Weekly Science Picks

Kelly Burnes — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 00:09:16 +0000

Destruction in the Philippines. Photograph by Bullit Marquez, AP, via National Geographic

Good morning. Or good afternoon, or evening, depending on your time zone. But it’s time for Weekly Science Picks, so let’s take a look at some of the stories making headlines in the world of science this week.

CLIMATE.

2013 ‘one of warmest’ on record by Roger Harrabin

Dr Steve Rintoul, research team leader at Australia’s CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research division, said: “A more significant point is that global-average temperature in each of the last three decades has been warmer than any prior decade dating back to 1850, as reported in the recently released IPCC report. It provides compelling evidence that human activities are primarily responsible for the warming over the last 50 years.”

In the light of climate, why the need for action is so dire.

5 Reasons the Philippines Is So Disaster Prone by Dan Vergano

From earthquakes to volcanic eruptions to previous super typhoons, death tolls following cataclysmic events in the Philippines tend to be high. Here are 5 reasons why:

I recall the movie “A Beautiful Mind” when the term schizophrenia comes up. It’s a beautiful movie about the life of John Nash,a mathematician working in differential geometry, game theory and partial differential equations. It depicts the highs and lows of a mental rollercoaster. This next article sheds light on new research, theories, and a little bit of controversy.

Forget the headlines – schizophrenia is more common than you might think by Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman

We tested the level of paranoia among the general public by asking volunteers to take a virtual reality tube train ride, during which they shared a carriage with a number of computer-generated “avatars”. These avatars were programmed to behave in a strictly neutral fashion, yet over 40% of participants reported that the avatars showed hostility towards them.

Here’s the perfect story to read over breakfast! Pancakes and Maths anyone?

Flipping pancakes with mathematics by The Guardian, Notes&Theories, Dispatches from the Science Desk

Thus the so-called pancake sorting problem was born. How many flips are required to turn a disordered stack of pancakes into an ordered stack?

It’s amazing how the designs architects draft on paper come to being before our eyes. Check out this gallery of slinky-esque buildings.

These Skytwisters Are the 21st Century’s Answer to the Skyscraper by Vince Miklos

We live in the age of the twisty, twirly, spun-up skyscraper. From the pages of conceptual architectural journals, to the streets of many cities, these eye-boggling wonders look like some of the most futuristic buildings in the world.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s edition. Have a great weekend. And stay thirsty for knowledge.

Cite this article:
Burnes K (2013-11-17 00:09:16). Weekly Science Picks. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 04, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/news/weekly-science-picks-54/

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Greenland ice core records provide a vision of the future

Editorial Board — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:01:21 +0000

Ice cores drilled in the Greenland ice sheet, recounting the history of the last great warming period more than 120,00 years ago, are giving scientists their clearest insight to a world that was warmer than today.

In a paper published on January 24th 2013, in the journal Nature, scientists have used a 2,540 metre long Greenland ice core to reach back to the Eemian period 115-130 thousand years ago and reconstruct the Greenland temperature and ice sheet extent back through the last interglacial. This period is likely to be comparable in several ways to climatic conditions in the future, especially the mean global surface temperature, but without anthropogenic or human influence on the atmospheric composition.

The Eemian period is referred to as the last interglacial, when warm temperatures continued for several thousand years due mainly to the earth’s orbit allowing more energy to be received from the sun. The world today is considered to be in an interglacial period and that has lasted 11,000 years, and called the Holocene.

“The research results provide new benchmarks for climate and ice sheet scenarios used by scientists in projecting future climate influences.”

Dr Mauro Rubino, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research

“The ice is an archive of past climate and analysis of the core is giving us pointers to the future when the world is likely to be warmer”, says CSIRO’s Dr Mauro Rubino, the Australian scientist working with the North Greenland Eemian ice core research project.

Dr Rubino says the Greenland ice sheet is presently losing mass more quickly than the Antarctic ice sheet. Of particular interest is the extent of the Greenland continental ice sheet at the time of the last interglacial and its contribution to global sea level.

Deciphering the ice core archive proved especially difficult for ice layers formed during the last interglacial because, being close to bedrock, the pressure and friction due to ice movement impacted and re-arranged the ice layering. These deep layers were “re-assembled

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Weekly Science Picks

Greenland ice core records provide a vision of the future