October 9, 2009, 7:18 AM CT

Inside the first bird

The raptor-like Archaeopteryx has long been viewed as the archetypal first bird, but new research reveals that it was actually a lot less "bird-like" than scientists had believed.

In fact, the landmark study led by paleobiologist Gregory M. Erickson of The Florida State University has upended the iconic first-known-bird image of Archaeopteryx (from the Greek for "ancient wing"), which lived 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic period in what is now Germany. Instead, the animal has been recast as more of a feathered dinosaur -- bird on the outside, dinosaur on the inside.

That's because new, microscopic images of the ancient cells and blood vessels inside the bones of the winged, feathered, claw-handed creature show unexpectedly slow growth and maturation that took years, similar to that found in dinosaurs, from which birds evolved. In contrast, living birds grow rapidly and mature in a matter of weeks.

Also groundbreaking is the finding that the rapid bone growth common to all living birds but surprisingly absent from the Archaeopteryx was not necessary for avian dinosaur flight.

The study is published in the Oct. 9, 2009, issue of the journal PLoS One In addition to Erickson, an associate professor in Florida State's Department of Biological Science and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, co-authors include Florida State University biologist Brian D. Inouye and other U.S. scientists, as well as researchers from Germany and China.........

Posted by: William      Read more         Source

October 9, 2009, 7:15 AM CT

Kraken achieves petaflop

The National Institute for Computational Sciences' (NICS's) Cray XT5 supercomputerKrakenhas been upgraded to become the first academic system to surpass a thousand trillion calculations a second, or one petaflop, a landmark achievement that will greatly accelerate science and place Kraken among the top five computers in the world.

Managed by the University of Tennessee (UT) for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the system came online Oct. 5 with a peak performance of 1.03 petaflops. It features more than 16,000 six-core 2.6-GHz AMD Istanbul processors with nearly 100,000 compute cores.

In addition, an upgrade to 129 terabytes of memory (the equivalent of more than 13 thousand movies on DVD) effectively doubles the size of Kraken for scientists running some of the world's most sophisticated 3-D scientific computing applications. Simulation has become a key tool for scientists in many fields, from climate change to materials.

"At over a petaflop of peak computing power, and the ability to routinely run full machine jobs, Kraken will dominate large-scale NSF computing in the near future," said NICS Project Director Phil Andrews. "Its unprecedented computational capability and total available memory will allow academic users to treat problems that were previously inaccessible"......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

October 8, 2009, 7:47 AM CT

Climate change, Tropical regions, and fisheries shifts

Major shifts in fisheries distribution due to climate change will affect food security in tropical regions most adversely, as per a research studyled by the Sea Around Us Project at The University of British Columbia.

In the first major study to examine the effects of climate change on ocean fisheries, a team of scientists from UBC and Princeton University finds that climate change will produce major shifts in productivity of the world's fisheries, affecting ocean food supply throughout the world. The study is published recently in the journal Global Change Biology

"Our projections show that climate change may lead to a 30 to 70 per cent increase in catch potential in high-latitude regions and a drop of up to 40 per cent in the tropics," says main author William Cheung, a researcher at the University of East Anglia in the UK who conducted the study while at UBC.

"A number of tropical island residents rely heavily on the oceans for their daily meals. These new findings suggest there's a good chance this important food source will be greatly diminished due to climate change".

Prior studies have looked at how climate change affects global food supply but were limited to land-based food sources. These studies have also predicted that tropical areas will see a decline in land productivity......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

October 7, 2009, 8:53 PM CT

Huelva is swallowing up coastal lagoons in Doana

A team of Spanish researchers from a variety of fields has analysed the effects of human activity on the peridunal lagoons in the Doana National Park. Results show that the lagoons are in the process of regressing, largely due to the extraction of underground water for the Matalascaas tourist resort (Huelva). Moreover, the natural effects of the ecosystem itself are further aggravating the situation.

Botanists, limnologists and climatologists from the University of Seville (US) have developed a botanical monitoring methodology which combines botanical studies with documents from past centuries, historical maps, data on the use of the land, microrelief and recent climate trends. The aim of the study, which was reported in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, was to investigate the changes in the perilagoonal vegetation in Doana and ascertain their impact.

Arturo Sousa, the lead author of the study and a researcher from the Department of Plant Biology and Ecology at the US explained the main conclusion of the study to SINC: "The lagoons are in the process of regressing, especially due to the extraction of underground water for the Matalascaas tourist resort, a coastal development complex that is right on the edge of the Doana National Park, a short distance from the lagoons"......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

October 7, 2009, 8:48 PM CT

Under the ice of a collapsing polar coast

Starting this month, a giant NASA DC-8 aircraft loaded with geophysical instruments and researchers will buzz at low level over the coasts of West Antarctica, where ice sheets are collapsing at a pace far beyond what researchers expected a few years ago. The flights, dubbed Operation Ice Bridge, are an effort by NASA in cooperation with university scientists to image what is happening on, and under, the ice, in order to estimate future sea-level rises that might result.

Since 2003, laser measurements of ice surfaces from NASA's ICESat satellite have shown that vast ice masses in Greenland and West Antarctica are thinning and flowing quickly seaward. Last month, a report in the journal Nature based on the satellite's measurements showed that some parts of the Antarctic area to be surveyed have been sinking 9 meters (27) feet a year; in 2002, one great glacial ice shelf jutting from land over the ocean on the Antarctic Peninsula simply disintegrated and floated away within days.

NASA's satellite reaches the end of its life this year, and another will not go up until 2015; in the interim, Operation Ice Bridge flights will continue and expand upon the satellite mission. In addition to lasers, the plane will carry penetrating radars to measure snow cover and the thickness of ice to bedrock, and a gravity-measuring system run by Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory that will, for the first time, plot the geometry and depth of ocean waters under the ice shelves. The gravity study is seen as key because a number of researchers believe warm ocean currents appears to be the main force pulling the ice sheets seaward, melting the undersides of ice shelves and thus removing the buttresses that hold back the far greater masses of ice on land......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

October 7, 2009, 8:05 PM CT

Mobile lab to study air quality

A new mobile air research laboratory will help a team of scientists led by a Michigan State University professor better understand the damaging health effects of air pollution and why certain airborne particles - emitted from plants and vehicles - induce disease and illness.

Jack Harkema, a University Distinguished Professor of pathobiology and diagnostic investigation in the College of Veterinary Medicine, will deploy the new 53-foot, 36,000-pound center - dubbed "AirCARE 2" - throughout southern Michigan, including metropolitan Detroit.

"The mobile laboratory allows us to analyze 'real-world' pollution in communities that appears to be at risk," he said. "We can study why certain ailments, such as asthma, cardiovascular disease and even obesity, appears to be more pronounced after exposure to particulate air pollution".

With about 450 square feet of indoor laboratory space, the $400,000 center helps scientists study fine and ultrafine particles in air pollution. These small particles have been found to increase mortality and morbidity among susceptible people with pre-existing health conditions such as heart disease.

Housed in a converted semitrailer, the mobile laboratory pulls air from the surrounding atmosphere through an air-particle concentrator, allowing the researchers to selectively collect the particles and analyze for chemical components that appears to be responsible for damaging health effects......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

October 7, 2009, 7:08 AM CT

A rare evidence of dinosaur cannibalism

University of Alberta researcher Phil Bell has found 70 million year old evidence of dinosaur cannibalism. The jawbone of what may be a Gorgosaurus was found in 1996 in southern Alberta. A technician at the Royal Tyrell Museum found something unusual embedded in the jaw. It was the tip of a tooth from another meat-eating dinosaur.

Bell, a paleontology PhD candidate, says discovery of the tooth shows that a fight between two dinosaurs definitely took place. "The wound showed no signs of healing so we know the dinosaur died soon after it was inflicted." Bell says that leaves two possible storylines. "Either the attacker fought, killed and ate this dinosaur, or the victim was already dead." Either way, if the attacker and the victim were the same species, Bell has a rare case of dinosaur cannibalism.

Analysis of the wound in the jawbone showed the bite was applied with the same force as a two tonne great white shark. "Sharks are a good analogue for this research," said Bell. "Their teeth frequently break off in an attack and become lodged in the victim."

The fossil record shows that Gorgosaurus, a 10-metre long cousin of the bigger, more famous, Tyrannosaurus rex, outnumbered other meat-eating dinosaurs in the area. That leads.

Bell to believe it's likely the attacker and the victim were both Gorgosaurus dinosaurs, making this a case of cannibalism......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

October 6, 2009, 11:08 PM CT

Oldest Hominid Skeleton

Nearly 17 years after plucking the fossilized tooth of a new human ancestor from a pebbly desert in Ethiopia, an international team of researchers today (Thursday, Oct. 1) announced their reconstruction of a partial skeleton of the hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus, which they say revolutionizes our understanding of the earliest phase of human evolution.

The female skeleton, nicknamed Ardi, is 4.4 million years old, 1.2 million years older than the skeleton of Lucy, or Australopithecus afarensis, the most famous and, until now, the earliest hominid skeleton ever found. Hominids are all fossil species closer to modern humans than to chimps and bonobos, which are our closest living relatives.

"This is the oldest hominid skeleton on Earth," said Tim White, University of California, Berkeley, professor of integrative biology and one of the co-directors of the Middle Awash Project, a team of 70 researchers that reconstructed the skeleton and other fossils found with it. "This is the most detailed snapshot we have of one of the earliest hominids and of what Africa was like 4.4 million years ago".

White and the team will publish the results of their analysis in 11 papers in the Oct. 2 issue of the journal Science, which has Ardi on the cover. They announced their findings at press conferences held simultaneously today in Washington, D.C., and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

October 6, 2009, 11:04 PM CT

Key to Roman Population Mystery?

University of Connecticut theoretical biologist Peter Turchin and Stanford University ancient historian Walter Scheidel recently developed a new method to estimate population trends in ancient Rome and waded into an intense, ongoing debate about whether the state's population increased or declined after the first century B.C.

Using the region's abundance of coin hoards, bundles of buried Roman coins that citizens hid to protect their savings during times of violence and political strife, the scientists determined that Rome's population declined after 100 B.C. and suggested that the alternative scenario of robust population growth was highly implausible.

Turchin and Scheidel applied a unique blend of quantitative modeling and empirical testing normally found in the natural sciences to reach their conclusion. They reasoned that in times of violence people tend to hide their valuables, which are later recovered unless the owners are killed or driven away. As a result, clumps of unrecovered coin hoards are an excellent indicator of intense internal warfare, which has direct impacts on population size.

Debates concerning the population of ancient Rome during the first century B.C. are important because if the minority of adherents, who hold to population growth scenarios are correct, then much of current Roman history would need to be rewritten and it would have enormous impacts on views of the economic potential and social structure of ancient Rome......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

October 6, 2009, 11:01 PM CT

Answer to 150-Year-Old Evolution Question

Staying at home may have given the very first termite youngsters the best opportunity to rule the colony when their parents were killed by their neighbors. This is as per new research supported by the National Science Foundation and published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists say the incentive to remain home with siblings and inherit the parents' estate could be the missing link to a question posed nearly 150 years ago by evolution theorist Charles Darwin. He wondered how natural selection could favor traits that reduce reproductive success among worker offspring in highly social insects.

This is particularly curious because Darwin argued for small biological changes that result in greater chances of survival and successful reproduction over time. But social insects, ants, bees, wasps and termites colonies in particular can have over a million sterile and/or non-reproductive workers and soldiers, which seemed counterintuitive.

Research conducted by biologists at the University of Maryland, College Park shows that when two neighboring termite families meet within the same log, one or both families' kings and queens are killed and a new, merged, cooperative colony results. Replacement "junior" kings and queens then develop from either or both colonies' non-reproducing, worker offspring, and termites from the two families may even interbreed......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source