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 the L.A. Times.
China sky watchers marvel at total eclipse
By Joshua Frank
July 22, 2009
Reporting from Beijing -- In a popular Chinese legend, a giant named Kua Fu chased the fiery sun across the sky, hoping to end a catastrophic drought. Though the hero dies in impassioned pursuit, the gods take notice of his effort and punish the sun, forcing it farther from Earth and drawing the calamitous weather to a close.
Chinese media were ablaze with the mythical giant's name today, this time, to refer to amateur astronomers who flocked to southern China for the longest solar eclipse of the 21st century.
More on this and other science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
Other Daily Kos Science Diaries
Two Three other science-related stories/diaries deserve your attention today. The first is DarkSyde's This Week in Science and the second is NellaSelim's This Week in Space. IMHO, without Vladislaw around, NellaSelim's diaries just don't get enough attention. UPDATE: The third is Username4242's Bonus Dinosaur of the Week. Show all these fine diarists your appreciation!
Slideshows/Videos
Discovery Networks: Flashback: Images in the News, July 20-24
Talal Al-Khatib, Discovery News
July 24, 2009 -- Think you had a rough week? Wild herds on the Serengeti are thirsty. A mysterious blob has suddenly emerged in Alaska. And to top it all off, a comet crashed into Jupiter, affecting a region the size of our entire planet.
Of course, it wasn't all bad. Take a look at this week's top stories in the Discovery News Flashback Slide Show.
L.A. Times: Asia views solar eclipse
This multiple-exposure image shows the various stages of the total solar eclipse over Baihata, India. The longest solar eclipse of the 21st century cast a shadow over much of Asia, plunging hundreds of millions into darkness across the giant land masses of India and China.
Astronomy/Space
Science News: Rotation may solve cosmic mystery
By Ron Cowen Web edition : Friday, July 24th, 2009
Literally cloaked in darkness, the faintest galaxies in the universe have remained a mystery since their discovery more than two decades ago. Now a team of theorists has come up with a new explanation for the origin of these dim bodies. Known as dwarf spheroidal galaxies, these ancient stellar groupings not only serve as fossil remains of the early universe but have the highest known ratio of dark matter to ordinary, visible matter.
In the most widely accepted model of galaxy formation, an exotic type of invisible material, known as cold dark matter, provides the gravitational glue that draws together stars and gas and keeps galaxies, along with galaxy clusters, from flying apart. It would seem that all galaxies ought to have about the same ratio of dark matter to visible matter, because gravity builds all galaxies in the same way. Yet dwarf spheroidals are the most dark matter–dominated galaxies known, with 10 to 30 times the ratio of dark to visible matter as large galaxies including the Milky Way.
That’s the puzzle that Elena D’Onghia of the University of Zurich and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and her colleagues set out to solve in a study posted online July 16 (http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.2442) and in an upcoming Nature.
Science News: Evidence mounts for liquid interior of a Saturn moon
By Ron Cowen Web edition : Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Editor’s Note: A paper in the July 23 Nature reports on evidence for ammonia in the plume of water vapor and ice emanating from Saturn’s moon Enceladus, along with the probable detection of argon-40, raising the chances that Enceladus has (or had in the recent past) liquid water in its interior. Science News reported that finding in this story, originally posted in May.
Swooping within 25 kilometers of Enceladus, the Cassini spacecraft has obtained additional evidence that the interior of this tiny, icy moon of Saturn may contain liquid water. Hunter Waite of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and his colleagues base their findings on close-up observations made with Cassini’s Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer, which on March 12, 2008 and October 9, 2008 tasted the plumes of icy particles and water vapor known to spew from the moon.
In a research abstract for a talk that was scheduled to have been given May 27 in Toronto at the 2009 Joint Assembly of the American Geophysical Union, Waite and his collaborators cite two findings that they say "provide compelling evidence for the existence — today or in the recent past — of liquid water in Enceladus' interior." The abstract has been publicly available for weeks with no embargo.
L.A. Times: 'Incredible' new scar is spreading on Jupiter
By John Johnson Jr.
July 22, 2009
For only the second time in recent history, scientists have observed the results of an object plunging into the solar system's largest planet.
The object, thought to be an asteroid or comet, left a large dark bruise that can still be seen spreading over Jupiter's southern hemisphere, according to Leigh Fletcher, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada-Flintridge.
"This is an incredible event," Fletcher said in an interview. The last time something like this happened was 15 years ago, when fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy comet plunged into the huge gaseous envelope that makes up most of the planet.
Science News covered this story, and they had a cooler headline, too: Jupiter takes it on the chin
Science News: Lopsided lights
By Sid Perkins Web edition : Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
The serendipitous observations of two Earth-orbiting satellites, one passing high over the North Pole while the other whizzed over Antarctica, have revealed that Earth’s auroras aren’t symmetrical.
Auroras, commonly called the northern and southern lights, are caused by charged particles from space slamming into gas molecules in the upper atmosphere. These ghostly, flickering phenomena are most commonly seen at high latitudes because the charged particles follow the lines of Earth’s magnetic field, which pierces the atmosphere in polar regions.
Scientists have presumed that the aurora encircling Earth’s northern magnetic pole, the aurora borealis, mirrors that seen in the Southern Hemisphere, the aurora australis, because the charged particles follow magnetic field lines that connect the two hemispheres, says Nikolai Østgaard, a space physicist at the University of Bergen in Norway. But new observations, reported by Østgaard and his colleagues in the July 23 Nature, reveal that the intensity and pattern of the northern and southern auroras can differ substantially on some occasions.
Evolution/Paleontology
Salt Lake Tribune: Tiny prehistoric mammals made their mark in monument
By Mark Havnes
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 07/24/2009 12:35:49 AM MDT
The rat-like creatures ran over prehistoric sand dunes about 190 million years ago. Now their ancient tracks have been discovered in Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah.
"Its an amazing find," said Dan Chure,a paleontologist with the National Park Service who discovered the site with George Engelmannof the University of Nebraska, Omaha.
Chure said in a telephone interview Thursday that the pair were exploring an area of the monument for the fourth consecutive summer when they found the tracks on July 8. He said he is hoping to find tiny skeletons, too, on further investigation.
The pair also found the fossilized trail of a scorpion tail near the tracks.
Hat/Tip to jlms qkw for this story.
Science News: Diggin’ dinos
By Sid Perkins Web edition : Monday, July 20th, 2009
Three enigmatic structures embedded in 106-million-year-old Australian rocks may be the remains of dinosaur burrows that were filled in by an ancient flood, a new study suggests. If that’s true, these fossils represent the oldest known dinosaur burrows and the first found outside North America.
The purported burrows sit within three meters of each other in now-hardened material that was laid down as sandy sediment along a stream bank near what is now Australia’s southern coast, says Anthony Martin, a paleontologist at Emory University in Atlanta who described the fossils online and in an upcoming Cretaceous Research. Recent erosion has erased much of two of the structures, but what remains of the largest one is remarkably similar to the remains of dinosaur burrows discovered in North America a few years ago (SN: 10/27/07, p. 259).
Science News: Fossil shows first all-American honeybee
By Susan Milius Web edition : Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
North America did too have a native honeybee.
A roughly 14-million-year-old fossil unearthed in Nevada preserves what’s clearly a member of the honeybee, or Apis, genus, says Michael Engel of the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
The Americas have plenty of other kinds of bees, but all previously known honeybees come from Asia and Europe. Even the Apis mellifera honeybee that has pollinated crops and made honey across the Americas for several centuries arrived with European colonists some 400 years ago.
Biodiversity
L.A. Times: AIDS-like disease in chimps may be a 'missing link'
By William Mullen
July 24, 2009
Reporting from Chicago -- Scientists have discovered that chimpanzees in Tanzania are falling ill and dying from an AIDS-like disease -- a surprising finding that could lead to insights into the illness and, perhaps, to a vaccine.
The study, published in Thursday's edition of the British research journal Nature, showed that chimps infected by certain strains of simian immunodeficiency virus, a precursor to HIV, died 10 to 16 times more frequently than uninfected chimps during a nine-year study.
The results contradict previous evidence suggesting that chimpanzees were immune from AIDS and that SIV infections in the species were harmless.
Science News: Web decorating with garbage
By Susan Milius Web edition : Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
Picked-over carcasses as home decor attract the wrong kind of attention, even among spiders, researchers say. But the decorations may work well as decoys.
Cyclosa mulmeinensis spiders tie old bits of prey onto their webs. Many spiders add extra features, mostly of silk, to their webs, and biologists are still debating what functions the apparent decorations serve.
About 950 hours of video of C. mulmeinensis spider webs in natural conditions show that webs generously decorated with food bits draw extra visits from predatory paper wasps, report I-Min Tso and Ling Tseng of Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan.
Science News: Sleeping ugly
By Laura Sanders Web edition : Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Instead of chopping firewood and pulling out the mittens to prepare for chilly winter days, the Arctic springtail hunkers down and dries itself out. A study published online July 21 in BMC Genomics identifies some of the genes that allow for the millimeters-long arthropod’s extreme wintering stunt.
When temperatures drop below freezing, Arctic springtails (Megaphorura arctica) lose a massive amount of water and shrivel into little husks. In this way — a method called cryoprotective dehydration — the critters ride out harsh winter temperatures. When conditions improve, the animals rehydrate, dust themselves off and crawl away.
"This whole question of what happens during dehydration is terribly interesting," says David Denlinger, an insect physiologist at Ohio State University in Columbus. "Here is an animal that has figured out how to survive — dried out."
L.A. Times: Toucan's bill keeps things cool, study says
By Shara Yurkiewicz
July 25, 2009
The toucan's enlarged bill may not just be for attracting mates or handling food, as biologists have speculated. It also may be able to exchange heat with its environment, enabling the bird to adjust its body temperature as its surroundings change.
With the largest beak relative to body size of all birds, the toucan has long fascinated researchers, including Charles Darwin, who speculated that the beak's size was used to display colors to the opposite sex, giving bigger-billed birds a reproductive edge.
Accounting for 30% to 50% of the body's surface area and about one-third of its length, the colorful bill has many blood vessels and is not insulated. These factors, contend the authors of a new study, make the beak well-suited to regulate body temperature.
Science News: Bird deaths blamed on vitamin deficiency
By Susan Milius Web edition : Monday, July 13th, 2009
Mysterious bird deaths around the Baltic Sea and possibly elsewhere in the world may be caused by a shortage of the vitamin thiamine, researchers say.
Wild birds of varied species along the Baltic coasts have been dying of hard-to-explain paralysis since at least 1982, says Lennart Balk of Stockholm University in Sweden. He and his colleagues have now studied the illness in three species with different life styles — herring gulls, common starlings and common eiders. Paralytic deaths in all three result from shortages of thiamine (vitamin B1), he and his colleagues report online July 13 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As for what’s causing the vitamin deficiencies, though, "the correct answer is, we don’t know," Balk says.
Science News: Old gene, short new trick
By Laura Sanders Web edition : Thursday, July 16th, 2009
We may never know how the zebra got its stripes, but we know how the wiener dog got its short legs. Height-challenged dog breeds — including dachshunds, corgis and basset hounds — have an extra copy of a normal gene to thank for their diminutive stature, new research shows.
"It’s stunning to see a genetic modification like this," developmental geneticist Douglas Mortlock of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., says of the new study, published online July 16 in Science. "This is the gene that makes wiener dogs short-legged."
...
Heidi Parker, of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., and her colleagues broadly compared the genomes of 95 short-legged dogs from the eight breeds with the genomes of 702 dogs from 64 breeds without the trait. Then, in a more detailed analysis, the researchers pinpointed an extra stretch of DNA on chromosome 18 in every dog from the eight short-legged breeds, but in none of 204 control dogs they examined.
Biotechnology/Health
SeedQuest: Global rice research community provides critical tools to unravel the diversity of rice
Los Baños, The Philippines
July 23, 2009
Source: International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
By looking at what different types of rice have in common a team of international scientists are unlocking rice’s genetic diversity to help conserve it and find valuable rice genes to help improve rice production.
Rice is the world’s most important food crop. Understanding its valuable genetic diversity and using it to breed new rice varieties will provide the foundation for improving rice production into the future and to secure global food supplies.
Recently published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the research team scrutinized the genomes of twenty different types of genetically diverse rice used in international breeding with a wide range of different characteristics.
L.A. Times: Dr. Joel D. Weisman dies at 66; among the first doctors to detect AIDS
By Elaine Woo
July 23, 2009
Dr. Joel D. Weisman, who was one of the first physicians to detect the AIDS epidemic and who became a national advocate for AIDS research, treatment and prevention, died Saturday at his Westwood home. He was 66.
Science News: Cheap shots -- typhoid vaccine shows broad coverage
By Nathan Seppa Web edition : Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
An inexpensive vaccine against typhoid fever offers protection across age groups and is particularly effective in preschool-age children, a large trial in India finds. The same study shows that vaccinating half the people in a neighborhood confers significant protection throughout its population, researchers report in the July 23 New England Journal of Medicine.
Despite the availability of two approved vaccines, many countries have lagged in their efforts to confront typhoid, which strikes 21 million people each year and causes 200,000 to 600,000 deaths worldwide.
In the new study, an international team took an unusual approach to gauge the public health effect of one of the vaccines. In late 2004, the researchers vaccinated more than 37,000 people in the slums of Calcutta. People in some neighborhoods received an injection of a typhoid vaccine called Vi, while half the people in other neighborhoods, serving as a control sample, received hepatitis A vaccinations.
Science News: Postmenopausal hormones up cancer risk
By Janet Raloff Web edition : Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
As a cub reporter in the mid-1970s, I did a brief stint writing for the newspaper in Oak Ridge, Tenn. And it was there I first learned about hormone replacement therapy. My editor had assigned me to talk to local women who sought to minimize the unpleasantness associated with menopause by periodically jetting over to Atlanta for estrogen-replacement treatments.
It was a novel therapy that East Tennessee’s medical establishment wouldn’t countenance (and which might even have been illegal at the time . . . I just can’t remember). In any case, I’ve always been surprised that throughout the intervening decades, research had failed to conclusively resolve whether such hormone therapy poses undue risks.
A report in the July 15 Journal of the American Medical Association now weighs in fairly conclusively on one aspect of the risk equation. It finds that "Regardless of the duration of use, the formulation, estrogen dose, regimen, progestin type, and route of administration, hormone therapy was associated with an increased risk of ovarian cancer."
Science News: Protein plays three cancer-fighting roles
By Tina Hesman Saey Web edition : Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Cells, do you need layers of cancer protection but hate juggling multiple proteins? Then an important tumor-suppressor is for you. A new study shows this cancer-controlling protein, p53, does not one, not two, but three different jobs, all in one convenient package.
Previous studies have demonstrated that p53 stops cancer from developing by sensing stress, such as DNA damage, and turning on genes that keep cells from dividing until the damage is repaired. The protein, which is a normal component of cells, also teams up with other molecules to trigger apoptosis, a type of cellular suicide, in over-stressed cells.
And now, researchers from University of Tokyo and their colleagues report in the July 23 Nature that p53 helps slice long pieces of RNA into small regulatory molecules called microRNAs. These microRNAs help control production of proteins, including some involved in cell proliferation, which can lead to cancer if unchecked.
Climate/Environment
Science News: Traffic hydrocarbons linked to lower IQs in kids
By Janet Raloff Web edition : Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
Here’s a dirty little secret about polluted urban air: It can shave almost 5 points off of a young child’s IQ, a new report suggests.
That’s no small loss, says Kimberly Gray, whose federal agency cofinanced the study, to appear in the August Pediatrics.
Geology/Geophysics
Science News: Signs of ancient sea ice
By Sid Perkins Web edition : Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
Fossils of ice-dependent algae reveal that Arctic sea ice, which is today very much an endangered species, formed at least 47.5 million years ago, about 1.5 million years earlier than previously recognized.
Psychology/Behavior
Science News: When Humor Humiliates
By Susan Gaidos August 1st, 2009; Vol.176 #3 (p. 18)
By most accounts, laughter is good medicine, the best even. But for some, such as the embarrassed diner, a good-natured chuckle isn’t funny at all. Morbidly averse to being the butt of a joke, these folks will go out of their way to avoid certain people or situations for fear of being ridiculed. For them, merely being around others who are talking and laughing can cause tension and apprehension.
Until recently, such people might have been written off as spoilsports. But in the mid-1990s, an astute German psychologist recognized the problem for what it is: a debilitating fear of being laughed at. Over the past decade, psychologists, sociologists, linguists and humor experts have examined this trait, technically known as gelotophobia. Though it sounds like an ailment involving Italian ice cream, scientists worldwide now recognize it as a distinct social phobia. Studies of causes and consequences of gelotophobia were among the topics presented in June in Long Beach, Calif., at a meeting of the International Society for Humor Studies.
Most people fear being laughed at to some degree and do their best to avoid embarrassment. One thing that sets gelotophobes apart is their inability to distinguish ridicule from playful teasing. For them, all laughter is aggressive, and a harmless joke may come across as a mean-spirited assault.
Science News: Early testing for Alzheimer’s
By Nathan Seppa Web edition : Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
Elderly people with mild cognitive losses are at a heightened risk of progressing to Alzheimer’s disease if they have a combination of telltale compounds in their spinal fluid, researchers report in the July 22/29 Journal of the American Medical Association.
By testing for a shortage of a sticky compound called amyloid-beta in the spinal fluid and for excess amounts of two kinds of a protein called tau, the scientists could identify people at greatest risk.
The test isn’t foolproof, and a positive reading still warns of a disease for which there is no cure. But scientists are heartened by this and earlier studies (SN: 9/20/03, p. 179)because Alzheimer’s disease is difficult to foresee and its early symptoms are often mistaken for routine cognitive losses caused by aging.
Science News: Neighborhood unity offers behavioral protection for poor kids
By Bruce Bower Web edition : Thursday, July 16th, 2009
From a child’s perspective, not all low-income neighborhoods are alike. Though opportunities for youthful fighting and law breaking abound in impoverished areas, good neighbors can nudge youngsters toward the straight and narrow, according to a five-year study led by psychologist Candice Odgers of the University of California, Irvine.
When a low-income community has a high level of a trait known as collective efficacy, 5-year-olds are less likely to fight, steal and engage in other misconduct, Odgers and her colleagues report in the July Developmental Psychology. Members of communities with high collective efficacy are close-knit and willing to intervene on behalf of the common good, say to prevent children from spraying graffiti on a local building or to prevent city officials from closing a nearby fire station.
Collective efficacy in low-income neighborhoods was associated with lower levels of aggression and physical violence by kids at age 5 but not at ages 7 or 10. This pattern held even after the researchers accounted for crime rates in different neighborhoods and family factors that contribute to early delinquency, including extreme poverty, physical abuse of children, domestic violence and parents’ past criminal activity.
Science News: 300 milliseconds from hand to head
By Rachel Ehrenberg Web edition : Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
The hand is quicker than the eye, but only by about 300 milliseconds. That’s the time window in which the mind can be tricked into incorrectly linking something it sees with something it feels, Sotaro Shimada of Meiji University in Kawasaki, Japan, and colleagues report July 9 in PLoS ONE. The new work, which uses the "rubber hand illusion," could help researchers better understand how and where the brain processes sensory information.
Archeology/Anthropology
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: DNA confirms coastal trek to Australia
Friday, 24 July 2009 Nicky Phillips
ABC
DNA evidence linking Indian tribes to Australian Aboriginal people supports the theory humans arrived in Australia from Africa via a southern coastal route through India, say researchers.
The research, lead by Dr Raghavendra Rao from the Anthropological Survey of India, is published in the current edition of BMC Evolutionary Biology.
One theory is that modern humans arrived in Australia via an inland route through central Asia but Rao says most scientists believe modern humans arrived via the coast of South Asia.
SeedQuest: DNA of ancient lost barley could help modern crops cope with water stress
Researchers at the University of Warwick have recovered significant DNA information from a lost form of ancient barley that triumphed for over 3000 years seeing off: 5 changes in civilisation, water shortages and a much more popular form of barley that produces more grains. This discovery offers a real insight into the couture of ancient farming and could assist the development of new varieties of crops to face today's climate change challenges.
The researchers, led by Dr Robin Allaby from the University of Warwick's plant research arm Warwick HRI, examined Archaeobotanical remains of ancient barley at Qasr Ibrim in Egypt's Upper Nile. This is a site that was occupied for over 3000 years by 5 successive cultures: Napatan, Roman, Meoitic, Christian and Islamic.
The first surprise for the researchers was that throughout that period every culture seemed to be growing a two rowed form of barley. While natural wild barley tends to be two rowed most farmers prefer to grow a much higher yield 6 row version which produces up to 3 times as many grains. That 6 row version has grown for over 8000 years and that was certainly grown in the lower Nile over the same period as Qasr Ibrim was occupied. It was thought that despite the fact that the rest of Egypt used 6 row barley that the farmers of Qasr Ibrim were perhaps deliberately choosing to import 2 rowed barley but the researchers could not understand why that would be so.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Indian burial grounds: Rest in peace
By MARY JANE SMETANKA, Star Tribune
Last update: July 22, 2009 - 9:00 AM
The teenage girl fancied herself an archaeologist. When she saw bones exposed in a road project in the Twin Cities, she picked them up and gave them a coat of varnish. Then they gathered dust in a box for decades.
She was an old woman when, fretting that she'd done something awful and frightened about being prosecuted, she asked an intermediary to contact the state. The bones she had tried to protect had become a guilty burden.
"She just wanted to give them back. She said, 'I'm sorry,'" recalled Jim Jones, cultural resource director for the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. "We just said, 'Thank you, we're going to take care of them.'" And the bones were reburied.
BBC: Berlusconi 'hid ancient graves'
Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has failed to declare the presence of 30 ancient tombs on his land, according to newly published recordings said to be of him.
The recordings allege Mr Berlusconi told escort Patrizia D'Addario of 30 Phoenician tombs at his Sardinia villa.
The tombs date from 300BC, a man said to be Mr Berlusconi was heard saying.
But officials say there is no record of him reporting any finds - a legal requirement for all Italians - and opposition MPs have called for a probe.
This is Hampshire: Visitors dig relics search
By David Connop Price
YOU might think some of the town planning in north Hampshire belongs to the Iron Age. And you would be right.
Because Silchester is emerging as the site of the oldest known town in Britain, thanks to the efforts of archaeologists.
Experts and students have been digging down into the history of Calleva Atrebatum each summer for 13 years and are now uncovering evidence of Silchester being a large Iron Age town in the first century AD.
The Irish Examiner: ‘Graveyard’ of five ancient Roman shipwrecks discovered
ARCHAEOLOGISTS using sonar technology to scan the seabed have discovered a "graveyard" of five pristine ancient Roman shipwrecks off the small Italian island of Ventotene.
The trading vessels, dating from the first century BC to the fifth century AD, lie more than 100 metres underwater and are amongst the deepest wrecks discovered in the Mediterranean in recent years, the researchers said.
The Boston Globe also carried this story--5 ancient Roman shipwrecks found off Italy coast--but it's from the AP, so I'll merely link to it. You can decide if you want to give the AP your eyeballs.
Wairarapa Times-Age (New Zealand): Maori site under threat
Michael Dickison | 23rd July 2009
"Irreplaceable" 700-year-old Maori ruins of national importance in South Wairarapa may be developed into a residential subdivision - upsetting archaeologists who demand the entire area be preserved.
Waiwhero, about 2km north of Ngawi, containing well-preserved examples of 14th-century Maori gardens and a battle site sacred to local iwi, is the site of a planned subdivision into four houses.
The proposal, undergoing resource consent with the South Wairarapa District Council would replace a fish-processing plant on one part of the site with four residential sections.
The council proposes strict conditions on the development, including monitoring by an archaeologist, but experts warn site-by-site protection is not enough.
Catholic News Service: Indiana Jones and the Christian catacombs? Not quite
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Sometimes a job is just a job, even when from the outside it looks like it involves the stuff of an Indiana Jones movie.
Fabrizio Bisconti is the newly named archaeological superintendent of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, which oversees the upkeep and preservation of 140 Christian catacombs from the third and fourth centuries scattered all over Italy.
Most of the time, he said, the job is just work and study.
National Public Radio: Dig Finds A Thriving Cultural Mecca In Indianapolis
by Daniel Robison
All Things Considered, July 23, 2009 · Urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s changed the landscape of many American cities. In Indianapolis, an African-American neighborhood was largely bulldozed to make way for a new university.
But now, archaeologists are finding evidence suggesting that it wasn't as blighted as portrayed before it was destroyed. They say the neighborhood's history deserves a rewrite.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
Science News: Beetle masters optics
By Laura Sanders Web edition : Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
Jeweled beetles’ resplendent shells have physicists green with envy. Intricate arrangements of cells on the beetles’ outer layers manipulate light in a special way, a study published online July 23 in Science reveals. Understanding the shell’s structure might prove useful for designing new optical devices.
Chrysina gloriosa get their greenish color from microstructures in their exoskeleton rather than from pigment. Study coauthor Mohan Srinivasarao of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and his colleagues have found that these structures are also responsible for the beetles’ light-bending tricks. Light hitting the shell is reflected by the microstructures, and these reflections create an electric field that forms a clockwise helix. Humans cannot see this property — known as left-handed circular polarization — but can see a green hue.
To find out how the beetle can shape light in this distinctive way, Srinivasarao and his colleagues examined the beetle’s exoskeleton under high-powered microscopes.
Science News: Random numbers faster
By Laura Sanders Web edition : Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
With a laser, a mirror and some simple calculations, researchers have created a fast, reliable way to produce long strings of random numbers. This speedy method, reported in the July 10 Physical Review Letters, may one day be used to improve data encryption, computer simulations and even gambling software.
Generating truly random numbers isn’t easy. Many techniques rely on computer algorithms to create a seemingly unpredictable chain of numbers. But such methods, says study coauthor Michael Rosenbluh, are not truly random. Under certain conditions, anyone with the same program could reproduce an identical series. Despite this flaw, many of today’s encryption programs still rely on such computer-generated numbers.
Other techniques, based on the inherent messiness of physical processes, generate truly random numbers but work too slowly to be practical. These systems create strings of random bits — 0s and 1s — that can encode numbers. "If it takes you 10 years to generate a gigabit, it’s not very helpful," says Rosenbluh, of Bar-Ilan University in Israel. "What we’ve shown is that you can generate very random numbers at very high rates."
Chemistry
Science News: CO2 sponge
By Sid Perkins Web edition : Friday, July 24th, 2009
A macromolecule that was accidentally discovered when scientists left stuff sitting on a lab bench seems to soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide, a study now suggests.
The original find was made by a research team led by chemists at the University of Southampton in England. They were trying to design and create molecules that could capture negatively charged ions, such as chlorides and phosphates, on the surfaces of bioengineered cells. In one experiment, the researchers set aside an alkaline solution of various organic substances to evaporate, says geochemist John A. Tossell, author of the new study. When analyzing the crystals that formed, the team found that the organic macromolecule that made up the crystal unexpectedly contained carbonates, which form in solutions containing carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide in those carbonates probably came from the air in the lab and was converted to carbonate in the solution, says Tossell, of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He describes, in the Aug. 3 Inorganic Chemistry, the macromolecule’s ability to absorb carbonate.
L.A. Times: Ralph F. Hirschmann dies at 87; pioneering chemist
By Thomas H. Maugh II
July 24, 2009
Ralph F. Hirschmann, the leader of one of two teams that first broke through the seemingly unbreachable wall between chemistry and biology by synthesizing an enzyme -- a key component of life -- in the laboratory, died June 20 at his home in Lansdale, Pa., from complications of kidney disease. He was 87.
He also was the leader of a medicinal chemistry team at Merck Research Laboratories that developed some of Merck's most important and profitable drugs, including the cholesterol-lowering Mevacor, Vasotec for reducing blood pressure, and Proscar for shrinking enlarged prostates and preventing prostate cancer.
"His creative contributions to chemistry and chemical biology inspired a whole generation of scientists to pursue the discovery of new medicines," said chemist Paul S. Anderson, a former president of the American Chemical Society and a close friend.
Energy
Science News: Electric grid still very vulnerable to electromagnetic weaponry
By Janet Raloff Web edition : Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
Electromagnetic pulse is hardly a household term. But perhaps it should be. Every computer we buy, every system we turn over to computer control, every device that relies on electronic components — all cars, TVs and phones, for instance — makes us more vulnerable to such a high-energy rain of electrons.
EMP is a powerful and potentially devastating form of electromagnetic "fallout." It’s usually associated with nuclear weapons, although it can be triggered by any major explosive bursts. Unlike radioactive fallout, this rain won’t directly harm living things. It will just catastrophically fry all electronics and modern electrical systems by inducing staggeringly large and rapid current or voltage surges.
It makes a great equalizer for small nations looking to stand up to military Goliaths, argues Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (Rep.-Md.), a former research scientist and engineer who has worked in the past on projects for NASA and the military. All one needs to wreak some serious EMP damage, he charges, is a sea-worthy steamer, $100,000 to buy a scud-missile launcher, and a crude nuclear weapon. Then fling the device high into the air and detonate its warhead.
Science News: A hundred new nukes?
By Janet Raloff Web edition : Monday, July 20th, 2009
Currently, the combined output of the United States’ 104 nuclear power plants — a little under one-quarter of the power reactors operating worldwide — accounts for one-fifth of America’s electricity. Unlike many of their foreign counterparts, however, U.S. reactors are graying and getting creaky. Indeed, there have been no new orders for a U.S. nuclear plant in 30 years.
So could we — should we — welcome a nuclear renaissance? I argued that with unlimited time and money, America should be able to develop safe, reliable nuclear plants to provide those streams of electrons to which modern society has become addicted.
Unfortunately, money is a very limited resource. In this economy, saving it has become a defining goal.
Science News: Salty water power
By Jenny Lauren Lee Web edition : Friday, July 24th, 2009
A new way to get electricity out of water could prove to be worth its salt. Mixing salt water and fresh water in a container with carbon electrodes can produce clean, renewable energy, reports Doriano Brogioli of the University of Milano–Bicocca in Italy.
The reaction’s main by-product is brackish water that could be dumped back into the sea, Brogioli says in a paper to be published online in Physical Review Letters.
If further developed, the idea could be the basis for a new type of power plant that could be built in coastal areas, where natural sources of salt water and fresh water already exist, Brogioli says. A device developed using the method could have the potential to produce 1 kilowatt of electric power — enough to power a house, he says.
Science News: The Biofuel Future
By Rachel Ehrenberg August 1st, 2009; Vol.176 #3 (p. 24)
Biofuels are liquid energy Version 2.0. Unlike their fossil fuel counterparts — the cadaverous remains of plants that died hundreds of millions of years ago — biofuels come from vegetation grown in the here and now. So they should offer a carbon-neutral energy source: Plants that become biofuels ideally consume more carbon dioxide during photosynthesis than they emit when processed and burned for power. Biofuels make fossil fuels seem so last century, so quaintly carboniferous.
And these new liquid fuels promise more than just carbon correctness. They offer a renewable, home-grown energy source, reducing the need for foreign oil. They present ways to heal an agricultural landscape hobbled by intensive fertilizer use. Biofuels could even help clean waterways, reduce air pollution, enhance wildlife habitats and increase biodiversity.
Yet in many respects, biofuels are in their beta version. For any of a number of promising feedstocks — the raw materials from which biofuels are made — there are logistics to be worked out, such as how to best shred the original material and ship the finished product. There is also lab work — for example, refining the processes for busting apart plant cell walls to release the useful sugars inside. And there is math. A lot of math.
SeedQuest: U.S. Agriculture Secretary Vilsack and Energy Secretary Chu announce $6.3 million for biofuels research
Washingon, DC
July 22, 2009
U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced the joint selection of awards of up to $6.3 million towards fundamental genomics-enabled research leading to the improved use of plant feedstocks for biofuel production. The seven projects announced today follow the green jobs and renewable energy Rural Tour event hosted last weekend by the two cabinet Secretaries in Virginia. These investments will further the Obama Administration's efforts to broaden the nation's energy portfolio while decreasing our dependence on foreign oil.
"Helping expand and diversify production of biofuels is an example of the Obama Administration's commitment to developing a sustainable domestic biofuels industry that can help strengthen rural America while decreasing our dependence on foreign oil," said Secretary Vilsack.
"Part of the solution to the energy problem will be home-grown energy crops," Secretary Chu said. "These projects will help us unlock the true potential of advanced biofuels, decrease our dependence on foreign oil, and create new jobs and a thriving biofuels industry in America."
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Alternet: Space Travel: The Path to Human Immortality?
By Tad Daley, AlterNet. Posted July 24, 2009.
On December 31st, 1999, National Public Radio interviewed the futurist and science fiction genius Arthur C. Clarke. Since the author had forecast so many of the 20th Century's most fundamental developments, the NPR correspondent asked Clarke if anything had happened in the preceding 100 years that he never could have anticipated. "Yes, absolutely," Clarke replied, without a moment's hesitation. "The one thing I never would have expected is that, after centuries of wonder and imagination and aspiration, we would have gone to the moon ... and then stopped."
Were Clarke alive today, he undoubtedly would have added, "and then lost so much interest that we erased the tapes of our epochal voyage because of a shortage of blank cassettes."
This month, the 40th anniversary of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong's first footsteps on the moon, you will hear many rationales for sending humans into space, many noble goals that the challenge of space can help humanity to fulfill. However, in cosmological consequence, one, and only one, stands paramount above all others -- human immortality. Space is the only place where we can ensure ourselves against extinction.
L.A. Times: 'Cash for clunkers' rules are released, sparking a rush
By Martin Zimmerman
July 25, 2009
Clunkermania officially began Friday.
The federal government finally released the rules that dealers and their customers have to follow to participate in the much-discussed "cash for clunkers" program, which can provide consumers with up to $4,500 when they trade in an older vehicle and buy a newer, more fuel-efficient model from a participating dealer.
The law creating the $1-billion program went into effect July 1, but many dealers were reluctant to participate until they got a look at the rules. The arrival of the 100-plus-page document Friday morning sparked a registration rush that overwhelmed the government's computers, resulting in waits of two hours or more, the National Automobile Dealers Assn. reported.
Yesterday, I didn't see any ads from auto dealers about this program. Today, they were incessant. The dealers, their ad agencies, and the TV channels wasted no time.
Hat/Tip to Calculated Risk for this story.
Science News: Pollution vs health reform
By Janet Raloff Web edition : Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
At his televised presidential briefing on health care reform, last night, President Obama talked about a need to increase access to health care for the millions of uninsured and to boost the buying power of investments in health spending generally. A primary focus, the president argued, should be "incentivizing" (how I hate that word) doctors, hospitals and insurance companies to reign in waste.
On the face of it, that sounds good, albeit plenty vague. It also sounds so limited as to be almost doomed to failure. And the reason: It focuses on finding affordable ways to make sick people better — or at least more comfortable. What it doesn’t address is the massive black hole in the room: environmental factors that hobble many of us or trigger pervasive chronic sickness.
It’s an issue that an epidemiologist brought up yesterday while we were talking about the newfound and dramatic IQ-diminishing impacts of ubiquitous combustion pollutants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs.
Science Education
Science News: Accept it: Talk about evolution needs to evolve
By Eugenie Scott August 1st, 2009; Vol.176 #3 (p. 32)
Watch your language! It’s a common message from Eugenie Scott, a physical anthropologist and director of the National Center for Science Education (www.ncseweb.org), an organization dedicated to promoting and defending the teaching of evolution in public schools. Scott recently spoke with Science News writer Susan Milius.
So you urge scientists not to say that they "believe" in evolution?!
Right. What your audience hears is more important than what you say.... What [people] hear is that evolution is a belief, it’s an opinion, it’s not well-substantiated science. And that is something that scientists need to avoid communicating.
You believe in God. You believe your sports team is going to win. But you don’t believe in cell division. You don’t believe in thermodynamics. Instead, you might say you "accept evolution."
L.A. Times: Student scientists do fieldwork from high above California
By Shara Yurkiewicz
July 25, 2009
A new collaboration between NASA and the University of North Dakota lets them take to the air in a DC-8 to get readings on air pollution, ocean toxin dangers and crops' water loss.
Just 1,000 feet above the ground, people, cars and trees were still visible from the small plane. The air was turbulent here, shaking the passengers as they took their careful measurements.
"Open," called a student operating a probe that protruded outside the window. The 2-liter canister attached to the probe filled up with air within seconds, and another student wrote down the exact position where the sample was taken.
Science Writing and Reporting
N.Y. Review of Books: Knossos: Fakes, Facts, and Mystery
By Mary Beard
Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism
by Cathy Gere
University of Chicago Press, 277 pp., $27.50
The masterpieces of Minoan art are not what they seem. The vivid frescoes that once decorated the walls of the prehistoric palace at Knossos in Crete are now the main attraction of the Archaeological Museum in the modern city of Heraklion, a few miles from the site of Knossos. Dating from the early or mid-second millennium BC, they are some of the most famous icons of ancient European culture, reproduced on countless postcards and posters, T-shirts and refrigerator magnets: the magnificent young "prince" with his floral crown, walking through a field of lilies; the five blue dolphins patrolling their underwater world between minnows and sea urchins; the three "ladies in blue" (a favorite Minoan color) with their curling black hair, low-cut dresses, and gesticulating hands, as if they have been caught in mid-conversation. The prehistoric world they evoke seems in some ways distant and strange—yet, at the same time, reassuringly recognizable and almost modern.
The truth is that these famous icons are largely modern. As any sharp-eyed visitor to the Heraklion museum can spot, what survives of the original paintings amounts in most cases to no more than a few square inches. The rest is more or less imaginative reconstruction, commissioned in the first half of the twentieth century by Sir Arthur Evans, the British excavator of the palace of Knossos (and the man who coined the term "Minoan" for this prehistoric Cretan civilization, after the mythical King Minos who is said to have held the throne there). As a general rule of thumb, the more famous the image now is, the less of it is actually ancient.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above article.
Science News: Book Review: Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples
Review by Rachel ZelkowitzBy Mark Dowie August 1st, 2009; Vol.176 #3 (p. 30)
Wilderness: The word evokes ideas of a land pristine, where native flora and fauna thrive untouched by humans. But Dowie, an investigative journalist, argues that the notion of virgin wilderness is largely a fantasy and shows how efforts to preserve land have upset the lives of millions of indigenous people around the world.
This thought-provoking book traces the story of ecological protection from its early days in the late 19th century. That’s when naturalist John Muir lobbied to evict American Indians from their ancestral lands in today’s Yosemite National Park, arguing that they threatened the land’s "natural" splendor.
For the first time in my life, I am ashamed of John Muir.
Science News: Book Review: Historic Photos of the Manhattan Project
Review by Sid PerkinsBy Timothy Joseph August 1st, 2009; Vol.176 #3 (p. 30)
Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 64 years ago this month, bringing World War II to an end. The research and development program that spawned those weapons had been officially launched only three years earlier. Historic Photos of the Manhattan Project is a captivating pictorial chronicle of this supersecret race to develop atomic weapons.
Science is Cool
LiveScience via Yahoo! News: Strange! Humans Glow in Visible Light
Charles Q. Choi
The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, scientists now reveal.
Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.
(This visible light differs from the infrared radiation - an invisible form of light - that comes from body heat.)
To learn more about this faint visible light, scientists in Japan employed extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20s were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms for 20 minutes every three hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above article.