“Argo” boosts Oscar chances with two weekend award

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Iran hostage drama “Argo” won its second big award in two days on Sunday, boosting its chances of winning a best picture Oscar next month in a race that had been considered wide open.

“Argo” won best cast ensemble, the top prize, at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, while Daniel Day-Lewis and Jennifer Lawrence took lead acting honors.

On Saturday, “Argo” won the Producers Guild Award – a key measure of Hollywood sentiment – beating “Lincoln,” “Les Miserables,” and “Silver Linings Playbook,” which are all Academy Award best picture contenders.

“There was absolutely no way I thought we would win this award,” the film’s director and star, Ben Affleck, told reporters backstage after the SAG win. “Argo” is the true story of the rescue of U.S. diplomats stranded in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Asked about his movie’s Oscar chances, Affleck said he was not in the business of “handicapping or trying to divine what’s going to happen down the road.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, nothing may happen, but it’s a wonderful opportunity to be on the ride,” Affleck added.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) ceremony is among the most-watched during Hollywood’s awards season because actors make up the largest voting group in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which chooses the Oscar winners. The SAG honors are selected by about 100,000 actors working in the United States.

SAG prizes acting over directing, screenplay writing and other skills that usually factor into the Oscar best picture choice.

PLAYING DOWN OSCAR HOPES

British-born Day-Lewis, who has picked up a slew of awards for his intense portrayal of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to abolish slavery in “Lincoln,” confirmed his status as front-runner for what would be his record third Oscar on February 24.

But the actor played down his Oscar hopes backstage. “Members of the academy love surprises, so about the worst thing that can happen to you is if you’ve built up an expectation,” Day-Lewis told reporters.

Accepting his award on stage to a standing ovation, he recalled that “it was an actor that murdered Abraham Lincoln and, therefore, it is sometimes only fitting that, now and then, an actor tries to bring him back to life again.”

In one of the most closely contested categories, Lawrence, 22, was chosen best lead actress for playing an outspoken young widow in “Silver Linings Playbook” over Jessica Chastain’s feisty CIA agent in Osama bin Laden thriller “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Tommy Lee Jones, 66, won the best supporting actor trophy for his turn as radical Congressman Thaddeus Stevens in “Lincoln,” beating strong competition from Robert De Niro, who played a gruff father in “Silver Linings Playbook.”

Anne Hathaway, 30, won her first SAG award for her supporting role as the tragic Fantine in musical “Les Miserables.”

“I got my SAG card when I was 14 … And I have loved every single minute of my life as an actor,” said Hathaway, accepting the statuette.

SAG also handed out awards for performances in TV dramas, comedies and mini-series, and gave a lifetime achievement award to actor Dick Van Dyke.

In TV drama, the British cooks and countesses period show “Downton Abbey” won best ensemble cast. “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston was named best actor and “Homeland’s” Claire Danes best actress.

“Modern Family” won the best comedy cast ensemble award for a third consecutive time. Alec Baldwin won best TV comedy actor for the 8th time for his role as an egotistical executive in “30 Rock” and his co-star Tina Fey took the honors for comedy actress ahead of the show’s final episode on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis, editing by Stacey Joyce)

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Well: Keeping Blood Pressure in Check

Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.

But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:

¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.

¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.

¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.

¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.

Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.

Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.

Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.

“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”

But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.

“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.

The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.

¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.

¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.

¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.

According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.

One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.

After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.

But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.

Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.

Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.

“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.

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Little Change on Wall Street

Wall Street stocks opened flat on Monday despite strong economic data and earnings results from Caterpillar, after a rally last week that took the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index above 1,500 for the first time in more than five years.

The S.&P. 500 was off about a point in early trading, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 4 points, and the Nasdaq composite index added 0.1 percent.

Caterpillar, a Dow component, rose 2.5 percent after it reported adjusted fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations, though revenue was slightly below forecasts. The heavy machinery maker also said it remained cautious on the economy despite recent improvements.

“You can’t find more of a global bellwhether than Cat, and people are pleased with the number, which suggests there could be less concern about slowing growth in China after this,” said Wayne Kaufman, chief market analyst at John Thomas Financial in New York.

Thomson Reuters data through Friday showed that of the 147 S.&P. 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 68 percent exceeded expectations. Since 1994, an average of 62 percent of companies have topped expectations, while the average over the past four quarters stands at 65 percent.

A strong start to the earnings season has bolstered equities, with major averages rising for four straight weeks. The S.&P. has gained for eight straight days, its longest winning streak in eight years, and closed at its highest since Dec. 10, 2007. The Dow ended at its highest since Oct. 31, 2007.

The S.&P. 500 is about 4.1 percent away from its all-time closing high of 1,565.15 on Oct. 9, 2007.

The Commerce Department said Monday that orders for durable goods jumped 4.6 percent in December, a pace that far outstripped expectations for a rise of 1.8 percent.

“We continue to have a parade of better-than-expected economic reports. All in all, it’s a good picture. I think there’s a good chance we’ve reached a point of recognition where people don’t think the economy will crater,” Mr. Kaufman said.

In addition to a push from earnings, equities have also risen on an agreement in Washington to extend the government’s borrowing power. On Monday, Fitch Ratings said that agreement removed the near-term risk to the country’s AAA rating. Previously, the agency said the lack of an agreement would prompt a review of the sovereign rating.

Keryx Biopharmaceuticals said a late-stage trial of its experimental kidney disease drug met the main study goal of reducing phosphate levels in blood, sending shares up 41 percent.

In Europe, stocks were generally ahead in afternoon trading.

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Death toll in Brazil nightclub fire hits 245

BRASILIA, Brazil—

A fire swept through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing at least 245 people and leaving at least 200 injured, police and firefighters said.

Police Maj. Cleberson Braida told local news media that the 245 bodies were brought for identification to a gymnasium in the city of Santa Maria.

That toll would make it one of the deadliest nightclub fires more than a decade.

The cause of the fire is not yet known, officials said. Officials earlier put the death toll at 180.

Civil Police and regional government spokesman Marcelo Arigoni told Radio Gaucha earlier that the total number of victims is still unclear and there may be hundreds injured,

The newspaper Diario de Santa Maria reported that the fire started at around 2 a.m. at the Kiss nightclub in the city at the southern tip of Brazil, near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.

Rodrigo Moura, whom the paper identified as a security guard at the club, said it was at its maximum capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000, and partygoers were pushing and shoving to escape.

Ezekiel Corte Real, 23, was quoted by the paper as saying that he helped people to escape. “I just got out because I'm very strong,” he said.

“Sad Sunday”, tweeted Tarso Genro, the governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He said all possible action was being taken and that he would be in the city later in the day.

Santa Maria is a major university city with a population of around a quarter of a million.

A welding accident reportedly set off a Dec. 25, 2000, fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.

At least 194 people died at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2004.

A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out on Dec. 5, 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with branches, killing 152

A nightclub fire in the U.S. state of Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling.

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Lace 'Em Up: 4 Running Shoes Reviewed

Hitting the streets to get fit by spring? We review four new specialty sneakers for runners.

Adidas' Adizero Feather 2.0 runners are so light (barely 7 ounces) and so responsive, running in them feels more like bouncing on fluffy clouds than pounding on pavement. OK, I'm exaggerating, but I was really blown away by the light weight when I took them out on long-distance runs. So effective was the feather-weight design on a 5-mile outing, I could actually notice the reduced effort in my legs.

The shoe is topped with a barely-there breathable mesh that runs from the toes all the way back to the heel. Ventilation is therefore excellent, with a constant flow of cool air delivered directly to your piggies. And, unlike most shoes that make use of fancy, lightweight materials, they're actually quite sturdy.

These sneaks are compatible with Adidas' miCoach data reporting system and its companion apps. So if you already have a miCoach Speed_Cell sensor, just lift up the shoe's insert and pop it in (You can also attach the sensor to your laces). The sensor can be synced with your iPhone to track your speed, acceleration, distance, and pace during runs.

The only problem is that the miCoach system needs some work, including the inconsistent syncing and the iPhone app's interface. If you're used to the Nike+ app, you'll be struggling to work your way through using Adidas' lesser creation. That said, it's an add-on to the shoe and not a primary feature, so miCoach's shortcomings don't detract from the sneaker's quality.

WIRED Obscenely light at only 7 ounces. Flexible mesh upper keeps your tootsies cool and dry. Durable, despite the lightweight design. miCoach-compatible for tracking your runs. Great styling. Affordable at $115. Men's and women's versions.

TIRED If you're not into light shoes, these aren't for you. The miCoach system needs a lot of work -- it's adequate, but could be so much better.

Photos by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Rating: 8 out of 10

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“Fruitvale,” “Blood Brothers” win top awards at Sundance

PARK CITY, Utah (Reuters) – Drama film “Fruitvale” and documentary “Blood Brothers” won the top awards at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, giving them a big boost to reach independent movie audiences this year.

“Fruitvale,” starring Octavia Spencer and Michael B. Jordan and directed by 26-year-old, first-time filmmaker Ryan Coogler,” picked up the U.S. drama jury and audience awards for its “moral and social urgency.”

The film is based on the true story of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, who was killed by police in Oakland, California, on New Year’s Eve in 2008 and whose death sparked riots against police brutality. Movie studio The Weinstein Company purchased distribution rights for the film.

“This film had a profound impact on the audience that saw it … this award goes out to my home in the Bay Area where Oscar Grant breathed, slept, loved, had fun and survived for 22 years,” Coogler said in his acceptance speech.

Oscar-winning documentarian Davis Guggenheim awarded the U.S. documentary jury prize to “Blood Brothers,” saying it shook the voting panel to their core.

The documentary follows an American man who moves to Africa and works with children suffering from HIV at an orphanage, and through his work, the children gain a voice.

“It is so encouraging for the kids … their lives are so encouraging, and they die and no one remembers their name … To take their story so that everyone sees it, it’s so awesome,” director Steve Hoover said.”

Young actress Shailene Woodley, praised for her performance in “The Descendants” last year, and her co-star Miles Teller won the Special Jury acting prize in “The Spectacular Now.”

Actress Lake Bell, who made her directorial debut in the U.S. drama category with quirky comedy “In A World,” picked up the drama screenwriting award.

Hosted by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who premiered his raunchy directorial debut “Don Jon’s Addiction” this year, the Sundance Film Festival Awards pick winners at the top gathering for independent movies made outside of Hollywood’s major studios.

“Sundance is a community of people of filmmakers and film lovers who all believe together that there’s more to movies than glitz and glamour and money and the box office. In Hollywood, you can feel like a freak if you talk about movies as art, and here, you don’t have that,” Gordon-Levitt said.

WORLD CINEMA WINNERS

The Sundance Film Festival, now in its 35th year, is backed by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. The 10-day gathering of the independent film industry is held in snowy Park City, Utah.

In previous years, films that win the top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival often go on to achieve Hollywood awards success as well.

Last year, mythological drama “Beasts of the Southern Wild” won the top prize at Sundance and is now nominated for four Oscars in major categories.

The award winners are voted for by special juries of industry professionals and by the audience for the audience favorite awards.

In the world cinema categories, South Korean drama “Jiseul” picked up the grand jury drama prize. The film, directed by Muel O, follows the residents of a small town who were forced to hide in a cave for 60 days after the military attacked their village.

Cambodian documentary “A River Changes Course,” about three young Cambodians struggling with adversity in a country ravaged by war and debt, picked up the world cinema grand jury award.

“Events like these really bring our communities together to share in the beauty of the world and the beauty of our future,” director Kalyanee Mam said.

“Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer,” which follows the story of three members of a Russian feminist punk band jailed for performing a “punk prayer” in a Russian Orthodox church, picked up special jury prize in the world documentary category.

Co-director Mike Lerner said the three members of the band had “started a feminist revolution that we hope will continue around the world.”

(Editing by Philip Barbara)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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J. Richard Hackman, an Expert in Team Dynamics, Dies at 72

J. Richard Hackman, a Harvard psychology professor whose fieldwork sometimes took him to the cockpit of an airliner to observe the crew in a nearly five-decade quest to determine the dynamics of teamwork and effective leadership, died on Jan. 8 in Boston. He was 72.

The cause was lung cancer, his wife, Judith Dozier Hackman, said.

Dr. Hackman, the author or co-author of 10 books on group dynamics, was the Edgar Pierce professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard.

In one of his best-known books, “Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances” (2002), he replaced the popular image of the powerful “I can do it all” team leader with that of someone who, as he wrote, had the subtle skills “to get a team established on a good trajectory, and then to make small adjustments along the way to help members succeed.”

The conditions for a successful team effort — among them “a compelling direction, an enabling team structure, a supportive organizational context and expert team coaching” — “are easy to remember,” Dr. Hackman wrote.

“The challenge,” he continued, “comes in developing an understanding of those conditions that is deep and nuanced enough to be useful in guiding action, and in devising strategies for creating them even in demanding or team-unfriendly organizational circumstances.”

Besides tracking the interplay of pilots, co-pilots and navigators aboard civilian and military planes, Dr. Hackman observed corporate boards, sports teams, orchestra players, telephone-line repair crews, hospital workers and restaurant kitchen staff members.

And in recent years, for his 2011 book, “Collaborative Intelligence,” he was allowed to observe interactions within the American intelligence, defense, law-enforcement and crisis-management communities.

“Although my main aspiration has been to provide guidance that will be useful to team leaders and members,” he wrote, “there are no ‘one-minute’ prescriptions here — creating, leading and serving on teams is not that simple.”

Anita Woolley, a professor of organizational behavior and theory at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said, “The key thing about Dr. Hackman’s work is that it stands in contrast to some of the more popular models of leadership that focused very much on style or how leaders behave, versus what they do.”

Rather than viewing pay as a prime motivator for good performance, she continued, “he focused on features of people’s jobs that made them more intrinsically satisfied: the freedom to determine how they conduct their work, having a variety of tasks, having knowledge of the ultimate outcomes of their work, knowing how their work affects or is received by other people.”

He also liked to overturn some of the received wisdom about teamwork. In a 2011 article for The Harvard Business Review, Dr. Hackman listed “Six Common Misperceptions About Teamwork.” Among them was this:

“Misperception No. 2: It’s good to mix it up. New members bring energy and fresh ideas to a team. Without them, members risk becoming complacent, inattentive to changes in the environment, and too forgiving of fellow members’ misbehavior.

“Actually: The longer members stay together as an intact group, the better they do. As unreasonable as this may seem, the research evidence is unambiguous. Whether it is a basketball team or a string quartet, teams that stay together longer play together better.”

John Richard Hackman was born in Joliet, Ill., on June 14, 1940, the only child of J. Edward and Helen Hackman. His father was an oil pipeline engineer, his mother a schoolteacher.

Dr. Hackman received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., in 1962, and a doctorate in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1966. He soon joined the psychology and administrative sciences department faculties at Yale, where he taught until 1986, when he moved to the psychology and business departments at Harvard.

Besides his wife, who is an associate dean at Yale, he is survived by two daughters, Julia Beth Proffitt and Laura Dianne Codeanne, and four grandchildren.

After Dr. Hackman died, The Harvard Crimson wrote that for years he had “devoted countless hours to improving one team in particular — the Harvard women’s basketball squad, for which he volunteered as an honorary coach.”

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China's smog taints economy, health

BEIJING — When a thick quilt of smog enveloped swaths of China earlier this month, it set in motion a costly chain reaction for the world's No. 2 economy.

Authorities canceled flights across northern China and ordered some factories shut. Hospitals were flooded with hacking patients.

A fire in an empty furniture factory in eastern Zhejiang province went undetected for hours because the smoke was indistinguishable from the haze. In coastal Shandong province, most highways were closed for fear that low visibility would cause motorists to crash. And in Beijing, the local government urged residents to remain indoors and told construction sites to scale back activity.

Photos: Smog in China

"These are emergency measures that have the same economic impact as a strike or severe weather," said Louis Kuijs, a Hong Kong-based economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland and formerly of the World Bank. "They're very painful."

Residents in the capital have taken to mocking their famously filthy air and its attendant health hazards with the expression "Beijing cough." Meanwhile, Shanghai's Environmental Protection Bureau has introduced a cartoon mascot to communicate daily air quality on its website: a pig-tailed girl who bursts into tears when smog reaches hazardous levels.

But economists say China's smog is no joke. As air pollution continues to obscure China's cities, the cost to the nation in lost productivity and health problems is soaring. The World Bank estimates sickness and early death sapped China of $100 billion in 2009, or just under 3% of gross domestic product. China is now home to seven of the 10 most-polluted cities in the world, according to a report by the Asian Development Bank and Beijing's Tsinghua University.

A study by Greenpeace and Peking University's School of Public Health put the cost of healthcare to treat pollution-related ailments in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xian at more than $1 billion last year.

Beijing resident Zhang Jian takes his 2-year-old son to a doctor regularly to treat the toddler's chronic sinus infection.

"It's definitely related to the pollution," said Zhang, 35, who wore a disposable mask at an overcrowded children's hospital recently. "My son snores and his nose is blocked constantly. It's a problem because he's too young to clear his nose like adults."

The doctor's visit and treatment cost Zhang about $320 — nearly a week's pay for the IT professional.

The Beijing government says it's considering a host of emergency measures to clear the air. Among them: limiting vehicle usage, spraying building sites to reduce dust and restricting outdoor barbecue grills.

Even China's next premier, Li Keqiang, weighed in recently on the issue. "This is a problem accumulated over a long period of time, and solving the problem will also require a long time. But we need to take action."

China's smog crisis is not unlike those experienced in London and Los Angeles in the 1950s. Public outcry ultimately led to cleaner air and tougher environmental regulations.

Environmental activists hope the same happens in China. The official response in recent weeks has raised optimism that authorities will begin addressing pollution more openly.

Until recently, state media was loathe to use the word "pollution," opting instead for the euphemism "fog."

But popular pressure is building, making it harder for policymakers to ignore the foul air in many of China's largest cities.

After the staggeringly bad bout of air pollution in the middle of this month, micro-bloggers took to posting pictures of themselves online wearing masks.

Some held handwritten signs that read, "I don't want to be a human vacuum cleaner."

The phrase became the top-trending topic on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo, attracting several million hits.

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Crazy Alien Weather: Lightning-Filled Rocket Dust Storms of Mars

Scientists have modeled the internal workings of lightning-filled “rocket dust storms” on Mars that rise at speeds 100 times faster than ordinary storms and inject dust high into the Martian atmosphere.

The Red Planet is a very dry and dusty place, with global storms that sometimes obscure the entire surface. Satellites orbiting Mars have seen persistent dust layers reaching very high altitudes, as much as 30 to 50 km above the ground, though scientists are at a loss to explain exactly how the dust got there.

Using a high-resolution model, researchers have shown that a thick blob-like dust pocket inside a storm may become heated by the sun, causing the surrounding atmosphere to warm quickly. Because hot air rises, these areas will shoot skyward super fast, much like a rocket launching into space, hence “rocket dust storms.”

“The vertical transport was so strong we want to come up with a kind of spectacular name, to give an idea of the very powerful rise,” said planetary scientist Aymeric Spiga from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris, France, who is lead author on a paper describing the phenomena in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets on Jan. 14.

These speedily rising dust blobs can soar from near the surface to 30 or 40 km into the atmosphere in a matter of hours at speeds in excess of 10 meters per second (22 mph). This is far faster than the typical convection speeds in a dust storm of 0.1 meters per second (0.2 mph). Since the dust particles rub up against one another and create friction, the rocket dust storms may become charged with electrostatic forces, which could which could trigger fantastic lightning bolts.

Spiga and his team used detailed models of winds and dust on Mars to determine exactly how these rocket dust storms behave. Most previous models of Mars’ climate simulate large-scale global dust storms with fairly coarse resolution and so have not noticed the rocket storms. The team seeded their model with data from a dust storm observed by the OMEGA instrument aboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiting satellite and watched the rise of rocket storms.

Similar dust storms can’t happen on Earth. This is mainly because Mars’ atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than our own, meaning that it gets quickly and efficiently heated when dust particles absorb sunlight and then emit thermal radiation.

But a comparable phenomenon occurs in grey cumulonimbus thunderstorm clouds on Earth. The large accumulations of water particles in such clouds release latent heat, causing strong vertical motions and an extensive tall structure. Spiga’s team has used this Earthly analogy in the rocket dust storm’s more technical name, conio-cumulonimbus, from the Greek conious, which means dust.

“But I prefer to call them rocket dust storms,” Spiga said. “Then everyone knows what I’m talking about.”

Other researchers are impressed with the physical modeling done in the work. “I was a little surprised that such a small dust disturbance could remain intact over such long distances,” said planetary atmospheres scientist Scot Rafkin from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. The mechanism could help explain how long-lasting layers of dust climb so high in the Martian atmosphere, he says. 

Because they appear to be relatively rare, it may take a while to track down more rocket dust storms. But Spiga is hopeful they will be found by orbiting satellites, which may even image the lightning flashes inside them.

Video: Spiga, Aymeric, et al. “Rocket dust storms and detached dust layers in the Martian atmosphere,” JGR:Planets, DOI: 10.1002/jgre.20046

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