Beginning next week (January 2, 2012) Science Tidbits is moving to Morning Open Thread. Posting will be 6:30AM ET on Monday mornings. Hope to see you one and all in the new digs.
Monday afternoon here in Possum Valley and the time has arrived once again for science talk. New discoveries, new takes on old knowledge, and other bits of news are all available for the perusing in today's information world. Over the fold are selections from the past week from a few of the many excellent science news sites around the world. Today's tidbits include a human skull study that causes an evolutionary headache, a new kind of metal in the deep Earth, novel device removes heavy metals from water, new device could bring optical transmission and more powerful supercomputers, a possible link between earthquakes and tropical cyclones, and a new eco-friendly foliar spray provides natural anti-freeze. Pull up that comfy chair and grab a spot near the fireside. There is always plenty of room for everyone. Another session of Dr. Possum's science education and entertainment is set to begin.
Featured Stories
Changes in the human skull once thought to have been separate evolutionary issues may have precipitated by one another instead.
Researchers at the Universities of Manchester and Barcelona examined 390 skulls from the Austrian town of Hallstatt and found evidence that the human skull is highly integrated, meaning variation in one part of the skull is linked to changes throughout the skull.
The Austrian skulls are part of a famous collection kept in the Hallstatt Catholic Church ossuary; local tradition dictates that the remains of the town’s dead are buried but later exhumed to make space for future burials. The skulls are also decorated with paintings and, crucially, bear the name of the deceased. The Barcelona team made measurements of the skulls and collected genealogical data from the church’s records of births, marriages and deaths, allowing them to investigate the inheritance of skull shape.
The team tested whether certain parts of the skull – the face, the cranial base and the skull vault or brain case – changed independently, as anthropologists have always believed, or were in some way linked. The scientists simulated the shift of the foramen magnum (where the spinal cord enters the skull) associated with upright walking; the retraction of the face, thought to be linked to language development and perhaps chewing; and the expansion and rounding of the top of the skull, associated with brain expansion. They found that, rather than being separate evolutionary events, changes in one part of the brain would facilitate and even drive changes in the other parts.
Deep within the Earth's interior the pressures and heat are intense, squeezing atoms and electrons close together.
New experiments and supercomputer computations discovered that iron oxide undergoes a new kind of transition under deep Earth conditions. Iron oxide, FeO, is a component of the second most abundant mineral at Earth’s lower mantle, ferropericlase.
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Compounds typically undergo structural, chemical, electronic, and other changes under these extremes. Contrary to previous thought, the iron oxide went from an insulating (non-electrical conducting) state to become a highly conducting metal at 690,000 atmospheres and 3000°F, but without a change to its structure. Previous studies had assumed that metallization in FeO was associated with a change in its crystal structure. This result means that iron oxide can be both an insulator and a metal depending on temperature and pressure conditions.
Heavy metals released from a number of manufacturing processes remain in water for many years and may pose human health risks even at low concentrations.
It took a few years to build and develop the system. In the paper, the authors describe how it works. The CEP system involves two main units, one to concentrate the cations and another to turn them into stable, solid-state metals and remove them. In the first stage, the metal-laden water is fed into a tank in which an acid (sulfuric acid) or base (sodium hydroxide) is added to change the water’s pH, effectively separating the water molecules from the metal precipitate, which settles at the bottom. The “clear” water is siphoned off, and more contaminated water is brought in. The pH swing is applied again, first redissolving the precipitate and then reprecipitating all the metal, increasing the metal concentration each time. This process is repeated until the concentration of the metal cations in the solution has reached a point at which electrowinning can be efficiently employed.
When that point is reached, the solution is sent to a second device, called a spouted particulate electrode (SPE). This is where the electrowinning takes place, and the metal cations are chemically changed to stable metal solids so they can be easily removed. The engineers used an SPE developed by Hradil, a senior research engineer at Technic Inc., located in Cranston, R.I. The cleaner water is returned to the precipitation tank, where metal ions can be precipitated once again. Further cleaned, the supernatant water is sent to another reservoir, where additional processes may be employed to further lower the metal ion concentration levels. These processes can be repeated in an automated, cyclic fashion as many times as necessary to achieve the desired performance, such as to federal drinking water standards.
The process is said to be scaleable allowing for commercial applications. Good news for public health if this comes to fruition.
A new type of optical device small enough to fit millions on a computer chip has been developed by researchers.
Although fiberoptic cables are instrumental in transmitting large quantities of data across oceans and continents, information processing is slowed and the data are susceptible to cyberattack when optical signals must be translated into electronic signals for use in computers, and vice versa.
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The new optical diodes could make for faster and more secure information processing by eliminating the need for this translation. The devices, which are nearly ready for commercialization, also could lead to faster, more powerful supercomputers by using them to connect numerous processors together.
New research findings suggests a possible link between earthquakes and tropical cyclones.
During the last 50 years three very wet tropical cyclone events – Typhoons Morakot, Herb and Flossie – were followed within four years by major earthquakes in Taiwan’s mountainous regions. The 2009 Morakot typhoon was followed by a M-6.2 in 2009 and M-6.4 in 2010. The 1996 Typhoon Herb was followed by M-6.2 in 1998 and M-7.6 in 1999 and the 1969 Typhoon Flossie was followed by a M-6.2 in 1972.
The 2010 M-7 earthquake in Haiti occurred in the mountainous region one-and-a-half years after two hurricanes and two tropical storms drenched the island nation within 25 days.
The researchers suggest that rain-induced landslides and excess rain carries eroded material downstream. As a result the surface load above the fault is lessened.
A new foliar spray protects plants from freezing in effect moving the planting space 200 miles south.
The spray is composed of ingredients that are non-toxic to plants, humans, and animals. “The components of the laboratory spray formulation and FreezePruf are all either human food ingredients or used in the human food production chain”, said (lead researcher) Francko. He said that the spray actually improves plants’ natural ability to tolerate freezing conditions.
The researchers tested the spray on a wide variety of foliage, flowers, and fruits. Data showed that both the laboratory formulation and the commercial version of the spray decreased the first damage temperature and the mortality temperature of the plants. “We noted beneficial effects within hours of application”, Francko remarked. “Our results suggested that the spray formulation could add the equivalent of approximately 0.25 to almost 1.0 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone to the cold hardiness rating of the plants used in the experiments.”
Other Worthy Stories of the Week
NASA discovers first Earth size planets beyond our solar system
Plant eating dinosaur discovered in Antarctica
New insight into the center of the Milky Way
A major step forward towards developing drought tolerance in plants
Ultra-compact dwarf galaxies are bright star clusters
Ecologists find threshold values for natural wildfires
Caterpillars mimic one another for survival
Birds caught in the act of becoming a new species
A single cell endoscope
New calculations suggest Jupiter's core may be liquefying
Invisible fungi crucial for rainforest diversity
Geologists pinpoint near exact source of some of Stonehenge stones
Rare galaxy discovered at the dawn of time
Paint-on solar cells
Searching the sea for scum busting cholera killers
Erupting volcanoes from space Pictures, pictures.
For even more science news:
General Science Collectors:
Alpha-Galileo
BBC News Science and Environment
Eureka Science News
LiveScience
New Scientist
PhysOrg.com
SciDev.net
Science/AAAS
Science Alert
Science Centric
Science Daily
Scientific American
Space Daily
Blogs:
A Few Things Ill Considered Techie and Science News
Cantauri Dreams space exploration
Coctail Party Physics Physics with a twist.
Deep Sea News marine biology
Laelaps more vertebrate paleontology
List of Geoscience Blogs
ScienceBlogs
Space Review
Techonology Review
Tetrapod Zoologyvertebrate paleontology
Science Insider
Scientific Blogging.
Space.com
Wired News
Science RSS Feed: Medworm
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe--a combination of hard science and debunking crap
At Daily Kos:
This Week in Science by DarkSyde
Overnight News Digest:Science Saturday by Neon Vincent. OND tech Thursday by rfall.
Pique the Geek by Translator Sunday evenings about 9 Eastern time
All diaries with the DK GreenRoots Tag.
All diaries with the eKos Tag
A More Ancient World by matching mole
Astro Kos
SciTech at Dkos.
Sunday Science Videos by palantir
NASA picture of the day. For more see the NASA image gallery or the Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive
Barnard 3, NASA, Public Domain