Russia is for RUSSIANS!!!

When the Russian government adopted a program several years ago intended to boost the country’s low birthrate, some commentators worried that it would increase that rate among non-Russians where it was already high and do little to raise it among ethnic Russians where the current fertility rate is far below replacement levels.

And while there has been some anecdotal evidence that the “maternal capital” program has led to an increase in the number of births, if not the fertility rate, among ethnic Russians, there are indications the program may be working just as these commentators feared and leading to an increase in both the total number of births and the fertility rate among non-Russians.

Given the increasing acceptability in Russia of openly nationalist arguments, some Russians, including at least one scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences, are now prepared to argue in public and without apology that the Russian government should provide monetary assistance only to women of ethnic Russian nationality.

Were Moscow to follow such advice, it would be violating the Russian constitution and setting the stage for a new and possibly more violent set of inter-ethnic conflicts. But even proposals to take this step from ostensibly “respectable” sources, especially if they are not immediately denounced, will further exacerbate ethnic tensions in the Russian Federation.

Today, Vladimir Lavrov, the deputy director of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told a meeting of the World Russian Peoples Assembly in Yekaterinburg that the government should pay subsidies only to ethnic Russian women who give birth and not to anyone else.

According to Lavrov, “the Russian nation is the state forming state, and its fall threatens terrible conflicts like those which took place in Kondopoga and Kosovo.” The “salvation of the nation,” he continued, requires the saving of the [ethnic] Russian family and boosting the willingness of [ethnic] Russian couples to have children.

The academic historian sharply criticized the current system of giving out what the Russian government calls “maternal capital” to women without regard to their ethnic background. In fact, some of the posters advertising this program feature women with “non-Russian” images. Lavrov said any funds must go “only to mothers of Russian nationality.”

oy. Assimilation. That must be for those dirty Americans and Canadians. And French. And...

Simulating the Bølling-Allerød Warming

By accurately modeling Earth's last major global warming — and answering pressing questions about its causes — scientists led by a University of Wisconsin-Madison climatologist are unraveling the intricacies of the kind of abrupt climate shifts that may occur in the future.

"We want to know what will happen in the future, especially if the climate will change abruptly," says Zhengyu Liu, a UW-Madison professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and director of the Center for Climatic Research in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. "The problem is, you don't know if your model is right for this kind of change. The important thing is validating your model."

To do so, Liu and his colleagues run their mode back in time and match the results of the climate simulation with the physical evidence of past climate.

Starting with the last glacial maximum about 21,000 years ago, Liu's team simulated atmospheric and oceanic conditions through what scientists call the Bølling-Allerød warming, the Earth's last major temperature hike, which occurred about 14,500 years ago. The simulation fell in close agreement with conditions — temperatures, sea levels and glacial coverage — collected from fossil and geologic records.

"It's our most serious attempt to simulate this last major global warming event, and it's a validation of the model itself, as well," Liu says.

The results of the new climate modeling experiments are presented today (July 17) in the journal Science.

The group's simulations were executed on "Phoenix" and "Jaguar," a pair of Cray supercomputers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and helped pin down the contributions of three environmental factors as drivers of the Bølling-Allerød warming: an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the jump-start of stalled heat-moving ocean currents and a large buildup of subsurface heat in the ocean while those currents were dormant.

The climate dominoes began to fall during that period after glaciers reached their maximum coverage, blanketing most of North America, Liu explains. As glaciers melted, massive quantities of water poured into the North Atlantic, lowering the ocean salinity that helps power a major convection current that acts like a conveyor belt to carry warm tropical surface water north and cooler, heavier subsurface water south.

As a result, according to the model, ocean circulation stopped. Without warm tropical water streaming north, the North Atlantic cooled and heat backed up in southern waters. Subsequently, glacial melt slowed or stopped as well, and eventually restarted the overturning current — which had a much larger reserve of heat to haul north.

"All that stored heat is released like a volcano, and poured out over decades," Liu explains. "That warmed up Greenland and melted (arctic) sea ice."

The model showed a 15-degree Celsius increase in average temperatures in Greenland and a 5-meter increase in sea level over just a few centuries, findings that squared neatly with the climate of the period as represented in the physical record.

"Being able to successfully simulate thousands of years of past climate for the first time with a comprehensive climate model is a major scientific achievement," notes Bette Otto-Bliesner, an atmospheric scientist and climate modeler at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and co-author of the Science report. "This is an important step toward better understanding how the world's climate could change abruptly over the coming centuries with increasing melting of the ice caps."

The rate of ice melt during the Bølling-Allerød warming is still at issue, but its consequences are not, Liu says. The modelers simulated both a slow decrease in melt and a sudden end to melt run-off. In both cases, the result was a 15-degree warming.

"That happened in the past," Liu says. "The question is, in the future, if you have a global warming and Greenland melts, will it happen again?"

At some point this will be up over at Science.

South American Dung Beetles of the Paleogene

A new study of 30 million year old fossil 'mega-dung' from extinct giant South American mammals reveals evidence of complex ecological interactions and theft of dung-beetles' food stores by other animals.

[...]

f the modern dung beetle deserves praise for these global sanitation efforts, then the extinct dung beetles of ancient South America deserve a medal. 30 million years ago the continent was home to what is known to palaeontologists as the South America Megafauna, including some truly giant extinct herbivores: bone covered armadillos the size of a small car, ground sloths 6 metres tall and elephant-sized hoofed-mammals unlike anything alive today. And of course, megafauna would have produced mega-dung! The beetles certainly had their work cut out for them and although the dung-beetles themselves did not fossilize, we know they were fully engaged in business because, amazingly, the results of their activities are preserved as fossil dung balls, some more than 40 million years old, and some as large as tennis balls.

Now palaeontologists in Argentina studying these dung balls have discovered that they have even more to tell us about the ecology of this lost world of giant mammals, but at a rather different scale. In a study published in the latest issue of the journal Palaeontology, Graduate Student Victoria Sánchez and Dr Jorge Genise report traces made by other creatures within fossil dung balls.

"Some of these are just the results of chance interactions" explains Dr Sánchez. "Burrowing bees, for example, dug cells in the ground where the dung balls were buried, and some of these happen to have been dug into the balls. But other traces record the behaviour of animals actively stealing the food resources set aside by the dung beetles. The shapes and sizes of these fossilized burrows and borings in the dung balls indicate that other beetles, flies and earthworms were the culprits. Although none of these animals is preserved in these rocks, the fossil dung balls preserve in amazing detail a whole dung-based ecosystem going on right under the noses of the giant herbivores of 30 million years ago."

hmmm. lol.

Futron Corp Predicts $1.5 Billion Commcerial Market

A study performed by the Futron Corporation, an aerospace consultancy based in Bethesda, MD, predicts that companies such as those competing for the Google Lunar X PRIZE will be able to address a market in excess of $1 billion over the course of the next decade. The market projection demonstrates the breadth of commercial opportunities that companies are likely to pursue either during or after the conclusion of their Google Lunar X PRIZE missions. The results of this study resonate well with our expectations, and provide excellent corroboration of internal studies conducted prior to the launch of this prize.

The Futron study, which involved a detailed examination of the 19 teams already registered in the competition, as well as a robust analysis of potential lines of business, identified six key market areas: hardware sales to the worldwide government sector, services provided to the government sector, products provided to the commercial sector, entertainment, sponsorship, and technology sales and licensing. Taken together, the study projects the value of these markets to be between $1 - $1.56 billion within the next decade. Additionally, some Google Lunar X PRIZE competitors have set their sights on additional market sectors that fell outside of the scope of the Futron report, which could result in an even higher total market size. I should also point out that the continued discoveries made by the government-funded spacecraft that are currently or have recently orbited the Moon will likely also generate ideas for new addressable markets.

hmmm. I wish, but...fwiw, I was surveyed as the Team Leader for Team Phoenicia.

Echo: "We No Longer Have a Viable Mars Program"

The journal Science's blog has posted a summary of the key issues raised at the last meeting of the Planetary Sciences Subcommittee, an advisory body of planetary scientists. The report confirms what was posted in other blogs and summarized in previous posts of my blog. The head of NASA's science program, Ed Weiler, had three key messages: NASA's planetary exploration budget has shrunk from $3B to $1.5B and as a result NASA no longer had a coherent Mars program nor could afford to build the Jupiter Europa Orbiter (penciled for launch in 2020). The galloping cost increases of the Mars Science Laboratory (originally proposed as a $600M technology development mission, then a $1.6B Flagship-class science mission that will eventually cost more than $2.2B with cost overruns).

From Future Planetary Exploration.

:((

I'm Only Happy When It Rains! (on Titan)

Title: Evidence for condensed-phase methane enhancement over Xanadu on Titan

Authors: M. Ádámkovics, I. de Pater, M. Hartung, J. W. Barnes
(Submitted on 13 Jul 2009)

Abstract: We present evidence for condensed phase methane precipitation near Xanadu using nine nights of observations from the SINFONI integral-field spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope and imaging analysis with empirical surface subtraction. Radiative transfer models are used to support the imaging technique by simulating the spectrometer datacubes and testing for variations in both the surface reflectivity spectrum and atmospheric opacity. We use the models and observations together to argue against artifacts that may arise in the image analysis. High phase angle observations from Cassini/VIMS are used to test against surface scattering artifacts that may be confused with sources of atmospheric opacity. Although changes in the surface reflectivity spectrum can reproduce observations from a particular viewing geometry on a given night, multiple observations are best modeled by condensed-phase methane opacity near the surface. These observations and modeling indicate that the condensed-phase methane opacity observed with this technique occurs predominantly near Xanadu and is most likely due to precipitation.

no time to comment.

Russian Bulava Fails Again

Russia's latest test of its advanced submarine-launched ballistic missile Bulava has failed, with the missile self-destructing, the Defense Ministry said Thursday — another setback for the nation's efforts to upgrade its aging arsenal.

The failure was the seventh in 11 test launches for the Bulava, and could have consequences for Russia's top missile designers and missile force commanders.

The Defense Ministry said in a statement that the missile was fired Wednesday from the submarine Dmitry Donskoi, but its first-stage malfunctioned and the weapon self-destructed.

No other information was released.

Russian forces earlier this week conducted two successful tests of another less-advanced missile, the Sineva. Military analysts, however, had been closely watching for the latest, long-promised test of the Bulava.

Defense Ministry officials had suggested a test was likely on Wednesday. However, there was no announcement of any sort that day, stoking speculation that the missile had again failed.

"Another failure would certainly provoke a serious soul searching in Russia," Pavel Podvig, a well-known analyst of Russia's missile forces, wrote in his blog on Wednesday. "It is probably too late to shut the program down, but the fact that the industry is not able to get the missile to fly ... is quite worrying."

Despite the failures, Russian leaders have boasted about the Bulava's capability to penetrate missile defenses and described it as a key part of the military's future nuclear arsenal.

Military commentator Alexander Golts said the failure was due to the fact that top government and military leaders were rushing to upgrade the aging-Soviet arsenal to keep up with the U.S.' technological advances.

He said missile designers skipped crucial steps in the testing process, such as running tests on land, instead of going straight to maritime conditions.

He also noted that the Bulava is the first missile to be designed and manufactured in post-Soviet Russia. That means that many of the research institutes and scientists who worked closely under the Soviet military industrial complex have withered away, for lack of government funding.

"The system disappeared, and they've had to build the system from scratch, and therefore serious failures," he said.<

I really need to write that post for Noel. *scribbles reminder*

Why Titan is so Exciting

Click the title. The Planetary Society has an awesome article up there.

A New North American Therizinosaur

A new North American therizinosaurid and the role of herbivory in ‘predatory’ dinosaur evolution



1. Lindsay E. Zanno (1,*)
2. David D. Gillette (2)
3. L. Barry Albright (3)
4. Alan L. Titus (4)

-Author Affiliations

1. Department of Geology, The Field Museum

2. Museum of Northern Arizona,

3. Department of Chemistry and Physics, University of North Florida

4. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

* Author for correspondence (lzanno@fieldmuseum.org).


Abstract

Historically, ecomorphological inferences regarding theropod (i.e. ‘predatory’) dinosaurs were guided by an assumption that they were singularly hypercarnivorous. A recent plethora of maniraptoran discoveries has produced evidence challenging this notion. Here, we report on a new species of maniraptoran theropod, Nothronychus graffami sp. nov. Relative completeness of this specimen permits a phylogenetic reassessment of Therizinosauria—the theropod clade exhibiting the most substantial anatomical evidence of herbivory. In the most comprehensive phylogenetic study of the clade conducted to date, we recover Therizinosauria as the basalmost maniraptoran lineage. Using concentrated changes tests, we present evidence for correlated character evolution among herbivorous and hypercarnivorous taxa and propose ecomorphological indicators for future interpretations of diet among maniraptoran clades. Maximum parsimony optimizations of character evolution within our study indicate an ancestral origin for dietary plasticity and facultative herbivory (omnivory) within the clade. These findings suggest that hypercarnivory in paravian dinosaurs is a secondarily derived dietary specialization and provide a potential mechanism for the invasion of novel morpho- and ecospace early in coelurosaurian evolution—the loss of obligate carnivory and origin of dietary opportunism.

Hat tip to Bill Parker of Chinleana.

More Evidence of PETM Methane Release

Kick-starting ancient warming

E. G. Nisbet¹, S. M. Jones², J. Maclennan³, G. Eagles¹, J. Moed⁴, N. Warwick⁴, S. Bekki⁵, P. Braesicke⁴, J. A. Pyle⁴ & C. M. R. Fowler¹

Rapid global warming marked the boundary between the Palaeocene and Eocene periods 55.6 million years ago, but how the temperature rise was initiated remains elusive. A catastrophic release of greenhouse gases from the Kilda basin could have served as a trigger.

Introduction

The warm period known as the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was a period of climatic turmoil that lasted more than 100,000 years1. Ocean temperatures increased by 3–10 °C, and atmospheric concentrations of methane and carbon dioxide rose sharply1. Meanwhile, the oceans became more acidic and the carbon isotopic values of marine carbonates declined significantly, a sign of a disrupted carbon cycle. These latter observations suggest that several thousand gigatonnes of isotopically light carbon must have been injected into the atmosphere–ocean system over the course of the event1, 2. Sources including the release of methane during the intrusion of magma into organic-rich sedimentary rocks, carbon dioxide outgassing from lava flows, and dissociation of methane gas hydrates in marine sediments2, 3, 4 have all been previously invoked in the perturbation — but we still do not know how much light carbon came from each source.

We are also unsure just what triggered the initial warming1, 2, 3, 4. More data on the environmental conditions of the PETM are becoming available, and it is now clear that the warming began several thousand years before the main disruption to the carbon cycle that is documented in the worldwide decrease in carbon isotope values5 often used to define the event. Therefore, the initial warming was probably a necessary precursor of the upheaval of the carbon cycle. Because, over a 20-year period, methane is 72 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warmer, a rapid injection of a relatively small amount of methane into the atmosphere could have caused the initial warming without leaving an identifiable isotopic signature. Mechanisms that have been suggested to provide such a methane burst include seabed hydrothermal activity and large submarine landslides3, 6.

Here we propose an alternative: we suggest that the early warming of the PETM was initiated by catastrophic expulsions of methane and also carbon dioxide that had accumulated over time in the stratified waters of the Kilda basin between Greenland and Norway, in a mechanism similar to that seen today in African rift lakes.

Correspondence to: E. G. Nisbet¹ e-mail: e.nisbet@es.rhul.ac.uk

Correspondence to: S. M. Jones² e-mail: stephen.jones@tcd.ie

Link to paper at the top. I can get it for anyone that wants it. I'll read it and add comments later. Press release here.

Reminder: Bone Yard in Three Days

Get your posts up, folks!

Venus' Wet, Volcanic Past

Venus Express has charted the first map of Venus's southern hemisphere at infrared wavelengths. The new map hints that our neighbouring world may once have been more Earth-like, with both, a plate tectonics system and an ocean of water.

The map comprises over a thousand individual images, recorded between May 2006 and December 2007. Because Venus is covered in clouds, normal cameras cannot see the surface, but Venus Express used a particular infrared wavelength that can see through them.

Although radar systems have been used in the past to provide high-resolution maps of Venus's surface, Venus Express is the first orbiting spacecraft to produce a map that hints at the chemical composition of the rocks. The new data is consistent with suspicions that the highland plateaus of Venus are ancient continents, once surrounded by ocean and produced by past volcanic activity.

"This is not proof, but it is consistent. All we can really say at the moment is that the plateau rocks look different from elsewhere," says Nils Müller at the Joint Planetary Interior Physics Research Group of the University Münster and DLR Berlin, who headed the mapping efforts.

The rocks look different because of the amount of infrared light they radiate into space, similar to the way a brick wall heats up during the day and gives off its heat at night. Besides, different surfaces radiate different amounts of heat at infrared wavelengths due to a material characteristic known as emissivity, which varies in different materials. The Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) instrument captured this infrared radiation during Venus's night-time orbits around the planet's southern hemisphere.

The eight Russian landers of the 1970s and 1980s touched down away from the highlands and found only basalt-like rock beneath their landing pads. The new map shows that the rocks on the Phoebe and Alpha Regio plateaus are lighter in colour and look old compared to the majority of the planet. On Earth, such light-coloured rocks are usually granite and form continents.

Granite is formed when ancient rocks, made of basalt, are driven down into the planet by shifting continents, a process known as plate tectonics. The water combines with the basalt to form granite and the mixture is reborn through volcanic eruptions.

"If there is granite on Venus, there must have been an ocean and plate tectonics in the past," says Müller.

no time to comment.

Majority of Repbulicans Think Palin's Not Fit For Presidency

[A] majority of Republicans now saying that they do not believe that Palin would be an effective president.

Only 33 percent of Republicans questioned in a CBS News survey released Monday night say that Palin would have the ability to serve effectively as president. Last fall, 71 percent of registered Republicans felt that way.

That added up to more than 100%, but, hey, the results are very, very encouraging. ;)

Congratz SpaceX

Depressing NASA Space Exploration News

NASA's planetary program has suffered a 50% budget reduction since 2005. This necessitates a complete replan of priorities. [Editor's notes: before this budget decline, an outer planets flagship mission could have been easily afforded]

*sighs*

SGI/PSC Ultraviolet Deal Dead?

There's a rumor running around that the new SGI is breaking the old SGI's deal with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. This would kill the petaflop Ultraviolet system that PSC was buying. The new SGI doesn't have to honor the contract and apparently has other custoemrs willing to pay more for the system than PSC. With a limited manufacturing capability and a customer willing to pay more, SGI is taking the highest bidder for its equipment. This leaves the NSF and PSC in a lurch. It may buy SGI some money now, which it needs, but it could also leave the HPC division in trouble in the future: NSF being one of the biggest funders of HPC systems in this country other than DOE.

We'll see...

Causes and Timing of Future Biosphere Extinctions

S. Franck, C. Bounama, and W. von Bloh

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

Abstract:

We present a minimal model for the global carbon cycle of the Earth containing the reservoirs mantle, ocean floor, continental crust, biosphere, and the kerogen, as well as the combined ocean and atmosphere reservoir. The model is specified by introducing three different types of biosphere: procaryotes, eucaryotes, and complex multicellular life. During the entire existence of the biosphere procaryotes are always present. 2 Gyr ago eucaryotic life first appears. The emergence of complex multicellular life is connected with an explosive increase in biomass and a strong decrease in Cambrian global surface temperature at about 0.54 Gyr ago. In the long-term future the three types of biosphere will die out in reverse sequence of their appearance. We show that there is no evidence for an implosion-like extinction in contrast to the Cambrian explosion. In dependence of their temperature tolerance complex multicellular life and eucaryotes become extinct in about 0.8–1.2 Gyr and 1.3–1.5 Gyr, respectively. The ultimate life span of the biosphere is defined by the extinction of procaryotes in about 1.6 Gyr.

This is the paper[1] that is by and large the cornerstone of Ward's book, The Medea Hypothesis. I'm chewing my way through what it means since I have finished the book. There are some troublesome assertions in there that I think ought to be brought a little more to light. I truly do not know how many people have been thinking about, commenting on, supporting or dismissing the whole Medea Hypothesis. So, I do know some of the paleo blog community reads here, so I m going to air some thoughts and see where and what I get smacked for...or who has similar qualms. There will be a flurry of relatively light weight posts as something of a point, but point basis over the next week. I truly hope that I get some discussion going. If you are going to join in, grab the paper and read. Please.

1. Available for free here. Hat-tip, Neil. Thank you.

PS. The Medea Hypothesis actually counts as a YAGUMET. *sighs* We will not get to Ward's Medea Hypothesis until at least Tuesday, possibly Wednesday. We're going to go over Franck et al's paper first. Without Franck et al's paper, its model, and its conclusions, Ward's stuff harder to grapple with: the book felt like there was a lot of assumption going on that we, the readers, were not privy to.

PPS I need a new label/keyword for this week's discussion. Suggestions?

Speaking of LC Restaurants...

The Guinness Book of World Records already has a largest hamburger designation on the books, but a southern New Mexico cafe is going for a spicier title: world's largest green chile cheeseburger.

The burger, crafted by Peppers Cafe in Mesilla, features a 10-inch diameter, 1-pound burger, a half-pound of cheese and three green chiles all between two specially made buns, said restaurant owner C.W. "Buddy" Ritter.

"We sold 20 of them yesterday, and we're very surprised they're selling like they are," Ritter said.

He said the cafe, which operates in the Double Eagle restaurant, sent an application to Guinness to make the burger the largest commercially available green chile cheeseburger in the world.

Oh Jason...this one has your name on it! Better take the whole crew.

Dino Burrows Found in Australia

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...

[...]

The Victoria fossils are about 110 million years old, around the time that Australia split with Antarctica, and dinosaurs roamed in prolonged polar darkness along forested southern Australia river plains. It was one of the last times the Earth experienced global warming, with an average temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit – about 10 degrees higher than today.

During the polar winter, though, the temperature could plunge below freezing. Previously, researchers theorized that the small dinosaurs in the region survived harsh weather by sheltering beneath large tree roots or in hollows. Martin's find, however, indicates that they may have dug into the soft banks of rivers flowing out of the rift valley.

The age, size and shape of the likely burrows led Martin to hypothesize that they were made by small ornithopod dinosaurs – herbivores that were prevalent in the region. These ornithopods stood upright on their hind legs and were about the size of a large, modern-day iguana.

"It's fascinating to find evidence connecting a type of behavior between dinosaurs that are probably unrelated, and lived in different hemispheres during different times," Martin says. "It fills in another gap in our understanding of the evolution of dinosaurs, and ways they may have survived extreme environments."

No time to comment, but pretty darn kewl!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

Repeat after me. Every last one of you scientist types that read this.

CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION.

Back.

Up.

What.

You.

Say.

With.

More.

Than.

Timing.

There is such a thing as coincidence.

It is always possible that Y you THOUGHT was causing X, is really Y happening because X happened.

You need MORE evidence. PERIOD.

For the love of Pete!

(there are multiple things that have brought this to a head)

NASA-ESA Mars Exploration Joint Initiative

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have agreed to establish a road map for future Mars missions.

The plan, known as the Mars Exploration Joint Initiative (MEJI), will serve to define a string of lander and orbiter flights to Mars in 2016, 2018 and 2020 that would ultimately lead to a sample return mission in the ensuing decade. The agencies also established a joint architecture review team to determine the most viable joint mission architectures for the initiative. The team's findings will be submitted for review to ESA member states and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

The moves were agreed upon by ESA science chief David Southwood and NASA Associate Administrator for Science Ed Weiler at a bilateral meeting in Plymouth, England June 29-30.

In addition to ESA's ExoMars project, nominally set for 2016, missions will include astrobiological, geological and other high-priority investigations that could pave the way for sample return, including perhaps a network of fixed geophysics stations originally intended for ExoMars (Aerospace DAILY, March 11).

The MEJI plan was motivated by the need to redefine ExoMars and descope its science package, because of lower than expected budget resources within ESA, and to reassess NASA's Mars exploration plans following a delay in the Mars Science Laboratory from 2009 to 2011 (Aerospace DAILY, Dec. 5, 2008).

Among the first tasks of the team will be to finalize NASA's role in ExoMars. The U.S. agency is studying supply of the launch, with an Atlas V and a telecom orbiter. One of the issues to be resolved, NASA engineers say, is whether the orbiter, which also would carry a science package, would be able to accommodate the large lander planned for ExoMars.

ESA has already worked out a framework agreement with the Russian Space Agency that would allow it to cooperate on ExoMars, including provision of backup launch services and a payload contribution, along with mission support.

hrm.

I whole heartedly support the different space agencies contributions to each other's mars missions. Cross pollination is a good thing. However, the idea that we ought to unify the missions into one Mars program leaves a bad taste in my mouth. International programs tend to be much more expensive. I need to find Paul Adam's old smn post about which countries to include in projects because its turned out to be oh-so-true.

Another Armadillosuchus Rendition

Hopefully this is more accurate than that other one I found. The teeth are certainly interesting. Are there more Armadillosuchus restorations out there? Link to the paper. Nick Gardner's post is excellent, too.

Beginning to Think About the Medea Hypothesis

I'm reading The Medea Hypothesis by Dr Peter Ward. The basic premise is that life is toxic to life and will, eventually, kill itself off. I'm about 2/3s done and there have been a number of things that are bugging me. I'll do a post eventually, however, I went looking for some responses to the book...so far, only one major one. There was some criticism by fellow scientists there:

Lynn Margulis, a noted biologist at the University of Massachusetts,Amherst, who helped Lovelock shape and promote the Gaia concept,dismisses Ward's work as misguided, describing it as “pseudo-quantitation, a nice example of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.”

J. David Archibald, a professor of biology and a vertebrate paleontologist at San Diego State University, said he was “underwhelmed” by the Medea idea. “I don't know that it tells us anything we didn't already know.”

Christopher Wills, a biologist at the University of California San Diego and co-author of “The Spark of Life,” a 2001 book on the origins of life on Earth, said it was too simplistic to say life causes mass extinctions. There are other, perhaps more compelling, factors, too.

“The dramatic changes in the Earth's climate have been accompanied by meteorite impacts and truly mind-boggling massive volcanic eruptions,” said Wills. “The Siberian eruptions that accompanied the great Permo-Triassic extinction 200 million years ago piled up layers of lava 10,000 feet thick over an area of 75,000 square miles. Life
didn't cause that.”

Wills' co-author, Jeffrey Bada, a marine chemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, also found the hypothesis wanting, particularly its eventual doomsday scenario.

“Given the ability for life on Earth to seemingly adopt to slowly changing conditions, I find the hypothesis to be far-fetched. There are certainly bacteria, some of which are photosynthetic, that would survive (increased solar radiation). And there is convincing evidence that some bacteria live far below the surface of the Earth, so they would be survivors as well.

“Animals, including humans, would probably have a rough go, but given the billion-year time scale for this scenario, it is likely that other catastrophes – a large impact event, nuclear war – would do these life-forms in before the heating was severe.”

One of the criticisms I have of the book is that there is a paper by Franck et al (2006) that is heavily cited...yet does not appear anywhere in the bibliography. Given it's absolute importance to the central thesis of the book, it's absence is pretty glaring and embarrassing. Fix it, guys, eh?

I've been googling for the paper and coming up empty handed. It has to do with paleoatmospheric content. Again, Franck et al 2006. I'll dig through and see if I can narrow down the journal. If anyone has it, *grovel*.

Memory Densities About to Go Up?

Researches at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, in Dresden, Germany headed up by Ruijuan Xiao say they found a way to increase storage capacity of magnetic data drives by a factor of 1,000. While the finding is simply a theory, the answer lies in tying cobalt molecules to a ring of carbon, as cobalt has the highest magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) of all ferromagnetic elements suitable for storage. The density of data storage depends on the size of magnetic grains, which cannot be shrunk indefinitely.

MAE is related to how easy it is to flip the magnetic field from one direction to the other, with a reliable lifespan of about 10 years for current hard drives. Today's high-end cobalt drives have about 50,000 atoms in a hexagonal close-packed structure, which results in an MAE of 0.06 meV per atom. Without changing this arrangement, which is necessary for reliable, long-term data storage, it is said to be possible to reduce the size of the cobalt grains to 15,000 atoms.

Xiao and his researchers say they have found a way to trick cobalt dimers, or two identical simple molecules, to think they're in a hexagonal close structure by attaching of them to a hexagonal carbon ring such as benzene or graphene.

The magnetic field between the cobalt atoms can then be switched by applying a weak magnetic field along with a strong electric field. Cobalt's MAE is 100 meV, which is reduced when the element is chemically bonded, but Xiao says his method of bonding it to carbon hexagons does not have such an effect.

Apart from longer life, this finding, if proven true with a working prototype, could also result in higher memory density, as current cobalt grains used in magnetic storage are about 8nm in width. Benzene rings, in comparison, are just 0.5nm wide. [via TechnologyReview]

Three hurdles to go. One functional prototype. Then a product unit (scaling and reproducibility issues as well as cost effectiveness). Then getting it adopted. That last is harder than it seems. There was a company during the dotcom days that came up with some CD/DVD replacement tech that was amazing for its time (TB+ sized disks), but...didn't get anywhere due to not being able to get someone to adopt it.

Notional F/A-XX: F/A-18E/F Replacement

On the heels of the Russian designer putting out how he thinks the PAK FA will look like, Boeing has put out what they currently think a 6th Generation Fighter will look like, one intended to replace the F/A-18E/F for the USN. Optionally manned is one of the key words here. I'm pretty convinced that it really ought to be completely unmanned. In fact, what they ought to be doing is having something like the old Vikings flying off the decks to control or coordinate the UCAVs.

One thought I had on the whole fighter concept was to have very fast UAVs that could close much faster than a manned platform for visual ID (possibly even expendable ones) and a manned control plane (E-2, whatever) and a few fat missile carriers that would follow long unmanned as well. UAV IDs target, man in the loop on control plane says yea or nay, missileer fires. Preferably there's a laser on the manned planned to tag obnoxious jerks and incoming missiles. Sounds vaguely FCS though.

Armadillosuchus Rendition

It looks like a cros between a croc, an armadillo and a fscking wolf. Was the fossil even close to that complete?

Is Putin's Russia Proto-Fascist?

Despite the hopes of many in the West for a more progressive approach from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the Moscow “tandem” of Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin represents a form of “proto-fascism,” one that will only get worse for both its people and the surrounding countries unless Western countries adopt a tough line.

In Kyiv’s “Den’” on July 4, Ukrainian commentator Volodomyr Lesnoy said that the current Russian regime can best be classified as “proto-fascist,” a system he defines as one “in which the characteristics of fascism exist in an incomplete form” but which are sufficiently developed that they recall “the first stage of fascism”.

So is Russia becoming fascist? Or is this an overblown nationalist in Ukraine? I have some pretty strong opinions about Putin and they are, by and large, rather negative. However, calling someone a fascist has a lot of historical baggage in the xUSSR. What do others think?

Sperm From Stem Cells

Human sperm have been created using embryonic stem cells for the first time in a scientific development which will lead researchers to a better understanding of the causes of infertility.

Researchers led by Professor Karim Nayernia at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI) have developed a new technique which has made the creation of human sperm possible in the laboratory.

The work is published today (8th July 2009) in the academic journal Stem Cells and Development.

[...]

In the technique developed at Newcastle, stem cells with XY chromosomes (male) were developed into germline stem cells which were then prompted to complete meiosis - cell division with halving of the chromosome set. These were shown to produce fully mature, sperm called scientifically, In Vitro Derived sperm (IVD sperm).

In contrast, stem cells with XX chromosomes (female) were prompted to form early stage sperm, spermatagonia, but did not progress further. This demonstrates to researchers that the genes on a Y chromosome are essential for meiosis and for sperm maturation.

Can't quite do away with us yet ladies.

Notional Sukhoi PAK FA's

Not the real deal, just someone's renderings of their ideas on how the PAK FA will supposedly look. Dewline noted the designer, Alekander Dultsev. The quesiton remains whether or not there will be a PAK FA at all: after all, there was this Mig 1.44 that was supposed to be the Russian answer to the F-22. And then there was the LFI and then...The PAK FA is already 2 years behind schedule. It's rumored to be because of manufacturing issues. Russian aerospace industry age much in how many years since they designed a new fighter?

Armadillosuchus, Brazilian Cretaceous Croc

Fossils found in Brazil are from a crocodile resembling a large armadillo that was a predator in the area around modern-day Sao Paulo state 90 million years ago, researchers said on Tuesday.

The 6.6-foot-long (two-meter-long), 265-lb (120-kg) crocodile, named the "Armadillosuchus," appears to have been unique to that area, the researchers at Rio de Janeiro's Federal University said.

The creature displayed some characteristics of an armadillo, with bony plates on its neck and back.

It had a carapace, a wide skull, a short, narrow snout, and relatively small, specialized teeth that make it distinct from any other crocodile discovered, the university said.

"The Armadillosuchus is only found in the interior of Sao Paulo state and this is a surprise, partly because it challenges the idea that crocodiles are found in hot and humid climates," UFRJ paleontologist Ismar de Souza Carvalho told reporters.

"In this case, they are crocodiles that live in a climate that is quite hot, dry and arid," he added.

The crocodile lived during the Cretaceous period, when temperatures would have reached about 113 degree Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius), the researchers said.

Regular blogging will resume soon. Promise.

PS. First tank passed the pressure test.

Reminder: Boneyard in Two Weeks

I had to postpone the BY until the 17th due to Team Phoenicia related stuff. However, I'm imploring the paleoset, please, get your posts in! My email is anzha lyu at gmail dottttted com or if you prefer my work email as wbaird at nersc dottted gov.

Zach and I are trying hard to get this revived. I'd really appreciate the paleoblogs contribution. Thanx, folks.

The Foraminifers Mass Extinction Paper

Surviving mass extinction by bridging the benthic/planktic divide

1. Kate F. Darling (a,1)
2. Ellen Thomas (b,c)
3. Simone A. Kasemann (a,d)
4. Heidi A. Seears (e)
5. Christopher W. Smart (f)
6. Christopher M. Wade (e)


a School of GeoSciences and Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JW, United Kingdom;

b Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8109;

c Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 06459;

d Institut für Geologische Wissenschaften, Fachrichtung Geologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Malteserstrasse 74-100, 12249 Berlin, Germany;

e Institute of Genetics, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2UH, United Kingdom;

f School of Earth, Ocean and Environmental Sciences, University of Plymouth, Plymouth PL4 8AA, United Kingdom

1 To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kate.darling@ed.ac.uk

Abstract:

Evolution of planktic organisms from benthic ancestors is commonly thought to represent unidirectional expansion into new ecological domains, possibly only once per clade. For foraminifera, this evolutionary expansion occurred in the Early–Middle Jurassic, and all living and extinct planktic foraminifera have been placed within 1 clade, the Suborder Globigerinina. The subsequent radiation of planktic foraminifera in the Jurassic and Cretaceous resulted in highly diverse assemblages, which suffered mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, leaving an impoverished assemblage dominated by microperforate triserial and biserial forms. The few survivor species radiated to form diverse assemblages once again in the Cenozoic. There have, however, long been doubts regarding the monophyletic origin of planktic foraminifera. We present surprising but conclusive genetic evidence that the Recent biserial planktic Streptochilus globigerus belongs to the same biological species as the benthic Bolivina variabilis, and geochemical evidence that this ecologically flexible species actively grows within the open-ocean surface waters, thus occupying both planktic and benthic domains. Such a lifestyle (tychopelagic) had not been recognized as adapted by foraminifera. Tychopelagic are endowed with great ecological advantage, enabling rapid recolonization of the extinction-susceptible pelagic domain from the benthos. We argue that the existence of such forms must be considered in resolving foraminiferal phylogeny.

That's a doozie. Here is my original post that Julia shared. Now, the question is...how many dual or multilifestyle foraminifers are there?!

(hey, Julia, boneyard, July 17, writewrite...please?)

New Australian Dinosaurs

Scientists have confirmed for the first time that Australia was once home to a dinosaur that was big, fast and terrifying, and they've named it like something from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Meet the Australovenator.

The beast was a 1,100 pound (500 kilogram) meat-eating predator with three slashing claws on each of its powerful forelimbs that stalked the Outback 98 million years ago, researchers said in a report published Friday.

Fossilized remnants of its limb bones, ribs, jaw and fangs were found — along with bones of two other new species of gigantic, long-necked herbivores weighing up to 22 tons (20 metric tons) — in Queensland state over the past three years.

The discovery, analyzed in a 51-page report published in the peer-reviewed online science journal PLoS ONE, was the first substantial find of large dinosaurs in Australia to be revealed in 28 years.

[...]

The finders nicknamed the 16-foot (5-meter) long carnivore, Australovenator wintonensis (pronounced oss-tra-low-VEN'-ah-tor win-TON'-en-sis), "Banjo," after the poet A.B. "Banjo" Paterson who in 1885 penned Australia's unofficial anthem "Waltzing Matilda" on a sheep ranch near Winton — a cattle town that lies closest to where the dinosaur bones were found. Banjo's Latin name means "Winton's Southern Hunter."

"The cheetah of his time, Banjo was light and agile," the report's lead author, Scott Hocknull, a Queensland Museum paleontologist, said in a statement.

"He's Australia's answer to Velociraptor, but many times bigger and more terrifying," Hocknull added, referring to the turkey-sized prehistoric predators recreated with artistic license in the "Jurassic Park" movies.

The other two finds — 52-foot- (16-meter-) long herbivores — were previously unknown types of titanosaur, the largest dinosaurs that ever lived. The giraffe-like Wintonotitan wattsi (pronounced win-ton-oh-TIE-tan wot-SIGH) and nicknamed Clancy translates from Latin as "Watts' Winton Giant." The Diamantinasaurus matildae (pronounced dye-man-TEEN'-ah-sor-us mah-TIL'-day) resembled a hippopotamus and has been nicknamed Matilda; the Latin name translates as "Matilda's Diamantina River Lizard."

Paper link is here.

New Mid-Cretaceous (Latest Albian) Dinosaurs from Winton, Queensland, Australia

Scott A. Hocknull (a*)
Matt A. White (b)
Travis R. Tischler(b)
Alex G. Cook(a)
Naomi D. Calleja(b)
Trish Sloan(b)
David A. Elliott(b)

a Geosciences, Queensland Museum, Hendra, Queensland, Australia

b Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History, The Jump-up, Winton, Queensland, Australia

Abstract:

Background

Australia's dinosaurian fossil record is exceptionally poor compared to that of other similar-sized continents. Most taxa are known from fragmentary isolated remains with uncertain taxonomic and phylogenetic placement. A better understanding of the Australian dinosaurian record is crucial to understanding the global palaeobiogeography of dinosaurian groups, including groups previously considered to have had Gondwanan origins, such as the titanosaurs and carcharodontosaurids.
Methodology/Principal Findings

We describe three new dinosaurs from the late Early Cretaceous (latest Albian) Winton Formation of eastern Australia, including; Wintonotitan wattsi gen. et sp. nov., a basal titanosauriform; Diamantinasaurus matildae gen. et sp. nov., a derived lithostrotian titanosaur; and Australovenator wintonensis gen. et sp. nov., an allosauroid. We compare an isolated astragalus from the Early Cretaceous of southern Australia; formerly identified as Allosaurus sp., and conclude that it most-likely represents Australovenator sp.
Conclusion/Significance

The occurrence of Australovenator from the Aptian to latest Albian confirms the presence in Australia of allosauroids basal to the Carcharodontosauridae. These new taxa, along with the fragmentary remains of other taxa, indicate a diverse Early Cretaceous sauropod and theropod fauna in Australia, including plesiomorphic forms (e.g. Wintonotitan and Australovenator) and more derived forms (e.g. Diamantinasaurus).

Perhaps Australia wasn't as much of a refugium as people - including me - have thought. Perhaps the difference in fauna - labrynthodonts, possibly dicynodonts, etc - are just a case of a different locale's fauna. huh. Wouldn't be funny if in Laurasia, in a polar region, there ended up being some dicynodonts and uber sized amphibians, too? And the only reason we don't know they are there is just sampling bias...huh. Interesting thought that.

The Late Miocene Pikermian Chronofauna

Distribution history and climatic controls of the Late Miocene Pikermian chronofauna

1. Jussi T. Eronen (a,1)
2. Majid Mirzaie Ataabadi (a)
3. Arne Micheels (b)
4. Aleksis Karme (a)
5. Raymond L. Bernor (c,d)
6. Mikael Fortelius (a, e)

a Department of Geology and

e Institute of Biotechnology, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland;

b Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum, Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum (BiK-F), Senckenberganlage 25, D-60325, Frankfurt am Main, Germany;

c Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology Program, Geosciences/Earth Sciences, National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22230; and

d College of Medicine, Department of Anatomy, Laboratory of Evolutionary Biology, Howard University, 520 W Street Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20059

Abstract:

The Late Miocene development of faunas and environments in western Eurasia is well known, but the climatic and environmental processes that controlled its details are incompletely understood. Here we map the rise and fall of the classic Pikermian fossil mammal chronofauna between 12 and 4.2 Ma, using genus-level faunal similarity between localities. To directly relate land mammal community evolution to environmental change, we use the hypsodonty paleoprecipitation proxy and paleoclimate modeling. The geographic distribution of faunal similarity and paleoprecipitation in successive timeslices shows the development of the open biome that favored the evolution and spread of the open-habitat adapted large mammal lineages. In the climate model run, this corresponds to a decrease in precipitation over its core area south of the Paratethys Sea. The process began in the latest Middle Miocene and climaxed in the medial Late Miocene, about 7–8 million years ago. The geographic range of the Pikermian chronofauna contracted in the latest Miocene, a time of increasing summer drought and regional differentiation of habitats in Eastern Europe and Southwestern Asia. Its demise at the Miocene-Pliocene boundary coincides with an environmental reversal toward increased humidity and forestation, changes inevitably detrimental to open-adapted, wide-ranging large mammals.

Likewise. No time.

Water Temperatures Warm Enough For Hurricanes

The first month of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season drew to a close without so much as a tropical storm, but that isn’t unusual. According to the National Hurricane Center, the 1944-2002 average for named storms in June was only about 0.75, which means they don't occur every year. When they do form, it is usually the Gulf of Mexico that brews them up, and this image of sea surface temperatures on June 30, 2009, shows why.

Based on a blend of observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite and MODIS on the Terra satellite, the image shows temperatures that are generally warm enough to sustain hurricanes in yellow, orange and red. The waters of the Caribbean Sea (south of Cuba), the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic off the Southeast coast were all warm enough to fuel hurricanes, while most of the tropical Atlantic between the Americas and Africa was still too cool.

No time to comment. Well, ok, very fast. Now imagine that pic with the surface water temps shifted 5 C up.

Using Foraminifers for Tracking Mass Extinctions Just Got A Whole Lot More Complicated

Two separate species of tiny marine organisms, a sea-floor dweller and an ocean surface swimmer, are one and the same despite radical differences in lifestyle.

The surprising discovery suggests that the group survived the Cretaceous mass extinction by abandoning the poisonous oceans for a refuge in the relative safety of the sea-floor.

Foraminifers have lived throughout the oceans for many millions of years. They are microscopic, single-celled organisms with tiny shells and are so abundant in marine sediments that they have been used to trace long-term changes in the ocean's environment. Scientists have recognised two main groups: the benthics live in sea-floor sediments, while the planktics inhabit surface ocean waters as part of the plankton.

Dr Kate Darling, from the University of Edinburgh, and colleagues discovered that a planktic species living 600 nautical miles offshore in the Arabian Sea - the Streptochilus globigerus (pictured) - is genetically identical to a benthic species called Boliviana variabilis, found off the coast of Kenya.

'This was a very surprising discovery,' says Darling. 'It's the same biological species but it is living two separate lives: on the shallow continental shelf and as plankton at the surface of the open ocean.'

[...]

Scientists think that all modern planktic foraminifers descend from a bottom-dwelling species that switched to a planktonic lifestyle sometime during the Mid to Early Jurassic, between 160 and 200 million years ago.

After the jump, the group diversified and new planktic species quickly colonised the oceans. Planktic foraminifers became very abundant, but only a small part survived the late Cretaceous extinction that killed off the dinosaurs. All modern planktic foraminifers are believed to descend from these lucky few.

Darling's findings complicate the story considerably. If some species can switch between free-swimming and bottom-dwelling lifestyles, then it's possible that 'most planktic foraminifers may have survived the KT [late Cretaceous] extinction in the sediment, not in the plankton,' says Darling.

It seems likely that the foraminifer species which had the ability to occupy both habitats survived on the sea-floor, avoiding the meteor impact catastrophe in the oceans above, argue the authors in the report published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. When the oceans returned to normal, the survivors were able to recolonise the ocean surface once more.

Darling is still working on this idea, but it's very telling that 'two of the three types that survived the KT extinction belong to the same kind of foraminifera' she says, referring to the two species now revealed as one.

oh boy.

The implications are huge. Mama Nature may have just played a nasty prank on paleo types, especially the mass extinction folks. More as I have time.

DARPA's Man Made Hummingbird

Intertropical Convergence Zone Creeping Northward

The rain band near the equator that determines the supply of freshwater to nearly a billion people throughout the tropics and subtropics has been creeping north for more than 300 years, probably because of a warmer world, according to research published in the July issue of Nature Geoscience.

If the band continues to migrate at just less than a mile (1.4 kilometers) a year, which is the average for all the years it has been moving north, then some Pacific islands near the equator – even those that currently enjoy abundant rainfall – may be drier within decades and starved of freshwater by midcentury or sooner. The prospect of additional warming because of greenhouse gases means that situation could happen even sooner.

The findings suggest "that increasing greenhouse gases could potentially shift the primary band of precipitation in the tropics with profound implications for the societies and economies that depend on it," the article says.

"We're talking about the most prominent rainfall feature on the planet, one that many people depend on as the source of their freshwater because there is no groundwater to speak of where they live," says Julian Sachs, associate professor of oceanography at the University of Washington and lead author of the paper. "In addition many other people who live in the tropics but farther afield from the Pacific could be affected because this band of rain shapes atmospheric circulation patterns throughout the world."

The band of rainfall happens at what is called the intertropical convergence zone. There, just north of the equator, trade winds from the northern and southern hemispheres collide at the same time heat pours into the atmosphere from the tropical sun. Rain clouds 30,000 feet thick in places proceed to dump as much as 13 feet (4 meters) of rain a year in some places. The band stretching across the Pacific is generally between 3 degrees and 10 degrees north of the equator depending on the time of year. It has recently been hypothesized that the intertropical convergence zone does not reside in the southern hemisphere for reasons having to do with the distribution of land masses and locations of major mountain ranges in the world, particularly the Andes mountains, that have not changed for millions of years.

The new article presents surprising evidence that the intertropical convergence zone hugged the equator some 3 ½ centuries ago during Earth's little ice age, which lasted from 1400 to 1850.

The authors analyzed the record of rainfall in lake and lagoon sediments from four Pacific islands at or near the equator.

One of the islands they studied, Washington Island, is about 5 degrees north of the equator. Today it is at the southern edge of the intertropical convergence zone and receives nearly 10 feet (2.9 meters) of rain a year. But cores reveal a very different Washington Island in the past: It was arid, especially during the little ice age.

Among other things, the scientists looked for evidence in sediment cores of salt-tolerant microbes. On Washington Island they found that evidence in 400- to 1,000-year-old sediment underlying what is now a freshwater lake. Such organisms could only have thrived if rainfall was much reduced from today's high levels on the island. Additional evidence for changes in rainfall were provided by ratios of hydrogen isotopes of material in the sediments that can only be explained by large changes in precipitation.

Sediment cores from Palau, which lies about 7 degrees north of the equator and in the heart of the modern convergence zone, also revealed arid conditions during the little ice age.

In contrast, the researchers present evidence that the Galapagos Islands, today an arid place on the equator in the Eastern Pacific, had a wet climate during the little ice age.

They write, "The observations of dry climates on Washington Island and Palau and a wet climate in the Galapagos between about 1420-1560/1640 provide strong evidence for an intertropical convergence zone located perennially south of Washington Island (5 degrees north) during that time and perhaps until the end of the eighteenth century."

If the zone at that time experienced seasonal variations of 7 degrees latitude, as it does today, then during some seasons it would have extended southward to at least the equator, Sachs says. This has been inferred previously from studies of the intertropical convergence zone on or near the continents, but the new data from the Pacific Ocean region is clearer because the feature is so easy to identify there.

The remarkable southward shift in the location of the intertropical convergence zone during the little ice age cannot be explained by changes in the distribution of continents and mountain ranges because they were in the same places in the little ice age as they are now. Instead, the co-authors point out that the Earth received less solar radiation during the little ice age, about 0.1 percent less than today, and speculate that may have caused the zone to hover closer to the equator until solar radiation picked back up.

"If the intertropical convergence zone was 550 kilometers, or 5 degrees, south of its present position as recently as 1630, it must have migrated north at an average rate of 1.4 kilometers – just less than a mile – a year," Sachs says. "Were that rate to continue, the intertropical convergence zone will be 126 kilometers – or more than 75 miles – north of its current position by the latter part of this century."

Interesting. Why North? Why not defuse north and south? Perhaps because of the thermal inertia of the oceans and the south has more of it? Or...? This is going to be important!


ObFutureThought: mmm. Sodden Hawaii. albeit several centuries from now...

Another Corrective Feedback Mechanism for Ice Ages

When glaciers advanced over much of the Earth's surface during the last ice age, what kept the planet from freezing over entirely? This has been a puzzle to climate scientists because leading models have indicated that over the past 24 million years geological conditions should have caused carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to plummet, possibly leading to runaway "icehouse" conditions. Now researchers writing in the July 2, 2009, Nature report on the missing piece of the puzzle – plants.

"Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been remarkably stable over the last 20 or 25 million years despite other changes in the environment," says co-author Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology. "We can look to land plants as the primary buffering agent that's held CO2 in such a narrow range during this time."

The research team, led by Mark Pagani of Yale University, found that the critical role of plants in the chemical breakdown and weathering of rocks and soil gave them a strong influence on carbon dioxide levels. It was a link that earlier studies had missed.

Over geologic time, large volumes of carbon dioxide have been released into the atmosphere by volcanoes. This would cause CO2 to build up in the atmosphere were it not for countervailing geologic processes of sedimentation, which bury carbon-containing minerals in the crust, sequestering it from the atmosphere. The overall rate of sedimentation is controlled by the upthrust of mountains and the erosion and chemical breakdown of their rocks. The rise of the Andes, Himalayas, Tibetan Plateau, and mountain ranges in western North America over the past 25 million years would have been expected to have cause faster weathering and erosion, and therefore a faster burial of carbon drawn from the atmosphere. But the stability of carbon dioxide levels indicate that this didn't happen. Why not?

This is where the plants come in. "The rates of weathering reactions are largely controlled by plants. Their roots secrete acids that dissolve minerals, they hold soils, and they increase the amount of carbon dissolved in groundwater," says Caldeira. "But when levels of carbon dioxide get too low, the plants basically suffocate and the weathering slows down. That means less sediment is eroded from the uplands and less carbon can be buried. It's a negative feedback on the system that has kept carbon dioxide levels from dropping too low."

Extremely low carbon dioxide levels would have reduced the atmosphere's ability to retain heat, putting the planet into a deep freeze. "So you could say that by limiting the drawdown of CO2 by chemical weathering and sedimentation, plants saved the planet from freezing over," says Caldeira.

This is an interesting contrast - a long with the earlier extended biosphere news - in contrast to the other book I am reading, The Medea Hypothesis. There will be posts on Ward's book. I am not so sure that I am agreeing with what he says. However, time will tell. I'm only a 1/3 done reading.

Fern Radiation in Cenozoic Angiosperm Forests

Evidence for a Cenozoic radiation of ferns in an angiosperm-dominated canopy

1. Eric Schuettpelz,1 and
2. Kathleen M. Pryer

Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708

Abstract:

In today's angiosperm-dominated terrestrial ecosystems, leptosporangiate ferns are truly exceptional—accounting for 80% of the ≈11,000 nonflowering vascular plant species. Recent studies have shown that this remarkable diversity is mostly the result of a major leptosporangiate radiation beginning in the Cretaceous, following the rise of angiosperms. This pattern is suggestive of an ecological opportunistic response, with the proliferation of flowering plants across the landscape resulting in the formation of many new niches—both on forest floors and within forest canopies—into which leptosporangiate ferns could diversify. At present, one-third of leptosporangiate species grow as epiphytes in the canopies of angiosperm-dominated tropical rain forests. However, we know too little about the evolutionary history of epiphytic ferns to assess whether or not their diversification was in fact linked to the establishment of these forests, as would be predicted by the ecological opportunistic response hypothesis. Here we provide new insight into leptosporangiate diversification and the evolution of epiphytism by integrating a 400-taxon molecular dataset with an expanded set of fossil age constraints. We find evidence for a burst of fern diversification in the Cenozoic, apparently driven by the evolution of epiphytism. Whether this explosive radiation was triggered simply by the establishment of modern angiosperm-dominated tropical rain forest canopies, or spurred on by some other large-scale extrinsic factor (e.g., climate change) remains to be determined. In either case, it is clear that in both the Cretaceous and Cenozoic, leptosporangiate ferns were adept at exploiting newly created niches in angiosperm-dominated ecosystems.

Dakota Gives Up Hadrosaur Skin Secrets

There's no evidence of goosebumps just yet, but a remarkably preserved dinosaur reveals that the prehistoric reptile had skin like that of birds and crocodiles, a new study says.

"This is the closest you're going to get to patting the animal," said excavation leader Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Britain's University of Manchester.

Advanced imaging and chemical techniques revealed that the 66-million-year-old "mummified" duckbilled dinosaur had two layers of skin, as do modern vertebrates, including humans.

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

[...]

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

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

Protein-recovery techniques used on the skin and a claw detected amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Proteins themselves, complex molecules that degrade easily over time, were not found, however.

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

That's like finding fragments of a broken vase instead of the intact vase, explained Thomas R. Holtz Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland.

Again, no time, but it is really good to see the famed dino mummies producing papers for a change, instead of just news stories.

Moa Colors Extracted from Feather DNA

Australian and New Zealand scientists have used prehistoric feathers to help map the color of giant extinct birds and said Wednesday they believe their method could help reconstruct the appearance of other extinct bird species.

The researchers retrieved ancient DNA from four species of New Zealand's extinct Moa from feathers found in caves and rock shelters and believed to be at least 2,500 years old.

The native Moa — a flightless, powerfully built forager that stood over 8 feet (2.50 meters) tall and weighed 550 pounds (250 kilograms) — ranged widely in southern New Zealand before the arrival of man.

Using DNA analysis, scientists from New Zealand's Landcare Research and Australia's Adelaide University reconstructed the mainly plain brown plumage of the stout legged Moa, heavy-footed Moa, upland Moa and South Island giant Moa.

"Some had white-tipped feathers to create a speckled appearance" that they used as camouflage, said researcher Nicolas Rawlence from the university's Australian Center for Ancient DNA.

The findings were published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.

no time to comment.

Canada Ranks Last on G8 Climate Change List

Canada ranks last among the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations for tackling climate change while Germany is top, the green group WWF and the German insurance giant Allianz reported on Wednesday.

Their assessment, issued ahead of the annual G8 summit, blasts Canada for greenhouse-gas emissions that are surging "far above" its obligations under under the UN's Kyoto Protocol.

"(Canada's) per capita emissions are among the highest in the world," they said.

"(Its) mid- to long-term greenhouse targets are inadequate. A plan to curb emissions was developed last year but has not been implemented. The Kyoto target will stay completely out of reach."

The United States, which placed last in the 2008 rankings, moves up a notch, thanks to the pro-climate policies launched by President Barack Obama.

haha. Wasn't James just talking about 'superior' being the other possible name of Canada?

Thhhhhbbbbbpppppt! :P

We will now return to our regular levels of maturity.

More on Vertical Farms

Encountered this - and posted on it - a couple years ago.

Ida Challenged by Burmese Primate

According to new research published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences) on July 1, 2009, a new fossil primate from Myanmar (previously known as Burma) suggests that the common ancestor of humans, monkeys and apes evolved from primates in Asia, not Africa as many researchers believe.

A major focus of recent paleoanthropological research has been to establish the origin of anthropoid primates (monkeys, apes and humans) from earlier and more primitive primates known as prosimians (lemurs, tarsiers and their extinct relatives). Prior to recent discoveries in China, Thailand, and Myanmar, most scientists believed that anthropoids originated in Africa. Earlier this year, the discovery of the fossil primate skeleton known as "Ida" from the Messel oil shale pit in Germany led some scientists to suggest that anthropoid primates evolved from lemur-like ancestors known as adapiforms.

According to Dr. Chris Beard–– a paleontologist at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and a member of the international team of researchers behind the Myanmar anthropoid findings––the new primate, Ganlea megacanina, shows that early anthropoids originated in Asia rather than Africa. These early Asian anthropoids differed radically from adapiforms like Ida, indicating that Ida is more closely related to modern lemurs than it is to monkeys, apes and humans.

The 38-million-year-old Ganlea megacanina fossils, excavated at multiple sites in central Myanmar, belong to a new genus and species. The name of the new species refers to a small village, Ganle, near the original site where the fossils were found, and the greatly enlarged canine teeth that distinguish the animal from closely related primates. Heavy dental abrasion indicates that Ganlea megacanina used its enlarged canine teeth to pry open the hard exteriors of tough tropical fruits in order to extract the nutritious seeds contained inside.

"This unusual type of feeding adaptation has never been documented among prosimian primates, but is characteristic of modern South American saki monkeys that inhabit the Amazon Basin," says Dr. Beard. "Ganlea shows that early Asian anthropoids had already assumed the modern ecological role of modern monkeys 38 million years ago."

Ganlea and its closest relatives belong to an extinct family of Asian anthropoid primates known as the Amphipithecidae. Two other amphipithecids, Pondaungia and Myanmarpithecus, were previously discovered in Myanmar, while a third, named Siamopithecus, had been found in Thailand. A detailed analysis of their evolutionary relationships shows that amphipithecids are closely related to living anthropoids and that all of the Burmese amphipithecids evolved from a single common ancestor. Some scientists had previously argued that amphipithecids were not anthropoids at all, being more closely related to the lemur-like adapiforms.

The discovery of Ganlea strongly supports the idea that amphipithecids are anthropoids, because adapiforms never evolved the features that are necessary to become specialized seed predators. Indeed, all of the Burmese amphipithecids appear to have been specialized seed predators, filling the same ecological niche occupied by modern pitheciine monkeys in the Amazon Basin of South America. During the Eocene when Ganlea and other amphipithecids were living in Myanmar, they inhabited a tropical floodplain that was very similar to the environment of the modern Amazon Basin.

Ha! Ida didn't change anything! They're still arguing this same argument: whither the origins of anthropoids? The book I'm almost down with, Splendid Isolation - written in the 80s - had the exact same argument and lamenting that it was still going on then.

Update: Oh, Brian has a great post on the subject.