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'Ocean Census' Scientists Taken Aback by Diversity

Frank Pope
Times Online
Sun, 18 Apr 2010 20:00 UTC
Protozoa
© TimesOnlineRadiolaria. Light micrograph of an assortment of radiolaria, a type of marine protozoa
Oceanographers hoping to create a comprehensive census of marine life are deciding that their task is far bigger than imagined.

During some 300 voyages scientists of the 10-year Census of Marine Life have been sampling plankton, microbes and sediment-dwellers, but the rate at which they made new discoveries - including a bacterial community the size of Greece on the seabed near Chile - is forcing them to reappraise their estimates of how much they know.

"There are many more species than we thought there were," Dr Ann Bucklin, head of the University of Connecticut Marine Sciences Department, who headed up the team investigating zooplankton, told The Times. "It turns out the ocean food web is much more complex than we thought it was, in terms of the number of different species."

The team used DNA-sampling techniques to catalogue the life they found, but other techniques have not changed much since the first oceanographic expedition, conducted by HMS Challenger in 1872. Huge nets were dragged through the deep sea between one and five kilometres beneath the surface. Some samples were kept for taxonomic study, while others were probed for their DNA. Now, as then, new species and genera were found with every trawl.
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Rocket

Rare Shuttle Re-Entry


Space Weather
Sun, 18 Apr 2010 18:41 UTC
Image
© NASA
On Monday morning, April 19th, space shuttle Discovery will make a rare "descending node" overflight of the continental United States en route to landing in Florida. Many towns and cities in the country's heartland are near the ground track.

Landing is scheduled for 8:48 am EDT, and it takes the shuttle about 35 minutes to traverse the path shown above. Observers in the northwestern USA will see the shuttle shortly after 5 am PDT blazing like a meteoritic fireball through the dawn sky. As Discovery makes its way east, it will enter daylight and fade into the bright blue background. If you can't see the shuttle, however, you might be able to hear it. The shuttle produces a sonic double-boom that reaches the ground about a minute and a half after passing overhead.
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Info

42,000-year-old baby mammoth on display in Chicago

Caryn Rousseau
Associated Press
Sun, 18 Apr 2010 18:20 UTC
Baby Mammoth
© M. Spencer Green/Associated PressLyuba, the most complete woolly mammoth specimen, is part of an exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago.
About 42,000 years after scientists say she fell into mud near a river and suffocated, an intact baby woolly mammoth from the Ice Age is on display for the first time in the U.S. at the Field Museum.

Scientists say the mammoth calf named Lyuba is the best preserved and most complete mammoth specimen known.

She was found in 2007 by a reindeer herder in northern Siberia's remote Yamal-Nenets autonomous region and named for his wife.

"Her preservation, her really lifelike qualities allow you to form a better impression of what the past was really like," said Dan Fisher, a University of Michigan paleontologist and the museum's exhibit curator. "It becomes more immediate. It's real."

In the exhibit, visitors can see the folds and creases in Lyuba's (pronounced lee-OO-bah) skin, the bottom of her foot and small patches of hair on her ear and leg. At 45 inches long, Lyuba weighs about 92 pounds and if fully grown could have measured 8 feet tall at her shoulder and weighed between three and four tons, Fisher said.
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Sherlock

Row of Ancient Stones Found in Dartmoor "Are Older than Stonehenge"


The Daily Mail
Sun, 18 Apr 2010 00:22 UTC
Image
© Press AssociationMysterious: A row of ancient stones which mirror the path of the sun like Stonehenge have been discovered in Dartmoor and may 1,000 years older than the famous site.
A row of ancient stones that mirrors the path of the sun like Stonehenge but is up to 1,000 years older has been unearthed on Dartmoor.

The discovery of the megaliths has thrilled archaeologists and once again raised debate about the purpose of Stonehenge, which is 120 miles away on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.

The nine stones at Cut Hill, one of the highest points on Dartmoor in Devon, have been carbon-dated to around 3,500BC.

It means they pre-date Stonehenge, which was not begun before 3,000BC.

Both monuments appear to be clearly aligned to mark the rising of the midsummer sun and the setting of the midwinter sun, suggesting they had religious or astronomical associations.

Archaeologists are debating whether the find adds credence to the theory that Stonehenge was linked to prehistoric death rituals or whether it was seen by ancient Britons as a centre of healing.
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Blackbox

Empathetic mirror neurons found in humans at last

Helen Thomson
New Scientist
Sat, 17 Apr 2010 20:57 UTC
Image
© Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/GettyEliciting a reaction
Brain cells that may underlie our ability to empathise with others have been detected directly in people for the first time.

Monkey brains have been shown to contain so-called "mirror" neurons, which fire both when the animal performs an action and when it observes others performing that action. Until now, the only evidence that our brains contain similar neurons has been indirect, derived from functional MRI scans.

Now Roy Mukamel at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues have observed mirror neurons directly in humans. They used electrodes to record brain activity in the medial frontal and temporal cortices of 21 people awaiting surgery to treat epilepsy, while they made - or observed others making - grasping actions and facial expressions.

The majority of these neurons responded only to the observation or execution of an action, but 8 per cent of the cells responded to both (Current Biology, DOI: link). These areas of the brain are involved in planning and controlling actions, abstract thinking and memory.
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Telescope

When black holes go rogue, they kill galaxies

Stephen Battersby
New Scientist
Sat, 17 Apr 2010 20:54 UTC
Image
© NASA/CXC/CfA/D.Evans et al.; Optical/UV: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/VLA/CfA/D.Evans et al., STFC/JBO/MERLINA powerful jet from a supermassive black hole is blasting a nearby galaxy in the system known as 3C321
Massive black holes may be kicking the life out of galaxies by ripping out their vital gaseous essence, leaving reddened galactic victims scattered throughout the universe. While the case is not yet closed, new research shows that these black holes have at least the means to commit the violent crime.

It was already known that "supermassive" black holes at the centre of most galaxies sometimes emit vast amounts of radiation. But nobody had a good idea how common such violence is. A snapshot of the universe doesn't give enough information to judge this because the activity of the black holes is thought to be intermittent, depending on how much nearby matter they have to feed on.

Now a team of astronomers have compiled a chronicle of activity going back deep into cosmic history, using the orbiting Chandra telescope to spot X-rays emitted by the black holes together with images from Hubble to look at their host galaxies. Previous surveys with less sensitive instruments were unable to spot the distant faint sources picked up by Chandra and Hubble. The team now have a set of galaxies reaching 13 billion light years.
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Question

What the heck is a WePad?

Juergen Baetz
The Christian Science Monitor
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
WePad
© NEWSCOMThe CEO of 'Neofonie Technologieentwicklung und Informationsmanagement GmbH', Helmut Hoffer von Ankershoffen, presents the company's new tablet pc WePad in Berlin, Germany on April 12, 2010.
The German maker of a new tablet PC is setting out to rival Apple's iPad with the promise of even more technology such as a bigger screen, a webcam and USB ports.

It is not, however, an "iPad killer" as it has been dubbed by some blogs but an alternative to its bigger rival, Neofonie GmbH's founder and managing director Helmut Hoffer von Ankershoffen told reporters on Monday in Berlin.

Ankershoffen stressed the system's openness: Two USB ports allow users to connect all kinds of devices with the WePad, from external keyboards to data sticks.

People who want to put music on their WePad do not have to have any particular software, Ankershoffen said - a blow at Apple's devices that require particular Apple software like iTunes.

The WePad's basic version, which comes with Wi-Fi and 16-gigabyte storage, is set to cost €449 ($600), the larger 32-gigabyte version with a fast 3G modem is €569.

Ankershoffen claimed that given its technological superiority and greater openness, "that's a bargain compared with the iPad."
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Saturn

Astronomers find 9 new planets and upset the theory of planetary formation

Gail Gallessich
eurekalert.org
Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:22 UTC
Image
© ESO/L. CalçadaThis is a gallery of exoplanets with retrograde orbits. Exoplanets, discovered by WASP together with ESO telescopes, that unexpectedly have been found to have retrograde orbits, are shown in this artist's conception. In all cases the star is shown to scale, with its rotation axis pointing up and with realistic colors.
Santa Barbara, California - - The discovery of nine new planets challenges the reigning theory of the formation of planets, according to new observations by astronomers. Two of the astronomers involved in the discoveries are based at the UC Santa Barbara-affiliated Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), based in Goleta, Calif., near UCSB.

Unlike the planets in our solar system, two of the newly discovered planets are orbiting in the opposite direction to the rotation of their host star. This, along with a recent study of other exoplanets, upsets the primary theory of how planets are formed. There is a preponderance of these planets with their orbital spin going opposite to that of their parent star. They are called exoplanets because they are located outside of our solar system.

These and other related discoveries are being presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, this week. This is the first public mention of the new planets and the research will be described in upcoming scientific journal articles.
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Saturn

Obama aims to send astronauts to Mars orbit in 2030s


Space-travel.com
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:49 UTC
Image
© Matt Stroshane/Getty Images/AFPU.S. President Barack Obama (R) exits Air Force One with U.S. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) US Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden and former Astronaut Buzz Aldrin at the shuttle landing facility at Kennedy Space Center April 15, 2010 in Cape Canaveral, Floridia. Obama is holding a summit to discuss the future of the space program.
US President Barack Obama said Thursday he is aiming to send US astronauts into Mars orbit in the mid-2030s as he sought to quell protests over his earlier space policies.

"By 2025 we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first ever crew missions beyond the moon into deep space," Obama told an audience at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"So, we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to earth, and a landing on Mars will follow."

Obama, who was accompanied on his trip by astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, vowed he was "100 percent committed" to NASA's mission as he sought to set a new course for future US space travel.

The US president was making a whirlwind trip to the heart of the US space industry after he was hit with stinging criticism for dropping the costly Constellation project which had aimed to put Americans back on the moon.
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Rocket

Indian rocket flops, crashing into sea


Space-travel.com
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:47 UTC
Image
An Indian rocket showcasing domestically built booster technology crashed soon after take-off on Thursday in a blow to the country's space ambitions, officials said.

The launch of the first Indian-made cryogenic powered rocket, a complex technology mastered by just five countries, failed soon after lift-off from India's space centre at Sriharikota in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh.

"The rocket along with the satellite tumbled from space and plunged into the Bay of Bengal," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S. Satish told AFP from Sriharikota.

Satish said controllers lost contact with the 50-metre (165-foot) rocket, named GSLV and carrying a 2.2-tonne satellite, and it plunged into the sea eight minutes after the launch.
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