Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Saturday
Sunday
Inside Science : Life in the Abyss
From Site:
[Via: http://www.brainpickings.org]
[Via: http://www.newton.tv]
"Life in the Abyss is a fascinating short documentary about the ambitious endeavor, inviting you aboard an Arctic Ocean research vessel as scientists scoop up organisms from the ocean floor to see new species being discovered before your very eyes. From bioluminescence to deep-sea life, the short film offers a glimpse of an astounding and otherworldly microcosm — a precious final frontier of humanity’s exploration of Earth.
For more on the remarkable and important project, dive into Paul Snelgrove’sDiscoveries of the Census of Marine Life: Making Ocean Life Count."
[Via: http://www.brainpickings.org]
[Via: http://www.newton.tv]
Friday
Teuthidodrilus samae, or "squid worm of the Sama"
Amplify’d from news.nationalgeographic.com
"Flamboyant" New Squid Worm Surprises, Delights Experts
"What's that?" said scientists of the tentacle-headed swimmer. Now they know.
"When the image came onto the screen, everyone said, Oh my gosh, what's that?" recalled marine zoologist Laurence Madin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
Thanks to a new study co-authored by Madin, we now have the answer. The animal—as suspected—turned out to be a bizarrely bedecked marine worm totally new to science. (See marine-worm pictures.)
The paper, published Tuesday in the journal Biology Letters, describes the new species at length for the first time and officially christens the creature Teuthidodrilus samae, or "squid worm of the Sama"—the Sama being a culture with ties to Philippine islands not far from the discovery site.
Its front end bristles with eight arms used for breathing—each as long as the worm's entire body—and two long, loosely coiled appendages employed for feeding.
As if that weren't enough hardware, six pairs of feathery sensory organs—the squid worm's collective "nose"—protrude from the new species' head. And along the length of its body, the worm has iridescent "paddles" for propulsion.
Whatever it is, it's "definitely flamboyant," said Kristian Fauchald, curator of annelid worms at the US. National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who wasn't part of the study.
Observed between 1.2 and 1.8 miles (2 and 2.9 kilometers) below the ocean surface, Teuthidodrilus samae lives neither on the seafloor nor in the sunny shallows.
Instead, the worm inhabits a dark in-between realm, where the limited observations done so far show the worm feeding off plankton and other nutritious detritus in the water.
Whatever the cause of the squid worm's chimerical form, it apparently works. "Numerous" specimens were observed during just a few dives, the study authors write—suggesting Teuthidodrilus is common and thriving in the region.
And its homely charms apparently work on humans, or at least on worm curators.
"It has done all sorts of peculiar things to its body," Fauchald said. "I'm delighted by it."
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/e4dVZm
Thursday
Into the abyss: The diving suit that turns men into fish
Amplify’d from www.independent.co.uk
very shallow depths.
Thanks to our inability to conquer the bends, diving below 70m still remains
astonishingly dangerous to anyone but a handful of experts. Ultra-deep
diving is so lethal that more people have walked on the moon than descended
below 240m using scuba gear.
to get humans down to serious depths – by getting us to breathe liquid like
fish.
explains Lande, a 79-year-old inventor from St Louis, Missouri. “But once
that oxygenated liquid is inside your lungs it would feel just like
breathing air.”
highly-oxygenated perfluorocarbons (PFCs) – a type of liquid that can
dissolve enormous quantities of gas. The liquid would be contained in an
enclosed helmet that would replace all the air in the lungs, nose and ear
cavities.
“scrubbed” from our blood by attaching a mechanical gill to the femoral vein
in the leg.
about decompression sickness - the often fatal condition known as “the
bends” which occurs when nitrogen dissolved in the blood under the immense
pressures of deep water bubbles out as we rise. It could potentially allow
them to descend to far greater depths than is currently possible.
in James Cameron’s 1989 sci-fi film The Abyss – but it is already used by a
handful of cutting-edge American hospitals for highly premature babies.
their lungs are not developed enough to comfortably adjust from the liquid
environment of the womb to inhaling gaseous air. Immature alveoli, the final
branchings inside the lung that feed oxygen into the blood, lack vital
surfactants which stop the tiny cavities sticking together when we breathe
out.
animal flounders wildly. Everything the mouse has ever learned screams at it
to avoid inhaling a solution it thinks will kill it.
is overridden by a stronger instinct to take in one last breath. It is a
desperate final attempt to get oxygen into the blood. If the liquid we are
in contains oxygen molecules that happily cross from the solution into our
blood stream, life will return. After all, it is not water that kills us
when we drown. It’s our inability to take oxygen from the water that
condemns us.
ventilation techniques on premature babies and were stunned by the results.
“But when we get them on to liquid breathing we see close to 60% going on to
lead fully healthy lives.”
from the drug companies,” he says. “Unfortunately premature babies don’t
have a voice. They don’t bring in money, so no-one really wants to invest.
But it does work. Physiologically, liquid ventilation is very do-able.”
drug companies are reluctant to fully explore liquid breathing, the Deep
Water Horizon disaster has reignited the debate over how to get divers
safely down to extreme depths.
from the safety of robotic vessels and submarines; or by using saturation
diving, an incredibly complicated technique where divers have to be brought
up to the surface in a pressurised container over a matter of weeks.
equipment the record is 318m, set by the South African diver Nuno Gomes in
June 2005. It took him 14 minutes to descend and 12 hours to come back up to
the surface.
breathe in water. Under the incredible pressure exerted by billions of
tonnes of ocean, gasses like nitrogen and helium dissolve into our
bloodstream, much like CO2 is dissolved in a soda bottle.
out of solution and into our bodies. If we don’t give our bodies enough time
to expel those gasses by ascending slowly, we die.
highly compressed gasses in the lungs that are going to dissolve into the
blood,” says Dr Lande, who recently presented a paper on his patent to the
first International Conference on Applied Bionics and Biomechanics in
Venice. “You have a liquid that you can infuse just as much oxygen as you
need.”
the technique to work. “I have personally put mammals down to a simulated
depth of 1000 feet and then decompressed them in half a second and they have
no decompression sickness,” he says.
early 1980s according to Shaffer who says he met a former Seal turned doctor
that was on the team.
explains. “Other than going very deep I don’t know what the point was. But
they tried it. The Navy pushed them to the point where they did it several
times a week.”
the Seals reportedly developed stress fractures on the ribs cause by the
sheer force of trying to get a liquid in and out of the lungs.
of medieval armour, which compresses the diaphragm and makes it easier to
breathe liquid.
willing to test his ideas.
highest mountains, sent people into space. It’s time to find ways of
exploring the deep oceans.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/i7pvCw
Tuesday
Glowing Squid Found in Indian Ocean's Depths
Amplify’d from news.discovery.com
The 70-centimeter (27 inches) long new species is part of the "chiroteuthid" family with light emitting organs that attract prey in the darkness thousands of meters (feet) down close to the craggy seabed, the IUCN said.
The six-week "Seamounts cruise" last year trawled about 7,000 samples of lifeforms in the southern Indian Ocean from depths of up to 1,200 meters (3,936 feet).
"For 10 days now, 21 scientists armed with microscopes have been working through intimidating rows of jars containing fishes, squids, zooplankton and other interesting creatures," said Alex Rogers, marine biologist at the Zoological Society of London.
The cruise was aimed at exploring seamounts in an attempt to help improve conservation and management of marine resources in the area.
"We're hoping to have the ecological results in 12 to 18 months," Rogers told AFP.
World Echinodea Database Is Open
Amplify’d from echinoblog.blogspot.com
A short post today that apparently someone went and turned the "on" switch to the World Echinoidea (sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea biscuits) Database! (click on logo or here)
This joins the World Ophiuroidea (brittle stars) Database and my own World Asteroidea (sea stars and starfish) Database that are part of the World Registry of Marine Species! Only crinoids and sea cucumbers left to go!
It also compliments the British Museum's Sea Urchin Directory.
and heck while I'm at it, here are some other useful links...
The Flickr Sea Urchin photo pool
The Flickr Sea Star/Starfish photo pool
Echinoderm publications in the semi-online journal Zootaxa!
The Echinoblog Video Playlist Page on Youtube!
wahoo!!
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9ovkGV
Wednesday
Clever knifefish hunts by biomechanics
From Site:
"The hunting strategy of a slender fish from the Amazon is offering insight into how to balance the metabolic cost of information with the metabolic cost of moving around to get it.
Malcolm MacIver, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of biomedical engineering at Northwestern University, led a team that analyzed the hunting behavior of the weakly electric black ghost knifefish.
The fish, which has become the fruit fly of studies on how animals process sensory information, hunts at night using a self-generated electric field to sense its surroundings, like a bat uses sonar, MacIver says.
The fish hunts while its body is tilted downward, which, much like standing up on the pedals of a bicycle while going downhill, causes more than twice as much resistance to movement than if the fish were swimming with no tilt. The posture allows
the fish to scan a wider area of fresh water and encounter more prey."
“To better understand the way animals are the way they are, we need to not look only at neurological function or only at sensory function—we have to look at mechanics. We need to think of the intelligence of the body as a central component to our overall intelligence and think of energy saving as cleverness.”
"The study also suggest that hunting at a drag-inducing position could be the basis for the fish’s unusual, elongated body.
MacIver says the findings give insight into certain patterns in animal evolution, such as why we and most other animals have moveable sensory systems like eyes, fingers and arms"
Although there is much more drag on the body when the electric black ghost knifefish hunts while tilted (blue), its electric sense scans so much more water for prey that it is a net energetic benefit. When it isn't hunting, it swims straight to minimize drag (red). (Credit: Northwestern U.)
[via: http://futurity.org]
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Saturday
Women Working In Antarctica
This website is produced by video journalist Mary Lynn Price to present some of the short video portraits of of women working in Antarctica created during the 2008 Austral Spring Season.
The video portraits of Women Working In Antarctica will be used as part of the Ocean Institute's Girls in Ocean Science program, based in Dana Point, California.
A video journalist based in La Jolla, California, Mary Lynn produces high definition videos and video podcasts about interesting subjects underwater and above.
Marine science is taking a beating
From Site:
Part of the tough part about working in the ocean is that it’s expensive, what with being big and wet and cold and deep. So in this economic slump, it’s not that surprising that marine research is taking a funding beat-down. Nonetheless, it’s still pretty depressing that research vessels are grounded, the deep-sea drilling program is stalled, and a Hawaiian marine lab is closing, all for lack of funds. (Sorry, these are links to Science and Nature that might be behind a subscription wall for most people.) There doesn’t seem to be much of an end in sight - even a new president can’t turn straw into gold, and if he could, that would probably just cause an animal feed shortage and gold deflation anyway. Here’s hoping the economy perks up and that we have a fruit-fly-and-grizzly-bear-loving administration when it does!
[via: http://theoystersgarter.com]
Part of the tough part about working in the ocean is that it’s expensive, what with being big and wet and cold and deep. So in this economic slump, it’s not that surprising that marine research is taking a funding beat-down. Nonetheless, it’s still pretty depressing that research vessels are grounded, the deep-sea drilling program is stalled, and a Hawaiian marine lab is closing, all for lack of funds. (Sorry, these are links to Science and Nature that might be behind a subscription wall for most people.) There doesn’t seem to be much of an end in sight - even a new president can’t turn straw into gold, and if he could, that would probably just cause an animal feed shortage and gold deflation anyway. Here’s hoping the economy perks up and that we have a fruit-fly-and-grizzly-bear-loving administration when it does!
[via: http://theoystersgarter.com]
Working Holidays
From Site:
"Voluntourism": See the World--And Help Conserve It
Lately a new subset of this boom has emerged. “Voluntourism” ramps the ecological impulse up a notch, providing ways for vacationers to help save the world’s sustainable resources. The trend has been described as a kind of mini version of the Peace Corps. Depending on your interests, you could find yourself repairing trails leading to Old Faithful, tracking sharks in the Atlantic, or mixing cement for housing in the Andes. Voluntourism is becoming a significant growth sector of the travel industry. Online trip planner Travelocity, for example, now partners with tour operators such as GlobeAware, Cross-Cultural Solutions and Take Pride in America, which specialize in launching voluntourists on service-oriented vacations.
Slide Show: Exotic "Voluntourism" locales
"Voluntourism": See the World--And Help Conserve It
Lately a new subset of this boom has emerged. “Voluntourism” ramps the ecological impulse up a notch, providing ways for vacationers to help save the world’s sustainable resources. The trend has been described as a kind of mini version of the Peace Corps. Depending on your interests, you could find yourself repairing trails leading to Old Faithful, tracking sharks in the Atlantic, or mixing cement for housing in the Andes. Voluntourism is becoming a significant growth sector of the travel industry. Online trip planner Travelocity, for example, now partners with tour operators such as GlobeAware, Cross-Cultural Solutions and Take Pride in America, which specialize in launching voluntourists on service-oriented vacations.
Slide Show: Exotic "Voluntourism" locales
The Rise Of Slime
Oceans Dead Zones Double To More Than 400 Worldwide
From Site:
"According to the research published last Friday in Science, there are now more than 400 dead zones worldwide, double the number reported by the United Nations just two years ago. Ugh."
"I also really like Jackson's assignment/presentation of the status of marine ecosystems given principal symptoms and drivers of degradation:"
[via: http://scienceblogs.com/shiftingbaselines]
[via: http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu]
[via: http://www.latimes.com]
From Site:
"According to the research published last Friday in Science, there are now more than 400 dead zones worldwide, double the number reported by the United Nations just two years ago. Ugh."
"I also really like Jackson's assignment/presentation of the status of marine ecosystems given principal symptoms and drivers of degradation:"
[via: http://scienceblogs.com/shiftingbaselines]
[via: http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu]
[via: http://www.latimes.com]
Wednesday
Prehistoric Explosions Wiped Out Ocean Life-- And Created Petroleum
Prehistoric Explosions Wiped Out Ocean Life And Created Petroleum
From Site:
Much of Earth's oil reserves can be traced to a single volcanic eruption, scientists say
According to Turgeon and Creaser, lava fountains from the ancient eruption changed oceanic chemistry, triggering widespread extinction of marine life. This happened in a two-step process: First, as the volcano erupted, nutrients were released into the ocean, encouraging the growth of vegetation and the feeding and reproduction of marine organisms. As this overgrowth of new plant and animal populations died off, the decomposing organic matter released clouds of carbon dioxide into the ocean and atmosphere, leading to an anoxic, or oxygen-depleted, environment.
Normally, decaying materials are completely broken down in the ocean, but due to the lack of oxygen, the prehistoric organic matter settled at the bottom of the sea bed and became trapped there, forming the petroleum-rich shale deposits which are important sources of oil today.
[via: http://www.popsci.com]
Much of Earth's oil reserves can be traced to a single volcanic eruption, scientists say
According to Turgeon and Creaser, lava fountains from the ancient eruption changed oceanic chemistry, triggering widespread extinction of marine life. This happened in a two-step process: First, as the volcano erupted, nutrients were released into the ocean, encouraging the growth of vegetation and the feeding and reproduction of marine organisms. As this overgrowth of new plant and animal populations died off, the decomposing organic matter released clouds of carbon dioxide into the ocean and atmosphere, leading to an anoxic, or oxygen-depleted, environment.
Normally, decaying materials are completely broken down in the ocean, but due to the lack of oxygen, the prehistoric organic matter settled at the bottom of the sea bed and became trapped there, forming the petroleum-rich shale deposits which are important sources of oil today.
[via: http://www.popsci.com]
Friday
Unexpected New Striations in the Earth s Ocean Currents
From Site:
"Sailors and scientists have been mapping ocean currents for centuries, but it turns out they’ve missed something big. How big? The entire ocean is striped with 100-mile-wide bands of slow-moving water that extend right down to the seafloor, according to a recent study.Source: livescience.com"
[via: http://www.nowpublic.com]
Tuesday
Sex trap for giant squid
Sex trap for giant squid
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3114124.stm
Hmm...now this sound like a fun project!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3114124.stm
Hmm...now this sound like a fun project!
Sunday
Japan to sell research whale meat - The Washington Times: United Press International
Japan to sell research whale meat
What I"m wondering...100 minke whales, 50 Bryde's whales and 50 sei whales,
1,346.20 tons of meat for research?
What and where is exactly their research?
How long have they been researching for...
Do you think they should have found out all they needed by now?
What I"m wondering...100 minke whales, 50 Bryde's whales and 50 sei whales,
1,346.20 tons of meat for research?
What and where is exactly their research?
How long have they been researching for...
Do you think they should have found out all they needed by now?
Friday
Researchers turn cameras on giant crabs
Researchers turn cameras on giant crabs
Scientists are hoping to use a deep sea camera to monitor giant crab populations on Tasmania's west coast.
Researchers have just returned from their first trip, filming in waters more than 500 metres deep off the continental shelf.
Caleb Gardner from the Tasmanian Aquaculture and Fisheries Institute says the images gathered are the first of the crab in its natural habitat.
"We're very keen to see them doing ... any sort of behaviour really. We're keen to see perhaps courting or mating behaviour between males and females or animals wandering around with prey items in their claws," he said.
"We know they do wander around. If they are going to eat something they don't necessarily just eat it very quickly they wander around with it in their claws and we've seen that in tanks. So I was ... really hoping we would see something like that, but unfortunately no."
[via: http://www.growfish.com.au]
Scientists are hoping to use a deep sea camera to monitor giant crab populations on Tasmania's west coast.
Researchers have just returned from their first trip, filming in waters more than 500 metres deep off the continental shelf.
Caleb Gardner from the Tasmanian Aquaculture and Fisheries Institute says the images gathered are the first of the crab in its natural habitat.
"We're very keen to see them doing ... any sort of behaviour really. We're keen to see perhaps courting or mating behaviour between males and females or animals wandering around with prey items in their claws," he said.
"We know they do wander around. If they are going to eat something they don't necessarily just eat it very quickly they wander around with it in their claws and we've seen that in tanks. So I was ... really hoping we would see something like that, but unfortunately no."
[via: http://www.growfish.com.au]
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