Americans’ support for government action on global warming remains high but has dropped during the past two years, according to a new survey by Stanford researchers in collaboration with Ipsos Public Affairs. Political rhetoric and cooler-than-average weather appear to have influenced the shift, but economics doesn’t appear to have played a role.

The survey directed by Jon Krosnick, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, shows that support for a range of policies intended to reduce future climate change dropped by an average of 5 percentage points per year between 2010 and 2012.

In a 2010 Stanford survey, more than three-quarters of respondents expressed support for mandating more efficient and less polluting cars, appliances, homes, offices and power plants.

Nearly 90 percent of respondents favored federal tax breaks to spur companies to produce more electricity from water, wind and solar energy. On average, 72 percent of respondents supported government action on climate change in 2010. By 2012, that support had dropped to 62 percent.

The drop was concentrated among Americans who distrust climate scientists, even more so among such people who identify themselves as Republicans. Americans who do not trust climate science were especially aware of and influenced by recent shifts in world temperature, and 2011 was tied for the coolest of the last 11 years.

Krosnick pointed out that during the recent campaign, all but one Republican presidential candidate expressed doubt about global warming, and some urged no government action to address the issue.

Rick Santorum described belief in climate change as a “pseudo-religion,” while Ron Paul called it a “hoax.” Mitt Romney, the apparent Republican nominee, has said, “I can tell you the right course for America with regard to energy policy is to focus on job creation and not global warming.”

The Stanford-Ipsos study found no evidence that the decline in public support for government action was concentrated among respondents who lived in states struggling the most economically.

The study found that, overall, the majority of Americans continue to support many specific government actions to mitigate global warming’s effect. However, most Americans remain opposed to consumer taxes intended to decrease public use of electricity and gasoline.

http://news.discovery.com/space/brown-dwarfs-birthing-may-explain-mystery-obj…


http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/mild-amazon.html


http://www.universetoday.com/95094/surprise-ibex-finds-no-bow-shock-outside-o…


http://www.universetoday.com/95097/end-of-the-world-averted-new-archeological…


http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=77877


http://spaceweather.com/


http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/


http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/data.html


http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/


http://umtof.umd.edu/pm/


http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/soho_movie_theater


http://www.ips.gov.au/HF_Systems/6/5


http://solarimg.org/artis/


http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/wsa-enlil/cme-based/


http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php


http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/SWMF_RealTime_browse.cgi


http://grb.sonoma.edu/


http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-torcon-index

J7409′s video:

Some of the most mysterious objects in our galaxy are also among the most numerous. And it turns out that there’s an estimated 100 billion mysterious brown dwarfs scattered among the stars.

They are so ubiquitous that there could be one closer to the Earth than the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. If a brown dwarf is ever discovered nearby, it would likely be the target of our first interstellar mission.

WATCH VIDEO: Discovery News unlocks the mysteries of stars and finds out why a star’s age matters.

ANALYSIS: Do ‘Ultracool’ Brown Dwarfs Surround Us?

Brown dwarfs are smaller than the lowest-mass stars but can be dozens of times more massive than Jupiter. They are too low mass to sustain hydrogen fusion and so technically they are not stars by definition. (The term brown dwarf is also misleading because brown is not a color in the visible spectrum. Something like ultra-red dwarfs would be a more appropriate name.)

Among the biggest questions is why brown dwarfs aren’t commonly found orbiting normal stars. However, some tend to hang out together in binary pairs of dwarfs. That said, they are found in the vicinity of normal stars but not gravitationally bound to them, as seen in the above photo of the Pleiades star cluster.

A newly published set of dynamical simulations points to brown dwarfs being born as knots of gas in protoplanetary disks around normal stars. They are then rudely ejected into interstellar space as lone drifters.

“We conclude that gas clump ejection and the formation of low-mass and substellar objects is a common occurrence, with important implications for understanding the formation of stars,” writes Shantanu Basu of the University of Western Ontario and Eduard I. Vorobyov of the University of Vienna.

The team’s simulations show a lumpy, fragmenting gas disk whirling around a forming star (as seen here, arrow points to brown dwarf progenitor clump). Several other large gas clumps play a gravitational game of bumper cars. In a typical “three’s-a-crowd” interaction, a clump is gravitationally ejected from the system. The clumps left behind may fall into the star or get tidally shredded.

The runaway clump later forms its own separate accretion disk and gravitationally collapses down to a compact object ranging from one-tenth to one-third the mass of our sun. In some cases two brown dwarfs contract out of the clump to make a binary system.

I’m fascinated by this theoretical work because I wonder if it would help explain one of the most legendary and strangest space photos ever taken — of an unexplained object called TMR-1c:

In 1998, the Hubble Space Telescope made an infrared photo of a very red pinpoint object (seen at bottom right) that is at the end of a ghostly finger of illuminated dust stretching 135 billion miles from a young binary star system. The telltale finger was interpreted as being formed after a large, hot planet was gravitationally ejected from the binary.

ANALYSIS: Phantom Planet Comes Back From Oblivion

It was later dismissed as simply a chance juxtaposition of the dust-reddened light from an old background star with a foreground linear nebulous feature. However, ground-based telescopic observations in 2009 show that the mystery object had gotten brighter and bluer. This is something a normal main sequence star could never do.

The variability in brightness and color is interpreted as a young substellar object surrounded by a spinning thick disk of dust. The colors of TMR-1c could be explained by the presence of a condensed atmosphere, as commonly observed among brown dwarfs.

These detailed computer simulations underscore that star-making, planet-making and even brown dwarf birth is a much more chaotic and messy business than ever before imagined.

Photo credits: ESO, S. Basu, NASA

Outbreak Notice Leptospirosis in Peru

This information is current as of today, May 11, 2012 at 20:47 EDT

Released: May 11, 2012

What Is the Current Situation?

Flooding has caused an outbreak of leptospirosis in Peru, especially in the Loreto region. This is the worst flooding seen in this area for over 20 years. Peru has reported more than 300 cases and 3 deaths associated with leptospirosis thus far in 2012. Health authorities have alerted people to take precautions against the infection.

What Is Leptospirosis?

Leptospirosis is a disease that is spread by animal urine. People become infected with the disease when they come in contact with body fluids of infected animals or in contact with water, soil, or food contaminated with infected urine. Leptospirosis is a hazard for many people who work outdoors or with animals. The disease has also been associated with swimming, wading, kayaking, and rafting in contaminated lakes and rivers. Symptoms include high fever, headache, chills, muscle aches, vomiting, jaundice (yellow eyes and skin), red eyes, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and rash. Some people do not experience symptoms. This disease can cause kidney or liver failure and/or meningitis (swelling of the tissue covering the brain). Without treatment, recovery can take several months.

Leptospirosis occurs throughout the world, especially in regions with flooding. Leptospirosis occurs more often in tropical areas. Urban areas lacking sanitation may also have a higher risk of leptospirosis.

How Can Travelers Protect Themselves?

No vaccine is available to prevent leptospirosis. Travelers to areas with flooding can take the following steps to prevent the disease:

• Avoid swallowing flood waters or water from lakes, rivers, and swamps. Wear protective clothing, especially footwear, if you are wading in flood waters or other areas that might be contaminated.
• Avoid wading in flooded areas, especially if you have any cuts or abrasions.
• Avoid contact with environments contaminated with animal urine.
• Talk to your health care provider about taking medicine to help prevent leptospirosis. Be sure to tell your health care provider about all your planned activities.

Clinician Information:

Adult travelers who travel to the Loreto region of Peru are at increased risk for leptospirosis and should be advised to consider chemoprophylaxis with doxycycline (200 mg orally, weekly), begun 1–2 days before and continuing through the period of exposure. Indications for prophylactic doxycycline use for children < 8 years of age have not been established. Travelers at increased risk for leptospirosis and in need of malaria chemoprophylaxis should consider using doxycycline for both indications.

Diagnosis of leptospirosis is usually based on serology. Antibodies may be detected in the blood within 5–7 days of symptom onset. Culture and demonstration of the organism under darkfield microscopy are both relatively insensitive. No PCR assay has been validated with clinical specimens. Confirmation of leptospirosis requires seroconversion between acute- and convalescent-phase serum specimens, as demonstrated by the microscopic agglutination test (MAT), culture of the organism from clinical specimens, or demonstration of Leptospira in a clinical specimen by immunofluorescence.

Missed or delayed diagnosis of leptospirosis is common because of its nonspecific clinical presentation and a low index of suspicion among clinicians seeing returned travelers. Antimicrobial therapy should be initiated early in the course of the disease if leptospirosis is suspected. Intravenous penicillin is a drug of choice for patients with severe leptospirosis. As with other spirochete infections, a Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction (an acute febrile reaction that can range from rash to anaphylaxis) can develop after initiation of penicillin therapy. Various methods have been described to prevent or control Jarisch-Herxheimer reactions, and management should follow the appropriate standards for patient care. Doxycycline is effective in decreasing the severity and duration of leptospirosis and the occurrence of leptospiruria. Parenteral third-generation cephalosporins and azithromycin may also be used for treatment. Because of the risk for potential complications, including cardiac arrhythmia, renal failure, pulmonary involvement and respiratory distress, or myocarditis, patients with leptospirosis may require hospitalization, supportive therapy, and close monitoring.

Additional Information:

• Leptospirosis – Yellow Book, Health Information for International Travel
• Leptospirosis – CDC Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology

 

 

11.05.2012

Epidemic

Philippines

Zamboanga

As people pump groundwater for irrigation, drinking water, and industrial uses, the water doesn’t just seep back into the ground – it also evaporates into the atmosphere, or runs off into rivers and canals, eventually emptying into the world’s oceans. This water adds up, and a new study calculates that by 2050, groundwater pumping will cause a global sea level rise of about 0.8 millimeters per year.

“Other than ice on land, the excessive groundwater extractions are fast becoming the most important terrestrial water contribution to sea level rise,” said Yoshihide Wada, with Utrecht University in the Netherlands and lead author of the study. In the coming decades, he noted, groundwater contributions to sea level rise are expected to become as significant as those of melting glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and the Antarctic.

Between around 1970 and 1990, sea level rise caused by groundwater pumping was cancelled out as people built dams, trapping water in reservoirs so the water wouldn’t empty into the sea, Wada said. His research shows that starting in the 1990s, that changed as populations started pumping more groundwater and building fewer dams.

The researchers looked not only at the contribution of groundwater pumping, which they had investigated before, but also at other factors that influence the amount of terrestrial water entering the oceans, including marsh drainage, forest clearing, and new reservoirs. Wada and his colleagues calculate that by mid-century, the net effect of these additional factors is an additional 0.05 mm per year of annual sea level rise, on top of the contribution from groundwater pumping alone.

The last report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 addressed the effect on sea level rise of melting ice on land, including glaciers and ice caps, Wada said. But it didn’t quantify the future contribution from other terrestrial water sources, such as groundwater, reservoirs, wetlands and more, he said, because the report’s authors thought the estimates for those sources were too uncertain.

“They assumed that the positive and negative contribution from the groundwater and the reservoirs would cancel out,” Wada said. “We found that wasn’t the case. The contribution from the groundwater is going to increase further, and outweigh the negative contribution from reservoirs.”

In the current study, the researchers estimated the impact of groundwater depletion since 1900 using data from individual countries on groundwater pumping, model simulations of groundwater recharge, and reconstructions of how water demand has changed over the years. They also compared and corrected those estimates with observations from sources such as the GRACE satellite, which uses gravity measurements to determine variations in groundwater storage.

With these groundwater depletion rates, Wada and his colleagues estimate that in 2000, people pumped about 204 cubic kilometers (49 cubic miles) of groundwater, most of which was used for irrigation.

Most of this, in turn, evaporates from plants, enters the atmosphere and rains back down. Taking into account the seepage of groundwater back into the aquifers, as well as evaporation and runoff, the researchers estimated that groundwater pumping resulted in sea level rise of about 0.57 mm in 2000 – much greater than the 1900 annual sea level rise of 0.035 mm.

The researchers also projected groundwater depletion, reservoir storage, and other impacts for the rest of the century, using climate models and projected population growth and land use changes.

The increase in groundwater depletion between 1900 and 2000 is due mostly to increased water demands, the researchers find. But the increase projected between 2000 and 2050 is mostly due to climate-related factors like decreased surface water availability and irrigated agricultural fields that dry out faster in a warmer climate.

If things continue as projected, Wada estimates that by 2050, the net, cumulative effect of these non-ice, land-based water sources and reservoirs – including groundwater pumping, marsh drainage, dams, and more – will have added 31 mm to sea level rise since 1900.

The new study assumes that, where there is groundwater, people will find a way to extract it, Wada said, but some of his colleagues are investigating the limits of groundwater extraction. One way to decrease groundwater’s contribution to sea level rise, he noted, is to improve water efficiency in agriculture – to grow more with less groundwater.

The research team’s article is being published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Mayan wall writings in Guatemala include calendars suggesting the culture was not convinced the world will end in 21012, as many have believed, researchers say.

Some previously discovered Mayan calendars did not go beyond 2012 — but the newly discovered writings and calendars do, scientists said.

“So much for the supposed end of the world,” archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, lead author of a study published in the journal Science, said.

Discovered in the ruins of Xultun, the astronomical calendar was unearthed in a filled-in scribe’s room, USA Today reported.

The ancient Mayan civilization of pyramid temples had collapsed there by about A.D. 900, leaving very few records of their astronomy — until now, Saturno said.

“The numbers we found indicate an obsession with time and cycles of time, some of them very large,” Saturno says. “Maya scribes most likely transcribed the numbers on the wall in this room into (books) just like the ones later seen by conquistadors.”

Some of the writings include dates corresponding to a time after the year 3500, he said.

Once considered peaceful star-gazers, ancient Mayan society has come to be identified through more recent research as engaged in politics, war and trade.

“We’re seeing the pendulum swing back with this discovery, where we can now see astronomy playing a role in ordering their society,” Mayan writing expert Simon Martin at Philadelphia’s Penn Museum said.

SENDAI — Japan will no longer have children under the age of 15 in 999 years, a group of researchers at Tohoku University Graduate School has estimated.

The team, led by professor Hiroshi Yoshida, developed a child population clock that displays an estimated number of children at any moment based on past percentages of decline. The clock was made available on the university’s website Thursday.

The team used a 2011-2012 percentage change in the number of children that was released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on April 1. The number of children aged under 15 fell to 16.6 million in 2012 from 16.9 million in 2011.

The clock calculates the estimated number of children at present and counts down to the last child, based on the assumption that the number of children is expected to continue falling.

Japan’s child population drops by one every 100 seconds, according to the clock. As a result, there will be no kids on May 18, 3011.

The percentage change, which the clock is based upon, will be reviewed every year by adding the latest population data.

The move is designed to highlight the decline in the number of children in Japan.

“By indicating it in figures, I want people to think about the problem of the falling birthrate with a sense of urgency,” Yoshida said.

William Saturno, a Boston University archeologist, excavates a mural in a house in Xultun, massive Mayan ruins in Guatemala. The mural depicts a figure who may have been the town scribe. Excavation and preservation of the site were supported by the National Geographic Society. Credit: Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic.

So much for the world ending on December 21, 2012. We’ve been saying it for years, but a new find by archaeologists confirms the Mayan calendar indeed does not end this year but keeps going, just like turning a page to a new calendar.

“It’s very clear that the 2012 date, while important as Baktun 13, was turning the page,” David Stuart, quoted by Alan Boyle on MSNBC’s Cosmic Log. “Baktun 14 was going to be coming, and Baktun 15 and Baktun 16. … The Maya calendar is going to keep going, and keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future.”

A team of archaeologists found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes wrote on the walls — apparently like a blackboard — to keep track of astronomical records and details of the complex Mayan calendar. The writings date to about 1,200 years ago.

These are the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. They were found at the Xultun archaeological site in Guatemala’s Peten region. Scientists already knew the Mayans must have been keeping such records during that time period, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later.

The room, about 2 meters (6-feet) square, contains walls decorated with images of a king and some other notable figures, as well as astronomical numbers and writings, the scientists said. The room had a stone roof rather than a thatched one, which may indicate the importance of the room.

Why did they write on walls, as opposed to other Mayan texts that have been found on bark paper?

The time period of the early 9th century was not a stable time for the Mayans, as there was political turmoil between the various city-states of the time, and the researchers said that perhaps the Xultun scribes wished to make a more permanent record of their data related to the calendar.

By some supposed “researchers,” Dec. 21, 2012 has been correlated to the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar, which was based on a cycle of 13 intervals known as baktuns, each lasting 144,000 days.

But the newly found writing on walls of the ancient room shows wide ranges of accumulated time, including a 17-baktun period. “There was a lot more to the Maya calendar than just 13 baktuns,” said Stuart, talking with reporters. Seventeen baktuns would stand for about 6,700 years, which is much longer than the 13-baktun cycle of 5,125 years. However, Stuart cautioned that the time notation shouldn’t be read as specifying a date that’s farther in the future than Dec. 21.

“It may just be that this is a mathematical number that’s kind of interesting,” he said. “We’re not sure what the base of the calendar is.”

William Saturno, an archaeologist at Boston University who led the team of archaeologists said many different scientists have been trying to get the word out that the end of the Maya culture’s 13-baktun Long Count calendar doesn’t signify the end of the world, but merely a turnover to the next cycle in a potentially infinite series — like going from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1 on a modern calendar.

“If someone is a hard-core believer that the world is going to end in 2012, no painting is going to convince them otherwise,” he said. “The only thing that can convince them otherwise is waiting until Dec. 22, 2012 — which fortunately for all of us isn’t that far away.”

Read the team’s abstract.

Read more at Cosmic Log, ABC News, Science, National Geographic.