Video of the new leviathan

Nature Video Channel on YouTube offers this 7-minute minifilm on the newly discovered Leviathan melvillei . Unlike the modern sperm whale, which basically inhales prey, this ancestor used two jaws full of 36-cm teeth (as I mentioned before, larger than the teeth of the sperm whale, the orca, the megalodon shark, or Tyrannosaurus rex) to chomp the hell out of anything it came across.

New species from 2009

This author's choice of the most interesting new species, with great photography, includes the imperial pigeon, the blossom bat, and the world's longest stick insect.

New species of porpoise from China?

Recent studies of the finless porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides), which ranges from the Persian Gulf to Japan, produced a surprise. A population of under 1,000 animals which occupies China's Yangtze River forms a distinct genetic group, which may qualify as a separate species. If it is a species, it is - sadly but not surprisingly - a highly endangered one.

New prehistoric whale was a monster

Its name was Leviathan melvillei (yes, named for Herman Melville). It was the size of its modern relative, the sperm whale, but had a full set of enormous (36cm) teeth and a habit of dining on other whales. You could say it incorporated the deadliest features of the modern sperm and orca, except the teeth were bigger than on any other marine animal, living or extinct. Thirteen million years ago, this was the unchallenged apex predator of the oceans.
COMMENT: This fascinating creature is a good reminder that prehistory still holds many surprises. While Alan Grant in Jurassic Park may have lamented the impending death of his profession, the truth is we still need paleontologists, and will for many generations to come. There are whole worlds yet to be understood.

NASA and its counterparts talk international cooperation

Without waiting for the new National Space Policy, NASA and its counterparts are discussing a joint lunar exploration infrastructure and the sharing of robotic mission work, based on a principles document hammered out in 2007.

Sculpting spacecraft - life-size

This Australian artist does something no one in the world does: using plywood, canvas, and steel to sculpt life size tributes to spacecraft like the Hubble Space Telescope. Fascinating photos.

White House formally announces National Space Policy

From the White House fact sheet, we can see the Obama administration is, as was earlier reported, putting more emphasis on international cooperation while setting down, at the highest level yet, the President's planned shift in NASA priorities. To "begin human missions to new destinations by 2025" is interesting: President Obama has mentioned a trip to an asteroid. (As expected, the policy makes no mention of returning humans to the Moon, a goal the President explicitly endorsed in a campaign speech but removed from his latest guidance to NASA.) The emphasis on Earth science and resources satellites was widely expected.
Now to translate this into a budget - that's the hard part.

Excerpts:

Key Elements of the Administration's National Space Policy


The United States remains committed to many long-standing tenets in space activities. The United States recognizes the rights of all nations to access, use, and explore space for peaceful purposes, and for the benefit of all humanity.


The United States calls on all nations to share its commitment to act responsibly in space to help prevent mishaps, misperceptions, and mistrust. The United States will take steps to improve public awareness of government space activities and enable others to share in the benefits of space through conduct that emphasizes openness and transparency.


The United States will engage in expanded international cooperation in space activities. The United States will pursue cooperative activities to the greatest extent practicable in areas including: space science and exploration; Earth observations, climate change research, and the sharing of environmental data; disaster mitigation and relief; and space surveillance for debris monitoring and awareness.


The United States is committed to a robust and competitive industrial base. In support of its critical domestic aerospace industry, the U.S. government will use commercial space products and services in fulfilling governmental needs, invest in new and advanced technologies and concepts, and use a broad array of partnerships with industry to promote innovation. The U.S. government will actively promote the purchase and use of U.S. commercial space goods and services within international cooperative agreements.


The United States recognizes the need for stability in the space environment. The United States will pursue bilateral and multilateral transparency and confidence building measures to encourage responsible actions in space, and will consider proposals and concepts for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable, and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies. In addition, the United States will enhance its space situational awareness capabilities and will cooperate with foreign nations and industry to augment our shared awareness in space.


The United States will advance a bold new approach to space exploration. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will engage in a program of human and robotic exploration of the solar system, develop new and transformative technologies for more affordable human exploration beyond the Earth, seek partnerships with the private sector to enable commercial spaceflight capabilities for the transport of crew and cargo to and from the International Space Station, and begin human missions to new destinations by 2025.


The United States remains committed to the use of space systems in support of its national and homeland security. The United States will invest in space situational awareness capabilities and launch vehicle technologies; develop the means to assure mission essential functions enabled by space; enhance our ability to identify and characterize threats; and deter, defend, and if necessary, defeat efforts to interfere with or attack U.S. or allied space systems.


The United States will fully utilize space systems, and the information and applications derived from those systems, to study, monitor, and support responses to global climate change and natural disasters. The United States will accelerate the development of satellites to observe and study the Earth's environment, and conduct research programs to study the Earth's lands, oceans, and atmosphere.

Super-Tech builds new Supercarrier

A fascinating look at the building of CVN-78, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the lead ship in the first new class of aircraft carriers since 1968. It replaces steam catapults with electromagnetic ones and includes numerous technical leaps, both in physical setup and in computerization, to launch more sorties (a sortie is the flight of an individual plane) more quickly than older carriers, using a smaller crew, and, thanks to 3D visualization systems, costing less to build than the last carrier from the Nimitz class, the current mainstays of Naval aviation.

New U.S. push for international space cooperation

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration will soon release a policy supporting increased international cooperation in space, fostering commerce, and pursuing arms control agreements.
COMMENT: I'll be very interested to see this. Civil space exploration is expensive, difficult, and something our whole species should be united in, with nations sharing risks and benefits. The U.S. leads in human spaceflight, while other nations are doing important robotic work, and the synergy could be very beneficial. The organizational aspects will be tricky: there is no realistic chance of a global NASA, but there are many other potential ways to make progress here.
I've always been skeptical of space-related arms agreements, however well-intentioned, because I've never seen a proposal that included strong verification procedures, but we'll see what comes up.

Blast from the past: France's rocket-powered train

From 1965 to 1977, French engineers worked on a high-speed express train powered by rocket engines. It looked like something out of 1950s science fiction, but it also looked promising until it was (figuratively speaking) overtaken by advances in electric motor technology.
COMMENT:
1) It's still cool.
2) The page's author claims high-speed trains would solve US transportation problems. They could help some, but they would not be heavily used because US cities that grew up with the automobile are physically enormous and almost impossible to get around quickly. Even the cities with better public transit are difficult unless you are already familiar with the routes and even more difficult to use to meet tightly spaced appointments. I agree with improving both intercity rail and public transit, but I've always felt the first priority is to improve the automobile. Absent brute force on the government's part, it's not going away.

Italy may prosecute quake scientists

An Italian prosecutor is going after seven seismologists and technicians who were unsure about whether last year's deadly L'Aquila earthquake would happen and offered their best guess that a major quake was not imminent. The charge: manslaughter, for failing to issue a warning and causing 308 deaths.
COMMENT: This is insane. It's terrifying to seismologists and other scientists (think meteorologists) who could potentially be held liable any time they get things wrong. Earthquake prediction is a very uncertain and immature field. If this actually goes through, who will ever try to advance this important frontier of science? Who will make anything but worst-case predictions on hurricanes, climate change, and so many other things?

7th graders discover cave on Mars

I love these kind of stories.

The Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University runs the Mars Student Imaging Program, where school kids can ask for a specific area to be photographed on Mars by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter if they come up with a compelling research question. A group of 7th graders hunting for lava tubes discovered instead a "pit crater" that appears to be a large cave entrance or possibly a spot where a cave or lava tube roof collapsed. Either way, it's a new and potentially important feature. An ASU scientist said, "This pit is certainly new to us. And it is only the second one known to be associated with [the volcano] Pavonis Mons."
COMMENT: What a great program!

CNN on the search for sasquatch

This article asks why people search for unlikely creatures. The answers will not surprise you: it's been said many times that people need "wildness" and a sense there are still mysteries in the world. What I did not know was that one anthropologist introduced here has run 15 specimens of alleged sasqautch or "chupacabra" tissue through DNA testing, always with mundane results. That does not prove nonexistence, but it's important to know.
I think it very unlikely, if not quite impossible, we have a species of ape in North America. (The arguments of some cryptozoologists that there are two, three, or four species are something I can't swallow: I'd bet $500 even money against one sasquatch species being formally described in one of the major scientific peer-reviewed journals in the next decade, but I'd bet $1,000 we don't have two new species in 20 years.) As long as it's "not quite impossible," I cheer on the searchers and wish them the best of luck. I want to be wrong. This article echoes that sentiment.

As a side note, I never thought much of the whole "chupacabra" business. The animal is saddled with an impossible range of conflicting descriptions, and where the heck was it before the reports began in the 1990s? Add the rate at which dead dogs and racoons have been stuck with this name, and the whole thing seems pretty silly.
I do agree cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard has a point when he suggests a series of weird canines from Texas raise the possibility some odd genetic quirk is turning up in coyotes and coyote hybrids down there, producing a susceptibility to sarcoptic mange (which leaves the animal hairless), exaggerated canine teeth, and a tendency for rear legs to be longer than normal, producing a strange gait. (This would in principle be a bit like the mutations that produced king cheetahs or Scotland's enigmatic Kellas wildcat, which sports long legs, and long fangs not found in its genetic sources, the known wildcat and the domestic cat.)

Japan's successes in space

In addition to the asteroid return mission, Japan's space agency, JAXA, just unfurled the first solar sail ever tested in space. (There have been other solar sail launches, but they were undone by launch mishaps.) The results solidify Japan's status as a technically innovative, highly accomplished space exploration power. As this article notes, the space program has become a source of pride in this recession-wracked nation.
COMMENT: This is a good reminder of something I've been working on for a couple of years now: fostering greater international cooperation in civil space exploration. Space exploration is costly (although the two Japanese missions were strikingly cost-effective compared to recent US missions) and technically difficult. If our species cannot pull together on exploring the universe, what can we agree on?

Water on the Moon may be widespread

We know from recent probes that there is water ice at the poles of the Moon. New analysis of lunar samples brought back from Apollo indicates that water is, or was, many times more common in lunar rocks than anyone has guessed. We are not talking about a ready supply to support human habitation - far from it - but evidence of water in rocks from many locations is a big, big puzzle for scientists studying how our satellite was formed. It has long been assumed that the high temperatures of the impact even which formed the moon almost instantly boiled off any water "captured" from the bodies inolved.
There are several lessons here, including "don't get too comfortable with theories no matter how long they've been accepted" and "just because evidence has been studied for decades doesn't mean it's a waste of time to study it again."

A real source for Europe's "wildman" tales?

Stories of "wildmen" on the Eurasian continent date back to the ancient Greeks and beyond. Such tales likely have more than one origin, but folklorist Michael Heaney suggests a the new hominin species from Siberia (see my post on this from March 2010) may have persisted long enough to inspire stories from Europe's wudewosa or wodewose to the almas of the Pamirs. Actually, given that the anecdotal evidence for the living almas is intriguing, if not definitive without a specimen, cryptozoologists would suggest the "wildman" could be with us yet. (See Dr. John Napier's superb 1972 book Bigfoot for a basic grounding in almas tales.)

New species: Cameroon's lovely new tree

New tree species are not as uncommon as you'd think. But huge, distinctive tree species? Meet Berlinia korupensis from Cameroon. It has lovely white flowers, seed pods which burst in spectacular fashions, and a known population of just 17 individuals. Add to those qualities its sheer size - up to 42m high with a trunk a meter thick - and it certainly qualifies as one of the most striking new species of the year.

The Blue Pike - an American fishing mystery

I like reminders that not everything about the natural world has been nailed down and catalogued yet - not even in the United States. Is the blue pike or blue walleye just an oddly colored walleye? Is it a hybrid? A subspecies? A distinct species? Anglers and icthyologists have been puzzled for a very long time. DNA may solve the mystery.

Book Review: World Ocean Census

WORLD OCEAN CENSUS
by Darlene Trew Crist, Gail Scowcroft, James M. Harding Jr., and Sylvia Earle
Firefly Books
2009

World Ocean Census may be sort of a clumsy title for a book, but this volume on the findings of the ongoing Census of Marine Life is just wonderful. Clearly and skillfully written, the text conveys both the science and the wonder of undersea exploration. Sections on everything from ancient fisheries to how new species are named (and how many new ones we are finding) flesh out the basic narrative.
Then we get to the photos. I simply run out of superlatives in trying to describe the photographs in this book. It's not too strong to say the book reminded me, in this age of video and CGI, how evocative still photographs could be. New and weird species, photographed with astonishing clarity, pop out from almost every page. It's hard to imagine how this book could have been better. It's also hard to imagine a better book for introducing people to the facination, diversity, and fragility of the ocean world.

How Mysterious, the Oceans...

Did you know the world's highest waterfall is underwater - near Greenland? That six times as many men have been to the moon as to the deepest depths of the ocean? That about 230,000 species of marine organisms have been discovered, and estimates of the undiscovered ones are over three times that? This article is a good reminder that, as Sylvia Earle once put it, "We know more about Mars" than we do about the deep sea.
COMMENT: As readers of this blog will know, we have not even defined all the large animals. New beaked whales, dolphins, and sharks keep showing up in the journals, and there are good sightings of at least two types of unclassified beaked whales, plus several problematic accounts of dolphins and porpoises, indicating just how much we still have to learn. And that's before we even get to the fishes, and we have no idea where we stand on the invertebrates...

How long do species stay unchanged?

All species may be caught up in an evolutionary mega-system of life, but some are much less affected than others. The coelacanth did not change very much (except to get larger) in 60 million years. That is probably a record for minimal change in known vertebrates, but the phenomenon of minimal change over millions of years is more common with small invertebrates.
The record-holder for multicelled creatures may be Neopilina, a weird little mollusk with a circular internal body plan, measuring about 35mm long, which was thought extinct until dredged up on the famous Galathea expedition of 1952. The existing species Neopilina galatheae is almost unchanged from fossils that go back over 400MY - and were believed to have been extinct 350MY ago.
A newer example (see title link) is this fig wasp from the Isle of Wight - almost unchanged after 34 million years.
Why do some animals find a comfortable niche and stay there, while others in the same niche, or similarly "comfortable" positions in nature, get displaced and move to the "extinct" column? It's a complicated question to which the answer is not yet clear. One of science's countless mysteries.

Sea turtle takes its own home movies

A diver in Aruba lost his waterproof Nikon camera while diving on a wreck. A sea turtle intercepted the object (maybe tyring to see if it was edible) and wound up with its flipper entangled in the camera strap. Somehow, in the jouncing, the camera was switched on. It was found much later on a beach in Florida and traced to its astonished owner, who found five minutes of turtle's-eye-view footage on it.

The Falcon has landed!

An international team of scientists verified the soft landing in the Australian outback of the return capsule from the space probe Hayabusa (Falcon) carrying the first samples ever taken directly from an asteroid. The probe landed twice on the half-kilometer-long asteroid Itokawa in 2005. It is not a certainty that the sample collector actually holds pieces of the surface, but project scientists are hopeful, and it's a brilliant feat of space exploration no matter how much or how little of Itokawa made it on board.

Large Hadron Collider: Halfway to full power

The newest bulletin from CERN on the LHC begins, "Over the past 2 weeks, commissioning of the machine protection system has advanced significantly, opening up the possibility of higher intensity collisions at 3.5 TeV..." (TeV = trllion electon volts).
The CERN gang is current working on curing a "beam instability" in order to enable those collisions. The significance here is that, as CERN's Steve Myers explains, “With two beams at 3.5 TeV, we’re on the verge of launching the LHC physics program." Collisions with a total energy of 7 TeV are - physicists hope - halfway to the realm where the Higgs boson will pop out.

COMMENT: Despite all this progress, of course, unscientific alarm has not gone away. Interestingly, the link on the LHC page for Safety requires a password. The best a casual visitor can do is read a very general two-paragraph discussion on the site's Outreach section FAQs. I know CERN scientists think the whole "destroy the universe" thing is absurd, but they could do a better job of public education. If you think about it, public concern over misunderstood science is the perfect attention-getting opportunity to explain the science right.

Scientific thought for the day

Seriously, we should all give some thought to this notion from the creator of Dilbert.

"Every generation of humans believed it had all the answers it needed, except for a few mysteries they assumed would be solved at any moment. And they all believed their ancestors were simplistic and deluded. What are the odds that you are the first generation of humans who will understand reality?"
— Scott Adams (Dilbert)

Gould: What is a scientific fact?

"In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."

Stephen Jay Gould

Centennial celebration for Jacques Cousteau

Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997) was born 100 years ago this coming Friday. The explorer - the first great television popularizer of science as well as a pioneering inventor of diving gear and a tireless conservationist - introduced global audiences to the marvels of the sea.
Cousteau's legacy includes a conservation society with 300,000 members as well as a mind-boggling 50 books and 120 documentaries. As a kid, I read everything I could find with his name on it and watched every show that appeared. He was a major inspiration to me, as he was to so many others.
He once said, "I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists," which pretty much nails it.
Cousteau, not surprisingly, saw a lot of strange things. He reported seeing the eye of an "utterly fantastic" squid out the porthole of his Diving Saucer. Off Africa, his divers found a wreck site where two ordinary wrasses, members of a species maybe a meter long at most, had grown to science-fiction proportions.
Here's wishing you "fair winds and following seas," Captain.

New species - Sharks! Skates! Rays!

Not only do we not know all the fish in the sea, but this paper from Australia reminds us we don't even know the large ones, like the elasmobranches. Seven new species and two resurrected ones are here in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Marine and Atmospheric Research Paper no. 032 (2010). Meet the rediscovered Borneo Shark, little known and believed to be very rare: Okamejei cairae, a new skate from the South China Sea: and the rest of a re-examined group.

Asteroid samples coming home to Earth

There have been four cases where spacecraft have returned matter from other bodies to the Earth. Apollo astronauts and Russian unmanned probes sent back samples from the Moon. The Genesis mission retrieved solar ejecta, and the Stardust spacecraft brought back samples of a comet. Now the fifth such program - the first NOT to be launched by one of the superpowers - is climaxing. Japan's Hayabusa (Falcon) capsule should land Sunday night in Australia with samples of an astroid after an odyssey that took seven years and covered 4 billion kilometers.
As one Australian on the project noted, "There's absolutely nothing like going to the source. Hayabusa has sampled an asteroid in situ and soon we will have in hand an actual asteroid. Any sample coming back ...will be a major scientific prize for us."

South Korea's space launch falls short

South Korea is angling to become the world's next space power. Iran was the last (maybe) to join the small group of nations which can launch their own satellites on their own rockets. In recent years, Brazil and North Korea have failed to join the club. (Brazil will try again in 2011).

Nations which have achieved such launches include the aforementioned Iran (although it is not universally agreed their satellite actually made orbit), the U.S,, the defunct USSR, France, Japan, Britain, India, modern Russia and Ukraine, Israel, and China. The ESA organization has a joint capability, and Britain has abandoned its independent national capability to work with ESA.

South Korea, working with Russian help, had a partial success in 2009 (a payload was placed in orbit, but the wrong orbit, and it did not function). The newest version of their Naro booster featured a Russian-built first stage and South Korean upper stages. It appears to be the Russian stage which was the culprit, since failure was apparent 137 seconds into the flight.
South Korea's Science Minister said, ""We humbly accept today's result and will find a remedy to continue our efforts at space exploration."

New-species news never ends

Here's a reference to a new armored catfish from Africa, while these folks at the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project link to two new frogs and a lizard - while also linking to some very serious concerns among herpetologists.
http://amphibianrescue.org/?page_id=162

Bad day for brown pelicans

The Deepwater Horizon spill is wreaking havoc with human lives and ecosystems around the Gulf Coast. One species hit harder than most is the brown pelican. After an enormous effort by Federal, state, local, and nonprofit conservation agencies, the bird finally graduated entirely from the Endangered Species List last year. It's not heading back onto the list as a result of this spill - the population has grown to a healthy 650,000. But it's rapidly becoming the poster animal for oil damage.

It's not just the pelicans who suffer. Last year, LSU biologist Prosanta Chakrabarty discovered two new species of bottom-dwelling pancake batfish - which today are smack dab in the path of the massive underwater plume of oil. Chakrabarty has noted that his article formally describing the new fish will appear in the August edition of the Journal of Fish Biology. By that point, the two species might merit being nominated to the same Endangered Species List the brown pelican has escaped from.

COMMENT: I avoid politics on this blog - so many people cover it much better than I could, so I focus on my niche - but this case is a reminder that science, technology, and policy are inextricably linked. I was never opposed to underwater drilling, mainly because American/British companies had a good record of doing it safely, and the switch to a "no oil economy" is not something that will happen quickly or painlessly. At the least, though, future drilling needs to be done under much more stringent oversight, with government inspectors permanently stationed on the rigs until a given project has finished drilling and has extracted oil for some period of time without incident. Just one non-expert's opinon.

More on the SpaceX success

Great job by SpaceX to make their medium-lift Falcon 9 succeed on the first try. There were some anomalies (having no anomalies would be downright weird) but, when you put your payload in the orbit you want it, that's the definitition of a highly successful launch. And I mean they placed it PRECISELY in the 250km orbit they wanted, with variances under one degree.
Boeing and LockMart deserved praise for making the newest versions of Atlas and Delta work well on the first and (so far) every launch, but they were coming off a heritage of decades of evolving these designs. SpaceX did something remarkable, with only the lessons of a much smaller vehicle to validate Falcon 9 design ideas.
It's been my opinion that SpaceX may have relied too heavily on their computer simulations with the Falcon 1, given that they lost two birds to problems (stage bump and propellant slosh) discovered in the 1950s. They were certainly aware of these problems (I spoke once with Elon Musk about the history of new vehicles and found him extremely well informed on the subject), but relied on solutions proven in their simulations rather than building a bigger margin for error into their birds. Fortunately, one of the critical things Musk and company did right was create a program with realistic expectations and the resources to survive early failures and incorporate the lessons learned, something many other entreprenuers could not or did not do.
The success of Falcon 9 indicates they found the right balances in design, construction, and testing this time out. There's a lot to work yet to come, and there may well be failures before the design is perfected, but this is a huge step forward.
Champagne in Ten Forward to the entire company!

Talking to Dolphins: There's an App for That?

Well, sort of. Scientists at a nonprofit institute are teaching a dolphin named Merlin to use his nose to select shapes on the touchscreen of an iPad in a waterproof case. The idea is to teach a dolphin a symbolic language, as has been done with apes. While dolphins may be just as smart as apes (depending, of course, on how one defines and measures "intelligence"), apes are far easier to work with because they can point, push buttons, and grasp objects. Apple's newest cool technology may overcome cetaceans' lack of fingers and enable, if not full communication, then at least a better understanding of how dolphins think.

SpaceX bird is go!

The first test version of SpaceX's Falcon-9 medium-lift booster has taken off from Cape Canaveral. It carries a mockup of the Dragon capsule, intended to haul materials and astronauts into low Earth orbit.
COMMENT: Entrepreneur Elon Musk makes no secret of his enthusiasm to help humans colonize space. That's why he put a big chunk of the fortune he earned inventing, running, and then selling PayPal into an effort to make boosters cheaper and more reliable, taking on industry giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin where several other companies had failed. He persevered through early failures of the smaller Falcon-1 and built the nine-engine Falcoln-9 and its test capsule. If the Falcon-9 system performs as Musk hopes, he wants to snag a big chunk of the money President Obama's new NASA budget would direct to private companies to provide orbital launch services. Fingers crossed.

Reflections on the synthetic cell

This superb article by the always-superb Natalie Angier looks at the big picture surrounding Dr. Craig Venter's announcement that his team has created a bacterium run by an artificial genome. That is, they did not build the whole bacterial cell from scratch, but they did remove the genome and replace it with one they had assembled in the lab, copying from a related bacterium, from chemical building blocks. The new genome immediately began to run the cell like its natural predecessor had. Angier reports the scientists did tinker with the genome to the point of writing scientific graffiti in it with encrypted messages, including Richard Fenyman's postulate that “What I cannot build, I cannot understand."
What Angier explains, though, is how far this still is from creating completely artificial life. A cell is not the seemingly roomy affair seen in textbook illustrations. It's jam-packed with complicated components, some of which we know how to make synthetically and some of which we're a long way off from understanding let alone building. So this a big (and controversial) step, but still only a step.

IgNobel nomination for proving a giraffe can swim

Dr. Darren Naish has been nominated for an IgNobel, the prize for research which cannot or should not be replicated. His achievement? With a co-author, he has proved mathematically that a giraffe can swim. It turns out there are no clear records of giraffes swimming, as opposed to wading across rivers (do you need to swim when you are five meters tall?). But now science has proven that, yes, if you throw a giraffe into water over its head, it can survive. Darren is now looking for a research grant and a spare giraffe, not to mention a crane....

Strange beast the ancestor of cephalopods

Cephalopods - octopus and squid - are pretty strange. But their ancestor was stranger. A half-billion years ago, a kite-shaped animal with two long tentacles and big eyes on stalks cruised the ancient seas. Its name was Nectocaris pteryx.

UPDATE: Dr. Charles Paxton has written in to note that it may be premature to grant Nectocaris the honored position of common ancestor to the cephalopods. He comments, "...I can see it looks like a larval teuthid but surely it should have a radula even if no beak or shell? [ED: the radula is the tonguelike abrasive structure all cephalopods use in feeding.] Why wouldn't that be preserved given the preservation of the other soft tissue? The authors argue the mouthparts are not well preserved. Do they have an objective way of knowing that or is it a convenient way to explain away the absence of a beak and radula in their putative cephalopod? The cephalopod affiliation is further reliant on identification of a "funnel" and no formal phylogenetic reconstruction is presented in the sense of comparison of traits using an algorithm."

In other words: Like a lot of claims made in science, the one made for Nectocaris is not a certainty. Future fossils may confirm the hypothesis or refute it. Science at work.

Thanks to Charles for writing in.

The challenge of human deep space exploration

"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy." - Han Solo.
This excellent report from Johns Hopkins APL looks at what's involved in getting humans to the outer planets. The authors consider what's involved in a program that takes humans all the way out to Neptune by 2100. Possible? Yes. Easy? No.

The Primate Problem (from Shadows of Existence)

SInce I'll be appearing on Sasquatch Detective this evening (8PM EST) I thought I would post the following essay (one of four on unknown primates) from my 2006 book Shadows of Existence.

Don't forget to tune in!
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/squatchdetective



THE PRIMATE PROBLEM
Of all the mammals, it is our relatives, the primates, which attract the most popular interest. This is understandable, as is the fascination with the idea that more primates, including large ones related to humans, may still await discovery.
The idea of unknown humanlike primates has been floating around our collective consciousness since humanity’s time began, but a thunderbolt of a discovery from the Indonesian island of Flores, announced October 27, 2004, raised the concept to a new level of awareness. When scientists led by Australians Mike Morwood and Peter Brown and Indonesian Thomas Sutikna found the three-foot human relative, Homo floresiensis, cryptozoologists were almost as excited as anthropologists. H. floresiensis might have lived as little as 12,000 years ago, when it would have coexisted with the larger modern humans. Paleontologist Henry Gee of the journal Nature, which published the report, commented, “They are almost certainly extinct, but it is possible that there are creatures like this around today.” Dr. Gee added, “Large mammals are still being found. I don't think the likelihood of finding a new species of human alive is any less than finding a new species of antelope, and that has happened."
The natives of Flores had tales of the ebu gogo, little men about three feet tall who, the islanders say, was still around only a century ago. From 12,000 years to 100 is a big leap, but it’s hard to call it an impossible one. Some scientists, inevitably, have begun to refer to the dwarf humans of Flores as “Hobbits.” (A humorous note is that, just before publishing the discovery of Flores man, Dr. Gee had completed a book called The Science of Middle-Earth.)
With the shock waves of the Hobbit discovery still reverberating through the world of anthropology, let us turn to the claims that unclassified living primates – some smaller than man, some the same size, some considerably larger – still haunt the Earth.
Such creatures are reported from every inhabited continent except Europe (and even there, are represented in old folklore about “wild men”). This global distribution is one of the major stumbling blocks in obtaining scientific credibility for the present topic. It is one thing to ask a primatologist to accept there is an unclassified ape at large. It is quite another to suggest the planet houses several good-sized bipedal primates, all uncaught and unclassified. Such a claim, made seriously by some cryptozoologists, is extremely difficult to even consider without hard evidence. That, in turn, makes many specialists unwilling to admit that any of these alleged animals could exist, the Flores discovery notwithstanding.
This problem raises the standard by which evidence is judged. The current situation can be stated very simply: the only evidence likely to result in widespread acceptance of any unknown large primate is a type specimen.
As of now, no case meets that standard. The yeti is known mainly from tracks and local traditions, plus a few reports by Westerners. The evidence for other primates, including Africa’s kikomba, Australia's yowie, China’s yeren, Siberia’s chuchunaa, and South America’s di-di and sisemite, is similar or weaker. North America’s sasquatch adds some disputed film evidence and many recent sightings. (The yeti and sasquatch, as the most famous primates in the crypto-zoo, merit more detailed essays later in this section.)
Anthropologist Myra Shackley has put forth a great deal of effort to prove relict Neanderthals, known as almas and by many other names, inhabit Mongolia, the Pamirs, and the Caucasus mountains. Unfortunately, she, too, has turned up no evidence more concrete than footprints and anecdotes. Along the rugged border shared by Pakistan and Afghanistan – a region in the news lately due to the search for terrorist Osama bin Laden – the local “wild men” are known as barmanu. In August 2002, Spanish zoologist Jordi Magraner was searching for these creatures when he was murdered. His death was a sobering reminder that finding new animals in remote regions is neither simple nor safe. (Reportedly, some local men involved in the region’s chronic border conflicts assumed Magraner’s communications gear marked him as a spy.)
Cryptozoologists must be open-minded, and generally hate to write off a seemingly insubstantial story which may prove to have been important. Still, some prioritization is necessary. Researchers must sort through the many reported primates and decide which cases, if any, most plausibly point to a real animal.
Sasquatch or bigfoot is the most widely reported of all such creatures, but is still highly problematical. There are thousands of sightings and footprint reports, and supporters say it would it be impossible to fake them all. As Craig Woolheater of the Texas Bigfoot Research Center put it, "What it comes down to is that if just one (witness) is telling the God's honest truth ... then there's something out there."
Critics, like anthropologist Kevin Wylie, respond that the problem arises when you examine these reports in detail. To Wylie, none of the sightings or other pieces of evidence is impressive enough to encourage acceptance of something as improbable as a huge, undiscovered North American ape.
Sasquatch-like creatures are widespread in Native American lore, although the origins and meaning of these stories are difficult to evaluate. The Salish word from which “sasquatch” is derived refers to a supernatural creature, not an animal. On the other hand, zoologist Ivan Sanderson wrote in the 1960s that, when one Indian was asked about the subject, the reply was a derisive, “Oh, don’t tell me the white men have finally gotten around to that.”
The late Dr. John Napier was the most prominent primatologist ever to examine this problem in depth. In his 1972 book Bigfoot, Napier endorsed sasquatch as a real animal, although he doubted all other such primates.
Concerning the almas, it seemed to Napier the inhabitants of its rugged homeland make the animal sound too plentiful, as if it should be easy to find. Napier recounted the story of one Caucasus resident who was asked if the almas was mythical. The man, proud of his people’s rich mythology, was actually offended that anyone would think it included something as common and boring as the almas. It was reported in 1985 that 5,000 almas sightings and fifty footprint reports were on file with the U.S.S.R. Geographical Society.
Some cryptozoologists suggest it is this creature which is represented by Bernard Heuvelmans’ Homo pongoides, the ape-like man. Dr. Heuvelmans did publish a description and identify an alleged type specimen. This was the famous Minnesota Iceman, a hairy corpse six feet tall. Heuvelmans, along with Ivan Sanderson, examined this traveling exhibit (frozen in a block of ice) in 1968. Heuvelmans was convinced the thing was genuine, although his colleague had reservations. The Iceman was being shown by one Frank Hansen, who told at least three different stories of its origin. Heuvelmans believed the Iceman was actually shot in Vietnam during the U.S.-Vietnamese war and then smuggled into this country. However, he had only secondhand reports to substantiate these events. There are ongoing reports of apelike primates in Vietnam (the Ngoi rung, or forest people), but no evidence connecting them to the Iceman.
Interviewed in 2000, Hansen said he never did know what the thing was. “It’s history,” he told a reporter. “I don’t care to get involved in that.” Such a comment, while not constituting a confession, is unlikely to reinforce the Iceman’s credibility. That credibility was already in question thanks to a 1981 newspaper article which claimed the Iceman was a creation of the late Howard Ball, a maker of animal models for Disney. Ball's widow and son supported the story.
Even if the Iceman was not - as seems likely - a clever hoax, the thing’s current whereabouts are unknown. It isn’t unknown for science to accept a description based on missing evidence. After all, no one doubts the validity of Peking Man, whose bones have been lost for over sixty years. H. pongoides, however, represents such a startling claim that the reluctance to accept it is understandable unless the mysterious corpse surfaces again.
Just to further confuse the issue: as noted above, many who accept the Asian ape-man reports believe they concern Neanderthals. Heuvelmans was one of these, and felt his H. pongoides was an example of such a survivor. However, Sanderson, the only other scientist to see the Iceman, strongly dissented. Not only did he feel the Iceman might have been an expertly-made model, but he wrote, "This creature is almost as far removed from the standard neanderthaloid construction as is possible." Heuvelmans' supposition was based on the controversial belief that the common reconstructions of Neanderthals as broad-faced, heavy-browed people are substantially inaccurate.
The yeti is in a state similar to that of the almas. Despite the long-standing local traditions and the efforts of determined cryptozoologists, the beast remains elusive. After a half-century of serious investigation, the best yeti evidence is still the broad, strange-looking footprints photographed by mountaineer Eric Shipton in 1951. Reported yeti remains have either been lost or identified as having belonged to known animals.
So the alleged large primates of the world are supported, at best, by an interesting but inadequate collection of local traditions, reports, footprints, and hair samples. For now, the motto of science remains habeas corpus, or “bring the body forth!”
Sources
Anonymous. 1982. “Big Foot Fraud,” OMNI, September.
Coleman, Loren, and Patrick Huyghe. 1999. The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide. New York: Avon.
Coleman, Loren. 1999. Cryptozoology A to Z. New York: Fireside.
Dalton, Rex. 2004. “Little lady of Flores forces rethink of human evolution,” Nature,
Published online October 27.
Davis, Anthony. 2003. “Searching for Sasquatch,” Texarkana (TX) Gazette, October 20.
Gee, Henry. 2004. “Flores, God, and Cryptozoology,” Nature, Published online October 27.
Hocking, Peter. 1992. “Large Peruvian Mammals Unknown to Zoology,” Cryptozoology (11), p.38.
Napier, John. 1972. Bigfoot. New York: Berkeley.
Sanderson, Ivan. 1969. "The Missing Link?" Argosy, May, p.23.
Sanderson, Ivan. 1961. Abominable Snowmen. Philadelphia: Chilton.
Shackley, Myra. 1983. Still Living? New York: Thames and Hudson.
Wylie, Kevin. 1980. Bigfoot. New York: Viking.
Meryhew, Richard. 2000. “Old tractor up for sale, reluctantly, by owner,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, September 23, p.A1. (Article on Frank Hansen)

Stunning cache of Australian rock art revealed

This site in Australia was used by aboriginal artists starting 12,000-15,000 years ago. Among its thousands of items are depictions of the thylacine, now believed extinct, and a sailing ship painted in the 1600s, well before historians previously thought the Aborigines of this region knew about white visitors. Use of the site continued until the 1950s: it's startling to see a very accurate drawing of a cruise ship in among the images. This was, essentially, a visual library, one maintained by hundreds of generations of artists over millennia. It's simply astonishing, both as art and as a record of a people.

World Science Fest includes way-out thinking

The World Science Festival is coming up in New York. Its organizers are trying hard to fight the "dork" image and reignite America's interest in science - especially the interest of the younger generation. The Festival's originator is a physicist who suggests string theory opens up the possibility we're all holographic projections of information that exists elsewhere in the multi verse. (As Woody Allen would say, "Then I definitely overpaid for my carpet.") Everyone from honoree Stephen Hawking to composed Philip Glass will be on hand for the kickoff on June 2.
COMMENT: Good luck, and sorry I'll miss the show!

Bigfoot and the Endangered Species Act

A hunter named Odie Ellis has written to Field & Stream suggesting the government should put Bigfoot on the Endangered Species List, in part to keep hunters who think they see a manlike form from nailing another hunter. The idea is attracting a lot of comment from cryptozoologists.
However...
Over 30 years ago, the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph published an article saying Bigfoot has been put on the Endangered Species List. When I wrote to the USFWS, a staffer wrote back (I still have the letter somewhere) that this “imaginary creature” had never been considered for protection. He added that, if the animal were proven to exist, it might be considered as a candidate for listing. I still don’t know how the article originated. No one I talked to at the paper had any idea.
There’s no reason to think the USFWS implementation of the ESA has changed. Absent an amendment to the law by Congress allowing reported species to be added (not going to happen), Bigfoot is not going on the list until there’s a bigfoot type specimen in hand. (Speculation: IF there is a type specimen available for scientific examination, protection might not wait until the formal species description is published: the Secretary of the Interior has emergency powers that, in a case as remarkable as this, might be used to protect the area the type specimen came from.)
Anyway, if Bigfoot exists, he's on his own as far as the government is concerned.

Alaotra grebe extinct

It's not a good decade to be an alaotra grebe, a waterbird of Madagascar distinguished by its tiny though functional wings. The new IUCN Red List marks it as the first bird species to go extinct in this century. Netting by fisherman and the introduction of predatory fish into the only lake housing the grebe have put paid to the species.
The Red List highlights several other birds whose continued existence is unclear, Cuba's zapata rail may disappear at any time, if it's not gone already. (An unusual note is that the rail was described by American ornithologist James Bond, whose book happened to be in writer Ian Fleming's room when Fleming was trying to think of a good name for a spy. So if British Intelligence is reading this, they might want to send 007 to Cuba to investigate an urgent mystery.)
The IUCN report is not all bleak: it upgrades the status of two birds that have benefited from conservation efforts.

Ardi, who art thou?

Last year, Science magazine's Breakthrough of the Year was the description of a new species of fossil primate, believed to be on the human line of descent but a million years older than the famous "Lucy." The type specimen of the new find was nicknamed "Ardi."
Now other scientists are challenging the placement of Ardi on the human line, saying it branched off somewhere closer to the common ancestor of humans and apes. Analysis of teeth, skull shape, wrist bones, etc. gets very technical, but the bottom line is some researches want Ardi booted out of the family. The original describers, not surprisingly, are standing their ground.
COMMENT: The important lesson, stressed by everyone involved, is that this kind of debate is normal and healthy in science. In this case (as in the Flores "hobbit" dustup) it may take more specimens, preferably from other locations, to get a definitive answer.

How small a population is too small?

People charged with maintaining the populations of endangered species are always worrying about how many animals are needed to make up a viable population. This also applies in nature: a species with only a few individuals is on its way out (the thylacine may be in this state today, if it's not already gone).

A common postulate is the 50/500 rule. The idea is that mammals need 50 genetically contributing individuals (that is, population N minus the nonbreeding animals (too old, too young, etc.) has to = 50 or more) to be viable in the short term, and over 500 to ensure long-term stability in the face of random events like epidemics.
Fewer than 50 animals does not automatically equal death. Northern elephant seal numbers may have dropped to around 20 at one point due to overhunting. Cheetahs passed through a natural genetic bottleneck that may have cut the population down to something similar. The European bison or wisent was reconstituted from six animals, although in this case the population was closely managed by humans to reduce the level of inbreeding.

A 2009 study by University of Adelaide and Macquarie University researchers suggested that neither 50 nor 500 is adequate. They came up with the figure of 2,000 animals in the face of large-scale stresses like climate change and loss of habitat. These factors vary with species and location, but the study is still concerning to wildlife managers. A 2008 study from the University of Boulder had already suggested that models tweaked for individual species, widely used in conservation programs, may be off by a factor of 100. See:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080702132238.htm

What does that mean for the animals of cryptozoology? If the existence of an animal like the sasquatch is uncertain, its population is more so. If there are only a few dozen sasquatch huddled in the Pacific Northwest, their chances for survival are low but not zero. Primates, which have few offspring and take care of them closely, may be able to adapt to that for a long time. A population in the thousands is much safer, although the likelihood of the existence of an animal for which we have no physical remains would seem to fall if one is postulating there must be thousands of them. It's all more complicated than I am qualified to sort out beyond these general thoughts, as you then get into how many large primates the presumed habitat could support, odds of accidental discovery (hunting accidents, roadkill, etc.), and so on. It varies with every presumed species: for example, the yeti's habitat, the high forested valleys of the Himalayas, is much smaller than potential sasquatch habitat but also sees fewer human residents and travelers.

The point here is that figuring out how many animals a species must include to survive is not an exact science, whether you're dealing with a known or unknown species. The implication is that this whole conservation business is trickier than we thought, and conservation of habitat, the major safety factor, rises even higher in importance. Let's hope we have the wisdom and resources to make it all work.

Me and sasquatch on Internet radio

OK, we're not on the same show together, but I thought this would be fun when I got an invite from Steve Kulls to appear on "The Sasquatch Detective" internet radio show at 8PM EST this Sunday. It should be interesting - I'm skeptical about our big furry friend, but there is a mystery to address here.
So click the title link if you need a diversion ...(shows are also archived so you can play back later).

Farewell, Phoenix and Atlantis

NASA reports that the Mars Phoenix lander, which made a slew of important discoveries since landing two years ago today, is dead. An image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows that, as most of the Phoenix's team of scientists and engineers expected, the accumulation of carbon-dioxide ice over the Martian winter has twisted or broken off the solar panels. That was the tradeoff in sending a lander to the high latitudes to study the Martian polar caps.

And the shuttle Atlantis should touch down tomorrow, returning after a highly successful mission to complete the planned configuration of the ISS. In all likelihood, Atlantis, which has logged some 120 million miles in space, will make only one more journey, to a museum. It's silly to get emotional over a machine, but Atlantis has been a magnificent vessel of exploration (like her predecessor, the U.S. government's first oceanic research vessel). It's sad to see her go.

UPDATE: And Atlantis is down safely. Well done, NASA.

Illustrating eyewitness reports - a problem for cryptozoology

There are many famous sightings of "cryptids" whose fame is due largely to an impressive drawing of the creature. Some of these are made by witnesses themselves, while others are drawn under their supervision or even just from the text of an account. In addition to the skill of the artist, though, the accuracy of these images depends on how good a look the witness(es) got and how much is accurately remembered.
Mike Dash of Fortean Times just posted this blog, which I helped a bit on the research with, looking at several cases where an illustration, however well done, may not have been a very good match to what the witnesses saw.
I've worked with superb illustrators for my books, and they were excited by the challenge of drawing an animal based on text or old sketch. Some of the results, such as Bill Rebsamen's working of the Valhalla sea-serpent, have been superb and match other data very well. In the Valhalla case, two highly qualified witnesses watched the animal, wrote down a detailed description, and produced a very competent sketch Bill could work from. That's not always true.
Craig Gosling, who did excellent work for my first book, drew the two-finned cetacean reported by Quoy and Gaimard, but the witnesses never saw the animals' heads, and Craig had to make an educated guess at the head shape and the snout based on other cetaceans. The resulting drawing may (assuming the animal exists, of course) be very accurate or far off. If it's off, that's no detriment to Craig: he simply had to conjecture to fill in what was not reported.
On the other hand, Craig's drawing from that book of Steller's "sea monkey" has been licensed for two other publications and is probably the best we are going to get. Steller's description was a thorough one, written down by an experienced observer or marine life, so Craig's talents have likely given us something very much like what the naturalist reported.
I've rambled on here, but the point Dash makes is important. We have to consider not only the features shown in an illustration but what the illustration was based on. As Dash notes, Loch Ness witness Arthur Grant reported a weird animal crossing the road at night: his own drawings and those of others have gotten far more detailed over the years. So be careful. An illustration, however evocative and however well the illustrator knows animals and their anatomy, can be only as good as its origins.

Book review: Hack the Planet

Hack the Planet: Science's Best Hope - or Worst Nightmare - for Averting Climate Catastrophe (Hardcover)
~ Eli Kintisch - Wiley - 2010

Geoengineering or "planet hacking" is the emerging field of developing large-scale schemes to control the Earth's climate and negate the effects of global warming. In one of the first books on this important topic, Eli Kintisch has provided a highly readable introduction for a broad audience.
Planet-hacking was long dismissed by climate scientists as either an unfeasible solution or a subversive one being pushed to enable us to keep dumping carbon into the atmosphere. As Kintisch shows, highly respected climatologists are coming around to the idea that geoengineering must be studied even though it's a very risky last resort, something to be considered only if we fail to reduce our carbon output - or if we've already passed the tipping point.
The author takes us through the variety of schemes proposed - sowing the atmosphere with sulfur compounds to reflect sunlight, sowing the oceans with iron to make plankton bloom (sequestering more carbon in an enhanced ocean food web), and even more daunting projects like maintaining huge fields of mirrors in orbit. Kitisch talks with all the major figures (many of them as interesting as the ideas they study), takes us through scientific meetings in the U.S. and Europe, and shows a growing consensus that geoengineering must be better understood, even as we hope never to deploy it. Every geoengineering concept has side effects and unknowns, and none of them are without serious political, financial, and technical challenges. There are worries about individual nations taking unilateral actions that could affect the whole planet and even about the possibility geoengineering could be weaponized.
Kitisch has no doubts about anthropogenic global warming and provides alarming statistics to show how serious a threat it's becoming. This, he argues, is why geoengineering must be studied despite its risks: because a day may come when the uncertain risks of geoengineering are outweighed by the certain risks of continuing climate change.
People may differ about how immediate the climate threat is and exactly how much human activity affects global temperatures. What can't be debated, though, is that our enormous conversion of carbon via fossil fuels amounts to an uncontrolled experiment on our own species. Kitisch and the scientists he interviews think we damn well better be aware of our options if that experiment puts us in imminent danger. His well-written book offers clear explanations and examples to bring readers up to speed on a subject that may determine our future on Earth.

Top 10 New Species announced

Every year, the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University picks a Top 10 of recently described species. This year (covering discoveries in 2008) they had 18,225 new species to consider. That's not a typo. 18,225. Two plants and eight animals made the top 10 list. A favorite: the wildly-colored, flat-faced Psychedelic Frogfish.

More new monitor lizards

Adding to the recent cascade of species descriptions, here are two new species of monitors from the Philippines, one identified from two overlooked specimens in the Zoological Museum of Copenhagen.
COMMENT: It is surprising but true that the largest lizards on the planet have produced so many recent discoveries. The grand-daddy of all living lizards, the Komodo, was only described in 1912, and many species have turned up in the pet trade before herpetologists even heard of them.

Also from the Philippines, the nation's most prominent herpetologist, Angel Alcala, shares his memories from a lifetime of discovery including 50 new species. See:
http://www.visayandailystar.com/2010/May/17/starlife.htm

New mammals, bird added to Indonesian fauna

It's hard to keep up with new species discoveries. One day after I did a roundup article on several of the most recent, out comes this report from Conservation International. The bag of a single expedition: a new tree kangaroo, a new woolly rat, a new pigeon, and a long-nosed frog called Pinocchio that was nabbed by hand when it simply hopped up onto a bag of rice the explorers' camp, seemingly presenting itself to science. It will take some work to confirm these are all new species (the pigeon, for example, might be a new color morph of a known type) but the point is the same as always: we are still discovering nature.

"River Monsters" strikes out in Iliamna

As I've written before, one "lake monster" story I always suspected had something to it was the tale of Lake Iliamna, Alaska. Iliamna, remote, sparsely inhabited, and covering 1,000 square miles, has a long tradition of "giant fish" stories that intrigued me because of persuasive eyewitness reports. I appeared (briefly, as it turned out) on Discovery Channel's "Monsters and Myths of Alaska," in which a couple of fishermen did hook into and lose something seemingly larger than the normal fish known to inhabit the place.
Now Jeremy Wade of Animal Planet's "River Monsters" has taken his turn at fishing in the lake. Result: zip.
In both cases, one problem was the fishing efforts were one-shot deals lasting 12 hours or less. If there is an unknown population of white sturgeons - or something more unusual - in Iliamna, it's not surprising these programs didn't find it. If something has gone for decades - or centuries, as Alaska Natives have it - it's going to take a more systemic approach to solve the mystery.

"Best Quirky Museum" award goes to ICM

Yankee magazine, well known in New England, gives out annual “Best of New England” Editor's Choice Awards this time every year. Honored as "Best Quirky Museum" is the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, ME. Congratulations to founder Loren Coleman.

COMMENT: The ICM is the ONLY cause I regularly beseech readers of this blog to support, whether that support is monetary or in the form of exhibits or archived materials. Whether you think cryptozoology is scientifically important, a silly nuisance, or something in between does not actually matter here. The ICM houses tens of thousands of items, from full-size animal models to newspaper clippings, making up a one-of-a-kind collection about humanity's fascination with animal mysteries.
For more,see:
http://networkedblogs.com/3Ug1j

NASA, Space, and all of us

The major change in direction of American space exploration being floated by the Obama administration has raised one heck of a ruckus in Congress, in states housing NASA facilities, and among space policymakers and devotees of all kinds. Keith Cowing of the blog NASAWatch has collected a few reminders of an important point: as we debate how we explore, don't forget the big question of why we explore.

"Why our space program? Why, indeed, did we trouble to look past the next mountain? Our prime obligation to ourselves is to make the unknown known. We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are."
- Gene Roddenberry, Executive Producer of "Star Trek"

New species roundup

The discovery and description of new species of animals from around the world continues apace. Actually, it continues at a pace that would surprise, even startle, most people.

The big recent news, mentioned earlier on this blog, is the colorful new monitor from the Philippines, almost 2m long and from a populated area where no one would expect a large new species. If you missed it, see this link:
http://www.livescience.com/animals/giant-lizard-komodo-100406.html

A little less celebrated is the "torch monitor," so called in Indonesia for its bright orange head. Varanus obor, attired mostly in glossy black, lives only one one small island, Sanana, one of the Moluccas. Monitor lizards are often the top predators on such islands, with the famous Komodo dragon being the biggest and nastiest of the group. See the title link for this one.

Then say hello to this brightly colored frog, orange with black markings, found in a tiny area at 3,000 meters altitude in the Western Ghats mountain range of India. To herpetologists, it's Raorchestes resplendens. It has unusually short legs for a frog and some other features that resemble those of toads.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8675828.stm

I always love stories about the contributions of amateurs to science. A truly tiny moth (wingspan: 6mm) has been identified from England after an amateur naturalist in Devon spotted a caterpillar he didn't recognize and showed it to entomologists. Bob Heckford has the permanent satisfaction of knowing Ectoedemia heckfordi is fluttering about the countryside.
http://www.biodiversityislife.net/?q=node/303

Every species we discover, large or small, is another piece of important knowledge in the mosaic of life. As this final article from Switzerland points out, we really don't have enough taxonomists to understand things as quickly as we need to for effective study and conservation. Here's hoping more people will realize how vibrant a field this is and join the effort to understand life on Earth.
http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_articles/100429_biosystematik_per/index_EN

It's all about the DNA

DNA analysis has demonstrated that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred at some point. But is it correct to call them one species, or should they be separate? Scientists have gone back and forth over this for over 150 years. Are we dealing with Homo sapiens neanderthalensis or Homo neanderthalensis? That's only one of the mysteries further analysis promises to unlock. Another is the migration patterns of ancient humans and their ancestors.
COMMENT: It must be one heck of an exciting time to be an anthropologist. Maybe the most exciting time ever to be one.

Reminder how strange genetics can be

Strange and seemingly cruel... Brooke is a girl from the UK and at age 17 is only 75cm tall, but her condition is not dwarfism. In many ways, physical and mental, she hasn't aged past about 6-12 months. She has not developed the ability to speak, and she still has her baby teeth. Prof. Richard Walker is leading the effort to sequence her genome: not just to possibly aid Brooke, but to unlock the secrets of aging. He explained, “Our hypothesis is that she is suffering from damage in the gene or genes that co-ordinate the way the body develops and ages. If we can use her DNA to find that mutant gene then we can test it in laboratory animals to see if we can switch if off and slow down the aging process at will."

THANKS to Kris Winkler for this item.

Last flight of Atlantis

Here we go. Friday is the last mission for the space shuttle Atlantis. Sad to see it... Godspeed, y'all.

Whatever is a gray whale doing here?

The North Atlantic gray whale population was wiped out centuries ago. The animals survive only in the Pacific. So what is one doing in the Mediterranean?
Cetologists are as flustered by that question as everyone else. Is it from some overlooked remnant of the Atlantic population? Did it come through the Northwest Passage and then swim south (as is considered most likely)? Did it head southwest and come up unnoticed through the Suez Canal? If it swam for thousands of miles to get to a place its species has never lived, why?
It's tempting to shriug and say Mother Nature likes to stump us once in a while. Scientists, of course, cannot stop there. This whale will have a lot of human company for a while.

THANKS to Drs. Charles Paxton and Darren Naish for passing on items about this sighting.

How manatees crossed the ocean

Sirenians (manatees and dugongs) exist in widely scattered locations. Dr. Darren Naish asks the logical question of how animals that are basically floating blimps managed to cross oceans (they seem to have originated in South America). The answer is, essentially, that currents and the Amazon river flow helped them to swim thousands of miles: and they must have made the journey because, well, there they are. Their extinct relation, Steller's sea cow, even made it to the Bering Sea.

MicroSat News: New experiments with SPHERES

The SPHERES microsatellites, three of them, have been tested inside the ISS. Now NASA and DARPA have launched a new program, International Space Station Spheres Integrated Research Experiments (InSPIRE) which seeks new uses for SPHERES to test advanced technology and increase participation by students and other groups in ISS experiments. The program manager at DARPA, Paul Eremenko (who I worked with on a paper on the agency's F6 interlinked-satellites program) emphasizes the importance of putting space technology to work in educational outreach.

A little Neanderthal in us - or most of us

The most extensive study of the topic to date indicates that humans and Neanderthals - well, dated. A little. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig report most humans include in their genome between one and four percent Neanderthal DNA. Oddly, the interbreeding doesn't seem to have occurred in Europe, where Neanderthal lasted the longest and coexisted with modern humans the longest. Instead, it happened in the Middle East and ended 60,000 years ago. Some Homo sapiens carried Neanderthal genes into Europe, others to East Asia. No trace appears in modern Africans. The findings are preliminary and are likely to change as more Neanderthal DNA is analyzed.

Species diversity plans aren't helping

The news is grim. A global conference in 2002 agreed the loss of species must be stemmed. 2010 was set as the target year. It's not working out. When the the Convention of Biological Diversity meets this October in Japan, the tone is going to be dire. The easiest numbers to understand are those concerning the most visible creatures: 20% of the mammals, 12% of the birds, and 30% of thee world's amphibians are in some category of threatened species.

An idea: maybe it's time for the most critical "hot spots" to be managed as international parks: not by fiat from New York or Zurich, but as Megacommunities which bring together government, business, and nonprofit entities with a shared objective. (See "The Megacommunity Manifesto," at
http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/44.02.Megacommunities )
(Full disclosure: some of the leaders at my day job came up with this concept, but the point is, it works where top-down efforts fail.)

Fun article from 1959 on Vanguard II

This article, focusing on the cloud cover experiment carried on Vanguard II, makes the interesting prediction that more advanced satellites will make weather forecasts 100% accurate.
We were optimistic about a lot of things in the 50s.

Pat Flannery, who posted this on the newsgroup sci.space.history, also found this link to a cool model kit of the satellite.

http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/ProjectVanguardSatellitePage.htm

Latest "grolar" bear was 2nd-Gen Hybrid

I blogged earlier on a story that a grizzly-polar bear hybrid, the second such animal confirmed from the wild, was shot on April 8. Now we know something more: this bear was a second-generation hybrid, the result of a male grizzly pairing with a female hybrid. No one has reported shooting that maternal hybrid, so she is likely still out there.
It's getting to look like the hybridization of grizzly (technically brown) bears and polars is not a one-off event but part of a small but potentially significant trend. It's been postulated that such hybrids will show up more often as human settlement on the south and diminishing ice to the north increasingly causes the ranges of the two bears to overlap. (Actually I postulated that on the 2008 Giant Bears episode of MonsterQuest: I'm sure I was not the first to have the thought, but it was original to me at the time. I'm gratified that people with actual qualifications have independently picked up the same thread.)

THANKS TO Gavin Joth for circulating the linked article.

How did dinos hold their necks?

It used to be thought the great sauropod dinosaurs held their necks high as they waded through the swamps. Then we figured out they didn't live in the swamps. Then came the idea, as shown in the series Walking with Dinosaurs, that the long necks were held out level to the ground, or even slanting downwards, balancing those long tails. Dr. Darren Naish, who never has a problem challenging paleontological orthodoxy, argues that no animal has ever evolved a long neck for low-level browsing only. Living animals like giraffes and saddle-backed giant tortoises use long necks to enable them to look around for food and enemies and to browse high vegetation. So, he and his colleagues argue, did sauropods.

Is cold fusion really dead?

Cold fusion is the vampire of the world of physics. No matter how many times it's staked through the heart, it keeps popping up. This report concerns a new symposium looking at several varieties of reported cold fusion reaction.
COMMENT: I've never known what to think of this topic. Certainly I don't have the background to pronounce on it with any kind of authority. But it's interesting there are a handful of people with doctorates who are willing to run the gauntlet of ridicule to report on what they think are important results. They may still be wrong, but what if they're not?

Sasquatch: invading a theater near you!

In fact, invading theaters over and over. There are, believe it or not, seven sasquatch-themed films now in production, most from independents but a couple from semi-major studies.

My favorite title so far? "Sasquatch vs. Chupacabra." (This could be a funny movie with the right tongue-in-cheek attitude. Think of the camp classic “King Kong vs. Godzilla.” Most of these filmmakers end up going the “babes and blood” route, though.)

The funny thing is that, if you think of the drama and the philosophical themes inherent in the sasquatch legend, there is room for a very good film on the subject. It's never been done. (When I was a kid, "The Legend of Boggy Creek" seemed pretty cool, but it doesn't hold up.)

The Razzies (the anti-Oscars) should give an award for “Worst Sasquatch Costume in a Motion Picture.” Think of the number of worthy (?) competitors.

Japan launching solar sail craft

On May 18, Japan will attempt the first test of a solar sail-propelled spacecraft beyond Earth orbit. The Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation of the Sun (Ikaros) will unfurl a kite-shaped sail 14 meters in diameter. One scientist at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), referring to the use of a "sail," called it a "space yacht."
COMMENT: While sailing using the pressure of sunlight offers limited power and acceleration, and has limited use beyond the neighborhood of Mars orbit, it could be valuable for probes and possibly, with much larger sails, spacecraft making bulk shipments of commodities like food and water.

Ice found on asteroid

Scientists have found something unexpected on an asteroid named 24 Themis. Only 140km or so in diameter, it naturally has minimal gravity. No one expected it to be covered (or even one-third covered) by water ice. This has important implications for future space exploration (especially since the President has mentioned a mission to an asteroid as a future human spaceflight goal).

Old police report on Loch Ness

The just-released 1933 report (it's been referenced before, but the whole document is now out) might be the first official mention of the "Loch Ness Monster" - a creature whose existence, according to the local chief constable, "seems beyond doubt." In response, the Scottish Office did discuss stationing observers at the loch, but that's as far as it went.

X-37 is in orbit

The Air Force's unmanned mini-shuttle, the X-37B, is in orbit.
The craft is deployed to conduct a number of experiments (specifics are classified) and then return to Earth. The idea is to test advances in constructing a reusable spacecraft (remember, the Space Shuttle is 1970s) and pave the way for larger, more capable spaceplanes. The Air Force is adamant that claims they are "weaponizing space" with the unarmed experimental system are completely off base.

Wild new species from Borneo

Borneo is definitely a hot spot for new species. Adam Tomasek, director of the Word Wife Fund for Nature (WWF)'s Heart of Borneo project, says, "We have been finding on average three new species a month and about 123 over the last three years, with at least 600 new species found in the last 15 years."
Among the newest are a stick insect 36 cm long, a 2.5cm slug that pierces its love interest with hormone-filled darts of calcium carbonate, and Barbourula kalimantanensis, a 7-5cm frog which has no lungs and breathers only through its skin.

Space history revealed: Mach 22 reconnaissance plane

Dwayne Day has published another scoop, this one on a partially declassified effort called ISINGLASS from the late 1960s that would have replaced the SR-71 with a spaceplane seven times as fast. The idea came out of the CIA, the Air Force never cottoned to it, and it died, though only after McDonnell Douglas had put significant work into it.
Would it have flown as designed? Seems unlikely - they were asking for a gosh-awful amount of energy from something that could not be much larger than the X-15 (and thus couldn't have much onboard fuel to play with.) But those guys in the 60s, man, they thought BIG.

Climate change, raw data, funding, and access

Interesting kerfuffle going on here, sparked by an amateur researcher and climate change skeptic's demand for the raw data (in this case, records of tree ring measurements) used by a British university professor to publish a paper on global warming.
The academic response is essentially "We did the work to gather this data: we should decide how and to whom it's released."
As much as I agree with the emotional response by a professor and his colleagues who did a lot of hard fieldwork to gather information, and more hard work to analyze it, it's hard for me to grasp the notion that research funded by taxpayers should be kept away from taxpayers, either based on an intellectual property argument or a belief that said taxpayers lack the training to interpret the data and may publish misleading results. I keep coming back to the simple fact that taxpayers funded the work, paying the salaries of the people gathering data.
I agree data should be kept private for a reasonable period to give the prof involved the chance to publish first on it. But I can't agree with keeping it locked away after that.
The official at the UK Information Commissioner's Office who ruled on this request under the UK's Freedom of Information law sounds like he thought the same way - also, that he was annoyed the university had gone to great lengths, including outright lying about how hard it would be to assemble the data, in order to keep it secret.
Sure, untrained members of the public may trumpet all kinds of misleading results - but, for all the public knows, the professor could be doing the same thing, only no one will ever know it if the data's kept secret. Even if the professor considers the requester a crank - and even if he has good reason to so consider the requester - the policy argument doesn't change.
Unless there's a national security reason to classify data, the general policy should be that, once the research has been published, the people who paid for the raw data have a right to see it.

UPDATE 4/48/2010: Wow, I set off a firestorm on the National Association of Science Writers list. Some of the points made were that funding is often commingled so that it's hard to say what's publicly funded and what isn't, that someone has to pay for and organize the effort of getting the data into a form that can be passed on, and that (and I reject this last one) the public is paying for the report, not the data (to me, the latter is part of the former.)

A new look at Mars

Check out these stunning images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, featuring eight areas selected by the public.

Ants that hop? Yep, Some Do

Jerdon's jumping ant, from India, can jump 12-18 inches. Australia's jack jumper ant, hops onto larger prey to deliver a lethal dose of venom. The trap-jaw ant uses its mandibles (seriously) to flip itself into the air fast enough to hit prey with a force equal to 300 times the ant's body mass.
There are thousands of species of ants known any many more thousands unknown. They include some very remarkable creatures.

Update: the Census of Marine Life

Some two thousand scientists worldwide are collaborating on the Census of Marine Life. They have discovered some 5,000 species and know they are nowhere near done. While most press has gone to the new fish, octopuses, etc., progress is being made at the "lower" levels, too. The thousands or millions of species of tiny animals lurking in the seafloor take great effort to find and classify, but they are important components of the ecosystem, so the Census wants them all.

Image of a spectacular fireball

This meteorite, which lit up the skies over several states, is a cool scientific phenomenon - and a reminder that the universe can snuff us all...this was a meter-wide body. A kilometer-sized one would ruin our whole day.

T. rex? Yes, that's name for new leech species

It's Tyrannobdella rex - a really repulsive new species from Peru with outsized teeth. How long till the giant version appears in a SyFy Channel movie?

Update: President Obama on space

COMMENT: OK, President Obama gave "the NASA speech." And since President Obama is nothing if not a skilled orator, as a speech it was fine.
There were no real surprises, most of the the details having been put out yesterday. Still, there were some interesting things said and some interesting things not said.
The result was kind of a mixed bag, in this space enthusiast's opinion.
The most notable thing the President did NOT say: he never actually committed to continuing the NASA astronaut corps. He talked about putting more astronauts in space but didn't say who they would work for.
One odd thing he did say was, "Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit." He is referring in part to use of a new heavy-lift rocket, but he didn't say who the astronauts would be or what the "systems" would be. He said developing Orion as a rescue vehicle would maintain a technology base for future spacecraft, and there's some, albeit limited, truth in that. His rationale of making us independent of other nations for rescue capability, though, is hardly a compelling rationale for doing anything, let alone spending billions to build exactly ONE capsule. No one made any issue of Soyuz capsules as the emergency return systems from the ISS. The issue was having our people restricted to using Soyuz capsules to get up there in the first place. And how exactly is the Orion rescue vehicle going to get UP to the station? Wait a decade for the new heavy-lift rocket? He didn't say. (And the timetable given for that program - taking until 2015 just to select a design for the rocket - leaves me speechless. That would seem far too long to maintain a viable option of restarting Shuttle tank production and using a Shuttle-derived heavy lifter.)
Finally, I think the President leaned too much on the Augustine Panel as an authority for canceling Project Constellation. That panel did not say Project Constellation was not feasible. They said it wasn't feasible on the current budget: that it would need an extra $3B a year. I never liked the Ares I booster and am not sad to see it die, but there was no mention of man-rating another booster rocket in its place, which could have been used to continue a revamped Constellation program.
The President did give a "shout out," in the current vernacular, to SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster, which will have the unintended effect of putting a lot of government/public/media pressure on SpaceX to make it work the first time. SpaceX's strength is that it, unlike other startups and unlike many government space programs, it progresses in a rational way that tries for success every time but accepts and learns from failures.
The President committed to a $6B increase over the next five years for NASA, which is not bad under the circumstances, and continued commitment to commercial launch providers, which is not in itself any bad thing. He did not, as some expected, commit to any more Shuttle flights, so we will see the end of the Shuttle before the end of this year.
As I said, a mixed bag. I have often argued that space flight is much bigger than just NASA, and NASA is much more than just its human spaceflight program. The increases for robotic missions are welcome. Any move to let the astronaut corps die, though, is never going to get past Congress.
Now Congress has its say. And that is going to be one bruising fight.

REMINDER: As always, but even more so, if that makes any sense: this is solely the personal opinion of the author as a science writer/private citizen/historian.

Second "grolar" hybrid bear kill reported

What may be second "pizzly" or "grolar" hybrid bear was killed by an Inuit hunter on Victoria Island, Northwest Territories, Canada. Canadian wildlife authorities are investigating the bear, which has a polar bear-like head but also shows brown bear features.

NASA awaits Presidential leadership

COMMENT: I almost never get political in this blog. The point of it is to pass along interesting science and technology news. But doggone it, Mr. President, NASA people are looking to you for leadership.
First the proposed FY11 budget effectively killed human spaceflight by NASA. As much as I disagree with the substance, Mr. Obama is the President and has a right to propose a new policy. Next came the promise to host a Space Summit on 4/15. Very good idea. Somehow, the Presidential portion has evaporated into a quick stop for a speech - rank and file workers not invited - and then the President moves on to a political fundraiser without meeting with the people most affected by the NASA changes.
I don't even know what to say about the other recent change, which seems to have been thrown out rather hastily amid criticism from Neil Armstrong and other NASA veterans. Spending billions of dollars to finish a limited-capability version of the Orion capsule solely so it can serve as an ISS lifeboat is hard to understand as part of any larger strategy.
That speech better be a doozy.

MicroSpace News: New programs in NASA's budget

From the FY11 budget materials for NASA Ames Research Center:

Exploration Scouts: New Program Office as part of Exploration’s Precursor Robotic Missions effort to manage approximately $20 million in FY 2011 and $400 million over five years allocated to scout locations for eventual human visits with a focus on small, competed robotic missions.
 Small Satellite Subsystem Technology: New Program Office to manage $6 million in FY 2011 and $126 million over five years in research and development in this important technology area.
 Edison Small Satellite Demonstrations: New Program Office to manage $10 million in FY 2011 and $90 million over five years to demonstrate key small satellite capabilities.


The first idea on this list, not that anyone will remember, was presented in a 2006 paper and a followup Space News op-ed by Kris Winkler and myself. We did not originate the notion, but it's nice to see NASA has come around to thinking the same way we did. (Or maybe that's scary. I'm not sure.) Credit for getting it in the budget goes, I suspect, to Ames Director Pete Worden, an ardent proponent of small spacecraft.

New species? Giant mouse lemur

A "giant mouse lemur" is not exactly a giant, not at 300 grams, but it's all relative. It's big for a mouse lemur. WWF zoologists Louise Jasper and Charlie Gardner (who are, BTW, engaged to each other - it's always good when work and love go hand in hand) were on a night walk along a creek in Madagascar when they spotted an animal that was different in size, color, and behavior from the common mouse lemur. Its status as a separate species still requires confirmation.

Research may shock women: Men have feelings too.

We can even be empathetic, kind, and nurturing. Really.

Big turtle with super-heavy armor found

Sixty million years ago, Columbia was home to the world's biggest-ever snake, Titanoboa. The presence of this monster may have sparked a defensive arms race among prey species, which produced Cerrejonemys wayuunaiki - a turtle whose meter-long shell had the thickness of a phone book.

COMMENT: Well, here's hoping the shell protected it. Carrying all that armor and being, well, a turtle to begin with, it sure couldn't have run from predators.

Tiny animals can live without oxygen

We knew some single-celled organisms could live without oxygen. But multi-celled animals? Some tiny creatures of the phylum Loricifera have "learned" to live in anaerobic (oxygen-free) mud on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. They manage without mitochondria, the organelles universally found in the cells of other animals which use oxygen to produce energy. Scientists who didn't know this was possible are now excited about looking in other environments for similar animals, while others ponder the implications for life on oxygen-free worlds.

New monitor lizard (big and colorful!) discovered

A monitor lizard measuring some two meters (over 6 feet), Varanus bitatawa, is the newest addition to the world's known fauna. The lizard, believed critically endangered, is a peaceful fruit-eater that inhabits a river valley on the Philippine island of Luzon. The discovery of such a large, colorful beast (mainly dark blue mottled with yellow-green spots) in an area heavily populated and largely deforested came as a shock to herpetologists.

COMMENT: This has an implication for cryptozoology as well as for herpetology. I'm the first to agree that some cryptozoologists go beyond logic in arguing the continents are seemingly crawling with big unknown species. But can we PLEASE have an end to the equally illogical objection that all the sizable animals of the world have been discovered? They haven't.

Amazing space photo - the ISS and the aurora

I have no words for this. Just drink in the beauty.

Visualizing an explosion of amphibians

This is a really cool site. The map of most interest shows the distribution of new amphibians found from 2004 through 2007.

Get this: "Since 1985...well over 2,000 new species have been discovered, which represents a 50% increase in total recognized species." The most popular countries for new amphibians: Brazil, with 68, followed by Papua New Guinea with 46, followed by Sri Lanka with 45.

A note from another source: Herpetologist Chris Raxworthy has reported he has over a hundred new frogs from Madagascar awaiting description. So we're a long way from a full catalog.

THANKS TO Dale Drinnon for pointing me to this site.

Record number of women in space

When the shuttle Discovery goes up today, there will be more women in space - four - than at any single time in history. NASA Associate Administrator of the Space Operations Directorate Bill Gerstenmaier called this a "credit to the system. ... I just think of it as a talented group of people going to do their job in space."
COMMENT: I salute all the ladies (and the men) pushing the frontier...this attitude is an improvement from the days when Dan Goldin and Bill Clinton reportedly discussed an all-female Shuttle crew as a political showpiece.

UPDATE: Discovery is in orbit, and all is looking good.

Findings in Physics - the universe gets weirder

Can you twist light beams into a pretzel? Measure the effects of "spooky action at a distance" on the motions of widely separated but "entangled" particles? Use a levitated magnetic ring to pull the world closer to fusion energy? Catch up on the seven latest finds in physics in this article.

New human ancestor reported

OK, the press is calling it a "missing link" - you knew they would. But it sounds like a pretty big deal in understanding human evolution. The fossil in question is a nearly complete primate skeleton - an extremely rare thing to find to begin with - two million years old. The South African find, which includes parts of other individuals' skeletons as well, is a treasure trove of fossils of a species that fit between the australopithecines and Homo habilis, the first known species in the genus Homo. This seems to be a leak by the Daily Telegraph. Formal announcement is reportedly coming this week.

And here's the biggest bug in the world

OK, an isopod is not technically a bug. So this thing that came up from over 2,500 meters down is not an insect or a spider. It's a stunning specimen of Bathynomus giganteus, a relative to the common woodlouse or pill bug on land. Add this nearly meter-long creature to the list of things I definitely don't want for a pet.

New species keep coming

This cute orange toad from Brazil (it's hard to think of a toad as cute, but this one is) is the latest in a parade of new amphibian species.

New creatures from the seamounts

An 18-month expedition to seamounts hidden under the seas near Madagascar has brought in a treasure trove of new species. The biggest new species nabbed was the "deal fish," two meters long, but there may be hundreds more new species among the expedition's 7,000 specimens. Most are invertebrates, including one poetically named the "snot flower."

New U.K. Space Agency launches

Britain is back in the space business, or, at least, better organized for it. Space has been a fragmented function, but on 4/1 the new UK Space Agency opened for business. Also opened: the new International Space Innovation Centre (ISIC) at Harwell. Britain has been busy in space for a long time - back to the days when the British Interplanetary Society was studying lunar landings in the early 1950s - but there's a new focus.
Lord Drayson, Science and Innovation Minister (a job we should have in the American cabinet, too) commented: "The action we’re taking today shows that we’re really serious about space. The UK Space Agency will give the sector the muscle it needs to fulfil its ambition. Britain’s space industry has defied the recession. It can grow to £40bn a year and create 100,000 jobs in 20 years. The Government’s commitments on space will help the sector go from strength to strength."
Good going, chaps!