ICE AGE FOSSILS FOUND NEAR LA TAR PITS
Trevor Valle, an assistant lab supervisor cleans a portion of a 10-foot-long Colombian mammoth tusk at the Page Museum lab at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles on Wednesday Feb. 18, 2009. Researchers discovered 16 fossil deposits under an old parking lot next to the tar pits in 2006 and began sifting through them last summer. The mammoth remains, including 10-foot-long tusks, were in an ancient riverbed near the fossil cache.
STUDENTS 'do not know the Bible"
The role of the poet laureate includes writing verse for royal occasions
The Poet Laureate says it is becoming increasingly difficult to teach English Literature because students do not know the Bible or classical mythology.
Andrew Motion told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the lack of knowledge made it "difficult to even get beyond go" when teaching some of his recent students.
John Mullan, professor of English at University College London, said it was up to academics to solve the problem.
He said the key was natural curiosity, rather than a huge body of knowledge.
Mr Motion told the BBC: "I've always been concerned about the levels of not-knowing since I started teaching, but quite recently I had a very bad experience of trying to teach some of my, in other respects, extremely good students about Paradise Lost.
These stories achieve archetypal status because they tell us recurring truths about human nature that is a pleasure and an important thing in and of itself
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate
How well do you know the Bible?
"They knew so little about the context in which the poem was written and about the references that the poem itself makes that it was very difficult even to get beyond go in talking about it."
He said he believed the issue was not simply that students were unaware of some of the more esoteric characters in classical literature, but that it was "more of a general problem".
The Poet Laureate said: "I'm not trying to give them a dusty and bitter pill to swallow here, I'm just saying that these stories achieve archetypal status because they tell us recurring truths about human nature that is a pleasure and an important thing in and of itself."
Mr Mullen told the programme he believed the problem was one that had been around for some time and one "that academics can't just lament but have to do something about".
He said his University College London English Literature course included a module through which students are brought up to speed with the classical texts.
He added: "I recently have interviewed quite a lot of candidates who have done Measure for Measure, Shakespeare's play, for 'A' level.
"Not a single one of them seemed to have known the title comes from Christ's Sermon on the Mount and that might make a difference to what the play's about."
OBAMA GETS AUTOGRAPHED SHAQUILLE O'NEAL SNEAKER
PHOENIX — What's the ideal gift for a basketball-obsessed president? Try a size 23 sneaker personally autographed by Shaquille O'Neal.
The Phoenix Suns center couldn't be around himself when President Barack Obama arrived at Sky Harbor International Airport Tuesday afternoon. So when the president stepped off of Air Force One, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon's son Jake made the presentation at the foot of the stairs.
The orange-and-white sneaker made a big impression.
Obama set it on the ground next to his own, much smaller shoe, and grinned as photographers captured the moment.
IF THERE IS LIFE ON MARS AS NASA SCIENTISTS CLAIM, THIS IS WHERE IT LIVES.
This extraordinarily detailed picture shows exactly where the most methane, taken as an indication of life, can be found.
Appropriately enough for the sphere dubbed the Red Planet , the scarlet areas are the places where scientists have detected the most of the gas.
Plumes of up to 19,000 tons of methane, pictured red, were detected in Mars' northern hemisphere
The picture was released by NASA just days after the U.S. space agency confirmed the presence of methane on Mars.
It is the first 'definitive proof' of plumes of the gas seeping from the planet's northern hemisphere.
And it is the strongest hint yet that alien microbes could be thriving deep below the red, dusty surface.
On Earth, 90 per cent of the methane produced is released by living organisms far beneath the soil.
'It might be possible for similar organisms to survive for billions of years below the permafrost layer on Mars, where water is liquid, radiation supplies energy, and carbon dioxide provides carbon,' said NASA scientist Professor Michael Mumma.
The surface of Mars may look dry and desolate but strange rock formations could suggest there was once water running there
Three large telescopes based in Hawaii revealed that the colours absorbed by gas in Mars' northern hemisphere during the planet's summer match those absorbed by methane on Earth.
The revealing colours were detected using specialist high-dispersion infra-red spectrometers, which can reveal the chemical make-up of gas.
'One of the plumes released about 19,000 metric tons of methane,' Professor Mumma said.
Methane was detected on Mars as early as 2003 but scientists claimed it could have been dumped on the planet by comets.
The latest discovery is proof that the gas is actually produced by the Red Planet.
There is not yet enough information to know for sure whether the methane was a product of biology or geology, Professor Mumma said.
But he added: 'It does tell us that the planet is still alive, at least in the geological sense.
'It is as if Mars is challenging us, saying "hey find out what this means."'
Professor Colin Pillinger, who masterminded the unsuccessful Beagle 2 mission to Mars in 2003, said he believed the gas pointed to the existence of life on the planet
British scientists welcomed the discovery, published in the journal Science.
Professor Colin Pillinger, the Open University scientist behind the failed Beagle 2 Mars probe in 2003, said: 'Methane is one indicator of life - and this is still more circumstantial evidence.
'We only have methane on the Earth because it is pumped into the air by life forms, or because it comes out of volcanoes. The only way to prove it is produced by life on Mars is to go and have a look.'
No active volcanoes have ever been spotted on the Red Planet.
Nasa's next probe to Mars will be sent in 2011. However, it will be poorly equipped to study methane and discover whether it comes from life.
The best chance to settle the life question will come in 2017 when Europe's ExoMars robotic mission is due to land on the Red Planet.
The methane levels peak during the warmer summer months, providing the strongest hint yet that alien microbes could be thriving deep below the red, dusty surface.
FLORIDA COLD SNAP CAUSES IGUANAS TO FALL FROM TREES
Experts say the cold-blooded reptiles go into a deep sleep when the temperature falls into the 40s. Their bodies basically shut off and they lose their grip on the tree.
NAPLES, Fla. — The chilly weather in southern Florida this week was cold enough to force some iguanas to fall from trees.
Experts say the cold-blooded reptiles go into a deep sleep when the temperature falls into the 40s. Their bodies basically shut off and they lose their grip on the tree.
According to Collier County Domestic Animal Services control supervisor Dana Alger, iguana reports traditionally rise when temperatures drop, as the reptiles seek to warm themselves on asphalt surfaces such as sidewalks, roads and driveways.
Most of the iguanas were once pets that got released when they got too big. The reptiles can grow up to six feet long.
Copyright Associated
NOVELIST HIRED FOR 'DOOM 4'
That was more than 15 years ago, and it seems series developer id Software is looking to grow the series at least a little beyond those simple roots. In an update to his personal Web site, British author Graham Joyce announced that he is now working on id's upcoming Doom 4.
Joyce is a decorated scribe, having four times won the British Fantasy Society's Award for Best Novel. Other famed authors to have claimed the annual award include Stephen King (who also won the honor four times) and Neil Gaiman. Joyce also won a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2003, when his book The Facts of Life shared the designation with Patricia A. McKillip's Ombria in Shadow.
Joyce did not reveal any of his plans for the game in his blog post, saying only that he has "been hired to contribute to the storyline" of the game. A representative for id Software had not returned GameSpot's request for comment as of press time.
SINGAPORE UNFURLS A SAIL-SHAPED GREEN SKYSCRAPER
A luminous sail-shaped skyscraper is nearing completion in Singapore, proving that there’s always room to grow despite the constraints of urban density. Designed by NBBJ Architects, The Sail @ Marina Bay consists of two smoothy sculpted skyscrapers inspired by the sun, wind, and water. Due for completion later this year, the project is expected to earn Singapore’s Gold Standard of Sustainability badge.
Singapore is striving to establish itself as a destination city for those who are interested living, working, and playing. The city recently moved its main port to Jurong, opening up new land ripe for development in the Marina Bay area of its Central Business District.
The Sail @ Marina Bay will be a mixed-use building that includes restaurants, health clubs, recreation decks with pools and tennis courts and parking all to service some of the loftiest apartments in the world. The residential units in the Sail will be the first to be built in the area, and will add density while hopefully eliminating the need to produce any carbon emissions on the way to work in the morning.
HOW MASSIVE STARS FORM: SIMPLE SOLUTION FOUND
The existence of massive stars — up to a whopping 120 times the mass of the sun — has long perplexed astronomers. The big question was how these stellar behemoths reached their enormous sizes without blowing off all the gas that feeds them.
A new computer simulation of star formation has found a surprisingly simple solution to how these stars might get around this problem.
The new findings, detailed in the Jan. 16 issue of the journal Science, also explain why these giants tend to occur in binary or multiple star systems.
"We didn't' set out to solve that question, so it was a nice side benefit of the study," said study leader Mark Krumholz of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Balancing forces
When a star begins to form, two opposing forces are at play. One is the pull of gravity creating by the rotating gas cloud from which the star is born. Gravity pulls the gaseous material in, feeding the protostar.
The other force, called radiation pressure, is generated by the growing star itself. This pressure is the force exerted by electromagnetic radiation on the surfaces it strikes. For ordinary light, this force is nearly negligible, but it becomes significant in the interior of stars because of the intensity of their radiation.
For massive stars, radiation pressure is the dominant outward-flowing force counteracting gravity's inward pull to prevent the further collapse of the star. Previous studies had suggested that radiation pressure would blow away a star's gas cloud before the star could grow much larger than 20 times the mass of the sun.
"When you apply the radiation pressure from a massive star to the dusty interstellar gas around it, which is much more opaque than the star's internal gas, it should explode the gas cloud," Krumholz explained.
Yet plenty of these massive stars have been spotted by astronomers (though they are rarer than small stars).
Surprise solution
Krumholz and his colleagues solved the dilemma with a three-dimensional computer simulation of the collapse of a giant interstellar gas cloud to form a massive star. Their research was funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy.
As the dusty gas collapsed, onto the star's growing core, instabilities developed that resulted in channels where radiation blew out through the cloud into interstellar space, while gas continued falling inward through other channels.
"You can see fingers of gas falling in and radiation leaking out between those fingers of gas," Krumholz said. "This shows that you don't need any exotic mechanisms; massive stars can form through accretion processes just like low-mass stars."
The disk of the collapsing gas also did something unexpected: it clumped to form a series of small secondary stars, most of which collided into the primary star, but some of which came to be stars in their own right and formed a multiple star system.
"I think now we can consider the mystery of how massive stars are able to form to be solved," Krumholz said.
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