Welcome to Sott.net
Fri, 05 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Science & Technology
Map

Satellite

Deep-sea robots are scoping out the origins of algae blooms - finds oxygen levels decreased ten-fold in coastal regions in the last 50 years

Marlene Cimons
Nexus Media
Sun, 25 Feb 2018 12:00 UTC
https://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.com/files/styles/655_1x_/public/images/2018/01/barents_tmo_2016188_lrg.jpg?itok=NR0O33T_&fc=50,50
© NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz and Joshua Stevens
A phytoplankton bloom in the Barents Sea.
Every spring, the North Atlantic Ocean sees an explosion of tiny, free-floating algae that form the base of the ocean's food chain. While these microorganisms are turning themselves into fish food, they also are gobbling up enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, making them one of nature's key warriors in the fight against climate change.


Comment: CO2 is not the driver behind the earth changes we're witnessing - and anyway, weren't we promised 'global warming'?


But scientists have never understood exactly what triggers the annual bloom. It's a puzzle that has stymied oceanographers for decades. For many years, the traditional way of studying these blooms was via satellites. But that doesn't work when clouds are overhead, meaning researchers were frequently in the dark.

Now, however, thanks to a new generation of sophisticated sea robots, researchers finally can learn about algae - and other things too.

Comment: One wonders whether the algae induced hypoxia occurring in the Atlantic Ocean could also be related to the slowing down of the Atlantic circulation system which has been recorded as being the weakest in over 1000 years. It is, however, not the first we've seen of strange and hazardous algae blooms all around the world, which are also on the increase:

      Read More...
Galaxy

Astronomers witness galaxy megamerger that raises questions about current galaxy cluster formation theories


Phys Org
Wed, 25 Apr 2018 16:27 UTC
galaxies
© NRAO/AUI/NSF; S. Dagnello
Artist impression of the 14 galaxies detected by ALMA as they appear in the very early, very distant universe. These galaxies are in the process of merging and will eventually form the core of a massive galaxy cluster.
Peering deep into space-an astounding 90 percent of the way across the observable universe-astronomers have witnessed the beginnings of a gargantuan cosmic pileup, the impending collision of 14 young, starbursting galaxies.

This ancient megamerger is destined to evolve into one of the most massive structures in the known universe: a cluster of galaxies, gravitationally bound by dark matter and swimming in a sea of hot, ionized gas.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international team of scientists has uncovered a startlingly dense concentration of 14 galaxies that are poised to merge, forming the core of what will eventually become a colossal galaxy cluster.

This tightly bound galactic smashup, known as a protocluster, is located approximately 12.4 billion light-years away, meaning its light started traveling to us when the universe was only 1.4 billion years old, or about a tenth of its present age. Its individual galaxies are forming stars as much as 1,000 times faster than our home galaxy and are crammed inside a region of space only about three times the size of the Milky Way. The resulting galaxy cluster will eventually rival some of the most massive clusters we see in the universe today.

The results are published in the journal Nature.
      Read More...
Beaker

When it comes to evaluating medical evidence, informed wisdom should trump rigid rules

Tom Siegfried
Science News
Mon, 23 Apr 2018 15:56 UTC
science studies stack of papers
© Elnur/Shutterstock
Systematic reviews emphasize process at the expense of thoughtful interpretation

Everybody agrees that medical treatments should be based on sound evidence. Hardly anybody agrees on what sort of evidence counts as sound.

Sure, some people say the "gold standard" of medical evidence is the randomized controlled clinical trial. But such trials have their flaws, and translating their findings into sound real-world advice isn't so straightforward. Besides, the best evidence rarely resides within any single study. Sound decisions come from considering the evidentiary database as a whole.

That's why meta-analyses are also a popular candidate for best evidence. And in principle, meta-analyses make sense. By aggregating many studies and subjecting them to sophisticated statistical analysis, a meta-analysis can identify beneficial effects (or potential dangers) that escape detection in small studies. But those statistical techniques are justified only if all the studies done on the subject can be obtained and if they all use essential similar methods on sufficiently similar populations. Those criteria are seldom met. So it is usually not wise to accept a meta-analysis as the final word.
      Read More...
Clipboard

Study: Billions of gallons of water will be saved by thinning down forests in California

Anthony Watts
WUWT
Wed, 25 Apr 2018 15:05 UTC
sunshine forest
There are too many trees in Sierra Nevada forests, say scientists affiliated with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory (CZO).

That may come as a surprise to those who see dense, verdant forests as signs of a healthy environment. After all, green is good, right? Not necessarily. When it comes to the number of trees in California forests, bigger isn't always better.

That's in part because trees use lots of water to carry out basic biological tasks. In addition, they act as forest steam stacks, raking up water stored in the ground and expelling it as vapor into the atmosphere, where it's accessible to humans and forest ecosystems only when it falls back to Earth as rain and snow.
      Read More...
Microscope 2

Enzyme telomerase, that affects ageing and cancer, decoded

Marlowe Hood
Yahoo!
Wed, 25 Apr 2018 00:01 UTC
old hands
© AFP Photo/PHILIPPE HUGUEN
Decoding the architecture of the enzyme, called telomerase, could lead to drugs that slow or block the ageing process, along with new treatments for cancer.
Elated scientists announced Wednesday the completion of a 20-year quest to map the complex enzyme thought to forestall ageing by repairing the tips of chromosomes in plants and animals, including humans.

Decoding the architecture of the enzyme, called telomerase, could lead to drugs that slow or block the ageing process, along with new treatments for cancer, they reported in the journal Nature.

"It has been a long time coming," lead investigator Kathleen Collins, a molecular biologist at the University of California in Berkley, said in a statement.

Comment: While this is no doubt an amazing step forward in the science of telomeres, it may be a little premature for people to start dreaming of a future where aging is a thing of the past. Genetics are profoundly complicated, and it is quite likely fixing the "caps on shoelaces" will turn out to be the tip of the iceberg.

See also:

      Read More...
Alarm Clock

The illusion of time: Carlo Rovelli's book 'The Order of Time' posits that reality is simply a complex network of events

Andrew Jaffe
Nature
Mon, 16 Apr 2018 00:01 UTC
time spiral illustration
© Illustration by Stephan Schmitz

Andrew Jaffe probes Carlo Rovelli's study arguing that physics deconstructs our sense of time.

The Order of Time Carlo Rovelli Allen Lane (2018)

According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn't correspond to physical reality. Indeed, as Rovelli argues in The Order of Time, much more is illusory, including Isaac Newton's picture of a universally ticking clock. Even Albert Einstein's relativistic space-time - an elastic manifold that contorts so that local times differ depending on one's relative speed or proximity to a mass - is just an effective simplification.

So what does Rovelli think is really going on? He posits that reality is just a complex network of events onto which we project sequences of past, present and future. The whole Universe obeys the laws of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, out of which time emerges.

Comment: It's difficult, maybe impossible, to conceptualize time as an illusion within our human limitations. Yet it seems that the cutting edge of science is showing that our perception of the flow of time is nothing more than an illusion.

See also:

      Read More...
Cloud Grey

3D renderings of real weather data prove just how complex and captivating clouds are

Devin Coldewey
Tech Crunch
Thu, 26 Apr 2018 08:29 UTC
cloud 3d

Visualisation from the ground to the Tropopause
Some people, when they look up at the sky and see a cloud, think "dog" or "fluffy." And some people think "it's a waning cumulus with a feathered edge suggesting a pressure system from the north ending in an updraft, which would probably cause turbulence. Also looks a bit like a dog." Clearly one of those people created these complex, beautiful renderings of weather data.

The idea behind this project at ETH Zürich, led by Markus Gross, is that different visualizations of detailed weather data may be highly useful in different fields. He and his colleagues have been working on a huge set of such data and finding ways of accurately representing it with an eye to empowering meteorologists from the TV station to the research lab.

"The scientific value of our visualisation lies in the fact that we make something visible that was impossible to see with the existing tools," explained undergraduate researcher Noël Rimensberger in an ETHZ news release. Representing weather "in a relatively simple, comprehensible way" is its own reward, really.

Comment: As is often the case, what the average person may see as a relatively simple concept, like clouds, is infinitely more complex and even our scientific communities knowledge is sorely lacking, and their theories may actually be off - that may explain the unreliability of weather forecasts! One thing is for sure, these days, opportunities to study awesome events in the skies are increasing by the day: For more, check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?

      Read More...
Cow Skull

Dinosaurs appeared much earlier, then their numbers exploded during planetary upheaval and mass extinction event

Shona East
Sci Tech Daily
Mon, 16 Apr 2018 12:00 UTC
Dinosaur
© Davide Bonadonna.
Life-scene from 232 million years ago, during the Carnian Pluvial Episode after which dinosaurs took over. A large rauisuchian lurks in the background, while two species of dinosaurs stand in the foreground. Based on data from the Ischigualasto Formation in Argentina. Davide Bonadonna.
It is commonly understood that the dinosaurs disappeared with a bang - wiped out by a great meteorite impact on the Earth 66 million years ago. But their origins have been less understood. In a new study, scientists from MUSE - Museum of Science, Trento, Italy, Universities of Ferrara and Padova, Italy and the University of Bristol show that the key expansion of dinosaurs was also triggered by a crisis - a mass extinction that happened 232 million years ago.

In the new paper, published today in Nature Communications, evidence is provided to match the two events - the mass extinction, called the Carnian Pluvial Episode, and the initial diversification of dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs had originated much earlier, at the beginning of the Triassic Period, some 245 million years ago, but they remained very rare until the shock events in the Carnian 13 million years later.

Comment: For more on the upheaval our planet has witnessed and the profound changes that were to follow, see: See Also: More on this study:
Date: April 16, 2018

Source: University of Bristol

Summary: It is commonly understood that the dinosaurs disappeared with a bang -- wiped out by a great meteorite impact on the Earth 66 million years ago. But their origins have been less understood. In a new study, scientists show that the key expansion of dinosaurs was also triggered by a crisis -- a mass extinction that happened 232 million years ago.

It is commonly understood that the dinosaurs disappeared with a bang -- wiped out by a great meteorite impact on the Earth 66 million years ago.

But their origins have been less understood. In a new study, scientists from MUSE -- Museum of Science, Trento, Italy, Universities of Ferrara and Padova, Italy and the University of Bristol show that the key expansion of dinosaurs was also triggered by a crisis -- a mass extinction that happened 232 million years ago.

In the new paper, published today in Nature Communications, evidence is provided to match the two events -- the mass extinction, called the Carnian Pluvial Episode, and the initial diversification of dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs had originated much earlier, at the beginning of the Triassic Period, some 245 million years ago, but they remained very rare until the shock events in the Carnian 13 million years later.

The new study shows just when dinosaurs took over by using detailed evidence from rock sequences in the Dolomites, in north Italy -- here the dinosaurs are detected from their footprints.

First there were no dinosaur tracks, and then there were many. This marks the moment of their explosion, and the rock successions in the Dolomites are well dated. Comparison with rock successions in Argentina and Brazil, here the first extensive skeletons of dinosaurs occur, show the explosion happened at the same time there as well.

Lead author Dr Massimo Bernardi, Curator at MUSE and Research associate at Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, said: "We were excited to see that the footprints and skeletons told the same story. We had been studying the footprints in the Dolomites for some time, and it's amazing how clear cut the change from 'no dinosaurs' to 'all dinosaurs' was."

The point of explosion of dinosaurs matches the end of the Carnian Pluvial Episode, a time when climates shuttled from dry to humid and back to dry again.

It was long suspected that this event had caused upheavals among life on land and in the sea, but the details were not clear. Then, in 2015, dating of rock sections and measurement of oxygen and carbon values showed just what had happened.

There were massive eruptions in western Canada, represented today by the great Wrangellia basalts -- these drove bursts of global warming, acid rain, and killing on land and in the oceans.

Co-author Piero Gianolla, from the University of Ferrara, added: "We had detected evidence for the climate change in the Dolomites. There were four pulses of warming and climate perturbation, all within a million years or so. This must have led to repeated extinctions."

Professor Mike Benton, also a co-author, from the University of Bristol, said: "The discovery of the existence of a link between the first diversification of dinosaurs and a global mass extinction is important.

"The extinction didn't just clear the way for the age of the dinosaurs, but also for the origins of many modern groups, including lizards, crocodiles, turtles, and mammals -- key land animals today."

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Bristol. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

Massimo Bernardi, Piero Gianolla, Fabio Massimo Petti, Paolo Mietto, Michael J. Benton. Dinosaur diversification linked with the Carnian Pluvial Episode. Nature Communications, 2018; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03996-1


      Read More...
Info

Research reveals upright walking substantially predates modern humans

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Wed, 25 Apr 2018 16:51 UTC
Fossilised footprint
© John Reader/Science Photo Library
One of the fossilised footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania, uncovered by paleo-anthropologist Mary Leakey in 1978.
Ancient hominins were walking in a decidedly "human-like" manner some three million years before Homo sapiens evolved, researchers have discovered.

By analysing 3.6 million-year-old fossilised footprints discovered at Laetoli in Tanzania, then comparing the findings with footprints made by human volunteers walking in different postures, David Raichlen from the University of Arizona, US, concludes that true bipedalism, with the legs fully extended, arose in the hominin line much earlier than previously thought.

"Fossil footprints are truly the only direct evidence of walking in the past," says Raichlen.

"By 3.6 million years ago, our data suggest that if you can account for differences in size, hominins were walking in a way that is very similar to living humans. While there may have been some nuanced differences, in general, these hominins probably looked like us when they walked."
      Read More...
Light Sabers

Ramped up fight-or-flight response indicates humans and chimps have a history of warfare


Science Daily
Thu, 19 Apr 2018 15:17 UTC
Liran Samuni/ Taï Chimpanzee Project
© Liran Samuni/ Taï Chimpanzee Project


Macaques and some bonobos lack these genetic variants that may increase the fight-or-flight response

Date: April 19, 2018

Source: PLOS

Summary: Humans and chimpanzees recently evolved a more active fight-or-flight response compared to other primates, possibly in response to the threat of warfare.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts