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Also, i dont think discordia attracts any more sociopaths than say, atheism or satanism.

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Started by Kai, July 30, 2008, 10:04:06 PM

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Kai

November 23, 2009




Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

The e-mail messages, attributed to prominent American and British climate researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments--in some cases derisive--about specific people known for their skeptical views. Drafts of scientific papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years.

In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical "trick" in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as "idiots."

http://snipr.com/tdwwb




Large Hadron Collider is Back Online
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Geneva (Associated Press) -- Scientists are preparing the world's largest atom smasher to explore the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10-billion machine following more than a year of repairs.

When the Large Hadron Collider is fully operational, its magnets will control the beams of protons and send them in opposite directions through two parallel tubes the diameter of fire hoses.

In rooms as large as cathedrals, 300 feet under the Swiss-French border, the magnets will force the protons into huge detectors to record the reactions.

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Crawling Around With Baltimore Street Rats
from Smithsonian

A trio of tiny rat statuettes stands sentinel in the center of Gregory Glass's desk. The shelves above are stuffed with rat necropsy records and block-by-block population analyses. Huge, humming freezers in the lab across the hall are chockfull of rodent odds and ends.

Now Glass, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, leads me out of his building and into the streets of Baltimore for a bit of impromptu fieldwork. He asks that I leave my jewelry and purse behind; after all these years of tramping the alleys in the rougher parts of town, the disease ecologist still gets nervous around sunset. Yet mostly he enjoys observing the "urban ecosystem," which, he says, is just as worthy of study as wilder areas, and maybe even more so: as savannas and rainforests shrink, cities grow, becoming a dominant habitat.

"This is what the natural environment looks like for most people," Glass says, as we enter a narrow passage behind a block of row houses. Some backyards are orderly and clean, others are heaped with garbage. I promptly step in something mushy. Glass frowns down at my flimsy shoes.

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First Test for Record Solar Plane
from BBC News Online

The prototype of a solar-powered plane destined for a record round-the-world journey has made its first trip across a runway.

On Thursday, the plane covered at least 2km at speeds of up to five knots on the landing strip in Switzerland.

This week saw the Solar Impulse plane outside its hangar for the first time, with tests of its engines and computer. As wide as a jumbo jet but weighing just 1,500 kg, it will be piloted by Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard.

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Classic View of Leaf-Cutter Ants Overlooked Nitrogen-Fixing Partner
from Science News

No pigs or chickens yet. But the vast farms where leaf-cutter ants raise their fungal crops may harbor a crew of previously overlooked farmhands--nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

At least eight species of leaf-cutter ants typically live with bacteria that capture nitrogen from the air and turn it into a form that living organisms can use, says microbial ecologist Adrián Pinto-Tomás of the University of Costa Rica in San José. He and his colleagues propose that these bacterial helpers might explain how the ants feed up to 8 million workers in a single colony just by harvesting bits of nitrogen-poor leaves and letting a fungus grow on them.

Neither the fungus nor the ants, nor any other multicellular organisms, can use the atmosphere's abundant nitrogen directly. Pinto-Tomás and his colleagues tracked the path of nitrogen through ant nests and tested inhabitants for genes active in capturing the nutrient from the air. Live-in bacteria, particularly in the genus Klebsiella, could provide an estimated 45 to 60 percent of the nitrogen in the ants' food, the researchers report in the Nov. 20 Science.

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Who Knew I Was Not the Father?
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

It was in July 2007 when Mike L. asked the Pennsylvania courts to declare that he was no longer the father of his daughter. For four years, Mike had known that the girl he had rocked to sleep and danced with across the living-room floor was not, as they say, "his."

The revelation from a DNA test was devastating and prompted him to leave his wife--but he had not renounced their child. He continued to feel that in all the ways that mattered, she was still his daughter, and he faithfully paid her child support. It was only when he learned that his ex-wife was about to marry the man who she said actually was the girl's biological father that Mike flipped. Supporting another man's child suddenly became unbearable. ...

Mike's conundrum is increasingly playing out in courts across the country, a result of political, social and technological shifts. Stricter federal rules have pressed states to chase down fathers and hold them responsible for children born outside of marriage, a category that includes 40 percent of all births. At the same time, DNA tests have become easier, cheaper and more reliable. Swiping a few cheek cells and paying a couple hundred dollars can answer the question that has plagued men since the dawn of time: Am I really the father?

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Thousands of Strange Creatures Found Deep in Ocean
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

NEW ORLEANS (Associated Press) -- The creatures living in the depths of the ocean are as weird and outlandish as the creations in a Dr. Seuss book: tentacled transparent sea cucumbers, primitive "dumbos" that flap ear-like fins, and tubeworms that feed on oil deposits.

A report released Sunday recorded 17,650 species living below 656 feet, the point where sunlight ceases. The findings were the latest update on a 10-year census of marine life. ...

Thousands of marine species eke out an existence in the ocean's pitch-black depths by feeding on the snowlike decaying matter that cascades down--even sunken whale bones. Oil and methane also are an energy source for the bottom--dwellers, the report said.

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Greening America's Asphalt Jungle
from the Guardian (U.K.)

In the 40 years since Joni Mitchell sang about paving paradise, putting up parking lots remains an American obsession. Scientists estimate that up to 10% of land in U.S. cities is now devoted to car parks, causing environmental damage whether they are used by Humvees or hybrids.

Stormwater run-off from roads, drains and parking dumps the equivalent of more than a dozen Exxon Valdez tankers of oil directly into U.S. rivers each year, in addition to dangerous levels of heavy metals, pesticides, bacteria and industrial pollutants. Traditional car parks also encourage sprawl, contribute to urban heat islands and offer little biodiversity.

Now the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has decided that it's time to turn grey car parks green. It has begun road-testing alternative paving materials that allow water to slowly filter back into the ground rather than rush down the drain.

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Into the Uncanny Valley
from Seed

A dead body appears in almost every way to be a normal human. But the pallid skin and empty eyes signal that the person-shaped form we are looking at is, in a way we can't even fully grasp, strange and disturbing.

We feel a similar eeriness when interacting with robots and models that look almost human but fall short of convincing us because of subtle peculiarities in their features. Poor box office returns on computer-animated films like "The Polar Express" and "Beowulf" were blamed on moviegoers finding the not quite true-to-life characters unsettling.

Disturbing experiences that feel both familiar and strange are instances of the "uncanny," an intuitive concept, yet one that has defied simple explanation for more than a century. Interest in the particular occurrences of the uncanny, in which humans are bothered by interaction with human-like models, began as a psychological curiosity. But as our ability to design artificial life has increased--along with our dependence on it--getting to the heart of why people respond negatively to realistic models of themselves has taken on a new importance.

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Lava Cave Minerals Actually Microbe Poop
from National Geographic News

Colorful cave deposits long thought to be ordinary minerals are actually mats of waste excreted by previously unknown types of microbes, scientists say.

The discovery could offer clues in the search for life on Mars and beyond, researchers said in October at a meeting of the Geological Society of America.

"We're finding that you need to look at things you might write off as not being biological--they might be biological," said Penelope Boston, a cave scientist at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro.

http://snipr.com/tdx42
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

 November 24, 2009




Can Climate Change Cause Conflict? Recent History Suggests So
from Scientific American

Some experts call the genocide in Darfur the world's first conflict caused by climate change. After all, the crisis was sparked, at least in part, by a decline in rainfall over the past 30 years just as the region's population doubled, pitting wandering pastoralists against settled farmers for newly scarce resources, such as arable land.

"Is Darfur the first climate change war?" asked economist and Scientific American columnist Jeffrey Sachs at an event at Columbia University in 2007. "Don't doubt for a moment that places like Darfur are ecological disasters first and political disasters second."

But new research would suggest the answer to Sachs's question is no, at least regarding the novelty of Darfur. Agricultural economist Marshall Burke of the University of California, Berkeley and his colleagues have analyzed the history of conflict in sub-Saharan Africa between 1980 and 2002 in a new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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fMRI Evidence Used in Murder Sentencing
from Science Insider

For what may be the first time, fMRI scans of brain activity have been used as evidence in the sentencing phase of a murder trial. Defense lawyers for an Illinois man convicted of raping and killing a 10-year-old girl used the scans to argue that their client should be spared the death penalty because he has a brain disorder.

The defendant, Brian Dugan, pleaded guilty in July to killing Jeanine Nicarico after kidnapping her from her home in 1983. (Prior to that, the Nicarico case had taken more turns than a hangman's knot, detailed in a 1998 book Victims of Justice). Dugan was already serving life sentences for two other murders, but prosecutors sought the death penalty for Nicarico's murder.

"Nobody thought we had any chance at all going in," says Steve Greenberg, the lead attorney for the defense. But the defense tried an unusual strategy: They argued that Dugan was born with a mental illness--psychopathy--that should be considered a mitigating factor because it impaired his ability to control his behavior.

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Skin Color Is in the Eye of the Beholder
from ScienceNOW Daily News

A new study suggests that we mentally alter politicians' skin tones to match how we feel about them. When presented with three photos of President Barack Obama and asked to choose which was most representative of him, liberals tended to pick a shot in which his skin had been digitally lightened, whereas conservatives tended to choose a darkened version.

Previous studies indicate that people tend to view lighter skin more favorably than they do darker skin. Darker skin tones are associated with more negative stereotypes, says Eugene Caruso, a social psychologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois and co-author of the new study. Clearly, skin tone affects how we perceive an individual. But can our perception of an individual affect how we see their skin tone?

To find out, Caruso and his colleagues quizzed undergraduate students--about 90% were white and 10% were black--on their political views and then presented them with three photos of Obama. The researchers had doctored two of the photos. In one, they digitally lightened Obama's skin tone slightly, and in the other they darkened his skin tone. The researchers then asked the students to choose the photo that best captured the candidate's "true essence."

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In Snails and Snakes, Features to Delight Darwin
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Charles Darwin seems to have had a boundless interest in the many forms life takes on earth. He could find something about any animal or plant that piqued his insatiable curiosity, and masses of such observations fueled his prodigious output of books and scientific papers.

Darwin was particularly intrigued by what he referred to as "contrivances," the various biological devices through which creatures make their livings or disperse their young.

Even the most pedestrian species seized his imagination. Take the Roman land snail Helix pomatia, for instance. If one is not a lover of escargot, this common European snail would inspire little attention. But not so for Darwin. He was gripped, and troubled, by the mere existence of land snails.

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Shedding Light on How the Brain Works
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

More than two centuries ago, the Italian scientist Luigi Galvani found that electricity could make a dead frog's leg kick, as if it were alive. Today, using the same basic principle but new tools, scientists are employing light to trigger brain cells--looking not for a kick, but for the origins of emotions, behaviors, and diseases in the brain.

Advanced imaging technologies have given neuroscientists new ways to peer into the working mind, but a precise understanding of how 100 billion brain cells create everything from memories to mental illness has remained elusive.

Now, by using gene therapy to insert light-sensitive proteins from algae and other organisms into brain cells, scientists are able to control specific brain circuits with light, and then watch what happens.

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Sunken Alaskan Sternwheeler is an Underwater Time Capsule
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Underwater archaeologists said Monday they have found a virtual time capsule of life during Canada's Klondike Gold Rush: a sunken Yukon River sternwheeler so well-preserved that researchers can document the last minutes of the five-man crew as well as their life aboard the primitive cargo-hauler.

The door of the steam boiler on the A. J. Goddard was open, and slightly charred wood found inside suggested the crew were trying to build up a head of steam, perhaps to break loose from an ice jam.

An axe remained on the deck after one crew member hefted it to chop the rope used to tow a barge, a sign of their frantic attempts to escape the ice floe.

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First Programmable Quantum Computer Created
from Science News

Using a few ultracold ions, intense lasers and some electrodes, researchers have built the first programmable quantum computer. The new system, described in a paper to be published in Nature Physics, flexed its versatility by performing 160 randomly chosen processing routines.

Earlier versions of quantum computers have been largely restricted to a narrow window of specific tasks. To be more generally useful, a quantum computer should be programmable, in the same way that a classical computer must be able to run many different programs on a single piece of machinery.

The new study is "a powerful demonstration of the technological advances towards producing a real-world quantum computer," says quantum physicist Winfried Hensinger of the University of Sussex in Brighton, England.

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Building a Better Alien-Calling Code
from Wired

Alien-seeking researchers have designed a new, simple code for sending messages into space. To a reasonably clever alien with math skills and a bit of astronomical training, the messages should be easy to decipher.

As of now, Earthlings spend much more time searching for alien radio messages than broadcasting news of ourselves. We know how to do it, but relatively little attention has been paid to "ensuring that a transmitted message will be understandable to an alien listener," wrote California Institute of Technology geoscientist Michael Busch and Rachel Reddick, a Stanford University physicist, in a study filed online Friday on arXiv.

According to Busch and Reddick, neither the Arecibo message, beamed at star cluster M13 in 1974, nor the Cosmic Calls sent in 1999 and 2003 were tested for decipherability. So the pair devised their own alien-friendly messaging system: Busch invented the code, and Reddick role-played the part of an alien trying to decode it.

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Friendly Bacteria Keep Your Skin's Defences in Check
from New Scientist

Being caked in germs sounds unpleasant, but "friendly" bacteria living on our skin may have the vital role of keeping in check inflammation triggered by injury and unwanted bacteria.

The discovery extends the list of bacteria that the human body relies on to function. It also suggests that antibacterial hand gels and soaps might exacerbate skin conditions characterised by excessive inflammation.

The most common family of bacteria found on the skin is Staphylococcus, the member of which are harmless, unless they get into wounds. To see if they might actually be useful to humans, Richard Gallo at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues added molecules released by Staphylococcus to cells found in human skin.

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Nasa Cassini Spacecraft Sends Pictures of Saturn's Moon
from BBC News Online

Nasa has released the latest raw images of Saturn's moon Enceladus, from the Cassini spacecraft's extended mission to the planet and its satellites. The images show the moon's rippling terrain in remarkable clarity.

Cassini started transmitting uncalibrated temperature data and images during a flyby on 21 November. The data will help scientists create a highly detailed mosaic image of the southern part of the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere, and a thermal map.

This thermal map will help researchers to study the long fractures in the south polar region of the moon's surface, which have been dubbed "tiger stripes" and are warmer than the rest of the surface.

http://snipr.com/tegou
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

November 25, 2009

Could Cannibalism Hold the Key to Alzheimer's?
from BBC News Online

It's a remarkable example of Darwinian natural selection at work in humans.

Villagers suffering from a major epidemic of Kuru, a fatal CJD-like brain disease, seem to have developed a strong genetic resistance to the condition.

The infection, which is associated with mortuary feasts, where mainly women and children consume the remains of respected relatives, devastated populations in the remote eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea. Things got so bad that in some villages there were no women of child-bearing age left alive and the practice was banned in the late 1950's and quickly died out.

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Intersex Fish in Potomac Remains Mystery
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

KEARNEYSVILLE, W.VA. -- What's the problem with the Potomac River--and could whatever it is spell problems for those of us who drink its water?

In 2003, scientists discovered something startling in the Potomac, from which at least 3 million Washington area residents get their drinking water: Male fish were growing eggs. But six years later, a government-led research effort still hasn't answered those two questions. Scientists say they still aren't sure which pollutants are altering the fish, or whether the discovery poses any threat to people's health.

The job is not easy: Scientists are looking for wisps of hormone-mimicking pollutants in the Potomac's vast, moving soup. But the effort has also been held back, according to environmentalists and a federal researcher, by sparse funding and a lack of government focus.

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How Do People Cope With 'Locked-in' Syndrome?
from BBC News Online

The case of Rom Houben, thought to have been in a coma for 23 years, but apparently conscious all the time, raises a horrifying prospect: how can you cope being trapped in your body, aware of everything but unable to communicate with the outside world?

Mike Cubiss can vividly remember the tiles on the kitchen floor and how cold they felt. He was waiting for the ambulance, afraid he might die, but unable to move or say goodbye to his wife. On an ordinary day in 2002, as he prepared to take his three sons to school, and his wife got ready for work, Mike collapsed. The aftermath was locked-in syndrome.

Public awareness of the condition today is largely a result of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a book by French magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, later turned into a film.

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Green Redemption
from the Economist

Depending on how you view it, climate change is either the biggest problem mankind faces or its greatest financial opportunity. For example, McKinsey has become known as a climate-change consultant, thanks to its greenhouse gas "cost abatement curve." This clever little chart shows the relative opportunity costs of different abatement activities. McKinsey's curve and expertise on climate change have opened the doors and pockets of ministries and industries around the globe.

What is striking about the global cost-abatement curve is what a bargain it seems to be to lower emissions by protecting rainforests. There is plenty of argument about whether it really will be as cheap as the curve suggests.

For example, Simon Counsell, director of the Rainforest Foundation, in Britain, queries whether the opportunity costs of reducing slash-and-burn farming are as low as they are presented. Subsistence farming may, indeed, yield only $200-300 per hectare but paying that sum to the locals will not give them shops in which to buy food.

http://snipr.com/texh0



The Universe's Past, in Close-Up
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

If there were a Guinness world record for making telescope mirrors, Dean Ketelsen would likely win it. Colleagues boast that the onetime Iowa farm boy has ground and polished more square footage of optics than any human being alive.

"It used to be a mysterious thing that hunch-backed people in white coats did," the 55-year-old technician said while taking a break at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory Mirror Lab. "Now we use machines to grind the glass. They've taken a lot of the black arts out of it."

Maybe so. But Ketelsen can't help being as proud as a soccer parent of his latest achievement. Resting behind him in the laboratory under the university's football stadium was the first of seven huge mirrors being made for the Giant Magellan Telescope.

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The Future of Trains
from Scientific American

Although so-called bullet trains in France can travel at speeds approaching 575 kilometers per hour, their adoption in the U.S. has been more local than express. Now, 140 years after the transcontinental railroad's nearly 2,900 kilometers of track first connected both U.S. coasts, a number of states are hoping for a second golden age of rail, this time fueled by the Obama administration's pledge of billions of stimulus dollars for high-speed railway development.

California is developing perhaps the most ambitious high-speed rail plans, a project that would include a mixture of shorter lines connecting Los Angeles to Anaheim and San Francisco to San Jose as well as a longer line traversing the nearly 1,300 kilometers between San Francisco and San Diego (with a branch through Sacramento).

The $10-billion price tag to get these projects on track is equally ambitious--California is looking for $4.7 billion of this to come from the $8 billion in stimulus money the federal government is making available for high-speed rail projects under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

http://snipr.com/texhg



A Vision Faces an Environmental Test
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

MICHES, Dominican Republic -- From a development perspective, this town has a few problems.

It is 60 miles from the nearest airport, a three-hour drive on roads so bad the trip can be nauseating. Electricity is erratic, drinking water is contaminated, the beach in town is littered with trash and nearby rivers are either clogged with an invasive weed or plagued by silty agricultural runoff that threatens the fish on offshore reefs.

But to a team of conservation biologists and other researchers from Columbia University who began working here in 2007, Miches has great potential. They see tourists camping in platform tents, like those in St. John, in the Virgin Islands. They see hikers in its lush green hills, people riding horseback on pristine beaches outside of town and others heading out to sea to watch whales, dolphins or manatees. They imagine the town's half-derelict waterfront plaza lined with locally owned restaurants serving locally caught fish.

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Scientists Seek New Ways To Produce Flu Vaccine
from National Public Radio

As the shortage of vaccinations against the new H1N1 swine flu begins to lessen, researchers are working to find ways to prevent flu vaccine shortages from occurring again.

They're looking for new ways to make flu vaccines. The old way, in use for more than 50 years, involves growing inside of chicken eggs a modified form of whatever flu virus is in circulation. The viruses replicate and can be harvested from the eggs. The process of vaccine development and production takes about five months.

According to Bill Hall, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, the government has spent nearly $2 billion in the past five years on developing quicker, eggless systems.

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Wind Turbines Take a Lesson From Lance Armstrong
from ScienceNOW Daily News

Arranging wind turbines like a school of fish could reduce the amount of land they take up by 100-fold while maintaining their electrical output, say researchers. Wind farms based on the approach might also be considerably safer for migrating birds.

Whether it's Lance Armstrong bicycling behind his teammates in the Tour de France or a storm of fish slicing their way through the ocean, animals benefit from drafting. The leader breaks through the calm air or water, while the followers enjoy the reduced resistance in the leader's wake.

The same doesn't hold true for horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWTs), the most common kind of windmill. Placing one HAWT in another's draft drastically reduces the efficiency of the trailing windmill. That's because the turbulent breeze created by the leading turbine's blades can't propel the trailing blades as well as an unobstructed airflow. So engineers spread the giant fans across hundreds of hectares of land--a practice that has created a backlash from people who find the turbines unsightly.

http://snipr.com/texiq



Ethiopia's Exotic Monkeys
from Smithsonian

Geladas are isolated, oddball monkeys that science has largely overlooked. They live in large herds in the towering Simien Mountains of northern Ethiopia. A few researchers studied the primates in the 1970s, but famine and political turmoil in the region made further investigations impossible. ...

Yet--if you don't mind heights--geladas (Theropithecus gelada) make intriguing research subjects. With their falsetto cries, explosive barks and soft grunts, geladas have one of the most varied vocal repertoires of all the primates. The noisy herds are relatively easy to follow. Unlike most monkeys, geladas graze primarily on grass. They are usually observable---except at night, when they disappear over the edges of cliffs to sleep on tiny ledges, safe from leopards and hyenas.

Geladas are visually striking, with burning eyes and leathery complexions. Males have vampiric canines, which they frequently bare at each other, and their golden manes are the stuff of shampoo commercials. "They cry out to be photographed," says Fiona Rogers. She and her partner, Anup Shah, visited Beehner's camp in Simien Mountain National Park for a month to photograph the animals.

http://snipr.com/texiv
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

 November 30, 2009




Kenyans Draw Weapons Over Shrinking Resources
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Isiolo, Kenya -- Have the climate wars of Africa begun? Tales of conflict emerging from this remote, arid region of Kenya have disturbing echoes of the lethal building blocks that turned Darfur into a killing ground in western Sudan.

Tribes that lived side by side for decades say they've been pushed to warfare by competition for disappearing water and pasture. The government is accused of exacerbating tensions by taking sides and arming combatants who once used spears and arrows.

The aim, all sides say, is no longer just to steal land or cattle, but to drive the enemy away forever.

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Americans' Eating Habits More Wasteful Than Ever
from ScienceNOW Daily News

After their biggest meal of the year, Americans might reflect on the fate of those moldering Thanksgiving leftovers. Nearly 40% of the food supply in the United States goes to waste, according to a new study, and the problem has been getting worse. "The numbers are pretty shocking," says Kevin Hall, a quantitative physiologist at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) in Bethesda, Maryland.

Food waste is usually estimated through consumer interviews or garbage inspections. The former method is inaccurate, and the latter isn't geographically comprehensive. Hall and his colleagues tried another approach: modeling human metabolism.

They analyzed average body weight in the United States from 1974 to 2003 and figured out how much food people were eating during this period. Hall and Chow assumed that levels of physical activity haven't changed; some researchers think that activity has decreased, but Hall and Chow say their assumption is conservative. Then they compared that amount with estimates of the food available for U.S. consumers, as reported by the U.S. government to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

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Europe's Post-Soviet Greening: Gains and Failures
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

Dniprodzerzhynsk, Ukraine (Associated Press) -- Twenty years ago, when the Iron Curtain came down, the world gagged in horror as it witnessed firsthand the ravages inflicted on nature by the Soviet industrial machine.

Throughout the crumbling communist empire, sewage and chemicals clogged rivers; industrial smog choked cities; radiation seeped through the soil; open pit mines scarred green valleys. It was hard to measure how bad it was and still is: The focus was more on production quotas than environmental data.

Today, Europe has two easts--one that has been largely cleaned up with the help of a massive infusion of Western funds and the prospect of membership in the prosperous European Union; another that still looks as though the commissars never left.

http://snipr.com/thl5z



Benign by Design
from Seed

More than 40 years ago, Rachel Carson warned of a "silent spring." Twenty years later, Bill McKibben wrote of the human alteration of every aspect of the natural world. Nature has not ended, but signs of severe and subtle disturbance are everywhere.

Scientists are now watching natural systems that have evolved over millennia begin to falter in response to chemical wrenches we've introduced into the global environment. The manufactured materials we've used for the past century have served us well in many ways. But it is now clear we can no longer afford--if we ever could--to proceed with designs that serve but one generation. ...

Yet as John Warner, one of the leading proponents of green chemistry, says, there is no reason a molecule must be hazardous to perform a particular task. For example, there are nontoxic alternatives to the chemicals that make products lightweight, shatterproof, and moldable. And as Paul Anastas--who with Warner is considered a founder of green chemistry--says, hazard adds nothing to performance and ultimately adds unwanted production costs.

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Climate Change Bill Faces Delays in Senate
from National Public Radio

In early December, world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to begin talks on a new treaty to curb greenhouse gases and global warming. President Obama will attend the summit.

In urging action on climate change, the president says it's essential "that all countries do what is necessary to reach a strong operational agreement that will confront the threat of climate change while serving as a stepping stone to a legally binding treaty."

White House officials say the U.S. will propose targets for reducing greenhouse gases in line with what Congress is considering. But while the House narrowly passed a climate change bill last summer, no action by the Senate is expected until next spring.

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Industrial Thanksgiving: Science Takes Mom's Recipes to the Assembly Line
from Wired

Thanksgiving is about eating, and though local, organic food might be what the cool kids are eating, most people are still eating products of the industrial food system.

Whether you're talking turkey, cranberries or potatoes, industrial-scale processes have been developed to drive down food costs, drive up corporate profits and feed America's incredible hunger for novel food items.

But most consumers of these manufactured meals have little or no knowledge of the machines and methods used to freeze turkeys, turn potatoes into fake potatoes, and cranberries into TV-dinner cranberry sauce. It's not always pretty, but food scientists' epic battle to scale up your mom's recipes without making them taste nasty is worth examining, if not giving thanks for.

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The Final Push to End Polio in India
from the Guardian (U.K.)

In a school courtyard in Lucknow on a dusty Sunday afternoon, the final push in a heroic campaign to drive a crippling disease from the planet is under way. Among scores of wide-eyed children, four-year-old Mohamed Yusuf is brought to the big wooden table under the yellow banners by his mother Afsar Jahan. Uncomprehending but compliant, he tilts his head back and opens his mouth to receive two drops of polio vaccine.

His less fortunate sister Saba Banu, 12, comes across the open space to join them, strikingly beautiful in her bright blue sari, swinging her deformed limb this way and that on her crutches. Saba's right leg is stunted from polio, which she contracted when she was two.

This campaign in the most densely populated state of India is intended to stop polio blighting other lives as it has Saba's. Nobody knows how long it will last, how much more effort will be required or whether, in the end, we will get there at all.

http://snipr.com/thl77



Martian "Lake Michigan" Filled Crater, Minerals Hint
from National Geographic News

Mars may have once hosted a body of water roughly the size of Lake Michigan, say researchers who have found a telltale "bathtub ring" of minerals inside an ancient Martian impact crater.

The find means that Columbus crater, in Mars's southern hemisphere, is the best place yet to study the chemistry of so-called fossil lakes on the red planet, the scientists say.

Hundreds of Martian craters have been identified as possible fossil lakes, based on the presence of now dry channels or sediments deposited at former deltas, said lead study author James Wray of Cornell University.

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The Royal Society Puts Historic Papers Online
from BBC News Online

One of the world's oldest scientific institutions is marking the start of its 350th year by putting 60 of its most memorable research papers online.

The Royal Society, founded in London in 1660, is making public manuscripts by figures like Sir Isaac Newton. Benjamin Franklin's account of his infamous kite-flying experiment is also available on the Trailblazing website.

Society president Lord Rees said the papers documented some of the most "thrilling moments" in science history.

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People Hear with Their Skin, As Well As Their Ears
from Scientific American

The act of hearing is a group effort for the human body's organs, involving the ears, the eyes and also, according to the results of a new study, the skin.

In 1976 scientists discovered the importance of the eyes to our sense of hearing by demonstrating that the eyes could fool the ears in a peculiar phenomenon named the McGurk effect. When participants watched a video in which a person was saying "ga" but the audio was playing "ba," people thought they heard a completely different sound--"da." Now, by mixing audio with the tactile sense of airflow, researchers have found that our perception of certain sounds relies, in part, on being able to feel these sounds. The study was published November 26 in Nature.

Normally when we say words with the letters "p," "t" and "k," we produce a puff of air. This puff helps the listener distinguish words with these letters from those with the similar sounding "b," "d" and "g," respectively, even though the puff is so subtle that most of us do not even notice feeling it.

http://snipr.com/thl7z
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

 December 1, 2009




Naked Black Hole Builds Future Galactic Dream Home
from Wired

Astronomers have spied a distant black hole in the act of creating the galaxy that will eventually become its home.

By sending a jet of gas and highly energetic particles into a neighboring galaxy, the black hole has touched off star formation at a rate 100 times the galactic average.

"Our study suggests that supermassive black holes can trigger the formation of stars, thus 'building' their own host galaxies," David Elbaz, lead author of a paper on the work in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, said in a press release. "This link could also explain why galaxies hosting larger black holes have more stars."

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Stolen E-Mails and the IPCC
from BBC News Online

The content of stolen e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia has prompted much discussion about the way peer-reviewed science is conducted. But it is also raising questions among some scientists about the workings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC, steered by governments and drawing on the work of thousands of scientists and other experts, is the world's biggest peer-review body. It was formed because politicians needed definitive advice about the effects of greenhouse gases.

Most policymakers rely in large part on the IPCC's summary reports--so the summaries involve a battle of wills and opinions in the distillation of thousands of studies into climate change. ... The CRU holds one of the key global data sets on temperature, so its data has helped underpin the IPCC's conclusions.

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'Simple' Bacterium Shows Surprising Complexity
from New Scientist

The inner workings of a supposedly simple bacterial cell have turned out to be much more sophisticated than expected.

An in-depth "blueprint" of an apparently minimalist species has revealed details that challenge preconceptions about how genes operate. It also brings closer the day when it may be possible to create artificial life.

Mycoplasma pneumoniae, which causes a form of pneumonia in people, has just 689 genes, compared with 25,000 in humans and 4000 or more in most other bacteria. Now a study of its inner workings has revealed that the bacterium has uncanny flexibility and sophistication, allowing it to react fast to changes in its diet and environment.

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A Lost European Culture, Pulled From Obscurity
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade.

For 1,500 years, starting earlier than 5000 B.C., they farmed and built sizable towns, a few with as many as 2,000 dwellings. They mastered large-scale copper smelting, the new technology of the age. Their graves held an impressive array of exquisite headdresses and necklaces and, in one cemetery, the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts to be found anywhere in the world.

The striking designs of their pottery speak of the refinement of the culture's visual language. Until recent discoveries, the most intriguing artifacts were the ubiquitous terracotta "goddess" figurines, originally interpreted as evidence of the spiritual and political power of women in society.

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Do Titan's Lakes Migrate South for the Winter?
from ScienceNOW Daily News

Imagine if all of the water in the Great Lakes evaporated, moved to the Southern Hemisphere, and rained down to form new lakes in Argentina. Then thousands of years later, the process repeated and the water returned north.

That's what researchers say could be happening on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Understanding the process could shed light on how long-term climate cycles operate on other worlds.

Titan's lakes aren't anything like those on Earth. Although some are as large and deep as our own Great Lakes--one, called Ontario Lacus, is about the size of Lake Ontario--they contain mostly methane, which becomes liquid at temperatures below -180°C. Even stranger, of the hundreds of lakes spotted so far, almost all are in Titan's far northern latitudes, and there seem to be no lakes at all near the moon's equator.

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Debate Over Artificial Legs in Sports
from LiveScience

In an ironic twist, Oscar Pistorius' disability has now been shown to be an unfair advantage. The South African sprinter, who races with two prosthetic lower legs, has been the subject of a see-saw legal battle trying to determine if his carbon fiber, crescent-shaped manufactured legs give him an unfair advantage.

Now, two sports scientists have published new research showing that the legs, known as "Cheetahs," make him 15-20 percent faster, equal to 10 seconds over a 400 meter race, then he otherwise would be with natural legs.

In 2008, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned a competition ban placed on Pistorius from the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), track and field's governing body. Seven scientists produced research that refuted the IAAF's contentions and Pistorius was cleared in time to try for a spot on the Beijing Olympic squad.

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H.M. Recollected: Famous Amnesic Launches Bold New Brain Project
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

As best he could remember, Henry Gustav Molaison never visited San Diego, spending his entire life on the East Coast. When he died late last year at the age of 82, Molaison was a man almost entirely unknown except by his initials H.M. and the fact that experimental brain surgery had erased his ability to form new memories.

He forgot names, places, events and faces almost immediately. Half an hour after lunch, he couldn't recall what he had eaten, or that he had eaten at all. His face in the mirror was a constant surprise because he remembered only what he looked like as a young man. Every question was new, even those asked just minutes before.

Yet Molaison bore this strange and unimaginable burden with grace and stoicism, allowing scores of scientists to study, probe and ponder his condition for decades, each seeking to better understand the mysteries of the human brain, memory and personal identity.

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Solar Panel Costs 'Set to Fall'
from BBC News Online

The cost of installing and owning solar panels will fall even faster than expected according to new research.

Tests show that 90% of existing solar panels last for 30 years, instead of the predicted 20 years. According to the independent EU Energy Institute, this brings down the lifetime cost. The institute says the panels are such a good long-term investment that banks should offer mortgages on them like they do on homes.

At a conference, the institute forecast that solar panels would be cost-competitive with energy from the grid for half the homes in Europe by 2020--without a subsidy.

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Vultures Should Be Allowed to Return as 'Nature's Waste Managers' in Spain
from the Guardian (U.K.)

Europe's carrion-guzzling vultures should be allowed to return to their old jobs as nature's waste managers, according to scientists who say the birds are suffering as they increasingly depend on being fed by people.

Stringent regulations brought in because of mad cow disease in 2002 meant the carcasses of dead cows, as well as sheep, goats and other livestock, could not be left in the open. Carrion was crucial part of the vultures' diet, but the birds now do much of their feeding at managed carrion centres set up by authorities.

The change means a gradual, decades-old revival of vulture populations around Europe is grinding to a halt. Vultures fed by humans find it harder to reproduce and farmers complain some have taken to attacking live animals.

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Narcolepsy Research Triggers Myriad Brain Studies
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

Research into an unusual sleep disorder is unraveling what goes awry in the brains of people who fall prey to daytime sleep attacks--and shedding light on everything from addiction to appetite.

Work that began in sleepy dogs and mice has led to a significant advance in understanding narcolepsy, providing new insight into the ways in which sleep and wakefulness, eating, and addictive behaviors are linked. The work is pointing to potential therapies not only for people who are chronically sleepy, but also for the much larger numbers who have trouble sleeping at all.

At the root of this work is a fundamental brain chemical called orexin. Research over the past decade has shown that narcolepsy is caused by the loss of a type of brain cell that produces orexin. Scientists have found that the chemical also helps determine when we are asleep and awake and plays a role in regulating appetite and addiction.

http://snipr.com/ti6ex
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

December 2, 2009




Fuelling Fears: Uranium Shortage Could Derail Plans to Go Nuclear
from the Economist

There is an awesome amount of energy tied up in an atom of uranium. Because of that, projections of the price of nuclear power tend to focus on the cost of building the plant rather than that of fuelling it. But proponents of nuclear energy--who argue, correctly, that such plants emit little carbon dioxide--would do well to remember that, like coal and oil, uranium is a finite resource.

Some 60% of the 66,500 tonnes of uranium needed to fuel the world's existing nuclear power plants is dug fresh from the ground each year. The remaining 40% comes from so-called secondary sources, in the form of recycled fuel or redundant nuclear warheads.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is a United Nations body, and the Nuclear Energy Agency, which was formed by the rich countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, both reckon that, at present rates, these secondary sources will be exhausted within the next decade or so.

http://snipr.com/titec




Treating Toddlers for Autism Boosts IQ Later
from New Scientist

Toddlers with symptoms of autism can show dramatic improvement if they are given early, intensive therapy. The finding, from the first randomised controlled trial in such young children, should settle the question of whether early screening and treatment of autism are worthwhile.

Sally Rogers, a psychologist at the Mind Institute of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues randomly assigned autistic toddlers aged 18 to 30 months to receive either conventional care or an intensive programme of behavioural therapy known as the Early Start Denver Model. This emphasises fun, child-directed activities rather than the repetitive exercises used in conventional autism therapies, which are less suitable for very young children.

"Being able to follow children's leads and build fun into their interactions is an important teaching tool. That may sound like common sense, but with autism nothing is common sense," says Rogers.

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China's OK on GMO Rice, Corn to Boost Yields
from Yahoo News

BEIJING (AFP) -- China has approved genetically modified strains of rice and corn in a move experts say could dramatically boost crop yields and help the world's most populous nation avoid food shortages.

The Ministry of Agriculture said it had issued initial production licences for genetically modified rice and corn, paving the way for commercial cultivation of high-yielding and pest-resistant grain and cereal crops.

In a fax to AFP this week, the ministry said the decision was "an important outcome of China's research on genetic engineering technology".

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Climate Research Chief Stands Down Pending Inquiry into Leaked Emails
from the Guardian (U.K.)

The head of the climate research unit that had its emails hacked and posted online will step down from his post while an inquiry into the affair is carried out.

Messages between scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were posted on the web last week, and climate-change deniers seized on them as alleged evidence that scientists have been hiding and manipulating data to support the idea that the world is warming up.

Professor Phil Jones, the director of the CRU, said he stood by the science produced by his researchers and suggestions of a conspiracy to alter evidence to support a theory of man-made global warming were "complete rubbish". But he said today that he would stand aside as director of the unit until an independent review into the hacked emails had been completed.

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The Moral Call of the Wild
from Scientific American

I love spending time outside. From wild places like the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, to the mundane nature in my back yard, I find comfort in my natural experiences. These places are restful. Peaceful. ...

The benefits of spending time in nature have been well-documented. Psychological research has shown that natural experiences help to reduce stress, improve mood, and promote an overall increase in physical and psychological well-being. There is even evidence that hospital patients with a view of nature recover faster than do hospital patients without such a view. This line of research provides clear evidence that people are drawn to nature with good reason. It has restorative properties.

But a recent article by researchers at the University of Rochester shows that experiences with nature can affect more than our mood. In a series of studies, Netta Weinstein, Andrew Przybylski, and Richard Ryan, University of Rochester, show that exposure to nature can affect our priorities and alter what we think is important in life. In short, we become less self-focused and more other-focused. Our value priorities shift from personal gain, to a broader focus on community and connection with others.

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American Indians Stand to Gain in Health Overhaul
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The meeting last month was a watershed: the leaders of 564 American Indian tribes were invited to Washington to talk with cabinet members and President Obama, who called it "the largest and most widely attended gathering of tribal leaders in our history." Topping the list of their needs was better health care.

"Native Americans die of illnesses like tuberculosis, alcoholism, diabetes, pneumonia and influenza at far higher rates," Mr. Obama said. "We're going to have to do more to address disparities in health care delivery."

The health care overhaul now being debated in Congress appears poised to bring the most significant improvements to the Indian health system in decades. After months of negotiations, provisions under consideration could, over time, direct streams of money to the Indian health care system and give Indians more treatment options.

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China's Climate Target: Is It Achievable?
from Nature News

Climate analysts are praising China's promise to slash the country's emissions--even as they wonder if the target is achievable or ambitious enough.

Last week, China's State Council announced that the country will cut its carbon intensity--carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP)--by 40-45% from 2005 levels by 2020. "It is a very welcome decision," says Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency in Paris. "If the target is met, it would have significant implications for China and the rest of the world."

Yet some think that the target is not far-reaching enough given China's booming economy and its track record of improving energy efficiency. The country reduced its energy intensity--energy consumption per unit of GDP--by 47% between 1990 and 2005, and looks likely to cut it by another 20% from 2005 levels by the end of next year. Carbon intensity can drop faster than energy intensity if clean-energy sources are brought into the mix.

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Loneliness Is Contagious, Study Suggests
from Science News

Staying socially connected may be just as important for public health as washing your hands and covering your cough. A new study suggests that feelings of loneliness can spread through social networks like the common cold.

"People on the edge of the network spread their loneliness to others and then cut their ties," says Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School in Boston, a coauthor of the new study in the December Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. "It's like the edge of a sweater: You start pulling at it and it unravels the network."

This study is the latest in a series that Christakis and James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego have conducted to see how habits and feelings move through social networks. Their earlier studies suggested that obesity, smoking and happiness are contagious.

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The End of Hypoallergenic Cats?
from the Scientist

A controversial company that claimed to develop hypoallergenic cats and dogs will bow out of the companion animal business and launch a new venture focused on veterinary diagnostic services starting next year, according to a statement sent out in their corporate newsletter this Sunday (29th November).

"Following our recent acquisition, the business will be taking a new direction from 2010, specifically, fine-tuning and launching our proprietary veterinary genetic molecular diagnostic products," reads a statement from the company, called Allerca Lifestyle Pets.

The statement did not indicate which company had acquired it, but noted that this information, as well as details on its new business model, will be announced publicly early next year. Allerca said that it will stop taking new orders for its two breeds of hypoallergenic cats and one dog breed as of December 31, 2010, but will continue filling already-placed orders through 2010 and early 2011.

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Venting at the Office Helps Hearts
from the Wall Street Journal

Men who didn't confront colleagues or bosses who treated them unfairly doubled their risk of heart attack, according to a study in Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Researchers asked 2,755 men how they typically responded to unfair treatment at work. Those who said they would most often "Go away" or "Let things pass without saying anything" had significantly more heart attacks during the following 10 years, even after researchers controlled for variables such as education level and job strain. The authors hypothesized that the stress resulting from unexpressed anger led to higher blood pressure, a risk factor for heart disease.

Caveat: The researchers didn't ask respondents how often they faced unfair treatment at work. The authors also interviewed women for the study, but too few of them had heart attacks to conduct a meaningful analysis.

http://snipr.com/titn8
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

December 3, 2009




New Stem Cell Lines Open to Research
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The National Institutes of Health said Wednesday that it had approved 13 new human embryonic stem cell lines for use by federally financed researchers, with 96 more under review.

The action followed President Obama's decision in March to expand the number of such cell lines beyond those available under a policy set by President George W. Bush, which permitted research to begin only with lines already available on Aug. 9, 2001.

Since that date, biomedical researchers supported by the N.I.H. have had to raise private money to derive the cells, which are obtained from the fertilized embryos left over from in vitro fertility clinics.

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Bhopal Marks 25 Years Since Gas Leak Devastation
from BBC News Online

People in the Indian city of Bhopal have been marking 25 years since a leak at a gas plant killed thousands and left many more seriously ill.

Activists and survivors marched through the city, chanting slogans against the government and Union Carbide - the US firm that owned the plant at the time.

The incident was the worst industrial disaster in history. Forty tonnes of a toxin called methyl isocyanate leaked from the factory and settled over slums on 3 December 1984.

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Cellphones and Cancer: Interphone Can't End the Debate
from New Scientist

Do cellphones cause cancer? That question is about to be revived with the publication of a long-awaited study called Interphone. Given the public health implications, we can expect it to get a lot of media attention. But you should treat what you read and hear with caution.

A decade ago, when the study was being set up, there were great expectations that it would produce a definitive answer. It is now clear that it cannot.

Interphone was coordinated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and established on the recommendation of the IARC's parent body, the World Health Organization. It comprises 16 studies in 13 countries that sought to determine whether cellphone use is associated with tumours of the brain (glioma), meninges (meningioma), acoustic nerve (acoustic neuroma) or salivary glands.

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Rising Obesity Rates Imperil Health Gains
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Americans have increased their life expectancy by cutting back on cigarettes, but the pounds they're packing on means that, ultimately, they could lose ground.

A New England Journal of Medicine study published Wednesday looked at previous national health surveys to forecast life expectancy and quality of life for a typical 18-year-old from 2005 through 2020. Declines in smoking over the last 15 years would give that 18-year-old an increased life expectancy of 0.31 years.

However, growing body mass index rates would also mean that that teen would have a reduced life expectancy of 1.02 years, giving a net life expectancy reduction of 0.71 years.

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Acidic Oceans May Be a Boon for Some Marine Dwellers
from ScienceNOW Daily News

Researchers fret that many species of invertebrates will disappear as the oceans acidify due to increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). But a new study concludes that some of these species may benefit from ocean acidification, growing bigger shells or skeletons that provide more protection. The work suggests that the effects of increased CO2 on marine environments will be more complex than previously thought.

Bottom-dwelling marine critters such as lobsters and corals encase themselves in shells or exoskeletons made from calcium carbonate. Previous studies predict that rising ocean acidity will result in the loss or weakening of these exoskeletons or shells and increase their owner's vulnerability to disease, predators, and environmental stress.

But marine scientist Justin Ries of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, hypothesized that not all ocean organisms would respond the same way to acidity because they use different forms of calcium carbonate for their shells.

http://snipr.com/tjg4y




The Mystery of Bosnia's Ancient Pyramids
from Smithsonian

Sam Osmanagich kneels down next to a low wall, part of a 6-by-10-foot rectangle of fieldstone with an earthen floor. If I'd come upon it in a farmer's backyard here on the edge of Visoko--in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 15 miles northwest of Sarajevo--I would have assumed it to be the foundation of a shed or cottage abandoned by some 19th-century peasant.

Osmanagich, a blond, 49-year-old Bosnian who has lived for 16 years in Houston, Texas, has a more colorful explanation. "Maybe it's a burial site, and maybe it's an entrance, but I think it's some type of ornament, because this is where the western and northern sides meet," he says, gesturing toward the summit of Pljesevica Hill, 350 feet above us. "You find evidence of the stone structure everywhere. Consequently, you can conclude that the whole thing is a pyramid."

Not just any pyramid, but what Osmanagich calls the Pyramid of the Moon, the world's largest--and oldest--step pyramid. Looming above the opposite side of town is the so-called Pyramid of the Sun--also known as Visocica Hill--which, at 720 feet, also dwarfs the Great Pyramids of Egypt. A third pyramid, he says, is in the nearby hills. All of them, he says, are some 12,000 years old. During that time much of Europe was under a mile-thick sheet of ice and most of humanity had yet to invent agriculture. As a group, Osmanagich says, these structures are part of "the greatest pyramidal complex ever built on the face of the earth."

http://snipr.com/tjg5r




Rolling Out the Changes: Fuel-Efficient Tyres
from the Economist

John Dunlop had a son who complained that his bicycle was bumpy to ride. So he invented the pneumatic tyre in 1888. Various improvements have been made since then. In particular, Pirelli, an Italian tyremaker, introduced steel-belted radial tyres in 1973. These reduced the fuel consumption of cars fitted with them. Now manufacturers are trying to develop tyres that reduce that consumption still further.

Tyres account for about a fifth of the energy required to power a car. They provide friction, so that the vehicle can grip the road, but some of the power supplied to the tyres is then lost as heat. Indeed, Michelin, a French tyremaker, estimates that this "rolling resistance" accounts for 4% of the world's carbon-dioxide emissions.

Tyre designers have therefore sought to improve fuel economy by reducing rolling resistance. However, this not only reduces a tyre's ability to grip, making drivers take corners sideways, it also wears out the tyres more rapidly.

http://snipr.com/tjg5w




Confessions of a Gall Hunter
from Natural History

Back in 1969, while I was working as a naturalist for the East Bay Regional Park District in Oakland, California, my boss, Chris Nelson, dropped a bunch of purple spiny things on my desk. "What are they?" he wanted to know. ... [W]ith his simple (and innocent) action, Nelson had sparked my curiosity about something small and wonderful, helping to define the course of my life.

The search for a better understanding of those natural "plant urchins" quickly led me to the late Sara S. Rosenthal, then a young wasp biologist from the University of California's Essig Museum of Entomology at Berkeley. Together we visited an old blue oak in Briones Regional Park, in the hills above Martinez, California. In the space of an hour or so, she pointed out twenty-one structures of every imaginable shape and color on the leaves and stems of that single tree.

They were galls, casings built by the tree in response to the manipulation of insects--in this instance, all species of wasps belonging to the family Cynipidae. Each cynipid species had made a distinct gall (you can identify the species of wasp by the shape, size, and color of the gall). ... In all the time I had spent in woodland and forest habitat, how could I not have noticed them before?

http://snipr.com/tjg62




Amino Acid Recipe Could Be Right for Long Life
from Science News

Long life may stem from a proper imbalance of dietary nutrients. A new study in fruit flies suggests that the life-extending properties of caloric restriction may be due not only to fewer calories in the diet, but also to just the right mix of protein building blocks, called amino acids. The study, published online December 2 in Nature, may help explain some of the health benefits of restricted-calorie diets.

Coupled with other data, the new study should prompt researchers to reevaluate whether it is calorie count or the nutrient composition of a diet that is most important for regulating lifespan and health, comments Luigi Fontana of Washington University in St. Louis.

Caloric restriction--a diet that contains a minimal amount of calories while maintaining healthy levels of nutrients--has been proven to extend lifespan in fruit flies, worms, mice, dogs, baboons and other organisms. Nutritious, low-cal diets also improve health in people, but scientists don't yet know whether such diets can extend maximal lifespan in humans.

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Man Can Control Robotic Hand with Thoughts
from Time

ROME (Associated Press) -- An Italian who lost his left forearm in a car crash was successfully linked to a robotic hand, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts, scientists said Wednesday.

During a one-month experiment conducted last year, 26-year-old Pierpaolo Petruzziello felt like his lost arm had grown back again, although he was only controlling a robotic hand that was not even attached to his body. "It's a matter of mind, of concentration," Petruzziello said. "When you think of it as your hand and forearm, it all becomes easier."

Though similar experiments have been successful before, the European scientists who led the project say this was the first time a patient has been able to make such complex movements using his mind to control a biomechanic hand connected to his nervous system.

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California's Sinking Delta
from the Christian Science Monitor

Dennis Baldocchi often drives past the ruins of his grandmother's house on Sherman Island, in northern California's Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Flooding gutted the house when the island's levee broke 40 years ago. Today, grass grows through the floors and chickens wander through.

To Dr. Baldocchi, the slanting hulk whispers an unsettling truth: The land that his family farmed for three generations is sinking farther below sea level each year.

Immigrants began arriving at the Sacramento River Delta 150 years ago. They drained 450,000 acres of marshy lands so that they could farm asparagus, corn, and sugar beets.

http://snipr.com/tjg70
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

December 4, 2009




Copenhagen Climate Change Talks Must Fail, Says Top Scientist
from the Guardian

The scientist who convinced the world to take notice of the looming danger of global warming says it would be better for the planet and for future generations if next week's Copenhagen climate change summit ended in collapse.

"I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it's a disaster track," said [James] Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

"The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means." He was speaking as progress towards a deal in Copenhagen received a boost today, with India revealing a target to curb its carbon emissions. All four of the major emitters--the US, China, EU and India--have now tabled offers on emissions, although the equally vexed issue of funding for developing nations to deal with global warming remains deadlocked.

http://snipr.com/tk2w1




After Delays, Vaccine to Counter Bad Beef Tested
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

HOLYOKE, Colo. -- Jason Timmerman coaxed a balky calf into a chute on his feedlot one recent afternoon and jabbed a needle into its neck. He was injecting the animal with a new vaccine to make it immune to a dangerous form of the E. coli bacteria.

The calf and thousands of others are part of a large-scale test to see whether animal vaccines are an answer to one of the nation's most persistent food-safety problems.

The test has been a long time coming. Bureaucratic delays in Washington stalled the arrival of the vaccines for years, even as people continued to become sick and die from eating tainted beef. And now, even if the vaccines prove successful in the ambitious tests that are just getting under way, they face an uncertain future as farmers and feedlot owners worry about who will pick up the extra cost.

http://snipr.com/tk2wi




Feeding Birds Could Create New Species
from Wired

Central European blackcap warblers that spend the winter in the birdfeeder-rich United Kingdom are on a different evolutionary trajectory than those that migrate to Spain. The population hasn't yet split into two species, but it's headed in that direction.

"This is reproductive isolation, the first step of speciation," said Martin Schaefer, a University of Freiburg evolutionary biologist.

Blackcap migration routes are genetically determined, and the population studied by Schaefer has historically wintered in Spain. Those that flew north couldn't find food in barren winter landscapes, and perished. But during the last half-century, people in the U.K. put so much food out for birds that north-flying blackcaps could survive.

http://snipr.com/tk2yt




Shark Fins Traced to Home Waters Using DNA--A First
from National Geographic News

Many of the hammerhead sharks that are butchered to feed Asian demand for shark-fin soup start their lives in American waters, a new forensic study shows.

For the first time, scientists have used DNA from shark fins to determine where they came from. The researchers traced finds from the scalloped hammerhead shark species--collected at the world's biggest fin market in Hong Kong--back to rare populations in the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific oceans.

The trade in shark fins supplies Asian markets with the key ingredient in the luxury dish shark-fin soup. The practice claims up to 73 million sharks annually, including up to 3 million hammerheads. The finless fish are usually tossed back into the ocean to die.

http://snipr.com/tk2yy




Obama Science Advisers Grilled Over Hacked E-Mails
from the San Diego Union-Tribune

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- House Republicans pointed to controversial e-mails leaked from climate scientists and said it was evidence of corruption. Top administration scientists looking at the same thing found no such sign, saying it doesn't change the fact that the world is warming.

The e-mails from a British university's climate center were obtained by computer hackers and posted online about two weeks ago. Climate change skeptics contend the messages reveal that researchers manipulated and suppressed data and stifled dissent, and conservative bloggers are dubbing it "Climategate."

In the first Capitol Hill airing of the issue, House Republicans Wednesday read excerpts from at least eight of the e-mails, saying they showed the world needs to re-examine experts' claims that the science on warming is settled. One e-mail from 2003 was by John Holdren, then of Harvard University and now the president's science adviser.

http://snipr.com/tk2z9




Contested Signs of Mass Cannibalism
from Science News

At a settlement in what is now southern Germany, the menu turned gruesome 7,000 years ago. Over a period of perhaps a few decades, hundreds of people were butchered and eaten before parts of their bodies were thrown into oval pits, a new study suggests.

Cannibalism at the village, now called Herxheim, may have occurred during ceremonies in which people from near and far brought slaves, war prisoners or other dependents for ritual sacrifice, propose anthropologist Bruno Boulestin of the University of Bordeaux 1 in France and his colleagues. A social and political crisis in central Europe at that time triggered various forms of violence, the researchers suspect.

"Human sacrifice at Herxheim is a hypothesis that's difficult to prove right now, but we have evidence that several hundred people were eaten over a brief period," Boulestin says. Skeletal markings indicate that human bodies were butchered in the same way as animals.

http://snipr.com/tk2zh




Tests Find More Than 200 Chemicals in Newborn Umbilical Cord Blood
from Scientific American

U.S. minority infants are born carrying hundreds of chemicals in their bodies, according to a report released today by an environmental group.

The Environmental Working Group's study commissioned five laboratories to examine the umbilical cord blood of 10 babies of African-American, Hispanic and Asian heritage and found more than 200 chemicals in each newborn.

"We know the developing fetus is one of the most vulnerable populations, if not the most vulnerable, to environmental exposure," said Anila Jacobs, EWG senior scientist. "Their organ systems aren't mature and their detox methods are not in place, so cord blood gives us a good picture of exposure during this most vulnerable time of life."

http://snipr.com/tk2zo




Antarctica Was Climate Refuge During Great Extinction
from New Scientist

The cool climate of Antarctica was a refuge for animals fleeing climate change during the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history, suggests a new fossil study. The discovery may have implications for how modern animals will adapt to global warming.

Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, about 90 per cent of land species were wiped out as global temperatures soared. A cat-sized distant relative of mammals, Kombuisia antarctica, seems to have survived the extinction by fleeing south to Antarctica.

Jörg Fröbisch, a geologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, and colleagues rediscovered fossils of K. antarctica dating from the end of the Permian among specimens collected from Antarctica over 30 years ago. The fossil hoard had been assembled for the American Museum of Natural History as evidence of the existence of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea, in which all today's continents were locked together in one land mass.

http://snipr.com/tk2zz




Cool Find in Hunt for Exoplanets
from BBC News Online

Astronomers have published an image of the coolest planet outside our solar system that has been pictured directly. The new find is more similar to our own Solar System than prior pictured exoplanets, in terms of the parent star's type and the planet's size.

However, the surface temperature is a scorching 280-370C, and could still prove to be a brown dwarf star.

The results, published in Astrophysical Journal, were obtained by a new camera on the Subaru telescope in Hawaii.

http://snipr.com/tk30i




Your Own Fat, Relocated
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The latest kind of recycling has nothing to do with soda bottles. It entails liposuctioning fat from, say, thighs or buttocks and injecting it into breasts to augment them. After being condemned in the early '90s, this procedure is generating newfound excitement among the handful of doctors nationwide who offer it and patients keen to enlarge their breasts without resorting to implants.

Almost 20 years ago, the association now known as the American Society of Plastic Surgeons issued a warning to its member doctors to not inject suctioned fat into patients' breasts, for fear that mammograms would be misread. Since some injected fat dies and calcifies, the thinking was that radiologists would not be able to distinguish between those calcifications (or calcium deposits) and suspicious ones that may indicate breast cancer.

A second concern was that too little injected fat survived being transplanted, because techniques for harvesting, refining and placing fat were not advanced enough. Even today, the success of fat grafting to the breast, as the procedure is also known, depends on the physician.

http://snipr.com/tk30s
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

December 22, 2009




Herschel Space Observatory Sees Stars Being Born
from Science News

Peering into the heart of a dust-covered stellar nursery, a new infrared observatory has spied some 700 stars in the making. At the moment, the soon-to-be stars are just clumps of dust and gas. But about 100 of the clumps are protostars, embryonic bodies about to initiate nuclear fusion at their cores and become bona fide stars. The other 600 objects are less mature but will ultimately develop into new stars.

The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory discovered the dust-obscured bodies by recording emissions of long-wavelength infrared radiation, which unlike visible light, penetrates through the embryos' dusty cocoons.

No other infrared satellite has been able to see into this dark, cold region, which lies 1,000 light-years from Earth in the Eagle constellation.

http://snipr.com/tsrxn



Building a Search Engine of the Brain
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

SAN DIEGO -- On a gray Wednesday afternoon here in early December, scientists huddled around what appeared to be a two-gallon carton of frozen yogurt, its exposed top swirling with dry-ice fumes.

As the square container, fixed to a moving platform, inched toward a steel blade mounted level with its surface, the group held its collective breath. The blade peeled off the top layer, rolling it up in slow motion like a slice of pale prosciutto. "Almost there," someone said.

Off came another layer, another, and another. And then there it was: a pink spot at first, now a smudge, now growing with every slice like spilled rosé on a cream carpet--a human brain. Not just any brain, either, but the one that had belonged to Henry Molaison, known worldwide as H. M., an amnesiac who collaborated on hundreds of studies of memory and died last year at age 82.

http://snipr.com/tsry8



One Dose of H1N1 Vaccine May Be Enough for Children
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Australian researchers have shown that a single dose of vaccine against pandemic H1N1 influenza can provide effective immunity against the swine flu virus in infants and children, a finding that, if corroborated, could help damp the spread of the virus by reducing the logistical complications associated with the currently recommended regimen of two doses.

Immunizing children plays a crucial role in preventing widespread outbreaks of flu and other infectious diseases because schools and camps provide a fertile breeding ground for viruses, which then spread into the community. Early swine flu outbreaks, in New York for example, were triggered by infections in the school system.

But immunizing a large proportion of schoolchildren is a daunting task, and making sure they receive the recommended two doses is doubly difficult.

http://snipr.com/tsryy



Widening the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

HAT CREEK, CALIF. -- The wide dishes, 20 feet across and raised high on their pedestals, creaked and groaned as the winds from an approaching snowstorm pushed into this highland valley. Forty-two in all, the radio telescopes laid out in view of some of California's tallest mountains look otherworldly, and now their sounds conjured up visions of deep-space denizens as well.

The instruments, the initial phase of the planned 350-dish Allen Telescope Array, are designed to systematically scan the skies for radio signals sent by advanced civilizations from distant star systems and planets.

Fifty years after it began--and 18 years since Congress voted to strip taxpayer money from the effort--the nation's search for extraterrestrial intelligence is alive and growing.

http://snipr.com/tsrzc



Old Discovery Could Bring New Cancer Therapies
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

An 80-year-old discovery about the way cancer cells generate energy is fueling a new wave of research into how cancers proliferate--and how to stop them.

In the 1920s, the German scientist Otto Warburg first observed that cancer cells burn sugar differently than normal cells do. Today, doctors exploit the phenomenon to capture images of tumors using PET-CT scans, which identify areas of the body that are metabolically active.

Still, the reason for cancer cells' peculiar metabolism--and the question of whether it plays a key role in driving cancer--remained largely mysterious to scientists. Over the past few years, however, biochemistry research has led to a resurgence of interest in cancer cell metabolism--the ways in which cancer cells generate energy to function and grow.

http://snipr.com/tsrzn



'Bumper Year' for Botanical Finds
from BBC News Online

Giant rainforest trees, tiny fungi and wild coffee plants are among almost 300 species that have been described by UK botanists for the first time in 2009.

The finds were recorded by researchers from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, who carried out surveys involving teams in 100 countries around the world.

The discoveries showed how little of the world's plant species had been documented, the researchers said. They warned that nearly a third of the finds were in danger of extinction.

http://snipr.com/tss09



First Jesus-Era House Discovered in Nazareth
from the Seattle Times

NAZARETH, Israel (Associated Press) -- Just in time for Christmas, archaeologists on Monday unveiled what may have been the home of one of Jesus' childhood neighbors. The humble dwelling is the first dating to the era of Jesus to be discovered in Nazareth, then a hamlet of around 50 impoverished Jewish families where Jesus spent his boyhood.

Archaeologists and present-day residents of Nazareth imagined Jesus as a youngster, playing with other children in the isolated village, not far from the spot where the Archangel Gabriel revealed to Mary that she would give birth to the boy.

Today the ornate Basilica of the Annunciation marks that spot, and Nazareth is the largest Arab city in northern Israel, with about 65,000 residents. Muslims now outnumber Christians two to one in the noisy, crowded city.

http://snipr.com/tss0k



In Oak and Iron, New Pipe Organ Sounds Echo of Age of Bach
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

ROCHESTER -- The ceremonial pipe organ of the 18th century was the Formula One racer of its time, a masterpiece of human ingenuity so elegant in its outward appearance that a casual observer could only guess at the complexity that lay within.

Each organ was designed to fit its intended space, ranging in size from local churches where townspeople could worship to vast cathedrals fit for royalty. The builders were precision craftsmen celebrated for their skill in hand-making thousands of moving parts and in shaping and tuning metal and wooden pipes to mimic the sounds of each instrument in an orchestra.

... Modern instruments take advantage of technologies that have given organ-makers generations of new tools and materials, like air compressors, composites and the electric circuit. But before all that, the builders did it another way.

http://snipr.com/tss22



The Truth About Lions
from Smithsonian Magazine

Craig Packer was behind the wheel when we came across the massive cat slumped in the shade beneath a spiny tree. It was a dark-maned male, elaborately sprawled, as if it had fallen from a great height. Its sides heaved with shallow pants.

Packer, a University of Minnesota ecologist and the world's leading lion expert, spun the wheel of the Land Rover and drove straight toward the animal. He pointed out the lion's scraped elbow and a nasty puncture wound on its side. Its mane was full of leaves. From a distance it looked like a deposed lord, grand and pitiable.

... Packer, 59, is tall, skinny and sharply angular, like a Serengeti thorn tree. He has spent a good chunk of his life at the park's Lion House, a concrete, fortress-like structure that includes an office, kitchen and three bedrooms. ... Packer has been running the Serengeti Lion Project for 31 of its 43 years. It is the most extensive carnivore study ever conducted.

http://snipr.com/tss2c



Bird-Like Dinosaur Used Venom to Subdue Prey
from Scientific American

A fierce, feathered raptor might have been terrifying enough to small dinosaurs, lizards, birds and mammals living 128 million years ago, but add venom to its arsenal and the threat would be paralyzing--literally.

First described a decade ago, Sinornithosaurus had peculiar dental and facial features--including some long, grooved teeth and indentations in its face--that initially escaped explanation.

But a new paper, published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, proposes that this Lower Cretaceous raptor used those adaptations to deliver prey-stunning poison that aided in killing.

http://snipr.com/tss2p
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

 December 18, 2009



At a Mine's Bottom, Hints of Dark Matter
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

An international team of physicists working in the bottom of an old iron mine in Minnesota said Thursday that they might have registered the first faint hints of a ghostly sea of subatomic particles known as dark matter long thought to permeate the cosmos.

The particles showed as two tiny pulses of heat deposited over the course of two years in chunks of germanium and silicon that had been cooled to a temperature near absolute zero. But, the scientists said, there was more than a 20 percent chance that the pulses were caused by fluctuations in the background radioactivity of their cavern, so the results were tantalizing, but not definitive.

Gordon Kane, a physicist from the University of Michigan, called the results "inconclusive, sadly," adding, "It seems likely it is dark matter detection, but no proof."

http://snipr.com/tqu2r



On Environment, Obama and Scientists Take Hit in Poll
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

As President Obama arrives in Copenhagen hoping to seal an elusive deal on climate change, his approval rating on dealing with global warming has crumbled at home and there is broad opposition to spending taxpayer money to encourage developing nations to curtail their energy use, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

There's also rising public doubt and growing political polarization about what scientists have to say on the environment, and a widespread perception that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether global warming is happening.

But for all the challenges American policymakers have to overcome, nearly two-thirds of people surveyed say the federal government should regulate the release of greenhouse gases from sources like power plants, cars and factories in an effort to curb global warming.

http://snipr.com/tqu4n



Human-Like Fossil Find Is Breakthrough of the Year
from BBC News Online

The discovery of a fossilised skeleton that has become a "central character in the story of human evolution" has been named the science breakthrough of 2009.

The 4.4 million year old creature, that may be a human ancestor, was first described in a series of papers in the journal Science in October. It has now been recognised by the journal's editors as the most important scientific accomplishment of this year. It is part of a scientific top 10 that ranges from space science to genetics.

The first fossils of the species, Ardipithecus ramidus, were unearthed in 1994. Scientists recognised their importance immediately. But the very poor condition of the ancient bones meant that it took researchers 15 years to excavate and analyse them.

http://snipr.com/tqu55



Murals Depict Everyday Life of the Maya
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Newly discovered Mayan murals, uncovered during an excavation at Calakmul, Mexico, offer a glimpse of the life of ordinary people instead of the more common depictions of the concerns and lives of Mayan ruling elites, according to the researchers who found the artworks.

The wall murals, which probably date from the 7th century, were preserved by a layer of clay when new buildings were constructed over the original one. They show groups of men, women and children doing such ordinary things as preparing food and tobacco, drinking maize gruel, serving and eating maize-bread tamales, wearing tall decorated hats and carrying large rope-tied bundles.

Hieroglyphic captions, including some using symbols that researchers hadn't encountered before, accompany some of the murals.

http://snipr.com/tqu6q



Shroud of Turin Not Jesus', Tomb Discovery Suggests
from National Geographic News

From a long-sealed cave tomb, archaeologists have excavated the only known Jesus-era burial shroud in Jerusalem, a new study says.

The discovery adds to evidence that the controversial Shroud of Turin did not wrap the body of Christ, researchers say. What's more, the remains of the man wrapped in the shroud are said to hold DNA evidence of leprosy--the earliest known case of the disease.

"In all of the approximately 1,000 tombs from the first century A.D. which have been excavated around Jerusalem, not one fragment of a shroud had been found" until now, said archaeologist Shimon Gibson, who excavated the site for the Israel Antiquities Authority. "We really hit the jackpot."

http://snipr.com/tqu6w



'Reconditioned' Lungs Transplanted
from the Times (London)

A British patient has undergone a pioneering lung transplant involving damaged donor lungs that were "resuscitated" in a laboratory to make them suitable for use.

James Finlayson, a sufferer of advanced cystic fibrosis, has become the first Briton to undergo the operation, which has been described by scientists as having the potential to address Britain's severe shortage of donor organs.

Mr Finlayson, 24, was discharged from hospital at the end of last month after receiving the lungs from a team in Newcastle. The organs were unuseable when donated but were repaired with a perfusion technique, where an oxygenated solution is pumped over them.

http://snipr.com/tqu72



Scientists Watch Deep-Sea Volcano for First Time
from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Registration Required)

SAN FRANCISCO (Associated Press) -- Scientists have witnessed the eruption of a deep-sea volcano for the first time ever, capturing on video the fiery bubbles of molten lava as they exploded 4,000 feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean in what researchers are calling a major geological discovery.

A submersible robot witnessed the eruption during an underwater expedition in May near Samoa, and the high-definition videos were presented Thursday at a geophysics conference in San Francisco.

Scientists hope the images, data and samples obtained during the mission will shed new light on how the ocean's crust was formed and how the earth behaves when tectonic plates ram into each other.

http://snipr.com/tqu7c



Artificial Platelets Catalyze Clotting
from ScienceNOW Daily News

Platelets can quickly stanch the bleeding from a cut in your finger, but the hemorrhaging caused by a car crash or a battlefield injury might overwhelm the blood-clotting abilities of these cell fragments. Now, researchers report that they have designed a potential helper for such situations, a synthetic platelet that they show can curtail blood loss in animals.

After an injury, platelets stick to the walls of damaged vessels, to each other, and to clotting proteins, forming a plug. Platelet transfusions can boost clotting in trauma patients, wounded soldiers, and people with low platelet counts because of disease or cancer treatment.

But platelets obtained from donated blood have several drawbacks, including a shelf life of only 5 days--versus 6 weeks for red blood cells--and a risk of bacterial infections.

http://snipr.com/tqu7p



Gene Variant May Help Against Emphysema, Asthma
from Science News

People who carry a variant form of a gene that encodes a protein called MMP-12 are in luck. This uncommon form of the gene appears to provide some protection against emphysema and asthma, researchers report online December 16 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In the study, an international team of researchers analyzed data on lung function and genetics from seven studies that included more than 5,000 people and found that 7 to 13 percent of people harbored the beneficial variant of MMP-12.

In four of the studies, the scientists found that tobacco smokers carrying the helpful form of the protein were one-third less likely to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease than other smokers. COPD includes emphysema and chronic obstructive bronchitis and is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States after heart disease, cancer and stroke.

http://snipr.com/tqu81



Earth-Like Planets May Be Made of Carbon
from Scientific American

Astronomy is the science of the exotic, but the thing that astronomers most want to find is the familiar: another planet like Earth, a hospitable face in a hostile cosmos. The Kepler spacecraft, which was launched last March, is their best instrument yet for discovering Earth-like planets around sunlike stars, as opposed to the giant planets that have been planet finders' main harvest so far.

Many predict that 2010 will be the year of exo-Earths. But if the giant planets, which looked nothing like what astronomers had expected, are any indication, those Earths may not be so reassuringly familiar either.

It has dawned on theorists in recent years that other Earth-mass planets may be enormous water droplets, balls of nitrogen or lumps of iron. Name your favorite element or compound, and someone has imagined a planet made of it. The spectrum of possibilities depends largely on the ratio of carbon to oxygen.

http://snipr.com/tqu8f

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

December 17, 2009



Scientists Crack 'Entire Genetic Code' of Cancer
from BBC News Online

Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of two of the most common cancers--skin and lung--a move they say could revolutionise cancer care.

Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, say the Wellcome Trust team.

Scientists around the globe are now working to catalogue all the genes that go wrong in many types of human cancer. The UK is looking at breast cancer, Japan at liver and India at mouth. China is studying stomach cancer, and the US is looking at cancers of the brain, ovary and pancreas.

http://snipr.com/tqbap



That Tap Water Is Legal but May Be Unhealthy
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The 35-year-old federal law regulating tap water is so out of date that the water Americans drink can pose what scientists say are serious health risks--and still be legal.

Only 91 contaminants are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, yet more than 60,000 chemicals are used within the United States, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates. Government and independent scientists have scrutinized thousands of those chemicals in recent decades, and identified hundreds associated with a risk of cancer and other diseases at small concentrations in drinking water, according to an analysis of government records by The New York Times.

But not one chemical has been added to the list of those regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2000. Other recent studies have found that even some chemicals regulated by that law pose risks at much smaller concentrations than previously known.

http://snipr.com/tqbaw



Microbes That Keep Us Healthy Are Disappearing
from Scientific American

Bacteria, viruses and fungi have been primarily cast as the villains in the battle for better human health. But a growing community of researchers is sounding the warning that many of these microscopic guests are really ancient allies.

Having evolved along with the human species, most of the miniscule beasties that live in and on us are actually helping to keep us healthy, just as our well-being promotes theirs. In fact, some researchers think of our bodies as superorganisms, rather than one organism teeming with hordes of subordinate invertebrates.

The human body has some 10 trillion human cells--but 10 times that number of microbial cells. So what happens when such an important part of our bodies goes missing? With rapid changes in sanitation, medicine and lifestyle in the past century, some of these indigenous species are facing decline, displacement and possibly even extinction.

http://snipr.com/tqbey



Creating Citizen Scientists
from Seed

... You might think astronomy would be one field where amateurs can't contribute much to the state of knowledge. The most advanced telescopes cost hundreds of millions of dollars and have long waiting lists of eager professionals anxious to put them to use.

How could an amateur scientist possibly help? While it is true an amateur isn't likely to get time on a cutting-edge telescope, that doesn't mean he or she can't help analyze the torrents of data those telescopes produce.

The newly-launched site Zooniverse consolidates several massive projects, each of which engages the assistance of hundreds of thousands of volunteers worldwide. I logged in to one of its oldest projects, Galaxy Zoo, to give it a try.

http://snipr.com/tqbfi



All Mammals March to the Same Beat
from ScienceNOW Daily News

Many animals test their legs and totter forth only hours after they are born, but humans need a year before they take their first, hesitant steps. Is something fundamentally different going on in human babies?

Maybe not. A new study shows that the time it takes for humans and all other mammals to start walking fits closely with the size of their brains.

In past studies to develop a new animal model for the brain events that support motor development, neurophysiologist Martin Garwicz of Lund University in Sweden and his colleagues discovered that the schedules by which ferrets and rats acquire various motor skills, such as crawling and walking, are strikingly similar to each other; the progress simply happens faster for rats. That made them wonder how similar the timing of motor development might be among mammals in general.

http://snipr.com/tqbfz



A Sultry World Is Found Circling a Distant Star
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Call it Sauna World. Astronomers said Wednesday that they had discovered a planet composed mostly of water.

You would not want to live there. In addition to the heat--400 degrees Fahrenheit on the ocean surface--the planet is probably cloaked in a crushingly dank and dark fog of superheated steam and other gases. But its discovery has encouraged a growing feeling among astronomers that they are on the verge of a breakthrough and getting closer to finding a planet something could live on.

"This probably is not habitable, but it didn't miss the habitable zone by that much," said David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the team that discovered the new planet and will reports its findings on Thursday in the journal Nature.

http://snipr.com/tqbge



Airman Injured in Afghanistan Gets a Remote Pancreas Fix
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Six days before Thanksgiving, Air Force Senior Airman Tre Francesco Porfirio was pulling duty in Afghanistan when three high-velocity bullets tore through his pancreas--the fist-size organ that produces insulin and enzymes needed to extract fuel from food.

With an injury like that, Porfirio's prognosis was difficult: If he could survive long enough to get to a specialized transplant center, he could perhaps get a transplant of islet cells from a deceased donor and take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his life. Or doctors could remove his pancreas, leaving him completely dependent on insulin. Either way, an early death from complications of Type 1 diabetes was highly likely.

Instead, doctors improvised a way to help the serviceman and made Porfirio, 21, a pioneer in the technique of islet-cell transplantation.

http://snipr.com/tqbh2



Deep-Sea Glider
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

She was at sea for 221 days. She was alone, often in dangerous places, and usually out of touch. Her predecessor had disappeared on a similar trip, probably killed by a shark. Yet she was always able to do what was asked, to head in a different direction on a moment's notice and report back without complaint.

So is it any surprise tears were shed when people could finally wrap their arms around her steel torso once more?

"She was a hero," said Rutgers University oceanographer Scott Glenn last week after retrieving an aquatic glider called the Scarlet Knight from the stormy Atlantic off western Spain. The 7-foot-9-inch submersible device, shaped like a large-winged torpedo, had just become the first robot to cross an ocean.

http://snipr.com/tqbi2



How to Slow Climate Change for Just $15 Billion
from Wired

Weaning humanity from its fossil fuel habit will take decades, and it will take decades more for global warming to stop. But one simple measure could slow warming in some of Earth's most sensitive regions, effective immediately--and it would cost just $15 billion.

That's a rough price tag for providing clean stoves to the 500 million households that use open fires, fed by wood and animal dung and coal, to heat their homes and cook. Those fires produce one-quarter of all so-called "black carbon," a sooty pollutant that's adding to the planetary heat burden.

"We know how to cook without smoke," said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a University of California, San Diego climatographer. "A clean stove costs $30. Multiply that by 500 million households, and it's only $15 billion. This is a solvable problem." After floating to the atmosphere, black carbon mixes with dust to form a solar heat-absorbing particulate layer. Raindrops form around the particles, trapping even more heat. Soot deposited by the rain heats up, too.

http://snipr.com/tqbib



Alice's Adventures in Algebra: Wonderland Solved
from New Scientist

What would Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland be without the Cheshire Cat, the trial, the Duchess's baby or the Mad Hatter's tea party? Look at the original story that the author told Alice Liddell and her two sisters one day during a boat trip near Oxford, though, and you'll find that these famous characters and scenes are missing from the text.

As I embarked on my DPhil investigating Victorian literature, I wanted to know what inspired these later additions. The critical literature focused mainly on Freudian interpretations of the book as a wild descent into the dark world of the subconscious.

There was no detailed analysis of the added scenes, but from the mass of literary papers, one stood out: in 1984 Helena Pycior of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee had linked the trial of the Knave of Hearts with a Victorian book on algebra.

http://snipr.com/tqbip
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

December 16, 2009



Alzheimer's Risk Linked to Appetite Hormone
from BBC News Online

High levels of a hormone that controls appetite appear to be linked to a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, US research suggests.

The 12-year-study of 200 volunteers found those with the lowest levels of leptin were more likely to develop the disease than those with the highest.

The JAMA study builds on work that links low leptin levels to the brain plaques found in Alzheimer's patients. The hope is leptin could eventually be used as both a marker and a treatment.

http://snipr.com/tpt1x



For Bicyclists Needing a Boost, This Wheel May Help
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

It is not easy to reinvent the wheel, but researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are giving it their best shot.

The Senseable City Laboratory at M.I.T. has designed a wheel that captures the kinetic energy released when a rider brakes and saves it for when the rider needs a boost. While technically sound, the wheel's true challenge may be in winning over cyclists. For centuries, bikes have been beloved for their simplicity, not their bells and whistles.

... The new wheel uses a kinetic energy recovery system, the same technology used by hybrid cars, like the Toyota Prius, to harvest otherwise wasted energy when a cyclist brakes or speeds down a hill. With that energy, it charges up a battery inside the wheel's hub.

http://snipr.com/tpt2a



New NIH Forms Raise Concerns
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

The new, shortened National Institutes of Health grant applications, designed to make the process easier on applicants and reviewers, may have an unintended downside, some researchers say.

Specifically, some critics say the new, shorter forms--down from 25 to 12 pages for R01 grants--will favor better writers, making it more difficult for younger investigators to compete for NIH funding.

"[The new grant applications] are going to focus people's words, and I do think it will favor better writers," said Robert Kalb, a University of Pennsylvania neurologist who is also the chair of the NIH's cellular and molecular biology of neurodegeneration study section. Plus, "it frees the experienced investigator to not provide as much feasibility and preliminary data because they can just cite their previous publications."

http://snipr.com/tpt2m



Teen Drug Use Survey Seen as 'Warning Sign'
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The federal government's annual report of kids' alcohol and drug abuse seems reassuring: Compared with earlier in the decade, use of hallucinogens was down in 2008, marijuana use was way down, and use of methamphetamines was way, way down.

But the researchers and public officials who crunch those numbers warned that some of the statistics gleaned from an annual survey of 46,000 American eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders were worrisome.

Though drug and alcohol use seems to be declining or holding steady, there has been slippage in teen disapproval of such practices and perception of the risks, officials warned.

http://snipr.com/tpt30



A Deluge of Data Shapes a New Era in Computing
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

In a speech given just a few weeks before he was lost at sea off the California coast in January 2007, Jim Gray, a database software pioneer and a Microsoft researcher, sketched out an argument that computing was fundamentally transforming the practice of science.

Dr. Gray called the shift a "fourth paradigm." The first three paradigms were experimental, theoretical and, more recently, computational science. He explained this paradigm as an evolving era in which an "exaflood" of observational data was threatening to overwhelm scientists.

The only way to cope with it, he argued, was a new generation of scientific computing tools to manage, visualize and analyze the data flood.

http://snipr.com/tpt38



Climate Change Talks Enter 'Important Moment'
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

COPENHAGEN -- Global warming talks entered what the top United Nations climate official described as "a very distinct and important moment in the process" Tuesday, as top ministers searched for a way to ensure the commitments nations made here would stand up over time.

Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, told reporters both large and small countries will have to make concessions in the coming days because "there is still an enormous amount of ground to be covered if this conference is to deliver what people around the world expect it to deliver."

The United States and other industrialized nations are still pressing for a way to verify that China, India and other emerging economies will make the greenhouse gas emissions cuts they've promised to make in the context of a new agreement, while developing countries argue these rich nations have not provided the financing and ambitious climate targets that would be commensurate with their historic responsibility for global warming.

http://snipr.com/tpt9u



Can a Lull in Solar Activity Head Off Climate Change?
from the Boston Globe(Registration Required)

CAMBRIDGE -- Old Sol these days is showing a strikingly bland face, one nearly unmarred by the usual wild magnetic storms, whipsawing coronal loops, and fiery plasma ejections.

"The sun is in the pits of the deepest solar minimum in almost 100 years," said Madhulika Guhathakurta, lead program scientist for NASA's Living With A Star program, whose focus is solar variability and its effects on the earth.

From the earth's perspective, scientists say, the periodic lull in the sun's activity means cosmic rays reaching our section of the solar system are way up, the planet's ionosphere is way down, and the minimum may be producing some small but still important counteraction to climate change--though that is controversial.

http://snipr.com/tpt3b



Distance Vision Is All a Blur to More of Us
from the Baltimore Sun

For an increasing number of Americans, life's a blur. That's according to a population-based study published Monday showing that rates of myopia--difficulty seeing distant objects--are soaring.

The trend is matched in many other countries, causing eye doctors to wonder what could be causing the decline in human vision. Some suspect both an increase in our close-up work time (think computer use) and a decrease in time spent outdoors.

Researchers at the National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, found that rates of myopia--also called nearsightedness--in people ages 12 to 54 increased from 25% in 1971-72 to 41.6% in 1999-2004. The study included people with a range of myopia, from mild to severe.

http://snipr.com/tpt3f



Yellowstone Magma Pocket 20% Larger Than Thought
from National Geographic News

The huge column of molten rock that feeds Yellowstone's "supervolcano" dives deeper and fills a magma chamber 20 percent bigger than previous estimates, scientists say.

The finding, based on the most detailed model yet of the region's geologic plumbing, suggests that Yellowstone's magma chamber contains even more fuel for a future "supereruption" than anyone had suspected.

The model shows that a 45-mile-wide plume of hot, molten rock rises to feed the supervolcano from at least 410 miles beneath Earth's surface.

http://snipr.com/tpt3r



Irrigation Draining California Groundwater
from Science News

SAN FRANCISCO -- In the past six years, the irrigation of crops in California's Central Valley has pulled groundwater from aquifers there at rates that are unsustainable if current trends continue, scientists say.

The Central Valley, which covers about 52,000 square kilometers, is one of the world's most productive agricultural regions, says Jay Famiglietti, director of the University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling in Irvine.

... But the productivity of those fertile fields is increasingly at risk: Satellite data suggest that more than 20 cubic kilometers of groundwater has been pumped from the valley's aquifers since October 2003, Famiglietti reported December 14 at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. That's roughly 4 percent the volume of Lake Erie.

http://snipr.com/tpt41
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

 December 15, 2009



Radiation From CT Scans Linked to Cancers
from USA Today

CT scans deliver far more radiation than previously believed and may contribute to 29,000 new cancers each year, along with 14,500 deaths, suggest two studies in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

One study, led by the National Cancer Institute's Amy Berrington de Gonzalez, used existing exposure data to estimate how many cancers might be caused by CT scans.

Another study in the journal suggests the problem may even be worse. In that study, researchers found that people may be exposed to up to four times as much radiation as estimated by earlier studies.

http://snipr.com/tp8hk



Half a Lifetime Spent in Pursuit of Waterbirds
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Twenty years ago, Theodore Cross traveled 16 time zones, from New York to Moscow, Irkutsk and Yakutsk, and finally to the tundra of the Kolyma Delta, in northeastern Siberia, to catch a coveted glimpse of an Arctic bird, the Ross's gull.

Mr. Cross did spot one gull, but its nest was overtaken by a parasitic jaeger before he could return with his blind and his long telephoto lens. The trip was a failure. Two weeks later, the unexpected happened: a Ross's gull showed up in Baltimore. Thousands of birders converged on the spot for the rare sighting.

"They call it the bird that launched 20,000 binoculars," Mr. Cross said. His 344-page volume, Waterbirds (W. W. Norton & Company), is part visual encyclopedia, part memoir of a nearly half-century pursuit of birds.

http://snipr.com/tp8i4



NASA Launches New Mapping Spacecraft
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

NASA's newest mapping mission, designed to sniff out the dimmest residents of our neighborhood in space, launched successfully Monday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

... Over the next 10 months, the spacecraft will photograph the entire night sky in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, finding objects too dim and cool to appear in ordinary light, much as night goggles reveal the faint signatures of warm-blooded creatures that would otherwise be hidden by vegetation or darkness.

The craft should greatly expand the catalogue of the known universe. In our solar neighborhood alone, it is expected to find thousands of never-seen asteroids between Mars and Jupiter ....

http://snipr.com/tp8j0



Plan to Rev Up Clean Technology in Poor Nations
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

COPENHAGEN -- Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Monday announced a five-year, $350 million international plan to deploy clean technology in developing countries.

The effort includes such things as putting solar lanterns in poor households and promoting advanced energy-efficient appliances worldwide, administration officials said.

The Climate Renewables and Efficiency Deployment Initiative is an attempt by the United States and other industrialized nations to help curb energy consumption in countries that will help determine whether global greenhouse emissions keep rising or level off.

http://snipr.com/tp9p7



Octopus Snatches Coconut and Runs
from BBC News Online

An octopus and its coconut-carrying antics have surprised scientists. Underwater footage reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, the team says it is the first example of tool use in octopuses.

One of the researchers, Dr Julian Finn from Australia's Museum Victoria, told BBC News: "I almost drowned laughing when I saw this the first time."

http://snipr.com/tp8r8



Did Mammoths Vanish Before and After Humans Arrived?
from Scientific American

Before humans arrived, the Americas were home to woolly mammoths, saber-toothed cats, giant ground sloths and other behemoths, an array of megafauna more impressive than even Africa boasts today.

Researchers have advanced several theories to explain what did them in and when the event occurred. A series of discoveries announced in the past four weeks, at first glance apparently contradictory, adds fresh details to the mystery of this mass extinction.

One prominent theory pegs humans as the cause of the demise, often pointing to the Clovis people, who left the earliest clear signs of humans entering the New World roughly 13,500 years ago. ... Another hypothesis supposes that climate was the culprit ....

http://snipr.com/tp8rn



Trusting Nature as the Climate Referee
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Imagine there's no Copenhagen. Imagine a planet in which global warming was averted without the periodic need for thousands of people to fly around the world to promise to stop burning fossil fuels.

Imagine no international conferences wrangling over the details of climate policy. Imagine entrusting the tough questions to a referee: Mother Earth.

That is the intriguing suggestion of Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph in Ontario who ... is virtuously restricting his carbon footprint by staying away from Copenhagen this week.

http://snipr.com/tp8uw



Higgs in Space: Orbiting Telescope Could Beat the LHC
from New Scientist

Evidence for the Higgs boson could be pouring down upon us from deep space. If so, an orbiting space telescope could upstage the Large Hadron Collider in the search for the elusive particle.

NASA's FERMI satellite was launched last year to detect gamma rays. One expected source of gamma rays is the mutual annihilation of dark matter particles in our galaxy.

While the nature of dark matter--which makes up 90 per cent of the matter in the universe--is unknown, physicists think it is made of weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs.

http://snipr.com/tp8xx



A Cheap Way to Chop up Nitrogen
from ScienceNOW Daily News

Nitrogen atoms are needed to make many important chemicals from drugs to fertilizers. But getting those atoms into chemicals is challenging, because nitrogen molecules are tough nuts to crack.

They consist of two atoms sharing a stubborn triple bond, which chemists can break up only by scorching them with temperatures of up to 500°C. And that results in the simple chemical ammonia, which needs further processing to produce more complicated compounds.

Now chemists have bypassed the energy-intensive reaction and devised a new one that splits molecular nitrogen at room temperature and synthesizes a common fertilizer.

http://snipr.com/tp8y9



UK's Vista Telescope Takes Stunning Images
from BBC News Online

The first images have been revealed from a telescope that can map the sky much faster and deeper than any other.

The Vista (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) is dedicated to mapping the sky in infrared light.

Spectacular images, including some of the centre of our Milky Way, show, astronomers say, that the UK-designed telescope is working "extremely well." It is based at the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile.

http://snipr.com/tp8yo
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

December 14, 2009



Mammogram Math
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

In his inaugural address, Barack Obama promised to restore science to its "rightful place." This has partly occurred, as evidenced by this month's release of 13 new human embryonic stem-cell lines.

The recent brouhaha over the guidelines put forth by the government task force on breast-cancer screening, however, illustrates how tricky it can be to deliver on this promise. One big reason is that people may not like or even understand what scientists say, especially when what they say is complex, counterintuitive or ambiguous.

As we now know, the panel of scientists advised that routine screening for asymptomatic women in their 40s was not warranted and that mammograms for women 50 or over should be given biennially rather than annually. The response was furious. Fortunately, both the panel's concerns and the public's reaction to its recommendations may be better understood by delving into the murky area between mathematics and psychology.

http://snipr.com/tojva



Genome Reveals Panda's Carnivorous Side
from Nature News

The complete genetic sequence of the giant panda has revealed that the iconic Chinese bear has all the genes required to digest meat--but not its staple food, bamboo.

The international team sequenced a three-year-old female panda called Jingjing, who was also a mascot of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and found that she lacks any recognizable genes for cellulases--enzymes that break down the plant material cellulose. "The panda's bamboo diet may be dictated by its gut bacteria rather than by its own genetic composition," says Wang Jun, deputy director of the Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, who led the sequencing project.

The researchers also discovered that the T1R1 gene, which encodes a key receptor for the savoury or 'umami' flavour of meat, has become an inactive 'pseudogene' due to two mutations. "This may explain why the panda diet is primarily herbivorous even though it is classified as a carnivore," says Wang.

http://snipr.com/tojvm



AP Impact: Science Not Faked, But Not Pretty
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

LONDON (Associated Press) -- E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data--but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.

The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change. However, the exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The scientists were keenly aware of how their work would be viewed and used, and, just like politicians, went to great pains to shape their message. Sometimes, they sounded more like schoolyard taunts than scientific tenets.

http://snipr.com/tojvw



Butterflies Versus Beetles
from the Christian Science Monitor

Sierra Chincua, Mexico -- The butterflies flitting in the sky above seem ablaze, as sunlight filters down into the Sierra Chincua forest in Mexico's Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. Millions of the orange-and-black insects are just arriving, as part of their annual 2,800-mile journey from Canada and the United States.

But this year, because of the worst drought in nearly 70 years, an infestation of bark beetles has hit this 138,000-acre reserve, where tourists from around the world come to view part of a migration pattern considered one of the globe's most extraordinary.

Authorities have already identified more than 7,500 beetle-infested fir trees--three times the normal amount in any given year--and have raced to cut them down. "We can expect to find more infected trees," says Rosendo Caro, director of the reserve.

http://snipr.com/tojw0



Poor Nations Threaten Climate Deal Showdown at Copenhagen Summit
from the Guardian

The Copenhagen climate talks hit trouble tonight as a number of African countries indicated their leaders would refuse to take part in the final summit unless significant progress was made in the next three days.

The showdown between rich and poor countries came as ministers began arriving in Copenhagen to take over negotiations. However, negotiators failed to reach agreement in key areas such as emission cuts, long-term finance and when poor countries should start to reduce emissions.

More than 110 heads of state, mainly from developing countries, are due to begin arriving on Thursday for an intense 24 hours of final negotiations.

http://snipr.com/tojw5



Genetic 'Map' of Asia's Diversity
from

from BBC News Online

An international scientific effort has revealed the genetics behind Asia's diversity. The Human Genome Organisation's (HUGO) Pan-Asian SNP Consortium carried out a study of almost 2,000 people across the continent.

Their findings support the hypothesis that Asia was populated primarily through a single migration event from the south. The researchers described their findings in the journal Science.

They found genetic similarities between populations throughout Asia and an increase in genetic diversity from northern to southern latitudes.

http://snipr.com/tol6q



New Google Innovation to Help Scientists Monitor Deforestation
from Spiegel Online

A new program from Google is helping environmentalists see the forest for the trees. Literally.

In Copenhagen on Thursday, the Internet giant launched a new technology that will allow governments, environmentalists and others to observe and measure on a global scale how the Earth's forests are changing. Google worked with the Carnegie Institution for Science and with Imazon, a non-profit research institution dedicated to sustainable development in the Amazon, to bring the project to life.

Using the "Google Cloud," the company's system of networked computers and computing power, the technology will be able to analyze deforestation and detect illegal logging in seconds, the company says. Indeed, in addition to helping scientists, it could also be a potential boon to local law enforcement. It will also lower the cost for nations to monitor and thereby protect their forests by providing an online platform to access and analyze the data collected. Google points out that Google Earth already allows people to view deforestation, but up until now there has been no way to measure the destructive activity.

http://snipr.com/tol6q



Turtles Act Like Chameleons
from LiveScience

Freshwater turtles' skin and shells often match the color of their habitat's substrate, which may help them deceive predators and prey alike. But what happens if turtles change abodes, from a black swamp, say, to a sandy-bottomed pond?

John W. Rowe, of Alma College in Michigan, and three colleagues collected gravid female midland painted turtles and red-eared sliders from the wild, brought them to the lab, and injected them with oxytocin, a hormone that induces egg laying.

They assigned the hatchlings to two control groups, which they kept for 160 days on either a white or a black substrate, and to two "reversal" groups, which they kept for 80 days on white or black and then switched to a substrate of the opposite color for another 80 days. The researchers periodically used a spectrometer to measure the color intensity of spots on each turtle's carapace and head.

http://snipr.com/tojx2



How Global Warming Could Change the Winemaking Map
from Time

Many Bordeaux winemakers are declaring 2009 the best vintage in 60 years, but Yvon Minvielle of Château Lagarette isn't celebrating. Like many vintners across France, Minvielle is feeling uneasy after another unusually warm summer and early grape harvest. "They say everything is going great in Bordeaux, but take a closer look," he says. Heat-stressed vines ripened at unequal rates this year, and only skillful picking spread over a full month allowed Minvielle to gather a mature crop.

Such seasonal headaches are becoming more commonplace in France, and many vintners are placing the blame on global warming. In the past 30 years, harvest dates have moved up an average of 16 days because of unusually warm growing seasons. Grapes are reaching their sugar ripeness before their aromas fully develop, alcohol levels are soaring and acid levels are dropping--forcing some winemakers to resort to chemistry in their cellars to produce a quaffable cuvée.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that the earth's temperatures could rise by as much as 6 degrees Celsius by 2100 if nothing is done to combat climate change. "While 2 to 3 degrees [Celsius] may be manageable, if temperatures rise 4 to 5 degrees ... the vineyard map will never be the same again," says Bernard Seguin, head of the Climate Change and Greenhouse Effect Unit at the National Institute for Agricultural Research in Avignon.

http://snipr.com/tojx6



Asian Mutation Protects Against Malaria
from ScienceNOW Daily News

A mutation common in Southeast Asia that causes anemia also provides some protection against malaria, according to a new study. The mutation doesn't shield carriers from the best-known and most severe cause of the disease, but from a more benign parasite that has been studied far less.

Scientists already know that humans' long battle with malaria has shaped our genome. One-third of sub-Saharan Africans, for example, carry a mutation that causes sickle cell anemia but that also protects against malaria: The deformed red blood cells prevent the malaria parasite from entering. Researchers have identified other mutations as well, but almost all protect against Plasmodium falciparum, a parasite transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes that kills more than a million people annually.

In the current study, geneticist Anavaj Sakuntabhai of the Pasteur Institute in Paris and colleagues examined a mutation in the gene encoding glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD), an enzyme that helps protect cells from damage by oxidizing molecules. Mutations in G6PD can cause jaundice in newborns, anemia after infection with certain pathogens, and other problems.

http://snipr.com/tojxe
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

 December 11, 2009




Ancient Amazon Civilisation Laid Bare by Felled Forest
from New Scientist

Signs of what could be a previously unknown ancient civilisation are emerging from beneath the felled trees of the Amazon. Some 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil's border with Bolivia.

The traditional view is that before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th century there were no complex societies in the Amazon basin--in contrast to the Andes further west where the Incas built their cities. Now deforestation, increased air travel and satellite imagery are telling a different story.

"It's never-ending," says Denise Schaan of the Federal University of Pará in Belém, Brazil, who made many of the new discoveries from planes or by examining Google Earth images. "Every week we find new structures." Some of them are square or rectangular, while others form concentric circles or complex geometric figures such as hexagons and octagons connected by avenues or roads. The researchers describe them all as geoglyphs.

http://snipr.com/tne8o



War Games: Military Use of Consumer Technology
from the Economist

Video games have become increasingly realistic, especially those involving armed combat. America's armed forces have even used video games as recruitment and training tools.

But the desire to play games is not the reason why the United States Air Force recently issued a procurement request for 2,200 Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) video-game consoles. It intends to link them up to build a supercomputer that will run Linux, a free, open-source operating system. It will be used for research, including the development of high-definition imaging systems for radar, and will cost around one-tenth as much as a conventional supercomputer. The air force has already built a smaller computer from a cluster of 336 PS3s.

This is merely the latest example of an unusual trend. There is a long tradition of technology developed for military use filtering through to consumer markets: satellite-navigation systems designed to guide missiles can also help hikers find their way, and head-up displays have moved from jet fighters to family cars. But technology is increasingly moving in the other direction, too, as consumer products are appropriated for military use.

http://snipr.com/tnea8



Dino Discovery Supports Migration Theory
from the San Francisco Chronicle

Dinosaur hunters digging in a New Mexico quarry have unearthed the fossil bones of an early meat-eating beast whose remains tell a remarkable story of evolution that started more than 200 million years ago when the whole world was one supercontinent known as Pangaea.

The bones boost theories that the first dinosaurs originated in what is now South America and some migrated north into the present day United States as the giant landmass began breaking into pieces.

A team of five paleontologists, including two who began their studies at UC Berkeley, reported the discovery of the small, carnivorous beast in the journal Science today.

http://snipr.com/tnebd



Our Atmosphere Came From Space Gases, Study Says
from National Geographic News

The gases that make up Earth's atmosphere came from a swarm of comets, not from bubbling volcanoes as long thought, a new study says.

The new theory came about after scientists discovered that pristine samples of the elements krypton and xenon, recently collected from deep within the Earth, have the same chemical makeup as ancient meteorites. The discovery has squelched the volcano theory, said project leader Chris Ballentine of the U.K.'s University of Manchester.

Most of the gases in the air we breathe originated in the solar nebula, the cloud of gas and dust that formed the sun and planets, the study says.

http://snipr.com/tnedr



Erasing Scary Memories Is a Matter of Timing
from ScienceNOW Daily News

We often think of memories like Polaroid snapshots, images frozen in time. But they're more like the fluid, melting pocket watches of Salvador Dali's painting The Persistence of Memory. Now scientists have developed a method that takes advantage of memory's malleability to block specific fear memories, which could someday lead to new therapies for anxiety disorders and phobias.

Each time you recall the ice cream cake and clown from your fifth birthday party, the memory is subject to change. Information about the color of the clown's polka-dotted suit, for example, becomes "unfrozen" and could change from red to blue. This process is called reconsolidation, and scientists have blocked scary memories in rats--such as the association between a specific tone and a painful shock--during reconsolidation with drugs. Unfortunately, these drugs stop protein synthesis in the brain, which would lead to terrible side effects in people.

A different approach to diminishing fear is called extinction training. In experiments with rats, scientists keep playing the ominous tone without a shock, and over time, the animals stop getting scared by the tone. Therapists use a similar method called exposure therapy to help people overcome debilitating fears, such as claustrophobia. But these methods aren't as long-lasting as the dangerous drugs.

http://snipr.com/tnefc



Ancient Maya King Shows His Foreign Roots
from Science News

A man's skeleton found atop a stone slab at Copán, which was the capital of an ancient Maya state, contains clues to a colonial expansion that occurred more than 1,000 years before Spanish explorers reached the Americas.

The bones come from K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo', or KYKM for short, the researchers report in an upcoming Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. KYKM was the first of 16 kings who ruled Copán and surrounding highlands of what is today northern Honduras for about 400 years, from 426 to 820, say archaeologist T. Douglas Price of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues. KYKM's bone chemistry indicates that he grew up in the central Maya lowlands, which are several hundred kilometers northwest of Copán.

Along with inscriptions at Copán, the new evidence suggests that the site's first king was born into a ruling family at Caracol, a powerful lowland kingdom in Belize. KYKM probably spent his young adult years as a member of the royal court at Tikal, a Maya kingdom in the central lowlands of Guatemala, before being sent to Copán to found a new dynasty at the settlement there, Price's team proposes.

http://snipr.com/tnefq



Geeky Math Equation Creates Beautiful 3-D World
from Wired

The quest by a group of math geeks to create a three-dimensional analogue for the mesmerizing Mandelbrot fractal has ended in success.

They call it the Mandelbulb. The 3-D renderings were generated by applying an iterative algorithm to a sphere. The same calculation is applied over and over to the sphere's points in three dimensions. In spirit, that's similar to how the original 2-D Mandelbrot set generates its infinite and self-repeating complexity.

If you were ever mesmerized by the Mandelbrot screen saver, the following images are worth a look. Each photo is a zoom on one of these Mandelbulbs.

http://snipr.com/tnegc



One Gene Keeps Ovaries Female
from the Scientist

Knocking down a single gene in an adult mouse makes ovaries develop the characteristics of a male gonad and produce testosterone, according to a study published today (December 10th) in Cell. The study suggests that the signal is required to maintain the female phenotype throughout adulthood, and may provide clues to female infertility.

"I think this is a very important finding" identifying a key regulator of the genes involved in sex development, said Blanche Capel from Duke University Medical Center, who was not involved in the research.

Mathias Treier from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, lead author of the study, and his colleagues cloned the Foxl2 gene, a transcription factor located on non-sex chromosomes, several years ago. When they knocked out the gene in mice, females began to form ovaries, but later in development, the ovaries degenerated. Since the gene is expressed throughout the lifespan, the researchers wondered whether it would behave the same way in adult females.

http://snipr.com/tnegw



Another Fatal Blow to Asian Vultures
from Scientific American

As if it weren't bad enough that 99.9 percent of Asian vultures have been killed off in the past 20 years, now comes news that yet another potential man-made disaster waits in the wings.

Millions of Asian vultures, particularly those in India, have died off over the last two decades after being poisoned by the veterinary drug diclofenac. The vultures eat dead cattle and other livestock treated with the drug, then go into renal failure.

Now scientists have discovered that another veterinary drug, ketoprofen, is also fatal to the birds. Vultures which feed on the carcasses of livestock recently treated with ketoprofen suffer acute kidney failure and die within days of exposure.

http://snipr.com/tnehq



Battery Made of Paper Charges Up
from BBC News Online

Batteries made from plain copier paper could make for future energy storage that is truly paper thin. The approach relies on the use of carbon nanotubes--tiny cylinders of carbon--to collect electric charge.

While small-scale nanotube batteries have been demonstrated before, the plain paper approach lends itself to making larger devices more cheaply.

The work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to "paintable" energy storage.

http://snipr.com/tnei1
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