Devil's Kettle Falls: the east branch (right) drops 50 feet over the rocky cliff; the west branch (left) disappears into a cauldron.
Courtesy Mark RyanWith autumn in full force and snow already in the weekend forecast there’s not much time to get out and get some last looks at some of the many interesting geological wonders we have here in Minnesota. So I thought I’d end the tourist season (at least the geo-tourist season) with one last thing that will keep you pondering all through the dreary days of winter. Hopefully, next spring, when you come out of hibernation you’ll have a solution in hand to this odd geological mystery.
Devil’s Kettle is a puzzling geological phenomenon located on the North Shore of Lake Superior. As the Brule River makes it way toward the lake, it gets split in two by a rocky knob located just above the falls. While the east half tumbles down 50 feet in normal waterfall fashion and continues toward the lake, the west half disappears in a very large pothole and is never seen again. Where does the water go? No one seems to know.
Devil's Kettle: where does all that water go?
Courtesy Mark RyanIt’s a heck of a lot of water (not to mention trees, rocks, and boulders) to just vanish into the ground. There’s been speculation that the underground river ends up somewhere along the shore of Lake Superior (about 1.5 miles away), but it has never been determined where exactly.
One theory has the river following a large fault located somewhere in the lower bedrock. But this is unlikely since it would have to be extremely large to allow for so much water to flow through it. It would also have to be precisely oriented toward the lake. And there’s never been any evidence of such a fault found in the area.
Another theory is that a lava tube formed a billion years ago when the rocks first solidified. Lava tubes can be found in Hawaii where fresh basalt is created by the islands’ volcanoes. The problem with this theory, according to geologist John C. Green, is that the rock at Devil’s Kettle waterfalls isn't basalt - it's rhyolite, and lava tubes never form in rhyolite.
But maybe it's a hidden lava tube located in a layer of basalt directly beneath the rhyolite. After all, geologists have determined that the rocks in that particular region alternate between layers of rhyolites and layers of basalts. Maybe the swirling rock-filled glacial water that formed the pothole at the end of an ice age cut down beyond the rhyolite and into an ancient lava tube. That could have happened right? Well, not likely. For one thing the basalts found in the area aren't the kind in which lava tubes would form. North Shore basalts were flood basalts that spread out on the surface like pancake batter poured onto a griddle. But even if it were the correct kind, the nearest basalt layer to Devil’s Kettle is located much too far underground to be any kind of factor in the mystery.
So where does it all that water go? Over the years, people have tried to figure it out by throwing logs, colored dyes, and even ping-pong balls into Devil’s Kettle in hopes of seeing signs of them show up along the lakeshore. But none ever has, and where it all ends up remains a mystery. (One story claims someone pushed a car into the cauldron, but to get a car to the site and be able to dump it into the kettle from above looked nearly impossible to me. When we were there, my wife remarked it’d be a great place to get rid of a body. That didn’t set well with me – and not because of the difficulty involved in doing it. I made sure she walked ahead of me on the way back.)
Anyway, if you want to go see this remarkable geological conundrum for yourself, Devil’s Kettle is located in Judge C. R. Magney State Park about fifteen miles beyond Grand Marais on Highway 61. To get to the falls you have to walk in about 1-1.5 mile from the park entrance, including climbing down (and up, on the way back) about 200 wooden steps. But the trek is well worth the effort. The park closes for the season at the end of October so if you have a chance this month you should check it out. Who knows - maybe once you see Devil’s Kettle for yourself, you’ll be the one to figure out where all that water goes.
Or maybe some of you already have a theory. If you do, let us know.
Tags : Dolla dolla bill y'all
Mo money, mo problems
Courtesy Acomment
Go ahead and take a quick look in your wallet or your purse. Do you have a dollar bill in there? Well 9 chances out of 10 you also are in possession of cocaine.
Think my claim is outrageous? Think again. In a current study conducted by the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth, research has shown that cocaine is present in up to 90 percent of paper money in the United States. The reports were presented at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society this month and suggest that cocaine use is still extensive and could possibly be on the rise.
Scientists tested banknotes from over 30 cities in five countries including Brazil, China, Japan, Canada and the U.S. of which the Chinese and Japanese currencies held the lowest rates of contamination (between 12 to 20 percent) while the U.S. and Canada were reaching rates from 85 to 95 percent. For the U.S., this percentage of contaminated banknotes is a 20 percent jump of contamination in comparison to a study done two years prior.
Yuegang Zuo, the sudy leader says, “I'm not sure why we've seen this apparent increase, but it could be related to the economic downturn, with stressed people turning to cocaine.”
The current study also used a new method of measurement. Previous techniques destroyed the currency, but by using a modified form of gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer, a faster, simpler and more accurate measurement is obtained while maintaining the banknote. Using the GC-MS, 234 banknotes from the U.S. were analyzed and found that traces of cocaine range from .006 micrograms (several thousand times smaller than a grain of sand) to 1,240 micrograms (roughly 50 grains of sand).
But don’t get carried away, the amount of cocaine found on dollar bills is so small that there is zero chance of health or legal concerns. But if you feel the need to get rid of all of your paper money, feel free to send it my way:
Science Museum of Minnesota
(Attn: trans-2-butene)
120 W. Kellogg Blvd.
St. Paul, MN 55102
It's Barcelona...: But it's like I can see through the buildings to their real colors.
Courtesy MorBCNIt’s Friday again, Buzzketeers, and you know what that sometimes means.
Yes, it means I may put on drag and take a jog out to the Walgreen’s.
Yes, it means that as soon as the sun sets, I’ll probably go down to the river and scream at the mer-people.
Sure, it means that I might leave work early, so I can go up on my roof and get some extra time in working on my flying eagle costume.
But more than any of that, it sometimes means that it’s time for an Extravaganza!
I know, right? Hoorays all around!
To be more specific, today’s extravaganza is a drugstravaganza. And to be even more specific, it’s a Euro illicit drugstravaganza. Better grab yourself some glowsticks!
Check it out: Spanish scientists have found that the air in Madrid and Barcelona is laced with illegal drugs. In addition to regular old city air-pollutants, the air-quality control stations discovered cocaine, amphetamines, LSD, opiates, and marijuana floating around in the cities’ air. The researchers hasten to point out, however, that these drugs were only found in trace amounts, and that you couldn’t absorb nearly enough to have a noticeable effect even in a lifetime’s worth of breathing. I think, however, that this might just be an attempt to discourage a flood of people who are both drug users and freeloaders from coming into Spain.
The scientists also pointed out that one of the testing stations was located near “a ruined building believed to be frequented by drug dealers” (in English: a “crackhouse”), and that both stations were located near universities, which we all know to be hotbeds of illegal activity. The study was even able to determine that drug levels in the air were higher (ah ha) on weekends, suggesting that local drug use was up on these days. It’s like when your mom smells your jacket for cigarette smoke… only instead it’s your government smelling your neighborhood for coke. (Except I don’t think these scientists were looking to get anyone grounded.)
And then there’s this little item: The Case of the Wandering Trip-fish. Apparently a some British fishermen recently netted a species of bream that causes frightening visual and auditory hallucinations when eaten. (I guess the fishes’ heads, in particular, are pretty hallucination inducing.) The fact that the fish makes people trip isn’t news—in 2006 two men in France were hospitalized after eating the fish, suffering hallucinations for two days, and supposedly this type of bream was consumed as a recreational drug in the Mediterranean region during the Roman Empire. What’s more remarkable is that this is a typically a Mediterranean fish, and it was caught near England. That is to say, it’s a warm water fish, and it was caught in what should be cold water. Its presence near England could be a fluke, but some scientists see it as further evidence of global warming, that colder waters are warming up, and exotic species may be moving it. None of us mind new neighbors, certainly, but we don’t like it when they bring drugs into the neighborhood.
So… I know this isn’t a very extravagant extravaganza, but we’re dealing with sensitive issues here (global warming, duh) so I think I better cut this one short. Plus, I want to get working on my eagle costume.
Foraging honey bee: Getting ready for the dance.
Courtesy Mark RyanOne of the strangest behaviors observed in nature is the honey bee “waggle dance”. Foraging bees use this get-down-get-funky display to communicate to their hive mates the discovery of a new food source. It usually takes place whenever the food is of a high quality or when the hive’s pantry is growing bare. The dance is performed on a special “dance floor” in the hive and is a way for the foragers to let the other bees know what’s been found and how to get there.
“The honey bee dance is this incredibly complex set of activities,” said University of Illinois entomology and neuroscience professor Gene Robinson. “It’s a very integrated communication system, very elaborate and very elegant, one of the seven wonders of the animal behavior world.”
Check it out for yourself:
Robinson and his colleagues wondered what motivated such behavior in foraging honey bees. Did they experience some sort of pleasure response, just like we humans do when we do something nice for others? To find out, the researchers decided to shake things up and see what happens when the celebration gets kicked up to another level and party drugs are thrown into the dance mix.
Robinson became interested in the waggle dance during a previous study investigating the role of octopamine in insect eating and movement behaviors. Octopamine is a biogenic amine (like histamine and serotonin) that’s found in higher levels in the brains of foraging honey bees than any other bees in the hive.
“The idea behind that study was that maybe this mechanism that structures selfish behavior – eating – was co-opted during social evolution to structure social behavior – that is, altruistic behavior,” Robinson said. “There are various lines of thought that indicate that one way of structuring society is to have altruistic behavior be pleasurable.”
Altruism is known to trigger a motivating pleasure response in the human brain, but the question remained whether the same reward mechanism existed in an insect’s brain.
So, in this new study Robinson and his research team at UI in Urbana-Champaign took things a step further. They found that when a foraging bee gets all hopped up on cocaine, it doesn’t matter how good the found food is or how much is stockpiled in the hive’s cupboards, bees just “Gotta Dance”.
Not only that, but the study’s results have also led the researchers to theorize that insects have motivating reward centers in their brains, just as humans do.
“This study provides strong support for the idea that bees have a reward system, that it’s been co-opted and it’s now involved in a social behavior, which motivates them to tell their hive mates about the food that they’ve found,” Robinson said.
Because cocaine causes honey bees to dance more – an altruistic behavior – the researchers believe their results support the idea that there is a reward system in the insect brain, something that has never before been shown.
A second set of experiments showed some interesting results. Non-foraging bees, it seems, were strict wallflowers: they never danced at all – no matter if they were on cocaine or not. And the coked-up foraging bees didn’t move about any more than non-foragers except when dancing, and when they did dance they only did so at appropriate times and only on the “dance floor”, no place else.
The honeybees, unfortunately, also seemed to suffer cocaine withdrawal symptoms, but the results of the study could lead to a better understanding of substance abuse in humans, and that’s fortunate for us.
The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
LINKS
IUUC news release
Crestor: :Rosuvastatin
Courtesy Mykhal The drug company, AstraZenca, makes a drug called Crestor and also receives royalties from a particular blood test (hsCRP) which detects C-reactive protein (CRP), an indicator of infection.
AstraZenca funded a study which found that their product, Crestor, when given to patients identified as having infection via their blood test (hsCRP), "slashed the risk (of heart attack or stroke) of those flagged by the test by about half -- even if their cholesterol was normal".
Infection's role in cardiovascular risk
Why people with normal cholesterol levels suffered heart attacks or strokes has been puzzling. In the study,
either 20 milligrams of the statin Crestor or an inert placebo (was given) daily to 17,802 middle-aged and elderly men and women who had what are considered safe cholesterol levels but high CRP -- 2 milligrams per liter of blood or above.
(They)stopped the trial ... after an average follow-up of less than two years, concluding that the benefit was so striking that it would unethical to continue withholding the real drug from those taking the placebo.
Compared with those getting the placebo, those taking Crestor were 54 percent less likely to have a heart attack, 48 percent less to have a stroke, 46 percent less likely to need angioplasty or bypass surgery to open a clogged artery, 44 percent less likely to suffer any of those events and 20 percent less likely to die from any cause, the researchers reported yesterday. WashingtonPost
Costs, benefits, and alternatives
For every 1000 people in this study who took Crestor, there were about 2 who had heart attacks compared to about 4 in the placebo group (per year).
Some skeptics, however, argued that the actual risk reduction for an individual would be very small, given the relatively low risk for most middle-aged people, so the benefits easily could be outweighed by the costs of thousands more people taking tests and drugs and being monitored by doctors.
The risks from extended use of Crestor by millions of patients is unknown. We do know that lifestyle interventions are effective.
Join the discussion, learn more
Washington Post Staff Writer Rob Stein will be online Monday, Nov. 10 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss a new study that could transform efforts to prevent heart attacks and strokes. You can discuss whether you think drugs and money or lifestyle changes are best for our future there or in comments below.
Read the research paper: Rosuvastatin to Prevent Vascular Events in Men and Women with Elevated C-Reactive Protein
The cure for what ails you: But only if you can get it in time.
Courtesy Destinys Agent
(With the Republican National Convention literally across the street, the Science Museum of Minnesota will be closed starting Friday, August 29. But Science Buzz marches on! To honor our convention guests, I’ll be posting entries focusing on issues where science and politics overlap. Hopefully this will spur some discussion. Or at least tick some people off. Previous entries here and here.)
Getting a new drug approved for use is a long and arduous process. As well it should be—we need to be sure not only that the drug works, but also that it doesn’t have any nasty, even fatal, side-effects.
Unfortunately, the process has gotten slower lately. The US Food and Drug Administration is approving only half as many drugs as it did a decade ago. Some observers believe the organization has grown gun-shy. After Vioxx and a few other high-profile drugs had to be pulled from the market over safety concerns, the agency has become a lot more cautious.
(The cynical among us might say the FDA is out to protect its own skin, regardless of how many lives are lost by withholding drug approvals. At the same time, one can argue that they agency has been forced into its current cautious approach by the media and Congress, who heap criticism and blame on the FDA for its few mistakes, but never offer any praise for its many successes.)
Another issue arises from the pre-approval trials. New drugs are tested on a small number of patients. Often there are more patients interested in taking part in the trial than there are slots available. This can be especially difficult for terminally ill patients who have exhausted all other treatment options – nothing has worked, and they are still dying. They would have nothing to lose, and potentially a lot to gain, from trying an experimental drug. The drug trial itself might benefit from having more subjects. It’s win-win.
But getting such patients added to trials has proven very difficult. In May, Sen. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) and Rep. Diane Watson (D., Calif.) introduced a bill to open up access to trials for such patients. No action was taken before Congress recessed for the summer.
Researchers in London have found that oxytocin – a naturally-produced human hormone – can help combat shyness. They are also hoping to use it to address other conditions, including autism and depression.
Let's hear it for maggots!
in Life Science, Diversity of Organisms, Scientific Inquiry, and Human Organism
Researchers at Swansea University, in the UK, are developing an antibiotic that can fight the MRSA superbug. And they're using superbugs to do it. OK, not superbugs. They're using the secretions from the maggots of the common green bottle fly.
A cage match I'm not sure I want to see: Maggots secrete a compound that can fight superbugs, including 12 strains of MRSA, E. coli, and C. difficile.
Courtesy National Institutes of Health
Super gross? Sure. And you won't see an ad for this antibiotic (Seraticin) on TV anytime soon. It takes some 20 maggots to make a single drop of the drug. So scientists have to fully identify it, figure out a way to synthesize it in the lab, test it on human cells, and put it through a clinical trial.
In the meantime, using live maggots on infected wounds is a time-tested way of beating infections. Dr. Alun Morgan, of ZooBiotic Ltd, told the BBC,
"Maggots are great little multitaskers. They produce enzymes that clean wounds, they make a wound more alkaline which may slow bacterial growth and finally they produce a range of antibacterial chemicals that stop the bacteria growing."
How effective are maggots? The University of Manchester has been doing research on diabetic patients with MRSA-contaminated foot ulcers. The patients treated with maggots were mostly cured within three weeks. Patients who got more conventional treatment needed 28 weeks.
So give maggots a big shout out. And then check these other stories:
"NHS 'needs to use more maggots'"
Prescription insects
Fun with beetles
Forget this cubicle, I’m becoming a drug dealer. Of babies.
Low-grade baby: but she seems to be enjoying it.
Courtesy ocadotonyI hope I don’t look like a chump. Because I’m no chump. I’m no chump, and I’m leaving this chump job. Goodbye, Chump Inc. Goodbye, Chumville. I’m starting an exciting new life, effective immediately, as a drug dealer.
And what poison will I peddle? What do I plan to sling on street corners and playgrounds? The worst and most deadly drug: pure, uncut baby.
Trust me; it’s the next big thing. I accept that my baby dealing operation will probably start out small (baby manufacturing is notoriously time-consuming), but before you know it gossip pages will be swimming in photos of starlets with babies peaking out of their handbags, or smeared on their upper lips. Why?
Because babies get you hiiigghhh!
Or at least they get mothers high, and that’s a market somewhat neglected by dealers. Cha-ching!
Research has shown that mothers, when shown pictures of their babies, experience strong brain activity in regions associated with reward and addiction—a natural high.
The strength of a mother’s reaction seems to depend partly on her baby’s expression. A crying baby, for instance, evokes a reaction little different from a mother seeing a stranger’s baby (ha!), whereas a smiling baby is like a spoonful of hot heroin. Relatively speaking.
That’s something I’ll have to factor into my operation—happy babies are the most potent, and I surely want to offer a high quality product. How do you make babies happy? It’s never really been my thing. Like…rattles, maybe? Cigarettes? I have the feeling that it’ll be a trial and error sort of thing.
Aside from inspiring a whole new career path for me, the research promises to be valuable in understanding some of the most basic elements of mother-child bonding, and why, in some cases, this bonding fails to occur. Neglect and abuse sometimes arises from such cases, and so, as a baby dealer, I think I would only be helping society by fixing up moms already jonesing for some baby, and encouraging the habit in others.
Don't do drugs!: This guy may have just seen Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Courtesy Mark RyanDr. Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) died yesterday at his home in Basel, Switzerland. He was 102.
Hofmann was working for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals (now Novartis) when he first synthesized LSD-25 in 1938. However, he set it aside and didn’t stumble upon its hallucinogenic powers until 5 years later, when, while synthesizing a new batch for study, he accidentally ingested some of it from his fingertips.
Once that genie was let out of the bottle, Hofmann went whole-hog investigating the drug’s possibilities, doing many experiments on himself and his colleagues.
He later became director of Sandoz’s natural products department studying other natural mind-altering substances, such as those found in Mexican mushrooms (psilocybin) and in the seeds of the morning glory species Rivea corymbosa (lysergic acid amide).
Hofmann referred to LSD as “medicine for the soul” and spent much of his life trying to convince others of its medicinal and therapeutic value, although he admitted it could be dangerous in the wrong hands. The drug was made illegal after a rise in popularity by counterculture youth during the 1960s.
"I produced the substance as a medicine,” he once said. “It's not my fault if people abused it.”
LINKS
Associated Press story
Albert Hofmann link on Wikipedia
More on LSD
Subscribe
I want to learn about
Science Buzz is supported by the National Science Foundation.Copyright © Science Museum of Minnesota, 2004-2010, except where noted.
Add a new comment