Science Headlines for August 9, 2008

Diet And Autism Research Focuses On Which Foods May Affect Autistic Behavior

Can autism be "cured" with diet? Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston embark on a double-blind study to find out if wheat and dairy products can affect autistic behavior, as some parents believe.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Aug 2008 | 12:00 am

Organic Food Has No More Nutritional Value Than Food Grown With Pesticides, Study Shows

New research in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture shows there is no evidence to support the argument that organic food is better than food grown with the use of pesticides and chemicals. The study looked at the following crops – carrots, kale, mature peas, apples and potatoes – staple ingredients that can be found in most families’ shopping list.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Aug 2008 | 12:00 am

How Whales And Other Marine Mammals React To Sonar

Marine biologists have just completed a pioneering research effort in Hawaii to measure the biology and behavior of some of the most poorly understood whales on Earth. During the study, for the first time, scientists attached listening and movement sensors on marine mammals around realistic military operations.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Aug 2008 | 12:00 am

People With Heart Disease Still Have Trouble Controlling Blood Lipid Levels

Despite some improvements to lower "bad" cholesterol levels, people with cardiovascular diseases still need to do a better job controlling overall blood lipid levels.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Aug 2008 | 12:00 am

Spiders Who Eat Together, Stay Together -- And Form Enormous Colony Sizes

The ability to work together and capture larger prey has allowed social spiders to stretch the laws of nature and reach enormous colony sizes, zoologists have found.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Aug 2008 | 12:00 am

Global Warming Forecasts Not Taking Into Account Nanoscale Atmospheric Aerosols

Researchers say brown carbons -- a nanoscale atmospheric aerosol species -- are being overlooked when scientists put together computer models for climate studies. They have developed a new technique to precisely determine optical properties of brown carbon nanoparticles over the entire visible light, ultraviolet and infrared spectrums. The method promises to provide more accurate prediction of climate change, including global warming.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Aug 2008 | 12:00 am

Putting MicroRNAs On The Stem Cell Map

Short snippets of RNA called microRNAs help to keep embryonic stem cells in their stem cell state. Researchers now have discovered the gene circuitry that controls microRNAs in embryonic stem cells. Mapping the control circuitry of stem cells reveals how they maintain themselves or decide to differentiate, providing key clues for regenerative medicine and reprogramming of adult cells to a stem cell state. These maps also aid our understanding of human development and diseases such as cancer.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Aug 2008 | 6:00 pm

Quantum Chaos Unveiled?

Scientists are shedding light on an important, unsolved physics problem: the relationship between chaos theory -- which is based on 300-year-old Newtonian physics -- and the modern theory of quantum mechanics. The study demonstrated a fundamental new property -- what appears to be chaotic behavior in a quantum system -- in the magnetic "spins" within the nuclei or centers of atoms of frozen xenon.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Aug 2008 | 6:00 pm

If Your First Cigarette Gave You A Buzz And You Now Smoke, A Gene May Be To Blame

Anyone who has ever tried smoking probably remembers that first cigarette vividly. Now, a new study links those first experiences with smoking, and the likelihood that a person is currently a smoker, to a particular genetic variation. The finding may help explain the path that leads from that first cigarette to lifelong smoking.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Aug 2008 | 6:00 pm

Trigger For Brain Plasticity Identified: Signal Comes, Surprisingly, From Outside The Brain

Researchers have long sought a factor that can trigger the brain's ability to learn -- recapturing the "sponge-like" quality of childhood. Called Otx2, it causes a key type of cell in the cortex to mature, initiating a critical period -- a window of heightened brain plasticity, when the brain can readily make new connections
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Aug 2008 | 6:00 pm

Eat kangaroo to 'save the planet'

Switching from beef to kangaroo burgers could significantly help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, an Australian scientist says.
Source: BBC News | Science/Nature | UK Edition | 9 Aug 2008 | 11:44 am

Bolivia, Shell reach agreement in nationalization (AP)

AP - Bolivia has reached an agreement in principle to purchase the local operations of energy company Royal Dutch Shell PLC as part of President Evo Morales' nationalization push.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Aug 2008 | 3:37 am

Barbadians slam discovery, naming of tiny snake (AP)

AP - A small snake has sparked a big debate in Barbados. Residents of the wealthy Caribbean nation have been heating up blogs and clogging radio airwaves to vent their anger at a U.S. scientist, who earlier this week announced his "discovery" of the world's smallest snake and named it "Leptotyphlops carlae," after his wife Carla.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Aug 2008 | 1:24 am

Bad Science: Silly season, silly machine

Ben Goldacre: What is the mysterious QXCI machine?
Source: guardian.co.uk Science | 8 Aug 2008 | 11:07 pm

Editorial: In praise of ... Neanderthals

Editorial: 'Primitive, uncivilized, loutish' is how the Oxford English Dictionary puts it
Source: guardian.co.uk Science | 8 Aug 2008 | 11:07 pm

Romanians find 2.5m-year-old skeleton

Miners unearth 2.5m-year-old mastodon, believed to be one of the best preserved in Europe
Source: guardian.co.uk Science | 8 Aug 2008 | 11:04 pm

Researchers study mercury in the Great Salt Lake (AP)

AP - The Great Salt Lake is so briny that swimmers bob in the water like corks. It is teeming with tiny shrimp that were sold for years in the back of comic books as magical "sea monkeys." And, for reasons scientists cannot explain, it is heavily laden with toxic mercury.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Aug 2008 | 10:02 pm

Gigapan: Turn Photos into High-Res Zoomable Panoramas

Gigapan allows users to stitch photos from their digital cameras into zoomable, high-resolution panoramas.
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Aug 2008 | 9:47 pm

Breast-Feeding: The Stress Buster That Lasts for Years

Researchers say mothers milk makes for even-keeled kids
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Aug 2008 | 9:12 pm

Group promotes New Orleans anthem (AP)

AP - Kevin Molony was listening to a version of the old spiritual "I Shall Not Be Moved," when it struck him as the perfect anthem for New Orleans residents still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Aug 2008 | 8:20 pm

Not just guns: Gazans smuggle lions into zoo (AP)

AP - The monkeys and lions were drugged, tossed into cloth sacks and dragged through smuggling tunnels under the border between Egypt and the besieged Gaza Strip before ending up in a dusty Gaza zoo. Stocked almost entirely with smuggled animals, the "Heaven of Birds and Animals Zoo" is a sign of Gaza's ever-expanding tunnel industry.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Aug 2008 | 8:12 pm

2.5 Million-Year-Old Mastodon Unearthed in Romania

Miners stumbled upon the remains of this mammoth-like animal.
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Aug 2008 | 8:11 pm

Study examines bluetongue spread

Scientists look at how bluetongue is spread by studying the movements and biting habits of midges that transmit the virus.
Source: BBC News | Science/Nature | UK Edition | 8 Aug 2008 | 6:37 pm

Bees, Fish Analyzed to Understand Serial Killers

Bee behavior may hold the secret to catching serial killers, say researchers.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Aug 2008 | 5:48 pm

Intact Mastodon Skeleton Unearthed in Romania

Miners stumble upon the skeleton of a 2.5 million-year-old mastodon in Romania.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Aug 2008 | 5:48 pm

Fingerprints Now Used to Find Drugs, Explosives

Scientists develop ways to get more than identity from fingerprints.
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Aug 2008 | 5:04 pm

The Reason More of Today's Scientists Hire Armed Guards (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - When Charles Darwin boarded the H.M.S. Beagle in 1831 as the ship's naturalist, he had only one challenge - to keep himself entertained for the next five years. His scientific assignment was to collect anything that crawled, swam or flew, and to keep track of all sorts of biological measures such as water temperature and currents. But really, boredom was the big problem.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Aug 2008 | 4:40 pm

Gene Variant May Decide Who Smokes and for How Long

Smokers were 8 times more likely than never-smokers to report 'buzz' with first cigarette
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Aug 2008 | 4:19 pm

Pilots' reports on low fuel (AP)

AP - The Aviation Safety Reporting System a database maintained by NASA has reports from pilots expressing safety concerns about airline directives pressuring them to fly with uncomfortably low fuel levels. NASA deletes names and other identifying information to encourage pilots, flight crews, dispatchers and others to identify safety problems, including their own mistakes.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Aug 2008 | 4:18 pm

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