Element FYI

The Alaskan coastline could be subject to an earthquake and tsunami similar to the Indonesian earthquake that devastated shores around the Indian Ocean last year. The southern Alaskan coastline sits over a seismically active subduction zone; the same type of tectonic setting as the site of the December 26, 2004 Indonesian earthquake. On March 30 at 9:45 am, the entire state of Alaska will receive the first-ever test of the tsunami warning communications system. According to a report released by NOAA, the tsunami alert will involve several federal and local government agencies and include a live television broadcast of tsunami warning codes in addition to a radio broadcast. The last great tsunami to hit Alaska followed a magnitude 9.2 earthquake on March 27, 1964, the largest earthquake ever recorded followed now by the magnitude 9.0 Indonesian quake. Tsunami wave heights from the 1964 earthquake reached 67 meters and contributed to 123 deaths in Alaska, Oregon, and California. The test is timed to occur during Tsunami Awareness Week (March 27 - April 2), proclaimed by Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski to mark the anniversary of the great 1964 quake.

Next to Einstein, Richard Feynman is one of the best known and most photographed physicists of the 20th century. His memoirs are hugely popular with science aficionados and his "Feynman Lectures on Physics" are a must-have for budding physicists. Now a new book of personal letters written by him and edited by his daughter is being released by Basic Books entitled "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman." Feynman is best known for his work in quantum physics, winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, working on the Manhattan Project, and for determining the cause of the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. The book is being promoted with a book tour by his daughter as well as panel discussions with prominent physicists who knew Feynman in major cities around the country. The Basic Feynman website contains various memorabilia including his Nobel Prize Speech and video clips of interviews.

This four part special Strange Days on Planet Earth tracks how small changes in the environment have huge impacts. The series begins with Invaders, which traces the effects of insect migration into habitats that are free of natural predators. Asian termites take over New Orleans. Alian hyacinth plants in Uganda create a health threat by leading to the spread of the tropical disease schistosomiasis through a chain of ecological events. Actor/writer/director Edward Norton lends a little Hollywood charm as host of the series, which airs this week in most cities. The Strange Days website contains background information and links to related science sites and resources. Click here to find out when it's playing in your area.

Launched in July 2004, NASA's Aura satellite program is providing the first-ever direct global measurements of ozone, air quality, and climate change on a daily basis. The project is helping scientists monitor pollution production and transport over thousands of miles across the globe, such as dust and pollution travelling from China to California, and a sulfur dioxide plume erupting from the Manam Volcano in New Guinea. Aura is third in a line of Earth Observing System satellites, following Terra and Aqua, that are designed to study the Earth's land, water, and atmosphere. Aura penetrates deeper into the Earth's atmosphere than previous satellites, reaching the Earth's troposphere that extends from the ground to about 10 km. NASA has designed a program to validate Aura's observations using ground-based, balloon, aircraft, and other satellite measurements. Click here to see a Flash movie about Aura's mission to study climate change.

The terms "internet" and "world wide web" capture the common vision of the internet as a global network, but if you had to map it, how would you do it and what would it look like? A program called the DIMES (Distributed Internet Measurements & Simulations) Project has set out to map the internet, with the help of volunteers who are being asked to contribute their internet location. The DIMES project, which has been operational since September 1, 2004, uses Internet measurements such as TRACEROUTE and PING, to identify agent locations and linkages. Volunteers receive maps of the internet relative to their location and a personal "Internet weather report" on internet activity around their node. The DIMES project is being run by researchers at Tel-Aviv University and is part of the EVERGROW consortium of researchers for complex systems research.

Remember the "I'm Just a Bill" cartoons? (Do they still play those anymore?) Now Hitachi has come up with a Flash animation called "Get Perpendicular" complete with a dancing bit--that looks a lot like Mr. Bill--and a talking iPod. In the video, the talking iPod teaches the bit about the superparamagnetic effect and how more bits can fit on a hard drive by making them "get perpendicular." Hitachi released the cartoon with the announcement in March that Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has achieved the highest areal density to date (230 Gb per square inch) using perpendicular recording technology. The cartoon explains how this is done, in a super-entertaining way that even a 5 year-old can understand. What does this mean for the iPod? In the next 5-7 years, according to the Hitachi website, a 60 Gb one-inch microdrive could be available for portable media devices, allowing you to store even more songs, or eventually movies, on your iPod. What do you think that little photo feature on the iPod is for, anyway? It ain't just for baby pictures....

The University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomographic Facility (UTCT) has created an online biological visualization library called DigiMorph, which contains X-ray computer tomographic (X-ray CT) scans of living and extinct vertebrates and invertebrates contributed by the facility and more than 80 collaborating international researchers. The UTCT facility is used by researchers all over the country to scan the internal structure of rocks, meteorites, fossils, and modern organisms at macro- and microscopic scales. The DigiMorph homepage presents recent additions to the biological collection including, most recently, an X-ray CT-scan of the ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct but recently spotted in Arkansas. DigiMorph made the best of an old mounted specimen of an ivory-billed woodpecker by imaging it inside and out to produce the figure at right. The specimen shown here was scanned to create 339 "slices" of the bird, each slice being 0.2 mm thick. The site contains fast links to images of alligators, dinosaurs, and other cool images.

Einstein is the most famous scientist of the last 100 years, but few can explain exactly why he is famous. Now a multimedia special report by the National Science Foundation (NSF) commemorating the World Year of Physics 2005 explains the ideas behind the papers published in 1905 that made Einstein, then a 26-year-old patent clerk, famous. From Einstein's explanation of Brownian motion, to his inquiries into the nature of light, to his work on relativity, the NSF special report uses multimedia videos and flash animation to explain Einstein's work. The site is one of the best to come out this year. You can find the NSF special report here and links to more World Year of Physics sites on the Element List feature page here.

Google has added aerial photos of the Moon for Google Maps in honor of the first manned Moon landing by NASA astronauts on Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969. According to the Google website, "Google will fully integrate Google Local search capabilities into Google Moon, which will allow our users to quickly find lunar business addresses, numbers and hours of operation, among other valuable forms of Moon-oriented local information." Google Moon is reportedly a product of Google's Copernicus initiative, otherwise known as the Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering (G.C.H.E.E.S.E.), which will conduct studies in "entropized information filtering, high-density high-delivery hosting (HiDeHiDeHo) and de-oxygenated cubicle dwelling." The new lunar mapping feature could come in handy when you're looking for a landing pad of your own from Craigslist.
P.S. - Readers are encouraged to use the zoom feature to see a close-up of the moon.

Dr. Robert "Bob" Ballard, the scientist who first discovered hydrothermal vents off Galapagos in the 1970s and later found even greater fame by locating the Titanic, will broadcast live from the Lost City hydrothermal vent field on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge this Saturday, July 23, at 10 a.m. EDT. The expedition is being co-led by Dr. Deborah Kelley from the University of Washington, who discovered white smokers off the axis of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in 2000. The broadcast will beam live pictures of white smokers from 2,100 feet below sea level in the Atlantic Ocean. The expedition will study the Lost City hydrothermal vent field for 24 hours per day for 10 days using remotely operated vehicles, with four live broadcasts per day at 10 a.m, noon, 2 p.m., and 4 p.m until August 1.

NASA's Astrobiology Magazine has posted the final installment in a four-part series that examines the potential connections between methane and life on Mars. Methane on Earth is mostly produced by living organisms, but it isn't clear whether the same can be said for methane on Mars. Scientists have determined that Martian methane must be younger than 600 years old and must be produced at a rate of 126 metric tons per year to maintain present levels of methane in the atmosphere. Extraterrestrial methane sources have been estimated to be miniscule. While a biogenic methane source is intriguing, methane could alternatively be seeping out from abiogenic sources within or below the rocky crust much like methane-rich vents found on the seafloor at mid-ocean ridges (see Element FYI post on the Lost City vent field). If the source is biogenic, scientists seem to favor the idea that anaerobic microbes living at or beneath the rocky surface could be the source--hardly the little green men in science fiction films.

In two announcements published yesterday in the NY Times, a total of nearly $800 million will be invested in biotech research and industry over the next two years to make New York City "one of the nation's primary bioscience clusters," according to New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a California-based real estate investment trust that specializes in medical facilities, agreed to build a $700 million biotech complex on the East Side of Manhattan between 28th and 29th Streets (pictured right). Construction will begin in 2006 with occupancy slated for 2008. Separately, Dr. Jan T. Vilcek, a professor and researcher in microbiology at the NYU School of Medicine who made a fortune with the drug Remicade, used to treat Crohn's disease, announced a donation of $105 million to his home institution at NYU. The funds will go toward supporting microbial research and will be used to recruit scientists, upgrade laboratories, and support the ear, nose, and throat department of the medical school. "We know that biotechs tend to cluster around great academic institutions, so why not New York?" said Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, to the NY Times in reference to the Alexandria deal. "I hope this will change the city's image, and make people feel this is a place where biotech is and wants to be."

You thought it was all over when Katrina hit New Orleans. Oh, no, siree. Katrina is heading north toward Ohio, New York, and Maine, and carrying flood and flash flood watches with her. You can follow this link to the National Weather Service public advisory on Katrina and follow the storm with the NOAA Storm Tracker. The NOAA homepage has plenty of headlines for you as well. Just for fun, look for any references on how global warming could be creating stronger hurricanes. In their rush save the Gulf of Mexico oil wells, the Bush Administration might not have deleted them all from the NOAA site yet.

Tired of graduating from school before seeing their missions launched into space, students from the European Student Space Exploration and Technology Inititative (SSETI) will launch the first European Student Earth Orbiter (ESEO) satellite "SSETI Express" (pictured right) scheduled for September 27, 5005. The satellite consists of three small CubeSat satellites developed by Japan, Germany, and Norway and will be launched from Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russia. The mini-satellite will orbit the Earth at an altitude of 686 km, conduct a radiation experiment, send pictures back to Earth, and function as a radio transponder. The project is sponsored by the European Space Agency. You can follow the progress of SSETI Express from the official mission website. Eds. Note: As of 9/18, the launch date has been changed to Sept. 30.

The New York City Office of Emergency Management (OEM) has begun an ad campaign to alert New Yorkers about the possibility of strong hurricanes and what to do in case evacuation becomes necessary. OEM designed the city's coastal storm plan, which includes potential evacuation measures. The city has also created a Hurricane Evacuation website that allows city residents to find out if they live in a hurricane evacuation zone by typing in their address. "Historically, New York City is most vulnerable to coastal storms and hurricanes from August to October, when water temperatures along the east coast warm up," OEM Commissioner Joseph F. Bruno said. "Hurricanes do not only affect Florida and the Gulf Coast. We hope this new ad campaign will encourage New Yorkers to find out if they live in a hurricane evacuation zone, and make sure they address hurricanes as part of their disaster plans." Photo by J. Floyd.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Sept. 21, Rita has reached Category 5 hurricane status with 165 mile per hour winds. By comparison, Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans over three weeks ago, was a Category 4 hurricane. You can find the latest Rita NOAA Public Advisory here and follow Rita through the latest Hurricane Rita Satellite Pictures from NOAA over the Gulf of Mexico.

Image credit: NOAA.

"Current knowledge of Mars suggests that it is possible to transform that planet into one that would be habitable by plants and microorganisms from Earth. This could be done over time-scales of a hundred years or so using technologies that we are already demonstrating, probably to our detriment, on the Earth. Should we do so?" That's not science fiction. That's astrobiologist Christopher P. McKay of the NASA Ames Research Center writing inThe Environmental Ethics of Bringing Mars to Life. NASA scientists are studying the possibility of altering the Martian atmosphere to make it habitable much like Earth. NASA has even created a website called Digital Dashboard: Build a Virtual World that allows you to practice making your own habitable planet on Mars by changing several climate forcing factors including light-dark albedo, incoming solar radiation, and greenhouse gases like methane. The website is based on global climate models developed for Martian atmospheric conditions by McKay and others at NASA. The calculations are relatively simplified, but it's not bad for conducting your own at-home experiments in terraforming. According to the NASA website, " [T]he basic Martian ingredients for plant life are available.... The three reservoirs of carbon dioxide on Mars - the atmosphere, the dry ice in the polar caps, and gas adsorbed in the soil - provide a positive feedback, since warming will outgas or melt this greenhouse gas, thickening the atmosphere further to trap more sunlight and thus dramatically accelerating Martian habitability."

Mac-loving scientists take note, there is now a website dedicated to you and your love of all things Mac. [Room fills with applause.] The site has the incredibly original name "MacResearcher" (why not iResearcher or iGeek?) and has dedicated itself to "cultivat[ing] [a] knowledgeable and vibrant community of Mac researchers who can collectively escalate the prominence [of] Apple technologies in the scientific research community." Believe it or not, there's not one single advertisement for Apple products, unless you miss the fact that the ENTIRE site is one big advertisement for Apple products. Then again, if you don't already own an Apple G4 or better, an iPod, an airport, and if, heaven forbid, you haven't already upgraded your operating system to Tiger ... well, then, you probably use a Dell. We particularly liked the latest post on scientific widgets for OS X Tiger (v10.4). There are several handy Periodic Table widgets of course, but also a NASA widget with space headlines, a Moon Atlas, a Genetic Code widget, a PubMed MEDLINE search widget, and an Earthquake Alert for the state of California from the USGS. The list goes on and on, and some of these are actually useful.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) announced September 1 that the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded the first year of a four-year, $14.2 million award to design and develop a large telescope that will be used to survey the night sky. The LSST will take 10-second exposures of 10-square-degree sections of the sky every three nights, allowing repeated, time-lapse images or movies of objects that change or move on rapid timescales, such as exploding supernovae, potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids, and distant Kuiper Belt Objects. The LSST will also be used to trace the apparent distortions in the shapes of remote galaxies produced by lumps of Dark Matter. The LASS website contains a large section explaining the science behind the experiment. The data will be made openly available to the public and scientists from around the world and accessible by a web browser. The final site for the LSST has not been decided. The three candidate locations are Las Campanas, Chile, Cerro Pachon, Chile, or San Pedro Martir, Baja California, Mexico. An artist's rendition of the telescope is shown here with a 6-foot tall person drawn in red to show the relative scale.