Hawaiian Submarine Canyons Are Hotspots of Biodiversity and Biomass for Seafloor Animal Communities

Underwater canyons have long been considered important habitats for marine life, but until recently, only canyons on continental margins had been intensively studied. Researchers from Hawaii Pacific University (HPU) and the Universtiy of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) have now conducted the first extensive study of canyons in the oceanic Hawaiian Archipelago and found that these submarine canyons support especially abundant and unique communities of megafauna (large animals such as fish, shrimp, crabs, sea cucumbers, and sea urchins) including 41 species not observed in other habitats in the Hawaiian Islands.
The research is published in the the March issue of the journal Marine Ecology.

The researchers used both visual and video surveys from 36 submersible dives (using UHM's Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory submersibles Pisces IV and Pisces V) to characterize slope and canyon communities of animals at depths of 350-1500 meters along the margins of four islands of the Hawaiian Archipelago. The coastlines of Oahu and Molokai were selected as examples of high, mountainous islands with large supplies of terrestrial and marine organic matter which can be exported down slopes and canyons to provide food to deep-sea communities. Nihoa Island and Maro Reef were chosen to represent low islands and atolls that are likely to export less organic matter to feed the deep-sea fauna.

Eric Vetter, the lead author of this paper and a Professor of Marine Biology from HPU, had previously studied four canyon systems off the coast of California and found that the productive waters along southern California had resulted in the delivery and accumulation of substantial amounts of organic material. "Craig Smith (Professor of Oceanography at UHM and co-author of this study) and I wondered if the same dramatic contrast in benthic food resources between canyon and non-canyon settings seen in continental margins would also occur on tropical oceanic islands," says Vetter. "We reasoned that the low productivity in tropical regions would result in reduced source material for organic enrichment in canyons and that steep bathymetry combined with curving coastlines would limit the area over which material could be transported to individual canyons. On the other hand we thought that any amount of organic enrichment might have a measureable effect given the very low background productivity."

Canyon systems can enhance abundance and diversity of marine life by providing more varied and complex physical habitats, and by concentrating organic detritus moving along shore and downslope. On most continental margins, the continental shelf and slope are dominated by soft, low-relief sediments; in contrast, canyons crossing these margins often have steep slopes, rocky outcrops, and faster currents that can support fauna with diverse habitat requirements. The margins of oceanic islands generally are steeper than continental margins, making the physical contrast between canyon and non-canyon habitats potentially less dramatic than along continents. "We wanted to learn, given all of these differences, if tropical oceanic islands would be regions of special biological significance, particularly in terms of productivity and biodiversity," says Vetter.

To conduct the research off Oahu, Molokai, and Maro Reef, Vetter, Smith and UHM Doctoral student Fabio De Leo took turns in the submersibles counting marine life on the ocean bottom using visual transects and recording results into a voice recorder. The survey off of Nihoa Island was conducted using a video recorder attached to the submersible. The results of the 36 surveys showed that the highly mobile megafauna (like fish, sharks, shrimp and squid) were much more abundant in the canyons than on the open slopes at all depths studied. This suggests that canyons provide an especially good habitat for mobile species that are able to feed on accumulated organic matter but can escape the physical disturbances in canyons resulting from high currents and mobile sediments (e.g., migrating sand ripples).

"Perhaps the biggest surprise of this study was the large number of species, 41, that we found only in canyon habitats," says Smith. "This suggests that canyons support a substantial specialized fauna that would not exist in the Hawaiian archipelago in the absence of canyons. Thus, submarine canyons are contributing uniquely to biodiversity in the islands and merit careful attention for environmental protection and management."

The elevated abundance and biodiversity of megafauna (especially highly mobile species of fish and crustaceans) in canyons suggests that those environments experience greater food availability, and may provide critical habitat for commercially important bottom fish and invertebrate stocks. "From a conservation standpoint, these regions would be ideal candidates to become Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), especially due to the higher turnover of species diversity when compared to regular slopes," says De Leo. "If we prove that the animals are using the canyons as a feeding ground because the organic debris accumulates there and nowhere else outside the canyons, that's another argument for an MPA." Adds Smith, "if we allow the Hawaiian canyons to be overexploited or impacted by human activities such as dredge-spoil dumping, there is likely to be a significant drop in biodiversity in the deep waters of Hawaii. Clearly, canyon habitats merit special attention for inclusion in Hawaiian MPAs."

Future studies by the team of the Hawaiian canyon fauna include analyses of the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in shrimp, urchins and other bottom feeders to identify their main food sources. Because different potential food sources, such as land plants, seafloor algae and phytoplankton, often have different stable isotope "signatures," these analyses will help the researchers to understand what exactly is fueling the rich animal assemblages in the canyons. "We need biochemical proof that the canyons are really channeling this type of material," says DeLeo. "Carbon and nitrogen isotopic signatures could tell the difference between the detrital plant material and the phytoplankton material pools, so you can see if the animal in the canyon is eating phytoplankton cells coming from pelagic production or macroalgae coming from the coast."

Vetter says that their current research is also formulating conceptual models that will allow the researchers to predict which features associated with different canyon systems act to influence biological patterns including animal abundance and diversity. "DeLeo's PhD research will include data on megafauna and macrofauna (smaller animals living in the sediments) patterns in canyons along the U.S. West Coast, Hawaii, and New Zealand, which should make important strides here."

This research was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ocean Exploration Office, by the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at UHM, and by the Census of Diversity of Abyssal Marine Life (CeDAMar). We also thank Capes-Fulbright for a fellowship for DeLeo.

World's Deepest Known Undersea Volcanic Vents Discovered

A British scientific expedition has discovered the world's deepest undersea volcanic vents, known as 'black smokers', 3.1 miles (5000 metres) deep in the Cayman Trough in the Caribbean. Using a deep-diving vehicle remotely controlled from the Royal Research Ship James Cook, the scientists found slender spires made of copper and iron ores on the seafloor, erupting water hot enough to melt lead, nearly half a mile deeper than anyone has seen before.
Deep-sea vents are undersea springs where superheated water erupts from the ocean floor. They were first seen in the Pacific three decades ago, but most are found between one and two miles deep. Scientists are fascinated by deep-sea vents because the scalding water that gushes from them nourishes lush colonies of deep-sea creatures, which has forced scientists to rewrite the rules of biology. Studying the life-forms that thrive in such unlikely havens is providing insights into patterns of marine life around the world, the possibility of life on other planets, and even how life on Earth began.

The expedition to the Cayman Trough is being run by Drs Doug Connelly, Jon Copley, Bramley Murton, Kate Stansfield and Professor Paul Tyler, all from Southampton, UK. They used a robot submarine called Autosub6000, developed by engineers at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in Southampton, to survey the seafloor of the Cayman Trough in unprecedented detail. The team then launched another deep-sea vehicle called HyBIS, developed by team member Murton and Berkshire-based engineering company Hydro-Lek Ltd, to film the world's deepest vents for the first time.

"Seeing the world's deepest black-smoker vents looming out of the darkness was awe-inspiring," says Copley, a marine biologist at the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES) based at the NOC and leader of the overall research programme. "Superheated water was gushing out of their two-storey high mineral spires, more than three miles deep beneath the waves." He added: "We are proud to show what British underwater technology can achieve in exploring this frontier -- the UK subsea technology sector is worth £4 billion per year and employs 40 000 people, which puts it on a par with our space industry."

The Cayman Trough is the world's deepest undersea volcanic rift, running across the seafloor of the Caribbean. The pressure three miles deep at the bottom of the Trough -- 500 times normal atmospheric pressure -- is equivalent to the weight of a large family car pushing down on every square inch of the creatures that live there, and on the undersea vehicles that the scientists used to reveal this extreme environment. The researchers will now compare the marine life in the abyss of the Cayman Trough with that known from other deep-sea vents, to understand the web of life throughout the deep ocean. The team will also study the chemistry of the hot water gushing from the vents, and the geology of the undersea volcanoes where these vents are found, to understand the fundamental geological and geochemical processes that shape our world.

"We hope our discovery will yield new insights into biogeochemically important elements in one of the most extreme naturally occurring environments on our planet," says geochemist Doug Connelly of the NOC, who is the Principal Scientist of the expedition.

"It was like wandering across the surface of another world," says geologist Bramley Murton of the NOC, who piloted the HyBIS underwater vehicle around the world's deepest volcanic vents for the first time. "The rainbow hues of the mineral spires and the fluorescent blues of the microbial mats covering them were like nothing I had ever seen before."

The expedition will continue to explore the depths of the Cayman Trough until 20th April.

In addition to the scientists from Southampton, the team aboard the ship includes researchers from the University of Durham in the UK, the University of North Carolina Wilmington and the University of Texas in the US, and the University of Bergen in Norway. The expedition members are also working with colleagues ashore at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Duke University in the US to analyse the deep-sea vents.

The expedition is part of a research project funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council to study the world's deepest undersea volcanoes. The research team will return to the Cayman Trough for a second expedition using the UK's deep-diving remotely-operated vehicle Isis, once a research ship is scheduled for the next phase of their project.

Additional information

(1) The expedition aboard the RRS James Cook began in Port of Spain, Trinidad on 21st March and ends in Montego Bay, Jamaica on 21st April. It is part of a £462k research project funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council.

(2) The RRS James Cook is the UK's newest ocean-going research ship, operated by the Natural Environment Research Council. The current expedition is the 44th voyage of the ship.

Researchers Shed Light on Ancient Assyrian Tablets

A cache of cuneiform tablets unearthed by a team led by a University of Toronto archaeologist has been found to contain a largely intact Assyrian treaty from the early 7th century BCE.
"The tablet is quite spectacular. It records a treaty -- or covenant -- between Esarhaddon, King of the Assyrian Empire and a secondary ruler who acknowledged Assyrian power. The treaty was confirmed in 672 BCE at elaborate ceremonies held in the Assyrian royal city of Nimrud (ancient Kalhu). In the text, the ruler vows to recognize the authority of Esarhaddon's successor, his son Ashurbanipal," said Timothy Harrison, professor of near eastern archaeology in the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations and director of U of T's Tayinat Archaeological Project (TAP).

"The treaties were designed to secure Ashurbanipal's accession to the throne and avoid the political crisis that transpired at the start of his father's reign. Esarhaddon came to power when his brothers assassinated their father, Sennacherib."

The 43 by 28 centimetre tablet -- known as the Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon -- contains about 650 lines and is in a very fragile state. "It will take months of further work before the document will be fully legible," added Harrison. "These tablets are like a very complex puzzle, involving hundreds of pieces, some missing. It is not just a matter of pulling the tablet out, sitting down and reading. We expect to learn much more as we restore and analyze the document."

The researchers hope to glean information about Assyria's imperial relations with the west during a critical period, the early 7th century BCE. It marked the rise of the Phrygians and other rival powers in highland Anatolia -- now modern-day Turkey -- along the northwestern frontier of the Assyrian empire, and coincided with the divided monarchy of Biblical Israel, as well as an era of increased contact between the Levantine peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt, as well as the Greeks of the Aegean world.

The cache of tablets -- which date back to the Iron Age -- were unearthed in August 2009 during excavations at the site of an ancient temple at Tell Tayinat, located in southeastern Turkey. A wealth of religious paraphernalia -- including gold, bronze and iron implements, libation vessels and ornately decorated ritual objects -- was also uncovered.

TAP is an international project, involving researchers from a dozen countries, and more than 20 universities and research institutes. It operates in close collaboration with the Ministry of Culture of Turkey, and provides research opportunities and training for both graduate and undergraduate students. The project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP), and receives support from the University of Toronto.

Robotics

Sony Dream Robot (SDR-4X)


Sony Dream Robot SDR-4X is a humanoid robot that can walk, move, and even dance. It is only 23 inches tall and weighs 14 pounds.

Powered by a two of RISC processors, the SDR-4X is capable of 38 separate degrees of movement (older version SDR-3X had only 26). SDR-4X has a real-time adaptive motion control system and better communication technology including facial recognition and complex speech recognition.

Newer version SRD-4X-II has three RISC processors and has advanced motion control, illusion of higher intelligence (vocabulary of approximately 20,000 words), better safety and identification features. SDR-4X-II came in April 02, 2003, lets see when we will see the newer version.

HRP-2m Choromet HRP-2m Choromet



The Choromet is expected to be available from General Robotics in September, with price which is less then five grands. The Choromet is about 13-3/4 inches tall, and is capable of walking upright on two legs. Four companies in Japan have created a relatively low-cost, user-programmable humanoid robot targeting educational and research applications. The HRP-2m Choromet uses technology from Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and is user-programmable thanks to open software running on a user-space real-time Linux implementation. AIST hopes Choromet's ability to run software-based movement programs on a real-time Linux platform will enable researchers and schools to experiment with the effectiveness of humanoid robot motion pattern applications. The Choromet is based on several technologies developed by AIST, including A business-card sized SBC (single board computer) 240MHz SH-4 processor, 32MB of RAM, "ARTLinux," an operating system that provides a user-space real-time Linux environment. Humanoid motion application software based on OpenHRP (Humanoid Robotics Project) Some other Choromet features are: Triaxial force sensors on legs, Accelerometer and gyroscope in trunk, and real-time sensor feedback. More info at http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS8377820601.html

ASIMO Humanoid Robot



ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative MObility) is a bipadel humanoid robot from Honda This robot has been evolving since its inception in 1986. Current version of ASIMO is 1.2 meter tall and weighs 43 Kg. This size enables ASIMO to actually perform tasks within the realm of a human living environment. It also walks in a smooth fashion which closely resembles that of a human being.
Advanced Walking Technology Predicted Movement Control (for predicting the next move and shifting the center of gravity accordingly) is combined with existing walking control know-how to create i-WALK (intelligent real-time flexible walking) technology, permitting smooth changes of direction. The latest updates on the ASIMO robot are available at Honda .
Following image gives the different version of this robot.


BigDog the Mule



Boston Dynamics has created BigDog the robotic pack mule which according to them is "the most advanced quadruped robot on Earth!" BigDog can carry four infantry backpacks while keeping its balance over different type of terrains. The following freaky video (28MB WMV) shows BigDog walking through mud, over slippery snow, over rocks, up a hill, and even keeps itself from toppling over when it's being kicked! BigDog stands about waist high, can carry 165 lbs (75 kg), can walk through most terrain and can always keep its balance. The on-board computer controls locomotion, monitors external & internal sensors and keeps itself balanced. A gasoline engine powers BigDog's hydraulic system for actuating the hydraulically controlled legs.



http://www.botmag.com/

All for One and One for All: Computer Model Reveals Neurons Coordinating Their Messaging, Yielding Clues to How the Brain Works

There is strength in numbers if you want to get your voice heard. But how to do you get your say if you are in the minority? That's a dilemma faced not only by the citizens of a democracy but also by some neurons in the brain.
Although they only account for a fraction of the synapses in the visual cortex, neurons in the thalamus get their message across loud and clear by coordination -- simultaneously hitting the "send" button -- according to a computer simulation developed by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Their findings, published in the April 2, 2010 issue of the journal Science, hold important clues to how the brain encodes and processes information, which can be applied to a wide variety of applications, from understanding psychiatric disorders to the development of novel pharmaceuticals and new ways of handling information by computers or communication networks.

Historically, neuroscientists have been limited to recording the activity of single brain cells, which led to the widely accepted view that neurons communicate with each other through volleys of electrical spikes and that they increase the average rate of spiking to "speak up."

But communication between neurons is not limited to one-on-one interactions. Instead, any given cell receives signals from hundreds of cells, which send their messages through thousands of synapses, specialized junctions that allow signals to pass from one neuron to the next.

"Unfortunately, we don't have the technology yet to actually measure what all these neurons are saying to the recipient cell, which would require recording simultaneously from hundreds of cells, " says graduate student and first author Hsi-Ping Wang. "For this reason, nobody could answer a very basic question that's been puzzling neuroscientist for decades, which is: 'How many neurons or synapses does it take to reliably send a signal from point A to point B?'"

This question is particularly pressing for the thalamus, the central switchboard that processes and distributes incoming sensory information to all parts of the cortex. Thalamic input only accounts for five percent of the signals that so-called spiny stellate cells in the cortex receive, even though they drive a good portion of activity throughout the cerebral cortex.

"That is a paradox," says Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Terrence J. Sejnowski, Ph.D., professor and head of the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory. "How can so few synapses have such a big impact? If the average spiking rate were the determining factor, thalamic input would be drowned out by the other 95 percent of the inputs from other cortical cells."

Based on the assumption that the brain cares about the reliability and precision of spikes, Sejnowki's team developed a realistic computer model of a spiny stellate cell and the signals it receives through its roughly 6,000 synapses. "We found that it is not the number of spikes that's relevant but rather how many spikes arrive at the same time," says Sejnowski.

"Surprisingly, our model predicts that it only takes about 30 synapses out of 6,000 firing simultaneously to create extremely reliable signaling," explains Wang, "and our prediction lines up with currently available in vivo measurements and understanding. You could have all 6,000 synapses firing at the same time, but it would be a waste of resources."

The researchers hope that their findings will give them new insight into the holy grail of neurobiology: decoding the neural code or language of the brain. If the eye receives the same visual information under identical conditions over and over again, one would expect that the signal, the series of generated spikes or bits, is essentially the same.

"But it's not known whether that happens under natural conditions, and it's technically very difficult to measure, " says senior researcher and co-author Donald Spencer, Ph.D. "That's where the power of computational neurobiology really comes to bear on otherwise intractable questions."

"Applying theories of engineering to the study of the brain has helped us gain new insight into how neurons communicate with each other," says Wang. "On the other hand, there are certain things that the brain does in unique ways that are completely different from how computers work. A better understanding of the brain allows us the capture these algorithms and could very well affect the things engineers do in everyday life."

Jean-Marc Fellous, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and Applied Mathematics at the University of Arizona, also contributed to the work.

The work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

An Archaeological Mystery in a Half-Ton Lead Coffin

n the ruins of a city that was once Rome's neighbor, archaeologists last summer found a 1,000-pound lead coffin.
Who or what is inside is still a mystery, said Nicola Terrenato, the University of Michigan professor of classical studies who leads the project -- the largest American dig in Italy in the past 50 years.

The sarcophagus will soon be transported to the American Academy in Rome, where engineers will use heating techniques and tiny cameras in an effort to gain insights about the contents without breaking the coffin itself.

"We're very excited about this find," Terrenato said. "Romans as a rule were not buried in coffins to begin with and when they did use coffins, they were mostly wooden. There are only a handful of other examples from Italy of lead coffins from this age -- the second, third or fourth century A.D. We know of virtually no others in this region."

This one is especially unusual because of its size.

"It's a sheet of lead folded onto itself an inch thick," he said. "A thousand pounds of metal is an enormous amount of wealth in this era. To waste so much of it in a burial is pretty unusual."

Was the deceased a soldier? A gladiator? A bishop? All are possibilities, some more remote than others, Terrenato said. Researchers will do their best to examine the bones and any "grave goods" or Christian symbols inside the container in an effort to make a determination.

"It's hard to predict what's inside, because it's the only example of its kind in the area," Terrenato said. "I'm trying to keep my hopes within reason."

Human remains encased in lead coffins tend to be well preserved, if difficult to get to. Researchers want to avoid breaking into the coffin. The amount of force necessary to break through the lead would likely damage the contents. Instead, they will first use thermography and endoscopy. Thermography involves heating the coffin by a few degrees and monitoring the thermal response. Bones and any artifacts buried with them would have different thermal responses, Terrenato said. Endoscopy involves inserting a small camera into the coffin. But how well that works depends on how much dirt has found its way into the container over the centuries.

If these approaches fail, the researchers could turn to an MRI scan -- an expensive option that would involve hauling the half-ton casket to a hospital.

The dig that unearthed this find started in summer 2009 and continues through 2013. Each year, around 75 researchers from around the nation and world, including a dozen U-M undergraduate students, spend two months on the project at the ancient city of Gabii (pronounced "gabby").

The site of Gabii, situated on undeveloped land 11 miles east of Rome in modern-day Lazio, was a major city that pre-dates Rome but seems to have waned as the Roman Empire grew.

Studying Gabii gives researchers a glimpse into pre-Roman life and offers clues to how early Italian cities formed. It also allows them broader access to more substantial archaeological layers or strata. In Rome, layers of civilization were built on top of each other, and archaeologists are not able or allowed to disturb them.

"In Rome, so often, there's something in the way, so we have to get lucky," Terrenato said. "In Gabii, they should all be lucky spots because there's nothing in the way."

Indeed, Terrenato and others were surprised to find something as significant as this coffin so soon.

"The finding of the lead coffin was exhilarating," said Allison Zarbo, a senior art history major who graduates this spring.

Zarbo didn't mind that after the researchers dug up the coffin once, they had to pile the dirt back on to hide it from looters overnight.

"The fact that we had to fill the hole was not so much of a burden as a relief!" Zarbo said. "For academia to lose priceless artifacts that have been found fully in context would be very damaging to our potential knowledge."

Students spent most of their time pick-axing, shoveling, and manning the wheelbarrows, said Bailey Benson, a junior who is double majoring in classical archaeology and art history.

"By the end of the day, not even a 20-minute shower can remove all the dirt and grime you get covered in," Benson said. "It's hard but satisfying work. How many people can say they uncovered an ancient burial?"

This research is funded in part by the National Geographic Society. The managing director of the project is Jeffrey Becker, assistant professor of classics at McMaster University. The field director leading the coffin studies is independent researcher Anna Gallone. The Italian State Archaeological Service (Soprintendenza di Roma) is authorizing and facilitating the project

Ancient Fossil Flea-Like Creature: Rare Body Parts Find Provides Vital Clues to Identity

The fossil, illustrated without the shell and showing the soft-parts, including limbs and eyes. (Credit: David J. Siveter, Derek E. G. Briggs, Derek J. Siveter and Mark D. Sutton)

A geologist from the University of Leicester is part of a team that has uncovered an ancient water flea-like creature from 425 million years ago -- only the third of its kind ever to be discovered in ancient rocks.

Professor David Siveter, of the Department of Geology at the University of Leicester worked with Professor Derek Siveter at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Professor Derek Briggs at Yale University USA and Dr Mark Sutton at Imperial College to make the rare discovery.

The specimen, which was found in rocks in Herefordshire, represents a new species of ostracod, and has been named Nasunaris flata. Like water-fleas and shrimps, ostracods belong to the group of animals called Crustacea. The find is important because the fossil has been found with its soft parts preserved inside the shell.

Today its descendents are common, and inhabit ponds, rivers and lakes and many parts of the seas and oceans, having first appeared on Earth about 500 million years ago.

Geologists find ostracods useful in order to help recreate past environments- the type of ostracod found in a rock sample would, for example, help to determine a picture of ancient conditions like water depth and salinity.

The study is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. and in Planet Earth, the online journal of the Natural Environment Research Council.

Professor David Siveter: "Most fossil ostracod species are known only from their shells. You need exceptional conditions to preserve the soft body- there are only two other known examples of ancient fossil ostracods where the complete soft parts of the animal are preserved along with the shell."

Professor Siveter and colleagues were able to identify the 5mm-long fossil, its body and appendages inside the shell, including the antennae and also a set of paired eyes.

The ostracod was so well preserved that the team managed to spot the Bellonci organ, a sensory structure observed in modern species which protrudes out of the middle eye located at the front of the head. 'This is the first time the Bellonci organ is observed in fossil ostracods,' says David Siveter.

Had the soft body parts not been preserved, the scientists were likely to misidentify the fossil based on the shell record alone, claims Professor Siveter.

Scientists to Unearth Ice Age Secrets from Preserved Tree Rings

New Zealand's Kauri trees can measure up to four metres wide and live for up to 2,000 years. (Credit: Chris Turney; Image courtesy of University of Oxford)

Oxford University is involved in a research project to unearth 30,000 year old climate records, before they are lost forever. The rings of preserved kauri trees, hidden in New Zealand's peat bogs, hold the secret to climate fluctuations spanning back to the end of the last Ice Age.
The team, led by Exeter University, has been awarded a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council to carry out carbon dating and other analyses of the kauri tree rings. The trees store an immense amount of information about rapid and extreme climate change in the past. For instance, wide ring widths are associated with cool dry summer conditions. The scientists believe their findings will help us understand what future climate change may bring.

Tree rings are now known to be an excellent resource for extracting very precise and detailed data on atmospheric carbon from a particular time period. Therefore this study could help plug a large gap in our knowledge of climate change by extending historical weather records that only date back to the mid-nineteenth century.

There is nowhere else in the world with such a rich resource of ancient wood that spans such a large period of time. The ancient kauri logs are of enormous dimensions, up to several metres across, and have the potential to provide new detailed information about rapid, extreme and abrupt climate changes at a time when there was significant human migration throughout the globe.

While various records exist for historic climate change, such as those derived from ice cores, there is no easy way of correlating these records. The research will focus on the last 30,000 years, but some trees date back 130,000 years. The period towards the end of the last Ice Age is particularly difficult to understand.

This unique archive of kauri trees is likely to be lost within the next ten years because the timber is so highly-prized for furniture, arts and crafts. Kauri (Agathis australis) are conifer trees buried in peat bogs across northern New Zealand. Trees can measure up to four metres wide and live for up to 2,000 years. As well as containing information on past climates, they could also shed light on environmental and archaeological change.

Samples from a network of sites with buried trees will be collected in New Zealand and taken back to the UK laboratories for preparation and analysis at Exeter and then radiocarbon measurement at Oxford.

Professor Christopher Ramsey, from the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, said: 'This gives us a unique opportunity to increase our knowledge of the earth's climate and human responses to it at the end of the last Ice Age. The radiocarbon measurements should give us important new data that will help us to understand interactions between the atmosphere and the oceans during this period when there was rapid and dynamic change. Equally exciting is the prospect it will give us of more precise dating of archaeological sites from this period -- illuminating the only window we have onto how humans responded to these major changes in the environment.'

Lead researcher Professor Chris Turney of the University of Exeter said: 'We are facing a race against the clock to gather the information locked inside these preserved trees. It is fantastic to have this funding so we are able to gather this information before it is lost forever. While it will be fascinating to find out more about the earth 30,000 years ago perhaps more importantly we will have a better appreciation of the challenges of future climate change.'

Quantum Technology Promises Wedding Photos From Phone Cameras

A new sensor technology promises to make cellphone cameras good enough to use for wedding photos.

InVisage Technologies, a Menlo Park, California-based company, has developed an image sensor using quantum dots instead of silicon. The company claims its technology increases sensor performance by more than four times.

“We have all heard ‘Gee, I wish the camera on my iPhone was better,’” says InVisage’s President and CEO Jess Lee. “But the heart of the problem is in the heart of the camera, which is the sensor.”

Most cameras today used either a CCD (charged-couple device) sensor or a CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor)-based sensor. The silicon in current image sensors has a light absorbing efficiency of only about 50 percent, says Lee.

Reducing efficiency still further are the layers of copper or aluminum circuitry laid on top of the silicon. The metal blocks the light, so only a fraction of a sensor’s silicon is exposed to light.

Replacing silicon with quantum dots could change all that. A quantum dot is a nanocrystal made of a special class of semiconductors. It allows manufacturers to have a very high degree of control over its conductive properties, and is about 90% efficient at absorbing light, according to Lee.

The quantum dots are usually suspended in fluid. InVisage takes a vial of these and spins it onto a layer of silicon, then adds the required metal circuitry to create a new type of sensor that it is calling QuantumFilm.

invisage-chart3In addition to the increased sensitivity, InVisage’s technology allows the metal circuits to be placed underneath the quantum film, where they don’t block the light.

“This is entirely different from the type of image sensors that we have right now,” says Tom Hausken, director with market research firm Strategies Unlimited. “Usually you see incremental improvements in sensor design, but these guys have made a a significant change in the process.”

Quantum dots can be made from silicon, tellurides or sulphides. InVisage won’t reveal exactly which material it is using.

As opposed to silicon’s indirect band gap, quantum dots have a direct band gap. Lee says Invisage can tune the Dots’ band gap much more efficiently than silicon so it is more sensitive to visible light, ultraviolet and even infrared waves.

In the last few years, manufacturers have been touting megapixels as the measure of a camera’s prowess. But the true measure of picture quality is not as much in the megapixels but in the size of the sensor used in the device.

To capture the light, imaging sensors need to have as much as area as possible. Powerful DSLR cameras have an imaging sensor that’s about a third of the size of a business card, while camera phones sport sensors that are only about a quarter inch wide (see top photo). Smaller sensors mean less light sensitivity for each pixel on the sensor, and that translates into lower-quality images.

Quantum dot-based sensors won’t be more expensive than traditional CMOS-based sensors, promises Lee. InVisage says it will have samples ready for phone manufacturers by the end of the year and the sensors could be in phones by mid next-year.

Though quantum dots are commercially produced by other manufacturers, they have never been used on image sensors before, says Hausken.

“Mostly people have looked to use it in displays, solar cells and as identification markers,” he says. “So we will have to see how effective and reliable it is as a sensor.”

To Capture Lost Power, Super Solution Sought

Towers that help carry electricity from one place to another, like these in France, are not a pretty sight. But there’s also an invisible problem--the power lost due to electrical resistance. Superconducting technology may be a solution.



Few people welcome the sight of those steel lattice towers that help carry electricity from one place to another, but there’s a deeper problem on the lines that’s invisible.

Conventional aluminum or copper power lines have a certain amount of natural resistance to the flow of electricity, so some energy is lost as heat during transmission. About 7 to 10 percent of the power put on the U.S. grid is wasted due to electrical resistance. That may not sound like much, but it’s enough juice to run 14 cities the size of New York.

So experts and entrepreneurs are looking at the potential of superconducting materials. These materials would allow power to zip along for miles with zero electrical resistance, but there’s a catch. The super-cables would have to be super-chilled--kept at a temperature of about -350 degrees Fahrenheit (-212 degrees Celsius)--in order to work their magic.

Scientists at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), an electric industry-funded nonprofit focused on technology, said in a new report that a superconducting cable system could be ready for commercial development within a decade. Moreover, they said it’s an important technology to consider, given the challenge of greater reliance on renewable energy. Areas with great potential for wind and solar power are often in remote regions far from population centers. Super-chilled wires could efficiently shuttle thousands of megawatts of electricity from distant sites to cities, said the EPRI report.

"The reason the superconductor [system] is beautiful is it likes big,” explained Steven Eckroad, a co-author of the report. “It likes high power."

Buried Underground

Another advantage of such a system is it would be buried underground. Proponents say that out-of-sight transmission projects would face less opposition than the traditional power towers. This month, for example, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power dropped plans for an 85-mile, U.S.$800 million transmission line designed to convey electricity from remote solar, geothermal and nuclear plants in the southeastern California desert and Arizona. The project faced fierce opposition from environmentalists opposed to erecting 16-foot (5-meter) pylons across the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve, the San Bernardino National Forest and other preservation areas.

Of course, buried superconducting transmission lines would face their own challenges. The wires would be encased in liquid-nitrogen filled tubes to keep them cool. Refrigerators also would have to be interspersed every few miles.

Then, there’s the power conversion issue. A superconducting line would use direct current (DC), good for transmitting power over long distances. But the nation’s power system now relies on alternating current (AC) for safe low-voltage transmission of power to homes and businesses. Improvements in AC-DC power conversion make long-distance DC transmission more feasible, the EPRI report said. Some power, however, would be lost at the terminals as electricity is converted from AC to DC and back again.

But the amount of power lost when transmitting electricity on a DC superconducting system would be less than 3 percent, according to Jack McCall, director of business development at American Superconductor, a Devens, Massachusetts firm that has been working to develop a system very similar to the one EPRI envisions.

Although the EPRI study cites cost as an obstacle to deploying superconducting technology as a competitive alternative to conventional power lines, McCall said that his company’s system will cost between $8 to $13 million per mile — or about the same as a conventional overhead power line today.

American Superconductor aims to prove the technology, and at the same time tackle a vexing U.S. power grid problem. Electricity can’t go cross-country because the nation has three separate power grids—one for the East, one for the West and one for Texas. American Superconductor’s proposed Tres Amigas project, on a 22.5-square-mile (58-square-kilometer) site in Clovis, New Mexico, would unite the three grids. The project, which could cost more than $1 billion, would be privately financed and is awaiting federal approval. If it goes forward, it would be the first large-scale test of superconducting transmission technology.

"By the end of 2014, the U.S. will have a 5,000-megawatt superconductor cable running in DC that utility companies can come and look at and touch and feel and poke and prod and say, ‘Yeah, this actually works,’" McCall said.

But there are other ideas for moving power. Electric Pipeline, a start-up company in Cambridge, New York, says it has a technology for moving DC power long distances underground without superconducting material. Instead, it would use wires that contain up to 50 times more aluminum as conventional overhead wires.

Roger Faulkner, Electric Pipeline chief executive, said there would be some electricity lost, but less than on conventional power lines, and at a price that makes it a competitive alternative.

Another option, of course, is to try to get by without moving power at all. The Los Angeles power department, having abandoned its cross-desert transmission plan, is looking at constructing a huge 80-square-mile (207-square-kilometer) solar array in the dry bed of Owens Lake—the body of water drained early last century by the city aqueduct. Among the advantages city officials cite: It is close to existing power transmission.

New Dinosaur: "Exquisite" Raptor Found

Like a zombie clawing its way out of the grave, a new dinosaur species was discovered when scientists spotted a hand bone protruding from a cliff in the Gobi desert of Inner Mongolia, paleontologists have announced.

Called Linheraptor exquisitus, the new dinosaur is a raptor, a type of two-legged meat-eater, that lived during the late Cretaceous period in what is now northeastern China .

"We were looking at these very tall red sandstone walls that were all abraded by the wind, and I saw this claw sticking out of the side of the cliff," recalls Jonah Choiniere, a grad student at George Washington University in Washington D.C. who found the fossil on a dig in 2008.

The claw wasn't protruding much: Less than a fingertip's worth of the bone was exposed. But further investigation revealed "bone after bone," Choiniere said, until the team had unearthed a nearly complete skeleton—one of the most complete raptor fossils ever found.


It was fortunate the team found the fossil when they did, Choiniere added, because once exposed, the dinosaur would have been rapidly lost to the elements.

"Erosion is very quick there," Choiniere said. "The whole specimen could have been turned to powdered bone dust in a few years, easily."

New Dinosaur Had Killer Claw

Stretching about 8 feet (2.5 meters) and weighing 55 pounds (25 kilograms), Linheraptor would have been a fast, agile animal that preyed on small horned dinosaurs related to Triceratops, which also lived the area.

It's unclear how this particular Linheraptor died, but one idea is that it suffocated beneath a sand avalanche.

Sand dunes in the region are notoriously unstable, Choiniere said, and an earthquake, a storm, or the minute shifting of sand grains could have been enough to trigger a collapse.

"It's great for paleontologists, but it must have been terrible to be trapped in it," said Choiniere, whose study of the fossil appears online today in the journal Zootaxa.

Finding such a well-preserved new raptor is important, because it helps reveal the evolution of raptors from smaller, birdlike dinosaurs, said Tom Holtz, a paleontologist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the study. (Take a dinosaur quiz.)

For instance, like its more famous relative the Velociraptor, Linheraptor possessed a large "killing claw" on each foot, which it may have used to bring down prey. (Related: "Jurassic Park Raptors Had Feathers, Fossil Suggests.")

This claw "is fairly big in Linheraptor, but it's not as big as in Velociraptor and Deinoychus," another famous raptor, Holtz noted. The claw that Choiniere initially spotted, however, was not Linheraptor's killing claw, but another claw on the dinosaur's hand.

Linheraptor also stands out from its raptor relatives because it has an unusually large lobe in a sinus cavity called the antorbital fenestra, a unique feature that will require further study to explain.

"It's not a missing link," Holtz added of Linheraptor. "But it does represent a grade of raptor between the earliest forms, such as those we know from early Cretaceous China, and the classic late forms, such as Velociraptor."

The find is also remarkable, he said, since "the team gave it the species name exquisitus, and it certainly fits that, because it's a wonderful specimen."

Evidence Indicates Humans' Early Tree-Dwelling Ancestors Were Also Bipedal

More than three million years ago, the ancestors of modern humans were still spending a considerable amount of their lives in trees, but something new was happening.
David Raichlen, an assistant professor in the University of Arizona School of Anthropology, and his colleagues at the University at Albany and City University of New York's Lehman College have developed new experimental evidence indicating that these early hominins were walking with a human-like striding gait as long as 3.6 million years ago.

The results of their research appears in PLoS ONE, a journal from the Public Library of Science.

A trackway of fossil footprints preserved in volcanic ash deposited 3.6 million years ago was uncovered in Laetoli, Tanzania, more than 30 years ago. The significance of those prints for human evolution has been debated ever since. The most likely individuals to have produced these footprints, which show clear evidence of bipedalism, or walking on two legs, would have been members of the only bipedal species alive in the area at that time, Australopithecus afarensis. That species includes "Lucy," whose skeletal remains are the most complete of any individual A. afarensis found to date.

A number of features in the hips, legs, and back of this group indicate that they would have walked on two legs while on the ground. But the curved fingers and toes as well as an upward-oriented shoulder blade provide solid evidence that Lucy and other members of her species also would have spent significant time climbing in trees.

This morphology differs distinctly from our own genus, Homo, who abandoned arboreal life around 2 million years ago and irrevocably committed to human-like bipedalism. Since the Laetoli tracks were discovered, scientists have debated whether they indicate a modern human-like mode of striding bipedalism, or a less-efficient type of crouched bipedalism more characteristic of chimpanzees whose knees and hips are bent when walking on two legs.

To resolve this, Raichlen and his colleagues devised the first biomechanical experiment explicitly designed to address this question. The team built a sand trackway in Raichlen's motion capture lab at the UA and filmed human subjects walking across the sand. The subjects walked both with normal, erect human gaits and then with crouched, chimpanzee-like gaits. Three-dimensional models of the footprints were collected by biological anthropologist Adam Gordon using equipment brought from his Primate Evolutionary Morphology Laboratory at the University at Albany.

The researchers examined the relative depth of footprints at the heel and toe, and found that depths are about equal when made by a person walking with an erect gait. In contrast, the toe print is much deeper than the heel print when produced by a crouched gait, a product of the timing of weight transfer over the length of the foot.

"Based on previous analyses of the skeletons of Australopithecus afarensis, we expected that the Laetoli footprints would resemble those of someone walking with a bent knee, bent hip gait typical of chimpanzees, and not the striding gait normally used by modern humans," Raichlen said. "But to our surprise, the Laetoli footprints fall completely within the range of normal human footprints."

The fossil footprints at Laetoli preserve a remarkably even depth at the toe and heel, just like those of modern humans. "This more human-like form of walking is incredibly energetically efficient, suggesting that reduced energy costs were very important in the evolution of bipedalism prior to the origins of our own genus, Homo," Raichlen said.

If the Laetoli footprints were made by Lucy's species, as most scientists agree to be the case, these experimental results have interesting implications for the timing of evolutionary events.

"What is fascinating about this study is that it suggests that, at a time when our ancestors had an anatomy well-suited to spending a significant amount of time in the trees, they had already developed a highly efficient, modern human-like mode of bipedalism," said Adam Gordon.

"The fossil record indicates that our ancestors did not make a full-time commitment to leaving the trees and walking on the ground until well over a million years after these (Laetoli) prints were made. The fact that partially tree-dwelling animals, like Lucy, had such a remarkably modern gait is a testament to the importance of energetic efficiency in moving around on two legs," Gordon said.

Closest Ever Look at Martian Moon

The sharpest images yet taken by the Mars Express spacecraft of Mars’ tiny moon Phobos reveal features as small as 14.5 feet across, the European Space Agency announced March 15.

Some of the new images taken March 7 during one of several recent close flybys of the moon home in on the proposed landing site for a Russian mission, Phobos-Grunt (meaning Phobos soil), that is expected to touch down on the moon next year.

During the three flybys on March 7, 10 and 13, researchers measured the moon’s tug on Mars Express by examining changes in the frequency of radio signals beamed by the spacecraft to Earth. The frequency shifts indicate that the craft has sped up or slowed down by a few millimeters per second due to the moon’s gravity.

When combined with images, the gravity data may provide new clues about Phobos’ composition and origin. According to one theory, Mars captured the moon from the nearby asteroid belt. Alternatively, Phobos may have formed where it now resides and could be a direct leftover from the planet-making era. With dimensions of 17 by 14 by 12 miles, the moon is the larger of Mars’ two moons.

The Mars Express flybys, which happen every five months, may also determine if Phobos is a fragile pile of rocky fragments stuck together — what planetary scientists refer to as a rubble pile — or solid through and through, says Mars Express scientist Gerhard Neukum of the Free University of Berlin. He notes that due to orbital maneuvers that had to be performed on relatively short notice, scientists missed the opportunity to take even higher-resolution images with another camera on Mars Express, which would have revealed features on Phobos as small as a meter across.


The craft will make two more passes by Phobos before the end of March, but they will not come as close as the March 7 flyby.

51 Headless Vikings in English Execution Pit Confirmed

Naked, beheaded, and tangled, the bodies of 51 young males found in the United Kingdom have been identified as brutally slain Vikings, archaeologists announced Friday.

The decapitated skeletons—their heads stacked neatly to the side—were uncovered in June 2009 in a thousand-year-old execution pit near the southern seaside town of Weymouth .

Already radio-carbon dating results released in July had shown the men lived between A.D. 910 and 1030, a period when the English fought—and often lost—battles against Viking invaders. But until now it hadn't been clear who the headless bodies had belonged to.

Analysis of teeth from ten of the dead—who were mostly in their late teens and early 20s—indicates the raiding party had been gathered from different parts of Scandinavia, including one person thought to have come from north of the Arctic Circle. The new study, led by Jane Evans of the U.K.'s NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory, investigated telltale chemical markers called isotopes, which can reveal a person's geographic origins.

Oxygen isotopes from drinking water, for example, become fixed in people's teeth as they age. Since isotope ratios vary with climate, Evans could tell that the had all been raised in much cooler regions than Britain.

"The values these individuals gave us could not be British," Evans said, but the ratios do match those from Norway and Sweden.

In addition, nitrogen-isotope readings showed the men enjoyed a meaty, high-protein diet—similar to readings from remains from the same period found in Sweden.

"What's fascinating about these findings is that Vikings are renowned for their pillaging, ransacking, and raping," Evans said.

"But here we've got real evidence that it was the other way round: Anglo-Saxons rounded up these Vikings and executed them."

Vikings Found With Hacked Heads, Naked Bodies

Many of the skeletons have deep cut marks to the skull, jaw, and neck. This suggests the men were war captives whose heads were savagely hacked off, said David Score of Oxford Archaeology, leader of the preconstruction survey that found the Vikings' execution pit.

"The majority seem to have taken multiple blows," he noted.

Other injuries hint that some of the slaughtered attempted to shield themselves from their executioners' blows. For instance, the hand of one victim had its fingers sliced through, Score said.

The heads were neatly piled to one side of the pit, perhaps as a victory display.
Unusually, no trace of clothing has been found, indicating the men were buried naked.

Even if only their weapons and valuables had been taken, "we should have found bone buttons and things like that, but to date we've got absolutely nothing," Score said.
Aside from their injuries, the headless Vikings "look like a healthy, robust, very strong, very masculine group of young males," he added. "It's your classic sort of warrior."

Vikings Forced to Surrender?

The burial's prominent location on a hilltop by the ancient main road to Weymouth also points to the victims being Vikings, Score said.

"Locations like this are classic sites for executions [by British-born warriors] in late Saxon and medieval times," he said. "If you're a Viking raider, you're much more likely to leave people where you killed them in the town or on the beach."

What's more, the new isotope findings suggest that the slain men had much more diverse origins than would be expected among soldiers from the Saxons' other enemies, such as ethnic Danes in northern Britain, tooth-study leader Evans noted.

Even before the new results were released, Kim Siddorn, author of Viking Weapons and Warfare, had thought the dead were Vikings.

"They had left their ship, walked inland, ran into an unusually well-organized body of Saxons, and were probably forced to surrender," Siddorn speculated in July.

Despite the Vikings' brutal reputation, there was actually little to differentiate Vikings and early English warriors on the battlefield, said Siddorn, also a founder of Regia Anglorum, a historical-reenactment society.

"You would find it very difficult to tell the difference between a Viking and a Saxon if they stood in front of you in war gear," he said. Both used spears as their primary weapons, with swords and axes as backups, Siddorn added.

But Vikings usually had surprise and, in some cases, numbers on their side. "Whilst the Vikings were no better than the Saxons at fighting, they did come by the shipload," he said.

"During the height of the Viking raids, it's reasonable to say it was unsafe to live anywhere within 20 miles [32 kilometers] of the coast."

Stolen sarcophagus