Monday, marvelous Monday and time for science talk to brighten your day with selections from science sites across the globe. New discoveries, new takes on old knowledge, and other bits of news are all available for the perusing in today's information world. Today's tidbits include flare from the Milky Way's black hole, formula unlocks secrets of cauliflower's geometry, new technology has allowed researchers to come closer than ever to cracking the world's oldest undeciphered writing system, discovery of fossils of the first feathered dinosaurs in North America, proximity breeds collaboration among researchers, and more bad news about the potential of thawing permafrost.
Pull up that comfy chair and grab a spot on the porch. There is always plenty of room for everyone. Another session of Dr. Possum's science education, entertainment, and potluck discussion is set to begin.
Featured Stories
In the first view of the Milky Way's black hole from NuSTAR, NASA's latest X-ray telescope, the usually quiescent black hole exhibits a flare.
Compared to giant black holes at the centers of other galaxies, Sagittarius A* (prounounced Sagittarius A-star and abbreviated Sgr A* is relatively quiet. Active black holes tend to gobble up stars and other fuel around them. Sgr A* is thought only to nibble or not eat at all, a process that is not fully understood. When black holes consume fuel -- whether a star, a gas cloud or, as recent Chandra observations have suggested, even an asteroid -- they erupt with extra energy.
In the case of NuSTAR, its state-of-the-art telescope is picking up X-rays emitted by consumed matter being heated up to about 180 million degrees Fahrenheit (100 million degrees Celsius) and originating from regions where particles are boosted very close to the speed of light. Astronomers say these NuSTAR data, when combined with the simultaneous observations taken at other wavelengths, will help them better understand the physics of how black holes snack and grow in size.
The process of developing
intricate patterns such as the surface of cauliflower is now described by scientists.
... researchers have provided a mathematical formula to describe the processes that dictate how cauliflower-like patterns – a type of fractal pattern – form and develop.
The term fractal defines a pattern that, when you take a small part of it, looks similar, although perhaps not identical, to its full structure. For example, the leaf of a fern tree resembles the full plant and a river’s tributary resembles the shape of the river itself.
Nature is full of fractal patterns; they can be seen in clouds, lightning bolts, crystals, snowflakes, mountains, and blood vessels. The fractal pattern of the cauliflower plant is ubiquitous and can be spotted in numerous living and non-living systems.
Scientists using new technology are examining examples of the proto-Elamite writing system used in ancient Iran from 3,200 to 3,000 BC and which is the
oldest undeciphered writing system currently known.
The reflectance transformation imaging technology system designed by staff in the Archaeological Computing Research Group and Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton comprises a dome with 76 lights and a camera positioned at the top of the dome. The manuscript is placed in the centre of the dome, whereafter 76 photos are taken each with one of the 76 lights individually lit. In post-processing the 76 images are joined so that the researcher can move the light across the surface of the digital image and use the difference between light and shadow to highlight never-before-seen details.
(snip)
Some features of the writing system are already known. The scribes had loaned - or potentially shared - some signs from/with Mesopotamia, such as the numerical signs and their systems and signs for objects like sheep, goats, cereals and some others. Nevertheless, 80-90% of the signs remain undeciphered.
The writing system died out after only a couple centuries. (researcher) Dr Dahl said: 'It was used in administration and for agricultural records but it was not used in schools – the lack of a scholarly tradition meant that a lot of mistakes were made and the writing system may eventually have become useless as an administrative system. Eventually, the system was abandoned after some two hundred years.'
In the badlands of Alberta, Canada, comes news of the discovery of the
first fossils of feathered dinosaurs in North America.
The researchers found evidence of feathers preserved with a juvenile and two adult skeletons of Ornithomimus, a dinosaur that belongs to the group known as ornithomimids. This discovery suggests that all ornithomimid dinosaurs would have had feathers.
The specimens reveal an interesting pattern of change in feathery plumage during the life of Ornithomimus.
"This dinosaur was covered in down-like feathers throughout life, but only older individuals developed larger feathers on the arms, forming wing-like structures,” says (researcher) Zelenitsky. "This pattern differs from that seen in birds, where the wings generally develop very young, soon after hatching."
This discovery of early wings in dinosaurs too big to fly indicates the initial use of these structures was not for flight.
A new study shows that
researchers sharing space generate more collaborative projects and increase their funding.
Researchers who occupy the same building are 33 percent more likely to form new collaborations than researchers who occupy different buildings, and scientists who occupy the same floor are 57 percent more likely to form new collaborations than investigators who occupy different buildings.
As the climate continues to warm the not so permanent
permafrost begins to release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the environment.
As much as 44 billion tons of nitrogen and 850 billion tons of carbon stored in arctic permafrost, or frozen ground, could be released into the environment as the region begins to thaw over the next century as a result of a warmer planet according to a new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey. This nitrogen and carbon are likely to impact ecosystems, the atmosphere, and water resources including rivers and lakes. For context, this is roughly the amount of carbon stored in the atmosphere today.
The release of carbon and nitrogen in permafrost could exacerbate the warming phenomenon and will impact water systems on land and offshore according to USGS scientists and their domestic and international collaborators. The previously unpublished nitrogen figure is useful for scientists who are making climate predictions with computer climate models, while the carbon estimate is consistent and gives more credence to other scientific studies with similar carbon estimates.
Knucklehead's Photo of the Week
Six Line Wrasse on the Reef Face
©Knucklehead, all rights reserved, presented by permission. (Click on the image to see more in the same series.)
Other Worthy Stories of the Week
Best microscope photos of the year
Raw food not enough to feed big brains
Quasar may be embedded in unusually dusty galaxy
Increasing amounts of plastic litter in the Arctic deep sea
Koalas have low genetic diversity
The rarest ladybug in the United States
Australia's Antarctic runway is melting
An 84-million star color-magnitude diagram of the Milky Way bulge published
Changing the color of gold
Amazing power freezes water droplets as they bounce
2012 Antarctic ozone hole second smallest in 20 years
Unique sea snake found in museum
Saturn's giant storm reveals the planet's churning atmosphere
Mysterious microscope photos
Ape-like human ancestors climbed trees
For even more science news:
General Science Collectors:
Alpha-Galileo
BBC News Science and Environment
Eureka Science News
LiveScience
New Scientist
PhysOrg.com
SciDev.net
Science/AAAS
Science Alert
Science Centric
Science Daily
Scientific American
Space Daily
Blogs:
A Few Things Ill Considered Techie and Science News
Cantauri Dreams space exploration
Coctail Party Physics Physics with a twist.
Deep Sea News marine biology
List of Geoscience Blogs
Science20.com
ScienceBlogs
Space Review
Science Insider
Scientific Blogging.
Space.com
Techonology Review
Tetrapod Zoologyvertebrate paleontology
Wired News
Science RSS Feed: Medworm
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe--a combination of hard science and debunking crap
At Daily Kos:
This Week in Science by DarkSyde
Overnight News Digest:Science Saturday by Neon Vincent. OND tech Thursday by rfall.
Pique the Geek by Translator Sunday evenings about 9 Eastern time
All diaries with the DK GreenRoots Tag.
All diaries with the eKos Tag
A More Ancient World by matching mole
Astro Kos
SciTech at Dkos.
Sunday Science Videos by palantir
NASA picture of the day. For more see the NASA image gallery or the Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive
NASA, Public Domain
