On April 2 at the Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast (NAM 2008), team leader Dr Michelle Murray from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL, University College London) will present the latest results from Hinode together with computer simulations that model conditions on the Sun.

Since its launch in October 2006, scientists have been using Hinode to examine the solar atmosphere in extraordinary detail. One of the instruments on the space observatory, the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) built by a consortium led by MSSL, generates images of the Sun and gives information on how fast its gases are moving.

Increases in pressure at the base of the Sun’s magnetic field cause enormous jets of hot gas to shoot upwards into the solar atmosphere. Once the pressure ceases, the hot gases stop soaring into the atmosphere and fall back towards the solar surface. The changes in pressure are caused by rearrangements of the Sun’s magnetic field, a continual process that results in looping cycles of increasing and decreasing pressure and, consequentially, intermittent solar fountains.

“EIS has observed the Sun’s fountains in unprecedented detail and it has enabled us to narrow down the fountains’ origins for the first time”, comments team member and MSSL postgraduate student Deb Baker.

‘We have also been able to find what drives the fountains by using computer experiments to replicate solar conditions.”

‘The computer experiments demonstrate that when a new section of magnetic field pushes through the solar surface it generates a continual cycle of fountains”, explains Dr Murray, “but new magnetic fields are constantly emerging across the whole of the solar surface and so our results can explain a whole multitude of fountains that have been observed with Hinode.”

Adapted from materials provided by Royal Astronomical Society.

The planet Mercury‘s magnetic field appears to be strong enough to fend off the harsh solar wind from most of its surface, according to data gathered in part by a University of Michigan instrument onboard NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft.

U-M’s Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS) on Jan. 14 took the first direct measurements of Mercury’s magnetosphere to determine how the planet interacts with the space environment and the Sun.

The solar wind, a stream of charged particles, fills the entire solar system. It interacts with all planets, but bears down on Mercury, 2/3 closer than the Earth to the Sun.

Earth’s magnetosphere is strong enough to protect us from the solar wind’s radiation, but Mercury’s magnetic field is comparatively weaker.

“From our magnetic measurements, we can tell that Mercury is managing to stand up to a lot of the solar wind and protect the surface of the planet, at least in some spots. Even though the magnetic field was weak, it was enough,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, FIPS instrument project leader and a professor in the U-M Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Science.

Zurbuchen said scientists can tell Mercury is putting up a good fight because instruments detected a layer of much slower-moving magentospheric plasma around the planet.

It’s possible that the magnetosphere shield has holes. Scientists found ions in the magnetosphere that may have been knocked off the surface by the solar wind at the poles, for example. The source and chemical composition of the ions is still unclear, Zurbuchen said. The particles could also be from the planet’s thin atmosphere.

“Mercury’s magnetosphere is more similar to Earth’s than we might have thought,” Zurbuchen said.

The spacecraft did find one major difference. Mercury has no Van Allen Belts, wing-shaped regions of energetic particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field.

“We flew through the region they would be in and they just weren’t there,” Zurbuchen said. “It could be that they’re intermittent, but when we were there, they weren’t.”

Mercury and Earth are the only two terrestrial planets in the solar system with magnetospheres produced by an intrinsic magnetic field.

This was the first of three planned flybys of Mercury. MESSENGER is scheduled to enter orbit in 2011.

Opaque amber has always been a challenge for paleontologists. Researchers cannot study it because the naked eye cannot visualize the presence of any fossil inclusion inside. In the Cretaceous sites like those in Charentes, there is up to 80% of opaque amber. It is like trying to find, in complete blindness, something that may or may not be there.

However, the paleontologists Malvina Lak, her colleagues from the University of Rennes and the ESRF paleontologist Paul Tafforeau, together with the National Museum of Natural History of Paris, have applied to opaque amber a synchrotron X-ray imaging technique known as propagation phase contrast microradiography. It sheds light on the interior of this dark amber, which resembles a stone to the human eye. “Researchers have tried to study this kind of amber for many years with little or no success. This is the first time that we can actually discover and study the fossils it contains”, says Paul Tafforeau.

The scientists imaged 640 pieces of amber from the Charentes region in southwestern France. They discovered 356 fossil animals, going from wasps and flies, to ants or even spiders and acarians. The team was able to identify the family of 53% of the inclusions.

Most of the organisms discovered are tiny. For example, one of the discovered acarians measures 0.8 mm and a fossil wasp is only 4 mm. “The small size of the organisms is probably due to the fact that bigger animals would be able to escape from the resin before getting stuck, whereas little ones would be captured more easily”, explains Malvina Lak.

Water to see tiny fossils better

The surface features of amber pieces, like cracks, stand out more in the images than the fossil organisms in the interior when using synchrotron radiation. In order to solve this problem, scientists soaked the amber pieces in water before the experiment. Because water and amber have very similar densities, immersion made the outlines of the amber pieces and the cracks almost invisible. At the same time, it increased overall inclusion visibility, leading to better detection and characterization of the fossils.

Classification of species

Once discovered on the radiographs, some of the organisms were imaged in three dimensions and virtually extracted from the resin. The high quality of these 3D reconstructions enables paleontologists to precisely study and describe the organisms. The success of this experiment shows the high value of the ESRF for the study of fossils. “Opaque amber hosts many aspects of past life on our planet that are still unknown, and the use of third generation synchrotron sources will continue to play an important role in unveiling them”, asserts Malvina Lak.

Reference: M. Lak, D. Néraudeau, A. Nel, P. Cloetens, V. Perrichot and P. Tafforeau, Phase Contrast X-ray Synchrotron Imaging: Opening Access to Fossil Inclusions in Opaque Amber, Microscopy and Microanalysis, Forthcoming article doi:10.1017/S1431927608080264.

Examples of virtual 3D extraction of organisms embedded in opaque amber: a) Gastropod Ellobiidae; b) Myriapod Polyxenidae; c) Arachnid; d) Conifer branch (Glenrosa); e) Isopod crustacean Ligia; f) Insect hymenopteran Falciformicidae. (Credit: M. Lak, P. Tafforeau, D. Néraudeau (ESRF Grenoble and UMR CNRS 6118 Rennes))

Until now, most scientists agreed that fossil stromatolites were connected with the activity of photosynthesizing micro-organisms, as is the case in present-day environments₍₁₎. This hypothesis was based on morphological criteria, which appeared to suffice for recent fossil rocks (several million years old) formed in environments similar to today’s. However, this was not the case for older stromatolites (2.5 to 4 billion years old), which developed under very different conditions and for which researchers have proposed (and tested numerically) models of mineral growth in the presence of water.

The researchers collected unaltered fossil stromatolites as part of a drilling project (the Pilbara Drilling Project₍₂₎), funded by CNRS’s National Institute of Earth and Astronomical Sciences and the Institut de Physique du Globe, in the Tumbiana formation in Australia. By using a very high resolution characterization method (of around 10 nanometers), they were able to discover and analyze small globules of organic matter containing nanocrystals of aragonite. It is known that present-day bacteria cause the precipitation of aragonite, a very unstable polymorph of calcium carbonate which rapidly changes into calcite once the micro-organisms die. Thanks to these findings, researchers now have irrefutable proof of microbial mediation in the formation of ancient stromatolites.

Notes :

1) for instance, at Shark Bay, Australia

2) see the article Drilling the Outback (backstory), in the same issue of the journal Nature Géoscience, which describes the drilling expedition

Journal reference: Microbially influenced formation of 2,724-million-year-old stromatolites, Kevin Lepot, Karim Benzerara, Gordon E. Brown Jr and Pascal Philippot, Nature Geosciences, online publication 28 January 2008.

Adapted from materials provided by Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique.

Stromatolites are fossils which show the life processes of the blue-green algae. These were found in Cervantes, Australia. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From its launch in the autumn of 2006, scientists have used the Hinode mission to study the Sun in unprecedented detail. One of the instruments on the probe, the UK-built Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) measures the speed at which material flows out from the Sun.

The Sun is a cauldron of hot gas shaped by magnetic fields, which create bright regions of activity on the solar surface. Using EIS, the scientists found that at the edges of these bright regions hot gas spurts out at high speeds. Magnetic fields connect the regions together, even when they are widely separated. For example, in the Hinode images that Prof Harra will present on Wednesday, magnetic fields linked two regions almost 500000 km apart – a distance equivalent to 40 Earths placed side by side in space. When magnetic fields from two regions collide they allow hot gas to escape from the Sun – this material flows out as the solar wind.

Professor Louise Harra of UCL-Mullard Space Science Laboratory says, “It is fantastic to finally be able to pinpoint the source of the solar wind – it has been debated for many years and now we have the final piece of the jigsaw. In the future we want to be able to work out how the wind is transported through the solar system”.

Steve Irwin is pictured in a typical pose at Australia Zoo shortly before his death in 2006.

var CNN_ArticleChanger = new CNN_imageChanger(‘cnnImgChngr’,'/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/03/australia.irwin.ap/imgChng/p1-0.init.exclude.html’,1,1); //CNN.imageChanger.load(‘cnnImgChngr’,'imgChng/p1-0.exclude.html’); Bob Irwin’s comments on a widely speculated falling out with his U.S.-born daughter-in-law, Terri Irwin, came as the manager of the dead star’s multimillion dollar (euro) business claimed Thursday the zoo had been duped in a tax minimization scam.

Australian media have speculated for months that Terri Irwin had fallen out with Bob Irwin following his son’s death in a 2006 stingray attack.

In brief excerpts released Thursday of Bob Irwin’s first interview since he left the park earlier this year, he told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. he “was becoming a disrupting influence, not that I meant to be.” There was no elaboration.

The full interview is due to be broadcast Monday.

Steve Irwin’s parents established a reptile haven in the early 1970s in the Sunshine Coast region of Queensland state, and handed control of it to their son two decades later, just before his television career took off. The park, named Australia Zoo, became the center of Steve Irwin’s multimillion-dollar television, tourist and conservation operations.

“It’s a strange feeling to spend half your lifetime building something up and walking away from it,” Bob Irwin said in another interview excerpt.

Terri Irwin has said she plans to expand the park to include a hotel and spa. She has also vowed to continue her late husband’s conservation work. Their daughter Bindi is being groomed to follow her father into television.

Terri Irwin has tried to dampen speculation that her father-in-law left the park because he disagreed with way his son’s legacy was being handled.

“I just can assure everyone that I love Bob dearly,” Terri Irwin told reporters last month, noting that he was mourning not only his son but also his first wife. “He’s gone through so much grief losing his wife and his only son that I will respectfully just leave it at that.”

Separately, Terri Irwin faced legal problems.

Australia Zoo and Terri Irwin are both being sued by a debt recovery agency for more than 2.5 million Australian dollars ($2.3 million; €1.5 million) allegedly owed to creditors. The case is in the preliminary stages before the courts.

In a statement related to the case that was sent to media Thursday, Australia Zoo general manager Frank Muscillo said the Australian Tax Office was examining a set of deals involving Singapore-based investment bank HQZ Argentum that the zoo had entered into, then tried to cancel when it became clear they were not legitimate.

“We were deceived by a very elaborate and deliberate plan,” Muscillo said.

He said Australia Zoo had “never pursued any illegal means to evade tax.”

He said Australia Zoo would be defending the civil suits against the zoo and Terri Irwin.

The HQZ Argentum offices in Australia did not immediately respond to requests for comment

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. – Jerry Seinfeld was in a harrowing rollover wreck but was unhurt after the brakes on one of his vintage cars failed. Seinfeld was driving alone when the brakes on his 1967 Fiat BTM stopped working Saturday evening, East Hampton Town Police Chief Todd Sarris told the New York Post. Seinfeld tried the emergency brake, to no avail, and then swerved to keep the car from careening into an intersection, Sarris said.

The two-door sedan flipped over and came to a stop just yards from the highway, Sarris said, adding that the comic’s maneuver “probably avoided a very serious accident.” The wreck was attributed to mechanical failure, and no summonses were issued, Sarris said. Seinfeld, 53, did not require medical attention and returned to his East Hampton home.

“He was a little shocked when he walked in and it started to dawn on him what happened,” said his wife, Jessica.

The comedian took the crash in stride.

“Because I know there are kids out there, I want to make sure they all know that driving without braking is not something I recommend, unless you have professional clown training or a comedy background, as I do,” Seinfeld said. “It is not something I plan to make a habit of.”

The sitcom star, who co-wrote, co-produced and starred in last year’s animated “Bee Movie,” is an auto aficionado. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in November that his favorite car in his collection is a 1955 Porsche Spyder.

getCSS(“3027626″) Alonso Duralde Film critic

Diner owner Jeremy (Jude Law) cuts into his untouched blueberry pie and serves the heartbroken Elizabeth (Norah Jones) a slice, noting that it’s not the pie’s fault that nobody wanted it. This scene stands out in “My Blueberry Nights” not only because it explains the film’s title, but also because every great chef occasionally delivers a bum pie. And that’s exactly what’s happened to Wong Kar-Wai this time around.

The director of such contemporary masterworks of longing and lost love as “2046,” “In the Mood for Love,” “Chungking Express,” “Happy Together” and “Days of Being Wild,” Wong makes movies where heartache and obsession are communicated through silent stares, pop songs, mood lighting, colorful art direction and even the great hairstyles of the 1960s.

And thus it gives me no pleasure to point out that his English-language debut is something of a disaster. But it’s not the English that seems to trip up the writer-director; it’s the language. Wong’s script, co-written with Lawrence Block, tosses out the filmmaker’s genius for non-verbal characterization and replaces it with talk, talk, talk. And none of it is particularly interesting.

Elizabeth catches her man cheating. She makes a series of visits to Jeremy’s diner, where they eat pie and commiserate over lost loves. She hits the road to get away from herself and takes a series of waitressing jobs, first in Memphis — where she crosses paths with a sad-sack, hard-drinking policeman (David Strathairn) and the floozy (Rachel Weisz) who done him wrong — and then to Nevada, meeting a down-on-her-luck gambler (Natalie Portman).

Just about everything that could go wrong with “My Blueberry Nights” does. For one thing, Jones is adequate in her first time as an actress, but while she avoids embarrassing herself, she doesn’t have the heft to hold together a movie this nebulous. The more established names, for the most part, turn in some of the worst work of their careers to date: Weisz is singularly unconvincing as a native Tennessean, and Portman goes too big or too small with her performance. And not that Jude Law has conditioned us to expect much from him, but he’s quite the dullard himself here. (Strathairn and Frankie Faison come off just fine, but they can’t stop this ship from sinking.)

The look of the film is also all over the place. Since a rather public split with his longtime cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Wong is working for the first time with Darius Khondji (“Se7en,” the U.S. “Funny Games”). Khondji’s work in the New York segment stands beside Doyle’s, with its compelling interplay between shadow and bright colors, but he fails to make Memphis or Vegas look any different than they have in a hundred other movies.

Musically, however, the best anyone could say about her singing is that it flew under the radar; she avoided the truly terrible performances and managed to stick around each week. But in the three months that “Idol” has been on the air this season, she never offered a memorable vocal. Not many people outside of her family could name a single song she sang half an hour after the end of each week’s performance.

Though she’s avoided danger in recent weeks, Dolly Parton night didn’t offer her much to work with. “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” was like all of her other songs during her “Idol” stay … solid, inoffensive and utterly forgettable. This week, that combination was finally too much to overcome, as she was eliminated from the competition on Wednesday.

Up to that point, it looked like everyone was rooting for her to succeed. Ryan Seacrest, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul were quick to blame sickness on a couple of occasions where she didn’t sing well, and Paula in particular always stressed how talented Malubay was, and how she had such a big voice coming out of such a tiny body.

getCSS(“3053751″) Slide show The ‘Idol’ finalists Ramiele is gone and eight contestants stay alive on “American Idol.” more photos

The problem was that nobody in the viewing audience got to see her hit her stride. She might have had a ton of potential, but all that buys is a ticket to the semifinals. From that point on, the audience becomes the key factor, and she was never able to engage the crowd and give them a reason to vote for her. On Wednesday, before Ryan read the final decision, all the judges agreed that it would be no surprise if she went home.

Cook gets her usual seat
Malubay was joined in the bottom two by Kristy Lee Cook. No stranger to being among the lowest vote-getters, Cook brought a little note saying “Kristy’s Seat” onstage with her for the announcement, so she’d be able to save one of her usual bottom-three chairs.

getCSS(“3088874″) INTERACTIVE Interactive: You be the ‘Idol’ judge Rate the contestants’ — and the judges’ — latest performances and see how the singers stack up.

Every season has at least one finalist who hangs around week after week, getting enough votes to squeak by and leaving everyone else wondering how that’s possible. Cook gets that honor this year, but at least she seems to be having some fun with it. Besides, any bit of levity that livens up a one-hour results show is always a plus.

Brooke White also was in the bottom three but, unlike Cook, it was her first trip. It was a bit of a surprise because she’s never been in danger before, but Simon Cowell complimented the voters for getting the bottom three right.

In addition to the standard voice function of a telephone, current mobile phones may support many additional services, and accessories, such as SMS for text messaging, email, packet switching for access to the Internet, and MMS for sending and receiving photos and video. Most current mobile phones connect to a cellular network of base stations (cell sites), which is in turn interconnected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) (the exception is satellite phones).

The mobile phone or mobile, also called a wireless, cellular phone, cell phone, cell speaker box, or hand phone (HP),^[1] is a long-range, portable electronic device used for mobile communication that uses a network of specialized base stations known as cell sites.

In addition to the standard voice function of a telephone, current mobile phones may support many additional services, and accessories, such as SMS for text messaging, email, packet switching for access to the Internet, and MMS for sending and receiving photos and video. Most current mobile phones connect to a cellular network of base stations (cell sites), which is in turn interconnected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) (the exception is satellite phones).

The mobile phone or mobile, also called a wireless, cellular phone, cell phone, cell speaker box, or hand phone (HP),^[1] is a long-range, portable electronic device used for mobile communication that uses a network of specialized base stations known as cell sites.

In addition to the standard voice function of a telephone, current mobile phones may support many additional services, and accessories, such as SMS for text messaging, email, packet switching for access to the Internet, and MMS for sending and receiving photos and video. Most current mobile phones connect to a cellular network of base stations (cell sites), which is in turn interconnected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) (the exception is satellite phones).