Weekly Science Headlines

[Kai]

November 4, 2008

The Safety Gap
from the New York Times Magazine (Registration Required)

In the belly of an industrial district south of Lyon, France, just past a sulfurous oil refinery and a synthetic vanilla plant, sits a run-down, eight-story factory that makes aspirin, the first pharmaceutical blockbuster.

The Lyon factory is the last of its kind. No other major facility in Europe or the United States makes generic aspirin anymore. The market has been taken over by low-cost Chinese producers. 

... European factories close; Chinese ones open. Consumers like their commodities cheap, in the case of aspirin as with everything else. China now produces about two-thirds of all aspirin and is poised to become the world's sole global supplier in the not-too-distant future. But are the Chinese factories safe? Who knows? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and other competent government regulators rarely, if ever, inspect them.

http://snipurl.com/4xoa9


Scientists to Measure Effects of Earthquakes on Acropolis
from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)

ATHENS, Greece (Associated Press)—For thousands of years the Acropolis has withstood earthquakes, weathered storms and endured temperature extremes, from scorching summers to winter snow.

Now scientists are drawing on the latest technology to install a system that will record just how much nature is affecting the 2,500-year-old site. They hope their findings will help identify areas that could be vulnerable, allowing them to target restoration and maintenance.

Scientists are installing a network of fiber optic sensors and accelerographs—instruments that measure how much movement is generated during a quake.

http://snipurl.com/4wh1s


Persistence Pays Off With New Drug for Gout
from the (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer

The line of work Dr. Mike Hershfield has pursued for most of his 32-year research career at Duke University is basically scientific social service. He adopts orphans.

Specifically, he takes on so-called orphan diseases—afflictions so rare that the big pharmaceutical companies have no financial incentive to develop treatments.

Hershfield and his team at Duke are among more than a dozen research groups at Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill and private biotech companies in the Research Triangle Park area that have contributed to a wave of new treatments for people suffering from diseases such as immune disorders, rare cancers and cystic fibrosis. Each disease afflicts fewer than 200,000 Americans, but all the orphan diseases added together strike an estimated 25 million.

http://snipurl.com/4xo11


Extra-Nutritious Bioengineered Foods Still Years Away
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

For years, advocates of agricultural biotechnology have promised a future in which foods will be genetically engineered to give more nutrition and to prevent chronic diseases, in which crops will be modified to thrive in salty soil or hot or dry climates and in which consumers will benefit directly from science's ability to tweak other characteristics of plants.

So far, however, that has generally not happened, and the main beneficiaries of agricultural biotechnology remain farmers battling pests and weeds that threaten staple crops such as soybeans, corn and cotton, as well as the companies that develop and produce genetically modified seeds.

But last week, consumers were reminded of what might be available in the future. Researchers at the British-government-sponsored John Innes Center announced that they had developed a purple tomato that has high levels of beneficial anthocyanins—antioxidants known to neutralize potentially harmful oxygen molecules, or free radicals, in the body and reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. The genes for the purple tomato came from snapdragons.

http://snipurl.com/4z8b0



Many More Children on Medication, Study Says
from the Baltimore Sun

Hundreds of thousands more children are taking medications for chronic diseases, with a huge spike over a four-year period in the number given drugs to treat conditions once seen primarily in adults and now linked to what has become an epidemic of childhood obesity.

In a study appearing yesterday in the journal Pediatrics, researchers saw surges in the number of U.S. children taking prescription medicines for diabetes and asthma, with smaller increases in those taking drugs for high blood pressure or high cholesterol. All of those conditions, to varying degrees, have been associated with obesity.

Though doctors have been seeing the trend in their practices, "the rate of rise is what's surprising," said Dr. Donna R. Halloran, a pediatrician at St. Louis University in Missouri and one of the study's authors.

http://snipurl.com/4z8si


Unknotting Knot Theory
from Science News

Sometimes, a simple, even childish question turns out to be connected to the deepest secrets of the universe. Here's one: How many different ways can you tie your shoelaces?

Mathematicians have been puzzling over that question for a century or two, and the main thing they've discovered is that the question is really, really hard. In the last decade, though, they've developed some powerful new tools inspired by physics that have pried a few answers from the universe's clutches.

Even more exciting is that the new tools seem to be the tip of a much larger theory that mathematicians are just beginning to uncover. That larger mathematical theory, if it exists, may help crack some of the hardest mathematical questions there are, questions about the mathematical structure of the three- and four-dimensional space where we live.

http://snipurl.com/4z8x2


Success in Treating Childhood Anxiety
from the Philadelphia Inquirer

More than 80 percent of children suffering from the most common psychiatric disorders—anxieties and phobias that can make them fear the future and avoid trick-or-treating—dramatically improved on a combination of medication and 12 weeks of therapy, researchers reported last week in the biggest study of its kind.

Nearly 60 percent were helped by either the antidepressant alone or the cognitive behavioral therapy program that was developed by a Temple University psychologist two decades ago and is now used around the world.

The Coping Cat program—aka Coping Bear in Canada and Coping Koala in Australia—encourages children to recognize, experience and then master their fears. ... Estimates of the number of children with debilitating anxieties or social phobias vary wildly. Many experts think it is about 10 percent of American children and adolescents.

http://snipurl.com/4z967


Researcher Seeks Clues to Aging in Our DNA
from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Here's the dilemma. At a fundamental level, we age because our cells stop dividing and multiplying. So why shouldn't medical science try to extend our lifespans and improve our health in old age by making sure our cells keep proliferating?

The answer is cancer. Any measures we take to keep tissues growing might raise the odds of cancer, which is characterized by cells that never stop dividing.

Patricia Opresko lives at the intersection of this quandary. A researcher at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, Dr. Opresko studies the basic mechanisms of why cells age, partly by specializing in a rare premature aging malady known as Werner syndrome.

http://snipurl.com/4z9ac


Utilities Putting New Energy Into Geothermal Sources
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

RENO, NV—Not far from the blinking casinos of this gambler's paradise lies what could be called the Biggest Little Power Plant in the World.

Tucked into a few dusty acres across from a shopping mall, it uses steam heat from deep within the Earth's crust to generate electricity. Known as geothermal, the energy is clean, reliable and so abundant that this facility produces more than enough electricity to power every home in Reno, population 221,000.

... Geothermal energy may be the most prolific renewable fuel source that most people have never heard of. Although the supply is virtually limitless, the massive upfront costs required to extract it have long rendered geothermal a novelty. But that's changing fast as this old-line industry buzzes with activity after decades of stagnation.

http://snipurl.com/4zbp4 


Study: Sex on TV Linked to Teen Pregnancies
from MSNBC

In the world of television programming, sex sells—perhaps a little too well with young viewers, a new study suggests.

The RAND Corp. study is the first of its kind to identify a link between teenagers' exposure to sexual content on TV and teen pregnancies. The study, released Monday and published in the November edition of the journal Pediatrics, found that teens exposed to high levels of sexual content on television were twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy in the following three years as teens with limited exposure.

The study's authors are quick to point out that the factors leading to teen pregnancies are varied and complex—but they say it's important for parents, teachers and pediatricians to understand that TV can be one of them.

http://snipurl.com/4zgmk

[Kai]

November 6, 2008

Unknown "Structures" Tugging at Universe, Study Says
from National Geographic News

Something may be out there. Way out there. On the outskirts of creation, unknown, unseen "structures" are tugging on our universe like cosmic magnets, a controversial new study says.

Everything in the known universe is said to be racing toward the massive clumps of matter at more than 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) an hour—a movement the researchers have dubbed dark flow.

The presence of the extra-universal matter suggests that our universe is part of something bigger—a multiverse—and that whatever is out there is very different from the universe we know, according to study leader Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The theory could rewrite the laws of physics.

http://snipurl.com/5660v 


Obama Promises New Era of Scientific Innovation
from New Scientist

Tuesday, the American people chose Barack Obama as the country's 44th president, promising a sea change in US policy that could affect not just the US, but the whole world. New Scientist takes a look at what Obama has pledged over the lengthy presidential campaign, to see what his administration will mean for science and technology.

In September, Obama unveiled a comprehensive Science and Technology Policy. In it he promised to lead a new era of scientific innovation in America and to restore integrity to US science policy. This would be achieved by doubling the federal investment in basic research and by addressing the "grand challenges" of the 21st century, he said. The rhetoric gained him the public endorsement of 61 Nobel laureates.

Obama lacks a science background, though, and over the past 50 years it has been Republican, rather than Democratic administrations, that have tended to spend more on science. Whether Obama and his team can buck this trend in the current dire financial situation remains to be seen.

http://snipurl.com/554xp


Oldest Evidence for Complex Life in Doubt
from Science News

Chemical biomarkers in ancient Australian rocks, once thought to be the oldest known evidence of complex life on Earth, may have infiltrated long after the sediments were laid down, new analyses suggest.

The evidence was based on biomarkers—distinctive chemical compounds produced today by modern-day relatives of cyanobacteria and other complex life forms. In 1999, a team of researchers contended that the biomarkers in the 2.7-billion–year-old rocks pushed back the origins of cyanobacteria by at least 550 million years and of eukaryotes by about a billion years.

Although some scientists interpret the new findings, published in the Oct. 23 Nature, as disproving the older dates, others contend that the results still allow for the presence of the organisms or their kin at that time.

http://snipurl.com/5552v 


At Specialty Garage, Making Hybrids Even Greener
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

SAN FRANCISCO—The fig tree and the philodendron are the first things that meet the eye in the repair bay of Luscious Garage. Then the two Toyota Priuses come into focus—one with a slightly dented rear door, the other on a lift with two tires off and rusty brake rotors exposed.

Then comes the eerie sense that something is missing: grime. "You could eat off her floor," said Sara Bernard, the customer in need of brake repair.

The only hybrid specialty garage run by a woman has opened in the Bay Area, which has more Priuses—70,000 as of 2006—than most states. And while its owner, Carolyn Coquillette, has a preoccupation with cleanliness that may not be unique in a mechanic's shop, her ubiquitous recycling containers (for paper, plastic, rubber, metal and oil) and the solar panels on her roof set Luscious apart. So does its specialty: giving hybrid owners the option of going fully electric.

http://snipurl.com/5558a


Authorities Hope Beetle Invasion Can Be Ground to a Halt
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

WORCESTER, Mass. (Associated Press)—A wood-devouring beetle has gained a foothold in New England, and authorities plan to cut down large numbers of infested trees and grind them up to stop the pest from spreading to the region's celebrated forests and ravaging the timber, tourism and maple-syrup industries.

The infestation of Asian longhorned beetles in the Worcester area marks the fourth time the pests have been found in trees in the United States and the closest they have ever come to New England's great woods, which erupt in dazzling colors in the fall.

"This insect scares us to death because, if it ever got loose in the forests of New England, it would be just about impossible to contain and it'd change the landscape dramatically," said Tom McCrumm, coordinator of the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association.

http://snipurl.com/555cz


Folic Acid, B Vitamins Offer No Cancer Protection
from USA Today

Researchers have more disappointing news for people who hope to protect their health with vitamins.

In the longest-running trial of its kind, doctors found that folic acid and other B vitamins didn't prevent breast cancer or cancer in general, according to a seven-year study of 5,442 women in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers randomly assigned some of the women to take the supplements—folic acid, vitamin B-6 and vitamin B-12—and others to get placebos. Neither the women nor their doctors knew which pills they were taking—a type of trial that is widely considered the "gold standard" for medical evidence.

http://snipurl.com/555hz 


Golf Secret Not All in the Wrists
from BBC News Online

After decades of research, the world may be closer to the perfect golf swing. The key, according to University of Surrey engineer Robin Sharp, is not to use full power from the start, but to build up to it quickly.

Surprisingly, the wrists do not play a critical role in the swing's outcome, according to the new model. The analysis also shows that while bigger golfers might hit the ball further, it is not by much.

Any golfer will tell you that the idea of swinging harder to hit farther is not as straightforward as it might seem; the new results indicate that how—and when—the power develops is the key to distance. Professor Sharp's work is based on a little-used model in which a golfer employs three points of rotation: the shoulders relative to the spine, the arms relative to the shoulders and the wrists relative to the arms.

http://snipurl.com/555ll


Scientists Work at Recruiting "Good Bugs"
from the Seattle Times

WASHINGTON—For years, it has been easy to walk into a drugstore or health-food outlet and buy a variety of "probiotics"—natural dietary supplements such as Acidophilus or Lactinex—off the shelf to treat conditions such as children's eczema or traveler's diarrhea.

Unlike antibiotics, these self-help products don't kill germs, but they supposedly confer health benefits, the way vitamins and certain minerals do. Existing probiotics haven't been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or subjected to rigorous clinical trials. When tested, their effectiveness has been mixed, medical researchers said.

Scientists these days are trying to design "good bugs," novel forms of bacteria created in the laboratory to prevent or cure specific diseases, including HIV and cancer.

http://snipurl.com/555wt


Five Ways Brain Scans Mislead Us
from Scientific American

Over the past few hundred years, as scientists have grappled with understanding the source of the amazing processing power in our skulls, they have employed a number of metaphors based on familiar technologies of their given era. The brain has been thought of as a hydraulic machine (18th century), a mechanical calculator (19th century) and an electronic computer (20th century).

Today, early in the 21st century, we have another metaphor driven by the capabilities of the current technology—this time colorful images from modern brain scans. Evolutionary psychologists, for example, have conceptualized the brain as a Swiss Army knife, with a collection of specialized modules that have evolved to solve specific problems in our evolutionary history ...

... Scientists often use metaphors such as these as aids in understanding and explaining complex processes, but this practice necessarily oversimplifies the intricate and subtle realities of the physical world. As it turns out, the role of those blobs of color that we see in brain images is not as clear-cut as we have been led to believe.

http://snipurl.com/55cld 


Science-Fiction Author Michael Crichton Dies at 66
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Best-selling author Michael Crichton, who wrote such novels as "The Andromeda Strain" and "Jurassic Park," and created the popular TV drama "ER," has died at 66, his family said Wednesday.

Crichton, a medical doctor turned novelist whose books have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide, died "unexpectedly" Tuesday in Los Angeles after a private battle with cancer, his family said.

... Crichton was born in Chicago on Oct. 23, 1942 and wrote his first novels under pen names while attending Harvard Medical School. "The Andromeda Strain," which was published in 1969, became his first best-seller. In addition to "Jurassic Park" and its sequel, "The Lost World," which became blockbuster Hollywood films, Crichton wrote "Congo," "The Terminal Man," "Prey" and "State of Fear" among others.

http://snipurl.com/55fu9

[Kai]

November 14, 2008

First Images Captured of Alien Solar System
from New Scientist

Two new planetary systems have been imaged in the Milky Way: a star boasting three planetary siblings and another harbouring one at a large distance from its star.

Other candidate planets have been imaged near stars. But the new pictures are the first to capture the slow crawl of the planets around their host stars, confirming that they are indeed orbiting the stars.

"It's great to see the quest for direct imaging of extrasolar planets finally bearing fruit," says Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto, who was not associated with the two new studies. Direct images can detect planets at much greater distances from their stars than the techniques most commonly used today. Such faraway worlds could challenge the prevailing model of how planets form.

http://snipurl.com/5f53s


Young Innovators Learn to Pitch Big Ideas
from the Christian Science Monitor

You've got a world-changing idea. And a passion to make it happen. That's good. But you need a third element: The ability to "pitch" your idea to venture capitalists and others who can help turn your dream into reality.

Budding business tycoons or Hollywood script writers know the importance of marketing themselves and their projects. But those in the nonprofit world, whose goal is altruistic, may never have thought about how to put a dazzling sheen on their quick "elevator pitch."

Learning what goes into a perfect pitch was just one of the practical skills taught to a group of up-and-coming "social innovators" last month at the 12th annual PopTech conference in Camden, Maine. PopTech has always been a place to hear about new ideas to improve the world. But this year, greater efforts have been made to turn those ideas into a reality, says its curator and executive director, Andrew Zolli.

http://snipurl.com/5eymu


U.N. Report Sees New Pollution Threat
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

BEIJING—A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations.

The byproduct of automobiles, slash-and-burn agriculture, wood-burning kitchen stoves and coal-fired power plants, these plumes of carbon dust rise over southern Africa, the Amazon basin and North America. But they are most pronounced in Asia, where so-called atmospheric brown clouds are dramatically reducing sunlight in many Chinese cities and leading to decreased crop yields in swaths of rural India, say a team of more than a dozen scientists who have been studying the problem since 2002.

Combined with mounting evidence that greenhouse gases are leading to a rise in global temperatures, the report's authors called on governments both rich and poor to address the problem of carbon emissions.

http://snipurl.com/5exvf 


Same-Sex Heart Transplants Have Better Outcomes, Study Finds
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Heart transplant patients are as much as 25% more likely to survive if the sex of the donor is the same as the patient's, researchers said Wednesday. The results surprised experts because, for most types of transplants, sex differences are irrelevant as long as a good immunocompatability is achieved.

The worst results were in men who received hearts from smaller women, suggesting that the pumping capacity of the organ is crucial to the success of the procedure, according to the study, presented at a New Orleans meeting of the American Heart Assn.

But women were also somewhat more likely to reject transplants from males, perhaps because of lingering immune stimulation from earlier pregnancies, experts said.

http://snipurl.com/5ewll


Advice and Comment
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

From climate change and science education to energy and the space program, President Obama will be faced with a host of pressing issues in science, medicine and technology when he takes office in January.

The choices he makes—and the actions he takes—will affect all of us, immediately and far into the future, in ways both obvious and unforeseen.

Which problems should he tackle first? What is the top priority? What is most important? The San Diego Union-Tribune asked local scientists, doctors, teachers and thinkers for their ideas and insights. 

http://snipurl.com/5eyt3


How Rocks Evolve
from the Economist

Evolution has come a long way since Charles Darwin's time. Today it is not only animals and plants that are seen as having evolved over time, but also things that involve the hand of humans, like architecture, music, car design and even governments. Now rocks, too, seem to be showing evolutionary characteristics.

Rocks are made from minerals, which like all matter are composed of individual chemical elements. What makes minerals special is the way that the atoms of those elements are arranged in lattices which create unique crystalline structures and shapes. Today more than 4,000 different minerals can be found on Earth. When the planet began to be formed, however, few existed.

Curious as to how this great variety came about, Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC, and a team of colleagues set out on their own voyage of discovery. Their study, just published in American Mineralogist, explores the history of minerals by identifying how much of the diversity was created by the rocks alone and how much of it was created by the evolution of life.

http://snipurl.com/5f4w3 


Exploring Old Rome Without Air (or Time) Travel
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

ROME—First Google Earth turned millions of Internet users into virtual travelers who could fly to any spot on the globe. Then its Sky feature took them to other galaxies. Now Google Earth has embraced a frontier dating back 17 centuries: ancient Rome under Constantine the Great.

Soaring above a virtual reconstruction of the Forum and the Palatine Hill or zooming into the Colosseum to get a lion's-eye view of the stands, Google Earth's 400 million users will be able to explore the ancient capital as easily "as any city can be explored today," Michael T. Jones, chief technology officer of Google Earth, said Wednesday at a news conference at Rome's city hall.

Ancient Rome 3D, as the new feature is known, is a digital elaboration of some 7,000 buildings recreating Rome circa A.D. 320, at the height of Constantine's empire, when more than a million inhabitants lived within the city's Aurelian walls.

http://snipurl.com/5eqos


New Autism Loci Discovered
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

Two large-scale genetic analyses have turned up a trio of new sites associated with autism, including a large-effect allele that seems to reduce the risk of developing the debilitating brain disorder, researchers reported Wednesday at the American Society of Human Genetics meeting in Philadelphia.

Last year, the Autism Genome Project Consortium performed the largest genome-wide linkage scan to date with around 10,000 SNPs in 1,181 families with at least two affected individuals. The group flagged a handful of genomic regions harboring autism susceptibility genes, although none of the linkage results were statistically significant.

Now, a team led by Dan Arking, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University, has ramped up the SNP count to include around 500,000 markers in 802 affected pairs of siblings. They then eliminated all the error-prone or uninformative SNPs to amass a collection of 180,000 high-quality markers for their analysis. "It's the cleanest best set of markers you can imagine," Arking said at a press conference.

http://snipurl.com/5f58y


New Ice Age Predicted—But Averted by Global Warming?
from National Geographic News

Deep ice sheets would cover much of the Northern Hemisphere thousands of years from now—if it weren't for us pesky humans, a new study says.

Emissions of greenhouse gases—such as the carbon dioxide, or CO2, that comes from power plants and cars—are heating the atmosphere to such an extent that the next ice age, predicted to be the deepest in millions of years, may be postponed indefinitely.

"Climate skeptics could look at this and say, CO2 is good for us," said study leader Thomas Crowley of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. But the idea that global warming may be staving off an ice age is "not cause for relaxing, because we're actually moving into a highly unusual climate state," Crowley added.

http://snipurl.com/5f5ix


Bridge's Fall Blamed on Design
from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON—Bridge design errors that went unnoticed for decades and a failure to limit heavy construction on the span led to the Minnesota highway bridge collapse that killed 13 people last year, federal investigators said Thursday.

Fractures in undersized steel plates in the Minneapolis I-35W bridge ultimately caused the structure to shift and break apart on Aug. 1, 2007, according to testimony at a National Transportation Safety Board hearing.

Some 111 vehicles were on the deck truss bridge spanning the Mississippi River near downtown Minneapolis during the evening rush hour when some of the main trusses failed, causing about 1,000 feet of the bridge to fall into the river.

http://snipurl.com/5gh5i

[fomenter]

   

The world has never seen such freezing heat

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/11/2008

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

[Vene]

How Rocks Evolve
from the Economist

Evolution has come a long way since Charles Darwin's time. Today it is not only animals and plants that are seen as having evolved over time, but also things that involve the hand of humans, like architecture, music, car design and even governments. Now rocks, too, seem to be showing evolutionary characteristics.

Rocks are made from minerals, which like all matter are composed of individual chemical elements. What makes minerals special is the way that the atoms of those elements are arranged in lattices which create unique crystalline structures and shapes. Today more than 4,000 different minerals can be found on Earth. When the planet began to be formed, however, few existed.

Curious as to how this great variety came about, Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC, and a team of colleagues set out on their own voyage of discovery. Their study, just published in American Mineralogist, explores the history of minerals by identifying how much of the diversity was created by the rocks alone and how much of it was created by the evolution of life.

As if there aren't enough people out there confused by the theory of evolution.

[Kai]

Ugh. Yeah.

[Kai]

November 17, 2008

Mockingbird Specimens Sparked Darwin's Theory
from the Guardian (UK)

The significance of the two birds lying side by side on a purple cushion with tags dangling from their feet is easy to miss. But the subtle differences—a strip of white on the wing, a smudge of dark on the breast—set Charles Darwin on course to develop the most important scientific theory ever conceived: the evolution of species through natural selection.

The mockingbirds are perhaps the most important specimens Darwin collected from the Galapagos during his five-year voyage aboard HMS Beagle in the 1830s, and today they go on show as part of a major exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London.

It reveals Darwin as a tenacious scientist, a pragmatic lover, and a man pained by losing his religion. The exhibition is the centrepiece of a nationwide programme to mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birthday next February.

http://snipurl.com/5mtfy


The Child Trap: The Rise of Overparenting
from the New Yorker

... It used to be known as "spoiling." Now it is called "overparenting"—or "helicopter parenting" or "hothouse parenting" or "death-grip parenting." The term has changed because the pattern has changed.

It still includes spoiling—no rules, many toys—but two other, complicating factors have been added. One is anxiety. Will the child be permanently affected by the fate of the [late lamented] hamster? Did he touch the corpse, and get a germ? The other new element—at odds, it seems, with such solicitude—is achievement pressure.

The heck with the child's feelings. He has a nursery-school interview tomorrow. Will he be accepted? If not, how will he ever get into a good college? Overparenting is the subject of a number of recent books, and they all deplore it in the strongest possible terms.

http://snipurl.com/5mk0s


Bounty Lies Ahead in Scallop Fishery
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

Scallop fishermen on the East Coast can look forward to a big catch of the succulent shellfish a few years from now, a recent survey of sea scallops from Massachusetts to North Carolina suggests.

The survey, conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, found a spike in the number of young scallops or "recruits" that keep a fishery thriving.

After six poor years for recruits, Georges Bank, a prime fishing ground stretching from Newfoundland to Cape Cod, had its highest number of the small scallops since 2000, and the mid-Atlantic region had nearly its highest population of them since 1979.

http://snipurl.com/5ml0r


EPA Advisers Seek Perchlorate Review
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The Environmental Protection Agency's scientific advisers have warned the agency that it should delay final action on its decision not to set a federal drinking-water standard for perchlorate, a chemical in rocket fuel, because the computer model underlying the decision may have flaws.

In a letter last week, the heads of EPA's Science Advisory Board and its drinking water committee urged EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson to extend the public comment period on its preliminary determination to not regulate perchlorate. That decision is set to become final next month.

Perchlorate, which is present in the water systems of 35 states, accumulates in the body from consuming water, milk, lettuce and other common products and has been linked in scientific studies to thyroid problems in pregnant women, newborns and infants.

http://snipurl.com/5mknn


That Burger You're Eating Is Mostly Corn
from Scientific American

If you thought you were eating mostly grass-fed beef when you bit into a Big Mac, think again: The bulk of a fast-food hamburger from McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's is made from cows that eat primarily corn, or so says a new study of the chemical composition of more than 480 fast-food burgers from across the nation.

And it isn't only cows that are eating corn. There is also evidence of a corn diet in chicken sandwiches, and even French fries get a good slathering of the fat that makes them so tasty from being fried in corn oil.

"Corn has been criticized as being unsustainable based on the unusual amount of fertilizer, water and machinery required to bring it to harvest," says geobiologist Hope Jahren of the University of Hawaii at Manoa's School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, who led the research. "We are getting a picture of the American diet on a national scale by using chemistry, which is quite objective."

http://snipurl.com/5f5dm


Science Reporting by Press Release
from the Columbia Journalism Review

A dirty little secret of journalism has always been the degree to which some reporters rely on press releases and public relations offices as sources for stories. But recent newsroom cutbacks and increased pressure to churn out online news have given publicity operations even greater prominence in science coverage.

"What is distressing to me is that the number of science reporters and the variety of reporting is going down. What does come out is more and more the direct product of PR shops," said Charles Petit, a veteran science reporter and media critic, in an interview.

Petit has been running MIT's online Knight Science Journalism Tracker since 2006, where he has posted more than 4,000 critiques involving approximately 20,000 articles.

http://snipurl.com/5hi5t


Tiny Radio Tags Offer Rare Glimpse into Bees' Universe
from National Geographic News

... Honeybees contribute some $15 billion to the U.S. economy every year, pollinating 90 major crops, everything from fruits to nuts. Most of us take these foods for granted, rarely realizing the vital role tiny creatures play in making them thrive.

Put simply, says zoologist Martin Wikelski, "Everything depends on pollinators." That's one reason this leader in the study of small-animal migration has begun examining the mostly unknown universe of bee movement.

Wikelski is pioneering the use of supersmall radio tracking tags that fit on the backs of bees, a technological breakthrough that may provide him and other scientists with a direct view of the pollinators' flight patterns.

http://snipurl.com/5mubg


Feed Your Brain: News from Neuroscience
from Science News

WASHINGTON, D.C.—More than 30,000 neuroscientists from around the world gathered in Washington, D.C., November 15–19 for the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

Presentations covered the science of nerves and brains on scales from molecules to societies.

From among the first day's presentations, Science News staffers report on the latest neural insights into psychopaths, liars and baby rats separated from their mothers, as well as new research on how a tiny parasite disrupts rats' ingrained fear of cats and how a rat mother's favoritism for outgoing pups influences developing social skills.

http://snipurl.com/5muoa


Long-Lost Lunar Photos Get Another Day in the Sun
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)—The old moon has never looked this good. Mankind's first up-close photos of the lunar landscape have been rescued from four decades of dusty storage, and they've been restored to such a high quality that they rival anything taken by modern cameras.

NASA and some private space business leaders spent a quarter million dollars rescuing the historic photos from early NASA lunar robotic probes and restoring them in an abandoned McDonald's.

The first refurbished image was released Thursday—a classic of the moon with Earth rising in the background. "This is an incredible image," said private space entrepreneur Dennis Wingo, who spearheaded the project.

http://snipurl.com/5mvbi


Study: Vitamin C, E Pills Do Not Prevent Cancer
from USA Today

(Associated Press)—Vitamin C or E pills do not help prevent cancer in men, concludes the same big study that last week found these supplements ineffective for warding off heart disease.

The public has been whipsawed by good and bad news about vitamins, much of it from test-tube or animal studies and hyped manufacturer claims. Even when researchers compare people's diets and find that a vitamin seems to help, the benefit may not translate when that nutrient is obtained a different way, such as a pill.

"Antioxidants, which include vitamin C and vitamin E, have been shown as a group to have potential benefit," but have not been tested individually for a long enough time to know, said Howard Sesso of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

http://snipurl.com/5pgjo

[Kai]

November 18, 2008

Report to Congress: Gulf War Syndrome Is Real
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Contradicting nearly two decades of government denials, a congressionally mandated scientific panel has concluded that Gulf War syndrome is real and still afflicts nearly a quarter of the 700,000 U.S. troops who served in the 1991 conflict.

The report cited two chemical exposures consistently associated with the disorder: the drug pyridostigmine bromide, given to troops to protect against nerve gas, and pesticides that were widely used—and often overused—to protect against sand flies and other pests.

"The extensive body of scientific research now available consistently indicates that Gulf War illness is real, that it is a result of neurotoxic exposures during Gulf War deployment, and that few veterans have recovered or substantially improved with time," according to the report presented today to Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake.

http://snipurl.com/5puf2


In Bias Test, Shades of Gray
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Last year, a team of researchers at Harvard made headlines with an experiment testing unconscious bias at hospitals. Doctors were shown the picture of a 50-year-old man—sometimes black, sometimes white—and asked how they would treat him if he arrived at the emergency room with chest pains indicating a possible heart attack. Then the doctors took a computer test intended to reveal unconscious racial bias.

The doctors who scored higher on the bias test were less likely than the other doctors to give clot-busting drugs to the black patients, according to the researchers, who suggested addressing the problem by encouraging doctors to test themselves for unconscious bias.

The results were hailed by other psychologists as some of the strongest evidence that unconscious bias leads to harmful discrimination. But then two other researchers, Neal Dawson and Hal Arkes, pointed out a curious pattern in the data.

http://snipurl.com/5rl6h


16th-Century Mapmaker's Intriguing Knowledge
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

How was it that a German priest writing in Latin and living in a French city far from the coast became the first person to tell the world that a vast ocean lay to the west of the American continents? That is one of the bigger mysteries in the history of the Renaissance.

But it is not the only one involving Martin Waldseemueller, a map-making cleric whose own story is sufficiently obscure that his birth and death dates aren't known for certain.

Waldseemueller appears to have also known something about the contours of South America's west coast years before Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the bottom of the continent. History books record them as the first Europeans to bring back knowledge of the Pacific Ocean.

http://snipurl.com/5rlpw 


Wind from the North
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

WEST CAPE, Prince Edward Island—Scattered across remote potato fields here, soaring white wind turbines generate electricity for a surprising customer 650 miles to the south: Massachusetts.

And much more Canadian renewable energy could be coming. From the rolling farmlands of the Maritime provinces to the shores of Lake Ontario, developers are building or planning nearly four dozen wind and hydroelectric projects in the next four years, enough to power more than a million homes.

Canada is the biggest exporter of oil to the United States, and one might expect environmentalists to cheer the prospect of exchanging a little of our dependence on foreign oil for dependence on foreign wind. But some fear that a flood of clean power from Canada will undercut New England's efforts to become a national leader in green energy and technology.

http://snipurl.com/5rlyg 


Woolly Rhino's Ancient Migration
from BBC News Online

Palaeontologists have pieced together the fossilised skull of the oldest example yet found of a woolly rhinoceros in Europe.

The 460,000-year-old skull, which was found in Germany, had to be reconstructed from 53 fragments. The extinct mammals reached a length of three-and-a-half metres in adulthood and, unlike their modern relatives, were covered in shaggy hair.

Details of the work appear in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews. The team says the find from Germany fills a gap in our understanding of how these animals evolved.

http://snipurl.com/5rmhu


Memory Loss: Special Report
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

We collect memories well into adulthood, but at some point, we start to lose them. How to tell the difference between memory lapse and signs of a disorder?

The L.A. Times provides a series of articles on the early warning signs of Alzhimer's disease, how much our bad habits and lifestyle choices may affect memory and tips for preventing memory loss, among other topics.

Other articles in the series focus on case studies and interviews that explore the causes and impact of forgetfulness.

http://snipurl.com/5puc1


World's Oldest Nuclear Family Unearthed in Germany
from the Guardian (UK)

DNA extracted from bones and teeth in a 4,600-year-old stone age burial has provided the earliest evidence for the nuclear family as a social structure. The find consists of two parents and two sons who were buried together after being killed in a violent conflict over some of the most fertile farming land in Europe.

The archaeologists who examined the bones said the burial provides evidence of a shift in social organisation from communal living to societies with large social differences between people.

"It provides evidence that will allow us to understand the rise of societies that are more modern," said Dr Alistair Pike, an archaeologist at Bristol University who was a member of the team.

http://snipurl.com/5rmwd


Big Particle Collider Repairs to Cost $21 Million
from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Registration Required)

GENEVA (Associated Press)—Fixing the world's largest atom smasher will cost at least 25 million francs ($21 million) and may take until early summer, its operator said Monday.

An electrical failure shut down the Large Hadron Collider on Sept. 19, nine days after the $10 billion machine started up with great fanfare. The European Organization for Nuclear Research recently said that the repairs would be completed by May or early June.

Spokesman James Gillies said the organization know as CERN is now estimating the restart will be at the end of June or later. "If we can do it sooner, all well and good. But I think we can do it realistically (in) early summer," he said. The organization has blamed the shutdown on the failure of a single, badly soldered electrical connection.

http://snipurl.com/5rnl7


Study: Scrutiny Has Chilling Effect on Scientists
from the Philadelphia Inquirer

When Pennsylvania's Patrick Toomey criticized a small group of federally funded sex studies—demanding "Who thinks this stuff up?" on the floor of Congress—his proposal to yank the funding was narrowly defeated.

A subsequent federal review of nearly 200 research grants, most of them sex- or drug-related, found that all had public-health value—with goals such as preventing the spread of AIDS. At the time, it seemed as if Toomey and other critics, such as the nonprofit Traditional Values Coalition, had failed. Perhaps not entirely, according to a new survey by a Rutgers University sociologist.

The 2003 controversy had a "chilling effect" on many of the researchers in question, leading some to drop important lines of research and a few to change jobs, survey author Joanna Kempner found. Of the 82 sex researchers surveyed, more than half said they now remove sex-related "red flag" words from the titles and summaries of their grant proposals. Removed words or phrases included "gay," "lesbian," "bathhouses" and "needle exchange."

http://snipurl.com/5rnud 


Life Viewed Through the Microscope
from Scientific American

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but it is also in the eye of a honeybee, the eggs of a lobster and the surface of petrified wood—as is evident from a selection of images entered in the 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition.

In its fifth year, the competition honors superior images of living organisms or their components attained with the help of light microscopy.

The judges chose 10 winners and awarded honorable mention to many others, evaluating entries based on the scientific value of the images, aesthetics and the difficulty of capturing the information displayed. This year, as in the past, competitors were free to bring out specific features through pseudo-coloring and other computer enhancements.

http://snipurl.com/5rorf

[Kai]

November 21, 2008

Teenagers' Internet Socializing Not a Bad Thing
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Good news for worried parents: All those hours their teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing, according to a new study by the MacArthur Foundation.

"It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it's on MySpace or sending instant messages," said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, "Living and Learning With New Media." "But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world ..."

... The study, part of a $50 million project on digital and media learning, used several teams of researchers to interview more than 800 young people and their parents and to observe teenagers online for more than 5,000 hours.

http://snipurl.com/62cpl


New Finds at King Herod's Tomb: 2,000-Year-Old Frescoes
from National Geographic News

Archaeologists exploring King Herod's tomb complex near Jerusalem have uncovered rare Roman paintings as well as two sarcophagi, or stone coffins, that could have contained the remains of Herod's sons.

In May 2007, veteran Hebrew University archaeologist Ehud Netzer solved one of Israel's great archaeological mysteries when he first uncovered the remains of Herod's first century-B.C. grave at the Herodium complex, located 9 miles south of Jerusalem.

King Herod, appointed by the Romans to rule Judea between 37 and 4 B.C., is renowned for his monumental construction projects, including the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the Caesarea complex, and the palace atop Masada. Herod constructed Herodium as a massive and lavish administrative, residential, and burial center.

http://snipurl.com/62d9d


USDA Panel Approves Rules for Labeling Farmed Fish 'Organic'
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

For the first time, a federal advisory board has approved criteria that clear the way for farmed fish to be labeled "organic," a move that pleased aquaculture producers even as it angered environmentalists and consumer advocates.

The question of whether farmed fish could be labeled organic—especially carnivorous species such as salmon that live in open-ocean net pens and consume vast amounts of smaller fish—has vexed scientists and federal regulators for years.

The standards approved Wednesday by the National Organic Standards Board would allow organic fish farmers to use wild fish as part of their feed mix provided it did not exceed 25 percent of the total and did not come from forage species, such as menhaden, that have declined sharply as the demand for farmed fish has skyrocketed.

http://snipurl.com/62e6p


Gobekli Tepe: The World's First Temple?
from Smithsonian Magazine

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery.

The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.

... Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant. And partly because Schmidt has found no evidence that people permanently resided on the summit of Gobekli Tepe itself, he believes this was a place of worship on an unprecedented scale—humanity's first "cathedral on a hill."

http://snipurl.com/62sup


Plumbing the Oceans Could Bring Limitless Clean Energy
from New Scientist

For a company whose business is rocket science Lockheed Martin has been paying unusual attention to plumbing of late. The aerospace giant has kept its engineers occupied for the past 12 months poring over designs for what amounts to a very long fibreglass pipe.

It is, of course, no ordinary pipe but an integral part of the technology behind Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), a clean, renewable energy source that has the potential to free many economies from their dependence on oil.

"This has the potential to become the biggest source of renewable energy in the world," says Robert Cohen, who headed the US federal ocean thermal energy programme in the early 1970s.

http://snipurl.com/62tad


Desert Drawn: A Hard Place
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

To the casual eye, the old Freeman property west of the Salton Sea is a corrugated landscape of sandy washes and barren wasteland, a bit of low desert baking in the heat of a late October sun.

But Brad Hollingsworth, curator of herpetology at the San Diego Natural History Museum, knows the emptiness is a mirage. Though hardly fecund with life, this parched patch of land is home—or could be home—to an enormously diverse variety of wildlife, from the hairy scorpions, flat-tailed horned lizards and sidewinders that Hollingsworth studies to prairie falcons, bobcats and the occasional bighorn sheep that come down from the rust-colored Santa Rosa Mountains to forage.

"It's a matter of perception," Hollingsworth says, squinting in the bright sunlight. "If you don't know what you're looking for, there seems to be nothing here, just a big, empty desert."

http://snipurl.com/62tvv 


Iron Age Neckband Discovered by Man and His Metal Detector
from the Daily Mail (UK)

For 40 years, Maurice Richardson has been braving all weathers to scour the countryside with his trusty metal detector, dreaming of buried treasure. But he almost ignored an unpromising-sounding beep as he searched for debris from a wartime air crash while being pelted with rain.

However the 59-year-old is glad his curiosity got the better of him after his persistence in digging through more than two feet of Nottinghamshire mud yielded a stunning 2,000-year-old gold treasure.

Now the artefact, an Iron Age torc, has been sold for a mammoth £350,000, and Tuesday it was unveiled at the British Museum as the most valuable discovery in recent times.

http://snipurl.com/62vz4


Criminology: Can the Can
from the Economist

A place that is covered in graffiti and festooned with rubbish makes people feel uneasy. And with good reason, according to a group of researchers in the Netherlands. Kees Keizer and his colleagues at the University of Groningen deliberately created such settings as a part of a series of experiments designed to discover if signs of vandalism, litter and low-level lawbreaking could change the way people behave.

They found that they could, by a lot: doubling the number who are prepared to litter and steal. The idea that observing disorder can have a psychological effect on people has been around for a while.

In the late 1980s George Kelling, a former probation officer who now works at Rutgers University, initiated what became a vigorous campaign to remove graffiti from New York City's subway system, which was followed by a reduction in petty crime. ... But the idea remains a controversial one, not least because it is often difficult to account for other factors that could influence crime reduction ...

http://snipurl.com/63ess


Risk of Lung, Other Cancers Soars for People with HIV
from the Baltimore Sun

Twenty-five years ago, a diagnosis of AIDS was a nearly immediate death sentence.

But now that patients with the AIDS virus are living longer, doctors are discovering a new set of complications: People with HIV have a much higher risk of developing certain cancers—lung, liver, head and neck, to name a few—and doctors fear that a cancer epidemic among this group could be coming.

Researchers in Maryland, home to one of the nation's largest AIDS populations per capita, are among the leaders in an effort to solve what has become something of a medical mystery. "We're seeing people we have treated successfully for HIV at much higher risk" for cancer, said Dr. Kevin J. Cullen, director of the University of Maryland's Greenebaum Cancer Center. "The reasons aren't fully understood."

http://snipurl.com/63gat


Artificial Heart Keeps Teen Alive for 118 Days
from the Miami Herald (Registration Required)

Wearing a hospital mask over her face and a long scar on her chest, 14-year-old D'Zhana Simmons stood up from her wheelchair. She took a few tentative steps, sat down in front of the TV cameras and began to talk.

Barely audible, D'Zhana told how she lived for 118 days without a heart, in limbo between transplant operations, her blood circulated by a pair of mechanical pumps. "Thank you," she said Wednesday, holding back tears, to the Holtz Children's Hospital transplant doctors sitting with her.

From July 4, when a first heart transplant failed, until Oct. 29, when she was well enough for another heart, D'Zhana's chest cavity was empty, doctors said. Beside her during that time was an artificial heart with two pumps. One took over for the heart's right ventricle, pumping blood to the girl's lungs; the other did the work of the left ventricle, pumping blood through her body.

http://snipurl.com/63hpy

[Kai]

November 24, 2008

Vast Mars Glaciers Are Spotted
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

In a discovery that partly answers the question of where all the water went on Mars, scientists have found vast, debris-covered glaciers much nearer the equatorial region than anyone had expected, according to a report Friday in the journal Science.

The glaciers, estimated to contain at least as much water as Lake Huron and possibly as much as the entire Great Lakes, were found by ground-penetrating radar on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.

"We have found a big chunk of the missing water that people have known must be there," said Ali Safaeinili, a member of the radar team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.

http://snipurl.com/6idso 


Massive Prehistoric Fort Emerges From Welsh Woods
from National Geographic News

Cloaked by time's leafy shroud, the prehistoric settlement of Gaer Fawr lies all but invisible beneath a forest in the lush Welsh countryside.

It's hard to imagine how it once dominated the landscape: a massive Iron Age fortress commanded by warrior chiefs who loomed over the everyday lives of their people.

But now we can, thanks to a digital recreation of the 2,900-year-old site following a painstaking survey by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. The Iron Age hill fort in central Wales was a major feat of civil engineering, researchers say.

http://snipurl.com/69l24


Foes of Stem Cell Research Now Face Tough Battle
from the San Francisco Chronicle

(Associated Press)—When the Bush presidency ends, opponents of embryonic stem cell research will face a new political reality that many feel powerless to stop.

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to lift restrictions on federal money for such research. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also has expressed interest in going ahead with legislation in the first 100 days of the new Congress if it still is necessary to set up a regulatory framework.

"We may lose it, but we're going to continually fight it and offer the ethical alternative," said Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa. "I don't know what the votes will be in the new Congress ... but it's very possible we could lose this thing."

http://snipurl.com/6ie98 


New Rule Would Discount Warming as Risk Factor for Species
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The Bush administration is finalizing changes to the Endangered Species Act that would ensure that federal agencies would not have to take global warming into account when assessing risks to imperiled plants and animals.

The proposed rule changes, which were obtained by The Washington Post, are under review by the Office of Management and Budget and are close to being published in the Federal Register.

The main purpose of the new regulations, which were first unveiled in August, is to eliminate a long-standing provision of the Endangered Species Act that requires an independent scientific review by either the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of any federal project that could affect a protected species.

http://snipurl.com/6iezt


Humans and Light Pollution Blamed as Fireflies Disappear
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

BAN LOMTUAN, Thailand—Thousands of fireflies fill the branches of trees along the Mae Klong River, flashing on and off in unison—relentless and silent, two times a second, deep into the night. Nobody knows why.

The fireflies, all males, sit on the tips of the leaves and synchronize their flashes into a single mating call—and then continue without a pause as if they were driven by an invisible motor.

"It's one of the most amazing things you'll ever see," said Sara Lewis, a professor of biology at Tufts University. Evolutionary biologists have studied synchronous flashing for 200 years, she said, and it remains a mystery.

http://snipurl.com/6iflb


Teed Up: The Long-Haul Golf Ball
from the Times (London)

It has long been known that the secret of how far a golf ball flies lies in its dimples. Now scientists believe they understand the forces at work, as air flows over the ball's surface.

Their work could be the key to a new generation of far more accurate, ultra-long-distance golf balls.

They cracked the problem by deploying the kind of extreme computing power usually reserved for predicting global weather patterns or the behaviour of sub-atomic particles. However, a set of super-computers ... still had to run for 300 hours before they were able to see the exact flow of air around a ball, and its dimples, in flight.

http://snipurl.com/6ih3v


Where Environment Is Just Right for Learning
from the Philadelphia Inquirer

STAFFORD TOWNSHIP, N.J.—As Caitlin Campbell was growing up at the Jersey Shore, the little worlds within the world around her—the flocks of egrets, the pods of migrating dolphins, the scores of tiny minnows she could scoop up in her hands—captured her attention longer than any video game or television program.

So in the eighth grade when she learned about a program called MATES, a first-of-its-kind Ocean County high school where she could delve so deeply into marine and environmental sciences that some courses could be credited toward college, she was onboard.

"I realized I could take a passion and an interest I have for the environment and the water and channel into something positive, into a future career," said Campbell, 17, a senior from Brick Township and one of 230 students at the Marine Academy of Technology and Environmental Science.

http://snipurl.com/6iinl


Copernicus' Grave, Remains Confirmed by DNA Testing
from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

WARSAW, Poland (Associated Press)—Researchers on Thursday said they have identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus by comparing DNA from a skeleton and hair retrieved from one of the 16th-century astronomer's books.

The findings could put an end to centuries of speculation about the exact resting spot of Copernicus, a priest and astronomer whose theories identified the Sun, not the Earth, as the center of the universe.

Polish archaeologist Jerzy Gassowski told a news conference that forensic facial reconstruction of the skull, missing the lower jaw, that his team found in 2005 buried in a Roman Catholic Cathedral in Frombork, Poland, bears striking resemblance to existing portraits of Copernicus.

http://snipurl.com/6ij15


Astronauts Try to Work Out Kinks in Urine Machine
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

HOUSTON (Associated Press)—Astronauts hope they have a solution for getting a pivotal piece of equipment working so it can convert urine and sweat into drinkable water and allow the international space station to grow to six crew members.

Flight controllers asked station commander Michael Fincke on Sunday to change how a centrifuge is mounted in the $154 million water recycling system. The centrifuge is on mounts and Mission Control asked Fincke to remove them.

... The astronauts have been working for the past three days to get the system running so that it can generate samples for testing back on Earth, but the urine processor only operates for two hours at a time before shutting down.

http://snipurl.com/6ik64


Brain Reorganizes to Make Room for Math
from Science News

WASHINGTON—It takes years for children to master the ins and outs of arithmetic. New research indicates that this learning process triggers a large-scale reorganization of brain processes involved in understanding written symbols for various quantities.

The findings support the idea that humans' ability to match specific quantities with number symbols, a skill required for doing arithmetic, builds on a brain system that is used for estimating approximate quantities. That brain system is seen in many nonhuman animals.

When performing operations with Arabic numerals, young adults, but not school-age children, show pronounced activity in a piece of brain tissue called the left superior temporal gyrus, says Daniel Ansari of the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. Earlier studies have linked this region to the ability to associate speech sounds with written letters, and musical sounds with written notes.

http://snipurl.com/6ikun

[Iason Ouabache]

Foes of Stem Cell Research Now Face Tough Battle
from the San Francisco Chronicle

(Associated Press)—When the Bush presidency ends, opponents of embryonic stem cell research will face a new political reality that many feel powerless to stop.

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to lift restrictions on federal money for such research. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also has expressed interest in going ahead with legislation in the first 100 days of the new Congress if it still is necessary to set up a regulatory framework.

"We may lose it, but we're going to continually fight it and offer the ethical alternative," said Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa. "I don't know what the votes will be in the new Congress ... but it's very possible we could lose this thing."

http://snipurl.com/6ie98 

[Cainad (dec.)]

Criminology: Can the Can
from the Economist

A place that is covered in graffiti and festooned with rubbish makes people feel uneasy. And with good reason, according to a group of researchers in the Netherlands. Kees Keizer and his colleagues at the University of Groningen deliberately created such settings as a part of a series of experiments designed to discover if signs of vandalism, litter and low-level lawbreaking could change the way people behave.

They found that they could, by a lot: doubling the number who are prepared to litter and steal. The idea that observing disorder can have a psychological effect on people has been around for a while.

In the late 1980s George Kelling, a former probation officer who now works at Rutgers University, initiated what became a vigorous campaign to remove graffiti from New York City's subway system, which was followed by a reduction in petty crime. ... But the idea remains a controversial one, not least because it is often difficult to account for other factors that could influence crime reduction ...

http://snipurl.com/63ess

That is cool.

I mean, that is REALLY cool. I wonder what it can tell us about PosterGASMing and other activities that make places seem weirder without damaging them.

[Triple Zero]

I don't like it, in fact. IMO, Graffiti can be used to pretty up otherwise boring places, and I'd be sad if it's coupled with a rise in criminal activity. But it's probably part of the general "messy" feeling it gives, so I suppose that "tagged" (stupid scribbles) walls and alleys are worse than the ones with colourful "pieces" (art) on them.

Also, that's my university. I wonder if this Kees Keizer guy did the experiments in my hometown as well, in which case I should try to find the locations, right?

[Triple Zero]

wait i should read the article first, the experiments they conducted were pretty cool:

His group’s first study was conducted in an alley that is frequently used to park bicycles. As in all of their experiments, the researchers created two conditions: one of order and the other of disorder. In the former, the walls of the alley were freshly painted; in the latter, they were tagged with graffiti (but not elaborately, to avoid the perception that it might be art). In both states a large sign prohibiting graffiti was put up, so that it would not be missed by anyone who came to collect a bicycle. All the bikes then had a flyer promoting a non-existent sports shop attached to their handlebars. This needed to be removed before a bicycle could be ridden.

When owners returned, their behaviour was secretly observed. There were no rubbish bins in the alley, so a cyclist had three choices. He could take the flyer with him, hang it on another bicycle (which the researchers counted as littering) or throw it to the floor. When the alley contained graffiti, 69% of the riders littered compared with 33% when the walls were clean.

To remove one possible bias—that litter encourages more litter—the researchers inconspicuously picked up each castaway flyer. Nor, they say, could the effect be explained by litterers assuming that because the spraying of graffiti had not been prevented, it was also unlikely that they would be caught. Littering, Dr Keizer observes, is generally tolerated by the police in Groningen.

The other experiments were carried out in a similar way. In one, a temporary fence was used to close off a short cut to a car park, except for a narrow gap. Two signs were erected, one telling people there was no throughway and the other saying that bicycles must not be left locked to the fence. In the “order” condition (with four bicycles parked nearby, but not locked to the fence) 27% of people were prepared to trespass by stepping through the gap, whereas in the disorder condition (with the four bikes locked to the fence, in violation of the sign) 82% took the short cut.

Nor were the effects limited to visual observation of petty criminal behaviour. It is against the law to let off fireworks in the Netherlands for several weeks before New Year’s Eve. So two weeks before the festival the researchers randomly let off firecrackers near a bicycle shed at a main railway station and watched what happened using their flyer technique. With no fireworks, 48% of people took the flyers with them when they collected their bikes. With fireworks, this fell to 20%.

The most dramatic result, though, was the one that showed a doubling in the number of people who were prepared to steal in a condition of disorder. In this case an envelope with a €5 ($6) note inside (and the note clearly visible through the address window) was left sticking out of a post box. In a condition of order, 13% of those passing took the envelope (instead of leaving it or pushing it into the box). But if the post box was covered in graffiti, 27% did. Even if the post box had no graffiti on it, but the area around it was littered with paper, orange peel, cigarette butts and empty cans, 25% still took the envelope.

The researchers’ conclusion is that one example of disorder, like graffiti or littering, can indeed encourage another, like stealing. Dr Kelling was right. The message for policymakers and police officers is that clearing up graffiti or littering promptly could help fight the spread of crime.

[Kai]

December 3, 2008

U.S. Lags In Providing College Access, Study Finds
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Other countries are outpacing the United States in providing access to college, eroding an educational advantage the nation has enjoyed for decades, according to a study released today by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

The nonprofit research group contends that if left unaddressed, the development will harm U.S. competitiveness in the near future.

"I don't know what it's going to take to get our nation to wake up to what's happening with regard to the education deficit we're building," said William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, who will present a similar study by the College Board on improving access to higher education next week.

http://snipurl.com/72ke3


Triple Helix: Designing a New Molecule of Life
from Scientific American

For all the magnificent diversity of life on this planet, ranging from tiny bacteria to majestic blue whales, from sunshine-harvesting plants to mineral-digesting endoliths miles underground, only one kind of "life as we know it" exists.

All these organisms are based on nucleic acids—DNA and RNA—and proteins, working together more or less as described by the so-called central dogma of molecular biology: DNA stores information that is transcribed into RNA, which then serves as a template for producing a protein. The proteins, in turn, serve as important structural elements in tissues and, as enzymes, are the cell's workhorses.

Yet scientists dream of synthesizing life that is utterly alien to this world—both to better understand the minimum components required for life (as part of the quest to uncover the essence of life and how life originated on earth) and, frankly, to see if they can do it. That is, they hope to put together a novel combination of molecules that can self-organize, metabolize (make use of an energy source), grow, reproduce and evolve.

http://snipurl.com/71hru 


Amphibian Extinctions: Is Global Warming Off the Hook?
from National Geographic News

The world's amphibians are in dire straits—but global warming may not be the problem, a new study suggests. Previous research has pinned steep declines in amphibian species on rising global temperatures, which are said to be fueling the growth of a deadly fungus.

Most experts agree that the disease-causing chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis is taking a terrible toll on frogs and toads. One in three species worldwide is threatened with extinction.

"There seems to be convincing evidence that chytrid fungus is the bullet killing amphibians," said University of South Florida biologist Jason Rohr, lead author of the study, published in a recent issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "But the evidence that climate change is pulling the trigger is weak at this point."

http://snipurl.com/71hl5


Top 10 Innovations of 2008
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

The life sciences move fast. Across the globe, companies are constantly churning out new products that they say will make your research smarter.

For six years, the Scientist has ranked the vendors of life science equipment in its Life Science Industry Awards. Now, to recognize winning combinations of invention, vision and utility, the magazine presents its first-ever ranking of the best innovations to hit the life science market in the past year.

A panel of expert judges was asked to sort through the year's offerings and pick the ones likely to have the biggest impact. Our judges—David Piston, Simon Watkins, Klaus Hahn, and Steven Wiley—are all known for pushing the technical boundaries, and have collectively published more than 700 scholarly articles.

http://snipurl.com/718at


Born to Run? Little Ones Get Test for Sports Gene
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

BOULDER, Colo.—When Donna Campiglia learned recently that a genetic test might be able to determine which sports suit the talents of her 2 ½-year-old son, Noah, she instantly said, Where can I get it and how much does it cost?

... In health-conscious, sports-oriented Boulder, Atlas Sports Genetics is playing into the obsessions of parents by offering a $149 test that aims to predict a child's natural athletic strengths. The process is simple. Swab inside the child's cheek and along the gums to collect DNA and return it to a lab for analysis of ACTN3, one gene among more than 20,000 in the human genome.

... In this era of genetic testing, DNA is being analyzed to determine predispositions to disease, but experts raise serious questions about marketing it as a first step in finding a child's sports niche ...

http://snipurl.com/6ykjn


Stress Reduction: Why You Need to Get a Grip and How
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Stocks are falling. Companies are handing out pink slips. Home values are collapsing. Financial icons are folding. And Americans' stress is rising.

The 2008 Stress in America survey, conducted by the American Psychological Assn. and released in October, found that stress levels have increased significantly over the last two years, particularly in the last six months. Money and the economy top the list of concerns.

As the economy plummets and stress levels soar, people need to find ways to manage their stress—or more than their investments will suffer. Chronic unresolved stress weakens the immune system, ... and when stress increases, so does inflammation, contributing to stroke, arthritis, Type 2 diabetes, periodontal disease and frailty. Additionally, studies have shown, the cumulative effects of unresolved psychological stress contribute to heart disease and high blood pressure.

http://snipurl.com/6zvzm


A Land Rush in Wyoming Spurred by Wind Power
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

WHEATLAND, Wyo.—The man who came to Elsie Bacon's ranch house door in July asked the 71-year-old widow to grant access to a right of way across the dry hills and short grasses of her land here. Ms. Bacon remembered his insistence on a quick, secret deal.

The man, a representative of the Little Rose Wind Farm of Boulder, Colo., sought an easement for a transmission line to carry his company's wind-generated electricity to market. ...

A quiet land rush is under way among the buttes of southeastern Wyoming, and it is changing the local rancher culture. The whipping winds cursed by descendants of the original homesteaders now have real value for out-of-state developers who dream of wind farms or of selling the rights to bigger companies.

http://snipurl.com/6ykov


Experts Debate CyberKnife for Prostate Cancer
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

When Georgetown University Hospital bought a new high-tech system in 2001 to treat patients with radiation, doctors at first used the computerized, robotic device only for brain and spinal tumors that would be difficult if not impossible to fight any other way.

But Georgetown, along with Virginia Hospital Center and others around the country, is now aggressively marketing the $4 million machine, known as the CyberKnife, for early prostate cancer, one of the most common cancers. That trend has sparked an intense debate about whether it represents an important advancement or the latest example of an expensive and potentially profitable new technology proliferating too soon.

While its advocates say the CyberKnife offers prostate cancer patients a safe and effective—and much more convenient—alternative to traditional radiation treatment, many experts fear that it could leave many men unnecessarily vulnerable to recurrences or potentially serious complications.

http://snipurl.com/6wkos


Food Crunch Opens Doors to Bioengineered Crops
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

KUNMING, China (Associated Press)—Zeng Yawen's outdoor laboratory in the terraced hills of southern China is a trove of genetic potential—rice that thrives in unusually cool temperatures, high altitudes or in dry soil; rice rich in calcium, vitamins or iron.

"See these plants? They can tolerate the cold," Zeng says as he walks through a checkerboard of test fields sown with different rice varieties on the outskirts of Kunming, capital of southwestern China's Yunnan province. "We can extract the cold-tolerant gene from this plant and use it in a genetically manipulated variety to improve its cold tolerance ..."

In a mountainous place like Yunnan, and in many other parts of the developing world, such advantages can tip the balance between hunger and a decent living. And China is now ready to tip that scale in favor of genetically modified crops.

http://snipurl.com/6ylhd


Apollo 8: The Mission that Changed Everything
from the Guardian (UK)

It has proved to be the most enduring image we have of our fragile world. Over a colourless lunar surface, the Earth hangs like a gaudy Christmas bauble against a deep black background.

The planet's blue disc—half in shadow—is streaked with faint traces of white, yellow and brown while its edge is sharply defined. There is no blurring that might be expected from the blanket of oxygen and nitrogen that envelops our planet.

Our atmosphere is too thin to be seen clearly from the Moon: a striking reminder—if we ever needed one—of the frailty of the biosphere that sustains life on Earth.

http://snipurl.com/6yl0y