TCU, Utah to play BCS elimination game

SALT LAKE CITY – Welcome to the BCS Buster playoffs. When No. 11 TCU visits No. 10 Utah on Thursday night, the winner is assured of staying alive for at least another week in the Bowl Championship Series sweepstakes. The loser can start making other postseason plans.

"It's everything you want. It's what you coach for," TCU coach Gary Patterson said. "Now we are in a situation where you see in three hours who can score one more point."

Most other seasons, the focus on this game would be the Mountain West Conference championship. The Utes (9-0, 5-0) and Horned Frogs (9-1, 6-0) are the only teams left without a league loss and the winner will have the inside track for the outright conference title.

But both teams are also in the top 12 of the BCS, one of the qualifying benchmarks for the top tier of bowls. The series only hands out one berth to a non-BCS conference school, and with Boise State of the Western Athletic Conference still in contention, a loss at this point would end any hope.

"It's like you have finals and then you've got vacation," Patterson said. "All you think about is you've got to get to finals to get vacation. Vacation is the No. 1 priority, but you know what? Vacation is not going to be a lot of fun if you flunk all your finals."

TCU hasn't flunked anything this season. The Horned Frogs' only loss was 35-10 to Oklahoma, which is respectable considering the sixth-ranked Sooners average almost 50 points per game. The only other team to hold Oklahoma to so few points was Texas in a 45-35 win for the Longhorns.

The Frogs have already taken out one potential BCS Buster with a 32-7 win over BYU three weeks ago. TCU held BYU to just 297 yards of offense, including 23 yards rushing.

"They're just tearing it up on defense. I don't know if I've seen a defense play as well as they have," Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. "You name it, they're doing it on defense. That is very impressive, what they've been able to do."

Utah is the original BCS Buster and is trying to be the first school to sneak in one of the big-money games twice. TCU is trying to be the first to earn a berth despite losing a game.

The speculation about who could be this year's BCS Buster has been building throughout the season, especially after TCU's win over BYU.

Although the BCS bylaws are complicated, Utah's route to getting there is simple. Stay unbeaten and the Utes, who are No. 8 in the BCS standings, can get the automatic berth.

"We control what we can control. Go out and win football games and let the rest take care of itself," quarterback Bryan Johnson said.

Utah is expecting Rice-Eccles Stadium to be packed Thursday night, despite a winter storm that hit Salt Lake City and covered the foothills above campus in white. Utah is encouraging fans to wear black and will hand out 35,000 black rally towels.

The Utes are also expected to debut black uniforms instead of their usual red. It's a move that didn't work well for Georgia earlier this season when Alabama beat the black-clad Bulldogs 41-30, but the Utes are trying to create a special atmosphere for the game.

Although with everything on the line, wardrobes won't matter much.

"It's pretty much the conference championship game, if you think about it," TCU linebacker Jason Phillips said. "It's definitely a lot of fun to play when you know there's a lot of people watching and you have a big audience."

TCU has one opponent left after Utah and can clinch at least a share of the Mountain West title with a win Thursday. The Frogs don't play again until they host Air Force on Nov. 22.

Utah still has San Diego State next week, then No. 17 BYU at home in a rivalry game that will be even bigger if there are still BCS implications.

"I don't even think about the BCS. We're just trying to find a way to beat TCU," Whittingham said. "You only worry about what you can control and we obviously have no control over that other than try to win games each week."

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Signs of Late Volcanism Seen on Moon

Volcanic activity on the far side of the moon may have lasted longer than previously thought, recent images from a Japanese lunar satellite suggest.

The finding, detailed in the Nov. 7 issue of the journal Science, could help shed light on the moon's formation and evolution.

Scientists think that the moon formed when a rogue planet about the size of Mars crashed into Earth and ripped out a chunk of the planet's molten mantle. Some of the material from that chunk began to orbit Earth, gradually cooling over millions of years to form the moon.
The lunar surface is dead now, but over the millions of intervening years since it formed, it experienced bouts of volcanic activity.
Scientists have studied lunar volcanic features, the most common of which are mare (dark "seas") basalts, from orbit to determine when they formed. Radiogenic dating is the best way to date mineral deposits, but samples from the moon's surface are limited, and come only from a few locations on the moon's nearside.
Another way to estimate the age of volcanic features is to count the number of impact craters they have: the younger the feature, the fewer the craters that mark its surface.
A group of researchers did just that for two areas on the far side of the moon, the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin and Mare Moscoviense, with images from the Terrain Camera aboard the Japanese polar lunar orbiter SELENE (KAGUYA). The orbiter launched on Sept. 14, 2007, and began its mission observing the moon's surface on Dec. 21.
Most mare volcanism ceased on the moon's far side about 3 billion years ago, but at a few locations, Junichi Haruyama of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and his colleagues estimated that mare deposits were only about 2.5 billion years old, suggesting that some episodic volcanism continued after the main thrust had ended.

Volcanism also continued on the nearside, apparently lasting longer than on the far side, the researchers found. In Oceanus Procellarum, for example, basalts have been estimated to be a young 1 billion years old.
The difference in the termination of volcanic activity on the two sides of the moon could be related to a thicker crust on the far side, or fewer heat-producing radioactive elements on the far side compared to the near side, the authors said.

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Ancient cave yields clues to Chinese history

WASHINGTON – A stalagmite rising from the floor of a cave in China is providing clues to the end of several dynasties in Chinese history. Slowly built from the minerals in dripping water over 1,810 years, chemicals in the stone tell a tale of strong and weak cycles of the monsoon, the life-giving rains that water crops to feed millions of people.

Dry periods coincided with the demise of the Tang, Yuan and Ming dynasties, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

In addition, the team led by Pingzhong Zhang of Lanzhou University in China noted a change in the cycles around 1960 which they said may indicate that greenhouse gases released by human activities have become the dominant influence on the monsoon.

The Wanxiang Cave is in Gansu Province, a region where 80 percent of the rainfall occurs between May and September.

Chemical concentrations in the stalagmite indicate a series of fluctuations lasting from one to several centuries and roughly similar to records of the Little Ice Age, Medieval warm period and Dark Age cold period recorded in Europe.

There were decade-long fluctuations between A.D. 190 and 530, the end of the Han Dynasty and most of the Era of Disunity, the researchers said. From 530 to 850 the monsoon declined, covering the end of the Era of Disunity, the Sui Dynasty and most of the Tang Dynasty.

The monsoon remained weak, with another sharp drop between 910 and 930, then it rose sharply over 60 and remained strong until 1020.

The researchers found that after 1020 the monsoon varied but was generally strong until a sharp drop between 1340 and 1360: the mid 14th-century monsoon weakening. It stayed weak, with substantial fluctuation, until a sharp increase between 1850 and 1880.

According to the researchers, the 9th-century dry period contributed to the decline of the Tang Dynasty and the Mayans in Mesoamerica. It also may have contributed to the lack of unity during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, they said.

The following strengthening of the monsoon may have contributed to the rapid increase in rice cultivation, the dramatic increase in population, and the general stability at the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty, they suggested, adding that the end of the Yuan and the end of the Ming are both characterized by unusually weak summer monsoons.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundations of the United States and China, the Gary Comer Science and Education Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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Male hormone patch increases libido in women

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Postmenopausal women with low sexual desire levels reported improved sexual function after they were treated with a patch in which the male hormone testosterone was applied through the skin, a clinical study has found. However, more studies are needed to confirm the safety of this treatment.

"Many postmenopausal women continue to be sexually active despite a high level of sexual dissatisfaction, engaging in sexual activity to please their partner and maintain domestic harmony," lead author Dr. Susan R. Davis, at Monash University in Prahran, Australia, and fellow researchers note.

While testosterone has proved effective for increasing libido among postmenopausal women who are on hormone replacement therapy, the effectiveness of this approach in women who are not taking estrogen is unknown.

There has also been some concern that testosterone administered without being tempered by another hormone may adversely affect circulating lipid (fat) levels, glucose (sugar) metabolism or breast tissue.

The APHRODITE trial (A Phase III Research Study of Female Sexual Dysfunction in Women on Testosterone Patch without Estrogen), conducted at 65 centers in Australia, Europe, and North America, included postmenopausal women who reported significant loss of sexual desire that was causing personal distress.

In this study, 267 women were assigned to receive transdermal testosterone at 150 g/day, 267 were treated with the patch testosterone at 300 g/day, and a third group of 277 women received placebo. The patches (Intrinsa, Procter & Gamble) were applied to the abdomen twice a week. The group assignments were all random and neither the patients nor the clinicians knew what each group was given.

At 24 weeks, an increase in the frequency of satisfying sexual episodes was significantly greater in the group receiving the 300 g testosterone dose than the placebo group, but not significantly greater in the group that received the lower dose of testosterone.

Both testosterone groups also had significantly increased scores for sexual desire and decreases in personal distress.

"The increase in the frequency of satisfying sexual episodes was modest but appeared to be clinically meaningful," the authors comment.

The most common hormone side effect was an increase in unwanted hair growth in the higher-dose group. The frequency and severity of other side effects events -- acne, baldness, and voice deepening -- did not differ between the treatment groups. There were no clinically relevant changes in blood lipid levels, glucose metabolism or liver function in any of the groups.

Of concern was the diagnosis of breast cancer in four women in the testosterone groups. The authors note that one of the subjects was symptomatic, with a bloody nipple discharge prior to study entry, and another was diagnosed after 4 months of treatment. The other two were diagnosed after 52 weeks and 104 weeks of treatment.

"Additional data are needed to assess the long-term safety of testosterone use in women with estrogen depletion," the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine, November 6, 2008.

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