Sunday, January 9, 2011

AAAS - AAAS News Release - "SCIENCE: Gulf Bacteria Quickly Digested Spilled Methane, Research Says"

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill - Gulf of Mexico

Image by kk+ via FlickrAAAS - AAAS News Release - "SCIENCE: Gulf Bacteria Quickly Digested Spilled Methane, Research Says"

Bacteria made quick work of the methane released by the Deepwater Horizon blowout, digesting most of the gas within the four months after its release, according to a new study published online at ScienceExpress.
One positive outcome of this violent and tragic blowout was that, in some ways, it paralleled natural events that are rare but potentially dangerous, and highly intriguing to scientists. For example, large volumes of methane have at times been released naturally along the sea floor through hydrocarbon seeps, hydrothermal vents, or the decomposition of solid, “clathrate” methane deposits. While large methane-release events would have had major effects on ocean chemistry and possibly climate, scientists can’t exactly set them off in order to see what happens.

To help dissipate the plume, crews in May burned floating oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

[Public domain image by John Kepsimelis, U.S. Coast Guard]

Dr. John D. Kessler sampling water.

[Photo by Elizabeth Crapo/NOAA]

The Deepwater Horizon blowout discharged massive amounts of oil and gas into the deep Gulf of Mexico, including methane. John Kessler of Texas A&M University and colleagues surveyed the Gulf waters during the leak as well as after the wellhead was sealed, and their results indicate that a vigorous bloom of bacteria degraded virtually all of the methane released form the well within 120 days of the initial blowout.
The authors base these conclusions on measurements of methane and oxygen distributions at over 200 stations (oxygen drops when bacteria respire methane), as well as genetic sequence data from water samples indicating a growing presence of methane-digesting bacteria.
The findings suggest that large-scale releases of methane in the deep ocean are likely to be met by a similarly rapid bacterial response, the researchers say. In a studypublished earlier in the fall, this group reported measurements taken earlier than the ones in this paper, which indicated bacteria were also quickly consuming ethane and propane, even before the major response to the methane got underway. The study did not explore what effect microbes may have had on the oil from the spill.

Kathleen Wren

6 January 2011

Motorola Introduces the Xoom, Its Answer to the iPad - NYTimes.com

Image via CrunchBaseMotorola Introduces the Xoom, Its Answer to the iPad - NYTimes.com

January 5, 2011, 8:15 PM

Motorola Introduces the Xoom, Its Answer to the iPad

By JENNA WORTHAM

6:30 p.m. | Updated Adding more on the Xoom and other new products.

LAS VEGAS — Motorola

, which has fought its way back into the cellphone market, is now taking on Apple’s iPad.

At a packed press event at the Consumer Electronics Show

here, the company showed off a tablet called the Xoom. It uses the newest version of Google

’s Android operating system, called Honeycomb, which is designed to make it easier to interact with a touchscreen tablet. Among other new features, the Xoom will come with new Google mapping software that displays and rotates 3-D building outlines.

“So far for Android, we’ve seen handset operating systems meant for phones running on tablets,” said Sanjay Jha, chief executive of Motorola Mobility, in an interview before the event. “This was an operating system built for a tablet from the ground up.” (As of Tuesday, Motorola split itself into two companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions, which is focused on business customers.)

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Prehistoric bird used club-like wings as weapon

Image via WikipediaPrehistoric bird used club-like wings as weapon

Prehistoric Bird Used Club-Like Wings as Weapon

ScienceDaily (Jan. 5, 2011) — Long before the knights of medieval Europe wielded flails or martial artists brandished nunchucks, it appears that a flightless prehistoric bird used its own wings as a similar type of weapon in combat.

See Also:

Plants & Animals

Birds

Bird Flu Research

Zoology

Fossils & Ruins

Early Birds

Dinosaurs

Evolution

Reference

Archaeopteryx

Difference between a butterfly and a moth

Pterosaur

Dodo and related birds

Paleontologists at Yale University

and the Smithsonian Institution

have discovered that Xenicibis, a member of the ibis family that lived about ten thousand years ago and was found only in Jamaica, most likely used its specialized wings like a flail, swinging its upper arm and striking its enemies with its thick hand bones.

"No animal has ever evolved anything quite like this," said Nicholas Longrich of Yale, who led the research. "We don't know of any other species that uses its body like a flail. It's the most specialized weaponry of any bird I've ever seen."

As part of the new study, the researchers analyzed a number of recently discovered partial skeletons of Xenicibis and found that the wings were drastically different from anything they'd seen before. "When I first saw it, I assumed it was some sort of deformity," Longrich said. "No one could believe it was actually that bizarre."

The bird, which was the size of a large chicken, is anatomically similar to other members of the ibis family except for its wings, which include thick, curved hand bones unlike those of any other known bird. Xenicibis also had a much larger breastbone and longer wings than most flightless birds. "That was our first clue that the wings were still being used for something," Longrich said.

While other birds are known to punch or hammer one another with their wings, Xenicibis is the only known animal to have used its hands, hinged at the wrist joint, like two baseball bats to swing at and strike its opponents. Although modern day ibises do not strike one another in this fashion, they are very territorial, with mates often fighting other pairs over nesting and feeding rights.

It's also possible that the birds used their club-like wings to defend themselves against other species that might have preyed on the birds' eggs or young. Xenicibis is unusual in that it became flightless even in the midst of a number of predators, including the Jamaican yellow boa, a small extinct monkey and over a dozen birds of prey.

The team found that two of the wing bones in the collection showed evidence of combat, including a fractured hand bone and a centimeter-thick upper arm bone that was broken in half. The damage is proof of the extreme force the birds were able to wield with their specialized wings, Longrich said.

Other authors of the paper, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, include Storrs Olson (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution).

Email or share this story:

|More

Large-scale study reveals major decline in bumble bees in US

Image via WikipediaLarge-scale study reveals major decline in bumble bees in US

Large-Scale Study Reveals Major Decline in Bumble Bees in US

ScienceDaily (Jan. 3, 2011) — The first in-depth national study of wild bees in the U.S. has uncovered major losses in the relative abundance of several bumble bee species and declines in their geographic range since record-keeping began in the late 1800s.

See Also:

Plants & Animals

New Species

Extinction

Mating and Breeding

Earth & Climate

Exotic Species

Environmental Policy

Geography

Reference

Africanized bee

Pollination management

Bee

Beekeeping

The researchers report that declining bumble bee populations have lower genetic diversity than bumble bee species with healthy populations and are more likely to be infected withNosema bombi, an intracellular parasite known to afflict some species of bumble bees in Europe.

The new study appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We have 50 species of bumble bees in North America. We've studied eight of them and four of these are significantly in trouble," said University of Illinois entomology professor Sydney Cameron, who led the study. "They could potentially recover; some of them might. But we only studied eight. This could be the tip of the iceberg," she said.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

How hybrids work

A plug-in, flex-fuel hybrid car. It has a 40-m...

Image via WikipediaHow hybrids work: "Here's an animated explanation of how hybrid cars save fuel and protect the environment."

Telling a little white lie may on occasion soothe ruffled social feathers, but covering up a murder plot or withholding information on terrorist cells can devastate individuals and society at large. Yet detecting deception often stumps the most experienced police officers, judges, customs officials and other forensic professionals. Research has shown that even agents from the FBI, CIA and Drug Enforcement Agency don't do much better than chance in telling liars from truth-tellers.

For example, a recent, as yet unpublished meta-analysis of 253 studies of people distinguishing truths from lies revealed overall accuracy was just 53 percent--not much better than flipping a coin, note the authors, psychologists Charles Bond, PhD, of Texas Christian University

, and Bella DePaulo, PhD, of the University of California

, Santa Barbara.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Science Blogs

PR: 9

NASA.gov
http://www.nasa.gov/

NASA.gov brings you images, videos and interactive features from the unique perspective of America's space agency.