Fishing for Oxygen in Warming Oceans
Records stretching back to 1960 prove what climate models had predicted: warmer oceans contain less oxygen. Oceanographer Lothar Stramma of the University of Kiel in Germany and his colleagues report in Science that an analysis of historical records and recent samples show that as the globe has warmed, waters with low oxygen content have expanded in the tropical Atlantic and equatorial Pacific oceans.
News Bytes of the Week–Was the Red Baron Just Lucky?
Was the Red Baron just lucky?Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron, was the most feared German flying ace of World War I. He racked up 80 official air combat victories–the biggest winning streak on either side–before being shot down on April 21, 1918, over northern France. We’re inclined to interpret the Baron’s record as proof that he was the best of the best. But a study published in the Journal of Mathematical Sociology claims that much of Richthofen’s success could be chalked up to plain old luck. German records list 2,894 WWI fighter pilots, who together scored 6,759 victories (planes shot down) and only 810 defeats. Although the win ratio seems suspiciously high, electrical engineers Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury of the University of California, Los Angeles, contend they can still use the numbers to analyze the pilots’ defeat rate–their total chances of being shot down after each flight. That rate started off high–25 percent for the first flight–but fell sharply; by the 10th flight it had leveled off below 5 percent, consistent with the weaker pilots getting picked off and the remaining aces having similar skills in the air. At that rate, the researchers conclude that the odds of one in 2,894 pilots racking up an 80-win streak are about 30 percent–not so remarkable after all.
Do different cells in our nose respond to different smells? [Ask the Experts]
People can smell thousands–perhaps even millions–of different scents. Yet scientists know that in the nose, there are only about 400 different types of odor receptors–proteins that capture scented molecules so that smells can be identified. Thus, there isn’t, obviously, one type of receptor that responds to a rose, while another jumps for jasmine. [More]
A Silver Coating in the Fight Against Microbes [News]
A new technique in paint making could soon make almost any surface germfree. Researchers have made paint that is embedded with silver nanoparticles known for their ability to kill bacteria and other microbes, in the hope that hospitals will coat their walls and countertops to fight infection.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than one million people a year contract bacterial infections in hospitals. Silver itself is an excellent bacteria fighter, and in nanoparticle form it is even more potent at killing microorganisms. So far it has not shown any adverse effects in humans.
Fishing Lines That Repel Sharks [60-Second Science]
Podcast Transcript: Sharks inspire fear as great predators, but their numbers are declining around the world. One way sharks occasionally meet their doom is by getting tangled up in long-line fishing gear. And they can eat the bait set out for the desired fish, which makes fishing less efficient and more expensive. But scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently noticed something unusual. They reported their findings at a workshop on shark-deterrence.
100 Years Ago: Whitest Printing Plant in the World
MAY 1958SELF–?“Most of us live behind a wall or smoke-screen which in some degree hides our true thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires, likes and dislikes. But the question of self-disclosure goes deeper than mere willingness or reluctance. People often cannot disclose themselves, even if they would, because they do not know their real selves–what they really want, feel or believe. Karen Horney has called this phenomenon of being a stranger to oneself ‘self-alienation,’ and she finds it characteristic of neurotics. It may be significant of modern society that so many people have taken to the psychoanalyst’s couch to try to know themselves.”
Congress Passes Bill Barring Genetic Discrimination [News]
The House today passed a measure by a whopping 414-to-1 margin that would prohibit health insurers from canceling or denying coverage or hiking premiums based on a genetic predisposition to a specific disease. The legislation, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), also bars employers from using genetic information to hire, fire, promote or make any other employment-related decisions. [More]
Charcoal in Burned Forests No Way to Store Carbon [News]
The boreal forests in the north of Canada, Russia and other countries that ring the Arctic burn every summer after lightning strikes their towering trees, releasing tons of carbon dioxide into the air as they turn to ash and charcoal in the flames. Some scientists have argued, however, that this climate-changing natural disaster might not be all bad from a global warming perspective: Charcoal is a stable way to store carbon in the ground, where the carbon-rich charcoal can safely stay for hundreds if not thousands of years. Or at least that’s the theory of so-called biochar. A new study published today in Science shows that such charcoal may not keep as much carbon in the soil as previously believed.
James Watson, six months later, still apologizing [Sciam Observations Blog]
You’d think James Watson would be pretty good at apologizing by now. [More]
Missing Link of Electronics Discovered: “Memristor” [News]
After nearly 40 years, researchers have discovered a new type of building block for electronic circuits. And there’s at least a chance it will spare you from recharging your phone every other day. Scientists at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, Calif., report in Nature that a new nanometer-scale electric switch “remembers” whether it is on or off after its power is turned off. (A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.)
Researchers believe that the memristor, or memory resistor, might become a useful tool for constructing nonvolatile computer memory, which is not lost when the power goes off, or for keeping the computer industry on pace to satisfy Moore’s law, the exponential growth in processing power every 18 months.
Buried Prejudice: The Bigot in Your Brain [Scientific American Mind]
“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson once told an audience, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery–then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
Jackson’s remark illustrates a basic fact of our social existence, one that even a committed black civil-rights leader cannot escape: ideas that we may not endorse–for example, that a black stranger might harm us but a white one probably would not–can nonetheless lodge themselves in our minds and, without our permission or awareness, color our perceptions, expectations and judgments.
Nutcracker Man Preferred Soft Fruits [60-Second Science]
Podcast Transcript: Some people lie through their teeth. Some lie about their teeth. Our early human cousins seem to have lied with their teeth. Or they at least misled scientists into first thinking that their diet was something other than it was. See, one of our East African relatives had chompers that looked so powerful, scientists nicknamed him “Nutcracker man.” With teeth and jaws so big and strong, everyone assumed that Paranthropus boisei was partial to nuts and seeds and other crunchy fare. [More]
Puzzling Adventures: How to Make Buses More Attractive Than Cars? [Puzzling A…
Like many cities of the North American Sunbelt, Las Gridas is a big grid of two-way roads (three lanes for each direction), some going east-west and some north-south. Most people get around by driving their cars. But gridlock and energy costs have finally driven the normally car-loving culture to reconsider its disdain for buses. [More]
Court Orders U.S. to Stop Keeping Polar Bear Status on Ice [News]
A federal judge Tuesday ordered the Bush administration to stop dragging its feet on the fate of polar bears and decide by May 15 whether declining sea ice in the Arctic threatens their existence. The ruling marks a victory for a coalition of environmentalists–the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)–which sued to force the U.S. Department of the Interior to decide whether to protect the hoary Arctic predators under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which it had committed to do by January 9. [More]
Albert Hofmann, Inventor of LSD, Embarks on Final Trip [News]
Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, inventor of LSD, died yesterday at the age of 102, just 10 days after the 55th anniversary of his notorious bicycle trip while tripping on “acid”. Hofmann, who suffered a heart attack at home in Basel, Switzerland, was the first person to synthesize lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, and the first human known to experience its mind-bending effects. [More]
