Riled Up

Flashing Light

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 12:06:15 GMT

Solarization is a special photo technique where a developing print is exposed to a flash of light while still in the darkroom tray. The result produces both positive and negative effects on the artistically rendered image in ghostly, halos of light. The same effect was captured by a very lucky Russian photographer when the recent meteor exploded over Siberia while he was conducting a sunrise photo shoot.

If timing and location are everything to a photographer then the surprised Russian was definitely in the right place at the right time. Streaking high above the city of Chelyabinsk and traveling over 12 miles/second, the meteor exploded in the atmosphere creating a flash brighter than the Sun. NASA has estimated that 500 kilotons of energy was released by the blast of space rock weighing nearly 10,000 tons. The flash created a remarkable solarized panoramic of the frozen Siberian landscape that Marat Ametvaleev captured directly in his camera.

Chelyabinsk Meteor (credit: NASA/Marat Ametvaleev )

No photographic darkroom tools were was needed here!

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Self Portrait

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 12:40:05 GMT

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CalTech and NASA have released a panoramic self-portrait of the Curiosity Rover compiled from multiple photographs captured by the rover itself. Holes where the rover drilled into Martian rocks are clearly visible. The frames used to create the photograph were edited to exclude the camera's robotic arm itself to enhance the effect of the self-portrait. What is particularly interesting is the presence of dust or fog in the Martian atmosphere that almost blots out the Sun.

Curiosity Self-portrait (credit: JPL/NASA)

It almost looks as if you could step into the photograph panorama and wander about Mars yourself.

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Molten Rain

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 18:11:24 GMT

Photography and video are used as powerful tools in helping to document research findings and create visual stories. An amazing example was released by NASA's Goddard Institute showing plasmas erupting from the Sun.

In the HD video, solar gasses have been ionized---stripped of their elemental electrons---and erupt in gigantic arches far greater in size than the Earth. The Sun's magnetic field constantly tugs on the ionized jets ( plasma ) pulling them back down to the surface in cascades appearing like molten rain. Some of the ionized gasses are ejected into space beyond the Sun's gravity and when they collide with the Earth's atmosphere, auroras shimmer in the night skies.

The material raining down produces something strikingly beautiful in both cases.

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Breakthrough Prizes

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:27:53 GMT

When you think of Silicon Valley, the life sciences aren't the first things that come to mind. The valley, once known for its orchards and berry farms, is now the epicenter of all things software, hardware, and gadget related. Now it is also the place where recognition of the biological sciences has gained some new acknowledgement with the Breakthrough Prize in the Life Sciences created by several of the Valley's famous entrepreneurs and investors.

The first Breakthrough Prizes have been awarded by the Foundation that was created by the founders of Facebook, Google, and a Russian venture capitalist. The $3million awards will go to 11 bio-medical researchers for a total of $33million. Recipients from the USA, Japan, Italy and the Netherlands, expressed 'shock and awe' when informed of the awards that represent, in financial terms, twice the level of support received by winners of a Nobel Prize. According to the Foundation, their awards are meant to assist new strategies:

"intended to inject excitement into the sometimes lonely, underfunded quests to understand and combat cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and other maladies."

Breakthrough Prize in the Life Sciences (credit: Breakthrough Prize Foundation)

Maybe in the future the new Silicon Valley foundation will recognize that biology extends beyond the research lab into the natural world. With the constant environmental degradation, climate change impacts, and depletion of biological diversity happening everywhere now, it would be a good idea if the Breakthrough Foundation recognized that field research is a critical element of the life sciences.

Recognizing with a prize, the importance of research into ecosystem sustainability, marine science, restoration ecology and their natural interface with "big data analysis" using advance computer technology might offer some real game-changing breakthroughs as well.

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President's Day Quiz

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 11:25:16 GMT

President's Day quiz: Where is the most isolated permanent settlement on Earth?

Perhaps a volcanic island with its nearest neighbor located ~1,350 miles away provides a clue:

Mystery Desert Island (credit: NASA)

Sometimes, it seems a remote desert island would be an ideal place to get away from all the politics and rancor that Presidents and everyone else must endure nowadays.

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The Dark Hedges

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 19:57:24 GMT

We all need some mystery and mythology in our lives. That is one reason why science fiction and fantasy novels and their movie adaptations remain so popular. A rural road in Ireland with the apt name, The Dark Hedges, fits both needs perfectly.

The Irish roadway of gnarled beech trees was planted over 200 years ago and included in the Game Of Thrones where a scene was shot for the epic TV show. It is a photographers dream location.

The Dark Hedges (credit: Flickr)

The Dark Hedges (credit: Dark Side of Ireland)

You can easily imagine a Leprechaun hanging out behind one of the ancient trees or a fiddler standing by the road playing a plaintive Irish tune.

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Passion Matters

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 21:04:56 GMT

Recently, the Cook Island created a huge protected zone for sharks: Cook Islands' shark sanctuary creates world's largest. This is remarkable for a small, poor, and isolated group of islands in the western Pacific particularly with demands for shark fins by Asian countries.

The new reserve places a ban on shark fishing and possession or sale of shark products in an area encompassing 2.6 million square miles - nearly the size of Australia. The Pew Environmental Trust assisted the islands but local involvement was critical for realizing the reserve declaration. A young woman, Jessica Cramp, also made a huge impact as the program manager for the Pacific Islands Conservation Initiative. Originally working in a research laboratory in San Diego, she decided to pursue her passion for marine life and moved to the Cook Islands. A fine commentary was provided by Dot Earth. The project was even celebrated by Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who stopped by during one of her many busy travels.

Cook Islands (map credit: Cook Islands Tourism)

As Cramp commented: “For me, traveling is all about gaining hands-on experience to better understand community level impacts and encouraging locals to get involved."

The Power of One is demonstrated well by the passion of this young woman to contribute to a conservation effort but anyone can make a difference with a bit of directed passion. The sharks certainly will benefit from hers.

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Voyager Valentine

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 10:26:14 GMT

Sometimes the best valentines come from afar.

On Valentine's Day 1990 and four billion miles away, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back to create a mosaic portrait of solar system. The robotic traveler's camera captured images of the inner Solar System on the left, linking up with Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, on the right. Mercury and Mars are obscured by sunlight.

Voyager Solar System Mosaic, Feburary 14, 1990 (credit: NASA)

The Voyager Valentine didn't come with any flowers or chocolates but it's pretty cool none the less.

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Long Exposure

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 10:34:59 GMT

Timing is everything!

It's particularly true when capturing a photograph that combines multiple elements. A nice example shows a tranquil lily pond with multicolor auroras, and the Pleiades Star Cluster. A long exposure was used to capture the details one fall evening in Alaska.

Alaska Lily Pond, Auroras, & the Pleiades (credit: NASA/Aurora Hunters)

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Patagonian Glacier Collapses

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:19:52 GMT

Mostly, we hear of climate change happening in Greenland, Iceland, or around the Arctic Ocean. Changing glacial landscapes in the southern hemisphere are less known but still occur. Now a visitor to a national park in Patagonia has observed the collapse a massive ice bridge in Periot Moreno National Park as the ice recedes and exposes long fjords.

A lucky tourist observed the ice bridge collapse while another visitor captured the event on video. Impressive event!

Ice Bridge, Perito Moreno National Park, Argentina (credit: Wiki-commons)

Fjords Developing from Perito Moreno Glacial Retreat (credit: NASA)

The question is whether a new ice block will be rebuilt by the glacier or whether it has has receded into history as another fjord forms.

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Antiquarian Photographic Modernity

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 13:24:40 GMT

Antiquarian photography can be amazing.

The ancient ways of crafting images using daguerreotypes, tintypes, and point-hole cameras can produce remarkable detail, depth, and beauty. Two examples, one a 1913 tintype of a meteor breaking apart over early Toronto, Canada, and a solargraph of an modern observatory produced with a pin-hole camera in 2012, illustrate this well.

1913 Meteor Break-up Procession, Toronto, Canada (credit: NASA)

Solargraph Observatory, UK, 2011 (credit: NASA)

So rummage around the attic for an old box camera, build a new a pin-hole device, read up about the antiquarian photo masters, and start taking some cool, ancient-looking, photographs yourself.

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Convergence & Storms

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 11:53:28 GMT

With the eastern USA in the grips of another massive storm, an obvious question is if a pattern may be underway.

Last fall, the confluence of three weather systems---a cold front from the north, tropical moisture from the south, and an energy mass from the west created Hurricane Sandy. A similar situation is now playing out again. A NOAA weather satellite observed the winter storm as it was building. The monster blizzard is now pummeling New York, Boston, and elsewhere:

(credit: NOAA-GEOS)

While weather systems known as Nor'easters have a long history, the real issue should be if the storm's amplitude and recognized weather patterns are changing in intensity. NASA has just published the results of a survey compiling the Scientific Consensus that concludes: "97% of all scientific societies worldwide now agree that humans have contributed to changing temperatures". Climate models predict this should occur with increased CO2 that impacts the dynamics of the atmosphere. A chart of temperature anomalies was developed from measurement gathered from around the world:

Temperature Anomalies, 1880-2012 (credit: NASA, NOAA, UK and Japan)

Initial estimates show that over 600,000 people are now without power and over 3' of snow continues piling up in the storm's path. The costs both public and environmental are still to be calculated.

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Catastrophic Evolution

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:25:01 GMT

Natural catastrophes happen---just think Pompeii or Ubar, two cities of the ancient world that disappeared in dual catastrophes that became legends until being re-discovered in the 18th and 20th Centuries. Massive random events can be caused by earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, plagues, or even asteroids. Besides their destructive force, they also produces prime opportunities for natural selection to being working on the survivors. A perfect example is the evolution of mammals at the end to the Age of Dinosaurs who then ruled the earth.

Approximately 65 million years ago an asteroid 5 miles wide slammed into the Earth in what is now the Yucatan Peninsula and caused the extinction of 75 percent of life on Earth. Known as the Chicxulub impactor, named for the Mexican town where tell-tale meteorite residues of the rare-earth mineral iridium were first discovered, it brought the Cretaceous period to an end. The dinosaurs disappeared shortly thereafter in an geological blink of time.

When the meteor impact was first proposed in 1980, it was considered a heretical theory but recent discoveries now reported in Science Magazine have shown the durability of the early analysis. National Public Radio aired a nice summary of the latest research just published.

Chicxulub Impactor in early Yucatan, Mexico (credit: NPR)

The other impact of the Chicxulub meteor was to unleash the power of natural selection and evolution to allow entire new plants and animals to repopulate landscapes devastated by the catastrophe. We should be thankful for this as the evolution of mammals, of which we belong, then began. In the Science report, the researchers described their use of vast databases of fossils and other biological data, as well as DNA evidence, to re-create the hypothetical ancestor for all mammalian species. Everything from whales, chimpanzees, dogs, rodents, and humans subsequently evolved from a humble shrew-like creature that survived the catastrophic end of Cretaceous event. The creature is now recognized as the progenator for all subsequent placental mammals. It is also another example for the power of Big Data to analyze significant patterns from large data sets.

Early Mammalian Ancestor (credit: AAAS)

As Jonathan Block, one of the lead authors, commented: "This gives us a new perspective of how major change can influence the history of life, like the extinction of the dinosaurs. This was a major event in Earth's history that potentially then results in setting the framework for the entire ordinal diversification of mammals, including our own very distant ancestors."

While catastrophes do cause big disruptions in the standing order, we are an evolutionary beneficiary of one such event. As the old adage goes: From Tiny Acorns, Mighty Oaks Doth Grow.

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Regenerating Medicine in 3D

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 13:10:41 GMT

Here at Riled Up we normally focus on telling stories about environmental matters, natural history, and the wonder of exploration. However, occasionally a technological advance emerges that requires very close attention. One has just happened: investigators at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland have produced a breakthrough with the development of living materials made from embryonic stem-cells created by using 3D printing machines. The implications for biological based medicine are almost limitless.

3D printing is increasingly used in diverse industries ranging from clothing fabrication, to architectural modeling, and even in candy creation. The novel process produces three dimensional objects from a digital design and then builds the resulting object layer by layer with a material laid down by the printer's jets. Using human embryonic stem cells (hESC's), that have the potential to become any type of tissue in the body, a 3D printer has constructed living 3D tissues from the cells. A full report of the breakthrough is published in Biofabrication.

In the longer term, this new method of printing may also pave the way for incorporating hESCs into artificially created organs and tissues ready for transplantation into patients suffering from a variety of diseases.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-02-3d-breakthrough-human-embryonic-stem.html#jCp

pave the way for incorporating hESCs into artificially created organs and tissues ready for transplantation int

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-02-3d-breakthrough-human-embryonic-stem.html#jCp

Will Shu and Stem Cells (credit: Heriot-Watt University/UK Telegraph)

Dr. Will Shu, one of the lead researchers on the Scotland project, said: "We found that the valve-based printing is gentle enough to maintain high stem cell viability, accurate enough to produce spheroids of uniform size, and most importantly, the printed hESCs maintained their pluripotency - the ability to differentiate into any other cell type."

Such a constructed bio-fabrics have the potential to be used to design hearts, lungs, kidneys or any other tissues for transplantation into patients with damaged organs. Creating more 3D tissues from stem-cells in Dr. Shu's laboratory will now be tried.

Like Guttenburg and the revolution he spawned with his printing press, let the bio-engineering with 3D printers using stem-cells begin. A revolution in regenerative medicine will follow.

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To learn more about the revolution being catalyzed by 3D printing, check out this BBC report on the technology here:

Ripples in Still Water

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 11:00:33 GMT

"If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
Would you hear my voice come through the music?
Would you hold it near, as it were your own?

Ripples in Still Water"

Like the famous song by the Grateful Dead ripples underwater have been observed off the coast of Trinidad. Seen by the Space Station, the "internal waves" are the surface manifestations of slow ocean movements underneath the surface. Internal waves can produce enough of an effect on the sea surface and can be seen when sunlight is reflected back into space on a clear day. They can be very beautiful like an Earth song

(credit: NASA)

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A River Once Ran Through It

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 15:17:27 GMT

Mars once was wet but is now is dry---super dry. Evidence for an extensive river system was recently announced by the European Space Agency when they published images of the dry river-beds captured by their Mars Express orbiter.

According to the ESA, the upper part of the Reull Vallis region of Mars shows a sinuous river structure stretching for more than 900 miles across Mars. The riverine landscape is flanked by numerous tributaries, one of which can be seen cutting in a steep-sided channel through the Marian Highlands before running on towards the floor of the huge Hellas basin.

Here are two of the remarkable ESA photographs:

Now the big question becomes were there any trout in those big streams?

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If You Were an Owl...

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:41:40 GMT

If you were an owl, you could rotate your head 360 degrees. Investigators at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigated the structure of an owls neck bones, muscles, and blood vessels to see how this was possible.

Here's the video presented by Science Friday:

I wouldn't give it a try!

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Unsung Heroes

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:43:11 GMT

Environmental protection is typically defined by organizations like The Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Fund, or any myriad of other groups. However, conservation success everywhere requires constant attention not just from well funded international organizations but also from ordinary people from many backgrounds to provide critical actions. Two new examples are worth a mention.

In Tibet, a vast plateau of mountains, forests, unique wildlife, and deeply spiritual people, the environment is under threat from multiple abuses. To try and counter this situation, individual villagers, Buddhist monks, and local herders have organized to protect their high mountain landscapes. As one Tibetan conservationist commented: "Life here teaches us to respect nature; that you can only survive by adjusting to nature. That’s the natural education the plateau quietly gives us."

Here are faces of some of these "unsung heroes" who were interviewed by Hong Kong's China Dialog on their reverence for nature:

(credit: China Dialog)

A continent away in the Central American nation of Costa Rica, the International Primatological Society has just recognized the efforts of a private landowner for his habitat protection efforts. Carlos Jiménez had conserved a highly endangered tropical dry forest habitat where white-faced Capuchin monkey and mantled howler monkeys live on his property.

(
(credit: Wiki-commons)

According to the primate conservation society: "we would be incapable of achieving our goals without extensive support from people like you, who have the human resources and authority to preserve these endangered habitats."

These are "unsung heroes" certainly but you could be one too.

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Solar Pop-Art

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 14:55:03 GMT

You see different kinds of detail viewing an object thru multiple wavelengths of light. Utilizing filters that capture an image in visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light provides a deep understanding of the object. Combining all three can produce an art installation. Here's a construction of the Sun using all three light wavelengths.

(credit: NASA)

The Pop artist Andy Warhol would be proud.

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Dolphin Rescue

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 17:45:50 GMT

Conscientiousness is a basic feature of intelligence and poorly understood. Psychological tradition says that the mental capacity requires an ability for self-awareness or self-recognition; the ability to express empathy and compassion for others; and the ability to understand and manipulate the world around yourself. Until recently, conscientiousness was only thought to be a feature exclusive to humans. Here's a short video about a dolphin off Hawaii that requested some rescue assistance that tests that assumption:

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