Medusa's Deep Sea Vent

Art © Barry Smith; Medusa © Marvel Comics

A new "black smoker" -- an undersea mineral chimney emitting hot, iron-darkened water that attracts unusual marine life -- has been discovered at about 8,500 feet underwater by an expedition and dubbed the Medusa hydrothermal vent field.

The researchers picked that name to highlight the presence of a pink form of the jellyfish order Stauromedusae as well as numerous spiky tubeworm casings that festoon the vent chimney and bring to mind "the serpent-haired Medusa of Greek myth," said expedition leader Emily Klein.

"It's astonishing that a rich ecology thrives in these extreme environments," Klein added. She noted, however, that while all the organisms near vents are adapted to the high pressures at these depths, not all experience extremely high temperatures.

"The temperature of the ocean floor is about 2 C and there is a strong temperature gradient as you move away from the vent, so animals living a few inches away may experience temperatures only a few degrees above normal for the ocean floor."

"Despite the great tempeature of the vent water, it doesn't boil until 390 C because pressures on the ocean floor are so great, about 200 times the pressure at sea level," Klein said. The tremendous pressures result from the weight of almost two miles of seawater pressing down from above. link

Colours Out of Time & Space

Scientists studied light absorbed and reflected by organisms on Earth, and determined that if astronomers were to look at the light given off by planets circling distant stars, they might predict that some planets have mostly non-green plants.

Cover by Pete Von Sholly

"We can identify the strongest candidate wavelengths of light for the dominant color of photosynthesis on another planet," said Nancy Kiang, lead author of the study.

On Earth, Kiang and colleagues surveyed light absorbed and reflected by plants and some bacteria during photosynthesis, a process by which plants use energy from sunlight to produce sugar. Organisms that live in different light environments absorb the light colors that are most available. For example, there is a type of bacteria that inhabit murky waters where there is little visible light, and so they use infrared radiation during photosynthesis.

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According to scientists, the Sun has a specific distribution of colors of light, emitting more of some colors than others. Gases in Earth's air also filter sunlight, absorbing different colors. As a result, more red light particles reach Earth's surface than blue or green light particles, so plants use red light for photosynthesis. There is plenty of light for land plants, so they do not need to use extra green light. But not all stars have the same distribution of light colors as our Sun. Study scientists say they now realize that photosynthesis on extrasolar planets will not necessarily look the same as on Earth.

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"It makes one appreciate how life on Earth is so intimately adapted to the special qualities of our home planet and Sun," said Kiang. link

Spectral Signatures of Photosynthesis. I. Review of Earth Organisms. 2007. Kiang, et al. Astrobiology 7: 222 -251. N.Y.

Spectral Signatures of Photosynthesis. II. Coevolution with Other Stars And The Atmosphere on Extrasolar Worlds. 2007. N.Y. Kiang, at al. Astrobiology 7: 252 -274

Bill Nelson Asks Max Headroom: Do You Dream In Colour?

The Hyborian Age: Chapter Six

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Script by Roy Thomas; Art © Walt Simonson; The Hyborian Age and Conan © their current copyright holders.

Read:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five

The Why of Fly Flying

Armed with a computer video tracking system and an array of mathematical techniques researchers have revealed how the flight patterns of starved fruit flies constitute an optimal scale-free searching strategy – like the fractal patterns of a snowflake, a fly flight path appears similar whether viewed up close, or from a distance.

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The researchers also found that searching is intermittent, such that flies actively search by making tight turns, and fly straight some distance to begin searching again. Scale-free movement patterns have been found in diverse animals including zooplankton, wandering albatrosses, jackals, and even human hunter-gathers. Intermittent searchers include octopi, graylings, and mating crickets.

Andy Reynolds says, "Our results with freely flying Drosophila appear to be the first reported example of searching behaviour that is both scale-free and intermittent. This suggests that these behaviours are not part of two different searching strategies, but rather represent a single very effective and perhaps widely adopted strategy." link

Fly on the Windshield:

Free-Flight Odor Tracking in Drosophila Is Consistent with an Optimal Intermittent Scale-Free Search 2007. AM Reynolds and MA Frye. PLoS ONE 2(4): e354.

Irrational Fashion Changes Explained

New research reveals that trends in popular culture (music, fashion, baby names) come and go at surprisingly regular and predictable rate, which is fueled by very few innovators amidst millions of people copying each other.

To come up with a template of the trend-setting machine, the scientists developed computer simulations based on a system of random copying in which hundreds or thousands of individuals copy each other with 2 percent or fewer being innovators. The model predicted regular and consistent turnover rates that matched the real-world data.

Bentley found that how quickly something comes into fashion and then fades out depends on the size of the list, with a top-100 list changing much faster than a top-40 list. However, the population number had no effect on turnover rate. The scientists suggest a larger population does mean more new ideas but it also means more competition for a top spot and they balance each other out.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the study also found that the more trendsetting innovators there are in a society, the faster one trend will replace another within a particular sector. “Innovators are the cool ones who ‘pump’ new fashions into our world,” Bentley said.

Wonder Woman © DC Comics

The results suggests that the practice, common among captains of the fashion industry, of trying to handpick the next consumer “gems” amongst millions of proposals is a hopeless undertaking.

Regular rates of popular culture change reflect random copying. 2007. R.A. Bentley, et al. Evolution and Human Behavior, published online 17 January 2007.

So many fashions...spinning...dizzy...

Steve Hickman's Kong

Art © Steve Hickman

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Scanned from The Monster Times #7, 1972.

Brewed This Day: 1st Batch of Coca-Cola

In 1886, the first batch of Coca Cola was brewed over a fire in a backyard in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. John Pemberton had created the concoction as a cure for "hangover," stomach ache and headache. He advertised it as a "brain tonic and intellectual beverage," and first sold it to the public a few weeks later on 8 May. Coke contained cocaine as an ingredient until 1904, when the drug was banned by Congress. link

Who Is Hoverboy?

Only in South America would you get this: