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>>> potential help from honda for those folks who have trouble getting around. their new personal mobility device. it respontdss to shifts in your weight. it leaves your arms free, takes up much less space than regular scooters. still to be determined when it comes to market and for how much.

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Public release date: 14-May-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Myles Gough
myles.gough@unsw.edu.au
61-029-385-1933
University of New South Wales

Underground soil cracks persist

Sydney, Australia - Deep cracks in soil can remain open underground even after they have visibly sealed on the surface, a new study has found.

The results could have important implications for agricultural management around the timing and intensity of water and pesticide applications.

"These soils are very fertile and provide the most productive agricultural land in Australia," said lead author Dr Anna-Katrin Greve, a postdoctoral fellow with UNSW's Connected Waters Initiative.

"Lower water application intensity will give soil cracks time to close and more frequent irrigations could prevent the soil cracks from reforming."

These cracks provide "preferential pathways" allowing water to flow much faster than it would through non-cracked soil, rapidly transporting nutrients and pesticides beyond the crops' root-zone. If the plants can't access the water it has effectively been wasted.

By sending an electrical current through the ground at different angles, the UNSW researchers can measure directional differences in current conduction, which offers clues about how water is moving through the soil.

This innovative technique means they can, for the first time, detect the exact time when preferential sub-surface pathways close. This is important for irrigators, as water flow through non-cracked soil is far more predictable.

Their findings, which have been accepted for publication in the journal Geoderma, reveal that surface appearances can be deceiving.

"We showed that soil cracks that developed in dry periods remain open as preferential flow paths, even after the cracks are visually closed," said Greve.

Researchers measured the flow of electrical current through a soil profile that was set-up over several years. The soil was contained in a fiberglass barrel, which had a small drain at the base.

Two irrigation events were carried out approximately 14 days apart. Each event used water from different sources, meaning the two samples had different stable isotope signatures, allowing researchers to distinguish between them.

At the time of the first irrigation event there were visible cracks upwards of three centimetres wide in the soil. By the time of the second irrigation, these cracks had visibly closed.

Despite this surface closure, the water from the second irrigation actually drained faster. It bypassed the sections of the soil where water from the first event was presumably stored and drained with signs of limited mixing, researchers said, meaning preferential flow paths must have remained open.

Greve's study was awarded best paper at a geoscience conference in Europe in 2011 and she recently presented her findings at a conference in Arizona.

###

Media Contact:

Dr Anna-Katrin Greve | +61 (0) 2 8071 9879 | a.greve@wrl.unsw.edu.au

Myles Gough, UNSW Media Office | +61 (0) 2 9385 1933 | myles.gough@unsw.edu.au

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 14-May-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Myles Gough
myles.gough@unsw.edu.au
61-029-385-1933
University of New South Wales

Underground soil cracks persist

Sydney, Australia - Deep cracks in soil can remain open underground even after they have visibly sealed on the surface, a new study has found.

The results could have important implications for agricultural management around the timing and intensity of water and pesticide applications.

"These soils are very fertile and provide the most productive agricultural land in Australia," said lead author Dr Anna-Katrin Greve, a postdoctoral fellow with UNSW's Connected Waters Initiative.

"Lower water application intensity will give soil cracks time to close and more frequent irrigations could prevent the soil cracks from reforming."

These cracks provide "preferential pathways" allowing water to flow much faster than it would through non-cracked soil, rapidly transporting nutrients and pesticides beyond the crops' root-zone. If the plants can't access the water it has effectively been wasted.

By sending an electrical current through the ground at different angles, the UNSW researchers can measure directional differences in current conduction, which offers clues about how water is moving through the soil.

This innovative technique means they can, for the first time, detect the exact time when preferential sub-surface pathways close. This is important for irrigators, as water flow through non-cracked soil is far more predictable.

Their findings, which have been accepted for publication in the journal Geoderma, reveal that surface appearances can be deceiving.

"We showed that soil cracks that developed in dry periods remain open as preferential flow paths, even after the cracks are visually closed," said Greve.

Researchers measured the flow of electrical current through a soil profile that was set-up over several years. The soil was contained in a fiberglass barrel, which had a small drain at the base.

Two irrigation events were carried out approximately 14 days apart. Each event used water from different sources, meaning the two samples had different stable isotope signatures, allowing researchers to distinguish between them.

At the time of the first irrigation event there were visible cracks upwards of three centimetres wide in the soil. By the time of the second irrigation, these cracks had visibly closed.

Despite this surface closure, the water from the second irrigation actually drained faster. It bypassed the sections of the soil where water from the first event was presumably stored and drained with signs of limited mixing, researchers said, meaning preferential flow paths must have remained open.

Greve's study was awarded best paper at a geoscience conference in Europe in 2011 and she recently presented her findings at a conference in Arizona.

###

Media Contact:

Dr Anna-Katrin Greve | +61 (0) 2 8071 9879 | a.greve@wrl.unsw.edu.au

Myles Gough, UNSW Media Office | +61 (0) 2 9385 1933 | myles.gough@unsw.edu.au

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

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Back in 2008, a nifty little box of tricks elbowed its way onto the market -- the Tonium Pacemaker. A gadget about the size of an OG PSP, with a complete DJ set-up hidden inside. It was a brave idea, and one that was fondly received. A few years down the line, mixed with a sprinkling of business politics, and sadly the Pacemaker's time on stage would come to an end. Like all good performances though, the show wasn't completely over. In true musical fashion its back for an encore, reinvented and more importantly -- right now at least -- in our hands. We spent sometime with the reincarnated Pacemaker DJ app, to see what life is like after hardware.

Continue reading Pacemaker DJ app for BlackBerry PlayBook impressions (video)

Pacemaker DJ app for BlackBerry PlayBook impressions (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 May 2012 09:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2012) ? Perched atop the sheer coastal cliffs of Ireland's Aran Islands, ridges of giant boulders have puzzled geologists for years. What forces could have torn these rocks from the cliff edges high above sea level and deposited them far inland?

While some researchers contend that only a tsunami could push these stones, new research in The Journal of Geology finds that plain old ocean waves, with the help of some strong storms, did the job.

And they're still doing it.

The three tiny Aran Islands are just off the western coast of Ireland. The elongated rock ridges form a collar along extended stretches of the islands' Atlantic coasts. The sizes of the boulders in the formations range "from merely impressive to mind-bogglingly stupendous," writes Dr. R?nadh Cox, who led the research with her Williams College students. One block the team studied weighs an estimated 78 tons, yet was still cut free from its position 36 feet above sea level and shoved further inland.

Armed with equations that model the forces generated by waves, some researchers have concluded that no ordinary ocean waves could muster the force necessary to move the largest of the boulders this high above the ocean surface and so far inland. The math suggests the rocks in the ridges could only have been put there by a tsunami.

The equations tell one story. The islands' residents tell another. According to some locals, enormous rocks have moved in their lifetimes, despite the fact that there hasn't been a tsunami to hit the islands since 1755.

"Unless you have little green men from mars doing this on the quiet, it must be storm waves," Cox said.

While the anecdotes from residents are interesting, Cox and her team went in search of more concrete evidence. The clincher came when the team compared modern high-altitude photos of the coastline to set of meticulous maps surveyed in 1839. The 19th century surveyors, who Cox describes as "possibly the most anal men on the planet," carefully mapped not only the boulder ridges, but all of the criss-crossing stone walls that farmers built between fields. The researchers digitized the maps and overlaid them on the modern images, using the walls to line the two up accurately.

"Not only did they map every wall, they did it right. The maps aren't even off by even a meter."

The overlay of the new photos with the old maps shows definitively that sections of the ridges have moved substantially since 1839 -- nearly 100 years after the most recent tsunami. Some sections moved inland at an average rate of nearly 10 feet per decade. In some places, the ridge had run over and demolished field walls noted on the old maps.

Other lines of evidence corroborate residents' accounts of recent movement. When the boulders were ripped from the bedrock, tiny clams that live in cracks and crevices sometimes came along for the ride. Using radiocarbon dating, Cox and her team found that some of the rocks have been pulled from the coastline within the last 60 years. What's more, the researchers have been photographing sections of the ridge during each field season since 2006, and they've documented movement from year to year.

So what of the equations that point to tsunami as the only possible earth mover?

"We've eliminated tsunami and I think we can rule out little green men," Cox said. "What that says is our equations aren't good enough."

Cox thinks the characteristics of the Aran Island shoreline are throwing off the calculations. The Aran cliffs rise nearly vertically out of the Atlantic, leaving very deep water close to the shore. As waves slam into the sheer cliff, that water is abruptly deflected back out toward the oncoming waves. This backflow may amplify subsequent waves. The result is an occasional storm wave that is much larger than one would expect.

"In this kind of environment these would be less rare," Cox said. "You only need a couple of them to move these rocks around. The radiocarbon data show that not only are some boulders moving in recent years, but also that some of them have been in the ridges for hundreds and even a couple of thousand years. Accumulated activity of rare large-wave events over that time could certainly build these structures"

Cox plans to add a physicist to her research team in the near future to try to shed some light on the wave dynamics on the islands, but it's clear from the evidence the team has already gathered that storm waves can do more than some researchers thought.

Following the devastating Indonesian tsunami in 2004, there has been renewed interest in learning about how a tsunami can change the landscape. Cox's findings have important implications for that research.

"There's a tendency to attribute the movement of large objects to tsunami," she said. "We're saying hold the phone. Big boulders are getting moved by storm waves."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. R?nadh Cox, Danielle B. Zentner, Brian J. Kirchner, and Mea S. Cook. Boulder Ridges on the Aran Islands (Ireland): Recent Movements Caused by Storm Waves, Not Tsunami. The Journal of Geology, 120:3 (May 2012)

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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