New Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents, Life Form Discovered

A new "black smoker"--an undersea mineral chimney emitting hot springs of iron-darkened water--has been discovered at 8,500-foot depths by an expedition funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to explore the Pacific Ocean floor off Costa Rica.

Scientists from Duke University, the Universities of New Hampshire and South Carolina, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts have named their discovery the Medusa Hydrothermal Vent Field.

The researchers chose that name to highlight the presence there of a unique pink form of the jellyfish order stauromedusae. The jellyfish resemble "the serpent-haired Medusa of Greek myth," says expedition leader Emily Klein, a geologist at Duke University.

The bell-shaped jellyfish sighted near the vents may be of a new species "because no one has seen this color before," says Karen Von Damm, a geologist at the University of New Hampshire.

According to Von Damm, stauromedusae are usually found away from high-temperature hydrothermal vents, where the fluids are a little bit cooler, not close to the vents as these are.
Aboard the Research Vessel (R/V) Atlantis, the researchers are studying ocean floor geology of the East Pacific Rise, one of the mid-ocean ridge systems where new crust is made as the earth spreads apart to release molten lava.

"Each new vent site has the potential to reveal new discoveries in interactions between hot rocks beneath the seafloor, the fluids that interact with those rocks and the oceans above, as well as a rich biosphere that depends on vent processes," says Adam Schultz, program director in NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the expedition through its Ridge 2000 program. "This discovery has implications for understanding the origin of Earth's crust, its evolution over time and how living organisms adapt to extreme environmental conditions."

Jason II, a remotely-controlled robotic vehicle the scientists are using to probe the vent field, logged water temperatures of 330 degrees Celsius (626 degrees Fahrenheit) at the mouth of one of the vents. Jason II subsequently found a second vent about 100 yards away.

Von Damm said that heat-tolerant tubeworms found living on Medusa's chimneys, a type known as alvinellids, are commonplace in the equatorial Pacific and thrive on high-iron fluids. Jason also has retrieved two other types of tubeworms--tevnia and riftia--from the vent area.

In addition, the camera-studded robot, which can collect biological specimens with the aid of the mechanical arms it uses to remove rock samples, has gathered samples of mussels from the vent area.


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Duke Lacrosse Players, Their Families Talk to Newsweek About What Happened That Night

Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann tells Newsweek that last Christmas, when he heard the news that the rape charges against him and two of his teammates were being dropped, but the prosecutor Mike Nifong was going ahead with the charges of kidnapping and committing a sexual offense, "That was the most frustrating point in the case, because you're like, 'This man will not let it go, no matter what we do.'"

Last Wednesday, Seligmann and his teammates Collin Finnerty and David Evans were declared innocent of all charges in the case that had appalledand titillated the U.S. for more than a year.

After the attorney general's announcement that completely vindicated them, Finnerty and Seligmann, as well as their parents, some siblings and Finnerty's girlfriend, spoke to Newsweek about the experience. The magazine als oobtained the handwritten statements given by Evans and the other two team captains, Daniel Flannery and Matthew Zash, to the Durham police two days after the alleged rape. The statements, never before made public, and interviews with defense attorneys familiar with the evidence, tell the real story of what happened that night, reports senior writer Susannah Meadows and Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas in the April 23 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, April 16).

As Newsweek reports, that night in March 2006, after the strippers arrived at the party, the accuser appeared to be intoxicated and had trouble standing up, much less dancing. Half-heartedly, she began kissing the other dancer. Later, when the night was played up as a violent bacchanal, a "Boys Gone Wild" situation, Seligmann would reflect thatanyone watching the real thing would have been bored. At the time, he says,"We didn't know how to react. It was disgusting. I was very uncomfortable and I wasn't the only one." Indeed, in a photo taken by one of the players and obtained by Newsweek, Seligmann appears to be recoiling as he watches the dancers. The performance lasted all of five minutes.

One night about a week after the incident, Finnerty and another player noticed a Take Back the Night rally as they walked to the library. Curious, they went over to hear the speakers decry sexual assault on campus. Activists were handing out wanted posters with pictures of the team. A student came up and began talking to Finnerty's teammate.

Before thestudent walked off, he pulled out a tape recorder and made a show of hitting the stop button, to make clear he had been recording the conversation. "You could see that something big was going on," recalls Finnerty, who wondered if he'd see the conversation in print.

Looking hugely relieved at a press conference last Wednesday, Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann expressed hope that the system would be reformed to stop runaway prosecutors.

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