Tag Archives: new mexico

Wildlife Monitoring Cameras Click Jaguar and Ocelot Photos

By Guest PostDecember 21, 2012Natureautomated, baboquivari mountains, big cats, boot heel, cat species, central, computer program, distribution of jaguars, ecology and habits, Environment, huachuca mountains, hunter, jaguar survey, lisa haynes, male jaguar, male ocelot, melanie culver, Mexico, monitoring project, mountain ranges, natural resources, neotropical cats, new mexico, ocelot movement, pictures of jaguar, project, rugged arizona landscape, santa rita mountains, sierra vista, sky island, south america, southern arizona, tail photo, united states, university of arizona, whetstone mountains, wildlife monitoring cameras

Automated trail cameras set up by a UA research team have snapped pictures of a male jaguar and a male ocelot roaming the rugged Southern Arizona landscape.

An adult male jaguar and an adult male ocelot have been photographed in two separate Southern Arizona mountain ranges by automated wildlife monitoring cameras. The images were collected as part of the Jaguar Survey and Monitoring Project led by the University of Arizona. Both animals appear to be in good health.

In late November, the UA project team downloaded photos from wildlife cameras set up as part of the research project and found new pictures of a jaguar in the Santa Rita Mountains. A total of 10 jaguar photos were taken by three UA cameras and one Arizona Game and Fish Department camera. The cat’s unique spot pattern matched that of a male jaguar photographed by a hunter in the Whetstone Mountains in the fall of 2011, providing clear evidence that the big cats travel between Southern Arizona’s “sky island” mountain ranges. (more…)

Seeing Stars, Finding Nukes: Radio Telescopes Can Spot Clandestine Nuclear Tests

By Guest PostDecember 11, 2012Environment, Scienceagu, american geophysical union, amplitudes, astronomical radio telescopes, atmosphere, China, distant galaxy, dorota grejner brzezinska, earth, global community, gnss, gps stations, gps systems, hunters trophy, ionosphere, Japan, jihye park, joseph helmboldt, kilotons, nevada, nevada test site, new mexico, north korea, north korean bomb, north korean explosion, north korean test, nuclear test, ohio state university, radio astronomer, radio telescopes, ralph von frese, rogue nukes, russia, socorro, south Korean, telltale atmospheric disturbances, thomas wilson, underground nuclear explosions, university of nottingham, very large array, vla, yu jade morton

SAN FRANCISCO — In the search for rogue nukes, researchers have discovered an unlikely tool: astronomical radio telescopes.

Ohio State University researchers previously demonstrated another unlikely tool, when they showed that South Korean GPS stations detected telltale atmospheric disturbances from North Korea’s 2009 nuclear test.

Both techniques were born out of the discovery that underground nuclear explosions leave their mark—on the outer reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. (more…)

Asteroid that Killed the Dinosaurs also Wiped out the ‘Obamadon’

By Guest PostDecember 11, 2012Nature, Scienceage of dinosaurs, alberta, asteroid collision, asteroid strike, bhart anjan bhullar, boundary, canada, carnivorous lizards, cerberophis, cretaceous, dinosaur species, dinosaurs, diversification, ecosystem, edmontosaurus, evolution, extinct lizard, flood, fossils, gracilis, harvard, jacques a gauthier, kill, lizard, mammals, mass extinction, montana, new mexico, nicholas r longrich, North America, obamadon, obamadon gracilis, odon, palaeosaniwa, paleogene, political significance, polyglyphanodontia, slender, snake, species, survivor, swamps, t rex, taxonomy, tooth, triceratops, united states, us president, yale, yucatan peninsula

The asteroid collision widely thought to have killed the dinosaurs also led to extreme devastation among snake and lizard species, according to new research — including the extinction of a newly identified lizard Yale and Harvard scientists have named Obamadon gracilis.

“The asteroid event is typically thought of as affecting the dinosaurs primarily,” said Nicholas R. Longrich, a postdoctoral associate with Yale’s Department of Geology and Geophysics and lead author of the study. “But it basically cut this broad swath across the entire ecosystem, taking out everything. Snakes and lizards were hit extremely hard.” (more…)

BOSS Quasars Unveil a New Era in the Expansion History of the Universe

By Guest PostNovember 21, 2012Scienceacceleration, analytic techniques, ancient universe, andreu font ribera, apache point observatory, bao, baryon, baryon acoustic oscillations, berkeley lab, bigboss, bill carithers, BOSS, clouds, cosmology, dark energy, dark matter, data sets, david schlegel, deceleration, density variation, digital sky survey, early universe, evolution, expanse of sky, expansion, gas clouds, gas density, gravity, hydrogen absorption lines, intergalactic gas, lyman alpha forest, mocks, new mexico, nicholas ross, oscillation, patrick mcdonald, quasars, riemann linux cluster, sdss, sloan, Space, spectra, spectroscopic, survey, universe, volume

Berkeley Lab scientists and their Sloan Digital Sky Survey colleagues use quasars to probe dark energy over 10 billion years in the past

BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, is mapping a huge volume of space to measure the role of dark energy in the evolution of the universe. BOSS is the largest program of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) and has just announced the first major result of a new mapping technique, based on the spectra of over 48,000 quasars with redshifts up to 3.5, meaning that light left these active galaxies up to 11.5 billion years in the past.

“No technique for dark energy research has been able to probe this ancient era before, a time when matter was still dense enough for gravity to slow the expansion of the universe, and the influence of dark energy hadn’t yet been felt,” says BOSS principal investigator David Schlegel, an astrophysicist in the Physics Division of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “In our own time, expansion is accelerating because the universe is dominated by dark energy. How dark energy effected the transition from deceleration to acceleration is one of the most challenging questions in cosmology.” (more…)

Degraded Military Lands To Get Ecological Boost From CU-led Effort

By Guest PostNovember 16, 2012Environmentamerican west, arid ecosystem, arid land, atmospheric dust, bacteria, biocrusts, biological soil crust, boulder, central america, China, colorado, cyanobacteria, degraded, desert environment, dugway proving ground, erosion, extreme environment, ferran garcia pichel, fort bliss, fungi, general george patton, hawaii, inoculation, jayne belnap, lichens, metropolitan area, michael duniway, microbial communities, military activity, military exercises, military installation, military vehicles, modeling, mojave desert, mosses, new mexico, nichole barger, northwest utah, pollutant, polyacrylamide, probability, restore, sasha reed, soil erosion, soil fertility, soil surface, South Africa, south america, survival, texas, university, water retention, word war

Some arid lands in the American West degraded by military exercises that date back to General George Patton’s Word War II maneuvers in the Mojave Desert should get a boost from an innovative research project led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

Headed up by CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Nichole Barger, the research team is focused on developing methods to restore biological soil crusts — microbial communities primarily concentrated on soil surfaces critical to decreasing erosion and increasing water retention and soil fertility. Such biological soil crusts, known as “biocrusts,” can cover up to 70 percent of the ground in some arid ecosystems and are dominated by cyanobacteria, lichens, mosses, fungi and bacteria, she said. (more…)

2001-02 Drought Helped to Shift Rocky Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreak into Epidemic

By Guest PostNovember 5, 2012Environment19th century, alpine research, Arctic, beetles, boulder, british columbia, climate, colorado, continental divide, drought, dynamics, epidemic, episode, evan pugh, forest, front range, lodgepole pine, mountain, native insect, new mexico, North America, northern, pine beetle, ponderosa pine, precipitation, rocky mountains, tania schoennagel, teresa chapman, thomas veblen, university, warmer climate, western slope, wyoming

A new University of Colorado Boulder study shows for the first time that episodes of reduced precipitation in the southern Rocky Mountains, especially during the 2001-02 drought, greatly accelerated development of the mountain pine beetle epidemic.

The study, the first ever to chart the evolution of the current pine beetle epidemic in the southern Rocky Mountains, compared patterns of beetle outbreak in the two primary host species, the ponderosa pine and lodgepole pine, said CU-Boulder doctoral student Teresa Chapman. The current mountain pine beetle outbreak in the southern Rockies — which range from southern Wyoming through Colorado and into northern New Mexico –is estimated to have impacted nearly 3,000 square miles of forests, said Chapman, lead study author. (more…)

Racial ‘Hierarchy of Bias’ Drives Decision to Shoot Armed, Unarmed Suspects, CU-Boulder Study Finds

By Guest PostOctober 25, 2012Politicsafrican american, asians, behavior, bernadette park, bias, black men, blacks, boulder, cell phone, charles judd, Chicago, colorado, cultural stereotype, dangerous, ethnic environment, ethnic group, florida, hierarchy, hispanics, joshua correll, jurisdiction, multi, new mexico, police officer, positive bias, russell sage foundation, san diego, shoot, state university, students, suspects, university, Washington, whites, young

Police officers and students exhibit an apparent “hierarchy of bias” in making a split-second decision whether to shoot suspects who appear to be wielding a gun or, alternatively, a benign object like a cell phone, research conducted by the University of Colorado Boulder and San Diego State University has found.

Both the police and student subjects were most likely to shoot at blacks, then Hispanics, then whites and finally, in a case of what might be called a positive bias, Asians, researchers found. (more…)

MSU Research Sheds New Light on Star Clusters, Black Holes

By Guest PostOctober 7, 2012Scienceanil seth, array telescope, astronomer, black hole, density, earth, Environment, Galaxy, globular cluster, gravitational dance, hubble, james miller jones, jay strader, laura chomiuk, light year, m22, messier 22, michigan, Milky Way, new mexico, radio observation, radio wavelength, research, space telescope, star, star cluster, state university, thomas maccarone, university, utah, very large, xray

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Research by Michigan State University astronomers has scientists re-thinking the fates of black holes, particularly in groups of stars known as globular clusters.

The research of Jay Strader, MSU assistant professor of physics and astronomy, and colleagues focused on a cluster called Messier 22, or M22, a collection of hundreds of thousands of stars located about 10,000 light years from Earth. Using images of unprecedented depth observed at radio wavelengths, Strader and his team were surprised to find not one but two black holes in the cluster. (more…)