Weekly Science Headlines

[Kai]

April 2, 2010

For more updates, follow @AmSciMag on Twitter!


Happy 20th, Hubble

from Science News

When NASA announced in 2004 that it was canceling a final mission to repair the then-ailing Hubble Space Telescope--effectively a death sentence--the agency received a letter from a 9-year-old girl who wanted to donate her lunch money to save Hubble. That letter, among countless others, exemplifies the public's love affair with the observatory, which turns 20 years old this month.

Since its launch on April 24, 1990, Hubble has repeatedly risen from the ashes to produce pictures of unparalleled clarity and beauty. The observatory has recorded nearly a million images and spectra in about 110,000 trips around the Earth.

Among its cosmic postcards--some of the best in the pages to follow--Hubble has caught bruises left on Jupiter by fragments of a comet, elderly stars gift-wrapped in shells of glowing gas, the slender arms of spiral galaxies and nebulae ablaze with the light of newborn stars.

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Human Genome at 10

from National Geographic News

In June 2000 scientists joined U.S. President Bill Clinton at the White House to unveil the Human Genome Project's "working draft" of the human genome--the full set of DNA that makes us human.

As the tenth anniversary of that achievement approaches, scientists weigh in on the scientific discoveries the Human Genome Project enabled, as well as some hopes and predictions for future advances that could be made using the project's data.

National Geographic looks at five breakthroughs powered by the Human Genome Project and five predictions for the next 10 years.

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On the Hunt of What Makes All of Us Recoil

from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

The pungent sting of wasabi, the searing pain of tear gas, and the watery eyes we get from chopping an onion are all triggered by an ancient chemical sensor that is found in everything from humans to mollusks and may hold the key to developing new kinds of insect repellents and pain medications.

Research by Brandeis University scientists finds that the ability to detect noxious compounds comes from a biological pathway older than our sense of smell, emerging far in the evolutionary past, about half a billion years ago.

"This chemical sense, as far as we can tell, appears to have been essentially unchanged," said Paul Garrity, a biology professor at Brandeis and senior author of a paper published in the journal Nature this month. The sensor's ubiquity and stability suggested it does something essential for the survival of animals, but what?

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Next Big Thing in English: Knowing They Know That You Know

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

... This layered process of figuring out what someone else is thinking--of mind reading--is both a common literary device and an essential survival skill. Why human beings are equipped with this capacity and what particular brain functions enable them to do it are questions that have occupied primarily cognitive psychologists.

Now English professors and graduate students are asking them too. They say they're convinced science not only offers unexpected insights into individual texts, but that it may help to answer fundamental questions about literature's very existence: Why do we read fiction? Why do we care so passionately about nonexistent characters? What underlying mental processes are activated when we read?

... Jonathan Gottschall, who has written extensively about using evolutionary theory to explain fiction, said "it's a new moment of hope" in an era when everyone is talking about "the death of the humanities." To Mr. Gottschall a scientific approach can rescue literature departments from the malaise that has embraced them over the last decade and a half. ... Since then a new generation of scholars have been casting about for The Next Big Thing. ... The brain may be it.

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Prostate Drug May Work as a Preventive

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Men at an above-normal risk of prostate cancer may be able to reduce their risk of developing the disease by taking a drug already on the market.

In research reported Wednesday, the drug dutasteride, currently used to shrink enlarged prostates, was found to reduce the risk of prostate cancer by about a quarter in high-risk men. The medication, sold under the brand name Avodart, apparently caused small tumors to stop growing or even to shrink, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

A previous study found that a similar drug, finasteride, could also lower the risk of prostate tumors, but the new research--conducted at 250 sites in 42 countries--suggests that dutasteride is slightly more effective.

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White House Mandates New Fuel Efficiency Standards

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The Obama administration finalized the first national rules curbing greenhouse gas emissions Thursday, mandating that the U.S. car and light-truck fleet reach an average fuel efficiency of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.

The new fuel efficiency standards ... represent a peaceful end to a contentious legal battle over how to regulate tailpipe emissions. At a time when it remains unclear whether Congress can pass climate legislation this year, the new rules also mark the White House's most significant achievement yet in addressing global warming.

In a speech Wednesday, President Obama said the standards "will reduce our dependence on oil while helping folks spend a little less at the pump." He estimated that tougher Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirements will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the life of vehicles sold under the program covering the 2012-16 model years. He said this would be the equivalent of taking 58 million cars off the road for a year. Environmentalists hailed the move, saying it will transform the American auto market in the years to come.

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Industry Wary of New Rules on Fishing

from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

The federal government finalized the most fundamental changes in New England fishing rules in more than a generation Wednesday, over the strenuous objections of many fishermen who say they will be put out of business.

The new rules, which take effect May 1, come after years of effort by the federal government and environmental groups to stop overfishing of the region's fabled cod, flounder, and other bottom-dwelling species that once were said to be so plentiful that colonists caught them simply by lowering baskets into the sea.

The rules encourage boat owners to organize into groups that will be allocated a share of the annual quota for each species, and already fishermen who account for the vast majority of the catch in New England have voluntarily formed groups, called sectors. The system is designed to give fishermen more financial incentive to be good stewards of the sea and more flexibility in deciding who fishes and when, such as allowing fishermen to avoid bad weather.

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Science Writer Simon Singh Wins Libel Appeal

from BBC News Online

A science writer has won the right to rely on the defence of fair comment in a libel action, in a landmark ruling at the Court of Appeal. Simon Singh was accused of libel by the British Chiropractic Association over an article in the Guardian in 2008.

Dr Singh questioned the claims of some chiropractors over the treatment of certain childhood conditions. The High Court had said the words were fact not opinion--meaning Dr Singh could not use the fair comment defence.

However, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger and Lord Justice Sedley ruled High Court judge Mr Justice Eady had "erred in his approach" last May, and allowed Dr Singh's appeal. BBC News science correspondent Pallab Ghosh says that, had Justice Eady's ruling stood, it would have made it difficult for any scientist or science journalist to question claims made by companies or organisations without opening themselves up to a libel action that would be hard to win.

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Advance Directives for End-of-Life Care Work

from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)

Advance directives work. That's the conclusion of one of the largest studies on the effectiveness of documents specifying what medical treatments are desired, or not desired, at the end of life. Further, Americans are increasingly making use of the tool.

In a study of 3,746 deaths, researchers found that 42.5% of patients had faced treatment decisions near the end of their lives but that more than 70% of those people had lacked the ability to make choices because of their mental or physical health. Among that group, however, the majority--67.6%--had advance directives.

Moreover, the instructions left in the advance directives were almost always carried out by surrogate decision-makers. The will of the patient, said the lead author of the study, prevailed.

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Study Suggests Toads Can Detect Coming Earthquakes

from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

LONDON (Associated Press) -- When it comes to predicting earthquakes, toads--warts and all--may be an asset. British researchers said Wednesday that they observed a mass exodus of toads from a breeding site in Italy five days before a major tremor struck, suggesting the amphibians may be able to sense environmental changes, imperceptible to humans, that foretell a coming quake.

Since ancient times, anecdotes and folklore have linked unusual animal behavior to cataclysmic events like earthquakes, but hard evidence has been scarce. A new study by researchers from the Open University is one of the first to document animal behavior before, during and after an earthquake.

The scientists were studying the common toad--bufo bufo--at a breeding colony in central Italy when they noticed a sharp decline in the number of animals at the site. Days later, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit, killing hundreds of people and badly damaging the town of L'Aquila.

http://snipr.com/v7ra0

[Kai]

March 31, 2010

For more updates, follow @AmSciMag on Twitter!


US Judge Strikes Down Patent on Cancer Genes

from the Miami Herald (Registration Required)

NEW YORK (Associated Press) -- In a ruling with potentially far-reaching implications for the patenting of human genes, a judge on Monday struck down a company's patents on two genes linked to an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet challenging whether anyone can hold patents on human genes was expected to have broad implications for the biotechnology industry and genetics-based medical research.

Sweet said he invalidated the patents because DNA's existence in an isolated form does not alter the fundamental quality of DNA as it exists in the body nor the information it encodes. He rejected arguments that it was acceptable to grant patents on DNA sequences as long as they are claimed in the form of "isolated DNA."

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Heading Off the Next Financial Crisis

from the New York Times Magazine (Registration Required)

...To reduce the odds of a future crisis, the Obama plan would take three basic steps. First, regulators would receive more authority to monitor everything from mortgages to complex securities. This is meant to keep future financial time bombs, like the no-documentation loans and collateralized debt obligations of the past decade, from becoming rife.

Second--and most important--financial firms would be forced to reduce the debt they take on and to hold more capital in reserve. This is the equivalent of requiring home buyers to make larger down payments: more capital will give firms a bigger cushion when investments start to go bad.

Finally, if that cushion proves insufficient, the government would be allowed to seize a collapsing financial firm, much as it can already do with a traditional bank. Regulators would then keep the firm operating long enough to prevent a panic and slowly sell off its pieces.

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How to Classify a Million Galaxies in Three Weeks

from Time

... Among the most ambitious and successful online "citizen science" projects to date, Galaxy Zoo asks its participants to help classify galaxies by studying images of them online and answering a standard set of questions about their features. For instance: Is the galaxy smooth or bulging? Is it elliptical or spiral? If it's spiral, how many arms does it have, and are they tightly wound or thrown open wide?

Galaxy Zoo was first launched in 2007 by astronomers and astrophysicists from the U.S. and U.K. The goal was to get the public to identify the shapes of 1 million galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which were photographed between 2000 and 2008 by a telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.

Because every feature of each galaxy had to be categorized by at least 20 people--having multiple classifications of the same object is important because it helps scientists assess how reliable each one is--astronomers estimated it would take three to five years to categorize all million galaxies. It took three weeks.

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Folk Medicine Poses Global Threat to Primates

from BBC News Online

Traditional folk medicine poses a significant and ongoing threat to the future of primates around the world. According to a major scientific survey at least 101 primate species are still used in traditional folk practices and in magic or religious rituals.

For example, spider monkeys are eaten to treat rheumatism, while gorilla parts are given to pregnant women. Such practises are accelerating the declines of many already vulnerable species, say the survey's authors.

Details of the survey are published in Mammal Review, the journal of the UK Mammal Society. Of 390 species studied, 101, or more than a quarter, are regularly killed for their body parts, with 47 species being used for their supposed medicinal properties, 34 for use in magical or religious practices, and 20 for both purposes.

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Amphibious Caterpillars Discovered in Hawaii

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Moths of the Hawaiian genus Hyposmocoma are an oddball crowd: One of the species' caterpillars attacks and eats tree snails. Now researchers have described at least a dozen different species that live underwater for several weeks at a time.

"I couldn't believe it," said study coauthor Daniel Rubinoff, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii at Honolulu, of the first time he spotted a submerged caterpillar. "I assumed initially they were terrestrial caterpillars . . . how were they holding their breath?"

Each of the 12 species lives in and along streams running down the mountains on several different islands of Hawaii, said Rubinoff, who has studied Hyposmocoma, a group of more than 350 moth species, for more than seven years. They usually eat algae or lichen, and build silk cases -- which one species even adorns with bird feathers -- for shelter and camouflage. They spin silk drag lines to withstand the high pressure of fast floodwaters.

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Whooping Cranes Tracked With GPS to Study Their Habits

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

WOOD RIVER, NEB. -- Each dawn and dusk, numberless birds stopping here to feed on their migration north take to the air. Against the steel-colored sky they look like iron filings wheeling and milling to an invisible magnet.

Most are sandhill cranes, whose beauty and marionette-like dance draw bird-watchers from across the country each spring. Some are snow geese, dabbing the dun fields with their white bodies. Teal, pintail, mallard--and dozens of other species of waterfowl--pass through in thousands. On the avian interstate known as the Central Flyway, Nebraska straddles the middle lane.

Somewhere among the flocks over the next few weeks will be a small number of whooping cranes. Huge white birds with red crowns and black legs, they will be flying in twos and threes, with rarely more than a dozen congregating on the brief sojourn here en route from Texas to Alberta. At five feet, they are the tallest birds in North America and also among the rarest.

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Among Weathercasters, Doubt on Warming

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

The debate over global warming has created predictable adversaries, pitting environmentalists against industry and coal-state Democrats against coastal liberals. But it has also created tensions between two groups that might be expected to agree on the issue: climate scientists and meteorologists, especially those who serve as television weather forecasters.

Climatologists, who study weather patterns over time, almost universally endorse the view that the earth is warming and that humans have contributed to climate change. There is less of a consensus among meteorologists, who predict short-term weather patterns.

Joe Bastardi, for example, a senior forecaster and meteorologist with AccuWeather, maintains that it is more likely that the planet is cooling, and he distrusts the data put forward by climate scientists as evidence for rising global temperatures.

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Lead "Burrito" Sarcophagus Found Near Rome

from National Geographic News

A 1,700-year-old sarcophagus found in an abandoned city near Rome could contain the body of a gladiator or a Christian dignitary, say archaeologists who are preparing to examine the coffin in the lab.

Found in a cement-capped pit in the ancient metropolis of Gabii, the coffin is unusual because it's made of lead--only a few hundred such Roman burials are known.

Even odder, the 800 pounds (362 kilograms) of lead fold over the corpse like a burrito, said Roman archaeologist Jeffrey Becker. Most lead sarcophagi look like "old-fashioned cracker boxes," molded into a rectangular shape with a lid, he said. The coffin, which has been in storage since last year, is about to be moved to the American Academy in Rome for further testing.

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Bar Codes Could Be Next to Check Out

from Science News

Lines at the grocery store might become as obsolete as milkmen, if a new tag that seeks to replace bar codes becomes commonplace.

Researchers from Sunchon National University in Suncheon, South Korea, and Rice University in Houston have built a radio frequency identification tag that can be printed directly onto cereal boxes and potato chip bags. The tag uses ink laced with carbon nanotubes to print electronics on paper or plastic that could instantly transmit information about a cart full of groceries.

"You could run your cart by a detector and it tells you instantly what's in the cart," says James M. Tour of Rice University, whose research group invented the ink. "No more lines, you just walk out with your stuff."

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Agile 'Roadrunner' Dinosaur Discovered in China

from BBC News Online

One the most agile dinosaurs so far discovered has been unearthed in China. The tiny dinosaur, dubbed a "roadrunner" by the scientists who found it, is also one of the smallest dinosaurs known.

Measuring just half a metre long, the fleet-footed theropod named Xixianykus zhangi was likely to have used a huge claw to dig for termites and ants. It then used its speed to efficiently move between ant mounds and avoid the attentions of larger predators. Details of the discovery are published in the journal Zootaxa.

"The limb proportions of Xixianykus are among the most extreme ever recorded for a theropod dinosaur," says Dr Corwin Sullivan, a Canadian palaeontologist based at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and one of the authors of the study.

http://snipr.com/v6bmt

[Kai]

April 5, 2010

For more updates, follow @AmSciMag on Twitter!


Obama Oil Drilling Plan Draws Critics

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON -- President Obama's proposal to open vast expanses of American coastlines to oil and natural gas drilling drew criticism from both sides in the drilling debate. The plan ... would end a longstanding moratorium on exploration from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.

"Drilling our coasts will do nothing to lower gas prices or create energy independence," Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement. "It will only jeopardize beaches, marine life, and coastal tourist economies, all so the oil industry can make a short-term profit."

On the other hand, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell called Mr. Obama's proposal "a step in the right direction, but a small one that leaves enormous amounts of American energy off limits."

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Environmental Regulations to Curtail Mountaintop Mining

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The Obama administration on Thursday imposed strict new environmental guidelines that are expected to sharply curtail "mountaintop" coal mining, a controversial practice that has enriched Appalachia's economy while rearranging its topography.

The announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency ended months of bureaucratic limbo on the issue. It was hailed by environmentalists but condemned by coal industry officials, who said it would render a technique that generates about 10 percent of U.S. coal largely impractical.

At "mountaintop removal" mines, which are unique to Appalachian states, miners blast the peaks off mountains to reach coal seams inside and then pile vast quantities of rubble in surrounding valleys. On Thursday, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said those "valley fills" will be curtailed. She cited new scientific evidence showing that when rainwater is filtered through the jumbles of rock, it emerges imbued with toxins, poisoning small mountain streams.

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"Roaming" Magnetic Fields Found

from National Geographic News

Weak magnetic fields are "roaming" across the universe, according to a new study that may have solved the mystery of where the huge magnetic fields around galaxies come from. Galaxies such as our Milky Way have their own large-scale magnetic fields. Although these fields are weak compared to planetary fields, scientists think the galactic versions help establish rates of star formation, guide cosmic rays, and regulate the dynamics of interstellar gas.

Most scientists believe the stronger magnetic fields of today's adult galaxies grew from weaker "seed" fields. But it's unclear where these older fields originated.

The two leading theories: The seed fields were created by the movement of charged gas in protogalaxies, or they were produced outside of galaxies by some unseen processes in the early universe. New observations made with NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope support the idea that the seeds were there all along, even before galaxies themselves.

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New Written Language of Ancient Scotland Discovered

from Discovery News

The ancestors of modern Scottish people left behind mysterious, carved stones that new research has just determined contain the written language of the Picts, an Iron Age society that existed in Scotland from 300 to 843.

The highly stylized rock engravings, found on what are known as the Pictish Stones, had once been thought to be rock art or tied to heraldry. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, instead concludes that the engravings represent the long lost language of the Picts, a confederation of Celtic tribes that lived in modern-day eastern and northern Scotland.

"We know that the Picts had a spoken language to complement the writing of the symbols, as Bede (a monk and historian who died in 735) writes that there are four languages in Britain in this time: British, Pictish, Scottish and English," lead author Rob Lee told Discovery News.

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UK Sets Up Chagos Islands Marine Reserve

from BBC News Online

The UK government has created the world's largest marine reserve around the Chagos Islands.

The reserve would cover a 545,000-sq-km area around the Indian Ocean archipelago, regarded as one of the world's richest marine ecosystems. This will include an area where commercial fishing will be banned.

But islanders, who were evicted to make way for the US air base on the island of Diego Garcia, say a reserve would effectively bar them from returning. UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband said establishing the reserve would "double the global coverage of the world's oceans under protection."

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Mapping Effort Hopes to Save Dozens of Native Plants

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

American colonists once watched for the spring bloom of the Nantucket shadbush, a sign that it was warm enough to bury the winter's dead.

Today, that shadbush and dozens of other flora native to the New York region face extinction, a result of urban development and the encroachment of invasive plants from foreign lands, scientists from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden report.

Hoping to revive the plants, the scientists recently completed a 20-year project mapping species in every county within a 50-mile radius of New York, providing detailed information on the health of more than 15,000 native and nonnative species.

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Meet the Periodic Table's Newest Resident: Copernicium

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

There's a new element officially in town and its name is copernicium, after the 16th-century Polish scientist Nicholas Copernicus. It is element 112 and its symbol is Cn.

Copernicium, a heavier relative of zinc, cadmium and mercury, was first seen in 1996 by researchers at the Society for Heavy Ions Research in Darmstadt, Germany, after they bombarded a lead target with zinc ions.

It took the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, which regulates nomenclature, nearly 14 years to resolve disputes between the Germans and American researchers over who was first to produce the new element, but the agency reported in the March issue of the journal Pure and Applied Chemistry that the Germans had priority and are thus entitled to propose a name.

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Inventors Hall of Fame Inducts 16

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The thing that is obvious if your profession is, say, NBA basketball, but less obvious if your profession is, say, adhesives and laminates, is that every field has its own hotshot studs. "Oh, I get maybe six or seven autograph requests" a week, Arthur Fry is saying modestly.

"Now, do you respond to those?" his collaborator Spencer Silver asks. He's always afraid that if he gives out autographs, someone could use his signature for identity theft. "Oh, yes."

Fry and Silver were surrounded by a small cluster of people in the National Press Building. They were there to be announced as two of 2010's 16 inductees to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, a tradition that began in 1973 ... Fry and Silver invented Post-its. They are the studs.

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Traumatized Vets Say Service Dogs Help Them to Live

from the Seattle Times

WASHINGTON -- Weeks after Chris Goehner, 25, an Iraq war veteran, got a dog, he was able to cut in half the dose of anxiety and sleep medications he took for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The night terrors and suicidal thoughts that kept him awake for days on end ceased.

Aaron Ellis, 29, another Iraq veteran with the stress disorder, scrapped his medications entirely soon after getting a dog--and set foot in a grocery store for the first time in three years. The dogs to whom they credit their improved health are not just pets. They are psychiatric service dogs trained to help traumatized veterans leave the battlefield behind as they reintegrate into society.

Because of stories like these, the federal government, not usually at the forefront of alternative medical treatments, is spending several million dollars to study whether research supports anecdotal reports the dogs might speed recovery from the psychological wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Air Force to Launch Robotic Winged Space Plane

from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Registration Required)

LOS ANGELES (Associated Press) -- After a decade of development, the Air Force this month plans to launch a robotic spacecraft resembling a small space shuttle to conduct technology tests in orbit and then glide home to a California runway.

The ultimate purpose of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle and details about the craft, which has been passed between several government agencies, however, remain a mystery as it is prepared for launch April 19 from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

... The quietly scheduled launch culminates the project's long and expensive journey from NASA to the Pentagon's research and development arm and then to a secretive Air Force unit. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on the X-37 program, but the current total has not been released.

http://snipr.com/v9u1b

[Kai]

April 6, 2010


Peering Into the Future of Science in U.S.

from the (Raleigh, N.C.) News and Observer

Dr. Neal Lane is a specialist in the area where science and policy collide. The molecular physicist served as National Science Foundation director in 1993 and as President Bill Clinton's science adviser in 1998.

He'll be the keynote speaker Saturday at N.C. State's Scope Academy 2010, an exploration of science and math topics including climate change and the statistics of bank failure. Lane will discuss the future of science in America and what upcoming challenges and opportunities will mean for the country.

In an interview, the News and Observer asked him if he thought there's been a change in the influence of science on public policy decisions and what the country can do to inspire students to seek careers in science and engineering.

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A Race to Reap Energy From the Ocean Breezes

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

As New Englanders await a decision in Massachusetts on a bitterly contested proposal to build the nation's first offshore wind farm, the State of Rhode Island is forging ahead with its own project in the hope of outpacing--and upstaging--its neighbor.

Crucial to its strategy is dispelling worries that economics will trump the environment, or the broader public good.

Instead of having a private developer dominate the research on potential sites, as Massachusetts has, Rhode Island embarked on a three-year scientific study, to be completed in August, of all waters within 30 miles of its coast. It has spent more than $8 million on research into bird migration patterns, wildlife habitats, fish distribution, fishermen's needs and areas that might be of cultural importance to Indian tribes.

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Climate Change Computer Models Under Attack

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

... The computer models used to predict climate change are far more sophisticated than the ones that forecast the weather, elections or sporting results. They are multilayered programs in which scientists try to replicate the physics behind things such as rainfall, ocean currents and the melting of sea ice. Then, they try to estimate how emissions from smokestacks and auto tailpipes might alter those patterns in the future, as the effects of warmer temperatures echo through these complex and interrelated systems.

To check these programs' accuracy, scientists plug in data from previous years to see if the model's predictions match what really happened. But these models still have the same caveat as other computer-generated futures. They are man-made, so their results are shaped by human judgment.

This year, critics have harped on that fact, attacking models of climate change that have been used to illustrate what will happen if the United States and other countries do nothing to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Climate scientists have responded that their models are imperfect, but still provide invaluable glimpses of change to come.

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New Studies Eat Into Diet Math

from the Wall Street Journal

How many calories must a dieter cut to lose a pound? The answer most dietitians have long provided is 3,500. But recent studies indicate that calories can't be converted into weight through a simple formula.

The result is that the 3,500-calorie rule of thumb gets things very wrong over the long term, and has led health analysts astray. Much bigger dietary changes are needed to gain or shed pounds than the formula suggests. Consider the chocolate-chip-cookie fan who adds one 60-calorie cookie to his daily diet. By the old math, that cookie would add up to six pounds in a year, 60 pounds in a decade and hundreds of pounds in a lifetime.

But new research--based on studies of volunteers whose calorie consumption is observed in laboratory settings, rather than often-unreliable food diaries--suggests that the body's self-regulatory mechanisms tamp down the effects of changes in diet or behavior. If the new nutritional science is applied, the cookie fiend probably will see his weight gain approach six pounds, and then level off ...

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Weak Economy Fuels Assault on California Climate Law

from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

SACRAMENTO (Associated Press) -- Four years ago, California earned accolades for adopting a law that would slash its greenhouse gas emissions and serve as a model for national climate change legislation.

With the state mired in a crippling recession, the law that once looked like a landmark achievement is coming under assault. The regulatory effort Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger set in motion is facing a political backlash and could come to an abrupt halt in the months ahead.

A coalition of businesses, financed largely by three Texas oil companies, is funding a ballot petition that would delay the law until California's current unemployment rate is cut by more than half. The leading Republican gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman, has vowed she would suspend the law on her first day in office, which she would have the authority to do.

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Study: Breast-Feeding Would Save Lives, Money

from USA Today

CHICAGO (Associated Press) -- The lives of nearly 900 babies would be saved each year, along with billions of dollars, if 90% of U.S. women breast-fed their babies for the first six months of life, a cost analysis says.

Those startling results, published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics, are only an estimate. But several experts who reviewed the analysis said the methods and conclusions seem sound. "The health care system has got to be aware that breast-feeding makes a profound difference," said Dr. Ruth Lawrence, who heads the American Academy of Pediatrics' breast-feeding section.

The findings suggest that there are hundreds of deaths and many more costly illnesses each year from health problems that breast-feeding may help prevent. These include stomach viruses, ear infections, asthma, juvenile diabetes, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and even childhood leukemia.

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Rare "Supertaskers" Can Juggle Driving, Cell Phones

from National Geographic News

People with superhuman powers walk among us--or at least drive among us, scientists say. Numerous studies have shown that the vast majority of people can't drive well while distracted, such as when talking on a cell phone.

A new study supports those findings, but it also uncovered a rare group of people who perform as well or better when multitasking. About 1 in 40 people are "supertaskers," the study found. The discovery may open the door to a slew of new research into how the brain handles multiple streams of information.

The existence of supertaskers "does seem to violate traditional cognitive theory," which says that the human brain can actively pay attention to just one task at a time, said study co-author Jason Watson, a University of Utah psychologist.

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Insulin-Producing Cells Can Renegerate in Diabetic Mice

from Science News

Replacements for some diabetics' missing insulin-producing cells might be found in the patients' own pancreases, a new study in mice suggests.

Alpha cells in the pancreas can spontaneously transform into insulin-producing beta cells, researchers from the University of Geneva in Switzerland report online in Nature April 4. The study, done in mice, is the first to reveal the pancreas's ability to regenerate missing cells.

Scientists were surprised to find that new beta cells arose from alpha cells in the pancreas, rather than stem cells. If the discovery translates to people, scientists may one day be able to coax type 1 diabetics' own alpha cells into replacing insulin-producing cells. Type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes, results when the immune system destroys beta cells in the pancreas.

http://snipr.com/vafip


Explosive Silicon Gas Casts Shadow on Solar Power

from Scientific American

In 2007, outside Bangalore, India, an explosion decapitated an industrial worker, hurling his body through a brick wall. In 2005 a routine procedure at a manufacturing plant in Taiwan caused a spontaneous explosion that killed a worker and ignited a blaze that ripped through the factory, shutting down production for three months.

Both incidents shared a common cause--silane, a gas made up of silicon and hydrogen that explodes on contact with air. And both incidents occurred in the same industry--solar power.

Among other environmental black marks, the process of manufacturing photovoltaic (PV) cells from silicon relies on this dangerous pyrophoric gas. As the industry gears up to meet growing demand--6.4 gigawatts of new photovoltaic installations were built worldwide in 2009 according to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association, the bulk of it silicon solar cells--what are the human health and environmental concerns related to solar power?

http://snipr.com/vafiy


NSF Study Looks at Who Does Interdisciplinary Research

from ScienceNOW Daily News

U.S. graduate students in the agricultural sciences are more likely than those in other fields to carry out interdisciplinary research, according to a first-ever analysis of the issue by the National Science Foundation. And the Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads the nation in the percentage of its doctoral students whose dissertations involve more than one discipline.

But beyond that, it's not clear what the data say about this important subject. It's an article of faith among science policymakers that interdisciplinary research is essential to address society's most pressing technological challenges, from energy independence to improved health care. But don't ask them to measure it.

The National Academies' upcoming assessment of doctoral research programs, for example, asked departments what percentage of their faculty members were associated with other programs. But the data "aren't very satisfactory," says Charlotte Kuh, study director. Part of the problem is the fuzzy definition of an interdisciplinary program, she adds.

http://snipr.com/vafjb

[Elder Iptuous]

oh, gawd....
i hope the term 'supertasker' isn't bandied about by the media much, 'cause that's the kind of bzz word that would catch.
every asshole with a blackberry would then consider themselves a 'supertasker' once there's a label the grab onto... 

also, just another thanks for providing this service, Kai! 

[Triple Zero]

Hey Kai, please ignore this if it's too much trouble. But could you perhaps make the titles of the articles bold again (in future posts) like you sometimes used to? I love reading these links, but having bolded titles would allow me to scan for items of interest much quicker.

[Kai]

I have been more or less copypasting these recently, because I haven't had the time to really edit them the way I should.

[Triple Zero]

Fair enough hey, I got an editor with regular expressions, which would make adding [ b ] tags a simple search/replace action, with your permission I could do an edit.

[Kai]

Permission granted.

[Telarus]

http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/04/10/0519202/The-Fruit-Fly-Drosophila-Gets-a-New-Name
G3ckoG33k writes: "The name of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster will change to Sophophora melangaster. The reason is that scientists have by now discovered some 2,000 species of the genus and it is becoming unmanageably large. Unfortunately, the 'type species' (the reference point of the genus), Drosophila funebris is rather unrelated to the D. melanogaster, and ends up in a distant part of the relationship tree. However, geneticists have, according to Google Scholar, more than 300,000 scientific articles describing innumerable aspects of the species, and will have to learn the new name as well as remembering the old. As expected, the name change has created an emotional (and practical) stir all over media. While name changes are frequent in science, as they describe new knowledge about relationships between species, these changes rarely hit economically relevant species, and when they do, people get upset."


http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/04/09/232219/Completely-Farm-Bred-Unagi-a-World-First
JoshuaInNippon writes: "Japanese scientists at the National Research Institute of Aquaculture, Fisheries Research Agency have reported that they successfully completed an artificial cultivation cycle for unagi, or eel — a world first. Unagi is a traditional delicacy in Japan, and can commonly be found in baked form at sushi restaurants. The fish has long been caught either matured, or still young and then fattened on farms. Sadly, as a result, natural stocks of unagi have plummeted in recent years. However, the research news indicates a future method to completely farm breed the tasty creature in mass quantity. Good news for sushi lovers, Japanese businesses, and wild eel alike."


http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/04/08/2111236/Wake-Forest-Researchers-Swap-Skin-Grafts-For-Cell-Spraying
TigerWolf2 writes with this excerpt from a Reuters story carried by Yahoo: "Inspired by a standard office inkjet printer, US researchers have rigged up a device that can spray skin cells directly onto burn victims, quickly protecting and healing their wounds as an alternative to skin grafts. ... Tests on mice showed the spray system, called bioprinting, could heal wounds quickly and safely, the researchers reported at the Translational Regenerative Medicine Forum."


http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/04/10/1440243/Underwater-Robot-Powered-By-Oceans-Thermal-Energy
separsons writes: "A team of scientists recently created the world's first underwater robotic vehicle powered entirely by renewable, ocean thermal energy. Researchers from NASA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the US Navy developed Sounding Oceanographic Lagrangrian Observer Thermal RECharging (SOLO-TREC), an autonomous robot that runs on a thermal recharging engine. The engine derives power from the natural temperature differences found at varying ocean depths. SOLO-TREC produces about 1.7 watts of power each dive, enough to juice the robot's science instruments, GPS receiver, communication device and buoyancy control pump. SOLO-TREC is poised to revolutionize ocean monitoring; previous robots could only spend a limited amount of time underwater because of depleting power sources. SOLO-TREC can stay beneath the surface of the waves for indefinite amounts of time. Based on SOLO-TREC's success, NASA and the US Navy plan to incorporate thermal recharging engines in next-generation submersibles."

[Telarus]

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/04/12/1944254/Crowdsourcing-the-Department-of-Public-Works
blackbearnh writes: "Usually, Gov 2.0 deals mainly with outward transparency of government to the citizens. But SeeClickFix is trying to drive data in the other direction, letting citizens report and track neighborhood problems as mundane as potholes, and as serious as drug dealers. In a recent interview, co-founder Jeff Blasius talked about how cities such as New Haven and Tucson are using SeeClickFix to involve their citizens in identifying and fixing problems with city infrastructure. 'We have thousands of potholes fixed across the country, thousands of pieces of graffiti repaired, streetlights turned on, catch basins cleared, all of that basic, broken-windows kind of stuff. We've seen neighborhood groups form based around issues reported on the site. We've seen people get new streetlights for their neighborhood, pedestrian improvements in many different cities, and all-terrain vehicles taken off of city streets. There was also one case of an arrest. The New Haven Police Department attributed initial reports on SeeClickFix to a sting operation that led to an arrest of two drug dealers selling heroin in front of a grammar school.'"


http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/04/12/158232/Woman-Creates-3-D-Erotic-Book-For-the-Blind
Lisa J. Murphy has written an erotic book with tactile images for that special visually impaired porn connoisseur in your life. Tactile Mind contains explicit softcore raised images, along with Braille text and photos. From the article: "A photographer with a certificate in Tactile Graphics from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Murphy learned to create touchable images of animals for books for visually impaired children. Then she realized that there was a lack of such books for adults only. 'There are no books of tactile pictures of nudes for adults, at least the last time I looked around,' says Murphy. 'We're breaking new ground. Playboy has [an edition with] Braille wording, but there are no pictures.' She says that while we live in a culture saturated with sexual images, the blind have been 'left out.'"


http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/04/11/0031221/VisLab-Sponsors-Milan-to-Shanghai-Driverless-Trek
incuso writes: "VisLab announced the most advanced challenge so far ever organized for autonomous vehicles. Two driverless electric cars will perform a trip from Italy to China to demonstrate the feasibility of autonomous driving in real traffic conditions. Each vehicle will be equipped with five laser scanners, seven cameras, GPS, inertial measurement unit, three Linux PCs, and an x-by-wire driving system. The mission will start on July 10 in Milan, Italy, and will reach Shanghai, China, on October 10 (10/10/10) on a 13,000 km route though Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, and finally China."


http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/04/11/0012244/Scientists-Turn-T-Shirts-Into-Body-Armor
separsons writes: "Scientists at the University of South Carolina recently transformed ordinary T-shirts into bulletproof armor. By splicing cotton with boron, the third hardest material on the planet, scientists created a shirt that was super elastic but also strong enough to deflect bullets. Xiaodong Li, lead researcher on the project, says the same tech may eventually be used to create lightweight, fuel-efficient cars and aircrafts."

[Kai]

http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/04/10/0519202/The-Fruit-Fly-Drosophila-Gets-a-New-Name
G3ckoG33k writes: "The name of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster will change to Sophophora melangaster. The reason is that scientists have by now discovered some 2,000 species of the genus and it is becoming unmanageably large. Unfortunately, the 'type species' (the reference point of the genus), Drosophila funebris is rather unrelated to the D. melanogaster, and ends up in a distant part of the relationship tree. However, geneticists have, according to Google Scholar, more than 300,000 scientific articles describing innumerable aspects of the species, and will have to learn the new name as well as remembering the old. As expected, the name change has created an emotional (and practical) stir all over media. While name changes are frequent in science, as they describe new knowledge about relationships between species, these changes rarely hit economically relevant species, and when they do, people get upset."

This is actually a HUGE story. Let me explain.

When one of the ranks covered by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) is named, a type species has to be fixed to that rank. So, for superfamily, family, subfamily, tribe, genus and subgenus (I think I got them all?), a species must be fixed to that name upon it's original description. That name is now fixed to that species; if  reclassification demands a changing of combinations at any of those levels, the type species MUST stay with it's original groupings.

In that sense, when the Subgenus Drosophila (Genus Drosophila) was first described, it was fixed to the type D. funebris. That means that if species are added or removed from Genus Drosophila due to new phylogenetic evidence, or if the ranks of subgenus are raised to genus level, /it must stay with Drosophila.

However, the model species D. melanogaster isn't in the subgenus Drosophila. It's in the subgenus Sophophora, though not fixed to it.

And the International Council of Zoological Nomenclature decided against unfixing D. funebris as the type, for various reasons.

So, the options:

1. Keep the Genus Drosophila at an unimaginably unmanagable size of 2000+ species.
2. Elevate the subgenera to genus level, changing D. melanogaster to S. melanogaster. It will upset a whole bunch of molecular biologists, but it will be far more stable within systematics (a whole bunch of name changes and confusion) and keep monophyletic, natural  groupings of species.
3. Say to hell with the ICZN, lets do whatever we want.
4. Or worse, screw the ICZN all together, and use Phylocode.

This is the first time, as far as I know, when the Council had any real political implications in its decisions. This could get interesting.

On the other hand, it's as weird as the uproar of Pluto not being a planet. 

[Telarus]

I knew you'd have some insight on that. Thanks Kai.

[Kai]

The red queen hypothesis is that you have to be constantly running in order to stay where you are, evolutionarily, since everything else is doing the same.

Sex is better explained by the benefit of recombination versus the detriment of mutation in fission reproduction. The more complex the systems of an organism, the more likely a single mutation will throw things to bits. Recombination leads to less likelyhood of lethal mutations, since one of the copies is likely not to have that mutation.

[Jasper]

I love the DNAs.  I love how monomaniacally pragmatic they are. 

Thanks for keeping WSH alive, Kai!