Shark vs octopus

Kinda in a rush reviewing papers today, but here's something you wouldn't expect.

Shark vs octopus.

Creepy.

Dam the lungfish

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie has recently announced plans to damn (/dam) the last remaining pristine river system, the Mary River, home to the rare Australian lungfish (Neoceratodus fosterii).

Lungfish go back 400 million years. Given that animals only evolved at the beginning of the Cambrian 530Myr ago, they've been around for over 75% of the history of crawling lifeforms. They've seen the dinosaurs go extinct, lived through meteorite impacts and volcanic events that would have wiped out civilisations, they've even battled through the Permian-Triassic mass extinction - the worst ever - where 96% of all life went extinct. Not the lungfish.

What's more, the Australian lungfish is the closest thing we've got to the missing link that first crawled out of water onto land, and eventually evolved to become amphibians, reptiles, mammals and human beings. It is our genetic ancestor. Damming the Mary river is like bulldozing a nursing home.

But now all that's left are a few scattered species around the globe, of which the Australian lungfish is unique. It has existed in quiet, slow flowing streams virtually unchanged for 100Myr. Now in one foul swoop Beattie wants to damn its last remaining habitat and send the lungfish to a watery oblivion.

The lungfish are hard to breed in captivity - its only been done once. And that required two ponds the size of Olympic size swimming pools. The Queensland Government has promised a fish elevator to carry the lungfish over the dam. Not really going to help, because the fish need quiet, slow flowing streams to spawn, and always return to the same area to spawn. The dam will destroy their spawning ground, according to expert Jean Joss at Macquarie University.

The lungfish was only native to two river systems in Queensland, the Burnett River and the Mary River. The Burnett river has already been dammed to satisfy SE Queensland's water problems. The damming of the Mary River system will destroy the last habitats of the lungfish, and there is a good chance it will send em extinct in the wild (and given the difficultly in breeding them in captivity, probably just extinct).

A complete coverage is in this weeks Nature (including the editorial).

The Queensland government needs an environmental impact assessment at a federal level before it can proceed with its plans. Lets see if the Australian EPA does what its there for.

In the meantime, if the dam does get blocked, it doesn't solve the water problem. What is the solution? One is a desalination plant based in Brisbane. An other is large-scale recycling of water.
Recent news coverage of drinking bore water, recycling in Toowoomba and dam problems in Qld.

double beds, racist saxons & one hungry python

In the news today, researchers have found that sharing a bed with someone can make you more stupid if you are a man.
Gerhard Kloesch and colleagues from the University of Vienna, Austria, showed that sharing your bed disturbs your sleep quality, affecting the ability to perform simple mental tasks. The effect was more pronounced for men than women. The full story can be found here.
They also found that sleeping together affected dream recall - women sleeping alone remembered dreams better, while men remembered more dreams after sex. No surprises there.

In other news, in case you didn't see the new remake of "Arthur" or read Mein Kampf - the early saxons were apparently racist bastards. Genetic analysis of English men showed that more than half of them carry a Y chromosone that can be traced back the early Germanic stomping grounds. Its been a bit of a paradox as historians argue the invading party could not have exceeded 200,000. Such a small population, in a sea of 2 million Celtic Britons, shouldn't have made such a dent. Now recent models have shown that in an aparthied society, where one genetic group is economically and politically segregated from another, the dominant race will not only have more children, but more of their children are likely to survive into adulthood. The full story is at New Scientist.
No mention is made of what happened to the pre-Celtic natives of Britain. Apparently the Celts were more efficient than saxons. The scots, being stubborn buggers, have hung onto their genes as well as they hang onto their money. (Its ok, I'm scottish...).

Lastly, a 12 foot Burmese python was successfully operated on today after it somehow swallowed a queen size electric blanket, including the cord and control box. Apparently it was after a rabbit, and the blanket, in its cage to keep it warm, somehow got in the way....
More on Live Science.

Tsunami warning system?

Whatever happened to that Indian Ocean tsunami warning system, anyway?
Not enough, going off the devastation wreaked on the southern Javan coastline by another big wave.
With the death toll currently topping 530, and over 50,000 refugees, why is it the first warning most people got was the sound of rushing water?

Firstly, the facts of the quake (there has been some sloppy reporting of these):

When: 17th July, 08:24 UTC (15:24 local time).
How big: magnitude 7.7 (cw 9.3 for the boxing day 2004 tsunami).
How deep: Hypocentre was 48.6km below the seafloor (revised to 34km by USGS).
Where: the epicentre was 9.295° S 107.347° E, which is is 225km NE of Christmas Island, 240km SSW of Tasikmalaya, Indonesia, and 358 km S of Jakarta.

(data from US geological survey via Wikipedia).

Epicentre of the July 17th earthquake, surface fault boundary (red line) and local islands.


For the most part, people barely felt the original magntitude 7.7 quake. The first warning of the tsunami was when the first waves arrived over an hour later. Numerous aftershocks (54 and counting) have kept people on their toes since then.

And the press is starting to blame the scientists:

"SCIENTISTS can't stop them and they can't predict them. They can, however, send an alarm when a powerful tsunami is heading to shore. But for residents of southern Java there was no such warning on Monday when a near 3m high wall of water, triggered by a magnitude 7.7 earthquake 10km below the seabed, crashed on to a 300km stretch along scenic Pangandaran beach in Indonesia."

From The Australian. The lack of warning is not really a problem with the science - the detection systems are in place - even though in this region the plan's still in its infancy. None of the teams who detected in the earthquake could estimate the tsunami's size. Again from The Australian:

"It was the Hawaiian centre and Japan's Meteorological Agency that picked up Monday's quake and alerted the world. Both organisations issued warnings within 17 minutes of the quake, more than a half-hour before the tsunami hit Java's coastline.
In the open ocean a tsunami travels, on average, 800km/h. It slows when it reaches the shallower water of a coastline. "That's why the wave builds up," Jepsen says."

I've had difficulty finding the time difference between the quake, and the tsunami arriving at Java or Christmas island. Unconfirmed press reports indicate a period of 1 hour between the quake and the tsunami's arrival at the Javan coastline (240km), and 17 minutes to reach Christmas Island (225km). However, ABC news reports that Christmas Island had 20 minutes warning to get to higher ground. There seems to be discrepancy in the velocity - can changes in the wave speed explain it?

The speed of a tsunami is given by the equation vel=sqrt(g*d) ... where vel is the velocity (in m/s), g is gravity (9.81m/s^2) and d is the depth of the ocean at a given point (in m). If we assume the average depth of the seafloor is 5km between the epicentre and Christmas Island, then the velocity is 221m/s, or 795km/hr. Pretty fast. At this speed the tsunami would have crossed the 225km to Christmas Island in 17 minutes. Anywhere the depth is shallower would have slowed it down.

Chistmas Island only reported a 60cm swell - this is mostly because of the steep drop-off surrounding the Island - from land to 5ooom deep in a very short range. So the tsunami had no shallow shelf to slow down and build up height. When it approached Indonesia, on the other hand, the situation was different - it could build up to a 2-4m swell (depending on if you believe the tidal gauge or the people surfing it) before it hit. Not massive, but enough to inundate low-lying coastal villages.

So not much time to warn Christmas Island - but more time to warn Indonesia. What happened to the warnings? From Wikipedia (with news items referenced):

Indonesian government science and technology minister Kusmayanto Kadiman confirmed that Indonesian officials had received bulletins from both the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii and the Japan Meteorological Agency twenty minutes before the first tsunami wave struck but were too busy monitoring the quake aftershocks to issue warnings. ^[1]

According to an AP report, Science and Technology Minister Kusmayanto Kadiman stated that Indonesia received the warning bulletins 45 minutes before the tsunami hit. However, Kadiman indicated that the government did not publicize the bulletins because they did not want to cause unnecessary alarm. ^[2]

Edi Prihantoro, an official at Indonesia’s Ministry of Research and Technology that oversees a national warning project, said the southern Java area had no system to warn people of coming waves.

As part of a five-year project to install tsunami buoys around the archipelago, Indonesia deployed two such devices off the island of Sumatra last year. However, when asked how many of the deployed devices were operational, Prihantoro replied: “None.” He continued, “We need at least 22 buoys to cover all of Indonesia. We have received two from Germany and they were deployed months ago. However, both of them are damaged now.” Both devices have since been decommissioned and one of them is awaiting repairs. ^[3]

References

1. ^ "Officials failed to pass on tsunami warning", Guardian Unlimited, 2006-07-18. Retrieved on 2006-07-18.
2. ^ "Java death toll tops 500", CNN, 2006-07-19. Retrieved on 2006-07-19.
3. ^ "Indonesia's 2 tsunami alert buoys were busted", MS/NBC, 2006-07-18. Retrieved on 2006-07-18.

So the warnings were issued but the Indonesian government failed to pass them on. Plus the buoys the were given were trashed and not fixed/replaced. Now we are at the crux of the problem. An early warning system will only be effective if local authorities act on the warnings, and take the system seriously. The tragedy of 500+ people's deaths, while probably not completely unavoidable, could have been mitigated if the Indonesian authorities had acted on the early warnings they were given.

Australia's resource curse

In an interesting review in Nature today Barry Jones, Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University, and former Australian minister of Science (from 1983-1990) reviews The Australian Miracle: An Innovative Nation Revisited, by Thomas Barlow, who coincidentally was an advisor to Brendan Nelson, Australia's recently departed science minister.

The books title is tellingly optimistic: Australian's are damn proud of their inventions; from the stump-jumper plough (though I've never seen one), the Hill-hoist clothesline, two-stroke lawnmowers, vegemite, Coopers sparkling ale ... the list goes on. But not for long.

The truth is, in the last century Australia's contribution to technological advance (excluding medicine) in the last 100 or so years has been pretty abysmal. The Hills-Hoist didn't really change the world. Barlow's book is somewhat dismissive of the naysaying of academics who are - lets face it, the worst whingers imaginable - and for that it is somewhat refreshing. But turning a blind-eye to our lack of techno can-do is not going to improve our lot.

Australia's main problem is what's generally known as "The resource curse." At first glance you wouldn't expect plentiful resources to be much of a curse. But to borrow from a talk I heard of Prof. John Connell's (Sydney Uni), lets take the case of Nauru.

The Nauru people were lucking enough to be living on a big pile of shi... er... guano. In fact it was one of the world's biggest supplier of phosphate for quite some time. The export of this after their independence in 66 allowed Nauruan's to enjoy the higest living standards in the Pacific: no taxes, free electricity (why bother turning the light off, its free!?), free air transport for a while ... and the highest obesity rate in the world.

Unfortunately, the crap dried up. In the 1990's Nauru had to look somewhere else for its future. The problem: most Nauruans have never done a solid day's work in their life. 90% of the island is unemployed; of those that work, 95% work for the government. They have no industry, no tourism - not only because the island's a pile of shit, but the phosphate mining operation wasn't pretty, and besides that, there are barely any tourist facilities. A national trust fund, established when the going was good, shrunk from AUS $1300 million in 1991 to $138 million in 2002. From Wikipedia:

"However, a history of bad investments, financial mismanagement, overspending and corruption has reduced the Trust's fixed and current assets. For example, Nauru House in Melbourne was sold in 2004 to finance debts and Air Nauru's last Boeing 737 was repossessed in December 2005... Nauru currently lacks money to perform many of the basic functions of government, the national Bank of Nauru is insolvent, and GDP per capita has fallen to US$5,000 per annum."

Not a great outlook. Chronic corruption and a "provided-for" mentality means it going to be hard for this little nation to pick up its feet. Its attempt at offering a no-questions-asked tax haven for foreign nationals led to millions of dollars being laundered by the Russian mafia through Nauru. International pressure has since put a stop to this. Now it relies on Australia's unwanted refugee's for income.

Australia is different from Nauru in many ways, but it still suffers from the resource curse: a primary reliance on sales of non-renewable natural resources for revenue, with no firm manufacturing or industrial base. This is a huge weakness in the Australian economy, and makes it highly susceptible to fluctuations in the metals market. Natural resources tend to drive the Aussie dollar, and living standards, higher, which makes it too expensive to manufacture in Australia, so industries go offshore.

Jones mentions in his critique a book by Donald Horne called The lucky country, published in 1964 - which outlines Australia's resource curse in different terms. Whenever Australia has had a crisis, it had nearly always escaped by digging stuff up to sell, from gold, to iron, copper, coal, oil/gas... Its not an escape strategy that is always going to work (not that much new stuff out there...). As a result, we've never had to knuckle-down and tackle our industrial ineptitude head on.

This is not to say Australia is not a technologically advanced nation; we are. But how much of that is home-grown? Jones' mentions that when you look at technological exchange to and from Australia, it is essentially one-sided. What we need, he states, is an Australia Volvo:

"Barlow fails to address what I refer to as Australia's inventory problem, the conspicuous lack of internationally successful high-value-added brand-name goods and services. The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Finland, which all have smaller populations than Australia, make products that sell internationally on reputation, rather than price. Where are the Australian equivalents of Philips, Volvo, Scania, Hasselblad, Nestlé, Roche or Nokia?"

Australia had an educated population clearly adept enough to ride the internet bubble, or capitalise on the communications revolution, but in investment it never leads - it just follows by example. A company like Nokia, for instance, would have a hard time starting up in Australia, yet its the biggest export Finland has. A little bit of forward thinking is required, short-sightedness is not just something you can fix with glasses.

crocodile vs tiger?

I'm seem to be on a bit of a crocodilian role, so while we've got momentum...
Tiger vs crocodile: who would win?
Find out here

Its been a bad run for crocodiles hasn't it? Though if they met in the water I wonder if it might have gone differently. Additionally, this guys not what you'd call massive. The tiger might have some problems with a 7m saltie. It probably would have fared like this bear. (haha - yeah, I know...)

I just read an article about Phillipino boy losing an arm after sneaking into a neighbour's yard and throwing rocks at his pet croc. Along similar lines comes this latter-day einstein from I think Thailand:

A history of bright ideas: 1) putting your hand in a croc's mouth.

Of course, I had to dig this up. My personal favourite example of human stupidity:

2) Put your head in a croc's mouth.

And why you shouldn't bungee jump in crocodile country (in case it wasn't bleedingly obvious).

3) Bungee's and crocs.

This last one is not real. Its was from a poorly received add in Australia for Fosters beer. Needless to say family groups didn't respond too well. But it has become a bit of an urban legend propagating round the net. More on snope.com.

That's all on crocodiles for a while.

Alligator v Python: 0-0

We've all asked ourselves the question: "What if a crocodile fought a shark? What about pirahna's vs electric eels?" Well one famous match-up has been fought to the death in the depths of the Everglades, Florida.

Stunned park officials came across the macabre scene last week. An adult Burmese python (an introduced species) was found attempting to digest a 2m alligator.

Burmese pythons are commonly kept as pets, and often released into the wild when they grow too big. They thrive in the humid Everglades swamps. The original size of the python is unclear as its head has been bitten off (probably by another alligator), but was estimated at 3.9m.

The most bizarre part: the python seems to have exploded while attempting to digest the alligator. Experts suggest that the alligator may have clawed at the pythons belly on the way down. For what its worth, I think this is unlikely - pythons generally squeeze until something is very dead before eating it - but they do take up to 2 weeks to digest a large meal; I'm wondering if it wasn't attacked by another alligator shortly after eating which caused its stomach to rupture (for supporting evidence: note missing head).

If you are eating breakfast right now, don't look below.

Burmese python explodes eating an alligator

For the full story, click here.

gold-forming bacteria

Scientists have just discovered that bacteria may be responsible for the growth of pure gold nuggets.
Bacteria structures have been tenuously identified before in gold grains. Now Frank Reith and colleagues have shown that gold flakes from mines thousands of kilometers apart both contain bacteria structures and biofilms - and have identified markers of over 30 species of microbes in gold grains.
One identified species - the appropriately named Ralstonia metallidurans, has been shown to survive in gold choloride solutions, apparently precipitating gold out of solution in an attempt to detox its environment.
The results were reported in Science, and coverage of the story can be found here.

Are we crazy enough?

How do you decide what's fringe science, and what's a revolutionary breakthrough? The answer, in all its shades of grey, is the topic for this offbeat post from defencetech.org:

Crazy enough?

They outline 3 revolutionary technologies (rockets, jet engines and death-rays ..er.. radar), and the huge resistance they had breaking into mainstream thought (including the New York Times telling rocket pioneer Robert Goddard that rockets couldn't work in a vacuum, and to learn some high school physics... After they landed a man on the moon NYT published an apology. Moral of the story: don't believe newspaper science).

Rocketman Robert Goddard

With hindsight its easy to recognize the success these guys had. Which makes them revolutionaries, instead of whackos. How can you tell the difference without the benefit of hindsight?

Does all revolutionary technology have to come from outside the mainstream?

A case in point is the atomic bomb. It was generally accepted by mainstream scientists (including Einstein) that the concept was quite feasible. Obviously a huge amount of work went into it, but it is one example of a revolutionary technology coming from the culmination of mainstream thought.

In short, the issue is clouded. Lets just hope the whackos keep getting some funding though, you just never quite when the revolution is gonna kick you in the pants.

Another bloody croc attack

There was another saltwater crocodile attack in Arnhem on the weekend. The victim was an eight year old aboriginal girl who was snatched from the Blythe river near Arnhem land in the Northern Territory, Australia.

The smh story is here.

The girl is the 6th person to be taken by crocodiles in the last four years.

The other victims include:

• Sep 2005 Darwin man Russell Butel, 55, killed while diving off Coburg Peninsula.
• Sep 2005 Russell Harris, 37, killed while snorkelling off Groote Eylandt.
• Aug 2005 Fisherman Barry Jefferies killed at Lakefield National Park, Cape York.
• Dec 2003 Brett Mann, 22, killed in Finniss River, NT.
• Oct 2002 Isabel von Jordan, 23, killed while swimming in Kakadu National Park.

(from smh).

Though many hundreds more people die in car accidents every year than are killed by crocs, crocodile attacks touch upon a primal fear base of humans. We are still (rightly) scared of being eaten alive. And this sort of frequency of attack is alarming, if only for the fact that its increasing.

For those outside Australia, we have two types of crocs: the saltwater croc (Crocodylus porosus):

And its much smaller cousin, the Freshwater crocodile (Crocodylus johnsonii


While freshies can inflict a nasty nick, they're not usually dangerous, and are generally pretty timid around humans.
The unfortunately named salties, however, are killers. The Australian terms: freshwater and saltwater crocs, are really misleading. Saltwater crocs can, and quite often do, live in freshwater, as well as dominating the estuary environment (or open ocean for that matter). Freshwater crocs are generally restricted to upper catchment and escarpments that salties rarely reach.

So how can you prevent these attacks? Well, unfortunately, in the case of the last one, its hard to see what else can be done. The family is local, they know the region and appreciate the risks crocodiles impose. The details aren't clear in the reports, but its possible they took a little too much for granted. Or it was unavoidable.

In the case of the last 5 previous attacks, its interesting that 2 of them involve people snorkelling/scuba diving - and from the sound of it in open water. Short of carrying a high-power spear-gun, again, these incidents were hard to prevent. They are part of the risk of swimming in crocodile country.

Crocodile attacks can easily be avoided. (from Outback Australia Travel Advice)
This is the general attitude of most pro-Tourism or even environmental sites you peruse. But is it true? In one sense yes: avoid the water. Avoid the water's edge. Avoid camping anywhere near the water. Avoid slopes leading down near the water. Maybe avoid the top end all together, and holiday in South Australia. And avoid the water there cause of the great whites.
In fact, doing activities that the top end is famous for (fishing, swimming in isolated waterholes) will inevitably put you at risk of croc attacks. But generally, if there is a sign with a crocodile on it, don't get in the water.



There are a few things you can do to minimise the risks, though, like don't get plastered and go swimming. In fact, nearly a third of all crocodile attacks involve alcohol. Which is probably not so surprising. Additionally, don't do this:

Seriously. Crocodiles have only 2 ways of interacting with other species: fear it or eat it. During the 1960's and the decimation of Australia's crocs due to unrestricted hunting, the big crocs got cagey around anything with two legs holding a pointy stick. However, the ones born since then don't know or care, and regard us smaller humans as home-delivery. This lack of fear of humans is due in large part to familiarity, and the fact that we feed them:


The case of a croc attacking a man with a chainsaw shows they have really lost their healthy respect of people. Maybe we need more handbag-wielding grannies to show 'em a thing or two.


A further list of all (including non-fatal) attacks from 2002-

• Oct 2004 - NT. Teenager escapes from jaws of crocodile with only minor puncture wounds.
• Oct 2004 - Qld. A four metre crocodile attacks a man sleeping in a tent on a beach at Cape Melville in far north Queensland.
• Oct 2004 - Qld. A Barramundi fisherman loses the tip of his index finger, bitten off by a crocodile while he was trying to free it from a net on the Nassau River on Cape York Peninsula.
• April 2004 - Qld. An 11-year-old girl has her arm grabbed by a crocodile while swimming at Margaret Bay on Cape York Peninsula.
• Dec 2003 - NT. Brett Mann, 22, killed after wading into the Finniss River, 80km from Darwin.
• Nov 2003 - NT. A woman beats off a crocodile with a bag of mussels after it bit her on the back while she was wading across a creek on Melville Island.
• Nov 2003 - NT. Teenager Manuel Gandigorrtij escapes from the jaws of a three-metre crocodile when his 53-year-old aunt punched it in the nose at Jibalbal Outstation, in Arnhem Land.
• Sept 2003 - NT. A tour guide suffers puncture wounds after being attacked by a 1.5m freshwater crocodile at a popular plunge pool in Kakadu National Park.
• Sept 2003 - NT. A 10-year-old girl received cuts to her leg after being attacked by a 2.13m crocodile as she swam with friends in a billabong at the Aboriginal community at Patonga Airstrip in Kakadu National Park.
• Oct 2002 - NT. German tourist Isabel von Jordan, 23, killed while swimming at a water hole at Kakadu National Park.-AAP

There has been quite a lot of interest in von Jordan's death (going of the google search hits here). To follow through: she was with an organized tour, swimming at a waterhole known for saltwater crocs. The problem here was a grevious and somewhat baffling decision from the tour guide to allow his group to swim at Sandy Billabong. The people on tour don't know better, and the tour guide has a duty of care towards those under his charge. So why? The guide made some statements to police about having seen aboriginal people swimming in the area (soundly denied by local aboriginals, and not believed by the coroner). In short, it was a really dumb decision that cost someone their life.
The thing to remember on tour in the top end: tour guides are not licensed. They come and go fairly quickly. This is from the coroner's report: "tour guides are able to operate generally in the Northern Territory without any minimum training requirements, without public liability insurance, and without any qualifications in first aid or resuscitation. Coroners in this jurisdiction have made this observation time and again in relation to drowning deaths in the Territory since the late 1980s." So, do not trust your tourguides. If there is a sign with a croc on it, stay out.
That's the other point. There is quite a bit signage in Kakadu National Park - most of it, like the sign above, saying "Stay Out". This is where it gets confusing, cause you can swim at JimJim falls, which has a sign. What they don't tell you is that the rangers run an efficient croc management program at Jimjim falls to keep crocs out so people can swim. The sign is there cause crocs can get potentially get in. In other areas, you have the same sign, but no croc management - how are tourists meant to know the difference?

Sandy Billabong: site of Isobel von Jordan's attack

Sandy Billabong, with "No Swimming" sign.

Doesn't look like much, does it? Not a real nice swimming hole in any case. But it is perfect saltie territory. The exact sequence of events surrounding the incident are outlined in the coroner's report:

"8. On the evening of 22 October, the group camped in the designated camping ground at Sandy Billabong. They had dinner at about 9 pm. At about 10.30 pm on that night, Mr Robless suggested they could swim off a sandbar situated on Nourlangie Creek approximately 1.5 kilometres from the camp site. He led the group to the location and seven members of the group commenced to swim in the Creek, whilst two remained on the bank. After the group had been swimming for a short time, Mr Robless left them there in order to make contact with a guide from Gondwana who was leading another tour group in the area.

9. In Mr Robless's absence, a large saltwater crocodile swam amongst the group and dragged the deceased below the water. She was not immediately seen to be missing. It took some time for the remaining members of the group to realise something was amiss. Certain members of the group have a recollection of the deceased giving a shout or yelp. Those who heard that sound initially thought it was part of the general “skylarking”. Another member of the group had felt something brush against her legs at about the time the deceased disappeared. Yet another member of the group thought he had seen something large swimming from the area. The realisation dawned that the deceased had likely been taken by a crocodile."

Pretty horrific. She was taken under and no-one even realised. Plus they were swimming at night, in a crocodile infested waterhole, which had signs up... It really should never have happened. Not that its any condolence to the family, but they got the croc that took her; a 4m+ croc weighing in at 400kg - not in the best shape either, which may have been why it was hunting humans (not that crocs need much incentive).

The full coroner's report can be found here.

A somewhat disturbing spin-off of the whole incident is the effect its had for business in NT. Business boomed. You would think something like this would be bad for tourism, but just the opposite. The territory came of as an untouched, rugged, and quite dangerous wilderness - which appealed to the adventurist types inclined to visit the region. This starts to reek of profiteering of someone's death, but I guess there's no accounting for human nature.


For the record, from wikipedia: The most deaths in a single crocodile attack incident may have occurred during the Battle of Ramree Island, on February 19, 1945, in what is now Burma. Nine hundred soldiers of an Imperial Japanese Army unit, in an attempt to retreat from the Royal Navy and rejoin a larger battalion of the Japanese infantry, crossed through ten miles of mangrove swamps which contained Saltwater Crocodiles. Twenty Japanese soldiers were captured alive by the British, and almost five hundred are known to have escaped Ramree. Many of the remainder may have been eaten by the crocodiles, although gunfire from the British troops was undoubtedly a contributory factor.
Bit more horrific than the worst pile-ups I've heard of.

The return of the Ozone man

Al Gore is back. An he's angry.



Haha, yeah, I know. If you've seen the Simpson's episode, the multiple Futurama episodes, or the South Park episode (pictured) staring Al Gore (former US senator, Vice President, and one-time Presidential Candidate against George W. Bush) - then you know why this is funny.

He is a man on a mission, though. I read his 1992 book "Earth in the Balance" some time ago, and was quite surprised by his astute grasp of the science and fundamental issues. Its something every intelligent person should read.

Not to mention it gives you hopes about the collective IQ of politicians. One of the great tragedies of this century was Al Gore's narrow defeat to George W. Bush for the US presidency.


Now Gore is back with a new book, and a movie-length documentary to boot.
This is from the NY Times review of the book:

Fourteen years ago, during the 1992 campaign, the current president's father, George Herbert Walker Bush, dismissed Mr. Gore as "Ozone Man" — if the Clinton-Gore ticket were elected, he suggested, "we'll be up to our neck in owls and out of work for every American" — but with the emerging consensus on global warming today, Mr. Gore's passionate warnings about climate change seem increasingly prescient.

Those without the time to sit down and plough through his book, though, can now see the movie instead. And no, not kidding.

"An inconvenient truth" has opened in US cinemas, and will probably make its way through to Australia some time in the next 6 months. Already it has become 5th highest earning documentary of all time (after Mike Moore and Madonna's romps). And its given the book a new lease on life: at the time of writing the book had moved up to No. 2 in the NY time's best seller list (non-fiction) - above Truman Capote!

Oprah does climate change

I missed it, but apparently Oprah has moved into the climate debate.
Check out the hype on Jbruno'z blog:

Is there anything Oprah can't do

Two interesting things about this blog:
1) The hybrid car Toyota Prius: it saves on fuel when driving round the city, but burns it big time on highways. Apparently the corolla (gotta love em) does a lot better on the highway that the Prius (which switches to pure petrol burning at high-revs highway commuting). Apart from this, of course, electric cars need to be plugged in, thus are pulling electricity from some power station which is burning coal, which produces more CO2, and so is not really cutting down on greenhouse emissions.
2) Trees suck more water out of the ground, as well as CO2 out of the air. This is true. Its touted as a problem in this article. But in Australia, in places which have been denuded due to agriculture, the problem is the (saline) water table is too high, effectively salting the Earth. Plant some trees in these regions, the water table drops, and increasing salinity is less of a problem. Its a win-win, really.

In case you don't think salinity's a problem, check out the havoc it wreaks in Australia:

Facial recognition software

Thanks to the The disgruntled chemist for pointing this out. There is an online facial recognition software system on the net, where you can upload a photo of yourself, and it scans your face and returns a list of celebrities you look most like.

Check it out at myheritage.com

I think its set up to check genealogies, but that doesn't mean you can't test-run the software.
Of course, I had to try it. I didn't upload a very clear picture of myself, but here are the results:



So.. the celebrity I look most like is ... Big Arnie! I'm not too sure how I feel about that. Although being mistaken for Brian May or Bon Jovi would be pretty cool, even if its just computer software making the error.

Can you imagine if they implement this software at airports? Good morning, Mr Bon Jovi? Can we upgrade you to first class today???

Rock on.

In other news, as you can see the software also matches you up with the other gender. Apparently the celebrity I look most like is tennis great Chris Evert! Not quite sure how I got matched up a blonde chick. I started to have some doubts about the quality of the matching algorithm after it said I looked like Janis Joplin or Steffi Graf, though. Love the music, but ole Janis wasn't much of a looker.

A detailed note on how this sort of software works can be found on howstuffworks.com.

I'm not quite sure it does. Or am I just in denial? What do you think, who do I look like?

The top five...

Nature has listed the Top Five science blogs on the web.
The list was compiled by the "Technorati" blog search. However, only 5 science blogs made it into the top 3500 blogs. Does that seem a bit low?
The nature article is here.

The top five science blogs are:

1) Pharyngula (at 179th overall).
- not sure myself what a pharyngula is, I think you have to check out the site yourself.

2) Panda's Thumb (1647th)

3) Real Climate (1884th)

4) Cosmic Variance (2174th)

5) Scientific Activist (3429th)

This last one, Nick Anthis's, has a funny story behind its popularity. Apparently Nick first blew the whistle on a high-ranking official at NASA having lied about graduating from Texas A&M University. How bad is that. Working at NASA and lying about your degree? Anyway, Nick spilt the beans during the censorship row at NASA early this year, and it blew out into major international news - which is always a sure path to popularity.

Congratulations to the winners. One wonders what the rest of the 3495 blogs were about, though. 5 out of 3500 blogs isn't that much; scientists constitute only 0.14% of the top ranking blogs, despite the many important things they should be saying. I reckon we can do better than this!

Just as an aside, the top 50 science blogs can be found here.

I recommend the The disgruntled chemist and Mike the mad biologist. Angry young scientists. Should be more of 'em.

Monkey business

Got your attention?

This just in:
Genetic evidence for complex speciation of humans and chimpanzees
Published in Nature, on the 29th of June. (You might not be able to see this article if you don't have a nature subscription...).

The authors looked at the genetic clocks in chimps and humans, which should be able to tell you when the two species diverged. However, they seemed to be ticking at different rates. Patterson et al. found that the least changes had happened along the X chromosome (the female chromosome). What did this mean? Well, they start of cloaking their suggestion in suitably modest terms:

"These unexpected features would be explained if the human and chimpanzee lineages initially diverged, then later exchanged genes before separating permanently."

Hmm, got it yet?

They later state:

"indicating an unusual history in the ancestral population at the time of speciation."

Unusual, hey? They concluded that:

"We suggest a provocative explanation for multiple features of these data: that the hominin and chimpanzee lineages initially separated but then exchanged genes before finally separating less than 6.3 Myr ago."

In case terse scientific prose is not your thing, here is a visual:

That's right, we're talking about monkey lurve...

Apparently, when humans first split from chimps, there was some monkey business going on for some time after. Its hard to picture, so here's another:

The authors tend to suggest that female chimp hybrids might have been fertile, and carried through the X-chromosome changes. That might be an easier to sell to a reputable journal than if it were the other way round. Although we do have some good evidence that humans are carrying chimp genes, and don't think anyone really needs any convincing:

Australia in denial

While Australia is still in severe drought, and still recovering from a few recent cyclones up north, and global warming continues unabated, its strange to see our trusty leaders with their heads in the sand:

SMH: World awake to climate but not us

In summary: Australia is behind the rest of the world in 1) even acknowledging climate change, let alone 2) doing anything about it.

You really do feel like giving someone a kick up the pants and shouting "This is really not a joke guys!". Australia is the highest greenhouse emitter per capita in the world. That we can lag behind the Bush-administration led US in our emissions, and in our motivation to do anything is something to hang your head about really.

I won't spend this blog trying to convince anyone of the reality of climate change.
For a summary of the evidence, Wikipedia is a good start.
For a slamming indictment of Australia's counter-productive effort so far, go here.
Or, for the perspective of top Aussie scientists, look here .

So why the apathy to do anything? It seems to come down to three issues:
1. A conservative, finance-oriented government deeply suspicious of green issues
2. Costs to industries
3. Ties with the US

The third point, ties with the US; a useful thing to have in times of war, but I think Australia should be very sceptical of tying itself down to a policy that is, quite frankly, unpopular with a lot of US citizens, and likely to be ditched if the democrats get in next term (if in doubt about the Democrat's agenda, you should read Al Gore's book, and imagine what the world would be like if he won Florida instead of Bush).

The 2nd point, costs to industries, is essentially bogus. By introducing a carbon tax, and making it costly to emit tonnes of crap into the atmopshere, you will find industries very quickly find ways to cut emissions cheaply. In a lot of cases, its not that hard. And besides, a quick "cost to industries" vs "cost to the world" - in pollutants, health issues, rising sea-levels, destabilisation of water-side properties, loss of land, people displacement, climate irregularities, crop failures, water supply problems (we have enough of them already!), fluctuating weather patterns (including increased cyclone activity in Australia, and hurricane season in the US), and you can see the cost of not doing anything is orders of magnitude more severe.

NB: the direct link between destructive weather and global warming is contentious. But cyclones are caused by lots of evaporation of warm water, if you heat the water up, you have a more powerful engine to drive cyclones. Its hard to see how this wouldn't affect weather.

In terms of point 3: why? Maybe its got something to do with the personalities in power. I really don't have an answer to this. It really wasn't so hard for us to make Kyoto. There is a long scepticism, not just in Australian politics, but in the Australian community, of greens and green issues. First there is the unfortunate label "watermelons" - green on the outside, but red on the inside, referring to the infiltration of the green party by people with communist/socialist tendencies. Ever since the disbandonment of the ACP, I guess they have nowhere else to go. But it hards to trust a party with such an obvious ulterior agenda. Or maybe that's to narrow, it could just be a mental inertia as the ramifications slowly trickle through community awareness.

In the mean time, we can look forward to a lot more of this: