And I missed it!

January 14th, 2009

Comet Lulin is On the Way!

Written by Nancy Atkinson

A new comet is swinging around the sun, and soon it will be more visible to stargazers, perhaps even with the naked eye. Both professional and amateur astronomers have been tracking this unusual comet, named Comet Lulin. Thanks to amateur astronomer Gregg Ruppel, who lives in the St. Louis, Missouri area for sharing images he has acquired of Comet Lulin. Gregg took the image above on January 11, 2009. The most interesting characteristic of this comet is its orbit. Lulin is actually moving in the opposite direction as the planets, so its apparent velocity will be quite fast. Estimates are it will be moving about 5 degrees a day across the sky, so when viewed with a telescope or binoculars, you may be able to see the comet’s apparent motion against the background stars. This is quite unusual! Today, January 14, the comet is at perihelion, closest to the sun. As it moves to its closest approach to Earth on February 24, Lulin is expected to brighten to naked-eye visibility in rural areas, (at best about magnitude 5 or 6) and will be observable low in the sky in an east-southeast direction before dawn.

The comet will pass 0.41 Astronomical Units from earth at its closest distance to Earth, about 14.5 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. It has a parabolic trajectory, which means it may have never come this way before –this may be its first visit to the inner solar system

Lulin was jointly discovered by Asian astronomers in July of 2007. Quanzhi Ye from China first saw the comet on images obtained by Chi-Sheng Lin from Taiwan, at the Lu-lin Observatory.

The discovery of Comet Lulin (also known as C/2227 2007 N3) was part of the Lulin Sky Survey project to explore the various populations of small bodies in the solar system, especially objects that could be a hazard to the Earth.

It has both a tail and an anti-tail, visible in this image.

Neanderthal genes examined

Team in Germany maps Neanderthal genome

By PATRICK McGROARTY (Associated Press Writer)

From Associated Press

February 12, 2009 2:26 PM EST

LEIPZIG, Germany – Researchers in Germany have completed the first draft of the Neanderthal genome, more than 3 billion genetic building blocks that will shed new light on the ancient hominid as well as the origins of its closest relation – modern humans.

The draft covers about 63 percent of the roughly 3.2 billion base pairs in the Neanderthal genome. The team led by geneticist Svante Paabo has actually isolated 3.7 billion base pairs, but that includes many duplications.

Paabo, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said the Neanderthal genome will be an important tool for researchers tracing hominid evolution, and for those probing the origins of the genetic traits that make humans so dominant.

“It will help show what the differences are between them and us that allowed us to develop technology, to colonize the planet,” he told The Associated Press on Thursday before presenting his findings to attendees of an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago by video uplink from Leipzig.

The announcement was planned to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth.

Gene expert Edward Rubin of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, is leading a separate project to sequence targeted segments of the Neanderthal genome. His work has shown that the Neanderthal genome is as much as 99.5 percent the same as modern humans. He said Paabo’s complete draft will let him compare segments and genes from his own research to a separate Neanderthal.

“We’ll look very carefully at the data they’ve generated, and it will tell us what areas we really want to look at,” Rubin said.

Other researchers are already planning comparative studies with genes known to influence speech and brain aging in humans. That work could rekindle a debate over whether early humans simply replaced Neanderthals, or whether the two may have interbred while their ranges overlapped in Europe more than 30,000 years ago.

Paabo, who presented DNA evidence in 1997 that Neanderthals were cousins rather than direct ancestors of modern humans, said his research suggests that if there was mixing between Neanderthals and modern humans, it has left minuscule traces in our genome. But he believes the new Neanderthal genome might allow researchers to investigate whether earlier human genes were passed on to the Neanderthal.

“We’re currently analyzing if we see evidence in the Neanderthal genome of contribution from human ancestors,” Paabo said. “That question I think is still totally open.”

Other researchers said the likelihood of contamination and the vast similarities between the two species would make it exceedingly difficult to pinpoint any genetic connection.

“This research is a great technical achievement in itself, but has little implication for the debate concerning a part-Neanderthal ancestry of Europe’s earliest modern humans,” Joao Zilhao of the University of Bristol in Britain wrote in an e-mail to the AP.

For 2 1/2 years, Paabo ran minute samples of bone – the whole project has required just half a gram – through hulking half-million dollar machines that revealed DNA sequences.

The process was tedious and fraught with challenges. Much of the DNA in the bone had decayed over time, and it was difficult to distinguish what remained from the genetic material of bacteria that colonized the Neanderthal after death. Human handling at the excavation site in Croatia and at the laboratory also contaminated the sample.

Paabo’s team studied places in the bone where molecules most often broke down over the centuries and used that data to rule out DNA that didn’t show similar degradation, meaning it probably belonged to bacteria. They sterilized their lab and attached a synthetic DNA tag to keep track of strands they believed to be genuine.

Geneticists and DNA researchers said the project’s success despite those challenges is its most significant achievement.

“What they’ve shown is it’s possible to get that much data from this old, crummy sample,” said Tom Gilbert, a geneticist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Many more runs will be necessary, Gilbert said, to check each pair by covering it multiple times before it’s clear which pairs are unique to the Neanderthal. Paabo hopes to cover each Neanderthal base pair 12 to 15 times in the years ahead.

In the meantime, scientists can compare smaller sections of Neanderthal DNA to data from completed genome projects on humans and chimpanzees.

Beth Shapiro, an ancient DNA specialist at Penn State University, said placing the three side by side will make it possible to determine what regions of our genome make us uniquely human.

“There are 35 million differences between chimps and us,” Shapiro said. “That’s a lot, so we don’t really know where to look. But this Neanderthal genome gets us that little bit closer.”

A three-way comparison will also allow researchers to investigate whether the Neanderthal inherited a certain trait from an ancestor closer to the chimpanzee or one closer to modern humans, Paabo said.

Recent work to map an extinct mammoth’s genome using hair preserved in permafrost raised questions about whether it might be possible to clone the mammal using its DNA sequencing as a blueprint. Paabo said because the Neanderthal DNA was scattered in imperfect fossils, the notion of cloning a Neanderthal was far-fetched.

“Starting from the DNA extracted from a fossil, it is and will remain impossible,” he said. “There is not really an improvement on current technologies that would make that possible.”

Egyptian tomb again

22 Mummies Found in Egyptian Tomb

By MAGGIE MICHAEL

AP

posted: 29 DAYS 4 HOURS AGO

CAIRO (Feb. 9) — A storeroom housing about two dozen ancient Egyptian mummies has been unearthed inside a 2,600-year-old tomb during the latest round of excavations at the vast necropolis of Saqqara south of Cairo, archaeologists said Monday.

The tomb was located at the bottom of a 36-foot deep shaft, said Egypt’s top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass. Twenty-two mummies were found in niches along the tomb’s walls, he said.

Eight sarcophagi were also found in the tomb. Archaeologists so far have opened only one of the sarcophagi — and found a mummy inside of it, said Hawass’ assistant Abdel Hakim Karar. Mummies are believed to be inside the other seven, he said.

The “storeroom for mummies” dates back to 640 B.C. during the 26th Dynasty, which was Egypt’s last independent kingdom before it was overthrown by a succession of foreign conquerors beginning with the Persians, Hawass said. But the tomb was discovered at an even older site in Saqqara that dates back to the 4,300-year-old 6th Dynasty, he said.

Most of the mummies are poorly preserved, and archeologists have yet to determine their identities or why so many were put in one room.

The name Badi N Huri was engraved into the opened sarcophagus, but the wooden coffin did not bear a title for the mummy.

“This one might have been an important figure, but I can’t tell because there was no title,” Karar said.

Karar also said it was unusual for mummies of this late period to be stored in rocky niches.

“Niches were known in the very early dynasties, so to find one for the 26th Dynasty is something rare,” he said.

Excavations have been ongoing at Saqqara for 150 years, uncovering a necropolis of pyramids and tombs dating mostly from the Old Kingdom but also tombs from as recent as the Roman era.

In the past, excavations have focused on just one side of the site’s two most prominent pyramids — the famous Step Pyramid of King Djoser and that of Unas, the last king of the 5th Dynasty. The area where the current tomb was found, to the southwest, has been largely untouched by archeologists.

In December, two tombs were found near the current discovery of mummies. The tombs were built for high officials — one responsible for the quarries used to build the nearby pyramids and the other for a woman in charge of procuring entertainers for the pharaohs.

In November, Hawass announced the discovery of a new pyramid at Saqqara, the 118th in Egypt, and the 12th to be found just in Saqqara.

According to Hawass, only 30 percent of Egypt’s monuments have been uncovered, with the rest still under the sand.

February 9, 2009, 4:48 pm <!– — Updated: 5:41 pm –>

Long-Lost Bugatti Sells for $4.4 Million

By Nick Kurczewski

This very rare 1937 Bugatti 57S Atalante was found in a garage in England after its owner had died in 2007. (Bonhams)

PARIS — Think twice before washing and waxing that old jalopy in your grandfather’s garage. Its faded paint and flat tires could be hiding a multimillion-dollar gem.

At least that was the case on Saturday when an unrestored 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante Coupe sold for roughly $4.4 million at the Bonhams auction here at Retromobile at the Porte de Versailles. The price was slightly higher than the official estimate.

The Bugatti had made headlines in January when Bonhams first announced the auction. The car was found in the garage of a doctor, who died in 2007.

A splotchy flat-black paint job, sagging seats and rusty wire wheels didn’t deter bidders of this “barn-find” Bugatti. According to the Bonhams sales catalog, the car had not been driven in “50 years.”

Founded in 1909 in Molsheim, France, the company made cars that were among the most advanced and expensive of their day. The brand was synonymous with racing victories and a worldwide “who’s who” of wealthy clientele. Bugattis won the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race, as well as innumerable victories in grand prix and sports-car racing.

The company managed to survive the Great Depression. World War II, coupled with the death of the company’s founder, Ettore Bugatti, in 1947, brought an end to the marque.

Several attempts were made at resurrecting the brand, with limited success. Volkswagen bought the Bugatti name in 1998, and after a long development program, the investment finally culminated in the outrageous Veyron supercar.

The Veyron’s top speed of 253 miles an hour — along with a sticker price in excess of $1 million –- once again made Bugatti the pinnacle of automotive technology and luxury.

Of course, the brand’s pre-existing fame did not stop the hype and hyperbole that is often used to excite potential buyers. It was suggested that the 57S Atalante Coupe could break the record for the most expensive car ever sold at auction. That record, incidentally, is held by another Bugatti, a 1931 Royale Kellner Coupe that sold at auction for £4.87 million (or $9.8 million) in 1987.

Only 17 copies of the Type 57S Atalante were built by Bugatti, according to Bonhams. Faster and sleeker than the standard 57 model, the 57S included special touches like a V-shaped radiator and a rear axle that passed directly through the frame (allowing for a much lower center of gravity).

In good running condition, a 57S like this one could be expected to top 120 miles an hour. But therein lies the problem for this car’s new owner. The official selling price of 3,417,500 euros (or $4.4 million, including buyer’s fees) does not include the hundreds of thousands of dollars (or euros) needed for a full restoration.

Bonhams did not comment as to who won the bidding or what the car’s fate might be.

volcano in Japan

Volcano spews ash on parts of Tokyo

Denver Post Wire Report

Posted: 02/02/2009 12:30:00 AM MST

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TOKYO — A volcano erupted near Tokyo early Monday, spewing a plume of smoke more than a mile high and raining ash down on parts of the city. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Mount Asama, about 90 miles northwest of Tokyo, erupted at 1:51 a.m. local time today, according to Japan’s Meteorological Agency. Chunks of rock from the explosion were found about 3,300 feet away from the volcano.

Meanwhile, geologists monitoring Alaska’s Mount Redoubt say the volcano is rumbling and emitting steam but has shown no dramatic burst of energy in the past 24 hours. Geologist Tina Neal at the Alaska Volcano Observatory said no flyovers were planned for Sunday.

Another shipwreck prize

The discovery of the shipwreck solves a longtime mystery about the fate of the warship, which sank in 1744 with 1,000 people and potentially $1 billion in gold aboard.

By Thomas H. Maugh II
February 3, 2009

American salvagers say they have discovered the long-sought wreck of HMS Victory, the mightiest and most technologically advanced warship of its time, which sank during a violent storm in the English Channel in 1744.

Armed with as many as 110 massive bronze cannons and carrying a crew of 900 men and 100 supernumeraries, the Victory was lost with all hands and reportedly with a treasure of gold bullion whose value is estimated at $1 billion.

In a news conference Monday in London, Greg Stemm, chief executive of Odyssey Marine Exploration in Tampa, Fla., said the company found the remains in 330 feet of water more than 60 miles from where the vessel was thought to have sunk — exonerating the captain, Sir John Balchin, from the widespread accusation that he had let it run aground through faulty navigation.

“This is the naval equivalent of the Titanic, perhaps even more important than the Titanic,” said marine archaeologist Sean Kingsley, director of Wreck Watch International, who consulted with Odyssey on the find. “It’s the only intact collection of bronze guns from a Royal Navy warship in the world.”

he ship, he added in a telephone interview, “was the equivalent in its day of an aircraft carrier armed with nuclear weapons. . . . When it disappeared off the face of the Earth, there was a collective gasp in the establishment and the general public.”

Like the Titanic, the Victory had flaws that rendered it vulnerable to its fate: Its three-deck design was unusually top-heavy, making it susceptible to excessive rolling, and its timbers were not aged properly, leading to premature rot.

Those flaws were corrected when its successor, the sixth and last British warship named Victory, was designed and built three decades later for Admiral Lord Nelson.

By that time as well, the massive bronze cannons had given way to lighter, cheaper cannons made of steel, marking the end of an era.

Odyssey Marine Exploration, which finds sunken ships and sells the artifacts, has made other notable discoveries.

In May 2007, it announced that it had recovered 17 tons of silver and gold coins from a Spanish wreck in the Atlantic, off the coast of Portugal.

The company is now in court with the Spanish government, which claims ownership of the treasure.

The company has been criticized by experts who say it has inflated the value of treasure to procure financial backing. Kingsley and Stemm both noted that the team had so far seen no sign of cargo on the Victory.

Odyssey’s shares, which have fallen sharply since September, rose 25 cents, or 6.3%, on Monday to close at $4.20 on Nasdaq.

The Victory search will be profiled this Thursday night in a documentary on the Discovery Channel.

Odyssey has also been criticized for its emphasis on finding wrecks carrying valuable cargo.

“I don’t approve of treasure hunting,” said marine archaeologist George Bass of Texas A&M University.

“I would like to think that historic shipwrecks would be treated like historic monuments on land, not broken down and sold for profit,” he said.

Stemm said Odyssey was negotiating with the British Defense Ministry over what salvage rights it will have.

The Victory site was discovered in May during Odyssey’s extensive surveying of the English Channel area with ships carrying sensitive magnetometers and other instruments. The location has been kept a closely guarded secret ever since.

Researchers used the company’s 8-ton remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Zeus to explore and photograph the site.

The ROV “almost immediately landed on a bronze cannon, which are extremely rare,” Kingsley said.

The cannons “were littered across the seabed, so you knew you had something incredible.”

The ROV also found a large copper caldron used for cooking, iron ballast that was placed in the keel for maneuverability, a 21-foot-long anchor — and, then, the “pièce de résistance, the royal arms of King George on the tops of the guns,” Kingsley said.

Using a specially designed ruler attached to the ROV’s camera, the researchers measured the mouths of the cannons and found that many were 7 inches in diameter — meaning they were 42-pounders, the most deadly weapon of the time, firing 42-pound cannonballs.

This much led the team to conclude that it had found a so-called first-rate warship, meaning it had three decks and more than 100 cannons. Only four first-rate warships were lost in the 18th century, and only one in the English Channel: the Victory.

“But really, finding a 42-pounder bronze cannon was as good as finding a bell with a name on it,” Kingsley said.

The Victory, which was built in Portsmouth between 1726 and 1737, was nearly 175 feet long, with a beam of 50 1/2 feet and a weight of 1,921 tons.

During her seven-year career, she was used primarily in noncombat operations to mount a show of force as a deterrent.

Her last master was Balchin, who spent nearly 60 years of his life serving the Royal Navy.

Balchin was called out of retirement in the summer of 1744 to helm the Victory on a mission to rescue a Mediterranean convoy blockaded by the French Brest fleet in the Tagus River in Lisbon.

After chasing the French away, Balchin headed home with his 26 ships. It was reported that the Victory took on a consignment of 400,000 pounds sterling for Dutch merchants.

A violent storm struck the channel on Oct. 5, scattering the fleet. All the ships made it home except the Victory.

History recorded that the ship was lost on the Casquets, a group of rocky islets northwest of Alderney and renowned as the “graveyard of the English Channel.” The lighthouse keeper at Alderney was court-martialed for failing to keep the lights on during the period in question.

Because of the prevailing winds and currents at the time, however, the researchers dismiss the possibility that the Victory ran aground. Instead, it sank at sea through no one’s fault.

“This is the most astonishing news,” Sir Robert Balchin, a descendant of the admiral, said in a statement released by Odyssey. “For generations, my family has wondered about the fate of Sir John and the Victory,” he said.

So far, Odyssey has retrieved only two bricks, which were used to register the site with U.S. officials; a 12-pounder cannon featuring the royal arms of George II; and a 4-ton, 42-pounder bearing the crest of George I.

The large cannon, Kingsley said, is the only known example of a gun of that size and type in existence on dry land.

The company is working with the Defense Ministry to plan the recovery of more artifacts. Kingsley said it was crucial to retrieve them as soon as possible to prevent further damage.

The site, he noted, is frequented by fishing trawlers whose nets “plow up the seabed.”

“All the wrecks in the area have massive plow marks through their middles,” Kingsley said.

The wreck is also at a depth that can be reached by diving, he said, and no provision has been made by the British government, which owns the ship, to protect it.

thomas.maugh@latimes.com

first the Pope – mobile, now ….

Pope to get his own Google channel

Vatican says texts, video of pontiff’s speeches will be posted

updated 6:28 p.m. MT, Sat., Jan. 17, 2009

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI is getting his own channel on Google.

It says the Vatican TV Center and Vatican Radio are collaborating with Google on the project.

The Vatican’s press office said Saturday that texts and video of the pope’s speeches as well as news about the pontiff would be posted directly onto the channel.

It says more information will be given next week.

The Vatican began using its Web site widely to publish teachings and pronouncements under the late Pope John Paul II.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

We knew water weighed a lot, but … oops!

Did massive dam trigger China quake?

Published Date: 07 February 2009

By Sharon LaFraniere in Beijing

NEARLY nine months after the devastating earthquake in China that left at least 80,000 people dead or missing, a growing number of scientists are suggesting the disaster was triggered by a four-year-old reservoir built close to a geological fault line.

An American scientist who studied the quake has said that it may have been induced by the weight of 320 million tons of water in the Zipingpu reservoir, less than a mile from a well-known major fault.

His conclusions coincide with a new finding by Chinese geophysicists that the dam caused significant seismic changes before the earthquake.

Scientists emphasise that the link between the dam and the failure of the fault has not been conclusively proved, and that even if the dam acted as a trigger, it would only have hastened an earthquake that would have occurred at some point.

However, any suggestion that a government project played a role in one of the biggest natural disasters in recent Chinese history is likely to be politically explosive.

he authorities have dismissed any notion that the building of the reservoir placed citizens in Sichuan province at any added risk, and they have blocked some environmental groups’ websites for suggesting dangers had been overlooked.

Pan Jiazheng, an expert in hydroengineering at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: “The earthquake research community outside and inside China has widely accepted the notion that the 12 May Wenchuan earthquake was a huge natural disaster caused by massive crustal movement, because no reservoir triggered-quake with a magnitude eight has ever occurred in history.”

Scientists generally agree that a reservoir, no matter how big, cannot, by itself, cause an earthquake. But Leonardo Seeber, a senior scientist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of New York’s Columbia University, said the impact of so much water could hasten an earthquake’s occurrence if geological conditions for a quake already existed. He said the best known example was a 1967 earthquake triggered by the Koyna dam in a remote area of India, with a magnitude of 6.5 and a death toll of about 180 people.

He said that the link between the Sichuan earthquake and the Zipingpu dam was not yet proved, and added:

“It would have occurred anyway. But, of course, the people who were affected might think the timing is an important difference.”

Christian Klose, a researcher at Columbia University, has estimated that the weight of the water in the Zipingpu reservoir amounted to 25 times the natural stress that tectonic movements exert in a year. The added pressure, he said, “resulted in the Beichuan fault coming close to failure”.

The dam, which is some 50 storeys tall and big enough to hold more than a billion cubic meters of water, sits astride the Minjiang River and was billed as one of China’s biggest water control projects.

Officials said the £500 million project, part of a grand plan to develop regions in China’s south and west, would generate 760,000 kilowatts of electricity, irrigate farmland, help control flooding and provide more water to industries and residents of Chengdu, a city with a population of more than ten million.

Almost as soon as construction got under way in 2001, one expert, Li Youcai, voiced fears that officials were underplaying the risk of a major earthquake in the region, but government officials reportedly rejected his argument.

Officials allowed the reservoir to fill with water in late 2004. Fan Xiao, chief engineer with the Sichuan geology and mineral bureau, said that from then until late 2005, there were 730 minor earthquakes, with magnitudes of three or less.

When the major quake struck last May, it originated 3.4 miles from the reservoir. The rupture in the Earth’s crust stretched for 185 miles, initially moving in a direction that Mr Klose said was consistent with the pressure from the water’s weight.

Mr Fan told reporters shortly afterwards that he believed the reservoir had influenced the timing, magnitude and location of the earthquake.

“The main lesson is that in building these kinds of projects, we need to give more consideration to scientific planning and not simply consider the electricity or water or the economic interests,” he said.

The debate reignited in December when two scientists at the China Earthquake Administration and three other researchers published a study in a Chinese journal. They concluded only that the weight of the reservoir’s water, and diffusion of water from the reservoir below the Earth’s surface, had “clearly affected the local seismicity” over a period of nearly four years before the fault ruptured.

They called for further study to establish whether the reservoir had helped trigger the earthquake.

One of the scientists, Du Fang, said she and other scientists were free to research the issue fully. “We scientists are free to research the topic we proposed, as long as it is worth studying,” she said. “I don’t feel any restrictions on access to the data from the government.”

New pressure of accountability on government from public

GOVERNMENT accountability and responsiveness is an issue that has boiled over in China in the past year. Grieving parents have made the earthquake a political issue, saying children died needlessly in unsafe school buildings approved by negligent or corrupt officials.

More public anger erupted last year, when the government failed to prevent the sale of tainted milk powder that caused the death of six children and made 300,000 ill.

Cheng Li, the China research director at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said: “Any kind of government-related disaster presently is very, very damaging and politically extremely sensitive.”

If it is proved the earthquake “was related to a man-made situation and not just a natural disaster, the government will be very uncomfortable”.

Questions about the Zipingpu dam are especially delicate because China is building many hydroelectric dams in the south-west of the country, a region which has abundant water resources but is considered to be prone to earthquakes.

In a petition to the government in July, a group of environmentalists and scholars said the fact that government scientists had underestimated the risk of the May earthquake raised questions about a host of other dams.

• Last Updated: 06 February 2009 9:27 PM
• Source: The Scotsman
• Location: Edinburgh

Polar seas very populous

Survey shows polar seas are no biological desert

By MICHAEL CASEY (AP Environmental Writer)

From Associated Press

February 15, 2009 2:59 PM EST

BANGKOK, Thailand – The polar oceans are not biological deserts after all.

A marine census released Monday documented 7,500 species living in the Antarctic and 5,500 in the Arctic, including several hundred that researchers believe could be new to science.

And, in one of the biggest surprises, researchers said they discovered dozens of species common to both polar seas – separated by nearly 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers).

Most of the new discoveries were simpler life forms known as invertebrates, or animals without backbones.

Researchers, for example, doubled the number of jellyfish-like Arctic ctenophore known to science from five to 10. One of those was the size and color of an orange, had bungee cord-like tentacles streaming off it and was living at a depth of two kilometers (1.2 miles).

They also found scores of sea spider species that were as big as a human hand and tiny, shrimp-like crustaceans in the Arctic basin that live at a depth of 9,850 feet (3,000 meters).

“The textbooks have said there is less diversity at the poles than the tropics but we found astonishing richness of marine life in the Antarctic and Arctic oceans,” said Victoria Wadley, a researcher from the Australian Antarctic Division who took part in the Antarctic survey. “We are rewriting the textbooks.”

Gilly Llewellyn, leader of the oceans program for the environmental group WWF-Australia, said the numbers of species found shows just how little was known about these frigid regions.

“We probably know more about deep space than we do about the deep polar oceans in our own backyard,” said Llewellyn, who did not take part in the survey. “This critical research is helping reveal the amazing biodiversity of the polar regions.”

The survey – which included over 500 polar researchers from 25 countries – took place during International Polar Year which ran in 2007-2008.

Researchers braved up to 48-foot (16-meter) waves on their trip to the Antarctic while their colleagues in the Arctic worked under the watchful eye of a security guard hired to protect them from polar bears.

New technology also helped make the expeditions more efficient and productive than in the past. Researchers used cell-phone-like tracking devices, for example, to record the Arctic migration of narwhals, a whale with a long twisted tooth, and remotely operated submersibles to reach several miles (kilometers) down into the oceans to study delicate marine animals that are impossible to collect.

The survey is one of several projects of the Census of Marine Life, an international effort to catalog all life in the oceans. The 10-year census, scheduled for final publication in 2010, is supported by governments, divisions of the United Nations and private conservation organizations.

As many as 235 species were found in both polar seas, including five whale species, six sea birds and nearly 100 species of crustaceans.

“We think of the Arctic and Antarctic as similar habitats but they are separated by great distances,” said University of Alaska Fairbanks plankton ecologist Russ Hopcroft, who took part in the Arctic survey.

“So finding species at both ends of the Earth – some of which don’t have a known connection in between – raises a whole bunch of evolutionary questions,” he said.

Hopcroft and other polar researchers will now try to determine how long these species have been separated and whether they have drifted apart genetically.

David Barnes, of the British Antarctic Survey, said there a number of possibilities to explain how similar species live so far apart.

Some may have traveled along the deep-sea currents that link the poles or may have thrived during the height of the last ice age about 20,000 years ago when the polar environment was expanded and the two habitats were closer.

Hopcroft and Barnes cautioned that more work needs to be done to confirm whether the 235 species are indeed the same or differ genetically.

“Painstaking work by geneticists investigating both nuclear and mitochondrial genes will only be able to confirm this,” Barnes said in an e-mail interview. “It may be they separated sometime ago but similar selective pressures have meant they have not changed much

New face – new life!

She can eat pizza. And hamburgers. She can smell perfume, drink coffee from a cup, and purse her lips as if to blow a kiss. Except that one lip is hers, and the other is from a dead woman. She is the nation’s first face transplant patient, and on Thursday night, she went home from a Cleveland hospital. “I’m happy about myself,” she told her doctors.

“She accepted her new face,” said Dr. Maria Siemionow, the Cleveland Clinic reconstructive surgeon who led the historic operation in early December.

The woman’s identity has not been revealed, and hospital officials won’t say where she went. She and her family have declined requests for an interview.

She suffered a traumatic injury several years ago, the details of which doctors also won’t reveal. But it left the woman with no nose, palate, or way to eat or breathe normally. In a 22-hour procedure, 80 percent of her face was replaced with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from another woman who had just died.

It was the fourth partial face transplant in the world, though the others were not as extensive.

The patient’s recovery has been astonishing, Siemionow said. She shows no signs of rejecting her new face, is doing well on standard immune-suppressing drugs, and can breathe normally instead of through a hole in her windpipe.

A couple weeks ago, she ate pizza for the first time in years.

“She can actually feel the new face, and she does not feel the difference between her old face and her new face,” Siemionow said.

“Before surgery, she couldn’t smell at all,” the surgeon said. Now, “she can recognize perfumes, she can eat and smell her hamburger … she can drink her coffee from the cup.”

Most surprising to doctors, who thought a transplanted face would never be able to do this: “She can wink her eye,” Siemionow said.

Her face appears so normal, that she could probably even could go out in public and not be recognized as someone who had a face transplant, Siemionow said.

“The scars are nicely hidden because it’s such a large transplant,” she said. “We are really pleased with the outcome.”

The woman must return a couple of times a week for follow-up care. She still needs restorative dental work. Doctors are working on a dental prosthesis to help fill the massive defect she suffered from her injury and to hold upper false teeth. Her lower teeth and lip are her own.

Already, the improvement in her quality of life is dramatic, and she is enjoying small pleasures “that we take for granted,” Siemionow said.

“She enjoys cookies with her coffee,” but could not drink from a cup before the transplant. “She loves hamburgers. For years, she could not eat chicken,” and longed for its taste, the surgeon said.

The woman suffered emotionally from being called names and frightening children who ran away when they saw her, Siemionow said in a December news conference when the transplant was announced. Now, she has found inner happiness and confidence with the new face.

“It’s something that will give a lot of hope to other patients,” Siemionow said.

Such operations have been controversial because unlike transplants of vital organs like hearts and livers, face transplants are done to improve quality of life — not extend it. Recipients run the risk of deadly complications and must take immune-suppressing drugs for the rest of their lives to prevent organ rejection, raising their odds of cancer and infections.

However, leading physician groups and bioethicists praised the Cleveland case and have warmed to the idea for carefully selected patients who have exhausted other reconstructive surgery options.

The Cleveland Clinic has received a military grant to investigate face transplants for injured soldiers, and Siemionow visited Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio a few months ago to consider potential candidates.

The clinic hopes to offer more such operations, but “we’ll give our results a little time” and make sure this patient does well, she said.

The world’s first partial face transplant was performed in France in 2005 on a 38-year-old woman who had been mauled by her dog. Isabelle Dinoire received a new nose, chin and lips from a brain-dead donor. Apart from some rejection episodes, she has done well.

Two others have received partial face transplants since then — a Chinese farmer attacked by a bear and a European man disfigured by a genetic condition.

article by Marilynn Marchione