Gizmorama
December 20, 2010
------------------------------------------------------------
It's Time To Throw That Tupperware Away
http://pd.gophercentral.com/u/1091/c/186/a/474
------------------------------------------------------------
Good Morning,
Coincidentally, I ran across two articles that deal with
the same scientific issue, but they give very different,
unique calculations. The first two articles are a textbook
example of the conflict in global warming theory and evi-
dence application; a clash that is very interesting to
follow.
Until Next Time,
Erin
Questions? Comments? Email me at: mailto:gizmo@gophercentral.com
Email your comments
P.S. You can discuss this issue or any other topic in the new
Gizmorama forum. Check it out here...
http://gizmorama.gophercentral.com
------------------------------------------------------------
Study: Sea ice will remain for polar bears
PALISADES, N.Y. - Summer sea ice will persist in the arctic
for decades even with global warming, providing refuge for
polar bears, seals and other animals, researchers say. U.S.
scientists say climate models predict arctic sea ice will
continue to pile up on the northern side of the Canadian
Arctic Archipelago and Greenland, where the thickest sea
ice exists today, an article in the journal Nature reported
Wednesday. Stephanie Pfirman, an environmental scientist at
the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, estimates
that an area of ice perhaps 200,000 square miles in size is
likely to persist year-round long into the 21st century.
Some of this ice is formed locally, and some is driven in
from Siberia by wind and ocean currents. Although the amount
of ice that melts each summer is increasing as global temp-
eratures rise, ice is still forming in the winter and is
being transported to the Canadian side of the Arctic faster
than before because the waters are more open. "If it used
to take eight or nine years to make the trip, it might now
do it in seven years," Robert Newton, a geochemist also at
Lamont-Doherty, says.
Hybridization seen as species threat
LONDON - Loss of sea ice in the arctic is leading to hybrid-
ization of animals, threatening the extinction of many
species as they are presently known, researchers say. With
ongoing reductions in the amount of summer sea ice in the
arctic predicted through the end of the century, polar bears
will spend even more time in grizzly bear territories, and
species of seals and whales currently living in different
oceans separated by ice will soon share the same northern
waters, an article in the journal Nature said. Isolated pop-
ulations will come into contact and mate, and some, like the
North Pacific right whale, could be driven to extinction, the
authors say. Many arctic hybrids have already been seen. In
2006, arctic hunters shot a polar bear-grizzly bear mix, a
white bear with brown patches. In the late 1980s, a skull
thought to be that of a narwhal-beluga whale mix was found
in west Greenland, and in 2009, an apparent bowhead-right-
whale hybrid was photographed in the Bering Sea. Porpoises
and seals are known to be hybridizing, researchers say, and
this year another polar-grizzly hybrid was killed. The
authors of the Nature piece call for a monitoring program
to see how much cross-breeding is going on, so the Inter-
national Union for the Conservation of Nature can develop
better protection plans. "The rapid disappearance of sea ice
leaves little time to lose," the authors write.
Satellite data said to improve forecasts
MADISON, Wis. - Satellite data may give weather forecasters
the ability to predict potentially dangerous thunderstorms
hours in advance, a U.S. researcher says. Chian-Yi Liu, a
postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison, says thunderstorms can quickly bring intense rain,
hail, lightning and even tornadoes, but "predicting them a
few hours out is one of the great problems of meteorology,"
a university release reported Wednesday. "Scientists under-
stand the basic causes of thunderstorm formation," Liu says,
"but their major source of data is usually surface observa-
tions, or measurements taken from balloons that are released
into the lower atmosphere, and they usually lack information
about the upper atmosphere." Data from satellites measuring
the upper atmosphere could greatly improve the accuracy of
thunderstorm prediction a few hours out, he says. Liu and
his colleagues used data collected by sensors on NASA's Aqua
satellite that measure conditions at different altitudes.
When they introduced data on conditions at 15,000-32,000
feet of altitude into their equations, they found a consid-
erable improvement in the crucial 3- to 6-hour forecast for
thunderstorms. "In my experience, there are not many advances
that come along with so much potential to improve forecasts,"
Steve Ackerman, UW-Madison professor of meteorology, says.
"This is an advance in the science, and it takes this per-
spective: Let's not always look at the atmosphere from the
ground. Let's also look at what happens in the upper atmos-
phere."
Brain shown to quickly build word memory
CAMBRIDGE, England - Our brains can permanently learn a new
word in 15 minutes, so forget that excuse that you could
never learn a foreign language, U.K. researchers say. Neuro-
scientists at Cambridge University say just listening to an
unfamiliar word 160 times in those 15 minutes will form a
whole new network of neurons specifically tasked with remem-
bering that word, The Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday.
Yury Shtyrov and his colleagues placed electrodes on the
heads of 16 volunteers to monitor their brain activity as
they listened to a familiar word, then again as they listened
to a made-up word over and over. At first the brain had to
work hard to recognize the new word, but after 15 minutes
the new memory traces were "virtually indistinguishable"
from those of the already familiar word, Shtyrov said. "What
this suggests is that practicing language is important. Every
little helps," he said. Shtyrov and his team at the Medical
Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit devel-
oped the approach, called constraint-induced aphasia therapy,
not to help people learn a foreign language, but to help
stroke patients regain their speech. "This research suggests
that faster rehabilitation may be possible if treatments for
people with brain damage, such as stroke patients, target
the brain's ability to rapidly create these memory traces,"
he said.
------------------------------------------------------------
Check out Viral Videos on the Net at EVTV1.com
http://www.evtv1.com/
EVTV1.com