Update: December 5, 2007

FROM THE HIGH ARCTIC TO HIGH FASHION

By Pam Eastlick for THE DEEP on line

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

MELTING, MELTING, MELTING
We’ve got some cool stories for you this week, but the first one is an update on something that isn’t nearly as cool as it should be.  The International Ice Charting Working Group predicts that there will be more ships in the Arctic as sea ice continues to diminish and warns of that many of them will strike icebergs, which will be "significant hazards to navigation," according to a recent statement.
The statement was released during a recent five-day conference held Italy, in which ice experts from Europe and North America gathered to discuss the state of the polar regions.

The statement continues, "In September 2007, the Arctic sea ice reached the minimum extent – the lowest amount of ice recorded in the area annually – in the history of ice charting based on satellite, aircraft and surface observations, continuing a recent trend of diminishing sea ice that began in the 1980s and has accelerated.  While there will still be natural variability, the decline is likely to continue."
During the last 25 years, researchers using satellite photos of the North Polar regions have seen the minimum ice present at the end of summer dwindle from around 3 million square miles in the early 1980’s to around 1.5 million square miles in September 2007.  The previous record low was in 2005 when the minimum ice extent was roughly two million square miles.

 

The north polar ice cap is shrinking much faster than global climate models predict.  According to Douglas Bancroft, Director of the Canadian Ice Service, the record reduction in 2007 stunned the scientists who study the movement and extent of polar ice.  "The overall extent was similar to what some of the models envisioned but decades earlier of when they expected that would occur.  In fact, the summer of 2007 looked very similar to some climate model forecasts for 2030 to 2050." Feeling warm yet? Envisat ASAR mosaic of the Arctic Ocean for early September 2007, clearly showing the most direct route of the Northwest Passage open (orange line) and the Northeast passage only partially blocked (blue line). The dark grey colour represents the ice-free areas, while green represents areas with sea ice. (Credit: ESA)

INVESTIGATING THE FURNACE
In a landmark test flight, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and a team of research partners this month successfully launched a solar telescope to an altitude of 120,000 feet, borne by a balloon larger than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.  The test clears the way for long-duration polar balloon flights beginning in 2009 that will capture unprecedented details of the Sun's surface.

The project, known as Sunrise, is an international collaboration that may usher in a new generation of balloon-borne scientific missions that cost less than sending instruments into space.  Scientists also can test an instrument on a balloon before making a commitment to launch it on a rocket.

The balloon, with its gondola of scientific instruments, was launched successfully on the morning of October 3 from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.  It flew for about 10 hours, capturing stable images of the solar surface and additional data from the various instruments of the sophisticated payload.  The gondola then separated from the balloon and descended with a parachute, landing safely in a field outside Dalhart, Texas.

The ultimate goal of the Sunrise project is to investigate the structure and dynamics of the Sun's magnetic fields.  The fields fuel solar activity, including plasma storms that buffet Earth's outer atmosphere and affect sensitive telecommunications and power systems.  Solar magnetic fields also cause variations in solar radiation, which may be significant factors in long-term changes in Earth's climate.

The next Sunrise flight will take place in the summer of 2009.  The balloon will be launched from Sweden and will make a flight lasting several days over the Arctic.  By taking advantage of the midnight Sun, the telescope will be able to capture continuous images for a period of several days to as long as two weeks, possibly orbiting the Arctic.  Another balloon may be launched later on another long-distance flight over the Arctic or the Antarctic.

The giant balloons travel to an altitude of 120,000 feet, placing the telescope above most atmospheric turbulence and ultraviolet-absorbing water vapor and ozone.  It will be able to view stable images in the ultraviolet range, which allow for higher resolution than can be obtained from Earth's surface.

The telescope will capture features on the solar surface as small as 20 miles across, more than double the resolution achieved by any other instrument to date.  This will enable scientists to examine solar structures that will help them understand the mechanisms driving solar activity.  In addition, by observing the same area during an entire flight over high latitudes in summer, the telescope will enable scientists to continually witness changes in the magnetic fields without the interruption of night.

The Sunrise balloon is designed to carry 6,000 pounds of equipment, including a 1-meter (39-inch) solar telescope, additional observing instruments, communications equipment, computers and disk drives, solar panels, and roll cages and crush pads to protect the payload on landing.  The equipment must be able to withstand dramatic changes in temperature, and the steel and aluminum gondola cannot vibrate in ways that could interfere with the operation of the telescope. One of the most difficult aspects of the engineering work was to design the gondola in such a way that the telescope in flight would remain focused on a specific and relatively tiny area of the Sun, even while twisting on a soaring balloon for a week or longer during the full-scale research missions.  To accomplish this, the gondola includes both a torque motor drive to keep the gondola and telescope in the correct orientation and a precision guiding and compensation system to constantly correct the telescope's aim.  Because the gondola is designed to withstand considerable force when it lands, the instruments can be launched on repeated missions.

The Sunrise balloon.  Slender hoses, blown into arcs by the wind, partially fill the balloon with helium before launch.  A large portion of the balloon is left unfilled so it can expand as it ascends into the stratosphere, where air pressure is considerably lower. (Credit: Photo by Carlye Calvin, Copyright UCAR)

And now, pulling our attention from the big science projects, let’s examine a little food news.

AS CAPARIS IS GOOD FOR YOU AFTER ALL
Everyone knows that most of what drove early exploration had nothing to do with the advancement of knowledge and everything to do with spices.  In the days before refrigeration, spices helped disguise the fact that your food was, perhaps, not as fresh as you wanted it to be.  Some of them actually helped preserve it.

Spices grow mostly in the tropics, but because Guam is a long way away from everywhere and the commercially valuable spice plants like cinnamon, cloves, black pepper and mace never made the trip on their own.  Planting spice trees doesn’t work here either because the typhoons blow them away.
But the clever Spanish did discover a commercially valuable spice that would grow here, and for 300 years they forced the Chamoru people to raise it.  The Chamorus called it as caparis and they hated the task.  As caparis is a small bush that will only grow in the tropics and only grow near the beach.  Because it grows close to the water; it’s typhoon resistant. 

But the problem with as caparis is that the only place it will grow on Guam is dissected limestone or karst.  You may be unfamiliar with those terms, but you sure are familiar with the terrain if you’ve ever gone to the beach anywhere on northern Guam.  You don’t climb on the rocks on northern Guam because when the limestone dissolves, it produces sharp edges.  Very sharp edges.  Farming as caparis is a little like farming on knives.  Harvesting as caparis is bloody work.

We know as caparis as capers and these little ‘salt pills’ are a prime ingredient in such culinary delights as chicken piccata and smoked salmon.  And it turns out that capers are an unexpectedly big source of natural antioxidants that show promise for fighting cancer and heart disease when added to meals, particularly meats.

The researchers who did the study on capers added caper extracts to grilled ground-turkey, and analyzed the byproducts formed during simulated digestion.  The scientists found that caper-extract helped prevent the formation of certain byproducts of digested meat that have been linked by others to an increased risk of cancer and heart disease.  That beneficial effect occurred even with the small amounts of caper typically used to flavor food. apers may have beneficial health effects, especially for people whose meals are rich in fats and red meats," the study concluded. So buy a jar of capers and add them to your food.  If you’d like to see what the plant looks like, look on the ground beyond the chapel at the Hilton Hotel.

Tiny capers, shown in different sizes, are rich in disease-fighting antioxidants. (Credit: Courtesy of Victoria Packing Corp.)

Those small bushes with the round grey leaves are capers.  But I don’t suggest taking a really close look unless you’re wearing really sturdy shoes!

And in related food research . . .

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE
A research project carried out by a British professor has found that thought suppression can lead people to engage in the very behavior they are trying to avoid.  It also found that men who think about chocolate end up eating more of it than women who have the same thoughts.

The researcher invited 134 young people (67 males and 67 females) with an average age of 22 years to investigate how thinking can affect taste preference.  They were given a taste preference task, where they were asked to try two brands of chocolate and answer a questionnaire and they were also given two periods of thought verbalization where they would have to verbalize their thoughts while alone. Additionally, they were given specific topics to try to think or not to think about. The results indicated both males and females who suppressed thoughts of chocolate ate significantly more than those in the control condition.  Secondly, for males, actively thinking about chocolate made them eat more chocolate when it was offered.

Both males and females who suppressed thoughts of chocolate ate significantly more than those in the control condition, researchers found. (Credit: iStockphoto/Liza McCorkle)

The published research paper was entitled "Resistance can be futile: Investigating behavioral rebound," by Dr James Erskine of the University of Hertfordshire. 

Now that’s MY kind of scientific research!!  Where can I sign up??

And in a different kind of science relating to food items.

WORLD’S OLDEST LIVING ANIMAL?
You probably thought it was a Galapagos tortoise, but a team of scientists from Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences have found a quahog clam off the north coast of Iceland which is apparently over 400 years old.

Can you imagine living for four centuries?  

When this animal was a juvenile, King James I replaced Queen Elizabeth I as English monarch, Shakespeare was writing his greatest plays , Galileo was peering at the sky through a telescope for the first time and Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for saying the Sun rather than the Earth was the enter of the universe.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the existing record for the longest-lived animal belongs to a 220 year old quahog clam collected in 1982 from American waters.  Unofficially, the record belongs to a 374 year old Icelandic clam which was found in a museum.  Both these records appear to have been eclipsed by the latest specimen, whose age, between 405 and 410 years, has been assessed by counting the annual growth lines in the shell. 

It is very likely that longer lived individuals of the species remain to be found.  Although Icelandic waters seem to provide the ideal conditions for extreme longevity, clams with lifetimes well in excess of 200 years have been found both in the Irish Sea and the North Sea.

So why do these clams live so long?  The Bangor scientists are intrigued to find out and believe that the clams may have evolved exceptionally effective defenses which hold back the destructive ageing processes that normally occur.  An investigation of the tissues of these real life Methuselahs might help us to understand the processes of aging. One wonders if after they dredged him up, they had him for lunch??

A clam dredged from Icelandic waters had lived for 400 years, scientists believe. (Credit: Image courtesy of Bangor University)

And now we make a really bizarre detour from the realms of science into the wonderful world of high fashion.

SEWING WITH SOUND
Fashion design students in a Cornell University intermediate pattern-development course have learned to mend their ways and stretch their skills by applying a technology used to make body bags to high couture.

A recent assignment challenged the students to create an innovative evening ensemble, a retro dress and a futuristic jacket.  But here was the real challenge: they couldn’t use thread or glue.  Instead the students were asked to "sew" with sound waves, using a process called ultrasonic bonding to get the job done. And talk about a stitch in time saving nine -- the technology saves hours of detail work. "Ultrasonic joining procedures are clean and precise and require no glue or thread to seam or seal," says Anita Racine, senior lecturer in the College of Human Ecology's Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design.  She said she wanted to challenge the students to increase their problem-solving abilities and see how they would apply the technology to fashion design, which had not yet been done. The results were so impressive that several of the student creations have been chosen for the runway at the annual International Textile and Apparel Association meeting where Racine will give a presentation on her award-winning work that used ultrasonic bonding in apparel design. The technology has been around for years to assemble synthetic hospital gowns, bulletproof vests and other types of protective and functional clothing -- and more recently military body bags -- because it eliminates fraying and unraveling of seams and edges and because of the way it seals to prevent leakage.

Jennifer Tokuda '09 models a dress designed by Heber Sanchez '09 ‘sewn’ together with sound waves. (Credit: Shai Eynav

In the process, high-frequency sound waves are converted into mechanical vibrations that are channeled through a component called a "horn," creating a rapid buildup of heat.  Fabrics used must be at least 60 percent synthetic so the seams can be fused together.