DevotedSkeptic - Slashdot User

Submission + - expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years (guardian.co.uk)

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DevotedSkeptic

on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @08:37AM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "One of the world's leading ice experts, Professor Peter Wadhams, has predicted the final collapse of Arctic sea ice in summer months within four years.

In what he calls a "global disaster" now unfolding in northern latitudes as the sea area that freezes and melts each year shrinks to its lowest extent ever recorded, Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University calls for "urgent" consideration of new ideas to reduce global temperatures.

Wadhams has spent many years collecting ice thickness data from submarines passing below the arctic ocean. He predicted the imminent break-up of sea ice in summer months in 2007, when the previous lowest extent of 4.17 million square kilometres was set. This year, it has unexpectedly plunged a further 500,000 sq km to less than 3.5m sq km. "I have been predicting [the collapse of sea ice in summer months] for many years. The main cause is simply global warming: as the climate has warmed there has been less ice growth during the winter and more ice melt during the summer."

Submission + - Is the Can Worse Than the Soda? (smithsonianmag.com)

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DevotedSkeptic

on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @07:13AM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "Since the 1960s, manufacturers have widely used the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) in plastics and food packaging. Only recently, though, have scientists begun thoroughly looking into how the compound might affect human health—and what they’ve found has been a cause for concern.

Starting in 2006, a series of studies, mostly in mice, indicated that the chemical might act as an endocrine disruptor (by mimicking the hormone estrogen), cause problems during development and potentially affect the reproductive system, reducing fertility. After a 2010 Food and Drug Administration report warned that the compound could pose an especially hazardous risk for fetuses, infants and young children, BPA-free water bottles and food containers started flying off the shelves. In July, the FDA banned the use of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups, but the chemical is still present in aluminum cans, containers of baby formula and other packaging materials.

Now comes another piece of data on a potential risk from BPA but in an area of health in which it has largely been overlooked: obesity. A study by researchers from New York University, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at a sample of nearly 3,000 children and teens across the country and found a “significant” link between the amount of BPA in their urine and the prevalence of obesity."

Submission + - Google Buys Snapseed Challenges Facebook's Instagram (forbes.com)

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DevotedSkeptic

on Tuesday September 18, 2012 @09:15AM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "Snapseed, by Nik Software, is a handy photo editor which offers similar filters to Instagram, and a lot more, including the ability to crop, sharpen, blur and play around with the specifics of lighting in a photo. The acquisition suggests that Google+ might be pitching itself as a home for more serious photo enthusiasts. While Facebook and Instagram typically compress photo sizes to save on server space, Google+ already offers high-resolution image uploads as well as photo editing features (such as sharpening or adding text) from within the social network.

One reason we can presume Google wants to integrate Nik’s technology into its social network: the acquisition was announced by the man behind Google+ himself, Vic Gundotra, on a Google+ post. “We want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone,” he wrote.

Financial terms of the deal are undisclosed, though it’s unlikely to be anywhere near the $1 billion Facebook paid for Instagram, which according to Mark Zuckerberg now has upwards of 100 million users. Nik released a short statement on its site, though, saying, “We’ve always aspired to share our passion for photography with everyone, and with Google’s support we hope to be able to help many millions more people create awesome pictures.”"

Submission + - Atomic bond types discernible in single-molecule images (bbc.co.uk)

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DevotedSkeptic

on Monday September 17, 2012 @07:11AM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "A pioneering team from IBM in Zurich has published single-molecule images so detailed that the type of atomic bonds between their atoms can be discerned.

The team, which included French and Spanish collaborators, used a variant of a technique called atomic force microscopy, or AFM.

AFM uses a tiny metal tip passed over a surface, whose even tinier deflections are measured as the tip is scanned to and fro over a sample.

It is difficult to overstate what precision measurements these are.

The experiments must be isolated from any kind of vibration coming from within the laboratory or even its surroundings.

They are carried out at a scale so small that room temperature induces wigglings of the AFM's constituent molecules that would blur the images, so the apparatus is kept at a cool -268C."

Submission + - Planets found orbiting sun-like stars in beehive cluster (discovery.com)

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DevotedSkeptic

on Sunday September 16, 2012 @02:38PM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "Two Jupiter sized planets have been found that orbit sun like stars within the beehive cluster. This discovery bolsters the search for extra terrestrial intelligence because planets are able to form and remain stable in a wider range of conditions that previously thought.

"We are detecting more and more planets that can thrive in diverse and extreme environments like these nearby clusters," Mario Perez, NASA astrophysics program scientist in the Origins of Solar Systems Program, said in a statement. "Our galaxy contains more than 1,000 of these open clusters, which potentially can present the physical conditions for harboring many more of these giant planets."

The two newly discovered "hot Jupiters," which are called Pr0201b and Pr0211b, orbit different sun-like stars in the Beehive Cluster, a collection of about 1,000 stars that swirls around a common center. Each planet likely has a dazzling night sky, one much starrier than we're used to here on Earth."

Submission + - 50 Years of Research and still no Deathray (nature.com)

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DevotedSkeptic

on Sunday September 16, 2012 @01:41PM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "The event in Quantico, Virginia, was to be a rare public showing for the US Air Force's Active Denial System: a prototype non-lethal crowd-control weapon that emits a beam of microwaves at 95 gigahertz. Radiation at that frequency penetrates less than half a millimetre into the skin, so the beam was supposed to deliver an intense burning sensation to anyone in its path, forcing them to move away, but without, in theory, causing permanent damage.

However, the day of the test was cold and rainy. The water droplets in the air did what moisture always does: they absorbed the microwaves. And when some of the reporters volunteered to expose themselves to the attenuated beam, they found that on such a raw day, the warmth was very pleasant.

The story is much the same in other areas of HPM weapons development, which began as an East–West technology race nearly 50 years ago. In the United States, where spending on electromagnetic weapons is down from cold-war levels, but remains at some US$47 million per year, progress is elusive. “There's lots of smoke and mirrors,” says Peter Zimmerman, an emeritus nuclear physicist at King's College London and former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in Washington DC. Although future research may yield scientific progress, he adds, “I cannot see they will build a useful, deployable weapon”."

Submission + - Graying Bikers Trike It

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Hugh Pickens writes

on Friday September 14, 2012 @03:04PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Jesse McKinley writes that in his nearly 50 years as an avid motorcyclist, Grady Howard, 74, has roared through the mountains of old Kentucky but with a balky left leg, he knew the only way to stay wild was to add a wheel. “I told my wife it was either trike it or park it,” says Howard. “And she said, ‘Trike it.’ ” Howard is one of a legion of aging bikers — suffering from aching joints and slowing reflexes — who have abandoned their traditional two-wheel motorcycles in favor of three-wheelers, the super-steady and seemingly safer machines commonly known as trikes. Industry experts say the sale of tens of thousands of trikes, whose sticker prices can rival an upscale sedan’s, are keeping a generation of born-to-run riders on the roads. Part of that appeal has to do with the stability of three-wheelers, which don’t require riders to lean into curves or hold them steady at stoplights, both of which can challenge weak knees and muscles. “The baby boomers are getting older, man,” says Steve Stirewalt, a lifelong rider and motorcycle dealer known as Fat Daddy by his friends. “People riding all their lives don’t want to stop just because of bad knees, or bad eyes, or diabetes or something. They want to keep rocking.” Advertisements for the three-wheelers like the Spyder feature the same kind of handsome graying men common to Viagra ads (video), and show a grizzled rider of a traditional two-wheeler nodding in approval of the three-wheeler but the reality at rallies can be a little different. “I get ribbed once in a while, people saying I’m an old man,” says David Jenkins.. “I always tell them, when they grow up they should get a real motorcycle, a three-wheeler.”"

Submission + - Asteroid the size of the Eiffel Tower will not hit earth (cnet.com)

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DevotedSkeptic

on Friday September 14, 2012 @09:20AM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "But it will get close (astronomically speaking)

A massive space rock traveling 25,000 miles per hour will get within 1.7 million miles from the Earth tonight. You'll be able to track its path live during a Slooh Space Camera show, starting at 4 p.m. Pacific/7 p.m. Eastern.

The asteroid, called 2012 QG42, will have about the same amount of brightness as the dwarf planet Pluto. Discovered a couple of weeks ago, 2012 QG42 is estimated to be between 625 feet and 1,500 feet in diameter.

The good news: There's no chance of a collision between the asteroid and Earth today. As for the future, that's anyone's guess right now."

Submission + - Opening Soon: The North-West Passage (arstechnica.com)

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DevotedSkeptic

on Friday September 14, 2012 @08:26AM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "Every time a new sea ice extent record is broken, the same question comes up: how long until it’s gone? That is, how long will it be before the Arctic Ocean is functionally ice-free in the summer, legitimately opening the once-fabled Northwest Passage?

The fact is, we don’t know. Climate models continue to underestimate the rate of sea ice loss we’re observing, leaving researchers to hazard less scientific guesses. Many estimate that day will come around 2030, but some others push it out to 2070. Regardless, Arctic sea ice is changing—and fast. The prospects of open shipping routes and newly-accessible resources have corporations chomping at the bit and governments racing to prepare the way. Three (open access) articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists describe the outlook for a changing Arctic from the perspectives of the US, Russia, and Canada. There will be some disagreements, but all parties have at least one view in common—things will get complicated.

The Three big issues that will appear when the Polar Ice Cap fully melts in the summer are: Shipping, Mineral Rights, and Defense and Management.

Shipping brings fuel and tankers into as well as ice breakers if the Arctic becomes a shipping route. Not to mention search and rescue facilities and safe harbors.

With an estimated 30 percent of the worlds's undeveloped natural gas and 13 percent of undeveloped oil resources there will be mineral rights disputes over these resources.

Defense of a North shore that previously could remain undefended (except for listening posts etc) may require Canada to step up it's presence along it's north coast."

Submission + - Mammoth Tooth Found Downtown San Francisco (sfgate.com)

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DevotedSkeptic

on Friday September 14, 2012 @06:35AM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "A seemingly ordinary day at the Transbay Transit Center construction site became a mammoth day of discovery Monday when a mild-mannered crane operator reached deep into the earth and pulled out a tooth.

This was no ordinary tooth. The 10-inch-long brown, black and beige chomper, broken in two and missing a chunk, once belonged to a woolly mammoth, an elephantine creature that roamed the grassy valley that's now San Francisco Bay 10 to 15 thousand years ago in the Pleistocene epoch.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Mammoth-tooth-found-at-Transbay-dig-3861381.php#ixzz26RHWlcZI"

Submission + - Autism gene found by UCSD researchers (nctimes.com)

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DevotedSkeptic

on Thursday September 13, 2012 @01:43PM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "A genetic cause for a rare form of epilepsy-associated autism has been identified by UC San Diego and Yale scientists.

Moreover, symptoms of the newly discovered form have been reversed in mouse models by altering diet. This gives rise to the possibility that similar treatment might help people, the researchers said. The study was published online Thursday in the journal Science.

Researchers led by Gaia Novarino and Joseph G. Gleeson of UCSD studied two families, one of Egyptian descent and another of Turkish origin. They examined the genome of patients and healthy relatives for exons, gene sequences that code for proteins. The researchers found that patients shared an exon mutation on a gene called BCKDK. The mutant gene is recessive, meaning that it must be inherited from both mother and father to manifest."

Submission + - What Was the Black Skull? | Hominid Hunting (smithsonianmag.com)

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DevotedSkeptic

on Wednesday September 12, 2012 @05:41PM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "Paleoanthropologists Alan Walker and Richard Leakey unearthed the Black Skull in 1985 at the site of West Turkana, Kenya. The 2.5-million-year-old skull was darkened by manganese minerals in the soil where it was buried. Complete except for the crowns of its teeth, the skull appeared to match several isolated jaws and teeth previously found in East Africa. The fossils belong to the species Paranthropus aethiopicus—or Australopithecus aethiopicus, depending on who you ask. The species highlights the trouble of identifying parallel evolution, when species independently evolve similar traits, in the hominid fossil record.

The features of the Black Skull, and the related teeth and jaws, are striking. The species had massive molars and premolars, thick jaw bones and a large sagittal crest—a ridge of bone running lengthwise down the back of the skull where chewing muscles attach. All of these features align the species with the powerful masticator Paranthropus boisei, which lived in East Africa 2.3 million to 1.2 million years ago, and Paranthropus robustus, which lived in South Africa 1.8 million to 1.2 million years ago. Because of the Black Skull’s greater age, some anthropologists think it’s the ancestor of the younger P. boisei and P. robustus, and call the species Paranthropus aethiopicus. All three Paranthropus species are thought to form a dead-end side branch on the human family tree.

That’s one way to interpret the Black Skull. But other features complicate the picture.

In some ways, the Black Skull wasn’t at all like the other Paranthropus species and was instead more similar to the older, more primitive Australopithecus afarensis: It had a flat skull base, a shallow jaw joint, a protruding face and a small brain (410 cubic centimeters). In contrast, P. boisei and P. robustus had an angled skull base, a deep jaw joint, a flat face and a somewhat larger brain (500 to 545 cc)—all traits that they shared in common with early Homo. If P. boisei and P. robustus evolved from the more primitive P. aethiopicus, it means they share features with early Homo due to parallel evolution–that is, both lineages independently evolved similar cranial characteristics.

In the 1990s, Randall Skelton of the University of Montana and Henry McHenry of the University of California, Davis (one of my graduate school professors) came to a different conclusion regarding the similarities between Homo and Paranthropus. They suggested that the two lineages actually inherited their shared features from a common ancestor, perhaps a species like South Africa’s Australopithecus africanus. In their opinion, P. aethiopicus was too primitive to be the ancestor. And in fact, the pair argued that parallel evolution, not common ancestry, explained all of the resemblances between the Black Skull and P. boisei and P. robustus; all three species must have had similar diets and therefore evolved similar chewing power. In this scenario, the Black Skull was an earlier offshoot of the Australopithecus lineage that left behind no descendants and should be called Australopithecus aethiopicus.

So, how did anthropologists come up with such different opinions about the Black Skull’s place in the human family? The answer comes down to how researchers construct their family trees, or phylogenies. The trees are made through a cladistic analysis, in which researchers, with the help of computers, group species based on the overall number of shared traits inherited through common ancestors. Different trees can arise for a number of reasons, such as how traits are interpreted and defined. For example, should large molars, thick jaws and a big sagittal crest count as three traits or one large trait complex related to chewing?

Over the years, anthropologists have constructed numerous trees that support both arguments, although the P. aethiopicus scenario appears to be the most favored as that species name is most commonly used. Regardless, the case of the Black Skull reminds us that sometimes looks can be deceiving, especially in the fossil record."

Submission + - How Does the Tiny Waterbear Survive in Outer Space? (smithsonianmag.com) 1

Submitted by

DevotedSkeptic

on Tuesday September 11, 2012 @01:49PM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "The humble tardigrade, also known as a “waterbear” or “moss piglet,” is an aquatic eight-legged animal that typically grows no longer than one millimeter in length. Most tardigrades (there are more than 1,000 identified species) have a fairly humdrum existence, living out their days on a moist piece of moss or in the sediment at the bottom of a lake and feeding on bacteria or plant life.

In 2007, a group of European researchers pushed the resilience of this extraordinary animal even further, exposing a sample of dehydrated tardigrades to the vacuum and solar radiation of outer space for 10 full days. When the specimens were returned to earth and rehydrated, 68 percent of those that were shielded from the radiation survived, and even a handful of those with no radiation protection came back to life and produced viable offspring.

How do the little tardigrades survive such a harsh environment? Although amateur tardigrade enthusiast Mike Shaw recently made waves by postulating that the animals may be equipped to survive in outer space because they originally came from other planets, scientists are certain that the creatures developed their uncommon toughness here on earth.

A tardigrade curls up into a dehydrated tun, allowing it to survive for years without water.
It turns out that the adaptation that allows tardigrades to live through these trying conditions is their ability to enter a dehydrated state that closely resembles death. When encountering environmental stresses, a tardigrade curls up into a dry, lifeless ball called a tun, reducing its metabolic activity to as low as .01 percent of normal levels. In order to do so, tardigrades produce trehalose, a special protective sugar that forms a gel-like medium that suspends and preserves the organelles and membranes that make up the animal’s cells.

The creatures are also capable of other types of transformations that allow them to survive in difficult conditions. If the oxygen content of their water medium drops too low for them to extract enough of the gas for respiration, they stretch out into a long, relaxed state, in which their metabolic rate is also reduced but the relaxation of their muscles allows as much water and oxygen to enter their cells as possible. If the temperature of a tardigrade’s environment falls below freezing, it forms a special cold-resistant tun, with molecules that prevent the formation of large ice crystals that could damage cell membranes.

This remarkably wide range of survival techniques leads to an obvious question: If tardigrades aren’t from outer space, just what barren environment did they actually evolve in? Although the exact placement of tardigrades in the evolutionary tree of life is still debated, scientists believe they are most closely related to arthropods, a phylum of animals with hard protective exoskeletons and that includes insects and crustaceans.

It is likely that the tardigrade evolved to survive intermittently freezes and droughts, and as a result they are able to survive the vacuum of space."

Submission + - FEMA Zombie Preparedness Campaign (go.com)

Submitted by

DevotedSkeptic

on Monday September 10, 2012 @07:20AM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "The government’s zombie apocalypse is spreading and could come to an emergency-management center near you.

A few weeks before the government’s Zombie Awareness Month in October, FEMA’s monthly webinar Thursday discussed the success of the Centers for Disease Control’s zombie-preparedness campaign and how other centers can use pop culture references – even fictitious ones like the walking dead – to promote gearing up for real disasters.

Almost 400 emergency-management professionals tuned in nationwide, according to an official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“Zombie-preparedness messages and activities have proven to be an effective way of engaging new audiences, particularly young people who are not familiar with what to do before, during or after a disaster,” Danta Randazzo of FEMA’s individual and community preparedness division said during the webinar. “It’s also a great way to grab attention and increase interest in general.”

He said the original zombie campaign, which the CDC launched in May 2011, succeeded in educating more members of the public about real emergencies while keeping government costs relatively low. After all, preparation for a zombie apocalypse isn’t especially different from preparation for a number of other disasters, such as the CDC’s zombie apocalypse-education program recommendations to build an emergency kit with food, water and medications; plan an evacuation route and pick a meeting place to regroup."

Submission + - Dime Size Spider Halts 15 Million Dollar Road Project (mysanantonio.com)

Submitted by

DevotedSkeptic

on Sunday September 09, 2012 @06:50PM

DevotedSkeptic writes: "It's the eight-legged discovery of the millennium! An endangered species of spider not seen in more than three decades unexpectedly appeared in Northwest San Antonio two weeks ago. Biologists and science buffs, rejoice.

There's just one downside if you're an area commuter: The spider, no bigger than a dime, showed up in the middle of a $15.1 million highway underpass project on Texas 151 at Loop 1604.
And in this particular case of nature vs. man-made road, the arachnid wins.

The highway project is on hold indefinitely.

A biologist discovered the eyeless spider, called the Braken Bat Cave meshweaver, after rain exposed a 6-feet-deep natural hole in the highway's median.

Construction, under way since April, was halted late last week after a taxonomist confirmed the creature indeed was the endangered meshweaver, named for the type of web it spins. It was added to the federal endangered species list in 2000, along with eight other “karst invertebrates” found only in Bexar County.

Biologists have been working alongside construction crews from the start because this area is known for its abundance of natural resources, including songbirds and rare cave animals, like the spiders.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Tiny-spider-is-a-big-roadblock-3849198.php#ixzz2610OAoKh"

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