Weekly Science Headlines

[Jasper]

New aphrodesiac found in bacon

Today, the market for sexual enchancement supplements is dominated by Viagra and similar artificially produced pharmaceuticals, but tomorrow, it could be dominated by bacon.
Source

This article seems legit.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

New aphrodesiac found in bacon

Today, the market for sexual enchancement supplements is dominated by Viagra and similar artificially produced pharmaceuticals, but tomorrow, it could be dominated by bacon.
Source

This article seems legit.

[Jasper]

New aphrodesiac found in bacon

Today, the market for sexual enchancement supplements is dominated by Viagra and similar artificially produced pharmaceuticals, but tomorrow, it could be dominated by bacon.
Source

This article seems legit.

April fool's, bitch!

[Kai]

March 31, 2009



Giant Laser Experiment Powers Up
from BBC News Online

The US has finished constructing a huge physics experiment aimed at recreating conditions at the heart of our Sun. The US National Ignition Facility is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion, a process that could offer abundant clean energy.

The lab will kick-start the reaction by focusing 192 giant laser beams on a tiny pellet of hydrogen fuel. To work, it must show that more energy can be extracted from the process than is required to initiate it.

... The California-based NIF is the largest experimental science facility in the US and contains the world's most powerful laser. It has taken 12 years to build. "This is a major milestone," said Dr. Ed Moses, director of the facility. "We are well on our way to achieving what we set out to do--controlled, sustained nuclear fusion and energy gain for the first time ever in a laboratory setting."

http://snipr.com/exhj2



Multi-Drug Pill Shows Promise in Cutting Heart Disease
from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Take a little aspirin, add one part low-dose cholesterol medicine and three parts low-dose blood pressure medicine. Put it in a single pill and give to everybody older than age 45. What do you get?

Doctors don't know for sure. But the emerging dream of a cheap polypill that could be used to reduce heart attacks and strokes in vast numbers of "healthy" people moved one step closer to reality Monday.

The first large study of a single pill made up of a brew of generic drugs showed that blood pressure and cholesterol were reduced enough to theoretically cut heart disease by 60% and strokes by 50% among middle-aged people, said lead author Salim Yusuf of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. But there's a potential downside: People might use the pill to avoid exercising and watching their diet.

http://snipr.com/exhl5



Texas Vote Leaves Loopholes for Teaching Creationism
from New Scientist

It was a mixed bag of victory and defeat for science on Friday when the Texas Board of Education voted on their state science standards.

In a move that pleased the scientific community, the board voted to not include proposed changes that would call for the teaching of the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories--code words for allowing creationist views into the classroom.

However, additional amendments that were voted through provide loopholes for creationist teaching. "It's as if they slammed the door shut with strengths and weaknesses, then ran around the house opening windows to let it in a bunch of other ways," says Dan Quinn, who was on site at the hearings. Quinn is communications director of the Texas Freedom Network, a community watchdog organisation.

http://snipr.com/exhn5



Medical Journals and Ethics: Pity the Messenger
from the Economist

In the past scientists sometimes managed to publish medical studies flogging the supposed benefits of some or other drug without disclosing that they had financial ties to the drug's manufacturer. One of the leading voices arguing for full disclosure of such connections has been the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA's editor, was even awarded the Catcher in the Rye humanitarian prize last year "because of her leadership on discussions of conflicts of interest in medicine."

So it comes as something of a shock to see her journal now engulfed by a scandal concerning its handling of precisely such a matter. The affair, which involves both non-disclosure of financial interests and alleged attempts to suppress whistle-blowers, has already drawn other medical journals into the fray. On March 20th JAMA published an editorial revising its procedures for investigating allegations of such misconduct--but this new policy has itself come under attack.

http://snipr.com/exhok



Among Climate Scientists, a Dispute Over 'Tipping Points'
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The language was apocalyptic. Last month, a leading climate scientist warned that Earth's rising temperatures were poised to set off irreversible disasters if steps were not taken quickly to stop global warming.

"The climate is nearing tipping points," the NASA climate scientist James E. Hansen wrote in The Observer newspaper of London. "If we do not change course, we'll hand our children a situation that is out of their control."

The resulting calamities, Dr. Hansen and other like-minded scientists have warned, could be widespread and overwhelming .... But the idea that the planet is nearing tipping points--thresholds at which change suddenly becomes unstoppable--has driven a wedge between scientists who otherwise share deep concerns about the implications of a human-warmed climate.

http://snipr.com/exhyw



Huge Man-Made Algae Swarm Devoured--Bad for Climate?
from National Geographic News

A giant experiment went awry at sea this month. Shrimplike animals devoured 159 square miles of artificially stimulated algae meant to fight global warming--casting serious doubt on ocean fertilization as a climate-control tool. For years, scientists have proposed supercharging algae growth by dumping tons of iron into the ocean.

Iron is a necessary element for algae photosynthesis--the process by which the plants convert sunlight into energy--but it is relatively rare in the ocean. Algae suck carbon dioxide (C02), a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, out of the atmosphere. The algae then generally fall to the seafloor--sequestering the CO2 indefinitely.

About a dozen such "iron fertilization" experiments have already been done--with mixed success. But experts have warned of unintended consequences, such as unpredictable reactions in the ecosystem.

http://snipr.com/exi0a



Fungus Farmers Show Way to New Drugs
from Nature News

In a mutually beneficial symbiosis, leaf-cutting ants cultivate fungus gardens, providing both a safe home for the fungi and a food source for the ants. But this 50-million-year-old relationship also includes microbes that new research shows could help speed the quest to develop better antibiotics and biofuels.

Ten years ago, Cameron Currie, a microbial ecologist then at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, discovered that leaf-cutting ants carry colonies of actinomycete bacteria on their bodies.

The bacteria churn out an antibiotic that protects the ants' fungal crops from associated parasitic fungi (such as Escovopsis). On 29 March, Currie, Jon Clardy at the Harvard Medical School in Boston and their colleagues reported that they had isolated and purified one of these antifungals, which they named dentigerumycin, and that it is a chemical that has never been previously reported.

http://snipr.com/exi28



Bioscientists Focus on the New, Vast Potential of Epigenetics
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

The human genome is an indisputably stunning piece of work: 25,000 or so genes containing all of the essential instructions for building a being. Still, it's only a guide. Alone, the genome cannot construct a person. The "book of life" requires a vocabulary of attendant molecules, compounds and chemicals--a biochemical language, so to speak--to help genes write the individual story of you.

Altogether, this phenomenon is called epigenetics. Its study represents one of the cutting edges of bioscience, offering the possibility of not just curing diseases like cancer and diabetes, but preventing them altogether.

"The human epigenome is the next frontier of genomic research," said Bing Ren, an associate professor of cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California San Diego, which recently received a five-year, $16.6 million grant from the federal National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish The San Diego Epigenome Center at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research on campus.

http://snipr.com/exi43



Surge of College Students Pursuing 'Clean Energy' Careers
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

In what could be an encouraging sign of change in the long-standing shortage of Americans preparing for "clean energy" careers, the subject is suddenly hot on college campuses across the nation--a surge of interest largely stimulated by the specter of global warming.

Concern about climate change is galvanizing more undergraduate students to turn toward a subject involving science and engineering, some educators suggest, in much the same way that Moscow's launching of the Sputnik space satellite jolted baby boomers to turn their eyes to the stars.

What remains uncertain is whether their enthusiasm for renewable energy will carry over into graduate school and lead them to swell the ranks of Americans with advanced science and engineering degrees.

http://snipr.com/exi6m



The Ogallala Aquifer: Saving a Vital U.S. Water Source
from Scientific American

On America's high plains, crops in early summer stretch to the horizon: field after verdant field of corn, sorghum, soybeans, wheat and cotton. Framed by immense skies now blue, now scarlet-streaked, this 800-mile expanse of agriculture looks like it could go on forever. It can't.

The Ogallala Aquifer, the vast underground reservoir that gives life to these fields, is disappearing. In some places, the groundwater is already gone. This is the breadbasket of America--the region that supplies at least one fifth of the total annual U.S. agricultural harvest.

If the aquifer goes dry, more than $20 billion worth of food and fiber will vanish from the world's markets. And scientists say it will take natural processes 6,000 years to refill the reservoir. The challenge of the Ogallala is how to manage human demands on the layer of water that sprawls underneath parts of eight states from South Dakota to Texas.

http://snipr.com/exi9z

[Kai]

April 3, 2009



Top Five Famous Computer Hackers
from ABC News

April 1 is the day the Conficker computer worm was supposed to do something terrible to millions of computers running Microsoft Windows--though engineers were at a loss to say just what that something was.

So what happened? If your computer lets you read this story, we can presume it's not a smoldering wreck. But somewhere in cyberspace, some hacker, or hackers, created Conficker, and they're still out there. So are others.

Merriam-Webster has multiple definitions of "hacker"--including ... "a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system." But you may be surprised to know what's happened to the most famed hackers of the past. We went looking for a way to measure the top cases ... and the consensus we found was that it's hard to do.

http://snipr.com/f5gc4



Tests Nipped Risk of Tainted Pistachios in Bud
from MSNBC

TERRA BELLA, Calif. (Associated Press)--A nationwide recall of 2 million pounds of pistachios in the wake of a salmonella scare has increased calls for more stringent food testing laws.

The contamination was only detected because of voluntary testing by a manufacturer for Kraft Foods Inc. almost two weeks ago. Private auditors hired by Kraft later found problems they think caused the contamination at a supplier's processing facility in central California.

If Kraft had not tested its product, 2 million pounds of pistachios that touched off government warnings and a scare this week probably would still be on the market. Neither the Food and Drug Administration nor state laws require food manufacturers to test the safety of their products.

http://snipr.com/f5giz



Heart Muscle Renewed Over Lifetime, Study Finds
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

In a finding that may open new approaches to treating heart disease, Swedish scientists have succeeded in measuring a highly controversial property of the human heart: the rate at which its muscle cells are renewed during a person's lifetime.

The finding upturns what has long been conventional wisdom: that the heart cannot produce new muscle cells and so people die with the same heart they were born with.

About 1 percent of the heart muscle cells are replaced every year at age 25, and that rate gradually falls to less than half a percent per year by age 75, concluded a team of researchers led by Dr. Jonas Frisen of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. The upshot is that about half of the heart's muscle cells are exchanged in the course of a normal lifetime, the Swedish group calculates. Its results are to be published Friday in the journal Science.

http://snipr.com/f5gll



"Hidden" Planet Found in Old Hubble Image
from National Geographic News

It took 11 years, but scientists have now found the earliest known picture of a planet outside our solar system. Using a new technique that removes starlight from an image, scientists re-examined a Hubble Space Telescope picture taken in 1998 and stripped away starlight to reveal a "hidden" world.

This planet orbits the young star HR 8799, which lies about 130 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus, noted lead study author David Lafrenière of the University of Toronto.

Last September Lafrenière and colleagues announced the first direct picture of an alien planetary system: three massive worlds circling HR 8799. The archived Hubble picture shows the outermost of that planetary trio. Although the new find is technically confirmation of a previously known planet, the discovery suggests there could be many more unknown planets waiting to be found in Hubble's archives, researchers say.

http://snipr.com/f5go0



How Infection May Spark Leukaemia
from BBC News Online

Scientists have shown how common infections might trigger childhood leukaemia. They have identified a molecule, TGF, produced by the body in response to infection that stimulates development of the disease.

It triggers multiplication of pre-cancerous stem cells at the expense of healthy counterparts. The Institute of Cancer Research study appears in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Leukaemia occurs when large numbers of white blood cells take over the bone marrow, leaving the body unable to produce enough normal blood cells. The researchers had already identified a gen

http://snipr.com/f5gqv



Heavyweight Galaxies in the Young Universe
from Science News

Peering into the center of five of the youngest clusters of galaxies known in the universe, astronomers recently found several full-grown, cigar-chomping adults among the myriad of toddlers. The remote galaxies hail from a time when the 13.7-billion-year-old cosmos was less than 5 billion years old.

Yet measurements reveal that the bodies are just as massive as galaxies like the modern-day Milky Way, which took at least 10 billions years to mature. The findings appear to call into question the leading theory of galaxy formation, known as the dark matter model--at least as it applies to the dense regions where galaxies congregate into clusters, says Chris Collins, an astronomer at the Liverpool John Moores University in England.

He and his colleagues used the infrared Subaru telescope atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea to observe the galaxies, and the team describes the findings in the April 2 Nature.

http://snipr.com/f5gt8



Recession Might Be Good for Your Health
from the Baltimore Sun

It took a moment to make the connection, but Jake Sawyers says the recession has been good for him, or at least for his health.

"I smoke when I drink, and I drink when I go out and I've been doing less of that," said the 36-year-old Canton resident who was buying a pack of cigarettes at a neighborhood convenience store. "I am also exercising more. Maybe I have more energy because I'm not drinking and smoking as much."

Sawyers isn't alone. Data show that many people are taming their vices rather than drowning their sorrows these days--behavior that national researchers say is consistent with past recessions. The desire to drink and smoke may grow with financial pressures, but sales of some alcohol and cigarettes are dipping with disposable income.

http://snipr.com/f5gvt



Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees
from Scientific American

Dave Hackenberg makes a living moving honeybees. Up and down the East Coast and often coast to coast, Hackenberg trucks his beehives from field to field to pollinate crops as diverse as Florida melons, Pennsylvania apples, Maine blueberries and California almonds.

As he has done for the past 42 years, in the fall of 2006 Hackenberg migrated with his family and his bees from their central Pennsylvania summer home to their winter locale in central Florida. The insects had just finished their pollination duties on blooming Pennsylvanian pumpkin fields and were now to catch the last of the Floridian Spanish needle nectar flow.

When Hackenberg checked on his pollinators, the colonies were "boiling over" with bees, as he put it. But when he came back a month later, he was horrified. Many of the remaining colonies had lost large numbers of workers, and only the young workers and the queen remained and seemed healthy. More than half of the 3,000 hives were completely devoid of bees. But no dead bees were in sight. "It was like a ghost town," Hackenberg said ...

http://snipr.com/f5gyg



Scientists Develop Techniques to Unravel Proteins' Mysteries
from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Proteins, the work-horse molecules necessary for virtually every human action from breathing to thinking, have proved an almost ghostly presence, daring scientists to fully grasp their structure and behavior.

Now, physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have developed powerful imaging techniques that promise to tell us much more about what proteins are and what they do, how they change shapes and how they work together in a cell. Such questions go to the heart of our quest to understand diseases and find effective drugs.

"The vast majority of diseases are caused by impairment in some kind of protein function--too much or not enough of a certain protein, or a protein that's not working properly," said Andy Greene, director of the Biotechnology and Bioengineering Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the UWM work.

http://snipr.com/f5h0k



Everglades Restoration Plan Shrinks
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

MIAMI--The Everglades have become yet another victim of the shrinking economy. Gov. Charlie Crist announced Wednesday that Florida would significantly scale back its $1.34 billion deal to restore the Everglades by buying 180,000 acres from the United States Sugar Corporation.

At a news conference in Tallahassee, Mr. Crist outlined a far more modest proposal: $530 million for 72,500 acres, with an option to buy the rest by 2019. "We feel this is the best opportunity, the best financial scenario we can present," Mr. Crist said, adding, "The economy has been what it has been, and we have to deal with the parameters we are given."

The new proposal, if approved by the South Florida Water Management District and the board of United States Sugar, would amount to the second major revision of a plan that began last June as a purchase of United States Sugar, all assets included, for $1.75 billion.

http://snipr.com/f5h35



Institute Provides Hands-on Learning
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

Five years before Neil Armstrong's historic walk on the moon, an elementary school teacher in southeastern San Diego launched an after-school science club in his classroom. The only equipment he had was a worn, 40-gallon aquarium that he filled with fish, sea cucumbers and octopuses.

Forty-five years after the program's launch and nearly a decade after the death of visionary

founder Tom Watts, the Elementary Institute of Science--as it is now known--is thriving, attracting hundreds of children from throughout the county to its after-school, weekend and summer classes.

Students flock to the program and parents rave about it because the Elementary Institute of

Science offers a unique, hands-on approach to learning that usually isn't available in public schools, said Doris Anderson, the institute's longtime executive director, herself a former junior high teacher.

http://snipr.com/f5h5e

[Vene]

Heart Muscle Renewed Over Lifetime, Study Finds
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

In a finding that may open new approaches to treating heart disease, Swedish scientists have succeeded in measuring a highly controversial property of the human heart: the rate at which its muscle cells are renewed during a person's lifetime.

The finding upturns what has long been conventional wisdom: that the heart cannot produce new muscle cells and so people die with the same heart they were born with.

About 1 percent of the heart muscle cells are replaced every year at age 25, and that rate gradually falls to less than half a percent per year by age 75, concluded a team of researchers led by Dr. Jonas Frisen of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. The upshot is that about half of the heart's muscle cells are exchanged in the course of a normal lifetime, the Swedish group calculates. Its results are to be published Friday in the journal Science.

http://snipr.com/f5gll

I wonder if this applies to the other muscle types.

Scientists Develop Techniques to Unravel Proteins' Mysteries
from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Proteins, the work-horse molecules necessary for virtually every human action from breathing to thinking, have proved an almost ghostly presence, daring scientists to fully grasp their structure and behavior.

Now, physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have developed powerful imaging techniques that promise to tell us much more about what proteins are and what they do, how they change shapes and how they work together in a cell. Such questions go to the heart of our quest to understand diseases and find effective drugs.

"The vast majority of diseases are caused by impairment in some kind of protein function--too much or not enough of a certain protein, or a protein that's not working properly," said Andy Greene, director of the Biotechnology and Bioengineering Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the UWM work.

http://snipr.com/f5h0k

This makes me 

[the other anonymous]

Recession Might Be Good for Your Health
from the Baltimore Sun

Yes, economically-enforced anorexia is always a great way to get your kids to lose weight.

-toa,
will soon be quitting smoking, too

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

April 3, 2009



Top Five Famous Computer Hackers
from ABC News

April 1 is the day the Conficker computer worm was supposed to do something terrible to millions of computers running Microsoft Windows--though engineers were at a loss to say just what that something was.

So what happened? If your computer lets you read this story, we can presume it's not a smoldering wreck. But somewhere in cyberspace, some hacker, or hackers, created Conficker, and they're still out there. So are others.

Merriam-Webster has multiple definitions of "hacker"--including ... "a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system." But you may be surprised to know what's happened to the most famed hackers of the past. We went looking for a way to measure the top cases ... and the consensus we found was that it's hard to do.

http://snipr.com/f5gc4

ABC News fails at computing forever.


Again.

[Iason Ouabache]

Texas Vote Leaves Loopholes for Teaching Creationism
from New Scientist

It was a mixed bag of victory and defeat for science on Friday when the Texas Board of Education voted on their state science standards.

In a move that pleased the scientific community, the board voted to not include proposed changes that would call for the teaching of the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories--code words for allowing creationist views into the classroom.

However, additional amendments that were voted through provide loopholes for creationist teaching. "It's as if they slammed the door shut with strengths and weaknesses, then ran around the house opening windows to let it in a bunch of other ways," says Dan Quinn, who was on site at the hearings. Quinn is communications director of the Texas Freedom Network, a community watchdog organization.

http://snipr.com/exhn5

I honestly don't know how I feel about this whole situation. Yes, making weak and ambiguous science standards make me  . But the Creationists had their "strength and weaknesses" language in place for a decade and didn't do much with it. The Creationists still can't win in lawsuits, where it counts. I get the feeling that this is all much ado about nothing. I just can't bring myself to care about it. 

[Corvidia]

April 3, 2009
Tests Nipped Risk of Tainted Pistachios in Bud
from MSNBC

TERRA BELLA, Calif. (Associated Press)--A nationwide recall of 2 million pounds of pistachios in the wake of a salmonella scare has increased calls for more stringent food testing laws.

The contamination was only detected because of voluntary testing by a manufacturer for Kraft Foods Inc. almost two weeks ago. Private auditors hired by Kraft later found problems they think caused the contamination at a supplier's processing facility in central California.

If Kraft had not tested its product, 2 million pounds of pistachios that touched off government warnings and a scare this week probably would still be on the market. Neither the Food and Drug Administration nor state laws require food manufacturers to test the safety of their products.

http://snipr.com/f5giz

This is the only time you will ever hear me praise Kraft. I would prefer not to die eating pistachios. Although it would be a delicious death.

[Kai]

April 6, 2009



Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain. Could make you forget a chronic fear, a traumatic loss, even a bad habit.

Researchers in Brooklyn have recently accomplished comparable feats, with a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory, like emotional associations, spatial knowledge or motor skills.

The drug blocks the activity of a substance that the brain apparently needs to retain much of its learned information. And if enhanced, the substance could help ward off dementias and other memory problems.

http://snipr.com/fc4ru



Inbreeding Taking Toll on Michigan Wolves
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

Michigan (Associated Press) -- The two dozen or so gray wolves that wander an island chain in northwestern Lake Superior are suffering from backbone malformations caused by genetic inbreeding, posing yet another challenge to their prospects for long-term survival, according to wildlife biologists.

Although confirmed only recently, the problem apparently has been festering for decades in the small, isolated packs in Michigan's Isle Royale National Park. The abnormalities, also found in some domestic dogs, can cause pain and partial paralysis while limiting the range of motion so crucial for predators in the wild.

The discovery raises the ethically thorny question of whether scientists should try to dilute the gene pool by introducing wolves from elsewhere, said researchers with Michigan Tech University in Houghton, which hosts a 51-year-old study of the island park's wolves and moose.

http://snipr.com/fc4xe



Research Links Poor Kids' Stress, Brain Impairment
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Children raised in poverty suffer many ill effects: They often have health problems and tend to struggle in school, which can create a cycle of poverty across generations.

Now, research is providing what could be crucial clues to explain how childhood poverty translates into dimmer chances of success: Chronic stress from growing up poor appears to have a direct impact on the brain, leaving children with impairment in at least one key area -- working memory.

"There's been lots of evidence that low-income families are under tremendous amounts of stress, and we know that stress has many implications," said Gary W. Evans, a professor of human ecology at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., who led the research. "What this data raises is the possibility that it's also related to cognitive development."

http://snipr.com/fc4z1



Rosy Complexion Denotes Health and Hormones
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

In the animal kingdom, some primates produce reddened faces in order to show off and attract mates. Humans apparently do the same, to some extent.

In a study published this week in the journal PLoS ONE, researchers at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland measured how skin color varies according to the amount of oxygen in the blood. Oxygenated blood is a bright red color, and deoxygenated blood has a slightly bluish-red color. Then they presented computerized graphics of young people's faces to study participants and allowed them to change the color of the faces to make them look as healthy as possible.

For all the faces, participants added more oxygen-rich blood color to improve a healthy appearance. A healthy appearance, the researchers note, has been shown to be a major characteristic of sexual attraction

http://snipr.com/fc502



Congress Delays Obama's Green Push
from New Scientist

At the G20 summit in London last week, Barack Obama took time out from fixing the world's financial system to promise that the US will "lead by example to reduce our carbon footprint". But back in Washington, DC, Congress was saying, in effect, "not so fast".

The basis of Obama's plan to reduce US emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 is a "cap-and-trade" system, in which emitters will be charged for every tonne of CO2 they put into the air. The cash - tens of billions of dollars of it - will go into federal funding of "green jobs" to revive the US economy with renewable energy like solar and wind power, and a smart grid to get that power to customers.

Last week, legislators in Congress began considering the laws necessary to establish the new cap-and-trade regime, but they immediately hit opposition from Democrats in coal-mining mid-western states who are fearful the measures could undermine their "brown jobs", especially in a recession. That left leading climate analyst Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Climate Change, saying that "the odds are [the legislation] will slip to 2010".

http://snipr.com/fc51l



Therapists Use Virtual Worlds to Address Real Problems
from Scientific American

When a troubled 13-year-old named Joe first entered the Kids in Transition program in 2007 in Camden, N.J., he hardly spoke to his therapist. Like many teens at this residential mental health treatment facility, he was admitted because he had trouble controlling his anger, had run away from home several times, and had a history of run-ins with the law, according to Heather Foley, a social worker with the program.

Therapists typically encourage patients like Joe to get at the core of their problems via face-to-face role-playing--pretending to be in a situation and having the patient practice how to handle it. But Foley says this approach was a nonstarter for Joe, whose confrontational behavior and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) impair his ability to engage and focus in this way.

When that approach failed, Foley enrolled her young patient in a program that treats teens using something familiar to most of them: the virtual world, in this case a customized one called Simulated Environment for Counseling, Training, Evaluation and Rehabilitation (SECTER).

http://snipr.com/fc52r



Getting People to Coexist With Cats
from Time

As the human population has grown in the Pantanal, the vast wetland in central Brazil, people and big cats -- namely the South American jaguar -- are encroaching increasingly on each other's territory. When conflict occurs, as it inevitably does, the cats are usually the ones who lose.

From the distance of a magazine story or a National Geographic special, it can be hard to understand why anyone would want to kill the very beautiful, very endangered jaguar. But if you're a Brazilian cattle farmer whose cows keep getting eaten by jaguars, the killing makes a little more sense.

This is the kind of situation to which conservationists might have responded by cordoning off protected habitats and reserves -- building a fence, in effect, between the wild animals and the people. But in the Pantanal, and in much of the rest of our once wild, once underpopulated world, total separation is simply not a sustainable option.

http://snipr.com/fc53a



Booting Up a Computer Pioneer's 200-Year-Old Design
from Smithsonian Magazine

When today's number crunchers want to make quick calculations, they reach for their smartphone, a device practically unimaginable two centuries ago. But in the 1820s, at least one forward-thinking mathematician envisioned a calculating machine, albeit far from portable.

Frustrated by the human errors he found in printed numerical tables, English inventor Charles Babbage designed a machine to perform mathematical functions and automatically print the results. His initial design, which called for 25,000 parts, would have weighed 15 tons and been about the size of a horse-drawn carriage.

The plans looked good on paper, but Babbage was never able to build his machine. More than a century after his death in 1871, computer historians blew the dust off his 5,000 pages of notes and drawings and wondered if his ideas could work. ... A full-scale clone of that machine is now on display in Mountain View, California, at the Computer History Museum through December 2009.

http://snipr.com/fc54f



Found: The Brain's Centre of Wisdom
from the Times (London)

Scientists have identified the seat of human wisdom by pinpointing parts of the brain that guide us when we face difficult moral dilemmas.

Sophisticated brain scanning techniques have found that humans respond by activating areas associated with the primitive emotions of sex, fear and anger as well as our capability for abstract thought.

The findings, to be published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, represent a significant incursion into territory once regarded as the domain of religion and philosophy.

http://snipr.com/fc55k



Viruses Used to Grow "Greener" Batteries
from National Geographic News

With the help of a common virus, scientists have built a battery that rivals the state-of-the-art rechargeable models now powering personal electronics and hybrid vehicles. The hope is to replace the costly, toxic electrodes currently used in lithium-ion batteries.

The researchers modified the M13 virus, which infects only bacteria, to grow proteins on its surface that attract amorphous iron phosphate.

The result: Wires just nanometers thick of the material, which is cheaper and environmentally friendlier than ones currently used to make electrodes for lithium-ion batteries.

http://snipr.com/fc56t

[Kai]

April 7, 2009



Did Scientist Predict Italy Quake?
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

More than a week ago, a scientist little known in earthquake circles made a bold prediction of a destructive earthquake in the Abruzzo region of central Italy based on spikes in radon gas. Giampaolo Giuliani went so far as to tell the mayor of a town there that it would strike within the next 24 hours.

His deadline passed and for days, nothing happened. Then, early Monday, a magnitude-6.3 earthquake struck near the town of L'Aquila, sparking a controversy around the world about whether Giuliani truly predicted the temblor or whether it was a fluke of timing.

"This happens all the time," said Tom Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center, who is also principal investigator on a worldwide project called the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability. "People send out predictions based on various stuff. It's always hard to evaluate."

http://snipr.com/feucq



When All You Have Left Is Your Pride
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Look around you. On the train platform, at the bus stop, in the car pool lane: these days someone there is probably faking it, maintaining a job routine without having a job to go to.

... "I have a new client, a laid-off lawyer, who's commuting in every day -- to his Starbucks," said Robert C. Chope, a professor of counseling at San Francisco State University and president of the employment division of the American Counseling Association. "He gets dressed up, meets with colleagues, networks; he calls it his Western White House. I have encouraged him to keep his routine."

The fine art of keeping up appearances may seem shallow and deceitful, the very embodiment of denial. But many psychologists beg to differ. To the extent that it sustains good habits and reflects personal pride, they say, this kind of play-acting can be an extremely effective social strategy, especially in uncertain times.

http://snipr.com/feuea



Why Does Scratching Relieve an Itch?
from Time

Medical science has deciphered many of the body's workings, down to the level of the gene, and isn't too far from using stem cells to repair its hobbled organs. But in many ways, the human body remains a vast and peculiar mystery.

Take the common itch. Everyone knows from experience that a good scratch can cure an itch, but doctors still don't understand the physiological mechanism behind the itch-scratch connection.

And that ignorance can have severe medical consequences. The common itch isn't so benign in many conditions, including shingles and AIDS, which can cause uncomfortably severe itching. Sometimes itching can occur inexplicably, without any apparent physical symptoms, and a patient's unchecked scratching can lead to excessive skin damage or worse. ... That's why a new study published [Monday] in the journal Nature Neuroscience offers some hope of lasting relief.

http://snipr.com/feugh



Sick Bats' PR Problem Could Prove to Be Deadly
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

To a public raised on vampire movies, bats are loathsome, frightening creatures - blind, flying rodents that all carry rabies, suck human blood, and get impossibly tangled in long hair.

None of it is true. But scientists trying to drum up a public outcry - and government funding - to stop a mysterious illness ravaging bat populations from Vermont to Virginia believe these myths are thwarting their efforts. The researchers say they are learning a harsh truth about the public's desire to save animals: Cuteness rules.

Despairing bat biologists want to hire a publicist - a kind of public relations batman - to give bats an image makeover and educate people about the night creatures' ecological benefits. If they could get people to care even half as much as they do about polar bears, these researchers say, desperately needed dollars and attention may follow to save the misunderstood animals.

http://snipr.com/feujv



Is Alzheimer's the Result of a Burnt-Out Brain?
from New Scientist

Healthy young adults carrying a gene variant that is a major risk factor for the disease seem to have extra activity in brain regions related to memory, even when their brains are at rest.

The gene APOE codes for a protein thought to help create, maintain and repair neuronal connections. One variant, epsilon 4, is considered the biggest risk factor for getting Alzheimer's, increasing your risk by up to 4 times if you have one copy and up to 12 if you have two. It is not known exactly how epsilon 4 ups the risk, but in people who carry it and have developed Alzheimer's, the hippocampus, which is involved in memory functions, is usually smaller.

To figure out if epsilon 4 influences brain function earlier on in life, Clare Mackay of the University of Oxford and colleagues at Imperial College London scanned the brains of 18 healthy adults with epsilon 4 and 18 controls who did not have the variant. In the scanner, the volunteers spent time performing memory tests and also doing nothing.

http://snipr.com/feunq



Virtual Stomachs Regurgitate the Mysteries of Digestion
from Scientific American

DAVIS, Calif.--Ann Wigmore was not enamored with the American diet. Having moved from Lithuania after World War I, she was appalled by our white breads and other abominations and dearly missed the treats her grandmother once prepared, including a savory "gruel made from crushed rye grain and diluted goat's milk."

One day, after struggling for years with ill health, she wandered out to an abandoned parking lot and, as she wrote in her memoir ... "There, spread out before my eyes, were hundreds of square feet of the most luscious weeds I had ever beheld." So began Wigmore's faith in the healing powers of wheatgrass, a belief that made her a pioneer of the raw foods movement ...

Although it may be easy to sneer at the most ardent adherents of "Raw Foodism," Wigmore's atavistic philosophy has influenced how most mainstream Americans eat and think about eating. ... Over the years, scientists have also had trouble dismissing the Raw Foodists.

http://snipr.com/feupq



Gravity Satellite Feels the Force
from BBC News Online

Europe's innovative Goce satellite has switched on the super-sensitive instrument that will make ultra-fine measurements of Earth's gravity. The sophisticated gradiometer will feel the subtle variations in Earth's tug as it sweeps around the globe.

The spacecraft has also fired up the British-built engine that will help maintain its orbit. Goce needs tiny but continuous levels of thrust to keep it stable and prevent it from falling out of the sky.

European Space Agency (Esa) mission manager Rune Floberghagen said all systems on the spacecraft had now been activated following the launch from Russia last month.

http://snipr.com/feusc



House Dust Yields Clue to Asthma: Roaches
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Asthma is the most common chronic disease of childhood, one that strikes the poor disproportionately. Up to one-third of children living in inner-city public housing have allergic asthma, in which a specific allergen sets off a cascade of events that cause characteristic inflammation, airway constriction and wheezing.

Now, using an experimental model that required leaving the pristine conditions of the lab for the messier ones of life, a team of scientists from the Boston University School of Medicine have discovered what that allergen is.

"For inner-city children," said the lead researcher, Dr. Daniel G. Remick, a professor of pathology, "the major cause of asthma is not dust mites, not dog dander, not outdoor air pollen. It's allergies to cockroaches."

http://snipr.com/feuwm



Climate Change Threatens Channel Islands Artifacts
from the Charlotte Examiner

SAN MIGUEL ISLAND, Calif. (Associated Press) -- Perched on the edge of this wind-swept Southern California island, archaeologist Jon Erlandson watches helplessly as 6,600 years of human culture - and a good chunk of his career - is swallowed by the Pacific surf.

It was not long ago that this tip of land on the northwest coast cradling an ancient Chumash Indian village stretched out to sea. But years of storm surge and roiling waves have taken a toll. The tipping point came last year when a huge piece broke off, drowning remnants of discarded abalone, mussel and other shellfish that held clues to an ancient human diet.

"There's an enormous amount of history that's washing into the sea every year," Erlandson said matter-of-factly during a recent hike. "We literally can't keep up."

http://snipr.com/feuyk



NASA Awaits Word on Where It Is Going Next
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

NASA has a space station, three space shuttles, two moon rockets under development, a fleet of robotic space probes, dozens of satellites, tens of thousands of employees and a budget that is creeping toward $20 billion a year. What it needs is a boss.

And one more thing, maybe: a mission that satisfies the new president of the United States.

A respected civil servant, Christopher Scolese, has been serving as acting NASA administrator since the departure on Jan. 20 of Michael D. Griffin. The Obama White House has twice been on the verge of making a formal nomination for a new head of the space agency but has pulled back both times because of grumbling from members of Congress with influence over space policy.

http://snipr.com/feuzs

[the other anonymous]

Oh! Now I get this thread!

Kai has teh blogs!

-toa,
is adding this to the blogroll

[Iason Ouabache]

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/news/news/1672/

Scientists have turned the basic structure of DNA on its head: taking it from 4 bases to 12. This 12 base system has already been implemented in developing new forms of personalised medicine but now the researchers want to see if this more complex DNA can be self-sustaining

Fifty-six years ago, Watson and Crick described DNA as containing base pairs made up of adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine or A-T-G and C. As far as we know, all DNA on Earth uses only these four bases (before methylation) and RNA uses uracil in place of thymine. But now Steve Benner, and colleagues from Florida, have re-written these rules and his group are testing a system that uses eight more bases.

They hope the research will shed light on how life started on Earth, by producing a self-sustaining molecule capable of Darwinian evolution and reproduction. And it's similar to the one that is thought to have appeared on Earth nearly four billion years ago.

At the American Chemical Society meeting this week, Benner described his ultimate goal to synthesize a similar molecule in his lab at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution. His 12 letter genetic system is capable of nearly all of the actions that define a living thing — reproduction, growth and response to its environment.

"But it still isn't self-sustaining," Benner explained. "You need a graduate or post-doc to come in the morning and feed it. It doesn't look for its own food. No one has gotten that first step to work. If you start making estimates of how many molecules you have to look for in order to find one that does this, you're talking about 1 x 10^34 molecules." He said.

It sounds like something from the X-files but one day they may grow their very own alien DNA molecule in the lab.

[Richter]

http://dsc.discovery.com/space/top-10/anti-matter/