Canada Has A Frigid May After A Cold Winter

From Watts Up With That?

May has been frigid slowing the planting and emergence of the summer crops in Canada. Late freezes and even snows are still occurring regularly and can be expected the rest of the month.

The chart above shows the May 2009 temperature anomaly through May 24th. Parts of central Canada (Churchill, Manitoba) are running 16 degrees F below normal for the month through the 26th (map ends 24th). Every day this month has seen lows below freezing in Churchill and only 6 out of the first 26 days days had highs edge above freezing. The forecast the rest of the month is for more cold with even some snow today in Churchill and again this weekend perhaps further south.

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My Comment: I live in Quebec, Canada .... I can vouch for this report.

New Solar Cycle Prediction: Fewer Sunspots, But Not Necessarily Less Activity

This is an image of the sun from NASA's twin STEREO satellites. Credit: NASA

From Physorg.:

PhysOrg.com) -- An international panel of experts has released a new prediction for the next solar cycle, stating that Solar Cycle 24 will peak in May 2013 with a below-average number of sunspots. Led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and sponsored by NASA, the panel includes a dozen members from nine different government and academic institutions. Their forecast sets the stage for at least another year of mostly quiet conditions before solar activity resumes in earnest.

"If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78," says panel chairman Doug Biesecker of the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, Boulder, Colo.

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Earliest Known Case of Leprosy Unearthed

From Live Science:

A 4,000-year-old skeleton found in India bears the earliest archaeological evidence of leprosy, a new study reports.

The finding, detailed in the May 27 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE, is also the first evidence for the disease in prehistoric India and sheds light on how the disease might have been spread in early human history.

Though it is no longer a significant public health threat in most parts of the world, leprosy is still one of the least understood infectious diseases, in part because the bacteria that causes it (Mycobacterium leprae) is difficult to culture for research and has only one other animal host, the nine banded armadillo.

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Scientists Reaching Consensus On How Brain Processes Speech

Researchers are finding that both human and non-human primate studies have confirmed that speech, one important facet of language, is processed in the brain along two parallel pathways, each of which run from lower- to higher-functioning neural regions. (Credit: iStockphoto/Don Bayley)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 27, 2009) — Neuroscientists feel they are much closer to an accepted unified theory about how the brain processes speech and language, according to a scientist at Georgetown University Medical Center who first laid the concepts a decade ago and who has now published a review article confirming the theory.

In the June issue of Nature Neuroscience, the investigator, Josef Rauschecker, PhD, and his co-author, Sophie Scott, PhD, a neuroscientist at University College, London, say that both human and non-human primate studies have confirmed that speech, one important facet of language, is processed in the brain along two parallel pathways, each of which run from lower- to higher-functioning neural regions.

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Sub Will Explore Undersea Borders

From The BBC:

A remotely operated vehicle (ROV) designed by a team of researchers in the Irish Republic could help define the limits of nations' underwater borders.

Named after the Celtic goddess of beer and water, ROV Latis has just completed trials off Ireland's west coast.

The information it gathers could help to settle, once and for all, disputes over continental perimeters.

It uses high resolution CCTV and colour cameras capable of operating in very low light.

Simon Marr, technical market analyst at the University of Limerick, explained that it was designed to perform seabed surveys and had a fibre-optic communication channel to relay all of the information it gathered.

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Fire And Water Reveal New Archaeological Dating Method

Ancient bricks. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Manchester)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 25, 2009) — Scientists at The University of Manchester have developed a new way of dating archaeological objects – using fire and water to unlock their 'internal clocks'.

The simple method promises to be as significant a technique for dating ceramic materials as radiocarbon dating has become for organic materials such as bone or wood.

A team from The University of Manchester and The University of Edinburgh has discovered a new technique which they call 'rehydroxylation dating' that can be used on fired clay ceramics like bricks, tile and pottery.

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Why Chimps, Monkeys Don't Develop Alzheimer's

This April 29, 2009 photo shows 'Jody,' a chimpanzee who was used for breeding and biomedical research at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in Cle Elum, Wash. As attacks and other problems with privately owned chimpanzees make the news, some chimpanzee sanctuaries are seeing an increase in inquiries from pet owners, looking for help in caring for their animals. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

From Yahoo News/Healthday:

MONDAY, May 25 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists have long noticed a curious phenomenon among primates: Humans get the devastating neurological disorder known as Alzheimer's disease, but their closest evolutionary cousins don't.

Even more inexplicable is the fact that chimpanzee and other non-human primate brains do get clogged with the same protein plaques that are believed by many to cause the disease in humans.

The answer to this puzzle could yield valuable insight into how Alzheimer's develops and progresses, and now researchers report they may have a clue. They report their finding in the latest issue of the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

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Hubble's Ten Most Significant Discoveries

Dark Energy: Courtesy of NASA

From Popsci.com:

PopSci offers up the ten most important scientific discoveries that the Hubble made possible, and the amazing images to go with them.

After astronauts fixed the lens on the Hubble space telescope, the satellite began sending back pictures of the cosmos that left all onlookers in awe. The beauty of those images often overshadowed the legitimate scientific progress the Hubble enabled.

So, in honor of the Hubble’s final servicing mission, Popsci.com and Mario Livio, a senior astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and author of Is God A Mathematician?, look past the pretty pictures and count down the ten most important scientific discoveries that the Hubble made possible.

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Overfishing Goes Back Centuries, Log Books Reveal

One of the earliest depictions of trawling. Mosaic from the 5th century, Bizerte, Tunisia. Credit: Yacoub, M., Splendors of Tunisian Mosaics, Tunis, 1995, Fig. 115.

From Live Science:

Overfishing led to shrinking sizes of freshwater fish caught by Europeans all the way back in medieval times. And the real revolution in deep-sea fishing came not with modern day trawlers, but back in the 1600s when pairs of boats began dragging a net between them.

Those are just a few of the facts unearthed by marine historians who want to find out when ocean life populations and natural sizes began to shrink.

The evidence shows that much of the decline took place even before the modern fishing industry really got going.

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The Moment A Hummingbird Meets A Sticky End Thanks To A Hungry Praying Mantis

Struggle for survival: This hummingbird met a sticky end when feeding

From The Daily Mail:

This startling picture captures the moment a praying mantis snared a hummingbird.

The predatory insect is seen dangling from a plant with its right spiny foreleg impaling the helpless bird. Although not much bigger than its prey, the mantis was able to gorge itself before releasing the lifeless body of its victim.

Richard Walkup, from West Chester in Pennsylvania, US, told how his quick-thinking son had captured the scene.

He said: 'The other day while I was working in the yard my son urgently called to me, 'Dad, a praying mantis caught a hummingbird!'

'I came running to see for myself. By the time I arrived it was too late for the poor hummer and my scientifically minded son had already begun taking pictures and studying the scene. '

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Space Rock Yields Carbon Bounty

From The BBC:

Formic acid, a molecule implicated in the origins of life, has been found at record levels on a meteorite that fell into a Canadian lake in 2000.

Cold temperatures on Tagish Lake prevented the volatile chemical from dissipating quickly.

An analysis showed four times more formic acid in the fragments than has been recorded on previous meteorites.

The researchers told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union that the formic acid was extraterrestrial.

Formic acid is one of a group of compounds dubbed "organics", because they are rich in carbon.

"We are lucky that the meteorite was untouched by humans hands, avoiding contamination by organic compounds that we have on our fingers," said Dr Christopher Herd, the curator of the University of Alberta's meteorite collection.

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Tech-word Origins: Stranger Than Science

From Christian Science Monitor:

A lexicographer describes where science fiction struck first.

Scientists are uniquely qualified to describe the universe in numbers and equations, but sometimes it takes an imaginative novelist to distill discoveries into words.

For his book “Brave New Words,” freelance lexicographer Jeff Prucher uncovered a slew of words that many people assume came from science, but actually originated in the pulpy pages of early science fiction. Here are four of his favorites.

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Why We Stare, Even When We Don’t Want To

From Weird Science/Wired:

The stares of strangers endured by Connie Culp, recent face transplant recipient, might have little to do with cruelty or lack of empathy. These responses are likely a result of neurologic, biologic and evolutionary factors.

Prior to her operation, the center of Culp’s face was blank skin traversed by a single raw scar where she once had a nose, upper lip and cheeks. The disfigurement made her the target of something perhaps even less fixable: millions of years of evolutionary uncouth. When she went out in public, people gaped at her. After her operation, her face still looks unusual and the stares continue.

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Rising Sea Levels: Survival Tips From 5000 BC

As sea levels rise, we need to find ways to adapt. Ancient civilisations could give us some tips (Image: Paul Kay / SplashdownDirect / Rex)

From The New Scientist:

WITH rising seas lapping at coastal cities and threatening to engulf entire islands in the not-too-distant future, it's easy to assume our only option will be to abandon them and head for the hills. There may be another way, however. Archaeological sites in the Caribbean, dating back to 5000 BC, show that some ancient civilisations had it just as bad as anything we are expecting. Yet not only did they survive a changing coastline and more storm surges and hurricanes: they stayed put and successfully adapted to the changing world. Now archaeologists are working out how they managed it and finding ways that we might learn from their example.

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New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

Scientists are reporting an advance toward a memory device capable of storing data for more than one billion years. (Credit: The American Chemical Society)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 26, 2009) — Packing more digital images, music, and other data onto silicon chips in USB drives and smart phones is like squeezing more strawberries into the same size supermarket carton. The denser you pack, the quicker it spoils. The 10 to 100 gigabits of data per square inch on today's memory cards has an estimated life expectancy of only 10 to 30 years. And the electronics industry needs much greater data densities for tomorrow's iPods, smart phones, and other devices.

Scientists are reporting an advance toward remedying this situation with a new computer memory device that can store thousands of times more data than conventional silicon chips with an estimated lifetime of more than one billion years. Their discovery is scheduled for publication in the June 10 issue of the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters, a monthly journal.

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Is It Safe To Exercise In Your 70s?

From Live Science:

This Week's Question: I've been told I should exercise more, but I'm afraid that at my age (73) I might damage something. Am I safer as a couch potato?

All the current scientific evidence shows that geezers should exercise, even though many older people think it could harm them. Study after study demonstrates that seniors hurt their health a lot more by being sedentary.

If you're inactive, you deteriorate. Physical activity can help restore your capacity. Most older adults, regardless of age or condition, will benefit from increasing physical activity to a moderate level.

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Russia's Dark Horse Plan to Get to Mars

Phobos, the larger of the two moons of Mars has many unknowns. For instance, what formed the grooves that run across its surface? Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

From Discover:

The Fobos-Grunt mission might pave the way for humanity's first permanent space base—on Phobos, Mars' bizarre moon.

Mars has been nothing but bad luck for the Russians. They have launched 20 probes to the planet since 1960, and all either failed or suffered from severe technical problems. But soon—as early as this October—Russia will attempt to reverse its fortunes with one of the most ambitious unmanned space missions ever.

Instead of aiming straight for Mars, the Russians are going after Phobos, the larger of its two little satellites and one of the oddest objects around. Their probe, called Fobos-Grunt (“Phobos soil” in Russian), will not only land on Phobos but also scoop up some samples of the surface and send them to Earth. Understanding Phobos could tell us a lot about the early history of the solar system. “It may give us clues to the formation of Earth’s moon and the moons of the other planets, and the role played by asteroid impacts in shaping the terrestrial [rocky] planets,” says Alexander Zakharov of the Moscow-based Space Research Institute and chief scientist for Fobos-Grunt. Even more important, this mission could lay the groundwork for an innovative strategy for exploring—and even colonizing—Mars itself.

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U.S. Natural Gas Boom: The Race To Tap Shale's Potential

(Photograph by Harald Sund/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

Natural gas prices are at a six-year low, but that's not slowing one unconventional—and historically costly—method for extracting gas for energy. Shale gas reserves are contributing to the 11 percent rise in natural gas production the United States has seen in the past two years. But the deposits have been known about for decades—why are these resources drawing attention now?

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Forget Plasma And LCDs: How The 3mm-thick, Eco-Friendly OLED Is The TV Of The Future

The Sony XEL-1 is currently the only OLED TV on the market and priced at £3,500.
The screen is just 3mm thick

From The Daily Mail:

Once they were a must-have for every living room. But LCD and plasma TVs could be about to go the way of the cathode ray tube.

A new generation of super-slim screens will revolutionise home entertainment, according to the makers.

The OLED sets boast the thinnest TV screen created. At its narrowest point it is the width of a pound coin. And technological advances make the image far sharper than on LCD and plasma screens.

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A Serious Search For Extraterrestrial Life

A planet probably the size of Jupiter orbits at a distance about four times that between Neptune and the sun. Many such exoplanets - all atmosphere, no solid surface - have been found since '95, when the first was confirmed.

From Philadelphia Inquirer:

Things have changed since the original Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock set off to seek out new life and new civilizations. Back in the 1960s, while the Enterprise crew was exploring a galaxy full of exotic life-forms, real astronomers were stuck in a solar system with eight desolate-looking neighbors and no signs of any planets beyond.

Now, finally, astronomers are starting to zero in on Earth-like worlds orbiting other stars. Some of the more recent finds even look potentially habitable.

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