June 2015

Largest freshwater lake on Earth was reduced to desert dunes in just a few hundred years

Largest freshwater lake on Earth was reduced to desert dunes in just a few hundred years

Fossilized fish. The drying of Lake Mega-Chad reveals a story of dramatic climate change in the southern Sahara, with a rapid change fro...

Helium leakage from Earth's mantle in Los Angeles Basin

0 earth, Tectonic 4:39 PM

Helium leakage from Earth's mantle in Los Angeles Basin

The Newport-Inglewood fault was responsible for the 4.9 magnitude Inglewood earthquake in 1920 and the 6.4 magnitude Long Beach earthqua...

Indonesian mud volcano likely human-caused

0 News, volcano 4:34 PM

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Earthquake not to blame for Indonesian mud volcano</h4>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">New research hopes to close the debate on whether a major mud volcano disaster in Indonesia was triggered by an earthquake or had human-made origins.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A mud volcano suddenly opened up in the city of Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia, in May 2006. Nine years later the eruption continues -- having buried more than 6.5km<span style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">2</span> of the city in up to 40m of mud and displacing almost 40,000 people. Costs of the disaster are estimated at over US$2.7 billion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Results of new research published today in correspondence in the journal<em style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">Nature Geoscience</em> directly address the ongoing controversy over the cause of the disaster, says lead author Dr Mark Tingay, Adjunct Associate Professor with the University of Adelaide's Australian School of Petroleum.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"There has been intense debate over the cause of the mud volcano ever since it erupted," Adjunct Associate Professor Tingay says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Some researchers argue that the volcano was human-made and resulted from a drilling accident (a blowout) in a nearby gas well. Others have argued that it was a natural event that was remotely triggered by a large earthquake that occurred 250km away and two days previously. There has been no scientific consensus about this, and it's a very hot topic politically in Indonesia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Our new research essentially disproves all existing earthquake-triggering models and, in my opinion, puts the matter to rest," he says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The study by Adjunct Associate Professor Tingay and colleagues in the US (Portland University; University of California, Berkeley) and UK (Newcastle University) is the first to use actual physical data collected in the days before and after the earthquake, rather than models and comparisons.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"The earthquake-trigger theory proposes that seismic shaking induced liquefaction of a clay layer at the disaster location. Clay liquefaction is always associated with extensive gas release, and it is this large gas release that has been argued to have helped the mud flow upwards and erupt on the surface. However, we examined precise and continuous subsurface gas measurements from the adjacent well and show that there was no gas release following the earthquake," Adjunct Associate Professor Tingay says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"The rocks showed no response to the earthquake, indicating that the earthquake could not have been responsible for the mud flow disaster. Furthermore, the measurements highlight that the onset of underground activity preceding the mud eruption only started when the drilling 'kick' occurred, strongly suggesting that the disaster was initiated by a drilling accident.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"We also use gas signatures from different rocks and the mud eruption itself to 'fingerprint' the initial source of erupting fluids. We demonstrate that erupting fluids were initially sourced from a deep formation, which is only predicted to occur in the drilling-trigger hypothesis. Taken together, our data strongly supports a human-made trigger. We hope this closes the debate on whether an earthquake caused this unique disaster," he says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><i><u>The above post is reprinted from <a href="http://www.newswise.com/articles/earthquake-not-to-blame-for-indonesian-mud-volcano" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c7a9f; outline-offset: 0.2em; outline: red dotted 0.14em !important;" target="_blank">materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.adelaide.edu.au/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c7a9f; outline-offset: 0.2em; outline: red dotted 0.14em !important;" target="_blank"><strong style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">University of Adelaide</strong></a>. <span style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.</span></u></i></span></div>
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Indonesian mud volcano likely human-caused

Earthquake not to blame for Indonesian mud volcano New research hopes to close the debate on whether a major mud volcano disaster in I...

Optimizing shale gas production from well to wire

0 Hydraulic fracturing, News, Oil, Petroleum 2:57 PM

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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J__9SLuGebM/VZEyYZEEksI/AAAAAAAAFik/wpbtOWsSgAs/s1600/Optimizing%2Bshale%2Bgas%2Bproduction%2Bfrom%2Bwell%2Bto%2Bwire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J__9SLuGebM/VZEyYZEEksI/AAAAAAAAFik/wpbtOWsSgAs/s1600/Optimizing%2Bshale%2Bgas%2Bproduction%2Bfrom%2Bwell%2Bto%2Bwire.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A researcher has analyzed the life-cycle of the shale gas supply chain and operations and found that the process systems can be made more environmentally and economically friendly.</span></span></h4>
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<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">"Shale gas is promising," said You, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. "No matter if you like it or not, it's already out there. The question we want to answer is: how can we help this industry to make it more sustainable?"</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">You has designed computational models to analyze the "well-to-wire" life cycle of electricity generated from shale gas. His models account for a number of stages in the process, including freshwater acquisition, shale well drilling, fracking, gas production and processing, wastewater management, and electricity generation, as well as transportation and storage. By discovering optimal design and operations for the shale gas supply chain, You believes the United States will benefit both environmentally and economically.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">Supported by the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern, You's findings were published in the June issue of <em style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering</em>. Jiyao Gao, a PhD student in You's lab, was the paper's first author.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">The economic benefits of shale gas are hard to ignore. According to the US Energy Information Administration, shale gas could become the dominant fuel source within 10 to 20 years, allowing the United States to become energy independent.</span></div>
<div style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">But many wonder if the environmental disadvantages outweigh the economic benefits. To extract shale gas from deep inside Earth, workers use a combination of fracking and horizontal drilling. Successful fracking requires 4 to 6 million gallons of freshwater per well, which is then mixed with chemicals and sand and injected into the drilled well to break up shale rock and release the gas hidden within it. When the water is flushed back up to the surface, it is contaminated with salt, pollutants, and even some radioactive chemicals. On top of this, the opened wells also release methane.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">"We talk about carbon dioxide, and we think it's bad because it causes global warming," You said. "But methane is even worse. One unit of methane is 86 times worse than one unit of carbon dioxide from a two-year horizon in terms of its ability to trap heat in the atmosphere."</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">Through modeling, You found that these issues can be mitigated by restructuring the supply chain. First, You recommends using a network of pipelines to transport freshwater to drilling sites and transport shale gas to processing and power plants. By removing trucks from the equation, the industry would save on gas and cut exhaust emissions.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">Next, You suggests developing a better drilling schedule. After drilling a vertical shale well, workers drill more wells horizontally to reach more targets. Horizontal drilling can result in 20 to 30 wells in one place. This requires more water, transportation, and storage then needed to meet demand, and it releases more methane. By evenly distributing drilling activities at each well site over the years instead of drilling all at once, the industry would avoid transporting the gas to long-term storage facilities. It would also reduce the amount of water needed at one time. As a result, facilities can be designed with a more suitable capacity, reducing the capital investment and negative ecological impacts.</span></div>
<div style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">Finally, You evaluated ways to handle the highly contaminated wastewater that is a fracking byproduct. Some companies have been disposing it in abandoned wells. But because these wells are few and far between, they have to drive farther and farther distances to find wells with room for disposal. The other option is to treat the water, which is difficult because of the high volume.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">"Onsite water treatment requires a lot of energy," You said. "Treatment technologies like reverse osmosis need electricity, which may come from a coal-fired plant. Disposing the water into a well is easier and cheaper but not for the long term. Through life-cycle analysis, we found that water treatment is actually a more sustainable solution."</span></div>
<div style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">While the treated water may not be fit to drink, it could be recycled back into the process and used again for fracking. This cuts the truck emissions and costs of transporting the water to far away facilities. And the more time a truck spends on the road, the greater the chances that the contaminated water will leak.</span></div>
<div style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">You said that because the shale gas industry is young, companies are still learning how to manage it. He believes that optimizing operations will help the industry have better control of the entire system. Not only will it benefit companies financially, it will do less damage to the environment.</span></div>
<div style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span data-offset-key="6bg83-0-0" data-reactid=".4h.1:3.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$6bg83.0:$6bg83-0-0">"We wanted to see if there was a win-win strategy," You said. "Indeed there is."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><u><i>The above post is reprinted from <a href="http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2015/06/optimizing-shale-gas-production-from-well-to-wire.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c7a9f; outline-offset: 0.2em; outline: red dotted 0.14em !important;" target="_blank">materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.northwestern.edu/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c7a9f; outline-offset: 0.2em; outline: red dotted 0.14em !important;" target="_blank"><strong style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">Northwestern University</strong></a>. The original item was written by Amanda Morris. <span style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.</span></i></u></span></div>
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Optimizing shale gas production from well to wire

A researcher has analyzed the life-cycle of the shale gas supply chain and operations and found that the process systems can be made m...

Opportunities for geothermal energy: New method reveals past underground temperatures

0 earth, Geothermal, News 3:43 PM

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<br />Rocks store information about the temperatures that they have experienced. Wageningen University researchers and international colleagues are the first to develop a method that reveals low-temperature information (from 35 °C and higher) on a relatively short timescale of thousands of years. The new method might find application in locating geothermal reservoirs and in maintaining underground tunnels.</h4>
<br />The deeper you go into the Earth, the warmer it gets. But how warm exactly can differ from location to location, for example because of snowmelt infiltration or a warm aquifer amidst the rocks. Luminescence can retrieve the temperatures that the rocks have experienced over thousands of years. The technique is based on trapped electrons that build up in crystals under the competing influences of natural radioactivity and heat. It is a fine balance, and small changes in temperature cause large changes in the signal intensity. The signal can be extracted in the laboratory by light.<br /><br />Together with international colleagues, Benny Guralnik, formerly at ETH-Zürich and now working for the Netherlands Centre for Luminescence dating (NCL) at Wageningen University, and Christina Ankjærgaard of the NCL developed the first method that can translate a signal in rocks that have experienced low temperatures (between 35 and 80 degrees Celsius) in the upper two kilometres of the Earth. Because of the new translation method, luminescence measurements on rock samples can give unique recent information about past temperatures, dating back 10,000 to 100,000 years.<br /><br />Existing methods provide information on timescales of millions of years, for deeper Earth layers and higher temperatures. Temperature measurements obtained from direct drilling do not provide this information either. Guralnik: "When we measure temperature in a drill hole with instruments, we get an indication of the temperature at that particular moment, but the drilling itself and the circulating waters often disturb the outcome. When we interpret luminescence signals, we begin to understand truly natural temperatures as averaged over thousands of years."<br /><br /><b>Astrophysics</b><br />In developing the new method, Guralnik reverted to theoretical work of the Austrian-German astrophysicist Fritz Houtermans of the fifties in the past century. Together with colleagues, he then collected a suite of rock samples in an existing drill hole in Southwestern Germany. Here, underground temperatures are well-known from both direct measurements and other methods. With these rock samples he validated the theory in the lab. "It was like making a crossword puzzle. We could check the outcomes in the back of the book to see if our solution was correct."<br /><br /><br /><b>Geothermal energy</b><br />The new method can be applied both above ground and underground, says Guralnik. "Similar to oil prospecting, you can look for underground heat with this method. We still enormously under-exploit geothermal energy, although it is a renewable source of energy." Another application is the determination of the safety of underground nuclear waste storage. "Nuclear waste both affects and is affected by the temperature of surrounding rocks. The method we developed could help assess that the rocks have not experienced severe temperature changes in the past."<br /><br />Another application of the new luminescence method can be for building and maintenance of underground tunnels, as it can potentially help finding weak spots. It can also help climate research and archaeologists, explains Guralnik. "At daytime, desert surfaces can reach temperatures of 70 °C. If you can retrieve the surface temperature as averaged over thousands of years, this could tell you more about the evolving regional climate. Archaeologists might discover more about cooking stones; whether a stone believed to have been used for cooking, was indeed a cooking stone."<br /><br /><b>Old literature</b><br /><br />Using seventy year old literature was no abnormality to Guralnik. "According to my father, something new is often something old that has been forgotten. Moreover, it shows the history of science. It easily can take fifty years before an idea yields results. Just as Newton said: 'If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.'"</div>

Opportunities for geothermal energy: New method reveals past underground temperatures

Rocks store information about the temperatures that they have experienced. Wageningen University researchers and international colleagu...

A 'hydrothermal siphon' drives water circulation through the seafloor

0 Geothermal, ocean, water 2:23 AM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="_209g _2vxa" data-block="true" data-offset-key="8dmv5-0-0" data-reactid=".23.1:5.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$8dmv5" style="background-color: white; color: #141823; direction: ltr; line-height: 16px; position: relative; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span data-offset-key="8dmv5-0-0" data-reactid=".23.1:5.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$8dmv5.0:$8dmv5-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">Studies by Andrew Fisher and colleagues have shown that seamounts provide conduits through which enormous quantities of water flow between the ocean and the rocks beneath the seafloor. Credit: Nicolle Rager</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Vast quantities of ocean water circulate through the seafloor, flowing through the volcanic rock of the upper oceanic crust. A new study by scientists at UC Santa Cruz, published June 26 in <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Nature Communications</i>, explains what drives this global process and how the flow is sustained.</span></h4>
<br /><br />About 25 percent of the heat that flows out of the Earth's interior is transferred to the oceans through this process, according to Andrew Fisher, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz and coauthor of the study. Much of the fluid flow and heat transfer occurs through thousands of extinct underwater volcanoes (called seamounts) and other locations where porous volcanic rock is exposed at the seafloor.<br /><br />Fisher led an international team of scientists that in the early 2000s discovered the first field site where this process could be tracked from fluid inflow to outflow, in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. In a 2003 paper published in Nature, Fisher and others reported that bottom seawater entered into one seamount, traveled horizontally through the crust, gaining heat and reacting with crustal rocks, then discharged into the ocean through another seamount more than 50 kilometers away.<br /><br />"Ever since we discovered a place where these processes occur, we have been trying to understand what drives the fluid flow, what it looks like, and what determines the flow direction," Fisher said.<br /><br />For the new study, first author Dustin Winslow, a UCSC Ph.D. candidate who graduated this month, developed the first three-dimensional computer models showing how the process works. The models reveal a 'hydrothermal siphon' driven by heat loss from deep in the Earth and the flow of cold seawater down into the crust and of warmed water up out of the crust.<br /><br />"Dustin's models provide the best, most realistic view of these systems to date, opening a window into a hidden realm of water, rock, and life," Fisher said.<br /><br />The models show that water tends to enter the crust ('recharge') through seamounts where fluid flow is easiest due to favorable rock properties and larger seamount size. Water tends to discharge where fluid flow is more difficult due to less favorable rock properties or smaller seamount size. This finding is consistent with field observations suggesting that smaller seamounts are favored as sites of hydrothermal discharge.<br /><br />"This modeling result was surprising initially, and we had to run many simulations to convince ourselves that it made sense," Winslow said. "We also found that models set up to flow in the opposite direction would spontaneously flip so that discharge occurred through less transmissive seamounts. This seems to be fundamental to explaining how these systems are sustained."</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><i><u>Provided by University of California - Santa Cruz</u></i></span></div>
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A 'hydrothermal siphon' drives water circulation through the seafloor

Studies by Andrew Fisher and colleagues have shown that seamounts provide conduits through which enormous quantities of water flow betw...

Image: Central California and the San Andreas Fault

0 earth, NASA, Tectonic 5:02 PM

Image: Central California and the San Andreas Fault

Credit: Copernicus data (2015)/ESA This image captured by Sentinel-1A's radar on 1 April 2015 shows a central region of California...

Earth's daily rotation period encoded in an atomic-level protein structure

0 earth, News 3:33 PM

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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">This image shows Earth and the circadian clock protein KaiC.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Scientists have demonstrated that Earth's daily rotation period (24 hours) is encoded in the KaiC protein at the atomic level, a small, 10 nm-diameter biomolecule expressed in cyanobacterial cells.The results of this joint research will help elucidate a longstanding question in chronobiology: How is the circadian period of biological clocks determined?</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This research group included: Dr. Jun Abe, Assistant Prof. Atsushi Mukaiyama, and Prof. Shuji Akiyama of the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS) Research Center of Integrative Molecular Systems (CIMoS); Assistant Prof. Toshifumi Mori and Prof. Shinji Saito of the Department of Theoretical and Computational Molecular Science at IMS; Designated Prof. Takao Kondo of Nagoya University; and Assistant Prof. Eiki Yamashita of the Osaka University Institute for Protein Research.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The results of this joint research will help elucidate a longstanding question in chronobiology: How is the circadian period of biological clocks determined? The results will also help understand the basic molecular mechanism of the biological clock. This knowledge might contribute to the development of therapies for disorders associated with abnormal circadian rhythms.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In accordance with diurnal changes in the environment (notably light intensity and temperature) resulting from the Earth's daily rotation around its axis, many organisms regulate their biological activities to ensure optimal fitness and efficiency. The biological clock refers to the mechanism whereby organisms adjust the timing of their biological activities. The period of this clock is set to approximately 24 hours. A wide range of studies have investigated the biological clock in organisms ranging from bacteria to mammals. Consequently, the relationship between the biological clock and multiple diseases has been clarified. However, it remains unclear how 24-hour circadian rhythms are implemented.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The research group mentioned above addressed this question using cyanobacteria. The cyanobacterial circadian clock can be reconstructed by mixing three clock proteins (KaiA, KaiB, and KaiC) and ATP. A study published in 2007 showed that KaiC ATPase activity, which mediates the ATP hydrolysis reaction, is strongly associated with circadian periodicity. The results of that study indicated that the functional structure of KaiC could be responsible for determining the circadian rhythm.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">KaiC ATPase activity exhibits a robust circadian oscillation in the presence of KaiA and KaiB proteins. In the study reported here, the temporal profile of KaiC ATPase activity exhibited an attenuating and oscillating component even in the absence of KaiA and KaiB. A close analysis revealed that this signal had a frequency of 0.91 day-1, which approximately coincided with the 24-hour period. Thus, KaiC is the source of a steady cycle that is in tune with the Earth's daily rotation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To identify causal structural factors, the N-terminal domain of KaiC was analyzed using high-resolution crystallography. The resultant atomic structures revealed the underlying cause of KaiC's slowness relative to other ATPases. "A water molecule is prevented from attacking into the ideal position for the ATP hydrolysis by a steric hindrance near ATP phosphoryl groups. In addition, this hindrance is surely anchored to a spring-like structure derived from polypeptide isomerization," elaborates Dr. Jun Abe. "The ATP hydrolysis, which involves access of a water molecule to the bound ATP and reverse isomerization of the polypeptide, is expected to require a significantly larger amount of free energy than for typical ATP hydrolysis. Thus, the three-dimensional atomic structure discovered in this study explains why the ATPase activity of KaiC is so much lower (by 100- to 1,000,000-fold) than that of typical ATPase molecules."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The circadian clock's period is independent of ambient temperature, a phenomenon known as temperature compensation. One KaiC molecule is composed of six identical subunits, each containing duplicated domains with a series of ATPase motifs. The asymmetric atomic-scale regulation by the aforementioned mechanism dictates a feedback mechanism that maintains the ATPase activity at a constant low level. The authors of this study discovered that the Earth's daily rotation period (24 hours) is implemented as the time constant of the feedback mechanism mediated in this protein structure.</span></div>
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<strong style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Technological Implications</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">KaiC and other protein molecules are capable of moving on short time scales, on the order of 10-12 to 10-1 seconds. This study provides the first atomic-level demonstration that small protein molecules can generate 24-hour rhythms by regulating molecular structure and reactivity. Lab head and CIMoS Director Porf. Shuji Akiyama sees, "The fact that a water molecule, ATP, the polypeptide chain, and other universal biological components are involved in this regulation suggests that humans and other complex organisms may also share a similar molecular machinery. In the crowded intracellular environment that contains a myriad of molecular signals, KaiC demonstrates long-paced oscillations using a small amount of energy generated through ATP consumption. This clever mechanism for timekeeping in a noisy environment may inspire development of highly efficient and sustainable chemical reaction processes and molecular-system-based information processing."</span></div>
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<strong style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Glossary</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">1) Clock protein: A clock protein plays an essential role in the circadian pacemaker. Mutations and deficiencies in clock proteins can alter the intrinsic characteristics of circadian rhythm.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">2) ATP: Adenosine triphosphate is a source of energy required for muscle contraction and many other biological activities. ATP, a nucleotide that mediates the storage and consumption of energy, is sometimes referred to as the "currency of biological energy" due to its universality and importance in metabolism. ATP consists of an adenosine molecule bound to three phosphate groups. Upon hydrolysis, the ATPase releases one phosphate molecule plus approximately 8 kcal/mol of energy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">3) Polypeptide isomerization: Protein polypeptide main chains undergo isomerization on a time scale of seconds or longer; therefore, protein isomerization is one of the slowest biological reactions. Most functional protein main chains have a trans conformation, and a few proteins have a functional cis conformation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><u><i>The above post is reprinted from <a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/nion-edr062215.php" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c7a9f; outline-offset: 0.2em; outline: red dotted 0.14em !important;" target="_blank">materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.nins.jp/english/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c7a9f; outline-offset: 0.2em; outline: red dotted 0.14em !important;" target="_blank"><strong style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">National Institutes of Natural Sciences</strong></a>. <span style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.</span></i></u></span></div>
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Earth's daily rotation period encoded in an atomic-level protein structure

This image shows Earth and the circadian clock protein KaiC. Scientists have demonstrated that Earth's daily rotation period ...

Magnitude-5.8 quake shakes buildings in south-central Alaska

0 Earhquakes, News 2:40 PM

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<i>A magnitude-5.8 earthquake has rocked south-central Alaska, but the U.S. Geological Survey says there's little likelihood of damage.</i><br />
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Wednesday afternoon's quake was initially reported with a magnitude of 5.6, but scientists later revised the measurement. The West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center says the earthquake isn't expected to cause a tsunami.<br />
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The quake at 2:34 p.m. caused computer monitors to sway and rattled buildings in Anchorage, Alaska's largest city.<br />
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The epicenter was 75 miles northwest of Anchorage and 72 miles deep.<br />
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The quake was centered in a mountainous area with few people, and the USGS says most structures in the region are resistant to damage from shaking.<br />
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Magnitude-5.8 quake shakes buildings in south-central Alaska

A magnitude-5.8 earthquake has rocked south-central Alaska, but the U.S. Geological Survey says there's little likelihood of damag...

Scientists persuade volcanoes to tell their stories

0 News, volcano 4:15 PM

Scientists persuade volcanoes to tell their stories

Laser compositional image in 3D of a volcanic crystal. Different crystal zones are shown with different colours. Credit: Teresa Ubide, T...

Understanding subduction zone earthquakes: The 2004 Sumatra earthquake

0 2:59 PM

Understanding subduction zone earthquakes: The 2004 Sumatra earthquake

Location map of Sumatra, Indonesia, depicting rupture areas for the AD 2004 and 2005 subduction zone earthquakes. The 26 December 2...

Uplifted island

0 earth, News, Tectonic 2:12 AM

Uplifted island

Uplift in the Santa María island as a result of the Maule earthquake in 2010. The island experienced a sudden uplift about 2 meters duri...

New estimates of deep carbon cycle

0 Carbonate, earth, News 2:09 PM

New estimates of deep carbon cycle

Major fluxes of carbon estimated by Craig Manning and Peter Kelemen. Over billions of years, the total carbon content of the oute...

Lake Fire in California burns over 11,000 acres

0 earth, News 2:33 PM

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<i>The Lake Fire located in San Bernardino National Forest was reported just before 4:00 p.m. on June 17. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. It is approximately 11,000 acres in size and burning in timber. It is currently 10 percent contained. There are approximately 150 structures threatened, however no structures are believed to be damaged or destroyed at this time. Big Bear High School faculty and students had to relocate their graduation ceremony due to the fire's proximity.</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Making matters more difficult a high-pressure weather system is in place with above normal temperatures over the next several days and very low daytime humidity (5 to 10 percent). That weather report is conducive to a continuation of the fire's activity. All hiking trails into the San Gorgonio wilderness area have been closed due to the proximity of the fire to many hiking trails. The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) is closed from Whitewater Preserve to Onyx Summit according to Inciweb.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="_209g _2vxa" data-block="true" data-offset-key="3edtu-0-0" data-reactid=".a5.1:5.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$3edtu" style="background-color: white; color: #141823; direction: ltr; line-height: 16px; position: relative; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span data-offset-key="3edtu-0-0" data-reactid=".a5.1:5.0.$right.0.0.0.0.1.0.0.1.0.0.$3edtu.0:$3edtu-0-0"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><i><u>The Lake Fire located in San Bernardino National Forest was reported just before 4:00 p.m. on June 17. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. It is approximately 11,000 acres in size and burning in timber. It is currently 10 percent contained.</u></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">June 18 and overnight into June 19, the fire pushed further east into the Heart Bar area and Coon Creek area, and also moved farther South into the San Gorgonio wilderness area in the Ten Thousand Foot Ridge area. Due to turbulent winds above and near ridge lines, helicopters have been more effective than air tankers in slowing the fire. Additional resources have been ordered and will be arriving over the coming days.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">NASA's Aqua satellite collected this natural-color image with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument on June 18. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red.</span></div>
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<em style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner with information from<a href="http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">inciweb.nwcg.gov</a></span></em></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><i><u>The above post is reprinted from <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/lake-fire-in-california-burns-over-11000-acres" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c7a9f; outline-offset: 0.2em; outline: red dotted 0.14em !important;" target="_blank">materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/goddard" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c7a9f; outline-offset: 0.2em; outline: red dotted 0.14em !important;" target="_blank"><strong style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center</strong></a>. <span style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.</span></u></i></span></div>
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Lake Fire in California burns over 11,000 acres

The Lake Fire located in San Bernardino National Forest was reported just before 4:00 p.m. on June 17. The cause of the fire is still u...

Sixth mass extinction is here: Humanity's existence threatened

6 Earth History, Fossils 1:54 AM

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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">Chart shows the enormous uptick in species loss over the last century.</span></div>
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<i>Biologists</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i> have use highly conservative estimates to prove that species are disappearing faster than at any time since the dinosaurs' demise.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," Ehrlich said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Although most well known for his positions on human population, Ehrlich has done extensive work on extinctions going back to his 1981 book, Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species. He has long tied his work on coevolution, on racial, gender and economic justice, and on nuclear winter with the issue of wildlife populations and species loss.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">There is general agreement among scientists that extinction rates have reached levels unparalleled since the dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago. However, some have challenged the theory, believing earlier estimates rested on assumptions that overestimated the crisis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The new study, published in the journal <em style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">Science Advances</em>, shows that even with extremely conservative estimates, species are disappearing up to about 100 times faster than the normal rate between mass extinctions, known as the background rate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said lead author Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autónoma de México.</span></div>
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<strong style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Conservative approach</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Using fossil records and extinction counts from a range of records, the researchers compared a highly conservative estimate of current extinctions with a background rate estimate twice as high as those widely used in previous analyses. This way, they brought the two estimates -- current extinction rate and average background or going-on-all-the-time extinction rate -- as close to each other as possible.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Focusing on vertebrates, the group for which the most reliable modern and fossil data exist, the researchers asked whether even the lowest estimates of the difference between background and contemporary extinction rates still justify the conclusion that people are precipitating "a global spasm of biodiversity loss." The answer: a definitive yes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"We emphasize that our calculations very likely underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis, because our aim was to place a realistic lower bound on humanity's impact on biodiversity," the researchers write.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To history's steady drumbeat, a human population growing in numbers, per capita consumption and economic inequity has altered or destroyed natural habitats. The long list of impacts includes:</span></div>
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<li style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Land clearing for farming, logging and settlement</span></li>
<li style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Introduction of invasive species</span></li>
<li style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Carbon emissions that drive climate change and ocean acidification</span></li>
<li style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Toxins that alter and poison ecosystems</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, the specter of extinction hangs over about 41 percent of all amphibian species and 26 percent of all mammals, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which maintains an authoritative list of threatened and extinct species.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead," Ehrlich said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As species disappear, so do crucial ecosystem services such as honeybees' crop pollination and wetlands' water purification. At the current rate of species loss, people will lose many biodiversity benefits within three generations, the study's authors write. "We are sawing off the limb that we are sitting on," Ehrlich said.</span></div>
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<strong style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hope for the future</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite the gloomy outlook, there is a meaningful way forward, according to Ehrlich and his colleagues. "Avoiding a true sixth mass extinction will require rapid, greatly intensified efforts to conserve already threatened species, and to alleviate pressures on their populations -- notably habitat loss, over-exploitation for economic gain and climate change," the study's authors write.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the meantime, the researchers hope their work will inform conservation efforts, the maintenance of ecosystem services and public policy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Co-authors on the paper include Anthony D. Barnosky of the University of California at Berkeley, Andrés García of Universidad Autónoma de México, Robert M. Pringle of Princeton University and Todd M. Palmer of the University of Florida.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><i>The above post is reprinted from <a href="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/june/mass-extinction-ehrlich-061915.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c7a9f; outline-offset: 0.2em; outline: red dotted 0.14em !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4c7a9f; outline-offset: 0.2em; outline: red dotted 0.14em !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><strong style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">Stanford University</strong></a>. The original item was written by Rob Jordan. <span style="border-radius: 0px !important; box-sizing: border-box;">Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.</span></i></span></div>
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Sixth mass extinction is here: Humanity's existence threatened

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