via the Daily Mail Online. Click for larger.

Kind of looks like a Halloween image.  It’s the Icelandic volcano causing all the trouble in Europe (and Iceland obviously) via the Daily Mail online.

The National Air Traffic Service says British airspace will be close at least through 7am tomorrow and likely longer.  Scotland’s airspace will be opening later this evening.

The ash plum seen from the MODIS imager on the Terra Satellite. Click for larger.

The second image was taken by the Terra Satellite yesterday morning. The plume from the volcano can be seen as a darker colored ribbon in the center of the image.

And finally this image from the CBC shows the vertical extent of the ash cloud.  The press release is also saying the WHO is saying Europeans should try to stay inside if ash starts to settle near them.

There are a few good points about the volcano:  it should make for some spectacular sunrises and sunsets, it could make good riddle fodder later this fall and how many times do I get the chance to use a word like “Eyjafjallajokull” ?

Notice I didn’t say pronounce it 

In the April issue of Discover, I take a look at the mind of the athlete. We may think of sports as a matter of muscle, but the brain is vital as well. And in becoming great athletes, people develop unusual brains. This transformation only makes sense–any intense training can change the brain, whether it’s practicing the piano or learning Mandarin. But for some reason, the idea that being a great athlete is, in part, a cerebral exercise still comes as a surprise. In fact, according to this ESPN take on my column, it’s downright disappointing.

[Image: Wikipedia]

The cargo from a Roman ship sunk off the coast of Sardinia more than 2,000 years ago will finally be put to use–it will become a shield for a neutrino detector. In Italy, 120 lead bricks recovered from the shipwreck will soon be melted to make a protective shield for Italy’s new neutrino detector, CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events).

The ancient lead, which is useful because it has lost almost all traces of its natural radioactivity, has been transferred from a museum in Sardinia to the national particle physics laboratory at Gran Sasso. After spending two millennia on the seabed, the lead bricks will now be used in an experiment that will take place beneath 4,500 feet of rock.

Nature News writes:

Once destined to become water pipes, coins or ammunition for Roman soldiers’ slingshots, the metal will instead form part of a cutting-edge experiment to nail down the mass of neutrinos.

From slingshots to particle physics–we humans have come a long way in 2,000 years.

CUORE is due to begin operations next year and will be used to investigate neutrinos, particles that have no electric charge and were long thought to have no mass; recent research has proven that the puzzling particles do have mass, but physicists still haven’t been able to determine how much. Scientists at CUORE hope to finally estimate the neutrinos’ mass by watching as atomic nuclei shed particles through radioactive decay. In order to watch this process, the researchers need to shield their experiment from all external radioactivity.

To create this shield, scientists need lead. But freshly mined lead is slightly radioactive and contains an unstable isotope. This isotope, lead-210, gradually decays into more stable isotopes after it’s extracted from the ground; its concentration halves every 22 years. That’s why physicists are so interested in old lead. As CUORE scientist Ettore Fiorini told Nature:

“It is not unusual for particle physicists to go hunting for low-radioactivity lead,” he says. “Metal extracted from roofs in antique churches or from keels of wrecked ships has often been used in experiments.”

So when the Roman shipwreck was discovered in 1988 and was found to be full of lead ingots, scientists were thrilled–they would have access to lead whose radioactivity had substantially diminished over the centuries, and the quantity would allow them to fashion a shield more than an inch thick.

A deal was worked out with the Italian museum and a proportion of the ingots were acquired to make the shield. Before the ingots are melted down, their inscriptions, which represent the trademarks of the firms that extracted and traded the lead, will be removed and sent back to the museum for preservation.

Still, Donatella Salvi, an archeologist at the Sardinian museum, admits that parting with the ingots has been “painful.” Nature News writes:

The ones given to [Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics] INFN are the worst-preserved, but are still of exceptional historical value. However, she says she is happy with the collaboration, because physicists are performing important analyses on the lead.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: Ice Fishing For Neutrinos From the Middle of the Galaxy
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DISCOVER: Opening an Icy Eye on the Neutrino Sky
DISCOVER: The Unbearably Unstoppable Neutrino
80beats: Next Global-Warming Victim: Centuries-Old Shipwrecks

Images: INFN/Cagliari Archeological Superintendence

Here’s a wonderfully disturbing new species of leech that you don’t want to find up your nose. For background, check out my profile of its discoverer, Mark Siddall, in the New York Times.

Lovely tribute in the Times to the Great Bear of Locktown.

On Twitter today geographile linked to some pareidolia that I simply have to keep you abreast of. I won’t post the picture; instead I’ll just send you to the article and note that it is very mildly NSFW and NSF people with grown up sensibilities.

But it made me smile.

Oh– keep the comments clean, folks!

A reminder to Bostonites: I’ll be speaking tomorrow at 4 at the Museum of Science as part of an all-day bash put on by the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences. The weather outside is going to be frightful, or at least dreadful, so why not enjoy some indoor entertainment? More information and registration here.

I’ve been away visiting relatives who somehow survive without WiFi. So now I’ll be catching up with a series of quick posts over the course of the day.

Last night, President Obama issued a memo that will change hospital visitation rights around the country. The administration will draft new rules declaring that any hospital participating in the government’s Medicare and Medicaid programs—which is most of them—will no longer be allowed to bar visitors that patients desire to have access to them.

This has been a particular hardship for gay Americans, who have been turned away from visiting sick loved ones because of policies that allow visiting rights solely to spouses or family members. They aren’t the only ones, either, Obama argues. He cited widows or widowers without children, members of religious orders as examples of people who have been unable to choose the people they want to be at their side [Reuters].

The changes won’t take effect right away. The Department of Health and Human Services must draft the new rules, then put them in place and police them. But in addition to expanding visitation rights, the order also requires that documents granting power of attorney and healthcare proxies be honored, regardless of sexual orientation. The language could apply to unmarried heterosexual couples too [Los Angeles Times]. You can read Obama’s memo here.

The President was particularly inspired by the case of a Florida couple, Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond. When Pond suffered an aneurysm, Langbehn was denied visiting access at the hospital, despite the fact that she carried power-of-attorney and the couple had adopted four children. Pond died before Langbehn was allowed access. On Thursday night, Mr. Obama called her from Air Force One to say that he had been moved by her case. “I was so humbled that he would know Lisa’s name and know our story,” Ms. Langbehn said in a telephone interview. “He apologized for how we were treated. For the last three years, that’s what I’ve been asking the hospital to do” [The New York Times].

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Image: iStockphoto

Magnificent: The Big Picture has a series of incredible pictures from the latest Soyuz and Shuttle missions to the International Space Station.

They are all amazing, but I think I like this one the best:

I know, it’s not what you’d think I’d pick, is it? But it shows astronaut Soichi Noguchi in the station’s cupola, taking one of his astonishing photographs that he posts on Twitter. Looking at this picture of him, and thinking of his incredible photos, really brings home the fact that humans are in space right now, circling the Earth over your head.

ResearchBlogCast is now on iTunes. You can search for it under “ResearchBlogCast” in the iTunes store and subscribe, or, just subscribe via this web page. We’re talking about the DASH diet next. Feel free to suggest ideas if you have anything clever, or want to hear our opinions on a specific topic. Just not something weird like Calvinist soteriology where there’s no chance that any of us are going to be able to follow the lingo.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It was 40 years ago today.  NASA encounters a major problem.  I do remember this very well, it was the start of one of the most monumental success stories that has unfolded at NASA.

A story that united a nation, all for naught probably.  Well I still care!

In October 2009, a man and two women walked into a renowned Los Angeles restaurant called The Hump and ordered some sushi. This seemingly innocuous act was the start of a fascinating chain of events that would involve hidden cameras, genetic sequencing, a few arrests, and the first solid proof of an illegal international trade in whale meat.

The man in question was Charles Hambleton, a keen diver and assistant director of The Cove, an Oscar-winning documentary that exposed the annual killing of dolphins in a Japanese national park. Hambleton had heard that The Hump was serving whale meat and decided to investigate.

Hambleton ordered an “omakase meal”, a challenging assortment of different meats chosen by the chef, only offered to the “adventurous” and priced at a hefty $800. Sure enough, the platter included four strips of whale sashimi. The receipt said as much, but Hambleton wanted proof. When the waiters and chef weren’t looking, he slipped a sample of the meat into a plastic bag and sent it to Scott Baker from Oregon State University.

By sequencing the meat’s DNA, Baker confirmed that it came from an endangered sei whale. In fact, the meat was an exact genetic match to products bought in Japan in September 2007. The whale in question must have been killed in those years during one of Japan’s controversial “scientific hunts”. From there, its meat had been illegally exported to the US, flouting a strict ban on the international trade of whale meat.

Together with Cove director Louis Psihoyos, Hambleton took his evidence to officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). When the duo returned to California to attend the Academy Awards, they conducted their final stings. Psihoyos says, “Charles and I did two more operations to buy whale meat from the same restaurant with federal officials watching so we could establish a chain of custody.” The Hump was forced to close its doors a few weeks later. On 10 March 2010, federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against both the restaurant and its chef.

The Hump wasn’t the only restaurant to be stung by the team. They found whale meat being sold in other diners in LA and Seoul, proving that the international trade spanned South Korea as well as the US. The Seoul restaurant served no less than 13 whale meat products, which came from minke, sei and fin whales, and one Risso’s dolphin. Once again, genetic analyses revealed that the fin whale meat came from a single animal that had been caught in Japan and had been sold in Japanese markets since September 2007.

Baker is just one of a wave of scientists who are using modern scientific techniques to track the trade of endangered species. Last year, Jacob Lowenstein found that some sushi restaurants were selling endangered southern bluefin tuna, despite claiming otherwise. And Ullas Karanth used photo-recognition software to match illegally sold tiger skins to animals once photographed in India’s national parks.

Needless to say, whale hunting is controversial – it’s cruel and unethical to some, but economically and culturally necessary to others. In 1982, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) set up a moratorium on commercial whaling that came into force in 1986. Both sides of the debate have pushed for the moratorium to be shifted, but Japan has neatly skirted around it by claiming to hunt whales for scientific research.

Japan’s Institute for Cetacean Research says that it aims to provide “information on the role of whales in the ecosystem and the effects of environmental changes on whales”. It allegedly studies population structures, age and diet, although critics are hardly convinced. Baker says, “It is widely recognised that scientific whaling is primarily a front for limited (but expanding) commercial whaling.” And Psihoyos adds, “There has not been a single peer reviewed paper the Japanese whalers have done since 1987, when their “scientific whaling” program began, to justify the killing of a single whale.”

Under the banner of research, Japanese boats kill minke, Bryde’s and sperm whales, as well as the endangered sei and fin species. Meanwhile, whales are sometimes killed as “bycatch”, ensnared within fishing nets that target smaller swimmers. If caught in this way, their flesh can be sold commercially, and they sell very well. Despite this thriving national trade, it’s generally assumed that Japan’s slaughtered whales stay within national boundaries.

The IWC regulates 13 species of whale and according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), none of these species can be traded commercially between countries. Japan, Iceland and Norway have permits that allow for some limited trade between each other, but they’re absolutely forbidden from trading whale products with countries that don’t hold permits, including the US and South Korea. Nonetheless, this new study clearly shows that this legislation is being flouted.

Both Norway and Japan keep DNA registers of whales that are killed for “scientific” purposes, or that are sold after being accidentally killed. You could easily work out if a suspicious product came from an authorised source by comparing it to these registers. But neither country makes their records freely available, even to the IWC’s Secretariat. Nor have they sanctioned market surveys to monitor the origins of whale products.

Baker says that independent surveys and open access to the registers are vital for controlling trade and confirming that countries are staying within their catch quotas. “Like the smuggling of drugs, we cannot hope to stop illegal trade in wildlife,” he says, “but we can impose monitoring and inspection schemes to limit and prosecute these cases.” To that end, Baker’s team have submitted a request to the Government of Japan, via the IWC Secretariat, to access the country’s whale DNA registers.

Reference: Biology Letters http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2010.0239

Image: whale meat by Stefan Powell; fin whale by Lori Mazzuca

More on conservation:

• Photo-recognition software catches tigers by their stripes
• Buzzing bees scare elephants away
• Genetic study puts damper on gray whales’ comeback
• Noise pollution drives away some birds, but benefits those that stay behind
• How research saved the Large Blue butterfly
• Human hunters unwittingly shrink their prey species at incredible rates

“The main objective of this study was to compare the heating patterns of chicken fingers deep-fried conventionally and using a microwave. Two dimensional internal temperature maps of fried chicken fingers with rectangular geometry were measured post frying using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Frying was performed in a microwave oven at 365 W power level for 0.5 and 1.5 min after bringing the oil temperature to 180 +/- 1 degrees C. Samples were also fried in a conventional fryer at 180 degrees C for 2 and 5 min for comparison. Variations in internal temperature distribution increased proportionally to frying time in both microwave and conventional frying. Internal thermal equilibrium is reached in all samples after 13 min of holding time. Internal structural changes, void formation, were also visualized in the images. Void formation did not significantly impact cooling rates.”

Photo: flickr/adamjackson1984

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This is so cool: 3D anaglyphs of some of the Apollo landing sites as seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter!

That’s the Apollo 14 site. Click to embiggen — and I urge you to do so. You can really see the lander popping right off the surface. In the Apollo 11 image you can even see that the lander feet are farther away from you than the top of the lander. It’s incredible!

These were done by Nathanial Burton-Bradford, and are part of a set of other 3D space anaglyphs. He took pairs of images taken by LRO (which is orbiting and taking phenomenal images of the Moon) and combined them to make the anaglyphs. They’re all worth perusing. I’m glad I have a set of red/green glasses! If you don’t have one, I again urge you to find ‘em — they can be ordered online, usually pretty cheap.

Normally, I ignore Apollo Deniers, since obviously no amount of evidence will ever wrench them from their fantasy world of ridiculous, top-heavy, and fact-free conspiracy theories… but these images really do hammer home that those landers are sitting on the Moon.

Oh, what we humans can do when we decide to.

Tip o’ the spacesuit helmet to Emily Lakdawalla.

The people who lived in the Amazon regions back before any Europeans showed up on the scene had an ingenious way to survive there. By creating mounds of biochar, the pre-Columbian peoples made beds for their crops that drained far better than the native soil, which is nutrient-poor and prone to flooding. And, it seems, they unintentionally contributed to the biodiversity of the region.

In a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists led by Doyle McKey of France investigated the savannas of French Guiana, in the far northern part of South America. These plains are flooded during the rainy season, dry and parched in the summer, and often burned by fires. It was while walking through this landscape that McKey started wondering about undulations in the terrain [New Scientist]. Just how effective were these people at creating favorable cropland? McKey found that the drainage capacity of the mounds was nine times that of the rest of the savanna.

As DISCOVER noted in the 2007 feature “Black Gold of the Amazon,” the nutrient-rich, fertile soil that resulted from the biochar mounds is a gold mine for local farmers even today. But it was the insects who really appreciated the gifts of the pre-Columbian peoples after those people disappeared. Species of ants and termites settled in the mounds, where their colonies wouldn’t flood. Their burrowing aerated the soil, and plant matter foraged from surrounding areas enriched it further. As a result, the mounds acted like sponges for rainfall, and outsourced insect labor made them rich in key fertilizer nutrients of nitrogen, potassium and calcium [Wired.com]. Because of the plentiful nutrients, plants on these mounds grew more successfully and their roots reached deeper.

All in all, McKey argues, the actions of those humans trying to better their agricultural situation actually improved biodiversity compared to what had been there before, the flat savanna. That’s not bad for a civilization about which our knowledge is extremely limited, and you can count McKey among the people who think that simple agriculture secrets like biochar could teach us something. “When people modified these ecosystems long ago, they changed the way the ecosystems work. We can use that knowledge,” said McKey [Wired.com].

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Image: Pre-Columbian raised fields around French Guiana, including on the left bank of the Mana River (A), near the Sinnamary River (B), west of the city of Kourou (C), and between the town of Macouria and Cayenne Island (D). Credit: McKey et. al. / PNAS

Elaine Howard Ecklund is a sociologist at Rice University; we cited her work on the topic of science and religion in Unscientific America. Now, she is out with a book that is going to seriously undercut some widespread assumptions out there concerning the science religion relationship. The book, soon to be out from Oxford University press, is entitled Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think. And let me give you just a taste of her answers, from the book jacket (I haven't dug in yet):
In the course of her research, Ecklund surveyed nearly 1,700 scientists and interviewed 275 of them. She finds that most of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong. Nearly 50 percent of them are religious. Many others are what she calls "spiritual entrepreneurs," seeking creative ways to work with the tensions between science and faith outside the constraints of traditional religion.....only a small minority are actively hostile to religion. Ecklund reveals how scientists--believers and skeptics alike--are struggling to engage the increasing number of religious students in their classrooms and argues that many scientists are searching for "boundary pioneers" to cross the picket lines separating science and religion. You can learn more about Ecklund's ...

I read Noisy Astronomer’s blog every day — she’s a grad student at the University of Virginia, and of course known the world around as Nicole Hasenpfeffer.

Reading her blog today I found out it’s the birthday of the McCormick Observatory! This venerable observatory houses a 26 inch ’scope that I used many times in my career at UVa, and I have many fond memories of it (and some not-so-fond, usually involving long cold nights at the eyepiece).

She also mentions that it’s Thomas Jefferson’s birthday too. I think I’ll celebrate by reading the Declaration of Independence. That’s seriously one of the finest examples of writing in the English language.

And oh, the third one? My brother, of course. Happy birthday Merril!

Pre-Columbian agricultural landscapes, ecosystem engineers, and self-organized patchiness in Amazonia. The circumstantial evidence is building that the Amazon is not a “pristine” and “virgin” wilderness. Rather, it may have been “re-wilded” after a massive die-off of the human population due to the spread of European diseases during the “Columbian Exchange.” Charles C Mann reports on this data in 1491.

How financial innovation causes crises. I’m willing to be convinced otherwise, but I strongly suspect that there’s really rapid diminishing returns to economic growth due to efficiencies of financial engineering. Even plainly useful ideas such as the joint-stock corporation aren’t necessary for economic takeoff; because of the South Seas Bubble they were banned in England during the period when the Industrial Revolution was occurring.

Monday Pets: Biological Evidence That Dog is Man’s Best Friend. This post reviews evidence that dogs predate agriculture. There have been enough circumstantial data that I accept this. But, there is new genomic evidence which implies that dogs may have radiated recently from the Middle East within the last 10,000 years, suggesting agriculture did play some role. So what gives? I suspect that one way to resolve this is that the Middle Eastern lineages replaced the others. Wolves are good candidates for domestication, and there’s no reason it couldn’t have happened more than once, with a recent monophyletic clade being due to replacement of other independent lineages.

Williams syndrome children show no racial stereotypes or social fear. That is, this form of mental retardation seems to produce kids who are not racially biased, at least to the level of statistical significance. Though they remain sex aware. I wonder if they’re able to understand theism? Well, I guess we’ve found a way to eliminate racism, and possibly religion and other phenomena not to our liking.

Planned Parenthood fights for freedom to spread AIDS. The title is tabloidesque, but basically like many groups Planned Parenthood is defending the absolute right of HIV positive people not to be forced to divulge their status to potential sex partners. It’s certainly un-libertarian to have a law stipulating you have to do this, but I guess that’s why I’m libertarianish. One can make slippery slope arguments, but I put HIV in a different class than herpes when it comes to the protecting public health at the expense of individual freedom to decide.