I’d thought I’d highlight some of the interesting science stories I’ve seen lately.
Music for the Monkeys
This is a really interesting story about music and its ability to effect emotions. It’s a great example of the scientific method.
[David] Teie has been developing a theory to explain why music plays on human emotions. His theory is that music relates to the most primitive sounds we make and respond to, like laughter, heartbeats, or a mother’s cooing.
“When I thought I had all the pieces put into place, I figured any good theory is testable, so one of the ways to test it would be to see if I could write music that would be affective for species other than human,” he says.
So David Teie contacted Chuck Snowdon who did research with tamarinds at the University of Wisconsin (go Badgers!). Professor Snowdon sent recordings of fearful tamarinds and happy tamarinds to David Teie and he composed music specifically based on these sounds.
He played the compositions on his cello and then electronically boosted them up three octaves, to a pitch that matched the monkeys’ voices. Monkeys don’t respond at all to music written for humans, but they did respond when they heard this composition.
Snowdon says people may not be calmed by this relatively fast tempo of one of the pieces, but the monkeys in his lab certainly were.
As expected, when the fearful composition was played the monkeys became quite agitated.
Say Cheese!
Scientists at IBM used Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to get an image of the atoms in a molecule.
It may look like a piece of honeycomb, but this lattice-shaped image is the first ever close-up view of a single molecule.
Scientists from IBM used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to reveal the chemical bonds within a molecule.
‘This is the first time that all the atoms in a molecule have been imaged,’ lead researcher Leo Gross said.
AFM image of pentacene
Coral Reefs in Trouble
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is in trouble.
The Great Barrier Reef is a world heritage site and its waters are managed but it could face destruction by 2050.
The reef, which stretches for 1,200 miles off the northeast coast of Australia, has “poor” prospects of survival as a result of over-development and a failure by the relevant authorities to protect it from illegal fishing and chemical run-off, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said its first report on the state of the reef’s health.
The report warned that damage to mangroves, increasing algae on coral reefs, ocean acidification and coral bleaching were already evident.
Coral reefs are like the ocean’s canaries in a coal mine. They’ve been in trouble for some time from the changes in the ocean due to climate change.
It now seems certain that coral reefs will be the first marine ecosystem to suffer extreme damage and possible collapse from climate change. The major consequences of increasing greenhouse gases on coral reefs include:
1. coral bleaching from warming oceans;
2. rising ocean acidification from dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2);
3. more severe storms; and
4. rising sea levels.
Ocean acidification is one consequence of climate change that has not been discussed much. Oceans absorb about 1/3 of the carbon dioxide emissions (1/3 is absorbed by plants and 1/3 goes into the atmosphere). The reaction of carbon dioxide with water to form carbonic acid is important for the ocean ecosystem but it is an equilibrium reaction – that means increasing carbon dioxide pushes the equilibrium to the carbonic acid side and that increases ocean acidity (decreasing pH). Indeed, the pH of the ocean has decreased 0.1 pH unit in this century. That is a huge change and it has consequences for sea creatures that depend on carbonate to make their shells. This effects the whole ocean ecosystem.