A theory long on the fringes of petroleum science gained some support from new research this week, but it is probably not enough to launch the concept into the mainstream.No evidence is enough.
ScienceDaily (July 30, 2009) — A new way of detecting how fast large gaseous planets are rotating suggests Saturn’s day lasts 10 hours, 34 minutes and 13 seconds – over five minutes shorter than previous estimates that were based on the planet’s magnetic fields.
The research, published in the journal Nature on July 30, was carried out by an international team led by scientists from Oxford University and the University of Louisville (USA).
ScienceDaily (July 27, 2009) — Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. ‘Transparent aluminium’ previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.
In the journal Nature Physics an international team, led by Oxford University scientists, report that a short pulse from the FLASH laser ‘knocked out’ a core electron from every aluminium atom in a sample without disrupting the metal’s crystalline structure. This turned the aluminium nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.
''What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. ‘Transparent aluminium is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.’
The discovery was made possible with the development of a new source of radiation that is ten billion times brighter than any synchrotron in the world (such as the UK’s Diamond Light Source). The FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany, produces extremely brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city.
ScienceDaily (July 27, 2009) — The oil and gas that fuels our homes and cars started out as living organisms that died, were compressed, and heated under heavy layers of sediments in the Earth's crust. Scientists have debated for years whether some of these hydrocarbons could also have been created deeper in the Earth and formed without organic matter. Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under the pressure-temperature conditions of the upper mantle —the layer of Earth under the crust and on top of the core.How original...pfff... big ass rolleyes.
The research was conducted by scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues from Russia and Sweden, and is published in the July 26, advanced online issue of Nature Geoscience.
ScienceDaily (July 25, 2009) — The checkout and calibration of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been interrupted to aim the recently refurbished observatory at a new expanding spot on the giant planet Jupiter. The spot, caused by the impact of a comet or an asteroid, is changing from day to day in the planet’s cloud tops.I love how the article says that worlds in collision are "new science" even though Democritus and Plato said so in the 4th century B.C.
For the past several days the world's largest telescopes have been trained on Jupiter. Not to miss the potentially new science in the unfolding drama 580 million kilometres away, Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, allocated discretionary time to a team of astronomers led by Heidi Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
ScienceDaily (July 24, 2009) — Norwegian researchers have shown that the auroras in the Northern and the Southern hemispheres can be totally asymmetric. These findings contradict the commonly made assumption of aurora being mirror images of each other.
The study was performed by PhD student Karl Magnus Laundal and professor Nikolai Østgaard at the Institute of Physics and Technology at the University of Bergen.
"The aurora is produced due to collisions between the Earth’s atmosphere and electrically charged particles streaming along the Earth’s geomagnetic field lines. – Since these processes occur above the two hemispheres, both the Northern and the Southern light are created. So far researchers have assumed that these auroras are mirror images of each other, but our findings show that this is not always the case," professor Nikolai Østgaard says.
The researchers at the University of Bergen have used data from the two NASA-satellites IMAGE and Polar to examine the Northern and the Southern light. In the Nature letter they present several possible explanations to the unexpected result.
"The most plausible explanation involves electrical currents along the magnetic field lines. Differences in the solar exposure may lead to currents between the two hemispheres, explaining why the Northern and the Southern light are not identical," PhD student Karl Magnus Laundal says.
ScienceDaily (July 22, 2009) — The wound that ultimately killed a Neandertal man between 50,000 and 75,000 years [ago] was most likely caused by a thrown spear, the kind modern humans used but Neandertals did not, according to Duke University-led research.
"What we've got is a rib injury, with any number of scenarios that could explain it," said Steven Churchill, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke. "We're not suggesting there was a blitzkrieg, with modern humans marching across the land and executing the Neandertals. I want to say that loud and clear."
But Churchill's analysis indicates the wound was from a thrown spear, and it appears that modern humans had a thrown-weapons technology and Neandertals didn't. "We think the best explanation for this injury is a projectile weapon, and given who had those and who didn't that implies at least one act of inter-species aggression."
Churchill is the first author of a new report now posted online in the Journal of Human Evolution on the long-ago incident in what is now Iraq. He and four other investigators used a specially calibrated crossbow, copies of ancient stone points and numerous animal carcasses to make their deductions.
Neandertals, stoutly-built and human-like, lived at the same time and in the same areas as some modern humans before going extinct. Anthropologists have been puzzling over Neandertal's fate for many years, proposing that perhaps they inter-bred with modern humans, failed to compete for food or resources, or were possibly hunted to extinction by the humans.
While narrowing the range of possible causes for the Iraqi Neandertal's wound, and raising the possibility of an encounter between humans and a now-extinct close cousin, the research does not definitively conclude who did it, or why.
The victim was one of nine Neandertals discovered between 1953 and 1960 in a cave in northeastern Iraq's Zagros Mountains. Now called "Shanidar 3," he was a 40- to 50-year-old male with signs of arthritis and a sharp, deep slice in his left ninth rib.
The wounded Neandertal's rib had apparently started healing before he died. Comparing the wound to medical records from the American Civil War, a time before modern antibiotics, suggested to the researchers that he died within weeks of the injury, perhaps due to associated lung damage from a stabbing or piercing wound.
"People have been speculating about that rib injury for going on 50 years now," Churchill said. "Some said it was interpersonal violence. Others said it could have been an accident. Did it involve only Neandertals? Now we, for the first time, have brought some experimental evidence to bear on these questions."
While scientists have been unable to precisely date the remains, Shanidar 3 could have lived and died as recently as 50,000 years ago. If so, he could have encountered modern humans who were just returning to the area then after a 30,000-year hiatus.
Archaeological evidence also suggests that by 50,000 years ago humans, but not their Neandertal cousins, had developed projectile hunting weapons, Churchill said. They used spear throwers, detachable handles that connected with darts and spears to effectively lengthen a hurler's arm and give the missiles a power boost.
ScienceDaily (July 21, 2009) — Scientists have found evidence that another object has bombarded Jupiter, exactly 15 years after the first impacts by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.
Following up on a tip by an amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley of Australia, that a new dark "scar" had suddenly appeared on Jupiter, this morning between 3 and 9 a.m. PDT (6 a.m. and noon EDT) scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, gathered evidence indicating an impact.
ScienceDaily (July 21, 2009) — A 17-member team has found what may be the smoking gun of a much-debated proposal that a cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago ripped through North America and drove multiple species into extinction.
In a paper appearing online ahead of regular publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Oregon archaeologist Douglas J. Kennett and colleagues from nine institutions and three private research companies report the presence of shock-synthesized hexagonal diamonds in 12,900-year-old sediments on the Northern Channel Islands off the southern California coast.
These tiny diamonds and diamond clusters were buried deeply below four meters of sediment. They date to the end of Clovis -- a Paleoindian culture long thought to be North America's first human inhabitants. The nano-sized diamonds were pulled from Arlington Canyon on the island of Santa Rosa that had once been joined with three other Northern Channel Islands in a landmass known as Santarosae.
The diamonds were found in association with soot, which forms in extremely hot fires, and they suggest associated regional wildfires, based on nearby environmental records.
Such soot and diamonds are rare in the geological record. They were found in sediment dating to massive asteroid impacts 65 million years ago in a layer widely known as the K-T Boundary. The thin layer of iridium-and-quartz-rich sediment dates to the transition of the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, which mark the end of the Mesozoic Era and the beginning of the Cenozoic Era.
"The type of diamond we have found -- Lonsdaleite -- is a shock-synthesized mineral defined by its hexagonal crystalline structure. It forms under very high temperatures and pressures consistent with a cosmic impact," Kennett said. "These diamonds have only been found thus far in meteorites and impact craters on Earth and appear to be the strongest indicator yet of a significant cosmic impact [during Clovis]."
The age of this event also matches the extinction of the pygmy mammoth on the Northern Channel Islands, as well as numerous other North American mammals, including the horse, which Europeans later reintroduced. In all, an estimated 35 mammal and 19 bird genera became extinct near the end of the Pleistocene with some of them occurring very close in time to the proposed cosmic impact, first reported in October 2007 in PNAS.
In the Jan. 2, 2009, issue of the journal Science, a team led by Kennett reported the discovery of billions of nanometer-sized diamonds concentrated in sediments -- weighing from about 10 to 2,700 parts per billion -- in six North American locations.
"This site, this layer with hexagonal diamonds, is also associated with other types of diamonds and with dramatic environmental changes and wildfires," said James Kennett, paleoceanographer and professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
"There was a major event 12,900 years ago," he said. "It is hard to explain this assemblage of materials without a cosmic impact event and associated extensive wildfires. This hypothesis fits with the abrupt cooling of the atmosphere as shown in the record of ocean drilling of the Santa Barbara Channel. The cooling resulted when dust from the high-pressure, high-temperature, multiple impacts was lofted into the atmosphere, causing a dramatic drop in solar radiation."
The hexagonal diamonds from Arlington Canyon were analyzed at the UO's Lorry I. Lokey Laboratories, a world-class nanotechnology facility built deep in bedrock to allow for sensitive microscopy and other high-tech analyses of materials. The analyses were done in collaboration with FEI, a Hillsboro, Ore., company that distributes the high-resolution Titan microscope used to characterize the hexagonal diamonds in this study.
Transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopes were used in the extensive analyses of the sediment that contained clusters of Lonsdaleite ranging in size from 20 to 1,800 nanometers. These diamonds were inside or attached to carbon particles found in the sediments.
These findings are inconsistent with the alternative and already hotly debated theory that overhunting by Clovis people led to the rapid extinction of large mammals at the end of the ice age, the research team argues in the PNAS paper. An alternative theory has held that climate change was to blame for these mass extinctions. The cosmic-event theory suggests that rapid climate change at this time was possibly triggered by a series of small and widely dispersed comet strikes across much of North America.
The National Science Foundation provided primary funding for the research. Additional funding was provided by way of Richard A. Bray and Philip H. Knight faculty fellowships of the University of Oregon, respectively, to Kennett and UO colleague Jon M. Erlandson, a co-author and director of the UO's Museum of Natural and Cultural History.
The 17 co-authors on the PNAS paper are Douglas Kennett, Erlandson and Brendan J. Culleton, all of the University of Oregon; James P. Kennett of UC Santa Barbara; Allen West of GeoScience Consulting in Arizona; G. James West of the University of California, Davis; Ted E. Bunch and James H. Wittke, both of Northern Arizona University; Shane S. Que Hee of the University of California, Los Angeles; John R. Johnson of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History; Chris Mercer of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and National Institute of Materials Science in Japan; Feng Shen of the FEI Co.; Thomas W. Stafford of Stafford Research Inc. of Colorado; Adrienne Stich and Wendy S. Wolbach, both of DePaul University in Chicago; and James C. Weaver of the University of California, Riverside.
Deep within the Sun, 93 million miles away, roiling plasma rises and bursts through the solar atmosphere, sometimes thrusting highly charged protons and electrons our way. When this so-called solar wind arrives near Earth, it energizes protons and electrons trapped in the planet’s magnetic field.
These charged particles then travel down magnetic field lines, like beads slipping along a string, into Earth’s upper atmosphere near the poles. There the particles in turn excite atoms and molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, and other atmospheric gases. As these atoms relax back down into their normal state, they release the excess energy as visible light, forming an aurora oval loosely centered on the magnetic pole.
During an aurora, vivid arcs, curls, waves and bands of green, red, and sometimes blue dance across the sky for minutes or hours, peaking near midnight — all between 60 and 600 miles above the ground.
Many people think auroras are rare events, but there’s almost always an aurora of some size in the sky near the poles. Seeing one is another matter.
Auroras are most often visible in regions bordering the Arctic Circle: Canada, Alaska, northern Greenland, the Scandinavian coast, and Siberia. In the south, you need to be visiting Antarctica to see an aurora frequently. But the larger the solar storm reaching Earth’s upper atmosphere, the farther the aurora extends from the poles. Residents of New England or southern Chile might see an aurora every few years. If you live in Florida or Italy, you’d be lucky to see an aurora once in your lifetime.
Corn as we know it today would not exist if it weren't for the humans that cultivated and developed it. It is a human invention, a plant that does not exist naturally in the wild. It can only survive if planted and protected by humans.The evidence shows that corn was genetically engineered, perhaps by man, over 80,000 years ago.
Scientists believe people living in central Mexico developed corn at least 7000 years ago. It was started from a wild grass called teosinte. Teosinte looked very different from our corn today.
The oldest known corn pollen is scarcely distinguishable from modern corn pollen, judging by an 80,000-year-old fossil found 200 feet below Mexico City.Popcorn Universe: 10,000 years before movies and theaters, there was popcorn.
Archaeologists have found 80,000-year-old corn pollen below Mexico City.Yet more confirmation of Pre-Clovis Atlantean Civilization and the Myth of the Bering Sea Land Bridge migration.
Parapsychological research generally tends to suggest some kind of dualist solution to the mind/body question. But parapsychological research is sometimes viewed with suspicion by scientists involved in consciousness research. One is left with the impression that such work is for marginal individuals, outside the mainstream of science. This impression may, however, be based on an incomplete understanding of the history of science. For example, not many physicists know that Nobel Laureates Pierre and Marie Curie were involved in parapsychological research. They participated with many other noted French scientists in investigating paranormal phenomena that occurred in the presence of the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino. In the works of Charles Richet (Nobel laureate physiologists) and others, we get an intriguing picture of Marie Curie controlling the medium while her husband Pierre measured the movement of objects in the room. Pierre Curie came to the conclusion that the phenomena were genuine. Richet himself conducted extensive research into the paranormal, as did Alfred Russell Wallace, cofounder with Darwin of the theory of evolution by natural selection, and Sir William Crookes, Nobel Laureate in physics and President of the Royal Society. And they were not alone. Indeed, from the time of Newton to the present, some of the best minds in science have actively investigated paranormal phenomena and come to conclusions tending to suggest that consciousness cannot be reduced to brain functions or derived from biochemistry. ...
Currently, dualist solutions to the brain/consciousness question are distinctly unpopular in mainstream scientific circles. Most research efforts are dedicated to exploring the “neural correlates of consciousness,” the brain circuitry that supposedly produces consciousness. The unremitting reductionism of most consciousness research does not interfere with my personal beliefs in Krishna consciousness, nor with my practice of Hare Krishna mantra meditation, inspired by my years of study of the ancient Sanskrit writings of India, as I have received them from my guru Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. But I am concerned that this almost unquestioned reductionism prevents many in the world of science from appreciating the true dimensions and characteristics of consciousness, which is something absolute, and not derivable from biochemistry or biophysics. Of course, even today there are researchers who pursue investigations suggesting consciousness is something that cannot be understood by the ordinary laws of physics and chemistry. These investigations come under the general heading of the “paranormal.” Most paranormal researchers concern themselves with micro-psychokinetic effects (statistically significant intentionally induced variations in the output of random number generators) and mico-esp events (statistically significant identifications of cards or pictures through remote vision). I find such work of considerable value, but I find even more value in the account of famous scientists of the past who recorded instances of macro-psychokinetic and esp events. These accounts, if true, in my opinion, provide stronger and more direct evidence for the existence of a conscious self, distinct from matter, than statistical summations of accounts of micro-effects.
Many modern scientists know that Sir Isaac Newton, the founding father of modern science, wrote extensively on alchemy and esoteric spiritual topics. But the paranormal research of later figures in science are less well known in scientific circles. Indeed, many suppose that research into the paranormal has been the special province of those on the outermost fringes of normal science. This may be true today, but it has not always been so. Some of the greatest minds of modern science have busied themselves with problems that now for many seem taboo. I shall now give a few of the many examples that could be given.
Alfred Russell Wallace was cofounder, with Charles Darwin, of the theory of evolution by natural selection. He conducted decades of research into spiritualistic phenomena, sometimes in the company of Sir William Crookes. Wallace wrotee: "I ought to state that for twenty-five years I had been an utter skeptic as to the existence of any preter-human or super-human intelligences, and that I never for a moment contemplated the possibility that the marvels related by Spiritualists could be literally true. If I have now changed my opinion, it is simply by the force of evidence.”
Sir William Crookes received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1911, for his discovery of the element thallium. Crookes was also elected President of the Royal Society, England’s most prestigious scientific body. He gave this account of a séance with D.D. Home (May 22, 1871), attended by himself and Wallace: "The table now rose completely off the ground several times whilst the gentlemen present took a candle, and kneeling down deliberately examined the position of Mr. Home's feet and knees, and saw the three feet of the [3-footed] table quite off the ground. This was repeated, until each observer expressed himself satisfied that the levitation was not produced by mechanical means on the part of the medium or any one else present."
Wallace and Crookes had both seen an accordion play while Home held it with one hand, away from the keyboard. Later, Crookes designed an experiment to further test this phenomenon. To insure that Home was not using sleight of hand, Crookes made a cage, which rested under a table. An accordion was placed in the cage, and Home was allowed to insert one hand into the cage to grasp one end of the instrument. Home was to keep his other hand on the top of the table. This arrangement prevented Home from using his free hand to manipulate the instrument. To guard against a trick accordion, Crookes supplied a brand new one never seen by Home. Crookes reported that even with this arrangement the accordion played as usual.Then Home removed his hand from the cage. Crookes stated: “I and two of the others present saw the accordion distinctly floating about inside the cage with no visible support.” Wallace reported a similar experience.
Both Wallace and Crookes reported seeing Home levitate. Crookes reported: “The best cases of Home's levitation I witnessed in my own house. On one occasion, he went to a clear part of the room, and, after standing quietly for a minute, told us he was rising. I saw him slowly rise up with a continuous gliding movement and remain about six inches off the ground for several seconds, when he slowly descended. On this occasion no one moved from their places. On another occasion I was invited to come to him, when he rose 18 inches off the ground, and I passed my hands under his feet, round him, and over his head, when he was in the air.” Crookes reported many other instances of Home levitating.
Every student of physics knows the story of the Curies. Their investigations of radioactivity earned them the Nobel Prize 1n 1903 and helped set physics on its modern course. But hardly anyone knows that they were heavily involved in psychical research. Along with Dr. Charles Richet, and other European scientists of the early twentieth century, they participated in investigations of the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino.
Eusapia was born in Italy in 1854, and her psychic abilities were manifested early in life. By the late nineteenth century, she was the object of study for many of Europe’s leading scientists. In 1905, she came to Paris, where Pierre and Marie Curie were among those who investigated her.
Pierre Curie, letter to Georges Gouy, July 24, 1905: “We had at the Psychology Society a few séances with the medium Eusapia Palladino. It was very interesting, and truly those phenomena that we have witnessed seemed to us to not be some magical tricks --a table lifted four feet above the floor, movements of objects, feelings of hands that pinched you or carressed you, apparitions of light. All this in a room arranged by us, with a small number of spectators all well known and without the presence of a possible accomplice. The only possible cheating would be an extraordinary ability of the medium as a magician. But how to explain the different phenomena when we are holding her hands and legs, and the lighting of the room is sufficient to see everything going on?”
In another letter to Gouy (April 14, 1906), Curie wrote: “We had a few new séances with Eusapia … those phenomena exist for real, and I can’t doubt it any more. It is unbelievable but it is thus, and it is impossible to negate it after the séances that we had in conditions of perfect monitoring.”
Charles Richet, who won the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1913, carried out decades of research into psychical phenomena. He participated with the Curies in the investigations of Eusapia Palladino. Here is one of his accounts of a séance:
“It took place at the Psychological Institute at Paris. There were present only Mme. Curie, Mme. X., a Polish friend of hers, and P. Courtier, the secretary of the Institute. Mme. Curie was on Eusapia’s left, myself on her right, Mme. X, a little farther off, taking notes, and M. Courtier still farther, at the end of the table. Courtier had arranged a double curtain behind Eusapia; the light was weak but sufficient. One the table Mme. Curie’s hand holding Eusapia’s could be distinctly seen, likewise mine also holding the right hand. . . We saw the curtain swell out as if pushed by some large object. . . I asked to touch it . . . I felt the resistance and seized a real hand which I took in mine. Even through the curtain I could feel the fingers … I held it firmly and counted twenty-nine seconds, during all which time I had leisure to observe both of Eusapia’s hands on the table, to ask Mme. Curie if she was sure of her control . . . After the twenty-nine seconds I said, ‘I want something more, I want uno anello (a ring).’ At once the hand made me feel a ring . . . It seems hard to imagine a more convincing experiment . . . In this case there was not only the materialization of a hand, but also of a ring.”
Camille Flammarion (1842-1925), founder of the French Astronomical Society, carried out extensive research into clairvoyance and apparitions. Flammarion concluded: “All these observations prove that a human being does not consist only of a body that is visible, tangible . . . it consists, likewise, of a psychic element that is imponderable, gifted with special, intrinsic faculties, capable of functioning apart from the physical organism and of manifesting itself at a distance with the aid of forces as to the nature of which we are still ignorant.”
Lord John William Strutt Rayleigh (1842-1919) received the 1904 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of argon. Rayleigh was attracted to psychical research by the writings of Sir William Crookes. He was cautious in drawing conclusions, but he never disavowed any of the positive experiences he recorded. Rayleigh accepted the presidency of the Society for Psychical Research in 1919. In his presidential address he said, “I have never felt any doubt as to the importance of the work carried on by the Society . . . Our goal is the truth, whatever it may turn out to be, and our efforts to attain it should have the sympathy of all, and I would add especially of scientific men.”
With Charles Richet, Oliver J. Lodge, a famous English physicist, participated in experiments with Eusapia Palladino and was convinced her phenomena, in this case, were real. During the First World War, his son Raymond was killed on the battlefield. Afterwards, Lodge claimed he was receiving verifiable communications from him through mediums. Lodge wrote: “I have made no secret of my conviction, not merely that personality persists, but that its continued existence is more entwined with the life of every day than has been generally imagined . . . and that methods of intercommunication across what has seemed to be a gulf can be set going in response to the urgent demand of affection.”
The testimony of such scientists, noted for their their skill in experimental design and observation, when taken in combination with modern parapsychological research, provides good reason to suppose that there is more to the human organism than the physical body visible to our eyes. It would appear that a complete picture of the human being must also take into account subtle mental energies and a conscious self distinct from the body. When embodied the conscious self can make use of subtle mental energies to manipulate matter in ways transcending the normal laws of physics. And when detached from the body, the same self can apparently make use of the same subtle mental energies to communicate with selves still embodied.
ScienceDaily (July 13, 2009) — Freshwater fish are an important part of the diet of many peoples around the world, but it has been unclear when fish became an important part of the year-round diet for early humans.
A new study by an international team of researchers, including Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shows it may have happened in China as far back as 40,000 years ago.
Chemical analysis of the protein collagen, using ratios of the isotopes of nitrogen and sulfur in particular, can show whether such fish consumption was an occasional treat or a regular food item.
The isotopic analysis of a bone from one of the earliest modern humans in Asia, the 40,000 year old skeleton from Tianyuan Cave in the Zhoukoudian region of China (near Beijing), by an international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, the Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and Washington University in Saint Louis has shown that this individual was a regular fish consumer.
ScienceDaily (July 11, 2009) — On the heels of his discovery in Montana of the first trace fossil of a dinosaur burrow, Emory University paleontologist Anthony Martin has found evidence of more dinosaur burrows – this time on the other side of the world, in Victoria, Australia. The find, to be published this month in Cretaceous Research, suggests that burrowing behaviors were shared by dinosaurs of different species, in different hemispheres, and spanned millions of years during the Cretaceous Period, when some dinosaurs lived in polar environments.
"This research helps us to better understand long-term geologic change, and how organisms may have adapted as the Earth has undergone periods of global cooling and warming," says Martin, a senior lecturer in environmental studies at Emory. Martin is also an honorary research associate at Monash University in Melbourne.
In 2006, in collaboration with colleagues from Montana State University and Japan, Martin identified the 95-million-year-old skeletal remains of a small adult dinosaur and two juveniles in a fossilized burrow in southwestern Montana. They later named the dinosaur species Oryctodromeus cubicularis, meaning "digging runner of the lair."
The researchers hypothesized that, besides caring for young in their dens, burrowing may have allowed some dinosaurs to survive extreme environments – throwing a wrench in some extinction theories.
A year after the Montana find, Martin traveled to the Victoria coast, which marks the seam where Australia once snuggled against Antarctica. Lower Cretaceous strata of Victoria have yielded the best-documented assemblage of polar dinosaur bones in the world.
During a hike to a remote site known as Knowledge Creek, west of Melbourne, Martin rounded the corner of an outcropping and was astounded to see, right at eye level, the trace fossil of what appeared to be a burrow almost identical to the one he had identified in Montana. "I stared at it for a long time," recalls Martin. "In paleontology, the saying, 'where luck meets preparation' really holds true."
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Researchers have discovered a new sub-species of monkey in a remote part of the Amazon rain forest, a U.S.-based wildlife conservation group said on Tuesday.
The newly found monkey was first spotted by scientists in 2007 in the Brazilian state of Amazonas and is related to the saddleback tamarin monkeys, known for their distinctively marked backs, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said.
The small monkey, which is mostly gray and brown and weighs 213 grams (0.47 pound), has been named the Mura's saddleback tamarin after the Mura Indian tribe of the Purus and Madeira river basins where the new sub-species was found.
It is 240 millimeters (9.4 inches) tall with a 320 millimeter (12.6 inch) tail.
"This newly described monkey shows that even today there are major wildlife discoveries to be made," Fabio Rohe, the lead author of a study confirming the new discovery, said in a statement released by the WCS.
The study found that the monkey is threatened by development projects in the region, including a major highway through the forest that is being paved and which could fuel deforestation.
"This discovery should serve as a wake-up call that there is still so much to learn from the world's wild places, yet humans continue to threaten these areas with destruction," Rohe said.
Talk of the Nation, July 3, 2009 · Deep-sea voyager Robert Ballard has discovered everything from 10-foot-tall tube worms to the Titanic on his ocean expeditions around the world. Ballard discusses his underwater finds and how new robotic technology allows scientists to explore the sea from ashore.TED talk: Robert Ballard on exploring the oceans.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian scientists have developed a "trojan horse" therapy to combat cancer, using a bacterially-derived nano cell to penetrate and disarm the cancer cell before a second nano cell kills it with chemotherapy drugs.
The "trojan horse" therapy has the potential to directly target cancer cells with chemotherapy, rather than the current treatment that sees chemotherapy drugs injected into a cancer patient and attacking both cancer and healthy cells.
Sydney scientists Dr Jennifer MacDiarmid and Dr Himanshu Brahmbhatt, who formed EnGenelC Pty Ltd in 2001, said they had achieved 100 percent survival in mice with human cancer cells by using the "trojan horse" therapy in the past two years.
The scientists plan to start human clinical trials in the coming months. Human trials of the cell delivery system will start next week at the Peter MacCullum Cancer Center at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and The Austin at the University of Melbourne.
The therapy, published in the latest Nature Biotechnology journal, sees mini-cells called EDVs (EnGenelC Delivery Vehicle) attach and enter the cancer cell.
The first wave of mini-cells release ribonucleic acid molecules, called siRNA, which switch off the production of proteins that make the cancer cell resistant to chemotherapy.
A second wave of EDV cells is then accepted by the cancer cell and releases chemotherapy drugs, killing the cancer cell.
"The beauty is that our EDVs operate like 'Trojan Horses' They arrive at the gates of the affected cells and are always allowed in," said MacDiarmid.
"We are playing the rogue cells at their own game. They switch-on the gene to produce the protein to resist drugs, and we are switching-off the gene which, in turn, enables the drugs to enter."
