Scientists have found a fossil of a "Monster" fish-like reptile in a 150 million-year-old Jurassic graveyard on an Arctic island off Norway.
The Norwegian researchers discovered remains of a total of 28 plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs -- top marine predators when dinosaurs dominated on land -- at a site on the island of Spitsbergen, about 1,300 km (800 miles) from the North Pole.
"One of them was this gigantic monster, with vertebrae the size of dinner plates and teeth the size of cucumbers," Joern Hurum, an assistant professor at the University of Oslo, told Reuters on Thursday.
"We believe the skeleton is intact and that it's about 10 meters (33 feet) long," he told Reuters of the pliosaur, a type of plesiosaur with a short neck and massive skull. The team dubbed the specimen "The Monster."
Such pliosaurs are known from remains in countries including Britain and Argentina but no complete skeleton has been found, he said. The skull of the pliosaur -- perhaps a distant relative to Scotland's mythical Loch Ness monster -- was among the biggest on record.
Scientists would return next year to try to excavate the entire fossil, buried on a hillside.
Plesiosaurs, which swam with two sets of flippers, often preyed on smaller dolphin-like ichthyosaurs. All went extinct when the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago.
The scientists rated the fossil graveyard "one of the most important new sites for marine reptiles to have been discovered in the last several decades."
"It is rare to find so many fossils in the same place -- carcasses are food for other animals and usually get torn apart," Hurum said.
Hurum reckoned the reptiles had not all died at the same time in some Jurassic-era cataclysm but had died over thousands of years in the same area, then become preserved in what was apparently a deep layer of black mud on the seabed.
At that time, the area of Spitsbergen under water several hundred km (miles) further south, around the latitude of Anchorage or Oslo.
Hurum said the presence of fossils was also an interesting pointer for geologists hunting for oil and gas deposits in the Barents Sea to the east. "A skull we found even smells of petrol," he said.
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Mexican archeologists make major Aztec find
Mexican archeologists have made the most significant Aztec find in decades, unearthing a 15th century altar and a huge stone slab at a ruined temple in the throbbing heart of Mexico City.
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The works were uncovered last weekend at the Aztec empire's main Templo Mayor temple, near the central Zocalo square, which was used for worship and human sacrifice.
It was the most meaningful find since electricity workers stumbled upon an eight-tonne carving of an Aztec goddess at the same site in 1978.
"It is a very important discovery, the biggest we have made in 28 years. It will allow us to find out a lot more," Mexico City's mayor, Alejandro Encinas, said on Wednesday.
The altar has a frieze of the rain god Tlaloc and an agricultural deity.
Archeologists are still unearthing the 11-foot (3.5-m) monolith, which they think might be part of an entrance to an underground chamber.
At the site, excavators with pick axes and shovels hacked at the earth above the monolith while groups of archeologists, government officials and reporters waited around the deep pit.
"The importance of the monolith is what we are going to discover...It's likely that it is part of a chamber, of some offering. We won't know until we get close. First we have to get the stone out," said Alberto Diaz, a member of the archeological team.
The Aztecs, a warlike and deeply religious people who built monumental works, ruled an empire stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and encompassing much of modern-day central Mexico.
Their often bloody reign began in the 14th century and ended when they were subjugated in 1521 by the Spanish led by Hernan Cortes.
TALE OF THREE CITIES
The Aztecs began building the Templo Mayor pyramid-shaped temple in 1375. Its ruins are now only yards from downtown's choking traffic.
The temple was a center of human sacrifice. At one ceremony in 1487, historians say tens of thousands of victims were sacrificed, their hearts ripped out.
Spanish conquistadors destroyed the temple when they razed the city and used its stones to help build their own capital.
Now the site is surrounded by Spanish colonial buildings like Mexico City's cathedral and the historical National Palace as well as convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.
"Really, when we begin to excavate, we realize that we are in three different times, three different cities: You see the current city, the colonial city and the pre-Hispanic city," said Diaz.
By Gunther Hamm
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The works were uncovered last weekend at the Aztec empire's main Templo Mayor temple, near the central Zocalo square, which was used for worship and human sacrifice.
It was the most meaningful find since electricity workers stumbled upon an eight-tonne carving of an Aztec goddess at the same site in 1978.
"It is a very important discovery, the biggest we have made in 28 years. It will allow us to find out a lot more," Mexico City's mayor, Alejandro Encinas, said on Wednesday.
The altar has a frieze of the rain god Tlaloc and an agricultural deity.
Archeologists are still unearthing the 11-foot (3.5-m) monolith, which they think might be part of an entrance to an underground chamber.
At the site, excavators with pick axes and shovels hacked at the earth above the monolith while groups of archeologists, government officials and reporters waited around the deep pit.
"The importance of the monolith is what we are going to discover...It's likely that it is part of a chamber, of some offering. We won't know until we get close. First we have to get the stone out," said Alberto Diaz, a member of the archeological team.
The Aztecs, a warlike and deeply religious people who built monumental works, ruled an empire stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and encompassing much of modern-day central Mexico.
Their often bloody reign began in the 14th century and ended when they were subjugated in 1521 by the Spanish led by Hernan Cortes.
TALE OF THREE CITIES
The Aztecs began building the Templo Mayor pyramid-shaped temple in 1375. Its ruins are now only yards from downtown's choking traffic.
The temple was a center of human sacrifice. At one ceremony in 1487, historians say tens of thousands of victims were sacrificed, their hearts ripped out.
Spanish conquistadors destroyed the temple when they razed the city and used its stones to help build their own capital.
Now the site is surrounded by Spanish colonial buildings like Mexico City's cathedral and the historical National Palace as well as convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.
"Really, when we begin to excavate, we realize that we are in three different times, three different cities: You see the current city, the colonial city and the pre-Hispanic city," said Diaz.
By Gunther Hamm
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Genetic code, DNA, is copied by an Enzyme
this year's winner of the 2006 Nobel Chemistry Prize, has been immersed in research since childhood and comes from a family that lives and breathes science.
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Kornberg is not a stranger to the Nobels either. In 1959, as a wide-eyed 12-year-old, he accompanied his father Arthur to Stockholm to see him receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
At the time of his father's award, Kornberg junior was already interested in science.
"Science was part of our conversations at the dinner table and part of our afternoon and weekend activities ... and the joy of science was completely natural for me and my brothers," Kornberg once told a science journal.
Arthur Kornberg, now in his 80s, was honoured for advancing understanding on how genetic information is transferred from a mother cell to its daughters.
The younger Kornberg's achievement was to portray how the genetic code, DNA, is copied by an enzyme and the copy is then stored in the outer part of the cell, in a process called transcription.
His mother Sylvy Ruth Levy was also a biochemist of note and contributed significantly to her husband's discovery of DNA polymerase, the enzyme that assembles the building blocks into DNA.
The day after her husband was awarded the Nobel prize, she was quoted in a newspaper as saying "I was robbed".
Born in Saint-Louis in 1947, Roger D. Kornberg is the eldest of three brothers.
Thomas is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California in San Francisco.
Even Kenneth, the youngest of the trio, has not entirely escaped the science bug. Although an architect, he specialises in laboratory design.
Roger Kornberg gained a degree in chemistry at Havard and earned his PhD, also in chemistry, from Stanford University.
Following postdoctoral work at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge, England, in 1978, he joined the staff there.
He later became part of the faculty in the Department of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School in the United States. He returned to Stanford in 1984, where he worked as professor of structural biology until 2002.
The following year he took up his current post as professor of medicine at Stanford University Medical School in California.
Kornberg is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Kornberg is not a stranger to the Nobels either. In 1959, as a wide-eyed 12-year-old, he accompanied his father Arthur to Stockholm to see him receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
At the time of his father's award, Kornberg junior was already interested in science.
"Science was part of our conversations at the dinner table and part of our afternoon and weekend activities ... and the joy of science was completely natural for me and my brothers," Kornberg once told a science journal.
Arthur Kornberg, now in his 80s, was honoured for advancing understanding on how genetic information is transferred from a mother cell to its daughters.
The younger Kornberg's achievement was to portray how the genetic code, DNA, is copied by an enzyme and the copy is then stored in the outer part of the cell, in a process called transcription.
His mother Sylvy Ruth Levy was also a biochemist of note and contributed significantly to her husband's discovery of DNA polymerase, the enzyme that assembles the building blocks into DNA.
The day after her husband was awarded the Nobel prize, she was quoted in a newspaper as saying "I was robbed".
Born in Saint-Louis in 1947, Roger D. Kornberg is the eldest of three brothers.
Thomas is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California in San Francisco.
Even Kenneth, the youngest of the trio, has not entirely escaped the science bug. Although an architect, he specialises in laboratory design.
Roger Kornberg gained a degree in chemistry at Havard and earned his PhD, also in chemistry, from Stanford University.
Following postdoctoral work at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge, England, in 1978, he joined the staff there.
He later became part of the faculty in the Department of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School in the United States. He returned to Stanford in 1984, where he worked as professor of structural biology until 2002.
The following year he took up his current post as professor of medicine at Stanford University Medical School in California.
Kornberg is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Nobel Prize in Physics : The Origin of the Universe and How it grew into Galaxies
Two American astronomers who uncovered evidence about the origin of the universe and how it grew into galaxies were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics today.
The researchers, John Mather of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and George Smoot of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, will split the prize of 10 million Swedish kroners, about $1.37 million.
Dr. Mather and Dr. Smoot led a team of more than 1,000 scientists, engineers and technicians that built and launched the Cosmic Background Explorer, or Cobe, satellite in 1989 to study a haze of microwave radiation that is believed to be a remnant of the explosion that, according to the Big Bang theory, started the universe.
Cobe’s measurements of the temperature and distribution of the microwaves, including the detection of tantalizingly faint irregularities from which things like galaxies could have grown, were a resounding confirmation of the theory of a universe that was born in a terrific explosion of space and time 14 billion years ago and in which the ordinary matter that makes up stars and people is overwhelmed by some mysterious “dark matter.”
“What we have found is evidence for the birth of the universe and its evolution,” Dr. Smoot said in a press conference about the results in 1992. About a map showing the splotchy seeds of galaxy formation, he famously said, “If you are religious, it is like looking at God.”
Today’s announcement delighted astronomers who had long anticipated a Nobel for the Cobe work. In the wake of that research wake came a wave of Big Bang theorizing and a series of balloon and satellite experiments to provide increasingly detailed data on the cosmic microwaves, including NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Project, or WMAP, which is still orbiting and beaming down data contributing to the emerging picture of a preposterous universe, full of dark energy pushing it apart, as well as dark matter.
James Peebles, a Princeton cosmologist, said, “Cobe was deeply important: those two measurements set cosmology on the track to our present well-based theory of the expanding universe.”
Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, said the Cobe measurements had ushered in an era of “precision cosmology” that continues to this day. “This is likely to the first of a number of prizes in cosmology in this golden age we find ourselves in.”
By DENNIS OVERBYE
The researchers, John Mather of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and George Smoot of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, will split the prize of 10 million Swedish kroners, about $1.37 million.
Dr. Mather and Dr. Smoot led a team of more than 1,000 scientists, engineers and technicians that built and launched the Cosmic Background Explorer, or Cobe, satellite in 1989 to study a haze of microwave radiation that is believed to be a remnant of the explosion that, according to the Big Bang theory, started the universe.
Cobe’s measurements of the temperature and distribution of the microwaves, including the detection of tantalizingly faint irregularities from which things like galaxies could have grown, were a resounding confirmation of the theory of a universe that was born in a terrific explosion of space and time 14 billion years ago and in which the ordinary matter that makes up stars and people is overwhelmed by some mysterious “dark matter.”
“What we have found is evidence for the birth of the universe and its evolution,” Dr. Smoot said in a press conference about the results in 1992. About a map showing the splotchy seeds of galaxy formation, he famously said, “If you are religious, it is like looking at God.”
Today’s announcement delighted astronomers who had long anticipated a Nobel for the Cobe work. In the wake of that research wake came a wave of Big Bang theorizing and a series of balloon and satellite experiments to provide increasingly detailed data on the cosmic microwaves, including NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Project, or WMAP, which is still orbiting and beaming down data contributing to the emerging picture of a preposterous universe, full of dark energy pushing it apart, as well as dark matter.
James Peebles, a Princeton cosmologist, said, “Cobe was deeply important: those two measurements set cosmology on the track to our present well-based theory of the expanding universe.”
Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, said the Cobe measurements had ushered in an era of “precision cosmology” that continues to this day. “This is likely to the first of a number of prizes in cosmology in this golden age we find ourselves in.”
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Monday, October 02, 2006
Nobel Prize in physiology or Medicine: Turn off the Effect of Specific Genes
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday for discovering a way to turn off the effect of specific genes.
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"RNA interference" is already being widely used in basic science as a method to study the function of genes and it is being studied as a treatment for virus infections, heart diseases, cancer and several other conditions.
Fire, of Stanford University, and Mello, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, published their seminal work in 1998.
RNA interference occurs naturally in plants, animals, and humans. The Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which awarded the prize, said it is important for regulating the activity of genes and helps defend against viral infection.
"This year's Nobel laureates have discovered a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information," the institute said.
Genes produce their effect by sending molecules called messenger RNA to the protein-making machinery of a cell. In RNA interference, certain molecules trigger the destruction of RNA from a particular gene, so that no protein is produced. Thus the gene is effectively silenced.
Fire, who conducted the research while at the Carnegie Institution, said he was honored that the work "has received such positive attention."
"Science is a group effort. Please recognize that the recent progress in the field of RNA-based gene silencing has involved original scientific inquiry from research groups around the world," he said in a statement released by the Carnegie Institution.
The announcement opened this year's series of prize announcements. It will be followed by Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics.
Last year's medicine prize went to Australians Barry J. Marshall and Robin Warren for discovering that bacteria, not stress, causes ulcers.
The Nobel committees do not reveal who has been nominated for the awards, but that does not stop experts and Nobel-watchers from speculating on potential winners.
Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in his will in the categories of literature, peace, medicine, physics and chemistry. The economics prize is technically not a Nobel but a 1968 creation of Sweden's central bank.
Winners receive a check of $1.4 million, handshakes with Scandinavian royalty, and a banquet on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896. All prizes are handed out in Stockholm except for the peace prize, which is presented in Oslo.
By MATT MOORE and KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writers
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"RNA interference" is already being widely used in basic science as a method to study the function of genes and it is being studied as a treatment for virus infections, heart diseases, cancer and several other conditions.
Fire, of Stanford University, and Mello, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, published their seminal work in 1998.
RNA interference occurs naturally in plants, animals, and humans. The Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which awarded the prize, said it is important for regulating the activity of genes and helps defend against viral infection.
"This year's Nobel laureates have discovered a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information," the institute said.
Genes produce their effect by sending molecules called messenger RNA to the protein-making machinery of a cell. In RNA interference, certain molecules trigger the destruction of RNA from a particular gene, so that no protein is produced. Thus the gene is effectively silenced.
Fire, who conducted the research while at the Carnegie Institution, said he was honored that the work "has received such positive attention."
"Science is a group effort. Please recognize that the recent progress in the field of RNA-based gene silencing has involved original scientific inquiry from research groups around the world," he said in a statement released by the Carnegie Institution.
The announcement opened this year's series of prize announcements. It will be followed by Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics.
Last year's medicine prize went to Australians Barry J. Marshall and Robin Warren for discovering that bacteria, not stress, causes ulcers.
The Nobel committees do not reveal who has been nominated for the awards, but that does not stop experts and Nobel-watchers from speculating on potential winners.
Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in his will in the categories of literature, peace, medicine, physics and chemistry. The economics prize is technically not a Nobel but a 1968 creation of Sweden's central bank.
Winners receive a check of $1.4 million, handshakes with Scandinavian royalty, and a banquet on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896. All prizes are handed out in Stockholm except for the peace prize, which is presented in Oslo.
By MATT MOORE and KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writers
Friday, September 22, 2006
Remains of earliest child discovered in Ethiopia
A 3.3 million-year-old skeleton of the earliest child ever found shows the ancient ancestor of modern humans walked upright but may also have climbed trees, scientists said on Wednesday.
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They found the well-preserved remains of a three-year-old girl of the species Australopithecus afarensis -- which includes the fossil skeleton known as "Lucy" -- in the Dikika area of Ethiopia, 400 kms northeast of the capital Addis Ababa.
"It represents the earliest and most complete partial skeleton of a child ever found in the history of paeleoanthropology," said Dr Zeresenay Alemseged, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
The skull, torso and upper and lower limbs, including the hand, show both human and ape-like features. The state of the ancient bones suggest she was buried in a flood which may also have caused her death.
The remains provide the first evidence of what babies of early human ancestors looked like. The nearly complete skeleton will also provide information about the child's height and structure.
"This child will help us understand a lot about the species to which it belongs," said Alemseged, leader of the international team of scientists who reported the findings in the journal Nature.
"The lower part of the body, which includes the foot, the shin bone and the thigh bone clearly shows us that this species was an upright walking creature," he told Reuters.
But some of the features from the upper part of the body, including the shoulder blade and arms are more ape-like. The fingers are long and curved which suggest she might have been able to swing through trees.
"The finding is the most complete hominid skeleton ever found in the world," Zeresenay Alemseged, who is head of the Paleoanthropological Research Team, told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
He said the fossil was older than the 3.2-million-year-old remains of "Lucy" discovered in 1974 and described by scientists as one of the world's greatest archaeological finds.
"The new bones belong to a three-year-old girl who lived 3.3 million years ago, 150,000 years before Lucy," Zeresenay said.
The fossil has been named "Selam," which means peace in Ethiopia's official Amharic language.
JUVENILE "LUCY"
Dr Simon Underdown of Oxford Brookes University in England described it as a massively exciting discovery of a juvenile "Lucy." "This tremendous fossil will make us challenge many of the ideas we have about how and why we came to walk on two feet," he said.
An analysis of the sediment in which the remains were found enabled researchers to build a picture of the type of environment in which the child lived.
It was a lush area with flowing water, forests and grassland which was also affected by volcanic eruptions. The range of habitats was suitable for hippos, crocodiles and relatives of the wildebeest.
"We can see from the sediment that the region was very much characterized by a mosaic of environment that ranged from forests and woodlands near the rivers, to seasonally flooded grasslands to a flood plain that would have supported more open vegetation," said Dr Jonathan Wynn of the University of South Florida who dated the sediments surrounding the remains.
By Patricia Reaney
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They found the well-preserved remains of a three-year-old girl of the species Australopithecus afarensis -- which includes the fossil skeleton known as "Lucy" -- in the Dikika area of Ethiopia, 400 kms northeast of the capital Addis Ababa.
"It represents the earliest and most complete partial skeleton of a child ever found in the history of paeleoanthropology," said Dr Zeresenay Alemseged, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
The skull, torso and upper and lower limbs, including the hand, show both human and ape-like features. The state of the ancient bones suggest she was buried in a flood which may also have caused her death.
The remains provide the first evidence of what babies of early human ancestors looked like. The nearly complete skeleton will also provide information about the child's height and structure.
"This child will help us understand a lot about the species to which it belongs," said Alemseged, leader of the international team of scientists who reported the findings in the journal Nature.
"The lower part of the body, which includes the foot, the shin bone and the thigh bone clearly shows us that this species was an upright walking creature," he told Reuters.
But some of the features from the upper part of the body, including the shoulder blade and arms are more ape-like. The fingers are long and curved which suggest she might have been able to swing through trees.
"The finding is the most complete hominid skeleton ever found in the world," Zeresenay Alemseged, who is head of the Paleoanthropological Research Team, told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
He said the fossil was older than the 3.2-million-year-old remains of "Lucy" discovered in 1974 and described by scientists as one of the world's greatest archaeological finds.
"The new bones belong to a three-year-old girl who lived 3.3 million years ago, 150,000 years before Lucy," Zeresenay said.
The fossil has been named "Selam," which means peace in Ethiopia's official Amharic language.
JUVENILE "LUCY"
Dr Simon Underdown of Oxford Brookes University in England described it as a massively exciting discovery of a juvenile "Lucy." "This tremendous fossil will make us challenge many of the ideas we have about how and why we came to walk on two feet," he said.
An analysis of the sediment in which the remains were found enabled researchers to build a picture of the type of environment in which the child lived.
It was a lush area with flowing water, forests and grassland which was also affected by volcanic eruptions. The range of habitats was suitable for hippos, crocodiles and relatives of the wildebeest.
"We can see from the sediment that the region was very much characterized by a mosaic of environment that ranged from forests and woodlands near the rivers, to seasonally flooded grasslands to a flood plain that would have supported more open vegetation," said Dr Jonathan Wynn of the University of South Florida who dated the sediments surrounding the remains.
By Patricia Reaney
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Timeline: 50 Years of Hard Drives
Over the past five decades, hard drives have come a long way. Travel through time with us as we chronicle 50 milestones in hard-drive development--from product firsts to new technologies, and everything in between.
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1956: IBM ships the first hard drive, the RAMAC 305, which holds 5MB of data at $10,000 a megabyte. It is as big as two refrigerators and uses 50 24-inch platters. (For the full story and interviews with key players, read "The Hard Drive Turns 50.")
1961: IBM invents heads for disk drives that "fly" on a cushion of air or on "air bearings."
1963: IBM comes up with the first removable hard drive, the 1311, which has six 14-inch platters and holds 2.6MB.
1966: IBM introduces the first drive using a wound-coil ferrite recording head.
1970: General Digital Corporation (renamed Western Digital in 1971) is founded in California.
1973: IBM announces the 3340, the first modern "Winchester" hard drive, which has a sealed assembly, lubricated spindles, and low-mass heads.
1978: First RAID (Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks) technology patent is filed. (Read "How to Buy a Hard Drive: Key Features" for a description of this technology.)
1979: A group headed by Al Shugart founds disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology.
1979: IBM's 3370 uses seven 14-inch platters to store 571MB, the first drive to use thin-film heads.
1979: IBM's 62 PC, "Piccolo," uses six 8-inch platters to store 64MB.
1979: Seagate introduces the ST-506 drive and interface, which is then used in all early microcomputer implementations.
1980: IBM introduces the first gigabyte hard drive. It is the size of a refrigerator, weighs about 550 pounds, and costs $40,000.
1980: Seagate releases the first 5.25-inch hard disk.
1981: Shugart Associates joins NCR to develop an intelligent disk drive interface called the Shugart Associates Systems Interface (SASI), a predecessor to SCSI (Small Computer System Interface).
1982: Western Digital announces the first single-chip Winchester hard drive controller (WD1010).
1983: Rodime releases the first 3.5-inch hard drive; the RO352 includes two platters and stores 10MB.
1984: Western Digital makes the first Winchester hard drive controller card for the IBM PC/AT--and sets an industry standard.
1985: Control Data, Compaq Computer, and Western Digital collaborate to develop the 40-pin IDE interface. IDE stands for Intelligent Drive Electronics, more commonly known as Integrated Drive Electronics.
1985: Imprimis integrates the first hard drive controller into a drive.
1985: Quantum introduces the Plus Hardcard, which allows the addition of a hard drive without an available bay or a separate controller card.
1985: Western Digital produces the first ESDI (Enhanced Small Device Interface) controller board, which allows larger capacity and faster hard drives to be used in PCs.
1986: The official SCSI spec is released; Apple Computer's Mac Plus is one of the first computers to use it.
1988: Prairie Tek releases the 220, the first 2.5-inch hard drive designed for the burgeoning notebook computer market; it uses two platters to store 20MB.
1988: Connor introduces the first 1-inch-high 3.5-inch hard drive, which is still the common form factor. Before this, hard drives were either full height or half-height.
1988: Western Digital buys the disk-drive assets of Tandon Corporation with an eye to manufacturing IDE drives.
1990: Western Digital introduces its first 3.5-inch Caviar IDE hard drive.
1991: IBM introduces the 0663 Corsair, the first disk drive with thin film magnetoresistive (MR) heads. It has eight 3.5-inch platters and stores 1GB. (The MR head was first introduced on an IBM tape drive in 1984.)
1991: Integral Peripherals' 1820 Mustang uses one 1.8-inch platter to store 21MB.
1992: Seagate comes out with the first shock-sensing 2.5-inch hard drive.
1992: Seagate is first to market with a 7200-revolutions-per-minute hard drive, the 2.1GB Barracuda.
1992: Hewlett-Packard's C3013A Kitty Hawk drive uses two 1.3-inch platters to store 2.1GB.
1994: Western Digital develops Enhanced IDE, an improved hard drive interface that breaks the 528MB-throughput barrier. EIDE also allows for attachment of optical and tape drives.
1996: IBM stores 1 billion bits per square inch on a platter.
1996: Seagate introduces its Cheetah family, the first 10,000-rpm hard drives.
1997: IBM introduces the first drive using giant magneto resistive (GMR) heads, the 16.8GB Deskstar 16GP Titan, which stores 16.8GB on five 3.5-inch platters.
1998: IBM announces its Microdrive, the smallest hard drive to date. It fits 340MB on a single 1-inch platter.
2000: Maxtor buys competitor Quantum's hard drive business. At the time, Quantum is the number-two drive maker, behind Seagate; this acquisition makes Maxtor the world's largest hard drive manufacturer.
2000: Seagate produces the first 15,000-rpm hard drive, the Cheetah X15.
2002: Seagate scores another first with the Barracuda ATA V Serial ATA hard drive.
2002: A demonstration by Seagate yields a perpendicular magnetic recording areal density of 100 gigabits per square inch.
2002: Among its many 2002 technology accomplishments, Seagate successfully demos Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording. HAMR records magnetically using laser-thermal assistance and ultimately aims to increase areal density by more than 100 times over 2002 levels.
2003: IBM sells its Data Storage Division to Hitachi, thus ending its involvement in developing and marketing disk drive technology.
2003: Western Digital introduces the first 10,000-rpm SATA hard drive, the 37GB Raptor, which is designed for the enterprise, but which gamers quickly learn is a hot desktop performer in dual-drive RAID setups.
2004: The first 0.85-inch hard drive, Toshiba's MK2001MTN, debuts. It stores 2GB on a single platter.
2005: Toshiba introduces its MK4007 GAL, which stores 40GB on one 1.8-inch platter, fielding the first hard drive using perpendicular magnetic recording.
2006: Seagate completes the acquisition of Maxtor, further narrowing the field of hard drive manufacturers.
2006: Seagate's Momentus 5400.3 notebook hard drive is the first 2.5-inch model to use perpendicular magnetic recording, which boosts its capacity up to 160GB.
2006: Seagate releases the Barracuda 7200.10, at 750GB the largest hard drive to date.
2006: Western Digital launches its 10,000-rpm Raptor X SATA hard drive, boosting its capacity to 150GB and placing a flashy transparent window that allows specially designed computer cases to showcase its inner workings.
2006: Cornice and Seagate each announce a 1-inch hard drive that holds 12GB. The drives are slated to ship in the third quarter of 2006.
Rex Farrance, PC World
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1956: IBM ships the first hard drive, the RAMAC 305, which holds 5MB of data at $10,000 a megabyte. It is as big as two refrigerators and uses 50 24-inch platters. (For the full story and interviews with key players, read "The Hard Drive Turns 50.")
1961: IBM invents heads for disk drives that "fly" on a cushion of air or on "air bearings."
1963: IBM comes up with the first removable hard drive, the 1311, which has six 14-inch platters and holds 2.6MB.
1966: IBM introduces the first drive using a wound-coil ferrite recording head.
1970: General Digital Corporation (renamed Western Digital in 1971) is founded in California.
1973: IBM announces the 3340, the first modern "Winchester" hard drive, which has a sealed assembly, lubricated spindles, and low-mass heads.
1978: First RAID (Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks) technology patent is filed. (Read "How to Buy a Hard Drive: Key Features" for a description of this technology.)
1979: A group headed by Al Shugart founds disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology.
1979: IBM's 3370 uses seven 14-inch platters to store 571MB, the first drive to use thin-film heads.
1979: IBM's 62 PC, "Piccolo," uses six 8-inch platters to store 64MB.
1979: Seagate introduces the ST-506 drive and interface, which is then used in all early microcomputer implementations.
1980: IBM introduces the first gigabyte hard drive. It is the size of a refrigerator, weighs about 550 pounds, and costs $40,000.
1980: Seagate releases the first 5.25-inch hard disk.
1981: Shugart Associates joins NCR to develop an intelligent disk drive interface called the Shugart Associates Systems Interface (SASI), a predecessor to SCSI (Small Computer System Interface).
1982: Western Digital announces the first single-chip Winchester hard drive controller (WD1010).
1983: Rodime releases the first 3.5-inch hard drive; the RO352 includes two platters and stores 10MB.
1984: Western Digital makes the first Winchester hard drive controller card for the IBM PC/AT--and sets an industry standard.
1985: Control Data, Compaq Computer, and Western Digital collaborate to develop the 40-pin IDE interface. IDE stands for Intelligent Drive Electronics, more commonly known as Integrated Drive Electronics.
1985: Imprimis integrates the first hard drive controller into a drive.
1985: Quantum introduces the Plus Hardcard, which allows the addition of a hard drive without an available bay or a separate controller card.
1985: Western Digital produces the first ESDI (Enhanced Small Device Interface) controller board, which allows larger capacity and faster hard drives to be used in PCs.
1986: The official SCSI spec is released; Apple Computer's Mac Plus is one of the first computers to use it.
1988: Prairie Tek releases the 220, the first 2.5-inch hard drive designed for the burgeoning notebook computer market; it uses two platters to store 20MB.
1988: Connor introduces the first 1-inch-high 3.5-inch hard drive, which is still the common form factor. Before this, hard drives were either full height or half-height.
1988: Western Digital buys the disk-drive assets of Tandon Corporation with an eye to manufacturing IDE drives.
1990: Western Digital introduces its first 3.5-inch Caviar IDE hard drive.
1991: IBM introduces the 0663 Corsair, the first disk drive with thin film magnetoresistive (MR) heads. It has eight 3.5-inch platters and stores 1GB. (The MR head was first introduced on an IBM tape drive in 1984.)
1991: Integral Peripherals' 1820 Mustang uses one 1.8-inch platter to store 21MB.
1992: Seagate comes out with the first shock-sensing 2.5-inch hard drive.
1992: Seagate is first to market with a 7200-revolutions-per-minute hard drive, the 2.1GB Barracuda.
1992: Hewlett-Packard's C3013A Kitty Hawk drive uses two 1.3-inch platters to store 2.1GB.
1994: Western Digital develops Enhanced IDE, an improved hard drive interface that breaks the 528MB-throughput barrier. EIDE also allows for attachment of optical and tape drives.
1996: IBM stores 1 billion bits per square inch on a platter.
1996: Seagate introduces its Cheetah family, the first 10,000-rpm hard drives.
1997: IBM introduces the first drive using giant magneto resistive (GMR) heads, the 16.8GB Deskstar 16GP Titan, which stores 16.8GB on five 3.5-inch platters.
1998: IBM announces its Microdrive, the smallest hard drive to date. It fits 340MB on a single 1-inch platter.
2000: Maxtor buys competitor Quantum's hard drive business. At the time, Quantum is the number-two drive maker, behind Seagate; this acquisition makes Maxtor the world's largest hard drive manufacturer.
2000: Seagate produces the first 15,000-rpm hard drive, the Cheetah X15.
2002: Seagate scores another first with the Barracuda ATA V Serial ATA hard drive.
2002: A demonstration by Seagate yields a perpendicular magnetic recording areal density of 100 gigabits per square inch.
2002: Among its many 2002 technology accomplishments, Seagate successfully demos Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording. HAMR records magnetically using laser-thermal assistance and ultimately aims to increase areal density by more than 100 times over 2002 levels.
2003: IBM sells its Data Storage Division to Hitachi, thus ending its involvement in developing and marketing disk drive technology.
2003: Western Digital introduces the first 10,000-rpm SATA hard drive, the 37GB Raptor, which is designed for the enterprise, but which gamers quickly learn is a hot desktop performer in dual-drive RAID setups.
2004: The first 0.85-inch hard drive, Toshiba's MK2001MTN, debuts. It stores 2GB on a single platter.
2005: Toshiba introduces its MK4007 GAL, which stores 40GB on one 1.8-inch platter, fielding the first hard drive using perpendicular magnetic recording.
2006: Seagate completes the acquisition of Maxtor, further narrowing the field of hard drive manufacturers.
2006: Seagate's Momentus 5400.3 notebook hard drive is the first 2.5-inch model to use perpendicular magnetic recording, which boosts its capacity up to 160GB.
2006: Seagate releases the Barracuda 7200.10, at 750GB the largest hard drive to date.
2006: Western Digital launches its 10,000-rpm Raptor X SATA hard drive, boosting its capacity to 150GB and placing a flashy transparent window that allows specially designed computer cases to showcase its inner workings.
2006: Cornice and Seagate each announce a 1-inch hard drive that holds 12GB. The drives are slated to ship in the third quarter of 2006.
Rex Farrance, PC World
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Russian refuses math's highest honor
A reclusive Russian won the math world's highest honor Tuesday for solving a problem that has stumped some of the discipline's greatest minds for a century — but he refused the award.
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Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old native of St. Petersburg, won a Fields Medal — often described as math's equivalent of the Nobel prize — for a breakthrough in the study of shapes that experts say might help scientists figure out the shape of the universe.
John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union, said that he had urged Perelman to accept the medal, but Perelman said he felt isolated from the mathematics community and "does not want to be seen as its figurehead." Ball offered no further details of the conversation.
Besides shunning the award for his work in topology, Perelman also seems uninterested, according to colleagues, in a separate $1 million prize he could win for proving the Poincare conjecture, a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space.
The award, given out every four years, was announced at the mathematical union's International Congress of Mathematicians. Three other mathematicians — Russian Andrei Okounkov, Frenchman Wendelin Werner and Australian Terence Tao — won Fields medals in other areas of mathematics.
They received their awards from King Juan Carlos to loud applause from delegates to the conference. But Perelman was not present.
"I regret that Dr. Perelman has declined to accept the medal," Ball said.
Perelman's work is still under review, but no one has found any serious flaw in it, the math union said in a statement.
The Fields medal was founded in 1936 and named after Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields. It come with a $13,400 stipend.
Perelman is eligible for far more money from a private foundation called The Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass.
In 2000, the institute announced bounties for seven historic, unsolved math problems, including the Poincare conjecture.
If his proof stands the test of time, Perelman will win all or part of the $1 million prize money. That prize should be announced in about two years.
The Poincare conjecture essentially says that in three dimensions you cannot transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it, although any shape without a hole can be stretched or shrunk into a sphere.
Proving the conjecture — an exercise in acrobatics with mindboggling imaginary doughnuts and balls — is anything but trivial. Colleagues say Perelman's work gives mathematical descriptions of what the universe might look like and promises exciting applications in physics and other fields.
"It is very important indeed because it really gives us an insight into geometry and in particular the geometry of the space we live in," said Oxford University math professor Marcus du Sautoy. "It does not say what the shape (of the universe) is. It just says, 'look, these are the things it could be.'"
Academics have been studying Perelman's proof since he left the first of three papers on it on a math Web site in Nov. 2002. Normal procedure would have been to seek publication in a peer-approved journal.
Three separate teams have presented papers or books explaining the details of Perelman's work, which draws heavily from a technique developed by another mathematician, Richard Hamilton of Columbia University. The Clay Mathematics Institute says the two men could conceivably share the Poincare money.
Ball said he asked Perelman if he would accept that money. Perelman said that if he won, he would talk to the Clay institute.
Perelman is believed to live with his mother in St. Petersburg. Repeated calls over many days to a telephone number listed as Perelman's went unanswered. Acquaintances refused to give out his address or the number they use to contact him, saying he did not want to talk to the media.
By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer
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Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old native of St. Petersburg, won a Fields Medal — often described as math's equivalent of the Nobel prize — for a breakthrough in the study of shapes that experts say might help scientists figure out the shape of the universe.
John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union, said that he had urged Perelman to accept the medal, but Perelman said he felt isolated from the mathematics community and "does not want to be seen as its figurehead." Ball offered no further details of the conversation.
Besides shunning the award for his work in topology, Perelman also seems uninterested, according to colleagues, in a separate $1 million prize he could win for proving the Poincare conjecture, a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space.
The award, given out every four years, was announced at the mathematical union's International Congress of Mathematicians. Three other mathematicians — Russian Andrei Okounkov, Frenchman Wendelin Werner and Australian Terence Tao — won Fields medals in other areas of mathematics.
They received their awards from King Juan Carlos to loud applause from delegates to the conference. But Perelman was not present.
"I regret that Dr. Perelman has declined to accept the medal," Ball said.
Perelman's work is still under review, but no one has found any serious flaw in it, the math union said in a statement.
The Fields medal was founded in 1936 and named after Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields. It come with a $13,400 stipend.
Perelman is eligible for far more money from a private foundation called The Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass.
In 2000, the institute announced bounties for seven historic, unsolved math problems, including the Poincare conjecture.
If his proof stands the test of time, Perelman will win all or part of the $1 million prize money. That prize should be announced in about two years.
The Poincare conjecture essentially says that in three dimensions you cannot transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it, although any shape without a hole can be stretched or shrunk into a sphere.
Proving the conjecture — an exercise in acrobatics with mindboggling imaginary doughnuts and balls — is anything but trivial. Colleagues say Perelman's work gives mathematical descriptions of what the universe might look like and promises exciting applications in physics and other fields.
"It is very important indeed because it really gives us an insight into geometry and in particular the geometry of the space we live in," said Oxford University math professor Marcus du Sautoy. "It does not say what the shape (of the universe) is. It just says, 'look, these are the things it could be.'"
Academics have been studying Perelman's proof since he left the first of three papers on it on a math Web site in Nov. 2002. Normal procedure would have been to seek publication in a peer-approved journal.
Three separate teams have presented papers or books explaining the details of Perelman's work, which draws heavily from a technique developed by another mathematician, Richard Hamilton of Columbia University. The Clay Mathematics Institute says the two men could conceivably share the Poincare money.
Ball said he asked Perelman if he would accept that money. Perelman said that if he won, he would talk to the Clay institute.
Perelman is believed to live with his mother in St. Petersburg. Repeated calls over many days to a telephone number listed as Perelman's went unanswered. Acquaintances refused to give out his address or the number they use to contact him, saying he did not want to talk to the media.
By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Happy 25th Birthday to the PC
August 12, 1981. If you were ready to plunk down about $1,600, you could have owned a piece of history: The original IBM 5150 PC, generally considered to be the "first" PC.
At 25 years old, it's fun to look back on how far we've come. At 21 pounds (without drives), the 5150 wasn't much fatter than the PCs of today. Under the hood, things looked a bit different: 40KB of read-only memory and 16KB of RAM (upgradable to 256KB). You could configure the machine with one or two 160KB floppy drives, but a jack for a cassette player was included. Users certainly loved the "power-on automatic self-test of system components" and "built-in speaker for musical programming." And the keyboard (included) weighed six pounds. The 11.5-inch monochrome monitor, capable of displaying 25 lines of text, weighed in at 17 lbs. and supported both upper- and lowercase characters. Whoa.
Mock it if you must, but remember that the 5150 was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. The Apple II, released a few years earlier, came close, but it was more of a hacker toy and game-playing machine than something that would be at home in a business. The 5150 had built-in BASIC and Pascal support for writing programs, and it included a ton of business software: VisiCalc, Peachtree accounting software, and the EasyWriter word processor. And yes, Microsoft Adventure, a text-based adventure game, was available for diversions.
So that was 25 years ago. Looking ahead 25 years is almost impossible (and the further we get from the birth of the PC, the harder and harder it gets), but let's imagine. Magnetic storage will still be around, and your average hard drive will hold something in the vicinity of 30 terabytes (30,000GB) and cost $50 or less. CPU architecture will be vastly different. If we're still using silicon wafers, you could have a 32-core CPU with dedicated encryption and graphics components. In 25 years, graphics will have evolved to the point where Toy Story will seem quaint. You'll be able to compose a production like that in real time, and it'll look perfect on your wall-sized display. And dare we dream of something in true 3-D? Memo to Silicon Valley: Better get busy!
For another walk down memory lane (or rather, a walk down a lane filled with computers that predate the PC most of which you have probably never heard of), check out this page of personal computer milestones, dating back to 1950. And let's hear your memories of the early days of the personal computer. What was your first machine, and how did it change your life? The comments are open!
By Christopher Null
At 25 years old, it's fun to look back on how far we've come. At 21 pounds (without drives), the 5150 wasn't much fatter than the PCs of today. Under the hood, things looked a bit different: 40KB of read-only memory and 16KB of RAM (upgradable to 256KB). You could configure the machine with one or two 160KB floppy drives, but a jack for a cassette player was included. Users certainly loved the "power-on automatic self-test of system components" and "built-in speaker for musical programming." And the keyboard (included) weighed six pounds. The 11.5-inch monochrome monitor, capable of displaying 25 lines of text, weighed in at 17 lbs. and supported both upper- and lowercase characters. Whoa.
Mock it if you must, but remember that the 5150 was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. The Apple II, released a few years earlier, came close, but it was more of a hacker toy and game-playing machine than something that would be at home in a business. The 5150 had built-in BASIC and Pascal support for writing programs, and it included a ton of business software: VisiCalc, Peachtree accounting software, and the EasyWriter word processor. And yes, Microsoft Adventure, a text-based adventure game, was available for diversions.
So that was 25 years ago. Looking ahead 25 years is almost impossible (and the further we get from the birth of the PC, the harder and harder it gets), but let's imagine. Magnetic storage will still be around, and your average hard drive will hold something in the vicinity of 30 terabytes (30,000GB) and cost $50 or less. CPU architecture will be vastly different. If we're still using silicon wafers, you could have a 32-core CPU with dedicated encryption and graphics components. In 25 years, graphics will have evolved to the point where Toy Story will seem quaint. You'll be able to compose a production like that in real time, and it'll look perfect on your wall-sized display. And dare we dream of something in true 3-D? Memo to Silicon Valley: Better get busy!
For another walk down memory lane (or rather, a walk down a lane filled with computers that predate the PC most of which you have probably never heard of), check out this page of personal computer milestones, dating back to 1950. And let's hear your memories of the early days of the personal computer. What was your first machine, and how did it change your life? The comments are open!
By Christopher Null
Monday, August 07, 2006
Beams reveal Archimedes' hidden writings
Previously hidden writings of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being uncovered with powerful X-ray beams nearly 800 years after a Christian monk scrubbed off the text and wrote over it with prayers.
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Over the past week, researchers at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park have been using X-rays to decipher a fragile 10th century manuscript that contains the only copies of some of Archimedes' most important works.
The X-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment.
"We are gaining new insights into one of the founding fathers of western science," said William Noel, curator of manuscripts at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, which organized the effort. "It is the most difficult imaging challenge on any medieval document because the book is in such terrible condition."
Following a successful trial run last year, Stanford researchers invited X-ray scientists, rare document collectors and classics scholars to take part in the 11-day project.
It takes about 12 hours to scan one page using an X-ray beam about the size of a human hair, and researchers expect to decipher up to 15 pages that resisted modern imaging techniques. After each new page is decoded, it is posted online for the public to see.
On Friday, members of the public watched the decoding process via a live Web cast arranged by the San Francisco Exploratorium.
"We are focusing on the most difficult pages where the scholars haven't been able to read the texts," said Uwe Bergmann, the Stanford physicist heading the project.
Born in the 3rd century B.C., Archimedes is considered one of ancient Greece's greatest mathematicians, perhaps best known for discovering the principle of buoyancy while taking a bath.
The 174-page manuscript, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, contains the only copies of treatises on flotation, gravity and mathematics. Scholars believe a scribe copied them onto the goatskin parchment from the original Greek scrolls.
Three centuries later, a monk scrubbed off the Archimedes text and used the parchment to write prayers at a time when the Greek mathematician's work was less appreciated. In the early 20th century, forgers tried to boost the manuscript's value by painting religious imagery on some of the pages.
In 1998, an anonymous private collector paid $2 million for the manuscript at an auction, then loaned it to the Walter Arts Museum for safekeeping and study.
Over the past eight years, researchers have used ultraviolet and infrared filters, as well as digital cameras and processing techniques, to reveal most of the buried text, but some pages were still unreadable.
"We will never recover all of it," Noel said. "We are just getting as much as we can, and we are going to the ends of the earth to get it."
By TERENCE CHEA, Associated Press Writer
ADVERTISEMENT
Over the past week, researchers at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park have been using X-rays to decipher a fragile 10th century manuscript that contains the only copies of some of Archimedes' most important works.
The X-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment.
"We are gaining new insights into one of the founding fathers of western science," said William Noel, curator of manuscripts at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, which organized the effort. "It is the most difficult imaging challenge on any medieval document because the book is in such terrible condition."
Following a successful trial run last year, Stanford researchers invited X-ray scientists, rare document collectors and classics scholars to take part in the 11-day project.
It takes about 12 hours to scan one page using an X-ray beam about the size of a human hair, and researchers expect to decipher up to 15 pages that resisted modern imaging techniques. After each new page is decoded, it is posted online for the public to see.
On Friday, members of the public watched the decoding process via a live Web cast arranged by the San Francisco Exploratorium.
"We are focusing on the most difficult pages where the scholars haven't been able to read the texts," said Uwe Bergmann, the Stanford physicist heading the project.
Born in the 3rd century B.C., Archimedes is considered one of ancient Greece's greatest mathematicians, perhaps best known for discovering the principle of buoyancy while taking a bath.
The 174-page manuscript, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, contains the only copies of treatises on flotation, gravity and mathematics. Scholars believe a scribe copied them onto the goatskin parchment from the original Greek scrolls.
Three centuries later, a monk scrubbed off the Archimedes text and used the parchment to write prayers at a time when the Greek mathematician's work was less appreciated. In the early 20th century, forgers tried to boost the manuscript's value by painting religious imagery on some of the pages.
In 1998, an anonymous private collector paid $2 million for the manuscript at an auction, then loaned it to the Walter Arts Museum for safekeeping and study.
Over the past eight years, researchers have used ultraviolet and infrared filters, as well as digital cameras and processing techniques, to reveal most of the buried text, but some pages were still unreadable.
"We will never recover all of it," Noel said. "We are just getting as much as we can, and we are going to the ends of the earth to get it."
By TERENCE CHEA, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
The Duke Lemur Center: New Name, New Goals
Duke University's 40-year-old home for primates is getting a makeover -- and a new name to match.
"Our new name, the Duke Lemur Center, reflects a refocusing of our scientific goals and overall mission," said Anne D. Yoder (http://dukenews.duke.edu/2006/04/yoderbio.html), the center's director since Jan. 1.
Although the center houses several types of prosimians, a suborder of primates, lemurs are the stars. "It makes sense to rename the center," Yoder said. "Its unique value lies with its collection of lemurs, which is the largest outside of their native Madagascar, an island off the southeast coast of Africa. We want to leverage this resource to benefit science."
The center will officially unveil its new name and scientific agenda on Saturday, April 29, at a celebration beginning at 5 p.m. at the center http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2006/04/lemurfacts.html.
To support the center's reinvigoration, Duke is allocating roughly $8 million to improve and expand its facilities. Three new buildings and associated habitats will provide the lemurs with even more natural living conditions and open new opportunities for scientists to study them.
Provost Peter Lange, the university's chief academic officer, said the new name and planned investment reflect "a new direction and sense of excitement for what already is one of the treasures of Duke University. People across North Carolina and beyond know the center as a wonderful place to visit and learn about lemurs. But it also is a unique learning resource for Duke students and others who work with the animals and get involved in research projects. Simultaneously, scientists working at the center have been broadening their agenda and pursuing a wide range of exciting research questions."
For years, scientists at the center focused primarily on understanding basic lemur biology and sorting out relationships among the various species. "Our new emphasis positions lemurs as models of primate biology and evolution," Yoder said. "Lemurs are complex creatures, and their unique biology, combined with their similarities to other primates, makes them an ideal model."
Lemurs are the closest living representatives of the kinds of animals from which humans evolved, Yoder said. "Humans are evolution's experiment on lemurs," she joked, adding that "by better understanding lemurs, we better understand ourselves."
In an important research direction, the center is partnering with the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (http://www.genomics.duke.edu/) to establish a Duke Lemur Genome Initiative. According to the institute's director, Huntington F. Willard, (http://mgm.duke.edu/faculty/willard/) one goal of the joint effort is to develop a toolkit of genome markers, distinctive segments of DNA that serve as landmarks for specific genes. To date, geneticists working on lemurs have used different markers, making it difficult to determine how different species are related to each other.
"With a standardized toolkit of genome markers, researchers should be able to greatly speed up efforts in working out the evolutionary trees of these animals," Willard said. "This will greatly assist lemur conservation efforts, as well as enhance understanding of our own evolution."
"This partnership with the Duke Lemur Center is consistent with our institute's broad efforts to explore the Genome Revolution and its consequences for life, health and society at large," he said.
Center biologists also will be able to use the genetic tools to develop active breeding programs to increase the total number of lemurs that call the center home, and to determine whether and how individual lemurs within a given population are related to each other. In the same way that DNA analysis is used to settle paternity suits, so can it be used to determine familial relationships with great accuracy. Such analyses, according to the scientists, are essential to avoid the effects of inbreeding and so maintain the genetic health of a species' population.
Across all of their research efforts, center scientists take care to ensure the animals are treated properly and studies are as noninvasive as possible. "The mantra of noninvasive research is 'do no harm," Yoder said. "For example, we take blood samples only as part of routine medical examinations." If the genome project needs blood for routine sampling, it will be stocked and used as needed. For animals without blood samples, DNA for genome analysis will be obtained using simple, safe cheek swabs.
"We must be sure to conduct our research carefully, but at the same time it is important that we study these animals," Yoder said. "They have a fascinating biology that can teach us a great deal."
For example, the genomes of brown lemurs will have different numbers of chromosomes, the structures that contain genes, with one animal having more or fewer genes than another. For brown lemurs, this trait has no harmful effects, resulting only in slight color variations. But in humans, many such chromosomal changes are highly deleterious. Center scientists hope that studying lemurs may provide insight into these conditions in humans.
Among other projects, cognitive behaviorist Elizabeth Brannon has been using lemurs to probe the connection between linguistic ability and conceptualizing numbers, running experiments in which lemurs interact with computer touch screens. The animals are not forced to participate. "They actually like to do these tasks," Yoder said. "One lemur, 'The Genius,' can't wait to start every day. He just loves it. Brannon's findings run counter to the dogma that lemurs are less intelligent than other primates. Everyone's surprised by these results."
Biologist Peter Klopfer and Andrew Krystal, director of the Duke Sleep Disorders Clinic, are studying hibernation in dwarf lemurs, which are the only primates to exhibit this trait. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is among the groups that may be interested in the results. The agency wants to learn whether it is possible to use hibernation mechanisms to prolong human sleep during long space flights.
The center also plans to strengthen its international connections. In one current partnership, its scientists are working with Jim Vaupel of the Max Planck Institute, based in Germany. "We're looking at male versus female morbidity and mortality in lemurs," Yoder said. "Among humans, males are healthier but have shorter life spans, whereas females are just the opposite. We want to know if this relates to social structures, such as the fact that most human societies are run by dominant males. Lemur society is matriarchal, with dominant females running things. So lemurs can provide a natural experiment for comparing with humans."
The scientists also are building on activities that were established during the center's previous incarnation, by choosing carefully among projects showing the greatest promise. At one time, the center supported efforts to reintroduce endangered lemurs to Madagascar, but Yoder said this approach now is considered a costly last resort. The scientists don't rule out future efforts, she said, but they are re-evaluating the overall value of the approach.
Instead, the center is directing considerable energies to building local conservation capacity in Madagascar, by training Malagasy scientists and conservation biologists. Among their efforts, center scientists are working with institutions such as Parc Ivoloina, a regional environmental education and training facility, to train foresters and students in lemur conservation and animal rescue. "This will give the people of Madagascar the tools they need to manage and mitigate their own environmental challenges," Yoder said. Center scientists also are working with a new veterinary school in Madagascar. The Duke scientists plan to bring in specialist scholars to train Malagasy in advanced techniques, and their ultimate goal is to establish an exchange program.
The genetic toolkit to be built as part of the Duke Lemur Genome Initiative is one of the resources the center will be providing to support conservation efforts. Using the markers, scientists in various areas will be able to make genetic comparisons of different wild populations and their genomes. Such comparisons, according to center scientists, are essential for guiding conservation priorities, given the dwindling numbers of wild lemurs.
The center's planned new facilities will be instrumental in bringing to fruition the various projects under way or being planned, Yoder said.
Because the center now lacks optimal winter quarters, animals are enclosed half the year, so there is only a six-month window for studying natural behavior. Future buildings will be integrated into the surrounding forest habitat so researchers can study natural behavior year-round. During the day, animals will range freely across multi-acre enclosures of woodland, while the new buildings within the enclosures will offer animals refuge at night. As many as three species will be housed together in a single enclosure to mirror the natural situation in Madagascar.
At least one of the new buildings to be constructed will be devoted to large social groups in which animals can reproduce freely. (Many animals are now on contraception.) The substantial space and the numbers of animals will allow authentic social interactions. The building will house ring-tailed lemurs and red-ruffed lemurs, as well as another prosimian species called sifaka.
The facility is expected to be a great draw for researchers and graduate and undergraduate students. "I want them to have my experience," Yoder said. "I want others to share my excitement and inspiration." Her scientific career, she noted, was kindled by a student tour of the former primate center when she was an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Such experiences can spark interest in biology and conservation, and create opportunities to introduce the science behind evolutionary biology," she said.
Another new building will provide homes to pairs of lemurs and small groups of up to four animals. It will be especially useful for scientists studying cognition and behavior, housing experiments that use minimally manipulative techniques, such as treadmills, food choice trials and simple physiological assessments. Center scientists aim to design experiments that provide the animals with enriched environments, which are healthier physically and psychologically.
To complement its research activities, the center also will get a new building geared to public outreach efforts. "Even without a lot of publicity, we had 13,000 visitors last year," Yoder said. "Now we want to do even more to educate the general public on the importance of biodiversity and evolutionary biology. The idea is to capture the imagination of the young."
Toward this aim, Heather Thomas, the center's tour coordinator, plans to develop a new exhibit featuring a replica of a Malagasy field researcher's hut. "The planned exhibit will be a reconstruction of a field station down to the tiniest detail -- excluding the mosquitoes," Yoder said. The hut will have a sleeping bag, food canteen, headlamp, field notebooks and assorted technical gear. "We expect the exhibit to help children make a connection," Yoder said. "They will be able to imagine themselves there. They'll think 'I want to do that.' "
An online "baby lemur gallery" of images and audio information about animals at the Duke Lemur Center animals is available at http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/flash/lemurbabies.html. A high-resolution image of red ruffed lemur twins, by David Haring, can also be accessed at http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/hires/redruffedtwins.jpg Also available in high resolution are images of: Primate Center director Anne Yoder by Duke University Photography (http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/hires/yoderandlemur.jpg); and Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy director Huntington Willard by Butch Usery (http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/hires/willard_hunt.jpg).
- - - -
CONTACT: Monte Basgall, Duke University Office of News & Communications, 919-681-8057, monte.basgall@duke.edu
NOTE TO BROADCAST EDITORS: Duke provides an on-campus satellite uplink facility for live or pre-recorded television interviews. We are also equipped with ISDN connectivity for radio interviews. Broadcast reporters should contact the Office of Radio-TV Services at 919-681-8067 to arrange an interview.
"Our new name, the Duke Lemur Center, reflects a refocusing of our scientific goals and overall mission," said Anne D. Yoder (http://dukenews.duke.edu/2006/04/yoderbio.html), the center's director since Jan. 1.
Although the center houses several types of prosimians, a suborder of primates, lemurs are the stars. "It makes sense to rename the center," Yoder said. "Its unique value lies with its collection of lemurs, which is the largest outside of their native Madagascar, an island off the southeast coast of Africa. We want to leverage this resource to benefit science."
The center will officially unveil its new name and scientific agenda on Saturday, April 29, at a celebration beginning at 5 p.m. at the center http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2006/04/lemurfacts.html.
To support the center's reinvigoration, Duke is allocating roughly $8 million to improve and expand its facilities. Three new buildings and associated habitats will provide the lemurs with even more natural living conditions and open new opportunities for scientists to study them.
Provost Peter Lange, the university's chief academic officer, said the new name and planned investment reflect "a new direction and sense of excitement for what already is one of the treasures of Duke University. People across North Carolina and beyond know the center as a wonderful place to visit and learn about lemurs. But it also is a unique learning resource for Duke students and others who work with the animals and get involved in research projects. Simultaneously, scientists working at the center have been broadening their agenda and pursuing a wide range of exciting research questions."
For years, scientists at the center focused primarily on understanding basic lemur biology and sorting out relationships among the various species. "Our new emphasis positions lemurs as models of primate biology and evolution," Yoder said. "Lemurs are complex creatures, and their unique biology, combined with their similarities to other primates, makes them an ideal model."
Lemurs are the closest living representatives of the kinds of animals from which humans evolved, Yoder said. "Humans are evolution's experiment on lemurs," she joked, adding that "by better understanding lemurs, we better understand ourselves."
In an important research direction, the center is partnering with the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (http://www.genomics.duke.edu/) to establish a Duke Lemur Genome Initiative. According to the institute's director, Huntington F. Willard, (http://mgm.duke.edu/faculty/willard/) one goal of the joint effort is to develop a toolkit of genome markers, distinctive segments of DNA that serve as landmarks for specific genes. To date, geneticists working on lemurs have used different markers, making it difficult to determine how different species are related to each other.
"With a standardized toolkit of genome markers, researchers should be able to greatly speed up efforts in working out the evolutionary trees of these animals," Willard said. "This will greatly assist lemur conservation efforts, as well as enhance understanding of our own evolution."
"This partnership with the Duke Lemur Center is consistent with our institute's broad efforts to explore the Genome Revolution and its consequences for life, health and society at large," he said.
Center biologists also will be able to use the genetic tools to develop active breeding programs to increase the total number of lemurs that call the center home, and to determine whether and how individual lemurs within a given population are related to each other. In the same way that DNA analysis is used to settle paternity suits, so can it be used to determine familial relationships with great accuracy. Such analyses, according to the scientists, are essential to avoid the effects of inbreeding and so maintain the genetic health of a species' population.
Across all of their research efforts, center scientists take care to ensure the animals are treated properly and studies are as noninvasive as possible. "The mantra of noninvasive research is 'do no harm," Yoder said. "For example, we take blood samples only as part of routine medical examinations." If the genome project needs blood for routine sampling, it will be stocked and used as needed. For animals without blood samples, DNA for genome analysis will be obtained using simple, safe cheek swabs.
"We must be sure to conduct our research carefully, but at the same time it is important that we study these animals," Yoder said. "They have a fascinating biology that can teach us a great deal."
For example, the genomes of brown lemurs will have different numbers of chromosomes, the structures that contain genes, with one animal having more or fewer genes than another. For brown lemurs, this trait has no harmful effects, resulting only in slight color variations. But in humans, many such chromosomal changes are highly deleterious. Center scientists hope that studying lemurs may provide insight into these conditions in humans.
Among other projects, cognitive behaviorist Elizabeth Brannon has been using lemurs to probe the connection between linguistic ability and conceptualizing numbers, running experiments in which lemurs interact with computer touch screens. The animals are not forced to participate. "They actually like to do these tasks," Yoder said. "One lemur, 'The Genius,' can't wait to start every day. He just loves it. Brannon's findings run counter to the dogma that lemurs are less intelligent than other primates. Everyone's surprised by these results."
Biologist Peter Klopfer and Andrew Krystal, director of the Duke Sleep Disorders Clinic, are studying hibernation in dwarf lemurs, which are the only primates to exhibit this trait. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is among the groups that may be interested in the results. The agency wants to learn whether it is possible to use hibernation mechanisms to prolong human sleep during long space flights.
The center also plans to strengthen its international connections. In one current partnership, its scientists are working with Jim Vaupel of the Max Planck Institute, based in Germany. "We're looking at male versus female morbidity and mortality in lemurs," Yoder said. "Among humans, males are healthier but have shorter life spans, whereas females are just the opposite. We want to know if this relates to social structures, such as the fact that most human societies are run by dominant males. Lemur society is matriarchal, with dominant females running things. So lemurs can provide a natural experiment for comparing with humans."
The scientists also are building on activities that were established during the center's previous incarnation, by choosing carefully among projects showing the greatest promise. At one time, the center supported efforts to reintroduce endangered lemurs to Madagascar, but Yoder said this approach now is considered a costly last resort. The scientists don't rule out future efforts, she said, but they are re-evaluating the overall value of the approach.
Instead, the center is directing considerable energies to building local conservation capacity in Madagascar, by training Malagasy scientists and conservation biologists. Among their efforts, center scientists are working with institutions such as Parc Ivoloina, a regional environmental education and training facility, to train foresters and students in lemur conservation and animal rescue. "This will give the people of Madagascar the tools they need to manage and mitigate their own environmental challenges," Yoder said. Center scientists also are working with a new veterinary school in Madagascar. The Duke scientists plan to bring in specialist scholars to train Malagasy in advanced techniques, and their ultimate goal is to establish an exchange program.
The genetic toolkit to be built as part of the Duke Lemur Genome Initiative is one of the resources the center will be providing to support conservation efforts. Using the markers, scientists in various areas will be able to make genetic comparisons of different wild populations and their genomes. Such comparisons, according to center scientists, are essential for guiding conservation priorities, given the dwindling numbers of wild lemurs.
The center's planned new facilities will be instrumental in bringing to fruition the various projects under way or being planned, Yoder said.
Because the center now lacks optimal winter quarters, animals are enclosed half the year, so there is only a six-month window for studying natural behavior. Future buildings will be integrated into the surrounding forest habitat so researchers can study natural behavior year-round. During the day, animals will range freely across multi-acre enclosures of woodland, while the new buildings within the enclosures will offer animals refuge at night. As many as three species will be housed together in a single enclosure to mirror the natural situation in Madagascar.
At least one of the new buildings to be constructed will be devoted to large social groups in which animals can reproduce freely. (Many animals are now on contraception.) The substantial space and the numbers of animals will allow authentic social interactions. The building will house ring-tailed lemurs and red-ruffed lemurs, as well as another prosimian species called sifaka.
The facility is expected to be a great draw for researchers and graduate and undergraduate students. "I want them to have my experience," Yoder said. "I want others to share my excitement and inspiration." Her scientific career, she noted, was kindled by a student tour of the former primate center when she was an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Such experiences can spark interest in biology and conservation, and create opportunities to introduce the science behind evolutionary biology," she said.
Another new building will provide homes to pairs of lemurs and small groups of up to four animals. It will be especially useful for scientists studying cognition and behavior, housing experiments that use minimally manipulative techniques, such as treadmills, food choice trials and simple physiological assessments. Center scientists aim to design experiments that provide the animals with enriched environments, which are healthier physically and psychologically.
To complement its research activities, the center also will get a new building geared to public outreach efforts. "Even without a lot of publicity, we had 13,000 visitors last year," Yoder said. "Now we want to do even more to educate the general public on the importance of biodiversity and evolutionary biology. The idea is to capture the imagination of the young."
Toward this aim, Heather Thomas, the center's tour coordinator, plans to develop a new exhibit featuring a replica of a Malagasy field researcher's hut. "The planned exhibit will be a reconstruction of a field station down to the tiniest detail -- excluding the mosquitoes," Yoder said. The hut will have a sleeping bag, food canteen, headlamp, field notebooks and assorted technical gear. "We expect the exhibit to help children make a connection," Yoder said. "They will be able to imagine themselves there. They'll think 'I want to do that.' "
An online "baby lemur gallery" of images and audio information about animals at the Duke Lemur Center animals is available at http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/flash/lemurbabies.html. A high-resolution image of red ruffed lemur twins, by David Haring, can also be accessed at http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/hires/redruffedtwins.jpg Also available in high resolution are images of: Primate Center director Anne Yoder by Duke University Photography (http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/hires/yoderandlemur.jpg); and Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy director Huntington Willard by Butch Usery (http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/hires/willard_hunt.jpg).
- - - -
CONTACT: Monte Basgall, Duke University Office of News & Communications, 919-681-8057, monte.basgall@duke.edu
NOTE TO BROADCAST EDITORS: Duke provides an on-campus satellite uplink facility for live or pre-recorded television interviews. We are also equipped with ISDN connectivity for radio interviews. Broadcast reporters should contact the Office of Radio-TV Services at 919-681-8067 to arrange an interview.
Friday, February 10, 2006
New Analysis Shows Three Human Migrations Out Of Africa
A, Ph.D, of Washington University in St Louis, shows three distinct major waves of human migration out of Africa instead of just two, and statistically refutes — strongly — the 'Out of Africa' replacement theory.
That theory holds that populations of Homo sapiens left Africa 100,000 years ago and wiped out existing populations of humans. Templeton has shown that the African populations interbred with the Eurasian populations — thus, making love, not war.
"The 'Out of Africa' replacement theory has always been a big controversy," Templeton said. "I set up a null hypothesis and the program rejected that hypothesis using the new data with a probability level of 10 to the minus 17th. In science, you don't get any more conclusive than that. It says that the hypothesis of no interbreeding is so grossly incompatible with the data, that you can reject it."
Templeton's analysis is considered to be the only definitive statistical test to refute the theory, dominant in human evolution science for more than two decades.
"Not only does the new analysis reject the theory, it demolishes it," Templeton said.
Templeton published his results in the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, 2005.
A trellis, not a tree
He used a computer program called GEODIS, which he created in 1995 and later modified with the help of David Posada, Ph.D., and Keith Crandall, Ph.D. at Brigham Young University, to determine genetic relationships among and within populations based on an examination of specific haplotypes, clusters of genes that are inherited as a unit.
In 2002, Templeton analyzed ten different haplotype trees and performed phylogeographic analyses that reconstructed the history of the species through space and time.
Three years later, he had 25 regions to analyze and the data provided molecular evidence of a third migration, this one the oldest, back to 1.9 million years ago.
"This time frame corresponds extremely well with the fossil record, which shows Homo erectus expanding out of Africa then," Templeton said.
Another novel find is that populations of Homo erectus in Eurasia had recurrent genetic interchange with African populations 1.5 million years ago, much earlier than previously thought, and that these populations persisted instead of going extinct, which some human evolution researchers thought had occurred.
The new data confirm an expansion out of Africa to 700,000 years ago that was detected in the 2002 analysis.
"Both (the 1.9 million and 700,000 year) expansions coincide with recent paleoclimatic data that indicate periods of very high rainfall in eastern Africa, making what is now the Sahara Desert a savannah," Templeton said. "That makes the timing very amenable for movements of large populations through the area."
Templeton said that the fossil record indicates a significant change in brain size for modern humans at 700,000 years ago as well as the adaptation and expansion of a new stone tool culture first found in Africa and later at 700,000 years expanded throughout Eurasia.
"By the time you're done with this phase you can be 99 percent confident that there was recurrent genetic interchange between African and Eurasian populations," he said. "So the idea of pure, distinct races in humans does not exist. We humans don't have a tree relationship, rather a trellis. We're intertwined."
That theory holds that populations of Homo sapiens left Africa 100,000 years ago and wiped out existing populations of humans. Templeton has shown that the African populations interbred with the Eurasian populations — thus, making love, not war.
"The 'Out of Africa' replacement theory has always been a big controversy," Templeton said. "I set up a null hypothesis and the program rejected that hypothesis using the new data with a probability level of 10 to the minus 17th. In science, you don't get any more conclusive than that. It says that the hypothesis of no interbreeding is so grossly incompatible with the data, that you can reject it."
Templeton's analysis is considered to be the only definitive statistical test to refute the theory, dominant in human evolution science for more than two decades.
"Not only does the new analysis reject the theory, it demolishes it," Templeton said.
Templeton published his results in the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, 2005.
A trellis, not a tree
He used a computer program called GEODIS, which he created in 1995 and later modified with the help of David Posada, Ph.D., and Keith Crandall, Ph.D. at Brigham Young University, to determine genetic relationships among and within populations based on an examination of specific haplotypes, clusters of genes that are inherited as a unit.
In 2002, Templeton analyzed ten different haplotype trees and performed phylogeographic analyses that reconstructed the history of the species through space and time.
Three years later, he had 25 regions to analyze and the data provided molecular evidence of a third migration, this one the oldest, back to 1.9 million years ago.
"This time frame corresponds extremely well with the fossil record, which shows Homo erectus expanding out of Africa then," Templeton said.
Another novel find is that populations of Homo erectus in Eurasia had recurrent genetic interchange with African populations 1.5 million years ago, much earlier than previously thought, and that these populations persisted instead of going extinct, which some human evolution researchers thought had occurred.
The new data confirm an expansion out of Africa to 700,000 years ago that was detected in the 2002 analysis.
"Both (the 1.9 million and 700,000 year) expansions coincide with recent paleoclimatic data that indicate periods of very high rainfall in eastern Africa, making what is now the Sahara Desert a savannah," Templeton said. "That makes the timing very amenable for movements of large populations through the area."
Templeton said that the fossil record indicates a significant change in brain size for modern humans at 700,000 years ago as well as the adaptation and expansion of a new stone tool culture first found in Africa and later at 700,000 years expanded throughout Eurasia.
"By the time you're done with this phase you can be 99 percent confident that there was recurrent genetic interchange between African and Eurasian populations," he said. "So the idea of pure, distinct races in humans does not exist. We humans don't have a tree relationship, rather a trellis. We're intertwined."
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Global Weather Influences And the Immediate Prospect: Season 2006
Without a troublesome pattern in the South Pacific, there is no influence to upset a normal summer pattern in the Southern Hemisphere. The winter warmth will surely be translated into summer heat. This will tend to provide a good base for the regular heat low, usually called the Barotse Low, to form early and drift gradually westward by the mid-summer. This area marks the regular base of operations for the ITCZ in southern Africa. Developing waves, after the Sahel pattern, drift westward and stagnate in the Etosha area.
The effect of the warm belt of water, offshore the West Coast, will be key. Increased warmth can bring, by insolation, even warmer waters offshore. A heat low coupling with such a favourable situation can foster a rainfall event that can last for some two to three weeks. Two such events, across January to March, will mean a wet year. The drift eastward, in tandem with a suitable cold front and upper trough, moves the rain area eastward across those areas on the eastern fringe of the previous wet zone, eventually to cross the southern subcontinent. The Congo Air factor means rains of intensity become widespread. The ready ability for Congo air to be brought southward, we have already witnessed twice during the usually unfavourable winter months. The heat low affords an attraction for the moist air circulating round the surface anticyclones to be advected inland towards the vortex: another favourable aspect.
But what about the persistent subtropical High-pressure belt? Surely, cells of this system will drift across the subcontinent some few times during the range of November through to April. The winter pattern has indicated a duration of weeks during the most favourable period (Cooler land/warmer seas). The summer season sees these cores following a more southerly track. The likelihood of our far north and northeast being consistently on the moist periphery of these cores provides a further optimistic note.
Excessive oceanic warmth can lead to two events: one very favourable for rain, the other unfavourable. The Benguela (El) Nino recurs approximately mid-decade. The cause or causes are improperly understood, but links with the Gulf of Guinea have been cited as a likely cause. Economically and ecologically, this event means turmoil and disaster. The rainfall benefits are usually plentiful. The last event peaked during February 1995. The Indian Ocean is a warm ocean by any standard. It hosts the tropical revolving storm known as a Cyclone. These storms usually develop around the Mauritius area and northward. Their tracks include the coastal waters of Madagascar and into the Mozambique Channel, on occasions.
Just occasionally, these storms make landfall and head up the Limpopo valley. They do bring considerable falls of rain to the areas in their path. But these storms are surrounded by ring of descending air (what goes up must come down syndrome) this means a zone of dry, rainless weather. People with longer memories may recall such names as Domoina and Imboia which made their dry mark during January and February 1984. The potential for these storms to drift inland as opposed to tracking southward down the Mozambique Channel is dependent upon the individual events. The Global Warming factor and its influence upon such potential is not known. A storm penetrating to the Makarikari area of Botswana will throttle active convection across northern and eastern Namibia comprehensively.
The ability to peer into the weather future is best measured in hours, rather than days. The time requirement really means months or even half a year. Much capable effort is being put into climatic forecasting. This provides percentage possibilities, across the summer month ranges, of monthly rainfall totals. In our type of climate, these efforts provide little of day-to-day practical value. When we with all our "press two buttons" capabilities have learnt to read nature and follow the preparatory signs of natural life preparing for the next season, we will be several worthy steps down the road of long-term, seasonal forecasting.
This outlook may sound very promising, or at least optimistic. The causes for this have been looked at. The dismal alternatives do not show up in the foreground. The likelihood of a dramatic, rapid turnaround of the state of the Pacific Ocean is not an event with any record. As on occasions in the past, it is an overall wait-and-see scenario.
John Olszewski
Windhoek
The effect of the warm belt of water, offshore the West Coast, will be key. Increased warmth can bring, by insolation, even warmer waters offshore. A heat low coupling with such a favourable situation can foster a rainfall event that can last for some two to three weeks. Two such events, across January to March, will mean a wet year. The drift eastward, in tandem with a suitable cold front and upper trough, moves the rain area eastward across those areas on the eastern fringe of the previous wet zone, eventually to cross the southern subcontinent. The Congo Air factor means rains of intensity become widespread. The ready ability for Congo air to be brought southward, we have already witnessed twice during the usually unfavourable winter months. The heat low affords an attraction for the moist air circulating round the surface anticyclones to be advected inland towards the vortex: another favourable aspect.
But what about the persistent subtropical High-pressure belt? Surely, cells of this system will drift across the subcontinent some few times during the range of November through to April. The winter pattern has indicated a duration of weeks during the most favourable period (Cooler land/warmer seas). The summer season sees these cores following a more southerly track. The likelihood of our far north and northeast being consistently on the moist periphery of these cores provides a further optimistic note.
Excessive oceanic warmth can lead to two events: one very favourable for rain, the other unfavourable. The Benguela (El) Nino recurs approximately mid-decade. The cause or causes are improperly understood, but links with the Gulf of Guinea have been cited as a likely cause. Economically and ecologically, this event means turmoil and disaster. The rainfall benefits are usually plentiful. The last event peaked during February 1995. The Indian Ocean is a warm ocean by any standard. It hosts the tropical revolving storm known as a Cyclone. These storms usually develop around the Mauritius area and northward. Their tracks include the coastal waters of Madagascar and into the Mozambique Channel, on occasions.
Just occasionally, these storms make landfall and head up the Limpopo valley. They do bring considerable falls of rain to the areas in their path. But these storms are surrounded by ring of descending air (what goes up must come down syndrome) this means a zone of dry, rainless weather. People with longer memories may recall such names as Domoina and Imboia which made their dry mark during January and February 1984. The potential for these storms to drift inland as opposed to tracking southward down the Mozambique Channel is dependent upon the individual events. The Global Warming factor and its influence upon such potential is not known. A storm penetrating to the Makarikari area of Botswana will throttle active convection across northern and eastern Namibia comprehensively.
The ability to peer into the weather future is best measured in hours, rather than days. The time requirement really means months or even half a year. Much capable effort is being put into climatic forecasting. This provides percentage possibilities, across the summer month ranges, of monthly rainfall totals. In our type of climate, these efforts provide little of day-to-day practical value. When we with all our "press two buttons" capabilities have learnt to read nature and follow the preparatory signs of natural life preparing for the next season, we will be several worthy steps down the road of long-term, seasonal forecasting.
This outlook may sound very promising, or at least optimistic. The causes for this have been looked at. The dismal alternatives do not show up in the foreground. The likelihood of a dramatic, rapid turnaround of the state of the Pacific Ocean is not an event with any record. As on occasions in the past, it is an overall wait-and-see scenario.
John Olszewski
Windhoek
Monday, October 17, 2005
Another Bird Link Found to Dinosaurs
Paleontologists working in northwestern Patagonia have unearthed the nearly complete skeleton of a small dinosaur whose bird-like appearance suggests that flight may have evolved twice -- not only in birds but also among the prehistoric raptors of the southern hemisphere.
The newly discovered fossil, of a rooster-sized carnivore known as a dromaeosaur, lived 95 million years ago and is the oldest raptor ever found in the southern continents. Its discovery may signal that dromaeosaurs are much older than previously thought.
"We're really just scratching the surface," said Peter Makovicky, dinosaur curator of Chicago's Field Museum and lead author of a report on the find published Wednesday in the journal Nature. "The evidence is that we have a distinct (dromaeosaurs) lineage -- the southern lineage."
Makovicky and a team of Argentine paleontologists led by Sebastian Apesteguia, of Argentina's Natural History Foundation, collected the fossil from a well-known site known as La Buitrera, "The Vulture's Nest," in Rio Negro province, about 700 miles southeast of Buenos Aires. The team named the new creature Buitreraptor gonzalezorum, after brothers Fabian and Jorge Gonzalez, who found the fossil.
Before Buitreraptor, a few teeth and other bone fragments were the only dromaeosaur remains known in the southern hemisphere. This scarcity contrasted sharply with the relatively abundant deposits in North America and Asia of such well known dromaeosaurs as velociraptor, Utahraptor and smaller species unearthed in China.
Paleontologists generally regard the northern raptors, especially the Chinese fossils, as part of the evolutionary lineage that produced modern birds. Archaeopteryx, regarded as the first true bird, is about 145 million years old, while the feathered raptors of Liaoning, China, are dated at 130 million years.
While Buitreraptor is considerably younger, its location deep in South America's southern cone suggests that dromaeosaurs generally may be 180 million years old, dating to the time when Earth's single land mass split into northern and southern pieces.
"To say dromaeosaurs are 180 million years old is not a stretch at all," said paleontologist Matthew Lamanna, of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in Pittsburgh. "You look at the fossil record and see Archaeopteryx is 150 million years old, so dromaeosaurs should already be around."
Makovicky noted, however, that, unlike northern dromaeosaurs, Buitreraptor has a long, heron-like skull and teeth without serrated edges, like a steak knife. "These are unusual features, and we think we have a predator of small prey," he said, possibly one that dined on small snakes prevalent in the region.
Lamanna said that the differences between the northern and southern species also come as no surprise. Once researchers established that dromaeosaurs were evolving on two separate super- continents, "the fact that they come to be different is what we would expect."
On the other hand, Makovicky said Buitreraptor is clearly a dromaeosaur, displaying many typical characteristics, including a spiked middle toe for gutting prey, heavy hind limbs for fast running, a long tail and powerful forelimbs -- but not powerful enough to fly.
Makovicky and the research team also noticed that Buitreraptor also shared characteristics with an unusual 65-million-year-old fossil from Madagascar known as Rahonavis -- thought to have been a primitive, long-tailed bird.
By Guy Gugliotta
The newly discovered fossil, of a rooster-sized carnivore known as a dromaeosaur, lived 95 million years ago and is the oldest raptor ever found in the southern continents. Its discovery may signal that dromaeosaurs are much older than previously thought.
"We're really just scratching the surface," said Peter Makovicky, dinosaur curator of Chicago's Field Museum and lead author of a report on the find published Wednesday in the journal Nature. "The evidence is that we have a distinct (dromaeosaurs) lineage -- the southern lineage."
Makovicky and a team of Argentine paleontologists led by Sebastian Apesteguia, of Argentina's Natural History Foundation, collected the fossil from a well-known site known as La Buitrera, "The Vulture's Nest," in Rio Negro province, about 700 miles southeast of Buenos Aires. The team named the new creature Buitreraptor gonzalezorum, after brothers Fabian and Jorge Gonzalez, who found the fossil.
Before Buitreraptor, a few teeth and other bone fragments were the only dromaeosaur remains known in the southern hemisphere. This scarcity contrasted sharply with the relatively abundant deposits in North America and Asia of such well known dromaeosaurs as velociraptor, Utahraptor and smaller species unearthed in China.
Paleontologists generally regard the northern raptors, especially the Chinese fossils, as part of the evolutionary lineage that produced modern birds. Archaeopteryx, regarded as the first true bird, is about 145 million years old, while the feathered raptors of Liaoning, China, are dated at 130 million years.
While Buitreraptor is considerably younger, its location deep in South America's southern cone suggests that dromaeosaurs generally may be 180 million years old, dating to the time when Earth's single land mass split into northern and southern pieces.
"To say dromaeosaurs are 180 million years old is not a stretch at all," said paleontologist Matthew Lamanna, of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in Pittsburgh. "You look at the fossil record and see Archaeopteryx is 150 million years old, so dromaeosaurs should already be around."
Makovicky noted, however, that, unlike northern dromaeosaurs, Buitreraptor has a long, heron-like skull and teeth without serrated edges, like a steak knife. "These are unusual features, and we think we have a predator of small prey," he said, possibly one that dined on small snakes prevalent in the region.
Lamanna said that the differences between the northern and southern species also come as no surprise. Once researchers established that dromaeosaurs were evolving on two separate super- continents, "the fact that they come to be different is what we would expect."
On the other hand, Makovicky said Buitreraptor is clearly a dromaeosaur, displaying many typical characteristics, including a spiked middle toe for gutting prey, heavy hind limbs for fast running, a long tail and powerful forelimbs -- but not powerful enough to fly.
Makovicky and the research team also noticed that Buitreraptor also shared characteristics with an unusual 65-million-year-old fossil from Madagascar known as Rahonavis -- thought to have been a primitive, long-tailed bird.
By Guy Gugliotta
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
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