The Verge - Sciences

King Richard III was buried quickly, carelessly, and in far too short a grave

2013-05-23T23:00:04Z

For 500 years, the death of King Richard III has been marred in mystery, and new details on his burial revealed today are adding to that. Richard III was buried in a hurry, and in an "untidy lozenge-shaped grave." Whoever buried the king did so quickly and without much care. The information, released in a new research paper from the University of Leicester, makes it clear that the slain king wasn't treated with the royal consideration you'd expect after his death, adding yet another layer to the drama of his final days.

It was only in February, after extensive DNA testing, that the skeletal remains of Richard III were positively identified in a grave under a parking lot in Leicester, which used to be the site of the Leicester Cathedral. The skeleton betrayed ten battle wounds, the king's curved spine, and dated to his 1485 death. Richard III is believed to have died in his late 20s or early 30s and to have had scoliosis. According to the research paper, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the Antiquity archeological journal, the medieval king was buried in an "odd position" with his torso crammed into a grave that was "noticeably too short for the body." The improper burial "may suggest haste or little respect for the deceased," the paper said.

Sometimes, it's not good to be the king

There's also evidence that his hands may have been tied before being placed in the grave. "The position of the hands over the right pelvis appears awkward and unarranged, possibly because the torso was twisted to the left, pulling them off center," the paper said. Richard III's head was also propped up against one corner of the grave, which signals that his body wasn't rearranged once his body was lowered into the ground. There is no evidence of a coffin, or even a shroud to cover the king's body. All of this stands contrary to standard burials for kings at that time. But, the signs of a quick and somewhat careless burial do Signs of careless burial line up with historical accounts lineup with accounts of Richard III's death recorded by 15th century historian Polydore Vergil who noted a lack of "pomp or solemn funeral," the university said. The quick and dirty burial was likely due to Richard III dying at the War of Roses' Battle of Bosworth Field, which resulted in his rival Henry Tudor taking over the English crown as King Henry VII. Richard III died a king, but he wasn't buried like one.

Now that Richard III's remains have been identified, and his gravesite and burial have been analyzed, the University of Leicester is promising two more research papers — one covering the king's bone analysis and another on DNA testing of the skeleton. From there, the bones will be re-interred in gravesite, and a new tourist center and monument to Richard III will be built so that eventually, you'll be able to see what's left of the king for yourself.

New US Energy Secretary says natural gas gives us 'more time' to develop renewable power

2013-05-23T22:50:03Z

New US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who was just confirmed for the job earlier this week, is already taking a strong stance in defense of the booming natural gas industry, which taken-off in recent years due to the controversial technique of fracking. In a video published today of his first "town hall" meeting with employees of the US Department of Energy, Moniz said: "the way I look at it at least, this natural gas boom is a boon. We all know that it is partially responsible for the decrease in CO2 emissions that we have experienced over the last years," adding, "what I would argue is that the way to look at, as gas is kind of the bridge to a very low-carbon future, is that it affords us a little bit more time to develop the technologies, to lower the costs of the alternative technologies."

"This natural gas boom is a boon."

The comments are in line with Moniz's previous statements as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he lead a research group funded in part by oil and gas companies, raising concerns among other scientists and some former colleagues that he was too close to the industry to truly be seen as "independent." But statistics released by the Energy Department last year, before Moniz was appointed in charge of the agency, back up his claim that cheaper and more plentiful natural gas, has resulted in a 20-year-low in CO2 emissions levels in the US.

Moniz was also quick to express his enthusiasm for solar and wind power during the town hall, saying, "I'm very bullish on solar, I think it's going to be a lot bigger than most people think, sooner than they think." But it's his comments on natural gas, a non-renewable resource that is extracted through controversial means, that are sure to generate the most interest.

Latest bird flu strain easily transferrable between ferrets, but not swine

2013-05-23T22:37:39Z

Scientists have confirmed that the deadly H7N9 bird flu strain is transferrable between ferrets. Six of the animals — which often serve as a good measure for the risk of transmission between humans — were injected with the virus and placed in a cage with three uninfected ferrets. Three more uninfected specimens were nearby, but outside of the cage. All three caged ferrets became infected with H7N9, though only outside ferret was afflicted. That suggests there's less risk of infection by air compared with direct contact, but scientists warn the successful transfer rate is higher than many prior avian viruses. Worse yet, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases-funded test further confirms that new carriers can appear asymptomatic for an entire day while spreading H7N9 to others. Don't start worrying about a pandemic just yet; the same test applied to pigs revealed that swine failed to transmit H7N9 through either contact or air exposure. Nonetheless, H7N9 has thus far killed 36 people and caused sickness in 131 individuals, though its spread appears to have slowed in recent days.

This year's hurricane season might be 'extremely active,' federal forecasters warn

2013-05-23T20:20:04Z

As if the devastation wrought by last year's Hurricane Sandy wasn't bad enough, federal forecasters have announced that the coming months will bring "an active or extremely active" hurricane season in the Atlantic.

In a newly issued release, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today joined a host of independent forecasting outlets that have already released stormy predictions for this year's hurricane season, which starts in June. A typical season, according to NOAA, entails 12 named storms and six hurricanes — three of which are strong enough to be deemed category 3, 4, or 5 storms. This year, however, they think those numbers will increase: forecasters expect to see between 13 and 20 named storms and between 7 and 11 hurricanes. Of those, anywhere from three to six could be major hurricanes.

More moderate than forecasts from independent outlets

Those predictions, which encompass storms in the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea, align with forecasts from major independent outlets: AccuWeather is anticipating eight hurricanes, while The Weather Channel predicts we'll endure nine.

"More and stronger hurricanes"

A combination of factors are responsible for the projected increase, NOAA notes, including an atmospheric climate pattern that's prompted an increase in hurricanes since 1995, and above-average water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. "Oceanic and atmospheric conditions in the Atlantic basin are expected to produce more and stronger hurricanes," Gerry Bell, PhD, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster with NOAA, said in a statement. "These conditions include weaker wind shear, warmer Atlantic waters and conducive winds patterns coming from Africa."

All those storms will this year be tracked with enhanced precision: NOAA has upgraded its supercomputing capacity, and will incorporate Doppler radar data from aboard their Hurricane Hunter aircraft. Those improvements are expected to improve the accuracy of specific storm monitoring by 10 to 15 percent.

Astronomers catch two giant galaxies merging in images from Europe's Herschel space telescope

2013-05-23T18:10:40Z

The European Space Agency's giant space telescope Herschel ran out of fuel last month and stopped working, as scientists had been expecting. But before then, the telescope was able to capture images of a rare cosmic event: the merger of two large, ancient galaxies into one super-sized galaxy. At first, astronomers thought that Herschel had accidentally captured two identical images of the same galaxy located 11 billion light years from Earth, but after performing follow-up studies on the data, they realized they were looking at two independent spiral galaxies — both the same shape as our own Milky Way galaxy — slowly but steadily fusing together across a bridge of gas. Eventually, scientists say that they will combine and change shape, becoming an elliptical galaxy.

"the most efficient star-forming factory ever found."

Astronomers turned to NASA's Hubble telescope and Spitzer telescope to learn more about the great galactic fusion, and what they found did not disappoint. It turns out that not only are the galaxies merging, but they are each giving birth to stars at an incredible rate. "This monster system of interacting galaxies is the most efficient star-forming factory ever found in the universe at a time when it was only 3 billion years old,” said Hai Fu, a research associate the University of California and the lead author of a paper on the find published this week in the journal Nature. NASA published a video simulation of the merging process sped up to cover 1.5 billion years in a matter of minutes.

The two galaxies are together producing about 2,000 new stars a year, compared to the single-digit number produced by the Milky Way each year. Astronomers also say that the discovery challenges the conventional theory that most elliptical galaxies are formed by absorbing smaller ones, instead suggesting many may have formed via a similar merging process to the one observed by Herschel.

Correction: This post originally stated that the Spitzer telescope was "ground-based," which is incorrect: It is an infrared space telescope.

The science of tornado prediction: can technology keep us safe from future storms?

2013-05-23T15:48:21Z

A satellite image of this week's tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, captured by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. (Credit: NASA.)

It's been nearly 150 years since scientists first made efforts to forecast the arrival of tornadoes. But as indicated by this week's storm in Moore, Oklahoma — which killed 24 people and ravaged thousands of homes — they still can't anticipate these potentially deadly weather events with much time to spare. In Moore, residents only had 16 minutes notice that a tornado was forming.

The first guide to tornado forecasting, published in 1888, set the basis for predicting the storms. But today, with new technology that offers a closer glimpse at weather conditions, the complexity of tornado forecasting is greater than ever. "Tornadoes are predicted by looking at present and near-future conditions — including moisture and wind throughout the atmosphere" explains James Elsner, PhD, a climate and weather researcher from Florida State University.

Meteorologists still have to rely on observations

Data is collected from a number of sources — radar, observation stations, weather balloons, planes and satellites, and a network of 290,000 volunteer storm spotters — and then fed into vast mathematical simulations that churn out detailed local forecasts of what may happen in a few hours' time. While it's relatively easy to say that an area half the size of a state may experience tornadoes, pinning down exactly where a twister will touch down is a much tougher job, and can only be done on a timescale of minutes — computer simulations aren't yet reliable enough at the scale of an individual storm, so meteorologists still have to rely on observations.

"Tornadoes can form in different ways," says Elsner. The same conditions that spawn a tornado during one storm might not do so in another. Plus, once the conditions are finally right, the tornado is often down on the ground before anyone has time to react. "They can form quickly and become violent in a matter of minutes," Elsner adds.

Tornado-generating storms need very specific conditions to form — moisture, temperature, and something known as wind shear, where the wind changes in strength and direction with height. The atmosphere also needs to be "unstable" — a term that indicates that if you give a bubble of air a shove, it'll accelerate upward. When you have those ingredients, the stage is set for the development of a thunderstorm that rotates, known as a supercell.

Plenty of supercells never spawn a tornado

Even when all those factors align, the chances of a tornado hitting the ground are very small. The number of strong, violent tornadoes that occur in a 10,000 square mile area, per year, is 0.1 across the entire US, and only 0.6 in Tennessee, the state with the highest frequency. In other words, plenty of supercells never spawn a tornado, as many a disgruntled stormchaser will tell you.

The average time between a tornado warning being issued and a twister touching down has been refined from 5 minutes to 13 minutes over the last couple of decades. It's an improvement, but hardly adequate to keep everyone in a tornado's path safe from harm.

NOAA image from four-dimensional storm sell investigator. (Credit: NOAA.)

But new techniques to ameliorate that timeframe are on the way. In 2007, meteorologists at the US government's National Severe Storm Laboratory (NSSL) developed a prototype, called the four-dimensional storm cell investigator. This radar can create and manipulate dynamic, 3D cross-sections, so that meteorologists can "slice and dice" storms and view that data from multiple angles and across time. "Scanning up and down with our radar helps," says Elsner. By looking at that structure, it's also possible to see common tornado signatures signatures, like the "hook echo" — a hook-shaped feature that indicates tornadogenesis.

A debris ball signature can verify tornadoes with 70 to 80 percent accuracy

This new radar has also helped forecasters establish more accurate tornado signatures, like the "debris ball," wherein material being carried in the vortex of a tornado can be spotted before the storm touches down. A debris ball signature can verify tornadoes with 70 to 80 percent accuracy. The four-dimensional storm cell investigator is still being tweaked and improved, but it's hoped that the technology will roll out to more radar stations across the US in the coming decade.

NOAA image of a debris ball in a storm. (Credit: NOAA.)

In addition to better radar, other investigators are working on more sophisticated computer modeling systems — capable of incorporating an unpredictable melee of variables into accurate predictions. "There's pressure, there's temperature, and none of the radars and current sensing instruments can get that at the resolution we really need to fundamentally understand the tornadoes," project leader Amy McGovern, PhD, a meteorologist at the University of Oklahoma, told Science Nation earlier this year.

Her computer models include these variables, giving meteorologists new opportunities to spot signatures that indicate the formation of a tornado — and potentially warn of tornadoes much sooner. This approach is being extensively tested by the research meteorologists at the NSSL, who are keen to get their hands on as many new tools as they can for their forecasting arsenal. Right now it's pumping out much more data than the forecasters need, so getting it to show the usable information and hide the junk is the next important step.

None of this burgeoning technology is foolproof

Unfortunately, none of this burgeoning technology is foolproof. Modeling storm systems is a promising technique, but because storms are incredibly sensitive to tiny changes, using a model — rather than observations — means that forecasters will inevitably lose accuracy. It's these tiny changes that tip a storm between forming a tornado or not, making McGovern and co.'s job incredibly difficult.

NOAA photo of a 2008 Oklahoma tornado. (Credit: Sean Waugh NOAA/NSSL.)

Piling on the pressure is the fact that false positives can do a tremendous amount of harm to residents' confidence in forecasts. Even when urgent warnings are issued, many people don't immediately seek shelter — sometimes because they don't have one, but often because they ignore sirens.

"A lot of times people don't react until they see it."

"We'd like to think that as soon as we say there is a tornado warning, everyone would run to the basement," Ken Harding, a weather service official in Kansas City, told the Huffington Post last year. "That's not how it is. They will channel flip, look out the window or call neighbours. A lot of times people don't react until they see it."

To address that problem, meteorologists are experimenting with issuing new warnings in Kansas and Missouri that use words like "mass devastation," "unsurvivable" and "catastrophic" to get people to pay attention. Two tiers of warnings for thunderstorms and three tiers for tornadoes have been created, based on severity. It's hoped that this might give people more context on the level of the danger that the storm poses, making them less likely to ignore it.

More accurate, effective forecasts being issued further in advance

If these techniques — improved radar analysis, better computer models and refined warnings — can be combined, we should see more accurate, effective forecasts being issued further in advance. And that might very well be increasingly important: no long-term trends have yet been established that indicate more tornadoes in the years to come, but Elsner suspects that tornado tracks, at least, are getting longer and wider. That usually means more powerful tornadoes. "Climate change increases the available energy for tornadoes through a warmer and moister atmosphere," he says. "We're battling the critics on this now. Stay tuned."

Solar Impulse travels 957 miles in furthest flight ever by solar-powered aircraft

2013-05-23T14:14:50Z

An airplane powered entirely by 11,000 solar cells covering its gigantic wings just completed the furthest continuous flight of a vehicle of its type in history early this morning local time, traveling 957 miles from Phoenix, Arizona, to Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas. The airplane, the Solar Impulse HB-SIA, made the trip as part of its ongoing flight across the continental US, which organizers say is designed to show off the practical applications of solar power. The cross-country flight is taking place now in several stages, but this particular part of the journey was the longest in terms of distance and time, and the most challenging yet for the aircraft and its pilot, who had to say awake for 18 hours as the Solar Impulse sailed across the sky.

"This leg was particularly challenging because of fairly strong winds."

"This leg was particularly challenging because of fairly strong winds at the landing. It also was the longest flight—in terms of distance—ever flown by a solar airplane," the plane's pilot Andre Borschberg said in a statement, as PhysOrg reported. However, Borschberg was also able to have some fun "surfing" the "wind waves" of the sky over the course of the flight, bobbing up and down with updrafts, as Solar Impulse said in a statement.

Borschberg and his co-pilot Bertrand Piccard previously are taking turns for each leg of the journey from San Francisco to New York. The Solar Impulse's previous furthest flight was a 693-mile trip from Switzerland to Spain. In 2015, Borschberg and Piccard want to fly the aircraft around the entire globe. Today's milestone puts them a bit closer to that goal.

As it turns 15, the ESO's Very Large Telescope captures another interstellar stunner

2013-05-23T13:38:02Z

The Very Large Telescope is about to turn 15, and to celebrate the European Southern Observatory has released a spectacular image of a radiant pink gas cloud. Naturally the shot you see above — showcasing just one nursery (IC 2944, according to Phys.org) where stars are born in spectacular fashion — was captured by the VLT. The telescope's massive optical power makes it feel as if you're right there, but in reality this cloud lies some 6500 light-years away. Researchers turned on the Very Large Telescope in May of 1998, and since then it's proven to be an indispensable tool cited in countless scientific papers and studies. And as you can clearly see, it's still producing wondrous results.

Scientists identify cell that could hold the secret to limb regeneration

2013-05-23T12:32:02Z

Researchers have identified a cell that aids limb regrowth in Salamanders. Macrophages are a type of repairing cell that devour dead cells and pathogens, and trigger other immune cells to respond to pathogens. In humans, they're also important to muscle repair, which led Dr. James Godwin, of the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University, to research whether the macrophages found inside Salamanders are related to the animal's ability to regenerate limbs.

The cells could release chemicals to trigger regeneration

Salamanders are unique in the vertebrate world as they're capable of repairing their hearts, tails, spinal cords, brain, and regrowing limbs. This makes them an obvious candidate for regenerative research. Godwin and the team at ARMI removed the macrophages the Salamanders and found that the animals were no longer able to regenerate limbs. He believes that the cells release chemicals that are vital to the Salamanders' regenerative powers. More research is needed to establish exactly how regeneration works, and Godwin is currently conducting experiments to investigate. "This really gives us somewhere to look for what might be secreted into the wound environment that allows for regeneration," he tells ABC News.

Although understanding the Salamander's abilities may one day lead to impossible-sounding feats like limb regeneration in humans, there are more-immediate benefits that could come from the research. Less ambitious goals such as scarless healing, could be attainable. "The long-term plan is that we'll know exactly what cocktail to add to a wound site to allow salamander-like regeneration under hospital conditions."

Glow-in-the-dark cockroach and social media butterfly named in scientists' top 10 new species

2013-05-23T12:12:04Z

A beautiful green lacewing, a snail-eating snake, and a glow-in-the-dark cockroach. These are just three of scientists' choices for a new top ten list of newly discovered animals, plants, and microbes from 2012. Now in it's sixth year, the list is put together by an international committee of experts selected by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University.

The light-producing cockroach, Lucihormetica luckae, is extraordinary for a number of different reasons. Not only is it one of a rare number of land-based animals to demonstrate luminescence, it may also already be extinct. The only known specimen was discovered more than 70 years ago. In a more modern twist, a lacewing (a relative of butterflies) made it to the list after a photo of the insect was spotted on a Malaysian man's Flickr account and identified as a new species by a Californian entomologist.

One new species was discovered on Flickr

Also fighting for a place in the top 10 is a snail-eating false coral snake, hanging flies that mimicked tree leaves more than 165 million years ago, rare flowering bushes from a forest in Madagascar, and a tiny violet. Completing the list is a new species of monkey that has human-like eyes and a blue bottom and a black fungus which is causing damage to Paleolithic paintings in the Lascaux Cave in France.

IISE founding director Quentin Wheeler believes the scientific community has only discovered 20 percent of earth's living species and is calling for a NASA-like mission to discover 10 million species in the next 50 years. "This would lead to discovering countless options for a more sustainable future while securing evidence of the origins of the biosphere," Wheeler said.