ON JAKOBSHAVN GLACIER, Greenland – The pilot eased his five-ton helicopter toward the glacier's rumpled surface, aiming for the lightest of setdowns atop one of the fastest-flowing ice streams on Earth.

David Holland's voice suddenly broke in on the intercom.

"Carl doesn't like this!" the scientist shouted. "Carl says it's snow bridges!" — drifts that can hide a deep crevasse.

The chopper pulled up sharply and veered off over the chaotic icescape of white knobs and pinnacles and bluish glints of meltwater, on to another, safer landing spot where Carl Gladish, Holland's lanky, ponytailed assistant, stepped cautiously off the skid and onto the ice, under the thudding rotor blades, to swiftly carry out his assigned task.

It was one of eight 2-minute touchdowns on which the New York University research team positioned instruments to measure the movement and internal cracking of Jakobshavn Glacier, a risky operation meant to shed light on one more tiny piece of the giant puzzle called Greenland.

Other scientists elsewhere were working on their own pieces, on demanding and often dangerous missions, sometimes in subfreezing temperatures and high winds, sleeping in tents on the ice, isolated for weeks at a time, linked tenuously by satellite phone.

On this same July day, Alun Hubbard was on a solitary trek to the north coast's spectacular, remote Petermann Glacier. Liz Morris was in the first hours of a monthlong research traverse along the hump of Greenland's vast, 3-kilometer-thick (2-mile-thick) ice sheet. Asa Rennermalm and her colleagues, at the ice's western fringe, were in their fourth summer of meticulous, tedious sampling of the meltwater flow from the interior.

Scattered across the world's largest island, as big as Alaska and California combined and 80 percent covered by ice, small bands of specialists tended to GPS sites and automatic weather stations, drilled down into the island's frozen cap, and analyzed the air and clouds overhead, working long hours under the midnight sun to help begin answering a crucial question:

How much of Greenland's ice will melt, and how quickly, in a world growing warmer, and warming fastest in the Arctic?

If all the ice eventually slipped into the ocean, it would be enough to raise global sea levels by 7 meters (23 feet). Even a fraction of that would inundate Bangladesh and south Florida, drown small islands, threaten Shanghai and New York.

But as temperatures rise from greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the answer isn't coming easily. The challenge — scientific, logistical — appears greater than the resources devoted to it.

This Greenland puzzle, and uncertainty over Antarctica's ice, led the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to essentially disregard the impact on oceans of an accelerating polar melt. In its 2007 global warming report, the IPCC projected a sea-level rise of only 18 to 59 centimeters (7 to 23 inches) this century, mostly from water expanding when warmed.

But researchers have since determined that Greenland lost ice in the 2004-2009 period four times faster than in 1995-2000. This May, the eight-nation Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program forecast a much higher global sea-level rise — of 90 to 160 centimeters (35 to 63 inches) by 2100.

To those best informed, like Cambridge University's Morris, a polar research veteran, melt is inevitable in a place where temperatures over the ice sheet have risen by 2.2 degrees C (4 degrees F) in just 20 years.

"There's no way that you put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and it won't warm and the ice won't melt," she said before setting out on her snowmobile expedition. "The uncertainty is when."

The "when" hinges on a web of variables in what Morris called Greenland's "massively complex" ice system.

When and where, for example, are warmer southern waters reaching Greenland's fjords, spreading under their glaciers? How effectively is meltwater percolating from the ice sheet's inland surface to its base, lubricating movement toward the sea? How much does snowfall — water drawn from the oceans — offset the melted ice?

Researchers long focused on southern outlet glaciers like the west coast's Jakobshavn, an awesome iceberg producer 6 kilometers (4 miles) wide, believed to be the Northern Hemisphere's biggest single contributor to ocean rise. The ice where doctoral candidate Gladish did his quick work is streaming toward the sea at a rate of 30 meters (100 feet) a day, twice as fast as in the 1990s.

The big melt is now moving northwest. Last year, U.S. and Danish scientists reported that "crustal uplift," the rising of land as the weight of ice melts away, was detected far up the coast.

"There are big red zones, big thinning rates going on in the far northwest, and that's bizarre because it's meant to be very cold up there," said Hubbard, of Wales' Aberystwyth University.

The ruggedly built British glaciologist spoke with a reporter at Kangerlussuaq, a southern research hub, hours before helicoptering off on a one-man mission to collect GPS and other data from Petermann Glacier, just 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from the North Pole.

A year ago, a 290-square-kilometer (110-square-mile) piece broke off giant Petermann and into the sea — a chunk of ice three times the size of Manhattan island.

But Hubbard, like others, said intensive research is now most needed deeper in the interior, to learn how the main body of ice is reacting to longer, warmer summers, and particularly whether meltwater pouring down to its base might cause "runaway instability" in the ice sheet.

He said the melt has moved inland up Greenland's icy dome to 1,500 meters (5,000 feet) elevation, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) in from the ice cap's edge.

This summer a U.S.-Swiss team was drilling boreholes into the ice sheet northeast of Jakobshavn Glacier to better understand how ice movement detected by GPS stations relates to the "plumbing," the under-ice meltwater system the boreholes find below.

Far up the slope, at the 3,200-meter-high (10,500-foot-high) frigid heart of the ice sheet, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) maintains its remote Summit Station research site, serviced by big New York Air National Guard LC-130 transport planes equipped with ski landing gear for the ice runway.

In small labs bristling with rooftop sensors, American researchers at Summit upgraded their instruments this summer to better study cloud formation and thickness, precipitation, the reflectivity of the snow and ice, and the presence of "black carbon," falling soot, that would dim that reflectivity and absorb warming sunlight.

Snowfall is key, but "we know so little detail about Greenland," said Summit visitor Erica Key, an Arctic program manager for the NSF, a major funder of Greenland research.

"Most models" — computer climate simulations — "block out Greenland as a black box," she said.

It was in Summit's thin air that 64-year-old Morris, her 155-centimeter (5-foot-1) frame bundled in orange cold-weather gear, set out with assistant John Sweeny on a one-month, two-snowmobile mission to supply her piece of the puzzle: measuring the snow density along a 400-kilometer (250-mile) route, to give the new European Cryosat 2 satellite some "ground truth" data to compare and calibrate with its own remote readings of ice thickness.

Those readings are badly needed. The European Union's first ice-surveying satellite failed on launch in 2005, and NASA's ICESAT orbiter stopped working in 2009, not to be replaced until at least 2015.

Any hard-won data emerging on the ice sheet's dynamics would help refine computer models for a better fix on how a warmer Greenland will produce higher seas. But modelers are short not only on satellite readings, but also on ground observations from a too-thin corps of scientists.

Below its gravelly fringe, near Kangerlussuaq, Rennermalm's team was measuring the volume of meltwater gushing down stream beds from the ice sheet — at up to 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) per second. But this was only one spot on a huge white map.

"I want to understand how much water is coming from the ice sheet," said the Danish researcher, a leader of the Rutgers-UCLA project. "But there are very few measurements like this in Greenland. This is a difficult place to do science, a logistical challenge."

Back up at Summit, two young Dartmouth College engineering graduates put one potential answer on display, testing the tiny, tractor-like "Yeti" autonomous robot over the ice. Like humans, Yeti could deploy ground-penetrating radar, meteorological gear and other research tools, say its designers, who envision hundreds crisscrossing Greenland offering up-to-the-minute data.

Someday. For now, NYU's Holland has opted for ringed seals, two sea mammals he fitted with instruments for recording temperature and depth in a southeastern fjord of interest — "researchers" whose findings were transmitted by satellite back to his NYU lab.

But two seals against 44,000 kilometers (27,000 miles) of Greenland coastline still come up short.

Solving the problem, said the veteran glaciologist, means accurately forecasting sea-level rise for particular regions over particular time periods. And "we don't have that capability yet."

He sees gaping holes: a need for new technology to comprehensively measure ocean temperatures; a need for an icebreaker dedicated to research in colder seasons.

"We are making a really noble effort," Holland said. "But if you ask me whether we are making adequate progress at an adequate pace, I'd say no."

The authoritative Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, in its May report, seemed to agree. Greenland's ice sheet is expected to melt faster and faster, but the impact remains highly uncertain, it said, and only "more robust observational networks" can change that.

"The Fate of Greenland," a new book co-authored by glaciologist Richard Alley and other leading U.S. scientists, offers stunning photos of an extraordinary white world, and dark words of warning.

"Our lack of fundamental understanding of ice-sheet behavior leaves open the possibility that we could be greatly underestimating the rate of response to warming, with potentially major implications," they write.

The world must pay attention to Greenland, these scientists say, "because in the fate of Greenland lie clues to the fate of the world."

WASHINGTON – One day monitoring a patient's vital signs like temperature and heart rate could be a simple as sticking on a tiny, wireless patch, sort of like a temporary tattoo.

Eliminating the bulky wiring and electrodes used in current monitors would make the devices more comfortable for patients, says an international team of researchers who report their findings in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

"What we are trying to do here is to really reshape and redefine electronics ... to look a lot more like the human body, in this case the surface layers of the skin," said John A. Rogers of the University of Illinois. "The goal is really to blur the distinction between electronics and biological tissue."

The researchers embedded electronic sensors in a film thinner than the diameter of a human hair, which was placed on a polyester backing like those used for the temporary tattoos popular with kids. The result was a sensor that was flexible enough to move with the skin and would adhere without adhesives.

The researchers said the devices had remained in place for up to 24 hours. Rogers said in an briefing that, while normal shedding of skin cells would eventually cause the monitors to come off, he thought they could remain in place as long as two weeks.

In addition to monitoring patients in hospitals, other uses for the devices could include monitoring brain waves, muscle movement, sensing the larynx for speech, emitting heat to help heal wounds and perhaps even being made touch sensitive and placed on artificial limbs, Rogers said.

The device will help fill the need for equipment that is more convenient and less stressful for patients, permitting easier and more reliable monitoring, said Zhenqiang Ma, an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin, who was not part of the research team. The electronic skin can simply be stuck on or peeled off like an adhesive bandage, he noted in a commentary on the report.

Rogers is a founder of the company MC10, based in Cambridge, Mass., which is working to develop commercial uses of the devices, but he declined to speculate on how soon the electronic skin would be ready for market or what it would cost.

The monitor looks rather like a bandage and contains an antenna that could be used to transmit data, though a radio to do that transmitting has not yet been tested, Rogers said.

The current design has a small coil and could be powered by induction — by placing it near an electrical coil — Rogers said. That would permit intermittent use, he said, and for longer-term monitoring a tiny battery or storage capacitor could be used.

The monitor doesn't use an adhesive, relying on a weak force called the van der Waals force that causes molecules and surfaces to stick together without interfering with motion. The ability of geckos to climb smooth surfaces has been attributed to the van der Waals force. For longer-term use the electronic skin could be coated with an adhesive.

Rogers and co-lead author Dae-Hyuong Kim, have been working on the technology for several years. They earlier worked together to develop flexible electronics for hemispherical camera sensors and other devices that have complex shapes.

Funding for the research came from the Air Force Research Laboratory, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, and a Defense Department National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship.

___

Online:

Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

NEW YORK – Tech heavyweights Microsoft and Google are acting like a couple of feuding starlets in a public online spat over — wait for it — patents.

It's not the first time Microsoft and Google have gone at each other's throats, nor is it likely the last.

But with Twitter and blog posts, the dispute is playing out in public in a way that wasn't possible in 2005, when lawsuits over an employee Google hired from Microsoft revealed the bitter rivalry between the two.

Now, Google is accusing Microsoft, Apple and others of launching a "hostile organized campaign" against its Android operating system, which runs smartphones that compete with iPhones, BlackBerrys and Windows-based mobile devices.

At issue are thousands of patents from Novell Inc., a maker of computer-networking software, and Nortel Networks, a Canadian telecom gear maker that is bankrupt and is selling itself off in pieces. Last month, a consortium that includes Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. prevailed over Google Inc. with a $4.5 billion cash bid for the Nortel patents.

Google lost out after a strange bidding process that included what published reports said was an offer for a billion times the mathematical constant "pi."

"Their response seems to be to whine about the process," technology analyst Rob Enderle said.

Enderle was referring to a scathing blog post by Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, who wrote on Wednesday that Microsoft was banding with others to acquire "bogus patents" to make sure Google can't get to them.

"They want to make it harder for manufacturers to sell Android devices," Drummond wrote. "Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation."

Not so fast, says Microsoft, which brought the feud to Twitter. There, Microsoft's communications chief, Frank Shaw, posted an image of an email from Google's general counsel, Kent Walker, declining to join Microsoft in the consortium to bid for the patents.

The email was sent to Microsoft's own general counsel, Brad Smith, who also chimed in. Smith wrote to his 2,000-plus Twitter followers that "Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no."

Shaw offered a reason in another Twitter post: "Why? BECAUSE they wanted to buy something that they could use to assert against someone else."

Enderle says it's no secret that Microsoft and Google don't like each other.

Microsoft has banded with another Google rival, Facebook, to include data from the online social network in Microsoft's search engine, Bing. Google can't do that because Facebook erected barriers preventing Google's search engine from indexing all the data on its network.

And earlier this year, Microsoft complained about Google to the European Commission in its first formal antitrust complaint against a rival. Microsoft accused Google of abusing its dominance of online search and advertising.

Then there was the 2005 incident, in which, according to court documents, Microsoft's boisterous CEO, Steve Ballmer, threw a chair and vowed to "kill" Google in an obscenity-laced tirade over the online search leader's hiring of Kai-Fu Lee. Lee helped develop Microsoft's MSN Internet search technology, including desktop search software rivaling Google's. He left the company that July after Google offered him a $10 million compensation package. He has since left Google, too.

So far, the patent feud has lacked obscenities, at least in public.

But the verbal tirade continued Thursday when Drummond updated his blog post to say that Microsoft is trying to divert attention from the real issue and push a "false `gotcha!'" instead.

"Microsoft's objective has been to keep from Google and Android device-makers any patents that might be used to defend against their attacks. A joint acquisition of the Novell patents that gave all parties a license would have eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners," he wrote.

Enderle says Google needs to grow up, and part of that process is that "they've got to get through the whining stage."

Google had the chance and refused to participate. Now, it is calling the process unfair, Enderle said, "which is something you can do as a little company but probably not when you yourself are a multinational."

Google did not immediately respond to a message for comment. Microsoft's Shaw didn't have a comment beyond what he tweeted.

NEW YORK – Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. zoomed to the top of the list of global smartphone makers in the second quarter, blowing past Nokia Corp. and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd., according to research firm IDC.

Korea's Samsung made the biggest jump, from No. 4 in the first quarter to No. 2 in the second, on the strength of its Galaxy phones, which run Google Inc.'s Android software. It sold 17.3 million smartphones in the second quarter, up from 10.8 million in the first, IDC said.

Apple rose to No. 1, taking the spot from Nokia, by selling 20.3 million iPhones, up from 18.7 million in the first quarter. That relegated Finland's Nokia, the long-time leader, to third place. Apple has yet to top Nokia's high-water mark of 28.1 million phones in a quarter.

"But given Apple's momentum in the smartphone market, it may not be a question of whether Apple will beat that milestone, but when," IDC said.

Remarkably, Apple's sales record comes nearly a year after it released its latest model, the iPhone 4, and it's still selling millions of the even older iPhone 3GS. Competitors such as Samsung put out new models every few months.

Nokia sold 16.7 million smartphones, a sharp drop from 24.2 million in the previous quarter. The company has struggled to come up with an answer to the iPhone. Nokia is now transitioning to smartphone software from Microsoft Corp., but it's first Windows Phones won't be on sale until late this year, at the earliest.

Canada's RIM fell from third to fourth place, as it saw a decline in BlackBerry sales from the first quarter to the second. Like Nokia, it has been struggling to update the high end of its line to compete with touch-screen phones such as the iPhone. It unveiled five new models with updated software this week.

HTC Corp. of Taiwan remained in fifth place, but it's seeing rapidly growing sales. Like Samsung, it has bet on Google's Android software for its phones.

By Dan Levine and Poornima Gupta

SAN FRANCISCO |
Tue Jul 12, 2011 5:20am EDT