Weekly Science Headlines

[Kai]

January 12, 2010
At Las Vegas Electronics Show, the Web and Cars Meet

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

LAS VEGAS -- What happens in Vegas could soon hit the open road. Even as policymakers and safety advocates worry that the use of gizmos in cars is driving people to distraction, companies including Ford Motor showcased dashboard innovations at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The topic was so prominent, in fact, that hundreds of booths dedicated to computers and cars gave the industry event a Detroit Auto Show feeling. Ford, for example, has a lineup of cars decked out with Internet dashboards that allow people to use Twitter and Facebook and stream Internet radio from behind the wheel.

Alan Mulally, Ford's chief executive, described the firm's "in-car connectivity strategy" as core to its corporate turnaround. ... But as the use of technology accelerates, policymakers are proceeding with caution. Distracted driving is deadly, they say.

http://snipr.com/u22c9


Climate Expert in the Eye of an Integrity Storm

from the Philadelphia Inquirer

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Michael Mann switched from physics to climate science back in graduate school because he thought climate offered a better chance to work "on a frontier."

He got his wish, and now, as the director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, he has experienced an aspect of frontier life more like the Wild West--a bounty on his head. After dozens of Mann's personal e-mails were hacked in November, the tenured professor has been called a fraud, a clown, and worse by columnists and bloggers.

Irate citizens complained to a Pennsylvania state senator, who demanded that the university conduct a probe into Mann's scientific integrity. That inquiry is ongoing. This is hardly Mann's first review. His work has been the subject of at least two major investigations by outside experts.

http://snipr.com/u22cx


Deciphering the Chatter of Monkeys

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Walking through the Tai forest of Ivory Coast, Klaus Zuberbühler could hear the calls of the Diana monkeys, but the babble held no meaning for him.

That was in 1990. Today, after nearly 20 years of studying animal communication, he can translate the forest's sounds. This call means a Diana monkey has seen a leopard. That one means it has sighted another predator, the crowned eagle.

"In our experience time and again, it's a humbling experience to realize there is so much more information being passed in ways which hadn't been noticed before," said Dr. Zuberbühler, a psychologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

http://snipr.com/u22dm - cool.


Trio of NASA Craft Will Boost Climate Data

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

NASA heads into 2010 with the bittersweet assignment of retiring the space shuttle after nearly three decades. But the agency also plans to launch three new satellites aimed at better understanding the sun and Earth's climate and oceans.

Two satellites will examine Earth--specifically, the concentration of salt in the world's oceans and the presence of aerosols, or minute particles, such as dust or ash, in the atmosphere. A third satellite mission will study the sun and its effect on space weather, including solar flares that can disrupt communication on Earth.

All three come at a critical time for NASA. Data will probably influence global-warming research, and the launches could serve as bright spots in a year otherwise dominated by debate over the future of the manned space program.

http://snipr.com/u22dw - This, to me, is so much more interesting than manned spacecraft.


What the EPA's "Chemicals of Concern" Plans Really Mean

from Scientific American

In an unusual exercise of its authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on December 30 the establishment of a "chemicals of concern" list and action plans that could prompt restrictions on four types of synthetic chemicals used widely in manufacturing and consumer products, including phthalates used to make flexible plastics, often for toys, household products and medical equipment.

Of the compounds covered in the action plans--which also include polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), long-chain perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) and short-chain chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs)--phthalates and PBDEs will be listed as "chemicals of concern." The PFCs and paraffins will be addressed under other TSCA provisions that could also result in restrictions.

These four types of chemicals, the EPA said, raise "serious environmental or health concerns" and in some cases "may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health and the environment."

http://snipr.com/u22e6


Ancient Hominids May Have Been Seafarers

from Science News

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Human ancestors that left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago to see the rest of the world were no landlubbers. Stone hand axes unearthed on the Mediterranean island of Crete indicate that an ancient Homo species--perhaps Homo erectus--had used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe via at least some of the larger islands in between, says archaeologist Thomas Strasser of Providence College in Rhode Island.

Several hundred double-edged cutting implements discovered at nine sites in southwestern Crete date to at least 130,000 years ago and probably much earlier, Strasser reported January 7 at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Archaeology.

Many of these finds closely resemble hand axes fashioned in Africa about 800,000 years ago by H. erectus, he says. It was around that time that H. erectus spread from Africa to parts of Asia and Europe.

http://snipr.com/u22pi - Interesting, but the above seems a bit sensational.


Carpe Diem? Maybe Tomorrow

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

For once, social scientists have discovered a flaw in the human psyche that will not be tedious to correct. You may not even need a support group. You could try on your own by starting with this simple New Year's resolution: Have fun ... now!

Then you just need the strength to cash in your gift certificates, drink that special bottle of wine, redeem your frequent flier miles and take that vacation you always promised yourself. If your resolve weakens, do not succumb to guilt or shame. Acknowledge what you are: a recovering procrastinator of pleasure.

It sounds odd, but this is actually a widespread form of procrastination .... But it has taken awhile for psychologists and behavioral economists to analyze this condition. Now they have begun to explore the strange impulse to put off until tomorrow what could be enjoyed today.

http://snipr.com/u22pv - yes, guilt is pretty powerful. I have this very problem.


Why Light Intensifies the Pain of a Migraine

from the Telegraph (UK)

Scientists have discovered why light intensifies the pain of migraine even among the blind, potentially offering hope to millions. Many sufferers of the debilitating head pain can find that light is a trigger and doctors often recommend lying in a dark room until an attack passes.

Researchers found that light rays trigger activity in specific brain cells within seconds of hitting the optic nerve, at the back of the eye. They believe these cells are responsible for causing the debilitating pain light can trigger in migraine sufferers.

Even when light was removed the cells remained active until up to half an hour later, animal tests show. The scientists, from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre, in Boston, now hope that drugs can be developed to block the signal to the brain cells, removing the pain.

http://snipr.com/u22q8 - Interesting.


Sailing into Antiquity

from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

The archeological digs at Egypt's Wadi Gawasis have yielded neither mummies nor grand monuments. But Boston University archeologist Kathryn Bard and her colleagues are uncovering the oldest remnants of seagoing ships and other relics linked to exotic trade with a mysterious Red Sea realm called Punt.

"They were the space launches of their time," Bard said of the epic missions to procure wondrous wares. Although Nile River craft are well-known, the ability of ancient Egyptian mariners to ply hundreds of miles of open seas in cargo craft was not so fully documented.

Then the team led by Bard and an Italian archeologist, Rodolfo Fattovich, started uncovering maritime storerooms in 2004, putting hard timber and rugged rigging to the notion of pharaonic deepwater prowess. In the most recent discovery, on Dec. 29, they located the eighth in a series of lost chambers at Wadi Gawasis after shoveling through cubic meters of rock rubble and wind-blown sand.

http://snipr.com/u22qf


Arctic Tern's Epic Journey Mapped

from BBC News Online

The Arctic tern's extraordinary pole-to-pole migration has been detailed by an international team of scientists. The researchers fitted the birds with tiny tracking devices to see precisely which routes the animals took on their 70,000km (43,000 miles) round trip.

The study reveals they fly down either the African or Brazilian coasts but then return in an "S"-shaped path up the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The long-distance adventure is described in the US journal PNAS.

"From ringing, we knew where the Arctic tern travelled," said Carsten Egevang of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources. "The new thing is that we've now been able to track the bird during a full year of migration, all the way from the breeding grounds to the wintering grounds and back again."

http://snipr.com/u22xd - Very cool.

[Kai]

January 13, 2010
The Madness of Crowds and an Internet Delusion

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

When does the wisdom of crowds give way to the meanness of mobs?

In the 1990s, Jaron Lanier was one of the digital pioneers hailing the wonderful possibilities that would be realized once the Internet allowed musicians, artists, scientists and engineers around the world to instantly share their work. Now, like a lot of us, he is having second thoughts.

Mr. Lanier, a musician and avant-garde computer scientist--he popularized the term "virtual reality"--wonders if the Web's structure and ideology are fostering nasty group dynamics and mediocre collaborations. His new book, "You Are Not a Gadget," is a manifesto against "hive thinking" and "digital Maoism," by which he means the glorification of open-source software, free information and collective work at the expense of individual creativity.

http://snipr.com/u2gqw - Sounds like someone who's butthurt about not having any ideas. That aside, something to check out, if only for the line about "nasty group dynamics and mediocre collaborations".


Watching TV Shortens Life Span, Study Finds

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Watching television for hour upon hour obviously isn't the best way to spend leisure time--inactivity has been linked to obesity and heart disease. But a new study quantifies TV viewing's effect on risk of death.

Researchers found that each hour a day spent watching TV was linked with an 18% greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, an 11% greater risk of all causes of death, and a 9% increased risk of death from cancer.

The study, released Monday in Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Assn., looked at health data among 8,800 men and women older than 25 who were part of the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study. Participants recorded their television viewing hours for a week, and researchers separated the results by amount of viewing: those who watched less than two hours of TV a day, those who watched two to four hours a day, and those who watched more than four hours a day.

http://snipr.com/u2grb - KILL YOUR FUCKING TELEVISION. NOW.


Astronomers Confident They'll Find Another Planet Like Earth

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

It seems increasingly likely that, as they stare at the heavens, astronomers are going to find an Earth out there, or at least something that they can plausibly claim is a rocky planet where water could splash at the surface and--who knows?--harbor some kind of life. But it's also clear that, when they make their big discovery, the astronomers might want to hire movie director James Cameron to help with the special effects.

The roughly 400 planets that astronomers have found outside our solar system have not been Earthlike by any stretch of the imagination. Most are hot Jupiters, which is to say they're gas giants in scorching orbits.

They've also been pretty much invisible, their presence inferred from fluctuations in starlight. The planet emerges from the data. Astronomers will announce a new planet find with a graph, typically with a nice curving line that represents the periodic changes in starlight associated with the orbiting body. There are no pictures. Which is fine for scientists.

http://snipr.com/u2grj


Benefit of Immobilizing Trauma Victims Questioned

from the Baltimore Sun

Shooting and stabbing victims immobilized to protect their spines might be twice as likely to die because of the delay in transporting them to the hospital, Johns Hopkins researchers conclude in a new study that could trigger a review of treatment protocols used by Maryland paramedics.

Immobilization is standard procedure for paramedics in Maryland and many communities across the country, and the study could have particular significance in Baltimore, where 218 people were fatally shot or stabbed last year.

Immobilization "shouldn't be applied to every single patient who is shot or stabbed because it uses up precious time and doesn't necessarily benefit the patient," said Dr. Elliott R. Haut, lead author of the study published Tuesday in the Journal of Trauma.

http://snipr.com/u2gs1 - This is one of those "It depends on the jurisdiction" things.


Solar Cells Made Through Oil-and-Water 'Self-Assembly'

from BBC News Online

Researchers have demonstrated a simple, cheap way to create self-assembling electronic devices using a property crucial to salad dressings.

It uses the fact that oil- and water-based liquids do not mix, forming devices from components that align along the boundary between the two. The idea joins a raft of approaches toward self-assembly, but lends itself particularly well to small components.

The work is reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Crucially, it could allow the large-scale assembly of high-quality electronic components on materials of just about any type, in contrast to "inkjet printed" electronics or some previous self-assembly techniques.

http://snipr.com/u2gs8 - Excellent.


New Sex Hormone Found--May Lead to Male Birth Control?

from National Geographic News

A new human sex hormone has been found, a new study says. The naturally occurring substance could lead to the long-sought male birth control pill, researchers cautiously speculate.

Gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH)--first identified in birds about a decade ago--was recently discovered in the hypothalamus of the human brain. The hypothalamus produces hormones that regulate sleep, sex drive, body temperature, and more.

GnIH suppresses another hormone--gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH)--which spurs the release of additional hormones, which get the body for sex and reproduction. So scientists cautiously suggest that contraceptives based on the newfound hormone could someday be possible.

http://snipr.com/u2gse - It would have just been enough to report on GnIH but they had to throw the speculation in....*sigh*


Hydrothermal Vent Environments Not Unchanging

from Science News

In stable neighborhoods, there's often very little turnover of residents. But a new study surprisingly suggests that around hydrothermal vents, considered to be some of the most stable environments on Earth, microbial communities in some parts of a hydrothermal system can undergo dramatic demographic changes over time.

Environmental conditions on the deep ocean floor rarely change: No sunlight reaches the sediment there, and water temperatures typically hover near freezing. In such an environment, hydrothermal vents--which spew immense amounts of warm, often nutrient-rich water--offer an oasis for microbes and the creatures that consume them.

Even within these systems, however, conditions, such as the mineralogy of the hydrothermal chimneys and the chemical composition of vent fluids as those oases age, can change.

http://snipr.com/u2gsx - UNIVERSE NOT STATIC. MORE AT TEN.


Should Evolutionary Theory Evolve?

from the Scientist (Registration Required)

Evolution, by its very nature, is a dynamic process. But just as fluid are humankind's efforts to understand, describe, and conceptualize that process. Out went Lamarck, in came Darwin. Mendel's insights set the rules for genetic inheritance, then certain exceptions to Mendel's rules materialized. So forth and so on.

The most recent, broadly recognized codification of evolutionary theory is known as the Modern Synthesis. After nearly 3 decades of theorizing, experimentation, and writing by paragons of evolutionary thought--Ronald Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright, to name but a few--British biologist Julian Huxley cemented the term in 1942 with the publication of his book Evolution: The Modern Synthesis.

The theoretical framework brought Darwin's ideas into the 20th century and married them to the gene's-eye-view of biology that was emerging at the start of the century, with the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's inheritance research. But since the 1940s, science's concept of evolutionary dynamics has, well, evolved. Indeed, these days, calling the Modern Synthesis "modern" might be a stretch.

http://snipr.com/u2gtm - My advisor specifically said that I should read this story. This is certainly the first time I've heard the term "evolvability", which is "the ability of a population or species to produce inheritable variation". I'm not sure how one would QUANTIFY that, or even qualify, because for the most part we can only actively watch transmutation in those species with short generation times, and we are severely limited in time and space to view the production of variation at all. In other words, it seems like speculation to me, and not science. Like string theory, the Extended Synthesis as they are calling it is largely composed of "theoretical concepts", by which they mean hypotheses that have no evidence as of yet. Speculation. The only thing here that DOES strike me as a good criticism is the need to include epigenetics in the Modern Synthesis. I will be reading the book mentioned in this article, if only to understand better the arguments.


New Cricket Species Filmed Pollinating Orchids

from BBC News Online

A new species of cricket has been caught on camera--and its bizarre behaviour has surprised scientists. Far from living up to the cricket's plant-destroying reputation, this species lends a helping hand to flora by acting as a pollinator. Scientists say this is the first time a cricket has been spotted pollinating a flower--in this case, an orchid.

A study of the nocturnal insect, which was found on the island of Reunion, has been published in the Annals of Botany. The creature has yet to be given a scientific name, but it belongs to the Glomeremus genus of crickets, which are also known as raspy crickets.

The insect was spotted by researchers who were attempting to find out how a species of orchid called Angraecum cadetii was being pollinated. This green-white flower is closely related to the comet orchid, which is found in Madagascar.

http://snipr.com/u2guj - This is way cool. I would call the species Glomeremus angraecumi, after the genus of orchid it polinates.


Bifocals Slow Progression of Myopia in Children

from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)

For children diagnosed with worsening myopia, bifocals might be a better choice than standard lenses for nearsightedness; researchers have found that the condition doesn't seem to progress as rapidly among bifocal-wearing children. Those findings, released Monday, raise the intriguing question of whether there is a better way to treat myopia early in its course, slowing its typical progression.

The condition, in which near vision is clear but distance vision is blurry, is usually identified in childhood and worsens until late adolescence. Myopia is increasing worldwide, with researchers at the National Eye Institute reporting last month that rates in Americans ages 12 to 54 rose 66% in the last 30 years.

Some research had suggested that treating children with bifocals could reduce the ultimate severity of the condition. Bifocals are glasses that use two corrective powers in each lens; traditional glasses simply correct vision for one distance.

http://snipr.com/u2gv1 - Interesting.

[Kai]

January 14, 2010
Tectonics, Poor Construction Create Devastation in Haiti

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The catastrophic quake that struck Haiti on Tuesday involved a collision of lethal circumstances: a massive, shallow eruption below a densely populated city with few, if any, building codes.

The magnitude 7.0 quake occurred near the boundary between two major tectonic plates, the Caribbean and North American plates. Most of the movement along these plates is what is known as left-lateral strike-slip motion, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, with the Caribbean plate moving eastward in relation to the North America plate.

Kate Hutton, a seismologist at Caltech, said the quake was similar to those seen along the San Andreas fault: It was shallow, a fact that enhances the intensity and makes it more localized to the region right along the fault.

http://snipr.com/u2whm


Study Supports Connection Between BPA and Heart Disease

from Science News

A previously reported link between exposure to the plastics chemical bisphenol A and heart disease stands, reports a new study published online January 12 in PLoS ONE.

Added to previous work, the finding provides a third prong of evidence implicating the chemical in cardiovascular and metabolic problems, notes Richard Stahlhut of the Center for Reproductive Epidemiology at the University of Rochester in New York. "It's becoming a coherent picture that really does fit together," says Stahlhut, who was not involved in the research. "If these all connect, we really do have a problem."

Researchers analyzed data from the 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. NHANES uses physical examinations, clinical and lab tests, and personal interviews to get a snapshot of the health and nutritional status of the U.S. population. The new analysis of 2005-2006 data reveals an association between concentrations of bisphenol A in urine and risk of cardiovascular disease, a link also detected in the 2003-2004 NHANES data.

http://snipr.com/u2wix


The Fickle Y Chromosome

from Nature News

The male sex chromosome, long dismissed as the underachieving runt of the genome, has now been fully sequenced in a common chimpanzee. And comparison with its human counterpart--the only other Y chromosome to have been sequenced in such detail--reveals a rate of change that puts the rest of the genome to shame.

The common chimp (Pan troglodytes) and human Y chromosomes are "horrendously different from each other", says David Page of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work. "It looks like there's been a dramatic renovation or reinvention of the Y chromosome in the chimpanzee and human lineages."

Sex chromosomes evolved some 200 million-300 million years ago, but the chimpanzee and human lineages diverged only 6 million-7 million years ago. Comparisons of the chimp and human genomes suggested that not much has changed between the species since.

http://snipr.com/u2wjg - Whenever a paper mentions the human Y chromosome, it always seems to lead to some sort of sensationalization.


Homo Erectus Invented "Modern" Living?

from National Geographic News

It's long been thought that so-called modern human behavior first arose during the middle Stone Age, in "modern" humans--Homo sapiens. But a new study suggests modern living may have originated roughly 500,000 years earlier--courtesy of one of our hairy, heavy-browed ancestor species.

At the prehistoric Gesher Benot Ya'aqov site in northern Israel, researchers have found the earliest known evidence of social organization, communication, and divided living and working spaces--all considered hallmarks of modern human behavior.

The former hunter-gatherer encampment dates back as far as 750,000 years ago, and must have been built by Homo erectus or another ancestral human species, archaeologists say. Homo sapiens--our own species--emerged only about a couple hundred thousand years ago, fossil record suggest. At the site, researchers found artifacts including hand axes, chopping tools, scrapers, hammers and awls, animal bones, and botanical remains buried in distinct areas.

http://snipr.com/u2wjv - Not sure I believe the dating on this one, just from the article.


Gene Found that Cuts Chance of Dementia

from the Telegraph (U.K.)

Hope of a new treatment for Alzheimer's was raised after scientists discovered a 'longevity gene' that protects against the disease. Researchers found that people with two copies of this gene had a 70 per cent reduced risk of developing the disease compared to those without it.

Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York city, America, found that the gene helped to slow age related decline in brain function.

The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, could lead to new treatments for the condition. Drugs that act in a similar way are now in development.

http://snipr.com/u2wkg - Dementia /is/ a terminal disease, I've said as much before.


Groups Ask U.S. to Regulate Shipping of Bumblebees

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Conservation groups said four species of native bumblebees are close to extinction and called on the federal government Tuesday to begin regulating the shipping of bees raised commercially as crop pollinators.

Researchers believe the precipitous declines in the species are being caused by diseases linked to the cultivation of a species of native bumblebee sold to farmers. The bees are used to increase fruit yield in a number of crops, including hothouse tomatoes and field-grown raspberries and blueberries.

During the past decade, wild bee species "went from being--some of them--very common to species that are now going extinct," said Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of the Xerces Society.

http://snipr.com/u2wkt - This is HONESTLY more important than colony collapse disorder.


Shar-pei Wrinkles Explained by Dog Geneticists

from BBC News Online

Just how did the Shar-pei get its famous wrinkled appearance? Scientists who have analysed the genetics of 10 pedigree dog breeds believe they now have the answer.

Their research identifies 155 distinct locations in the animals' genetic code that could play a role in giving breeds their distinctive appearances. In the Shar-pei, the team found differences in a gene known as HAS2 which makes an enzyme known to be important in the production of skin.

"There was probably a mutation that arose in that gene that led to a really wrinkly puppy and a breeder said, 'Hey, that looks interesting, I'm going to try to selectively breed this trait and make more of these dogs'," explained Joshua Akey from the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, US.

http://snipr.com/u2wl1 - cute. Now, can we cure cancer please?


For Olympic Games, London Dreams of a Cloud Castle

from the Christian Science Monitor

A group of architects, artists, and other big thinkers are certain that they don't have their heads in a cloud as they plan what could be the most startling structure to emerge from the London Olympic Games of 2012.

Called simply "the Cloud," the monument would consist of two slender towers rising hundreds of feet into the air. Atop the twin spires float digital displays and viewing platforms for the public, who would climb up by foot or bicycle using spiral ramps wrapped around one of the towers. The summit would also feature giant inflated plastic spheres, some of which visitors could enter. Real-time information about the Games and the surroundings would be displayed by Google.

In an emerging century with more and more online experience, the Cloud aims to form a connection from the virtual world to the real world, "from the world of bits to the physical world, the world of atoms," says Carlo Ratti, head of the SENSEable Cities Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., and a member of the international team working on the project.

http://snipr.com/u2wl9 - Cain, can you comment on this please?


Popular Blood Therapy May Not Work

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

... It is a new procedure, based on an idea that once seemed revolutionary: Inject people with their own blood, concentrated so it is mostly platelets, the tiny colorless bodies that release substances that help repair tissues.

Soon the treatment, platelet-rich plasma, or P.R.P., was extended to so many uses--treating muscle sprains and tendon pulls and tears, arthritis, bone fractures and surgical wounds--that Dr. Bruce Reider, editor of The American Journal of Sports Medicine, said in a recent editorial that perhaps it should be called "platelet-rich panacea."

... Now, though, the first rigorous study asking whether the platelet injections actually work finds they are no more effective than saltwater. The study, reported in the Jan. 13 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, involved people with injured Achilles' tendons, fibrous tissue that connects the calf to the heel bone.

http://snipr.com/u2wlu - again, I really HATE science reporting for the way they make overly simplistic conclusions out of complex papers.


Scientists Make New Molecules That Look and Act Like Others

from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Since ancient times, alchemists have strived to turn base metals into gold, without success. But a Penn State University physicist and his team of researchers are logging achievements along those lines of which alchemists could only dream.

A team led by A. Welford Castleman Jr., the Eberly Distinguished Chair in Science and Evan Pugh Professor in the departments of chemistry and physics, has "squished together" cheaper base elements into molecules known as superatoms that have "the electronic signatures" of more expensive, or more exotic, atoms or elements.

Superatoms they've created with metals, oxygen and carbon closely mimic such elements as nickel, platinum and palladium. A Penn State news release says these superatoms could be used in such widespread applications as "new sources of energy, methods of pollution abatement and catalysts on which industrial nations depend heavily for chemical processing."

http://snipr.com/u2wmp - QUANTUM?

[Kai]

January 15, 2010
Haiti Earthquake Disaster Little Surprise to Some Seismologists

from Scientific American

The devastating magnitude 7.0 quake that ripped through Haiti Tuesday, reportedly killing thousands, did not catch everyone by surprise.

In an interview last week for an unrelated story, Robert Yeats, a professor emeritus in geoscience at Oregon State University in Corvallis and co-author of a June 1989 article for Scientific American "Hidden Earthquakes," said that an imminent big west coast earthquake concerned him far less than a "big one" that might occur in Haiti, due to the large fault near the capital city of Port-au-Prince--and the poverty-driven low level of earthquake-preparedness there.

"If they have an earthquake on this fault that runs through Port-au-Prince," the death toll would be tremendous, he said January 6. The fault, called the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden Fault, runs some 16 kilometers from Port-au-Prince and is at the intersection of the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates, which are slowly sliding past one another.

http://snipr.com/u3c6d - Yeah, it was pretty clear this was going to happen eventually.


Endangered Birds and Quirky Lists

from the Philadelphia Inquirer

Like most birds, the cerulean warbler is a fussy sort. The tiny creature, just inches long, nests only in the tops of deciduous trees, those that lose their leaves in winter. With males a vivid sky blue, it's a "gorgeous bird," says ornithologist Jeffrey Wells.

It's also in trouble. In three decades, its numbers have declined by about 80 percent. It is one of the fastest-declining forest birds in the United States. So how do we protect the warbler and other creatures in similar decline? Recent research by Wells and others has cast doubt on whether the current methods are working as well as they could.

Indeed, their flaws "could have profound negative consequences" for many species, the authors concluded in a study published last week in the scientific journal PLoS ONE. In the last few decades, a cornerstone of publicly funded wildlife conservation has been lists.

http://snipr.com/u3c7p - Lists are good, but more important is overall ecosystem conservation.


Morphine Shows Promise Against PTSD

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Early administration of morphine to military personnel wounded on the front lines during Operation Iraqi Freedom appears to have done more than relieve excruciating pain.

Scientists believe it also prevented hundreds of cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, the debilitating condition that plagues 15 percent of those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That conclusion is based on findings published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. They suggest that a simple treatment can stop a single horrifying event from escalating into a chronic, incapacitating illness.

http://snipr.com/u3cf8 - Interesting.


U.S. Obesity Rate Leveling Off

from USA Today

Americans may be tightening their belts. Or at least not expanding them.

The percentage of adults who are obese hasn't increased much over the past 10 years after several decades of skyrocketing growth, an indication that America's obesity epidemic is finally starting to level off, according to a landmark government analysis released Wednesday.

About 34 percent of U.S. adults--almost 73 million people--were obese (roughly 30 or more pounds over a healthy weight) in 2008, up from 31 percent in 1999.

http://snipr.com/u3cfm - Probably because Texas has hit it's carrying capacity.


Report Links Vehicle Exhaust to Health Problems

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Exhaust from cars and trucks exacerbates asthma in children and may cause new cases as well as other respiratory illnesses and heart problems resulting in deaths, an independent institute that focuses on vehicle-related air pollution has concluded.

The report, issued on Wednesday by the nonprofit Health Effects Institute, analyzed 700 peer-reviewed studies conducted around the world on varying aspects of motor vehicle emissions and health. It found "evidence of a causal relationship," but not proof of one, between pollution from vehicles and impaired lung function and accelerated hardening of the arteries.

It said there was "strong evidence" that exposure to traffic helped cause variations in heart rate and other heart ailments that result in deaths. But among the many studies that evaluated death from heart problems, some did not separate stress and noise from air pollution as a cause, it said.

http://snipr.com/u3cg0  - Well, DUH.


New FDA Deputy to Lead Food-Safety Mandate

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

A year ago, Michael Taylor was sitting in his office at George Washington University, considering a basic mission of the federal government: making sure food is safe. He'd devoted his career to food safety, working in and out of government, and he was finally in academia where he could think deeply about what was wrong and how to fix it.

And then the call came. The Obama administration wanted Taylor to implement the solutions he had been designing. A string of food poisoning outbreaks nationally had sickened thousands and killed dozens. Both parties in Congress were calling for tough new laws. The president promised the public that he would strengthen food safety.

In July, Taylor became an adviser to Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Wednesday he was named deputy commissioner for foods, a new position that elevates food in an agency long criticized for placing greater emphasis on drugs and medical devices.

http://snipr.com/u3cgh


Mysterious Jamestown Tablet an American Rosetta Stone?

from National Geographic News

With the help of enhanced imagery and an expert in Elizabethan script, archaeologists are beginning to unravel the meaning of mysterious text and images etched into a rare 400-year-old slate tablet discovered this past summer at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America.

Digitally enhanced images of the slate are helping to isolate inscriptions and illuminate fine details on the slate--the first with extensive inscriptions discovered at any early American colonial site, said William Kelso, director of research and interpretation at the 17th-century Historic Jamestowne site.

The enhancements have helped researchers identify a 16th-century writing style used on the slate and discern new symbols, researchers announced last week. The characters may be from an obscure Algonquian Indian alphabet created by an English scientist to help explorers pronounce the language spoken by the Virginia Indians.

http://snipr.com/u3cgy - Also interesting.


Soybean Genome Turns Out to Be Soysoybeanbean

from Science News

Scientists finally do know beans about soybeans, thanks to a newly unveiled genome sequence.

The plant's DNA contains a surprising amount of duplication, says geneticist Scott Jackson of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. Having the soybean's genetic blueprint, he says, should help scientists both improve crop varieties and study the evolutionarily important process of genome doubling.

Soybean's set of chromosomes has copied itself at least twice, approximately 59 million years ago the first time and then again about 13 million years ago, Jackson and his colleagues report in the Jan. 14 Nature. Redundant genes often retool or vanish, but soybean plants still have multiple copies of almost three-quarters of their genes, the researchers say.

http://snipr.com/u3chk - polysomy is pretty common in plants, so this isn't surprising.


Biomedical Bust

from the Scientist (Registration Required)

It's not just the growth rate of biomedical funding that's slowing; the total number of dollars seems to be decreasing as well, says a study in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.

To make matters worse, the funding downturn also corresponds to one of the biomedical industry's most stagnant periods in productivity, measured by the number of new drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, the report notes.

E. Ray Dorsey, a neurologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center, New York, and colleagues analyzed biomedical funding records from federal, state and local governments, foundations, and industry. All values were adjusted to 2008 dollar levels using the biomedical research and development price index (BRDPI). They then compared their results to a similar 2005 study they did on biomedical funding from 1994 to 2003.

http://snipr.com/u3chx - Well, it's probably due to the huge economic recession we've been having. Just a thought.


Catching Up on Lost Sleep a Dangerous Illusion

from USA Today

People who are chronically sleep-deprived may think they're caught up after a 10-hour night of sleep, but new research shows that although they're near-normal when they awake, their ability to function deteriorates markedly as night falls.

Some studies show that almost 30% of Americans get less than six hours of sleep at night. The research indicates that the body's daily circadian rhythm hides the effects of chronic sleep loss and gives such people a second wind between about 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., when the circadian rhythm is pushing them to be awake. But then they fall off a cliff in terms of attention.

Staying up for 24 hours straight is bad enough, but the study shows that if you do that on top of having gotten less than six hours of sleep a night for two to three weeks, your reaction times and abilities are 10 times worse than they would have been just pulling an all-nighter, says Daniel Cohen, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the study in Wednesday's Science Translational Medicine journal.

http://snipr.com/u3cij - Okay, I'm gonna take this seriously. This is a real problem for graduate students and people in academia in general. I don't want to process stuff at one tenth my capacity. So, at least 7 hours a night, that will be my goal from now on.

[Kai]

January 22, 2010
The Venus Flytrap's Lethal Allure

from Smithsonian Magazine

As I slogged through black swamp water, the mud made obscene smooching noises each time I wrenched a foot free. "Be careful where you put your hands," said James Luken, walking just ahead of me. "This is South Carolina"--home to multitudinous vipers, canoe-length alligators and spiders with legs as thick as pipe cleaners.

... Our destination, not far from the headwaters of the Socastee Swamp, was a cellphone tower on higher ground. Luken had spotted a healthy patch of Venus flytraps there on an earlier expedition. To reach them, we were following a power-line corridor that cut through oval-shaped bogs called Carolina bays.

... Luken, a botanist at Coastal Carolina University, is one of the few scientists to study flytraps in the wild, and I was starting to understand why he had so little competition.

http://snipr.com/u5kk4 - I really should go see this before I leave this state. And you all should read this. Carnivorous plants are way cool.

UN Climate Report Riddled With Errors on Glaciers

from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- Five glaring errors were discovered in one paragraph of the world's most authoritative report on global warming, forcing the Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists who wrote it to apologize and promise to be more careful.

The errors are in a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-affiliated body. All the mistakes appear in a subsection that suggests glaciers in the Himalayas could melt away by the year 2035--hundreds of years earlier than the data actually indicates. The year 2350 apparently was transposed as 2035.

The climate panel and even the scientist who publicized the errors said they are not significant in comparison to the entire report, nor were they intentional. And they do not negate the fact that worldwide, glaciers are melting faster than ever. But the mistakes open the door for more attacks from climate change skeptics.

http://snipr.com/u5kl9 - Yes, yes they do, and it just means that scientists need to be more careful than ever at informing the public. Charles Darwin understood the delicacy of scientific information made public, and what care was needed to do it right.

Humans Might Have Faced Extinction 1 Million Years Ago

from Scientific American

New genetic findings suggest that early humans living about one million years ago were extremely close to extinction.

The genetic evidence suggests that the effective population--an indicator of genetic diversity--of early human species back then, including Homo erectus, H. ergaster and archaic H. sapiens, was about 18,500 individuals (it is thought that modern humans evolved from H. erectus), says Lynn Jorde, a human geneticist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. That figure translates into a total population of 55,500 individuals, tops.

One might assume that hominin numbers were expanding at that time as fossil evidence shows that members of our Homo genus were spreading across Africa, Asia and Europe, Jorde says. But the current study by Jorde and his colleagues suggests instead that the population and, thus its genetic diversity, faced a major setback about one million years ago. The finding is detailed in the January 18 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://snipr.com/u5km9 - GENETIC BOTTLENECK! HA! But again, this is PNAS. Can we really trust that journal right now?

Breakup Doesn't Keep Hydrogel Down

from Science News

Pulling yourself back together after a breakup can be tough to do. But a new hydrogel has no trouble. Using little more than water, clay and a new, designer compound, scientists have created a moldable gel that is both strong and can heal itself in seconds when split in two. The gel may advance efforts in tissue engineering and environmentally friendly chemistry.

The new hydrogel is more than 50 times stronger than comparable squishy self-healing materials, researchers led by Takuzo Aida of the University of Tokyo report in the Jan. 21 Nature. Such substances are well suited for the body; they are 95 percent water. Hydrogels may one day serve as scaffolding for growing new tissue, as matrices for keeping drugs in their targeted area or as replacements for damaged cartilage. The new gel, unlike similar materials, is quick and relatively simple to make.

The work adds to a "growing field of materials with exceptional properties that really could not be imagined" before, comments chemical engineer J. Zach Hilt of the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

http://snipr.com/u5koh - very cool.

Seven Essentials for Longer Life Spans

from the Seattle Times

DALLAS (Associated Press) -- Here are the seven secrets to a long life: Stay away from cigarettes. Keep a slender physique. Get some exercise. Eat a healthful diet and keep your cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar in check.

Research shows that most 50-year-olds who do that can live an additional 40 years free of stroke and heart disease, two of the most common killers, said Dr. Clyde Yancy, president of the American Heart Association. The heart association published the advice online Wednesday in the journal Circulation.

The group also introduced an online quiz to help people gauge how close they are to the ideal. Tips are offered for those who fall short.

http://snipr.com/u5koq - Hm....looks like I've got most of those in the bag.

Mammals "Rafted" to Madagascar, Climate Model Suggests

from National Geographic News

Only in the movies could a lion, a zebra, a giraffe, and a hippo wash ashore on Madagascar to start a new life. But a new computer model suggests there may be a grain of truth in the animated fiction: The ancestors of ring-tailed lemurs, flying foxes, and other mammals that live on the Indian Ocean island got there aboard natural rafts.

The model supports a 70-year-old theory that mainland mammals from southeastern Africa "rafted" to the island on large logs or floating carpets of vegetation after being swept out to sea during storms.

The ancient refugees were carried to Madagascar by ocean currents, drifting on the open seas for several weeks before finally coming ashore, the model says. Based on genetic and ecosystem evidence, this theory makes more sense than the alternative, which holds that Madagascar's mammals arrived via a land bridge that was later destroyed by shifting continents.

http://snipr.com/u5kow - Hollywood imitating life.

Magnetic Activity in Brain 'Diagnoses Stress Disorder'

from BBC News Online

A one-minute test appears to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder with an accuracy of 90%. The test measures the tiny magnetic fluctuations that occur as groups of neurons fire in synchrony, even when subjects are not thinking of anything.

These "synchronous neural interactions" have already been shown to distinguish signals from subjects with a range of disorders including Alzheimer's. The latest work is reported in the Journal of Neural Engineering.

The brain's signals are effectively a symphony of electrical impulses, which in turn drive tiny magnetic fields. Researchers have measured and mapped these fields, in a pursuit known as magnetoencephalography, since the late 1960s. It has already been used to diagnose tinnitus, and can even predict when people will make mistakes.

http://snipr.com/u5kp0 - Hey, this is pretty cool!

Big Benefits Are Seen From Eating Less Salt

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

In a report that may bolster public policy efforts to get Americans to reduce the amount of salt in their diets, scientists writing in The New England Journal of Medicine conclude that lowering the amount of salt people eat by even a small amount could reduce cases of heart disease, stroke and heart attacks as much as reductions in smoking, obesity and cholesterol levels.

If everyone consumed half a teaspoon less salt per day, there would be between 54,000 and 99,000 fewer heart attacks each year and between 44,000 and 92,000 fewer deaths, according to the study, which was conducted by scientists at University of California San Francisco, Stanford University Medical Center and Columbia University Medical Center.

The report comes as health authorities at federal, state and municipal levels are considering policies that would have the effect of pressuring food companies to reduce salt in processed foods, which are considered to be the source of much of the salt Americans eat.

http://snipr.com/u5kp8 - Depends on who you are, of course. I actually add salt, because otherwise I don't get enough.

Study: Hacking Passwords Easy As 123456

from PC World

If you are using "123456" as your password it is past time to stop. Same if you are using the always popular "Password" to protect your account. Those easy-to-hack passwords were the top and fourth most-popular from among 32 million hacked from RockU.com, a new study finds.

Imperva studied the breached passwords and has published an interesting study that talks about them. While "Consumer Password Worst Practices" isn't about us supposedly savvy business users, as an occasional system administrator I've run into both 123456 and Password on many occasions.

... "To quantify the issue, the combination of poor passwords and automated attacks means that in just 110 attempts, a hacker will typically gain access to one new account on every second or a mere 17 minutes to break into 1000 accounts," Imperva said in its report.

http://snipr.com/u5kph - "That's the code for my luggage!"

MS Pills Show Promise and Risk, Studies Say

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

ATLANTA (Associated Press) -- Tests of the first two oral drugs developed for treating multiple sclerosis show that both cut the frequency of relapses and may slow progression of the disease, but with side effects that could pose a tough decision for patients.

Two experts not involved in the studies said the drugs appear effective but with potentially dangerous side effects. It's too soon to know if the pills will be approved by the government or widely adopted by physicians, they said.

About 2.5 million people around the world have multiple sclerosis, a neurological disease that can cause muscle tremors, paralysis and problems with speech, memory and concentration. The studies involve the most common form of the disease, in which people are well for a while and then suffer periodic relapses. Current treatments can reduce the duration and severity of symptoms but require daily or regular shots or infusions.

http://snipr.com/u5kq0 - One of my favorite scientists has MS. I'm hoping this works.

[Nast]

http://snipr.com/u5kk4 - I really should go see this before I leave this state. And you all should read this. Carnivorous plants are way cool.

They sure are. The Southeastern conifer forests (or, what little's left of them) sound very fascinating. Thanks for the article!

[Kai]

January 25, 2010
Strongest Hurricanes May Triple in Frequency, Study Says

from National Geographic News

The U.S. Southeast, Mexico, and the Caribbean will be pounded by more very intense hurricanes in the coming decades due to global warming, a new computer model suggests.

Warmer sea surface temperatures--which fuel hurricanes--and shifting wind patterns are expected to strengthen the storms, the study says. At the same time, rising temperatures should result in fewer weak or middling hurricanes in the western Atlantic.

The study considered what would happen if people kept emitting more greenhouse gases until about 2050 and then started cutting emissions.

http://snipr.com/u6op7 - PARTY ON THE GULF COAST! 


Absolutely: The Psychology of Power

from the Economist

Reports of politicians who have extramarital affairs while complaining about the death of family values, or who use public funding for private gain despite condemning government waste, have become so common in recent years that they hardly seem surprising anymore. Anecdotally, at least, the connection between power and hypocrisy looks obvious.

Anecdote is not science, though. And, more subtly, even if anecdote is correct, it does not answer the question of whether power tends to corrupt, as Lord Acton's dictum has it, or whether it merely attracts the corruptible.

To investigate this question Joris Lammers at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, and Adam Galinsky at Northwestern University, in Illinois, have conducted a series of experiments which attempted to elicit states of powerfulness and powerlessness in the minds of volunteers. Having done so, as they report in Psychological Science, they tested those volunteers' moral pliability. Lord Acton, they found, was right.

http://snipr.com/u6oq6 -ATTN Cain...Actually, attention EVERYFUCKINGBODY. Read this!


Prions 'May Keep Nerves Healthy'

from BBC News Online

Experiments on mice may help scientists understand the workings of the prion protein linked to brain disease vCJD.

Swiss researchers say there is evidence that prions play a vital role in the maintenance of the sheath surrounding our nerves. They say it is possible that an absence of prions causes diseases of the peripheral nervous system.

One expert said there was growing evidence that the prion had a number of important roles in the body. As well as the latest research in the journal Nature Neuroscience, other studies have indicated prions may protect us from Alzheimer's disease or even play a role in our sense of smell.

http://snipr.com/u6oqm - O.o okay, as far as I knew previously, prions are pathogenic proteins that turn your brain into swiss cheese.


The Origin of Darwin (Q&A)

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Randal Keynes, 62, is the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. He is also the author of the book Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution, inspiration for the new film Creation, starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly.

The film, which opened Friday and gets a wider release Jan. 29, is a heartbreaking biopic that explores Darwin's life and loves and portrays him as more than a bit tortured by an irony in his family: Darwin (Bettany) was poised to go public on the origins of all life, including that of human beings, and his wife, Emma (Connelly), was a devout Christian who believed the only way to heaven was to trust in God.

Darwin struggled over whether to reveal his theories and how it would affect his family. His oldest daughter, Annie, who died at age 10, becomes his conscience in the film--an apparition that helps and haunts him.

http://snipr.com/u6or4 - I will be seeing this eventually, but not now. Too happy with my good interpretation of Darwin from his actual writings and the writings of his son to poison that with Hollywood ATM.


New Rule Allows Use of Partial DNA Matches

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

ALBANY -- New York has become the latest of a handful of jurisdictions to permit a controversial use of DNA evidence that gives law enforcement authorities a sophisticated means to track down criminals.

Under a state rule approved in December, DNA found at a crime scene that does not exactly match that of someone in the state's DNA database can still be used to pursue suspects if the DNA closely resembles that of someone on file.

Since family members share genetic traits, a partial DNA match allows investigators to narrow searches to relatives of people whose DNA is already in the state database, forensic experts say.

http://snipr.com/u6orm - This is a huge slope, and it's very SLIPPERY.


Slime Mold Is Master Network Engineer

from Science News

Talented and dedicated engineers spent countless hours designing Japan's rail system to be one of the world's most efficient. Could have just asked a slime mold.

When presented with oat flakes arranged in the pattern of Japanese cities around Tokyo, brainless, single-celled slime molds construct networks of nutrient-channeling tubes that are strikingly similar to the layout of the Japanese rail system, researchers from Japan and England report January 22 in Science. A new model based on the simple rules of the slime mold's behavior may lead to the design of more efficient, adaptable networks, the team contends.

Every day, the rail network around Tokyo has to meet the demands of mass transport, ferrying millions of people between distant points quickly and reliably, notes study coauthor Mark Fricker of the University of Oxford. "In contrast, the slime mold has no central brain or indeed any awareness of the overall problem it is trying to solve, but manages to produce a structure with similar properties to the real rail network."

http://snipr.com/u6ors - Acellular slime molds are probably one of the coolest organisms around. Besides caddisflies, of course.


Newlyweds Chased From Their Home by Mold, Bacteria

from the Philadelphia Inquirer

After a honeymoon in Mexico, Danielle and David Beety returned to their dream home, a $407,000 yellow stucco on a cul-de-sac in Gloucester County. Their future seemed golden.

"We were on cloud nine," said Danielle Beety, a first-grade teacher who also coached high school field hockey. "Everything was going completely great," added David Beety, a mortgage loan originator.

That lasted two weeks. Suddenly, Danielle Beety was stricken with severe throat pain and developed flulike symptoms. Her baffled doctors ordered myriad tests. Three times they admitted her to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. She required two operations to remove a 5-centimeter abscess inside her neck.

http://snipr.com/u6osb - Okay, this is honestly just gross. How can people not notice these issues immediately?


Cold War Split Birds, Too

from SciencNOW Daily News

The Cold War divided the people of Europe for nearly half a century, and it turns out humans weren't the only ones stuck behind the Iron Curtain. Trade blockades led to vastly different numbers and types of invasive birds in Western and Eastern Europe, new research reveals. The findings, say experts, highlight the dramatic impact human activity can have on the success of alien species.

After World War II, political divisions split Western Europe and the United States from communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Democratic Western Europe became closely linked to North America and Africa, while Eastern Europe was largely isolated from global trade and suffered economically under communism.

This disparity, researchers argue in the February issue of Biological Conservation, had a profound effect on invasive bird species. The data come from more than 150 years of bird-introduction records--including government reports, scientific papers, and observations by local experts--which were collected and analyzed as part of a European program called Delivering Alien Invasive Species Inventories for Europe.

http://snipr.com/u6osq - Interesting.


Are Algae Worse than Corn for Biofuels?

from Scientific American

Growing algae for use in biofuels has a greater environmental impact than sources such as corn, switch grass and canola, researchers found in the first life-cycle assessment of algae growth.

Interest in algae-based biofuels has blossomed in the past year, sparking major investments from Exxon Mobil Corp. and Dow Chemical Co., and it has gained steam on Capitol Hill, as well. But the nascent industry has major environmental hurdles to overcome before ramping up production, according to research published this week in Environmental Science and Technology.

"What we found was sort of surprising," said Andres Clarens, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Virginia and lead author of the paper. "We started doing this with as much optimism as everybody else."

http://snipr.com/u6otd - And this is why its time for PANIC, ehem, I mean Panicum.


Economic Growth 'Cannot Continue'

from BBC News Online

Continuing global economic growth "is not possible" if nations are to tackle climate change, a report by an environmental think-thank has warned.

The New Economics Foundation (Nef) said "unprecedented and probably impossible" carbon reductions would be needed to hold temperature rises below 2C (3.6F). Scientists say exceeding this limit could lead to dangerous global warming.

"We urgently need to change our economy to live within its environmental budget," said Nef's policy director.

http://snipr.com/u6otl - Well DUH.

[Kai]

January 27, 2010
Surgical Procedure Urged for Atrial Fibrillation

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

People with atrial fibrillation, a common type of irregular heartbeat, should be referred for a surgical treatment called catheter ablation if an oral medication is not effective, said the authors of a study released Tuesday.

In a head-to-head comparison of the two forms of treatment, catheter ablation was so superior in resolving the disorder and helping patients to feel better that the study was halted early. The results will be published today in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

Atrial fibrillation, which affects more than 2 million Americans, occurs when the heart's two small upper chambers quiver instead of beating effectively. It can cause blood to pool and clot, raising the risk of a stroke. The condition can go undetected indefinitely, though many people have symptoms such as palpitations, dizziness, chest pain, fatigue and shortness of breath.

http://snipr.com/u7f0r


China Spends Billions to Study Dinosaur Fossils

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

ZHUCHENG, CHINA -- What killed the dinosaurs? Scientist Wang Haijun thinks the answer may be buried inside a 980-foot-long ravine in the Chinese countryside 415 miles southeast of Beijing where hundreds of the creatures may have huddled in the final moments before their extinction.

The fossils here--more than 15,000 fractured, mangled and blackened bones from about 65 million years ago in the late Cretaceous period right before they went extinct--support theories of a catastrophe. Global fires. Explosions. Climate change.

"This find is very important for understanding the very end of the age of dinosaurs," said James M. Clark, a paleontologist at George Washington University who has examined some of the fossils. The excavation here, believed to be the largest dinosaur fossil site in the world, is one of a number of groundbreaking research projects in a country that once shunned science because it was associated with the elites.

http://snipr.com/u7f1r - THURNEZ, PACK YOUR BAGS WE'RE GOING TO BEJING!


A Deadly Quake in a Seismic Hot Zone

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

To scientists who study seismic hazards in the Caribbean, there was no surprise in the magnitude 7 earthquake that devastated the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, two weeks ago. Except, perhaps, in where on the island of Hispaniola it occurred.

"If I had had to make a bet, I would have bet that the first earthquake would have taken place in the northern Dominican Republic, not Haiti," said Eric Calais, a geophysicist at Purdue University who has conducted research in the area for years.

The fault that ruptured violently on Jan. 12 had been building up strain since the last major earthquake in Port-au-Prince, 240 years ago. Dr. Calais and others had warned in 2008 that a quake could occur along that segment, part of what is called the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone, although they could not predict when.

http://snipr.com/u7f26 - Just like you can't predict when the 500 year flood will come to a floodplain, might be 500 years or more, might be tomorrow. However, it WILL happen. So watch your ass.


The MRSA Bacteria Mutates Quickly As It Spreads

from Science News

An antibiotic-resistant strain of staph bacteria began its globetrotting adventures in Europe and can mutate quickly as it spreads, a new study suggests. Scientists acting as molecular historians used a new technology to decode the bacteria's genome and follow its movements, an approach that could one day help health care workers pinpoint the origins of outbreaks and prevent further infections.

The marauding bacterium, known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, changes its genetic makeup faster than previously thought by altering at least one letter in its genetic handbook about every six weeks, a new study in the Jan. 22 Science shows.

More of those mutations fall in genes involved in antibiotic resistance than would be expected if the changes had occurred randomly, "illustrating that there is an immense selective pressure from antibiotic use worldwide," says Simon Harris, a bacterial phylogeneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England. Bacteria that get mutations creating resistance to antibiotics are more likely to survive than are bacteria that remain sensitive to drugs.

http://snipr.com/u7f58 - Staph infections freak me out.


High-Tech Energy "Oasis" to Bloom in the Desert?

from National Geographic News

A renewable-energy "oasis" slated to be built in 2010 may serve as a proving ground for new technologies designed to bring green living to the desert.

The planned research center is part of the Sahara Forest Project--but that doesn't mean it'll be built in Africa. Sahara means "desert" in Arabic, and the center is meant to be a small-scale version of massive green complexes that project managers hope to build in deserts around the globe.

Experts are now examining arid sites in Australia, the U.S., the Middle East, and Africa that could support the test facility. "The Sahara Forest Project is a holistic approach for creation of local jobs, food, water, and energy, utilizing relatively simple solutions mimicking design and principles from nature," said Frederic Hauge, founder and president of the Norwegian environmental nonprofit the Bellona Foundation.

http://snipr.com/u7f5j - The deserts were the last places to escape from humanity. No longer.


Genetic Tests Give Consumers Hints About Disease Risk

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Last fall, Sgt. Timothy Gall, an Army medic stationed at Fort Belvoir, sought clues to the multiple sclerosis and heart disease that ran in his family by looking into his DNA. All it took was some spit and about a thousand bucks.

He didn't go to a doctor. Instead, Gall, 30, joined the growing number of consumers ordering scans of their DNA directly from private companies. A handful of companies such as 23andMe, Navigenics and Decode Genetics offer customers a personal peek at their genetic code, finding variations linked to certain traits, diseases and drug sensitivities--a process known as genotyping. As the cost of genetic scanning has dropped and the pace of genetic discovery quickened, these companies began springing up about three years ago. Now, as they're attracting more and more customers, they're also drawing more scrutiny.

Once Gall decided to try it, he persuaded his father to be genotyped, too. As a quality check, both men mailed saliva samples to two testing firms: 23andMe, based in California's Silicon Valley, and Decode, of Reykjavik, Iceland. "I figured I'd only pay attention to the results where both companies agreed," Gall said.

http://snipr.com/u7f6w  - I bet no one can guess the potential for misuse on this.


Scientist: Alien Life Could Already Be on Earth

from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

LONDON (Associated Press) -- For the past 50 years, scientists have scoured the skies for radio signals from beyond our planet, hoping for some sign of extraterrestrial life. But one physicist says there's no reason alien life couldn't already be lurking among us--or maybe even in us.

Paul Davies, an award-winning Arizona State University physicist known for his popular science writing, said Tuesday that life may have developed on Earth not once but several times. Davies said the variant life forms--most likely tiny microbes--could still be hanging around "right under our noses--or even in our noses."

"How do we know all life on Earth descended from a single origin?" he told a conference at London's prestigious Royal Society, which serves as Britain's academy of sciences. "We've just scratched the surface of the microbial world."

http://snipr.com/u7f7a - Why oh WHY do theroretical physicists have to talk like they actually understand biology?


Mars Rover Will Rove No More

from MSNBC

Nine months after the Spirit rover sank into a Martian sand trap, NASA says the troubled traveler will have to remain stationary in order to survive the Red Planet's winter. Now the challenge is to improve Spirit's tilt so that it soaks up as much solar energy as it can.

Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, said that Spirit ran up against "a golfer's worst nightmare" and that the rover's "driving days are likely over."

"Right now the worry is about getting through the winter," he told journalists Tuesday during a teleconference. After the winter, scientists plan to conduct stationary experiments to characterize the Red Planet's core--is it solid, or still somewhat molten? They'll also look into the interaction between the Martian soil and atmosphere, as well as the characteristics of the intriguing soil around the rover.

http://snipr.com/u7f7l - Poor little rover.


Female Teachers May Pass on Math Anxiety to Girls

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Girls have long embraced the stereotype that they're not supposed to be good at math. It seems they may be getting the idea from a surprising source--their female elementary school teachers.

First- and second-graders whose teachers were anxious about mathematics were more likely to believe that boys are hard-wired for math and that girls are better at reading, a new study has found. What's more, the girls who bought into that notion scored significantly lower on math tests than their peers who didn't.

The gap in test scores was not apparent in the fall when the kids were first tested, but emerged after spending a school year in the classrooms of teachers with math anxiety. That detail convinced researchers that the teachers--all of them women--were the culprits.

http://snipr.com/u7f7q - I personally think they do math better. And sexier.


Physicists' Dreams in Era of the Big Collider

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

A few dozen scientists got together in Los Angeles for the weekend recently to talk about their craziest hopes and dreams for the universe. At least that was the idea.

"I want to set out the questions for the next nine decades," Maria Spiropulu said on the eve of the conference, called the Physics of the Universe Summit. She was hoping that the meeting, organized with the help of Joseph D. Lykken of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan, would replicate the success of a speech by the mathematician David Hilbert, who in 1900 laid out an agenda of 23 math questions to be solved in the 20th century.

Dr. Spiropulu is a professor at the California Institute of Technology and a senior scientist at CERN, outside Geneva. Next month, CERN's Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator ever built, will begin colliding protons and generating sparks of primordial fire in an effort to recreate conditions that ruled the universe in the first trillionth of a second of time.

http://snipr.com/u7f7y  - You know, I don't care for anything but that last line above. Its just a fucking cool line.

[Kai]

More on the prion story: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100124/full/news.2010.29.html

[Triple Zero]

Cold War Split Birds, Too

from SciencNOW Daily News

The Cold War divided the people of Europe for nearly half a century, and it turns out humans weren't the only ones stuck behind the Iron Curtain. Trade blockades led to vastly different numbers and types of invasive birds in Western and Eastern Europe, new research reveals. The findings, say experts, highlight the dramatic impact human activity can have on the success of alien species.

After World War II, political divisions split Western Europe and the United States from communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Democratic Western Europe became closely linked to North America and Africa, while Eastern Europe was largely isolated from global trade and suffered economically under communism.

This disparity, researchers argue in the February issue of Biological Conservation, had a profound effect on invasive bird species. The data come from more than 150 years of bird-introduction records--including government reports, scientific papers, and observations by local experts--which were collected and analyzed as part of a European program called Delivering Alien Invasive Species Inventories for Europe.

http://snipr.com/u6osq - Interesting.

awwwww that means this beautiful song is wrong

Harry Jekkers & het Klein Orkest - Over de muur

translation and explanation of the lyrics: http://everything2.com/title/Over+de+muur

it's beautiful

if you have ever seen the movie "Goodbye Lenin", you get the idea. otherwise, REALLY go see that movie, it is a wonderfully tragicomic story surrounding the fall of the Berlin wall.

[Chairman Risus]

Just wanted to say to keep up the good work, Kai.
Fun thread.

[Jasper]

This thread is one of my favorite PDcom threads to date.

[Kai]

I have to go through my email and update today, a whole bunch. Look for it.

[Kai]

February 1, 2010
The Great Uranium Stampede

from the Times (London)

It's an odd place for a group of Frenchmen to pitch a tent city. Bakouma is one of the deepest, darkest corners of African jungle. From Bangui, the capital of the land-locked Central African Republic, it takes days to navigate the 800km of dirt track to this patch of virgin forest in the middle of the continent. Usually they go by light aircraft to a nearby landing strip.

Most of the 160 or so jungle dwellers are scientists but they are not there to count butterflies. They are drawing up plans for a uranium mine. Areva, France's state-owned nuclear giant, is behind the project. It hopes to begin clearing forest next year after the government approves its plan.

Bakouma is not an isolated case. It's just one example of a silent landgrab unfolding around the globe. After decades as a forgotten commodity, uranium, the radioactive element used as the primary fuel for nuclear power, is hot property again. Agents for companies, many of them government-controlled, are fanning out across the globe to gain access to the powdery, radioactive ore.

http://snipr.com/u8qrj

2011 NASA Budget Eliminates Funds for Manned Lunar Missions

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

NASA's grand plan to return to the moon, built on President George W. Bush's vision of an ambitious new chapter in space exploration, is about to vanish with hardly a whimper. With the release Monday of President Obama's budget request, NASA will finally get the new administration's marching orders, and there won't be anything in there about flying to the moon.

The budget numbers will show that the administration effectively plans to kill the Constellation program that called for a return to the moon by 2020. The budget, expected to increase slightly over the current $18.7 billion, is also a death knell for the Ares 1 rocket, NASA's planned successor to the space shuttle. The agency has spent billions developing the rocket, which is still years from its first scheduled crew flight.

It remains to be seen whether Congress will accede to Obama's change in direction. Industry insiders expect a brutal fight in Congress. The early reaction to media reports about the budget request has been filled with howls of protest from lawmakers in districts that would be most affected by a sharp change in strategy.

http://snipr.com/u8qrx

Genetically Modified Forest Planned for U.S. Southeast

from Scientific American

Genetic engineering is coming to the forests. While the practice of splicing foreign DNA into food crops has become common in corn and soy, few companies or researchers have dared to apply genetic engineering to plants that provide an essential strut of the U.S. economy, trees.

But that will soon change. Two industry giants, International Paper Co. and MeadWestvaco Corp., are planning to transform plantation forests of the southeastern United States by replacing native pine with genetically engineered eucalyptus, a rapidly growing Australian tree that in its conventional strains now dominates the tropical timber industry.

The companies' push into genetically modified trees, led by their joint biotech venture, ArborGen LLC, looks to overcome several hurdles for the first time. Most prominently, they are banking on a controversial gene splice that restricts trees' ability to reproduce, meant to allay fears of bioengineered eucalyptus turning invasive and overtaking native forests.

http://snipr.com/u8qs2

Is There an Ecological Unconscious?

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

About eight years ago, Glenn Albrecht began receiving frantic calls from residents of the Upper Hunter Valley, a 6,000-square-mile region in southeastern Australia. ... Residents were distraught over the spread of coal mining in the Upper Hunter. Coal was discovered in eastern Australia more than 200 years ago, but only in the last two decades did the industry begin its exponential rise.

Today, more than 100 million tons of black coal are extracted from the valley each year, primarily by open-pit mining, which uses chemical explosives to blast away soil, sediment and rock. The blasts occur several times a day, sending plumes of gray dust over ridges to settle thickly onto roofs, crops and the hides of livestock. Klieg lights provide a constant illumination. Trucks, draglines and idling coal trains emit a constant low-frequency rumble. Rivers and streams have been polluted.

Albrecht, a dark, ebullient man with a crooked aquiline nose, was known locally for his activism. He participated in blockades of ships entering Newcastle (near the Upper Hunter), the largest coal-exporting port in the world, and published opinion articles excoriating the Australian fossil-fuel industries. But Albrecht didn't see what he could offer besides a sympathetic ear and some tactical advice. Then, in late 2002, he decided to see the transformation of the Upper Hunter firsthand.

http://snipr.com/u8qs9

The Intellectual Property Fight That Could Kill Millions

from Discover

Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali is best known as a tourist hub, the bustling port of entry to a volcanic paradise. But when Indonesian authorities learned that a Mexican swine flu had gone global, that hub became a surreal microcosm of flu politics.

Each arriving passenger was scanned for fever. ... The controversial head of the Indonesian Health Ministry, physician Siti Supari, quarantined sick foreigners at warp speed. Already embroiled in a battle royal with the world's superpowers over another flu virus--the ultra-lethal bird flu--Supari did not have time to deal with a new enemy. She would do everything possible, she told her fellow citizens, to protect them from the new pathogen spawned by a pig.

The recent frenzy in Bali stood in notable contrast to the research paralysis that has gripped this tropical archipelago since late 2006, when Supari declared that flu viruses circulating in Indonesia belonged to her government alone. It was a bizarre, 21st-century twist on an age-old intellectual property argument. Developing nations had long fought passionately over plant and native human genes, but no one had ever before staked claim to microbes that birds could carry anywhere.

http://snipr.com/u8qsh

On Financial Decisions, Older Isn't Always Wiser

from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

Contrary to the popular notion that young people are reckless, while older people avoid risks, new research shows that in an investment task that involves balancing risk to make the most money, older people make more mistakes than their younger counterparts.

That does not mean older adults are bad investors who should not be entrusted with financial decisions. But the research--in which participants were placed in a brain scanner while they chose stocks and bonds--found that as age increases, so do the mistakes people make. The scans also showed that in older adults, there was more "noise" in a brain region thought to be involved in computing value.

"Older adults aren't terrible at this, it's just that they sometimes make more mistakes, especially when they were choosing the risky assets," said Gregory R. Samanez-Larkin, a psychology graduate student at Stanford University and lead author of the study, published last week in the Journal of Neuroscience.

http://snipr.com/u8qsr

Scientists Test Model Dinosaur Wings

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The long-dead bones of a four-winged dinosaur, the cat-sized Microraptor gui, have inspired lively argument among present-day paleontologists. How, they ask, did such an animal coast through the skies?

For a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers took an unusual approach to test the 125-million-year-old dinosaur's flight capability--they built a life-size model microraptor from a beautifully preserved fossil skeleton found in China.

Little is known about how this microraptor lived, but some scientists believe it probably glided from tree to tree in the subtropical forests, eating insects and smaller animals.

http://snipr.com/u8qsu

Climate Deadline Passes--But Does It Really Matter?

from BBC News Online

Arguably, it's a deadline that isn't a deadline for an accord that isn't an accord. "It" is--or was--the 31 January target date by which governments were supposed to tell the UN climate convention (UNFCCC) secretariat what pledges they are prepared to make on curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

The date stems from the Copenhagen Accord--the agreement cobbled together at the end of December's UN climate summit in the Danish capital.

It received less than universal support at the summit, and since then UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer has indicated that 31 January isn't a deadline anyway. So does who sends in what really matter?

http://snipr.com/u8qsw

Henrietta Lacks' 'Immortal' Cells (Q&A)

from Smithsonian

Medical researchers use laboratory-grown human cells to learn the intricacies of how cells work and test theories about the causes and treatment of diseases. The cell lines they need are "immortal"--they can grow indefinitely, be frozen for decades, divided into different batches and shared among scientists.

In 1951, a scientist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, created the first immortal human cell line with a tissue sample taken from a young black woman with cervical cancer. Those cells, called HeLa cells, quickly became invaluable to medical research--though their donor remained a mystery for decades.

In her new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, journalist Rebecca Skloot tracks down the story of the source of the amazing HeLa cells, Henrietta Lacks, and documents the cell line's impact on both modern medicine and the Lacks family.

http://snipr.com/u8qt2

The Bedbug Decider

from the New Yorker

"Dear Carolyn, I am super paranoid that I have bedbugs. No bites, just crazy paranoia. This is all the evidence I have. [Sample] C looks like a cockroach, but I don't know about the others. Please give me a careful and thoughtful definitive answer. Thank you! Jody..."

Carolyn Klass, who for the past thirty-eight years has been Cornell University's diagnostician for insect pests, gets this kind of mail every day. A petite woman with mussed graying blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses, Klass is paid to examine other people's bedbugs, or what they think might be bedbugs. Half are. "The other half are odd things with that general shape," Klass said the other day, sitting in her laboratory in Comstock Hall, in Ithaca.

Often, the item in question is not even an insect. Pills of fabric, cereal, and skin particles or scabs frequent her microscope slides. "People send me pillowcases and bedcovers. Sometimes you see other things, too," she said, blushing. "A sock, or even worse." She'll advise on most everything, except skin debris. In such cases, she tells clients to consult a dermatologist.

http://snipr.com/u8qta

[Kai]

February 2, 2010
Extra Money for Science in Obama's Budget

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Calming fears that scientific research would be hurt by the Obama administration, the budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services was $81.3 billion, up from $79.6 billion a year ago. And the National Institutes of Health saw its budget request rise by $1 billion, to $32 billion, more than was requested last year.

The proposed budget, announced on Monday, now includes $6 billion for cancer research, intended to allow the agency to start 30 new drug trials and double the number of drugs and vaccines in clinical trials by 2016.

... In other science-related budget requests, the National Science Foundation would get $7.4 billion, a nearly 8 percent increase from the budget last year.

http://snipr.com/u92lc


Antidepressants May Help Victims of Stroke

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Widely used antidepressants may help patients recover cognitive functions, such as memory skills, that are damaged following a stroke, according to research released Monday.

Escitalopram, a type of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI, was linked to improved cognitive functioning in a group of stroke patients who did not have symptoms of depression, scientists found.

Previous research showed antidepressants were associated with improved cognitive functioning in stroke patients who were given the drug because they were depressed. The new study ... assessed the effect of cognitive functioning in 129 stroke patients who were not depressed.

http://snipr.com/u92lp


Focus on Abstinence Can Delay Sexual Activity

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can convince a significant proportion to delay sexual activity, researchers reported Monday in a landmark study that could have major implications for the nation's embattled efforts to protect young people against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

In the first carefully designed study to evaluate the controversial approach to sex ed, researchers found that only about a third of 6th and 7th graders who went through sessions focused on abstinence started having sex in the next two years.

In contrast, nearly half of students who got other classes, including those that included information about contraception, became sexually active.

http://snipr.com/u92lx


Rotting Fish Yield Fossil Clues

from BBC News Online

By watching fish as they rot, scientists have discovered "patterns" that could help interpret some of the oldest and most important fossils. The "very smelly" study revealed how primitive marine creatures changed as they decayed.

The researchers identified particular patterns of deterioration that should help scientists more accurately identify very early marine fossils. They published their findings in the journal Nature.

Dr Rob Sansom from the University of Leicester, UK, who led the study, said that examining fossils was very similar to forensic analysis--putting together a scientific reconstruction of something that happened in the past.

http://snipr.com/u92m1


Westerner's Skeleton Found in Ancient Mongolian Tomb

from Science News

Dead men can indeed tell tales, but they speak in a whispered double helix.

Consider an older gentleman whose skeleton lay in one of more than 200 tombs recently excavated at a 2,000-year-old cemetery in eastern Mongolia, near China's northern border. DNA extracted from this man's bones pegs him as a descendant of Europeans or western Asians.

Yet he still assumed a prominent position in ancient Mongolia's Xiongnu Empire, say geneticist Kyung-Yong Kim of Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea, and his colleagues. On the basis of previous excavations and descriptions in ancient Chinese texts, researchers suspect that the Xiongnu Empire ... included ethnically and linguistically diverse nomadic tribes.

http://snipr.com/u92m8


In Vitro Meat's Evolution

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

In 1932, Winston Churchill, appalled by the leftover bones and gristle crowding his dinner plate, predicted that in 50 years "we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium."

It's taken longer than that, but at the dawn of the 21st century we're finally closing in on tasty and eerily healthy meat grown by scientists instead of Old MacDonald.

"It's been a thought problem for scientists for decades," says Jason Matheny, director of New Harvest, a nonprofit organization devoted to global efforts to produce cultured meat. With meat consumption in heavily populated countries like China and India multiplying every decade, the environmental complications resulting from industrial meat production have reached critical mass.

http://snipr.com/u92mi


Best Fluid Motion Pictures Named

from National Geographic News

Ripples in soap film mimic the flow of air from a hand-held fan in an award-winning image from the American Physical Society's (APS) most recent Gallery of Fluid Motion.

To create the image, a team at the Technical University of Denmark flapped a rigid foil over soap film, creating a breeze that made the film flow into a "beautiful butterfly shape," according to the scientists.

Each year the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics sets up the Gallery of Fluid Motion exhibit at its annual meeting. The exhibit displays "stunning graphics and videos from computational or experimental studies showing flow phenomena," according to the APS Web site.

http://snipr.com/u92mr


Digital Doomsday: The End of Knowledge

from New Scientist

"In month XI, 15th day, Venus in the west disappeared, 3 days in the sky it stayed away. In month XI, 18th day, Venus in the east became visible."

What's remarkable about these observations of Venus is that they were made about 3500 years ago, by Babylonian astrologers. We know about them because a clay tablet bearing a record of these ancient observations, called the Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, was made 1000 years later and has survived largely intact. Today, it can be viewed at the British Museum in London.

We, of course, have knowledge undreamt of by the Babylonians. ... Yet even as we are acquiring ever more extraordinary knowledge, we are storing it in ever more fragile and ephemeral forms. If our civilisation runs into trouble, like all others before it, how much would survive?

http://snipr.com/u92mx


Foster Care for Chimps

from ScienceNOW Daily News

When Victor's mother died from anthrax, Fredy came along and adopted him. He shared his home with Victor every night, carried him on his back, and even gave him some of his precious food. Such altruistic behavior is one of the noblest attributes of our species. But Fredy and Victor aren't humans--they're chimps.

A new study of these primates in the wild suggests that they are far more selfless than scientists have given them credit for, though some researchers have their doubts.

Researchers have seen evidence of altruistic-type behavior in several species, including marmosets, rats, and even ants. But it's unclear whether these behaviors fit the scientific definition of altruism: spontaneously helping others with no expectation of a reward.

http://snipr.com/u92nf


Up in the Air, and Down, With a Twist

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

PARK CITY, Utah -- The first time you watch skiers hurtle off a curved ramp at 30 miles per hour, soaring six stories in the air while doing three back flips and up to five body twists, you can't help but think: These people are crazy.

Keep watching and you will quickly have second--and third--thoughts. You begin to notice how the skiers adjust their starting point on the inrun to reach the proper takeoff speed, how they practice odd arm movements, like giant Barbie dolls whose limbs are being manipulated by unseen hands.

Freestyle aerialists, as these athletes are known, are not actually throwing caution, along with themselves, to the winds. It is not fate that plops them down at the end of their jumps, more or less upright and safe, in a cloud of powdery snow. It is physics, and plenty of preparation.

http://snipr.com/u92ns