Gizmorama
December 22, 2010
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Good Morning,
With the unique circumstances of Monday night's lunar
eclipse, scientists have taken the opportunity to explore
the possibilities of life on a distant planet. All the
details on this observation can be found in the third
article.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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Young female chimps seen in 'doll' play
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Young female chimpanzees use sticks as
"dolls" more than their male peers do, like human cultures
where girls play with dolls more than boys do, a study says.
Researchers say the observations, from 14 years of field
work with the Kanyawara chimp community in Kibale National
Park, suggest the first evidence of a non-human animal in
the wild that exhibits sex differences in how it plays,
ScienceNews.org reported Monday. This finding backs up a
\controversial theory that biology as well as society directs
boys' and girls' contrasting toy preferences. "These new
data suggest that sex differences in how children play may
go way back in our evolutionary lineage and predate sociali-
zation in human cultures," anthropologist Elizabeth Lonsdorf
at the Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at
Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago says. Young male Kanyawara
chimps occasionally used sticks to mimic child care, but
far more often they fought with sticks, an infrequent be-
havior among females, Sonya Kahlenberg of Bates College in
Lewiston, Maine, and Richard Wrangham of Harvard University
said. "Although play choices of young chimps showed no evi-
dence of being directly influenced by older chimps, young
females tended to carry sticks in a manner suggestive of
doll use and play-mothering," Wrangham says. Kanyawara
youngsters learned from each other to play with sticks as
if caring for infants, the researchers propose, since child-
bearing adult females never played with sticks and thus
didn't model such behavior for younger chimps.
New solar cells could even work at night
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho - U.S. researchers say they've developed
a new kind of solar cell that can generate energy even at
night, promising a new form of renewable energy. The key is
their ability to harvest infrared radiation as well as vis-
ible light, Steven Novack at the U.S. Department of Energy's
Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls says. Almost half
of the available energy in the spectrum of solar radiation
resides in the infrared band, and infrared is re-emitted as
heat by the Earth's surface after the sun has gone down,
meaning the cells can even capture some energy during the
night, he says. Novack estimates a complete system using
the new cells would have an overall efficiency of 46 percent,
whereas the most efficient current silicon solar cells top
out at about 25 percent. Also, currently solar cells can
only produce their top output in a narrow range of condit-
ions. For example, if the sun is in the wrong position,
sunlight is reflected off a silicone solar cell instead of
being absorbed to create energy. The new cells can absorb
radiation at a variety of angles, the researchers say.
Eclipse colors signal planets' atmosphere
BOSTON - Witnesses to the lunar eclipse Monday night through
Tuesday saw a phenomenon scientists are using in their
search for alien life, U.S. researchers say. At the height
of the eclipse as Earth slides between the sun and moon, the
moon's surface changed from white to orange to reddish brown
and back, the effect of the sunlight being filtered through
the Earth's atmosphere on its way to the moon, The Christian
Science Monitor reported. The result is a tagging the sun's
rays with the chemical fingerprints of gases in the Earth's
atmosphere. Astronomers say this same effect could reveal
clues about possible life on a distant, extrasolar planet
orbiting another star, by indicating gases in the atmosphere
that could suggest the presence of organic life on the
planet. As a planet passes in front of its star, starlight
passes through the planet's atmosphere, picking up signatures
of atoms and molecules there and carrying those signatures
with it as the starlight continues to travel. Astronomers
say the telltale colors, at least for rocky, Earth-mass
planets orbiting stars relatively close to the sun, could
be detected using large earthbound telescopes, the online
newspaper said. "It's an exciting experiment -- one of the
few I've seen that I wish I'd thought of myself," Sara
Seager, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology who studies exoplanets, says. "The Earth is our best
laboratory; it's the only planet we know of with life. So we
really want to understand what Earth would look like as an
exoplanet far away."
Mars rover gets guidance from orbit
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA says its Mars Opportunity rover is
being directed from orbiting instruments for the first time
to areas that might hold clues to past Martian environments.
Researchers are using a sensitive mineral-mapping instrument
aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to make decisions
about where to have the rover go as it investigates a large
ancient crater called Endeavor, ScienceDaily.com reported
Monday. The orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spec-
trometer is producing maps of minerals at Endeavour's rim
that are helping the team choose which area to explore first.
"This is the first time mineral detections from orbit are
being used in tactical decisions about where to drive on
Mars," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. -
Louis. Opportunity's science team decided to begin moving
the rover toward the 14-mile-wide crater in 2008, after four
years studying other sites in what initially was planned as
a three-month mission. The rover has traveled about nine
miles since setting out for Endeavour crater and will need
several more months to reach it. Opportunity's exploration
of Endeavour will begin at a rim fragment called Cape York
that orbital measurements suggest is nearly surrounded by
water-bearing minerals, NASA says.
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