their observations, the scientists realized that red dwarfs were much more abundant than they had expected.
Discovery News: Weather Outlook on Super-Earth: Steamy
Extreme heat and some water on a distant exoplanet may make for steamy conditions.
By Irene Klotz
Scientists have come up with their first weather report for a super-Earth -- a type of planet two to 10 times bigger than Earth that doesn't exist in our solar system, but which holds much promise in the search for extraterrestrial life.
No one expects life to exist on GJ 1214b, a hellish world 70 times closer to its parent star than Earth orbits the sun. But by a fortuitous alignment of geometry, the planet disappears behind its star relative to our view on Earth, giving astronomers an opportunity to study how its parent star's light changes as it passes through the planet's atmosphere.
"We're sure it has an atmosphere, because the size is not right for a purely solid body," astronomer Jacob Bean, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Discovery News.
Examiner.com: X-37B spaceplane returns to Earth
By Jason Rhian, NASA Examiner
The U.S. Air Force's classified and unmanned X-37B spacecraft landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1:16 a.m. PST. The spaceplane landed after a successful first flight that lasted over seven months.
The X-37B is a stubby-winged, robotic spacecraft that is in many ways similar to the space shuttle – except the fact that it is far smaller and needs no crew to operate. As with much everything else involving this flight – little information was given about the landing excluding some images and some infrared video showing the small spaceplane coming to a landing at the air base.
Examiner.com: Falcon 9 test fire unsuccessful
By Jason Rhian, NASA Examiner
SpaceX attempted to test fire its Falcon 9 rocket, a mere four days before the rocket is scheduled to make its second flight – with limited results. The rocket was scheduled to conduct a 2-second test burn of its Merlin engines – however, the test lasted barely a second when it was required to shut down.
Examiner.com: Discovery won't be launching this year
By Jason Rhian, NASA Examiner
NASA has decided to reschedule the final flight of space shuttle Discovery – again. Discovery’s last launch is now scheduled to take place on Feb. 3 at 1:34 a.m. EDT. Mission managers decided that more tests were required before going ahead with the launch of the STS-133 mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Evolution/Paleontology
Physorg.com: Ammonites were probably eaten by fellow cephalopods
December 3, 2010 by Lin Edwards
(PhysOrg.com) -- Fossilized ammonites found with bite marks in similar places on their shells suggest they were eaten by other cephalopods such as beaked squid, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society.
The ammonites were invertebrate marine creatures living in shallow waters less than 100 meters deep. They became extinct around the end of the Cretaceous period, and are thought to be the ancestors of the modern-day cephalopods, which include squid, cuttlefish, nautilus and octopus species. They are the best preserved and most widely found fossil around the world, and are recognizable by their spiral shells. They were predators themselves, feeding on a variety of fish, mollusks, and even other cephalopods, but little is known about ammonites as prey.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Examiner.com: Rainforest collapse drove reptile evolution
By Paul Hamaker
Global warming devastated tropical rainforests, 300 million years ago. Now scientists report the unexpected discovery that this event triggered an evolutionary burst amongst reptiles and inadvertently paved the way for the rise of dinosaurs, a hundred million years later.
This event happened during the Carboniferous Period. At that time, Europe and North America lay on the equator and were covered by steamy tropical rainforests. But when the Earth’s climate became hotter and drier, rainforests collapsed, triggering reptile evolution.
Examiner.com: Complete 150 million-year-old sauropod found in China
By Paul Hamaker
A set of well-preserved dinosaur fossils was recently unearthed in the suburban area of Qijiang County in Chongqing. The set of fossils has been preliminary identified by archaeologists as the remains of a sauropod dinosaur that lived during the Jurassic period 150 million years ago.
According to sources, the sauropod dinosaur was the largest terrestrial animal during the Jurassic period.
Examiner.com: Genomic fault zones play key role in evolution
By Paul Hamaker
The fragile regions in mammalian genomes that are thought to play a key role in evolution go through a "birth and death" process, according to new bioinformatics research performed at the University of California, San Diego. The new work, published in the journal Genome Biology on November 30, could help researchers identify the current fragile regions in the human genome – information that may reveal how the human genome will evolve in the future.
"The genomic architecture of every species on Earth changes on the evolutionary time scale and humans are not an exception. What will be the next big change in the human genome remains unknown, but our approach could be useful in determining where in the human genome those changes may occur," said Pavel Pevzner, a UC San Diego computer science professor and an author on the new study. Pevzner studies genomes and genome evolution from a computational perspective in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.
The fragile regions of genomes are prone to "genomic earthquakes" that can trigger chromosome rearrangements, disrupt genes, alter gene regulation and otherwise play an important role in genome evolution and the emergence of new species. For example, humans have 23 chromosomes while some other apes have 24 chromosomes, a consequence of a genome rearrangement that fused two chromosomes in our ape ancestor into human chromosome 2.
Biodiversity
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Scientists fear mass extinction as oceans choke
By Amy Simmons
Australian scientists fear the planet is on the brink of another mass extinction as ocean dead zones continue to grow in size and number.
More than 400 ocean dead zones - areas so low in oxygen that sea life cannot survive - have been reported by oceanographers around the world between 2000 and 2008.
That is compared with 300 in the 1990s and 120 in the 1980s.
Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) and from the University of Queensland, says there is growing evidence that declining oxygen levels in the ocean have played a major role in at least four of the planet's five mass extinctions.
"Until recently the best hypothesis for them was a meteor strike," he said.
Hat/Tip to Stranded Wind, RLMiller, and the other editors of Progressive Congress News for the above articles.
NPR: Declining Biodiversity Speeds Spreading Of Disease
by Eliza Barclay
The unassuming opossum, a soft gray marsupial that slinks around at night, glimpsed by the occasional car headlight, is an unlikely mediator in the spread of Lyme disease. But scientists have found that the opossum, whose claws are well-suited to picking off the irksome ticks that try to bite them, can actually serve as a biological buffer between the Lyme bacterium and the humans it sickens.
But what happens when the opossum's habitat — the Northeast forest — is bulldozed? Lyme disease hops aboard the white-footed mouse, a species less adept at killing piggybacking ticks, and less reliant on the forest for survival.
The tale of the opossum is one of many in a review article published in Nature this week, which details how a loss in biodiversity more often than not increases the transmission of disease. As humans have disrupted ecosystems around the world, it seems we have helped to unlock some diseases we'd never encountered before, like HIV and SARS, and aided the spread of others that already afflict us.
Hat/Tip to Inspired By Nature, who sent me this link.
Biotechnology/Health
UCLA: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/...
By Kim Irwin
December 03, 2010
A protein that is crucial for regulating the self-renewal of normal prostate stem cells, which are needed to repair injured cells or restore normal cells killed by hormone-withdrawal therapy for cancer, also aids the transformation of healthy cells into prostate cancer cells, researchers at UCLA have found.
The findings, by scientists with the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA, may have important implications for controlling cancer growth and progression.
Results from the three-year study, done in primary cells and in animal models, were published Dec. 2 in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Cell Stem Cell.
UCLA: UCLA biochemists develop new method for preventing oxidative damage to cells
Findings could lead to enhanced health supplements, progress on Parkinson's
By Stuart Wolpert and Kim DeRose
December 01, 2010
Catherine Clarke and UCLA researchersThe discovery by UCLA biochemists of a new method for preventing oxidation in the essential fatty acids of cell membranes could lead to a new class of more effective nutritional supplements and potentially help combat neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's disease and perhaps Alzheimer's.
While polyunsaturated fatty acids are essential nutrients for everything from brain function to cell function, they are the most vulnerable components in human cells because of their high sensitivity to oxidative modifications caused by highly reactive oxygen molecules in the body.
The biochemists, led by UCLA chemistry and biochemistry professor Catherine Clarke, have developed a new method for increasing the stability of polyunsaturated fatty acids. They have discovered a way to make these molecules harder to break apart so that oxidation is less likely to occur, rather than relying on antioxidants to repair damage after it occurs.
University of California: Finding could shrink dengue-spreading mosquito population
RIVERSIDE — Each year, dengue fever infects as many as 100 million people while yellow fever is responsible for about 30,000 deaths worldwide. Both diseases are spread by infected female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which require vertebrate blood to produce eggs. The blood feeding and the egg development are tightly linked to how the mosquito transmits the disease-causing virus.
Now a team of entomologists at the University of California, Riverside, has identified a microRNA (a short ribonucleic acid molecule) in female A. aegypti mosquitoes that when deactivated disrupts the mosquito's blood digestion and egg development — a discovery that could help control the spread of not only dengue and yellow fever but potentially all vector-borne diseases.
MicroRNAs do not code for protein products but play powerful regulatory roles in development and cell growth; their mis-regulation leads to defects, including cancer. The researchers asked if microRNAs were involved in essential functions in female mosquitoes such as blood feeding and egg maturation. These functions are required not only for successful reproduction, but also serve as a foundation for the mosquito's ability to transmit pathogens of devastating human diseases.
University of California: Scientists map genetic changes caused by DNA damage
Using a new technology called "differential epistasis maps," an international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has documented for the first time how a cellular genetic network completely rewires itself in response to stress by DNA-damaging agents.
The research — to be published in the Friday (Dec. 3) issue of Science — is significant because it represents a major technological leap forward from simply compiling lists of genes in an organism to actually describing how these genes actively work together.
"Cell behavior is dynamic, but the genetic networks that govern these behaviors have been studied mostly only under normal, benign laboratory conditions," said Trey Ideker, professor of medicine and bioengineering, and chief of the Division of Medical Genetics in the UC San Diego School of Medicine. "This work is the next milestone. It shows that we can map how genetic networks in cells are reprogrammed in response to stimuli, thus revealing functional relationships that would go undetected using other approaches."
Climate/Environment
The Guardian (UK): Climate change could push staple food prices up 130% – study
Report warning comes as many countries fear instability caused by rising food prices and shortages
Suzanne Goldberg, US environment correspondent
Climate change could lead to shortages and punishing 130% price rises in staple foods within our lifetime, raising the spectre of riots and civil unrest, a new study warned today.
The report, by the International Food Policy Research Institute, warned that warming of even one degree by 2050 could play havoc with food production – with hotter, wetter temperatures cutting crop yields.
With a global population of 9 billion forecasted by the middle of the century, the effects of lower crop yields could be devastating – especially if income growth faltered in developing countries, the report warned.
Reuters: Special Report: Making forests pay in a warming world
By David Fogarty
SEMPIT, Indonesia | Fri Dec 3, 2010 10:45am EST
Deep in the flooded jungles of southern Borneo, muddy peat oozes underfoot like jello, threatening to consume anyone who tries to walk even a few yards into the thick, steaming forest.
Hard to imagine this brown, gooey stuff could become a new global currency worth billions a year, much less an important tool in the fight against climate change.
Yet this is a new frontier for business, says Bali-based consultant Rezal Kusumaatmadja, and a new way to pay for conservation efforts in a world facing ever more pressure on the land to grow food and extract timber, coal and other resources.
Hat/Tip to Stranded Wind, RLMiller, and the other editors of Progressive Congress News for the above articles.
Geology
Discovery News: Ancient Mega-Lake Found in Egyptian Desert
One of the driest places in the world was once home to a lush lake nearly the size of Lake Michigan.
By Larry O'Hanlon
The hyper-arid deserts of western Egypt were once home to a lush mega-lake fed by the Nile River's earliest annual floods.
Fossil fish and space shuttle radar images have defined the bed and drainage channels of the long lost lake, which at times was larger than Lake Michigan, stretching as far as 250 miles west of the Nile in southwestern Egypt.
The discovery pushes back the origin of the "Gift of the Nile" floods to more than a quarter million years ago and paints a drastically different picture of Egypt's environment than is seen today. It also explains the longstanding puzzle of the fossilized fish found in the desert -- fish that are of the same kinds that live in today's Nile River.
Psychology/Behavior
UCLA: Contact with dads drops when women ovulate
Evidence of evolutionary protection against inbreeding in women?
By Meg Sullivan
November 29, 2010
Through an innovative use of cell phone records, researchers at UCLA, the University of Miami and Cal State, Fullerton, have found that women appear to avoid contact with their fathers during ovulation.
"Women call their dads less frequently on these high-fertility days and they hang up with them sooner if their dads initiate a call," said Martie Haselton, a UCLA associate professor of communication in whose lab the research was conducted.
Because they did not have access to the content of the calls, the researchers are not able to say for sure why ovulating women appear to avoid father-daughter talks. They say the behavior may be motivated by an unconscious motive to avoid male control at a time when the women are most fertile. But a more primal impulse may be at work: an evolutionary adaptation to avoid inbreeding.
Whatever the case, the researchers know that the findings are consistent with past research on the behavior of other animals when they are at their most fertile.
University of California: ‘Brain maps' track how humans reach
A ballet dancer grasps her partner's hand to connect for a pas de deux. Later that night, in the dark, she reaches for her calf to massage a sore spot. Her brain is using different "maps" to plan for each of these movements, according to a new study at UC Santa Barbara.
In preparing for each of these reaching movements, the same part of the dancer's brain is activated, but it uses a different map to specify the action, according to the research. Planning to hold hands is based on her visual map of space. Her second plan, to reach for her calf, depends on the dancer's mental body map.
Two UC Santa Barbara scientists studied the brains of 18 individuals who made 400 distinct arm reaches as they lay in an MRI scanner. The researchers found clear differences in brain planning activity with regard to the two types of reaching behavior. Their discovery is reported in the journal Neuron.
"Our results have two important applications," said Scott T. Grafton, professor of psychology. "One is robotics. The other is in the area of machine-brain interface; for example, in developing machines to help paraplegics. A critical issue is to understand how movement-related information is represented in the brain if we're to decode it." Grafton, a leading expert in brain imaging, directs the UC Santa Barbara Brain Imaging Center where the university's MRI scanner is located.
Archeology/Anthropology
China People's Daily: Prehistoric sites discovered in Guizhou's Qinglong
13:36, December 03, 2010
Eight sites with evidence of Paleolithic and Neolithic human activities have been discovered during the third general cultural relic survey conducted by Qinglong County, according to related departments on Nov. 30.
Through the analysis of collected stone tools, pottery fragments and broken animal bone fossils, archeological experts have initially ascertained that the unearthed stone tools were made about 10,000 years ago, implying that the history of human activities in Qinglong County may date back to as far as 10,000 years ago.
Physorg.com: The oldest salt mine known to date located in Azerbaijan
French archeologists have recently provided proof that the Duzdagi salt deposits, situated in the Araxes Valley in Azerbaijan, were already being exploited from the second half of the 5th millennium BC. It is therefore the most ancient exploitation of rock salt attested to date. And, to the researchers' surprise, intensive salt production was carried out in this mine at least as early as 3500 BC. This work, conducted in collaboration with the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences and published on 1st December 2010 in the journal TUBA-AR, should help to elucidate how the first complex civilizations, which emerged between 4500 BC and 3500 BC in the Caucasus, were organized.
BBC: Multiple burials at Orkney Neolithic site
Archaeologists have recovered remains from at least eight people after initial excavation at a Neolithic tomb site in Orkney discovered in October.
A narrow, stone-lined passageway leads to five chambers, two of which have been part-excavated so far.
Fragments of skull and hipbone have been unearthed, some carefully placed in gaps in the stones, suggesting the 5,000-year-old site is undisturbed.
The bones point to a range of ages at death including a child of about six.
Nature: Chemists help archaeologists to probe biblical history
Collaboration establishes a new approach for teasing out clues hidden in the soil.
Haim Watzman
Fabled as a site of biblical battles and spectacular palaces, Tel Megiddo today is a dusty mound overlooking Israel's Jezreel valley. It is also host to one of the hottest debates in archaeology — a controversy over the historical truth of the Bible's account of the first united Kingdom of Israel.
Ancient Megiddo is said to have been a key administrative and military centre in the kingdom ruled by King David and his son Solomon during the eleventh and tenth centuries BC. But the biblical narrative is challenged by archaeologists such as Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, who believe that David and Solomon did not rule over an Iron Age empire. Instead, they suggest, David and Solomon commanded a small and not terribly influential kingdom, and Megiddo's peak came nearly a century after the united kingdom had divided.
Discovery News via MSNBC: Did female Egyptian pharaoh rule before Cleopatra?
Woman who was Olympic champion may have had title 200 years before
By Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery Channel
Cleopatra may not have been ancient Egypt's only female pharaoh — Queen Arsinoë II, a woman who competed in and won Olympic events, came first, some 200 years earlier, according to a new study into a unique Egyptian crown.
After analyzing details and symbols of the crown worn by Arsinoë and reinterpreting Egyptian reliefs, Swedish researchers are questioning Egypt's traditional male-dominated royal line. They suggest that Queen Arsinoë II (316-270 B.C.) was the first female pharaoh belonging to Ptolemy's family — the dynasty that ruled Egypt for some 300 years until the Roman conquest of 30 B.C.
China People's Daily: 7 Ming dynasty imperial kilns found in Wuhan
15:49, December 01, 2010
Seven imperial kilns from the Ming dynasty were discovered in Xinzhou by local archaeologists on Nov. 30.
The bricks in the kilns still bear clearly legible inscriptions "Production supervised by Liu Bowen," who was the main advisor to Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder and first emperor (1368–1398) of the Ming dynasty of China.
University of Bristol (UK) via physorg.com: Identifying Eadgyth
When German archaeologists discovered bones in the tomb of Queen Eadgyth in Magdeburg Cathedral, they looked to Bristol to provide the crucial scientific evidence that the remains were indeed those of the English royal. Dr. Alistair Pike in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology tells Hannah Johnson how tiny samples of tooth enamel proved the identity of a Saxon queen.
Teeth provide remarkable evidence about the early years of an individual’s life. The region where a person grew up can be traced in the tooth enamel laid down in their first 14 years because strontium and oxygen isotope ratios in the teeth reflect the food a person ate and the water they drank.
When rocks form, they contain minute traces of radioactive rubidium 87, which decays to strontium 87. Over millions of years, the ratio of strontium 87 to the stable isotope strontium 86 changes, so, in very young rocks, the ratio will be smaller than in very old rocks.
Vancouver Sun (Canada): Canadians closing in on lost wreckage of HMS Terror
By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News November 26, 2010
It's a genuine treasure of American history, with a price tag to match: a rare, 195-year-old printing of the original sheet music for the Star-Spangled Banner is expected to sell for up to $300,000 at an auction next week in New York.
But as U.S. history buffs lined up for a look at the patriotic relic this week during Christie's pre-sale exhibition, Canadian archeologists were planning their next Arctic Ocean search for one of the very War of 1812 ships — the last in existence — responsible for the "rockets' red glare" and "bombs bursting in air" that helped inspire American poet Francis Scott Key to write his country's national anthem after witnessing the bombing of Baltimore in September 1814.
Bishop Museum via Hawaii 24/7: Hawaiian Archaeological Survey database online
MEDIA RELEASE
Bishop Museum has launched of its Hawaiian Archaeological Survey (HAS) on-line database.
This searchable database contains information on sites in Hawaii excavated by Bishop Museum archaeologists.
"HAS opens up archaeological site based information and literature to the greater community, on a scale that’s never been done before," Bishop Museum Archaeology Collections Manager Rowan Gard said.
"Now people can search for information pertaining to their community, even their own backyard in the HAS and hopefully gain a greater understanding of the Hawaiian past that is manifested in the present landscape – geographic, as well as the cultural," he said.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
University of California: Scientists identify basic science of swirling phenomona
Scientists can use cylinders as small as teapots to study the mechanisms involved in powerful hurricanes and other swirling natural phenomena.
The Earth's atmosphere and its molten outer core have one thing in common: Both contain powerful, swirling vortices. While in the atmosphere these vortices include cyclones and hurricanes, in the outer core they are essential for the formation of the Earth's magnetic field. These phenomena in Earth's interior and its atmosphere are both governed by the same natural mechanisms, according to experimental physicists at UC Santa Barbara working with a computation team in the Netherlands.
Using laboratory cylinders from 4 to 40 inches high, the team studied these underlying physical processes. The results are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
"To study the atmosphere would be too complicated for our purposes," said Guenter Ahlers, senior author and professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara. "Physicists like to take one ingredient of a complicated situation and study it in a quantitative way under ideal conditions."
UCLA: UCLA receives $8.4M to lead research on ultra-low-power, non-volatile logic technologies
By Wileen Wong Kromhout and Matthew Chin
December 02, 2010
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science an $8.4 million grant for research on a technology known as non-volatile logic, which enables computers and electronic devices to keep their state even while powered off, then start up and run complex programs instantaneously.
The research has broad implications across a range of technologies, including portable electronics, remote sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles and high-performance computing.
UCLA Engineering researchers will conduct studies into the materials, design, fabrication and tools used to develop such technologies.
"The technologies developed in this project will form the basis for a paradigm shift, not only in spintronics, but in the electronics industry as a whole," said Kang Wang, UCLA's Raytheon Professor of Electrical Engineering and joint principal investigator on the project. "The support from DARPA is critical, since it will allow the U.S. to take the lead in developing this new non-volatile electronic technology."
Chemistry
Science News: The nitty-gritty of diamond polishing
Researchers reveal atomic secrets of an ancient art
By Rachel Ehrenberg
You can soften your sweetie with diamonds, but to soften a diamond — the hardest material on Earth — takes some special chemistry.
New research finds that a liquidlike layer of carbon at the interface between a diamond-polishing wheel and a diamond creates the magic that turns a grubby stone into a girl’s best friend.
New polishing tricks may emerge from the research, perhaps allowing scientists to exploit diamonds for use in semiconductors or optics. And the computational modeling approach used in the study, published online November 28 in Nature Materials, could aid in understanding wear in materials such as metals or ceramics.
Energy
N.Y. Times: Midwest Emerges as Center for Clean Energy
By KEITH SCHNEIDER
Published: November 30, 2010
CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio — With surprising speed, and with the help of ample public incentives, a solar energy manufacturing center has emerged in the upper Midwest that is helping to supply the world’s growing demand for clean power.
Here in this central Ohio city of 13,400 residents, DuPont is building a $175 million, 162,000-square-foot solar materials plant that will employ 70 people.
About 320 miles north, near Midland, Mich., Hemlock Semiconductor is completing a $1 billion polycrystalline silicon plant to supply a basic raw material in the manufacture of solar photovoltaic cells, which convert sunlight to electricity. The Hemlock plant will add 300 new jobs by the end of the year.
In between the two plants are six more new solar facilities in Michigan and three others in Ohio.
Solar Feeds: MIT Liquid Battery Could Make Solar Power Forever Storable
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are once again entering the solar technology field to help solve one of solar’s most pressing questions: how can we efficiently store and transport solar energy?
MIT’s Associate Professor of Power Engineering Jeffrey Grossman is leading a research team that is developing what they hope becomes the world’s first liquid solar storage battery – able to infinitely store and transport solar power captured by photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. The research comes just three months after MIT’s SENSEable City Lab unveiled "Seaswarm"- a solar-powered, oil-sucking robot that would be able to clean up future oil spills similar to the Gulf Coast oil disaster this past summer.
The research team has discovered that fulvalene diruthenium – a molecule that comes out of the rare transition metal, ruthenium – absorbs sunlight and changes it into what Discovery calls a, "semi-stable condition." Then, when a catalyst is added to the stable power, the energy reverts back to its original form and can be used for heaters or appliances.
Renewable Energy World: Solar Maps Help Foster Sustainable Cities
Cities across the U.S. are creating solar maps to help residents learn more about installing solar.
By Stephen Graff, Contributor
New York, NY, USA -- Solar energy is more accessible to Americans than ever before. There are federal tax credits, cheaper photovoltaic systems on the market and hefty rebates that make a return on investment more attractive.
But sifting through this stack of information can be daunting, so city sustainability officials are simplifying the process by rolling out solar maps—online, interactive one-stop shops. Think Google Maps for solar.
"This is a way to make it much more tangible for the public," said Tria Case, university director of sustainability for the City University of New York (CUNY), which partnered with New York City to create its solar map, set to launch early 2011. "The more we can streamline the process, the greater the likelihood we will see an increase in solar in the city."
Smart Grid on tmcnet.com: Natural Gas Impeding Renewable Energy Growth
By TMCnet Special Guest
Kira Gaza, Senior Researcher, Zpryme Research
Energy analysts around the U.S. were shocked when the price of wind energy per mega-watt hour (MWh) fell below the price of natural gas in Texas. According to some analyses, Texas consumers were paying $5.55 more per MWh of natural gas than wind energy for the fiscal year 2009. This was encouraging news to many who work in the renewable energy field, because renewable energy is intermittent and can be difficult to predict how much energy will be produced. To stabilize an inconsistent energy supply, utility providers back up their renewable energy suppliers with a more reliable energy source.
Natural gas is often the favored back up energy source in the U.S. as it can provide flexible generation, new production facilities can easily be built, there is a large natural supply, and it produces about half of the emissions of coal. Energy investors look for opportunities when renewable energy prices fall below the natural gas price curve, at which time they try to capture the spread between the two. Having wind prices fall below natural gas prices was promising for the renewable industry, as it showed that renewables could prove to be a profitable investment.
However, the encouraging pricing trend for renewable energy was disrupted in late 2009 as natural gas prices fell to a five year low of $3.71 per thousand cubic feet. Before this, natural gas had been selling at a five year high in 2008 at an average of $7.96 per thousand cubic feet and since 2005 had not dipped below the $5.00 mark per thousand cubic feet. Analysts contribute the price decrease to several factors. In 2008, extraction began on one of the world’s largest natural gas resources, the Marcellus Shale reserve, which extends from southern New York, eastern Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Some geologists estimate there is enough natural gas here to supply the East Coast for the next 50 years.
Hat/Tip to Stranded Wind, RLMiller, and the other editors of Progressive Congress News for the above articles.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
The Daily Pennsylvanian: Federal ruling: Penn Museum must return Alaskan Native artifacts
by Jared McDonald | Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 11:44 pm
A federal committee ruled last month that the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology must return over 40 artifacts to the T’akdeintaan Clan, an Alaska Native community in Hoonah, Alaska, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
The items in the dispute, — which began in the 1990s — range from ceremonial drums to masks and were purchased by the museum in 1924, according to a Penn Museum letter to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Review Committee.
"While we are disappointed with the committee’s decision, we remain hopeful that we can still work out a resolution with the claimants," University spokeswoman Lori Doyle wrote in a statement.
Providence Journal: Developer wants to build 53 houses on historic Indian ground in Narragansett
01:00 AM EST on Thursday, December 2, 2010
By Peter B. Lord
Journal Environment Writer
NARRAGANSETT — The fields and woods behind the Salt Pond Shopping Center here cover the remains of a 900-year-old Indian village that has yielded thousands of artifacts and revolutionized the way historians think about the development of agriculture and the culture of Native Americans in New England.
A state archaeologist says the site is of national significance, and he would like to see the village reconstructed so people could walk through it and learn how Indians lived before the Europeans arrived.
But because the state and developer Richard Baccari have been unable to negotiate a state purchase of the property, Baccari is moving ahead with efforts to secure a permit that will let him build 53 houses over the village remains.
Times of India: Residents of 2 TN towns fear eviction from 'heritage'
Julie Mariappan, TNN, Dec 2, 2010, 02.48am IST
CHENNAI: Thousands of families in Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts, neighbouring Chennai, are in a state of panic. They can neither sell nor acquire any property here and they cannot even make minor alterations or renovations to their houses. They even face the dark prospect of being evicted. For, many of the areas have been labelled as 'protected' by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and residents are believed to be squatting on 2,000-year-old 'megalithic' sites with a rich ancient heritage beneath the ground.
There is evidence to indicate that at least 24 megalithic sites, with burials and other structures, are located in the region, say archaeological experts. But the residents claim they were informed about an 18-year-old legislation freezing constructions in these areas, spread over 24 local bodies, only at recent meetings. ''Several hundreds of residents who could not afford housing in the city and had moved to the southern suburbs a decade ago and built houses with their meagre earnings are now in a state of distress,'' said V Santhanam, president, Federation of Civic and Welfare Association of Pallavaram. ''People are worried that one morning they might find themselves thrown out of their homes,'' he said.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Grist: China widens gap with U.S. in green energy race
by Todd Woody
A day after Energy Secretary Steven Chu's "Sputnik speech," in which he warned that China was investing billions in renewable energy while American politicians bickered over small-potatoes stimulus spending on green technology, a report from Ernst & Young released Tuesday confirmed Asia's ascendancy.
"A new world is emerging in the clean energy sector with China now the clear leader in the global renewables market," the report's authors wrote.
Ernst & Young publishes a quarterly "country attractiveness" index for investors that ranks nations' renewable energy policies, renewable energy markets, and other factors.
China took first place -- again -- ousting the U.S. from the spot it had occupied between 2006 and 2010.
Imagine if Sputnik's beeping had been ignored in 1957--what would have been the state of the country 20 years later during the terminal stages of the Cold War?
Speaking of the Russians...
Clean Techies via Reuters: Russia to Invest $300 Billion in Energy Efficiency
Mon Nov 29, 2010 11:27am EST
by Edouard Stenger
Some interesting news recently went unnoticed. Last month, Russia unveiled a massive energy efficiency plan, as the country wastes as much energy as the French economy consumes.
Soviet-era buildings and factories completely lack energy efficiency as they were built as cheaply as possible to answer the demands of the government at that time.
But this might soon change. The Moscow Times recently noted that:
"Promoting energy efficiency is one of the priorities of Medvedev's modernization program and includes a goal to cut the amount of energy spent per unit of economic output by 40 percent by 2020.
The country is estimated to use 2.5 times more energy to produce a given amount of goods and services than the world average."
The Energy Collective: Can the Smart Grid Solve Climate Change?
November 29, 2010 by Christine Hertzog
The United Nations Climate Change Conference is convening in Cancun, Mexico from November 29 to December 10 to discuss reduction strategies for global warming and funding for programs developing nations can put in place to mitigate the impacts of climate changes.
Can the Smart Grid solve climate change? No, but it can reduce the amounts of emissions that we will continue to pump into the atmosphere. Here are 6 examples of how the Smart Grid will reduce emissions
The Guardian (UK): Four myths that hold back progress in fighting climate change
For the Cancún climate summit to make a difference, we must overcome perceived barriers to the efficient use of resources
Vinod Thomas and Kenneth Chomitz
Last month the UN secretary-general presented options for raising $100bn a year to promote development while fighting climate change. But for such funds to make a difference, we must get past a set of myths that prevent the efficient use of resources.
Myth No 1: Energy efficiency can't meet energy needs
...
Myth No 2: Protected areas don't help the environment
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Myth No 3: Carbon markets will naturally promote renewable energy investments
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Myth No 4: Technology transfer revolves around intellectual property rights
N.Y. Times: Prospects for Delivering Climate Policy 'in Chunks' Get Tougher
By LISA FRIEDMAN AND EVAN LEHMANN of ClimateWire
Published: December 3, 2010
Even as the Obama administration insists it can keep its Copenhagen climate pledges, U.S. lawmakers are warning that Congress won't deliver either big emission cuts or billions of dollars in promised aid for poor countries.
Republicans and Democrats alike undercut Obama's vow to slash America's emissions about 17 percent below 2005 levels this decade and help mobilize $100 billion annually by 2020 in return for commitments from developing nations. And, lawmakers warned, U.S. climate envoys at U.N. climate treaty talks in Cancun, Mexico, this month should not be getting the world's hopes up.
"Talk big when you can get something big done. Otherwise, lower expectations until you can deliver," said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who is poised to take the chairmanship of the House Government Reform Committee next year.
Asked if he think the Obama administration overpromised in Copenhagen, Issa raised an eyebrow.
"You think?" he said.
Bloomberg: Cap-and-Trade Market for North America Weighed by States After Obama FailsCap-and-Trade Market for North America Weighed by States After Obama Fails
By Simon Lomax - Nov 30, 2010 12:00 AM ET
California, New Mexico and 10 U.S. Northeastern states may try to create a North American carbon market on their own now that President Barack Obama has given up on cap-and-trade legislation that stalled in Congress.
The emissions-trading system would be based on a planned carbon market in California, the most populous state, and an existing regional cap-and-trade program for power plants in the Northeast, according to state environmental officials. Three Canadian provinces have also shown interest in a cross-border carbon-trading system, the officials said.
"The key is to have as large and as liquid a market as possible," John Yap, British Columbia’s climate-change minister, said in a telephone interview. Under cap-and-trade, the government creates a market for pollution rights by issuing a limited number of carbon-dioxide permits, which companies can buy and sell.
Forbes: The Most Wasteful Ethanol Subsidy
Posted by Robert Rapier
With the 45 cent per gallon ethanol subsidy and the tariffs on imported ethanol both set to expire at the end of December, ethanol proponents and ethanol opponents have ramped up the rhetoric. The purpose of this essay is not to argue over the pros and cons of the role ethanol plays in the U.S. energy mix. But I am going to argue that in either case, extending the VEETC in its current form is fiscally irresponsible.
...
There are two pieces of legislation set to expire at the end of this year. One is the 45 cent per gallon subsidy (called the VEETC) that is paid to oil companies to blend ethanol into gasoline. Because the oil companies are also mandated to blend ethanol, the subsidy is mostly redundant. In 2010, oil companies were under legal mandate to blend 12 billion gallons of ethanol into the fuel supply. Despite that, we still paid those oil companies 45 cents per gallon ($5.4 billion in 2010) to add the ethanol to the gasoline supply. This is similar to paying people to obey traffic laws, which most would consider wasteful spending of tax dollars. You can find a more detailed discussion on the VEETC here.
The second piece of legislation up for expiration is an ethanol tariff that is applied to ethanol entering the U.S. market. Brazilian producers want to see that tariff removed to open up the U.S. market, and U.S. producers want to see it maintained to protect their market.
Hat/Tip to Stranded Wind, RLMiller, and the other editors of Progressive Congress News for the above articles.
Science Education
Inside Higher Ed: Anthropology Without Science
November 30, 2010
A new long-range plan for the American Anthropological Association that omits the word "science" from the organization's vision for its future has exposed fissures in the discipline.
The plan, adopted by the executive board of the association at its annual meeting two weeks ago, includes "significant changes to the American Anthropological Association mission statement -- it removes all mention of science," Peter N. Peregrine, president of the Society for Anthropological Sciences and professor at Lawrence University, wrote in a widely circulated e-mail to members. The changes to the plan, he continued, "undermine American anthropology."
The Society for Anthropological Sciences, which is a smaller and more recently formed group than the larger, older and broader association, embraces and promotes empirical research. It condemned the move by the century-old, 10,000-member American Anthropological Association, Peregrine wrote.
The Cabinet (Massachussetts): WLC class finds old stuff is ‘awesome’
By JESSIE SALISBURY
Correspondent
WILTON – The site is an old family dump where discarded household items have been thrown for several generations.
But despite being overgrown with weeds and covered with leaves and twigs from surrounding trees, the site is yielding some of its secrets to a new Introduction to Archaeology class at Wilton-Lyndeborough Cooperative High School.
"To hold a bottle that might be 150 years old is awesome," class member Andrea Heck said.
"It’s really cool," classmate Riley Court said.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Examiner.com: NASA to give away heat tiles to schools and universities
By Jason Rhian, NASA Examiner
Thirty years worth of space flight history will soon be used as an educational tool around the nation. NASA will offer up 7,000 heat tiles to schools and universities. The space agency hopes that these tangible, physical pieces of space history will inspire students to pursue careers in aviation and space exploration. In many ways this represents a move to regain the interest of America’s youth which has waned over the post-Apollo years.
Now with the end of the shuttle era drawing near, NASA is hoping to use this turning point in space history to draw attention to the important aspects of the space shuttle program.
University of California: DOE awards supercomputing time
Scientists from the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and other parts of the University of California, San Diego — conducting research in biological sciences, computer science, Earth science and physics — were awarded supercomputing processor time by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as part of its 2011 Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program.
In total, the DOE’s Office of Science awarded a record amount of almost 1.7 billion processor hours to researchers across 57 new and renewed scientific projects, compared with 1.6 billion processor hours awarded in 2010 for 69 new and renewed projects. Areas of research include next-generation biofuels, medicine, nanotechnology, batteries, combustion, carbon capture and storage, astrophysics, nuclear fusion energy, climate, aeronautical engineering, groundwater and fundamental physics.
Science Writing and Reporting
Science News: Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals
By Hal Herzog
Review by Susan Milius
In his lively book on human-animal interactions, Herzog denies rumors that he feeds kittens to snakes. For a while, however, his academic research did focus on snake behavior, and his son did have a pet boa. Whispers circulated, but Herzog says the little snake could barely tackle a mouse.
The incident serves as an example of the complexity of human reactions to animals. The idea of scooping up little fluffballs and dropping them into a snake cage unsurprisingly repels most people. But at least one of Herzog’s critics allows pet cats to roam outdoors, a practice that dooms an estimated billion birds and other small animals each year to becoming cat food.
Considering this, Herzog asks why animal lives are valued so differently.
Science is Cool
MSNBC: Make your own geeky gift goodness
Alan Boyle writes:The MakerBot Thing-o-Matic 3-D printer kit is a versatile if pricey holiday present for the geek who wants to make everything. And that's probably why it was voted this year's top Science Geek Gift.
For the past few years, people have been predicting that 3-D printers could become the next big home appliance once their cost drops below $1,000. The gizmos "print" three-dimensional objects by building up layers of plastic to match a computerized design. The resulting printed products could be prototypes for commercial products, made-to-order artwork or household items, replacement parts for other devices you have at home ... even custom-made action figures for gamers and collectors.
Science News: How to use a pulsar to find Starbucks
Cosmic GPS would employ pulsing stars, not satellites, as celestial beacons
By Marissa Cevallos
To find your favorite coffee shop in an unknown city, getting directions via satellite works like a charm. But that technology won’t get you from Earth to Jupiter.
So theorists have proposed a new type of positioning system based on stars instead of satellites. By receiving radio blips from pulsars, stars that emit radiation, a spacecraft above the atmosphere could figure out its place in space.
Unlike the Global Positioning System of satellites used in cars and smart phones, the pulsar positioning system wouldn’t need humans to make daily corrections.