Weekly Science Headlines

[Kai]

There are delicious mammoths waiting to be brought back from extinction.

Honestly, I care less about mammoths and more about the more recent extinctions.

Just think if we could bring back passenger pidgeons.

Kai,

would love to live to see that day.

[fomenter]

i want mammoth steak now!!!! get you ass in gear scientists

[Triple Zero]

T-Bone Rex!

didnt the Flintstones have a brontoburger?

i'll have the double dodo burger deluxe

[Cainad (dec.)]

I WANT TO TOUCH MY LEGS TO YOUR LEGS

How gregarious!

[Requia ☣]

There are delicious mammoths waiting to be brought back from extinction.

Honestly, I care less about mammoths and more about the more recent extinctions.

Just think if we could bring back passenger pidgeons.

Kai,

would love to live to see that day.

I want a giant ground sloth.

[Kai]

http://catalogue-of-organisms.blogspot.com/2009/02/of-gregarines.html

a group of the parasitic Sporozoans (Protozoa), about the systematics etcetera. Thanks again Cat. of organisms for informing on obscure clades of life.

http://bedbugger.com/2009/02/01/lou-sorkin-and-bill-schutt-feeding-lous-bed-bug-colony/

A very disturbing video of bedbug colonies and feeding by the writers of Dark Banquet.

[Iason Ouabache]

There are delicious mammoths waiting to be brought back from extinction.

Honestly, I care less about mammoths and more about the more recent extinctions.

Just think if we could bring back passenger pidgeons.

Kai,

would love to live to see that day.

I want a giant ground sloth.

TITCM(egafauna)

[Kai]

Today's Headlines - February 2, 2009



Glaciers around the World Found Shrinking for 18th Year
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

BERLIN - Glaciers from the Andes to Alaska and across the Alps shrank as much as 10 feet, the 18th year of retreat and twice as fast as a decade ago, as global warming threatens an important supply of the world's water.

Alpine glaciers lost on average 0.7 meters of thickness in 2007, data published yesterday by the University of Zurich's World Glacier Monitoring Service showed. The melting extends an 11-meter retreat since 1980.

"One year doesn't tell us much, it's really these long-term trends that help us to understand what's going on," Michael Zemp, a researcher at the University of Zurich's Department of Geography, said in an interview. "The main thing that we can do to stop this is reduce greenhouse gases" that are blamed for global warming.

http://snipr.com/b5r5y



Triceratops' Horns Were for Fighting, Research Shows
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The dinosaurs' headgear wasn't just ornamentation, says a Claremont researcher. Probably the creatures battled for mating supremacy the way modern horned mammals do.

Many types of dinosaurs had elaborate sets of horns and frills, and scientists have argued for decades about whether such features were strictly ornamental or meant for fighting. A Claremont researcher has now found firm evidence that they were meant for internecine warfare.

Andrew A. Farke, curator of the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology on the campus of the Webb Schools, and his colleagues studied fossilized bones from Triceratops specimens in museums throughout North America. Triceratops had a pair of massive horns on its head and a shorter horn on its snout, as well as a shield-like frill around its neck.

http://snipr.com/b5ra7



Acid Oceans 'Need Urgent Action'
from BBC News Online

The world's marine ecosystems risk being severely damaged by ocean acidification unless there are dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions, warn scientists.

More than 150 top marine researchers have voiced their concerns through the "Monaco Declaration," which warns that changes in acidity are accelerating.

The declaration, supported by Prince Albert II of Monaco, builds on findings from an earlier international summit.

http://snipr.com/b5r90



Excess Blood Sugar Could Harm Cognition
from Science News

Chronically elevated blood levels of the simple sugar glucose may contribute to poor cognitive function in elderly people with diabetes, a study in the February Diabetes Care suggests. But whether these levels add to a person's risk of developing dementia is unclear, the study authors say.

People with diabetes face a risk of old-age dementia that's roughly 50 percent greater than those without diabetes, past studies have shown. Research has also hinted that surges in blood sugar might account for some of that added risk. Many previous studies have tested for elevated blood glucose by obtaining a snapshot blood sample taken after a person has fasted for a day.

In the new study, Tali Cukierman-Yaffe, an endocrinologist at Tel-Aviv University and McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, teamed with an international group of colleagues to assess blood glucose levels in nearly 3,000 diabetes patients by measuring A1c, shorthand for HbA1c or glycosylated hemoglobin. Since sugar in the blood sticks to the hemoglobin protein in red blood cells, the A1c test reveals an average sugar level over two or three months.

http://snipr.com/b5rbe



Jetting Their Way to a Better Understanding of Global Warming
from Scientific American

BOULDER--Scientists have taken the first crack at solving a fundamental climate mystery, criss-crossing the globe in a souped-up corporate jet to determine where and when greenhouse gases enter and leave the atmosphere.

An understanding of how these climate-warming gases move about the globe is a critical prerequisite for any policy aimed at curbing global warming, scientists said Thursday, and information gained over the next three years will play a crucial role in sharpening future predictions and improving their accuracy.

Using a high performance jet, scientists will take a series of "slices" of the atmosphere over the next few years from pole to pole and from the surface to the atmosphere's upper reaches. ... Scientists running the instruments say they have seen several "wonderful jewels" in the raw data that challenge current thinking and assumptions.

http://snipr.com/b5rc1



Extinct Ibex Is Resurrected by Cloning
from the Telegraph (UK)

The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain.

Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat, a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen.

Using DNA taken from these skin samples, the scientists were able to replace the genetic material in eggs from domestic goats, to clone a female Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo as they are known. It is the first time an extinct animal has been cloned.

http://snipr.com/b5rfa



Mars Rover May Be Feeling its Age - Finally
from the San Francisco Chronicle

Spirit, the aged and somewhat creaky Mars rover, is stalled on the Red Planet with a touch of bewilderment, but earthbound engineers are confident they'll get the mobile explorer up and running smoothly soon.

The Spirit and its sister rover, Opportunity, landed on Mars five years ago for what was designed as a 90-day mission, but have far exceeded all expectations, exploring successfully on opposite sides of the planet ever since. The only signs of age have been a little wear on the wheels and problems with some of their onboard instruments.

Lately, though, the Spirit apparently is disoriented. The robot vehicle has failed to obey radio commands from Earth to start driving, and has been unable to find the sun, NASA scientists say.

http://snipr.com/b5rg0



Where Do Comets Come From?
from New Scientist

Few cosmic apparitions have inspired such awe and fear as comets. The particularly eye-catching Halley's Comet, which last appeared in the inner solar system in 1986, pops up in the Talmud as "a star which appears once in seventy years that makes the captains of the ships err." In 1066, the comet's appearance was seen as a portent of doom before the Battle of Hastings; in 1456, Pope Callixtus III is said to have excommunicated it.

Modern science takes a more measured view. Comets such as Halley's are agglomerations of dust and ice that orbit the sun on highly elliptical paths, acquiring their spectacular tails in the headwind of charged particles streaming from the sun. We even know their source: they are Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) tugged from their regular orbits by Neptune and Uranus.

But there's a problem. Certain comets, such as Hale-Bopp, which flashed past Earth in 1997, appear simply too infrequently in our skies. Their orbits must be very long, far too long to have an origin in the Kuiper belt. The conclusion of many astronomers is that the known solar system is surrounded in all directions by a tenuous halo of icy outcasts, thrown from the sun's immediate vicinity billions of years ago by the gravity of the giant planets.

http://snipr.com/b5rgg



Geologist: No Big Energy Bursts at Alaska Volcano
from the San Diego Union-Tribune

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Associated Press) -- Groans and steam emanated from Mount Redoubt yet another day, but the volcano showed no dramatic burst of energy, geologists noted Sunday.

"It looks like a volcano that wants to erupt, and our general impression is that it's more likely to erupt than not," said Tina Neal with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

As a precaution, Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, about 100 miles northeast of Redoubt, was moving five C-17 cargo planes to McChord Air Force Base in Washington.

http://snipr.com/b5rhn



Running on Empty: The Pros and Cons of Fasting
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Something about the way Americans eat isn't working -- and hasn't been for a long time. The number of obese Americans is now greater than the number who are merely overweight, according to government figures released last month. It's as if once we taste food, we can't stop until we've gorged ourselves.

Taking that inclination into account, some people are adopting an unusual solution to overeating. Rather than battling temptation in grocery stores, restaurants and their own kitchens, they simply don't eat. At least not at certain times of the day or specific days of the week.

Called intermittent fasting, this rather stark approach to weight control appears to be supported by science, not to mention various religious and cultural practices around the globe. ... "There is something kind of magical about starvation," says Dr. Marc Hellerstein, a professor of endocrinology, metabolism and nutrition at UC Berkeley, who studies fasting.

http://snipr.com/b5rkr

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I WANT TO TOUCH MY LEGS TO YOUR LEGS

How gregarious!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

http://catalogue-of-organisms.blogspot.com/2009/02/of-gregarines.html

a group of the parasitic Sporozoans (Protozoa), about the systematics etcetera. Thanks again Cat. of organisms for informing on obscure clades of life.

http://bedbugger.com/2009/02/01/lou-sorkin-and-bill-schutt-feeding-lous-bed-bug-colony/

A very disturbing video of bedbug colonies and feeding by the writers of Dark Banquet.

I am absolutely fucking terrified of bedbugs. I had to go on medication for it last year. I probably shouldn't have clicked that link, it was sort of my own personal 1 man 1 cup.

[Kai]

http://other95.blogspot.com/2009/02/circus-of-spineless-35-regeneration.html

Circus of the Spineless, a monthly blog circus about invertebrates.

[Kai]

Today's Headlines - February 5, 2009

Fossil of 43-Foot Super Snake Titanoboa Found in Colombia
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Researchers excavating a coal mine in South America have found the fossilized remains of the mother of all snakes, a nightmarish tropical behemoth as long as a school bus and as heavy as a Volkswagen Beetle.

Modern boas and anacondas ... have been known to swallow Chihuahuas, cats and other small pets, but this prehistoric monster ate giant turtles and primitive crocodiles.

"This is amazing. It challenges everything we know about how big a snake can be," said herpetologist Jack Conrad of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was not involved in the research.

http://snipr.com/bckp4



Telescope Sees Smallest Exoplanet
from BBC News Online

The smallest planet yet found outside the Solar System has been detected by a French space telescope. The rocky world is less than twice the size of Earth.

Only a handful of planets have so far been found with a mass comparable to Earth, Venus, Mars or Mercury. The discovery was made by Corot, an orbiting observatory with a 27cm-diameter telescope to search for planets orbiting other stars.

About 330 of these "exoplanets" have been discovered so far. But most of them have been gas giants similar to Jupiter or Neptune. "For the first time, we have unambiguously detected a planet that is 'rocky' in the same sense as our own Earth," said Malcolm Fridlund, Corot project scientist from the European Space Agency (Esa). "We now have to understand this object further to put it into context, and continue our search for smaller, more Earth-like objects with Corot ..."

http://snipr.com/bckrj



Octuplet Mother Also Gives Birth to Ethical Debate
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

LOS ANGELES--Public opinion seems to be cresting against her, her own mother is rattled, and now fertility experts are suggesting the case of Nadya Suleman and her octuplets constitutes a breach of medical guidelines.

Suleman, 33, gave birth to six boys and two girls by Caesarean section Jan. 26 at a Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower, Calif. The miraculous event ... quickly drew criticism after it was revealed that Suleman is single, unemployed, lives with her mother and already has six children--including twins--ranging in age from 2 to 7.

... The birth of eight babies to a woman who becomes responsible for 14 children is attracting a different set of worries from the medical community, particularly fertility doctors, who say it goes against the mission of their work: to minimize high-risk, multiple-birth pregnancy and safely provide a woman with a single healthy baby.

http://snipr.com/bckt4



Study Links TV Viewing by Teens to Depression
from the Columbus Dispatch

All the time your teen spends in front of the television could increase his risk of becoming depressed as an adult, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard Medical School looked at the media habits of 4,142 healthy adolescents and calculated that each additional hour of television watched a day boosted the odds of becoming depressed by 8 percent. Other forms of media didn't affect the risk of depression, according to the study published Tuesday in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The results don't prove that TV viewing itself causes depression, said Brian Primack of Pitt's Center for Research on Health Care, who led the study.

http://snipr.com/bckuv



Science Found Wanting in Nation's Crime Labs
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Forensic evidence that has helped convict thousands of defendants for nearly a century is often the product of shoddy scientific practices that should be upgraded and standardized, according to accounts of a draft report by the nation's pre-eminent scientific research group.

The report by the National Academy of Sciences is to be released this month. People who have seen it say it is a sweeping critique of many forensic methods that the police and prosecutors rely on, including fingerprinting, firearms identification and analysis of bite marks, blood spatter, hair and handwriting.

The report says such analyses are often handled by poorly trained technicians who then exaggerate the accuracy of their methods in court. It concludes that Congress should create a federal agency to guarantee the independence of the field, which has been dominated by law enforcement agencies, say forensic professionals, scholars and scientists who have seen review copies of the study. Early reviewers said the report was still subject to change.

http://snipr.com/bckwf



Hormone May Predict 'Baby Blues'
from BBC News Online

Measuring levels of a hormone midway through pregnancy may predict a woman's risk of postnatal depression, say US researchers.

In a study of 100 women, levels of the pCRH hormone at 25 weeks helped predict three-quarters of those who developed the "baby blues." The researchers said, if proven in larger studies, the test could be used routinely to screen for depression. The findings are published in Archives of General Psychiatry.

Postnatal depression generally starts within four to six weeks of giving birth and affects 10-15% of mothers. Known risk factors include a history of depression, stressful life events, a lack of social support, low self-esteem, anxiety or stress during pregnancy.

http://snipr.com/bckyx



New Step Reported in Untangling Nature vs Nurture
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)--Untangling the mystery of inherited versus acquired traits may be a step closer. Arguments have been long and contentious over how much people inherit and how much they are influenced by their environments.

Researchers led by Frances Rice and Anita Thapar of Britain's Cardiff University focused on reports that smoking by the mother during pregnancy increased the chance of low birth weight and anti-social behavior in children.

The researchers studied 533 children who were genetically related to the mother that carried them and 195 who resulted from egg donations and thus were not genetically related to the mother. The children were aged from 4 to 10 and had been conceived at clinics in the United Kingdom and United States. "What we have been able to confirm is that cigarette smoke in pregnancy does lower birth weight regardless of whether the mother and child are genetically related or not," Thapar said. However, that was not the case with anti-social behavior in children ...

http://snipr.com/bcl2h



Digital TV Conversion Delayed Until June 12
from the San Francisco Chronicle

Television viewers who rely on sets with antennas to pick up their broadcast signals have about four extra months to get ready for the nation's switch to digital TV.

The House of Representatives voted 264 to 158 Wednesday to move back the Feb. 17 deadline to June 12, sending the fast-tracked legislation to President Obama, who has promised to sign it.

The vote, largely along party lines, gives approximately 6.5 million unprepared households more time to prepare for the day when all analog TV broadcasts are turned off. ... Consumers who rely on traditional over-the-air broadcasts will need to upgrade to a pay TV service such as cable or satellite, use a TV with a digital tuner or buy a converter box for their older analog television sets.

http://snipr.com/bclq2



Halting Hormone Therapy Reduces Breast Cancer Risk Quickly
from Time

Six years after a landmark federal study established that hormone-replacement therapy (HRT) increases the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women, researchers are still trying to tease out exactly how the hormones interfere with women's health.

The assumption has always been that stopping hormone therapy would lead to a corresponding drop in breast-cancer risk, but now newly published data from the original trial ... suggest that the benefit occurs much more immediately than previously thought.

The finding is a contentious one. The authors of the new paper, which appears in the Feb. 5 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the rate of breast cancer in postmenopausal women fell just two years after they stopped hormone therapy and continued to decline yearly.

http://snipr.com/bcl6v



First Deep Sea Observatory Looks at Climate Change
from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Registration Required)

ABOARD RESEARCH VESSEL POINT LOBOS, Off the California Coast (Associated Press)--A crane on a ship deck hoisted a 502-pound video camera and plopped it into the ocean for a 3,000-foot descent to the world of neon-glowing jellyfish, bug-eyed red rock cod and other still unknown slithery critters.

The so-called Eye-in-the-Sea camera would be added to the first observatory operating in deep sea water and become part of a new kind of scientific exploration to assess the impacts of climate change on marine life.

... The camera is one of many instruments powered by the Monterey Accelerated Research Station or MARS, an underwater observatory that began operating in November off the California coast. Other instruments measure currents and seismic activity, while another part studies how higher acidity would affect marine life.

http://snipr.com/bcla3

February 4, 2009



When Dreams Come True
from Science News

Dreams don't just bubble up at night and then evaporate like morning dew once the sun rises. What you dream shapes what you think about your upcoming plans and your closest confidants, especially if nighttime reveries fit with what's already convenient to believe, a new report finds.

In an effort to understand whether people take their dreams seriously, Carey Morewedge of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and Michael Norton of Harvard University surveyed 149 college students attending universities in India, South Korea or the United States about theories of dream function.

People across cultures often assume that dreams contain hidden truths, much as Sigmund Freud posited more than a century ago, Morewedge and Norton report in the February Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In fact, many individuals consider dreams to provide more meaningful information regarding daily affairs than comparable waking thoughts do, the two psychologists conclude.

http://snipr.com/ba9vo



Early Whales Gave Birth on Land, Fossils Reveal
from National Geographic News

It's an evolutionary discovery Darwin himself would have been proud of. Forty-seven million years ago primitive whales gave birth on land, according to a study published this week that analyzes the fossil of a pregnant whale found in the Pakistani desert.

It is the first fetal fossil from the group of ancient amphibious whales called Archaeoceti, as well as the first from an extinct species called Maiacetus inuus. When the fossil was discovered, nine years ago, University of Michigan paleontologist Philip Gingerich was thrown off by the jumble of adult and fetal-size bones.

"The first thing we found [were] small teeth, then ribs going the wrong way," Gingerich said. Later, "it was just astonishing to realize why the specimen in the field was so confusing." The head-first position of the fetus was especially telling. Land mammals are generally born head first, and marine mammals are born tail first.

http://snipr.com/ba9yk



Can Bacteria Rescue the Oil Industry?
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

... Until only a few years ago, the majority of researchers doubted the possibility of any living matter in oil reservoirs that were sealed off for 200-500 million years.

Despite the discovery of hyperthermophilic life in Yellowstone geysers as early as the 1960s, it wasn't until the early 1990s that a number of researchers started reporting life in oil reserves 3-4 kilometers beneath the surface. Many researchers were skeptical that the found biomatter could be anything but contamination.

... Geologists and physicists dominate the science of oil extraction, but the subtle capabilities of microorganisms reveal new approaches to unlocking the full potential of oil reserves--reserves that have been inaccessible using established technology.

http://snipr.com/9mtrf



Google Earth Provides Dizzying 3D Views of Mars
from New Scientist

Mars enthusiasts can fly from the towering peak of Olympus Mons to Mars Pathfinder's peaceful resting place in an add-on to the latest version of the desktop application Google Earth, which was released on Monday.

The new Mars map amasses some 1000 gigabytes of data from a range of Mars probes, including NASA's Viking orbiters, Europe's Mars Express orbiter, and six landers, such as NASA's twin rovers, to create a three-dimensional view of the planet at a wide range of scales.

"What we've done is bring all that information into one single, easy-to-use platform," says Matthew Hancher of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "Everything that's ever gone to Mars has been put together to give us this unified view of the planet."

http://snipr.com/baa1t



Half of Britons Do Not Believe in Evolution, Survey Finds
from the Guardian (UK)

Half of British adults do not believe in evolution, with at least 22% preferring the theories of creationism or intelligent design to explain how the world came about, according to a survey.

The poll found that 25% of Britons believe Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is "definitely true," with another quarter saying it is "probably true." Half of the 2,060 people questioned were either strongly opposed to the theory or confused about it.

The Rescuing Darwin survey ... found that around 10% of people chose young Earth creationism--the belief that God created the world some time in the last 10,000 years--over evolution.

http://snipr.com/baa3i



Exploring the Folds of the Brain--And Their Links to Autism
from Scientific American

One of the first things people notice about the human brain is its intricate landscape of hills and valleys. These convolutions derive from the cerebral cortex, a two- to four-millimeter-thick mantle of gelatinous tissue packed with neurons sometimes called gray matter that mediates our perceptions, thoughts, emotions and actions.

... The cortex of large-brained mammals expanded considerably over the course of evolution much more so than the skull. Indeed, the surface area of a flattened human cortex equivalent to that of an extra-large pizza is three times larger than the inner surface of the braincase. Thus, the only way the cortex of humans and other brainy species can fit into the skull is by folding.

... New research indicates that a network of nerve fibers physically pulls the pliable cortex into shape during development and holds it in place throughout life. Disturbances to this network during development or later, as a result of a stroke or injury, can have far-reaching consequences for brain shape and neural communication. These discoveries could therefore lead to new strategies for diagnosing and treating patients with certain mental disorders.

http://snipr.com/baa5c



That Buzzing Sound: The Mystery of Tinnitus
from the New Yorker

I noticed the sound one evening about a year ago. At first, I thought an alarm had been set off. Then I realized that the noise--a high-pitched drone--was mainly in my right ear. It has been with me ever since.

The tone varies, from a soft whoosh like a shower to a piercing screech resembling a dental drill. When I am engaged in work at the hospital or in the laboratory, it seems distant. But in idle moments it gets louder and more annoying, once even jarring me from a dream.

Tinnitus--the false perception of sound in the absence of an acoustic stimulus, a phantom noise--is one of the most common clinical syndromes in the United States, affecting twelve percent of men and almost fourteen percent of women who are sixty-five and older. It only rarely afflicts the young, with one significant exception: those serving in the armed forces. Tinnitus affects nearly half the soldiers exposed to blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://snipr.com/baaad



Tracking Forest Creatures on the Move
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

BARRO COLORADO ISLAND, Panama--We were tramping doggedly through the forest in pursuit of white-faced capuchins, those familiar organ-grinder monkeys with the wild hair, piercing eyes and impatient scowls of little German professors. Capuchins are said to be exceptionally quick-witted, and that morning they might as well have been swinging from their Phi Beta Kappa keys.

... "Nothing seems to slow them down," Dr. [Margaret] Crofoot said. "They never stop moving." Neither did Dr. Crofoot, 29, who is tall, blond and sporty and who reminded me of the actress Laura Dern in "Jurassic Park."

Capuchins are smart, gorgeous and socially sophisticated, and Dr. Crofoot has relished the many hours spent studying them with the traditional field research tools of binoculars, notebook and a saint's portion of patience. Yet she and other scientists who work here at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute are thrilled with a new system for tracking their subjects that could help revolutionize the labor-intensive business of field biology.

http://snipr.com/baac1



Bolivia: The Saudi Arabia of Lithium?
from the Seattle Times

UYUNI, Bolivia--In the rush to build the next generation of hybrid or electric cars, a sobering fact confronts both automakers and governments seeking to lower their reliance on foreign oil: Almost half of the world's lithium, the mineral needed to power the vehicles, is found in Bolivia--a country that may not be willing to surrender it easily.

Japanese and European companies are trying to strike deals to tap the resource, but a nationalist sentiment about the lithium is building in the government of President Evo Morales, an ardent critic of the United States who already has nationalized Bolivia's oil and natural-gas industries.

For now, the government talks of closely controlling the lithium and keeping foreigners at bay. Adding to the pressure, indigenous groups in the remote salt desert where the mineral lies are pushing for a share in the eventual bounty.

http://snipr.com/baaef



Methane Rain Formed New Lake on Saturn Moon
from National Geographic News

Methane rains on Saturn's moon Titan may have created a new lake about four times the size of Yellowstone National Park, scientists say. The new lake covers about 13,000 square miles. It's part of a system of lakelike features around Titan's south pole.

Scientists have been studying what appear to be methane lakes near both of Titan's poles since the craft arrived in the Saturnian system in 2004. The work suggests the large, frigid moon also has methane rain.

The new lake could simply be a shallow marsh, the scientists admit, but data suggest the rainstorm that created it might have been torrential enough to form something deeper.

http://snipr.com/baa7i

[Kai]

January 30, 2009



New Look at Food Safety After Peanut Tainting
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Christopher Meunier, 7, had not been sick since he was a toddler, but in late November, he suddenly had a high fever and bloody diarrhea and started vomiting. ... Hospitalized for six days, Christopher had salmonella poisoning, making him one of more than 500 people sickened across the country after eating peanut butter or peanut products made at a Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Ga.

The Food and Drug Administration has charged that the company knowingly shipped contaminated products to some of the largest food makers in the country from a plant that was never designed to make peanut butter safely, causing one of the most extensive food recalls in history. The company responded that it disagreed with some of the agency's findings and that it had "taken extraordinary measures to identify and recall all products that have been identified as presenting a potential risk."

Food scares have become as common as Midwestern tornadoes. Cantaloupes, jalapeños, lettuce, spinach and tomatoes have all been subject to major recalls in recent years. ... A clutch of legislative proposals this year would offer fixes to the system ...

http://snipr.com/b068g



MRIs Reveal Possible Source of Woman's Super-Memory
from USA Today

A Southern California man employed in the entertainment business is the fourth person verified by scientists to have an ultra-rare memory gift: He recalls in detail most days of his life, as well as the day and date of key public events, says Larry Cahill, who co-leads a project on people with super-memory. The name of the latest "bona fide" won't be released by scientists because he's a research subject, but he is free to identify himself.

Meanwhile, MRI scans on Jill Price, 43, the Los Angeles religious school administrator who in 2006 was the first person confirmed to have such an ability, reveal two abnormally large areas in her brain.

That discovery could lead to breakthroughs on how memories are formed and kept, says Cahill, a neuroscientist at the University of California-Irvine. Price went public last year with the publication of her book, The Woman Who Can't Forget.

http://snipr.com/b06c0



Eccentric Exoplanet Gets Hot Flashes
from National Geographic News

A distant Jupiter-like planet on an eccentric orbit swings so close to its parent star that its temperature spikes by about 1,260 degrees Fahrenheit (682 degrees Celsius) in only six hours, a new study reports.

Then as rapidly as it heats up, the extrasolar planet cools back down after zipping past its star, said lead study author Gregory Laughlin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The planet's path is unique, Laughlin noted. Most known "hot Jupiters" have tight, roughly circular orbits. They are tidally locked, showing only one face to their stars, just as the moon does to Earth. "But this planet has the most eccentric orbit of any discovered," he said. Its elongated elliptical path makes it impossible for the world to be tidally locked, "so it's guaranteed to bring the planet spinning in every 111 days for a harrowing encounter."

http://snipr.com/b06f9



Balancing the Risks and Rewards of a Power Source
from Scientific American

... Since 1979, after Three Mile Island partially melted down, U.S. nuclear reactors have had to shut down for a year or more for repairs or other safety improvements 46 times, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. For example, in February 2000 a steam generator tube abruptly ruptured at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y.--a potential problem first identified in 1997 that had not been fixed.

All told, only four incidents in the history of the nuclear power industry have been worse than the cavity [that caused a shut-down] of Davis-Besse [near Toledo, Ohio], and two have been roughly equivalent, according to the NRC, such as a radioactive steam pipe burst at PSEG's Salem nuclear generating station in New Jersey.

Even as the U.S. considers building as many as 26 new reactors, 51 of the 104 currently operating have received clearance from the NRC to extend their generating lives by 20 or more years. And the remainder are either under review by the agency or expected to apply. The question: Are they safe?

http://snipr.com/b06gl



Wolves and the Balance of Nature in the Rockies
from Smithsonian Magazine

Roger Lang looked at two black wolves looking back at him. "I knew they wouldn't get them all," he said, steadying his binoculars on the steering wheel of his pickup truck. "Some of them were trapped. Some were shot from helicopters. They culled nine and actually thought they got the whole pack. But you can see they didn't."

Sloping down to the Madison River, Lang's 18,000-acre Sun Ranch in southwest Montana is an Old West tableau of rippling prairie, plunging streams, ghostly bands of elk, browsing cattle--and, at the moment, two wolves poised like sentinels on a knoll beneath the snowy peaks of the Madison Range.

... Lang has a close-up view of one of the most dramatic and contentious wildlife experiments in a century--the reintroduction of wolves to the northern Rocky Mountains, where they were wiped out long ago. Caught in Canada and flown to Yellowstone, 41 wolves were released in the area between 1995 and 1997, restoring the only missing member of the park's native mammals.

http://snipr.com/b06it



American Attitudes to Stem-Cell Therapies Are Changing Fast
from the Economist

For the past eight years, America's government has declined to fund new research into one of the world's most promising medical technologies: the use of human embryonic stem cells to repair or replace damaged tissue in the diseased and injured. Embryonic stem cells are special for two reasons, one scientific and one ethical. ... But it was this destruction of potential human life that disturbed George Bush and his supporters.

Barack Obama has promised to reverse the ban. When that happens, American academics will no longer have to watch enviously from the sidelines as their colleagues in Australia, Britain, China, the Czech Republic, Israel, Singapore and South Korea push ahead. But though the legislative wheels have yet to start turning, the mood has already shifted.

One sign of this shift came on January 23rd when the country's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted permission for the first clinical trial of a therapy based on human embryonic stem cells to Geron, a firm based in Menlo Park, California. Geron was able to ask for permission, and the FDA was able to grant it, because the ban does not apply to privately financed research. America, it seems, is back in the stem-cell business.

http://snipr.com/b06l2



Mammoth-Killing Comet Questioned
from BBC News Online

A study of wildfires after the last ice age has cast doubt on the theory that a giant comet impact wiped out woolly mammoths and prehistoric humans.

Analysis of charcoal and pollen records from around 13,000 years ago showed no evidence of continental-scale fires the cometary impact theory suggests. However, the results showed increased fires after periods of climate change.

The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The cometary impact hypothesis holds that an enormous comet slammed into or exploded over North America in the Younger Dryas period some 12,900 years ago. The idea was first mooted by Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in the US and colleagues in 2007.

http://snipr.com/b06n8



How Inventors Plan to Change Football
from the Christian Science Monitor

Football is mostly a game of throwing, running, and tackling-all human feats. Players use strength and strategy to propel the ball across the goal line. What could make it better?

According to some inventors, plenty. Technology, they say, can make the game faster, more fair, and less dangerous for players. The National Football League (NFL) is slow to adopt certain changes, but these plucky tinkerers push on, driven by a desire to solve problems, a love of the game, and hopes that their designs gain a few more yards each year.

Take the chains that have been used for decades to measure a first down. Super Bowls have been decided by inches, depending on how far the ball was advanced on certain plays. That leaves a lot of room for human error, says Alan Amron, a professional inventor from Woodbury, N.Y. He is the brains behind motorized squirt guns. Surveyors get very accurate measurements using gyroscopes and laser beams, he says. Why not apply that to football?

http://snipr.com/b06or



Common Chemical Causes Locusts to Swarm
from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)--A chemical that affects people's moods also can transform easygoing desert locusts into terrifying swarms that ravage the countryside, scientists report. "Here we have a solitary and lonely creature, the desert locust. But just give them a little serotonin, and they go and join a gang," observed Malcolm Burrows of the University of Cambridge in England.

The brain chemical serotonin has been linked to mood in people. It plays a role in sexual desire, appetite, sleep, memory and learning, too.

Under certain conditions, locusts triple the amount of serotonin in their systems, changing the insects from loners to pack animals, Burrows and his co-authors report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

http://snipr.com/b06qs



Baby Neurons Glue New Memories
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

New findings suggest a hypothesis for a much-debated question in neuroscience: what exactly is the role of new neurons born in the adult human brain? These brain cells may help link memories of events that occurred within a week or two of each other, a paper published in Neuron reports.

"It's really novel, and I think it's quite informative," said behavioral neuroscientist Andrea Chiba of the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the work.

Fred Gage a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., published a controversial study in 1998 identifying the formation of new neurons in the adult hippocampus, a brain region associated with memory. Til then, neuroscience dogma had held that humans are born with all of the neurons they will ever have. But the function of these newly formed cells has never been identified.

http://snipr.com/b06sc

[Kai]

February 3, 2009



Google Earth Fills Its Watery Gaps
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Two and a half years ago, the software engineers behind Google Earth, the searchable online replica of the planet, were poised to fill an enormous data gap, adding the two-thirds of the globe that is covered by water in reality and was blue, and blank, online.

... "We had this arbitrary distinction that if it was below sea level it didn't count," recalled John Hanke, the Internet entrepreneur who co-created the progenitor of Google Earth, called Keyhole, and moved to Google when the company bought his company in 2004.

That oversight had to be fixed before the months and months of new programming and data collection could culminate in the creation of simulated oceans. On Monday, the ocean images underwent the most significant of several upgrades to Google Earth, with the new version downloadable free at earth.google.com, according to the company.

http://snipr.com/b7xpi



Animal Eggs No Good for Cloning?
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

Cloned human embryos express the genes required for pluripotency, but animal-human hybrids do not, according to a study published Monday in the journal Cloning and Stem Cells.

The findings pave the way for isolating human embryonic stem cells from therapeutic cloning--a landmark that has never been achieved after Woo-suk Hwang's discredited cloning experiments--but call into question the utility of interspecies embryos.

"These eggs simply do not reprogram," lead author Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., said of the human-animal hybrid embryos. "That puts the nail on the coffin for that whole line of work."

http://snipr.com/b7xr5



Ocean Iron Plan Approved as Researchers Show Algae Absorb CO2
from the Guardian (UK)

Seeding the oceans with iron is a viable way to permanently lock carbon away from the atmosphere and potentially tackle climate change, according to scientists who have studied how the process works naturally in the ocean.

The study, from researchers at the University of Southampton, is published following the announcement earlier this week that scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany were finally given the go-ahead for a controversial experiment to drop several tonnes of iron into the Southern Ocean. Some environmentalists are concerned that the long-term ecological effects of iron seeding are unknown.

Ocean geo-engineering using iron as a fertiliser for microscopic creatures in the ocean is seen as a possible way to slow down global warming. Marine algae and other phytoplankton capture vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, but this growth is often limited by a lack of essential nutrients such as iron.

http://snipr.com/b7xui



The Big Fix
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The economy will recover. It won't recover anytime soon. It is likely to get significantly worse over the course of 2009, no matter what President Obama and Congress do. And resolving the financial crisis will require both aggressiveness and creativity. In fact, the main lesson from other crises of the past century is that governments tend to err on the side of too much caution--of taking the punch bowl away before the party has truly started up again.

"The mistake the United States made during the Depression and the Japanese made during the '90s was too much start-stop in their policies," said Timothy Geithner, Obama's choice for Treasury secretary ... Japan announced stimulus measures even as it was cutting other government spending. Franklin Roosevelt flirted with fiscal discipline midway through the New Deal, and the country slipped back into decline.

Geithner arguably made a similar miscalculation himself last year as a top Federal Reserve official who was part of a team that allowed Lehman Brothers to fail. But he insisted that the Obama administration had learned history's lesson. "We're just not going to make that mistake," Geithner said. "We're not going to do that. We'll keep at it until it's done, whatever it takes."

http://snipr.com/b7xw3



Cancer Protection Secret Revealed
from BBC News Online

Scientists say they have discovered a missing link in the way cells protect themselves against cancer. They have uncovered how cells switch a gene called p53, which can block the development of tumours, on and off.

The researchers say the finding has important implications for cancer treatment and diagnosis. The study, published in Genes And Development, was carried out by teams of scientists in Singapore and the University of Dundee.

The p53 gene, first discovered 30 years ago, plays a vital role in keeping the body healthy by ordering damaged cells to commit suicide, or by stopping them dividing while key repair work is carried out. In half of all cancers the gene is either damaged or inactive, giving damaged cells a free rein to keep dividing and form cancer.

http://snipr.com/b7xzw



Local Police Want Right to Jam Wireless Signals
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

As President Obama's motorcade rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, federal authorities deployed a closely held law enforcement tool: equipment that can jam cellphones and other wireless devices to foil remote-controlled bombs, sources said.

It is an increasingly common technology, with federal agencies expanding its use as state and local agencies are pushing for permission to do the same. Police and others say it could stop terrorists from coordinating during an attack, prevent suspects from erasing evidence on wireless devices, simplify arrests and keep inmates from using contraband phones.

But jamming remains strictly illegal for state and local agencies. Federal officials barely acknowledge that they use it inside the United States, and the few federal agencies that can jam signals usually must seek a legal waiver first.

http://snipr.com/b7y1o



'Normal' Levels of Bad Cholesterol May Be Too High
from USA Today

The bottom isn't just dropping out of the stock market. It's also giving way in a critical measure of heart risk.

Two new studies indicate that the threshold of what doctors consider "normal" levels of bad cholesterol, or LDL, may be too high, leaving thousands of people vulnerable to heart attacks and strokes.

One of the studies, led by Gregg Fonarow of UCLA, examined 131,000 hospital admissions for heart disease and found that at least half of the patients had normal LDL levels. The other study, called JUPITER, involved 18,000 people. It showed that giving a cholesterol-lowering statin to older people with normal LDL cut their risk of heart attack and stroke in half.

http://snipr.com/b7y3t



A Leap for Teleporting, Between Ions Feet Apart
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Without quite the drama of Alexander Graham Bell calling out, "Mr. Watson, come here!" or the charm of the original "Star Trek" television show, scientists have nonetheless achieved a milestone in communication: teleporting the quantum identity of one atom to another a few feet away.

The contraption is a Rube Goldberg-esque mix of vacuum chambers, fiber optics, lasers and semitransparent beam splitters in a laboratory at the Joint Quantum Institute in Maryland.

"Even in the far future, "Star Trek" transporters will probably remain a fantasy, but the mechanism could form an important component in new types of communication and computing.

Quantum teleportation depends on entanglement, one of the strangest of the many strange aspects of quantum mechanics. Two particles can become "entangled" into a single entity, and a change in one instantaneously changes the other even if it is far away.

http://snipr.com/b7y5n



First Chocoholics in U.S. Found in New Mexico?
from National Geographic News

Chocolate lovers are a dedicated bunch. Hershey's sales and profits rose even in the brutal final quarter of 2008, and a thousand years ago ancient Americans may have walked hundreds of miles to procure the bittersweet stuff, a new study suggests.

Chemical residues found on pottery jar shards reveal that the practice of drinking chocolate had spread at least as far north as Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico by A.D. 1000 to 1125--400 years earlier than chocolate was thought to have reached what is now the United States.

The discovery suggests a vast trade network helped deliver chocolate from Central America, where the seeds of the cacao tree were first transformed into beverages some 3,000 years ago.

http://snipr.com/b7y9l



Wreck of HMS Victory Found in English Channel
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

American salvagers say they have discovered the long-sought wreck of HMS Victory, the mightiest and most technologically advanced warship of its time, which sank during a violent storm in the English Channel in 1744.

Armed with as many as 110 massive bronze cannons and carrying a crew of 900 men and 100 supernumeraries, the Victory was lost with all hands and reportedly with a treasure of gold bullion whose value is estimated at $1 billion.

In a news conference Monday in London, Greg Stemm, chief executive of Odyssey Marine Exploration in Tampa, Fla., said the company found the remains in 330 feet of water more than 60 miles from where the vessel was thought to have sunk--exonerating the captain, Sir John Balchin, from the widespread accusation that he had let it run aground through faulty navigation.

http://snipr.com/b7y7d

[Iason Ouabache]

Half of Britons Do Not Believe in Evolution, Survey Finds
from the Guardian (UK)

Half of British adults do not believe in evolution, with at least 22% preferring the theories of creationism or intelligent design to explain how the world came about, according to a survey.

The poll found that 25% of Britons believe Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is "definitely true," with another quarter saying it is "probably true." Half of the 2,060 people questioned were either strongly opposed to the theory or confused about it.

The Rescuing Darwin survey ... found that around 10% of people chose young Earth creationism--the belief that God created the world some time in the last 10,000 years--over evolution.

http://snipr.com/baa3i

This survey was bullshit, btw.  The question they asked is whether people agreed that "evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things, so the intervention of a designer is needed at key stages".  Very obviously biased wording.  It would have been better to ask something like "Do you believe that the theory of evolution explains the diversity of life on earth?"  You would have gotten very different numbers from that survey.