Intelligent Robots Will Explore Milky Way by 2020 -A Galaxy Insight

Before the year 2020, scientists are expected to launch intelligent space robots that will venture out to explore the universe for us.

"Robotic exploration probably will always be the trail blazer for human
exploration of far space," says Wolfgang Fink, physicist and researcher at Caltech. "We haven't yet landed a human
being on Mars but we have a robot there now. In that sense, it's much
easier to send a robotic explorer. When you can take the human out of
the loop, that is becoming very exciting."

While Fink is encouraged by the progress made by missions such as
the Mars Phoenix and its robotic arm, he emphasizes that the link
between human and robot needs to be eliminated, allowing robots to
make their own decisions on what science needs to be carried out. In
reference to the Phoenix's robotic arm he said, "The arms are the
tools,
but it's about the intent to move the arms. That's what we're after. To
have the robot know that something there is interesting and that's
where it needs to go and then to go get a sample from it. That's what
we've after. You want to get rid of the joystick, in other words. You
want the system to take control of itself and then basically use its
own tools to explore."

The physicist said he envisions a time when humans send out intelligent
probes to explore the far reaches of the universe and send information
back to Earth - without having to send people on excruciatingly long
and dangerous space missions.

"In the old Star Wars movies, especially in the Empire Strikes Back,
the empire was sending out probes or floating robots," said Fink.
"Those were ideal robotic explorers because they floated over planets
and had sensors and communication capabilities. Once you venture out to
other planets, you need something that can operate on its own. You
can't monitor and supervise every single step. You want to deploy
something that, on its own, can start a reconnaissance of the area and
report back."

The key attribute robots need to possess is the ability to recognize
something of interest, such as a rock or crater, something that a human
mind would see as a scientific opportunity. At Caltech, Fink and others
are working on programs that use images for robots to distinguish
colors, textures, shapes and obstacles. Once artificial intelligence
has the ability to do this, if the programming is complex enough, the
robot can notice something that is out of place, or a region worth
investigating (such as a strangely coloured patch of Mars regolith that
a Mars robot will decide to dig into).

The researchers also are working on a wish list of sorts for the
spacecraft. The list would include things that NASA and university
scientists would like the robot to investigate. "It's very difficult to
teach a spacecraft," said Fink. "When a geologist goes into the field,
they can tell you if they see something that sparks their interest.
Based on that interest, it triggers more refined research. But the
problem is if you encounter something that scientists had not foreseen,
then you run the risk of not detecting it We'll equip it with a
database and a wish list, along with the ability to flag an anomaly."

Fink said NASA has shown some interest in their work. And that makes
sense since NASA is planning an unmanned mission to Titan, Saturn's
largest moon, around 2017. The CalTech physicist explained that an
orbiter would most likely release a balloon-type vehicle that would
float above the surface of the moon and send its findings back to Earth.

"It takes more than hour to send communications back and forth to a
space probe at Saturn or Titan," said Fink. "It is not a problem so
much if you are dealing with a Lander, which is immobile, or when
you're dealing with a rover which is not moving too fast. It becomes a
significant problem if you deploy a balloon or air ship on Titan, let's
say. They are floating so you need a much quicker reaction time. If
there's a mountain or hill coming up, you need to make a decision right
there and then.

The main question is will robotic missions trump our basic human desire to explore space via manned missions?

Posted by Casey Kazan.

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/07/28/by-2020-droids-will-explore-space-for-us/

Mega-Gadget: Igniting the Power of Stars on Earth

The National Ignition Facility, a man-made machine designed to recreate the power source of stars, will be dedicated today. If all goes as planned, the facility's 192 lasers — made of nearly 60 miles of mirrors and fiber optics, crystals and light amplifiers — will fire as one to smash a fleck of hydrogen fuel smaller than a match head. Compressed and heated to temperatures hotter than those of the Sun, the hydrogen atoms will fuse into helium, releasing bursts of thermonuclear energy.

It's taken ten thousand workers and ten years of effort and it's ready to start researching free power for all people - when it isn't dealing with vocal skeptics. Doubters deride NIF as a $140 million annual sideshow that is squandering precious resources at a time of economic hardship.

Naysayers have always plagued those who dare to move forward, and for every nutball suing the Large Hadron Collider you can bet there was one particularly sloping-browed caveman insulting the guy with flint and sticks.  The most popular 'problem' at the moment is "the recession!", the topical rallying cry of those who oppose what they don't understand.

The NIF has cost three and a half billion dollars, with criticizing such spending with "the recent recession."  Because as we all know, canceling everything but bread and water at the first sign of market downturn is a strategy without flaw.  Especially if it means abandoning custom hardware, which was only doing something silly like "maybe allowing free energy production."  (Oh, and don't mention how that's less than the cost of a fortnight's worth of Iraq War.  They don't seem to like that.)

Another idiot-detecting statement is "It's a very complicated system, and you're dependent on many things working right."  The NIF does have one hundred and ninety two lasers and more optical components than a shortsighted army, but - well, do we even have to explain the problem with that statement?  Of course you're depending on bits working right.  The internal combustion engine depends on working right!  That's why we didn't let bakers build it, instead insisting on people who knew what they were doing and who can fix the inevitable problems.

The last and bestest of all is when people demand guarantees that everything will work immediately, interpreting any other response as an admission of failure.  Amazingly these people are actually reasoned with, as opposed to being led away somewhere a nice lady can use small words, and possibly puppets, to explain what "re-search" is.

The National Ignition Facility is humanity's attempt to light our own star, to solve our energy needs, and to add another fundamental force of the universe to the "We've got that working for us" list.  If you're against that you simply don't understand some part of the issue.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

In Hot Pursuit Of Fusion

New 3-D Technology To Read Messages & Scrolls From Vesuvius Eruption in 79 A.D.

Computer scientists are working on a way to read the unreadable - and we're not talking about silicon Zen masters, or building a machine to deal with Twilight novels the way we have ones for toxic waste.  A stockpile of papyrus scrolls pose the ultimate Roman Empire tease: they're an irreplaceable treasure trove of antiquity, but they're so fragile even unrolling will destroy them.  Modern technology might now open this ancient door.

On Aug. 24, 79 A.D., Italy's Mount Vesuvius exploded, burying the Roman towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii under tons of super-heated ash, rock and debris in one of the most famous volcanic eruptions in history. Yet somehow, hundreds of papyrus scrolls survived in a villa at Herculaneum thought to have been owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law.

The scrolls contained ancient philosophical and learned writings. But they were so badly damaged — literally turned to carbon by the volcanic heat — that they crumbled when scholars first tried to open them centuries later. The remaining scrolls, stored away in Italy and France, haven't been read — or even unrolled — since 79 AD.

Professor Seales and colleagues of the University of Kentucky are combining of computerized axial tomography (CT) and modeling to unwrap what's inside.  They don't even have to touch them, which is good, because they're not allowed to.  The conservators charged with preserving over a thousand of these self-destructing messages (which predate Mission Impossible by almost two thousand years) have granted the team access to two for a test run.

The scan non-invasively probes the insides of the scrolls, building up pictures of thousands of slices.  Computer modeling will then be used to build a 3D structure and virtually unroll it to reveal what it reads.  If it works, it'll be an incredible find for fans of ancient history - the priceless  scrolls contain messages from colleagues of Virgil, Cicero, victims of the Vesuvius eruption, the family of Julius Caesar, and we're honestly surprised that an Indiana Jones/Dan Brown tag-team didn't steal them half way through that sentence.  (Brown wouldn't even need to worry about actually reading the scrolls - he could just make them up!)

Ancient history isn't the only application of this work.  There has been talk of using it in a a national security capacity, to reconstruct other destroyed documents, though that would require significant reconfiguring and a lot of work - the carbonization of the papyrus scrolls was something of a freak confluence of mansion design, lava flow and the cutting off of air supply.  Unless terrorists are planning strikes from Dr Evil's volcano lair just as James Bond is in business, we might want to stick with philosophy.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Computer To Read Ancient Scrolls

Vulcans Nixed: You Can’t Have Logic Without Emotion -A Galaxy Classic

Fifty years ago some young MIT scholars delivered a radical notion to the world. They proposed that it is possible to scientifically study precise mechanisms and processes of human thought. The movement was the catalyst for many fields of study.

Now after a generation of productive research, a newer paradigm shift is taking place. Science is discovering that it is our emotions that make thought possible, not the other way around. We simply cannot understand thought without understanding emotion. This is a radical departure from the traditional perspective, which used to regard emotion as the antagonist of reason.

Because we subscribed to this false ideal of rational, logical thought, we diminished the importance of everything else," said Marvin Minsky, a professor at MIT and pioneer of artificial intelligence. "Seeing our emotions as distinct from thinking was really quite disastrous."

Cognitive psychologists have traditionally downplayed the importance of emotions to the thought process. "They regarded emotions as an artifact of subjective experience, and thus not worthy of investigation," said Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist at NYU.

In all fairness to cognitive psychologists, the field of cognitive psychology has always been criticized for being too "soft" of a science. The effect is that cognitive scientists have always felt compelled to "harden" the science up with logical facts, and less study of emotion and behavior. Ironically, "feelings" ARE the new "fact", and the main determination of the choices we make- not logic.

In fact, the entire "science of thinking" was approached somewhat backwards right from the start. Perhaps, this was partly due to the field being largely dominated by men who suspected (in true Vulcan fashion) that "feeling" is inferior to logic. In fact, as I was summarizing these findings for this post, my husband called to tell me about a problem he is having with a coworker. I asked him if he had talked to the individual to find out how he was feeling. My husband replied, "Men don't talk about feelings. We talk about facts."

Of course, that doesn't apply to all men. Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at USC has played an important role in establishing the importance of studying emotion. Before Damasio came onto the scene, most cognitive scientists assumed that emotions only interfered with rational thought. It was assumed that a person without any emotions would be a better thinker, since their "cortical computer" could process information without the hindrance of emotion. Damasio's research challenged the assumption by showing that people who have suffered brain injuries which prevent them from perceiving their own feelings, are ineffective decision-makers. Most would spend hours deliberating over irrelevant details, such as where to eat lunch. Damasio's research, among many other studies, is revealing that emotion is what enables us to make up our minds. It is pure reason- not feeling- that is the true hindrance to decision making. So take that, Mr. Spock!

Posted by Rebecca Sato

Be Sure to Check Out the LeDouxLab on the Emotional Brain

Link to the History of the Planet Vulcan

Prior Posts:

Big Brain & the Pursuit of Happiness
Mysteries of the Human Brain

VIDEO Interview with Director Guillermo del Toro About "The Strain" - a Vampiric Virus That Invades NYC

A case of perfect timing? With the swine flu outbreaks in Manhattan, Guillermo del Toro director of Pan's Labyrinth, will published his first novel on June 2nd. He signed with HarperCollins to write a trilogy of books called The Strain about a vampiric virus that invades New York. The trilogy is co-written with thriller writer Chuck Hogan.

The Strain opens with the arrival of a transatlantic flight at JFK airport. Upon touchdown, all power and communication to the aircraft are lost and a mysterious sliver of black appears – in the form of a slowly opening door – on the plane's fuselage.

"I tired to make them [the vampires] as menacing, and as real, and as absolutely disgusting and alien as possible. I tried to make them into a plague of creatures where you do not recognize the humanity."

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Related Galaxy posts:

The Ghost Map
Deadly Companions: Animal-born Microbes Pose Threat of Global Pandemic
Hot Zone: Scientists Unlock Secret of 1918 "Spanish Flu" Pandemic
Pandemics from Outer Space Possible? Europe's Scientists Discuss The Future of Humans in Space
Did Ancient Viruses Spur Human Evolution? A Galaxy Insight

Source: http://www.latinoreview.com/news/del-toro-talks-the-strain-6683

name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/w0nk136ImlM&hl=en&fs=1">

The Rise of the Robot Era: Population Will Exceed 1 Million Worldwide by 2010

An eminent roboticist is warning the people of Earth that we must prepare defenses against the rise of the robots.  But for once it isn't Dr Cyboz doing so from the top of an overloading Cyber-Tower - in fact, he hasn't even built the rebelling robots.  And an article in the journal Science hardly counts as a desperate rallying cry.

The scientist in question is Professor Noel Sharkey of the University
of Sheffield, who's noticed that there are something like five and a
half million robots in action in the private sector and said "Crikey,
that's a lot."  Especially since there are expected to be more than
twice that by 2010, because if there's one thing the movies have taught
us it's that a geometrically increasing population of robots is nothing
to worry about.

Prof Sharkey's point is that while public interest in robotics has
increased, the public's protection against them hasn't - and we're not
talking desperate bands of fleshy rebels, we're talking about the real
weaponry of the modern age: legislation.  The only legal framework
applied to robotics is the usual "try not to build anything that
actively kills people" boilerplate, and while that's a very good rule
it hardly covers the complexity of human-robot interactions.

So far there haven't been too many problems because the early-adopters
that have machines in the home tends to be tech-savvy - they're not the
kind of people who need boldface instructions like "DO NOT TAKE A BATH
WITH YOUR ROBOT WHILE JUGGLING CHAINSAWS."  Besides, there's only so
much damage a vacuum cleaner can do.  But with increasingly interactive
robots on the way, Sharkey foresees serious psychological issues in the
offing and urges consideration of the moral and ethical factors.

A problem with this is that the leading source of robotic funding is
the military, whose ethical factors tend to start with "Will it kill
them quickly?" and end with "If not, will we get caught?"  Even the
makers of your rascally Roomba are deeply into defense.  That's not
necessarily a bad thing - of all the employers in the wold, the army
are the ones we'd most like to use machines instead of people (unless
you're volunteering to get shot at while clearing minefields).

The real problem is that there's a real distance between realising the
importance of some Laws of Robotics and making them actually happen.
As long as there are defense dollars and private sector payoffs to be
had, you need more muscle than "actually being the beardies who build
the things" to get a say in the result.  Governments simply won't get
involved fast enough until after the first accident or ten.

Machines are going to be great, and robots will help in a million
different ways - but if you actually want to be safe, you may have to
go hide under Crystal Mountain.  We hear John Connor is looking for
some extra help.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Scientist warning http://www.physorg.com/news148832430.html

Shark Technology -What Can We Learn from Nature's Most Perfectly Honed Creation?

Honed to hunting perfection by millions of years of evolution, there's a lot we can learn from sharks.  More than just "Stay out of the water", "Keep the hell away from Amity Island" and how to play the cello.  Their skin is a nanostructured surface perfected for their role as nature's flesh-seeking missile, and while human swimmers and boats aren't generally blood-motivated murderizers they can benefit from the same coating.

Synthetic shark skin might sound like the ultimate in faux-fashion
disasters, but work at the University of Florida by materials engineer
Tony Brennan and colleagues has allowed us to coat boats and even
Olympic swimmers in this material.  It turns out that shark skin is not
smooth, but consists of thousands of "dermal denticles" and yes, that
means "denticle" as in "dentistry and teeth".  Not content with going
through up to thirty thousand actual teeth in its lifetime, sharks are
actually coated in adapted versions of the things - meaning it
maintains its speed advantage literally by the skin of its teeth.

These scales have small-scale structure, a series of grooved channels
which move slightly as the scales turn and flex with the shark's
motion.  It turns out that the smoothest possible surface won't
increase your speed in the water - the layer of fluid right next to the
smooth surface will be slowed down by friction, and as that water drags
against the faster water further away turbulent vortices are created,
every one of them slowing the submerged object down.  The mini-ridges
in the shark scales channel the water into faster flow, as well as
mixing the slower and faster faster flows in a less turbulent manner.
This involves hydrodynamics which takes a degree and some high-level
simulation software to calculate, but a few million generations of
sharks seem to worked out the hard way.

These coatings have been used in Speedo Fastskin swimsuits and boat
hulls.  You might associate Speedo with not wearing very much at all,
but the FastSkin suit actually does cover a lot of flesh, and has
conferred significant advantages on those who do so - wearers won 80%
of all medals and broke 13 (of 15!) world records in the 2000
.  Speedo have upgraded their shark-simulating skin, so expect
to see even better performances (but hopefully no feeding frenzies) in
Beijing this year.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Related Galaxy posts:

Cetacea: Mind-Bending Theories About the Planet's "Other" Intelligent Life
The Planet's Other "Intelligent" Species: Do Dolphins Have a Sense of the Future?
Australian Scientists Begin to Crack Whale Code

Source links:

Biomimicking Sharks

Shark skin research

Is Mars Between Ice Ages? Experts Say "Yes" -A Galaxy Classic

"Mars is not a dead planet -it undergoes climate
changes that are even more pronounced than on Earth."

James Head, planetary geologist, Brown University

The prevailing thinking is that Mars is a planet whose active climate
has been confined to the distant past. About 3.5 billion years ago, the
Red Planet had extensive flowing water and then fell quiet - deadly
quiet. It didn't seem the climate had changed much since. Now, recent studies by scientists at Brown University show that  Mars' climate has been much
more dynamic than previously believed.

After examining stunning
high-resolution images taken last year by the Reconnaissance
Orbiter, researchers have documented for the first time that ice
packs at least 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) thick and perhaps 2.5 kilometers
(1.6 miles) thick existed along Mars' mid-latitude belt as recently as
100 million years ago. In addition, the team believes other images tell
them that glaciers flowed in localized areas in the last 10 to 100
million years - a blink of the eye in Mars's geological
timeline.

This evidence of recent activity means the Martian climate may change
again and could bolster speculation about whether the Red Planet can,
or did, support life.

"We've gone from seeing as a dead planet for three-plus billion
years to one that has been alive in recent times," said Jay Dickson, a
research analyst in the Department of Geological Sciences at Brown and
lead author. "[The finding] has changed our
perspective from a planet that has been dry and dead to one that is icy
and active."

In fact, Dickson and his co-authors, James Head,
and David Marchant, a associate professor at Boston University, believe the images show that has
gone through multiple Ice Ages - episodes in its recent past in which
the planet's mid-latitudes were covered by glaciers that disappeared
with changes in the Red Planet's obliquity, which changes the climate
by altering the amount of sunlight falling on different areas.

NASA's Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions have provided
evidence of a relatively recent ice age on Mars. In contrast to Earth's
ice ages, a Martian ice age expands when the poles warm, and water
vapor is transported toward lower latitudes. Martian ice ages wane when
the poles cool and lock water into polar icecaps.

The catalysts of ice ages on appear to be much more extreme than
the comparable drivers of climate change on Earth. Variations in the
planet's orbit and tilt produce remarkable changes in the distribution
of water ice from Polar Regions down to latitudes equivalent to Houston
or Egypt. Researchers, using NASA spacecraft data and analogies to
Earth's Antarctic Dry Valleys, reported their findings in the journal
Nature.

"Of all the solar system planets, has the climate
most like that of Earth. Both are sensitive to small changes in orbital
parameters," said Head. "Now we're seeing that Mars, like
Earth, is in a period between ice ages," he said. This evidence of
recent activity means the Martian climate may
change again and could bolster speculation about whether the Red Planet
can, or did, support life.

Head and his team examined global patterns of landscape shapes and
near-surface water ice Nasa's orbiters mapped. They concluded a covering
of water ice mixed with dust mantled the surface of to latitudes
as low as 30 degrees, and is degrading and retreating. By observing the
small number of impact craters in those features and by backtracking
the known patterns of changes in Mars' orbit and tilt, they estimated
the most recent ice age occurred just 400 thousand to 2.1 million years
ago.

Marchant, a glacial geologist who spent 17 field seasons in the
Mars-like Antarctic Dry Valleys, said, "These extreme changes on Mars
provide perspective for interpreting what we see on Earth. Landforms on
that appear to be related to climate changes help us calibrate and
understand similar landforms on Earth. Furthermore, the range of
microenvironments in the Antarctic Dry Valleys helps us read the Mars
record."

According to the researchers, during a Martian ice age,
polar warming drives water vapor from polar ice into the atmosphere.
The water comes back to ground at lower latitudes as deposits of frost
or snow mixed generously with dust. This ice-rich mantle, a few meters
thick, smooths the contours of the land. It locally develops a bumpy
texture at human scales, resembling the surface of a basketball, and
also seen in some Antarctic icy terrains. When ice at the top of the
mantling layer sublimes back into the atmosphere, it leaves behind
dust, which forms an insulating layer over remaining ice. On Earth, by
contrast, ice ages are periods of polar cooling. The buildup of ice
sheets draws water from liquid-water oceans, which lacks.

Dickson and
the other researchers focused on an area called Protonilus Mensae-Coloe
Fossae. The region is located in Mars's mid-latitude and is marked by
splotches of mesas, massifs and steep-walled valleys that separate the
lowlands in the north from the highlands in the south.

The team looked in particular at a box canyon set in a low-lying
plain. Images show the canyon has moraines - deposits of rocks that
mark the limits of a glacier's advance or the path of its retreat. The
rock deposit lines appear to show a glacier that flowed up the box
canyon, which "physically cannot happen," Dickson said.

Instead, the team deduced the ice in the surrounding plain grew higher
than the canyon's walls and then flowed downward onto the top of the
canyon, which had become the lowest point on the ice-laden terrain. The
team calculated the ice pack must have been one kilometer thick by past
measurements of height between the plain and the lip of the canyon.
Based on the ice flow patterns, the ice pack could have reached 2.5
kilometers at peak thickness during a period known as the late
Amazonian, the authors said.

The finding could have implications for the life-on-argument by
strengthening the case for liquid water. Ice can melt two ways: by
temperature or by pressure. As currently understood, the Martian
climate is dominated by sublimation, the process by which solid
substances are transformed directly to vapor. But ice packs can exert
such strong pressure at the base to produce liquid water, which makes
the thickness of past glaciers on its surface so intriguing.

Dickson also looked at a lobe across the valley from the box canyon
site. There, he saw a clear, semi-circular moraine that had spilled
from an ancient tributary on to the surrounding plain. The lobe is
superimposed on a past ice deposit and appears to be evidence of more
recent glaciation. Although geologists can't date either event, the
landscape appears to show at least two periods in which glaciation
occurred, bolstering their theory that the Martian climate has
undergone past Ice Ages.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Related Galaxy posts:

Unraveling
the Mysteries of -Clues to Climate Change on Earth?
Movie of NASA's Sites on for Future Landings & Search for Ancient Life
Exploration: Secrets of the Soil
Is There Life on Mars? NASA Goes Underground to Find Out
New Phoenix Mission Technology to Search for Life
Is there an Interplanetary Mars-Earth Microbe Shuttle?
"The Overview Effect": Is Space Travel Next Step in Human Evolution?
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos Revisited -NASA's Phoenix Probe & the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
Phoenix Lander and the 'Canals' of Mars

Sources:

http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2008/04/martian-glaciers
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/dec/HQ_03415_ice_age.html

Did Mars Lose Its Atmosphere Early in Its Evolution?

NASA has been making a lot of headlines with recent discoveries on Mars, and fans of the red planet are in for good news: they're going again, bigger and better than ever.  There's the Mars Surface Laboratory, the ExoMars rover, and flying above them all will be MAVEN.

Mars has been balding like a
middle-aged banker for some time now, a presumably thick and lustrous
atmosphere which allowed surface water having been lost some time ago.
Just why this should have happened, and what the current rate of loss
is, are questions the MAVEN will hope to find answers to.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission will examine the
evolution of Mars' atmosphere, as well as underlining their dedication
to acronyms even when they require almost random capitalization and a
dictionary.  A 'maven' is an expert, by the way, and in late 2014 this
orbiter will know more about Mars' atmosphere than anything ever has.

It should, because it'll be flying through it.  The MAVEN will be
orbiting low enough to scoop out samples of the air not only to find
out what's there, but also what isn't.

One theory is that Mars lost its magnetic field, without which it was
defenseless against the brutal onslaught of solar radiation which
stripped anything not nailed down (like air) off the planet.  You may
remember this from an explanation in 'The Core', but we at the Galaxy
must recommend against thinking about "The Core" and real science at
the same time in the strongest possible terms.  It's like mixing matter
and antimatter: not something you want to do inside your skull.

The MAVEN is classified as a scout mission, with a modest budget of
only half a billion dollars.  You see, cooler people get to play with
lots more money.

Luke McKinney.

MAVEN

Related Galaxy posts:

Unraveling
the Mysteries of -Clues to Climate Change on Earth?
Movie of NASA's Sites on for Future Landings & Search for Ancient Life
Exploration: Secrets of the Soil
Is There Life on Mars? NASA Goes Underground to Find Out
New Phoenix Mission Technology to Search for Life
Is there an Interplanetary Mars-Earth Microbe Shuttle?
"The Overview Effect": Is Space Travel Next Step in Human Evolution?
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos Revisited -NASA's Phoenix Probe & the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
Phoenix Lander and the 'Canals' of Mars

The Daily Flash -Eco, Space, Science (5/27)

The New New Economy: More Startups, Fewer Giants, Infinite Opportunity

As the Internet was taking shape in the late 1980s, an MIT professor named Tom Malone started thinking about how it could change the structure of industries. In a series of papers, he predicted that the big top-down companies of the 20th century would soon "decentralize and externalize" into industry ecosystems. "Imagine an AT&T that breaks up into not two or three different companies but two or three hundred thousand different companies."

Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews

18,516 New Species (Including a Fascinating Top Ten) Identified in 2007 - But What Is Their Significance?

Climate link to mockingbird songs

Can robots ever be like humans?

Opposites attract — how genetics influences humans to choose their mates

By 2050 25% Of The World's Electricity Will Be Solar

Rising sea levels: Survival tips from 5000 BC

Modern Man Ate His Rivals : Why Our Ancestors Won Out Over the Neatherthals

Why our ancestors won out over the Neanderthals is an important anthropological question.  Some say we were better at acquiring resources, we bred faster, we adapted better to a changing climate - oh, and the minor matter of how we hunted them down and ate them.  That helped.

That's the conclusion reached by fossil expert Fernando Rozzi of Paris's Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique, and considering it's based on a jawbone from a Neanderthal clearly butchered for food by someone with Homo Sapiens tools, there really aren't many other options.  The chips and damage to the jawbone were consistent with skeletons from deer which had been harvested for meat - except for, you know, the way it was a kinda-sorta person being eaten.  Go Team Humanity!

Examination of the jawbone shows that even the tongue was cut out and eaten, proving that either early humans had an advanced culinary sensibility or were just really really hungry.  This isn't very odd - the idea of actually choosing not to eat certain parts is an incredibly recent invention.  For most of human history we've just had to eat everything, then there was a brief period where wealth allowed people to turn their noses up at the "gross" bits, then the hot dog was invented and we ate everything again.

The cannibal conclusion has already been opposed by other anthropologists, who apparently believe that the Neanderthals just spontaneously died out when humanity arrived.  Also they don't study the entirety of human history, which has basically been "kill each other."  While we agree it can be important to protect your family name, when you find actual murder-investigation-grade evidence that your great-great-great-great^3500-father ate people, you should face the facts.  If only because we can absolutely guarantee he has no descendants to vow revenge.

[Were just kidding, Conan!].

Humans Ate Neanderthals

Related Galaxy posts:

Controversial Theory Says Modern Man is a Descendant of the Neanderthals
Did Neanderthals Share the "Language Gene" with Homo Sapiens?
"Out of Africa" View of Early Human Origins Disputed
Neanderthal Man, the Sequel -Scientists Aim to Bring Extinct Species Back to Life
Bringing Ancient Human Viruses Back to Life: A Jurassic Park or Salvation?
Loren Eiseley on Evolution: Transcending the Cosmos -A Galaxy Insight
Neanderthal Man, the Sequel -Scientists Aim to Bring Extinct Species Back to Life

Last of Africa's Desert Elephants Ravaged by Severe Drought

A rare herd of desert elephants in Mali is being ravaged by one of the worst droughts in living memory, which has left water sources at lowest level in the past quarter of a century.

The 350 to 450 elephants of Gourma, the northernmost herds still alive in Africa, are being forced to trek extreme distances across the fringes of the Sahara to find scarce water. Juveniles are the most affected, as (unlike the bigger bulls) their trunks are not long enough to reach deep into wells - one of the only remaining water sources.

This year the water levels are extremely low in the Gourma region due to uneven rainfall in 2008. The most important of these lakes, Banzena, is the lowest it has been since 1983 when it dried completely.

On the 16th of May, Jake Wall, a scientist with Save the Elephants, returned from Banzena; he found it almost dry. Very few options now exist for finding water and we are witnessing erratic movements further and further afield as they desperately search for water and forage.

Over the last few years, The WILD Foundation and Save the Elephants (STE), in collaboration with the Malian Environment Ministry directorate for conservation - Direction Nationale de la Conservation de la Nature (DNCN), have monitored these last rare desert elephants using 9 collars fitted with Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. The collars transmit the hourly positions of the elephants three times daily via satellite link and give real-time information about the activities of the elephant herds.

Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton of Save the Elephants has been monitoring their range since the mid 1970s. He says: "In the Gourma region of Mali are the last elephants living in the Sahel and they are northernmost in Africa. Their range has shrunk drastically since the 1970's due to climate change and overstocking of livestock which has degraded the habitat. These elephants have the longest migration route of any in Africa and move in a counterclockwise circle of about 700 km. At the height of the dry season there are only a handful of shallow lakes left to them until recharged by rains in July and August." Our group of NGOs is launching an emergency appeal to save this unique herd.

Many elephants are now surviving with very limited and hard to access water supplies. At a dry lake bed 50 km to the east of Banzena, 6 bull elephants are surviving by getting on their knees and reaching for water with their trunks that is 3 meters beneath ground level and through a hole dug by the Touareg people. Younger elephants who are not as big or as skilled cannot possibly reach these hard to get at water points. The long distances, high temperatures and weakened condition will also take a heavy toll on the younger elephants.

Read more…

For Information on urgently needed donations

Posted by Jason McManus from materials provided by Wild.org

Source Link: http://www.wild.org/blog/worst-drought-in-26-years-threatens-the-survival-of-the-last-desert-elephants/

BioHackers: Is DIY DNA a Threat to Society?

Solitary citizens are toiling over test-tubes, sacrificing their time and money to create brand new lifeforms - but this isn't a science fiction movie, it's a hobby.  "DIY Biochemistry" sees private citizens converting their dining rooms into DNA labs.  It's only a pity that Michael Crichton has passed on, because we've got the plot of his next book right here.

With a wealth of online guides, biochemical supply companies and even
craigslist cryogenic equipment, hobbyists or collectives like the
Cambridge group "DIYbio" are enabling determined individuals to
engineer their own organisms.  The self-titled "biohackers" paint a
picture of "citizen scientists", freeing genetic engineering from the
stuffy confines of university and corporate labs.  We would point out
that anybody keen on freeing anything from a containment lab might not
have a full understanding of what they're doing.

The almost anti-scientist sentiment that "regular people should be able
to do this without years of study" is fundamentally flawed - those
years of study are what enable professionals to know what they're at.
These people demand "Why shouldn't we be allowed to do this in our own
homes?", and if you have to even ask that question you truly don't know
the answer.

We don't doubt that many useful results will come out of the DIY DNA
diversion, and anything which increases the public's knowledge of this
crucial branch of science has a good side.  The sheer spectrum of ideas
that can come from hobbyists has been proved time and again by the
internet, and harnessed safely by such mass-simulations as FoldIt.
Also unquestionable is that the vast majority of these projects will be
only beneficial, at worst failures which achieve nothing, and any
imagined terrorist threats are vastly overstated.

But it only takes one.  A single amateur ecology-alterer managed to
devastate Australia with a bag of rabbits back in the day, and he
didn't even have a biochem lab.  Caution is advised.

Proponents proudly point out how Apple and Google were started by
similarly small-scale entrepreneurs.  The problem, of course, is that
the first Apple computer couldn't replicate uncontrollably and dominate
the entire globe.  Likewise Google - well, okay, that did happen with
Google but it seems to have worked out.  But we won't have the same
guarantee with gengineered bacteria.

Posted by Luke McKinney

DIY DNA

DIYbio  http://www.diybio.org

Introducing Galaxy Realtime! - News & Commentary At the Speed of Light (Well, Almost)

Don't
miss our new streaming news feature on the discoveries, people, ideas
and events changing the planet. Starting today, we deliver breaking,
realtime news and commentary on the environment, space, science,
technology and more from Twitter and the web's top sources.

Galaxy Realtime: Join the community, dive in, dig deep!

Your Galaxy team.

The 10,000 Year Explosion: Has Human Civilization Turbo Charged Evolution?

 

"It was the failures who had always won, but by the time they won they had come to be called successes. This is the final paradox, which men call evolution."

Loren Eiseley -The Immense Journey

According to most theories of human evolution, the species became "behaviorally modern" some 50,000 years ago and has not evolved much genetically since then. But according to a controversial new book, The 10,000 Year Explosion, human civilization has actually turbo changed our evolution.

Gregory Cochran and Henry  dispute the late Stephen Jay Gould's assertion that civilization was "built with the same body and brain" Homo sapiens has had for 40,000 years. Humanity has been evolving  dramatically for the last 10,000 years, they say, spurred by the very civilizational forces launched by that evolution.

The 10,000 Year Explosion is a work of genetic history that gives full treatment to the evolutionary power of natural selection in shaping human history. For example, how did the Indo-European language family get to be so geographically expansive? There is the story of how lactose tolerant Indo-Europeans spread milk-drinking with blood and fire, why the Ashkenazi suffer from crippling genetic diseases at an unexpectedly high rate while winning 25% of Nobel Prizes in the last century, and how the Spanish destroyed the Aztecs and the Incas. The real accidents of history are matters of gene flow and chance mutation.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Related Galaxy posts:

Homo Sapiens -The "Time Travelers" -A Galaxy Classic
"Hyper-Speed" Evolution Discovered
Bringing Ancient Human Viruses Back to Life: A Jurassic Park or Salvation?

Immense Journey

The 10,000 Year Explosion: Has Human Civilization Turbo Charged Our Evolution?

 

"It was the failures who had always won, but by the time they won they had come to be called successes. This is the final paradox, which men call evolution."

Loren Eiseley -The Immense Journey

According to most theories of human evolution, the species became "behaviorally modern" some 50,000 years ago and has not evolved much genetically since then. But according to a controversial new book, The 10,000 Year Explosion, human civilization has actually turbo changed our evolution.

Gregory Cochran and Henry  dispute the late Stephen Jay Gould's assertion that civilization was "built with the same body and brain" Homo sapiens has had for 40,000 years. Humanity has been evolving very dramatically for the last 10,000 years, they say, spurred by the very civilizational forces launched by that evolution.

The 10,000 Year Explosion* is actually a work of genetic history that gives full treatment to the evolutionary power of natural selection in shaping human history. The last 10,000 years really have seen an explosion of evolutionary change. For example, how did the Indo-European language family get to be so geographically expansive? There is the story of how lactose tolerant Indo-Europeans spread milk-drinking with blood and fire, why the Ashkenazi suffer from crippling genetic diseases at an unexpectedly high rate while winning 25% of Nobel Prizes in the last century, and how the Spanish really brought down the Aztecs and the Incas. The real accidents of history are matters of gene flow and chance mutation.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Related Galaxy posts:

Homo Sapiens -The "Time Travelers" -A Galaxy Classic
"Hyper-Speed" Evolution Discovered
Bringing Ancient Human Viruses Back to Life: A Jurassic Park or Salvation?

Immense Journey

The Ultimate Invasion Of Privacy: The Online Genome

Thirteen thousand people are having their genomes uploaded online, along with their photos and complete medical histories.  Never mind stealing social security numbers - a few more years of development and people will be able to copy them entirely.  And they did it voluntarily, and it's to help every single one of us.

The Personal Genome Project (PGP) is a research effort designed to harness the incredible internet-intellect.  Instead of genetics labs having to source their own data, or gain access to the few genomes already available, the PGP aims to make one hundred thousand human genomes available to anyone who wants to have a look.  Most of these will be research facilities, of course, but it opens the doors to computer scientists, mathematicians, any interested observer who wants to have a crack at the code of life.  The benefits are twofold: established scientists will have more to work with, and if we can harness a tiny fraction of the incredible inventiveness shown online we'll be riding cancer-curing dinosaurs into a forest that grows batteries.

This awesome project requires awesome technology: a single sequence of DNA requires six gigabytes of storage, meaning the PGP is aiming to upload over half a petabyte.  If you aren't stunned, it's only because you don't really get that word.  The server requirements are staggering but companies like Google, Amazon and Isilon Systems are already queuing up to sort it out.  So yeah, those people who make millions because they knew where the future was?  They're working on this.

It's also an excellent example of how people are just getting past privacy - half the admission process to the project is explaining to people that everything about them will be online (except the name, but nobody is under any illusions about how easy that'll be to find).  But ten minutes on twitter will show that many modern-minded people will share everything with anyone, for good or ill, and this way they're helping cure cancer.

Which is a bit more important than changing your status message every five minutes.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Personal Genome Project http://www.personalgenomes.org/

Thirteen thousand already in http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&articleId=9133167&taxonomyId=19&intsrc=kc_top

Parallel Universes: Are They More than a Figment of Our Imagination? A Galaxy Classic

"The multiverse is no longer a model, it is a consequence of our models."

~Aurelien Barrau, particle physicist at CERN

The Hollywood blockbuster, The Golden Compass, adapted from the first volume of Pullman’s classic sci-fi trilogy, "His Dark Materials" portrays various universes as only one reality among many, but how realistic is this kind of classic sci-fi plot? While it hasn't been proven yet, many highly respected and credible scientists are now saying there's reason to believe that parallel dimensions could very well be more than figments of our imaginations.

"The idea of multiple universes is more than a fantastic invention—it
appears naturally within several scientific theories, and deserves to
be taken seriously," stated Aurelien Barrau, a French particle
physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

There are a variety of competing theories based on the idea of parallel
universes, but the most basic idea is that if the universe is infinite,
then everything that could possibly occur has happened, is happening,
or will happen.

According to quantum mechanics, nothing at the subatomic scale can
really be said to exist until it is observed. Until then, particles
occupy uncertain "superposition" states, in which they can have
simultaneous "up" and "down" spins, or appear to be in different places
at the same time. The mere act of observing somehow appears to "nail
down" a particular state of reality. Scientists don't yet have a
perfect explanation for how it occurs, but that hasn't changed the fact
that the phenomenon does occur.

Unobserved particles are described by "wave functions" representing a
set of multiple "probable" states. When an observer makes a
measurement, the particle then settles down into one of these multiple
options, which is somewhat how the multiple universe theory can be
explained.

The existence of such a parallel universe "does not even assume
speculative modern physics, merely that space is infinite and rather
uniformly filled with matter as indicated by recent astronomical
observations," Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at MIT in Boston,
Massachusetts concluded in a study of parallel universes published by
Cambridge University.

Mathematician Hugh Everett published landmark paper in 1957 while still
a graduate student at Princeton University. In this paper he showed how
quantum theory predicts that a single classical reality will gradually
split into separate, but simultaneously existing realms.

"This is simply a way of trusting strictly the fundamental equations of
quantum mechanics," says Barrau. "The worlds are not spatially
separated, but exist as kinds of ‘parallel’ universes."

Partly because the idea is so uncomfortably strange, it's dismissed as
sci-fi by many critics. But there are also many credible, respected
proponents of the theory—a group that is continuously gaining new
adherents as new research unveils new evidence. Some Oxford
research—for the first time—recently found  a mathematical answer that
sweeps away one of the key objections to the controversial idea. Their
research shows that Everett was indeed on the right track when he came
up with his multiverse theory. The Oxford team, led by Dr David
Deutsch, showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure
created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can
explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes.

The work has another strange implication. The idea of parallel
universes would apparently side-step one of the key complaints with
time travel. Every since it was given serious credibility in 1949 by
the great logician Kurt Godel, many eminent physicists have argued
against time travel because it undermines ideas of cause and effect. An
example would be the famous "grandfather paradox" where a time traveler
goes back to kill his grandfather so that he is never born in the first
place.

But if parallel worlds do exist, there is a way around these
troublesome paradoxes. Deutsch argues that time travel shifts happen
between different branches of reality. The mathematical breakthrough
bolsters his claim that quantum theory does not forbid time travel. "It
does sidestep it. You go into another universe," he said. But he admits
that there will be a lot of work to do before we can manipulate
space-time in a way that makes "hops" possible. While it may sound
fanciful, Deutsch says that scientific research is continually making
the theory more believable.

"Many sci-fi authors suggested time travel paradoxes would be solved by
parallel universes but in my work, that conclusion is deduced from
quantum theory itself."

The borderline between physics and metaphysics is not defined by
whether an entity can be observed, but whether it is testable, insists
Tegmark.

He points to phenomena such as black holes, curved space, the slowing
of time at high speeds, even a round Earth, which were all once
rejected as scientific heresy before being proven through
experimentation, even though some remain beyond the grasp of
observation. It is likely, Tegmark concludes that multiverse models
grounded in modern physics will eventually be empirically testable,
predictive and disprovable.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

Related Galaxy posts:

New Proof from Oxford: Parallel Universes Exist
Cosmic Pentimento: Beyond the Great Void May be a Great Something
Weird Science: Can Time Move Backwards?

links:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/09/n–one-of-the-m.html

http://physorg.com/news118241154.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/09/21/sciuni121.xml

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=paUniverse_sun14_parallel_universes&show_article=1&cat=0

Enhancing Evolution: Do Humans Have a Moral Duty to Improve the Species?

John Harris, the Sir David Alliance Professor of Bioethics at Manchester University, lays out a fascinating argument in his compelling book Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People.

Harris has a lot of liberal ideas, but one that he believes most
strongly is that as parents, as citizens, as scientists, we are morally
obliged to do what we can to make life better and longer for ourselves
and our children. Society currently devotes so much energy and
resources towards saving lives, which, in reality, is simply postponing
death.

If it is right to save life, Harris says, then it should also be
right to postpone death by stemming the flow of diseases that carry us
to the grave. And we should make any such technology available as soon
as we can, even if it means there will be some "haves" and "have-nots".

"Certainly, sometimes we want competitive advantage – but for the
enhancements I talk about, the competitive advantage is not the prime
motive. I didn't give my son (Jacob, to whom the book is dedicated) a
good diet in the hope that others eat a bad diet and die prematurely.
I'm happy if everyone has a good diet. The moral imperative should be
that enhancements are generally available because they are good for
everyone." The only other route to equality, he says, is to level down
so that everyone is as uneducated, unhealthy and unenhanced as the
lowest in society – which is unethical. Even though we can't offer a
liver transplant to all who need them, he says, we still carry them out
for the lucky few. Much better to try to raise the baseline, even if
some are left behind."

For Harris, having the ability to improve our species lot in life
but refusing to do so, makes little sense. He has a difficult time
understanding why some people are so insistent that we shouldn't try to
improve upon human evolution.

"Can you imagine our ape ancestors getting together and saying,
'This is pretty good, guys. Let's stop it right here!'. That's the
equivalent of what people say today."

But Leon Kass, the highly influential American philosopher who
persuaded President Bush to end public funding of research using human
embryos, abhors Harris's vision of a biotechnology-enhanced future.
Kass believes it will lead to parents who "design" their children
leading to a new generation "at risk of despotic rule" by the previous
generation. But Kass can't really articulate his main concern, which
has been referred to as the "yuk factor" that many feel about
scientific interference with the human body. Kass wrote a widely quoted
essay entitled The Wisdom of Repugnance, in which he argued,
"Repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's
power fully to articulate it".

Personally, Harris doesn't find Kass' argument to be very
compelling, since repugnance does not actually signify wisdom nor a
lack of it. "The fact that people can't articulate the reasons for
their distaste or revulsion doesn't make it invalid," Harris says. "But
the fact that they feel revulsion doesn't make it valid, either.

"Human history is littered with examples of things that we recognize
now were inappropriate objects of revulsion…[such as] homosexuality and
working women, and other races. Nobody would say today that those
feelings were appropriate, even though they were powerfully felt by
very large numbers of people, sometimes whole societies. We ought to
have a rational caution about following the 'yuk factor' because we
know it has led us not only in the wrong direction but in a thoroughly
corrupt direction."

Harris doesn't find the Mother Nature argument to be very compelling
either. He points out that if we're going to leave it to Mother Nature
to decide, then why are we always resisting her?

"Medicine goes against nature – people naturally fall ill and
naturally die prematurely. If we believed in letting nature take its
course, we would not practice medicine. It's not that I despise nature;
there's no particular virtue in it. Sometimes it's great, sometimes
it's crap. The virtue of medicine is that it prevents harm and does
good. That, I believe, is the virtue of enhancement. Enhancement shares
exactly the same moral purpose as medicine and it's likely to be at
least, if not more, effective."

Posted by Rebecca Sato

Related posts:

Can Humans Live to 1,000? Some Experts Claim We Can — Others Want to Prevent That
The Story of a Biologist & the Extension of the Human Life Span
Scientists Bio-engineer a Virus that Destroys Cancer Cells
"Smart Mice" Created - A new mechanism of learning
"Mind Children": Transhumanism & the Search For Genetic Perfection

Link:
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article2622232.ece

Biologists Say Planet is Undergoing Mass Species Extinction (VIDEO)

Although Earth's islands make up less than four per cent of the
planet's land mass, they are home to around a quarter of the world's
known plants - 70,000 of which do not exist anywhere else.

"Humanity doesn't need a moon-base or a manned trip to Mars. We need an
expedition to planet Earth, where probably fewer than 10 per cent of
species are known to science, and fewer than 1 per cent of those have
been studied beyond a simple anatomical description and a few notes on
natural history. At the same time, we are engaged in a genocide against
those species, known and unknown; the sixth mass extinction has begun."

E.O. Wilson, Harvard evolutionary biologist and author of "The Creation."

Experts say that at least
half of the world's current species will be completely gone by the end
of the century. Most biologists
say that we are in the midst of an anthropogenic mass extinction.
Numerous scientific studies confirm that this phenomenon is real and
happening right now. Should anyone really care? Will it impact
individuals on a personal level? Scientists say, "Yes!

Critics argue that species disappear and new ones emerge all the
time. That's true, if you're speaking in terms of millennia. Scientists
acknowledge that species disappear at an estimated rate of one species
per million per year, with new species replacing the lost ones at
around the same rate. Recently humans have accelerated the extinction
rate to where several entire species are annihilated every single day.
The death toll artificially caused by humans is mind-boggling. Nature
will take millions of years to repair what we destroy in just a few
decades.

One analysis, published in the journal Nature, shows that it takes
10 million years before biological diversity even begins to approach
what existed before a die-off. Over 10,000 scientists in the World Conservation Union
have compiled data showing that currently 51 per cent of known
reptiles, 52 per cent of known insects, and 73 per cent of known
flowering plants are in danger along with many mammals, birds and
amphibians. It is likely that some species will become extinct before
they are even discovered, before any medicinal use or other important
features can be assessed. The cliché movie plot where the cure for
cancer is about to be annihilated is more real than anyone would like
to imagine.

Research done by the American Museum of Natural History found that
the vast majority of biologists believe that mass extinction poses a
colossal threat to human existence, and is even more serious of an
environmental problem than one of its contributors- global warming. The
research also found that the average person woefully underestimates the
dangers of mass extinction. Powerful industrial lobbies would like
people to believe that we can survive while other species are quickly
and quietly dying off. Irresponsible governments and businesses would
have people believe that we don't need a healthy planet to survive-
even while human cancer rates are tripling every decade.

Although Earth's islands make up less than four per cent of the
planet's land mass, they are home to around a quarter of the world's
known plants - 70,000 of which do not exist anywhere else.

In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences journal found that islands have more endemic and localized
species than continental areas, so any threats to those species could
put them at risk of extinction. With biocide occurring at an alarming
rate, islands will play an
increasingly important role in preserving the planet's ecological
balance.

A lot of us heard about the recent extinction of the Yangtze river
dolphin. It was publicized because dolphins are cute and smart, and we
like dolphins. We were sort of sad that we humans were single-handedly
responsible for destroying the entire millions-of-years-old species in
just a few years through rampant pollution. Unfortunately the real
death toll is so much higher than we hear on the news. Only a few
endangered "celebrity favorites" get any notice at all.

Since animals and plants exist in symbiotic relationships to one
another, extinction of one species is likely to cause "co-extinctions".
Some species directly affect the health of hundreds of other species.
There is always some kind of domino effect. This compounding process
occurs with frightening speed. That makes rampant extinction similar
too disease in the way that it spreads. Sooner or later- if gone
unchecked- humans may catch it too.

Amphibians are a prime example at how tinkering with the environment
can cause rapid animal death. For over 300 million years frogs,
salamanders, newts and toads were hardy enough to precede and outlive
the dinosaurs up until the present time. Now, within just two decades
many amphibians are disappearing. Scientists are alarmed at how one
seemingly robust species of amphibians will suddenly disappear within a
few months.

The causes of biocide are a hodge-podge of human environmental
"poisons" which often work synergistically, including a vast array of
pollutants, pesticides, a thinning ozone layer which increases
ultra-violet radiation, human induced climate change, habitat loss from
agriculture and urban sprawl, invasions of exotic species introduced by
humans, illegal and legal wildlife trade, light pollution, and man-made
borders among other many other causes.

Is there a way out? The answer is yes and no. We'll never regain the
lost biodiversity-at least not within a fathomable time period, but
there are ways to prevent a worldwide bio collapse, but they all
require immediate action. The eminent Harvard biologist Edward O
Wilson, and other scientists point out that the world needs
international cooperation in order to sustain ecosystems, since nature
is unaware of artificially drawn borders. Humans love to fence off
space they've claimed as their own. Sadly, a border fence often has
terrible ecological consequences. One fence between India and Pakistan
cuts off bears and leopards from their feeding habitats, which is
causing them to starve to death. Starvation leads to attacks on
villagers, and more slaughtering of the animals.

Some of the most endangered wildlife species live right in between
the borderland area of the US and Mexico. These indigenous animals
don't know that they now live between two countries. They were here
long before the people came and nations divided, but they will not
survive if we cut them off fromtheir habitat. The Sky Islands is one of
many areas smack in the middle of this boundary where some of North
America's most threatened wildlife is found. Jaguars, bison, and Wolves
have to cross through international terrain in the course of their
life's travels in order to survive. Unfortunately, illegal Mexican
workers cross here too. People who know nothing of the wildlife's
biological needs want to create a large fence to keep out Mexicans,
regardless of the fact that a fence would devastate these already
fragile animal populations.

Wilson says the time has come to start calling the "environmentalist
view" the "real-world view". We can't ignore reality simply because it
doesn't conform nicely within convenient boundaries and moneymaking
strategies. What good will all of our money and conveniences do for us,
if we collectively destroy the necessities of life?

There is hope, but it requires radical changes. Many organizations
are lobbying for that change. One group trying to salvage ecosystems is
called The Wildlands Project, a conservation group spearheading the
drive to reconnect the remaining wildernesses. The immediate goal is to
reconnect wild North America in four broad "mega-linkages". Within each
mega-linkage, mosaics of public and private lands, which would provide
safe migrations for wildlife, would connect core areas. Broad,
vegetated overpasses would link wilderness areas normally split by
roads. They will need cooperation from local landowners and government
agencies.

It is a radical vision to many people, and the Wildlands Project
expects that it will take at least 100 years to complete. Even so,
projects like this, on a worldwide basis, may be humanity's best chance
of saving what's left of the planets eco-system, and the human race
along with it.

Posted by Rebecca Sato with Casey Kazan.

Sources:

Islands are a Key Factor in Planet's Biiodiversity

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2494659.ece

Check out Extinction Blog for Global Incidents and Info

Prior Posts:

The 6th Mass Extinction

"The Great Extinction" & the Rise of Modern Species

Coming of Age in the Holoc

Did Light Travel Faster in the Early Universe? A New Theory Says, "Yes" -A Galaxy Classic

A brilliant young physicist João Magueijo  asks the heretical question: What if the speed of light—now accepted as one of the unchanging foundations of modern physics—were not constant?

Magueijo, a 40-year old native of Portugal, puts forth the heretical idea that in the very early days of the universe light traveled faster—an idea that if proven could dethrone Einstein and forever change our understanding of the universe. He is a pioneer of the varying speed of light (VSL) theory of cosmology -an alternative to the more mainstream theory of cosmic inflation- which proposes that the speed of light in the early universe was of 60 orders of magnitude faster than its present value.

Solving the most intractable problems of cosmology in one brilliant
leap, Magueijo's varying-speed-of-light theory (VSL) would have
stunning implications for space travel, black holes, time dilation, and
string theory—and could help uncover the grand unified theory that
ultimately eluded Einstein.

Joao Magueijo's radical ideas intend to turn that Einsteinian dogma
on its head. Marueijo is trying to pick apart one of Einstein's most
impenetrable tenets, the constancy of the speed of light. This idea of
a constant speed (about 3×106 meters/second) -is known as the universal
speed limit. Nothing can, has, or ever will travel faster than light.

Magueijo -who received his doctorate from Cambridge, has been a
faculty member at
Princeton and Cambridge, and is currently a professor at Imperial
College, London- says: not so. His VSL theory presupposes a speed of light that can be energy or time-space
dependent.

In his fist book, Faster than the Speed of Light, Magueijo
leads laymen readers into the abstract realm of theoretical physics,
based on several well known, as well as obscure, thinkers. The VSL model was first proposed by John Moffat, a Canadian scientist, in 1992. Magueijo
carefully builds the foundations for a discussion of Big Bang
cosmology, and then segues into the second half of the book, which is
devoted to VSL theory.

Like most radical, potentially seminal thinkers,  Magueijo shakes
the foundations of the physics community, while irritating off many of
his fellow scientists. VSL purposes to solve the problems at which all
cosmologists are forever scratching: those inscrutable conceptual
puzzles that surround the Big Bang. Currently many of these problems
have no widely accepted solutions.

Could Einstein be wrong and Magueijo right? Is he a gadfly or a true, seminal genius? Time will tell.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Related Galaxy posts:

Einstein's "Biggest Blunder" May Turn Out to Be His Greatest Success
Einstein Right (Again): Earth Proven to Bend the Space-Time Fabric
Italian Scientists Build World's First "Atomic Laser" Envisioned by Einstein in 1925
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Radiation Resistant Plants For Outer Space

Chernobyl's meltdown caused a lot of things:  anti-nuclear protests, an incredible number of sci-fi stories, even STALKING videogames afflicted with horrific glitches and bugs (accurately simulating a radiation damaged disk).  Now it seems that there are even radiation resistant plants.

The Slovak Academy of Sciences, perhaps upset at the lack of horrible mutated monstrosities emerging from the zone, decided to see if they could grow some.  In a wonderful sign that scientists are starting to heed Hollywood's warnings they didn't start with soldiers, sharks, or anything else that can already kill us.  They went for plants - in fact, they went for soya beans, the least triffidiffic of all plants, whose most fiendish attack is to replace meat with flavorless styrofoam (and we have to help it do that).

By planting pots of soya inside the irradiated zone and in non-nuclear contaminated soil (which is most of it, at least until Judgement Day), the team were able to observe induced changes in the plants.  Since these changes can include "mutation and death", the team had to wear radiation gear to plant the seeds, making them the Most Xtreme Gardeners ever.

Even the first generation of radiation-contaminated plants show significant adaptations to the environment.  The "poisoned with long-lived 137-Cesium isotopes" environment.  The most important alterations are to seed-storage proteins - proving that even if we aren't thinking of the next generation when we cut the nuclear reactor safety budget, plants are.  As well as preparing their offspring for a nuclear wasteland, these Sarah-Connor-equivalent soya plants exhibit increased resistance to radiation damage and heavy-metal poisoning.  So if we ever do have to engage in anti-plant war, Metallica will be useless.

Such studies are important not only for the immediate "oops we blew this up" applications, but for plants in future irradiated areas.  If you don't think there are any of those we actually want to got to, there's a little place called "space" absolutely stuffed with lethal energy beams and particles out to diddle the DNA of anything that ventures beyond a magnetosphere.  Radiation resistant plants could be incredibly useful in oxygen production, terraforming, or even as a food source (though there will have to be an anti-toxicity breakthrough to allow us to eat recycled radiation plants).

This is only the first of four generations the team will study, and increased radiation-based powers are expected with every iteration.  We can only hope that the scientists will think to tell us if the plants start getting up or firing energy beams.

Posted by Luke McKinney

Radiation Resistant Plants 

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The Planet's Biggest Camera: Scanning the Skies with 1.4 Gigapixels

Cameras are one of the hottest subjects for geek gadget envy, with increasingly evolved camera-phones boasting up to five megapixels, while dedicated camera-carriers brag about the ridiculously high resolution offered by eight megapixels. Which is why MIT took the time to remind us all who the alpha nerds are, building a billion-pixel camera. Which watches out for threats to Earth, as if the sheer ludicrous size of the camera wasn't cool enough.

The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) will scan the sky from beautiful Hawaii. This has long been a popular spot for observatories as one of the best vantage points on the surface (or at least that's what all the astronomers who get to work in Hawaii tell us, anyway).

The camera core is an eight by eight array of eight by eight arrays of cells. That's not an accidental repeat, that's eight to the fourth equals four thousand and ninety-six CCD cells, each one of which could kick the hell out of your little digital imager, adding up to a forty square centimeter focal plane with 1.4 Gigapixels.

The camera is billed as searching for rogue asteroids and other near Earth objects, because apparently you still have to justify building something like this with reasons other than "But look at how big the number is!" The system will be able to pick out objects as small as 300 meters (big enough to simulate several atomic warheads and take a good solid chunk out of a country). If the Pan-STARRS does pick up a species-busting asteroid on the way, we have to wonder what the "Rapid Response" in the title could be (apart from "take pictures for aliens to find when they sift through the wreckage.")

Maybe it has Bruce Willis's phone number.

By Luke McKinney

Photo credit: Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii

Gigapictures on Technology Review

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