Weekly Science Headlines

[Kai]

June 24, 2009



Appendicitis Test Under Development for Children
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Researchers have identified a chemical in urine that is closely associated with appendicitis in children and are working to develop a simple test that could be used to diagnose the condition -- a test that would both increase the likelihood of performing surgery before the appendix bursts and prevent unnecessary surgery.

Preliminary results show that the test is highly accurate, producing very few instances in which cases are missed (false negatives) or children are incorrectly diagnosed with the condition (false positives), a team from Children's Hospital Boston reported in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Appendicitis is the most common childhood surgical emergency. The lifetime prevalence of appendicitis is 9% for males and 7% for females, but the bulk of the cases occur in childhood or adolescence.

http://snipr.com/ks8gq



The Science of Economic Bubbles and Busts
from Scientific American

... Economists have fought for decades about whether money illusion and, more generally, the influence of irrationality on economic transactions are themselves illusory.

... But the ideas of behavioral economists, who study the role of psychology in making economic decisions, are gaining increasing attention today, as scientists of many stripes struggle to understand why the world economy fell so hard and fast.

And their ideas are bolstered by the brain scientists who make inside-the-skull snapshots of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and other brain areas.

http://snipr.com/ks8if



Long-Lasting Daddy Longlegs
from Science News

Scientists have unearthed the fossils of two new species of harvestmen, a delicate type of creature better known to many folks as daddy longlegs.

Though there are more than 6,400 known modern-day species of harvestmen -- which aren't spiders but are closely related -- only 26 species have been identified in the fossil record, notes Paul Selden of the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

... The two new species ... were entombed in fine-grained volcanic ash that fell in what is now north central China about 165 million years ago.

http://snipr.com/ks8m0



Carvings From Cherokee Script's Dawn
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The illiterate Cherokee known as Sequoyah watched in awe as white settlers made marks on paper, convinced that these "talking leaves" were the source of white power and success. This inspired the consuming ambition of his life: to create a Cherokee written language.

... Ten years later, despite the ridicule of friends who thought him crazed, he completed the script, in which each of the 85 characters represented a distinct sound in the spoken tongue, and combinations of these syllables spelled words.

... An archaeologist and explorer of caves has now found what he thinks are the earliest known examples of the Sequoyah syllabary. The characters are cut into the wall of a cave in southeastern Kentucky, a place sacred to the Cherokee as the traditional burial site of a revered chief.

http://snipr.com/ks8ne



Mystery Glaciers Growing as Most Others Retreat
from National Geographic News

Two South American glaciers are displaying strange behavior for the times: They're growing.

Most of the 50 massive glaciers draped over the spine of the Patagonian Andes are shrinking in response to a global warming, said Andrés Rivera, a glaciologist at the Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia, Chile.

But the Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina and Pio XI glacier in Chile are taking on ice, instead of shedding it. "What is happening ... is not well understood," Rivera said.

http://snipr.com/ks8qr



U.S. Eugenics Legacy
from USA Today

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- Paul Lombardo hadn't planned on a three-decade detour when he stopped at a greasy-spoon restaurant for breakfast in February, 1980. Lombardo, then a graduate student at the University of Virginia, picked up a newspaper to read as he ate his bacon and eggs.

... For almost 30 years, Lombardo has tried to uncover the full story of the wrongs he read about that day. The article he had stumbled across was about two sisters sterilized in the 1920s by the state of Virginia for being "feeble-minded." The younger sister hadn't even known she'd had a tubal ligation.

She didn't learn until she was in her late 60s that the surgery hadn't been for appendicitis. The older, more famous sister -- Carrie Buck -- was the subject of the now infamous lawsuit over the legality of the operation, Buck v. Bell, that was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

http://snipr.com/ks8sg



Vatican's Celestial Eye, Seeking Not Angels but Data
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

MOUNT GRAHAM, Ariz. -- Fauré's "Requiem" is playing in the background, followed by the Kronos Quartet. Every so often the music is interrupted by an electromechanical arpeggio -- like a jazz riff on a clarinet -- as the motors guiding the telescope spin up and down. A night of galaxy gazing is about to begin at the Vatican's observatory on Mount Graham.

"Got it. O.K., it's happy," says Christopher J. Corbally, the Jesuit priest who is vice director of the Vatican Observatory Research Group, as he sits in the control room making adjustments.

The idea is not to watch for omens or angels but to do workmanlike astronomy that fights the perception that science and Catholicism necessarily conflict.

http://snipr.com/ks8wr



Hidden Cancer Threat to Wildlife Revealed
from New Scientist

Cancer poses a serious threat to wild animals. That is the message of two pathologists working for the Wildlife Conservation Society, in New York, who have for the first time listed all the animal species that are threatened by cancer.

Conservationists awoke to the problem in the late 1990s when numbers of Tasmanian devils plummeted as a result of the gruesome and disfiguring devil facial tumour disease. The disease causes tumours to form in and around the marsupials' mouth and they eventually die of starvation.

In 2008, the World Conservation Union listed the Tasmanian devil as endangered. Despite this, "cancer really isn't something that's been on anyone's radar in a conservation sense," says Denise McAloose, chief pathologist for the WCS's global health programme.

http://snipr.com/ks927



Catching a Wave, Powering an Electrical Grid?
from Smithsonian Magazine

She was in the water when the epiphany struck. Of course, Annette von Jouanne was always in the water, swimming in lakes and pools as she was growing up around Seattle, and swimming distance freestyle competitively in high-school and college meets.

... But in December 1995 she was bodysurfing in Hawaii over the holidays. She'd just begun working as an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Oregon State University.

... "As the sun set, it hit me: I could ride waves all day and all night, all year long," says von Jouanne. "Wave power is always there. It never stops. I began thinking that there's got to be a way to harness all the energy of an ocean swell, in a practical and efficient way, in a responsible way."

http://snipr.com/ks946



Elusive Forms of Water Found?
from Nature News

Researchers in India and Italy say they have seen two types of liquid water that have long been suspected to exist below water's normal freezing point.

Water is undoubtedly a strange liquid. Unlike most liquids, it becomes less rather than more dense when it freezes -- and it is densest not when it is coldest (at 0 °C, just before it freezes) but at 4 °C.

... This anomalous behaviour stems from the weak chemical bonds, called hydrogen bonds, that stick water molecules together in the liquid. In ice, these bonds hold the molecules 'at arm's length' and so leave plenty of empty space between them.

http://snipr.com/ks96y

[Kai]

June 23, 2009



A Chance for Clues to Brain Injury in Combat Blasts
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

No direct impact caused Paul McQuigg's brain injury in Iraq three years ago. And no wound from the incident visibly explains why Mr. McQuigg, now an office manager at a California Marine base, can get lost in his own neighborhood or arrive at the grocery store having forgotten why he left home.

But his blast injury -- concussive brain trauma caused by an explosion's invisible force waves -- is no less real to him than a missing limb is to other veterans. Just how real could become clearer after he dies, when doctors slice up his brain to examine any damage.

Mr. McQuigg, 32, is one of 20 active and retired members of the military who recently agreed to donate their brain tissue upon death so that the effects of blast injuries -- which, unlike most concussions, do not involve any direct contact with the head -- can be better understood and treated.

http://snipr.com/kpt5o



Martian Lightning
from Science News

Scientists say they have seen the first direct evidence of lightning on Mars, in the form of electrical discharges during a Martian dust storm.

The finding has implications for human travel to the Red Planet and for studying possible origins of life on Mars, the authors say in a paper to appear in Geophysical Research Letters.

It has been thought that lightning might be possible on Mars. Bits of dust rubbing against each other in one of the planet's famous dust devils could charge up the particles the same way that running on a carpet charges up socks. All that charge could then be discharged in a zap, either as lightning or a shock.

http://snipr.com/kpt7y



Indonesian Elephant Fossil Opens Window to Past
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

BANDUNG, Indonesia (Associated Press) -- Indonesian scientists are reconstructing the largest, most complete skeleton of a prehistoric giant elephant ever found in the tropics, a finding that may offer new clues into the largely mysterious origins of its modern Asian cousin.

The prehistoric elephant is believed to have been submerged in quicksand shortly after dying on a riverbed in Java around 200,000 years ago. Its bones -- almost perfectly preserved -- were discovered by chance in March when an old sand quarry collapsed during monsoon rains.

The animal stood four meters (13 feet) tall, five meters (16 feet) long and weighed more than 10 tons - closer in size to the woolly mammoth of the same period than to the great Asian mammals now on Earth.

http://snipr.com/kpt9a



Scientific Flip-Flop: Experts Debate the Roots of GM Opposition
from Seed

On April 22, 1998 the European Union contravened decades of stalwart opposition to genetically engineered crops when it greenlighted the cultivation of "Mon 810," a pest-resistant maize manufactured by Monsanto.

But despite Mon810's official sanction under EU law, several countries ... have imposed national bans on the GE crop. ... At the European level, scientific assessments have found the risks Mon810 poses to the environment to be exceedingly small. ...s]tudy after study after study has concluded that the hazards ... are no greater with GE crops than with conventionally grown ones.

So why the disconnect? Why do many environmentalists trust science when it comes to climate change but not when it comes to genetic engineering? Is the fear really about the technology itself or is it a mistrust of big agribusiness?

http://snipr.com/kptfe



How to Get Drugs Into the Brain
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

With tactics that range from subterfuge to ultrasound beams, scientists are searching for a solution to one of medicine's most intractable problems: how to get drugs into the brain.

Standing in the way is the blood-brain barrier, a formidable defense system that keeps out pathogens and toxins but also bars many potential therapies from reaching the seat of maladies such as brain cancer or Alzheimer's disease.

"The system is supposed to protect us from substances that could be noxious to the brain. Unfortunately, it is also quite efficient in removing various drugs that can actually help in curing certain diseases," said Adam Chodobski, a professor of emergency medicine at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University, who studies the blood-brain barrier.

http://snipr.com/kpti5



Science Takes to the Ice
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

NEWARK, Del. -- Melissa Bulanhagui is a highly ranked figure skater, but two years ago her right ankle failed her. She sprained it twice and tore a ligament, each time during one of her favorite jumps, the triple lutz.

Other skaters have suffered similar injuries, and now science is studying why, aiming to help skaters meet the sport's physical challenges without sacrificing their health.

For one study, Ms. Bulanhagui (pronounced BULL-en-hayg-ee), 18, and other skaters tape to their shins devices called tibial accelerometers, which measure the force of the impact when skaters land a jump.

http://snipr.com/kptj2



Following the Money
from Scientific American

Global health hit the philanthropic jackpot in recent years. About four times more aid flowed into developing countries in 2007 than in 1990. But a paper published in The Lancet suggests the nearly $22 billion donated in 2007 missed many of the world's most deserving countries and diseases.

"We know there's a lot of money," says Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and co-author of the study that tracked both the sources and destinations of aid. "But we also know there's huge variation in the amount of money per unit of health need."

Murray lived in Niger as a kid, a country ranked by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the world's 28th most needy country and home to one of the highest childhood death rates. The development funding for Niger, however, is well below that of wealthier countries like Namibia, which receives "10 to 15 times more aid per year of lost life," he says.

http://snipr.com/kptju



Can Wind Power Get Up to Speed?
from Time

Pop quiz: what source of power doesn't come out of the ground, doesn't burn and isn't radioactive? Hint: it contributed the most new electricity generation to the U.S. grid in 2008.

The answer is wind power, the technology that has become synonymous with going green. Companies that started out small ... have become multinational giants selling steel and fiberglass wind turbines; even blue-chippers like General Electric have identified wind power as a major revenue source for the future...

But for all the green talk and growth in wind power ... wind still makes up less than 3% of America's total electricity generation. Even at current rates of growth, that figure is unlikely to change soon. The question is, will wind ever produce enough power to satisfy America's energy needs? A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says yes.

http://snipr.com/kptlj



Human Role in Big Kangaroo Demise
from BBC News Online

A fossil study of the extinct giant kangaroo has added weight to the theory that humans were responsible for the demise of "megafauna" 46,000 years ago.

The decline of plants through widespread fire or changes toward an arid climate have also played into the debate about the animals' demise.

But an analysis of kangaroo fossils suggested they ate saltbush, which would have thrived in those conditions. The research is in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://snipr.com/kptmz



Animals That Count: How Numeracy Evolved
from New Scientist

Clever Hans's gift was just too good to be true. The Arabian stallion wowed the crowds in early 20th-century Europe with his apparent ability to stomp out the answers to simple mathematical problems, such as 12 - 3 = 9. He could even add fractions and factorise small numbers. Then in 1907, a German psychologist, Oskar Pfungst, proved that Hans was no animal savant.

In a scientific trial of sorts, Pfungst demonstrated that Hans could do arithmetic only when his owner, a maths teacher, or another questioner provided unconscious body cues hinting that Hans had reached the correct answer. With blinkers on or with the questioner hidden, Hans's abilities vanished. So, too, did the notion that animals could count.

Much has changed, however, in the century since Clever Hans's ignominious exposure. Few now doubt that primates have a sense of number, and even distantly related animals, including salamanders, honeybees and newly hatched chicks, seem to have the knack, with some able to perform basic arithmetic. What's more, the skills of this growing mathematical menagerie resemble our own innate abilities. Could basic mathematics have evolved hundreds of millions of years ago?

http://snipr.com/kptqg

[Kai]

June 22, 2009



Device on Nets May Protect Sea Turtles
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

BOURNE, Mass. (Associated Press) -- Fishery managers trying to protect rare sea turtles from dying in fishing nets have chosen a Cape Cod company to build a device that they think can help balance turtle protection with profitable fishing.

The device is a 7-inch silver cylinder that attaches to fishing nets and records how long they stay underwater. Time is crucial if the nets, dragged behind trawlers, snare a turtle. Federal research indicates that the vast majority of sea turtles survive entanglement, but only if the net is pulled up in less than 50 minutes.

With the logger, regulators can avoid other restrictions on fishermen, like shutting down fishing areas or requiring turtle-saving gear that does not work well in all nets. In fisheries where regulators decide that time limits would work best, they would not have to rely on an honor system for pulling nets up on time.

http://snipr.com/knch5



Evidence Indicates Manioc Was a Major Maya Crop
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Corn was the royalty of Maya food crops, celebrated in religion and cosmology, but archaeologists have long suspected that a different crop, the lowly manioc plant, was the mainstay of Maya life, providing the basic sustenance that allowed their civilization to flourish in densely populated cities.

Now, Colorado researchers have provided the first direct evidence that manioc was indeed intensively cultivated by the Maya -- in quantities that would allow its use for many purposes.

Manioc tubers, also known as cassava, can grow to as much as 3 feet long and as thick as a man's arm. They produce the highest food energy yield of any cultivated crop, about eight to 10 times as much as corn. They can also be grown in infertile soils and require little or no irrigation.

http://snipr.com/knck8



Antipsychotic Drugs for Kids Raise Hope, Worry
from the San Francisco Chronicle

Increasingly powerful antipsychotic drugs available on the market, and growing evidence that starting these medications early can help children with conditions like bipolar disorder, is putting doctors under more pressure than ever to diagnose and treat young people with mental illnesses.

As a result, some doctors say, mental illness, especially bipolar disorder, has been overdiagnosed much the same way attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was in the 1980s.

"ADHD was the diagnosis du jour in the '80s. Now it's become bipolar disorder," said Dr. Andrew Giammona, who heads the psychiatry department at Children's Hospital Oakland. "We're in a quick-fix society, and parents want to believe that if we had this treatment we can get it fixed and move on."

http://snipr.com/knclw



Among Many Peoples, Little Genomic Variety
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

There is a simplicity and all-inclusiveness to the number three -- the triangle, the Holy Trinity, three peas in a pod. So it's perhaps not surprising that the Family of Man is divided that way, too.

All of Earth's people, according to a new analysis of the genomes of 53 populations, fall into just three genetic groups. They are the products of the first and most important journey our species made -- the walk out of Africa about 70,000 years ago by a small fraction of ancestral Homo sapiens.

One group is the African. It contains the descendants of the original humans who emerged in East Africa about 200,000 years ago. The second is the Eurasian, encompassing the natives of Europe, the Middle East and Southwest Asia (east to about Pakistan). The third is the East Asian, the inhabitants of Asia, Japan and Southeast Asia, and -- thanks to the Bering Land Bridge and island-hopping in the South Pacific -- of the Americas and Oceania as well.

http://snipr.com/kncnb



The Plant That Pretends to Be Ill
from BBC News Online

A plant that pretends to be ill has been found growing in the rainforests of Ecuador. The plant feigns sickness to stop it being attacked by insect pests known as mining moths, which would otherwise eat its healthy leaves.

It is the first known example of a plant that mimics being ill, and could also explain a common pattern seen on plant leaves known as variegation. The discovery is published in the journal Evolutionary Ecology.

Variegation is familiar to gardeners and affects many species of plant. Variegated plants have different coloured patterns on the leaf surface, produced by a variety of causes.

http://snipr.com/kncos



Great White Sharks Hunt Like Serial Killers
from Discovery News

Sharks may only kill for food, but they share similar strategies with human serial killers: They lurk out of sight, stalking their victims.

Sharks and human serial killers can both be tracked using geographic profiling, according to a new study that applied this investigative technique to the hunting patterns of great white sharks, the world's largest known predatory fish.

The study, published in the latest Journal of Zoology, marks the first time geographic profiling has ever been used on a marine species.

http://snipr.com/kncuk



Raindrops Keep Falling -- Too Quickly -- On My Head
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The hows and whys of rainfall have been pondered for about as long as human beings have walked upright. Now a research team thinks it has discovered something everyone else missed: Some raindrops fall faster than they should.

Curious though it is, the finding could have consequences far beyond inspiring water cooler talk at the National Weather Service.

According to the researchers at Michigan Technological University and the National University of Mexico, their exhaustive study of how tiny drops of rain behave as they tumble out of the sky, bumping and mixing and breaking apart from their soggy brethren, could ultimately be used to improve weather forecasting.

http://snipr.com/kncvo



Email Patterns Can Predict Impending Doom
from New Scientist

Email logs can provide advance warning of an organisation reaching crisis point. That's the tantalising suggestion to emerge from the pattern of messages exchanged by Enron employees.

After US energy giant Enron collapsed in December 2001, federal investigators obtained records of emails sent by around 150 senior staff during the company's final 18 months. The logs, which record 517,000 emails sent to around 15,000 employees, provide a rare insight into how communication within an organisation changes during stressful times.

Ben Collingsworth and Ronaldo Menezes at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne identified key events in Enron's demise, such as the August 2001 resignation of CEO Jeffrey Skilling. They then examined the number of emails sent, and the groups that exchanged the messages, in the period around these events. They did not look at the emails' content.

http://snipr.com/kncx0



Finch Researchers Win Kyoto Prize
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

Peter and Rosemary Grant, emeritus professors at Princeton University who were the first to document natural selection in action, have won the 2009 Kyoto Prize in the category of Basic Sciences for their work on evolutionary adaptations in response to environmental flux.

"I can't think of any other scientists who deserve it more," said Kenneth Petren, a former postdoc of Peter Grant and now a professor at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, citing "their long term commitment to unraveling some very complex problems" in evolutionary biology.

Following in Darwin's footsteps, the Grants have spent 35 years studying the finches he discovered on the Galápagos Islands during his Beagle tour.

http://snipr.com/kncxx



Art Exhibit Links Darwin to Degas
from Seed

Surrealist artists claimed Freud, the cubists looked to Einstein, but Charles Darwin's influence on his 19th century artistic contemporaries has rarely been fully appreciated.

In celebration of his bicentennial birthday this year, Connecticut's Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) and the UK's Fitzwilliam Museum ... have launched ... a traveling exhibit that properly takes stock of the impact Darwin's evolutionary theories had on the visual arts.

It's hard to exaggerate just how widely Darwin's ideas on natural selection and the evolution of human kind traveled in the cultural milieu of his day, even in the age of stagecoaches and month-long journeys across the Atlantic. Artists of all shades reacted to his revolutionary theories, and this exhibit attempts to capture their range of responses in all sorts of mediums, including paintings, photographs, sketches, and sculptures.

http://snipr.com/kncyx

[Kai]

June 29, 2009


Grant System Leads Cancer Researchers to Play It Safe
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Among the recent research grants awarded by the National Cancer Institute is one for a study asking whether people who are especially responsive to good-tasting food have the most difficulty staying on a diet. Another study will assess a Web-based program that encourages families to choose more healthful foods.

Many other grants involve biological research unlikely to break new ground. For example, one project asks whether a laboratory discovery involving colon cancer also applies to breast cancer. But even if it does apply, there is no treatment yet that exploits it.

The cancer institute has spent $105 billion since President Richard M. Nixon declared war on the disease in 1971. The American Cancer Society, the largest private financer of cancer research, has spent about $3.4 billion on research grants since 1946.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/health/research/28cancer.html?ref=science



Rising Carbon Dioxide Affects Ear Structure of Fish
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Listen up! Carbon dioxide being absorbed by the oceans is having a puzzling effect on fish -- their ears get bigger.

The ear structure in fish, known as an otolith, is made up of minerals. Scientists knew that increasing carbon dioxide in the oceans -- absorbed from the atmosphere -- is making the sea more acidic, which can dissolve and weaken shells. They wondered if it also would reduce the size of the otoliths.

It turned out to be just the opposite, according to a study published Friday in the journal Science.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-fish-ears27-2009jun27,0,3356298.story


Radar Lets NASA See Beneath Surface of Faults
from the San Francisco Chronicle

California's two most dangerous earthquake faults - the Hayward and the San Andreas - are undergoing a new kind of seismic investigation as NASA scientists probe the faults with radar from the sky.

The new airborne radar is able to see what lies beneath the surface of the faults, providing information that researchers hope will lead to improved quake forecasting, updated building codes, and emergency planning to meet seismic hazards, according to quake forecasters at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Seismic probes aren't the NASA scientists' only goal: They're also seeking signs of danger in the steep East Bay hills where almost imperceptible movements even in dry weather can presage destructive landslides that threaten every year when the rains come and the ground turns soggy.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/29/MNUP18BMDE.DTL&type=science



Metrorail Crash May Exemplify Automation Paradox
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Sometime soon, investigators will piece together why one train on Metro's Red Line hurtled into another last Monday, killing nine people and injuring dozens. Early indications suggest a computer system may have malfunctioned, and various accounts have raised questions about whether the driver of the speeding train applied the brakes in time.

The problem, said several experts who have studied such accidents, is that these investigations invariably focus our attention on discrete aspects of machine or human error, whereas the real problem often lies in the relationship between humans and their automated systems.

"It is easy to focus on the last act that may or may not have prevented the collision," said John D. Lee, a professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "But you can trace the accident back to purchasing decisions, maintenance decisions and track layout. To lay the blame on the end result of when and how quickly someone activated the brake may not help with improving safety."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/28/AR2009062802481.html



Few See Themselves as 'Old,' No Matter What Their Age
from USA Today

If you've been telling yourself you're not old yet, you fit right in.

No matter what their chronological age, most people say that they aren't yet "old" — and that they feel younger than their birthday count, according to a new nationally representative survey of almost 3,000 adults by the Pew Research Center.

The average age considered "old" by respondents was 68 — but there were real differences in perception driven by the respondents' own ages.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-06-29-pew-study-aging-perceptions_N.htm



Electronic Nose Can Pinpoint Where Wine Was Made
from the Telegraph (UK)

Scientists have developed a way of identifying wine so accurately they can even say which barrel it was produced in. It uses an electronic nose to make even the most confident sommelier a little nervous.

The technique exploits the unique and complex mix of thousands of compounds found in each bottle of wine that gives the drink subtly different scents and flavours.

Wine experts use the odour and taste of some of these compounds to identify types and vintages of wines during tasting sessions.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/5663798/Electronic-nose-can-pinpoint-where-wine-was-made.html



Forgotten Evolutionist Lives in Darwin's Shadow
from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Registration Required)

SANTUBONG, Malaysia (Associated Press) — As he trudges past chest-high ferns and butterflies the size of saucers, George Beccaloni scours a jungle hilltop overlooking the South China Sea for signs of a long-forgotten Victorian-era scientist.

He finds what he's looking for: an abandoned, two-story guest house, its doors missing and ceiling caved in. "Excellent. This is the actual spot," he yells.

It is on this site, in a long-gone thatched hut, that Alfred Russel Wallace is believed to have spent weeks in 1855 writing a seminal paper on the theory of evolution. Yet he is largely unknown outside scientific circles today, overshadowed by Charles Darwin, whom most people credit as the father of a theory that explains the origins of life through how plants and animals evolve.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/shared-gen/ap/Science/AS_FEA_Malaysia_Forgotten_Evolutionist.html


It's Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in Colorado
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

DURANGO, Colo. — For the first time since territorial days, rain will be free for the catching here, as more and more thirsty states part ways with one of the most entrenched codes of the West.

Precipitation, every last drop or flake, was assigned ownership from the moment it fell in many Western states, making scofflaws of people who scooped rainfall from their own gutters. In some instances, the rights to that water were assigned a century or more ago.

Now two new laws in Colorado will allow many people to collect rainwater legally. The laws are the latest crack in the rainwater edifice, as other states, driven by population growth, drought, or declining groundwater in their aquifers, have already opened the skies or begun actively encouraging people to collect.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/us/29rain.html?ref=science



No News Can Be Bad News With Medical Test Results
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

"No news is good news" is what most patients assume when they're waiting to receive test results. But "no news" actually meant "bad news" for one out of 14 patients with troubling labs, according to a study published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The study, led by Dr. Lawrence P. Casalino of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, examined more than 5,000 records of randomly selected middle-aged patients from 23 primary care practices.

The patients had received common blood and screening tests, including mammograms, pap tests, cholesterol tests and red blood cell counts. Almost 35% of the patients had abnormal results that fell well outside the normal range. But in 7.1% of those cases, practices did not inform -- or document that they had informed -- the patients.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-test-results27-2009jun27,0,4193383.story


Extremely Large Telescope Surveys the Past
from the Times (London)

The European Extremely Large Telescope will dwarf all other telescopes. In 1609 Galileo's "Old Discoverer" had a lens an inch in diameter. Now the Keck Observatory on top of a mountain in Hawaii has two mirrors, each of them 10m across, that are so smooth and so perfect that even if they were stretched out to the width of the world their irregularities would still be only inches high. The Extremely Large Telescope — its name so deliberately prosaic that it becomes almost poetic— will, provided that it is completed by 2018, be the diameter of five double-deck buses placed end to end and will be able to see (rather than infer) Earth-like planets revolving around distant stars.

We could, in effect, be looking at ourselves through the looking glass. The Extremely Large Telescope will probably be located in the Canary Islands, but you really can try something like this at home. Look at yourself in the mirror. What do you see? Look very carefully. Obviously your left eye is where your right eye ought to be, but there is more than that, something practically impossible to notice and yet fundamental to making sense of the Universe. Your reflection is no longer you. The difference between you as you are now, and you as the mirror represents you, is measurable. This is what you used to look like, a short time (a few nano seconds) ago. But if the speed of light is finite — something that Galileo realised — then everything you see is history.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6583353.ece

[Kai]

I just spent an hour formatting links and writing up snarky little comments for this thread, and just before I finished the forum ate my post. So fuck it.

[Triple Zero]

aw

(but take this as an opportunity to learn that any post that takes, say, more than 10 minutes to write, write it in Notepad or something similar)

[Cramulus]

I just spent an hour formatting links and writing up snarky little comments for this thread, and just before I finished the forum ate my post. So fuck it.

UGH! That sucks - I know how you feel.

[Richter]

 
I've lost 3 page bullshit masterpieces that way.

[Kai]

aw

(but take this as an opportunity to learn that any post that takes, say, more than 10 minutes to write, write it in Notepad or something similar)

Yeah, next time I'll do it via text editor.

[Kai]

Lets try this again shall we?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/06/AR2009070602076.html National Institute of Health to allow stem cell usage that has been obtained "ethically" (take from that what you will) from non-embryonic tissue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/science/07angier.html?_r=1 Tropical paleontology at the Panama Canal.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-07-07-food-safety-guidelines_N.htm Food and Drug Administration possibly getting visibility and food safety based overhaul.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090706-humans-bats-echolocation.html HUMANS CROSSED WITH BATS RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!1 More seriously, you can use palate clicks to navigate in a similar way that bats do. Very cool. Actually, I want someone to teach me this.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327154.500-eavesdropping-on-the-music-of-the-brain.html Listening to brain scans by assigning areas of activity to different pitches can help determine disorders such as schizophrenia. Also very cool. Whats with all the cool hearing based stuff today?

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13979392 One of the biggest issues facing taxonomy: more species going extinct every day that we will never know about.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/45214/title/Concerns_over_bisphenol_A_continue_to_grow New study out about bisphenol-A leaching from plastics, prognosis: arrhythmias.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/science/07glass.html Glass laminated with polymers to make awesome architecture even more awesome.

http://www.americanscientist.org/science/content1/7069 And one of the ones I screwed up from yesterday, spider decoys built by spiders. Something I've never heard of before, and wish I would hear more about.

[Kai]

10 Worst Evolutionary "Designs"

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-08/st_best

I actually didn't know the Narwhal tusk was a tooth.

[AFK]

10 Worst Evolutionary "Designs"

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-08/st_best

I actually didn't know the Narwhal tusk was a tooth.

Heh, thanks for that find.  A very amusing read and a good way to start the day.

Also, I'm glad I'm not a Hyena. 

[Richter]

Wow, a bit lighter than your usual fare, but awesome nonetheless.  I'm going to be horrormirthing for hours at the idea of an engorged, baby crushing clitoris.

Also:  Walrus Penis Bone:  What the hell do they do if it breaks?  Compound fracture?   

[Kai]

Theres more to the Hyena story. It is, for me, the number one argument against a benevolent yet omnipotent and omniscient deity.

The female spotted hyena genetalia is highly masculinized. The labia are fused, and the urogental tract runs straight through the enlarged clitoris. This includes the birth canal. So, not only is sex for spotted hyena's highly awkward, birth is an extremely painful experience. The clitoris expands (spotted hyena females have the highest concentration of relaxin of any organism) to great dialation. A good number of first time mothers die in the experience. On TOP of this, the birth canal isn't straight, it has a 90 degree angle, and the pup often gets stuck.

Hows that for horror? 

On a side note, I've actually seen a walrus bacculus before (in a museum bone collection you sick fucks). It looks like a goddamn horse femur.

[AFK]

coo coo ka choo indeed.