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RESTON, Va., Feb. 24 (UPI) — The U.S. Geological Survey says every ice shelf in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula is retreating because of climate change.

The USGS says its report is the first to document that every ice front in that area has been retreating overall from 1947 to 2009, with the most dramatic changes occurring since 1990.

The retreat, scientists said, could result in sea-level rise if warming continues, threatening coastal communities and low-lying islands worldwide.

The USGS previously documented the majority of ice fronts on the entire peninsula have also retreated during the late 20th century and into the early 21st century.

Officials said the ice shelves are attached to the continent, holding in place the Antarctic ice sheet that covers about 98 percent of the Antarctic continent. As the ice shelves break off, it becomes easier for outlet glaciers and ice streams from the ice sheet to flow into the sea. That transition of ice from land to the ocean is what raises the sea level.

“This research is part of a larger ongoing USGS project that is for the first time studying the entire Antarctic coastline in detail, and this is important because the Antarctic ice sheet contains 91 percent of Earth’s glacier ice,” USGS scientist Jane Ferrigno said.

“The loss of ice shelves is evidence of the effects of global warming,” she added. “We need to be alert and continually understand and observe how our climate system is changing.”

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IPSWICH, England, Feb. 24 (UPI) — The British owners of a young chicken said the hen’s fourth-ever egg weighs in at more than six times the average weight.

Mark Cornish, 36, of Ipswich, England, and partner Denise Bartram, 42, said Matilda the hen, one of four kept by the couple in their garden, laid a monster egg weighing 4.2 ounces and measuring more than 8 inches in circumference, the Daily Mail reported Wednesday.

Cornish said hens typically lay eggs weighing about 0.7 ounces and measuring 5.5 inches in circumference.

“It’s only the fourth egg Matilda’s ever laid and her first in two weeks. She must have been saving up for it,” Cornish said. “My eyes almost popped out of my head when I first saw it. We might have to see about entering her in the record books.

“It’s just ridiculous to look at — anyone would think it was a goose egg, it’s that big,” he said. “My first thought was whether Matilda was OK after laying such a huge egg but she seems completely nonplussed by it all.”

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ORLANDO, Fla., Feb. 24 (UPI) — A killer whale launched a fatal attack on a trainer Wednesday in front of an audience at SeaWorld in Florida, officials said.

The show at Shamu Stadium was halted and the audience removed, the Orlando Sentinel reported. The park remained open.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office said the trainer was dead by the time rescue workers arrived.

Victoria Biniak, who was watching the show, told WKMG-TV in Orlando the trainer was a woman. The TV station identified the whale as Tillikum or Tilly.

“The trainer was explaining different things about the whale and then the trainer that was down there walked away from the window. Then Tilly took off really fast in the tank and he came back, shot up in the air, grabbed the trainer by the waist and started thrashing around,” Biniak said.

Tillikum was sold to SeaWorld in 1992, the Sentinel said. In 1991 the whale was involved in drowning a trainer at Sealand of the Pacific in British Columbia.

In 1999 park employees found the body of a homeless man on the whale’s back. Investigators determined the man probably drowned after becoming hypothermic in the chilly water and that the whale attacked his body, believing it was a toy.

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ANN ARBOR, Mich., Feb. 24 (UPI) — U.S. scientists say they’ve found the remains of a new herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that may help explain the evolution of Earth’s largest land animals.

The fossils were discovered near the Carnegie Quarry in Dinosaur National Monument, along the border between Colorado and Utah.

University of Michigan Assistant Professor Jeffrey Wilson and graduate student John Whitlock said the discovery represents a rare look at a sauropod skull.

“At first glance, sauropods don’t seem to have done much to adapt to a life of eating plants,” said Wilson, who is also an assistant curator at the university’s Museum of Paleontology.

But together with paleontologists Brooks Britt of Brigham Young University and Dan Chure from Dinosaur National Monument, Wilson and Whitlock compared the skulls and teeth of the new dinosaur to those of other sauropods and discovered one repeated trend throughout sauropod evolution — the development of narrow, pencil-like teeth from broad-bladed teeth.

“We know narrow-crowned teeth appear at least twice throughout sauropod history, and both times it appears to correspond to a rise in the number of species,” Whitlock said. “This new animal is intermediate in terms of its tooth shape and helps us understand how and when one of these transitions occurred.”

The team reports on the new dinosaur, named Abydosaurus mcintoshi — in honor of paleontologist Jack McIntosh — in the early online edition of the journal Naturwissenschaften.

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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz., Feb. 24 (UPI) — Flagstaff, Ariz., leads all U.S. cities with the most snowfall so far for 2010, in a season of sometimes epic snowfall in parts of the nation, authorities say.

To date there has been 118 inches, nearly 10 feet, of snow, surpassing the average amount of 109 for an entire winter, Flagstaff’s Arizona Daily Sun reported Wednesday.

The normal snowfall through Feb. 22 is 72 inches.

In cities with populations over 100,000, Syracuse, N.Y., tops the list with 86 inches of snow. But even that total is almost 3 feet less than they’ve had in Flagstaff, with a population of 60,000, the Sun said.

National Weather Service meteorologist Justin Johndrow said Flagstaff has already broken one record this winter, having 78 consecutive days with at least 6 inches of snow on the ground.

Johndrow is predicting a strong storm this weekend.

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SEATTLE, Feb. 24 (UPI) — A five-person U.S. team evaluating the magnitude-7 earthquake that struck Haiti Jan. 12 says much of the massive loss of life might have been prevented.

The team, led by University of Washington structural engineering Professor Marc Eberhard, said its main conclusion was that much of the loss of life could have been prevented by using earthquake-resistant designs and construction, as well as improved quality control in concrete and masonry work. The researchers recommended simple and cost-effective earthquake engineering be emphasized in Haiti’s rebuilding effort.

“A lot of the damaged structures will have to be destroyed,” Eberhard said. “It’s not just 100 buildings or 1,000 buildings. It’s a huge number of buildings, which I can’t even estimate.

“Usually when I go to earthquakes I find that the amount of damage is less than what appears on the television,” Eberhard said. “In this case it was much more.”

The report from the team that included Steven Baldridge of Baldridge & Associates Structural Engineering Inc., Auburn University Assistant Professor Justin Marshall, Walter Mooney of the U.S. Geological Survey and Georgia Institute of Technology Professor Glenn Rix is available at http://www.eqclearinghouse.org/20100112-haiti/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/USGS_EERI_HAITI_V1.1.pdf.

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STANFORD, Calif., Feb. 24 (UPI) — A U.S. scientist says he and his team are re-conceptualizing energy storage by utilizing nanotechnology.

Stanford Assistant Professor Yi Cui says nanotech products of the future might allow energy storage on paper and cloth while retaining the mechanical properties of ordinary paper or fabric.

Cui’s team envisions numerous functional uses for their inventions — homes lined with energy-storing wallpaper or reactive high-performance sportswear that would allow everything from portable appliances to a soldier’s battle gear to be powered by an outlet woven into a T-shirt.

“Energy storage is a pretty old research field,” Cui said. “Supercapacitors, batteries — those things are old. How do you really make a revolutionary impact in this field? It requires quite a dramatic difference of thinking.”

Cui said he plans to direct his research toward studying both the “hard science” behind the electrical properties of nanomaterials and designing real-world applications.

“This is the right time to really see what we learn from nanoscience and do practical applications that are extremely promising,” he said.

The Cui group’s latest research on energy storage devices was detailed in papers published in the December online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and in the January issue of the journal Nano Letters.

Cui also presented his research last week in San Diego during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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JAKARTA, Feb. 24 (UPI) — A landslide at a tea plantation in Indonesia’s West Java province killed at least 72 people, disaster officials said.

Sofyan Nataprawira, head of Bandung district’s disaster management and refugee coordinating agency, said five victims have been extracted from Tuesday’s landslide, but 67 others remained buried, the Antara news agency reported.

Nataprawira said rescuers had difficulty reaching the Dewata tea plantation in Tenjolaya because the slide occurred between the plantation and forests, making deployment of heavy machinery complicated.

The landslide overran nearly all parts of the plantation, including the offices, the report said.

“We have difficulty contacting the authorities due to the absence of cellular phone signals,” Nataprawira said.

Bandung district and other parts of West Java have been belted by heavy rains during the past two months, officials said. Landslides had occurred in Bandung district, and in the cities of Bogor and Garut.

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STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Feb. 24 (UPI) — Police had to restore order at a Stockholm bus terminal Tuesday night after continuing bad weather resulted in long service delays, officials said.

Officials told the Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyra that about tempers flared among approximately 1,000 commuters who were having little luck getting home as buses to the suburbs became fewer and farther between.

“There are no reports of actual fighting, but there was a lot of anger,” police spokesman Ulf Lindgren told the news agency.

The government recently deployed troops to assist with snow removal along the rail lines serving the capital.

The weather forecast called for more snowfall across Sweden during the weekend.

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WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (UPI) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says a Maryland veal calf dealer has agreed to close his business after repeatedly violating federal food laws.

The FDA said William Nickle violated regulations by selling veal calves with illegal drug residues in their edible tissues. He agreed to shut down as part of a permanent injunction and consent decree issued by a Baltimore U.S. District Court judge.

“Nickle’s business sold about 1,200 calves a year,” the FDA said in a statement. “The federal government’s complaint was based, in part, on Nickle’s illegal administration of flunixin, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. Illegal residues of the drug were found by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in calves Nickle sold for human consumption. In recent years, Nickle had received numerous oral and written warnings from both the FDA and the USDA.”

Officials said the sale of animals for human food that might contain illegal levels of drugs is a concern because of the potential for adverse effects on human health.

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