Science & TechnologyS


Sherlock

Dinosaur Whodunit: Solving A 77-million-year-old Mystery


Science Daily
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:25 UTC
It has all the hallmarks of a Cretaceous melodrama. A dinosaur sits on her nest of a dozen eggs on a sandy river beach. Water levels rise, and the mother is faced with a dilemma: Stay or abandon her unhatched offspring to the flood and scramble to safety?

Seventy-seven million years later, scientific detective work conducted by University of Calgary and Royal Tyrrell Museum researchers used this unique fossil nest and eggs to learn more about how nest building, brooding and eggs evolved. But there is a big unresolved question: Who was the egg-layer?
dinosaur nest
© Julius T. CsotonyiReconstruction of the dinosaur nest and the two possible theropod egg layers.

"Working out who the culprit was in this egg abandonment tragedy is a difficult problem to crack," says Darla Zelenitsky, U of C paleontologist and the lead author of a paper published today in the journal Palaeontology. "After further investigation, we discovered that this find is rarer than we first thought. It is a one of a kind fossil. In fact, it is the first nest of its kind in the world."
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Info

Purified urine to be astronauts' drinking water

Irene Klotz
Science Daily
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:14 UTC
Cape Canaverl, Florida - As NASA prepares to double the number of astronauts living aboard the International Space Station, nothing may do more for crew bonding than a machine being launched aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on Friday.
Crew members of the space shuttle Endeavour
© REUTERS/Scott Audette Crew members of the space shuttle Endeavour on Mission STS-126 arrive to prepare for launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida November 11, 2008. From left are Donald Pettit, Pilot Eric Boe, Mission Commander Chris Ferguson, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Robert Kimbrough, Steve Bowen and Sandra Magnus. The mission to the International Space Station is scheduled for November 14.

It's a water-recycling device that will process the crew's urine for communal consumption.

"We did blind taste tests of the water," said NASA's Bob Bagdigian, the system's lead engineer. "Nobody had any strong objections. Other than a faint taste of iodine, it is just as refreshing as any other kind of water."

"I've got some in my fridge," he added. "It tastes fine to me."
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Magic Wand

NASA Surprised by Unexpected Meteor Outburst


Space.com
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:25 UTC
When NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke arrived at the Marshall Space Flight Center and checked his email Sept. 9, 2008, he was very surprised to learn that he'd slept through a dramatic event.

A flurry of shooting stars had lit up the pre-dawn skies, including more than two dozen fireballs brighter than Venus. Cooke's all-sky Sentinel camera recorded the whole thing and had left him an email summarizing the outburst.

"Our Sentinel system consists of a computer-controlled camera, fisheye lens and digital video recorder," Cooke explained. "It was developed by researchers at the University of Western Ontario for studies of meteors over Canada, and now we've adapted it for our purposes. Every night, Sentinel patrols the sky, looking for the unexpected, and it never gets sleepy."
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Telescope

First fuzzy photos of planets outside solar system


Associated Press
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:05 UTC
WASHINGTON - Earth seems to have its first fuzzy photos of alien planets outside our solar system, images captured by two teams of astronomers. The pictures show four likely planets that appear as specks of white, nearly indecipherable except to the most eagle-eyed experts. All are trillions of miles away - three of them orbiting the same star, and the fourth circling a different star.
alien planets
© AP Photo/NASAIn this image released by NASA, a dust ring, seen in red, surround the star Fomalhaut, that resides at the center of the image, and not visible to the human eye in this image. The Hubble Telescope discovered the fuzzy image of the planet, known as Fomalhaut b, which is no more that a white speck in the lower right portion of the dust ring that surrounds the star.
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Sherlock

Ancient Celtic coin cache found in Netherlands


Associated Press
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:36 UTC
Amsterdam - A hobbyist with a metal detector struck both gold and silver when he uncovered an important cache of ancient Celtic coins in a cornfield in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht.
ancient Celtic and Germanic coins
© AP Photo/ VU/Gemeente Maastricht, HO A hobbyist with a metal detector has found a cache of ancient Celtic and Germanic coins in a cornfield in the southern city of Maastricht. The city says the trove of 39 gold and 70 silver coins are dated to the middle of the first century B.C. The hobbyist, Paul Curfs, 47, found several coins this spring and called attention to the find, which eventually led to an archaeological investigation by Amsterdam's Free University.

"It's exciting, like a little boy's dream," Paul Curfs, 47, said Thursday after the spectacular find was made public.

Archaeologists say the trove of 39 gold and 70 silver coins was minted in the middle of the first century B.C. as the future Roman ruler Julius Caesar led a campaign against Celtic tribes in the area.

Curfs said he was walking with his detector this spring and was about to go home when he suddenly got a strong signal on his earphones and uncovered the first coin.

"It was golden and had a little horse on it - I had no idea what I had found," he said.

After posting a photo of the coin on a Web forum, he was told it was a rare find. The following day he went back and found another coin.
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Dig

Rare Hebrew seal from First Temple period discovered in archaeological excavations in Jerusalem's Western Wall Plaza


Science Daily
Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:28 UTC
In archaeological excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out at the behest of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, in the northwestern part of the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem, a rare and impressive Hebrew seal was discovered that dates to the latter part of the First Temple period. The seal was found in a building that is currently being uncovered, which dates to the seventh century BCE - to the time when the kings Manasseh and Josiah reigned.
Hebrew seal
© Israel Antiquities AuthorityA rare and impressive Hebrew seal was discovered that dates to the latter part of the First Temple period.
The seal will be shown today (Thursday, October 30, 2008) during a study day dealing with "Innovations in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and its Surroundings", organized by the Jerusalem Region of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Fish

Marine Plankton Found In Amber


Science Daily
Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:23 UTC
Marine microorganisms have been found in amber dating from the middle of the Cretaceous period. The fossils were collected in Charente, in France. This completely unexpected discovery will deepen our understanding of these lost marine species as well as providing precious data about the coastal environment of Western France during the Cretaceous.
Diatom in amber
© Laboratoire géosciences RennesDiatom in amber.

This work was carried out by researchers at the Géosciences Rennes laboratory (CNRS/Université de Rennes 1), together with researchers from the Paléobiodiversité et Paléoenvironnement laboratory in Paris (CNRS/Muséum national d'histoire naturelle/Université Pierre et Marie Curie) and the Centre de Géochimie de la Surface in Strasbourg (CNRS/Université de Strasbourg 1). It was published in the 11 November 2008 issue of PNAS.
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Telescope

Mysterious New Aurora On Saturn


Science Daily
Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:32 UTC
Saturn has its own unique brand of aurora that lights up the polar cap, unlike any other planetary aurora known in our solar system. This odd aurora revealed itself to one of the infrared instruments on NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
aurora on Saturn
© NASA/JPL/University of ArizonaThis image of the northern polar region of Saturn shows both the aurora and underlying atmosphere, seen at two different wavelengths of infrared light as captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

"We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere," said Tom Stallard, a scientist working with Cassini data at the University of Leicester, England. Stallard is lead author of a paper that appears in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Nature. "It's not just a ring of auroras like those we've seen at Jupiter or Earth. This aurora covers an enormous area across the pole. Our current ideas on what forms Saturn's aurora predict that this region should be empty, so finding such a bright aurora here is a fantastic surprise."
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Bizarro Earth

Simulation Shows What Would Happen If Magnitude 7.8 Earthquake Hit California


Science Daily
Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:36 UTC
What would happen in California was hit by the Big One? New 3-D animations of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake scenario are now available to the public.*
San Andreas fault
© USGSStill image from a movie showing a view of southern California with the seismic waves radiating outward from the fault as the rupture propagates towards the northwest along the San Andreas fault.

Fourteen animations can be downloaded from the site in high definition format. The 3-D animations show, from the perspective of a several different Southern California locations, how intensely the ground would shake and shift during a very strong 7.8 earthquake with an epicenter on the southern end of the San Andreas Fault.

The science-based earthquake scenario, developed by USGS scientists and partners, is used for both the Great Southern California ShakeOut drill on November 13 and the statewide Golden Guardian 2008 emergency response exercise from November 13 - 18.
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Sun

Light Triggers New Code For Brain Cells


Science Daily
Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:51 UTC
Brain cells can adopt a new chemical code in response to cues from the outside world, scientists working with tadpoles at the University of California, San Diego report in the journal Nature.
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