Science & TechnologyS


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Mystery Volcano May Have Triggered Mini Ice Age


National Public Radio
Sat, 12 Dec 2009 09:20 UTC
Scientists say evidence in the ice of Antarctica and Greenland shows a volcanic eruption, probably near the equator, contributed to global cooling early in the 19th century.

Global warming may be making some people nervous now, but from 1810 to 1819, people worried because the Earth was colder than usual.

For an entire decade, the Earth cooled almost a full degree Fahrenheit. In fact, 1816 was known as the year without a summer. And until recently, scientists weren't quite sure why everyone was shivering.

The chill of 1816 has long been blamed on an Indonesian volcano called Tambora, which erupted the year before. But no one could figure out why the years before Tambora's eruption were also colder than usual.
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Meteor

Geminid meteors will create a sky show Sunday night


Space Weather
Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:41 UTC
Image
© Bill Cooke
This weekend, Earth is passing through a stream of debris from extinct comet 3200 Phaethon, source of the annual Geminid meteor shower. Forecasters expect more than 100 meteors per hour to fly out of the constellation Gemini when the shower peaks on Dec. 13th and 14th. For most observers, the best time to look will be from 10 pm local time on Sunday night to dawn on Monday morning.

Click here to watch an early-arriving Geminid streak past the Moon on Dec. 9th.
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Hourglass

Genetic Ancestry Highly Correlated With Ethnic and Linguistic Groups in Asia


ScienceDaily
Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:35 UTC
Several genome-wide studies of human genetic diversity have been conducted on European populations. Now, for the first time, these studies have been extended to 73 Southeast Asian (SEA) and East Asian (EA) populations.

In a paper titled, "Mapping Human Genetic Diversity in Asia," published in online Science on 10 Dec. 2009, over 90 scientists from the Human Genome Organisation's (HUGO's) Pan-Asian SNP Consortium report that their study conducted within and between the different populations in the Asia continent showed that genetic ancestry was highly correlated with ethnic and linguistic groups.
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Study Provides Genetic Map of Asian Population


Press TV
Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:50 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Scientific studies have revealed that the diverse Asian population has been formed as a result of a single migration from the south.

The Pan-Asian SNP Consortium of The Human Genome Organization (HUGO) conducted the study on almost 2,000 Asians finding genetic similarities between Asians throughout the continent.

Some 90 scientists from China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the US were involved in the consortium, BBC reported.

According to the study published in the journal Science, an increasing genetic diversity from northern towards southern latitudes were found.
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Ancient Mayans Were Nature Lovers, Not Destroyers


AndhaNews
Sat, 12 Dec 2009 06:00 UTC
In a new research, a team of archaeologists has disputed claims made by experts that the ancient Mayans agricultural practices led to their eventual collapse, and that the forest gardens cultivated by the Maya demonstrate their great appreciation for the environment.

Many archaeologists, anthropologists, and other scholars are of the opinion that the Mayan civilization's slash-and-burn approach to farming caused such widespread environmental devastation that the land simply could not sustain them.

But, research conducted by Anabel Ford, an archaeologist at UC Santa Barbara and director of the university's MesoAmerican Research Center, suggests the contrary may be true -- that the forest gardens cultivated by the Maya demonstrate their great appreciation for the environment.

A forest garden is an unplowed, tree-dominated plot that sustains biodiversity and animal habitat while producing plants for food, shelter, and medicine.
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Sherlock

Ancient Mediterranean Flood Mystery Solved?

Victoria Gill
BBC News
Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:05 UTC
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© R. PibernatThe team made a reconstruction of the Mediterranean during the "megaflood."
Research has revealed details of the catastrophic Zanclean flood that refilled the Mediterranean Sea more than five million years ago.

The flood occurred when Atlantic waters found their way into the cut-off and desiccated Mediterranean basin.

The researchers say that a 200km channel across the Gibraltar strait was carved out by the floodwaters.

Their findings, published in Nature, show that the resulting flood could have filled the basin within two years.

The team was led by Daniel Garcia-Castellanos from the Research Council of Spain (CSIC).

He explained that he and his colleagues laid the foundations for this study by working on tectonic lakes.
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Studying Hair of Ancient Peruvians Answers Questions About Stress


ScienceDaily
Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00 UTC
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© iStockphoto/Amy HarrisView of the Lost Incan City of Machu Picchu near Cusco, Peru.
Recent studies show that one in three people suffer from stress and the number is on the rise. But stress isn't a new problem.

While the physiological state wasn't properly named until the 1930s, new research from The University of Western Ontario proves stress has plagued humans for hundreds, and perhaps thousands of years.

The first study of its kind, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, detected the stress hormone cortisol in the hair of ancient Peruvians, who lived between 550 and 1532 A.D.

When an individual is stressed -- due to real or perceived threats -- cortisol is released into nearly every part of the body, including blood, saliva, urine and hair.
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Footprints

Ancient Amazon Civilization Laid Bare by Felled Forest

Linda Geddes
New Scientist
Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:49 UTC
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© Edison CaetanoUncovering civilisation
Signs of what could be a previously unknown ancient civilization are emerging from beneath the felled trees of the Amazon. Some 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil's border with Bolivia.

The traditional view is that before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th century there were no complex societies in the Amazon basin - in contrast to the Andes further west where the Incas built their cities. Now deforestation, increased air travel and satellite imagery are telling a different story.

"It's never-ending," says Denise Schaan of the Federal University of Pará in Belém, Brazil, who made many of the new discoveries from planes or by examining Google Earth images. "Every week we find new structures." Some of them are square or rectangular, while others form concentric circles or complex geometric figures such as hexagons and octagons connected by avenues or roads. The researchers describe them all as geoglyphs.
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Ladybug

Nuclear-Powered Transponder for Cyborg Insect

Sally Adee
IEEE Spectrum
Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:29 UTC
This week at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), in Baltimore, Md., Cornell University engineers presented research that shows progress in powering cybernetic organisms with a radioactive fuel source.

Electrical engineering associate professor Amit Lal and graduate student Steven Tin presented a prototype microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) transmitter - an RF-emitting device powered by a radioactive source with a half-life of 12 years, meaning that it could operate autonomously for decades. The researchers think the new RFID transmitter, which produces a 5-milliwatt, 10-microsecond-long, 100-megahertz radio-frequency pulse, could lead to the widespread use of radioisotope power sources.

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Telescope

Dark Side of a Saturnian Moon: Iapetus is Coated with Foreign Dust


ScienceDaily
Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:00 UTC
Iapetus is often called Saturn's most bizarre moon, due to its starkly contrasting hemispheres -- one black as coal, the other white as snow.

Image
© Cassini Imaging TeamCassini-Huygens spacecraft images of Iapetus' dark, leading side and its bright, trailing side. The high-resolution images shed new light on the long-standing puzzle of how Iapetus got its unusual coloration.
Images taken by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, orbiting Saturn since 2004, offer the most compelling evidence to date of why and how the moon got its yin-yang appearance, as well as clues to how other such satellites might have formed in the early universe. Analyzed by a research team that includes Cornell scientists, the images are detailed in the Dec. 10 online edition of the journal Science.

"This is not the most fundamental problem in the world," said research team member Joseph A. Burns, Cornell's Irving Porter Church Professor of Engineering and professor of astronomy. "But it's an enigma that's been puzzling astronomers for centuries."

Since pictures of Iapetus from the Voyager mission 30 years ago confirmed its intriguing color scheme, scientists have puzzled over whether Iapetus' dark-light contrast was the result of external debris hitting some of the moon, or whether the dark dust was the result of internal activity. Now they know the dust came from elsewhere.
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