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New Method Predicts Dropping Out Of UniversityResearchers in Spain are creating a statistical model to calculate the probability of university students dropping out and to help in the drawing up of strategic plans to reduce the number of students who give up their studies.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 3:00 pm Wildlife As A Source For Livestock InfectionsA bacterium possibly linked to Crohn's disease could be lurking in wild animals. According to new research, Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis, can be transmitted between wildlife and domestic ruminants, supporting the theory of wildlife reservoirs of infection.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 3:00 pm New Biologic Drug Is Effective Against Rheumatoid ArthritisAbatacept, a member of a new class of drug that targets immune cells to treat rheumatoid arthritis, is effective against RA, according to a new review. The review examines recent trials to assess safety and efficacy of the drug.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 3:00 pm Major Discovery Opens Door To Leishmania TreatmentLeishmania is a deadly parasitic disease that affects over 12 million people worldwide, with 2 million new cases reported every year. Until recently, scientists were unsure exactly how the parasite survives inside human cells. That mystery has now been solved according to a new study that lead to the development of the first prophylactic treatment.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 3:00 pm Albatross Camera Reveals Fascinating Feeding Interaction With Killer WhaleScientists from the UK and Japan have recorded the first observations of how albatrosses feed alongside marine mammals at sea.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 3:00 pm NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope Discovers Largest Ring Around SaturnNASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered an enormous ring around Saturn -- by far the largest of the giant planet's many rings.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 3:00 pm DNA Test Could Be Key To Targeting Treatments For Head And Neck CancerScientists have found that a DNA test, which reveals the level of activity of a virus linked to the cause of tonsil, tongue and soft palate cancer, may help medics predict which patients will respond well to particular types of treatments.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm New Chemo Cocktail Blocks Breast Cancer Like A Strong FenceA new chemotherapy cocktail cuts the spread of breast cancer by half and is the first drug to attack metastasizing breast cancer. The disease becomes fatal when it travels outside the mammary ducts, enters the bloodstream and spreads to the bones, liver or brain. Currently, there are only drugs that try to stem the uncontrolled division of cancer cells within the ducts.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm To Peer Inside A Living Cell: Quantum Mechanics Could Help Build Ultra-high-resolution Electron MicroscopesElectrical engineers have proposed a new scheme that can overcome a critical limitation of high-resolution electron microscopes: they cannot be used to image living cells because the electrons destroy the samples. The researchers suggest using a quantum mechanical measurement technique that allows electrons to sense objects remotely without ever hitting the imaged objects, thus avoiding damage.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm Perceptions Might Often Kick A Player When They Are DownJust like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, kicking a football through goal posts can be an elusive task, according to new research. People trying to kick field goals will see a much smaller goal after unsuccessful attempts. But those who kicked better judged the goal posts to be farther apart and the crossbar lower to the ground.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm Warning over River Trent cyanideA quantity of the chemical cyanide and raw sewage is flowing along a 30-mile stretch of a river in Staffordshire.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Oct 2009 | 4:32 am Albatross cam for bird's eye viewA project fitting albatrosses with digital cameras reveals that they forage in groups and often feed alongside killer whales.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Oct 2009 | 4:24 am 2 Americans, 1 Israeli win Nobel chemistry prize (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 4:12 am Cambridge chemist wins Nobel prize for work on cell proteinsVenkatraman Ramakrishnan shares the prestigious award for chemistry with Thomas Steitz and Ada Yodath for elucidating how cells make proteins The Nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for unravelling the mechanism by which cells make proteins. The process is fundamental for life and describes how cells use genetic code to produce the building blocks of living organisms. The prize was awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a US scientist at the Medical Research Council's prestigious Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, the American Thomas Steitz at Yale University, and an Israeli, Ada Yonath at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. Inside every cell in all organisms, there are strands of DNA. They contain the blueprints for how a human being, a plant or a bacterium, looks and functions. But the DNA molecule is passive. If there was nothing else, there would be no life. The blueprints are transformed into living matter through the work of structures called ribosomes. Based on the information in DNA, ribosomes make proteins to do a range of vital jobs, from making skin and bone, to building immune systems and transporting oxygen around our bodies. There are tens of thousands of proteins in the body that build and control life at the chemical level. Understanding ribosomes is important for a scientific understanding of life. Many of today's antibiotics cure various diseases by blocking the function of rhibosomes in bacteria. Without working ribosomes, bacteria cannot survive. The researcheres generated 3D computer models that show how antibiotics bind to ribosomes. The models are used by scientists to develop new antibiotics. The prize of 10m Swedish kronor (£900,000) will be shared equally among them. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 7 Oct 2009 | 4:11 am The Nation's weather (AP)AP - Rainy weather is predicted to continue over the Eastern half of the country on Wednesday as an intense low pressure system pushes eastward through the country, moving over the Great Lakes and into the Northeast.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 4:10 am Two Americans, Israeli win 2009 chemistry NobelSTOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Two Americans and an Israeli shared the 2009 Nobel Prize for chemistry for showing how ribosomes function, work that has important implications for antibiotics, the prize committee said on Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 3:58 am Chemistry Nobel prize announcedThe Nobel Prize for chemistry is awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Oct 2009 | 3:57 am UN climate chief hails Bangkok talks (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 3:34 am Colossal dust ring detected around Saturn's moon (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 2:56 am Energy saving day on Isles of Scilly comes up shortA 24-hour energy 'switch off' in the Isles of Scilly sees consumption fall by only 1.2% but organisers say they are pleased.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Oct 2009 | 2:43 am New ring detected around SaturnA colossal dust ring is seen encircling Saturn, extending some 13 million km (eight million miles) into space.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Oct 2009 | 2:10 am Nasa discovers 'supersized' Saturn ringThin array of ice and dust particles lies at far reaches of Saturnian system, starting about 3.7 million miles from the planet A never-before-seen "supersized" ring around the planet Saturn has been discovered. The thin array of ice and dust particles lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system and its orbit is tilted 27 degrees from the planet's main ring plane, Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory said. A spokeswoman, Whitney Clavin, said the ring was very diffuse and did not reflect much visible light, but the infrared Spitzer space telescope was able to detect it. No one had looked at its location with an infrared instrument until now, Clavin said. The ring dust is very cold – minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit – but it shines with thermal radiation. The bulk of the material starts about 3.7m miles from the planet and extends outward about another 7.4m miles. Saturn was previously known to have seven main rings and several faint, unnamed rings. A paper on the discovery was to be published online today by the journal Nature. "This is one supersized ring," said one of the authors, Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Her co-authors are Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland, College Park, and Michael Skrutskie, also of the University of Virginia. Saturn's moon Phoebe orbits within the ring and is believed to be the source of the material. The ring may answer the riddle of another moon, Iapetus, which has a bright side and a very dark side. The ring circles in the same direction as Phoebe, while Iapetus, the other rings and most of Saturn's other moons go the opposite way. Scientists think material from the outer ring moves inward and slams into Iapetus. "Astronomers have long suspected that there is a connection between Saturn's outer moon Phoebe and the dark material on Iapetus," said Hamilton. "This new ring provides convincing evidence of that relationship." The Spitzer mission, launched in 2003, is managed by the jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California. Spitzer is 66m miles from Earth in orbit around the sun. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 7 Oct 2009 | 1:15 am Parma brings more rain to flooded Philippines (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 12:48 am NASA telescope discovers giant ring around Saturn (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 9:28 pm Study: Endangered AK beluga whale group declining (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 7:35 pm Apple leaves US Chamber of Commerce over climate clash (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 7:12 pm Vaccine to help cocaine addiction?Scientists in Texas who have completed early trials on a vaccine for cocaine dependence believe it shows promise in the treatment of addiction to the stimulant. The experimental vaccine was given to about 60 volunteers over a 12-week period, with a similar number receiving a placebo. The study found the vaccine produced an antibody reaction which helped many cocaine users cut down their consumption of the drug. The vaccine works by attaching itself to cocaine molecules. These larger combined units are easier for the body's immune system to recognise, and so help in the formation of antibodies which attack the cocaine molecules before they have a chance to enter the brain and cause euphoria. Five injections of the vaccine were administered in phases, allowing antibodies to build up. The researchers found 38% of the volunteers who were given the vaccine produced significantly higher levels of anti-cocaine antibodies, and in these cases there was a marked reduction in their cocaine use – of up to 50% compared with the group given a placebo. Thomas Kosten, a psychiatrist at Baylor College of Medicine, who led the study, said the vaccine was only the start of a search for a fully effective treatment. He pointed out that a fifth of those given the vaccine failed to develop many anti-cocaine antibodies. Researchers also said the vaccine blocked the euphoric effects of the drug, but it did not take away cravings for it. As such, it was not suitable for cocaine users in the throes of an addiction and would only work for those who had taken a real decision to overcome the habit. A larger test of the vaccine, with about 300 cocaine-dependent volunteers, will begin in January. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Oct 2009 | 6:48 pm Communication pioneers win 2009 physics NobelSTOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A pioneer in fiber optics and two scientists who figured out how to turn light into electronic signals -- work that paved the way for the Internet age -- were awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 6:02 pm Bird Cam Captures Albatross, Killer Whale Rendezvous
Tiny cameras attached to the backs of four Antarctic albatrosses have revealed a clever feeding strategy: Instead of randomly scanning the open ocean for prey, some birds appear to fly alongside killer whales and scavenge for scraps left by the mammalian predators. Albatrosses often have to fly hundreds of miles in just a few days in order to find their prey, and scientists have long wondered how the birds navigate over a largely featureless ocean. Previous studies suggested the birds might use a combination of scent and vision to guide them, but until now, no one had been able to directly record the behavior of the foraging seabirds. To track the birds, scientists attached lipstick-sized digital cameras, equipped with depth and temperature sensors, to the backs of four albatrosses from Bird Island off the coast of South Georgia in the Antarctic Ocean. After three foraging trips, the bird-borne cameras had captured more than 28,725 images. Although many photos were too dark to be useful — and 6,600 were obscured by feathers fluttering in front of the camera lens — the remaining images yielded a startling result.
Unfortunately, several subsequent images were blocked by feathers. But based on a rapid temperature drop recorded by the camera, it appears the albatross landed on the sea surface after spotting the killer whale, and likely spent the next 30 minutes diving for prey alongside the whale. The researchers say it’s difficult to quantify how often black-browed albatrosses associate with killer whales in the open ocean, but they say their findings suggest that shared meals may be quite common. “When killer whales feed on fish, fragments of prey are often left near the sea surface,” the scientists wrote. “These prey fragments could be an important food resource for albatrosses. Scavenging on such prey fragments may be more energetically advantageous than the pursuit and capture of live prey, as such activities can require frequent take-off, landing and prey handling, which may all be energetically costly.” Similar behavior has been recorded in tropical birds, who scavenge alongside tuna, but this is the first time the behavior has been seen among albatrosses in the deep ocean. In the video below, albatrosses fly around Bird Island, groom one another and care for their fuzzy gray chicks. Image 1: Black-browed albatrosses fly over Bird Island, British Antarctic Survey. Image 2: Albatrosses interact with a killer whale on the open ocean. Photo taken with the bird-borne camera, National Institute of Polar Research, Japan. Video: British Antarctic Survey. See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 6 Oct 2009 | 6:00 pm How whales take albatrosses to dinnerMiniature cameras mounted on the birds' backs give vital clues to the albatrosses' feeding habits The image is hazy and the horizon is leaning hard to one side, but this is the first photographic evidence of an albatross following a killer whale as it patrols the Southern Ocean in search of food. The snap was taken from a lipstick-sized camera attached to the back of a black-browed albatross nesting on Bird Island off the north-west tip of South Georgia. The image comes from a a study of the birds' foraging behavior by scientists at the National Institute of Polar Research in Japan and the British Antarctic Survey. Three other albatrosses were following the whale at the time. The tiny cameras were developed to help understand how vulnerable albatrosses, which can fly hundreds of kilometres in a few days, locate food in the open, featureless oceans. This image, and others taken by the group, suggest the birds trail behind killer whales and fishing trawlers and pick up the scraps left in their wake. The research is published in the open-access journal Plos One. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Oct 2009 | 6:00 pm Rare British butterfly wends its way northA rare butterfly is spotted in Perthshire, hundreds of miles from its usual habits in England and Wales.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Oct 2009 | 5:24 pm 3 Americans share Nobel physics prize (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 4:27 pm Ex-biotech exec gets 3 years for faking cancer (AP)AP - A former executive of Biopure Corp. has been sentenced to three years in prison for pretending he had terminal colon cancer to dodge a federal lawsuit filed by securities regulators.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 3:58 pm Dino Footprints Set New RecordThe world's largest dinosaur tracks have been excavated by French researchers.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Oct 2009 | 3:45 pm Anatomy of an Asteroid
FAJARDO, Puerto Rico — Planetary scientists have reported a slew of new findings about the first asteroid ever spotted before pieces of it fell to Earth. The space rock contained a number of amino acids, had a flattened shape and appears to have been blasted off the surface of a larger body, researchers reported October 5 at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences.
As observed through a telescope during the last two hours of its journey to Earth, the small asteroid appeared only as a flickering point of light. But by analyzing the variations in brightness of the rock as it tumbled through space, along with information culled from fragments on the ground, Peter Scheirich of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Ondrejov and his colleagues have now reconstructed what the asteroid would have looked like up close. The space rock resembled a flattened loaf of bread, Scheirich reported. Further analysis of the shape of the asteroid, along with estimates of the asteroid’s mass and the reflectivity of the recovered meteorites, could reveal whether the rock is solid through and through or porous, like a loosely held rubble pile, he adds. The rock entered Earth’s atmosphere “like the Apollo space capsule, flat face forward,” says Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who led an effort to recover some 300 meteorites in Sudan in October 2008.
Structures in the meteorites — pores lined with fine-grained crystals of a mineral called olivine — suggest that the asteroid was blasted off the surface of a larger rock, reported Michael Zolensky of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. That means it should be relatively easy to use the properties of these meteorites to understand the properties of thousands of observed asteroids in space, which only reveal clues about their surfaces through telescope images and spectra, he says. Other studies, also reported October 5, reveal that the meteorites contain amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, that must have come from 2008 TC3, reported Michael Callahan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The meteorites belong to a rare type called ureilites, which contain microscopic diamonds. “To my knowledge this is the first report of amino acids in any ureilite-type meteorite,” said Daniel Glavin of NASA-Goddard, who collaborated with Callahan and other colleagues on the analysis. The researchers identified 18 amino acids, including alpha-aminoisobutyric acid and isovaline. Because they are uncommon on Earth, Glavin said, “it is highly likely that these two amino acids were formed in space.” “The discovery of amino acids in [2008 TC3] provides additional support for the idea that organic matter delivered by asteroids could have seeded the early Earth with the raw ingredients for life,” he noted. At the same time, the presence of the amino acids is puzzling, Glavin added. Evidence suggests that 2008 TC3 was heated to temperatures as high as 1,300˚ Celsius billions of years ago, yet amino acids are destroyed at temperatures above 500–600˚C, Glavin said. Other researchers, including Richard Zare, Amy Morrow and Hassan Sabbah of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., reported that they had found common components of soot known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the meteorites. This soot is interspersed with amino acids, Zare said. “The big mystery now is how did these complex organic compounds survive such high temperatures?” notes Glavin. One possibility is that the amino acids or their precursors were incorporated into the asteroid’s parent rock during its formation and survived the heating and melting that would have occurred when the parent rock was blasted into pieces. Another possibility, he notes, is that amino acids formed inside 2008 TC3 itself much later on, after it cooled to temperatures below 500–600˚C. To help settle these and other questions, Jenniskens plans to return to Sudan this December to pick up more specimens. Image: The contrail left by the asteroid’s passage through the atmosphere. / Muawia Shaddad. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 6 Oct 2009 | 3:15 pm Goal Posts Appear Smaller After Kicker MissesFailed field-goal attempts can change an athlete's perception of the goal size.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Oct 2009 | 12:40 pm World's Historic Monuments at RiskA number of cultural heritage sites are threatened by neglect or overdevelopment.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Oct 2009 | 12:30 pm Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: NASA’s Lost Female Astronauts
Imagine if the first person on the moon had proclaimed, “That’s one small step for woman, one giant leap for mankind.”
It could have happened. In the late 1950s, the United States government contemplated training women as astronauts, and newly released medical test results show that they were just as cool and tough as the men who went to the moon. “They were all extraordinary women and outstanding pilots and great candidates for what was proposed,” said Donald Kilgore, a doctor who evaluated both male and female space flight candidates at the Lovelace Clinic, a mid-century center of aeromedical research. “They came out better than the men in many categories.” The clinic’s founder, Randy Lovelace, developed the health assessments used to select the Mercury 7 team, and thought that women might make competent astronauts. It was a radical idea for the era. Women’s liberation had just begun to stir, and only a quarter of U.S. women had jobs. But Lovelace was practical: Women are lighter than men, requiring less fuel to transport them into space. They’re also less prone to heart attacks, and Lovelace considered them better-suited for the claustrophobic isolation of space. In 1959, Lovelace collaborator Donald Flickinger, an Air Force general and NASA advisor, founded the Women In Space Earliest program in order to test women for their qualifications as astronauts. But the Air Force canned it before testing even started, prompting Lovelace to start the Woman in Space Program.
“They were all motivated to a degree you could not measure. They knew they were ideal candidates, but NASA regulations kept them out of the game,” said Kilgore. The results of the women’s tests are described for the first time in an article published in the September Advances in Physiology Education, and show just how capable they. One set of results, from the sensory deprivation tests, are especially striking. “Based on previous experiments in several hundred subjects, it was thought that 6 hours was the absolute limit of tolerance for this experience before the onset of hallucinations,” write Kilgore and his co-authors. “[Jerrie] Cobb, however, spent 9 hours and 40 minutes during the experiment, which was terminated by the staff. Subsequently, two other women (Rhea Hurrle and Wally Funk) were also tested, with each spending over 10 hours in the sensory isolation tank before termination by the staff.” During the test, the women were immersed in a lightless tank of cold water. By contrast, John Glenn’s memoir recounts being tested in a dimly-lit room, where he was provided with a pen and paper. Glenn’s test lasted just three hours. The would-be Mercury 13 astronauts would ultimately be held to a different standard than their male counterparts. Some NASA officials speculated that female performance could be impaired by menstruation. Others wanted pilots who had already flown experimental military aircraft — something only men could have done, since women were barred from the Air Force. In August 1961, WISP was cancelled. It was not until 1995, when Eileen Collins piloted the STS-63 shuttle around the MIR space station, that the Mercury 13 met again. Collins was the first woman to become a space pilot, but not the first woman who deserved to. “They knew it was a long shot, but they were willing to take it,” said Kilgore. “They were very special people.” See Also:
Citation: “A forgotten moment in physiology: the Lovelace Woman in Space Program (1960–1962).” By Kathy L. Ryan, Jack A. Loeppky and Donald E. Kilgore, Jr. Advances in Physiology Education, Vol. 33 No. 3, September 2009. Image: Jerrie Cobb on a tilt table and beside a Mercury capsule, from Advances in Physiology Education. Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecosystem and planetary tipping points.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 6 Oct 2009 | 11:09 am BLOG: McDonalds Plugs for PlutoMcDonalds' Happy Meal boxes claim NINE planets orbit our sun (including Pluto).Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Oct 2009 | 10:45 am Fiber Optics Pioneers Win Nobel PrizeThree scientists who developed fiber optics tech win the Nobel Prize in physics.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Oct 2009 | 10:10 am WATCH: How Green Can a Building Be?This office building is about as green as it gets. Find out what makes it so Earth-friendly.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Oct 2009 | 10:10 am Brain Waves Surge Moments Before DeathSurges in brain activity just before death were seen in a study of seven patients.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Oct 2009 | 9:45 am Tsunami MakerA tsunami generated by a piston wavemaker travels across a flume, breaks and impacts a wall, causing it to collapse.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Oct 2009 | 9:03 am Camera Components Win Physics NobelDiscoveries that led to digital cameras, telecommunications win Nobel Prize in physics.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Oct 2009 | 8:52 am Earth WatchSustainable fish at 10 years - pushing the boundaries?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Oct 2009 | 8:50 am Thrust to dustHow do you turn a jet engine into a pile of powder?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Oct 2009 | 8:42 am BLOG: Coin Stashes Suggest Declining RomeBuried coins suggest the Roman republic was in serious decline during 1st century B.C.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Oct 2009 | 8:40 am Biggest dinosaur footprints foundLocal enthusiasts find sauropod tracks up to two metres in diameter spread over large area in Jura mountains An "exceptional" collection of the biggest dinosaur footprints ever recorded has been found by two amateur enthusiasts on an expedition near France's Jura mountains, palaeontologists said today. Imprints measuring up to 2 metres (6ft 6in) in diameter and stretching over a vast area of land have been uncovered near the village of Plagne, 30 miles west of Geneva, according to the National Centre of Scientific Research. In a statement, the centre said the significance of the prints could not be overestimated. "According to the researchers' initial work, these tracks are the biggest ever seen," it said. Pierre Hantzpergue, a palaeontologist at the University of Lyon who verified the prints with a colleague at the research centre, said the perfectly preserved tracks could make Plagne one of the most significant dinosaur locations in the world. "What is remarkable about this site … is firstly the sheer size of the footprints. They are really enormous," he said. "This is new. Some very big footprints have been found in the US but I don't think they are as big as these." The site's other, equally important, attraction, Hantzpergue added, was the geographical spread. The research centre said they were formed "over dozens if not hundreds of metres". "These are very large distances," said Hantzpergue. "We've seen tracks of maybe 50 metres in France, around 100 metres in Switzerland, and the world record is in Portugal … with about 150 metres. Now, we still have many hectares to search but we will undoubtedly have more than 150 metres at Plagne." The imprints are believed to have been those of sauropod dinosaurs, the gentle herbivorous giants which roamed the region about 150m years ago. They appear to have been well preserved by a thick layer of limestone sediment dating from the late Jurassic period – the geological era named after the Jura mountains which lie just to the north of where the tracks were discovered. Despite the region's well-known reputation for such discoveries – in 2004, thousands of footprints were revealed on the Swiss side of the border – this latest, and probably most spectacular, find was left to amateurs from the local town of Oyonnax, near Geneva, to stumble upon. Marié-Hèlene Marcaud, a teacher, and Patrice Landry, a geologist, uncovered the tracks on 5 April during one of their regular expeditions with the Naturalists' Society of Oyonnax. Amazed by their find, they then contacted Hantzpergue and Jean-Michel Mazin at the National Centre of Scientific Research to confirm the authenticity. The Franco-Swiss border is no stranger to palaeontological treasures, and its ancient landscape has allowed scientists to piece together the history of biodiversity over the past 200 million years. A recent motorway project on the Swiss side of the Jura has led to the discovery of not only dinosaur tracks but fossils of creatures including marine crocodiles and mammoths. On the French side sauropod tracks were found at Coisia, about 25 miles from Plagne, in 2004 and on the floor of the Loulle quarry in 2006. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Oct 2009 | 8:39 am Controversial New Idea Surfaces on Origin of Moon's WaterThe surprising discovery of water on the surface of the moon is especially mysterious because scientists aren’t sure where it came from. A recent study actually predicted this water before it was found, and offers a novel hypothesis for its origin.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Oct 2009 | 8:27 am Origin of Komodo Dragon RevealedNew study suggests that the giant lizards came from the land down under.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Oct 2009 | 8:24 am Inflamed passionsWhy do vaccines trigger such passionate debate?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Oct 2009 | 8:16 am Crisis pointWhy the Earth's amphibians need our attention, nowSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Oct 2009 | 8:11 am Myths About Diabetes and Diet PersistIf there is a so-called diabetes diet, then it is the same healthy diet recommended for everyone.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Oct 2009 | 8:06 am Childhood Stress Cuts Life Short, Study SuggestsKids who suffered physical abuse and other stressors may not live as long as their carefree counterparts.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Oct 2009 | 7:14 am Green Roofs Shown to Offset WarmingGreen roofs not only reduce heating and AC costs, they can also sop up greenhouse gases.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am Nobel prize-winning medical research long and costlySAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Nobel-winning medical science that points the way to a cancer cure was sparked by curiosity, not business sense, a new laureate said on Monday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 6:45 am The Making of a Mind-Blowing Space Photo
One late night in 2007, Rogelio Bernal Andreo and his wife were driving down Highway 1 along California’s Lost Coast, when his wife opened the moon roof. What spread out above them looked nothing like the mauve sky near their Sunnyvale home. “It was like the Milky Way was in front of us,” said Andreo, a former early eBay employee, who runs a Spanish-language internet company. “It looked like it was gonna fall on us.”
He pulled out his digital SLR camera and spent two hours trying to capture the vast galaxy. When he got home, he downloaded the photos, and caught the astrophotography bug. “I started to look on the internet and see all these pictures, really gorgeous pictures,” Andreo said. “I said, ‘How do people do this?’” Two years of intensive study, rigorous practice, and perhaps $10,000 of equipment later, he knows. And he let Wired.com in on his process. Step-by-step, we’ll break down how he went from the black-and-white star scene below to the mind-blowing space photo above. Thanks to cheaper high-quality digital cameras and editing equipment, creating beautiful images of galaxies, nebulae and star clusters is now within the reach of anyone with a few thousand dollars to spend. So, we live in a golden age for space photos, but looking at the technicolor images of what appears to the naked eye to be a fairly bland sky, we find ourselves asking: Does it really look like that? As we find in this behind-the-scenes look at the making of a mind-blowing space photo, the answer is yes — but just not to your eyes, which are pretty poor sensors, compared with purpose-built astrophotographic equipment. But that doesn’t mean the photos aren’t “real.” Most astrophotographers have an ethic: They won’t add color or lasso just a part of an image for editing. They can only bring things out of the data, not add them. The photos are often processed in Photoshop, but what they do is the opposite of falsifying the visual record. Astrophotographers are using digital-editing tools to find the truth in the noisy data that are the heavens. “The stuff up there is really dim,” Andreo said. “The good thing is that the camera records all that and the trick is to bring it out.”
The first step in getting a good space photo is picking a spot without light pollution from cities. In northern California, Andreo prefers Lake San Antonio, Henry Coe State Park and Fremont Peak, depending on how far he wants to drive. His equipment list is long. He packs a Takahashi telescope, Takahashi mount, tripod, SBIG STL11000M camera, adapters, cables, deep-cycle marine batteries, an Asus eee laptop, food and coffee of course. This photo is how the process begins. It’s the first of 11 black-and-white exposures that he’ll make. The field of view is just the left third — the area around the bright blue stars of Orion’s belt — of the completed panorama at the top of the page. “This is just one shot, a 15-minute exposure,” Andreo said. “That’s how it comes out of the camera. The original size of the picture is like 20 megabytes.” Of course, he shoots in RAW format with no compression to maximize the amount of data the images retain.
Now, the processing begins. Andreo takes his 11 exposures and “stacks” them in “The stuff that’s really up there is going to stay, but the noise — because it was random — is going to disappear,” he said. At this stage, he also does background calibration, which tends to brighten the image and make it a little “creamier.”
Here, Andreo has started to “push the histogram,” as astrophotographers say. “You push up or down the low levels of the image and the high levels of the image and more data starts to show up,” he said. “It’s the first thing that most people are going to do. Once you stack your images, then adjust your histogram a little to see how much stuff is really there.” Here, more stars are obviously apparent and the creaminess has gone away with the processing for greater contrast. Next comes the color.
After he shoots an area of the sky with the monochrome, high-resolution filter, he switches to separate red, green and blue filters. He goes through the same process for each color component as he did for the black-and-white image. He takes multiple exposures, combines them, and does background calibration. “It’s just red, green and blue combined and slightly stretched to bring out all the detail,” Andreo said. “You start to see more of pretty picture, basically.”
Here, Andreo has draped the color data onto the more detailed luminance image. “I take the RGB that you saw from the previous image, and I put it on top of the luminance,” Andreo said, “but I don’t want the details, I just want the color information.” Once that’s complete, he pushes the histograms some more or perhaps adjusts the levels in the image to bring out the details. Some of the artistry comes out in this stage. “Because there is a lot of creativity, with the same set of raw data, two different people are going to come up with different things,” he said.
The last step was simply to rotate it vertically because he just “liked it more this way.” After all, the number of targets for amateur astrophotographers is fairly limited. Framing is a key component of standing out. “I’m hoping that my final picture will escape mediocrity,” he said. “It may not be the best you’ve ever seen, but at least it’s not just one more.” Later, that rotation turned out fortuitously when a friend saw the image and suggested he combine it with photos he’d taken of an adjacent region of the sky. Working with a program called Registar that helps photographers join their photos by identifying the common stars in different images, he stitched the images together. It required rotating and cropping his original Orion belt, but when the mosaic was finished, it was absolutely breathtaking. Last month, it was selected by NASA as the agency’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for September 18th. The image certainly traveled a long way from its initial incarnation to the finished product, but is the first image any more real than the last? Does adding dozens of exposures together and “pushing the histogram” add or subtract from the reality of the image? After stepping through the transformation, we’re not convinced either way, but we’re sure glad that someone takes pictures of space that look like pieces of the heavens. Images: Rogelio Bernal Andreo. See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 6 Oct 2009 | 6:43 am Volcanoes Defrosted Ice AgeVolcanic eruptions may have brought Earth out of the last ice age.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Exploring the multiverseDo quantum computers offer proof of parallel universes? And where does that leave philosophers? The concept of the multiverse is not new. In 55 BC, Lucretius speculated that the motion of atoms might be energetic enough to propel them into parallel worlds. During the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno raised a similar possibility, his speculations causing him tragic trouble with the church. The poet, Thomas Traherne, raised the thought again in the 17th century: God's love is infinite, he mused, so maybe there are an infinite number of worlds over which that love moves. The history of the idea is worth bearing in mind since it suggests something: the multiverse proposal appears when the cosmology of the day reaches a limit of understanding. Today, it arises in a number of contexts. Consider just one, the way it tackles a paradox of quantum theory. The quantum world is described as a superposition of states, expressed by the wave function. However, we don't live in a superposition of states, but just one. The paradox is how the two relate. In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, the wave function is said spontaneously and mysteriously to collapse into the state we actually observe. John Gribbin, the popular science writer who has a new book out, In Search of the Multiverse, rejects that. Instead, he follows Hugh Everett and David Deutsch who have argued that in the superposition of states, the wave function actually describes the parallel worlds of a multiverse. What we experience, then, is just one part of the wave function, other parts existing in other universes. So, in the famous Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment, it is not that the cat lives or dies according to the choice of an observer. Rather, it is that there is one universe in which the cat lives, and another in which it never lived. Gribbin familiarises the possibility by appealing to the sci-fi trope of parallel universes in which, say, I never wrote this article, and another again in which you never read it. You can then have fun asking which universe you'd prefer to be in. Perhaps there is even a universe in which everyone on Cif threads cordially and routinely agrees. That thought immediately raises a concern, the multiverse proposal's extravagance. There could be an infinity of infinities of them. One is reminded of the total perspective vortex in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide – a machine that enables you to see the universe in its infinite majesty, which is also to see yourself in your infinitesimal obscurity. The net result is a blown mind. Another facet of such extravagance is demonstrated by the speculations with which Gribbin ends his book: he thinks it quite likely that our universe has been designed by a super-civilisation with technology vastly superior to our own. That said, just because the multiverse is a wild theory does not mean it's not right. Modern physics often seems to align craziness with veracity. And yet, there are other problems with it. Consider this. The multiverse implies that alongside our world lie a possibly infinite number of other worlds, very many of which are almost exactly the same as ours, and to which ours has some connection. And yet, we have precisely no experience of them. Why we don't is a quandary. Gribbin is not put off. On the contrary, he believes that the latest work in quantum computing demonstrates that we can have knowledge of other worlds. According to the multiverse interpretation, quantum computing works because it accesses computers in other worlds. That is the source of its power: if you manage to build a quantum computer, you effectively have many computers at your disposal. It's a prospect plausible enough to worry the encryption industry, encryption resting on the assumption that computer power is strictly limited to a single universe. Whether or not quantum computing has proven what Gribbin claims of it is not clear. This is a flaw of the book: he presents the multiverse as a fait accompli, when there are other possibilities, not least of which is that quantum theory, as it stands, is incomplete, a scenario that could wipe out the need for the multiverse interpretation. And that might be the case. For one thing, appealing to an infinite number of possible universes, in which every possible state of things exists, could be accused of not explaining anything: is it science to say that everything is possible somewhere? That would mean there is at least one universe in which Jesus spontaneously rose from the dead. Perhaps it happened in ours. More specifically, it seems unlikely that quantum theory is complete because crucial questions, like how it relates to gravity, remain opaque. If they became clearer, the multiverse interpretation might prove unnecessary. Perhaps Gribbin implicitly recognises these problems when he calls the search for the multiverse "metaphorical". It is pursued via mathematics and, like a metaphor, it is not always clear how the maths maps onto reality. It's a striking admission. Theologians describe their discipline as metaphorical too: they admit that what they seek, an understanding of the nature of God, is ultimately beyond them. However, via the deployment of metaphors, theologians believe that their task is worthwhile since it leads to a deeper understanding of the mystery of ultimate reality. Could it be that with quantum theory, physics enters what might be called a "cloud of unknowing"? If so, the implication is that the fundamental nature of reality is located within that cloud. "Nature loves to hide", said Heraclitus. Or, to recall Stephen Hawking's phrase, seeing into the mind of God just won't be possible after all. Which isn't to say that physicists needn't keep trying, as indeed theologians do. It is precisely the mystery of things that compels us. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Oct 2009 | 3:00 am
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