From Gizmodo:
According to BP officials, the implementation of their latest containment seal at the Deepwater Horizon rig has been successful. That means that for the first time in months, no new oil is gushing into the Gulf. BP still has to conduct pressure tests to make sure t
What 15 million years ago was very bad for Australian marsupials is now very good for paleontologists: Researchers have uncovered a death trap, an underground limestone cave where hundreds of animals stumbled to their demise.
A paper published today in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology details the resulting fossil menagerie, which includes an extinct wombat-like marsupial known as Nimbadon lavarackorum.
Karen Black of the University of New South Wales led the excavation and says in a press release that her team has already uncovered 26 Nimbadon skulls. The varying ages of the skulls detail the Nimbadon’s whole life cycle from “suckling pouch” to “elderly adults.”
“This is a fantastic and incredibly rare site,” says Dr. Black [regarding the cave]. “The exceptional preservation of the fossils has allowed us to piece together the growth and development of Nimbadon from baby to adult.” [Society of Vertebrate Paleontology]
See a photo gallery of the excavation and fossil processing below the jump.
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Researchers believe that there are even more fossils deeper in the Queensland cave, known officially as AL90. They also suspect that finding so many of the same animal might mean the Nimbadon exhibited “mob” behavior–traveling in large groups–as seen with today’s grey kangaroos.
The skulls are relatively large, but researchers think Nimbadon didn’t have much in the way of brains. Perhaps that’s not surprising, given the animals fell into a hole en masse.
“We think it needed a large surface area of skull to provide attachments for all the muscle power it required to chew large quantities of leaves, so its skull features empty areas, or sinus cavities,” said study team member Mike Archer of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. “Roughly translated, this may be the first demonstration of how a growing mammal ‘pays’ for the need to eat more greens—by becoming an ‘airhead.’” [Society of Vertebrate Paleontology]
Related content:
80beats: Could a Rain of Dead, Poisoned Toads Save an Australian Marsupial?
80beats: Scientist Smackdown: Were Giant Kangaroos Hunted Into Extinction?
80beats: Hope for Taz? A Colony of Tasmanian Devils Resists the Species’ Deadly Disease
80beats: Drying Climate Turned Possum-Like Critter Into the Strange Koala
My friend Surly Amy wrote a fantastic piece at Skepchick about why being a skeptic, being a critical thinker, is important. She includes a letter from a reader that… well, just read it for yourself. Make sure you read the whole thing.
Then go out and be skeptical. Go! It’s important.
The only thing worse than embarrassing yourself while skiing or snowboarding is messing up your cranium in the process. Enter the Head Impact Detection and Alert System, a sophisticated helmet that both detects and signals brain injuries as they occur. More »
Washington, D.C. – Following today’s executive session of the Senate Commerce Committee, the President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, Bretton Alexander, stated, “Thanks to Senators Warner, Boxer, Udall, and Brownback, American industry won a victory today. But this legislation must be improved so that we create more sustainable American jobs, instead of exporting jobs to Russia. This compromise committee bill represents progress from the original draft, but there is still a long way to go to get to where the Augustine Committee said NASA needs to be.”
“We strongly supported Senator Warner’s proposed amendment to increase funding for, and remove needless restrictions on the development of, commercial crew and cargo. We greatly appreciate all that Senator Warner did to promote commercial spaceflight and help the United States regain its human spaceflight capability quickly.” Alexander added, “Senator Boxer’s leadership has also been pivotal in securing improvements to the bill.”
Alexander continued, “The Senate committee’s recognition that commercial systems, not government systems, will be the primary means of crew transportation to the International Space Station represents a milestone for our industry. Instead of spending money to purchase seats on Russian launch vehicles, the commercial industry will create jobs and critical technological capabilities here in America through investment in commercial spaceflight. I would also note that Senator Nelson has stated that he intends to fund commercial crew fully over the envisioned six-year timeframe for the program. Moving forward, a firm Congressional commitment to commercial spaceflight will be critical to enable industry to accelerate its rate of hiring and job creation.”
Alexander also applauded Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, saying, “The Senate Committee also adopted Senator Udall’s amendment specifying funding and support for NASA’s innovative Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) Program, which will enable university students and researchers to fly science payloads aboard new low-cost commercial suborbital vehicles whose development is well underway.”
During this morning’s markup, Senators Boxer and Warner made several comments supportive of commercial spaceflight. These quotes can be viewed in the Senate Commerce Committee webcast at 39:00 and 53:50 respectively, and verbatim versions are provided below for reference.
July 15 Markup: Webcast Quotes from Senators Boxer and Warner
Senator Boxer: “As we move to the floor, I’m going to be teaming up with some colleagues who would like to see a little more done on the commercial side, so we’ll all work together and maybe we can get that done. We think this is a great area and we know the Committee worked hard to find that balance but we’d like to work a little more on that.” (39:00 into webcast)
Senator Warner: “I wanted to highlight two things as somebody who’s been a large advocate of commercial spaceflight, both from a cargo standpoint and ultimately from a manned standpoint. I want to thank Senator Nelson and the work of the Chairman and others to make sure that the funding levels moved up from where the draft legislation was. I know it’s been a challenging process, I know the Administration has been working with us and others as well who are advocates of commercial space, and I think there may be even more room to go, but I think this is a very important good faith-effort.” (53:50 into webcast)
Dave Winer—the father of blogging and the RSS—has published this article on Apple's current situation. His prediction: The Reality Distortion Field bubble is "about to burst" and Apple is going to suffer the ugliest shitstorm you've ever seen. More »
Nintendo went all in on motion control, and now the rest of the industry is following their lead. But according to Mario mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto, the company doesn't think it's quite time for them to jump into the third dimension. More »
According to BP officials, the implementation of their latest containment seal at the Deepwater Horizon rig has been successful. That means that for the first time in months, no new oil is gushing into the Gulf. More »
If we want the fan to consume less electricity at low speed, what do we have to do?
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Hello again, Mercury. This week in a trio of papers Science, the scientists behind the Messenger probe released their findings from the craft’s third and final flyby of the planet closest to the sun, which it executed last September. Mercury, they’ve shown once again, is full of surprises—and they’ll get the chance to explore them when Messenger returns and finally enters Mercury’s orbit in March 2011.
Scientists have now mapped 98 percent of the planet by combining the new observations with the first two flybys in January and October 2008, plus the Mariner 10 mission in the ’70s, [said Brett Denevi, coauthor of one of the papers]. The latest flyby filled in a 360-mile-wide gap that had never been imaged before.
“It wasn’t a huge amount of real estate, but there was a lot of really interesting stuff there,” Denevi said. The most exciting features include a 180-mile-wide basin filled with hardened lava, and a crooked bowl surrounded by glass and magma that may be the largest volcanic vent ever identified on Mercury. Together, these features suggest that Mercury had active volcanoes later in its history than scientists had suspected [Wired.com].
The first image above shows a smooth basin dubbed Rachmaninoff, which is one of the smoothest regions seen on Mercury—so smooth that it must have formed from volcanic material in the last billion years or so. The yellowish part in the upper right of this false color image is that volcanic vent.
Louise Prockter, one of the scientists on the volcanism paper, says the findings suggest a Mercury that was active longer than most scientists thought—perhaps up to one to two billion years ago.
“Until MESSENGER, we had expected Mercury to get rid of all its heat early on in its history because it’s pretty small,” Prockter said. “We’ll want to see if the volcanism we see with this basin was an isolated case or whether it was widespread across the surface, which would have us perhaps rethinking our models of Mercury. It seems that Mercury did not get rid of her heat nearly as efficiently as had previously been thought” [Space.com].
That’s not all. Mercury, the researchers found, also releases fierce magnetic storms.
The September MESSENGER flyby is the first time scientists have documented the buildup of magnetic energy in Mercury’s magnetotail, the magnetic lines of force that form a region shaped like a comet’s tail on the planet’s night side. The magnetotail absorbed 10 times more magnetic energy from the sun than Earth’s magnetotail does. It then dumped that energy in just two to three minutes, compared to two to three hours for Earth’s field [Science News].
Now, the waiting is the hardest part. The countdown to Messenger’s big adventure in March stands at eight months.
Related Content:
80beats: Latest Mercury Pics Reveal Massive Craters & Possible Volcanic Vents
80beats: Space Probe Soon to Study Mercury’s Comet-Like “Tail”
80beats: Mercury Flyby Reveals Magnetic Twisters and Ancient Magma Oceans
80beats: Brand New Postcards From Mercury, Courtesy of Messenger Space Probe
Images: NASA/JPL/Johns Hopkins
This may sound like a stupid question, but what is the little thumb wheel for on the front of a CD R/RW disc drive on a computer? Computer manufacturers don't explain what the various switches, jacks, controls are for. They seem to make the assumption that we all know what there are for.
The Benguela region, off the coast of Namibia, is a shadow of its former self. In the first half of the 20th century, it was one of the world’s most productive ocean areas and supported a thriving fishing community. Today, the plentiful stocks of sardines and anchovies, and the industries that overexploited them, are gone. The water is choked of oxygen and swarming with jellyfish. Plumes of toxic gas frequently erupt from the ocean floor. But one fish, the bearded goby, is positively thriving in this inhospitable ecosystem. It’s a critical link in a food web that’s on the verge of collapse.
For every tonne of fish currently swimming in the Benguela waters, there are more than three tonnes of jellyfish. Some scientists have suggested that the jellyfish explosion has trapped the region in a “trophic dead-end”. Jellyfish have few predators so, having skyrocketed, their numbers are unlikely to fall back to levels where fish can return.
Below the zone where the jellyfish live, there is a layer that is completely devoid of life, extending from the bottom to around 20-60 metres above it. The mud and sediment along the Benguela ocean floor is extremely low in oxygen (hypoxic), and dominated by algae and large mats of bacteria. It frequently releases massive amounts of toxic gases, like methane and hydrogen sulphide, into the waters above with disastrous consequences for marine life.
But Anne Utne-Palm has found cause for hope. The bearded goby is tough enough to endure in conditions that have driven away most other fish and it’s one of the few species with a strong presence in Benguela. The goby’s success is a bit of a mystery since it’s now the main target for predatory birds, mammals and fish, following the loss of the sardines. And yet, despite being snapped at by hungry beaks and jaws, its population is growing. Now, Utne-Palm has found out why.
The goby lives its life at either ends of the Benguela dead zone and it has very strange inclinations. It spends its days resting on, or hiding inside, the hypoxic mud and it actually prefers these sediments over more typical sand. If another fish did the same, its metabolism would grind to a halt because of the lack of oxygen and the toxic concentrations of hydrogen sulphide. It would become sluggish and vulnerable to predators, and its heart would become irrevocably damaged after a short span of time.
But the goby doesn’t suffer any of these consequences. Its tolerance for low oxygen levels surpasses that of any other bony fish, and it can generate energy aerobically with so little oxygen that the conditions within the Benguela mud are no challenge for it. It’s virtually unaffected by high concentrations of hydrogen sulphide. And even if it’s kept in hypoxic conditions, below its critical threshold, it remains alert and its heart recovers quickly afterwards.
During the evening, the goby rises up to the mid-level waters before sinking back in the early morning. It spends the intervening hours in the company of two species of large jellyfish that rule these waters. And again, it will actually opt to spend time in a chamber with jellyfish, when given the option to swim in an empty tank. By analysing the contents of the gobies’ stomach, and the chemical content of their flesh, Utne-Palm found that the fish actually eats the jellies, which comprise up to 60% of its diet.
Whether it actually hunts live jellies is unclear. Other items in the goby’s stomach, including bottom-dwelling worms and algae, suggest that it probably scavenges upon dead jellies that sink to the ocean floor. Its fondness for loitering among the living jellies might be a way of protecting it from predators like mackerel, which shun the swarm of tentacles.
Rising above the dead zone might have other benefits too. It might help their digestion, which tends to be suppressed in hypoxic conditions. Utne-Palm noted that the gobies’ stomachs are far fuller, and their meals more intact, when they rise to the surface than when they return to the bottom. The waters of the open ocean are also richer in oxygen, allowing the goby to replenish its supply before sinking back to hypoxic levels.
While some species have suffered from the ashes of Benguela’s decline, the bearded goby has the right adaptations to make the most of this almost post-apocalyptic landscape. And it now plays a pivotal role in this brave new world. By eating jellyfish and algae in the hypoxic mud, it transfers some of these dead-end resources back into the food web.
Reference: Science http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1190708
More on fishing:
If the citation link isn’t working, read why here
There's been a lot written about Facebook privacy concerns, so much so that you'd be forgiven for abandoning hope of keeping track of it all. But this video by Casey Neistat sums it up pretty well, and entertainingly. More »
Tomorrow, Apple is announcing something about the iPhone 4. Maybe it's about the antenna. Maybe it's about how many bajillion they've sold. Or both! We'll be covering the news and doing analysis live, right here: [Gizmodo Live] More »
The fixes are minor, but if you've been having issues connecting to Wi-Fi, watching videos or dealing with single-page PDFs, the latest iPad firmware 3.2.1 update is for you. Also, how geeky cool is it that the update counts down 321? This is a once-in-a-lifetime firmware moment, folks. Enjoy it. [TUAW] More »
Have you ever heard problem about 7pa2740 relay of siemens ?
contact isolation is weak
auto transformer's circuit breakers trips while have no reason
thanks ahead for your answers.
Imagine enough forest to cover the state of Florida. According to a recent report (pdf), a downturn in illegal logging has protected that amount of forest land–some 42 million acres–over the past decade.
The decrease is a good start, London think tank Chatam House authors say, but there is still more work to do.
“We’re a quarter of the way there,” said Sam Lawson, one of the report’s authors. He expressed the hope that newer regulations–such as a European law passed last week that will ban the import of illegal timber by 2012–would cut the amount of illegal logging even further. [AP]
During the last decade, the report says, Cameroon, the Brazilian Amazon, and Indonesia have decreased logging between 50 and 75 percent. Meanwhile, the seven studied consumer and processing countries have decreased illegally harvested wood imports by 30 percent.
Among those importing countries is the United States, which in 2008 became the first country to ban all imports of illegally logged plants and plant products, including furniture and paper. Europe’s ban, passed earlier this month, will go into effect in 2012.
Still, despite these laws and others in exporting countries, a good deal of illegally sourced lumber still makes it to market. Some exporting countries, like Ghana and Malaysia, haven’t reduced their output, and “processing countries” like China and Vietnam can allow illegal lumber to pass through. Finally, even in the United States some importers don’t abide by the ban.
[C]ompanies still often turn a blind eye, “prioritizing profits over ethical standards,” according to the report’s lead author, Sam Lawson…. But even a total end to illegal timber imports wouldn’t solve the problem, as the contraband would likely find its way to “less sensitive” markets, such as the Middle East, according to Lawson. “If the United States just shuts off its market—even if it could—it would still be a great problem,” he says. [Nature News]
The reports’ authors also outline the consequences if the current illegal harvest does not stop. The report cites the amount of money lost to illegal logging and also logging’s environmental consequences–it estimates that forest destruction is responsible for up to 20 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions caused by human activities.
As a specific example, the report estimates that the 42 million acres mentioned above store 1.2 billion tons of Co2 and are worth 6.5 billion dollars (if harvested legally). The forests’ also serve as home and livelihood for many of these producer countries’ people.
The stakes are high, said lead author Sam Lawson. “Up to a billion of the world’s poorest people are dependent on forests, and reductions in illegal logging are helping to protect their livelihoods,” he said. [AFP]
Related content:
80beats: Truce Between Green Groups & Timber Companies Could Save Canadian Forests
80beats: Obama Admin. Rolls Back Bush-Era Rules on Mining & Forests
80beats: As Amazon Rainforest Destruction Continues, Brazil Pledges Drastic Action
80beats: The Latest Threat to the Amazon Rainforest: Hackers
80beats: Papua New Guinea’s Forests Falling Fast
Image: flickr / Nirudha Perera
I thought this Amazon page was fake... until I searched for it and found the product page for the Fleshlight. Now, I believe. More »
Hello all.
I am looking for a Deionizer to generate automotive battery water from rain water. Please advise on a reliable source and what specs to look uot for.
Regards
Applied
