Weekly Science Headlines

[LMNO]

Just in time for "Angels and Demons," too!

[Telarus]

LOL, every time I hear "Ancient Illuminati Threat" from that trailer I giggle for 2 minutes.

[Kai]

May 11, 2009



Species Act Won't Be Used to Force Lower Emissions
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The federal bureaucracy that safeguards endangered species isn't equipped to tackle climate change, Interior Department officials said yesterday -- declining to protect Alaskan polar bears by cracking down on polluters in the Lower 48.

The decision, announced [Friday] by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, was the Obama administration's first word on an emerging environmental question.

The 35-year-old Endangered Species Act was designed to save animals from close-by threats such as hunting, trapping and logging. But, now that U.S. species from mountainsides to tropical seas are threatened by climate change, can it be used to fight a global problem?

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'Cone of Silence' Keeps Conversations Secret
from New Scientist

In Get Smart, the 1960s TV spy comedy, secret agents wanting a private conversation would deploy the "cone of silence," a clear plastic contraption lowered over the agents' heads. It never worked - they couldn't hear each other, while eavesdroppers could pick up every word. Now a modern cone of silence that we are assured will work is being patented by engineers Joe Paradiso and Yasuhiro Ono of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Their idea, revealed in US patent application 2009/0097671 on 16 April, is to make confidential conversations possible in open-plan offices and canteens. It will even let a conversing group move around a room and still remain in a secure sound bubble.

"In increasingly common open-plan offices, the violation of employees' privacy can often become an issue, as third parties overhear their conversations intentionally or unintentionally," the inventors say in their patent. Their aim is to relieve people of that concern.

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Fears of Global Decline in Bees Dismissed as Demand for Honey Grows
from the Times (London)

The threat of a world without bees has been described as more serious than climate change. But world honeybee colonies have actually increased by almost half over the past 50 years, according to an analysis of UN figures.

While bees have been dying out in Britain, Europe and the US, managed bee numbers worldwide having been thriving because of global demand for honey, biologists suggest in the journal Current Biology. They also say that the bulk of agriculture, including wheat and rice, does not rely on pollination.

However, the growing popularity of expensive crops which need to be pollinated by bees has outstripped the growth in bee numbers, they find. This could lead to shortages in fruits like raspberries, plums, cherries and mangoes as well as Brazil and cashew nuts, they suggest.

http://snipr.com/hspor



Digital Field Guides Eliminate the Guesswork
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The traditional way to identify an unfamiliar tree is to pull out a field guide and search its pages for a matching description. One day people may pull out a smartphone instead, photographing a leaf from the mystery tree and then having the phone search for matching images in a database.

A team of researchers financed by the National Science Foundation has created just such a device -- a hand-held electronic field guide that identifies tree species based on the shape of their leaves, said Peter N. Belhumeur, a professor of computer science at Columbia and a member of the team.

The field guide, now in prototype for iPhones and other portable devices, has been tested at three sites in the northeastern United States, including Plummers Island in Maryland and Central Park in New York...

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The Anatomy of Creativity
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

Here's a question that has plagued philosophers, artists, and scientists alike for centuries: How was consciousness born?

One composer and a neuroscientist took a stab at answering the age-old question at a performance of a new musical work, "Self Comes to Mind," last Sunday (May 3), at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The story tells of "the evolution of mind from brain," Adolphe told The Scientist in an interview the week before the performance. "It goes from the idea of a brain in a creature that doesn't know, to consciousness and the anxiety and dilemmas of consciousness." Each section of the music is preceded by a recording of Damasio reading a passage that describes a stage in the evolution of consciousness and the discovery of self-awareness.

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Whaling Peace Talks 'Fall Short'
from BBC News Online

Moves to make a peace deal between pro and anti-whaling nations have stalled, with no chance of agreement this year.

Countries have been talking for nearly a year in an attempt to hammer out an accord by this year's International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting. But a draft report seen by BBC News admits the process has "fallen short."

A source close to the talks blamed Japan, saying it had not offered big enough cuts in its Antarctic hunt, conducted in the name of research.

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Misread Epigenetic Signals Play Role in Leukemia
from Science News

Scientists have shed light on how a genetic mutation linked to acute myeloid leukemia may trigger the disease. The problem arises when cells misinterpret chemical tags called epigenetic marks on certain key genes, a new study shows.

Similar problems probably lie at the heart of other cancers and diseases and may represent a new category of diseases, researchers report online May 10 in Nature.

Cancer may result from many different triggering events. In some patients with the blood cancer, the trigger seems to be a rearrangement of small pieces of chromosome, researchers discovered last year. The rearrangement fuses parts of two proteins -- NUP98 and JARID1A -- together. Now, [researchers] show how the pairing of the two proteins might lead to trouble for a cell.

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Caribbean Migration Clue to Puzzle of Basking Sharks' Vanishing Act
from the Times (London)

The mystery of where basking sharks, the world's second-largest fish, disappear to for eight months of the year has intrigued scientists and fishermen for more than half a century.

It was assumed that the sharks, which have never been seen outside temperate waters, hibernated on the seabed during the winter months. Scientists have been startled, however, by a project that has tracked them to the Caribbean, indicating that they may be making global migrations.

Last year Mauvis Gore, of Marine Conservation International, placed a tracking device on a large female basking shark -- Cetorhinus maximus -- off the Isle of Man. To her astonishment, the filter-feeding shark plunged to a depth of 1,264 metres (4,147ft) and made for Newfoundland. It was the first time anyone had found a link between the populations of the eastern and western Atlantic.

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How Stereotypes Defeat the Stereotyped
from Time

As explicit discrimination has receded in the last two decades, ...those who study the effects of racism and sexism have had to cope with a difficult question: If discrimination is less powerful, why do some groups in society continue to fare worse than others? Has bias merely become better hidden, or are there other forces at work?

One theory that has gained influence among sociologists is that some members of stigmatized groups, when faced with stressful situations, expect themselves to do worse -- a prophecy that fulfills itself. These expectations, ...produce stress and threaten cognitive function. The effect is called "stereotype threat," and African-Americans, girls, even jocks have all been shown susceptible to stereotype threat.

Now a new study shows that old people are also vulnerable to the phenomenon. ...Published in the journal Experimental Aging Research, the study shows that merely reminding people that they are members of a stigmatized group (in this case, older Americans) reliably dampens their performance.

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Invasion of the Lionfish
from Smithsonian Magazine

It took as few as three lionfish to start the invasion. Or at least, that's the best guess. Genetic tests show that there weren't many.

No one knows how the fish arrived. They might have escaped into Florida's waters in 1992, when Hurricane Andrew capsized many transport boats. Or they might have been imported as an aquarium curiosity and later released.

But soon those lionfish began to breed a dynasty. They laid hundreds of gelatinous eggs that released microscopic lionfish larvae. The larvae drifted on the current. They grew into adults, capable of reproducing every 55 days and during all seasons of the year. The fish, unknown in the Americas 30 years ago, settled on reefs, wrecks and ledges. And that's when scientists, divers and fishermen began to notice.

http://snipr.com/hsps4

[Kai]

May 8, 2009



Feet Offer Clues About Tiny Hominid
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The extinct hominids commonly known as hobbits may have been small of body and brain, but their feet were exceptionally long, and they were flat.

Scientists, completing the first detailed analysis of the hominid's foot bones, say the findings bolster their controversial interpretation that these individuals belonged to a primitive population distinct from modern humans that lived as recently as 17,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores.

The new anatomical evidence, being reported Thursday in the journal Nature, is unlikely to solve the mystery of just where the species--formally designated Homo floresiensis--fits in human evolution. That fact even the researchers acknowledge, and some of their critics still contend that the skull and bones are nothing more than remains of modern pygmy humans deformed by genetic or pathological disorders.

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New Virus, Old Tale: Animals Share Bugs With Us
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Somewhere out there, somewhere along the way, a single creature got all this started. A pig, presumably. Pig Zero.

Scientists suspect that two influenza viruses common in swine, one rooted in Eurasia and the other in North America, came together in a single cell within a pig. The two viruses exchanged their genes like a couple of kids swapping school clothes. The result was a novel strain of virus, with, according to scientists, two genes from the Eurasian virus and six genes from the North American virus.

The new strain then jumped to humans. Where is unknown. Mexico is a possibility, but so far the virus hasn't been found in any Mexican swine. All of this is the latest iteration of a phenomenon dating to the dawn of mankind: zoonosis. A zoonotic disease is one that spreads from animals to humans, or vice versa.

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NASA Rescue Mission Aims to Revive Hubble
from USA Today

The Hubble Space Telescope, one of the greatest scientific instruments of all time, is about to get an extreme makeover--an overhaul so delicate and risky that NASA astronaut John Grunsfeld likens it to "brain surgery."

At 19 years old, the famous telescope is showing its age. Three of its scientific instruments are broken. Half of its six gyroscopes, which keep the Hubble pointed in the right direction, aren't working. And its batteries are slowly dying.

The seven-member crew of space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to blast off Monday in an attempt to fix it. It will be the fifth, final and most difficult mission to service the Hubble--a mission that was judged so risky to astronauts it was canceled in 2004 before safety precautions were added to ease the concerns.

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Narcolepsy Linked to Immune System
from Science News

Scientists have identified a second genetic tie that cements a connection between a disabling sleep disorder and the immune system. Emmanuel Mignot, a sleep researcher and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Stanford University, led an international team searching for the genetic causes of narcolepsy. The team reports online May 3 in Nature Genetics that several genetic markers associated with narcolepsy map to a gene important for turning immature immune T cells into microbe killers.

For decades scientists have known that people with narcolepsy are more likely to have a particular version of an immune gene called HLA-DQB1*0602. The gene belongs to a class of genes called HLA, for human leukocyte antigens, that makes key immune proteins.

... Given the association between narcolepsy and the HLA gene, the lethality of T cells intrigued scientists studying the sleep disorder. Neurons that make a wake-promoting protein called hypocretin die in people who have narcolepsy. Death of the cells means that people can't make enough hypocretin to stay awake, and they experience sudden bouts of sleep during the day and have disrupted sleep at night.

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Hawaii's "Gentle" Volcano More Dangerous Than Thought
from National Geographic News

Hawaii's tourist-friendly Kilauea volcano is famous for its lazy rivers of lava. But a new report says the volcano, known as the world's most active, has a violent alter ego. The coastal volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii is capable of much stronger eruptions than previously thought, according to the study.

"It turns out that the volcano--known for being this nice, gentle volcano [where] you can walk up to lava flows just wearing flip-flops--has a very dangerous side," said study co-author Tim Rose, a volcanologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

Kilauea's violent side was revealed by a layer of tephra--volcanic ash and rocks--extending many miles from the volcano. The tephra, the scientists determined, erupted some time between 1,000 and 1,600 years ago, when it apparently was blasted high enough into the air that today it would be a hazard to passenger jets.

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Quizzing the World's First Answer Engine
from New Scientist

An ambitious attempt to create a "knowledge engine" will go live next week. Called Wolfram Alpha, it is designed to understand search requests made in everyday language and work out the answer to factual questions on almost any aspect of human knowledge.

A preview of Alpha carried out by New Scientist has revealed some of the new technology's abilities but also exposed some shortcomings. Meanwhile, in an apparent attempt to steal Alpha's thunder, Google has released a data visualisation tool that may provide stiff competition when fully developed.

Alpha was created by Stephen Wolfram, famous for the software package Mathematica. He employed more than 150 people to collect information on all the major branches of science, from the properties of the elements and the location of planets to the relationships between species and the sequence of the human genome. Economic measures, such as inflation histories for specific countries, are included, as are geographic, cultural and many other data sets.

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Using Dead Stars to Spot Gravitational Waves
from Science News

DENVER--A bunch of dead stars could serve as ready-made recorders for gravitational waves--subtle ripples in spacetime that if discovered would be the crowning achievement of Einstein's theory of general relativity, astronomers propose. Researchers have been spending billions of dollars to perfect sensitive, kilometer-long devices on the ground and launch even more sophisticated experiments in space to detect this cosmic symphony.

The new search technique would instead rely on radio waves generated like clockwork by millisecond pulsars--the collapsed remnants of massive stars that spin about once every one to 10 milliseconds. The speed at which these pulsars rotate enables researchers to measure the timing of the waves' arrival at Earth with high accuracy.

Measuring arrival time is critical, says Frederick Jenet of the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, who presented his team's proposal on May 3 at the American Physical Society meeting. Colleague Andrea Lommen of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., reported additional details on May 5.

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Electric Cars and Noise: The Sound of Silence
from the Economist

When cars run on electric power they not only save fuel and cut emissions but also run more quietly. Ordinarily, people might welcome quieter cars on the roads. However, as the use of hybrid and electric vehicles grows, a new concern is growing too: pedestrians and cyclists find it hard to hear them coming, especially when the cars are moving slowly through a busy town or manoeuvring in a car park.

Some drivers say that when their cars are in electric mode people are more likely to step out in front of them. The solution, many now believe, is to fit electric and hybrid cars with external sound systems.

A bill going through the American Congress wants to establish a minimum level of sound for vehicles that are not using an internal-combustion engine, so that blind people and other pedestrians can hear them coming. The bill's proponents also want that audible alert to be one that will help people judge the direction and speed of the vehicle. A similar idea is being explored by the European Commission.

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The Science of "Star Trek"
from Scientific American

Ever since the starship Enterprise first whisked across television screens in 1966, Star Trek has inspired audiences with its portrayal of a future, spacefaring humanity boldly going where no one has gone before.

Creator Gene Roddenberry's vision went on to spark five other TV series and now 11 movies, as a new film hits multiplexes this week. This prequel, simply titled Star Trek and directed by J. J. Abrams--the force behind TV's Lost and Fringe, among other projects--chronicles the early years of Captain Kirk and some of his Enterprise shipmates, including Spock, McCoy and Uhura.

To get a sense of how much actual science has made its way into the science fiction universe of Star Trek, ScientificAmerican.com spoke to Lawrence Krauss, author of The Physics of Star Trek, the first edition of which appeared on bookshelves in 1995.

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Protein Structures: Structures of Desire
from Nature News

When considered up close, the blood protein from a sperm whale is a marvellous thing. Or so it seemed just over 50 years ago, when John Kendrew and other researchers at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, UK, reported that they had used X-rays to reveal the three-dimensional structure of a globular protein for the first time.

Analysis of the diffraction pattern caused by crystals of myoglobin, which was chosen for its simplicity, required one of the most powerful computers in the world at that time, and later won Kendrew a share of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with his Cavendish colleague Max Perutz. The picture it created "is more complicated than has been predicated by any theory of protein structure", Kendrew and his colleagues wrote in a Nature article.

Half a century on, X-ray crystallography's techniques are in outline the same: you need a crystal, X-rays and calculating power to make sense of the diffraction pattern. In all these three areas, however, progress has been enormous.

http://snipr.com/hm41m

[Kai]

May 7, 2009



Mild Flu Could Hit Harder in the Fall
from the Baltimore Sun

The number of swine flu cases in Mexico is stabilizing. In the U.S., though more people are being diagnosed with the virus, cases have been mostly mild, claiming two lives. And health officials have backed off on closing schools where students are sick.

It may seem as though the threat of the virus known as H1N1 has lessened. But infectious disease experts and public health officials agree: The worst is likely still to come. In pandemics of the past, flu that arrived in the spring hit harder come fall, when influenza season returned.

"If you were just to bet on the odds, you would bet H1N1 would abate in the summer and return in the winter," said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Tennessee. "The illness produced, so far, is really quite mild. But the question would be-as it circulates among humans in the Southern Hemisphere [in their winter flu season]-could it pick up a virulence gene ... that is capable of producing severe disease?"

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Officials Debate Production of H1N1 Vaccine
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

As U.S. health authorities told Congress on Wednesday that they were prepared to mass produce a vaccine against the new H1N1 influenza virus if needed, World Health Organization officials said they would convene an expert committee next week to determine if such production was necessary -- or desirable. The U.S. is expected to follow the recommendation.

Production of a vaccine against the virus in anticipation of its return in the fall might sound like an obvious step, but doing so would sharply limit the amount of seasonal flu vaccine that would be available because the new vaccine would be manufactured instead of the traditional one.

The virulence of the new strain remains unclear, but seasonal flu is a known killer. About 36,000 people die from it in the U.S. each year and tens of thousands more worldwide.

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'Anaconda' Harnesses Wave Power
from BBC News Online

A new wave energy device known as "Anaconda" is the latest idea to harness the power of the seas. Its inventors claim the key to its success lies in its simplicity: Anaconda is little more than a length of rubber tubing filled with water.

Waves in the water create bulges along the tubing that travel along its length gathering energy. At the end of the tube, the surge of energy drives a turbine and generates electricity.

The device is being developed by Checkmate Seaenergy Ltd, which has been testing a small-scale 8m-long prototype in a wave tank in Gosport, Hampshire, owned by the science and technology company Qinetiq.

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Face Transplant Recipient: 'I'm Not a Monster'
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

CLEVELAND (Associated Press)--When Connie Culp heard a little kid call her a monster because of the shotgun blast that left her face horribly disfigured, she pulled out her driver's license to show the child what she used to look like. Years later, as the nation's first face transplant recipient, she's stepped forward to show the rest of the world what she looks like now.

Her expressions are still a bit wooden, but she can talk, smile, smell and taste her food again. Her speech is at times a little tough to understand. Her face is bloated and squarish. Her skin droops in big folds that doctors plan to pare away as her circulation improves and her nerves grow, animating her new muscles.

... On Dec. 10, in a 22-hour operation, Dr. Maria Siemionow led a team of doctors who replaced 80 percent of Culp's face with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from another woman who had just died. It was the fourth face transplant in the world, though the others were not as extensive.

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How to Build Nanotech Motors
from Scientific American

Imagine that we could make cars, aircraft and submarines as small as bacteria or molecules. Microscopic robotic surgeons, injected in the body, could locate and neutralize the causes of disease--for example, the plaque inside arteries or the protein deposits that may cause Alzheimer's disease. And nanomachines ... could penetrate the steel beams of bridges or the wings of airplanes, fixing invisible cracks before they propagate and cause catastrophic failures.

In recent years chemists have created an array of remarkable molecular-scale structures that could become parts of minute machines. James Tour and his co-workers at Rice University, for instance, have synthesized a molecular-scale car that features as wheels four buckyballs (carbon molecules shaped like soccer balls), 5,000 times as small as a human cell.

But look under the hood of the nanocar, and you will not find an engine. Tour's nanocars so far move only insofar as they are jostled by random collisions with the molecules around them, a process known as Brownian motion. This is the biggest current problem with molecular machines: we know how to build them, but we still do not know how to power them.

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NASA's Program for Future Space Flight to Be Reviewed
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

In a major turnaround, the Obama administration intends this week to order a review of the spacecraft program that NASA had hoped would replace the space shuttle, the Orlando Sentinel has learned.

According to administration officials and industry insiders, the review would examine whether the Ares 1 rocket and Orion capsule are the best option to send astronauts into orbit by 2015. The review of the so-called Constellation program could be finished by fall.

The decision follows months of critical reports that have questioned whether Ares and Orion can overcome major financial and technical hurdles that threaten to delay a scheduled 2015 launch to the International Space Station and a return to the moon by 2020.

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U.S. Halts Pilot Program in New York to Detect Biological Attacks
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The Department of Homeland Security is dismantling a next-generation biological attack warning system in New York City subways because of technical problems, U.S. officials said.

Robert Hooks, a deputy assistant secretary, said the department no longer believes it is necessary to expand the pilot program, as he told Congress in July, because of resource and technology limits. Hooks said a long-planned alternative sensor system, set for initial deployment late next year, also will not be available nationwide until 2012, to allow for more testing.

The deactivation of the pilot program in late March marks a setback in U.S. efforts to detect biological weapons, and its disclosure comes as the Obama administration is unveiling new security priorities as part of its 2010 budget today.

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Hunting the Mysterious Monopole
from New Scientist

They seem magical: magnets, every child's favourite science toy. Two otherwise ordinary lumps of metal draw inexorably closer, finally locking together with a satisfying snap. Yet turn one of them round and they show an entirely different, repulsive face: try as you might to make them, never the twain shall meet.

If magnets seem rather bipolar, that's because they are. Every magnet has two poles, a north and a south. Like poles repel, unlike poles attract. No magnet breaks the two-pole rule - not the humblest bar magnet, not the huge dynamo at the heart of our planet. Split a magnet in two, and each half sprouts the pole it lost. It seems that poles without their twins-magnetic "monopoles"-simply do not exist.

That hasn't stopped physicists hunting. For decades they have ransacked everything from moon rock and cosmic rays to ocean-floor sludge to find them. There is a simple reason for this quixotic quest. Our best explanations of how the universe hangs together demand that magnetic monopoles exist. If they are not plain to see, they must be hiding.

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Now Showing: RNA Activation
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

After getting the data back from the very first experiment at her new job, Rosalyn Ram, a lab technician at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, was convinced she had messed something up. The results were decidedly "weird," she recalls.

Her lab heads, the husband-and-wife research duo David Corey and Bethany Janowski, had already shown that synthetic DNA molecules with protein-like backbones, known as peptide nucleic acids, could block gene transcription. And as a long shot, in October 2004 they had tasked the new lab tech with trying to do the same with small RNA molecules, fully expecting it not to work.

But it did work: Like the peptide nucleic acids, the RNAs targeted to the same promoter also silenced gene expression at the level of transcription. "When [Ram] saw the silencing, she thought she had done something wrong," says Janowski. "She didn't want to show me the data because she thought it was supposed to be a negative result."

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DNA Twisted into Boxes
from Nature News

A multidisciplinary team of researchers has created tiny DNA strongboxes measuring just 30 nanometres on each side. The boxes, which can be unlocked with a gene 'key', could be used for drug delivery or as sensors.

The boxes are the latest novelty to emerge from 'DNA origami,' the technique by which researchers build structures out of DNA. They use oligonucleotides, short snippets of nucleic acid bearing genetic information, to fold longer strands of DNA into a complex structure. Each box is large enough to hold a single ribosome--the cell's machine for making proteins. Previously, researchers have built tubes and even a map of the Americas using the technique.

The latest work uses the same principle. It's just a little more complicated, according to team member Jørgen Kjems, a chemist at Aarhus University in Denmark.

http://snipr.com/hjpz6

[Kai]

May 6, 2009



10 Genes, Furiously Evolving
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Evolutionary biology may sometimes seem like an arcane academic pursuit, but just try telling that to Gavin Smith, a virologist at Hong Kong University. For the past week, Dr. Smith and six other experts on influenza in Hong Kong, Arizona, California and Britain have been furiously analyzing the new swine flu to figure out how and when it evolved.

The first viruses from the outbreak were isolated late last month, but Dr. Smith and his colleagues report on their Web site that the most recent common ancestor of the new viruses existed 6 to 11 months ago. "It could just have been going under the radar," Dr. Smith said.

The current outbreak shows how complex and mysterious the evolution of viruses is. That complexity and mystery are all the more remarkable because a virus is life reduced to its essentials.

http://snipr.com/hh62n



Solar Storms Ahead: Is Earth Prepared?
from the Christian Science Monitor

When we look at the sun (carefully), it appears to be a uniform, unchanging star. But scientists and engineers have a much different perspective. To them, the sun is a dynamic, chaotic, and poorly understood caldron of thermonuclear forces, one that can spit out fierce bursts of radiation at any time.

And when Earth lies in the path of that blast, the flare can play havoc with power grids, disrupt radio communications, and disturb or disable satellites. Fifty years into the Space Age, Earth has avoided the worst the sun can deliver-so far.

But with the sun entering a period of increased activity, more frequent solar flares could be headed our way. This has many astronomers and companies asking if satellites and power grids are ready.

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Gates Funds Unorthodox Health Research
from the Times (London)

There is a magnet that can detect malaria at the flick of a switch, a flu-resistant chicken, an "antiviral" tomato and a vaccine enhanced with the use of a laser. The ideas are so bold that, as the scientists behind them admit, they can often struggle for funding.

Tuesday, though, more than 80 projects at the far edge of innovation in global health research will share millions of pounds of grants to support unorthodox thinking--and the outside chance of a world-changing discovery.

Among the recipients, announced today by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as part of their Grand Challenges initiative, are three British scientific teams pursuing novel approaches to prevent and treat infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and pneumonia, as well as viruses such as HIV.

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C. P. Snow's 'Two Cultures' Fifty Years Later
from the Telegraph (UK)

On May 7 1959, the celebrated novelist C. P. Snow mounted the podium in the Senate House in Cambridge to deliver that year's Rede Lecture. The title was "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution," and his theme the dangerously wide gap that had opened up between scientists and "literary intellectuals."

He spoke of scientists who could scarcely struggle through a novel by Dickens, but more importantly of humanities professors who were ignorant of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, who sneered at science as an inferior branch of learning that no really cultured person needed to trouble with.

... Snow compared Britain unfavourably with the US and USSR, in terms of numbers of young people who remained in education to the age of 18 and above. The British system, he argued, forced children to specialise at an unusually early age, with snobbery dictating that the children would be pushed towards the "traditional culture" and the professions, rather than science and industry.

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Museum Puts Off DNA Testing of Lincoln Artifact
from the Philadelphia Inquirer

The strip of a pillowcase stained with the blood of Abraham Lincoln is usually locked away in a display case or safe at the Grand Army of the Republic Museum and Library in Philadelphia's Frankford section.

But Monday night it was brought out as Exhibit A during a debate among members of the museum's board over whether to allow DNA testing of the relic to solve a medical mystery. John Sotos ... asked to test the artifact to prove Lincoln had a rare genetic cancer syndrome called multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B (MEN2B).

The museum board last night turned down Sotos' request while leaving open the possibility of future testing that may be overseen by the National Museum of Health and Medicine, part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington.

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Climate Change and Ethanol's Greenhouse Emissions
from the Minneapolis Star Tribune (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)-The Obama administration renewed its commitment Tuesday to speed up investments in ethanol and other biofuels while seeking to deflect some environmentalists' claims that huge increases in corn ethanol use will hinder the fight against global warming.

President Barack Obama directed more loan guarantees and economic stimulus money for biofuels research and told the Agriculture Department to find ways to preserve biofuel industry jobs. The recession, as well as lower gasoline prices, has caused some ethanol producers to suffer, including some who have filed for bankruptcy.

... The reassurances to the ethanol industry came as the Environmental Protection Agency made public its initial analysis on what impact the massive expansion of future ethanol use could have on climate change.

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Targeting Risk Factors
from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Feeling that one is being treated unfairly is a sure guarantee of unhappiness and can quickly put a person into a sour mood.

But researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard find that it can also be hazardous to your health. Their work is part of a larger research project studying aging and health.

In the study appearing in a forthcoming issue of Brain, Behavior and Immunity, UW-Madison researcher Elliot Friedman and colleagues report that men who say they have been passed over for promotion, denied a bank loan or felt other [slights] show an increase in the level of E-selectin in their blood. This molecule is an indicator of blood vessel damage and is a marker for later heart problems ...

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Portuguese Trove of Trilobite Fossils
from Science News

Fossils unearthed at a slate quarry in northern Portugal include those of the largest known trilobites, as well as immense assemblages--some a thousand strong--that suggest the creatures exhibited social behavior.

Trilobites, an extremely successful but now long-extinct group of arthropods, strolled ancient seafloors for millions of years.

The new fossils come from rocks laid down as seafloor sediments about 465 million years ago, says Artur Sá, a paleontologist at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro in Vila Real, Portugal. He and his colleagues describe the fossils in the May Geology.

http://snipr.com/hh824



Bendable Concrete Heals Itself
from National Geographic News

Its not quite as advanced as Terminator technology. But a new concrete that can heal its own wounds may soon bring futuristic protection to bridges and roads.

Traditional concrete is brittle and is easily fractured during an earthquake or by overuse. By contrast, the new concrete composite can bend into a U-shape without breaking. When strained, the material forms hairline cracks, which auto-seal after a few days of light rain.

Dry material exposed by the cracks reacts with rainwater and carbon dioxide in the air to form "scars" of calcium carbonate, a strong compound found naturally in seashells, said study co-author Victor Li of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The flexible material is just as strong after it heals, the study authors report.

http://snipr.com/hh7w2



Scientists Pinpoint Fats Danger
from BBC News Online

Scientists have identified a genetic mechanism which appears to determine which fatty deposits in the arteries have the potential to kill us. Most of these plaques pose no risk to health, but a minority burst, forming blood clots, which can cause heart attacks or strokes.

A Columbia University team pinpointed a gene which seems to make plaques more vulnerable to rupture. The American study appears in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Fatty deposits begin to form in the arteries of most people in their teens, but the vast majority are harmless. However, it is thought that around 2% of plaques have the potential to burst.

http://snipr.com/hh7xr

[Kai]

May 5, 2009



Mexican Officials Lower Flu Alert Level
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Amid signs that the H1N1 influenza outbreak in Mexico is waning, health authorities there said Monday that they were lowering the alert level and would begin allowing nonessential businesses to reopen, starting with restaurants Wednesday. Museums, churches and libraries can open a day later.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said schools would reopen gradually. University and preparatory students will return to class Thursday, but those in lower grades will remain out until Monday to give officials more time to clean facilities.

"Today the situation is stabilizing, and we are on the way toward normalcy," Calderon said. Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said that no new deaths from H1N1 had occurred since Wednesday and that the number of new patients was falling. He said tests had confirmed the virus in 802 cases, fewer than half of the 2,150 samples checked.

http://snipr.com/hem8e



How to Grow New Organs
from Scientific American

... Today nearly 50 million people in the U.S. are alive because of various forms of artificial organ therapy, and one in every five people older than 65 in developed nations is very likely to benefit from organ replacement technology during the remainder of their lives.

Current technologies for organ substitution, such as whole-organ transplants and kidney dialysis machines, have saved many lives, but they are imperfect solutions that come with heavy burdens for patients.

Engineered biological tissues are customizable and immune-compatible and can therefore potentially make a significant difference in the lives of people with failing organs. They can fill other human needs as well, for example, serving as "organs on a chip" for testing the toxicity of candidate drugs.

http://snipr.com/hembg



Sun Oddly Quiet -- Hints at Next "Little Ice Age"?
from National Geographic News

A prolonged lull in solar activity has astrophysicists glued to their telescopes waiting to see what the sun will do next--and how Earth's climate might respond. The sun is the least active it's been in decades and the dimmest in a hundred years.

The lull is causing some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age, an unusual cold spell in Europe and North America, which lasted from about 1300 to 1850. The coldest period of the Little Ice Age, between 1645 and 1715, has been linked to a deep dip in solar storms known as the Maunder Minimum.

... But researchers are on guard against their concerns about a new cold snap being misinterpreted. "[Global warming] skeptics tend to leap forward," said Mike Lockwood, a solar terrestrial physicist at the University of Southampton in the U.K. He and other researchers are therefore engaged in what they call "preemptive denial" of a solar minimum leading to global cooling.

http://snipr.com/hemdw



Waves of the Future
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

Just minutes after the seafloor north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra buckled on Dec. 26, 2004 ... analysts in Alaska and elsewhere knew a massive tsunami would likely follow.

Warnings were immediately issued. Phone calls were made. But the effort was too little, too late. The quake happened early on a Sunday morning. Most government offices were closed. Word was appallingly slow to reach small, isolated villages along the coasts of Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India. In many places, residents never knew what hit them.

... If a tsunami were to strike today, however, chances are much better that people in imperiled areas could be warned in time. Major elements of a global tsunami early warning system have been put in place, though some regions of the world remain uncovered.

http://snipr.com/hemg6



Here Comes the Sun. Right?
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

... For the residents of Hillsboro, and for the Oregon economy, SolarWorld's presence is a welcome boon. Its employees enjoy being in start-up mode, while others like the cachet of working for a renewable-energy company--which goes down well in outdoorsy Oregon.

"Green is the way to go," says Michelle Zillig, who worked at Intel for 18 years before joining SolarWorld as a technician. "People can only have so many computers."

At first glance, the timing of SolarWorld's decision to invest $500 million in the new site during a recession, in a state with an unemployment rate second only to Michigan's, couldn't have been worse. Prices for the company's solar panels have slid about 15 percent since the factory opened, a result of growing competition and slowing demand, especially in Europe. Two manufacturers, GE Energy's solar branch and BP Solar, have cut production in East Coast plants. But new federal incentives to encourage renewable energy in the United States will give the industry a boost, analysts say.

http://snipr.com/hemhg



Mobile Food-Safety Labs Get FDA Up to Speed
from USA Today

NOGALES, Ariz.--The FDA has hit the road. A month ago, three gleaming white trailers--the Food and Drug Administration's $3 million mobile food-safety lab--rolled into this major port of entry for people and goods coming from Mexico. They joined an alphabet soup of federal agencies sifting through millions of tons of goods in search of drugs, guns, invasive plants and tainted foods.

The lab represents a new era for the agency in keeping the food supply safe, says Michael Chappell, FDA acting associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. It is a tool that can be suited up and rolled out to anyplace in the country facing the danger of contaminated food, whether at the hand of terrorists or Mother Nature.

... In the three weeks the trailers were based in Nogales before heading to their next assignment, the FDA estimates that direct contact with the truckers shaved tens of thousands of dollars in testing costs and spoiled produce. The mobile unit also may help repair the agency's reputation, which has been battered by public frustration with the contamination of such popular foods as peanuts and spinach.

http://snipr.com/hemoo



The Space Giant Is Coming
from BBC News Online

The most distant cosmic explosion ever recorded would have made a fascinating target for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), according to scientists now building the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The cataclysmic detonation reported last week is the most far-flung object in the Universe yet seen.

... Nasa's James Webb is designed with the purpose of imaging and studying this realm of the cosmos-and beyond-in extraordinary detail. It is scheduled for launch in 2013.

To see so far, the observatory will be the space agency's largest and most technically challenging telescope mission to date. Its primary mirror is 6.5m (21ft) across-close to three times wider than Hubble's.

http://snipr.com/hemqt



Nuclear Power Foes Not Stilled in New England
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

VERNON, Vt.-Sprawling along the Connecticut River, just a few miles from the Massachusetts border, lies Vermont Yankee, one of the country's oldest nuclear power plants and supplier of about a third of the Green Mountain State's electricity.

When the reactor first booted up in the early '70s, it was a symbol of an energy revolution in New England. Today, it is a symbol of how the region stands apart from the rest of the country, a place where skepticism of nuclear power-in the form of vocal and organized opposition- persists even as the nation gives nuclear energy a fresh look.

A march in Montpelier last week was only the latest reminder of ongoing opposition to Vermont Yankee's bid to extend its operating license 20 more years. The Vermont Public Interest Research Group wants the Vermont Yankee plant shut down, and assurances that its owner, Entergy Corp., will pay the full cost of decommissioning it.

http://snipr.com/hemts



A Battle to Preserve a Visionary's Bold Failure
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

In 1901, Nikola Tesla began work on a global system of giant towers meant to relay through the air not only news, stock reports and even pictures but also, unbeknown to investors such as J. Pierpont Morgan, free electricity for one and all. It was the inventor's biggest project, and his most audacious.

The first tower rose on rural Long Island and, by 1903, stood more than 18 stories tall. One midsummer night, it emitted a dull rumble and proceeded to hurl bolts of electricity into the sky. The blinding flashes, The New York Sun reported, "seemed to shoot off into the darkness on some mysterious errand."

But the system failed for want of money, and at least partly for scientific viability. Tesla never finished his prototype tower and was forced to abandon its adjoining laboratory. Today, a fight is looming over the ghostly remains of that site, called Wardenclyffe--what Tesla authorities call the only surviving workplace of the eccentric genius who dreamed countless big dreams while pioneering wireless communication and alternating current.

http://snipr.com/hemvt



How to Map the Multiverse
from New Scientist

Brian Greene spent a good part of the last decade extolling the virtues of string theory. He dreamed that one day it would provide physicists with a theory of everything that would describe our universe -- ours and ours alone. His bestselling book The Elegant Universe eloquently captured the quest for this ultimate theory.

"But the fly in the ointment was that string theory allowed for, in principle, many universes," says Greene, who is a theoretical physicist at Columbia University in New York. In other words, string theory seems equally capable of describing universes very different from ours. Greene hoped that something in the theory would eventually rule out most of the possibilities and single out one of these universes as the real one: ours.

So far, it hasn't -- though not for any lack of trying. As a result, string theorists are beginning to accept that their ambitions for the theory may have been misguided. Perhaps our universe is not the only one after all. Maybe string theory has been right all along.

http://snipr.com/hen00

[Kai]

May 4, 2009



Swine Flu Threat Appears to Be Easing, Officials Say
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The number of swine flu cases continued its slow climb, reaching 263 in the United States and at least 937 in 19 countries worldwide, but both Mexican and U.S. authorities expressed cautious optimism Sunday that the outbreak may not be as severe as originally feared.

U.S. officials continued to express confidence that the H1N1 virus was not unusually virulent, but they cautioned that the number of cases and deaths would rise. In Mexico, however, officials said the disease was on the decline.

"What I can say is that we're seeing encouraging signs," Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on ABC News' "This Week With George Stephanopoulos." "That makes us all very happy."

http://snipr.com/hc16u



Culture May Be Encoded in DNA
from Wired

Knowledge is passed down directly from generation to generation in the animal kingdom as parents teach their children the things they will need to survive. But a new study has found that, even when the chain is broken, nature sometimes finds a way.

Zebra finches, which normally learn their complex courtship songs from their fathers, spontaneously developed the same songs all on their own after only a few generations.

"We found that in this case, the culture was pretty much encoded in the genome," said Partha Mitra of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, co-author of a study in Nature on Sunday.

http://snipr.com/hc18s



They Know What You're Thinking: Brain Scanning Makes Progress
from the Times (London)

If Adam Wilson had had a sense of making history he might have chosen his words more carefully. "Go Badgers," he wrote, in a message posted on the Twitter website last month.

The phrase, a rallying call for his university's sports team, seemed entirely unremarkable - until the research scientist revealed in a second message just how he had sent it.

"Spelling with my brain," he wrote 20 minutes later. Wilson had become the first person to post electronic messages just by thinking about them.

http://snipr.com/hc1i1



Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON -- The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is "global warming." The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about "our deteriorating atmosphere." Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up "moving away from the dirty fuels of the past." Don't confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like "cap and cash back" or "pollution reduction refund."

EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives.

http://snipr.com/hc1l6



Web-Footed Missing Link in Sea Life Evolution
from the San Francisco Chronicle

New York (Associated Press) -- Scientists say they've found a "missing link" in the early evolution of seals and walruses - the skeleton of a web-footed, otter-like creature that was evolving away from a life on land.

Those feet and other anatomical features show an early step on the way to developing flippers and other adaptations for a life in the sea, the scientists said. One expert called it "a fantastic discovery" that fills a crucial gap in the fossil record.

The 23 million-year-old creature was not a direct ancestor of today's seals, sea lions and walruses, a group known collectively as pinnipeds. It's from a different branch. But it does show what an early direct ancestor looked like, said researcher Natalia Rybczynski.

http://snipr.com/hc1o8



Finding Space for All in Our Crowded Seas
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The ocean is getting crowded: Fishermen are competing with offshore wind projects, oil rigs along with sand miners, recreational boaters, liquefied gas tankers and fish farmers. So a growing number of groups -- including policymakers, academics, activists and industry officials -- now say it's time to divvy up space in the sea.

"We've got competition for space in the ocean, just like we have competition for space on land," said Andrew Rosenberg, a natural resources and environment professor at the University of New Hampshire who has advised Massachusetts on the issue. "How are you going to manage it? Is it the people with the most power win? Is it whoever got there first? Is it a free-for-all?"

To resolve these conflicts, a handful of states -- including Massachusetts, California and Rhode Island -- have begun essentially zoning the ocean, drawing up rules and procedures to determine which activities can take place and where. The federal government is considering adopting a similar approach, though any coherent effort would involve sorting out the role of 20 agencies that administer roughly 140 ocean-related laws.

http://snipr.com/hc1su



Ancient Tsunami 'Hit New York'
from BBC News Online

A huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River.

The scenario, proposed by scientists, is undergoing further examination to verify radiocarbon dates and to rule out other causes of the upheaval.

Sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate that some sort of violent force swept the Northeast coastal region in 300BC.

http://snipr.com/hc1we



The Ice-Age Baby from the Deep Freeze
from the Guardian (UK)

Barely a month old, she fell into an ice age muddy river some 40,000 years ago, where a biological twist of fate led to her being almost perfectly preserved.

Astonishing pictures show Lyuba, named after the wife of the reindeer herder who discovered her in 2007 on the Yamal peninsula in Siberia. Missing only her hair and toenails, Lyuba is the best discovered example yet of a woolly mammoth spat from its tomb deep in the Russian permafrost.

An extinct group of elephants, woolly mammoths emerged some 400,000 years ago and died out perhaps just 10,000 years ago. In an echo of modern concerns about climate change, some blame their fate on a natural upswing in temperature that altered vegetation. Others accuse early human hunters.

http://snipr.com/hc1yw



Another Clue in the Case for Dark Matter
from Science News

DENVER -- Using a sensitive detector to survey the abundance of high-energy electrons and positrons in nearby reaches of space, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has found new evidence that may hint at the existence of dark matter, the exotic invisible material believed to make up 85 percent of the mass of the universe.

The measurements, reported May 2 at a meeting of the American Physical Society, bolster the possibility that another orbiting observatory called PAMELA (for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) did indeed see indirect signs of dark matter, which has eluded detection ever since astronomers first proposed the material more than 75 years ago.

But it's also possible that many of the energetic electrons and positrons Fermi recorded might instead come from a more mundane astrophysical source -- dense, rapidly rotating stars called pulsars -- cautions Fermi researcher Peter Michelson of Stanford University.

http://snipr.com/hc29n



As Bats Die, Closing Caves to Control a Fungus
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (Associated Press) -- The federal Forest Service is preparing to close thousands of caves and former mines in national forests in 33 states in an effort to control a fungus that has already killed an estimated 500,000 bats.

A Forest Service biologist, Becky Ewing, said an emergency order was issued last week for caves in 20 states from Minnesota to Maine. A second order covering the Forest Service's 13-state Southern region should be issued this month.

The sites will be closed for up to a year, Ms. Ewing said. The orders follow the request in March by the Fish and Wildlife Service for people to voluntarily stay out of caves in 17 states.

http://snipr.com/hc2bz

[Kai]

May 1, 2009



Scientists See This Flu Strain as Relatively Mild
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

As the World Health Organization raised its infectious disease alert level and health officials confirmed the first death linked to swine flu inside U.S. borders, scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza--at least in its current form--isn't shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics.

In fact, the current outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which emerged in San Diego and southern Mexico late last month, may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare.

"Let's not lose track of the fact that the normal seasonal influenza is a huge public health problem that kills tens of thousands of people in the U.S. alone and hundreds of thousands around the world," said Dr. Christopher Olsen, a molecular virologist who studies swine flu at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine in Madison.

http://snipr.com/h5hln



Panel Advises Clarifying U.S. Plans on Cyberwar
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The United States has no clear military policy about how the nation might respond to a cyberattack on its communications, financial or power networks, a panel of scientists and policy advisers warned Wednesday, and the country needs to clarify both its offensive capabilities and how it would respond to such attacks.

The report, based on a three-year study by a panel assembled by the National Academy of Sciences, is the first major effort to look at the military use of computer technologies as weapons. The potential use of such technologies offensively has been widely discussed in recent years, and disruptions of communications systems and Web sites have become a standard occurrence in both political and military conflicts since 2000.

The report, titled "Technology, Policy, Law, and Ethics Regarding U.S. Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities," concludes that the veil of secrecy that has surrounded cyberwar planning is detrimental to the country's military policy.

http://snipr.com/h5ho6



Drug Shows Promise Against Chronic Hepatitis C
from the Baltimore Sun

LOS ANGELES (Associated Press)--An experimental drug greatly increased the number of people who appear to be cured of hepatitis C infection, according to results of mid-stage testing.

The findings also suggest the drug telaprevir, made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., which sponsored the two studies, can cut treatment time from one year to six months. However, those taking the drug reported more side effects including severe rash, nausea and anemia than those on standard treatment alone.

Still, telaprevir and similar drugs that other companies are testing offer hope of a major advance against the disease, which afflicts about 3.2 million Americans and 180 million people worldwide. It is caused by a blood-borne virus that can lead to liver scarring or liver cancer. Treatment is aimed at helping the immune system eliminate the virus.

http://snipr.com/h5hs9



Birds Show Off Their Dance Moves
from BBC News Online

Some birds have a remarkable talent for dancing, two studies published in Current Biology suggest. Footage revealed that some parrots have a near-perfect sense of rhythm; swaying their bodies, bobbing their heads and tapping their feet in time to a beat.

Previously, it was thought that only humans had the ability to groove. The researchers believe the findings could help shed light on how our relationship with music and the capacity to dance came about.

One bird, Snowball, a sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita eleanora), came to the researchers' attention after YouTube footage suggested he might have a certain prowess for dance - especially when listening to Everybody by the Backstreet Boys.

http://snipr.com/h5htu



Huge Gene Study Shines New Light on African History
from New Scientist

The history of Africa, the cradle of humanity, is written in its genes. And now we have our best-ever view of African genetic diversity, with the publication of a huge study of the genomes of people from across the continent.

For the past 10 years, an international team led by Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has toured the African continent, collecting blood samples from thousands of individuals. The results confirm Africa as the centre of human genetic diversity and, together with linguistic data, reveal a rich pattern of human migrations within the continent.

"Now we have a spectacular insight into the history of African populations," says Muntaser Ibrahim of the University of Khartoum in Sudan, a member of the team.

http://snipr.com/h5hvc



Team Claims Second Batch of Soft Dinosaur Tissue
from the (Raleigh, N.C.) News and Observer

RALEIGH -- A team of researchers led by the N.C. State University scientist famed for the controversial discovery of soft tissue in the fossilized bone of a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex in 2005 has found more soft tissue in an even older dinosaur skeleton.

Results of the more recent discovery, from the femur of an 80 million-year-old duckbill dinosaur, appear today in the journal Science. The new evidence not only undermines skeptics of Mary Schweitzer's earlier work, but also may offer clues about where more bones with such material may be found. That could help other scientists replicate the findings and investigate how such delicate material could last for such an extraordinary length of time.

... A crew including Schweitzer and some of her students dug the duckbill femur out of a Montana cliff in 2007, after other research suggested that soft tissue may be more common in bones that had been buried quickly in deep sandstone.

http://snipr.com/h5hwa



Leap Forward for Invisibility Cloaks
from Nature News

Invisibility 'carpets' that conceal objects by making bumps look flat can work under near-infrared light, two teams of physicists have shown. And making a similar device that shields objects in visible light should be relatively straightforward, they say.

Xiang Zhang and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, and Michal Lipson's team at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, have independently created slightly different versions of the silicon carpet.

In both designs, a mirrored edge that contains a bump appears flat, allowing an object to be tucked behind the bump without being seen. Infra-red light rays shone on the bump are bent by the surrounding material, making it appear that the radiation that bounces back has been reflected by a flat mirror.

http://snipr.com/h5hxy



"Dark Age" Temple Found in Turkey
from National Geographic News

An ancient temple in Turkey has been found filled with broken metal, ivory carvings, and stone slabs engraved with a dead language. The find is casting new light on the "dark age" that was thought to have engulfed the region from 1200 to 900 B.C.

Written sources from the era--including the Old Testament of the Bible, Greek Homeric epics, and texts from Egyptian pharaoh Ramses III--record the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age as a turbulent period of cultural collapse, famine, and violence.

But the newfound temple suggests that may not have been the case, say archaeologists from the University of Toronto's Tayinat Archaeological Project, led by Timothy Harrison.

http://snipr.com/h5hz4



Tablet to Treat MS Seen as Huge Step Forward
from the Guardian (UK)

Campaigners for the 85,000 Britons with multiple sclerosis on Wednesday welcomed the emergence of a drug promising to greatly alleviate symptoms of the debilitating disease.

Trials of cladribine found that it offers significant benefit to the estimated 55,000 people who have relapsing-remitting MS, its commonest form, with alternating periods of good and bad health but a decline, sometimes into total paralysis, when the gaps between spells start to shorten.

Research on more than 1,300 MS patients over two years found those taking the cladribine tablet were 55% less likely to relapse than those on a placebo; they were 30% less likely to suffer worsening disability; and 80% were relapse-free, compared with 61% on the placebo. The results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology.

http://snipr.com/h5i0l



Warfare: All at Sea
from the Economist

Basing troops and equipment on foreign soil is fraught with difficulty. Even friendly countries can cut up rough at crucial moments, as America found when Turkey restricted the use of its territory and airspace during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In an occupied country the situation is worse, as a base is a magnet for attacks. Nor can you always put your base where you need it.

If a country does not want to host it, and cannot be bribed to, that--short of invasion--is that. But no one owns the high seas, and partisans rarely have access to serious naval power. So America, still the world's only superpower and thus the one with most need for foreign bases, is investigating the idea of building military bases on the ocean.

They would, in effect, be composed of parts that can be rearranged like giant Lego bricks. The armed forces could assemble them when needed, add to them, subtract from them and eventually dismantle them when they are no longer required--and all without leaving a trace.

http://snipr.com/h5i2i

[Kai]

And finally,

Haldane - On Being the Right Size

http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html

[Kai]

Space Junk Raises Risks for Hubble Repair Mission
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)--Space shuttle Atlantis is now in a rough orbital neighborhood-a place littered with thousands of pieces of space junk zipping around the Earth at nearly 20,000 mph.

There are more pieces of shattered satellites and used-up rockets in this region than astronauts have ever encountered. And the crew must be there for more than a week to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. As soon as the job is complete, the shuttle will scamper to safety.

The telescope orbits about 350 miles above Earth, a far dirtier place than where shuttles normally fly. And all those tiny projectiles raise the constant threat of a potentially fatal collision.

http://snipr.com/hxt8a



Mexican Genomes Show Wide Diversity
from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)--The most detailed look yet at the genetics of Mexicans is showing significant diversity, a finding that could help point the way to customized drugs and identification of people prone to certain diseases.

Researchers led by Dr. Gerardo Jimenez-Sanchez studied the genes of 300 mestizos--people of mixed Indian and European background--from six states in Mexico, and one Indian population.

They found significant differences between the mestizos and such groups as Europeans, Africans and Asians, the researchers reported in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

http://snipr.com/hxtbd



Study Links Formaldehyde to More Common Cancers
from USA Today

New research raises additional concerns about the harmful effects of formaldehyde, a common chemical found in everything from plywood to nail polish, car exhaust and cigarette smoke.

Formaldehyde has long been linked to rare tumors of the nasopharynx, which includes the back of the throat, which affect about 2,000 Americans a year, according to the American Cancer Society.

The new study--the largest to date on workplace exposures--provides further evidence linking formaldehyde with cancers of the blood and lymphatic system. These cancers are far more common, affecting nearly 140,000 Americans a year.

http://snipr.com/hxtds



'Chemical Robots' Swarm Together
from BBC News Online

In a pair of small laboratories in Prague, a swarm of tens of millions of robots is being prepared, to be set loose en masse. It is only fitting that here, in the town where the word robot was coined by author Karel Capek, the next generation of robotics should be envisioned.

But these won't be typical robots with gears and motors; they will instead be made of carefully designed chemical shells-within-shells, with receptors on their surface.

Instead of software and processors to guide them, their instructions will be written into the chemistry of their constituent parts. They are chemical robots, or as the 1.6m euro project's title has it, chobots.

http://snipr.com/hxthj



Mars Rover Spirit Is Stuck in Sand
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The long-lived rover Spirit is stuck in the sand on Mars, and controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge are scrambling to find a way to extricate the vehicle before it becomes entombed on the Red Planet.

"This is quite serious," said JPL's John Callas, the project manager for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity. "Spirit is in a very difficult situation. We are proceeding methodically and cautiously. It may be weeks before we try moving Spirit again."

The rover, which landed on Mars in 2004 for what was expected to be a three-month mission, was driving toward a pair of volcanic features named Von Braun and Goddard when it became ensnared in soft sand.

http://snipr.com/hxtja



A Scientist's Guide to Finding Alien Life
from Discover

Things were not looking so good for alien life in 1976, after the Viking I spacecraft landed on Mars, stretched out its robotic arm, and gathered up a fist-size pile of red dirt for chemical testing. Results from the probe's built-in lab were anything but encouraging.

... What a difference 33 years make. Back then, Mars seemed the only remotely plausible place beyond Earth where biology could have taken root. Today our conception of life in the universe is being turned on its head as scientists are finding a whole lot of inviting real estate out there.

As a result, they are beginning to think not in terms of single places to look for life but in terms of "habitable zones"--maps of the myriad places where living things could conceivably thrive beyond Earth. Such abodes of life may lie on other planets and moons throughout our galaxy, throughout the universe, and even beyond.

http://snipr.com/hxtky



China Outpaces U.S. in Cleaner Coal-Fired Plants
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

TIANJIN, China--China's frenetic construction of coal-fired power plants has raised worries around the world about the effect on climate change. China now uses more coal than the United States, Europe and Japan combined, making it the world's largest emitter of gases that are warming the planet.

But largely missing in the hand-wringing is this: China has emerged in the past two years as the world's leading builder of more efficient, less polluting coal power plants, mastering the technology and driving down the cost.

While the United States is still debating whether to build a more efficient kind of coal-fired power plant that uses extremely hot steam, China has begun building such plants at a rate of one a month.

http://snipr.com/hxtof



"Supergiant" Asteroid Shut Down Mars's Magnetic Field
from National Geographic News

A "supergiant" asteroid several times larger than the one that likely killed the dinosaurs struck Mars with such force that it shut down the planet's magnetic field, scientists say.

Based on the number of large craters present, scientists think very early Mars suffered 15 or so giant impacts within a span of about a hundred million years.

Now a new computer model suggests Mars's magnetic field may have been slowly weakened by four especially large impacts and then snuffed out completely by a fifth and final blow.

http://snipr.com/hxtpa



Nonstick Chemical Pollutes Water at Notable Levels
from Science News

A new study finds evidence that people may be exposed through drinking water to a persistent nonstick chemical at levels approaching those that trigger adverse effects in laboratory animals.

The fluorine-based nonstick chemical, PFOA or perfluorooctanoic acid, was developed by DuPont more than 50 years ago and used to launch the company's Teflon line of nonstick products. Ironically, earlier studies have shown that the nonstick agent itself sticks around a very, very long time--potentially forever.

The chemical appeared in roughly two-thirds of some 30 public water systems sampled by New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection between 2006 and 2008, researchers report online and in an upcoming issue of Environmental Science & Technology.

http://snipr.com/hxtqt



Women 'Fight Off Disease Better'
from BBC News Online

Men really do have an excuse for supposedly being wimpy about coughs and colds-their immune systems are not as strong as women's, research suggests.

A Canadian study indicates that the female sex hormone oestrogen gives women's immune systems added bite at fighting off infection.

Oestrogen seems to counter an enzyme which blocks the inflammatory process. The McGill University study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://snipr.com/hxttc

[Kai]

Astronauts Install New Hubble Camera
from the Baltimore Sun

The crowd of scientists watching on the big screen in the auditorium of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore went silent Thursday when it appeared a single stuck bolt might foil NASA's plans to install a powerful new camera on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Astronaut Drew Feustel had tried and failed to budge it with his power wrench. If he couldn't muscle it into submission with elbow grease alone, the 15-year-old camera would have to be reconnected. Worse, its replacement - the $150 million Wide Field Camera 3, packing more than ten times the "discovery power" of the old camera - would have to be repacked for the ride home.

"If you needed any proof that no task in space is routine, this is it," said Mario Livio, a senior scientist at the institute.

http://snipr.com/i2vxl



Study Halves Prediction of Rising Seas
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

A new analysis halves longstanding projections of how much sea levels could rise if Antarctica's massive western ice sheets fully disintegrated as a result of global warming.

The flow of ice into the sea would probably raise sea levels about 10 feet rather than 20 feet, according to the analysis, published in the May 15 issue of the journal Science.

The scientists also predicted that seas would rise unevenly, with an additional 1.5-foot increase in levels along the east and west coasts of North America. That is because the shift in a huge mass of ice away from the South Pole would subtly change the strength of gravity locally and the rotation of the Earth, the authors said.

http://snipr.com/i2p7s



Is Alzheimer's Disease in Your Future?
from ABC News

It may soon be easier to predict which patients 65 and older will develop Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, researchers said.

A 15-point index including both conventional and newly identified risk factors for the conditions correctly classified 88 percent of patients according to their risk of developing dementia within six years, Deborah Barnes of the University of California San Francisco and colleagues reported online in Neurology.

More than half of patients with a high score -- 56 percent of them -- developed some form of dementia, compared with 4.2 percent of those with a low score and 22.8 percent of those who fell in between.

http://snipr.com/i2p8t



Star Crust Is Ten Billion Times Stronger Than Steel
from National Geographic News

Move over, Superman. The Man of Steel has nothing on the collapsed cores of massive snuffed-out stars, scientists say.

A new computer model suggests that the outer crusts of so-called neutron stars are the strongest known material in the universe. To determine the breaking point of a neutron star's crust, the team modeled magnetic field stresses and crust deformation for a small region of the star's surface.

The results showed that the crust of a neutron star can withstand a breaking strain up to ten billion times the pressure it would take to snap steel. "It sounds dramatic, but it's true," said study team member Charles Horowitz of Indiana University.

http://snipr.com/i2pa5



Talks Tackle Climate Change Finds
from the New Zealand Herald

Researchers at a three-day science conference starting in Wellington today are looking at implications of new work on climate change.

More than 150 scientists from around the world will look at past climates in New Zealand, Australia and Antarctica, the causes and effects of climate change specifically in the Southern Hemisphere, and their relationships with global climates.

At the weekend, the scientists will hold workshops on climate in Australasia and the Southern Hemisphere looking at analysis of ice-core, marine and terrestrial records as well as computer modelling of past climates. Geomorphologist Andrew Mackintosh of Victoria University - who was part of new research showing New Zealand glaciers have been heavily influenced by regional atmospheric conditions - has already said people should not assume warming will be uniform over the Earth.

http://tinyurl.com/ofste2



Lift-off for European Telescopes
from BBC News Online

Europe's Herschel and Planck telescopes have blasted into space on an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou in French Guiana. The satellites are being sent into orbit to gather fundamental new insights into the nature of the cosmos.

The Ariane thundered clear of the launch pad at 1312 GMT (1412 BST) - its flight lasting just under half an hour. Mission controllers in Germany made contact with the telescopes over the Indian Ocean once they had separated from the rocket's upper-stage.

The acquisition of the signals, relayed through ground stations in Australia, will have been a moment of huge relief for everyone connected with the two observatory projects.

http://snipr.com/i2pdu



Cancer Patients Challenge the Patenting of a Gene
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

When Genae Girard received a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2006, she knew she would be facing medical challenges and high expenses. But she did not expect to run into patent problems.

Ms. Girard took a genetic test to see if her genes also put her at increased risk for ovarian cancer, which might require the removal of her ovaries. The test came back positive, so she wanted a second opinion from another test. But there can be no second opinion. A decision by the government more than 10 years ago allowed a single company, Myriad Genetics, to own the patent on two genes that are closely associated with increased risk for breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and on the testing that measures that risk.

On Tuesday, Ms. Girard, 39, who lives in the Austin, Tex., area, filed a lawsuit against Myriad and the Patent Office, challenging the decision to grant a patent on a gene to Myriad and companies like it. She was joined by four other cancer patients, by professional organizations of pathologists with more than 100,000 members and by several individual pathologists and genetic researchers.

http://snipr.com/i2pey



What You Need to Know Before Going Under the Knife
from Scientific American

Every operation starts with a cut and ends when the incision is closed. And though the closing act that follows a complicated surgery may seem almost incidental, a surgeon's choice of needles, sutures or adhesives to do the job plays a big part in how well and how quickly the patient heals.

These days, there are more tools than ever at a surgeon's disposal. The choice of which one to use is as much art as science, often boiling down to a surgeon's personal preference, says Lee Nelson, a neurosurgeon with Boulder Neurosurgical Associates in Colorado.

"Every surgeon probably uses 10 different types of sutures for different reasons," he adds. Flexibility, elasticity and strength of the materials are part of the calculation. The composition and thickness of a suture and needle depend on what the surgeon is closing.

http://snipr.com/i2ph1



Dead or Alive? Yucca Mountain Still Gets Funding
from the Miami Herald (Registration Required)

LAS VEGAS (Associated Press) -- These days, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid prefers nothing so much as a one-word description for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository long planned for his state: dead. And President Barack Obama has made clear he is looking elsewhere to solve the nation's nuclear waste problem.

But that doesn't mean people aren't still paying for it. Sometimes not even a president with the Senate majority leader at his back can easily kill a project 25 years and $13.5 billion in the making. Not quickly or cheaply, anyway.

In February, Congress allocated $288 million for the development of the site legally designated to hold the nation's radioactive waste. That was about $100 million less than what the Bush administration requested, but still enough for a staff of several hundred people to continue work. Last week, President Barack Obama proposed $196.8 million in 2010 funding for Yucca Mountain, an all-time low.

http://snipr.com/i2pic



Ginger Capsules Ease Nausea From Chemo
from the Seattle Times

(Associated Press) -- Ginger, long used as a folk remedy for soothing tummy aches, helped tame one of the most dreaded side effects of cancer treatment: nausea from chemotherapy, the first large study to test the herb for this has found.

People who started taking ginger capsules several days before a chemo infusion had fewer and less severe bouts of nausea afterward than others who were given dummy capsules, the federally funded study found.

"We were slightly beside ourselves" to see how much it helped, said study leader Julie Ryan, of the University of Rochester in New York. Results were released Thursday by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and will be presented at the group's annual meeting this month.

http://snipr.com/i2pjj

[Kai]

May 18, 2009



'Lone' Longitude Genius May Have Had Help
from New Scientist

The story of John Harrison the "lone genius" who solved the problem of finding longitude at sea is in urgent need of a rewrite.

Discoveries made during repairs to Harrison's first successful "sea clock" - completed in 1735 - suggest that others contributed to his pioneering timepieces. "Harrison is always cast as a self-taught lone genius pitted against the establishment. The truth is, that is a great over-simplification," says horologist Jonathan Betts of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London.

Betts dismantled the device - called H1 - after it stopped last year when a connection between a spring and a swinging balance broke. "It's only when you take it apart and have it in your hands that it comes home to you: the story isn't quite the one that's told."

http://snipr.com/i9gkl



Beyond Galileo's Universe
from Science News

Four hundred years ago, astronomy embraced all that was visible. For Galileo, looking through his primitive telescope, the vistas included jewel-like stars, mountains on the moon, moons orbiting Jupiter and the glow of comet tails.

Today astronomy is often about what cannot be seen. Astronomers have known for decades that stars and galaxies are mere baubles floating on a vast sea of dark matter. More recently, astronomy's roster of Darth Vaders has expanded to include an even more mysterious force: dark energy, an entity that drives the universe to accelerate its expansion just when gravity's tug ought to be slowing it down.

On the brighter side, astronomers are beginning to learn more about the complicated processes that formed stars and galaxies, giving the universe its light. The Planck mission will test the idea that the Big Bang was accompanied by a brief burst of rapid expansion called inflation, which is thought to have created the seeds of matter from which stars and galaxies arose.

http://snipr.com/i9gmq



As Alaska Glaciers Melt, It's Land That's Rising
from New York Times (Registration Required)

JUNEAU, Alaska -- Global warming conjures images of rising seas that threaten coastal areas. But in Juneau, as almost nowhere else in the world, climate change is having the opposite effect: As the glaciers here melt, the land is rising, causing the sea to retreat.

The geology is complex, but it boils down to this: Relieved of billions of tons of glacial weight, the land has risen much as a cushion regains its shape after someone gets up from a couch. The land is ascending so fast that the rising seas -- a ubiquitous byproduct of global warming -- cannot keep pace. As a result, the relative sea level is falling, at a rate "among the highest ever recorded," according to a 2007 report by a panel of experts convened by Mayor Bruce Botelho of Juneau.

Greenland and a few other places have experienced similar effects from widespread glacial melting that began more than 200 years ago, geologists say. But, they say, the effects are more noticeable in and near Juneau, where most glaciers are retreating 30 feet a year or more.

http://snipr.com/i9gor



Scientist Say Blue Whales Returning to Alaska Waters, Likely Establishing Old Migration Route
from Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Associated Press) -- Blue whales are returning to Alaska in search of food and could be re-establishing an old migration route several decades after they were nearly wiped out by commercial whalers, scientists say.

The endangered whales, possibly the largest animals ever to live on Earth, have yet to recover from the worldwide slaughter that eliminated 99 percent of their number, according to the American Cetacean Society. The hunting peaked in 1931 with more than 29,000 animals killed in one season.

The animals used to cruise from Mexico and Southern California to Alaska, but they had mostly vanished from Alaskan waters. But several sightings of California whales in recent years off the coasts of Alaska and British Columbia suggest that the massive animals are expanding north again in search of tiny shrimp-like krill to eat, scientists contend in a recent article published in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

http://snipr.com/i9gpz



House, EPA to Tackle Climate Policy Alternatives
from the San Francisco Chronicle

(Associated Press) -- Congress and the Obama administration have two options when it comes to global warming: write a new law to deal with it or use existing ones to do the job. Both approaches await scrutiny by lawmakers and regulators Monday.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee planned to begin work on legislation that, for the first time, would limit the emissions blamed for global warming.

"It is clear that the choice is no longer between doing something and doing nothing to curb greenhouse gas pollution. It is a choice between regulation and legislation," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., "We believe that the bill we have crafted in the Energy and Commerce Committee ... protects consumers and provides businesses with the certainty they need to adapt to our clean energy future."

http://snipr.com/i9grn



Who Went With Columbus? Dental Studies Give Clues
from Washington Post (Registration Required)

The first planned colonial town in the New World was founded in 1494, when about 1,200 of Christopher Columbus's crew members from the 17 ships that made up his second journey to the Americas settled on the north coast of what is now the Dominican Republic.

Beset by mutiny, mismanagement, hurricanes and disease, the settlement of La Isabela lasted only a few years. The ruins remained largely intact until the 1950s, when a local official reportedly misunderstood the order from dictator Rafael Trujillo to clean up the site in preparation for visiting dignitaries, and had them mostly bulldozed into the sea. Little remained but the skeletons below ground in the church cemetery, which lay undisturbed until excavations began in 1983.

In the past few years, sophisticated chemical studies of the skeletons, especially their teeth, have begun to yield new insights into the lives and origins of Columbus's crew. The studies hint that, among other things, crew members may have included free black Africans who arrived in the New World about a decade before the slave trade began.

http://snipr.com/i9hak



New York Reports Its First Swine Flu Death
from New York Times (Registration Required)

An assistant principal at a New York City public school died of complications from swine flu in an intensive care unit of a Queens hospital on Sunday night, the first death in New York State of the flu strain that has swept across much of the world since it was first identified in April.

On Friday, Dr. Daniel Jernigan, head of flu epidemiology for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there had been 173 hospitalizations and 5 deaths reported to the agency. But he emphasized that most cases in the United States -- possibly "upwards of 100,000" -- were mild.

In Japan, the number of swine flu cases soared over the weekend, and authorities closed more than 1,000 schools and kindergartens.

http://snipr.com/i9hc5



The Plant That Can Water Itself
from BBC News Online

The plant, a type of rhubarb, has specially designed leaves that channel rain water to its roots. It is the only known plant in the world able to self-irrigate.

The adaptation allows the rhubarb to flourish in extreme arid conditions by collecting up to 16 times more water than other plants in the region, say the scientists who published details of the discovery in Naturwissenschaften.

Simcha Lev-Yadun, Gadi Katzir and Gidi Ne'eman of the University of Haifa, Israel first noticed the desert rhubarb when studying plants in the country's mountainous desert.

http://snipr.com/i9hdj



Women's Menstruation Genes Found
from BBC News Online

A UK-led team located two genes on chromosomes six and nine that appear to strongly influence the age at which menstruation starts.

The Nature Genetics study also provides a clue for why girls who are shorter and fatter tend to get their periods months earlier than classmates. The genes sit right next to DNA controlling height and weight.

A second paper, published in the same journal, also concludes that one of the two genes highlighted by the first study plays a key role in the timing of puberty in both girls and boys.

http://snipr.com/i9hgh



Pollution Can Change Your DNA in 3 Days, Study Suggests
from National Geographic News

Breathing in polluted air may wreak havoc on our DNA, reprogramming genes in as few as three days and causing increased rates of cancer and other diseases.

So says a new study that tracked DNA damage in 63 steel-foundry workers in Brescia, Italy, who, under their normal factory conditions, were exposed to particulate matter.

The same damage may occur in city dwellers exposed to normal air, the researchers say. Particulate matter includes suspended, tiny bits of dust, metal, or soot in the air, which can lodge deep in the lungs. Exposure to the substance has been linked to respiratory diseases, lung cancer, and heart problems.

http://snipr.com/i9hhz



UN: Growth of Slums Boosting Natural Disaster Risk
from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Registration Required)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (Associated Press) -- The rampant growth of urban slums around the world and weather extremes linked to climate change have sharply increased the risks from "megadisasters" such as devastating floods and cyclones, a U.N. report said Sunday.

The study -- which examines natural disaster trends and strategies to reduce potential catastrophes -- also noted that millions of people in rural areas are at higher risk from disasters such as landslides where forests have been stripped away or crippling droughts blamed on shifting rainfall patterns.

Much of nearly 200-page report restates warnings from previous studies about unchecked urban growth and shortsighted rural planning. But it also seeks to sharpen the apparent link between climate change and the severity and frequency of major natural disasters including severe droughts and epic storms.

http://snipr.com/i9hpc

[Kai]

May 19, 2009



What If Global-Warming Fears Are Overblown?
from Fortune

With Congress about to take up sweeping climate-change legislation, expect to hear more in coming weeks from John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at University of Alabama-Huntsville.

A veteran climatologist who refuses to accept any research funding from the oil or auto industries, Christy was a lead author of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report as well as one of the three authors of the American Geophysical Union's landmark 2003 statement on climate change.

Yet despite those green-sounding credentials, Christy is not calling for draconian cuts in carbon emissions. Quite the contrary. Christy is actually the environmental lobby's worst nightmare - an accomplished climate scientist with no ties to Big Oil who has produced reams and reams of data that undermine arguments that the earth's atmosphere is warming at an unusual rate and question whether the remedies being talked about in Congress will actually do any good.

http://snipr.com/ic5dc



Mockingbirds Can Identify People and Quickly React to Those They Don't Trust, Study Finds
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- Mockingbirds may look pretty much alike to people, but they can tell us apart and are quick to react to folks they don't like. Birds rapidly learn to identify people who have previously threatened their nests and sounded alarms and even attacked those folks, while ignoring others nearby, researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This shows a bird is much more perceptive of its environment than people had previously suspected," said Douglas J. Levey, a professor in the zoology department of the University of Florida.

The researchers are studying mockingbirds as part of an effort to better understand how species adapt to urbanization.

http://snipr.com/ic5fu



A Long Search for a Universal Flu Vaccine
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Two shots of measles vaccine given during childhood protect a person for life. Four shots of polio vaccine do the same. But flu shots must be taken every year. And even so, they provide less than complete protection.

The reason is that the influenza virus mutates much more rapidly than most other viruses. A person who develops immunity to one strain of the virus is not well protected from a different strain.

That is shaping up to be a major problem as the world prepares for a possible pandemic this fall from the new strain of swine flu. It is impossible to know how many people might die before a vaccine matched to that strain can be manufactured.

http://snipr.com/ic5h8



Officials Urge WHO to Change Swine Flu Alert Criteria
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

As the World Health Organization inched closer Monday to raising the infectious disease alert level to its highest stage -- and to a decision on whether to manufacture a vaccine against the novel H1N1 influenza virus -- some delegates to the WHO congress in Geneva urged the agency to change its criteria for increasing the alert level.

Current rules call for the alert to be raised to Phase 6 if community transmission of the new virus is observed in two different WHO regions. So far, such transmission has been observed only in North America, which accounts for about 95% of the nearly 9,000 confirmed infections that have been observed worldwide.

But an outbreak of the virus in Japan detected over the weekend hints that such transmission may soon be observed in Asia as well. Japanese authorities said Monday in Tokyo that there have been 135 confirmed cases of H1N1 influenza in schools in Kobe and Osaka, mostly among students and family members who have not visited North America, suggesting that the virus might have been transmitted locally.

http://snipr.com/ic5j1



Vehicle Emission Rules to Tighten
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The Obama administration today plans to propose tough standards for tailpipe emissions from new automobiles, establishing the first nationwide regulation for greenhouse gases.

It will also raise fuel efficiency targets to 35.5 miles per gallon for new passenger vehicles and light trucks by 2016, four years earlier than required under the 2007 energy bill, sources close to the administration said.

The measures are significant steps forward for the administration's energy agenda by cutting greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to climate change and by easing U.S. dependence on oil, most of which is imported.

http://snipr.com/ic5kr



Astronauts Ready to Say Goodbye to Hubble for Good
From the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

CAPE CANAVERAL (Associated Press) -- It's time for NASA to say goodbye to the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronauts on the space shuttle Atlantis Tuesday morning will gently toss the 19-year-old observatory back into orbit. That's after five successful spacewalks to install two new scientific instruments, fix two broken ones, and do general maintenance.

NASA says the handyman mission not only fixed Hubble, but it should last five to 10 more years and unlock even more mysteries of the cosmos.

There will be no more repair missions to Hubble. Sometime after 2020, NASA will send a robotic spaceship to steer Hubble back into the atmosphere and a watery grave.

http://snipr.com/ic5m4



Komodo Dragons Have Venomous Bite
from BBC News Online

Previously it was thought that Komodo mouths harboured virulent bacteria that quickly infect and subdue prey.

But an analysis of Komodo specimens has shown a well-developed venom gland with ducts that lead to their large teeth.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences report shows that rather than using a strong bite force, Komodos keep a vise-like grip on their prey. In this way, the venom can seep into the large wounds they make with their teeth.

http://snipr.com/ic5nz



The Birds Are Dying, and No One Knows Why
from the Miami Herald (Registration Required)

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Chilean scientists are investigating three mysterious ecological disasters that have caused the deaths of hundreds of penguins, millions of sardines and about 2,000 baby flamingos in the past few months.

The events started to unfold in March, when the remains of about 1,200 penguins were found on a remote beach in southern Chile. Then came the sardines -- tons of them -- dead and washed up on a nearby stretch of coastline. The stench forced nearby schools to close, and the army was called in to shovel piles of rotting fish off the sand.

Farther north, thousands of rare Andean flamingos abandoned their nests on a salt lake in the Atacama Desert. The eggs failed to hatch and, over a period of three months, all 2,000 chicks died. The extent of the damage was discovered in April, during an inspection.

http://snipr.com/ic5pe



Breathing Batteries Could Store 10 Times the Energy
from NewScientist

The lithium ion batteries used in laptops and cellphones, and tipped for future use in electric cars, are approaching their technological limits. But chemists in the UK say that there's a way to break through the looming energy capacity barrier - let the batteries "breathe" oxygen from the air.

A standard lithium ion battery contains a negative electrode of graphite, a positive electrode of lithium cobalt oxide, and a lithium salt-containing electrolyte. Lithium ions shuttle between the two electrodes during charging and discharging, sending electrons around the external circuit to power a gadget in the process.

The problem with that design, says Peter Bruce at the University of St Andrews, is that the lithium cobalt oxide is bulky and heavy. "The major barrier to increasing the energy density of these batteries is the positive electrode," he says. "Everyone wants to find a way to push up the amount of lithium stored there, which would raise the capacity."

http://snipr.com/ic5ro



Delaying Retirement Could Prevent Early Dementia, Say Scientists
from the Guardian (UK)

Working beyond normal retirement age might help stave off dementia, scientists said today.

Keeping the brain active later in life appears to reduce the chances of an early onset of Alzheimer's disease, according to a study of 382 men with probable dementia. The researchers suggest a significant link between later retirement and delayed symptoms.

The findings emerged from a wider study on data from 1,320 people with dementia led by members of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London, and funded by the Alzheimer's Research Trust and the Medical Research Council.

http://snipr.com/ic5t4

[Kai]

Had alot alot of back logged science news articles, but I don't have time to post them all so heres just the most recent batch.

June 12, 2009



No Smoking: Historic Vote Could Bring New Limits
from the Seattle Times

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- Smoking foes see a turning point in their long battle against the tobacco industry as Congress prepares to send President Barack Obama a bill giving the government broad authority to determine how cigarettes will be made, marketed and sold.

The House was scheduled to vote Friday on legislation, passed just a day before by the Senate, that for the first time would put the Food and Drug Administration in charge of regulating cigarettes and other tobacco products.

The measure puts special emphasis on dissuading some of the 3,500 young people who every day smoke a cigarette for the first time. The FDA would ban use of candied and other flavored tobacco used to entice young smokers, stop advertising that targets children, make it harder for underaged youth to buy cigarettes ...

http://snipr.com/jz4w7



WHO Calls Swine Flu Outbreak a Pandemic
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The World Health Organization yesterday declared the seven-week-old outbreak of the novel H1N1 influenza virus a pandemic, marking it as a historic global health event, one whose consequences may not be known for years.

The announcement -- expected for weeks but made with some reluctance -- essentially warns the WHO's 194 member nations to get ready for the new flu strain, which is likely to infect as much as one-third of the population in the first wave and return in later waves that may be more severe.

"The world is moving into the early days of its first influenza pandemic of the 21st century," Margaret Chan, the WHO's director general, said at an afternoon news conference in Geneva. "We anticipate this action will raise many questions and that often these questions do not have simple answers."

http://snipr.com/jz4y9



Japan's First Lunar Probe Ends Mission
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

TOKYO (Associated Press) -- Japan's first lunar probe made a controlled crash landing on the moon Thursday, successfully completing a 19-month mission to study the Earth's nearest neighbor, Japan's space agency said.

The remotely controlled satellite, named after the folklore princess Kaguya, had been orbiting the moon to map its surface and study its mineral distribution and gravity levels. It was dropped onto the surface of the moon at 3:25 am. (1825 GMT), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said in a statement.

"The mission was a success. Thanks to Kaguya, we will have a very detailed map of the lunar surface," said JAXA spokesman Shinichi Sobue. The Japanese space agency will analyze data sent by Kaguya and plans to publish the results online in November.

http://snipr.com/jz4zu



Population and Sustainability
from Scientific American

In an era of changing climate and sinking economies, Malthusian limits to growth are back--and squeezing us painfully. Whereas more people once meant more ingenuity, more talent and more innovation, today it just seems to mean less for each.

Less water for every cattle herder in the Horn of Africa. ... Less land for every farmer already tilling slopes so steep they risk killing themselves by falling off their fields.

... Less capacity in the atmosphere to accept the heat-trapping gases that could fry the planet for centuries to come. Scarcer and higher-priced energy and food. And if the world's economy does not bounce back to its glory days, less credit and fewer jobs. It's not surprising that this kind of predicament brings back an old sore topic: human population and whether to do anything about it.

http://snipr.com/jz520



"Human"-Faced Missing Link Found in Spain?
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Move over Ida--you're last month's news. There's a new (purported) "missing link" in town.

An 11.9-million-year-old fossil ape species with an unusually flat, "surprisingly human" face has been found in Spain. The discovery suggests humans' ape ancestors split from primitive apes in Europe, not Africa--the so-called cradle of humanity--a new study says.

The species, Anoiapithecus brevirostris, may also represent the last known common ancestor of humans and living great apes--including orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees--researchers say. "With this fossil, our opinion is that the origin of our family very probably took place in the Mediterranean region," said study leader Salvador Moyà-Solà of the Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Barcelona.

http://snipr.com/jz53r



Tuberculosis Bacterium Subverts Basic Cell Functions
from Science News

Tuberculosis microbes invading human immune cells carry a cargo that increases TB virulence by inducing the cells to act less like sentinels and more like bystanders, tests in mice show.

In a report in the June 11 Nature, a team hypothesizes that this initial infection strategy lays the groundwork for TB's uncanny ability to lie dormant in an infected person for years. Even though TB has been studied for hundreds of years, it still guards many secrets -- including precisely how it undercuts immune cells.

"Understanding the mechanisms by which the bacteria are having their way with our host cells will be very helpful in coming up with targets that we might hit," says Kathleen McDonough, a microbiologist at the State University of New York at Albany and the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health, also in Albany.

http://snipr.com/jz55f



Typhoons Trigger Slow Earthquakes
from BBC News Online

Typhoons can trigger imperceptible, slow earthquakes, researchers say.

Scientists report in the journal Nature that, in a seismically active zone in Taiwan, pressure changes caused by typhoons "unclamp" the fault. This gentle release causes an earthquake that dissipates its energy over several hours rather than a few potentially devastating seconds.

The researchers believe this could explain why there are relatively few large earthquakes in this region. Alan Linde from the Carnegie Institution for Science in the US and colleagues monitored movement of two colliding tectonic plates in eastern Taiwan.

http://snipr.com/jz575



Despite Odds, Cities Race to Bet on Biotech
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

KANNAPOLIS, N.C. -- Where a textile mill once drove the economy of this blue-collar town northeast of Charlotte, an imposing neoclassical complex is rising, filled with fine art, Italian marble and multimillion-dollar laboratory equipment. Three buildings, one topped by a giant dome, form the beginnings of what has been nicknamed the Biopolis, a research campus dedicated to biotechnology.

At $500 million and counting, the Biopolis, officially called the North Carolina Research Campus, is a product of a national race to attract the biotechnology industry, a current grail of economic development.

Cities like Shreveport, La., and Huntsville, Ala., are also gambling millions in taxpayer dollars on if-we-build-it-they-will-come research parks and wet laboratories, which hold the promise of low-pollution workplaces and high salaries.

http://snipr.com/jz58x



Report: Planets Will Collide in 5 Billion Years
from the San Francisco Chronicle

From chaos we all began, and to chaos we'll all return, but not for a very, very long time - 5 billion years or so, more or less.

In the journal Nature, two French scientists, using arcane mathematical models, predict that in the distant future, the Earth and planet after planet will collide with each other as an inevitable part of the solar system's long-term evolution.

For many millennia, the scientists say, the orbits of the solar system's eight planets will remain stable, just as they are today, but eventually small eccentricities in their flight paths around the sun could cause Mercury, Mars, Venus and Earth to smash into each other, either one at a time or all at once - the ultimate chaotic disaster.

http://snipr.com/jz5af



Aztec Temple Could Yield One of Antiquity's Great Treasures
from the Times (London)

Archaeologists working amid the smog and din of Mexico City may be on the verge of unlocking an extraordinary time capsule.

The leaders of a team exploring a site opened up by earthquake damage believe that they have found the first tomb of an Aztec ruler. If they are right the site may yield one of the great treasures of antiquity, the sort of haul that fires the imagination of people far beyond academic circles.

None of the finds has been put on public display but Britain will get an early preview. Fourteen gold objects from the site will feature in the British Museum's exhibition on Moctezuma II, the last great Aztec ruler. These could prove to be the early pickings of a much richer harvest.

http://snipr.com/jz5bm