Science & TechnologyS


Stop

American physicists warned not to debate global warming

Bureaucrats at the American Physical Society (APS) have issued a curious warning to their members about an article in one of their own publications. Don't read this, they say - we don't agree with it. But what is it about the piece that is so terrible, that like Medusa, it could make men go blind?

Evil Rays

Coral isotopes show quake history; Absorbed carbon may also improve disaster forecasts

Carbon isotopes trapped for thousands of years in coral skeletons could establish the long-term frequency of major earthquakes in southeast Asia and the South Pacific, and perhaps enable these events to be forecast.

Geoscientists have used corals before to look at earthquake history, by studying the terraced growth patterns that result. A major quake can push up an entire region, thrusting parts of a reef above the low-tide level, killing the exposed coral polyps. The rest of the coral continues to grow, producing a 'hat-brim' pattern that can indicate elevation changes as small as a few centimetres. This phenomenon has allowed scientists to date many earthquakes, including major ones in 1797 and 1833 off Sumatra, Indonesia. But the pattern erodes over time, so it can only be used to identify quakes that occurred within the past few hundred years.

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©Soc./EPA/Corbis
Wildlife Conservation

Display

Codex Sinaiticus, the world's oldest Bible, goes online

Almost 1700 years after scribes in the Holy Land first created it from vellum, one of the world's oldest Bibles this week makes its debut on the internet.

codex
©EPA
Prof. Schneider [left] and Dr. Carsten Dorgerloh, of Microsoft, hold two facsimiles of the papyrus Ebers (circa 1550) and a paper of the Codex Sinaiticus (313) at the library of the University of Leipzig

Roses

Saharan dust storms help sustain life in North Atlantic Ocean

Working aboard research vessels in the Atlantic, scientists mapped the distribution of nutrients including phosphorous and nitrogen and investigated how organisms such as phytoplankton are sustained in areas with low nutrient levels.

They found that plants are able to grow in these regions because they are able to take advantage of iron minerals in Saharan dust storms. This allows them to use organic or 'recycled' material from dead or decaying plants when nutrients such as phosphorous - an essential component of DNA - in the ocean are low.

Professor George Wolff, from the University's Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, explains: "We found that cyanobacteria - a type of ancient phytoplankton - are significant to the understanding of how ocean deserts can support plant growth. Cyanobacteria need nitrogen, phosphorous and iron in order to grow. They get nitrogen from the atmosphere, but phosphorous is a highly reactive chemical that is scarce in sea water and is not found in the Earth's atmosphere. Iron is present only in tiny amounts in sea water, even though it is one of the most abundant elements on earth.

Telescope

Spitzer Reveals 'No Organics' Zone Around Pinwheel Galaxy

The Pinwheel galaxy is gussied up in infrared light in a new picture from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The fluffy-looking galaxy, officially named Messier 101, is dominated by a mishmash of spiral arms. In Spitzer's new view, in which infrared light is color coded, the galaxy sports a swirling blue center and a unique, coral-red outer ring.

Pinwheel galaxy
©NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI
The Pinwheel galaxy, otherwise known as Messier 101, sports bright red edges in this new infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

A new paper appearing July 20 in the Astrophysical Journal explains why this outer ring stands out. According to the authors, the red color highlights a zone where organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are present throughout most of the galaxy, suddenly disappear.

Bulb

Awaiting a Messenger From the Multiverse

As particle physicists eagerly await results from the LHC, many theorists are already promoting interpretations of what they hope it will find. This week's Chronicle of Higher Education has a cover story on the LHC entitled The Machine at the End of the Universe (see associated articles here and here). In it, Gordon Kane enthusiastically describes the LHC as "It is certainly the most important experiment of any kind in the past century, without qualification" and "the most important thing ever in our quest to understand the fundamental laws of nature and the universe."

Meteor

Asteroids and Comets: The Earth's Scars



earth_scars
©Stephen Alvarez
Asteroids and comets in nearby space pose a constant threat to our planet. Can we avert catastrophe the next time around?

The first sign of the threat was no more than a speck on a star-streaked telescope image. Just after 9 p.m. on June 18, 2004, as twilight faded over Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, David Tholen was scanning for asteroids in an astronomical blind spot: right inside Earth's orbit, where the sun's glare can overwhelm telescopes. Tholen, an astronomer from the University of Hawaii, knew that objects lurking there could sometimes veer toward Earth. He had enlisted Roy Tucker, an engineer and friend, and Fabrizio Bernardi, a young colleague at Hawaii, to help. As they stared at a computer, three shots of the same swath of sky, made a few minutes apart, cycled onto the screen. "Here's your guy," said Tucker, pointing at a clump of white pixels that moved from frame to frame.

Tholen reported the sighting to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, a clearinghouse for data on asteroids and comets. He and Tucker hoped to take another look later that week, but they were rained out, and then the asteroid disappeared from view.

Comment: The threat to Earth by asteroids and comet fragments has been increasing dramatically, please see our 'must-read' Comet Series for more information.


Bulb

India: Brain scans used as trial evidence

The state police can now bank on a forensic tool to achieve speedy convictions. For the first time in Maharashtra, life sentences were meted out to the accused based on the findings of Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature (BEOS) profiling. Reports of these tests, conducted at the state forensic lab in Kalina, were held admissible in sessions courts in two brutal cases of murder.

Comment: A society that wants to vaccinate itself from the ponerizing influence of psychopaths in positions of power will likely have to use a variety of means including brain scans and psychological tests to discover these clever mimics of normal humans. However, there certainly is no government currently mature enough to use and not abuse the science necessary to such an approach.


Bulb

The genetics of the white horse unravelled



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©The National Museum of Fine Arts in Sweden
The Swedish king Karl XI on his horse Brilliant after the battle in Lund, December 4, 1676, painted by David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl.

The white horse is an icon for dignity which has had a huge impact on human culture across the world. An international team led by researchers at Uppsala University has now identified the mutation causing this spectacular trait and show that white horses carry an identical mutation that can be traced back to a common ancestor that lived thousands of years ago.

The study is interesting for medical research since this mutation also enhance the risk for melanoma. The paper is published on July 20 on the website of Nature Genetics.

The great majority of white horses carry the dominant mutation Greying with age. A Grey horse is born coloured (black, brown or chestnut) but the greying process starts already during its first year and they are normally completely white by six to eight years of age but the skin remains pigmented. Thus, the process resembles greying in humans but the process is ultrafast in these horses. The research presented now demonstrates that all Grey horses carry exactly the same mutation which must have been inherited from a common ancestor that lived thousands of years ago.

Heart

Suckling Infants Trigger Surges Of Trust Hormone In Mothers' Brains

Researchers from the University of Warwick, in collaboration with other universities and institutes in Edinburgh, France and Italy, have for the first time been able to show exactly how, when a baby suckles at a mother's breast, it starts a chain of events that leads to surges of the "trust" hormone oxytocin being released in their mothers brains.