Wednesday Morning Science Supplement

Wednesday Morning Science Supplement is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Science

1 NASA rocket failure blow to Earth watching network

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

Tue Feb 24, 7:23 pm ET

WASHINGTON – A new satellite to track the chief culprit in global warming crashed into the ocean near Antarctica after launch Tuesday, dealing a major setback to NASA’s already weak network for monitoring Earth and its environment from above.

The $280 million mission was designed to answer one of the biggest question marks of global warming: What happens to the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide spewed by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas? How much of it is sucked up and stored by plants, soil and oceans and how much is left to trap heat on Earth, worsening global warming?

“It’s definitely a setback. We were already well behind,” said Neal Lane, science adviser during former President Bill Clinton’s administration. “The program was weak and now it’s really weak.”

2 Global warming danger threat increased

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer

Mon Feb 23, 5:05 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The Earth won’t have to warm up as much as had been thought to cause serious consequences of global warming, including more extreme weather and increasing threats to plants and animals, says an international team of climate experts.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the risk of increased severe weather would rise with a global average temperature increase of between 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit and 3.6 degrees above 1990 levels. The National Climatic Data Center currently reports that global temperatures have risen 0.22 degree since 1990.

Now, researchers report that “increases in drought, heat waves and floods are projected in many regions and would have adverse impacts, including increased water stress, wildfire frequency and flood risks starting at less than (1.8 degrees) of additional warming above 1990 levels.”

3 Ministers get close look at Antarctic ice threat

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent

Mon Feb 23, 11:45 am ET

TROLL RESEARCH STATION, Antarctica – A parka-clad band of environment ministers landed in this remote corner of the icy continent on Monday, in the final days of an intense season of climate research, to learn more about how a melting Antarctica may endanger the planet.

Representatives from more than a dozen nations, including the U.S., China, Britain and Russia, were to rendezvous at a Norwegian research station with American and Norwegian scientists coming in on the last leg of a 1,400-mile (2,300-kilometer), two-month trek over the ice from the South Pole.

The visitors will gain “hands-on experience of the colossal magnitude of the Antarctic continent and its role in global climate change,” said the mission’s organizer, Norway’s Environment Ministry.

4 China opens bidding on moon probe technology

Reuters

1 hr 12 mins ago

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will open competitive bidding so that domestic schools and institutions can help build crucial parts of the country’s moon exploration craft, an official newspaper said on Wednesday.

In October 2003, China became the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket, after the former Soviet Union and the United States. And the government has made expanding the nation’s presence in space, and eventually reaching the moon, a cornerstone of its bid to rise as a technological power.

But the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense has decided contributions from the country’s universities, institutes and other “qualified” institutions are needed for crucial parts of the lunar effort, which aims to put an unmanned buggy on the moon by 2012, the Guangming Daily reported.

5 Florida tests using magnets to repel crocodiles

By Jane Sutton, Reuters

Tue Feb 24, 7:40 pm ET

MIAMI (Reuters) – Florida wildlife managers have launched an experiment to see if they can keep crocodiles from returning to residential neighborhoods by temporarily taping magnets to their heads to disrupt their “homing” ability.

Researchers at Mexico’s Crocodile Museum in Chiapas reported in a biology newsletter they had some success with the method, using it to permanently relocate 20 of the reptiles since 2004.

“We said, ‘Hey, we might as well give this a try,” Lindsey Hord, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s crocodile response coordinator, said on Tuesday.

6 Ancient statue found buried at Egypt Giza pyramids

Reuters

Tue Feb 24, 11:22 am ET

CAIRO (Reuters) – Maintenance workers at Egypt’s Giza Pyramids have found an ancient quartzite statue of a seated man buried close to the surface of the desert, the culture ministry said on Tuesday.

The statue, about life-size at 149 cm (five feet) tall, was found north of the smallest of Giza’s three main pyramids, the tomb of the fourth dynasty Pharaoh Mycerinus, who ruled in the 26th century BC, the ministry said in a statement.

The man was wearing a shoulder-length wig and was seated in a simple chair, his right hand clenched on his knee and holding an object. His left hand was resting on his thigh.

7 U.S. scientists build computer model for snowflakes

Reuters

Tue Feb 24, 4:27 pm ET

CHICAGO (Reuters) – The random, symmetrical beauty of snowflakes has been recreated in a computer program, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

It took four years for two mathematicians from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of California, Davis, to develop the computer model’s theory and perform the computations.

“Even though we’ve artfully stripped down the model over several years so that it’s as simple and efficient as possible, it still takes us a day to grow one of these things,” Wisconsin researcher David Griffeath said in a statement.

8 Researchers make nerve cells from new "stem" cells

Reuters

Tue Feb 24, 5:23 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers said on Tuesday they had made a type of nerve cell out of ordinary skin cells in a new approach to stem cell research.

They made motor neurons out of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells — a type of cell made from ordinary skin cells that resembles human embryonic stem cells.

Scientists hope that iPS cells might offer a substitute for embryonic stem cells and a short-cut to tailored medical therapy for a range of diseases.

9 Brain injury raises epilepsy risk for years: study

Reuters

Mon Feb 23, 5:25 pm ET

LONDON (Reuters) – A severe brain injury puts people at high risk of epilepsy for more than a decade after they are first hurt, a finding that suggests there may be a window to prevent the condition, researchers said on Monday.

A Danish team found that the odds of epilepsy more than doubled after mild brain injury or skull fracture and was seven times more likely in patients with serious brain injury.

The risk remained even 10 years on, more so in people older than 15, Jakob Christensen and colleagues at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark and colleagues wrote in the journal Lancet.

10 Antibodies protect against bird flu and more

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor, Reuters

Mon Feb 23, 5:46 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers have discovered human antibodies that neutralize not only H5N1 bird flu but other strains of influenza as well and say they hope to develop them into lifesaving treatments.

The antibodies — immune system proteins that attach to invaders such as viruses — also might be used to protect front-line workers and others at high risk in case a pandemic of flu broke out, the researchers said.

In tests on mice the viruses neutralized several types of influenza A viruses, including the H5N1 avian influenza virus, the researchers reported in Sunday’s issue of the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

11 Obama calls for carbon cap legislation

by Jo Biddle, AFP

2 hrs 22 mins ago

WASHINGTON, (AFP) – President Barack Obama urged Congress to draft legislation setting market-based caps on the emissions of carbon gases in a landmark move in the United States to combat global warming.

“To truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy,” Obama told lawmakers in his maiden speech to Congress.

“So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.”

12 China’s environment problems serious: minister

AFP

1 hr 20 mins ago

SHANGHAI (AFP) – China’s environmental problems remain serious with local governments not putting enough pressure on businesses to control pollution, the nation’s environment protection minister has said.

Efforts to toughen environment laws have not done enough to fix the widespread problems for China’s air, lakes and rivers, Zhang Lijun said on Tuesday, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

“The general situation of environmental pollution does not allow us to be optimistic,” Zhang was quoted telling a national meeting on pollution control in Shanghai.

13 Japan may force utilities to buy surplus domestic solar power

AFP

Tue Feb 24, 10:45 am ET

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan plans to soon require electricity companies to buy surplus power generated by household solar panels at about twice the current price, a government official said Tuesday.

The scheme, to start as early as the fiscal year beginning in April, aims to promote solar power as part of efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming, an industry ministry official said.

“Japan has already led solar power technology in the world,” the official told AFP. “With the scheme, we would like to firmly secure the lead.”

14 Plague threat looms as Bangladesh rat problem grows

by Shafiq Alam, AFP

Tue Feb 24, 1:10 am ET

DHAKA (AFP) – Bangladesh’s remote Chittagong Hill Tracts region faces a serious risk of prolonged famine and bubonic plague unless a ballooning rat population is brought under control, experts say.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) began distributing three million dollars of emergency food supplies to some 120,000 people in the southeastern tribal area bordering India and Myanmar last May, after the rat population exploded.

The rats — some weighing as much as 1.5 kilogrammes (3.3 pounds) — feed on bamboo forests in the hilly region.

15 Supreme Court mulls who pays after toxic spills

AFP

Tue Feb 24, 7:10 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Supreme Court Tuesday heard arguments in a case to determine whether companies can be held financially liable for cleaning up polluted sites even when not directly to blame for the contamination.

The US high court heard petitions in two separate, but similar cases: Burlington Northern v. United States and Shell Oil v. United States.

In the Shell Oil case, the US government is trying to recover the cost of cleaning up a polluted California site, where Brown & Bryant Inc. stored pesticides until an environmental investigation led to its bankruptcy in 1988.

16 Climate change risk underestimated: study

AFP

Mon Feb 23, 5:26 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The risk posed to mankind and the environment by even small changes in average global temperatures is much higher than believed even a few years ago, a study said Monday.

Published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study updated a 2001 assessment by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change that looked at temperature changes and the risks they pose.

“Today, we have to assume that the risks of negative impacts of climate change on humans and nature are larger than just a few years ago,” said Hans-Martin Fussel, one of the authors of the report.

17 New study points to GM contamination of Mexican corn

AFP

Mon Feb 23, 3:00 pm ET

PARIS (AFP) – Genes from genetically-engineered corn have been found in traditional crop strains in Mexico, according to a new study likely to reignite a bitter controversy over biotech maize.

The paper, by scientists from Mexico, the United States and the Netherlands, backs a 2001 probe that sparked a row over the safety of genetically-modified (GM) crops.

Green activists say GM crops are a potential hazard, arguing that their genes could spread to related plants through cross-pollination.

18 Two arrested over water contamination: state media

AFP

Mon Feb 23, 3:26 pm ET

BEIJING (AFP) – Two managers of a chemical company have been arrested over a spill that led to the suspension of drinking water supplies for hundreds of thousands of people in a Chinese city, state press said Monday.

The two officials of the Biaoxin Chemical Company were arrested on charges of causing large-scale environmental pollution that forced water supplies for large parts of Yancheng city to be cut off, Xinhua news agency reported.

The plant has also been ordered closed, it said.

19 Chad fights charcoal in battle against creeping desert

by Patrick Fort, AFP

Sun Feb 22, 9:37 pm ET

NDJAMENA (AFP) – Authorities in Chad are cracking down on the use of charcoal to save forests and keep the desert from advancing in the Saharan nation, but discontent is mounting over the tough measures.

Sanctions that began coming into effect in December include torching vehicles carrying charcoal and arresting people transporting the product, law-and-order officials say.

The measures have sparked an outcry among the poorest residents of this desolate west African country, who claim they cannot afford to buy gas to cook their daily meals.

20 Poachers put Balkan lynx on brink of extinction

by Jasmina Mironski, AFP

Sun Feb 22, 1:17 am ET

GALICICA MOUNTAIN, Macedonia (AFP) – The camera sits hidden in a field ready to track every move of the Balkan lynx, a wild cat both revered as an icon and reviled as a pest that has teetered on extinction for nearly a century.

“The lynx has no natural enemy except man,” said Georgi Ivanov, an ecologist working on a project to monitor lynx numbers in western Macedonia’s Galicica National Park, where 30 such cameras have been set up.

Poaching is one of the biggest threats to the survival of this Balkan subspecies of the European lynx, the largest wild cat found on the continent.

21 French farm show seeks greener tomorrow

by Arielle Verley, AFP

Sat Feb 21, 3:38 pm ET

PARIS (AFP) – France’s annual crop and livestock show opened on Saturday with President Nicolas Sarkozy promising farmers to help prepare them to face a future with smaller European subsidies.

Part trade fair and part family day out, the week-long jamboree is expected to draw half-a-million visitors to an exhibition centre in Paris and allow city dwellers to reconnect with French farming traditions.

It is also a highly political event, an annual opportunity for a string of Paris-based politicians to have themselves photographed with one of the 650 prize cattle, 550 sheep and 140 horses on show.

22 Carbon dioxide emissions could last millenniums, expert says

By Renee Schoof, McClatchy Newspapers

Tue Feb 24, 4:07 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Until now, most discussion of climate change has been about what scientific evidence shows is likely to happen between now and 2100. However, scientific research shows that the carbon dioxide gas released from burning fossil fuels lasts in the atmosphere much longer than mere decades.

David Archer , a leading climate researcher who teaches at the University of Chicago , has written a new book that looks at carbon dioxide’s “long tail” and what it means for changes on Earth in the future.

If the world continues its heavy use of coal over the next couple of hundred years until it’s essentially used up, it would take several centuries more for the oceans to absorb about three-quarters of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. In those centuries, there would be a “climate storm” that Archer says would be significantly worse than the forecast from now to 2100.

23 Aging Mars Rover Gets a Power Boost

Tariq Malik, Senior Editor SPACE.com

Sat Feb 21, 12:15 pm ET

NASA’s aging Mars rover Spirit has a bit more power under its hood thanks to some Martian winds that cleaned dust from its vital solar panels.

The handy cleaning occurred earlier this month and was discovered by engineers scanning data from Spirit’s power subsystem.

“We will be able to use this energy to do significantly more driving,” said Colette Lohr, a rover mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. “Our drives have been averaging about 50 minutes, and energy has usually been the limiting factor. We may be able to increase that to drives of an hour and a half.”

24 Natural Explanation Found for UFOs

SPACE.com Staff

Mon Feb 23, 3:15 pm ET

Mysterious UFO sightings may go hand in hand with a puzzling natural phenomenon known as sprites – flashes high in the atmosphere triggered by thunderstorms.

The dancing lights have appeared above most thunderstorms throughout history, but researchers did not start studying them until one accidentally recorded a sighting on camera in 1989.

“Lightning from the thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite,” said Colin Price, a geophysicist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “We now understand that only a specific type of lightning is the trigger that initiates sprites aloft.”

25 New Search for Cosmic Inflation Mounted

Robin Lloyd, Senior Editor SPACE.com

Tue Feb 24, 9:45 am ET

A telescope at the South Pole is being fine tuned to search for gravity waves, hypothetical distortions of space-time that, if confirmed to exist, could further validate Einstein and reveal convincing evidence for a big cosmology theory.

Cosmic inflation theory proposes that the early universe passed through a phase of exponential expansion, ballooning almost instantaneously from less than the size of an atom to about golf-ball size.

The theory is widely accepted. It’s tied up with the big bang theory of how the universe started and predicts the existence of gravity waves, as well as fluctuations in the density and temperature of radiation left over from the big bang (called the cosmic microwave background, or CMB) and the mass density of the universe. However, unlike CMB and mass density observations, gravity waves have remained elusive.

26 Odd Life Found in Great Lakes

LiveScience Staff, LiveScience.com

Tue Feb 24, 5:50 pm ET

Scientists have found some odd life forms in Lake Huron.

Peculiar geological formations are supporting floating plumes and purple mats of microbes dwelling in enclaves of the Great Lake, researchers report. The odd biology is more akin to what is found in some of Earth’s most extreme environments.

The mats are located about 66 feet (20 meters) below the surface of Lake Huron – the third largest of North America’s Great Lakes – where researchers have found sinkholes made by water dissolving parts of an ancient underlying seabed.

27 Rare Jaguars Spotted in Arizona and Mexico

Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director LiveScience.com

Sun Feb 22, 11:05 am ET

The once-common jaguar has become a rare sight in North America, thanks to hunting and habitat fragmentation.

Now two were spotted in exceedingly rare and unrelated events this month.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department caught and collared a wild jaguar in Arizona for the first time, officials said Thursday. While a handful of the big cats have been photographed by automatic cameras in recent years, the satellite tracking collar will now help biologists learn more about this animal’s range.

28 Unlike Diamonds, Most Minerals Not Forever

Harvey Leifert, Natural History Magazine, LiveScience.com

Mon Feb 23, 10:25 am ET

Diamonds may be forever, but that’s not true of most minerals. In fact, about two-thirds of the 4,300 known minerals on Earth today owe their existence to biological processes, and thus evolved fairly recently in geological terms. So says Robert M. Hazen of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., who with seven colleagues identified three phases of mineral evolution.

The first phase began more than 4.55 billion years ago, as the solar system started developing. Chemical elements came together, forming about 250 simple minerals that in turn coalesced into planets. On Earth, the second phase stretched from 4.55 billion to 2.5 billion years ago, starting with the violent collision that formed the Moon. Earth’s temperature and pressure varied wildly; plate tectonics began churning the planet’s surface; and volatiles appeared, such as water and carbon dioxide, helping to redistribute the elements. Those changes enabled the evolution of some 1,250 new minerals.

Finally, during the past 2.5 billion years, biological processes – particularly photosynthesis – have profoundly affected mineral composition by oxygenating the atmosphere and thus promoting oxidation of ores. Malachite, turquoise, and nearly 3,000 other minerals could occur only on a living planet, Hazen says.

29 Strange Fish Has See-Through Head

LiveScience Staff, LiveScience.com

Mon Feb 23, 6:05 pm ET

A bizarre deep-water fish called the barreleye has a transparent head and tubular eyes. Since the fish’s discovery in 1939, biologists have known the eyes were very good at collecting light. But their shape seemed to leave the fish with tunnel vision.

Now scientists say the eyes rotate, allowing the barreleye to see directly forward or look upward through its transparent head.

The barreleye (Macropinna microstoma) is adapted for life in a pitch-black environment of the deep sea, where sunlight does not reach. They use their ultra-sensitive tubular eyes to search for the faint silhouettes of prey overhead.

30 Freaky Fish Has Eyes Like Ours

Robin Lloyd, LiveScience Senior Editor

Tue Feb 24, 2:20 pm ET

Most fish have eyes on the sides of their heads, but a scientist now has confirmed a new and elusive species of carnivorous frogfish with eyes that face forward, like ours. The creature also has a fleshy chin and cheeks, adding to its strange appearance.

The bizarre new species, Histiophryne psychedelica, made a brief splash a year ago when sport divers about 30 feet offshore of Ambon Island, Indonesia, photographed a shallow-water fish not seen before in 20 years of diving there.

Ichthyologist Ted Pietsch of the University of Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture received pictures of the fish and guessed it belonged to the Histiophryne genus. Now he has confirmed this using genetic and morphological data, and fully described the freaky fish as a new species.

3 comments

  1. The NASA launch failure is really the story of the day, everybody has 2 or 3 takes on it.

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