NERSC's New System: Announcing Carver

Carver: IBM iDataPlex

NERSC's next medium-sized scientific computing system will be an IBM iDataPlex Linux cluster. The IBM system, selected in a competitive procurement, provides excellent performance, good energy efficiency per flop, and a familiar environment for mid-range parallel applications. It is intended to replace Bassi and Jacquard.

The system will be named after the American scientist George Washington Carver.

410 nodes with dual quad core Nehalems. IB interconnect. More than 10 TB of memory. 1.2 PB of disk. 34.2 TFlops peak. Link in title, as always.

Insect Pollination Before Angiosperms

A Probable Pollination Mode Before Angiosperms: Eurasian, Long-Proboscid Scorpionflies

1. Dong Ren (a)
2. Conrad C. Labandeira (b,c,*)
3. Jorge A. Santiago-Blay (b,d)
4. Alexandr Rasnitsyn (e,f)
5. ChungKun Shih (a)
6. Alexei Bashkuev (e)
7. M. Amelia V. Logan (g)
8. Carol L. Hotton (b,h)
9. David Dilcher (b,i)

a College of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China.

b Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA.

c Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

d Department of Biology, Gallaudet University, Washington, DC 20003, USA.

e Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 117997, Russia.

f Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, UK.

g Department of Mineral Sciences, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA.

h National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.

i Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: labandec@si.edu

Abstract:

The head and mouthpart structures of 11 species of Eurasian scorpionflies represent three extinct and closely related families during a 62-million-year interval from the late Middle Jurassic to the late Early Cretaceous. These taxa had elongate, siphonate (tubular) proboscides and fed on ovular secretions of extinct gymnosperms. Five potential ovulate host-plant taxa co-occur with these insects: a seed fern, conifer, ginkgoopsid, pentoxylalean, and gnetalean. The presence of scorpionfly taxa suggests that siphonate proboscides fed on gymnosperm pollination drops and likely engaged in pollination mutualisms with gymnosperms during the mid-Mesozoic, long before the similar and independent coevolution of nectar-feeding flies, moths, and beetles on angiosperms. All three scorpionfly families became extinct during the later Early Cretaceous, coincident with global gymnosperm-to-angiosperm turnover.

Interesting...

Arctic Traps 25% of the World's Carbon

The arctic could potentially alter the Earth’s climate by becoming a possible source of global atmospheric carbon dioxide. The arctic now traps or absorbs up to 25 percent of this gas but climate change could alter that amount, according to a study published in the November,2009 issue of Ecological Monographs.

In their review paper, David McGuire of the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and his colleagues show that the Arctic has been a carbon sink since the end of the last Ice Age, which has recently accounted for between zero and 25 percent, or up to about 800 million metric tons, of the global carbon sink. On average, says McGuire, the Arctic accounts for 10-15 percent of the Earth’s carbon sink. But the rapid rate of climate change in the Arctic – about twice that of lower latitudes – could eliminate the sink and instead, possibly make the Arctic a source of carbon dioxide.

mmm. Toasty.

Hrm. Kickstarter invite? Anyone?

After Tom's suggestion, I thought trying kickstarter might be a good idea to give it a try. However, given its requirement to have an invite to start a project....would there happen to be someone with an available invite?

w baird at team phoenicia dot org.

thanx.

Dust Plumes Over the Med

Basal Therian Mammal Discovered in France

The oldest modern therian mammal from Europe and its bearing on stem marsupial paleobiogeography

1. Romain Vullo (a,b,1)
2. Emmanuel Gheerbrant (c)
3. Christian de Muizon (c)
4. Didier Néraudeau (b)

a. Unidad de Paleontología, Departamento de Biología, Calle Darwin, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain;

b. Université de Rennes 1, Unité Mixte de Recherche Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 6118, Campus de Beaulieu, 35042 Rennes, France; and

c. UMR 7207 du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - CR2P Centre de Recherches sur la Paléobiodiversité et les Paléoenvironnements, CP 38, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, 75005 Paris, France

1. To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: romain.vullo@gmail.com

Abstract:

We report the discovery of mammalian tribosphenic teeth from the basal Cenomanian of southwestern France that we refer to a new primitive marsupial-like form identified as a basal taxon of Marsupialiformes, a new clade recognized here to include the crown group Marsupialia and primitive stem lineages more closely related to Marsupialia than to Deltatheroida. Arcantiodelphys marchandi gen et sp nov. shares several significant marsupial-like features (s.l.) with marsupialiform taxa known from the North American Mid-Cretaceous. Among marsupialiforms, it shows a closer resemblance to Dakotadens. This resemblance, which is plesiomorphic within “tribotherians,” makes Arcantiodelphys one of the most archaic known Marsupialiformes. Moreover, Arcantiodelphys is characterized by an original and precocious crushing specialization. Both the plesiomorphic and autapomorphic characteristics of Arcantiodelphys among Marsupialiformes might be explained by an Eastern origin from Asian stem metatherians, with some in situ European evolution. In addition, the presence of a mammal with North American affinities in western Europe during the early Late Cretaceous provides further evidence of a large Euramerican biogeographical province at this age or slightly before. Concerning the paleobiogeographical history of the first stem marsupialiforms during the Albian–Cenomanian interval, 2 possible dispersal routes from an Asian metatherian ancestry can be proposed: Asia to Europe via North America and Asia to North America via Europe. The main significance of the Archingeay-Les Nouillers mammal discovery is that it indicates that the beginning of the stem marsupialiforms history involved not only North America but also Europe, and that this early history in Europe remains virtually unknown.

no time to comment today.

Muscle Extracted from 18 MYO Salamander Fossil

The scientists claim that their discovery is unequivocal evidence that high-fidelity organic preservation of extremely decay prone soft tissues is more common in the fossil record - the only physical record of the history of life on earth.

Previous examples of soft tissues fossilised in this way have been limited to samples extracted from amber or inside bone - a very rare set of circumstances. This latest discovery simply occurs inside the body of the salamander tucked in beside the spine.

“We came across the muscle tissue during our analysis of several hundred fossil samples taken from an ancient lake bed in Southern Spain. It was immediately identifiable by the sinewy texture visible under the microscope,” says Dr Patrick Orr from the UCD School of Geological Sciences, University College Dublin.

“After first sighting the material, we completed a series of highly detailed analyses to limit the possibility that it was simply an artefact of preservation or something unrelated to the biology of the animal.” says UCD geologist, Dr Maria McNamara, the lead author of the report.

”We noticed that there had been very little degradation since it was originally fossilised about 18 million years ago, making it the highest quality soft tissue preservation ever documented in the fossil record.”

According to the University College Dublin geologists, the muscle tissue is organically preserved in three dimensions, with circulatory vessels infilled with blood.

DUDE!

It's muscle. 18 MILLION YEAR OLD muscle. Obviously its past its expiration date. Don't eat it!

Baby Pix

More on the Archaen Sulfuric Ocean Paper

Scientists widely accept that around 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere underwent a dramatic change when oxygen levels rose sharply. Called the “Great Oxidation Event” (GOE), the oxygen spike marks an important milestone in Earth’s history, the transformation from an oxygen-poor atmosphere to an oxygen-rich one paving the way for complex life to develop on the planet.

Two questions that remain unresolved in studies of the early Earth are when oxygen production via photosynthesis got started and when it began to alter the chemistry of Earth’s ocean and atmosphere.

Now a research team led by geoscientists at the University of California, Riverside corroborates recent evidence that oxygen production began in Earth’s oceans at least 100 million years before the GOE, and goes a step further in demonstrating that even very low concentrations of oxygen can have profound effects on ocean chemistry.

To arrive at their results, the researchers analyzed 2.5 billion-year-old black shales from Western Australia. Essentially representing fossilized pieces of the ancient seafloor, the fine layers within the rocks allowed the researchers to page through ocean chemistry’s evolving history.

Specifically, the shales revealed that episodes of hydrogen sulfide accumulation in the oxygen-free deep ocean occurred nearly 100 million years before the GOE and up to 700 million years earlier than such conditions were predicted by past models for the early ocean. Scientists have long believed that the early ocean, for more than half of Earth’s 4.6 billion-year history, was characterized instead by high amounts of dissolved iron under conditions of essentially no oxygen.

“The conventional wisdom has been that appreciable atmospheric oxygen is needed for sulfidic conditions to develop in the ocean,” said Chris Reinhard, a Ph.D. graduate student in the Department of Earth Sciences and one of the research team members. “We found, however, that sulfidic conditions in the ocean are possible even when there is very little oxygen around, below about 1/100,000th of the oxygen in the modern atmosphere.”

Reinhard explained that at even very low oxygen levels in the atmosphere, the mineral pyrite can weather on the continents, resulting in the delivery of sulfate to the ocean by rivers. Sulfate is the key ingredient in hydrogen sulfide formation in the ocean.

Timothy Lyons, a professor of biogeochemistry, whose laboratory led the research, explained that the hydrogen sulfide in the ocean is a fingerprint of photosynthetic production of oxygen 2.5 billion years ago.

“A pre-GOE emergence for oxygenic photosynthesis is a matter of intense debate, and its resolution lies at the heart of understanding the evolution of diverse forms of life,” he said. “We have found an important piece of that puzzle.”

Study results appear in the Oct. 30 issue of Science.

“Our data point to oxygen-producing photosynthesis long before concentrations of oxygen in the atmosphere were even a tiny fraction of what they are today, suggesting that oxygen-consuming chemical reactions were offsetting much of the production,” said Reinhard, the lead author of the research paper.

The researchers argue that the presence of small amounts of oxygen may have stimulated the early evolution of eukaryotes – organisms whose cells bear nuclei – millions of years prior to the GOE.

“This initial oxygen production set the stage for the development of animals almost two billion years later,” Lyons said. “The evolution of eukaryotes had to take place first.”

The abstract is here. This is more the popsci version.

Ares 1-Y Recommended for Cancellation for Ares 1-X' Flight

NASA's Constellation Program has recommended dropping a planned follow-on to last week's successful Ares I-X flight-test because it doesn't have the funding necessary to get an upper stage engine ready in time.

Instead, the Ares I-X engineering team will study the costs and benefits of going ahead with a 2012 launch previously dubbed "Ares I-X prime" that would flight-test a full five-segment Ares I solid-fuel first stage and the Orion crew exploration vehicle launch abort system at high altitude, according to Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley.

Hanley said on Nov. 3 he has recommended to NASA headquarters that the Ares I-Y test planned for March 2014 be canceled because the J-2X engine needed to propel the upper stage won't be ready in time to support that test date. The problem is money, he said.

"Because of the cost-constrained environment that we've been in, I just cannot get an engine to that vehicle soon enough," Hanley said.

"The engine has to be available months in advance of that to be integrated with the stage and the engine and stage itself tested."

Bob Ess, the Ares I-X mission manager, will oversee the I-X prime study. Expected to take about two months, the study will apply the lessons learned from the Oct. 28 Ares I-X test to a more elaborate flight that also will test the Ares I stage separation system and a water landing and recovery of a higher fidelity Orion capsule than the boilerplate version that flew last week.

uh oh.

I was concerned with the lack of test flights and their spacing already, but...now...not good. Not good at all.

HR 3940: Educate Guam on the Status Question Options

HR 3940 IH

111th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 3940
To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to extend grants and other assistance to facilitate a political status public education program for the people of Guam.CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

October 27, 2009

Ms. BORDALLO introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Natural Resources

A BILL

To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to extend grants and other assistance to facilitate a political status public education program for the people of Guam.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SENSE OF CONGRESS.

Congress reaffirms that it is the responsibility of the Secretary of the Interior to advance the economic, social, and political development of the Territories of the United States.

SEC. 2. ASSISTANCE FOR POLITICAL STATUS PUBLIC EDUCATION PROGRAM.

The Secretary of the Interior may, in exercise of the administrative authority granted under section 3 of the Organic Act of Guam (48 U.S.C. 1421a), extend to the Government of Guam and its agencies and instrumentalities assistance, including assistance in the form of grants, research, planning assistance, studies, and agreements with Federal agencies, to facilitate a public education program regarding political status options for the Territory of Guam.

Proceratosaurus...Tyrannosaur?

Spanning just 10 feet in length and sporting a tiny horn on its nose, a newly identified dinosaur has become the oldest known relative of the fierce meat-eater, Tyrannosaurus rex. The discovery suggests such tyrannosaurs were quite petite before they evolved into giant killing machines just before their demise.

The dinosaur, called Proceratosaurus, lived some 170 million years ago. "We can say conclusively it's the earliest representative of the line of evolution that led to Tyrannosaurus," said study researcher Angela Milner of the Natural History Museum in London.

The group of huge carnivores called tyrannosaurs ruled the land about 85 million to 65 million years ago when a mass extinction event wiped them out along with most dinosaurs and many other animals and plants.

Another miniature T. rex of sorts that lived about 125 million years ago was described just recently from remains unearthed in northeast China.

"In other words, tyrannosaurs for a long time were a group of quite small animals going back through time. And they only got suddenly very large right toward the end of the age of dinosaurs," Milner told LiveScience.

The latest discovery involves a skull, measuring just 11 inches (30 cm) long, that was dug up during an excavation near Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire, England. When it was first described in 1910, scientists thought the remains came from a Megalosaurus (not a type of tyrannosaur).

Then, in the late 1920s, a German scientist found that the skull belonged to a different species of meat-eating dinosaur, which is when it got its current name. But only recently have scientists figured out exactly how this horned beast fits in with other dinosaurs and its link with the prehistoric Hollywood star.

Milner and her colleagues scanned the skull using computed tomography techniques to create a 3D image showing the noggin's internal structure.

The image showed three suites of features specifically found in T. rex and its relatives: specializations of its teeth, large windows in the side of its skull, and air spaces inside the skull. For instance, rather than knife-like teeth found in some carnivorous dinosaurs, Proceratosaurus had banana-shaped front teeth like T. rex.

"The tyrannosaurs fed by a puncture-and-pull technique using the mouth to bite down on prey and just pull pieces off," Milner said. "Some other kinds of meat-eating dinosaurs had slicing teeth."

And the skull windows, or openings, would've allowed this dinosaur, like T. rex, to have a powerful bite.

"The side of the skull is composed of a series of engineering struts, and they allow the skull to be much lighter and provide a lot more area for muscles that open and close the jaws," Milner said. "They can actually bulge through these windows."

The new finding is published in the most recent issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

erm. ok...

huh. It seems that dinosaur diversity took place very early in their history. Interesting thought that.

An Official Shift in Chinese Space Weapons Policy?

A top China air force commander has called the militarisation of space an "historical inevitability", state media said Monday, marking an apparent shift in Beijing's opposition to weaponising outer space.

In a wide-ranging interview in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Daily, air force commander Xu Qiliang said it was imperative for the PLA air force to develop offensive and defensive operations in outer space.

"As far as the revolution in military affairs is concerned, the competition between military forces is moving towards outer space... this is a historical inevitability and a development that cannot be turned back," Xu told the paper.

"The PLA air force must establish in a timely manner the concepts of space security, space interests and space development.

"We must build an outer space force that conforms with the needs of our nation's development (and) the demands of the development of the space age."

Superiority in outer space can give a nation control over war zones both on land and at sea, while also offering a strategic advantage, Xu said, noting that such dominance was necessary to safeguard the nation.

"Only power can protect peace," the 59-year-old commander said in the interview given to coincide with this month's 60th anniversary of the founding of the PLA air force.

Interesting, but cynically not unexpected. Now that we have an administration that his NOT supportive of space based weapons, the Chinese are expressing their own support.

Russia Wargames Nuking, Invading Poland?

The armed forces are said to have carried out "war games" in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country's coast.

Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland's leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus.

The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops.

Poland, which has strained relations with both countries, was cast as the "potential aggressor".

The documents state the exercises, code-named "West", were officially classified as "defensive" but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature.

The Russian air force practised using weapons from its nuclear arsenal, while in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which neighbours Poland, Red Army forces stormed a "Polish" beach and attacked a gas pipeline.

The operation also involved the simulated suppression of an uprising by a national minority in Belarus – the country has a significant Polish population which has a strained relationship with authoritarian government of Belarus.

Real or not?

However, the use of nukes on the first roll of the dice is perfectly in line with the Russian military doctrine.

Dust Storm in the Copper River Valley, Alaska

Ethopian Rift Confirmed to be New Sea Floor

In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial.

Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea.

The new study, published in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that the highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of little by little as has been predominantly believed. In addition, such sudden large-scale events on land pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events, says Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study.

"This work is a breakthrough in our understanding of continental rifting leading to the creation of new ocean basins," says Ken Macdonald, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and who is not affiliated with the research. "For the first time they demonstrate that activity on one rift segment can trigger a major episode of magma injection and associated deformation on a neighboring segment. Careful study of the 2005 mega-dike intrusion and its aftermath will continue to provide extraordinary opportunities for learning about continental rifts and mid-ocean ridges."

"The whole point of this study is to learn whether what is happening in Ethiopia is like what is happening at the bottom of the ocean where it's almost impossible for us to go," says Ebinger. "We knew that if we could establish that, then Ethiopia would essentially be a unique and superb ocean-ridge laboratory for us. Because of the unprecedented cross-border collaboration behind this research, we now know that the answer is yes, it is analogous."

Atalay Ayele, professor at the Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, led the investigation, painstakingly gathering seismic data surrounding the 2005 event that led to the giant rift opening more than 20 feet in width in just days. Along with the seismic information from Ethiopia, Ayele combined data from neighboring Eritrea with the help of Ghebrebrhan Ogubazghi, professor at the Eritrea Institute of Technology, and from Yemen with the help of Jamal Sholan of the National Yemen Seismological Observatory Center. The map he drew of when and where earthquakes happened in the region fit tremendously well with the more detailed analyses Ebinger has conducted in more recent years.

Ayele's reconstruction of events showed that the rift did not open in a series of small earthquakes over an extended period of time, but tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. A volcano called Dabbahu at the northern end of the rift erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began "unzipping" the rift in both directions, says Ebinger.

So are we going to get Dixon's Lemuria? Or something kewler? Anyone with some speculative bio? I started one with some folks, but it died when didn't want to continue it. Right now, more focused on the xenopemian. and rockets. However, if there's interest, make a thread here on what might arise in the future on the new continent ripped from Africa.

Late Archean Sulfidic Sea Caused by Continental Weathering?

A Late Archean Sulfidic Sea Stimulated by Early Oxidative Weathering of the Continents


1. Christopher T. Reinhard (1)

2. Rob Raiswell (2)

3. Clint Scott (1)

4. Ariel D. Anbar (3)

5. Timothy W. Lyons (1,*)


1 University of California–Riverside, Department of Earth Sciences, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.

2 University of Leeds, School of Earth and Environment, Leeds, UK LS2 9JT.

3 Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: timothyl@ucr.edu

Abstract:

Iron speciation data for the late Archean Mount McRae Shale provide evidence for a euxinic (anoxic and sulfidic) water column 2.5 billion years ago. Sulfur isotope data compiled from the same stratigraphic section suggest that euxinic conditions were stimulated by an increase in oceanic sulfate concentrations resulting from weathering of continental sulfide minerals exposed to an atmosphere with trace amounts of photosynthetically produced oxygen. Variability in local organic matter flux likely confined euxinic conditions to midportions of the water column on the basin margin. These findings indicate that euxinic conditions may have been common on a variety of spatial and temporal scales both before and immediately after the Paleoproterozoic rise in atmospheric oxygen, hinting at previously unexplored texture and variability in deep ocean chemistry during Earth’s early history.

I wonder how this dovetails (or doesn't) with "Anoxygenic photosynthesis modulated Proterozoic oxygen and sustained Earth's middle age." IDK why in the world the Lab doesn't have access to Science of all journals.

*shakes head*

New Anklyosaur From Cretaceous of Montana

A husband and wife team of American paleontologists has discovered a new species of dinosaur that lived 112 million years ago during the early Cretaceous of central Montana.

The new dinosaur, a species of ankylosaur, is documented in the October issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. Ankylosaurs are the biological version of an army tank. They are protected by a plate-like armour with two sets of sharp spikes on each side of the head, and a skull so thick that even 'raptors' such as Deinonychus could leave barely more than a scratch.

Bill and Kris Parsons, Research associates of the Buffalo Museum of Science, found much of the skull of the newly described Tatankacephalus cooneyorum resting on the surface of a hillside in 1997. Because the skull was 90% complete, it was possible to justify this fossil as a new species.

"This is the first member of Ankylosauridae to be found within the Early Cretaceous Cloverly Geologic Formation," said Bill Parsons, who characterized the fossil as a transitional evolutionary form between the earlier Jurassic ankylosaurs and the better known Late Cretaceous ankylosaurs.

The skull is heavily protected by two sets of lateral horns, two thick domes at the back, and smaller thickenings around the nasal region. "Heavy ornamentation and horn-like plates would have covered most of the dorsal surface of this dinosaur" said Bill Parsons.

"For years, Bill and Kris have been collecting fossils from a critical time in Earth's history, and their hard work has paid off," said Lawrence Witmer, professor of paleontology at Ohio University who was not involved with this study. "This is a really important find and gives us a clearer view of the evolution of armored dinosaurs. But this is just the first; I'm sure, of what will be a series of important discoveries from this team."

Parsons also illustrated the dermal armour of this new species based on the theory by Museum of the Rockies paleontologist John R. Horner that there was an outer keratinous sheathing on it as found in modern turtle shells and bird beaks. In his new reconstruction, Parsons suggests that Tatankacephalus exhibited complex and colorful patterns rather than the dull appearance suggested in earlier ankylosaur portraits. "According to Horner's theory, many other dinosaurs also had this kind of sheathing and also may have been diversely colored" said Parsons.

As to its name, the broad, short horns on the back of its skull resemble the horns found on a modern buffalo skull and Tatankacephalus loosely translates as 'Buffalo head.' Parsons also noted, "of course any further allusions to the city of Buffalo are completely intentional as well".

AP write up here too.

Any pix?