Climate Change And The Mystery Of The Shrinking Sheep

Milder winters are causing Scotland's wild breed of Soay sheep to get smaller, despite the evolutionary benefits of possessing a large body. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 4, 2009) — Milder winters are causing Scotland's wild breed of Soay sheep to get smaller, despite the evolutionary benefits of possessing a large body, according to new research.

The new study provides evidence for climate change as the cause of the mysterious decrease in the size of wild sheep on the Scottish island of Hirta, first reported by scientists in 2007. The researchers believe that, due to climate change, survival conditions on Hirta are becoming less challenging, which means slower-growing, smaller sheep are more likely to survive the winters than they once were. This, together with newly-discovered so-called 'young mum effect' whereby young ewes produce smaller offspring, explains why the average size of sheep on the island is decreasing.

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The Strange Ingredients In Fireworks

Copper produces blue sparks. Barium, also used in rat poison and glassmaking, makes green. A mix of strontium salts, lithium salts and other stuff makes red. Aluminum and titanium put the white stars in an aerial flag. Image credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

Fireworks for the 4th of July are all about light, color and sound. But inside, there are some bizarre ingredients, from aluminum to Vaseline and even the stuff of rat poison.

An ancient mix of black powder, essentially gunpowder little changed from its invention in China a millennia ago, gets each rocket in the air by creating pressure in gas trapped in a tube, or mortar.

Two fuses are lit at once: one to ignite the black powder, and another that burns slower, creating a well-timed explosion high in the sky.

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Marie Curie Voted Greatest Female Scientist

Marie Curie has been voted the greatest woman scientist of all time. Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist has been voted the greatest woman scientist of all time.

The Polish-born researcher, who discovered radiation therapy could treat cancer, won just over a quarter of the poll (25.1 per cent) - almost twice as much as her nearest rival Rosalind Franklin (14.2 per cent), the English biophysicist who helped discover the structure of DNA.

Only two modern role models made the top ten - astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell came fourth (4.7 per cent) and Dr Jane Goodall, the world famous primatologist, was tenth (2.7 per cent).

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Hunting For Life In Alien Worlds

An artist's impression of the exoplanet HD 189733b transiting its sun. Astronomers have detected both water vapour and methane in its atmosphere. Image: ESA - C.Carreau.

From Plus Magazine:

Two of the most fundamental questions asked by people, and as yet still unanswered by science, are how life emerged on the Earth, and whether we are alone in the cosmos: does life exist in extraterrestrial locations as well? These deeply important questions form the core of a new kind of science, one that recently has been rapidly gathering momentum. Astrobiology is supported by a flood of new information from studies on the origins of terrestrial life, and our deep-space probes and telescopes exploring the Universe around us. The science incorporates everything from understanding the survival of life in the most extreme environments on Earth and looking for the earliest evidence of cells in the ancient rocks of our planet, to exploring the alien worlds of our solar system to determine if they have ever provided an environment suitable for life of their own.

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Vegetarian Diet 'Weakens Bones'

A vegetarian salad. Australian researchers have said that people who live on vegetarian diets have slightly weaker bones than their meat-eating counterparts. (AFP/File/Jay Directo)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

SYDNEY (AFP) – People who live on vegetarian diets have slightly weaker bones than their meat-eating counterparts, Australian researchers said Thursday.

A joint Australian-Vietnamese study of links between the bones and diet of more than 2,700 people found that vegetarians had bones five percent less dense than meat-eaters, said lead researcher Tuan Nguyen.

The issue was most pronounced in vegans, who excluded all animal products from their diet and whose bones were six percent weaker, Nguyen said.

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Don't Look Down: Terrifying View From Glass Box Balcony Jutting Out From Skyscraper's 103rd Floor

Long way up: Even the floor of the platforms are glass - few
were brave enough to look straight down

From The Daily Mail:

If you're scared of heights, it may be time to look away now.

Not content with having the tallest building in America, the owners of Sears Tower in Chicago have installed four glass box viewing platforms which stick out of the building 103 floors up.

The balconies are suspended 1,353 feet in the air and jut out four feet from the building's Skydeck.

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My Comment: This is so cool.

New Form Of El Nino May Increase Atlantic Storms

From Yahoo News/AP:

WASHINGTON – El Nino may have a split personality.

The warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean has long been known to affect weather around the world, but researchers now say it may come in two forms with different impacts.

The traditional El Nino tends to reduce the number of Atlantic hurricanes. But a form Georgia Tech scientists call El Nino Modoki can lead to more hurricanes than usual in the Atlantic Ocean. Modoki, from Japanese, refers to something that is "similar but different."

The traditional El Nino involves a periodic warming of the water in the eastern part of the tropical Pacific. Indeed, it was first noticed by Peruvian fishermen, who named it after the baby Jesus because it tended to first appear around Christmastime.

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Computer Reveals Stone Tablet 'Handwriting' In A Flash

Archaeologists have discovered more than 50,000 stone inscriptions from ancient Athens and Attica so far. However, attributing the pieces to particular cutters so they can be dated has proven tricky. Traditionally, epigraphers must hunt for giveaways to a cutter's individual style - a tiny stroke at the top of a letter, for instance (Image: Michail Panagopolous et al.)

From New Scientist:

You might call it "CSI Ancient Greece". A computer technique can tell the difference between ancient inscriptions created by different artisans, a feat that ordinarily consumes years of human scholarship.

"This is the first time anything like this had been done on a computer," says Stephen Tracy, a Greek scholar and epigrapher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who challenged a team of computer scientists to attribute 24 ancient Greek inscriptions to their rightful maker. "They knew nothing about inscriptions," he says.

Tracy has spent his career making such attributions, which help scholars attach firmer dates to the tens of thousands of ancient Athenian and Attican stone inscriptions that have been found.

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Sea Ice At Lowest Level In 800 Years Near Greenland

There has never been so little sea ice in the area between Svalbard and Greenland in the last 800 years. (Credit: NASA/GSFC)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2009) — New research, which reconstructs the extent of ice in the sea between Greenland and Svalbard from the 13th century to the present indicates that there has never been so little sea ice as there is now. The research results from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, are published in the scientific journal, Climate Dynamics.

There are of course neither satellite images nor instrumental records of the climate all the way back to the 13th century, but nature has its own 'archive' of the climate in both ice cores and the annual growth rings of trees and we humans have made records of a great many things over the years - such as observations in the log books of ships and in harbour records. Piece all of the information together and you get a picture of how much sea ice there has been throughout time.

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How Earth Got Its Oxygen

Cyanobacteria scum is now considered a nuisance, but these microbes oxygenated our planet over 2 billion years ago. Credit: Washington State Dept. of Health

From Live Science:

The first half of Earth's history was devoid of oxygen, but it was far from lifeless. There is ongoing debate over who the main biological players were in this pre-oxygen world, but researchers are digging up clues in some of the oldest sedimentary rocks on the planet.

Most scientists believe the amount of atmospheric oxygen was insignificant up until about 2.4 billion years ago when the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) occurred. This seemingly sudden jump in oxygen levels was almost certainly due to cyanobacteria – photosynthesizing microbes that exhale oxygen.

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Fit Body, Fit Mind? Your Workout Makes You Smarter

Photo: Noah Clayton Getty Images

From Scientific America:

How can you stay sharp into old age? It is not just a matter of winning the genetic lottery. What you do can make a difference

As everybody knows, if you do not work out, your muscles get flaccid. What most people don’t realize, however, is that your brain also stays in better shape when you exercise. And not just challenging your noggin by, for example, learning a new language, doing difficult crosswords or taking on other intellectually stimulating tasks. As researchers are finding, physical exercise is critical to vigorous mental health, too.

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The Truth About Water on Mars: 5 New Findings

Lesson 4: The Lack of Perchlorate Streaks Contradicts

Evidence of Liquid Water Deposits Underground

From Popular Mechanics:

In its few months of roaming the polar area on Mars last year, the Phoenix Lander found water ice beneath the red planet's surface and snow in the atmosphere. But for those hoping that life once existed on Mars—or still might—liquid water would be the crown jewel. While Phoenix died this past November as the winter brought on shorter and colder days, project leader Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, along with a number of colleagues from NASA's Jet Propulsion lab and universities all over the world, have spent the intervening months confirming those early finds and poring over the lander's massive amounts of data. Most of the attention is focused on whether Phoenix's data conclusively shows evidence that liquid water once flowed across Mars. There is a lot of complex analysis, but, in short, signs point to yes. Here are five lessons taken from today's analysis, which was published today in four separate studies in the journal Science.

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International Space Station To Get A Big, Beautiful Window

International Space Station Cupola Window: NASA

From Popsci.com:

We've seen private tourists and urine-recycling water filters make their way onto the International Space Station, but breathtaking views have never been the station's strongest selling point. Because of external hazards such as solar radiation and orbiting space debris, the biggest window is only 20 inches. Until now, that is.

The Tranquility node of the ISS is slated for a new 31-inch window, dubbed the Cupola, that will provide views of space never before seen from inside the station. NASA says astronauts will be able to gaze at Earth and the stars. [NASA via Boing Boing]

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Unlocked: The Secrets Of Schizophrenia

A colour enhanced MRI image of the brain shows one of the theories into what may be the chemical basis for Schizophrenia. Researchers have found reduced receptors for dopamine in the brain (areas colourized). NEIL BORDEN/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

From The Independent:

Scientific breakthrough offers hope of new treatments for mental condition.

Scientists have discovered a remarkable similarity between the genetic faults behind both schizophrenia and manic depression in a breakthrough that is expected to open the way to new treatments for two of the most common mental illnesses, affecting millions of people.

Previously doctors had assumed that the two conditions were quite separate. But new research shows for the first time that both have a common genetic basis that leads people to develop one or other of the two illnesses.

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Huge Underground Chamber Found--Early Christian Refuge?

A human-made, underground cave (pictured)—the largest in Israel—likely began life 2,000 years ago as a quarry but may have gone on to become a monastery, a refuge for persecuted Christians, or a Roman army base, experts said in June 2009. Photograph courtesy Moshe Einav, University of Haifa

From National Geographic:

A 2,000-year-old underground chamber has been discovered in Israel's Jordan Valley.

The largest human-made cave in Israel, the 1-acre (0.4-hectare) space is thought to have begun as a quarry. In subsequent centuries it may have served as a monastery, hideout for persecuted Christians, or Roman army base, experts say.

Archaeologists working in the valley found the cave this past March when they came across a hole in a rock face.

As they were about to enter, two fearful-looking Bedouins appeared and warned the team that hyenas and wolves inhabited the cave.

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Igniting Fusion

Ground zero: A circular access port affords a glimpse into a 10-meter-diameter target chamber where, in the coming months, powerful lasers will be fired with the goal of setting off small thermonuclear explosions. Credit: Jason Madara

From Technology Review:

Researchers at a California National Lab will soon attempt to start self-sustaining fusion reactions using the world's largest lasers. If it works, it could be a first step on the road to abundant fusion power.

It's late April and workers are assembling the last parts of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a sprawling building covering the area of three football fields at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, CA. Dressed in hard hats, hair nets, lab coats, and latex gloves, they have gathered at the target chamber, a sphere 10 meters in diameter and bristling with 48 burnished-aluminum ducts that together house 192 separate laser beams. Each beam on its own is one of the world's most powerful, says Bruno Van Wonterghem, operations manager at NIF. Together they deliver 50 to 60 times the energy of any other laser.

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Biological 'Fountain Of Youth' Found In New World Bat Caves

The Mexican Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida brasiliensis) lives a very long life compared to closely related animals such as mice. (Credit: Photo by Ron Groves/United States Department of Transportation)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) — Scientists from Texas are batty over a new discovery which could lead to the single most important medical breakthrough in human history—significantly longer lifespans. The discovery, featured on the cover of the July 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, shows that proper protein folding over time in long-lived bats explains why they live significantly longer than other mammals of comparable size, such as mice.

"Ultimately we are trying to discover what underlying mechanisms allow for some animal species to live a very long time with the hope that we might be able to develop therapies that allow people to age more slowly," said Asish Chaudhuri, Professor of Biochemistry, VA Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas and the senior researcher involved in the work.

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Sand Found to Flow Like Water

Low levels of surface tension cause water-like droplet formation in flows of dry granular materials. In essence, the sand flows like water. Credit: Helge F. Gruetjen, John R. Royer, Scott R. Waitukaitis, and Heinrich M. Jaeger, The University of Chicago

From Live Science:

When poured, sand behaves much like water to form water-like droplets, scientists have discovered.

The finding could be important to a wide range of industries that use "fluidized" dry particles for oil refining, plastics manufacturing and the drug industry, the researchers say.

Researchers previously thought dry particles lacked sufficient surface tension to form droplets like ordinary liquids. But physicists from the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at the University of Chicago, led by professor Heinrich M. Jaeger, used high-speed photography to measure minute levels of surface tension and detect droplet formation in flows of dry granular materials.

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SETI And The Singularity

From The Futurist:

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) seeks to answer one of the most basic questions of human identity - whether we are alone in the universe, or merely one civilization among many. It is perhaps the biggest question that any human can ponder.

The Drake Equation, created by astronomer Frank Drake in 1960, calculates the number of advanced extra-terrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy in existence at this time. Watch this 8-minute clip of Carl Sagan in 1980 walking the audience through the parameters of the Drake Equation. The Drake equation manages to educate people on the deductive steps needed to understand the basic probability of finding another civilization in the galaxy, but as the final result varies so greatly based on even slight adjustments to the parameters, it is hard to make a strong argument for or against the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence via the Drake equation. The most speculative parameter is the last one, fL, which is an estimation of the total lifespan of an advanced civilization. Again, this video clip is from 1980, and thus only 42 years after the advent of radio astronomy in 1938.

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New Class of Black Holes Discovered

From The Danger Room:

Only two sizes of black holes have ever been spotted: small and super-massive. Scientists have long speculated that an intermediate version must exist, but they’ve never been able to find one until now.

Astrophysicists identified what appears to be the first-ever medium-sized black hole, pictured in an artist’s rendition above, with a mass at least 500 times that of our Sun. Researchers from the Centre d’Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in France detected the middling hole in a galaxy about 290 million light-years from Earth.

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