Science & TechnologyS


Hardhat

Scientists document fracking chemical contamination of Pennsylvania drinking water wells

Penn State
Science Daily
Mon, 04 May 2015 00:00 UTC
water well contamination fracking
© Susan Brantley, Penn StateThis is a bottle containing foam from a water source.
Substances commonly used for drilling or extracting Marcellus shale gas foamed from the drinking water taps of three Pennsylvania homes near a reported well-pad leak, according to new analysis from a team of scientists.

The researchers used a new analytical technique on samples from the homes and found a chemical compound, 2-BE, and an unidentified complex mixture of organic contaminants, both commonly seen in flowback water from Marcellus shale activity. The scientists published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"These findings are important because we show that chemicals traveled from shale gas wells more than two kilometers in the subsurface to drinking water wells," said co-author Susan Brantley, distinguished professor of geosciences and director of the Earth and Environmental Institute at Penn State. "The chemical that we identified either came from fracking fluids or from drilling additives and it moved with natural gas through natural fractures in the rock. In addition, for the first time, all of the data are released so that anyone can study the problem."

Such contamination from shale gas wells in shallow potable water sources has never been fully documented before, Brantley said. The new technique could be a valuable tool in evaluating alleged causes of unconventional gas drilling impacts to groundwater.

Comment: Despite numerous studies linking fracking to contamination of groundwater supplies, the oil and gas industry continues to collude with local governments to ignore citizen concerns and even forbid citizens to ban the practice. In a sick society, profits always trump environmental and health concerns.

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Bulb

Researchers: Asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago may have caused Deccan Traps' vast lava flow


Earthsky.org
Mon, 04 May 2015 14:43 UTC
Image
© Gerta Keller
The Deccan Traps in India - between 17° - 24° North and 73° - 74° East - are a place where you can find layer upon layer of solidified rock. This region is thought to have been the site of extremely powerful volcanic activity in the past, so powerful that it caused mile-deep lava over an area as large as the state of California. Last week (April 30, 2015) geophysicists at UC Berkeley announced their evidence that this vast region is related to the asteroid thought to have slammed into the ocean half a world away. The impact near Chicxulub, Mexico - 66 million years ago - is believed by many researchers to have killed the dinosaurs and ushered in the age of mammals. The Berkeley researchers say the impact probably "rang the Earth like a bell," triggering powerful earthquakes and volcanos around the globe, including those that created the Deccan Traps.

The Berkeley researchers - who published their work online April 30 in the The Geological Society of America Bulletin - cited the "uncomfortably close" coincidence between the Deccan Traps eruptions and the asteroid impact 66 million years ago. Team leader Mark Richards of UC Berkeley said in a statement:
If you try to explain why the largest impact we know of in the last billion years happened within 100,000 years of these massive lava flows at Deccan ... the chances of that occurring at random are minuscule.
Image
© UC BerkeleyIllustration of a hot mantle plume “head” pancaked beneath the Indian Plate. The theory by Richards and his colleagues suggests that existing magma within this plume head was mobilized by strong seismic shaking from the Chicxulub asteroid impact, resulting in the largest of the Deccan Traps flood basalt eruptions.
Richards had proposed in 1989 that plumes of hot rock, called "plume heads," rise through Earth's mantle every 20-30 million years and generate huge lava flows, called flood basalts, like the Deccan Traps. It struck him as more than coincidence that the last four of the six known mass extinctions of life occurred at the same time as one of these massive eruptions.

Comment: See also: Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction!

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Evil Rays

NASA balloon experiment record eerie infrasound from the edge of space

Becky Oskin
Live Science
Mon, 04 May 2015 10:03 UTC
A spectrogram of infrasound
© Daniel BowmanA spectrogram of infrasound recorded during the high-altitude balloon flight.
Eerie sounds from the edge of space were recorded for the first time in 50 years aboard a NASA student balloon experiment.

Infrasound microphones captured the mysterious hisses and whistles 22 miles (36 kilometers) above the Earth's surface last year. Daniel Bowman, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, designed and built the equipment. The instruments eavesdropped on atmospheric infrasound, or sound waves at frequencies below 20 hertz. Infrasound is below human hearing range, but speeding up the recordings makes them audible.

"It sounds kind of like 'The X-Files,'" Bowman told Live Science. [Listen: High-Altitude Infrasound Recorded in Space]

The infrasound sensors were dangling from a helium balloon that flew above New Mexico and Arizona on Aug. 9, 2014. The experiment was one of 10 payloads flown last year on the High Altitude Student Platform (HASP). The high-altitude balloon flight is an annual project conducted by NASA and the Louisiana Space Consortium that is meant to spark student interest in space research. Since 2006, HASP has launched more than 70 experiments designed by college students across the United States.

Comment: Also read: Infrasound: "There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres"

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Sun

NASA records enormous burst of plasma erupting from the sun


RT
Mon, 04 May 2015 19:03 UTC
plasma eruption sun
Screenshot from NASA video
An enormous burst of plasma erupting from the sun has had astronomers glued to their telescopes for hours. Two orbital observatories managed to capture the phenomenon on video, published by NASA.

The event was filmed with the use of coronographs. They are specialized observation devices which use an occulter disk to block out light from the sun itself and create an artificial eclipse within the device. This enables astronauts to observe the dimmer parts of the star, its corona.

Filaments are unstable strands of solar matter which rise above the sun with the fluctuations of its magnetic field. They are much colder than the surface of the sun, and are thus visible as darker areas when viewed against it. However, when seen from the side, like in the video, they look like snake-like bursts of flame, which sometimes loop back onto the sun
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Galaxy

Strange exoplanet orbiting small cool star challenges planetary formation theories


Phys.org
Fri, 01 May 2015 00:00 UTC
HATS-6
© ANUArtist's impression of HATS-6
The Australian discovery of a strange exoplanet orbiting a small cool star 500 light years away is challenging ideas about how planets form.

"We have found a small star, with a giant planet the size of Jupiter, orbiting very closely," said researcher George Zhou from the Research School of Astrophysics and Astronomy.

"It must have formed further out and migrated in, but our theories can't explain how this happened."

In the past two decades more than 1,800 extrasolar planets (or exoplanets) have been discovered outside our solar system orbiting around other stars.

The host star of the latest exoplanet, HATS-6, is classed as an M-dwarf, which is one of the most numerous types of stars in galaxy. Although they are common, M-dwarf stars are not well understood. Because they are cool they are also dim, making them difficult to study.
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Info

Researchers have found a way to modify blood types

Chuck Bednar
RedOrbit
Fri, 01 May 2015 03:03 UTC
Blood
© Thinkstock
There's a serious supply-and-demand problem when it comes to blood transfusions: Patients are in constant need of the bodily fluid, which delivers oxygen and nutrients to the cells, but because they need a specific type, hospitals and blood banks often experience shortages.

Fortunately, chemists from the University of British Columbia and colleagues from the Center for Blood Research have created an enzyme that could potentially solve this problem by cutting off the antigens (sugars) found in Type A and Type B blood to make it more like Type O, which is universal and can be given to patients regardless of their blood types.

UBC postdoctoral fellow David Kwan, lead author of a new Journal of the American Chemical Society study detailing the research, explained in a statement that their "mutant enzyme" is "very efficient" at cutting off antigens in A and B blood, and "much more proficient" at removing the A-antigen subtypes that the parent enzymes tend to struggle with.
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Info

Left-handed people have same genetic code abnormality as those with situs inversus

Roisin O'Connor
The Independent, UK
Thu, 30 Apr 2015 01:41 UTC
Left Handed
© The Independent, UK100,000 people had their genes sequenced to determine handedness.
Left-handed people may be even more unique than first thought, thanks to a study that has linked one rare condition with another.

100,000 people had their genes sequenced to determine handedness, and it seems that a condition called situs inversus may be able to provide clues behind what makes people use their left hand instead of the right.

One in 20,000 people are affected by the condition which mirrors the major organs from their major positions: for instance the heart would be on the right side of the body instead of the left.

Human geneticist Silvia Paracchini and her team from the University of St Andrews found that the part of the genetic code which is abnormal in people who have situs inversus is the same that affects handedness.

Paracchini said: "The reason why it fascinates us is that we don't really understand it. It's fascinating but also puzzling.

"There must be an evolutionary advantage [to being right-handed]."

While 25 per cent of all left handedness can be linked by a person's genes, the other 75 per cent is still yet to be fully explained.

Comment: Apparently claims are being made in the above article that have no documentation at all: See: Handedness and Military Leaders
When one looks at the evidence for individual claims though (rather than just taking the word of numerous websites for granted), the issue immediately clouds still further. For example, the case for Alexander the Great being left-handed is tenuous at best. His constant inclusion at the top of lists of left-handers is a relatively recent phenomenon, apparently arising from a misreading of accounts in the 1960s and thereafter, and possibly arising from his own (entirely unsubstantiated) claim to have conquered a country of left-handed people. In fact, Alexander is always shown in classical depictions as right-handed, and none of the contemporary or near-contemporary historians, who documented his life so meticulously, make any mention of an unusual trait like left-handedness.

The notable Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II is usually numbered among the host of left-handers, presumably on the strength of the tomb inscription in which he claims "with my left hand I hurled the dart", totally ignoring the next line which reads "with my right I swung the blade". Incidentally, neither does this make him ambidextrous (what is a man wielding two weapons to do?)

It is not at all clear why Julius Caesar should be considered a left-hander, as he usually is. There does not appear to be any documentary evidence to suggest it, and to assert that he encouraged the Roman practice of shaking the right hand in greeting because he was left-handed (and therefore, presumably, unscrupulous) is circular reasoning of the highest order. The common inclusion of the Roman Emperor Commodus in such lists is even more puzzling. Although almost definitely a left-hander, and a fierce and merciless fighter, Commodus was one of Rome's worst Emperors and a poor military leader. Interestingly, Emperor Tiberius was also a left-hander according to biographer Suetonius, and a much better military leader, but he is hardly ever mentioned in the lists. All this merely demonstrates the tendency for websites and blogs to copy each other unthinkingly.


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Beaker

Bad reputation of viruses not universally deserved


Phys.org
Thu, 30 Apr 2015 00:00 UTC
beneficial viruses
"The word, virus, connotes morbidity and mortality, but that bad reputation is not universally deserved," said Marilyn Roossinck, PhD, Professor of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology and Biology at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park. "Viruses, like bacteria, can be important beneficial microbes in human health and in agriculture," she said. Her review of the current literature on beneficial viruses appeared ahead of print April 24 in the Journal of Virology, which is published by the American Society for Microbiology.

In sharp contrast to the gastrointestinal distress it causes in humans, the murine (mouse infecting) norovirus plays a role in development of the mouse intestine and its immune system, and can actually replace the beneficial effects of certain gut bacteria when these have been decimated by antibiotics. Normal, healthy gut bacteria help prevent infection by bacteria that cause gastrointestinal illness, but excessive antibiotic intake can kill the normal gut flora, and make one vulnerable to gastrointestinal disease. However, norovirus infection of mice actually restored the normal function of the immune system's lymphocytes and the normal morphology of the intestine, said Roossinck.

Mammalian viruses can also provide immunity against bacterial pathogens. Gamma-herpesviruses boost mice resistance to Listeria monocytogenes, an important human gastrointestinal pathogen, and to Yersinia pestis, otherwise known as plague. "Humans are often infected with their own gamma-herpes viruses, and it is conceivable that these could provide similar benefits," said Roossinck.

Latent herpesviruses also arm natural killer cells, an important component of the immune system, which kill both mammalian tumor cells, and cells that are infected with pathogenic viruses.

Comment: For more information on some beneficial effects of viruses, see:

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Bug

A lesson from nature? Bumblebees use nicotine to combat parasites


Science Daily
Mon, 27 Apr 2015 16:44 UTC
Image
© D Baracchi/QMULThis is a bumblebee feeding at an artificial feeder.

Bumblebees that have been infected by parasites seek out flowers with nicotine in the nectar, likely to fight off the infection, new research has found. The nicotine appears to slow the progression of disease in infected bees but has harmful effects when consumed by healthy bees.

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), gave bumblebees the option to choose between a sugar solution with nicotine in it and one without. Those bees infected with the Crithidia bombi parasite were more likely to go for the nicotine-laced nectar than those that weren't infected.

Infected bumblebees that consumed nicotine delayed the progress of the infection for a few days, showing lower levels of parasites than those that had not. However, it did not increase the life expectancy of those bees, meaning that the direct benefits of nicotine for the bee colony remain to be identified.
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Galaxy

Mysterious X-rays could mark stellar graveyard

Stuart Gary
ABC Science, Australia
Wed, 29 Apr 2015 21:09 UTC
Center of Galaxy
© NASA
Astronomers are baffled by the discovery of a mysterious fog of high energy X-rays blasting out of the centre of our galaxy.

The discovery, reported in the journal Nature, challenges our understanding of the physics taking place in the galactic centre.

The astronomers speculate the mysterious cloud could be generated by a vast graveyard of thousands of stellar remnants clustered in the shadow of the supermassive black hole.

But the source still eludes them.

"This is something that has never been seen before, I only wish we knew what it is that we discovered," says one of the study's authors Professor Chuck Hailey of the University of Columbia in New York.

"We have quite a few theories of what it could be, but none of them fits the facts, so at this point it's something of a mystery."

The international team of scientists discovered the huge X-ray cloud during observations using the NuSTAR X-ray Observatory to study a region 30 light-years wide around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.

"There really was no evidence to suggest that there should be this diffused foggy type of high energy X-rays in the region around the central black hole," says Hailey.
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