And the BAND Plays on!

Researchers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight – and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.

The conclusions add to other evolving evidence that may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-eating dinosaurs, OSU researchers say.

"It's really kind of amazing that after centuries of studying birds and flight we still didn't understand a basic aspect of bird biology," said John Ruben, an OSU professor of zoology. "This discovery probably means that birds evolved on a parallel path alongside dinosaurs, starting that process before most dinosaur species even existed."

These studies were just published in The Journal of Morphology, and were funded by the National Science Foundation.

It gets REALLY good.

BAND, fwiw, means Birds Are Not Dinosaurs. I subscribe to BAD: Birds Are Dinosaurs.

Greenland Pro Independence Party Wins Election

Greenland's pro-independence leftist party Inuit Ataqatigiit, which won the Danish territory's legislative election on June 2, has agreed to form a coalition with two centrist parties, it said Sunday.

The three parties will hold a majority with 19 of 31 seats in the local parliament, the Landsting, IA leader Kuupik Kleist said in a statement.

IA, which ousted the social democratic Siumut party after 30 years in power, will hold 14 seats, the Democrats four seats and the Kattusseqatigiit Partiiat one seat.

Even though Siumut and IA had served in a coalition together as recently as 2007, Kleist had ruled out forming an alliance with Siumut after it became embroiled in a slew of scandals in recent months.

Final details still needed to be worked out on the government coalition and the cabinet portfolios were to be divided up Monday, Greenlandic radio KNR reported.

This is something I've not seen in my light cone of the blogosphere. I'm surprised at least Randy didn't pick it up. I really wonder what the economic prospects of an independent Greenland would be. After all, they receive a nontrivial amount of subsidies - more than half a billion, for 60k people!!! - from Denmark at this point and presumably that'd go away. Oh the other hand, lots of natural resources are becoming more accessible. Is it worth half a billion in subsidies though?

1 MY Serbian Mammoth Fossil Found

A well-preserved skeleton of a mammoth that is believed to be about one million years old has been unearthed in eastern Serbia, archaeologists said Thursday.

The discovery was made during excavation two days ago at an open-pit coal mine near Kostolac power plant, said Miomir Korac, from Serbia's Archaeology Institute.

A mammoth in a coal mine. Interesting combo. It's a southern mammoth (mammuthus meridionalis).

First ExtraGalactic ExoPlanet

Yes, you read that right. They found an exoplanet in the Andromeda Galaxy. Freakin Italians just couldn't stand to let anyone outdo them in astronomy anymore. Sheesh.

Paleoclimate Simulation Meeting

8:30 a.m. Christine Shields – NCAR
Updates to the CCSM3 Late Ordovician Simulations: CO2 Sensitivity and Implications for Glaciation

8:50 a.m. Arne Winguth – University of Texas
Response of Early Eocene Climate to Greenhouse Gas Forcing – A Model Study with CCSM3

9:10 a.m. Cecilia Bitz – University of Washington
North Atlantic Climate Variability at LGM, 14k, and Present Day

9:30 a.m. Esther Brady – NCAR
Ocean Freshwater Transport in the LGM Freshening Experiments

9:50 a.m. Zhengyu Liu – University of Wisconsin
Transient Climate Evolution of the Last 21000 Years: Update

10:10 a.m. Synte Peacock – NCAR
Isotopes in the Glacial Ocean

10:30 a.m. Break

11:00 a.m. Caspar Ammann – NCAR
New Implementations of Natural Forcing in CCSM4

11:20 a.m. Robert Oglesby – University of Nebraska
Role of North Atlantic SST on Persistent Drought in North America

11:40 a.m. Discussion

12:00 p.m. Adjourn

Link at the top is to the webcast. It's in the Tarn room. I'll try to live blog this.

Browsing Horse Found in Panama Canal Zone

Rushing to salvage fossils from the Panama Canal earthworks, Aldo Rincon, paleontology intern at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, unearthed a set of fossil teeth. Bruce J. MacFadden, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida in Gainesville, describes the fossil as Anchitherium clarencei, a three-toed browsing horse, in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of Paleontology.

By far the most complete fossil of a horse collected at the site in excavations spanning the last century, characteristics such as the shape of the teeth confirm the identity of two earlier finds and indicate that this horse was primarily a forest-dwelling browser living in the area between 15 and 18 million years ago. This evidence supports MacFadden's earlier proposal that the habitat was probably a mosaic of relatively dense forest and open woodlands. The presence of this browsing horse in Panama significantly extends the southern tip of its range from previous finds from roughly the same period in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota.

No time to comment.

Trains May Be Worse for Global Warming Than Planes

True or false: taking the commuter train across Boston results in lower greenhouse gas emissions than travelling the same distance in a jumbo jet. Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is false.

A new study compares the "full life-cycle" emissions generated by 11 different modes of transportation in the US. Unlike previous studies on transport emissions, this one looks beyond what is emitted by different types of car, train, bus or plane while their engines are running and includes emissions from building and maintaining the vehicles and their infrastructure, as well as generating the fuel to run them.

Including these additional sources of pollution more than doubles the greenhouse gas emissions of train travel. The emissions generated by car travel increase by nearly one third when manufacturing and infrastructure are taken into account. In comparison to cars on roads and trains on tracks, air travel requires little infrastructure. As a result, full life-cycle emissions are between 10 and 20 per cent higher than "tailpipe" emissions.

Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath of the University of California, Berkeley, included in their calculations data on the "life expectancy" of each component of each mode of transportation, such as the tracks used by a train and the airports used by aircraft.

They calculated the total "travel kilometres" each component allows and how many tonnes of greenhouse gases were emitted to build and maintain each component. This allowed them to calculate the component's emissions per kilometre travelled, for each mode of transport per kilometre for each traveller on board.

oh my...

CAMP Increasingly Tied to TJ Extinction

40Ar/39Ar ages of CAMP in North America: Implications for the Triassic–Jurassic boundary and the 40K decay constant bias

Jourdan, F., Marzoli A., Bertrand, H., S. Cirilli, S., Tanner, L.H., Kontak, D.J.,
McHone, G, Renne, P.R., and G. Bellieni. 2009. 40Ar/39Ar ages of CAMP in North America: Implications for the Triassic–Jurassic boundary and the 40K decay constant bias. Lithos 110:167-180. doi:10.1016/j.lithos.2008.12.011

ABSTRACT - The Central Atlantic magmatic province (CAMP) is one of the largest igneous provinces on Earth (greater than 10 million square km), spanning four continents. Recent high-precision 40Ar/39Ar dating of mineral separates has provided important constraints on the age, duration, and geodynamic history of CAMP. Yet the North American CAMP is strikingly under-represented in this dating effort.

Here we present 13 new statistically robust plateau, mini-plateau and isochron ages obtained on plagioclase and sericite separates from lava flows from the Fundy (n=10; Nova Scotia, Canada), Hartford and Deerfield (n=3; U.S.A.) basins. Ages mostly range from 198.6±1.1 to 201.0±1.4 Ma (2σ), with 1 date substantially younger at 190.6±1.0 Ma. Careful statistical regression shows that ages from the upper (199.7.0±1.5 Ma) and bottom (200.1±0.9 Ma) units of the lava pile in the Fundy basin are statistically indistinguishable, confirming a short duration of emplacement (≪1.6 Ma; ≤1 Ma). Three ages obtained on the Hartford (198.6±2.0 Ma and 199.8±1.1 Ma) and Deerfield (199.3±1.2 Ma) basins were measured on sericite from the upper lava flow units. We interpret these dates as reflecting syn-emplacement hydrothermal activity within these units. Collectively, CAMP ages gathered so far suggest a short duration of the main magmatic activity (2–3 Ma), but also suggest the possibility of a temporal migration of the active magmatic centers from north to south. Such a migration challenges a plume model that would postulate a radial outward migration of the magmatism and is more compatible with other models, such as the supercontinent global warming hypothesis. When compared to the age of the Triassic–Jurassic boundary, the filtered CAMP age database suggests that the onset of the magmatic activity precedes the limit by at least few hundred thousand years, thereby suggesting a causal relationship between CAMP and the end of Triassic mass extinction.

An age at 191 Ma possibly suggests a minor CAMP late tailing activity (190–194 Ma) which has been observed already for dykes and sills in Africa and Brazil. We speculate that, if genuine, this late activity can be due to a major extensional event, possibly heralding the oceanization process at ~190 Ma. Comparison between high quality U/Pb and 40Ar/39Ar ages of pegmatite lenses from the North Mountain basalts confirms a ~1% bias between the two chronometers. This discrepancy is likely attributed to the miscalibration of the 40K decay constants, in particular the electron capture branch.

Hat tip to Bill Parker at Chileana.

This is increasingly looking like the TJ/LTE is a volcano caused mass extinction. Chalk another one up to the vulcanists. (well, I already had, but...)

Atmospheric Pressure, Biospheres, Exoplanets, & When Life Finally Dies

Atmospheric pressure as a natural climate regulator for a terrestrial planet with a biosphere

1. King-Fai Li,1,
2. Kaveh Pahlevan,
3. Joseph L. Kirschvink and
4. Yuk L. Yung

-Author Affiliations

1.
Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125


Abstract

Lovelock and Whitfield suggested in 1982 that, as the luminosity of the Sun increases over its life cycle, biologically enhanced silicate weathering is able to reduce the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) so that the Earth's surface temperature is maintained within an inhabitable range. As this process continues, however, between 100 and 900 million years (Ma) from now the CO2 concentration will reach levels too low for C3 and C4 photosynthesis, signaling the end of the solar-powered biosphere. Here, we show that atmospheric pressure is another factor that adjusts the global temperature by broadening infrared absorption lines of greenhouse gases. A simple model including the reduction of atmospheric pressure suggests that the life span of the biosphere can be extended at least 2.3 Ga into the future, more than doubling previous estimates. This has important implications for seeking extraterrestrial life in the Universe. Space observations in the infrared region could test the hypothesis that atmospheric pressure regulates the surface temperature on extrasolar planets.

I've not read this paper yet...but will shortly.

Introducing Anoiapithecus from Miocene Spain

A unique Middle Miocene European hominoid and the origins of the great ape and human clade

1. Salvador Moyà-Solàa,1,
2. David M. Albab,c,
3. Sergio Almécijac,
4. Isaac Casanovas-Vilarc,
5. Meike Köhlera,
6. Soledad De Esteban-Trivignoc,
7. Josep M. Roblesc,d,
8. Jordi Galindoc and
9. Josep Fortunyc

-Author Affiliations

1.
aInstitució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats at Institut Català de Paleontologia (ICP) and Unitat d'Antropologia Biològica (Dipartimento de Biologia Animal, Biologia Vegetal, i Ecologia), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Edifici ICP, Campus de Bellaterra s/n, 08193 Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain;
2.
bDipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Via G. La Pira 4, 50121 Florence, Italy;
3.
cInstitut Català de Paleontologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Edifici ICP, Campus de Bellaterra s/n, 08193 Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain; and
4.
dFOSSILIA Serveis Paleontològics i Geològics, S.L. c/ Jaume I núm 87, 1er 5a, 08470 Sant Celoni, Barcelona, Spain



Abstract

The great ape and human clade (Primates: Hominidae) currently includes orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans. When, where, and from which taxon hominids evolved are among the most exciting questions yet to be resolved. Within the Afropithecidae, the Kenyapithecinae (Kenyapithecini + Equatorini) have been proposed as the sister taxon of hominids, but thus far the fragmentary and scarce Middle Miocene fossil record has hampered testing this hypothesis. Here we describe a male partial face with mandible of a previously undescribed fossil hominid, Anoiapithecus brevirostris gen. et sp. nov., from the Middle Miocene (11.9 Ma) of Spain, which enables testing this hypothesis. Morphological and geometric morphometrics analyses of this material show a unique facial pattern for hominoids. This taxon combines autapomorphic features—such as a strongly reduced facial prognathism—with kenyapithecine (more specifically, kenyapithecin) and hominid synapomorphies. This combination supports a sister-group relationship between kenyapithecins (Griphopithecus + Kenyapithecus) and hominids. The presence of both groups in Eurasia during the Middle Miocene and the retention in kenyapithecins of a primitive hominoid postcranial body plan support a Eurasian origin of the Hominidae. Alternatively, the two extant hominid clades (Homininae and Ponginae) might have independently evolved in Africa and Eurasia from an ancestral, Middle Miocene stock, so that the supposed crown-hominid synapomorphies might be homoplastic.

I've sat on this for a couple days, so Brian posted a far, far better version of a write up than I could. Go read it.

Link to the paper at the top.

Metal Pumps Liquid

In nature, trees pull vast amounts of water from their roots up to their leaves hundreds of feet above the ground through capillary action, but now scientists at the University of Rochester have created a simple slab of metal that lifts liquid using the same principle—but does so at a speed that would make nature envious.

The metal, revealed in an upcoming issue of Applied Physics Letters, may prove invaluable in pumping microscopic amounts of liquid around a medical diagnostic chip, cooling a computer's processor, or turning almost any simple metal into an anti-bacterial surface.

"We're able to change the surface structure of almost any piece of metal so that we can control how liquid responds to it," says Chunlei Guo, associate professor of optics at the University of Rochester. "We can even control the direction in which the liquid flows, or whether liquid flows at all."

Guo and his assistant, Anatoliy Vorobyev, use an ultra-fast burst of laser light to change the surface of a metal, forming nanoscale and microscale pits, globules, and strands across the metal's surface. The laser, called a femtosecond laser, produces pulses lasting only a few quadrillionths of a second—a femtosecond is to a second what a second is to about 32 million years. During its brief burst, Guo's laser unleashes as much power as the entire electric grid of North America does, all focused onto a spot the size of a needlepoint, he says.

The wicking process, which on Guo's metal moves at a quick one centimeter per second speed against gravity, is very similar to the phenomenon that pulls spilled milk into a paper towel or creates "tears of wine" in a wineglass—molecular attractions and evaporation combine to move a liquid against gravity, says Guo. Likewise, Guo's nanostructures change the way molecules of a liquid interact with the molecules of the metal, allowing them to become more or less attracted to each other, depending on Guo's settings. At a certain size, the metal nanostructures adhere more readily to the liquid's molecules than the liquid's molecules adhere to each other, causing the liquid to quickly spread out across the metal. Combined with the effects of evaporation as the liquid spreads, this molecular interaction creates the fast wicking effect in Guo's metals.

Adding laser-etched channels into the metal further enhances Guo's control of the liquid.

"Imagine a huge waterway system shrunk down onto a tiny chip, like the electronic circuit printed on a microprocessor, so we can perform chemical or biological work with a tiny bit of liquid," says Guo. "Blood could precisely travel along a certain path to a sensor for disease diagnostics. With such a tiny system, a nurse wouldn't need to draw a whole tube of blood for a test. A scratch on the skin might contain more than enough cells for a micro-analysis."

Guo's team has also created metal that reduces the attraction between water molecules and metal molecules, a phenomenon called hydrophobia. Since germs mostly consist of water, it's all but impossible for them to grow on a hydrophobic surface, says Guo.

Currently, to alter an area of metal the size of a quarter takes 30 minutes or more, but Guo and Vorobyev are working on refining the technique to make it faster. Fortunately, despite the incredible intensity involved, the femtosecond laser can be powered by a simple wall outlet, meaning that when the process is refined, implementing it should be relatively simple.

Really, really swamped. Hence no update yesterday.

Polar Methane Quantity Increasing

A rise in concentrations of a powerful greenhouse gas over the Arctic after a decade of stability is stirring worries about a possible thaw of vast stores trapped in permafrost, experts said.

Levels of methane in the atmosphere rose 0.6 percent in 2008, according to preliminary data from the Zeppelin station on a remote island in the Norwegian Arctic, after a similar 0.6 percent gain in 2007, Norwegian officials said.

The 2007 rise outpaced a global rise in methane of 0.34 percent to a new record high after levels had been stable for about a decade. World data for 2008 are not yet available.

"The biggest worry is that there are emissions from the permafrost, and also from wetlands in the northern region," said Catherine Lund Myhre, senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research.

A thaw of permafrost, such as in Siberia or Canada, could release vast amounts of trapped greenhouse gases and in turn accelerate global warming. "There may be several causes for the rise. Currently it's not solved," she told Reuters.

Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas behind carbon dioxide, accounting for about 18 percent of the heat-trapping greenhouse effect from human activities that might trigger more heatwaves, floods or rising seas.

Methane is emitted from natural sources -- such as from decaying plants in swamps or by termites -- and by human use of fossil fuels, rice paddies, landfills and from the digestive tracts of animals such as cows and sheep.

Paul Fraser, a chief research scientist at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, said wetlands, both in the tropics and in the north, seemed a likely source of extra methane after a drier period.

Very quick comment: I wonder if this - methane accumulation at the poles, not unlike what happens with CFCs - is what warms the poles so much during Green House Climates (most recently the Eocene).

Pixar's Up!

eh.

Not that fun a movie. Avrora was scared a good deal of time. Lyuda was bored most of the time. I was...underwhelmed. There were a few good moments, but ...idk...

SQUIRREL!

(best line in the whole movie)

That Guadalupian Mass Extinction Paper (Wignall et al)

Volcanism, Mass Extinction, and Carbon Isotope Fluctuations in the Middle Permian of China

Paul B. Wignall,1,* Yadong Sun,2 David P. G. Bond,1 Gareth Izon,3 Robert J. Newton,1 Stéphanie Védrine,1 Mike Widdowson,3 Jason R. Ali,4 Xulong Lai,2 Haishui Jiang,2 Helen Cope,5 Simon H. Bottrell1

The 260-million-year-old Emeishan volcanic province of southwest China overlies and is interbedded with Middle Permian carbonates that contain a record of the Guadalupian mass extinction. Sections in the region thus provide an opportunity to directly monitor the relative timing of extinction and volcanism within the same locations. These show that the onset of volcanism was marked by both large phreatomagmatic eruptions and extinctions amongst fusulinacean foraminifers and calcareous algae. The temporal coincidence of these two phenomena supports the idea of a cause-and-effect relationship. The crisis predates the onset of a major negative carbon isotope excursion that points to subsequent severe disturbance of the ocean-atmosphere carbon cycle.

1 School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
2 Faculty of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
3 Department of Earth and Environmental Science, The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK.
4 Department of Earth Sciences, Pokfulam Road, University of Hong Kong.
5 Department of Bioengineering, University of Strathclyde, Wolfson Building, 106 Rottenrow, Glasgow G4 0NW, UK.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: p.wignall@see.leeds.ac.uk

I have emailed and asked about the paper. If anyone else can get it to me faster...;) Dr Wignall sent me a copy.

Munchy Crunchy Belarus? Or More Posturing?

The future of Belarus can no longer depend on Russia, President Alexander Lukashenko declared Friday, a day after talks between the once close ex-Soviet allies ended in acrimony.

Lukashenko, whose government was dubbed Europe's last dictatorship by the United States but is now courting closer ties with the European Union, said the days of Minsk "bowing down" to Moscow were over.

His extraordinary anti-Moscow tirade came a day after his talks with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Minsk were overshadowed by bitter disputes over Russian loans to Belarus and recent Belarussian overtures to the EU.

"It's not working out with Russia. We don't need to bow down. We don't need to whine and cry," his press service quoted Lukashenko as telling his government.

"We need to look for our happiness on a different part of the planet. I consciously say this in public. From this day on, that time has come to an end and another time has started."

mmm. This is gonna be "fun" to watch play out. How Russia reacts ought to be interesting. And telling.

*chokes*

In 2002, British viewers of the BBC put Winston Churchill, Princess Diana and 19th century engineer Brunel at the top of their list of national heroes. Then,, last year, Russian viewers of Moscow’s “Rossiya” channel offered Aleksandr Nevsky, Stolypin and Stalin as their favorite national heroes.

I was reading an article about only what could be termed Russian Exceptionalism when I read the above paragraph...I spewed coffee all over. I wonder what the world would think if a listing like that had been made for Germans and - forgive me German readers, truly - it had come out Arminius, Frederick the Great and Hitler?

Speaking of German What-if's and of a great deal better taste:

When Benno Ohnesorg was shot on June 2, 1967 by a policeman in West Berlin during a demonstration against the Shah of Iran, the young German student became a martyr for a generation of left-wing activists. The killing triggered the radicalization of the mass protest movement in West Germany, which directed its anger against the police, the government and the conservative establishment. The poignant image of a woman cradling Benno Ohnesorg's head as he lay dying on the ground became etched in Germans' minds. But now it has emerged that the police officer who pulled the trigger was actually a spy working for the Stasi, East Germany's dreaded secret police. The revelation has stunned Germans and thrown a whole new light on Germany's past.

A researcher working for a government agency that manages the old communist regime's secret police records stumbled across the new information as she was carrying out research on another project. The former West Berlin cop, Karl-Heinz Kurras, has a bulging Stasi file of some 7,000 pages. Kurras, it turns out, was a member of the East German SED Communist Party as well as an active Stasi agent. He joined the West Berlin police at the age of 22 in 1950, but five years later he switched sides and went to the authorities in East Berlin. Kurras wanted to move to East Germany but he was persuaded to stay with the police in West Berlin and spy for the Stasi under the cover name of "Otto Bohl". For years, Kurras delivered sensitive information about Allied soldiers and police officers to his controllers in East Berlin. According to government officials, he was rewarded handsomely for his services. One payment alone in 1966, for instance, came to 4,500 German marks, worth just over $1000 at the time.

So what-if "Bohl" is unmasked by accident by the East German government. What would the impact be? There's a news story about it here. I am a little unconvinced that it would derail the student movement as it was. There was plenty of gunpowder laying around and something was going to light that boomski.

Astrometry Finally Bags an Exoplanet

Using the method of astrometry to find planets orbiting other stars has been around for 50 years, and until now it hasn’t bagged a single exoplanet. But finally, astronomers found a Jupiter-sized planet , called VB 10b, using this method. Astrometry is difficult and requires very precise measurements over long periods of time. So why did they keep trying for so long? “This method is optimal for finding solar-system configurations like ours that might harbor other Earths,” said astronomer Steven Pravdo of JPL. “We found a Jupiter-like planet at around the same relative place as our Jupiter, only around a much smaller star. It’s possible this star also has inner rocky planets. And since more than seven out of 10 stars are small like this one, this could mean planets are more common than we thought.”

The finding confirms that astrometry could be a powerful planet-hunting technique for both ground- and space-based telescopes. For example, a similar technique would be used by SIM Lite, a NASA concept for a space-based mission that is currently being explored.

The newfound exoplanet is about 20 light-years away in the constellation Aquila. It is a gas giant, with a mass six times that of Jupiter’s, and an orbit far enough away from its star to be labeled a “cold Jupiter” similar to our own. In reality, the planet’s own internal heat would give it an Earth-like temperature.

The planet’s star, called VB 10, is tiny. It is what’s known as an M-dwarf and is only one-twelfth the mass of our sun, just barely big enough to fuse atoms at its core and shine with starlight. For years, VB 10 was the smallest star known — now it has a new title: the smallest star known to host a planet. In fact, though the star is more massive than the newfound planet, the two bodies would have a similar girth.

They tried this with Bernard's Star and failed to find anything...despite some misstarts.

Science Vs Journalism: A VITAL Read

There are lessons to be taken from even the most rant-y or misguided efforts of pseudo-science and un-science and general misrepresentations of science provided you know where to find them. One aspect of the near congenital media screw-up of science is the idea that one vocal dissenter to a well recognised hypothesis or theory makes this either controversial or uncertain. In fact I recently found a great quote by a science journalist on this very issue: “Journalism, which relies on “balance”, has never dealt with science, which relies on consensus”. (Sharon Weinberger).

Please, PLEASE, PLEASE go read David Hone's commentary on science vs journalism and the lone dissenter. He really hits it on the head and I wish journalists and those that read the popsci writeups will pay attention. Closely.

A Guadalupian Mass Extinction Correlation

A mass extinction some 260 million years ago may have been caused by volcanic eruptions in what is now China, new research suggests.

The so-called Guadalupian Mass Extinction, devastating marine life around the world, was preceded by massive eruptions in the Emeishan province of Southwest China, researchers led by Paul Wignall of Britain's University of Leeds report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Because the eruptions occurred in a shallow sea the researchers were able to study both the volcanic rock and the overlying layer of sedimentary rock containing fossilized marine life, making it possible to compare dates.

I went looking for a paper, but I haven't been able to find it in Science.

Pointers to the paper?

Note: THIS IS A CORRELATION, NOT VERIFIED CAUSATION. I really like that Wignall acknowledges that. That's really kewl.

China's Lunar Plans

A Chinese space scientist said that his country is considering the feasibility of a manned lunar landing mission sometime between 2025 and 2030. China is also planning a sample return mission to the Moon by 2017, said Ye Peijian, chief designer of the China’s Chang’e Project. “Through the development of lunar probes, we have made constant progress of the ability to explore the outer space,” Ye was quoted as saying by the China News Service.

Chang’e -1 launched successfully in 2007 and orbited the Moon for 16 months before conducting a controlled impact on the Moon’s surface earlier this year. The satellite mapped and created three-dimensional images of the lunar surface. Several performance tests were carried out while Chang’e-1 was in orbit to give engineers experience in orbit adjustment, and to test the spacecraft’s capability.

According to Ye, China will launch the second lunar probe Chang’e-2 in 2010 which will conduct research at a 100-kilometer-high moon orbit as the preparation for a soft landing by using variable thrusters with the Chang’e-3, which will include a lunar rover, currently in development.

Will they get there before the GLXP folks? ;)