Posts by AltonParrish:
- By Parrish Alton.
8,400+ Terrorist attacks in 2012, new data shows
December 23rd, 2013
By University of Maryland.
Although terrorism touched 85 countries in 2012, just three – Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan – suffered more than half of 2012’s attacks (54 percent) and fatalities (58 percent), according to new data released today by theNational Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism(START) Global Terrorism Database (GTD), based at the University of Maryland. The next five most frequently targeted countries were India, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen and Thailand.
“While terrorist attacks have in large part moved away from Western Europe and North America to Asia, the Middle East and Africa, worldwide terrorism is reaching new levels of destructiveness,” said Gary LaFree, START director and professor of criminology and criminal justice at UMD.In addition to illustrating a continued shift in location of attacks, the new data — with more than 8,400 terroristattacks killing more than 15,400 people in 2012 — also show an increase in attacks and fatalities over the past decade. The previous record for attacks was set in 2011 with more than 5,000 incidents; for fatalities, the previous high was 2007 with more than 12,500 deaths.
A map showing concentration and intensity of 2012attacks is available here.It is important to note that beginning with 2012 data collection, START made several important changes to the GTD collection methodology, improving the efficiency and comprehensiveness of the process. As a result of these improvements, a direct comparison between 2011 and 2012 likely overstates the increase in totalattacks and fatalities worldwide during this time period. However, analysis of the data indicate that this increase began before the shift in data collection methodology, and important developments in key conflicts around the world suggest that considerable upward trends remain even when accounting for the possibility of methodological artifacts.
In the 1970s, most attacks occurred in Western Europe. In the 1980s, Latin America saw the most terrorist acts. Beginning with the 1990s, South Asia, North Africa and the Middle East have seen steadily rising numbers of attacks, a trend that has accelerated in recent years.
“The other striking development in recent years is the incredible growth in terrorist attacks linked to al-Qaida affiliates,” LaFree said.
Though al-Qaida central was not directly responsible for any attacks in 2012, the six deadliest terrorist groups in the world were all affiliated to some extent with the organization. These include the Taliban (more than 2,500 fatalities), Boko Haram (more than 1,200 fatalities), al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (more than 960 fatalities), Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (more than 950 fatalities), al-Qaida in Iraq (more than 930 fatalities) and al-Shabaab (more than 700 fatalities).
Attacks in Yemen, Nigeria and Iraq were among the deadliest in 2012.
On Jan. 5, unidentified Sunni perpetrators in Dhi Qar, Al Anbar and Baghdad, Iraq bombed various Shiite civilian targets, including pilgrims and laborers, in six separate attacks. Nearly 120 people were killed across all six attacks, including at least two suicide bombers.
In Nigeria on Jan. 20, approximately 190 people were killed in bombings targeting government, police, media, schools, utilities and private citizens, primarily in Kano. Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attacks, indicating that they were carried out in response to Nigerian authorities detaining and killing Boko Haram members.
On March 4, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula attacked a series of military targets in Zinjibar, Yemen, killing a total of 195 soldiers and kidnapping 73. More than 40 perpetrators were also killed in these attacks, and the hostages were released the following month.GTD data files and documentation are available for download from the START website for users who would like to conduct custom analysis of the data.
In addition to the methodological improvements made in the collection and coding process, the GTD team has added elements to improve the experience for those using the database. 2012 is the first year of data that includes geocodes for all attacks that occurred worldwide. Efforts to geocode the historical data back to 1970 are ongoing, and with the current update the geocoding process was completed for an additional 20 countries in North Africa and Southeast Asia. This information makes it possible for analysts to explore geospatial patterns of terrorist violence and more easily identify the sub-national concentrations of attacks.
Other new variables include target subtypes, which systematically classify targets into more specific categories. For example, while previous versions of the data allowed users to explore a subset of attacksagainst transportation targets, now analysts can easily identify attacks that target busses (42 percent of all transportation attacks), trains (33 percent), bridges and tunnels (9 percent), stations (7 percent), roads (4 percent), subways (2 percent), or taxis (1 percent).
“This update includes a number of improvements that we have been working on for several years, in response to common requests from users,” said Erin Miller, GTD program manager. “We are always happy to get feedback on what types of information would make this a more useful resource and better serve the needs of researchers and practitioners.”
According to Miller, the most commonly requested feature is the ability to distinguish between international and domestic attacks. To address this need, the GTD team developed a set of indicators that classify attacksas international or domestic across several dimensions, including logistics (whether the perpetrator group crossed a border to carry out the attack) and ideology (whether the perpetrator group was attacking a target of a different nationality, regardless of where the attack took place).
The domestic/international indicators and other new variables are currently included in the downloadable data files. START plans to incorporate them into the online user interface in a future update. More information about the new variables can be found in theGTD Codebook.
With this data release, the GTD now contains information on more than 113,000 domestic and international terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2012 that resulted in more than 243,000 deaths and more than 324,000 injuries. These attacks are defined as the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious or social goal through fear, coercion or intimidation.
The GTD is funded through START by the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s Office of University Programs, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s Resilient Systems Division.
Junk food can harm memory in a week
December 21st, 2013
By Alton Parrish.
Even a short-term diet of junk food can have a detrimental effect on the brain’s cognitive ability, according toUNSW research.
For the first time, researchers have shown that rats fed a diet high in fat and sugar had impaired memory after just a week.
Interestingly, the results were similarly poor for the rats fed a healthy diet and given access to sugar water to drink.
The work has been published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity.
The cognitive impairment related to place recognition, with the animals showing poorer ability to notice when an object had been shifted to a new location. These animals also had inflammation of the hippocampal region of the brain, which is associated with spatial memory.
“We know that obesity causes inflammation in the body, but we didn’t realise until recently that it also causes changes in the brain,” says one of the authors Professor Margaret Morris from UNSW Medicine.
“What is so surprising about this research is the speed with which the deterioration of the cognition occurred,” says Professor Morris, from the School of Medical Sciences. “Our preliminary data also suggests that the damage is not reversed when the rats are switched back to a healthy diet, which is very concerning.”
Some aspects of the animals’ memories were spared, regardless of their diets. All the animals were equally able to recognise objects after eating either the “healthy”, “cafeteria” (high in fat and sugar, including cake, chips and biscuits) or “healthy with sugar” regimes.
The change in the animals’ memory appeared even prior to the emergence of weight differences between theanimals.
Ongoing work will attempt to establish how to stop the inflammation in the brain of animals with the unhealthy diets.
“We suspect that these findings may be relevant to people,” says Professor Morris. “While nutrition affects the brain at every age, it is critical as we get older and may be important in preventing cognitive decline. An elderly person with poor diet may be more likely to have problems. ”
The research builds on previous work that has implications for obesity.
“Given that high energy foods can impair the function of the hippocampus, if you eat a lot of them it may contribute to weight gain, by interfering with your episodic memory,” says Professor Morris.
“People might be less aware of their internal cues like hunger pangs and knowing when they have had enough,” she said.
This work by Jessica Beilharz, Jayanthi Maniam and Margaret Morris was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council.
Smoking up a storm
December 19th, 2013
Marijuana consumption in Washington state is about twice as large as previously estimated, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
Using federal data and information from a new survey of marijuana users in Washington state, researchers say marijuana consumption likely will range from 135 metric tons to 225 metric tons during 2013, with 175 metric tons as the median estimate.
The analysis was done as a part of efforts to help the Washington State Liquor Control Board prepare for commercial sales of marijuana, which will begin in 2014 as a result of Washington’s Initiative 502 that legalized the commercial production and sales of marijuana for recreational use
RAND researchers say understanding the size and composition of the current marijuana market is important to help state policymakers make decisions about the number of marijuana sales licenses to issue, to accurately project tax revenues and provide a foundation for evaluations of the state’s legalization of recreational marijuana.
“Updated federal data and information we collected from marijuana users in Washington prompted us to conclude that consumption is significantly larger than previously estimated,” said Beau Kilmer, the study’s lead author and a senior policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “There is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding marijuana market estimates, but our work used new insights and novel data collection tools to improve upon previous efforts.”
Randy Simmons, the Initiative 502 implementation project manager with the Washington State Liquor Control Board, said researchers shared their insights about marijuana consumption in June and the information was “very useful” as state officials made decisions about production and licenses.
The Washington state marijuana consumption estimates were compiled using information from the federal National Survey on Drug Use and Health, as well as a web-based survey of marijuana users in Washington state compiled by the research team. The online survey included novel approaches such as showing participants photos of marijuana to help them better report the actual quantity that they use.
“The federal National Survey on Drug Use and Health provides useful information about marijuana users, but it does not account for all of them,” said Jonathan Caulkins, a study co-author and the Stever Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. “We devoted serious attention to this undercounting issue in the report.”
The RAND report estimates marijuana consumption in each of Washington’s 39 counties, showing that the state’s three most-populous counties (King, Snohomish and Pierce) account for about half of all use.
Support for the study was provided by the state of Washington as part of a contract with BOTEC Analysis Corporation, which advised the state on technical issues related to implementation of legal marijuana in the state.
Voters in Washington approved Initiative 502 in November 2012 that legalized recreational use of marijuana for those aged 21 and older, and requires the state to regulate and tax a new marijuana market. Commercial marijuana stores and associated supply chains are scheduled to begin operating in 2014.
The RAND report, “Before the Grand Opening: Measuring Washington State’s Marijuana Market in the Last Year Before Legalized Commercial Sales,” is available at http://www.rand.org. Other authors of the report are Jonathan P. Caulkins and Linden Dahlkemper of Carnegie Mellon University, Greg Midgette and Rosalie Liccardo Pacula of RAND, and Robert J. MacCoun of UC Berkeley.
Since 1989, the RAND Drug Policy Research Center has conducted research to help policymakers in theUnited States and throughout the world address issues involving alcohol and other drugs. In doing so, the center brings an objective and data-driven perspective to an often emotional and fractious policy arena.
Evidence of water vapor venting off Jovian moon
December 16th, 2013
By Alton Parrish.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has observed water vapor above the frigid south polar region of Jupiter’smoon Europa, providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon’s surface.
Previous scientific findings from other sources already point to the existence of an ocean located under Europa’s icy crust. Researchers are not yet certain whether the detected water vapor is generated by waterplumes erupting on the surface, but they are confident this is the most likely explanation.
This graphic shows the location of water vapor detected over Europa’s south pole that provides the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off Europa’s surface, in observations taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in December 2012. Hubble didn’t photograph plumes, but spectroscopically detected auroral emissions from oxygen and hydrogen. The aurora is powered by Jupiter’s magnetic field. This is only the second moon in the solar system found ejecting water vapor from the frigid surface. The image of Europa is derived from a global surface map generated from combined NASA Voyager and Galileo space probe observations.
Illustration Credit: NASA, ESA, and L. Roth (Southwest Research Institute and University of Cologne, Germany)
“By far the simplest explanation for this water vapor is that it erupted from plumes on the surface of Europa,” said lead author Lorenz Roth of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. “If those plumes are connected with the subsurface water ocean we are confident exists under Europa’s crust, then this means that future investigations can directly investigate the chemical makeup of Europa’s potentially habitable environment without drilling through layers of ice. And that is tremendously exciting.”
In 2005, NASA’s Cassini orbiter detected jets of water vapor and dust spewing off the surface of Saturn’smoon Enceladus. Although ice and dust particles subsequently have been found in the Enceladus plumes, only water vapor gases have been measured at Europa so far.
Hubble’s spectroscopic observations provided the evidence for Europa plumes in December 2012. Time sampling of auroral emissions measured by Hubble’s imaging spectrograph enabled the researchers to distinguish between features created by Jupiter’s magnetospheric particles and local enhancements of gas, and to also rule out more exotic explanations such as serendipitously observing a rare meteorite impact. The imaging spectrograph detected faint ultraviolet light from an aurora, powered by Jupiter’s intense magnetic field, near the moon’s south pole. Atomic oxygen and hydrogen produce a variable auroral glow and leave a telltale sign that they are products of water molecules being broken apart by electrons along magnetic field lines.
“We pushed Hubble to its limits to see this very faint emission. These could be stealth plumes, because they might be tenuous and difficult to observe in the visible light,” said Joachim Saur of the University of Cologne in Germany. Saur, who is principal investigator of the Hubble observation campaign, co-wrote the paper with Roth. Roth suggested long cracks on Europa’s surface, known as lineae, might be venting water vapor into space. Cassini has seen similar fissures that host Enceladus’ jets.
The Hubble team found that the intensity of Europa’s plumes, like that Enceladus’s plumes, varies with the moon’s orbital position. Active jets have been seen only when Europa is farthest from Jupiter. But the researchers could not detect any sign of venting when Europa is closer to Jupiter.
This is an artist’s concept of a plume of water vapor thought to be ejected off of the frigid, icy surface of the Jovian moon Europa, located 500 million miles from the Sun. Hubble Space Telescope spectroscopic measurements lead scientists to calculate that the plume rises to an altitude of 125 miles and then probably rains frost back onto the moon’s surface. Previous findings already point to a subsurface ocean under Europa’s icy crust.
“The apparent plume variability supports a key prediction that Europa should tidally flex by a significant amount if it has a subsurface ocean,” said Kurt Retherford, also of Southwest Research Institute.
Europa’s and Enceladus’ plumes have remarkably similar abundances of water vapor. Because Europa has roughly 12 times more gravitational pull than Enceladus, the vapor, whose temperature is measured at minus 40 degrees Celsius, does not escape into space as it does at Enceladus. Instead, it falls back onto the surface after reaching an altitude of 125 miles, according to the Hubble measurements. This could leave bright surface features near the moon’s south polar region, the researchers hypothesize.
“If confirmed, this new observation once again shows the power of the Hubble Space Telescope to explore and opens a new chapter in our search for potentially habitable environments in our solar system,” said John Grunsfeld, an astronaut who participated in Hubble servicing missions and now serves as NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington, D.C. “The effort and risk we took to upgrade and repair the Hubble becomes all the more worthwhile when we learn about exciting discoveries like this one from Europa.”
Contacts and sources:
Dwayne Brown / J.D. Harrington
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Global map to predict giant earthquakes
December 13th, 2013 By Alton Parrish.
The new research, published in the journal Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, comes nine years after the giant earthquake and tsunami in Sumatra in December 2004, which devastated the region and many other areas surrounding the Indian Ocean, and killed more than 200,000 people.
Since then two other giant earthquakes have occurred at subduction zones, one in Chile in February 2010 and one in Japan in March 2011, which both caused massive destruction, killed many thousands of people and resulted in billions of dollars of damage.
Most earthquakes occur at the boundaries between tectonic plates that cover the Earth’s surface. The largestearthquakes on Earth only occur at subduction zones, plate boundaries where one plate sinks (subducts) below the other into the Earth’s interior. So far, seismologists have recorded giant earthquakes for only a limited number of subduction zone segments. But accurate seismological records go back to only ~1900, and the recurrence time of giant earthquakes can be many hundreds of years.
Dr Schellart, of the School of Geosciences, and Professor Nick Rawlinson from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland used earthquake data going back to 1900 and data from subduction zones to map the main characteristics of all active subduction zones on Earth. They investigated if those subduction segments that have experienced a giant earthquake share commonalities in their physical, geometrical and geological properties.
They found that the main indicators include the style of deformation in the plate overlying the subduction zone, the level of stress at the subduction zone, the dip angle of the subduction zone, as well as the curvature of the subduction zone plate boundary and the rate at which it moves.
Through these findings Dr Schellart has identified several subduction zone regions capable of generating giant earthquakes, including the Lesser Antilles, Mexico-Central America, Greece, the Makran, Sunda, North Sulawesi and Hikurangi.
“For the Australian region subduction zones of particular significance are the Sunda subduction zone, running from the Andaman Islands along Sumatra and Java to Sumba, and the Hikurangi subduction segment offshore the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. Our research predicts that these zones are capable of producing giant earthquakes,” Dr Schellart said.
“Our work also predicts that several other subduction segments that surround eastern Australia (New Britain, San Cristobal, New Hebrides, Tonga, Puysegur), are not capable of producing giant earthquakes.”
Life miles deep in the earth similar all over the world
December 10th, 2013Posted by Alton Parrish.
The results, which were presented at the American Geophysical Union conference Dec. 8, suggest that these communities may be connected, said Matthew Schrenk, Michigan State University geomicrobiologist.
MSU scientist finds that, even miles deep and halfway across the globe, microbial communities are somehow quite similar.
Schrenk leads a team funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Deep Carbon Observatory studyingsamples from deep underground in California, Finland and from mine shafts in South Africa. The scientists also collect microbes from the deepest hydrothermal vents in the Caribbean Ocean.
“It’s easy to understand how birds or fish might be similar oceans apart,” Schrenk said. “But it challenges the imagination to think of nearly identical microbes 16,000 kilometers apart from each other in the cracks of hard rock at extreme depths, pressures and temperatures.”
Cataloging and exploring this region, a relatively unknown biome, could lead to breakthroughs in offsetting climate change, the discovery of new enzymes and processes that may be useful for biofuel and biotechnology research, he added.
For example, Schrenk’s future efforts will focus on unlocking answers to what carbon sources the microbes use, how they cope in such extreme conditions as well as how their enzymes evolved to function so deep underground.
“Integrating this region into existing models of global biogeochemistry and gaining better understanding into how deep rock-hosted organisms contribute or mitigate greenhouse gases could help us unlock puzzles surrounding modern-day Earth, ancient Earth and even other planets,” Schrenk said.
Collecting and comparing microbiological and geochemical data across continents is made possible through the DCO. The DCO has allowed scientists from across disciplines to better understand and describe these phenomena, he added.
Additional researchers included Julie Huber of Marine Biological Lab, T.C. Onstott of Princeton University, Merja Itavaara of VTT Finland and Ramunas Stepanauskas of Bigelow Laboratories.
Impossible planet found throwing a wrench into planet formation theories
December 8th, 2013
Posted by Alton Parrish.
The discovery of a giant planet orbiting its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance has astronomers puzzled over how such a strange system came to be.
Weighing in at 11 times Jupiter’s mass and orbiting its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance, planet HD 106906 b is unlike anything in our own Solar System and throws a wrench in planet formation theories.
This is an artist’s conception of a young planet in a distant orbit around its host star. The star still harbors a debris disk, remnant material from star and planet formation, interior to the planet’s orbit (similar to the HD106906 system).
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star formation fully explains what we see,” said Vanessa Bailey, who led the research. Bailey is a fifth-year graduate student in the UA’s Department of Astronomy.
It is thought that planets close to their stars, like Earth, coalesce from small asteroid-like bodies born in the primordial disk of dust and gas that surrounds a forming star. However, this process acts too slowly to grow giant planets far from their star. Another proposed mechanism is that giant planets can form from a fast, direct collapse of disk material. However, primordial disks rarely contain enough mass in their outer reaches to allow a planet like HD 106906 b to form. Several alternative hypotheses have been put forward, including formation like a mini binary star system.
“A binary star system can be formed when two adjacent clumps of gas collapse more or less independently to form stars, and these stars are close enough to each other to exert a mutual gravitation attraction and bind them together in an orbit,” Bailey explained. “It is possible that in the case of the HD 106906 system the star and planet collapsed independently from clumps of gas, but for some reason the planet’s progenitor clump was starved for material and never grew large enough to ignite and become a star.”
According to Bailey, one problem with this scenario is that the mass ratio of the two stars in a binary system is typically no more than 10-to-1.
“In our case, the mass ratio is more than 100-to-1,” she explained. “This extreme mass ratio is not predicted from binary star formation theories – just like planet formation theory predicts that we cannot form planets so far from the host star.”
This system is also of particular interest because researchers can still detect the remnant “debris disk” of material left over from planet and star formation.
“Systems like this one, where we have additional information about the environment in which the planet resides, have the potential to help us disentangle the various formation models,” Bailey added. “Future observations of the planet’s orbital motion and the primary star’s debris disk may help answer that question.”
At only 13 million years old, this young planet still glows from the residual heat of its formation. Because at 2,700 Fahrenheit (about 1,500 degrees Celsius) the planet is much cooler than its host star, it emits most of its energy as infrared rather than visible light. Earth, by comparison, formed 4.5 billion years ago and is thus about 350 times older than HD 106906 b.
Credit: Vanessa Bailey
Direct imaging observations require exquisitely sharp images, akin to those delivered by the Hubble Space Telescope. To reach this resolution from the ground requires a technology called Adaptive Optics, or AO. The team used the new Magellan Adaptive Optics (MagAO) system and Clio2 thermal infrared camera – both technologies developed at the UA – mounted on the 6.5 meter-diameter Magellan telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile to take the discovery image.
UA astronomy professor and MagAO principal investigator Laird Close said: “MagAO was able to utilize its special Adaptive Secondary Mirror, with 585 actuators, each moving 1,000 times a second, to remove the blurring of the atmosphere. The atmospheric correction enabled the detection of the weak heat emitted from this exotic exoplanet without confusion from the hotter parent star.”
“Clio was optimized for thermal infrared wavelengths, where giant planets are brightest compared to their host stars, meaning planets are most easily imaged at these wavelengths,” explained UA astronomy professor and Clio principal investigator Philip Hinz, who directs the UA Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics.
The team was able to confirm that the planet is moving together with its host star by examining Hubble Space Telescope data taken eight years prior for another research program. Using the FIRE spectrograph, also installed at the Magellan telescope, the team confirmed the planetary nature of the companion. “Images tell us an object is there and some information about its properties but only a spectrum gives us detailed information about its nature and composition,” explained co-investigator Megan Reiter, a graduate student in the UA Department of Astronomy. “Such detailed information is rarely available for directly imaged exoplanets, making HD 106906 b a valuable target for future study.”
“Every new directly detected planet pushes our understanding of how and where planets can form,” said co-investigator Tiffany Meshkat, a graduate student at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. “This planet discovery is particularly exciting because it is in orbit so far from its parent star. This leads to many intriguing questions about its formation history and composition. Discoveries like HD 106906 b provide us with a deeper understanding of the diversity of other planetary systems.”
The research paper, “HD 106906 b: A Planetary-mass Companion Outside a Massive Debris Disk,” has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and will appear in a future issue. An online version is available for download at http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.1265 .
MagAO’s development was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Major Research Instrumentation program, and its Telescope System Instrumentation Program and an Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation Award.
The members of the discovery team are Vanessa Bailey (UA), Tiffany Meshkat (Leiden Observatory [LO]), Megan Reiter (UA), Katie Morzinski (UA), Jared Males (UA), Kate Y. L. Su (UA), Philip M. Hinz (UA), Matthew Kenworthy (LO), Daniel Stark (UA), Eric Mamajek (University of Rochester), Runa Briguglio (Arcetri Observatory [AO]), Laird M. Close (UA), Katherine B. Follette (UA), Alfio Puglisi (AO), Timothy Rodigas (UA, Carnegie Institute of Washington [CIW]), Alycia J. Weinberger (CIW), and Marco Xompero (AO).
Rapid climate changes but with a 120 year time lag
December 5th, 2013Posted by Alton Parrish.
Regional climate changes can be very rapid. A German-British team of geoscientists now reports that such a rapid climate change occurred in different regions with a time difference of 120 years. Investigation in the westGerman Eifel region and in southern Norway demonstrated that at the end of the last glaciation about 12,240 years before present climate became warmer, first recognized in the Eifel region and 120 years later in southern Norway. Nonetheless, the warming was equally rapid in both regions.
The team around Christine Lane (Oxford University) and Achim Brauer from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences reports in the latest volume of “Geology” (vol 41, no 12, p. 1251) that within the younger Dryas, the last about 1100-year long cold phase at the end of the last ice age, a rapid warming first was measured in the Eifel region. Sediment cores from the Meerfelder Maar lake depict a typical deposition pattern, which was also found in the sediments of Lake Krakenes in southern Norway, but with a time lag of 120 years.
The ash of the Katla volcanic eruption thus was deposited at the same time in the Eifel and in Norway. The sediments of the Eifel maar lake depict the rapid warming 100 years before the volcanic ash, while it is seen in the southern Norwegian lake sediment 20 years after the volcanic eruption. The same warming, but with a 120 difference in timing between the about 1200 km distant locations? Achim Brauer:
“We can explain this difference with the shift of hemispheric wind systems. Climate changed in both regions very rapid, but the polar front, that is the atmospheric boundary layer between cold polar air and the warmer air of the mid-latitudes, required more than 100 years to retreat from its glacial position at about the location of the Eifel at 50° N to its southern Norwegian position at 62° N.”
Hence, the study provides evidence for a rapid change that slowly moved northwards. The result of this studyhas some implications on the understanding of both past and future climate change. The assumption of an everywhere and always synchronously changing climate must be questioned and climate models have to better consider such regional aspects.
Ison is likely only dust says NASA
December 3rd, 2013By Alton Parrish.
Comet ISON comes in from the bottom right and moves out toward the upper right, getting fainter and fainter, in this time-lapse image from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The image of the sun at the center is from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Image Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO/SDO/GSFC
Comet ISON, which began its journey from the Oort Cloud some 3 million years ago, made its closest approach to the sun on Nov. 28, 2013. The comet was visible in instruments on NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, and the joint European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, via images called coronagraphs.
Whether that spot of light was merely a cloud of dust that once was a comet, or if it still had a nucleus – a small ball of its original, icy material – intact, is still unclear. It seems likely that as of Dec. 1, there was no nucleus left. By monitoring its changes in brightness over time, scientists can estimate whether there’s a nucleus or not, but our best chance at knowing for sure will be if the Hubble Space Telescope makes observations later in December 2013.
Regardless of its fate, Comet ISON did not disappoint researchers. Over the last year, observatories around the world and in space gathered one of the largest sets of comet observations of all time, which should provide fodder for study for years to come. The number of space-based, ground-based, and amateur observations were unprecedented, with twelve NASA space-based assets observing over the past year.
War, Inca predecessors, used restraints to reshape human landscape
December 1st, 2013Posted by Alton Parrish.
Credit: Alan Covey
Credit: Department of Library Services, American Museum of Natural History
Many scholars think the Wari established strong centralized control — economic, political, cultural and military– like their Inca successors to govern the majority of the far-flung populations living across the central Andes. But the Dartmouth study suggests that while the Wari had significant administrative power, they did not successfully transition most colonies into directly ruled provinces.
This is the distribution of Wari pottery identified through survey, with three-hour walking intervals from Pikillacta and Tankarpata.
Credit: Department of Library Services, American Museum of Natural History
10 years above Mars, high resolution movie
December 1st, 2013
By ESA.
From the highest volcano to the deepest canyon, from impact craters to ancient river beds and lava flows, this showcase of images from ESA’s Mars Express takes you on an unforgettable journey across the Red Planet.
Mars Express was launched on 2 June 2003 and arrived at Mars six-and-a-half months later. It has since orbited the planet nearly 12 500 times, providing scientists with unprecedented images and data collected by its suite of scientific instruments.
The images in this movie were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera and the video was released by the DLR German Aerospace Center as part of the ten years of Mars Express celebrations in June 2013. Themusic has been created by Stephan Elgner of DLR’s Mars Express planetary cartography team. DLR developed and is operating the stereo camera.
Matter waves taught new tricks:Magnets made with ultra cold atoms
November 28th, 2013
Posted by Alton Parrish.
Credit: Center for Optical Quantum Technologies (ZOQ)
Quantum matter waves themselves are an intriguing state of atomic Rubidium clouds, based on a quantum mechanical effect predicted by Einstein and Bose as early as 1924 and observed for the first time in a ground-breaking experiment in 1995, which was later awarded with the Nobel prize.
Building on that experiment and developing it further, the team of scientists used infrared laser beams to force the atoms into a motion along triangular pathways, creating quantum matter waves that act as if they were magnets, like the ones you stick on your fridge. Speaking of cold, these atoms are about a trillion times colder than outer space.
“The experimental challenges are extraordinary”, says lead experimental author Julian Struck. “For the atoms to move along the right trajectories, it is absolutely crucial that the laser beams are precisely stabilized. Otherwise, the motion of the atoms would be completely chaotic.”
When a matter wave moves clockwise around a given triangle, as depicted in the illustration, the neighboring triangles are surrounded by counterclockwise motion. The resulting orientation at each triangle corresponds to a magnet pointing in North or South direction. These elementary magnets form domains and are in competition with each other, depicted in red and blue.
Lead theoretical author Robert Höppner explains: “We had to use a supercomputing facility such as the one at Juelich for our computer simulations of the experiment. Otherwise the complexity of the problem cannot be tackled. This allowed us to visualize the triangular magnets created by the condensate of atoms, and we learned about the subtle domain structure and how they respond in a magnetic field.”
The results of this study have been published in the November issue of Nature Physics, where an illustrationof the magnetic phases from the computer simulation is featured on the cover.
Archaeological discoveries confirm early date of Buddha’s life
November 28th, 2013By National Geographic.
Archaeologists Robin Coningham (left) and Kosh Prasad Acharya direct excavations within the Maya Devi Temple, uncovering a series of ancient temples contemporary with the Buddha. Thai monks meditate.
Credit: Ira Block/National Geographic
Pioneering excavations within the sacred Maya Devi Temple at Lumbini, Nepal, a UNESCO World Heritage site long identified as the birthplace of the Buddha, uncovered the remains of a previously unknown sixth-century B.C. timber structure under a series of brick temples. Laid out on the same design as those above it, the timber structure contains an open space in the center that links to the nativity story of the Buddha himself.
Until now, the earliest archaeological evidence of Buddhist structures at Lumbini dated no earlier than the third century B.C., the time of the patronage of the Emperor Asoka, who promoted the spread of Buddhism from present-day Afghanistan to Bangladesh.
“Very little is known about the life of the Buddha, except through textual sources and oral tradition,” said archaeologist Professor Robin Coningham of Durham University, U.K., who co-led the investigation. Some scholars, he said, have maintained that the Buddha was born in the third century B.C. “We thought ‘why not go back to archaeology to try to answer some of the questions about his birth?’ Now, for the first time, we have an archaeological sequence at Lumbini that shows a building there as early as the sixth century B.C.”
Early Buddhism revealed
The international team of archaeologists, led by Coningham and Kosh Prasad Acharya of the Pashupati Area Development Trust in Nepal, say the discovery contributes to a greater understanding of the early development of Buddhism as well as the spiritual importance of Lumbini. Their peer-reviewed findings are reported in the December 2013 issue of the international journal Antiquity. The research is partly supported by the National Geographic Society.
To determine the dates of the timber shrine and a previously unknown early brick structure above it, fragments of charcoal and grains of sand were tested using a combination of radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence techniques. Geoarchaeological research also confirmed the presence of ancient tree roots within the temple’s central void.
“UNESCO is very proud to be associated with this important discovery at one of the most holy places for one of the world’s oldest religions,” said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, who urged “more archaeological research, intensified conservation work and strengthened site management” to ensure Lumbini’s protection.
“These discoveries are very important to better understand the birthplace of the Buddha,” said Ram Kumar Shrestha, Nepal’s minister of culture, tourism and civil aviation. “The government of Nepal will spare no effort to preserve this significant site.”
Buddhist tradition records that Queen Maya Devi, the mother of the Buddha, gave birth to him while holding on to the branch of a tree within the Lumbini Garden, midway between the kingdoms of her husband and parents. Coningham and his colleagues postulate that the open space in the center of the most ancient, timber shrine may have accommodated a tree. Brick temples built later above the timber shrine also were arranged around the central space, which was unroofed.
Four main Buddhist sites
Lumbini is one of the key sites associated with the life of the Buddha; others are Bodh Gaya, where he became a Buddha or enlightened one; Sarnath, where he first preached; and Kusinagara, where he passed away. At his passing at the age of 80, the Buddha is recorded as having recommended that all Buddhists visit “Lumbini.” The shrine was still popular in the middle of the first millennium A.D. and was recorded by Chinese pilgrims as having a shrine beside a tree.
The Maya Devi Temple at Lumbini remains a living shrine; the archaeologists worked alongside meditating monks, nuns and pilgrims.
In the scientific paper in Antiquity, the authors write: “The sequence (of archaeological remains) at Lumbini is a microcosm for the development of Buddhism from a localized cult to a global religion.”
Lost and overgrown in the jungles of Nepal in the medieval period, ancient Lumbini was rediscovered in 1896 and identified as the birthplace of the Buddha on account of the presence of a third-century B.C. sandstone pillar. The pillar, which still stands, bears an inscription documenting a visit by Emperor Asoka to the site of the Buddha’s birth as well as the site’s name — Lumbini.
Despite the rediscovery of the key Buddhist sites, their earliest levels were buried deep or destroyed by later construction, leaving evidence of the very earliest stages of Buddhism inaccessible to archaeological investigation, until now.
Half a billion people around the world are Buddhists, and many hundreds of thousands make a pilgrimage to Lumbini each year. The archaeological investigation there was funded by the government of Japan in partnership with the government of Nepal, under a UNESCO project aimed at strengthening the conservation and management of Lumbini. Along with the National Geographic Society, the research also was supported by Durham University and Stirling University.
Coningham and Acharya were joined on the Antiquity paper by coauthors K.M. Strickland, C.E. Davis, M.J. Manuel, I. A. Simpson, K. Gilliland, J. Tremblay, T.C. Kinnaird and D.C.W. Sanderson.
A documentary on Coningham’s exploration of the Buddha’s life, “Buried Secrets of the Buddha,” will premiere in February internationally on National Geographic Channel.
Ecovolt generates energy from wastewater
November 26th, 2013By MIT.
Spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2006, Cambrian Innovation is commercializing a portfolio of environmental solutions based on newly discovered electrically active microbes. By harnessing the power of bio-electricity and advances in electrochemistry, Cambrian Innovation’s products help industrial, agricultural and government customers save money while recovering clean water and clean energy from wastewater streams.
With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), engineers and co-founders Matt Silver and Justin Buck are bringing their research from the lab to the market. One system, called EcoVolt, generates methane gas from the wastewater by leveraging what is called “electromethanogenesis.” It’s a newly discoveredprocess for producing methane.
“NSF funding of Cambrian Innovation’s research demonstrates our strong interest in supporting small business innovation that leads to novel and greener technological solutions to societal challenges,” says NSF program director Prakash Balan.
The EcoVolt system sends wastewater through a bio-electrochemical reactor. As water filters through it, special bacteria in the reactor eat the organic waste in the water and release electrons as a byproduct. Those electrons travel through a circuit to generate methane, or CH4.
A wireless signal allows the process to be monitored remotely. This very high quality methane is then piped out to an engine, where it’s burned with a small amount of natural gas. It then generates heat and energy. In addition, sensor systems built by Cambrian Innovation can also monitor pollutants, such as fertilizer run-off.
World first: Artificial skin grown from umbilical cord stem cells, will aid burn victims
November 24th, 2013By University of Granada.
One of the problems major burn victims have is that, using the current protocols for artificial skin, they need to wait various weeks in order for it to be grown, using healthy skin from the own patient.
Spanish scientists, from the Tissue Engineering Research Group, from the Dept. of Histology at the University of Granada, have managed, for the first time, to grow artificial skin from stem cells of umbilical cord. Their study, published in the prestigious journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine, shows the ability of Wharton jelly mesenschymal stem cells to turn to oral-mucosa or skin-regeneration epithelia.
Credit: University of Granada
To grow the artificial skin, the researchers have used, in addition this new type of epithelia covering, a biomaterial made of fibrin and agarose, already designed and developed by the University of Granada research team. The work has been carried out in the laboratories of the Faculty of Medicine, alongside the Experimental Unit of the Granada “Virgen de las Nieves” University Hospital Complex.
Prior studies from this same research team, which received recognition in the World Congress on Tissue Engineering, held a few months ago in Seoul (S. Korea), already pointed to the possibility that Wharton stem cells could be turned into epithelia cells. This current work is the confirmation of those initial studies and its application to two regeneration structures: skin and oral mucosa, increasingly needed in injuries in these parts of the body.
Instant Use
One of the problems major-burn victims currently have is that, in order to apply the current techniques of artificial skin, a number of weeks are needed. That is because the skin needs to be grown from parts of the patient’s healthy sin. “Creating this new type of skin using stem cells, which can be stored in tissue banks, means that it can be used instantly when injuries are caused, and which would bring the application of artificial skin forward many weeks”, as explained by Antonio Campos, Professor of Histology at the University of Granada and one of the authors of this study.
To carry out this research, in addition to the researchers from the Dept. of Histology at the University ofGranada (Ingrid Garzón, Miguel González Andrades, Mª Carmen Sánchez Quevedo, Miguel Alaminos and Antonio Campos), researchers from the Dept. of Cellular Biology at the University of Granada (Ramón Carmona), from the University of Valencia (Carmen Carda) and from the University of Florianopolis, Brazil (Juliano Miyake) have also been involved.
This article can be found at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23817131
600 stamp and cylinder seals found at sanctuary of storm god in Turkey
November 24th, 2013
By Alton Parrish.
Classical scholars from the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” made an unusually large find of seals in an ancient sanctuary in Turkey. They discovered more than 600 stamp seals and cylinder seals at the sacred site of the storm and weather god Jupiter Dolichenus, 100 of which in the current year alone.
Photo: Forschungsstelle Asia Mino
“The amazingly large number proves how important seals and amulets were for the worshipping of the god to whom they were consecrated as votive offerings”, according to Classical scholar Prof. Winter. Many pieces show scenes of adoration. “Thus, they provide a surprisingly vivid and detailed insight into the faith of the time.” The stamp seals and cylinder seals as well as scarabs, made of glass, stone and quartz ceramics, were mostly crafted in a high-quality manner. Following the restoration work, the finds were handed over to the relevant museum in Gaziantep in Turkey.
Photo: Forschungsstelle Asia Minor
Different themes can be found on the seals and amulets: the spectrum ranges from geometric ornamentsand astral symbols to elaborate depictions of animals and people. This includes, for example, praying men in front of divine symbols. Another popular theme was a royal hero fighting animals and hybrid creatures. “Even those images that do not depict a deity express strong personal piety: with their seals, people consecrated an object to their god which was closely associated with their own identity”, said Blömer. People wore the amulets found with the seals in everyday life. “Strung on chains, they were supposed to fend off bad luck”, explained the archaeologist.
Up to now, the researchers were able to identify late Babylonian, local Syrian Achaemenid and Levantine seals.
Photo: Forschungsstelle Asia Minor
During this year’s excavations at the Turkish mountain Dülük Baba Tepesi, Prof. Winter’s team worked in an area of over 500 square metres. “The results are already extending our knowledge of all periods in this holy place’s long history. It covers the time span from the early place of worship of the Iron Age and the sacred site of the Roman era, famous throughout the empire, to the long phase of utilisation as a Christian monastery, which existed until well into the time of the crusaders”, explained Prof. Winter.
After this year’s excavation season had ended, work at the touristic development continued. “We were able to complete a visitors’ path leading to central areas within the excavation site, with signposts in three languages.” Furthermore, according to the researchers, numerous protective and precautionary measures are required in order to secure the remains of the sanctuary permanently. An initial large protective shelter has already been erected this year.
Photo: Julia Holtkötter
In 2012, the research team announced an archaeological park which is to make the outstanding temple complex and the local medieval monastery ruins of Mar Solomon accessible to the public at large. For that purpose, the ruins had already been preserved and encased with a special fleece material, according to the scholars.
Supported by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft, DFG), the University ofMünster’s Asia Minor Research Centre has been doing excavation work at the main sanctuary of Jupiter Dolichenus under the direction of Prof. Winter since 2001. The international group consisting of archaeologists, historians, architects, conservators, archaeozoologists, geoinformation scientists and excavation workers uncovered foundations of the archaic and the Roman sanctuary, as well as of the medieval monastery of Mar Solomon, which had previously only been known from written sources. The Cluster of Excellence’s project B2-20, “Media Representation and Religious ‘Market’: Syriac Cults in the Western Imperium Romanum”, is interlinked with the excavations.
On Tuesday, 19 November, as part of the public lecture series “Holy Places. Origins and transformations – political interests – memory cultures” of the Cluster of Excellence and the Centre for the History and Culture of the Eastern Mediterranean (Centrum für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Mittelmeerraums, GKM), the sacred site of Jupiter Dolichenus will be the topic of a lecture by Prof. Winter. The classical scholar will discuss the transformation and consistency of the religious site. The lecture will be held at 6.15 p.m. in lecture theatre F2 of the Fürstenberghaus at Domplatz 20-22 in Münster. (ska/vvm
Coffee may help perk up your blood vessels
November 21st, 2013By The American Heart Association.
A study of 27 healthy adults showed – for the first time – that drinking a cup of caffeinated coffee significantly improved blood flow in a finger, which is a measure of how well the inner lining of the body’s smaller blood vessels work. Specifically, participants who drank a cup of caffeinated coffee had a 30 percent increase in blood flow over a 75-minute period compared to those who drank decaffeinated coffee.
“This gives us a clue about how coffee may help improve cardiovascular health,” said Masato Tsutsui, M.D., Ph.D., lead researcher and a cardiologist and professor in the pharmacology department at the University ofthe Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan.
The study adds to a growing body of research about coffee, the most widely consumed beverage worldwide. Previous studies showed that drinking coffee is linked to lower risks of dying from heart disease and stroke, and that high doses of caffeine may improve the function of larger arteries.
Study participants were people who did not regularly drink coffee, ranging in age from 22 to 30. On one day, each participant drank one five-ounce cup of either regular or decaffeinated coffee. Then researchers measured finger blood flow with laser Doppler flowmetry, a non-invasive technique for gauging blood circulation on a microscopic level. Two days later, the experiment was repeated with the other type of coffee. Neither the researchers nor the participants knew when they were drinking caffeinated coffee.
The researchers noted blood pressure, heart rate, and vascular resistance levels. They also took blood samples to analyze levels of caffeine and to rule out the role of hormones on blood vessel function.
Compared to decaf, caffeinated coffee slightly raised participants’ blood pressure and improved vessel inner lining function. Heart rate levels were the same between the two groups.
It’s still unclear how caffeine actually works to improve small blood vessel function, although Tsutsui suggests that caffeine may help open blood vessels and reduce inflammation.
“If we know how the positive effects of coffee work, it could lead to a new treatment strategy for cardiovascular disease in the future,” said Tsutsui.
Ancient, modern DNA tells tale of first humans in America
November 19th, 2013By University of Urbana-Champaign.
He will share some of his findings at the meeting, “Ancient DNA: The First Three Decades,” at The Royal Society in London on Nov. 18 and 19.
Credit: L. Brian Stauffer
He and a group of collaborators from the Tsimshian Nation on the northwest coast of British Columbia, for example, recently found a direct ancestral link between ancient human remains in the Prince Rupert Island area and the native peoples living in the region today. That study looked at changes in the mitochondrial genome, which children inherit only from their mothers.
Credit: Wikipedia
Other studies from Malhi’s lab analyze changes in the Y chromosome or the protein-coding regions of the genome.
“The best opportunity to infer the evolutionary history of Native Americans and to assess the effects of European colonization is to analyze genomes of ancient Native Americans and those of their living descendants,” Malhi said.
“I think what makes my lab unique is that we focus not only on the initial peopling of the Americas but also what happened after the initial peopling. How did these groups move to new environments and adapt to their local settings over 15,000 years?”
While continuing his work in British Columbia, Malhi also is setting up study sites in California, Guatemala,Mexico and Illinois.
“What’s interesting about the northwest coast and California is that these communities were complex hunter-gatherer societies, whereas in Mexico and Guatemala, it’s more communities that transitioned to farming and then experienced the effects of European colonization,” he said.
Genomic studies can fill in the blanks on studies that seek to tell the story of life in the Americas before and after European colonization, Malhi said. Researchers may draw the wrong conclusions about human history when looking only at artifacts and language, he said.
Gigantism: Did something in the air cause dinosaur to become giant?
November 19th, 2013By Alton Parrish.
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Scientists encounter big challenges when reconstructing atmospheric compositions in the Earth’s geological past because of the lack of useable sample material. One of the few organic materials that may preserve reliable data of the Earth’s geological history over millions of years are fossil resins (e.g. amber). “Compared to other organic matter, amber has the advantage that it remains chemically and isotopically almost unchanged over long periods of geological time,” explains Ralf Tappert from the Institute of Mineralogy and Petrography at the University of Innsbruck.
Selection of amber samples from the Eocene from Bitterfeld, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, approx. 35 million years old.
Atmospheric oxygen between 10 and 15 percent
The research team analyzed a total of 538 amber samples from from well-known amber deposits worldwide, with the oldest samples being approximately 220 million years old and recovered from the Dolomites in Italy. The team also compared fossil amber with modern resins to test the validity of the data. The results of this comprehensive study suggest that atmospheric oxygen during most of the past 220 million years was considerably lower than today’s 21 percent.
Modern resins were also used for the study: Here fresh resin, the raw material for amber, is oozing out of the trunk of an Araucaria tree (Araucaria cunninghamii) in Adelaide Botanical Garden, Australia.
Effects on climate and environment
The researchers also relate this low atmospheric oxygen to climatic developments in the Earth’s history. “We found that particularly low oxygen levels coincided with intervals of elevated global temperatures and highcarbon dioxide concentrations,” explains Tappert. The mineralogist suggests that oxygen may influencecarbon dioxide levels and, under certain circumstances, might even accelerate the influx of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Oxygen may not be the cause of gigantism
According to the results of the study, oxygen may indirectly influence the climate. This in turn may also affect the evolution of life on Earth. A well-known example are dinosaurs: Many theories about animal gigantism offer high levels of atmospheric oxygen as an explanation. Tappert now suggests to reconsider these theories: “We do not want to negate the influence of oxygen for the evolution of life in general with our study, but the gigantism of dinosaurs cannot be explained by those theories.” The research team highly recommends conducting further studies and intends to analyze even older plant resins.
Early uses of chilly peppers in Mexico including beverages
November 18th, 2013By Alton Parrish.
Chili peppers may have been used to make spicy beverages thousands of years ago in Mexico, according to new research published November 13 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Terry Powis at Kennesaw State University and colleagues from other institutions.
Credit: Roberto Lopez and Emiliano Gallaga Murrieta
In this study, the authors used chemical extractions to reveal the presence of Capsicum residues in pottery samples from a site in southern Mexico. Some of these pottery vessels were over 2000 years old, dating from 400 BC to 300 AD.
They found Capsicum residue in multiple types of jars and vessels, which suggests that those cultures may have been using chili peppers for many different culinary purposes. For instance, Capsicum was found in a vessel called a sprouted jar, which is used for pouring a liquid into another container. The authors suggest that chili peppers may have been used to prepare spicy beverages or dining condiments.