On Tuesday, the team discussed the research in progress concerning an ongoing investigation of perchlorate salts detected in soil analyzed by the wet chemistry laboratory aboard the Phoenix Lander.

“Finding perchlorates is neither good nor bad for life, but it does make us reassess how we think about life on Mars,” said Michael Hecht of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Hecht is the lead scientist for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, the instrument that includes the wet chemistry laboratory.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University
Image acquired by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander shows the trench informally called “Snow White.”

Two samples were delivered to the Wet Chemistry Laboratory, which is part of Phoenix’s Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer. The first sample was taken from the surface area just left of the trench and informally named “Rosy Red.” The second sample, informally named “Sorceress,” was taken from the center of the “Snow White” trench.

“The Phoenix project has decided to take an unusual step” in talking about the research when its scientists are only about half-way through the data collection phase and have not yet had time to complete data analysis or perform needed laboratory work, said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. Scientists are still at the stage where they are examining multiple hypotheses, given evidence that the soil contains perchlorate.

“We decided to show the public science in action because of the extreme interest in the Phoenix mission, which is searching for a habitable environment on the northern plains of Mars,” Smith added. “Right now, we don’t know whether finding perchlorate is good news or bad news for possible life on Mars.”

Perchlorate is an ion, or charged particle. It is also an oxidant, that is, it can release oxygen, but it is not a powerful one. Perchlorates are found naturally on Earth at such places as Chile’s hyper-arid Atacama Desert.

The 44-pounder found roaming the streets of Voorhees recently was thought to be many things.

First called Princess Chunk by rescuers, it was soon found out that “she” was a “he”, and he was no regular stray.

That’s when the story took a sad turn, and the cat’s former owner stepped in to announce how he came to end up on the streets.

His real name was Powder, and until Donna Oklatner lost her home to foreclosure, he lived there happily with her other fur children, Powder’s twin brother Puff, a dog named Cody, and a rabbit called Honey Bunny.

Oklatner told local media she could only care for one of the animals when she had to move, and the others were adopted out. The arrangement hit a snag when Powder’s new owner had to go out of town, and the hefty cat was returned to her. Still unable to keep him, Oklatner gave Powder to friends who promised to take him to the local animal shelter. Within days, his furry face was making headlines after the Camden County Animal Shelter took him in.

Powder’s former owner says he ate only Fancy Feast and dry food, no table scraps. She suspected he had a thyroid problem but could not afford to have him tested.

While a local newspaper reports Powder has been adopted, the Camden County Animal Shelter website says otherwise. The shelter says hundreds of people have applied to adopt the cat, who they say is just two pounds shy of the world record. The shelter also reports it is completely full and hopes those interested in Powder will consider another of the shelter’s 300 animals that need homes.

Powder’s story took him to national fame with appearances on NBC’s “Today Show”, “Live with Regis and Kelly,” and “Good Morning America.”

Animal shelters across the country report many pets are being turned in by owners who can no longer care for them in these tough economic times, many of whom, like Powder’s owner, have lost their homes to foreclosure.

At last report, the National Hurricane Center said the storm was moving slowly across the Lone Star State to the east of Houston on a path toward central Texas. Rainfall from the storm was expected to be in the range of three to five inches, with isolated downpours in some locations as high as 10 inches over portions of southeastern Texas.

Edouard’s winds have died down to near 50 miles per hour with higher gusts. The storm is expected to become a tropical depression by early Wednesday.

A tropical storm warning remains in effect from Cameron, Louisiana to San Luis Pass, Texas.

Map Courtesy: National Hurricane Center

“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University Arizona/Texas A&M University

With enticing results so far and the spacecraft in good shape, NASA also announced operational funding for the mission will extend through Sept. 30. The original prime mission of three months ends in late August. The mission extension adds five weeks to the 90 days of the prime mission.

“Phoenix is healthy and the projections for solar power look good, so we want to take full advantage of having this resource in one of the most interesting locations on Mars,” said Michael Meyer, chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The soil sample came from a trench approximately 2 inches deep. When the robotic arm first reached that depth, it hit a hard layer of frozen soil. Two attempts to deliver samples of icy soil on days when fresh material was exposed were foiled when the samples became stuck inside the scoop. Most of the material in Wednesday’s sample had been exposed to the air for two days, letting some of the water in the sample vaporize away and making the soil easier to handle.

“Mars is giving us some surprises,” said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. “We’re excited because surprises are where discoveries come from. One surprise is how the soil is behaving. The ice-rich layers stick to the scoop when poised in the sun above the deck, different from what we expected from all the Mars simulation testing we’ve done. That has presented challenges for delivering samples, but we’re finding ways to work with it and we’re gathering lots of information to help us understand this soil.”

Since landing on May 25, Phoenix has been studying soil with a chemistry lab, TEGA, a microscope, a conductivity probe and cameras. Besides confirming the 2002 finding from orbit of water ice near the surface and deciphering the newly observed stickiness, the science team is trying to determine whether the water ice ever thaws enough to be available for biology and if carbon-containing chemicals and other raw materials for life are present.

The mission is examining the sky as well as the ground. A Canadian instrument is using a laser beam to study dust and clouds overhead.

“It’s a 30-watt light bulb giving us a laser show on Mars,” said Victoria Hipkin of the Canadian Space Agency.

A full-circle, color panorama of Phoenix’s surroundings also has been completed by the spacecraft.

“The details and patterns we see in the ground show an ice-dominated terrain as far as the eye can see,” said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, lead scientist for Phoenix’s Surface Stereo Imager camera. “They help us plan measurements we’re making within reach of the robotic arm and interpret those measurements on a wider scale.”

Source: NASA - The University of Arizona.

Using an instrument on NASA’s Cassini orbiter, they discovered that a lake-like feature in the south polar region of Saturn’s moon, Titan, is truly wet. The lake is about 235 kilometers, or 150 miles, long.

The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, or VIMS, an instrument run from The University Arizona, identifies the chemical composition of objects by the way matter reflects light.

Above image caption: (Right image half): the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) aboard NASA’s Cassini orbiter captured this detailed, partial view of Titan’s Ontario Lacus at 5 microns wavelength from 1,100 kilometers away, or about 680 miles away, on Dec. 4, 2007. Only part of the lake is visible on Titan’s sunlit side. What appears to be a ‘beach’ is seen in the lower right of the image, below the bright lake shoreline. LEFT IMAGE: Cassini’s Imaging Science System took this image of Lacus Ontario in June 2005.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona Left image - NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

When VIMS observed the lake, named Ontario Lacus, it detected ethane, a simple hydrocarbon that Titan experts have long been searching for. The ethane is in liquid solution with methane, nitrogen and other low-molecular weight hydrocarbons.

“This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid,” VIMS principal investigator and professor Robert H. Brown of UA’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory said. Brown and his team report their results in the July 31 issue of the journal Nature.

“Detection of liquid ethane in Ontario Lacus confirms a long-held idea that lakes and seas filled with methane and ethane exist on Titan,” said Larry Soderblom of the U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Ariz.

The fact that the VIMS could detect the spectral signatures of ethane on the moon’s dimly lit surface while viewing at a highly slanted angle through Titan’s thick atmosphere “raises expectations for exciting future lake discoveries by the infrared spectrometer,” Soderblom, an interdisciplinary Cassini scientist, said.

The ubiquitous hydrocarbon haze in Titan’s atmosphere hinders the view to Titan’s surface. But there are transparent atmospheric “windows” at certain infrared light wavelengths through which Cassini’s VIMS can see to the ground. VIMS observed Ontario Lacus on Cassini’s 38th close flyby of Titan in December 2007.

The lake is roughly 20,000 square kilometers, or 7,800 square miles, just slightly larger than North America’s Lake Ontario, Brown said. Infrared spectroscopy doesn’t tell the researchers how deep the lake is, other than it must be at least a centimeter or two, or about three-quarters of an inch, deep.

“We know the lake is liquid because it reflects essentially no light at 5-micron wavelengths,” Brown said. “It was hard for us to accept the fact that the feature was so black when we first saw it. More than 99.9 percent of the light that reaches the lake never gets out again. For it to be that dark, the surface has to be extremely quiescent, mirror smooth. No naturally produced solid could be that smooth.”

VIMS observations at 2-micron wavelengths shows the lake holds ethane. The scientists saw the specific signature of ethane as a dip at the precise wavelength that ethane absorbs infrared light. Tiny ethane particles almost as fine as cigarette smoke are apparently filtering out of the atmosphere and into the lake, Brown said.

Ethane is a simple hydrocarbon produced when ultraviolet light from the sun breaks up its parent molecule, methane, in Titan’s methane-rich, mostly nitrogen atmosphere.

Before the Cassini mission, several scientists thought that Titan would be awash in global oceans of ethane and other light hydrocarbons, the byproducts of photolysis, or the action of ultraviolet light on methane over 4.5 billion years of solar system history. But 40 close flybys of Titan by the Cassini spacecraft show no such oceans exist.

The observations also suggest the lake is evaporating. The lake is ringed by a dark beach, where the black lake merges with the bright shoreline.

“We can see there’s a shelf, a beach, that is being exposed as the lake evaporates,” Brown said.

That the beach is darker than the shoreline could mean that the “sand” on the beach is wet with organics, or it could be covered with a thin layer of liquid organics, he said.

The VIMS measurements rule out the presence of water ice, ammonia, ammonia hydrate and carbon dioxide in Ontario Lacus.

The VIMS result gives researchers new insight on Titan’s chemistry and weather dynamics.

Titan, which is one-and-a-half times the size of Earth’s moon and bigger than either Mercury or Pluto, is one of the most fascinating bodies in the solar system when it comes to exploring environments that may give rise to life.

Cassini cameras and radar and the UA-built camera aboard the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe that landed on Titan in January 2005 have shown that methane saturates and drains from Titan’s atmosphere, creating river-like and lake-like features on the surface. Just as water cycles through the hydrologic regime on Earth, methane cycles through a methanological cycle on Titan.

Source: University of Arizona.

Professor Rosaleen Duffy and Dr Lorraine Moore from the University’ s School of Social Sciences say many problems have endured since the ending of the logging trade which employed virtually all Thai elephants in 1989.

The ban made 2,000 animals and their Mahouts - or trainers - unemployed overnight, forcing many onto the streets to beg for cash.

Image above caption: Elephants with their Mahouts.

Credit: Manchester University

Though transferring to the tourism trade has improved working conditions for many elephants, their future remains under a cloud argues Professor Duffy.

“Despite the move into tourism, we have found evidence that street walking persists in some areas and that can be traumatic for the animals and a nuisance for humans,” she said.

“And the almost total reliance on the tourist trade makes the Thai elephants especially vulnerable to a downturn in the market.

“If that happens more are forced onto the streets or into inappropriate activities in towns.

“The December 2004 tsunami had - at least to some extent - that effect. The rising oil prises of today are bound to affect air travel and hence tourism as well.

“The elephants are very important in Thai culture, and mahouts generally only beg on the streets with their elephants as an absolute last resort.

“It’s a sad outcome for these once proud animals and their trainers.”

A powerful symbol of the problem is provided by a video of a baby elephant used to attract people to a Flintstone themed bar in the Phuket resort - taken by Professor Duffy.

The animal is made to stand outside the bar each night to attract customers. “This a very questionable practice as at night baby elephants will be scared by the lights,” she said.

“They shouldn’t be forced to stand on concrete for long periods of time as it will damage their feet and be extremely painful according to Dr Moore. “I also witnessed other poor treatment: for example elephants trained to stand on their heads during a show. “This is bad practice as the elephant’s head is not designed to take its body weight in this posture.

“In addition, a minority of the elephant camps do not provide proper working hours or conditions for their animals.”

However, the picture is not all bad: mistreatment of elephants was far more prevalent in the logging industry than in tourism.

According to Professor Duffy and Dr Moore, many of the elephant camps in Thailand treat their animals well.

And the 2000 elephants employed in today’ s Thai tourism industry may be used to add the declining elephant gene pool of 1000 wild elephants.

A scheme which trains captive elephants to survive in the wild is undertaken at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre (TECC).

TECC is also experimenting with alternative schemes to generate income from elephants including elephant dung paper and elephant dung fertiliser.

A TECC project with University of Chiang Mai has found that when autistic children are allowed to interact with the elephants their condition improves.

Mae Sa elephant camp has an elephant nursery which is engaged in artificial insemination.

The Manchester team hope to repeat their research in Botswana later in the year and aim to publish advice for tourist companies and guide books working in both countries. Some southern African countries are starting to train African elephants for elephant back safaris.

Professor Duffy added: ” We hope this project will provide the impetus for travel companies and travel guide authors to provide information to their clients and readers on how and where to report cruelty to elephants.”

source: University of Manchester.

The journal paper, ‘Cow Power: The Energy and Emissions Benefits of Converting Manure to Biogas’, has implications for all countries with livestock as it is the first attempt to outline a procedure for quantifying the national amount of renewable energy that herds of cattle and other livestock can generate and the concomitant GHG emission reductions.

Livestock manure, left to decompose naturally, emits two particularly potent GHGs – nitrous oxide and methane. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, nitrous oxide warms the atmosphere 310 times more than carbon dioxide, methane does so 21 times more.

The journal paper creates two hypothetical scenarios and quantifies them to compare energy savings and GHG reducing benefits. The first is ‘business as usual’ with coal burnt for energy and with manure left to decompose naturally. The second is one wherein manure is anaerobically-digested to create biogas and then burnt to offset coal.

Through anaerobic digestion, similar to the process by which you create compost, manure can be turned into energy-rich biogas, which standard microturbines can use to produce electricity. The hundreds of millions of livestock inhabiting the US could produce approximately 100 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to power millions of homes and offices.

And, as manure left to decompose naturally has a very damaging effect on the environment, this new waste management system has a net potential GHG emissions reduction of 99 million metric tonnes, wiping out approximately four per cent of the country’s GHG emissions from electricity production.

The burning of biogas would lead to the emission of some CO2 but the output from biogas-burning plants would be less than that from, for example, coal.

Authors of the paper, Dr. Michael E. Webber and Amanda D Cuellar from the University of Texas at Austin, write, “In light of the criticism that has been levelled against biofuels, biogas production from manure has the less-controversial benefit of reusing an existing waste source and has the potential to improve the environment.

“Nonetheless, the logistics of widespread biogas production, including feedstock and digestates transportation, must be determined at the local level to produce the most environmentally advantageous, economical, and energy efficient system.”

Source: Institute of Physics.

The new study suggests that the water came from the Moon’s interior and was delivered to the surface via volcanic eruptions over 3 billion years ago. The finding calls into question some critical aspects of the “giant impact” theory of the Moon’s formation and may have implications for the origin of possible water reservoirs at the Moon’s poles. The research is published in the July 10, 2008, issue of Nature.

It is believed that the Moon was formed when a Mars-size body collided with Earth some 4.5 billion years ago. This “giant impact” melted both objects and sent molten debris into orbit around the Earth, some of which coalesced to form the Moon. Under this scenario, the heat from the giant impact would have vaporized the light elements.

Over the past forty years there have been significant efforts to determine the content and origin of the volatile contents in the lunar samples. There is reliable evidence that the Moon’s interior contains sulfur, some chlorine, fluorine, and carbon. Yet the evidence for indigenous H2O has remained elusive, consistent with the general consensus that the Moon is dry.

The research team, with scientists from Brown University, Carnegie Institution for Science, and Case Western Reserve University, took advantage of new methods for analyzing lunar samples to detect tiny amounts of water. Co-author of the paper, Erik Hauri of the Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, developed new techniques that can detect extremely minute quantities of water in glasses and minerals by the technology called secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). These technical advances were made in collaboration with engineers from Cameca Instruments (France), who manufactured the NanoSIMS instrument used to make these challenging measurements.

“For the past four decades, the limit for detecting water in lunar samples was about 50 parts per million (ppm) at best,” explained Hauri. “We developed a way to detect as little as 5 ppm of water. We were really surprised to find a great deal more in these tiny glass beads, up to 46 ppm.”

One glass bead told the tale of what happened. The researchers found that the volatiles decreased from the tiny sphere’s core to its rim—a difference that indicates that some 95% of the water was lost during the volcanic activity. James Van Orman, a former Carnegie postdoc now at Case Western Reserve University, was one of the team members who wrote the numerical model. “We looked at many factors over a wide range of cooling rates that would affect all the volatiles simultaneously and came up with the right mix. A droplet cooling at a rate of about 3° F to 6° F per second over 2 to 5 minutes between the time of eruption and when the material was quenched or rapidly cooled matched the profiles for all the volatiles, including the loss of about 95% of the water,” he said.

The researchers estimated that there was originally about 750 ppm of water in the magma at the time of eruption. “Since the Moon was thought to be perfectly dehydrated, this is a giant leap from previous estimates,” continued Hauri. “It suggests the intriguing possibility that the Moon’s interior might have had as much water as the Earth’s upper mantle. But even more intriguing: If the Moon’s volcanoes released 95% of their water, where did all that water go?”

Since the Moon’s gravity is too feeble to retain an atmosphere, the researchers speculate that some of the water vapor from the eruptions was probably forced into space, but some may also have drifted toward the cold poles of the Moon where ice may be present in permanently shadowed craters. Several previous lunar missions have suggested the presence of ice at both poles. Unless it is very deep, lunar groundwater is unlikely to exist since the Sun heats most of the Moon’s surface to over 200°F (100°C).

Lead author of the study, Alberto Saal of Brown University remarked: “Beyond the evidence for the presence of water in the interior of the Moon, which I found extremely exciting, I learned that the contributions from scientists from other disciplines has the potential to produce unexpected results. Such a scientist is able not only to ask questions that no one has asked before, but also can challenge hypotheses that are embedded in the thinking of the scientists working in the field for many years. Our case is a typical example. When I suggested we measure volatiles in lunar material, everyone I talked to thought that such proposal was a futile endeavor. We ‘knew’ the Moon was dry.”

Many scientists have believed the Moon’s polar ice, if there, originated from impacts of water-rich meteoroids and comets that struck the Moon’s surface over its history. The new study suggests that some of this water could have come from lunar volcanic eruptions. Verifying that water is at the Moon’s poles is one goal of the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/) mission, due to launch later this year. And it is the primary objective of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/) with a 2009 launch date. Verification of water on the Moon’s surface is an important step in progress toward an eventual manned lunar outpost.

 Source:Carnegie Institution.

Reports of hundreds of people sickened in the outbreak have been coming in since April. As of this weekend, the Centers for Disease Control puts the total at 552 people in 32 states and Washington, D.C. with the rare Salmonella Saintpaul strain.

It’s a situation that has proved confusing for consumers, who saw tomatoes removed from grocery produce sections and restaurants earlier this month. The FDA has said all along that the tainted tomatoes are only the red Roma, red plum, and red round varieties, and that cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, those on the vine, and home-grown tomatoes are all safe to eat.

The FDA continues to update a list of states and countries whose tomatoes have been ruled out in the probe, but reminds consumers that some of the suspect tomatoes could still have been trucked into these areas.

Here is the list of areas not linked to the outbreak and safe to eat, as of June 19:

U. S.:

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida (counties of: Jackson, Gadsden, Leon, Jefferson, Madison, Suwannee, Hamilton, Hillsborough, Polk, Manatee, Hardee, DeSoto, Sarasota, Highlands, Pasco, Sumter, Citrus, Hernando, Charlotte), Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah
Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin

Outside U.S.:

Baja California (Norte) Mexico, Belgium, Canada, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Israel, Netherlands, Puerto Rico

“It must be ice,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. “These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can’t do that.”

The chunks were left at the bottom of a trench informally called “Dodo-Goldilocks” when Phoenix’s Robotic Arm enlarged that trench on June 15, during the 20th Martian day, or sol, since landing. Several were gone when Phoenix looked at the trench early today, on Sol 24.

Image above caption: This color image was acquired by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander’s Surface Stereo Imager on the 19th day of the mission, or Sol 19 (June 13, 2008), after the May 25, 2008, landing. This image shows one trench informally called “Dodo-Goldilocks” after two digs (dug on Sol 18, or June 12, 2008) by Phoenix’s Robotic Arm. The trench is 22 centimeters (8.7 inches) wide and 35 centimeters (13.8 inches) long. At its deepest point, the trench is 7 to 8 centimeters (2.7 to 3 inches) deep.

White material, possibly ice, is located only at the upper portion of the trench, indicating that it is not continuous throughout the excavated site. According to scientists, the trench might be exposing a ledge, or only a portion of a slab, of the white material.

The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University

Also early today, digging in a different trench, the Robotic Arm connected with a hard surface that has scientists excited about the prospect of next uncovering an icy layer.

The Phoenix science team spent Thursday analyzing new images and data successfully returned from the lander earlier in the day.

Studying the initial findings from the new “Snow White 2″ trench, located to the right of “Snow White 1,” Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, co-investigator for the robotic arm, said, “We have dug a trench and uncovered a hard layer at the same depth as the ice layer in our other trench.”

On Sol 24, Phoenix extended the first trench in the middle of a polygon at the “Wonderland” site. While digging, the Robotic Arm came upon a firm layer, and after three attempts to dig further, the arm went into a holding position. Such an action is expected when the Robotic Arm comes upon a hard surface.

Meanwhile, the spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is preparing a software patch to send to Phoenix in a few days so scientific data can again be saved onboard overnight when needed. Because of a large amount a duplicative file-maintenance data generated by the spacecraft Tuesday, the team is taking the precaution of not storing science data in Phoenix’s flash memory, and instead downlinking it at the end of every day, until the conditions that produced those duplicative data files are corrected.

“We now understand what happened, and we can fix it with a software patch,” said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. “Our three-month schedule has 30 days of margin for contingencies like this, and we have used only one contingency day out of 24 sols. The mission is well ahead of schedule. We are making excellent progress toward full mission success.”

Source: The Phoenix Mission.