An Atlas V rocket carrying Landsat 8 seen just after launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. (NASA)

NASA’s latest Earth-observing satellite rocketed into space today continuing a program which began more than 40 years ago.

An Atlas V rocket carrying the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) spacecraft launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc, California.

NASA officials called today’s launch “picture perfect.”   The spacecraft is now on its own after a successful separation from the Centaur upper stage.

The LDCM is the eighth in a series of global observational spacecraft called Landsat, a collaborative effort between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

According to NASA, it will play a critical role in monitoring, understanding and managing the resources, such as food and water, needed to sustain human life.

After three months of testing in orbit, the satellite will become known as Landsat 8, and all operational control of the spacecraft will transfer to USGS.

All Landsat data and imaging will continue to be collected by USGS primary ground stations in South Dakota and Australia.

Orbiting Earth every 99 minutes, Landsat 8 will be able to image Earth every 16 days as it circles the globe in a near polar orbit. Two new sophisticated instruments, Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), will allow Landsat 8 to provide image and data information that wasn’t possible with previous Landsat satellites.

Landsat 7 took these images showing the significant shrinkage of central Asia’s Aral Sea from 1977 to 2010 due to water diversion for agricultural use. (USGS)

The OLI will cover wide areas of the Earth’s surface, sending back data and high definition images to help observers distinguish between various surfaces; such as urban, agricultural and forested areas.

The TIRS will use new technology which applies quantum physics to measure land surface temperature in two thermal bands, helping observers differentiate the temperature of the Earth’s surface from that of the atmosphere.

The Landsat mission to study and monitor our planet’s land masses began with the launch of Landsat 1  in 1972.

Since then, Landsat 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 have all been put into service.  Landsat satellites 1 through 4 were taken out of service from the late 1970s through the early 1990s.

Landsat 5 , launched in 1984, was recently taken out of service and Landsat 6 never made it into orbit after a fuel line exploded seven minutes after liftoff.  Along with the just-launched Landsat 8, Landsat 7, which was sent into orbit in 1999, is the only remaining Landsat observing satellite still in service.

Landsat satellites snapped these Washington state images of  Mount St. Helens, which was surrounded by forests in 1974. Three months after the 1980 volcanic eruption, devastation caused by the blast is evident. By 2011, much of the damaged region had started to regrow. (USGS)

The imaging and data provided by the Landsat spacecraft  have helped scientists  better understand our planet’s climate, carbon cycle, ecosystems, water cycle, biogeochemistry and changes to Earth’s surface, as well as our understanding of visible effects  human have made to land surfaces.

NASA and USGS say the information provided by Landsat over the last 40 years has helped improve human and biodiversity health, energy and water management, urban planning, disaster recovery, and agriculture, which in turn has helped develop the world economy.

NASA video overview of the LDCM Mission

(Image: University of Colorado Denver)

Facebook users who decide to unfriend someone may trigger a series of real-life consequences which reach beyond cyberspace, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Denver.

Based on 582 survey responses gathered via Twitter, the study found that 40 percent of people would avoid anyone who unfriended them on Facebook in real life. Half of the respondents said they would not avoid the person, and the remaining 10 percent were unsure.

The survey found more women than men would avoid contact with the person who unfriended them. That surprised researchers, who were unable to find any reasons behind the difference between genders.

Social media websites have opened a new chapter in human relationships. In the past, making a friend involved face to face communication and interaction; friends were an actual physical part of your social circle.

Sites like Facebook allow users to become friends with people they’ve never met and might never meet in person.

(Image: AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, file)

This past October, Facebook alone logged its one billionth user.

Social media websites have been changing the dynamics in interpersonal communication as well. Traditional face-to-face dialog has given way to quick online interactions that have their own set of rules, language and even etiquette – called ‘netiquette’.

“People think social networks are just for fun,” said study author Christopher Sibona, a doctoral student at the University of Colorado Denver Business School. “But, in fact, what you do on those sites can have real-world consequences.”

Sibona found there were six factors which predicted whether someone would avoid a person who unfriended them.

♥ If the person discussed the event after it happened

♥ If the emotional response to the unfriending was extremely negative

♥ If the person unfriended believed the action was due to offline behavior

♥ The geographical distance between the two – if they lived close to each other and there’s a chance of physical contact

♥ If the troubled relationship was discussed prior to the unfriending

♥ How strong the person valued the relationship before the unfriending

Those who thought the unfriending was punishment for behaving badly offline also tended to avoid further contact with the ‘unfriender’

Everybody loves friends (Image: Pollyalida/Creative Commons at Flickr)

Compared to real-life relationships, the cost of maintaining online relationships is extremely low, according to Sibona. “In the real world, you have to talk to people, go see them to maintain face-to-face relationships. That’s not the case in online relationships. ”

Sibona also points out that real-life friendships often end by just fading away as people drift apart. However, an online friendship can come to an abrupt end when one friend unilaterally declares the friendship is over.

“Since it’s done online, there is an air of unreality to it, but in fact there are real-life consequences,” Sibona said. “We are still trying to come to grips as a society on how to handle elements of social media. The etiquette is different and often quite stark.”

In 2010, Sibona authored another Facebook-based study which examined why people are unfriended on Facebook. He found four top reasons for unfriending:

♥ Frequent, unimportant posts

♥ Polarizing posts usually about politics or religion

♥ Inappropriate posts involving sexist, racist remarks

♥ Boring everyday life posts about children, food, spouses etc.

Unfriending someone in Facebook could have real world consequences (Image: Oli Dunkley/Creative Commons via Flickr)

According to Sibona, past research shows individuals who’ve been ostracized from a group of friends experience lower moods, have less of a feeling of belonging, and feel a sense of loss of control and reduced self-esteem.

“People who are unfriended may face similar psychological effects, because unfriending may be viewed as a form of social exclusion,” Sibona said. “The study makes clear that unfriending is meaningful and has important psychological consequences for those to whom it occurs.”

Drawing of the path of near-Earth asteroid 2012ge DA14 when it passes close to Earth on Feb. 15, 2013. (NASA)

Earth is about to have a close encounter with an asteroid, the nearest an object of its size has ever come to our planet.

The fly-by is expected to occur at around 1924 UTC on Feb. 15, according to scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The US space agency says there’s no chance the asteroid will collide with Earth.

“This is a record-setting close approach,” says Don Yeomans of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program at JPL. “Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, we’ve never seen an object this big get so close to Earth.”

Scientists expect the asteroid to pass us at a distance of about 27,700 km from the surface of the Earth. That’s close enough for it to pass inside the ring of a number of geosynchronous weather and communications satellites currently orbiting the Earth at about 36,000 km from Earth’s surface above the equator.

However, the asteroid should fly well above most of the satellites and spacecraft circling the planet, including the International Space Station (ISS).

To get an idea of just how close the 2012 DA14 asteroid will get to us, consider that it will come nearer to us than the moon, about 1/13th of the distance to the Moon, which is 384,400 km from Earth.

It’s expected to whiz by our planet quite fast, at a speed of about 7.8 kilometers per second in a south-to-north direction. This will be the closest an asteroid has come to Earth in at least 30 years and will give researchers a unique opportunity  to study it.

The 2012 DA14 is quite small, weighing about 130,000 metric tons and measuring about 45 meters across, less than the width of a soccer field. Astronomers believe it is made of stone, rather than metal or ice.

The asteroid was discovered by astronomers at the OAM Observatory in La Sagra, Spain less than a year ago, on Feb. 23, 2012, which is why “2012″ is part of its name.

NASA video feature of asteroid fly-by

A few other asteroids have flown even closer to Earth, but they were much smaller than the one expected to zoom by this month.  Scientists say objects of this size fly this close to the Earth about once every 40 years; an actual collision with Earth happens about every 1,200 years.

The 2012 DA14 asteroid is so tiny, it’s expected to look like a small point of light, even to those using the biggest optical telescopes. Difficult to see with the naked eye, it will be easily visible with a good set of binoculars or a small telescope.

Astronomers say the best place to see the asteroid will be in Indonesia, but people in Eastern Europe, Asia and Australia should also be able to get a glimpse.

The public can watch the event through live feeds from telescopes in La Sagra and Tenerife, Spain.

NASA astronomers at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC) in California’s Mojave Desert will use radar imaging to determine the orbit of the asteroid, allowing them to better predict future encounters. The imaging data will also be used to create a 3D map showing the asteroid from all sides and should reveal more about the asteroid’s physical characteristics, such as its size and spin.

Georgia Tech researchers found many types of bacteria, include E.coli, in the middle to upper regions of the troposphere. (Photo: USDA)

Scientists have discovered a considerable number of living microorganisms, including bacteria, in the middle to upper regions of the troposphere, the region of our atmosphere that’s about seven to 20 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology said their findings might help other scientists learn more about the role microorganisms play in forming ice that may impact weather and climate.

Health and medical experts studying the transmission of disease could also benefit by gaining new insight into long-distance transport of bacteria.

Conditions in the troposphere cannot support most other forms of life without the aid of special equipment. Temperatures there can drop to as low as -55° C and the air pressure and density are considerably lower than on earth.

Microorganisms, such as bacteria, are plentiful and can be found everywhere on the Earth and in the sea.

These hardy little forms of life not only survive but actually thrive in some of the harshest conditions known to man. They live within other forms of life, such as the human body; in the soil and the air surrounding us; in scalding hot springs; the great depths of the ocean; and inside rocks deep within the Earth’s crust.

A view outside the window of a DC-8 aircraft as air samples are gathered for a NASA study. Georgia Tech scientists found living microorganisms in the samples. (Photo: NASA)

The microorganisms  documented by Georgia Tech scientists were gathered from air samples recovered as part of NASA’s 2010 Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) program, which studies low- and high-altitude air masses associated with tropical storms.

NASA gathered the air samples from aboard a DC-8 aircraft that flew over both land and ocean, including the Caribbean Sea and portions of the Atlantic Ocean during and after two major tropical hurricanes in 2010, Earl and Karl.

Attaching a special filter system developed by the Georgia Tech team to the aircraft’s outside air sampling probes, researchers were able to collect numerous particles, including the microorganisms.

Once the air samples were taken, the filters were removed from the aircraft and sent to researchers for examination.

Rather than resorting to conventional cell-culture techniques to make their analysis, the researchers instead used genomic techniques, including polymerase chain reaction (PCR) – a biochemical technology used in molecular biology that magnifies a piece of DNA, allowing scientists to generate millions of copies of the DNA sequence, as well as gene sequencing to spot and estimate the quantities of microorganisms contained within the air samples.

The researchers found more bacteria than fungi among the microorganisms.

“We did not expect to find so many microorganisms in the troposphere, which is considered a difficult environment for life,” said one of the study’s authors, Kostas Konstantinidis, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech. “There seems to be quite a diversity of species, but not all bacteria make it into the upper troposphere.”

Terry Lathem, a graduate student in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, aboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft while gathering samples of microorganisms in the atmosphere. (NASA)

The living bacterial cells found made up about 20 percent of the total particles detected within the size range of 0.25 to 1 microns in diameter.

Air samples taken over the ocean were found to contain mostly marine bacteria, while primarily terrestrial bacteria was found in samples taken above land.

The researchers also found that hurricanes had a major impact on the distribution and dynamics of microorganism populations.

Kostas Konstantinidis joins us for this weekend’s radio edition of Science World.  He’ll tell us how these findings could help advance research in climatology and medicine.

Check out the right column for scheduled air-times or listen now to the interview below.

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Thousands of years after first becoming domesticated, the house cat remains a beloved family pet. (Photo: Dave Morris/Flickr via Creative Commons)

Most people view cats as harmless pets, but for birds and small mammals, the domesticated feline can be a deadly killer.

A new study in Nature Communications finds bird and mammal mortality caused by outdoor cats is much higher than has been previously reported. Annual bird deaths in the United States are now estimated to be 1.4 to 3.7 billion, while mammal mortality runs from 6.9 to 20.7 billion individual animals.

Stray cats, as opposed to those that are owned and cared for by humans, cause the majority of these deaths, according to researchers from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, who conducted the study.

The study, by two of the world’s leading science and wildlife organizations, offers the one of the most comprehensive analyses on outdoor cat predation.

The ancient Egyptians may have been the first to domesticate the cat more than 4,000 years ago. The animal became a favored household pet over the centuries, in large part due to their natural ability to hunt and eradicate household pests and vermin, such as mice and rats.

But that natural hunting ability could be a key reason cats are listed as one of the 100 worst non-native invasive species in the world, according to the Global Invasive Species Database, which was published in 2000.

A cat with its catch, a bird called the American Coot (Photo: Debi Shearwater)

A separate 2011 study found free-ranging cats have caused or contributed to 14 percent of modern bird, mammal and reptile extinctions on islands. The same report also found that feral cats cause a substantial proportion of total wildlife mortality.

Dr. George Fenwick, president of American Bird Conservancy, a group which has called for action on this issue for many years, reacted to this latest report. “This study, which employed scientifically rigorous standards for data inclusion, demonstrates that the issue of cat predation on birds and mammals is an even bigger environmental and ecological threat than we thought. No estimates of any other anthropogenic [human-caused] mortality source approach the bird mortality this study calculated for cat predation.”

However, the Humane Society of the United States questioned the report’s numbers.  “The HSUS values both cats and wildlife. There is a legitimate issue with free-roaming cats preying on birds and other wildlife, and we are working to change that in a meaningful way,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the US. “Despite the scientific rigor with which this report was prepared, like others recently published, it tries to attach a number to something that is almost impossible to credibly quantify.”

The larger issue, according to the humane society,  is finding practical and humane actions to mitigate the impact of cats in communities.

Current policies for managing feral cat populations and regulating pet ownership usually focus more on animal welfare rather than ecological impacts, according to authors of the latest study.

The domesticated cat’s natural hunting abilities help homeowners keep their homes pest and vermin free. (Photo: Cobalt123/Flickr via Creative Commons)

One of the more popular forms of managing free-ranging cats includes Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate and Return colonies,  a method of humanely trapping feral cats, spaying or neutering them as needed, vaccinating the animals for diseases like rabies, and then releasing them back to the same location where they were collected.

The study asserts these methods of managing feral cats are employed throughout the US without widespread public knowledge, consideration of scientific evidence, or the environmental review processes typically required for actions with harmful environmental concerns.

The researchers recommend scientifically sound conservation and policy intervention to reduce the negative impact of feral cats on wildlife.

Waste heat from major cities is contributing to warmer winters, according to a new study. (Photo: Petr Magera via Creative Commons at Flickr)

Everyday energy consumption in urban areas could be significant enough to cause winter temperatures to rise.

According to a new study funded by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), waste heat released in major cities in the Northern Hemisphere in the northern-most parts of North America and Eurasia.

“The world’s most populated metropolitan areas, which also have the highest rates of energy consumption, are along the east and west coasts of the North American and Eurasian continents, underneath the most prominent atmospheric circulation troughs and ridges,” said Ming Cai, from Florida State University and an author of the study. “The concentrated and intensive release of waste energy in these areas causes a noticeable interruption to normal atmospheric circulation systems, leading to remote surface temperature changes far away from the regions where the waste heat is generated.”

According to the study published Nature Climate Change, the total amount of energy consumed throughout the world in 2006 was 16 terawatts, 16 trillion watts with 6.7 terawatts of that amount consumed within the 86 metropolitan areas considered in the study.

“The burning of fossil fuel not only emits greenhouse gases but also directly effects temperatures because of heat that escapes from sources like buildings and cars,” said Aixue Hu of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, another of the study’s authors.

The excess energy and resulting warmer winter temperatures could also help explain the discrepancies between actual observed warming over the last half-century, compared to the amount of warming that computer models have been able to account for.

US National Weather Service illustration of two atmospheric systems known as jet streams traveling northeast across the United States. (NOAA)

Waste heat from urban areas is different from energy found naturally in atmosphere, such as what’s produced by our Sun-warmed planet.  That atmospheric energy is normally distributed from one region to another by various circulation systems, like the Jet Stream.

Humans consume energy produced by fossil fuel sources, oil and coal, that have stayed hidden and unused for millions of years.  Although the amount of energy produced and used by humans represents only a small portion of what’s actually transported throughout the atmosphere by nature, the researchers say that it is highly concentrated in urban areas.

“What we found is that energy use from multiple urban areas collectively can warm the atmosphere remotely, thousands of miles away from the energy consumption regions,” said study co-author Guang Zhang, from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “This is accomplished through atmospheric circulation change.”

The influence of heat generated in urban areas can widen the jet stream and strengthen atmospheric flows in regions located at mid-latitudes, areas which lie between the tropics and the polar regions of the world.

Researchers point out this warming effect generated by urban heat is not necessarily even and uniform throughout the world.  They say changes in major atmospheric systems, that can cool parts of Europe by up to 1 degree C mostly during the fall, can offset this heating effect. That’s why the impact of the urban winter heat on global temperatures is slight, raising the temperature by an average of about .1 degree C worldwide.

The study does not address whether the effects of urban heating can actually disrupt atmospheric weather patterns or if it plays any role in hastening global warming.

Electrodes are placed on the head of lab chimpanzee Mizuki for brain wave measurement. (NIH)

An advisory group has called on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to retire most of the nearly 700 chimps it owns or supports.

NIH’s Council of Councils also recommended the medical research agency drastically cut back on the various medical studies involving the use of chimpanzees, while making certain those chimps that are still being studied are kept in proper living conditions.

The recommendations, contained in an 84-page report, were in response to a December 2011 review by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which concluded that while the chimpanzee was a valuable animal model in the past, most current biomedical use of the animal is unnecessary.

The IOM suggested that while chimpanzees could still serve an important role in some research areas, a set of guidelines, principles and criteria must be established to govern that research.

Chimpanzees that had been used for NIH biomedical testing get acquainted with their new retirement home at Chimp Haven in Louisiana. (AP)

Using the IOM report for guidance, NIH’s advisory group recommended the majority of NIH-owned chimpanzees be retired and transferred to facilities within the federal sanctuary system, while immediately planning to ensure proper accommodations and treatment for the chimps.

The advisory group suggested a small population of about 50 chimpanzees be maintained by the agency for future potential research as long it meets the principles and guidelines contained within the IOM report.

The report stressed that animals remaining in NIH custody should be kept in “ethologically appropriate” settings, which include large, complex social groups, year-round outdoor access and more than 1,000 square feet of living space per chimpanzee.

The size and placement of this colony, according to the NIH group, should also be reassessed about every five years to ensure  a colony of chimps is still needed and that the animals aren’t overused.

With fewer chimpanzees being made available to scientists for research, the advisory group recommended  NIH to encourage and support the development and refinement of other approaches, especially alternative animal models, such as genetically altered mice, for research on new, emerging and reemerging diseases.

A chimpanzee named Lyons sits in a play yard at Chimp Haven in Keithville, La. (AP)

The new recommendations follow last month’s NIH decision to move all 100 of the federally-owned chimpanzees at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana to Chimp Haven, a federal chimpanzee sanctuary in nearby Keithville, Louisiana, over the next 12 to 15 months.

A leading animal rights group praised the  recommendations.

“The Humane Society of the United States is extremely pleased that these experts confirm what the public has been urging: move away from invasive chimpanzee experimentation and release these animals to the most appropriate setting available – sanctuary,” said Kathleen Conlee, vice president of animal research issues at the Humane Society. “There are top-notch sanctuaries in the U.S., including federal sanctuary Chimp Haven, that have the capacity to expand and we are ready to work with the government to provide these chimpanzees with the retirement they so greatly deserve.”

The NIH will make a final determination on the recommendations after a 60-day public comment period that begins today and runs until March 23, 2013.