debate

http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.blogspot.comConcerned that our lawmakers don’t fully appreciate the value of maintaining strong investments in science and engineering? Do you even know where the presidential candidates stand on stem-cell research, the dismantling of EPA libraries, or the proposed shutdown of a particle collider in California (and retrenchment of activities at another in Illinois)? Well, you should be concerned— and know which potential leader of the Free World is least likely to gut federal funding for the very research that promotes innovation and economic growth.

http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.blogspot.comAt least that’s what the American Association for the Advancement of Science, among others, is advocating.

Indeed, AAAS announced today (Jan. 23) that it’s jumped on the bandwagon of a grassroots initiative calling for a presidential debate of issues that focus squarely on science and engineering—aspects of the economy that “have driven half the nation’s growth in GDP over the last half-century.” That’s gross domestic product—or national income—we’re talking about.

Research disciplines “lie at the center of many of the major policy and economic challenges the next president will face,” argues AAAS CEO Alan Leshner. “We feel that a presidential debate on science would be helpful to America’s national political dialogue.”

AAAS is describing Science Debate 2008 as a citizen initiative led by “largely nonscientists.” Over the past month, however, many researchers have now endorsed the initiative, which has garnered some 10,000 supporters. If you want to join the groundswell, go to the URL linked here.

If you’re not the joiner type, that’s okay. You’ve already done one useful thing, by reading about science developments at this site and elsewhere.

But that isn’t really enough.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m about as apolitical as they come. But playing ostrich is no solution to the growing science illiteracy and politicization of research that’s been sweeping this nation—including the hallowed halls of Congress (remember that comment by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), last year, regarding periodic up-ticks in global temperature—such as at the end of the Paleocene, 55 million years ago: “We don’t know what those other [climate-warming] cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence…”)

If advocacy is anathema to you, no prob. Take another tack: Educate.

You wouldn’t let a child leave a science classroom espousing bunk—such as that dinosaurs and humans coexisted a few thousand years ago—without attempting to correct his or her misunderstanding of paleontological and anthropological history. http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.blogspot.comI don’t think we should let those who set the agenda for federal economic policies and investments wallow in ignorance either.

One idea: Invite a politician and his or her political challengers to meet with the local chapter of your professional society. Find out where each politico stands on research and education issues, and if it’s intellectually cock-eyed, politely set them straight. Consider it education and a public service.

depths

Widespread extinctions in the world’s oceans millions of years ago may have been triggered by massive underwater volcanic eruptions that created much of the Caribbean seafloor। http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

About 93.5 million years ago, many types of deep-sea creatures, including large clams and various microorganisms that lived on the seafloor, died out. http://louis-j-sheehan.बिज़ At the same time, thick layers of organic-rich marine sediments accumulated at several sites worldwide, says Steven C. Turgeon, a geochemist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

The layers, such as a 1.2-meter-thick black shale layer off the northeastern coast of South America that contains as much as 23 percent organic matter, suggest that the waters bathing ocean floors across the globe at the time contained little if any dissolved oxygen, he notes। http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

Similar events, which scientists have dubbed oceanic anoxic events, pepper the geologic record, and their causes have long remained unexplained. Now geochemical clues in the sediments link the low-oxygen episode of 93.5 million years ago, called OAE2, to the beginning of an extended period of underwater volcanism in what is now the Caribbean, Turgeon and UA colleague Robert A. Creaser propose in the July 17 Nature.

Specifically, Turgeon and Creaser looked at the ratio of osmium isotopes in 93.5-million-year-old rocks from a seafloor site off South America, as well as a site in Italy where marine rocks of the same age are preserved.

Whereas deep-earth magma and extraterrestrial sources of osmium are rich in osmium-188, the osmium that slowly erodes from continental rocks is rich in osmium-187. Unlike many of the other elements dissolved in seawater in small quantities, osmium has a short lifetime in the ocean, remaining dissolved only for about 10,000 years Turgeon says. Therefore, any short-term changes in osmium input to the oceans would be readily chronicled in marine sediments, he notes.

In the rock samples they studied, the researchers found that osmium-isotope ratios were relatively stable before the 500,000-year-long OAE2 episode began. Then, the concentration of osmium locked in rocks deposited during OAE2 — and particularly, the proportion of osmium-188 found there — skyrocketed, says Turgeon. Data suggest that more than 97 percent of the osmium in those organic-rich sediments came from either deep-earth magma or from an extraterrestrial impact.

Because no evidence for an impact from that era has yet been found, Turgeon and Creaser pin the blame on a massive surge of volcanic activity. The largest region of ocean crust solidified from the resulting magma about 93 million years ago now lies beneath the Caribbean, the researchers note.

The immense amount of highly reactive minerals injected into the ocean by the undersea eruptions would have robbed the seas of oxygen, the researchers speculate. Furthermore, they say, those minerals may have served as nutrients for the phytoplankton at the ocean’s surface — organisms that, when they died, fell to the bottom and decomposed, thereby stripping even more oxygen from the depths.

The new findings indicate that a large amount of volcanic activity triggered OAE2, says Timothy J. Bralower, a marine geologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. “That’s by far the biggest find of this paper,” he notes. Other factors, such as sluggish ocean circulation, might have played a role as well. The world then was several degrees Celsius warmer than it is today, and the temperature difference between the poles and the tropics wasn’t as large. So, he explains, the temperature-driven circulation that oxygenates today’s oceans wouldn’t have been as efficient. Whereas the waters in today’s oceans circulate once every 1,500 years, the chemical composition of OAE2 sediments hint that the oceans of that time circulated only once every 23,000 years.

inclined

May 30, Monday। My constant application has left me no time for several days to jot down occurrences and make remarks। http://louis7j7sheehan.blogspot.com

Mr. Sanford was very pertinacious and determined in his scheme of going out in the Niagara, and represented that Mr। Seward favored it. I am inclined to think Seward fell into the arrangement without much thought. This is the best view for Seward. Sanford is . . . fond of notoriety; delights to be busy and fussy, to show pomp and power; and to have a vessel like the Niagara bear him out to his mission would have filled him with delight, but would not have elevated the country, for Sanford’s true character is known abroad and wherever he is known, which is one of obtrusive intermeddlings, — not that he is mischievously inclined, but he seeks to be consequential, wants to figure and to do. http://louis7j7sheehan.blogspot.com

The consul at Bermuda having written us that the Florida was there on the 14th inst., I wrote Mr. Seward that the Niagara would be directed to cruise and get across in about thirty days, consequently Mr. Sanford had better leave by packet steamer. Mr. Seward writes me today that he concurs with me fully.

The army movements have been interesting for the last few days, though not sensational. Grant has not obtained a victory but performed another remarkably successful flank movement. Sherman is progressing in Georgia.