Glacier calves Manhattan-sized iceberg
NEWARK, Del., July 17 (UPI) -- An island of ice twice the size of Manhattan broke off from Greenland's largest glaciers Monday, a U.S. researcher reports.
University of Delaware ocean scientist Andread Muenchow blogged the "calving" from the Petermann Glacier, one of the two largest glaciers left in Greenland connecting the great Greenland ice sheet with the ocean via a floating ice shelf.
Muenchow, who credits the Canadian Ice Service for first noticing the fracture, said the discovery was confirmed by re-analyzing data from NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites.
At 46 square miles this latest ice island is about half the size of the event that occurred at the same glacier two years ago that saw an island four times the size of Manhattan break free.
"While the size is not as spectacular as it was in 2010, the fact that it follows so closely to the 2010 event brings the glacier's terminus to a location where it has not been for at least 150 years," Muenchow said in a university release.
"The Greenland ice sheet as a whole is shrinking, melting and reducing in size as the result of globally changing air and ocean temperatures and associated changes in circulation patterns in both the ocean and atmosphere," he said.
This newest ice island should follow the path of the 2010 ice island, Muenchow said, providing a slow-moving floating home for polar bears, seals and other marine life until it enters the deep channel between northern Greenland and Canada where it likely start to break
Japanese smartphone aimed at elderly users
TOKYO, July 17 (UPI) -- Japanese electronics firm Fujitsu says its new smartphone for elderly users has a unique touchscreen and a simplified Android interface.
Japan's aging population is the target of the new F-12D phone from Fujitsu's RakuRaku line, from the Japanese for "easy" or "comfortable," SlashGear reported Tuesday.
Fujitsu said it collaborated with Google to design a phone that would not overwhelm or confuse elderly users while using it, with a simplified user interface featuring larger text and buttons and only vertical scrolling.
The touchscreen was specifically designed for first-time users who aren't yet used to the technology, Fujitsu said, as their tests found many elderly users found the typical touchscreen difficult and frustrating to use.
As a result, the touchscreen on the F-12D has been designed to give a little when pressed, to give the feeling of pressing a physical button.
The phone will go on sale in Japan in August from NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest carrier, and Fujitsu said it is looking at the global market as well.
Pilfering rodents help trees survive
RALEIGH, N.C., July 17 (UPI) -- Rodents resorting to stealing food from their neighbor's caches may be responsible for the 10,000-year survival of a tropical tree species, researcher say.
Scientists at North Carolina State University think the thieving rodents known as agoutis helped the black palm tree survive by taking over the seed-spreading role once performed by the mighty mastodon and other extinct elephant-like creatures that are thought to have eaten and then distributed the tree's large seeds.
"The question is how this tree managed to survive for 10,000 years if its seed dispersers are extinct," N.C. State zoologist Roland Kays, said. "There's always been this mystery of how does this tree survive, and now we have a possible answer for it."
The researchers said the agoutis, rainforest rodents that hoard seeds like squirrels, repeatedly stole from their neighbors' underground seed caches, and all that thieving moved some black palm seeds far enough from the mother tree to create favorable conditions for germination.
"We knew that these rodents would bury the seeds but we had no idea that there would be this constant digging up of the seed, moving it and burying it, over and over again," Kays said. "As rodents steal the same seed many, many times, it adds up to a long-distance movement of the seed that one animal by itself could have never done."
One seed was moved and buried 36 times before an agouti dug it up for the last time and ate it, researchers said, and about 14 percent of the seeds survive such treatment until the following year.
"When you think about global climate change and habitats shifting, for a forest to move into new areas, trees need to have their seeds moved into new areas," Kays said. "This opens up a route to study how animals can help trees adjust to climate change through seed dispersal."
World's lightest material is created
HAMBURG, Germany, July 17 (UPI) -- German researchers say they've created the lightest material in the world, a network of porous carbon tubes they've dubbed "Aerographite."
Scientists of Kiel University and Hamburg University of Technology said the tubes, three-dimensionally interwoven at the nano and micro level, create a material that weighs just 0.2 milligrams per cubic centimeter -- which means ordinary Styrofoam is almost 400 times heavier.
"Our work is causing great discussions in the scientific community. Aerographite weighs [a fourth of the] world-record-holder up to now," co-author Matthias Mecklenburg of the Hamburg university said in a release Tuesday.
Aerographite is jet-black, remains stable and is electrically conductive, ductile and non-transparent, the researchers said.
While most super-lightweight materials can withstand compression but not tension, Aerographite features both an excellent compression and tension load, they said.
Possible uses of the material could be to create very lightweight batteries, to give electrical conductivity to synthetic materials such as plastic, or in electronics for aviation and satellites because they have to endure high amounts of vibration, researchers said.
