Jupiter struck by asteroid (probably). Look at the southern part of the planet. Click for larger. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), H. B. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.), I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), and the Jupiter Impact Team

Well that’s what the experts are speculating. What ever it was it’s pretty amazing and it happened on July 19, 2009. You can see the “bruise” at the bottom of the image above taken by Hubble and the newly installed camera (click the image for a larger version). To give you a sense of how big Jupiter is, it is estimated that black spot is the size of the Pacific Ocean.

I’ve included the introduction from the Hubble page below, but you really, no REALLY need to go there to see and read more about this.

The introduction:

JUNE 3, 2010: Without warning, a mystery object struck Jupiter on July 19, 2009, leaving a dark bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean. The spot first caught the eye of an amateur astronomer in Australia, and soon, observatories around the world, including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, were zeroing in on the unexpected blemish. Astronomers had witnessed this kind of cosmic event before. Similar scars had been left behind during the course of a week in July 1994, when more than 20 pieces of Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) plunged into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The 2009 impact occurred during the same week, 15 years later.

This Hubble image of Jupiter’s full disk, taken July 23, 2009, revealed an elongated, dark spot at lower, right (inside the rectangular box). The unexpected blemish was created when an unknown object plunged into Jupiter and exploded, scattering debris into the giant planet’s cloud tops. The strike was equal to the explosion of a few thousand standard nuclear bombs. The series of close-up images at right, taken between July 23, 2009 and Nov. 3, 2009, show the impact site rapidly disappearing. Jupiter’s winds also are spreading the debris into intricate swirls. The natural-color images are composites made from separate exposures in blue, green, and red light. Astronomers who compared Hubble images of the two collisions (in 1994 and 2009) say that the culprit in the 2009 event may have been an asteroid about 1,600 feet (500 meters) wide. The images, therefore, may show for the first time the immediate aftermath of an asteroid, rather than a comet, striking another planet.

[Update 3 (June 4, 16:00 UT): I have a followup post with a very pretty color picture, and video of the impact event.]

[UPDATE 2: Wesley has put up his video, and it's very cool. The impact is, um, pretty obvious. Bright, too, which makes me think this was a significant object. I'm very surprised at how quickly it brightens and fades, though; I'd expect the flash from the object itself to last a few seconds, and then to see some sort of glowing plume. Perhaps the object itself was a small comet or a loosely packed asteroid -- a so-called "rubble pile " -- which fell apart and vaporized while still high in the atmosphere. I'm guessing, so I'll wait and see what the experts say soon.]

[Update (19:00 Mountain time): CONFIRMED! A poster on the Unmanned Space Flight forum reports that another amateur astronomer, Christopher Go (link goes to home page, no news there yet) has confirmed Anthony Wesley's observation and also has video. Though I'm having some trouble playing it, I did see the flash in the video. I think it's safe to call this one real!]

In what turns out to be a major coincidence, Anthony Wesley, an amateur astronomer in Australia, is reporting that he recorded another impact on Jupiter! This time he has video of the impact, which he claims was quite bright and lasted about two seconds. The video is not yet available, but here’s a still:

He reports that there is no obvious impact scar as in previous such events. If this pans out, I’m sure Hubble and many other observatories will be in a big hurry to get observations! Infrared images are of particular interest, since they can record the heat from the blast.

This really is a funny coincidence, since just this morning the news was released that the 2009 impact — also discovered by Wesley — was caused by an asteroid impact. This new event appears to be smaller, since it didn’t get as bright as the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts in 1994, which were also of the same magnitude as the 2009 event.

I’ve started contacting folks I know to see if anyone has more info on this. Hopefully we’ll be getting the big guns involved as soon as possible! Stay tuned.

Tip o’ the Whipple Shield to Dan Durda for letting me know about this!

“We assessed the effects of several treatments on the concentrations of oral sulfur-containing gases, compounds thought to be responsible for morning breath. Upon awakening in the morning, healthy volunteers collected oral gas samples before and for eight hours after the following treatments: no treatment, brushing the teeth with toothpaste, brushing the tongue, rinsing with 5 mL of 3% hydrogen peroxide, breakfast ingestion, or swallowing two BreathAsure capsules. The gas samples were analyzed for sulfur-containing volatiles via gas chromatography. Baseline collections usually contained three sulfur gases: hydrogen sulfide, methanethiol, and dimethylsulfide. The effectiveness of a treatment was determined via comparison of the areas under gas concentrations-time curves with and without treatment. Brushing the teeth or ingestion of BreathAsure had no apparent influence on the sulfur gases. Ingestion of breakfast and tongue brushing resulted in strong trends toward decreased sulfur gases. Hydrogen peroxide significantly reduced the sulfur gas concentrations for eight hours.”

Photography: Dr. Rachel

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You can’t rise from the primordial ooze if that ooze is frozen. But about three billion years ago the sun was around thirty percent dimmer, meaning our planet should have been a snowball. The puzzle has haunted scientists for decades, but a study in Science has a new answer: It argues that a dense cloud of “fractal haze” enveloped the Earth.

Old Theories

This isn’t the first attempt to solve the early Earth conundrum. Carl Sagan, for one, had a few ideas. First, in 1972, he speculated that the atmosphere had ammonia which could trap heat, but later work showed that the sun’s ultraviolet radiation would have broken that ammonia down. In 1996 he tried again, saying that Earth might have had a thick haze, perhaps a nitrogen-methane mix, that blocked the ultraviolet but let in enough of the sun’s then-meager rays to warm the planet. Unfortunately, that too was a no go:

Early models assumed the haze particles were spheres, and that when individual particles collided, they globbed together to make bigger spheres. These spheres blocked visible light as well as ultraviolet light, and left the Earth’s surface even colder. “It basically led us to a dead end where we couldn’t have a warm early Earth,” said Eric Wolf, a graduate student in atmospheric sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the first author of the new study. [Wired]

This Theory

The perfect haze was not too sparse (since it needed to provide some UV-protection for developing life), and not too dense (because then the planet would have been dark and cold). Just right, the new study suspects, might have been hydro-carbon clouds of what the study’s authors call fractal haze. Unlike the spherical haze particles, fractal haze is made of long chains of particles stuck together.

The end result of this arrangement, dubbed a fractal size distribution, would be an aerosol haze opaque enough to block the shortwave ultraviolet radiation that would have hindered or prevented life from arising. At the same time, it would have proven transparent enough in longer, visible wavelengths to let them keep the atmosphere warm and the planet wet enough for life to emerge. “It’s surprising that molecules with complex shapes could make such a difference,” said researcher Eric Wolf [Space.com]

This theory also allows Sagan’s ammonia, protected from the UV, to exist in the atmosphere. The famous Miller-Urey experiment–in which scientists sparked what they believed comprised the earth’s early atmosphere and made amino acids, life’s building blocks–assumed that the young planet had ammonia to work with.

Alternate Theories?

But in April, scientists proposed another answer: that the young earth had smaller land masses and so reflected fewer of the sun’s rays, absorbing more heat. But it’s possible that the theories can work together.

Rather than being an alternate explanation to last month’s theory about how Earth stayed warm under a faint young sun, the newly proposed haze layer may actually be a complement to it, says Wolf. Researchers who conducted that study didn’t include a haze layer, which probably would have helped keep their darker world warm enough to prevent water at Earth’s surface from freezing. Future research could clarify the issue, Wolf notes. [Science News]

This all means that Earth’s baby picture probably looked a lot like a current shot of Saturn’s moon Titan (shown above).

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Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

July: a time of sweltering heat, fireworks-related injuries, and newbie doctors roaming the halls of teaching hospitals, ready to learn medicine by practicing on you. The “July Effect”—the idea that medical mistakes spike in that month because new, inexperienced residents are on the scene— has become the subject of repeated studies trying to sort out whether it’s real or just conventional “wisdom.” Those studies have reached differing results. So, should we believe the newest one, which attributes a 10 percent July spike in fatal medical errors to those freshmen docs?

The study by David Phillips and Gwendolyn Barker, to be published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, has a large sample size going for it. Phillips says that many prior “July effect” studies have examined just a single hospital’s population. But:

He and Barker, by contrast, probed a national database of more than 62 million death certificates that spanned from 1979 (when hospital status was first recorded in those records) through 2006 (the most recent year for which data were available). They turned up almost a quarter-million deaths that were coded as having not only occurred in a hospital setting, but also been due to medication errors. Both in-patient and out-patient cases were included [U.S. News & Report].

The researchers say there was a clear July spike. And they were further sold on a young doctor July effect when they saw not only the rise in fatal medication errors, but also that the effect was most pernicious in areas with lots of teaching hospitals—and disappeared in their absence.

However, while the study’s strength is a huge sample size that allowed for a wide-ranging look, its weakness is that it didn’t allow for specificity.

The researchers say that their investigation was limited by the fact that they were only analyzing the most severe outcomes of medical mistakes, and that the death certificates provided little detail about the specific circumstances of each mortality. Additionally, they question why fatal medication mistakes surged during July in areas with teaching hospitals, while other types of medical errors — such as surgical mistakes — did not [TIME].

Because the study could not delve into the question of why these effects showed up, one can only speculate. Did the newbie docs receive adequate supervision while performing surgery or other medical procedures, but not when they were prescribing medication?

Without answers to those kinds of questions, Phillips and Barker recommend doing more to cut mistakes by young docs, like the 2003 rules that limited them to 80-hour workweeks.

“Our findings provide fresh evidence for re-evaluating responsibilities assigned to new residents and increasing supervision. Incorporating these changes might reduce both fatal and non-fatal medication errors” as well as associated costs, they said [AFP].

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Image: iStockphoto

This morning I talked with Nobel-prize-winning physicist John Mather and a few dozen high school students from New York, Kansas, Florida, and Ghana at the World Science Festival. In a testament to the maturity of videoconferencing technology, we actually had a fantastic conversation, which consisted in large part of the students peppering Mather about cosmology, his area of expertise. I remember well being 14 and thinking to myself, “So…wait a minute…if the universe is expanding, what’s it expanding into?” But I didn’t get to ask the person who built the COBE satellite that actually found some of the key evidence for the Big Bang. So I was a little jealous today.

I hope that the video gets posted online before too long, because I thought Mather was the model of how scientists can stoke the passion of young people. I mean, here was a guy who hung out after our talk to autograph pictures of COBE for students. For a line of students. To give a sense of how good he is, check out Mather on Youtube, answering questions from museum goers (see below).

I was particularly pleased by one thing that Mather said. He was talking to the students about how you become a scientist. He observed that you need to figure out the sorts of tools you need to do the science that excites you most, and learn how to use them. But he also said that it’s crucial for aspiring scientists to learn how to write well. Because otherwise no one will understand what you’re doing or why it matters.

I swear that I did not pay him to say that. I was just glad he did.

Worried your man is cheating? Don’t rely on hunches, send his undies to the lab. Some suspicious people are paying upwards of $500 to air their dirty laundry, and a DNA-testing company is happily testing suspected spouses’ condoms, sheets, and tighty whities for genetic signs of infidelity.

Chromosomal Laboratories Inc., the same company that has offered paternal-testing giveaways on Father’s Day, is now in the unmentionables business. The company offers a smorgasbord of tests starting with a UV-light sweep and going as far as a microscopic search for sperm heads.

On the version of the company’s website designed for suspicious men, the biological sleuths describe a test for Prostate Specific Antigen and boast: “The technique is extremely powerful because it can confirm the presence of semen even in samples from sterile or vasectomized men.”

An order sheet (pdf), which “should not come in contact with any of the samples,” allows concerned lovers to mark the quantity of saliva, sperm, or DNA tests that the lab should perform. A similar site exists for women testing their husbands’ or boyfriends’ garments since the company can also screen for vaginal fluid, and a simple cheek swab can rule out the concerned partner’s own DNA that might contaminate the “sample.”

The Phoenix New Times broke the story, interviewing Melissa Beddow, an analyst for the company:

Beddow says stealing someone’s underwear and testing it for DNA isn’t an invasion of privacy because the tests aren’t used in court–although, in some cases, like divorce proceedings, Chromosomal Laboratory’s results can be admitted into evidence.

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Image: flickr / Egan Snow

I am a hardened geek, a nerd who strides across the planet with 20 km boots, a dork of such vastness that I can crush you into oblivion with my HP calculator before I even hit Enter.

Yet I was reduced to near-normalcy in comparison by listening to this [some brief NSFW language]. If you are a Trek fan, specifically of TNG, and are a fan of Wil Wheaton, Jonathan Frakes, and/or LeVar Burton, then you need to drop whatever you’re carrying — a Steuben crystal, a cooler with a transplant heart, your bowl of Quisp — and listen to that. These three men are all +20 for geekery.

And next year, by Grabthar’s hammer, I’ll try to go to Phoenix Comic Con.

In the film Slumdog Millionaire, Jamal Malik, a teenager from Mumbai’s slums, wins India’s version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? As the film continues, flashbacks reveal how events in Jamal’s life inadvertently furnished him with the knowledge to answer all fifteen questions and net the top prize. The film illustrates how some of life’s most useful events have no apparent value at first; their true worth lies in allowing us to exploit future opportunities. It’s a lesson that evolution also teaches, time and time again.

One such lesson has just been narrated by Jesse Bloom from the California Institute of Technology and stars the H1N1 flu virus. One of our main defences against this dangerous infection is the drug oseltamivir, better known as Tamiflu. The drug was generally effective against the H1N1 swine flu from last year’s pandemic, but it doesn’t work against seasonal strains of H1N1 that naturally circulate among humans. In 2007, the first signs of resistance emerged and within a year, virtually all strains of seasonal H1N1 were shrugging off Tamiflu. And we’ve only just worked out why this happened.

Tamiflu binds to a protein called neuraminidase, which covers the surface of the flu virus and allows it to break free from its host cell. Tamiflu worked by gumming up the business end of this protein, turning a host cell from a virus factory into a prison. The infecting viruses can replicate all they like but they can’t get out. But resistant strains have a mutation in their neuraminidase gene, which changes a single amino acid in the protein’s sequence. This changes the structure of the protein so that Tamiflu no longer sticks to it.

But this mutation, known as H274Y, is a double-edged sword. It allows the virus to shrug off Tamiflu, but it also changes the structure of neuraminidase so that the virus has trouble shunting it to its surface. The result is a strain, with half the necessary amount of neuraminidase – it’s a less inviting target for Tamiflu but it’s also weak and feeble. When the first H1N1 viruses with this mutation were discovered in 1999, they were rubbish at infecting the cells of mice or ferrets. Scientists thought that this mutation was “unlikely to be of clinical consequence”.

Clearly, they were wrong. The mutation spread like wildfire across the world, effectively neutralising one of our main weapons against seasonal flu. Now, Bloom has discovered how this supposedly crippling mutation conquered the globe – it had help.

Bloom showed that some strains of H1N1 had already acquired two other mutations that eventually compensated for the harmful effects of the H274Y mutation. When these “permissive mutations” first arose, they were fairly innocuous and may not have conferred any obvious advantages in their own right. But they sowed the seeds of resistance, allowing the virus to eventually pick up the H2747 mutation at no cost to itself. Like the random pieces of trivia in Slumdog Millionaire, these inoffensive events paved the way for a big future win.

Bloom sequenced the neuraminidase protein from a variety of seasonal H1N1 strains since 2006 and built up a family tree that charted which mutations they developed, and in what order. Two of these (V234M and R222Q for the technically minded) corrected the problems caused by H274Y, shifting the protein’s structure so that the right amount ends up at the virus’s surface. The combination of all three mutations produced a strain of flu that resisted Tamiflu and was just as good at infecting cells as normal strains. Compared to a strain that only had the resistance mutation, the triple-mutant grew 100 times better in cell cultures.

The story of H1N1 teaches us an important lesson. It means that some strains of virus are inherently better than others at evolving drug resistance and other important traits. Perhaps some mutations are already out there that could eventually pave the way for more virulent viruses, or ones that could jump the species barrier from other animals. For now, we know of two permissive mutations that allowed H1N1 to pick up Tamiflu resistance. In the future, it would behove us to monitor other lineages of flu – particularly the recent pandemic strains – for these same changes. If resistance crops up, it will most likely do so in these strains.

Reference: Science http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1187816

Infographic: from Science

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Last year, in July, something smacked Jupiter. Hard.

It was discovered when an amateur astronomer found a black spot marring Jupiter’s cloud tops. Followup observations saw the spot glowing in the infrared, meaning it was hot, and therefore was not just a storm (which are common). For real and for sure, something impacted Jupiter and exploded – and I mean exploded, releasing the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of nuclear weapons.

But what was it?

A new paper just published indicates that it was an asteroid that hit Jupiter. However, since it wasn’t seen beforehand, how do we know?

Because we’ve seen this sort of thing before. In 1994, the big planet was hit repeatedly by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. The comet had broken up into dozens of pieces, including several chunks a kilometer or so across, and they slammed into Jupiter one after another over the course of a week. That was one of the most well-observed astronomical events in history; every telescope on the planet was focused on Jupiter at the time.

And telescopes off the planet were too: Hubble took a lot of data, and found two key differences between the 1994 and 2009 events.

One is that there was a halo of lighter debris around the comet impact points in 1994 (as seen in this image on the right), but no such halo around the 2009 impact site. That indicates that the impacting objects were different.

Also, Hubble observed Jupiter both times in the ultraviolet. Images like that show where small, lighter-weight particles fell from the impact because those particles absorb UV light, leaving dark spots. Even nearly two weeks later, dark spots on Jupiter were evident around the 1994 impact sites. Since comets have a lot of ices in them — what you might call frozen gases like ammonia, methane, and so on — that’s expected. The lighter particles floated around in Jupiter’s clouds, absorbing the UV for quite some time.

But observations from last year’s impact don’t show that behavior! As you can see in big the image above, the dark spot fades rapidly. That’s most likely due to the impact debris (made up of vaporized impactor plus material from Jupiter’s atmosphere that got heated and chemically altered) to sink beneath the clouds. That indicates the particles were heavier than the SL9 impact in 1994, pointing toward the impacting object being an asteroid, not a comet. This is also consistent with the lack of a halo as mentioned above; halos are also made by finer particles. The 2009 impact site lacking a halo means the particles were heavier, as you’d expect from an asteroid.

So even though we didn’t see the object before it hit, it left — haha! — a smoking gun pointing toward its origin.

And here’s a funny thing: this impact occurred 15 years to the week after the SL9 onslaught. I remember getting a lot of email asking me if that meant they were related, but if you think about it you’ll realize it has to be a coincidence: after all, why would Earth’s orbital period have to do with anything hitting Jupiter? And now we see that the object that hit was not comet-like, proving the point.

Asteroid and comet impacts are a real threat to us on Earth. Jupiter, being so much more massive than the Earth, is a bigger target; its gravity draws in more debris. By observing it we can get a better idea of just how much stuff is out there in the solar system, waiting to put the hurt on a planet, including our planet. Just in case you have any lingering doubts, astronomy is important. It is no exaggeration at all to say that learning about astronomy and astronomical events may very well save the human race one day.

Image credits: NASA, ESA, M. H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), H. B. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.), I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), and the Jupiter Impact Team; HST Comet Team and NASA

Hasta luego, plastic bags? This week the California State Assembly approved a measure to ban single-use plastic bags, and if the state’s Senate approves it too, California will likely become the first of these United States to ban the bags. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has indicated that he supports the bill, and will sign it if it lands on his desk.

Shoppers who don’t bring their own totes to a store would have to purchase paper bags made of at least 40 percent recycled material for a minimum of 5 cents or buy reusable bags under the proposal, which would take effect Jan. 1, 2012 [San Francisco Chronicle].

Convenience and drug stores, as well as small businesses, would get a little longer to switch over. The law wouldn’t go into force for them until July 2013.

Previously, California’s fight over banning plastic bags at the state level had bogged down into a predictable back-and-forth: Green groups cited the 19 billion plastic bags Californians use every year, most of which don’t get recycled, while plastic industry people complained that such a rule is just a tax. The breakthrough, though, came when the California Grocers Association, led by David Heylen, decided it wanted the ban.

Cities such as San Francisco and Oakland already have bans, and 20 other California municipalities are considering similar laws. Heylen said there was a growing concern among grocery chains that a patchwork of laws would be untenable. Another important change was that the bill covered not just supermarkets but convenience stores and smaller markets [San Diego Union-Tribune].

The bill could go to the California Senate this year. Bot one thing that remains to be decided: If grocers charge more than 5 cents for a paper bag, where will the extra money go? It makes sense to offer a financial deterrent if you want people to use less plastic, as only so many people are going to buy reusable bags out of the goodness of their hearts (or to be more eco-conscious than their friends). But the San Diego Union-Tribune says that the money isn’t directed to particular recycling or other environmental programs, and grocers could charge more than the nickel per bag and pocket the difference.

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Image: flickr / evelynishere

The town of Palmerston, Australia is now the unwilling host of a parrot frat party. Hundreds of lorikeets appear to be drunk: The disoriented birds are passing out cold and falling from tree branches.

Though seemingly inebriated parrots have been spotted before in Palmerston, never has the town seen this many at once. The situation concerns veterinarians, since the birds are injuring themselves, and, untreated, could die.

About eight lorikeets arrive each day to the Ark Animal Hospital, which cares for about thirty at a time. “They definitely seem like they’re drunk,” Lisa Hansen, a veterinary surgeon at the hospital told the the AFP. “They fall out of trees… and they’re not so coordinated as they would normally be. They go to jump and they miss the next perch.” Hansen and colleagues nurses them to health by feeding them a “hangover” broth that includes sweet fruit.

Literally drunk parrots have appeared in other parts of the world, for example in Austria in 2006, when birds ate rotting, fermenting berries. This time the inebriated birds remain a mystery: Some locals speculate that the birds are feasting on something something alcoholic, but others fear they have caught an unknown illness.

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Image: Wikimedia Commons / Mats Lindh

Guess which astronomer with two thumbs was interviewed in this week’s A. V. Club section of The Onion?

This guy! OK, that joke works better if you could see me pointing at myself with my thumbs, but you get it. I hope.

Anyway, yeah, I was interviewed for America’s Finest News Source about end of the world scenarios as they pertain to terrible, terrible Hollywood movies. Of course, we talked asteroid impacts and that cinematic crapsterpiece, "Armageddon".

Despite my brilliant contributions, however, the article fails in two ways. One, in the online version they put me on page two (in the print version it’s like page 20). Page 2! The shame. And B, when it comes to 2012, they did a straight interview with John Major Jenkins, a guy who makes all sorts of weird claims about the Mayans. Apparently, unlike almost every 2012 crackpot out there, Jenkins says there’s nothing to worry about in 2012, but then goes on to say that the Mayans knew about a major Galactic alignment and loads of other things that are clearly wrong. I guess that makes him better than the chuckleheads claiming 2012 will see the Earth cracking in half like an egg or something, but by how much is unclear.

Still and all, the article is pretty in-depth and funny, and worth perusing just to relive all the times you’ve thrown away money on box-office sewage.

All over the world, people greet, talk, eat, dance and celebrate according to their own cultural practices. We’re not the only species with such traditions. Chimpanzees have rich cultural traditions that determine how they forage for food, communicate, groom each other and wield tools. Other species with their own local customs, including orang utans, monkeys, dolphins and killer whales, are all united by their vaunted intelligence. But another mammal with a comparatively smaller brain has just joined this cultural club – the banded mongoose.

Corsin Muller from the University of Exeter gave wild mongooses a plastic shell containing some food (like a reverse Kinder egg). He found that adults preferred to break into the shells using one of two possible tactics, and that they passed on these traditions to their pups.

The results earn some kudos for the humble mongoose, but they’re important because our evidence for animal traditions has always come from studies that compared the practices of wild populations, or that ran carefully controlled experiments in captive groups. This is the first time that anyone has used experiments to show that wild mammals pass on traditions by imitating one another.

Banded mongooses live in large groups of up to 40 individuals, who cooperate to find food and raise their young. Muller worked with five such groups in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park. Banded mongooses eat an eclectic menu of insects, centipedes, small reptiles, eggs and even mice. Many of their snacks come in a hard shell that needs to be cracked and mongooses do so either by biting them or smashing them against a stone or tree trunk.

Individuals have clear preferences about these two techniques. When Muller gave the adults his plastic shell, containing a mix of rice and fish, he found that some were exclusive biters, others only smashed and yet others used a combination. Critically, they were stuck in their ways. When Muller tested them three months later, they each showed the same preferences.

He also found these adults transferred their preferences to the pups who watched them. Banded mongoose pups form exclusive one-to-one associations with specific adults who act as their mentors. These adults are usually young males, who aren’t necessarily related to the pup, and the youngster will aggressively monopolise the attentions of these chaperones.

Around 2-4 months after the adults infiltrated their Kinder surprises, Muller gave their attendant pups (now independent) their own eggs to break into. Even though none of them had seen the toy eggs in the intervening time, they showed a significant preference for the technique that their mentors had used. Those who saw an adult bite the toys open did the same themselves; those whose mentors liked to smash copied that strategy instead; and those whose mentors had ignored their toy eggs were themselves uninterested. These preferences even persisted as the pups grew into adults.

Muller’s study expands on experiments with other captive species in a number of ways. In finding the same trend in all five groups of mongooses, he added some valuable replication to his study, which is often missing from experiments that focus on one group of captive animals. Muller showed that multiple traditions can coexist within a single population. And he showed that animals don’t need big brains to pass on traditions across the generations. It may be that such traditions are more commonplace than previously thought.

Reference: Current Biology http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.04.037

Photo by Reini68; video by Corsin Muller

More on animal cultures

• Chimps prefer to copy others with prestige
• Culture shapes the tools that chimps use to get honey
• How dolphins prepare the perfect cuttlefish meal

The tiny islands of the Pacific Ocean appear to be the very the picture of climate change vulnerability—some rise such a short distance above current sea level that it seems like any rise would swallow them up. The Earth’s climate system, though, is a great deal more complex than the simplistic rhetoric that fills the political echo chamber. That’s demonstrated again in a new study that argues some the Pacific’s low-lying islands are actually increasing slightly in land area rather than decreasing. It’s good news, yes—but not without caveats.

First, the specifics. Arthur Webb and Paul Kench published their work, based on decades of aerial and satellite photos, in the journal Global and Planetary Change. During the years spanned by those images, the sea level in the area has been rising by about 2 millimeters per year. Nevertheless, they say that 23 of the 27 Pacific islands they studies either held firm in land area or saw a slight increase. How could this be?

Unlike the sandbars of the eastern US coast, low-lying Pacific islands are made of coral debris. This is eroded from the reefs that typically circle the islands and pushed up onto the islands by winds, waves and currents. Because the corals are alive, they provide a continuous supply of material. “Atolls are composed of once-living material,” says Webb, “so you have a continual growth.” Causeways and other structures linking islands can boost growth by trapping sediment that would otherwise get lost to the ocean [New Scientist].

For the people of places like Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Federated States of Micronesia, who fear the rising seas will swallow up their homes, the idea that these islands might have some kind of resistance to sea level rise is certainly a reprieve. Says Kench:

“We have now got the evidence to suggest that the physical foundation of these countries will still be there in 100 years, so they perhaps do not need to flee their country” [BBC News].

But even if Webb and Kench are right, it wouldn’t put the islands out danger in the longer term. As Kench notes, just having an island isn’t enough:

“An important question is — if islands still exist, will they still be able to carry human communities?” [AFP].

This study measures only total land area. It doesn’t consider the nature of that land, nor the effects of a shape-shifting island on the people who actually live there.

Even on islands where the total land mass is stable or grows, one area may be eroded while another is being added to. It’s not possible to simply move people living in highly urbanised areas to new land, says Naomi Biribo of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia [New Scientist].

Furthermore, it’s not known whether that influx of coral sediment that recharges the islands with material could keep up if sea level rise accelerated past its current pace. And the coral reefs themselves that supply this material aren’t in the best of shape, either—marine scientists worry that they won’t be able to cope with the increasing acidification of the ocean, which is another effect of rising carbon dioxide levels.

Related Content:
80beats: Forget the Press Coverage: Conflicting Reports on Rising Oceans Are a Fake Controversy
DISCOVER: The Tide Rises—But It’s Not the Same Everywhere
Discoblog: S.O.S.: Global Warming Will Submerge My Country, President Says
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Bacteria and Languages Reveal How People Spread Through the Pacific

Image: Wikimedia Commons

All aboard for fake Mars!

Earlier today, a six-man crew battened down the hatches on an 1,800-square-foot module for 520 days of isolation as they pretend to go to Mars and back again. The Mars-500 project, run by the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) and funded in part by the European Space Agency, hopes to test the psychological mettle required for such a journey.

“See you in 520 days!” shouted Russia’s Sukhrob Kamolov as he was sealed inside the simulator at around 1000 GMT. [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty]

The trip will have three stages, including the trip to and from Mars and a simulated landing and planet exploration.

Psychologists said the simulation can be even more demanding that a real flight because the crew won’t experience any of the euphoria or dangers of actual space travel. They have also warned that months of space travel would push the team to the limits of endurance as they grow increasingly tired of each other. [AP]

Using a variety of unforeseen (for the crew at least) simulated disasters, the project managers hope to keep the men on their feet.

Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock, a space scientist with the satellite manufacturer EADS Astrium and a strong advocate of a manned mission to Mars, believes that the experiment will be extremely valuable–but expects that the main difference between a real and simulated voyage will be the difficulty for the crew in maintaining motivation. “I think the main challenge for them will be trying to maintain motivation for a long period of time,” she says. “It’s far less likely this would be a problem if you really were going to Mars. But the danger is that because you know you’re really in a hangar in Moscow, you start thinking: ‘I can’t be bothered’.” [BBC]

During their voyage, the team of three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese will eat canned food similar to that on the International Space Station, have limited communication with the outside world, shower once every ten days, and play video games. One crew member brought a guitar to entertain the others. Why they didn’t recruit college freshmen, we don’t know.

Related content:
80beats: Six “Astronauts” Prepare for 17 Months in Isolation to Simulate Mars Mission
80beats: After Three Months in a Tin Can, Three Men End Simulated Mars Mission
80beats: Six Volunteers, Living in a Tin Can, Will Simulate a Trip to Mars
80beats: Traveling to Mars? You’ll Need This Miniature Magnetic Force-Field
DISCOVER: Russia’s Dark Horse Plan to Get to Mars
DISCOVER: For the Love of Mars explores the Mars Society’s frontier vision

Image: ESA

This animation is a pretty good lesson in chemistry … but I’m not sure it’s all that safe for little kids.

No, that helium atom was not me in middle school. But I never dated the Hydrogen twins either. I guess my life is a little bit more Boron than Oxygen.

Tip o’ the O₂ tank to BIL Chris Setter.

This is a guest post from Vanessa Woods, author of the new book, Bonobo Handshake. Vanessa is a Research Scientist in Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University and studies the cognition of chimpanzees and bonobos in Congo. Here is the latest from Martin Subeck - who I met a few years ago at Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in Congo. The first thing about Martin is he's an excellent scientist working with Gottfried Hohmann, who is one of the best. The second thing is, that like Max the bonobo, Martin is really really ridiculously goodlooking. Anyway, I digress. Martin saw something totally cool - bonobos cannibalizing an infant - cool because it's the first time something like this happened. So I was blogging about it on my other blog, bonobo handshake, and I got messages like:
Dave H. said...
Why do you "wonder if the infant was killed by a high ranking male"? In chimpanzees it has always been the adult females that killed and ate their groupmates' offspring. The male chimps have only been seen killing juveniles from other groups. And it would make no sense for a high ranking male to kill what may very well have been his offspring. Anyway, from the New ...