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Once overlooked because of its relative inactivity compared to other subduction zones around the world, the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) — and the potentially devastating megathrust earthquakes and tsunamis it could unleash — are today well known to both geoscientists and the public. Beginning with the efforts of John Adams of the Geological Survey of Canada and Brian Atwater of the U.S. Geological Survey in the late 1980s, a series of oceanic research cruises and datasets has steadily advanced our understanding of Cascadia. It seems like there is “a paradigm change every few years,” says Chris Goldfinger, a geologist at...

Watchmaking is a noble tradition stretching back hundreds of years when they would make all the parts by hand. While technology today has lightened some of their workload, it's still a fascinating sight when a watchmaker creates another mechanical beauty.

A few weeks ago it was teeming with sunspots, as you would expect since we are supposed to be in the middle of solar maximum -- the time in the sun's 11-year cycle when it is the most active. But now, there is hardly a sunspot in sight. If you look closely at the image above, taken on July 18 by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, you will see a tiny smidge of brown just right of center where a small sunspot appears to be developing. But just one day before, there truly was nothing. It was a totally spotless day....

Things are heating up on planet Earth. Average global temperatures shattered records this June ... for the second month in a row, according to a new report from the National Climactic Data Center. The NCDC, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, analyzed data from 2,000 weather stations scattered across the globe measuring both ocean and land temperatures and found that global average temperatures surpassed the previous record by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit. That makes June 2014 the warmest June since record keeping began in 1880. If this trend continues, 2014 could top 2010 as the warmest year recorded.

Explanation: Yes, but have you ever seen aurora from a cave? To capture this fascinating juxtaposition between below and above, astrophotographer Bjargmundsson spent much of a night alone in the kilometer-long Raufarhólshellir lava cave in Iceland during late March. There, he took separate images of three parts of the cave using a strobe for illumination. He also took a deep image of the sky to capture faint aurora, and digitally combined the four images later. The 4600-year old lava tube has several skylights under which stone rubble and snow have accumulated. Oh -- the person standing on each mound --...

The highlight of the excavation was the discovery of a Judea Capta coin, which was minted by Roman Emporor Domitian during his reign of 81 – 96 CE in honor of the conquest of Judea and the destruction of Jersusalem in 70 CE by his father, Vespasian, and brother, Titus. Christie Cobb, a doctoral student at Drew University in New Jersey, discovered the coin. There are only 48 other versions of this coin that have been found, and fewer still at Biblical sites such as Bethsaida. “The coin confirms other ceramic data about the date of the large Roman period...

Apple Inc. is preparing for its largest initial production run of iPhones, betting that larger-screen models will lure consumers now attracted to similar phones from Samsung Electronics Co. and others. The Cupertino, Calif., company is asking suppliers to manufacture between 70 million and 80 million units combined of two large-screen iPhones with 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch displays by Dec. 30, according to people familiar with the matter. Its forecast for what is commonly called the iPhone 6 is significantly larger than the initial order last year of between 50 million and 60 million versions of the iPhone 5S and 5C--which had...

Climate change skeptics have suggested a recent slowdown in the warming of the Earth is evidence that global warming is a farce and that climate models can't be trusted, but new research suggests the slowdown, or "pause," was not a significant disruption of larger trends. The planet has been slowly warming over the last century or more. But in the last 15 years, that rate of warming has slowed. Temperatures are still high by historical standards; but between 1998 and 2013 they were slightly below what climate models had predicted. A small number of scientists and policy makers have pointed...

Climate alarmists sometimes like to claim skeptical scientists don’t exist, but they do, and one meteorologist had a lot to say on the subject. In an interview with the MRC’s Business and Media Institute, well-known meteorologist Joe Bastardi dissected and criticized major aspects of the climate change alarmism movement. Drawing on his knowledge of weather and climate history, Bastardi said that “extreme weather” events the media talk about so much are commonplace and the result of normal variability. He also attacked basic arguments about CO2, scientific consensus and alarmist media bias. Bastardi contended that climate alarmism is “ludicrous” and “not...

Just being in the Goldilocks zone doesn't mean there'll be anyone to eat the porridge ... “We know that many planets are completely uninhabitable because they are either too close or too far from their sun. A planet’s habitable zone is based on its distance from the sun and temperatures at which it is possible for the planet to have liquid water,” said David Stevens, from the university's school of mathematics. “But until now, most habitability models have neglected the impact of oceans on climate. Oceans have an immense capacity to control climate. They are beneficial because they cause the...

� A flip-flop on Arctic permafrost thaws – actually a net cooling rather than a warming A conversation with Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. on the Kaya Identity → Hard times for Aussie Alarmists – Flannery begs in new video Posted on July 18, 2014 by Anthony Watts Story submitted by Eric WorrallTim Flannery, one time head of the government Climate Commission in Australia, until it was disbanded by the current government, has released a video begging for donations to “keep science in the news”. A year after raising a million dollars, he now needs more money. Flannery has an impressive track record...

Among the most exciting of the new acquisitions are the materials from the site of Jebel Sahaba, now in northern Sudan, which were donated to the Museum by Dr Fred Wendorf in 2002. Excavating here in 1965–66, as part of the UNESCO-funded campaign to salvage sites destined to be flooded by the construction of the Aswan High Dam, Dr Wendorf found a cemetery (site 117) containing at least 61 individuals dating back to about 13,000 years ago. This discovery was of great significance for two reasons. First, as a designated graveyard, evidently used over several generations, it is one of...

As of today, Australia no longer has the most expensive “carbon” price in the world. The voters didn’t ask for a tax in 2010,  but it was forced on them in 2011. They rejected it wholeheartedly in 2013 but it still has taken months to start unwinding this completely pointless piece of symbolism which aimed to change the weather. The machinery of democracy may be slow, but this is a win for voters.11:15am EST today: The Australian Senate passes the carbon tax repeal bill.“Australia has become the first country in the world to abolish a price on carbon, with the Senate...

South Korea announces delay the day after Australia’s carbon tax repealStory submitted by Eric WorrallIn a sign that rejection of climate alarm is gathering momentum, South Korea has thrown doubt on its carbon plans. Significantly, the announcement was made the day after Australia abolished the carbon tax. According to the report; “July 18 (Reuters) – South Korea’s finance minister has called its impending emissions trading market “flawed in many ways”, hinting that he would pressure other ministries to delay the planned 2015 launch, a local newspaper reported. Choi Kyung-hwan, who is also deputy prime minister, said problems had been found...

...the burials of the deceased of the estimated 30,000 commoners and laborers remained elusive – until 2001, when archaeologist Barry Kemp of the University of Cambridge began to see the first signs. Kemp has directed excavations and surveys at Amarna for the Egypt Exploration Society since 1977. “The puzzle seems now to have been solved,” says Kemp. “ It has come about through the desert GPS survey begun in 2001 and continued in subsequent years. First came the discovery of two cemeteries (clearly robbed) of what must be relatively poor graves on the flat desert not far from tomb no....

About 400 footprints were first discovered in the cave in 1965. Scientists initially attributed the impressions to a man, woman and child who lived 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. But radiocarbon measurements of two cave bear bones excavated just below the footprints now indicate that Homo sapiens made these tracks around 36,500 years ago, say anthropologist David Webb of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and his colleagues. Analyses of 51 footprints that remain — cave explorers and tourists have destroyed the rest — indicate that six or seven individuals, including at least one child, entered the cave after a flood had...

Explanation: Why does this comet's nucleus have two components? The surprising discovery that Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has a double nucleus came late last week as ESA's robotic interplanetary spacecraft Rosetta continued its approach toward the ancient comet's core. Speculative ideas on how the double core was created include, currently, that Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko is actually the result of the merger of two comets, that the comet is a loose pile of rubble pulled apart by tidal forces, that ice evaporation on the comet has been asymmetric, or that the comet has undergone some sort of explosive event. Pictured above, the comet's unusual...

Explanation: What's happened to our Sun? Nothing very unusual -- it just threw a filament. Toward the middle of 2012, a long standing solar filament suddenly erupted into space producing an energetic Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). The filament had been held up for days by the Sun's ever changing magnetic field and the timing of the eruption was unexpected. Watched closely by the Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, the resulting explosion shot electrons and ions into the Solar System, some of which arrived at Earth three days later and impacted Earth's magnetosphere, causing visible aurorae. Loops of plasma surrounding an active...

Forty-five years ago, on July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) touched down on the surface of the Moon. On the eve of this anniversary, NASA has released a new look at the Apollo 11 landing site created using data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

New research, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), counters a widely-held scientific view that thawing permafrost uniformly accelerates atmospheric warming, indicating instead that certain Arctic lakes store more greenhouse gases than they emit into the atmosphere. The study, published this week in the journal Nature, focuses on thermokarst lakes, which occur as permafrost thaws and creates surface depressions that fill with melted fresh water, converting what was previously frozen land into lakes. The research suggests that Arctic thermokarst lakes are "net climate coolers" when observed over longer, millennial, time scales. "Until now, we've only thought of thermokarst lakes as...

When most of us look at our hands, we might notice that we need to trim, clean, or stop biting our fingernails, and that's about it. But if you ask a dermatologist, they can see a whole lot more. Everything from poor diet and stress to serious kidney problems can be revealed by a glance at your fingernails. There are about 30 different nail signs that can be associated with medical issues, though many may indicate more than one problem, according to Dr. Amy Derick, a clinical instructor of dermatology at Northwestern University. Here are eight of the things a...

Perhaps the most astounding development in the wake of the Gaza incursion was the revelation that Turkey had suddenly discovered that there is such a thing as “the conscience of humanity.” Those were the very words used by that country’s foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu. They surfaced during the endless ranting and raving by him and Turkey’s pathetic farce of a prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan against Israel. The other astounding development is that Erdogan actually used the word “genocide.” It’s been a century now since the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians and until this day, although the event was...

Newsmax Professor: Robots Are the Future of Elder Care Sunday, July 20, 2014 10:01 AM By: Sandy Fitzgerald Many older people need someone who is always there to help them with their everyday tasks, to listen to their stories, and to help them live independently — in other words, a robot caregiver, writes an associate professor of geriatrics in Sunday's New York Times. "That may sound like an oxymoron," writes the University of California's Louise Aronson in her opinion piece. "In an ideal world, it would be: Each of us would have at least one kind and fully capable human...

There is a famous comparison made between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. The more mystical types among us find the apparent similarities compelling evidence of some inscrutible fate, and much ink has been spilled (no doubt to buttress the legend of Kennedy, who was largely a failure as president.) Naturally, people focus on the coincidental similarities and ignore the huge differences; people naturally seek patterns, and when they find them they say "aha!" even if those patterns happen to mean nothing.In a recent blog post at American Thinker the brilliant Rosslyn Smith falls into this trap, making the case...

Everything about the scene suggested that it might very well have been the last we heard of the NanoFlowcell Quant e-Sportlimousine. Promises of a magic bullet of energy storage, made by a three-month-old company, packaged with outlandish numbers like 0-62 mph (100 km/h) in 2.8 seconds and a top speed of 236 mph (380 km/h), hinted, rather strongly, that this car's technology and performance would only exist on paper. Given that a similarly outlandish Quant car, centered in a similar black-walled booth, introduced by a very different Nunzio La Vecchia company, had vaporized years earlier, it seemed a responsible assumption...

Explanation: In this beach and skyscape from Alicante, Spain, July's Full Moon shines in the dark blue twilight, its reflection coloring the Mediterranean waters. Near the horizon, the moonlight is reddened by its long path through the atmosphere, but this Full Moon was also near perigee, the closest point to Earth along the Moon's elliptical orbit. That made it a Supermoon, a mighty 14% larger and 30% brighter than a Full Moon at apogee, the Moon's farthest orbital swing. Of course, most warm summer nights are a good time to enjoy a family meal oceanside, but what fish do you...

Explanation: A mysterious, squid-like apparition, this nebula is very faint, but also very large in planet Earth's sky. In the mosaic image, composed with narrowband data from the 2.5 meter Isaac Newton Telescope, it spans some 2.5 full moons toward the constellation Cepheus. Recently discovered by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the remarkable nebula's bipolar shape and emission are consistent with it being a planetary nebula, the gaseous shroud of a dying sun-like star, but its actual distance and origin are unknown. A new investigation suggests Ou4 really lies within the emission region SH2-129 some 2,300 light-years away. Consistent with that...

Explanation: If you're looking for something to print with that new 3D printer, try out a copy of the Homunculus Nebula. The dusty, bipolar cosmic cloud is around 1 light-year across but is slightly scaled down for printing to about 1/4 light-nanosecond or 80 millimeters. The full scale Homunculus surrounds Eta Carinae, famously unstable massive stars in a binary system embedded in the extensive Carina Nebula about 7,500 light-years distant. Between 1838 and 1845, Eta Carinae underwent the Great Eruption becoming the second brightest star in planet Earth's night sky and ejecting the Homunculus Nebula. The new 3D model of...

July 17, 2014 – By measuring how fast Earth conducts electricity and seismic waves, a University of Utah researcher and colleagues made a detailed picture of Mount Rainier’s deep volcanic plumbing and partly molten rock that will erupt again someday. “This is the most direct image yet capturing the melting process that feeds magma into a crustal reservoir that eventually is tapped for eruptions,” says geophysicist Phil Wannamaker, of the university’s Energy & Geoscience Institute and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “But it does not provide any information on the timing of future eruptions from Mount Rainier or other...

With 9 presets that were finely tuned to emulate the most legendary organs from the '60s and beyond, the B9 Organ Machine will transform your guitar or keyboard. Tracking is fast and flawless. Control of its signature percussive click and sweet modulation is precise. Blend your dry instrument to create lush layers.

Geophysicists say a network of electrical sensors is giving them a picture of the deep underground volcanic plumbing containing molten rock under some of North America's most active and dangerous volcanoes.

The comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko may actually be two objects stitched together. New images from ESA's Rosetta spacecraft show an odd constriction near the middle of the comet, suggesting that two clumps of matter may have merged in what scientists call a contact binary. The conclusions are preliminary, as Rosetta was still roughly 12,000 kilometers away from the comet when the images were taken. The comet could also have had a more regular single shape with parts carved out through impacts or ice melting as the object circled the sun, mission scientists say. They will have more details about the comet's...

According to the report, the future mission should focus on taking a closer look at the ocean that scientists suspect lies below the surface; characterizing its icy crust and looking for any subsurface liquid water; determining the surface composition and chemistry; examining surface features and identifying landing areas for future missions; and understanding the purpose of its magnetosphere — the magnetic field surrounding the celestial body. NASA officials said the instrument proposals should focus on at least one of these exploration goals. The announcement calls for instruments designed for a spacecraft that will orbit Europa or complete several flybys, since...

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is probably the most widely used personality test in the world. An estimated 2 million people take it annually, at the behest of corporate HR departments, colleges, and even government agencies. The company that makes and markets the test makes somewhere around $20 million each year. The only problem? The test is completely meaningless.

When mice with the human equivalent of Type 2 diabetes were injected with the protein FGF1, their blood sugar levels returned to normal over two days. Just one injection of the protein both regulated these levels and even helped reverse insulin insensitivity – the underlying cause of diabetes. Published in the journal Nature, the research on FGF1 could revolutionize diabetes treatment. In addition to being effective against diabetes, the protein has several advantages over current diabetes drugs. It does not result in dangerous side effects seen with other diabetes drugs, such as heart problems, weight gain, or hypoglycemia. Additionally, FGF1...

Two new studies suggest that being overweight may actually protect against death from cardiovascular causes. For the first study, led by Dr. Abhishek Sharma, a cardiology fellow at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY, researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 36 studies that looked at the outcomes of patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) who underwent coronary revascularization procedures, including percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and coronary artery bypass graft (CABG). they found that patients with the lowest cardiovascular mortality risk were those who were overweight - a BMI of 25-30 kg/m2. In addition, patients who...

The same federal scientist who recently found forgotten samples of smallpox at a federal lab also uncovered over 300 additional vials, many bearing the names of highly contagious viruses and bacteria. Related Stories Forgotten vials of smallpox found in storage room Associated Press 'Forgotten freezer' held much more than smallpox AFP CDC Closes Labs After Accidents With Flu, Anthrax Samples The Wall Street Journal Vials of Smallpox Virus Found in Unapproved Maryland Lab ABC News Scientists found some smallpox vials lying around in an unsecured federal lab The Week (RSS) Food and Drug Administration officials said Wednesday the undocumented collection...

Explanation: What happened to half of Saturn? Nothing other than Earth's Moon getting in the way. As pictured above on the far right, Saturn is partly eclipsed by a dark edge of a Moon itself only partly illuminated by the Sun. This year the orbits of the Moon and Saturn have led to an unusually high number of alignments of the ringed giant behind Earth's largest satellite. Technically termed an occultation, the above image captured one such photogenic juxtaposition from Buenos Aires, Argentina that occurred early last week. Visible to the unaided eye but best viewed with binoculars, there are...

Mount Fuji, or Fujisan as it is known in Japanese, is the highest point on the archipelago (rising to 3,776 metres) and the national emblem, immortalised in countless etchings. In June last year Unesco added it to the World Heritage list as a "sacred place and source of artistic inspiration". But it is still an active volcano, standing at the junction between the Pacific, Eurasian and Philippine tectonic plates. Though it has rarely stirred in recorded history, it is still potentially explosive. The Tohoku – or Great East Japan – earthquake on 11 March 2011 triggered a devastating tsunami, which...

This is what may have happened around 3,200 BC on the Lake of Mondsee (Lake Constance), resulting in the exodus of a metalworking community that lived there. When the site of this particular settlement was excavated in the 19th century, 595 stone axes and studded battleaxes, 451 arrowheads along with 12 copper axes and six daggers were discovered. These items represented highly sought-after status symbols, and would never have been left behind intentionally, unless of course the settlement had been abandoned as the result of a disaster. Well preserved foods such as charred hazelnuts, grain and pieces of apples were...

Abstract -- In the last years several phylogeographic studies of both extant and extinct red deer populations have been conducted. Three distinct mitochondrial lineages (western, eastern and North-African/Sardinian) have been identified reflecting different glacial refugia and postglacial recolonisation processes. However, little is known about the genetics of the Alpine populations and no mitochondrial DNA sequences from Alpine archaeological specimens are available. Here we provide the first mitochondrial sequences of an Alpine Copper Age Cervus elaphus. DNA was extracted from hair shafts which were part of the remains of the clothes of the glacier mummy known as the Tyrolean Iceman or...

Explanation: Why is there a blue bridge of stars across the center of this galaxy cluster? First and foremost the cluster, designated SDSS J1531+3414, contains many large yellow elliptical galaxies. The cluster's center, as pictured above by the Hubble Space Telescope, is surrounded by many unusual, thin, and curving blue filaments that are actually galaxies far in the distance whose images have become magnified and elongated by the gravitational lens effect of the massive cluster. More unusual, however, is a squiggly blue filament near the two large elliptical galaxies at the cluster center. Close inspection of the filament indicates that...

The U.S. government says it has developed the first ever self-guided bullets that can lock onto a target more than a mile away and maneuver midflight in order to hit its mark. The .50 caliber target tracking bullets, dubbed Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO), are designed for military snipers, who must deal with changes in wind, light and ambient heat as they fire on a target. The EXACTO technology is being developed by Teledyne Scientific and Imaging with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which researches new military technologies and is known as a key developer of...

Explanation: Gusting solar winds and blasts of charged particles from the Sun resulted in several rewarding nights last December for those anticipating auroras. The above image captured dramatic auroras stretching across a sky near the town of Yellowknife in northern Canada. The auroras were so bright that they not only inspired awe, but were easily visible on an image exposure of only 1.3 seconds. A video taken concurrently shows the dancing sky lights evolving in real time as tourists, many there just to see auroras, respond with cheers. The conical dwellings on the image right are teepees, while far in...

Can't get your children to eat their vegetables or clean up their toys? Game theory offers some solutions. The party is over, and you're down to the last bit of cake. All three of your children want it. If you're familiar with game theory, you might think of the classic strategy in which one person cuts the cake and the other chooses the slice. But how do you divide it three ways without anyone throwing a fit? Game theory is, in essence, the science of strategic thinking—a way of making the best decision possible based on the way you expect...

Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate SkepticismWhile alarmists try to enshrine climate scientists as pure and unbiased, those familiar with real life science understand a scientist’s opinion should always be challenged- challenged because personal bias taints their interpretations and challenged because a small minority will fudge the data in order to gain peer acceptance, status and funding.Read the NY Times piece Crack Down on Scientific Fraudsters   http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/opinion/crack-down-on-scientific-fraudsters.html?_r=1Scientific fraud is found in the field of medical science because results can be quickly checked. In climate science, dooms...

IBM has provided an outline of its plans to invest $3 billion over the next five years. It hopes the cash injected into its R&D activities will help it find ways to make chips even smaller and more efficient and research into practical alternative materials which will prove superior to silicon.Big Blue has observed the diminishing returns in the process reduction of silicon chips over recent years and has now decided it needs to bet big on the task of finding a suitable successor. Tom Rosamilia, Senior Vice President of IBM Systems & Technology Group said "We really do see...

Some climate change proponents are saying the huge amounts of methane gas, stored under the Arctic ice is a potential "ticking time bomb." They claim that we must stop extracting fossil fuels that put more CO2 into our atmosphere or face disaster. Methane is only one of a number of gases called greenhouse gases (GHG) that can absorb and emit infrared radiation, or in other words, this means they can trap and absorb heat. The most abundant GHG is water vapor, followed by carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and CFC's. By measuring atmospheric infrared radiation, climatologists are able to...

CHEYENNE, Wyo.—The ever-changing thermal geology of Yellowstone National Park has created a hot spot that melted an asphalt road and closed access to popular geysers and other attractions at the height of tourist season, officials said Thursday. As they examined possible fixes, park officials warned visitors not to hike into the affected area, where the danger of stepping through solid-looking soil into boiling-hot water was high.

Explanation: NGC 2818 is a beautiful planetary nebula, the gaseous shroud of a dying sun-like star. It could well offer a glimpse of the future that awaits our own Sun after spending another 5 billion years or so steadily using up hydrogen at its core, and then finally helium, as fuel for nuclear fusion. Curiously, NGC 2818 seems to lie within an open star cluster, NGC 2818A, that is some 10,000 light-years distant toward the southern constellation Pyxis (the Compass). At the distance of the star cluster, the nebula would be about 4 light-years across. But accurate velocity measurements show...