The live show MythBusters: Behind the Myths, starring Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, co-hosts of the Emmy-nominated Discovery series "MythBusters," returns to the The Bushnell's Mortensen Hall for one night only on Wednesday, December 3 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are on sale now. The show promises to be an outrageous evening of entertainment featuring brand new onstage experiments, behind-the-scenes stories and some of your all-time favorites. A new immersive video experience will keep you bolted to your seat. MythBusters: Behind the Myths brings you face-to-face with the curious world of Jamie and Adam as the duo matches wits on stage with each other and members of the audience. The show played a first sold out date at The Bushnell in March 2012. Tickets for Mythbusters: Behind the Myths are available at The Bushnell box office, 166 Capitol Avenue in Hartford, by phone at 860-987-5900, and online at bushnell.org. One of the most highly regarded and watched series on the Discovery Channel, "MythBusters" is now in its twelfth season. Co-hosted by Hyneman and Savage, the show mixes scientific method with gleeful curiosity and plain old- fashioned ingenuity to create its own signature style of explosive experimentation - and the supporting or de-bunking of urban myths that we live with day to day.

Western Antartica's immense glaciers are melting fast and giving up ice to the sea at a rate that is considered already past "the point of no return," according to recent research work done by two different groups of scientists. The resulting scenario is compelling: an increase in the world sea levels of 4 feet or more in the next centuries, according to findings announced Monday by scientists from the University of Washington, the University of California-Irvine and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA. "It truly is a startlingly disturbing situation," says Pennsylvania State University glaciologist Sridhar Anandakrishnan, who was not associated with any of the research studies. "This is a big part of West Antarctica, and it appears to have been pushed violently over the edge." The researchers claim the glaciers are most certainly bound to be lost. One study confirms that a river of ice named Thwaites Glacier is possibly starting to collapse and that complete collapse is likely to occur. A second research illustrates that six glaciers are giving up ice into the sea at an ever-increasing rate. At that rate, there will be a 4-feet increase in the sea-level, states study author Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California-Irvine, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Alvin M. Weinberg introduced the term "big science" into the national lexicon in 1961. Big science is research that requires the coordination of massive resources, including thousands of our best minds and cutting-edge technologies to solve massive, complex problems. With visionary gusto, Weinberg wrote that "the monuments of big science, the huge rockets, the high-energy accelerators, the high-flux research reactors ... will be symbols of our time as surely as Notre Dame is a symbol of the Middle Ages." The concept of big science is especially timely in a highly charged political environment with the debate focused on the Affordable Care Act, streamlining services and controlling costs. As a result, vital research often gets short shrift. Big science is expensive and time-consuming, but the results can have exponential benefits: the potential for dramatically improved health outcomes throughout the world.

Scientists reported Wednesday that they had taken a significant step toward altering the fundamental alphabet of life - creating an organism with an expanded artificial genetic code in its DNA. The accomplishment might eventually lead to organisms that can make medicines or industrial products that cells with only the natural genetic code cannot. The scientists behind the work at the Scripps Research Institute have already formed a company to try to use the technique to develop new antibiotics, vaccines and other products, though a lot more work needs to be done before this is practical. The work also gives some support to the concept that life can exist elsewhere in the universe using genetics different from those on Earth. "This is the first time that you have had a living cell manage an alien genetic alphabet," said Steven A. Benner, a researcher in the field at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Fla., who was not involved in the new work. But the research, published online by the journal Nature, is bound to raise safety concerns and questions about whether humans are playing God. The new paper could intensify calls for greater regulation of the budding field known as synthetic biology, which involves the creation of biological systems intended for specific purposes.

More and more scientists are publishing their results online. And as a result, it's becoming easier to link to new knowledge. A Berlin-based platform called ScienceOpen wants to tap into that. "It's really important for me that everyone gets immediate access to the wonderful work that scientists do," says Stephanie Dawson. The Yale-educated biologist is the managing director for ScienceOpen, a research platform that went live this week. "Access to this research is like a human right," Dawson told DW. "After all, it's all research funded with taxpayers' money." But it's not only about who pays - it's also about what gets done with the research, and who is allowed to work with it. Then there are the traditional publishers of science research. They criticize online open access journals and portals for lacking editorial quality control. It hasn't stopped the trend towards open access in Europe, though.

Teleskopet stor nok til at stedet tegn af fremmede liv på andre planeter

Ingeniører er ved at sprænge væk i toppen af en chilensk bjerg til at oprette et websted for den europæiske meget Large Telescope. Det vil gøre det muligt for os, for første gang, at direkte observere planeter uden for solsystemet.

Cerro Armazones er en smuldrende kuppel af rock, som dominerer de udtørrede toppene af bjergkæden chilenske kyst nord for Santiago. Et par gamle beton platforme og nogle rustne rør, dele af fjeldets gammel vejrstation, er de eneste råd at mennesker nogensinde har taget en interesse i dette forbyder, tørt sted. Selv udsigt ser fremmede, med omkringliggende boulder-strøet ørkenen forsynet med en bemærkelsesværdig lighed med landskabet af Mars.

Dramatiske ændring nærmer sig Cerro Armazones, dog - for i et par uger, bjerget 10.000 m vil have sin top slået. "Vi vil at sprænge det med dynamit og derefter bortføre murbrokker," siger ingeniør Gerd Hudepohl. "Vi vil tage omkring 80 m væk fra toppen af bjerget til at oprette et plateau - og når vi har gjort det, vi vil bygge verdens største teleskop der."

Givet det bjerg remote, ugæstfri beliggenhed, det lyder måske en usandsynlig påstand - bortset fra det faktum, at Hudepohl har gjort slags før. Han er en af det europæiske sydlige observatorium mest erfarne ingeniører og var involveret i halshugning af et andet nærliggende bjerg, Cerro Paranal, hvor hans hold derefter rejst en af planetens mest avancerede observatorier.

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Den komplekse Paranal har været i drift i mere end et årti og omfatter fire gigantiske instrumenter med otte meter hele spejle - kendt som den meget store teleskoper eller VLTs - samt kontrol værelser og en labyrint af underjordiske tunneler, der forbinder sine instrumenter. Mere end 100 astronomer, ingeniører og støtte medarbejdere arbejde og leve der. Et par dusin meter under teleskoper, de har en sports-kompleks med en squashbane, en indendørs fodboldbane og en luksuriøs 110-værelse ejendom, har en central swimmingpool og en restaurant der serverer måltider og drikkevarer døgnet rundt. Bygget med udsigt over en af verdens tørreste ørkener, er stedet en fantastisk oase. ( Se nyheder på Dicoveries )

European Southern Observatory, som Storbritannien er en nøglen medlemsstat ønsker nu Hudepohl og hans team til at gentage dette bemærkelsesværdige trick og tage toppen af Cerro Armazones, som ligger 20km væk. Selv denne gang vil de opføre et instrument så stort, det vil dværg alle teleskoper på Paranal sat sammen, og eventuelle andre teleskop på planeten. Når afsluttet, den europæiske meget Large Telescope (E-ELT) og sin 39-meter spejl vil tillade astronomer at kigge længere ind i rummet og se nærmere tilbage på historien om universet end nogen anden Astronomisk enhed i eksistens. Dets konstruktion vil skubbe teleskop-gør til sin grænse, men. Dens primære spejl vil være lavet af næsten 800 segmenter - hver 1,4 meter i diameter - men kun et par centimeter tyk, som skal bringes i overensstemmelse med mikroskopiske præcision.

Det er en bemærkelsesværdig sammenstilling: midt i fuldkommen ødelæggelse, forskere har bygget gigant maskiner manipuleret til at operere med glat perfektion og nu planlægger at top denne præstation ved at bygge en endnu mere omfattende enhed. Spørgsmålet er: med hvilket formål? Hvorfor gå til en remote ørkenen i det nordlige Chile og hugge ned toppe til at gøre boliger for nogle af planetens mest komplekse videnskabelige hardware?

Svaret er ligetil, siger Cambridge University astronomen Professor Gerry Gilmore. Det handler om vand. "Stemningen her er så tør som du kan få og der er af afgørende betydning. Vandmolekyler skjule visningen fra teleskoper på jorden. Det er ligesom forsøger at peer gennem tåge - for tåge er hovedsagelig en suspension af vandmolekyler i luften, efter at alle, og de dunkle din vision. For et teleskop baseret på havets overflade, der er en stor ulempe.

"Men hvis du bygger dit teleskop, hvor atmosfæren over du er helt tørt, du får den bedste mulige udsigt over stjernerne - og der er ingen steder på jorden, som har luft tørrere end dette sted. For god foranstaltning, de højtliggende vinden blæser i en glat, laminar måde over Paranal - som plader af glas - så billeder af stjerner er fortsat bemærkelsesværdigt stabil så godt."

Udsigten over himlen her er tæt på perfekt, med andre ord - som en aftentur rundt udsigtsplatform på Paranal viser tydeligt. Under mit besøg hang Mælkevejen over observatoriet som en enkelt hvid ark. Jeg kunne se de fire vigtigste stjerner af Southern Cross; Alpha Centauri, hvis usete følgesvend Proxima Centauri er den nærmeste stjerne til vores solsystem; de to Magellanske skyer, satellit-galakser af vores egen Milky Way; og Coalsack, en interstellare støv Sky, der udgør en slående silhuet mod den stjerneklare Mælkevejen. Er ingen synlige i nordlige himmel og vises ingen med sådanne brilliance andre steder på planeten.

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Jord-størrelse planet discovery: 5 ting at vide

NASA'S Kepler rumteleskopet opdaget en anden jord-størrelse planet, der er i den "beboelige zone," en planet afstand fra sin stjerne hvor forholdene er ideel til flydende vand.

Denne planet--kaldet Kepler-186f--er tættest på jorden i størrelse af alle de tidligere opdagelser af planeter i dette Guldlok zone, sagde Elisa Quintana af NASAs Ames Research Center og SETI Institute, ledende forfatter af undersøgelsen rapporteret i tidsskriftet Science.

Opdagelsen af Kepler-186f er "et stort skridt hen imod at finde denne hellige gral planet", der både tæt i størrelse til jorden og kredser omkring en stjerne svarer til jordens sol, Quintana sagde. I stedet for at kalde det en jordens tvilling, finder NASA Kepler-186f en jorden fætter.

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Her er fem ting at vide:

1. planeten er 1,1 gange på størrelse med jorden. Seneste opdagelser har været 1,4 gange størrelsen af jorden eller større, Quintana sagde.

2. Kepler-186f har en kortere orbital mønster: 130 dage at kredsen sin stjerne, versus 365 dage til jorden.

3. stjernen Kepler-186f kredsløb er "mindre, køler, lysdæmper" end Jordens sol, sagde J.D. Harrington, NASA talsmand.

4. den masse og sammensætning af Kepler-186f er ukendt. Men baseret på planeter af samme størrelse, er det sandsynligt, planeten er sammensat af en rocky materiale, Quintana sagde.

5. planeten er 500 lysår fra jorden.

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Deler deres arbejde er at hjælpe de rivaliserende pharma giganter oprette nye lægemidler

Mene Pangalos er manden til opgave med intet mindre end fyres op opdagelse motor af Storbritanniens næststørste narkotika maker efter sin katastrofale falder ud over "patent klippen".

Han tiltrådte AstraZeneca som leder af innovative lægemidler i 2010, da selskabet afstivet for patenter at udløbe på en perlerække af sine bedst sælgende lægemidler.

Halvfemserne havde været produktiv for Astra, men rørledningen var tørret. Holdenes forskning stadig churning ud masser af "kandidat" medicin, men de fleste af dem var ikke når testet i virkelige patienter.

Virksomheden stadig betaler prisen for at tage sine øjne ud bolden i den tidlige del af årtiet. Salget faldt kraftigt i 2012 og forventes at holde faldende i en årrække.

"Drug kandidater er en nem ting at levere," siger Pangalos, nu Astra's executive vice formand for innovative lægemidler og tidlige udvikling.

"Hvis du havde målt AstraZeneca som en kandidat [narkotika] maskine, vi var en af de bedste selskaber i verden. [Men] Når du målt os for succesfulde lanceringer, vi var en af de mindst produktive."

Problemet var enkel. Astras forskere var at blive belønnet for at levere så mange potentielle lægemidler som muligt, uanset deres langsigtede potentiale.

"Forskning var forkert, fordi du var at fokusere på diskenheden ikke kvalitet," siger han.

"Gør forskere ikke bare aflevere en kandidat, men er nødt til at tænke på hvordan du får det i sene udvikling - pludselig deres verden fik vendt op og ned, fordi nu de ikke var at få belønnet bare for en kandidat.

"Det drev en meget anderledes adfærd med hensyn til hvordan du synes om [et lægemiddel] fra forskning i udvikling," siger han.

Pangalos, en neurolog af baggrund, er i en nøddeskal "sandheden-søger". Ophøjede det kan lyde, men det er også indlysende, forbløffende.

Hans mantra er, at den mere Astra forskere forstår de sygdomme, de forsøger at behandle, og "target" årsag pathway, jo bedre de bliver at udvikle den rette medicin.

Det er nu muligt for forskere at lokalisere som en del af DNA er blevet "brudt" i visse sygdomme og så finde ud af hvilken slags molekyle kan gribe ind for at forebygge eller mindske følgerne.

De starter med en såkaldt "target"-det være sig en kemisk reaktion, der sker i en syge celle eller en del af DNA- og designe et stof omkring det.

"Du vil blive overrasket over hvor mange gange molekyler er gået ind i mennesket, mislykkedes og derefter nogen spørger det meget enkle spørgsmål, 'gjorde du engagere mål?' og folk slags skuldertræk deres skuldre," siger han.

Han indrømmer AstraZeneca var sent til spillet, men skiftet er begyndt at betale.

Rørledningen er fylde igen, takket være en blanding af erhvervelser og nye lægemidler fra virksomhedens egne forskere, og Astras administrerende direktør, Pascal Soriot, påstod tidligere på året, at salg vil begynde at stige igen i 2017 som nye produkter ramte markedet.

Pangaloss arbejde var godt på vej af den tid, Soriot tog roret i slutningen af 2012, men det har taget scenen under den nye chef. Inden måneder efter sin ankomst udpeget Soriot Pangalos til hans inderkreds som en del af en større management omlægning.

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Rising Japanese scientist faked heralded stem cell research, lab says

In her short scientific career, the trajectory of Haruko Obokata was meteoric. Before the 30-year-old was 20, she was accepted into the science department at Tokyo's Waseda University where the admittance board placed great importance on a candidate's aspirations.

Then she studied at Harvard University in what was supposed to be a half-year program, but advisers were so impressed with her research, they asked her stay longer.

It was there that she would come up with an idea that would come to define her - in ways good and bad. The research was called STAP - "stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency" - which unveiled a new way to grow tissue. "I think about my research all day long, including when I am taking a bath and when I am on a date with my boyfriend," Obokata told the Asahi Shimbun.

Last January, just three years after Obokata earned her PhD, she published what appeared to be her groundbreaking research in the scientific journal Nature

It purported to establish a new way to grow tissue and treat complicated illnesses like diabetes and Parkinson's disease with an uncomplicated lab procedure.

Many called it the third most significant breakthrough in stem cell research.

"There were many days when I wanted to give up on my research and cried all night long," she said at news conference. "But I encouraged myself to hold on just for one more day."

The headlines were thunderous. "Stem cell 'major discovery' claimed," BBC bellowed. "STAP cell pioneer nearly gave up on her research," reported the Asahi Shimbun. "Scientist triumphed over setbacks," crooned the Japan News.

On Tuesday morning, Obokata's research institute, Riken, which is almost entirely funded by the government, announced that the 30-year-old had purposely fabricated the data to produce the findings.

Institute director Ryoji Noyori said he'll "rigorously punish relevant people after procedures in a disciplinary committee," according to AFP.

The investigation's head said the paper "amounts to phony research or fabrication." He added: "The manipulation was used to improve the appearance of the results."

Obokata, for her part, denied the month-long investigation's allegations. "I will file a complaint against Riken as it's absolutely impossible for me to accept this," AFP reports her saying in a statement.

Whispers began soon after the paper hit print. No one was able to successfully reproduce the experiment.

According to Riken's preliminary report, the institute received its first hint that not everything was as it seemed with Obokata's research on February 13, and eventually conceded there were "serious errors."

Riken said it launched its probe of the research that day "given the seriousness of the issue."

In early March one of the paper's co-authors, Teruhiko Wakayama, jumped ship, calling for a retraction of the findings. "It's unlikely that it was a careless mistake," he wrote the Wall Street Journal in an email.

"There is no more credibility when there are such crucial mistakes," he added.

At issue, investigators say, are images of DNA fragments submitted into Obokata's work. They say they weren't the result of "errors," as previously theorised. The images were either doctored or entirely fabricated.

Way too often, media coverage on science and technology tends to concentrate on topics of current fashion or what some people call as "high-fi" themes - be it the God particle, stem cell biology, or yet another nanomaterial. Articles that appear in "high impact" journals are covered more often while discoveries and analysis of everyday problems and suggestions to handle them, usually published in more modest journals are given the go-by. Two such reports concerned with pressing problems of everyday importance to India appear in the latest issue of Current Science (Volume 106, 10 February 2014, pages 343-345), which need to be highlighted. One of them has to do with the overload of phosphorus in the soils of Kerala and how it affects the health of the land and the waters of the region and what may be done about it. And the other is a report about the discovery of a few bacteria in the coast of Gujarat which can degrade plastic materials such as polythene. And it is a pity that main line media, right here in India, have not found them worthy of coverage and publicity.

The first is a short report (just about 1200 words and two figures) by scientists from the Indian Institute of Spices Research in Calicut, concerning the massive accumulation of phosphorus in the soils of Kerala. The Kerala State Planning Board has taken up the massive (and rather "boring") task of analyzing the status of acidity in the agricultural field in all the Panchayats of the state. As many as 1,56,801 samples across the state were analysed (a huge exercise in itself) and of these about 91 per cent of the fields were found to be moderate to strongly acidic (pH between 6.5 and 4.5). This is bad because plants grow best by absorbing nutrients from soil whose pH is between 6.5 and 7.5. This is the ideal pH range for plant root growth; when the pH reduces below 6.5, the phosphorus (P) in the soil gets "fixed" by the metals present in the soil (such as aluminum and iron) and no longer available in the soluble form for absorption by the plant roots. And P is vital since it is used not only to make the DNA and RNA of the plant cells but also as the energy currency in the biochemical processes that all living beings use for metabolism (just as we use the rupee in our daily live transactions).

How did this high level of P come about? Through the overuse of fertilizers and manure by the farmers. As the Calicut scientists report, soil in Kerala is already inherently acidic and the overuse of fertilizers and manure only adds to the problem. Not only does much of the P in the soil gets fixed and becomes unavailable for plant growth but even some of the soluble phosphorus is lost through the run-off water from these sites and affects the quality of water in the nearby lakes and water bodies.

The Kerala State Planning Board's report is thus an important and admirable exercise that calls for action. The Calicut scientists make some relevant suggestions towards this, e. g., skip the applications of high P fertilizers, test the soil periodically and reduce (or avoid) manure that contains high amounts of P. We must express our appreciation to Drs K. M. Nair, P, Rajasekharan, G. Rajasree, P. Suresh Kumar and M. C.Narayanan Kutty of the National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research), the Kerala State Planning Board, and Drs R. Dinesh, V. Srinivasan, S. Hamza and M. Anandaraj, at the Indian Institute of Spices Research at Calicut for this important and relevant research and analysis. The second report in page 345 of the same issue of Current Science, by the budding science writer Ipsita Herlekar, highlights the discovery by scientists at the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute, Bhavnagar, Gujarat. These scientists analysed as many as 60 types of bacteria in the Arabian Sea along the coast of Gujarat and found three species from there, namely, K. Palustris M16, B. Pumilus M27, and B. Subtilis H1584, are able to "eat" polyethylene - the synthetic plastic used in everyday life as bags and films to cover materials, and that the B. Subtilis H158 strain was the best among the three. This calls for further work which might help us find an eco-friendly way to manage this totally out of hand (and totally man-made) menace of plastic waste and pollution.

Let us applaud Drs K. Harshvardhan and B.Jha, the CSMCRI scientists for this discovery and hope they will take this further into the level of practical application, Ipsita for elegantly highlighting this CSMCRI work, and the journal Current Science for publishing these reports which are of "high impact" at the practical and actionable level. Bread and butter science is just important as "blue sky" science.

The above article is a repost from TheHindu

A new type of giant virus called "Pithovirus" has been discovered in the frozen ground of extreme north-eastern Siberia by researchers from the Information Génomique et Structurale laboratory (CNRS/AMU), in association with teams from the Biologie à Grande Echelle laboratory (CEA/INSERM/Université Joseph Fourier), Génoscope (CEA/CNRS) and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Buried underground, this giant virus, which is harmless to humans and animals, has survived being frozen for more than 30,000 years. Although its size and amphora shape are reminiscent of Pandoravirus, analysis of its genome and replication mechanism proves that Pithovirus is very different. This work brings to three the number of distinct families of giant viruses.

In the families Megaviridae (represented in particular by Mimivirus, discovered in 2003) and Pandoraviridae, researchers thought they had classified the diversity of giant viruses (the only viruses visible under optical microscopy, since their diameter exceeds 0.5 microns). These viruses, which infect amoebae such as Acanthamoeba, contain a very large number of genes compared to common viruses (like influenza or AIDS, which only contain about ten genes). Their genome is about the same size or even larger than that of many bacteria.

By studying a sample from the frozen ground of extreme north-eastern Siberia, in the Chukotka autonomous region, researchers were surprised to discover a new giant virus more than 30,000 years old (contemporaneous with the extinction of Neanderthal man), which they have named Pithovirus sibericum. Because of its amphora shape, similar to Pandoravirus, the scientists initially thought that this was a new member -- albeit certainly ancient -- of this family. Yet genome analysis on Pithovirus showed that this is not the case: there is no genetic relationship between Pithovirus and Pandoravirus. Though it is large for a virus, the Pithovirus genome contains much fewer genes (about 500) than the Pandoravirus genome (up to 2,500). Researchers also analyzed the protein composition (proteome) of the Pithovirus particle (1..5 microns long and 0.5 microns wide) and found that out of the hundreds of proteins that make it up, only one or two are common to the Pandoravirus particle.

Another primordial difference between the two viruses is how they replicate inside amoeba cells. While Pandoravirus requires the participation of many functions in the amoeba cell nucleus to replicate, the Pithovirus multiplication process mostly occurs in the cytoplasm (outside the nucleus) of the infected cell, in a similar fashion to the behavior of large DNA viruses, such as those of the Megaviridae family. Paradoxically, in spite of having a smaller genome than Pandoravirus, Pithovirus seems to be less reliant on the amoeba's cellular machinery to propagate. The degree of autonomy from the host cell of giant viruses does not therefore appear to correlate with the size of their genome -- itself not related to the size of the particle that transports them.

In-depth analysis of Pithovirus showed that it has almost nothing in common with the giant viruses that have previously been characterized. This makes it the first member of a new virus family, bringing to three the number of distinct families of giant viruses known to date. This discovery, coming soon after that of Pandoravirus, suggests that amphora-shaped viruses are perhaps as diverse as icosahedral viruses, which are among the most widespread today. This shows how incomplete our understanding of microscopic biodiversity is when it comes to exploring new environments.

Finally, this study demonstrates that viruses can survive in permafrost (the permanently frozen layer of soil found in the Arctic regions) almost over geological time periods, i.e. for more than 30,000 years (corresponding to the Late Pleistocene). These findings have important implications in terms of public health risks related to the exploitation of mining and energy resources in circumpolar regions, which may arise as a result of global warming. The re-emergence of viruses considered to be eradicated, such as smallpox, whose replication process is similar to Pithovirus, is no longer the domain of science fiction. The probability of this type of scenario needs to be estimated realistically. With the support of the France-Génomique infrastructure, set up as part of the national Investments for the Future program, the "Information Génomique et Structurale" laboratory is already working on the issue via a metagenomic study of the permafrost.

While there is a collective fear for microorganisms for causing human diseases in particular, many of them are actually beneficiel in the field of food, vehicle and antibiotic production. Koyal Info Mag prides itself in its wide coverage of scientific news, discoveries and resources that caters to researchers, scientists, students, scholars, healthcare practitioners and various institutions.

The above article is a repost from ScienceDaily/a>

The Koyal Group Info Mag Articles - Dozens of University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM) scientists and student researchers will present new research findings at the 2014 Ocean Sciences Meeting at the Hawai‘i Convention Center on February 24-28.  This 17th biennial meeting will be the largest international assembly of oceanographers and other aquatic science researchers and policy makers, with attendance expected to exceed 4,000.

 

For a full list of sessions and presentations, visit: http://www.sgmeet.com/osm2014/.  Conference registration is complimentary for members of the news media.

 

 

A selection of School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) highlights includes the following:

 

 

Science Research Sessions and Presentations:

Celebrating 25 years of sustained marine observations, scientists working at the open ocean field site Station ALOHA will share biological, chemical and physical oceanography discoveries deriving from Hawai‘i’s own unique ocean science field programs.  Station ALOHA was established by the Hawaiʻi Ocean Time-series (HOT) program in 1988, and has been visited on a monthly basis since that time.  The emerging data comprise one of the only existing records of decadal-scale ecosystem change in the North Pacific Ocean. "Time series research is more important than ever before; understanding planetary change requires high quality observations and measurements,” said Matthew Church, UHM Oceanography Professor and HOT Program Principle Investigator.  “Humans are influencing the oceans in many ways, and measurements made at Station ALOHA are helping us understand and document how ocean ecosystems are responding to these changes."  This session includes more than 25 presentations drawing from observations from present day back to 1988, including long-term changes and trends observed in ocean biology, chemistry, and physics.  Among the notable topics highlighted in this session include documenting ocean acidification, studies on time-varying changes in biodiversity, and the influence of local and regional climate on ocean ecosystem behavior around Hawai‘i.

 

Chip Fletcher, UHM Geology Professor and his team will describe their effort to monitor and evaluate beach erosion rates at the Royal Hawaiian Beach in Waikīkī. One year after a major sand replenishment program, the beach width appears to vary by location and by season, resulting in net erosion in eastern and western portions of beach.

 

In the “Story of Marine Debris from the 2011 Tsunami in Japan,” UHM International Pacific Research Center scientists Jan Hafner and Nikolai Maximenko will present the latest synthesis of modeling and observations over the 3 years tracking the debris. This synthesis has resulted in understanding the pathways of the drift from the debris. The improved ocean drift model can help locate marine debris, marine animals, and people lost at sea.

 

Other research presentations will focus on ocean acidification, sea-level rise and inundation, and climate change including extreme sea level variability due to El Nino events, among many other topics.

 

 

Education and Engagement:

UH Mānoa’s Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE) and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute are hosting a Youth Science Symposium on Tuesday, February 25, from 4-6 p.m. Nearly 20 middle and high school youth scientists will present posters of their research.

 

SOEST will share several programs aimed at recruiting Native Hawaiian students into ocean and earth science.  Funded by C-MORE and NSF, the Ocean TECH program engages middle school, high school and community college students in the ocean and earth sciences through technology, career pathways and interaction with career professionals.  Funded by the UHM Sea Grant College Program and offered in partnership with Kapiʻolani and Leeward Community Colleges, the SOEST Maile Mentoring Bridge supports Native Hawaiian students throughout their undergraduate years through mentoring relationships that offer encouragement and the sharing of academic and non-academic knowledge.

 

“Marine Microbiological Mysteries” is a new UHM Outreach College program designed for grades 9-12 to help foster interest in pursuing STEM careers. The hands-on learning opportunity at the Waikīkī Aquarium places microbiology in a real-world context.  This presentation is part of an OSM session titled "Sea-ing connections: Ocean science as a catalyst to inspire the next wave of young (preK-16) scientists and keep students engaged within and outside the classroom."

 

 

The Koyal Group Info Mag articles - A zircon crystal embedded in sandstone found on a sheep ranch in Australia is the oldest piece of the Earth’s crust to be discovered, shedding new light on our planet’s formation.

 

The zircon, described in the journal Nature Geoscience, is about 4.4 billion years old and much smaller than a single grain of rice. But the tiny crystal carries an outsize significance: It is evidence that by that point in its history, Earth had gone from a superheated ball of molten rock to a congealed surface eventually capable of supporting life.

“One of the main goals of the space program is to understand if there’s life elsewhere in the universe,” said John Valley, a University of Wisconsin professor who led the study, collaborating with scientists in Australia, Canada and Puerto Rico.

By studying how the conditions of life came together on our planet, scientists believe we will learn what to look for on other planets.

But the earliest rocks and first evidences of life have been subject to dispute over the years. Some scientists, for example, maintain that the earliest evidence of life is about 3.8 billion years old and found in Isua, Greenland. Skeptics, however, note that no fossils were found in the Greenland rock. They point instead to 3.5 billion-year-old evidence of life found in rocks in Pilbara, Australia.

 

That’s no small difference — 300 million years.

The age of the zircon described by the Valley team, however, does not appear to be in dispute. The Valley team used a new technique called atom-probe tomography, which allowed them to confirm the accuracy of the crystal’s age. The new instrument, made in Wisconsin, is so sensitive that researchers were able to identify the atomic number and mass of each atom in the sample.

“I think they have shown unequivocally, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this grain is that old,” said Samuel Bowring, an expert in the early history of the Earth and a geology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bowring was not involved in the new study.

 

“It’s only one grain, mind you,” he added, “but it’s very significant.”

 

Jim Mattinson, a professor emeritus in the department of earth science at University of California, Santa Barbara, said zircons have been found previously that were about the same age as the one in the current paper, but the earlier discoveries were met with skepticism.

 

“This paper drives a nail into that coffin (of doubt),” Mattinson said. “We’re really getting back as far as we can go in the Earth’s geologic records.”

Zircon crystals are composed mainly of the elements zirconium, silicon and oxygen. Small amounts of uranium also appear in zircon.

The uranium decays at a set rate, forming lead. Because of these characteristics, scientists can use the lead and any remaining uranium in a zircon crystal to calculate the age.

Zircon is found embedded in younger rock. Valley found the zircon used for the current study in sandstone collected in the arid Jack Hills of western Australia, a region known to contain some of the oldest pieces of the planet’s crust.

 

“The oldest rock in Australia was collected not far from where we were working,” Valley said.

 

Dating of the zircon helps clarify an early chapter in the Earth’s history. Scientists have theorized that one of the crucial early events occurred when an asteroid roughly the size of Mars struck a glancing blow to the Earth, vaporizing the mantle and crust. Dust from the collision merged to form the moon.

The enormous energy from the collision transformed the surfaces of the Earth and moon into oceans of molten rock. Both subsequently cooled. Zircon was one of the minerals formed when the planet cooled.

Although minerals also were formed as far back in history, what makes zircon so valuable to geologists is its ability to endure. Zircon is a very hard mineral with stable chemistry able to survive extreme temperatures.

 

 

“We like to say that zircons are forever,” Valley said. “They really persist in the rock record.”

Physicist (and Star Trek expert) Lawrence Krauss talks about the unpredictability of the future.

 

The Koyal Group Info Mag Articles - Lawrence Krauss is a busy man. A theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University, Krauss has studied the universe, served on the science policy committee for Barack Obama's first presidential campaign, and crossed paths with intellectuals like Stephen Hawking and Christopher Hitchens. He has authored several books, including The Physics of Star Trek. In February 2014, Krauss took part in an American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium titled Where's My Flying Car? Science, Science Fiction, and a Changing Vision of the Future.

 

 

So, where is my flying car?

Your flying car is still in the dreams of people 50 years ago. You can feel bad that we don't have flying cars, that we're not living in hotels in space, but the real world intervenes. Certain [technological innovations] are just a lot harder, a lot more expensive.

 

At the same time, there's a flipside: The real things that have happened are much more interesting. The Internet is a clear example of how our lives have changed in ways we couldn't have imagined: a distributed information source, which is invisible to everyone, where you can access anything, and it's distributed throughout the whole world. Basically, communication is instantaneous.

 

When it comes to the things that people really want in science fiction—like space travel—the simplest things end up causing them not to happen. Humans are 100-pound bags of water, built to live on Earth.

We hoped for flying cars and got the Internet instead. What's to blame for the difference between our hopes and the reality we end up with instead?

 

I would say [innovations] almost never come from predictable places. If innovations were predictable, they wouldn't be discoveries. When people extrapolate into the future, they extrapolate [from] the known present. If I knew what the next big thing was, I'd be doing it now.

 

What have we done to the world? Climate change. Overpopulation. Global inequity. Perhaps a virus we set loose from the animal world by displacing so many exotic species, which could wipe us all out. These all either seem to be here already or looming in our near future.

 

The virus thing: I wouldn't stay up overnight on it. We're pretty robust; we've survived for four and a half million years.

 

 

So what does the future hold?

 

It looks like we're destroying the world as we know it. We certainly are entering Earth 2.0. But where that will go is not clear.

 

 

Are you hopeful for the future?

 

It depends on the day. I'm not very hopeful that humanity can act en masse to address what are now truly global problems that require a new way of thinking. As Einstein said when nuclear weapons were created: "Everything's changed save the way we think."

 

I think we need to change the way we think to address these global problems. Will it happen? Maybe kicking and screaming. My friend, the writer Cormac McCarthy, told me once: "I'm a pessimist, but that's no reason to be gloomy." In a sense, that's my attitude.

 

 

Five hundred years from now, will we be living on Mars?

 

Maybe. If we do space travel, it will tend to be one-way trips. Throughout human history, people have done these ridiculously difficult one-way voyages for one reason: because where they lived was so awful they were willing to get on a little wooden vessel that might sink and go across an ocean to some unknown place that they would probably never return from because it was so crummy where they were.

 

 

Maybe we'll do that for ourselves. We'll make the world so miserable that living in some harsh environment on Mars might seem attractive.

Physicist (and Star Trek expert) Lawrence Krauss talks about the unpredictability of the future.

The Koyal Group Info Mag Articles - Lawrence Krauss is a busy man. A theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University, Krauss has studied the universe, served on the science policy committee for Barack Obama's first presidential campaign, and crossed paths with intellectuals like Stephen Hawking and Christopher Hitchens. He has authored several books, including The Physics of Star Trek. In February 2014, Krauss took part in an American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium titled Where's My Flying Car? Science, Science Fiction, and a Changing Vision of the Future.

 

So, where is my flying car?

Your flying car is still in the dreams of people 50 years ago. You can feel bad that we don't have flying cars, that we're not living in hotels in space, but the real world intervenes. Certain [technological innovations] are just a lot harder, a lot more expensive.

At the same time, there's a flipside: The real things that have happened are much more interesting. The Internet is a clear example of how our lives have changed in ways we couldn't have imagined: a distributed information source, which is invisible to everyone, where you can access anything, and it's distributed throughout the whole world. Basically, communication is instantaneous.

When it comes to the things that people really want in science fiction—like space travel—the simplest things end up causing them not to happen. Humans are 100-pound bags of water, built to live on Earth.

We hoped for flying cars and got the Internet instead. What's to blame for the difference between our hopes and the reality we end up with instead?

I would say [innovations] almost never come from predictable places. If innovations were predictable, they wouldn't be discoveries. When people extrapolate into the future, they extrapolate [from] the known present. If I knew what the next big thing was, I'd be doing it now.

What have we done to the world? Climate change. Overpopulation. Global inequity. Perhaps a virus we set loose from the animal world by displacing so many exotic species, which could wipe us all out. These all either seem to be here already or looming in our near future.

The virus thing: I wouldn't stay up overnight on it. We're pretty robust; we've survived for four and a half million years.

 

So what does the future hold?

It looks like we're destroying the world as we know it. We certainly are entering Earth 2.0. But where that will go is not clear.

 

Are you hopeful for the future?

It depends on the day. I'm not very hopeful that humanity can act en masse to address what are now truly global problems that require a new way of thinking. As Einstein said when nuclear weapons were created: "Everything's changed save the way we think."

I think we need to change the way we think to address these global problems. Will it happen? Maybe kicking and screaming. My friend, the writer Cormac McCarthy, told me once: "I'm a pessimist, but that's no reason to be gloomy." In a sense, that's my attitude.

 

Five hundred years from now, will we be living on Mars?

Maybe. If we do space travel, it will tend to be one-way trips. Throughout human history, people have done these ridiculously difficult one-way voyages for one reason: because where they lived was so awful they were willing to get on a little wooden vessel that might sink and go across an ocean to some unknown place that they would probably never return from because it was so crummy where they were.

 

Maybe we'll do that for ourselves. We'll make the world so miserable that living in some harsh environment on Mars might seem attractive.

The Koyal Group Info Mag Articles - NASA's Kepler space telescope may be hobbled, but scientists continue to pull new discoveries from its huge dataset.

 

The space agency will announce more findings by Kepler — whose original planet-hunting mission was halted by a glitch in May 2013 — during a press conference on Wednesday (Feb. 26). You can listen to the event, which begins at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT), live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA.

 

 

The following people will participate in the press conference:

— Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet exploration program scientist, NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington

— Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

— Jason Rowe, research scientist, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, Mountain View, Calif.

— Sara Seager, professor of planetary science and physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

 

 

The $600 million Kepler mission launched in March 2009 to determine how commonly Earth-like planets occur around the Milky Way galaxy. Kepler has been incredibly prolific and successful, detecting 3,600 potential exoplanets to date, 246 of which have been confirmed by follow-up observations. (Mission scientists expect that at least 90 percent of Kepler's candidates will turn out to be the real deal.)

 

Kepler's original mission ended in May 2013 when the second of its four orientation-maintaining reaction wheels failed, robbing the instrument of its ultraprecise pointing ability. However, Kepler team members have said that the data the observatory gathered in its first four years of operation should allow them to achieve the mission's major goals.

 

Further, researchers have proposed a new mission for Kepler called K2, which would allow the observatory to continue hunting for alien planets (albeit in a modified fashion), as well as other celestial objects and phenomena such as comets, asteroids and supernova explosions.

 

NASA is expected to make a final decision about the K2 mission proposal, and Kepler's ultimate fate, by this summer.

 

 

The Koyal Group Info Mag Articles - While these stories may have not made Science's 'Top 10 science stories of the year' list touting the biggest discoveries of the year, many interesting findings made headline in 2013.

 

 

Last year held plenty of off-beat and off-the-beaten-track findings and news: Humans ate the first test-tube hamburger, a plan to capture an asteroid was launched, and a mind-controlled prosthetic leg was made.

 

 

These are the kinds of findings that make science fun, so we decided to ditch the over-hyped stories and make a list of the most remarkable things you might have missed last year. Here are the incredible stories.

 

 

A hydrogen bond was photographed for the first time.

 

 

In September, scientists captured the first images of one of the most important physical interactions in the world — the hydrogen bond — which holds DNA together and gives water its unique properties.

 

These never-before-seen photos are an encouraging advancement in atomic force microscopy, a method of scanning that can see details at the fraction of a nanometer level.

 

 

A skull from Georgia suggests that all early humans were a single species.

 

 

The analysis of a 1.8-million-year-old skull found in a region of Georgia suggests that the earliest members of the Homo genus actually belonged to the same species. The skull was discovered alongside the remains of four other early human ancestors, but had different physical features despite being from the same time period and location.

 

 

Researchers have traditionally used variation among Homo fossils to define separate species, but now think that early, diverse Homo fossils from Africa actually represent members of a single, evolving lineage — they just looked different from one another.

 

 

For the first time in 35 years, a new carnivorous mammal was discovered in the Americas.

A relative of the raccoon, the olinguito, has been described as looking like a "cross between a house cat and a teddy bear."

 

The animal's discovery in the forests of Ecuador, confirmed in August, shows that the world is not yet completely explored. It's the first new species of mammal discovered in 35 years.

Discoveries: Art, Science & Exploration from the University of Cambridge Museums, Two Temple Place, London Can you distil the intellectual life of centuries into an exhibition? If so, Cambridge's eight major museums are uniquely placed to do so. Each is distinctive, from the Museum of Zoology, home of a Tinamou egg acquired in Uruguay by Charles Darwin (who cracked it by compressing it into too small a box on the Beagle's return voyage), and the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, whose founder Reverend Sedgwick bought a rare Jurassic ichthyosaur fossil for £50 in 1835, to high-minded Kettle's Yard, where collector Jim Ede amassed rigorous modernist abstract sculpture by Gaudier-Brzeska and Henry Moore in a modest domestic interior. But all breathe the spirit of inquiry and freedom of thought associated with the university.

Info Mag Koyal Group Mars Rover Marks an Unexpected Anniversary With a Mysterious Discovery Ten years ago, NASA's Opportunity rover bounded to the surface of Mars for what was planned to be a three-month exploration. Opportunity is still going today - and still making discoveries. The latest, scientists said on Thursday at a news conference celebrating an anniversary none had expected 10 years ago, is a small rock that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. The rock, whose chemical composition was also unexpected, appears in an image taken Jan. 8. There was no rock in a picture taken of the same spot less than two weeks earlier. "This is strange," said Steven W. Squyres, the principal investigator for Opportunity, during the NASA news conference. But he added, "We don't think anything particularly exotic happened here." Dr. Squyres said the most likely explanation was that as the rover pirouetted at an uphill location, its lame right front wheel, which has not turned for years, dragged across the rock and flicked it out of the ground to its new location. The scientists have not yet spotted the divot where the rock popped out, but that spot may be obscured by the rover's solar panels. Year after year, Opportunity goes farther than anyone dreamed. The expectation had been that it would drive about a kilometer - six-tenths of a mile - before dust accumulated on the solar panels and the batteries drained. Unexpectedly, fortuitous winds periodically cleaned off the solar panels, and Opportunity, as well as its twin, Spirit, continued to operate. Spirit got stuck in a sand dune 2009 and then fell silent in 2010 after it was not able to point its solar panels toward the sun during the winter months. Info Mag Koyal Group Mars Rover Marks an Unexpected Anniversary With a Mysterious Discovery Instead of one kilometer, Opportunity has driven 38.7 kilometers, or about 24 miles, exploring a series of ever larger craters, taking 170,000 pictures along the

En sen torsdag kveld midtsommers ble en 25,91 meter lang og 27 tonn tung rørhåndteringsenhet transportert langs RV42 fra Steis Mekaniske på Tonstad til Sense Drilfab i Nodeland. Enheten er en av 3 som produseres i Sirdal og som skal fraktes den smale vegen til Nodeland ved Kristiansand, hvor den skal testes før den skal ut på en oljeinstallasjon i Nordsjøen. SR bidrar med planlegging og prikkfri gjennomføring av denne veitransporten som ble bestilt av Cameron Sense i Kristiansand. Våre befraktere planlegger gjennomføringen, søker nødvendige dispensasjoner og ivaretar formalitetene omkring oppdraget. Selve utførelsen er det vår dyktige sjåfør Jan Tore Sola som står for sammen med følgebilsjåfør Ove Salte. Å kjøre med en over 30 meter lang ekvipasje på de smale vegene i Sirdal og Evje er en utfordring og stiller store krav til både mann og utstyr. Med spesialtralle med dobbelt uttrekk og en av våre mest rutinerte sjåfører gikk imidlertid oppdraget veldig bra. Sirdølen omtalte også den laaaange transporten. Vil du vite mer om hva vi kan innenfor spesialtransport - eller andre former for transport - kontakt vår salgsavdeling: - Kjetil Njærheim - tlf 9166 5509 - e-post - Konrad Jonassen - tlf 9166 5526 - e-post