British polar scientists to get new £200m icebreaker ship

Government to commission world-leading research ship for Antarctic and Arctic scientific research GEORGE OSBORNE announced today that the government is to spend £200m on a new icebreaker polar research ship. The ship will be a boon to UK science, supporting researchers in both the Arctic and the Antarctic. The vessel is expected to be 430ft long, says the BBC, and will come equipped with a helipad, cranes and onboard laboratories. It will have the capability to transport and deploy submarines and other ocean sampling equipment. The vessel, which will be completed in 2019, will be among the most advanced and capable in the world. With a specially reinforced hull, it will be able to push deeper into the icepacks than any other British ship. Current plans suggest that the ship will be able to maintain a speed of three knots while breaking through ice floes. Up to 60 scientists and research staff will be able to live aboard and the ship will be self-sufficient for up to 80 days, during which time it could cover 24,000 nautical miles. Alarm has been sounded that the long-term plan may be to replace the UK's two existing polar research ships - one built in 1990, one in 1995 - with just one super-ship. However, the National Environmental Research council, which funds polar science in the UK says there is no current plan to do this...

Read More........→May 03, 2014

New Technology To Record Whale Songs In Antarctica

Sydney, March 28 (IANS/EFE) Scientists have managed to capture up to 26,545 blue whale songs in the Antarctic in a study for which they used - for the first time - new acoustical detection and tracking techniques to locate and observe them. The work was carried out by researchers from Germany, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, the US, France, Norway, Britain, South Africa and New Zealand, all of whom are participating in the ongoing Antarctic Blue Whale Project to study the world's largest animal. Some 18 experts in acoustics and in classification of the whales, as well as engineers and observers, departed in January on a seven-week trip to the Ross Sea with the aim of deploying acoustic devices known as sonobuoys to study the population, distribution and behavior of the whales. The result was 626 hours of audio registered in real time including 26,545 songs - or vocalizations - produced by the gigantic beasts, according to the project's head acoustician, Brian Miller, with the Australian Antarctic Division. The blue whale - or Balaenoptera musculus - makes a very deep and resonant call that can be captured underwater hundreds of kilometers away, Miller said in a statement. The International Whaling Commission has calculated that in 2000 the population of blue whales in the Southern Hemisphere was between 400 and 1,400. Blue...

Read More........→April 01, 2014

Ancient mammoth blood gives new life to de-extinction project

Ever fancied your own Mr Snuffleupagus? The dream may not be that far away. Russian scientists claim to have discovered liquid woolly mammoth blood in a frozen carcase in Siberia, which would make cloning a real possibility. An expedition earlier this month, led by scientist Semyon Grigoryev, uncovered the remains of a 60-year-old female mammoth on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean. "This find gives us a really good chance of finding live cells which can help us implement [our] project to clone a mammoth," Grigoryev said. However, many scientists are sceptical. Dolly, the famous cloned sheep, was born after 277 attempts. The discovery has reignited debate over the ethics of cloning. At a conference at Stanford Law School last week, experts debated the ethical, legal and political implications of “de-extinction”. Beth Shapiro, of the University of California at Santa Cruz, expressed concerns about the difficulty of cloning and the inevitable creation of countless deformed and terminal-ill animals. “I think we should consider deeply why we want to de-extinct things" she said. Kate Jones of University College London said that “Conservation biologists worry that if people think we can revive species they won’t care about protecting what’s left". The scientific community also questions the involvement of disgraced South Korean...

Read More........→December 12, 2013

World's Amazing Talking Birds

some people want a pet that they can exercise and play with, and some people want a pet that will help keep them warm at night. Still other people want a companion -- an animal that will be an unquestioning, faithful friend through thick and thin. That's all good for them, but there are those of us who want a companion that we can talk to. We want a voice at the end of a long work day welcoming us home with, "Hello, darling, how was your day?" For people who wish to have that type of companion in the form of an animal, a talking bird fits the bill very nicely. However, not just any talking bird will do. Some birds speak quietly, while others will scream at the top of their lungs. The type of bird one chooses must be paired suitably with the environment in which one lives. That is, house or apartment, metropolitan or suburban. At any time of day. But, perhaps you live in the countryside and the only audio comfort that needs to be taken into consideration is your own. In that case, you will need to decide how much noise you can handle through the day. All talking birds are great fun to have as companions, but some are better at verbalizing and enunciating their words than others. Some species have better memory than others and are able to store hundreds, even thousands of words into their little bird brains. Then there are...

Read More........→November 30, 2013

Study Finds Climate Link To 'Atmospheric River' Storms

Image Credit: Anthony Wimmers and Chris Velden, University of Wisconsin-CI A new NASA-led study of "atmospheric river" storms from the Pacific Ocean may help scientists better predict major winter snowfalls that hit West Coast mountains and lead to heavy spring runoff and sometimes flooding. Animation of the atmospheric-river event. This animation shows an atmospheric river event over Dec. 18-20, 2010. High-altitude winds pull large amounts of water vapor (yellow and orange) from the tropical ocean near Hawaii and carry it straight to California. Atmospheric rivers -- short-lived wind tunnels that carry water vapor from tropical oceans to mid-latitude land areas -- are prolific producers of rain and snow on California's Sierra Nevada mountains. The finding, published in the journal Water Resources Research, has major implications for water management in the West, where Sierra runoff is used for drinking water, agriculture and hydropower. The research team studied how two of the most common atmospheric circulation patterns in the Northern Hemisphere interact with atmospheric rivers. They found when those patterns line up in a certain way, they create a virtual freeway that leads the moisture-laden winds straight to the Sierras. Bin Guan of the Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, a collaboration...

Read More........→November 09, 2013