Science & TechnologyS


Blackbox

U.S. Government shutdown prompts 'Accuracy' warning on USGS earthquake site

Any drop in USGS activity would impact lesser developed nations such as the Philippines, which run smaller-scale monitoring and rely on the USGS for global earthquake data, Robert Geller, a professor of seismology at Tokyo University, said by phone. It would also affect ordinary citizens in the U.S, he said.

"If a big quake occurred now, hypothetically, inside the U.S., disaster relief work might be slowed down if USGS data wasn't available to the government," Geller said. The effect of the shutdown depends on whether the agency has curtailed the monitoring itself or stopped putting the data online, he said.

Earthquake Risk

Despite the warning, the National Earthquake Information Center of the USGS at Golden, Colorado, does not expect delays in earthquake monitoring and said data is being gathered at the same rate as before the shutdown. "At this point we are getting earthquakes posted on our website on time, within 20 minutes for magnitude 5 and larger worldwide, and earlier for a national event," Jana Pursley, a geophysicist at the center, said today in a phone interview.

Eye 1

Grocery store 'smart shelves' will target consumers in real-time based on their facial features

shelves
© Reuters/Brendan McDermid
Going to the grocery store is about to get a lot more personal: one of the biggest names in food is preparing to launch "smart shelves" to gather intelligence on consumers and customize their shopping experience.

Mondelēz International, the parent company of Kraft Foods, plans on having their space-age smart shelves rolled out on supermarket floors sometime in 2015. And if all goes as planned, soon after the multi-national corporation behind products such as Chips Ahoy, Oreo, Wheat Thins and Ritz will begin collecting analytics about impulse buys and learn new ways to bring customers the products they crave.

Cloud Lightning

New evidence on lightning strikes

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© flagstaffotos.com.au
Lightning strikes causing rocks to explode have for the first time been shown to play a huge role in shaping mountain landscapes in southern Africa, debunking previous assumptions that angular rock formations were necessarily caused by cold temperatures, and proving that mountains are a lot less stable than we think.

In a world where mountains are crucial to food security and water supply, this has vast implications, especially in the context of climate change.

Professors Jasper Knight and Stefan Grab from the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at Wits University used a compass to prove - for the first time ever - that lightning is responsible for some of the angular rock formations in the Drakensburg.

Comet

How many mega impacts have whacked Earth?

Impact Event
© Andrzej Wojcicki/CorbisAn artist’s illustration of an asteroid impacting Earth.
If you enjoy leaves turning, pumpkin patches and other rites of autumn, thank the giant impact event early in Earth's history which knocked our planet's axis off kilter, creating the seasons that we know and love today. But was there just one planet-tilting impact?

University of Western Ontario geologist Grant Young thinks there were two, separated by billions of years. He has been studying rocks from the Ediacaran Period, 540 to 635 million years ago and says he sees signs of massive changes to Earth's seasons and climate that can best be explained by a axis-shifting collision of a small planetary body into the ocean about 570 million years ago.

That's long after the famous smash up with a Mars-sized body that is credited with creating the Moon around 4 billion years ago and giving Earth its mild tilt and modern seasons. It was also at the time Earth was seeing the earliest animals, or metazoans, come into being.

"I think this might have stimulated the evolution of metazoans," Young told Discovery News.

The scenario he has presented in the October issue of GSA Today is that there was first the collision that created the Moon. But instead of that giving Earth its current tilt (which wobbles a bit, and is currently at 23.5 degrees), that first event knocked the planet over almost on its side. That orientation would give the poles a temperate climate without nights for half the year and the equator much less sunshine all year round.

Cut

Mammals chop up viral RNA to attack infection

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© JAMES CAVALLINI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYRNAi may have evolved to help cells fight viral infections.
Two controversial studies suggest antiviral mechanism called RNA interference may exist in vertebrates after all.

Organisms including plants, fungi and flies fight viruses using an elegant mechanism involving RNA snippets that mammals apparently ditched at some point in their evolutionary history. At least, that is what scientists thought - but two controversial reports published today suggest otherwise.

The RNA defence mechanism hinges on the fact that most viruses copy their RNA when they replicate. Invaded cells recognize viral RNA and automatically launch RNA interference, or RNAi, to stop the virus from multiplying and spreading to other host cells.

The RNAi process begins when an enzyme known as DICER chops a long strand of the virus RNA into chunks that are about 22 genetic letters long. Next, another one of the host cell's molecules ships the fragments off to the invading virus where they cling to the viral RNA, preventing its replication.

"It's an incredible system because it can be adapted to any virus," says Olivier Voinnet, a molecular biologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, and an author of one of the papers, which are published in Science1, 2.

Comment: For some food for thought see: On viral 'junk' DNA, a DNA-enhancing Ketogenic diet, and cometary kicks


Arrow Down

Major earthquake would collapse over a thousand buildings in Los Angeles

Earthquake video poster
© L.A. Times
More than 1,000 old concrete buildings in Los Angeles and hundreds more throughout the county may be at risk of collapsing in a major earthquake, according to a Times analysis.

By the most conservative estimate, as many as 50 of these buildings in the city alone would be destroyed, exposing thousands to injury or death.

A cross-section of the city lives and works in them: seamstresses in downtown factories, white-collar workers in Ventura Boulevard high-rises and condo dwellers on Millionaires' Mile in Westwood.

Despite their sturdy appearance, many older concrete buildings are vulnerable to the sideways movement of a major earthquake because they don't have enough steel reinforcing bars to hold columns in place.

Los Angeles officials have known about the dangers for more than 40 years but have failed to force owners to make their properties safer. The city has even rejected calls to make a list of concrete buildings.

In the absence of city action, university scientists compiled the first comprehensive inventory of potentially dangerous concrete buildings in Los Angeles.

The scientists, however, have declined to make the information public. They said they are willing to share it with L.A. officials, but only if the city requests a copy. The city has not done so, the scientists said.

Info

Rare blood-engorged mosquito fossil found

Fossil Mosquito
© Smithsonian InstitutionThe fossil of a blood-engorged mosquito was found in northwestern Montana.
About 46 million years ago, a mosquito sunk its proboscis into some animal, perhaps a bird or a mammal, and filled up on a meal of blood. Then its luck turned for the worse, as it fell into a lake and sunk to the bottom.

Normally this wouldn't be newsworthy, and nobody would likely know or care about a long-dead insect in what is now northwest Montana. But somehow, the mosquito didn't immediately decompose - a fortuitous turn of events for modern-day scientists - and became fossilized over the course of many years, said Dale Greenwalt, a researcher at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Greenwalt discovered the mosquito fossil after it was given to the museum as a gift, and he immediately realized the specimen's rarity.

It is, in fact, the only blood-engorged mosquito fossil found, Greenwalt told LiveScience. The fossil is even stranger because it comes from shale, a type of rock formed from sediments deposited at the bottom of bodies of water, as opposed to amber, the age-old remains of dried tree sap, in which insect remnants are generally better preserved.

"The chances that such an insect would be preserved in shale is almost infinitesimally small," Greenwalt said.

In their study, Greenwalt and his collaborators bombarded the mosquito fossil with molecules of bismuth, a heavy metal, which vaporizes chemicals found in the fossil. These airborne chemicals are then analyzed by a mass spectrometer, a machine that can identify chemicals based on their atomic weights, Greenwalt said. The beauty of this technique, called time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry, is that it doesn't destroy the sample - previously, similar techniques required grinding up portions of fossils, he added. The analysis revealed hidden porphyrins, organic compounds found in hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in blood, hidden in the fossilized mosquito's abdomen.

Comet 2

New comet ISON pictures: The comet of the century blazes green

Show up ISON! You have got the green light! The latest images of ISON show the 'Comet of the Century' shining green! October 8 2013This stunner was captured by Adam Block on Ocotober 8 2013, just before sunrise, atop Mount Lemmon. This beautiful image features ISON's greenish coma, trailed by a long, straight tail.
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© Adam Block Comet ISON is green in the sky atop Mount Lemmon, Arizona on October 8 2013
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© Michael JägerGreen Comet ISON on Oct. 5, 2013 in the sky over Weissenkirchen, Austria.

Info

Link to Oetzi the Iceman found in living Austrians

Oetzi
© Samadelli Marco/EURACOetzi's genome was published in February, indicating his probable eye colour and blood type.
Austrian scientists have found that 19 Tyrolean men alive today are related to Oetzi the Iceman, whose 5,300-year-old frozen body was found in the Alps.

Their relationship was established through DNA analysis by scientists from the Institute of Legal Medicine at Innsbruck Medical University.

The men have not been told about their connection to Oetzi. The DNA tests were taken from blood donors in Tyrol.

A particular genetic mutation was matched, the APA news agency reports. Oetzi's body was found frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991.

Binoculars

Flying Alpine swifts stay airborne for 200 days in longest recorded flight made by any bird

  • Scientists found that three Alpine swifts travelled 1,240 miles non-stop
  • The birds were found to eat and drink while in the air by Swiss researchers
  • Instead of resting at night, data collected suggested they carried on
    gliding

    Image
    Record breakers: Scientists say that a 1,240-mile flight carried out by three Alpine Swifts is the longest recorded flight made by any bird
    Researchers who tracked a group of migrating birds have discovered that they flew for 200 days non-stop between Africa and Europe.

    Scientists say that the 1,240-mile flight carried out by three Alpine Swifts is the longest recorded flight made by any bird.

    Although experts have speculated that a related species, the common swift, remains airborne for much of the year, the latest research is the first to provide data over such a long period.