NASA has revealed that a whiff of methane has been detected twice in the last couple of years at the Martian surface by the Curiosity Rover.
The source of the methane is uncertain. It is not even clear if the methane originated on Mars or arrived there by way of a meteorite that landed on the surface of the red planet, but this is the strongest evidence yet of possible life in its ancient past.
"We have full confidence that there is methane in the atmosphere of Mars," announced John Grotzinger of CalTech, a Curiosity project scientist, on December 16. "Life is one of the few hypotheses for the formation of methane on Mars".
The data that the Curiosity Rover is collecting about what Mars is like today provides strong clues about its history. The first in situ detection shows methane in the Martian atmosphere at a low background level as well as in episodic spikes at 10 times the background concentration.
These latest results were announced at the American Geophysical Union's meeting in San Francisco, a gathering of more than 25,000 Earth and planetary scientists. The findings, published in the journal Science, were obtained through separate periods of daytime sampling in late 2013 and early 2014.
The results were described as "An unexpected episodic increase in the Mars methane" by members of the project. Sushil Atreva, of the University of Michigan said: "A sudden spike and just as suddenly a disappearance of methane tells us that the Mars surface is communicating with the atmosphere."
How did it get there?
There are three likely scenarios for the origin of the methane. The first is alteration of surface organics formed from past life on Mars that have since been broken down by the Sun's ultraviolet rays.
Another is a reaction of water with minerals in the Martian subsurface that created methane from olivine in a process called serpentinisation. Or it could have been delivered from elsewhere in the Solar System as cosmic dust or micrometeorites.
Once produced, it seems most likely that the methane was stored as gas ice-like crystals, called clathrate hydrates, in the subsurface.
It seems that the methane is periodically destabilized and escapes into the atmosphere. It is distributed across the surface of the planet by winds over the course of a few months, and then oxidized by photochemistry, eventually breaking down to CO2 in the atmosphere. The methane source was described by NASA scientists as localized and small, and they claim that this strongly suggests Mars is currently active.
Now what?
Grotzinger said that NASA doesn't know when methane will next appear but will monitor the surface continuously in a bid to determine how it got there.
The NASA scientists suggest that the methane originates from organic compounds accumulated in the Martian sediment, possibly early in the planet's history, maybe billions of years ago. Loose sediment accumulates organics, they explained, which are degraded by cosmic radiation. Fluids containing oxidising compounds then move through the rock, and the rock undergoes chemical change. Then cosmic radiation destroys the organics.
Instruments on board Curiosity identified a compound called chlorobenzine from samples of dust drilled at the Gale crater. For Roger Summons of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this chlorobenzine is indicative of "more complex organic matter in the sample".
"The stability of the clathrates depends on where are they are in the surface. Small impacts or thermal stresses may have destabilized the clathrates, which may represent ancient methane. They can be stored for billions of years," said Syshil Atreya, from the University of Michigan.
The background levels measured in the Martian gas samples correspond to a total of around 5,000 tons of methane in the entire atmosphere. At their peak, the methane "burps" reached concentrations 10 times this amount. This compares with the much higher amount of methane in Earth's air, which stands at around 500,000,000 tons.
The team is planning further drilling samples to try to characterize the nature of the source of the methane in the trapped sediments.
More from The Conversation UK...
The release of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program documents the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) against terrorism suspects detained by the agency.
The report concludes that the CIA program was more widespread and egregious than the American public — and Congressional oversight committees — had been led to believe. Not surprisingly, key findings in the report also call into question the claimed efficacy of EITs in eliciting reliable intelligence information.
As a research psychologist who has spent more than a decade assessing the effectiveness of various interview and interrogation methods, I regard release of the Senate report as a uniquely important event. It should encourage us to critically assess the ethical, legal, and scientific basis upon which the EIT program was based. Just as important, it should prompt us to consider how we devise our future interrogation practices.
An absence of scientific scrutiny
The report offers an opportunity for us to reflect upon the events that led to the use of EITs by the CIA, as well as the debate over their purported effectiveness.
While proponents claim these methods are necessary to compel uncooperative subjects to divulge critical information, critical analysis fails to justify their use.
From my perspective, EITs are ethically indefensible. Their use appears to violate both domestic and international law. Furthermore, no scientific assessment of the techniques can be offered to demonstrate their effectiveness in practice.
The report's first finding agreed — the "CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees." However, the debate between critics and proponents of the program continues, with both sides offering anecdotal evidence to support their claims.
The absence of (and need for) scientific scrutiny on this issue is obvious. Unfortunately, ethical issues once again pervade any such discussion. The ethical conduct of experimental research would preclude any responsible scientist from systematically assessing the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques".
How should one conduct interrogation?
A 2006 Intelligence Science Board concluded that the U.S. government's interrogation practices were largely devoid of any scientific validity.
In fact, existing research into current practices in the U.S. indicates that the use of an accusatorial approach — characterized by accusation, confrontation, and psychological manipulation — can produce false confessions if applied against innocent subjects.
In 2009, the Obama administration created the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), an inter-agency group comprising personnel from the FBI, CIA, and (Defense Intelligence Agency) DIA. The operational mission of the HIG was to conduct interrogations of high-value terrorism suspects. In addition, the HIG was also tasked with developing a research program to assess the effectiveness of current interrogation practices and to develop novel, science-based methods.
Since 2010, I have led a group of internationally renowned psychologists from the U.S., UK, Sweden, Australia, Southeast Asia, South Africa, and the Middle East to do just that. For the past four years, we have worked to develop new methods of intelligence interviewing and interrogation. This research is unclassified and is conducted with the oversight of Human Subjects Review Committees that protect the rights and welfare of study participants. Our group has produced more than 60 studies — from experimental research to interviews and surveys of interrogation professionals and systematic analysis of specific criminal and counterterrorist interrogation interviews.
These studies assess the importance of social relationships, active listening, and personal rapport in extracting information. They have developed methods that enhance memory recall and evaluate what kind of questioning can help an interrogator judge whether a suspect is telling the truth or not. They look at the impact of the interrogation context (how should we set up the interrogation room?), and the role of culture and language (including the influence of interpreters).
We are working with U.S. military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies to introduce science-based methods into their formal training programs. The good news is that these methods are now being taught to U.S. government personnel.
Our findings clearly show that interrogation strategies that are based on building rapport and seek to understand a suspect's motivation to cooperate are more effective than accusatory practices that look to raise anxiety levels, fabricate evidence, and minimize a suspect's perception of their own culpability. This conclusion is confirmed by the experiences of many highly skilled interrogators. Further, the "information gathering approach," as it is known, preserves the ethical principles of fairness and justice and is legally permissible.
A complete description of the implications of this research is too detailed to be included here. However, the results of our efforts are available to both the scientific and professional communities. Studies conducted by our researchers are being published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at both academic and professional meetings. A new publication, Interrogation: Expanding the Frontiers of Research and Practice, shares our findings with interrogation professionals, U.S. government trainers, and the public.
Our research program represents only the beginning of what is possible. Medicine and education have turned to researchers for the development of evidence-based approaches. It is time that the practice of interrogation be similarly informed by scientific scrutiny.
More from The Conversation US...
The Moon was new on July 16. Its familiar nearside facing the surface of planet Earth was in shadow. But on that date a million miles away, the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) captured this view of an apparently Full Moon crossing in front of a Full Earth. In fact, seen from the spacecraft's position beyond the Moon's orbit and between Earth and Sun, the fully illuminated lunar hemisphere is the less familiar farside. Only known since the dawn of the space age, the farside is mostly devoid of dark lunar maria that sprawl across the Moon's perpetual Earth-facing hemisphere. Only the small dark spot of the farside's Mare Moscoviense (Sea of Moscow) is clear, at the upper left. Planet Earth's north pole is near 11 o'clock, with the North America visited by Hurricane Dolores near center. Slight color shifts are visible around the lunar edge, an artifact of the Moon's motion through the field caused by combining the camera's separate exposures taken in quick succession through different color filters. While monitoring the Earth and solar wind for space weather forcasts, about twice a year DSCOVR can capture similar images of Moon and Earth together as its crosses the orbital plane of the Moon.While studying latent HIV cells, researchers in the laboratory of Prof. Kathryn Miller-Jensen have developed a device that
The post Lab Develops New Device For Studying Cells has been published on Technology Org.
