Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video is called Balanus barnacle hunting and gathering on a stone in Puget Sound.

From the BBC:

Barnacles‘ sticky secret revealed

By Jody Bourton
Earth News reporter

Barnacles are able to attach themselves to almost anything.

They are found clinging to the hulls of ships, the sides of rock pools and even to the skin of whales.

Just how they stick so steadfastly whilst underwater has remained a biochemical puzzle for scientists for many years.

Now researchers have solved this mystery, showing that barnacle glue binds together exactly the same way as human blood does when it clots.

Barnacles are crustaceans that live in shallow ocean environments.

As larvae they affix to hard substrates, then remain stationary for the rest of their lives.

To attach themselves to a surface, the barnacles secrete an adhesive substance.

Scientist knew the chemical properties of this glue, but not how these chemicals interact to create a sticky effect.

Now researchers reveal all in The Journal of Experimental Biology.

This video argues from biblical quotations that the shroud of Turin is a fake.

From Reuters today:

Italian scientist reproduces Shroud of Turin

By Philip Pullella

ROME – An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ’s burial cloth is a medieval fake.

The shroud, measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches bears the image, eerily reversed like a photographic negative, of a crucified man some believers say is Christ.

“We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud,” Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday.

A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, Garlaschelli made available to Reuters the paper he will deliver and the accompanying comparative photographs.

The Shroud of Turin shows the back and front of a bearded man with long hair, his arms crossed on his chest, while the entire cloth is marked by what appears to be rivulets of blood from wounds in the wrists, feet and side.

Carbon dating tests by laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson, Arizona in 1988 caused a sensation by dating it from between 1260 and 1390. Sceptics said it was a hoax, possibly made to attract the profitable medieval pilgrimage business.

But scientists have thus far been at a loss to explain how the image was left on the cloth.

Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.

They placed a linen sheet flat over a volunteer and then rubbed it with a pigment containing traces of acid. A mask was used for the face.

PIGMENT, BLOODSTAINS AND SCORCHES

The pigment was then artificially aged by heating the cloth in an oven and washing it, a process which removed it from the surface but left a fuzzy, half-tone image similar to that on the Shroud. He believes the pigment on the original Shroud faded naturally over the centuries.

They then added blood stains, burn holes, scorches and water stains to achieve the final effect.

The Catholic Church does not claim the Shroud is authentic nor that it is a matter of faith, but says it should be a powerful reminder of Christ’s passion.

One of Christianity’s most disputed relics, it is locked away at Turin Cathedral in Italy and rarely exhibited. It was last on display in 2000 and is due to be shown again next year.

Garlaschelli expects people to contest his findings.

“If they don’t want to believe carbon dating done by some of the world’s best laboratories they certainly won’t believe me,” he said.

The accuracy of the 1988 tests was challenged by some hard-core believers who said restorations of the Shroud in past centuries had contaminated the results.

The history of the Shroud is long and controversial.

After surfacing in the Middle East and France, it was brought by Italy’s former royal family, the Savoys, to their seat in Turin in 1578. In 1983 ex-King Umberto II bequeathed it to the late Pope John Paul.

The Shroud narrowly escaped destruction in 1997 when a fire ravaged the Guarini Chapel of the Turin cathedral where it is held. The cloth was saved by a fireman who risked his life.

From the American Chemical Society:

Arabic chemists from the ‘Golden Age’ given long overdue credit

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16, 2009 — You’ve heard of Louis Pasteur and George Washington Carver, no doubt. And probably Joseph Priestley, one of the founders of modern chemistry. Names like Antoine Lavoisier, John Dalton, and Amadeo Avogadro may even bring a twinkle of recognition to the eye for their famous roles in establishing chemistry as a modern science.

But what about Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (”Rhazes”)? Or Jabir ibn Hayyan (”Geber”)? Or Abu Jusuf Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi. Huh?

“You should know them,” Benjamin Huddle, Ph.D., declared in a report presented here today at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. They’re chemists from the Golden Age of Arabic-Islamic Science, which stretched from the 8th to the 13th centuries. During this era, science and medicine in Muslim countries — from southern Europe through North Africa to Central Asia and India — flourished and was unrivaled anywhere in the world. Muslim physicians and scientists made advancements that built the foundations for the emergence of modern science and medicine in Europe.

“Science in the early Muslim period is largely forgotten today in the Western world, or relegated to pseudo-science,” Huddle said. “We are rediscovering the fact that from 750 to 1258 A.D. the best science in the world was being done by Arabic-speaking peoples. In chemistry we use language from the Arabs, apparatus and techniques, many chemicals (especially perfumes), and many materials.”

Huddle did his research on the Golden Age, which produced a portrait of Arabic-Islamic love for learning and reverence for education and knowledge that defies popular modern stereotypes.

From Reuters:

Superheavy element joining periodic table

Element 112 gets permanent place on chemical list; will need new name

June 11, 2009

BERLIN - A new, superheavy chemical element numbered 112 will soon be officially included in the periodic table, German researchers said.

A team in the southwest German city of Darmstadt first produced 112 in 1996 by firing charged zinc atoms through a 393-foot-long (120-meter-long) particle accelerator to hit a lead target.

“The new element is approximately 277 times heavier than hydrogen, making it the heaviest element in the periodic table,” the scientists at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research said in a statement late Wednesday.

The zinc and lead nuclei were fused to form the nucleus of the new element, also known as Ununbium, which is a placeholder name.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, confirmed the discovery of 112 by the team led by Sigurd Hofmann at the Helmholtz Center. IUPAC has asked for an official name for the element to be submitted.

John Jost, executive director of IUPAC in North Carolina, told Reuters that the creation of new elements helps researchers to understand how nuclear power plants and atomic bombs function.

The atomic number 112 refers to the sum of the atomic numbers of zinc, which has 30 protons, and lead, which has 82. Atomic numbers denote how many protons are found in the atom’s nucleus.

Scientists at the Helmholtz Center have discovered six chemical elements, numbered 107 through 112, since 1981. The remaining five elements have already been recognized and named.

In 1925, scientists discovered the last naturally occurring element on the periodic table. Since then researchers have sought to create new, heavier elements.

Proving the existence of atoms with such a high mass, the so-called superheavy elements, is a complex procedure because they exist for only tiny fractions of a second and then decay radioactively into other elements.

This video says about itself:

Dinosaurs Extinction: Final Days: 65 Million BC. A Reptilian Holocaust. Starring: Triceratops, Brontosaurus, Pteranodon, Pterodactyl, Allosaurus, & T-Rex! This film contains stock footage from the 1925 silent film: Lost World (claymation/animation: Marcel Delgado, Willis O’Brien). For this film, the original footage has been recut, edited, altered, colorized, scenes altered or new scenes created, and sound effects added as the original was a silent film, by Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D.

Evidence of the ‘Lost World’ — did dinosaurs survive the end Cretaceous extinctions?

The Lost World, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s account of an isolated community of dinosaurs that survived the catastrophic extinction event 65 million years ago, has no less appeal now than it did when it was written a century ago. Various Hollywood versions have tried to recreate the lost world of dinosaurs, but today the fiction seems just a little closer to reality.

New scientific evidence suggests that dinosaur bones from the Ojo Alamo Sandstone in the San Juan Basin, USA, date from after the extinction, and that dinosaurs may have survived in a remote area of what is now New Mexico and Colorado for up to half a million years. This controversial new research, published today in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, is based on detailed chemical investigations of the dinosaur bones, and evidence for the age of the rocks in which they are found.

“The great difficulty with this hypothesis - that these are the remains of dinosaurs that survived - is ruling out the possibility that the bones date from before the extinction” says Jim Fassett, author of the research. “After being killed and deposited in sands and muds, it is possible for bones to be exhumed by rivers and then incorporated into younger rocks” he explains. This is not the usual way in which fossil deposits of this kind form, but it has been shown to explain some other post-extinction dinosaur bones. Fassett has amassed a range of evidence that indicates that these fossils from the Ojo Alamo Sandstone were not exhumed and redeposited and that these dinosaurs really did live after the end Cretaceous extinction event.

The first step must be to demonstrate that the rocks containing the bones are younger than the extinction event. Fassett has analysed the magnetic polarity of the rocks, and the pollen grains they contain, different approaches to finding the age of rocks which, he concludes “independently indicate that they do indeed post-date the extinction”. Fassett also found that “the dinosaur bones from the Ojo Alamo Sandstone have distinctly different concentrations of rare earth metal elements to the bones in the underlying Cretaceous rocks” and this, he argues “makes it very unlikely that the post-extinction bones were exhumed from the underlying sediments.” This is supported by a find of 34 hadrosaur bones together - “these are not literally an articulated skeleton, but the bones are doubtless from a single animal” - if the bones had been exhumed by a river, they would have been scattered.

So does this provide conclusive proof that dinosaurs survived the Cretaceous extinctions? According to David Polly, one of the editors of the journal in which the research is published “this is a controversial conclusion, and many palaeontologists will remain sceptical”, but we already know that flying theropod dinosaurs (more generally referred to as birds) and crocodiles survived, so the possibility of pockets of survivors of other types of dinosaur is not quite as far fetched as it might sound. Finding conclusive evidence, however, is a difficult matter when the crime scene is 65 million years old. “One thing is certain” continues Polly, “if dinosaurs did survive, they were not as widespread as they were before the end of the Cretaceous and did not persist for long.” The ‘Lost World scenario’ of humans and dinosaurs existing at the same time, still belongs firmly in the realms of pure fantasy. END

###

Notes to Editors:

1. The paper, “New Geochronologic and Stratigraphic Evidence Confirms the Paleocene Age of the Dinosaur-Bearing Ojo Alamo Sandstone and Animas Formation in The San Juan Basin, New Mexico and Colorado” by James Fassett, is published in the April 29 issue of Palaeontologia Electronica. The paper is available on the www at: http://www.palaeo-electronica.org/

2. Jim Fassett holds an emeritus position at the U. S. Geological Survey in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

3. Palaeontologia Electronica is an international internet-based journal co-sponsored by The Palaeontological Association, The Paleontological Society, and Society of Vertebrate Paleontology -the world’s leading learned societies in the field, all non-profit organisations that promote the scientific study of fossils. For further information about the Palaeontological Association and its activities, or forthcoming papers of interest, contact the Publicity Officer, Mark Purnell, publicity@palass.org

This is a video about dinosaurs in Wisconsin, USA.

Did Underpants Kill the Dinosaurs? Here.

American Eocene fossils: here.

This National Geographic video is called Knysna seahorse.

From Scientific American:

The Mr. Moms of the Fish World

Male pipefish, like seahorses, have their own placentas to carry and nourish their offspring

By Adam Marcus

Male pipefish, seahorses and their kin are the stay-at-home dads of the fish world, rearing their young in placentalike pouches from the time they are fertilized eggs until they can swim away.

New research shows that these involved fathers not only shelter their young but transfer key nutrients to their offspring via their own versions of a placenta, helping to supplement what the embryos received from their mother in the egg yolk.

“In this study, we clearly demonstrate embryonic uptake of paternally derived nutrients in two pipefish species,” says researcher Jennifer Ripley, a biologist at West Virginia University in Morgantown (W.V.U.). “This is the first time we actually have evidence for this placental-like role in these fishes. It has been hypothesized for years but not demonstrated until now.”

To test whether males of two pipefish species, Syngnathus fuscus (northern) and S. floridae (dusky), pass nutrients to their young, Ripley and her colleague Christy Foran, a biologist at W.V.U., injected brooding fish—those carrying embryos in various stages of development—with the lipid (fat) palmitic acid and the amino acid lysine, two important embryonic building blocks. The substances—both of which are essential for development and must be supplied by the dad if egg reserves are not sufficient—were tagged with isotopes (a traceable version of an element) that allowed the researchers to track them with spectroscopy from father to embryo.

From The herptile blog:

Green-blooded frog makes first appearance for scientists

Posted by Miqe on December 18, 2008

A new species of frog that has green blood and turquoise bones has been discovered living in a former stronghold of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge forces.

The Samkos bush frog is one of four previously unknown species discovered as part of a project to rebuild the country’s science base from the devastation left by the dictator’s regime.

The unusual colour of the blood and bones is caused by biliverdin, a pigment that would usually be processed in the liver as a waste product but which in the frog is passed back into the bloodstream.

Conservationists believe that the pigment helps to camouflage the amphibian because it shows green through the translucent skin. It is suspected that it also serves to make the frog, Chiromantis samkosensis, taste nasty to predators. Jeremy Holden, a naturalist for the conservation group Fauna & Flora International (FFI), who discovered the bush frog, said: “When I found the frog, I had a thrilling suspicion that we were looking at an entirely new species of amphibian.”

The species is so small and well camouflaged in the jungle habitat that researchers are able to track it down only by listening for its distinctive “rising trill” call. It is thought to breed in temporary pools created by heavy rain.

Smith’s frog, Rana faber, the Aural horned frog, Megophrys auralensis, and the Cardamom bush frog, Philautus cardamonus, are the other three species discovered by researchers from FFI during their surveys of Cambodia in the Cardamom mountains.

Cambodia new wildlife discoveries: here.

This video from the USA says about itself:

Leopard Frog Eggs and Courtship

I pointed my camera at this mass of Northern leopard frog eggs and walked away to look for snakes for a half hour. When I got back there was some cool footage!

Popular agrochemical linked to frog disease

Atrazine, one of the world’s most widely-used herbicides, makes frogs more susceptible to disease by compromising their immune system, US scientists suggest. The study provides further evidence linking the herbicide to a global decline in amphibian populations over the last three decades.

‘Amphibians are perhaps the most threatened vertebrates on the globe,’ says Jason Rohr, who led the work at the University of South Florida. Since the 1980s, he explains, amphibian populations have been declining at a startling rate.

Local chemical pollution has been blamed along with global climate change. But links between pollution and amphibian diseases are not clear, says Rohr.

Rohr and colleagues studied parasitic infection of the leopard frog (Rana pipiens) - a declining species - in wetlands across Minnesota. Of 240 possible factors, the researchers found that atrazine and phosphate, a common component of fertiliser, were the best predictors of the abundance of parasitic flatworm infection in the frogs - which can lead to malformed limbs, kidney damage, and death.

Back in the laboratory, the team found that frogs of various species exposed to atrazine were more likely to have a suppressed immune system, judging by measurements of immune cells. Atrazine also appeared to increase concentrations of the snails that harbour flatworm parasites.

Banning chances

Atrazine has already been suspected of causing a variety of ill-effects in frogs, such as growth defects and reduced sex hormone production. The chemical was banned on fears of groundwater contamination by the European Union in 2004. But it is still commonly used in the US; in 2006, the country’s Environmental Protection Agency concluded there was not enough evidence to suggest the chemical was harmful to humans.

‘I doubt that further documentation of atrazine’s harmful effects on frogs will prompt a ban in the US anytime soon,’ says Pieter Johnson, an expert on amphibians at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US.

‘In some respects amphibian development mirrors human development very closely and could therefore be used as a bioindicator. But in other regards, amphibians and humans are very different both ecologically and physiologically,’ Johnson adds. ‘Work such as this, in combination with more findings that atrazine could pose a threat to humans may push towards a ban in the US.’

A falling population of amphibians is itself a cause for concern, let alone any effect on humans, notes Rohr. Though bullfrogs and cane toads have been castigated for being invasive predators, most native amphibians are important for controlling insect pests that attack crops, and, as prey for birds and mammals, provide a link between freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems.

Lewis Brindley

Disease in Northern Leopard Frog Linked to Herbicide Atrazine: here.

American bullfrogs in the Netherlands: here.

From the BBC:

‘Glowing’ jellyfish grabs Nobel

A clever trick borrowed from jellyfish has earned two Americans and one Japanese scientist a share of the chemistry Nobel Prize.

Martin Chalfie, Roger Tsien and Osamu Shimomura made it possible to exploit the genetic mechanism responsible for luminosity in the marine creatures.

Today, countless scientists use this knowledge to tag biological systems.

Glowing markers will show, for example, how brain cells develop or how cancer cells spread through tissue.

But their uses really have become legion: they are now even incorporated into bacteria to act as environmental biosensors in the presence of toxic materials.

Colour palette

Jellyfish will glow under blue and ultraviolet light because of a protein in their tissues. Scientists refer to it as green fluorescent protein, or GFP.

Shimomura made the first critical step, isolating GFP from a jellyfish (Aequorea victoria) found off the west coast of North America in 1962. He made the connection also with ultraviolet light.

Today we consider chemistry to be a science, but its roots, back in Ancient Egypt, lie in art and the creation of synthetic pigments: here.

This is a video of an ivory gull, ‘30/12-06 … Langø Havn, Lolland Denmark’.

Reuters reports:

Gull sets Arctic pollution record for birds

Thu Sep 4, 2008 11:03am EDT

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO - A small Arctic gull has set a record as the bird most contaminated by two banned industrial pollutants, scientists said on Thursday.

Eggs of the ivory gull, which has a population of about 14,000 from Siberia to Canada, were found to have the highest known concentrations of PCBs, long used in products such as paints or plastics, and the pesticide DDT.

“Environmental poisons are threatening ivory gulls,” the Norwegian Polar Institute said in a statement of eggs collected off northern Norway and Russia. “Levels of PCB and DDT are higher in ivory gulls than in other Arctic seabirds.”

The long-lasting chemicals, swept north by prevailing winds and currents from industrial centers, often end in the Arctic where they build up in fatty tissues of animals, fish and birds.

A 2001 U.N. convention outlawed most uses of 12 so-called persistent organic pollutants after the chemicals were found in the breast milk of Inuit women and in polar bears. Levels of many of the “dirty dozen” in the Arctic have been falling.

“Ivory gulls are top predators, that’s a main reason why they have high levels of contaminants,” said Hallvard Stroem, of the Polar Institute. The gulls eat cod and other fatty fish and also scavenge dead seals or polar bears for a fat-charged diet.

“We’re not sure why the levels are higher than for other birds,” he told Reuters, adding there were no known local sources of the pollutants to explain the high concentrations.

PCBs, at up to 0.02 percent of the egg weight, were comparable with those found in some polar bears 20 years ago.

Previous studies show that the chemical pollutants can have effects on birds such as shortening lifespans or thinning of eggshells. Ivory gulls can live about 10 to 20 years.

The shrinking of Arctic sea ice in recent years, apparently because of global warming, also threatens the birds by reducing the size of their habitat. The gulls feed most around the fringes of the ice, where fish and plankton thrive.

“Climate change is an added stress — the ivory gull is dependent on the sea ice,” Stroem said.

The survey was carried out after reports that numbers of ivory gulls had plunged by 80 percent in Canada. Stroem said population trends elsewhere were not clear.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

Arctic and Antarctic: here. And here.

Pesticides in Latin America: here.