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 Science News.
Voter madness
Home team victories may influence elections
By Laura Sanders
Whether politicians win or lose may come down to how local athletes play the game. When local football and basketball teams were victorious, voters were more pleased with elected officials, a study appearing online July 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds. The capricious link between sports teams and politicians’ performance is a clear example of how irrelevant events can shape important judgments.
Lakoff maintains that conservatives understand the irrational factor in politics better than liberals. It's time to use science to close that gap.
More science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
Watch this space!
This Week in Science
by DarkSyde
Most Successful Conspiracy Theory Evah
by Steven D
Gulf Coast, a reminder
by Knucklehead
Slideshows/Videos
National Geographic: Pictures: Stonehenge "Twin" Revealed
Just a stone's throw from Stonehenge, the remains of the British monument's long-lost timber twin—pictured in an artist's conception—have been found, archaeologists announced Thursday.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
MSNBC: Top 10 new species of 2009 named
Weird and wild picks include bomb-dropping worm, frogfish with psychedelic skin
by John Roach
msnbc.com contributor
This bomb-dropping worm, Swima bombiviridis, is among the top 10 species discovered in 2009, according to the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University. The annual roundup winnows down a list of about 20,000 species described each year to just a few mind-benders.
"It is a great way of getting the public involved in biodiversity," says Mary Liz Jameson, a biodiversity scientist at Wichita State University and chair of this year's selection committee. While the criteria for selection include scientific significance, Jameson admits that "the cool factor" also plays a part.
For example, the bomb-dropping worm found off the coast of California "has these green gills it can kind of throw off, and the predator will follow the gill instead of following the [worm], so it is tripping up the predator," Jameson said. "It's really cool."
Click ahead to see the other cool species on the top-10 list.
Discovery News: DNews Quiz: Test Your Smarts!
From buckyballs to digital drugs and more, test your knowledge of this week's top Discovery News stories.
Astronomy/Space
Examiner.com: U of M astronomer finds that black hole at Milky Way core propels hypervelocity stars
By Vince Lamb, Detroit Science News Examiner
Ever since the discovery of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies, astronomers have hypothesized that the black holes not only helped form the galaxies, they help keep them together. Now they have found that they also eject stars into intergalactic space at speeds up to 1.8 million miles (3 million kilometers) per hour, fast enough that the stars leave their home galaxies permanently.
Oleg Gnedin, an assistant professor in the University of Michigan Department of Astronomy, led a team of astronomers who used the Hubble Space Telescope to examine HE 0437-5439, a blue star in the Southern Hemisphere traveling at 1.6 million miles per hour, fast enough to escape the Milky Way forever. They traced the path of the high-velocity star back to a fateful rendevous with the galaxy's supermassive black hole 100 million years ago.
"This is the first objective evidence that these hypervelocity stars do come from the center of the galaxy," said Dr. Gnedin in a press release. "It's an example of a very violent interaction that happens as a direct consequence of the black hole there."
He added, "We had theorized that you could only get such high velocity if you kick a star from very close to a black hole in a special way that involves another star or object. It's a three-body interaction. The black hole rips apart a binary or tertiary star system, captures one of the companions and jettisons the others."
Space.com via MSNBC: How to find aliens: Follow the photosynthesis
by Charles Q. Choi
By calculating where photosynthesis might be possible around the galaxy, scientists are developing a new way to figure out where Earth-like planets might be located.
When seeking to figure out where life might evolve, researchers have often focused on the " habitable zones " around stars, where the heat from the star is at the perfect level for liquid water to exist on the surface of a planet in that zone. The reasoning there is that wherever there is water on Earth, there is a chance for life.
Another strategy that physicist Werner von Bloh at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and his colleagues suggest is to focus on the zones around stars where photosynthesis might be possible, since nearly all life on Earth depends on it one way or another for energy.
Space.com via MSNBC: Solar sail camera spots cosmic explosion
by SPACE.com Staff
A camera riding on the world's first deep space solar sail has caught managed to observe a violent gamma-ray burst, one of the most powerful explosions in the universe, Japanese space officials have announced.
The Ikaros solar sail detected the first gamma-ray burst with its onboard Gamma-ray burst Polarized light detector (GAP) on July 7, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in an announcement.
Gamma-ray bursts are the dying explosion of large stars that have run out of fuel. The collapsing star cores can form either black holes or neutron stars, and emit an intense burst of high-energy gamma-rays.
Space.com via MSNBC: Best map of Mars ever made hits Internet
by Denise Chow
Ever wanted to explore the surface of Mars? Now you can at least virtually — thanks to a powerful camera aboard a spacecraft in orbit around Mars that has made the most accurate global map of the red planet in history.
A camera from NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft captured nearly 21,000 images using its Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, a multi-band infrared camera. The images were stitched into the new Mars map, which was posted online by researchers at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility in Tempe, Ariz.
Mars Odyssey's THEMIS observations began eight years ago, and since then, Mars Space Flight Facility researchers worked together with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., to compile the images, patching them together to create the giant Martian map.
Space.com via MSNBC: New Mars rover takes first drive ... on Earth
by Denise Chow
NASA's next-generation Mars rover took its first baby steps on Earth Friday a few short drives that herald its upcoming mission to the red planet.
"This is great, this is really exciting," said Ashwin Vasavada, deputy project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory rover's mission. "This is a huge milestone. It's a rover."
The ambitious new rover, named Curiosity, took center stage in the clean room of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, showcasing a whole slew of new instruments and support features. It drove just about 3 feet (1 meter) back and forth in its first drives.
Space.com via MSNBC: Summer meteor shower season in full swing
by Joe Rao
For skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere, late summer is usually regarded as the prime "meteor-viewing season," with one of the best displays of the year reaching its peak in mid-August. But some lesser-known summer meteor displays can still dazzle.
The summer meteor shower season hits its peak with the annual Perseid meteor shower, which is usually beloved by everyone from meteor enthusiasts to summer campers in August. This year will be an excellent one for the Perseids, as their peak will nearly coincide with a new moon, which should offer dark skies for prospective observers.
But the Perseids aren't the only meteor show in town.
Evolution/Paleontology
The Gazette (Maryland): Would-be tomb raiders dig up fun at Laurel dinosaur park
by Graham Moomaw | Special to The Gazette
On a hot summer afternoon, a crowd of amateur dinosaur-hunters young and old stood hunched over on a dirt outcrop tucked away at the back of an office complex, searching for signs of Maryland's prehistoric past at Dinosaur Park in Laurel.
About 125 people, including a group of almost 100 from the Prince George's and Laurel historical societies, came out Saturday to dig around in the hopes of making their own discovery at what paleontologist Peter Kranz calls "the most important fossil-hunting site east of the Mississippi River."
...
Fossils from dinosaurs, crocodylians, turtles and plants dating back 65 to 144 million years — to the early Cretaceous period — have been found at the site, where plant and animal remains washed into an ancient lake and became trapped in the sediment.
Science News: Oldest dog debated
Fossil jaw may, or may not, come from oldest known example of man’s best friend
By Bruce Bower
Every dog has its day, but that day took more than 14,000 years to dawn for one canine. A jaw fragment found in a Swiss cave comes from the earliest known dog, according to scientists who analyzed and radiocarbon-dated the fossil.
Dog origins remain poorly understood, however, and some researchers say that dog fossils much older than the Swiss find have already been excavated.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
Space.com via MSNBC: Sun's rumored 'Nemesis' may not exist
by Clara Moskowitz
Some astronomers believe a hidden mini star nicknamed Nemesis is orbiting the sun, but a new analysis of life extinction cycles on Earth suggests this dark companion may not exist.
Nemesis was first proposed in 1984 to explain perplexing cycles in mass extinctions on Earth. About every 27 million years, almost like clockwork, there is a significantly higher likelihood that a mass extinction will take place on our planet akin to the apocalypse that killed off the dinosaurs (and much of the rest of Earth's life) about 65.5 million years ago.
The scale of this cycle on the order of tens of millions of years suggests some celestial phenomenon might be affecting it.
LiveScience via MSNBC: Clawed dino caught in act of digging for prey
Fossils found in southern Utah date back 75 million to 80 million years ago
by Charles Q. Choi
A clawed, predatory dinosaur may have been caught in the act of digging for mammalian prey, scientists now reveal.
The fossils showing the paleo-scene were discovered within sandstone layers in southern Utah, and date back 75 million to 80 million years ago, when the area consisted of windblown dunes.
"We found them about four years ago in July, in 100-degree heat," said researcher Edward Simpson, a geologist at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. "We had scorpions, rattlesnakes, and swarms of gnats."
Biodiversity
LiveScience via MSNBC: How one jellyfish stung 100 people
Tentacles of lion's mane jellyfish form net-like trap that's hard to avoid
by Jeanna Bryner
How can one jellyfish sting up to 100 people? With lots of stinger-equipped tentacles, the largest jellyfish in the world may be up to the job, though scientists aren't sure if this week's mass stinging was the result of one jellyfish or more than one.
Reported Wednesday at Wallis Sands State Beach in Rye, N.H., between 50 and 100 beachgoers were treated for jellyfish stings likely from a lion's mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata). Officials can't be certain one jellyfish stung all the people, though they didn't spot another giant blob.
"It is unlikely (essentially impossible) that one jellyfish could sting that many people, though," said John Costello in the Biology Department at Providence College in Rhode Island.
Discovery News: Prey Fish Turns Predator
Analysis by Teresa Shipley
A mystery is brewing off the south west coast of Africa.
A particular species of small fish, typically no larger than the length of your hand, is thriving in the oxygen-depleted, jellyfish-ridden waters, and scientists have no idea how.
An international team of researchers studied the bearded goby (Sufflogobius bibarbatus), a harmless creature that normally feeds on phytoplankton and provides a rich food source for predators like penguins, seals and larger fish.
They discovered that the community of gobies was behaving in strange and interesting ways.
They're eating the same jellyfish who normally prey on them.
Agence France Presse via Yahoo! News: Wide-eyed primate caught on camera for first time
A "cute" primate so rare it was thought to be extinct has been caught on camera in the forests of Sri Lanka for the first time, scientists said Monday.
The Horton Plains slender loris is a small, nocturnal animal which can grow up to 17 centimetres (six inches) long with big, bulging eyes.
Endemic to Sri Lanka, it was first discovered in 1937 but had only been seen four times since then.
Biotechnology/Health
Examiner.com: Science does not take the summer off at Wayne State University--research roundup for July 11-18
By Vince Lamb, Detroit Science News Examiner
Summer may be the time for family vacations or enjoying the hot, sunny days for most of us, but for the researchers at Wayne State University, it is a time to get things done. This past week, the scientists, engineers, and health care researchers at Wayne State announced the results of a study on how changing lifestyles can reduce heart disease risk. The institution also had studies funded for breast cancer prevention, detection, and treatment, the effectiveness of administering oxygen to terminally ill patients, and risk factors among survivors of sexual abuse. Just as at fellow Michigan University Research Corridor institution Michigan State University, science does not take the summer off at Wayne State.
Study shows combined behavioral interventions best way to reduce heart disease risk
A study entitled Interventions to Promote Physical Activity and Dietary Lifestyle Changes for Cardiovascular Risk Factor Reduction in Adults. A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association (PDF) published July 12th in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association shows that combining counseling, extended follow-up with a health care provider, and self-monitoring of diet and exercise is the most effective way to help patients embrace lifestyle changes that can lower their risk for heart and blood vessel (cardiovascular) diseases. It also stated that current health care policies should be modified to encourage these interventions.
The lead author of the study, Nancy T. Artinian, Ph.D., R.N., professor, associate dean for research and director of the Center for Health Research at Wayne State University's College of Nursing, said in a press release, "We need to do a better job finding ways to help people not only change their behaviors but maintain them over a lifetime. As health care providers, we're pretty good at saying that you are at risk for a disease, you need to lose weight, be more physically active, and eat more fruits and vegetables. While that's easy to say, it's not easy for the person to actually translate it into their everyday life."
After an extensive examination of peer-reviewed scientific studies, Artinian and her co-authors identified several critical parts of effective behavioral change programs, including health care providers using a motivational interviewing technique to encourage patients to make healthier lifestyle choices, counseling patients that occasional setbacks are normal and scheduling recurring follow-up sessions with patients.
Examiner.com: Local universities recognized for research into brain and spine disorders
By Vince Lamb, Detroit Science News Examiner
This month, all three of Michigan's major research universities shared the results of their efforts to understand the workings of the brain and spinal column. A Michigan State University researcher was awarded $1.5 million from the National Institutes of Health to test how a protein can help heal damage from Parkinson's Disease. A team of researchers at the University of Michigan published a study about the functioning of the cell, which may lead to better understanding of conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease). Finally, an expert guide to the most important advances in medicine identified a study and subsequent article by a Wayne State University School of Medicine professor concerning death rates after spinal fusion surgery as one of the most significant medical articles published in 2009.
Discovery News via MSNBC: Scientists create a mosquito that’s ‘malaria-proof’
By Eric Bland
A "malaria-proof" mosquito has been created by scientists who have engineered a genetic "on" switch that permanently activates a malaria-destroying response, according to their report in the journal Public Library of Science Pathogens.
If these mosquitoes are successfully introduced into the wild, they could prevent millions of people from becoming infected with life-threatening Plasmodium — the parasite that causes malaria.
"We were surprised how well this works," said Michael Riehle, a professor at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the new PLoS Pathogens paper. "We were just hoping to see some effect on the mosquitoes' growth rate, lifespan or their susceptibility to the parasite. But it was great to see that our construct blocked the infection process completely."
Discovery News via MSNBC: Virtual cells cooperate like ants
By Eric Bland
Inspired by the social interactions of ants and slime molds, scientists from the University of Pittsburgh have created slimmed-down, virtual slime mold cells to study how organisms communicate and work together.
The research could lead to a new generation of microscopic devices that could deliver medicines inside the body.
"Cells have all this complicated machinery to perform various functions," said Anna Balazs, a co-author of a recent study on the work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and a scientist at the University of Pittsburgh. "We wanted to see what you could do if you didn't have all that complicated machinery."
Climate/Environment
Tech News Daily via MSNBC: Supercomputer predicts cyclones 5 days ahead
A NASA supercomputer has enabled researchers to predict the birth of a cyclone five days in advance, a first for storm-modeling that might improve forecasting and emergency preparedness.
At the heart of the research is an advanced computer model that ran millions of numbers — atmospheric conditions like wind speed, temperature, and moisture — through a series of equations.
"To do hurricane forecasting, what's really needed is a model that can represent the initial weather conditions — air movements and temperatures, and precipitation — and simulate how they evolve and interact globally and locally to set a cyclone in motion," said Bo-wen Shen, a research scientist at the University of Maryland-College Park, whose study appeared online last week in the Journal of Geophysical Research–Atmospheres.
Geology
Science News: Hole from on high
Egyptian impact crater first spotted on Google Earth
By Sid Perkins
Researchers poring over Google Earth images have discovered one of Earth’s freshest impact craters — a 45-meter-wide pock in southwestern Egypt that probably was excavated by a fast-moving iron meteorite no more than a few thousand years ago.
Although the crater was first noticed in autumn 2008, researchers have since spotted the blemish on satellite images taken as far back as 1972, says Luigi Folco, a cosmochemist at the University of Siena in Italy. He and his colleagues report their find online July 22 in Science.
Psychology/Behavior
Discovery News: Soldiers Under Stress Become Less Vigilant
Analysis by Teresa Shipley
Let's say you wanted to know more about how constant, daily stress affects soldiers' brains. What would be the best way to accomplish that?
Jump into a combat zone, of course.
A Tel Aviv University (TAU) researcher did just that by hooking Israeli soldiers on the war-torn Gaza strip up to neural imaging monitors and other equipment.
The result was a "real-time" picture of stress.
Archeology/Anthropology
LiveScience: Stone Age Carving: Ancient Dildo?
By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 20 July 2010 02:27 pm ET
Last week, an excavation in Sweden turned up an object that bears the unmistakable look of a penis carved out of antler bone. Though scientists can't be sure exactly what this tool was used for, it's hard not to leap to conclusions.
"Your mind and my mind wanders away to make this interpretation about what it looks like – for you and me, it signals this erected-penis-like shape," said archaeologist Gšran Gruber of the National Heritage Board in Sweden, who worked on the excavation. "But if that's the way the Stone Age people thought about it, I can't say."
Voice of America: Ancient Pakistan Civilization Remains Shrouded in Mystery
Carla Babb | Harappa, Pakistan 21 July 2010
The Indus civilization encompassed more than 680,000 square kilometers, from western India to northern Afghanistan, double the area of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia combined. Although the civilization had some of the earliest writing, several factors have kept clues about the ancient Indus people buried underground and under the Indus River.
The ancient cities of Harappa and Moenjodaro, hours south of Islamabad by land, were the two largest centers of the Indus civilization.
Indus artifacts like these shed light on daily life here more than 4000 years ago. But much is still unknown about the Indus people's communication, religion and political organization.
National Geographic News: "Lost" Languages to Be Resurrected by Computers?
New program can translate ancient Biblical script.
Tim Hornyak
for National Geographic News
Published July 19, 2010
A new computer program has quickly deciphered a written language last used in Biblical times—possibly opening the door to "resurrecting" ancient texts that are no longer understood, scientists announced last week.
Created by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the program automatically translates written Ugaritic, which consists of dots and wedge-shaped stylus marks on clay tablets. The script was last used around 1200 B.C. in western Syria.
Reuters via Stuff (New Zealand): Archaeologists find new structure at Stonehenge
Archaeologists have discovered a wooden version of British prehistoric monument Stonehenge at the same site, the project's leader told Reuters on Thursday.
Using radar, the archaeologists found a circular ditch less than one kilometer away from the iconic stone circle, which is thought to date back to the Neolithic period 2,000 to 4,000 years ago.
Physorg.com: New research will unravel Arizona's prehistoric puzzle of the Hohokam ceramic industry
Can a manufacturing industry purr along without a class system of managers and workers? That's part of a longtime mystery that may soon be solved: How did a prehistoric, egalitarian people called the Hohokam produce large quantities of decorated ceramic vessels without a "manager" hierarchy?
Archaeologists from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the Cultural Resource Management Program of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona have launched a unique research partnership to decipher the mechanics of the large-scale industry.
That's something that would be worthing knowing how to pull off today. Who says we can't learn from the past?
Discovery News: Alexander the Great Killed by Toxic Bacteria?
By Rossella Lorenzi
An extraordinarily toxic bacterium harbored by the "infernal" Styx River might have been the fabled poison rumored to have killed Alexander the Great (356 - 323 B.C.) more than 2,000 years ago, according to a scientific-meets-mythic detective study.
The research, which will be presented next week at the XII International Congress of Toxicology annual meetings in Barcelona, Spain, reviews ancient literary evidence on the Styx poison in light of modern geology and toxicology.
According to the study, calicheamicin, a secondary metabolite of Micromonospora echinospora, is what gave the river its toxic reputation.
The Styx was the portal to the underworld, according to myth. Here the gods swore sacred oaths.
Physorg.com: Extreme archaeology: Divers plumb the mysteries of sacred Maya pools
Steering clear of crocodiles and navigating around massive submerged trees, a team of divers began mapping some of the 25 freshwater pools of Cara Blanca, Belize, which were important to the ancient Maya. In three weeks this May, the divers found fossilized animal remains, bits of pottery and - in the largest pool explored - an enormous underwater cave.
Discovery News: Mayan King's Tomb Found in Guatemala
Analysis by Rossella Lorenzi
Archaeologists digging in Guatemala’s jungle-covered Peten region have discovered a Mayan royal tomb packed with a hoard of carvings, ceramics and children's bones.
Dating from about 350 to 400 A.D., the unlooted tomb, about 6 feet high, 12 feet long, and 4 feet wide, lay hidden beneath the El Diablo pyramid in the city of El Zotz.
It was unearthed in May, but the finding has only just been made public at a news conference in Guatemala City.
Belleville News-Democrat: 'It's mind blowing': 900-year-old figurine found during work on new river bridge
BY GEORGE PAWLACZYK - News-Democrat
If just one more shovel of earth had been removed, the curious figurine of a kneeling woman carved about 900 years ago might have ended up in a 19th century curio shop.
Or lost forever.
Instead, archaeology graduate student Steve Boles found the rare, 6-inch-high artifact this spring at a massive archaeological dig now under way at the old National Stock Yards to make way for construction of a new $670 million Mississippi River bridge. The figurine and the whole excavation have caused great excitement among archaeology professionals and students.
The Independent (UK): Medieval history in the making
Eleven years ago, John Lichfield witnessed the birth of Château de Guédelon, the 13th-century castle being built by hand in modern day France. This week he went back to see how work is progressing.
Physorg.com: Australia's earliest contact rock art discovered
July 23, 2010
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers have discovered evidence of Southeast Asian sailing vessels visiting Australia in the mid-1600s -- the oldest contact rock art in Australia.
The discovery was made by the team taking part in the Picturing Change fieldwork project in the Wellington Range, Arnhem Land. The rock shelter the researchers are studying at Djulirri has nearly 1200 individual paintings and beeswax figures. It was documented by Professor Paul Taçon (Griffith University), Mr. Ronald Lamilami (Senior Traditional Owner) and Dr Sally K. May (ANU).
"This site includes at least 20 layers of art," said Dr May. "And importantly, it has also yielded the oldest date yet recorded for contact rock art in Australia. A yellow painted prau (Southeast Asian sailing vessel) is found underneath a large beeswax snake. This snake was radiocarbon dated by Dr Stewart Fallon at ANU to between AD1624 - 1674, meaning that this is a minimum age for the sailing vessel painting."
CNN: The race to save Yemen's ancient wonders
By Mark Tutton
In Yemen, there is a race against time to save the historic Old City of Sana'a from the forces of modernization.
The sprawling metropolis that is modern Sana'a is the bustling capital of Yemen. But it occupies a site that has been inhabited for more than 2,000 years, and it boasts a historic quarter as beautiful as any in the world.
The Old City is made up of some 8,000 buildings, including its distinctive multi-storey tower houses. Built of earth, they are adorned with painted white "filigree" motifs that look like icing sugar on fairytale gingerbread houses.
Most buildings are between 200 and 500 years old, but some are much older, such as the Great Mosque, said to have been constructed in the seventh century, while the Prophet Muhammad was still alive.
Declared a World Heritage Site in 1986, the Old City is now threatened by urban growth, modernization and the unavoidable realities of ageing.
Post-Tribune (NW Indiana): Extinct bird's bone found at Collier Lodge dig site
July 21, 2010
BY CHARLES M. BARTHOLOMEW, POST-TRIBUNE CORRESPONDENT
Like the great bison herds than once blackened the Great Plains, the American passenger pigeon filled the skies over the Midwest more than a century ago.
On Monday, a cousin of Martha, the last bird that died in 1914 in the Cincinnati Zoo, reappeared during a field workshop of the seventh annual archaeological dig by the Kankakee Valley Historical Society at its Collier Lodge site on the Kankakee River.
"It's just a little bit from the wing. It was actually dug up last year," said Notre Dame anthropology professor Mark Schurr, who has supervised the mostly volunteer dig for the society since it began the year after test digging in 2003.
BBC: Archaeologists dig into Lymington's sea salt industry
"Salt was often said to be worth its weight in gold," says archaeologist Frank Green.
Salt was a booming trade along the Solent coast up to the middle of the 19th century.
Now the secrets of Lymington's salt industry are set to be revealed by Mr Green and a team of archaeologists and volunteers.
The area around the country's last two remaining sea salt boiling houses in the town is being excavated.
BBC: Canadian archaeologists hunt long-lost Arctic explorers
By Sian Griffiths Ottawa, Canada
It has been more than 150 years since Capt Sir John Franklin and his 128 men perished in the Canadian Arctic, their ships lost in one of the greatest disasters of British polar exploration.
Now, a Canadian archaeological team is en route to the Arctic in a fresh hunt for Franklin's ships.
Relying on 150-year-old testimony of indigenous Inuits and 21st-Century methods like sea-floor surveying, the team hopes to find HMS Terror and HMS Erebus and discover once and for all the fate of the men - who are believed to have succumbed to scurvy, hypothermia and even cannibalism before they perished in the frozen Arctic.
Shropshire Star (UK): Warm spell reveals Shropshire’s historic secrets
Thursday 22nd July 2010, 8:00PM BST.
Archaeologists have taken advantage of the driest spring and early summer conditions for 80 years to photograph a wide range of normally invisible sites across Shropshire from the air.
The pictures have been taken as part of a three-year aerial archaeology project that is being carried out by the Shropshire Council’s historic environment team, with funding provided by English Heritage.
Centuries of ploughing has meant that many of these sites are no longer visible on the surface.
But the drought conditions has meant that buried archaeological remains have become visible as "cropmarks".
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
AOL News: Researchers in Israel Find World's First Steak Knives
Traci Watson
(July 22) -- Archaeologists digging in a cave in Israel have found what looks to be the world's first cutlery: tiny stone knives dating back at least 200,000 years that would have been used to cut meat during a meal.
Made of flint, the ancient knives are about the size and shape of a quarter. But these puny bits of stone have two razor-sharp edges and two dull edges. That made them easy to hold between two fingers and safe to wield close to the mouth, says Tel-Aviv University's Ran Barkai, leader of the team that made the finding.
The miniature knives were the Stone Age equivalent of disposable tableware. They would've been used for a short time and then tossed aside, because they couldn't hold an edge, says the University of Pennsylvania's Harold Dibble, who has studied miniature stone tools from another archaeological site.
Physics
Science News: Taming time travel
By Laura Sanders
Novelists and screenwriters know that time travel can be accomplished in all sorts of ways: a supercharged DeLorean, Hermione’s small watch and, most recently, a spacetime-bending hot tub have allowed fictional heroes to jump between past and future.
But physicists know that time travel is more than just a compelling plot device — it’s a serious prediction of Einstein’s general relativity equations. In a new study posted online July 15, researchers led by Seth Lloyd at MIT analyze how some of the quirks and peculiarities of real-life time travel might play out. This particular kind of time travel evades some of its most paradoxical predictions, Lloyd says.
Any theory of time travel has to confront the devastating "grandfather paradox," in which a traveler jumps back in time and kills his grandfather, which prevents his own existence, which then prevents the murder in the first place, and so on.
Chemistry
Xinhua: Novel computer memory boosted by protein from poplar trees
Is there any connection between poplar tree and computer? Yes.
Scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have succeeded in showing how it is possible to greatly expand the memory capacity of future computers through the use of memory units based on silica nanoparticles combined with protein molecules obtained from the poplar tree.
In doing so, they have developed an alternative avenue to miniaturize memory elements while increasing the number and capacity of memory and functional logic elements in computers, according to a news release published on Wednesday.
Space.com via MSNBC: Largest molecules ever known in space found
by JR Minkel
Astronomers have found evidence of buckyballs — carbon molecules shaped like soccer balls — in the nebula around a distant white dwarf star. The discovery marks the largest molecules known to exist in space.
Normally found in chemistry labs, where they are made by vaporizing graphite in the presence of helium, buckyballs were long suspected to form inside stars.
"As soon as they were discovered in the lab it was actually suggested they would be very good candidates to be found in space," astronomer Jan Cami of the University of Western Ontario, who led the new study, told Space.com.
Energy
British Robotics Laboratory: Energy Autonomy: Ecobot
One goal of our work is to build energetically autonomous robots. For this, the Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology is employed to extract electrical energy from refined foods such as sugar and unrefined foods such as insects and fruit. This is achieved by extracting electrons from the microbial metabolic processes. To be truly autonomous, robots will be required to incorporate in their behavioural repertoire actions that involve searching, collecting and digesting food. The robot will be designed to remain inactive until sufficient energy has been generated to complete its next task. This may prove to be a paradigm shift in the way action selection mechanisms are designed - (Project code-name:‘EcoBot’).
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Examiner.com: Investment in science and technology keeping manufacturing "alive and well in Michigan"
By Vince Lamb, Detroit Science News Examiner
While the auto industry has gone through a massive transformation that cut jobs, 11,000 Michigan firms still employ more than 381,000 people in highly productive advanced manufacturing jobs---nearly two-thirds of the state's manufacturing base, according to a study (PDF) issued Wednesday by Michigan's University Research Corridor (URC). The report, prepared by East Lansing-based-Anderson Economic Group (AEG), documents Michigan's particular strengths in research-related advanced manufacturing. One-third of the research and testing jobs in the Midwest are in Michigan and more than half of the state's advanced manufacturers are seeing productivity gains exceeding the U.S. average while employing 10 percent of the state's workforce.
"This report provides, in great detail, hard evidence that manufacturing is alive and well in Michigan today, and that much of the manufacturing now done in Michigan is high-tech, high productivity advanced manufacturing,'' said AEG founder Patrick Anderson in a press release issued simultaneously by the URC and the URC's three member institutions, Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, and Wayne State University. Anderson further noted that as jobs have been cut or moved to lower-wage markets, the state has been unfairly "saddled with a reputation for being very good at something that is no longer relevant, modern or particularly useful in the 21st century."
URC investment in manufacturing
The report noted the URC invested more than $101.9 million in advanced manufacturing reseach and development and had active research awards of more than $425 million during Fiscal Year 2009. It also pointed out that all three URC member institutions support advanced manufacturing at every step of the product development lifecycle from the idea stage through design and testing to commercialization and business operations.
Wayne State University President Jay Noren stressed, "This report does an excellent job of describing in detail the URC's role in the advanced manufacturing process, from research and development through the education of tomorrow's leaders and innovators in present and emerging tech-tech fields--a comprehensive network of support that will pay off for all sectors of Michigan's economy."
While I didn't scoop the Detroit News, I provided more details. I also beat the Detroit Free Press with this story (Michigan news and Michigan business).
Science Education
Examiner.com: Michigan State University science, medicine, and technology roundup for the week of July 11-18 By Vince Lamb, Detroit Science News Examiner
While many readers are enjoying their summer vacations, the scientists, engineers, and agronomists at Michigan State University have been busy advancing knowledge. The week began with a national meeting of a scientific society at MSU and concluded with the announcement of another scientific conference. In between these two bookends, the university announced the funding of three projects, the awarding of an honor to one of its faculty, and the opening of an energy research and education center. At MSU, just as at the other colleges in Michigan's Research Corridor, science does not take the summer off.
Science Writing and Reporting
Science News: Book Review: Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery
By Stephen J. Pyne
Review by Alexandra Witze
What with Mars rovers that tweet and space telescopes with Facebook fan pages, one might think space exploration today is just another part of modern life. In this new book, however, environmental scholar Pyne reminds readers of the rich cultural history that underlies humankind’s exploration of the cosmos.
To frame his story Pyne chooses the twin Voyager missions, launched in 1977 to study Jupiter and Saturn but later extended for a "Grand Tour" that also took in Uranus and Neptune. The probes, he argues, symbolize a Third Age of exploration...
Science is Cool
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Yahoo! News: Salad Spinner Centrifuge: A Cheap, Ingenious Health Care Tool
by Tonic
We already know that we need to eat plenty of leafy greens to stay healthy, but who knew that a salad spinner itself could help save lives?
As we learn from EurekAlert, Rice University undergraduates Lila Kerr and Lauren Theis were presented with an assignment in their Introduction to Bioengineering and World Health class. As Theis explains:
"We were essentially told we need to find a way to diagnose anemia without power, without it being very costly and with a portable device."