Mediterranean Sea Getting Saltier, Hotter, 10/19/11

Link to article; http://www.livescience.com/6510-mediterranean-sea-saltier-hotter.html

"The Western Mediterranean Sea is heating up and getting saltier, a recent study finds." Every year the temperature of the deep layer of the Western Mediterranean increases by .oo36 degrees Fahrenheit. Also its salt levels increase a tiny bit and researchers are monitoring the sea. They claim the changes have to do with the effects of global warming. An increase in ocean salt suggests that there is an increase in the net evaporation of the water "the difference between evaporation and precipitation. "When evaporated water leaving the ocean is greater than water entering the ocean as precipitation that means overall less water staying in the sea with the same amount of salt. So the sea gets saltier." A higher evaporation rate can be because of a warmer ocean, but other main factors take a role too, like humidity and temperature of the atmosphere. "The top layer of the entire ocean has warmed significantly over the past 16 years, according to another study detailed in the May 20 issue of the journal Nature. From 1993 to 2008, the top 2,300 feet (700 meters) of the world's oceans warmed 0.64 watts per square meter."


This article pertains to Chapter 2 because in part of it, it talks about evaporation. In Chapter 2, we talked about many things including evaporation, condensation, and sublimation. Also, we talked about salt a little bit (especially during one of the labs). Finally, we also talked about saltwater and the Mediterranean is a salt sea.

word from dictionary.com: salinity: salty water; a salty solution.

Sperm Whales Speak in Accents by Jennifer Welsh

"Sperm whales like to be individuals; they use accents to identify themselves to others in their extended family group, new research finds. The accents are specific to one call," "... used by whales worldwide, enabling them to recognize strangers from any region." "It isn't that the whales in a group are making different" calls, "they don't have different names, they just say the same things in different ways....We believe they can pick between each other, that they can tell each other apart by this call." Sperm whales live in family groups, with several generations of females living together with their young. "They communicate using these calls, specific combinations of clicking sounds."

The calls "travel about a kilometer in the ocean, and they are used mostly within a group to communicate during dives and social situations. The team followed one group of sperm whales, called the 'group of seven,' made up of four sisters, their aunt, and two juvenile males, for 40 days while the animals fed off the coast of Dominica, a Caribbean island. They found that one of these calls, called the 'five regular' for its five consecutive clicks, is pronounced by individual whales in different ways, and can be used to identify individuals by how the clicks are accented or the timing between consecutive clicks. Previous research had shown that sperm whales are able to identify, and preferentially spend time with, certain group members. This doesn't seem like a great feat to landlubbers like humans, but in the deep, dark ocean vision isn't something whales can rely on, so they have to find other ways to hunt and identify themselves." The "five regular" call is one of the few codas that all sperm whale groups, no matter where they live — the Caribbean, the Pacific or the Mediterranean Sea — use in their regional dialects. "The fact that it's that one that appears to carry a signal of identity is pretty interesting," Gero told LiveScience. "You don't want to mess up the call that everyone uses to identify everyone."' "Increasing ocean noise, from underwater drilling operations and shipping traffic, may interfere with these social calls." "These calls are important, likely, for keeping groups together and also for knowing where and if another group is coming up. Their whole life is based on sound," Gero said. "When you increase the background noise, you start disrupting their lives." There has been a continued observation of these animals over the years, and in different social situations will give the researchers more clues on how these whales use their calls.

4.5-Billion-Year-Old Metorite Yields New Mineral by Jeanna Bryner

"A 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite from northwest Africa has yielded one of the earliest minerals of the solar system." Scientists officially named the mineral krotile. This mineral has never been found in nature before, but "it is a man-made constituent of some high-temperature concrete, according to study researcher Anthony Kampf, curator of Mineral Sciences at the Natural History Museum (the words History Museum= link to the article this is about) of Los Angeles County (NHM)."This mineral was never known in nature until scientists discovered it recently."The meteorite containing krotile is called NWA 1934 CV3 carbonaceous chondrite. Chondrites are primitive meteorites that scientists think were remnants shed from the original building blocks of planets. Most meteorites found on Earth fit into this group."Scientists now say that "studying this mineral and other components of the ancient meteorite are essential for understanding the origins of the solar system."

Soaring Straws

The goal of the soaring straws lab was to determine the average height that a straw would travel when propelled by a rubber band, allowing us to calculate Gravitational Potential Energy (G.P.E.) and Elastic Potential Energy (E.P.E.). During the lab, we choose the amount of stretch of the rubber band to shoot the straw and we had three trials for each amount of stretch. The materials we used were one pair of scissors, one rubber band, three plastic straws, a marker, a meter stick, our balance, masking tape, and a empty toilet paper tube. To make the launcher so that we could shoot the straw, we first cut the rubber band. Next, we used the masking tape and taped the two newly cut ends of the rubber band to the top of the toilet paper tube. This way, the straw could be put onto the rubber band so that we could pull it down through the tube and then shoot it straight up into the air. When we did the lab, for the first set of trials, we stretched the rubber band 6 cm and the three trials heights were, 81 cm, 70 cm, and 144 cm, making the average height 98.3 cm (.983 m). For our second set of trials, we stretched the rubber band 11 cm. This made our three trials measurements 230 cm, 233 cm, and 300 cm, and the average height was 2.54 m. Finally, when we did the third set of trials, our amount of stretch was 4 cm. Our heights for the third set were, 95 cm, 98 cm, and 75 cm, making our average height .893 m. In order, the G.P.E. ( which is potential energy that pulls objects back down to earth, solved by mass of the straw times 9.81 for gravity times height) for the three stretches of the rubber band were, 54.96 millijoules (mj), 142.19 mj, and 49.93 mj. E.P.E. is potential energy related to stretch (for example, a rubber band has E.P.E.). What I just stated means that potential energy is energy that is building up to move (once it moves, it's Kinetic Energy). G.P.E. and E.P.E. are related. G.P.E. = E.P.E. since G.P.E. tells how much energy there will be when the straw comes back down to the ground, and equals E.P.E. since that tells how much energy there will be when the rubber band is stretched to send the straw to the height where we figured out G.P.E.

There is an experimental error in of the measurements of how high the straw flew. For the trials that the straw didn't stop at a surface, it was hard to measure how high the straw flew. What would definitely make this better is if I was allowed to use a ladder (a tall one). This would be helpful because if the straw was shot high up into the air, it would be easier to figure out how high it went. Another idea that would improve the lab is if we had 3 meter-long measuring tapes. This would be helpful because if we stood on the ladder, we would be able to pull the measuring tape out all the way we can get it to touch the ceiling and the floor so we could get an even closer height to the actual amount of centimeters the straw flew. Lastly, instead of having three trials, there should be 5 or 10 trials to get more accurate data.

LIt Poems

"The Most Important Child"

Byron
Strong, brave, and tough
Who loves being constantly moving.
Who feels proud about saving has brother from drowning
Who needs his family
Who shares emotions
Who fears losing a family member
Who'd like to see something else
Who dreams of having his family safe
Who ends up becoming friendlier


"Cities"

Flint
Safe, peaceful
icebox, expanding, building
better, free, worst, unfair
oven, shrinking, falling
dangerous, violent
Birmingham

Genetics (Extra Credit)

The nucleus in the cells in our bodies contain genes,
It doesn't matter if you an adult, kid, or teen.
In between 20 and 25 thousand genes make up one chromosome,
And alleles tell how you will look but not where you will roam.
X and Y tells if you are a girl or boy,
But it won't tell who you will annoy.
As generations go on, more people are closely related to you,
And parents can pass genes for allergies that can make you go achoo.
Genes can make a boy colorblind,
And they also control part of what is in your mind.

Toothpick Fish Lab

The toothpick fish lab was a way to figure out what alleles there would be for the fish in each generation. Alleles tell how an organism will like (alleles are your genes). In each generation the majority of the fish were usually green and orange but there were some yellow and red fish in each new generation. When two green fish, two red fish, two orange fish, or one fish of one color mated another, they were able to have offspring. When two yellow fish mated, they wouldn't make any offspring and the yellow fish population went down. Green was always dominant, red was recessive to green, yellow is recessive to green, and orange could only occur when a red and a yellow fish mated. In the first generation, there were three sets of two green fish parents, and two sets of one green, one red parent. This made the offspring of 5/12 of the population green. There was one set of two red fish, and four sets of one red and one yellow fish. This made the offspring of 1 set red and the offspring of 4 sets orange. There were also 2 sets of yellow fish so the population went down. The second generation had only 5/6 of the population the first generation did because they lost the 2 yellow mated pairs. The second generation's offspring was 7/10 green. This was because the alleles ff the parents that made of 1 pair were both green, the alleles of 4 pairs was 1green, 1 red, and the alleles of 2 pairs were one green on yellow. For the other pairs, one was both red, and the other 3 were 1 red, one yellow. The pair of 2 red had red offspring, and the pairs of one red one yellow made orange offspring. For the third generation, there were 6 pairs with green offspring and, 4 pairs with orange offspring.For the pairs that had green offspring, 2 pairs of fish had both parents with green skin, and4 pairs of parents were green, 1 red. The third generation also had 4 pairs of parents with 1 red, 1 yellow, making 4 sets of orange offspring.

When it got to the fourth generation, a disaster happened. Factory waste was dumped into the stream and the algae died. No green fish are being easily found and eaten. Originally, the fourth generation had 2 sets of 1 green, 1 yellow parent, 6 pairs of 1 green on red parent, and 2 sets of on red on yellow parent. This means that 8/10 had green skin and 2/10 had orange skin. Then because of the disaster, all the green fish died. This left only 2/10 of the offspring alive for when it came to the time of the survivors. Some thing that could change in the lab is what can happen to the fourth generation. Instead of the green fish dieing from factory waste, they could have been a way that scientists discovered so that yellow fish could mate yellow fish and so that orange fish could mate all fish. This would change the lab because then the fish would start to multiply very quickly.

The Future Is Here: Cyborgs Walk Among Us By Jeremy Hsu

When one-eyed filmmaker Robert Spence decided to sell a documentary film idea of becoming an "EyeBorg," he made a cheap LED light in his prosthetic eye. Adding this light in his eye made his cyborg idea a possibility to likely business partners. Meanwhile, he was close to a deal for his documentary. Beings that are part-human, part-machine might sound like something that still belongs to Science-Fiction."But experts say that cyborgs are already walking among us, and have been around for quite some time." Three examples of sci-fi cyborgs are General Grievous, and Darth Vader from Star Wars, and the Master Chief from the Halo video games (most would agree that Darth Vader fits the cyborg definition). "What a cyborg is, in big part, is a fictional character from the future," Spence said. The futuristic aspect of cyborgs weighs heavily on the popular definition, as Spence quickly realized. "His conceptual success with "EyeBorg's" cheap light comes despite the fact that the prosthetic acts as a separate camera and has no functional connection to his body." "Nobody calls people with a prosthetic eye cyborgs, but put in a $5 LED light and you look like the Terminator," Spence pointed out. Even through this, Warwick said that "some definitions would allow any human using any piece of technology – whether it's glasses, bicycles or pens – to count as a cyborg."

George Landow is a digital media scholar at Brown University. He said,"Many other experts agreed with the most basic technical definition of a cyborg as a being that combines technology with human biology." "Anyone who uses medication, contact lenses, is well into cyborgism, and people like myself who have metal stents in their hearts and artificial lenses inside their eyes (after cataract operations), is definitely a cyborg according to the most conservative, cautious definition."

Something as ordinary as a piano or a piece of clothing can count as a cyborg but also as an everyday object. A cyborg is a human being who has extended themselves by using technology. "I'd say it's the most useful, super-technical definition, but it's the least fun. A lot of the point of defining a cyborg is to have fun," Spence said.

It is very cool that we are all counted as cyborgs. anyone who wears something to help them are cyborgs. Also, even if you are wearing even one piece of clothing, you are a cyborg. Some people are more cyborg than others because of what they wear. Other things that might be considered cyborg include hearing aids. Over time you can become more or less cyborg. One day you can be riding a bike (more cyborg) , and the next day, you can be wearing just clothes and not riding a bike (less cyborg).

http://www.livescience.com/technology/cyborg-future-human-halo-101207.html

Massive Mega-Star Challenges Black Hole Theories by Clara Moskowitz

Astronomers have recently discovered a massive star that most likely dwarfed our sun and is now challenging theories of how stars form, die and form black holes.The star is a specific object called a magnetar. "Magnetars are extremely dense super-magnetic stars that can form from supernova explosions." The newly discovered magnetar has been calculated to likely weigh at least 40 times as much as the sun. Large stars in this mass category were thought to become black holes, not magnetars, when they exploded in supernovas."This therefore raises the thorny question of just how massive a star has to be to collapse to form a black hole if stars over 40 times as heavy as our sun cannot manage this feat," said researcher Norbert Langer of the Universität Bonn in Germany and the Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands."' When massive stars come to the end of their lives and die in supernovas, they leave behind remains. If the star is very massive, those remains are a black hole (a black hole is "an extremely dense collection of mass with such a strong gravitational pull, not even light can escape"). If the original star was slightly less massive, the supernova remains will become a neutron star (these objects are made mostly of neutrons, and are more dense than regular stars and less dense than black holes). Magnetars are a specific type of neutron star with colossal magnetic fields and are about a "million billion" times than that of Earth. Massive stars must get rid of more than nine-tenths of their mass before they explode as a supernova, because otherwise, they would create a black hole instead.

It is good that we discovered this huge magnetar. This is because now we know what might have been the reason that our sun was dwarfed and also because we now know how black holes form. We also now know that magnetars can be huge and that they can form from the remains of other stars that have exploded in supernovas just like black holes.

http://www.livescience.com/space/massive-mega-star-challenges-black-hole-theory-100818.html