NASA approves Hubble repair mission

NASA has approved a Shuttle mission to extend the life of the Hubble telescope. The action was widely applauded in the space science community, which has not had much to cheer about from NASA lately. The mission would launch in 2008 to allow astronauts to add seven years of life to Hubble by upgrading guidance and control components. They would also attempt to repair one instrument and replace two others, greatly improving the telescope's capabilities. However, NASA, having directed all possible funding into the Shuttle missions supporting the International Space Station, the planned retirement of the Shuttle in 2010, and the demands of the new Vision for Space Exploration, does not know where the estimated $900M budget for the mission will come from.

World fish stocks trending sharply downward

A new study indicates that global stocks of fish and other edible marine life, with the ecosystems they support, are headed for a cliff by 2050. Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, said, "I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are - beyond anything we suspected." He and his colleagues, who spent four years collating results of experiments and other studies worldwide, report that 29% of commercially valuable marine species have already "crashed" - that is, the populations are down an estimated 90 % or more - and the rest are following quickly. Overfishing in the main culprit, but coastal development and other ecological degradation is blamed as well.

COMMENT: This is not like global warming, where the observed changes leave some doubt about the overall trend and the human role in it. This is a crisis that essentially is impossible to dispute. While some nations, notably the US, believe they are maintaining proper controls keeping harvesting by their own fishing fleets to sustainable levels, the global picture is a very bleak one. This situation requires coordinated global action NOW.

New Species from the Pacific

A protected marine area northwest of Hawaii has yielded a bonanza of new and rare species of marine animal. A three-week expedition in the French Frigate Shoals area netted over a thousand species of invertebrates. Examples include a sea star (starfish) colored bright purple and measuring a foot (30cm) across the arms and "a hermit crab that dons a sea anemone and sports shiny golden claws."
There is still much work to be done to determine how many of these are new, but one zoologist with the team said, "There were lots of organisms that people were saying, 'Wow! What's that?'"

Elephant awareness?

An Asian elephant in the Bronx Zoo showed the ability to recognize herself in a mirror. This behavior, indicating at least a basic level of self-awareness, has been seen only in humans and chimps until now. (Results on dolphins are suggestive but not definite.) Some animals ignore mirrors, while others assume the image is another individual. Interestingly, only one of the three elephants clearly understood the test, touching her trunk to her face where the mirror showed a marking.

Another nation resumes whaling

Iceland, citing its centuries-old whaling tradition, has announced it will issue permits for taking a total of 39 fin and minke whales. Iceland stopped commercial whaling when an international moratorium was agreed on in 1989. While the minke whale is relatively abundant, probably numbering in the hundreds of thousands (it has benefited greatly from past hunting that decimated the numbers of larger baleen whales), the "finner" is still listed as an endangered species by the IUCN.

COMMENT: The north Atlantic minke and fin stocks could, from a hard-nosed numerical point of view, survive a limited annual cull without significant harm. HOWEVER, in the bigger picture, this is a very bad idea. First, it further legitimizes whale hunting, encouraging more nations to resume the practice, inevitably leading to larger kills and environmental impacts. Second, the more widespread whaling is, the more it provides cover for the taking of protected species. Numerous samples of humpback, blue, and other rare species have been found in markets selling meat from Japan's "scientific" harvest of minke whales. (How good can their scientists be if they can't tell a humpback from a minke? One sample was even shown to come from a blue/fin hybrid. Try mistaking that for a minke sometime).

The Bionic Dolphin

That's what Thomas "Doc" Rowe calls his invention, but it's more like a sports car for the oceans. Rowe is currently working with regulators on how to license his prototype, which can carry passengers on the surface at 55 miles per hour or dive underneath the waves and manuever like a marine mammal. Projected consumer cost for this ultimate toy: $350,000.

Science and Ghosts

It's Halloween....

We all know someone who has experienced a seemingly ghostly event. Maybe we've experienced one ourselves. But is there any way to prove whether there's a ghost in the room?
Skeptic Benjamin Radford has no doubts: the answer is no. Radford looks at TV "ghost hunters" and complains that, despite their habit of carrying instrumentation like electromagnetic field detectors, they never really find a ghost. Anything anomalous, like a cold spot, is considered to be evidence a ghost is present, but all that's left at the end is a collection of anomalies.. nothing consistent, nothing repeatable, nothing definite.

Is Mars getting boring?

Read The Onion's version fo the adventures of the rover Opportunity and judge for yourself.

Fun with Rockets

Alan Boyle writes, "What do you get when you cross a circus with a space shot? That breed of alien hybrid would probably look very much like the Wirefly X Prize Cup, gearing up at the Las Cruces International Airport in New Mexico." The events underway range from flight tests of lunar lander technology to demonstrations of what is pretty likely to be the world's only rocket-powered truck.

Honeybees - Past and Present

News (or buzz) came out almost simultaneously of two discoveries involving that indispensable insect, the honeybee.
First, the genetic blueprint of the honeybee was published. Only three other insects have had their genomes sequenced so far. Among the surprises: two genetically distinct European bee populations are more closely related to African bees than to each other.
Second, a tiny (3mm) amber-preserved specimen 100 million years old was identified as the earliest known bee. Melittosphex burmensis came from a mine in Burma's Hukawng Valley. The ancient insect showed features supporting the idea that bees were then in the process of descending from a wasp ancestor.

Thanks (as usual) to Kris for this item.

Interview with an Explorer

Robert Ballard, whose teams discovered the first known hydrothermal vent ecosystem in 1977 and the wreckage of the Titanic in 1985, is busily working on new robotic technology to open the deep to routine study through "telepresence." He's helping to outfit a new exploration vessel, the Okeanos Explorer, with a next-generation system of remotely operated vehicles dubbed Hercules.
When asked what mysteries of the ocean he would like to solve next, Ballard told an interviewer, "I have no idea. When you make a true discovery, like the hydrothermal vents, we didn't know they were there, we tripped over them. What ocean exploration does and will do is trip over stuff. I can tell you that statistically there has to be stuff there because we've only looked at a small percentage of the ocean floor, and look what we've discovered. There's got to be countless more discoveries to be made."

A Great White on display

A great white shark - perhaps the hardest creature to keep alive in captivity - is wowing the crowd at the Outer Bay Exhibit, a million-gallon tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium designed with great whites in mind. The inhabitant is a male, about a year old and about 5 feet 8 inches long. It's not what people normally think of when they picture a great white - we all have the maneating monster from Jaws planted in our minds - but people are flocking to see the animal just the same. "We're not trying to display a large 18-foot animal," curator Jon Hoech told USA Today. "We believe starting small gives us our best chances."

"Lucy" fossil to be exhibited in the U.S.

One of the pivotal finds in the study of human evolution - the 3.2 million-year-old fossil skeleton of a female hominid known as "Lucy" - will be joining other items showcasing Ethiopia's heritage in an 11-city tour of the United States. The exhibit will open in Houston next September.

Life finds a way

Two miles beneath the surface of the Earth, in a South African gold mine, scientists have discovered a bacterial ecosystem that needs no connection, not even indirectly, to the Sun. Sulfur and hydrogen, of geological origin, are the only nutrients required. Other "chemoautotrophic" ecosystems, like those at deep-sea vents, still use, at least in part, some nutrients that can be traced to the photosynthetic world. One of the discoverers, Douglas Rumble, observed, "It is possible that communities like this can sustain themselves indefinitely, given enough input from geological processes. Time will tell how many more we might find in Earth's crust, but it is especially exciting to ponder whether they exist elsewhere in the solar system."

Cyprus mouse not as unique as claimed

Every article I've seen on the new species of mouse from Cyprus (see earlier post) includes the discoverers' statement that this is the first new mammal described from Europe in over a century. Paleobiologist Darren Naish wondered if that was true. It turns out to be way off. Naish counts no fewer than 29 new species of moles, voles, mice, bats, and other odds and ends described from the world's most densely populated continent in that time frame. It's a good reminder that just because a qualified scientist says something is true, and presumably believes it's true, does not guarantee he or she has done the homework before putting out the claim.

Thanks to Darren Naish

A Dog-Sized Buffalo?

Such a buffalo (part of the Asian buffalo family, not related to the American bison) once lived in the Philippines. On the island of Cebu, the buffalo formed an isolated population whose members shrank in size by about two-thirds over time, resulting in an animal shorter than the largest domestic dogs and weighing about 350 lbs. The bones of the only known example were found fifty years ago in a phosphate mine by engineer Michael Armas, who kept them without thinking much of them until he showed them to specialists in 1995. Estimated at ten to twenty thousand years old, the remains are now the basis for a formally described species, Bubalus cebuensis. The buffalo is an important example of "island dwarfism," a phenomenon in which island populations develop smaller size compared to their counterparts in mainland environments. (In an amusing example of the vagaries of evolution, the feet of B. cebuensis did not shrink as much as the rest of the animal, so it has disproportionately large feet.)
The concept of island dwarfism has been most famously debated in the case of the proposed hominid species, Homo floresiensis, the "hobbit" from the Indonesian island of Flores.

Still Roving the Red Planet

This article includes an awesome photograph: an image taken by one spacecraft (the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) of another space voyager (the rover Opportunity) at the edge of the Victoria Crater on Mars. Opportunity has so far traveled 9.4 kilometers on our most intriguing planetary neighbor.

COMMENT: I will always remember one great cartoon published during the Mars Pathfinder mission... it showed the little Sojourner rover crossing the Martian sands, leaving human footprints.

New National Space Policy unveiled

For the first time since 1996, the basic statement of American space policy has been updated. The new policy approved by President Bush reinforces the view, expressed in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, that resources in space are not subject to commercial or governmental appropriation. It states in slightly stronger terms than the 1996 policy the US intent to maintain freedom of action in space for uses such as reconnaissance satellites. Most importantly, from a scientific point of view, the old policy said NASA should study human expansion to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The new policy, in line with the Vision for Space Exploration the President announced in 2004, makes it clear the nation's intent is to carry out such exploration, not just study it.

Europe's first new mammal in a century

Scientists used to think the little gray mouse roaming the island of Cyprus was just a house mouse brought by human settlers nine or ten thousand years ago. As it turns out, they were very wrong. Mus cypriacus , the first new species of mammal described from Europe in 100 years, shows an affinity to fossils dated well before the human colonization. It is, in fact, the only pre-human rodent still living on Cyprus. The term "living fossil" is overused, but, to mammologists, the mouse is a window to the long-ago development of the region's mammalian fauna.

Thanks once again to Kris Winkler, who could put me out of a job if she started her own blog :)

A stunning view of Saturn

This NASA image from the Cassini probe shows the ringed planet with a "string of pearls" formation, seemingly circling the entire atmosphere. The pearls are clearings in one layer of Saturn's cloud cover. Scientists are still a long way from understanding this phenomenon.


COMMENT: While I try to take a scientific view of the world, I can't work out why evolution alone would equip us with the capacity to look on a sight like this and feel, not just curiosity or scientific interest, but awe, wonder, and beauty. There is something in the human spirit that evolutionary biology alone has not yet explained. I don't think it ever will.

Whether outwardly or inwardly, whether in space or time, the farther we penetrate the unknown, the vaster and more marvelous it becomes.

— Charles A. Lindbergh

Another colorful feathered friend

From Columbia comes word of a snazzy-looking new species, the bright yellow and red-crowned Yariguies brush-finch. Add this to the discovery from India (see earlier post) and it's been a good month for ornithologists. The new brush-finch dwells in the cloud forests on the eastern side of the Andes.

A "camelephant" from ancient Syria?

Researchers have unearthed 100,000-year-old remains of a camel the size of an elephant from the central region of Syria. According to Jean-Marie Le Tensorer of the University of Basel, "The camel's shoulders stood three meters high and it was around four meters tall; as big as a giraffe or an elephant. Nobody knew that such a species had existed."
The find is important in another way, too. "It was not known that the dromedary was present in the Middle East more than 10,000 years ago," Le Tensorer added.
It's not yet clear whether the camels were hunted by early humans, although the two species did coexist. The human remains found at the site are puzzling in themselves: it's not clear whether they belong to modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) or H. s. neanderthalensis, and further study is underway.

Thanks to the ever-vigilant Kris Winkler for pointing me to this article.

Irwin's Turtle Discovery Endangered

The Sydney Morning Herald reports, "A rare turtle named after the late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin could be under threat of extinction if a dam planned for construction in its habitat goes ahead. Elseya irwini is named as a species at risk in a Queensland Government environmental impact report."
The first person to catch a specimen of E. irwini was Steve Irwin's father, Bob, in 1990. Steve could not identify the animal, so he took pictures and sent them to turtle expert John Cann. "I saw the photos and jumped on the telephone because I knew it was a new species," Cann said. "I think if someone discovers something they should have a reward for it. It's a good legacy for Steve."

Time for the Ig Nobel Prizes

The Ig Nobels are given each year for scientific (or kind of scientific) research that "cannot or should not be repeated." The prizes have been handed out at a Harvard University ceremony every year since 1991. Some people have traveled from other nations to accept their Igs, which are handed out by real Nobel laureates. (As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.) 2006 Igs include an award for figuring out why we hate the noise of fingernails scraping on a blackboard. Another went to Harry Stapleton for inventing the Mosquito "teenager repellent" device, which emits annoying noise at a frequency teens can hear but most adults can't. Then there was Dr. Ivan Schwab, who figured out why woodpeckers don't get headaches. This is no doubt of great interest to the Bayer Aspirin people, whose sales to woodpeckers have been far short of projections. There are times science could definitely use a dose of humor, and the Annals of Improbable Research, which hands out the Ig Nobels, definitely does its part.

A Collision in Space

Around the Earth orbit thousands of pieces of debris, from dead satellites to screws, bolts, and paint flakes. Despite being spread out over the vast expanse of near-Earth space, this junkyard poses a threat to every spacecraft. On its last mission, the Space Shuttle Atlantis was hit by a tiny piece of debris that left a hole about a tenth of an inch (2.5mm) in the right payload bay door radiator. This impact posed no threat to the Shuttle and crew, but illustrates one more hazard that must be accounted for in our plans for the final frontier.

Monsters from the Ancient Seas

Norwegian scientists are describing new species from a huge cache of marine reptile fossils. The fossil "graveyard," dating back 150 million years, was found on the Arctic island of Spitzbergen. Fishlike icthyosaurs, long-necked plesiosaurs, and short-necked pliosaurs once roamed the area. One pliosaur skeleton has been nicknamed "The Monster." The Monster's skull is almost three meters long, and still sports teeth the size of bananas. One scientist exclaimed, "What's amazing here is that it looks like we have a complete skeleton. No other complete pliosaur skeletons are known anywhere in the world."

Meanwhile, Canadian researchers found a new species of ichthyosaur in a unique place - under a ping-pong table. At the University of Alberta, researchers renovating their lab space moved an old ping-pong table and looked into the boxes they found underneath. There, untouched since someone had stashed them in 1971, were the 100-million-year-old remains of a new species of icthyosaur. Michael Caldwell, who co-authored the paper naming the new species, said, "I did my undergraduate work here and I was studying specimens right on top of this table."
See:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/

THANKS TO: Kris Winkler for noticing the first article, and to Angela (I know her only by her MySpace name) for the second.

Solving the Monarch Mystery

How do monarch butterflies find their way thousands of miles to places they have never seen?
Dr. Orley Taylor of the University of Kansas has enlisted a small army of butterfly hunters - many of them children - in solving this conundrum. Dr. Taylor's Monarch Project is tagging thousands of butterflies in an effort to trace their migration patterns. The monarchs are not like salmon, who return to the stream where they were born: these colorful orange insects make a multi-generational trip across Mexico, the United States, and Canada. At the end, they somehow manage to locate roosts in Mexico where their great-grandparents originated. Do they use light? Magnetic fields? Scent? Scientists are divided. All we know for sure is, as Ian Malcolm liked to say in Jurassic Park, "Life finds a way."

Thanks to Kris Winkler for pointing me to this item.

George Schaller: Conservation and Cryptozoology

In this interview with a leading Indian newspaper, The Hindu, Dr. George Schaller has a lot to say. Schaller, one of the world's best-known conservationists and a biologist of great accomplishment, makes, as one would expect, a passionate plea for conservation of species like the tiger and lands like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. What may be surprising is his view of a very controversial topic, cryptozoology.
Schaller has played a role in describing several new or extremely rare species of mammals. He thinks the yeti and sasquatch are, while seemingly doubtful, still worthy of study. "There are so many human-like creatures in different places. But after all these years there is not a single bone, a single hair. There is no physical evidence other than tracks. There is one film, taken in 1960, and it has been played endlessly for years analyzed, but they can't say it is fake. A hard-eyed look is absolutely essential." [Editor's note: Either Schaller misremembered, or a typo crept into the story, since the film he is referring to is from 1967.]
"I'm not one to say that something does not exist. Look at the Himalayan area. ...People said that the Javan Rhino was extinct. We started talking to local people and one of them said that a rhino was killed recently. He brought out a horn that was selling for a very high price. Local people know a lot, you have to ask the right questions."

Web journals vs. Peer Review

There's a revolution coming in science. Will it be good or bad?

The first Web-based "open peer-review" journals are appearing. Traditionally, a paper is scrutinized (sometimes savaged) by qualified reviewers before it appears in a print journal or its online counterpart. But the Public Library of Science is launching its first open peer-reviewed journal, PLoS ONE, which will appear on the Web and then be subject to review from anyone who puts forth the effort. Will it lead to a flowering of new and innovative ideas? Or will the result be a flood of shoddy work unleashed on the public? Opinions differ, but the idea of open web journals can't be stuffed back in a box. It's going to happen - for good or ill.

Still Roving Mars

Twenty-one months into its impressively long mission, the NASA rover Opportunity has reached its newest target. Victoria Crater is an impressive half-mile-wide hole in the Martian surface, but what excites scientists are the walls showing layers of exposed rock. The mission's Principal Investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell, describes the crater as "a geologist's dream come true...Those layers of rock, if we can get to them, will tell us new stories about the environmental conditions long ago. We especially want to learn whether the wet era that we found recorded in the rocks closer to the landing site extended farther back in time. The way to find that out is to go deeper, and Victoria may let us do that."

Grizzly bears survive in Colorado?

The grizzly, Ursus arctos horribilis, was officially extirpated from the state of Colorado in the 1950s. A few years ago, I wrote a paper for the Colorado-Wyoming Academy of Science arguing that sighting reports indicated a few bears were hanging on in the southwestern quarter of the state, though I didn't think a viable population was indicated. Now a sighting by hunters near Independence Pass, concerning a female with two cubs, has been considered credible enough by the Division of Wildlife that a helicopter was sent to conduct a search. SO far, no supporting evidence has been collected, but the story could have major implications for other "extinct" or unconfirmed animals. If it turns out we missed 800-lb predators in Colorado, what else might be out there... ?

Florida Ivory-bill Paper

Following up on the Auburn University researchers' report of Florida ivory-bills:

You can download the paper presenting the evidence from the journal Avian Conservation and Ecology, at:

http://www.ace-eco.org/

(Thanks to Chad Arment for locating the paper)

Ivory-bills in Florida?

Auburn University researchers believe they have sighted the world's most elusive woodpecker in the Panhandle region of Florida. The Auburn researchers say their data, including 14 sighting reports and many recordings of woodpecker calls and double-rap tree drumming sounds, is actually better than the evidence from Arkansas that caused such a flap (no pun intended) last year. Very very exciting, it proves to be true... they do not have any photographs or videotapes, however. While some ornithologists are cautious, team leader Geoff Hill is certain. "I am one hundred percent positive that I saw an ivory-bill," he said.

For Saturn, a new ring

As a reminder that there's more going on in solar system exploration than the rovers on Mars, NASA's Cassini spacecraft is making important discoveries around the distant, majestic world of Saturn. When the planet recently passed in front of the sun (from the spacecraft's perspective), Cassini's camera spotted a hitherto unknown ring. The new ring intersects the orbits of two moons, Janus and Epimetheus.

Amazing undersea image collection

OK, "amazing" is an overused word. But nothing else works in this case. The winning entries from the BP Kongsberg Underwater Image Competition 2006 cover marine fauna, environments, and technology in a way that words can't express.

NATURE's science newsblog

In the "always worth reading" department is this newsblog from the editos of the prestigious science journal NATURE. This week, it coveres everything from super-cheap space launch ideas to why socialites need more sleep.

Final Final Verdict: No Face on Mars

New Scientist reports that European space scientists have new images of the Cydonia region of Mars, including the so-called "Face," from the Mars Express spacecraft. The result is - surprise - just like NASA found in earlier missions, the mystery object is merely a hill. Will this quiet the conspiracy buffs? Not a chance.

A Child 3M Years Old

Scientists today released information on what may be the fossil find of the decade: the skeleton of a 3-year-old female from Africa who lived, it is estimated, 3.3 million years ago. The child is an amazingly complete specimen of Australopithecus afarensis, the ancient hominin most famously known from the fossil named "Lucy." Will Harcourt-Smith of the American Museum of Natural History said, "It's a pretty unbelievable discovery... It's sensational." Scientists have spend five painstaking years freeing remains from the sandstone that encased them, and have years of additional work still to go. The fossil may settle many questions, including whether this species retained some of its ancestors' tree-climbing adaptations.

Teleportation, of a sort

German physicists report they have, for the first time anywhere, "teleported" the combined quantum state of two photons. Quantum teleportation does not transfer matter, but it does transfer information, in this case the quantum state of a particle's properties, such as polarization. In theory, this can be the basis of instant transference of almost infinite amounts of data.
COMMENT: It will be a long time before that theory pays off, but your grandchildren may think nothing of holding interactive video conferences and sending massive files back and forth with no time lag between their Martian colony and their Earthbound teacher.

52 new species from Indonesian seas

Two surveys of the seas around the Bird's Head peninsula at the western end of New Guinea by scientists from Conservation International have revealed 52 new species of animals. Twenty-four, including two 1.2-meter epaulette sharks, were fish. The head of this enterprise was Mark Erdmann, famous for the episode in which he and his wife discovered the world's second known species of coelacanth. Other fish include new "flasher" wrasse, unusual species in which the males go through sudden color changes and maintain "harems" of females. Invertebrates catalogued included new species of corals and shrimp. Erdmann is arguing for increased protection of this area, which is biologically rich and diverse but threatened by illegal fishing methods including the use of dynamite.

A Towering Tree

The tallest living thing on Earth has gone undiscovered until now. At an undisclosed location in northern California, two amateur naturalists identified a redwood tree which, according to laser height-finding instruementaion, is 378.1 feet tall. The tree has been named Hyperion. Scientists plan to confirm the record the old-fashioned way: a brave and talented climber will ascend to the top of this natural skyscraper and drop a tape measure.

Oldest writing in the New World

The Olmecs built a mighty civilization in Mesoamerica while the Aztecs and Mayas were not even a gleam in the eyes of their gods. Now a stone from the Mexican state of Veracruz is giving us an idea how sophisticated these people were. Discovered in 1999 by two Mexican archaeologists, this block of serpentine, about the size of two thick encyclopedia volumes, contains the oldest known writing from the Western Hemisphere. The stone is over 3,000 years old, some 400 years older than any previous New World writing examples. The inscription on the stone includes 26 distinct symbols, although it's not clear yet what the unknown Olmec scribe meant to communicate.
American archaeologist Stephen Houston commented, "This reveals the Olmecs, in many ways the first civilization in a vast part of the ancient Americas, were literate, which we did not know for sure before, and hints that they were capable of the same large-scale organization assisted by writing like you saw in early Mesopotamia or Egypt."

How do you Classify a Kouprey?

The folks at cryptomundo.com provide a good summary of a new controversy in the mammal world.
One of the poster animals of cryptozoology is the Southeast Asian wild ox called the kouprey(Bos sauveli). It was described only in 1937, and no larger land mammal has been found since. (We'll set aside for the moment the debate over whether the African elephant is actually two species.) The kouprey has been on the edge of extinction almost since it was found, and there have occasionally been fears it was gone altogether, save for some hybrid animals that included domestic cattle blood.
Now three biologists have claimed that genetic analysis shows the kouprey was never anything but a hybrid between the banteng (Bos javanicus) and the zebu (Bos taurus indicus). Two French scientists immediately responded that, while "pure" koupreys may be hard to find, they do (or did) exist. The whole episode, which is far from resolved, is a reminder that taxonomy, even when it concerns creatures we know as well as we do our fellow mammals, is still not an exact science.

Success in Space

As the STS-115 shuttle mission winds down, the crew of the shuttle Atlantis and their counterparts on the International Space Station (ISS) have a lot to be proud of. After several long and strenuous spacewalks, the visitors from Earth will leave the ISS with much more power and capability than it had a week ago. Congratulations to all.

COMMENT: The ISS was expensive, and sometimes poorly managed: it will never produce the level of science return originally hoped for. That said, it gives us experience in two areas that will be very important in the future. One is long-duration human spaceflight. The other is the construction of large assemblies in space, something impossible to replicate precisely on Earth. Both will be critical to our aspirations to go beyond this planet - first with machines, as we do today, but someday with human explorers.

The urge to explore has propelled evolution since the first water creatures reconnoitered the land. Like all living systems, cultures cannot remain static; they evolve or decline. They explore or expire. - Buzz Aldrin

Neanderthals' Last Stand

Radiocarbon dating of charcoal from Neanderthal hearths in a cave on Gibraltar has documented what may be the last Neanderthal settlement to exist anywhere. Known as Gorham's Cave, the site revealed what are known as Mousterian stone tools, from the final era of the Neanderthals. Seven years of work by a team led by Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum produced "raw" (uncalibrated) radiocarbon dates ranging from 23,000 to 33,000 years B.P. It remains to be seen whether other scientists accept or repeat these findings, but for now, it lends credence to the idea that Neanderthals lingered here and perhaps at other southern European sites after modern humans had come to dominate the continent.

Xena, We Hardly Knew Ye

The solar system inhabitant that started the whole "what is a planet" debate has an official name. Dubbed 2003 UB313 but widely known by its nickname Xena, this body is now named Eris, after the Greek goddess of chaos and strife. The new name was announced by the International Astronomical Union, which also approved naming Eris' moon (known until now as Gabrielle) Dysnomia. Dysnomia was Eris' daughter and was another famed troublemaker in Greek mythology. Eris joins Pluto and the former asteroid Ceres in the new category of "dwarf planets."

India's First New Bird in Half-Century

And it's a colorful new species, too.

The man who found India's newest bird is an astronomer and amateur birder named Ramana Athreya, a member of Mumbai's Natural History Society. The new species, Liocichla sp., comes from the Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. It sports a bright yellow patch around the eyes, a a black cap, and yellow, crimson, black and white patches on the wings.
(Thanks to Darren Naish for a correction on this post.)

Atlantis makes orbit

After two weeks of frustrating delays, the space shuttle Atlantis, Mission ST-115, is in orbit. There was no evidence of significant foam shedding from the external tank, and no problems with the power unit and fuel sensor that forced the launch to slip. The six crewemembers have an ambitious shcedule ahead of them, as they make major additions to the International SPace Station (ISS). Good luck to Commander Brent W. Jett Jr., Pilot Christopher J. Ferguson and Mission Specialists Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper, Joseph R. Tanner, Daniel C. Burbank and Steven G. MacLean of the Canadian Space Agency.

Most dinosaurs are still undiscovered

A statistical analysis based on rates of discovery indicates that 71 percent of all dinosaur genera have yet to be discovered. The estimate by Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania and Steve Wang of Swarthmore College means, as Dodson says, "It's a safe bet that a child born today could expect a very fruitful career in dinosaur paleontology."

The "Crocodile Hunter" dies at 44

Steve Irwin, the Australian-born wildlife enthusiast known worldwide as The Crocodile Hunter, has died. In a freak incident, he was diving on the Great Barrier reef and passed just above a stingray, which thrust its barb up into into his chest. Most stingray events involve wounds in the feet or lower legs and are likely to be survivable, but Irwin died before he could be taken to a hospital.
COMMENT: Irwin was not a scientist, but he was a tremendously successful popularizer of science. Some scientists dismissed him as a showman who added no new knowledge and exploited animals, but science needs its showmen. Irwin showed millions of people how complex and interesting animals from crocodiles to snakes and spiders really were. He also made good use of his fame in the cause of conservation. Farewell, Steve. We'll miss you.

A "Smart" crash on the Moon

The European SMART-1 spacecraft completed its mission to study the Moon and was deliberately crashed into the lunar surface. Unique images are available here on the website of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

LockMart wins Orion

A team led by Lockheed Martin has been selected by NASA to design, develop, and test the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), now named Orion. LM was selected over a team headed by Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

COMMENT: It will no doubt trouble a lot of people that LM's last spaceship development project for NASA, the X-33, was an unmitigated disaster. On the other hand, Boeing botched its highest-profile space project, the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA), so badly the Pentagon took it away and gave it to LM. Northrop Grumman's flagship space program is the NPOESS environemntal satellite system, which has been a mess as well. So there was no opportunity to select a large American spacecraft builder with a pristine record of recent success. (LM's team includes Orbital Sciences, a smaller company that does have an almost spotless record for the last decade. Maybe it'll rub off. An innovative entry, T-space, which included the SpaceShipOne builders, quit the competition early, saying it was scared off by the sheer magnitude of the NASA bureaucracy and the mass of reports and documentation required to deal with it.)

Of the companies that built human spaceflight vehicles for the US, none exists anymore.
The record goes like this:
1970s: Space Shuttle: Rockwell International (sold to Boeing)
1960s: Apollo: North American (merged into Rockwell and hence to Boeing)
1960s: Gemini: McDonnell (merged into Boeing)
1960s: Mercury: McDonnell

Let's hope LM gets it right. This is NASA's big bet for decades to come. I wish the agency and the company all possible success.

Conservation Heroes: Shep and Scarface

One of the great success stories in animal conservation is the costly, difficult, and ultimately successful effort to rescue the black-footed ferret, not just from endangered status, but from what was generally considered extinction. This article tells a good story of that effort and pays tribute to two unlikely heroes: Shep, the Wyoming ranch dog who dragged home a black-footed ferret on September 25, 1981: and Scarface, the last wild ferret to be captured, who may have personlly saved the species by fathering the first two litters born in captivity.

Shuttling back and forth

The space shuttle Atlantis, which was in the process of being rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building as protection from Tropical Storm Ernesto, has reversed course and is on its way back to the pad. As it's no simple thing to turn around and re-prepare a Shuttle on the pad, presumably NASA has decided the weather danger is minimal. This would be very good news for the agency, because the Shuttle's launch windows are so tight and so crowded with other considerations like Soyuz launches that it would be easy for a delay to cascade into next year.

Fingers crossed....

Plutonians not taking demotion well

NASAWatch has posted an email announcement making the rounds at JPL. It seems the High Coucil of Plutonian States is not pleased that the inhabitants of the "third rock from the sun" have demoted their world.

Pluto Demoted

The IAU has made up its mind. Instead of adding planets to the solar system (see earlier post) it will subtract one. Pluto, ruled out of planetary status by its overlapping orbit with Neptune, will join a class called "dwarf planets."

COMMENT: Alas, nine-planet system, we knew you well. Think of the textbook corrections alone that need to be done. Still, it was long past time that someone had officially defined what a planet is.

The Hobbit Wars

The latest round has been fired in the hottest scientific debate of the 21st century (so far, anyway): whether a distinct species of human lived on the Indonesian island of Flores. The only full skeleton and skull found so far, dubbed LB1, represents "a developmentally abnormal individual, being microcephalic," according to Dr. Robert Eckhardt of Penn State.

COMMENT: Expect another round of rebuttals, based in part on indications that fragmentary skeletons of other individuals show similar adult size. I still think the "pro-species" side has the best of it, but the technical nature of the debate has surpassed my ability as an interested amateur to keep up with it all. This is not likely to be settled until (and unless) more adult skulls emerge from the site.

The Oldest Animal on Earth

This item updates a fascinating story I mentioned in my new book Shadows of Existence. It was always presumed the great whales lived to be quite old for mammals, maybe 60 or 70 years, but 200+? The question was raised when bowhead whales were killed legally by aboriginal people of the Arctic and found to have stone harpoon points, out of use for over a century, embedded in them. Analysis of amino acid ratios in the preserved eyes of some of these whales indicate, according to Jeffrey Bada of Scripps Institute, that "About 5 percent of the population is over a hundred years old and in some cases 160 to 180 years old." One male may have been over 200. Bada said we don't know if bowheads are unique or if studies of other whale species may indicate similar longevity.

When Sturgeon Attack

Boaters on Florida's Suwannee River are facing an unusual danger: jumping sturgeon. The Gulf sturgeon, which can be two and a half meters long, has an odd habit of jumping clear out of the water for unclear reasons. In the last year, five collisions have occurred when sturgeon opted to jump just as a boat or personal watercraft was passing. One knocked a man unconscious: another smashed the windshield of a boat. State biologists blame it on coincidence, aided by the increase in humans using the waterway and a growing sturgeon population.

More from Conference on Small Satellites

On Day 3 of the 20th annual conference, papers were presented on a variety of technologies, not all strictly related to small satellites, and on university satellites programs. The university group is very impressive: science projects have come a long way from dissecting frogs. University of Central Florida, for example, is equipping a microsat with a new kind of telescoping gravity-gradient boom which will stabilize the satellite precisely enough to allow for imaging.
ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain rejected the idea of basing "small" on mass alone and outlined what he called a "light satellite" approach, based on flexibility of requirements, constrained cost, and acceptance of risk, which will sometimes, though not always, lead to a smaller spacecraft. He cited ESA's SMART-1 lunar probe as an example.
Overall, this year's conference included a greater variety of papers than ever, everything from broad examinations of what a small satellite is good for to extremely technical topics like a thermal control switch design and even a DARPA-funded project to allow accurate navigation anywhere in the solar system by using X-ray pulsars as reference points. Launch and launch opportunities remained a central concern, and in some cases a very sore point for experimenters who had depended for decades on Space Shuttle "GAS Can" opportunities. The "smallsat community" showed it was a vibrant, growing assembly of entrepreneurs, professors, students, large corporations, governments, and even international associations.
Happy 20th Birthday!

Pluto is still a planet, but...

A new IAU proposal on planets (see earlier item) basically calls something a planet if it is in orbit around a star (while not being a star) and massive enough to attain a spherical shape due to its own gravity. This will be voted on next week. It would create 12 known planets in our solar system, with more possible.

NASA administrator Griffin addresses smallsat conference

Leonard David of Space.com report on NASA Administrator Mike Griffin's speech (which I missed) to the 20th AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites.

Conference on Small Satellites, Day 2

8/15/06

This morning, Kris Winkler and I presented our paper, “Microspacecraft and the Vision for Space Exploration.” It was very well received. We owe major thanks to our employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, for sponsoring our efforts. (The paper, it must be noted, does not reflect the company's positions, only those of the authors).

Other highlights:
General Lance Lord (ret.) , formerly Commander, Air Force Space Command, said, “There are small satellites, but no small missions.”
According to Gen. Lord, this is the point at which to shape the future: small satellites are increasingly accepted, and the pace of change in space is accelerating. Smallsats are best for high-risk R&D, testing and training of space professionals, and some military applications.
Smallsat promoters have to answer the big questions of the near future: how can smallsats help deter enemies? How can they help the individual warfighter? How can they make force applications more precise? If we can answer these questions, resources to develop small space systems will follow.
He stressed the importance of a good concept of operations established between the satellite provider and the warfighter before war begins. This was done with GPS before the shooting started in the first Gulf War. The same idea applied to civilian applications.
In response to a question on what the space industry will look like in 15 years, he said that, if we stay the current course, it will be a future of incremental improvements, not transformation.

The man who provided Lord’s introduction was Utah Congressman Rob Bishop. I had a chance to ask him whether the proposed $2B supplemental for NASA was likely to pass. He said, “no,” but he thought it was important and was willing to fight for it.

Presentations on the use of multiple payload mounting and ejection systems came from Jeffrey Roddish of NASA Goddard and Mike Marlow of the USAF’s SMC/Det 12, who manages the STP/SIV standardization initiative. Gene Katz of CISSP (General Dynamics C4 organization) provided an introduction to the use of information assurance (IA) principles in space systems, emphasizing how strictly DoD was insisting they be applied in military space systems and how system designers “need to be paranoid” about information threats.
Mark Wilkinson of the Space Dynamics Laboratory discussed what a purely tactical satellite reconnaissance system, as opposed to current ones oriented toward strategic reconnaissance, would look like. Principles offered included more on-board processing, direct downlink to mobile, simple ground terminals, and a focus on speed over detail.
Alex De Silva of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) presented the results of experiments by SSTL on studying the reflection of GPS and other GNSS signals from the Earth’s surface. SSTL has determined that this “free” resource provides accurate ocean surface data (wind speed and direction and wave height) information on the moisture content and height of land formations. Experiments to measure the thickness of sea ice by this method are still ongoing.

2006 Conference on Small Satellites

Microspacecraft have always been one of my pet topics of interest. I am presenting a paper (co-written with Kris Winkler) on microspacecraft and NASA's Vision for Space Exploration at the 2006 AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites in Logan, UT. I'll post some highlights each day.

Day 1 (8/14/06)
Due largely to road construction delays, missed NASA Administrator Mike Griffin’s speech. Arrived in time for his Q and A.
The Q and A reported here is NOT verbatim, except where quote marks so indicate: they are as close as I can come to an accurate account, with some paraphrasing, written down shortly after the exchange.


Q: What is NASA doing about the S&T workforce?
A: This is not just a problem for NASA, but government-wide. I worry about it a lot, and we’re working on it, but it’s a government-wide problem.

Q (From Gil Moore, Project Starshine): I used to be able to tell students that, before they graduated in four years, they would be able to get their payload in space on a GAS can [Space Shuttle Getaway Special]. Now there is nothing they can use. Is NASA doing anything about it?
A: This isn’t NASA’s job. If universities want to work with the entrepreneurial community and get rides on their rockets, that’s great, but brokering those launches is not NASA’s job.

Q: Do you think the current NASA organization is right for the new missions, or does it need to be reorganized?
A: “If I thought it needed to be reorganized, I would reorganize it.”
We have made some changes, and now we have the four directorates, and I think that’s the right setup. We have decoupled the center directors from being program directors. We have the center directors as administrators responsible for the academic quality of their centers, but not for the programs. That’s how we did it in the Apollo days, and it worked pretty well, so I went back to it. It’s possible for an organization to be so confused that it gets in its own way, but I’ve never believed that an organization’s wiring diagram determines how effective it is. What determines how effective it is is the people.

Q: Who in NASA will perform future small satellite missions? We hear a lot in the media about Ames getting involved, especially for lunar missions. Will it be a center, or will it be based on mission?
A: We run them now as a competition, and I think that works pretty well. If an AO [NOTE: not sure of this term’s meaning] wants to get with an industry team, or a center, and they win the competition, then that’s who does it. I don’t try to steer those competitions in any direction.
I do need to get Ames back in the space business. We spend our budget the way Congress mandates it, and 16/17 of my budget is for space, but four of my ten centers, so 40% of the centers, are not in space. I’m devoting 40 percent of my centers to one seventeenth of my budget. That’s not workable...I need to get Ames and Langley and Glenn back in the space business.

Q: The greatest impediment to small satellite use is the high cost of launch. We can use Cubesats on Russian launchers, but we would rather launch in the United States and avoid the ITAR problems. What can NASA due to help?
A: Launch costs have always been the greatest impediment to doing anything in space. I hope the entrepreneurs can help us on this. I’ve bet a half-billion dollars over the next four years that they can do this. [NOTE: reference is to the Crew and Cargo Transportation Partners program for the ISS]. NASA is not able to solve this. NASA’s budget is completely taken up by things this Administration, prior administrations, and this Congress and past Congresses have mandated. We have no budget for this. I’d like to make investments in technology to reduce launch costs, but it’s not going to happen.

Americans don't understand evolution

A study of 34 nations (the US, Europe, and Japan) by Michigan State Univeristy reports that Americans rank near the bottom in understanding genetics, biology, and especially evolution. An increasing percentage of American adults are unsure about evolution (the percentages of those who fully accept it and completely reject it are both dropping). It's not just a matter of religious beliefs, but a poor grasp of biology in general that contributes to the increasing confusion. This article from LiveScience.com has a good sampling of the conflicting views over the causes and consequences of this situation.

COMMENT: While a growing number of Christians (like myself) believe the Genesis timeline is an analogy and not a literal account of creation, even those determined to oppose such thinking need to understand that evolution through natural selection is a dominant scientific paradigm. Even if you think it's false, you have to understand it in order to work anywhere in the life sciences or understand the thoughts of those who do.

What IS a planet, anyway?

Astronomers are trying anew to define exactly what should qualify as a planet and how many of them inhabit our solar system. The discovery of a large "borderline" object past Pluto (officially known as 2003 UB313, but better known as Xena) has brought new attention to the fact that Pluto is pretty borderline itself. The topic will be the headliner at the 12-day International Astonomical Union conference now beginning in Prague.

Studying Fossils in Unprecedented Detail

OK, we can't bring fossil creatures back to life. But we can study them with a new and astonishing level of precision, thanks to an international team's pioneering work with high-powered X-rays and computer imaging systems. Synchrotron-radiation X-ray tomography was developed on embryos of two worm-like animals: fossils 500 million years old and less than one millimeter in size. These were imaged in such detail that scientists could map previously invisible anatomical features to those of animal lineages we know today.

New type of volcano found

This post reminds us how much there still is to learn about our planet. Japanese scientists report an entirely new type of small seafloor volcano, one not tied to plate boundaries or "hot spots" which are the sources of all previsouly known volcanos on Earth.

RIP: Dr. James A. Van Allen

A sad day for space…

In my own experience, Van Allen was wonderfully approachable to two authors he had never heard of. When Erika Lishock and I began writing The First Space Race, I called him out of the blue. He was happy to answer all our queries, sat for a day-long interview, corrected a draft of the book, and wrote a Forward as well as a laudatory letter that we will always treasure.

Godspeed,


Matt Bille

BOOK OF THE MONTH: Singing Whales and Flying Squid

Singing Whales and Flying Squid: The Discovery of Marine Life by Richard Ellis (Lyons Press, 2006)

In some ways, this book feels more like two short books with some overlap. The first book is a history of marine exploration, with emphasis on marine biology. The second focuses more on how fragile and endangered marine life is. Both halves are good, but in a work of 288 pages (with some of that given over to illustrations and references), they leave the reader wanting more of both subjects.

What is here is first-rate. Ellis is a good writer, able to explain fairly technical concepts in friendly language, and very knowledgeable of his subjects. His excellent drawings and paintings bring his subjects to life. Even the reader well-versed in marine literature will learn something: one eye-opener, for example, is how the old stories of swordfish attacking whales turned out to be true, although the reasons for such pointless (or pointed, from the whale's point of view) attacks are still a complete mystery. Ellis does not focus just on the charismatic animals: he gives the clearest explanation of the bottom of the ocean food web that I have read in a popular book.

Not surprisingly, there are sections in here on Ellis' favorite creatures, the giant squid and the cetaceans. I had hoped for a bit more on the beaked whales, particularly the Species A and Species B mysteries. (I hope Richard will do another new book entirely about what's recently been learned, and being learned, about whales and dolphins.) The first underwater video of the giant squid, which was released only after the text was written, changed some of our assumptions about this animal, and Ellis deals with this in a note added at the front of the book.

Of interest to cryptozoologists, Ellis notes that the bizarre seven-meter "elbow squid" has not been formally described, despite several videos, because there is no holotype in hand. Ellis opts not to visit the subject of "sea serpents," which he has done in other books, and tosses off cryptozoology with a single (and misstated) aside. In a note on negative evidence, he says cryptozoologists point out that "because no one has ever seen a sasquatch doesn't mean there aren't any." The actual problem is quite different: many people believe they have seen sasquatches. The sentence would have been accurate if written "because no one has brought in hard evidence of sasquatch..."

Overall, this is a very valuable book, something which will draw more people in to the splendor of the oceans while painlessly introducing the science. I think it's clear that is precisely Ellis' purpose, and he accomplishes it in exemplary fashion.

Modern Technology Reveals Ancient Writing

In a fascinating news bite from the world of archaeology, X-rays have been used to recover hitherto unknown writings by Archimedes - erased from the paper by a misguided monk who wrote prayers over the original text. The energy beams reveal traces of iron left from the original ink when it was erased in the 10th century.

Name Your Own Spider

An interesting addition to the new-species news: the Queensland Museum is selling naming rights to approximately 200 species of spiders recently discovered in Australia. For $5000 (AUS) you can pick the spider and have it formally descibed in a journal with a name incorporating your own name (or whatever moniker you'd like).

COMMENT: This is one of several recent examples of a novel approach to raising money for conservation and research. At least one bird and one monkey have been named by sponsors. It may seem a little crass to some scientists, but it works.

New Species are Everywhere

There is so much concern about what we are losing in the natural world that we sometimes forget an important story: how much we are still discovering.

The 1990s saw more new mammal species described than any decade since the 1920s. The rate of discovery of new birds and fishes has essentially held steady in the last few decades, and the rates for reptiles, amphibians, and insects and other small invertebrates have increased dramatically.

Some examples:
A new leaf-warbler, not yet named, is now known from Vietnam.

A beautiful new species of black coral (Antipathes dendrochristos) was identified in the Pacific just off Los Angeles.

An earlier post mentioned Rungwecebus kipunji, a new species and genus of
African macaque.

New crustaceans and other invertebrates turned up in a new cave in
Israel.

Speaking of cave species, a graduate student and a National Park Service researcher have found an unusual new genus of cave cricket in Arizona, along with several other species.

Six new frogs hopped up in
Laos.

And three new lemurs were identified in
Madagascar.

Then there's a newly described shark from the
Gulf of California.

Finally, the prize of 2006 so far may be (Orcaella heinsohni, the
Austalian snubfin dolphin.


Not every new animal is big and spectacular (although some of those do still turn up). The point, though, is that we do not know all the species of the world. Indeed, we may not know half the larger ones, and we probably know only a few percent of the smallest. Exploration, discovery, and description are as alive and vital in 2006 as they were a century ago.

ISS Research in Danger

NASA deputy space station program manager Kirk Shireman has confirmed a nasawatch.com report that the agency may stop all US research programs on board the International Space Station for one year to save $100M.

COMMENT: "Shortsighted" is far too mild a word for this. It will take years to get the life sciences and other programs on the ISS running again, no doubt raising costs and damaging research intended to pave the way for longer human space voyages. Maybe "insane" is a better word. If NASA can't find the money, it needs to lobby the Administration to ask for emergency funding unti lthe 2007 budget is approved.

A First: Fossilized Bone Marrow Recovered

Maria McNamara of University College Dublin in Ireland has announced that her team of scientists recovered intact bone marrow ten million years old from from the fossilized remains of salamanders and frogs. This is the first case where fossilized bone marrow was ever found. Coming on the heels of the 2005 report of fossilized red blood cells recovered from a T. rex, this opens up new approaches to the study of extinct animals and how they developed in giving rise to modern-day descendants.

Debating "Natural Cures"

No one challenges that a lot of "natural" health advice - eat your veggies, get your exercise, take your vitamins - is good. But claiming there are "natural cures" for every human ill, cures that the evil axis of pharmacology is keeping a secret, has become a lucrative industry. In this column on LiveScience.com, Christopher Wanjek knocks out some of the myths used to support these claims.

Mammoth clone attempt failed

Hwang Woo-suk, the South Korean scientist disgraced for faking his results concerning human stem cells, says he tried to clone a mammoth. While his project did clone endangered tigers, he says, "We secured mammoth tissues from glaciers and tried cloning three times, but failed."

COMMENT: For an entertaining science fiction treatment of this theme, read Mammoth by John Varney.

Sex in Space: Not So SImple

Hey, everyone in the space business thinks about it. What would sex be like, and could humans procreate and produce healthy children? Alan Boyle of MSNBC reports it's a surprisingly difficult proposition (OK, that pun was intended). According to NASA physician Jim Logan, "The fantasy might be vastly superior to the reality."

Space Tourism Industry Developments

A couple of interesting things are happening in the space tourism business. First, Jeff Bezos' company, Blue Origin, has revealed some more details, including the fact its suborbital spaceships will take off and land vertically from the company's base in Texas. Commercial flights could begin in 2010.

Meanwhile, pioneering firm Space Adventures, which has sent several people to the International Space Station via agreements with Russia, is now advertising that for a $15M premium on top of its usual $20M space-tourist rate, the buyer can experience an EVA. This is news to NASA. An EVA is a major event at the ISS, requiring the participation of all on board, and the company is going to have to work things out before - and if - it can deliver on this offer.

FINALLY! SHADOWS OF EXISTENCE is out!

Shadows of Existence, my second book on the newest, rarest, and most mysterious animals of the world, is out after multiple delays in publication. There remain some minor publisher-induced glitches in the text, and we disagreed on whether to put the most relevant or the most spectacular illustrations in, but the important thing is Hancock House is now shipping the book.
Shadows continues the scientific detective work of its predecessor, Rumors of Existence (Hancock, 1995). The book includes four sections:
- New Creatures (discovered from 1990 through 2005)
- In the Shadows of Extinction ("extinct" species which have been or may be rediscovered)
- The Classic Mystery Animals (an open-minded review of sasquatch, sea serpents, and the like)
- Miscellanea, which reports on such topics as the possible identity of several whales which have been spotted, but not classified.)
What sets this book apart, I hope, is not only the text, but the Resources section, with its 95 pages of books, periodicals, websites, and end notes. It there is anything readers want to know about new species, rare species, or cryptozoology, I think I've provided a good starting point.
I'm very proud of this book. It's available from the publisher at www.hancockhouse.com and should soon be in the major online bookstores as well.

Flores humans: more evidence of a new species

In a new paper for the Journal of Human Evolution, four experts led by Debbie Argue and including Colin Groves maintain that the remains excavated from Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores do indeed represent a new species, Homo floresiensis. The authors refute the claim that the bones of the main find, a partial adult skeleton called LB1, represent only a microcephalic modern human. Noting archaic traits from the LB1 skull, they Argue (sorry, there's an unavoidable, or at least irresistable, pun there) that, "Based on these comparisons, we conclude that it is unlikely that LB1 is a microcephalic human, and it cannot be attributed to any known species."

This debate can be followed on an excellent source, Dienekes' Anthropology Blog, http://dienekes.blogspot.com/.

A Delta-Winged Reptile

In the "really cool paleontology" department, studies of the only known fossil of the tiny Triassic glider Sharovipteryx mirabilis, along with data from analogous modern creatures, computer modeling, and wind-tunnel tests, indicate the animal may have had delta (triangular) wings. Irish paleontologist Gareth Dyke and his colleagues report one possible shape of the wing membranes was a double-delta plan in which large triangular wings were based on the hind legs and attached along the body almost to the forelimbs, while a smaller set sprouted from the forelegs and attached to the body in front of them.

The Neanderthal Genome

Scientists from the American company 454 Life Sciences Corp. and Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology are out to map the DNA of Neanderthal man. 454's Michael Egholm says, "The Neanderthal is the closest relative to the modern human, and we believe that by sequencing the Neanderthal, we can learn a lot." The project is expected to take two years.

Precarious rulers of the animal kingdom

This interesting article by Bjorn Carey analyzes why it's the largest animals who often have trouble surviving over the long term. The outstanding example, of course, is the dinosaurs, but there are many contemporary ones as well. A related article by Carey in the same online publication(www.LiveScience.com) reports on the importance of apex predators, normally the largest predators in the food chain, and how they, too, often end up on the endangered list. (For modern top predators, the answer usually is that humans opt to remove them from the ecosystem, often with no idea of the consequences.)

And we have touchdown, Houston....

The space shuttle Discovery is on the ground after a highly successful mission. Discovery's crew accomplished several objectives, including the all-important flight test of recent safety modifications and an EVA to repair a rail cart on the outside of the International Space Station. Next up: The shuttle Atlantis, on an ISS assembly mission that could launch as early as August 27. Hats off to the shuttle program and all of NASA.

Something in the air this summer?

First we had the flight of the world's first human-carrying ornithopter (see the post from July 9). Now a group of Japanese students has built the first piloted airplane powered by household batteries - 160 AAs. The plane had a 31m wingspan, but weighed only 44kg without the pilot. It flew for a distance of 391m.

Book of the Month: FIRST MAN

James R. Hansen's First Man (Simon and Schuster, 2005) is the first authorized biography of Neil Armstrong, and is likely to remain the definitive one. This 769-page tome does an excellent job of acquainting readers with Armstrong the man as well as Armstrong the astronaut and, most often overlooked, Armstrong the engineer, a man who made a major contribution to the revolutionary development of digital fly-by-wire control. This biography hits all the highlights of Armstrong's career, but goes beyond earlier efforts be explaining how he reached those highlights and why. Armstrong's personal life is detailed - not excessively, but enough to help readers understand a man who has tried to maintain some distance between himself and Armstrong the icon. This is a superb achievement.

Human v. Insect

It's very hard to think of a practical use for this, but a clever grad student named Wim van Eck has developed a Pac-man game that a cricket can play. The cricket, motivated at appropriate times by its dislike for vibrations, transits a Pac-Man maze rigged with sensors and gadgets to vibrate the floor wherever a Pac-Man "ghost" would appear. There's no word in the article about how insect and humans fare in a head-to-antennas matchup.

The fascinating world of meerkats

Scientists have just described how meerkats (Suricata suricatta), everyone's favorite African mammals, teach their young in a way few animals do. An older "helper" meerkat will teach a young one how to eat scorpions by bringing a scorpion to them and removing the stinger, then helping the youngster kill it. Once the pup can handle "de-stung" scorpions on its own, the helper brings the arthropods intact for the pups to disable and then destroy.

The "Demon Duck of Doom"

I couldn't resist that headline.

Scientists at the University of New South Wales report they have found fossils of new and bizarre creatures, including a saber-toothed carnivorous kangaroo and the colorfully nicknamed "demon duck of doom," a bird standing three meters high and weighing 200 kg. The kangaroo's enlarged killing teeth, by the way, projected from the lower jaw, not the upper as in saber-toothed cats, creating a truly bizarre appearance.

COMMENT: A saber-toothed kangaroo that gallops instead of hops reminds one of Robin Williams' line, "Does God get stoned? I think so. Look at the platypus."

Paralyzed Man controls computer with thoughts

A team led by Dr Leigh Hochberg of Massachusetts General Hospital reports a paralyzed man using a new brain sensor has been able to move a computer cursor, open e-mail and control a robotic device simply by thinking.

COMMENT: This is potentially a huge advance in all kinds of fields, with telerobotics just as one example.

West African rhino population extinct

The World Conservation Union (IUCN) announced the West African black rhinoceros has likely gone extinct. This subspecies survived only in Cameroon, were a recent survey found no trace of it. The IUCN blames poaching. The population of the northern white rhino, in the Congo, is down to four known individuals and is likely to vanish as well.
Africa has two rhino species, white and black, divided into six subspecies - two of which are gone or likely to be.
The news is only partly offset by success in conserving and slowly increasing the numbers of other black rhinos. There has also been a spectacular recovery by the southern white rhino, from 50 to 14,000 individuals over the last century.

Private space venture launches habitat prototype

The Genesis 1 prototype of an inflatable habitat, developed by the private firm Bigelow Aerospace, was launched successfully into low Earth orbit (LEO). Bigelow envisions a space tourism industry with people flying to orbit and staying aboard "hotels."
COMMENT: This is a major step toward determining how viable the orbital space tourism industry may be. Congratulations to Bigelow.

News from Deep-Sea Biology

The 11th International Deep-Sea Biology Symposium is underway, and there's a lot to talk about.

A new objection is being raised to whaling. Scientists have recently identified no fewer than 28 new species that depend on the mini-environments created when naturally dead whales drift down to the seafloor. Meanwhile, a strange disease is wreaking havoc on mussel colonies around deep-sea vents, and there's a new understanding of why, although most deep-sea creatures are very small, there are a few abyssal giants like the squid Architeuthis.

Flight of the Ornithopter

A team lead by Dr. James DeLaurier, a University of Toronto engineering professor who has been working on the problem of human flight via mechanically flapping wings for 30 years, has finally done what seemed, even to other engineers, to be impossible. They have flown an ornithopter. The altitude was only two meters, the distance only about a third of a kilometer, but the darn thing flew.

COMMENT: The immediate practical applications of this thing may be zero, but DeLaurier has done a great service to everyone who still believes that, with enough effort and brains, the human race can do just about anything.

New Inventions - Useful and Otherwise

The science magazine New Scientist has an interesting column by Barry Fox which keeps track of recent inventions, some of which look extremely useful, while others... well, let's say they are tributes to the human spirit of creativity. Among the recent items spotlighted are:
-- A cheap, throwaway parachute made of polypropylene, very useful for dropping military or relief supplies
-- An electronic system, using an LCD watch, that keeps the members of a handbell choir in tune by telling them when to ring, very useful for... well, something.
-- A "fermented coffee beverage" that pours and foams like beer, has the smell and caffeine of coffee. Nestle apparently plans to inflict this on the market.
-- A car navigation system (brought to you by Microsoft) that turns navigating into a video game - the driver pursues a cartoon car on the navigation screen.

What color is a mammoth?

They may have come in several colors, including red and blond. That news from Holger Roempler of the University of Leipzig in Germany, whose team extracted DNA from a bone 43,000 years old. Mammoth DNA included the gene that codes for a protein which allows mammals (humans, for example) to have several different colors of hair. So we don't know if there were blond mammoths, but there might have been.

And we have liftoff...

The Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off smoothly on schedule at 1438 EST. The STS-121 crew will spend 13 days in space, mainly to service the International Space Station.

Everyone is breathing again.

Godspeed, Discovery.

Birds and Extinctions

There is news on new studies of avian extinctions. One study focused on the general topic, the other on its most famous example.

Stuart Pimm's team reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that we have approximately 10,000 known bird species and 130 known examples of extinction, most concerning Pacific island birds. Pimm warns, though, that we are undercounting extinctions, in part due to overlooking the new examples of extinct species being identified from fossil and subfossil remains. He calculates the rate of bird extinctions may be about one species per year. For what it's worth, that rate, says Pimm, would have tripled if not for recent bird conservation efforts.

Meanwhile, there's news about the most famous symbol of extinction caused by human activity, the dodo bird of Mauritius. Scientists studying the largest cache of dodo remains ever found report the population took a severe hit from a natural disaster long before humans got there in the 16th century. A cyclone and/or flood created a disaster that left the dodo population in a precarious state. Humans are still guilty of the final execution of the species, but it's important to understand all the factors involved in any extinction, and now we have a much clearer picture of this one.

News of the final frontier

A great deal has been happening in addition to the marquee event in space exploration, the delayed and somewhat controversial launch of the shuttle Discovery on the STS-121 mission. Discovery should launch today at 1438 EST.
See title link above for the latest.

Meanwhile, acoustic-environment testing of ESA's next major contribution to the International Space Station, and no doubt to programs beyond that, was completed successfully in the Netherlands. The 20-ton Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle appears able to handle the sound and vibration it will get as a payload on the Ariane 5 heavy launcher.
See: http://www.esa.int/esaMI/ATV/index.html

Finally, on the small end of things, the three 25-kg satellites of NASA's Space Technology 5 (ST5) program have completed their 90-day mission and have been shut down. As NASA puts it, "The mission demonstrated the benefits of using a constellation of spacecraft to perform scientific studies of the beautiful auroral displays that occur near Earth's polar regions. The spacecraft simultaneously traversed electric current sheets and measured the magnetic field using miniature magnetometers."
"Taking measurements at the same time in different locations allowed scientists to better estimate the thickness of current sheets and how they vary over time," said Guan Le, mission project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. "This could not have been done with a single spacecraft, no matter how capable."
It's another step toward utilizing the full capability of microspacecraft.
COMMENT: It's too bad NASA could not, instead of shutting these spacecraft down, have handed them over to a university or other lab, some of which do have their own satellite control centers. Unfortunately, nothing in NASA releases indicates this was considered.
See:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/st-5/main/