The Vanishing Glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro
-World's Climate-Change Icon

This June 2009 photo of Mount Kilimanjaro by Stephen Morrison of the European Pressphoto Agency, the clearly highlights the absence of large glaciers. Climate change and forest depletion near the storied mountain that rises nearly four miles above the shimmering plains of Tanzania are both blamed for the melt-off.

The majestic glacial cap of 11,000-year-old ice has long captured imaginations of scientists and environmemtalists the world over. Six ice cores taken from Mount Kilimanjaro glaciers provide an 11.7-thousand-year record of Holocene climate and environmental variability for eastern equatorial Africa, including three periods of abrupt climate change: 8.3, 5.2, and 4 thousand years ago, with latter is coincident with the "First Dark Age," the period of the greatest historically recorded drought in tropical Africa. Over the 20th century, the areal extent of Kilimanjaro's ice fields has decreased 80%, and if current climatological conditions persist, the shrinking ice fields are likely to disappear between 2015 and 2020.

A new study, to be published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reached no consensus on whether the melting could be attributed mainly to humanity?s role in warming the global climate according to the New York Times. Approximately 85 percent of the ice cover that was present in 1912 has vanished, scientists said.

Casey Kazan

Sources:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/5593/589?ijkey=WhFFa/hp06CUc&keytype=ref&siteid=sci

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/world/africa/03melt.html

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The Vanishing Glaciers Mount Kilimanjaro -World's
Climate-Change Icon

This June 2009 photo of Mount Kilimanjaro by Stephen Morrison of the European Pressphoto Agency, the clearly highlights the absence of large glaciers. Climate change and forest depletion near the storied mountain that rises nearly four miles above the shimmering plains of Tanzania are both blamed for the melt-off.

The majestic glacial cap of 11,000-year-old ice has long captured imaginations of scientists and environmemtalists the world over. Six ice cores taken from Mount Kilimanjaro glaciers provide an 11.7-thousand-year record of Holocene climate and environmental variability for eastern equatorial Africa, including three periods of abrupt climate change: 8.3, 5.2, and 4 thousand years ago, with latter is coincident with the "First Dark Age," the period of the greatest historically recorded drought in tropical Africa. Over the 20th century, the areal extent of Kilimanjaro's ice fields has decreased 80%, and if current climatological conditions persist, the shrinking ice fields are likely to disappear between 2015 and 2020.

A new study, to be published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reached no consensus on whether the melting could be attributed mainly to humanity?s role in warming the global climate according to the New York Times. Approximately 85 percent of the ice cover that was present in 1912 has vanished, scientists said.

Casey Kazan

Sources:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/5593/589?ijkey=WhFFa/hp06CUc&keytype=ref&siteid=sci

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/world/africa/03melt.html

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Real-Life Cyborg Astrobiologists to Search for
Signs of Life on Future Mars Missions

At the remote Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, astronauts wearing artificial-intelligence enhanced spacesuits with digital eyes that can see in the infrared what human eyes are unable to see developed by Patrick McGuire (a University of Chicago geoscientist who?s developed algorithms that can recognize signs of life in a barren landscape) are testing future planetary rover missions that will travel long distances from their safe landing site to the exploration targets. The central nervous system of McGuire?s platform is a Hopfield neural network, a type of artificial intelligence that compares incoming data against patterns it?s seen before, eventually picking out those details that qualify as new or unusual.

For past few years, McGuire's team worked on CRISM, a Mars-orbiting imager that detects infrared and other invisible-to-human-eye wavelengths of light, allowing it to identify different types of rock and soil. McGuire envisions the digital eyes of cyborg astrobiologists as scaled-down versions of CRISM, their data perpetually crunched by the Hopfield networks on their hips.

In earlier efforts, the EuroGeo team developed a wearable-computer platform for testing computer-vision exploration algorithms in real-time at geological or astrobiological field sites, focusing on the concept of "uncommon mapping"  in order to identify contrasting areas in an image of a planetary surface. Recently, the system was made more ergonomic and easy to use by porting the system into a phone-cam platform connected to a remote server.

The Mars Desert Research Station is the second such research station to be built, after the completion of the Arctic station (FMARS) on Devon Island in 2000. Stations to be built in Europe (Euro MARS) and Australia (MARS Oz) are currently in the planning stages.

The Cyborg Astrobiologist phone-cam platform, which utilizes the mobile-phone network, is now functional. New platforms will add a Bluetooth communications and a second computer-vision exploration algorithm using a  neural network in order to remember aspects of previous images and to perform novelty detection. Future enhanncements to the Cyborg Astrobiologist system that will help identify both carbon and non-carbon forms of life will include:

1) Texture detection and recognition: Wth plans to implement a texture recognition algorithm to be able to discriminate between rocks with similar colors. This algorithm will both recognize textures it has seen in previous images and detect predefined structures characteristic of cert-ain rock types, such as layering.

2) Expand wavelength domain: The existing system is capable of treating multispectral images with further channels in the near infrared without major adaptations.

3) Processing speed: The system will benefit from an increase in processing and transmission speed from the current 120 sec/picture to 30 sec/picture.

The Cyborg Astrobiologist is the cuurent realization of the integration of man with with machine. Whoever said science is totally cool!

Casey Kazan

Source: The Cyborg Astrobiologist: Teaching Computers to Find Uncommon or Novel Areas of Geological Scenery in Real-time. http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~mcguire/Cyborg_ESLAB_2009.pdf

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Genetic Mutations that Set Humans Apart from
Other Primates Identified

Although humans and chimpanzees genetically vary by just 1.2 percent,that small percentage makes a world of difference in the mental andlinguistic capabilities between the two species. A study shows that acertain form of neuropsin, a protein that plays a role in learning andmemory, is expressed only in the central nervous systems of humans. Thescientists conclude that this critical difference originated less than5 million years ago.

Dr. Bing Su of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Kunming,China, and other researchers analyzed the DNA of humans and severalspecies of apes and monkeys. Previously they had found that type IIneuropsin, a longer form of the protein, is not expressed in theprefrontal cortex (PFC) of lesser apes and Old World monkeys.

Inthe study, they tested the expression of type II in the PFC of twogreat ape species, chimpanzees and orangutans, and found that it wasnot present in these closely related species either. Since these twospecies diverged most recently from human ancestors (about 5 and 14million years ago respectively), this finding demonstrates that type IIis a human-specific mutation and originated relatively recently.

Theresearchers note that more studies should look further into thebiological function of type II neuropsin in humans, in order tounderstand the genetic basis that underlies the traits that set humansapart from nonhuman primates.  

*The study was published online in Human Mutation, the official journal of the Human Genome Variation Society.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

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Image of the Day: Time Travel Through the Human
Brain

Over the past 100-years, the way we visualize and understand the complexity of the brain has evolved due to huge strides microscope design and manufacture, together with the development of cell-staining techniques, gave neuroscientists their first glimpse at the specialized cells that make up the nervous system. Microscopes with more magnifying power enabled them to probe nerve cells in greater detail, revealing distinct compartments. Newer techniques expose the connections between nerve cells, revealing the complex organization of the brain.

In the 1980s, scientists developed fluorescent dyes to help them examine the long, thin extensions of neurons that carry information between these cells. Injected directly into the brain, the dye is incorporated into the cell membrane and transported along it, revealing the route of the nerve fiber. This image highlights the long-range connections between sensory areas of a mouse?s cerebral cortex and thalamus, often called the brain?s relay station. Fibers from the primary visual cortex are shown in red, while fibers from the primary somatosensory cortex, which processes bodily sensations, are shown in green.

Photo Credit: Maria Carmen Piñon and Zoltán Molnár/University of Oxford

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23758/

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Milky Way Awe: a 648-Megapixel Panorama of Our
Galaxy

 

Piecing together 3000 individual photographs, a physicist has made a new high-resolution panoramic image of the full night sky, with the Milky Way galaxy as its centerpiece. Axel Mellinger, a professor at Central Michigan University, describes the panorama: "This panorama image shows stars 1000 times fainter than the human eye can see, as well as hundreds of galaxies, star clusters and nebulae," Mellinger said. Mellinger spent 22 months and traveled over 26,000 miles to take digital photographs at dark sky locations in South Africa, Texas and Michigan.

Source: http://io9.com/5394972/the-ultimate-space-porn-a-648-megapixel-image-of-our-galaxy

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Will Augmented Reality (AR) Change Your Life
Techies Says "Yes"

AugmentedReality sounds like a sissy description of drug use, but it's thelatest and greatest concept in computer-enhanced living.  And has a lotof the same effects: seeing things that aren't there, an increasedawareness of your place in the universe, even being able to "really,like, tell what somebody truly is" by looking at them - and it's thislast that The Amazing Tribe (TAT, a Swedish technology firm) areworking on.

Augmented Reality (AR) is the information age overlaid on the realworld.  The idea is that if you know where a billboard is, and what itsays, and what direction it's facing, then there's no need to botherwith the actual object: you can just call up the information wheneveryou're in the area.  Until recently AR required specialist gear, whichmeant it was never going to happen - such as system needs society-wideuse before the databases will be updated enough to be useful.

Thisproblem was solved by the surge in smartphones - now everyone who mightbe interested in AR has (or can get) a portable, population-widestandardized combination of computer, camera and digital display: theperfect tools for AR.  There are already elementary AR apps (likelocating a train station in London, superimposing location anddirection over your screen), and TAT are extending it to people.  Withaugmented ID, your set your status, services and whatever else you wanton your phone - and anyone who views you through another sees this datahovering around you.  You really have to watch the video (linked below)to appreciate how cool the concept is.

Unfortunately it is only aconcept so far, but not for long.  The technological basis(smartphones, facial recognition, and wireless communication) isalready here, and it's only a matter time before you start hearing ofsilly status messages left on during important business meetings.  Avery short time, we'd wager, so get ready to know more than beforeabout anyone you want.  And after that - remember how much insane,unimaginable and incredible stuff emerged from the internet?  Andthat's when we were just connecting computers together - AR can affecteverywhere else.

Luke McKinney

TAT Augmented ID concept

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The Daily Flash -Eco, Space, Tech (11/03)

The Fastest Solar Car on the Planet

In the most recent World Solar Challenge, a Japanese team upset the former 4-time Dutch champs to win the 1,864-mile solar car race across Australia with the vehicle you see here. The Tokai Challenger completed the journey in 29 hours and 49 minutes despite a flat tire?that's an average speed of about 63mph.

Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter

Twitter itself didn?t invent retweeting; it was created by Twitter users. The company?s second-in-command, Biz Stone, called them ?a great example of Twitter teaching us what it wants to be.? The good news, he said, was that Twitter was building retweets right into the site?s architecture. The bad news was that Project Retweet didn?t make any provision for the commentary that users might like to add.

Opening Up A Colorful Cosmic Jewel Box

The Kappa Crucis Cluster, also known as NGC 4755 or simply the "Jewel Box" is just bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye. It was given its nickname by the English astronomer John Herschel in the 1830s because the striking colour contrasts of its pale blue and orange stars seen through a telescope reminded Herschel of a piece of exotic jewellery.

Chinese iPhone Looks Poised to Fail

At Apple's all-night iPhone launch party in Beijing, there were none of the day-long lines seen in New York, London, or Paris. According to the Financial Times, the Chinese iteration of the iPhone, which went on sale on October 30, has stirred the interest of only 11.7 of Chinese cell phone users, according to one survey.

High-Energy Batteries Coming to Market

Rechargeable zinc-air batteries can store three times the energy of a lithium-ion battery.

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Shrew pursue taboo dew brew.

Chronic intake of fermented floral nectar by wild treeshrews.

"For humans alcohol consumption often has devastating consequences. Wild mammals may also be behaviorally and physiologically challenged by alcohol in their food. Here, we provide a detailed account of chronic alcohol intake by mammals as part of a coevolved relationship with a plant. We discovered that seven mammalian species in a West Malaysian rainforest consume alcoholic nectar daily from flower buds of the bertam palm (Eugeissona tristis), which they pollinate. The 3.8% maximum alcohol concentration (mean: 0.6%; median: 0.5%) that we recorded is among the highest ever reported in a natural food. Nectar high in alcohol is facilitated by specialized flower buds that harbor a fermenting yeast community, including several species new to science. Pentailed treeshrews (Ptilocercus lowii) frequently consume alcohol doses from the inflorescences that would intoxicate humans. Yet, the flower-visiting mammals showed no signs of intoxication. Analysis of an alcohol metabolite (ethyl glucuronide) in their hair yielded concentrations higher than those in humans with similarly high alcohol intake. The pentailed treeshrew is considered a living model for extinct mammals representing the stock from which all extinct and living treeshrews and primates radiated. Therefore, we hypothesize that moderate to high alcohol intake was present early on in the evolution of these closely related lineages. It is yet unclear to what extent treeshrews benefit from ingested alcohol per se and how they mitigate the risk of continuous high blood alcohol concentrations."

Thanks to Daniel for today's ROFL!

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and a bullhorn for every maniac

Right now, somewhere, Ray Comfort and his designated former child star stalker are handing out a mangled copy of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species at some hapless college. Lacking important chapters where a number of crucial questions about[...]

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