March 19, 2006, 9:29 PM CT

Cape Tribulation

Cape Tribulation, Australia

Another busy day followed as John's dad hired a car and we drove up the coast to Cape Tribulation. We stopped at a Heritage Cantre in Mossman called Kuku Yalanji and saw some cool Aboriginal art. John also had a swim in the Mossman River, the water was so clear you could see all the fish swimming around. We spent a few hours walking around the national park & rainforest. We then headed up the coast and across the croc infested Daintree River via a small ferry to the Cape. Cape Tribulation is a World Heritage area and the beach there is one of the most impressive things we've seen so far. The rainforest actually ends at the beach and is one of the only places in the world where rainforest and reef are in such close proximity. With a Mrs Mac's pie each and some local Daintree icecream, a great day was rounded off nicely!

A lazy day was planned for the next day and, as it turned out, we had no real choice in the matter as it bucketted down with rain almost all day. We had a night bus to catch that evening so after a teary goodbye with Carol & Ian we headed 700km down the coast to Airlie Beach.

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March 19, 2006, 7:53 PM CT

A Taste Of Technology And Maple Syrup

Forget about buckets. Most maple syrup is now made with an assortment of machines and tubes so complex that some sugarmakers call their final product "technosyrup." Chat with a few of them, boiling sap one evening, and you're likely to hear debate about reverse osmosis sap extractors, "steam-away" units and air injectors. They'll all agree that today's maple syrup is produced more quickly than it was a generation ago, and a number of will argue that the new devices produce a syrup finer in quality - that's just as pungently delicious as ever.

But is it?.

Tim Perkins, director of UVM's Proctor Maple Research Center in Underhill Center, has decided to find out. This week, he and his staff will start boiling sap at a new research building to test exactly what effect new technologies have on the chemistry, flavor and quality of maple syrup.

"This is the only such facility in the world," Perkins says. "Nobody since the 1940s has done these kinds of experiments, and the industry has changed a lot since then."

Pointing to two gleaming evaporators that look like undersized subway cars, Mark Isselhardt '98, one of Perkins's maple technicians, explains the method: "The only way to find out what's going on is to run side-by-side tests." Above his head, on a loft, a large stainless steel trough waits for the season's first sap run.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

March 19, 2006, 7:43 PM CT

Trapping Carbon Dioxide To Stop Climate Change

A natural physical process has been identified that could play a key role in secure sub-seabed storage of carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fuelled power stations.

With EPSRC funding, a team at the Centre for Gas Hydrate Research, at Heriot-Watt University is investigating how, in some conditions, seawater and carbon dioxide could combine into ice-like compounds in which the water molecules form cavities that act as cages, trapping the carbon dioxide molecules.

In the unlikely event of carbon dioxide starting to leak into the sea from an under-seabed disposal site (e.g. a depleted North Sea oil or gas reservoir), this process could add a second line of defence preventing its escape.

This is because, as the carbon dioxide comes into contact with the seawater in the pores of seafloor sediments above it, the compounds (called carbon dioxide hydrates) would form. This would create a secondary seal, blocking sediment pores and cracks, and slowing or preventing leakage of the carbon dioxide.

Professor Bahman Tohidi is leading the project. "We want to identify the type of seabed locations where sediment, temperature and pressure are conducive to the formation of carbon dioxide hydrates," he says. "This data can then be used to help identify the securest locations for carbon dioxide storage and can aid in the development of methods for monitoring potential CO2 leakage. In the future, it may even be possible to manipulate the system to promote CO2 hydrate formation, extending the number of maximum-security sites that are available."........

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March 19, 2006, 7:38 PM CT

Radar To Investigate Snowfall

The Department of Physical Sciences at the University of Helsinki has acquired a state-of-the-art polarimetric weather radar. The new radar is reserved exclusively for research. Its most important meteorological research target is the physics of rain clouds, and researchers intend to focus on snow and sleet in particular. Snowfall and its polarimetric measurements have hardly been studied anywhere else in the world, eventhough in the Finnish conditions, for instance, snowfall is one of the key weather elements.

The first test measurements of the prototype radar built for the University's radar laboratory provided strong evidence for the potential of a polarisation weather radar. The largest road traffic catastrophe in the Helsinki metropolitan area took place on 17 March 2005, with several multiple pile-ups on all Helsinki. The new radar was just undergoing test runs and it immediately revealed the meteorological factors which led to the accidents. Radar images showed that the road conditions before the accident were dry and cold with only slight snowfall. There was, however, supercooled water in the air, which made the road surfaces slippery immediately previous to the accidents. At the time of the accidents, a narrow zone of heavy snowfall arrived from the south, suddenly reducing visibility. In places, this was followed by a larger area of snowfall with a high content of supercooled water.........

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March 12, 2006, 9:53 PM CT

Identifying Gems And Minerals

It'll be a snap to identify gemstones once Robert Downs finishes his library of spectral fingerprints for all the Earth's minerals.

Downs is almost halfway there. So far, the associate professor of geosciences at The University of Arizona in Tucson has cataloged about 1,500 of the approximately 4,000 known minerals using a technique called Raman spectroscopy. The effort is known as the RRUFF Project.

"We're developing a tricorder," Downs said, referring to the instrument used on the "Star Trek" television show that could be waved over materials to identify their chemical composition.

Downs' work is destined for space. Eventhough Downs' current Raman spectrometer takes up an area the size of a tabletop, his colleague M. Bonner Denton, a UA professor of chemistry and of geosciences, is developing a pocket-sized Raman spectrometer to be used on the 2009 Mars rover.

Downs is collaborating with George Rossman of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena to develop the database of minerals.

The technology being developed for Mars will help create handheld instruments for use on Earth.

One use for a hand-held instrument would be the identification of gemstones. Downs and Denton will both give presentations on that aspect of the project on Sunday afternoon, March 12, at the 57th Annual Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (PITTCON 2006).........

Posted by: Sarah      Permalink         Source

March 9, 2006, 11:41 PM CT

Yellowstone's Deep Secret

Satellite images acquired by ESA's ERS-2 revealed the recently discovered changes in Yellowstone's caldera are the result of molten rock movement 15 kilometres below the Earth's surface, as per a recent study published in Nature.

Using Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry, InSAR for short, Charles Wicks, Wayne Thatcher and other U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researchers mapped the changes in the northern rim of the caldera, or crater, and discovered it had risen about 13 centimetres from 1997 to 2003.

InSAR, a sophisticated version of 'spot the difference', involves mathematically combining different radar images, acquired from as near as possible to the same point in space at different times, to create digital elevation models and reveal otherwise undetectable changes occurring between image acquisitions.

"We know now how mobile and restless the Yellowstone caldera actually is. Ground-based measurements can be more efficiently deployed because of our work," Thatcher said. "The research could not have been done without satellite radar data." .

About 640,000 years ago, a massive volcano erupted in Yellowstone, creating the caldera, which measures some 45 kilometres wide and 75 kilometres long, in the centre of Yellowstone National Park.........

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March 9, 2006, 11:21 PM CT

Ice Sheet Melting And Rapid Climate Changes

The behavior of a massive ice sheet that existed in northern Europe at the end of the last Ice Age has been outlined for the first time, and scientists believe it may provide a sneak preview of how major ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will act in the face of global warming.

The study, which will be published Friday in the journal Science by scientists from Oregon State University, shows that ice sheets can react quite differently depending on the climatic conditions at the time global warming occurs - sometimes actually growing larger and sometimes rapidly disappearing, depending on whether increased snow offsets melting effects, or not.

In this analysis of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet that existed as recently as 10,000 years ago, the study showed that it actually grew for a long period while the climate was warming but still very cold, and then rapidly disintegrated once the climate warmed even further.

OSU experts say those same forces are at work today, and probably mean that in the face of future global warming, the ice in large parts of Antarctica may actually increase, while the massive Greenland ice sheet - which exists in a slightly warmer setting - will almost certainly disappear.

"This study supports what we've been learning about the Greenland ice sheet, which is that it will completely melt within 500 to 1,000 years," said Peter Clark, a professor of geosciences at OSU and an international expert in the study of ancient ice sheets. "Our new analysis of the ancient Scandinavian Ice Sheet, like other studies, is showing how these events unfolded in the past, which will help us better understand what the future will hold."........

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March 9, 2006, 10:53 PM CT

Stronger Storms Change Heat and Rainfall

Studies have shown that over the last 40 years, a warming climate has been accompanied by fewer rain- and snow-producing storms in mid-latitudes around the world, but the storms that are happening are a little stronger with more precipitation. A new analysis of global satellite data suggests that these storm changes are affecting strongly the Earth's water cycle and air temperatures and creating contrasting cooling and warming effects in the atmosphere.

The mid-latitudes extend from the subtropics (approximately 30 degree N and S) to the Arctic Circle (66 degree 30" N) and the Antarctic Circle (66 degree 30" S) and include pieces of all of the continents with the exception of Antarctica.

George Tselioudis and William B. Rossow, both researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University, New York, authored the study that appears in the recent issue of the American Geophysical Union's journal, Geophysical Research Letters.

"There are consequences of having fewer but stronger storms in the middle latitudes both on the radiation and on the precipitation fields," Tselioudis said. Using observations from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) and the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP), Tselioudis and Rossow determined how the changes in intensity and frequency of storms are both cooling and warming the atmosphere around the world.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink     

March 8, 2006, 11:26 PM CT

Dasht-e Kavir Iran

Like swirls of paint on an enormous canvas, shallow lakes, mudflats, and salt marshes share the sinuous valleys on Iran's largely uninhabited Dasht-e Kavir, or Great Salt Desert. This image was acquired by Landsat 7's Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus sensor.

The Dasht-e Kevir, or valley of desert, is the largest desert in Iran. It is a primarily uninhabited wasteland, composed of mud and salt marshes covered with crusts of salt that protect the meager moisture from completely evaporating.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink     

March 8, 2006, 11:18 PM CT

Rethinking of Theory of Giant Earthquakes

The Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of December 26, 2004, was one of the worst natural disasters in recent memory, mostly on account of the devastating tsunami that followed it. A group of geologists and geophysicists, including researchers at the California Institute of Technology, has delineated the full dimensions of the fault rupture that caused the earthquake.

Their findings, published in the March 2 issue of the journal Nature, suggest that prior ideas about where giant earthquakes are likely to occur need to be revised. Regions of the earth previously believed to be immune to such events may actually be at high risk of experiencing them.

Like all giant earthquakes, the 2004 event occurred on a subduction megathrust-in this case, the Sunda megathrust, a giant earthquake fault, along which the Indian and Australian tectonic plates are diving beneath the margin of southeast Asia. The fault surface that ruptured cannot be seen directly because it lies several kilometers deep in the Earth's crust, largely beneath the sea.

Nevertheless, the rupture of the fault caused movements at the surface as long-accumulating elastic strain was suddenly released. The scientists measured these surface motions by three different techniques. In one, they measured the shift in position of GPS stations whose locations had been accurately determined previous to the earthquake.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

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