Penguin Wonderings...

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2012-01-27T00:00:00-08:00

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2012-01-26T00:00:00-08:00

Cures for Toothaches
Cure for toothaches: Rinse the mouth with some alcohol, such as vodka, to kill any infection. Clean a cavity out with a toothpick then pack it with some cotton soaked in clove oil. Keep the mouth and sore area well cleansed with salt water. Rinse your mouth out with hydrogen peroxide. This will kill the infection. Rub the palm of your hand with ice to relieve pain. Place an ice pack on your cheek next to the sore spot for toothaches caused by infection. Fill a bag or bottle with warm water and press against the sore area. Try pure vanilla extract placed directly on the bad tooth. It's instant relief. The taste is terrible, but it works. Hold an aspirin on the cavity. It will ease the pain. Tastes awful, but it works. Place a whole peeled clove of garlic directly on the aching tooth and keep it there for an hour. Rub a few grains of cayenne pepper into the gum around the tooth. Chew on some cloves dipped in honey
Baking Soda Uses

OCTONAUTS!

2012-01-22T00:47:00.000+08:00

I just discovered this. This is like so awesome! What can I say I'm easily amused.... :D

Vampire Squid

Cookie Cutter

Slime Eel

Crafty Cuttlefish

Gian Kelp Forest

Enemy Anemones

Blobfish Brothers

Snot Sea Cucumber

The Narwhale

Check Youtube for more...

Fishing Under Ice

2012-01-11T15:35:00.000+08:00

*sigh* this makes me miss ice diving. We did ice hockey and underwater skiing....

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2011-12-30T00:00:00-08:00

1000 Twitter Apps, Tools, Clients, and Services

'Single cells, single cells, plankton all the way'... Christmas card made from tiny sea creatures

2011-12-23T14:17:00.001+08:00

Amplify’d from www.dailymail.co.uk

It certainly is a Christmas card with a difference.

A marine scientist has produced this incredible Christmas card made from his own pictures of plankton.

Dr Richard Kirby has created a festive scene including a decorated Christmas tree, bells, angels and even the Star of Bethlehem.

Christmas tree of life: Every festive symbol on Dr Richard Kirby's card is made from plankton. The paddle worm Tomopteris Helgolandica looks like a Christmas tree

Because the remarkable creatures come in
so many shapes, sizes and colours the academic has been able to form
them into a classic card.

Included in the card are the paddle worm helgolandica, which looks like a Christmas tree.

There are bells made from the jellyfish Aglanthe digital held together by rings of the phytoplankton Eucampia zodiacus.

Illuminated candles are the larva of the starfish Luidia ciliaris and the star on top of the tree is a juvenile Luidia ciliaris.

The angels are sea angels, Clione limacina, and the fairy lights are Protozoan acantharea.

The Star of Bethlehem is a worm larva and the sky is filled with snowflakes that are actually baby starfish.

Dr Kirby, from Plymouth University, said: 'I was looking through the photographs of plankton and some reminded me of Christmas.

Key: Because of the reaction to his special Christmas card Dr Richard Kirby is considering putting it on sale next year

'Many people have remarked how certain plankton remind them of other things, so I've collated several pictures to make a classic Christmas card.

'The importance of these micro marvels in the sea can't be underestimated.

'Their importance on a global scale is obvious when you realize that 50 per cent of the world's photosynthesis takes place in the surface of the sea, drawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the oceans and releasing oxygen.

'Starting with the phytoplankton, plant-like cells mostly smaller than the diameter of a human hair, and the tiny animals that eat them called the zooplankton, these creatures underpin the whole marine food chain.

'Without the plankton food web there would be no fish in the sea or seabirds in the skies above.

'The largest mammals on earth, the baleen whales, even rely upon these smallest of sea creatures for their food.

'Most people are unaware of their presence, but if you have been swimming in the sea you will have almost certainly have swallowed them.

'It is also the plankton that give the sea its distinctive smell referred to as the 'sea air' because certain phytoplankton give off aromatic chemicals when they die.

'And they are even responsible for forming clouds because the same chemicals when in the atmosphere cause water droplets to form around them.

'Your car is also fuelled by their remains and over millions of years they created some of the most enigmatic features of our coastline.

'When you turn on the oven to cook the Christmas turkey, the gas comes from plankton that sank to the seafloor over hundreds of millions of years of earth's history.

'So when you drive your car to the festive family gathering it is all thanks to the processed plankton that fuel it.'

The worldwide success of Dr Kirby's book called 'Ocean Drifters - a secret world beneath the waves' prompted him to create the image which he may put on sale next year.
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Shark that smiles for the cameras: Meet the fearsome creature that eats polar bears and can live until 200

2011-12-20T15:54:00.001+08:00

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A daredevil photographer went to extraordinary lengths to photograph these rarely seen sharks, which look like they have been etched from stone.

These incredible Greenland sharks can survive for more than 200 years at depths of up to 600 metres under Arctic ice.

Bigger than the notorious great white, they grow to 23-feet long and are so fearsome they have even been known to eat polar bears.

Killer with a smile: The Greenland shark might look friendly but the beast is known to attack polar bears

They live further north than any other shark species and can swim in waters where temperatures plummet to just one degree celsius.

Doug Perrine had a close encounter with the elusive creatures when they ventured into the warmer waters of the St Lawrence River in North America, hunting for food.

The sharks usually eat large seals but have even been known to polish off polar bears and reindeer.

But 59-year-old Mr Perrine, from Kailua Kona, Hawaii, was brave enough to swim to just a metre away from the giants to get his shots.

He said: 'These sharks were very placid and curious. They are much calmer than other sharks - they have an almost goofy, comical appearance.

'I was amazed because most sharks are very shy of divers and tend to avoid the sound of scuba bubbles, but these these were attracted to the sound. They even swam closer to investigate.

'When I moved in closer to get a better shot, they did not flee but continued on their way at a steady pace."

He added: 'The sharks were able to satisfy their curiosity about me by approaching to the limit of visibility at about six metres distance.

Close encounter: The sharks can grow up to 23-feet in length - bigger than a Great White

'Although they were swimming in quite a lazy fashion, they are much more streamlined than me. I had to swim quite hard to close the distance and then keep up to continue taking pictures.

'The sharks are known to prey on large seals but I never felt threatened.'

Greenland sharks have been hunted by residents in Iceland and Greenland for centuries.

Their skin is used to make boots while their teeth are turned into cutting tools.

The flesh is part of the national dish of Iceland - called the hakarl.

Caught on camera: Greenland sharks prefer colder waters and can dive to depths of 600 metres
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Picture of penguins is a prize-winner

2011-12-12T22:54:00.001+08:00

Amplify’d from news.mongabay.com

King Penguins coming ashore at Salisbury Plain on South Georgia Island. Photo by Carl Safina, with travel to South Georgia facilitated by Lindblad Expeditions

Carl Safina's picture of King Penguins coming ashore at Salisbury Plain on South Georgia Island was the first winner of mongabay.com's series of photo contests hosted on Facebook.

Fans of the mongabay.com page on Facebook participated in the vote, selecting among more than 30 photos submitted by users.

Runners up in the contest were Lucille Le Corre with a shot of a Blue Crowned Pigeon at Weltvogelpark in Germany and Patricia Paladines with her picture of an Upland goose (Chloephaga picta leucoptera) and goslings in the Falkland Islands.

Safina will take home a copy of RAINFORESTS, a book recently published by mongabay.com's Rhett A. Butler.

Safina — an accomplished author, musician, and poet who runs the Blue Ocean Institute — said he was pleased with winning the contest.

“I’m tickled that my photo won Mongabay’s first photo contest. I stood in the surf in the same spot for over two hours as penguins continued coming and going, trying to make that shot work. And in the end it was worth every chilly minute," said Safina. “Penguins and other animals are living in a changing world, and the Blue Ocean Institute explains what a changing ocean means to wildlife and to people, working to instill both urgency and a sense of hope.”
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2011-12-11T00:00:00-08:00

One Year of the Moon in 2.5 Minutes

2011-12-11T09:19:00.001+08:00

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Ancient killer had excellent vision

2011-12-11T08:40:00.001+08:00

Amplify’d from www.cosmosmagazine.com

DUBLIN: A remarkably preserved fossil from South Australia has revealed that the top predator in the Cambrian oceans, over 500 million years ago, was equipped with complex eyes and excellent vision.

The world's top predator in the Cambrian oceans was equipped with complex eyes and excellent vision. Here is an artist's reconstruction of the fearsome metre-long super predator Anomalocaris.

The alien-like eyes of this fearsome metre-long hunter consisted of thousands of tiny lenses and sat on protruding stalks. The optical design indicates that the creature, Anomalocaris, pursued prey in well-lit waters.

"What was most surprising is the huge number of lenses in each eye," said lead author John Paterson from the University of New England of the study published in Nature today. With thousands of lenses in each eye, that "was something I never would have predicted, particularly of an animal of this age".

Studying an ancient killer

The body of Anomalocaris was segmented and had several pairs of swimming flaps; its head had formidable clasping claws and a mouth surrounded by toothed plates. The body had a tendency to break into different parts, and these fossils were described as different animals for many years.

"It wasn't until the 1980s that it was realised that all the different body parts belonged to one strange animal," said Allison Daley, a researcher at the Natural History Museum in London who is studying Anomalocaris and its kin.

The details of the eyes remained a mystery until now. Each oval eye is up to 3 cm in length and contains over 16,000 lenses. Its acute vision rivals or exceeds that of most living insects and was probably comparable to predatory dragonflies today.

The fossilised eyes were discovered in the Emu Bay Shale of South Australia, dating from approximately 515 million years ago. "I had a pretty good idea of what they were straight away. We had a film crew with us at the time, so I quietly passed it over to Jim Jago [a researcher at the South Australian Museum], who took one look with his hand lens and gave me the classic raised eyebrow," Paterson said.

Insect ancestor

The compound nature of the eye indicates that Anomalocaris is a close arthropod relative. Arthropods are the group which includes insects, crustaceans, spiders and centipedes.

Having direct evidence of the compound eye helps us pick apart the sequence by which arthropods built up their body plan, said Gregory Edgecombe, a co-author at the Natural History Museum in London. It shows the arthropod eye became elaborate early in the evolution of the group, originating before characteristics such as a hardened exoskeleton or jointed walking legs.

The acute vision of Anomalocaris gave it a distinct advantage over competing predators and prey, as many Cambrian animals either had poor vision or were completely blind. "This advantage would have placed considerable selective pressure on prey - that is, a case of survival of the fittest - so prey animals had to adapt and rapidly evolve defensive armour such as shells or face extinction," Paterson said.

Predatory scavenger

Anomalocaris has been blamed for bite marks on trilobite fossils. It seems likely that it would have eaten almost anything it could find, in a mixture of scavenging and predatory behaviour, said Daley, who compares its position in the food chain to today's great white shark.

Paleobiologist Peter Van Roy, affiliated to Yale University and Ghent University in Belgium, described the size and complexity of the eyes as "amazing".

"Predators are one of the factors driving the evolution of ecosystems, and having such a well-equipped apex predator in the Cambrian would likely have been a significant driver of the 'arms race' between predators and prey that really took off with the Cambrian explosion," he said.

Emu Bay comes up trumps

"The pleasing thing is that Emu Bay Shale has turned up another trump card, commented palaeontologist Patrick Orr of University College Dublin in Ireland, and this is an exciting sequel to a report by this research team earlier this year. "But this is bigger and better material in terms of its potential impact."

"This find, like all fossils from Cambrian Lagerstätten (the fancy term to describe fossil sites where soft parts are preserved), is incredible when you consider that the fossils are over 500 million years old and are recording the earliest complex marine animal ecosystems in the history of the planet," added Daley.

"Despite the age, sites such as Emu Bay Shale preserve in amazing detail the soft parts of animals that wouldn't normally be preserved," she said, such as eyes, skin, gut and gills.

Paterson believes it is only a matter of time before they find the complete body of Anomalocaris in the Emu Bay Shale. "The Emu Bay Shale is now a force to be reckoned with in Cambrian research," he said.
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Oceans' deepest depth re-measured

2011-12-11T08:05:00.001+08:00

Amplify’d from www.bbc.co.uk

US scientists have mapped the deepest part of the world's oceans in greater detail than ever before.

The Mariana Trench in the western Pacific runs for about 2,500km and extends down to 10,994m.

This measurement for the deepest point - known as Challenger Deep - is arguably the most precise yet.

The survey, conducted by the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping (CCOM), was completed to help determine the exact extent of US waters in the region.

"We mapped the entire trench, from its northern end at Dutton Ridge, all the way to where it becomes the Yap Trench in the south," explained Dr Jim Gardner from CCOM, which is based at the University of New Hampshire.

"We used a multibeam echosounder mounted on a US Navy hydrographic ship. This instrument allows you to map a swath of soundings perpendicular to the line of travel of the ship. It's like mowing the grass. And we were able to map the trench at a 100m resolution," he told BBC News.

The distance to the bottom of Challenger Deep has an error associated with it of about plus or minus 40m.

The figure of 10,994m is slightly less than some other measurements in the modern era, but they are all broadly similar.

A location in the trench about 200km to the east of Challenger goes almost as far down. This spot, known as HMRG Deep, has a depth of 10,809m.

It is extraordinary to think that both Challenger and HMRG extend deeper below sea level than Mount Everest rises above it.

Dr Gardner said his team's survey put a huge effort into getting the "sound speed profile" of the water column correct - this measure of how the echosounding signals curve as they descend is the largest source of error in the measurement.

He presented the results of the mapping here at the 2011 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the world's largest annual gathering of Earth and planetary scientists.

The US State Department funded the study because it wants to know whether the exclusive economic zone encompassing the American territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands can be pushed out beyond its current limit of 200 nautical miles (370km).

This may be possible if the shape of the seafloor fulfils certain requirements under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

But the data also has high scientific interest in that it gives geologists a clearer picture of the structures in one of the most fascinating subduction zones on Earth.

It is at the trench where a huge slab of Pacific oceanic crust is diving down under the adjacent Philippines tectonic plate.

Researchers are keen to know what happens when underwater mountains, or seamounts, go over the edge and are swallowed.

There has been considerable debate over whether the descent of the seamounts can influence the frequency and scale of big earthquakes. It has been suggested they might create extra friction that can then be released suddenly to trigger major tremors.

"Our data shows the seamounts entering the Mariana Trench are getting really fractured as they go down," said Dr Gardner.

"As soon as the Pacific Plate starts bending down, it cracks that old, old crust. That crust is really brittle. It cracks right through the seamounts. Certainly in the Mariana Trench, the seamounts get splintered and whittled away, and then get subducted.

"What I don't see are remnants of seamounts being accreted to the inner wall of the trench."

What is evident, however, is the pile of material this creates across the axis of the trench in a number of places. Dr Gardner describes four "bridges" that stand as much as 2,500m above the floor of the depression.

'Race to the bottom'

The survey is also highly topical in that four teams are about to send manned submersibles into the trench to explore its depths.

So far, only two humans have visited Challenger Deep - Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard in the research bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960.

But those that are racing to return to the deepest of the deep are Virgin's Oceanic submarine, which will be piloted by Chris Welsh; Triton submarines, which is based in Florida; James Cameron is said to be backing another effort in a bid to film the Mariana Trench; and DOER Marine, which is backed by Google's Eric Schmidt and oceanographer Sylvia Earle.

There is renewed interest in the trench and new submersibles will soon dive its depths

These missions will be a huge gamble for those involved, both in terms of finance and reputation, as well as posing a serious safety concern for the pilots.

Dr Earle told BBC News: "In 1960, Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard knew only that they were descending in the bathyscaphe Trieste to what was thought to be the deepest place in the sea - the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.

"The terrain was unknown, unmapped - truly a dive into a deep mystery. Today, as explorers begin to return to that deepest place, they can do so with a high-resolution map in hand, thanks to technologies that did not exist half a century ago.

"In broad strokes, the ocean's great mountain ranges, valleys are now defined in maps derived from satellite observations and sonar swaths from research vessels, but only about 5% of the ocean has been explored and mapped with the detail comparable to Earth's above-ocean terrain, or the surface of the Moon, Mars, or Jupiter.

"In 1960, it seemed that nothing humans could do could alter the nature of the ocean - or if we did, it wouldn't matter. Now we know that the ocean is Earth's 'life support system', the blue heart of the planet, the key to climate, weather, planetary chemistry. We also know that the ocean is in trouble owing to what we are putting into it - and what we are taking out.

"High-resolution maps of the iconic Mariana Trench may inspire action to fill in the blanks for the rest of Earth's surface - under the sea. At the very least we should have a good map of the part of the Earth that keeps us alive."

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24 JUNE 2011,
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Branson to journey to ocean bottom
06 APRIL 2011,
SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT

Deepest part of ocean gets probed
17 JANUARY 2011,
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'Flying submarines' plumb hidden depths
08 SEPTEMBER 2010,
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Meet the creatures that live beyond the abyss
22 JANUARY 2010,
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Robot sub reaches deepest ocean
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Deep sea submarine pioneer dies
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Sea floor survey reveals deep hole
16 JULY 2003,
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2011-12-05T00:00:00-08:00

Mark Your Calanders for December 10

2011-12-04T08:09:00.001+08:00

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2011-12-03T00:00:00-08:00

A Better Way to See Orcas

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A Better Way to See Orcas

2011-12-02T21:35:00.001+08:00

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2011-12-02T00:00:00-08:00

Whale song project
Do you have an ear for an accent? Then the world of science needs you! Scientists who study whale sounds are asking the public for help in identifying whale dialects. They say that – by crowd-sourcing with the help of you all – they can make rapid progress in figuring out which groups of whales have different dialects. Together, you might even help scientists decipher what some whale sounds actually mean.

Whale Song Project Needs Your Help

2011-12-02T13:08:00.001+08:00

Amplify’d from earthsky.org

Whale Song Project needs your help

You can help scientists figure out which groups of whales have different dialects. You might even help figure out what some whale songs mean. Plus … it looks like fun.

Do you have an ear for an accent? Then the world of science needs you! Scientists who study whale sounds are asking the public for help in identifying whale dialects. They say that – by crowd-sourcing with the help of you all – they can make rapid progress in figuring out which groups of whales have different dialects. Together, you might even help scientists decipher what some whale sounds actually mean. Plus it looks like fun.

Called the Whale Song Project, the idea has been launched by Scientific American, and is part of the Zooniverse collection of citizen scientist projects. Other ongoing Zooniverse projects – undertaken by its 400,000 volunteers – include the classification of galaxies in Hubble images, and the search for an icy rendezvous target for the New Horizons spacecraft (now en route to Pluto), reconstruction of historical records of Earth’s weather, and finding planets around other stars.

In the Whale Song Project, the professional scientists are from the St. Andrews Sea Mammal Research Unit in Scotland and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the U.S.

According to a story in Physorg.com this morning:

The whale sounds have been collected over many years by researchers affixing temporary microphones to orca or pilot whales (both members of the dolphin family) and through the use of microphones submerged beneath boats or buoys. The problem has been, as the data mounts, the material available starts to overwhelm. With thousands of sounds to analyze and just a few hundred scientists working to figure out if sounds between different pods for example vary slightly, or if different types of whales of the same species sing in entirely different languages, it becomes a nearly impossible task. Thus, enlisting citizen scientists to help seems only natural, as all it takes is a pair of ears and a willingness to listen.

Wait. You didn’t know whales had dialects? They do. We carried a story last May (2011) about sperm whales who – when diving together – make patterns of clicks for one another (“codas”) that mean different things to the whales. Caribbean and Pacific whales have been found to have different repertoires of codas, like a regional dialect. You can read or listen to more about sperm whale dialects at EarthSky’s site.

Interested in helping identify whale dialects? Go to Whale FM, and get started. You can listen to whale songs and match them to others – and/or create a free account on the site that will let you do things like follow whales under study as they move around in the ocean. Added benefit: listening to whale songs is said to be very calming. What are you waiting for?

Whale Song Project and Whale FM
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Can’t Decide Between a Private Island or a Mega-Yacht? Get Both in One

2011-11-30T21:52:00.001+08:00

Amplify’d from dsc.discovery.com

Island Yacht Designs"Tropical Island Yacht" features a massive lagoon pool fed by the volcano waterfall (Photos: Yacht Island Designs)

Got an extra $100 mill laying around and can’t decide if you want to blow it on a private tropical island in the South Pacific, or a couple-hundred foot mega-yacht? According to Yacht Island Designs, you don’t have to decide. They’ll build you a yacht that’s a traveling island paradise.

While it only exists as a concept right now (this isn’t a boat you want to build on spec and see if anyone is interested), their Tropical Island Paradise takes all the over-the-top luxury you can imagine, and puts it together in a design that can only be described as Disney’s Pleasure Island gets re-imagined by Tony Stark. I can see James Bond villains lining up right now…

According to England-based Yacht Island Designs’ website, “The brief for this concept was to create an idyllic, floating island, with all the features of a tropical island getaway built into the design.” Hence the bridge-top volcano waterfall that feeds into the massive lagoon pool. (The back of which is made of glass, so you can swim and look out at the sea. Naturally.)

Since you probably won’t be sailing on this isle-yacht alone, there are plenty of guest cabanas, spots for outdoor eating, and a deploy-able beach deck “which allows access to the sea for various water sports and sea level relaxation.” As if having your own private volcano waterfall isn’t relaxing enough…

Besides the number of luxury guest suites, media room, library, game room, gym, and helicopter landing pad, you, as the owner and king of your own island nation, get a two-deck suite carved out of the front of the volcano so you can survey your domain from your bedroom.

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Rainforest Polar Bear?

2011-11-30T21:17:00.001+08:00

Amplify’d from photographya.info

Rainforest Polar Bear Photographs - Is this a polar bear into the woods of the forest? Have a look carefully, Do you think its a polar bear? No it isn’t but the “Bai Ling Bear” or “Spirit Bear“, also named as Kemo De Bear (Kermode Bear), is basically a sub species of black bears in North America. White fur of spirit bear body is not caused by albinism but its caused by mutated gene. This is an extremely rare animal located in North America. Enjoy the photographs.

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Walking through doorways causes forgetting, study shows

2011-11-23T13:52:00.001+08:00

Well that explains a lot!

Amplify’d from earthsky.org

Researchers suggest that a doorway – or ‘event boundary’ – causes memory lapses.

We’ve all experienced it: The frustration of entering a room and forgetting what we were going to do. Or get. Or find.

New research released today (November 21, 2011) from University of Notre Dame Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky suggests that passing through doorways is the cause of these memory lapses. He said:

Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away. Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized.

The study was published recently in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Conducting three experiments in both real and virtual environments, Radvansky’s subjects – all college students – performed memory tasks while crossing a room and while exiting a doorway.

In the first experiment, subjects used a virtual environment and moved from one room to another, selecting an object on a table and exchanging it for an object at a different table. They did the same thing while simply moving across a room but not crossing through a doorway.

Radvansky found that the subjects forgot more after walking through a doorway compared to moving the same distance across a room, suggesting that the doorway or event boundary impedes one’s ability to retrieve thoughts or decisions made in a different room.

The second experiment in a real-world setting required subjects to conceal in boxes the objects chosen from the table and move either across a room or travel the same distance and walk through a doorway. The results in the real-world environment replicated those in the virtual world: walking through a doorway diminished subjects’ memories.

The final experiment was designed to test whether doorways actually served as event boundaries or if one’s ability to remember is linked to the environment in which a decision – in this case, the selection of an object – was created. Previous research has shown that environmental factors affect memory and that information learned in one environment is retrieved better when the retrieval occurs in the same context. Subjects in this leg of the study passed through several doorways, leading back to the room in which they started. The results showed no improvements in memory, suggesting that the act of passing through a doorway serves as a way the mind files away memories.
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Aliens in my Orchids - Timelapse Strange Earth Lifeforms 720p HD

2011-11-23T13:25:00.003+08:00

My favorite flower!

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What freediving does to the body

2011-11-22T21:48:00.002+08:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12151830

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Bajau fisherman Sulbin freediving on one breath, filmed in real time

With sea levels rising, can humans adapt to a more watery world? The Bajau people of South-East Asia live in stilt houses and fish underwater for up to five minutes on one breath. What does this do to the body?

Take a deep breath in - how long until the urge to gasp for air becomes too much? Perhaps it comes after 30 or 40 seconds.

But the bodies of habitual freedivers, who hold their breath for minutes at a time, can change to be better adapted to the water.

The Bajau people, sometimes known as the sea gypsies of Malaysia and Indonesia, are renowned natural freedivers. Traditionally, they are born, live and die at sea, and fish by diving 20m (more than 65ft) underwater for minutes at a time on one breath.

At this depth, water pressure is almost three times what it is on the surface, squeezing lungs already deprived of oxygen.

Filmed underwater in real time for the BBC's Human Planet, Bajau fisherman Sulbin demonstrates his techniques off the east coast of Sabah, Borneo. Wearing hand-made wooden goggles and armed with a spear, he first prepares himself mentally.

"I focus my mind on breathing. I only dive once I'm totally relaxed," says Sulbin, who goes into a trance-like state before entering the water.

This degree of mind control is crucial, says freediving instructor Emma Farrell, the author of One Breath, A Reflection on Freediving. "You have to be warm and relaxed - you don't want to hyperventilate before taking your last breath."

The mammalian dive reflex - seen in aquatic animals such as dolphins and otters, and in humans to a lesser extent - helps, says Farrell.

A Bajau stilt village, built on a coral reef - some settlements are far off shore

"It's a series of automatic adjustments we make when submerged in cold water. It reduces the heart rate and metabolism to slow the rate you use oxygen."

During breath-holding, oxygen stores reduce and the body starts diverting blood from hands and feet to the vital organs.

Our bodies have a way to compensate. Underwater pressure constricts the spleen, squeezing out extra haemoglobin, the protein in red corpuscles that carry oxygen around the body.

"Not enough research has been done to know if it wears off when you're not diving," says Farrell. "But I know people who do a lot of deep training - as Sulbin does - whose blood is like that of people living at high altitude."

In high altitudes, there is less oxygen and so the amount of haemoglobin in blood increases.

Seeing underwater

For most of their history, the Bajau have lived on houseboats, or in stilt houses built on coral reefs - some far from shore. Many report feeling "landsick" on the rare occasions they spend time on dry land.

Thanks to time spent in the water as children when the eyes are developing, the Bajau, in common with other coastal dwelling people, have unusually strong underwater vision.

Their eye muscles have adapted to constrict the pupils more, and to change the lens shape to increase light refraction.

This makes their underwater eyesight twice as strong, according to Anna Gislen, of Sweden's Lund University, who from 2003 has compared the water vision of sea gypsy children of Thailand and Burma with that of European children. A gap that can narrow with training.

One part of the Bajau body that hasn't fared well is the eardrum, which ruptures at a young age, says Human Planet director Tom Hugh-Jones.

Our dive reflex means babies don't breathe in underwater

"Sulbin's hearing is shot because he doesn't equalise the pressure in his ears as he dives. He's never had formal dive training. He was taught by his father to hold his breath."

There are evolutionary theories - not widely accepted, he adds - that an early ancestor of modern humans had to adapt to a partially aquatic environment. The aquatic ape theory suggests this is why humans are largely hairless and have a subcutaneous layer of fat for underwater insulation, and so are better adapted to swimming than near relations such as the great ape.

But Sulbin and other Bajau divers have little body fat. The wiry frame of these subsistence fishermen may actually help.

A lean physique is more efficient at using oxygen. And having little body fat makes Sulbin less buoyant, able to walk across the reef bed with ease.

"This type of freediving - repeatedly diving to depths of 10 to 20m - carries the greatest risk of decompression sickness," says Farrell. "But you are less likely to get the bends if you are lean, or very well hydrated."

Bajau children's underwater vision is less blurred than landlubbers of the same age

Some Bajau die of the bends from diving - also a risk for compression divers in the Philippines encountered by the Human Planet team.
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Tsunami debris closing in on Hawaii

2011-11-06T06:59:00.001+08:00

Amplify’d from www.dailymail.co.uk

'We don't want to create a panic, but it’s good to know it’s coming'
Jan Hafner
University of Hawaii researcher

Televisions, fridges and furniture pieces are heading for Hawaii, as a huge amount of debris from Japan’s earthquake sails across the Pacific.

Up to 20 million tons of debris from the earthquake in March is traveling faster than expected and could reach the U.S. West Coast in three years.

A Russian ship’s crew spotted the debris - which included a 20ft long fishing boat - last month after passing the Midway Islands.

Debris wave: Up to 20 million tons of debris from the earthquake is travelling faster than expected and could reach the U.S. West Coast in three years

On the way: Experts have revised predictions to say the debris will reach will now reach the Midway Islands by winter and Hawaii in less than two years

‘We have a rough estimate of 5 to 20 million tons of debris coming from Japan,’ University of Hawaii researcher Jan Hafner told KITV.

Experts have revised predictions to say the debris will now reach the Midway Islands by winter and Hawaii in less than two years.

Crew members on the Russian training ship STS Pallada spotted the debris 2,000 miles from Japan, including a fishing boat from Fukushima, reported AFP.

‘They saw some pieces of furniture, some appliances, anything that can float - and they picked up a fishing boat,’ Mr Hafner told KITV.

A crew member told AFP: 'We keep sighting things like wooden
boards, plastic bottles, buoys from fishing nets [small and big ones],
an object resembling a wash basin, drums, boots, other wastes.'

On its way: Debris from the tsunami is approaching Hawaii

We also sighted a TV set, fridge and a couple of other home appliances.'

A spokesman for the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii said: 'The Russian ship... found an array of unmistakable tsunami debris on its homeward voyage from Honolulu to Vladivostok.'

Some of the lighter debris is moving quicker than expected. ‘We don't want to create a panic, but it’s good to know it’s coming,’ Mr Hafner added.

Salvaged: Crew members on the Russian training ship STS Pallada spotted the debris almost 2,000 miles from Japan, including a fishing boat from Fukushima

Find: Russian ship STS Pallada's crew spotted the items last month soon after passing the Midway Islands, where the debris is expected to reach in winter

Japan was badly hit by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11, which left 20,000 people dead or missing.

The quake damaged cooling systems at the Fukushima plant, which resulted in the worst atomic disaster in the world since Chernobyl in 1986.

Japan is struggling in part because tourists are worried about visiting, so the country's tourist board is giving away 10,000 free flights.

Scientists are eager to track where the debris is heading because it can threaten small ships as well as coastlines, reported LiveScience.
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Farting Fish

2011-10-31T17:59:00.001+08:00

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Flatulence might be rude to us humans, but for herring, it's a survival strategy. Herring have a secret, and funny, way of communicating with each other — by farting. They just have to hope neighboring predators aren't listening in...

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Eye am for real: One-eyed albino shark-clops 'is not a fake', say experts

2011-10-20T10:27:00.001+08:00

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It looks like a creature from the ancient myths.

So when a shark pup with albino skin and a single eye was found by fishermen in Mexico, and photographs were beamed across the world, many dismissed the strange creature as a hoax.

But after examination by a Mexican biologist, the shark was declared real.

It was removed from the womb of its mother, an endangered dusky shark, which was caught in the Gulf of California.

This one-eyed albino fetus was cut from the belly of a pregnant bull shark caught off the coast of California this summer

Shark researchers say the creature is genuine, although it is unlikely to have survived after birth

Mexican biologist Felipe
Galvan-Magana diagnosed the fish with cyclopia, a rare defect that
causes the development of only one eye.

It has also drawn comparisons with a famous celluloid monster — green, grinning Mike from Monsters, Inc.

The one-eyed shark has achieved cult
status since Pisces Fleet Sportfishing published pictures of it in July,
giving rise to rumours of Photoshopping or other hoaxes.

Shark expert Felipe Galvan Magana, of Mexico’s Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias del Mar, said: ‘This is extremely rare. As far as I know, less than 50 examples of an abnormality like this have been recorded.’

The shark’s condition is known as cyclopia, and is a rare congenital disorder characterised by the failure of the front portion of the brain to properly divide the orbits of the eye into two cavities.

Cyclopia occurs within the spectrum of brain and face defects known as holoprosencephaly, which in severe cases can result in miscarriage or stillbirth.

In 2005 a kitten born with only one eye and no nose caused a similar online stir.

The feline, one of two in a litter, became known as Cy (short for Cyclops) and died within a day.

In 2005 a kitten - nicknamed Cy - was born with the same rare congenital disorder
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First-ever photos of triple and quadruple rainbows

2011-10-08T09:25:00.001+08:00

Amplify’d from earthsky.org

We now have the first scientifically accepted photos of triple and quadruple rainbows. For some, it’s as if we’ve captured a picture of a real unicorn.

Credit: Michael Theusner/Applied Optics.

Click here to expand this image

A scientific journal has accepted the first photos of a triple (tertiary) rainbow and a quadruple (quaternary) rainbow, both taken in summer 2011 in Germany. And it is likely we will see more photos of triple and quadruple rainbows in the years ahead.

Like many of you reading, I thought triple rainbows – three rainbows arcing through the sky at once – had been seen and photographed many times. An Internet search reveals photos claiming to be triple and even quadruple rainbows – but apparently these images either aren’t real or aren’t true rainbows. According to the Optical Society in Washington D.C. – a scientific society with 16,000 members around the world – there have been only five scientific reports of triple rainbows in 250 years. Some scientists believed triple and quadruple rainbows did not truly exist in nature, but now scientists have their proof.

A new meteorological model provided the scientific underpinnings to find these rare and precious triple and quadruple rainbows. The work is described in a series of papers in a special issue – Issue 28 – of the journal Applied Optics from the Optical Society, published September 30, 2011.

The beautiful image at the top of this post shows the third-order and fourth-order band of the quadruple rainbow. The first two bands of the rainbow are not shown in this image, which was taken by Michael Theusner on June 11, 2011 in Schiffdorf, Germany.

The image below is the first-ever picture of a triple rainbow.

Credit: Michael Grossmann/Applied Optics.

Michael Grossmann took this image on May 15, 2011 in Kampfelbach, Germany. (a) is his raw camera image. (b) shows the third-order rainbow arc, marked by arrows, after contrast expansion and unsharp masking. (The two reference positions A and B are for image orientation.)

We all know about rainbows to some extent, because everyone loves to see one. In our culture, we consider them a symbol of hope and good luck. When sunlight is refracted, or split, then reflected once in droplets of water, you see a single rainbow. When light is reflected twice inside water droplets, you see a double rainbow. Three reflections create a triple rainbow, and four a quadruple rainbow.

Double rainbow in Alaska. The shadow of the photographer's head on the bottom marks the centre of the rainbow circle (antisolar point). Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

We’ve all seen single or even double rainbows. Why are triple and quadruple rainbows so rare? Sky watchers know that – to see a single or double rainbow – you have to look opposite the sun.

But – to see a triple or quadruple rainbow – you have to look toward the sun. Triple and quadruple rainbows form around the sun, centered on it. They are hard to see because, to see them, you have to look into the sun’s glare. That might explain why only five scientifically knowledgeable observers had described tertiary rainbows during the past 250 years, prior to Michael Grossmann’s first true photo.

Raymond Lee, a professor of meteorology at the U.S. Naval Academy, predicted a year ago how triple rainbows might be found and challenged rainbow chasers to find them. He told Foxnews.com that photographers should hold one hand out at arm’s length, with a thumb over the sun.

Then they should splay their fingers so that the distance between their pinky and thumb is at about a 17 degree angle. Where their pinky stops is where the third and fourth bands should be.

Lee figured this method out by reviewing descriptions of the scientific sightings of triple rainbows, then using a mathematical model – with colleague Philip Laven – to predict what conditions might produce visible triple rainbows. According to a press release by the Optical Society:

First, they needed dark thunderclouds and either a heavy downpour or a rainstorm with nearly uniformly sized droplets. Under these conditions, if the sun broke through the clouds, it could project a tertiary rainbow against the dark clouds nearby. The contrasting colors would make the dim tertiary visible.

When Lee presented his findings at last year’s International Conference on Atmospheric Optics, some scientists argued with him heatedly, saying that triple and quadruple rainbows were a myth, akin to the pot of gold at a raindow’s end.

But now we have the actual photos. According to the Optical Society, the photos underwent only minimal image processing to improve the contrast.

Michael Grossman recalled seeing a double rainbow on the day he snapped his photo of the triple rainbow. When the rain intensified, he said knew he had to turn toward the sun. He said:

It is really exaggerated to say that I saw it, but there seemed to be something.

The pictures he snapped in the rain showed he had captured the triple rainbow. Theusner’s photo – the second-ever of a triple rainbow and first of a quadruple rainbow – came about a month later. Now that the technique for seeing them has been proven, we can expect other sky photograpahers to take up the challenge – and more photos of triple and quadruple rainbows in the years ahead.

A double rainbow clearly showing the dark area between the two bands. This region is known as Alexander's dark band. Image Credit: NASA

To learn more about how triple and quadruple rainbows form, and about the range of rainbows, mistbows, moonbows, halos and other delicate light phenomena of the open air, check out Les Cowley’s Atmospheric Optics , a wonderful website.

Bottom line: Michael Grossman and Michael Theusner have snapped the first-ever scientifically accepted photos of triple (tertiary) rainbows. Theusner also caught a quadruple (quaternary) rainbow on film. The now-historic photos inspired a special issue of the journal Applied Optics from the Optical Society, published September 30, 2011.

What makes a halo around the moon?
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Environmentalists pitch voyage in sea of tsunami debris

2011-10-06T12:27:00.001+08:00

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WASHINGTON — Fancy a holiday in a sea of junk? Environmentalists in the United States are offering "eco-adventurers" the chance to do just that.

From May 1 next year, the Sea Dragon will sail for two months through sections of the North Pacific Ocean swirling with debris from the March 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan, organizers said Wednesday.

"We'll be riding the same currents that are transporting cigarette lighters, bottle caps, children's toys and all manner of other plastic pollution generated by the tsunami," said expedition leader Marcus Eriksen.

The unique voyage is organized by the 5 Gyres Institute and the Algalita Marine Research Institute, both California-based non-profit groups that research and raise public awareness of plastic marine pollution.

Nine places are available on the Sea Dragon, a 22-meter (72-foot) former long-distance racing yacht, with the voyage being made in two stages -- the first costing $13,500 per person and the second priced at $15,500 per person.

Participants must agree to lend a hand to sail the steel-hulled sloop and to help researchers take stock of how the debris swept from the Japanese coast by the killer tsunami is drifting across the Pacific.

The first leg of the trip will depart the Marshall Islands for a section of the North Pacific Gyre known as the "western garbage patch" where little research has been carried out so far on plastic pollution.

Leg two will go due east from Japan to Hawaii through the gyre -- a vortex of ocean currents where seaborne litter accumulates -- to cross the so-called "Japan tsunami debris field."

"Of great interest to the researchers is how fast the plastic trash is traveling across the gyre, how quickly or slowly it is decomposing, how rapidly marine life is colonizing on it, and whether it is transporting invasive species," the organizers said.

Debris at sea fascinates oceanographers. In 1992 they seized upon the mid-Pacific loss of a container full of Asian-made rubber ducks, turtles, beavers and frogs as a unique chance to learn more about current flows.

Some of the bath toys washed up in Britain, most recently in 2009, apparently after being carried by the currents through the Arctic Ocean.
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First comet found with ocean-like water

2011-10-06T11:10:00.001+08:00

Amplify’d from www.labspaces.net

New evidence supports the theory that comets delivered a significant portion of Earth's oceans, which scientists believe formed about 8 million years after the planet itself.

The findings, which involve a University of Michigan astronomer, are published Oct. 5 online in Nature.

This is the comet Hartley, as imaged by NASA's EPOXI spacecraft. Credit: Image courtesy of NASA

"Life would not exist on Earth without liquid water, and so the questions of how and when the oceans got here is a fundamental one," said U-M astronomy professor Ted Bergin, "It's a big puzzle and these new findings are an important piece."

Bergin is a co-investigator on HiFi, the Heterodyne Instrument for the Infrared on the Hershel Space Observatory. With measurements from HiFi, the researchers found that the ice on a comet called Hartley 2 has the same chemical composition as our oceans. Both have similar D/H ratios. The D/H ratio is the proportion of deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, in the water. A deuterium atom is a hydrogen with an extra neutron in its nucleus.

This was the first time ocean-like water was detected in a comet.

"We were all surprised," Bergin said.

Six other comets HiFi measured in recent years had a much different D/H ratio than our oceans, meaning similar comets could not have been responsible for more than 10 percent of Earth's water.

The astronomers hypothesize that Hartley 2 was born in a different part of the solar system than the other six. Hartley most likely formed in the Kuiper belt, which starts near Pluto at about 30 times farther from the sun than the Earth is. The other six hail from the Oort Cloud more than 5,000 times farther out.

The source of earth's oceans has been a subject for debate among astronomers for decades. Until now, asteroids were thought to have provided most of the water. Now, however, Herschel has shown that at least one comet does have ocean-like water.

"The results show that the amount of material out there that could have contributed to Earth's oceans is perhaps larger than we thought," Bergin said.
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Lungfish Provides Insight to Life On Land: 'Humans Are Just Modified Fish'

2011-10-06T09:33:00.001+08:00

Amplify’d from www.sciencedaily.com

A study into the muscle development of several different fish has given insights into the genetic leap that set the scene for the evolution of hind legs in terrestrial animals. This innovation gave rise to the tetrapods -- four-legged creatures, and our distant ancestors -- that made the first small steps on land some 400 million years ago.

Pectoral fin muscle formation in paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) utilises the fully derived mode of appendicular muscle formation and is not associated with an epithelial extension. (Credit: Cole et al., PLoS Biology, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001168)

A team of Australian scientists led by Professor Peter Currie, of the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute at Monash University, and Dr Nicolas Cole, of the University of Sydney, report their results October 4 in online, open access journal PLoS Biology.

Scientists have long known that ancient lungfish species are the ancestors of the tetrapods. These fish could survive on land, breathing air and using their pelvic fins to propel themselves. Australia is home to three species of the few remaining lungfish -- two marine species and one inhabiting Queensland's Mary River basin.

There are big gaps in our knowledge, however. Most conclusions have previously been drawn from fossil skeletons, but the muscles critical to locomotion cannot be preserved in the fossil record. The team used fish living today to trace the evolution of pelvic fin muscles to find out how the load-bearing hind limbs of the tetrapods evolved. They compared embryos of the descendants of species representing key turning points in vertebrate evolution to see if there were differences in pelvic fin muscle formation. They studied "primitive" cartilaginous fish -- Australia's bamboo shark and its cousin, the elephant shark -- as well as three bony fishes -- the Australian lungfish, the zebrafish and the American paddlefish. The bony fish and in particular the lungfish are the closest living relative of the tetrapods' most recent common ancestor with fish.

"We examined the way the different fish species generated the muscles of their pelvic fins, which are the evolutionary forerunners of the hind limbs," said Professor Currie, a developmental biologist. Currie and his team genetically engineered the fish to trace the migration of precursor muscle cells in early developmental stages as the animal's body took shape. These cells in the engineered fish were made to emit a red or green light, allowing the team to track the development of specific muscle groups. They found that the bony fish had a different mechanism of pelvic fin muscle formation from that of the cartilaginous fish, a mechanism that was a stepping stone to the evolution of tetrapod physiology.

"Humans are just modified fish," said Professor Currie. "The genome of fish is not vastly different from our own. We have shown that the mechanism of pelvic muscle formation in bony fish is transitional between that in sharks and in our tetrapod ancestors."
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Scuba Diver Costume For Halloween

2011-10-01T21:00:00.001+08:00

I LOVE IT!

Amplify’d from www.parenting.com

Scuba Diver Costume

Your child will make a splash in this no-sew costume

By Ellen Goldberg; photo by Squire Fox

Scouring pads, a soda bottle, and other household products give you a deep-sea diver's duds.

Scuba gear:

3 yards black nylon webbing

1 yard self-adhesive Velcro

6 metallic scouring pads

2-liter plastic soda bottle

1 sports-bottle lid

Silver spray paint

4 inches black rubber tubing

18 inches cord-keeper tube

Wet suit:

Black hooded sweatshirt

Black tights or leggings

Black gloves

Plastic safety goggles

1. Cut a piece of nylon webbing 2 inches longer than your child's waist circumference. Attach Velcro pieces to each end for a belt.
2. Measure your child from front of waist, over shoulders, to back of waist. Cut two straps of webbing to this measurement. Glue one end of each piece of webbing to the center of the back of the belt, about 1/4 inch apart. Attach loose ends to front of belt, about 3 inches apart, like suspender straps.

3. Fold scouring pads into tubes and glue edges together. Glue tubes around belt to create diving weights.

4. Coat soda bottle and sports-bottle lid with spray paint and let dry, about one hour.

5. Glue a piece of webbing around bottom of soda bottle to resemble an air tank. Attach bottle to belt and straps with pieces of Velcro.

6. Wrap rubber tubing around the mouth of the soda bottle and glue ends inside cord-keeper tube.

Push other end of cord keeper into loop of painted sports-bottle top for a ventilator; tuck cord-keeper tube under webbing strap to hold in place.
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Gamers Vs. Scientists

2011-09-29T12:50:00.001+08:00

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When you’ve got a problem that ten years of trying has failed to solve, it’s time to consider another approach. So recently, when scientists at the University of Washington Department of Biochemistry, led by Dr. Firas Khatib (a featured Gnomedex speaker a few years back), failed to configure the structure of a retrovirus enzyme even after a decade of trying, they decided to enlist help from an unlikely source: gamers.

“We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed,” says Dr. Khatib.

Since 2008, the University of Washington’s Foldit project has been encouraging people to use their grey matter and play Foldit — a game that combines elements of puzzle solving, pattern recognition, crowdsourcing, and distributed computing — to fold proteins and determine their active, three-dimensional conclusions. Pattern matching is one of those rare computations in which the human brain excels over what is currently possible by purely computerized means, and Foldit aims to take full advantage of this human brainpower.

Says researcher Dr. Seth Cooper: “People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at. Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week’s paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before.”

In only three weeks, this experiment paid off in ways where a decade of more traditional approaches had failed. Gamers were able to generate models that were close enough for the trained eyes of researchers to refine and discover the enzyme’s structure and discern vulnerabilities on the molecule that would make ideal targets for deactivation by drugs designed to knock it out. This could give us a vast new arsenal in the war against AIDS and other retroviral conditions.

The team’s findings are summed up in its paper, Crystal structure of a monomeric retroviral protease solved by protein folding game players, published in the September 18th edition of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

If you’d like to give Foldit a spin for a more complete idea of how you can make a difference in big deal endeavors like curing cancer, abolishing Alzeheimer’s, drop kicking immune deficiencies, efficient biofuel production, and more (while having fun), check out Foldit.
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