Update: January 16, 2008

DEEP SPACE TO STITCHES

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.

TAKING CLOSE-UPS OF A SPEED DEMON
We’ll start this week’s science news with a couple of updates from space.  Today, the MESSENGER spacecraft is scheduled to make the closest flyby of the smallest planet Mercury since the Mariner 10 spacecraft flew by the Sun-scarred world over 30 years ago.

Because of Mercury’s unique rotational timing (its day is longer than its year), the Mariner 10 spacecraft took close up pictures of less than half of Mercury.  Mercury is very difficult to see from Earth because it’s so close to the Sun (the Hubble Space Telescope can never take pictures of Mercury for that reason) and scientists are eagerly awaiting the new pictures, which will show the planet in its entirety for the first time.

If you’d like to see the solar system’s speed demon (Mercury orbits the Sun in excess of 100,000 mph), in your personal sky; just watch the Sun set tonight and look for a bright star above the Sun’s setting position as it begins to grow dark.  That’s not a star; it’s Mercury.

A SNOWBALL’S CHANCE
There’s more solar system news, but this one is happening a lot farther away.  The scientists who run the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn have discovered an amazing fact.  The north pole of the ringed planet is much hotter than it should be.

We’re used to poles being much colder than usual because here on Earth (and on Mars) they only get direct sunlight half the year.  Saturn’s poles don’t get much direct sunlight either, but we’ve known that Saturn’s south pole had a hot spot for a while now.  Astronomers had assumed it was because Saturn’s south pole is having summer and has faced the Sun since 1995.

They have to rethink their assumptions since Saturn’s north pole has a hot spot too and it’s been in perpetual darkness since 1995.  The north pole hot spot is also completely contained inside the mysterious polar hexagon that Cassini scientists found last year.  Now, they are completely mystified about the causes of both polar hot spots and that strange hexagonal ring of clouds.

One thing’s for certain.  You don’t hear anybody saying, “There’s nothing new to discover in the solar system!”  There’s plenty to discover here on Earth too, and we’ll now have a couple of stories about earthquakes.

LOOK OUT, SAN FRANCISCO!
The City by the Bay could be in for a big shaker.  New U.S. Geological Survey studies provide mounting evidence that the San Francisco Bay area should get ready for another big quake soon along the Hayward Fault.

The last five large earthquakes along the Hayward Fault have occurred at 140 year intervals.  October 21, 2008, marks the 140th anniversary of the 1868 Hayward Fault earthquake, which had a magnitude of at least 7 on the Richter scale.  Two and half million people now live along the Hayward Fault and seven million people in the region would feel a repeat event of the same magnitude.

The 1868 Hayward earthquake was overshadowed by the 1906 earthquake that destroyed much of San Francisco.  Nonetheless, a modern recurrence of the 1868 earthquake would cause widespread damage to the densely populated Bay Area, particularly in the East Bay communities that have grown up virtually on top of the Hayward fault. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the Hayward earthquake and you love Google Earth, an educational Web site is being constructed using Google Earth to illustrate the cause and effect of the 1868 earthquake.  The website will provide information about regional plate tectonics and faulting in western North America, to more specific information about the 1868 Hayward earthquake.
And there’s more earthquake news, this time about how to predict them.

ARE WE LISTENING?
Antony Fraser-Smith, a professor emeritus of Stanford University has been interested in ultra-low radio waves for years.  Most of these very long radio waves are generated in the Sun, but Fraser-Smith may have located another source closer to home.

In 1989, Fraser-Smith and his research team were monitoring ultra-low-frequency radio waves in a remote location in the Santa Cruz Mountains as part of a long-term study of the signals reaching Earth from space.  On Oct. 5, 1989, their equipment suddenly reported a large signal, and the signal stayed up for the next 12 days.  At 2:00 p.m. on Oct. 17, 1989, the signal jumped even higher, about 20 to 30 times higher than what the instruments would normally ever measure, Fraser-Smith said.  At 5:04 p.m. the 7.1 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake hit the Monterey Bay and San Francisco Bay areas, killing 63 people and causing severe damage across the region.

Fraser-Smith originally thought there was something wrong with the equipment.  After ruling out the possibility of technical malfunctions, he and his research team started to think the Loma Prieta quake had quietly announced its impending arrival, and that their equipment just happened to be in the right place at the right time to pick up the message.

Fraser-Smith has found three other studies describing electromagnetic surges before large earthquakes, just as he had found at the Loma Prieta site.  The earliest report was from the Great Alaska earthquake (magnitude 9.2) in 1964. 

This technique will probably only yield results for earthquakes of approximately magnitude 7 or higher, because background waves from the atmosphere will tend to mask any smaller signals.  But these are the quakes people are most concerned about anyway, from a safety and damage point of view.
Some seismologists are suspicious that these results are real but it would take little effort to verify or disprove them.  Fraser-Smith is calling for federal funding for a mission-oriented study that would place approximately 30 of the ultra-low-frequency-detecting instruments around the world at hotspots for big quakes.  It would cost around $3 million to buy 30 of these machines, which is cheap compared to the cost of many other large studies.

Every year, there are on average 10 earthquakes of magnitude 7 or higher around the world.  So within just a few years, you could potentially have 10 new measurements of electromagnetic waves before big quakes-surely enough to determine whether the previous four findings were real.

Maybe we could get one out here!  And now a couple of stories about our all-time favorite subject, global warming.

HOT, HOTTER, HOTTEST
The decade of 1998-2007 is the warmest on record, according to data sources obtained by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).  The global mean surface temperature for 2007 is currently estimated at 0.74°F above the 1961-1990 annual average of 57.20°F.

Preliminary global temperature figures for 2007 show the top 11 warmest years all occurring in the last 13 years.  The provisional (WMO) global figure for 2007 using data from January to November, currently places the year as the seventh warmest on records dating back to 1850.  According to NOAA records, 2007 is likely to be the fifth warmest on record.

The level of the world ocean also continues to rise at rates substantially above the average for the 20th century (about 1.7 mm per year).  Measurements show that the 2007 global sea level is about 8 inches higher than the 1870 estimate.  Modern satellite measurements show that since 1993 global averaged sea level has been rising about 3 mm per year.

And not only has the air been getting warmer, so has the Arctic Ocean.

COME ON IN, THE WATER’S WARM
Record-breaking amounts of ice-free water have deprived the Arctic of more of its natural "sunscreen" than ever recorded in recent summers.  The effect is so pronounced that average sea surface temperatures were 9 degrees F above average in one Arctic location, a high never before observed.
Such superwarming of surface waters can affect how thick ice grows back in the winter, as well as its ability to withstand melting the next summer.  Since September, the end of summer in the Arctic, winter freeze-up in some areas is two months later than usual.

Such widespread warming is probably the result of having increasing amounts of open water in the summer that readily absorb the sun's rays.  Hard, white ice is very reflective and doesn’t heat up as much as darker water.  The warming may be partly caused by increasing amounts of warmer water coming from the Pacific Ocean, something scientists have noted in recent years.

Now the situation could be self-perpetuating.  Having more heat in surface waters in recent years means 23 to 30 inches less ice will grow in the winter than formed in 1965.  Since sea ice typically grows about 80 inches in a winter, a significant fraction of Arctic ice could go permanently missing.

A comparison of 2000 and 2007 shows how the ice edge has retreated as the ice cap has shrunk and how surface waters have warmed compared to the 100-year average.  For example, parts of the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea were 3 and 3.5 degrees warmer than the historical average.  The spot that was 5 degrees above average was found at the center of the 4 degree area of water north of the Chukchi Sea. (Credit: Applied Physics)

And now a couple of upbeat health stories that may affect you sooner than you think.

GROWING NEW PARTS
MIT scientists have found a way to induce cells to form parallel tube-like structures that could one day serve as tiny engineered blood vessels.  The researchers found that they can control the cells' development by growing them on a surface with extremely tiny patterning imprinted on it.
Their work focuses on vascular tissue, which includes capillaries, the tiniest blood vessels.  The team has created a surface that can serve as a template to grow capillary tubes aligned in a specific direction.

Growing tissue on a patterned surface allows researchers more control over the results than the classic technique of mixing cell types with different growth factors and hoping that a useful type of tissue will be produced.  The next step is to implant capillary tubes grown in the lab into tissues of living animals and try to integrate them into the tissues.

And if you were worrying about all those scars from the operation, there’s news for you too.

LOOK MA!!  NO STITCHES!!
A thin polymer bio-film that seals surgical wounds could make ugly surgical scars a relic of medical history.  The film called Surgilux, is thinner than a human hair and it’s placed over a surgical wound. Then it’s exposed to an infrared laser, which heats the film just enough to bind it to the tissue, and perfectly seal the wound.

The raw material for Surgilux is extracted from crab shells and the ultra-thin polymer has Food and Drug Administration approval in the US.

Early test results indicate that its strongest potential is for use in brain and nerve surgery because it avoids the numerous disadvantages of stitches, which fail to seal and can act as a source of infection.  Up to 11% of brain surgery patients have to return for repeat surgery due to leakage of cerebro-spinal fluid and other complications arising from sutures.

Surgical stitches have been around for at least 4,000 years, so the technique is definitely due for an update.  Surgical glues have been tried, but the bonding can be uneven and results in unsightly (and dangerous!) leakage.  And if you’ve ever tried to use the superglues yourself you can appreciate the dangers of some poor patient getting to wear the doctor’s surgical gloves for a while.

Surgical superglues also require UV light to set, which can cause skin damage.  (Where’d you get the awful sunburn?  From my surgery!).  Surgilux is set by infra-red so you may get a little warm, but you won’t get sunburned.  Better still, Surgilux has anti-microbial properties, which deters post-operative infections.

Ugly stitches may soon be a thing of the past!