ESA ExoMars Rover Delayed Again

Dordain said, though, that the Martian rover ExoMars, which had previously been planned for launch in November 2013, would head to the Red Planet in early 2016.

Planning concerns made it preferable to aim for the next launch window for Mars, he said, insisting that there had not been budgetary problems.

The celestial ballet between Earth and Mars means that the distance between the two planets varies between 55 million kilometres (34 million miles) and more than 400 million kilometres.

The ExoMars mission entails sending a 200-kilogramme (440-pound) wheeled rover, which will carry a drill enabling it delve up to two metres (seven feet) below the surface to see if the Red Planet has microbial life, or the potential for it.

ExoMars was initially planned for launch in 2011, but this date had already slipped by two years to help resolve what its goals should be.

I hope this doesn't get delayed into oblivion.

VOTE BRIAN!

There's a scholarship of $10k for science bloggers. The internet folks get to decide who gets it based on a vote. Brian Switek of Laelaps has become a candidate and I would strongly suggest that people go vote for him. Please, go vote for him. Brian's a good guy and an excellent sci-blogger. It will only take a couple seconds of your time.

Thanx, folks.

A Little More Diverse Than We Thought

3 species!

DOE to Cut Funding to Elevated CO2 Forest Experiment

For more than a decade, the federal government has spent millions of dollars pumping elevated levels of carbon dioxide into small groups of trees to test how forests will respond to global warming in the next 50 years.

Some scientists believe they are on the cusp of receiving key results from the time-consuming experiments.

The U.S. Department of Energy, however, which is funding the project, has told the scientists to chop down the trees, collect the data and move on to new research. That plan has upset some researchers who have spent years trying to understand how forests may help stave off global warming, and who want to keep the project going for at least a couple of more years.

"There has been an investment in these experiments and it's a shame we are going to walk away from that investment," said William Chameides, an atmospheric scientist at Duke University, where one of the experimental forests is located. "There is no question that ultimately we want to cut the trees down and analyze the soil. The question is whether now is the time to do it."

Ronald Neilson, a U.S. Forest Service bio-climatologist in Corvallis, Ore., said the experiments should continue because they still have potential to answer key questions about how rainfall and fertility affect how much carbon a forest will store long-term — essential to understanding how forests may soften the blow of climate change.

But the Energy Department, following the advice of a specially convened panel of experts, believes that chopping down the trees and digging up the soil will allow the first real measurements of how much carbon the leaves, branches, trunks and roots have been storing, said J. Michael Kuperberg, a program manager with the agency.

Ending the experiments will also allow the funding to be devoted to new research that will look at the effects of higher temperatures, changes in rainfall, and variations in soil fertility, Kuperberg said.

"What we are trying to do here is balance the time to get optimal results out of the existing experiment with our desire for a new generation of experiments that we feel is more likely to realistically represent future climate scenarios," Kuperberg said.

Some scientists, though, believe ending the long-term research may be a mistake.

"If we stop these experiments now, it could cost many years to get back to this point, time we may not have," Kevin Lee Griffin, associate professor of environmental sciences at Columbia University, wrote in an e-mail.

The research program, Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE), consists of rings of tall white plastic pipes with holes along their length that emit once-liquified carbon dioxide in carefully metered doses. The loblolly pines planted in 1994 at Duke in North Carolina are located behind gates several miles from campus.

[...]

The Department of Energy's Office of Biological & Environmental Research has informed those managing the experiments that their current research will be phased out by 2011. They are to get the definitive measurements on how tree growth, which represents stored carbon, was influenced, and should design new experiments to get rolling by 2012.

The panel found that the current experiments had a useful life of 10 to 12 years, and in a few more years the results would become invalid, in part because the trees were nearly taller than the pipes delivering the carbon dioxide.

Results so far indicate that elevated levels of carbon dioxide make forests grow more quickly, said Ram Oren, associate professor of ecology at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and principal investigator on the experiments there.

But unless forests are on fertile ground — hard to come by because of development — growth will be in leaves, needles, and fine roots, which die off and decompose in a year or two, releasing the carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere, Oren said.

[...]

Rich Norby, who oversees the tree experiment at Oak Ridge, said he had thought it had run its course, but emerging trends indicate the new wood growth from increased carbon dioxide tapers off due to limitations of nitrogen — fertilizer — in the soil.

There are pros and cons with this one. Comments to come. Busy today.


Fast one: carbon uptake is limited by soil quality. This means that we may be able to suck up some CO2 via reforestation, but it will hit a wall after a point due to other nutrient issues.

Phoenix RIP

The Phoenix Mars Lander has fallen silent.

I Am Disturbed

It seems that in several nonEnglish Wikipedia entries, my blog has been taken as an authoritative source.

(o.O)

Mystery Deepens Over Subglacial Gamburtsev Mountains

The existence of a massive Antarctic mountain range buried under miles of ice has become an even deeper mystery, a new study says.

The little-researched Gamburtsev Mountains seem to challenge geologic patterns seen in other mountain ranges on Earth.

For one, the range is situated in the middle of the continent instead of on the edge—at the plate-tectonic boundaries—like most other mountains. (See a high-resolution map of Antarctica.)

The range's high peaks reach an elevation of about 10,000 feet (more than 3,000 meters)—heights typical of relatively young mountain ranges, such as the spiky Rockies and the European Alps.

New findings based on river sediments, which suggest the range is more than 500 million years old, are intriguing, experts say.

Older mountains, such as the Appalachian range in the eastern U.S., are thought to be shorter and less rugged after hundreds of millions of years of erosion.

Because the Gamburtsev range is tall, some scientists have argued it must have formed relatively recently—within the last 60 million years or so.

And because it's not near a tectonic boundary, some have suggested the range rose up as the result of magma buildup around a theoretical volcanic hot spot.

"The hypothesis that the mountains are derived from young volcanic activity is hard to reconcile with our data," said study lead author Tina van de Flierdt of the Imperial College London.

Note: GaM on the map is the locale of the Gamburtsev Mountains.

Map Credit from TAMU.

Boneyard XXV Live!

It lives over at The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Big Lie.

A Permian Landscape Depiction

Just in case you don't realize, the title on this blog is ALWAYS a link back to the article or source.

That said, this is kewl, but perhaps a touch too Mordor-esque. The flood basalts. of Siberia wouldn't have been cut like this so soon.

Sea Snakes Only Drink Fresh Water

Sea snakes may slither in saltwater, but they sip the sweet stuff.

So concludes a University of Florida zoologist in a paper appearing this month in the online edition of the November/December issue of the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology.

Harvey Lillywhite says it has been the "long-standing dogma" that the roughly 60 species of venomous sea snakes worldwide satisfy their drinking needs by drinking seawater, with internal salt glands filtering and excreting the salt. Experiments with three species of captive sea kraits captured near Taiwan, however, found that the snakes refused to drink saltwater even if thirsty — and then would drink only freshwater or heavily diluted saltwater.

"Our experiments demonstrate they actually dehydrate in sea water, and they'll only drink freshwater, or highly diluted brackish water with small concentrations of saltwater — 10 to 20 percent," Lilywhite said.

Harold Heatwole, a professor of zoology at North Carolina State University and expert on sea snakes, termed Lillywhite's conclusion "a very significant finding."

"This result probably holds the key to understanding the geographic distribution of sea snakes," Heatwole said.

The research may help explain why sea snakes tend to have patchy distributions and are most common in regions with abundant rainfall, Lillywhite said. Because global climate change tends to accentuate droughts in tropical regions, the findings also suggest that at least some species of sea snakes could be threatened now or in the future, he added.

"There may be places where sea snakes are barely getting enough water now," he said. "If the rainfall is reduced just a bit, they'll either die out or have to move."

This is something to be considered for the extinct diapsid lineages. They may not have been able to get water from the sea...somehow I doubt it for the ichthyosaurs, but you never know. Have any ever been found in deep river deposits? What about mosasaurs and the others?

Bioleeching: Phytomining's Microscopic Cousin

Bacteria can leach small amounts valuable metals from otherwise useless ore, researchers have found.

These mineral-crunching microorganisms are a type of bacteria that use minerals as their source of energy. When the life-forms break down the matter through metabolism, they squeeze out metal ores or concentrates combined with sulfur in a process called bioleaching.

The method is emerging as an increasingly important way to extract valuable minerals when conventional methods such as smelting can't do the job cheaply enough, experts say.

Development is also being spurred by the electronics industry's brisk global demand for copper.

"Certain microbes react to metal ions and help copper be leached out of low-quality ore," said Masaru Tomita of the Institute for Advanced Biosciences at Japan's Keio University.

"The ultimate goal is to establish biotechnologies to leach copper from this low-quality ore."

Bioleaching already currently accounts for an estimated 20 percent of the world's mined copper, and is in use at about 20 mines around the world.

That's further along than I would have thought. Pretty kewl too.

Puerto Rico Election News

The mainland of the USA wasn't the only place that had elections yesterday. Puerto Rico also had their elections. There were some very interesting results. First off, the governorship has changed hands from the Popular Democratic Party's Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, the incumbent, to the New Progressive Party's Luis Fortuño. It was an 11 point margin. The New Progressive Party is roughly allied with the mainland's Republican Party and is pro-statehood for Puerto Rico. The Popular Democratic Party is approximately aligned with the Democratic Party and promotes the so-called enhanced commonwealth status (*cough*unconstitutional*cough*). For once, the race wasn't as much about pro or anti statehood, Vilá has been indicted on 20 (?) federal corruption charges and the economy there is TEH SUCK. Fortuño promised to clean up everything and fix the economy. That seems to have won him the governorship.

The nonvoting representative to congress - that's all you get as a colony, ahem, unincorporated territory - is also of the New Progressive Party. Furtehrmore, it looks like their legislature just got pwnd by the New Progressive Party as well. I'm a little unsure as to the percentages, but it looks like they got over 50%.

It looks like interesting timing here...y'know, with HR 900 sitting out there, the pro-statehood party takes control of PR's government...very interesting.

Hat Tip Latino Pundit.

PS the Puerto Rico Independence Party recieved something around 1%. Ditto for the Puerto Ricans for Puerto Rico Party. Both will lose accreditation as parties if true.

Well Crap: SpacePort America Takes a Hit from Otero County

Residents of Otero County in New Mexico have defeated a Spaceport America tax increase to help build an inland spaceport that will serve as the launching ground for commercial spacecraft.

Reports from the field there say Tuesday's election tally show that 52.3 percent voted against the tax; 47.7 percent voted for the tax.

While not impacting Spaceport America as far as moving forward, the Otero non-support means there will be less money for operations. Officials have said the initial estimate cost to build the spaceport 45 miles (72.4 km) north of Las Cruces, NM, is about $198 million, with a cap set for $225 million.

Earlier, both Dona Ana County and Sierra County approved a tax increase meaning that Spaceport America will proceed. However, the Otero vote for the tax increase would have raised some $2.3 million for the effort, with that county becoming part of a triad of support to build the facility.

That hurts. And sux.

Dona Ana passed it. Sierra County passed it. But, oh, no, Otero couldn't. Geez.

Medvedev: Missiles to Polish Border

Russia will deploy missiles near NATO member Poland in response to U.S. missile defense plans, President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday in his first state of the nation speech.

Medvedev also singled out the United States for criticism, casting Russia's war with Georgia in August and the global financial turmoil as consequences of aggressive, selfish U.S. policies.

He said he hoped the next U.S. administration would act to improve relations. In a separate telegram, he congratulated Barack Obama on his election victory and said he was hoping for "constructive dialogue" with the incoming U.S. president.

Medvedev also proposed increasing the Russian presidential term to six years from the current four, a major constitutional change that would further increase the power of the head of state and could deepen Western concern over democracy in Russia.

The president said the Iskander missiles will be deployed to Russia's Kaliningrad region, which lies between Poland and the ex-Soviet republic of Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, but did not say how many would be used. Equipment to electronically hamper the operation of prospective U.S. missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic will be deployed, he said.

He did not say whether the short-range Iskander missiles would be fitted with nuclear warheads and it was not clear exactly when the missiles would be deployed.

Russia will certainly be a challenge for President Obama. My wife thinks that Putin is salivating. I have some commentary on the election for later.

Luis W. Alvarez Postdoctoral Fellowship

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and the Computational Research Division at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory invite applications for the Luis W. Alvarez Fellowship in Computational Science. The fellowship allows recent graduates with a Ph.D. (or equivalent) to acquire further scientific training at one of the leading facilities for scientific computing and to develop professional maturity for independent research.

The scientific staff at Berkeley Lab recognizes the increasing significance of computational and computer science and the need to help educate students across the full spectrum of scientific computing. Today's computational science is rooted in the efforts of innovative scientists like Luis W. Alvarez. In the 1950s, physicist Dr. Alvarez opened a new era in high-energy physics research with his proposal to build a pressurized chamber filled with liquid hydrogen. Known as a bubble chamber, this device would allow scientists to discover new particles and analyze their behavior. In his 1955 prospectus for such an experimental facility, Dr. Alvarez became one of the first scientists to propose using computing devices for analyzing experimental data, even before such computers were actually available.

By the 1960s, Dr. Alvarez's vision was reality. His colleagues at Berkeley Lab used computers to track some 1.5 million particle physics events annually and developed scientific computing techniques which were adopted by researchers around the world. This effort led to Dr. Alvarez receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968.

Today, Berkeley Lab's Computing Sciences organization provides high-performance computing (HPC) resources and expertise to researchers across the country, advancing computational science of scale. Research areas in the Computational Research Division include:

* Developing and supporting robust and reliable bioinformatics tools
* Researching and developing software to support extreme-scale computing and data analysis in distributed environments
* Developing mathematical modeling tools for complex scientific problems
* Designing algorithms to improve the performance of scientific applications
* Researching system architectures to improve system performance
* Advancing peta-scale scientific data management
* Evaluating new and promising computing and networking technologies
* Researching methods to control and manage dynamic circuit networks
* Large scale visualization technologies


The Luis W. Alvarez Fellowship in Computational Science aims to achieve these goals by supporting recent graduates (within the past three years) with a strong emphasis on computing or computational science. The successful applicant will be compensated with a competitive salary and excellent benefits.

We encourage those who share Dr. Alvarez's scientific curiosity and dedication to join us in our efforts by applying for a fellowship.

Qualifications

Requires a Ph.D. in computer science or related discipline. Candidates must have received a Ph.D. within the last three years.

Notes

Applications are due by December 2, 2008 for Fall 2009.

If anyone knows anyone...

Cray Turns a Profit

Cray Inc. reported third-quarter net income of $5 million, or 15 cents per share, which compares with net income of $5.1 million, or 16 cents per share a year earlier.

Revenue for the Seattle supercomputer company (NASDAQ: CRAY) was $54.6 million compared with $55 million in 2007.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial Network expected a loss of 5 cents per share and revenue of $54.3 million.

Yea!

We like our vendors to suffer...but not die.

Did Dimetrodon Piscovore?

Go Look at Beyond Bones.

Settling the Russian Future Tank Speculation

NYET!



DA!

There has been a long and, frankly, ridiculous speculation on the next Russian tank. There were wild rumors of a monstrosity that was armed with either a 135mm or 152mm direct fire, high velocity cannon meant to kill M-1s from the frontal aspect. This sounded like a truly nasty critter that was under forever development at the tank factories of the xUSSR. Well, Medvedev almost assuredly just put that nightmare where it belongs: strictly in the imagination. In fact, back in the wank fantasy dreams.

The Russians were never developing the monster T-95. To think otherwise, looking back, was absurd: I was hoping actually, cuz, well, it'd be so kewl. Even though tanks are far cheaper than aircraft, the Russians simply did not have enough money to produce something completely new. Since the Black Eagle is just a derivative of the T-80 tank - new turret - means that they are going with what they have...mildly upgraded. Again, Cold War tech with a few sprinkles on top. No monster gun. No unmanned turret. Nothing more than a mild evolution of what has come before. In fact, probably easily killable even by the FCS MCS, a light tank.

(if that ever comes to fruition).

GET OUT AND VOTE!

Democracy only works if we go out and minimally get out to vote.

Quick Note

Wow.

We have had a wild time recently. I'll do some real posts shortly. One bit of news was that we went to the SF Symphony for the Day of the Dead celebrations and watched a really kewl concert. Avrora loved it. I have to say the Gambosa was fantastic. I have to say I am also a sucker for Copland. Still. There were other great pieces as well, but I'll have to remember to bring a program to do them justice.

More soon.