Better models needed to track atmospheric pollution's impact on health, climate |  |
- Better models needed to track atmospheric pollution's impact on health, climate
- Pulsars: The Universe's gift to physics
- Atomtronics: A new phase
- UC Davis MIND Institute researchers to present on autism at AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver
- IU's Menczer to present latest work on tracking ideas in social media
- 'Talking dictionaries' document vanishing languages
- From Earth's water to cosmic dawn: New tools unveiling astronomical mysteries
- Launch of new system for observing the Southern Ocean
- AAAS-SFU research: Fracking risks, fact or fiction?
- Professor from Karolinska Institutet now international educator
| Better models needed to track atmospheric pollution's impact on health, climate Posted: 19 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The past decade has witnessed a significant growth in Asian air pollution, causing a great concern for air quality and climate. If government policy makers hope to contain the problem, they will need increased research and better computer models of black carbon and other aerosol pollutants, also known as atmospheric brown cloud (ABC), according to University of Iowa engineering professor Gregory Carmichael. Carmichael made the case for more research and better-informed policy makers when he spoke Sunday, Feb. 19, at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He said that while ABC pollution is responsible for many problems -- including hundreds of thousands of deaths annually in India and China alone -- the scientific data required to attack the problem needs improvement. He stressed that the problem of Asian pollutants has steadily grown worse. Collectively, ABCs have given rise to major areas of concern, some of the most critical being the observed decrease in the Indian summer monsoon rainfall, the north-south shift in eastern China rainfall patterns, and the accelerated retreat of the HKHT (Hindu Kush-Himalayan-Tibetan) glaciers and decrease in snow packs, he said. All these have led to negative effects on water resources and crop yields in Asia. He noted that the many variables involved in weather and air pollution forecasting have made it almost impossible to predict the pathways and effects of such pollution. Models play a critical role in linking emissions to climate and environmental impacts. This information is needed to help inform policies that target reductions in health and climate impacts. But the emissions inventories themselves are recognized to have 50 percent uncertainty in global totals, and have estimated errors of a factor of two to five in specific regions, he said. We need to reduce the uncertainties in the analysis... http://www.rxpgnews.com    |
| Pulsars: The Universe's gift to physics Posted: 19 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Pulsars, superdense neutron stars, are perhaps the most extraordinary physics laboratories in the Universe. Research on these extreme and exotic objects already has produced two Nobel Prizes. Pulsar researchers now are poised to learn otherwise-unavailable details of nuclear physics, to test General Relativity in conditions of extremely strong gravity, and to directly detect gravitational waves with a telescope nearly the size of our Galaxy. Neutron stars are the remnants of massive stars that exploded as supernovae. They pack more than the mass of the Sun into a sphere no larger than a medium-sized city, making them the densest objects in the Universe, except for black holes, for which the concept of density is theoretically irrelevant. Pulsars are neutron stars that emit beams of radio waves outward from the poles of their magnetic fields. When their rotation spins a beam across the Earth, radio telescopes detect that as a pulse of radio waves. By precisely measuring the timing of such pulses, astronomers can use pulsars for unique experiments at the frontiers of modern physics. Three scientists presented the results of such work, and the promise of future discoveries, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. Pulsars are at the forefront of research on gravity. Albert Einstein published his theory of General Relativity in 1916, and his description of the nature of gravity has, so far, withstood numerous experimental tests. However, there are competing theories. Many of these alternate theories do just as good a job as General Relativity of predicting behavior within our Solar System. One area where they differ, though, is in the extremely dense environment of a neutron star, said Ingrid Stairs, of the University of British Columbia. In some of the alternate theories, gravity's behavior should vary based on the internal structure of the neutron star. By carefully... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Posted: 18 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Just as NASA engineers test new rocket designs in computer studies before committing themselves to full prototypes, so physicists will often model matter under various circumstances to see whether something new appears. This is especially true of atomtronics, a relatively new science devoted to creating artificial tailored materials consisting of neutral atoms held in an array with laser beams, or atoms moving along a desired track under electric or magnetic influence. A new study* shows how a simple joystick consisting of an adjustable magnetic field can create several new phases of atomtronic matter, several of them never seen before. Charles Clark, Co-Director of the Joint Quantum Institute** will report the results at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver on February 18, 2012***. One of the attractions of atomtronics is that the properties of electrons moving through solid state materials can often be mimicked using atoms operating under highly controlled circumstances. Why not just study electrons directly? Because in atomtronics the forces among the atoms can be controlled; you can't do that as well with electrons in solids. That is, atoms can be induced to interact via a force that can be dialed up or down, exploiting the large magnetic dipole moment of some atoms, such as dysprosium-161. Clark will describe theoretical work carried out with colleagues at George Mason University, the University of Hamburg, Germany and the University of California, Riverside. Together they have studied what happens when ultracold highly magnetic atoms are held in an optical lattice and subjected to an external magnetic field, which can be steered in various directions. This field tugs on the atom-sized magnets and, along with the direction of the field itself, leave the atoms standing upright or pulled over on their sides at various inclinations described in the figure by... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| UC Davis MIND Institute researchers to present on autism at AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver Posted: 18 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Two UC Davis MIND Institute researchers will lead a symposium on relationships between genetic, epigenetic and environmental influences on the development of autism in children during the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting, Feb. 16 -18 in Vancouver, Canada. The symposium, Autism: Genetic, Epigenetic and Environmental Factors Influencing Neural Networks, will be held Feb. 18. The researchers, both affiliated with the UC Davis MIND Institute, are Isaac Pessah, director of the UC Davis Children's Center for Environmental Health and Disease Prevention and a professor in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and Janine LaSalle, professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and in the Rowe Program in Human Genetics. A news briefing on the symposium will be held at 9 a.m. on Feb. 19 in Room 221 on the second Level of the Vancouver Convention Center. Autism is a heterogeneous set of developmental disorders with complex etiologies. The goal of the symposium is to present a multidisciplinary perspective on how genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors can interact to promote autism risk. Other presenters will include symposium co-organizer Cindy Lawler of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Scott Selleck of Pennsylvania State University and Pat Leavitt of the University of Southern California. Pessah, the symposium organizer, will address how understanding how low-level chemical exposures influence molecular, cellular and behavioral outcomes relevant to the development of autism will enlighten geneticists, neuroscientists and immunologists about autism's complex etiologies, and possibly yield novel intervention strategies. The inherent imbalances in neuronal connectivity in children at risk for autism are likely to provide the biological substrate for enhanced susceptibility to environmental triggers that are known to target signaling systems. He... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| IU's Menczer to present latest work on tracking ideas in social media Posted: 18 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) VANCOUVER, B.C. -- Indiana University's Filippo Menczer has shown how to out political astroturfers through his complex networks laboratory's study of information diffusion on Twitter. The research team went on to learn that while retweet networks are politically segregated between left- and right-leaners, Twitter mentions actually create a communication bridge between the two partisan groups. Now the Truthy team has added new features for analyzing political social media that includes the capability for citizens to interact with the data and then explore the impact, partisanship and sentiment of the users involved in the diffusion of a meme. New tools on the Truthy website also allow visitors to see the location of users involved in information movement, and permit them to download tweets of interest from Twitter and generate videos of actual meme diffusion as it occurs. Menczer, a professor of computer science and informatics, unveiled the new tools today, Feb. 18, during a panel discussion titled Web Surveillance: Fighting Terrorism and Infectious Diseases and presented during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The title of his presentation was Tracking the Diffusion of Ideas in Social Media. This latest news from IU's Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, of which Menczer is director, also introduced evidence that scientists can now reproduce the incredible diversity of popular and persistent (and the unpopular and fading) nuggets of information in social networks without assuming that some ideas are better than others. Focused on the advancement of Web surveillance methodologies developed in the fields of information management, global information science, linguistic ontology, complex networks and epidemiology, and on the tools used by the lab -- innovative Web mining algorithms, space-time analysis, user-generated content and social networks -- the symposium... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| 'Talking dictionaries' document vanishing languages Posted: 17 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) WASHINGTON -- Digital technology is coming to the rescue of some of the world's most endangered languages. Linguists from National Geographic's Enduring Voices project who are racing to document and revitalize struggling languages are unveiling an effective new tool: talking dictionaries. Of the nearly 7,000 tongues spoken today on Earth, more than half may be gone by century's end, victims of cultural changes, ethnic shame, government repression and other factors. National Geographic Fellows K. David Harrison and Gregory Anderson, the linguists who are creating these dictionaries, say that some of them represent the first time that the language has been recorded or written down anywhere. Harrison, associate professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, and Anderson, president of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, have traveled to some of Earth's most remote corners, visiting language hotspots and seeking out the last speakers of vanishing languages. The last speakers and their threatened cultural heritage are photographed by National Geographic Fellow Chris Rainier. Occasionally the team surfaces tongues not known to science. In 2010 they announced with National Geographic the first documentation of a highly endangered language known as Koro, spoken by only a few hundred people in northeastern India. Harrison unveiled eight new talking dictionaries Feb. 17 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, British Columbia. The dictionaries contain more than 32,000 word entries in eight endangered languages, more than 24,000 audio recordings of native speakers pronouncing words and sentences, and photographs of cultural objects. Endangered language communities are adopting digital technology to aid their survival and to make their voices heard around the world, Harrison said. This is a positive effect of globalization. The AAAS meeting featured a... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| From Earth's water to cosmic dawn: New tools unveiling astronomical mysteries Posted: 17 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Two new and powerful research tools are helping astronomers gain key insights needed to transform our understanding of important processes across the breadth of astrophysics. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter (ALMA), and the newly-expanded Karl G. Jansky Very Large (VLA) offer scientists vastly improved and unprecedented capabilities for frontier research. The cutting-edge research enabled by these powerful telescope systems extends from unlocking the mysteries of star- and planet-formation processes in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, to probing the emergence of the first stars and galaxies at the Universe's cosmic dawn, and along the way helping scientists figure out where Earth's water came from. A trio of scientists outlined recent accomplishments of ALMA and the Jansky VLA, both of which are in the early science phase of their development, as construction progresses toward their completion. The astronomers spoke to the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. One exciting area where the two facilities are expected to unlock longstanding mysteries is the study of how new stars and planets form, in our own Milky Way Galaxy and in its nearby neighbors. These new 'eyes' will allow us to study, at unprecedented scales, the motion of gas and dust in the disks surrounding young stars, and put our theories of planet formation to the test, said David Wilner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). In addition, he added, the new telescopes will help show the first stages of planet formation -- the growth of dust grains and pebbles in the disks -- as well as show the gravitational interactions between the disks and new planets embedded within them. The power of ALMA and the expanded VLA also will allow us to study many more young stars and solar systems -- probably thousands -- than we could before. This will help us understand the processes that... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Launch of new system for observing the Southern Ocean Posted: 17 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) An international committee of experts will meet this month to begin the implementation of a new observing system for the study of the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean plays a key role in the climate and ecosystem functioning of the whole planet, but understanding has long been hampered by lack of data. The science community has established the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) to address this. SOOS Executive Officer Dr Louise Newman said the new system highlighted the importance of a coordinated approach to research in the Southern Ocean. A key element of SOOS is the bringing together of different research communities to collectively tackle the really big issues confronting us she said. Sustained, multi-disciplinary observations are required to detect, interpret and respond to change. An international science committee has been formed, under the auspices of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), and other major international bodies. Dr. Mike Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey and Mr. John Gunn of the Australian Institute for Marine Science will initially chair the committee, which will meet in Salt Lake City this month to take the first steps in implementing SOOS. Once established, SOOS will enable greater global understanding of such challenges including climate change, sea-level rise, ocean acidification and the sustainable management of marine resources. To deliver this information, strategic observations of the changing physical, biogeochemical and biological state of the Southern Ocean are critical, Dr Newman said. Advances in technology and knowledge mean that it is now possible to design and implement a sustained, feasible and cost-effective observing system for this remote environment. The SOOS was established in August last year after the four-year development of a Science Strategy, led by SCAR, SCOR and the World Climate Research... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| AAAS-SFU research: Fracking risks, fact or fiction? Posted: 17 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A Simon Fraser University researcher known for his expertise on naturally occurring hazards will participate Friday in a shake down of the truth about a new form of human-induced earthquakes. John Clague, an earth sciences professor, will discuss documented connections between shale gas development and earthquakes at a symposium during the 2012 American Association for the Advance of Science (AAAS) conference in Vancouver. The conference is Feb. 16-20 at the Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC). Clague's presentation, Hydraulic Fracturing and Earthquakes in Western Canada, at 1:30pm, Feb. 17, Room 202-204, VCC West Building, is part of Hydraulic Fracturing of Shale: Building Consensus Out of Controversy, a three-hour symposium. Hydraulic fracturing involves the injection of fluids at high pressure into horizontally drilled holes in shale, to create fractures in rock and release natural gas. The controversial practice has on the one hand, the potential to unleash previously inaccessible natural gas that could provide North America with a relatively clean, affordable source of energy for the next 100 years or more. On the other hand, some scientists fear hydraulic fracturing could contaminate groundwater, worsen air quality and trigger seismic activity. Clague stresses the known science behind what potentially causes hydraulic fracturing to trigger earthquakes is so new there are no published studies on the phenomenon. However, Clague's overview of documented observations of spatial and temporal coincidences between fracturing and earthquakes east of the Rocky Mountains near Fort Nelson, B.C. underscore the need for more research, especially in earthquake prone areas. To my knowledge, the Horn River area of northeastern B.C., which is an example in my talk of where fracking coincides with earthquakes, is not particularly earthquake prone, says Clague. Yet there are documented observations in this area of fluid pressures... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Professor from Karolinska Institutet now international educator Posted: 17 Feb 2012 05:00 AM PST ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Hans Rosling, professor of international health at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet and founder of the Gapminder Foundation, is equally popular as a lecturer at international science conferences and as a guest on television shows around the world. His next scheduled appearance is in a panel debate at the international AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver on 16-20 February. The theme of the conference is Flattening the World: Building the 21st Century Global Knowledge Society. I'll be testing basic facts and addressing the dynamic that drives population growth, says Professor Rosling. The greatest problem with population growth is that so few people understand it. He says that people mistakenly think he does research, but although he still works at Karolinska Institutet as a teacher and mentor, his own research he has abandoned in favour of adult education. He therefore likes to point out that instead of working with research information, he is an educator who devotes his time to explaining common public statistics. There seems to be a mix of ignorance and a kind of arrogance in the richest countries about the rest of the world, and I think people should know the facts so that they can re-evaluate old truths, he says. But things haven't gone that well so far. I might have been lauded for my efforts but I haven't actually been particularly successful. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is one of the world's oldest and largest scientific conferences and, given the thousands of international journalists and reporters who cover it, an excellent forum for researchers to publicise their work to a worldwide audience. But this was not a conscious choice by Professor Rosling. Nothing he has done has been a conscious choice, he claims, not even the research to which he dedicated 20 years of his life: It's just how things turned out, but of course my background in science comes in useful even... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
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