Chart: new Canadians, their origins

Top 10 countries where recent immigrants were born

'Recent immigrants' = permanent residents who arrived in Canada within five years prior to a given census. For additional data from 1981 and 1991, go here.

Source: Statistics Canada, censuses of population

Manicouagan impact crater, Quebec

Image source: Earth Impact Database

An ancient language speaks

Babylonian, Dead For Millennia, Now Online

2 Millennia After The Venerable Language Died Out, Sound of Babylonian Streams from Internet

CBS News: The language of the Epic of Gilgamesh and King Hammurabi has found a new life online after being dead for some 2,000 years. Academics from across the world have recorded audio of Babylonian epics, poems, and even a magic spell to the Internet in an effort to help scholars and laymen understand what the language of the ancient Near East sounded like. The answer? Cambridge University's Martin Worthington told The Associated Press that it's 'a bit like a mixture of Arabic and Italian.'

Babylonia was among the world's first civilizations and produced some of its earliest pieces of literature. Its people also play a central role in the Bible. Babylon's soaring, pyramid-shaped Temple of Marduk is thought to have inspired the tale of the Tower of Babel, while their conquest of the Kingdom of Judah in the early sixth century B.C. led to the deportation an exile of the nation's Jewish population.

The Babylonian language, written on clay tablets in cuneiform script, dominated the Near East for centuries before it was gradually displaced by Aramaic. After a long decline, it disappeared from use altogether sometime in the first century A.D. -- and was only deciphered nearly two millennia later by 19th-century European academics.

Worthington... said scholars have a pretty good idea of what Babylonian sounded like by comparing the language to its Semitic cousins -- Hebrew and Arabic -- and by picking out Babylonian words written in Greek or Aramaic. The vowel patterns within Babylonian itself also provide clues as to how some words are supposed to sound...

The website hosts some 30 audio files, generally a few minutes long. Among them are extracts from 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' and the 'Codex Hammurabi,' one of the world's oldest set of laws. There are also several versions of the 'Poem of the Righteous Sufferer,' a Babylonian tale that closely parallels the Biblical story of Job, and other texts, including an erotic hymn to the goddess Ishtar.

Image source here.

Space debris

Computer generated image from NASA: Approximately 95% of the objects in this illustration are orbital debris, i.e., not functional satellites. The dots represent the current location of each item. The orbital debris dots are scaled according to the image size of the graphic to optimize their visibility and are not scaled to Earth. For images from other observation points, go here.

Books are our friends II

Image source here.

Coral die-offs warn of climate distress

Extreme Heat Bleaches Coral, and Threat is Seen

NYT: This year's extreme heat is putting the world's coral reefs under such severe stress that scientists fear widespread die-offs, endangering not only the richest ecosystems in the ocean but also fisheries that feed millions of people.

From Thailand to Texas, corals are reacting to the heat stress by bleaching, or shedding their color and going into survival mode. Many have already died, and more are expected to do so in the coming months... Corals in the Caribbean may undergo drastic bleaching in the next few weeks...

Scientists say the trouble with the reefs is linked to climate change. For years they have warned that corals, highly sensitive to excess heat, would serve as an early indicator of the ecological distress on the planet caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases. 'I am significantly depressed by the whole situation,' said Clive Wilkinson, director of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, an organization in Australia that is tracking this year's disaster...

Coral reefs occupy a tiny fraction of the ocean, but they harbor perhaps a quarter of all marine species, including a profusion of fish. Often called the rain forests of the sea, they are the foundation not only of important fishing industries but also of tourist economies worth billions...

Summer is only just beginning in the Southern Hemisphere, but water temperatures off Australia are also above normal, and some scientists are worried about the single most impressive reef on Earth. The best hope now, Dr. Wilkinson said, is or mild tropical storms that would help to cool Australian waters. 'If we get a poor monsoon season,' he said, 'I think we're in for a serious bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef.'

Source of images here.

Canada #9 in economic equity for women

Women's Economic Opportunity, A new global index and ranking by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Complete report here (.pdf)

Arctic sea ice 'is not going to recover'

Arctic Ice in Death Spiral

IPS News: The carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have melted the Arctic sea ice to its lowest volume since before the rise of human civilization, dangerously upsetting the energy balance of the entire planet, climate scientists are reporting.

'The Arctic sea ice has reached its four lowest summer extents (area covered) in the last four years,' said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the US city of Boulder, Colorado. The volume -- extent and thickness -- of ice left in the Arctic likely reached the lowest ever level this month... 'I stand by my previous statements that the Arctic summer sea ice cover is in a death spiral. It's not going to recover.' he said...

'The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic,' [said] James Overland of the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory... 'Paradoxically, a warmer Arctic means future cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception' in these regions...

One local impact is a rapid warming of the coastal regions of the Arctic, where average temperatures are now three to five degrees C warmer than they were 30 years ago... 'I hate to say it but I think we are committed to a four- to six- degree warmer Arctic,' Serreze said...

If the Arctic becomes six degrees warmer, than half of the world's permafrost will likely thaw, probably to a depth of a few metres, releasing most of the carbon and methane accumulated there over thousands of years... Methane is a global warming gas approximately 25 time more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2). That would be catastrophic for human civilization, experts agree... A Canadian study in 2009 documented that the southernmost permafrost limit had retreated 130 kilometres over the past 50 years.

Image sources here and here.

North magnetic pole leaving Canada

North Magnetic Pole Moving Due to Core Flux

National Geographic: Earth's north magnetic pole is racing toward Russia at 55 to 60 kilometres (34 to 37 miles) a year due to magnetic changes in the planet's core... The core is too deep for scientists to directly detect its magnetic field. But researchers can infer the field's movements by tracking how Earth's magnetic field has been changing at the surface and in space...

There's a region of rapidly changing magnetism on the core's surface, possibly being created by a mysterious 'plume' of magnetism arising from deeper in the core. And it's this region that could be pulling the magnetic pole away from its long-time location in northern Canada...

Magnetic north, which is the place where compass needles actually point, is near but not exactly in the same place as the geographic North Pole. Right now, magnetic north is close to Canada's Ellesmere Island...

The magnetic north pole had moved little from the time scientists first located it in 1831. Then in 1904, the pole began shifting northeastward at a steady pace of about 9 miles (15 kilometers) a year. In 1989 it sped up again, and in 2007 scientists confirmed that the pole is now galloping toward Siberia.

Image source here.

Israeli settlements: facts on the ground

For interactive version, go here.

Sabotage by 'The most dangerous player'

September 2009: Could Israel strike Iran over nuclear concerns?

Reuters: Israel has been developing 'cyber-war' capabilities that could disrupt Iranian industrial and military control systems... An advantage of sabotage over an air strike may be deniabilitly.

August 2010: Iran targeted in cyber attack

War in Context: Now it seems such an attack may have occurred in recent months.

Iran nuclear program disrupted by cyberattack

Globe & Mail: A computer virus that attacks a widely used industrial system appears aimed mostly at Iran and its power suggests a state may have been involved in creating it.

Stuxnet malware is 'weapon' out to destroy... Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant?

CS Monitor: Cyber security experts say they have identified the world's first known cyber super weapon designed specifically to destroy a real-world target -- a factory, a refinery, or just maybe a nuclear power plant. Stuxnet's arrival heralds something blindingly new... Internet link is not required... 'Stuxnet is a 100-percent-directed cyber attack aimed at destroying an industrial process in the physical world.' says [Ralph] Langner, [a German cyber-security researcher]. It might be too late for Stuxnet's target, Langer says. He suggests it has already been hit -- and destroyed or heavily damaged.

Stuxnet: The Trinity test of cyberwarfare

War in Context: Ralph Langer envisages that the highly sophisticated attack would have required a preparation team that included 'intel, covert ops, exploit writers, process engineers, control system engineers, product specialists, military liaison.'...

6. In the strategic landscape of cyberwarfare the most dangerous player may turn out to be a small but highly developed fortress-state that feels threatened by much of the rest of the world; that neither trusts nor is trusted by any of its allies; that sees its own stability enhanced by regional instability; that has seen its own economic fortunes rise while the global economy suffers; and that views with contempt the notion of an international community.

Image source here.

Equinox and Full Moon: Happy Autumn!

Lunar topography

Since June 2009, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been circling the Moon, compiling data for the first topographic map of the Moon's surface. More images here.

The aurora borealis online

Northern lights viewable every night on new Canadian Space Agency website

The Canadian Press: Canada's northern lights are going online. Starting last night, Live feeds of the aurora borealis are available on AuroraMax, a website set up by the Canadian Space Agency... The light show begins after dusk local time or at about 11:30 EDT. But if skywatchers can't stay up, they can watch it the next day on video.

The launch of the online observatory coincides with aurora season in Northern Canada, which generally begins in late August or early September and ends in May. Auroras occur as charged particles from the sun collide with gases in Earth's upper atmosphere. The online observatory is a collaborative initiative involving the space agency, the University of Calgary, the city of Yellowknife and Astronomy North. Watch the aurora at AuroraMax.

Image source here.

Microbes move gold with groundwater flow

Bacteria make gold nuggets

Discovery News: Gold nuggets are often the creations of bacterial biofims, say Australian researchers who have demonstrated the process and even identified the bacteria at work.

Layers of bacteria can actually dissolve gold into nanoparticles, which move through rocks and soils, and then deposit it in other places, sometimes creating purer 'secondary' gold deposits in cracks and crevices of rocks. The process overturns the long-held belief by some scientists that gold ore is created only by 'primary' physical geological processes...

The University of Adelaide's Frank Reith and his colleagues discovered that 90 percent of the bacteria were of just two species, Delftia acidovorans and Cupriavidus metallidurans. The bacteria share genes that make them resistant to the toxic effects of heavy metals... The discovery appears in the September issue of the journal Geology.

'We tagged the DNA and saw the beautiful active biofilm (dissolving the gold), said [Joel] Brugger. 'That was very interesting because gold in soluble form is very toxic.' That dissolved gold can then be redeposited in other places in a much purer form... 'At the moment we don't really understand how gold moves around in the environment,' said Brugger. 'I think that here we can see for the first time how it happens.' Microbes move it around with the groundwater flow.

Image source here.