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Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Live from Expand: DJ Spooky (video)
We'll be joined onstage by artist, writer and musician DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid to discuss technology's impact on music.
March 17, 2013 5:00 PM EDT
For a full list of Expand sessions, be sure to check out our event hub.
Filed under: Misc
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/17/live-from-expand-dj-spooky/
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Earthquakes turn water into gold
Heritage Auctions
The tyrannosaur of the minerals, this gold nugget in quartz weighs more than 70 ounces (2 kilograms).
By Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet
Earthquakes have the Midas touch, a new study claims.
Water in faults vaporizes during an earthquake, depositing gold, according to a model published in the March 17 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. The model provides a quantitative mechanism for the link between gold and quartz seen in many of the world's gold deposits, said Dion Weatherley, a geophysicist at the University of Queensland in Australia and lead author of the study.
When an earthquake strikes, it moves along a rupture in the ground ? a fracture called a fault. Big faults can have many small fractures along their length, connected by jogs that appear as rectangular voids. Water often lubricates faults, filling in fractures and jogs.
About 6 miles (10 kilometers) below the surface, under incredible temperatures and pressures, the water carries high concentrations of carbon dioxide, silica and economically attractive elements like gold.
Shake, rattle and gold
During an earthquake, the fault jog suddenly opens wider. It's like pulling the lid off a pressure cooker: The water inside the void instantly vaporizes, flashing to steam and forcing silica, which forms the mineral quartz, and gold out of the fluids and onto nearby surfaces, suggest Weatherley and co-author Richard Henley, of the Australian National University in Canberra.
While scientists have long suspected that sudden pressure drops could account for the link between giant gold deposits and ancient faults, the study takes this idea to the extreme, said Jamie Wilkinson, a geochemist at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study.
"To me, it seems pretty plausible. It's something that people would probably want to model either experimentally or numerically in a bit more detail to see if it would actually work," Wilkinson told OurAmazingPlanet.
Previously, scientists suspected fluids would effervesce, bubbling like an opened soda bottle, during earthquakes or other pressure changes. This would line underground pockets with gold. Others suggested minerals would simply accumulate slowly over time.
Weatherley said the amount of gold left behind after an earthquake is tiny, because underground fluids carry at most only one part per million of the precious element. But an earthquake zone like New Zealand's Alpine Fault, one of the world's fastest, could build a mineable deposit in 100,000 years, he said.
Surprisingly, the quartz doesn't even have time to crystallize, the study indicates. Instead, the mineral comes out of the fluid in the form of nanoparticles, perhaps even making a gel-like substance on the fracture walls. The quartz nanoparticles then crystallize over time. [Gold Quiz: From Nuggets to Flecks]
Even earthquakes smaller than magnitude 4.0, which may rattle nerves but rarely cause damage, can trigger flash vaporization, the study finds.
"Given that small-magnitude earthquakes are exceptionally frequent in fault systems, this process may be the primary driver for the formation of economic gold deposits," Weatherley told OurAmazingPlanet.
The hills have gold
Quartz-linked gold has sourced some famous deposits, such as the placer gold that sparked the 19th-century California and Klondike gold rushes. Both deposits had eroded from quartz veins upstream. Placer gold consists of particles, flakes and nuggets mixed in with sand and gravel in stream and river beds. Prospectors traced the gravels back to their sources, where hard-rock mining continues today.
But earthquakes aren't the only cataclysmic source of gold. Volcanoes and their underground plumbing are just as prolific, if not more so, at producing the precious metal. While Weatherley and Henley suggest that a similar process could take place under volcanoes, Wilkinson, who studies volcano-linked gold, said that's not the case.
"Beneath volcanoes, most of the gold is not precipitated in faults that are active during earthquakes," Wilkinson said. "It's a very different mechanism."
Understanding how gold forms helps companies prospect for new mines. "This new knowledge on gold-deposit formation mechanisms may assist future gold exploration efforts," Weatherley said.
In their quest for gold, humans have pulled more than 188,000 tons (171,000 metric tons) of the metal from the ground, exhausting easily accessed sources, according to the World Gold Council, an industry group.
Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us?@OAPlanet, Facebook?or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/17/17348660-earthquakes-turn-water-into-gold?lite
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Tourist-fed stingrays change their ways
Mar. 18, 2013 ? Stingrays living in one of the world's most famous and heavily visited ecotourism sites -- Stingray City/Sandbar in the Cayman Islands -- have profoundly changed their ways, raising questions about the impact of so-called "interactive ecotourism" on marine wildlife, reports a new study published March 18 in the journal PLOS ONE.
Researchers from Nova Southeastern University's Guy Harvey Research Institute in Hollywood, Fla. and the University of Rhode Island studied the southern stingray population of Stingray City -- a sandbar in the Cayman Islands that draws nearly a million visitors each year to feed, pet and swim with its stingrays -- to assess how the intensive ecotourism has affected the animals' behavior.
"Measuring that impact is important because there's a lot of interest in creating more of these interactive ecotourism operations, but we know little about the life histories of the animals involved or how they might change," said study co-author Guy Harvey, who initiated the project.
The researchers found that Stingray City's stingrays show distinctly different patterns of activity than their wild counterparts, who don't enjoy daily feedings or close human contact.
"We saw some very clear and very prominent behavioral changes, and were surprised by how these large animals had essentially become homebodies in a tiny area," said study co-author Mahmood Shivji, director of the Guy Harvey Research Institute and NSU Oceanographic Center professor, who led the study.
Wild stingrays are active at night and solitary -- they forage through the night over large distances to find food, and rarely cross paths with other stingrays. To see if Stingray City's fed stingrays stray from this behavior, Mark Corcoran, lead author of the study who did the research as part of his graduate work at NSU, and the research team tagged and monitored both wild and fed stingrays over the course of two years and compared their patterns of movement.
They found that fed stingrays swapped their normal nighttime foraging for daytime feeding, and in contrast to their wild counterparts, began to rest at night. They also didn't mind rubbing shoulders with their neighbors: At least 164 stingrays abandoned the species' normal solitary behavior, crowding together in less than a quarter square mile of space at Stingray City. They even formed schools and fed together. The fed stingrays mated and became pregnant year-round, instead of during a specific mating season, and also showed signs of unusual aggression, biting each other more frequently than their wild counterparts.
These results suggest that human-provided food can dramatically change how even large, highly mobile ocean animals behave -- with potentially serious consequences, the researchers conclude.
"There are likely to be some health costs that come with these behavior changes, and they could be detrimental to the animals' well-being in the long term," Shivji said. Stingray City means big business in the Cayman Islands, where each stingray generates as much as $500,000 annually in tourism income, Harvey said. The team plans to continue to monitor Stingray City's population to track its health -- and the industry's impact -- over time.
"Right now, these animals have no protection at all," Harvey said. "Without more studies like these, we won't know what that means for the wildlife or if we need to take action. It's unclear how much of the stingray's daily diet comes from tourism provided food, but the good news is we have seen the animals forage when tourists are absent suggesting that these animal are not completely dependent on these handouts."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Nova Southeastern University, via Newswise.
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Journal Reference:
- Mark J. Corcoran, Bradley M. Wetherbee, Mahmood S. Shivji, Matthew D. Potenski, Demian D. Chapman, Guy M. Harvey. Supplemental Feeding for Ecotourism Reverses Diel Activity and Alters Movement Patterns and Spatial Distribution of the Southern Stingray, Dasyatis americana. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (3): e59235 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059235
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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Monday, March 18, 2013
China, US: Stop hacking accusations, says official
BEIJING ? China and the United States should avoid "groundless accusations" against each other about cyber security and hacking into each other's computer systems, newly installed Premier Li Keqiang said on Sunday.
Li's comments, at the close of China's annual meeting of parliament and a day after he assumed the premiership, come amid a war of words between Beijing and Washington over cyber attacks and national security.
A U.S. computer security company said last month that a secretive Chinese military unit was likely behind a series of hacking attacks mostly targeting the United States.
Responding to a reporter at a news conference, Li said he "sensed the presumption of guilt" in the question.
"I think we should not make groundless accusations against each other, and spend more time doing practical things that will contribute to cyber security," Li said.
"This is a worldwide problem. In fact, China itself is a main target of such attacks," he said. "China does not support, indeed we are opposed to, such activities."
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will press China to investigate and stop cyber attacks on U.S. companies and other entities when he visit China this week, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.
President Barack Obama also raised U.S. concerns about computer hacking in a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, the same day Xi took office.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.
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Monday, March 4, 2013
Head of Chadian army claims troops kill Belmoktar
FILE - This image taken from video provided by the SITE Intel Group made available Thursday Jan. 17, 2013, purports to show militant militia leader Moktar Belmoktar. The head of Chad's military has announced Saturday March 2, 2013, on state television that Chadian troops deployed in northern Mali have killed Moktar Belmoktar, the international terrorist responsible for the attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria that resulted in the death of dozens of foreigners. The French military, which is leading the offensive in northern Mali, says it cannot confirm the information. (AP Photo/SITE Intel Group) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS HAS NO WAY OF INDEPENDENTLY VERIFYING THE CONTENT, LOCATION OR DATE OF THIS PICTURE. MANDATORY CREDIT: SITE Intel Group
FILE - This image taken from video provided by the SITE Intel Group made available Thursday Jan. 17, 2013, purports to show militant militia leader Moktar Belmoktar. The head of Chad's military has announced Saturday March 2, 2013, on state television that Chadian troops deployed in northern Mali have killed Moktar Belmoktar, the international terrorist responsible for the attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria that resulted in the death of dozens of foreigners. The French military, which is leading the offensive in northern Mali, says it cannot confirm the information. (AP Photo/SITE Intel Group) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS HAS NO WAY OF INDEPENDENTLY VERIFYING THE CONTENT, LOCATION OR DATE OF THIS PICTURE. MANDATORY CREDIT: SITE Intel Group
N'DJAMENA, Chad (AP) ? Chad's military chief announced late Saturday that his troops deployed in northern Mali had killed Moktar Belmoktar, the terrorist who orchestrated the attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria that left 36 foreigners dead.
The French military, which is leading the offensive against al-Qaida-linked rebels in Mali, said they could not immediately confirm the information.
Local officials in Kidal, the northern town that is being used as the base for the military operation, cast doubt on the assertion, saying Chadian officials are attempting to score a PR victory to make up for the significant losses they have suffered in recent days.
Known as the "one-eyed," Belmoktar's profile soared after the mid-January attack and mass hostage-taking on a huge Algerian gas plant. His purported death comes a day after Chad's president said his troops had killed Abou Zeid, the other main al-Qaida commander operating in northern Mali.
If both deaths are confirmed, it would mean that the international intervention in Mali had succeeded in decapitating two of the pillars of al-Qaida in the Sahara.
"Chad's armed forces in Mali have completely destroyed a base used by jihadists and narcotraffickers in the Adrar and Ifoghas mountains" of northern Mali, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Zakaria Ngobongue said in a televised statement on state-owned National Chadian Television. "The provisional toll is as follows: Several terrorists killed, including Moktar Belmoktar."
The French military moved into Mali on Jan. 11 to push back militants linked to Belmoktar and Abou Zeid and other extremist groups who had imposed harsh Islamic rule in the north of the vast country and who were seen as an international terrorist threat.
France is trying to rally other African troops to help in the military campaign, since Mali's military is weak and poor. Chadian troops have offered the most robust reinforcement.
In Paris, French military spokesman Col. Thierry Burkhard said that he had "no information" on the possibility that Belmoktar was dead. The Foreign Ministry refused to confirm or deny the report.
A spokesman for Chad's presidential palace did not immediately return a request for comment.
In Kidal in northern Mali, an elected official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said that he did not believe that Belmoktar was dead and waved off the claim as an attempt by Chad to explain the loss of dozens of their troops to a grieving nation.
"These last few weeks, the Chadians have lost a significant number of soldiers in combat. (Claiming that they killed Belmoktar) is a way to give some importance to their intervention in Mali," said the official, who keeps in close contact with both French and Malian commanders in the field.
Belmoktar, an Algerian, is believed to be in his 40s, and like his sometimes partner and sometimes rival, Abou Zeid, he began on the path to terrorism after Algeria's secular government voided the 1991 election won by an Islamic party.
Both men joined the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, and later its offshoot, the GSPC, a group that carried out suicide bombings on Algerian government targets.
Around 2003, both men crossed into Mali, where they began a lucrative kidnapping business, snatching European tourists, aid workers, government employees and even diplomats and holding them for multimillion-dollar ransoms.
The Algerian terror cell amassed a significant war chest, and joined the al-Qaida fold in 2006, renaming itself al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
Belmoktar claims he trained in Afghanistan in the 1990s, including in one of Osama Bin Laden's camps. It was there that he reportedly lost an eye, earning him the nickname "Laaouar," Arabic for "one-eyed."
Until last December, Belmoktar and Abou Zeid headed separate brigades under the flag of al-Qaida's chapter in the Sahara. But after months of reports of infighting between the two, Belmoktar peeled off, announcing the creation of his own terror unit, still loyal to the al-Qaida ideology but separate from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
It was this group that launched the fatal attack on a BP-operated natural gas plant in southeastern Algeria in retaliation for the French-led military intervention in Mali.
In the attack and in the subsequent rescue attempt, 37 people, all but one of them foreigners, were killed inside the complex. Belmoktar claimed responsibility for the attack within hours, immediately catapulting him into the ranks of international terrorists.
In addition to the alleged killing of Belmoktar, Ngobongue said that Chad's military had also nabbed 60 of the jihadists' cars, electronic equipment and weapons. "The raid is still ongoing," he said.
___
Callimachi contributed to this report from Dakar, Senegal. Baba Ahmed contributed from Bamako, Mali.
___
Rukmini Callimachi can be reached at www.twitter.com/rcallimachi
Baba Ahmed can be reached at www.twitter.com/babahmed1
Associated PressFriday, February 1, 2013
Mozambique military called in to battle floods
Mozambique's military has been called in to help tackle severe flooding that has killed 48 people and is likely to spread to the country's central and northern regions, officials said Tuesday.
The armed forces have begun helping with clean-up operations in the devastated southern town of Chokwe, which has borne the brunt of the flooding caused by heavy rains.
"We can confirm the army is helping support the affected people," said Benjamim Chabualo, spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence told AFP.
Soldiers have also been involved in rescue efforts and the navy has ferried people by boat to reach areas isolated by flooding.
According to UN figures around 250,000 people have been affected by the floods and 146,000 people are being housed in temporary shelters.
Water levels have begun to recede in the south of the country, but the situation remains critical, and the centre and north are expected to be hit by fresh rain.
In Chokwe many homes have been completely inundated, and the flood surge has left in its wake piles of rubbish, mud and the detritus of lives destroyed.
"In Chokwe families have begun cleaning their homes and (the national civil protection unit) will help the municipality to clean the city," civil protection spokeswoman Rita Almeida said.
Even as the floods ebb in some places, residents faced a tough slog to get clean food, water, shelter and avoid a legion of risks.
"The rains over southern Mozambique have ceased for the time being, and the floodwaters are slowly receding. However, many have lost everything in the floods," according to a UN situation report.
At least 48 people have died, some electrocuted by severed power lines trailing in the water, some crushed by collapsed buildings and some attacked by crocodiles
At temporary shelters aid agencies are feeding approximately 70,000 people.
While tens of thousands of people have made their way to government camps, many more have not.
"We know there are a great many people affected who did not turn up at these centres," said Rita Almeida, Mozambique's national disaster management institute.
Some may have gone to the houses of family and friends, others, in more remote regions, remained stranded.
Helicopters are airlifting food and medical supplies to isolated areas.
"We are lifting supplies to places where neither boats or vehicles can enter," the Director-General of Mozambique's Disaster Management Institute (INGC) said on national radio.
"We are doing all in our power to get food to people where they need it."
The entire south and centre of the country is still on red alert for floods although authorities say water levels on main rivers are gradually dropping.
Authorities are monitoring the central Sofala and Zambezia provinces which have been registering rains.
"The forecast is it could keep raining for the next 48 hours and that the rain is moving north," Almeida said.
"We appeal to people to take precautions, particularly in houses made of material that is vulnerable to floods."
Some residents have refused to leave their homes out of fear of looting.
"If they stay on top of houses they can't benefit from aid. They prefer staying until the water goes down," Chokwe mayor, Jorge Macucua told AFP.
Source: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Mozambique_military_called_in_to_battle_floods_999.html
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