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 and welcome to the last column of the year. I thought today we’d take a little trip through the animal file and see what we can find about the critters that share our world with us.
One critter I can definitely do without is the mosquito. Besides the fact that the mosquito is annoying and painful, it’s also a notorious spreader of disease. Quite frankly, I personally think we’d be better off without them. Here’s a sad little tale of economics and pests.
TAKING OUT THE STING
After searching for more than 50 years, scientists finally have discovered a number of new mosquito repellents that beat DEET, the gold standard for warding off the pesky insects. They sound like a dream come true. They repel mosquitoes for up to three times longer than DEET, the active ingredient in many of today’s insect repellents. They don’t have the unpleasant odor of DEET. And they don’t cause DEET’s sticky-skin sensation. But there’s a mosquito in the ointment: The odds appear to be stacked against any of the new repellents ever finding a place on store shelves.
Ulrich Bernier, Ph.D., the lead researcher for the repellent study, said that costly, time-consuming pre-market testing and approval is a hurdle that will delay the availability of the repellents, which were discovered last year.
Making the repellents commercially available takes significant investment in both money and time. The cost may be several hundred thousand dollars. Once it’s determined that the repellent works then there’s also a toxicological hazard evaluation involving numerous toxicological tests."
If the repellents continue to work well when tested in the laboratory on human skin, and if they pass the battery of toxicological tests, they still face a series of tests to prove their effectiveness against mosquitoes.
Bernier and his team discovered the repellents with what they say is the first successful application of a computer model using the molecular structures of more than 30,000 chemical compounds tested as repellents over the last 60 years. Using 11 known compounds, they synthesized 23 new ones. Of those, 10 gave about 40 days protection, compared to 17.5 days for DEET, when a soaked cloth was worn by a human volunteer. When applied to the skin, however, DEET lasts about five hours.
Bernier routinely participates in repellency studies, which involve about 500 mosquitoes trying to land on his arm and bite through a repellent-soaked cloth. If the mosquitoes don’t land, the researchers know the repellent is working. If they walk around on the cloth-covered-arm, they’re on the verge of being repelled. If they bite…then it’s on to the next repellent.
To search for the best repellents, the team devised software that recognized structural features of a chemical that would make it effective in keeping the bugs away. They trained it by feeding it the molecular structures of 150 known repellents. Based on this information, the program learned to identify the chemical traits of a good repellent without the chemists even having to know what those traits were. For example, the team checked out 2,000 variants of a compound found in black pepper that repels insects.
I hope that they get some funding to market these new repellants soon. I’d sure buy them!
Mosquitoes stay away from repellent-soaked cloth on the arm of researcher Ulrich Bernier. (Credit: Greg Allen, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service)
And now we move on to a tale of another of the least-loved animals on the planet.
YOU THINK WE’VE GOT PROBLEMS??
I’m having a little mini-invasion at my house. I’m surrounded by forest and a large family of brown tree snakes seems to have decided to call my house and my dog food theirs. We whip them around a mop handle and dump them in the freezer. No more blood, no more machete nicks on my stuff. It’s a humane way to die, not that I really care because brown tree snakes are aggressive and I’ve been bitten several times.
Brown tree snakes can get quite large, but they don’t hold a candle to the subjects of this story. The southern United States is being invaded by some of the biggest snakes on the planet.
A new report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) tells all about the risks of nine non-native snake species including boa constrictors, anacondas and pythons. Two of the species have been documented as reproducing in the wild in South Florida where the Burmese python population is already reported to be in the tens of thousands.
Although the giant snakes don’t pose a great threat to humans, adults of the largest pythons have been known to attack and kill people in their native habitats. The snake most often associated with attacks on humans is the reticulated python, a native of Southeast Asia.
Although many of the giant snakes snake species may be confined to the deep South, others like Burmese pythons, northern and southern African pythons, boa constrictors and yellow anacondas put larger portions of the U.S. mainland at risk.
The USGS scientists who authored the report point out that native U.S. birds, mammals, and reptiles have never had to deal with huge predatory snakes before. Individuals of the largest three species reach lengths of more than 20 feet and upwards of 200 pounds. The reticulated python is the world’s longest snake, and the green anaconda is the heaviest snake. Both species have been found in the wild in South Florida, although breeding populations are not yet confirmed for either.
Breeding populations have been confirmed in South Florida for Burmese pythons and the boa constrictor, and there is strong evidence that the northern African python may have a breeding population in the wild as well.
Unfortunately these snakes mature early, produce large numbers of offspring, travel long distances, and have broad diets that allow them to eat most native birds and mammals. In addition, most of these snakes can inhabit a variety of habitats and are quite tolerant of urban or suburban areas. Boa constrictors and northern African pythons, for example, already live wild in the Miami metropolitan area.
The report notes that there are no controls adequate for eradicating an established population of giant snakes once they have spread over a large area. Making the task of eradication more difficult is that in the wild these snakes are extremely difficult to find since their camouflaged coloration enables them to blend in well with their surroundings.
Dr. Gordon Rodda, a herpetologist who lived on Guam, mentions us in the report. “We have a cautionary tale with the American island of Guam and the brown tree snake,” he says. “Within 40 years of its arrival, this invasive snake has decimated the island’s native wildlife: 10 of Guam’s 12 native forest birds, one of its two bat species, and about half of its native lizards are gone. The python introduction to Florida is so recent that the tally of ecological damage cannot yet be made.”
USGS researchers used the best available science to predict areas of the country most at risk of invasion by these giant snakes. Based on climate alone, many of the species would be limited to the warmest areas of the United States, including parts of Florida, extreme south Texas, Hawai
i, and America’s tropical islands, such as Puerto Rico, Guam, and other Pacific islands. For a few species, however, larger areas of the continental United States appear to exhibit suitable climatic conditions. For example, much of the southern U.S. climatic conditions are similar to those experienced by the Burmese python in its native range.
The Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service will use the report to help them figure out what to do about the problem and how to prevent further colonization.
Researchers implant a radio transmitter in a 16-foot, 155-pound female Burmese python at the South Florida Research Center, Everglades National Park. Radio-tracking builds understanding of where pythons spend their time and therefore where they can be controlled in practice. Photo courtesy of Lori Oberhofer, National Park Service. (Credit: U.S. Geological Survey)
I once had a very good friend in Pete, the reticulated python. Despite her name, she was a female and she was a mascot for one of the units at U-tapao Air Base in Thailand. She had been captured on the flightline about five years before I got there and at that time, she was three feet long and weighed 30 pounds.
To keep Pete fed, the Thais who ran the café where she was housed ran a lottery. They put a chicken in the cage with Pete once a week and for a quarter, you could put in your guess of the day and time that Pete ate the chicken. The person who came the closest got the money, less the amount to buy the next week’s chicken.
Reticulated pythons don’t eat that often in the wild and when I left Thailand, Pete was 33 feet long and weighed 300 pounds. Most times, when I came to call, she would rear up her head until it was on the level of mine and we would chat. I never decided if she was just curious about the white lady, or viewed me as lunch. She was an impressive animal, but not one I’d want to meet in my back yard!
By Pam Eastlick
We truly live in a miraculous age so I thought a little trip through the technology files might be in order. There’ve been many articles about how the Internet is changing the face of scientific research because it makes sharing ideas and processes so much easier. But there are other technologies that are also having an impact on basic research as outlined in this first tale of science.
SMILE FOR THE CAMERA
When I was doing research for my master’s degree, I remember spending most of a short trip through Hawaii in the university library madly copying resources that weren’t available here on Guam. It took a chunk out of my limited budget and there were things that I wanted to buy in Hawaii that I had to forego because they would have put me over my weight limit. Paper is heavy, you know.
I did my research a little too early, it seems because Christopher Gennari, an Assistant Professor of History at Camden County College in Blackwood, New Jersey devised a marvelous scheme to avoid my dilemma. Read on.
Mr. Gennari was doing research on Swedish military history and the reign of the Swedish king Charles X who lived in the seventeenth century. He decided to visit the Riksarkivet in Stockholm, Sweden.
"As a US university student I was constrained by factors of time, space, income and, unexpectedly, source material," Gennari says, "I only had the income and free time to support living in Sweden for about a month. Travel space restrictions on transatlantic flights limited my ability to perform massive photocopying; the sheer bulk weight (not to mention cost) of hundreds of photocopied pages made for a daunting endeavor." (Hmmm. Sounds familiar!) With this in mind, he planned to make very specific use of the Riksarkivet materials, reading only highly relevant letters and documents in the archives.
Unfortunately, Mr. Gennari ran into an unexpected obstacle. The manuscripts were incredibly difficult to read. "The 17th century handwriting was difficult to read, it was narrow, close together, and in many cases nearly the entire page is filled with script making it difficult to know where a sentence finished or began." The curators in Stockholm offered Gennari a magnifying glass and a handwriting decoder photocopy and wished him luck.
"Suddenly, in leafing through a series of folios," he says, "I realized why very few Swedes and not a single English language historian had done large scale, archival level work on the reign of Charles X."
He couldn’t easily read the documents for the key words he was searching for, he only had a month in the country and he could see his research plans crumbling before his eyes. And photocopying the vast numbers of documents was out of the question both because of the cost and the weight. But Mr. Gennari had brought one personal piece of equipment with him that turned out to be the key to the whole affair. He had his digital camera.
An off-hand remark to one of the staff at the Riksarkivet revealed that they not only allowed non-flash photography of their collections, but they even had a camera stand setup for the occasional photographing of maps and images that could not be photocopied.
So, Mr. Gennari set about photographing 2,500 documents, producing some 25,000 images in total, which would have been the equivalent of $15,000 worth of photocopying. If he’d used a film camera, almost 700 rolls of film (about $4,000) would have been required with the attendant costs of converting those to photo CDs adding $30,000 to the total costs.
However, with the images safely stored on a handful of recordable DVDs Gennari was able to import the whole collection into Google’s free Picasa image library software for cataloguing and study on his return to the US.
"Digital photography and computer technology allowed me to capture, transport, and manipulate a previously inconceivable amount of document at a tremendous cost saving," he says, "Additionally, my need for frequent return trips and long, expensive, stays in a foreign country to continue my research has been eliminated. I have a lifetime worth of research documents at my fingers whenever I wish to conduct the research; 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."
"Digital photography allows for the collection of large amounts of archival documents in a short period of time," explains Mr. Gennari. But the intrepid researcher does have one very important piece of advice for all those who would follow in his footsteps: Take several sets of spare rechargeable batteries for your camera!
There’s no question, that the digital revolution is changing the language. Twitter used to be something birds did, Spam was something we all eat, and google referred exclusively to eyes (as in googly-eyes)! And the term ‘cement overcoat’ had a very specific meaning that conjures up visions of swarthy men dressed in fedoras, pinstriped suits and machine guns. Now thanks to researchers in England ‘cement overcoat’ may develop quite a different meaning.
NOT ‘SWIMMING WITH THE FISHES’
Engineers at the University of Leeds are working on a new type of body armor made from cement. The new vests combine super-strong cement with recycled carbon fiber to make a material tough enough to withstand most bullets.
The chief researcher says that using cement instead of aluminum will significantly reduce the costs of body armor production. At least for people like security guards, reporters and aid workers who are worried about the odd pot shot being taken at them.
He says that much of the body armor sold today is over-engineered for the threats faced by the people who wear it. The cement-based armor would not only create a whole new market but it would also reduce the demand for the high-end armor so that people like soldiers, who really need it, can get it.
Currently available advanced body armor is made from alumina plates – the raw material used to make aluminum – which is heated to 1600 degrees Celsius for up to two weeks in a process called ‘sintering’ in order to make them ultra hard.
Soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have faced shortages of enhanced combat body armor (ECBA) as production has struggled to keep up with soaring global demand.
Cement vests are just one of a range of novel uses for the 2000 year old material that the researchers are investigating in a three year project called ‘Cementing the Future’. Other ideas include cement based pump-less fridges, a new type of catalytic converter, and improved bone replacements.
Dr Philip Purnell with recycled carbon fibre. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Leeds)
Does give a whole new meaning to ‘cement overcoat’, doesn’t it?
There’s also news about the other material mentioned in the last item. It’s no secret that I’m a Trekkie who’s been out of the closet for a long time. Although this particular form of entertainment may have passed you by, there’s no question that Star Trek, both the TV series in its multiple manifestations and the movies have had a great impact on the general public.
Star Trek has also had a great impact on science. It seems that if you grow up believing that something is possible, in later life, you work to make it possible. Dr. McCoy’s medical tricorder already has working prototypes and though we’re still a long way from the transporter and warp drive, the science of Star Trek is a very real and viable thing.
One of the iconic materials casually mentioned by Mr. Scott
in the movie Star Trek IV was ‘transparent aluminum’. He was quite surprised that it hadn’t been invented yet. Well, perhaps at the time the movie was released it hadn’t been, but read on.
ONE STEP CLOSER
Scientists at the University of Oxford in England have created a transparent form of aluminum by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. ‘Transparent aluminum’ previously only existed in science fiction but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.
New states of matter don’t come along every day. Traditionally there are four: the three you’re familiar with; solid, liquid and gas and plasma, the most abundant state of matter in the universe because that’s what stars are made from.
The Oxford researchers report that a short pulse from the x-ray laser removed a core electron from every aluminum atom in a sample without disrupting the metal’s crystalline structure. This turned the aluminum nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.
”What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. ‘Transparent aluminum is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of ‘miniature stars’ created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.’
The discovery was made possible with the development of the FLASH laser in Hamburg, Germany. The FLASH laser produces a stream of radiation that’s ten billion times more powerful than any other laser. It produces extremely brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city. Although the transparency lasted for an extremely brief time, it demonstrates that exotic states of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources.
Experimental set-up at the FLASH laser used to discover the new state of matter. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Oxford)
We certainly do live in an amazing age!
By Pam Eastlick
Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.
We truly live in a miraculous age so I thought a little trip through the technology files might be in order. There’ve been many articles about how the Internet is changing the face of scientific research because it makes sharing ideas and processes so much easier. But there are other technologies that are also having an impact on basic research as outlined in this first tale of science.
SMILE FOR THE CAMERA
When I was doing research for my master’s degree, I remember spending most of a short trip through Hawaii in the university library madly copying resources that weren’t available here on Guam. It took a chunk out of my limited budget and there were things that I wanted to buy in Hawaii that I had to forego because they would have put me over my weight limit. Paper is heavy, you know.
I did my research a little too early, it seems because Christopher Gennari, an Assistant Professor of History at Camden County College in Blackwood, New Jersey devised a marvelous scheme to avoid my dilemma. Read on.
Mr. Gennari was doing research on Swedish military history and the reign of the Swedish king Charles X who lived in the seventeenth century. He decided to visit the Riksarkivet in Stockholm, Sweden.
"As a US university student I was constrained by factors of time, space, income and, unexpectedly, source material," Gennari says, "I only had the income and free time to support living in Sweden for about a month. Travel space restrictions on transatlantic flights limited my ability to perform massive photocopying; the sheer bulk weight (not to mention cost) of hundreds of photocopied pages made for a daunting endeavor." (Hmmm. Sounds familiar!) With this in mind, he planned to make very specific use of the Riksarkivet materials, reading only highly relevant letters and documents in the archives.
Unfortunately, Mr. Gennari ran into an unexpected obstacle. The manuscripts were incredibly difficult to read. "The 17th century handwriting was difficult to read, it was narrow, close together, and in many cases nearly the entire page is filled with script making it difficult to know where a sentence finished or began." The curators in Stockholm offered Gennari a magnifying glass and a handwriting decoder photocopy and wished him luck.
"Suddenly, in leafing through a series of folios," he says, "I realized why very few Swedes and not a single English language historian had done large scale, archival level work on the reign of Charles X."
He couldn’t easily read the documents for the key words he was searching for, he only had a month in the country and he could see his research plans crumbling before his eyes. And photocopying the vast numbers of documents was out of the question both because of the cost and the weight. But Mr. Gennari had brought one personal piece of equipment with him that turned out to be the key to the whole affair. He had his digital camera.
An off-hand remark to one of the staff at the Riksarkivet revealed that they not only allowed non-flash photography of their collections, but they even had a camera stand setup for the occasional photographing of maps and images that could not be photocopied.
So, Mr. Gennari set about photographing 2,500 documents, producing some 25,000 images in total, which would have been the equivalent of $15,000 worth of photocopying. If he’d used a film camera, almost 700 rolls of film (about $4,000) would have been required with the attendant costs of converting those to photo CDs adding $30,000 to the total costs.
However, with the images safely stored on a handful of recordable DVDs Gennari was able to import the whole collection into Google’s free Picasa image library software for cataloguing and study on his return to the US.
"Digital photography and computer technology allowed me to capture, transport, and manipulate a previously inconceivable amount of document at a tremendous cost saving," he says, "Additionally, my need for frequent return trips and long, expensive, stays in a foreign country to continue my research has been eliminated. I have a lifetime worth of research documents at my fingers whenever I wish to conduct the research; 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."
"Digital photography allows for the collection of large amounts of archival documents in a short period of time," explains Mr. Gennari. But the intrepid researcher does have one very important piece of advice for all those who would follow in his footsteps: Take several sets of spare rechargeable batteries for your camera!
There’s no question, that the digital revolution is changing the language. Twitter used to be something birds did, Spam was something we all eat, and google referred exclusively to eyes (as in googly-eyes)! And the term ‘cement overcoat’ had a very specific meaning that conjures up visions of swarthy men dressed in fedoras, pinstriped suits and machine guns. Now thanks to researchers in England ‘cement overcoat’ may develop quite a different meaning.
NOT ‘SWIMMING WITH THE FISHES’
Engineers at the University of Leeds are working on a new type of body armor made from cement. The new vests combine super-strong cement with recycled carbon fiber to make a material tough enough to withstand most bullets.
The chief researcher says that using cement instead of aluminum will significantly reduce the costs of body armor production. At least for people like security guards, reporters and aid workers who are worried about the odd pot shot being taken at them.
He says that much of the body armor sold today is over-engineered for the threats faced by the people who wear it. The cement-based armor would not only create a whole new market but it would also reduce the demand for the high-end armor so that people like soldiers, who really need it, can get it.
Currently available advanced body armor is made from alumina plates – the raw material used to make aluminum – which is heated to 1600 degrees Celsius for up to two weeks in a process called ‘sintering’ in order to make them ultra hard.
Soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have faced shortages of enhanced combat body armor (ECBA) as production has struggled to keep up with soaring global demand.
Cement vests are just one of a range of novel uses for the 2000 year old material that the researchers are investigating in a three year project called ‘Cementing the Future’. Other ideas include cement based pump-less fridges, a new type of catalytic converter, and improved bone replacements.
Dr Philip Purnell with recycled carbon fibre. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Leeds)
Does give a whole new meaning to ‘cement overcoat’, doesn’t it?
There’s also news about the other material mentioned in the last item. It’s no secret that I’m a Trekkie who’s been out of the closet for a long time. Although this particular form of entertainment may have passed you by, there’s no question that Star Trek, both the TV series in its multiple manifestations and the movies have had a great impact on the general public.
Star Trek has also had a great impact on science. It seems that if you grow up believing that something is possible, in later life, you work to make it possible. Dr. McCoy’s medical tricorder already has working prototypes and though we’re
still a long way from the transporter and warp drive, the science of Star Trek is a very real and viable thing.
One of the iconic materials casually mentioned by Mr. Scott in the movie Star Trek IV was ‘transparent aluminum’. He was quite surprised that it hadn’t been invented yet. Well, perhaps at the time the movie was released it hadn’t been, but read on.
ONE STEP CLOSER
Scientists at the University of Oxford in England have created a transparent form of aluminum by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. ‘Transparent aluminum’ previously only existed in science fiction but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.
New states of matter don’t come along every day. Traditionally there are four: the three you’re familiar with; solid, liquid and gas and plasma, the most abundant state of matter in the universe because that’s what stars are made from.
The Oxford researchers report that a short pulse from the x-ray laser removed a core electron from every aluminum atom in a sample without disrupting the metal’s crystalline structure. This turned the aluminum nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.
”What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. ‘Transparent aluminum is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of ‘miniature stars’ created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.’
The discovery was made possible with the development of the FLASH laser in Hamburg, Germany. The FLASH laser produces a stream of radiation that’s ten billion times more powerful than any other laser. It produces extremely brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city. Although the transparency lasted for an extremely brief time, it demonstrates that exotic states of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources.
Experimental set-up at the FLASH laser used to discover the new state of matter. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Oxford)
We certainly do live in an amazing age!
By Pam Eastlick
GETTING MUDDY
(IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE)
By Pam Eastlick
Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond. Visit our website at www.thedeepradioshow.com
I thought I’d start today with a little news update. Do you remember the mud volcano in Indonesia? Well, let’s take a little trip down memory lane because there’s recent news about Lusi. Keep reading! I wrote this first section two years ago, and the figures on size and people displaced have changed. You’ll get the latest figures in the last section of the article.
THE BACKGROUND
I’ve followed with great interest the saga of the Indonesian mud volcano called Lusi that first erupted near Surabaya, the second largest city in Indonesia three years ago in May of 2006. Mud volcanoes are not unheard of. There are at least 2,000 worldwide including one in the Santa Barbara Channel near Redondo Beach California. But the mud volcano in Indonesia may be one of the few caused by humans.
The viscosity of mud volcanoes is wildly variable. Some look like volcanoes with thick mud flowing from a raised central crater, while others simply look like slowly growing mounds of dirt that are squeezed out of a crack like toothpaste. Others erupt mud that is much thinner and this describes what’s flowing out of the ground in Indonesia. Lusi’s mud is about 70% water and instead of mounding up, is flowing disastrously over the countryside. Since Lusi erupted in May 2006, the soupy mud has covered four square miles to a depth of 16 feet in some places, submerged parts of four villages and displaced about 25,000 people.
When the flow started in May of 2006, Lusi was erupting about a quarter of a million cubic feet of mud every single day. Now, however, the rate has increased to over 5 million cubic feet a day and it shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. In addition, scientists predict that if the underlying mud is drained, the land above it will begin to sag and there may be a dramatic collapse into the empty hole left behind. (Lusi is already sinking and may in fact form that gigantic hole.)
So, what caused Lusi? Lusi erupted from a gas well that was operated by Lapindo Brantas, Inc. one of Indonesia’s biggest oil companies. And we have two interesting opinions about what caused that eruption. On the one hand, we have a statement from Indonesia’s coordinating minister for social welfare, Aburizal Bakrie. He says the volcano is a “natural disaster” unrelated to the drilling activities. Mr. Bakrie stated, “It is not because of the Lapindo drill case but it is because of the quake.” He was referring to an earthquake that occurred two days before the Lusi eruption near the ancient city of Yogyakarta that killed around 6,000 people.
Now that ‘drill case’ he mentions is in response to a finding made by a team led by British scientist Richard Davies, a professor at the University of Durham’s Center for Research into Earth Energy Systems in northeastern England.
That study reported that the kind of drilling done by Lapindo in the geographical regions into which they drilled requires the use of steel casing to support the borehole, to protect against the pressure of fluids such as water, oil or gas.
Mr. Davies reported in a press release; “In the case of Lusi, a pressured limestone rock containing water — a water aquifer — was drilled while the lower part of the borehole was exposed and not protected by casing. As a result, rocks fractured and a mix of mud and water worked its way to the surface. Our research brings us to the conclusion that the incident was most probably the result of drilling.”
So was it drilling or was it the earthquake? Does it make a difference when I tell you that Mr. Aburizal Bakrie, whose job it is to be concerned about social welfare, is one of the wealthiest men in Indonesia and his family firm controls Lapindo Brantas? Apparently that fact made a difference to the president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who ordered Lapindo to pay 3.8 trillion rupiah ($421 million) in compensation and costs related to the mudflow.
Aerial view of Lusi
IT WAS THE DRILLING
In more of the ongoing Lusi story, in 2008, an international team of petroleum geologists met at Cape Town, South Africa and concluded that Lusi was not a ‘natural’ volcano. She’s man-made.
The 74 scientists considered the evidence presented by four experts in the field and then voted on two scenarios. Forty-two scientists voted that Lusi was triggered when Lapindo Brantas, an Indonesian oil company drilled the gas exploration well called Banjar-Panji-1. Only three scientists voted for the alternative explanation. This hypothesis stated that Luisi’s eruption was triggered by an earthquake that occurred two days earlier with an epicenter located 175 miles from Lusi. Sixteen scientists voted that the evidence was inconclusive and 13 said that a combination of earthquake and drilling were the cause.
There was some pretty strong evidence that the drilling triggered Lusi. The key points presented to support the drilling hypothesis were:
· the earthquake was too small and too far away to have been the trigger.
· the well was being drilled when Lusi erupted and is only 500 feet from the volcano site.
· large amounts of water were pumped into the well the day before the eruption, resulting in pressures the sides of the well couldn’t tolerate.
· the pressure measured in the well after the influx provides strong evidence that the well was leaking and even evidence for the initial eruption at the surface.
One of the speakers, leading geologist Professor Richard Davies of Durham University, UK, commented: “The conference allowed us to present new data on the pressures in the well the day before the eruption and these provide a compelling tape recording of the well as it started to leak. We were particularly grateful to Lapindo, the company involved in the drilling, who were widely applauded at the meeting for their willingness to take part in the discussion.”
Prof Davies added: “I remain convinced that drilling was the cause of the mud volcano. The opinion of the international scientists at the event in South Africa adds further weight to my conviction and the conclusions of many other leading scientists who have studied Lusi.”
Susila Lusiaga a drilling engineer and part of the Indonesian police investigation team said: “There is no question, the pressures in the well went way beyond what it could tolerate – and it triggered the mud volcano.”
Michael Manga, Professor of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “The key observation from an earthquake perspective is that there were many much larger and quite a bit closer earthquakes that did not trigger an eruption. The Yogyakarta earthquake was simply too small and too far away to initiate an eruption.”
IT WAS THE EARTHQUAKE
Brave words, guys but it didn’t do any good. In the latest news on Lusi, almost three years to the day from the eruption, Indonesia’s supreme court ruled that it had cleared the government and Lapindo of any wrongdoing related to Lusi’s eruption. The mud has now wiped out 12 villages, killed 13 people and displaced more than 42,000 people in the Sidoarjo district of East Java since it burst from a drilling well operated by the Lapindo company on May 29, 2006.
The company, which is connected to powerful Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie, has however agreed to pay millions of dollars in damages to help affected villagers rebuild their lives. However, three years later many victims complain they have received only a fraction of the payout.
In a short statement, court spokesman Nurhadi said judges agreed with earlier rulings in lower courts that cleared the company and the government of neglect related to the disaster.
“The Supreme court has rejected an appeal filed by YLBHI,” he told reporters, referring to the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation. The YLBHI had argued that the government and Lapindo had failed to prevent the disaster and properly compensate thousands of displaced families.
YLBHI lawyer Zainal Abidin said the supreme court’s judgement was a major blow to the victims, many of whom are now unemployed and live in squalid bamboo shacks awaiting full compensation.
“The judges should have taken into consideration the people’s needs. The court has failed to deliver justice,” he told AFP.
Some 800 hectares (1,977 acres) of villages and fertile farming land now lie beneath the stinking, hot sludge, which continues to spew out of the Lapindo well despite the company’s containment efforts. About 6,000 people have been forced to flee their homes since October as the volcano, dubbed ‘Lusi,’ breaks man-made embankments and devours more land, officials said.
But the people who have lost their homes and are in danger of losing their homes to Lusi don’t have to worry. In a stunning show of compassion, Lapindo Brantas came up with the ultimate solution for them. The company funded a soap opera called “Digging a Hole, Filling a Hole.” Set amidst the misery of the mud, “Digging …” was a love story that reportedly shows the virtues of patience – something in short supply these days.
And in the ultimate news update? “Digging . . . “ was NOT a hit in Indonesian TV. Big surprise, huh?
Cruise on over to the Deep Website at www.thedeepradioshow.com to learn more about taking mud baths and many other topics. Enjoy!
By Pam Eastlick
Greetings everyone and welcome to another trip into the wonderful and sometimes kooky world of science. I looked at the files this week and discovered that the biggest one was the one labeled Miscellaneous so today’s topics are going to be all over the map. For our first one, I’ll take the Boomers on a little trip down Memory Lane
REMEMBERING TO THE MUSIC
Researchers have recently announced the results for the Magical Memory Tour, the largest-ever international online survey, which asked people to record their memories of the Beatles to create the biggest database of autobiographical memories ever attempted. The survey sought enhance our understanding of human memory by discovering the role The Beatles and their music play in our personal lives.
The six-month online survey generated some 3000 responses from people ranging from 17 to 87 years old and spanning 69 different nationalities. People were invited to share the most vivid memory that came to mind relating to a Beatles album, song, news story or band member. The majority of respondents were ‘silver surfers’, between the ages of 55 to 65, who would have been teenagers during the Beatles heydays in the 1960s.
As expected, the majority of memories related to the teenage years of people’s lives, showing a classic reminiscence bump. The difference is that the bump occurs slightly earlier in the lifespan than for autobiographical memories more generally, suggesting that music, or at least The Beatles’ music, is important in the storage of particularly early memories.
The song that emerged overall as generating the most memories was ‘She Loves You’, not surprising since this was the biggest selling single of the 60’s and the Beatles’ most popular record ever.
There were some differences among nationalities. English people related most memories to the song ‘She Loves You’, while for Americans it was ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’. English people reported most film-associated memories to ‘Help’, while Australians reported most to ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. But what’s more interesting than these relatively minor differences between nationalities is the similarities in terms of the moods, feelings, scenes and situations they relay. They show the influence The Beatles had as global cultural icons.
One of the researchers said they were impressed with how vividly people recalled memories sometimes from more than 40 years ago, especially when many eloquent and vivid memories appear to have been little recalled in decades. This shows the power of music in shaping and reliving sometimes long-neglected memories.
The researchers also hoped to examine the levels of emotionality in the uploaded memories. They anticipated that women might have more emotional memories but that wasn’t substantiated by the data. Apparently the Beatles really were a universal force in people’s lives. To read memories from the survey visit http://www.magicalmemorytour.com.
And though the Beatles may be intimately linked with the memories and emotions of many of us, there’s some surprising research that says that some of the most basic parts of our makeup are not learned but are innate.
INNATE SMILE
The result of a surprising new study says that our facial expressions of emotion are hardwired into our genes and are not products of cultural learning. The study is the first of its kind to demonstrate that sighted and blind individuals use the same facial expressions, producing the same facial muscle movements in response to specific emotional stimuli.
The study also provides new insight into how humans temper our emotional displays according to social context, suggesting that the ability to regulate emotional expressions is not learned through observation.
San Francisco State University Psychology Professor David Matsumoto compared the facial expressions of sighted and blind judo athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games. More than 4,800 photographs were captured and analyzed, including images of athletes from 23 countries.
“The statistical correlation between the facial expressions of sighted and blind individuals was almost perfect,” Matsumoto said. “This suggests something genetically resident within us is the source of facial expressions of emotion.”
Matsumoto found that sighted and blind individuals manage their facial expressions of emotion in exactly the same way and they do it according to social context. For example, because of the social nature of the Olympic medal ceremonies, 85 percent of silver medallists who lost their medal matches produced “social smiles” during the ceremony. Social smiles use only the mouth muscles whereas true smiles, known as Duchenne smiles, cause the eyes to twinkle and narrow and the cheeks to rise.
The losers all produced these ‘social smiles’ whether they were blind or sighted. The athletes who were blind from birth couldn’t have learned to control their facial expressions in this way through visual learning so there has to be another mechanism. Dr. Matsumoto speculates that our emotions, and the systems to regulate them, are vestiges of our evolutionary ancestry. It’s possible that in response to negative emotions, humans have developed a system that closes the mouth so that they are prevented from yelling, biting or throwing insults.
So watch that ‘social smile’. You may just be responding to an age-old evolutionary beat!
Photos show comparison of facial expressions by blind and sighted athletes who just lost a match for a medal. (Credit: Bob Willingham)
Our next two items have to do with food, one of my favorite pastimes. Remember I told you last week about the fact that one of the world’s richest ecosystems is the one that lives in your personal gut? Well, not only do bacteria digest your food for you, it turns out they have a lot to do with which food you eat!
ENHANCING THE TASTE
Scientists in Switzerland have reported that bacteria in the human mouth play a role in creating the distinctive flavors of certain foods. They found that these bacteria actually produce food odors from odorless components of food, allowing people to fully savor fruits and vegetables.
The researchers point out that some fruits and vegetables release characteristic odors only after being swallowed. While scientists had previously reported that volatile compounds produced from precursors found in these foods are responsible for this ‘retro-aromatic’ effect, the details of this transformation were not understood.
To fill that knowledge gap, the Swiss scientists performed sensory tests on 30 trained panelists to evaluate the odor intensity of volatile compounds called ‘thiols’ that are released from odorless sulfur compounds found naturally in grapes, onions, and bell peppers.
When given samples of the odorless compounds, it took participants 20 to 30 seconds to perceive the aroma of the thiols – and this perception persisted for three minutes. The researchers also determined that the odorless compounds are transformed into the thiols by anaerobic bacteria residing in the mouth – causing the characteristic ‘retro-aromatic’ effect.
“The mouth acts as a reactor, adding another dimension to odor perceptions,” they explain. However, the authors conclude, it is saliva’s ability to trap these free thiols that helps modulate the long-lasting flavors.
So not only do bacteria digest your food for you, they tell you you like it and you want to eat it! And now we’ll move on to a tale of why you eat too much. This one probably has a lot of application here!
I’LL HAVE SOME OF THAT
Researchers at Cornell University have recently made a not-so-surprising discovery. Overweight diners at Chinese buffets serve themselves differently and eat differently than normal weight individuals. These differences may, in fact, lead them to overeat. Compared to normal weight diners, overweight individuals sat 16 feet closer to the buffet, faced the food, used larger plates, ate with forks instead of chopsticks, and served themselves immediately instead of browsing the buffet.
“What’s crazy is that these people are generally unaware of what they’re doing – they’re unaware of sitting closer, facing the food, chewing less, and so on,” says Brian Wanink, lead author of the study and of the book “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.”
The study was published in the journal Obesity and includes observations of 213 diners at 11 all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant buffets across the country. Study participants included a range of normal weight to obese diners, none of whom were Asian. Major study findings include:
- 27% of normal-weight patrons faced the buffet compared to 42% of obese diners.
- Overweight diners sat an average of 16 feet closer than normal-weight diners.
- 16% of obese diners sat at a booth rather than a table compared to 38% of normal weight diners
- 71% of normal-weight diners browsed the buffet before serving themselves compared to 33% of obese diners
- 24% of normal-weight people used chopsticks compared with 9% of overweight people
The researchers say that when food is more convenient people tend to eat more and that seemingly subtle differences in behavior and environment may cause people to overeat without even realizing it.
So, the next time you go to the buffet, see how many of the research criteria you meet and then have a look at your waistline. Correlation? Only you can say!
|
|
|
|
Jim is, above all, a passionate eco-humanitarian who has developed his own science talk-radio show to inform The DEEP’s listeners about such newsy topics as global warming, shark-finning and reef protection as well as to explore earth’s many underwater and space mysteries. After
sailing 12,000 miles and visiting five countries Jim is back here, ready to explore the depths of the ocean to the deepest frontier, space MORE>>
|
Star
Lady Pam Eastlick is an expert in both the stars
and seas as a graduate of the University of Guam Marine
Lab and the Director of the UOG Planetarium. |
|
|
