EARTHLY HAPPENINGS

The Tobogganing Crow

2012-01-15T23:32:00.000-08:00

Our latest Amazing Animal video selection: A crow enjoys a sled ride down a snow-covered roof. We hope you enjoy the video!

Dark Matter: Does it Exist?

2012-01-12T21:08:00.000-08:00

Dark matter cannot be seen, and some people doubt its very existence, but many scientists think it makes up about 20% of our universe. In this clip from Nova, Astronomer Doug Clowe explains how the Bullet Cluster, a group of galaxies billions of light years away, might shed some light on the mystery of dark matter.

The Imperial Woodpecker: Is it Extinct?

2011-12-27T12:38:00.000-08:00

The video above is the only known film of the Imperial woodpecker, a 2-foot-tall relation of the Ivory-billed woodpecker. Found in a mountain range in Mexico, the Imperial woodpecker is highly endangered, if not extinct. William Rhein, an amateur ornithologist filmed the rare bird in the 50s, but wasn't pleased with the quality of the footage, which has only now been released. Brought to you by Science Friday.

What Darwin Never Knew: Now on PBS

2011-12-25T18:43:00.000-08:00

Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish, and more than 350,000 species of beetles. What explains this explosion of living creatures—1.4 million different species discovered so far, with perhaps another 50 million to go? The source of life's endless forms was a profound mystery until Charles Darwin brought forth his revolutionary idea of natural selection. But Darwin's radical insights raised as many questions as they answered. What actually drives evolution and turns one species into another? To what degree do different animals rely on the same genetic toolkit? And how did we evolve?

"What Darwin Never Knew" offers answers to riddles that Darwin couldn't explain. Breakthroughs in a brand-new science—nicknamed "evo devo"—are linking the enigmas of evolution to another of nature's great mysteries, the development of the embryo. NOVA takes viewers on a journey from the Galapagos Islands to the Arctic, and from the explosion of animal forms half a billion years ago to the research labs of today. Scientists are finally beginning to crack nature's biggest secrets at the genetic level. The results are confirming the brilliance of Darwin's insights while revealing clues to life's breathtaking diversity in ways the great naturalist could scarcely have imagined.

This video can be viewed online on the NOVA website. Just click the play button next to "watch preview". It isn't actually a preview-- it's the entire show.

US Crops Threatened by Globetrotting Bugs

2011-10-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

Florida oranges are among the most threatened crops

Associated Press
Dozens of foreign insects and plant diseases have slipped undetected into the United States since 9/11. With authorities entirely focused on preventing another attack, they overlooked a pest explosion that now threatens the nation's food supply.

At the time, hundreds of agricultural scientists responsible for stopping invasive species at the border were reassigned to anti-terrorism duties in the newly formed Homeland Security Department — a move that scientists say cost billions of dollars in crop damage and eradication efforts from California vineyards to Florida citrus groves. The consequences come home to consumers in the form of higher grocery prices, substandard produce and the risk of environmental damage from chemicals needed to combat the pests.

An Associated Press analysis of inspection records found that border-protection officials were so engrossed in stopping terrorists that they all but ignored the country's exposure to destructive new insects and infections — a quietly growing menace that has been attacking fruits and vegetables and even prized forests ever since.

"Whether they know it or not, every person in the country is affected by this, whether by the quality or cost of their food, the pesticide residue on food or not being able to enjoy the outdoors because beetles are killing off the trees," said Mark Hoddle, an entomologist specializing in invasive species at UC Riverside. Homeland Security officials acknowledge making mistakes and say they are now working to step up agricultural inspections at border checkpoints, airports and seaports.

Many invasive species are carried into the U.S. by people who are either unaware of the laws or are purposely trying to skirt quarantine regulations. The hardest to stop are fruits, vegetables and spices carried by international travelers or shipped by mail. If tainted with insects or infections, they could carry contagions capable of devastating crops. Plants and cut flowers can harbor larvae, as can bags of bulk commodities such as rice. Beetles have been found hitchhiking on the bottom of tiles from Italy, and boring insects have burrowed into the wooden pallets commonly used in cargo shipments.

Invasive species have been sneaking into North America since Europeans arrived on the continent, and many got established long before 9/11. But the abrupt shift in focus that followed the attacks caused a steep decline in agricultural inspections that allowed more pests to invade American farms and forests. Using the Freedom of Information Act, The Associated Press obtained data on border inspections covering the period from 2001 to 2010. The analysis showed that the number of inspections, along with the number of foreign species that were stopped, fell dramatically in the years after the Homeland Security Department was formed. Over much of the same period, the number of crop-threatening pests that got into the U.S. spiked, from eight in 1999 to at least 30 last year.

The bugs targeted some of the nation's most productive agricultural regions, particularly California and Florida, with their warm year-round climates that make it easy for foreign species to survive the journey and reproduce in their new home.

A look at the damage:

No fewer than 19 Mediterranean fruit fly infestations took hold in California, and the European grapevine moth triggered spraying and quarantines across wine country.

The Asian citrus psyllid, which can carry a disease that has decimated Florida orange groves, crossed the border from Mexico, threatening California's $1.8 billion citrus industry.

New Zealand's light brown apple moth also emerged in California, prompting the government in 2008 to bombard the Monterey Bay area with 1,600 pounds of pesticides. The spraying drew complaints that it caused respiratory problems and killed birds. Officials spent $110 million to eradicate the moth, but it didn't work.

The sweet orange scab, a fungal disease that infects citrus, appeared in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, which all imposed quarantines.

Chili thrips, rice cutworms and the plant disease gladiolus rust also got into Florida, which saw a 27 percent increase in new pests and pathogens between 2003 and 2007.

The erythrina gall wasp decimated Hawaii's wiliwili trees, which bear seeds used to make leis.

Forests from Minnesota to the Northeast were also affected by beetles such as the emerald ash borer, many of which arrived in Chinese shipping pallets because regulations weren't enforced.

Overall, the number of pest cases intercepted at U.S. ports of entry fell from more than 81,200 in 2002 to fewer than 58,500 in 2006, before creeping back up in 2007, when the farm industry and members of Congress began complaining.

Spiraling costs Once the pests get established, costs can quickly spiral out of control. The most widely quoted economic analysis, conducted in 2004 by Cornell University puts the total annual cost of all invasive species in the U.S. at $120 billion. Much of that burden is borne by consumers in the form of higher food costs and by taxpayers who pay for government eradication programs.

For instance, if the destructive infection known as citrus canker were to become established in California, which produces most of the nation's fresh oranges, consumers would pay up to $130 million more a year for the fruit, according to an ongoing study by scientists at the University of California at Davis. "It's all about early detection, and it wasn't their priority at the time," said A.G. Kawamura, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture from 2003 through 2010, who was sharply criticized for the spraying in Monterey Bay.

And it's not just humans who pay the cost. Wildlife and beneficial insects die when fields are sprayed.

From MSNBC.

Sometimes There Are Just Too Many Jellies

2011-09-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

Shortly after reaching the 67-mile mark, 62-year-old endurance athlete Diana Nyad has given up her attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida. The cause: painful man o' war stings, which medics warned could be life-threatening. After 40 hours of swimming and two nasty Portuguese Man-of-War stings that left her face and body swollen, Diana ended the swim.

Science, From the Mouths of GOP Candidates

2011-09-08T09:56:00.000-07:00

As if we needed more evidence that American education has all but failed to equip those who run for public office in the fundamental tenets of scientific method, and basic applications of logic and environmental planning, more comes to light.

The following is an excerpt from, "In Their Own Words: GOP Candidates And Science" by Corey Dade for National Public Radio.

Jon Huntsman's recent tweet on science might not stand out in some crowds: "I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy," the former Utah governor wrote on Aug. 18. But among his fellow contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, Huntsman's declaration in support of both evolution and human-caused global warming made him an outlier. We compiled the Republican candidates' recent statements on climate change and evolution, and for comparison, included the consensus view among mainstream scientists and educators.

Scientific Consensus:

A long list of individual scientists and scientific societies, including the National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have released statements in recent years affirming a growing consensus that the globe is warming and human activity is to blame.

And here are just a few sad examples of those who would represent the voters putting their ignorance of science and mistrust of experts on display:

"Carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas; it is a harmless gas ... And yet we're being told that we have to reduce this natural substance and reduce the American standard of living to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occurring in the Earth."

--Michelle Bachmann, House floor speech April 22, 2009

"Do I think the world's getting hotter? Yeah, I don't know that, but I think that it is. I don't know if it's mostly caused by humans ... What I'm not willing to do is spend trillions of dollars on something I don't know the answer to."
--Mitt Romney, Campaign stop in New Hampshire, August 24, 2011

"I believe the Earth gets warmer, and I also believe the Earth gets cooler. And I think history points out that it does that, and that the idea that man, through the production of CO2 — which is a trace gas in the atmosphere, and the man-made part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas — is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all the other factors, El Niño, La Niña, sunspots, moisture in the air. ... To me, this is an opportunity for the left to create — it's really a beautifully concocted scheme because they know that the Earth is gonna cool and warm."

--Rick Santorum on The Rush Limbaugh Show, June 8, 2011

Much more on this subject can be found on NPR's Website.

Free NASA Ap for Android

2011-09-03T12:36:00.000-07:00

Now you can explore with NASA from your Android phone, and it doesn't cost a dime. Discover a huge collection of stunning images, videos, mission information, news, NASA TV and featured content with the new NASA App for Android (TM). It is available free of charge from NASA on the Android Market (TM).

Features of the NASA Android Ap:
Thousands of images from NASA IOTD, APOD and NASAImages.org
On demand NASA Videos from around the agency
Current NASA Mission Information
Launch Information & Countdown clocks
Current Visible Passes for the International Space Station (ISS)
ISS and Earth Orbiting Satellite Tracker
NASA Twitter Feeds from around the agency
News and Features from the NASA topic areas
Facebook® Connect and Integrated Twitter™ client for easy sharing
Live Streaming of NASA TV
NASA TV and What's On Your TV schedules
Map and links to all of the NASA centers
Featured content section

Screenshots from the NASA Android Ap:

Home Screen

Images

Missions

Berkeley Scientists Discover Supernova

2011-08-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

A supernova discovered yesterday is closer to Earth — approximately 21 million light-years away — than any other of its kind in a generation. Astronomers believe they caught the supernova within hours of its explosion, a rare feat made possible with a specialized survey telescope and state-of-the-art computational tools.

The finding of such a supernova so early and so close has energized the astronomical community as they are scrambling to observe it with as many telescopes as possible, including the Hubble Space Telescope.

The green arrow points to the supernova, which can be seen to grow in size across the three images.

Joshua Bloom, assistant professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, called it “the supernova of a generation.” Astronomers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley, who made the discovery predict that it will be a target for research for the next decade, making it one of the most-studied supernova in history.

The supernova, dubbed PTF 11kly, occurred in the Pinwheel Galaxy, located in the “Big Dipper,” otherwise known as the Ursa Major constellation. It was discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) survey, which is designed to observe and uncover astronomical events as they happen.

“We caught this supernova very soon after explosion. PTF 11kly is getting brighter by the minute. It’s already 20 times brighter than it was yesterday,” said Peter Nugent, the senior scientist at Berkeley Lab who first spotted the supernova. Nugent is also an adjunct professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley. “Observing PTF 11kly unfold should be a wild ride. It is an instant cosmic classic.”

More about the discovery of this supernova is available from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Rare Earthquake Strikes Virginia

2011-08-23T16:32:00.000-07:00

People in Philadelphia look up at a window that
cracked during the 8/23/11 earthquake.
Associated Press Photo

The magnitude 5.8 earthquake that struck Virginia today was a rare but significant event for the region, according to one quake expert. The Virginia earthquake struck at about 1:51 p.m ET near Mineral, Virgina, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Richmond. The tremors shook buildings and prompted evacuations as far away as Washington, D.C., and New York City. The quake was followed by a magnitude 2.8 aftershock 45 minutes later. These events caused excitement and minor injuries, but minimal damage.

As reported by Cleveland.com, "The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was half a mile deep and centered near Louisa, Va., about 40 miles northwest of Richmond. Shaking was felt at the White House and all over the East Coast, as far south as Charleston, S.C. Parts of the Pentagon, White House and Capitol were evacuated."

According to National Geographic, earthquakes rarely strike the U.S. East Coast and are generally less severe when they do. Before this latest quake, for example, the largest earthquake on record in central Virginia was a magnitude 4.8 temblor that occurred in 1875, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). However, each of these quakes can affect a much larger area than those that occur in California because the eastern U.S. sits on much older and firmer continental crust, allowing seismic waves to travel further.

"A magnitude 5.5 eastern U.S. earthquake usually can be felt as far as 500 kilometers [300 miles] from where it occurred, and sometimes causes damage as far away as 40 kilometers [25 miles]," according to the USGS.

Earthquakes are rare in the eastern U.S. because the region is farther from a plate boundary—a region where tectonic plates meet and grind together. The closest such boundary is several hundred miles away in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and in the Caribbean Sea.

Go Green Forever

2011-08-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

If you feel as if there's not much one person can do to make a positive impact on the environment—just take a look at the Go Green (Forever®)stamps offered by the United States Postal Service. They illustrate the simple things each of us can do every day to keep our environment healthy and save money at the same time.

Go Green, a pane of 16 stamps, is the Postal Service's social awareness issue for 2011. Award-winning animator, filmmaker, and illustrator Eli Noyes worked with Art Director Derry Noyes on this stamp project, using a colorful, playful style to convey the message that every American can take simple actions to conserve energy and improve the environment. These Forever stamps are and will always be equal in value to the current First-Class letter rate, no matter what price increases occur in the future.

Here are just a few of the example suggestions illustrated on the new forever stamps: Walk or bike to the store. Repair that drippy faucet—the noise was driving you crazy, anyway. Switch to energy-efficient light bulbs. Put on a sweater instead of turning up the thermostat. Sun dry your sheets—they'll smell wonderful!

Is it enough to make a difference? Absolutely. Recycling just one aluminum can reduces waste—and saves enough energy to run a computer for three hours. Simple insulation like caulking or weatherstripping pays for itself with reduced utility bills within one year. Properly inflating your car tires improves gas mileage. You're not just saving the environment, you're saving money. Suddenly small steps seem pretty significant.

Sure, online communication is replacing some of the mail that the US Postal Service used to process, but there are still times when a snail mail letter does the job better. And when you have sent or received a treasured letter, thoughtful greeting card, or important document using a Go Green Forever Stamp, remember to drop any unneeded paper products in your nearest paper recycling container, and use recycled paper products instead of new ones when possible.

Stamps are made in the USA. CLICK HERE to buy some Go Green forever stamps online directly from the US Postal Service. Earthly Happenings does not receive any of the proceeds from stamp sales, nor any advertising fees. This article is for informational purposes, only.

NASA Rover Opportunity Reaches Endeavor Crater on Mars

2011-08-12T21:04:00.000-07:00

A portion of the west rim of Endeavour crater
sweeps southward in this NASA image.

After traveling persistently for more than two years, NASA's rover Opportunity just completed a 13-mile trip to allow scientists to examine a large Martian crater. It took the golf-cart-sized rover more than two years to reach the Endeavour crater after first exploring a smaller crater. Scientists have been eager to study the Endeavour crater, which seems to hold clay minerals that NASA says "may have formed in an early warmer and wetter period" on Mars.

Explaining why Endeavour's rocks are different, Mars Exploration Rover science team member Matthew Golombek says, "Clay minerals form in wet conditions, so we may learn about a potentially habitable environment that appears to have been very different from those responsible for the rocks comprising the plains."The Mars rovers have far exceeded expectations for their planned three-month mission. As a news release from NASA explains, "NASA launched the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity in the summer of 2003. Both completed their three-month prime missions in April 2004 and continued years of extended operations. They made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life."

In the photo above, a portion of the west rim of Endeavour crater sweeps southward in this color view from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. According to NASA, "This crater, with a diameter of about 14 miles (22 kilometers), is more than 25 times wider than any that Opportunity has previously approached during the rover's 90 months on Mars."

Bears Prefer Doughnuts

2011-07-28T17:13:00.000-07:00

A black bear in captivity

Wildlife officials in Oklahoma are studying the state's black bear population. To study the bears, they first have to catch them. And what have the wildlife officials been using to attract the bears?

According to Tulsa's KOTV, they've been trapping them using a variety of foods as bait, and they've had the most success with pastries. So much for honey and berries. As it turns out, bears prefer doughnuts.

Rice Paddy Murals Adorn Japanese Villages

2011-07-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

A Sengoku period warrior on horseback

Stunningly beautiful crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan. This creative agricultural art form is relatively new and quite real. It's not a hoax. The designs have been cleverly planted using rice plants with different colored leaves. Farmers creating the huge displays use neither ink nor dye, and the photos are not doctored. Instead, different colors of rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the rice fields. As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to be visible.

Farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru roman variety to create the colored patterns between planting and harvesting in September.

The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square meters of rice fields. From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb a nearby tower to view the fabulous artwork. Rice-paddy art began in Inakadate in 1993 as a local area revitalization project. The idea for such a delightful art form emerged from meetings of the village committee.

Napoleon on horseback

The largest and most elaborate rice paddy art is grown in the Aomori village of Inakadate, 600 miles north of Toyko, where the tradition began. The village has now earned a reputation for its agricultural artistry and this year the enormous pictures of Napoleon and a Sengoku-period warrior, both on horseback, are visible in a pair of fields adjacent to the town hall.

Each year hundreds of volunteers plant four different varieties of rice in late May across huge swathes of paddy fields. More than 150,000 visitors go to Inakadate every summer to see the extraordinary murals, swelling the usual population of only 8,700 residents.

Fictional warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, Osen

Over the past few years, other villages have joined in with the crop designs. Another famous rice paddy art venue is in the town of Yonezawa in the Yamagata prefecture. This year's design shows the fictional 16th-century samurai warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, Osen, whose lives feature in the television series Tenchijin.

Now that's art that you can sink your teeth into!

Close-up of the rice plants

Last Space Shuttle Lands in Florida

2011-07-21T07:02:00.000-07:00

America's space shuttle program, which saw triumph and tragedy over its 30 years, came to an end this morning when Atlantis and its four-member crew touched down at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after nearly 13 days in space. Atlantis landed in the pre-dawn dark just before 5:58 a.m. ET.

Long Lost Rainbow Toad Found

2011-07-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy Indraneil Das, Conservation Intl.

This just in from National Geographic News, an exiting discover by Conservation International and the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Amphibian Specialist Group:

A colorful, toxic toad that was last seen 87 years ago, and never photographed, has been rediscovered in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Called the Sambas stream toad or Bornean rainbow toad, the elusive amphibian was last spotted by European explorers in 1924. The toad has unusually long limbs and a pebbly back covered with bright red, green, yellow, and purple warts. Like many other colorful amphibians, the toxic toad's appearance is likely a warning to potential predators, said Robin Moore, an amphibian expert with Conservation International.

"You can see the skin is rough, which usually indicates the presence of poison glands," Moore said. "You probably don't want to put this in your mouth."

Despite its flamboyant appearance, the rainbow toad is known from only three specimens and a black-and-white drawing from the 1920s. Suspecting the toad might still be alive, Conservation International and the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Amphibian Specialist Group included the species as one of its ten most wanted amphibians in a 2010 global campaign to find "extinct" species.

That faith was rewarded this summer, when a team led by ecologist Indraneil Das rediscovered the toad in the mountain jungles of western Sarawak, which is located between Malaysia's Sarawak state and Indonesia's Kalimantan Barat Province.

As part of their search, the team led by Das, of the University of Malaysia, looked at close relatives of the rainbow toad to estimate where and when the species would most likely be active. After months of searching, the team spotted the long-lost toad six feet (two meters) up a tree. A total of three rainbow toads—an adult male, an adult female, and a juvenile—were found.

"They pieced its [behavior] together from related species," Moore said. "They suspected it might be climbing trees, and they knew to search at night along streams. But a lot of it was still guesswork."

The rainbow toad is only the second species, along with Ecuador's critically endangered Rio Pescado stubfoot toad (picture), to be found from the most wanted list.

Last Space Shuttle Launch

2011-07-08T12:19:00.000-07:00

Space Shuttle Atlantis leaves the launch pad (Photo: NASA)

"Space shuttle Atlantis roared off the launch pad at Florida's Kennedy Space Center this morning, beginning a 12-day mission to the International Space Station that marks the end of NASA's 30-year-old shuttle program," wrote NPR's Mark Memmott.

With hundreds of thousands of people watching from highways, beaches and balconies along Florida's "Space Coast," and millions more watching on television and the Web, the shuttle and its crew of four astronauts lifted off after a morning of uncertainty about whether storms in the area might force a postponement. If you missed the launch, there is a video below.

The Associated Press reported that before taking flight, Commander Christopher Ferguson saluted all those who contributed over the years to the shuttle program. "The shuttle is always going to be a reflection of what a great nation can do when it dares to be bold and commits to follow through,' he said, addressing NASA launch director Mike Leinbach. 'We're not ending the journey today ... we're completing a chapter of a journey that will never end. Let's light this fire one more time, Mike, and witness this great nation at its best."

On the other hand, increasing numbers of people are asking if ending NASA's publicly-funded space program and replacing it with private spacecraft was a wise move. Time will tell.

Atlantis is now in orbit around earth after the successful separation of the external fuel tanks.

A minor glitch caused about a two-minute pause with just 30 seconds to go in the countdown. NASA says it was because engineers needed to confirm that the "gaseous vent arm" had completely retracted from the shuttle. Other than that, NASA says, it was a "flawless launch."

Language and the Chimpanzee Brain

2011-07-07T13:51:00.000-07:00

By Matt Walker

A talented chimpanzee called Panzee can recognize distorted and incomplete words spoken by a computer, scientists have discovered. That suggests that apes may be more capable of perceiving spoken sounds than previously thought, and that the common ancestor of humans and chimps may also have had this ability. It also refutes the idea that humans have brains uniquely adapted to process speech, say the scientists who have published their findings in the journal Current Biology.

Panzee was raised from 8 days old, by humans, and was spoken to and treated as if she were human. At the same time, she was taught to use symbols called lexigrams to communicate.

"This has resulted in Panzee showing proficiency in understanding approximately 130 English words," researcher Lisa Heimbauer told BBC Nature. That made her an ideal subject to test hypotheses about how well other species, rather than humans, might be able to understand speech.

"There is a view about the human ability to produce and perceive speech that is called 'Speech is Special'," said Ms Heimbauer, who is studying for her PhD. "This argument proposes that, besides humans being the only species able to produce speech, due to their anatomy, they also have a specialised, cognitive module to process speech." Evidence for that comes from studies showing that humans can understand speech even when it is incomplete or highly distorted.

"However, an alternative view is that auditory processing is fundamentally similar across most mammals, and that animals therefore have latent abilities for speech perception," said Ms Heimbauer. So she and her colleagues Michael Beran and Michael Owren, all from Georgia State University in Atlanta, US, tested Panzee to find out if she too could recognise incomplete or distorted spoken words. They played Panzee noise-vocoded speech, which alters the frequencies of the spoken words. This produces a sound similar to what people with cochlear implants hear. They also played Panzee so-called sine-wave speech, which is synthesised from just three pure tones. Both types of degraded speech have been shown to be understandable by people.

"She is only one of a few animals who could be tested in this way, to reveal what the speech perception abilities of a common chimp/human ancestor may have been," said Ms Heimbauer. The researchers discovered that Panzee recognised these degraded spoken words far more often than she should by chance. Her upbringing, say the scientists, appears to have given her enough experience of hearing and understanding spoken words to allow her to recognise them when they are distorted. That "highlights the importance of early experience in shaping speech perception," said Ms Heimbauer. It also provides evidence that a common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees would have had the ability to perceive speech, she says.

"If humans do possess a specialized, cognitive, speech-processing brain module, it would be something that evolved later in humans, making us more efficient at what we do."

This article first appeared on the BBC Nature News website.

Lisa Heimbauer is a doctoral candidate at Georgia State University.

South Korea to Host 2018 Winter Olympics

2011-07-06T10:26:00.000-07:00

By Mark Memmott

South Korean Flag

The 2018 Winter Olympics will be in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the International Olympic Committee just announced from Durban, South Africa. The other finalists were: Munich, Germany, and Annecy, France.

The last time the Winter Olympics were held in Asia was in 1998, at Nagano, Japan. The 2010 Winter Games were held in Vancouver, Canada. The 2014 Winter Games will be in Sochi, Russia. Summer Olympics are set for London in 2012 and Rio De Janeiro in 2016.

View Larger Map

This story first appeared in The Two Way, NPR's News Blog.

South Korean flag image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Map brought to you by Google Maps.

Green Car List 2011

2011-06-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy's ranking of green cars has been published

2011 Toyota Prius

annually since 1998. Emissions are a major factor in the council's Green Car Rankings. “This is the most exciting Green Book in a decade for me, because there are so many vehicles in the running,” said Therese Langer, ACEEE’s Transportation Director, in an interview with PluginCars.com. The non-profit uses an exacting methodology for calculating the environmental impact of all cars and trucks.

2011 Smart ForTwo

Despite new competition from electric vehicles, such as the all-electric Nissan LEAF and the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid, the winner for the 8th consecutive year is the Honda Civic GX, which runs on compressed natural gas. The Prius maintains a very presentable score, lowest hybrid emissions, and reliable track record. The Chevy Volt came in at the bottom of the list. “The Chevy Volt came very close to not making the list,” said Shruti Vaidyanathan, ACEEE Vehicle analyst. The first negative mark against the Volt in ACEEE’s methodology is the weight, which provides an indication of how much energy went into producing the vehicle. The Volt weighs about 500 pounds more than the Nissan LEAF or Toyota Prius. Plugin Cars reports that the Volt has unimpressive fuel economy when running on gasoline.

The top six cars on the official Green Car list for 2011:

2011 Nissan Leaf

Honda Civic GX: Mileage: 24 city, 36 hwy, per gallon-equivalent. The Civic GX tops the list despite fuel economy figures that are lower than the others. It runs on compressed natural gas, which is burns more cleanly than gasoline.
Nissan Leaf: Mileage: 106 city, 92 hwy, per gallon equivalent. EV rage: 100 miles. The Leaf burns no fuel at all, running purely on electricity. Electric power plants do burn fuel, and that's a factor taken into account in the ACEEE rankings. Of course, if the Leaf was charged with electricity from a solar plant or rooftop solar panels, the fuel issue would be eliminated.
Smart ForTwo: Mileage: 33 city, 41 hwy. The ForTwo, a two-seat car, relies on small size, light weight and a tiny three cylinder engine to get a high "Green Score." The assumption is that heavier cars create more waste and emissions in their manufacturing and disposal than lighter cars. However, we do wonder why a car as small and light as the Smart ForTwo doesn't have significantly better gas mileage.
Toyota Prius: Mileage: 51 city, 48 hwy. Hybrid cars rank highly based on fuel economy, but they pay a penalty because of their heavy battery packs. The Prius is a very solid hybrid car with excellent fuel efficiency. However, cars that use nickel-metal batteries, as the Prius does, pay a higher penalty in the ACEEE rankings because their batteries contain more toxic substances than do the lithium-ion batteries used in most plug-in cars.
Honda Civic Hybrid: Mileage: 40 city, 43 hwy. Because its hybrid system operates differently from that in a Prius, the Civic Hybrid is more efficient in highway driving than in the city. It's also less efficient overall.
Honda Insight: Mileage: 40 city, 43 hwy. Honda launched the Insight as a less costly competitor to the Prius. Despite being a smaller car, its fuel economy is the same as the Civic Hybrid and not as good as the Prius.

We have only described the top six Green Cars of 2011, but the key stats of all 14 cars on the list appear in the chart below:

Facing a Mass Extinction of Marine Life

2011-06-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

By Richard Black

The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists. In a new report, they warn that ocean life is "at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history".

Scientists conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised. The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.

The panel was convened by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), and brought together experts from different disciplines, including coral reef ecologists, toxicologists, and fisheries scientists.

"The findings are shocking," said Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University. "As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised. We've sat in one forum and spoken to each other about what we're seeing, and we've ended up with a picture showing that almost right across the board we're seeing changes that are happening faster than we'd thought, or in ways that we didn't expect to see for hundreds of years."

These "accelerated" changes include melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, sea level rise, and release of methane trapped in the sea bed.Fast changes

"The rate of change is vastly exceeding what we were expecting even a couple of years ago," said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a coral specialist from the University of Queensland in Australia.
Some species are already fished way beyond their limits - and may also be affected by other threats

"So if you look at almost everything, whether it's fisheries in temperate zones or coral reefs or Arctic sea ice, all of this is undergoing changes, but at a much faster rate than we had thought."

But more worrying than this, the team noted, are the ways in which different issues act synergistically to increase threats to marine life. Some pollutants, for example, stick to the surfaces of tiny plastic particles that are now found in the ocean bed. This increases the amounts of these pollutants that are consumed by bottom-feeding fish and in turn the pollutants that humans ingest.

Plastic particles also assist the transport of algae from place to place, increasing the occurrence of toxic algal blooms - which are also caused by the influx of nutrient-rich pollution from agricultural land.

In a wider sense, ocean acidification, warming, local pollution and overfishing are acting together to increase the threat to coral reefs - so much so that three-quarters of the world's reefs are at risk of severe decline.Carbon deposits

Life on Earth has gone through five "mass extinction events" caused by events such as asteroid impacts; and it is often said that humanity's combined impact is causing a sixth such event. The trends are such that it is likely to happen, they say - and far faster than any of the previous five.

"What we're seeing at the moment is unprecedented in the fossil record - the environmental changes are much more rapid," Professor Rogers told BBC News.

"We've still got most of the world's biodiversity, but the actual rate of extinction is much higher [than in past events] - and what we face is certainly a globally significant extinction event."

The report also notes that previous mass extinction events have been associated with trends being observed now - disturbances of the carbon cycle, and acidification and hypoxia (depletion of oxygen) of seawater. Levels of CO2 being absorbed by the oceans are already far greater than during the great extinction of marine species 55 million years ago (during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum), it concludes.Blue planet

In the long run, greenhouse gas emissions must be cut to conserve ocean life, the report concludes

IPSO's immediate recommendations include:

stopping exploitative fishing now, with special emphasis on the high seas where currently there is little effective regulation
mapping and then reducing the input of pollutants including plastics, agricultural fertilisers and human waste
making sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon dioxide levels are now so high, it says, that ways of pulling the gas out of the atmosphere need to be researched urgently - but not using techniques, such as iron fertilisation, that lead to more CO2 entering the oceans.

"We have to bring down CO2 emissions to zero within about 20 years," Professor Hoegh-Guldberg told BBC News. "If we don't do that, we're going to see steady acidification of the seas, heat events that are wiping out things like kelp forests and coral reefs, and we'll see a very different ocean."

Another of the report's authors, Dan Laffoley, marine chair of the World Commission on Protected Areas and an adviser to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), admitted the challenges were vast.

"But unlike previous generations, we know what now needs to happen," he said. "The time to protect the blue heart of our planet is now."

This article originally appeared on the BBC News website.

Image courtesy of Suat Eman.

Solar Plane Lands in Paris

2011-06-16T07:50:00.000-07:00

The Swiss Solar Impulse lands in Paris

The Swiss Solar Impulse arrives in Le Bourget for the Paris air-show, where its makers say it marks a new stage in aviation and may revolutionize the air transportation industry. With 12,000 solar cells integrated into the wings, the aircraft is completely solar powered. By storing energy, it can also fly in cloudy weather and at night. Currently, Solar Impulse has a flying speed of about 70 kilometers per hour. However, as the engineers explained when the plane landed in Paris, this is just a first step, "Now we're showing that an airplane with zero fuel, just on solar power, can fly day and night with a pilot on board." A larger prototype of the plane is scheduled to fly around the world in 2013.

Sensationalizing Afghanistan?

2011-06-07T18:15:00.000-07:00

By Bashir Ahmad Gwakh

Greg Mortenson’s best-selling “Three Cups of Tea” earned him millions of dollars and a global reputation as an altruistic humanitarian.

He was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Recent media investigations contend, however, that Mortenson has not only fabricated a story about being kidnapped by tribes in Waziristan but also misused millions of dollars donated for the construction of schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This scandal is but the latest involving Western writers who have traveled to Afghanistan and either exaggerated or blatantly lied about what they saw in order to make names for themselves and sell books.

Registan.net, a blog that covers Central Asia, once published a comic guide to writing about Afghanistan. The guide is inspired by Christian Bleuer’s “29 Tips For Bad Writing On Afghanistan” and a famous comic guide by Binyavanga Wainaina, “How To Write About Africa,” in which both writers mock how foreign journalists depict these parts of the world and aim to provide some “simple things to keep in mind in order to keep standards as low as they currently are."

It seems like Mortenson had read Registan.net’s sarcastic guide on how to write about Afghanistan so as to attract readers, earn credibility as an expert, and eventually become a millionaire by selling lots of books full of sensationalism and drama. Indeed, Mortenson’s “kidnapping accident” in Waziristan sounds exactly like one of the suggested techniques: “Treat Afghanistan as if it were one indistinct mass. It is hot and dry all year, and full of angry, heavily armed religious fanatics who spend all their time torching girls’ schools and kidnapping Western journalists.”

Just Can't Compete
In "Three Cups Of Tea," Mortenson described his host, Mansoor Khan Mahsud, as an "emerging Taliban commander" who held Mortenson captive for several days. Mahsud rejected this allegation and said Mortenson was his guest for two weeks and that his fellow tribe members took care of him and offered the most generous hospitality.

The made-up kidnapping is a case in point. The actual story of hospitable, friendly Pashtuns just couldn't compete with the more striking image of wild-eyed, violent tribesmen. Therefore, Mortenson invented a story that would sensationalize his experience and enthrall more readers.

National Public Radio quoted Mortenson as saying that his publisher, Viking Press, also played a role in the decision to dramatize his story. And that is understandable. Because in order to get sympathy and eventually a broader audience, most writers overuse terms to dramatize events. The Registan.net guide, for instance, suggests using attention-grabbing phrases like “war-torn."

One sees this trend in the media’s description of Kandahar -- one of the region’s most ancient cities, historically known as Gandahara, and whose name translates into “sugar necklace” -- as “the birthplace of the Taliban.” The city has given Afghanistan its most influential leaders, intellectuals, poets, writers, and architects for centuries. But all that is lost under the fog of some ugly buzzwords.

The Other Side Of Helmand
Another hotspot in the news is Helmand. This province was once dubbed “Little America” for serving as the center of a USAID development project, The Helmand Valley Authority, from 1949-63. Famous among tourists for its green landscape, Helmand was a flourishing agriculture region. However, during Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s and since 2001, when the Taliban government was overthrown by U.S.-allied forces, things took a turn for the worse. Taliban insurgents turned Helmand into their main center of command for planning and carrying out attacks on foreign and Afghan forces. Helmand is also the world's largest opium-producing region.

But there is another picture of Helmand that the media largely ignores: one that shows a place where construction projects are under way, health clinics are opening, and children -- boys and girls -- go to school. A recent concert in Helmand featured the popular female Afghan singer Farzana Naz, who appeared without a head covering. But these positive attributes are not as well-known because Helmand’s reputation as the birthplace of the Taliban insurgency makes a “sexier” story.

Most of the foreign writers covering Afghanistan are locked into the notion that the tribesmen on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border are fanatical xenophobes, the eternal "warrior race." They ignore the fact that this is also the land of Bacha Khan, a “nonviolent soldier of Islam” and “the Frontier Gandhi."

Born in Peshawer, Khyber Pukhtonkhwa, as Abdul Ghafar Khan, Bacha Khan (King Khan) was a Pashtun leader and close friend of India’s Mohandas Karam Chand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi). He is known for his nonviolent struggle against the British role in India. He was a devoted Muslim who persuaded Pashtuns to follow the route of nonviolence.

Truth Of The Matter
On the subject of Afghan hospitality and Mortenson’s deception about this generous and imperative pillar of Afghan culture, another book -- and the controversy it stirred -- comes to mind. Like “Three Cups Of Tea,” it, too, was a best seller.

In "The Bookseller Of Kabul," a Norwegian journalist told the story of a Kabul bookseller who still maintains a famous bookshop in the city. Shah Muhammad Raes, named in the book as Sultan Khan, is portrayed as an oppressor who treats his family, especially his female relatives, harshly, and refuses to educate his sons. But the truth of the matter is that he actually saved hundreds of books during Afghanistan’s civil war.

It all started when Asne Seierstad asked Shah Muhammad if she could stay with his family for a period of time and write about their lives. He agreed. Seisrstad stayed for almost six months. When she completed the book and it became a best seller, her host sued her for fabricating the events she claimed to have witnessed at his home. Not only did she tear apart his reputation in public, she had intimately described one of the women of Muhammad’s family. Seierstad wrote an explicit account of the young girl’s breasts and genitals while taking a bath in a hammam.

In a female hammam, everyone can see everyone. However, it is hard to justify putting this in the book, unless one wants to add sexual explicitness for Western readers regardless of the consequences for those mentioned back in Afghanistan. Afghan woman seldom leave their homes after reaching adulthood. Sexual discussion is taboo in Afghan society. Talking about somebody’s genitalia is considered vulgar and brings extreme shame to the family. Never mind putting such details in a book that sells millions of copies, is translated into various languages -- including Dari, one of two Afghan official languages -- and distributed throughout the world. Plus, I am sure Shah did not host Seierstad knowing that she would write sexual portraits of his female relatives.

Couldn't Face Them
Here’s how I see the situation as an Afghan who has enjoyed the hospitality of Americans: Several years ago, I was a Fulbright scholar who participated in a Chicago-based seminar on Afghanistan. The member families of the community that organized the seminar each hosted two students. I was fortunate to stay with a family of four people -- two parents and their two daughters. It would be cruel were I to write ill about my extremely nice and hospitable Chicago host family, with whom I stayed in 2008 and 2009. Would I ever have be able to face them again if I wrote atrocious things in exchange for their having treated me as a prince? Even if the well-mannered mother had beaten her two teenage daughters, I would have not judged the American people from that Illinois family as Seirstad presented Shah’s family as a picture of the whole Afghan nation.

Shah Muhammad Raes was so angry about the book that he flew to Norway, successfully sued Seierstad, and wrote his own book, "Once There Was A Bookseller In Kabul."

The sensationalizing of Afghanistan doesn’t end there. "Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil" is the best-selling story of Michigan hairdresser Deborah Rodriguez, who travels to Afghanistan, falls in love with the country, and sets up a beauty school in Kabul. She tells dramatic tales, including helping a bride fake her virginity on her wedding night and preventing the school from being seized by the government. The subjects of her book, however, claim she fabricated much of the story. Rodriguez ended up marrying a warlord, a subordinate to the brutal Northern Alliance commander Rashid Dostum, a powerful figure in Afghan politics. That explains how Rodriguez was able to save her beauty school.

"[The book] makes Debbie out to be Mother Theresa. And it's wrong," Sheila McGurk, Rodriguez’s former colleague, told “The New York Times.” But, unfortunately, that’s too often how it has to be when foreigners write about Afghanistan. People are not interested in reading a story about just another ordinary person; you have to be a hero to impress. Too many Western writers try to portray themselves as selfless, Mother Theresa-like figures who venture to an exotic and dangerous country to single-handedly save the natives.

Fabrication, exaggeration and drama seem to be necessary elements in writing about Afghanistan today. After spending some time in Afghanistan, the Western writers become famous millionaires and “experts” for writing about the locals’ misery. A better approach to writing about the country would be for writers to acknowledge their ignorance of the place and to understand that Afghanistan, like any country, is a complex land that offers more than just terrorism, fundamentalism, and poverty.

Andrea Busfield, the writer of "Born Under A Million Shadows" -- a novel I edited for cultural accuracy -- put her experience this way: “Afghanistan had been generous to me. I went there single and curious, and I left 2 1/2 years later, richer and wiser, with a dog and a boyfriend."

This article first appeared on the Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Website.
Image provided by digitalart.

Godzilla on the International Space Station

2011-06-05T17:17:00.000-07:00

Go Go Godzilla!

SS007-E-08562 (June 2003) --- This picture was downlinked from the International Space Station by NASA ISS science officer Edward T. Lu, with the following note:

"This is a screen shot of the computer program we use to tell where we are. The places labeled EOS are locations that scientists have requested photos of. Godzilla is shown for scale."

EH has an office Godzilla much like this one. He's useful for putting things into perspective. It's good to know that Godzilla and a healthy sense of humor are in orbit around earth. :)

No, Gmail Was Not Hacked

2011-06-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

This week, NPR mistakenly reported that some Google Gmail accounts had been "hacked." Instead, what happened was that some users gave up their account information to a phishing scam. Hacking and phishing are two very different online activities. Both are malevolent, but here is what they actually mean: These days, hacking refers to gaining access to internal systems and thus information without the users' knowledge, while phishing is sending out false e-mails that trick users into giving up access to their individual accounts. The Gmail system has not been hacked, so users need not fear.

To avoid falling prey to increasingly elaborate phishing scams aimed at e-mail users everywhere, remember than no legitimate business (Google, Paypal, etc.) will ever send you an e-mail asking for your your username and password. Also, if you receive an e-mail that contains a link, check the URL to see who actually sent the message and where the link actually goes. If it looks suspicious, report the scam immediately.

Google has taken this opportunity to warn users about the importance of guarding their online access information closely. More information can be found in this post on the Official Google Blog.