Volunteers Wanted for Simulated 520-Day Mars Mission

A special isolation facility hosts the Mars500 study.

(Credit: ESA - S. Corvaja)

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Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the martian surface. In reality, they will live and work in a sealed facility in Moscow, Russia, to investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration space mission. ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part.

The 'mission' is part of the Mars500 programme being conducted by ESA and Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) to study human psychological, medical and physical capabilities and limitations in space through fundamental and operational research. ESA's Directorate of Human Spaceflight is undertaking Mars500 as part of its European Programme for Life and Physical Sciences (ELIPS) to prepare for future human missions to the Moon and Mars.

Following on from the successful 105-day precursor study completed in July, ESA is now looking for two candidates and two backups for the full 520-day study, which is due to get underway before mid-2010 after four months of training.

The crew will follow a programme designed to simulate a 250-day journey to Mars, a 30-day surface exploration phase and 240 days travelling back to Earth. For the 'surface exploration', half of the crew will move to the facility's martian simulation module and the hatch to the rest of the facility will be closed.

Candidates should be aged 20-50, motivated, in good health and no taller than 185 cm. They should speak one of the working languages: English and Russian. Candidates must have a background and work experience in medicine, biology, life support systems engineering, computer engineering, electronic engineering or mechanical engineering.

Selection will be based on education, professional experience, medical fitness and social habits. Following an initial assessment, potential candidates will have to submit results from medical tests and will then be invited for interview, to be screened in a process similar to that used in astronaut selection.

The candidates' nationality and residence is restricted to ESA Member States participating in ELIPS (Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Norway, The Netherlands, Sweden and Canada).

The Call for Candidates and related documents are available on: http://www.esa.int/callmars500. The deadline for applications is 5 November 2009.

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by European Space Agency.

Cassini Captures Ghostly Dance of Saturn's Northern Lights

 This still image from a video shows the tallest known auroras in the solar system, rippling high above Saturn.

(Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

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In the first video showing the auroras above the northern latitudes of Saturn, Cassini has spotted the tallest known "northern lights" in the solar system, flickering in shape and brightness high above the ringed planet.

The new video reveals changes in Saturn's aurora every few minutes, in high resolution, with three dimensions. The images show a previously unseen vertical profile to the auroras, which ripple in the video like tall curtains. These curtains reach more than 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) above the edge of the planet's northern hemisphere.

The new video and still images are online at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini , http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://ciclops.org .

Auroras occur on Earth, Jupiter, Saturn and a few other planets, and the new images will help scientists better understand how they are generated.

"The auroras have put on a dazzling show, shape-shifting rapidly and exposing curtains that we suspected were there, but hadn't seen on Saturn before," said Andrew Ingersoll of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who is a member of the Cassini imaging team that processed the new video. "Seeing these things on another planet helps us understand them a little better when we see them on Earth."

Auroras appear mostly in the high latitudes near a planet's magnetic poles. When charged particles from the magnetosphere -- the magnetic bubble surrounding a planet -- plunge into the planet's upper atmosphere, they cause the atmosphere to glow. The curtain shapes show the paths that these charged particles take as they flow along the lines of the magnetic field between the magnetosphere and the uppermost part of the atmosphere.

The height of the curtains on Saturn exposes a key difference between Saturn's atmosphere and our own, Ingersoll said. While Earth's atmosphere has a lot of oxygen and nitrogen, Saturn's atmosphere is composed primarily of hydrogen. Because hydrogen is very light, the atmosphere and auroras reach far out from Saturn. Earth's auroras tend to flare only about 100 to 500 kilometers (60 to 300 miles) above the surface.

The speed of the auroral changes in the video is comparable to some of those on Earth, but scientists are still working to understand the processes that produce these rapid changes. The height will also help them learn how much energy is required to light up auroras.

"I was wowed when I saw these images and the curtain," said Tamas Gombosi of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who chairs Cassini's magnetosphere and plasma science working group. "Put this together with the other data Cassini has collected on the auroras so far, and you really get a new science."

Ultraviolet and infrared instruments on Cassini have captured images of and data from Saturn's auroras before, but in these latest images, Cassini's narrow-angle camera was able to capture the northern lights in the visible part of the light spectrum, in higher resolution. The movie was assembled from nearly 500 still pictures spanning 81 hours between Oct. 5 and Oct. 8, 2009. Each picture had an exposure time of two or three minutes. The camera shot pictures from the night side of Saturn.

The images were originally obtained in black and white, and the imaging team highlighted the auroras in false-color orange. The oxygen and nitrogen in Earth's upper atmosphere contribute to the colorful flashes of green, red and even purple in our auroras. But scientists are still working to determine the true color of the auroras at Saturn, whose atmosphere lacks those chemicals.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Flash Recovery Of Ammonoids Af

Flash Recovery Of Ammonoids After Most Massive Extinction Of All Time!

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Asteroceras, a Jurassic ammonite from England.

(Credit: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

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After the End-Permian extinction 252.6 million years ago, ammonoids diversified and recovered 10 to 30 times faster than previous estimates. The surprising discovery raises questions about paleontologists' understanding of the dynamics of evolution of species and the functioning of the biosphere after a mass extinction.

The study, conducted by a Franco-Swiss collaboration involving the laboratories Biogéosciences (Université de Bourgogne / CNRS), Paléoenvironnements & Paléobiosphère (Université Claude Bernard / CNRS) and the Universities of Zurich and Lausanne (Switzerland), appears in the August 28 issue of Science.

The history of life on Earth has been punctuated by a number of mass extinctions, brief periods of extreme loss of biodiversity. These extinctions are followed by phases during which surviving species recover and diversify. The End-Permian extinction, which took place between the Permian (299 – 252.6 MY) and Triassic (252.6 – 201.6 MY), is the greatest mass extinction on record, resulting in the loss of 90% of existing species. It is associated with intensive volcanic activity in China and Siberia. It marks the boundary between the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras. Until now, studies had shown that the biosphere took between 10 and 30 million years to recover the levels of biodiversity seen before the extinction.

Ammonoids are cephalopod swimmers related the nautilus and squid. They had a shell, and disappeared from the oceans at the same time as the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, after being a major part of marine fauna for 400 MY.

The Franco-Swiss team of paleontologists has shown that ammonoids needed only one million years after the End-Permian extinction to diversify to the same levels as before. The cephalopods, which were abundant during the Permian, narrowly missed being eradicated during the extinction: only two or three species survived and a single species seems to have been the basis for the extraordinary diversification of the group after the extinction. It took researchers seven years to gather new fossils and analyze databases in order to determine the rate of diversification of the ammonoids. In all, 860 genera from 77 regions around the world were recorded at 25 successive time intervals from the Late Carboniferous to the Late Triassic, a period of over 100 million years.

The discovery of this explosive growth over a million years takes a heated debate in a new direction. Indeed, it suggests that earlier estimates for the End-Permian extinction were based on truncated data and imprecise or incorrect dating. Furthermore, the duration for estimated recovery after other lesser extinctions all vary between 5 and 15 million years.

The result obtained here suggests that these estimates should probably be revised downwards. The biosphere is most likely headed towards a sixth mass extinction, and this discovery reminds us that the recovery of existing species after an extinction is a very long process, taking several tens of thousands of human generations at the very least.

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by CNRS (Délégation Paris Michel-Ange), via AlphaGalileo.

Journal Reference:
Brayard A., Escarguel G., Bucher H., Monnet C., Brühwiler T., Goudemand N., Galfetti T. and Guex J. Good Genes and Good Luck: Ammonoid Diversity and the End-Permian Mass Extinction. Science, 2009; 325 (5944): 1118 DOI: 10.1126/science.1174638

Mass Extinction

Mass Extinction: Why Did Half of N. America's Large Mammals Disappear 40,000 to 10,000 Years Ago?

Years of scientific debate over the extinction of ancient species in North America have yielded many theories. However, new findings from J. Tyler Faith, GW Ph.D. candidate in the hominid paleobiology doctoral program, and Todd Surovell, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming, reveal that a mass extinction occurred in a geological instant.

During the late Pleistocene, 40,000 to 10,000 years ago, North America lost over 50 percent of its large mammal species. These species include mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, among many others. In total, 35 different genera (groups of species) disappeared, all of different habitat preferences and feeding habits.

What event or factor could cause such a mass extinction? The many hypotheses that have been developed over the years include: abrupt change in climate, the result of comet impact, human overkill and disease. Some researchers believe that it may be a combination of these factors, one of them, or none.

A particular issue that has also contributed to this debate focuses on the chronology of extinctions. The existing fossil record is incomplete, making it more difficult to tell whether or not the extinctions occurred in a gradual process, or took place as a synchronous event. In addition, it was previously unclear whether species are missing from the terminal Pleistocene because they had already gone extinct or because they simply have not been found yet.

However, new findings from Faith indicate that the extinction is best characterized as a sudden event that took place between 13.8 and 11.4 thousand years ago. Faith's findings support the idea that this mass extinction was due to human overkill, comet impact or other rapid events rather than a slow attrition.

"The massive extinction coincides precisely with human arrival on the continent, abrupt climate change, and a possible extraterrestrial impact event" said Faith. "It remains possible that any one of these or all, contributed to the sudden extinctions. We now have a better understanding of when the extinctions took place and the next step is to figure out why."

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by George Washington University.

Journal Reference:
Faith et al. Synchronous extinction of North America's Pleistocene mammals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2009; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0908153106

Solar Power from Your Windows, Awnings, Even Clothing?

An organic photovoltaic cell on glass. The goal for UA scientists is to understand and control the interfaces in these devices at nanometer-length scales (less than 1/100,000 the thickness of a human hair) to enable the development of long-lived solar energy conversion devices on tough, flexible and extremely low-cost plastic substrates. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Arizona)

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On a 104-degree Friday in July when sunlight bathed The University of Arizona campus, doctoral student Dio Placencia sat before a noisy vacuum chamber in the Chemical Sciences Building trying to advance the renewable energy revolution.

As a member of UA professor Neal R. Armstrong's research group, Placencia conducts research aimed at creating a thin, flexible organic solar cell that could power a tent or keep a car charged between trips to work and back home again.

He's passionate about renewable energy and says it's a waste that so little solar has been incorporated into society. "I have a little flat panel that I walk around with," Placencia said. "I usually put that on my backpack, and I charge my cell phone when I'm walking to school."

The sun is clean and free. "Here it is," he said. "Why not use it?"

Across the University, professors, researchers, students and others involved in policy planning and economic analysis are working to make that question moot. In a region noted for abundant sunlight, they are chipping away at problems like how to employ solar at the utility-generating plant level, how to harness it to charge the newly indispensable products of the day – cell phones, MP3 players, laptops – what to do at night and when clouds halt the energy giveaway from the sky.

The research proceeds in labs amid state-of-the-art equipment funded by multimillion-dollar federal grants. It's the product of students' hunches and long careers spent unlocking the mysteries of science. Along the way, students are being immersed in a nascent industry that many hope will be the economic engine of the next decade.

"Looking at renewable energy is a perfect place to emphasize that we don't know where the next breakthrough is going to be," said Leslie P. Tolbert, UA vice president for research, graduate studies and economic development. "Somewhere in a lab someplace, there's somebody figuring out a whole new way to capture sunlight. In fact, there are many people doing that. And even they are depending on knowing that there is, behind them, a cadre of basic science researchers producing new information that will feed their thoughts."

Armstrong, a professor of chemistry and optical sciences at the UA, occasionally teaches freshman chemistry. He decided one day near the end of the semester to try to make the material even more relevant. "I said to myself, well, lithium ion batteries in my cell phone, in my iPod," – his daughter had given him one – "I wonder how much coal we burn to charge those guys up at the end of the day. Because that's one of the big drivers for portable power, to get all this stuff off the grid." After making some very conservative calculations, he arrived at an answer, which he shared with the class: "You burn about a quarter of a pound of coal per charge of your lithium ion battery, and you generate about half a pound of CO2 per charge, per battery, per day .... The room got really quiet."

The next time, he intends to calculate how much coal is burned per Twitter tweet.

"It really is chilling," Armstrong said. "You start doing the math and thinking about the number of consumer electronic devices that you and I have added to our lives in the last decade that I charge up typically once every night – my laptop computer and my cell phone. Then you start thinking about, 'What if I do buy an electric car, and I come home at night and plug that sucker in,' and you do the same thing. We'll shut this grid down in no time."

In April, the U.S. Department of Energy announced it was funding Armstrong's Center for Interface Science as one of 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers. The mission of these centers, which will receive $2 million to $5 million a year for five years, is "to address current fundamental scientific roadblocks to clean energy and energy security," according to the DOE.

Ever since Armstrong was a graduate student during the first Arab oil embargo in 1973, he's experienced a succession of government distress calls over energy. One such emergency led him to discover the work of Heinz Gerischer and Frank Willig in Germany. They had figured out how to adsorb dye molecules to the surface of oxides and split water with light from the sun. "I thought, 'That's it. That's what I'm going to do my career on.'"

He moved to the UA in 1978, attracted by a program in photo-thermal solar energy conversion. In the 1980s, with gas cheap and plentiful again, solar went back on the back burner.

The next call came about four years ago. "DOE was beginning to sense that the tides were about to shift again, big-time," Armstrong said. "And they were really concerned that they didn't know what to do – how to present this to Congress in a way that would lead to new funding and which would have a rationale associated with it so that by the middle of this century we had someplace to go."

Armstrong realized it was time to come back to the problem that he wanted to work on 30 years before. "This time, we were really well-equipped," he said. "We've learned how to image molecules at the molecular level, we've learned how to measure energies of incredibly thin films, we've learned how to make devices, we've collaborated with physicists and material sciences and that sort of thing, we've done a lot of interesting other stuff and I suddenly realized I could bring it all back together here."

In his office, he displays a sample of his work: a 1-inch square of glass on which is deposited a thin film of indium tin oxide, a conducting transparent oxide commonly found in display technologies like computer screens. On top of that is a thin film of organic dyes. The last layer is an aluminum electrode.

"You'd have a roll of plastic with these cells laid out on it," he explained. "The idea is for you to go to Target or something like that and buy this roll of plastic and roll it out. It's got two wires connected to it, and you plug in your battery or your laptop and charge it up."

"The grand total in terms of the thickness is about 400 nanometers, which is one ten-thousandth the thickness of a human hair. And yet, shine a light on it and you get electricity out of it. Now we'd like it to be a bit thicker. We have to keep them thin in order to get all of the electrical charge out of the device. But if you think about this as a sandwich structure, we've made this incredibly thin sandwich and then each of the layers in contact with each other have to be just right in terms of the chemical composition, the orientation of the molecules, how well they adhere to each of the underlying surfaces. And if I go in and change just one molecule layer, the composition – that's at the level of 1 nanometer in thickness – I can take a good device and turn it into a bad device; I can take a bad device and turn it into a good device. That's the kind of level of control that we need. And we don't fully understand it."

But the equipment available now – optical microscopes capable of imaging individual molecules and revealing their electrical properties and spatial orientation – are helping his team understand. His goal is to figure out how to have the molecules arrange themselves – every time – in a way to produce lots of electricity. "They have to all line up like little soldiers," he said.

"We have to give you a technology that is going to look like an ink, like a blue ink, that you can spray down on one of these surfaces and the molecules at the nanometer level are going to say, 'OK, we're going to get organized this way,' and in doing so, when I put that top electrode on and shine a light, I'll get lots and lots of electricity out of there," Armstrong said.

A high vacuum photoelectron spectrometer allows them to build each molecular layer, moving it within the vacuum to study it, and then continue with another molecular layer. Other tools, like a silicon microtip, which looks like a tiny phonograph needle, can be positioned to +/- 0.01 nanometers. "Well inside the diameter of a molecule," he said. Bouncing a laser off the back of the tip yields an image. Passing current through the tip, they can map the electrical properties of molecules. All this can help them build a template to create the ideal array of the molecule assemblies.

Erin Ratcliff joined the team as a postdoctoral electrochemist with a doctorate from Iowa State. "My background wasn't in solar cells at all," she said. "I had to come here and had to learn everything, where grad students get it from Day One at the UA."

She spoke of the business school curve, resembling a hockey stick, when progress begins to accelerate rapidly. "We're right at the magic moment when the hockey stick starts to take off, when you go from flat to hockey stick. We're right there. It's exciting to read the literature and hope that, yes, we will take off. It will be exciting to look back and say 'I was there for that.'"
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Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by University of Arizona.

NGRI advertises for scientist post

NATIONAL GEOPHYISCAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE
(Council of Scientific and Industrial Research)
HYDERABAD-500 007
ADVERTISEMENT No. NGRI- 3/ 2009
National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), a premier Research Institute under
Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, is involved in
multidisciplinary R & D programmes in different areas of Earth Sciences: Geophysics,
Geology, Geochemistry and Geochronology. Major focal themes of R & D include:
Exploration for Hydrocarbon, Mineral and Groundwater resources, Understanding the Earth’s
Lithosphere and Interior, Geodynamics and Earth’s Environment. It has excellent facilities in
all the above disciplines.
Applications are invited from bright and eligible candidates with excellent academic
record throughout and desirous of taking research in Earth Science as a career for the
following posts:
1. Scientist Gr.IV(3)(Rs.15600-39100 with Grade pay of Rs. 7600/-)(01 Post)(UR).
Upper Age limit: 40 years (as on the last date for receipt of filled in applications).
Post Code : S-1. Discipline: Geology.
Essential Qualifications : First Class M.Sc. / M.Sc.(Tech) in Geology/ Applied Geology
OR M. Tech. in Geology / Applied Geology OR Ph. D. in Geology / Applied Geology.
Job Requirement: To work in a modern isotope geochemical - geochronology lab. To
formulate, acquire and interpret field geological and laboratory data and participate in
integrated Geoscience R&D programs in lithosphere and mineral resources.
Experience : 7 years after M.Sc. or 5 years after M.Tech. or 4 years after Ph.D. Experience
should be in the field of Geological mapping and substantial practical experience in a
modern Geochemical and Geochronological laboratory conversant with TIMS/MC-ICPMS
and Clean Chemistry practices.
02. Scientist Gr.IV(3) (Rs.15600-39100 with Grade pay of Rs.7600/-)(2 posts).
Upper Age limit: 40 years (as on the last date for receipt of filled in applications).
Post Code & Reservation Status:S-2(forUR) & S-3 (for OBC). Discipline: Geophysics.
Essential Qualifications : First Class M.Sc. / M.Sc. (Tech) / M.Tech. in Geophysics/
Exploration Geophysics / Applied Geophysics OR Ph.D. in Geophysics / Applied
Geophysics.
Job Requirement : To plan, acquire, process and interpret Gravity / Magnetic / MT /
electrical / seismic data for hydrocarbon and mineral exploration and to formulate new
research programmes in Exploration Geophysics.
Experience : 7 years after M.Sc. or 5 years after M.Tech. or 4 years after Ph.D. Experience
should be in the field of Gravity / Magnetic / MT / electrical and Seismic exploration (2-D, 3-
D and 4-D)
03. Scientist Gr.IV(3)(Rs.15600-39100 with Grade pay of Rs.7600/-)(1 Post)(UR).
Upper Age limit : 40 years (as on the last date for receipt of filled in applications).
Post Code : S-4. Discipline: Airborne Geophysics.
Essential Qualifications: First Class M.Sc. / M.Sc. (Tech) / M.Tech. in Geophysics /
Exploration Geophysics/ Applied Geophysics OR Ph.D in Geophysics.
Job Requirement: To plan, acquire, process and interpret high resolution airborne
geophysical data for mineral exploration and to formulate and execute new research
programmes in airborne geophysics.
Experience : 7 years after M.Sc. or 5 years after M.Tech. or 4 years after Ph.D. Experience
should be in the field of Airborne geophysics/ electromagnetic methods.
04. Scientist Gr.IV(3) )(Rs.15600-39100 with Grade pay of Rs.7600/-)(1 Post)(for OBC).
Upper Age limit : 40 years (as on the last date for receipt of filled in applications).
Post Code : S-5. Discipline : Rock Magnetism and Paleomagnetism/Rock Mechanics.
Essential Qualifications: First Class M.Sc. / M.Sc.(Tech) / M.Tech or Ph.D. in
Geophysics/ Exploration Geophysics/ Applied Geophysics/Rock Mechanics.
Job Requirement: To develop and maintain a modern rock magnetism and paleomagnetic
laboratory and to formulate and execute new R&D projects in Rock magnetism and Rock
Mechanics
Experience :7 years after M.Sc. or 5 years after M.Tech. or 4 years after Ph.D. Experience
should be in the field of Rock Magentism/Paleomagnetism/ Rock Mechanics.
05. Scientist Gr.IV(3)(Rs.15600-39100 with Grade pay of Rs.7600/-)(1 Post)(for UR).
Upper Age limit : 40 years (as on the last date for receipt of filled in applications).
Post Code : S-6. Discipline : Seismology / Seismic Exploration.
Essential Qualifications: First class M.Sc. / M.Sc. ( Tech ) / M. Tech. in Geophysics /
Exploration Geophysics/ Applied Geophysics OR Ph.D. in Geophysics.
Job Requirement: To plan, acquire, process and interpret Seismological / Seismic data for
land and Sea.
Experience : 07 years experience in relevant field after M.Sc. OR 05 years relevant
experience after M.Tech. OR 04 years relevant experience after Ph.D.

Lady Resident Medical Officer Gr. III(5) (Rs.15600-39100 with Grade Pay of Rs. 6600)
(1 post) (UR) :
Upper Age limit : 40 Years (as on the last date for receipt of filled in applications).
Post Code : LMO-7. Discipline : Medical & Health Services.
Essential Qualifications : MBBS. Desirable: Diploma in Gynaecology / Pediatrics.
Job Requirement : Attending/examining the ailing members of staff and their families in the
Dispensary of the Institute as well as at their residences whenever required and such other allied
duties of the Medical Officer of a dispensary. Attending emergencies during/beyond Office hours and
on holidays. Shall be required to (i) work on Saturdays (ii) stay in NGRI.
Experience : Not less than 5 years experience in a reputed Hospital.
IMPORTANT:
1. Experience should be in the relevant area and according to the job requirement.
2. The age and experience will be reckoned as on the last date prescribed for receipt of completed
application form.
03. The period of experience in a discipline or area of work, where prescribed, shall be counted after
the date of acquiring the minimum prescribed educational qualification for the post.
General conditions:
1. The posts will carry usual allowances as admissible to CSIR employees. Higher initial pay may be
considered in exceptionally meritorious cases. Incumbents are liable to serve anywhere in India or
outside.
2. Relaxations: Relaxation of age to the SC/ST/OBC/PH candidates will be considered against the posts
reserved for their category in accordance with the GOI/CSIR rules as made applicable to them, from time
to time. The SC/ST/OBC candidates who apply for the general vacancies will not be eligible for age
relaxation. (ii) age, qualifications and experience prescribed above can be relaxed in case of exceptionally
meritorious candidates with the prior approval of the Competent Authority.
3. Applications from the candidates working in Govt. Departments/ Public Sector Organizations and Govt.
funded Research Agencies will be considered only if forwarded through proper channel (advance copy of
application should reach before the last date) and with a clear certificate that no vigilance case is pending/
being contemplated against him/her and the applicant will be relieved within one month of receipt of
appointment order.
4. Separate applications should be submitted for each post in the prescribed format indicating clearly the
Advertisement Number, Name of the Post and Post Code, accompanied by separate application fee.
05. Application forms may be obtained from the Controller of Administration, National Geophysical
Research Institute, Uppal Road, Hyderabad-500007 by sending a requisition together with a self
addressed stamped envelope of (23 x 10cm.) bearing postage stamp of Rs.10 (Rupees ten) or in
person on or before 21.09.2009. Requests for application form received after this date will not be
entertained.
06. Application duly filled in and duly supported by attested copies of all relevant certificates including
Community Certificate (in the case of SC/ST/OBCs candidates), certificate of physically handicapped
issued by the competent authority (in case of PH candidates), passport size photograph of the
individual along with a non-refundable application fee of Rs.100/- (Rupees one hundred only) in the
form of D.D. drawn in favour of Director, National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, valid
at least for 6 months, should be sent so as to reach the Controller of Administration on or before
07.10.2009. SC/ST/PH candidates and regular employees of CSIR are exempted from payment of
application fee.
7. Applications not accompanied by (i)the relevant attested copies of certificates including semister
wise memorandum of marks sheet(s) (ii) Demand Draft and (iii) unsigned & incomplete applications
will be summarily rejected.

8. Incomplete and unsigned applications as well as those received after the last date i.e. 07.10.2009 will not
be considered.
9. Mere fulfilling the essential educational qualifications and experience will not vest any right on a
candidate for being called for interview. The applications will be short-listed and the decision of the
Institute will be final.
10. The candidates called for interview will be paid to and fro single second class rail fare, by shortest direct
route, from the actual place of undertaking the journey or from the place of their residence whichever is
nearer to Secunderabad Railway Station, on production of Bus ticket/rail ticket number, as per GOI/CSIR
Rules.
11. Canvassing in any form, and/or bringing in any influence, political or otherwise, will be treated as a
disqualification for the post.
INTERIM ENQUIRES WILL NOT BE ENTERTAINED.
CONTROLLER OF ADMINISTRATION
****
This advertisement is also available at NGRI Website : www.ngri.org.in

'Hobbits' Are a New Human Species

'Hobbits' Are a New Human Species, According to Statistical Analysis of Fossils

Researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York have confirmed that Homo floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease. Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans.

Details of the study appear in the December issue of Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society, published by Wiley-Blackwell.

In 2003 Australian and Indonesian scientists discovered small-bodied, small-brained, hominin (human-like) fossils on the remote island of Flores in the Indonesian archipelago. This discovery of a new human species called Homo floresiensis has spawned much debate with some researchers claiming that the small creatures are really modern humans whose tiny head and brain are the result of a medical condition called microcephaly.

Researchers William Jungers, Ph.D., and Karen Baab, Ph.D. studied the skeletal remains of a female (LB1), nicknamed "Little Lady of Flores" or "Flo" to confirm the evolutionary path of the hobbit species. The specimen was remarkably complete and included skull, jaw, arms, legs, hands, and feet that provided researchers with integrated information from an individual fossil.

The cranial capacity of LB1 was just over 400 cm, making it more similar to the brains of a chimpanzee or bipedal "ape-men" of East and South Africa. The skull and jawbone features are much more primitive looking than any normal modern human. Statistical analysis of skull shapes show modern humans cluster together in one group, microcephalic humans in another and the hobbit along with ancient hominins in a third.

Due to the relative completeness of fossil remains for LB1, the scientists were able to reconstruct a reliable body design that was unlike any modern human. The thigh bone and shin bone of LB1 are much shorter than modern humans including Central African pygmies, South African KhoeSan (formerly known as 'bushmen") and "negrito" pygmies from the Andaman Islands and the Philippines. Some researchers speculate this could represent an evolutionary reversal correlated with "island dwarfing." "It is difficult to believe an evolutionary change would lead to less economical movement," said Dr. Jungers. "It makes little sense that this species re-evolved shorter thighs and legs because long hind limbs improve bipedal walking. We suspect that these are primitive retentions instead."

Further analysis of the remains using a regression equation developed by Dr. Jungers indicates that LB1 was approximately 106 cm tall (3 feet, 6 inches) -- far smaller than the modern pygmies whose adults grow to less than 150 cm (4 feet, 11 inches). A scatterplot depicts LB1 far outside the range of Southeast Asian and African pygmies in both absolute height and body mass indices. "Attempts to dismiss the hobbits as pathological people have failed repeatedly because the medical diagnoses of dwarfing syndromes and microcephaly bear no resemblance to the unique anatomy of Homo floresiensis," noted Dr. Baab.

Adapted from materials provided by Wiley-Blackwell, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Extinction Rates Higher in Open-Ocean

Paleontologists Find Extinction Rates Higher in Open-Ocean Settings During Mass Extinctions.

For many years, paleobiological researchers interested in the history of biodiversity have focused on charting the many ups (evolutionary radiations) and downs (mass extinctions) that punctuate the history of life. Because the preserved record of marine (sea-dwelling) animals is unusually extensive in comparison, say, to that of terrestrial animals such as dinosaurs, it's been easier to accurately calibrate the diversity and extinction records of marine organisms.

"Paleontologists now recognize that there were five particularly large, worldwide mass extinction events during the history of life, known among the cognoscenti as 'The Big Five,'" says Miller. "Much ink in research journals has been spilled over the past few decades on papers investigating the causes of these events."

Although researchers have long understood the potential value of "dissecting" mass extinctions, to ask whether some environments and organisms were affected more dramatically than others, little attention has been paid to a major dichotomy observed among marine sedimentary rocks and fossils: the distinction between epicontinental seas, which were broad shallow seas (typically less than 100 meters in depth) that once covered large regions of present-day continents, and open-ocean-facing coastlines, such as the continental shelves that rim many continents.

Today, it is difficult to appreciate that there was a time when regions such as Cincinnati were once covered by epicontinental seas, which gradually diminished over time so that almost none are left in the present day. And yet, a large percentage of Earth's fossil record is associated with these settings in the geological past, and there are many reasons to believe that their environmental properties were very different from open-ocean settings.

For one thing, because they were so broad and relatively flat, drops in sea level should have had more drastic effects on epicontinental seas because large regions could have been drained entirely in a short amount of time. On the other hand, the sluggish circulation associated with epicontinental seas may have inhibited the spread of the waterborne effects of such events as volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts, which may have been more effective killing agents in open oceans.

In their research, Miller and Foote assembled data on the occurrences of marine genera from the Paleobiology Database for the Permian through Cretaceous periods, during which both major settings are well preserved in the fossil record. From that, they determined whether these occurrences were from epicontinental seas or open-ocean-facing settings, and they then compared extinction and origination rates in the two settings throughout the interval.

"This was a particularly juicy interval to work with, because it includes three of The Big Five, including the Late Permian mass extinction, the largest extinction in the history of marine animal life, and the end-Cretaceous event, which also did in the dinosaurs and has been associated previously with the impact of a big comet or asteroid," Miller says.

Miller and Foote found that, while extinction rates in the two settings did not generally differ from one another during "background" times between mass extinctions, there was a strikingly different pattern for the mass extinctions: extinctions rates during mass extinctions were significantly higher in open-ocean-facing settings than in epicontinental seas, indicating that open-ocean settings were more susceptible to the mass-extinction-causing agents.

The only exception to Miller and Foote's basic finding was an interval of heightened extinction in the run-up to the big event at the end of the Permian, during which the extinction rate was higher in epicontinental seas. But this interval had already been fingered by previous researchers as one in which there was a big sea-level decline, so Miller and Foote's finding bolsters the view that a drop in sea level was uniquely important as a cause of extinction in that interval.

For their analysis, Miller and Foote looked at several hundred thousand occurrences of fossils throughout the world assembled from the Paleobiology Database and used paleogeographic maps on which they had delineated the boundaries of epicontinental seas to determine whether individual occurrences were from epicontinental seas or the open ocean. "We then determined from these occurrences whether a given genus had a statistically significant tendency to occur in one setting more often than in the other, and if so, it was classified as open-ocean 'loving' or epicontinental-sea 'loving,'" Miller explains. "Our assessments of extinction and origination rates for the two settings were based on these assignments."

Anticipating that biologists might ask if the results primarily reflected a property unique to bivalve mollusks, which comprise a plurality of the data, Miller and Foote ran their analysis again using everything but the bivalves and obtained the same pattern. Similarly, because epicontinental seas tend to be associated with tropical latitudes dominated by carbonate (biologically derived) sediments and open-ocean settings occur more frequently in nontropical latitudes dominated by terrigenous (land-derived) sediments, Miller and Foote extracted subsets of the data limited only to tropical carbonates and nontropical terrigenous sediments and then split them into epicontinental seas versus open oceans. In nearly all cases they got the same results, thereby making it clear that their results truly reflected a difference between epicontinental seas and open oceans.

"One clear outcome of our analyses is that different marine environments respond differently to agents of mass extinction," says Miller. "Given present-day concerns that physical agents such as the accelerated pace of global warming may be inducing a 'sixth' extinction, we might also ask whether some present-day marine settings are likely to be more susceptible than others to the effects of extinction-causing agents."

Although their results to date are compelling, Miller and Foote are not done. Among other things, they intend to extend their analyses back through the entire Paleozoic Era, when epicontinental seas were at their zenith. They will be especially interested in the response of the marine biota to the other two of The Big Five mass extinctions: the Late Ordovician and Late Devonian events.

About the Paleobiology Database

The Paleobiology Database is a global compilation of the occurrences of fossil taxa categorized at the genus or species levels, including geographic, environmental, and time information about these occurrences. It is a collaboration of paleontological researchers from around the world and permits users to track where taxa of interest were living through time, and to piece together and analyze global diversity trends in unprecedented ways.

This research was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) program in Exobiology and National Science Foundation (NSF) programs in Biocomplexity and in Geology and Paleontology.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Cincinnati.

Cigarettes Harbor Many Pathogenic Bacteria

 Cigarettes are "widely contaminated" with bacteria, including some known to cause disease in people, concludes a new international study conducted by a University of Maryland environmental health researcher and microbial ecologists at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon in France.

The research team describes the study as the first to show that "cigarettes themselves could be the direct source of exposure to a wide array of potentially pathogenic microbes among smokers and other people exposed to secondhand smoke." Still, the researchers caution that the public health implications are unclear and urge further research.

"We were quite surprised to identify such a wide variety of human bacterial pathogens in these products," says lead researcher Amy R. Sapkota, an assistant professor in the University of Maryland's School of Public Health.

"The commercially-available cigarettes that we tested were chock full of bacteria, as we had hypothesized, but we didn't think we'd find so many that are infectious in humans," explains Sapkota, who holds a joint appointment with the University's Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health and the department of epidemiology and biostatistics.

"If these organisms can survive the smoking process -- and we believe they can -- then they could possibly go on to contribute to both infectious and chronic illnesses in both smokers and individuals who are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke," Sapkota adds. "So, it's critical that we learn more about the bacterial content of cigarettes, which are used by more than a billion people worldwide."

The study will appear in an upcoming edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Public Health Significance

The researchers describe the study as the first snapshot of the total population of bacteria in cigarettes. Previous researchers have taken small samples of cigarette tobacco and placed them in cultures to see whether bacteria would grow. But Sapkota's team took a more holistic approach using DNA microarray analysis to estimate the so-called bacterial metagenome, the totality of bacterial genetic material present in the tested cigarettes.

Among the study's findings and conclusions:
Commercially available cigarettes show a broad array of bacterial diversity, ranging from soil microorganisms to potential human pathogens;
The is the first study to provide evidence that the numbers of microorganisms in a cigarette may be as "vast as the number of chemical constituents;"
Hundreds of bacterial species were present in each cigarette, and additional testing is likely to increase that number significantly;
No significant variability in bacterial diversity was observed across the four different cigarette brands examined: Camel; Kool Filter Kings; Lucky Strike Original Red; and Marlboro Red;
Bacteria of medical significance to humans were identified in all of the tested cigarettes and included Acinetobacter (associated with lung and blood infections); Bacillus (some varieties associated with food borne illnesses and anthrax); Burkholderia (some forms responsible for respiratory infections); Clostridium(associated with foodborne illnesses and lung infections); Klebsiella (associated with a variety of lung, blood and other infections); and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (an organism that causes 10 percent of all hospital-acquired infections in the United States).

"Now that we've shown that a pack of cigarettes is loaded with bacteria, we will conduct follow-up research to determine the possible roles of these organisms in tobacco-related diseases." Sapkota says.

For example, do cigarette-borne bacteria survive the burning process and go on to colonize smokers' respiratory systems? Existing research suggests that some hardy bacteria can be transmitted this way, the researchers say. This might account for the fact that the respiratory tracts of smokers are characterized by higher levels of bacterial pathogens. But it's also possible that smoking weakens natural immunity and the bacteria come from the general environment rather than from cigarettes. Further research will be needed to determine the possible health impacts of cigarette-borne bacteria.

Sapkota is the lead and corresponding author. She conducted the research with Sibel Berger under the guidance of Timothy M. Vogel in 2007 at the Environmental Microbial Genomics Group, Laboratoire Ampère, UMR CNRS 5005, Ecole Centrale de Lyon in Lyon, France.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Maryland.

After Mastodons and Mammoths, a Transformed Landscape

Roughly 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, North America's vast assemblage of large animals -- including such iconic creatures as mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, ground sloths and giant beavers -- began their precipitous slide to extinction.

And when their populations crashed, emptying a land whose diversity of large animals equaled or surpassed Africa's wildlife-rich Serengeti plains then or now, an entirely novel ecosystem emerged as broadleaved trees once kept in check by huge numbers of big herbivores claimed the landscape. Soon after, the accumulation of woody debris sparked a dramatic increase in the prevalence of wildfire, another key shaper of landscapes.

This new picture of the ecological upheaval of the North American landscape just after the retreat of the ice sheets is detailed in a study published November 19 in the journal Science. The study, led by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, uses fossil pollen, charcoal and dung fungus spores to paint a picture of a post-ice age terrain different from anything in the world today.

The work is important because it is "the clearest evidence to date that the extinction of a broad guild of animals had effects on other parts of these ancient ecosystems," says John W. Williams, a UW-Madison professor of geography and an expert on ancient climates and ecosystems who is the study's senior author. What's more, he says, the detailing of changes on the ice age landscape following the crash of keystone animal populations can provide critical insight into the broader effects of animals disappearing from modern landscapes.

The study was led by Jacquelyn Gill, a graduate student in Williams' lab. Other co-authors are Stephen T. Jackson of the University of Wyoming, Katherine B. Lininger of UW-Madison and Guy S. Robinson of Fordham University.

The new work, says Gill, informs but does not resolve the debate over what caused the extinction of 34 genera or groups of large animals, including icons of the ice age such as elephant like mastodons and ground sloths the size of sport utility vehicles. "Our data are not consistent with a rapid, 'blitzkrieg' overkill of large animals by humans," notes Gill, nor was their decline due to a loss of habitat.

However, the work does seem to rule out a recent hypothesis that a meteor or comet impact some 12.9 thousand years ago was responsible for the extinction of ice age North America's signature large animals.

The study was conducted using lake sediment cores obtained from Appleman Lake in Indiana, as well as data obtained previously by Robinson from sites in New York. Gill, Williams and their colleagues used pollen, charcoal and the spores of a dung fungus that requires passage through a mammalian intestinal tract to complete its life cycle to reconstruct a picture of sweeping change to the ice age environment. The decline of North America's signature ice age mammals was a gradual process, the Wisconsin researchers explain, taking about 1,000 years. The decline in the huge numbers of ice age animals is preserved in the fossil record when the fungal spores disappear from the record altogether: "About 13.8 thousand years ago, the number of spores drops dramatically. They're barely in the record anymore," Gill explains.

Like detectives reconstructing a crime scene, the group's use of dung fungus spores helps establish a precise sequence of events, showing that the crash of ice age megafauna began before plant communities started to change and before fires appeared widely on the landscape.

"The data suggest that the megafaunal decline and extinction began at the Appleman Lake site sometime between 14.8 thousand and 13.7 thousand years ago and preceded major shifts in plant community composition and the frequency of fire," notes Williams.

Absent the large herbivores that kept them in check, such tree species as black ash, elm and ironwood began to colonize a landscape dominated by coniferous trees such as spruce and larch. The resulting mix of boreal and temperate trees formed a plant community unlike any observed today.

"As soon as herbivores drop off the landscape, we see different plant communities," Gill explains, noting that mastodon herds and other large animals occupied a parkland like landscape, typified by large open spaces and patches of forest and swamp. "Our data suggest that these trees would have been abundant sooner if the herbivores hadn't been there to eat them."

While both the extinction of North America's ice age megafauna and the sweeping change to the landscape are well-documented phenomena, there was, until now, no detailed chronology of the events that remade the continent's biological communities beginning about 14.8 thousand years ago. Establishing that the disappearance of mammoths, giant beavers, ground sloths and other large animals preceded the massive change in plant communities, promises scientists critical new insight into the dynamics of extinction and its pervasive influence on a given landscape.

The new study was funded by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the UW-Madison Center for Climatic Research in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, and the National Science Foundation.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison. Original article written by Terry Devitt.

Man May Have Caused Pre-Historic Extinctions

New research shows that pre-historic horses in Alaska may have been hunted into extinction by man, rather than by climate change as previously thought.

The discovery by Andrew Solow of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, US, David Roberts of the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew and Karen Robbirt of the University of East Anglia (UEA) is published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The accepted view had previously been that the wild horses became extinct long before the extinction of mammoths and the arrival of humans from Asia - ruling out the possibility that they were over-hunted by man. One theory had been that a period of climate cooling wiped them out.

However, the researchers have discovered that uncertainties in dating fossil remains and the incompleteness of fossil records mean that the survival of the horse beyond the arrival of humans cannot be ruled out.

The PNAS paper develops a new statistical method to help resolve the inherent problems associated with dating fossils from the Pleistocene period. The aim is to provide a far more accurate timetable for the extinction of caballoid horses and mammoths and, ultimately, the cause.

"This research is exciting because it throws open the debate as to whether climate change or over-hunting may have led to the extinction of pre-historic horses in North America," said UEA's Karen Robbirt.

The Pleistocene period refers to the first epoch of the Quarternary period between 1.64 million and 10,000 years ago. It was characterised by extensive glaciation of the northern hemisphere and the evolution of modern man around 100,000 years ago.

It is known that the end of the Pleistocene period was a time of large-scale extinctions of animals and plants in North America and elsewhere but the factors responsible have remained open to question, with climate change and over-hunting by humans the prime suspects.

Adapted from materials provided by University of East Anglia.

Mammoths Survived In Britain Until 14,000 Years Ago

Mammoths Survived In Britain Until 14,000 Years Ago, New Discovery Suggests

Research which finally proves that bones found in Shropshire, England provide the most geologically recent evidence of woolly mammoths in North Western Europe publishes June 17 in the Geological Journal. Analysis of both the bones and the surrounding environment suggests that some mammoths remained part of British wildlife long after they are conventionally believed to have become extinct.

The mammoth bones, consisting of one largely complete adult male and at least four juveniles, were first excavated in 1986, but the carbon dating which took place at the time has since been considered inaccurate. Technological advances during the past two decades now allow a more exact reading, which complements the geological data needed to place the bones into their environmental context. This included a study of the bones' decay, analysis of fossilised insects which were also found on the site, and a geological analysis of the surrounding sediment.

The research was carried out by Professor Adrian Lister, based at the Natural History Museum in London, who has conducted numerous studies into 'extinction lag' where small pockets of a species have survived for thousands of years longer than conventionally thought.

"Mammoths are conventionally believed to have become extinct in North Western Europe about 21,000 years ago during the main ice advance, known as the 'Last Glacial Maximum'" said Lister. "Our new radiocarbon dating of the Condover mammoths changes that, by showing that mammoths returned to Britain and survived until around 14,000 years ago."

As the Shropshire bones are the latest record of mammoths in North Western Europe they not only prove that the species survived for much longer than traditionally believed it also provides strong evidence to settle the debate as to whether mammoth extinction was caused by climate change or human hunting.

"The new dates of the mammoths' last appearance correlate very closely in time to climate changes when the open grassy habitat of the Ice Age was taken over by advancing forests, which provides a likely explanation for their disappearance," said Lister. "There were humans around during the time of the Condover mammoths, but no evidence of significant mammoth hunting."

Dr Lister's findings feature in one of three papers on the Condover Mammoths which are all published in the Geological Journal. The other papers focus on the Palaeoenviromental context of the mammoths (Allen et al) and a geological study of the site in which the mammoths were discovered (Scourse et al).

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by Wiley-Blackwell, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal References:
Lister A. Late-glacial mammoth skeletons (Mammuthus primigenius) from Condover (Shropshire, UK): anatomy, pathology, taphonomy and chronological significance. Geological Journal, DOI: 10.1002/gj.1162
Allen.J.R.M, Scourse.JD, Hall,A.R, Coope G.R. Palaeoenviromental context of the Late-glacial woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) discoveries at Condover, Shropshire, UK(pn/a). Geological Journal, 2009 DOI: 10.1002/gj1161
Scourse, Coope et al. Late-glacial remains of woolly mammoth Mammuthus primigenius) from Shropshire UK: stratigraphy, sedimentology and geochronology of the Condover site (p n/a). Geological Journal, 2009 DOI: 10.1002/gj.1163

Genetic Variation Linked to Individual Empathy, Stress Levels

 Researchers have discovered a genetic variation that may contribute to how empathetic a human is, and how that person reacts to stress. In the first study of its kind, a variation in the hormone/neurotransmitter oxytocin's receptor was linked to a person's ability to infer the mental state of others.

Interestingly, this same genetic variation also related to stress reactivity. These findings could have a significant impact in adding to the body of knowledge about the importance of oxytocin, and its link to conditions such as autism and unhealthy levels of stress.

Sarina Rodrigues, an assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University, and Laura Saslow, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, published their findings in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Rodrigues said oxytocin has already been significantly linked with social affiliation and reduction in stress. It is a peptide secreted by the pituitary gland and regulated by the hypothalamus of the brain and is best known for its role in female reproduction (it is important for labor and breastfeeding, for instance). It is also associated with social recognition, pair bonding, dampening negative emotional responses, trust, and love.

Rodrigues, who studies stress in humans, studied 200 college students, of diverse ethnicities and balanced gender. The students filled out self-reported questionnaires, as well as participated in laboratory-based sessions.

Individuals can have one of three combinations of this particular naturally occurring genetic variation of the oxytocin receptor. All humans get one copy of this gene from each parent, thus the three possible combinations, labeled in the paper as AA, AG or GG allele. The AA and AG gene group were not statistically different, so they were grouped together and compared in all tests with the GG group.

Rodrigues said the tests included a standard stress reactivity test involving white noise blasts directed in headphones after countdowns presented on the screen. Heart rate was monitored through sensors throughout the laboratory session. In general, they found that women were overall more sensitive to the stress tests, but that both men and women in the GG allele group displayed a lower increase heart rate during this task, as compared to baseline heart rate measured at the beginning of the laboratory session.

One of the tests used to measure empathy included the "Reading the Mind in Eyes" test, created by Simon Baron-Cohen (cousin of actor/comedian Sacha Baron Cohen). Rodrigues said that this test is commonly used to discern how individuals can put themselves into the mind of another person, which overlaps with empathy, because it tests how well the participant can infer someone's emotional state by their eyes.

"In general, women do better on this test than men," Rodrigues said. "But we found a stark difference in both sexes based on the genetic variation." Those with the GG genetic variation were 22.7 percent less likely to make a mistake on the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test than the other individuals.

Rodrigues said previous research has shown that people with autism display lower scores on behavioral and dispositional empathy measures, and that a nasal spray with oxytocin increases scores in these areas.

"Our data lends credence to the claim that this genetic variation of oxytocin influences emotional processing and other-oriented behavior," she said.

However, Rodrigues cautioned against drawing too many conclusions just yet from the study's findings. She said these population trends should not be translated to individuals, meaning there are plenty of people in the AA or AG gene pool who are empathetic, caring individuals.

"I tested myself and while I am not in the GG group, I'd like to think that I am a very caring person with empathy for others," she said. "These findings can help us understand that some of us are born with a tendency to be more empathic and stress reactive than others, and that we should reach out to those who may be naturally closed-off from people because social connectivity and belongingness benefits everyone."

Natalia Garcia, Oliver P. John and Dacher Keltner, all with University of California, Berkeley, also contributed to the research, which was funded by the Metanexus Institute and the Greater Good Science Center. The studies were conducted in the laboratory of Dacher Keltner.

'Vampire Star': Ticking Stellar Time Bomb Identified

The expanding shell around V445 Puppis. (Credit: Image courtesy of ESO)

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Using ESO's Very Large Telescope and its ability to obtain images as sharp as if taken from space, astronomers have made the first time-lapse movie of a rather unusual shell ejected by a "vampire star," which in November 2000 underwent an outburst after gulping down part of its companion's matter. This enabled astronomers to determine the distance and intrinsic brightness of the outbursting object.

It appears that this double star system is a prime candidate to be one of the long-sought progenitors of the exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae, critical for studies of dark energy.

"One of the major problems in modern astrophysics is the fact that we still do not know exactly what kinds of stellar system explode as a Type Ia supernova," says Patrick Woudt, from the University of Cape Town and lead author of the paper reporting the results. "As these supernovae play a crucial role in showing that the Universe's expansion is currently accelerating, pushed by a mysterious dark energy, it is rather embarrassing."

The astronomers studied the object known as V445 in the constellation of Puppis ("the Stern") in great detail. V445 Puppis is the first, and so far only, nova showing no evidence at all for hydrogen. It provides the first evidence for an outburst on the surface of a white dwarf dominated by helium. "This is critical, as we know that Type Ia supernovae lack hydrogen," says co-author Danny Steeghs, from the University of Warwick, UK, "and the companion star in V445 Pup fits this nicely by also lacking hydrogen, instead dumping mainly helium gas onto the white dwarf."

In November 2000, this system underwent a nova outburst, becoming 250 times brighter than before and ejecting a large quantity of matter into space.

The team of astronomers used the NACO adaptive optics instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to obtain very sharp images of V445 Puppis over a time span of two years. The images show a bipolar shell, initially with a very narrow waist, with lobes on each side. Two knots are also seen at both the extreme ends of the shell, which appear to move at about 30 million kilometres per hour. The shell -- unlike any previously observed for a nova -- is itself moving at about 24 million kilometres per hour. A thick disc of dust, which must have been produced during the last outburst, obscures the two central stars.

"The incredible detail that we can see on such small scales -- about hundred milliarcseconds, which is the apparent size of a one euro coin seen from about forty kilometres -- is only possible thanks to the adaptive optics technology available on large ground-based telescopes such as ESO's VLT," says Steeghs.

A supernova is one way that a star can end its life, exploding in a display of grandiose fireworks. One family of supernovae, called Type Ia supernovae, are of particular interest in cosmology as they can be used as "standard candles" to measure distances in the Universe and so can be used to calibrate the accelerating expansion that is driven by dark energy.

One defining characteristic of Type Ia supernovae is the lack of hydrogen in their spectrum. Yet hydrogen is the most common chemical element in the Universe. Such supernovae most likely arise in systems composed of two stars, one of them being the end product of the life of sun-like stars, or white dwarfs. When such white dwarfs, acting as stellar vampires that suck matter from their companion, become heavier than a given limit, they become unstable and explode.

The build-up is not a simple process. As the white dwarf cannibalises its prey, matter accumulates on its surface. If this layer becomes too dense, it becomes unstable and erupts as a nova. These controlled, mini-explosions eject part of the accumulated matter back into space. The crucial question is thus to know whether the white dwarf can manage to gain weight despite the outburst, that is, if some of the matter taken from the companion stays on the white dwarf, so that it will eventually become heavy enough to explode as a supernova.

Combining the NACO images with data obtained with several other telescopes the astronomers could determine the distance of the system -- about 25 000 light-years from the Sun -- and its intrinsic brightness -- over 10 000 times brighter than the Sun. This implies that the vampire white dwarf in this system has a high mass that is near its fatal limit and is still simultaneously being fed by its companion at a high rate. "Whether V445 Puppis will eventually explode as a supernova, or if the current nova outburst has pre-empted that pathway by ejecting too much matter back into space is still unclear," says Woudt. "But we have here a pretty good suspect for a future Type Ia supernova!"

This research was presented in a paper to appear in the 20 November 2009 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

The team is composed of P. A. Woudt and B. Warner (University of Cape Town, South Africa), D. Steeghs and T. R. Marsh (University of Warwick, UK), M. Karovska and G. H. A. Roelofs (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge MA, USA), P. J. Groot and G. Nelemans (Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands), T. Nagayama (Kyoto University, Japan), D. P. Smits (University of South Africa, South Africa), and T. O'Brien (University of Manchester, UK).

Ancient High-Altitude Trees Grow Faster as Temperatures Rise

Increasing temperatures at high altitudes are fueling the post-1950 growth spurt seen in bristlecone pines, the world's oldest trees, according to new research.

Pines close to treeline have wider annual growth rings for the period from 1951 to 2000 than for the previous 3,700 years, reports a University of Arizona-led research team. Regional temperatures have increased, particularly at high elevations, during the same 50-year time period.

"We're showing this increased growth rate at treeline in a number of locations," said Matthew W. Salzer, a research associate at UA's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. "It's unique in several millennia, and it's related specifically to treeline."

Bristlecone pines live for thousands of years on dry, windswept, high-elevation mountain slopes in the western U.S. The scientists collected and analyzed tree rings from Great Basin bristlecone pines located in three mountain ranges in eastern California and Nevada that are separated by hundreds of miles.

Only trees growing within about 500 feet (150 meters) of treeline showed the surge in growth. In general, those trees were at or above about 11,000 feet (3,300 meters) in elevation.

"You can come downslope less than 200 vertical meters and sample the same species of tree, and it won't show the same wide band of growth," Salzer said.

Growth at the pines' upper elevational range is limited by cold temperatures. At the lower elevations, growth of the trees is limited by moisture more than temperature, Salzer said.

Co-author Malcolm K. Hughes said, "Something very unusual is happening at high elevations, and this is one more piece of evidence for that." One other example, he said, was the accelerated melting of small glaciers at high altitudes.

"There is increasingly rapid warming in western North America," said Hughes, a UA Regents' Professor of dendrochronology. "The higher you go, the faster it's warming. We think our finding may be part of that whole phenomenon."

Salzer, Hughes and their co-authors Andrew G. Bunn of Western Washington University in Bellingham and Kurt F. Kipfmueller of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis will publish their paper in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The National Science Foundation funded the research.

Individual Great Basin bristlecone pines, Pinus longaeva, are the longest-living organisms known. The trees live at an elevation range of approximately 8,200 to 11,400 feet (about 2,500 to 3,500 meters). The oldest living bristlecone, almost 5,000 years old, is in California's White Mountains.

The trees' longevity coupled with the excellent preservation of trunks from even older dead trees has allowed some scientists to reconstruct regional climate 8,000 years into the past using tree-ring records from bristlecone pines.

The recent rapid growth of three species of pines at elevations close to treeline had been noticed more than 25 years ago by previous researchers from UA's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. The sudden growth surge was puzzling in trees hundreds to thousands of years old, well past their adolescence.

"It means there has been some environmental change that affected the trees' ability to make wood," Salzer said. "The place they were living wasn't as limiting to their growth anymore."

Salzer and his colleagues wanted to study trees whose growth was strongly affected by temperature.

"Where do you go to look for trees where ring width is related to temperature? You look for trees in high mountain ranges, where the mountain continues up and the trees don't follow," Salzer said. "As you go up, the main thing that's changing in these places is temperature."

He and his colleagues chose to extend the previous research efforts. The scientists used the previous researchers' data and also took new bristlecone pine cores to increase the number of samples available for analysis.

The team analyzed the average and median width of tree rings for 50-year blocks of time, starting with the latter half of the 20th century, the years 1951 to 2000, and going backward in time to 2650 B.C. The analysis spans more than 4,600 years.

To see how the annual growth rings changed with temperature, the team used a new method of mapping climate data called PRISM that was unavailable to researchers 25 years ago.

PRISM combines weather records and knowledge of how topography affects weather and climate to provide state-of-the-art climate information going back 100 years for specific locations. PRISM stands for "Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model."

The tree-ring researchers found that the chronological timing of the wider tree rings correlates with increasing temperatures from the PRISM climate map.

Hughes said that increasing temperatures high in the mountains could have significant effects elsewhere. In many areas of the western U.S., mountains are a key source of water for farms and urban areas at lower elevations.

"If the snow melts earlier, the mountains won't be able to hold onto water for as long," Hughes said. "They won't be as effective as water towers for us."

The same pattern of high-elevation growth increases has also been observed in Rocky Mountain bristlecone pines, including ones in Arizona's San Francisco Peaks, Salzer said. He plans to expand the research to investigate high-altitude trees at additional locations.

Heart Disease Found in Egyptian Mummies

 Hardening of the arteries has been detected in Egyptian mummies, some as old as 3,500 years, suggesting that the factors causing heart attack and stroke are not only modern ones; they afflicted ancient people, too.

Study results are appearing in the Nov. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and are being presented Nov. 17 at the Scientific Session of the American Heart Association at Orlando, Fla.

"Atherosclerosis is ubiquitous among modern day humans and, despite differences in ancient and modern lifestyles, we found that it was rather common in ancient Egyptians of high socioeconomic status living as much as three millennia ago," says UC Irvine clinical professor of cardiology Dr. Gregory Thomas, a co-principal investigator on the study. "The findings suggest that we may have to look beyond modern risk factors to fully understand the disease."

The nameplate of the Pharaoh Merenptah (c. 1213-1203 BC) in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities reads that, when he died at approximately age 60, he was afflicted with atherosclerosis, arthritis, and dental decay. Intrigued that atherosclerosis may have been widespread among ancient Egyptians, Thomas and a team of U.S. and Egyptian cardiologists, joined by experts in Egyptology and preservation, selected 20 mummies on display and in the basement of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities for scanning on a Siemens 6 slice CT scanner during the week of Feb. 8, 2009.

The mummies underwent whole body scanning with special attention to the cardiovascular system. The researchers found that 9 of the 16 mummies who had identifiable arteries or hearts left in their bodies after the mummification process had calcification either clearly seen in the wall of the artery or in the path were the artery should have been. Some mummies had calcification in up to 6 different arteries.

Using skeletal analysis, the Egyptology and preservationist team was able to estimate the age at death for all the mummies and the names and occupations in the majority. Of the mummies who had died when they were older than 45, 7 of 8 had calcification and thus atherosclerosis while only 2 of 8 of those dying at an earlier age had calcification. Atherosclerosis did not spare women; vascular calcifications were observed in both male and female mummies.

The most ancient Egyptian afflicted with atherosclerosis was Lady Rai, who lived to an estimated age of 30 to 40 years around 1530 BC and had been the nursemaid to Queen Ahmose Nefertiri. To put this in context, Lady Rai lived about 300 years prior to the time of Moses and 200 prior to King Tutankhamun (Tut).

In those mummies whose identities could be determined, all were of high socioeconomic status, generally serving in the court of the Pharaoh or as priests or priestess. While the diet of any one mummy could not be determined, eating meat in the form of cattle, ducks and geese was not uncommon during these times.

"While we do not know whether atherosclerosis caused the demise of any of the mummies in the study, we can confirm that the disease was present in many," Thomas says.

In addition to Thomas, Dr. Adel Allam of the Al Azhar Medical School in Cairo, Egypt, is the study's co-principal investigator. Dr. Randall Thompson of the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo.; Dr. L. Samuel Wann of the Wisconsin Heart Hospital in Milwaukee; and Dr. Michael Miyamoto of UC San Diego also contributed to the JAMA report.

The Egyptology and preservationist team consisted of Abd el-Halim Nur el-Din and Gomma Ab el-Maksoud of Cairo University; Ibrahem Badr of the Institute of Restoration in Alexandria, Egypt; Hany Abd el-Amer of the National Research Center in Dokki, Giza, Egypt.

The authors express their appreciation to Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, for allowing them to scan these mummies and perform this investigation.
Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Irvine, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide Emissions Up

Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide Emissions Up by 29 Percent Since 2000

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Human emissions rise 2 percent despite the global financial crisis. (Credit: CSIRO)

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ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2009) — The strongest evidence yet that the rise in atmospheric CO2 emissions continues to outstrip the ability of the world's natural 'sinks' to absorb carbon is published November 17 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

An international team of researchers under the umbrella of the Global Carbon Project reports that over the last 50 years the average fraction of global CO2 emissions that remained in the atmosphere each year was around 43 per cent -- the rest was absorbed by the Earth's carbon sinks on land and in the oceans. During this time this fraction has likely increased from 40 per cent to 45 per cent, suggesting a decrease in the efficiency of the natural sinks. The team brings evidence that the sinks are responding to climate change and variability.

The scientists report a 29 per cent increase in global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel between 2000 and 2008 (the latest year for which figures are available), and that in spite of the global economic downturn emissions increased by 2 per cent during 2008. The use of coal as a fuel has now surpassed oil and developing countries now emit more greenhouse gases than developed countries -- with a quarter of their growth in emissions accounted for by increased trade with the West.

Lead author Prof Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the British Antarctic Survey said: "The only way to control climate change is through a drastic reduction in global CO2 emissions. The Earth's carbon sinks are complex and there are some gaps in our understanding, particularly in our ability to link human-induced CO2 emissions to atmospheric CO2 concentrations on a year-to-year basis. But, if we can reduce the uncertainty about the carbon sinks, our data could be used to verify the effectiveness of climate mitigations policies."

The main findings of the study include:
CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels increased by two per cent from 2007 to 2008, by 29 per cent between 2008 and 2000, and by 41 per cent between 2008 and 1990 -- the reference year of the Kyoto Protocol.
CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have increased at an average annual rate of 3.4 per cent between 2000 and 2008, compared with one per cent per year in the 1990s.
Emissions from land use change have remained almost constant since 2000, but now account for a significantly smaller proportion of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions (20 per cent in 2000 to 12 per cent in 2008).
The fraction of total CO2 emissions remaining in the atmosphere has likely increased from 40 to 45 per cent since 1959, models suggests this is due to the response of the natural CO2 sinks to climate change and variability.
Emissions from coal are now the dominant fossil fuel emission source, surpassing 40 years of oil emission prevalence.
The financial crisis had a small but discernable impact on emissions growth in 2008 -- with a two per cent increase compared with an average 3.6 per cent over the previous seven years. On the basis of projected changes in GDP, emissions for 2009 are expected to fall to their 2007 levels, before increasing again in 2010.
Emissions from emerging economies such as China and India have more than doubled since 1990 and developing countries now emit more greenhouse gases than developed countries.
A quarter of the growth in CO2 emissions in developing countries can be accounted for by an increase in international trade of goods and services.

The researchers called for more work to be done to improve our understanding of the land and ocean CO2 sinks, so that global action to control climate change can be independently monitored. The sinks have a major influence on climate change and are important in understanding the link between anthropogenic CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentration. But so far scientists have not been able to calculate the CO2 uptake of the sinks with sufficient accuracy to explain all the annual changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration, which hinders the scientists' ability to monitor the effectiveness of CO2 mitigations policies

Depression as Deadly as Smoking

A study by researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King's College London has found that depression is as much of a risk factor for mortality as smoking.

Utilising a unique link between a survey of over 60,000 people and a comprehensive mortality database, the researchers found that over the four years following the survey, the mortality risk was increased to a similar extent in people who were depressed as in people who were smokers.

Dr Robert Stewart, who led the research team at the IoP, explains the possible reasons that may underlie these surprising findings: 'Unlike smoking, we don't know how causal the association with depression is but it does suggest that more attention should be paid to this link because the association persisted after adjusting for many other factors.'

The study also shows that patients with depression face an overall increased risk of mortality, while a combination of depression and anxiety in patients lowers mortality compared with depression alone. Dr Stewart explains: 'One of the main messages from this research is that 'a little anxiety may be good for you'.

'It appears that we're talking about two risk groups here. People with very high levels of anxiety symptoms may be naturally more vulnerable due to stress, for example through the effects stress has on cardiovascular outcomes. On the other hand, people who score very low on anxiety measures, i.e. those who deny any symptoms at all, may be people who also tend not to seek help for physical conditions, or they may be people who tend to take risks. This would explain the higher mortality.'

In terms of the relationship between mortality and anxiety with depression as a risk factor, the research suggests that help-seeking behaviour may explain the pattern of outcomes. People with depression may not seek help or may fail to receive help when they do seek it, whereas the opposite may be true for people with anxiety.

Dr Stewart comments: 'It would certainly not surprise me at all to find that doctors are less likely to investigate physical symptoms in people with depression because they think that depression is the explanation, but may be more likely to investigate if someone is anxious because they think it will reassure them. These are conjectures but they would fit with the data.'

The researchers point out that the results should be considered in conjunction with other evidence suggesting a variety of adverse physical health outcomes and poor health associated with mental disorders such as depression and psychotic disorders.

In light of the findings, Dr Stewart makes suggestions on the focus of future developments in the treatment of depression and anxiety: 'The physical health of people with current or previous mental disorder needs a lot more attention than it gets at the moment.

'This applies to primary care, secondary mental health care and general hospital care in the sense that there should be more active screening for physical disorders and risk factors, such as blood pressure, cholesterol, adverse diet, smoking, lack of exercise, in people with mental disorders. This should be done in addition to more active treatment of disorders when present, and more effective general health promotion.'

Major Advance in Organic Solar Cells

Professor Guillermo Bazan and a team of postgraduate researchers at UC Santa Barbara's Center for Polymers and Organic Solids (CPOS) have announced a major advance in the synthesis of organic polymers for plastic solar cells.

Bazan's team reduced reaction time by 99%, from 48 hours to 30 minutes, and increased average molecular weight of the polymers by a factor of more than 3.

The reduced reaction time effectively cuts production time for the organic polymers by nearly 50%, since reaction time and purification time are approximately equal in the production process, in both laboratory and commercial environments.

The higher molecular weight of the polymers, reflecting the creation of longer chains of the polymers, has a major benefit in increasing current density in plastic solar cells by as much as a factor of more than four. Over polymer batches with varying average molecular weights, produced using varying combinations of the elements of the new methodology, the increase in current density was found to be approximately proportional to the increase in average molecular weight.

The methodology, detailed in a recent Nature Chemistry paper, "will greatly accelerate research in this area," stated Bazan, "by making possible the rapid production of different batches of polymers for evaluation." He further noted, "We plan to take advantage of this approach both to generate new materials that will increase solar cell efficiencies and operational lifetimes, and to reevaluate previously-considered polymer structures that should exhibit much higher performance than they showed initially."

To make these gains, the team:
replaced conventional thermal heating with microwave heating,
modified reactant concentrations, and
varied the ratio of reactants by only 5% from the nominal 1:1 stoichiometric ratio normally employed in polymerization reactions.

Mike McGehee, Director of Stanford's Center for Advanced Molecular Photovoltaics, hailed Bazan's work, commenting, "Many synthetic chemists around the world are making copolymers with alternating donor and acceptors to attain low bandgaps. Most of them are having trouble attaining adequate molecular weight, so this new synthetic method that creates longer polymer chains is a real breakthrough. The reduction in synthesis time should also make it easier to optimize the chemical structure as the research moves forward and will ultimately reduce the manufacturing cost."

Bazan is a Professor of Chemistry and of Materials at UC Santa Barbara, and is co-director of CPOS and a faculty member at the NSF-funded Materials Research Laboratory.

Lesser known chemicals influence climate change

Dozen Lesser-Known Chemicals Have Strong Impact on Climate Change

A new study indicates that major chemicals most often cited as leading causes of climate change, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are outclassed in their warming potential by compounds receiving less attention.

Purdue University and NASA examined more than a dozen chemicals, most of which are generated by humans, and have developed a blueprint for the underlying molecular machinery of global warming. The results appear in a special edition of the American Chemical Society's Journal of Physical Chemistry A, released Nov. 12.

The compounds, which contain fluorine atoms, are far more efficient at blocking radiation in the "atmospheric window," said Purdue Professor Joseph Francisco, who helped author the study. The atmospheric window is the frequency in the infrared region through which radiation from Earth is released into space, helping to cool the planet. When that radiation is trapped instead of being released, a "greenhouse effect" results, warming the globe. Most of the chemicals in question are used industrially, he said.

NASA scientist Timothy Lee, lead author of the study with Francisco and NASA postdoctoral fellow Partha Bera, characterized the fluorinated compounds as having the potential to quickly slam the atmospheric window shut, as opposed to gradually easing it shut like carbon dioxide.

In the results, chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur and nitrogen fluorides stood out in their warming potential because of their efficiency to trap radiation in the atmospheric window.

"It's actually rather stark," said Francisco, a Purdue chemistry and earth and atmospheric sciences professor, whose research focuses on the chemistry of molecules in the atmosphere.

An understanding of how the chemicals contribute to climate change on a molecular scale affords the opportunity to create benign alternatives and to test new chemicals for their global warming capability before they go to market, Francisco said.

"Now you have a rational design basis," he said.

The researchers looked at more than a dozen chemicals, often referred to as "greenhouse gases," listed as warming agents by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the most prominent international scientific group monitoring global warming. The study employed both results from experimental observations and from computer modeling using supercomputers from Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP), Purdue's central information technology organization, and NASA. The goal was to determine which chemical and physical properties are most important in contributing to global warming.

"Believe it or not, nobody has ever delineated these properties," Lee said.

CFC use has waned with the discovery that the chemicals contribute to the destruction of Earth's ozone layer, which absorbs most of the dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun. But HFCs and PFCs are widely used in air conditioning and the manufacturing of electronics, appliances and carpets. Other uses range from application as a blood substitute in transfusions to tracking leaks in natural gas lines.

"Although current concentrations of some of these trace gases have been found to be substantially small compared to carbon dioxide, their concentration is on the rise," the study notes. "With the current rate of increase, they will be important contributors in the future, according to some models."

The fluorine atoms that characterize the chemicals are highly electro-negative and tend to pull electrons to themselves, Francisco said. This shift makes the molecules more efficient at absorbing radiation, which would normally bleed harmlessly into space. As a result, the fluorine-containing compounds are the most effective global warming agents, the study concludes.

The compounds also persist longer than carbon dioxide and other major global warming agents, said Lee, chief of the Space Science and Astrobiology Division at NASA Ames Research Center. The concern is that, even if emitted into the atmosphere in lower quantities, the chemicals might have a powerful cumulative effect over time. Some of these chemicals don't break down for thousands of years.

The research was supported by NASA.