coffee poems

Some Do Not Like It Hot

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:15:58 -0400

The Great Dying, The Big One -- The Permo-Triassic!
(In a time machine, not sure if that's where I'd aim …)
As extinctions go, this one's a blockbuster classic,
When most of Earth's species dropped out of the game.
Conodont fossils reveal massive changes
In sea surface temperatures (and CO2?).
Terrestrial critters reduced their lat ranges;
Low-oxygen regions in deep ocean grew.
Peat swamps disappeared (a great gap in coal),
And at the equator, most fish would fry.
At times like these, seems wise to head for the pole!
In a hot-steamy world … adapt, move, or die.

Perspective: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6105/336.full

Full article: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6105/366.full

Bottom Feeders

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 21:57:38 -0400

Graduate students, microbe goo …
What is it that links the two?
It seems that both life forms are found
Where electron donors (food) abound!
Sed rates, organic stuff control
Cell distribution on the whole.
New techniques birth a new notion:
Sub-seafloor mass, the same as ocean.

Perspective: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6104/204.full

Full study: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/40/16213.full

Dinosaur Dentition

Fri, 5 Oct 2012 19:43:33 -0400

Many duck-billed dinosaurs roamed the late Cretaceous,
Their appetite for tough old plants was really quite voracious!
Phytoliths are tough on teeth (not like rice and beans),
Lucky duck-bills' mouths contained real slice-and-grind machines!
The power of complex dentition gave them more food sources,
Strangely like much-later beasts, like elephants and horses!

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6103/98.full

Martian alluvium

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 09:40:42 -0400

Deep in Gale Crater, conglomerates found!
Sand, pebbles, cobbles, some of them round.
From sizes and shapes, geologists reckoned
There must have been water-flow 3 feet per second!
High as your ankle, maybe up to your hip,
Waters rushed downwards from over the lip.
Canyons and outcrops, the clues appear rife ...
The trickier task: detect signs of life.

Ofiicial press release:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-305

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/09/scienceshot-bingo-ancient-rushing.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/28/mars-rover-curiosity-evidence-water?newsfeed=true

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/28/161925428/nasas-curiosity-finds-water-once-flowed-on-mars

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120927-mars-streambed-riverbed-science-curiosity-rover-nasa-water/

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6102/1604.1.full?sid=2a330fc0-e639-4833-af23-fd8368926bc1

Deep-Sea Plough

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 14:32:32 -0400

Giant fleets the oceans trawl,
Gasping fish they skywards haul.
Not just critters do they move,
But sediments they push and groove ...
Ten times greater their extent
Than the land that farmers dent!
What will come of shelf slopes now,
Underneath the deep-sea plough?

Puig et al. 2012 Nature
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7415/full/nature11410.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20120913