Weekly Science Headlines

[Chairman Risus]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=you-have-superpowers On positive illusions. This may bother some people around here.

Ha. I've been doing a sort of personal experiment similar to this for about half a year now. Positive results so far.

[Kai]

July 22, 2010

Workers on Doomed Rig Voiced Concern About Safety

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON -- A confidential survey of workers on the Deepwater Horizon in the weeks before the oil rig exploded showed that many of them were concerned about safety practices and feared reprisals if they reported mistakes or other problems. In the survey, commissioned by the rig's owner, Transocean, workers said that company plans were not carried out properly and that they "often saw unsafe behaviors on the rig."

Some workers also voiced concerns about poor equipment reliability, "which they believed was as a result of drilling priorities taking precedence over planned maintenance," according to the survey, one of two Transocean reports obtained by The New York Times. "At nine years old, Deepwater Horizon has never been in dry dock," one worker told investigators. "We can only work around so much." "Run it, break it, fix it," another worker said. "That's how they work."

According to a separate 112-page equipment assessment also commissioned by Transocean, many key components -- including the blowout preventer rams and failsafe valves -- had not been fully inspected since 2000, even though guidelines require its inspection every three to five years.

http://snipr.com/zpvjn

Asteroid Threat: Don't Worry, Congress Is Looking into It

from the Christian Science Monitor

Lawmakers are paying new attention to how best to shield Earth from a bad day -- getting whacked by an asteroid or comet that has our planet in its cross-hairs.

A new bill introduced to Congress proposes establishing a government-sponsored commission to study the threat of a major space rock collision with Earth and how prepared we are--as a country and a planet--to face such a danger.

There is a growing choir of concern regarding Near Earth Objects, or NEOs - spotting them and dealing with any Earth-threatening gatecrashers. While the annual probability of the Earth being struck by a huge asteroid or comet is small, the consequences of such a collision are so calamitous that it is prudent to appraise the nature of the threat and prepare to deal with it, experts say.

http://snipr.com/zpvkg

Harvard Puts Tighter Limits on Medical Faculty

from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

Harvard Medical School will prohibit its 11,000 faculty from giving promotional talks for drug and medical device makers and accepting personal gifts, travel, or meals, under a new policy intended partly to guard against companies' use of Harvard's prestige to market their products.

The conflict-of-interest rules also place stricter limits on the income faculty can earn from companies for consulting, joining boards, and other work; require public reporting of payments of at least $5,000 on a medical school website; and promise more robust internal reporting and monitoring of these relationships.

Harvard, which provides continuing medical education for tens of thousands of doctors worldwide, also will erect a more solid firewall between itself and health care companies during these courses.

http://snipr.com/zpvl2

Amazon Drought Raises Research Doubts

from Nature News

A once-in-a-century drought struck much of the Amazon rainforest in 2005, reducing rainfall by 60-75% in some areas -- and giving scientists a window on to a future coloured by climate change.

The drought foreshadowed the Amazon drying that many climate modellers expect to see in a warmer world. But five years on, a spate of research, including 13 papers published on 20 July in a special issue of the journal New Phytologist , shows that researchers are still grappling with the impact of drought and what it could reveal about the fate of the world's largest tropical forest, a major carbon storehouse.

The debate began with a 2007 study that used data gathered by NASA's Terra satellite to argue that the canopy of the Amazon rainforest grew and "greened up" during the drought -- suggesting that the rainforest could be resilient to dryness, at least for short periods. The phenomenon can be attributed to fewer clouds and more sunlight. But in March, a study using the same satellite data added confusion to the issue when it failed to find excessive greening.

http://snipr.com/zpvlu

Credentials Question Halts Duke Gene Trials

from the Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer

DURHAM -- Researchers have stopped three clinical trials that rely on the work of a Duke University scientist who may have falsely claimed to be a Rhodes Scholar on applications he submitted for federal grant funding.

The three trials are testing the genetic findings reported by cancer researcher Dr. Anil Potti and his colleagues. Last week, Duke placed Potti on administrative leave after allegations arose that on grant applications he embellished his résumé with the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.

Enrollment in the trials was halted Sunday at Duke and elsewhere. The next day, a letter signed by 31 researchers at universities across the nation sharply criticized the work conducted by Potti and Dr. Joseph Nevins, another Duke cancer researcher, noting "serious errors" in their science.

http://snipr.com/zpvmj

Taming Time Travel

from Science News

Novelists and screenwriters know that time travel can be accomplished in all sorts of ways: a supercharged DeLorean, Hermione's small watch and, most recently, a spacetime-bending hot tub have allowed fictional heroes to jump between past and future.

But physicists know that time travel is more than just a compelling plot device -- it's a serious prediction of Einstein's general relativity equations. In a new study posted online July 15, researchers led by Seth Lloyd at MIT analyze how some of the quirks and peculiarities of real-life time travel might play out. This particular kind of time travel evades some of its most paradoxical predictions, Lloyd says.

Any theory of time travel has to confront the devastating "grandfather paradox," in which a traveler jumps back in time and kills his grandfather, which prevents his own existence, which then prevents the murder in the first place, and so on.

http://snipr.com/zpvng

After Oil Cleanup, Hidden Damage Can Last for Years

from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

On the rocky beaches of Alaska, scientists plunged shovels and picks into the ground and dug 6,775 holes, repeatedly striking oil--still pungent and dangerous a dozen years after the Exxon Valdez infamously spilled its cargo.

More than an ocean away, on the Breton coast of France, scientists surveying the damage after another huge oil spill found that disturbances in the food chain persisted for more than a decade. And on the southern gulf coast in Mexico, an American researcher peering into a mangrove swamp spotted lingering damage 30 years after that shore was struck by an enormous spill.

These far-flung shorelines hit by oil in the past offer clues to what people living along the Gulf Coast can expect now that the great oil calamity of 2010 may be nearing an end.

http://snipr.com/zpvnz

Prone to Error: Earliest Steps to Find Cancer

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Monica Long had expected a routine appointment. But here she was sitting in her new oncologist's office, and he was delivering deeply disturbing news. Nearly a year earlier, in 2007, a pathologist at a small hospital in Cheboygan, Mich., had found the earliest stage of breast cancer from a biopsy. Extensive surgery followed, leaving Ms. Long's right breast missing a golf-ball-size chunk.

Now she was being told the pathologist had made a mistake. Her new doctor was certain she never had the disease, called ductal carcinoma in situ, or D.C.I.S. It had all been unnecessary -- the surgery, the radiation, the drugs and, worst of all, the fear.

... Like most women, Ms. Long had regarded the breast biopsy as the gold standard, an infallible way to identify cancer. "I thought it was pretty cut and dried," said Ms. Long, who is a registered nurse. As it turns out, diagnosing the earliest stage of breast cancer can be surprisingly difficult, prone to both outright error and case-by-case disagreement over whether a cluster of cells is benign or malignant, according to an examination of breast cancer cases by The New York Times.

http://snipr.com/zpvrq

Old Faithful Tevatron Collider Leads Race to Higgs

from New Scientist

It could do with a lick of paint and may not break any records any time soon. But the Tevatron collider in Batavia, Illinois, which has been slamming protons and antiprotons together for the last 27 years, is poised to beat Europe's much-vaunted Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the race to find the first hints of a Higgs boson. How has an ageing workhorse come to have the edge on its successor?

A new batch of data collected at the Tevatron will be presented next week at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Paris, France. The results are likely to tighten the constraints on the possible mass of the Higgs boson, the particle thought to be responsible for giving other particles their mass.

The Tevatron is set to shut up shop by the end of September 2011, but the progress revealed in Paris could bolster the case to let it operate for another three years. ... If it is allowed to stay open--at a cost of around $50 million a year--the steady collision rate the Tevatron can achieve, combined with improvements in its data analysis and the closure of the LHC throughout 2012 for repairs, will favour the Tevatron in the hunt for the first signs of the Higgs, say researchers at the collider.

http://snipr.com/zpvt8

Magnetic Remote Control Can Rewind a Worm's Wriggle

from Scientific American

The power to control living things and objects from a distance is a popular supernatural talent in science fiction and fantasy: Witches fling spells at foes and X-Men send chairs and tables flying with telekinesis, for example. But when it comes to remotely controlling biological organisms, science has a few tricks up its sleeve, too--although there's nothing metaphysical about them.

Manipulating biological processes with minimal interference, from the cellular level to the behavior of whole organisms, is a burgeoning scientific effort to better understand how living things work and to develop more effective treatments for a range of medical disorders.

Most recently, researchers essentially created a magnetic remote control that alters cell function and changes the behavior of a tiny worm. A team of biophysicists from the State University of New York (S.U.N.Y.) at Buffalo used magnetic nanoparticles to control heat-activated protein gates called ion channels embedded in the membranes of nerve cells, allowing the researchers to stimulate a simple reflex in nematode worms at will.

http://snipr.com/zpvug

[Kai]

July 23, 2010

Tropical Tropical Storm in Gulf Halts Oil Spill Response Efforts

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

A tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico has forced the evacuation of response vessels at the site of BP's blown-out oil well, further stalling efforts to permanently seal the well.

Tropical Storm Bonnie, with winds of 40 miles an hour, was about 80 miles south-southeast of Miami and moving west-northwest at 19 miles an hour, the United States National Hurricane Center said Friday morning. The agency projected that the storm would approach the northern Gulf coast late Saturday or early Sunday.

Among the vessels forced to flee the well site, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, was a drill rig that was working on a relief well, which is considered the ultimate way to seal the well. Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who leads the federal response effort, said late Thursday evening that it was beginning the process of disconnecting a riser pipe from the rig to the seabed and pulling it up, a process expected to take up to 12 hours.

http://snipr.com/zrdns

Stimulus Funds Give High-Speed Rail a Kick

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Americans love to complain about the pitiable state of our once-great rail system and wonder why our locomotives are stuck in the past. I mean, you can zip between Wuhan and Guangzhou, China, at 220 mph. Japan's Shinkansen system tops 186 mph. The French TGV can blaze across the countryside at more than 200 mph.

... Outside the Northeast corridor, few people in the U.S. even consider train travel. America has the worst rail system in the developed world, right? Well, sort of.

U.S. trains may not be the best at moving people, but they're great at moving everything else. More than 40 percent of U.S. freight miles are done by rail, compared with less than 15 percent in Europe, according to Christopher Barkan, a professor who heads the railroad engineering program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

http://snipr.com/zrdop

Marmots Thriving Amid Climate Change -- For Now

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Every year, scientists fan out across Colorado's Upper East River Valley to count the yellow-bellied marmots that make their home in rocky meadows bordered by aspen, fir and spruce trees.

Over the last decade, the work has gotten more tiring. Now they know why--the population of squirrel-like critters has vastly expanded as a result of environmental changes brought on by global warming, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature.

It's a rare example of animals benefiting from the higher temperatures, which are making life increasingly difficult for polar bears, harlequin frogs and dozens of other species around the world, the researchers said. But in this case the effect is only temporary, since the forces that are causing marmots to thrive are almost certain to spell their doom.

http://snipr.com/zrdp0

Stars Reveal Carbon 'Spaceballs'

from BBC News Online

Scientists have detected the largest molecules ever seen in space, in a cloud of cosmic dust surrounding a distant star.

The football-shaped carbon molecules are known as buckyballs, and were only discovered on Earth 25 years ago when they were made in a laboratory.

These molecules are the "third type of carbon"--with the first two types being graphite and diamond. The researchers report their findings in the journal Science.

http://snipr.com/zrdpl

Ethanol Future Looking for More Fuel

from National Geographic News

By now, well into the 21st century, at least some U.S. cars were supposed to be running on an exciting new power source--clean fuels refined from corn husks, timber waste and tall, fast-growing grasses.

But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, acknowledging that not a single facility is yet producing this advanced "cellulosic" ethanol, has proposed dramatically scaling back a federal program to promote the fuel for the second straight year.

Instead of requiring that the oil industry blend 250 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol into the gasoline sold at the pump next year, as Congress envisioned under the Renewable Fuels Standard program, the EPA said July 12 that it intends to cut the 2011 mandate to 5 million gallons.

http://snipr.com/zrdql

A Bag and a Trap. Oil Spill Invention Is a Keeper

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Gerry Matherne recently built a helicopter from "a bit of this and a piece of that," which made him a minor star on YouTube when the engine died in midair and he didn't. He somehow landed the crippled craft beside power lines.

"I'm always inventing something," said the gruff 61-year-old captain of an oil supertanker. "When I was a boy, a wristwatch was never safe in my hands. I'd dismantle anything to see how it ran."

So when Matherne learned of the runaway BP oil leak, he considered it a personal challenge. He drove to a hardware store, bought some window screens and PVC pipe, and began to tinker.

http://snipr.com/zrdrx

Hole From on High

from Science News

Researchers poring over Google Earth images have discovered one of Earth's freshest impact craters--a 45-meter-wide pock in southwestern Egypt that probably was excavated by a fast-moving iron meteorite no more than a few thousand years ago.

Although the crater was first noticed in autumn 2008, researchers have since spotted the blemish on satellite images taken as far back as 1972, says Luigi Folco, a cosmochemist at the University of Siena in Italy. He and his colleagues report their find online July 22 in Science.

The rim of the Egyptian crater stands about 3 meters above the surrounding plain, which is partially covered with distinct swaths of light-colored material blasted from the crater by the impact. These rays, which emanate from the impact site like spokes from the hub of a wheel, are what drew researchers' attention to the crater, says Folco.

http://snipr.com/zrduw

Quantum Mechanics Flummoxes Physicists Again

from Nature News

If you ever want to get your head around the riddle that is quantum mechanics, look no further than the double-slit experiment. This shows, with perfect simplicity, how just watching a wave or a particle can change its behaviour.

The idea is so unpalatable to physicists that they have spent decades trying to find new ways to test it. The latest such attempt, by physicists in Europe and Canada, used a three-slit version--but quantum mechanics won out again.

In the standard double-slit experiment, a wide screen is shielded from an electron gun by a wall containing two separated slits. If the electron gun is fired with one slit closed, a mound of electrons forms on the screen beyond the open slit, trailing off to the left and right--the sort of behaviour expected for particles. If the gun is fired when both slits are open, however, electrons stack along the screen in comb-like divisions. This illustrates the electrons interfering with each other--the hallmark of wave behaviour.

http://snipr.com/zrdy0

Marine Creatures Survived Ancient Ocean Acidification

from ScienceNOW Daily News

Researchers studying an ancient episode of high ocean acidity have discovered that a group of marine creatures living at the time adapted to the change in water chemistry. But the findings may provide little comfort for scientists worried about ocean conditions today, which are changing much more quickly.

About 120 million years ago, during the early part of the Cretaceous period, a series of massive volcanic eruptions pumped huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2)into Earth's atmosphere. The air's CO2 content rose to about twice today's level. Eventually, the oceans absorbed much of that CO2, which significantly increased the water's acidity.

The change reduced the amount of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) in the water, making it more difficult for creatures such as some kinds of plankton to form shells. Ocean pH returned to normal after about 160,000 years.

http://snipr.com/zrdym

Gut Check: How Do Caterpillars Walk?

from National Public Radio

The question isn't why did the caterpillar cross the road but how? Researchers have discovered that at least one species of caterpillar precedes each step with a thrust of its gut. The finding points to an entirely new mode of animal locomotion and could lead researchers to develop new robotic tools for exploration and medicine

Caterpillars don't have a bone in their body. They move by squeezing muscles in sequence in an undulating wave motion. It is easy enough to observe from the outside, but Michael Simon, then a graduate student at Tufts University wanted to know what was happening on the inside. Simon decided he needed to X-ray a caterpillar as it crawled.

That isn't as easy as it sounds. Because caterpillars don't have bones, they can't be X-rayed by conventional machines. So Simon and his group took the caterpillars to a special, X-ray-producing particle accelerator at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. They also brought a tiny, custom-built caterpillar treadmill.

http://snipr.com/zrdzv

[Kai]

Cacao genome sequenced, and Mars and Hershey are arguing over who owns it.


Salmonella enteritidis found in Iowa egg farm.

PortTechLA center in Las Angeles producing high efficiency and long lasting oil filters, among other pollution limiting technology.

Fuel-secreating bacteria via genetic insertion.

Low Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) means a much lower chance of prostate cancer.


On southeast Asian tiger conservation.

Antibiotics cause alteration in our resident gut flora.

Artificial skin for robots.


Evidence of star cannibalism.

Researcher, fired over laying the truth straight at a presentation about an anti-cancer drug trial, files suit against former employers for science misconduct.

[Doktor Howl]

Cacao genome sequenced, and Mars and Hershey are arguing over who owns it.

We really need to cleanse the temple, Kai.

[Kai]

Cacao genome sequenced, and Mars and Hershey are arguing over who owns it.

We really need to cleanse the temple, Kai.

Seriously.

[Kai]

I think, given the time I have these days, I'll plan on updating every Saturday, with a few links that I pick out from the week.

[Kai]

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/11/magic-and-the-brain.html - Review for a new book, Sleights of Mind.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/11/genetically-modified-salmon/ Truth and misinformation on GM salmon.

http://www.economist.com/node/17519716 - On the Uncanny Valley.

http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57814/ - weird tunicate an exception to conservation of order in genomes.

[Kai]

REVIVAL!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/03/tree-deaths-amazon-climate "Russian roulette with the worlds largest forest"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9387000/9387395.stm BREAKING: BIRDS ARE BIRD BRAINED. But only after exposure to massive radioactive decay.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/magazine/06baby-t.html?_r=2&ref=magazine IT SHAKES THE BABBY?

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/57932/ Genome size measurement project.

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2011/02/06/us_china_space_venture_appears_unlikely_for_now/ Speculation: China and USA in space.

http://scidev.net/en/news/new-mosquito-type-could-undermine-malaria-control-1.html The mosquito that Charley posted about in the other thread.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/06/first-panoramic-view-sun PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE SUN!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/02/04/133371076/how-keeping-little-girls-squeaky-clean-could-make-them-sick Daily duh: Exposure to bacteria boosts immunoefficiency. Whowuddathunk?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/05/AR2011020503743.html Seize the cheese.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08obplant.html?_r=1 Daily cycling of the immunodefense of plants. Yeah, plant immunodefense, not something I think about much.

[Kai]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/us/05science.html?_r=1 Honestly, I hated science fairs in grade school. I thought they were a pile of bullshit. Do you ever see taxonomic works at these things? No, you only see lame "experiments". Now, if some kid did a review of the species of an taxon in his region, /that/ would be a cool science fair project.

http://www.economist.com/node/18061104 When it comes to waste fuel-burning, the always and eternal problem is the toxic gas that's released. Toxic solid goes to toxic gas...and goes into solution in our rivers, lakes and oceans. Thus the cycle continues.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20088-woodpeckers-head-inspires-shock-absorbers.html Biomimetics in action. Unfortunately, most of the biomimicry results end up as lame ass products.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110204-new-species-pseudoscorpion-caves-animals-science/ Daily Nuh Spuh (taxonomist joke, from the abbreviation n. sp. for new species): cave dwelling pseudoscorpion with venomous pinching chelicerae.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-water-flea-20110206,0,7033137.story A species of Daphnia ("water flea") with a really long genome.

http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/69553/title/Extinctions_breed_carbon_chaos Carbon cycling during large scale extinction events associated with vulcanism.

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/medical/heartdisease/story/2011/02/Weight-loss-surgery-may-remodel-heart/43291594/1 Daily Duh: Loosing weight puts less stress on the heart. Whowuddathunk!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12365070 Loss of function in Dicer1 enzyme linked to macular degeneration.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-he-stem-cells-20110203,0,7365273.story This "memory" in stem cells that they are talking about is the epigenetic effect of transcription factor cascades, the things that produce the gridded layout of development.

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110206/full/news.2011.73.html Fly brain imaging bringing incredible detail.

[Kai]

No snarkyness today, just posting the total. Too tired.

---

Breast-Cancer Study Questions Lymph Node Removal

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Many women with early breast cancer do not appear to need removal of their lymph nodes, as is often recommended, according to a federally funded study released Tuesday.

The study, involving nearly 900 women who were treated at 115 sites across the country, found that those who did have their lymph nodes removed were no more likely to survive five years after the surgery than those who did not, the researchers reported in a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Breast cancer is diagnosed in about 200,000 women each year in the United States, with the cancer reaching the lymph nodes in about one-third of the cases.

When the cancer has spread to any lymph nodes, doctors usually recommend that nodes in the armpit be removed surgically, along with the tumor in the breast, to reduce the risk of a recurrence. But such removal is painful, makes recovery more difficult and leaves women susceptible to complications, including infections and a chronic, sometimes disabling swelling in their arms known as lymphodema.

http://ow.ly/3T859


Study Links Teenage Bullying to Social Status

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Scientists have confirmed an axiom of teenage life: Kids intent on climbing the social ladder at school are more likely to pick on their fellow students.

The finding, reported in Tuesday's edition of the American Sociological Review, lends an air of authenticity to TV shows like "Gossip Girl" and the 2004 movie "Mean Girls."

More importantly, it may suggest that efforts to combat bullying in schools should focus more closely on social hierarchies. "By and large, status increases aggression," said sociologist Robert Faris of UC Davis, who led the study.

http://ow.ly/3T89A


Studying How Snakes Got Legless

from BBC News Online

A 95-million-year-old fossil is helping scientists understand how snakes lost their legs through evolutionary time. Found in Lebanon, the specimen is one of only three examples of an ancient snake with preserved leg bones.

One rear leg is clearly visible but researchers had to use a novel X-ray technique to examine another leg hidden inside the fossil rock. Writing in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the team says the snake records an early stage in limb loss.

The scientists' high-resolution 3D images suggest the legs in this particular species, Eupodophis descouensi, grew more slowly, or for a shorter period of time.

http://ow.ly/3T8df


An H.I.V. Strategy Invites Addicts In

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- At 12 tables, in front of 12 mirrors, a dozen people are fussing intently in raptures of self-absorption, like chorus line members applying makeup in a dressing room. But these people are drug addicts, injecting themselves with whatever they just bought on the street--under the eyes of a nurse here at Insite, the only "safe injection site" in North America.

"You can tell she just shot cocaine," Thomas Kerr, an AIDS expert who does studies at the center, said of one young woman who keeps readjusting her tight tube top. "The way she's fidgeting, moving her hands over her face--she's tweaking."

Insite, situated on the worst block of an area once home to the fastest-growing AIDS epidemic in North America, is one reason Vancouver is succeeding in lowering new AIDS infection rates while many other cities are only getting worse.

http://ow.ly/3T8hQ


Discrimination Against Women in Science May Be Institutional

from the Guardian (UK)

When it comes to worrying about the underrepresentation of women in science, especially at higher levels, are we stuck in the past?

A paper published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that we are. Researchers Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams from Cornell University in the US reviewed 20 years of data on gender discrimination and the status of women in the sciences. They argue that too much attention has been focused on apparent sexual discrimination when women apply for new jobs, funding or to be published in journals.

Instead, Ceci and Williams believe that women are more likely than men to make personal choices--many of which may well be constrained--that prevent them from progressing to more senior levels (eg time off to raise children, following a spouse, caring for parents). They argue that focusing on discrimination at application stages may represent a costly red herring and that resources should be redirected towards education and policy changes that reflect the challenges faced by women interested in building a long-term career in science.

http://ow.ly/3T8mx


A Growing Danger for Athletes

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Just two days after the start of the winter strength-and-conditioning program, Jim Poggi, a University of Iowa freshman football player, called his father to report that his body ached from the intense workouts. The pain in his arms and legs had not subsided even after a weekend of rest.

... By the third day of workouts, on Jan. 24, it was clear something had gone terribly wrong. By the next morning, Poggi and 12 of his Iowa teammates were hospitalized with rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which muscle tissue breaks down and floods the bloodstream with a protein that can impair kidney function.

This type of rhabdomyolysis, caused by physical overexertion, was once rare. But the condition is cropping up with increasing frequency in the world of amateur athletics, experts say, perhaps the result of a culture in sports that emphasizes superior conditioning and physical tenacity.

http://ow.ly/3T8pJ


Social Scientist Sees Bias Within

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

SAN ANTONIO -- Some of the world's pre-eminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting.

Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology's conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year's meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new "outgroup."

It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

http://ow.ly/3T8uf


NASA Engineers Can't Find Electronic Flaws in Toyotas

from the Seattle Times

WASHINGTON -- There is no evidence that unintended accelerations in Toyota vehicles were caused by electronic flaws, the Transportation Department said Tuesday. The agency reached the conclusion after a 10-month investigation that said the mechanical causes were the same ones identified earlier by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA): sticking accelerator pedals and floor-mat interference.

"The jury is back," said Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary. "The verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas. Period." An engineer from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), brought in to help conduct the inquiry, was slightly less categorical but still emphatic.

"It's very difficult to prove a negative," said Michael Kirsch, a principal engineer with NASA's Engineering and Safety Center. But the electronic system for throttle controls in Toyotas would require two separate sensors to fail simultaneously in such a way that neither created an "error code" in the vehicle's onboard computer.

http://ow.ly/3T8yn


Gene Reading Steps Up a Gear

from Nature News

"It's super cool, but it's never going to work," genomics guru Eric Schadt responded when a wary investor asked for his opinion about a new DNA-sequencing technology in 2003. A company was creating a machine that it claimed could revolutionize the field by reading over the shoulder of an enzyme as it copied DNA molecules.

Despite his initial scepticism, Schadt touted the method's success last weekend at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology meeting in Marco Island, Florida. Now chief scientific officer at the company he had once doubted--Pacific Biosciences in Menlo Park, California--Schadt was one of several researchers at the meeting who provided a glimpse of how the company's first DNA-sequencing machines are performing.

All eyes are on these machines. Pacific Biosciences set a high bar for its own success in 2008, when chief technology officer Stephen Turner boasted that the instruments would be able to sequence a human genome in just 15 minutes by 2013, compared with the full month it took at that time. This year, as researchers unveiled data from the first machines to leave the company's campus, the discussion was less about revolutionizing the field and more about niche applications.

http://ow.ly/3T8CN


Buried Microbes Coax Energy From Rock

from Science News

Here's yet another reason to marvel at microbes: Buried deep within Earth at temperatures and pressures that would kill most living beings, bacteria and other tiny organisms not only survive but apparently even coax the rocks around them to produce food.

Researchers have found that the mere presence of microbes triggers minerals to release hydrogen gas, which the organisms then munch. "It looks like the bacteria themselves have an integral role in liberating this energy," says R. John Parkes, a geomicrobiologist at Cardiff University in Wales.

His team's findings appear in the March issue of Geology. The work helps explain how microbes can survive up to kilometers deep in a subterranean world far from any sunlight to fuel photosynthesis. Such "deep biospheres" may even exist on other planets, Parkes says, with organisms tucked safely away from frigid temperatures and lethal radiation at the surface.

http://ow.ly/3T8GF

[LMNO]

Bullying, Bias, and microbes that eat rocks.


It's been a good week.

[Epimetheus]

http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/11/scientists-discover-drug-resistant-gonorrhea-superbug/

A new, untreatable strain of the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea has been discovered in Japan, according to an international team of infectious disease experts. The strain, named H041, is resistant to all known forms of antibiotics.

Of course it's Japan.

[Xooxe]

I can't wait to find out that door handles are a vector.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I blame Weezer.