Mating Toads can ‘predict earthquakes’ and seismic activity

Common toads appear to be able to sense an impending earthquake and will flee their colony days before the seismic activity strikes.

The evidence comes from a population of toads which left their breeding colony three days before an earthquake that struck L’Aquila in Italy in 2009.

How toads sensed the quake is unclear, but most breeding pairs and males fled.

They reacted despite the colony being 74km from the quake’s epicentre, say biologists in the Journal of Zoology.

It is hard to objectively and quantifiably study how animals respond to seismic activity, in part because earthquakes are rare and unpredictable.

Some studies have been done on how domestic animals respond, but measuring the response of wild animals is more difficult.

Even those that have been shown to react, such as fish, rodents and snakes tend to do so shortly before an earthquakes strikes, rather than days ahead of the event.

However, biologist Dr Rachel Grant of the Open University, in Milton Keynes, UK, was routinely studying the behaviour of various colonies of common toads on a daily basis in Italy around the time a massive earthquake struck.

Her studies included a 29-day period gathering data before, during and after the earthquake that hit Italy on 6 April 2009.

The quake, a 6.3-magnitude event, struck close to L’Aquila city, about 95km (60 miles) north-east of Rome.

Dr Grant was studying toads 74km away in San Ruffino Lake in central Italy, when she recorded the toads behaving oddly.

Five days before the earthquake, the number of male common toads in the breeding colony fell by 96%. …

That is highly unusual for male toads: once they have bred, they normally remain active in large numbers at breeding sites until spawning has finished.

Yet spawning had barely begun at the San Ruffino Lake site before the earthquake struck.

Also, no weather event could be linked to the toads’ disappearance.

Three days before the earthquake, the number of breeding pairs also suddenly dropped to zero.

While spawn was found at the site up to six days before the earthquake, and again six days after it, no spawn was laid during the so-called earthquake period – the time from the first main shock to the last aftershock. …

via BBC – Earth News – Toads can ‘predict earthquakes’ and seismic activity.

“Roaming” Magnetic Fields Found

Weak magnetic fields are “roaming” across the universe, according to a new study that may have solved the mystery of where the huge magnetic fields around galaxies come from.

Galaxies such as our Milky Way have their own large-scale magnetic fields. Although these fields are weak compared to planetary fields, scientists think the galactic versions help establish rates of star formation, guide cosmic rays, and regulate the dynamics of interstellar gas.

Most scientists believe the stronger magnetic fields of today’s adult galaxies grew from weaker “seed” fields. But it’s unclear where these older fields originated.

The two leading theories: The seed fields were created by the movement of charged gas in protogalaxies, or they were produced outside of galaxies by some unseen processes in the early universe.

New observations made with NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope support the idea that the seeds were there all along, even before galaxies themselves.

(Related: “Gamma Ray Telescope Finds First ‘Invisible’ Pulsar.”)

Based on Fermi’s data, “we’ve found that these weak magnetic fields should be everywhere. They should be outside the galaxies, filling the whole universe, even where there are no galaxies, no clusters, no anything,” said study co-author Andrii Neronov of the University of Geneva’s ISDC Centre for Astrophysics in Switzerland.

Since the new findings suggest magnetic fields can form outside galaxies, “perhaps those magnetic fields were created before the galaxies were formed,” Neronov said.

Sowing the Seeds for Galactic Fields

According to the theory, primordial seed fields could have been created from charged particles spit out during violent events such as supernovae.

Over time, the theory goes, a seed field could bulk up inside a galaxy, because the galaxy’s slow spin causes charged particles and gases to align along the seed’s magnetic field lines. (Related: “Earth’s Core, Magnetic Field Changing Fast, Study Says.”)

But other seed fields would remain roaming through intergalactic space—and that’s what Neronov and colleagues think they’ve found.

More precisely, the team saw a lack of very high-energy gamma rays in Fermi data on blazars, galaxies with supermassive black holes at their centers that spew jets of particles at near the speed of light. …

via “Roaming” Magnetic Fields Found.

Basiago and Eisenhower reveal “Marsgate” and make case for “Alternative 4”

Independent Mars colony recruits Andrew D. Basiago and Laura Magdalene Eisenhower have confirmed the existence of a secret human survival colony on Mars in a joint appearance on Exopolitics Radio with Alfred Lambremont Webre.

Mr. Basiago, 48, a Cambridge-educated lawyer who practices law in Washington State, was a child participant in the DARPA time travel program Project Pegasus (1968-72) and later teleported to a U.S. base on Mars twice in 1981.Ms. Eisenhower, 36, the great-granddaughter of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was the subject of a sophisticated attempt to recruit her into the secret Mars colony in 2006 that she broke free from after resisting its deeply rooted manipulations and chose to live out her destiny on Earth

They described how the secret Mars colony is funded by black budget military and intelligence sources as a survival mechanism for the human genome in the event that solar flares, nuclear war, or some other cataclysm ends human life on Earth.

In the wide-ranging, three-hour interview, Mr. Basiago termed the cover-up of the Mars colony “Marsgate” and called for a Congressional investigation of the U.S. presence on Mars, with its emphasis on military occupation rather than diplomatic engagement of the indigenous human society living in underground cities beneath the surface of Mars.

Ms. Eisenhower stated that “Alternative 3” – the notion that trillions of dollars of resources should be spent to protect human life by placing it on Mars – should give way to “Alternative 4,” a new public awakening to achieve a sustainable civilization on Earth.

Their historic, interactive exposé of Marsgate on Exopolitics Radio was based on direct personal experience. For Mr. Basiago, this consisted of the two trips that he took to Mars in 1981, when, at age 19, he walked on the surface of the Martian terrain after teleporting there from a CIA facility in El Segundo, California. For Ms. Eisenhower, this consisted of clandestine efforts that were made in 2006, when she was 33, to infiltrate her personal life and recruit her as a member of the secret Mars colony. She was recruited for a mission that would travel to Mars and learned that a colony had been under development there for several decades. It wasn’t until later that she found the connection between the mission and the colony, in very significant ways.

via Basiago and Eisenhower reveal “Marsgate” and make case for “Alternative 4”.

So believable.

Mega-flood triggered cooling 13,000 years ago

Scientists say they have found the trigger of a sharp cooling 13,000 years ago that plunged Europe into a mini ice age.

Mark Bateman from the University of Sheffield in England said a catastrophic flood unleashed from a giant North American lake dumped large amounts of freshwater into the Arctic Ocean.

This led to the shutting down of the Gulf Stream ocean circulation pattern that brings warmth to Europe.

“We’re talking about a lake the size of the UK emptying very quickly,” Bateman told Reuters by telephone. “We don’t know the exact period of time but we’re talking about a catastrophic flood.”

The finding has confirmed past theories about the likely cause of a sudden cooling period called the Younger Dryas when temperatures in Europe, similar to today’s, quickly returned to ice age conditions. The cooling lasted for about 1,400 years.

“Our research shows that if you put a large volume of fresh water into the North Atlantic in a very short space of time, this is what happens,” Bateman said. His team’s work is published in the latest issue of the journal Nature.

The Gulf Stream acts like a conveyer belt by bringing warm water from the tropics to Europe while cold salty water sinks to the depths in the far north. This “overturning” circulation draws in yet more warm water from the south.

Climate scientists fear rapid global warming could trigger a sharp increase in the amount of meltwater from Greenland. This surge in freshwater could trigger a tipping point that overwhelms the Gulf Stream, shutting it down and likely plunging Europe into another deep freeze.

via Mega-flood triggered cooling 13,000 years ago: scientists | Reuters.

The archaeology of Christianity – The bones of St. Paul

For centuries, the faithful have believed the bones of St. Paul, who helped spread the Christian faith after the death of Christ, were in a tomb under the Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome. Though the belief has seldom been questioned, Vatican archaeologists recently carbon-dated the remains for the first time and found that they date from the first or second century.

“This seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that they are the mortal remains of Apostle Paul,” Pope Benedict XVI said as he announced the findings. In addition to the bone fragments, archaeologists found grains of incense, a piece of purple linen with gold sequins, and a blue fabric with linen filaments.

via The archaeology of Christianity – Science- msnbc.com.

Why do they believe this is St. Paul? This could be the best archaeological evidence ever. I’d like to see an independent confirmation of this result. By the way, if Vatican archaeologists accept carbon dating, then they should admit that the Earth is half a million times older than Creationists claim.

Related article from 2009:

Dresden, Germany – Responding to the claim by Pope Benedict XVI that the bones of St Paul have been found in Rome, a Dutch expert, Rengert Elburg, said Monday this can never be proven.

Elburg, an expert on archaeological study of old bones and organic remains for the government of the German state of Saxony, told the German Press Agency dpa in an interview, ‘It’s impossible to establish that it’s him.’

Even a genetic analysis of the bones in a sarcophagus marked as Paul’s would reveal nothing, because there were no proven descendants whose DNA could be compared.

‘But the bones could tell you the sex and age of death of the person,’ he said. A face could be reconstructed if a skull were in the grave. ‘But we don’t know how Paul looked, so that doesn’t help identify the body,’ he said.

Elburg said scientists were likely to check for links to the historical account of the beheading of St Paul, the author of copious letters and first interpreter of Christianity.

‘Traces of beheading can be identified with absolute certainty,’ he said.

The cut was usually found between the third and fourth vertebrae.

Elburg counselled maximum precision in opening the sarcophagus, saying, ‘It will be comparable to opening the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh.’ Fabric in a coffin could fall apart at a touch.

He said dry, outside air would not damage fabric or the bones. The presence of any clothing was likely to depend on whether the sarcophagus had been hermetically sealed for 20 centuries.

‘Roman fabrics in the time of St Paul were of very high quality. They had wool, linen and even silk,’ he said.

The pagan Romans embalmed their bodies, but Christians did not, he added. ‘Doubtless nothing like that was done with this early Christian person,’ he said.

The Pope said Sunday that a probe through a tiny hole in the sarcophagus at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Wall proved they contained remains from the time of Christ.

- monstersandcritics

Liquid asset: The damp side of the moon

IT IS the best of times and the worst of times for lunar scientists. “We’ve got a revolution going on in our understanding of the lunar surface,” says Rick Elphic of NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Three recent missions have found an unexpectedly large supply of water on the moon that could both quench the thirst of future lunar dwellers and produce fuel for missions to other places in the solar system.

Yet the prospect of astronauts getting there any time soon is receding fast. In February, President Barack Obama announced his intention to cancel NASA’s Constellation programme, which included plans to get astronauts back to the moon by the early 2020s. His decision leaves the US without a reliable means of transport to low Earth orbit, let alone the moon.

Even so, the 2010s are shaping up to be a boom time for lunar science. The Obama administration’s plans give strong financial support to robotic exploration of the solar system, including the moon. NASA already has four robotic missions in the works, designed to explore the moon’s atmosphere, gravity and seismology. And one of the three finalists to be NASA’s next medium-sized mission is a robot called MoonRise, which would land in the vast South Pole-Aitken basin, dig up soil samples and return them to Earth. China and India, too, are planning follow-ups to their successful Chang’e and Chandrayaan orbiters, and Russia and Germany have missions in development.

What has reinvigorated lunar science most of all are the discoveries of water made last year by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), as well as India’s Chandrayaan-1.

“Not only is there water on the moon,” says Carle Pieters, the chief scientist for the Moon Mineralogy Mapper on Chandrayaan-1, “but there are three different kinds of water.”

Pieters is referring to the discovery in 2008 of trace amounts of water in volcanic glasses from deep in the moon’s interior, surface water detected by Chandrayaan-1, and buried water at the poles dug up by LCROSS. “They are all different, and they all have different sources and implications,” she says.

“This is not your father’s moon,” says Greg Delory, a space scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Rather than a dead and unchanging world, it could be a very dynamic and interesting one.”

via Liquid asset: The damp side of the moon – space – 01 April 2010 – New Scientist.

MIT makes significant step toward lightweight batteries

A team of researchers at MIT has made significant progress on a technology that could lead to batteries with up to three times the energy density of any battery that currently exists.

Yang Shao-Horn, an MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering, says that many groups have been pursuing work on lithium-air batteries, a technology that has great potential for achieving great gains in energy density. But there has been a lack of understanding of what kinds of electrode materials could promote the electrochemical reactions that take place in these batteries.

Lithium-oxygen (also known as lithium-air) batteries are similar in principle to the lithium-ion batteries that now dominate the field of portable electronics and are a leading contender for electric vehicles. But because lithium-air batteries replace the heavy conventional compounds in such batteries with a carbon-based air electrode and flow of air, the batteries themselves can be much lighter. That’s why leading companies, including IBM and General Motors, have committed to major research initiatives on lithium-air technology.

In a paper published this week in the journal Electrochemical and Solid-State Letters, Shao-Horn, along with some of her students and visiting professor Hubert Gasteiger, reported on a study showing that electrodes with gold or platinum as a catalyst show a much higher level of activity and thus a higher efficiency than simple carbon electrodes in these batteries. In addition, this new work sets the stage for further research that could lead to even better electrode materials, perhaps alloys of gold and platinum or other metals, or metallic oxides, and to less expensive alternatives.

… Why it matters: Lightweight batteries that can deliver lots of energy are crucial for a variety of applications — for example, improving the range of electric cars. For that reason, even modest increases in a battery’s energy-density rating — a measure of the amount of energy that can be delivered for a given weight — are important advances.

via MIT makes significant step toward lightweight batteries.

Engineers turn noise into vision

A new technique for revealing images of hidden objects may one day allow pilots to peer through fog and doctors to see more precisely into the human body without surgery.

Developed by Princeton engineers, the method relies on the surprising ability to clarify an image using rays of light that would typically make the image unrecognizable, such as those scattered by clouds, human tissue or murky water.

In their experiments, the researchers restored an obscured image into a clear pattern of numbers and lines. The process was akin to improving poor TV reception using the distorted, or “noisy,” part of the broadcast signal.

“Normally, noise is considered a bad thing,” said Jason Fleischer, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Princeton. “But sometimes noise and signal can interact, and the energy from the noise can be used to amplify the signal. For weak signals, such as distant or dark images, actually adding noise can improve their quality.”

He said the ability to boost signals this way could potentially improve a broad range of signal technologies, including the sonograms doctors use to visualize fetuses and the radar systems pilots use to navigate through storms and turbulence. The method also potentially could be applied in technologies such as night vision goggles, inspection of underwater structures such as levies and bridge supports, and in steganography, the practice of masking signals for security purposes.

The findings were reported online March 14 in Nature Photonics. …

The crucial portion of the experiment came when Fleischer and Dylov placed another object in the path of the laser beam. Just in front of the receiver, they mounted a crystal of strontium barium niobate (SBN), a material that belongs to a class of substances known as “nonlinear” for their ability to alter the behavior of light in strange ways. In this case, the nonlinear crystal mixed different parts of the picture, allowing signal and noise to interact.

By adjusting an electrical voltage across the piece of SBN, the researchers were able to tune in a clear image on the monitor. The SBN gathered the rays that had been scattered by the translucent plastic and used that energy to clarify the weak image of the lines and numbers.   …

“We used noise to feed signals,” Dylov said. “It’s as if you took a picture of a person in the dark, and we made the person brighter and the background darker so you could see them. The contrast makes the person stand out.”

The technique, known as “stochastic resonance,” only works for the right amount of noise, as too much can overwhelm the signal. It has been observed in a variety of fields, ranging from neuroscience to energy harvesting, but never has been used this way for imaging.

Based on the results of their experiment, Fleischer and Dylov developed a new theory for how noisy signals move through nonlinear materials, which combines ideas from the fields of statistical physics, information theory and optics.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Air Force.

via Engineers turn noise into vision – Princeton Engineering.

Video here.

Plastic electronics could slash the cost of solar panels

A new technique developed by Princeton University engineers for producing electricity-conducting plastics could dramatically lower the cost of manufacturing solar panels.

By overcoming technical hurdles to producing plastics that are translucent, malleable and able to conduct electricity, the researchers have opened the door to broader use of the materials in a wide range of electrical devices.

With mounting concerns about global warming and energy demand, plastics could represent a low-cost alternative to indium tin oxide (ITO), an expensive conducting material currently used in solar panels, according to the researchers.

“Conductive polymers [plastics] have been around for a long time, but processing them to make something useful degraded their ability to conduct electricity,” said Yueh-Lin Loo, an associate professor of chemical engineering, who led the Princeton team. “We have figured out how to avoid this trade-off. We can shape the plastics into a useful form while maintaining high conductivity.”

A multi-institutional team reported on its new technique in a paper published online March 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The area of research, known as “organic electronics” because plastics are carbon-based like living creatures, holds promise for producing new types of electronic devices and new ways of manufacturing existing technologies, but has been hampered by the mysterious loss of conductivity associated with moldable plastics.

“People didn’t understand what was happening,” said Loo, who co-wrote the paper. “We discovered that in making the polymers moldable, their structures are trapped in a rigid form, which prevented electrical current from traveling through them.”

Once they understood the underlying problem, Loo and her colleagues developed a way to relax the structure of the plastics by treating them with an acid after they were processed into the desired form.

via Plastic electronics could slash the cost of solar panels – Princeton Engineering.

Neuroscientists show how brain stores memories of specific fears

The brain is capable of holding and retrieving memories for specific fears, revealing a more sophisticated storage and recall capacity than previously thought, neuroscientists have found. The study, which appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience, may have implications for treating post-traumatic stress syndrome—as scientists begin to understand how different fears are stored in the brain, they can move toward addressing specific fear memories.

The research was conducted by researchers at New York University’s Center for Neural Science, the Department of Psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine–Bellevue Hospital Center, the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Krakow, Poland, Université Paris-Sud, and the Emotional Brain Institute at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research.

The research focused on the brain’s amygdala, which has previously been shown to store fear memories. However, prior studies have indicated that the amygdala does not discriminate among the different threats it holds and processes. In other words, whether you are afraid of dogs because you were once bitten by a dog or you are afraid of pizza because you once nearly choked to death eating it, all the amygdala remembers is that both of these experiences were scary. By contrast, other brain areas, such as cortex, ensures that all other aspects of these fearful events in your life are remembered.

The scientists on the Nature Neuroscience study sought to determine if there were differences in how the amygdala processes and remembers fears. To do so, they focused on a process called memory consolidation in which an experience is captured, or encoded, then stored. Once consolidation occurs, memories may be long lasting—one experience may create memories that last a lifetime. However, whenever recalled, memories become labile—that is, susceptible to changes. This process is called reconsolidation. In life, reconsolidation allows updating existing memories. But this process also serves as a valuable methodological tool as it lets researchers control the modification of memories.

When it comes to developing fear memories, one model posits that during a fear experience, a neutral stimulus (e.g., a musical passage) becomes associated with a negative encounter (e.g., a dog bite). Therefore, future occurrences of this neutral stimulus, or conditioned stimulus (CS), forewarns the onset of the negative encounter, or unconditioned stimulus (US). Previous research shows that the association between a CS and a US is processed and stored in the amygdala.

To replicate this process, the researchers devised an experiment using laboratory rats. In it, they paired two distinct audio tones, which served as the neutral stimulus, or conditioned stimulus (CS), with mild electric shocks to different parts of the rats’ bodies. As a result, the rats linked a mild shock to a certain part of their bodies with a certain tone.

Under the memory reconsolidation model, exposing an organism to any aspect of the learned experience brings this memory back to mind and makes it susceptible to changes. Thus, if two distinct tones were each paired with two distinct electric shocks and if the amygdala does not discriminate among different threats, then re-exposing a rat to any of these shocks should cause lability of all fear memories stored in the amygdala.

However, the Nature Neuroscience study yielded quite different results. The researchers found that re-exposing a rat to a particular shock (that is, one applied to a certain part of the body), followed by an injection of an antibiotic known to disrupt reconsolidation processes, impaired only these associations that were linked to this particular shock. Despite the disruption of one type of fear memory, rats were still able to express fear behavior to the tone which had been paired with a shock applied to another part of the body.

The finding demonstrates that the amygdala makes distinctions among the fear memories it holds and retrieves.

via Neuroscientists show how brain stores memories of specific fears.