Science buffs got an early Christmas present when rare video was released showing a spectacular undersea volcanic eruption deep in the Pacific Ocean.
The West Mata volcano sits nearly 4,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific in an area bordered by Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. It was discovered in May by scientists with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation. Lucky researchers managed to catch high-definition video of the eruption with the help of a remotely-operated underwater robot named Jason.
Jason's cameras captured masses of lava bubbling up into the cold seawater, chunks of debris breaking off vents and falling to the seafloor, and enormous clouds of volcanic ash billowing into the water.
The discovery is significant for several reasons. For one, it is the deepest erupting volcano ever seen. As marine geologist Bob Embley said, "Since the water pressure at that depth suppresses the violence of the volcano's explosions, we could get the underwater robot within feet of the active eruption. On land, or even in shallow water, you could never hope to get this close and see such great detail."
It's also the first deep-water eruption observed in the last 25 years of submarine volcano research by NOAA and the NSF. In addition, the kind of lava spewing from the West Mata volcano is rare. Known as boninite lava, it's believed to be among the hottest on the planet. Prior to the West Mata discovery, it had only been seen on extinct volcanoes that were more than a million years old.
Despite the volcano's incredible depth and an environment as acidic as battery acid, the area is far from lifeless. Tim Shank, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (which operates the Jason robot), discovered shrimp thriving in the area of the eruption. He is now comparing the DNA of the West Mata shrimp to that of shrimp found in similar environments 3,000 miles away to determine whether they are the same species.
Scientists presented their work Thursday at an annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Not so long ago, large, numerate brains got together to create a mathematical formula for choosing the right wife.
Not content with satisfying the need for perfection in human relationships, mathematicians have now dedicated themselves to creating equations for the perfect relationship with the physical world.
Yes, according to the Telegraph, a British math professor has created a formula for successfully slipping your car into a parking spot.
You might think this a trivial pursuit. You'd be right. However, Vauxhall Motors, which participated in this useful experience, claims that 15 percent of hardy Brits say that the the biggest challenge of their holiday period is finding a fine place to park their car.
Please don't be square-rooted to the spot this Holiday Season, unless you're very good at math.
(Credit: Cc David Hilowitz/Flickr)So in drove professor Robin Blackburn of the University of London's Royal Holloway College to inscribe a few symbols and square roots in order to solve a real human problem.
The formula involves knowing such simple numbers as the radius of your car's curb-to-curb turning circle and the distance from the center of the front wheel to the front of your car.
Frankly, if you don't have these numbers stored at the very front of your brain, just behind seven pictures of Tiger Woods' alleged mistresses, then you have no business being on the road.
Professor Blackburn is merely putting all your most intimate numbers together for you. As he told the Telegraph: "Everyone has had the experience of ignoring a space because you're not sure if you can fit in or not. This formula solves that problem."
Indeed it does. Save for one small issue. You see, a U.K. government survey showed that almost 7 million Brits have math skills that are below the level of an average 11-year-old.
Many places in the US might have larger parking areas, but US math skills are not exactly proportionate. The National Assessment of Educational Progress suggests that only 4 out of 10 fourth- and eighth-graders are, well, any good at math at all. And only 42 percent of high school graduates left prepared for college-level math.
Professor Blackburn's formula is not simple. So I fear a new onset of holiday season accidents as willing but unable parkers attempt to enact his mathematical genius, only to plow into the silver Volvo in the adjacent parking space.
The Department of Energy on Monday named the first winners of a program aimed at generating breakthroughs in clean-energy technologies.
The program, called Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), began taking applications earlier this year for research ideas that reduce imports of foreign fuel, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and improve energy efficiency. Funding for the agency is part of the Obama administration's goal to improve the economic competitiveness of the U.S. by investing in energy technology.
The DOE is awarding $151 million in 37 grants to both academics and green-tech companies, most of which are start-ups. The ideas are meant to be high-risk and high-reward, with a number not expected to meet their goals.
Authority to create the agency, roughly modeled on the DARPA defense program that spawned the space race, happened in 2007 but it wasn't funded until earlier this year. ARPA-E now has authority to fund as much as $400 million in research. A second tranche of grant awardees is scheduled to be announced later this fall.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)The naming of ARPA-E grants is being closed watched in the green-tech start-up community and among researchers. There were 3,600 concept papers submitted, followed by 300 full applications and ultimately 37 awardees.
One awardee is an effort at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to make an all-liquid battery, which would make storage of storage of solar and wind power more cost effective.
Another is funding for a bioreactor developed by the University of Minnesota that proposes using two microorganisms to make a vehicle fuel. One bacteria would convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into a sugar, and another would convert the sugar into a fuel.
Two other efforts include developing enzymes that would more effectively capture carbon dioxide from power plants and a low-cost material for making LED lighting. The full list of awardees is at the ARPA-E site (click for PDF).
Energy Secretary Steven Chu is scheduled to speak at Google Monday morning in Google to make an announcement, after which Google CEO Eric Schmidt will speak with Chu. Through its philanthropic arm Google.org, Google has invested in a number of renewable energy companies. It has also developed Web-based energy monitoring software for consumers.
Have you ever worried that knuckle cracking will give you arthritis or wondered why pregnant women don't tip over? Me too.
Research into those topics--as well as studies finding that diamonds could be created from tequila and giant panda feces are good for composting--received Ig Nobel Prizes in a ceremony on Thursday night at Harvard University.
The prizes, awarded to scientific achievements that "cannot and should not be reproduced," are presented in the week before the real Nobel prizes are announced and are sponsored by the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research."
A Thousand Oaks, Calif., doctor won the Ig Nobel medicine prize for his firsthand research into arthritis in fingers. As a child and in adulthood, Donald Unger's mother, several aunts, and mother-in-law warned him that cracking his knuckles would lead to arthritis in his fingers. To test that theory, he cracked the knuckles of his left hand, but not the right hand, every day for more than 60 years.
His conclusion? The cracking has no effect. (A chiropractor in San Francisco previously agreed with that notion in a very unscientific survey conducted by me.)
In Switzerland, the half-liter refillable beer bottle is commonly used as a weapon in bar fights and can crack a skull, researchers said.
(Credit: Stephan Bolliger/Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine)"There was no arthritis in either hand, and no apparent differences between the two hands," Unger wrote in a letter to the editor in Arthritis and Rheumatism, Vol. 41, No. 5, in 1998, after he had completed only 50 years of his study.
"This result calls into question whether other parental beliefs, e.g., the importance of eating spinach, are also flawed," he wrote. "Further investigation is likely warranted."
The Ig Nobel Prize for peace went to a group at the University of Bern in Switzerland for its bar room brawl-related research. The doctors, several of whom are forensic pathologists, had been asked to testify in court cases whether a skull can be broken by smashing a beer bottle on someone's head--and whether that is more easily accomplished with a full bottle or an empty one.
"Full and empty bottles suffice in breaking the skull. However, the likelihood of such fractures is greater in blows with an empty bottle. Empty beer bottles are therefore more dangerous," Dr. Stephan Bolliger wrote in an e-mail response to questions on Friday.
Asked whether certain beer brands might be more dangerous than others, Bolliger said, "The brand of the bottle is irrelevant, as the major breweries in Switzerland all use the same, recyclable half-liter bottles."
The research paper concludes that because half-liter beer bottles present "formidable weapons" in a fight, "prohibition of these bottles is therefore justified in situations which involve risk of human conflicts."
Meanwhile, other Ig Nobel-honored research suggests that farmers can benefit from improved human-bovine relations. Researchers at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom won the veterinary-medicine prize for their work showing that "Bessie" is likely to produce more milk than "No. 5863329."
"On farms where cows were called by name, milk yield was 258 liters higher than on farms where this was not the case," the researchers wrote in an abstract for their paper, "Exploring Stock Managers' Perceptions of the Human-Animal Relationship on Dairy Farms and an Association with Milk Production."
In Japan, researchers turned to a beloved animal for help in home waste reduction. A team at the Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Sagamihara won the biology prize for "demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90 percent in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas."
The physics prize went to researchers from the University of Cincinnati, the University of Texas, and Harvard for "analytically determining why pregnant women don't tip over" in their paper "Fetal Load and the Evolution of Lumbar Lordosis in Bipedal Hominins."
And in a modern-day alchemy experiment, researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico received the chemistry prize for turning tequila into diamonds. Well, maybe not exactly diamonds, but diamond films that could be an economical component in electrical insulators.
The public-health prize was awarded to inventors who received a patent for a brassiere that can be converted into a pair of gas masks.
There were also awards for findings that came of less research. The economics prize was awarded to officials from four Icelandic banks "for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa--and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy."
The mathematics prize went to the governor of Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank for "giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers--from very small to very big--by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from 1 cent to 100 trillion dollars."
And finally, the prize for literature was given to Ireland's police service for writing more than 50 traffic tickets to "the most frequent driving offender in the country--Prawo Jazdy--whose name in Polish means "Driver's License."
IBM scientists have imaged the chemical structure of an individual molecule, increasing the possibility for creating electronic building blocks on the atomic and molecular scale.
By using an atomically sharp metal tip terminated with a carbon monoxide molecule, IBM scientists were able to obtain an image of the inner structure of the molecule. The colored surface represents experimental data. The model below shows the position of the atoms within the molecule.
(Credit: IBM)Scientists In Zurich, Switzerland, have, for the first time, imaged the "anatomy," or chemical structure, of an individual molecule with "unprecedented" resolution, using noncontact atomic force microscopy (AFM), IBM said Thursday. Resolving individual atoms within a molecule has been a long-standing goal of surface microscopy, according to the computer company, which has a research and development program dating back to 1945.
This research will be essential for building computing elements at the atomic scale that are vastly smaller, faster and more energy-efficient than today's processors and memory devices, IBM said.
The research is reported in the August 28 issue of Science magazine.
Though in recent years progress has been made in research of nanostructures on the atomic scale with AFM, imaging the chemical structure of an entire molecule has never been achieved with atomic resolution, according to IBM.
The atomic force microscopy was done in an ultrahigh vacuum and at very low temperatures (5 Kelvin equals minus 268 degrees Centigrade or minus 451 Fahrenheit) to image the chemical structure of individual pentacene molecules. Pentacene has a crystal structure that gives it properties as an organic semiconductor.
Scientists were able "to look through the electron cloud and see the atomic backbone of an individual molecule for the first time." This is roughly analogous to X-rays that pass through soft tissue to enable clear images of bones, IBM said.
The Science magazine article follows another piece published two months ago in the June 12 issue of the magazine covering the "determination of atomic charge states." The results discussed in both of these articles will "open new possibilities for investigating how charge propagates through molecules or molecular networks," IBM said.
Understanding the charge distribution may lead to building computing elements ... Read more
I know science thinks it can do everything.
I know robots will soon be ordering us around like wait staff at the Ritz.
But I am gravely concerned about an experiment that has been going on up there in space.
Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who returned to earth Friday, had been on the International Space Station since March. And, well, I don't know quite how I am to put this, but he didn't change his underwear for a month.
I know what you're thinking. We're both thinking the same thing.
Not even in the the darkest, most slovenly days of our student youth did we wear the same pair of knickers for 30 days. Around seven days was our limit. Then we'd at least manage a hand wash in a sink.
But here was the intrepid Wakata, prepared for the sake of all our futures to don anti-static, flame-resistant, odor-eating, bacteria-killing, water-absorbent underpants. Yes, water-absorbent.
I know that there was a lady astronaut a little while ago who wore diapers on a long car journey, but this is surely couture from another realm.
The London Times quoted Wakata as saying, pre-landing: "I haven't talked about this underwear to my crew members."
This is quite understandable. I rarely talk about my underwear to my clients. Not even my underwear clients. However, wasn't just the occasional merest stink caused by this novel eco-friendly fashion show?
"I wore it for about a month and my station crew members never complained, so I think the experiment went fine," he said.
Well, now, in polite society one doesn't normally comment when a fellow worker suffers something of a digestional malfunction, so how can Wakata be sure that his fellow astronauts weren't furtively making sniffy remarks about certain odors emanating from his person?
I know you'll be wondering what astronauts normally do with their soiled undies. Firstly, they take them off. Then they pack them up with the trash, which they shoot into outer space on human-less Russian cargo ships. On the way, the dirty undies are cremated.
But here's the thing with Wakata's undergarments: the Japanese space agency, Jaxa, which designed them, has no firm idea just how well they performed their task.
Which makes two pulsating thoughts thud around my cranium.
One: what if the anti-static, flame-resistant, odor-eating, bacteria-killing, water-absorbent qualities didn't work so well? Especially the last two. What effects might imperfect performance have on poor Mr. Wakata's inner well-being?
And two, I must do the washing.
Both the American public and researchers have a high regard for scientific advancement. But they disagree over the standing of science in the U.S.
A full 84 percent of the public believes science's effect on society has been mostly positive, reveals a survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. And 70 percent feel scientists contribute a lot to society's well-being.
However, only 17 percent of the public think that U.S. scientific achievements rank as best in the world. That contrasts with 49 percent of scientists surveyed who feel U.S. science is still at the top compared with other countries.
Among the public, America's scientific prowess has declined over the past 10 years. In the current survey, only 27 percent of Americans cited scientific advancement as one of the country's most important achievements, compared with 47 percent in May 1999.
(Credit:
Pew Research Center)
Scientists also have their own concerns. Among those surveyed, 85 percent see the public's lack of scientific knowledge as a major problem. Almost half criticize the public for having unrealistic expectations about scientific progress.
The media also shares in the blame, say scientists. About 48 percent of scientists say the news oversimplifies science. Newspaper coverage comes off best, with 36 percent of scientists rating it excellent or good. But TV coverage of science fares worse--only 15 percent of scientists see it as excellent or good.
(Credit:
Pew Research Center)
The survey uncovered other differences in opinion between scientists and the public.
The majority of scientists firmly believe in evolution, with 87 percent saying humans and other living creatures have evolved over time through processes such as natural selection. Only 32 percent of the public believes the same.
A full 84 percent of scientists say global warming is the result of human actions, such as burning fossil fuel, while only 49 percent of the public agrees.
As part of the survey, the public was also quizzed on its knowledge of science, with mixed results. Fully 91 percent of those tested know that aspirin is used to prevent heart attacks. Around 82 percent said that GPS technology relies on satellites. But only 47 percent knew that lasers do not work by using sound waves, and a mere 46 percent remembered that electrons are smaller than atoms.
(Credit:
Pew Research Center)
Pew's survey (PDF) of the general public targeted 2,001 adults by phone from April to June. The survey of scientists was conducted online in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and reached 2,533 members of the AAAS from May to June.
An elastomer made with mechanophore-linked polymers changes color when stretched.
(Credit: Beckman Institute Imaging Technology Group, Darren Stevenson, and Alex Jerez)Scientists at the University of Illinois have developed polymers that change color when the material becomes overstressed.
The materials science invention could be used in things like parachute cords, climbing ropes, or added to smart coatings for bridges.
The polymers contain mechanophores--molecules that create a chemical reaction that makes the synthetic material change color when a certain amount of force is exerted upon it.
One of the polymers offered by the scientists as an example of their work is an amber-colored elastomer that turns progressively more orange as it's pulled and then finally red right before it reaches its point of failure and snaps (see photo). In another example, the group made a hard little bead that turned from translucent to purple when compressed.
The group, whose project is funded by the U.S. Army Research Office MURI program, had previously done work with mechanophore-linked polymers in liquid. This latest invention is with solids .
The University of Illinois research was led by Nancy Sottos, a Willett Professor of materials science and engineering and a professor at the university's Beckman Institute; and Douglas Davis, graduate research assistant and lead author on the project.
Davis noted that the material can go back to its original color once relieved of stress and perform the same function over and over.
"Mechanical stress induces a ring-opening reaction of the spiropyran that changes the color of the material. The reaction is reversible, so we can repeat the opening and closing of the mechanophore," Davis said in a statement.
Keeping that in mind, the group hopes to create mechanophore-linked polymers that could actually self-reinforce each time they're met with increased stress. If created, the material could be used in things like airplanes as a temporary solution to damaged or stressed parts. In a plane, for example, parts made of the polymer could self-reinforce to minimize damage until the plane could safely be landed and fixed.
Details of the group's invention can be found in the May 7 issue of Nature.
Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie are among computing industry leaders who President Barack Obama named to a technology advisory panel Monday.
The executives are among the members of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The council's three co-chairmen are John Holdren, assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Eric Lander, a Human Genome Project leader and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; and Nobel laureate Harold Varmus, chief executive of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and former head of the National Institutes of Health.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)Schmidt already had close ties with the Obama camp. He was an adviser to the Obama campaign, campaigned for Obama, and is a member of the Transition Economic Advisory Board.
In related news, Obama announced in a speech at the National Academy of Sciences on Monday that he wants to devote 3 percent of the country's gross domestic product to research and development.
Here's the White House's full list of board membership:
• Rosina Bierbaum, a widely-recognized expert in climate-change science and ecology, is Dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. Her PhD is in evolutionary biology and ecology. She served as Associate Director for Environment in OSTP in the Clinton Administration, as well as Acting Director of OSTP in 2000-2001. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• Christine Cassel is President and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and previously served as Dean of the School of Medicine and Vice President for Medical Affairs at Oregon Health & Science University. A member of the US Institute of Medicine, she is a leading expert in geriatric medicine and quality of care.
• Christopher Chyba is Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and International Affairs at Princeton University and a member of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. His scientific work focuses on solar system exploration and his security-related research emphasizes nuclear and biological weapons policy, proliferation, and terrorism. He served on the White House staff from 1993 to 1995 at the National Security Council and the Office of Science and Technology Policy and was awarded a MacArthur Prize Fellowship (2001) for his work in both planetary science and international security.
... Read more
The new cloak with the bump, left, and the prototype, right.
(Credit: Duke University)That cloaking device we've been dreaming of appears to be one step closer to actual cloakdom, so start pondering the mischievous possibilities.
Scientists from Duke University have improved on their earlier efforts at producing an invisibility cloak, coming up with a new type of device they say is significantly more sophisticated at cloaking an object (and eventually a person?) from visible light.
The device is made from a light-bending composite material that can detour electromagnetic waves around an object and reconnect them on the other side. That creates an effect similar to a distant mirage you'd see hovering above a road on a hot day.
In Duke's latest experiments, a beam of microwaves aimed through the cloaking device at a "bump" on a flat mirror surface bounced off the surface at the same angle, as if the bump wasn't there. Additionally, the device prevented the formation of scattered beams that would normally be expected from such a perturbation. (The team details its findings in far more technical terms than I ever could in the latest issue of Science magazine.)
... Read more
