Monday, Monday. Magical, marvelous Monday is here one more time. Time to take a well deserved hiatus from all the politics of the day and enjoy some of the fine science news of the past week. New discoveries, new takes on old knowledge, and other bits of news are all available for the perusing in today's information world. Over the fold are selections from the past week from a few of the many excellent science news sites around the world. Today's tidbits include warming of Lake Tanganyika threatens fishing, sharing air around the globe, Greenland rising as ice melts, calculating the depth of the world's oceans, mercury levels are increasing in popular game fish in Lake Erie, and tracing polluted groundwater to the sea. Come gather around the fire for one more session of Dr. Possum's science education and entertainment.
Featured Stories
Lake Tanganyika is a source of fish for many in central Africa.
The surface waters of Lake Tanganyika are the most biologically productive part of the lake. For the 1,400 years before 1900, those waters were no warmer than 75.7 F (24.3 degrees C). Since 1900, the lake's surface waters warmed 3 degrees F, reaching 78.8 degrees F (26 degrees C) in 2003, the date of the researchers' last measurement.
...as Lake Tanganyika warms, the upper waters of the lake become less dense. Therefore, stronger winds are required to churn the lake waters enough to mix the deeper waters with the upper layer. As a result, the upper layers of the lake are becoming increasingly nutrient-poor, reducing the lake's productivity.
The very air we breathe is touched and sometimes tainted by effects from the other side of the globe. A recent dust cloud over the Eastern U.S. originated in China.
The dust plume that arrived in the U.S. maintained an average size of more than 1,200 miles wide and six miles tall as it traveled across the Earth. It began in China's Taklimakan and Gobi Deserts, and over 10 days, NASA captured the dust moving across the Pacific Ocean, through the United States and Canada and over Virginia.
The same effect is seen every Spring, but rarely with such intensity. Climate change anyone?
For more evidence of the ongoing effects of climate change look to Greenland.
Greenland is situated in the Atlantic Ocean to the northeast of Canada. It has stunning fjords on its rocky coast formed by moving glaciers, and a dense icecap up to 2 km thick that covers much of the island--pressing down the land beneath and lowering its elevation. Now, scientists at the University of Miami say Greenland's ice is melting so quickly that the land underneath is rising at an accelerated pace.
New calculations suggest the volume of the world's oceans is a little less than previous numbers.
The researchers report that the world’s total ocean volume is less than the most recent estimates by a volume equivalent to about five times the Gulf of Mexico, or 500 times the Great Lakes. While that might seem a lot at first glance, it is only about 0.3% lower than the estimates of 30 years ago.
But just think a moment about how accurate those older estimates were with methods much more crude than what is available today.
After two decades of seeing a steady decline scientists are now reporting increased mercury levels in game fish in Lake Erie.
The scientists studied mercury levels in 5807 fish samples collected from the lakes between the 1970s and 2007. The samples included lake trout and walleye, two of the most common species of game fish caught in the region. The researchers found that mercury levels in the fish steadily declined from the mid-1970s to 2007 in the upper Great Lakes (Superior and Huron). In recent years (between 1990 and 2007), however, the mercury concentrations leveled-off in Lake Ontario walleye but appear to be increasing in Lake Erie walleye. The mercury increases in Lake Erie walleye are likely caused by a combination of factors, including modifications in Lake Erie’s foodweb due to invasions of dreissenid mussels and round goby, the scientists suggest.
Whatever the cause of increased mercury this cannot be what we consider good news.
Faulty septic systems have long been blamed for ocean water contamination
Now, in the first study of its kind, Stanford University researchers have tracked a plume of polluted groundwater from a septic system to one of Northern California's top recreational beaches.
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Other Worthy Stories of the Week
Schooling fish offer new ideas for wind farming
How to build a chicken coop and raise your own chickens
Unique eclipsing binary star system discovered
Web searches may sacrifice accuracy for popularity
European scientists call for action in controlling ocean acidity
Even small patches of urban woods are valuable for migrating birds
Pyramid tomb found with human sacrifices
New fossil evidence redefines putative dinosaur as early reptile
Oldest soft-bodied marine fossils discovered
Ancient nursery of giant, extinct sharks found
New cause for supernova explosion identified
Biodiesel from sewage sludge within pennies of being competitive
Gesture based computing uses $1 Lycra gloves
Temperature and salt levels are on the increase in Western Mediterranean
Common musk turtle breathes through its tongue
For even more science news:
General Science Collectors:
Alpha-Galileo
BBC News Science and Environment
Eureka Science News
LiveScience
New Scientist
PhysOrg.com
SciDev.net
Science/AAAS
Science Alert
Science Centric
Science Daily
Scientific American
Space Daily
Blogs:
A Few Things Ill Considered Techie and Science News
Cantauri Dreams space exploration
Coctail Party Physics Physics with a twist.
Deep Sea News marine biology
Laelaps more vertebrate paleontology
List of Geoscience Blogs
ScienceBlogs
Space Review
Techonology Review
Tetrapod Zoologyvertebrate paleontology
Science Insider
Scientific Blogging.
Wired News
Science RSS Feed: Medworm
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe--a combination of hard science and debunking crap
Daily Kos regular series:
Daily Kos University, a regular series by plf515
This Week in Science by DarkSyde
This Week in Space by nellaselim
Overnight News Digest:Science Saturday by Neon Vincent. This week OND by palantir.
Weekend Science by AKMask
All diaries with the DK GreenRoots Tag.
All diaries with the eKos Tag
NASA picture of the day. For more see the NASA image gallery.
Runaway Star, NASA, Public Domain