New research from the American Museum of Natural History shows that America's Great Plains region may have once been home to some typically sea-bound creatures.

Ammonites - a type of shelled mollusk, now extinct and closely related to the nautiluses and squids of today - may have lived in methane seeps when a seaway once covered America's midwest. The findings have been published online in the journal Geology, and shed some new light on how and where these ancient animals lived.

During the Late Cretaceous period, around 80 to 65 million years ago, scientists believe America was split into two land masses by the Western Interior Seaway. Sediments were deposited in this seaway, creating geologic formations in some parts of Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming. As popular destinations for paleontologists, the researchers have narrowed their focus on a giant mound of fossilized material where methane-rich fluids are believed to have migrated through sediments onto the seafloor.

Here, the researchers have the shelled mollusks.

"We've found that these methane seeps are little oases on the sea floor, little self-perpetuating ecosystems," said Neil Landman, lead author of the paper published in Geology and a curator in the Division of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, according to a statement.

"Thousands of these seeps have been found in the Western Interior Seaway, most containing a very rich fauna of bivalves, sponges, corals, fish, crinoids, and, as we've recently documented, ammonites."

Craters made by asteroid impacts may be the best place to look for signs of life on other planets, a study suggests. Tiny organisms have been discovered thriving deep underneath a site in the US where an asteroid crashed some 35 million years ago.

Scientists believe that the organisms are evidence that such craters provide refuge for microbes, sheltering them from the effects of the changing seasons and events such as global warming or ice ages.

Life forms

The study suggests that crater sites on Mars may also be hiding life, and that drilling beneath them could lead to evidence of similar life forms.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh drilled almost 2 km below one of the largest asteroid impact craters on Earth, in Chesapeake Bay, US.

Samples from below ground showed that microbes are unevenly spread throughout the rock, suggesting that the environment is continuing to settle 35 million years after impact.

According to NASA, there is a bit of testing where hardware, software and certain procedures are concerned

NASA announced that all is well with SpaceX's Dragon capsule, and that an April 30 flight to the International Space Station (ISS) is possible.

SpaceX, which is expected to be the first private company to send a spacecraft to the ISS, has been preparing its Dragon capsule for the flight. However, it delayed the Dragon's first launch to the ISS, which was set for February 7. The company wanted to conduct more tests before the cargo capsule took off for space.

"Everything looks good as we head toward the April 30 launch date," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations. "There is a good chance to make the 30th."

The Dragon capsule will be expected to carry 1,148 pounds of cargo to the ISS, which will consist of supplies needed for the space lab, and will return 1,455 pounds of cargo back to Earth.

On the 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, The Japan Times yesterday ran an editorial titled "The Titanic and the Nuclear Fiasco" which stated: "Presenting technology as completely safe, trustworthy or miraculous may seem to be a thing of the past, but the parallels between the Titanic and Japan's nuclear power industry could not be clearer."

"Japan's nuclear power plants were, like the Titanic, advertised as marvels of modern science that were completely safe. Certain technologies, whether they promise to float a luxury liner or provide clean energy, can never be made entirely safe," it said.

It quoted from a piece by Joseph Conrad written after the Titanic sank in which he noted the "chastening influence it should have on the self-confidence of mankind." The Japan Times urged: "That lesson should be applied to all 'unsinkable' undertakings that might profit a few by imperiling the majority of others."

Yes, the same kind of baloney behind the claim that the Titanic was unsinkable is behind the puffery that nuclear power plants are safe. The nuclear power promoters are still saying that despite the sinking of atomic Titanics: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and now the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants.

In fact, underneath the PR offensive are government documents admitting that nuclear power plants are deadly dangerous.

A smile and a frown mean the same thing everywhere - or so say many anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists, who for more than a century have argued that all humans express basic emotions the same way. But a new study of people's perceptions of computer-generated faces suggests that facial expressions may not be universal and that our culture strongly shapes the way we read and express emotions.

The hypothesis that facial expressions convey the same meaning the world over goes all the way back to Charles Darwin. In his 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, the famed naturalist identified six basic emotional states: happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sadness. If facial expressions are just cultural traits, passed down through the generations by imitation, their meanings would have diverged by now, he argued. A smile would signal happiness for some and disgust for others. But that's not what he found, based on his correspondence with researchers around the world using photos of various facial expressions. So Darwin concluded that the common ancestors of all living humans had the same set of basic emotions, with corresponding facial expressions as part of our genetic inheritance. Smiles and frowns are biological, not cultural.

Or are they? Rachael Jack, a psychologist at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, says that there is a fundamental flaw in the facial expression studies carried out since Darwin's time: Researchers have been using Darwin's six basic expressions as their starting point, and yet they were first identified by Western European scientists studying Western European subjects. The fact that non-Western subjects can recognize the emotions from photographs of those facial expressions has been taken as support for the universality hypothesis. But what if non-Western cultures have different basic emotions that underlie their expressions? Those expressions may be similar to those of Westerners, but with subtle differences that have gone undetected because no one has looked.

To test the true universality of Darwin's six emotional categories, Jack and colleagues used a computer program to create virtual faces with 4800 expressions. The program generated the faces by contracting virtual facial muscles, pulling the corners of the mouth up or down, widening or narrowing the eyes, and so forth. Half of the expressions were shown on a Western Caucasian face and half on an East Asian face.

Magnetic fields on the sun's northeastern limb erupted around 17:45 UT on April 16th, producing one of the most visually-spectacular explosions in years. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the blast at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths:
The explosion, which registered M1.7 on the Richter Scale of solar flares, was not Earth-directed. A CME produced by the blast is likely to hit NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft, but probably no planets.

This event confirms suspicions that an active region of significance is rotating onto the Earth-facing side of the sun. Stay tuned for updates.

Update: Using data from SDO, Steele Hill of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has assembled a must-see movie of the event. The movie shows the explosion unfolding at 304 Angstroms, a wavelength which traces plasma with a temperature around 80,000 K.

The first prostate cancer vaccine could be a step away after ministers gave their approval for a human trial of a new genetically modified therapy.
The treatment, which uses viruses carrying human DNA to direct the body's natural defences against cancer cells, is the first prostate cancer vaccine ever to reach late stage "phase three" trials in Europe.

A person's blood type may influence their susceptibility to infection with rotavirus, a type of stomach bug, a new study suggests.

The results show that certain strains of rotavirus attach to cells by binding to "A antigen" - a marker on the surface of cells in people with blood types A and AB. The first step of infection is attachment to the cell.

People with these blood types have the "A antigen" not only on their blood cells, but also on the cells that line the gastrointestinal tract, which rotavirus attacks.

This means its possible that people with blood types A and AB are more susceptible to rotavirus infections, but it's too soon to draw firm conclusions, said study researcher B. V. Venkataram Prasad, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. For one thing, the virus strains that were found to attach to A antigen are not the most common strains of rotavirus. It's possible the most common strains preferentially infect people with blood type B, for example.

In addition, no one has looked at large populations to see whether those who are infected with rotavirus are more likely to have a certain blood type, Prasad said. Still, the new study could prompt this type of research, now that scientists are aware there might be a link, Prasad said.

New Zealand Building $4.1M Cathedral ... From Cardboard...Will be 82-feet high and seat 700

A cathedral made from cardboard. The idea may sound flimsy, but in the earthquake-devastated city of Christchurch, Anglican leaders believe it will deliver both a temporary solution and a statement about the city's recovery. Albeit a pricey one: The plans call for an 82-foot high cathedral constructed with 104 tubes of cardboard ... at a cost of up to $4.1 million. The structure, set to seat 700, will be a temporary replacement for the iconic stone ChristChurch Cathedral and will be used for 10 years while a permanent replacement is designed and built.

Construction will hopefully begin within about six weeks and be completed by the end of the year. The plan is to use traditional materials like concrete, steel, and wood to provide structural support, and the structure will be weatherproof and fire-resistant. Up to two dozen shipping containers inside will provide space for offices, a kitchen, and storage, and the roof will be made of an opaque polycarbonate material.

A recent Harvard study has a theory on why bees are dying around the country.

It links pesticides to the problem and what's called colony collapse disorder.

The study says the pesticide imidacloprid, from the class of neonicotinoid pesticides is an insect neurotoxin, and makes the bees leave the hive, or not find their way back.

Since 2006, commercial beekeepers have reported a 30 to 90-percent loss in bee colonies.

The San Luis Obispo County Department of Agriculture said the imidacloprid is widely used in the state and on the Central Coast.

Wade Johnston, of TheraBee is a bee-keeper who builds small apiaries on properties around San Luis Obispo County. He said he's focusing on raising healthier, stronger bees.