Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, energy, and the environment.
This week's featured story comes from Reuters.
Whale snot, bat sex win 2010 IgNobel spoof prizes
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON | Fri Oct 1, 2010 10:37am EDT
Researchers who used a remote-controlled helicopter to collect whale snot, documented bats having oral sex and showed that swearing makes you feel better when you stub a toe were among the winners of spoof IgNobel prizes on Thursday.
The prizes, meant to be both humorous and to encourage scientific research, are given every year by the Journal of Improbable Research as a whimsical counterpart to the Nobel Prizes, which will be awarded starting next week.
IgNobels also went to researchers who found that wearing socks outside shoes can prevent slipping on ice and that organizations would fare better if managers were promoted randomly.
Some of this research has been featured in this past year's OND. Remember, you read them here first.
More after the jump.
Recent Science Diaries and Stories
DarkSyde: This week in science
eKos: World-Wide Water Woes {eKos Earthship Friday/Saturday}
Jill Richardson: BIG BIG BIG Victory This Week (After 20 Years of Waiting)
juliewolf: Dawn Chorus: a preview
Slideshows/Videos
KIFI-TV (Idaho Falls): Museum Of Natural History And ISU Get $1 Million Grant Creating Virtual Museum
Brittany Borghi, Local News 8 Reporter
POCATELLO, Idaho -- The Informatics Research Center at ISU and the Museum of Natural History have partnered together to create a Virtual Museum of the Artic. A $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, along with another $100,000 grant from Idaho funds the project.
Created by ISU students, it puts actual 3D models of artic animal bones online for scientists to study, students to learn from and anyone to check out with the click of a mouse.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
KIFI-TV (Idaho Falls): BYU-Idaho Goes Green
University Releases New Energy And Sustainability Plan
By Brett Crandall, Local News 8 Reporter
REXBURG, Idaho -- Brigham Young University-Idaho is going green and it is doing it without spending any extra green.
The university released a new energy and sustainability plan this week outlining the steps the school is taking.
It's all thanks to the students. The student government came up with a plan and the administration liked what they saw.
China2057 on YouTube: Chang'e-2 Launch
Vimeo: Homemade Spacecraft
Video from a camera attached to a weather balloon that rose into the upper stratosphere and recorded the blackness of space.
Wired: Great Digs: Finalists Vie to Live in Museum for a Month
By Lisa Grossman
The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is looking for one lucky nerd to eat, sleep, breathe and blog about science for a full month this fall. More than 1,500 hopeful science fans entered the "Month at the Museum" contest for the chance to live in the museum full-time, explore behind the scenes and basically be a science exhibit themselves from Oct. 20 to Nov. 18.
Each contestant submitted a bio, an essay and a one-minute video explaining why they'd be the best museum ambassador ever. Somehow the museum folks whittled it down to just five finalists.
Now it's up to you. Meet the finalists, watch their videos and vote for your favorite at monthatthemuseum.org before 5 p.m. October 4.
Wired: High-Speed Videos: The Hidden World of Insect Flight
By Brandon Keim
Using high-speed video cameras that capture more than a thousand frames per second, Andrew Mountcastle's videos reveal an insect ballet hidden to plain sight.
"I refer to high-speed cameras as time microscopes. You see things that you can't see with your naked eye," says the Harvard University biologist, who specializes in the flight dynamics of moths.
While a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington, Mountcastle and labmate Armin Hinterwirth were commissioned to replace the Pacific Science Center's outdated video installation. The pair filmed garden-variety insects in flight, their everyday glory unmasked in slow motion.
"What's commonplace in the life of these insects is new and exciting. That's the really neat thing about high-speed cameras," said Mountcastle. "You can point them in any direction, and before long you're capturing something interesting."
Mountcastle took Wired.com on a tour of his work.
Discovery News: Inventors Killed By Their Own Inventions: Slide Show
By Amy Enchelmeyer, Discovery News
Oct. 1, 2010 -- This week Jimi Heselden, owner of the British company Hesco Bastion that produces Segways, died in a tragic Segway accident. Police report that Heselden apparently fell off a cliff and into a river while out on a ride.
Although Heselden was not the inventor of the Segway, (Dean Kamen was; Heselden was merely the owner of the overseeing company that bought the scooter), the tragic irony of the man behind the invention being killed by his own life's work is not unheard of.
Follow along as we run down other notable men and women who pioneered new technology and paid the ultimate price.
Discovery News: What Will the Constellations Look Like in 50,000 Years?
by Eva Dou
Stargazers of the future will look into a different night sky. That's because the stars are constantly moving relative to each other.
These shifts are nearly imperceptible during a person’s lifetime, but they add up over the centuries and millennia. This means that in, say, 50,000 years, many common constellations will have a very different shape.
Take a look at how five famous constellations will look 50,000 years from now. Astronomer Robert Hurt of NASA's Spitzer Science Center helps us explain the changes in these images generated by the space simulation software Starry Night.
Astronomy/Space
Discovery News: Earth-Like Planet Can Sustain Life
Located in a solar system that parallels our own, the new world could be habitable -- or even inhabited.
By Irene Klotz
A new member in a family of planets circling a red dwarf star 20 light-years away has just been found. It's called Gliese 581g, and the 'g' may very well stand for Goldilocks.
Gliese 581g is the first world discovered beyond Earth that's the right size and location for life.
"Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say that the chances for life on this planet are 100 percent. I have almost no doubt about it," Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California Santa Cruz, told Discovery News.
Wired: Solar System’s Shield Could Leak Cosmic Rays
By Lisa Grossman
The bubble that separates our sun from the galaxy is surprisingly active. The second global map from the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, shows that the edge of the solar system changes more quickly and drastically than scientists expected.
"If we’ve learned anything from IBEX so far, it’s that the models we were using for interaction of the solar wind with the galaxy were just dead wrong," said IBEX principal investigator David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in a press briefing Sept. 30.
The new data could have implications for future astronauts on long interplanetary voyages, and could make scientists rethink which extrasolar planets could support life.
Wired: Close Encounter Coming With Ghostly Green Comet
By Lisa Grossman
Comet Hartley 2 will swoop within 11 million miles of Earth on October 20, one of the closest approaches of any comet in the last few centuries.
Hartley 2 is already visible as a pale green streak in the W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia.
...
October 20 marks the closest approach of Hartley 2 to Earth since its discovery in 1986. But two weeks later, a spacecraft from Earth will get closer still. The NASA EPOXI mission (formerly known as Deep Impact) will fly within 435 miles of the comet’s icy nucleus on November 4 — only the fifth time ever that a spacecraft has been close enough to image a comet’s core.
Discovery News: Mercury's Tail Makes it a 'Comet-Planet'
Analysis by Ray Villard
As if the debate over what is and what is not a planet hasn't gotten confusing enough, we are beginning to see a class of object that could be called "Comet-Planets."
The innermost planet Mercury has been photographed spouting a faint comet-like tail. Unlike a comet, which is a sublimating ball of dusty ices, Mercury is bone dry. This tail is created by a gusher of solar radiation accelerating sodium atoms off Mercury's surface. They absorb enough energy to escape the planet's gravitational pull and zoom off into space. The pressure of the solar wind sweeps back the expanding cloud into a windsock-like tail.
The sodium tail had been detected behind Mercury during the first two flybys of NASA’s MESSENGER probe, in January and October 2008. It was much fainter in the third flyby in 2009. This was probably due to the fact that Mercury was in a different part of its elliptical orbit. The sun was a little father away and so there was less energy for turbo-boosting the surface sodium atoms.
Florida Today: USA lays off nearly 900 workers | VIDEO
BY DAVE BERMAN • and JAMES DEAN • October 2, 2010
CAPE CANAVERAL — They knew for months that this day was coming.
But for many of the United Space Alliance shuttle workers leaving a company building in Cape Canaveral on Friday, the realization that they were out of work finally sunk in with a single task that took only a few seconds -- handing over their company and NASA security badges.
It was the last thing they did before walking out the door.
Reuters: China launches second lunar exploration probe
By Ben Blanchard
BEIJING | Sat Oct 2, 2010 10:14am EDT
China launched its second lunar exploration probe on Friday, boosting the country's efforts to rise as a major space power eventually capable of landing a man on the moon and perhaps one day exploring far beyond.
The Chang'e-2 lunar orbiter blasted off from a remote corner of the southwestern province of Sichuan a few seconds before 7 p.m. (7 a.m. EDT), state media said, on the same day the country celebrates 61 years since the founding of Communist China.
"Chang'e-2 lays foundation for the soft-landing on the moon and further exploration of outer space," Xinhua news agency quoted head of the orbiter's design team Wu Weiren as saying.
"It (will) travel faster and closer to the moon, and it will capture clear pictures," Wu added.
Discovery News: Russian Firm Plans Commercial Space Station
Analysis by Irene Klotz
Buoyed by plans for commercial space taxis, a Russian company plans to build and launch a privately owned outpost in orbit for tourists, scientists and other paying visitors.
RSC Energia, which designed and built the Russian modules of the International Space Station, is partnering with Russian commercial space startup Orbital Technologies to manufacture the new hub, currently known as Commercial Space Station.
Unlike the International Space Station, the CSS will be assembled on the ground and put into orbit by a single Soyuz rocket, according to Orbital Technologies CEO Sergey Kostenko.
Discovery News: 'Franken-Ship' Proposed From Space Shuttle Scraps
NASA's 30-year old space shuttles may see a second life as their parts are used for new rockets.
By Irene Klotz
Ditch the space shuttle orbiters. Stretch their rocket boosters. Add more main engines. Put a capsule on top. What do you have? Franken-ship -- the quickest route to a new rocket for NASA.
Briefing charts obtained by the NASA Watch website show a new vehicle that puts three disposable shuttle main engines on a shuttle fuel tank, a pair of solid rocket boosters on either side of the tank, and a capsule on top, replacing the side-mounted shuttle orbiter.
That incarnation can carry 70 tons into orbit, says the Human Exploration Framework Team, an in-house NASA advisory panel.
Evolution/Paleontology
Salt Lake Tribune: Discovery of dino skulls in Grand-Staircase will have ‘huge impact’
By Mark Havnes
Kanab • The skulls of Utah’s prehistoric lizards keep rolling out of the country’s largest national monument with the two newest ones so unusual that when unveiled this week, their discovery will have a global impact.
That was the message during last week’s lecture from paleontologist Scott Sampson, author, research curator for the Utah Museum of Natural History and host of the children’s science program "Dinosaur Train" on PBS.
Although the names of the new species of horned dinosaurs will not be announced until Wednesday at the museum in Salt Lake City, Sampson said their significance lies in helping scientists determine that horned dinosaurs living at the same time in different areas of the continent evolved differently.
Hat/tip to jlms qkw, who sent in this article.
This Day in History from The History Channel:
Oct 2, 1836: Darwin returns to England
The British naturalist Charles Darwin returns to Falmouth, England, aboard the HMS Beagle, ending a five-year surveying expedition of the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Visiting such diverse places as Brazil, the Galapagos Islands, and New Zealand, Darwin acquired an intimate knowledge of the flora, fauna, and geology of many lands. This information proved invaluable in the development of his theory of evolution, first put forth in his groundbreaking scientific work of 1859, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
Wired: How Plants Drove First Animals Onto Land
By Brandon Keim
About 350 million years ago, evolution took one small step for fish, and a giant leap for every terrestrial animal since. According to a new study, it was all made possible by plants.
Prehistoric oxygen levels extrapolated from ancient mineral sediments suggest aquatic life went into overdrive after plants boosted atmospheric oxygen levels. Oceans became so fiercely competitive that some fish sought safe haven outside them.
Some scientists have proposed as much, but the new research, published Sept. 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides the first solid evidence.
"Before this paper, there was essentially no experimental evidence for how oxygen accumulated through animal history. It was only predicted by theory," said Tais Dahl, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Southern Denmark’s Nordic Center for Earth Evolution.
Discovery News: Underwater T.Rex-Like Carnivores Built to Kill
These extinct relatives of crocodiles sunk their sharp, serrated teeth into prey and then spun, ripping out chunks of flesh.
By Jennifer Viegas
Like an underwater T. Rex, marine mega meat-eaters ripped into prey with massive, serrated teeth some 171 to 136 million years ago to satisfy a diet of at least 70 percent flesh.
What's more, metriorhynchids, the extinct relatives of today's crocodiles, had a killing skill that T. Rex lacked: The death roll. The creatures would sink their teeth into prey and then spin their bodies in the water to tear out large chunks of flesh.
New findings show how adaptations for a mega meat-eating lifestyle extended to some full-time water dwellers as well as to certain land-based animals, like dinosaurs.
BBC: Ancient giant penguin unearthed in Peru
By Katia Moskvitch
Science reporter, BBC News
The fossil of a giant penguin that lived 36 million years ago has been discovered in Peru.
Scientists say the find shows that key features of the plumage were present quite early on in penguin evolution.
The team told Science magazine that the animal's feathers were brown and grey, distinct from the black "tuxedo" look of modern penguins.
It was about 1.5m (5ft) tall and nearly twice as heavy as an Emperor Penguin, the largest living species.
The bird, named Inkayacu paracasensis, or Water King, waddled the Earth during the late Eocene period.
Biodiversity
Agence France Presse via Discovery News: 20 Percent of Plant Species Face Extinction
The loss of more than a fifth of the planet's 380,000 plants is potentially catastrophic for life on Earth.
More than a fifth of the world's plant species faces the threat of extinction, a trend with potentially catastrophic effects for life on Earth, according to research released on Wednesday.
But a separate study cautioned that extinction of mammals had been overestimated and suggested some mammal species thought to have been wiped out may yet be rediscovered.
Stephen Hopper, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London, said the report on plant loss was the most accurate mapping yet of the threat to the planet's estimated 380,000 plant species.
"This study confirms what we already suspected, that plants are under threat and the main cause is human-induced habitat loss," Hopper said at the launch of the so-called Sampled Red List Index.
Discovery News: Clams Dwindle as CO2 Rises
Analysis by Michael Reilly
The number of shelled creatures in the ocean is truly dizzying. And we need them -- they are keystone species for everything from building coral reefs to anchoring the ocean food chain to making a killer linguine and clam sauce.
But as carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, ocean water becomes more acidic. And shellfish have trouble growing their shells.
Scientists have worried for years about ocean acidification affecting shelled creatures in the future, but according to a new study, it's already happening, and has been for over a hundred years.
Discovery News: India Facing Crop Shortage as Pollinators Disappear
Analysis by Michael Reilly
When Colony Collapse Disorder swept through American and European bee populations in 2007, the western world was alerted to a startling fact: a huge portion of our food supply rests on the industrious pollinating habits of honey bees.
Now India, home to nearly 1.2 billion people, is facing a similar problem. The country's pollinators are dwindling and its supply of nutritious vegetables like eggplant, squashes, and cucumbers, may be in jeopardy.
In a report presented at the British Ecological Society, Parthiba Basu of the University of Calcutta's Ecology Research Unit found that the country's pollinators, which include many small insects as well as bees, were in decline, but he and colleagues were at a loss to explain why.
New Scientist: Zoologger: Horror fly returns from the dead
by Rowan Hooper
This week: a mythical beast, not seen for more than 160 years. A nocturnal animal that feeds on the rotten flesh of large mammals. A species active only during the winter months that reportedly emits a luminous glow from its large, orange head. What new horror is this?
It's a fly, the bone skipper Thyreophora cynophila, and it is back from the dead. Considered globally extinct until now, the first fly to be killed off by humans, the bone skipper was first described by an entomologist who found it on the carcass of a dog in 1798. Last seen in the 1840s, it has now been rediscovered by Daniel Martín-Vega and colleagues of the University of Alcalá in Madrid, Spain. The fly turned up in baited traps in woodland around Madrid and in La Rioja province.
As might be expected of a species described as "mythical" even by entomologists and that until recently hadn't been seen in living memory, little is known of its feeding ecology or its behaviour. But we can make some educated guesses.
National Geographic News: BO Attracting Predators to Birds
Adding deodorant to New Zealand nests may be one solution, scientist says.
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
Published September 29, 2010
New Zealand's native-bird BO is so pungent, it's alerting predators to the birds' presence, ongoing research shows.
The smells may drive some species to extinction, unless conservationists take unorthodox measures, such as adding "deodorant" to bird nests, according to biologist Jim Briskie of Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Many bird scents stem from a gland that produces waxes essential to keeping feathers healthy.
In Europe and the Americas, birds' bodies alter this preening wax during breeding season, changing the wax's composition to reduce smells and keep the birds' nests less detectable by predators that use their noses to find food.
Wired: A Third of ‘Extinct’ Mammals May Still Be Alive
By Brian Switek
There may be many more "extinct" mammals waiting to be rediscovered than conservation biologists previously thought.
Categorizing a mammal species as extinct has rested upon two criteria: It has not been seen for more than 50 years, or an exhaustive search has come up empty. But "extinct" species occasionally turn up again, and some species have disappeared more than once. Australia’s desert rat kangaroo, for example, was rediscovered in 1931 after having gone missing for almost a century, only to disappear again in 1935 when invasive red foxes moved into the area of the remaining survivors.
In order to determine how often extinct species had been rediscovered, University of Queensland scientists Diana Fisher and Simon Blomberg created a dataset of 187 mammal species that have been reported extinct, extinct in the wild, or probably extinct since 1500, as well as those which have been rediscovered. They also looked at historical data on the threats that caused species to become extinct — or brought them close to it — including habitat loss, introduced species and overkill by humans.
It turns out that rumors of the extinction of more than a third of these species have turned out to be premature, the scientists report in Proceedings of the Royal Society B Sept. 29. At least 67 species — a little more than a third of those presumed to be extinct — were later found again. And in most cases, these were animals that had been hardest hit by habitat loss.
Biotechnology/Health
Discovery News: Air Pollution Strongly Linked to Diabetes
Analysis by Michael Reilly
What's causing the diabetes epidemic in the United States? Poor diet, lack of exercise, obesity, and a smoking habit are commonly cited as the big factors. But what about pollution in the environment, and specifically air pollution? Could small particles from haze, smoke and car exhaust have a hand in doubling the number of diagnosed cases of the disease over the last 15 years?
A new study argues there is a strong link between pollution and diabetes rates, and that even current pollution limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency may not be stringent enough to protect us from harm.
Measuring the health effects of particulate pollution is a tricky business -- generally speaking, the smaller the particle, the more easily it can get inside your lungs and into your bloodstream. Studies suggest that anything smaller than ten micrometers in diameter (about a tenth the diameter of a human hair) is problematic, increasing the risk of asthma, heart disease, and stroke.
Climate/Environment
Discovery News: Summer of 2010 was the 4th Warmest on Record
Analysis by John D. Cox
Global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere summer of 2010 were slightly below 2009, but NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies reports that the season was still the 4th warmest in 131 years of records.
Regional differences were naturally variable, but GISS Director James Hansen said the global differences from last year to this were the result of changing ocean conditions in the Tropics. "2010 was a bit cooler than 2009 mainly because a moderate El Nino in the equatorial Pacific Ocean during late 2009 and early 2010 has been replaced by a moderate La Nina," he said.
Idaho State Journal: Heat wave topples old record in Pocatello
By Sean Ellis sellis@journalnet.com
P
OCATELLO — Sunday’s high of 90 degrees was an all-time record for that day in Pocatello and a few more records could be erased before the week is over.
Sunday’s high at the Pocatello Airport broke the previous record for Sept. 26 of 87 degrees set in 1978 and the predicted high for the rest of the week is in the upper 80s.
Los Angeles wasn't the only location with record high temperatures.
Also, climate change doesn't just mean "global warming," it also means more extreme weather of all kinds.
A record low temperature of 28 degrees was set Sept. 7, breaking the previous mark of 31 degrees set in 1992.
Wired: Tiny Plankton Could Steer Giant Hurricanes
By Duncan Geere, Wired UK
Microscopic plants less than half a centimeter across may be able to change the paths of 300-mile-wide tropical storms, due to their ability to change the color of the surface of the sea.
Phytoplankton is as common in the oceans as grass is on land, and blooms when cold, nutrient-rich water upwells from the depths. That bloom turns the ocean surface from a deep dark blue to a murky turquoise, henceforth known as murkquoise.
The murkquoise stops the sun from penetrating as far as it normally does into the surface of the sea, making the surface layer much warmer, and the depths cooler. As a result, hurricanes tend to be stronger and last longer.
Geology
Idaho State Journal: ISU researchers study newly discovered earthquake fault in Sawtooth Mountains
POCATELLO — While looking at a highly detailed new topographic image of Idaho’s Sawtooth Range, Idaho State University geosciences professor Glenn Thackray had an "eureka moment" when he discovered a previously unknown active earthquake fault about 65 miles, as the crow flies, from Boise.
ISU researchers estimate the fault has been active twice in the last 10,000 years, about 4,100 and 7,000 years ago.
...
Four years ago while doing some research on glaciers in the Sawtooth Range, Thackray was examining a high-resolution, "bare-earth" LIDAR image of the mountains: this is when he noticed a line running through the image in the vicinity of Redfish Lake.
"The black line stood out and I thought that it had to be an earthquake fault," Thackray said. "It was long suspected that there was an active fault in the Sawtooths, but without the LIDAR technology it would have been exceptionally hard to find."
Psychology/Behavior
Wired: Intelligent Individuals Don’t Make Groups Smarter
By Brandon Keim
An early effort at defining general intelligence in groups suggests that individual brainpower contributes little to collective smarts.
Instead, it’s social awareness — the ability to pick up on emotional cues in others — that seems to determine how smart a group can be.
"We lack a shared criterion in predicting which groups will perform well and which won’t," said psychologist Anita Woolley of Carnegie Mellon University. "There’s an underlying factor that seems to drive how individuals perform in multiple domains. I wondered if that was true of groups as well."
Wired: Monkeys See Selves in Mirror, Open a Barrel of Questions
By Brandon Keim
Monkeys may possess cognitive abilities once thought unique to humans, raising questions about the nature of animal awareness and our ability to measure it.
In the lab of University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Luis Populin, five rhesus macaques seem to recognize their own reflections in a mirror. Monkeys weren’t supposed to do this.
"We thought these subjects didn’t have this ability. The indications are that if you fail the mark test, you’re not self-aware. This opens up a whole field of possibilities," Populin said.
Archeology/Anthropology
Physorg.com: Sifting through S. Africa's archaeological riches
September 28, 2010 By Robyn Dixon
When Morris Sutton picks a chipped, ordinary-looking rock from the soil, he's the first to touch the stone tool since an ancestor of man used it nearly 2 million years ago.
In his dim, cool cavern at the bottom of a 30-foot ladder, he feels the wonder of it, breathing in the loamy smell, peering through a window deep into time.
Sutton, 47, an archaeologist, was a Memphis, Tenn., factory manager who grew tired of the flat horizon of commerce and manufacturing and of laying off fellow employees.
So he quit to pursue his hobby: hunting for fossils and Stone Age tools. He went back to college to study archaeology and later moved to South Africa, where he is a postdoctoral researcher with the Institute for Human Evolution at Witwatersrand University.
South Africa is a mecca for archaeologists from around the world; its fossils cover an unbroken sweep of prehistoric time, from the first smudge of life through the dinosaur era to early hominids and beyond. Some of the world's most significant fossils were discovered here: the Taung child, Little Foot and, in April, a young male hominid, believed to be a new species, Australopithecus sediba, whose remains appear to be nearly 2 million years old.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Early humans in PNG highlands 50,000 years ago
By Emma Pollard
Scientists have uncovered the world's oldest known high-altitude human settlement in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
A team of archaeologists discovered a series of campsites dating back 49,000 years buried under volcanic ash in the mountains near Kokoda.
They learned the prehistoric highlanders made stone tools, hunted small animals and ate yams and pandanus nuts.
Dr Andrew Fairbairn from the University of Queensland says it is a rare discovery.
"On a global scale, this is actually very early. I mean Homo sapiens are just getting into the southern parts of Europe," he said.
Xinhua via People's Daily (China): China Cultural, Archaeological News in Brief: Prehistoric ruins found in north China
PREHISTORIC RUINS FOUND IN INNER MONGOLIA
Archaeologists have confirmed ruins discovered in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region date back 40,000 to 50,000 years, to the late Paleolithic Period.
...
ANCIENT CITY WALL DISCOVERED IN SOUTH CHINA'S ISLAND PROVINCE
Chinese archaeologists have discovered a 50-meter-long city wall from the Song Dynasty (960-1279) on southern China's island province of Hainan.
New Kerala (India): Australian Aborigines reached America first?
Sydney, Oct 1 : Scientists have discovered hundreds of skulls in Central and South America, some dating back to over 11,000 years ago, that have cranial features distinctive to Australian Aborigines.
The oldest female skeleton, dubbed Luzia, is between 11,000 and 11,400 years old. The dating is not exact because the material in the bones used for dating has long since degraded.
Evolutionary biologist Walter Neves of the University of Sao Paulo examined these skeletons and recovered others, and argued that there is now a mass evidence indicating that at least two different populations colonised the Americas.
He and colleagues in the United States, Germany and Chile argued that first population was closely related to the Australian Aborigines and arrived more than 11,000 years ago.
Western Mail (UK) via Wales Online: ‘Atlantis’ hunt for hidden Wales
Sep 25 2010 by Sally Williams, Western Mail
ARCHAEOLOGISTS are searching for a tribal undersea equivalent of the lost civilisation of Atlantis off the Welsh coast.
Archaeologist Dr Andrew Petersen, who earlier this year unearthed a town – complete with a fort, mosque and homes – which had been lost beneath the coastal sands at Ras al-Sharig, Qatar, for centuries, is now turning his attention to Wales.
Working with a team of Welsh academics, he plans to help map some of the ancient underwater landscapes which have remained hidden just miles out to sea from the coastal towns of Wales for thousands of years.
He says evidence of dry stone and willow walls which are a familiar aspect of the Welsh mountainous landscape today can also be found in the nation’s hidden seascape, together with fossil forests and peat bogs.
Meadville Tribune (Pennsylvania): Digging into the distant past locally
By David Coy SPECIAL TO THE MEADVILLE TRIBUNE The Meadville Tribune Mon Sep 27, 2010, 07:30 AM EDT
MEADVILLE — It is late July in a former potato field next to a swamp in northwestern Pennsylvania, southern Crawford County. You are on your knees, sweating, digging, really getting your hands dirty.
But you are not digging for potatoes. There are no mosquitoes under the hot sun today, thank God, but there may have been 12,000 years ago when the local residents were here hunting, beside a lake. The lake is now gone, having been replaced by a large swamp that is an arm of the Conneaut Outlet, and without doubt the vegetation looks very different in the summer of 2010 than it did all those thousands of years ago.
Modern Crawford County residents hunt here for the white-tailed deer and waterfowl, mostly, with some pheasant, turkey and rabbit harvesting as well. But the earlier occupants of this territory were out for more varied and some bigger game: mastodons and mammoths, caribou, bear and others.
Physorg.com: No evidence for ancient comet or Clovis catastrophe, archaeologists say
September 29, 2010
(PhysOrg.com) -- New research challenges the controversial theory that the impact of an ancient comet devastated the Clovis people, one of the earliest known cultures to inhabit North America.
Writing in the October issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologists David Meltzer, Southern Methodist University, and Vance Holliday, University of Arizona, argue that there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest an abrupt collapse of Clovis populations.
"Whether or not the proposed extraterrestrial impact occurred is a matter for empirical testing in the geological record," the researchers write.
"In so far as concerns the archaeological record, an extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that does not exist."
Discovery News: Stonehenge Drew Prehistoric Tourists
Analysis by Rossella Lorenzi
Stonehenge’s circle of large standing stones was a top international tourist attraction already in prehistoric times, according to chemical analysis of the teeth of individuals found buried near the mysterious megaliths.
Presented this week at a science symposium in London to mark the 175th anniversary of the British Geological Survey (BGS), the study involved a technique known as isotope analysis, which measures the ratio of strontium and oxygen isotopes in tooth enamel.
Strontium isotopes provide information on the geological setting of a person’s childhood, while the oxygen isotopes can pinpoint the climate in which the subject was raised.
The News Star (Louisiana): Poverty Point considered for UN list
By Greg Hilburn • ghilburn@thenewsstar.com • September 30, 2010
Louisiana's Poverty Point State Historic Site could one day be mentioned with the same historical significance of such cultural and natural sites as the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, the Great Wall of China, the Statue of Liberty and the Galapagos Islands.
The vast complex of earthen mounds and ridges in West Carroll Parish built by inhabitants more than 3,500 years ago is among 13 sites on the U.S. Department of Interior's tentative list of places that could be nominated to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Heritage List.
"The inclusion of Poverty Point on the World Heritage List would elevate the status of both the site and our park system tremendously," said Stuart Johnson, assistant secretary of Louisiana's Office of State Parks. "It would be absolutely huge to reach that level of distinction."
There are only 911 such designated sites in the world and none in Louisiana or in any state contiguous to Louisiana.
Wharfdale Observer (UK): Archaeologists find ‘tomb of tribal king’ hidden on moor
7:40am Sunday 26th September 2010
By Jim Jack
A prehistoric cairn circle which may have been the tomb of a tribal king has been identified on Askwith Moor.
The discovery at Snowden Crags was made by the same group of antiquarians who uncovered evidence of several other cairns, or ancient graveyards, on the moor earlier this year.
Antiquarian Paul Bennett – aided by friends Michala Douglas, Dave Hazell, Robert Hopkins, Paul Hornby and Geoff Watson in finding and examining the spot – is convinced the large circle is an important find.
Sofia News Agency (Bulgaria): Archaeologists Mull Displaying St. John Relics in Sofia
The relics of St. John the Baptist, which were found in July near the Bulgarian Black Sea town of Sozopol, might be lying in state in Sofia on November 21.
During a discussion on the remains, it was announced that the date was chosen to coincide with the Day of the Christian Family.
The discovery of the Bulgarian archaeologist Kazimir Popkonstantinov caused tension in the archaeological community in the country.
Some of the archaeologists have stated that the triumph over the relics of St. John the Baptist were premature.
People's Daily (China): 1,000-year-old tomb found at Anhui construction site
11:00, September 28, 2010
Six cultural relics, including a pottery jar and pot as well as damaged pottery spindle whorl and an iron sword, were recently unearthed out of a 1,000-year-old tomb from the Southern Dynasties period found at a construction site on Huangguan Road in a chemical industry park in Anqing, Anhui Province.
The relics were handed over to the Anqing Museum on Sept. 25.
The Anqing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage received a call on Sept. 15 saying that an ancient tomb was discovered at a construction site in the Anqing Chemical Industry Park and archeologists were expected to investigate.
The administration immediately dispatched a group of archeologists to the tomb who later identified that it was indeed an ancient tomb. Therefore, the administration immediately put the tomb under protection and submitted an application to the Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology for more experts to jointly carry out archaeological excavations. The institute soon approved the application and sent out their experts.
The Telegraph (Calcutta, India): Mixed role of archaeology
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Lucknow, Sept. 30: Archaeological evidence gathered from Ayodhya seven years ago could not go far in settling the dispute over ownership of land, with each judge interpreting it differently today.
One of the questions in court was "whether the pillars inside and outside the disputed mosque had any images of Hindu gods". The temple petitioners had claimed that human and animal figurines on the pillars belonged to the age of Ram.
The three-judge bench of Allahabad High Court had on March 5, 2003, said that "archaeological evidence is important to decide the issue if there was any temple" on the disputed land.
But on the basis of reports submitted by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the three judges today held different views on the issue.
The Oregonian via Oregon Live: Quest to uncover Fort Vancouver's past grows
Dean Baker, special to The Oregonian
After 42 years of digging up the past, archaeologists at the site of 185-year-old Fort Vancouver extended their reach this summer.
With the help of students and professors from two universities, they excavated the seventh of 15 houses they believe housed fort workers on the Columbia River, just northeast of today's Interstate Bridge, in the 1840s and 1850s.
The houses made up Kanaka Village, some 300 yards west of today's reconstructed fort.
Bearing a Hawaiian moniker, the town was home to about 600 servants and workers of the British fur trading Hudson's Bay Co. They were members of some 30 Native American tribes, from Iroquois to Chinook, plus Hawaiians, French Canadians, Scots, Irish and other Europeans. They worked several hundred acres of farm fields as well as a shipyard, grist mill, sawmill, tannery and distillery.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman, who sent in the above articles.
Physics
Discovery News: US Lab Simulates the Awesome Power of Galactic Mergers
Analysis by Ian O'Neill
The scales are mind-boggling and the physics is cutting edge, so how do you go about simulating the collision of two galactic clusters? Using some of the most powerful computers in the world, researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, the Flash Center at the University of Chicago and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have done just that.
A galactic cluster is a group of galaxies held together under their mutual gravity. Occasionally -- during universal history spanning time scales of billions of years -- two clusters will slam into each other at breakneck speeds. But considering these collisions occur in volumes of space measuring in the megaparsecs (one megaparsec is equal to over 3.2 million light-years), it's easy to see why these events take billions of years to merge.
Wired: Ultrafast Laser Pulse Makes Desktop Black Hole Glow
By Lisa Grossman
A desktop black hole created in a lab in Italy has been shown to emit light, a discovery that could seal one of the biggest holes in theoretical physics and pave the way for physicist Stephen Hawking to win a Nobel Prize.
The eerie glow is called Hawking radiation, and physicists have been hunting it for decades. Hawking calculated in 1974 that, rather than gobbling up everything in their path and giving nothing back, black holes can radiate like the heating element in a toaster.
But astrophysical black holes, the ultradense gobs of mass that lurk at the centers of galaxies and are left behind when stars collapse, radiate too dimly to be seen. So instead of looking at real black holes, a group of physicists led by laser physicist Daniele Faccio of Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, created a miniature analog by shooting short pulses of intense laser light into a chip of glass. The results will appear in Physical Review Letters.
Chemistry
Science News: Tiny tools aren’t toys
Enzyme-based machinery could have medical applications
By Rachel Ehrenberg
Tiny tools that may one day deliver or collect things in the body are built in an open position (far left) but snap shut when triggered with enzymes (left to right). D. Gracias et al/JACS 2010Researchers have created millimeter-sized metal tools that contort on command, clamping shut or popping open in response to specific chemical cues. The smart devices, described online September 17 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, may one day be used to biopsy a liver, prop open an artery or deliver drugs to a target site.
Even tiny tools need some power source — a battery pack or electrical wires — but that adds unwanted bulk, says study leader David Gracias of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Yet nature is filled with minimachines: muscles contract, leaves turn to the sun, a Venus fly trap snaps shut. "In nature, and in us, these respond to chemistry," Gracias says.
Energy
Reuters: Electric cars arrive, pose test for grids
By Helen Massy-Beresford and Gilles Guillaume
PARIS | Fri Oct 1, 2010 2:09pm EDT
Top automakers finally have electric cars ready to purr into dealer showrooms. Now the question is whether the charging infrastructure and electricity supply are up to the task.
Industry watchers question if power grids can cope with the influx of electric vehicles, even though EVs are likely to remain, at least at first, a fraction of the new car market.
But as CO2 emissions rules tighten, carmakers need to take action. "We need a radical solution," Renault and Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said at the Paris Auto Show.
Discovery News: My Test Drive of the Chevy Volt, and A's To Your Q's
Analysis by Tracy Staedter
This past weekend, I was in Dallas to attend the Electric Vehicle Showcase at the Texas State Fair. Texas may not immediately come to mind whenever talk about electric cars creeps into conversation. After all this is oil country, right? But it's also wind country. Of the top 5 states producing the most wind energy, Texas ranks number one, according to the American Wind Energy Association's latest numbers from 2009. Here they are:
1.Texas 9,405 MW
2.Iowa: 3,670 MW
3.California 2,723 MW
4.Washington 1,908 MW
5.Oregon: 1,821 MW
The state is also building out 400 miles of transmission lines that will help export wind energy generated in west Texas as far away as Atlanta, Ga., where wind energy capability is practically nonexistent.
What does wind energy have to do with electric vehicles? Ideally, charging stations would get their electricity from a renewable source, such as wind, and not from coal- or natural gas-fueled power stations.
Science, Space, Environment, and Energy Policy
Reuters: Obama expected to sign NASA budget soon: official
By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Thu Sep 30, 2010 6:03pm EDT
President Barack Obama is expected early next month to sign into law a new NASA budget that adds a space shuttle mission, begins work on a new deep-space rocket and seeds development of commercial space taxis, the agency's deputy administrator said on Thursday.
The budget authorization bill for the space agency passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 304 to 118 late on Wednesday after passing the Senate earlier.
"The President is expected to sign this," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver told reporters, adding that the signing would likely occur within 10 days.
N.Y. Times: U.S. Issues New Rules on Offshore Drilling
By JOHN M. BRODER
WASHINGTON — The Interior Department tightened its rules on offshore oil and gas operations on Thursday but left in place the moratorium on deepwater drilling that has left oil executives frustrated and Gulf Coast officials fuming.
The new rules — governing well casing and cementing, blowout preventers, safety certification, emergency response and worker training — provide offshore drillers with clarity on the terms under which drilling will resume when the current freeze ends.
The main conditions had already been telegraphed by the department in a safety report issued in May and in two notices to offshore operators handed down in June in response to the blowout of a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20.
Reuters: Appeals court allows stem cell funds to continue
By Jeremy Pelofsky
WASHINGTON | Wed Sep 29, 2010 5:34am EDT
A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday allowed federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research to continue pending a full appeal, lifting an injunction issued by a federal judge who had said the Obama administration's policy violated the law.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Obama administration had "satisfied the standards required for a stay pending appeal" of the injunction imposed by the judge last month.
Judge Royce Lamberth ruled the National Institutes of Health guidelines on the research violated the law because embryos were destroyed in the process and it put other researchers working with adult stem cells at a competitive disadvantage for federal grants.
The Obama administration challenged his ruling and asked the appeals court to put it on hold pending its decision on the merits of the dispute. The appeals court ordered an expedited schedule for arguments.
N.Y. Times: Egypt and Thirsty Neighbors Are at Odds Over Nile
By THANASSIS CAMBANIS
Published: September 25, 2010
BATAMDA, Egypt — One place to begin to understand why this parched country has nearly ruptured relations with its upstream neighbors on the Nile is ankle-deep in mud in the cotton and maize fields of Mohammed Abdallah Sharkawi. The price he pays for the precious resource flooding his farm? Nothing.
"Thanks be to God," Mr. Sharkawi said of the Nile River water. He raised his hands to the sky, then gestured toward a state functionary visiting his farm. "Everything is from God, and from the ministry."
But perhaps not for much longer. Upstream countries, looking to right what they say are historic wrongs, have joined in an attempt to break Egypt and Sudan’s near-monopoly on the water, threatening a crisis that Egyptian experts said could, at its most extreme, lead to war.
People's Daily (China): China issues first provincial regulation on climate change
Northwest China' s Qinghai on Wednesday became the first province to establish a regulation that holds local governments and state-owned enterprises responsible in coping with climate change.
Called Qinghai' s Regulations of Coping with Climate Change, issued by the provincial government Wednesday and scheduled to take effect on Oct. 1, the regulations will cover the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which has one of the most fragile ecological systems in the world.
Energy savings, emissions reductions, water resource conservation and other works related to climate change will be considered when evaluating senior officials of governments and state-owned enterprises administered by Qinghai, the new regulation stipulates.
Science Writing and Reporting
Science News: Book Review: Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception
By Charles Seife
Review by Alexandra Witze
The 2000 U.S. presidential election should have been decided by a coin flip.
Or so argues Seife, a mathematician-turned-journalist who tackles some of society’s biggest math problems in his new book. The race between George W. Bush and Al Gore was, mathematically speaking, too close to call. So, Seife suggests, instead of counting chads, the contested state of Florida should have relied on an age-old procedure for breaking a tie: drawing lots.
Science Education and Science is Cool
Philadelphia Inquirer: Scientists will be taking it to the streets in spring
By Tom Avril
Inquirer Staff Writer
A man in a baseball cap parked a big telescope in an unlikely location recently: the sidewalk at Second and Chestnut Streets. He offered the nighttime crowd in Old City a chance to look at the heavens, but he was also on a scouting mission of sorts.
Derrick Pitts was testing the city's appetite for a serious avalanche of science.
It was just the merest taste of what is coming here next spring. On Monday, the Franklin Institute and two dozen partners plan to announce the first Philadelphia Science Festival, a two-week celebration of science starting April 15.
The festivities include an outdoor science carnival on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a science night with the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park, movies, lectures, hands-on experiments, demonstrations, and quiz shows. Expect to run into scientists throughout the city where you'd least expect them: restaurants, bars, and, yes, sidewalks.
Hat/Tip to annetteboardman for this story.
People's Daily (China): 2010 Alternative Nobel Prizes awarded in Sweden
The 2010 Right Livelihood Awards, also known as the alternative nobel, was given in Stockholm Thursday to human rights and environment activists from Nigeria, Brazil and Nepal.
They are Nnimmo Bassey from Nigeria, Bishop Erwin Krautler from Brazil, Shrikrishna Upadhyay from Nepal and the organization Physicians for Human Rights Israel, according to the Right Livelihood Award Foundation.
Each of them will receive 50,000 euros (about 74,000 U.S. dollars).
People's Daily (China): Six panda lovers crowned "pambassadors" in west China
Forget the "Super Girls" and all the American idol-like talent shows. For now, China's super stars are those people who know everything about giant pandas.
Six panda lovers have been named as "pambassadors" after the grand finals of a global competition for panda keepers held Wednesday afternoon in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province.
Wang Yu-wen, a university student from Taiwan, stood out as the champion of the contest. The five other winners hail from the Chinese mainland, Japan, Sweden, France and the United States.