Posts Tagged ‘Science’
Belief In Science Increases In Stressful Situations
Friday, 07 June 2013 12:34
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belief in scienceBelief doesn’t have to be superstitious or irrational to give us comfort. e! Science News reports:

A faith in the explanatory and revealing power of science increases in the face of stress or anxiety, a study by Oxford University psychologists suggests. The researchers argue that a ‘belief in science’ may help non-religious people deal with adversity by offering comfort and reassurance, as has been reported previously for religious belief. (Read more…)

‘It’s not just believing in God that is important for gaining these psychological benefits, it is belief in general,’ says Dr. Farias. ‘It may be that we as humans are just prone to have belief, and even atheists will hold non-supernatural beliefs that are reassuring and comforting.’

The researchers say their findings are consistent with the idea that belief in science increases when secular individuals are placed in threatening situations. They go on to suggest that a belief in science may help non-religious people deal with adverse conditions.

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Slicing Open Stalagmites to Reveal Climate Secrets
Thursday, 06 June 2013 15:04
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If you’ve ever visited a cave, you know the rules: Stay on the path, and keep your greasy paws off the formations. So Stacy Carolin was a bit taken aback the first time she headed into a cave not as a tourist, but as a scientist, and took a step off the beaten path. “I was a city girl back then,” she recalls. “It was very muddy and slippery… and also completely pitch black. (Read more…)” Not exactly the setting you’d expect for cutting-edge climate change research.

A few years later, Carolin, a PhD student at Georgia Tech, is breaking ground in the field of paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climates, using an unconventional but increasingly prevalent tool: “speleothems,” a catch-all term for cave formations that includes stalagmites (remember the mnemonic: those that “mite” reach the ceiling from the floor) and stalactites (those that hold “tite” to the ceiling).

In a study released today in the journal Science, Carolin and her colleagues outline 100,000-year-old rainfall conditions in Borneo, mapped from chemical clues in cave formations there. Like most historic climate reconstructions, the goal is to compile real-life data against which to test predictive models; if scientists know how much rainfall there was in the tropics in the past, they can see how well their models are able to replicate those conditions, and tweak accordingly. But the most commonly-used “proxies” for ancient climates, including tree rings and ice cores, are notoriously inadequate in the tropics, leaving holes in scientists’ geographic picture of the past and making it difficult to measure historic changes in tropical weather systems, like monsoons, which can themselves have major impacts on global climate.

Deep inside caves in Mexico, Southeast Asia, China, and other limestone-rich locales worldwide, scientists have found rich troves of data in speleothems. Researchers look for formations that have already fallen over or broken off, so as not to damage the cave, haul these back to the lab, slice them open (“like a hot dog,” Carolin says), and study the ancient atoms within to discover how old they are and how much rainfall there was at different points in their past (speleothems form when rainwater drips through the limestone, picking up acid and minerals that pile up in the cave).

Tim McDonnell

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Grazing Reindeer Take a Bite Out of Global Warming
Thursday, 06 June 2013 05:05
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Turns out where we let reindeer dine when has a big impact on the energy balance of the planet. That’s because reindeer (aka caribou) prune dark-colored Arctic vegetation, minimizing solar heat absorption.

The study was done by Finnish researchers using satellite data to compare tundra in Norway, where reindeer aren’t allowed to graze in summer, with similar tundra in Finland, where they are. As you might expect, vegetation is shorter and sparser on the Finnish side. (Read more…) In contrast, the taller trees and shrubs of the ungrazed Norwegian side absorb more sunlight—which promotes an earlier snowmelt, increases solar absorption, and accelerates warming.

The heat difference is significant, according to the team’s calculations: on the Norwegian side, solar energy absorption of up to 6 W/m2 in the snowmelt season, or up to 0.5 W/m2 to the yearly energy balance. Put another way, compared to the Finnish tundra, Norwegian energy absorption during the months of March, April, and May is enough to melt a cubic kilometer of ice. “No small matter,” Lauri Oksanen, a co-author of the paper in Remote Sensing of Environment, tells Eye on the Arctic.

Reindeer lichen
Reindeer lichen: Travis at Flickr

The net result is that reindeer can delay seasonal warming and help de-couple one of the more potent positive feedback loops affecting climate in the far north. Although, Oksanen notes, that if the reindeer are allowed to overgraze their favorite food—the whitish-colored reindeer lichen—they can also remove one of the tundra’s most reflective summer surfaces.

Photo credit: dration at Flickr

So, carefully managed, reindeer could be used to do what they do best: geoengineer the landscape. Selective summer grazing could be used to delay snowmelt, increase the surface albedo, and reduce ground heating. 

“If wetlands and poorly growing forests could be brought back so that the forests were left sparse and the wetlands returned to a natural state, it would significantly cool the atmosphere,” says Oksanen.