A new species of Pseudoscorpion from Hainan Island, south China.

Pseudoscorpions (or False Scorpions) are small Arachnids with flattened oval or pear-shaped bodies; they have pincers resembling those of true Scorpions, but lack stinging tails. The largest species reach 12 mm, but most are considerably smaller. They have a fossil record dating back to the Devonian, and may be considerably older since the oldest fossils closely resemble modern forms.

In a paper published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa on 26 September 2012, Jun-fang Hu and Feng Zhang of the College of Life Sciences at Hebei University, describe a new species of Pseudoscorpion from Hainan Islans, off the south coast of mainland China.

The new species is placed in the genus Atemnus, and given the specific name limuensis, after Mount Limu, where it was discovered living under the bark of an Ormosia tree (a type of Legume). Atemnus limuensis is a small, reddish brown Pseudoscorpion, with females larger than the males; 5.4-6.25 mm, compared to 4.38-4.88 mm. 

Atemnus limuensis, male specimen. Hu & Zhang (2012).

See also Two new species of Pseudoscorpion from China and An Eocene False Scorpion from Baltic amber. 

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Magnitude 7.3 Earthquake off the coast of Japan.

On Friday 7 December 2012, slightly before 5.20 pm local time (slightly before 8.20 am, GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency recorded a Magnitude 7.3 Earthquake at a depth of 10 km, roughly 250 km off the east coast of Japan. This was followed 13 minutes later by a second, Magnitude 6.2 quake at roughly the same location, and a number of subsequent aftershocks have been recorded. No casualties or damage have been reported, but the quake was felt across much of eastern Japan and a tsunami warning was initially issued, though this was later withdrawn. 

The location of the 7 December 2012 quake, and the areas that felt the strongest shaking. Areas coloured the strongest yellow would have been shaken the most severely. Japan Meteorological Agency.

The quake took place on the Japan Trench, along which the Pacific Plate is being subducted beneath the Okhotsk Plate which underlies northern Japan. As the Pacific Plate sinks into the Earth the two plates continuously stuck together then broke apart as the pressure built up, causing Earthquakes in the process. 

The movement of the tectonic plates underlying Japan. Chubu Electric/Earthquake Research Committee.

This is particularly dangerous along a marine trench, as the overlying plate can be bent by the tectonic movement then snap back with the quake that releases the pressure; which causes some of the most severe tsunamis.

The sequence of events that can lead to major Earthquakes on a submarine trench. PennState University.

See also Volcanic activity on Mount Alaid, Eruption on Ivan Grozny, Massive deep Earthquake beneath the Sea of Okhotsk, Japan shaken by pair of major Earthquakes and Earthquakes on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

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Eruption on Mount Langila.

Mount Langila is an active complex volcano comprised of four overlapping craters emerging from the northeast flank of the extinct Talawe Volcano on Cape Gloucester at the western tip of New Britain, Papua New Guinea. The volcano has produced numerous explosive eruptions ever since it was first recorded in the mid-nineteenth century, and is flanked to the northeast by a lava field which runs to the sea. The newest crater was created during an explosive eruption in 1960 that produced 10 000 cubic meters of lava.

Steam issuing from two craters on Langila. Oceanic Expeditions.

On 1 December 2012 the Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre reported an eyewitness account from a pilot of an ash-plume rising 1.5 km above the volcano. This is the first eruption since September 2010 (some steam was witnessed issuing from the volcano in 2011, but this was not thought to be a major event).

New Britain is located on the South Bismarck Plate, one of a group of small tectonic plate fragments caught between the converging Pacific and Australian Plates. To the south of the island the Solomon Sea and Australian plates are both being subducted, passing under the South Bismark Plate as they do so. As they sink into the Earth the plates are partially melted by the friction and the heat of the planet's interior. Some of this melted material then rises through the overlying plate, fuelling the volcanoes of New Britain.

See also Major Earthquake shakes New Ireland & New Britain, Eruption on Mount Pago, Earthquake shakes New Britain and Volcanoes on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

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Two new species of Moss from the Permian of Brazil.

Mosses (Bryophytes) are simple plants which lack vascular systems to pump water and nutrients from a root system, instead relying on what they can absorb through their leaves, and generally only reaching a few cm in height. This means that they are at their most diverse in moist habitats, though some species are surprisingly drought-tolerant. Despite their simple nature, Mosses are an important part of ecosystems the world over, creating a water-holding layer which covers soil, rocks, trees and some animals, inside which entire miniature communities of organisms thrive. Mosses also differ from vascular plants in that they are haploid (have one set of chromosomes) rather than diploid (have paired chromosomes); though they have a diploid spore stage used to propagate the species in the same way that the (haploid) pollen of vascular plants is.

In a paper published in the journal Palaeontology in January 2012, Isabel Cortez Christiano de Souza and Fresia Ricardi Branco of the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resources at the Institute of Geosciences at the State University of Campinas and Yelitza León Vargas of the Centro Jardín Botánico at the Facultad de Ciencias at the Universidad de Los Andes describe two new species of Moss from the Middle Permian Teresina Formation, found in the Rio Preto Quarry, in the state of Paraná in Brazil. Mosses from the Permian are not unexpected, since they are thought to be one of the oldest groups of plants to have colonized the land, possibly dating back as far as the Ordovician, but they are not well known from the former Gondwana Supercontinent (of which South America forms a part), despite the flora of the widespread Glossopteris forests of the time being well studied on several continents.

The location and geological setting of the Rio Preto Quarry. Christiano de Souza et al. (2012).

The first new species of Moss is named Capimirinus riopretensis, where Capimirinus is a Latinization of capim mirin, which means small delicate plant in the Tupi-Guarani language, and riopretensis derives from the Rio Preto Quarry. Capimirinus riopretensis grew up to 25 mm in length, with stems that narrow towards the tips, showing dichotomous branching (branching by splitting into two equal parts in a 'Y' shape, as opposed to growing side-branches from existing stems), with erect, spirally arranged leaves and a sporophyte (diploid reproductive structure) produced on a pleurocarp (short side branch).

Capimirinus riopretensis. Scale bar 5 mm in top left image, 1 mm in all other images. Christiano de Souza et al. (2012).

The second new species described is named Yguajemanus yucapirus, meaning the Old Moss of Death in Tupi-Guarani. This has branching stems of a constant thickness and strongly curved leaves aranged in symmetrical pairs. 

Yguajemanus yucapirus. Christiano de Souza et al. (2012).

See also A Permian forest preserved in volcanic ash, Russian scientists germinate Pleistocene seeds, Insect borings in Triasic wood, Did the first land plants cause an Ordovician glaciation? and The end of the Permian.

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Earthquake felt across Cumbria.

On Wednesday 28 November 2012, slightly after 9.35 pm, GMT, the British Geological Survey recorded a Magnitude 2.1 Earthquake  at a depth of 7 km, about 6 km north of the Cumbrian  town of Ambleside, at the northern tip of Lake Windamere. This is too small to have caused any real danger, but was large enough to be felt across much of Cumbria.

The epicentre (place on the ground surface directly above the point of maximum movement) of the 28 November quake and locations where shaking was felt and reported. BGS.

As a rough rule of thumb Earthquakes become more frequent in the UK as you move to the north and west. This is due to glacial rebound; during the last ice age (i.e. before about 10 000 years ago, much of the north of the UK was covered by a thick layer of glacial ice. This pushed the rocks of the British lithosphere down into the underlying mantle, and, now that the ice has gone, these rocks are slowly rebounding, causing the occasional Earthquake in the process.

However this is not the full story, and Earthquakes in the UK can seldom be attributed to a single cause with confidence. Britain is also subjected to tectonic stresses caused by the expansion of the Atlantic Ocean, the impact of the African Plate into the Eurasian Plate from the south, and, to a lesser extent, by smaller areas of crustal expansion beneath the North Sea, the Rhine Valley and the Bay of Biscay. 

See also Earthquake on the Isle of Jura, Small Earthquake on the Isle of Mull, Earthquake in the Scottish Highlands, Earthquake in Leicestershire and Earthquakes on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

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Typhoon Bopha sweeps across the southern Philippines.

Typhoon Bopha made landfall on Mindanao early in the morning of Tuesday 4 December 2012, bringing with it widespread flooding, wind-damage and landslides. Authorities have reported at least one casualty so far, with more loss of life feared in remote areas. The storm has already swept across Micronesia and Palau, growing from a tropical depression to a Super-Typhoon shortly before hitting Mindanao, though it has since lost energy over land and been downgraded to a Category 3 Typhoon.

The path of Typhoon Bopha, with the strength of the storm indicated by colour and the potential future path of the storm indicated by concentric circles (the largest indicates possible positions for the centre of the storm 120 hours ahead of the time of writing: 8.20 am GMT on 12 December 2012). Tropical Storm Risk.

Tropical storms are caused by solar energy heating the air above the oceans, which causes the air to rise leading to an inrush of air. If this happens over a large enough area the inrushing air will start to circulate, as the rotation of the Earth causes the winds closer to the equator to move eastwards compared to those further away (the Coriolis Effect). This leads to tropical storms rotating clockwise in the southern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere.

Photograph of Typhoon Bopha taken from the International Space Station on 2 December 2012. NASA.

Tropical storms tend to grow in strength as they move across the ocean and lose it as they pass over land (this is not completely true: many tropical storms peter out without reaching land due to wider atmospheric patterns), since the land tends to absorb solar energy while the sea reflects it. They are categorised according to their wind speeds; using sustained wind strength (wind speeds maintained for a minute or more) rather than peak wind strength (the strongest gusts). A Super-Typhoon (or Super-Hurricane, or Super-Cyclone, depending on where these occur in the world), or Category 5 storm, has a sustained wind speed of 251 km/h or higher, a Category 3 Typhoon a sustained wind speed of 178-208 km/h.

The real danger of such storms is not, however, their wind speed, but the water they carry with them. The low pressure above the storms causes water to rise there by ~1 cm for every millibar drop in pressure, leading to a storm surge that can overwhelm low-lying coastal areas, while at the same time the heat leads to high levels of evaporation from the sea - and subsequently high levels of rainfall. This can cause additional flooding on land, as well as waterlogging soils on slopes leading to landslides.

Evacuees at an emergency shelter in Cagayan de Oro City. US Environmental Protection Agency.

See also Hurricane Sandy heads towards east coast of America, Tropical Storm Son-Tinh kills at least 24 in the Philippines and Hurricane Sandy causes devastation in Jamaica.

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Eruptions on Stromboli.

Stromboli is an island volcano off the west coast of southern Italy, slightly over 200 km southeast of Naples. The volcano has been in more-or-less constant eruption since at least Roman times, and is thought to be about 5000 years old, though it is not generally considered dangerous if not approached closely; there are three settlements on the island, all less than three kilometres from the summit. Stromboli is noted for frequent small explosive eruptions, which through lava bombs, ash and incandescent rock fragments out of the crater, a type of eruption known by vulcanologists around the world as 'strombolian'. The summit rises 924 m above sea level.

A column of smoke emerging from Stromboli in November 2012. We Go Round the World.

The volcano has been fairly quiet since June this year (2012), but activity increased sharply in November. On the fifth five active vents were visible on the crater terrace, with one in the southwest crater producing lava fountains with durations in excess of a minute long and two craters in the central crater also producing lava fountains, with interludes of between five minutes and an hour. On 21 November activity resumed, with lava fountains from two vents on the northern and central parts of the terrace. 

An eruption of ash and lava bombs on the Sciara del Fuoco, a horseshoe shaped depression on the northern flank of the summit of Stromboli. Stromboli Online.

Southeastern Italy lies on the edge of the Eurasian Plate, close to its margin with Africa. The African Plate is being subducted beneath Italy on along a margin that cuts through the island of Sicily. The African plate is being subducted beneath Italy, and as it sinks is melted by the friction and heat of the Earth's interior. Some of the melted material then rises through the overlying plate fuelling the volcanoes of southern Italy.

See also Magnitude 5.3 quake in southern Italy kills at least one person, Six Italian scientists gaoled for failure to predict Earthquake, Italian scientists face gaol over failure to predict Earthquake, Modena Plane hit by second major Earthquake and and Volcanoes on Sciency Thoughts YouTube.

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