For several years conservationists, big-hearted celebrities and oceanographers have been talking about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (and other garbage patches around the world.) Now scientists are showing that the Texas-sized piece of water real estate is growing bigger every year, fed by plastic pollution from developing countries like China. The diffused mass of micro-plastic gets stuck in an area between Hawaii and California called the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.

Tiny Plastic Confetti Dots Open Ocean for Thousands of Miles, Making Garbage Patch Almost Invisible from Above, courtesy of Scripps

Think of it like a vortex where ocean currents and wind patterns converge to create a circular motion that traps anything that floats into a large but contained area.

New research by a graduate student at Scripps Oceanographic Institute at the University of California San Diego shows the patch has experienced a 100-fold increase in the number & mass of plastic per unit seawater in the last 40 years. The study appears in the journal Biology Letters.

Miriam Goldstein, the lead author of the study says, “Plastic only became widespread in late ’40s and early ’50s, but now everyone uses it and, over a 40-year range, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in ocean plastic.”

Water Strider Finds Mid-Ocean Plastic Ideal Spot to Lay Eggs, courtesty of Scripps, photo by Anthony Smith

Goldstein says the water striders “have exploited the influx of plastic garbage as new surfaces for their eggs [which] has led to a rise in the insect’s egg densities.” That’s good news for the predators that eat the insect, including crabs. And this ecological shift is very bad news for the critters that the bugs eat.

The study found that the explosion of the insects’ population could lead to a dwindling supply in zooplankton and fish larvae, the water strider’s favorite foods. That can have devastating impacts up the food chain. The research noted a significant increase in egg-laying but didn’t comment on any resulting increase in adult water striders in the garbage patch.

Microplastics Cleaned and Dried, courtesy of NOAA

Of all the plastic discarded into the ocean about 80 percent originates on land. And the floating pieces that don’t sink will eventually break down thanks to the sun’s energy and the pounding of waves. While those natural forces shred the material over time into smaller and smaller pieces, this micro-material gets ingested by marine birds and fish.

A similar study resulting from the same Scripps research expedition in 2009 found that nine percent of fish in the gyre had some plastic in their stomachs. That study published in Marine Ecology Progress Series, estimated the fish at intermediate ocean depths in the North Pacific Ocean could be ingesting plastic at a rate of roughly 13,000 to 26,000 tons per year.

And many of us have seen pictures of young dead albatrosses near Midway island who have starved to death because their stomachs are full of plastic which their mothers mistakenly feed to them thinking they are some other source of food.

Most scientists worry about the toxic plastic bioaccumulating in marine animals and because of that Goldstein expected to see fewer water striders perched on mid-ocean plastic not more. But she was surprised to find that the insects seemed to be thriving in their new artificial environment.

She says, “The study raises an important issue, which is the addition of hard surfaces to the open ocean.”

Gooseneck Barnacles and Anemones on a Piece of Rope Found during 2009 SEAPLEX Expedition, courtesy of Scripps

The water strider is already taking advantage of this new micro-plastic habitat.

Goldstein says, “So, what plastic has done is add hundreds of millions of hard surfaces to the Pacific Ocean. That’s quite a profound change.”

Not every virus has a pathological purpose. Sure they make us sick regularly and terrorize our computers. But researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in Berkeley have found a good use for harmless viruses — electricity generators.

Imagine walking down the street and charging your cellphone just from the motion of your feet. Scientists have been trying to capture the piezoelectric effect so that motion will create electricity and power our gadgets.

In new research at that appears in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, a team at LLNL found they can squish sheets of viruses between two plates and generate enough electricity to power a simple liquid-crystal display. It’s only the first step in generating electricity on the go but it’s an important one.

a, The M13 phage is ~880 nm in length and ~6.6 nm in diameter, is covered by ~2,700 pVIII coat proteins and has five copies each of pIII (grey lines) and pIX (black lines) proteins at either end. b, Side view of the electrostatic potential of M13 phage after bioengineered modification with four glutamate amino acids. The dipole moments generated by ten α-helical major coat proteins are directed from the N-terminus (blue) to the C-terminus (red). Yellow arrows indicate dipole direction. c, Vertical cross-sectional view of the electrostatic potential of M13 phage. The pVIII coat proteins assemble with five-fold rotational and two-fold screw symmetry. d, Side-view representation of the electrostatic potential of a single M13-phage pVIII coat protein. The pVIII coat protein has an ~20° tilt angle with respect to the phage long axis. The colours of the molecular surface indicate positive (red), neutral (white) and negative (blue) electrostatic potentials. Yellow arrows filled with two colours (red and blue) represent the dipole pointing from negative (blue) to positive (red) regions. e, Primary structure of the engineered major coat protein. Amino acids with positively and negatively charged side chains are labelled in red and blue, respectively. The engineered four-glutamate (4E) amino-acid sequence is underlined.

Seung-Wuk Lee made a thin rubbery film from layers of genetically-engineered, non-toxic viruses, which are only harmful to the e coli bacteria into which they are inserted. He discovered that when pressure is applied the phage particles scatter and as they zip around a tiny spark of energy begins an electrical process which Lee and his team are confident can be scaled up to power phones, computers and other personal devices.

Lee says, “We ended up with trillions or jillions of these virus particles, which can generate the electricities.” He says the viruses cost nothing because they keep manufacturing themselves. Lee just adds water and waits. Phage can be produced simply and economically by infecting bacteria. The phage then co-opts the bacterial metabolism to continuously synthesize and secrete new phage particles, leading to millions of copies after culturing overnight.

A little ways off, Lee sees the big potential for this little science experiment.

He says, “Maybe 5 or 10 years later, we can begin to make very small, personalized electric generators.”

Most piezoelectric generators — from eco-friendly dance floors in Europe to a little jacket worn by a hamster on a wheel at Georgia Tech– use toxic and chemically treated wires to capture the kinetic energy being generated by mechanical motion. But the Berkeley experiment uses harmless viruses called phages. Common biotechnology techniques enable large-scale production of genetically modified phages so phage-based piezoelectric materials potentially offer a simple and environmentally friendly approach to piezoelectric energy generation.

The human brain may be more like a street map — laid out on a grid — than a tangled mess of spaghetti. Neuroscientists have been trying to unlock the structure of the brain to unravel mysteries of brain development and evolution, and help link neurological and psychiatric disorders to abnormalities in brain structure that occur in diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. But the long-held idea that the brain is a set of wires criss-crossing more or less at random has never quite fit with the simplicity and efficiency of natural selection.

Primate Brain Neurology, Showing Grid-Like Patterning in Nerve Cells, image by Van Wedeen, Martinos Center and Dept. of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University Medical School

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital are going out on a neurological limb to say the fiber architecture of the brain is as simple as anyone could imagine. They think that each pathway in the brain is one point in a three-dimensional grid not an isolated network that connects and disconnects at will.

New high-resolution images show a distinct grid pattern in the brain stem of a rhesus monkey. There is distinct left-right, up-down and front-back patterning shown in three axes, much like a three-dimensional street map.

Harvard professor Van Wedeen and team found mind-blowing complexity can arise from a seductively simple underlying structure that follows a few simple rules and repeats them over and over. Wedeen argues that if you straighten out the folds in the brain it turns into a three-dimensional tapestry of interwoven fibers.

Using a brain mapping technique called diffusion spectrum MRI, Weeden insists that the images reveal sheets of parallel fibers running at 90 degrees to each another, much like a woven fabric. These sheets are also arranged at right angles to one another, completing a three-dimensional grid.

He says the pattern is easier to see in lower primates like the Galago bushbaby than it is in humans because we have more brain folds and curves giving us more complex brains.

Fiber Architecture of the Brain, image by Van Wedeen, Martinos Center and Dept. of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University Medical School

And he thinks this simple structure might explain how complex brains evolved. If the brain were organized like a tangle of spaghetti, it would be difficult to see how mutations could lead to incremental changes in connectivity on which natural selection could act.

Wedeen says, “Try going into your basement and randomly rewiring your house. In a grid structure, it’s much easier to imagine changes in the developmental code producing adaptive changes in behavior.”

But not everyone agrees with this simple approach to the complexity of brain architecture.

David Van Essen says, “To me the jury is out.” He is the head of the Human Connectome Project, a five-year federal program to elucidate the neural pathways that underlie human brain function. The goal? Deciphering this amazingly complex wiring diagram to see what makes us uniquely human and what makes every person different from all others. Of the current research Essen says, “My concern is that they may have oversimplified and overgeneralized in their optimism that this will apply brain-wide.”

The diffusion spectrum MRI technique gives great images but it doesn’t detect the nerve fibers directly. Marsel Mesulam says, “We’re looking at reconstructed images based on the movement of water molecules in a magnetic field.” It is not a microscope producing a literal image.

Van Essen thinks that this technique misses fibers that criss-cross in other orientations. Marco Catani, a specialist in diffusion MRI at the King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry, argues that Wedeen’s method is likely to miss fibers crossing at angles less than about 70 degrees.

Van Wedeen, Associate Professor of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging

So for some, this simplified look at the brain is an oversimplification of much more complex geometry.

But Wedeen didn’t go searching for a simple answer to the complex organ. He says, “By looking at how the pathways fit in the brain, we anticipated the connectivity to resemble that of a bowl of spaghetti, a very narrow and discreet object.” But instead he found that the pathways in the top of the brain are all organized like woven sheets with the fibers running in two directions in the sheets and in a third direction perpendicular to the sheets. These sheets all stack together so that the entire connectivity of the brain follows three precisely defined directions.

Wedeen is adamant that his work would have detected fibers crossing at lower angles if they were common.

Now the focus of microscopic brain anatomy turns to study which view of the brain is most accurate. No doubt a flood of research answering the question of the human brain will follow.

With 100 billion neurons, each with around 10,000 connections, mapping the human brain will be no easy feat, and charting every single connection could take decades. That’s where the Human Connectome Project comes in. The HCP aims to map the large-scale connections of 1,200 human brains and is expected to start delivering the goods later this year. These are pathways that govern how personality, memory and even consciousness are formed.

After a week of grueling physical and mental endurance tests in Seattle the iconic Space Needle announced that Gregory Schneider, a father from Tucson, Arizona has won a trip into sub-orbital space.

Gregory Schneider, Winner of Space Race 2012

Over 50,000 would-be astronauts entered the Space Race 2012 contest sponsored by the Seattle landmark, which celebrates its 50th Anniversary this year.

Decorated astronaut Buzz Aldrin was on hand at the end of the space race to announce the winner. He was intrigued by the contest and by the performance of the two finalists, “I’ve been kind of out and back,” he said, referring to venturing to the moon and to the bottom of the ocean, “but you wouldn’t catch me walking around that Space Needle. I’m afraid of heights.”

Gregory Schneider Walks the Space Needle's Outer Ring Answering Questions and Solving Puzzles

After three other finalists were eliminated during the first two days of the competition, the two took turns climbing the antenna on top of the needle for time and then answering questions and solving puzzles as they walked around the “halo” of the Space Needle’s observation deck. Schneider answered the most questions (8 out of 10) to end up with the best time and Apollo 11 moonwalker Aldrin opened the envelope to read Schneider’s name.

After winning the spot on a future Space Adventures sub-orbital flight the young father was overcome with emotion as he spoke while choking back tears. He says, “This is really thrilling for me. I think that space flight…and…the more people who get to see the world from a different perspective the closer we can all come.”

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin Announces Schneider as Winner of Trip to Space

In his winning video he said he wants to go to space to “inspire my children, to turn their dreams into reality, to venture into the cosmos, and to understand the universe.” He and his wife Lindsay have two children – Emi, 7 and Jude, 3. Like their father, Emi and Jude are interested in outer space. Gregory says, “[Jude] talks constantly about blasting off in a rocket ship, and I won’t be surprised when he eventually does.”

The Space Race program was launched in August 2011 and attracted applicants from around the country. One thousand entrants were randomly selected from that group and asked to submit videos detailing why they wanted to go into space. Then the judges selected twenty of those videos to post on the Space Needle’s Facebook page for public voting.

Schneider about to Ascend the Antenna on Top of the Space Needle

Gregory Schneider, from Tuscon, Arizona, is a recent law-school graduate from the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law now doing a clerkship with an appeals-court judge. He says his family is his motivation to go to space. He’s just about to graduate from law school, is expecting his third child later this year and now he’s going to space.

Peru is ill-equipped to handle a coastal environmental emergency. Almost 900 dolphins washed ashore on the nation’s northern beaches this winter and their deaths still remain a mystery, in part because the country lacks all the tools to test for diseases. Necropsies weren’t conducted in a timely manner as the animals showed up on beaches between January and April. By waiting too long to study the carcasses, biologists think that vital clues about the stranding may have been lost.

Before the dolphin disaster was over, pelicans began dying in record numbers along the same beaches, triggering concern from beach-goers and fishermen. Though it is fall in Peru and the prime tourist season is over, many surfers hang ten along 1,500 miles of coastline. And many Peruvians make their living from the sea and are worried that what might be harming dolphins and pelicans may also harm people.

But several leading scientists believe that the dolphin die-off and pelican deaths are completely unrelated.

One of Almost 900 Dead Dolphins along the Peruvian Coast, Photo Courtesy of Hardy JonesOne of Almost 900 Dead Dolphins along the Peruvian Coast, Photo Courtesy of Hardy Jones

The Peru-based Organization for Research and Conservation of Aquatic Animals did 30 dolphin necropsies from some of the first cetaceans to wash ashore on February 12. Carlos Yaipen-Llanos, the group’s director, says they had broken ear bones, collapsed livers and internal hemorrhages, all signs of acoustic explosions.

He tells the Associated Press, “In microscopic exams we found fatty tissue with a great quantity surrounding bubbles and hemorrhages. This happens when there is a strong sound in the fatty tissue, in the mandibular fat where sounds are received.”

ORCA blames seismic sounding for oil deposits on the dolphin deaths. The Peruvian government denies that the animals died from seismic oil exploration being conducted by Houston-based BPZ Energy off the north coast of Peru between Feb. 8 and April 8. On April 27, BPZ announced a joint venture with Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp. to explore and develop offshore oil drilling in the area where the dolphins died. The company denies any involvement in the almost 900 dead dolphins.

BPZ Energy Map of Oil Exploration Block Z-1 off Coast of Peru, Courtesy of BPZ Energy

Jones says, “We had counted 615 dead dolphins and had evidence of the tragedy and necropsy samples that might shed light on what had produced this catastrophe.”

But like so many marine die-offs, definitive answers are often impossible to find.

When the story was first reported, a few scientists thought that earthquakes in Chile were the culprit. Some thought algae blooms or disease could be responsible. Chemical runoff and near-shore pollution couldn’t be ruled out either. But based on initial reports from Dr. Yaipen-Llanos, the acoustic explosion theory holds the most water.

He tells Jones in an email from mid-February, “Now Hardy, what we found in this mass stranding is that 10 of the 17 animals found dead had broken periotic bones, that is, due to acoustic impact. The source of the impact was from the right side of the pod, since hemorrhagic internal ear was found in the right side of the stranded animals.”

Other tests have ruled out heavy metal poisoning, biotoxin contamination, several common diseases and bacterial infections.

But what about the pelicans?

Probably unrelated to the dolphin die-off the deaths of over 4,500 pelicans along the same stretch of Peruvian coastline has people wondering what is happening to animals on the Pacific.

Again, no definitive proof can be gleaned but scientists think what’s killing juvenile pelicans began in January. That’s when the anchovy fishery near Lambayeque plummeted. Daily catches of 5 tons of anchovetas a day by fishermen dwindled so almost nothing about the time they started seeing the small fish dead on beaches.

Anvhovetas (the Spanish version of anchovies) require cool water. Biologist Patricia Majluf believes that tongues of warm water began driving the small fish which is the main source of food for pelicans into deep waters, where the younger birds can’t reach them.

Carlos Bocanegra at the National University of Trujillo analyzed 10 dying pelicans last week and found they were starving. Many of the birds had empty digestive tracks or some evidence of fish that the birds generally don’t eat. Scientists believe that the dead and dying birds are 3-4 years old, an age when they can’t dive as deep for food as older birds.

Dead Pelicans on the Beaches in Pirua, Peru, Photo by REUTERS/Heinze Plenge

Similar pelican die-offs in 1982-1983 and 1997-1998 coincided with strong El Ninos, which warm the oceans, forcing the feeder fish deeper where young birds can’t reach them. Could this be the beginning of another strong El Nino weather pattern?

Bocanegra says, “We saw mass deaths along Peru’s entire coast, also associated with high sea temperatures.” He says right now ocean temperatures in the region are 10 degrees above normal for this time of year.

This double marine die-off has scientists questioning Peru’s ability to handle coastal emergencies. As the dolphin disaster winds down — though rotting carcasses still line the beach — and the pelican problem ramps up health officials warned the public to stay away from beaches from Lima northward, though the Health Ministry didn’t identify a specific health issue.

One economist says these die-offs highlight Peru’s lack of readiness. Juan Carlos Sueiro says, “Peru doesn’t have a policy of coastal territory management.” He calls it “probably the most backward in the entire region.”

And for an area so rich in biodiversity thanks to the Humboldt Current, which funnels cold, nutrient rich water along the coastline from Chile to Peru. It is the most productive marine ecosystem in the world, as well as the largest upwelling system. That has marine biologists, like Sue Rocca, worried.

She says, “One of the things we do know is just how fragile we have discovered our ecosystems have become.”

These die-offs show that slight alterations to the natural environment have big consequences.

35 million sheep and 8 million cows animals are emitting more than 50 percent of the greenhouse gas New Zealand produces. That is why scientists at the Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Center are studying ways to reduce the potency of their methanated burps and high-nitrogen urine.

Farmers in the U.S. have been studying ways to reduce cow flatulence, which releases methane into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, more than 20 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide though it only stays suspended in the atmosphere for 9-15 years (compared to CO2′s 100-year atmospheric lifespan.)

The Stoneyfield Farm Experiment proved to be effective in reducing methane output by 18 percent on some farms by adjusting animal feed to include more alfalfa and flaxseed and less corn and soy. And climate scientists believe that improving cow breath needs to be a top priority.

In The U.S. Cattle Account for 20 Percent of Methane Emissions, According to the EPA

Cows have digestive bacteria in their stomachs that help them break down food but in the process they belch methane, the second-most-significant heat-trapping emission associated with global warming after carbon dioxide.

As transportation improvements, energy efficiency and other preventive global warming measures are being studied the agricultural sector is playing a role, too. According to the United Nations, worldwide animal emissions (mostly from 1.2 billion cows) account for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Peter Janssen at the New Zealand ag center is working on a number of ways to reduce cow and sheep emissions. Like in Vermont he is altering animal feed to test which grains and grasses reduce methane output. He is even injecting a vaccine or a methane inhibitor in an effort to reduce the methane output from cows.

Ultimately he is trying to understand how the amounts of methane changes with different treatments.

Also at the New Zealand ag center Surinder Saggar is looking at sprays that can be used on grazing pastures to reduce the nitrous oxide that goes into the atmosphere and increases the nitrogen the ground absorbs.

And all for good reason.

A group of scientists just published a study showing that massive methane expulsions from dinosaur dietary tracts may have been significant enough to create a global-warming induced mass extinction.

Brachiosaurus and Other Sauropods Produced Large Methane Quantities, Exceeding of Animal and Industrial Emissions Today

Scientists don’t know what kind of bacteria lived in the stomachs of these giant herbivores, which gases they produced or even what the dinosaur digestive track looked like.

Lead author David Wilkinson from Liverpool John Moores University and study coauthor Graeme Ruxton from the University of St Andrews were studying sauropod ecology when a question dawned on them: If modern cows produce enough methane gas to be of interest to climate scientists, then what about sauropods? They teamed up with methane expert Euan Nisbet at the University of London to work out the numbers.

Wilkinson supposed the bacteria was very similar to those in cows today. Starting with that as his hypothesis, he and his team used a mathematical model to estimate what level of emissions plant-eating dinosaurs were producing. They took a middle of the road approach to their calculations and wound up with startling results.

Large dinosaurs produced as much methane tens of millions of years ago as modern animals and all manmade sources combined today. In fact, the numbers are startlingly close. The total number of tons of methane produced by manmade and natural sources is almost equal to what the dinosaurs emitted themselves 250-65 million years ago.

Wilkinson says, “I was expecting a number like that produced by cows, so the size of the number really surprised me.”

Cows produce 55 to 110 million tons of methane per year. Wilkinson and his team determined dinosaurs produced about 520 million tons though there is no way to confirm that. Current animal and manmade methane emissions total about 500 million tons per year. The study will be published in Current Biology this week.

If the levels were anywhere near where the calculations indicate, Wilkinson says, it very well could have been one of many factors that made that era warmer and wetter than modern times.

He adds, “Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources—both natural and man-made—put together.”

Luke Tipple is a shark advocate. The marine biologist and television host reveres the misunderstood fish. So it was a bit curious to find out that he decided to mount a laser on a shark in a real-life reenactment of the villainous fictional musings of Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies.

With a little prodding from laser maker Wicked Lasers in Hong Kong who offered to fund some of his research, Dr. Tipple decided to turn a publicity stunt into a science opportunity. He found a somewhat willing male lemonshark (who he affectionately named Mr. Bigglesworth) swimming in the Caribbean for the experiment.

On his website, Tipple says that he chose the lemon shark because they are relatively slow-moving during the day, they like the shallow clear waters of the Bahamas and they have a big dorsal fin ideal for attaching a laser-mounted clip.

Here’s the video that Wicked Lasers commissioned, showing a shark swimming with a laser attached to its dorsal fin. Tipple says this video makes sharks appear cool to a frightened human audience who mostly associate sharks with being bitten or killed. Sharks are apex predators but so are humans.

When the laser company approached Tipple in March he said, “My first thought was, um… no. There’s really no reason to do it and it was obviously just a publicity stunt.”

But after talking to the company’s owner — who apparently has a deep affection for sharks too — Tipple tweaked the original the mission and added ome scientific rigor. In exchange for 15 minutes of sensational underwater footage of a shark tooling around the ocean with a green laser beam projecting from its dorsal fin, Tipple would test a non-invasive mounting technique and see if sharks are attracted or repelled by lasers.

He says, “Initially I rejected the idea as I thought it was simply just a stunt and, while it was very cool and Austin Powersy, I was only interested if we could find a real world or scientific application for the technology.”

So he did.

Luke Tipple, Shark Advocate and Marine Biologist

As a marine biologist Tipple has always been “a bit uneasy” by the accepted practice of drilling tags into the dorsal fins of sharks (and other marine animals) to collect scientific data. He says it’s the most effective attachment process for expensive and informative electronic tags. But he still doesn’t like it and has been developing a gel clip that can attach easily to shark fins.

He says, “I’m not saying that the data isn’t worth it or that the methodology is flawed, but I do like the idea of exploring less invasive ways in which to attach scientific packages to sharks (and even other marine animals).”

The Wicked Lasers offer presented an opportunity for him to showcase his clip and demonstrate a less-invasive way to attach sensors to sea creatures. He says, “I’m pleased that the experiment is getting so much attention and that we’ve demonstrated a secure, and temporary attachment protocol. It definitely warrants further research and work… but probably minus the lasers from now on.”

The clip has specially designed gel pads on the inside of the jaws which create a tactile surface interaction with the dermal denticles of the sharks skin. In other words, Tipple says, “Basically, it doesn’t move.”

Tipple attached his specially-designed clip to Mr. Bigglesworth for about 15 minutes but he says that the clip will stay on for up to 30 days before the seawater corrodes the zinc elements in the spring and it releases its grip on the shark’s fin and eventually falls off.

After the experiment, he reports that the shark seemed unfazed and that his test was a success.

Though Wicked Lasers holds a world record for most powerful handheld laser, which can be seen from space (apparently) and its products boast the brightness of 8,000 times that of the sun, require safety goggles and warn not to point directly at a person or animal, Dr. Tipple asked for the weakest member of the laser beam team.

He says, “No animals (or divers) were put at any risk during this experiment.”

Besides testing the clip, Tipple is fascinated by the scientific opportunities that lasers offer when mounted on sharks.

Researchers could use sharks with lasers not to destroy enemy combatants but to study shark velocity and trajectory in real-time. Tipple says, “One implementation we have worked on for the laser tracking is to measure these two variables in relation to observed behavior.”

Scientists could use such information to understand the difference in a shark’s behavioral reaction to a person splashing in the surf or a wounded animal.

Male Lemon Shark Dons a 50mm Laser for the Camera

To test whether certain wavelengths of light repel sharks Tipple held the laser and knelt in the seabed, pointing the beam at the shark. A laser net or force field is a common gimmick used by online laser retailers. If lasers harmlessly nudge the fish away from an area, then a laser fence could be constructed to keep swimmers and sharks separated near beaches with frequent shark attacks.

Tipple says, “If it turned out to be true imagine if we could virtually net off a swimming area without causing harm to the sharks.”

During his experiment he didn’t shine the laser directly in the shark’s eyes and turned the beam off as soon as the sharks snout crossed it. If pressed Tipple would say that his quick experiment on shark reaction to a laser beam is the opposite of the hypothesis. Not only did the beam not repel sharks, Tipple says it seemed to get their attention and attract them. But he admits it was a crude test and more research needs to be done.

He says since sharks can’t go backwards they might just swim faster through a laser fence just to get through the beams. And he adds, “Viewed from an angle the laser is a bright point of green light and time and again the sharks seemed to swim over to me when they caught sight of it.”

If Luke Tipple can make sharks known for something other than hurting people then he’s all for it. As the managing director for the non-profit organization Shark-Free Marinas, Tipple is dedicated to one singular purpose, to reduce worldwide shark mortality. He does that by informing people about sharks, discouraging commercial fishermen from catching and killing sharks and he encourages sports fishing and resort marinas to prohibit the landing of any shark at a participating marina.

But all told, mounting a laser to a shark helped shine a bright light on the issue of attaching scientific tags to sharks and other marine life. It busted the myth used by laser makers that sharks don’t like light beams. And the publicity stunt made sharks cool…for a minute.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may need to pull a rabbit out of its hat — and fast — in light of recent news that a leadership conference planned for June would feature a magcician. Within days of the agency that monitors weather, climate and oceans announcing a solicitation for a motivational prestidigitator it withdrew the request.

The original bid notice, posted on Federal Business Opportunities website called for someone with a specific background in magic who could deliver “physical energizers, magic tricks, puzzles, brain teasers, word games, humor and teambuilding exercises.” It asked for the performer to create “a unique model of translating magic and principals of the psychology of magic, magic tools, techniques and experiences into a method of teaching leadership.”

But a Washington government watchdog magazine made the whole idea disappear before NOAA’s very eyes.

A few members of Congress weighed in on the issue, which most would chalk up to poor decision-making (though the fixed cost was only to be $3,500.)

House Science Committee Chairman Ralph Hall, (R-TX) gave NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco a week (which expires on May 11) to explain her agency’s decision and he is asking for details about past spending on magicians and comedians.

Senator Scott Brown, (R-MA) says “This is a low point even by Washington’s standards” and he added, “The best magic that NOAA could perform would be to make this wasteful spending disappear.”

And that’s what happened within days of the May 1 posting. So the day-long session at a quarterly training exercise put on by NOAA and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which part of Commerce’s Leadership Effectiveness and Advancement Program, will not feature a “magic of change” session.

Patricia McBride-Finneran, the NOAA administrative officer who placed the solicitation told Government Executive magazine, “This is a program in which we train potential managers — just a one-day conference, where we teach about different things that pertain to government, such as working with Congress.” It is only intended for an audience of 45 federal workers.

This comes a little over a month after the General Services Administration found itself in hot water over extravagant spending at a Las Vegas training conference in 2010. There the agency hired a clown and a (self-proclaimed) mind reader. A meetings planner who reviewed the spending for the biannual Western Regions GSA training conference says that the GSA overspent, including spending $130,000 on six scouting trips before the group met in October 2010. Some question whether a training conference like this (which included staff from four out of 11 regions) is necessary at all.

Steve Ellis, vice president for the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense tells the Associated Press he’s surprised that NOAA would try to hire a magician after the GSA scandal raised people’s awareness about silly conference spending.

Next week the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will act on NOAA’s budget bill. Since NOAA has been a target Republican budget cutting efforts in the past it might behoove the important scientific agency to steer clear of the illusion of government waste, less Congressional budget choppers saw it in half.

Magic

By: The Pussycat Dolls

Pick a card any card, that’s what he told me
I took it to rodeo and it worked like magic for me
Spa massage a lap of the lux
His’ and her’s, flying spurs, automatical rush

I’m charming, don’t charm on a chain
Don’t hate me hate the game
I can wave my wand and like that
Now we all alone

Just like that your mine
Like magic, magic, magic
With just one blink of an eye
Like magic, magic, magic

I know I caught you by surprise
Like magic, magic, magic
Won’t be the same after tonight
Like magic, magic, magic
Like magic, na, na, na, na, na, na

Now you see, now you don’t
I got this trick to show ya
Disappear when he act upon ya
For you know ill be alright up on ya

Juicy Coutures and night at the bars
Turning back [unverified]
Valet lift up the door

I’m charming, don’t charm on a chain
Don’t hate me hate the game
I can wave my wand and like that
Now we all alone

Just like that you’re mine
Like magic, magic, magic
With just one blink of an eye
Like magic, magic, magic

I know I caught you by surprise
Like magic, magic, magic
Won’t be the same after tonight
Like magic, magic, magic

Just like that you’re mine
Like magic, magic, magic
With just one blink of an eye
Like magic, magic, magic

I know I caught you by surprise
Like magic, magic, magic
Won’t be the same after tonight
Like magic, magic, magic
Like magic, na, na, na, na, na
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na

Abracadabra, I got to have ya
He don’t realize what were doin’
Hypnotized by illusions in the club
Abracadabra, I got to have ya, spread your eyes
Where attention blow your mind

When I get you out the club
I’ll wave my hands tonight
Make him my man tonight

I’m charming, don’t charm on a chain
Don’t hate me hate the game
I can wave my hand
And like that now we all alone

Just like that you’re mine
Like magic, magic, magic
With just one blink of an eye
Like magic, magic, magic

I know I caught you by surprise
Like magic, magic, magic
Won’t be the same after tonight
Like magic, magic, magic

Just like that you’re mine
Like magic, magic, magic
With just one blink of an eye
Like magic, magic, magic

I know I caught you by surprise
Like magic, magic, magic
Won’t be the same after tonight
Like magic, magic, magic
Like magic, na, na, na, na, na, na
Na, na, na, na, na, na

Songwriters: Tim Mosley, Jerome Harmon, Ezekiel Lewis, Balewa Muhammad, Patrick
Smith, Candice Nelson
Performed by The Pussycat Dolls
(c) 2008 Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

Type-2 diabetes used to be called adult-onset diabetes. But that had to change when so many kids, some as young as 5, began contracting the disease that stems from poor nutrition and obesity.

Overweight and Sedentary Kids Have Higher Risk of Type-2 Diabetes, Photo courtesy of Digital Vision

Now fully one-third of all kids between the ages of 10 and 17 are on track to get diabetes because they are overweight. That means people are living with this chronic disease from an early age and it will follow them throughout their lifetime.

University of Sydney researcher Tim Gill says, “With diabetes developing younger in life, it means people now have the disease for a longer period and will move onto more intensive and expensive therapy earlier, and require it longer.”

Doctors are seeing cirrhosis in seven-year-olds and strokes in five-year-olds. And kids are having heart attacks at age 20.

In our super-sized society, a sedentary lifestyle in front of the TV or computer combined with fast food nutrition is creating a national health crisis.

And one that may be worse than doctors realized.

A four-year study just wrapped up and found that it’s much tougher to treat diabetes in children 10-17 than in adults. Scientists also found that diabetes develops much faster in this age population and is difficult to combat with three standard therapies.

Dr. David M. Nathan led the study and says, “It’s frightening how severe this metabolic disease is in children.” The director of the diabetes center at Massachusetts General Hospital adds, “It’s really got a hold on them, and it’s hard to turn around.”

Girth of Youth Worries Doctors, Photo courtesy of Peter Dazeley/Getty Images

Most doctors agree that starving the obesity crisis starts with a heavy helping of prevention. Parents need to jump in and make their children understand that diabetes once contracted is a lifelong disease. The honorary president of the Brussels-based International Diabetes Federation says, “We don’t have a solution to this except to do better things about prevention.”

Since 1980 the number of cases of child-onset diabetes has tripled. Every year 3,600 kids become diabetic, adding to the eventual healthcare costs for us all. The National Diabetics Education Program estimates at about 215,000 kids have diabetes. While most of those are type-1 the type-2 kids are catching up.

Dr. Paul Zimmet says, “It’s very hard to tell a 12-year-old that they’re going to be on medication for the rest of their life.”

Robin Goland, a member of the research team and co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center in New York tells the New York Times, “The research is the first large study of Type 2 diabetes in children, ‘because this didn’t used to exist.’”

Healthy Nutrition Lowers Diabetes Risk, Photo courtesy of YMCA Diabetes Prevention Program

Prior to the 1990s type-2 diabetes in kids was almost unheard of and now it is starting to outpace type-1 also known as juvenile diabetes.

Both forms of the disease cause high blood sugar, but their underlying causes are different.

Type 1 occurs when the patient begins destroying pancreatic cells that make insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar levels. For this type, patients must take insulin.

Scientists don’t yet understand why people are getting type-2 diabetes but they know that inactive and obese people seem to develop the disease when they gain weight. There is also a genetic predisposition both to the disease and to put on weight, both of which may be involved in the onset of the disease. In type-2 diabetes the pancreas still produces insulin — though not enough — and the body doesn’t process it properly. That leads to a common condition called insulin resistance. Type-2 diabetics often have high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Many people can be adequately treated initially by changing their diets, exercising and taking a pill. But eventually most need insulin to control the disease.

Poorly controlled diabetes leads to more severe health problems, including eye problems, nerve damage, heart disease, kidney failure and amputations. Since the childhood type-2 diabetes study showed how difficult it is to control the disease in the hormone-filled teen years, in theory, kids who develop diabetes could begin suffering chronic complications much earlier in life than previous generations who became diabetic as adults. Dr. Nathan is worried about what this means for young people.

He says, “I fear that these children are going to become sick earlier in their lives than we’ve ever seen before.”

The Canadian government wants to know exactly what its scientists are saying to the media. A few months ago the Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper tightened a five-year-old communications policy at Environment Canada where it began watching and recording what the agency’s scientists are saying, especially about climate change, wildlife and the Arctic.

Page from November 2007 Media Relations Protocol, Environment Canada

The protocol has been in effect since November 2007 but a polar conference in Montreal at the end of April presented rare opportunity to see the science minders en masse. At a conference of hundreds of scientists from all over the world it was easy to spot the Canadian ones — they all had shadows, hanging on their every word.

A week before the International Polar Year conference began all Environment Canada scientists received an e-mail with their muzzled marching orders. It says, “If you are approached by the media, ask them for their business card and tell them that you will get back to them with a time for interview. Send a message to your media relations contact and they will organize the interview. They will most probably be with you during the interview to assist and record.”

The memo, signed by Kristina Fickes, an Environment Canada senior communications adviser, goes on to say that recordings of interviews are to be forwarded to the department’s media relations headquarters in Ottawa.

Science Minder (L) and Canadian Scientist (R) at Montreal IPY Conference in April

It may be consistent with the government’s communication policy but many believe that there is a warped obsession with information control within the Harper government.

A senior Environment Canada scientist who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions from Ottawa says, “Until now such a crude heavy-handed approach to muzzle Canadian scientists, prior to a significant international Arctic science conference hosted by Canada, would have been unthinkable.”

He says that the memo is clearly designed to intimidate Environment Canada scientists. He calls the move unethical and says it’s very embarrassing to those in the international world of science.

University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver says the government’s email instructions to polar scientists is “unbelievable.” A vocal critic of the federal government silencing and muzzling scientists for several years he says, “It’s going from bad to worse.”

Weaver says having media minders take charge of arranging interviews and sending copies of the recordings to Ottawa is reminiscent of the way the Soviet Union used to send KGB agents to conferences with scientists during the Cold War. He says Weaver. “It’s an affront to democracy.”

No one knows exactly what prompted the government-wide policy but its had the chilling effect of reducing media coverage on climate change by 80 percent since going into effect in 2007. And during that time the number of media strategists, information officers and science minders on the federal payroll has risen to almost 4,500.

Dr. Kristi Miller, Barred from Speaking to Press Because Her Research Found Too Many Salmon Are Dying

At the time she said, “I cannot speak to the press…it’s an unfortunate situation and I do hope that this policy doesn’t not undermine the public credibility or relevance of Canadian government science.”

After the Montreal polar conference memo went public on April 25, Environment Minister Peter Kent defended the policy, calling it standard practice. He said, “Communications management is a widely respected and essential tool of any large organization.” He went on to say, “Our scientists are free to address questions regarding science but my friends should remember that when it comes to policy issues ministers speak for the department.”

Weaver says, “The current administration in Canada feels it’s really important to control the information that’s being disseminated to the public.” He adds, “There is a fear about science.”

Weaver also says the instructions to polar scientists are also “absurd” since anyone — including a journalist — is allowed to ask questions after presentations at scientific conferences. It is also common for the media to conduct impromptu interviews with speakers immediately following sessions to clarify details before filing stories on tight deadlines.

In February, Canadian journalists protested, demanding the government allow more open media access to federal scientists. Two weeks later, one of the world’s leading scientific journals, Nature, accused Canada of muzzling its scientists.

David Tarasick, Barred from Discussing His Ozone Hole Findings until Government Said He Could Talk

Environment Canada scientist David Tarasick was part of an international team involved in a study that found the largest recorded ozone hole above the Arctic. He was forbidden last fall by Environment Canada for several weeks from speaking to the media about the study or his part in it.

In Dr. Miller’s case, her salmon investigation seemed to suggest that fish might have been exposed to a virus associated with cancer. That suggestion raised many questions, including whether the virus might have been imported by the local aquaculture industry. But Miller couldn’t speak about it thanks to the government’s communications policy.

At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting held in February in Vancouver, many scientists, journalists and members of the public groused about the state of communication since Stephen Harper became Prime Minister in 2006.

Postmedia News reporter Margaret Munro told a AAAS session that the muzzling of scientists is worse when the topic is controversial.

She says, “The more controversial the story, the less likely you are to talk to the scientists. They (government media relations staff) just stonewall. If they don’t like the question you don’t get an answer.”

Munro says because reporters were denied the opportunity to question Dr. Miller about her work, important public policy issues went unanswered.

She says, “You have a government that is micromanaging the message, obsessively. The Privy Council Office (which works for the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper) seems to vet everything that goes out to the media.”

But senior scientist Thomas Pedersen at University of Victoria says vital research on the environment and health is being suppressed. And he sees a political motive.

He says, “The Prime Minister is keen to keep control of the message, I think to ensure that the government won’t be embarrassed by scientific findings of its scientists that run counter to sound environmental stewardship. I suspect the federal government would prefer that its scientists don’t discuss research that points out just how serious the climate change challenge is.”

With accusations of poor environmental policy and secrecy around oil extraction in the tar sands of Alberta, chemical pollution of the pristine Arctic and Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol earlier this year, the Canadian government wants to keep set the conversation on its terms. That’s the number one rule of public relations. Unfortunately, it has to keep the public in the dark and the scientists silent to do that.

The 2007 communications protocol for Environment Canada scientists states, “Just as we have one department we should have one voice. Interviews sometimes present surprises to ministers and senior management. Media relations will work with staff on how best to deal with the call (an interview request from a journalist). This should include asking the programme expert to respond with approved lines.”

Dr. Weaver calls it simply, “Orwellian.”

Since the 1960s theoretical phsycists have been working with a veritable elementary particle zoo that underlies the more familiar nucleic parts of atoms — electrons, protons and neutrons. And slowly over decades and with the help of expensive atom smashers those theorized particles are being experimentally observed, thus moving from theory into reality.

Six Types of Quarks over Three Generations

It all started with Murray Gell-Mann, who noticed that during a Stanford linear accelerator experiment where protons collided with electrons traveling near the speed of light that three shadowy blobs appeared inside the atomic nucleii. He called these new fundamental building blocks of atoms quarks. Protons and neutrons are the subatomic particles also known as baryons.

In particle physics, the baryon family refers to particles that are made up of three quarks. Quarks form a group of six particles that differ in their masses and charges. The two lightest quarks, the so-called “up” and “down” quarks, form the two commonly known atomic components, protons and neutrons. Scientists have found all the baryons that are composed of the three lightest quarks — up, down and strange — quarks. But only very few baryons with heavy quarks have been observed in the lab. They can only be generated artificially in particle accelerators and are highly unstable.

Now several years after the Large Hadron Collider below the Franco-Swiss border began recreating the moments following the Big Bang in the Universe particle physicists have put another theoretical particle puzzle to rest.

Cornell University physicist James Alexander says the discovery of the new Xi_b* (pronounced ky-bee-star) particle is “another brick in the wall.”

The Xi_b* particle belongs to the so-called beauty baryons, particles that all contain a heavy bottom quark, also known as a beauty quark.

Researchers from University of Zurich’s Physics Institute detected a baryon with one light and two heavy quarks. Xi_b* has one up, one strange and one bottom quark. With this observation by physicists Claude Amsler, Vincenzo Chiochia and Ernest Aguiló two of the three baryons theorized to have that usb composition have been experimentally observed.

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector found evidence of the new particle’s rapid decay but didn’t see it directly because it is such a short-lived subatomic particle, existing for just a fraction of a second before decaying into 21 equally fleeting particles.

Following the discovery CMS physicist Vincenzo Chiochia, a co-discoverer of the new particle, told Symmetry Breaking magazine, “Finding this particle is really very hard.”

Chiochia says, “Finding this complicated decay in such a messy event makes us confident in our abilities to find other new particles in the future.”

CMS scientists believe they have confirmed Xi_b*’s existence to a sigma level of five, which means the researchers are 99.99 percent confident that the result is more than a chance occurrence.

Known and Theorized Subatomic Particles Make the Particle Zoo of the Standard Model

The discovery of the new particle confirms the long-held theory of how quarks bind. It is part of quantum chromodynamics, which predicts how quarks combine to form heavy particles, but had never before been observed. It also helps to explain the strong interaction, one of the four basic forces of physics which determines the structure of all matter.

This is only the second particle discovery at CERN since the LHC began smashing atoms in 2008.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but what the beholder beholds is just math. We don’t see math in a pretty face but it is math that makes it appear beautiful.

Golden Spiral Made from Whirling Triangles, Based on Fibonacci Sequence

Scientists have found the Golden Ratio throughout nature and the man-made world. It appears in the spirals of seashells and the great pyramids of Giza. It can be found in the Parthenon in Athens and all over your own body. Expressed as a number the Golden Ratio is 1.618.

It starts with the Fibonacci Numbers where every number (after the second) is the sum of the two preceding numbers. For example 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…

The Golden Ratio is derived by dividing the Fibonacci Numbers. For example 1/1=1, 2/1=2, 3/2=1.5, 5/3=1.666…, 8/5=1.6, 13/8=1.625, 21/13=1.61538…, 34/21=1.61905…, 55/34=1.61764…, 89/55=1.61861…

Like its neighbor irrational number Pi, the Golden Ratio or Phi has no equivalent fraction and the numbers after its decimal point go on forever. Though it is irrational it is very important in nature and demonstrates a high degree of efficiency. The Golden Ratio is found in the patterns we see in sunflowers, pine cones and even pineapples. This is largely because one of the best ways to efficiently pack things tightly together is using the Fibonacci sequence. Just look at the petals of flowers and leaves on many plants. They are designed to maximize sunlight and water transport. And they all utilize the Golden Ratio.

Population can be measured with this ratio in mind and we can even tell how attractive someone is by how they fit the Golden Ratio. A recent contest in England proved that.

Florence Colgate, Most Beautiful Face of Britain

18-year-old Florence Colgate took home the prize from Lorraine Cosmetics for her near-perfect symmetry and mathematically flawless face. The young seaside fish and chip fry girl who is studying for exams to study business management in college has been dubbed Britain’s most beautiful face and there is science to back up that claim.

Scientists at the St. Andrews University perception lab determined that Colgate has a perfectly proportioned face. The distance between the eyes is 44 percent of the whole width of her face. The ideal golden ratio girl would have eye distance of 46 percent. Experts also believe the relative distance between eyes and mouth should be just over a third of the measurement from hairline to chin. Colgate’s ratio is 32.8 per cent.

PhD student Carmen Lefèvre says Colgate has all the classic signs of beauty. She says, “She has large eyes, high cheekbones, full lips and a fair complexion. Symmetry appears to be a very important cue to attractiveness.”

While Colgate is the current mathematical beauty scientists have conducted several studies on attractiveness over the years and the most aesthetically pleasing people are closely aligned with the Golden Ratio. 1.618 gets repeated throughout nature and is the ideal for many body proportions.

For example, the ideal distance from the pupil of a person’s eye to the center of the chin is 1.618 times the distance from the pupil to the end of the nose. The ideal length of a face is also 1.618 times its width and 1.618 times the distance between the eyes and the person’s mouth. In other words, wherever you think classical beauty, you’re probably just responding to the beautiful symmetry and repeating mathematical perfection.

RF Mask of Facial Beauty, Designed by Stephen Marquardt, Female (L), Male (R)

It is the ratio between the length of your hand and the length of your lower arm (between your elbow and your wrist). It’s also the ratio of your total height to the distance between your head and your fingertips. It can even appear deep inside your cells in the structure of DNA. The DNA molecule measures 34 angstroms long by 21 angstroms wide for each full cycle of its double helix spiral. And a cross-section of a DNA double helix forms a decagon, which in essence is two pentagons rotated 36 degrees so each spiral of DNA double helix traces out a pentagon. And the ratio of the diagonal of a pentagon to its side is 1.618:1.

In 2007 scientists at Cambridge University found that the closer a woman’s hips to waist ratio is to 0.7 the sexier her walk is. So, a woman with 25 inch waist and 36 inch hips, has all she needs for a perfect walk. For men, a ratio of 0.9 shows a strong correlation with general health and fertility.

Jessica Alba, Modern Day Beauty, According to the Math

The report also reveals that singer Shania Twain and actresses Liz Hurley are ranked among perfectly formed celebrities.

Now there’s an app to see where you fall on the scale of stunning. The Ugly Meter uses a virtual structure to measure your eyes, nose, mouth and the size and shape of your face. It then comes up with a rating based on the measurements and spits out a score based on a 100 point scale. Ugly Meter scans a user’s photo looking for contours, symmetry and proportions.

Joe Overline, Ugly Meter App Maker

Jo Overline made the app and admits that his ugly mug is just that. According to his own invention, he scores a measly 32. But he’s laughing all the way to the bank. The app he built at his company Dapper Gentlemen just knocked Angry Birds of its perch as the top-selling app in the iTunes store.

Arizona-based Overline started the $.99 app as a joke. But the $4.99 Pro version is much more scientifically robust, including using the Golden Ratio for facial symmetry.

He says Brad Pitt scores a 91 out of 100 on the Ugly Meter while a photo of Angelina Jolie gets an 86. The app suggests that her eyes are a bit too close together although the perfect size for her head.

While holding a smartphone up to a photo removes a lot of the scientific validity that went into building the app, it shows that mathematical proportion and symmetry underlie what we commonly view as beautiful.

When Ernest Callenbach wrote the environmental page-turner Ecotopia in 1975 he drew the vision of his environmental utopian society from the latest science available at the time.

Ernest Callenback, Author of Ecotopia, Dies at 83

The 83-year-old author died at his home in California earlier this month. His famous book sold over one million copies, became a mainstay in college classrooms and painted a portrait of a sustainable future, some of which we are just starting to realize.

In an interview several years ago, he said, “What has happened in the 30 years since I wrote the book in a million little ways people have begun to do Ecotopian things. Most of them don’t realize these are Ecotopian things. They’re just good business decisions or they’re an interesting technological thing that somebody has cooked up.”

Before his death from cancer on April 16 he said the world is moving in a decidedly Ecotopian direction where we are rethinking all of our processes — from household to manufacturing. They all have Ecotopian characteristics and Callenbach said the transitions would go faster if we just realized that.

He said, “Anytime somebody invents something that is better it turns out that it not only saves money which has to happen or they won’t do something in our society. But it will also save energy. It will probably take up less space. It will probably be more inherently efficient in terms of the physics and the mechanics of the processes and so on.”

Those are just some of the characteristics of Ecotopia.

Ernest found his footing when he founded the magazine Filme Quarterly in the late 1950s. He grew up on a chicken farm in Pennsylvania where his father taught poultry classes. Callenbach flew the coop and studied cinema in Paris before returning to the U.S. and venturing to University of California to be the assistant editor of the press.

He served as the magazine’s editor until 1991 while also editing the university’s California Natural History Guides.

But as much as he loved his work Callenbach was becoming increasingly concerned about water and sewage problems. Unable to get any publisher to print a futuristic novel about a world that solves its environmental problems he mustered up enough money from friends to self-publish Ecotopia. The book went on to sell over one million copies, became the founding document for the Green Party in Germany and left a lasting impression of a greener future.

Seoul's Cheonggyecheon Urban Creek Reintroduces Nature to the City

Callenbach was an avid country music lover, especially the home-spun stylings of Tammy Wynette and Mary Lou Harris. But according to his son Hans his father who many called Chick held great musical appreciation for another reactionary with political flair, Tom Lehrer.

He tells REALscience, “In addition to being a man of ideas and words, Chick loved a good laugh and he had a mischievous side and a sly smile. I think he would smile thinking about this song, as an east-coaster who got to the west coast and could not believe what he saw and felt there, the Wild West. It will certainly stir up some commentary speaking to our carelessness as a species and need for us fix more things than we break.”

The Wild West is Where I Want to Be

By Tom Lehrer

Spoken intro:
Now if I may indulge in a bit of personal history, a few years ago I worked for a while at the Los Alamos scientific laboratory in New Mexico. I had a job there as a spy. No, I guess you know that the staff out there at that time was composed almost exclusively of spies… of one persuasion or another. And, while I was out there, I came to realize how much the Wild West had changed since the good old days of Wyatt Earp and Home on the Range, and here then is a modern cowboy ballad commemorating that delightful metamorphosis called The Wild West Is Where I Wanna Be.

Along the trail you’ll find me lopin’
Where the spaces are wide open,
In the land of the old A.E.C. (yea-hah!)
Where the scenery’s attractive,
And the air is radioactive,
Oh, the wild west is where I wanna be.

Mid the sagebrush and the cactus,
I’ll watch the fellas practice
Droppin’ bombs through the clean desert breeze.
I’ll have on my sombrero,
And of course I’ll wear a pair o’
Levis over my lead B.V.D.’s.

Ah will leave the city’s rush,
Leave the fancy and the plush,
Leave the snow and leave the slush
And the crowds.
Ah will seek the desert’s hush,
Where the scenery is lush,
How I long to see the mush-
room clouds.

‘Mid the yuccas and the thistles
I’ll watch the guided missiles,
While the old F.B.I. watches me. (yea-hah!)
Yes, I’ll soon make my appearance
(Soon as I can get my clearance),
‘Cause the wild west is where I wanna be.

Music and lyrics by Tom Lehrer
(c) 1960

A fireball from space screamed across the weekend morning sky last Sunday, creating a sonic boom as it broke the sound barrier and shaking parts of California and Nevada. That was the signal from space that put Bob Ward, Scott Sanford and David Gheesling on the same trajectory. The three men came from Arizona, California and Georgia to try to find pieces of the minivan-sized meteorite that broke up over the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Meteorite Hunter Bob Ward Finds Fireball Fragments in Lotus, CA

They all met in Lotus, a town born during the California gold rush in the 1800s.

Ward who runs Iron from the Sky Meteorites has been hunting meteorites for 20 years. When he heard about the fireball event last weekend he hopped in his car and drove 14 hours from Prescott, Arizona.

He says, “This is an opportunity of a lifetime and this may never ever happen again in my lifetime.” As the first person to retrieve two pea-sized fragments of the meteorite Ward says his trip was well worth it.

He is quick to point out that this event is only the third time a meteorite has been known to fall in the state of California in recorded history. He says, “There is material in here that predates the formation of our sun — 4.8 billion years or older.”

A fireball event of this size happens about once a year somewhere in the world. But most of the time they occur over uninhabited areas or the ocean. And most of the meteors we incorrectly label shooting stars in the night sky are the size of dust or pebbles.

So it’s a huge scientific opportunity as well as being an exciting moment of treasure hunting.

NASA Meteorite Expert Scott Sanford Hunts Fireball Fragments

When Ward found the first piece of the meteorite on Tuesday between a baseball field and a park, he knew it was a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite, a rare and exciting find. Scientists confirmed that the rock he found dates back to the early solar system, some 4-5 billion years ago. He could tell it was a “CM” meteorite because the nickel-sized rock showed “fusion crusts” which form during atmospheric entry on one side. Excitedly, Ward says, “It is one of the oldest things known to man and one of the rarest types of meteorites there is.”

Without studying his find, he says it contains amino acids and organic compounds that are very important to science.

First Two Remnants of Carbonaceous Chondrite Meteorite Found by Bob Ward

Don Yeomens from NASA’s Near Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the meteorite contains two of the most important chemicals that science seeks — carbon and a form of water. While this type of meteorite is very unusual, according to NASA scientists, it appears to be full of water (not in a liquid form) and out in space it would have made a good candidate for a new asteroid mining company that launched this week.

UCLA meteorite expert and cosmochemist John Wasson hopes that the hundreds of meteorite dealers and collectors who flock to the area this week will find big chunks of the space rock. He says it’s critical to recover as many fragments as soon as they can because rain will degrade the rocks, causing them to lose their sodium and potassium.

And it is worth hunting. The meteorite market can be quite lucrative. The going rate for a meteorite like this is about $10,000 per gram. The two pieces that Ward found are about 10 grams each.

Atlanta Meteorite Collector Dave Gheesling Joins Hunt in California

And that makes the space rock fragments so valuable.

NASA Ames is organizing a meteorite search party this weekend in an effort to recover as much of the rock as they can before weather changes, turning a sleepy California village into a boom town once more.

The fledgling commercial space industry hasn’t even fully achieved liftoff and already there’s a new space start-up eager to pave the way for a whole new commercial space industry — mining. And in the process the company could expand the scope of natural resources as robotic spacecraft search the solar system for extractable precious metals and water to be used as rocket propellant.

Peter Diamandis, the founder of the X-Prize Foundation (which first put space travel in private sector hands) leads the Seattle-based Planetary Resources group of deep-pocketed business investors which also include, explorer-director James Cameron, Google co-founder Larry Page, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, space tourist and software billionaire Charles Simonyi, former Netscape and Amazon.com executive Ram Shiriam and Ross Perot Jr.

The team thinks that gold, precious metals used in electronics and water can be found on near-Earth asteroids. And they are going to go look for it in the next couple of years.

What a Future Asteroid Being Mined for Natural Resources Looks Like

The plan is to send small commercially built spaceships to squeeze water and valuable minerals out of space rocks that regularly whiz by Earth. It will cost untold millions if not billions of dollars and may not amount to much. But if it all works, the payoff could be huge, revolutionizing how we view space travel and opening up the solar system for future generations.

Planetary Resources says it is poised to initiate prospecting missions targeting resource-rich asteroids that are easily accessible.

Right now, going to space is a lot like going camping. You have to take all your provisions with you, carry enough to get by until you return to Earth and you have to plan for surprises so you always pack more than you need.

Since we first put men on the moon in the 1960s scientific exploration has included the search for water and minerals that could be used in some far-off, science fiction-inspired future to fuel spacecraft and even establish permanent off-Earth settlements.

The seasoned team at Planetary Resources announced their plans this week at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Members who include NASA veterans responsible for the Mars rover program believe that process begins with the extraction of abundant natural resources contained in asteroids.

Dr. Diamandis recognizes that the idea is crazy. But he’s wanted to be an asteroid miner since he was a teenager. He says, “I always viewed it as a glamorous vision of where we could go.”

The founder of the X-Prize Foundation which launched commercial spaceflight in the first place believes it’s not only possible but he is determined to make it happen in the next eight years. He says the company’s vision “is to make the resources of space available to humanity.”

But before Planetary Resources can collect samples and cash in on the high price of gold here on Earth, they will have to do some real science to determine the make up of the asteroids they are targeting.

To be considered a good candidate asteroid, it must be easier to get to from Earth than the moon. Planetary Resources has identified 1,500 space rocks left over from the formation of the solar system that fit the bill. And astronomers are finding more and more asteroids every year.

Planetary Resources Spacecraft Scans Asteroid for Valuable Minerals and Water

This would be the equivalent of going camping with electricity and running water as opposed to really roughing it. Right now, space travel is pretty rough all things considered. The ability to extract minerals could make it much more sophisticated in a short period of time.

Planetary Resources is not the only group looking at the suitability of asteroids. Since scrapping the idea to go back to the moon and to Mars in the next decade, NASA has trained its attention on asteroids with the intention of sending a manned mission to one by 2025.

But before people can zip off to an asteroid on the way to Mars or beyond, scientists who know very little about asteroids must develop a quick and easy way to look at a candidate space rock and determine its value from a resource perspective. To do that Planetary Resources is developing a fleet of explorer robots that can venture to near-Earth asteroids and take a took at their offerings.

They are looking for iron, nickel, gold, platinum and palladium. The Bellevue, WA-based company says some near-Earth asteroids contain platinum group metals (including ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinumin) in much higher concentrations than the richest mines on Earth.

The website says, “In space, a single platinum-rich 500 meter wide asteroid contains about 174 times the yearly world output of platinum, enough to fill a basketball court to four times the height of the rim.”

It has a similarly optimistic view of water on asteroids. A single water-rich 500-meter-wide asteroid could contain 80 times more water than the largest supertanker could carry and could provide. And, according to Planetary Resources if the water were converted to rocket propellant it would equal over 200 times the rocket fuel needed to launch all the rockets in human history.

But do asteroids contain the treasure trove of minerals and water that Planetary Resources hopes?

Asteroid exploration has been part of the human space agenda since 1991 when spacecraft Galileo fly by asteroid 951 Gaspra on its way to Jupiter. But in over 20 years the asteroid knowledge base hasn’t grown much. Every mission involving asteroids seems to rewrite what science knows about the space rocks.

Planetary Resources says, “Our knowledge of these celestial neighbors has been revolutionized by a small set of US and international missions carried out since that time. With each visit or fly-by, the science on asteroids has been rewritten.”

And the newest commercial space company and first in space mining aims to do just that.

It will all start with an array of small spaced-based telescopes.

Leo Space Telescope Gives Private Sector Access to Space Exploration

Leo will lead the charge. The small remote-sensing telescope will sit in low-Earth orbit looking for target asteroids. But Planetary Resources is designing Leo to be more than a rock lookout. The company says, “Leo is capable of surveying for near-Earth asteroids during one orbit, then be retasked for rain forest observation on the next. The possibilities for utility and engagement are only limited by the imagination of the user.”

It calls Leo “the first space telescope within reach of the private citizen.”

To date, space-based telescopes have been the provenance of government agencies and research institutions. And while our taxpayer dollars fund those projects, they remain out of reach for most.

Planetary Resources hopes to launch the first in a series of Leo telescopes within the next 18 to 24 months. The asteroid spotting sentinels will consist of several foot long tubes, weighing just a few pounds and should be small enough to hold in your hand. And they will each run about $10 million, according to company documents.

Though many scientists remain skeptical, Diamandis and his co-founder Eric Anderson have an established track record of profiting from various space ventures. They led the industry in selling rides to space and Diamandis has a separate company that offers weightless plane flights.

Anderson says, “There will be times when we fail and there will be times when we have to pick up the pieces and try again.” But he says the benefits to humanity far outweigh the risk. He adds, “We do understand that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if it’s successful, will be big.”

Curtis Ebbesmeyer recently returned from Alaska, where he visited the area near where the first fishing boat drifted into American coastal waters after being washed out to sea following the devastating Japanese tsunami in March 2011.

The Seattle-based consulting oceanographer has been tracking wayward Nike shoes, rubber duckies and hockey gloves for 25 years. In fact, he is known as one of the top flotsam experts in the world and is the author of Flotsametrics and the Floating World. And with decades of practice he’s pretty good at predicting what will float past thanks to wind patterns and ocean currents.

Japanese Tsunami Debris Island off Coast of Japan, courtesy of US Navy

He predicted that the U.S. mainland would start seeing the most buoyant pieces of debris from Japan sometime this year. After studying drifting ships and other things that float, he thought the first of dozens of Japanese fishing boats would begin to hit the U.S. west coast in February.

Many other scientists thought that was a bold prediction and one that seemed too early by their standards. When the first Japanese boat found its way to the north Pacific waters off Canada, Ebbesmeyer thought the sighting was a bit later than he thought.

He says, “Judging by the devastation in Japan I was expecting dozens of boats. You know we have about 100 boats that we’ve recorded in the last 200 years so I was expecting a boat in February. I was a little surprised that it took so long.”

Japanese Ghost Ship, Ryou-Un Maru Floats Near British Columbia before Coast Guard Scuttles Her

During a spring trip to Craig, Alaska, Ebbesmeyer taught kids how to spot Japanese tsunami debris, how to use a geiger counter and even asked them for solutions to get rid of the refuse.

So far he says hundreds if not thousands of four-foot black styrofoam buoys have washed ashore — mostly from oyster farms off the coast of Japan. They are appearing, pretty much all at once, Ebbesmeyer says, from Kodiak, Alaska all the way to northern California.

He tells KUOW’s Weekday says, “When you have a disaster like a container spill the debris comes ashore all at once and that’s what we’ve seen since last October.”

Now Ebbesmeyer says he’s expecting more to wash ashore, including refrigerators, cameras and boats. But so far there’s only been the one squid, which the U.S. Coast Guard sank in deep water near the Queen Charlotte Islands.

He says, “Refrigerators float because the insulation around the outside is styrofoam.” A couple of years ago Ebbesmeyer tracked a container spill of little refrigerators which washed ashore months later. So he knows that they float quite well.

The Coast Guard says the Japanese ghost ship was floating in shipping lanes and posed a risk as an unmanned, unmarked, unlit vessel. Therefore it had to be sunk, despite the fact that it was still carrying diesel fuel on board.

Ebbesmeyer says that we are woefully unprepared for the Japanese tsunami debris and that the decision to sink the 200-foot boat shows that.

He says, “We’re in reactionary mode when things show up and we react but we don’t have time to plan.”

3 Japanese Buoy Types Washing Ashore from Oregon to Alaska, Photo by John Ingraham

The debris began arriving last October in what Ebbesmeyer says was the wake-up call. Now, he says, this boat has given us another wake-up call. He says, “I think we are going to be driven by more and more events of different things washing up until the main event starts maybe this fall in October.”

He says that’s when we are going to see a lot of flotsam washing ashore up and down the U.S. west coast from Alaska to California. Right now, Ebbesmeyer says we are “behind the curve” and need to get ahead of it.

The Soccer Ball with Japanese Writing, "Hang in There, Murakami!!" Came from a School in the Tsunami Zone Washed up on An Alaskan Island. Photo by David Baxter.

NOAA spokesman Doug Helton says he is working with the U.S. State Department and Japanese officials to return the two items.

He tells the Anchorage Daily News, “There have been other items that were suspected, but this is the first one that we’re aware of that has the credentials that may make it possible to positively identify it.”

Baxter and his wife are in the process of returning the soccer ball to 16 year-old Misaki Murakami and the volleyball to 19 year-old Shiori Sato. According to a NOAA update Murakami received the ball in 2005 as a gift from his classmates in third grade before moving to a new elementary school. He lost everything in the 2011 Japan tsunami and is grateful that this sentimental object has been located. The NOAA update also says that Sato’s house washed away during the March 11, 2011 tsunami.

Helton says that a new computer model released earlier this month puts Alaska as one of the first stops for tsunami debris from Japan. He says, “You can see that the Gulf of Alaska is going to get high windage items, floats, Styrofoam, soccer balls. Those things could be moving pretty quickly. Wood and construction materials will be a lot slower.”

In a late March post on his blog Beachcomber’s Alert Ebbesmeyer began tracking the 170-foot squid boat Ryou-Un Maru. Using the OSCURS computer model which his oceanographer friend Jim Ingraham built, the two tracked the ship’s path using wind speed and ocean currents.

OSCURS Model Maps Path of Ryou-Un Maru Japanese Ghost Ship, courtesy of Jim Ingraham, Driftbusters, Inc.

They wanted to see where the vessel would eventually make landfall, somewhere near the northern tip of British Columbia. As it turns out, the Coast Guard scuttled the ship about 150 miles south of Alaska.

Ebbesmeyer thinks that Japanese tsunami debris in coming months and years is going to overwhelm beach clean up efforts because it’ll just be too much stuff. After talking with middle and high school students in Alaska he’s decided that beachside rock pits that commonly dot the coastline there could be a good place to store the debris as it washes ashore before it can be sorted and recycled or returned.

He says, “There will be mementos that the Japanese will want to come over and retrieve themselves.”

But the rest he says needs to be removed from beaches and “sequestered so we can sort it judiciously.”

Based on running the OSCURS model for the last 30 years, a lot of experience with flotsam and the wind factor, Ebbesmeyer says that the U.S. west coast is going to be getting a big pile of Japanese debris sometime around October. Based on ocean currents the coast of Washington and Vancouver Island could receive up to 90 percent of the debris that’s on its way.

Ebbesmeyer is traveling around the state telling people to get ready and in his words “to gear up.”

A minivan-sized meteorite woke many California and Nevada residents yesterday morning as it streaked across the sky, probably less than five miles above Earth. The low altitude and high speed aligned to create a sonic boom, which occurs when an object travels faster than the speed of sound and the pressure waves before and after an object get compressed, merging into one sound shock wave at the speed of sound, also known as mach 1 (761 mph.)

Residents from Reno to Las Vegas and from San Francisco to Sacramento all heard, felt and saw the same thing — a fireball racing across the low horizon accompanied by a loud explosion.

Map of Sightings of Sunday's Supersonic Meteorite

Many people hopped out of bed thinking they were experiencing an earthquake. Some thought a car had hit their homes. But it was a 12-foot solid piece of space rock racing through the atmosphere and burning up as it shrieked across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Small chunks of the meteorite probably hit the ground, according to astronomers.

Meteor physicist Elizabeth Silber at Western University in Ontario, Canada tracks fireball events. She followed Sunday’s supersonic meteorite using infrasound, which allowed her to triangulate the location of the bolide, high in the California mountains.

Meteors generate infrasound waves, which appear at the frequency below 20Hz, the range of human hearing. Animals such as whales, dolphins, elephants and giraffes use infrasound to communicate with each other across long distances because the infrasound waves travel far without losing signal quality. Avalanches, ocean waves, waterfalls and earthquakes also create infrasound, which scientists like Silber can track.

Natural and Manmade Infrasound, courtesy of Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

He thinks that the space rock was a sporadic meteor and not a fragment from a comet (a much rarer event). The Earth is passing through the tail debris field of the comet Thatcher and dust to pea-sized chunks of the comet have been making spectacular nighttime viewing during the annual Lyrid meteor shower, which was just winding down when the unusual meteor disrupted a quiet Sunday.

Cooke says this was a big event and the comet packed quite a punch which caused the sonic boom. He says, “The energy is estimated at a whopping 3.8 kilotons of TNT — about one fourth the energy of the [atomic] bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”

It was enough for Silber to detect from Canada and it roused Reno resident Nicole Carlsen. She tells the Associated Press, “I kept looking for earthquake information, but (there was) nothing. I even checked the front of my house to make sure no one ran into the garage. I wish I had seen the meteor.”

Bright Fireball Zips across Cloudless Morning Sky in Nevada, courtesy of KTVN viewer Lisa Warren

Many people in a 600-mile range thought the sonic boom was actually an earthquake but the U.S. Geological Survey didn’t report any quakes in the area at the time. The American Meteor Society says it was a fireball, which is an extremely bright meteor. Member and man who wrote the book on observing meteors Robert Lunsford says, “It happens all the time, but most are in daytime and are missed. This one was extraordinarily bright in the daylight.”

He says most fireballs are visible at about 50 miles above the ground but a sonic boom won’t occur unless the meteor breaks up pretty close to Earth, like about five miles.

Lunsford says, “If you hear a sonic boom or loud explosion, that’s a good indication that some fragments may have reached the ground.”

While somewhat rare, the AMS has logged over 2,000 reports of nine fireball events so far this year.

Now the search begins for meteorite fragments. Could be a job (and episode) for the Meteorite Men, Geoff Notkin and Steve Arnold.

If you find a fragment of this meteor, please let REALscience know, too! Happy hunting.

Rise and Mobilize on April 22, the 42nd Earth Day.

The international theme of Earth Day this year is Mobilize the Earth. After last year’s call for one billion acts of green, the environmental movement is trying to put all of those individual good deeds into a global push for environmental sustainability, reduction of waste, climate policy and energy efficiency.

To mark the green occasion the environmental arm of Disney — called DisneyNature — is releasing its fourth Earth-centric feature film today. In partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute, Chimpanzee tells the story of orphaned chimp Oscar who finds himself alone in the African jungle until a male chimp Freddie adopts him.

Like the other DisneyNature films a portion of the opening week’s proceeds will be donated to charity — this time the Goodall Institute’s Chimpanzee work. $.20 from every Chimpanzee ticket sold between April 20 and 26 will go toward habitat restoration, education and other chimp-related programs as part of the Disneynature Tchimpounga Nature Reserve Project.

Previous efforts by Disney included partnering with the Nature Conservancy to plant trees and to preserve coral reefs. DisneyNature also partnered with African Wildlife Foundation to ensure the future of lions, cheetahs, and other animals on the African savanna.

Each of these films has debuted just before Earth Day, a global day of celebration and appreciation for the planet on which we all live.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to turn out for the national Earth Day celebration in Washington D.C. on Sunday. Among the entertainers will be Cheap Trick, Dave Mason (frontman for Traffic), Kicking Daisies, Explorers Club as well as numerous political and environmental activists, including Denis Hayes the founder of Earth Day.

Denis Hayes, Earth Day Founder and CEO of the Bullitt Foundation

He considers Earth Day to be a gateway drug to environmentalism. And he hopes it’s one on which everyone gets hooked. As the honorary chair of the global Earth Day Network he says, “We need a shot in the arm. We’ve been pretty disappointed with the environmental movement’s failure to capitalize on things that have gone wrong – the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. These things were all over the headlines, and yet what new policies have they led to?”

But they are only a handful of issues the world faces this Earth Day. Fortunately, there are tens of thousands of events around the world highlighting the problem and millions of ways to make a difference. This Earth Day think about Arctic ice melting, wildlife disappearing, deforestation, oil spills, air pollution and contaminated water.

Earth Day is a moment when people can tell their elected leaders what they want for a better environment. This year that list includes, renewable energy, improved energy efficiency, green jobs, clean air and a healthy environment for our families.

The Earth Day Network is encouraging a billion acts of green to show how serious people are about improving and preserving the environment for generations to come. And that’s why in the Earth Day trailer, activists say, “We are going to show our leaders that we are tired of waiting by inspiring a billion acts of green.”

Whether it is turning off the lights when they aren’t in use, organize a tree planting or bike to work, your actions can tell the world how you are pitching in on Earth Day. Everyday is Earth day but April 22 is just an annual reminder to focus on our precious planet.

McClain Sisters (China, Lauryn and Sierra) at Chimpanzee Premier

Three teen sisters, China, Lauryn and Sierra make up the pop trio McClain Sisters. Their song Rise is featured in the DisneyNature film Chimpanzee. They are the spokesteens for Disney’s community and environmental program Friends for Change, which inspires kids to make change, to rise above their circumstances and improve their communities. Those are also themes from Chimpanzee.

Talking over each other at the Orlando premier of the movie, the sisters say, “And, um, since Friends for Change, we’ve started recycling and turning water off [OVERLAP] — Turning the water off. Exactly, exactly. And lights. Exactly. Stuff like that, so it’s really changed our lives, and we were really excited.”

After seeing very early scenes from Chimpanzee, the sisters created Rise to capture the resilience of one little chimp and ability of a new family of chimps to band together to protect their land from a gang of rivals.

Sierra McClain says, “It’s uplifting, you know, and it’s spiritual and that was a big thing for the movie, you know, how they all had to stick together if they wanted to survive, you know, they had to be together.”

Rise

By: McClain Sisters (Disney Friends for Change)

I used to be afraid of giving up
The road was just too tough
Out here on my own
My path was so alone

But now I see clearly
Everything within me
Is reaching out to the sky
I can see the world with open eyes

You can’t let it pass you
Just take hold and grasp it
Now’s the time to take a chance
With the strength of a thousand men
Climbing to my feet again

So dry those tears from your eyes
And everything will be alright
You know the rainbow’s just in sight
Dust your wings off as you rise
If your heart feels overwhelmed
Just know you’re never by yourself
Put your hands in mine, hold your head up high
And together we’ll rise

That’s what left your head up to the sky
And find yourself asking why?
Never see them out at night
With the hardships of life

But faith is where my heart is
Let energy replace my doubts
Won’t my trials get the best of me
I’m marching forward towards my destiny

You can’t let it pass you
Just take hold and grasp it
Now’s the time to take a chance
With the strength of a thousand men
Climbing to my feet again

So dry those tears from your eyes
And everything will be alright
You know the rainbow’s just in sight
Dust your wings off as you rise
If your heart feels overwhelmed
Just know you’re never by yourself
Put your hands in mine, hold your head up high
And together we’ll rise

Together we can do anything
We’ll rise
We can make it through anything
We’ll rise
Together we can do anything
We’ll rise, we’ll rise, we’ll rise

You can try to hurt me, doubt me and desert me
I feel the will of kings, with my mind I’ll build the sea
And you know a tree will grow and take me in
To safety’s arms, I will descend

So dry those tears from your eyes
And everything will be alright
You know the rainbow’s just in sight
Dust your wings off as you rise
If your heart feels overwhelmed
Just know you’re never by yourself
Put your hands in mine, hold your head up high
And together we’ll rise

Together we can do anything
We’ll rise
We can make it through anything
We’ll rise
Together we can do anything
We’ll rise, we’ll rise, we’ll rise

Together we can do anything
We’ll rise
We can make it through anything
We’ll rise
Together we can do anything
We’ll rise, we’ll rise, we’ll rise

Music and Lyrics by: The McClain Sisters + Mom Shontell and Dad Michael
(c) 2012

Known as the father of Microsoft Word and Excel, billionaire tech titan Charles Simonyi has been to space twice, spending two two-week stints aboard the International Space Station. The high-profile astronaut is a neighbor of Bill Gates just outside of Seattle who recently donated $3 million to outfit the nearby Museum of Flight with his Russian orbital capsule which is housed in the new Charles Simonyi Space Gallery.

Charles Simonyi Practices Superman Move in Zero-Gravity Preparation for His First Space Trip, 2006

Right now, he is touring the country talking about the cultural place of science in society. To do that he is promoting the published work of his father, Hungarian physicist Károly Simonyi. The elder Simonyi published A Cultural History of Physics in his native language in 1979. Since then it has been updated five times and now thanks to his son, the work is being published in English and released in the U.S. for the first time. The younger Simonyi shows that he is more than his wealth, his education and his accomplishments. He is also a good son.

The book chronicles 4,000 years of physics from the Ancient Greeks to the to the end of the 20th Century. The new English “world book” edition features an introduction by physicist Freeman Dyson, a foreword by Charles Simonyi and an epilogue by physicist Ed Witten (who brings the story from the year 2000 to the present.)

Charles Simonyi tells Space.com, “It’s an extraordinary book because it’s written for everyone who is interested in culture either from the humanities side or from the science side.”

A Cultural History of Physics by Karoly Simonyi Reaches English-Speaking World Thanks to Son Charles

After being forced to step down as director at the Hungarian Physics Research Institute for political reasons in the 1960s Károly Simonyi decided to write a book which helps to bridge two seemingly diametrically opposing cultures — the humanities and science.

Science historian C.P. Snow defined the idea of Two Cultures. And other scientific historians have attempted to explore the societal divide between them.

The proud son Simonyi says, “I think science, of course, is very important for everyone to understand — if not the details of science, the role of science in society and how science relates to the rest of our lives and the rest of our pursuits.” And what could be a better way to learn about the connection of science and the humanities he says than through the familiar lens of history.

American physicist Freeman Dyson writes the introduction of the book. He calls Károly Simonyi’s masterwork “a grand monument to the life of its author” whom he says was a teacher first, a scholar second and a scientist third.

Charles Simonyi Poses with His Father's Book Next to His Old Spacesuit

Son Charles penned the book’s foreword. In it he says, “In the politically charged atmosphere of the 1960s in Hungary, his quasi-apolitical personal conduct, based on the age-old virtues of hard work, good character, and charity, was interpreted as political defiance that could not be countenanced by the state.”

At age 17 in another act of political defiance, Charles left Hungary and his parents for the U.S. in search of a better life. At the time and perhaps prophetically the man who would become the only civilian to visit the International Space Station twice knew only two English words, “propellant” and “nozzle.”

Simonyi says the book captures his father’s sense of humor. It even features 17th Century gossip among heavy hitters in science, including an apparent exchange between Sir Isaac Newton and Leibniz.

Newton: He [Leibniz] uses hypotheses rather than arguments resulting from experimentation, accuses me of opinions that I do not hold, and instead of asking questions that should be answered by experiment before they are granted entrance into philosophy, proposes hypotheses that should be accepted and believed before they are examined.

Leibniz: After I was told that Newton had said something unusual about God in the Latin version of his Opticks, I had a look at it and had to laugh over the idea that space is the sensorium of God—as though God, the source of all things, had need of a sensorium. … In metaphysics, this man, it would seem, is not very successful.

Diagrams throughout the book taken from non-Western philosophers exemplify Károly Simonyi’s position that science needs the humanities and that between the two cultures lies an exciting interplay of ideas, emotion and insight about life.

The tome is filled with obscure and illuminating quotations from the great scientific masters, including one from German physicist Max Planck taken from his autobiography.

“My original decision to devote myself to science was a direct result of the discovery which has never ceased to fill me with enthusiasm since my early youth—the comprehension of the far from obvious fact that the laws of human reasoning coincide with the laws governing the sequences of the impressions we receive from the world about us; that, therefore, pure reasoning can enable man to gain an insight into the mechanism of the latter. In this connection, it is of paramount importance that the outside world is something independent from man, something absolute, and the quest for the laws which apply to this absolute appeared to me as the most sublime scientific pursuit of life.” — Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers

Dyson remembers visiting the elder Simonyi in Budapest once where he saw the man’s tattered and bullet-riddled books. There a highlight for him was catching a glimpse the German version of the book now available in English. Of that experience, he says, “I had only a few minutes to explore the beauties of this work, but I recognized it at once as a unique and magnificent achievement.”

Charles Simonyi pays tribute by fulfilling his father’s dream of having A Cultural History of Physics published in English. Now Dyson and others have all the time in the world to dive into the misunderstood chasm that lies between science and the humanities.

Self-deprecating astronomer Chris Lintott is terribly British. From his post at University of Oxford he keeps tabs on the universe and everything in it. He says, “This is a problem because the universe is very big and reasonably complicated and I am very small and reasonably stupid.”

Chris Lintott, Astronomer and Galactic Zookeeper

Before a crowd of London pub-dwellers recently Lintott who is the brain behind Zooniverse, an online portal for citizen science, admitted getting lost on the way to the Lost Lectures, a bit of irony not lost on him.

As is commonly understood the universe expanding and that expansion is even speeding up. To that Lintott quips, “So there is more stuff that I don’t understand each and every second.” That’s why he needs everyone’s help to unravel a few scientific mysteries.

Lintott is traveling the world telling the story of Zooniverse, raising awareness and excitement about citizen science initiatives and projects. And he is pointing out that we are living in a unique period of human history.

For thousands of years our understanding of the universe has been limited to what we could see with our eyes, brains and telescopes. But now we can process much more data than ever before with distributed networks, supercomputers and citizen scientists.

Now astronomy finds itself in a reverse conundrum where there is a vast shortage of astronomers to analyze an accelerating and growing amount of data.

In just a couple of years Zooniverse has become a leading citizen science portal with over 600,000 people from all over the world helping astronomers better understand the universe. But why turn to the public?

Lintott says, “We had one of those everyday problems — too many galaxies.” The Sloan Digital Sky Survey in New Mexico captured images of a million galaxies. And each of those galaxies has a hundred billion stars. And now astronomers believe there is at least one planet orbiting each of those stars. That’s a lot of information available just waiting to be studied.

Before turning to the public, Lintott tells the crowd he did what any self-respecting scientist would do to classify the million galaxies. He got a student named Kevin to work on it. But after a mere 50,000 galaxies the Kevin sat Lintott down at the Royal Oak pub in Oxford where he announced he couldn’t look at all one million galaxies on his own.

Lintott put a call for help since this was a project for people not computers. And with literally a million images to sift through this task called for an army of citizen scientists.

A few years later, Zooniverse was born. And then Lintott faced another problem — coping with the hordes of people who wanted to help with the research. At the same time other researchers began calling saying they had too much data as well.

Now the Zooniverse includes projects on climate, archiving ancient papyrus texts, classifying galaxies, identifying icy Kuiper Belt objects and even planet hunting.

A Few Projects from Zooniverse.org

When the first planet orbiting a star outside our solar system was discovered it was an exciting moment and at the time thought to be a rare occasion — like spotting a super nova mid implosion. But 16 years later the Kepler Space Telescope is sending back so much information after staring day in and day out at the same patch of sky with 150,000 stars that astronomers need the public’s help to comb through all the information and images.

Using a process called the transit method to find new planets orbiting distant stars can be accomplished with precise instruments and computers but the public seems to do a better job.

Lintott says, “Computers find some of them but with the help of the public we’d like to find the weird and the strange ones.”

Last year, citizen science planet hunters found a world orbiting a double star. Lintott compares it to the fictional Star Wars planet Tatooine and cites it as a stellar example of weird planets that are out there waiting to be found. Zooniversers also found an odd galaxy.

Hanny's Voorwerp, a Super-Heated Gas Cloud near a Black Hole, Discovered by Zooniverse Volunteer Hanny van Arkel

A Dutch school teacher found a super-heated and galaxy-sized gas cloud on one of the galaxy images. She tagged it as unusual and that caught the attention of astronomers who discovered that it is a real-life example of something that was only theorized.

Called a thingy in Dutch, Lintott says Hanny’s Voorwerp looks like a space ship or Kermit the Frog, depending how you squint at it.

Lintott says, “The Voorwerp is a cloud of gas that just got in the way and got heated up (to 50,000 degrees) and it may even be forming stars as the result — very odd.”

And it wouldn’t have been spotted by a computer because no one knew it existed in order to tell the computer to look for it. Computers can give predictable results but in exploration and research like astronomy what isn’t known is just as valuable or more so than what it.

That makes citizen scientists indispensable to the science process involving big amounts of data.

Now that Zooniverse and other citizen science portals have broken down the barrier which has left science to the experts in universities, Lintott is hoping to let the citizens drive the research by asking relevant questions and having the scientists follow along helping out with the process.

He says, “Once we see people are empowered to do that they start leading their own projects; they have their own research questions.” He says that the citizen scientists become passionate defenders who are doing their own research with our help on the things they care about.

Then citizens not research councils begin to drive the science agenda. And that really excites Lintott.

To participate in citizen science project you need to be able to recognize patterns. So Lintott says you should be about 6 or older to join a citizen science project. You just need spare time, a willingness to help and a web browser.

Zooniverse Volunteers Help Make Science History

Lintott still wants to know why galaxies act the way the do. He says, “It’s a beautifully messy problem and we’re just getting to the point where we can look at millions of galaxies and with the help of our volunteers we can unpick the story.”

Galaxy Zoo, the oldest of the Zooniverse projects has spawned 28 scientific papers and has contributed to the knowledge base of galactic astronomy. Zooniverse is also working with SETI to search for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations and to study solar storms as they erupt from the sun.

Lintott says, “It’s all visual information using pattern recognition software that’s already running between your ears to do real science.”

Fifty years ago the biggest problem facing science was getting enough information. Since then scientists have become very good about collecting information about the world and the universe. And in a networked world electronics are cheap cameras are cheap. Lintott says, “That’s easy” But he adds, “The hard bit is processing the stuff and having enough eyes to do that. So that’s why we’re asking for everybody’s help.”

Gilbert Levin, Former NASA Scientist Who Claims Life on Mars

NASA has only ever searched for extraterrestrial life during one mission. The three experiments took place in 1976 during the Viking lander missions on Mars. And according to a new paper (PDF) published in the journal International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences scientists found life but discounted it for a few reasons.

Of the three experiments performed on Martian soil only the Labeled Release experiment obtained a clearly positive response, according to new research. The paper says, “Labeled Release (LR) experiment of Levin and Straat [1-4] satisfied a stringent set of prior agreed upon criteria for the detection of microbial life on Mars (i.e. a significant increase in evolved radioactive carbon-containing gas over baseline after 14C radiolabeled nutrient administration to a Mars soil sample.”

After applying a chemical cocktail that would react with any biological form in the soil, Levin and Straat (who are co-authors on the new paper) say there was a gas release, indicating they had found microbial life.

But those results became controversial because some scientists believed the samples were contaminated by a mysterious agent in the planet’s soil, giving a false result. For decades researchers studied the chemistry of that experiment.

Now an international group of scientists, including two who were involved in the original LR experiment, conducted a new kind of mathematical analysis using complexity and came up with the same result. There is microbial life on Mars.

But critics remain doubtful.

Schematic of Mars Viking Lander Life Detection Equipment

Miller tells REALscience the paper looked at the numeric complexity of biological and non-biological data sets and found that the LR experiments “generated data that were much more complex than the controls.”

To do their complexity study the team took the LR data from Mars and then added both known terrestrial biological and non-biological data series to see how they compared. By doing a cluster analysis they found that the active LR data naturally sorted with known biological samples and the control LR data (from heat-sterilized soil) naturally sorted with non-biological data.

Miller says those results are highly significant. He says, “You can see that the two data types, biolgoical v. non-biological are almost mirror images of each other.”

But it’s not enough to appease the critics who say that the study didn’t use enough different types of biological and non-biological data to validate the procedure.

To that Miller says, “Our critics say it would have been best to look at say, 30 examples of biological and non-biological measures on Earth.” He says, “Sure, no argument. But the thing they are missing is that we got highly significant differences even with a modest data set.”

Biological systems are highly ordered but non-biological processes are fairly random. Think of biological systems as the signal while non-biological processes are the white noise. To tease out the signal from the noise biological systems exhibit patterns over time.

Using complexity theory, Miller and his astrobiological cohorts employed seven complexity variables, all derived from LR data, to show that Viking LR active responses can be distinguished from controls via cluster analysis and other multivariate math techniques.

The paper says, “These measures very strongly suggest, in agreement with terrestrial analyses, that the active LR experiments in all likelihood detected microbial life on Mars.”

Miller reiterates, “The obvious hypothesis is that the active LR experiments were looking at some type of microbial life.”

To do the complexity analysis, the team used a data series of rat core temperatures taken every minute over a 23-day period for a biological comparison. They also compared the complexity of the Viking lander LR experiments samples to soil samples with known Earthly microbes. Then they added non-biological data to the analysis, including Mars background radiation, Mars atmospheric temperature, temperature readings from the Viking lander, and data from a terrestrial heat-sterilized soil sample.

Viking Lander During Labeled Release Experiment on Surface of Mars, 1976

After seeing the non-biological data cluster sort so well with the control experiments from the Viking mission and likewise seeing the active experiments sort with known terrestrial biological specimens, Miller says, “It is amazing that life is so ordered.”

And since healthy living systems are so complex with a high degree of order, they tend to get less orderly as the degrade over time. But why? Well, Miller thinks, “It is probably because Earth is not a closed system. energy is pumped into our environment from the sun and plants use that energy to make complex chemicals, some of which we eat, allowing us to grow, develop intelligence and create civilizations.”

And in their complexity analysis that’s what the team found.

By looking at all the biological and non-biological data over time the scientists found changes in the biological data and no change in the non-biological. The paper says, “It demonstrated that the complexity measures evolve over time in the direction of disorder.”

Dissatisfied with the possible chemical explanations over the years Levin and Straat cling to a biological interpretation of the Mars Viking lander data. More scientists have begun considering a biological explanation after the discovery of overlapping regions of methane and water ice deposits at the equator of Mars and the discovery of hardy extremophiles in the sub-soil desert region here on Earth. Maybe the red planet does have the necessary ingredients for life.

And this complexity analysis may point the way toward evidence of life on Mars.

Scientists may have found life on Mars 36 years ago and just not realized it. During the Viking lander mission to the red planet in 1976, robotic probes scooped up soil samples, including some microbial life.

Viking 1 Launches from Cape Canaveral in 1975

Initial analysis showed the soil to be bereft of life. But a new mathematical reanalysis may shed new light on the old data.

Neurobiologist Joseph Miller from the USC Keck School of Medicine took another look at the numbers and concluded that the lander may have grabbed some Martian dirt containing life decades ago.

This news comes as NASA is in the midst of re-prioritizing its future scientific space program, which includes several planned trips to Mars. Starting next year the science budget will be slashed nine percent and that includes a 39 percent cut to the NASA Mars Program.

The next Mars mission is now slated for 2018 (at the earliest) and the space agency is looking for mission ideas in an effort to redraw the road map to Mars two months after NASA pulled out of two joint missions with the European Space Agency in 2016 and 2018.

For years scientists have maintained the only way to know if life ever existed on Mars is to go there and bring back rock and soil for detailed analysis.

Unfortunately budget realities continue to push Mars and other solar system missions off into the far future. In his latest budget President Obama cut spending for exploration of the solar system by 21 percent, angering scientists and making the joint effort with Europe too expensive to continue.

According to the Associated Press NASA has spent $6.1 billion exploring Mars in the last ten years. Two rovers have been patrolling the planet for five years and this summer a car-sized rover named Curiosity will join Spirit and Opportunity on the red planet where the new $2.5 billion rover will explore the Martian equator.

A new NASA team will cull through the mountains of ideas that will flood the agency in an effort to find cost-effective missions to Mars. All ideas must cost less than $700 million and must be ready to fly by 2018.

Mars Viking Lander, courtesy of NASA

Since life is a complex system or at least vastly more complex than a non-living system, he believes that proves there is life on Mars.

With great confidence he says, “On the basis of what we’ve done so far, I’d say I’m 99 percent sure there’s life there.” But he’d like to send a video camera on the next mission to capture microbial life wriggling around under a microscope just to be sure. He says, “The ultimate proof is to take a video of a Martian bacteria. They should send a microscope — watch the bacteria move.”

In 1976 the Labeled Release experiment looked for signs of life by studying microbial metabolism in soil scooped up by both Viking landers. At the time the general scientific consensus was that the soil contained geological but no biological activity. To confirm microbial life scientists fed the soil samples a radiolabeled nutrient cocktail that if life did exist in the soil would have produced either carbon dioxide or methane as the microbes munched. But that didn’t happen so scientists concluded that there was no life present.

Miller’s team pored over the old data and found some interesting and complex patterns — patterns he says you don’t find in non-biological soil samples. The team concludes that the high degree of order found in the data is more characteristic of biological, rather than purely physical processes.

Miller says, “The presence of circadian rhythmicity and a high degree of mathematical complexity most likely means Viking discovered microbial life on Mars over 35 years ago.”

Panoramic View of Mars from Viking Lander, Photo by NASA July 20, 1976

But critics are quick to point out that Miller’s theory hasn’t been tested on Earth so it couldn’t possibly work on Mars.

Chris McKay at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California tells Discovery News, “Ideally to use a technique on data from Mars one would want to show that the technique has been well calibrated and well established on Earth. The need to do so is clear; on Mars we have no way to test the method, while on Earth we can.”

While far from conclusive Miller thinks his findings are an additional piece of evidence that challenges the popularly held belief that Viking did not find life on Mars.

He says, “To paraphrase an old saying, if it looks like a microbe and acts like a microbe, then it probably is a microbe.” And to Miller and his team the old Viking lander data shows a level of complexity they would only see associated with biological life.

The unsinkable ship Titanic sank in the frigid waters 100 years ago but a shroud of mystery still surrounds the boat that inspired a box-office breaking blockbuster movie.

Iron-Eating Bacteria is Giving Titanic Rustcicles Which Will Recycle Ship by 2030

A couple of years ago, scientists reported that the Titanic remains sitting at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean will be nothing but a rust stain by the year 2030. Newly discovered bacteria (aptly named Halomonas titanicae) found in the scuttled ship’s icicle-shaped rust deposits along the ship’s hull are eating away at the metal and essentially recycling it — a promising method of dealing with cleaned heavy machinery like oil rigs and other rusting hulks of metal buried at sea.

Dalhousie University biologist and geologist Henrietta Mann says the Halomonas titanicae bacteria is “able to reproduce and interact with all the other species that are there and then continue to extract the iron away from the steel that the Titanic was made of, and so it’s going to degrade and break down all of the Titanic and it’ll be all gone and recycled.”

As the 100th Anniversary of the Titanic sinking approached, scientists have tried to figure out what made the steel luxury liner go down after striking an iceberg.

Some blame the moon. A pair of scientists believe that a full moon months before Titanic sailed on her maiden voyage created abnormally high tides near Greenland which allowed a large number of icebergs to break off and sail into the path of the Titanic.

The theory originally put forth in the 1990s by oceanographer Fergus Wood goes like this. And iceberg broke off from the Disko Bay area of Greenland in January 1912 during some super high tides caused by a rare convergence of astronomical factors: within a single 27-hour span on January 4th, Earth came its nearest to the Sun, the Moon was its nearest Earth, and the Moon was full.

Photo of Iceberg, from German liner Prinze Adelbert on the morning of April 15, 1912, Hours after Titanic Sank

Olson says, “The lunar connection may explain how an unusually large number of icebergs got into the path of the Titanic.”

University of Washington seismologist John Vidale thinks blaming the moon for the Titanic iceberg encounter is weak at best. He tells the Huffington Post that a key calculation is missing from the theory. No one knows how much higher the January 4, 1912 tides were to see if they could have had any impact on the release of icebergs southward.

Still, Olson says, “We don’t claim to know exactly where the Titanic iceberg was in January 1912 — nobody can know that — but this is a plausible scenario intended to be scientifically reasonable.”

Geophysicist John Bellini sides with Vidale and remains skeptical. He says, “It sounds to me like the authors are teasing with chaos theory akin to the classic scenario of a butterfly’s wings fluttering in one place causing a deadly hurricane thousands of miles away and many weeks later.”

Vidale studies the weak connection between ocean tides and earthquake activity. Regardless of what the moon was doing, the failure to see the iceberg in time to respond is what sank the Titanic.

Ultimately the ship’s crew didn’t see the massive ice block floating toward them in time to change course, killing 1,500 passengers on board and creating the world’s most famous shipwreck.

James Delgado, director of maritime heritage at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tells the Associated Press this week that while new research and theories of what happened are important, “At its most basic what happened is they failed to heed warnings and they hit the iceberg because they were going too fast.”

In a just-in-time-for-the-hundredth-anniversary theory Titanic historian Tim Maltin says a freak atmospheric condition known as Novaya Zemlya may be partly to blame. His latest Titanic e-book called A Very Deceiving Night lays out a theory that an Arctic mirage could have tricked the crew on a cloudless night.

Though not a scientist Maltin believes that unusually cold sea air underneath a pocket of warm air in the North Atlantic was bending light in such a way as to obscure a large object like a massive iceberg until it was too late.

According to the Titanic logs, the first officer reported a haze on the horizon. Maltin says that rescue boats even ran into the same phenomenon which made it difficult to navigate around icebergs.

Maltin reports that British meteorologists monitored the same area for these oddball temperature inversions and he says they found them there about 60 percent of the time.

The idea of a mirage is not as far-fetched as many would think. When a cold weather front collides with warmer air it causes light passing between the boundary of the two to be bent dramatically, distorting how an object appears.

Common Arctic Mirage which Distorts Objects Making Judging Size and Distance Difficult

As crews of pleasure boaters navigate the once-impenetrable Northwest Passage through the Canadian Archipelago similar Arctic mirage stories begin to emerge. Captains of small, lightweight boats are particularly vulnerable to icebergs which dot the area and are sometimes hard to see because the light distortion creates a false horizon.

This theory also explains why Stanley Lord, captain of the nearest ship The Californian, ignored the Titanic’s distress call because the mirage effect made it look like a much smaller ship, which created confusion during the crisis.

Maltin says, “‘It does actually make me feel sorry for Captain Lord, knowing now what I know about the science of that night. When he is apparently making excuses, saying the ship he was looking at did not look anything like the Titanic, what I now understand is that he was telling the exact truth.In fact, what he was looking at did not look anything like the Titanic at all.

Maltin, who is releasing a new documentary about the disaster on the National Geographic channel says, “It’s almost as though the Titanic sank in a killing zone of nature where all these dangerous elements combined to make it fatal.”

After looking at the weather charts in the area, he concludes that the ship was also right in the middle of an extreme Arctic high pressure system. In fact he says at 1,035 millibars, that is the highest pressure anywhere in North America. And that pressure usually sits over the North Pole but for a number of reasons it dipped south, setting up perfect conditions to help sink the Titanic.

After poring over weather records from the time, Maltin concluded that the ship sank at the exact location and time that freezing waters from the Arctic flowing along the Labrador Current met hotter air from the Gulf Stream. This system of ocean currents comprises the North Atlantic Oscillation or the great ocean conveyor belt that shuttles warm water from the Caribbean to the North Atlantic, allowing Great Britain to enjoy a temperate climate.

He also says because a clear night Arctic mirage bent the light rays passing through the air at this point the Titanic sailed directly towards the giant iceberg for a full 20 minutes because the hunk of floating ice was completely obscured by the false horizon and completely out of view of the ship look-outs.

Maltin attributes the botched rescue to the same effect, known as the scintillation. It’s what makes stars appear to twinkle as light gets distorted when it passes through the Earth’s atmosphere.

During the attempted rescue of the passengers on board the Titanic, Maltin says the rescue flares probably appeared to the crew of the Californian to be the mast flickering under the stars or ordinary lights on the deck.

He says the cold mirage also explains why SOS Morse lamp signals got crossed. He says, “I’ve spent years wondering why these two ships which were trying to Morse each other all night couldn’t communicate.”

The British historian says the Titanic sank not because of avoidable human error but because of air density difference.

As the world gears up for the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic this weekend surely more theories of the whys and wherefores of the famous mid-sea collision will surface causing the scientific speculation to go on and on…

My Heart Will Go On

By Celine Dion

Every night in my dreams
I see you, I feel you
That is how I know you, go on

Far across the distance
And spaces between us
You have come to show you, go on

Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more you open the door
And you’re here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on

Love can touch us one time
And last for a lifetime
And never let go till we’re gone

Love was when I loved you
One true time I hold you
In my life we’ll always go on

Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more you open the door
And you’re here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on

You’re here, there’s nothing I fear
And I know that my heart will go on
We’ll stay forever this way
You are safe in my heart
And my heart will go on and on

Music by James Horner
Lyrics by Will Jennings
(c) 1997

A major 8.6 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of the island of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean, triggering a tsunami alert for the whole ocean and traumatizing those who lived through the 2004 9.1 earthquake that killed more than 230,000 in 12 countries.

But this earthquake was all bark and no bite. Very few reports of damage and injuries have been reported. And no big tsunami threatened the area.

U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Susan Hough says, “It’s clearly a bit of an odd duck.”

Movement of Crust during Earthquakes, courtesy of the USGS

That is in large part due to the type of earthquake. The quake that struck today and an 8.2 aftershock that followed are strike-slip quakes. While unusual in this seismically active part of the world, this type of quake is far less devastating and typically doesn’t cause a tsunami because of the direction of the shaking.

Strike-slip quakes occur when the earth’s crust fractures along a fault line creating two blocks. In a strike-slip quake the two blocks of the Earth’s crust move side to side (either left or right) not up and down. Because there is only horizontal movement, the seafloor does not get displaced. That seafloor displacement pushes water up and causes tsunami.

But scientists are puzzled because a strike-slip quake like this is usually much smaller.

Penn State University geosciences professor Kevin Furlong tells the Associated Press, “A week ago, we wouldn’t have thought we could have a strike-slip earthquake of this size. This is very, very large.”

By contrast, the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was the biggest strike-slip quake on record. And it measured 7.8 on the Richter scale. During that quake, the ground shifted about 15 feet.

Geologists believe that during today’s Indonesian quake one side of the fault lurched 70 feet past the other, making it the strongest strike-slip fault quake on record and the 11th most powerful earthquake since record-keeping began in 1900.

2004 Aceh Tsunami Overpowers Indonesians

British geological seismologist Susanne Sargeant says, “We have had two blocks rubbing together, it’s called a strike-slip earthquake … That means there hasn’t been any displacement of the sea floor. Although an earthquake of this magnitude has the potential to cause a large tsunami, the fact that we haven’t seen any drop of the sea floor, which is what generates the wave, it looks like the possibility of a tsunami being generated is low”.

And within hours of the first big quake, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii canceled its alert for the Indian Ocean. Several tsunami ranging between six inches and 3 feet did follow the quakes but they were not enough to cause damage, even on low-lying islands that sit barely above sea level.

U.S. Geological Survey issued the following statement right after the quake.

Large strike-slip earthquakes, while rare, are not unprecedented in this region of the Indo-Australian plate. Since the massive M 9.1 earthquake that ruptured a 1300 km long segment of the Sumatran megathrust plate boundary in December of 2004, three large strike-slip events have occurred within 50 km of the April 11, 2012 even. These earthquakes occurred on April 19 2006 (Mw6.2), October 4 2007 (Mw6.2) and January 10, 2012 (Mw7.2). In all three cases, the style of faulting was similar. These events align approximately with fabric of the sea floor in the diffuse boundary zone between the Indian and Australian plates.

The M8.6 April 11, 2012 earthquake off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia, occurred as a result of strike-slip faulting within the oceanic lithosphere of the Indo-Australia plate. The quake was located approximately 100 km to the southwest of the major subduction zone that defines the plate boundary between the Indo-Australia and Sunda plates offshore Sumatra. At this location, the Indo-Australia plate moves north-northeast with respect to the Sunda plate at a velocity of approximately 52 mm/yr.

Site of April 11 Sumatra Earthquake in Relation to Minor Tectonic Plates

Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the National Earthquake Information Center says the big difference between today’s quakes and the 9.1 temblor in 2004 was location. These quakes were both relatively shallow (14 miles and 10 miles) and situated 110 miles from the edge of the Eurasian plate, firmly over the Australian plate.

If the fault happened at the subduction zone, where the two plates meet, a tsunami would have been the likely outcome. And with the distance from the plate boundary comes a less devastating event.

While those strike-slip fault earthquakes are fairly unusual in this region, there have been three big ones since the massive thrust fault earthquake in 2004 that ripped open a 1,500 mile fault line. The fault during oday’s big quake slipped 70 feet.

Since the 2004 earthquake and tsunami Unesco has helped install a seismic monitoring and communication system so anytime an earthquake strikes in the Indian Ocean, sensors placed on the seafloor can detect any change in the water column and that information can be sent to all countries in the path of a potential tsunami within minutes.

After today’s quake and aftershocks, officials say that all alerts went out within five minutes even though the quake didn’t produce any tsunami.

Large Quakes Involving the Sunda Trench

The Sunda trench is a large depression in the ocean floor where the Indian and Australian tectonic plates presse into and under the larger Eurasian tectonic plate.

Twenty years ago Judy Avery Arroyo stumbled into her calling to rehabilitate injured and abandoned sloths in Costa Rica. The bed and breakfast owner from Alaska and her Costa Rican husband now run one of the largest sloth sanctuaries in the world. With over 130 sloths under their care, it all started with Buttercup.

When some neighbor girls brought the three-toed baby sloth to Arroyo, she took one look at its cute face and decided to take it in. Now she says, “I cupped the tiny animal in my hands and knew I had to do something.” Buttercup was dying of starvation and had been abandoned by her mother who Arroyo presumes was killed by a jungle animal.

People around her advised her to let the baby sloth go because she wouldn’t be able to feed it. In those days, very little was known about sloths. But Arroyo decided to learn how to care for Buttercup and after what she says was a lot of trial and error and a good bit of intuition, the baby sloth began to thrive after a couple of tough months.

Buttercup, 20-year-old Queen of the Sloth Sanctuary, Aviarios del Caribe

Now Buttercup holds the record of being the oldest sloth in captivity and is a tourist attraction in eastern Costa Rica, where according to Arroyo the matron sloth “reigns supreme over the veranda” at the sloth sanctuary.

As the founder of the sloth rescue center at Aviarios del Caribe Arroyo has helped hundreds of the world’s slowest mammals. Sloths are found across parts of Central and South America and call the jungles of Costa Rica home. There are six-known species across the continent and the Costa Rican sanctuary is home to the Bradypus and Choleopus genuses. According to the World Wildlife Fund, many species of the sloth are at risk of extinction. The animals are under severe pressure from urban development including electrical cabling strung up through its habitats and deforestation across the country.

Sanctuary veterinarian Marcelo Espinoza says, “There are many cases of electrocutions and they recover here, there are also fractures when they fall from trees and [we] repair their limbs and send them back to the jungle.”

Arroyo says, “Many have been maimed by electric wires, or tortured by cruel humans. They require our constant attention.”

Sloths have caught the world’s attention. A series of videos shot at the sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica are wildly popular on Animal Planet.

CNN newsman and daytime talk show Anderson Cooper loves sloths. During a 2007 CNN special he and animal expert Jeff Corwin visited the jungle of Costa Rica where they help return sloths to the wild.

Anderson Cooper, Jack Hanna and a Sloth

Cooper says sloths are his favorite animal. On a recent episode of his eponymous show Anderson he told animal wrangler Jack Hanna that he looked into getting a sloth but decided against it, learning that exotic animals never make good pets.

The sloth sanctuary outside of Limon, Costa Rica has also become the center of sloth research. After 20 years of behavioral and medical study Arroyo and her team of sloth watchers have gathered a lot of good data about these unusual animals.

Twin Orphaned Baby Two-Fingered Hoffman's Sloths, photo by Suzi Eszterhas

As the slowest moving land mammal they spend a lot of time digesting food and sleeping. Sloths sleep about 18 hours a day.

Costa Rica is home to the brown-throated bradypus sloth which has three toes. Unlike the other sloth genus found in Costa Rica, the bradypus are diurnal, meaning they are active during the day. They can turn their heads 180 degrees, have telescopic vision and are agile swimmers.

The two-fingered Hoffman’s sloth is the only member of the choloepus genus found in Costa Rica. The choloepus is larger than the bradypus and it is nocturnal. It also has peripheral vision, which helps to keep it safe from predators.

Luis and Judy Arroyo say their private wildlife sanctuary is a living biology classroom. They invite students and researchers to use the various habitats of Aviarios del Caribe as the object of their research.

Three Two-Fingered Hoffman's Sloths Prepare for a Tea Bath, courtesy of Sloth Sanctuary

Arroyo still offers a bed and breakfast experience at the sloth sanctuary, where tourists are flocking to volunteer to spend time with the animals.

But despite their best efforts humans are no replacement a baby sloth’s mother. Arroyo says, “This is a problem that we’re facing. How do we teach a baby, who has arrived and is less than a year old, who doesn’t have the information that its mother provides? Because in the jungle all the trees that they eat from have their defenses and the mother needs to teach the baby how to choose the correct quantity of a leaf that is toxic and change to another tree. It’s very complicated.”

Abstract artists Daniel Hill and Ron Janowich say, “Art and science are both born from a sense of wonder and curiosity and a desire to understand.”

After a series of conversations about the complexity of the natural world, the two men decided to mount an exhibition, featuring the artistic side of science. Looking at scientific theory with artist eyes helps convey very complicated technical information to a broad audience.

And while no collaborating artists are scientists, their work incorporates the precision and accuracy of science and math to tell a story about the subject, which often is rooted in science.

Attractors (2012) by David Mann, courtesy of Lafayette College

Hill and Janowich say, “Whether it is the Higg’s boson particle and the origin of mass/structure (the so-called “God particle”); Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle; entanglement’s “spooky action at a distance”; or the experience of perception and the origin of consciousness, these ideas prove not only irresistible but abound in profound and potentially unrealized implications in the quest to comprehend our world.”

In the foreword of the exhibition catalog, neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer says that people have an innate need to see the world as it is but also to make sense of what we see. He says that need explains the necessity of art. He says, “Within the framework of art we are able to affirm simultaneously the mystery, even as we seek to unravel it.”

Hidden within the abstract are patterns that elicit a feeling of familiarity that conveys truth about the world around us.

Lehrer says, “Even when staring at these deliberate abstractions, we still see the familiar stuff of life, those forms we never seem to leave behind. They emerge, like ghosts, from the brushstrokes and charcoal marks, from the acrylic on wood and the shellac on paper. Such simple materials give rise to such complex thoughts that the artist provokes us to see patterns while forcing us to recognize where these patterns emanate from.”

The two curators say the artists in “their investigations into the sciences have added significantly to the theoretical
foundation of their practice.” They say the Emergence & Structure exhibition is an expression of that understanding.

Sonic Network No. 10 (2011) by John Aslanidis, courtesy of Location One

Since the 1990s, electronic music buff and Australian visual artist John Aslanidis has been exploring the relationship between optical and sound art by looking at patterns of waves, frequencies and vibrations. In each of his paintings, he uses color and line patterns to create a visual intensity that invokes the experience of listening to music.

Sonic Current No. 2 (2007) by John Aslanidis, courtesy of Lafayette College

His sonic painting series includes Sonic Current No. 2 and Sonic Network No. 10, which are featured in the current Emergence & Structure exhibition. He says he draws concentric circles with a beam compass and uses a lot of masking tape. Then he layers oil or acrylic airbrushed paint in alternating layers to mirror his own cyclic creative process. He believes his paintings represent a fragment of infinity, a scientific concept that is difficult to show visually but somehow the visual depiction of sound makes this pattern easier to recognize.

Angie Drakopoulos is trying to to find balance between the complex and the simple in her mixed media art. And in the process she is trying to unite the scientific with the mystical.

Using symmetry as her base, she adds elements from biology, geometry, physics, metaphysics and eastern philosophy. She says, “I try to find the most subtle and interesting way to connect the different elements that will reveal an underlying structure or system.”

Negentropy III (2007) by Angie Drakopoulos, courtesy of Lafayette College

In her acrylic and resin on plexiglass Negentropy III, Drakopoulos explores the intersection point between entropy and life. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger introduced the concept of negative entropy or negentropy in his popular 1944 science book What is Life? In the book Schrödinger states that life feeds on negative entropy. For example, people eat dead food in order to stay alive. In other words the entropy that a living system exports to keep its own entropy low is negentropy.

Drakopoulos expresses the very complex physics with light. She allows refined and intricate patterns to emerge as light dances over the paintings’ surface, showing different tonalities of iridescent paint locked in the translucent layers. She says, “Slowly as the work evolves, these inner connections and details begin to form an alternative definition of the energy and invisible forces that govern the movement of matter, from the microcosmic level of molecules and light particles, to the macrocosmic level of planets and galaxies.” For her the work then becomes a “diagram for energy and a quest for unity.”

Untitled 8 (2011) by Daniel Hill, courtesy of DanielHill.net

Hill says we are expert modelers, relentlessly constructing visual models to truly see the world, including the parts of the world that we can’t possible see with our eyes. He says, “Visual modeling is an invaluable tool in both how we perceive our world and how information about our universe can be organized and better understood.”

The abstract artist takes abstract theories, ideas and concepts of science that are often difficult to comprehend. With the aid of visual models and the language of abstraction Hill and the other exhibition artists can be transform physics, biology and neuroscience into more easily digestible and familiar forms, such as graphs, schematics, diagrams, and maps.

Untitled 9 (2011) by Daniel Hill, courtesy of DanielHill.net

Hill believes that our collective future is deeply rooted in the imagination and that abstract art such as that featured in Emergence & Structure plays a role not in answering the big questions of life and the natural world. But rather, this type of art can play a larger role in our understanding of the world by helping to reveal the right questions to ask.

He says we did not solve the great problems of the past with a sudden influx of intellectual capability. Hill says, “What did change was our ability to look at the problem in new ways.”

Spring has barely sprung and already much of the country is experiencing abnormally high temperatures. Trees are budding a month early and over 7,000 March high temperature records have been broken. Across the Northeast and Midwest winter has suddenly turned into summer.

Brave Waders Hit the Beach around Lake Michigan as March Temps Soared above 80, courtesy of Bill Steffen

Instead of temperatures hovering in the mid-40s for early March, the windy city has been enjoying an unseasonably warm streak of 80-degree days, including reaching 87 degrees March 21. Chicago rarely reaches the 80-degree mark in April, let alone March.

International Falls, Minnesota saw a 93-degree temperature swing from -14 to 79 from March 9-18. Marquette, Michigan obliterated its old March 21 record high of 49, replacing it with a new record of 81. Even the low temperatures that day was higher than the old record high.

Those staggering numbers have meterologists across the heartland using words like “freak heatwave,” “record heat wave.” And Popular Science says it’s “almost like science fiction.”

Partial List of Records Set during 2012 Spring Heat Wave

University of Edinburgh climate scientist Gabi Hegerl sees evidence that extreme heat events like the one that began in a good chunk of the U.S. on March 12 have become more common and more severe, including at the regional level in parts of the U.S. She says, “This is consistent with observing more and stronger heat waves.”

And she is not alone. A group of climate scientists are studying the role that climate change plays in individual extreme weather events. They are pioneering a new scientific discipline called climate attribution. And they agree that global warming has made March’s summer-like temperatures more likely but they say that natural variability also played a vital role.

Two Technical College Students Tap a Maple Tree in Vermont where Warm Weather and No Snow Cover Means a Short Sugaring Season. Photo by Trent Campbell, courtesy of Addison Indpendent

Hegerl suggests conducting climate model studies where scientists compare the odds of this event occurring with and without added greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, “to see how much the warming has changed the odds.”

Scientific studies of previous heat waves using this probability-based approach have shown that global warming is increasing the odds of heat extremes. But to what extent is unclear.

Both global-warming trends and shifts in atmospheric circulation are help make an extreme weather event, so scientists need to observe the whole climate system in order to investigate how often an event with these extreme characteristics takes place under the two alternative scenarios.

A study published in the October issue of the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found a local warming trend in the Moscow, Russia area is quintupling the number of heat records there per decade. The study also concluded that there is an 80 percent chance that the 2010 July monthly heat record in Russia wouldn’t have happened without global warming.

A similar study after the European heat wave in 2003 reached the same conclusion.

NOAA deputy research director Randall M. Dole says the U.S. spring heat wave is “absolutely” global warming. He says, “The planet as a whole is warming, the continents on average are warming faster than the oceans, so there is a great body of scientific evidence that would support such an interpretation. The question is how much.”

The Moscow heat wave study suggests that global warming enables extreme heat events, increasing the frequency of such weather anomalies but not causing them directly or being responsible for one extreme event characteristic.

Dr. Dole says that climate change definitely stacked the deck in favor of this springtime heat wave but global warming’s small role just doesn’t explain its intensity.

Top: Massive Heat Dome over Eastern North America on March 22. Bottom: Satellite Image Showing Low Pressure Forming over Midwest to Push Heat Dome East. Photos courtesy of Wright Weather and Stu Ostro, University of Washington

The high pressure dome that is blocking storms from reaching the midsection of the U.S. and Canada are similar to those that influenced the Moscow heat wave in 2010 and the European heat wave in 2003.

Scientists don’t yet understand what causes these big high pressure systems that block incoming weather systems and they don’t yet grasp what effects climate change are having on the frequency and intensity of those patterns.

Martin Hoerling agrees with Dole that climate change didn’t play a leading role in this spring heat wave. He says, “Meteorology, not climate change, is the main ingredient in the current March 2011 U.S. extreme warmth.”

Climate scientist Kevin Trenberth says, “Indeed [greenhouse gas-driven] warming is not dominant, but I suspect when all the evidence is in we will find that the event likely would not have occurred without global warming.” He adds, “The odds will be so low.”

But this burst of springtime summer is about to end. The high pressure system is breaking down already and a wet weekend is on the way thanks to a low pressure system that will push out the high.

Well-known global warming advocate Bill McKibben summed up the heat wave on Twitter saying, “I know I’m a little obsessed with this heat wave–but: it’s not just off the charts, it’s off the wall the charts are tacked to.”

The Capital Weather Gang at the Washington Post says, “Meteorologists and other weather commentators have frequently commented they’ve never seen anything like this, exhausting superlatives.”

Here’s a round-up of the popular words weather forecasters have used to describe Spring Heat Wave 2012: Mind-boggling, eye-popping, unthinkable, unreal, unbelievable, astonishing, unfathomable, historic, unprecedented, crazy, insane, mutant, incredible, amazing, stunning, unheard of, surreal, remarkable, jaw-dropping.

When low temperatures are the same as previous record highs, the deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center calls that “incredible.” Mike Halpert says,”To me, that’s just mind-boggling.”

Heatwave

By: Marilyn Monroe

Oh! We’re having a heatwave, a tropical heatwave
The temperature’s rising, it isn’t surprising,
she certainly can can-can

She started a heatwave by letting her seat wave,
in such a way that the customers say
that she certainly can can-can

Gee,gee! Her anatomy makes the mercury rise to 93!
Having a heatwave, a tropical heatwave, the way that she moves,
that thermometer grooves that she certainly can…
(What’s your name honey? Pablo). Certainly can..
(Chico, Miguelito, Pablo, Chico, Miguelito)…oh, can-can.

Pablo, it’s saying here in the weather report,
it’s saying a fairly warm air is moving in from..(Where?) Jamaica
Moderately high air pressure will cover the NE and.. (where else?)
The Deep South. Small danger of (what?) Fruit frost!
Hot and humid nights can be expected.
Vincent 95, Guadeloupe 97, Santo Domingo 99. Pardon me? 105?
We’re having a heatwave, a tropical heatwave,
the temperature’s rising, it isn’t surprising,
I certainly can can-can

I started this heatwave in such a way
that the customers say that I certainly can can-can
The man who need makes the mercury rise to 93
We’re having a heatwave, a tropical, a tropical heatwave
the way that I move, that thermometer grooves
She certainly certainly certainly can
I certainly certainly certainly can can-can

Written by Irving Berlin
Performed by Marilyn Monroe
(c) 1954 There’s No Business Like Show Business

Who could say No to a face like this? Especially when that face is attached to a scientist doing cool research?

Kevin Miklasz, Independent Scientist

Kevin Miklasz is just about to finish his PhD in Biomechanics at Stanford University. At the end of the month he’ll be one of many well-educated scientists without big research dollars or a university to back his future work. He’s opted to help develop science curriculum for an after school program for most of the year and then devote his two-month summer break to his own research. More and more this is becoming the norm for scientists.

Shrinking basic research budgets and a glut of smart graduates has created a problem — too many brains and not enough jobs.

But venture capitalist and life-long lover of science Matt Salzberg is stepping in with his new crowdfunding site Petridish.org. It’s a platform that allows independent scientists like Miklasz who need to collect basic data or conduct preliminary research before they attempt to secure big National Science Foundation grants.

Petridish is not the first site to attempt to match researchers with unfunded projects with a science-appreciative donor base. The SciFund Challenge launched by media and arts crowdfunding source RocketHub has helped raise tens of thousands of dollars for different projects. And, SciFlies.org is a non-profit platform doing the same thing.

Crowdfunding has become a disruptive way to turn the venture capital business model for start-up organizations upside down. Instead of a lot of money coming from one or a few sources, crowdfunding encourages little bits of money from many people — the crowd. And the beauty of it is that nobody pays anything until the goal amount is raised in pledges during a certain period of time.

Salzberg says, “Petridish is an online community of scientists and everyday science-lovers that allows researchers to connect with private donors interested in their work.”

So because of this new model to fund science research, soon-to-be Dr. Miklasz will be able to do his work, which could shed some much-needed light on the future health of oceans.

As a biomechanic, Miklasz looks at biology from a physics perspective. He wants to know what forces exert pressure on biological organisms to make them look the way they do. And, his current plant passion happens to be seaweed. It may not sound like a sexy science project.

But 28 backers helped raise the necessary $1,000 he asked for through Petridish.org and with 30 days to go he’s actually raised 140 percent of his target.

Adult Algae on Rocky Coastline

In his crowdfunding pitch he points out that algal spores are one-tenth the size of a period at the end of a sentence (like this one.) Yet, he says they grow to be gigantic, some reaching the size of redwood trees hundreds of feet tall.

He thinks that physics and particularly the wave crashing of reef break near-shore environments has something to say about the size and shape of algae spores.

And thanks to a group of public supporters, he’ll take his experiment to Friday Harbor Labs in the San Juan Islands of Washington state where in their new state-of-science ocean acidification tank he’ll see how well these little buggers fare in future ocean waters which will be warmer and contain a higher acid content.

He says, “As we put more CO2 into the atmosphere, more CO2 will end up in the oceans, which in turn makes the water more acidic and toxic.”

Because more acid oceans create difficulty for shell-building creatures at the bottom of the food chain to grow calcium rich shells, Miklasz supposes the same will hold true of important coralline algae, which could be wiped out before we know anything about them.

His crowdfunded project will be the first attempt to try to characterize the influence of ocean acidification on juvenile algae. Other scientists have long been looking at how changes in ocean chemistry will affect juvenile fish and other animal species. But Miklasz says he’s the first to think about algae.

In concrete terms his experiment will create a shear flume — think of it like a high-pressure water chute — to pummel algae in a simulated ocean of the future. He’ll study the effects of wave action on algal offspring and see if he can pinpoint the physics that currently drive their shape and size to get a sense of how that will change in a more acidic ocean environment.

Salzberg is happy to provide a platform and community where scientists can promote research, educate and engage the public, and raise money all at once. And science enthusiasts can donate to projects and be a part of exciting new discoveries, which makes them feel more invested in the outcomes of basic research.

New Science Crowdfunding Platform Petridish.org

Petridish co-founder Ilia Papas says, “I’m excited to introduce a new way to help researchers fund fascinating work and give the public a way to connect with scientists!”

The founders acknowledge that they have no pure scientific background, but say that is deliberate because they wanted to build a community platform that allows the public to support research based on the researchers’ pitches and every user’s individual interests and concerns.

And it seems to be working. After launching quietly on March 6, 615 science supporters have donated just over $37,000 across 14 projects. That averages out to just about $61 per person. Donors can give any amount they want, starting at $1. And projects often give out incentive gifts for larger donations.

If you give $100 to Miklasz’ algae project you will receive a framed algae pressing. And one lucky person who pledges $5,000 toward Brian Fisher’s Madagascar ant project will get a new ant species named in him or her honor.

Amelia Earhart’s disappearance has been one of the long-standing mysteries of a modern age and it has endured since the determined woman pilot vanished while trying to be the first person to fly solo around the world following the longest equatorial route.

Amelia Earhart, Disappeared 1937

But during that journey 75 years ago something happened and the pilot disappeared, sparking a big mystery that today remains unsolved.

A new search attempt will begin this year, supported by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and mounted by a private effort of airplane enthusiasts.

Of Amelia Earhart Secretary Clinton says, “Her legacy resonates today for anyone — girls and boys — who dreams of the stars and I do think it’s important as Americans to keep our eyes on the stars and keep our minds set on what we are able to do that keeps pushing the boundaries of human experience.”

Clinton spoke at a press conference Tuesday announcing the expedition researchers from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) are launching to find Earhart’s plane in the ocean off a remote island in the Pacific nation of Kiribati.

Former aviation accident investigator Ric Gillespie founded TIGHAR and is leading the latest search for Earhart. He believes he’s solved what is one of the biggest mysteries of the 20th Century. And this time he feels confident.

1937 Photo Taken By U.S. Navy Searchers, Red Box May Be Landing Gear

But what is fueling the renewed search for the lost aviator and what gets Clinton and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood excited about this new expedition is a photograph that recently underwent new photo-enhancement analysis.

Researchers believe that a blurry object lower left corner of the black-and-white photo taken months after Earhart disappeared shows the landing gear from an airplane protruding from the water near the remote island of Nikumaroro. The object, which the team affectionately calls “Nessie” — after the well-circulated blurry pictures of a black object sticking out of Loch Ness in Scotland — could be a strut and wheel of a Lockheed Electra landing gear.

"Nessie" Photo Showing Enhanced Image of Possible Upside Down Landing Gear

Gillespie says, “To you and me it might just look like a blob, but to the people who do forensic imaging analysis, all the elements of the landing gear of a Lockheed Electra, the kind of plane Amelia was flying, are present.”

In July Gillespie will lead a team of historians, scientists and salvagers on a ten-day expedition to the island in the hope of finding the wreckage of Earhart’s plane and perhaps even her remains.

Titanic discoverer and oceanographer Bob Ballard is advising the team that will use state-of-the-art underwater robotic submarines and mapping equipment to look for the wreckage in a few square miles off the island’s reef.

He thinks the photographic evidence may be the “smoking gun” the searchers have needed to narrow the search to a certain manageable area. He says, “If you ever want a case of finding a needle in a haystack, this is at the top of the list.”

Remote Nikumaroro Island in Kiribati, South Pacific Ocean, Amelia Earhart Search Site

Earhart’s winged globe trek started in Oakland, California in May 1937. She crossed the U.S., stopping in Miami. Then, following the equatorial line she flew over South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, before continuing on to India, across Southeast Asia, Australia and New Guinea. Then on July 2, she took off for Howland Island, in the remote South Pacific where she planned to re-fuel before her final leg to the United States. That’s the last anyone heard from Amelia Earhart.

Despite dozens of searches over decades, no one has found definitive proof of what happened. Radio distress calls, island lore and other circumstantial evidence points to Earhart and Noonan landing alive on the South Pacific atoll. But her disappearance has fueled speculation for a long, long time.

In a press conference announcing the new search Clinton said to the explorers, “Even if you do not find what you seek, there is great honor and possibility in the search itself. So, like our lost heroine, you will all carry our hopes.”

And regardless of what the privately-funded $500,000 expedition turns up, the search will be turned into a Discovery Channel documentary about the investigation into Earhart’s mysterious disappearance.

Some would call Felix Baumgartner crazy. Others call him fearless. Either way this high-diving sky jumper wants to break the world record for highest sky dive, currently held for over 50 years by U.S. Air Force Colonel (Retired) Joseph Kittinger. He jumped from a whopping 102,600 feet.

Felix Baumgartner Prepares for His Test Jump in New Mexico

But this will be his biggest and to prepare for the big dive he practiced his stratospheric leap in a practice jump from 71,581 feet on March 15.

He’s been planning to complete this high-altitude dive for a couple of years but it’s taken a while to iron out all the bugs associated with this kind of stunt, including a lawsuit from someone claiming to have the same idea. Even on his recent dive he noticed he could barely move his hands to open the capsule to make the jump because he was so cold.

Wearing a Spacesuit Baumgartner Steps Out of the Capsule at 71,000 Feet

The plan is to ride inside a pressurized capsule attached to a helium weather balloon and at 120,000 feet he will depressurize the capsule and step out on a ledge where he will then step into the stratosphere.

Since the height of this record attempt is beyond the Armstrong Line — the altitude at which no one can survive a jump without oxygen and a pressure suit — Baumgartner looks more like a spaceman without a ship than a skydiver.

Current record-holder Kittinger has been advising the 42-year-old flying man as the team prepares for this supersonic freefall.

He says, “What Felix is doing is proving the next generation of space suit so that when we go back into space we’ll have a better understanding than we have today and Felix will make that contribution.”

Once he leaves the capsule Baumgartner will plunge toward Earth at about 690 miles per hour and will probably break the sound barrier about 35 seconds into his 10-minute dive. He has enough oxygen for 20 minutes.

He will be wearing a special suit built to withstand temperatures of -94 degrees F, which coincidentally is the outside temperature in the stratosphere at 120,000 feet. And even in August above the New Mexico desert where the skydive will take place it will be very cold when the trained helicopter pilot steps outside and into the record books.

On the way down, Baumgartner is hoping to break four world records: Highest-altitude freefall, highest manned balloon flight, longest distance travelled in freefall and fastest freefall.

Baumgartner Freefalling at Supersonic Speed

Besides helping to develop the next generation of space suits, Baumgartner and the Stratos team are creating viable escape procedures for passengers and crew in space, and creating parachutes with state of the art safety systems.

During his big dive over Roswell, New Mexico later this year a chest pack full of equipment will record the event. A GPS unit will track his position while some telemetry equipment will capture key data. A High-Definition video camera with a 120-degree view will capture every moment of his dive.

The world governing body for air sports and aeronautical world records (the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale) that will ultimately verify the records Baumgartner hopes to break will also attach some equipment to his suit. An inertia measurement unit (IMU) will report Baumgartner’s altitude, pitch, angle and spin.

When he reaches 5,000 feet he will open a specially-designed parachute to slow his supersonic descent from beyond the speed of sound to 172 miles per hour. His chute pack also comes equipped with a smaller chute called a drogue designed especially to steady him even at mach 1.

And even though outer space officially begins once you cross the 62-mile mark, Baumgartner’s planned parachuted plummet from high in the sky caught NASA’s attention.

He says, “I like to challenge myself and this is the ultimate skydive. I think there’s nothing bigger than that.”

Paleontologists got a brief glimpse into Earth’s tropical past when the U.S. built the Panama Canal Zone almost 100 years ago. But the scientific world didn’t know what was there until the unearthed fossils housed at the Smithsonian were studied and Frank Whitmore and Robert Stewart published the first paper on Panamanian fossils at the end of the 1960s.

At the time they determined that South America was a giant island continent with its own diverse and unusual animal life until the isthmus of Panama grew through uplifting of tectonic plates, connecting North and South America and cutting off the Atlantic Ocean from the Pacific.

With the Discovery of Ancient Camels 20 Million Years Ago, Tectonic History Needs Revision

A few years ago the largest expansion of the Panama Canal began and the $5.2 billion project is giving scientists another glimpse of our tropical geological past. This time, a PhD candidate from the University of Florida unexpectedly found camel fossils while doing field excavations at the construction site in Panama.

Aldo Rincon found the fossils of two species of small camel that roamed the area 23 million years ago, well before North and South America were joined together. Researchers from Panama, the U.S. and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute also report finding fossils of horses and marine vertebrates, including ancient marlins and turtles.

Rincon says he was very excited when he took the fossil pieces back to his lab in Gainsville and began piecing them back together. He realized that he had a nearly complete camel jaw that had been nearly perfectly preserved beneath a greenish coating of volcanic ash. He says, “It’s something like Pompeii.”

University of Florida Geologist Aldo Rincon at Panama Canal Expansion Site, 2011

So far five camel fossils have been recovered from the Panama Canal expansion project. Four belong to the larger species, which looked little like a modern camel. Besides having no hump, they probably only stood about three feet tall.

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute biologist Carlos Jamarillo says, “It was like a little dog.”

The discovery by Florida Museum of Natural History researchers extends the distribution of mammals to their southernmost point in the ancient tropics of Central America. The tropics are home to the world’s most important ecosystems, including rain forests that regulate climate systems and serve as a vital source of food and medicine, yet little is known of their history because lush vegetation prevents paleontological excavations.

Bruce MacFadden, vertebrate paleontology curator at the Florida museum and co-principal investigator on the National Science Foundation grant funding the project says, “We’re discovering this fabulous new diversity of animals that lived in Central America that we didn’t even know about before.”

Lower Jaw of Aguascalietia Panamaensis, A New Species of Ancient Camel, Courtesy of University of Florida

Jamarillo says scientists never expected to find a camel in the canal zone. He adds, “It’s really, really a surprise.”

Part of the reason that it’s such a surprise is that scientists thought they had pinpointed the date that North and South America joined together. But they may be wrong, given the discovery of these mammal fossils.

Researchers have long thought the isthmus of Panama rose about 3.5 million years ago, but now that scientists have discovered a camel species living in the area so much earlier, that hypothesis is being questioned.

Before Rincon and his team found the camel fossils in Panama, no one had spotted camels south of Mexico. The camel family likely originated in Florida and Texas about 30 million years ago and spread across most of North America and changed as they migrated south.

A construction project near San Francisco unearthed some ancient camel bones a couple years ago that dated back 11 million years. The camels Josh Wyatt at PaleoResource found in the Caldecott Tunnel excavation were from giant camels that he says were probably the size of giraffes.

Rincon made the Panamanian camel discovery over a two-year period but didn’t publish until recently. The study appears in the March 2012 issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Since 2007, when the multi-year excavation project began, thousands of fossils have been recovered and sent to labs across the Americas for analysis.

Until the expansion project is finished and the new canal channels opened paleontologists will follow the footprint of the construction, searching for lost moments in geologic time, trying to piece together the planet’s past through the fossil record.

The battle over teaching evolution in biology class is still raging. Proponents of intelligent design want to import a quasi-religious teaching (many call it veiled creationism) as an alternative to Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Intelligent design is the idea that life is too complicated to have arisen through mutation, chance and evolution. Therefore, it must have been initiated by a creative, intelligent force, which many proponents identify as God.

P.Z. Myers in Seattle to Discuss Expelled, June 2008, photo by Michael Bradbury

Most scientific organizations, including the National Center for Science Education classify intelligent design as a religious philosophy not a scientific theory.

A few years ago a quasi-documentary starring former President Nixon speech writer, game show host and comedian Ben Stein stirred up debate over scientists being fired for their belief in intelligent design as a sound theory. The documentary Expelled however was dismissed because as its subtitle says, “No Intelligence Allowed.” (REALscience covered the film previously, including the expulsion of evolutionary biologist P.Z. Myers from a screening).

This week, a former NASA computer specialist went to court, alleging he was first demoted and then fired for his stance on intelligent design, a belief that a higher power pushed the button of creation because life is just too complex to have developed on its own. Opening statements are supposed to begin Monday in a complicated workplace lawsuit that could reopen old evolution v. creation debates.

David Coppedge at the Los Angeles Superior Court, March 12, 2012

The organization that birthed the idea of intelligent design — Seattle’s Discovery Institute — is backing Coppedge in his legal battle.

Discovery Institute spokesman John West tells the Associated Press that being fired for espousing intelligent design is part of a pattern of discrimination. He says, “There is basically a war on anyone who dissents from Darwin and we’ve seen that for several years. He adds that this is a free speech and freedom of conscience case.

The National Center for Science Education is watching the case very closely and has posted all legal filings on its website. NCSE program and policy director Josh Rosenau believes this is a pretty straightforward case of a man being laid off as a mission comes to a close.

He says, “It would be unfortunate if the court took what seems to be a fairly straightforward employment law case and allowed it to become this tangled mess of trying to adjudicate scientific matters.”

In his lawsuit Coppedge alleges his bosses singled him out specifically because they perceived his belief in intelligent design as religious. Around NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech Coppedge had a reputation as an evangelical Christian. His case will hinge on his being persecuted for religious beliefs.

NASA JPL tells a different story. In court documents lawyers representing Caltech, where JPL is housed say Coppedge was given a written warning after coworkers complained he was harassing them. And they say he lost his team lead position because he had conflicts with others.

A professor of First Amendment law at UCLA tells the Associated Press, “The question is whether the plaintiff was fired simply because he was wasting people’s time and bothering them in ways that would have led him to being fired regardless of whether it was about religion or whether he was treated worse based on the religiosity of his beliefs.”

In his free time, Coppedge runs a website called Creation Safaris where his company puts together Bible-inspired hiking and camping trips. In his company’s description he mentions Creation Science and being a leader of a local Bible Science Association in California where he lives.

From a quick Internet survey, Coppedge is a devout believer in the literal interpretation of the Bible. He says, “God’s greatest judgment on this earth was the great Flood of Noah’s day. Now if the Bible is not just telling stories, but is revealing the true history of the world, we would expect to find evidence of this event in nature. And that’s exactly what we do find! All over in our travels on Creation Safaris, we see evidence for flooding and erosion on monumental scales, far more than what is happening in the world today. This is another confirmation of the veracity of God’s word. Seeing it with your own eyes can increase your fear of God.”

Film by Illustra Media, Espousing Idea of Intelligent Design

Coppedge looks at scientific discoveries through the lens of intelligent design. He also sits on the board of Illustra Media, a company that produces documentaries examining the scientific evidence of intelligent design, including the DVDs Coppedge gave to coworkers which landed him in trouble.

Coppedge is not a scientist. He maintained the computer network and solved technical problems for the Cassini mission. As “team lead” he acted as the go-between for the technicians and the managers. His suit filed in April 2010 alleges religious discrimination, retaliation and harassment. Once he lost his job he amended the suit to include wrongful termination last year.

In the 2008 quasi-documentary Expelled, other scientists alleged wrongful termination for their support of intelligent design.

Immunopharmacologist Dr. Caroline Crocker lost her job at George Mason University after she gave a lecture using long since discredited creationist arguments in her biology class. She says she was let go “for teaching the problems with evolution.” George Mason University disagrees.

The university says she held a non-tenure track contingent faculty position and left when her contract was not renewed. The school denies she was let go for her intelligent design beliefs, as alleged in Expelled. Two years before the movie was released GMU spokesman Daniel Walsch told the Washington Post, “We wholeheartedly support academic freedom.” He added, Does academic freedom “literally give you the right to talk about anything, whether it has anything to do with the subject matter or not? The answer is no.”

Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig was a plant geneticist at Max Planck Institute in Cologne, Germany. He complained that his feelings were hurt after people asked him to stop telling them his problems with Darwin’s theory of evolution. He is now retired, not because of his views on intelligent design but because he reached retirement age (65 in Germany) a month before the film was released in 2008. As of 2010 he was still volunteering as a guest scientist at the MPIZ where he worked for over 20 years.

Expelled scientists, Drs. Richard Sternberg, Guillermo Gonzalez, Robert Marks and Discovery Institute's John West at the world premiere of Expelled.

The controversial essay appeared in the August 2004 issue of the quarterly magazine and it was Sternberg’s last issue as editor, not because he authorized the article but because he was stepping down anyway, something not illuminated in Expelled. A month later, the journal made a statement saying, “The paper by Stephen C. Meyer, “The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories”, in vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239 of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was published at the discretion of the former editor, Richard v. Sternberg. Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history.”

After his journal controversy became public Sternberg who was working as an unpaid research associate at the National Musuem of Natural History at the Smithsonian filed a religious discrimination complaint. Sternberg claims that he was “targeted for retaliation and harassment” and that several efforts were made to remove him from the museum in retaliation for his religious views and ties to intelligent design.

Former Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN)

After leaving his volunteer position there in 2007 (but not before demanding the institution pay him $300,000 for his trouble(PDF)) Dr. Sternberg became a research fellow at the Biologic Institute of Seattle, funded by a grant from the Discovery Institute.

Dr. Michael Behe is a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University. While he is not barred from speaking about intelligent design, his university has issued a Biology department disclaimer saying, “The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of “intelligent design.” While we respect Prof. Behe’s right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific.”

Biochemist Michael Behe and his book, Darwin's Black Box

Behe is a fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture where he reports to director Stephen Meyer. Most prominently, Behe is well known for his testimony in the Kitzmiller v. Dover court case in Pennsylvania, which found that intelligent design was indeed based on the religious idea of creationism and therefore could not be mandated in public schools.

Despite his appearance in the trailer for Expelled, somehow he was left on the cutting room floor, perhaps because his continued standing as a scientist hasn’t been jeopardized by his intelligent design beliefs.

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez is an assistant professor of astronomy and physics at Iowa State University was denied tenure, claiming discrimination against him for his support of intelligent design. The university said that it was because he didn’t meet the basic requirements for tenure because he published no significant papers in the seven years he was at ISU and he didn’t get any grants and only had one graduate student finish a doctoral dissertation.

In 2008 Gonzalez left ISU and accepted a non-tenure track job in the physics department at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. There he runs the astronomy program and operates the school’s observatory.

David Coppedge joins a long list of people complaining that their religious beliefs cost them their scientific jobs. And now it’s up to a court to determine whether NASA acted within the confines of the Constitution, which all federal institutions are bound.

Intelligent Design

Words and Music By Barry Mitchell

Religion isn’t science,
That’s what they always teach.
But in our nation’s classrooms
Some people want to preach
along with Evolution, a secondary claim, It’s really just Creationism with a brand new name.

Intelligent Design.
Intelligent Design.
It’s Darwin or the other way
The two just can’t combine.
Did we all evolve or was it something more Divine?
They want to teach Intelligent Design.

We might not come from monkeys,
The Good Book tells me so.
Of Pandas and Of People is the good book students know.
But politicians pander, we all know that’s the case They’re making monkeys of us all by pandering to their base!

Intelligent Design.
Intelligent Design.
It’s Darwin or the other way;
The two just can’t combine.
Noah built his ark, and Hallelujah, it worked fine.
That ark was an Intelligent Design.

No matter how we got here
Remember this, I pray:
When kids ask, “Where’d we come from?”
I say, “The USA!”

And we should always follow
This simple Golden Rule:
“Do unto others — and then run.”
That’s what I learned back in school!

Intelligent Design.
Intelligent Design.
We’ve all got our theories,
You’ve got yours and I’ve got mine.
If there’s one Creator, Lord, just please give us a sign.
(SFX: loud clap of thunder)
Should we teach Intelligent Design?
Amen.

(c) 2005 CUNY TV

Can you see yourself in space? Do you envision yourself traveling months or even years to explore our corner of the solar system? If so, you may want to get your eyes checked.

A new study of astronauts who have spent a lot of time in space on shuttle missions or at the International Space Station shows they develop eye problems after prolonged periods in weightlessness.

University of Texas Medical School researchers scanned the eyes of 27 astronauts who had spent at least 108 days in space. They found that many astronauts who previously had 20/20 vision required glasses. and quite a few developed blurry vision, likely caused by intracranial hypertension, a condition caused by pressure building in the skull. Twenty percent of the astronauts studied also reported a flattening of the back of the eyeball, which makes focusing more difficult.

Study lead author Larry Kramer says, “The MRI findings revealed various combinations of abnormalities following both short and long-term cumulative exposure to microgravity also seen with idiopathic intracranial hypertension.”

Astronaut John Grunsfeld, Spacewalking, courtesy of NASA Goddard

For years NASA has studied bone mineral loss and temporary muscular aches in astronauts. Now it is focusing on the eye health of its spaceflyers.

Dr. William Tarver at NASA’s Johnson Space Center says, “NASA has placed this problem high on its list of human risks, has initiated a comprehensive program to study its mechanisms and implications, and will continue to closely monitor the situation.”

A few astronauts who developed eye problems were told returning to space might permanently damage their vision. And weak vision has even cost a couple astronauts their private pilot licenses. When this astronaut vision problem became visible last year, ABC News talked to former astronaut Peggy Whitson who said, “We’ve known about vision changes on orbit but in some cases we’ve actually found that it can be permanent.”

The question remains what does this mean for flights to Mars or beyond? Dr. Kramer isn’t sure and that’s why he wants to study this more closely.

He says, “At this point we’re just raising the issue but once you’re headed to Mars, there’s no turning back.”

On Earth our bodies are oriented with gravity in mind. That is why our hearts pumps to prevent blood and other fluids from pooling in our legs. In microgravity, there is no force to counteract the pumping, so fluids get pushed upward without a way to pull them back down. Astronauts report a feeling of full headedness. On short flights astronauts use tabasco sauce and horseradish to help clear out their sinuses.

In the study 60 percent of the astronaut subjects reported some eye problem. Some were reversible and others may be permanent. This has immediate implications for the US space program since ending the shuttle program last year all spaceflights are multi-month missions to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule. And all long term space exploration involves long range targets, whether Mars or a large asteroid.

Russian cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev lost his eyesight to progressive cataracts. He blamed excessive radiation for his eye problem, after spending 221 days orbiting Earth in 1982. He says, “It was all concealed back then, during the Soviet years, but now I can say that I caused damage to my health because of that flight.

According to one NASA survey of about 300 astronauts, nearly 30 percent of those who have flown on space shuttle missions – which usually lasted two weeks — and 60 percent who’ve completed six-month shifts aboard the station reported a gradual blurring of eyesight. But 40 percent of astronauts experienced no eye problems whatsoever, which puzzles Kramer and his team.

NASA’s Chief Health and Medical Officer says, “This [eye problem] is comparable to the other risks like bone demineralization and radiation that we have to consider. Dr. Rich Williams says, “It does have the potential for causing mission impact.”

So before you purchase a $200,000 ticket to the edge of space on Virgin Galactic next year, start counting how much time you are spending in a weightless environment. This research shows that symptoms associated with intracranial hypertension can begin after just 30 days in space or other microgravity.

DroughtGard Corn from Monsanto, courtesy of Monsanto

But what’s in the corn that makes it more resistant to drought? It’s a gene called cold shock protein B or cspB that comes from a common bacteria. It is called the Bacillus subtilis bacteria, also known as hay or grass bacillus, commonly found in soil. The gene facilitates protein function. The seed giant also added a second foreign gene that codes for antibiotic resistance.

According to Monsanto in the case of corn, “CspB works by helping the plant maintain growth and development during times of inadequate water supply. A corn plant is particularly vulnerable to drought during reproductive growth stages. By mitigating the impact of drought on the plant, cspB helps provide yield stability. Improved yield stability is of significant value to farmers faced with unpredictable rainfall.”

Monsanto worked with European chemical company BASF to develop the first biotechnology-derived drought-tolerant crop in the world. They made the initial discovery in 2009 but it’s taken several years of regulatory scrutiny and testing to bring it to the farmers in drought-stricken parts of the U.S.

In a 2010 biotechnology note the FDA, which regulates food additives, said, “Monsanto describes the CSPB protein produced in corn event MON 87460 as identical to the native CSPB protein produced in B. subtilis except for one amino acid introduced for cloning purposes. Bacterial cold shock proteins (CSP) are hypothesized to function by binding to RNA secondary structures, thus reducing the free energy required for unfolding misfolded RNA. CSPs are classified as RNA chaperones. Monsanto notes that similar cold shock domain-containing proteins are also present in plants where they appear to play a role in conferring stress tolerance.”

CsbB Protein at Work in Monsanto Genetically Modified Corn, courtesy of Monsanto

The FDA noted that Monsanto found several polypeptides containing at least 8 amino acids that could express proteins. The company ran those sequences against databases of any known toxins or allergens and found they didn’t match any. Then the FDA reports that it tested both bacillus subtilis and the cspB protein for safety and toxicity.

Previous research shows that b. subtilis is commonly used as a food additive with no deleterious effects, thus answering the safety question. And additional research shows that the cspB protein bears no similarity to proteins known to be toxic or bioactive.

Speaking on behalf of the agency, Susan Carlson said, “Based on the information provided by the company and other information available to the agency, FDA did not identify any issues under Sections 402 and 409 of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act that would require further evaluation at this time.” She felt that Monsanto had satisfied their obligation to determine if its intended genetic modification of corn posed any risk.

Before the FDA gave its approval for Monsanto to move forward with its testing and commercialization of drought-resistant corn, Dr. Shenaz Moola from the African Centre for Biosafety raised a few objections (PDF).

He says, “Inserted gene sequences may interrupt native gene sequences and/or their promoters and additional code fragments are not necessarily non-functional and may be transcribed.”

He cites Monsanto’s product Roundup Ready Soy which was supposed to have gene fragments that were “non-functional and not-transcribed.” Later they were found to transcribe and produce RNA. He says, “Unintended effects that are not detected in the lab and that may only become apparent in the long term cannot be ruled out.”

The antibiotic resistance marker gene nptII from E.coli is also part of the drought-resistant corn DNA. That gene codes for an enzyme that makes the organism (in this case the corn) resistant to three common families of antibiotics.

Dr. Moola doesn’t know why Monsanto and BASF even put that gene into the drought-resistant corn. He says, “In the development of MON 87460 [drought-resistant corn], the residual nptII gene is gratuitous especially since it is bordered by loxP sites and thus could have been removed.”

In a European Food Safety Authority statement (PDF) Monsanto says its antibiotic resistance markers have “no adverse effects on human health and the environment.

Not everyone agrees.

Two senior members of the EFSA’s biohazard panel that reviewed Monsanto’s application for use of drought-tolerant corn say, “adverse effects cannot be assessed” and the probability of gene transfers from plants to bacteria ranges widely “from unlikely to high.”

Dr. Moola says the evolution of antibiotic resistance is a clear indicator of gene transfer frequency, since antibiotics have been used in medicine for about 50 years. He is concerned about horizontal gene transfer where genes transfer genetic material between organisms, outside the context of parent to offspring reproduction. Most of the time it is performed through infectious transfer where the genetic material is transported by a bacteria or virus.

He says, “The intentional modification of plants could through horizontal gene transfer result in the unintentional modification of other organisms.”

This is already widely seen in pollination events where genetically modified plants are interbreeding with non-GMOs.

DroughtGard Field Test Map, 2010, courtesy of Monsanto

But the new DroughtGard variety of corn is already in the ground. For the last three years over 200 test sites throughout the Midwest have been planting the transgenic corn next to unmodified corn to measure the difference.

During its testing phase Monsanto has shifted its effort from a drought-resistant variety ideal for the parched Earth of Africa to a drought-tolerant variety that just boosts yields a bit under stressed water conditions.

And for the last couple of years the corn belt in Kansas and Nebraska have feel the full force of drought conditions as corn yields dropped under unusually dry conditions. During these times the DroughtGard corn performed well compared to non-GMO corn.

According to a United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization report prepared for ministers of the G-8, the number and duration of dry spells, especially in already drought-prone areas, is expected to increase.

Monsanto and its line of drought-resistant crops is banking on that. Over the next ten years it hopes to roll out a series of genetically modified plants that will all have foreign genes inserted into the seed’s DNA to make it more drought tolerant and make the company an additional $300 million to $500 million a year.

In December when the FDA decided not to regulate the new Monsanto corn variety, it marked the first time the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service approved a product that is genetically modified to resist drought, instead of a pest or fertilizer.

The agency concluded that the corn is is unlikely to harm the environment, people or animals and wouldn’t boost corn production at the expense of grasslands and forest.

Doug Gurian-Sherman from the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Food and Environment Program says, “There’s no reason to think the corn might be unsafe.” But he and Bill Freese at the Center for Food Safety wish there were more stringent testing and regulation of crops produced with biotechnology.

For the last seven years famed film director James Cameron has been working to build a tiny submarine capable of exploring the deepest reaches of the ocean. Later this month, the blockbuster creator of Titanic, The Abyss and Avatar will venture where only two men have gone before.

In preparing for his deep-sea dive last week, Cameron, who is an explorer in residence at the National Geographic Society set a new world depth record as he descended 5.1 miles. He beat the old record for modern vehicles previously held by a Japanese submersible by over a mile.

Deepsea Challenger Bobs on Surface during Final Checks

Cameron describes his surroundings 26,791 feet underwater. He says, “The ponded sediment in the center of the trench was the finest I’ve ever seen. When the thrust-wash just barely kissed it, it formed silken veils undulating across the bottom, and then it would rise and hang in tendrils like ectoplasm. Not at all like the typical turbidite plains of abyssal depths. Where I dove the basin of ponded sediment was 1.5 km across, flat as a billiard table, and virtually featureless. It actually ended at a well-defined ‘beach’ where the normal rocks and sediment commenced, terracing upward to the fault scarps. I explored up the scarps onto a plateau.”

But he’s ready to go deeper. Driven by pure curiosity the six-foot-two inch man will fold himself into the one-man sub and plunge seven miles to the Challenger Deep located in the Mariana Trench in the South Pacific. 57-year-old director Cameron hopes this expedition will help answer some basic scientific questions about ocean trenches, like whether fish can live there. So far no deep sea camera has captured one swimming around.

He says, “We’re gonna go down there with our cameras, our lights, and find the answers to some of those questions.”

Many fans of Cameron’s movies are critical of this flight of fancy and would rather have him working on his next film than exploring the ocean.

Adam Chitwood at Collider.com says, “When you’re James Cameron, you get to do pretty much whatever you want. That’s why instead of working away like a madman on Avatar 2 and 3 in order to meet a studio deadline, Cameron is out doing fun, hobby stuff like trying to reach the ocean’s deepest point; you know, for giggles.”

But Cameron is fulfilling a boyhood dream and he is pushing science and exploration at the same time. He says, “So little is known about these deep places that I knew I would see things no human has ever seen.” And the alien creatures he will surely film will likely inspire a new generation of movies.

James Cameron and Crew in Front of Deepsea Challenger

The only way to make his dream a reality was to build a new type of submersible vehicle unlike anything that was available. And Cameron is no stranger to submarines. He’s been on 72 dives, 51 of which were in Russian Mir subs to depths of up to 16,000 feet. And he’s visited the final resting place of the Titanic 33 times.

Over the last seven years he has been working on his new sub design, which he built secretly in Australia. Cameron is emerging as one of a handful of wealthy entrepreneurs who are helping to push scientific exploration forward.

Last year British billionaire Richard Branson launched his own submersible company, called Virgin Oceanic. Part of that underwater airline involves deep sea dives to the five of the most inaccessible spots on Earth.

Even though there is no real competition afoot, both Branson and Cameron would like to be the first to return to the bottom of the ocean after a 52-year hiatus.

Science is the binder for both of these projects. And Douglas Bartlett, a professor of marine microbial genetics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California San Diego is the glue that holds the science together for both expeditions.

While Cameron will film his entire deep sea experience on the ocean floor 36,000 below the surface, he will also be collecting water and marine life samples which will get turned over to Dr. Bartlett who has become a global expert on deep sea life.

Xenophyophore, Large Single-Celled Protist in Deep Ocean

Bartlett says, “The identification of these gigantic cells in one of the deepest marine environments on the planet opens up a whole new habitat for further study of biodiversity, biotechnological potential and extreme environment adaptation.”

But there are more than giant amoebas in the deep ocean. Bartlett is also part of the science team on Branson’s Challenger project to dive the deepest parts of the world’s five oceans. First stop, the Mariana Trench.

The $15 million project will give researchers at Scripps and elsewhere an unprecedented peek into the least accessible waters on Earth. Bartlett says, “It’s just going to be an incredible resource for looking at life in this extreme environment.”

Chris Welsh and Sir Richard Branson Sit atop Virgin Oceanic's Challenger, April 2011

Virgin Oceanic’s Challenger idea began years ago when adventurer Steve Fossett was setting sailing records with his 125-foot catamaran PlayStation. Eddie Kisfaludy, Virgin Oceanic’s operations manager says Fossett “was having this sub built to go down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.”

Fossett converted his catamaran into a research yacht, complete with a crane that could lift a sub out of the water and into a cradle on a center deck. He also commissioned a sub but died in 2007 before completing the project. Newport Beach real estate investor Chris Welsh shared Fossett’s passion for adventure so he bought Fossett’s catamaran and came up with the idea to dive five oceans.

He partnered with Branson and together the two adventurers are funding the whole project, with a little help from sponsors listed on the website.

Welsh says, “I just sort of sat back and looked at what could be done, and going to the deepest places in each of the five oceans kind of bubbled to the top.”

Deepsea Challenge and Challenger Expeditions Science Team Member Douglas Bartlett

Welsh plans to pilot the first of five dives himself later this year. Currently, the Branson team is testing the fitness of the flying sub off the coast of California ahead of its maiden voyage to the Mariana Trench.

After each of the five Challenger dives scientists will look at everything from the geology and chemistry of the area. They will analyze the types of simple organisms that survive in extreme environments and they may even find answers to all sorts of biological riddles.

Cameron’s Deepsea Challenge expedition seven miles down wouldn’t be complete without filming something. National Geographic says he’ll be at the bottom of the ocean shooting his environment in high-definition 3D video for up to 6 hours.

The last dive to these depths lasted only 20 minutes and no images were captured. A window cracked in the US Navy sub Trieste on the way down. The landing stirred up so much ooze that the divers could see little through the portholes, took no pictures and Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard began their ascent after just 20 minutes on the seabed.

The New York Times says, “As with the birth of the private space rocket industry, where commercial companies are building ships to take astronauts aloft, the debut of Mr. Cameron’s submarine signals the rising importance of entrepreneurs in the global race to advance science and technology.”

And it signals a commitment to learning about our planet’s innerspace — the deep ocean. According to the Cameron’s expedition website, “Its mission will be one of scientific exploration and discovery, part of an expedition that will help scientists study alien ecosystems and the tectonic forces that help shape Earth.”

And according to those close to the project, the big dive will take place later this month.

James Hansen looks more like an Amish farmer these days — sporting a chin curtain beard, button-down white shirt and hat — than a scientist. At least that’s how the renowned climate expert appeared at the end of February, as he delivered a dire message to a room full of movers and shakers at the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach.

NASA Dropped "To Understand and Protect The Home Planet" from Its Mission Statement in February, 2006

The outspoken physicist used to justify his advocacy for planet Earth as part of NASAs mission statement, which stated in its first line, “To understand and protect the home planet.” But that was before NASA dropped that piece in 2006, largely because of Dr. Hansen.

Dr. Hansen runs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Sciences in New York. But he started out studying Venus under James Van Allen, for whom the Van Allen radiation belts are named. As a young scientist Hansen focused his research on understanding the atmosphere of Venus. By helping NASA build an instrument to study our neighboring planet, Hansen helped confirm that Venus is hot — about 860 degrees F on the surface — and is surrounded by a smoggy atmosphere of sulfuric acid.

In the 1960s and 1970s he published several papers about the Venutian atmosphere, postulating that the hot surface was the result of aerosols trapping the internal energy of the planet and preventing it from radiating back to space. Essentially, Hansen was describing the greenhouse effect on Venus. While the Pioneer Venus Project was still being planned, Hansen started looking at the greenhouse effect here on Earth because scientists realized that the atmospheric composition was changing.

Hansen says he resigned from the Venus experiment “because a planet changing before our eyes is more interesting and important.”

He immediately recognized that changes in the composition of Earth’s atmosphere will affect all of humanity. By the late 1970s the greenhouse effect had been well understood for more than a century after first having been discovered by British physicist John Tyndall in the 1850s. Tyndall measured infrared radiation, which is heat. And in laboratory tests he showed that gases such as carbon dioxide absorbed heat, as Hansen says, “thus acting like a blanket warming Earth’s surface.”

So he began looking at the temperature record of Earth and found that over the previous century (from 1880-1980) the world had warmed by 0.4 degrees Celsius. And that was enough to show that the greenhouse effect was already in effect.

Hansen, et al. Publish Critical Climate Change Study in 1981

1. Earth would likely warm in the 1980s
2. Warming would exceed the random noise level of random weather by the end of the century
3. The 21st Century would see shifting climate zones, creation of drought-prone regions in North America and Asia, erosion of ice sheets, rising sea levels and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage

In 2012 Hansen says, “All of these impacts have since happened or are now well underway.”

But that is still not why he is so adamant about getting people to recognize the importance of climate change. After over 40 years of studying the climate and understanding the physics of the atmosphere as well as anyone can, he is driven to speak out in an uncharacteristically vocal way because he looks at his grandchildren and says he can’t imagine knowing what he knows and not sharing that crucial information clearly with everyone he encounters.

In 1988 he testified before Congress where he talked about global warming increasing both extremes of the Earth’s water cycle. He said a warming world would experience heat waves and droughts directly from the increased warming. But he also warned that since a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor there would also be more intense storms and flooding.

James Hansen Addresses TED Conference, February 2012

Fast-forward 15 years. Hansen and his colleagues have more evidence than ever that the planet is warming and could reach a tipping point where reversing the effects will be impossible. He began engaging politicians — most notably President George W. Bush’s administration, twice.

He says, “By then most of the things we mentioned in our 1981 paper were facts but energy policies continued to focus on finding more fossil fuels.”

After being censored by the White House and causing NASA to drop the first part of its own mission statement Hansen, the quiet Midwestern physicist was thrust into the spotlight and began talking not about physics but about energy policy. He was still studying the science but physics wasn’t as provocative as the controversy surrounding the hot-button issue of global warming.

At the TED Talk in February, Hansen says the most important piece of science he learned during the last decade is about Earth’s energy imbalance.

He says, “Adding CO2 to the air is like throwing another blanket on the bed. It reduces Earth’s heat radiation to space so there is a temporary energy imbalance. More energy is coming in than going out until Earth warms up enough to again radiate to space as much energy as it absorbs from the sun.”

So the big climate physics question revolves around Earth’s energy imbalance. Is there more energy coming in than going out? If so, then more warming is already in the pipeline and the process will continue without adding any additional greenhouse gases.

After decades of speculation Hansen says science “can finally measure Earth’s energy imbalance precisely by measuring the heat content in Earth’s heat reservoirs.”

Most of the excess heat that can’t escape back to space gets absorbed in the ocean at three levels, the upper ocean, the deep southern ocean and the abyssal ocean. Ice melt and ground warming make up the rest of the heat reservoirs.

Over the last ten years scientists have been racing to understand the role the ocean plays in global warming. Now Hansen has discovered that the upper ocean accounted for 71 percent of the energy imbalance. That means 71 percent of the heat is going right into the ocean, warming the surface, raising sea level and changing the chemistry. By 2006 3,000 floats covering most of the world’s oceans began collecting temperature and other data. In 2011, Karina von Schuckmann and Pierre-Yves Le Traon estimated that between 2005 and 2010 the world ocean gained energy at a rate 0.41 W/m2 averaged over the planet.

That put a big missing piece of the climate puzzle in place.

Hansen says, “The total energy imbalance right now is about 0.6 of a watt per square meter.” He says that may not sound like a lot but when added together it is about 20 times greater than the amount of energy used by everyone on Earth. It’s equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima-style atomic bombs per day, 365 days per year. Hansen says, “That’s how much extra energy Earth is gaining each day.”

Based on his calculations, Hansen holds firm to his previous recommendation that we need to reduce CO2 levels to 350 parts per million from today’s 391 ppm. He says, “That is the chance to restore energy balance and prevent further warming.”

800,000 Years of Ice Core Data from Antarctica

Looking back to the history of our planet scientists see fluctuations in temperature, carbon dioxide levels and sea levels. They shift as the orbit of Earth around the sun shifts. Hansen says these natural cycles that begin with very small orbital changes, which affect how much sun reaches Earth’s surface, cause planet-wide climate change.

The same thing happened on Venus. Scientists now with a better understanding of the planet thanks the work of James Hansen note that Venus was probably very similar to Earth billions of years ago. It likely had a water and rock surface, much cooler surface temperatures and a more breathable atmosphere. But a runaway greenhouse effect caused by the evaporation of that original water probably generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere, warming the planet to its current levels.

Now human action has perturbed Earth’s climate outside of its natural state. And Hansen (along with many other scientists) are concerned that if things continue in a business-as-usual fashion, Earth is heading for an energy imbalance that would create runaway global warming.

Because the world hasn’t come together to solve this planetary crisis, Hansen says, “Clearly I haven’t got this message across. The science is clear. I need your help to communicate the gravity and the urgency of this situation and its solutions. More effectively, we owe it to our children and grandchildren.”

James Hansen Arrested in Front of White House, 2011

He says, “The phsyics doesn’t change. As Earth warms now from extra CO2 we put in the atmosphere, ice will melt and CO2 and methane will be released by warming ocean and melting permafrost.”

These are the climate feedback loops that Hansen worries about most. While he says no one can be certain when these amplifying feedbacks will happen, he says, “We can be certain that they will occur unless we stop the warming.”

Like all climate scientists Hansen says that global warming can’t be attributed to a single event. But over time the frequency of such events can be linked to climate change.

Hansen says that global warming is already affecting people. He points to the Texas, Oklahoma, Mexico drought last year, Moscow the year before and the widespread heat wave in Europe in 2003. He calls them exceptional events. To qualify as exceptional an event it must be more than three standard deviations outside the norm.

He says, “Fifty years ago, such anomalies covered 2-3 tenths of one percent of land area. In recent years, because of global warming, they now cover about ten percent.”

That big jump, by a factor of 25-50, allows Hansen and others to say with a great degree of confidence that the severe Texas and Moscow heat waves are not natural. He says, “They were caused by global warming.”

As a physicist who has studied the problem for a long time Hansen believes he’s come up with a suitable solution. He says placing a rising carbon fee on fossil fuels is a “simple and honest approach.”

He says, “It would be immoral to leave young people with a climate system spiraling out of control.” His plan calls for a fee collected from fossil fuel companies with of the proceeds given to citizens on a monthly basis. His hope is that new money would increase jobs, spur innovation and make clean energy sources more affordable. He wants the system automated so 100 percent of the carbon money gets transferred “electronically every month to all legal residents on a per capita basis with the government not keeping one dime.”

The energy policy of the U.S. and much of the world externalizes the true cost of fossil fuels. That’s what prompts Hansen to sound the alarm. The quiet scientist was arrested last year for protesting outside the White House. He is so determined to get the public to embrace the serious nature of climate change that he spends his vacation time speaking to audiences around the world and raising awareness about our climate’s precarious situation.

James Hansen at TED 2012

According to his figures if we had started in 2005 we could have restored Earth’s energy balance and stabilized the climate during the 21st Century with only three percent emissions reduction per year. If we start next year, we would need to reduce emissions six percent per year to prevent runaway warming. And if we wait another ten years we would need to reduce emissions drastically by 15 percent per year. At that point Hansen says it would be extremely difficult and expensive and perhaps impossible.

He says, “The longer we wait the more expensive and difficult it becomes. And we aren’t even starting.”

Despite what some people may think 19-year-old Miley Cyrus is not a robot. She even has a song about it. Though this week the teen rock star upset many of her most ardent fans who are also religious conservatives when she posted a picture on a social network.

Normally, that type of celebrity behavior wouldn’t raise eyebrows. But Cyrus posted a picture of theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss embedded with his quote: “You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, all the things that matter for evolution) weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in stars. So forget Jesus. Stars died so you can live.”

Miley Cyrus Twitpic of Lawrence Krauss with His Quote

To the photo, she added her own comment, “Beautiful.” That seeming endorsement of the Big Bang theory began a war of words where some of her fans in an unchristian fashion attacked the pop star for her belief in the beginning of the universe.

They clearly took issue with the “So forget Jesus” line of Krauss’ quote.

This week she returned to Twitter saying, “How can people take the love out of science and bring hate into religion so easily? It makes me sad to think the world is this way. Like Einstein says: ‘Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.’”

Miley Cyrus Sings "Robot"

Now that the singer is a young adult, some of her growing pains are creating conflict. But as she says in her song Robot, “Stop telling me I’m part of a big machine.”

Right after the backlash began Hollywood Life editor Bonnie Fuller came to the teen’s defense. She says, “Miley, we’re so proud of you for standing up in your new tweets about your beliefs that the world was created through evolution, even though you were attacked by some livid fans!”

Well, the quote more refers to the Big Bang creating the universe not evolution but Fuller means well despite her scientific naivete. So we’ll give her a pass for now.

In a poll on the same site, Fuller reports that 57 percent didn’t think Cyrus’ Twitpic of Krauss was offensive.

But many die-hard fans are ready to take away her Southern Baptist card and some even told her to go to Hell. Again, not very Christian of them.

One online supporter says, “I believe in God, the big bang and evolution. The heavens and the earth are so awesome that i cant imagine that it is an accident. We may have been created in God’s image but we have no idea what that image is. I dont think it was an ashton kutcher lookalike.”

But Krauss in a 2009 Wall Street Journal editorial outlines why science must be separate from religion. He says, “God is, of necessity, irrelevant in science.”

He refers to evolutionary biologist J.B. Haldane’s idea that science is an atheistic discipline. This kind of talk angers many religious people but let’s look at what that really means.

In 1934 Haldane said, “When I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course.” And science would lack consistency, reproducibility and integrity if supernatural interventions explained how the natural world works.

While Haldane was an true non-believing atheist, Krauss balks at the title, accepting the less extreme moniker of rational atheist (as opposed to an absolutist). He says, “Faced with the remarkable success of science to explain the workings of the physical world, many, indeed probably most, scientists understandably react as Haldane did.”

And that ability to reason has allowed society to advance over the last 400 years. Krauss says that God has no place in science he also argues that the true believers in each of the leading world religions are themselves atheists regarding the specific sacred tenets of all other faiths.

Krauss says, “So while scientific rationality does not require atheism, it is by no means irrational to use it as the basis for arguing against the existence of God, and thus to conclude that claimed miracles like the virgin birth are incompatible with our scientific understanding of nature.”

When it comes to the hot topic of science and religion, those thought-provoking statements are far more incendiary than Miley Cyrus tweeting a picture of a theoretical physicist and saying his quote is beautiful. But that’s not what grabs headlines.

Robot
By: Miley Cyrus

It’s been like this from the start
One piece after another to make my heart
You mistake the game for being smart
Stand here, sell this, and hit your mark

But the sound of the steel
And the crush, and the grind
It all screams who am I, to decide my life
But in time it all dies,
There’s nothing left inside
Just rusted metal that was never even mine

I would scream
But I’m just this hollow shell
Waiting here, begging please
Set me free so I can feel

HEY

Stop trying to live my life for me
I need to breathe, I’m not your robot
Stop telling me I’m a part of the big machine
I’m breaking free,
can’t you see
I can love, I can speak
Without somebody else operating me
You gave me eyes and now I see
I’m not your robot I’m just me

All this time, I’ve been mislead
There was nothing but crossed wires in my head
I’ve been taught to think that what I feel
doesn’t matter at all
till they say its real

I would scream
But I’m just this hollow shell
waiting here, begging please
Set me free so I can feel

HEY

Stop trying to live my life for me
I need to breathe, I’m not your robot
Stop telling me I’m a part of the big machine
I’m breaking free,
can’t you see
I can love, I can speak
Without somebody else operating me
You gave me eyes and now I see
I’m not your robot, I’m just me

I’m not your robot, I’m just me
I’m not your robot

I would scream,
but I’m just this hollow shell
Waiting here
Breaking free
Set me free so I can feel

HEY

Stop trying to live my life for me
I need to breathe, I’m not your robot
Stop telling me I’m a part of the big machine
I’m breaking free,
can’t you see
I can love, I can speak
Without somebody else operating me
You gave me eyes and now I see
I’m not your robot, I’m just me

I’m not your robot, I’m just me
I’m not your robot

“Robot” written by John Shanks and Miley Cyrus
Lyrics (c) Sony/ATV Music Publishing

Last year 1,668 tornadoes raked the U.S. causing billions of dollars in damage and claiming many lives. Winter tornadoes tend to be infrequent and weak because they rely on warm water in the Gulf of Mexico which is cooler at that time of year. But not this year. Temperatures in the Gulf are running 2-4 degrees above normal because it’s been a very mild winter.

With that fuel ready to power severe storms all that is needed is a little push of cold unstable air coming across the Rocky Mountains and the recipe for severe tornado outbreaks is complete.

Snow covers a storm-damaged home in Henryville, Indiana, March 5, 2012. Courtesy of Reuters/John Sommers II

Because of the mild winter, the tornadoes are stronger than usual. Television meterologist Zack Shields says there are more F3 and F4 twisters being reported. Tornadoes rank from weakest to strongest on the Fujita Scale from F0 to F5.

And some scientists only think the seasons will start earlier as the world warms. Climate scientist Kevin Trenberth says, “As spring moves up a week or two, tornado season will start in February instead of waiting for April.” The National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist believes that climate change will likely change the severity and frequency of tornadoes.

Inside a Tornado, Courtesy of NOAA

Researchers say that the two conditions necessary to spawn tornadoes will be affected in opposite ways. While the intensity of twisters will probably increase as the world warms a reduction in high altitude winds known as wind shear will follow, reducing the frequency of such events.

NASA atmospheric physicist Anthony Del Genio says thunderstorms in the future will pack a more powerful punch but strike less frequently than in the past.

Despite wind shear making tornadoes less frequent, Trenberth sees last year’s record-breaking tornado season as a bad omen. In April 2011 multiple tornado outbreaks spun out 753 twisters that month, almost reaching the annual average of 800. In the past scientists have noticed a connection between the La Nina weather phenomenon and active tornado seasons. While a powerful La Nina last year likely made the tornado season so violent, a repeat La Nina this year is weakening and shouldn’t be much of a factor this season.

March generally marks the beginning of tornado season across the Midwest and deep South, with April and May as the peak months for severe thunderstorms that create ideal tornado conditions. Last year the tornado activity began on New Year’s and ramped up to big outbreaks in April and May.

Devastation after Joplin Tornado, April 2011

In the recent spate of late February and early March storms, some people report only getting a three or four-minute head start before tornadoes pummeled entire towns.

New research is looking at ways to increase the warning lead time but weather prediction of this sort still baffles most meteorologists. Scientists will meet this summer to determine how they can do longer range tornado prediction. The National Weather Service is also in the process of installing upgraded radar for live forecasting, tracking and distinguishing of tornadoes, which according to NWS meteorologist Paul Schlatter will help forecasters make more certain warnings and potentially save lives.

But those advances are about 8-10 years down the road. And in the meantime tornadoes are already bearing down on snow-covered towns.

It may seem far away but astronomers have confirmed that a new planet orbiting a star 42 light years away is mostly made of water. This super Earth is much larger than our own planet and is one of several orbiting the star JG 1214, located in the constellation Ophiuchus (the serpent bearer).

The planet was actually spotted in 2009 by a first year graduate student working on the MEarth Project, an array of ground-based robotic telescopes in Arizona. That student is credited with the discovery of the second “Super Earth” exoplanet.

Three years later that student is Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Zachory Berta. He says, “GJ 1214b is like no planet we know of.” And of the over 700 exoplanets that have been detected by ground-based and space telescopes over the past 15 years this one is unique for its high water content.

Brown University physics professor Ian Dell’Antonio teaches a class about exoplanets. He tells the Providence Journal that the discovery of this watery world is very important. He says, “[It has] interesting and perhaps intriguing properties in terms of the possibilities of the search for life.”

Artist Rendering of Exoplanet GJ 1214b with Star GJ in the Background

For that reason, astronomers believe the planet is a water world, containing much more water than Earth and far less rock.

Even though it was a lot of water, it probably isn’t conducive to life as we know it. The average temperature is a steamy 446 degrees F.

Berta’s team studied the planet’s sunsets using the Hubble Space Telescope after initial analysis suggested that its atmosphere was made mostly of water. Astronomers studied how the planet’s atmosphere filtered starlight to determine its composition. Now in light of the high surface temperature the atmosphere is likely made of steam.

Berta says, “The high temperatures and high pressures would form exotic materials like ‘hot ice’ or ‘superfluid water,’ substances that are completely alien to our everyday experience.”

So this is an alien planet among alien planets. There are over 2,300 candidate planets that astronomers have identified using the Kepler Space Telescope, which has only been watching for exoplanets for 16 months. The candidate planets have yet to confirm many but with each new discovery science is adding a lot of diversity to our cosmic landscape.

Astronomers have found one planet that is as light and airy as Styrofoam and another that is as dense as iron. They have also found several alien worlds that orbit two suns or are locked in orbit around a single star.

Because GJ 1214b is so close to Earth, it is considered a prime candidate for future study by specialized instruments, including those that will be loaded on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is slated to launch in 2018.

Ocean acidity is one of the most worrisome problems facing marine biologists. There is a lot that we don’t understand about the carbon cycle, including exactly how much of the carbon dioxide human activity belches into the atmosphere ultimately ends up in the ocean. Scientists think it’s about 30 percent, give or take.

They know that the oceans act as a carbon sink, meaning excess atmospheric CO2 makes its way to the ocean where it gets absorbed. When carbon dioxide mixes with saltwater it turns to carbonic acid. The more carbon in the ocean the higher the acidity and the lower the ocean’s pH balance.

As Carbon Dioxide Gas Dissolves in Seawater, Carbonic Acid Forms. In the Weak Acid Carbonate Ions neutralize Free Hydrogen Ions, Causing Carbonate Levels to Drop.

Scientists studying the carbon cycle believe over 30 percent of anthropogenic CO2 emissions go straight into the oceans, which makes them progressively more acidic. Acidification harms many marine life forms and interferes with the development of shell-building creatures, especially those with calcium-carbonate skeletons, like corals and molluscs. It also can affect phytoplankton species, which are at the bottom of the ocean food chain but are an essential part of the marine network that feeds fish, crustaceans and other species.

New research from an international collaboration of scientists finds the ocean’s pH levels have dropped 0.1 unit during the 20th Century. Since the make up of the ocean has remained very stable for millions of years, this seemingly rapid change represents the largest shift in ocean chemistry in 300 million years.

For millions years the oceans have become hospitable to many forms of life because the chemistry has been stable. But about 56 million years ago volcanic activity coupled with the destabilization of frozen methane hydrates on the ocean floor forced the release of massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Ocean acidification then led to a mass extinction of marine animals.

Calcium Dependent Nano-Fossils under a Scanning Electron Microscope, (L) before PETM, (R) after PETM 56 Million Years Ago

But scientists warn that those rapid CO2 emissions were still at least ten times slower than those occurring now. Dr. Carles Pelejero, researcher at the CSIC Institute of Marine Sciences and ICREA in Spain says the fossil record “augurs more catastrophic consequences caused by current anthropogenic changes.”

The geological record shows how large disturbances on the planet can change the pH levels in the oceans. 65 million years ago when a giant meteor struck Earth killing the dinosaurs and marking the end of the Cretaceous Period oceans became more acidic. And 200 million years ago the Triassic Period may have ended with ocean acidification. The same can be said for the end of the Permian Period about 250 million years ago.

The one thing that all three of these major events have in common is warming temperatures, decreased oxygen and ocean acidification.

Patrizia Ziveri, a Spanish researcher at ICTA says, “Considering the effects we detect through fossil records, there is no doubt that we must tackle the problem at its roots as soon as possible, adopting measures to immediately reduce our CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.”

Columbia University paleoceanographer Bärbel Hönisch is the lead author on research that appears in the journal Science. She led the review of hundreds of paleoceanographic studies, and headed a team of researchers from five countries that found evidence for only one period in the last 300 million years when the oceans changed even remotely as fast as today — the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, some 56 million years ago.

She says, “We know that life during past ocean acidification events was not wiped out — new species evolved to replace those that died off. But if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about — coral reefs, oysters, salmon.”

The oceans act like a sponge to draw down excess carbon dioxide from the air. The greenhouse gas reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid, which over time gets neutralized by fossil carbonate shells on the seafloor. But if CO2 goes into the oceans too quickly, it can deplete the carbonate ions that corals, mollusks and some plankton need for reef and shell-building.

Pteropod Placed in Corrosive Water Simulating the Ocean in 2100. The Shell Dissolves over 45-Day Period, courtesy of PMEL

In the early 1990s, scientists extracting sediments from the seafloor off Antarctica found a layer of 56-million-year-old mud from this period wedged between thick deposits of white plankton fossils. In a span of about 5,000 years, they estimated, a mysterious surge of carbon doubled atmospheric concentrations, pushed average global temperatures up by about 6 degrees C, and dramatically changed the ocean’s entire biotic landscape.

Hönisch says that in the last hundred years, atmospheric CO2 has risen about 30 percent, to 393 parts per million, and ocean pH has fallen by 0.1 unit, to 8.1–an acidification rate at least 10 times faster than that 56 million years ago.

And, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that pH may fall another 0.3 units by the end of the century, to 7.8, raising the possibility that we may soon see ocean changes similar to those observed during the PETM.

NOAA oceanographer Richard Feely says studying the past may a good way to see the future. He wasn’t associated with the current study but says, “These studies give you a sense of the timing involved in past ocean acidification events — they did not happen quickly.” But current ocean acidification is happening at a very rapid pace. To that Dr. Feely says, “The decisions we make over the next few decades could have significant implications on a geologic timescale.”

Throughout his career it is clear that one moment stuck out for him. When he was 11 years old he asked his teacher about the flame at the end of a candle. Her quick yet unsatisfying response only heightened the mystery.

Actor, Science Communicator Alan Alda

The trick is that it can’t be couched in jargon. The explanation must be easily understood and appreciated by a panel of 11 year olds because that’s who will be judging the entries.

Obviously, Alda never got a satisfactory answer to his own question about the flame and that ignited a burning desire within him to communicate complex subject matter to a general audience.

Hey, that’s what REALscience does. How about that?

Alda says, “Scientists urgently need to be able to speak with clarity to funders, policy-makers, students, the general public, and even other scientists.” He even recounts the wish of some young researchers to be able to relay their work to their grandmothers.

He says he first became aware of the divide between scientists and the public when working on Scientific American Frontiers where he abandoned the traditional interview format for a conversation because he had to ask so many questions to be able to understand what the researchers were saying.

During that process he humanized the science and let his audience see the people behind the lab coats. He says, “I began to think that clarity in communicating science is at the very heart of science itself.”

What's Going on with A Candle Flame? Alan Alda Wants to Know

Drawing from his personal disappointment over a concise and digestible explanation of a simple candle flame Alda is convinced that the failure to communicate science with clarity holds very serious consequences for society. He says, “We feel the disconnect all around us, from a common misimpression that evolution is the theory that we’re descended from monkeys, to the worry that physicists in Geneva might suck the universe into a teacup—or something uncomfortably smaller.”

Sixty-five years ago Alda’s teacher answered his inquiry about a candle flame with, “It’s oxidation.” Clearly that wasn’t a good enough explanation for the curious young Alda. Now he’s challenging the world’s chemists and physicists to come up with a better explanation and one a child can grasp.

For the next month The Flame Challenge will light the way for scientists to intelligibly convey to a preteen panel what goes on at the end of a burning candle. Alda suggests the process could even be fun. The contest runs March 2 to April 2 and the results will be announced in June at the World Science Festival in New York.

Rules:

1. Answer the question — “What is a flame?” — in a way an 11-year-old will find intelligible and maybe even fun.

2. Answers will be screened for accuracy by scientists, then judged by a panel of 11-year-olds.

3. Answers can be submitted through April 2, 2012. [Click here for the entry form.]

4. The winning entry will be unveiled at a special event at the World Science Festival in New York in June. The winner will get VIP tickets to the Festival, along with a Flame Challenge T-shirt, and the gratitude of a nation of 11-year-olds.

5. Finalist entries, as well as the winning entry, will be posted on the Flame Challenge website:www.flamechallenge.org

6. Entries can be written, spoken (on video), or told through graphics.

7. There is no limit on length, but remember – brevity is the soul of wit, particularly when the 11-year-old has a cell phone, an X-Box, a Facebook habit, etc.

Jill Tarter has never been accused of being a small thinker. The astronomer and director of the Center for SETI Research, one of three non-profit organizations that make up the SETI Institute. The purpose as the acronym implies is to search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Astronomer Jill Tarter Makes Her TED Prize Wish, 2009.

Now three years later her wish is coming true in the form of SETI Live, a new public project that enlists citizen scientists to sift through radio telescope data, separating terrestrial noise from any extraterrestrial signal.

TED Prize Director Amy Novogratz says, “This landmark step empowers people around the globe to meaningfully contribute to this important scientific endeavor and work towards answering the ultimate question, ‘are we alone?’”

SETI Live was created in collaboration with Zooniverse at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium where Dr. Chris Lintott is the principal investigator. He says, “Over the last few years, we have learned about the incredible desire of hundreds of thousands of people to take part in scientific research as they’ve used Zooniverse to classify galaxies, explore the Moon and even to discover planets.”

Allen Telescope Array, SETI

For the first time SETI supporters — many of whom donated excess computer processing time in the search for aliens in the SETI@home program — now can look through data streaming live from the Kepler Space Telescope that is trained on a group of stars in the Kepler field where over 1,000 planets have been discovered.

But SETI Live almost didn’t go live. And the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) almost shut down last year after deep budget cuts and the loss of a key funder. But the Air Force stepped up and gave the search for extraterrestrials a new chance for success. They will fund a project that will keep the radio telescopes listening for signals from out of this world for the next five years. And a crowdfunded project helped raise $200,000 to dust off the telescopes and get them back online after they began the process of shutting down for good.

For the last 70 years we have been transmitting radio waves into space, beyond our ionosphere in hopes of reaching some other intelligent life in the universe.

The nearest star that astronomers know to have a planet is Epsilon Eridani, which is 10 light-years away. That means it would take ten years to travel there racing at the speed of light. And sound waves travel much slower. The distance that sound can travel in 70 years is our current radiosphere.

Our signals haven’t had time to reach planets outside our radiosphere, so there’s no chance they could detect them…yet. Another problem is that radio waves spread out over space, so the signal weakens as it travels, requiring an intelligent civilization to have powerful antennas to detect our signal.

The radiosphere works in reverse as well, but we don’t know of any extraterrestrial civilization so we can’t figure out the radiosphere if it started producing signals that could escape their ionosphere. But that is what SETI Live is all about. The project will scan the mountains of radio signal data, looking for signals that other-worldly civilizations are producing.

Until now, there were entire areas of the SETI project that were impossible to sort because of overlapping signals in crowded radio frequency bands. That’s where Tarter and her team decided it would be worthwhile getting human eyes on the data instead of relying on computer algorithms.

She says, “There are frequencies that our automated signal detection systems now ignore, because there are too many signals there. Most are created by Earth’s communication and entertainment technologies, but buried within this noise, there may be a signal from a distant technology.”

She hopes that by recruiting a global army of volunteers the scientists can overcome the crowded frequency bands that confuse the computers. And, it’s all being done live. So if several volunteers mark the same data repeatedly the ATA can be stopped and go back for a second look.

Tarter says, “By doing this in real-time, we will have an opportunity to follow up immediately on what our volunteers discover.”

Lintott says, “This is what real alien hunting looks like. The pictures aren’t as pretty and it’s not as exciting as a flying saucer landing at your gate, but it is real science.”

Antonio Ereditato was correct not to call his measurement of subatomic particles moving faster than the speed of light a discovery. And now after further scrutiny, the finding is falling apart. The high-energy particle physicists working at the European nuclear research lab CERN stunned the world last September when they thought they had captured evidence of neutrinos surpassing the cosmic speed limit.

After months of speculation about time travel, Einstein being wrong (his theory of special relativity imposes the limit on things traveling faster than light) and other scientific flights of fancy this exciting possibility melts away because of a couple of technical glitches. The time spent trying to rehash the complex math involved in calculating the time neutrinos travel through solid Earth from CERN, below the Franco-Swiss border to Gran Sasso, Italy can’t be recovered. But scientists are growing more confident that nothing — not even almost massless neutrinos — can travel faster than the speed of light, which is known to consistently be 186,282.397 miles per second.

The measurement the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA) team took had neutrinos arriving a scant 60 nanoseconds faster than light. And with a 10-second margin of error, suddenly that miniscule measurement took on a lot more significance.

In an update February 23, CERN reports finding that an oscillator as well as a optical fiber connector may have malfunctioned, but one error would increase the size of the measured effect, the other would shrink it.

The defective oscillator could have caused an inaccurate synchronization between the time measured at the CERN facility and Gran Sasso. This, according to the scientists on the OPERA project, may have led them to overestimate the neutrinos’ timing.

A loose optical fiber connector could have thrown off the GPS system on which the experiment relied heavily to ensure precise recording of the time of the neutrinos’ arrival in Italy. A fault in the optical fiber connector, which carried the GPS signal to the CERN master clock, may have resulted in an underestimate of the time measurement. The passage of time on the clocks between the arrival of the synchronizing signal has to be interpolated, and OPERA now says that this may not have been done correctly.

The loose connector, which has now been fully secured, explains the 60-nanosecond discrepancy perfectly. But the story doesn’t end there. The scientists say the oscillator error creates a timing error in the opposite direction.

The the OPERA team says in a statement, “While continuing our investigations, in order to unambiguously quantify the effect on the observed result, the collaboration is looking forward to performing a new measurement of the neutrino velocity as soon as a new bunched beam will be available in 2012.”

To get a better handle on this neutrino experiement — which was conducted for an entirely different purpose — Ereditato and his team will do it all again in May. In the meantime two other labs are also working to replicate the experiment to either confirm or deny the results. Fermilab in Illinois and T2K in Japan will all replicate the experiment to determine what went wrong.

The exact impact of the two effects is expected to be known only after further experiments with short pulsed neutrino beams. So what may have been the biggest physics discovery in a century comes down to faulty wiring and poorly synchronized clocks.

At the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Vancouver a few weeks ago no fewer than five physics teams were gearing up to run their own experiments to re-measure the speed of neutrinos.

The discovery of technical problems doesn’t surprise CERN research director Sergio Bertolucci. When the facility made the announcement last fall he figured something wasn’t done quite right. At the AAAS meeting in Vancouver he said he had his doubts, “because nothing in Italy arrives ahead of time.”

Since the advent of the annual star fest of Oscar night science and technology have made movies bigger, better, more realistic and more imaginative. We’ve rolled along with the advances that have helped us suspend our disbelief a little longer and under more and more unrealistic conditions.

2011 Winners of the Science and Technical Oscars, with Host Milla Jovovich

But what about the people who make help audiences relate to movies by making the unbelievable believable? Sure they get their own awards show but it barely merits a quick clip from the stage of the main event. On Oscar night a few technical awards are handed out — including Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and several others. But for most viewers those awards go to people no one has ever heard of so it generally signals a bathroom break for those watching the three-plus hour awards ceremony.

Andy Knapp at Forbes magazine has a great idea. Give the science and techy awards some star heft and move those familiar awards of Best Film Editing and Best Visual Effects and the others to a more high-profile version of the Scientific and Technical Oscars.

He says, “A broadcast of the technical awards could do something unique – rather than focusing on skits and red carpet, it could focus on the actual merits of the awards.”

He also suggests getting Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage from Mythbusters to host the event, giving accessible explanations of the work that crews go through to achieve the stunning and memorable scenes we see as moviegoers.

Douglas Trumbull, Special Effects Guru, Tree of Life

This year, Douglas Trumbull received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award at the sci-tech Oscars for his pioneering work in this year’s Best Picture nominee Tree of Life. His contribution over the years as designer, director, inventor and entrepreneur has made movies more than just theatrical romps. He’s made them big-screen spectacles.

He’s added special effects to 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Andromeda Strain, Silent Running, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek – The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and Tree of Life.

He says, “All the new digital technology on the camera side, the post-production side and the projection side is now ready to unleash this total new cinematic vision that I’ve had ever since 2001.” Referring to the movie (not the year,) which wowed audiences 30 years ago Trumbull has been a pioneer in making movies more spectacular.

Since science and technology moves slower than the movies the nominees for the scitech awards don’t have to develop or introduce their contributions in the current year to qualify for an award.

This year the Arrilaser design team received an Oscar statuette (whereas the other winners get certificates or plaques) for creating a device that transfers edited digital movie footage onto film. This process was used in finishing four Best Picture nominees this year, including Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Tree of Life, The Help, and War Horse.

Actress Milla Jovovich, Host of 2011 Science and Technical Oscars

After hosting the awards show, the actress said, “It was so wonderful to see the faces behind the incredible innovators that take the technology of movie making to greater and greater heights!”

And her Resident Evil movie franchise has been one of the major beneficiaries of such scientific and technical advances. So have Mission Impossible III: Ghost Protocol, The Hangover Part II and Fast Five.

Radu Corlan, Andy Jantzen, Petru Pop and Richard Toftness received an Academy plaque for the design and engineering of the Phantom family of high-speed cameras for motion picture production.

According to the official Oscar release, “The Phantom family of high-speed digital cameras, provide imagery at speeds and efficacy surpassing photochemical technology, while seamlessly intercutting with conventional film production.”

Vision Research, the company that pioneered the Phantom series provides cameras, lighting, underwater camera equipment and now high-speed cameras that shoot over 2,000 frames per second for the film and television industry.

A Technical Achievement award when to Andrew Clinton and Mark Elendt for their invention and integration of micro-voxels in the Mantra software. According the Academy, “This work allowed, for the first time, unified and efficient rendering of volumetric effects such as smoke and clouds, together with other computer graphics objects, in a micro-polygon imaging pipeline.” Micro-voxels are fragments of an image and they have shared screen time in recent box office hits The Golden Compass and TRON: Legacy.

Michael Lewis Accepts a Scientific and Engineering Oscar

And Michael Lewis, Greg Marsden, Raigo Alas and Michael Vellekoop received an Scientific Achievement award for the concept, design and implementation of the Pictorvision Eclipse system, which allows cinematographers to capture aerial footage at faster flying speeds with aggressive platform maneuvering. It has been seen in such high-flying successes as Thor, Twilight: Breaking Dawn–Part 1, The Hangover Part II, and Fast Five.

The universe is made of 12 particles of matter and 4 forces of nature. Those are the words of British physicist Brian Cox. It neatly categorizes everything into a tight package that we can understand. But within those 16 simple universal items there is infinite complexity and a never-ending search for greater understanding.

Stephen Hawking calls for a theory of everything, a unified theory of the universe that would marry Einstein’s theory of general relativity which explains how matter functions on a visible scale with the quantum mechanics which govern how tiny particles that comprise matter act at small scales.

So far something to join the macro and subatomic worlds has been just out of reach. But work at the European nuclear research lab CERN has been trying to experimentally prove much of what theoretical physics has been saying for 80 years. The international consortium of scientists there is close to directly observing the Higg’s Boson, one of the elusive particles of high energy physics also known as the God particle. If it is proven to exist it will put a big piece of the quantum theory in place and explain how matter gets its mass.

Meanwhile in the Hawaiian islands physicist surfer Garrett Lisi has developed a unifying theory. He calls it his Simple Theory of Everything. And simplifies that further by just referring to his geometrical model as E8. Time will tell whether or not Dr. Lisi’s theory is the universal unifier Dr. Hawking wants to see.

Quantum Science in Song

Brian Cox, Science Popularizer and British Physicist

He reduces the unimaginable complexity of the universe to 16 items — 12 particles and 4 forces.

However the explanation is much more complicated. Physicists view the universe as being comprised of 12 fundamental particles of matter. They refer to those particles as fermions. The 12 fermions are divided into two groups, six quarks and six leptons. (It’s beginning to sound like a familiar song about Dem Bones…The toe bone connected to the heel bone…but I digress.) The six quarks are called up, down, strange, charm, top and bottom. And the six leptons are called the electron, electron neutrino, muon, muon neutrino, tau and tau neutrino.

Then there are particles that carry the fundamental forces. They are called bosons. Photons carry the electromagnetic force. W and Z bosons are responsible for the weak force. Gluons cause the strong force. And then there is the Higgs boson, the elusive particle named after Peter Higgs which if discovered is theorized to carry the all-too-familiar force, gravity.

For example a proton (one of the building blocks of an atom) is made from two up quarks and a down quark held together with gluons. (…The thigh bone connected to the back bone…) And a neutron is built from two down quarks and an up quark, again held together with gluons. (…The neck bone connected to the head bone…Oh, dem bones.)

Dr. Cox is one of the scientists working on the ATLAS experiment at CERN where a giant atom smasher races streams of protons around a 17-mile ring at speeds approaching the speed of light. Then scientists watch what happens when two streams collide. Designed to create the moments just after the Big Bang the highly sensitive detectors observe quarks, leptons and bosons flying out of the wreckage of the proton collisions. And hidden somewhere in the trillions of data points is likely that elusive Higgs Boson.

Garret Lisi, Physicist Surfer, Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

Scientists are sifting through the proton pile up to find the particle that gives all matter its mass.

Finding the Higgs would give Dr. Lisi’s Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything more credibility. In fact, his theory needs the Higgs. He says, “This Higgs is required to break the unified symmetry of electroweak forces into the separate electromagnetic and weak forces we see.” But his theory would fall apart if a bunch of new particles associated with supersymmetry, strings or new dimensions are found. He says, “This E8 Theory predicts just a handful of new, colored Higgs particles. If a bunch of superparticles are seen, it will mean this new theory is wrong…and I will have to pay some bets.”

The Quantum World
Created by John D. Boswell

[Morgan Freeman]
So, what are we really made of?
Dig deep inside the atom
and you’ll find tiny particles
Held together by invisible forces

Everything is made up
Of tiny packets of energy
Born in cosmic furnaces

[Frank Close]
The atoms that we’re made of have
Negatively charged electrons
Whirling around a big bulky nucleus

[Michio Kaku]
The Quantum Theory
Offers a very different explanation
Of our world

[Brian Cox]
The universe is made of
Twelve particles of matter
Four forces of nature

That’s a wonderful and significant story

[Richard Feynman]
Suppose that little things
Behaved very differently
Than anything big

Nothing’s really as it seems
It’s so wonderfully different
Than anything big

The world is a dynamic mess
Of jiggling things
It’s hard to believe

[Kaku]
The quantum theory
Is so strange and bizarre
Even Einstein couldn’t get his head around it

[Cox]
In the quantum world
The world of particles
Nothing is certain
It’s a world of probabilities

(refrain)

[Feynman]
It’s very hard to imagine
All the crazy things
That things really are like

Electrons act like waves
No they don’t exactly
They act like particles
No they don’t exactly

[Stephen Hawking]
We need a theory of everything
Which is still just beyond our grasp
We need a theory of everything, perhaps
The ultimate triumph of science

(refrain)

[Feynman]
I gotta stop somewhere
I’ll leave you something to imagine

Mash up by John Boswell, from Symphony of Science Bundle v1​.​3, released 06 September 2011.

Richard Feynman – Fun to Imagine
BBC Visions of the Future – the Quantum Revolution
Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman
Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking
Brian Cox TED Talk
BBC What Time is it
BBC Wonders of the Universe
BBC Horizon – What Is Reality

Apa Sherpa has climbed Mount Everest 21 times and is practically a mountain goat when it comes to knowing the terrain of the Himalayas. When he first climbed the tallest peak he says there was always snow and ice for climbers to grip. Now, much of the ascent to the peak is just bare ground with loose rocks that pose a different danger as they frequently slide from above.

But besides noting massive change in the highly revered region this year he is seeing fast snow melt and the creation of hundreds of lakes, some of which appear that they may burst and flood the narrow valleys below. If that happens he believes the glacial waters will wipe out hundreds of villages as they course across the plateau.

He has watched the glaciers retreat from the area and now he is worried that a bigger environmental disaster is looming large.

He says, “For me, climate change is personal.” In 1985 a glacial lake destroyed his home, killed seven people in his village, and destroyed bridges and a new power station.

Apa Sherpa is most concerned about Imja lake, a 47-million-cubic-yard lake fed by the retreating Imja glacier. It’s a lake that didn’t exist 50 years ago.

Funuru Sherpa runs a popular Internet cafe high in the Himalayas where tourists visiting the Mount Everest region connect to friends and family across the world. His business sits right below Imja lake. He says, “Before, it was all ice.” The 31-year-old business owner has watched the glacier retreat and the lake swell over the last 20 years. He says, “This is proof that the glaciers in the high Himalayas are melting. And that must be because the temperatures have gone up.”

Sonam Mishi Sherpa and César Portocarrero, head of the Department of Glaciology and Water Resources at the National Water Authority of Peru above Imja Lake

But lately the pace has picked up.

In 2009 ICIMOD glaciologist Samjwal Ratna Bajracharya said, “Our studies of the past 30 years show that the temperatures (in the Himalayas) are rising up to eight times faster than the global average. Melting is taking place higher and faster.”

Imja is the second largest lake in Nepal, where over 200 glacial lakes have formed. Environment secretary Uday Raj Sharma says the bursting of the Imja lake would be like a “Nepalese tsunami.”

In January, Apa Sherpa led a group of Nepalese celebrities on a Himalayan hike on part of the Great Himalaya Trail, a 1,100-mile path system that stretches the length of the majestic mountain range and passes through Nepal, Pakistan, India and Bhutan. The purpose of the trip which will wrap up in May is to pay tribute to conservation pioneers who died in a helicopter crash in 2006 and to raise awareness about climate change high in the mountains.

Along the trail Dawa Steven Sherpa says that climate change is all around them. He says, “It is reducing agricultural productivity and causing massive landslides threatening existing trails that are already fragile.”

The Guardian Newspaper sent a U.S. environmental journalist to see the Himalayan glacial lake last year and talk to people about the changes at Imja.

Environmental engineer Daene McKinney from University of Texas, Austin says the natural glacial moraines are holding the lake in place for now. But he says that could change. He says, “With the ice core of these moraines and their melting over the next few years it could totally change the landscape with these moraines, which is totally holding back the lake water.”

According to three studies recently released by ICIMOD, in the last 30 years Nepal’s glaciers have shrunk by 21 percent while Bhutan’s by 22 percent. And of the 3,200 glaciers in Nepal that means the formation of a lot of glacial lakes. 1.3 billion people live downstream of Asia’s Himalaya Mountain Range.

Dr. McKinney says, “In the next five years it could be a lot more dangerous than it is now.”

Squirrels bury the darnedest things. And one squirrel about 32,000 years ago buried the fruit of a tiny Arctic flower which was preserved in Russian permafrost until a few scientists discovered the cryo-preserved posey. They nurtured the plant and resurrected it using hormones and then grew new plants from the original.

The plant offspring from the original reanimated narrow-leafed campion also bloomed and produced seeds to grow into new plants, which resemble the modern version of the Silene stenophylla.

Svetlana Yashina and David Gilichinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences research center at Pushchino just outside Moscow unearthed the plant matter a few years ago and claim that they have done all the right science to prove its authenticity.

If proved that the flower is indeed from an extinct variety then this will uproot the current old plant champion — a 2,000-year-old date palm found in the walled fortress of Masada in Israel.

Grant Zazula of the Yukon Paleontology Program at Whitehorse in Yukon Territory, Canada calls the discovery an amazing breakthrough. He tells the New York Times, “I have no doubt in my mind that this is a legitimate claim.” And he is a bit of an authority on accurately dating plants frozen in permafrost. The plant biologist was responsible for discrediting a goldminer’s claim that ancient lupine seeds were 10,000 years old. He discovered they were modern and the result of contamination.

But not everyone is so sure that the Russian team’s claim is valid.

Alistair Murdoch, a British expert on seed viability says that when poppy seeds are kept at minus seven degrees Celsius — the temperature the Russian plant excavators claim — only two percent of the seeds can germinate after 160 years. So the odds of any seeds being viable after over 30,000 are slim. He says, “It’s beyond the bounds of what we’d expect.”

Silene Stenophylla, Arctic Campion Regrown after 32,000 Years

And they also credit the squirrels themselves. The rodents in this region liked to build their refrigerators next to the permafrost to keep their food supply cold during the summer so the material was chilled from the start. And the makeup of the plant material also aided in its preservation. The placenta of the campion is high in phenols and sucrose, which are both good anti-freeze agents.

Stanislav Gubin, one of the study authors says, “The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber.” He adds, “It’s a natural cryobank.”

Plant Placenta Where Fruit's Seeds Attach, Labeled "P" in Image A, Shown with Attached Seeds in Image B, Courtesy of Yashina, et al.

After discovering nearly 600,000 seeds and fruits the Russian team tried to revitalize the seeds and failed. The old, frozen seeds wouldn’t germinate. So the team decided to take some cells from the plant placenta where the fruit produces seeds. They thawed them out and grew them in a the lab using a plant cloning method.

Eventually they were able to grow 36 plants from the ancient cells. And they say the plant looked identical to the modern-day campion until it bloomed. Then they discovered that it had a different flower pattern. The ancient plant produced narrower, more splayed-out petals. And the team radiocarbon dated the seeds that were attached to the placenta which grew the living plants. They dated back to 31,800 years.

The research appears in the current issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Just before the article appeared Dr. Gilichinsky’s daughter said he was suffering from an asthma attack and couldn’t comment on the findings. Then University of California Berkeley physicist Buford Price said Dr. Gilichinsky had died suddenly from a heart attack over the weekend.

Now University of Copenhagen ancient DNA expert Eske Willerslev says Dr. Yashina needs to run DNA analysis to prove the ancient flowers are ancestors of the now-living plants. He says right now, “It’s all resting on [the radiocarbon date]— if there’s something wrong there it can all fall part.”

The research team in the PNAS article says this experiment proves permafrost can serve as a natural repository of ancient life and could pave the way for the revival of other species, plant and animal.

Dr. Gubin says, “If we are lucky, we can find some frozen squirrel tissue. And this path could lead us all the way to [the] mammoth.”

The first beef created in a science lab in the Netherlands is being grown and by October physiologist Mark Post thinks it will reach the size of a golfball and be big enough to cook to see if the meat grown from cow muscle stem cells is any good. If successful this will be the most expensive hamburger ever made.

The $330,000 project underway at Maastricht University is privately funded by an anonymous backer and Post tells media at a press conference at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Vancouver that it will take 20-30 years using this technique before stem cell meat production is efficient enough to make sense.

Cow Stem Cells Grow Strips of Beef Muscle in a Lab, Photo by Mark Post

Post has already built several small strips of cow muscle tissue that form the foundation for his first burger patty. Now he just needs to make thousands more and he thinks he’ll get there by October.

But according to University of Missouri geneticist Nicholas Genovese (PDF), global meat consumption will rise about 60 percent by 2050, making alternative meat production not just a novelty but a necessity. He and other scientists want to find ways to make meats that are more environmentally friendly, healthy, and in some cases less cruel to animals.

Stanford University Medical School biochemist Patrick Brown says, “Animal farming is by far the biggest ongoing environmental catastrophe.” He says grazing cattle or raising pigs requires intensive energy and land use, calling farming an incredibly inefficient system long overdue for a technological revolution.

Genovese says concentrated animal feeding operations common in large-scale meat production carry higher risk deadly outbreaks of E. coli infection which could be controlled with synthetic meats.

Brown and Post hope to compete head-to-head with the $74 billion dollar U.S. beef industry, which is also looking at alternative meat solutions.

While Post grows his beef from stem cells in a lab, Brown uses plant materials. Post says growing meat this way will use about 40 percent less energy than traditional livestock production.

But will people eat test tube meat? Word on the street now is probably not. But there is time to build public support for lab-grown meat. Before any such creation is sold for food in the U.S. it will have to pass rigorous screening by the Food and Drug Administration.

Beef is not the first food animal to be grown in a lab. A fast-growing Atlantic salmon still hasn’t gotten out of the hatchery after years of FDA entanglements.

So cows don’t need to mooove over just yet. But perhaps way down the road a simple chemical process will get you that favorite cut of beef.

Michael Jackson’s operatic opus Earth Song was described as overblown and whiny by US music critics when it debuted just before Christmas in 1995. However, it took Europe by storm becoming the all time best-selling single in the UK and topping music charts across Europe. 15 years later the dramatic video played behind Jennifer Hudson, Carrie Underwood, Smokey Robinson, Celine Dion, and Usher as they sang the bluesy Gospel-operata at the Grammy Awards in tribute to Jackson, who died in July 2009.

The song touches on themes of war, poverty, animals and the environment and in retrospect foretells a very possible future in which humans have destroyed our fragile planet. The simple melody and lyrics call upon us all to help role back that apocalyptic vision of the future to preserve rain forests, animals, endangered ecosystems, water supplies and fresh air.

In one line Jackson says, “What about apathy” as a possibility as to how we find ourselves in this barren future. As smokestacks belch carbon dioxide into the air it could just as well be denial as apathy that makes that future real.

This week, libertarian think tank the Heartland Institute found itself trying to explain its funding of anti-science campaigns to propel the manufactured debate about climate change. DeSmog Blog broke the story and Climate Rocks is tracking all the media coverage. We’ll be following the story, which already has the catchy moniker of Denialgate.

This climate scandal is poetically named in a response to Climategate, the manufactured controversy partly funded by the Heartland Institute in 2009, which claimed that scientists manipulated climate data after a computer hacker stole private internal emails and posted them online.

Denialgate puts forth the idea that some scientists — including a few climate scientists — are actively working to discredit the almost unanimous majority of of the climate community who adamantly say that the globe is warming and mankind is to blame. In a 2010 study 97 percent of climate scientists agree that human-caused global warming is changing the Earth’s climate.

The set of documents given to DeSmog Blog and others by a Heartland insider (who goes by the handle Heartland Insider) includes budget plans and outlines of the group’s anti-science climate strategy. The scientists on the Heartland payroll who probably know better go beyond climate skeptics. We call them deniers.

Generally they deny there is a problem with the climate changing. They wax lyrically about increased carbon dioxide as a boon for plants and increasing the crop harvest for farmers. They talk about warmer climate causing fewer cold-related deaths. While both of those statements are true to a certain extent they deny the complexity of the climate system and even settled science.

S. Fred Singer, Climate Denier, PhD

Dr. Singer is a scientist. He is an atmospheric physicist with a PhD in Physics from Princeton. Prior to that he obtained a BEE in Electrical Engineering from Ohio State University in 1943, and an MA in Physics from Princeton in 1944. Currently he is emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia.

Robert M. Carter, Climate Denier, PhD

Dr. Carter is an adjunct research fellow in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia. He was Professor and Head of School of Earth Sciences, James Cook University. Before that he studied geology and obtained a PhD in Paleontology.

Craig Idso, Climate Denier, PhD

Internal Heartland Institute documents show the three scientists were paid to deny climate change. Carter receives $1,667 per month, while Singer gets $5,000 per month, plus expenses and Idso rakes in $11,600 per month to rail against the rest of the climate science community.

Singer and Dennis Avery co-authored the anti-global warming book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years where he reverses his position that global warming doesn’t exist at all and is a manufactured scientific phenomenon. In the popular anti-science book he adopts the belief that global warming is just part of a natural cycle and that human activity couldn’t possibly influence such a big system.

Avery studied agricultural economics at Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin and now directs the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington D.C. Not a scientist himself, he is a leading proponent of global cooling — the idea that based on natural cycles the Earth’s temperature will drop in the next 20-30 years. He points to the ocean for the evidence but ignores regular fluctuations of El Nino and La Nina conditions.

Unlike Climategate, Denialgate erupted from leaked documents not stolen emails. But in the race to clean up its mess the Heartland Institute is ready to sue anyone who posts the leaked documents online. The think tank claims fraud and wrongdoing in the dissemination of the internal documents and even claims that one is completely fake.

In a prepared statement the organization says, “The stolen documents were obtained by an unknown person who fraudulently assumed the identity of a Heartland board member and persuaded a staff member here to ‘re-send’ board materials to a new email address. Identity theft and computer fraud are criminal offenses subject to imprisonment. We intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes.”

Street Artist Banksy Captures Global Warming Denial, from Poznan, Poland, Courtesy of Paul Nine-O, 2009.

Instead a spokesman for the brothers says, “The Charles Koch Foundation provided $25,000 to the Heartland Institute in 2011 for research in healthcare, not climate change, and this was the first and only donation the Foundation made to the institute in more than a decade. The Foundation has made no further commitments of funding to Heartland.” Greenpeace confirmed that the Charles Koch Foundation hasn’t donated to the Heartland Institute any other times since 1999.

Microsoft and General Motors both appeared among companies that donated to the Heartland Institute. Microsoft quickly responded to allegations that it was funding junk science. In a statement the company says that it donated software licenses for the non-profit to use as an in-kind donation. And General Motors has given the institute $30,000 since 2010 for its school-privatization publication School Reform News even though the right-wing think tank has accused “Government Motors” of “corporate welfare-sucking” and told people to “never again buy a GM car or truck.”

Screenshot of Heartland Institute 2012 Budget Plan, Featuring Anthony Watts Weather Station Project

Regardless of what this latest climate controversy conjures for you it is clear that apathy as Michael Jackson calls it or denial as the Heartland Institute internal documents are showing is preventing us from solving the big social problems that stand before us, including addressing the global warming reality.

The Heartland Institute Documents Provided by “Heartland Insider”:
Name File Size
(1-15-2012) 2012 Fundraising Plan.pdf 89.87 KB
(1-15-2012) 2012 Heartland Budget (2).pdf 124.62 KB
2 Agenda for January 17 Meeting.pdf 7.4 KB
2010_IRS_Form_990 (2).pdf 2.7 MB
2012 Climate Strategy (3).pdf (***Heartland Institute claims this document is fabricated) 96.56 KB
Binder1 (2).pdf 55.36 KB
Board Directory 01-18-12.pdf 11.28 KB
Board Meeting Package January 17.pdf 6.84 KB

Earth Song

by: Michael Jackson

What about sunrise
What about rain
What about all the things
That you said we were to gain…
What about killing fields
Is there a time
What about all the things
That you said was yours and mine…
Did you ever stop to notice
All the blood we’ve shed before
Did you ever stop to notice
The crying Earth the weeping shores?

Aaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaah
Aaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaah

What have we done to the world
Look what we’ve done
What about all the peace
That you pledge your only son…
What about flowering fields
Is there a time
What about all the dreams
That you said was yours and mine…
Did you ever stop to notice
All the children dead from war
Did you ever stop to notice
The crying Earth the weeping shores

Aaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaah
Aaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaah

I used to dream
I used to glance beyond the stars
Now I don’t know where we are
Although I know we’ve drifted far

Aaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaah
Aaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaah
Aaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaah
Aaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaah

Hey, what about yesterday
(What about us)
What about the seas
(What about us)
The heavens are falling down
(What about us)
I can’t even breathe
(What about us)
What about the bleeding Earth
(What about us)
Can’t we feel its wounds
(What about us)
What about nature’s worth
(ooo, ooo)
It’s our planet’s womb
(What about us)
What about animals
(What about it)
We’ve turned kingdoms to dust
(What about us)
What about elephants
(What about us)
Have we lost their trust
(What about us)
What about crying whales
(What about us)
We’re ravaging the seas
(What about us)
What about forest trails
(ooo, ooo)
Burnt despite our pleas
(What about us)
What about the holy land
(What about it)
Torn apart by creed
(What about us)
What about the common man
(What about us)
Can’t we set him free
(What about us)
What about children dying
(What about us)
Can’t you hear them cry
(What about us)
Where did we go wrong
(ooo, ooo)
Someone tell me why
(What about us)
What about babies
(What about it)
What about the days
(What about us)
What about all their joy
(What about us)
What about the man
(What about us)
What about the crying man
(What about us)
What about Abraham
(What was us)
What about death again
(ooo, ooo)
Do we give a damn

Aaaaaaaaah Aaaaaaaaah

Written, composed and lead and background vocals by Michael Jackson
Produced by Michael Jackson and David Foster
Co-Produced by Bill Bottrell
Choir performance by the Andrae Crouch Choir
Keyboards: David Paich
Bass guitar: Guy Pratt
Synthesizer programming: Steve Porcaro
Co-performance by London Philharmonic Orchestra (Orchestral Mix only)
Orchestral arrangement by James Horner (Orchestral Mix only)

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2012/02/17/sdf-michael-jacksons-earth-song-calls-out-apathy-climate-denial/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2012/02/17/sdf-michael-jacksons-earth-song-calls-out-apathy-climate-denial/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/realscience/posts/~3/OprUaeXHDdE/ http://www.realscience.us/2012/02/16/aggressive-monk-seal-gets-new-lease-on-life/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 23:28:55 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=6226

An unusually aggressive Hawaiian monk seal is settling into his temporary home at the Waikiki Aquarium after almost being killed last fall. The 9-year-old male known as KE18 has been beating up younger seals in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. Endangered monk seals are having a hard enough time staying alive. They don’t need one of their own brutalizing young pups and threatening their survival.

KE18 Attacks Hawaiian Monk Seal Pup, Photo Courtesy of NOAA

A NOAA team led by Dr. Charles Littnan was prepared to euthanize the aggressive 450-pound bully. But when they went to Kure Atoll last August the wily seal was nowhere to be found. Between fall and winter he swam to nearby Midway. That bit of luck saved the seal’s life and gives scientists a chance to study this type of aggression.

Dr. Littnan tells REALscience that low level aggression is common in monk seals, especially males. But he says, “KE18′s behavior was a more extreme version of this.”

If KE18 had not eluded capture last summer he would have been killed by the NOAA team that is studying monk seals in the area. At the time there was no facility available to house the rogue seal. Since then a spot opened up in California where scientists will study KE18 to see why he’s so aggressive.

KE18 Sports Battle Wounds, Possibly from Another Male Aggressor

Dr. Littnan says, “People that go through trauma when they’re young can have troubles when they’re older. KE18, if you look at him, he’s got lots of scars that are indicative of being perhaps a victim of a male aggressor himself. So does violence beget violence? We don’t know.”

The marine biologist says the team collected a full set of samples for a standard health screening. They are looking for anything unusual that could explain his erratic behavior. They will look for bacteria, viruses and even environmental contaminants like lead or other toxins that will show up in the seal’s blood. Veterinarians will also check his hormone levels and blood to assess the seal’s overall health and organ function.

KE18 is becoming aware of people and is starting to realize that that’s where his food is coming from. Dera Look of NOAA Fisheries Marine Mammal Stranding Program says, “He’s acclimating very well to his environment.” He’ll spend another couple weeks in Honolulu before flying to Santa Cruz.

Dr. Littnan says male monk seals can be aggressive at times but that aggression is not a major factor in high mortality rates among young seal pups. He says fewer than one in five monk seals make it to adulthood. Apex sea predators seem to be the biggest problem for young seals. He says, “Young monk seals are being outcompeted by other large apex predators like sharks and jaks.”

If a seal can survive until it is three then its odds of survival increase significantly. Dr. Littnan’s monk seal recovery program is focused on increasing seal survival rates from birth to age 3. He says, “Our efforts have resulted in 18-23 percent of monk seals alive today.” If NOAA and its partners hadn’t been working on conserving monk seals the population would be about 30 percent lower.

Hawaiian Monk Seal KE18 Swims at Waikiki Aquarium

Dr. Littnan says, KE18 was a threat, he killed pups so he cannot be returned to the wild.”

KE-18 is known to have attacked at least 13 pups and juvenile seals at Kure and Midway Atolls and killed at least two. And among a dwindling population of monk seals needlessly losing one to its own is unacceptable.

Dr. Littnan says, “In the next 15 to 20 years there may be a total of 34 pups that are born in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands compared to there’s about 100 right now.” He says, “So when you start talking about the removal of one pup or two pups, or three pups – you are talking about substantially impacting the ability of this population to perpetuate.”

After about two years in Santa Cruz KE18 will be moved one more time to his permanent home at Oahu’s Sea Life Park where he will become a tourist attraction.

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