Aliens in the oceans -- searching for life on the moons of Jupiter
As the Curiosity rover begins its exciting trek across the surface of Mars and up the dramatic peak of Mt. Sharp it is important to realize that the plans for this great success were incubated and acted upon more than 10 years ago. Exploration like this is not for the faint of heart -- it takes time and persistence.
So what's next? What is in the funded pipeline now that will be revolutionizing our understanding of life in the solar system 10 or even 20 years from now? The short answer is -- nothing. Curiosity is it. After Curiosity there is, at present, no other mission in production that will explore potentially habitable worlds beyond Earth. |  |
New toilet technology after 150 years of waste
SEATTLE (AP) — These aren't your typical loos. One uses microwave energy to transform human waste into electricity. Another captures urine and uses it for flushing. And still another turns excrement into charcoal.
They are part of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation competition to reinvent the toilet for the 2.5 billion people around the world who don't have access to modern sanitation. |  |
17th century shipwreck to be freeze-dried, rebuilt
BRYAN, Texas (AP) — More than three centuries ago, a French explorer's ship sank in the Gulf of Mexico, taking with it France's hopes of colonizing a vast piece of the New World — modern-day Texas.
Like La Salle in 1685, researchers at Texas A&M University are in uncharted waters as they try to reconstruct his vessel with a gigantic freeze-dryer, the first undertaking of its size.
Like La Salle in 1685, researchers at Texas A&M University are in uncharted waters as they try to reconstruct his vessel with a gigantic freeze-dryer, the first undertaking of its size.
Black Hills Auction: Saving Pe’ Sla
On August 25, 1,942.66 acres divided into five tracts of land located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, is slated to go up for auction. In 2012, such an event isn’t extraordinary; except in this case the land scheduled to be sold to the highest bidder is sacred to the Oceti Sakowin, The People of the Seven Council Fires—the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota people. We are also referred to in mainstream circles as The Great Sioux Nation.
To the Oceti Sakowin, Pe’ Sla is The Heart of Everything. Not only does this sacred site play a key role in our creation story, it is said to be the place where The Morning Star plunged to earth, and saved the People from seven creatures who had killed seven women. The Lakota hero then placed those women in the night sky as ‘The Seven Sisters,” called ‘The Pleiades’ by western astronomers.
To the Oceti Sakowin, Pe’ Sla is The Heart of Everything. Not only does this sacred site play a key role in our creation story, it is said to be the place where The Morning Star plunged to earth, and saved the People from seven creatures who had killed seven women. The Lakota hero then placed those women in the night sky as ‘The Seven Sisters,” called ‘The Pleiades’ by western astronomers.
Was Narmada valley the centre of human evolution?
VADODARA: Much is known about how the Harappan Civilization flourished on the banks of the Indus almost 5,000 years back. But now is the time to move 'ahead' of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Through the largest exploration exercise ever undertaken, M S University's Department of Archaeology and Ancient History along with United States' Stone Age Institute will unearth evidence of our own ancestors.
Through the largest exploration exercise ever undertaken, M S University's Department of Archaeology and Ancient History along with United States' Stone Age Institute will unearth evidence of our own ancestors.
Technology to the rescue for ancient Japanese culture
The vanished early agrarian settlements of East Asia interests Gary Crawford, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, though his search is focused on seeds and grains.
Crawford studies the relationships between people and the plants they once consumed, cultivated and collected. He sees more in charred millet seeds, for example, than the average person. Specifically, he pictures how well and whether communities sustained themselves and their ecosystems millennia ago. An important component of his research is exploring how agriculture developed.
Crawford studies the relationships between people and the plants they once consumed, cultivated and collected. He sees more in charred millet seeds, for example, than the average person. Specifically, he pictures how well and whether communities sustained themselves and their ecosystems millennia ago. An important component of his research is exploring how agriculture developed.
In fast-changing India, preserving what came before
Bangalore, India — The main thoroughfare in the information technology city of Bangalore seems to change every day.
Glass-fronted malls and multi-level stores have replaced old family-owned shops. A chaotic rush of traffic chokes the street, which was calm and orderly two decades ago. On the former site of a 90-year-old movie hall, a giant hole is being readied for construction. “I wanted my city to grow and prosper, but I did not realize that my quiet garden city would explode like this,” said Bhoopalam Srinath, 54, whose clothing store on Mahatma Gandhi Road faces a new Metro station. “The boulevard was the heart of the city. It has gone now." |  |
Monastery where Christian saint was martyred is uncovered on Eigg
An ARCHAEOLOGICAL dig on a Scottish island has unearthed the remains of what is thought to be a monastery founded by one of the country’s first Christian saints.
St Donnan brought Christianity to many places in the West Highlands in the seventh century before settling on Eigg. According to local folklore, he became a martyr after he was killed by Norsemen, along with 50 monks, while giving Mass on Easter Sunday in the year 617. Eigg History Society won £17,500 of Heritage Lottery funding to carry out an archaeological excavation on the island in an effort to locate St Donnan’s monastery. |  |
Science on the Silk Road: Taste for adventure
It wasn't quite the lowest point of the expedition. But Paolo Gasparini was decidedly uncomfortable at a banquet in the small town of Alga, Kazakhstan, when he was given the honour of dividing a boiled sheep's head among the gathering. He could sense the silent alarm of his young colleagues, fearing that soon they would be politely chewing on an eye or an ear. Fighting nausea, Gasparini, a medical geneticist at the University of Trieste, Italy, sympathetically sliced each of them just a taste of skin, passing the traditionally valued sense organs to the village elders.
What Are the Limits of Human Survival?
One hears epic accounts of people surviving bullets to the brain, 10-story freefalls or months stranded at sea. But put a human anywhere in the known universe except for the thin shell of space that extends a couple of miles above or below sea level on Earth, and we perish within minutes. As strong and resilient as the human body seems in some situations, considered in the context of the cosmos as a whole, it's unnervingly fragile.
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Scottish people's DNA study could 'rewrite nation's history'
A large scale study of Scottish people's DNA is threatening to "rewrite the nation's history", according to author Alistair Moffat.
Scotland, he told the Edinburgh international book festival, despite a long-held belief that its ethnic make-up was largely Scots, Celtic, Viking and Irish, was in fact "one of the most diverse nations on earth". "The explanation is simple. We are a people on the edge of beyond; on the end of a massive continent. Peoples were migrating northwest; and they couldn't get any further. We have collected them.". |  |
Will DNA unlock the Elephant Man's final secret?
He was the thing of children's nightmares, outcast by a Victorian society unable to comprehend his grotesque deformities, but was later immortalised in films and plays. Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man, is one of medical history's enigmas: 122 years after his death, no one knows exactly what caused his extreme disfigurement. But scientists will attempt to solve the puzzle next month by extracting DNA from his bones for analysis.
Merrick came to the attention of the medical profession in the 1880s. Ever since, scientists have struggled to explain the huge growths that caused him to be first shunned and finally celebrated by society – by the end of his life his courage and humility had, at last, been recognised. Merrick became a folk hero for speaking up for others who were similarly afflicted.
Merrick came to the attention of the medical profession in the 1880s. Ever since, scientists have struggled to explain the huge growths that caused him to be first shunned and finally celebrated by society – by the end of his life his courage and humility had, at last, been recognised. Merrick became a folk hero for speaking up for others who were similarly afflicted.
Water shortages hit US power supply
As the United States' extended heat wave and drought threaten to raise global food prices, energy production is also feeling the pressure. Across the nation, power plants are becoming overheated and shutting down or running at lower capacity; drilling operations struggle to get the water they need, and crops that would become biofuel are withering.
While analysts say the US should survive this year without major blackouts, more frequent droughts and increased population size will continue to strain power generation in the future. |  |
Greeks go back to basics as recession bites
As Greece sinks ever deeper into the most severe economic depression in living memory, some young people are taking drastic action to change their lives.
In the foothills of Mount Telaithrion on the Greek island of Evia, Mr Sianos and three other like-minded Athenians set up an eco-community. The idea was to live in an entirely sustainable way, free from the ties of money and cut off from the national electricity grid. "What others saw as a global economic crisis, we saw as a crisis of civilisation," Mr Sianos explains. "Everything seemed to be in crisis - healthcare, the environment, education. So we made the decision to try something different.". |  |
Quakes Beneath Antarctic Glacier Linked to Ocean Tides
Thousands of earthquakes occurring in rapid succession in less than a year under an Antarctic glacier may have been linked to ocean tides, new research suggests.
Scientists investigated seismic activity under David Glacier, a large glacier in East Antarctica about 270 square miles (700 square kilometers) in size. The glacier serves as the outlet from which ice from 4 percent of that region's ice sheet drains out toward the sea. |  |
Mars mission will study planet's 'heartbeat'
Scientists from Imperial College London and Oxford University have developed a seismometer that will listen for "marsquakes" on a new American Mars mission to delve under the skin of the red planet.
The instrument, carried by the InSight lander, will help determine if Mars has a solid or liquid core. It will also provide clues as to why the planet's crust is not made up of tectonic plates as on Earth. InSight is due to be launched by the American space agency Nasa in 2016. After landing on Mars, the craft will deploy a thermal probe called the "tractor mole" that will drive itself 16 feet below the planet's surface. The probe will record how much heat is coming from the Martian interior. |  |
Are we alone? Calculate the number of alien civilizations in three easy steps
Today, we live in an age of exploration, where robots on Mars and planet-hunting telescopes are beginning to allow us to edge closer to an answer.
While we wait to establish contact, one technique we can use back on Earth is an equation that American astronomer Frank Drake formulated in the 1960s to calculate the number of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations may exist in the Milky Way galaxy. |  |
Alien Planet Haul: NASA Space Telescope Spots 41 New Exoplanets
Astronomers have discovered 41 new alien planets in one sweep by analyzing how each world gravitationally yanks on its neighbors.
The newly confirmed exoplanets were spotted by NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, which has detected more than 2,300 potential alien worlds since its March 2009 launch. The new finds, announced in two separate papers, bring the number of verified Kepler worlds to 115 and the total exoplanet tally to nearly 800. "Typically planets are announced one or two at a time — it's quite exceptional to have 27 announced in a single paper, or 41 in two," said Jason Steffen, an astrophysicist at the Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics in Batavia, Ill. Steffen is lead author of one of the studies. |  |
Bonobo genius makes stone tools like early humans did
Kanzi the bonobo continues to impress. Not content with learning sign language or making up "words" for things like banana or juice, he now seems capable of making stone tools on a par with the efforts of early humans.
Eviatar Nevo of the University of Haifa in Israel and his colleagues sealed food inside a log to mimic marrow locked inside long bones, and watched Kanzi, a 30-year-old male bonobo chimp, try to extract it. While a companion bonobo attempted the problem a handful of times, and succeeded only by smashing the log on the ground, Kanzi took a longer and arguably more sophisticated approach. |  |
Star is caught devouring planet
Astronomers have found evidence for a planet being devoured by its star, yielding insights into the fate that will befall Earth in billions of years.
The team uncovered the signature of a planet that had been "eaten" by looking at the chemistry of the host star. They also think a surviving planet around this star may have been kicked into its unusual orbit by the destruction of a neighbouring world. Details of the work have been published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. |  |
What's Causing Extreme Weather?
Wondering what's causing all the extreme weather we've seen lately? The short answer, scientists say, is rotten luck and a warmer planet.
It's not easy to shatter a record that has lasted for more than 75 years. But that's what happened last month, when a stubborn heat wave pushed July temperatures in the United States into uncharted territory. Not since 1895, when national record keeping began, has the thermometer stayed so high. The average temperature in July was 3.3°F (1.8°C) above the 20th-century average, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), breaking a record set in 1936. |  |
Experiment would test cloud geoengineering as way to slow warming
Even though it sounds like science fiction, researchers are taking a second look at a controversial idea that uses futuristic ships to shoot salt water high into the sky over the oceans, creating clouds that reflect sunlight and thus counter global warming.
University of Washington atmospheric physicist Rob Wood describes a possible way to run an experiment to test the concept on a small scale in a comprehensive paper published this month in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The point of the paper — which includes updates on the latest study into what kind of ship would be best to spray the salt water into the sky, how large the water droplets should be and the potential climatological impacts — is to encourage more scientists to consider the idea of marine cloud brightening and even poke holes in it. In the paper, he and a colleague detail an experiment to test the concept. |  |
Arctic sea ice set to hit record low
Arctic sea ice looks set to hit a record low by the end of the month, according to satellite data.
Scientists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center said data showed that the sea ice extent was tracking below the previous record low, set in 2007. Latest figures show that on 13 August ice extent was 483,000 sq km (186,000 sq miles) below the previous record low for the same date five years ago. The ice is expected to continue melting until mid- to late September. "A new daily record... would be likely by the end of August," the centre's lead scientist, Ted Scambos, told Reuters. |  |
Forest Razing by Ancient Maya Worsened Droughts, Says Study
For six centuries, the ancient Maya flourished, with more than a hundred city-states scattered across what is now southern Mexico and northern Central America. Then, in A.D. 695, the collapse of several cities in present day Guatemala marked the start of the Classic Maya's slow decline. Prolonged drought is thought to have played a role, but a study published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters adds a new twist: The Maya may have made the droughts worse by clearing away forests for cities and crops, making a naturally drying climate drier.
"We're not saying deforestation explains the entire drought, but it does explain a substantial portion of the overall drying that is thought to have occurred," said the study's lead author Benjamin Cook, a climate modeler at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. |  |
Archaeologist: Early Egyptian Islamic site, Istabl Antar, in dire danger
The Istabl Antar excavations have been conducted within the remit of the scientific activities of the French Archaeological Institute in Cairo (IFAO) where I initiated the field of Islamic archaeology.
Today, this site, which I have managed to preserve in the face of illegal urbanisation over more than a quarter of a century, is on the verge of disappearing, due to the lack of proper protection and total disrespect of law. In what follows, I give you a short description of the remains that are on the point of being destroyed. They deserve to be protected and preserved, simply because they are unique in the history of Islamic Egypt, and even in the Islamic world. |  |
Living Earth Simulator to seek planet's future in its data
Researchers in Switzerland are planning an incredibly ambitious computer system that will attempt to simulate as much of the planet and its activity as possible, from weather to the economy — and perhaps even predict the future. They call it the Living Earth Simulator, and it's in the running to get hundreds of millions in funding.
The idea is that with enough data and enough computing power, a system should be able to essentially simulate the whole world. But until recently, there wasn't enough data or enough computing power; now there are enormous databases on all kinds of topics, as well as labs and sensors reporting from all over the world. Add all that into a few supercomputers and you might be able to predict the next tropical storm, economic collapse or even armed conflict.
The idea is that with enough data and enough computing power, a system should be able to essentially simulate the whole world. But until recently, there wasn't enough data or enough computing power; now there are enormous databases on all kinds of topics, as well as labs and sensors reporting from all over the world. Add all that into a few supercomputers and you might be able to predict the next tropical storm, economic collapse or even armed conflict.
Waste disposal network discovered in the brain
The brain drain is real. There is a network of previously unrecognised vessels that rid the brain of unwanted extracellular fluids and other substances, including amyloid-beta – a peptide that accumulates in the brain of people with Alzheimer's. The new discovery looks set to add to our understanding of the disease.
Jeffrey Iliff at the University of Rochester Medical Center, New York, and his colleagues, were intrigued by the fact that there are no obvious lymphatic vessels in the brain. Among other things, the lymphatic system removes waste interstitial fluids from body tissue. "It seemed strange that such an important and active organ wouldn't have a specialised waste-removal system," says Iliff. |  |
Super-fast solar flare spotted by NASA satellite
A powerful sun storm in July unleashed a wave of plasma and charged particles into space, and scientists now say this solar outburst may be one of the fastest ever recorded.
On July 23, the sun blasted a massive cloud of solar material, called a coronal mass ejection(CME), into space, sending it whipping by NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft. Scientists used STEREO's observations to calculate that the speedy CME was traveling between 1,800 and 2,200 miles per second (2,900 and 3,540 kilometers per second). |  |
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