Watch out for Hurricane Henry! Britain and Ireland Get Storm Naming System

Last month the Met Office together with Met Éireann announced a pilot project to name storms that may have the potential to affect Britain and/or Ireland during autumn and winter 2015/16.

They received thousands of responses by email, through the Met Office Facebook pages and @metoffice on Twitter.

The winning names were: Abigail, Barney, Clodagh, Desmond, Eva, Frank, Gertrude, Henry, Imogen, Jake, Katie, Lawrence, Mary, Nigel, Orla, Phil, Rhonda, Steve, Tegan, Vernon and Wendy.

Image credit: Met Office

To maintain consistency with the naming convention of storms in the North Atlantic, no names beginning with Q, U, X, Y, or Z will be used. This is in keeping with the US National Hurricane Centre's naming policy.
It is hoped that naming storms will help raise awareness of severe weather and ensure greater safety of the public.

A storm will be named when it is deemed to have the potential to cause a substantial impact in the UK and/or Ireland.

If a storm is the remnants of a tropical storm or hurricane that has moved across the Atlantic, the already established method of referring to it as, for example "Ex-hurricane X", will continue.

Text via Press Association 

Top image credit: Storm in the Mountains by Albert Bierstadt, via Wikimedia Commons

Press Release: NASA Confirms Evidence That Liquid Water Flows on Today’s Mars

These dark, narrow, 100 meter-long streaks called recurring slope lineae flowing downhill on Mars are inferred to have been formed by contemporary flowing water. Recently, planetary scientists detected hydrated salts on these slopes at Hale crater, corroborating their original hypothesis that the streaks are indeed formed by liquid water. The blue color seen upslope of the dark streaks are thought not to be related to their formation, but instead are from the presence of the mineral pyroxene. The image is produced by draping an orthorectified (Infrared-Red-Blue/Green(IRB)) false color image (ESP_030570_1440) on a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the same site produced by High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (University of Arizona). Vertical exaggeration is 1.5.

Credits: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

New findings from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.
Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. They darken and appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade in cooler seasons. They appear in several locations on Mars when temperatures are above minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), and disappear at colder times.
“Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water -- albeit briny -- is flowing today on the surface of Mars.”
These downhill flows, known as recurring slope lineae (RSL), often have been described as possibly related to liquid water. The new findings of hydrated salts on the slopes point to what that relationship may be to these dark features. The hydrated salts would lower the freezing point of a liquid brine, just as salt on roads here on Earth causes ice and snow to melt more rapidly. Scientists say it’s likely a shallow subsurface flow, with enough water wicking to the surface to explain the darkening.

Dark narrow streaks called recurring slope lineae emanating out of the walls of Garni crater on Mars. The dark streaks here are up to few hundred meters in length. They are hypothesized to be formed by flow of briny liquid water on Mars. The image is produced by draping an orthorectified (RED) image (ESP_031059_1685) on a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the same site produced by High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (University of Arizona). Vertical exaggeration is 1.5.

Credits: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

"We found the hydrated salts only when the seasonal features were widest, which suggests that either the dark streaks themselves or a process that forms them is the source of the hydration. In either case, the detection of hydrated salts on these slopes means that water plays a vital role in the formation of these streaks," said Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, lead author of a report on these findings published Sept. 28 by Nature Geoscience.
Ojha first noticed these puzzling features as a University of Arizona undergraduate student in 2010, using images from the MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). HiRISE observations now have documented RSL at dozens of sites on Mars. The new study pairs HiRISE observations with mineral mapping by MRO’s Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM).
The spectrometer observations show signatures of hydrated salts at multiple RSL locations, but only when the dark features were relatively wide. When the researchers looked at the same locations and RSL weren't as extensive, they detected no hydrated salt.
Ojha and his co-authors interpret the spectral signatures as caused by hydrated minerals called perchlorates. The hydrated salts most consistent with the chemical signatures are likely a mixture of magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate and sodium perchlorate. Some perchlorates have been shown to keep liquids from freezing even when conditions are as cold as minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 70 Celsius). On Earth, naturally produced perchlorates are concentrated in deserts, and some types of perchlorates can be used as rocket propellant.
Perchlorates have previously been seen on Mars. NASA's Phoenix lander and Curiosity rover both found them in the planet's soil, and some scientists believe that the Viking missions in the 1970s measured signatures of these salts. However, this study of RSL detected perchlorates, now in hydrated form, in different areas than those explored by the landers. This also is the first time perchlorates have been identified from orbit.
MRO has been examining Mars since 2006 with its six science instruments.
"The ability of MRO to observe for multiple Mars years with a payload able to see the fine detail of these features has enabled findings such as these: first identifying the puzzling seasonal streaks and now making a big step towards explaining what they are," said Rich Zurek, MRO project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
For Ojha, the new findings are more proof that the mysterious lines he first saw darkening Martian slopes five years ago are, indeed, present-day water.
"When most people talk about water on Mars, they're usually talking about ancient water or frozen water," he said. "Now we know there’s more to the story. This is the first spectral detection that unambiguously supports our liquid water-formation hypotheses for RSL."
The discovery is the latest of many breakthroughs by NASA’s Mars missions.
“It took multiple spacecraft over several years to solve this mystery, and now we know there is liquid water on the surface of this cold, desert planet,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “It seems that the more we study Mars, the more we learn how life could be supported and where there are resources to support life in the future.”

This animation simulates a fly-around look at one of the places on Mars where dark streaks advance down slopes during warm seasons, possibly involving liquid water. This site is within Hale Crater. The streaks are roughly the length of a football field.

There are eight co-authors of the Nature Geoscience paper, including Mary Beth Wilhelm at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California and Georgia Tech; CRISM Principal Investigator Scott Murchie of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland; and HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona. Others are at Georgia Tech, the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique in Nantes, France.
The agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin built the orbiter and collaborates with JPL to operate it.
More information about NASA's journey to Mars is available online at:

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/journeytomars

For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mro

-end-

Last Updated: Sept. 28, 2015

Editor: Gina Anderson

Copyright NASA

Credits and Press Contacts:

Dwayne Brown / Laurie Cantillo
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726 / 202-358-1077
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov / laura.l.cantillo@nasa.gov

Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278
guy.w.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Last Updated: Sept. 28, 2015

Editor: Gina Anderson

Unexpected Gliding Ability Discovered in Spider Species

Scientists conducting research in the Peruvian rainforest dropped spiders to see whether they could glide and discovered that the large, flat Selenops spiders could do just that. Described by the National Geographic as being as big as a soup tin but as thin as a nickel, these spiders, known as 'flatties', were found to be able to direct themselves towards targets while they fell, using their forelimbs to steer.

The spiders do not use silk to glide, something which other spiders species do by using a dragline to anchor themselves for safety.  The flatness of the Selenops species may be instrumental in their unexpected prowess in gliding, according to the leader of the study, Stephen Yanoviak, who was impressed by the apparent use of steering: "If it wants to turn left, it changes the angle of the right front leg. And if it wants to turn right, it does the same with the left front leg."

A 'Flatty' spider (Selenops sp.)

The study describes an ability not previously known to be exhibited by arachnids, and is a first for science. The gliding technique is thought by the authors of a paper outlining the research to be an adaptation to arboreal living, as opposed to forest floor living, which allows the flatties to right themselves in the air within milliseconds of falling.

The research is described in a newly published manuscript in the journal Interface.

By Jon Fern

Picture credits: Stephen Yanoviak/National Geographic

Press Release: Do Micro-organisms Explain Features on Comets?

Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, studied in detail by the European Space Agency Rosetta and Philae spacecraft since September 2014, is a body with distinct and unexpected features. Now two astronomers have a radical explanation for its properties – micro-organisms that shape cometary activity. Dr Max Wallis of the University of Cardiff set out their ideas today (Monday 6 July) at the National Astronomy Meeting at Venue Cymru in Llandudno, Wales.
A close up image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, taken at a distance of 130 km using the OSIRIS camera on the Rosetta spacecraft. A range of features, including boulders, craters and steep cliffs are clearly visible. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA.Rosetta data have revealed an irregular ‘duck shaped’ comet with about 4.3 by 4.1 km in extent. It appears to have a black crust and underlying ice and images show large, smooth ‘seas’, flat-bottomed craters and a surface peppered with mega-boulders. The crater lakes are re-frozen bodies of water overlain with organic debris. Parallel furrows relate to the flexing of the asymmetric and spinning double-lobed body, which generates fractures in the ice beneath.
Dr Wallis, and his colleague Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, argue that these features are all consistent with a mixture of ice and organic material that consolidate under the sun’s warming during the comet’s orbiting in space, when active micro-organisms can be supported.
In their model, the micro-organisms probably require liquid water bodies to colonise the comet and could inhabit cracks in its ice and ‘snow’. Organisms containing anti-freeze salts are particularly good at adapting to these conditions and some could be active at temperatures as low as -40 degrees Celsius.
Sunlit areas of P/67 Churyumov-Gerasimenko have approached this temperature last September, when at 500 million km from the Sun and weak gas emissions were evident.  As it travels to its closest point to the Sun – perihelion at 195 million km – the temperature is rising, gassing increasing and the micro-organisms should become increasingly active.
Dr Wallis said: “Rosetta has already shown that the comet is not to be seen as a deep-frozen inactive body, but supports geological processes and could be more hospitable to micro-life than our Arctic and Antarctic regions”.
Wallis and Wickramasinghe cite further evidence for life in the detection by Philae of abundant complex organic molecules on the surface of the comet and in the infrared images taken by Rosetta.
Professor Wickramasinghe commented: “If the Rosetta orbiter has found evidence of life on the comet, it would be a fitting tribute to mark the centenary of the birth of Sir Fred Hoyle, one of the undisputable pioneers of astrobiology.”

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Images and captions

An image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at a distance of 285 km. The images were made using the OSIRIS camera on the Rosetta spacecraft. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

A close up image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, taken at a distance of 130 km using the OSIRIS camera on the Rosetta spacecraft. A range of features, including boulders, craters and steep cliffs are clearly visible. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

---

Media contacts

Dr Robert Massey
Royal Astronomical Society
Mob: +44 (0)794 124 8035
rm@ras.org.uk
Ms Anita Heward
Royal Astronomical Society
Mob: +44 (0)7756 034 243
anitaheward@btinternet.com
Dr Sam Lindsay
Royal Astronomical Society
Mob: +44 (0)7957 566 861
sl@ras.org.uk

---

Science contacts

Dr Max Wallis
University of Cardiff
WallisMK@cardiff.ac.uk
Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe
Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology
University of Buckingham
ncwick@gmail.com


The above text is taken from a press release posted on the Royal Astronomical Society website and is reproduced here for educational purposes only.

First image credit: Reuters/ESA

Expect Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life to Look Something Like Us, Says Biologist

A leading biologist has claimed "we are not alone" arguing that extra-terrestrials resembling humans must have evolved on other planets.

Evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris says that evidence that different species will independently develop similar features means that life similar to that on Earth would also develop on other, equivalent planets.

This theory, known as convergence, suggests evolution is far from random but in fact a predictable process which follows a rigid set of rules.

It means that popular depictions of aliens with an appearance similar to humans - such as the character in the hit 1980s' film ET - may not be far from the truth.

Professor Conway Morris added that, given the growing number of Earth-like planets now discovered by astronomers, it is surprising that we have not yet discovered aliens which look and sound like us.

He added: "I would argue that in any habitable zone that doesn't boil or freeze, intelligent life is going to emerge, because intelligence is convergent.

"One can say with reasonable confidence that the likelihood of something analogous to a human evolving is really pretty high.

"And given the number of potential planets that we now have good reason to think exist, even if the dice only come up the right way every one in 100 throws, that still leads to a very large number of intelligences scattered around, that are likely to be similar to us."

Prof Conway Morris, a fellow at St John's College, Cambridge, puts forward the argument in his new book The Runes Of Evolution.

He argues that convergence is not just common, but everywhere, and that it has governed every aspect of life's development on Earth.

Proteins, eyes, limbs, intelligence, tool-making - even our capacity to experience orgasms - are, he argues, inevitable once life emerges.

"Often, research into convergence is accompanied by exclamations of surprise, describing it as uncanny, remarkable and astonishing," Prof Conway Morris said.

"In fact it is everywhere, and that is a remarkable indication that evolution is far from a random process.

"If the outcomes of evolution are at least broadly predictable, then what applies on Earth will apply across the Milky Way, and beyond."

He has previously raised the prospect that alien life, if out there, would resemble earthlings - with limbs, heads, and bodies.

His new book goes further adding that any Earth-like planet should also evolve predators like sharks, pitcher plants, mangroves, and mushrooms, among many other things.

Limbs, brains and intelligence would, similarly, be "almost guaranteed".

The traits of human-like intelligence have evolved in other species - the octopus and some birds, for example, both exhibit social playfulness - and this, the book suggests, indicates that intelligence is an inevitable consequence of evolution that would characterise extra-terrestrials as well.

Text courtesy of Press Association.

Image copyright of Columbia Pictures.

Press Release: Key Element of Human Language Discovered in Bird Babble

Stringing together meaningless sounds to create meaningful signals was previously thought to be the preserve of humans alone, but a new study has revealed that babbler birds are also able to communicate in this way.
Researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Zurich discovered that the chestnut-crowned babbler - a highly social bird found in the Australian Outback - has the ability to convey new meaning by rearranging the meaningless sounds in its calls. This babbler bird communication is reminiscent of the way humans form meaningful words. The research findings, which are published in the journal PLOS Biology, reveal a potential early step in the emergence of the elaborate language systems we use today.
Lead author Sabrina Engesser from the University of Zurich said: "Although previous studies indicate that animals, particularly birds, are capable of stringing different sounds together as part of a complex song, these songs generally lack a specific meaning and changing the arrangement of sounds within a song does not seem to alter its overall message."
"In contrast to most songbirds, chestnut-crowned babblers do not sing. Instead its extensive vocal repertoire is characterised by discrete calls made up of smaller acoustically distinct individual sounds." she added.
"We think that babbler birds may choose to rearrange sounds to code new meaning because doing so through combining two existing sounds is quicker than evolving a new sound altogether." said co-author Professor Andy Russell from the University of Exeter who has been studying the babblers since 2004.
The researchers noticed that chestnut-crowned babblers reused two sounds "A" and "B" in different arrangements when performing specific behaviours. When flying, the birds produced a flight call "AB", but when feeding chicks in the nest they emitted "BAB" prompt calls.
When the researchers played the sounds back, the listening birds showed they were capable of discriminating between the different call types by looking at the nests when they heard a feeding prompt call and by looking out for incoming birds when they heard a flight call. This was also the case when the researchers switched elements between the two calls: making flight calls from prompt elements and prompt calls from flight elements, indicating that the two calls were indeed generated from rearrangements of the same sounds.
Co-author Dr Simon Townsend from the University of Zurich said: "This is the first time that the capacity to generate new meaning from rearranging meaningless elements has been shown to exist outside of humans.
"Although the two babbler bird calls are structurally very similar, they are produced in totally different behavioural contexts and listening birds are capable of picking up on this."
The authors report that in the chestnut-crowned babbler, the first sound element "B" is what seems to differentiate the meaning between flight and prompt vocalisations, akin to cat and at in English, where the c represents the meaning differentiating element, or phoneme.
"Although this so-called phoneme structuring is of a very simple kind, it might help us understand how the ability to generate new meaning initially evolved in humans" added Dr Simon Townsend. "It could be that when phoneme structuring first got off the ground in our hominid ancestors, this is the form it initially took".

###

For more images and audio recordings of chestnut-crowned babbler sounds: University of Exeter Press Office: +44 (0)1392 722 062 or +44(0)7827 309 332; email: pressoffice@exeter.ac.uk
University of Zurich: Calista Fischer. Tel: +41 (0)44 635 4080; email: c.fischer@mnf.uzh.ch

Researcher Contacts
Sabrina Engesser: Tel: +41 (0)76 204 9893; email: sabrina.engeser@ieu.uzh.ch
Andrew F. Russell: Tel. +44 (0)1326 255936, 07887 389226; email: a.russell@exeter.ac.uk
Simon W. Townsend: Tel: +41 (0)78 944 6117, +41 (0)44 635 5286; email: simon.townsend@ieu.uzh.ch


The above text is taken form a press release assigned the code PUBLIC RELEASE 29-JUNE-2015 and posted on eurekalert.org
Picture via Wikimedia Commons.

Methane in Meteorites May Suggest Subsurface Life on Mars

A group of scientists, led by Doctor Nigel Blamey of Brock University, Ontario, Canada, have found that, by crushing meteoritic rocks from Mars, a methane-rich component is exuded. From this, the group's findings have concluded that existing, or historic, subsurface life on Mars may use, or have used, methane as a source of energy for microbiological processes.

From the extract of their paper, entitled Evidence for methane in Martian meteorites and published in Nature Communications:

"The putative occurrence of methane in the Martian atmosphere has had a major influence on the exploration of Mars, especially by the implication of active biology. The occurrence has not been borne out by measurements of atmosphere by the MSL rover Curiosity but, as on Earth, methane on Mars is most likely in the subsurface of the crust. Serpentinization of olivine-bearing rocks, to yield hydrogen that may further react with carbon-bearing species, has been widely invoked as a source of methane on Mars, but this possibility has not hitherto been tested. Here we show that some Martian meteorites, representing basic igneous rocks, liberate a methane-rich volatile component on crushing. The occurrence of methane in Martian rock samples adds strong weight to models whereby any life on Mars is/was likely to be resident in a subsurface habitat, where methane could be a source of energy and carbon for microbial activity."

The finding lends weight to the theory that Mars may host at least simple microbial life, possibly below its seemingly inhospitable surface. Last year, NASA found venting plumes of methane on Mars, the strongest sign so far of the possibility of extant life on the planet.

Image Credit: BBC