Wed, 01/12/2010 - 09:30 by Prince damin
Cambridge, Mass. -- Earth's oceans were homegrown and not delivered by icy comets and asteroids as long contended, U.S. researchers say.
Astronomers have long theorized that comets and asteroids delivered the water for the world's oceans during an epoch of heavy bombardment that ended about 3.9 billion years ago, but researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology contend the water came from the very rocks that formed the planet, AAAS ScienceMag.org reported Monday.
Geologist Linda Elkins-Tanton says computer simulations show a large percentage of the water in the molten rock forming the early Earth would quickly form a steam atmosphere before cooling and condensing into an ocean.
|
Wed, 01/12/2010 - 09:28 by Prince damin
Denver -- U.S. and state officials are trying to determine what a healthy number of gray wolves is for the species in the northern Rockies.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar discussed the issue Monday at a meeting in Denver with the governors of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, The Denver Post reported. The meeting was closed to the public and news media, but those who attended said there was general agreement the gray wolf can be taken off the endangered species list, returning control of populations to the states.
"The successful recovery of the gray wolf is a stunning example of how the Endangered Species Act can work to keep imperiled animals from sliding into extinction," Salazar said in a statement.
|
Wed, 01/12/2010 - 09:26 by Prince damin
AnnArbor, Mich. -- An ingredient in antibacterial soaps may provoke more allergies, and some plastics used in soap bottles may affect the immune system, U.S. researchers say.
Triclosan, widely used in products such as antibacterial soaps, and bisphenol A, found in many plastics and food containers, are both in a category of chemicals called endocrine-disrupting compounds thought to threaten human health by mimicking or affecting hormones, ScienceDaily.com reported Tuesday.
A University of Michigan School of Public Health study compared levels of urinary bisphenol AA and triclosan with cytomegalovirus antibodies and diagnoses of allergies or hay fever in a sample of U.S. adults and children over age 6.
|
Wed, 01/12/2010 - 09:25 by Prince damin
Paris -- European scientists say a mysterious, high-altitude layer of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus has been explained, with possible earthly connections.
Sulphuric acid clouds blanket Venus at an altitude of between 30 and 45 miles, formed by sulfur dioxide from volcanoes combining with water to form sulfuric acid droplets.
Intense solar radiation above 45 miles should destroy any sulfur dioxide above that height, so scientists were puzzled when a European Space Agency probe found a layer of sulfur dioxide at about 55 miles, an ESA release said.
|
Wed, 01/12/2010 - 07:23 by Prince damin
State College, Pa. -- The 2010 Atlantic Hurricane Season was an active one but the Eastern North Pacific basin yielded the fewest storms on record this year, forecasters said.
The Pacific Basin normally sees 15 tropical storms form each season, with an average of nine becoming hurricanes, but this year only seven tropical storms formed, with three becoming hurricanes, Accuweather.com reported Tuesday.
Sixty percent of all storm development in the region during the season occurs in September and October, but this September was the quietest on record with only one tropical storm, Accuweather meteorologist Dan Kottlowski said.
October yielded no tropical activity, something that hasn't happened since 1977, he said.
|
Wed, 01/12/2010 - 06:54 by Prince damin
London -- Polar bears are carrying cubs on their backs while they swim through icy waters, possibly because of global warming melting arctic ice, U.K. researchers say.
Scientists say they believed it to be a new behavior, possibly the result of bears having to swim longer distances in the ocean because of reduction in the amount of ice used by the bears as seal-hunting territory, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported.
During the longer swims, traveling on the mother's back could be vital for the survival of the cubs, scientists say, as being on the mother's back means the cub's body is in direct contact with the adult's fur and a large part of the baby is out of the icy water, thereby reducing heat loss.
|
Wed, 01/12/2010 - 06:44 by Prince damin
Cardiff, Wales -- British environmentalists say an invasive "killer" shrimp that feeds on native counterparts, young fish and insect larvae has been detected in Wales.
The predatory Dikerogammarus villosus can have serious impacts on the ecology of habitats it invades and can cause extinctions, the BBC reported.
Dubbed the killer shrimp by biologists for its voracious appetite, it often kills its prey and leaves it uneaten.
Originally from the steppe region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, D. villosus, which can grow to be much larger than native freshwater shrimp, has been spreading across Western Europe for 10 years.
|
Wed, 01/12/2010 - 06:35 by Prince damin
Oxford, England -- U.K. astronomers say a nearby galaxy, well past its cosmic "prime" for producing stars, shows evidence it is still churning out baby stars.
Images from the Hubble Space Telescope show the core of an elliptical galaxy known as NGC 4150, thought to be well past its period of star formation, surrounded by streamers of dust, gas and young, blue stars considerably less than 1 billion years old, SPACE.com reported Tuesday.
Scientists say the finding suggests elliptical galaxies can still have some youthful vigor left, possibly through encounters with smaller galaxies, and that the star birth in NGC 4150 may have been kicked off by a collision and merger with a dwarf galaxy.
|
Wed, 01/12/2010 - 06:17 by Prince damin
Cleveland -- The U.S. Air Force used 1,760 Sony Playstation 3 video game consoles to create a supercomputer at about a tenth the normal cost for such a setup, officials say.
Named the Condor Cluster and to be unveiled Wednesday, it's the fastest interactive computer the Defense Department has, the Air Force said.
Researchers under the command of Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, harnessed the computing power of off-the-shelf PlayStation 3 consoles linked to more traditional graphical processing computer components, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported.
The Condor Cluster can be used to solve image-matching problems and assist in surveillance situations, using radar
enhancement and pattern recognition capabilities, the Air Force said.
|
Tue, 30/11/2010 - 10:43 by Rakhi
New York -- New technologies in cars, from navigation screens to built-in Internet hot spots and voice-activated systems, are ultimately dangerous, U.S. safety experts say.
Critics say even when designed to help drivers keep both hands on the wheel, such technologies can cause "cognitive distractions" and are dangerous, LiveScience.com reports.
An example, critics say, is Ford's latest enhancement of its popular voice-activated SYNC in-car communications system, with a completely voice-controlled interface for entertainment -- AM/FM and satellite radio, HD, CD, MP3 -- as well as climate control, phone and navigation.
|
Tue, 30/11/2010 - 10:34 by Prince damin
Gothenburg, Sweden -- The Amazon Basin's impressive biodiversity was started by the creation of the Andes, pushing its beginnings earlier than previously thought, a researcher says.
While researchers have long suspected the diversity of the Amazonian rainforest was affected by the Andes, the causal links have long been the subject of debate among scientists.
|
Tue, 30/11/2010 - 10:28 by Prince damin
Annapolis, Md. -- U.S. researchers say they've taken a page from the humpback whale's book to design more efficient underwater turbines for generating electricity.
The turbines are an integral part of the technology that attempts to convert ocean tidal flow energy into electricity.
Researchers at the United States Naval Academy in Maryland have been tackling one of the serious challenges of the technology, the low velocity associated with many tidal flows and the difficulty of extracting useful energy from low speed flows using current designs, a release from the American Institute of Physics says.
|
