At Science News Sid Perkins checked in on the American Meteorological Society meeting in Phoenix and seems to have this newslette to himself: identification of the world’s windiest known stretch of ocean. It is off the southern tip of Greenland, east of the ominously-named Cape Farewell. He reports that winds there routinely, and for long periods, run at more than 45 miles per hour, and that’s measured by a buoy right at the surface (the buoy, one learns, eventually ripped free of its deep sea anchor). His story, delivering results of research by a Univ. of East Anglia group in the UK,  concludes with a brief wrap-up on other wind news from the meeting. His piece recognizes that hurricanes blow much harder than the prevailing winds at Cape Farewell, but they don’t last in one place for very long. Nobody, presumably, is thinking of putting up a windfarm on the tip of Greenland. But Perkins explains the factors that make it so brutally breezy.

-CP

This week several UK dailies jumped on news of the perfect circle of ice found turning, turning, turning in their nation – on the River Otter, in Devon. It is weird looking, even though such things, forming in eddies, are well known from more northern regions – especially Scandinavia, some reports say.

At The Times, Nico Hines reports however “the cause is unclear,” and writes that the UK’s top weather and climate people, at the Meteorological (or Met) Office, could not explain why the ice circle appeared last week. “We’re kind of a bit stumped to be honest,” a spokesman tells him.

At The Sun, a shorty by Alex West explains it, says they’re so rare there’s no scientific name for them, and what-the-hell-why-not?, he throws in UFO landings.  The Telegraph provides the most intimate story, with a narrative arc and quotes from the initially dumbfound discoverers. Best entry on this tale of the frozen disk is at a blog aggregator site, UpdatedFrequently, that inlcudes photos of this one and of a bunch of other ones. And best of those photos is one of an eddy that not only made one giant disk, but a flock of satellite ones, sort of like little spots spun out of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

-CP

The BBC‘s Richard Black has a story nicely composed to explain how the scientific method works – in perhaps idealized form but that’s apparently how this episode unfolded. He starts with a finding that a team in Germany published a few years back: a big share of the world’s rising level of atmospheric methane wafts from the leaves of plants. That finding’s accompanying hypothesis is that plants, ergo, have a previously unsuspected metabolic path that churns out CH4.  Black then walks readers along in describing how a mainly-British team scratched its collective head, ran some tests, and discovered that the plants are mere conduits for methane that their roots found in the soil. Thus, it says, the guilty parties are in the dirt (probably microbes but some will probably proclaim it’s primordial, somehow). Finally, he provides reply from an author of the earlier hypothesis who points out that, logically, just because some plants transfer methane from one place to another does not rule out the some other plants make it themselves. The story deftly gets the audience inside the head of scientists puzzling their way through data, and setting up experiments accordingly. It’s therefore a portrait of research iterating itself closer to what looks like truth. One also has to get a laugh out of the art selected for transmission with this story: a pic of the biggest darned leaf one can imagine. (The Tehran Times picks up the Beeb’s story – and accompanies it with illus that defies easy explanation). The latest news arises from a report in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Other outlets picked it up, too, including:

• AAAS ScienceNOW – Claire Thomas : Methane Emissions? Don’t Blame Plants ;
• Press Trust of India (via The Hindu): Plants don’t make greenhouse gases: Study ;

Grist for the Mill:

Univ. of Cambridge Press Release ; Royal Holloway – Univ. of London Press Release (basically same as Cambridge’s with citation of universities reversed in the lede) ; Univ. of So. Australia Press Release ;

If you think Canada Geese leave a mess on the park lawn, imagine the droppings left by grazing flocks, maybe better call them herds, of nine foot tall flightless birds. Paleontologists from Australia and New Zealand don’t have to imagine them. They’ve gathered them by the bucketful from caves and other corners of remote regions of southern New Zealand where giant moa once roamed. The researchers have their findings in a geological journal called Quaternary Science Reviews. Reuters‘s Tan Ed Lyn reports it all the way from Hong Kong, noting that some of the feces are 15 cm (half a foot) long. More important – and succinctly reported here – are the seeds and other plant remains they contain. The giant birds’ diet, it appears, was largely small bushes and herbs; Some of the plant species common in the coprolites are now rare – implying that perhaps they depended on bird transport to distributed their seeds. The marvelous ratites disappeared after they, in turn, became part of the diet of early island settlers, ancestors of today’s Maori.
This appears to be a good study deserving a longer public airing. Coprolites tend to draw readers, if only for the seeming zaniness in many people’s minds of studying ancient poo. Such reporting easily leads to intriguing stories of scientific detective work and to the discernment of vanished worlds. It got some other pickup, including in Wellington‘s Dominion Post, by Paul Easton who writes that the findings “have overturned notions that moa snacked only on trees and bushes.” He also finds a quote worth pondering to use as his end kicker: “Where has all the Australian poo gone?” Indeed.

The press down under has spotted this study before this, and before it had results. The New Zealand Herald had “$700,000 grant to probe moa grazing,” from the NZPA news service in September. While that’s a piece of change to study bird turds, the article is sensible – no cheap jokes about it at all.

Grist for the Mill: U. Adelaide Press Release, Journal abstract ;

Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin and state wildlife officials say they plan a suit against the federal government for putting Beluga Whales that live near Anchorage in the Cook Inlet on the endangered species list. It’s not that they want to start shooting them or anything. (In  some parts of the state subsistence hunting of them is permitted – and formerly was in Cook Inlet – for indigenous peoples.) The state says that plenty is already done to protect the animals, that their recent plunge in numbers has stabilized and started moving up, and that the new federal regulations would force costly changes in local business plans. Another argument, the Anchorage Daily News‘s George Bryson reports, is that the feds haven’t adequately explained why the inlet’s several hundred white whales qualify as a distinct population. His first quote from an enviro supporter of the new level of federal protection has some punch and pugnacity: “It seems the Palin administration only likes one kind of science – the kind it agrees with.” Another source tells Bryson that the protective status got backing from a Congressionally-chartered commission on marine mammals.

Other stories:

• AP- Mary Pemberton ;
• Reuters Yereth Rosen ;

Grist for the Mill:

Alaska Governor’s Office Press Release ;  Center for Biological Diversity Press Release ;

The news gets one thinking. Belugas haven’t gotten the popular attention of some other arctic animals in trouble or in potential trouble. As rally beasts, polar bears are the stars. But Belugas, one thinks, could close the gap somewhat. They are intelligent, attractive, and they easily arouse compassion, partly because of their Pillsbury dough boy complexions and their ability to twist their necks and look right at you. No one of sane mind wants them widely slaughtered. One suspects that if they do get more attention pressure will grow throughout the state on subsistence Inupiat hunters, already in dutch with some enviros for harpooning a few dozen bowhead whales a year and sharing their blubber and meat within their traditional communities, to leave Beluga alone too. This could offer opportunity for careful reporting on stories where the easy, obvious lines blur between good and not good. Alaska’s Eskimos and Inuits in Canada have become natural poster peoples against global warming as their traditional grounds warm and sea ice diminishes. But they depend, for both practical and cultural reasons, on hunting seals, walruses, whales, caribou, polar bears, belugas, and plenty else. Sympathies may get whipsawed. Grab the maqtaaq and pass the dunuuq! (beluga skin dipped in broken down whale blubber).

For a glimpse of how Belugas pull heartstrings, see this somewhat nuanced guest column recently in South Carolina’s Aiken Standard by Whit Gibbons. (With a hot-under-collar reader riposte that sets a few facts straight).
Pic hi res ;

-CP

Maybe somebody else wrote it, but among our usual outlets, so far only two seem to have had something on an interesting report in last week’s Science.

National Geographic News‘s Anne Minard handles nicely a new development in conjecture, pretty well documented now, that our planet froze over, or very nearly so and including the oceans, more than half billion years ago during the pre-Cambrian. Now, an international team led by a man at Louisiana State reports evidence gathered on Norway’s Svalbard arctic island hinting that a super greenhouse, with 300 to 1000 times the CO2 as today, helped break the cold spell’s spell. The evidence – an oxygen isotope signature in ancient carbonates – along with other data from Earth science suggest that the planet, for awhile, had an atmosphere so different from today’s it might be called alien. The lesson, her kicker line says, is that this means Earth’s atmospheric chemistry is disturbingly fragile.

The Telegraph‘s Richard Alleyne wrote it up too, but seems to have it somewhat bollixed. He stresses that we had a planet covered in ice, yet an atmosphere stuffed with CO2, thus suggesting the CO2 may have been what led to the freezing. A blog sponsored at Britain’s Natural Environment Research Council (with more from that agency in Grist) roundly criticizes the Telegraph’s version. The Telegraph has, one must add, developed a reputation for somewhat skeptical coverage of anthropogenic greeenhouse warming.

Grist for the Mill:

University of Birmingham Press Release ;  A news account appears also at PlanetEarth online, published by Britain’s Natural Environment Research Council.

Taking a look at the feed from Time Magazine reveals two good, succinct, and timely pieces from its Bryan Walsh. This is quickie science writing from the top drawer: not too long, thoughtful, and tying bigger issues to current events. In this case the events are the freezing weather hitting much of the country lately (not out here in drought-terrified California. It was 75 degrees here yesterday, cloudless, and this is in Northern California), and the ugly mess at the TVA coal plant with a spilt fly ash pond.

Stories:

• Why Global Warming Portends a Food Crisis ;
• Exposing the Myth of Clean Coal Power ;
• If you want to sample further, here’s Times’s Health & Science lineup.

 Only two of three parts have been broadcast, but if you’re interested in the history of science, and want also to listen in on staggeringly clever and informed conversation, catch up on what host Robyn Williams has been doing at his The Science Show on ABC-Australia radio. It just goes to show that a Brit accent may not just make people sound smart – on occasion they really are. Mostly Williams is talking with prolific and engaging book writer Simon Winchester (The Tracker’s read only one book of Winchester’s, The Map That Changed the World, but is grateful to meet him if only in this once-removed fashion). Winchester in turn has a book out about one Joseph Needham, the engaging and oversexed, one thinks, fellow who decades ago turned out a massive set of enormous books on science and civilization in China. The third segment is to run this weekend. The following links include audio, and full transcripts. Bravo. This is one to download for a listen on some airplane flight, in the car…

• The astonishing Dr. Joseph Needham – Part 1
• Ditto – Part 2.
• *UPDATE – Part 3.

Link to the third part to be added as it comes along.

Grist for the Mill: Bomb, Book, and Compass ; The Needham Res. Institute ;

-CP

Today, as the following post also shows, seems a day for pop psychology or pop medical semi-serious diagnosis of who’s got what it takes, hormonally. A Cambridge University team is reporting in Proceedings of the Nat’l Academy of Sciences that the success of male stock market traders – maybe traders of both sexes but they only studied men – correlates with the length ratios of their ring fingers to their index fingers. The upshot: If you’ve got a longer ring finger than pointer finger, put it at the top of your resume – maybe clip a photocopy of your right hand to it – when you go for a job on the trading floor. The ratio  seems to correlate with prenatal exposure to testosterone, it says here. The Cambridge team has been in this line of analysis before, it appears, having last year found a similar correlation between stock trading success and current levels of testosterone. At the extreme, the ratio correlated with six times the earnings for those at the high end for ring finger length than those at the other end. That is, one must say, impressive. So, stock market guy sharks, if that pretty thing grabs your hand, she (he?) may not like you, yet. Just checking the stats. (Looking at my hands sheepishly, seeing the two fingers about the same length, oh crap. Average schmo again). Of course, they only studied 44 traders. Could be a blip?

Stories:

• Financial Times – Clive Clookson : Top traders hold key to success in their hands ;
• The Sun (UK) Jane Symons : Fingers point to success ; She includes a pic of Bill Gates. Not sure if it really shows his ratio is astounding.
• AAAS ScienceNOW – Nayanah Siva : Are You a Moneymaker? Look at Your Hands ; As one might expect of this outlet, the piece keeps it sanely in context with reassurances these are just less than lock-tight correlations.
• Wash. Post – Rob Stein : Born to Be a Trader? Fingers Point to Yes ;
• Globe and Mail – Anne McIlroy: Longer ring finger, bigger profits ; Nice paraphrase of results: “…development of both digits and gonads are governed by a common family of genes, he says…” ;
• BBC : Finger size link to earning power ;
• Bloomberg – Elizabeth Lopato : Long Ring Fingers May Point to Wealth in Traders, Study Says ;
• HealthDay – Alan Mozes: In High-Stakes Stock Trading, Finger Length Matters ;
• Time Magazine – Adam Smith : Successful Traders: The Testosterone Effect ;
• Independent (UK) – Jeremy Laurance : Success isn’t written in the stars, it’s in the length of your fingers ; Good roundup on context in last graf ;
• … could do lots more

Grist for the Mill: Univ. Cambridge Press Release ;

Pic source (it includes floor traders’ signals, presumably including with their long #4 digits)

-CP

Looks like Little Richard’s title boogie tune – from the great 1956 homage to rock and roll’s fun side in the movie “The Girl Can’t Help It” with the immortal wiggly queen of the silver screen, Jayne Mansfield – had it right. (And if you want a listen, check it on YouTube and read along with songwriter Bobby Troup’s lyrics, which are zestier than The Tracker had remembered. Best line in my judgment:”… if she winks an eye, the bread slice turn to toast…”). It’s the estradiol. At least, that is one way to interpret a report from researchers at the University of Texas-Austin and in the Royal Society’s journal Biology Letters.

Reuters‘s Maggie Fox sums up the news this way: “Women with high levels of estrogen not only look and feel prettier — but they may act on those feeling by moving from man to man…” Estradiol is the hormone’s variant that got the study’s focus. So I mention this to Mrs. Tracker this morning and she says “Where can I get some of that?” Hmmmm. Uh oh.

This sort of thing has been in the news before, hasn’t it? That women tend not only to feel more attractive, but even in double-blinded tests others say they look more attractive when their hormones are at high tide. They dress more provocatively on average, flirt more, and other such friendliness. So I seem to have read already.

This is definitely a story best listed by headline, as everybody seems to be competing to get it as zingy as possible. The results, one is afraid, sometimes go well beyond the science. Average and other statistical measures of behavior, causes, and effects, seem to be universally linked by headline writers in this instance as sure explanations for everybody. Sheesh. The news and copy editors can’t help it. Maybe it’s their hormones.

Other stories:

• Agence France-Presse (via Philippines Inquirer): What drives sexy women to infidelity ;
• Sydney Morning Herald – Deborah Smith: Biology, not heart, provokes infidelity ; No kidding. Who’d a thunk sex is biological?
• The Age (Australia) Julia Medew: ‘Flirt’ hormone may trigger affairs ;
• The Sun (UK) Pretty girls have cheat hormone ;
• Telegraph (UK) Richard Alleyne : Beautiful women more likely to have affair because of sex hormone ;
• Mail (UK) Fiona MacRae :   The beautiful women who are programmed to be unfaithful… by the ‘Marilyn’ hormone ;
• Times of India: High sex hormones ‘make women unfaithful” ;

Grist for the Mill: Royal Society Press Release ;

On a serious note if you’ll forgive me for interrupting the giggles, and there is nothing much to do about this, but it seems worth realizing that in certain fundamentalist and other circles news like this only reinforces (mostly male) medievalists’ opinion that women are dangerous sex bombs and must be wrapped even deeper in burkhas and such, locked up at home, maybe put under crude and cruel surgery, etc. Sigh. What a world.

A creature called a Beipiaosaurus that lived 120 million years ago or so in what is now China had feathers that some paleontologists had surmised, but never before seen. Instead of the barbed and multiply branched feathers of modern birds and many dino fossils, these are simple things with but one main shaft and one iteration of barbs sticking out of it. This is how evolutinary biologists thought feathers may have begun their evolution and now they have solid evidence for it. The report, from researchers at the Chinese Acad. of Sciences, is in Proceedings of the Nat’l Academy of Sciences.

Stories:

• Live Science – Jeanna Bryner : Dinosaur Wore Primitive Down Coat ;  Yes, but the new feather form is not, it appears, part of its down.
• Science News – Sid Perkins : Dinosaur fossil reveals creature of a different feather ;
• Wired News – Brandon Keim : Paleontologists Find Dinosaur Protofeather ;
• Times (UK) Lewis Smith : Downy dinosaur found in China was an early bird ; Not really a bird, but playing with common phrases covers a lot of sins.
• AAAS ScienceNOW – Sara Coelho : The Flashiest Dino of Them All: She proposes these sturdy spines may have supports a peacocklike display.
• *UPDATE: Jan 30 Wall St. Journal – Robert Lee Hotz writes the hell out of this, including pot-bellied herbivores, ferocious meateating puff-balls, leathery raptors, and a plug for Darwin and his Origin of Species too: An Ancient Quill Rewrites Dinosaur History ;

It’s no surprise that ecosystems are complicated things, and fixing them while they’re in operation can be about as predictable as switching nozzles on a rocket while its running. Could blow up. Could fizzle. Could go loop-de-loop.

On MacQuarie Island in the cold seas south of Australia, several news outlets are telling us, wildlife managers took matters into their own hands some years ago after watching feral cats endanger many of the sea birds that nest there. It’s an important place, designated as a UNESCO World-Heritage Site. So when they got rid of the predatory cats, birds were not the only things whose population grew. Non-native rabbits multiplied like crazy. That’s even worse. Birds suffered anew. The news arises in a report from the Australian Antarctic Division in the Journal of Applied Ecology. It’s been fighting to restore the original ecosystem for some time via varying stratagems. Now, it further appears, a rabbit poisoning campaign is under discussion.

Stories:

• Canberra Times Andrew Darby starts off on the last cat to die, “an elusive tabby,” and spells out why that $500,000 gunshot (for all the cats) backfired.
• BBC ;
• AP – Michael Casey ;
• Bloomberg – Jeremy van Loon ;
• Guardian (UK) David Adam ;
• Telegraph (UK) Louise Gray localizes it to Britain, where officials are wondering how to control rats, grey squirrels, and hedgehogs.  ; Nick Squires files from Sydney ;

Grist for the Mill: Australian Antarctic Division Press Release ;

Pic: A royal penguin path on the islands before the rabbits ran amok ;