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 Agence France Presse by way of Discovery News.
Magnitude 7.1 Quake Rattles New Zealand
New Zealand's most destructive earthquake in nearly 80 years caused two billion dollars' worth of damage Saturday, felling buildings, tearing up roads and sending terrified residents fleeing into the streets.
Officials said it was "extremely lucky" no one was killed when the 7.0 magnitude quake shook the island nation's second-largest city of Christchurch just before dawn.
Frightened residents fled from their homes to find streets covered in rubble and glass, but despite the extent of the damage only two people were seriously injured in the city of 340,000 people.
More on this and other science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
DarkSyde: This week in science
David Brin: London, transparency, podcasts... and more science...
eKos: Most new farmland cut from tropical forests {Earthship Friday}
GlowNZ: "A Sad, Bleak Day" NZ Quake Update and Plane Crash Kills Nine Updated
jamess: could affect tourism ... but finding the truth is more important
ManfromMiddletown: From the Basque Country to Bangladesh: A Climate Change Solution?
Slideshows/Videos
Discovery News: Hubble's Best Photos
BY LAUREN EFFRON
The Hubble Space Telescope has dazzled us for years with its unbelievable images of breathtaking cosmic phenomena. In honor of its 20th anniversary in orbit, we're sharing what we think are some of Hubble’s best photos.
Discovery News: Dissecting Hurricane Earl: Big Pics
No matter how you look at them from afar, hurricanes are gorgeous.
Discovery News: World's Largest Tidal Turbine Submerged
By Tracy Staedter
Sept. 02, 2010 -- The world's largest tidal turbine, developed by Singapore-based Atlantis Resources Corp., was unveiled this past August and, just recently, was lowered into its subsea berth -- 115 feet of water near the European Marine Energy Center in Orkney, Scotland. The area is referred to as the Pentland Firth, a strait of water known for its strong currents. In fact, it's potential for energy is often called the "Saudi Arabia of tidal power."
Astronomy/Space
Science News: Still no Earths, but getting closer
Two newly discovered planetary systems shed light on odds of forming terrestrial planets
By Ron Cowen
Only a few years ago, astronomers were thrilled if they found a star beyond the solar system harboring a single planet. Now they’re discovering more and more multiple-planet systems that may offer new clues about the formation of planets and their evolution.
In one new study, scientists have discovered a star with at least five and as many as seven planets, which would make it the richest known planetary retinue beyond the solar system. A second study has revealed a star with two Saturn-mass planets locked in a special gravitational embrace that allows astronomers to study the pair in unusual detail. Researchers also find hints of a third planet orbiting with the two. If confirmed, the planet would be the tiniest extrasolar orb known, with a diameter only 1.5 times that of Earth.
With these multiple-planet systems, "we’re entering a new era of exoplanets," says theorist Sara Seager of MIT. Instead of focusing on individual discoveries, she adds, "we’re moving on to complex planetary system architectures and the hope of being able to understand how they got that way."
Science News: Solar system older than estimated
Meteorite age suggests planets began to form earlier than thought
By Gwyneth Dickey
The solar system may be almost 2 million years older than previously thought, a new study shows.
Data from a newly studied meteorite recovered from the Saharan Desert show that the solar system formed 4,568.2 million years ago, 0.3 million to 1.9 million years earlier than other estimates. The results were published online August 22 in Nature Geoscience.
"All the interesting things we want to understand about the chemistry of our solar system happened within the first five to 10 million years," says study coauthor Meenakshi Wadhwa, a cosmochemist from Arizona State University in Tempe. "When you push it back by 2 million years, that’s a substantial proportion of that 5 to 10 million years."
Discovery News: Two Chinese Satellites Have Close Encounter in Orbit
Analysis by Ian O'Neill
It would appear that China has successfully carried out a satellite rendezvous maneuver in orbit. And on August 19, the two satellites may have even touched, one probe being shunted aside by the other.
The event was first reported by the Russian media and U.S. military tracking data seems to back up these early reports. Now the question on everyone's mind is: Why?
It may be tempting to jump to the conclusion that this technology has some kind of military application -- after all, satellites have been in China's cross-hairs before.
Discovery News: A Traffic Cop for Satellites
By Irene Klotz
Collisions in space don't happen very often, but when they do the impact is long-lasting. A coalition of satellite traffic cops, however, aims to prevent these episodes from occurring at all.
In orbit, chunks and fragments from a crash won't settle down. They'll keep moving -- extremely rapidly -- upping the odds of additional crashes.
"You don't just sweep up the debris and haul it away on a tow truck. That's why we're having to take all these precautions," said Tobias Nassif, vice president of satellite operations and engineering for Intelsat and a director of the newly formed Space Data Association.
Discovery News: Tether Maneuvers Spacecraft Without Fuel
The technology pushes against Earth's magnetic field for propulsion.
By Irene Klotz
A NASA team is preparing a bid to test a chemical-free propulsion system that taps the power of Earth's magnetic field to move satellites and spacecraft in orbit.
Think of the force holding together or repelling two magnets. A similar energy is generated when an electrically charged wire encounters a magnetic field, such as what envelopes Earth.
Space tethers collect current when they fly near the ionosphere -- the charged, upper layer of atmosphere -- and magnetic field. The current flowing through the wire will be pushed on by Earth's magnetic field, creating a force that can be used to raise or lower a spacecraft's orbit.
Evolution/Paleontology
Drumheller Mail (Canada): Tyrrell to receive fossils retrieved from Edmonton sewage tunnel
A sharp eyed City of Edmonton worker halted the construction of a sewage tunnel earlier this week when he spotted what he thought might be a dinosaur bone.
The city contacted Jack Brink, Curator of Archaeology at the Royal Alberta Museum, who brought Mike Burns, a Ph.D. student in palaeontology from the University of Alberta, to investigate the find.
Burns determined that the bones, located in west Edmonton, are a very well-preserved tooth of a tyrannosaurid (likely Albertosaurus) and large limb bone elements possibly from the hadrosaur Edmontosaurus.
Physorg.com: Archaeological study shows human activity may have boosted shellfish size
In a counter-intuitive finding, new research from North Carolina State University shows that a species of shellfish widely consumed in the Pacific over the past 3,000 years has actually increased in size, despite - and possibly because of - increased human activity in the area.
"What we've found indicates that human activity does not necessarily mean that there is going to be a negative impact on a species - even a species that people relied on as a major food source," says Dr. Scott Fitzpatrick, associate professor of sociology and anthropology at NC State and co-author of the study. "The trends we see in the archaeological record in regard to animal remains are not always what one would expect."
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
Science News: Primordial bestiary gets an annex
Burgess shale site expands to include thinner deposits
By Alexandra Witze
One of paleontology’s most revered fossil sites now has a baby brother. Scientists have discovered a group of astonishing fossils high in the Canadian Rockies, just 40 kilometers from the famous Burgess Shale location.
A paper describing the find appears in the September issue of Geology.
Since its discovery in 1909, the Burgess Shale has yielded many thousands of fossils dating to 505 million years ago — a period often called "evolution’s big bang," when animals were exploding in diverse body plans. These soft-bodied critters scurried around on the sea floor, then were buried in mudslides and exquisitely preserved.
Science News: Feud over family ties in evolution
Prominent scientists dispute kinship’s role in self-sacrifice among highly social creatures
By Susan Milius
A furor has broken out among biologists over ant specialist E.O. Wilson’s latest attack on a concept used to explain the origins of self-sacrifice in the dog-eat-dog world of evolution.
The debate centers around an idea called kin selection, which biologists use to understand altruistic behaviors such as honeybee workers raising the queen’s young but never having their own. These selfless workers would seem to lose out in the evolutionary struggle to pass along genes to the next generation. But according to the idea of kin selection, workers without young more than compensate by sharing in the reproductive success of relatives, with whom they share genes.
In the Aug. 26 Nature, Wilson and two Harvard colleagues argue that the concept of kin selection is "limited" and "unnecessary." And they propose steps for the evolution of ants, honeybees and other highly social species with such altruistic behaviors by just the broad "survival of the fittest" forces of natural selection without specifically invoking the power of kinship.
Biodiversity
University of Michigan: On organic coffee farm, complex interactions keep pests under control
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Proponents of organic farming often speak of nature's balance in ways that sound almost spiritual, prompting criticism that their views are unscientific and naïve. At the other end of the spectrum are those who see farms as battlefields where insect pests and plant diseases must be vanquished with the magic bullets of modern agriculture: pesticides, fungicides and the like.
Which view is more accurate? A 10-year study of an organic coffee farm in Mexico suggests that, far from being romanticized hooey, the "balance and harmony" view is on the mark. Ecologists John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto of the University of Michigan and Stacy Philpott of the University of Toledo have uncovered a web of intricate interactions that buffers the farm against extreme outbreaks of pests and diseases, making magic bullets unnecessary. Their research is described in the July/August issue of the journal BioScience.
The major players in the system—several ant species, a handful of coffee pests, and the predators, parasites and diseases that affect the pests—not only interact directly, but some species also exert subtle, indirect effects on others, effects that might have gone unnoticed if the system had not been studied in detail.
Discovery News: Climate Change Plays Unlucky for Horseshoe Crabs
Analysis by Zahra Hirji
Horseshoe crab populations are declining across the entire East Coast, from Maine to Florida, and are triggering a domino-effect among the larger animals that prey on them. Already, researchers are observing marked decreases in shore bird populations, especially the red knot bird and loggerhead sea turtles, two species that commonly feast on the crabs.
Human activity, from overfishing to population booms along shorelines, have been blamed for recent drops in the number of American horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus). A new study in the journal Molecular Biology suggests that climate change may also play a significant role.
Tim King, of the U.S. Geological Survey, and colleagues evaluated historical crab population trends and found a convincing correlation between historical climate change events and past declines in the species.
Biotechnology/Health
Science News: Wheat genome announcement turns out to be small beer
DNA sequence released by U.K. team still requires assembly
By Rachel Ehrenberg
U.K. scientists made a big splash on August 27 with the announcement that they had unveiled the sequence of DNA in the wheat genome. "Wheat genome may help tackle food shortages," headlines declared. And "Scientists crack through wheat's genetic code."
More like, "Scientists take a first crack at the genetic code of wheat." Because what these scientists did is not comparable to what scientists have usually done when they announce that they have sequenced an organism’s genome.
Science News: Diabetes drug might fight cancer
In use for years, metformin has few side effects
By Nathan Seppa
An ancient herbal remedy that constitutes the active ingredient in a modern diabetes drug may soon play a new role in combating cancer, two studies show. The findings, published in the September Cancer Prevention Research, support earlier population studies suggesting that diabetes patients receiving the drug, called metformin, are less prone to develop cancer.
Metformin helps to stabilize blood sugar by decreasing the liver’s glucose output and increasing the sugar’s use by muscle tissue. Scott Lippman, an oncologist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, estimates that more than 40 million metformin prescriptions have been filled in the United States. "It’s been around for a while," he says.
Science News: Gloves may head off ‘garden’ variety pneumonia
Doctors have begun linking garden compost to an unusual source of Legionnaire’s disease
By Janet Raloff
Compost feels so good, sifting through a gardener’s fingers. Unfortunately, data are showing that this soil amendment can host a germ responsible for Legionnaire’s disease, a potentially serious form of pneumonia.
The risk of picking up a Legionella infection from compost is rare, points out Simon Patten, a physician specializing in internal medicine at Royal Alexandria Hospital in Paisley, Scotland. Just nine instances have turned up in the United Kingdom within the past 26 years.
Scotland hosted four, however, within just the past three years — including one case that Patten’s team treated this spring.
University of Michigan: Some vitamin supplements increase presence of the HIV virus in breast milk
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Vitamin A and beta-carotene supplements are unsafe for HIV-positive women who breastfeed because they may boost the excretion of HIV in breast milk—thereby increasing the chances of transmitting the infection to the child, a pair of new studies suggest.
Epidemiologist Eduardo Villamor of the University of Michigan School of Public Health says transmission of HIV through breastfeeding happens because breast milk carries viral particles that the baby ingests. Supplementing HIV-positive women with vitamin A and beta-carotene appears to increase the amount of the virus in milk.
This may be partly because the same nutrients raise the risk of developing subclinical mastitis, an inflammatory condition which causes blood plasma to leak into the mammary gland and viral particles to then leak into the milk, he says.
University of Michigan: U-M launches effort to conquer common hospital-acquired infection
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Clostridium difficile, a wily, familiar bacterium, causes a growing number of serious infections in U.S. hospitals and nursing homes. With a $7.5 million, five-year award from the National Institutes of Health, University of Michigan researchers plan to discover what factors in the microbe and in patients make C. difficile a formidable, costly problem. C. difficile infects nearly a half-million Americans each year.
U-M scientists and clinicians from many disciplines will conduct three interrelated projects that will focus on:
- the pathogen’s genetic variations, to understand how pathogen variation leads to different disease outcomes
- the beneficial gut microbiota that, when altered by antibiotics, leave patients vulnerable to infection
- the human immune response to C. difficile infection.
University of Michigan: Bacteria make thrift a habit, U-M researchers find
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—In these lean times, smart consumers refuse to pay a lot for throwaway items, but will shell out a little more for products that can be used again and again. The same is true of bacteria and other microbes, researchers at the University of Michigan have learned.
These organisms "spend" more on proteins that will be used and recycled internally than on proteins that are secreted from the cell and lost to the environment, said graduate student Daniel Smith, lead author of a paper published online in the open access journal mBio.
Proteins are made up of building blocks called amino acids, which vary in size, complexity and chemical characteristics. These differences make some amino acids cheaper for cells to produce than others. Proteins made of mostly cheap amino acids are therefore less costly to the organism than are proteins composed of more energetically expensive amino acids. This much is obvious, but the connection between a protein's location and its expense has not been appreciated until now.
Michigan State University: Researchers discover mechanism protecting plants against freezing
EAST LANSING, Mich. — New ground broken by Michigan State University biochemists helps explain how plants protect themselves from freezing temperatures and could lead to discoveries related to plant tolerance for drought and other extreme conditions.
"This brings together two classic problems in plant biology," said Christoph Benning, MSU professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. "One is that plants protect themselves against freezing and that scientists long thought it had something to do with cell membranes, but didn’t know exactly how. "The other is the search for the gene for an enigmatic enzyme of plant lipid metabolism in the chloroplasts," shedding light on how cell membrane building blocks are made, Benning said.
In an article published online this week by the journal Science, Benning and his then-doctoral degree candidate Eric Moellering and technical assistant Bagyalakshmi Muthan describe how a particular gene leads to the formation of a lipid that protects chloroplast and plant cell membranes from freeze damage by a novel mechanism in Arabidopsis thaliana, common mustard weed.
University of Michigan: U-M, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan working to prevent blood clots
Reprinted from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan
DETROIT – Building upon an award-winning partnership program that has helped improve the quality of care in other medical areas, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Blue Care Network, the University of Michigan Health System and 16 other hospitals throughout the state are launching a new quality improvement initiative aimed at reducing the risk of blood clots in hospitalized patients.
Blood clots (venous thromboembolism or VTE) are a common risk of hospitalization due to the lack of movement a person experiences while remaining in a hospital bed. Patients who develop hospital-associated blood clots often experience poorer clinical outcomes, extended hospital stays, and ongoing treatment to address potential long-term ramifications of the blood clot.
To combat this, the Michigan Blues and the participating hospitals will collect and share data to help develop best practices for preventing blood clots in high-risk medical inpatients.
Climate/Environment
Science News: Deep-sea oil plume goes missing
Controversy arises over whether bacteria have completely gobbled it up
By Janet Raloff
In May, researchers began reporting that the massive jets of crude emanating from BP’s damaged Deepwater Horizon well were creating deep, diffuse plumes of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Since then, chemical oceanographers have been probing the plumes for indirect clues about how quickly native bacteria might be gobbling up the oil.
Microbial ecologist Terry Hazen of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California now thinks he has a surprising answer: very quickly.
He’s part of a broad team of scientists from two Department of Energy national labs and two universities that has been collecting plume samples continually for months. In a paper posted online August 24 in Science, the team reports data from late May to early June showing that those deep-sea plumes enticed a hitherto unknown cold-water–adapted bacterium to rapidly chow down on the oil.
Yes, I've moved news about the Gulf oil spill back into the body of the OND. I've decided to feature a dozen local environmental disasters who can be voted out this November in the tip jar instead, starting with the one who ostensibly represents me--yeah, right.
Science News: Tar sands 'fingerprint' seen in rivers and snow
New data counter claims that the pollution was from natural oily seeps
By Janet Raloff
A new study refutes a government claim (one echoed by industry) that the gonzo-scale extraction of tar sands in western Canada — and their processing into crude oil — does not substantially pollute the environment.
Oil reserves in Alberta, Canada, are second only to Saudia Arabia’s in size. Unlike the bubbling crudes pumped to the surface from underground reserves throughout most of the Lower 48 and Mexico, Alberta’s constitute thick, viscous hydrocarbons mixed in with silica. Hence their name: oil or tar sands.
Mined by the shovelful, Alberta’s hydrocarbon-soaked sands are hauled by monster trucks to nearby "upgrading" plants, which refine the tarry bitumen into conventional petroleum.
Discovery News: Katrina's Floods Dropped Children's Lead Levels
Hurricane Katrina, while devastating, had one bright side: It caused lead levels in children to drop due to a fresh soil layer.
By Jessica Marshall
The floods that inundated New Orleans five years ago during Hurricane Katrina may have left behind a small silver lining for some families.
The fresh layer of sediment deposited by the floods buried contaminated soils and led to a drop in soil lead levels in some heavily contaminated neighborhoods. That led to a dramatic drop in the blood lead levels of children living there, according to a recent study published in Environmental Science and Technology.
Howard Mielke of Tulane University in New Orleans, and colleagues, was studying the relationship between lead levels in the soil and in children's blood in New Orleans when Katrina hit. After the hurricane, they went back to survey many of the sites and combined the findings with post-hurricane blood samples of more than 2,000 children.
Discovery News: How Stable Is The West Antarctic Ice Sheet?
Analysis by Zahra Hirji
If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) collapsed, global sea level would likely rise between 11 and 16 feet. Such an enormous increase would cripple the planet, considering a 3-foot rise in ocean level is predicted to flood 861,000 square miles of land and affect 145 million people.
So, what are the chances that one of the world's largest ice sheets will buckle catastrophically? According to a new study in the journal Global Change Biology, they are better than scientists ever thought.
Using the distribution of tiny marine organisms called Bryozoans (shown to the left), scientists discovered evidence for a surprisingly recent collapse in the WAIS.
Geology
Discovery News: The Haiti and New Zealand Quakes: A Fair Comparison?
Analysis by Michael Reilly
At first blush, the earthquake that struck Christchurch, New Zealand on Saturday was the spitting image of the one that ravaged Haiti in January. Each was a powerful magnitude 7.0 quake, and each occurred on a strike-slip fault near a major population center.
The similarities end there. Reports out of Christchurch have been almost miraculous: Though the city suffered extensive damage, not a single person out of nearly 400,000 appears to have died. By contrast, the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince was flattened, and a quarter of a million people were killed. There remains immense suffering in the country, nearly eight months later.
There are two main reasons for this extreme contrast in events: luck, and preparedness.
Science News: Geomagnetic field flip-flops in a flash
Scientists unearth more evidence of superfast changes in Earth’s magnetic polarity
By Alexandra Witze
Lava flows in Nevada's Sheep Creek Range may have preserved evidence that the planet’s magnetic field rapidly changed direction 15 million years ago.Scott BogueJust north of a truck stop along Interstate 80 in Battle Mountain, Nev., lies evidence that the Earth’s magnetic field once went haywire.
Magnetic minerals in 15-million-year-old rocks appear to preserve a moment when the magnetic north pole was rapidly on its way to becoming the south pole, and vice versa. Such "geomagnetic field reversals" occur every couple hundred thousand years, normally taking about 4,000 years to make the change. The Nevada rocks suggest that this particular switch happened at a remarkably fast clip.
Anyone carrying a compass would have seen its measurements skew by about a degree a week — a flash in geologic time. A paper describing the discovery is slated to appear in Geophysical Research Letters.
Discovery News: Bacteria Make Gold Nuggets
The finding could help prospectors use biosensors to zero-in on where clumps of the precious metal may lie.
By Larry O'Hanlon
Gold nuggets are often the creations of bacterial biofilms, say Australian researchers who have demonstrated the process and even identified the bacteria at work.
Layers of bacteria can actually dissolve gold into nanoparticles, which move through rocks and soils, and then deposit it in other places, sometimes creating purer "secondary" gold deposits in cracks and crevices of rocks. The process overturns the long-held belief by some scientists that gold ore is created only by "primary" physical geological processes.
By looking at the DNA in biofilms that grow on gold grains collected from the Prophet gold mine in southeast Queensland, Australia , the University of Adelaide's Frank Reith and his colleagues discovered that 90 percent of the bacteria were of just two species Delftia acidovorans and Cupriavidus metallidurans. The bacteria share genes that make them resistant to the toxic effects of heavy metals.
Psychology/Behavior
Discovery News: 9/11 Imprint Persists in American Brains, Bodies
Nine years after the attacks of 9/11, the psyches of people who were even distant from the events, show permanent changes.
By Emily Sohn
To elicit powerful emotions and vivid memories, all it takes for many Americans is the mention of two numbers -- 9/11.
Nine years later, studies suggest, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, continue to affect the way we think, remember and react to stressful situations. The actual trauma ended long ago, but for many people, measures of brain activity and body chemistry are different than they were before it happened.
While people who were closest to the attacks were probably affected most, the research suggests, the events of September 11 may have shaped the psyche of our nation in ways far more subtle than high-profile cases of post-traumatic stress disorder and other clinical disorders. Scientists are still trying to figure out how to interpret all the data they've collected.
NPR: Keeping Trapped Chilean Miners Sane
The 33 miners trapped underground in Chile likely face months of isolation. Rescuers called in experts from NASA for advice on how to keep the men safe and mentally sound until their rescue. They are also looking to other isolating experiences for lessons, such as ships stuck in ice and long-term hostage situations.
Science News: DVDs don’t turn toddlers into vocabulary Einsteins
But some parents mistakenly think kids do learn words from watching these popular programs
By Bruce Bower
Toddlers get a kick out of giving adults a hard time. True to form, these wobbly-legged knowledge-sponges learn virtually nothing from best-selling DVDs that their parents believe will boost vocabulary and trigger academic superstardom.
Young children who viewed a popular DVD regularly for one month, either with or without their parents, showed no greater understanding of words from the program than kids who never saw it, according to a study slated to appear in Psychological Science.
"The degree to which babies actually learn from baby videos is negligible," says psychologist and study director Judy DeLoache of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Science News: Alzheimer’s trade-off for mentally active seniors
Stimulation delays cognitive decline, but disease advances quickly once it starts
By Bruce Bower
Mental exercise lets seniors outrun Alzheimer’s disease — for a while. Then the race takes a tragic turn for the sharp-minded, a new study finds, as declines in memory and other thinking skills kick into high gear.
After age 65, regular participation in mentally stimulating activities, including doing crossword puzzles and reading, delays intellectual decay caused by Alzheimer’s disease, say neuropsychologist Robert Wilson of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and his colleagues. But when this debilitating condition finally breaks through the defenses of a mentally fortified brain, it rapidly makes up for lost time, the scientists report in a paper published online September 1 in Neurology.
"The benefit of delaying initial signs of cognitive decline by keeping mentally active may come at the cost of more rapid dementia progression later on," Wilson says.
Archeology/Anthropology
National Geographic: Ancient Sorcerer's "Wake" Was First Feast for the Dead?
Leftovers, skeletons hint that world's first villagers fostered peace via partying.
Heather Pringle
for National Geographic magazine
Published August 30, 2010
Some 12,000 years ago in a small sunlit cave in northern Israel, mourners finished the last of the roasted tortoise meat and gathered up dozens of the blackened shells. Kneeling down beside an open grave in the cave floor, they paid their last respects to the elderly dead woman curled within, preparing her for a spiritual journey.
They tucked tortoise shells under her head and hips and arranged dozens of the shells on top and around her. Then they left her many rare and magical things—the wing of a golden eagle, the pelvis of a leopard, and the severed foot of a human being.
Now called Hilazon Tachtit, the small cave chosen as this woman's resting place is the subject of an intense investigation led by Leore Grosman, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
Yale Daily News: Yale archaeologists unearth Egyptian city
By Baobao Zhang
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
After 18 years of excavation, a Yale archaeology team has unearthed a large industrial center in the deserts of Western Egypt, shedding light on a little-known period in Egyptian history, the University announced last week.
Egyptology professor and Department Chair John Darnell and his team worked their way through the previously unearthed site of Umm Mawagir in the western deserts of Egypt and discovered large piles of ash next to clay ovens, buried in the sand. At first, the team wondered why so many ovens were clustered so close together in the northern part of the town, far from areas where people lived. They realized the ovens must have been used for large-scale production, not private use, at the newly discovered site — once an oasis but now a no man’s land.
Associated Press via ABC News: Jordan Unearths 3,000-Year-Old Iron Age Temple
AMMAN, Jordan September 1, 2010 (AP)
Archaeologists in Jordan have unearthed a 3,000-year-old Iron Age temple with a trove of figurines of ancient deities and circular clay vessels used for religious rituals, officials said Wednesday.
The head of the Jordanian Antiquities Department, Ziad al-Saad, said the sanctuary dates to the eighth century B.C. and was discovered at Khirbat 'Ataroz near the town of Mabada, some 20 miles (32 kilometers) southwest of the capital Amman.
..
The sanctuary and its artifacts — hewn from limestone and basalt or molded from clay and bronze — show the complex religious rituals of Jordan's ancient biblical Moabite kingdom, according to al-Saad.
"Today we have the material evidence, the archaeological proof of the level of advancement of technology and civilization at that period of time," he said.
Sorry, couldn't quite maintain the no-AP policy tonight. There was no non-AP source that I thought able to replace this article.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Lantern find sheds light on Roman in the gloamin'
An intact Roman lantern made of bronze, believed by experts to be the only one of its kind in Britain, has been unearthed in a field by a metal-detecting enthusiast.
The unique artefact, which dates from between the 1st and 3rd century AD, was discovered by 21-year-old Danny Mills at a detecting rally near Sudbury, Suffolk.
Mr Mills reported the find to local archaeologists and the landowner later donated it to the regional museum.
Archaeologists say the British Museum in London holds only fragments of similar finds and its closest complete double was found at the Roman city of Pompeii in southern Italy.
Toronto Star (Canada): Franklin's northern fate still elusive
Published On Mon Aug 30 2010
By Mary Ormsby Feature Writer
Sir John Franklin’s ships, HMS Erebus and Terror, continue to evade maritime detectives 160 years after Canadian Arctic waters swallowed them into secret graves.
Franklin and his 128-man crew set sail in 1845 to discover the Northwest Passage but were halted when their ships became icebound. Erebus and Terror were abandoned by the English captain and his crew, who then disappeared forever into the harsh Canadian wild, leaving barely a footprint behind.
It’s a high seas cold case that for more than a century has stumped search teams — the latest being an expert aquatic squad of Canadian government scientists that came up empty last week.
BBC: Divers steal from Holland 5 submarine off Sussex coast
Thieves have targeted a historically important submarine wreck lying in the English Channel, it has emerged.
English Heritage said divers stole the torpedo tube hatch of the Holland 5, which sank six miles off Eastbourne in East Sussex in 1912.
The theft was discovered during a licensed dive by the Nautical Archaeology Society (NAS) in June and confirmed during a dive last month.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Washed up foot in shoe case still a mystery
RCMP in Saskatchewan are still trying to figure out an unusual case from 1993, when a shoe with a foot in it washed up from the North Saskatchewan River.
The remains were discovered near Prince Albert, Sask.
On Tuesday, the RCMP's historical cases unit released a picture of the running shoe.
They also said the foot was examined by archaeology experts at the University of Saskatchewan.
"It was determined to be size ten and that of a robust male, big boned, and athletic," RCMP said in a media release.
The Guardian (UK): Dry early summer turns 2010 into a vintage year for archaeology
Parched fields revealed a Roman camp in Dorset, a fort in Yorkshire and 60 other sites
The Guardian, Monday 30 August 2010
Dry weeks in early summer have already made 2010 a vintage year for archaeology, English Heritage said yesterday. The conditions allowed hundreds of cropmark sites – created when crops grow at a different rate over buried features – to be seen from the air. A Roman camp near Bradford Abbas, Dorset, was found after three sides appeared in parched barley fields. The lightly built defensive enclosure would have provided basic protection for Roman soldiers while on manoeuvres in the first century AD and is one of only four discovered in the south west of England, English Heritage said.
The dry conditions also allowed well known sites to be photographed in greater detail. Newton Kyme, near Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, was shown to be home not only to a 2,000-year-old Roman fort but also to a larger defence built in AD290. Stone walls up to three metres thick and a ditch 15 metres wide were revealed by an image taken from a Cessna light aircraft.
The Art Newspaper: Archaeologists attack BP’s drilling plans
Damage feared to underwater sites off the coast of Libya, after Gulf disaster
By Emily Sharpe
London. From Greek and Roman shipwrecks to 20th-century warships; from ancient streets with intact buildings and mosaics to amphorae and ingots, the Mediterranean is a subaqueous treasure trove. So BP’s plans to drill exploratory oil wells off Libya has raised serious concerns among archaeologists, historians and heritage preservation organisations.
The global energy giant says that it will begin the $900m project to drill five exploratory wells in the Gulf of Sirte "before the end of this year" despite the fact that the cause of the blowout of its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico has yet to be determined. The Libyan wells will be 200 metres deeper than the Macondo.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
Science News: Changing one of nature's constants
If correct, new finding could upend physicists’ view of universe
By Ron Cowen
The constants, they may be a-changin’ — and so may some of the fundamental laws of nature, a controversial new study suggests.
Studying the pattern in which gas clouds absorb the light from distant quasars, astronomers say they have found evidence that one of nature’s physical constants changes in a lopsided manner.
Along one direction the fine-structure constant, which governs the strength of the electromagnetic force, grows slightly weaker with time, while in the other direction it grows slightly stronger. The research, by John Webb of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues, was posted online at arXiv.org on August 25 (http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3907). The work is the latest in a series of controversial studies on the fine-structure constant, also known as alpha, that the researchers have conducted since 1999.
If the study is correct, it would force physicists to reconsider many of their most cherished ideas about the universe, including the notion, touted by Einstein, that the laws of physics are the same everywhere in the cosmos.
Science News: String theory entangled
Equations can be retooled to describe a strange quantum effect
By Laura Sanders
Physicists looking for a way to test their theory about strings might make more progress if they tangle them up.
String theory — equations that aspire to explain all of nature’s particles and forces — has extended its reach to the strange quantum behavior known as entanglement, physicists report September 2 in Physical Review Letters. Repurposing string theory mathematics allowed physicists to solve a hard problem involving entanglement, a strange feature at the heart of quantum mechanics. In doing so, the new study also points out a way to test whether the co-opted string theory equations are actually correct.
"String theory has not had a lot of success in making falsifiable predictions," says study coauthor Michael Duff of Imperial College London. "But in the field of quantum information theory, it can."
Chemistry
University of Michigan: Smallest U-M logo demonstrates advanced display technology
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—In a step toward more efficient, smaller and higher-definition display screens, a University of Michigan professor has developed a new type of color filter made of nano-thin sheets of metal with precisely spaced gratings.
The gratings, sliced into metal-dielectric-metal stacks, act as resonators. They trap and transmit light of a particular color, or wavelength, said Jay Guo, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. A dielectric is a material that does not conduct electricity.
"Simply by changing the space between the slits, we can generate different colors," Guo said. "Through nanostructuring, we can render white light any color."
Energy
Discovery News: School of Underwater Turbines Swim to Fast Currents
Analysis by Alyssa Danigelis
The power potential in underwater ocean currents can make the winds that turn terrestrial turbines seem like a baby's breath. But actually tapping the Gulf Stream presents myriad challenges. A new turbine in the works might be able to swim around them.
Darris White, associate mechanical engineering professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, wants to build a swarm of underwater turbines that behave like schools of fish to capture the shifting current. These autonomous turbines wouldn't need to be affixed to one spot on the seafloor. Instead, a set of them would be tethered, allowing them to move together. Sensors would let them communicate with each other.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Science News: Academies recommend that IPCC make changes
Implementing some would make the group more nimble, others could render it less vulnerable to sloppy judgments
By Janet Raloff
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an authoritative scientific organization set up in 1989 to assess climate science, took some heat today from a group that it commissioned to investigate its credibility. The oversight group uncovered procedural weaknesses that preclude IPCC from responding nimbly to events, it said — or from reliably identifying errors in its assessments.
In early March, the United Nations and the IPCC’s chairman requested that a group of the world’s science academies collectively review IPCC processes and procedures. On Aug. 30, this InterAcademy Council — or IAC — issued a 100-page report to IPCC that recommends a number of changes in how it conducts its business. For instance, the IAC called for greater transparency in the IPCC’s deliberations, term-limited appointments for the IPCC’s top eight officials and the development of a new top-tier committee that could make time-sensitive executive decisions on IPCC’s behalf (rather than waiting, as now, for annual meetings of a larger plenary group).
But what catalyzed the new IPCC review more than anything were challenges to the group’s credibility over a small passage referring to the melting rate of Himalayan glaciers. It said that "if the present [melt] rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high." The next sentence then appeared to contradict that, saying the total area of the glaciers in question could shrink from 500,000 square kilometers to 100,000 square kilometers — again by 2035.
Okay, so which is it?
University of Michigan: Biden: U-M transforming economy through innovation
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Two U-M researchers were honored Tuesday by Vice President Joe Biden for "transforming the American Economy through innovation" to accelerate significant advances in science and technology.
The White House honored U-M autism researcher Catherine Lord and School Public Health investigator Goncalo Abecasis, along with other researchers and business people gathered at the White House Executive Office Building.
The White House also issued a 48-page report detailing work supported by $100 billion in grants aimed toward innovative and transformative programs as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Investment Act: www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/Recovery_Act_Innovation.pdf
Science Education
University of Michigan: Lives, achievements of women physicians recognized in traveling exhibit
Collection on display, one-woman play at BSRB illustrate important role women played in the practice of medicine
Ann Arbor, Mich. —Women physicians always have strongly influenced the way medicine is practiced from traditional family care to researching significant breakthroughs. U-M’s Office of Medical Student Education is pleased to recognize those contributions with an exhibit that opens Aug. 30, "Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America's Women Physicians."
The exhibit is an interactive, multimedia traveling exhibition that honors the lives and achievements of American women in medicine, both past and present. The exhibition is based on a larger exhibition that was displayed at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, from 2003-2005.
Along with the exhibit, which opens Aug. 30 in the Biomedical Science Research Building (BSRB), U-M will host a Sept. 7 performance of "A Lady Alone." The one-woman play tells the story of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from medical school.
Science Writing and Reporting
University of Michigan: Fixing Wiki: Wikipedia revision project teaches teamwork, communication, chemistry
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Halogen bonding, hyperconjugation, electroactive polymers—such subjects are typical fare in graduate-level chemistry courses. But how many classes challenge students to explain the concepts to the whole world?
That's essentially the assignment in Anne McNeil's courses at the University of Michigan, where teams of students are given the task of revising a Wikipedia entry on an esoteric subject, making it understandable not only to fellow scientists but also to general readers.
In the process, students learn teamwork and improve their communication skills while mastering chemistry, said McNeil, who recently was invited to make a presentation at the Wikimedia Foundation headquarters in San Francisco. McNeil and three U-M colleagues also describe the teaching technique, its challenges and successes, in a paper published online in the Journal of Chemical Education.
Michigan State University: MSU environmental ethicist co-edits book
EAST LANSING, Mich. -- It's not enough to simply know the environmental impacts of climate change, according to Michigan State University ethicist Michael Nelson. Instead, we must do something and getting from knowing to acting is the challenge.
That's the crux of "Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril," a book Nelson co-edited, which will be released Sept. 1. He is associate professor with joint appointments in MSU's departments of Fisheries and Wildlife and Philosophy as well as the Lyman Briggs College.
The collection of essays was also edited by Kathleen Moore, distinguished professor of philosophy and writer laureate at Oregon State University.
Science is Cool
Science News: Going viral takes a posse, not an army
Dedicated followers spread the word online
By Rachel Ehrenberg
When it comes to going viral online, it’s not how many people you know but who they are, a new study suggests. An analysis of the social networking tool Twitter concludes that having a lot of followers isn’t as important to Internet exposure as having discriminating followers to pass the message on.
The results suggest that those trying to communicate through social networking, be they politicians, advertising executives or philanthropic organizations, shouldn’t focus their efforts on targeting the masses. Target the influential, and the masses will come.
"It’s not only the numbers, the quantity of your audience, but also the quality of your audience," says study coauthor Wojciech Galuba, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.