Record Lows

As long time readers know, the Clarion Content is not a believer that global warming will destroy the world. Our initial frame of reference was the Club of Rome Report and Ehrlich & Ehrlich. We have pretty much passed the panic stage and moved on to a serene, well, these things happen over geological scales of time. We do believe to the extent global warming manifests itself in our lifetime it will be in the form of weather turbulence and extreme events. (These are real, with human and economic costs, and are not to be taken lightly.)

We are, indeed, fond of chronicling those extraordinary weather events here at the Clarion Content. The latest such moment in time we have read about took place in the San Francisco Bay Area last week. There was snow, at least in the Twin Peaks area of the city of San Francisco, where elevations are about 900 feet above sea level. It was only a dusting though, so it won't count as the first measurable snowfall in the city in thirty-five years.

There were record low temperatures recorded throughout the area. San Francisco got down to 37 degrees, which tied the previous cold weather record for the date set in 1962. Oakland got down to 34 degrees, breaking a record set in 1987 and San Jose tied a record low of 33 degrees, set way back in 1897. Read the whole story here.

More Gaian evidence

The Clarion Content is an unabashed support of the Gaia theory. We read several years back about work being done on parasitic worms, the human digestive tract and autoimmune disorders. The basic premise being that when human's used to spend a lot less time and energy sanitizing our food, we were a lot less susceptible to autoimmune disorders.

Naturally, this struck our Gaian heart as a likely candidate for a symbiotic relationship. Research has increasing born this theory out, although it is still highly controversial in the United States. Parasitic worms (likely worms in general) carry connotations far beyond the more common archetypes of natural healing; we are not talking wheat grass shots, yoga or even acupuncture here. We are talking extracting roundworm eggs from the stool of an eleven year-old infected girl, cleaning them and eating them. Or putting hookworm larva on a patient's arm so they burrow through the skin enter the bloodstream and make their way into one's intestines.

Yet the results have been compelling. Many of the Man's pigeons pooh-pooh evidence found on blogs. Read then an amazing tale on CNN backing the theories originally popularized by Dr. Joel Weinstock, chief of gastroenterology at Tufts University Medical School.

Humans lived with worms in our intestines for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Is it really so odd that our bodies and theirs learned to work together?

Monty Burns frog

An expedition coordinated by Conservation International looking for possibly extinct species of frog instead discovered three new species, two toads and a poison-secreting rocket frog. The expedition to Colombia failed to find the species it was hoping to rediscover, the Mesopotamia beaked toad.

According to the BBC, it did find a 3-4cm red-eyed toad, which was discovered at an altitude of over 6,000 feet. It also encountered a new toad that is also tiny, less than 2cm long. It has a bird beak-shaped head that Dr. Robin Moore, the scientist who led the rediscovery project, compared to the snout of Montgomery Burns.

Read the whole story here in the BBC.

Baby Talk

This is something the intuitive have known for a long time. Baby's brains are ready and open for business from a very young age. Baby talk is the foundation of language. It is how babies practice and imitate the adults around them. Ask a smart parent, they will tell you.

The scientists are catching on, too. M.D. Perri Klass in the New York Times, "Babble is increasingly being understood as an essential precursor to speech, and as a key predictor of both cognitive and social emotional development."

What is more interesting is first-year babies all over the world babble in similar ways, but during their second year, toddlers mold their sounds into the words of their native tongues.

This has implications for linguistics that stretch from the Biblical Tower of Babble story to the co-development of the human species.

For parents this is a reminder to talk to your kids even from the youngest age. Scientists' research indicates that babble has cognition in common with questions. Babies' brains are open for reception when they are babbling along in baby talk. Research also suggests that the television and the computer don't substitute for human interaction when it comes to language learning. Babies are picking up on facial clues and gestures as an essential part of their language skill development.

The New York Times reports that a baby hears much of language and is able to differentiate well before it can reproduce the same range of sounds. The experiments argue that a baby’s vocalizations signal a state of focused attention and a readiness to learn. When parents respond to babble by naming the object at hand babies are more likely to learn words.

This kind of linguistic and neurological digging is a wonderful nexus for people to understand our common humanity. And a great reason to start talking to your kids as early as you can.

Science fiction predictions...

that came true. There is a lot of debate about whether or not the majority of science fiction predictions come true. Of course, the easy answer is no. Hundreds, even thousands, of science fiction books are published every year. Most sink like silent stones in the vast cultural pond.

The Clarion Content's editor attended a lecture this week at Duke University, by the great science fiction writer, William Gibson. Gibson made this very point, most science fiction predictions do not come true. He further noted that despite being visions of the future, years on, science fiction books are viewed as a commentary on their times. So while he wrote Neuromancer about the year 2025, it will be viewed by history as a book about 1984 which is when it was published.

It was interesting then, only days after this lecture and absorbing this point, to see a list of eleven science fiction predictions that according to Sarah Kessler of Mashable came true.

Check it out here, from the tank to the i-pod, from the cubicle to the escalator. Kessler includes the excerpts from the texts of the original authors to make her point. It is a fun read.

Shrooms help cancer patients cope

A new study reports a controlled dose of the main ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms, psilocybin, appears to help reduce anxiety and lift spirits in people battling advanced cancer. The study, by Dr. Charles Grob, will be published in the January 2011 print issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The government, suffering from bad vibes dating back to the 60's, when its foundations actually shook, is still incredibly reluctant to fund this kind of research. Health Day reports that it took four years to get the funding and necessary approvals for this trial, even though it only involved a dozen patients (all with advanced cancer). It has been over thirty years since a similar study was conducted.

In the study, patients reported feeling calmer and happier, and that they felt closer connections to friends and family. They were better able to address end-of-life issues. This is very important according to Dr. Amy Abernethy, director of the Duke University Cancer Care Research Program in Durham, N.C. She told Health Day, "We know that with some people with advanced life-threatening illness, there is very truly a substantial existential component and importance and need for meaning-making in life, and that until people start making that transition they can be very, very distressed. It can be hard to get back to the business-of-life closures and other things you need to do at the end of life. This kind of intervention [may] allow people time and space and extended cognitive ability to reflect on life and see it in a different way, make that transition and then get back into a more relaxed space and get back to the business of living.

"Being in the business of living is about doing what is important and meaningful to you every day even if you don't have many days left, focusing on things like saying goodbye to loved ones, which can be hard to do if you're distressed."

Read the whole story here.

Unintended Consequences

The law of unintended consequences is a funny one. We bet this was one of the unknown unknowns even Donald Rumsfeld did not consider. The havoc wreaked on Iraq in recent years have pushed archaeologists to begin excavations in relatively safer and more tranquil Syria.

United States and Syrian excavators have uncovered a huge panoply of artifacts from what must have been a robust pre-urban settlement on the upper Euphrates River at a site known as Tell Zeidan. The New York Times reports, "Zeidan should reveal insights into life in a time called the Ubaid period, 5500 to 4000 B.C. In those poorly studied centuries, irrigation agriculture became widespread, long-distance trade grew in influence socially and economically, powerful political leaders came to the fore."

Archaeologists caught a break because apparently subsequent civilizations and generations did not build on the site. The potential sounds limitless. The Times quotes, Guillermo Algaze, an anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego, "[Zeidan] has the potential to revolutionize current interpretations of how civilization in the Near East came about."

Read the whole article here.

NASA selecting a new patch

NASA challenged its past and present space program workers to design an emblem to mark the end of the space shuttle era in a contest that ended December 1st. They are now going through the nearly 100 entries received, including a few by those who rode one of the shuttles to space. There are only five shuttle flights remaining. The shuttle program began back in 1981. Over the years, fourteen astronauts have lost their lives on shuttle missions.

Check out a couple of cool entries here.

Africa splitting

And no, we don't mean that figuratively, Africa is literally splitting in two according to geologists from the University of Rochester. A thirty-five mile long gash opened up in Ethiopia as recently as 2007, it is twenty feet wide in places. Scientists say the process mimics rifts that open on the bottom of the ocean floor. Fox News reported, "the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began 'unzipping' the rift in both directions.

The African and Arabian tectonic plates meet in the remote Afar desert of Northern Ethiopia. They have been spreading apart in a process that moves at a speed of less than 1 inch per year, over the past 30 million years. This rifting process formed the 186-mile Afar depression and the Red Sea.

Read more here.

Australian Fossil Field

In the northern Australian state of Queensland, near the town of Eromanga, an area that once used to be a vast inland sea, is yielding a bumper crop fossils. According to the BBC, Australian scientists discovered a nearly complete fossil of a new species of dinosaur, a large plant-eating sauropod.

The scientists have nicknamed the fossil Zac. Zac, like other sauropods, had a very long neck, a small head and blunt teeth, and a long tail to counter-balance the weight of the neck. The remains are estimated to be 97 million years old. According to the Australian scientists the area, now a sheep farm, will yield many more fascinating fossil finds in the coming years.

Read more here.

New Ocean Current path

Research led by oceanographers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Duke University have added to the complicated model of the North Atlantic Ocean currents. This new evaluation may have substantial impact on scientists' understanding of climate change.

Using field observations and computer models, their study shows that much of the southward flow of cold water from the Labrador Sea moves not along the deep western boundary current, but along a previously unknown path in the interior of the North Atlantic.

The study by Amy Bower, a senior scientist in the WHOI Department of Physical Oceanography, and Susan Lozier, a professor of physical oceanography at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, was published in the May 14 issue of the research journal Nature.

The bearing this study has on climate change analysis is as follows according to Dr. Lozier, "This finding means it is going to be more difficult to measure climate signals in the deep ocean. We thought we could just measure them in the Deep Western Boundary Current, but we really can't." The cold southward-flowing water is thought to influence and perhaps moderate human-caused climate change.

Read more here at Terra Daily.com.

How to put out a grease fire

This excellent video came our way from a New York City reader. It is a very dramatic demonstration of how to deal with and how not deal with a grease fire. Do NOT throw water on a grease fire ever, it will explode. The water, being heavier than oil, sinks to the bottom where it instantly becomes superheated. The explosive force of the steam blows the burning oil up and out. Also, do not throw sugar or flour on a grease fire. One cup of either creates the explosive force of two sticks of dynamite.

Nature outflanks

The Clarion Content's editor-in-chief's Gaian perspective inherently assumes that nature outflanks human civilization, a holistic planet cannot be destroyed by one species. It can be made uninhabitable for one species or another, by one species or another, but its rebalancing is innate, at least until the sun goes out. But enough of the big perspective, writ small, here are two instances where nature (in the form of individuals outflanked humankind).



The first is a story about a wolverine. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has been tracking wolverines in an effort to discover more about their habits. According to WCS researchers when a male wolverine ranged into Colorado earlier in the week it was the first time a wolverine had been sighted in Colorado since 1919. Wolverines reportedly need massive territories, with individuals staking out as much as 500 square miles of space per creature. The fellow they were following walked over 500 miles in just the months of April and May this year.

The wolverine was once native to the mountains and surrounding areas of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and California. Public records indicate that populations were largely wiped out by the 1930s, according to the WCS. Their recovery has been intermittent since.

Read the whole story here from Live Science.




The other story of nature reappearing, from humankind's perspective, took place clear across the country, in Collier County Florida at the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. Volunteers there were treated to a rare daytime sighting of a Florida Panther. The female in question probably weighed 100 pounds according to scientists. The two volunteers hunkered down and were able to capture about forty-five seconds of video footage of the cat. A relative of the cougar, there are only estimated to be about 100 Florida Panthers roaming the the low tides, palm forests and wild swamps of the state.

Read the whole article and see the footage here.

New Element

Element 112, is still looking for a name, but it will be added to the periodic table more than a decade after the first single atoms of it were produced. Element 112 was officially recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).

It is part of a group of super heavy elements that are very unstable and begin to fall apart within a few milliseconds of creation. As yet, it is only possible to "make" such elements in the lab with most powerful of particle accelerators.

Read more here in the BBC.

Bats recognize each others voices

The study was conducted with greater mouse eared bats like this one.

The Clarion Content has always been fascinated by animal communication. Our Gaian perspective implies almost axiomatically that animals can communicate with each other (and us, if we are open to it) in very sophisticated ways.

A recent study at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel, verified that individual bats recognize each other's voices. They have also analyzed how it works. The lead scientist, Yossi Yovel explained to the BBC, "If you think of this in comparison with humans, it's like being able to recognize a person just by listening to the same one-syllable yell in different voices. The bats learned the voice by listening to hundreds of very short yells."

Read more here from the BBC News.

Interesting visual links

We have two interesting links to cool visual stimuli for you, dear reader.

The first one came our way courtesy of our friends at the MEP report, a site you should be checking out regularly if you aren't already. It is a fascinating diagram, high school science book-style, on the eleven types of lightning that scientists have observed. Neato.

This picture link we discovered looking for an illustration to put with an earlier post. It didn't really work there or anywhere else, but it was a cool image.

Two planets

The LA Times has an interesting article about what scientists consider the two most earthlike planets of the 340 planets discovered outside of our solar system. Oddly enough, both orbit the same star, a dwarf 20 light-years from Earth called Gliese 581. The smaller of the two is one of the smallest planets yet discovered outside of our solar system, only twice the size of Earth. There is a possibility of water on the other based on its distance from its star. Read the whole article here.

Tremors

The were rumblings southeast of Los Angeles, Sunday and Monday, at a place called the Salton Sea. The California government's official website crows, "The Sea teems with fish. That is why some scientists have called the Salton Sea “California’s crown jewel of avian biodiversity” and perhaps the most productive fishery in the world." Impressive stuff, not everyone agrees.

The Los Angeles Times reported that approximately 150 miles from Los Angeles, and 110 miles northeast of San Diego, "in a 48-hour period starting Saturday morning, 42 quakes shook [an area] just south of Bombay Beach on the Salton Sea. The quakes ranged in magnitude from 0.5 to 3.3, with three larger than 3.0 hitting the area Saturday afternoon."

They talked to a UC San Diego geophysicist who said the area is dangerously interconnected with the legendary San Andreas fault. They report, "These quakes appear to be taking place at the hazy intersection of several recently mapped faults crossing beneath the Salton Sea and the the San Andreas fault."

They even-handedly offer both sides of the story. The UC San Diego guy with two first names, Graham Kent, is quoted offering the darker scenario, "The worry for scientists comes from a case in 1987, when a magnitude-6.2 earthquake on one of the crossing faults appeared to trigger a 6.6 quake 12 hours later on the Superstition Hills fault to the south. The San Andreas fault is north of these crossing faults and the geometry is similar." For the opposite side, to offer some reassurance, since honestly nobody can say for sure either way, they give the reader Kate Hutton, a seismologist at Caltech. She says, "The last time a swarm of this type occurred in the area was 2001, so they are not especially unusual. Every time you have a swarm of earthquakes, it does raise the chances of having a larger quake, but it doesn't raise it a huge number."

Just an fyi.

Fingers crossed, prayers said, geological long-run inevitability understood.

Read the whole story here.

Breakthrough battery charger

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced a breakthrough in lithium-ion battery chargers yesterday. They claim that the advance allows lithium-ion batteries, the standard in small electronics cellphones, and hybrid vehicles, both to charge and discharge stored energy much more quickly than presently possible. While it might take six, eight, ten minutes to fully charge a cell phone now with a good charger, the MIT prototype can do it in thirty seconds. Because it is a new technique of manufacturing lithium-ion battery materials, rather than a new material, itself, researchers said production could be only two to three years away. It could be a huge boon to the electric car. Read more detail here from The Times of London.

Latest global warming victim

California Brown Pelican

The latest of the victims of on-going climate change and global warming were the endangered California Brown Pelican. The birds lured by warming temperatures and mild winters have been moving en mass north to Oregon and even Washington, well beyond their traditional California habitat which ranges from Northern California to Baja California, Mexico.

According to the New York Times as many as 5,000 pelicans may have been roosting on East Sand Island in the Columbia River estuary when a brutal storm hit. The storm packed 60 mile-an-hour winds and temperatures below freezing. The Times quotes Deborah Jaques, an Oregon wildlife biologist specializing in sea birds, "These birds were probably not subject to anything like this in a hundred years." UC Davis avian ecologist Dan Anderson told the Times that, "...once exposed to snow and extreme cold, the birds have a tough time drying off if soaked." This jives with the observations of David Jessup, a senior wildlife veterinarian for the California Department of Fish and Game. Jessup said his department examined many of the over 400 dead birds found in recent weeks and encountered lots of cases where legs, toes and pouches had frozen off.

In the Clarion Content's view this tragedy epitomizes what is likely to come from climate change and global warming. It is quite impossible for humans to wipe the Earth out. However, significant changes in climate will have all sorts of unintended consequences and blowback. It is quite possible for mankind to wipe out many species, including our own.