10 Million X Finer Resolution MRI

IBM Research scientists, in collaboration with the Center for Probing the Nanoscale at Stanford University, have demonstrated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with volume resolution 100 million times finer than conventional MRI.

This result, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), signals a significant step forward in tools for molecular biology and nanotechnology by offering the ability to study complex 3D structures at the nanoscale.

By extending MRI to such fine resolution, the scientists have created a microscope that, with further development, may ultimately be powerful enough to unravel the structure and interactions of proteins, paving the way for new advances in personalized healthcare and targeted medicine. This achievement stands to impact the study of materials from proteins to integrated circuits for which a detailed understanding of atomic structure is essential.

Today has been a kewl day for scitech announcements.

IBM isn't out from under the death glare as work though.

DNA to Reveal Book Origins!?!

The animal-skin pages used in early medieval manuscripts contain genetic material capable of solving long-standing mysteries about the works, according to new research.

Before paper was widely used, European books were written on parchment made from the treated skins of calves, young sheep, and goats.

"What I was looking for was a way to date and localize these manuscripts," said Timothy Stinson, an English professor at North Carolina State University.

"In the past, we used an analysis of handwriting and an analysis of the dialects" of the scribes who created the manuscripts, Stinson said.

"But these were fairly inexact," he said, noting that dates determined by this method could be off by a half-century.

Stinson wondered if the pages held enough intact animal DNA to provide useful information, so he called his brother, C. Michael Stinson, a biologist at Southside Virginia Community College.

After several years of testing, Timothy Stinson will present the brothers' preliminary findings next week at the annual meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America in New York City.

If it works, this is damned kewl.

Sorry about the invective, but that's just awesome if true.

New Books

My wife gave me a gift certificate to Amazon for my Xmas & birthday and my uncle and aunt that we visited gave me two gift certificates from Barnes and Noble. As you might guess, I am delighted. I've only ordered one book from B&N, but I've used up the Amazon card already.

I ordered Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History. I already have the volume on cats. Someone ought to do this for bears. I also ordered The World Without Us and The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?. I also picked up History of the Persian Empire and Solar Sails (I've been in love with the things since I was a teenager). To round it out, I also picked up In the Shadow of the Dinosaurs: Early Mesozoic Tetrapods (used).

From B&N I ordered Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs. I am probably going to order Last Hunters, First Farmers, too, but we'll see. I'd like to pick up some paleo books this route, too.

I was outright given Your Inner Fish which I read very, very quickly: it was good, but I'm hitting the point that I need to start crossing into the pro's papers instead of just the pop sci stuff since I knew 95% of what was covered in the book already. I also finished reading Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies. I am half done at the moment with United States and Mexico: Between Partnership and Conflict.

I have some questions for my Canadian readers in the future, but I think I need to dedicate some time to phrase the questions properly. Interestingly, did you guys know back in 1948 (+/-), the Canadians approached the US about a free trade treaty. It wasn't as interesting to the US at first, but a few (couple?) years later, the US came back with interest in the treaty, the Canadians rejected it as an encroachment on their sovereignty by the US...even though it had been their idea. *scratches head* There had to have been a government change in that time frame, but I don't recall one. I'll look again if anyone asks. However, the WI being, had the treaty gone ahead and the US and Canada had formed a free trade zone in around 1950, how would the US and Canadian economies developed differently? I doubt there would be a customs union or whatnot beyond straight up free trade. Think of it similar to the historical CUSFTA treaty prior to NAFTA. yet...There might be as much as 40 years before Mexico decides to join in, if ever. 40 years of deep economic integration between the US and Canadian economies, especially during the 1950s, would have some oddball effects I am sure. Anyone interested in discussing it?

Oh and there are times we hate IBM, too, at work. grrr. Good thing I got a lot of sleep last night and I'm caffed up...I can get uber scary then. Ogre Genes in full expression here! Coherent Ogre Genes at that.

Another Paper I Need...but I doubt anyone has it

High-intensity rocket noise: Nonlinear propagation, atmospheric absorption, and characterization

Sally Anne McInerny and Semih M. Ölçmen
Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, The University of Alabama, P.O. Box 870280, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0280

(Received 24 August 2004; revised 1 November 2004; accepted 6 November 2004)

Analyses of rocket noise data measured at far-field locations during the launch of a large rocket and a smaller rocket are presented. Weak shocks are present in all of the data sets. In order to characterize these shocks, those segments of the waveforms where the acoustic pressure is increasing are isolated and the rate of increase in pressure plotted versus magnitude of pressure rise. The plots follow a trend consistent with random noise at low values of pressure rise, then transition to the pressure-squared dependence expected for weak shocks at higher pressure rise values. Power spectral densities of the noise during the period of maximum overall sound-pressure levels display high- and low-frequency spectral slopes that are close to those predicted for shock-dominated noise. It is concluded that shocks must be included in propagation models if high frequency levels are to be estimated as a function of distance from the source. Initial shock thicknesses will have to be characterized experimentally and will require instrumentation with a bandwidth well in excess of 20 kHz. Reflection-free data are essential if meaningful assessments of the statistical properties of the noise are to be made. ©2005 Acoustical Society of America.

I might just to buy this one. :(

Climate Change and Alaskan Glaciers

Go Take a Look!

Go, Boss! Go!

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu promised Tuesday that if confirmed as energy secretary he will aggressively pursue policies aimed at addressing climate change and achieving greater energy independence by developing clean energy sources.

But he also told lawmakers that he views nuclear power and coal as critical parts of the nation's energy mix and said he was optimistic that ways can be found to make coal a cleaner energy source by capturing its carbon dioxide emissions.

Chu, nominated by President-elect Barack Obama to head the Energy Department, appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee where he received immediate support from both Democrats and Republicans.

Committee chairman, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said Chu has "the insight and vision" to press Obama's energy policies at the department. Bingaman said he saw no serious opposition to Chu's nomination and that a committee vote approving his selection would like occur later this week.

Chu, a Chinese-America who has been director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2004, told senators that climate change is "a growing and pressing problem" and the nation's dependence on oil represents a threat to the U.S. economy and security.

Of the risks from global warming, Chu said: "It is now clear that if we continue on our current path, we run the risk of dramatic disruptive changes to our climate system in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the committee's ranking Republicans, also called Chu well qualified, but pressed him on his position on offshore oil development and nuclear energy.

Chu said nuclear energy produces a fifth of the nation's electricity and 70 percent of the carbon-free electricity and "is going to be an important part of our energy mix." About domestic oil production, Chu reiterated Obama's views that some expansion of offshore oil and gas development should be included as a broader energy plan.

But Chu sidestepped Murkowski's question on whether he would oppose any reinstatement of a broad ban on offshore oil drilling on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. "Improvements in energy efficiency is the one single factor that can most reduce our dependency on foreign oil," said Chu.

A widely respected scientist who shared a Nobel Prize in physics in 1997, Chu has been a strong advocate for more energy-related research, especially work on advanced biofuels and solar energy technologies. He has said that scientific research is key to tackling climate change, which he has argued cannot be ignored.

But Chu, when pressed by senators, also said coal must not be abandoned as a primary source of energy, although he promised that research into capturing carbon emissions — pollution linked to climate change — would be pursued aggressively.

"Some people think perhaps we can turn off coal," said Chu. "Even if we do it, China and India will not."

Damned smart man.

(and a nice guy too)

Whoa: Therinizosaurs with Simple Feathers?

Ed Young at Not Exactly Rocket Science has the scoop.

That would it feathers even further down as a basal trait for theropods, right? Therinizosaurs and maniraptors aren't that closely related are they?

Evolution in Action?

Fishing and hunting are having broad, swift impacts on the body size and reproductive abilities of fish and other commercially harvested species, potentially jeopardizing the ability of entire populations to recover, according to the results of a new study that will appear in the January 12, 2009, online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Human predation is accelerating the rate of observable trait changes by 300 percent above the pace observed within natural systems, and 50 percent faster than in systems subject to other human influences, including pollution, according to Chris Darimont, the lead author of the paper entitled "Human Predators Outpace Other Agents of Trait Change in the Wild."

Not only fast, the changes are also dramatic in magnitude: Harvested populations are on average 20 percent smaller in body size than previous generations, and their age of first reproduction is on average 25 percent earlier, according to Darimont, a postdoctoral researcher in environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"Harvested organisms are the fastest-changing organisms of their kind in the wild, likely because we take such high proportions of a population and target the largest," said Darimont. "It's an ideal recipe for rapid trait change."

The study is the first to calculate the pace of evolution in commercially harvested organisms and compare the rates to other systems. The team calculated the rates of trait change with a metric appropriately called the 'Darwin,' which allowed the comparison of changes across traits and species among natural and human-modified systems, including 'human predator' systems. It builds on research by coauthor Michael Kinnison and colleagues that has documented the evolutionary impact of other human activities, such as pollution and the introduction of species to new environments.

Darimont's findings are based on a meta-analysis of 34 scientific studies that tracked 29 species in a total of 40 specific geographic systems. The bulk of the studies focused on impacts on fish populations, but other subjects included intertidal invertebrates such as limpets and snails, as well as bighorn sheep, caribou, and two plant species: Himalayan snow lotus and American ginseng.

By harvesting vast numbers and targeting large, reproductively mature individuals, human predation is quickly reshaping the wild populations that remain, leaving smaller individuals to reproduce at ever-earlier ages, said Darimont.

"The public knows we often harvest far too many fish, but the threat goes above and beyond numbers," said Darimont. "We're changing the very essence of what remains, sometimes within the span of only two decades. We are the planet's super-predator."

"The pace of changes we're seeing supercedes by a long shot what we've observed in natural systems, and even in systems that have been rapidly modified by humans in other ways," said Darimont. "As predators, humans are a dominant evolutionary force."

Hans Reiser Jumped in Prison

An Oakland man, imprisoned at San Quentin for the murder of his wife, is recovering after he was beaten up by several prisoners this week.

Corrections Lt. Sam Robinson said that Hans Reiser suffered some cuts and bruises after he was jumped by several inmates on their way back to their cells after a morning meal.

Reiser was checked out and treated for his injuries. The prison has put him in a special cell, isolated from the general population as a precaution.

Soooo....anyone think he'll actually make it to 15 years?

(I didn't go looking for this. I've stopped watching the train wreck. A friend of mine hasn't and sent me this...oy)

Attack of the Killer Micro Accelerators?

WHEN the Large Hadron Collider was switched on last September - and ignominiously switched off a few days later - it was the subject of the kind of media frenzy usually reserved for rock stars and celebrity models. These, we were told, were the first moments of the most complex machine ever built. What we were not told was that something similar might never be built again.

At issue is the sheer scale of the project. The LHC took some 20 years to design and build, and cost around $9 billion. The price didn't even include the 27-kilometre circular tunnel that houses the machine underneath the French-Swiss border near Geneva - that was built a couple of decades earlier for a previous accelerator.

Some day, particle physicists will want to upgrade the LHC to an even bigger, better and more expensive model. In fact, they are already working on a successor known as the International Linear Collider. If the public baulks at paying the price, physicists can kiss goodbye to their dreams of teasing apart the laws of nature by smashing together particles at high energies. Given the current economic turmoil, the ILC might never be built.

Perhaps it won't need to be. In laboratories around the world, the outline of an entirely new design of accelerator is being sketched that could revolutionise the economics of particle physics. Out are the many-kilometre-long tunnels; in is a compact construction a fraction of the size. More intriguingly still, this new breed of accelerator is being conjured up from little more than thin air.

hmmmm. New Scientist weighed against some of my collabies in it. hmmmm.

Monday Militaria: Sukhoi T-50, Nice Figure Only

For more than a decade the world has been waiting for Russia's aerospace industry to produce a fifth-generation fighter aircraft -- a replacement for the more than 25-year-old designs of the Mikoyan MiG-29 and Sukhoi Su-27/Su-30 models and an analogue to the Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor and F-35 Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Organised as a cooperative program involving almost the entirety of the Russian military aircraft industry, the project is known as the PAK-FA (Perspektivnnyi Aviatsionnyi Kompleks - Frontovoi Aviatsyi, or Future Air System for Tactical Air Forces).

The design bureau designation for the prototype is T-50, with this airplane in the beginning stages of assembly at the Komsommolsk-na-Amure Aviation Production Association (KNAAPO) plant in the Russian Far East region of Kharabovsk. "Metal is being cut at the KNAAPO plant" and the plan is now for the aircraft to fly in 2009 -- or 2010 at the latest -- said a source knowledgeable of the program.

[...]

"The USAF essentially picked a winner and then said 'now that you have officially won go and develop the airplane,' which took another 14 and half years between this fly-off of virtually empty prototypes and the official acceptance of the F-22A into service at the end of 2005," said Stevenson.

The PAK-FA seems destined to meet a similar fate. The prototype will fly sometime within the next 12 to 18 months, but -- like the F-22A -- it seems that these demonstration flights will meet almost none of the Russian Air Force's (VVS) operational requirements.

Russian industry representatives close to the program tell THE WEEKLY STANDARD that "the radar to be flown in the aircraft from NIIP design bureau will be a variant of the same Irbis-E passive electronically scanning array (PESA) radar technology that is in the Sukhoi Su-35 Super Flanker and not the next-generation active array (AESA) that program requirements call for. The engine will be the Saturn/Lyulka 117S modernised derivative of the Su-27's AL-31F-Series 3 engine and not the next-generation AL-41F1 design. There will also be few new-age on-board systems in the avionics suite."

As early as mid-2007, Sukhoi General Director Mikhail Pogosian and other senior Russian industry officials were downplaying expectations when they hinted that these on-board systems might not be ready when the first prototype aircraft flies and would only come on line later. When asked about the engine development at the Le Bourget air show outside of Paris in June 2007, Pogosian responded "that since the serial production covers a period of 30 years and 30 more years for operation, the engine and other systems will change considerably in the course of serial production. That is normal."

According to the division of labour that has been agreed to for the PAK-FA, the KNAAPO plant will be the lead final production assembly point. The Chkalov NAPO plant in Novosibirsk will supply the nose section and other carbon composite sections for the aircraft. But, officials in Novosibirsk have previously told THE WEEKLY STANDARD "there are no plans to place a large share of the [PAK-FA] production at NAPO, largely due to the nature of the local workforce here in Siberia. Because there are no so many commercial trading companies now here in Novosibirsk it is too difficult to retain enough skilled engineering talent with this kind of competition from the private sector."

But, labour problems are only one facet of the difficulties that Russian defense industry now faces. Among them is a government out of touch with industry's problems, lack of investment, and technological bottlenecks -- and literally demanding that they "make ropes from sand," as the old fable says.

An example came during a recent telemost broadcast on Russian state television in which Russian PM Vladimir Putin answered phone-in questions he was asked about the PAK-FA program and stated "we are developing such airplanes and the work is going according to plan. I am certain that they will appear in the Russian Armed Forces and I would like that they appear on time."

Demanding that the PAK-FA appears "on time" shows that Putin and Co. have not spent enough time reading their briefing book on "why the Soviet Union failed as a nation-state." Rule number one from that briefing is that simply decreeing a desired outcome does not make it so. Even though Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Board of Russia's Unified Aircraft-Building Corporation (OAK), Sergei Ivanov, stated in May 2007 that Pogosian had "confirmed that the first plane will make its maiden flight in late 2008," these technological obstacles have made it so that the first flight will now be at least a year late.

"The most likely near-term future for the PAK-FA is that there will be prototype demonstrators that make a number of flights -- just like the Mikoyan MFI 1.44 and Sukhoi S-37/Su-47 models -- and then the program may slow down or come to a halt altogether while industry tries to finish developing these on-board systems," said one analyst in Moscow familiar with the program.

Such is the decay of the old Soviet military industrial complex.

Power Glicthes Suck

Or, in other words, PG&E, there are times we seriously hate you all.

First Synthetic Self Reproducing RNA Created

Findings could inform biochemical questions about how life began

Now, a pair of Scripps Research Institute scientists has taken a significant step toward answering that question. The scientists have synthesized for the first time RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely.

The work was published on Thursday, January 8, 2008, in Science Express, the advanced, online edition of the journal Science.

In the modern world, DNA carries the genetic sequence for advanced organisms, while RNA is dependent on DNA for performing its roles such as building proteins. But one prominent theory about the origins of life, called the RNA World model, postulates that because RNA can function as both a gene and an enzyme, RNA might have come before DNA and protein and acted as the ancestral molecule of life. However, the process of copying a genetic molecule, which is considered a basic qualification for life, appears to be exceedingly complex, involving many proteins and other cellular components.

For years, researchers have wondered whether there might be some simpler way to copy RNA, brought about by the RNA itself. Some tentative steps along this road had previously been taken by the Joyce lab and others, but no one could demonstrate that RNA replication could be self-propagating, that is, result in new copies of RNA that also could copy themselves.

wow.

Amanda Needs You Again!

What's Your Favorite Toy? Brickfish

Amanda is seeking a scholarship via brickfish! She wants to go to school full time and sorely needs the money. She doesn't want you to give her money, but rather simply click on the vote for her favourite toy. She's fallen from second to fourth place and she needs some mad clicking help. Since clicking is pretty cheap even in this economy, please do so!

Impact Timing Coincidence

Scientists have discovered only the second example of a meteorite impact that occurred at the same time as massive volcanic activity, in research published in the Journal of the Geological Society the week of Jan 12. The first time such a coincidence was observed, at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, was the catastrophic event thought to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.

This new event, uncovered after the 17 km diameter Logoisk impact structure in Belarus was precisely dated, is thought to have taken place around 30 million years ago. The crater was dated using argon isotopes, and found to have occurred at a similar time to a period of massive volcanism known as the Afro-Arabian flood volcanism, which started in NW Yemen at around 30.9 Mya, and SW Yemen at around 29.0 Mya.

The impact also coincides broadly with a period of sudden global cooling and sea level fluctuation. The researchers, led by Sarah Sherlock at the Open University, argue that massive volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts are likely to have coincided much more frequently than has previously been thought, but because the preservation of impact craters on Earth is poor much of the evidence for these coincidences is lost.

The relationships between meteorite impact craters, volcanism and changes in climate is a subject of much debate among scientists. Prior to the study, only one example of an impact coinciding with volcanism had been found: the Chicxulub and Boltysh impacts and the Deccan Traps flood volcanism, all of which occurred at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. In 2002, the discovery of their coincidence with a global mass extinction led to debate over the causative links between meteorite impacts, volcanism and mass extinction events, and fuelled the search for more impacts at stratigraphic boundaries.

Unlike the Cretaceous-Tertiary event, the combination of the Logoisk impact and the Afro-Arabain flood volcanism does not seem to have caused an extinction event. The researchers suggest that the reason for this may be that the magnitude of the event was not sufficiently large in comparison. Whilst the Chicxulub crater associated with the extinction of the dinosaurs measures 170km in diameter and the Deccan Traps released around (2-4) x106 km3 of lava, in comparison the Logoisk impact structure measures 17km across and the Afro-Arabian flood volcanism is around 1.2 x106 km3 in volume.

As a result, the effects of each event were likely to have been very different. At the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, it is thought that one of the deadly effects was the release of sulphur dioxide, either as acid rain or in the stratosphere, where it would have prevented heat from reaching the earth and caused massive global cooling. Around 8000 billion tons of SO2 are thought to have been released by the volcanism and meteorite impact. In comparison, the Logoisk impact and the Afro-Arabian volcanism are thought to have contributed only 30 billion tons of SO2.

Just interesting timing, folks. I'd be curious if the Malkanovitch Cycle was such that if there was an injection of ash and SO2 there would be sufficient to cross a tipping point since the warming was thought to be caused by methane releases. Without the methane in the atmosphere, this plausibly may have reset the thermostat, so to speak. It may not have too.

This impact, btw, is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too small to have done anything other than kill locals.

Frictionless Surfaces on the Horizon?

U.S. scientists have found a way to levitate the very smallest objects using the strange forces of quantum mechanics, and said on Wednesday they might use it to help make tiny nanotechnology machines.

They said they had detected and measured a force that comes into play at the molecular level using certain combinations of molecules that repel one another.

The repulsion can be used to hold molecules aloft, in essence levitating them, creating virtually friction-free parts for tiny devices, the researchers said.

Federico Capasso, an applied physicist at Harvard University in Massachusetts, whose study appears in the journal Nature, said he believed that detection of this force opened the possibility of a whole new class of tiny gadgets.

The team, including researchers at the National Institutes of Health, has not yet levitated an object, but Capasso said he now knows how to do it. "This is an experiment we are sure will work," he said. His team has already filed for patents.

Interesting. Let's see if it pans out.

If it can be applied to macroscopic objects and the power requirements are less than the cost of traveling on a road with wheels, life could get really interesting for, say, trains. No friction (or little friction) would reduce some expense a bit.

Talk about sfnal.

Uk Due for Regular Severe Flooding by 2080

Flooding like that which devastated the North of England last year is set to become a common event across the UK in the next 75 years, new research has shown.

A study by Dr Hayley Fowler, of Newcastle University, predicts that severe storms – the likes of which currently occur every five to 25 years across the UK – will become more common and more severe in a matter of decades.

Looking at 'extreme rainfall events' – where rain falls steadily and heavily for between one and five days – the study predicts how the intensity of these storms may change in the future.

Dr Fowler found that across the UK, the amount of rain falling during one of these extreme events was likely to increase by up to 30 per cent by 2080. This increase is most likely to occur in autumn, winter and spring when the ground is already saturated, posing the biggest threat of flooding.

Dr Fowler, Reader in Climate Change Impacts at Newcastle, explained: "Predicting how extreme rainfall might change many years in the future is very difficult because events can be quite localised, especially in the summer.

"You only have to think about how difficult it is for the Met office to predict the weather two or three days in advance – the overall picture for the country tends to stay the same but local weather patterns can change quite dramatically.

"By taking a much more detailed look at the results from different regional climate models, we have created a more accurate picture of how wet Britain will be by 2070.

"What the data quite clearly shows is that we're going to see far more of these extreme downpours in years to come, putting more and more homes at risk from flooding, particularly in autumn and winter months when the ground is already saturated."

The research, published online today in the International Journal of Climatology, looks at changes to seasonal extreme rainfall across the UK by 2070-2100.

[...]

Consistent with global warming, the team found that as the air becomes warmer and is able to hold more moisture, Britain will get wetter.

In general, the study suggests larger changes to the intensity of short duration extreme rainfall events – those lasting one or two days. Northern and western regions of the UK are predicted to be worst hit.

Dr Fowler added: "Unfortunately, we still have least confidence in the model's predictions for the summer months and it is still highly uncertain how summer flash flooding such as the Hull and Hereford and Worcester floods in 2007 will change.

"What our data does show is that floods are no longer going to be freak events. All 13 models we looked at predict increases in extreme rainfall in winter, autumn and spring by the 2080s although the percent increase varies.

Soggy Brits are coming to town!

Modern Diatom Rise Slower Than Thought

The evolutionary history of diatoms -- abundant oceanic plankton that remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year -- needs to be rewritten, according to a new Cornell study. The findings suggest that after a sudden rise in species numbers, diatoms abruptly declined about 33 million years ago -- trends that coincided with severe global cooling.

The study is published in the Jan. 8 issue of the journal Nature.

The research casts doubt on the long-held theory that diatoms' success was tied to an influx of nutrients into the oceans from the rise of grasslands about 18 million years ago. New evidence from a study led by graduate student Dan Rabosky of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology takes into account a widespread problem in paleontology: that younger fossils are easier to find than older ones.

"We just tried to address the simple fact that the number of available fossils is colossally greater from recent time periods than from earlier time periods," Rabosky said. "It's a pretty standard correction in some fields, but it hasn't been applied to planktonic paleontology up till now."

More than 90 percent of known diatom fossils are younger than 18 million years. So an unadjusted survey of diatom fossils suggests that more diatom species were alive in the recent past than 18 million years ago.

The dearth of early fossils is understandable. Sampling for diatom fossils requires immense drill ships to bore into seafloor sediment. To find an ancient fossil, scientists first have to find ancient sediment -- and that's no easy task because plate tectonics constantly shift the ocean floor, fossils and all. Much of the seafloor is simply too young to sample.

So Rabosky and co-author Ulf Sorhannus of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania controlled for how many samples had been taken from each million-year period of the Earth's history, going back 40 million years. After reanalysis, the long-accepted boom in diatoms over the last 18 million years disappeared. In its place was a slow recent rise, with a much more dramatic increase and decline at the end of the Eocene epoch, about 33 million years ago.

With the new timeline, diatoms achieved their peak diversity at least 10 million years before grasslands became commonplace.

"If there was a truly significant change in diatom diversity at all, it happened 30 million years ago," Rabosky said. "The shallow, gradual increase we see is totally different from the kind of exponential increase you would expect if grasslands were the cause."

This sounds as though there was an extinction of the tropical forms that were common in the Eocene greenhouse and then it took 30 odd million years to recover.

State and Country Visit Update

Mine

visited 16 states (32%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or try another Douwe Osinga project

visited 7 states (3.11%)
Create your own visited map of The World or try another Douwe Osinga project

Then there's Lyuda's world travels:

visited 12 states (5.33%)

Global Warming is Ineviable (N+n)

China is aiming to increase its coal production by about 30 percent by 2015 to meet its energy needs, the government has announced, in a move likely to fuel concerns over global warming.

Beijing plans to increase annual output to more than 3.3 billion tonnes by 2015, said Hu Cunzhi, chief planner of the land and resources ministry, said on Wednesday.

That is up from the 2.54 billion tonnes in produced 2007, according to the ministry.

Figures for 2008 have not yet been released.

Annual production of natural gas will more than double to 160 billion cubic metres (5.6 billion cubic feet) by 2015, while that of crude oil will increase by seven percent to more than 200 billion tonnes, according to Hu.

The government will set up reserves of oil and coal as part of its efforts to ensure national energy security, added Hu at a press conference.

China began building four strategic oil reserve facilities on its east coast this decade, and two of these are now in operation.

The country's energy consumption expanded by an average annual rate of 5.4 percent between 1979 and 2007, the official Xinhua news agency said Thursday, which fuelled average annual economic growth of 9.8 percent.

China is dependent on coal for about 70 percent of its energy and because of its thundering growth the country has become one of the two biggest emmitters of greenhouse gases alongside the United States.

oy.

Neo-[Oligocene/Eocene] here we come!