Pituitary tumour caused world’s tallest man’s gigantism

September 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Sept 18 (ANI): The Turkish man crowned as the world’s tallest man suffers from a pituitary tumour which has resulted in his gigantic height.

Sultan Kosen stands eight-foot-one-inch tall and was unveiled as the tallest man in the world by the Guinness World Records.osen’s height is a result of a tumour in his pituitary gland, which has led to an over production of growth hormones, reports the National Geographic News.

The condition called pituitary gigantism has also led his feet to grow to almost 15 inches, while his hands are larger than 10 inches.t was only after the tumour was removed last year, that Kosen stopped growing.

The 27-year old is forced to use crutches as his height has weakened his knee joints.

The now-famous Kosen wants to travel around the world and meet a woman who would like to marry him. (ANI)

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Research team all set to explore sacred Maya pools of Belize

September 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, September 14 (ANI): A team of expert divers, a geochemist and an archaeologist is all set to become the first to explore the sacred pools of the southern Maya lowlands in rural Belize.

The expedition, made possible with a grant from the National Geographic Society and led by a University of Illinois archaeologist, will investigate the cultural significance and environmental history and condition of three of the 23 pools of Cara Blanca, in central Belize.

Called ‘cenotes’, these groundwater-filled sinkholes in the limestone bedrock were treated as sacred sites by the Maya, according to University of Illinois archaeologist Lisa Lucero, who will lead the expedition next spring.

“Any openings in the earth were considered portals to the underworld, into which the ancient Maya left offerings,” said Lucero. “We know from ethnographic accounts that Maya collected sacred water from these sacred places, mostly from caves,” she added.

Studies of shallow lakes and cenotes in Mexico and Guatemala have found that the Maya also left elaborate offerings in the sacred lakes and pools.

Items found on the bottom of lakes in these regions include masks, bells, jade, human remains, figurines and ceramic vessels decorated with animals, plants and the gods of fertility and death.

“Diving the sacred pools of Cara Blanca, in central Belize, is necessary to determine if they have similar sacred qualities,” Lucero said.

“Once underwater, we will first have to cut out some of the jungle wood so that we can even reach the bottom,” said Patricia Beddows, a lecturer of earth and planetary sciences at Northwestern University and an expert diver who has explored cenotes on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.

“After mapping for fragile Maya artifacts, we will also take water data and manually drill sediment cores,” she added.

“The sediment samples will provide a record of changes in surface and water conditions,” Beddows said.

“Were the Maya challenged by droughts in the area? Did the water quality suddenly go bad due to sulfur or other geologic factors? We hope these cenotes will provide a rich story of linked human and environmental conditions,” she said.

One of the three pools the researchers will explore has a substantial Maya structure on its edge, likely ceremonial.

Preliminary investigations of the structure conducted by archaeologist Andrew Kinkella, of Moorpark College, turned up a lot of jars and the fragments of jars.

“This could indicate that the site was important for collecting sacred water,” Lucero said. (ANI)

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Sea levels rose as much as 2 feet this summer along the US East Coast

September 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, September 12 (ANI): Reports indicate that sea levels rose as much as 2 feet (60 centimeters) higher than predicted this summer along the US East Coast, surprising scientists who forecast such periodic fluctuations.

According to National Geographic News, though the immediate cause of the unexpected rise has now been solved, the underlying reason remains a mystery.

Usually, predicting seasonal tides and sea levels is a pretty cut-and-dried process, governed by the known movements and gravitational influences of astronomical bodies like the moon, according to Rich Edwing, deputy director for the Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

But, NOAA’s phones began ringing this summer when East Coast residents reported higher than predicted water levels, much like those associated with short-term weather events like tropical storms.

These high seas persisted for weeks, throughout June and July.

The startling rise caused only minor coastal flooding, but puzzled scientists.

Now, a new report has identified the two major factors behind the high sea levels-a weakened Gulf Stream and steady winds from the northeastern Atlantic.

The Gulf Stream is a northward-flowing superhighway of ocean water off the US East Coast.

Running at full steam, the powerful current pulls water into its “orbit” and away from the East Coast.

But this summer, for reasons unknown, “the Gulf Stream slowed down,” Edwing said, sending water toward the coasts-and sea levels shooting upward.

Adding to the sustained surge, autumn winds from the northeastern Atlantic arrived a few months early, pushing even more water coastward.

The higher waters caused inconveniences for some anglers and boaters and rearranged a bit of shoreline.

“A couple of sand beaches we’d normally fish from were eaten up. And the volume of water was higher than it normally would be,” said Paulie Apostolides, owner of Paulie’s Tackle in Montauk on New York State’s Long Island.

Even before the new report, released by NOAA on September 2, Apostolides said that many local fishers had already attributed the sea level rise to the “ferocious” winds from the northeast. (ANI)

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Killer whales have to raise their voices to be heard over ship noise

September 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, September 11 (ANI): A new research has determined that killer whales have to raise their voices to be heard over ship noise, and the effort may be wearing the whales out as they try to find food amid dwindling numbers of salmon.

According to a report in National Geographic News, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) carried out the research.

The research indicates that the killer whales of Puget Sound, a complex of inland marine waterways in the northwestern part of Washington, US, make more calls and clicks while foraging than while traveling, suggesting that such mealtime conservations are key to coordinating hunts.

“(The killer whales’) call exchange is incredibly important, and vessel noises have the potential to mask these calls,” said research leader Marla Holt of Seattle’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, which is run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Holt and colleagues’ previous research had shown that some killer whales make louder calls to be heard over vessel rumblings-just as people raise their voices to talk over the din of a cocktail party.

Now, the researchers think the cacophony could be causing the region’s killer whales to use up more energy during hunts, even as their preferred prey, chinook salmon, are on the decline.

In Puget Sound, a small group of killer whales known as the Southern Residents has been found to be particularly well-suited to eating salmon-even down to the whales’ tooth size.

These animals don’t eat seals or other mammals, as do the transient killer whales that migrate through the sound.

In the mid- to late 1990s, the Southern Resident population mysteriously shrank by nearly 20 percent, from 97 to 88 animals. Today, there are 85 individuals.

In 2005, the federal government listed the population as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act.

No one knows for sure, but the cause was likely a combination of fewer salmon, exposure to toxic contaminants, and vessel noise, according to Lynne Barre of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service Northwest Regional Office.

Holt’s work adds to existing data that have already prompted NOAA to propose a new killer whale protection law that would make all boats keep at least 600 feet (200 yards) away from the animals around Washington State.

The existing law allows boats to approach as close as 300 feet (100 yards), and some research has shown this influences the whales’ behavior.

“A lot of people would argue, Why focus on these vessel regulations?” Holt said. “But it’s one thing we can do immediately,” he added. (ANI)

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Laser cooling may be used to create “exotic” states of matter

September 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, September 9 (ANI): In a new study, scientists have determined that the technique of laser cooling could be used to create “exotic” states of matter.

According to a report in National Geographic News, in a new technique, Martin Weitz and Ulrich Vogl of the University of Bonn in Germany used a laser to bring the temperature of dense rubidium gas far below the normal point at which the gas becomes a solid.

Previous research had been able to use lasers to quickly “supercool” only very diluted gases.

But, “here’s a case where you shine a laser on something and it actually cools down, and not just a handful of atoms, but a macroscopic object,” said Trey Porto, a physicist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s laser-cooling group.

The process could be used to create fascinating new states of matter, according to the study authors.

“For example, if you can very quickly cool water much lower than zero Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), where it would normally turn to ice, exotic crystalline and glassy states of matter would be predicted,” Weitz said.

The new technique could also be used in cooling mechanisms to boost the efficiency of some stargazing equipment, he added.

“If you could cool thermal cameras that look at the stars, they may have less noise and be more sensitive,” he said.

Since a laser’s color is linked to its intensity, the new technique is based on using a red laser in which the frequency has been adjusted so that the beam affects the atoms only when they collide with each other.

Weitz and Vogl shone this laser beam into gaseous rubidium atoms in a high-pressure “atmosphere” of argon.

In the experiment, the rubidium gas fell from 662 degrees Fahrenheit (350 degrees Celsius) to almost 536 degrees Fahrenheit (280 degrees Celsius) within mere seconds.

Much more research needs to be done before the laser-cooling process can be used in real-world applications, study co-author Weitz cautioned.

But, NIST’s Porto said the work already represents a major departure from traditional cooling of diluted gases, which are currently used for studying quantum effects or preparing gas samples for atomic clocks.

“I think the really amazing thing is that you can even get cooling in this regime, because it’s a really dense gas and a very different mechanism,” Porto said.

“Traditional cooling powers are so tiny. To cool a physical object by a measurable degree with a laser is amazing,” he added. (ANI)

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Cities trap more CO2 than rain forests

September 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, September 9 (ANI): A surprising new study has found that cities trap more carbon dioxide (CO2) than rain forests.

According to a report in National Geographic News, compared with tropical rain forests, cities store more carbon, acre for acre, in their trees, buildings, and dirt.

“Everyone thinks about the tropical forests, but I don’t think people consider cities as a way to store carbon,” said study leader Galina Churkina of the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research in Germany.

“Although a lot of studies have focused on carbon in forests, grasslands, and other natural ecosystems, looking at cities-which now house half of the world’s population-is relatively new,” Churkina said.

Intentionally storing carbon in cities could be one approach to counter global warming, she added.

Churkina and colleagues pulled together previous evidence looking at various stores of organic carbon, which comes from living things, as well as from such as plants and animals, wood, dirt, and even garbage.

Cities, including both dense metropolises and sprawling suburbs, store about a tenth of all the carbon in U.S. ecosystems, the study estimated.

In total, U.S. cities contain about 20 billion tons of organic carbon, mostly in dirt, according to the new study.

Some of this carbon-rich topsoil is in parks and under lawns, but it’s also sealed underneath buildings and roads-a remnant of grasslands or forests that were there before development.

Of all this urban carbon, about three billion tons are locked up in human-made materials-two-thirds of it in garbage dumps, and the rest in building materials such as wood.

Many cities have already launched ambitious plans for turning gray to green, such as Los Angeles’ Million Trees LA project, which aims to plant a million trees in the Californian city over several years.

Trees take up CO2 and turn it into carbon in their trunks, branches, and leaves, so planting more trees helps counter some of the excess CO2 in the air.

Likewise trees also cool cities and reduce the need for air-conditioning, according to urban forest expert David Nowak of the U.S. Forest Service in Syracuse, New York.

By planting trees around buildings, he added, “you avoid about four times more CO2 emissions than the trees sequester.”

Study leader Churkina added, “people could (also) try to store more carbon in gardens by smart management of the land. The carbon storage in lawns is quite amazing.” (ANI)

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Human-like ‘E-tongue’ created

September 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Sept 2 (ANI): Scientists have created an “electronic tongue” that can digitally measure the taste of sweetness.

Under the leadership of Kenneth Suslick, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the revolutionary device, which makes use of a postage stamp-size piece of paper dotted with colored pigments, has been developed.

The study has appeared August 1 in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

“E-tongue” can identify with 100 percent accuracy the full sweep of natural and artificial sweet substances, including 14 common sweeteners, using easy-to-read color markers, reports National Geographic News.

Suslick’s team spent a decade developing colorimetric sensor arrays (PDF), where chemicals in each of the 16 to 36 micro dye spots reacted with sweet substances to produce color changes.

The colors tell not just which types of sweeteners are present, but also how much there is. (ANI)

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Beefed-up diets of Asia’s middle class may lead to chronic food shortages

August 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, August 30 (ANI): Scientists have said that the beefed-up diets of Asia’s expanding middle class could lead to chronic food shortages for the water-stressed region.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the threat was highlighted in a study by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which estimate that Asian demand for food and livestock fodder will double in 40 years.
Asia’s growing economy and appetite for meat will require a radical overhaul of farmland irrigation to feed a population expected to swell to 1.4 billion by 2050, scientists warned at Stockholm’s World Water Week recently.
At current crop yields, East Asia would need 47 percent more irrigated farmland and to find 70 percent more water, the study found.
South Asia would have to expand its irrigated crop areas by 30 percent and increase water use by 57 percent.
Given existing agriculture pressure on water resources and territory, that’s an impossible scenario, according to the study authors.

Scientists urge modernization of existing large-scale irrigation systems, most of which were installed in the 1970s and 1980s.
It’s estimated that India, the world’s largest consumer of underground water, has 19 million unregulated groundwater pumps.
Groundwater in northern India is receding by as much as a foot (0.3 meter) a year due to rampant water extraction, most of it for crop irrigation, according to a study.
More than 109 cubic kilometres of groundwater were drained from the region between 2002 and 2008, according to the satellite image-based study led by scientists with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
“Governments’ inability to regulate this practice is giving rise to scary scenarios of groundwater over-exploitation, which could lead to regional food crises and widespread social unrest,” said Tushaar Shah of IWMI.

As for China, the country’s per capita “water footprint” for food production has almost doubled since 1985, according to Junguo Liu of the Beijing Forestry University.
“A switch from traditional rice and noodles to a meatier diet is behind the change,” Liu said. “Changes in food consumption are the major cause of worsening water scarcity in China,” he added.
Total water requirements for food production in China are predicted to rise by 40 to 50 percent in the next 30 years, he further added.
“Where do you get such a big amount of water? It is a really big question and a big challenge,” he said.
“If other developing countries follow China toward a Western diet, the global water shortage becomes even more serious,” he added. (ANI)

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Cairo’s slums get an energy makeover

August 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, August 30 (ANI): Reports indicate that the slums of Cairo, Egypt’s largest city, have got an energy makeover, with solar panels sprouting on apartment rooftops, providing residents with clean power and water and a chance to directly improve their lives.

According to a report in National Geographic News, since 2003, the nonprofit Solar CITIES project has installed 34 solar-powered hot water systems and 5 biogas reactors in Cairo’s poor Coptic Christian and Islamic neighborhoods.

“Our program is unique, in that we’re implementing rural-type solutions in an urban environment,” said project leader Thomas Culhane, an urban planner and 2009 National Geographic emerging explorer.
“It’s the kind of stuff you would do in the Peace Corps in an African village, but we’re doing it right smack dab in the slums of a city,” he added.

Solar CITIES’ hot water systems are constructed from recycled materials and are uniquely tailored to the parts of a city where water and electricity availability are often sporadic.
“The problem with professional solar hot water systems is that they’re made for cities with continuous water,” Culhane said.

By contrast, Solar CITIES’s water heaters use a city’s water when it’s available but draw from a backup storage tank when it’s not.
The setup consists of an insulated rectangular box covered in clear glass or plastic on one side. Inside the box are copper tubes wrapped in sheets of aluminum, which are painted black.
Sunlight striking the darkened aluminum is converted to heat, which is then used to warm water flowing through the pipes.
The glass sheet on top of the box prevents the heat from being carried away by wind.
The water, which can reach temperatures of 176 degrees Fahrenheit (80 degrees Celsius), is then pumped into an insulated plastic barrel for storage.

The water, which remains warm long after sunset, can be connected to an apartment’s plumbing system.
Solar CITIES also installs biogas reactors, which are based on designs Culhane saw while working in India.
The reactors use microbes harvested from animal guts to break down food wastes into flammable gas that can be used for cooking and heating.

If necessary, the reactors can draw hot water from the solar water heaters to maintain the warm temperatures the bacteria need to survive.
By attaching a simple plastic tube to the reactors, gas can be piped down several stories for residents to use.
“In 24 hours, you’ve got 2 hours of cooking gas from yesterday’s cooking garbage,” Culhane said. (ANI)

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Dead Sea shrinking by 1 meter every year

August 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, August 27 (ANI): Reports indicate that the Dead Sea is still shrinking fast, with water levels continuing to drop at the rate of about 1 meter per year.

Praised far and wide for the reputed healing powers of its minerals and waters, the Dead Sea has been luring visitors for thousands of years.

But these days, tourists see a very different lake from the one that others would have witnessed a few decades ago.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the sea sits in the lowest place on earth, and for years, the water level was 1280 feet below sea level. However, in the last 40 years, it’s dropped more than 80 feet.

Today, the Dead Sea continues to drop at the rate of about 1 meter per year.

This dramatic shortage is particularly evident at Israel’s Ein Gedi Spa, on the southern shores of the Dead Sea.

“The beach was here, and now (it’s) far away. You can see it’s more than one kilometre from here. In 30 years, the beach (will have) disappeared,” said Alon Shachal, Ein Gedi Spa Manager.

The need to change the status quo and find a solution to the Dead Sea’s alarming shrinking has been a concern for years for ‘Friends of the Earth Middle East’, a non-governmental organization that brings together Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian environmentalists.

“After the ’60′s, we started to see a dramatic decrease in the surface area of the Dead Sea. And according to the different studies, in 50 years from now, at the same rate, which is 1 meter per year of drop in the surface level of the Dead Sea, means that this sea will not be the same. It will be more of a very small lake; not the same area that we have today,” said Iyad Aburdeieneh, Project Coordinator, Friends of the Earth Middle East Bethlehem.

According to Gidon Bromberg, from Friends of the Earth Middle East Tel Aviv, “The Dead Sea has had its taps closed from both ends. From the North, in fact here in front of us is where the Jordan River should be flowing to the Dead Sea, but the Jordan River basically doesn’t flow anymore.”

“Ninety-five per cent of its waters have been diverted by Israel, by Syria, by Jordan, so that what’s left in the Jordan River – a river holy to half of humanity – is little more than agriculture runoff, fish farm waste and, mostly, untreated sewage waters,” he said. (ANI)

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“Mars spectacular” event on August 27 a hoax, say astronomers

August 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, August 27 (ANI): Astronomers have confirmed that an email promising a “Mars spectacular” event on August 27, when the Red Planet will look as large as the full moon, is nothing but a hoax.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the anonymous message from an unknown part of the globe says that the red planet “will look as large as the full moon” in the night sky, and that “no one alive today will ever see this again.”

The claim has been bombarding people’s inboxes worldwide every summer for five years.

Today, the Mars hoax has grown into a kind of cyber legend-one that astronomers are still struggling to debunk.

“The possibility of seeing Mars as large as the moon strikes the imagination,” said Marc Jobin, staff astronomer at the Montreal Planetarium in Quebec.

“The sad reality is that a lot of people have little comprehension of astronomy and are unable to call the hoax,” he added.

But, there is a thread of truth that inspired the prank several years ago.

Planets are not on perfectly circular orbits, and during their elliptical paths around the sun, planets can vary in their exact distances to each other over time.

On August 27, 2003, Mars made a historically tight approach to Earth, coming about 56 million kilometers away.

Such a near pass hadn’t happened in nearly 60,000 years, and it won’t happen again until August 28, 2287.

In 2003, planetariums had sent out notices alerting stargazers of the real astronomical event.

“At the time, through the telescope, Mars looked as large as the full moon would with the naked eye,” explained Geza Gyuk, astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois.

Through a backyard telescope with a high-power eyepiece, viewers could even make out many surface features on Mars’s disk.

With the naked eye, Mars still appeared as nothing more than a brilliant orange-colored star in the sky.

Still, an email hoax was born.

If the red planet actually did appear as huge as purported in the Mars hoax email, the planet would be just 750,000 kilometers from Earth, or about twice as far away as the moon.

According to Jobin, at that distance, life on Earth would likely be doomed.

Given the interplay of gravity between the planets and the sun, a much closer Mars “would have extreme consequences on the shape of the Earth’s orbit, with our planet swinging much closer and much farther away from the sun,” he said. (ANI)

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Female fruit flies prefer keeping sex short to get a reproductive boost

August 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, August 22 (ANI): A new study has shown that female fruit flies prefer keeping sex short and sweet because they get a reproductive boost from shorter intercourse.

Since males like sex to last longer, a fight ensues.

“After about a minute and a half (of mating), the female begins kicking and struggling,” National Geographic News quoted Kirsten Klappert, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, as having written in the study report.

The researcher notes that when mating lasts longer, female flies have less time to mate again with a different male, if they do so at all.

Although that is good for males flies, as it means that their sperm have less competition, it can be disastrous for females.

“Many male Drosophila montana are infertile, so if you only mate with one you have a high risk of no offspring at all,” Klappert said.

During the study, Klappert’s team paired live males with dead females to see how much control female flies have over mating length.

The dead insects were propped up to convince the males that they were still alive, and ready for sex, said the researchers.

The team observed that male flies’ sex with the dead insects lasted 1.5 times longer than it did with live females.

This finding does attain significance because scientists at other institutions believe that humans can relate to the female fruit fly’s desires.

Rhonda Snook, a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield in England who studies sexual selection and reproductive behaviour in fruit flies, said: “I don’t know you could say human females want longer copulation, per se. It’s really the foreplay, not the actual act of copulation. In the insects, prior to that, there’s courtship going on, and that’s like foreplay in humans.”

A research article describing Klappert’s study has been published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. (ANI)

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Giant robotic cages may one day roam the seas as future fish farms

August 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, August 19 (ANI): If scientists have their way, giant robotic cages may one day roam the seas as future fish farms, which could help produce greener, healthier, and more numerous fish.

According to a report in National Geographic News, scientists propose that in the future, giant, autonomous fish farms may whir through the open ocean, mimicking the movements of wild schools or even allowing fish to forage “free range” before capturing them once again.

Such motorized cages could help produce greener, healthier, and more numerous fish, just when humans need them the most.

The world’s growing population is devouring seafood as quickly as it can be caught and has seriously depleted the world’s wild fish stocks, warn experts.

Traditional fish farms typically consist of cages submerged in shallow, calm waters near shore, where they are protected from the weather and easily accessible for feeding and maintenance.

But, raising fish in such close quarters can contribute to the spread of disease among the animals, and wastes may foul the waters.

Cages must be moved to keep the waters clean and the fish healthy.

Deepwater cages offer cleaner, more freely circulating ocean water and natural food, which can yield tastier fish.

But, the deep-sea cages must be built to withstand the rigors of the deep ocean. And because they are harder for humans to access, “smarter,” self-sufficient cages could be key.

That’s one reason that Cliff Goudey, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Offshore Aquaculture Engineering Center, is building cages that can move under their own power.

Goudey has equipped an Aquapod cage, produced by Maine-based Ocean Farm Technologies, with a pair of 2.4-meter (8-foot) diameter propellers, which can be steered easily by controllers on a boat to which the cage is tethered.

Aquapods are composed of triangular panels covered with vinyl-coated, galvanized steel netting and come in sizes from 8 to 28 meters in diameter (26 to 92 feet in diameter).

Goudey’s technology gives fish farmers a way to rotate cage locations without towing cages behind boats.

Someday such automated cages could herald an entirely new form of fish farming.

They might be turned loose to mimic natural systems by following carefully chosen ocean currents.

The robotic fish farms could help lead to larger, healthier crops of farmed fish far from crowded coastal areas, where farmed fish both suffer from poor water quality and, by producing waste, add to water woes.

Cages might even generate their own electricity by harnessing solar energy, wave energy, or other forms of renewable power. (ANI)

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First planet that orbits “backward” around its star found by scientists

August 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, August 18 (ANI): Scientists have found the first planet that orbits “backward” around its star, an eccentricity likely caused by a collision with a larger neighbor early in its life.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the planet, dubbed WASP-17b, orbits a star about a thousand light-years away.

In addition to its exceptionally low density, the planet is one of the largest yet found.

“When I first saw that this thing might have a radius twice that of Jupiter, I was really astounded,” said David Anderson of Keele University, a member of the UK-based Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) consortium.

WASP-17b probably got so big because of its unusual orbit, Anderson and colleagues said in a new paper describing the find.

The planet is also the first found to orbit “backward” around its star, an eccentricity likely caused by a collision with a larger neighbor early in WASP-17b’s life.

That planetary crash may have nudged WASP-17b into an elongated orbit, which led to variations in the gravitational pull exerted on the planet by its host star, according to Anderson.

Changes in the star’s pull would have generated powerful tidal forces, which in turn would have created friction that got dissipated as heat.

The planet’s heated gases would have then expanded, causing the world to bloat. (ANI)

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‘Spiderbots’ inside Mount St Helens may detect impending volcanic eruption

August 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, August 15 (ANI): NASA scientists have placed about a dozen monitoring ‘spiderbots’ inside the volcanic crater in Mount St Helens in the US, which are high-tech devices that can detect an impending eruption.

Mount St. Helens is one of the most active volcanoes in the US. Its most devastating eruption in 1980, and the most recent seen here in 2004.

According to a report in National Geographic News, about a dozen so-called Spiders were placed on Mount St. Helens in July.

The pods, designed to go where no human can, were lowered by helicopter inside and around the volcano center.

“We can detect the differences between snow falling off of a branch, an animal running by, wind, a thunderstorm and the very subtle signatures of magma moving at depth, perhaps even kilometers beneath the surface of the earth,” said Steve Chien, Principal Scientist, Autonomous Systems, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory .

The pods form a virtual wireless network and communicate with each other and a NASA satellite called Earth Observing-1, or EO-1.

Each pod contains a seismometer, a GPS receiver, an infrared sounder to sense explosions, and a lightning detector.

According to Chien, “They have the ability to recognize different kinds of events such as seismic events, earthquakes, that are basically indications that something is happening at the volcano.”

“In the context of volcano monitoring, we want to have the best educated guess to make decisions that will save life and properties,” said Sharon Kedar, Geophysicist, NASA /Jet Propulsion Laboratoy.

NASA would like to someday use this same technology on the surface of Mars to study atmospheric events like dust storms, which are mini-tornadoes, as well as seismic activity. (ANI)

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Scientists discover pot-bellied dino that had claws like ‘Wolverine’

July 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, July 16 (ANI): Scientists have discovered the most complete skeleton of a type of pot-bellied dinosaur, a therizinosaur, in southern Utah, US, which had claws like that of the fictional ‘X-Men’ character ‘Wolverine’.

According to a report in National Geographic News, dubbed Nothronychus graffami, the 13-foot-tall (4-meter-tall) therizinosaur lived about 92.5 million years ago in what is present-day Utah.

When alive, the animal would have sported a beaked mouth and forelimbs tipped with 9 inch- (22 cm)-long sickle claws.

In life, sheathed in hornlike keratin, the talons would have each been about a foot (30 centimeters) long, or about as long as the dinosaur’s head.

In addition to its imposing claws, which are a therizinosaur trademark, the newfound dinosaur had a less-than-fearsome potbelly, a birdlike beak, stumpy legs, and a short tail.

Its stumpy legs, large gut and other features suggest the lumbering giant scarfed down plants rather than chasing after meaty prey.

Because these facts suggest that the animal was a plant-eater, scientists are puzzled about the use of the killer claws for the dinosaur.

“We really don’t know,” said study team member Lindsay Zanno of the Field Museum in Chicago.

“There are some things we can rule out, such as digging. Other than that, the claws may have been used for defense, to forage for plants, or to attract mates,” she added. (ANI)

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Primates evolved larger brains to hop between trees

July 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, July 1 (ANI): A new study, in which scientists scanned a 54-million-year-old skull roughly the size of a walnut, has suggested that primates such as lemurs, monkeys, apes, and humans might have evolved larger brains as a result of the need to move quickly from tree to tree.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the 1.5-inch-long (4-centimeter-long) skull belongs to the long-gone Ignacius graybullianus, described as a cousin of our earliest ancestors, which arose less than ten million years after the dinosaurs vanished.

Discovered in Wyoming roughly 25 years ago, the fossil “is the most complete early primate skull known,” said study co-author Jonathan Bloch, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Florida.

Due to its completeness and age, the skull gives us the clearest idea yet what early primates were like, according to the researchers.

After taking more than 1,200 detailed X-ray images of the skull, researchers combined them to help create a 3-D model of Ignacius’ brain.

The model showed a brain just one-half to two-thirds the size of the smallest modern primate brain, the study said.

It seems that such a small brain was enough for tree dwelling and fruit seeking.

Ignacius’ teeth, for example, suggest it had a fruit diet, while the animal’s claws and flexible joints hint at tree dwelling.

The finding therefore reopens the question of what triggered the evolution of large brains in later primate species, if not branch living or fruit eating?

One activity Ignacius seems unsuited for is jumping from tree to tree, as opposed to simply climbing branches.

In primates, this type of leaping generally requires long hind limbs, large inner-ear organs linked to balance-and strong visual processing.

Instead of a robust center of vision, Ignacius’ brain had large lobes dedicated to smelling, the model suggests.

The prehistoric primate “was mostly a nose-first animal that relied on smell instead of sight, unlike modern primates, which have far more developed visual processing areas,” explained lead study author Mary Silcox, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Winnipeg.

“For primates, stepping up vision would have been key for leaping safely,” she surmised.

But, to do that, the brain had to be larger, which eventually happened as a result of evolution. (ANI)

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Duckbilled dino had skin like birds and crocodiles

July 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, July 1 (ANI): A new study of a remarkably preserved fossil of a duckbilled dinosaur has revealed that the prehistoric reptile had skin like that of birds and crocodiles.

According to a report in National Geographic News, advanced imaging and chemical techniques revealed that the 66-million-year-old “mummified” duckbilled dinosaur had two layers of skin, as do modern vertebrates, including humans.

Such a discovery was possible because the dinosaur’s skin fossilized before bacteria had a chance to eat up the tissue.

It is “absolutely amazing to be able to identify organic molecules from soft tissue that belonged to a beast that died over 66 million years ago,” said excavation leader Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Britain’s University of Manchester. “It’s certainly in my top ten all-time (most significant) fossils,” he added.

Tyler Lyson, a teenager at the time, discovered Dakota, as the fossil was later dubbed, in 1999 on his family’s North Dakota property.

No one knows how the hippo-size animal died. But, scientists do know that the body was probably buried rapidly.

The resulting low-oxygen environment and the apparent lack of disturbance to the site made Dakota a “world-class dinosaur” fossil, according to the new study.

With electron microscopes and x-rays, Manning discovered that Dakota had cell-like structures indicative of two-ply skin: a thin surface layer plus an underlying layer of dense connective tissues.

That’s just like skin of modern birds and reptiles, which scientists believe are closely related to duckbilled dinosaurs.

Protein-recovery techniques used on the skin and a claw detected amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.

Proteins themselves, complex molecules that degrade easily over time, were not found, however.

But, Manning did identify molecules that would have broken down proteins in Dakota’s body.

That’s like finding fragments of a broken vase instead of the intact vase, explained Tom Holtz, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland.

“What’s really nice about the new research is this protein-recovery strategy. It’s the first time the skin of such a big plant-eating dinosaur has been analyzed so deeply,” said Holtz.

“That Dakota’s skin resembles modern vertebrate skin is not surprising but nonetheless comforting,” he added.

Understanding the exact environments that froze Dakota in time may help paleontologists better target future fossil hunts, according to lead study author Manning. (ANI)

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Mississippi River Delta may drown by 2100

June 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, June 30 (ANI): A new research has predicted that the Mississippi River Delta in the US would drown by the year 2100.

“There’s just not enough sediment to sustain the delta plain,” study author Michael Blum of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, told National Geographic News.

Deltas are coastal landmasses created from a river’s sediment deposits as the water flows out to sea. The Mississippi River’s delta plain, for example, includes the lacy “toe” of southern Louisiana.

All deltas are degrading to some extent, as their sediment settles and sinks.

Today, sediments collected along the Mississippi cover about 23,360 square miles (60,500 square kilometers) ranging in thickness from less than 33 feet (10 meters) upstream near Memphis, Tennessee, to about 328 feet (100 meters) in the delta at the tip of southern Louisiana.

The drainage basin of the roughly 2,350-mile-long (3,782-kilometer-long) river, however, includes about 40,000 dams and levees built over the past century.

These structures control flooding and improve navigation, but they also trap sediment or funnel it completely through to the sea.

Previous studies suggested that dams and reservoirs built since 1950 have trapped as much as 70 percent of the river’s natural amount of sediment.

With less material feeding it, the delta plain has been experiencing erosion.

But, even without the dams and levees, the amount of sediment flowing downriver would no longer be enough to sustain the delta because of rising seas, according to the researchers.

The researchers base their conclusions on estimated delta levels over the past 12,000 years, which show significant changes more than 7,000 years ago, when meltwater from the last ice age quickly filled the oceans.

The Mississippi Delta plain retreated inland at that point, and it was only after sea level rise had slowed considerably that the delta again grew seaward.

Current sea level rise, however, may be three times faster than it was the last time the delta was able to grow.

According to the researchers, with the added threat of rapid sea-level rise, sustaining the current extent of the delta plain would require 18 to 24 billion tons of sediment, which is way more than the entire Mississippi River currently carries.

The team therefore estimates that as much as 5,200 square miles (13,500 square kilometers) of delta land could disappear by 2100. (ANI)

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