October 19, 2006, 9:59 PM CT

Kartchner Caverns To Become Microbial Observatory

University of Arizona scientists will investigate the lives of Kartchner Caverns State Park's tiniest inhabitants with the help of a $1.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

The five-year grant to the UA will add Kartchner Caverns, part of the Arizona State Parks system, to the National Science Foundation's worldwide network of Microbial Observatories.

Research at the networks' sites is revealing the goings-on of the Earth's smallest and most poorly known life forms. Kartchner Caverns is the only cave in the network.

"We thought Kartchner Caverns waccording tofect for this. It's one of the top 10 caves in the world in terms of mineralogical diversity," said principal investigator Raina M. Maier, a UA professor of soil, water and environmental science. "And the development of Kartchner is a model internationally for the development of a cave as a living system. It's a model for preservation".

The scientists will catalog the microbial inhabitants of the cave, study how tourism affects their diversity and investigate whether microorganisms are involved in the growth of cave formations such as stalactites and stalagmites. The team also hopes to find microbes that could be exploited for medical, industrial and biotechnology applications.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

October 18, 2006, 8:35 PM CT

More Currency Than Gold On Columbus's Travels

The humble device that prevents shoelaces from fraying was deemed to be worth more than gold by the indigenous Cubans who traded with Columbus's fleet, a study led by UCL (University College London) archaeologists has discovered.

Reporting in next month's edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science, the scientists analysed burial material - such as beads and pendants - excavated from one of the largest burial sites in northeast Cuba. To their surprise very little gold was discovered, despite its relative abundance in the region. Instead, the most common artefacts were small metal tubes made of brass that were often threaded into necklaces.

While brass making was widespread in medieval and earlier Europe, no evidence exists of brass production in America by indigenous people in the Caribbean - known as Taíno - before the arrival of the Europeans. Using microstructural and chemical analysis, the scientists were able to prove the brass originated in Gera number of.

Columbus's 1492 Spanish fleet was the first European presence to arrive in Cuba and radiocarbon dating shows remains from the burial site at El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba date from a few decades after the conquest. Columbus's diaries also mention the trade of lacetags.

A review of relevant literature and paintings from European sources revealed that the most likely origin of the tubes was not beads but strung together lacetags, or aglets, from European clothing. From the 15th century onwards, these were used to prevent the ends of laces from fraying, and to ease threading in the points for fastening clothes such as doublets and hose. Examples of such usage include a 1636 portrait of William Style of Langley (Tate Gallery, London), which depicts the use of aglets in his waist to secure his trousers through his jacket. Original lacetags excavated from across London that date back to the 13th century can also be found in the Museum of London's Archaeological Archive.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

October 17, 2006, 10:07 PM CT

Ecosystem Of Vanishing Lake

In the salt flats near a slowly vanishing lake, a team of scientists have found never-before-seen bacterium that could clean up some of humanity's pollution.

In three scientific papers currently being written, Brent Peyton, a Montana State University chemical engineering professor, his students, and collaborators are describing the unique qualities of Halomonas campisalis, a bacterium Peyton discovered in 1995 near Soap Lake, Wash.

At the time of discovery, Peyton worked for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash., one of nine U.S. Department of Energy labs. The laboratory wanted to develop a therapy to remove nitrate contaminants from alkaline and saline radioactive wastewater. Such a therapy could also be used to clean-up wastewater from fertilizer and explosive manufacturing plants, which is 10 to 15-times saltier than the ocean and laden with polluting nitrates.

Peyton hoped the salty ecosystem of Soap Lake might be home to a bacterium that could live in such high-salt waters and also find nitrates appetizing.

Soap Lake is one of only 11 known meromictic lakes in the United States. The water in meromictic lakes separates into layers of differing mineral concentrations. The upper layer of Soap Lake is a little less than half the saltiness of the ocean, but more than 100-times saltier than river water. The bottom layer is more than twice as salty as the ocean and more than 700-times saltier than river water. These two layers are thought to have remained unmixed in any significant way for the past 2,000 to 10,000 years. The conditions of Soap Lake are considered so extraordinary the National Science Foundation designated it a "microbial observatory".........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

October 16, 2006, 10:14 PM CT

Harmful Algal Bloom Models

A new observation and modeling program focused on the southern Gulf of Maine and adjacent New England shelf waters could aid policymakers in deciding whether or not to re-open, develop, and manage offshore shellfish beds with potential sustained harvesting value of more than $50 million per year. These areas are presently closed to the harvest of certain species of shellfish due to the presence of red tide toxins.

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and his colleagues from seven other universities or agencies began the five-year Gulf of Maine Toxicity program, or GOMTOX, on September 1. The $7.5 million dollar program is funded by a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Ocean Service, Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research (NOS/CSCOR) through the ECOHAB program.

The new research effort expands past studies in the Gulf of Maine and builds on data collected during the historic 2005 red tide, which led to closure of both nearshore shellfish beds and offshore beds in federal waters out to Georges Bank. The toxicity also extended for the first time to the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

The Gulf of Maine (GoM) and its adjacent southern New England shelf is a vast region with extensive shellfish resources, large portions of which are frequently contaminated with paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxins produced by the dinoflagellate Alexandrium fundyense. The 2005 outbreak caused millions of dollars in economic damage, but monitoring programs and cooperation among federal, state and local officials, scientists, and shellfishermen prevented any reported cases of illness from people eating contaminated shellfish.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

October 16, 2006, 9:19 PM CT

Link Ice-age Climate-change Records To Ocean Salinity

Sudden decreases in temperature over Greenland and tropical rainfall patterns during the last Ice Age have been linked for the first time to rapid changes in the salinity of the north Atlantic Ocean, according to research published Oct. 5, 2006, in the journal Nature. The results provide further evidence that ocean circulation and chemistry respond to changes in climate.

Using chemical traces in fossil shells of microscopic planktonic life forms, called formanifera, in deep-sea sediment cores, scientists reconstructed a 45,000- to 60,000-year-old record of ocean temperature and salinity. They compared their results to the record of abrupt climate change recorded in ice cores from Greenland. They found the Atlantic got saltier during cold periods, and fresher during warm intervals.

"The freshening likely reflects shifts in rainfall patterns, mostly in the tropics," Howard Spero of the University of California at Davis said. "Suddenly, we're looking at a record that links moisture balance in the tropics to climate change. And the most striking thing is that a measurable transition is happening over decades".

Spero, who is currently on leave at the National Science Foundation's Marine Geology and Geophysics Program, worked with lead author Matthew Schmidt of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Maryline Vautravers of Cambridge University in the United Kingdom to conduct the research.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

October 15, 2006, 8:29 PM CT

Marine Life Stirs Ocean

Oceanographers worldwide pay close attention to phytoplankton and with good reason. The microscopic plants that form the vast foundation of the marine food chain generate a staggering amount of power, and now a groundbreaking study led by Florida State University has calculated just how much -- about five times the annual total power consumption of the human world.

Physical and biological oceanographers led by FSU Professor William Dewar put the yearly amount of chemical power stored by phytoplankton in the form of new organic matter at roughly 63 terawatts, and that's a lot of juice: Just one terawatt equals a trillion watts. In 2001, humans collectively consumed a comparatively measly 13.5 terawatts.

What's more, their study observed that the marine biosphere -- the chain of sea life anchored by phytoplankton -- invests around one percent (1 terawatt) of its chemical power fortune in mechanical energy, which is manifested in the swimming motions of hungry ocean swimmers ranging from whales and fish to shrimp and krill. Those swimming motions mix the water much as cream is stirred into coffee by swiping a spoon through it.

And the sum of all that phytoplankton-fueled stirring may equal climate control.

"By interpreting existing data in a different way, we have predicted theoretically that the amount of mixing caused by ocean swimmers is comparable to the deep ocean mixing caused by the wind blowing on the ocean surface and the effects of the tides," Dewar said.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

October 12, 2006, 9:55 PM CT

Northern Bogs Andt Global Warming

Methane gas released by peat bogs in the northern-most third of the globe probably helped fuel the last major round of global warming, which drew the ice age to a close between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago, UCLA and Russian Academy of Sciences researchers have concluded.

But the new information in no way lets human sources of greenhouse gases off the hook for the present round of global warming, warn the team of scientists whose findings are reported in the Oct. 13 issue of Science.

"If anything, our findings show just how sensitive the planet's environment is to change and just how complex the results of these changes may be," said Glen M. MacDonald, the lead author of the study and a UCLA climate change scholar.

As the incipient bogs were strong producers of methane, the findings help solve a long-standing mystery about the source of a massive infusion of atmospheric methane that helped raise the Earth's surface temperature following the ice age.

"Researchers have long known that the northern bogs produce methane, but until now they were generally dismissed as the source of this change at the close of the last ice age because they were thought to have formed too slowly and too late to be a factor," said Laurence C. Smith, a UCLA professor of geography and study coauthor. "The initial development of the huge complex of northern bogs that now cover 1.54 million square miles occurred earlier than previously thought." .........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

October 12, 2006, 9:50 PM CT

Making Safer Pesticides

Each year millions of dollars in crops are lost to two insects notorious for devastating farms: the greenbug (Schizaphis graminum) and the English grain aphid (Sitobion avenae). Eventhough these tiny green insects are 1/16th of an inch long, they are heavyweights in the farm industry. In 2005, the Department of Agriculture reported that $100 million in crops were lost in six states to these pests.

In a new study in the recent issue of Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters, a Mayo Clinic researcher has published work that opens the door to the possibility of creating safer pesticides to control the greenbug and English grain aphid in crop farms. The key, as per the study's author, Yuan-Ping Pang, Ph.D., director of Mayo Clinic's Computer-Aided Molecular Design Laboratory, was in identifying an insect-specific enzyme that could be used as a direct target for a new insecticide that would not affect humans and animals. The research was done with the support of a powerful terascale supercomputer Dr. Pang designed to develop a three-dimensional model of an enzyme taken from the two insects. (Terascale refers to a computer so powerful it can perform one trillion operations per second.).

"We now have a blueprint that will enable the development of a new generation of pesticides that will not be toxic to humans. Ultimately, the idea would be that we would be able to eat apples without washing them -- even though it may be covered with pesticides," says Dr. Pang.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

October 12, 2006, 8:05 PM CT

Central American Fires Impact U.S. Air Quality

Researchers using NASA satellites and computer models have shown that pollutants from Central American biomass burning can influence air quality and climate in the United States.

A NASA-funded study reported in the July 26, 2006 Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres observed that during April-May 2003, large amounts of smoke, which include aerosols -- tiny particles suspended in the air -- from biomass burning in the Yucatan Peninsula and southern Mexico reached Texas, Oklahoma, and other areas in the southeastern United States.

The smoke plumes degraded visibility and air quality in coastal regions along the Gulf of Mexico and resulted in the greatest concentration of small particulate matter in southern Texas since 1998. By blocking incoming sunlight, the smoke plumes also cooled surface air temperatures over land. But higher in the atmosphere the smoke absorbed solar radiation and warmed temperatures. This created a circulation pattern that trapped smoke aerosols in the lower atmosphere, worsening air quality.

The scientists used a newly developed computer model to simulate the transport and effects of smoke in the atmosphere and on the Earth's surface. The model couples aerosol properties with meteorology and uses hourly smoke emission data from the NASA-led Fire Locating and Monitoring of Burning Emissions (FLAMBE) project. FLAMBE is a joint effort by NASA, the U.S. Navy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and university partners to develop smoke aerosol forecasting models for the benefit for the global weather community.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

October 12, 2006, 7:55 PM CT

Plants Become Air Quality Detectives

What does a garden have to do with the chemistry of the atmosphere and air quality? One of the newest exhibits at NASA Goddard's Visitor Center, Greenbelt, Md., is a project related to NASA's Aura satellite. Aura is currently studying atmospheric chemistry and air pollution from space. The new Aura Ozone Monitoring Garden is used to study air quality from the ground by seeing how ozone in the air damages the leaves of certain plants.

During the summer months of intense sunlight, the air surrounding major urban areas undergoes dramatic changes. Ozone is formed when chemical pollutants that are by-products of human activities such as biomass burning and the combustion of fossil fuels react in the presence of sunlight. Ozone is a molecule that at ground level is a harmful air pollutant in high or prolonged concentrations.

Ozone tolerance among plants and people varies. According to research at the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and elsewhere, many common species of plants are sensitive to high concentrations of ozone. The Aura Ozone Monitoring Garden features plants that are known to be ozone sensitive, such as white dogwood (Cornus florida) and cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis).

Many of the plants that have been found to be ozone sensitive thrive in a wide range of the temperate environments within the continental United States. Aura education personnel at Goddard chose a variety of plants for the garden that represent different growing environments, from agriculture to horticulture.........

Posted by: Jessica      Permalink         Source