Recent Science Diaries and Stories
DarkSyde: This Week in Science
palantir: Three Cheers for Nature!
terryhallinan: Weird Science For The Environment
Slideshows/Videos
CNN: Eight arms, one big appetite
An octopus on one side, a shark on the other; which one do you bet on? The winner surprised CNN's Rick Sanchez.
Discovery News: Sunsets and Other Sky Wonders
See gorgeous photos of sunsets and other wondrous sky events in this gallery.
Astronomy/Space
Prague Post (Czech Republic): Digging up Brahe
By Frank Kuznik - Staff Writer
If everything goes according to plan, sometime in November a group of about a dozen Czech and Danish scientists will descend on the Church of Our Lady Before Týn on Old Town Square. Soon thereafter, a man who has been dead for more than 400 years will say hello to the 21st century.
Tycho Brahe was the greatest astronomer of his time, a leading light in the court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. But, at this point, it's safe to say he is more famous in death than he ever was in life - in science, for his precise observations of the heavens, and in popular culture, for the mysterious manner of his death.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Discovery News: Rogue Stars, Non-Constant Constants... Holes in Space? Our Universe is Rebelling!
Analysis by Jennifer Ouellette
I don't know if you've been paying attention to all the astrophysics news coming down the pipeline this week, but it's clear that our universe is feeling a bit rowdy and unruly of late, in no mood for observing the usual established customs that govern a well-ordered cosmos. Don't believe me? Check out these stories that have come out in just the last few days.
First, there's this news story on how the fundamental constants in our universe might not be so constant after all -- you know, like the "fine structure constant," which determines the strength of the electromagnetic force.
Excuse me, but the very definition of "constant" means "unchanging" -- not "more or less unchanging, so long as the fluctuations are below 3 sigma." Oh, you can say it's harmless and all in good fun, and don't be such a rigid killjoy. But constants need a firm hand. Give them a little space here, a little wriggle room there, and before you know it they'll be running amok and thinking they're free-wheeling variables or something.
The Daily Mail (UK): Jupiter loses one of its stripes and scientists are stumped as to why
By Claire Bates
Jupiter has lost one of its iconic red stripes and scientists are baffled as to why.
The largest planet in our solar system is usually dominated by two dark bands in its atmosphere, with one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere.
However, the most recent images taken by amateur astronomers have revealed the lower stripe known as the Southern Equatorial Belt has disappeared leaving the southern half of the planet looking unusually bare.
Evolution/Paleontology
The Australian: Ancient birds struggled with liftoff
Leigh Dayton, Science writer
JUST as paleontologists thought they had resolved the dispute about how birds first flew, British researchers have found ancient birds could barely glide, let alone power through the sky.
The feathers of birds such as fearsome Archaeopteryx and its kind were too weak to support their weight if the wings flapped like modern birds, the researchers reported in the journal Science.
Examiner.com: U of M scientists find climate change, mountain building led to mammal diversity patterns
by Vince Lamb, Detroit Science News Examiner
Travel from the Equator to the one of the poles and one finds that the climate becomes colder and harsher. During that same journey from the tropics to the Arctic (or Antarctic, as the case may be), one would also notice that biodiversity (the number of species of animals and plants) also decreases along with the average temperature. Based on that relationship between temperature and biodiversity, one might also expect biodiversity to decrease as one climbs from the lowlands into the mountains. That hypothesis has been shown to be wrong; biodiversity generally increases at first, then decreases as one scales a mountain range. Furthermore, mountain ranges make the landscape more complex, increasing biodiversity.
In a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, University of Michigan paleontologists John A. Finarelli and Catherine Badgley have found that the current relationship between mountains and biodiversity has not always held. Instead, they suggest that the elevational patterns of diversity we see today have appeared, disappeared, and reappeared over Earth's history and that these patterns arose from interactions between climate change and mountain building.
Finarelli and Badgley performed their analysis by comparing changes in rodent diversity between the geologically quiet Great Plains and the geologically active region from the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains west to the Pacific Ocean during the Miocene Epoch, which began 25 million years ago and ended 5 million years ago. They looked at the records of 418 species of rodents described from the Miocene rocks of the two regions. They found that, while the times of increased diversification and extinction were different between the Great Plains and the western mountains, the total number of species, speciation rate, and extinction rate per million years were not significantly different between the two areas during the 20 million year interval.
Personal note: While I was a grad student at U of M, Dr. Badgley was a post-doc in the Museum of Paleontology. I'm glad to see that she got a tenure-track job, especially at U of M.
Science Daily: Common Mosquito Repellent No Longer Repels Certain Mosquitoes
Mosquitoes can develop a resistance to substances used to repel them. This has been shown for the first time in laboratory tests at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and associates in the UK.
It is the yellow fever mosquito that has developed a resistance to the mosquito repellent DEET, a substance used in mosquito repellents all over the world. In Sweden it is found in the products MyggA and Djungelolja (Jungle Oil). The capacity of mosquitoes to develop resistance has been shown to be hereditary.
"Through testing, we have found that yellow fever mosquitoes no long sense the smell of DEET and are thereby not repelled by it. This is because a certain type of sensory cell on the mosquito's antenna is no longer active" says Rickard Ignell, a researcher at the Division for Chemical Ecology at SLU in Alnarp.
Biodiversity
BBC: Night-time creatures 'in crisis'
Two of the UK's nocturnal creatures are "in crisis", say conservation groups, who are asking the public to take part in a national survey.
Butterfly Conservation and the Bat Conservation Trust are asking people to take part in a "National Moth Night" on 15 May to find out more about the creatures and their habitats.
They say UK moth numbers have fallen by a third in the past 40 years.
This poses a threat to the bats that feed on them.
Vancouver Sun: http://www.vancouversun.com/...
By Judith Lavoie, Victoria Times Colonist
VICTORIA — The grey whale that has stunned scientists by showing up off the coast of Israel is believed to be one of the whales that usually swim past Vancouver Island, migrating from the birthing lagoons in Mexico to the Bering Sea.
"It is quite remarkable," said John Ford, head of the cetacean research program at the federal Pacific Biological Station, in Nanaimo, B.C. He wonders why a whale would head to the Mediterranean instead of Alaska, and whether the Arctic is sufficiently ice-free to allow such passage.
"It’s certainly a big topic of speculation," said Ford, musing whether the whale could have swum the Northwest Passage — connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans — in late summer or early fall when ice cover would have been at its thinnest. "The ice cover last winter was pretty minimal."
So did it get lost, forget to ask the way or deliberately head into unknown waters? Or maybe a parent led it astray.
Biotechnology/Health
Eureka Alert: Sniff of local anesthetic in the dentist's chair could replace the needle
American Chemical Society
WASHINGTON, May 13, 2010 — Modern dentistry has eliminated much of the "ouch!" from getting a shot of local anesthetic. Now a new discovery may replace the needle used to give local anesthetic in the dentist's chair for many procedures. Scientists are reporting evidence that a common local anesthetic, when administered to the nose as nose drops or a nasal spray, travels through the main nerve in the face and collects in high concentrations in the teeth, jaw, and structures of the mouth.
The discovery could lead to a new generation of intranasal drugs for noninvasive treatment for dental pain, migraine, and other conditions, the scientists suggest in American Chemical Society's bi-monthly journal Molecular Pharmaceutics. The article is scheduled for the journal's May-June issue.
Climate/Environment
Examiner.com: University of Michigan scientists devise new way to measure melting permafrost
by Vince Lamb, Detroit Science News Examiner
Three University of Michigan scientists have devised a new method of measuring melting permafrost. In a study published in Chemical Geology, they described several chemical tests of melting stream water that are more senstitive than the established procedure of pushing a steel rod into the ground until it hits frozen ground and then measuring the depth.
...
In a press release, geochemist Joel Blum, who is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Geological Sciences, was quoted as saying, "We were studying the chemistry of soils in the area around Toolik Field Station in northern Alaska, and we found that once we got below the thickness that typically would thaw during summer, the soil chemistry changed dramatically. Material that has not thawed since it was deposited by glaciers 10,000 to 20,000 years ago is now beginning to thaw, and when it does, it reacts strongly with water, which it's encountering for the first time. This soil is much more reactive than soils higher up that interact with soil water every summer."
Blum and his co-authors, Katy Keller and George Kling, found that the amount of calcium, relative to sodium and barium, was higher in the newly thawed permafrost. They also found that the ratio of the strontium isotope 87Sr to its counterpart 86Sr was lower. The researchers wondered if these chemical signatures of increasing thaw depth could be seen in local stream water.
Discovery News: Organic Farms Not a Conservation Cure-All
by Emily Sohn
THE GIST
- Organic farms in the United Kingdom protect just 12 percent more biodiversity than conventional farms.
- These farms also produce less than half the amount of crop yield as their conventional counterparts.
- Biodiversity was higher on organic farms that were surrounded by other organic farms as opposed to those surrounded by conventional farms.
Geology
Discovery News: No, Seriously, Why is the Sky Blue?
Analysis by Michael Reilly
The answer is a little more complicated than you may think. It may have a lot to do with rocks, phosphorous and ancient algae, according to a new study.
For the first two billion years of Earth's history or so, the sky was probably orange. We're not sure whether that's really true -- no one's been able to hop in a time machine and go back and check -- but based on what we know about the chemistry of that time period, there's a good chance the atmosphere's primary component was methane (CH4), which would've cast a strange pall over our young planet.
These days, the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and oxygen. Sunlight is made up of all the colors of the rainbow (as well as many wavelengths we can't see); as it jostles through air molecules, blue light is most efficiently reflected, so our eyes end up experiencing a beautiful azure shade.
Discovery News: The Pain and Beauty of China's "Earthquake Marriages"
Analysis by Michael Reilly
Two years ago in China, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake tore apart Sichuan province, killing an estimated 87,000 people (including the nearly 18,000 still officially "missing"), wounding some 400,000 and leaving 5 million homeless.
Dizzying statistics like that miss the humanity of the tragedy. The quake meant the loss of sons, daughters, husbands, and wives -- sometimes all of the above -- for thousands of people. How do you move on from that?
The Chinese have an answer: earthquake marriages.
Psychology/Behavior
Agence France Presse via News 24 (South Africa): Mozart won't make you smart - study
Vienna - Listening to Mozart does not make you more intelligent, researchers from the Austrian composer's homeland said on Monday, contradicting a popular 1993 study that first coined the "Mozart effect".
A team at Vienna University's Faculty of Psychology compiled studies that have since 1993 sought to reproduce the Mozart effect and found no proof of the phenomenon's existence, the university said in a statement.
The original study showed that adolescents performed better in reasoning tests having listened to Mozart's 1781 Sonata for Two Pianos in D major than those who listened to something else or those who had been in a silent room.
Discovery News: Why We Sigh (It's a Human Reset Button)
By Larry O'Hanlon
Scientists studying breathing patterns think they have found the reason we sigh: To reset breathing patterns that are getting out of whack and keep our respiratory system flexible.
The study entailed rigging up eight men and 34 women with sensor-equipped shirts that record their breathing, heart rates and blood carbon dioxide levels over 20 minutes of quiet sitting.
What the researchers at the University of Leuven in Belgium were looking for were specific changes over one-minute periods encompassing sighs that could confirm or contradict the "re-setter hypothesis" for the function of sighing. And they think they found it.
CNN: Quarter of U.S. women ambivalent toward pregnancy
By Ed Payne, CNN
Nearly one in four women of childbearing age in the United States are unconcerned about getting pregnant -- but aren't trying either -- and would be happy either way, according to a recent study.
"This finding dramatically challenges the idea that women are always trying, one way or another, to either get pregnant or not get pregnant," said Julia McQuillan, professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the study's lead author.
About 71 percent questioned in the study of nearly 4,000 women ages 25 to 45 who were sexually active said they were not trying to get pregnant, while 6 percent said they were. But nearly one in four, or 23 percent, told researchers they were "OK either way," meaning they were neither trying to conceive, nor trying to prevent a pregnancy.
Archeology/Anthropology
Red Orbit: Advanced Models Bring New Perspective To Study Of Archaeology
Computational modeling techniques provide new and vast opportunities to the field of archaeology. By using these techniques, archeologists can develop alternative computerized scenarios that can be compared with traditional archaeological records, possibly enhancing previous findings of how humans and the environment interact.
An article published in the April 2010 issue of the journal American Antiquity by researchers at Arizona State University and North Carolina State University describes the use of computational modeling to study the long-term effects of varying land use practices by farmers and herders on landscapes. It compares the results with the Levantine Neolithic archaeological record, which preserves a record of the long-term socioecology of subsistence farming.
Ha'aretz (Israel): Aladdin's cave in the Galilee
By Eli Ashkenazi
"A rare find" and "a sensational discovery" are just some of phrases used by those people who have seen or heard about the discovery of a large stalagmite cave in the western Galilee some 10 days ago. Human skulls and animal bones were found at the site. According to experts, "These are rare and fascinating finds." The cave opening was uncovered by chance by a tractor driver.
The first to enter the cave were volunteers from the western Galilee rescue unit. Israel Antiquities Authority cave researchers and archaeologists were also summoned to the site. According to the testimony of those who entered, "It is a huge stalagmite cave that contains important archaeological finds." The cave is about 85 meters long, 40 meters wide and some 30 meters high. "We have not discovered another cave of such size in Israel," said Yinon Shivtiel, a cave researcher who lectures at the Safed Academic College.
Monsters and Critics: Cool response from Berlin to fresh Nefertiti demand from Cairo
Berlin - Berlin responded cooly on Friday to renewed demands from Cairo that the prized bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti should be returned to its country of origin from its current home in a Berlin museum.
'A request from Egypt to return (Nefertiti) has not reached us yet,' said a spokeswoman for the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which runs the Berlin museum housing the 3,500-year-old sculpture. She referred to a previous statement which denied any Egyptian claim to the bust.
The Independent (UK): 114 terracotta warriors discovered in the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang
By Rebecca Thompson
114 Terracotta Warriors, and several artefacts, have been discovered in the mausoleum of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. The warriors were discovered in the largest of the pits, No 1 pit, and retained some of the richly-coloured paint that all of the warriors would have displayed originally.
Photos of the warriors, which are mostly infantrymen, have not yet been released, but the researchers describe them as between 1.8 and 2 metres tall, and brightly coloured. Their eyes and hair colour were naturalistic – most had black hair and either brown or black eyes. Their faces varied between white, pink and green, and archaeologists have noted that the different face colours are matched to different costumes.
Discovery News: Ancient Egyptian 'Nilometer' Helped Measure River's Height
Analysis by Rossella Lorenzi
Egyptian archaeologists carrying routine excavations at the so-called "Avenue of Sphinxes," have unearthed the remains of a 5th century Egyptian Christian church and a "nilometer," a structure used to measure the level of the Nile during floods.
Already announced by Dr. Sabry Abd El Aziz, head of the SCA's Egyptology sector, in a 2008 Discovery News exclusive interview, the Avenue of Sphinx project involves the restoration of a 2.7-km (1.7-mile) ancient processional avenue that connects the grand temples of Luxor and Karnak on the east bank of the Nile River.
University of Manchester(UK): Easter Island discovery sends archaeologists back to drawing board
Fieldwork led by researchers at University College London and The University of Manchester, has shown the remote Pacific island’s ancient road system was primarily ceremonial and not solely built for transportation of the figures.
A complex network of roads up to 800-years-old crisscross the Island between the hat and statue quarries and the coastal areas.
Associated Press via Discovery News: Medieval Aqueduct Found in Jerusalem
Content provided* by Grant Slater, Associated Press
THE GIST
- Archaeologists have uncovered an aqueduct that first supplied water to Jerusalem during the Middle Ages.
- The 14th-century aqueduct was in use well into the 19th century.
- It was uncovered during repairs to the city's modern-day water system.
*As with all AP articles on Discovery News, I excerpt "The Gist" written by Discovery News instead of the original article. Therefore, no actual AP content was harmed.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
Discovery News: Ancient Shipwreck to Aid Ghostly Neutrino Search
Analysis by Jennifer Ouellette
You wouldn't think a sunken ship from 2000 years ago could hold the key to the success of a neutrino detection experiment, except perhaps in a Hollywood movie, or a NOVA special on Jacques Cousteau. But sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. Scientists with the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE), a neutrino observatory buried under the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy, hit the motherlode when archaeologists discovered a Spanish ship off the coast of Sardinia, filled with lead that dates back two millennia.
Yes, lead. Really, really old lead. That might not seem very exciting to you, but for CUORE scientists, it's a godsend. They use lead (also copper) as a shielding material for their neutrino detection materials. See, neutrinos -- dubbed "ghost particles" because they so rarely interact with everything (billions course through you every second) -- are extremely difficult to detect, in part because their signals can be obscured by things like cosmic rays, and the natural radioactivity in rocks, for example.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Chemistry
Reuters: China scientists find use for cigarette butts
by Tan Ee Lyn
Chemical extracts from cigarette butts -- so toxic they kill fish -- can be used to protect steel pipes from rusting, a study in China has found.
In a paper published in the American Chemical Society's bi-weekly journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, the scientists in China said they identified nine chemicals after immersing cigarette butts in water.
They applied the extracts to N80, a type of steel used in oil pipes, and found that they protected the steel from rusting.
Energy
Discovery News: Electronic Waste Produces Algae for Biofuel
Content provided by Aniqa Hasan
When you think of recycling electronics, no doubt you imagine the old PC or mobile phone being disassembled, and it’s metal and plastic parts melted down to be repurposed. But for some people, it means reusing the parts to grow algae.
Students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created Bio-Grow, a device made from various computer parts that serves as a reservoir to cultivate algae.
The algae can then be used in biodiesel production, which could potentially replace petroleum in the future.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Agence France Press via Discovery News: Obama 'Poorly Advised' on Space: Armstrong
Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, said that President Barack Obama is "poorly advised" on space matters, renewing criticism of a plan to abandon a project to return astronauts to the moon.
Appearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Armstrong said the Obama plan to end the Constellation program and cut other space efforts appeared to be made without input from NASA or the president's science adviser.
"I have yet to find a person in NASA, the Defense Department, the Air Force, the National Academies, industry, or academia that had any knowledge of the plan prior to its announcement," the Apollo 11 commander told lawmakers. "A plan that was invisible to so many was likely contrived by a very small group in secret who persuaded the president that this was a unique opportunity to put his stamp on a new and innovative program."
Science Writing and Reporting
Daily Kos: Review: Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails)
by Devilstower
When you think of books on science, emotion isn't always the first word that comes to mind. Facts, sure. Rational arguments, absolutely. Only those arguments are too often couched in dispassionate terms. The best science writing (and science writers) understand that "just the facts" doesn't have to make a work as dull as Joe Friday plodding through a case. In Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails), writer and physicist Matt Young and evolutionary biologist Paul Strode deliver plenty of facts, plenty of rational arguments, and plenty of illuminating examples, but they also deliver a passionate argument for the importance of evolution both in nature and in the classroom.
Science is Cool
Discovery News: Is Love Blind?
Analysis by Cristen Conger
Shakespeare wrote in The Merchant of Venice that "love is blind and lovers cannot see." More than 400 years later, brain imaging has offered some scientific support to that iambic verse.
Looking at a brain in love is like watching a neurological fireworks display.
The ventral tegmental area and ventral striatum, nestled in the center of the brain, light up excitedly as the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine spring into action, causing a person to have short attention spans, feel giddiness and crave the object of her desire.
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