Science & TechnologyS


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Towering Mystery Fossil Was a 'Shroom With a View

Anne Minard
National Geographic
Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:24 UTC
At a time when the tallest trees stood just a few feet high, giant "mushrooms" towered over the landscape.

That's the finding being reported by new a paper appearing in the May issue of the journal Geology.

he study adds to the quest to solve a long-standing scientific puzzle: the true nature of a fossil that was the world's largest organism from about 420 million to 370 million years ago.

Called Prototaxites, the mystery life-form was first reported in 1859 based on samples found in Canada.

The ancient organism boasted trunks up to 24 feet (8 meters) high and as wide as three feet (one meter).

Prototaxites was widespread - its fossils are found all over the globe.

Lead study author Kevin Boyce, of the University of Chicago, said the unidentified monstrosity was a staple in textbooks while he was still in school.

"It's fun because it's kind of a classic specimen that people have worried about for a long time," Boyce said. "It's been an outstanding question for 150 years."
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Frog

Fibonacci spirals in nature could be stress-related

Jon Cartwright
PhysicsWeb
Thu, 26 Apr 2007 07:13 UTC
The Fibonacci sequence -- in which each successive number is the sum of its two preceding numbers -- regularly crops up in nature. It describes the number of petals around daisies, how the density of branches increases up a tree trunk, and how a pine cone's scales are arranged. Now, having performed "stress engineering" to create Fibonacci-sequence spirals on microstructures grown in the lab, physicists in China think they may have found the reason why the sequence is so ubiquitous -- with a little help from a seemingly unrelated physics problem posed over 100 years ago

Stress engineering can be used to create microstructures without using any high-precision patterning equipment. In the technique, a curved "core" material is coated with a different "shell" material at a high temperature. The composite is then cooled while carefully restricting the geometry, and because of difference in the thermal expansion of each material selective parts of the shell buckle under stress, causing patterns to form.
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Light Sabers

Ireland: Text messages harm written language?


Reuters
Thu, 26 Apr 2007 07:04 UTC
The rising popularity of text messaging on cell phones poses a threat to writing standards among Irish schoolchildren, an education commission says.

The frequency of errors in grammar and punctuation has become a serious concern, the State Examination Commission said in a report after reviewing last year's exam performance by 15-year-olds.

"The emergence of the mobile phone and the rise of text messaging as a popular means of communication would appear to have impacted on standards of writing as evidenced in the responses of candidates," the report said, according to Wednesday's Irish Times.
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Bulb

Canada to ban incandescent light bulbs by 2012


Reuters
Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:17 UTC
OTTAWA - Canada will ban the sale of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2012 as part of a plan to cut down on emissions of greenhouse gases, Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said on Wednesday.

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Novice tells of Bronze Age find


BBC News
Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:45 UTC
A metal-detecting novice who unearthed an "extremely important" hoard of Bronze Age artefacts has said his discovery was due to "sheer luck".

©PA
John Minns found the items shortly after he started metal detection
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Health

Cancer-Fighting Drug Found in Dirt

Charles Q. Choi
Livescience
Wed, 25 Apr 2007 02:27 UTC
The bark of certain yew trees can yield a medicine that fights cancer. Now scientists find the dirt that yew trees grow in can supply the drug as well, suggesting a new way to commercially harvest the medicine.

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Telescope

'Earth-like' planet discovered orbiting red dwarf

Andy McSmith
The Independent
Wed, 25 Apr 2007 19:19 UTC
Scientists have discovered a planet not much bigger than Earth that could be covered in oceans and has the right temperature to support life. And it is only 20.5 light years away.
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Cloud Lightning

NASA Mission to Explore Noctilucent Clouds

Kenneth Chang
NY Times
Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:35 UTC
Two hundred seventy thousand feet above the ground, higher than 99.9 percent of the earth's air, clouds still float around - thin, iridescent wisps of electric blue.

NASA is launching a small satellite to take a closer look at these clouds at the edge of outer space and to try to understand why, in recent years, they are appearing more often over more parts of the world. They are also becoming brighter.

©Ed Lu/NASA
Noctilucent clouds are more easily seen from space as this photograph from the International Space Station shows. Since 1980, satellite observations show the number of noctilucent clouds increasing about 28 percent per decade. The ice crystals in the clouds also appear to be getting bigger, with the brightness of the clouds rising about 7 percent per decade.
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Junk DNA Now Looks Like Powerful Regulator

Staff Writers
Terra Daily
Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:16 UTC
Large swaths of garbled human DNA once dismissed as junk appear to contain some valuable sections, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California-Santa Cruz. The scientists propose that this redeemed DNA plays a role in controlling when genes turn on and off.
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Evil Rays

H2CAR could fuel entire U.S. transportation sector sustainably for thousands of years

Lisa Zyga
Physorg.com
Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:31 UTC
In a recent study, scientists have demonstrated that a hybrid system of hydrogen and carbon can produce a sufficient amount of liquid hydrocarbon fuels to power the entire U.S. transportation sector. Using biomass to produce the carbon, and solar energy to produce hydrogen, the process requires only a fraction of the land area needed by other proposed methods.

©Physorg.com
A possible configuration of the proposed H2CAR process. Image credit: Rakesh Agrawal, et al.

Comment: The old adage, "If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably isn't" should be applied here. Converting biomass to fuel would in effect, mean the death of millions from starvation so that the rich can still maintain their luxurious lifestyle.

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