| Digging Up Valuable Fossils in Suburban New Jersey Outside Freehold, N.J.--The water is icy cold and the stone is slippery as I wade in up to my calves. Along the banks of this slow-flowing stream, guarded by prickly brambles, lies one of the richest caches of fossils dating back to the extinction that claimed the dinosaurs. The remains of marine creatures buried here, kept secret to prevent looting, tell an unusual tale: rather than dying off 65 million years ago, these creatures lived on afterward, albeit briefly. The discovery is causing scientists to rethink why some creatures survived the so-called KT extinction while others did not.Unlike this one, significant fossil sites tend to be found in exotic locales such as the searing hot Gobi Desert or the windswept pampas of Patagonia, areas remote from the kind of urban development that can ruin them. “You don’t expect to find them here in suburban New Jersey some 90 minutes away from New York City,” explains Neil Landman, curator of fossil invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Prospects for solar: "It's like watching the Internet mature in 1995" Editor's Note: Scientific American 's George Musser will be chronicling his experiences installing solar panels in Solar at Home (formerly 60-Second Solar). Read his introduction here and see all posts here . I may be one of the few people in my town to have solar power right now, but if the news I’m hearing from the Solar Power International trade show this week is right, a wave of installations is about to sweep the country. I wasn’t able to attend the show -- this blog is just a sideline for me and I couldn’t justify a whole trip -- but I had a chance to talk with two conference attendees, Mike Caliel, CEO of IES , a big national energy contractor that has gotten heavily involved in renewables, and Harry Fleming, CEO of Acro Energy Technologies , one of the biggest solar installers in California. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Copenhagen Accord Was an "Important Step Forward," Says U.S. Climate Negotiator Lead U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern said Thursday the Copenhagen Accord represents the best way forward for a binding global climate deal but that success likely rests with a smaller group of major emitters working outside the unwieldy, multi-national United Nations process. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Humboldt Squid Seem to Be Thriving--Thanks to Ocean Dead Zones Although many of the Pacific Ocean's big species are floundering, one large creature of the deep seems to be flourishing. The Humboldt squid ( Dosidicus gigas , also known as jumbo squid , owing to its sizable nature) has been steadily expanding its population and range: whereas sightings north of San Diego were rare 10 years ago, the squid are now found as far north as Alaska. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Engineering students happily deafened by Mwanga metalworkers Editor's Note: Students from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering are working in Tanzania to help improve sanitation and energy technologies in local villages. The student-led group , known as Humanitarian Engineering Leadership Projects (HELP), will file dispatches from the field during their trip. This is their seventh blog post for Scientific American.The rooster in the room next to us crowed loudly at sunrise, and we despondently got out of bed with the goal of finding Fundi [see photo at left] , the town of Kalinzi's elusive stove maker. We found him farming and arranged to meet with him after work at the seventh hour of the Swahili clock, 1 p.m. international time (Swahili time starts with the first hour of sunlight and is therefore six hours behind). [More] Tanzania - Swahili language - Engineering - Dartmouth College - Thayer School of Engineering rss.sciam.com |