Author Archives: marcia

Japan Strong Aftershock

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Very strong coastal earthquake / aftershock near Ofunato, Japan

Last update: July 25, 2011 at 5:58 am by By Armand Vervaeck and James Daniell

Earthquake overview : At 1.34 PM (13:34), a very strong aftershock has shaken the Ofunato coastal area. Theearthquake had a magnitude of 6.4 following USGS.  The Ofunato coast was severely damaged during the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Intensity map courtesy JMA Japan – Orange: 5+ Yellow: 5-

FINAL UPDATE 25/07 05:49 UTC :
There has been 2 buildings damaged in Tono, in the Iwate Prefecture.
6 non-dwelling buildings have also been partially damaged.
In addition, one educational facility was damaged and also a cleaning facility.
No damage to nuclear facilities has occurred.
The damage denotes CATDAT ORANGE.

07:15 UTC : JMA has revised its earthquake parameters to a magnitude of 6.4 @ a depth of 47 km.

to read more, go to:   http://earthquake-report.com/2011/07/25/very-strong-coastal-earthquake-near-ofunato-japan/

Jellyfish force shutdowns of Nuclear Plants

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Jellyfish Invasions Force Shutdowns at 3 Separate Nuclear Plants

Natalie Wolchover, Life’s Little Mysteries Staff Writer
Date: 07 July 2011 Time: 01:25 PM ET
-IMAGEALT-
In the Gulf of Mexico’s densest jelly swarms, there are more jellyfish than there is water. More than 100 jellies may jam each cubic meter of water.
CREDIT: Dauphin Island Sea Lab

 

A nuclear power plant on the coast of Israel was forced to shut down this week when its seawater cooling system became clogged with jellyfish. A similar incident temporarily disabled two nuclear reactors at the Torness power station on the Scottish coast last week. A week before, a reactor in Shimane, Japan was crippled by yet another jellyfish infiltration.

Amid speculation that warm waters and ocean acidification — both driven by climate change — are boosting jellyfish populations, are these three incidents signs of a growing trend?

“The several [power plant incidents] that happened recently aren’t enough to indicate a global pattern. They certainly could be coincidental,” said Monty Graham, a jellyfish biologist and senior marine scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab off the Gulf Coast of Alabama.

to read more, go to:    http://www.livescience.com/14945-jellyfish-invasions-force-shutdowns-3-separate-nuclear-plants.html

Images from the Bermuda Triangle

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Gallery: Lost in the Bermuda Triangle

Welcome to the Bermuda Triangle

Welcome to the Bermuda TriangleCredit: doctorjools | dreamstimeThe Bermuda Triangle is infamous for making everything from cargo ships to airplanes disappear. The mysterious body of water is clouded with rumors of suspicions — if not supernatural — activity. Over the past century, the Bermuda Triangle has been “swallowing” vessels and is blamed for the loss of hundreds of lives. Here, we recap its strangest disappearances. Explore if you dare…

Warhol Musical?

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Theater review: ‘Pop!’ paints bold portrait of Warhol and his inner circle

By , Published: July 19

Absence is a tough concept to cover in a musical. We are far more conditioned for characters to sing to fill a void than for their melodic personalities to hover, enigmatically, in a theater’s negative space.

So for its novelty alone, Maggie-Kate Coleman and Anna K. Jacobs’s “Pop!” — a 90-minute musical tumble down the curious rabbit hole of artist Andy Warhol — is an intriguing and on occasion rousing evening, a bold and inventive attempt to give tuneful form to Warhol’s obsessive pursuit of the mundane.

( Linda Davidson / THE WASHINGTON POST ) – Tom Story takes full advantage of his role as the submissive-seeming Andy Warhol in “Pop!”

“Nothing gets noticed. Nothing is a story,” Warhol sings late in the proceedings at Studio Theatre, in the guise of actor Tom Story, his hair bleached and parted in trademark Warhol fashion. The idea that nothing is everything and everything is nothing is reinforced from the start of Studio’s 2ndStage production — skillfully assembled by director Keith Alan Baker — when Story, languorously examining a brown paper lunch bag, sings of its magical properties:

Alaska Volcano Preparing to Erupt

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Alaska volcano shows signs of impending eruption

By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska | Fri Jul 22, 2011 8:54am EDT

(Reuters) – Recent satellite images of a remote Alaska volcano along a flight route for major airlines show it may be poised for its first big eruption in 10 years, scientists said.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory has issued an eruption advisory for the 5,676 foot-tall (1,730 meters) Cleveland Volcano, located on the uninhabited island of Chuginadak in the Aleutian chain about 940 miles (1,500 km) southwest of Anchorage.

The advisory was based on “thermal anomalies” detected by satellite, the observatory said on Thursday. Those measurements indicate the volcano could erupt at any moment, spewing ash clouds up to 20,000 feet (3.7 miles/6 km) above sea level with little further warning, the observatory said.

to read more, go to:    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/22/uk-usa-volcano-alaska-idUSLNE76L03220110722

Mouse Develops Resistance to Poison

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Mutant Mouse Resistant to Poison

By Nadine DeNinno | July 21, 2011 9:07 PM EDT

A mouse has been found that is resistant to poison due to interbreeding, according to scientists at Rice University, which can potentially lead to its spread across the globe.

The European house mouse was found to be resistant to certain ingredients in common rodent poisoning due to a genetic mutation stemming from interbreeding. The mutation to gene vkorc1, which is present in mammals to manage Vitamin K, allows the “super mouse” to be unaffected by warfarin, a common rodent toxin.

to read more, go to:   http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/184775/20110721/mutant-mouse-resistant-poison.htm

Search for Higgs Boson Narrows Range

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23 July 2011 Last updated at 10:39 ET

Large Hadron Collider results excite scientists

By Paul RinconScience reporter, BBC News, Grenoble

Atlas experiment (Cern)The Atlas experiment is one of two multi-purpose experiments at the LHC

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has picked up tantalising fluctuations which might – or might not – be hints of the sought-after Higgs boson particle.

But scientists stress caution over these “excess events”, because similar wrinkles have been detected before only to disappear after further analysis.

Either way, if the sub-atomic particle exists it is running out of places to hide, says the head of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), which runs the LHC.

He told BBC News the collider had now ruled out more of the “mass range” where the Higgs might be.

The new results are based on analyses of data, gathered as the vast machine smashes beams of protons together at close to light speeds.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14258601

Mythical Beasts?

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Mythical Creatures: Beasts That Don’t Exist (Or Do They?)

By Benjamin Radford, Life’s Little Mysteries Contributor
01 March 2011 6:14 PM ET
 

 

A still shot from the newly posted video that some think shows a monster in Lake Champlain in Vermont. Credit: YouTube

When scientists visit a tucked-away part of the planet — say, a deep-ocean hydrothermal vent or an isolated jungle mountain — they routinely find dozens of species that have never been documented. It’s discoveries like these that allow folks who believe in mythical beasts such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and El Chupacabra to hold out hope that these creatures actually do exist.
In most cases, hope is all they have, as the scientific evidence for these 10 animals of urban legend simply isn’t very convincing.

Bigfoot

 to read more and see the list of the other creatures, go to:    http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/mythical-creatures-beasts-1412/

Fossil Frankenstein Bug Found

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Ancient ‘Frankenstein’ Insect Discovered

Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 19 July 2011 Time: 06:00 AM ET

Insect “Frankensteins” have been discovered among fossils from a deposit in Brazil. The prehistoric creatures had the wings and middle-body segments of a dragonfly’s, wing veins arranged like a mayfly and a praying mantis’s forelegs.

“It is a very strange mix of characteristics that are otherwise only known for the unrelated insect groups,” said one of the researchers to discover this new group of insects, Günter Bechly, a paleontologist at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany.

to read more, go to:    http://www.livescience.com/15100-insect-frakenstein-fossil-order-coxoplectoptera.html

Gallery of Wolves

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My, What Big Teeth: Wolves Gallery

1 of 12

A Common Ancestor

A Common AncestorCredit: John and Karen Hollingsworth | US Fish & Wildlife Service

The wolf, an ancestor of the domestic dog, is both a cherished and feared creature. There are many different subspecies of wolves, and in the U.S., the gray wolf, red wolf, Mexican wolf and Arctic wolf are all endangered

to see all 12 images in the gallery, go to:  http://www.livescience.com/15159-wolves-gallery.html .