TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| A research expedition begins to wrap Editor's Note: Peggy Delaney is sailing on a newly refurbished research vessel, the JOIDES Resolution, that left Honolulu on March 10 with an international group of researchers on board. The ship, supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, conducts scientific investigations beneath the seafloor by drilling the ocean floor and retrieving long “cores” of mud for testing and data collection. This is her twelfth blog post. To see all her posts, see "60 Seconds in the Mid-Pacific."SOMEWHERE IN THE MID-PACIFIC (April 26, 2009)--I just came back inside from watching the rig floor crew trip pipe--that is, go through the process of extracting the over four kilometers (2.5 miles) of drill string that hung beneath the ship as we drilled the final hole at the final site (U1336B, for those keeping score). The last core came on deck around 2 A.M. last night. The scientists who were awake gathered on the catwalk to watch the process of receiving, labeling and sectioning the core one more time. The co-chief scientists, Heiko Pälike and Hiroshi Nishi, congratulated the rig floor crew for a successful operation. [More] rss.sciam.com |
How to Sell Cap & Trade The American public is eager for dramatic change in U.S. energy policy, but Democratic efforts to sell their agenda on energy and climate change aren't reaching voters, a prominent Democratic Party polling firm is warning. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Shrimpy Sea Life May Mix Oceans as Much as Tides and Winds Do Here's a puzzle: A child pees in the shallow end of a pool and then swims to the deep end. Which end should you avoid? Conventional wisdom holds that the deep end would be safe (until the pool's normal circulation mixed the contaminated water throughout). But according to new research--and old observations by Charles Darwin, the grandson of the more famous Charles Darwin--it would be wise to avoid most of the child's path through the water. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Underwater Suffering: Do Fish Feel Pain? Many a seafood fan has parroted the popular idea that fish and crustaceans do not feel pain. New research, however, suggests that they may, revealing that their nervous system may be more complex than we thought--and our own awareness of pain may be much more evolutionarily ancient than suspected. [For more on pain, see the special section beginning here .]Joseph Garner of Purdue University and his colleagues in Norway report that the way goldfish respond to pain shows that these animals do experience pain consciously, rather than simply reacting with a reflex--such as when a person recoils after stepping on a tack (jerking away before he or she is aware of the sensation). In the study, the biologists found that goldfish injected with saline solution and exposed to a painful level of heat in a test tank “hovered” in one spot when placed back in their home tank. Garner labels that “fearful, avoidance behavior.” Such behavior, he says, is cognitive--not reflexive. Other fish, after receiving a morphine injection that blocked the impact of pain, showed no such fearful behavior. [More] rss.sciam.com |
In the Dark: Unusual Deep-Sea Species Documented [Slide Show] The darkest reaches of the ocean have long been thought of as a desolate biome. But as researchers send equipment down to document these mysterious depths, they are quickly learning not only that it is teaming with life, but also that it boasts surprising diversity. [More] rss.sciam.com |