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Curious Cat Science and Egineering blog full tag cloud
Discovery of Giant Roaming Deep Sea Protist Provides New Perspective on Animal Evolution
Biologist Mikhail “Misha” Matz and his colleagues recently discovered the grape-sized protists and their complex tracks on the ocean floor near the Bahamas. DNA analysis confirmed that the giant protist found by Matz and his colleagues in the Bahamas is Gromia sphaerica, a species previously known only from the Arabian Sea.
Matz says the protists probably move by sending leg-like extensions, called pseudopodia, out of their cells in all directions. The pseudopodia then grab onto mud in one direction and the organism rolls that way, leaving a track. Hr says the giant protists’ bubble-like body design is probably one of the planet’s oldest macroscopic body designs, which may have existed for 1.8 billion years.
“I personally think now that the whole Precambrian may have been exclusively the reign of protists,” says Matz. “Our observations open up this possible way of interpreting the Precambrian fossil record.”
He says the appearance of all the animal body plans during the Cambrian explosion might not just be an artifact of the fossil record. There are likely other mechanisms that explain the burst-like origin of diverse multicellular life forms.
Single-Celled Giant Upends Early Evolution
A distant relative of microscopic amoebas, the grape-sized Gromia sphaerica was discovered once before, lying motionless at the bottom of the Arabian Sea. But when Mikhail Matz of the University of Texas at Austin and a group of researchers stumbled across a group of G. sphaerica off the coast of the Bahamas, the creatures were leaving trails behind them up to 50 centimeters (20 inches) long in the mud.
The trouble is, single-celled critters aren’t supposed to be able to leave trails. The oldest fossils of animal trails, called ‘trace fossils’, date to around 580 million years ago, and paleontologists always figured they must have been made by multicellular animals with complex, symmetrical bodies.
Related: Lancelet Genome Provides Answers on Evolution - MicroRNAs Emerged Early in Evolution - Fossils of Sea Monster - Sea Urchin Genome
A penguin takes sanctuary on a boat while killer whales circle.
Related: Killer Whales Create Wave to Push Seal Off Ice - Octopus Juggling Fellow Aquarium Occupants - Jumping Savannah Cat
Fun blog by Linds, a geophysicist, with fun name and tagline: PhD = Pretty huge Dork There’s no crying in grad school! I enjoy including some posts on scientists at work (and plan on trying to intentionally do more of that). The photo shows her office onboard ship - pretty impressive. I thought this monitor was cool.
Those snippets are from various posts on the blog. Another from earlier:
Related: Giant Star Fish and More in Antarctica - Beloit College: Girls and Women in Science - A Career in Computer Programming - Diversity in Science and Engineering - So, You Want to be an Astrophysicist? - Dr. Tara Smith
“Once we saw him juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, another time he threw stones against the glass damaging it. And from time to time he completely re-arranges his tank to make it suit his own taste better - much to the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants.”
Related: more fun posts - The Brine Lake Beneath the Sea - Baby Sand Dollars Clone Themselves When They Sense Danger - Virgin Birth for Another Shark Species
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Now that is some cool engineering: a bridge that becomes a tunnel. The Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel is a 4.6 miles (7.4 km) crossing for Interstate 664 in Hampton Roads, Virginia, USA. It is a four-lane bridge-tunnel composed of bridges, trestles, man-made islands, and tunnels under a portion of the Hampton Roads harbor where the James, Nansemond, and Elizabeth Rivers come together in the southeastern portion of Virginia.
It was completed in 1992, after 7 years of construction, at a cost $400 million, and it includes a four-lane tunnel that is 4,800 feet (1,463 m) long, two man-made portal islands, and 3.2 miles (5.1 km) of twin trestle.
Photos by Virginia Department of Transportation. Details from wikipedia. Google satellite view of the bridge-tunnel.
Related: Extreme Engineering - Cool Falkirk Wheel Canal Lift - The Dynamics of Crowd Disasters: An Empirical Study - A ‘Chunnel’ for Spain and Morocco - Swiss dig world’s Longest Tunnel
3281 FEET: BATHYPELAGIC ZONE
The ocean is dark at this level; the only glow is from bioluminescent animals. There are no living plants, and creatures subsist by eating the debris that falls from the levels above, including dead or dying fish and plankton.
3,281 feet: Maximum diving depth of the sperm whale. To navigate in the darkness, these whales emit high pitched sounds and use echoes to determine the location of prey.
3,937 feet: Maximum diving depth of the leatherback sea turtle.
4,000 feet: The domain of the Pacific sleeper shark, the largest toothed shark ever photographed. It can reach lengths of 28 feet.
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5,187 feet: Maximum diving depth of the elephant seal.
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13,123 FEET: ABYSSOPELAGIC ZONE
In the pitch-dark of the abyss, there is no light at all, the water temperature is near freezing. Of the few creatures found at these crushing depths, most are blind and have long tentacles - tiny invertebrates such as shrimp, basket stars, and small squids.
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19,685 FEET: HADOLPELAGIC ZONE
Despite the intense pressure and frigid temperature in the deepwater trenches and canyons, life still exists here, especially near hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. Invertebrates such as starfish actually thrive.
Related: Ocean Life - Giant Star Fish and More in Antarctica - ocean related posts - Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone
Scotland Plans World’s First Tidal Turbine Farms
Project aims to harness sea power
Related: Generating Electricity from the Ocean - Commercial Wave Project - World’s First Commercial-Scale Subsea Turbine - posts on energy
North American Fish Under Threat
“Fish are kind of canaries in the coal mine,” said Howard Jelks of the USGS and lead author of the report, published in Fisheries. “If you change the water to something that’s not able to support these fish, it’s also not going to be as high quality for recreating, for eating the fish out of these streams, for drawing water that’s ultimately used for drinking, or for other things.”
Related: Fishless Future - SelFISHing - Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace - Running Out of Fish
Do dolphins sleep?, MIT:
Related: Why do We Sleep? - Energy Efficiency of Digestion - interesting science facts - Why is the Sky Blue?
Pretty cool swimming fish robot from Essex University.
Related: Robot Fish Debut in London - Robo-Salamander - Roachbot: Cockroach Controlled Robot - Robo Insect Flight
By virtue of their rough, water-repellent coat, when submerged these insects trap a thin layer of air on their bodies. These bubbles not only serve as a finite oxygen store, but also allow the insects to absorb oxygen from the surrounding water.
“Some insects have adapted to life underwater by using this bubble as an external lung,” said John Bush, associate professor of applied mathematics, a co-author of the recent study.
Thanks to those air bubbles, insects can stay below the surface indefinitely and dive as deep as about 30 meters, according to the study co-authored by Bush and Morris Flynn, former applied mathematics instructor. Some species, such as Neoplea striola, which are native to New England, hibernate underwater all winter long.
Related: Swimming Ants - Fish Discovery: Breathes Air for Months at a Time - Giant Star Fish and More in Antarctica
Dolphin Kick Gives Swimmers Edge
The dolphin kick first hit Olympic swimming big-time 20 years ago, after Harvard backstroker David Berkoff figured out something fundamental. “It seemed pretty obvious to me that kicking underwater seemed to be a lot faster than swimming on the surface,” Berkoff says.
That’s because there’s turbulence and air on the surface of the water, and they create resistance. The “Berkoff Blastoff,” as it was called, was used at the start and after turns, with long stretches of that underwater undulating kick.
Follow the link for a video of Michael Phelps demonstrating the technique and more interesting details. Photo by A. Dawson shows Michael Phelps diving into the water at the 2008 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials.
Related: Science of the High Jump - Sports Engineering - Physicist Swimming Revolution - Swimming Robot Aids Researchers
NASA Spacecraft Confirms Martian Water, Mission Extended
“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”
With enticing results so far and the spacecraft in good shape, NASA also announced operational funding for the mission will extend through Sept. 30. The original prime mission of three months ends in late August. The mission extension adds five weeks to the 90 days of the prime mission.
“Phoenix is healthy and the projections for solar power look good, so we want to take full advantage of having this resource in one of the most interesting locations on Mars,” said Michael Meyer, chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
The soil sample came from a trench approximately 2 inches deep. When the robotic arm first reached that depth, it hit a hard layer of frozen soil. Two attempts to deliver samples of icy soil on days when fresh material was exposed were foiled when the samples became stuck inside the scoop. Most of the material in Wednesday’s sample had been exposed to the air for two days, letting some of the water in the sample vaporize away and making the soil easier to handle.
“Mars is giving us some surprises,” said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. “We’re excited because surprises are where discoveries come from. One surprise is how the soil is behaving. The ice-rich layers stick to the scoop when poised in the sun above the deck, different from what we expected from all the Mars simulation testing we’ve done. That has presented challenges for delivering samples, but we’re finding ways to work with it and we’re gathering lots of information to help us understand this soil.”
Related: NASA Set to Test Mars Ice - NASA You Have a Problem (their site is still broken) - Mars Rovers Getting Ready for Another Adventure
My cat ran up a $300 water bill:
The amazing cat cam could help investigate such problems too.
Related: Automatic Cat Feeder - Toilet Repairs - Young Engineer
Why you can get ‘500 year floods’ two years in a row by Anne Jefferson:
This post is a good explanation that the 500 year flood idea is just way of saying .2% probability (that some people confuse as meaning it can only happen every 500 years). But I actually am more interested in the other factor which is how much estimation is in “500 year prediction.” We don’t have 500 years of data. And the conditions today (I believe) are much more likely to create extreme conditions. So taking comfort in 500 year (.2%), or even 100 year (1% probability) flood “predictions” is dangerous.
It would seem to me, in fact, actually having a 500 year flood actually increases the odds for it happening again (because the data now includes that case which had not been included before). It doesn’t actually increase the likelihood of it happening but the predictions we make are based on the data we have (so given that it happens our previous 500 year prediction is questionable). With a coin toss we know the odds are 50%, getting 3 heads in a row doesn’t convince us that our prediction was bad. And therefore the previous record of heads or tails in the coin toss have no predictive value.
I can’t see why we would think that for floods. With the new data showing a flood, (it seems to me) most any model is likely to show an increased risk (and pretty substantial I would think) of it happening again in the next 100 years (especially in any area with substantial human construction - where conditions could well be very different than it was for our data that is 20, 40… years old). And if we are entering a period of more extreme weather then that will likely be a factor too…
The comments on the original blog post make some interesting points too - don’t miss those.
Related: Two 500-Year Floods Within 15 Years: What are the Odds? USGS - All Models Are Wrong But Some Are Useful by George Box - Cancer Deaths - Declining Trend? - Megaflood Created the English Channel - Seeing Patterns Where None Exists - Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data - Understanding Data
Professor Stephen Burkinshaw, Chair of Textile Chemistry at the University of Leeds, has created a nearly waterless washing machine. Xeros ltd. has been created to commercialize products based on this system (both for home use and for solvent-based commercial garment cleaning). Given the predicted trouble for supplies of freshwater technology that can reduce water use will be very useful.
Virtually waterless washing machine heralds cleaning revolution
Related: Clean Clothes Without Soap - Ventless Clothes Dryers - environment related posts
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