HOW SWEET IT ISN’T

By Pam Eastlick

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

I was looking through the medical file last week and discovered a very interesting study that has great relevance for you personally. So . . . Tun Jose is diabetic and Nana was too, and now they’ve diagnosed Papa and I guess that diabetes is just inevitable for me too, huh?

It’s very true there are an incredible number of diabetics in the Pacific and some of it may be genetic. But there’s a new study out that says that the King Car tea in your hand may have a lot more to do with whether you develop diabetes or not.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health have published a study that provides hard evidence that drinking too many sugary beverages can trigger diabetes. Lead author Vasanti Malik says "Many previous studies have examined the relationship between sugar-sweetened beverages and risk of diabetes, and most have found positive associations but our study, which is a pooled analysis of the available studies, provides an overall picture of the magnitude of risk and the consistency of the evidence."

Consumption of sugary drinks, like sodas, beer and high fructose juices is on the rise everywhere and previous scientific studies have shown consistent associations with weight gain and risk of obesity. However, this study is the first to review the evidence linking sugar-sweetened beverages with type 2 diabetes.

The researchers analyzed the information from different 11 studies that examined the association between sugar-sweetened beverages and diabetes 2. The studies included more than 300,000 participants and 15,043 cases of type 2 diabetes.

The findings showed that drinking one to two sugary drinks per day increased the risk of type 2 diabetes by 26% compared with those who consumed less than one sugary drink per month. Drinking one 12-ounce serving per day increased the risk of type 2 diabetes by about 15%.

The researchers said that the link they observed between soda consumption and risk of diabetes is likely a cause-and-effect relationship because other studies have documented that sugary beverages cause weight gain, and weight gain is closely linked to the development of type 2 diabetes.

There are many things that cause diabetes, but putting down that coke or that beer or that King Car tea and picking up a bottle of water is fairly easy. A can of coke contains THREE TABLESPOONS OF SUGAR. The Chamorus don’t call diabetes, “sugar blood” for nothing!

Dr. Malik says "People should limit how many sugar-sweetened beverages they drink and replace them with healthy alternatives, such as water, to reduce risk of diabetes as well as obesity, gout, tooth decay, and cardiovascular disease."

Little kids with silver teeth, Tun Dabit’s case of gout, Auntie Maria who got stuck in the chair the other day and your primu who died at age 42 from a heart attack. Are we forming a picture here? Reduce your intake of sugar-laden beverages today and you’ll live longer!

A PERSONAL VOYAGE

By Pam Eastlick

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

Since we’re going to be doing a short feature on the sky every week, I need to tell you how to find the things I talk about. It’s really simple. First, make a fist, tucking your thumb inside your hand. Now, straighten your arm out full length. You’ve just created a marvelous measuring device.

The width of your fist held at arm’s length covers approximately 10 degrees. Of course, if you measure the width of your fist against that of a four-year old child, you’ll definitely discover that your fist is bigger. But, your arm is longer than a four-year old’s arm and for both of you, your fist covers about 10 degrees.

To check this for accuracy, just put the bottom of one fist on the horizon and place the other fist on top. If you alternate your fists, raising your arms in the air, you should measure 9 fist-widths from horizon to zenith (that’s the astronomy term for ‘straight up’).

Now, let me give you a little homework. Go outside tonight and watch one of our magnificent sunsets (tough homework, huh?). Although the Sun won’t set exactly due west tonight, the Sun always sets in the west. It may be south of due west (as it will be tonight) or it may be north of due west, but it will be in the west!

Notice where the Sun disappears along your horizon and mark the location with a coconut tree or your neighbor’s roof or whatever works for you. Then, go back outside at around 7:15 p.m. and find the Sun’s setting location again.

Why 7:15 p.m.? Because I tend to tell you about the night sky as it appears at one hour after sunset. By that time it’s completely dark and you can see everything the clouds will let you see, even the dim stuff. We need a set time because just as the Sun sets, the stars and planets near the western horizon set too, because the giant spaceship you ride every day of your life is spinning.

So, find the location of the setting Sun at 7:15 p.m., and create your measuring device. Hold your fist parallel to the horizon and put one side of it at the Sun’s setting position. You want to measure one fist-width to the right of where the Sun disappeared. Then turn your fist so it’s at right angles to the horizon and measure four fist-widths up in the sky. If you’ve done your homework correctly, there should be a very bright star immediately above your fist.

If it’s substantially after 7:15 p.m. the star will be closer to the horizon and if you go out after 10 o’clock, it won’t be there at all because it will have set, just like the Sun did. There’s something very interesting about that bright star. It isn’t a star at all, it’s the planet Jupiter.

If you have a good pair of binoculars, use them to have a look at Jupiter. You’ll notice something interesting. There will be two, three or four very bright little stars next to Jupiter in a line that will be pretty much at right angles to the horizon. If you look at Jupiter with your binoculars tomorrow night, you’ll discover that the positions and probably the numbers of the little ‘stars’ have changed. They aren’t stars: those are Jupiter’s four big moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

Now, start at Jupiter and very slowly use your binoculars to look closer and closer to the ground. If you’re lucky, you’ll see a faint star that looks like all the other stars you can see through your binoculars with one very important exception; it will be the color of pistachio ice cream.

Green stars are very rare and I don’t think there are any that you can see with binoculars. That’s not a star; you’ve just discovered the planet Uranus.

Go on a voyage of discovery tonight in your own backyard. Take your children along. Discover a planet in your very own personal sky. Look up tonight, the universe awaits you!

IS IT GETTING HOT IN HERE OR IS IT JUST ME?

By Pam Eastlick

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

Greetings everybody. I have some really good news if you get up early in the morning while it’s still dark. And since we’ll have the latest sunrise times of the year for the rest of the month (the Sun will rise at 6:48 a.m. every day) that includes most of us. This coming Friday morning 21 January, there’l be an astoundingly bright pass of the International Space Station. It will be very bright because it occurs not too far before sunrise and because it will pass almost directly overhead.

To see this bright pass, mark your calendar to remind yourself to go outside on Friday morning, and visit www.time.gov and set your watch. Then go outside on Friday morning at 6:00 a.m. and face east where the Sun will rise. You’ll see an astoundingly bright star above the eastern horizon. That’s not a star, that’s the planet Venus. If you have an unobstructed view of the horizon, you’ll see another bright star close to the ground (or ocean). That’s not a star either, it’s Mercury.

I find morning skies absolutely astounding because if I haven’t turned on any lights, my eyes are already adjusted to the dark. After you find Venus (and Mercury, if you’re lucky) swing slowly to your right and face south. Yes indeed, that is the Southern Cross virtually upright above the southern horizon, and if you look opposite it in the north, you’ll see the Big Dipper.

Continue your swing to the right until you’re facing west, opposite where the Sun will rise. If there are no clouds along your western horizon, between 6:05 and 6:07 a.m. you should see a very bright star appear above the southwestern horizon. That’s not a star, of course, it’s the reason you’re standing out in your yard enjoying the early morning sky: it’s the International Space Station.

The ISS is now over 350 feet long, 150 feet wide and 60 feet tall. It is, by far, the largest satellite ever orbited. It has a huge array of solar panels whose main purpose is to absorb sunlight. But all those panels also reflect a lot of sunlight and the ISS will shine at an astounding -3.7. So how bright is that? Just turn back around and face east. Venus is brighter at -4.2. Nothing outshines Venus in the sky except the Sun and Moon!

The ISS will climb higher in the sky and at 6:10:20 it will pass quite close to a bright star. That’s not a star; that’s the planet Saturn and if you’re lucky enough to see Mercury on Friday morning, you’ll see three of the visible planets. The ISS will pass virtually overhead at 6:10:37 a.m.

At 6:10:45, the ISS will pass quite close to Arcturus, the fourth brightest star and by 6:13 a.m. it will disappear above the northeastern horizon into the glow of the rising Sun. Go out and enjoy! Trust me; you’ll be glad you did!

And now it’s time for our science news and unfortunately, it’s not nearly as ‘feel good’ as going outside for a little early morning stargazing.

NASA recently had a news release that named 2010 as tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record. There was a lot of press concerning it and a lot of people saying that the scientists are just letting off hot air (pun intended!) and it doesn’t really mean anything.

The difference between the average temperatures of the two years tied for first place is so small as to be meaningless. What’s more important is second place. We find not two years tied for the dubious honor of being the second hottest year on record; not three years, but SIX years all vying to be the second hottest. They are, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2009. Less than a TENTH of a degree Fahrenheit separates them all.

And the fact that all these years are warmer than average and that last year was tied for first is a little scary for two reasons. First, the Sun has been much quieter than normal for the past several years. Since ALL the heat comes from there (we just fix it with our pollution so that the heat can’t get away as easily), you would suspect that things should be cooling off a bit. They aren’t.

Second, we’re in the middle of a La Nina event and typically, the Pacific Ocean cools off in a La Nina and as a result, global temperatures are a little cooler. Guess what? It isn’t happening with this one!

So global warming isn’t happening, eh? Yeah, right!

SPIES AND BLACK GOLD

By Pam Eastlick

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

Greetings everyone! Welcome to a new year, a new decade (it is, after all 01/11/11) and a whole new The Deep column! We’ll be leaner, meaner and feature information about the local sky.

LOOKING UP

One of the really cool things about living so close to the equator is that most of the satellites that orbit Earth pass over us and there’s a lot of stuff up there. For instance, twenty-four objects will pass over your head tonight during the two-hour satellite viewing window.

You can only see satellites for two hours after sunset and two hours before sunrise because they don’t have lights. You can only see them if the Sun’s light is still shining on them and since most satellites orbit at a maximum altitude of 400 miles, that period lasts about two hours.

Of the twenty-four objects that will pass through Guam’s skies tonight, a whopping sixteen of them are junk. They’re third stage rockets or rocket boosters. If you see a satellite that’s flashing on and off, it’s most certainly a rocket, because they sometimes tumble and catch the sunlight erratically. Rockets stages are also typically bigger than the satellites they carry into orbit and they reflect more sunlight.

I’ll be featuring a satellite pass most weeks and if you’re interested in seeing them yourself, you’ll need to get an accurate time check for your watch at www.time.gov. I get my satellite information from www.heavens-above.com.

There aren’t any particularly bright passes tonight but there is one that caught my eye. The small moving light will appear above the southeastern horizon at 6:57 p.m. It reaches maximum altitude at 7:01 p.m., but it should be fairly easy to spot because it will pass right through Orion’s Belt at 7:02:30. It will disappear in the northeast by 7:04 p.m. and it will shine at magnitude 3.5, dimmer than Orion’s belt stars.

Most satellites travel from west to east because they’re launched toward the east to take advantage of the Earth spinning beneath them but this one is traveling from south to north. Here’s a little satellite watching tip. If it’s in a polar orbit, the odds are very good that it’s a spy satellite because the entire Earth turns beneath it.

What’s odd about this particular satellite? It’s listed at Heaven’s-Above not as “HST” or as “MOS 1 Rocket” or as “Helios 1 B” but as “Unknown Object B”. “What???” I said. There’s not a whole lot of info on this bird, but it was launched in 2004 and the country of origin is listed as PRC. People’s Republic of China, eh? If I were you I’d wave at “Unknown Object B” tonight because the odds are very good it’s taking your picture!

LUXURIOUS LIQUIDS

So, are you fed up with $4.00 per gallon for gas? Are you thinking that gasoline has to be the most expensive liquid around? Not even close!

There are some interesting contenders for most expensive liquid. Apparently cobra venom ranks right up there at around $150,000 per gallon, and Chanel No. 5 clocks in at $25,000 per gallon, but most of us will never deal in cobra venom and sadly a lot of us will never use any Chanel No. 5.

Of course that’s not to say that some of the liquids we use frequently aren’t expensive. Most shampoo costs around $30 a gallon, most hard liquors are $50-$75 a gallon and I hate to tell you this, guys but your Tabasco sauce beats most alcohol hands-down since it runs around $100 per gallon.

But there’s a liquid that most of us use on a frequent basis that is outrageously expensive. Don’t believe me? Just estimate the amount of black ink in the printer on your desk.

After spending just under $20 for a new ink cartridge this week I took it out of the box and looked at it closely. Hmmmm says I; I estimate that there’s about an eighth of a cup of ink in there. So . . . . that means that this ink is roughly $160 A CUP. There are 16 cups in a gallon and my trusty calculator tells me that the black ink for my printer is over TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDREDS DOLLARS A GALLON!!

I could buy a fairly decent used car for what printer ink costs per gallon. So, are you still worried about the price of gas?

GEOLOGICALLY SPEAKING

By Pam Eastlick

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

Greetings everyone! I hope you had as much fun over the holidays as I did. This week, I thought we’d explore a file that isn’t bulging, but we haven’t been there for a while and there are some fascinating stories about our wonderful planet in it. We’re going exploring in the geology file.

We’ll start in the middle of our wonderful planet and then go exploring at the opposite ends of the Earth. Of course, I’ve always wondered how a sphere can have ends!

I used to live in Southern California and I remember a great trip to Los Angeles where we visited a place that absolutely fascinated me, the La Brea Tar Pits. It was hard to reconcile the astonishingly well preserved mammals that are still being excavated in the area with the bustling traffic on Wiltshire Boulevard. I was also intrigued by the fact that they are encased in tar or asphalt which is just another form of black gold or Texas T. There’s oil in them there plains!

There’s been a more recent discovery that shows that the La Brea tar pits aren’t the only place tar is found. Scientists have recently discovered enough tar to pave most of Southern California, but it’s in the ocean.

AN UNDERGROUND TRIBUTE TO JOANIE MITCHELL

Well, as it turns out, they paved paradise and actually did put up a parking lot. A big one. Off the coast of Santa Barbara in 700 feet of water there are football-field-sized asphalt domes that are unlike any other underwater features known to exist.

About 35,000 years ago, researchers think a series of undersea volcanoes deposited massive flows of petroleum 10 miles offshore. The deposits hardened into domes that were discovered recently by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and UC Santa Barbara (UCSB).

"It was an amazing experience, driving along…and all of a sudden, this mountain is staring you in the face," said Christopher M. Reddy, director of WHOI’s Coastal Ocean Institute and one of the study’s senior authors, as he described the discovery of the domes using the deep submersible vehicle Alvin. Moreover, the dome was teeming with undersea life. "It was essentially an oasis," he said, "almost like an artificial reef."

Reddy is a marine geochemist who studies oil spills and what really got his attention was the chemical composition of the dome: "very unusual asphalt material," he said. "There aren’t that many opportunities to study oil that’s been sitting around on the bottom of the ocean for 35,000 years."

The first dome was discovered in 2007 and a piece of the brittle black material it was made from was brought to Reddy. That dome, called Il Duomo, is about the size of two football fields, side by side and as tall as a six-story building. The scientists used Alvin’s robotic arm to snap off a piece of the unusual formation, secure it in a basket and deliver it to Reddy aboard Atlantis, the mother ship for Alvin.

Since he wasn’t in his lab at Woods Hole, Reddy used “a 25-cent glass tube, the back of a Bic pen and a little nail polish remover" to analyze the crusty substance. He used crude tools like a mortar and pestle to grind the rock, "and literally within several minutes, it became a thick oil."

A few asphalt-like undersea structures have been reported, but nothing like as big as the ones off Santa Barbara. The researchers estimate that the domed structures contain about 100,000 tons of residual asphalt and compare them to an underwater version of the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, complete with the fossils of ancient animals.

The researchers are not sure exactly why sea life has taken up residence around the asphalt domes, but one possibility is that because the oil has become non-toxic enough over the years that some microbes and other tiny creatures can actually obtain energy from it. They may also be living around tiny holes in the dome areas that release minute amounts of methane gas.

Eventually, the scientists may drill into one of the domes and also engage some geologists to try to figure out where the oil is coming from. They also want to discover if the weathering of the oil into asphalt was caused by microorganisms and also discover if there are animals trapped in the asphalt as they are at La Brea.

Chris Reddy (left) of WHOI and Chief Scientist Dave Valentine of UCSB hold a large chunk of undersea asphalt collected with one of the robotic arms of the DSV Alvin. The sample was surprising light in weight compared to rock. (Credit: Photo by Molly Redmond, UC Santa Barbara)

The scientists who study these mounds may find a whole host of animals trapped inside. The mounds are only 700 feet below the water’s surface. Was the area above the water 35,000 years ago? Or will they find only sea creatures? Only time and research will tell.

Now, we’re headed for the top of the world, and a LOT farther back in time. Global warming may eventually change the world dramatically, but at least in its initial stages, the melting ice is literally uncovering some very interesting things.

THE ORIGINAL STUFF

It’s not news that the rapidly melting ice at the Earth’s North Pole has opened the Northwest Passage, at least in the summer. Land that’s been hidden beneath ice and snow is seeing the light of day for the first time in centuries. Researchers who explored newly-exposed volcanic rocks on Canada’s Baffin Island have discovered a new window into the Earth’s violent past.

Geochemical evidence from these volcanic rocks suggests that there’s a region of the Earth’s mantle below the rocks of Baffin Island that’s largely escaped the billions of years of melting and geological churning that has affected the rest of the planet. Researchers believe the discovery offers clues to the early chemical evolution of the Earth.

The newly identified mantle "reservoir," as it is called, dates from only a few million years after the Earth was first assembled from the collisions of smaller bodies. This reservoir likely represents the composition of the mantle shortly after formation of the core, but before the 4.5 billion years of crust formation and recycling modified the composition of most of the rest of Earth’s interior.

The Baffin Island rocks contain an unusually high ratio of helium-3 to helium-4. Helium-3 is very rare on Earth because most of this very light gas has been lost from the atmosphere over Earth’s long history. Helium-4 however has been constantly replenished by the decay of radioactive uranium and thorium. The high proportion of helium-3 suggests that the Baffin Island lavas came from a reservoir in the mantle that never lost its original helium-3. This implies that these rocks weren’t exposed to the extensive chemical differentiation experienced by most of the mantle.

The researchers confirmed this conclusion by analyzing the lead isotopes in the lava samples, which date the reservoir to between 4.55 and 4.45 billion years old. This age is only slightly younger than the accepted age of the Earth itself. The early age of the mantle reservoir implies that it existed before melting of the mantle began to create the magmas that rose to form Earth’s crust and before plate tectonics allowed that crust to be mixed back into the mantle.

The melting ice has exposed the oldest rocks on Earth. Who knows what will be uncovered next? I just hope that the complete frozen mammoth or saber-toothed tiger or other extinct animal is found before the warming temperatures destroy it!

An island in Frobisher Bay in Canada’s Arctic. (Credit: iStockphoto/Ryerson Clark)

NOT FROZEN IN TIME

Now we’ll take the longest journey to the other end of the world for a look at some research in Antarctica. There, scientists don’t expect to find frozen relics of the ancient past, they expect to find living creatures that have been cut off from the main line of evolution for millions of years. Researchers from Britain are going to drill into Lake Ellsworth, a huge lake of fresh water that lies beneath almost two miles of ice.

No one has yet drilled into an Antarctic sub-glacial lake. But microbiologists believe that such lakes could harbor uniquely adapted life-forms cut off from other lines of evolution. Paleoclimatologists also suggest that sediments on the lake floors could contain records of ice sheets and climate history that would revolutionize research into global warming.

In order to access the lake water and the undisturbed sediment containing the climate record, it is essential to drill in the right place. The optimal drilling site has to avoid possible areas of in-coming water that would disturb the sediment, as well as areas of so-called basal freezing — where lake water freezes to the underside of the ice. It also has to avoid any concentrations of trapped gases which could rush up the bore hole to cause a potentially dangerous blowout at the surface.

To locate the optimal drill site, the team produced the first detailed map of a sub-glacial lake. They used ice-penetrating radar to investigate ice thickness, seismic surveys to calculate lake water depths and flow measurements to calculate how the ice sheet flows over the underlying lake. They plan to do their drilling in the 2012-13 Antarctic summer.