Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew, consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors ScottyUrb, Bentliberal, wader, Oke, rfall, and JML9999, alumni editors palantir and jlms qkw, guest editors maggiejean and annetteboardman, and current editor-in-chief Neon Vincent, along with anyone else who reads and comments, informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.
Between now and the end of the primary/caucus season, Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday will highlight the research stories from the public universities in each of the states having elections and caucuses during the week (or in the upcoming weeks if there is no primary or caucus that week). Tonight's edition features the science, space, environment, and energy stories from universities in the states of Wisconsin and Maryland.
This week's featured story comes from CNN along with Earth Hour and Greening the House on YouTube.
More at
Earth Hour.
Happy Earth Hour! Sydney Opera House is proud to have turned off its non-essential lighting for Earth Hour 2012. This year, we joined UNESCO World Heritage sites globally to switch off between 8:30 - 9:30pm on 31 March 2012.
Earth Hour aims for lights off across the globe
By Anne Renzenbrink, for CNN
updated 2:57 AM EDT, Sat March 31, 2012
On Saturday, European Space Agency astronaut and World Wildlife Fund ambassador André Kuipers will watch from the International Space Station as each time zone hits 8:30 p.m. -- and track to see who on Earth turns out the lights.
Kuipers will blog from 240 miles above the planet as part of the Earth Hour, an annual event that encourages homes, businesses and governments to turn off their lights for one hour to build awareness about energy use and climate change.
"We are living beyond our means. That is not sustainable," says Andy Ridley, co-founder and executive director of Earth Hour. "We want to unite people around the world to build a sustainable future."
More stories after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
GM pulls funding from climate-denying Heartland Institute
by xxdr zombiexx
Earth Hour Tonight
by ShoshannaD
The Daily Bucket - ferns in the forest, 2011 vs 2012
by bwren
This week in science: Walking with wingnuts
by DarkSyde
Slideshows/Videos
National Geographic: Unseen Titanic
At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, the “unsinkable” R.M.S. Titanic disappeared beneath the waves, taking with her 1,500 souls. One hundred years later, new technologies have revealed the most complete—and most intimate—images of the famous wreck.
Reuters via the Christian Science Monitor: The new clue that could solve the Amelia Earhart mystery (+video)
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has joined scientists and aviation archaeologists in unveiling a renewed search for the wreckage of the plane flown by Amelia Earhart as she attempted to circle the globe in 1937.
By Andrew Quinn, Reuters / March 20, 2012
U.S. scientists on Tuesday announced a new phase in the search to resolve the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, saying fresh evidence from a remote Pacific island may hold clues to the fate of the renowned U.S. pilot who vanished in 1937 while attempting to circle the globe.
Aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, departed from Lae, Papua New Guinea, on July 2, 1937, in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe. The two were never seen again.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined scientists and aviation archaeologists to unveil the expedition, which will set out from Honolulu in July to probe underwater areas around the Phoenix Islands in Kiribati where they believe Earhart may have crashed 75 years ago.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
The Real News Network via Truth-Out: High Oil Prices Must be Subject of Criminal Investigation
By Paul Jay, The Real News Network
Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:42
Gas prices are emerging as one of the central issues in the 2012 presidential elections. The Republicans are saying the issue is: increase American oil, increase North American-produced oil. They want the pipeline of Canadian tar sands oil down to the Gulf to hit American refineries, and they say this will decrease the price of gasoline at the pumps. President Obama in response is saying more or less the same thing, except he's saying he has increased domestic supply and domestic production. But how much does increasing domestic oil supply really affect prices?
Now joining us to talk about that and what may be the real issues in high gas prices is Michael Greenberger. He's currently a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, where he teaches homeland security and financial law. He's a former division director at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, where he worked closely with Brooksley Born.
University of Wisconsin, Madison: Slide show: Cool Science Image Contest 2012: Winners and Honorable Mentions
See accompanying article under "Science is Cool."
Washington Post: UMBC: A top up-and-coming university
The University of Maryland Baltimore County has built a reputation for teaching that rivals the higher education elite.
See accompanying article under "Science Education."
Kowch737 on YouTube: This Week @ NASA
Administrator Charles Bolden joined other NASA officials on Capitol Hill for an agency showcase called, 'NASA Technology: Imagine. Innovate. Explore'.
He's been to Infinity and Beyond -- but now Buzz Lightyear is at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum's Moving Beyond Earth gallery.
During a recent visit to CFD Research Corporation in Huntsville, Alabama, NASA Chief Technologist Mason Peck was briefed on some of the firm's newest technologies.
NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver spoke to students at Luther Jackson Middle School in Falls Church, Virginia as part of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Nifty Fifty Program.
JPL News on YouTube: What's Up April? Ice in the Solar System, Saturn Opposition
WXYZ-TV on YouTube: Teens win worldwide science contest
WXYZ-TV on YouTube: Titanic Exhibit
Astronomy/Space
LiveScience via Space.com: 18th-Century Bone Telescopes Discovered in Amsterdam
Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor
Five telescopes made of bone and dating to the 18th century have been discovered in Amsterdam, with two of the scopes found in the equivalent of toilets.
At the time, called the Enlightenment, the telescopes would have been considered luxury items and were likely used to gaze at objects on land or sea, rather than to look at the stars. They were created during a period when Amsterdam was a flourishing center for trade, one that attracted talented craftsmen.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Science News: Life’s building blocks grow close to home
Chemical reactions in the early solar system create complex organic molecules
By Nadia Drake
Web edition : Thursday, March 29th, 2012
Though life is a complicated brew, some of its ingredients can be plucked from Earth’s backyard instead of being imported from more distant interstellar fields.
In a new study, scientists suggest that complex organic molecules — such as the amino acids that build proteins and the ringed bases that form nucleic acids — grow on the icy dust grains that lived in the infant solar system. All it takes are high-energy ultraviolet photons to provoke the rearrangement of chemical elements in the grains’ frozen sheaths.
If making these organic ingredients happens this readily, then exoplanetary systems are probably seeded with the same fertile, organic pastures. “Anywhere you have ice and high-energy, ultraviolet radiation, this process is going to take place. And those are both pretty common in the universe,” says Dante Lauretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona.
Science News: Vesta seems more planet than asteroid
Spacecraft explorations reveal a layered, beat-up body
By Nadia Drake
Web edition : Thursday, March 22nd, 2012
THE WOODLANDS, Texas — The enormous asteroid Vesta is more like a small, rocky planet than other space rocks wandering around the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Among other planetlike characteristics, Vesta’s interior is probably divided into layers like Earth’s — and scientists have detected traces of an ancient magnetic field.
“We have a hard time working on this body and not thinking about it as a planet,” said UCLA’s Christopher Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn spacecraft that has been buzzing around Vesta since July.
Like Earth, Vesta probably has an iron core, a mantle and crust. Scientists don’t know how thick the crust is, but Dawn measurements suggest that the core’s radius is between 107 and 113 kilometers, Carol Raymond of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on March 22 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Vesta is only about 530 kilometers across, meaning that the core occupies almost half its diameter. And new gravity maps from Dawn reveal anomalies in the crust, or areas where there’s “likely mantle material close to the surface,” Raymond reported.
Science News: Smallest planet yields big surprises
Mercury has a complicated inside and an active geologic past
By Nadia Drake
Web edition : Thursday, March 22nd, 2012
THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Mercury is even weirder than expected, NASA’s MESSENGER probe is showing.
For starters, the planet’s interior is built differently than anything else scientists have blueprints for. Unlike Earth’s, Mercury’s core — which gobbles up 85 percent of the planet’s radius — consists of three layers instead of two. At the planet’s heart lies a probable solid layer, surrounded by a swirling liquid iron layer, all encapsulated by a third, solid iron-sulfur layer.
The new MESSENGER results were presented on March 21 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, as well as in two papers appearing online in Science. One paper discusses the gravity measurements leading to the new model of the planet’s interior, and the other describes surface features in the northern hemisphere.
Evolution/Paleontology
The Daily Telegraph (UK): Human hunting caused extinction of 'megafauna'
Australian scientists have concluded that human hunting caused the extinction of the ancient giant animals – or megafauna - that roamed the continent and vanished about 40,000 years ago.
A new study on the hotly-debated mystery, published in Science, blames humans rather than climate change for the demise of the massive plant-eating animals such as 300-kilogram kangaroos, birds that were twice the size of emus and a leopard-sized marsupial lion. Various theories have been promoted to explain the demise of the megafauna, including the use of fire and climate change.
"The debate really should be over now," said John Alroy, from Sydney's Macquarie University. "Hunting did it, end of story."
Leader-Post (Canada): Butchered sloth bone lends more evidence to early North American settlement
By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News
March 20, 2012
A Canadian scientist's analysis of ancient animal remains found in Ohio — including the leg bone of an extinct giant sloth believed to have been butchered by an Ice Age hunter more than 13,000 years ago — has added weight to a once-controversial argument that humans arrived in North America thousands of years earlier than previously believed.
The discovery of what appear to be dozens of cut marks on the femur of a gargantuan, 1,300-kilogram Jefferson's ground sloth is being hailed as the earliest trace of a human presence in the Great Lakes state.
University College London (UK) via Science Daily: DNA Traces Cattle Back to a Small Herd Domesticated Around 10,500 Years Ago
March 27, 2012
All cattle are descended from as few as 80 animals that were domesticated from wild ox in the Near East some 10,500 years ago, according to a new genetic study.
An international team of scientists from the CNRS and National Museum of Natural History in France, the University of Mainz in Germany, and UCL in the UK were able to conduct the study by first extracting DNA from the bones of domestic cattle excavated in Iranian archaeological sites. These sites date to not long after the invention of farming and are in the region where cattle were first domesticated.
The team examined how small differences in the DNA sequences of those ancient cattle, as well as cattle living today, could have arisen given different population histories. Using computer simulations they found that the DNA differences could only have arisen if a small number of animals, approximately 80, were domesticated from wild ox (aurochs).
The study is published in the current issue of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
Biodiversity
Ottawa Citizen (Canada): Viking invaders brought mice everywhere, except Canada
New research shows no evidence of Norse mouse bloodlines in northern Newfoundland, offering further proof of the difficult conditions encountered by Leif Ericsson, writes Randy Boswell.
By Randy Boswell, Ottawa Citizen
March 20, 2012
An international team of scientists has determined that the Viking invasions throughout the North Atlantic world more than 1,000 years ago were accompanied in almost every case by the introduction of common house mice to the newly established Norse colonies - with the lone exception of Canada.
The new research is described as further proof of the inhospitable conditions encountered by Viking seafarers led by Leif Ericsson when they landed at L'Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland. The harsh Canadian climate and the Vikings' violent clashes with the island's "skraelings" - members of an unidentified aboriginal nation - are believed to have forced the would-be conquerors of North America (and apparently their mouse companions, too) to abandon Newfoundland after a short time and to return to safer settlements in Greenland and Iceland.
N.Y. Times: Ancient Hawaiians Caught More By Fishing Less
By DOUGLAS M. MAIN
Centuries ago, Hawaiians caught three times more fish annually than scientists generally consider to be sustainable in modern times — and maintained this level of harvest for more than 400 years, researchers report in a new study in the journal Fish and Fisheries.
The findings could be instructive for agencies that enforce fishing limits in overfished waters around the globe.
Native Hawaiians caught about 50 percent more fish than modern fleets catch today in both Hawaii and the Florida Keys, the two largest reef ecosystems in the United States, said a co-author of the study, Loren McClenachan, a fisheries researcher at Colby College in Waterville, Me.
Western Daily Press via This is Somerset (UK): Mythical marshes are given a 21st century lease of life
An ambitious scheme for Somerset’s historic Avalon Marshes, internationally important for their wildlife and archaeology, will be protected for generations to come and opened up to communities across the West Country thanks to significant lottery funding.
The landscape is home to many rare or endangered species. Its population of bitterns is booming literally and metaphorically, while underground archaeological gems including the wooden Sweet Track lie preserved in the peat.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
United States Naval Academy: Naval Academy Contributes to Chesapeake Bay Oyster Restoration Project
By MC3 Danian Douglas
March 21, 2012
A U.S. Naval Academy team of researchers and Navy divers completed a year of collecting oyster samples from the Severn River Mar. 20 as part of an ongoing effort to study and restore oyster populations in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
The team helps rejuvenating the declining oyster population by monitoring water quality and testing the collected samples.
The project was initiated two years ago, when a group of oceanography and ocean engineering faculty and staff working independently on Chesapeake Bay-related issues saw the Army Corps of Engineers were reconstructing local oyster reefs.
The USNA group contacted the Army’s engineers to suggest that the Naval Academy could play a role, said ocean engineer Louise Wallendorf, who works in the academy’s hydromechanics laboratory.
Biotechnology/Health
University of Maryland: University of Maryland Completes the Most Extensive Face Transplant In World
March 27, 2012
The University of Maryland in Baltimore released details today of the most extensive full face transplant completed to date, including jaws, teeth, and tongue. The 36-hour operation occurred on March 19-20, 2012, at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center and involved a multi-disciplinary team of faculty physicians from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and a team of more than 150 nurses and professional staff.
The face transplant, formally called a vascularized composite allograft, was part of a 72-hour marathon of transplant activity at one of the busiest transplant centers in the world. The family of one anonymous donor generously donated his face and also saved five other lives through the heroic gift of organ donation. Four of these transplants took place over the course of two days at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Climate/Environment
Salon: The impending urban water crisis
There'd be plenty of water, if only our fastest-growing cities weren't in deserts. We'll need creative fixes, fast
By Will Doig
March 31, 2012
In January, the town of Spicewood, Texas, ran out of water. It’s a scenario virtually unheard of in modern America, but the state’s worst drought in half a millennium changed that. Now, four times a day, a 7,000-gallon truck rolls into town, a sort of liquid life-support system that’s the only thing preventing a full-scale evacuation.
That’s not going to work in Las Vegas. Nevertheless, Vegas’ main water source, Lake Mead, is nearly tapped out. The water level there will soon drop below one of the city’s two pipelines. So they’re building a third pipe, except this one will come up from underneath the lakebed, like a drain. Even that may not be enough — Lake Mead could be empty as early as 2021. So the city has hatched a scheme for a 300-mile pipeline that will siphon water from the eastern half of the state to the Strip. And if that plan doesn’t work …
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science: Study confirms oil from Deepwater Horizon disaster entered food chain in the Gulf of Mexico
CAMBRIDGE, MD (March 20, 2012)—Since the explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, scientists have been working to understand the impact that this disaster has had on the environment. For months, crude oil gushed into the water at a rate of approximately 53,000 barrels per day before the well was capped on July 15, 2010. A new study confirms that oil from the Macondo well made it into the ocean’s food chain through the tiniest of organisms, zooplankton.
Tiny drifting animals in the ocean, zooplankton are useful to track oil-derived pollution. They serve as food for baby fish and shrimp and act as conduits for the movement of oil contamination and pollutants into the food chain. The study confirms that not only did oil affect the ecosystem in the Gulf during the blowout, but it was still entering the food web after the well was capped.
Oil, which is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons and other chemicals, contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which can be used to fingerprint oil and determine its provenance. The researchers were able to identify the signature unique to the Deep Water Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico.
N.Y. Times: Spring Gets Ahead of Itself
By HEIDI CULLEN
Published: March 19, 2012
THE first day of spring isn’t what it used to be. In fact, over the past several decades spring weather has been arriving earlier in most parts of the United States. This shift affects all aspects of life — from when flowers bloom to when animals migrate and have babies — the very things that make spring magical.
Related in Opinion
The climatologist Mark D. Schwartz at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and colleagues at the USA National Phenology Network have developed an index that can be used to estimate the date of the onset of the spring growing season (as opposed to the date in March when daylight and darkness are of equal length, the technical definition of the first day of spring, which falls on Tuesday). This “first leaf” index estimates the first day that leaves appear on plants. Here in the lower 48, spring now arrives approximately three days earlier. “First leaf” has gone from March 20 (1951-1980 average) to March 17 (1981-2010 average). This forward creep is consistent with the effects of an overall warming climate, roughly 1.4 degrees over the past century, what we refer to as global warming.
Geology
University of Washington via Science Daily: Fossil Raindrop Impressions Imply Greenhouse Gases Loaded Early Atmosphere
March 28, 2012
In ancient Earth history, the sun burned as much as 30 percent dimmer than it does now. Theoretically that should have encased the planet in ice, but there is geologic evidence for rivers and ocean sediments between 2 billion and 4 billion years ago.
Scientists have speculated that temperatures warm enough to maintain liquid water were the result of a much thicker atmosphere, high concentrations of greenhouse gases or a combination of the two.
Now University of Washington researchers, using evidence from fossilized raindrop impressions from 2.7 billion years ago to deduce atmospheric pressure at the time, have demonstrated that an abundance of greenhouse gases most likely caused the warm temperatures.
Their work, which has implications for the search for life on other planets, is published March 28 in Nature.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
University of Maryland: Forecast for Early Earth: Haze followed by Sun, then Haze, then Sun. . .
March 21, 2012
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Earth's early atmosphere periodically flipped back and forth between hazy and sunny in a way that would have had a profound effect on the climate of our young planet, says a new study by scientists at the University of Maryland, Newcastle University and NASA.
The research published March 18 in the journal Nature Geoscience, indicates that some 2.5 billion years ago - just prior to the oxygenation of Earth that led to its development of complex life - the atmosphere seesawed between an orange haze laden with hydrocarbon particles and sunny, mostly hydrocarbon-free skies.
"The trigger for these events appears to be atmospheric changes in a potent greenhouse gas, methane," says University of Maryland geochemist James Farquhar, a coauthor of the study. "These high concentrations of methane, produced by microbial ocean life, caused the haze and an 'anti-greenhouse' effect. This is one of the earliest examples of the tight climatic coupling between Earth and its inhabitants."
Psychology/Behavior
Reuters via News Daily: Japan bees cook enemy in 'hot defensive bee ball'
By Mariko Lochridge
TOKYO, Mar. 29, 2012
When confronted with their arch-enemy, the aggressive giant Asian hornet, the honeybees will attack it by swarming en masse around the hornet and forming what scientists call a "hot defensive bee ball" - a move unique to their species.
With up to 500 bees all vibrating their flight muscles at once, the bee ball cooks the hornet to death.
While this defensive maneuver has been known for some time, the mechanism behind it has been shrouded in mystery. But researchers at Japan's University of Tokyo, through study of the bees' brains, have now found that neural activity in bees taking part in the attack picks up.
Archeology/Anthropology
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History via Science Daily: 'Lucy' Lived Among Close Cousins: Discovery of Foot Fossil Confirms Two Human Ancestor Species Co-Existed
March 28, 2012
A team of scientists has announced the discovery of a 3.4 million-year-old partial foot from the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region of Ethiopia. The fossil foot did not belong to a member of “Lucy’s” species, Australopithecus afarensis, the famous early human ancestor. Research on this new specimen indicates that more than one species of early human ancestor existed between 3 and 4 million years ago with different methods of locomotion.
The analysis will be published in the March 29, 2012 issue of the journal Nature.
Scientific American: Report from Former U.S. Marine Hints at Whereabouts of Long-Lost Peking Man Fossils
By Kate Wong
March 22, 2012
In the 1930s archaeologists working at the site of Zhoukoudian near Beijing recovered an incredible trove of partial skulls and other bones representing some 40 individuals that would eventually be assigned to the early human species Homo erectus. The bones, which recent estimates put at around 770,000 years old, constitute the largest collection of H. erectus fossils ever found. They were China’s paleoanthropological pride and joy. And then they vanished.
According to historical accounts, in 1941 the most important fossils in the collection were packed in large wooden footlockers or crates to be turned over to the U.S. military for transport to the American Museum of Natural History in New York for safekeeping during World War II. But the fossils never made it to the U.S. Today, all scientists have are copies of the bones. The disappearance of the originals stands as one of the biggest mysteries in paleoanthropology.
Researchers have found a new lead, however.
Science: Were Some Neandertals Brown-Eyed Girls?
by Traci Watson
19 March 2012, 3:29 PM
In museums around the world, reproductions of Neandertals sport striking blue or green eyes, pale skin, and gingery hair. Now new DNA analysis suggests that two of the most closely studied Neandertals—a pair of females from Croatia—were actually brown-eyed girls, with brunette tresses and tawny skin to match. The results could help shed new light on the evolution of the family that includes both modern humans and Neandertals, who died out some 30,000 years ago.
The study has provoked deep skepticism among several outside researchers, however, who criticize numerous aspects of its methodology. The results also run contrary to other genetic evidence and to a long-held hypothesis that Neandertals, who lived mostly in northern latitudes, must've had light skin to get enough vitamin D.
National Geographic Society via Science Daily: Afghans Share Unique Genetic Heritage, DNA Analysis Shows
March 27, 2012
A study by The Genographic Project has found that the majority of all known ethnic Afghans share a unique genetic heritage derived from a common ancestral population that most likely emerged during the Neolithic revolution and the formation of early farming communities. Through detailed DNA analysis of samples from 27 provinces, the Genographic team found the inter-Afghan genetic variability to be mostly attributed to the formation of the first civilizations in the region during the Bronze Age.
University of Missouri-Columbia via Science Daily: Rare Animal-Shaped Mounds Discovered in Peru
March 29, 2012
For more than a century and a half, scientists and tourists have visited massive animal-shaped mounds, such as Serpent Mound in Ohio, created by the indigenous people of North America. But few animal effigy mounds had been found in South America until University of Missouri anthropology professor emeritus Robert Benfer identified numerous earthen animals rising above the coastal plains of Peru, a region already renowned for the Nazca lines, the ruined city of Chan Chan, and other cultural treasures.
"The mounds will draw tourists, one day," Benfer said. "Some of them are more than 4,000 years old. Compare that to the effigy mounds of North America, which date to between 400 and 1200 AD. The oldest Peruvian mounds were being built at the same time as the pyramids in Egypt."
Benfer identified the mounds, which range from five meters (16.5 feet) to 400 meters (1,312 feet) long in each of the six valleys he surveyed in coastal Peru. The mounds pre-date ceramics and were probably built using woven baskets to carry and pile up rock and soil.
BBC: Skye cave find western Europe's 'earliest string instrument'
Archaeologists believe they have uncovered the remains of the earliest stringed instrument to be found so far in western Europe.
The small burnt and broken piece of carved piece of wood was found during an excavation in a cave on Skye.
Archaeologists said it was likely to be part of the bridge of a lyre dating to more than 2,300 years ago.
Music archaeologist Dr Graeme Lawson said the discovery marked a "step change" in music history.
The Cambridge-based expert said: "It pushes the history of complex music back more than a thousand years, into our darkest pre-history.
Discovery News via Fox News: Hoard of Roman coins found in England
Written By Rossella Lorenzi
One of the largest collections of Roman coins -- over 30,000 silver pieces -- has been recovered in England from the building site of a new hotel in Bath, just 450 feet from the historic Roman Baths.
Known as the Beau Street Hoard, from the street where they have been unearthed, the coins date to 270 A.D., a time of great upheaval when the western Roman empire was threatened by civil war and barbarian invasion.
BBC: Mary Rose skeletons studied by Swansea sports scientists
Skeletons recovered from the wreck of a King Henry VIII's warship the Mary Rose are being studied to discover more about life in the 1500s.
Swansea University sports scientists are hoping to find out more about the toll on the bodies of archers who had to pull heavy bows.
It is documented that archers were aboard the ship when it sank in 1545.
The wreck was raised from the Solent in 1982, containing thousands of medieval artefacts.
The ship, which is now based in Portsmouth where a new museum is being built to house her, also had 92 fairly complete skeletons of the crew of the Mary Rose.
York Daily Record: Archaeology revealed unusual finds at the house that dates to the mid-1700s.
By TERESA ANN BOECKEL
Daily Record/Sunday News
Updated: 03/20/2012 11:10:59 PM EDT
York, PA - In the Dritt Mansion, which dates to the mid-1700s, local archaeologist Jan Klinedinst discovered a "W" -- similar to the Volkswagen "W" -- carved in a wall leading to the attic.
Research showed it was a ritual mark, a symbol for the Virgin Mary, Klinedinst said. It was intended to protect the house against witches.
Longmont Times-Call via Daily Camera: Lafayette woman excavates old outhouse to unearth unexpected treasures
By Pam Mellskog Longmont Times-Call
Posted: 03/17/2012 08:17:25 PM MDT
Updated: 03/17/2012 09:24:52 PM MDT
LAFAYETTE -- While excavating her home's old outhouse pit, Rebecca Schwendler set down her trowel and picked up the phone after unearthing what looked like two human finger bones and the top of a human thigh bone.
Eight men and one woman from the Office of the Medical Examiner and the Lafayette Police Department stood in her Old Town Lafayette backyard a day later and sent the remains to Colorado State University for analysis.
"I thought 'Oh, my god. What if he's in my outhouse?'" Schwendler said, referring to a reputed unsolved murder in Lafayette in 1927, the year of the nearby Columbine Mine Massacre.
Lucky for her, they turned out to be pig bones.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
Science News: Bits of Reality
Not just for codes and computers, quantum information holds clues to the nature of the physical universe
By Tom Siegfried
April 7th, 2012; Vol.181 #7 (p. 26)
Ask any physicist to name the top two theories of the 20th century, and you’ll almost always get the same automatic answer: Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics. But lately a few 21st century thinkers have hinted that maybe the third-place theory should move up a notch. In the wake of the computer revolution, information theory might deserve to displace relativity in the rankings.
That revisionist perspective reflects a late 20th century twist in the story of that century’s theories: the surreptitious merger of quantum theory with information science. Their origins had been entirely independent. Quantum mechanics arose in the 1920s as the math for describing the odd behavior of atoms and electrons; information theory came along two decades later, as formulas for quantifying communication over telephone lines. For decades the two theories led separate lives in fields of study far removed from one another. While physicists expended their intellectual energy on uniting quantum mechanics with relativity (a quest that continues, still without success), information scientists graduated from telephones to computers with only occasional concern for quanta. But then in the 1980s and ’90s, quantum and information science met, married and produced offspring — specifically, the intellectual enterprise known today as quantum information theory.
Science News: Cloaks for hiding heat
Proposed shield could protect computers or satellites from high temperatures
By Rebecca Cheung
Web edition : Thursday, March 29th, 2012
A new type of invisibility cloak could take the heat off hot devices. A theoretical cloak that can shield a protected area from intense temperatures is described online March 26 in Optics Express.
“You can just dress your satellite in a thermal cloak,” says study author Sebastien Guenneau, of the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Aix-Marseille. A heat cloak just 1 or 2 centimeters thick might potentially protect a satellite from overheating as it re-entered the atmosphere, he says.
Chemistry
Science News: Order from disorder
Collective motion emerges spontaneously in wiggling protein strands
By Alexandra Witze
Web edition : Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
Japanese researchers attached filaments of protein to a second protein that acts as a biological motor, rotating and driving the filaments to move. The scientists then injected ATP, a molecule that sends energy flowing within a cell; at first, the filaments meandered aimlessly around. But after about a quarter of an hour, they organized themselves into dramatic vortices nearly big enough to be seen by the naked eye.
Science News: Protons on the move find novel molecular route
Experiment reveals new pathway for hydrogen traveling between molecules
By Rachel Ehrenberg
Web edition : Monday, March 26th, 2012
Some take the road less traveled. Hydrogen atoms can take roads not previously known to exist.
The lone proton — the nucleus of a common hydrogen atom — typically uses a single road — the hydrogen bond — to get from one molecule to another. But now researchers report such a proton traveling to another molecule by different means.
The implications of the new route, described online March 18 in Nature Chemistry, aren’t clear. But scientists are certain that they’ve never seen it before.
Energy
University of Wisconsin, Madison: Wisconsin technology powers California microgrid project
by Brian Mattmiller
March 21, 2012
California’s Santa Rita Jail just got a little more secure this week, thanks to the completion of a $14 million “microgrid” project that gives the facility its own autonomous power supply — a feat rooted in University of Wisconsin-Madison technology.
California officials will formally dedicate the microgrid on Thursday, and on hand will be UW-Madison emeritus electrical and computer engineer Robert Lasseter, one of the world’s leading experts on microgrids. Lasseter has six microgrid-related patents managed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and several companies licensing the technology are involved in the Santa Rita effort.
Microgrids are designed to operate as self-contained local electrical power grids by drawing together a combination of sources and loads, frequently including photovoltaic, wind, diesel generators and storage. One of Lasseter’s big research contributions is the development of an elegant and simple control concept that allows these different energy generators to “plug and play” into a seamless system.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Internews via Gulf Times (Qatar): UN rejects request on heritage status for three sites
Internews/Islamabad
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) has turned down Pakistan’s request for heritage status for its three cities of historical importance, local media reported yesterday.
According to the report, the Unesco rejected the request due to the government’s neglect of these ancient treasures.
In 2010, the government sent 10 entries for Unesco world heritage status. It particularly sought recognition for the 7,000 BC Mehergarh site in southwestern Balochistan, the pre-Harappa 4,000 BC Rehman Dheri in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the 2,600 BC Harappa site in Punjab.
The Times of India: Modern touch gives historic monuments a weird look
Sudipta Sengupta & Nikhila Henry, TNN
Mar 25, 2012, 02.35AM IST
HYDERABAD: Ancient they could be, but the heritage monuments in the city have donned a rather eerie "modern" look in the recent past. With archaeology department employing the most inexperienced of people to work on the most important of projects, the monuments and sites that could have been windows to the past are now reduced to modified, painted over buildings that bear little trace of the history they represent. From choosing public works department (PWD) engineers over conservation architects, to roping in people with little experience in archaeological documentation to work on digitising the most ancient of monuments and excavation sites, the department in the past few years seems have committed a series of 'mistakes' which according to city based heritage lovers reflect, above all, a lack of planning and commitment.
Times-Colonist (Canada): Commentary: Faith, forgery, science and the James Ossuary
By Nina Burleigh
March 28, 2012
On March 14, a Jerusalem judge acquitted a man accused of forging an inscription on a small stone coffin. The writing, on what’s known as the James Ossuary, reads "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus." Its promoters claim that it’s the first archaeological evidence of Jesus Christ’s existence and that the box once held the bones of Jesus’ brother James. Its detractors, including most scholars, say the last two words of the inscription are faked, modern additions to a genuinely ancient limestone casket.
The box was first brought to public attention in 2002. Tens of thousands lined up in freezing Canadian weather to see it go on exhibit — with a sly caveat about its authenticity — at the Royal Ontario Museum in January 2003.
The box was seized on by believers as proof of the Bible. But Israeli authorities, who eventually found what appeared to be a forgery workshop in the apartment of the box’s owner, Tel Aviv industrial designer and antiquities collector Oded Golan, called it a fraud. The workshop contained half-made “antiquities,” plans for others and even labeled baggies of silt from different archaeological sites around the Holy Land. The state would later assert that the silt was used to create a paste to coat the objects and fool scholars.
Yemen Times: Tribesmen in Dhamar demand archaeology police pay “blood money”
Abdul-Kareem Al-Nahari (author)
Published on 29 March 2012 in News
DHAMAR, March 21- A tribal decision has led to a demand that archaeology police in the ancient Al-Masna’at Mariah in Dhamar’s Ans district pay YR 11 million as diyah’ (blood money) to the family of the slain member of a gang of looters.
The robber was killed in a February 27 gun battle on between a gang of looters - who were unlawfully digging at the archaeological site - and policemen tasked with protecting the site.
An Ans local authority source said the tribal decision had been reached by tribal sheikh Ali Yahya Abu Yabis.
Security authorities had been slow to arrest members of the gang of looters, which had targeted the ancient site.
L.A. Times via Sacramento Bee: Turkey asks US museums to return artifacts
By JASON FELCH
Los Angeles Times
Published: Saturday, Mar. 31, 2012 - 1:00 am
LOS ANGELES -- The government of Turkey is asking American museums to return dozens of artifacts that were allegedly looted from the country's archaeological sites, opening a new front in the search for antiquities smuggled out of their original countries through an illicit trade.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Cleveland Museum of Art and Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection are among the institutions that the Turkish government has contacted, officials say.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
University of Wisconsin, Madison: International commission offers road map to sustainable agriculture
by Jill Sakai
March 28, 2012
An independent commission of scientific leaders from 13 countries today (Wednesday, March 28) released a detailed set of recommendations to policymakers on how to achieve food security in the face of climate change.
In their report, the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change proposes specific policy responses to the global challenge of feeding a world confronted by climate change, population growth, poverty, food price spikes and degraded ecosystems. The report highlights specific opportunities under the mandates of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Group of 20 (G20) nations.
"Food insecurity and climate change are already inhibiting human well-being and economic growth throughout the world and these problems are poised to accelerate," said Sir John Beddington, chair of the commission. "Decisive policy action is required if we are to preserve the planet's capacity to produce adequate food in the future."
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee: Cutting through the ‘bull’ of high-energy, high-alcohol drinks
"The market for energy drinks is clearly young people," says Lisa Berger.
By Carolyn Bucior
March 27, 2012
Caffeinated-alcoholic beverages (CABs) were banned from the U.S. market in November 2010 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which noted serious health incidents at university campuses. However, current manufacturers of Four Loko, Moonshot, Joose, Core High Gravity and others continue to tap into a primarily young-adult-male market with separate highly caffeinated drinks (also called energy drinks) and high-alcohol drinks.
The issue has flared up again. According to a Jan. 24 , 2012, Wall Street Journal article, some energy-drink manufactures have begun adding citocoline to their products, claiming that it improves mental performance. Citocoline, a stimulant that occurs naturally in the body, has been used to help regenerate brain function in stroke patients. The evidence at this time is inconclusive regarding citocoline for this or any other purpose, and especially for use in healthy individuals.
While CABs have been banned, concerns obviously remain, says Lisa Berger, associate professor in the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare and researcher with UWM’s Center for Addiction and Behavioral Health Research (CABHR). Berger’s research on energy drinks and their consumption in Milwaukee markets appeared in a recent issue of Addictive Behaviors.
University of Maryland: First Statewide Children's Oral Health Literacy Campaign Launched Here
March 26, 2012
Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, Senator Benjamin Cardin, and Representative Elijah Cummings joined more than 200 invited guests at the Dr. Samuel D. Harris National Museum of Dentistry on the Baltimore campus of the University of Maryland on March 23 to launch the Healthy Teeth, Healthy Kids campaign, which targets pregnant women and children up to 6 years.
The campaign by the Maryland Dental Action Coalition (MDAC), supported by a strategic alliance with the state Office of Oral Health, is designed to stem a tide of dangerous risks associated with childhood oral disease.
The principle behind the campaign is that delaying or skipping dental treatment, or not requiring proper oral hygiene and dietary practices, can increase a child's chances for developing pediatric oral disease, which can lead to serious long-term repercussions including malnourishment, learning delays, behavioral problems, or in extreme cases-death.
Science Education
University of Wisconsin, Madison: UW wildlife students tweet from the field to let classmates know what they’ve seen
by Nicole Miller
March 27, 2012
Now that migratory birds are back in Wisconsin and twittering in the treetops, a group of UW-Madison wildlife ecology students are paying close attention and doing some tweeting of their own.
Students in Anna Pidgeon's Terrestrial Vertebrate Ecology class are looking for wildlife, in the woods, fields, parking lots and alleys, and they're sharing their observations with their fellow classmates via Twitter.
"It's pretty simple. The students must get a Twitter account, and then tweet a minimum number of wildlife sightings or behaviors over the course of the semester," explains Pidgeon, an assistant professor of forest and wildlife ecology. "This exercise encourages them to look around, to notice things, like when cardinals first started singing this spring. It just makes them focus a lot more."
University of Wisconsin, Madison: Innovative crane curriculum introduces environmental stewardship to young students in China
By Jenny Peek
March 22, 2012
Implementing western-style environmental education programs in developing countries can be difficult. Educational systems typically grow from local traditions and culture, leading to unique curricula, methods and expectations. To be successful, new concepts must first be accepted by the community and educators.
In southwestern China’s Guizhou Province, the International Crane Foundation and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies have found the perfect balance, partnering on a novel environmental education program for elementary school children that incorporates western techniques and local traditions.
The three-year initiative, funded by the Crane Foundation and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is directed by Nancy Mathews, a professor of environmental studies and director of the Morgridge Center for Public Service. It complements the Crane Foundation’s ongoing rural development efforts in Guizhou, aimed at integrating community development and wildlife conservation in this poor, largely agricultural province.
University of Wisconsin, Madison: Residential community helps science-minded college women succeed
by Renee Meiller
March 20, 2012
“Some of my classes can be daunting when I’m the only — or one of a few — female members,” says Jessica MacAllister, a UW-Madison undergraduate studying computer engineering.
As a woman pursuing a degree in a STEM (science, technology, engineering or math) field heavily dominated by men, MacAllister isn’t the only female who sometimes feels out of place.
Rather, she’s among many women whose collegiate educational path begins in the sciences — and often ends in frustration and isolation.
University of Wisconsin, Platteville: Students, faculty display research at UW-Platteville
March 26, 2012
PLATTEVILLE – When University of Wisconsin-Platteville student Russ Wolf began his research project of studying the effects of stream restoration on fish and other life forms, he was a little skeptical of how much impact the restoration really would have on the fish population. But once he began the project, the results astounded him.
“I never expected to get as many fish as we did in the restored streams,” said the Dyserville (Western Dubuque High School) native. “The invertebrates total we found shocked me as well. It just blew my mind. Before this, I had no idea what stream restorations really did.”
Wolf was part of the 20th annual UW-Platteville Research/Poster Day on March 14. His group was one of 43 different displays of research by students, faculty and staff.
Washington Post: UMBC’s quiet revolution in teaching science is earning school extra credit
By Daniel de Vise
Published: March 20
Each year, U.S. News & World Report asks college leaders to pick the top institutions for undergraduate teaching. Dartmouth and Princeton topped the list this year, along with some Ivy League peers and elite public schools such as the College of William and Mary. All in all, it was an utterly predictable exercise — save for UMBC, tied with Yale at fourth place.
The school is known for African American scholarship in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Many higher-education leaders say no institution does a better job of seeding black students into the sciences than UMBC and that no one knows how to do it better than Hrabowski. To those observers, UMBC and its 20-year president are indistinguishable.
“He has looked so systematically at what attracts students to science education, what inspires them to stay in it and what support they need to succeed in it,” said Drew Faust, Harvard’s president.
University of Maryland, Eastern Shore: Tracking marine life migration in the North Atlantic
PRINCESS ANNE, MD – (March 28, 2012) - Students from UMES’ Living Marine Resources Cooperative Science Center spent 10 days at sea in January investigating North Atlantic marine life.
Guided by Dr. Vince Guida, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration biologist, and Dr. Bradley Stevens of UMES, the group set out to document fish and invertebrates from Woods Hole, Mass. south to Virginia Beach, Va.
Using deep sea trawls aboard the Delaware II, a NOAA research vessel, the students captured organisms on the continental shelf at depths ranging from 20 to 200 meters, and on the continental slope at depths from 300 to 900 meters. NOAA routinely surveys this area each spring and fall, but few studies are conducted mid-winter or at depths below 250 meters. The abundance and types of organisms present at that time or depth are not well known, Stevens said.
Of particular interest on this cruise were deep-sea red crabs and monkfish. Both species live at great depths and support modest commercial fishing, but little is known about their life history or biology.
United States Naval Academy: Midshipman Volunteers Expose Students to STEM
By MC2 Alexia Riveracorrea
March 22, 2012
A group of midshipmen from the Naval Academy’s Midshipmen Action Group spent spring break mentoring students at a school on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Six volunteers, led by Midshipman 2nd Class Dustin Longhenry, used “STEM In a Box” to expose students to science, technology, engineering and math concepts in everyday life and generate interest in the sciences through hands-on experience.
“We were able to do experiments with the students and talk about the things we do and study at the academy,” said Longhenry, of Navarre, Fla. “We wanted to increase their awareness of college opportunities and help them realize that they have options.”
Science Writing and Reporting
The Guardian (UK): TV treasure hunt show to pick Britain's most important archaeological find
Britain's Secret Treasures on ITV to follow experts as they judge the merits of antiquities discovered in the UK in the last 15 years
Maev Kennedy
guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 March 2012 08.17 EDT
Historians and archaeologists are arguing over the single most historically important archaeological find among almost a million objects discovered in the UK in the last 15 years. Contenders include the heap of glittering Anglo-Saxon gold of the Staffordshire Hoard, a scruffy little coin that proved the existence of a previously unknown Roman emperor, a bronze token that some claim entitled the bearer to the illustrated services in a Roman brothel, a stone hand axe, or the eerie shimmering beauty of the Crosby Garrett Roman helmet.
The debate will be followed over a week of primetime television programmes being made for ITV, Britain's Secret Treasures, to be broadcast in July and presented by the historian Bettany Hughes and the veteran journalist Michael Buerk in his first appearance on the channel.
Although filming continues, the arguments are already passionate as the team attempts to narrow down almost a million objects recorded by the British Museum to a shortlist of 50. Most were found by amateurs using metal detectors, but others were uncovered by the mudlarks who comb the muddy foreshore of the Thames at low tide, during rescue excavation by archaeologists before road or building works, or by chance.
Hat/tip to annetteboardman for this story.
Science is Cool
PR Web via Yahoo! News: Maya Spring Equinox Celebrations at Belize’s Caracol
March 22, 2012
This year’s Maya Spring Equinox celebrations at Caracol, Belize’s premier Maya archaeological site were a fitting kick-off to the 2012 equinox and solstice calendar, Chaa Creek’s Larry Waight said.
Mr Waight was among 60 participants in a special tour led by Dr Jaime Awe, director of the Belize Institute of Archaeology and one of the world’s foremost authorities on Maya civilisation.
The Oregonian via Oregon Live: Rocks, fossils and artifacts star at Portland State University's Archaeology Roadshow
By Nick Budnick, The Oregonian
Published: Saturday, March 24, 2012, 5:42 PM
Updated: Saturday, March 24, 2012, 5:43 PM
From a cardboard box Chris Kiefer carefully draws out a large object wrapped in a gray towel and lays it on the table; unwrapped it becomes a colorful club, with a head made of smooth brown-beige basalt marked by perfect rings worn into each end. A bright green ribbonlike material holds it onto a shaft wrapped tightly in beads of maroon, green and white.
"Wow," says Ken Ames, a longtime professor and anthropology chairman at Portland State University.
Kiefer, a 56-year-old Safeway cashier from Portland, was part of a horde of history lovers, rock hoarders, artifact collectors and unsuspecting passersby who came, many bearing artifacts, to PSU's Cramer Hall on Saturday for the school's Archaeology Roadshow. Modeled after the PBS "Antiques Roadshow" television show, it brought together dozens of archaeology buffs and experts who volunteered, along with exhibits and demonstrations --and plenty of candy for the kids.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for these stories.
University of Wisconsin, Madison: Cool science images show aesthetic side of science at UW-Madison
by David Tenenbaum
March 22, 2012
The second annual UW-Madison Cool Science Image contest has highlighted the synergy of science and aesthetics, selecting six winners and six honorable mentions from 82 entries from faculty, staff and students on campus.
...
The contest is an outgrowth of the popular Cool Science Image feature at The Why Files, a UW-Madison web magazine devoted to covering the science behind the news.
The tradition of mixing art and science is at least as old as the anatomical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, says Kevin Eliceiri, director of the Laboratory for Optical and Computational Instrumentation. "Scientific imagery can have an aesthetic element that is central to their communication mission."
