Scienceology
Shresta, Dhriti and Maanya 6 MYP-C (Sreenidhi International School)
The Dead Sea Will Be
Dead Soon
The Dead Sea, also known as the Salt Sea,
is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east
and Israel and the West Bank to the west.
Its a hypersaline lake that is truly one of
Earths unique places. The surface and
shores of the Dead Sea are 423 metres
(1,388 ft) below sea level, making it
Earths lowest elevation on land.The Dead
Sea is 377 m (1,237 ft) deep, making it the
deepest hypersaline lake in the world. A
hypersaline lake is a landlocked body of
water that contains significant
concentrations of sodium chloride or other
mineral salts, with saline levels surpassing
that of ocean water.. The Dead Seas
unusually high salt concentration means
that people can easily float in the Dead Sea
due to natural buoyancy. In this respect the
Dead Sea is similar to the Great Salt Lake
in Utah in the United States.The Dead Sea
is roughly 8.6 times saltier than the ocean.
This salinity makes for a harsh
environment in which animals cannot
flourish (hence its name). The high salinity
prevents macroscopic aquatic organisms
such as fish and aquatic plants from living
in it, though minuscule quantities of
bacteria and microbial fungi are present.
The level of the dead sea is decreasing
every year. According to Bromberg, the
two main reasons for the dropping water
level are mineral extraction by Israeli and
Jordanian companies in the artificially
shallow southern basin, and the fact that 95
percent of the Jordan River - the Dead Sea's
main source of replenishing water - is being
diverted. The river used to provide 1,350
million cubic metres of water each year
(mcm), but that flow has dwindled to just
20 mcm.
For more information, visit:
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles
/32464/20161121/dead-sea-soon-evaporat
es-year.htm
Design Semester 2 Project
Ranging) launched in 2004 and is
currently in the middle of an extended
Tiny Planet mission around Mercury.
Mercury Is For more information visit-
Shrinking Faster http://www.space.com/25102-planet-
mercury-shrinking-fast.html
The surface of Mercury is shrinking
faster than previously thought, photos
from a NASA spacecraft orbiting the
tiny planet reveal.The first
comprehensive survey of the surface
Fun Facts
of Mercury by NASA's MESSENGER Banging your head against
spacecraft shows that planet's crust a wall burns 150 calories
has contracted as it cooled by as much
as 4.4 miles (7 kilometers),
an hour.
When hippos are upset,
significantly more than previous
estimates. The findings clear up a their sweat turns red.
long-standing clash between scientists'
understanding of the heat production
Billy goats urinate on their
own heads to smell more
and loss and the contraction of
Mercury. Over the billions of years attractive to females.
since its formation at the birth of the
solar system, the planet has slowly
Polar bears can eat as
many as 86 penguins in a
cooled, a process all planets suffer if
they lack an internal source of heat single sitting. (If they
renewal. As the liquid iron core lived in the same place)
solidifies, it cools, and the overall
An eagle can kill a young
volume of Mercury shrinks. When
NASA's Mariner 10 mission deer and fly away with it.
circled the planet in the 1970s, it In the UK, it is illegal to
captured images of surface features
eat mince pies on
created by the shrinkage. The
contracting planet pushed the crust up Christmas Day!
and over itself, forming scarps that Cherophobia is the fear of
can extend miles below the planet's
surface. At the same time, the fun.
shrinking surface caused the crust to If you lift a kangaroos tail
wrinkle up on itself, forming so-called
off the ground it cant
"wrinkle ridges.
"The surface of Mercury is made up of hop.
just one continental plate covering the During your lifetime, you
entire planet. Its enormous iron core, will produce enough
estimated to be about 2,500 miles
(4,040 km) across, leaves only 260
saliva to fill two
miles (420 km) for a mantle and crust swimming pools.
an extremely thin skin for the solar
system's smallest planet. The Earth's
mantle, for comparison, is about 1,800
miles (2,900 km) thick, while the crust
above it averages 25 miles (40 km) in
 thickness. NASA's MESSENGER
probe (the name is short for MErcury
Surface, Space ENvironment,
GEochemistry, and
or wheat. With a slightly sweet taste,
maltodextrin is a common ingredient
in processed foods such as potato
chips and salad dressings. Next, the
Milking chocolate for team added the mixture to milk
chocolate. This gave the chocolate
its health benefits antioxidant the levels typical of dark
chocolate. Best of all, there was no
change in the candys taste. Just to be
Research has shown that oxidation
sure, the team asked 100 volunteers to
underlies a host of illnesses, including
sample three pieces of milk chocolate.
cancer and heart disease.All chocolate is
Only one piece in the three contained
made from cocoa beans, which contain
the peanut-skin extract and
antioxidants. To produce chocolate, the
maltodextrin. Eight in every 10
beans are broken down into cocoa solids
volunteers tasted no difference
and a type of fat called cocoa butter. Put
between the regular milk chocolate
those two parts back together and you have
and doctored sweet. The other 20 Find the differences...
unsweetened chocolate, which doesnt taste
percent picked up on some extra
very good. Adding sugar produces the
bitterness. These volunteers are what
tastier, though still somewhat bitter, dark
scientists call supertasters. They are
chocolate. Milk chocolate contains cocoa
particularly sensitive to bitter tastes.
solids and cocoa butter. It, however, has
Dean says about 20 percent of people
more sugar than dark chocolate. It also has
are supertasters. That means that few
milk or cream. This makes the candy
people should notice whether
lighter in color and smoother in taste. But
antioxidants had been added to milk
gram for gram (or ounce for ounce), milk
chocolate. Some candy makers are
chocolate contains less cocoa than dark
experimenting with adding
chocolate. That means it also has fewer
antioxidants to their milk chocolate.
antioxidants. Yet scientists can't just add
But Dean says she hasn't heard of any
antioxidants to make milk chocolate
who have used peanut extracts. "By
healthier without affecting its taste,
using an extract, you can put in tiny
anyway. After all, these chemicals tend to
taste bitter. "It gives you that
amounts so it doesn't affect flavor," Riddles
mouth-puckering feeling," explains Lisa L.
she says. Dean cautions that milk What belongs to you but
chocolate containing peanut extracts
Dean. This food scientist is an author of the
would need clear labels so that people
others use it more than
new study. Dean works for the U.S. you. Name
with peanut allergies could avoid it.
Department of Agriculture at North
Carolina State University in Raleigh. Dean
Suzanne Johanningsmeier studies food What starts with a T ends
science for USDA at North Carolina
and her team now report having found a
State, but was not involved in this
with a T and has T in it.
way to top up the antioxidants in milk Teapot
study. Roughly 100 million pounds of
chocolate without making it bitter. Their
secret ingredient? Peanut skin extract. (An
peanut skins are thrown out every You will always find me
year, she notes. The new research, she in the past. I can be
extract is a substance, often in concentrated
observes, could reduce food waste by
form, that has been removed from its created in the present, But
using peanut skins to create a new,
natural. The researchers weren't actually
trying to make a healthier milk chocolate.
health-boosting food ingredient." the future can never taint
They were merely looking for a way to use me. What am I? History
up peanut skins. Most peanuts in the United For more information visit-
States go to make peanut butter. Their skins https://www.sciencenewsforstudents
end up buried as wastes in landfills. Recalls .org/article/milking-chocolate-its-he
Dean: "We thought, what can we do with alth-benefits
this food waste?" She and her team decided
to extract antioxidants from the skins.
Then, to mask the bitter taste of the
antioxidant, they mixed the peanut-skin
extracts with an edible powder called
maltodextrin. Its made from starchy foods
such as potatoes, rice.

gases in the atmosphere, such as

carbon dioxide and methane, trap
Arctic Sea Would Be Ice Free By
2050
The average Americans carbon footprint
shrinks Arctic sea ice. Not by a little. By a
lot about the area covered by 16
queen-size beds. And that happens each
year.A carbon footprint is the number of
tons of carbon dioxide a person produces in
their daily activities. The average American
produces about 16 metric tons of carbon
dioxide each year. Each metric ton of this
CO released into the atmosphere directly
results in a 3-square-meter (32-square-foot)
loss of sea ice cover at summers end.
Thats similar to losing an area of ice just a
bit smaller than a two-seat Smart car,
scientists say. How much CO each person
produces leads to a lot of melting ice. And
there are some 7 billion people
contributing. Altogether, humanity is
responsible for the release of some 36
billion metric tons of CO each year. With
another trillion metric tons, the Arctic
Ocean will have a completely iceless
summer.This might be the first time the
summer Arctic has been ice-free in 125,000
years. And it could happen before 2050,
Notz estimates. Dwindling ice at the top of
the world is important to watch. Its
disappearance threatens Arctic species. Its
melting also can spread pollution. And,
disappearing ice could open the region to
polar shipping. Each winter, the Arctic sea
surface freezes solid. As snow falls on it,
more and more accumulates and eventually
melts into ice. Some of that ice melts in
summer. Still, a great deal of the Arctic
retains its ice cover even throughout the
summer. But that situation is threatening to
change and in our lifetime. Satellite data
show summertime Arctic ice cover has
been falling. To do that, the researchers
analyzed records of Arctic sea surface
temperatures and the minimum sea area
covered by summer ice. They looked at
records going way back to 1953. The
average ice cover by the end of September
had dropped. And it fell in lockstep with
the rising releases of CO2 from human
activities, the team found.The researchers
think they now understand why there is
such a simple relationship between CO2
emissions and ice loss. As CO2 builds up
in the atmosphere, it strengthens the
so-called greenhouse effect. This is where
certain
some of the suns heat. As CO2 levels
climb, less of the suns heat bounces
back into space. Instead, it remains
trapped near Earths surface. This
increases the amount of ice-warming
infrared radiation hitting the Arctic.
That causes the outermost edge of the
sea ice to retreat northward, moving
away from the shore. And that shift
northward begins to reduce the total
area covered by ice. Sea ice cover in
the Arctic reaches its peak during
winter, she notes. At that time, little
light shines on the area. During these
months of dark or near-darkness, the
greenhouse effect is less important,
she explains. But just as the summer
minimum of Arctic sea ice has been
falling, so has the maximum sea ice
present in winter. After declining for
decades, it reached a record low in
March 2016. Why the ice is declining
in the winter is not yet clear, she says.
More study is needed. Scientists need
to figure out whether warming from
below or above the ice plays a larger
role, says Zhang. Indeed, she adds:
Theres not just one explanation.
We together need to start saving the
planet.
For more information visit -
-https://www.sciencenewsforstudent
s.org/article/arctic-sea-could-be-ice-
free-2050
keeping water in your glass but bad
for cleaning, Nathan explains. Their
VANILLA SPONGE CAKE RECIPE -
VERY SOFT AND MOIST
INGREDIENTS
60 grams / cup confectioners sugar
100 grams butter (Approximately
cup)
1 can/tin (400 grams) condensed milk
like milkmaid
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1.5 cups milk
250 grams / 1.75 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoon baking powder
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F /
180 degrees Celsius. Line an 8
inch square pan with butter paper
or parchment. Grease and flour the
pan. Set aside.
2. Cream the butter and sugar until
light and fluffy.
3. Add in a teaspoon of real vanilla
extract and one whole can/tin of
milkmaid to the creamed butter
sugar mixture. Beat well for a
couple of minutes.
4. Sift the dry ingredients to remove
any lumps in the flour and to
distribute the raising agents
uniformly in the mixture. Add in
the sifted flour mixture slowly
until a thick batter is formed.
5. Measure 1.5 cups of milk. Heat the
milk until it's hot but not boiling.
Add the hot milk to the batter and
mix well to combine.
6. Pour it in a 8 by 8 square pan and
bake it immediately in a preheated
350 degree F oven for about 50-60
minutes or until a toothpick
inserted in the middle comes clean.
Do not open the oven for the first
30 minutes of baking.
7. Cool on a wire rack for 10
minutes. Run a knife on the edges
of the pan to ensure smooth
release.
8. Turn the pan upside down and
gently release the pan. Remove the
butter paper/parchment. Invert the
cake and cool the cake completely.
9. Store in an airtight container in the
refrigerator for up-to two days.
Teen studies better
cleaning through
chemistry
WASHINGTON, D.C. Inspiration for
science projects can be found almost
anywhere, even in the most common of
tasks. Nathan Deng, 14, found his doing the
dishes. The teen wondered why hot water
worked better than cold water when
washing, and what made soap a good
cleaner. The simple experiments he devised
to investigate these matters earned him the
Lemelson Award for Invention here at the
Broadcom MASTERS. Nathan now a
freshman at San Marino High School in
California doesnt like his household
chores any more than anybody else. But he
said doing them made him curious about
why we use hot water and soap to clean.
The teen was further inspired something he
read about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. To clean up
the mess, planes sprayed the water with a
chemical mix called Corexit. It was
supposed to help disperse the oil,
preventing it from clumping on the surface
and coating the wildlife, though it didnt
work well.
I decided that I wanted to find a method
for cleaning that is both efficient and
environmentally friendly, he says. But this surface tension, he gathered a large
is a big goal, so the teen started small. He plastic syringe, some tubing, a kitchen
decided to look at surface tension an
effect that occurs when molecules bond to
each other on the surface of a liquid.
Surface tension is why, when you fill a
glass just a little too much, the water forms breaks apart.
a tiny lump at the top. This is great for
hydrophobic heads stick out into the
air while their hydrophilic tails stay
comfortably in the water. This film of
molecules means water cant form its
usual bonds at the surface. The whole
mixture has lower surface tension.At
high concentrations of SLSA,
something else happens. The surface
of the water is filled with the
chemical, and the rest of the
molecules are stuck under the water.
There they form clumps called
micelles. These clumps are very good
for cleaning up oil, Nathan notes. Oil
is also hydrophobic, and a micelle
isolates the oil from the water. Finally,
Nathan wanted to see what would
happen if he added regular old table
salt. He thought that salt might
decrease surface tension, because
adding the tiny molecules to the water
would stop the water bonding to itself
at the surface. But he found that salt
made very little difference. The teen
ended up with an answer to why we
use hot water and soap to clean dishes
instead of cold water alone. Both
reduce surface tension. And this helps
water get into the nooks and crannies
of our dirty dishes. If you have no
soap, he says, use hot water. But
adding soap is usually a good idea.
Nathan found that his apparatus a
syringe and tube with a scale was
great for measuring surface tension.
He wants to sell his setup as a surface
tension kit for classrooms, so other
teens can do his experiments. Then
they, too, can learn that invention and
research dont require fancy materials
or expensive equipment. Riddled with
tiny cracks and pores places where
dirt and germs can hide. Surface
tension holds water together, keeping
it out of these itty bitty spots. Instead
of going into the pores where it can
reach the dirt, the water bridges over
these places, Nathan explains. And
that can make it difficult to clean the
stuff stuck in the crevices, he says.
The teen wanted to see how he might
reduce the surface tension of water.
That would break up the bridging over
the pores, he explains. Then, the water
could flush through and rinse out the
dirty substances. Nathan didnt have a
lot of fancy equipment to work with.
That didnt stop him. To measure
scale and of course some water. If
a water droplet has a high surface
tension, it holds together longer
and gets bigger before a drop
"Based on the data from the
Atlas, we know that some bird
species have disappeared from
Nathan filled his syringe with water and
slowly pushed it out over the scale.
Bigger drops have more surface tension.
So by weighing his drops, the teen could
find out if changes he made to the water
increased or decreased the surface
tension. Nathan started with drops of
water that had different temperatures. As
water gets hotter, the molecules in it
move faster. The teen hypothesized that
this would make it harder for the water
to form a film on the surface and its
surface tension would decrease. He
tested water at 5, 15, 20, 35 and 50
Celsius (41, 59, 68, 95 and 122
Fahrenheit). Nathan avoided water at 0
C (32 F) since ice doesnt drip well.
He also avoided boiling water, which
could get dangerous. The teen dripped
water at each temperature and weighed
it to determine the size of his drops,
running each temperature test three
times. As the temperature of the water
increased, the size of the drops
decreased, which suggested the surface
tension was also decreasing. Nathan
concluded that cleaning a dish with hot
water is probably more efficient than
cold. Next, he tested soap or rather a
main ingredient in it, sodium lauryl
sulfoacetate (or SLSA). This chemical is
a surfactant a chemical that decreases
the attraction between water molecules,
which lowers surface tension. Nathan
tested pure water, water with 0.01375
percent, 0.01275 percent, 0.055 percent,
0.1 percent, 0.2 percent and 0.5 percent
SLSA. (All were held at the same
temperature of 20 C.) He dripped and
weighed his mixtures again. The
addition of the surfactant decreased
surface tension more than simply
heating water, Nathan found. After
reading more about the chemical, the
teen discovered that SLSA is a chemical
with two ends. One is hydrophobic it
is repelled by water. The other is
hydrophilic, or attracted to water. When
SLSA with its two ends is placed in
water, the molecules of the chemical
line up at the waters surface.
For more information visit-
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.o
rg/blog/eureka-lab/teen-studies-better-
cleaning-through-chemistry
Researchers investigate
decline in South
Africa's forest-birds
Forest-dwelling bird species are
disappearing from some of South
Africa's indigenous forests, with forest
birds in the Eastern Cape being the most
affected.
A new study, published in Bird
Conservation International recently,
showed that the ranges of 28 of South
Africa's 57 forest-dwelling bird
species were declining, while those of
22 species were increasing and seven
remained stable. The findings are
based on 25 years of citizen science
data collected by the Southern
African Bird Atlas Project. The data
can be used to indicate the
conservation status of a species,
depending on its known range and
how it is changing. The first survey
took place from 1987 to 1992, and the
second survey started in 2007 and is
ongoing.Researchers from
Stellenbosch University (SU) and
South Africa's Department of
Environmental Affairs used data on
57 forest-dwelling species to
investigate links between deforestation,
species characteristics and range
declines for these species over the last
20 years.Indigenous forests make up
less than one percent of South
Africa's landscape, but are home to
some 14% of our terrestrial birds,
many of which are endemic or
range-restricted. But these forest
patches are highly fragmented, with
most remaining forests being smaller
than 1 km2.Prof. Michael Cherry, a
behavioural ecologist from SU and
one of the co-authors, says they are
particularly concerned about the
disappearance of forest birds from
indigenous forests in the Eastern
Cape, and especially the former
homelands of the Ciskei and
Transkei. These areas form part of the
Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany
Biodiversity Hotspot.
these forests. But we do not know They are working not only on
whether this implies a decline in birds, but other animal groups as
population or whether they are well. "We predict that if birds --
simply moving somewhere else" perhaps the most mobile of animal
he says. "When a forest is taxa as they are able to fly
destroyed or becomes degraded, relatively long distances between
the bigger and stronger bird forest fragments -- are being
species can fly elsewhere to find negatively affected by forest
food and refuge. But smaller bird degradation, than other animal
species could be stuck if there is species are likely to be worse
not another forest patch within affected," he says. Indigenous
range."Often plantations of alien forests are not only threatened by
trees, usually pine or gum, are deforestation. Forests are also
closely associated with under pressure from rural
indigenous forests. These trees communities who collect forest
are planted so that they can be products for firewood, building
harvested either for timber or for materials, food and traditional
pulp.He says while some medicines. "If humans and birds
forest-bird species are able to are targeting the same tree species
benefit from plantations, others, as resources, then the quality of
such as the Bush Blackcap, the these resources declines for both,"
Yellow-throated warns Cherry. "The challenge is to
Woodland-warbler and the develop a forest management
Orange Ground-thrush, were lost policy which minimizes forest
from areas where plantations degradation to the benefit of both
increased."Plantations are humans and birds," he concludes.
unsuitable habitats for these
species as they build nests in the
understory of indigenous forest,
which is vulnerable to trampling
if cattle are allowed to graze
there. This is often the case, as
forests are not usually fenced
unless they fall within park
boundaries," he explains.
Currently Prof. Cherry leads a
major research project, funded by
the Foundational Biodiversity
Information Programme, that will
try to ground-truth the results of
this study in the forests of the
Eastern Cape. Research partners
include four South African
universities and six museums, as
well as Harvard University in the
United States of America.During
2016 and 2017 the group has
already undertaken three field
trips to the Amathole and
Transkei mistbelt forests and the
Pondoland scarp forests, and
another three field trips are in the
pipeline.
For more info, visit:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/
170203101525.htm