Katrina-Like Storm Surges Could Become Norm

Last year's devastating flooding in New York City from Hurricane Sandy was the city's largest storm surge on record. Though Hurricane Sandy was considered a 100-year-event - a storm that lashes a region only once a century - a new study finds global warming could bring similar destructive storm surges to the Gulf and East Coasts of the United States every other year before 2100.

Severe storms generate both high waves and storm surge, which can combine to erode beaches and dunes and flood coastal communities. Storm surge is seawater pushed ahead of a storm, mainly by strong winds. Onshore, the surge can rise several feet in just a few minutes. High waves travel on top of the surge, and cresting waves raise the sea's height even more.

Looking at extreme events, which researchers called 'Katrinas' after the 2005 hurricane that flooded the Gulf Coast, a new model predicts Katrina-like storm surges will hit every other year if the climate warms 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).

That would be 10 times the rate seen since 1923, after which there has been a Katrina-magnitude storm surge every 20 years, the study, published in the March 18 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,found.

In 2009, the world's nations agreed to try to limit climate change to a 2 C increase by 2100, but recent studies show temperatures could rise 7.2 F (4 C) before the century ends.

But the tenfold increase in Katrina-like storm surges does not have to translate into a tenfold increase in disasters, said Aslak Grinsted, a climate scientist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the lead study author. 'Every Katrina-magnitude event is not necessarily going to be a Katrina-magnitude disaster. It's all about planning smartly,' he told OurAmazingPlanet.

Warmer seas spin stronger storms

Scientists know that warmer oceans will change how the Atlantic Ocean spawns hurricanes. More heat means more energy, and many models predict global warming will bring bigger, stronger storms, though the details between the model scenarios differ. But the models could be biased by changes in hurricane observational methods, such as the switch to satellites from planes and ships, which may impact records of wind speed and other storm data, Grinsted said.

Many studies have looked at how the frequency and size of hurricanes will change as global warming raises ocean temperatures, but few have investigated their impact on the Atlantic coast.

To better assess which model does the best job of divining the future, Grinsted and his colleagues constructed a record of storm surges from tide gauges along the Atlantic coast dating back to 1923. 'Big storm surges give me a new view of hurricane variability in the past,' Grinsted said.

Grinsted weighed each statistical model according to how well they explained past extreme storm surges. One way scientists test climate models is by seeing how well they predict the weather in the past.

Of the competing models, the top performer was one of the simplest. It relied on regional sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean hurricane birthing ground. The researchers also created a new global 'gridded' model, incorporating ocean temperatures around the world. Grinsted said the top models agree roughly on the magnitude of the increase in storm surges, giving him confidence in the results. [Hurricanes from Above: See Nature's Biggest Storms]

A 0.4 C warming corresponded to doubling of the frequency of extreme storm surges, the study found. 'With the global warming we have had during the 20th century, we have already crossed the threshold where more than half of all 'Katrinas' are due to global warming,' Grinsted said.

James Elsner, a climate scientist at the University of Florida, said he agrees with the study's main finding, but thinks the modeling underestimates the effects of climate factors such as the El Niño/ La Niña Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index, and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Studies have shown that the warm El Niño events mean fewer hurricanes in the Atlantic, while the NAO influences storm tracks across the ocean basin.

'As the planet warms up and the oceans get warmer, the chances of stronger storms goes up,' Elsner said. 'I think it's an interesting exercise, but I think statistically, it's got some issues,' he told OurAmazingPlanet.

Storm surges and sea level rise

Grinsted is concerned about the combined effects of future storm surge flooding and sea level rise, which adds to the base of the storm surge.

'I think what will be even more important is the background sea level rise, and that is something that is very hard to model,' he said.

Hurricane Sandy brought an 11.9-foot (3.6 meters) surge to southern Manhattan, plus a boost from the high tide, creating a storm tide as high as 13.88 feet (4.2 m).

Hurricane Katrina caused storm surge flooding of 25 to 28 feet (7.6 to 8.5 m) above normal tide level along portions of the Mississippi coast and 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6.1 m) above normal tide levels along the southeastern Louisiana coast.

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

• 8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World
• Natural Disasters: Top 10 U.S. Threats
• Infographic: Storm Season! How, When & Where Hurricanes Form

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Novartis says Alcon's eye drug Jetrea gets EU approval

ZURICH (Reuters) - Novartis said its Alcon unit got a green light from the European Commission for Jetrea, a drug that treats an eye condition that can lead to blindness.

Jetrea is the first eye drug to treat vitreomacular traction (VMT) associated with macular hole that can cause progressive sight-threatening symptoms and irreversible vision loss, Novartis said in a statement on Monday.

Novartis has acquired the rights to sell Jetrea outside the United States from ThromboGenics NV. In October 2012, Jetrea was approved in the U.S. for the treatment of patients with symptomatic vitreomacular adhesion (VMA).

Stuart Raetzman, Area President Europe, Middle East and Africa at Alcon, said the EU approval was a major breakthrough because it allowed eye care professionals to treat the disease early with a one-time injection instead of using surgery.

The condition is estimated to affect 250,000 to 300,000 people in Europe alone, Novartis said.

(Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)

Microbes flourish in deepest spot in world's oceans: study

By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle

OSLO (Reuters) - Microbes are thriving in surprising numbers at the deepest spot in the oceans, the 11,000-metre (36,000 ft) Mariana Trench in the Pacific, despite crushing pressures in sunless waters, scientists said.

Dead plants and fish were falling as food for microscopic bugs even to the little-known hadal depths, parts of the seabed deeper than 6,000 meters and named after Hades, the god of the underworld in Greek mythology, they said.

The presence of life in the trench also shows how the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, vital for the growth of tiny marine plants at the ocean surface, can eventually get buried in the depths in a natural process that slows climate change.

A Danish-led team of scientists, using a robot to take samples, found double the amount of bacteria and other microbes munching away on debris at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific than at a nearby site 6,000 meters deep.

'It's surprising there was so much bacterial activity,' said Ronnie Glud, of the University of Southern Denmark and lead author of the study in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.

'Normally life gets scarcer the deeper you go. But when you go very deep, more things start happening again,' he told Reuters of the report that also involved research institutes in Scotland, Greenland, Germany and Japan.

The finding backed up a theory that dead plants and fish falling onto the steep sides of the Mariana Trench often slide to the bottom to form a 'hot spot' for microbes. Earthquakes also trigger mudslides that carry debris down.

GRAND CANYON

The Mariana Trench is five times longer than the Grand Canyon and could easily swallow the world's highest mountain Mount Everest, which stands 8,848 meters tall.

Life has been detected at the bottom before, but its extent is little known. The scientists' video cameras also spotted a few shrimp-like crustaceans at the bottom of the trench.

'It's most likely that more carbon is deposited' in the hadal depths than previously believed, Glud said.

'We have a small exotic piece of the puzzle which has never been studied before,' Glud said of the way that the oceans recycle or bury carbon.

Only about 2 percent of the world's oceans are deeper than 6,000 meters.

Until now, scientists had suspected that life in most of the ocean depths, where waters are just above freezing, was severely limited by a lack of food.

Only about one or two percent of living material in the upper waters is expected to sink even to the average ocean floor depth of 3,700 meters, the study said. Most food gets scavenged and carried up towards the surface before it falls so deep.

And water pressure at the bottom of the trench is about 16,000 lbs per square inch (1,125 kg per sq cm), about the same as being stepped on by an elephant wearing high-heeled shoes.

The scientists were also studying the genetic makeup of the microbes, living in temperatures just above freezing.

The ability to survive crushing depths may mean they have enzymes that could be used by industries that use high pressures, ranging from fermentation to oil and gas.

The bottom of the Mariana Trench was first reached by scientists in a submarine in 1960. Film director James Cameron also descended in 2012 and reported few signs of life.

(Reporting By Alister Doyle; Editing by Sophie Hares)

5 Fun Facts About St. Patrick's Day

Every year on March 17, millions of people gussy themselves up in green attire, hold big parades and drink lots of beer, all in the name of an old Irish saint. But what's the history of this emerald-hued holiday, and why do we celebrate it with shamrocks and alcohol?

Who was St. Patrick?

St. Patrick was a Christian missionary, bishop and a patron saint of Ireland. He was born in Roman Britain to a wealthy family near the end of the fourth century. At age 16, he was captured by Irish raiders and brought to Ireland, where he spent six years in captivity, working as a shepherd. He became a devout Christian and, it's believed, began to dream of converting the Irish to Christianity. He then escaped back to England. He wrote that a voice - God's - spoke to him in a dream telling him to leave Ireland.

After reaching England, Patrick described having a second dream in which an angel told him to go back to Ireland as a missionary. He started religious training to become a priest. He was later sent to Ireland on a mission to convert the Irish to Christianity and minister to Christians already there. Rather than replacing pagan Irish rituals, he incorporated them into his teachings. For instance, the Irish used to honor their gods with fire, so Patrick used bonfires to celebrate Easter. He died in A.D. 461 on March 17, which became St. Patrick's Day.

Why green clothes?

Wearing green has become a staple of St. Patrick's Day, but the holiday was originally associated with the color blue. It's thought that the shift to green happened because of Ireland's nickname 'The Emerald Isle,' the green in the Irish flag and the shamrock, or clover. Green ribbons and shamrocks were worn as early as the 17th century. During the Irish Rebellion of 1798, an uprising against British rule in Ireland, Irish soldiers wore full green uniforms on March 17 to make a political statement. Legend has it that wearing green makes a person invisible to leprechauns that will pinch someone if they see them. [Image Gallery: One-of-a-Kind Places on Earth]

In Ireland, some people still adhere to the tradition of Catholics wearing green and Protestants wearing orange, the colors that represent their respective religious sects on the Irish flag.

Where the shamrock came from

According to folklore, St. Patrick used the shamrock, the familiar three-leafed clover, to explain the Christian Holy Trinity. The word 'shamrock' comes from the Irish word 'seamróg,' meaning 'little clover.' It is the symbol of Ireland, and wearing and displaying shamrocks has become a widespread practice on St. Patrick's Day.

Why so much beer?

Beer is one of the most widely consumed beverages on St. Patrick's Day.

While the Irish beer Guinness remains a top St. Patty's Day choice, a disturbing trend is the consumption of green beer, dyed with food coloring. Some studies have linked food coloring to cancer (at least in lab animals) and headaches, though revelers would probably have to drink a lot more dye than the beers contain to cause health problems, according to nutrition expert Keri Glassman, founder and president of a nutrition practice based in New York City.

It's no surprise that imbibing beer or other alcoholic beverages affects brain function, and a new study helps reveal what's going on. The ethanol in these drinks disrupts connections between the brain's visual and motor areas, hindering muscle coordination, a recent study found.

Parades and celebration

Celebrations of St. Patrick's Day would not be complete without parades, festivals and Céilithe, a social gathering that typically involves Gaelic folk music and dancing. Céilithe, also known as Céilidh, has its origins in Ireland and Scotland, but has spread with the Irish and Scottish diasporas.

Many cities hold parades in honor of the holiday. The New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade is the largest parade in the world. It was first held in 1762, 14 years before the Declaration of Independence, by a group of homesick Irish expats and soldiers who served with the British Army in the American colonies, according to the parade's website.

The world's shortest St. Patrick's Day parade is held in the Irish village of Dripsey. It lasts only 100 yards, spanning the distance between the village's two pubs.

Follow Tanya Lewis @tanyalewis314. Follow us @livescience, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• Raise Your Glass: 10 Intoxicating Beer Facts
• Emerald Isle: A Photo Tour of Ireland
• 5 Green Spots on Earth

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Obama says US must shift cars, trucks off of oil

LEMONT, Ill. (AP) - Envisioning cars that can go 'coast to coast without using a drop of oil,' President Barack Obama on Friday urged Congress to authorize spending $2 billion over the next decade to expand research into electric cars and biofuels to wean automobiles off gasoline.

Obama, expanding on an initiative he addressed in his State of the Union speech last month, said the United States must shift its cars and trucks entirely off oil to avoid perpetual fluctuations in gas prices. Citing policies that already require automakers to increase gas mileage, he said he expects that by the middle of the next decade, Americans will only have to fill up their cars half as often.

'We've set some achievable but ambitious goals,' Obama said, speaking at Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago

'The only way to break this cycle of spiking gas prices - the only way to break that cycle for good - is to shift our cars entirely, our cars and trucks, off oil,' the president said.

Friday's speech, with its focus on energy, was designed to draw attention to what the White House says is one of Obama's top agenda items for his second term. That focus, however, has been overshadowed as the administration and Congress work on an immigration overhaul, gun legislation and deficit-reduction measures.

Obama cast his proposal as not only a clean energy plan, but as one meant to create opportunities for economic growth.

'I want the next great job-creating breakthroughs, whether it's in energy or nanotechnology or bio-engineering , I want those breakthroughs to be right here in the United States of America, creating American jobs and maintaining our technological lead,' he said.

Obama spoke from inside Argonne's Advanced Photon Source, a ring-shaped facility a mile and a half around. The facility acts as a giant extra-bright X-ray that allows scientists to look inside objects at the atomic level.

The initiative, proposing to spend $200 million a year on research, would be paid for with revenue from federal oil and gas leases on offshore drilling and would not add to the deficit.

The money would fund research on 'breakthrough' technologies such as batteries for electric cars and biofuels made from switch grass or other materials. Researchers also would look to improve use of natural gas as a fuel for cars and trucks.

Obama's motorcade passed a couple dozen protesters standing in the rain at the Argonne entrance, protesting against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport oil from Canada's tar sands to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. The Obama administration is considering whether to clear the project. White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force one that 'there's no question' that the types of green energy initiatives the president was talking about at Argonne would have more impact on climate change than whether Keystone is built.

'Thousands of miles of pipelines have been built since President Obama took office inside the United States of America and it hasn't had a measurable impact on climate change' Earnest said. 'But what has had an impact, measurable impact, on climate change has been, for example, the car rule that the president has put in place that has greatly increased fuel efficiency and reduced carbon emissions.'

Inside the national lab, Obama got a firsthand look at some of the cutting-edge vehicle research, including a room that can go to extreme temperatures to test the impact on fuel efficiency. He talked to engineers working on electric car batteries and on an engine that runs on diesel and gasoline to reduce fuel costs.

'We want to keep on funding them,' the president said as he looked at the engine, developed with public and private funding from Chrysler. 'That's what I'm trying to tell Congress.'

The proposal is modeled after a plan submitted by a group of business executives and former military leaders who are committed to reducing U.S. oil dependence. The group, called Securing America's Future Energy, or SAFE, is headed by FedEx Corp. Chairman and CEO Frederick W. Smith and retired Marine Corps Gen. P.X. Kelley.

Creation of the trust would require congressional approval at a time of partisan divide over energy issues. Republicans have pushed to expand oil and gas drilling on federal land and water, while Obama and many Democrats have worked to boost renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

There were signs agreement may be possible. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has called it 'an idea I may agree with.'

Murkowski, senior Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, did not fully endorse the plan, which is similar to one she has proposed to use revenue from drilling for oil and natural gas on public lands that previously were off-limits to energy production to pay for research on new energy technologies.

White House officials said the president's proposal would not require expansion of drilling to federal lands or water where it is now prohibited. Instead, they are counting on increased production from existing sites, along with efficiencies from an administration plan to streamline drilling permits. The government collects more than $6 billion a year in royalties from production on federal lands and waters.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said Obama needs to expand drilling to get his support.

'For this proposal to even be plausible, oil and gas leasing on federal land would need to increase dramatically,' the spokesman, Brendan Buck, said. 'Unfortunately, this administration has consistently slowed, delayed and blocked American energy production.'

Obama's push for the energy trust came as the Environmental Protection Agency released a report Friday indicating that fuel economy standards rose last year by 1.4 miles per gallon, the largest annual increase since EPA started keeping track. The agency said the improvement was due to better availability of high-performing cars and more options for consumers.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers suggested that rather than encouraging research on fuel-efficient cars, the government should focus on making diverse fuels more available and improving transportation infrastructure.

___

Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nedrapickler and Matthew Daly at https://twitter.com/MatthewDalyWDC

___

Daly reported from Washington.

Global warming may have fueled Somali drought

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Global warming may have contributed to low rain levels in Somali in 2011 where tens of thousands died in a famine, research by British climate scientists suggests.

Scientists with Britain's weather service studied weather patterns in East Africa in 2010 and 2011 and found that yearly precipitation known as the short rains failed in late 2010 because of the natural effects of the weather pattern La Nina.

But the lack of the long rains in early 2011 was an effect of 'the systematic warming due to influence on greenhouse gas concentrations,' said Peter Stott of Britain's Met Office, speaking to The Associated Press in a phone interview.

The British government estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people died from the famine. But the new research doesn't mean global warming directly caused those deaths.

Ethiopia and Kenya were also affected by the lack of rains in 2011, but aid agencies were able to work more easily in those countries than in war-ravaged Somalia, where the al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremist group al-Shabab refused to allow food aid into the wide areas under its control.

The peer reviewed study will appear in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Senait Gebregziabher, the Somalia country director for the aid group Oxfam, said climate change is increasing humanitarian needs.

'In the coming decades, unless urgent action is taken to slash greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures in East Africa will continue to rise and rainfall patterns will change. This will create major problems for food production and availability,' Gebregziabher said.

Stott said that the evidence is 'very strong' that the planet is warming due to an increase in greenhouse gases. He noted that the study indicates that both natural causes - La Nina and the short rains - and man-made causes contributed to Somalia's drought.

The Met Office's computer modeling study found that between 24 percent and 99 percent of the cause of the failure of the 2011 rains can be attributed to the presence of man-made greenhouse gases, Stott said.

Global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - which sends heat-trapping gases, such as carbon dioxide, into the air, changing the climate, scientists say.

Ahmed Awale works for the non-profit group Candlelight, which is dedicated to improving conservation and the environment. He believes Somalia's climate has been changing for many decades, with rainfall patterns becoming more erratic.

'If you miss one of the two rainy seasons we have a very severe drought. The other indicator is that there is a rise in temperature,' he said, adding later: 'This all negatively impacts the livelihood of the people. Most of Somalis depend mostly on pastoral production.'

Arctic Storm Shatters Thin Sea Ice

Though every day brings more sunlight, February is still one of the coldest months in the Arctic. The sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is now nearing its winter maximum, but the effects of a February storm markedly illustrate the changes that have happened with the Arctic sea ice cover under the effects of climate change.

In past decades, winter meant thick, years-old pack ice would extend over much of the Arctic Ocean. But the modern Arctic's thinner ice cover is more easily pushed by wind, according to Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers University. Other factors, such as global warming, weather patterns and solar heating, also play a role in the loss.

As the Feb. 8 storm passed over the North Pole, it created a strong offshore ice motion, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The fracturing progressed through relatively weak, thin, year-old pack ice during February, as seen in a series of images from the NSIDC.



Similar patterns were observed in early 2011 and 2008, but the 2013 fracturing is quite extensive, the NSIDC said in a statement. The fractured area extends through the Beaufort Sea from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic to Barrow, Alaska.

The overall February ice extent remains below average, in part due to warmer-than-average temperatures, the NSIDC said. The average sea ice cover in February was 5.66 million square miles (14.66 million square kilometers), the seventh-lowest on record for the month.

Overall, the Arctic has lost more than 606,000 square miles (1.57 million square km) of winter sea ice since 1979, an area slightly smaller than Alaska, the biggest state.

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

• 10 Things You Need to Know about Arctic Sea Ice
• 8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World
• Arctic Sea Ice Hits a Record Minimum

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Galaxy S IV could feature a 'Hyper Bright Display' [updated]

A filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office revealed that Samsung (005930) will be using the term "Hyper Bright Display" to describe screens for some of its upcoming products. The company was quick to trademark the term prior to the unveiling of the Galaxy S IV, which is significant because recent rumors suggest that Samsung's latest smartphone will be equipped with a new kind of AMOLED display, called "green PHOLED," that will be 25% more efficient than older AMOLED panels. The technology is said to make the handset's 5-inch full HD display brighter than any of the company's earlier models. Samsung will introduce the Galaxy S IV, possibly with a "Hyper Bright Display," at Radio City Musical Hall in New York City and BGR will be on hand to bring you the news as it breaks starting a 7:00 p.m. EDT.

[More from BGR: Samsung was never an underdog - it was a sleeping giant that has now been awakened]

UPDATE: RootzWiki reports that the USPTO has rejected Samsung's "Hyper Bright Display" copyright application on the grounds that "'hyper bright' is a very common type of LED display." It will be interested to see if Samsung still refers to its new displays as "hyper bright" even if it doesn't own a trademark for the term.


This article was originally published on BGR.com

Sex in Space: Plant Canoodling Is Weird Without Gravity

A real-time look at plant sex in an environment simulating microgravity reveals that agriculture in space might face challenges.

The study also illuminates how gravity works on intercellular transport, a crucial process for mating plants and communicating human brain cells alike.

There's no word yet, however, on how human sex in space would work out - though that may have to change if a private plan to send a married couple on a journey around Mars pans out.

Sex in space

Though not as titillating as humans getting busy, plant sex is a great way to examine how cells transport materials inside their walls. When a pollen grain lands on a stigma, the female part of a flowering plant, it grows a pollen tube that acts as a tunnel for sperm cells to travel down to reach the egg. The pollen tube is the fastest-growing cell in the plant kingdom. [50 Sultry Facts About Sex]

Fast growth is key for studying the way cells move in real-time. Using any other plant cell, you'd have to wait weeks to see a response to gravity, said study researcher Anja Geitmann, a biologist at the University of Montreal. In pollen tubes, a response takes mere seconds.

Pollen tubes are also good models in which to examine how intercellular transport works, because they don't sense gravity. Any response pollen tubes have is due only to the physical effects of the gravitational force, not the cell sensing gravity and changing its behavior accordingly.

Some plant cells do sense gravity; tiny structures called statoliths in root cells ensure that plant roots grow down, for example. But growth of pollen tubes follows the chemical signal from a female plant, so they don't need gravitational information. In that way, they work like any cell with a nucleus, including animal cells.

Beyond 1 g

No pollen tubes were blasted into space in the making of this study. Instead, Geitmann and her co-researchers availed themselves of the tools of the European Space Agency (ESA). They used a spinning centrifuge 26 feet (8 meters) in diameter to expose growing pollen tubes to forces of gravity up to 20 times normal Earth gravity (known as 1 g). They also put pollen tubes in the ESA's Random Positioning Machine, which turns specimens in all directions at a particular speed, essentially canceling out the effects of gravity from each side. This creates conditions that simulate the microgravity of space.

'It's not true zero gravity,' Geitmann told LiveScience. 'There is continuously 1 g on the sample, but it simply changes direction.'

The researchers used microscopy to watch their samples in real-time. The results revealed that while the pollen tube may not sense which way is up, gravity affects it nonetheless. The diameters of the tubes grown in simulated microgravity were 8 percent smaller than a tube grown in 1 g. At five times Earth's gravity, the tubes were 8 percent wider, and at 20 times Earth's gravity, they were 38 percent wider.

The surface expansion rate of the tubes also dropped 39 percent in the simulated microgravity.

Because forming a pollen tube is essentially a tiny cellular construction project, cells transport little bubbles, or vesicles, of material to build out the cell walls in the direction the tube is growing. The researchers found that the distribution of two of these materials, cellulose and callose, was disrupted in hyper- and microgravity.

'The intercellular trafficking, which occurs in very precisely defined paths in these cells, was affected,' Geitmann said. She and her colleagues reported their findings today (March 13) in the journal PLOS ONE.

Animal reproduction isn't similar enough to plant reproduction to draw any conclusions about the result of human sex in space from this study, Geitmann said. Concerns about human reproduction in space include the effects of radiation exposure on a developing fetus as well as unknowns about microgravity, according to a 1996 paper in the journal Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica. [Animal Sex Quiz: Test Your Smarts]

But don't shrug off microgravity plant sex just yet. Intercellular transport is important in a variety of human cells, particularly lengthy neurons, Geitmann said. Researchers studying fish brains reported in the journal Advanced Space Research in 2002 that synaptic formation was influenced by microgravity. Anecdotal reports and small studies of astronauts also suggest that cognitive performance declines in space, but individuals varied widely, according to a 2012 report by NASA.

Causes for that decline could range from sleep deprivation and stress to radiation, NASA found, but no one has looked at whether intercellular transport in neurons might play a role, Geitmann said.

'Many neuronal diseases, such as Huntington's or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, are related to trafficking,' she said.

Humans also need to understand plant sex in space should our species ever need to feed itself on long-duration missions or colonies on other planets.

'If we ever want to do agriculture in space, so to say - it's a long-term vision! - then we have to take this into account,' Geitmann wrote in an email. 'In order to actually do long-term plant cultivation, we have to look for species that can actually reproduce under zero gravity conditions.'

Follow Stephanie Pappas @sipappas. Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• The 10 Most Surprising Sex Statistics
• 6 Weird Facts About Gravity
• Image Gallery: Weird Gravity Waves

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

It's a God Awful Small Affair, but There Could Have Been Life on Mars

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover drilled into a rock and found that it contained a clay-like material. That's the news. The implication is much larger: Mars may once have had an environment hospitable to life.

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One of the tricky aspects of science is that its revelations tend to be more exciting the more attention you pay to science. For those who are generally disinterested in science, there's a high bar for an exciting announcement; for scientists, a graph showing just the right data point can be validation of a life of effort. The job of organizations like NASA is bridging the two groups, presenting the small, important discoveries of its scientists into something that thrills the world.

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The small important discovery announced today is that the Mars rover, Curiosity, analyzed the component elements of dust from a rock that lies in what may once have been a stream bed. It found a variety of common elements you'd find on Earth - oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, etc. - what NASA calls 'some of the key chemical ingredients for life.' NASA's press release quotes the project's lead scientist: 'A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment. From what we know now, the answer is yes.' It doesn't currently, mind you. But it could have. 'This ancient wet environment, unlike some others on Mars,' NASA notes, 'was not harshly oxidizing, acidic or extremely salty.'

RELATED: Admit It: You're a Little Disappointed with NASA's New Rover Plan



At right, the hole drilled by Curiosity. At left, an earlier, less indicative experiment.

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That's fine. But more evocative is the more detailed description of what was found.

'Clay minerals make up at least 20 percent of the composition of this sample,' said David Blake, principal investigator for the CheMin instrument at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

These clay minerals are a product of the reaction of relatively fresh water with igneous minerals, such as olivine, also present in the sediment. The reaction could have taken place within the sedimentary deposit, during transport of the sediment, or in the source region of the sediment.

There's something striking about that: the idea that clay-like material was created near a stream on Mars some indescribably long time ago and has been sitting there since. Perhaps even while life was forming on Earth, this rock came into being on Mars. The scientists clarified that they can't be sure how the timelines of habitability line up, though it was probably about 3 billion years ago - which, give or take millions of years, could line up with the first records of life on Earth.

John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist, summarized the findings in response to a question from the press. 'We have found,' he said, 'a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life, that probably if this water were flowing and you were around, you would have been able to drink it.'

Drilling a rock is not exciting. Speculating about visiting the surface of another planet, drinking from a flowing stream? The mind reels.

China wrestles with cost of cleaner environment

BEIJING (AP) - Facing public outrage over smog-choked cities and filthy rivers, China's leaders are promising to clean up the country's neglected environment - a pledge that sets up a clash with political pressures to keep economic growth strong.

An array of possible initiatives discussed by officials and state media ahead of this week's meeting of China's legislature include tightening water standards and taxing carbon emissions. No change is expected at the National People's Congress, which will be dominated by the installation of a new Cabinet under Communist Party leaders who took power in November. But the meeting offers a platform to try to appease the public by discussing possible changes.

Pollution and public frustration about it are hardly new to China. But now, the ruling party is under pressure from entrepreneurs and professionals who are crucial to its development plans and want cleaner living conditions. Pressure intensified after this winter's record-shattering smog in Beijing and other cities left office workers wheezing.

For industry, pollution controls could cause a costly upheaval after three decades of breakneck growth with little official concern about damage to China's air, water and soil. Party leaders have given no timetable and have yet to make clear how far they are willing to go if such measures wipe out jobs or force factories and power plants to close.

'Economic interests are one of the biggest stumbling blocks to real progress on the environmental front,' said Melanie Hart, a specialist in Chinese energy and climate policy at the Center for American Progress in Washington, in an e-mail.

Skepticism about Beijing's commitment rose in February when the Ministry of Environmental Protection refused to publish results of a five-year survey of soil pollution. Some consumers worry food is tainted by toxin-laced farmland, and activists questioned whether the ministry found that problems were even worse than expected.

Party leaders have promised to balance economic needs with environmental protection but could face resistance from industry and local officials whose promotions depend on meeting growth targets.

The party's latest five-year development plan calls for cleaner, energy-efficient growth. Outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao last week promised more spending on renewable energy, pollution control and cleaning up lakes and rivers. The environment ministry is getting a 12 percent budget increase. The Cabinet's economic planning agency promised to change pricing and taxes for water, oil and other resources to curb waste and pollution.

Some analysts suggest that if Beijing keeps its promises, environmental protection could be a core element of the legacy of Xi Jinping, who took power as the party's general secretary in November in a once-a-decade transition.

'I see the last five years and the future five years are a turning point in China toward greener development,' said Xu Jintao, director of Peking University's environmental economics program.

The government is looking at updating laws on vehicle emissions, other air pollution and overall environmental protection, according to Fu Ying, a deputy foreign minister who is spokeswoman for the legislative meeting.

'First, we must strengthen environmental protection legislation,' said Fu. She gave no timeframe or other details but said new party leaders who took power in November 'will definitely put this issue in a priority position to consider.'

A cleaner environment is in line with the party's ambition to transform China into a creator of technology and reduce reliance on manufacturing and heavy industry. The World Bank and other advisers have urged Beijing to develop service industries, which could create more jobs and wealth with smaller inputs of fuel and raw materials.

China's first environmental law, a clean air act, was passed in 1987 but activists complain local authorities ignore controls if they conflict with business goals. They say filters on power plant smokestacks and other environmental technology that might reduce output is turned on only when inspectors from Beijing visit.

Rising incomes have given city dwellers higher expectations for quality of life and the confidence to make demands, even as they add to emissions by purchasing more cars and using more coal-fired electric power.

Smog reached a peak in January, when the Beijing city government reported levels of particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter - one of the most damaging pollutants - were as high as 700 micrograms per cubic meter. That was 28 times the World Health Organization's recommended safe level of 25 and the highest since the government began reporting PM2.5 numbers last year.

Chinese smog is so bad that officials in South Korean and Japan say pollutants are spreading to their countries. Last week, residents of Japan's Kumamoto prefecture were told to stay indoors or wear masks as protection against airborne particles from China.

The bulk of the smog choking Chinese cities is belched out by commercial trucks, but authorities have put off tightening emissions standards. Upgrading to cleaner engines would cost about 20,000 yuan ($3,200) per vehicle, adding about 8 percent to a typical sticker price.

Auto industry analysts say this winter's wave of smog is likely to prod authorities to speed up the introduction of tougher standards, at least in major cities.

The Internet has made it easy to publicize problems, adding to pressure on Chinese leaders.

In February, a businessman in the southeastern city of Rui'an attracted national attention when he posted pictures of a garbage-filled river online and offered an environmental official 200,000 yuan ($32,000) to swim in it. That prompted an anonymous offer of 300,000 yuan ($48,000) on a separate online forum for the environmental protection chief of the nearby county of Cangnan to swim in polluted rivers there.

Beijing has shut down antiquated power plants, steel mills and other facilities over the past decade to improve energy efficiency. Analysts say the easy gains have been made and further improvement will be tougher and more costly.

Some major Chinese companies have shifted with the political tide and embraced conservation.

The chairman of Sinopec, one of China's three major state-owned oil companies, announced in February the company will spend several billion dollars in the next few years to upgrade its refineries and produce cleaner gasoline.

At lower levels, though, communist leaders need to restructure a tangle of economic and political incentives if they want their orders to be obeyed.

They are likely to face resistance from local leaders who will be required to enforce rules but whose careers depend on meeting economic growth targets, said Peking University's Xu. He said mayors who change jobs as often as once a year are forced to aim for short-term gains and ignore the environment.

'There is still a lot of pressure not to do much about the environment,' he said. 'They need a change of incentive for local government.'

The ministries of finance and environmental protection are looking at a possible shift to using taxes on fuel, carbon output or other pollution instead of administrative controls, according to Xu. He said that income could help offset losses to local governments from reduced business activity.

'That gives local governments an incentive to cooperate,' he said.

The head of the Finance Ministry's tax division said in February on the ministry website that Beijing might introduce a carbon tax. The official, Jia Chen, gave no details and the ministry did not respond to a request for further information.

Still, environmentalists are alarmed by one proposed amendment to the environmental law that would require plans to be reviewed by economic officials before they could be considered for Cabinet approval, according to Hart.

'That language would certainly send the signal that central leaders are still prioritizing growth over the environment,' she said. 'I hope that is not the case.'

Arctic Gets Greener As Climate Warms: NASA Study

Higher temperatures and a longer growing season mean some of Earth's chilliest regions are looking increasingly green, researchers say.

Today, the plant life at northern latitudes often looks like the vegetation researchers would have observed up to 430 miles (700 kilometers) farther south in 1982, according to a new study.

'It's like Winnipeg, Manitoba, moving to Minneapolis-Saint Paul in only 30 years,' study researcher Compton Tucker of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement.

Tucker and a team of university and NASA scientists looked at 30 years' worth of satellite and land surface data on vegetation growth from 45 degrees north latitude to the Arctic Ocean. In this region, large patches of lush vegetation now stretch over an area about the size of the continental United States and resemble what was found 4 to 6 latitude degrees to the south in 1982, the researchers say.

'Higher northern latitudes are getting warmer, Arctic sea ice and the duration of snow cover are diminishing, the growing season is getting longer and plants are growing more,' climate scientist Ranga Myneni of Boston University said in a statement, adding that the changes are leading to great disruptions for the region's ecosystems. [10 Facts About Arctic Sea Ice]

The Arctic has been warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world in the past several decades, and Myneni says an amplified greenhouse effect is largely to blame for the changes in plant life. In this cycle, high concentrations of heat-trapping gasses drive up temperatures in the ocean and atmosphere. This warming cuts down Arctic sea ice and snow cover, causing the oceans and land surfaces in the region to be exposed (ice and snow are more reflective than darker surfaces); these surfaces absorb more heat from the sun's rays, which leads to further heating of the air and further reduction of sea ice and snow. Myneni warns that the cycle could get worse.

'The greenhouse effect could be further amplified in the future as soils in the north thaw, releasing potentially significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane,' Myneni said.

Using climate models, the team found that Arctic and boreal regions could see the equivalent of a 20-degree latitude shift by the end of this century due to rising temperatures. But this doesn't necessarily mean more and more plants. The researchers say the amplified greenhouse effect could have other consequences, like more forest fires, pest infestations and droughts, which cut vegetation growth.

And the availability of water and sunlight determines where plants will thrive. 'Satellite data identify areas in the boreal zone that are warmer and dryer and other areas that are warmer and wetter,' Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., explained in a statement. 'Only the warmer and wetter areas support more growth.'

The researchers also saw more plant growth in the boreal zone from 1982 to 1992 than from 1992 to 2011 - a trend they attributed to a lack of water in the region during the last two decades of the study.

The research was detailed Sunday (March 10) in the journal Nature Climate Change.

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How Women Can Stop Webcam Hacker Creeps from Watching You

There is one foolproof way to avoid an increasingly terrifying group of perverted cyberspies who are hijacking (mostly) women's computer cameras: Buy a new computer that has a light that goes on whenever your webcam is in use, whether you know it or not. Ars Technica's Nate Anderson details 'the Internet's Wild West' of remote administration tools (RAT), which are as scary for their description of female hacking victims as 'slaves' as they are vulnerable to the little known little green light, which is installed on all Macbooks. 'If someone release[s] soft[ware] which will disable the led cam light he will be the richest man in HF [Hack Forums]!!!' wrote one user on Hack Forums.

RELATED: If You Can Crack This Code, The British Government Would Like To Hire You

The whole thing is as terrifying as it sounds, as you can see in the clip of the RAT process in action below. But thanks to the increasing popularity of the notification light being built into an increasing number of newer laptops and computers, there's a way to fight back. Of course, these creeps still try to get around that: 'The first time I use a slaves cam tho I send a fake message saying something like the cams software is updating and the light may come on and go off periodically,' wrote another user on Hack Forums. Others keep lists of computers that still don't have the lights. And there are already tons of photos of women available on the Hack Forums for the picking. Also, RAT-ing extends far beyond webcam spying. These hackers also search a computer for porn and other illicit photographs. These RATs aren't going anywhere. In addition to keeping an eye out for that webcam light, there are some other things people can do to avoid the uncomfortable situation, as Anderson explains:

Use a solid anti-malware program, keep your operating system updated, and make sure plugins (especially Flash and Java) aren't out of date. Don't visit dodgy forums or buy dodgy items, don't click dodgy attachments in e-mail, and don't download dodgy torrents. Such steps won't stop every attack, but they will foil many casual users looking to add a few more slaves to their collections.