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The most kick-ass fish in the sea

Michael Marshall
New Scientist
Wed, 05 May 2010 15:51 UTC
Image
© Norbert Wu/Minden Pictures/FLPA
To die for
Species: Takifugu rubripes

Habitat: Deep in the seas around Japan, and the north-west Pacific; fish tanks in sushi restaurants, looking nervous

If you were looking for an animal to take the title of "most kick-ass fish in the sea", then the tiger puffer would have to be a strong contender.

Not only is it lethally poisonous - though that doesn't stop people trying to eat it - and able to scare off predators by inflating itself to become much larger than normal, when it is young it munches on its own brothers and sisters.

Tiger puffers attach their eggs to rocks near the bottom of the sea, often at the mouths of bays. The larvae hatch, then move to estuaries or mudflats once they have grown a little. Having put on a lot more weight, they head out to sea.

It's no innocent childhood for the pufferfish, though, as Shin Oikawa of Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, and colleagues found when they hatched tiger puffer larvae in the lab and monitored them for two months.
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Bizarro Earth

Rumbles hint that Mount Fuji is getting angry


New Scientist
Wed, 05 May 2010 15:47 UTC
Image
© Japan Stock/Alamy
What's going on below?
Something is brewing under Japan's Mount Fuji. Using rocks ejected by previous eruptions, between 781 AD and 1707, geologists are figuring out what the volcano's internal plumbing looks like.

A team led by Takayuki Kaneko at the University of Tokyo's Volcano Research Center has found that over the centuries the magma's silica levels have gradually increased. High silica tends to indicate large explosions, suggesting eruptions have become more violent. Large amounts of basalt rich in aluminium oxide were also found, which can trigger an eruption when it collides with silica.

Based on the pressures required to form both materials, Kaneko believes the two mineral composites are housed in separate chambers under Fuji: one deep chamber 20 kilometres below the volcano, rich in basaltic magma, and a shallower chamber housing the silica 9 kilometres underground.

He says the deep rumble of low-frequency earthquakes beneath Fuji in 2000 and 2001 suggests movement inside the basaltic magma chamber, and adds he would not be surprised if Fuji erupts in the very near future.
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Bizarro Earth

Magnitude 6.5 - Southern Sumatra, Indonesia


US Geological Survey
Wed, 05 May 2010 16:29 UTC
Indon Earthquake_050510
© USGS
Earthquake Location
Date-Time:
Wednesday, May 05, 2010 at 16:29:02 UTC

Wednesday, May 05, 2010 at 11:29:02 PM at epicenter

Location:
4.081°S, 101.069°E

Depth:
18.1 km (11.2 miles) (poorly constrained)

Distances:
135 km (85 miles) WSW of Bengkulu, Sumatra, Indonesia

215 km (135 miles) WSW of Lubuklinggau, Sumatra, Indonesia

355 km (220 miles) SSE of Padang, Sumatra, Indonesia

680 km (420 miles) WNW of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia
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Cloud Lightning

Cannes struggles to prepare for film festival as unseasonal wind, 10 meter high waves, hail and snow batter France's Cote d'Azur

Lizzy Davies
The Guardian
Wed, 05 May 2010 13:23 UTC
Image
© AFP / VALERY HACHE
Waves up to 10 metres high overturn cars and damage restaurants in Côte d'Azur a week before film festival

France's Côte d'Azur was struggling today to retain its seasonal spirit after huge waves and strong winds left the coastline badly damaged a week before the world's rich and famous are due to arrive for the 63rd Cannes film festival.

Waves between four and 10 metres high crashed into the Promenade des Anglais in Nice and the Croisette in Cannes yesterday afternoon, overturning cars and battering seafront restaurants.

As teams of workers laboured through the night to sweep away the displaced sand, clean the pavements and clear the detritus, the deputy mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, said the cost of the damage would run into millions of euros.

But, he insisted, the freak weather would not be allowed to disrupt the film festival, which is due to open next Wednesday. "There will be a few days of putting things right but everything will be ready, clean, impeccable and sunny," he said.
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Arrow Down

Arctic ice sets 30 records in April - One for each day - The Ice Age Cometh

Lawrence Solomon
NationalPost.com
Mon, 03 May 2010 20:59 UTC
Image

The winter after this one?
The Arctic ice set 30 records in April, one for each day. According to satellite data received by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the Arctic was more ice bound each day of April than it had been any other corresponding day in April since its sensors began tracking the extent of Arctic Ice in mid 2002. Click here to see this tracking on the Japan Aerospace website, run jointly with the International Arctic Research Center.

While Arctic ice has always varied greatly, expanding and contracting during the course of a year and also from year to year and decade to decade, the expansion of the Arctic ice this decade is significant in one respect: It acts to disprove the models that had predicted that the Arctic ice in this century would not recover as it had in previous centuries.

The expansion of the Arctic ice also acts to support a growing number of reports that Earth could be in for a period of global cooling. In one recent example, on April 14 New Scientist in an article entitled "Quiet Sun Puts Europe on Ice" warned its readers as follows: "BRACE yourself for more winters like the last one, northern Europe. Freezing conditions could become more likely: winter temperatures may even plummet to depths last seen at the end of the 17th century, a time known as the Little Ice Age. That's the message from a new study that identifies a compelling link between solar activity and winter temperatures in northern Europe."
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Igloo

Scientist says Arctic getting colder


United Press International
Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:54 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Moscow - A Russian scientist says the Arctic may be getting colder, not warmer, which would hamper the international race to discover new mineral fields.

An Arctic cold snap that began in 1998 could last for years, freezing the northern marine passage and making it impassable without icebreaking ships, said Oleg Pokrovsky of the Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory.

"I think the development of the shelf will face large problems," Pokrovsky said Thursday at a seminar on research in the Polar regions.

Scientists who believe the climate is warming may have been misled by data from U.S. meteorological stations located in urban areas, where dense microclimates creates higher temperatures, RIA Novosti quoted Pokrovsky as saying.
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Attention

The coming ice age could be just one winter away

Patrick Collins
Ice Age Now
Tue, 04 May 2010 20:44 UTC
Image
Robert Felix argues convincingly that, rather than runaway heating due to humans' burning fossil fuels, the world is much more likely to face rapid onset of the next ice age in the near future.

"Metres of snow every day for months on end", as seems to have occurred before, would kill everyone in northern countries - Russia, Poland, Germany, Scandinavia, northern Britain, Canada, northern USA - from Moscow to Seattle - in just a few days.

Elementary risk analysis shows that, at the very least, detailed studies of possible counter-measures and even preparations for a "crash program" are URGENTLY needed.

Governments have already spent hundreds of millions, supposedly to avert global warming, yet even the worst-case risk is decades away.

The coming ice age could be just one winter away.
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Mr. Potato

Stunning Pictures of Al Gore's New $9 Million Mansion Media Totally Ignored

Noel Sheppard
NewsBusters.org
Tue, 04 May 2010 19:02 UTC
Nobel Laureate Al Gore purchased a $9 million mansion in the luxurious hills of Montecito, California, recently, and with the exception of the Los Angeles Times and Fox News, America's media couldn't care less.

You think it might be because the Gore-loving press wouldn't want people to consider the possibility that all of his global warming hysteria was really about lining his wallet and not saving the planet?

Formulate a response to that question as you look at what all that money the former Vice President is making off of spreading this myth can buy (h/t Doug Ross):
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Attention

It's snowing in Mexico in May!

Carlos Hernández (Translated by Sott.net)
El Diario
Sun, 02 May 2010 16:06 UTC
Image
© El Diario
The Ice Age cometh: local residents pose for photographs in the snow. In Mexico. In May!
The 50th cold wave entered Friday night to the [Chihuahua] State, and caused a snowfall in 18 municipalities. The snow reached 18 centimeters in Ignacio Zaragoza and 12 centimeters in Gomez Farías.

In the state capital, the weather phenomenon took people by surprise, since for 32 years it did not snow in May, said spokesman of the State Civil Protection Unit, Martín de la Rosa.

The municipalities that were covered in white from the early hours of Saturday are: Aldama, Aquiles Serdan, Bocoyna, Buenaventura, Casas Grandes, Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, Galeana, Gomez Farias, Guachochi, Guerrero, Ignacio Zaragoza, Madera, Matachi, Ocampo, Riva Palacio, San Juanito and Temosachic. It also snowed in San Juanito, Creel, Cusárare and in the region of Divisadero.

In the areas of Rubio and Anahuac, snow fell more intensely, while the inhabitants of Bachíniva, Namiquipa and Riva Palacio, also reported to the Civil Protection Unit of this phenomenon.
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Bizarro Earth

Large amounts of nitrogen stored beneath selected agricultural areas


PhysOrg
Tue, 04 May 2010 16:24 UTC
Large amounts of nitrogen are stored in the soils of agricultural areas in Nebraska and Maryland, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Once in the soil, nitrogen can be converted to nitrate, which can readily move to groundwater.

"We expected to find nitrogen stored in organic matter in these soils, but didn't realize how much," said Tom Nolan, USGS hydrologist, who led the study. "If mobilized, the large reservoirs of nitrogen could significantly impact water quality."

Nitrogen occurs in soil, plants, and groundwater, and it is difficult to account for all of the various forms it can take. For this study, scientists at the USGS National Water Quality Assessment Program and the USDA Agricultural Research Service used a new version of the Root Zone Water Quality Model to estimate unsaturated zone nitrogen mass balances at four agricultural fields. The study was reported in the May/June 2010 edition of the Journal of Environmental Quality, published by the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America.

The mass balances were expected to reveal the predominant forms of nitrogen in important agricultural settings. The four sites had variable climate, soils, and management practices, and included: an almond orchard in central California; a cornfield that is about 0.6 kilometers from the almond orchard; a corn-soybean crop rotation in eastern Nebraska; and a corn-soybean rotation in eastern Maryland.
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