Really? Science News

Storing solar heat

2008-04-07T10:10:00.004-04:00

The photovoltaic materials needed to turn the sun's rays into electricity are still relatively expensive, given the power they can produce. And, since the sun doesn't always shine, solar energy must be stored if it is to provide a continuous stream of electricity. A recent NYTimes Science article describes a technology that collects solar energy as heat, and stores the heat to enable 24-hour-a-day power generation.

Using mirrors and lenses, the sun's rays are reflected and focused on to a tank of molten salt. The salt reaches temperatures high enough to boil water. It's a lot cheaper to store energy as heat than it is to store it as electricity. The article cleverly points out that a coffee thermos and a laptop computer battery can store roughly the same amount of energy; and the battery cost 30 times more. By cooling the hot salt, steam is made continuously, rain or shine, night and day. The steam powers conventional electric generators. link

A step closer to theraputic cloning-- treating deseases with the patient's own cells

2008-03-27T16:32:00.003-04:00

Science Magazine's news site, ScienceNow, reports that scientists have moved a step closer toward being able to use patients' own cells to treat their diseases. This process is referred to as therapeutic cloning. A team led by neuroscientist Lorenz Studer of the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City was able to show that mice with a Parkinson-like movement disorder significantly improved after being implanted with brain cells derived from their own tissue.

The new study is the first to show that cells from a diseased animal can be used to treat the very same animal. The researchers gave mice brain lesions to create a Parkinson-like disorder in which knocked out the use of the neurotransmitter dopamine on one side of their brains, limiting their ability to control paw movements.

To treat the Parkinson-like disorder, the researchers isolated a cell produced in a mouse's ovary called an oocyte, and transferred the nucleus of the mouse's skin cell into the ooctye. These modified cells were grown into early embryos, which were clones of the afflicted mice. Many of these cells grew into dopamine-producing neurons that the scientists could implant to treat the brains of the original donors.

The sick mice treated with their own cells showed a significant improvement in their ability to control paw movements. The improvement only occurred in mice treated with their own cells. link

You can't buy happiness for yourself

2008-03-21T10:34:00.004-04:00

Social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver wanted to find out what kind of spending makes people happier: spending money on yourself, or spending it on others.

Dunn's researchers gave 46 UBC students envelopes containing either a $5 bill or a $20 bill and told them how to spend it. Some were told to spend it on themselves; some were told to spend it on someone else. After interviewing the students later, it turned out that those who spent it on others, as a gift or donation to charity, were happier than those who blew it on themselves.

According to Science Magazine, two more studies yielded similar results. Dunn's team polled 16 employees of a Boston company before and after they received bonuses of various sizes, and they gathered data on income, spending, and happiness from 632 people across the United States. In both groups, happiness correlated with the amount of money people spent on others rather than the absolute amount of the bonus or income.

If you bought yourself a cup of coffee or an ice cream today, and tomorrow bought one for someone else. Which would bring you more long- or short-term happiness? link

Thermoelectric materials: making electric current from heat

2008-03-20T09:36:00.000-04:00

We make electricity from heat all the time. Burn fuel, the heat moves the piston, the piston turns the generator, and we can plug in our X-Box or our vacuum cleaner. But imagine if we could heat a wire and make electric current move through the wire just by heating it.

Thermoelectric materials are capable of absorbing heat and turning it into electric current. Today's thermoelectric materials aren't very efficient, but they are used in niche applications like in cooling certain microchips. NASA uses them on spacecraft that are too far from the sun to use solar power.

Recently, researchers at MIT and Boston College have discovered a simple way of making thermoelectric materials, and these theromelectric materials are 40 percent more efficient than normal. The process involves grinding bismuth antimony telluride into fine particles and then pressing it back together. link

If thermoelectric materials can someday be easily made in bulk, these matrials could be used to make engines or air conditioners significantly more energy efficient. A typical car engine loses roughly a third of it's energy to heat. Thermolelectric materials could someday cool the engine of a hybrid car, and take a good portion of the lost energy to power the electric drive motor. Such a vehicle would be super efficient. Another possiblity is using thermoelectric materials absorb heat from the air-- a much more efficient way of cooling a building. link

Cassini misses, Dextre's ready

2008-03-16T18:14:00.004-04:00

In July 2005, a group of NASA scientists got very interested in Enceladus, a small moon of Saturn. At that time, the Cassini spacecraft flew over the surface of Enceladus' south pole, and discovered a dozen or so warm geysers spraying water vapor and ice crystals. That was surprising because moons as small as Enceladus, which is just 300 miles wide, do not usually generate enough internal heat to create such activity. The existence of the plumes hinted that there might be a liquid water ocean beneath the surface, and the possibility of liquid water always brings the possibility for life.

Last Wednesday, the Cassini spacecraft flew into the mysterious icy plumes erupting from Enceladus. The flyby, however, turned out to be a bust. Passing only 125 miles from the base of the plume, an "unexplained software hiccup" prevented the spacecraft's Cosmic Dust Analyzer from transmitting data to the onboard computer. Flybys planned for later in 2008 may be able to repeat the plume fly-through to try to collect the observations missed this time around. link

Much closer to Earth, in the International Space Station, astronauts have just completed assembling Dextre, a special purpose dexterous manipulator (SPDM). Dextre is a robot with two large arms that will allow it to transport objects, use tools, and install and remove equipment on the outside of space station. Sensors allow Dextre to "feel" objects and automatically react to movements or changes. Astronauts will operate Dextre from inside the space station, looking through Dextre's four mounted cameras. The robot is designed to function with spacewalking astronauts, or to work independently on tasks that previously would have required a spacewalk. link

Struggling against greenhouse gases

2008-03-13T20:15:00.000-04:00

There is strong support to the idea that the use of plug-in electric cars, cars that recharge overnight, would greatly aid the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Research from the University of Texas, to be published in the June issue of Environmental Science & Technology, suggests that electric cars would would aid drought. Accorcing to the report, filling the road with 10-million plug-in electric cars by 2015 would require an additional 1.1 percent or so of water used by electric power plants. Nonetheless, I don't think that kills the whole electric car idea. link

But here's some real bad news. Using data provided by the Chinese government, researchers at the University of California have calculated China's greenhouse gas emissions by 2010. The results are that within two years, Chinese emissions of greenhouse gases will have vastly outstripped the reductions achieved by all the countries that have signed up to the Kyoto protocol combined.

Chinese greenhouse gas emissions are estimated to be between 600- and 1,200-million metric tons greater than they were in 2000. Even the minimum figure is five times as large as the 115.90 million metric ton in reductions which the US Energy Information Agency estimates will have been achieved by signatories of the Kyoto protocol by 2010.

"The emissions growth rate is surpassing our worst expectations, and that means the goal of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 is going to be much, much harder to achieve," says Maximillian Auffhammer of the University of California, Berkeley. link

Jupiter Probe confirms ideas about Earth's Van Allen Belts

2008-03-12T10:09:00.005-04:00

The first thing you have to know is that the Earth is submerged in the center of doughnut-shaped belts made of energetic charged particles. We call this the Van Allen Belts, after James Van Allen who discovered the Earth's radiation belts 50 years ago using the first US satellite, Explorer I.

Within the Van Allen belts, we observe occasional flurries of high-energy electrons that are known to mess with the electronics inside communication and other types of satellites. It has been theorized that these high-energy electrons are accelerated by very low-frequency radiowaves. Understanding these high-energy electrons is key in being able to predict their behavior, and make the Van Allen belts safer for satellites.

Using data collected at Jupiter by the Galileo spacecraft, Dr Richard Horne of British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and colleagues from UCLA, and the University of Iowa found that a special type of very low frequency radio wave is strong enough to accelerate electrons up to very high energies inside Jupiter's magnetic field.

According to Dr Horne, "We've shown before that very low frequency radio waves can accelerate electrons in the Earth's magnetic field, but we have now shown that exactly the same theory works on Jupiter, where the magnetic field is 20,000 times stronger than the Earth's and the composition of the atmosphere is very different. This is the ultimate test of our theory." link

Japan and Korea go to space

2008-03-11T13:08:00.004-04:00

Space Shuttle Endeavour left Cape Canaveral today to deliver part of a Japanese space laboratory and a Canadian-built robotic arm system to the International Space Station (ISS). With the arrival of Japan's lab, all 15 partner countries in the ISS are represented in orbit.

The $100-billion space station is 60% complete after a decade of construction and must be finished by the time the space shuttle program is retired in 2010. Endeavour is carrying the first part of an elaborate Japanese space laboratory, which the Japanese have been working on for over 20 years. About the size of a double-decker bus, it will be the station's largest laboratory and will have facilities for art and "orbital dance", along with experiment racks for biomedical studies, fluid physics research and life science. link

It was announced yesterday that the first South Korean astronaut will be a woman. Yi So-yeon, 29, is a biotechnology engineer who is finishing her doctorate. Yi will serve as a payload specialist with two Russian cosmonauts for a seven- or eight-day mission to the International Space Station. The man intended to be the first South Korean in space has been grounded for violating security protocol. link

Depressing news about SSRIs

2008-02-26T12:23:00.002-05:00

The antidepressant Prozac and related drugs are no better than placebo in treating all but the most severely depressed patients, according to a recent reassessment of clinical data.

Prozac is a SSRI, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Since its launch, more than 50 million people with depression have been treated with Prozac. Other SSRIs include fluoxetine (Prozac), venlafaxine, nefazodone, and paroxetine (Seroxat or Paxil).

A previous study had indicated that the benefits of antidepressants might be exaggerated. So, UK and US researchers led by Irving Kirsch of Hull University, UK, studied clinical trials of these drugs, using all data presented to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The researchers have concluded that SSRIs do not work for most patients, stating "compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression". link

Bad Biofuels

2008-02-09T11:21:00.000-05:00

United Nations Environment Program spokesman Nicholas Nuttall states: “There was an unfortunate effort to dress up biofuels as the silver bullet of climate change. We fully believe that if biofuels are to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, there urgently needs to be better sustainability criterion.” In other words, we're not seeing the whole biofuels picture. And the picture isn't good.

Two papers published in Science explain that if the full emissions costs of producing biofuels are taken into account, growing and using biofuels will result in more greenhouse emissions than conventional fuels. The factor that has previously been ignored in the biofuel life cycle is the carbon emissions that will result from clearing new land for growing fuels. Using existing food-producing farmland for growing fuel does not solve the problem, because switching from food to fuel will reduce the supply of food crops, and that will motivate farmers elsewhere to clear more land. Tropical rainforest land is already being cleared for this purpose, but the studies show that the carbon cost is great even if less-lush scrubland is cleared for farming. link

Prior to the release of these studies, scientists have been wary of biofuels. In his book, The Omnivore's Dilema, Michael Pollen explains that by some estimates, growing and producing one gallon of corn ethanol takes 9/10-ths of a gallon of gasoline. This is because petroleum is used in production and application of fertilizers, as well as irrigation, distillation, and transportation of the biofuel. The October 2007 issue of National Geographic dedicates a cover story to the environmental price of biofuels. link

Keeping faith in science

2008-01-06T14:29:00.000-05:00

In an eloquently written piece, NY Times science columnist Dennis Overbye explores the origins of scientific law. Overbye asks, "Are [scientific laws] merely fancy bookkeeping, a way of organizing facts about the world? Do they govern nature or just describe it? And does it matter that we don’t know and that most scientists don’t seem to know or care where they come from?"

Overbye's comments follow a New York Times Op-Ed by Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University. Davies recently provoked an avalanche of blog commentary when he asserted in his Op-Ed that science, like religion, rests on faith. Science rests not on faith in God, but faith in the idea of an orderly universe, and without this presumption a scientist could not function.

When I taught physics, I used to begin by making an analogy that I learned from the writings of Nobel physicist Richard Feynman. The analogy assumes that rules exist.

Feynman said that to understand what a physicist does, imagine an observer, watching a chess match. Imagine that this observer knows nothing about the rules of chess. At first the observer will have very basic questions about how the different chess pieces can move. After a while, the observer will start to build an understanding of the rules. Along the way, old rules will be amended, and new rules will be discovered.

Over time, the observer will learn the rules of chess in the same way that physicists learn the laws of nature. As more is understood about the basic rules of game, questions will arise about larger strategies. Just as in science, the questions get bigger and more interesting as you go along. link

Talking stereotypes

2008-01-04T21:18:00.000-05:00

In my household, the woman talks more than the man, and this agrees with traditional stereotypes for male and female behavior. The stereotype, however, turns out to be false. In a study conducted at the University of Texas at Austin , about 200 female and 200 male students wore voice recorders during their waking hours that automatically turned on every 12.5 minutes to record for 30 seconds. The recordings were transcribed, counted, and extrapolated to estimate a daily word count. The verdict: men and women averaged roughly the same verbosity, both emitting about16,000 words a day. link

Women's backs are built for pregancy (but still ache anyway)

2007-12-13T11:45:00.000-05:00

A scientific comparison between of the lower backs of women and men has shown that women's backs are specially built for carrying the extra weight of pregnancy. Similar studies on our evolutionary ancestors bore the same result.

When human ancestors changed from walking on four legs to two, the bones and muscles of their spines had to evolve to accommodate the shift in weight. The lower spine curved, to shift the shoulders back, and keep our center of gravity over our two legs.

The term center of gravity refers to the mathematical average location of an object's weight. When your the center of gravity extends in front of the end of your feet, you fall over. You can experience this for yourself. Stand keeping the back of your feet and hips against a wall, and move your center of gravity forward by bending at the waist. If you do this, you'll know when your center of gravity is beyond the end of your toes.

Because of the extra weight of pregnancy, women's lower backs evolved differently than men's. The curve of a women's lower back spans three vertebrae; in men, it spans just two. The added vertebra helps distribute the pregnancy weight over a wider area. The joints located behind the spinal cord, called zygapophyseal joints, are 14 percent larger in women than in men, suggesting that the joints can bare more weight. These joints are also oriented at a slightly different angle in women, allowing them to better brace the vertebrae against slipping. link

Google thinks like you

2007-12-11T13:46:00.000-05:00

PageRank, the computer program that is Google's search formula, works more like our own mind than previously thought.

In a study published in Psychological Science, people were asked to think of a word that begins with a particular letter, and their responses were recorded and ranked by popularity. The Google PageRank result for the letter turned out to be a good predictor of human responses.

When you get the PageRank search results for a search word, what you see is a list of websites associated with that word, ranked by PageRank's website popularity or importance. A web site's importance is determined by how many web pages are linked to the page, and how many web pages are linked to those pages, and so on. Using this method, a seemingly unimportant word can have great notoriety because of it's association with a popular word.

For example, think of the word myrrh. Nobody uses that word much through the year, but it maintains at least moderate importance because of it's link with Christmas, which has a lot of links. link

Clues to water on Mars lie here on Earth

2007-12-10T12:12:00.000-05:00

Our everlasting Mars Rovers are still up there sniffing for evidence of Martian water. To better understand what evidence of Martian water looks like, researchers at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio University are studing the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica.

Antartic and Martian dry valleys both experience sub-zero temperatures and both have iron-rich soil. Year round, salt water flows in the ground below the Antartic dry valleys. The topographical similarity between these two regions may be an indication of water under Martian soil; and if so, the prospect of present or past water on Mars looks pretty likely. link

Hurricane season wasn't as bad as expected

2007-12-04T10:37:00.000-05:00

For the second year in a row, meteorologists expected a worse Atlantic hurricane season than the one we experienced, and meteorologists are beginning to be concerned that future predictions will not be taken seriously.

The conditions this year were ripe for intense hurricane activity. Seventeen named storms were predicted, but the season only produced 14. Only two of the 14 storms were were extremely intense: hurricanes Dean in August and Felix in September. These storms caused catastrophic damage in Mexico.

Meteorologists are still puzzling over the reason for the lower-than-predicted hurricane rate. It is likely that windblown dust from Africa blocked sunlight and keep water temperatures down near the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

"We are in a time until about 2020 that hurricane threats will be more frequent and more intense on our coastlines. So instead of saying, Ha, ha, ha, there's nothing going on, people should be thankful that there's not as much going on," says Joe Bastardi, a meteorologist with the private weather forecasting service AccuWeather. link

Meanwhile, on Venus...

2007-11-30T09:50:00.000-05:00

Lately, Earth and Mars seem to get all the press, but the NASA has ignored Venus since the NASA's Magellan mission used radar to map the planet in 1994 . Venus is Earth's neighbor, on the side closer to the Sun. The planet has roughly the same mass, size, and composition as Earth. Evidence shows that Venus was once partially covered by deep oceans of water. Today, Venus is unimaginably hot, with only a little water left on its surface. How could two planets that were once so essentially alike end up so different?

This week, the European Space Agency (ESA) released eight papers in Nature magazine documenting the findings of the Venus Express mission, their unmanned probe launched in 2005. The ESA has been building their understanding of Venusian weather, which to Earthlings is astounding: above the planet's 460-degree-C surface, the Sun’s energy blasts thick sulphuric acid clouds through an atmosphere that is about 95 percent carbon dioxide.

On Earth, a small amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide warms the surface, which is tempered by vast oceans. On Venus, the thin spots of surface water are vaporizing into space under intense heat. With an atmosphere composed mainly of carbon dioxide, no oceans to cool lava that flows to its surface, and a closer proximity to the sun, Venus experiences an extreme greenhouse effect.

Venus' inhospitable conditions ruins our chances of finding any remaining record of past life there, and makes the possibility of landing an astronaut there a pipe dream. link

Beer fridges are widening our carbon footprints

2007-11-28T20:31:00.000-05:00

According to a researcher at the University of Alberta, the secondary refrigerators found in many Canadian households are significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.

In Canada, one in three households have a second refrigerator, and most of these second refrigerators are used to keep beverages cold. Beer fridges tend to be older and less energy efficient, 65 percent are more than 10 years old. According to a Canadian researcher, secondary refrigerators in Canada consumed at least as much electricity as 100,000 US homes.

Although the study did not include the US, it's fair to assume that US households contributing to greenhouse emissions in a similar way. The According to the National Resources Defense Council, 98 to 99 percent of US homes have at least one refrigerator, and 18 percent of those have two or more refrigerators. link

Emryonic stem cells - without the embryos

2007-11-27T11:01:00.000-05:00

Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent-- they have an almost magical ability to grow into any kind of cell and perform any function. There is a good possibility that some day we may use cells like this to heal injuries and deceases. Until recently, the only way to get these cells was to remove them from the cells of a embryo, a process that is fatal to the embryo and controversial to many.

It was reported on November 20 that a method was developed for making pluripotent stem cells from ordinary skin cells, with no need for an embryo. Two different scientific teams developed the method independently, using specialized viruses to deliver four genes to the skin cell's genetic code. Adding four genes is all it takes to make a embryonic-like stem cell from a skin cell.

Anytime genes are added to normal cells, there is a risk that the cells can grow cancerous. But, researchers are confident that they will soon find a way to switch the cell's genes instead of adding to them, removing the cancer risk.

Having a method for making pluripotent stem cells without using embryos will extinguish the controversy that beleaguers stem cell research. "People working on ethics will have to find something new to worry about," says stem cell researcher Jose Cibelli of Michigan State University. link

Why do the trees change color in the fall?

2007-10-31T09:34:00.000-04:00

It seems a fairly obvious question for this time of year. My daughter asked me this question last week, and I was embarrassed that I didn't know what to tell her.

According to News@nature.com, color change in leaves is not very well understood. The predominant theory is that leaves change their color in order to recycle the last bit of nutrients from their leaves before they are lost. Thus, trees grown in areas with less soil nutrients will produce more brilliant leaf colors.

As the weather turns colder, the trees switch to winter hibernation mode. The green chlorophyll in the leaves breaks down and disappears, revealing the yellow carotinoids that have been lurking among the chlorophyll all summer. The brilliant red color that people admire comes from a pigment called anthocyanin, which trees produce in autumn. Why trees expend their precious energy producing anthocyanin is still a matter of study and debate. It is believed that anthocyanin acts as a sunscreen, protecting leaves which are more vulnerable to sun damage after the chlorophyll is gone. The protected leaves can stay on the trees longer, allowing leaf nutrients to be absorbed into the other parts of the tree. link

Gravity victorious in rocket competition

2007-10-30T09:36:00.000-04:00

NASA held their 2007 X Prize Cup rocket expo this past weekend near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The weekend's big event was the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, offering 1.35-million dollars in prize money to the company that can demonstrate a new space vehicle capable of landing humans on the moon.

Of the nine companies that registered for the event, only Armadillo Aerospace of Mesquite, Texas was ready to go on launch day. Armadillo is headed by John Carmack, the creator of the video game Doom. Their entry, Module 1, failed the test the first two times and exploded on the third. Interestingly, Armadillo was the only entry to show up for the 2006 competition, and its entry crashed that year, too.

Why is it that a team can't meet the challenge? It's not exactly rocket science. link

Some Neanderthals were redheads

2007-10-27T12:59:00.000-04:00

The journal Science reports that at least 1 percent of Neanderthals were fair-skinned redheads. This adaption likely helped the Neanderthals of the high latitudes synthesize vitamin D with less sunlight.

Separate teams isolated a version of a gene called mc1r from the fossils of two different Neanderthals, one 43,000-year-old fossil from Spain, and another 50,000-year-old fossil from Italy. The Neanderthal version of the mc1r gene is similar to a gene found in humans that have fair skin and red hair.

The Neanderthal version of mc1r is not found in humans, which confirms that the gene samples were not mistakenly taken from a human. This also strengthens the currently-accepted theory that humans did not evolve from Neanderthals. link

Engineered virus shrinks tumors

2007-10-26T14:14:00.000-04:00

Viruses have been known to shrink tumors. A reduction in tumor size can be observed after vaccinating a cancer patient, because vaccinating introduces a small amount of virus. The challenge has been to get enough virus cells to target the tumor without damaging healthy cells.

By genetically modifying the pox virus, David Kirn at Jennerex Biotherapeutics in San Francisco has engineered a special virus to seek and destroy tumors. Kirn's genetically-modified virus spreads more easily within tumors thanks to a tail composed of a protein called actin. Kirn has also modified the virus so that it is unable to produce an enzyme called thymidine kinase, without which the virus is unable to replicate and damage healthy tissue. Since cancerous cells contain an abundance of thymidine kinase, it is easy for the modified virus to multiply within tumors, and once the virus enters a cancer cell, it replicates itself until the cancer cell bursts. The third modification to the pox virus makes it produce a signalling molecule called cytokine, which attracts the body's immune cells towards tumors.

Clinical trials on the virus treatment was conducted with 13 patients with advanced liver cancer. The patients were so advanced that all previous therapies had failed, and they had a life expectancy of only three to four months. Beginning in July 2006, researchers started treating by administering the engineered virus directly into the participants' tumors every three weeks.

Seven of the participants survived for more than eight months, and three are still alive today, over 15 months later. The virus shrank the tumors of 10 of the 13 participants, including five whose tumors were reduced more than 50 percent. The only notable side effect experienced by the participants was temporary flu-like symptoms. link

Predicting global climate change: mission impossible

2007-10-25T19:01:00.000-04:00

In the current issue of Science magazine, two University of Washington scientists suggest that we "call off the quest" for predicting global temperature changes, and that political decisions should not be made based on climate models.

For 20 years now, scientists have been working on predicting how much the average global temperature will increase when carbon dioxide levels reach double the pre-industrial levels. For all the effort, the predictions are not getting any more accurate -- current estimates range between 2.0 and 8.0 degrees C.

The article states that even the best computer models have too much uncertainty; this uncertainty comes from feedbacks in the system that change the way the system changes. For example, the sun is melting the polar ice caps. As they melt, they reflect less of the suns energy, changing the balance. These types of feedbacks cause uncertainty.

The article does not dispute that global temperatures will continue to rise; but nonetheless, the article will likely fuel the critics of the the climate change movement. link

Carbon dioxide emissions are still climbing

2007-10-24T07:33:00.000-04:00

The greenhouse gas problem is nothing new, and you might think we've begun to at least slow our increasing carbon dioxide emissions. However, a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences discloses more inconvenient truth.

In 2006, global carbon dioxide emissions resulted in a release of 9.9-billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere; 35-percent higher than the 1990 carbon emissions. In the atmosphere, carbon concentrations are now increasing at a rate of 1.93 parts per million (ppm) each year. This is the highest rate of increase since carbon monitoring activities began in 1959. The current rate of annual increase is considerably higher than the 1.58-ppm average for the 1980s and the 1.49 ppm for the 1990s.

Dr. Pep Canadell, the study's lead author and the Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project, explains that emission rates have likely risen as a result of the increase in global population and wealth. We have yet to find a way to increase increase global wealth without increasing carbon emissions rates. In addition, there has been a slowing of the effectiveness of global carbon-absorbing systems, such as rainforests and oceans. link

Flu spreads faster in cold weather

2007-10-19T15:29:00.000-04:00

We can tell our grandmas they were right. New research from the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that the flu virus spreads easier in cold and dry weather. We used to explain that the increase in indoor activity in the colder months makes the flu season a cold-weather event. But, that's not the whole story.

The flu virus is exhaled from the body attached to aerosol water droplets. In as series of medical studies, the flu was spread through a population of guinea pigs. Since guinea pigs were in separate cages and do not sneeze or cough, the virus was spread only through breathing. Results showed that the flu spread much faster in colder air and in drier air.

When the air is dry, water aerosols and viruses move efficiently. But in damp air, the virus can't stay airborne; the aerosols containing the virus tend to combine with other water aersols and settle out of the air. Warm air can hold more moisture than cold air, so cold air tends to be drier and is better at spreading the flu.

After further study of the ginea pigs, researchers concluded that the spread of flu is also affected by the health of the mucus layers that line the nose and throat. In warm conditions, the mucus layer traps viruses and carries them from the body. Cold air damages the mucus layer, making the it more viscus and hindering the ability of the mucus to rid the infection.

So grandmas, bring on the chicken soup. link

A step closer Alzheimer's detection

2007-10-16T10:40:00.000-04:00

More than 5-million North Americans are diagnosed with Alzheimer's decease, and a quarter of a million more are estimated to be living undiagnosed. Currently, doctors diagnose Alzheimer's by the patients' behavior and by eliminating other possible deceases. The only fool-proof way to diagnose the decease is after it's too late - through autopsy of the brain.

Researchers at the Stanford School of Medicine studied concentrations of communicode proteins the blood of living patients. The communicode is a set of 120 proteins that human cells use to communicate with each other. It is thought that the decease damages the communicode proteins in the brain and that these damaged proteins circulate throughout the bloodstream. Doctors diagnosed 20 patients with or without Alzheimer's. The blood test and the doctors' diagnoses agreed in 18 of 20 patients.

Unfortunately, even if diagnosed early, there is no current treatment for the decease. link

Mars orbiter snaps new high-resolution color images

2007-10-14T08:15:00.000-04:00

Searching for the next Mars landing sights, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured 143 high-resolution color images of the planet's surface. The pictures are the first color images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard the orbiter. The images are quite striking; they illustrate the unique geological history and chemical make-up of the planet's surface.

The next landing of a Mars rover will be in 2009. The unmanned rover, called the Mars Science Laboratory, will carry the next generation of instrumentation, searching for conditions that can or had once supported life on Mars.

Meanwhile, Opportunity and Spirit, the first two Mars Rovers, are still sending back data after more than three years of service. Not bad, considering the missions were expected to last three months. The aging rovers are beginning to fatigue due to the daily temperature swings of 200 degrees F. link

Memory shuts off just before sleep

2007-10-13T16:11:00.000-04:00

What can we remember from surgery? What do we remember while dropping off - but not quite - asleep? Anesthesiology researchers say that we don't remember much.

Anesthetized patients were played a recording of words and sounds just before they went under. The patients brains were monitored through the whole process using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Although researchers observed brain activity in the part of the brain that recognizes language, the part of the brain that has to untangle language and meaning did not function well. After recovering, patients had difficulty identifying the last things they heard.

This finally proves what I've been telling you for 8 years about dozing off in class. link

Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize for work on climate change

2007-10-12T19:31:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for claiming the Nobel Peace Prize. Gore has been a widely-visible spokesman for the climate change cause. The IPCC is a central repository for climate change research that collects and organizes the results of all climate change research, and then compiles plain-language summaries for the World's governments. Although the work of Gore and the IPCC is largely scientific, the work was viewed as an act of peace based on its intergovernmental nature. link

There are persuasive arguments to debunk Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. The film may contain some partial and convenient facts (link), but the science of the matter is conclusive. The Earth is getting warmer and we are the cause. link

The appendix is good for something afterall

2007-10-10T11:58:00.000-04:00

Back in my teaching days, I occasionally gave a lesson on useless body parts. The list would include discussions on the wisdom teeth, the sinuses, the coccyx, and male nipples. Students were surprised to learn that we still have muscles specifically for hanging from trees or walking on all fours, and that women have sperm ducts in their ovaries.

Until recently, the appendix was a regular on the useless list. This 4-inch-long sac at the juncture of the small and large intestines is known mostly for getting infected and bursting. Recently, researchers at the Duke University Medical Center have concluded that the appendix has a back-up role in the digestive process. The appendix stores a variety of good bacteria, the kind that healthy intestines use to break down nutrients. These bacteria can be deployed to repopulate the intestines after a catastrophic decease and diarrhea clears the contents of the intestines.

Now, what about those male nipples? link

Chilli powder: a cure for pain

2007-10-08T12:58:00.000-04:00

The thing that makes the dentist's drill bearable is local anaesthetics. Local anaesthetics work rather haphazardly; they block not only pain channels but all the message channels in your nerve cells. The result is a loss of all sensation and temporary paralysis in the affected area; thus, the drooling.

But there are more serious problems with local anaesthetics. Take, for example, the epidural, a common childbirth procedure in which an anaesthetic is injected directly into the mother's spine. The process ameliorates the pain of childbirth, but leaves the mother's body unable to push out the baby.

It was reported in Nature that capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers, has the ability to specifically activate pain channels in nerve cells and leave all other channels alone. When capsaicin is injected along with a local anaesthetic, pain channels can be targeted by the capsaicin and closed by the anaesthetic, allowing pain sensation to be blocked without loss of other sensations and without paralysis. Since the anaesthetic and capsaicin are already approved for the drug market, use of capsaicin in pain therapy is expected to be available soon. link

Sputnik turns 50

2007-10-04T10:44:00.000-04:00

Fifty years ago today, the USSR successfully launched the first ever man-made Earth satellite. The orbiter was nothing more than a beachball-sized metal sphere that contained a radio and batteries to emit a beeping signal. The beeping little orbiter, named Sputnik, carried on for about two days before it faded into oblivion. Many Americans recall the eerie bleeping that was received by radio operators and replayed on radio and TV newscasts.

Those of us who were not around back then may be surprised to learn the emotional toll that Sputnik caused on most Americans. The Sputnik program was held completely secret to the public. It as only until after the launch that Americans (and even the Russian populace) heard the shocking news. In the height of the cold war, the thought that communist Russia had technologically surpassed the US was distasteful to most Americans, not to mention scary. If communists can put a radio beacon in orbit that can fly over America every 90 minutes, many Americans worried about what would come next - a spy satellite, or worse a warhead.

It was a real wake-up call to the US space program. President Kennedy announced the goal of landing on the moon within 3 years. The space race was on, thanks to that beachball in orbit. link

Radio burst puzzles astronomers

2007-10-01T12:31:00.000-04:00

The Parkes radio telescope in Australia picked up a single, quick blast of radio waves that contained as much energy in its mere 5-millisecond duration as the sun puts out in a month. The signal was by far the strongest short signal radio astronomers have ever observed, and no previously-detected cosmic radio burst has the same set of frequency characteristics. After analysis, it was estimated that the radio burst came from 3-billion light-years away.

Astronomers know of only two possible sources of the burst: either the merger of two neutron stars or the final gasp of a dying black hole. Whatever the source, "it's bound to be exciting," says radio astronomer Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. The source is likely to "push us into exciting new realms of physics." Astronomers are searching archives for similar phenomena. Meanwhile, we'll stay tuned for more. link

Thinking like a human, a computer program falls for similar illusions

2007-09-28T17:03:00.000-04:00

If you designed a computer program to make decisions like a human, wouldn't you expect it to make human mistakes?

At the University College in London, researchers made a computer program that acquired knowledge the same way humans do, from experience, trial and error. The computer studied a series of gray-scale images. Its job was to judge the lightness of the shade at the center of each image. As the computer made its choices, it changed its decision technique depending on whether its previous decision was right or wrong.

Not surprisingly, when looking at certain gray-scale contrasts, the computer program fell for the same optical illusions that trick most of us. For example, when it studied a light object on a darker background, it predicted that the shade of object was lighter than it really was. Dark objects on lighter backgrounds similarly fooled the program. The computer also fell for 'White's Illusion', a pattern in which the same shade of gray is usually predicted by humans to be two different shades (see link for illustration).

The program points out the difference between hard-wired, computer-coded decision making and the more human process of making judgements based on experience. Human minds are not wired for accuracy, they're wired to find what's useful. link

Birds likely see magnetic fields

2007-09-27T10:00:00.000-04:00

Imagine if your eyes could see the Earth's magnetic field around you. It's likely that migratory birds can do just that.

We've known that migratory birds use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate during their migrations. In order to sense magnetic fields, birds use their eyes and the part of the brain that processes vision.

Recently, scientists observed the jumping behavior of garden warblers under different colors of light. It was observed that only certain colors of light threw off the birds' navigation system. This hinted that vision played a role. In further studies, brain activity was monitored while the birds where in migratory mode. The neuron pathways for sensing vision and magnetism were found to be one in the same. link audio

It's a comet - it's an asteroid - it's both

2007-09-26T14:33:00.000-04:00

It used to be an asteroid was an asteroid and a comet was a comet. Now, astronomers realize, the line's getting blurry.

In 1999, the Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft spotted an object (later dubbed 'P/2007 R5') passing close to the Sun. The object was assumed to be a comet, because it was passing the sun, and that's what comets are known to do. What puzzled some scientists was that P/2007 R5 did not have classic comet features such as a tail and a coma – the cloud of gas and dust that surrounds a comet's body, or nucleus. The tail and coma are created when the Sun's heat vaporizes frozen water and carbon dioxide on the comet, and blasts a brightly illuminated cloud of dust off the comet's surface. Without these features, P/2007 R5 would be better classified as an asteroid. Asteroids traditionally do not contain high enough quantities of solid carbon dioxide and water ice to make such a display.

When SOHO spotted P/2007 R5 swinging by the Sun again in 2003, scientists officially designated it as a short-period comet.

Pesky little P/2007 R5 appeared near the Sun again in September 2007. It still didn't have the classic comet features, but on this passage near the Sun, when it was just 15% of Mercury's distance from the star, it brightened by a factor of a million and faded again. These brilliant flashes are common for comets, but not for asteroids.

Based on its orbit, P/2007 R5 is likely a comet from the Kuiper belt, a reservoir of icy comets and asteroids that orbit the Sun way out beyond the orbit of Neptune. Most of P/2007 R5's surface ice was probably baked off during previous passes near the Sun, so that it now shows little to no tail or comma when it feels the Sun's heat.

So, is it a comet or is it an asteroid? Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in DC says, "There's probably not a sharp cutoff. Comets probably have a lot of rock in them and asteroids probably have a lot of ice in them as well." link

Bacteria cultured in space are more deadly

2007-09-25T11:34:00.000-04:00

It turns out that a few bacteria can really ruin your space flight. That's why NASA quarantines astronauts several days before their launch.

The National Academy of Sciences reported that bacteria exposed to the microgravity of space are considerably more deadly than their earthbound relatives. During last year's space shuttle Atlantis mission, astronauts brought aboard (on purpose) infectious Salmonella bacteria to see how they are affected by microgravity. When the space-tourist bacteria returned to Earth, they were injected into mice. Mice exposed to space bacteria were three times more likely to die from the Salmonella infection than the control mice, which were injected with earthbound Salmonella.

The most likely explanation for this dwells along the outer cell walls of the bacteria. It is thought that microgravity reduces fluid shear - the movement of liquid around the bacterium cells. Low fluid shear conditions are what the cells experience when they are in the human body. It was also observed that the low fluid shear stimulated the expression of the gene Hfq, which scientists are now fingering as the key to Salmonella's increased strength.

Couple microgravity's affect on bacteria with the fact that microgravity is also known to weaken the human immune system, and it creates a perfect storm for bacteria to attack space travelers. link

Blurring the line between algorithm and judgment

2007-09-23T21:36:00.000-04:00

A NYTimes science columnist has eloquently mused on the input-feedback dynamic between cyberspace and its users. "As you sit with your eHarmony spouse watching the movies Netflix prescribes, you might as well be an avatar in Second Life. You have been absorbed into the operating system." link
(If you don't want to register for NYT free content, go to http://www.bugmenot.com/)

Why our cells regenerate the hard way

2007-09-22T13:14:00.000-04:00

We lose billions of cells from our body everyday. It's natural to lose them, and luckily, we can naturally replace them. But when our cells regenerate, but they don't do it the easy way. The easy way would be for similar cells in the location to divide and replicate themselves to fill in for their lost neighbors. That would be a very fast and energy-efficient way of regenerating. But that's not the way it works, as summarized in a new report in Nature.

When dead cells are replaced, they are replaced from scratch. Each kind of cell in the body has its own dedicatied set of stem cells. To keep up with the need for replacement cells, stem cells act as the seeds from which new cells for that part of the body are sprung. By dividing, the stem cells initiate a series of cell generations, each new generation more speciallized than the one before it, until the just the right replacement cell is produced. This process takes a lot more energy and time than a single cell division.

Building replacement cells from scratch is safer for the body; it guarentees that replacement cells will not have the mutations of the cells from which they divided. Why is this safer? If the dividing cell was deceased, or if it were a cancer cell, then deceased cells would divide and quickly multiply beyond the organism's control.

Futhermore, if our cells were to regenerate by a single cell division, single organisms would evolve as they aged. For example, consider a frog genetically built for a cool, wet environment that moves to a hot, dry environment. As the cells of this frog are naturally replaced over time, the cells that are better suited for dry heat will out-complete the others. And with each generation of new cells, the whole frog would evolve towards the hot, dry environment. Within its single lifespan, this organism would do what is not possible: evolve into a very different one. A species cannot evolve in one generation; it must evolve over a long series of generations.

So, for an organism to make a replacement cell, it must be built from scratch from stem cells; it cannot make cheap copies of ready-made cells.

Interestingly, there is an exception to this rule, found in cells of the immune system. The cells of an organism's immune system must evolve within the organism's lifespan. Take our frog for example: when the frog's immune system encounters a decease it has never handled before, immune cells capable of fighting the decease can directly divide themselves to increase their numbers. It does the frog no good if the frog's descendants' evolve to fight the decease. The frog's immune cells must evolve during the frog's lifetime, or the frog won't stand a chance against the new decease. Does this mean that cells of the immune system are more vulnerable to decease, given that deceased immune cells are can divide and spread themselves? Yes. This is why deceases that attack the immune system are so deadly. link

Martian surface water: none to be found

2007-09-20T21:20:00.000-04:00

Finding liquid water on Mars has been a frustrating endeavor. We know that the poles are covered with ice, but several satellite missions have failed to find water flowing on the surface of the red planet. This month's journal Science describes the latest information from the first 100 days of the mission of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Hoping that the orbiter would identify waterfront landing sites for future rovers, scientists were disappointed to find that the virtually all of the Mars surface is dry. The formations once thought to be carved out by flowing water have been formed by lava flows. Dry areas thought to be riverbeds and former ocean floors are covered with volcanic rock. link

Things could always be worse

2007-09-19T19:27:00.000-04:00

Think the environment in your area is bad? Yesterday, National Geographic reported the 10 most polluted places in the word, as named by the Blacksmith Institute. No sites in the US made the list, which includes several mining towns and Chernobyl. link

A rose is not a rose

2007-09-16T15:39:00.000-04:00

The old saying goes, "a rose is a rose is a rose." Scientists, however know otherwise. Two humans can describe and react to the same smell quite differently. In a recent study at Rockefeller University in NY, some human subjects found the compound androstenone to be appealing and sweet, others found it to be foul and offensive, and others could not smell it at all. Going on a hunch, the scientists examined each subjects' genetic code, and found that how the subjects perceived androstenone depended on a single gene. This is one step in unravelling the links between our genetic code and our senses. link audio link

Waking a sleeping red giant

2007-09-15T19:35:00.000-04:00

Better get your stuff done. Time's running out. Five-billion years from now, our sun will live out it's current stage of life. Having turned all the hydrogen in it's core into helium, it's outer layers of hydrogen will collapse into the center. The sun will become a red giant. In the process, it's core will heat and expand, it's radius will grow to 100 times it's size, and anything in the way, including Mercury and Venus, will be obliterated. But, according to a group of Italian astronomers, the Earth will be spared. The astronomers report that a nearby star called V 391 Pegasi has a planet orbiting it at about the same distance as we are to our sun. Remarkably, this planet has survived V 391 Pegasi's transformation to a red giant, so there's hope for Earth. Unfortunately, even though the Earth will survive, we will not. When the sun becomes a red giant, the intense heat and proximity of the sun will scorch the Earth and boil off the oceans. Perhaps within five-billion years, humans will have evolved into higher, purely spiritual beings, and we'll have no need for a planet anyway. link

Japanese head for the moon

2007-09-14T10:34:00.000-04:00

Given all we know about distant planets and their moons, it is surprising that we still haven't got a definitive theory about where the moon came from. This morning, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched their Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE) satellite. The satellite will orbit the earth a couple of times, and then head for the moon. After reaching the moon's orbit, it will launch two support satellites, and over the next year the satellite system will send back lunar topography and gravity data in unrivalled detail . This data is expected to firm up the 'giant impact' theory. According to this theory, a planetary body slammed into Earth 4.5-billion years ago, and the resulting debris eventually gathered to form the moon. link

The healing power of embryonic stem cells

2007-09-13T20:07:00.000-04:00

Embryonic stem cells are formed so early in an organism's development that they have an almost magical ability to grow into any kind of cell and perform any function. For some time now, researchers have sought ways to recruit these adaptable cells to replace others that have been damaged by diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's. But recently, it was seen that embryonic stem don't just replace damaged cells, they also release chemical signals that prompt the defective cells to reboot and start developing properly. After examining tissue that was repaired by the injection of embryonic stem cells, it was determined that only one in five of the repaired cells were actually descendants of the injected embryonic stem cells. The rest repaired themselves after receiving signals from the injected stem cells. link

Neanderthals not the victim of climate change

2007-09-13T19:50:00.000-04:00

What happened to the Neanderthals? They lived in Europe until about 30,000 years ago. After comparing the most likely dates of their extinction to climate data, scientists have concluded that their extinction was not caused by climate change. Their extinction was most likely due to their inability to complete with a more intelligent species: humans. link

Wow is an understatement

2007-09-13T13:12:00.000-04:00

A year and a half ago, I stopped blogging. It seemed like I was shouting into an anthill, and I lost interest. I looked at my blog today. I haven't looked at it for a long time. I actually had comments, and I missed them while I was on hiatus. Thank you, much too late, for your comments. I'm back.

Old Fridges, Cars Slow Ozone Hole Recovery

2005-12-09T23:07:00.000-05:00

The Antarctic ozone hole will probably take longer to heal than was previously thought. At the current rate of recovery, the hole won't fix itself until around 2065, some 15 years later than the generally accepted estimate. In the 1987 Montreal Protocol, many nations agreed to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, that eat away at the protective ozone layer when released into the atmosphere. But the amount of CFCs that linger on in old refrigerators, fire extinguishers, air-conditioning systems and other equipment was greatly underestimated. National Geographic News

'Borneo beast' seen in the underbrush

2005-12-08T23:34:00.000-05:00

Patience pays off for the researchers who may have spotted a new carnivore in the jungles of Borneo. nature.com/news

Dog Decoded

2005-12-07T23:34:00.000-05:00

Researchers published the full genetic code of a 12-year-old boxer named Tasha. But she is not just another addition to the list of animals with completely sequenced genomes. Domestic dogs have a unique genetic background, thanks to humans. Humans have created more than 400 dog breeds, each with its own traits, and its own genetic code. So it should be a lot easier to pin down the genetic roots of traits in dogs than in people, whose characteristics and genetic groupings are much less clear cut. nature.com/news

Leap second to be added to 2005

2005-07-07T12:25:00.000-04:00

News@Nature.com reports that, "Officials have announced that an extra second will be added to 2005, to accommodate a slowing down of the Earth's rotation. The announcement is by no means unprecedented. We have been adding leap seconds to years since the 1970s, but, owing to unpredictable quirks in our planet's rotation, we haven't needed one since 1998. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service in Paris will sneak the extra time in on 31 December 2005, making the countdown to the new year one second longer than some might expect." The extra second was needed as a result of the large earthquake that caused the tsunami in Indonesia. The quake forced a dense mass of the earth's crust downward. Like a spinning figure skater that brings her arms in, the earth began to spin faster as the mass shifted shortening our day by 3 millions of a second.

Space probe slams into comet

2005-07-04T12:20:00.000-04:00

Running as planned, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft released a 360-kilogram (816-pound) impactor probe on July 4th that collided with the comet Tempel 1. The super-fast probe generated an immense flash of light. Meanwhile, on the Deep Impact mothership, camera's fixed on the collision captured images in the light of the collision. Deep Impact scientists theorize the 820-pound impactor was turned to vapor deep below the comet's surface when the two collided at 1:52 am July 4, at a speed of about 10 kilometers per second (6.3 miles per second or 23,000 miles per hour).

The goal of the Deep Impact mission was to provide an in-depth picture of the composition of a comet. Because the materials found on comets have changed very little since the formation of our solar system, mission scientists hope the project will answer basic questions about how the solar system formed.

Does vitamin C stop colds?

2005-06-28T12:51:00.000-04:00

The answer is kinda, but not so much. Consuming 200 mg of vitamin C per day (the recommended daily allowance is between 60 and 90 mg), was found to reduce the duration of a cold by only 8% in adults. The vitamin did not reduce the likelihood of getting a cold, except in soldiers, marathon runners, and others under extreme external stress. Given that the average adults only gets one cold per year, it doesn't make sense to swallow 200 mg per day of vitamin C. Humans are unlike most animals in that they can not make their own vitamin C.

Better luck next time for solar sail

2005-06-26T09:32:00.000-04:00

The unmanned solar sail spacecraft Cosmos 1is most likely lost. The spacecraft was launched from a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea on June 21. Once deployed by a rocket, this spacesraft was to be the first to use its eight-panel solar sail to catch the gentle push of the steady flow of particles from the sun (the solar wind) to propel it through space at high speeds. The project was organized by The Planetary Society, an independent and privatley-funded space research organization. It is still uncertain whether the spacecraft is adrift in an unknown orbit or has crashed to earth.

Scientists fear Martian microbes

2005-06-20T22:08:00.000-04:00

NASA scientists are quite worried about the possibility that the Martian atmosphere or soil might contain living microorganisms. President Bush's plan to send humans to Mars could be delayed as a result. If living microbes from Mars were carried back to earth from the Mars mission, they could quickly wipe us out if they are harmful to humans. The likelihood that Mars has micrbes is low, and that the likelihood that they're harmful is even lower. The chances are slim, but the risks are high, and that's why NASA wants to send a robot to Mars that can return atmosphere and soil samples to earth. NASA also requests a highly secure biological facility to store the Mars samples. All this could delay the manned Mars mission by 10 to 15 years. Link.

Rocky planet found

2005-06-13T23:20:00.000-04:00

"This is by far the most Earth-like planet ever found," said Dr. Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Marcy used one of the giant 10-meter diameter Keck telescopes in Hawaiii to discover a small extra-solar planet. (An extra-solar planet is a planet located beyond our solar system.) This new planet is about 7 times the mass of earth; even so, it's the smallest planet extra-solar planet we've found. It's probably made of rock, and this makes it different than any other extra-solar planet. All of the other 150-or-so extra-solar planets that have been identified are large spheres of gas, like our neighbor Jupiter. "This is a really cool result,"says Dr. David Spergel, a Princeton University scientist who is building a planet hunting satellite for NASA.

Flying cell phones interfere with radio telescopes

2005-06-10T11:50:00.000-04:00

FCC and FAA regulators have been considering re-allowing cell phone use on commercial airline flights. During the 9-11 terroist attacks, passengers with cellphones were able to communicate to the ground, and in light of this, cellphones on planes become an important safety tool. But there's a problem. Cellphones that broadcast at high altitutes interfere with sensitive radio telescopes on the ground. These telescopes are used to search for extra-terrestrial life and perform other research. This problem, caused by too much technology, can be solved by more technology. The strength of the broadcast signal of a cellphone is controlled automatically based on the location of the nearest cell tower. A device can be installed on commercial planes that can fool a cellphone to trim down its signal as if there is a nearby tower, keeping signals from bugging the radio telescopes. Link.

The planetology of Star Wars

2005-06-07T19:56:00.000-04:00

I know, I know... it's only a movie. But there's a lot of good science to discuss when an expert on planets speaks with a National Geographic reporter about the planets located in a galaxy far, far away. Link.

Mars rover on the move again

2005-06-06T22:23:00.000-04:00

The Mars rover Opportunity was cuising the Martian landscape at almost 200 m per day, until it got stuck in loose sand on April 25. Since then it's been creeping backwards at about 2 meters per day, its wheels at least half buried in loose sand. I was reported today that the Opportunity has freed itself. The next plan is to analyze the sand it was trapped in. Link.

Embattled ozone layer hangs in there

2005-06-06T21:56:00.000-04:00

The ozone layer over the Antarctic is usually the focus of environmental concern; it generally gets more damage than the Arctic ozone layer. But this winter, the ozone loss over the Arctic was at near-record levels. Fortunately, stratospheric winds transported ozone-rich air from earth's middle latitudes into the Arctic, replacing most of the lost ozone. As a result, only a small rise in ultraviolet radiation was observed at ground level. Link.

South Korea Cloning

2005-06-03T23:50:00.000-04:00

"I never destroy any life during my process," said South Korean laboratory director Dr. Woo Suk Hwang, as he looks at a black-and-white screen. Magnified 250 times, the screen shows him the probe he uses to to inject the DNA of a skin cell into a human egg. Dr. Hwang recently reported that he had created new colonies of stem cells that matched the DNA of their donors. This is a major step towards growing replacement tissues to possibly treat spinal cord injuries, juvenile diabetes, and immune deficiencies.
By generally accepted definitions, Dr. Hwang is cloning. Many say Dr. Hwang is tampering with human life. But this is not the opinion of British, Japanese, Swedish, and Spanish researchers have all come to Seoul to see Dr. Hwang's work. American research institutions that are seeking collaborations with Dr. Hwang include Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Link.

Brian Greene: This he believes

2005-06-01T19:21:00.000-04:00

Brian Greene, U Columbia Physicist and author of The Elegant Universe, said the following on a National Public Radio feature on 5-30-05. Quote:

I believe we owe our young an education that captures the exhilarating drama of science.
I believe the process of going from confusion to understanding is a precious, even emotional, experience that can be the foundation of self-confidence. I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.
I believe that the wonder of discovery can lift the spirit like Brahms' Third Symphony.
I believe that the breathtaking ideas of science can nourish not only the mind but also the soul. Link.

Curiosity shoplifted

2005-05-30T21:54:00.000-04:00

With shifts in federal scientific funding from open-ended research to technology development, one Washington Post columnist writes that we are in danger of losing our sense of curiosity. Are we too focused on short-term progress and profits? Are we no longer interested in exploring for the sake of exploring? Link.

Invasive species

2005-05-30T21:05:00.000-04:00

According to May’s issue of Discover, the species invasion has already begun: dandelions, purple loosestrife, Cuban tree frogs, etc. The success of an invading species depends on its ability to find and exploit a niche in a new ecosystem. When an alien species enters a new ecosystem, it can cause a stir by eating native species, spreading disease, competing better against local decease, or changing the environment in such a way that favors itself. But, most invasive species just take their place quietly. Purple loosestrife, for example, is taking over wetlands and backyards in the northeast. Although local ecologists are sounding the alarm, a zoological study concluded that there is little or no evidence that its invasion has any serious ecological consequences. We traditionally see invasive species as deceases that ruin natural ecosystems. But invasion biologists don’t see it that way. Invasions don’t cause ecosystems to collapse; in fact, invasive species can make an ecosystem healthier by increasing the local biodiversity. Although a new species may not be as useful or attractive to humans, the new, more competitive species will make the ecosystem stronger. (You might not be able to read the story without a password.) Link.

US Senate supports the stem cell bill

2005-05-26T15:15:00.000-04:00

The human embryonic stem cell research bill has a lot of support in the US Senate, despite its opposition by President Bush. Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican and chief sponsor of a bill, said Wednesday that he had enough votes in the Senate to override a presidential veto of the measure. The measure approves the use of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, and goes against the President's 2001 executive order that banned funding of the controversial research. Link.

What is human embryonic stem-cell research? Stem cells are the first few cells that form after a fertilized egg divides. They are medically the most useful cells because as they grow and subdivide, they can turn into any type of cells, such as spinal cord cells or heart muscle cells. So, any kind of damaged human tissue can be replaced by tissue regenerated from stem cells, giving hope to the many who suffer from spinal cord injury, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, or many other conditions. Link.

Why is embryonic human stem-cell research so controversial? The controversy comes into play when scientists make a new cell line. When a new human stem cell line is made, a human egg is fertilized in order to generate the stem cells. The moral issue is whether or not harvesting stem cells from the fertilized human egg is morally the same as taking a life, because under the right conditions, the fertilized egg could grow into a whole human being. The President's supports federal funding of human embryonic stem-cell research only if no new stem cell lines are made. But here's the problem: in-vitro fertilization, a common procedure for couples with problems conceiving a child, produces thousands of unused fertilized eggs every year. The bill currently in Congress doesn't suggest that we should fertilize human eggs just to do medical research on them, it supports funding for research done on the embryos discarded from in-vitro fertilization.

How long could you survive in the vacuum of space?

2005-05-25T16:34:00.000-04:00

As the school year comes to an end for seniors, I traditionally show the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the film, astronaut Dave Bowman finds himself stuck in a small space pod, locked out of the main spacecraft, without the helmet to his spacesuit. Forced to enter through the emergency air lock, Dave is briefly subjected to the vacuum of space. Is it possible for him to survive? The answer, according to science fiction writer Geoffrey Landis, is YES. Landis, who referenced several sources, explains that a human can remain mentally conscious in the vacuum of space for about 10 seconds, and survive that environment for about 90 seconds. As soon as the astronaut hits the vacuum, air will be knocked out of the lungs through the nose and mouth. Space is a very cold and very hot place; without an atmosphere to even things out, the difference between sunlight and shade is 400 degrees F. The mouth and tongue may freeze, it will only take a short time for skin not exposed to the sun to get lightly frostbitten, and skin exposed to the sun will be badly sunburned. But that's about the worst of it inside of 90 seconds of exposure. Unless the astronaut tries to hold their breath...this will cause the lungs to rupture. So, as a safety tip, if you’re going for a space walk without a helmet, keep your mouth open. Eventually, like deep-sea divers coming up to the surface too quickly, gas bubbles will form in the astronaut's blood and soft tissues -- a condition called "the bends". Hypothermia, or a harmful drop in core body temperature, will set in, but is not a short-term concern. Link.

Turn that moon dust into oxygen and win

2005-05-25T16:03:00.000-04:00

Moon dust engineers are in high demand these days. NASA has a quarter of a million dollar prize up for grabs for the first team to make oxygen from moon dust. The machine must meet NASA's weight and power limits, and must be able to extract at least five kilograms of oxygen from a sample of volcanic ash in eight hours. Volcanic ash is very similar to moon dust, and obviously a lot easier to get one's hands on. For the machine to work, it will need to release oxygen atoms from the silica and other minerals that form the majority of volcanic and lunar rock. One way to separate oxygen from the rock is to use an electric current to separate negatively charged oxygen from the positive ions to which it is bound. Link.

Moon dust in your hair

2005-05-24T14:07:00.000-04:00

NASA is funding a four-year study at the Colorado School of Mines on extra-terrestrial dust control. The surface of the moon is covered with a fine, talcum-like powder, the kind of stuff that kicks up really easily. Since the gravity on the moon is only one-sixth of Earth, humans and machines that disturb the moon ground will make lots and lots of dust. Stuck to spacesuits and boots, the dust is easily tracked into a lunar lander, where it gets quite annoying, gumming up equipment and covering instrument displays. The particles of moon dust can be harmful to lungs if inhaled over a long period of time. This is a major concern for long-term moon expeditions of the future. The dust problem will also be a major concern for astronauts sent to Mars, perhaps much worse. Mars dust contains the highly reactive compound iron-oxide, which, in essence, burns skin and can severly irritate lung tissue. The dust will be driven by the harsh wind storms that occur on Mars' surface. Link.

South Korea takes the lead in stem cells

2005-05-20T22:00:00.000-04:00

Last year, a team of scientist from South Korea made the first stem-cell line from cloned human cells. A stem-cell line is a source of cells from a donor that scientists can go back to indefinitely to gather stem cells for study. Recently, the South Korean scienctists have taken the work a big step further by making stem-cell lines from several patients with different diseases, such as autism, diabetes and Parkinson’s. By studying these lines, they may be able to watch how diseases unfold, and develop cures. The cell lines will be used to test new drugs, without risks to human or animal subjects. Despite what you may have heard, science is a long way away from being able to grow complete replacements for deceased organs.

To make a cell line, scientists take a sample of skin cells from a donor. They then suck out the nucleus of each skin cell, and implant it in a human egg whose own nucleus has been removed. The eggs grow into a round structure of cells, a structure that forms early in human development. Scientists remove the stem cells from this structure and transfer them to a place where they can grow until researchers are ready to experiment on them.

Meanwhile, back in the US, stem cell research is being slowed by bioethical controversy and a presidental ban on government funding for stemcell research. “There is a good chance that the US will be left behind as the situation on stem cell research there becomes more fragmented and incoherent,” says UK scientist Stephen Minger, of King’s College London. Link.

Antarctica ice on the move

2005-05-19T21:29:00.000-04:00

Nature.com reported on April 21 that 87 percent of 244 Antarctic glaciers have been retreating in the past 40 years. The likely cause is that the Antarctic Ocean temperature has risen 2 degrees C in the last 50 years. Link. A May 19 Nature.com article reported that scientists have also observed that the overall thickness of the ice layer in East Antarctica is increasing. They explain that the warmer oceans evaporate more moisture into the Antarctic air, which results in greater snowfall on the continent. The thickening of the ice layer has previously been predicted by global warming models. In time, the rate of glacier retreat will make up for the increase in Antarctic snow fall, and sea levels will slowly rise. Link.

NASA plans to fix the Hubble, but postpones other stuff

2005-05-13T21:41:00.000-04:00

NASA is proceeding with plans to send a shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the ailing Hubble Telescope, reversing their previous decision to simply let the telescope die. The bad news is that funding the Hubble mission would mean the indefinite postponement of two future missions to search for extrasolar planets - the Space Interferometry Mission, which had been scheduled for 2011, and the Terrestrial Planet Finder, which was set to launch in 2014. It is also possible that the next rover mission to Mars, the Mars Science Laboratory, will be pushed back to from 2009 to 2011. Link.

New species of rodent a tasty treat

2005-05-12T19:40:00.000-04:00

“It was for sale on a table next to some vegetables,” says conservation biologist Robert Timmins, “And I knew immediately it was something I had never seen before.” The rock rat, as it's called, is a completely new species of rodent. The creature looks like a cross between a large dark rat and a squirrel, but is actually more closely related to guinea pigs and chinchillas. People in the Khammouan region of Laos prepare it by roasting it on a skewer. Link.

Let's send a rover to Venus

2005-05-09T20:53:00.000-04:00

Could we have as much success landing a rover to explore Venus as we did with our other closest neighbor, Mars? Venus is a much tougher environment than Mars, but NASA still has an interest in exploring there. The atmospheric pressure on the surface of Venus is about 90 times greater than Earth's. A Venicean day lasts 117 Earth days, daytime temperatures reach 450 degrees C, and the dense atmosphere is acidic. A ground-traveling Venus rover will have to be extremely acid-proof, heat-proof, leak-proof, and pretty dumb, because at such high temperatures, it is not currently possible to operate electronics on a ground-based Venus rover. Because of this, NASA is designing an aircraft to orbit Venus and hold the rover's electronics to process data and communication. The orbiting aircraft would take advantage of the dense atmosphere, using wings and a propeller. The orbiter would float up in the cooler altitudes and collect the intense solar energy, which should keep it powered indefinitely. Link.

One of Saturn's moons is not like the others

2005-05-04T18:50:00.000-04:00

Astronomers have confirmed what they have suspected about Saturn's moon Phoebe: the potato-like moon didn't come from Saturn. They new that the direction and tilt of Phoebe's orbit is different from the other moons of Saturn, and data from the Cassini-Huygens probe show more differences. For instance, Pheobe has much less ice and much more rock than the other moons. It is most likely that Pheobe came to Saturn from the Kuiper belt, a ring od icy rocks past Neptune. Cassini data also show that some of the minerals and organic molecules on Phoebe's surface are typical of objects in the Kuiper belt. Link.

New Breast Cancer Treatment on Horizon

2005-04-14T08:15:00.000-04:00

Most women are protected from breast cancer by their BRCA genes. But some women have inherited mutations in BRCA genes, giving them about an eighty per cent risk of developing breast cancer. The key to stopping cells with mutated BRCA is a protein called PARP.

Healthy human cells replicate (reproduce); their DNA divides and copies itself. If DNA is damaged before replication, it is usually repaired by PARP. If a cell can't repair it's DNA with PARP, it uses a backup system called combination to fix the damage so it can continue to replicate.

Cells with mutated BRCA genes don't have the backup system of recombination; rely completely on PARP to fix DNA damage. The new treatment uses a chemical that knocks out PARP, making all cells rely on recombination. The breast cancer tumour, that forms from the cells with mutated BRCA cannot perform recombination and is therefore unable to replicate and create new cells. The tumour is then unable to grow and eventually dies.
The other cells in the body are likely to be unaffected by the treatment. Link.

Auroras

2005-04-12T17:27:00.000-04:00

From the Sun comes an extremely thin electrified gas, known as the solar wind; it blows constantly out from the Sun at 250 miles per second. The Earth's magnetic field provides a shield against the solar wind. Shaped by the solar wind, the magnetic field becomes stretched and pushed into a teardrop-shaped bubble we call the magnetosphere. Some electrically-charged particles from the solar wind penetrate the magnetosphere, collide with the Earth's upper atmosphere, and emit colorful light which we observe as an aurora. The aurora form near-circular bands around both the northern pole (the aurora borealis) and southern pole (the aurora australis).

Recently, researchers were surprised to find that the two aurora are not mirror images of each other, as was once thought. This appears to be caused by fluctations in the tilt of the Earth's magnetic field, and conditions in the solar wind. Link.

It depends what you mean by "planet."

2005-04-05T11:44:00.000-04:00

In a previous post, I mentioned that astronomers had used an innovative method to, for the first time, observe light from an extra-solar planet. (An extra solar planet is a planet that orbits a star other than our own sun.) This planet orbits the star GQ Lup. There's no question that the object was observed, but there now seems to be a question of whether it's a planet or just a dim star. Why do we think it's a planet? It's 20 times further from it's GQ Lup than Jupiter is from the our sun. It has a mass of 2 or 3 Jupiters, and anything less massive than 13 Jupiters is small enough to be a planet. But here's the problem: the "planet" is bright; GQ Lup is only 156 times brighter than it. And, it's hot; the "planet" is estimated to be 3,000 degrees F. So for now, astronomers are using the term "companion", rather than "planet". Last year, when Sedna was found orbiting our sun out past Pluto, it sparked a debate as to whether Sedna or Pluto were real planets. The whole problem comes back to the basic question that has yet to be answered: what is a planet? Link.

Ability to determine mass sinks to a new low

2005-03-31T22:40:00.000-05:00

What mass can the world’s smallest scale detect? A zeptogram, which is one gram times 10 to-the-negative-21st power, or about the mass of one protein molecule. How is this done? A small blade is vibrated in a magnetic field. When the particle to be weighed are placed on the blade, the frequency of the vibration changes, and the mass of the particle is related to the frequency. Link.

First soft dinosaur tissue recovered

2005-03-24T22:40:00.000-05:00

The 70-million-year-old T. rex thighbone that was unearthed in Montana was too far from a road and too big for the helicopter to lift. So, the team of paleontologists cut it in half. And, to their surprise, inside the bone was soft tissue: blood vessels and cells preserved in deep layers of bone. Because soft tissue decays quickly, samples of dinosaur soft tissue have never before been recovered. “This is something I never dreamed I’d see”, says paleontologist Mary Scheitzer. The soft tissue sample will make it possible to more closely compare dinosaurs to modern living things. If fragments of DNA are found, they will reveal a lot of new genetic information. Link.

Star no longer steals planet's light

2005-03-23T22:40:00.000-05:00

Astronomers have identified more than 130 planets beyond our solar system. But until recently, they have never actually seen one of these planets. This because, like Earth, extra-solar planets orbit a star, and the light from the star completely outshines the dim light reflected off a planet. So until recently, the only way to confirm that a planet orbits a distant star is by observing the affects of the planet’s gravity on the star. Light from the planet was recently detected by an innovative method. Light energy signals are gathered from the star when the planet is behind the star. When these signals are subtracted from the light energy signals that are gathered when the planet comes back out from behind the star, what remains is the pure reflected light from the planet. Link.

Nano-this, nano-that

2005-03-21T22:40:00.000-05:00

An article from News@nature.com explains how single-celled bacteria are used to assemble parts of nano-machines, the super-miniature silicon chips that process information. The bacteria act as a sort of glue that binds nano-parts together. The bacteria are guided into place by small electric currents. The outer surfaces of the bacteria naturally contain proteins that stick to certain molecules. When nano-parts tagged with these molecules are placed in a fluid and washed over the area, the tagged parts stick to the right nano-spot. Link.

Science shows that the rich got richer

2005-03-12T12:25:00.000-05:00

Economists will join physicists to discuss these issues next week in Kolkata, India, at the first ever conference on the "econophysics" of wealth distribution. Physicists are using new models based on simple physical laws to understand the distribution of wealth. Among these physicists is Victor Yakovenko of the University of Maryland, who analysed income data from the US Internal Revenue Service from 1983 to 2001. Data clearly show that the difference between rich and poor has greatly and quickly widened. In 1979, the richest 1% of Americans earned an average of 33.1 times as much as the poorest 20% of Americans. In 2000, the richest earned an average of 88.5 times as the poorest. Link.

Environmental news isn't all bad

2005-03-11T11:53:00.000-05:00

The US Environmental Protection Agency's new Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) will require that coal-burning power plants in 28 US states reduce their emissions of smog and soot. Because CAIR regulates the flow of air pollution between states, the rules affects 28 eastern and central states, but does not apply to larger western states like California, where pollution between states is not a critical issue. The goal of CAIR is to cut emissions of sulfur dioxide by 73% and nitrogen oxides by 61% by the year 2015. Atmospheric sulfur dioxide is a major cause of acid rain, and nitrogen oxides creates smog. By reducing rates of lung-related illnesses, the cuts are predicted to prevent 17,000 premature deaths and 700,000 lung-related illnesses every year.

Airline Air and Germs

2005-03-10T11:33:00.000-05:00

In March 2003, when one passenger with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) infected 22 fellow passengers on a 3-hour flight from Hong Kong to Beijing. Some infected passengers were seated seven rows away. But, researchers at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston say not to worry. They conclude that on-board ventilation systems generally do a good job protecting airline passengers against infection. These ventilation systems completely replace cabin air about every three minutes. When working right, these systems clear 63% of airborne germs with each cycle. The ventilation systems in the airport terminals aren't as good as the ones on the planes, so in reality, your more likely to catch something while you're still on the ground. To reduce the risk of catching an infection on an airplane, health officials advise that you wash your hands frequently, and turn on the blowers above your seat. Link.

The Biggest Stars

2005-03-10T08:16:00.000-05:00

How big can a star get? According to newly-published research from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the most massive a star can get is between 120 and 150 times the mass of our sun. The new findings really narrow the possiblities, because previously astronomers thought that stars could be anywhere from 10 to 1000 the sun's mass, while some astronomers have argued that there is no mass limit at all. "This will heat up the debate. It is a clear indication that there is an upper limit," says Pavel Kroupa at the University of Bonn, Germany. Knowing the upper limit of a stars mass will help astronomers make better predictions of the masses of other galaxies, and further our understanding of how stars are formed. Link.

Moonquakes

2005-02-17T17:20:00.000-05:00

On earth, the shaking of the ground from an earthquke is measured by an instrument called a seismometer. Four seismometers were left on the moon after the Apollo missions in the '70s, and they radioed back through 1977. Today they help bolster the theory that the earth and the moon did not form at he same time.

When the data was first recorded, there wasn't a computer fast enough to analyze it. Researchers spread the data in long, squiggly pages and analyzed it by eye, looking for evidence of moonquakes. Recently, the data was analyzed by modern computers. Here's a summary of what they found.

There are frequent moonquakes. Certain interior parts of the moon brake repeatedly, and the rate of moonquakes suggested that they are caused by the pull of tidal forces between the moon and the earth. Almost all of the deep moonquakes originate on the side that faces earth. The moon's crust is 25 percent thinner than earlier believed.

The moon's interior has a considerably different chemical make-up than the Earth's upper mantle. This supports the idea that the moon and the earth did not form at the same time, because if that had been the case, the two bodies would be expected to have similar. Link.

Black holes bend light in strange ways

2005-02-15T22:29:00.000-05:00

Ever notice that when you put an oar in the water, it looks like it's bent upward? Or, when you look at someone standing up to their knees in water, they look short? The physics principle behind this is refraction: light "bends", or changes direction, when it passes a boundary between two different media, like water and air. When light is bent, it it creates the illusion that an object is out of place.

Albert Einstein was first to realize that light can also be bent around stars; the intense gravity of a star can refract light. If light from a distant source passes a star, the path of the light bends, causing observers on earth to get the wrong idea about where the light came from.

Black holes have intense gravity, in fact the strongest we know of, and scientists recently determined that black holes can bend light in directions that don't jive with our understanding of normal refraction. This adds another item to the list of baffling black hole phenomenon. Link.

Puzzling Sedna

2005-02-14T15:22:00.000-05:00

Last February, astronomers first discovered Sedna, an object a bit small than our moon, orbiting way out towards the edge of our solar system. Sedna just doesn't fit with any other object in our solar system. It's a bit too small to be called a planet, but if we don't call it a planet, we could not call Pluto a planet by the same measure. Yet, Sedna is too large and too round to be an astroid. The tilt and shape of Sedna's orbit is unlike any of the nine traditional planets, and Sedna's origin is still totally unknown. It may have formed with Earth and the traditional planets, or it may have formed somewhere else before it was captured by our sun's gravity. An article in The Washington Post explains the many mysteries of Sedna, discussing lots of good astronomy along the way. Link.

The Death Star will soon be fully operational

2005-02-13T16:52:00.000-05:00

The Cassini Spacecraft captured this image of Saturn's moon Mimas. Mimas' huge, 138-km-wide crater makes the small moon look like the Death Star from the Star Wars films. (Mike B explains that the Death Star did not actually appear in The Empire Strikes Back, as previously reported.) Link.

Is the global climate getting warmer? Will the warming affect us? Did we cause this?

2005-02-12T22:18:00.000-05:00

This article on global climate change is well balanced, providing facts on both sides of the issue. But, in the end, the logical conclusion is: it's going to get warmer. Link.

Star on route to exit the Milk Way

2005-02-11T22:51:00.000-05:00

Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA have identified a star that is blazing across our galaxy at 700 km/s, a pace that will allow it to escape our galaxy.

It is believed that the star was previously a binary star, spinning with a partner star and orbiting our Milky Way galaxy. The star likely got too close to the black hole at the center of the galaxy and got swung around the center. This sling-shot effect gave the star a tremendous amount of speed, hurling the star out of its orbit and across the galaxy at a speed that is twice the necessary escape speed, the speed at which an object can break free of the galaxtic gravity. The star will travel to the edge of the galaxy, and moving to fast for gravity to stop it, it will enter intergalactic space towards, well... who knows. This is not the first time that this kind of rouge star has been observed. Link.

Meet the Vatican Astronomer

2005-02-09T18:03:00.000-05:00

The March issue of Astronomy magazine features an interview with Father George Coyne, Jesuit priest and the Vatican's chief astronomer. Francis Reddy put some tough questions to Coyne about the perceived conflicts between religion and science.

On how his spirituality is connected to his science, Coyne says, "In a sense, they are two compartments in my life. I try to do publishable research in international journals, but then, I'm a religious priest. There is some crossover in my personal life. Knowing more about the universe, and believing that God created the universe, nourished my knowledge of the spiritual background. I believe God is creator, and I've never come to that belief through any rational process. It's not irrational -- I don't think it contradicts reason -- but it transcends reason."

Astronomy's Reddy asks Coyne, "Are you saying there are essentially no conflicts between theology and science? Could there ever be? Is there a discovery that would somehow introduce one?"

"I can't imagine a conflict between the two.", Coyne begins. "That's more a faith-based statement, but I believe God created the universe. I can't imagine that God would create a universe in which there would be some contradiction. Ignorance breeds temporary conflicts, there's no doubt about that, but that's ignorance. I would think, undoubtedly, the very distant supernova measurements that have indicated an accelerating universe is the most challenging discovery in the past couple of years."

The interview in Astronomy magazine is not available on line, but I did find a story on Coyne that ran in The Detroit News May of 2002. Link.

Who was Ernst Mayr?

2005-02-06T14:01:00.000-05:00

Biologist Ernst Mayr died last week at the age of 100. Mayr's work was key in developing the theory of evolution. He improved upon the theory of Evolution, placing a key piece in Darwin's evolution puzzle. Darwin's famous book "Origin of Species" did not include a clear definition of the term "species". Mayr clarified the definition, explaining that a species is a group of organisms, capable of breeding among themselves, but unable to breed with others. New species can develop when an existing species splits up into two groups, and the two groups get isolated from each other, usually by geography. In time, the members of the groups will physically change to the point where they are too different to breed with members of the other group. When this happens, the groups are considered two different species. This idea is now widely accepted, and is known to biologists as allopatric speciation. Mayr is also credited as being one of the key biologists who first established the relationship between evolution with genetics. Link.

Maybe it's time to move on from the Hubble

2005-02-05T20:33:00.000-05:00

NASA is not likely to get the $1 billion it needs to put togther a service mission for Hubble Telescope, our only space telescope. Maybe letting the Hubble Telescope die of natural causes isn't so bad after all. The project is could end up costing $2 billion. Do we want to spend that kind of money if it means less funding for other NASA programs? Do we want a risky Space Shuttle flight? I didn't realize until recently that even without he repair, the Hubble is still expected to continue to work fine for as much as another 10 years, maybe more. Meanwhile, NASA's got a fleet of new and better telescopes planned. Link.

Wicked cool science

2005-02-04T11:57:00.000-05:00

#1 The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, is a naturally-occurring colorful display in the sky. In the upper atmosphere, a layer of charged particles discharged by the Sun are attached to the Earth's north and south magnetic poles. When the particles collide with molecules of oxygen and nitrogen in the air, they make the sky glow with bright colors. Using an enormous 960-kilowatt radio transmitter, researchers at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) facility near Gakona, Alaska created shiny "speckles" of light in the Aurora Borealis. "It's cool that they created a visible effect just using radio waves," says Pat Newell, who studies the aurorae at Johns Hopkins University. Link.

#2 According to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, gravity bends space and time. Picture the Earth resting at the bottom of a shallow cone, created by gravity, with moon rolling around the rim: this is similar to the way Einstein described gravity. In theory, As objects move throught he universe, they send out ripples of gravity, in other words, gravity waves.

Researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) hope to enlist up to a million personal computers, linked through the web, in their search for sources of the waves, which have long been predicted by Einstein but never directly observed. A system of lasers and mirrors collects data on gravitational disturbences. (Using computers all over the web to accomplish a single large task is also being done for climate change modeling. See previous post.) The computers will attempt to match the signals to waves of different frequencies. The database is so large that it will take a million active users to make a dent. The project, known as Einstein@home, will use the computer's idle time to search particular frequencies for a 'ringing' gravity wave source. While it's at work, the program also displays a screensaver charting the location of the search in the night sky. "It's really a cool kind of project," says Bruce Allen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Link.

Climate change? Atmospheric scientists have no doubts about it

2005-02-04T11:31:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, the 200 top climate scientists, along with a few economists and politicians, assembled at Britain's Met Office, one of the world's leading providers of environmental and weather-related services. Their message: it's time for the politicians to take steps to lower emisions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. According to Stanford University's Michael Mastrandrea, "We don't really need more detail now. We already have enough information to make an educated guess on how we need to reduce emissions."

In the last 10 years, researcher have made many predictions about the effects of climate change. Larry Hughes, an environmental researcher from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada says that researchers agree that many of these predictions have come true, such as thermal expansion of the oceans, acidification of water, increased air temperatures, and more storm activity. "And it is apparent that things aren't getting better," says Robert Socolow, co-director of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton University in New Jersey. "What we can tell politicians is that the list of worries is going to grow." Link.

Despite our efforts, what comes up must come down

2005-02-01T21:29:00.000-05:00

With current technology, our ability to travel into space is trapped in a catch-22: to get more things into a spacecraft means adding more fuel, which adds more weight, which means adding more fuel. We could break the cycle if we could shield the thing that holds us down: gravity. Just think-- if you could place a box under your feet that could shield gravity, you could pretty much go anywhere you want with little effort. A gravity shield would not only revolutionive space travel, but transportation in general.

But so far, no one's been able to shield or control gravity in any way. Studies commissioned by the European Space Agency (ESA) to evaluate schemes for gravity control have concluded that, even if such control were possible, the benefits for lifting spacecraft out of the Earth's gravitational field would probably not be worth the effort. Link. In 1996, NASA began research program on "speculative propulsion methods", called Breakthrough Propulsion Physics. The program was all about finding breakthroughs in space transportation, such as rocket fuel systems that don't add mass to the spacecraft and propulsion systems that achieve incredibly high speeds. The program yielded no results, and its funding was cut in 2003. Link.

Before we can shield gravity, we need to rewrite some laws of physics. First we would have to do away with the law of conservation of energy, which says that you can create energy without using energy. For example, say you had a gravity shield, and you placed it underneath one-half of a wheel. Whay would happen? The shielded part of the wheel would rise, causing the wheel to rotate forever without a power source. The law of conservation of energy says no-can-do. The second problem is with Einstein's general theory of relativity. Used by Einstein explain gravity, the theory says that gravity results from the fact that massive objects actually bend the fabric of space itself, and you just can't undo that so easily.

The Web's prediction: warmer days ahead

2005-01-28T17:44:00.000-05:00

More than 90,000 people worldwide have participated in a project operated by Climateprediction.net. Participants downloaded software that uses the spare capacity of their computers to model the future of the globe’s climate. The model breaks down the Earth’s surface into1,000+ zones, and predicts climate based on factors including cloud coverage, the rate of heat movement and rainfall rates. A total of 2,017 simulations were run, and all of them predicted temperature rises, most temperature rises were about 3.4 ºC, some results were much higher. Further, the computer the models predict that midway through this century, atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels will be double what they were before the industrial age. Results were published in the journal Nature. Link. According to the some scientists, climate change is not our fault and is not something we can predict or fix. This opinion is popular with the Coal Association of Canada, among others. Link.

Hubble left hanging

2005-01-24T20:56:00.000-05:00

The 14-year-old Hubble Space Telescope has been orbiting the Earth and capturing historic images, aiding us in the understanding of our universe, and allowing us to boldly see where no one has seen before. Link. It’s our only space telescope… the only telescope that has the advantage of having a view of the universe that isn’t affected by the Earth’s atmosphere. But now, the old space telescope needs a billion-dollar tune up. NASA scientists and others like them have been debating whether it's better to send astronauts or a robot to do the Hubble repairs, but it looks like they might as well save their breath. The latest word is that the Bush administration plans to cut the funds for a Hubble repair and scrap plans for a repair mission. Plans to bring the telescope back to Earth unharmed aren’t looking good either. The soon-to-be retired instrument could end up in pieces on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, instead of displayed in a museum in one piece. There is hope that the White House is just bluffing; they do this to NASA routinely as a bargaining game. In 2011, NASA plans to send up the new Webb Telescope, more than twice as large as the Hubble. Although more powerful, the Webb isn’t exactly the same as the Hubble, it detects different wavelengths of light. Link.