Quote:
Hi Miguel,

Looks like the Vatican is soon to fall. I surely will be looking forward to see these people be put to where they will not harm another child, man or woman. Looking to wee what Sept 15, 2012 brings forth.

Myrna

Mysterious Changes in Ocean Salt Spur NASA Expedition

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's research vessel Knorr docked before its scheduled departure on Sept. 6 to study salinity in the mid-Atlantic ocean.

Over the past 50 years, the salty parts of the oceans have become saltier and the fresh regions have become fresher, and the degree of change is greater than scientists can explain.

Researchers are heading out into one particularly salty ocean region, in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, in the hopes of better understanding what drives variation in salinity in the upper ocean.

Ultimately, they hope, research like this will offer insight on the dynamics behind the dramatic changes in the ocean's salt content.

Many oceanographers have a hunch about what is going on: Climate change, Ray Schmitt, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told journalists during a news conference Wednesday (Sept. 5).

"Climate is changing all the time, and some of that change is due to natural variation," Schmitt said. "The 50-year trend we are talking about, most of us believe is really due to the general trend of global warming."

Salt & the global water cycle

This matters because the ocean is at the heart of the planet's water cycle: 86 percent of global evaporation and 78 percent of global precipitation occur over the ocean, according to NASA, the lead entity behind the project, called Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS).

Over the ocean, more evaporation as compared to precipitation translates into saltier water. Meanwhile, in regions where precipitation is favored, water is fresher.

By tracking ocean salinity, researchers can better understand the global water cycle. Global warming is expected to intensify it, but current computer models do not predict the amount of change seen over the last 50 years, Schmitt said.

Aside from an increase in evaporation caused by warming, such factors as winds can also contribute to changes in salinity.

"We have a lot of questions about the basic physics we hope to resolve with this cruise," Schmitt said.

In addition to instruments attached to the research vessel itself, scientists plan to deploy a variety of drifting, remotely operated and moored sensors. European researchers are also visiting the site and collecting data.

Salinity data is also expected to come from the satellite-borne instrument, called Aquarius, launched about a year ago, as well as the global network of Argo floats, which measure temperature and salinity. [Satellite Gallery: Science from Above]

The research vessel Knorr departed Woods Hole, Mass., for the mid-Atlantic Thursday (Sept. 6). The researchers will spend about three weeks deploying their instruments, leaving some behind for when they return. Due to hurricanes Leslie and Michael, the vessel's captain decided to travel quickly to the east and then south to miss the worst of the weather on their way to the study site.

Ongoing work

The mid-Atlantic isn't the only area where researchers hope to study ocean salinity in detail.

"SPURS is named because spurs come in pairs," said Eric Lindstrom, a physical oceanography program scientist at NASA headquarters, explaining that researchers hope to do something similar in a low-salinity region, such as the Bay of Bengal or an area south of Hawaii.

While researchers think global climate change may be behind the changes in ocean salinity, changes like these are expected to have their own implications for climate. This is because ocean salinity also affects ocean circulation, and as a result, ocean temperatures, which have implications for weather.

Here's how it works: Compared with fresh water, salty water is heavier, and so more prone to sinking. Temperature has a similar effect, with warmth causing water to rise. Differences in salinity and temperature drive a slow-moving conveyor belt of ocean currents that encircles the planet. The Gulf Stream, which carries warm water across the Atlantic to Europe, is part of this conveyor belt.

It may work out that higher salinity in some regions counterbalances fresher water in others, Schmitt said: "It is a delicate balance and what we think now is it is not too likely the conveyer belt is going to shut down anytime soon."

Follow Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry or LiveScience @livescience. We're also onFacebook & Google+.

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Iraq blasts kill 100 as fugitive VP gets death sentence

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A series of bombs ripped through mainlyShi'ite Baghdad districts on Sunday after Iraq's fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi was sentenced to death, ending one of the bloodiest days of the year with more than 100 killed across the country.

The violence and the sentence for Hashemi, a senior Sunni politician, threatened to stoke sectarian tensions in Iraq where a Shi'ite-led government is battling political instability and a Sunni Islamist insurgency nine months after U.S. troops left.

Hashemi, a fierce critic of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, fled Iraq after the authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in December, a move that risked collapsing a fragile power-sharing agreement among Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs.

After Sunday's court ruling, car bombs tore through six districts around Baghdad, hitting a restaurant and a cafe. Another bomb went off in a busy commercial area, killing more than 50 people following bombs in other cities nationwide.

"I heard women screaming, I saw people running in all directions, chairs scattered in the street. My windows were blown out, my mother and two kids were injured too," said Alla Majid, still shaking after a blast in Baghdad's Sadr City.

Hashemi, who is unlikely to return to Iraq from Turkey, had accused Maliki's government of controlling the judiciary and of orchestrating a crackdown on Sunni opponents. He had refused to appear in a court he dismissed as biased.

He and his son-in-law were both found guilty in absentia of murdering a female lawyer and security official, Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar, a judiciary spokesman said.

"This is a political decision. All our respect to the Iraqi judicial system, but this was political," said lawmaker Jaber al-Jaberi, a member of Hashemi's Sunni-backed Iraqiya party.

Hours before the sentence was announced, a wave of bombings and shootings had already killed at least 58 people and a car bomb had exploded outside a French consular office in Nassiriya in southern Iraq.

Since the last U.S. troops left, Maliki's Shi'ite-led government has been politically deadlocked and insurgents have continued to strike, hoping to ignite the kind of sectarian tensions that drove Iraq close to civil war in 2006-2007.

The most serious of the attacks happened near the city of Amara, 300 km (185 miles) south of the capital, when two car bombs exploded outside a Shi'ite shrine and a market place, killing at least 24 people, officials said.

With its main hospital overflowing with the injured, mosques in Amara used prayer loudspeakers to call for blood donations.

More were killed in bombings in the towns of Kirkuk, Baquba, Samarra, Basra and Tuz Khurmato, and there was also a strike on an army base and a bombing of security guard recruits for the Iraqi North Oil Company.

The car bomb outside the building housing the French consular office in Nassiriya, 300 km south of Baghdad, killed a police guard and wounded four, authorities said. The consul, an Iraqi citizen, was not at the office.

SECTARIAN TENSIONS

After the fall of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein and the rise to power of Iraq's Shi'ite majority, many Iraqi Sunnis feel they have been sidelined.

Sunni politicians say Maliki is failing to live up to agreements to share power among the parties, a charge his backers dismiss, pointing to Sunnis in key posts.

When the Hashemi charges were announced, his Iraqiya party attempted a short-lived boycott of parliament and the Cabinet. But the party has since splintered further, strengthening the political hand of Maliki's Shi'ite coalition.

Heightened political tension is often accompanied by a surge in violence as Sunni Islamist insurgents try to capitalise on instability to strike at the government, local security forces and Shi'ite religious targets.

Violence in Iraq has eased since the dark days of sectarian slaughter that erupted a few years after the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam. But insurgents are still carrying out at least one major coordinated attack a month.

Infighting in the religiously mixed government, and a resurgence of a local al Qaeda wing, are raising fears of a return to wider violence, especially as Iraq is struggling to contain spillover from Syria's crisis over the border.

Iraq's local al Qaeda affiliate, Islamic State of Iraq, has claimed responsibility for major attacks on security forces and Shi'ite neighbourhoods. Former members of Saddam's outlawed Baathist party and other Sunni Islamist groups are also fighting the government.