Tag: science

The battle in Congress of the EPA’s effort to regulate dust

10:02 am

The battle in Congress over the EPA’s effort to regulate dust.

Not surprisingly, the Democrats all support the EPA’s effort, while there are Republicans who oppose. What I consider significant is that more than a hundred agricultural organizations oppose the regulations.

One of the agricultural groups that is supporting the bill [to block the EPA regulations], the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG), wrote a letter to the committee last month, saying that a slight raise in overall particulate matter standards would require the EPA to regulate farm dirt under the current standards. “And, for what purpose? Scientific studies have never shown rural dust to be a health concern at ambient levels,” said the NAWG letter. [emphasis mine]

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Has dark matter been identified?

9:21 am

From a paper published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph preprint website, scientists suggest that three different physics experiments might have identified dark matter. From the abstract:

Three dark matter direct detection experiments (DAMA/LIBRA, CoGeNT, and CRESST-II) have each reported signals which are not consistent with known backgrounds, but resemble that predicted for a dark matter particle with a mass of roughly ~10 GeV. . . . In this article, we compare the signals of these experiments and discuss whether they can be explained by a single species of dark matter particle, without conflicting with the constraints of other experiments. We find that the spectrum of events reported by CoGeNT and CRESST-II are consistent with each other and with the constraints from CDMS-II, although some tension with xenon-based experiments remains. Similarly, the modulation signals reported by DAMA/LIBRA and CoGeNT appear to be compatible, although the corresponding amplitude of the observed modulations are a factor of at least a few higher than would be naively expected, based on the event spectra reported by CoGeNT and CRESST-II. This apparent discrepancy could potentially be resolved if tidal streams or other non-Maxwellian structures are present in the local distribution of dark matter.

The last sentence above suggests that the differences between the various experiments might be explained by the motion of dark matter itself as it flows through the solar system.

This conclusion is very tentative. The scientists admit that there remain conflicts between the results of the three experiments, and that there also could be explanations other than dark matter for the results. Furthermore, the results of other experiments raise questions about this conclusion.

Nonetheless, it appears that physicists might be closing in on this most ghostlike of all particles in the universe.

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Eradicating polio: not this year

8:35 am

The effort to eradicated polio entirely by the end of 2012 will not be met.

Afghanistan and Nigeria, two of the three remaining endemic countries, have had more cases in the first nine months of this year than in 2010 altogether. Several other countries targeted by the plan have also seen more cases to date this year compared to this time in 2010. Additionally, polio had popped up in countries where it had previously been eradicated — notably China, which went polio-free for 11 years until this summer.

Sadly, politics and culture are almost certainly the main reasons polio still survives in these countries.

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House Panel Lays Out Spending Preferences for science programs

5:30 pm

The Republicans on the House science panel lay out their recommended spending plans for science.

Updated and bumped: First a correction: in my original post I had incorrectly assumed these recommendations were from the entire House panel, not from the Republicans alone. (You can read their actual letter here [pdf].)

Second, that these recommendations come from the Republicans alone is quite depressing, as it seems they don’t have the guts to cut much of anything. All these recommendations do is trim some programs around the edges. Overall, very little is cut at all, with almost all departments ending up with budgets greater than they had in 2008. Even NASA, whose budget is cut from the 2011 $18.8 billion down to $16.6 billion, still includes the billions allocated for the Congressionally-designed Space Launch System. As these Republicans depressingly enthuse, “We also strongly support proposed funding levels for the Space Launch System and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.”

With this kind of budget-cutting wimpiness from the Republicans, I expect the federal government to continue to grow in an out-of-control manner, even as the rest of the economy continues to tank.

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An independent study of climate suggests the climate has warmed 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1950

2:24 am

An independent study of land temperature records by a team led by Richard Muller concludes that the climate has warmed 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1950.

Does this prove that human-caused global warming is happening? No, not even close. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed, and others have not yet been able to duplicate its results. Also, a warming trending since 1950 can be caused many things, and it is only a very short snapshot of a vastly longer movie.

Nonetheless, it does appear that real science (open data, honest analysis, and a willingness to entertain opposing viewpoints) is beginning to return to the field of climate research. For this we should celebrate.

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Ancient Greek ships shipped more than just wine

5:28 pm

New data has shown that ancient Greek merchant ships transported a wide assortment of goods, not just wine.

What is interesting about this story is how it punctures a hole in an assumption too many archeologists have been making about the amphorae, the standard shipping container of the ancient Mediterranean:

Amphorae have been found in their thousands in wrecks all over the Mediterranean Sea. Some of them contain residues of food, such as olive pits and fish bones, but the vast majority of them are discovered empty and unmarked. Foley says historians tend to assume that these containers were used mainly to transport wine — in a survey of 27 peer-reviewed studies describing 5,860 amphorae, he found that 95% of the jars were described as having carried the beverage.

The new research found evidence for many things besides wine, illustrating again the dangers of assuming anything in science.

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An archeology discovery in Africa suggests that Stone Age humans had an understanding of basic chemistry

9:15 pm

An archeology discovery in Africa suggests that Stone Age humans had an understanding of some basic but complicated chemistry.

Archaeologists have found evidence that, as long ago as 100,000 years, people used a specific recipe to create a mixture based on the iron-rich ochre pigment. The findings, published in the journal Science, “push back by 20,000 or 30,000 years” the evidence for when Homo sapiens evolved complex cognition, says Christopher Henshilwood of the universities of Bergen in Norway and Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, who led the work. “This isn’t just a chance mixture, it is early chemistry. It suggests conceptual and probably cognitive abilities which are the equivalent of modern humans,” he says.

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Rough Terrain

10:21 pm

The Dawn scientists have released another spectacular image of the south polar mountain on Vesta whose relative size is three times that of Mount Everest. More information about the image can be found here. From the caption:

The peak of Vesta’s south pole mountain, seen in the center of the image, rises about 13 miles (22 kilometers) above the average height of the surrounding terrain. Another impressive structure is a large scarp, a cliff with a steep slope, on the right side of this image. The scarp bounds part of the south polar depression, and the Dawn team’s scientists believe features around its base are probably the result of landslides.

Mountain on Vesta

It appears the light gravity on Vesta allows for the formation of extreme topology.

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New cave discoveries in the western Caucasus of Russia

11:46 am

From an email sent out by Ukrainian caver Alexander Klimchouk, received today:

Pavel Rud’ko of Krasnoyarsk (Rissia, Siberia) has reported the success of the recent expedition of Krasnoyarsk cavers to the Sarma Cave, Arabika Massif, Western Caucasus. The cave, previously explored by cavers from Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk to -1570 m, has now been made almost 200 m deeper, to reach depth of -1760m and become the second deepest cave in the world.

The expedition led by Pavel Rud’ko has been carried out between September 1st – October 7th, 2011. The main branch has been pushed to -1760 m after breaking through a narrow meander at the old bottom. Many side and ascending passages in other parts of the cave have been also explored. The expedition performed systematic temperature measurements, and speleobiological and microbiological sampling.

With its new depth figure, Sarma surpassed the Illjuzia-Mezhonnogo-Snezhnaya system (-1753 m), located in the nearby Bzybsky Massif, and became the second deepest cave in the world, following Krubera Cave (-2191 m) located in the same massif. Thus, the western Caucasus now hosts three deepest caves in the worlds, two of them in Arabika Massif and one in Bzybsky Massif.

Some details of geology, hydrogeology and cave locations of Arabika can be found here. [pdf]

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The new hockey stick

9:15 am

Steven Hayward at Powerline has noted a new hockey stick graph, produced by scientists and described in detail by the journal Nature. This one is not specifically about climate, but about the reliability of science and the peer-review process itself. To quote the Nature article:

[Retraction] notices [of science papers] are increasing rapidly. In the early 2000s, only about 30 retraction notices appeared annually. This year, the Web of Science is on track to index more than 400 (see ‘Rise of the retractions’) — even though the total number of papers published has risen by only 44% over the past decade.

Below is the graph from the Nature paper. As Hayward says, “Lo and behold, it looks like a hockey stick! (Heh.)”
» Read more

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