February 26, 2008, 7:54 PM CT

Supercomputer Unleashes Virtual 9.0 Megaquake

On January 26, 1700, at about 9 p.m. local time, the Juan de Fuca plate beneath the ocean in the Pacific Northwest suddenly moved, slipping some 60 feet eastward beneath the North American plate in a monster quake of approximately magnitude 9, setting in motion large tsunamis that struck the coast of North America and traveled to the shores of Japan.

Since then, the earth beneath the region - which includes the cities of Vancouver, Seattle and Portland -- has been relatively quiet. But researchers think that earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 8, so-called "megathrust events," occur along this fault on average every 400 to 500 years.

To help prepare for the next megathrust earthquake, a team of scientists led by seismologist Kim Olsen of San Diego State University (SDSU) used a supercomputer-powered "virtual earthquake" program to calculate for the first time realistic three-dimensional simulations that describe the possible impacts of megathrust quakes on the Pacific Northwest region. Also participating in the study were scientists from the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego and the U.S. Geological Survey.

What the researchers learned from this simulation is not reassuring, as published in the Journal of Seismology, especially for residents of downtown Seattle......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

February 26, 2008, 5:19 PM CT

Giant Fossil Frog from Hell

A team of researchers, led by Stony Brook University paleontologist David Krause, has discovered the remains in Madagascar of what may be the largest frog ever to exist.

The 16-inch, 10-pound ancient frog, scientifically named Beelzebufo, or devil frog, links a group of frogs that lived 65 to 70 million years ago with frogs living today in South America.

Discovery of the voracious predatory fossil frog -- reported on-line this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) -- is significant in that it may provide direct evidence of a one-time land connection between Madagascar, the largest island off Africa's southeast coast, and South America.

To identify Beelzebufo and determine its relationship to other frogs, Krause collaborated with fossil frog experts Susan Evans, lead author of the PNAS article, and Marc Jones of the University College London. The authors concluded that the new frog represents the first known occurrence of a fossil group in Madagascar with living representatives in South America.

"Beelzebufo appears to be a very close relative of a group of South American frogs known as 'ceratophyrines,' or 'pac-man' frogs, because of their immense mouths," said Krause, whose research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The ceratophryines are known to camouflage themselves in their surroundings, then ambush predators......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

February 25, 2008, 9:25 PM CT

Tracking your carbon footprint

An innovation called Carbon Hero may help reduce global warming by making people more aware of their carbon footprint. Regional prize winner in the 2007 European Satellite Navigation Competition, sponsored by ESA's Technology Transfer Programme, the device uses satellite navigation technology to track journeys.

Concerned about global warming, a number of people are now looking for ways to reduce their generation of carbon dioxide (CO2). One option is to use public transport and limit journeys by car and plane; however, eventhough this can significantly reduce each person's carbon footprint, until now the benefits have been difficult to measure.

"With Carbon Hero calculating your carbon footprint is easy," explains Andreas Zachariah, a graduate student from the Royal College of Art in London and inventor of Carbon Hero. "This easy-to-use mobile system uses satellite navigation data to calculate the environmental impact of travel. With its specialist database and algorithm, it can determine the mode of transport and its environmental impact with almost no user input."

It was back in 2006, that Andreas Zachariah came up with the idea of a small and practical device to track personal CO2 emissions during travel. It determines the carbon footprint of travellers using different modes of transport by using satellite navigation data to measure the distance, identify the type of transportation and calculate the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere through travel......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

February 25, 2008, 9:07 PM CT

Royals weren't only builders of Maya temples

An intrepid archaeologist is well on her way to dislodging the prevailing assumptions of scholars about the people who built and used Maya temples.

From the grueling work of analyzing the "attributes," the nitty-gritty physical details of six temples in Yalbac, a Maya center in the jungle of central Belize - and a popular target for antiquities looters - primary investigator Lisa Lucero is building her own theories about the politics of temple construction that began nearly two millennia ago.

Her findings from the fill, the mortar and other remnants of jungle-wrapped structures lead her to think that kings weren't the only people building or sponsoring Late Classic period temples (from about 550 to 850), the stepped pyramids that rose like beacons out of the southern lowlands as early as 300 B.C.

"Preliminary results from Yalbac suggest that royals and nonroyals built temples," said Lucero, a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois.

In fact, judging by the varieties of construction and materials, any number of different groups - nobles, priests and even commoners - may have built temples, Lucero said, and their temples undoubtedly served their different purposes and gods.

That different groups had the wherewithal - the will, resources and freedom - to build temples suggests to Lucero that "the Maya could choose which temples to worship in and support; they had a voice in who succeeded politically"......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

February 24, 2008, 10:26 PM CT

The light and dark of Venus

Venus Express has revealed a planet of extraordinarily changeable and extremely large-scale weather. Bright hazes appear in a matter of days, reaching from the south pole to the low southern latitudes and disappearing just as quickly. Such 'global weather', unlike anything on Earth, has given researchers a new mystery to solve.

The cloud-covered world of Venus is all but a featureless, unchangeable globe at visible wavelengths of light. Switch to the ultraviolet and it reveals a truly dynamic nature. Transient dark and bright markings stripe the planet, indicating regions where solar ultraviolet radiation is absorbed or reflected, respectively.

Venus Express watches the behaviour of the planet's atmosphere with its Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC). It has seen some amazing things. In July 2007, VMC captured a series of images showing the development of the bright southern haze. Within days, the high-altitude veil continually brightened and dimmed, moving towards equatorial latitudes and back towards the pole again.

Such global weather suggests that fast dynamical, chemical and microphysical processes are at work on the planet. During these episodes, the brightness of the southern polar latitudes increased by about a third and faded just as quickly, as sulphuric acid particles coagulate......... Posted by: Brooke      Read more         Source

February 13, 2008, 9:17 PM CT

Stirling Energy Systems set new world record

On a perfect New Mexico winter day - with the sky almost 10 percent brighter than usual - Sandia National Laboratories and Stirling Energy Systems (SES) set a new solar-to-grid system conversion efficiency record by achieving a 31.25 percent net efficiency rate. The old 1984 record of 29.4 percent was toppled Jan. 31 on SES's "Serial #3" solar dish Stirling system at Sandia's National Solar Thermal Test Facility.

The conversion efficiency is calculated by measuring the net energy delivered to the grid and dividing it by the solar energy hitting the dish mirrors. Auxiliary loads, such as water pumps, computers and tracking motors, are accounted for in the net power measurement.

"Gaining two whole points of conversion efficiency in this type of system is phenomenal," says Bruce Osborn, SES president and CEO. "This is a significant advancement that takes our dish engine systems well beyond the capacities of any other solar dish collectors and one step closer to commercializing an affordable system".

Serial #3 was erected in May 2005 as part of a prototype six-dish model power plant at the Solar Thermal Test Facility that produces up to 150 kilowatts (kW) of grid-ready electrical power during the day. Each dish unit consists of 82 mirrors formed in a dish shape to focus the light to an intense beam......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

February 12, 2008, 9:52 PM CT

How river carbon impacts the Arctic Ocean

Arctic rivers transport huge quantities of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to the Arctic Ocean. The prevailing paradigm regarding DOC in arctic rivers is that it is largely refractory, making it of little significance for the biogeochemistry of the Arctic Ocean. However, a recent study by R. M. Holmes of the Woods Hole Research Center and his colleagues at collaborating institutions challenges that assumption by showing that DOC in Alaskan arctic rivers is remarkably labile during the spring flood period when the majority of annual DOC flux occurs. The research was published February 9 in Geophysical Research Letters.

As per Dr. Holmes, Though only about 1% of global ocean volume, the Arctic Ocean receives almost 10% of global river discharge. As a consequence, organic carbon transported by arctic rivers has the potential to strongly impact the chemistry and biology of the Arctic Ocean.

The primary focus of the paper is the lability of dissolved organic carbon in Alaskan arctic rivers, or how available the DOC is for microbial decomposition. Because of logistical challenges, past studies have focused almost exclusively on the summer low-flow period, when numerous studies have shown arctic river DOC to be refractory. However, by timing their sampling to include the high-flow period just after the spring ice break, the authors observed that much of the DOC discharged by Alaskan rivers to the Arctic Ocean is labile. Consequently, riverine inputs of DOC to the Arctic Ocean may have a much larger influence on coastal ocean biogeochemistry than previously realized, and reconsideration of the role of terrigenous DOC on carbon, microbial, and food-web dynamics on the arctic shelf is warranted......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

February 12, 2008, 9:39 PM CT

Lake Mead Could Be Dry by 2021

There is a 50 percent chance Lake Mead, a key source of water for millions of people in the southwestern United States, will be dry by 2021 if climate changes as expected and future water usage is not curtailed, as per a pair of scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.

Without Lake Mead and neighboring Lake Powell, the Colorado River system has no buffer to sustain the population of the Southwest through an uncommonly dry year, or worse, a sustained drought. In such an event, water deliveries would become highly unstable and variable, said research marine physicist Tim Barnett and climate scientist David Pierce.

Barnett and Pierce concluded that human demand, natural forces like evaporation, and human-induced climate change are creating a net deficit of nearly 1 million acre-feet of water per year from the Colorado River system that includes Lake Mead and Lake Powell. This amount of water can supply roughly 8 million people. Their analysis of Federal Bureau of Reclamation records of past water demand and calculations of scheduled water allocations and climate conditions indicate that the system could run dry even if mitigation measures now being proposed are implemented.

The paper, "When will Lake Mead go dry?," has been accepted for publication in the peer-evaluated journal Water Resources Research, published by the American Geophysical Union, and is accessible via the AGU's website (see instructions below)......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

February 12, 2008, 9:17 PM CT

MIT reveals superconducting surprise

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--MIT physicists have taken a step toward understanding the puzzling nature of high-temperature superconductors, materials that conduct electricity with no resistance at temperatures well above absolute zero.

If superconductors could be made to work at temperatures as high as room temperature, they could have potentially limitless applications. But first, researchers need to learn much more about how such materials work.

Using a new method, the MIT team made a surprising discovery that may overturn theories about the state of matter in which superconducting materials exist just before they start to superconduct. The findings are published in the recent issue of Nature Physics.

Understanding high-temperature superconductors is one of the biggest challenges in physics today, as per Eric Hudson, MIT assistant professor of physics and senior author of the paper.

Most superconductors only superconduct at temperatures near absolute zero, but about 20 years ago, it was discovered that some ceramics can superconduct at higher temperatures (but commonly still below 100 Kelvin, or -173 Celsius).

Such high-temperature superconductors are now beginning to be used for a number of applications, including cell-phone base stations and a demo magnetic-levitation train. But their potential applications could be much broader......... Posted by: Sarah      Read more         Source

February 12, 2008, 9:13 PM CT

Future of social networking explored

If you need information, the Internet offers a wealth of resources. But if you're hunting down a person or a thing, a computer's not much help. That may soon change. Electronic tags promise to create what some call the "Internet of things," in which objects and people are connected through a virtual network.

To see what this future world would be like, a pilot project involving dozens of volunteers in the University of Washington's computer science building provides the next step in social networking, wirelessly monitoring people and things in a closed environment. Beginning in March, volunteer students, engineers and staff will wear electronic tags on their clothing and belongings to sense their location every five seconds throughout much of the six-story building. The information will be saved to a database, published to Web pages and used in various custom tools. The project is one of the largest experiments looking at wireless tags in a social setting.

The RFID Ecosystem project aims to create a world that a number of technology experts predict is just on the horizon, said project leader Magda Balazinska, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering. The project explores the use of radio-frequency identification, or RFID, tags in a social environment. The team has installed some 200 antennas in the Paul Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering. Early next month scientists will begin recruiting 50 volunteers from about 400 people who regularly use the building......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source