The Deep X-PAC 8,000 Press Release

By Pam Eastlick

Jim Sullivan www.thedeepradioshow.com
Email: oceanfriends@hotmail.com (310) 591-4741

The Deep X-PAC 8,000 Expedition: 8,000 mile nonstop, engineless journey along the north equatorial current in a 30 foot Bill Lapworth custom built sailboat designed for long passage making known as The Elusive Spirit. Departing from Los Angeles, California to Cebu Philippines. Latitude 33 degrees to 12 degrees north passing south of Hawaii, north of the Marshalls, south of Guam and north of Palau.

Mission Statement: It is the Mission of The Elusive Spirit to set sail nearly 8,000 miles and 3 months from Los Angeles, California to Cebu, Philippines in February 2012, not only to sail nonstop without an engine but to bring awareness to Earth Island Institute and savethejapandolphins.org.

My name is Jim Sullivan and this is more than just a nautical feat for me. This is about giving back and overcoming a serious physical challenge while revisiting a place in the North Pacific where God saved my life. The Elusive Spirit wants to bring awareness to the movie documentary, “The Cove,” staring Rick O’ Barry, displaying the slaughtering of hundreds of thousands of dolphins contributing to a extinction of mammals in our oceans as well as the toxicity of mercury known as minimata from the digestion of dolphin meat. Instead of bringing these dolphins into our world such as sea world or other aquarium attractions, The Elusive Spirit wants to enter their world latitude 12 degrees north, and as captain Sully says, “It’s not Route 66 but highway 10,” documenting live sounds and pictures about these precious dolphins as well as whales. During this voyage, The Elusive Spirit would like to connect and interact with people around the world with this journey as they can follow us along online day by day learning about weather patterns, currents that may affect climate change as well as learning about our stars and oceans through our very own “Star Lady”, Pam Eastlick on thedeepradioshow.com.

Come join us on The Deep X-PAC 8000 Expedition as God guides us through the most treacherous tropical oceans in the world. Help us as we bring awareness to God’s given ocean and our planet Earth with Earth Island Institute as we become first sailboat since the 19th century Spanish Galleons to sail this route nonstop without an engine. This route was traveled engenineless from 1565 to 1815 primarily used for trade.

Committee:
Bob Silvers: Expedition & Weather Coordinator
Audrey McCurdy: Webmaster & Web Development
Pam Eastlick: The Deep XPAC 8,000 Space and Ocean Journalist (Star Lady)
Princess Sharon: Guiding Light
Brian Locke: Executive Partner
Team Bandacorp: www.bandacorp.com

Crew:
Jim Sullivan

PLAGUES

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. Well, it’s been a while since we dipped into the medicine file and I found a little history and some good news for us here in the tropics. Read on!

We’ve all heard about The Black Death also simply called ‘the plague’. This scourge that raged across Europe in the Middle Ages and killed millions of people was thought to have been caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis.

The epidemic’s actual cause has always been highly controversial and many other diseases have been considered. Now German researchers have used DNA and protein analyses from the skeletons of plague victims to conclusively show that Yersinia pestis was indeed, responsible for the Black Death in the 14th century and the subsequent epidemics that continued to ravage Europe and England for the next 400 years.

The skeletons were exhumed from mass graves in England, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. While other infections like leprosy can be easily identified long after death by the deformed bones, plague victims die almost immediately and the disease leaves no visible trace.

The team looked for traces of Y. pestis DNA in dental pulp and found it in all the skeletons. Once the Y. pestis infection was conclusively proven, the researchers tested to see which of the two modern forms of plague were present. They discovered two unknown forms, which are distinctly different from the modern pathogens. One of these two types probably no longer exists today. The other is similar to types that were recently isolated in Asia.

Plague is endemic in the American southwest and I’ve been waiting for the rats of Los Angeles to trigger a new epidemic. Once it goes pneumonic, the form that doesn’t depend on rats and fleas but can be transmitted directly from human to human, our modern day jets will transport it all over the world and the Black Death will walk again. There’s still no cure, you know.

And if the Black Death doesn’t scare you, there’s always malaria. But there may be good news on that front. Imagine an insect repellant that’s thousands of times more effective than DEET — the active ingredient in most commercial mosquito repellants – and also works against all types of insects, including flies, moths and ants.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have discovered a new class of insect repellant based on insights about the basic nature of the sense of smell in mosquitoes and other insects. An insect smells with its antennae and until recently biologists thought an insect’s olfactory system worked the same way as it does in mammals. Proteins called odorant receptors, or ORs, sit on the surface of nerve cells in mammalian noses. When these receptors come into contact with smelly molecules, they trigger the nerves and signal the detection of specific odors.

Scientists have recently learned that an insect’s olfactory system doesn’t work that way. In the insect system, ORs don’t act alone. They form a complex with a unique co-receptor (called an Orco) that’s also required to detect smelly molecules. Insect ORs are spread all over the antennae and each responds to a different odor. Each OR must be connected to its co-receptor.

The Orco acts as the switch that tells the brain when there’s a signal. When a mosquito smells a specific odor, only the OR’s for that smell are turned on. If you can find a way to turn on all the Orcos, it effectively overloads the mosquito’s sense of smell and shuts down her ability to find blood.

Preventing a mosquito from smelling my blood is a fine thing, but here’s what I really love about this story.

"It wasn’t something we set out to find," said David Rinker, a graduate student who aided in the study. "It was an anomaly that we noticed in our tests."

And that, ladies and gentlemen is where a lot of real science happens. Not with the multimillion dollar research grants but when someone says “Hmmmm, that’s funny . . . . “

THE SCIENCE OF ART

By Pam Eastlick

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

Today we’re going to delve into a little used drawer in the file cabinet; the one labeled “ART”. Of course since this is a science and technology column, you might expect that would be a part of it and you’d be right.

Scientists at the National Gallery in London are revealing the hidden secrets of some of the world’s most famous paintings. They’re using a gas-chromatography-mass-spectrometer (GC-MS) to study the organic chemistry of old master paintings to understand how these paintings were made and how they’ve changed over time. The scientists are using the GC-MS to study the media used to bind the paint pigments, additions to the paint, like resins and the composition of old varnishes.

The results of this work have raised complex questions of disputed authorship and authenticity, and have revealed that some paintings are period copies and some are modern forgeries. The technique also reveals the original color balance of paintings.

One example is The Virgin and Child with an Angel, originally attributed to the Renaissance painter Francesco Francia and dated about 1490. The painting’s authenticity was questioned in 1954 when another version appeared on the market. Finally in 2009, GC-MS testing on the paint media and varnish, proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the Gallery’s painting was indeed a fake that was painted in the 19th century.

The work is technically demanding. Only tiny fragments of paint and canvas can be used as samples, and the organic content can be very complex. The tested materials have usually changed over time and the analyses of the degraded materials have to be compared with assessments of the original chemical composition.

The National Gallery is featuring an exhibition called “Close Examination” which presents some of the fascinating stories behind more than 40 paintings in the museum’s collection. The exhibition looks at some of the major challenges faced by Gallery experts: Deception and Deceit; Transformations and Modifications; Mistakes; Secrets and Conundrums; Redemption and Recovery; and a special focus room relating to Botticelli. The exhibition features works by Raphael, Dürer, Rembrandt and others. The very next time I’m in London, I’d love to go!

But the GC-MS isn’t the only way to study paintings. Even though you learn a lot, you have to take a small sample to use this technique. A group of researchers at McGill University in Montreal Canada has started using a non-destructive method to examine old paintings. They’ve started listening to them . . . huh?

They’re using a technique known as photo-acoustic infrared spectroscopy which can identify the composition of pigments in paintings that are decades or even centuries old. Pigments give paints their color, and they emit sounds when light is shone on them.

Photo-acoustic infrared spectroscopy is based on Alexander Graham Bell’s 1880 discovery that solids can emit sounds when exposed to sunlight, infrared radiation or ultraviolet radiation. Advances in mathematics and computers have enabled chemists to use the technique on various materials, but the McGill team is the first to use it to analyze the inorganic pigments that most artists use.

The researchers have classified 12 historically prominent pigments by the infrared spectra they exhibit — i.e., the range of noises they produce — and they hope the technique will be used to establish a pigment database. Once this database is established, the technique will become yet another weapon in the arsenal of art forensic laboratories.

Obviously there’s a lot more to art than just looking at it!

THEY SAID IT COULDN’T HAPPEN HERE

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 talked last month about the ozone hole that’s developed over the Arctic which is certainly big news. I warned you not to move to Alaska or even the northern United States because the Arctic ozone hole has wanderlust and those holes let in excessive amounts of ultra-violet radiation which is not a good thing for human skin.

But the developing ozone holes are over the poles and those pesky holes don’t affect us here, right? Well, that’s what I always thought until I learned about research done by scientists at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. They reported in the journal Science that the Antarctic ozone hole has affected the atmospheric circulation of the entire southern hemisphere all the way to the equator.

Previous work had shown that the ozone hole changes the atmospheric flow at higher latitudes, but this new study demonstrates that the ozone hole can also influence tropical circulation and bring increased rainfall near the equator. This is the first time that ozone depletion, an upper atmospheric phenomenon confined to the polar regions, has been linked to climate change from the pole to the equator. The ozone hole is now widely believed to have been the dominant agent of atmospheric circulation changes in the southern hemisphere in the last 50 or 60 years.

In case you need some background, the ozone layer is located in Earth’s stratosphere and it absorbs most of the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. Since the 1950’s, widespread use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), has significantly and rapidly broken down the molecule ozone and caused a hole to develop in the Antarctic ozone layer. Global CFC production was phased out in the 1990’s and scientists have observed over the past decade that ozone depletion has largely halted. The scientists have great hopes that the ozone holes will close by midcentury.

But as I mentioned last month, we are still messing with things we don’t understand and can’t control and even if the ozone hole does close 2050 or so (and there’s some debate about that), these new findings suggest that in the fifty years or so until this happens, the ozone holes are going to have a considerable impact on climate.

The ozone hole above Antarctica. The ozone hole has affected the entire circulation of the Southern Hemisphere all the way to the equator. (Credit: NOAA)

So are we being affected here? I’ve lived here for 30 years and it seems to me that the wet season is a lot drier than it used to be and the dry season is a lot wetter. Manny Sikau, a traditional navigator has told me that the weather lore his grandfather taught him doesn’t seem to work as well any more. He said he was afraid that he was forgetting what his grandfather had taught him. I told him that I suspected that wasn’t the problem.

Climate change. Up close and personal!

News from your Planetarium

By Pam Eastlick

Greetings All,

There will be an astounding pass of the International Space Station

TONIGHT, 9 November. The ISS will pass virtually directly over the

island and will remain in view for almost 9 minutes! Since we’ve had some relatively cloud-free skies we may be in luck!

Get an accurate time check for your watch today and then about 6:20 p.m.

go outside and face west. It will still be fairly light but you should be able to see Venus a fist-width above and a fist-width to the left of the sun’s setting position (three fist-widths to the left of due west).

Mercury will be very close to Venus and to the left of her and as it gets darker, you may be able to see Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius the Scorpion to the left of Mercury.

At 6:24 p.m., measure 8 fist widths to the right of Venus and Mercury and you should see the ISS 10 degrees above the northwestern horizon. It will climb virtually straight up and at 6:27:12 it will pass very close to Vega, the fifth brightest star. At 6:28 p.m., it will be almost straight overhead.

At 6:29:01 p.m., the ISS will pass very close to Fomalhaut, the 18th brightest star, in the southeastern sky and at 18:31 it will be 10 degrees above the southeastern horizon. It will go below the horizon at 18:33:25.

This is one of the best passes we’ve had in a long time. Here’s hoping the clouds let us see it!

And don’t forget that this is public show week. Join us in the UOG Planetarium for Sky Legends of the World 19 this Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 10, 11 and 12 November. The show is at 6:30 and 7:00 p.m. (same show at both times) and the doors open at 6:00 p.m. And . . .

Planetarium shows are always FREE!!