Science & TechnologyS


Bizarro Earth

Chernobyl Fungus Feeds On Radiation


Science aGoGo
Fri, 25 May 2007 13:26 UTC
Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AEC) have found evidence that certain fungi possess another talent beyond their ability to decompose matter: the capacity to use radioactivity as an energy source for making food and spurring their growth.

Detailing the research in Public Library of Science ONE, AEC's Arturo Casadevall said his interest was piqued five years ago when he read about how a robot sent into the still-highly-radioactive Chernobyl reactor had returned with samples of black, melanin-rich fungi that were growing on the ruined reactor's walls. "I found that very interesting and began discussing with colleagues whether these fungi might be using the radiation emissions as an energy source," explained Casadevall.
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Magnify

1,600-Year-Old Roman Man May Offer New Clues to London's Past

Brian Lysaght
Bloomberg
Fri, 25 May 2007 10:54 UTC
The remains of a wealthy Roman man, buried 1,600 years ago near London's St. Martin-in-the-Fields church, is providing clues for archaeologists trying to understand a little-known period in the city's history.

The remains of the man, who was in his early 40s when he died about A.D. 410, went on display yesterday at the Museum of London. The museum also is showing items found in tombs nearby that date from a period when the Saxons of northern Germany ruled the city.
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Telescope

Multi planet system that could alter planet formation theory discovered


ANI
Thu, 24 May 2007 10:48 UTC
Researchers from the University of Texas have discovered a multi-planet system around an unexpected star, which they say could alter planet formation theories.

Astronomers William Cochran and Michael Endl, using the 9.2-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald Observatory discovered a system of two Jupiter-like planets orbiting a star whose composition seemed at odd with planet formation theories.
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Magnify

Quebec crater is out of this world

Ingrid Peritz
Globe and Mail
Fri, 25 May 2007 10:30 UTC
A massive crater in Northern Quebec has been luring the curious for over 50 years. Diamond prospectors, Second World War pilots and National Geographic all made pilgrimages to the distant natural wonder.

Now, an international team led by Laval University in Quebec City has journeyed to the Pingualuit Crater near the Hudson Strait in hopes of unlocking 120,000 years worth of secrets about climate change.

©Michel Bouchard
Pingualuit Crater located on the Ungava Peninsula in northern Quebec.
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Black Cat

Swimming dinosaur enters the history books


AFP
Fri, 25 May 2007 01:29 UTC
Twelve footprints found in the bed of an ancient lake in northern Spain have thrown up the first compelling evidence that some land dinosaurs could swim, researchers reported Thursday.

The 15-metre (48.75-feet) -long track in sandstone "strongly suggests a floating animal clawing the sediment" as it swam against a current, they say.
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Telescope

Outflow jets found around brown dwarf star


Red Orbit
Wed, 23 May 2007 22:07 UTC
Jets of matter have been discovered around a very low mass 'failed star', mimicking a process seen in young stars. This suggests that these 'brown dwarfs' form in a similar manner to normal stars but also that outflows are driven out by objects as massive as hundreds of millions of solar masses down to Jupiter-sized objects.
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No Entry

Conservative Media Attacks New Species Discoveries

Loren Coleman
Criptomundo
Sat, 19 May 2007 18:37 UTC
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a rather conservative newspaper in the United States, for Saturday, May 19, 2007, parrots the UK's The Economist, reinforcing the challenge to the concept that we are in the midst of a wave of new species being discovered.

In the WSJ's section "Informed Reader" obviously editorialized thumbnail sketches are given of other newspapers' recommended articles. Under "Nature," a new article in The Economist is mentioned. Entitled "Species Inflation May Infect Over-Eager Conservationists," (I was unable to upload The Economist article itself), the WSJ notes that various scientists are overzealously boosting the conversation of seemingly rare animals by upgrading subspecies into species. Primatologists are guilty of "taxonomic inflation," we are being told.

Here is the conclusion of the piece that the WSJ is "informing" the reader about:
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Rocket

Blocked by U.S., China finds it own way to space

Jim Yardley
International Herald Tribune
Wed, 23 May 2007 14:34 UTC
For years, China has chafed at efforts by the United States to exclude it from full membership in the world's elite space club. So, lately, China seems to have hit on a solution: create a new club.

Beijing is trying to position itself as a space benefactor to the developing world - the same countries, in some cases, whose natural resources China covets here on Earth. The latest, and most prominent, example came last week when China launched a communications satellite for Nigeria in a project that serves as a tidy case study of how space has become another arena where China is trying to exert its soft power.
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Telescope

UD scientists build an "ice top" at the bottom of the world, look for neutrinos


University of Delaware
Wed, 23 May 2007 12:57 UTC
The University of Delaware is helping to build a huge "IceCube" at the South Pole, and it has nothing to do with cooling beverages.

"IceCube" is a gigantic scientific instrument--a telescope for detecting illusive particles called neutrinos that can travel millions of miles through space, passing right through planets.

©James Roth, University of Delaware
The IceCube telescope's optical detectors are deployed in mile-and-a-half deep holes in the Antarctic ice.

A poet might refer to them as stardust or ghosts from outer space. But to astrophysicists, neutrinos are the high-energy messengers from the universe, formed during such cataclysmic cosmic events as exploding stars and colliding galaxies.
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Telescope

Astronomers identify a new class of cosmic explosions


CalTech News Release
Wed, 23 May 2007 12:51 UTC
Astronomers are announcing today the discovery of a new class of stellar explosions. The finding is based on observations of a flash seen in the Virgo cluster in a galaxy known as Messier 85.

According to Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, the team leader announcing the discovery of M85OT2006-1, the event is thought to have resulted from the merger of two ordinary stars 49 million years ago.
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