Weekly Science Headlines

[Kai]

October 13, 2008

Paul Krugman Wins Economics Nobel
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton University and an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science on Monday.

"It's been an extremely weird day, but weird in a positive way," Mr. Krugman said in an interview on his way to a meeting for the Group of Thirty, an international body from the public and private sectors that discusses international economics.

Mr. Krugman received the award for his work on international trade and economic geography. In particular, the prize committee lauded his work for "having shown the effects of economies of scale on trade patterns and on the location of economic activity."

http://snipurl.com/4bdr1 


Numbers Don't Add Up for U.S. Girls
from Science News

A combination of peer pressure, gender stereotyping and low expectations contributes to turning potentially gifted kids—especially girls—away from mathematics, wasting a precious national resource, a new study suggests.

The study, by cancer biochemist Janet Mertz of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her collaborators, appears in the November Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

Mertz's team tallied the participants in top international competitions for high school students, the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition and the International Mathematical Olympiad, and other data. While girls were underrepresented on all countries' teams, some countries, including the United States, often had no girls on a team.

http://snipurl.com/48wnr


Shark "Virgin Birth" Confirmed
from National Geographic News

A female blacktip shark in Virginia fertilized her own egg without mating with a male shark, new DNA evidence shows. This is the second time scientists have used DNA testing to verify shark parthenogenesis—the process that allows females of some species to produce offspring without sperm.

The female shark, dubbed Tidbit, died during a routine physical exam before the pregnancy was identified. A necropsy—an animal autopsy—after her death revealed she was carrying a near-term pup fetus that was about 12 inches (30 centimeters) in length.

Tidbit was caught in the wild when she was very young and reached sexual maturity in a tank at the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach, where she lived for eight years.

http://snipurl.com/48wt7


Mismanaged Tourism Threaten Galapagos Islands
from the Seattle Times

A few weeks ago, 19 Ecuadorean citizens detained on these world-renowned islands were marched onto a plane and sent back to the continent under armed guard. Their crime? Illegal migration.

So far this year, the government has expelled 1,000 of its citizens from the Galápagos—a living laboratory of unique animal and plant species—who were there without residency and work permits. It also has "normalized" 2,000 others, in effect giving most of them a year to leave.

The migrants are attracted not by the tortoises or blue-footed boobies but by the islands' booming economy, which offers plentiful jobs and good pay. Typical wages run 70 percent higher than on Ecuador's mainland, the public schools are good and violent crime is nonexistent. Last year, Ecuador was stung by a United Nations warning that the islands, whose human population has doubled in 10 years to about 30,000, are at risk from overcrowding and mismanaged tourism.

http://snipurl.com/48zg8


Doubling of Kids' Vitamin D Intake Urged
from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)

(Associated Press)—The nation's leading pediatricians group says children—from newborns to teens—should get double the usually recommended amount of vitamin D because of evidence that it may help prevent serious diseases.

To meet the new recommendation of 400 units daily, millions of children will need to take daily vitamin D supplements, the American Academy of Pediatrics said. That includes breast-fed infants—even those who get some formula, too, and many teens who drink little or no milk.

Baby formula contains vitamin D, so infants on formula only generally don't need supplements. However, the academy recommends breast-feeding for at least the first year of life, and breast milk is sometimes deficient.

http://snipurl.com/4bdyt 


US Tourist Set for Space Station
from BBC News Online

US space tourist Richard Garriott has successfully blasted off into space, following in the footsteps of his astronaut father. Mr Garriott has paid about $30m (£17m) for his 10-day trip to the International Space Station (ISS).

The Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft, mounted on a three-stage rocket, launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, at 0701 GMT (0801 BST; 0301 EDT). Richard's father, Owen Garriott, spent 60 days on a US space station in 1973. He took extensive photographs of the Earth's surface during his stay on the Skylab orbital outpost.

Owen, 77, will support his son from mission control in Moscow. Richard Garriott, a 47-year-old computer game designer, is joined on the flight by US astronaut Mike Fincke, who becomes the space station's commander, and Russian flight engineer Yuri Lonchakov.

http://snipurl.com/4bdsy


World's Oldest Footprints Found in Nevada?
from National Geographic News

Scientists believe they have uncovered Earth's oldest known footprints in the mountains of Nevada—a fossil find that suggests animals have been walking around about 30 million years longer than previously thought, according to new research.

The controversial tracks—described by one skeptical scientist as "paired rows of dots"— may indicate animals had legs in the late Protozoic era, about 570 million years ago, according to lead researcher Loren Babcock.

The discovery is the strongest evidence to suggest animals were able to move about on their own appendages during the Ediacaran period, before the Cambrian period "explosion." During the Cambrian complex animals rapidly emerged and replaced simple multicellular animals, said the Ohio State University professor.

http://snipurl.com/4agfn


A Green Revolution for Africa?
from the New York Times Magazine (Registration Required)

"When we started," Rajiv Shah recalled over a late-evening coffee at the Serena Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, "developing-world agriculture seemed very much out of fashion." That was before the food riots and rice tariffs and dire predictions of mass starvation that accompanied the global rise in food prices last spring.

And it was before the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for which Shah has worked since 2001, made agriculture, particularly African agriculture, a top priority. Agriculture may have been unfashionable four years ago, when Shah and others on the foundation's "strategic opportunities" team began discussing an agriculture initiative, but it is fashionable now.

This is partly a result of market forces leading to the prospect of severe food shortages; but it is also partly because of the market-making power of the Gates Foundation itself. Bill Gates began this year with a promise to nearly double the foundation's commitment to agricultural development with $306 million in additional grants.

http://snipurl.com/4ahtl


Craft Flies 16 Miles From Moon Of Saturn
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The international Cassini space probe flew within 16 miles of the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus last week—a breathtakingly close flyby designed to gather dust and water particles that will help scientists better understand the recently discovered geysers that spew constantly from the moon's south pole.

"Cassini flew closest to the equator of Enceladus to collect those particles and then went into the plume coming out of the south pole at a much greater height," said project scientist Robert Pappalardo.

The main goal of the mission, he said, is to determine if the dust and ice particles drifting above the moon's equator are the same or different from those that spit out of the geysers. "This is how we hope to learn more about the history and evolution of Enceladus, and about whether there's liquid water involved in the generation of the plume," he said.

http://snipurl.com/4atiq


Herceptin Brings New Age in Breast Cancer Care
from USA Today

Barbara Bradfield has lived to see dramatic changes in breast cancer. When she was diagnosed in 1989, Bradfield's tumor—which produced an overabundance of a protein called HER2—was considered especially deadly. Today, women with tumors like hers have some of the best survival rates in breast cancer.

Experts say the drug that has kept Bradfield healthy for so long, Herceptin, has changed the nature of breast cancer and helped doctors better understand what causes the disease.

In the 10 years since it was approved, doctors say Herceptin also has encouraged the development of a growing arsenal of new therapies that target cancer cells but spare patients from many of the grueling side effects of traditional chemotherapy. Bradfield, who received chemo before and during her Herceptin therapy, developed permanent hearing loss and numbness in her fingers because of those older drugs.

http://snipurl.com/4bdvy

[Kai]

Also, thought I'd get a jump on this.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081014134015.htm

While paleontologists may scour remote, exotic places in search of prehistoric specimens, Tufts researchers have found what they believe to be the world's oldest whole-body fossil impression of a flying insect in a wooded field behind a strip mall in North Attleboro, Mass.

Though, the verdict is still out on whether its a flying insect or not, and if so, whether it had full flight capacities or rudiments composes of leg endites and exites forming thoracic sidelobes. (The origin of wings from the endites and exites of thoracic appendanges has been pretty much confirmed by Drosophila genetic manipulation since the '80, yet there are still some people that hold on tight to the old paranotal lobe hypothesis. I don't get it.)

[Kai]

I'm especially interested in the mindfulness article in this one. The Tiktalik fossil is another.




October 16, 2008

"Fishapod" Had World's First Known Neck, Study Says
from National Geographic News

The skull of a 375-million-year-old Arctic fossil fish reveals that the "fishapod" could nod its head up and down and may have breathed air, a new study says. These new clues may help explain how our fish ancestors evolved into land dwellers.

The fossil fish—called Tiktaalik roseae—was discovered in the Canadian Arctic in 2004 and provides the 'missing link' between fish and land vertebrates, according to scientists.

The new study confirms that the prehistoric fish, which had limblike fins, heralded a momentous departure from water for vertebrates (animals with backbones) but that this evolutionary transition wasn't as sudden as previously thought.

http://snipurl.com/4e581


Bypassing Paralyzed Nerves
from Science News

It's a case of mind over muscle, by way of machine. By electronically connecting a monkey's forearm muscles to its brain, researchers gave a temporarily paralyzed monkey the ability to clench those muscles.

An electrode implanted in the monkey's brain picked up the electrical signal from a single neuron, and the monkey learned to control the activity of that neuron to regain control of its wrist—even if the neuron was in a sensory rather than a muscle-controlling region of the brain.

It's a powerful demonstration of the brain's flexibility, and the first time that scientists have electronically linked a single neuron to an animal's own muscles, researchers report in the Oct. 16 Nature.

http://snipurl.com/4e5de


See the World—And Help Conserve It
from Scientific American

Rain forests and tundra, deserts and savannas, mountaintops and undersea reefs. No spot on the planet is too remote for the movement that has changed the face of leisure travel. Ecotourism, in all its various guises—green tourism, sustainable tourism, adventure travel—has gained traction as enthusiasts seek to experience the earth's wonders while treading lightly on them.

Lately a new subset of this boom has emerged. "Voluntourism" ramps the ecological impulse up a notch, providing ways for vacationers to help save the world's sustainable resources. The trend has been described as a kind of mini version of the Peace Corps. Depending on your interests, you could find yourself repairing trails leading to Old Faithful, tracking sharks in the Atlantic, or mixing cement for housing in the Andes.

Voluntourism is becoming a significant growth sector of the travel industry. Online trip planner Travelocity, for example, now partners with tour operators such as GlobeAware, Cross-Cultural Solutions and Take Pride in America, which specialize in launching voluntourists on service-oriented vacations.

http://snipurl.com/4e5hb


American Icons Aren't the Animals They Used to Be
from New Scientist

Some iconic American animals—wolves, bears and bison—are not the creatures that they used to be. The problem is hybridisation, the "contamination" of one species' DNA with that of another. Does this matter? Should hybrid populations get the same protection as pure-bred ones?

Conservationists are debating, for example, whether the western grey wolf should have been removed from the Endangered Species list because genetic studies suggest some of them are wolf-coyote hybrids.

Grey wolves are not the only ones mixing up their historical genomes. Six of the 15 bison herds in the US have pieces of cattle DNA. Meanwhile, polar bears are mating with grizzlies, resulting in hybrid "grolar bears." Opinions are divided about how much this should affect conservation initiatives. Some say it depends on how heavily the human hand has played a role in introducing hybrids.

http://snipurl.com/4e5qn


Commentary: What Makes Science 'Science'?
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

A science educator surveyed science graduates who were teachers-in-training on their understanding of key terminology, and his findings revealed a serious problem.

Graduates, from a range of science disciplines and from a variety of universities in Britain and around the world, have a poor grasp of the meaning of simple terms and are unable to provide appropriate definitions of key scientific terminology.

So how can these hopeful young trainees possibly teach science to children so that they become scientifically literate? How will school-kids learn to distinguish the questions and problems that science can answer from those that science cannot and, more importantly, the difference between science and pseudoscience?

http://snipurl.com/4e5y9



Does This Explain Muskrat Love?
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Scientists have confirmed what poets have long known: Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Working with mouse-like rodents called prairie voles, scientists have found that close monogamous relationships alter the chemistry of the brain, fostering the release of a compound that builds loyalty but also plays a role in depression during times of separation.

The scientists found that after four days away from their mates, male voles experienced changes in the emotional center of their brains, causing them to become unresponsive and lethargic. When given a drug that blocked the changes, however, lonely voles emerged from their funk.

http://snipurl.com/4e6hf



FDA Looks into BPA Advocate's Donation to Science Center
from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Federal officials are investigating whether the chairman of a panel about to make a pivotal ruling on the safety of bisphenol A has been compromised by a large donation that was disclosed by the Journal Sentinel on Sunday.

The Food and Drug Administration is reviewing all documents to ensure that Martin Philbert complied with the agency's disclosure requirements, said FDA spokesman Michael Herndon. Philbert serves as chairman of the FDA subcommittee that is reviewing an earlier FDA ruling on the safety of the controversial chemical.

"We have no reason to believe that Dr. Philbert has done anything other than act in good faith on this matter," Herndon said. The move comes after several congressmen, citing the Journal Sentinel story, called for Philbert to step down or return the $5 million given to the center he directs.

http://snipurl.com/4e6tj


Internet Millionaire Takes Aim at Mars
from the Christian Science Monitor

Hawthorne, Calif.—Every morning, Elon Musk steels himself to once again do battle with gravity. A multimillionaire who made his fortune as cofounder of PayPal, Mr. Musk has spent six years and $100 million of his own money designing rockets for his company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX). In August, he watched helplessly as a design flaw allowed Newtonian forces to triumph over his Falcon 1—the third failure in as many launches.

... It took a fourth launch on Sept. 28, preceded by a family visit to Disneyland's Space Mountain to calm Musk's nerves, for Falcon 1 to become the first privately developed, liquid-fuel rocket to orbit Earth.

Having passed that milestone ... SpaceX is on a trajectory to revolutionize space transportation. Musk wants to make it more affordable through much cheaper launches. His larger ambition is to transport astronauts in Space X's rocket capsule, effectively providing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration with an alternative to the space shuttle, due to be mothballed in 2010.

http://snipurl.com/4e78x


Calming the Mind's Chatter
from the Baltimore Sun

They're crescendoing like the finale of Beethoven's "Ninth": Bailouts, buyouts. Recession, depression. Enter the meditative practice of mindfulness. Born of Buddhist roots, it's increasingly recognized as a measure to calm the mind's chatter and elevate the brain's thinking and organizational processes.

Mindfulness seminars. Mindfulness books. Even the medical mainstream is taking note—the Sept. 17 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association had a piece titled "Mindfulness in Medicine."

... Mindfulness is built around the premise of disengaging from overly emotional responses and extraneous thoughts that clutter the mind's ability to think clearly. By using techniques such as breathing, visual imagery and meditation to slow down and focus on the present, the theory goes, a person can tap into a higher level of awareness.

http://snipurl.com/4e7pd


Bottled Water Has Contaminants Too, Study Finds
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

(Associated Press)—Tests on leading brands of bottled water turned up a variety of contaminants often found in tap water, according to a study released Wednesday by an environmental advocacy group.

The findings challenge the popular impression—and marketing pitch—that bottled water is purer than tap water, the researchers say. However, all the brands met federal health standards for drinking water. Two violated a California state standard, the study said.

An industry group branded the findings "alarmist." Joe Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Association, said the study is based on the faulty premise that a contaminant is a health concern "even if it does not exceed the established regulatory limit or no standard has been set."

http://snipurl.com/4e7v2

[Vene]

Shark "Virgin Birth" Confirmed
from National Geographic News

A female blacktip shark in Virginia fertilized her own egg without mating with a male shark, new DNA evidence shows. This is the second time scientists have used DNA testing to verify shark parthenogenesis—the process that allows females of some species to produce offspring without sperm.

The female shark, dubbed Tidbit, died during a routine physical exam before the pregnancy was identified. A necropsy—an animal autopsy—after her death revealed she was carrying a near-term pup fetus that was about 12 inches (30 centimeters) in length.

Tidbit was caught in the wild when she was very young and reached sexual maturity in a tank at the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach, where she lived for eight years.

http://snipurl.com/48wt7

I didn't realize that parthenogenesis was an option for "[a]ll non-mammal vertebrate species."  I was under the impression that only whiptail lizards did it.  Makes me wonder how common it really is.

[Kai]

Shark "Virgin Birth" Confirmed
from National Geographic News

A female blacktip shark in Virginia fertilized her own egg without mating with a male shark, new DNA evidence shows. This is the second time scientists have used DNA testing to verify shark parthenogenesis—the process that allows females of some species to produce offspring without sperm.

The female shark, dubbed Tidbit, died during a routine physical exam before the pregnancy was identified. A necropsy—an animal autopsy—after her death revealed she was carrying a near-term pup fetus that was about 12 inches (30 centimeters) in length.

Tidbit was caught in the wild when she was very young and reached sexual maturity in a tank at the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach, where she lived for eight years.

http://snipurl.com/48wt7

I didn't realize that parthenogenesis was an option for "[a]ll non-mammal vertebrate species."  I was under the impression that only whiptail lizards did it.  Makes me wonder how common it really is.

Parthenogenesis often occurs in insects. It could potentially occur in any organism, I think, but in insects particularly because the sex chromosomes are the same, two for a female and one for a male. So, to get a male in insects you just subtract an X. In vertebrates, its usually XY, so you can't parthenogenicaly get males, but you can get females. Its essentially natural cloning.

[Vene]

Shark "Virgin Birth" Confirmed
from National Geographic News

A female blacktip shark in Virginia fertilized her own egg without mating with a male shark, new DNA evidence shows. This is the second time scientists have used DNA testing to verify shark parthenogenesis—the process that allows females of some species to produce offspring without sperm.

The female shark, dubbed Tidbit, died during a routine physical exam before the pregnancy was identified. A necropsy—an animal autopsy—after her death revealed she was carrying a near-term pup fetus that was about 12 inches (30 centimeters) in length.

Tidbit was caught in the wild when she was very young and reached sexual maturity in a tank at the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach, where she lived for eight years.

http://snipurl.com/48wt7

I didn't realize that parthenogenesis was an option for "[a]ll non-mammal vertebrate species."  I was under the impression that only whiptail lizards did it.  Makes me wonder how common it really is.

Parthenogenesis often occurs in insects. It could potentially occur in any organism, I think, but in insects particularly because the sex chromosomes are the same, two for a female and one for a male. So, to get a male in insects you just subtract an X. In vertebrates, its usually XY, so you can't parthenogenicaly get males, but you can get females. Its essentially natural cloning.

I can see why it doesn't work for mammals though because there have actually been experiments where an embryo has been fertilized with the genes from two ovum.  It dies during development.  That's where the theory of genomic imprinting came from and there are some genes that are expressed differently depending on which sex it came from.

[Kai]

Shark "Virgin Birth" Confirmed
from National Geographic News

A female blacktip shark in Virginia fertilized her own egg without mating with a male shark, new DNA evidence shows. This is the second time scientists have used DNA testing to verify shark parthenogenesis—the process that allows females of some species to produce offspring without sperm.

The female shark, dubbed Tidbit, died during a routine physical exam before the pregnancy was identified. A necropsy—an animal autopsy—after her death revealed she was carrying a near-term pup fetus that was about 12 inches (30 centimeters) in length.

Tidbit was caught in the wild when she was very young and reached sexual maturity in a tank at the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach, where she lived for eight years.

http://snipurl.com/48wt7

I didn't realize that parthenogenesis was an option for "[a]ll non-mammal vertebrate species."  I was under the impression that only whiptail lizards did it.  Makes me wonder how common it really is.

Parthenogenesis often occurs in insects. It could potentially occur in any organism, I think, but in insects particularly because the sex chromosomes are the same, two for a female and one for a male. So, to get a male in insects you just subtract an X. In vertebrates, its usually XY, so you can't parthenogenicaly get males, but you can get females. Its essentially natural cloning.

I can see why it doesn't work for mammals though because there have actually been experiments where an embryo has been fertilized with the genes from two ovum.  It dies during development.  That's where the theory of genomic imprinting came from and there are some genes that are expressed differently depending on which sex it came from.

I've heard things about lesbian couples wanting to have kids together and some sort of experiments into that. Do you know anything about that?

Edit: I freely admit that vertebrates are not my specialty, much less mammals.

[Vene]

This is the last thing that I've heard about turning ovum into sperm.  I have no idea where it's gone if there has been any progress.  The wikipedia page doesn't have any more recent information.  I can only assume that it hasn't worked yet.

[Kai]

Yesterday's news


October 15, 2008

Sloan Sky Survey's 3-D Guide to the Final Frontier
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

SUNSPOT, N.M.—It's fair to say that Dan Long has seen more of the universe than anyone but God.

... This summer, after eight years of charting the cosmos, Long and his colleagues completed the deepest, most comprehensive map of the heavens ever produced.

Known as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, it is a remarkable three-dimensional model of the universe that allows an observer to travel, as if by rocket ship, from the dwarf galaxies hugging the skirts of the Milky Way to the frontier campfires of the most distant quasars, blazing billions of light-years away.

http://snipurl.com/4dpok


Cooling Climate 'Consensus' of 1970s Never Was
from Science News

The reasons to disbelieve that humans are causing global warming are many and varied, skeptics say. For example: Natural factors such as long-term variations in solar radiation are causing the rise in worldwide average temperature.

The urban heat island effect is skewing modern weather data, so the warming observed in recent decades isn't real. And besides, not long ago experts all believed the Earth was cooling, not warming.

Actually, research has shown that many such ideas are bogus. ... Now, new research also skewers the global warming skeptics' claim that, in the 1970s, scientists believed that an ice age was imminent.

http://snipurl.com/4cp8n 


What Being Neat or Messy Says about Political Leanings
from Scientific American

Researchers insist they can tell someone's politlcal affiliation by looking at the condition of their offices and bedrooms. Messy? You're a lefty. A neatnik? Welcome to the Right.

According to a controversial new study, set to be published in The Journal of Political Psychology, the bedrooms and offices of liberals, who are generally thought of as open, tend to be colorful and awash in books about travel, ethnicity, feminism and music, along with music CDs covering folk, classic and modern rock, as well as art supplies, movie tickets and travel memorabilia.

Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to surround themselves with calendars, postage stamps, laundry baskets, irons and sewing materials in their personal spaces, according to the study. Their bedrooms and offices are well-lighted and decorated with sports paraphernalia and flags—especially American ones.

http://snipurl.com/4cppd


Outcry at Scale of Inheritance Project
from Nature News

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) handed out the first payments in a multi-million-dollar project to explore epigenomics last month. But some researchers are voicing concerns about the scientific and economic justification for this latest 'big biology' venture.

Epigenetics, described as "inheritance, but not as we know it," is now a blisteringly hot field. It is concerned with changes in gene expression that are typically inherited, but not caused by changes in gene sequence.

In theory, epigenetic studies can help explain how the millions of cells in the human body can carry identical DNA but form completely different cell types, and perhaps why certain cells are susceptible to disease. The NIH's epigenomics initiative is a plan for such studies on a grand scale ... 

http://snipurl.com/4cq0e


After Acai, What Is Amazon's Next "Cinderella Fruit"?
from National Geographic News

In the rainforests of Peru's remote Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, mothers don't make kids eat their carrots. Instead, kids munch on aguaje, a crisp, neon yellow palm fruit covered in maroon scales. It tastes a bit like a carrot, but packs three times the vitamin A punch.

Aguaje is just one of more than a hundred wild and domesticated fruits available to people each year in this 8,000-square-mile chunk of protected Amazon wetland at the confluence of two rivers in northeastern Peru.

And with so much variety and abundance, it's not surprising that these fruits form the centerpiece of the local diet. The reserve's 100,000 residents depend on them for many nutrients—like vitamins, protein, and oils—that the rest of us normally get from a variety of other foods, including vegetables and nuts.

http://snipurl.com/4cynr


NASA to Reboot Hubble Space Telescope
from New Scientist

NASA will attempt to revive the $2 billion Hubble Space Telescope on Wednesday, officials say. The telescope was idled two weeks ago by an equipment failure.

The breakdown of a computer needed to relay science data to Earth prompted NASA to postpone until next year a long-awaited space shuttle mission to upgrade the orbital observatory. That flight, which had been slated for lift-off on Tuesday, was rescheduled for February.

Engineers plan to send commands to the telescope early on Wednesday to switch over to a backup computer that has not even been turned on since before the telescope arrived in orbit 18 years ago.

http://snipurl.com/4cyt6


Thinking Anew About a Migratory Barrier: Roads
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

SALTESE, Mont.—Dr. Chris Servheen spends a lot of time mulling a serious scientific question: why didn't the grizzly bear cross the road? The future of the bear may depend on the answer.

The mountains in and around Glacier National Park teem with bears. A recently concluded five-year census found 765 grizzlies in northwestern Montana, more than three times the number of bears as when it was listed as a threatened species in 1975.

To the south lies a swath of federally protected wilderness much larger than Yellowstone, where the habitat is good, and there are no known grizzlies. They were wiped out 50 years ago to protect sheep. One of the main reasons they have not returned is Interstate 90.

http://snipurl.com/4cz0v


Expedition Set for 'Ghost Peaks'
from BBC News Online

It is perhaps the last great Antarctic expedition—to find an explanation for why there is a great mountain range buried under the White Continent. The Gamburtsevs match the Alps in scale but no-one has ever seen them because they are covered by up to 4km of ice.

Geologists struggle to understand how such a massif can have formed and persisted in the middle of Antarctica. Now, an international team is setting out on a deep-field survey to try to get some answers.

The group comprises scientists, engineers, pilots and support staff from the UK, the US, Germany, Australia, China and Japan. The ambitious nature of the project—working in Antarctica's far interior—has required an exceptional level of co-ordination and co-operation.

http://snipurl.com/4cz6o


Number of Devil's Hole Pupfish Increasing
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The tiny Devil's Hole pupfish, found only in a small, deep pool in the desert near Death Valley, has been teetering on the brink of extinction for years. In the spring of 2006 there were only 38 of them, down from roughly 500 in the mid-1990s.

The reasons for the decline are unclear. But government scientists trying to reverse the trend appear to be enjoying a bit of success.

The autumn count of the iridescent blue fish has risen for three years, to 126 this fall, the first steady increase in more than a decade. Convinced that the pupfish problems are tied to a shortage of nutrients, biologists took the unusual step of feeding the fish.

http://snipurl.com/4cord


TB Victim Remains Re-write History of Disease
from the Telegraph (UK)

The discovery of two nine thousand year old tuberculosis victims demolishes the conventional wisdom that humans caught the disease from cows, claims a new study.

Scientists have traditionally believed that tuberculosis was caught from the infected milk of cattle at a time when humans first started domesticating animals around six thousand years go.

But the discovery of two much older victims—a mother and a child—finally proves that the human strain most likely existed before its bovine equivalent. It is hoped the findings reported in the Public Library of Science One journal, will help scientists trace the route of the disease which still kills thousands of people every year.

http://snipurl.com/4dpwc

[Kai]

October 24, 2008

Cancer Drug Shows Promise Against MS
from USA Today

A leukemia drug was about 70% more effective than a standard therapy in treating early multiple sclerosis, according to clinical trial results in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.

In multiple sclerosis, or MS, the immune system attacks myelin, the sheath that enables nerve cells to conduct impulses between the brain and other parts of the body.

The drug, alemtuzumab, is a monoclonal antibody that depletes the body of the white blood cells that attack myelin, which are eventually replaced by new white blood cells that don't. For reasons not yet clear, though, alemtuzumab raised patients' risk of autoimmune diseases of the thyroid or platelets, and one study participant died as a result.

http://snipurl.com/4n3pn


Flying Syringes and Other Bold Ideas
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

BANGKOK, Oct. 22—The charitable foundation founded by Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates has awarded 104 grants, each for $100,000, in a bid to inject entrepreneurial boldness and risk-taking into the often staid world of medical research.

Announced in Bangkok, the grants are the first stage of a $100 million, five-year project the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hopes will encourage research into innovative medical ideas that it feels now have little chance of development, largely because of how funding is distributed.

In making its picks, the foundation has rejected the widespread practice of peer review—assigning other specialists in a field to evaluate research—because, in the words of Tadataka Yamada, the foundation's director of global health, "peer review—by definition almost—excludes innovation because innovation has no peers."

http://snipurl.com/4n37g


Team Records 'Music' from Stars
from BBC News Online

Scientists have recorded the sound of three stars similar to our Sun using France's Corot space telescope. A team writing in Science journal says the sounds have enabled them to get information about processes deep within stars for the first time.

If you listen closely to the sounds of each star ...you'll hear a regular repeating pattern. These indicate that the entire star is pulsating. You'll also note that the sound of one star is very slightly different to the other. That's because the sound they make depends on their age, size and chemical composition.

The technique, called "stellar seismology," is becoming increasingly popular among astronomers because the sounds give an indication of what is going on in the stars' interior.

http://snipurl.com/4n2xr


Drought Resistance Is the Goal, but Methods Differ
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

GRAND ISLAND, Neb.—To satisfy the world's growing demand for food, scientists are trying to pull off a genetic trick that nature itself has had trouble accomplishing in millions of years of evolution. They want to create varieties of corn, wheat and other crops that can thrive with little water.

As the world's population expands and global warming alters weather patterns, water shortages are expected to hold back efforts to grow more food. People drink only a quart or two of water every day, but the food they eat in a typical day, including plants and meat, requires 2,000 to 3,000 quarts to produce.

For companies that manage to get "more crop per drop," the payoff could be huge, and scientists at many of the biggest agricultural companies are busy tweaking plant genes in search of the winning formula.

http://snipurl.com/4n2hi


Mysterious 'Dead Water' Effect Caught on Film
from New Scientist

In 1893, Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen and his ship Fram were victims of a strange phenomenon as he sailed past the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, north of Siberia. Nansen wrote afterwards: "Fram appeared to be held back, as if by some mysterious force, and she did not always answer the helm ..."

Nansen called the effect "dead water ..." Research has already shown that dead water occurs when an area of water consists of two or more layers of water with different salinity, and hence density ...

Now French scientists recreating that scenario in a lab tank have revealed new detail of the phenomenon and even captured the effect on video. The work will help scientists to better understand dead water and the behaviour of stratified sea patches.

http://snipurl.com/4lvvd


Study Probes Clouds' Climate Role
from BBC News Online

An international team of scientists is hoping to shed light on how clouds over the Pacific Ocean are affecting global climate and weather systems. The clouds, some of which are bigger than the US, reflect sunlight back into space and cool the ocean below.

The team hopes to learn more about the clouds' properties and if pollution from activities such as mining affect the formation of these systems. The month-long study will involve more than 200 experts from 10 countries.

A team of 20 climate and cloud experts from the UK's National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) are taking part in the expedition, which will be based in Chile. Hugh Coe, the lead scientist for the British consortium, said the project would help improve the accuracy of climate change models.

http://snipurl.com/4mobm 


Creationists Declare War Over the Brain
from New Scientist

"You cannot overestimate," thundered psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, "how threatened the scientific establishment is by the fact that it now looks like the materialist paradigm is genuinely breaking down. You're gonna hear a lot in the next calendar year about ... how Darwin's explanation of how human intelligence arose is the only scientific way of doing it ... Materialism needs to start fading away and non-materialist causation needs to be understood as part of natural reality."

His enthusiasm was met with much applause from the audience gathered at the UN's east Manhattan conference hall on 11 September for an international symposium called Beyond the Mind-Body Problem: New Paradigms in the Science of Consciousness.

Earlier Mario Beauregard, ... co-author of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul, told the audience that the "battle" between "maverick" scientists like himself and those who "believe the mind is what the  brain does" is a "cultural war."

http://snipurl.com/4lxoj


New Critter Webcam: Hot Undersea Action!
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Armchair adventurers with high-speed Internet have a new window into the natural world. National Geographic has added an underwater WildCam to its portfolio  that includes Mashatu Game Reserve in Botswana and others that allow viewers to watch the activities of grizzlies, polar bears and other charismatic 
megafauna.

The new camera pans the undersea world 66 feet below the surface at Glover's Reef, a World Heritage Site on the barrier reef off the Central American country of Belize. Think of it as one of those video fish tanks, but the fish are real.

Web watchers can see wild marine life swim past in real time—at least during daylight hours. The reef has crystal-clear waters, colorful reef fish and the hypnotic sashaying of sea fans and soft corals.

http://snipurl.com/4nt3r


Britain to Allow Animal-Human Hybrid Embryos for Research
from the Seattle Times

LONDON (Associated Press)—British plans to allow scientists to use hybrid animal-human embryos for stem-cell research won final approval from lawmakers Wednesday in a sweeping overhaul of sensitive science laws.

The House of Commons also clarified laws that allow the screening of embryos to produce babies with suitable bone marrow or other material for transplant to sick siblings. It was the first review of embryo science in Britain in almost 20 years.

The legislators voted 355-129 to authorize the proposals after months of sometimes bitter debate that has pitted Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government and scientists against religious leaders, anti-abortion campaigners and others anxious about medical advances.

http://snipurl.com/4n4c8


Hubble Back to Work This Weekend, NASA Says
from National Geographic News

The Hubble Space Telescope could resume scientific observations as early as this weekend, NASA officials said Thursday.

The 18-year-old spacecraft has not gathered data since September 27, when its data formatter, which sends information back to Earth, stopped working.

Last week NASA engineers put several key Hubble computers and all of its scientific instruments into safe mode so the team could switch to a backup formatter. Although the data formatter turned on, it mysteriously reset after a matter of hours, as did a backup computer used to manage Hubble's suite of cameras and other instruments.

http://snipurl.com/4nq68

[Kai]

And this, because it has great implications to biologists.

DNA Barcoding All Our Flora and Fauna
from the Telegraph (UK)

Imagine going for a walk and spotting a wild flower. Its beauty and fragrance delight you but the name eludes you. No problem. You whip out a hand-held scanner, about the size of a mobile phone, and pop a fragment of a leaf into the device. A few seconds, and the read-out tells you that you're looking at a pyramidal orchid. Satisfied, you continue on your way.

Sound far-fetched? Not at all. Scientists are currently gathering a DNA barcode for every species of plant and animal on the planet. It won't be long before everyone, from experts to amateurs, will be able to scan the world's flora and fauna as if they were checking out groceries at a supermarket, to look up or confirm their identities.

There are numerous practical uses, too. Such a device would let you scan fish at the fishmonger's to check if it's been labelled properly, work out exactly what is in your mixed vegetable soup, and confirm whether a piece of furniture really has come from a renewable forest, as the retailer claims.

http://snipurl.com/4kigk

[Kai]

October 21, 2008

Virtual Fossils from 425 Million-year-old Volcanic Ash
from American Scientist

What is a fossil? This word can mean many things, but it usually refers to the mineralized skeleton of some extinct organism—a trilobite or dinosaur, for example—which resists degradation and thus survives the eons largely intact. The fossil record of such hard parts, however, captures only a minority of invertebrates, because up to two-thirds of these species are soft-bodied—they have no shells at all.

Fortunately, circumstances occasionally conspire to preserve evidence of these creatures. In an American Scientist article, a research team relates such an example, one that reveals an amazing amount of detail about animals that lived during the Silurian Period.

... More than a decade ago, they found a diverse, well-preserved assemblage of largely soft-bodied fossils from the Silurian Period in Herefordshire, England. Because they are from a typical marine setting, these remarkable fossils provide important insights into the early evolution of life in the ocean.

http://snipurl.com/4ja6p


Space Probe Is On Its Way
from the San Antonio Express-News

A new space probe from San Antonio's Southwest Research Institute left Earth with a flawless launch Sunday to begin a two-year mission that will chart the boundaries of the solar system.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer soared into space aboard an Orbital Space Sciences Pegasus rocket that fired as planned at 12:48 p.m. CDT, moments after dropping from the belly of a modified airliner that flew across the South Pacific near Kwajalein Atoll.

... The institute's Dave McComas is the lead scientist on the $169 million NASA-funded probe, which is the first to focus on the heliosphere, a protective balloon that the hot solar wind inflates around the solar system, protecting it from the dangerous radiation in the galaxy beyond. IBEX will study the distant region where the solar wind collides with the cold space of the interstellar medium.

http://snipurl.com/4j6dn


Personalized Cancer Treatment Offers New Range of Options
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The one thing Kevin Carlberg refused to face after his diagnosis with brain cancer in 2002 was anyone's estimate for how long he might live. His doctors and his family all knew the number: six to 18 months.

"I understand the averages," says Carlberg, a rock musician who had just released a CD and was two months from his wedding date when he was told he had the worst stage of the worst kind of brain cancer, glioblastoma. "But every person is different."

Those words could serve as the new mantra in medicine. After having his tumor removed and undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, he received a novel treatment that was designed using his own white blood cells and proteins taken from his tumor to prod his immune system into recognizing and attacking more cancer in his body. It's an example of a growing healthcare strategy known as personalized medicine.

http://snipurl.com/4jcfg 


Geoengineering: How to Cool Earth—At a Price
from Scientific American

When David W. Keith, a physicist and energy expert at the University of Calgary in Alberta, gives lectures these days on geoengineering, he likes to point out how old the idea is. People have been talking about deliberately altering climate to counter global warming, he says, for as long as they have been worrying about global warming itself.

As early as 1965, when Al Gore was a freshman in college, a panel of distinguished environmental scientists warned President Lyndon B. Johnson that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels might cause "marked changes in climate" that "could be deleterious." Yet the scientists did not so much as mention the possibility of reducing emissions.

Instead they considered one idea: "spreading very small reflective particles" over about five million square miles of ocean, so as to bounce about 1 percent more sunlight back to space—"a wacky geoengineering solution," Keith says, "that doesn't even work." In the decades since, geoengineering ideas never died, but they did get pushed to the fringe ... Three recent developments have brought them back into the mainstream.

http://snipurl.com/4j8y2


Molecules That Matter
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

"Molecules That Matter," a traveling exhibit that opened to the public at the newly renovated Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia earlier this month, ties the history of the 20th century to a handful of the most influential molecules of the period.

The goal of the exhibit is simple: to help the public, who typically cringes at memories from high school chemistry classes, to connect chemical discoveries to the products they use everyday.

And connect it does. Brightly colored models of penicillin G, DDT, and Prozac molecules ... hover above visitors from the exhibit ceiling. Contemporary art and artifacts—including marble sculptures of genetically-modified rats and a 1960 magazine cover addressing the controversy surrounding "the pill"—mingle in the museum. A display case of consumer products born out of the 20th century chemical discoveries, like Tupperware and pantyhose, allows visitors to follow a timeline of chemistry's rise to popular prominence.

http://snipurl.com/4j9co


Fatty Acids Clue to Alzheimer's
from BBC News Online

Controlling the level of a fatty acid in the brain could help treat Alzheimer's disease, an American study has suggested.

Tests on mice showed that reducing excess levels of the acid lessened animals' memory problems and behavioural changes. Writing in Nature Neuroscience, the team said fatty acid levels could be controlled through diet or drugs.

A UK Alzheimer's expert called the work "robust and exciting." ... Scientists from Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and the University of California looked at fatty acids in the brains of normal mice and compared them with those in mice genetically engineered to have an Alzheimer's-like condition. They identified raised levels of a fatty acid called arachidonic acid in the brains of the Alzheimer's mice.

http://snipurl.com/4j9hz


Migrating Pollock Could Lead to a New Dispute with Russia
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

DUTCH HARBOR, ALASKA—America's biggest catch lands here and at nearby ports every year: more than 2 billion pounds of Alaskan pollock to feed a global appetite for fish sticks, fast-food sandwiches and imitation crabmeat.

The tightly managed Alaskan pollock fishery has been a rare success story in the U.S., which has seen the collapse of species such as New England cod and now imports 80% of its seafood.

Yet the careful management that helped make Alaskan pollock a billion-dollar industry could unravel as the planet warms. Pollock and other fish in the Bering Sea are moving to higher latitudes as winter ice retreats and water temperatures rise. Alaskan pollock are becoming Russian pollock, swimming across an international boundary in search of food and setting off what could become a geopolitical dispute.

http://snipurl.com/4jcku 


Risk of Disease Rises With Water Temperatures
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

When a 1991 cholera outbreak that killed thousands in Peru was traced to plankton blooms fueled by warmer-than-usual coastal waters, linking disease outbreaks to epidemics was a new idea.

Now, scientists say, it is a near-certainty that global warming will drive significant increases in waterborne diseases around the world.

Rainfalls will be heavier, triggering sewage overflows, contaminating drinking water and endangering beachgoers. Higher lake and ocean temperatures will cause bacteria, parasites and algal blooms to flourish. Warmer weather and heavier rains also will mean more mosquitoes, which can carry the West Nile virus, malaria and dengue fever. Fresh produce and shellfish are more likely to become contaminated.

http://snipurl.com/4kaop


Rock Records Dino 'Dance Floor'
from BBC News Online

Scientists have identified an amazing collection of dinosaur footprints on the Arizona-Utah border in the US. There are so many prints—more than 1,000—that geologists have dubbed the site "a dinosaur dance floor."

Located within the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, the marks were long thought simply to be potholes gouged out of the rock by years of erosion. A paper describing the 190-million-year-old footprints is published in the palaeontology journal Palaios.

"Get out there and try stepping in their footsteps, and you feel like you are playing the game 'Dance Dance Revolution' that teenagers dance on," says Professor Marjorie Chan from the University of Utah.

http://snipurl.com/4kb4g   


A Taste for Blood
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

With his soft voice and friar's manner, Louis Sorkin hardly seems the type to flout the sensible advice of a nursery rhyme. Yet on a recent afternoon at the American Museum of Natural History, Mr. Sorkin, a renowned entomologist, did precisely, luridly that.

He took a glass jar swarming with thousands of hungry specimens of Cimex lectularius, better known as bedbugs. The small, roachy-looking bloodsuckers have been spreading through the nation's homes and hotels at such a hyperventilated pace that by next year they are expected to displace cockroaches and termites as America's leading domestic pest insect. To better understand their habits, Mr. Sorkin has cultivated a personal bedbug colony—very personal.

... Mr. Sorkin and his bedbugs are featured in the newly published "Dark Banquet," a jaunty, instructive and charmingly graphic look at nature's born phlebotomists—creatures from wildly different twigs of the phylogenetic tree that all happen to share a fondness for blood.

http://snipurl.com/4kar4

[Kai]

October 21, 2008

Virtual Fossils from 425 Million-year-old Volcanic Ash
from American Scientist

What is a fossil? This word can mean many things, but it usually refers to the mineralized skeleton of some extinct organism—a trilobite or dinosaur, for example—which resists degradation and thus survives the eons largely intact. The fossil record of such hard parts, however, captures only a minority of invertebrates, because up to two-thirds of these species are soft-bodied—they have no shells at all.

Fortunately, circumstances occasionally conspire to preserve evidence of these creatures. In an American Scientist article, a research team relates such an example, one that reveals an amazing amount of detail about animals that lived during the Silurian Period.

... More than a decade ago, they found a diverse, well-preserved assemblage of largely soft-bodied fossils from the Silurian Period in Herefordshire, England. Because they are from a typical marine setting, these remarkable fossils provide important insights into the early evolution of life in the ocean.

http://snipurl.com/4ja6p


Space Probe Is On Its Way
from the San Antonio Express-News

A new space probe from San Antonio's Southwest Research Institute left Earth with a flawless launch Sunday to begin a two-year mission that will chart the boundaries of the solar system.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer soared into space aboard an Orbital Space Sciences Pegasus rocket that fired as planned at 12:48 p.m. CDT, moments after dropping from the belly of a modified airliner that flew across the South Pacific near Kwajalein Atoll.

... The institute's Dave McComas is the lead scientist on the $169 million NASA-funded probe, which is the first to focus on the heliosphere, a protective balloon that the hot solar wind inflates around the solar system, protecting it from the dangerous radiation in the galaxy beyond. IBEX will study the distant region where the solar wind collides with the cold space of the interstellar medium.

http://snipurl.com/4j6dn


Personalized Cancer Treatment Offers New Range of Options
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The one thing Kevin Carlberg refused to face after his diagnosis with brain cancer in 2002 was anyone's estimate for how long he might live. His doctors and his family all knew the number: six to 18 months.

"I understand the averages," says Carlberg, a rock musician who had just released a CD and was two months from his wedding date when he was told he had the worst stage of the worst kind of brain cancer, glioblastoma. "But every person is different."

Those words could serve as the new mantra in medicine. After having his tumor removed and undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, he received a novel treatment that was designed using his own white blood cells and proteins taken from his tumor to prod his immune system into recognizing and attacking more cancer in his body. It's an example of a growing healthcare strategy known as personalized medicine.

http://snipurl.com/4jcfg 


Geoengineering: How to Cool Earth—At a Price
from Scientific American

When David W. Keith, a physicist and energy expert at the University of Calgary in Alberta, gives lectures these days on geoengineering, he likes to point out how old the idea is. People have been talking about deliberately altering climate to counter global warming, he says, for as long as they have been worrying about global warming itself.

As early as 1965, when Al Gore was a freshman in college, a panel of distinguished environmental scientists warned President Lyndon B. Johnson that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels might cause "marked changes in climate" that "could be deleterious." Yet the scientists did not so much as mention the possibility of reducing emissions.

Instead they considered one idea: "spreading very small reflective particles" over about five million square miles of ocean, so as to bounce about 1 percent more sunlight back to space—"a wacky geoengineering solution," Keith says, "that doesn't even work." In the decades since, geoengineering ideas never died, but they did get pushed to the fringe ... Three recent developments have brought them back into the mainstream.

http://snipurl.com/4j8y2


Molecules That Matter
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

"Molecules That Matter," a traveling exhibit that opened to the public at the newly renovated Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia earlier this month, ties the history of the 20th century to a handful of the most influential molecules of the period.

The goal of the exhibit is simple: to help the public, who typically cringes at memories from high school chemistry classes, to connect chemical discoveries to the products they use everyday.

And connect it does. Brightly colored models of penicillin G, DDT, and Prozac molecules ... hover above visitors from the exhibit ceiling. Contemporary art and artifacts—including marble sculptures of genetically-modified rats and a 1960 magazine cover addressing the controversy surrounding "the pill"—mingle in the museum. A display case of consumer products born out of the 20th century chemical discoveries, like Tupperware and pantyhose, allows visitors to follow a timeline of chemistry's rise to popular prominence.

http://snipurl.com/4j9co


Fatty Acids Clue to Alzheimer's
from BBC News Online

Controlling the level of a fatty acid in the brain could help treat Alzheimer's disease, an American study has suggested.

Tests on mice showed that reducing excess levels of the acid lessened animals' memory problems and behavioural changes. Writing in Nature Neuroscience, the team said fatty acid levels could be controlled through diet or drugs.

A UK Alzheimer's expert called the work "robust and exciting." ... Scientists from Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and the University of California looked at fatty acids in the brains of normal mice and compared them with those in mice genetically engineered to have an Alzheimer's-like condition. They identified raised levels of a fatty acid called arachidonic acid in the brains of the Alzheimer's mice.

http://snipurl.com/4j9hz


Migrating Pollock Could Lead to a New Dispute with Russia
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

DUTCH HARBOR, ALASKA—America's biggest catch lands here and at nearby ports every year: more than 2 billion pounds of Alaskan pollock to feed a global appetite for fish sticks, fast-food sandwiches and imitation crabmeat.

The tightly managed Alaskan pollock fishery has been a rare success story in the U.S., which has seen the collapse of species such as New England cod and now imports 80% of its seafood.

Yet the careful management that helped make Alaskan pollock a billion-dollar industry could unravel as the planet warms. Pollock and other fish in the Bering Sea are moving to higher latitudes as winter ice retreats and water temperatures rise. Alaskan pollock are becoming Russian pollock, swimming across an international boundary in search of food and setting off what could become a geopolitical dispute.

http://snipurl.com/4jcku 


Risk of Disease Rises With Water Temperatures
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

When a 1991 cholera outbreak that killed thousands in Peru was traced to plankton blooms fueled by warmer-than-usual coastal waters, linking disease outbreaks to epidemics was a new idea.

Now, scientists say, it is a near-certainty that global warming will drive significant increases in waterborne diseases around the world.

Rainfalls will be heavier, triggering sewage overflows, contaminating drinking water and endangering beachgoers. Higher lake and ocean temperatures will cause bacteria, parasites and algal blooms to flourish. Warmer weather and heavier rains also will mean more mosquitoes, which can carry the West Nile virus, malaria and dengue fever. Fresh produce and shellfish are more likely to become contaminated.

http://snipurl.com/4kaop


Rock Records Dino 'Dance Floor'
from BBC News Online

Scientists have identified an amazing collection of dinosaur footprints on the Arizona-Utah border in the US. There are so many prints—more than 1,000—that geologists have dubbed the site "a dinosaur dance floor."

Located within the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, the marks were long thought simply to be potholes gouged out of the rock by years of erosion. A paper describing the 190-million-year-old footprints is published in the palaeontology journal Palaios.

"Get out there and try stepping in their footsteps, and you feel like you are playing the game 'Dance Dance Revolution' that teenagers dance on," says Professor Marjorie Chan from the University of Utah.

http://snipurl.com/4kb4g   


A Taste for Blood
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

With his soft voice and friar's manner, Louis Sorkin hardly seems the type to flout the sensible advice of a nursery rhyme. Yet on a recent afternoon at the American Museum of Natural History, Mr. Sorkin, a renowned entomologist, did precisely, luridly that.

He took a glass jar swarming with thousands of hungry specimens of Cimex lectularius, better known as bedbugs. The small, roachy-looking bloodsuckers have been spreading through the nation's homes and hotels at such a hyperventilated pace that by next year they are expected to displace cockroaches and termites as America's leading domestic pest insect. To better understand their habits, Mr. Sorkin has cultivated a personal bedbug colony—very personal.

... Mr. Sorkin and his bedbugs are featured in the newly published "Dark Banquet," a jaunty, instructive and charmingly graphic look at nature's born phlebotomists—creatures from wildly different twigs of the phylogenetic tree that all happen to share a fondness for blood.

http://snipurl.com/4kar4

[Kai]

October 21, 2008

Virtual Fossils from 425 Million-year-old Volcanic Ash
from American Scientist

What is a fossil? This word can mean many things, but it usually refers to the mineralized skeleton of some extinct organism—a trilobite or dinosaur, for example—which resists degradation and thus survives the eons largely intact. The fossil record of such hard parts, however, captures only a minority of invertebrates, because up to two-thirds of these species are soft-bodied—they have no shells at all.

Fortunately, circumstances occasionally conspire to preserve evidence of these creatures. In an American Scientist article, a research team relates such an example, one that reveals an amazing amount of detail about animals that lived during the Silurian Period.

... More than a decade ago, they found a diverse, well-preserved assemblage of largely soft-bodied fossils from the Silurian Period in Herefordshire, England. Because they are from a typical marine setting, these remarkable fossils provide important insights into the early evolution of life in the ocean.

http://snipurl.com/4ja6p


Space Probe Is On Its Way
from the San Antonio Express-News

A new space probe from San Antonio's Southwest Research Institute left Earth with a flawless launch Sunday to begin a two-year mission that will chart the boundaries of the solar system.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer soared into space aboard an Orbital Space Sciences Pegasus rocket that fired as planned at 12:48 p.m. CDT, moments after dropping from the belly of a modified airliner that flew across the South Pacific near Kwajalein Atoll.

... The institute's Dave McComas is the lead scientist on the $169 million NASA-funded probe, which is the first to focus on the heliosphere, a protective balloon that the hot solar wind inflates around the solar system, protecting it from the dangerous radiation in the galaxy beyond. IBEX will study the distant region where the solar wind collides with the cold space of the interstellar medium.

http://snipurl.com/4j6dn


Personalized Cancer Treatment Offers New Range of Options
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The one thing Kevin Carlberg refused to face after his diagnosis with brain cancer in 2002 was anyone's estimate for how long he might live. His doctors and his family all knew the number: six to 18 months.

"I understand the averages," says Carlberg, a rock musician who had just released a CD and was two months from his wedding date when he was told he had the worst stage of the worst kind of brain cancer, glioblastoma. "But every person is different."

Those words could serve as the new mantra in medicine. After having his tumor removed and undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, he received a novel treatment that was designed using his own white blood cells and proteins taken from his tumor to prod his immune system into recognizing and attacking more cancer in his body. It's an example of a growing healthcare strategy known as personalized medicine.

http://snipurl.com/4jcfg 


Geoengineering: How to Cool Earth—At a Price
from Scientific American

When David W. Keith, a physicist and energy expert at the University of Calgary in Alberta, gives lectures these days on geoengineering, he likes to point out how old the idea is. People have been talking about deliberately altering climate to counter global warming, he says, for as long as they have been worrying about global warming itself.

As early as 1965, when Al Gore was a freshman in college, a panel of distinguished environmental scientists warned President Lyndon B. Johnson that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels might cause "marked changes in climate" that "could be deleterious." Yet the scientists did not so much as mention the possibility of reducing emissions.

Instead they considered one idea: "spreading very small reflective particles" over about five million square miles of ocean, so as to bounce about 1 percent more sunlight back to space—"a wacky geoengineering solution," Keith says, "that doesn't even work." In the decades since, geoengineering ideas never died, but they did get pushed to the fringe ... Three recent developments have brought them back into the mainstream.

http://snipurl.com/4j8y2


Molecules That Matter
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

"Molecules That Matter," a traveling exhibit that opened to the public at the newly renovated Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia earlier this month, ties the history of the 20th century to a handful of the most influential molecules of the period.

The goal of the exhibit is simple: to help the public, who typically cringes at memories from high school chemistry classes, to connect chemical discoveries to the products they use everyday.

And connect it does. Brightly colored models of penicillin G, DDT, and Prozac molecules ... hover above visitors from the exhibit ceiling. Contemporary art and artifacts—including marble sculptures of genetically-modified rats and a 1960 magazine cover addressing the controversy surrounding "the pill"—mingle in the museum. A display case of consumer products born out of the 20th century chemical discoveries, like Tupperware and pantyhose, allows visitors to follow a timeline of chemistry's rise to popular prominence.

http://snipurl.com/4j9co


Fatty Acids Clue to Alzheimer's
from BBC News Online

Controlling the level of a fatty acid in the brain could help treat Alzheimer's disease, an American study has suggested.

Tests on mice showed that reducing excess levels of the acid lessened animals' memory problems and behavioural changes. Writing in Nature Neuroscience, the team said fatty acid levels could be controlled through diet or drugs.

A UK Alzheimer's expert called the work "robust and exciting." ... Scientists from Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and the University of California looked at fatty acids in the brains of normal mice and compared them with those in mice genetically engineered to have an Alzheimer's-like condition. They identified raised levels of a fatty acid called arachidonic acid in the brains of the Alzheimer's mice.

http://snipurl.com/4j9hz


Migrating Pollock Could Lead to a New Dispute with Russia
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

DUTCH HARBOR, ALASKA—America's biggest catch lands here and at nearby ports every year: more than 2 billion pounds of Alaskan pollock to feed a global appetite for fish sticks, fast-food sandwiches and imitation crabmeat.

The tightly managed Alaskan pollock fishery has been a rare success story in the U.S., which has seen the collapse of species such as New England cod and now imports 80% of its seafood.

Yet the careful management that helped make Alaskan pollock a billion-dollar industry could unravel as the planet warms. Pollock and other fish in the Bering Sea are moving to higher latitudes as winter ice retreats and water temperatures rise. Alaskan pollock are becoming Russian pollock, swimming across an international boundary in search of food and setting off what could become a geopolitical dispute.

http://snipurl.com/4jcku 


Risk of Disease Rises With Water Temperatures
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

When a 1991 cholera outbreak that killed thousands in Peru was traced to plankton blooms fueled by warmer-than-usual coastal waters, linking disease outbreaks to epidemics was a new idea.

Now, scientists say, it is a near-certainty that global warming will drive significant increases in waterborne diseases around the world.

Rainfalls will be heavier, triggering sewage overflows, contaminating drinking water and endangering beachgoers. Higher lake and ocean temperatures will cause bacteria, parasites and algal blooms to flourish. Warmer weather and heavier rains also will mean more mosquitoes, which can carry the West Nile virus, malaria and dengue fever. Fresh produce and shellfish are more likely to become contaminated.

http://snipurl.com/4kaop


Rock Records Dino 'Dance Floor'
from BBC News Online

Scientists have identified an amazing collection of dinosaur footprints on the Arizona-Utah border in the US. There are so many prints—more than 1,000—that geologists have dubbed the site "a dinosaur dance floor."

Located within the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, the marks were long thought simply to be potholes gouged out of the rock by years of erosion. A paper describing the 190-million-year-old footprints is published in the palaeontology journal Palaios.

"Get out there and try stepping in their footsteps, and you feel like you are playing the game 'Dance Dance Revolution' that teenagers dance on," says Professor Marjorie Chan from the University of Utah.

http://snipurl.com/4kb4g   


A Taste for Blood
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

With his soft voice and friar's manner, Louis Sorkin hardly seems the type to flout the sensible advice of a nursery rhyme. Yet on a recent afternoon at the American Museum of Natural History, Mr. Sorkin, a renowned entomologist, did precisely, luridly that.

He took a glass jar swarming with thousands of hungry specimens of Cimex lectularius, better known as bedbugs. The small, roachy-looking bloodsuckers have been spreading through the nation's homes and hotels at such a hyperventilated pace that by next year they are expected to displace cockroaches and termites as America's leading domestic pest insect. To better understand their habits, Mr. Sorkin has cultivated a personal bedbug colony—very personal.

... Mr. Sorkin and his bedbugs are featured in the newly published "Dark Banquet," a jaunty, instructive and charmingly graphic look at nature's born phlebotomists—creatures from wildly different twigs of the phylogenetic tree that all happen to share a fondness for blood.

http://snipurl.com/4kar4

[Eve]

A Taste for Blood
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

With his soft voice and friar's manner, Louis Sorkin hardly seems the type to flout the sensible advice of a nursery rhyme. Yet on a recent afternoon at the American Museum of Natural History, Mr. Sorkin, a renowned entomologist, did precisely, luridly that.

He took a glass jar swarming with thousands of hungry specimens of Cimex lectularius, better known as bedbugs. The small, roachy-looking bloodsuckers have been spreading through the nation's homes and hotels at such a hyperventilated pace that by next year they are expected to displace cockroaches and termites as America's leading domestic pest insect. To better understand their habits, Mr. Sorkin has cultivated a personal bedbug colony—very personal.

... Mr. Sorkin and his bedbugs are featured in the newly published "Dark Banquet," a jaunty, instructive and charmingly graphic look at nature's born phlebotomists—creatures from wildly different twigs of the phylogenetic tree that all happen to share a fondness for blood.

http://snipurl.com/4kar4