Journey Toward The Center Of The Earth: One-of-a-kind Microorganism Lives All Alone

The first ecosystem with only a single biological species has been discovered and its genome analyzed by a multi-institutional and multidisciplinary team. Living 2.8 km beneath the surface of the earth in the Mponeng gold mine near Johannesburg, South Africa, the rod-shaped bacterium Desulforudis audaxviator exists in complete isolation, total darkness, a lack of oxygen, and 60-degree-Celsius heat.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 6:00 pm

Species Extinction By Asteroid A Rarity

New research argues in favor of a "sick earth" mechanism for most extinctions, rather than external event like an asteroid strike.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 6:00 pm

How Effective Are Probiotics In Irritable Bowel Syndrome?

Several new studies highlight the safety and efficacy of probiotics in improving symptoms and normalizing bowel movement frequency in patients suffering from constipation or diarrhea related to Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 6:00 pm

Baked Slug: New Method To Test Fireproofing Material

Researchers have developed a technique for measuring a key thermal property of fire-resistive materials at high temperatures. The measurement technique has already been adopted commercially and incorporated into a national standard.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 6:00 pm

Wielding Microbe Against Microbe, Beetle Defends Its Food Source

As the southern pine beetle moves through the forest boring tunnels inside the bark of trees, it brings with it both a helper and a competitor. The helper is a fungus that the insect plants inside the tunnels as food for its young. But also riding along is a tiny, hitchhiking mite, which likewise carries a fungus for feeding its own larvae.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 6:00 pm

New Light On Link Between Snoring And Cognitive Deficits In Children

About two-thirds of children with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) -- snoring or obstructive sleep apnea -- have some degree of cognitive deficit, but the severity of the cognitive deficit has been notoriously difficult to correlate to the severity of the SDB, suggesting that other important issues may be at play, or that the right factors were simply not being measured.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 6:00 pm

Do Lie Detectors Work?

Polygraphs don't actually out a liar.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Oct 2008 | 3:42 pm

Creation Museum Claims Big Crowds

Year and a half after opening, Creation Museum claims to draw crowds.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Oct 2008 | 3:31 pm

Diversity Of Plant-eating Fishes May Be Key To Recovery Of Coral Reefs

A report scheduled to be published this week in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that maintaining the proper balance of herbivorous fishes may be critical to restoring coral reefs, which are declining dramatically worldwide.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

Promising New Material Could Improve Gas Mileage

With gasoline at high prices, it's disheartening to know that up to three-quarters of the potential energy you are paying for is wasted. Now researchers have identified a promising new material that could transform a technology that currently cools and heats car seats -- thermoelectrics -- into one that also efficiently converts waste heat into electricity to help power the car and improve gas mileage.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

How Fatty Foods Curb Hunger

Fatty foods may not be the healthiest diet choice, but those rich in unsaturated fats -- such as avocados, nuts and olive oil -- have been found to play a pivotal role in sending this important message to your brain: stop eating, you're full.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

New Screening Technologies Improve Detection Of Polyps During Colonoscopy

Two new studies highlight new technologies with the potential to improve the detection of colorectal polyps and flat lesions during colonoscopy.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

Stress and Suicide in Hard Times: How People Really React (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - The economy is in bad shape, as the pundits have coined it, "from Wall Street to Main Street." Anyone following the news has some idea of what that may mean for their retirement savings and home loans, but what about the less obvious effects of social and economic hardship?
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 2:55 pm

Gaming Mogul to Blast Off on Russian Rocket

A son of a U.S. astronaut and a video game mogul is slated to blast off to the space.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Oct 2008 | 2:34 pm

US trade gap shrinks to $59.1 billion (AFP)

AFP - The US trade deficit fell 3.5 percent in August to 59.1 billion dollars amid a drop in imports and weaker oil prices, government data showed Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 2:30 pm

Stress and Suicide in Hard Times: How People Really React

Suicide does not go up in hard times. But people stress out and eat badly.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Oct 2008 | 2:05 pm

Polygraphs Proposed for Ind. Congressional Debate

Two Ind. congressional candidates have agreed to be hooked up to lie detectors.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Oct 2008 | 1:47 pm

British mother, teenage daughter drown in Spanish floods (AFP)

AFP - A British woman and her 14-year-old daughter have drowned in a flash flood in eastern Spain which has been lashed by torrential rains, officials said on Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 1:27 pm

Animals Have Personalities, Too (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - We know our siblings and in-laws have personalities - sometimes to a fault. But science recently has revealed that such individual differences are widespread in the animal kingdom, even reaching to spiders, birds, mice, squid, rats and pigs.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 1:25 pm

Where Have All the Little Plutos Gone?

The far corners of our solar system may be surprisingly sparse, research shows.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Oct 2008 | 1:23 pm

Spacecraft moved to launch pad ahead of ISS flight (AP)

AP - Friends and family of the world's next space tourist — including his astronaut father — watched Friday as the rocket for the voyage was placed on a launch pad in Kazakhstan for its weekend takeoff to the International Space Station.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 1:17 pm

Second 'Virgin Birth' Documented in Shark

A female shark becomes pregnant without a male in a second documented case.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Oct 2008 | 1:15 pm

Animals Have Personalities, Too

Model shows why wild animals have personalities.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Oct 2008 | 1:12 pm

Unlocking the Secrets of Atomic Nuclei

Smashing atoms and ciphering the spray of particles can reveal the cosmic origins of elements.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Oct 2008 | 1:07 pm

Making waves

Idea of seeding seas with iron splits wildlife summit
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Oct 2008 | 12:11 pm

Hydrogen centre 'first in the UK'

A hydrogen energy research centre, described as the first of its kind in the UK, opens near Swansea, Wales.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Oct 2008 | 11:22 am

Sky Search: How to Find Neptune

Neptune is much too faint to be perceived without any optical aid.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Oct 2008 | 10:32 am

Former Astronaut's Son Set for Space Tourist Trek

Richard Garriott, son of a former NASA astronaut, is ready to make his own space trek.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Oct 2008 | 10:32 am

Scientists: Virginia shark's pup a 'virgin birth' (AP)

AP - Scientists have confirmed the second case of a "virgin birth" in a shark.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 10:30 am

Call to maintain climate targets

Ed Miliband, the new energy and climate secretary, urges Europe's leaders to stick to climate change targets.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Oct 2008 | 8:41 am

Western group petitions for species protection (AP)

AP - A tortoise, a hare, a mouse and a half-dozen mussels are some of the creatures that a conservation group hopes to save through a "Western Ark" project aimed at petitioning the government for federal protection.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 7:53 am

Virgin shark got pregnant in Virginia aquarium

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists using DNA testing have confirmed the second-known instance of "virgin birth" in a shark -- a female Atlantic blacktip shark named Tidbit that produced a baby without a male shark.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 5:15 am

Shark Pregnant, No Males Required

Biologists confirm a female shark got pregnant without mating with a male.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Oct 2008 | 4:06 am

Tropical species also threatened by climate change (AP)

AP - If you can't stand global warming, get out of the tropics. While the most significant harm from climate change so far has been in the polar regions, tropical plants and animals may face an even greater threat, say scientists who studied conditions in Costa Rica.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Oct 2008 | 1:01 am

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'

The global economy loses more money from deforestation than the current banking crisis, says an EU-commissioned report.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Oct 2008 | 12:23 am

Gut 'tasting' could beat poisons

The gut may have receptors that shut down appetite when bitter substances are detected, a study suggests.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Oct 2008 | 12:01 am

Charles Arthur: The difficult decision that would change our son's life

Charles Arthur: Two years ago, at 14 months, our son Lachlan had an operation to give him a cochlear implant
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 9 Oct 2008 | 11:05 pm

The Einstein Letters

Extract from some of Albert Einstein's letters that are up for auction
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 9 Oct 2008 | 11:05 pm

Warm welcome for house powered by hydrogen fuel cell

House in Lye, near Stourbridge, will be opened as the first of its kind connected to the national grid
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 9 Oct 2008 | 11:03 pm

Rebecca Atkinson: I wouldn't have minded if my baby had been born deaf, but the embryology bill suggests I should

Rebecca Atkinson: Deaf, like black, is not just a description of a physical attribute, but an expression of pride, belonging and cultural identity
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 9 Oct 2008 | 11:02 pm

Biogen discontinues experimental arthritis drug (Reuters)

Reuters - Biogen Idec Inc said on Thursday it will discontinue development of baminercept as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis after the experimental drug failed to prove effective in a mid-stage trial.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Oct 2008 | 11:02 pm

Meteor Explodes Over Sudan — Right On Schedule

An explosion equal to more than a kiloton of TNT rocked the sky over a remote part of northern Sudan late Monday night, ending a 20-hour scramble to track the first Earth impacting meteoroid to be discovered before impact.

Though the meteoroid was not expected to reach Earth's surface, the astronomers' goal was to refine the trajectory and predict where the automobile-sized rock was headed to test their ability to track potentially dangerous asteroids in the future.

There are three reported "sightings" of the resulting fireball so far: The first was from a weather satellite over Europe and Africa that imaged the fireball as a cluster of pixels; The second was a seismometer in Kenya that picked up the kiloton blast; And the third was a KLM pilot who saw the streak of light from 750 nautical miles away. On the map above, the plane is marked by the cross and the asteroid by the circle.

The space rock graciously targeted a very rural part of the world, allowing its gigantic fireball to serve as a warning to keep an eye on the sky. It also proved to be a good dry run for scientists to see how quickly they could coordinate observations and calculate trajectories. The real question is, if it had been bigger (in which case we might have had a few days more warning), and headed towards a major city, what could we have done?

This is the very scenario Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart has been asking the world to address. The time to make an emergency plan is not after you know where it is going to hit. Then only the impacted country will be concerned about it, and there might not be much they can do on their own. However if we come up with a global plan ahead of time, it could end up coming to the aid of my country just as well as yours.

Asteroid Impact [Space Weather.com]

See Also:

• Meteor Predicted to Hit Earth's Atmosphere Tonight
• Nukes Are Not the Best Way to Stop an Asteroid
• Ex-Astronauts Loney Mission: Save Earth from Asteroid Strike

Image courtesy Jacob Kuiper and Meteosat 7

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 9 Oct 2008 | 11:01 pm

Minister wants astronaut 'icon'

The UK's new science minister says he wants a British astronaut in space because that individual would inspire youngsters.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Oct 2008 | 11:00 pm

Georgia villages "torched," satellite study shows

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hundreds of houses in ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia were torched in August, after Russian troops took control of the area, according to an analysis of satellite images released on Thursday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 9 Oct 2008 | 10:14 pm

Volcano in lab may help predict real eruptions

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have recreated conditions found in an erupting volcano in the laboratory, offering a new way to understand and forecast future damaging eruptions.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 9 Oct 2008 | 10:03 pm

New method generates stem cells safely from mice

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japanese researchers who invented a way to make powerful stem cells out of ordinary cells say they have now found a safer way to do it.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 9 Oct 2008 | 9:42 pm

Flying Cars

Paul Moller's flying cars look like UFOs or vehicles out of the Jetsons. Moller explains how they work. Credit: Moller Int.
Source: Livescience.com | 9 Oct 2008 | 9:28 pm

Ginkgo extract offers promise to cut stroke damage

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Extract from the leaves of the ginkgo tree offers promise to minimize brain damage caused by a stroke, scientists said on Thursday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 9 Oct 2008 | 8:30 pm

Gecko-like glue is said to be stickiest yet

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A new type of dry glue designed to mimic gecko feet is 10 times stickier than the gravity-defying lizards, and three times stickier than other gecko-inspired glues, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 9 Oct 2008 | 7:47 pm

'Acoustic Smog' Threatening Whales

The underwater cacophony made by large ships is killing whales, say scientists.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 9 Oct 2008 | 7:21 pm

Satellites collect data on sea temperatures, reefs (AP)

AP - Satellites are helping scientists expand a virtual network to watch for increases in ocean temperatures that can damage or kill the fragile ecosystems of coral reefs worldwide.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Oct 2008 | 7:07 pm

Microscope shows first hours of developing embryo

LONDON (Reuters) - A new high-powered microscope has allowed scientists to watch a zebrafish develop from a single cell into an embryo with a beating heart, the first time this has been possible in vertebrates, researchers said on Thursday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 9 Oct 2008 | 6:45 pm

Video of the First 24 Hours of an Embryo's Cells

   

For the first time, it is possible to actually watch the initial 24 hours of the life of an embryo at the cellular level.

With a newly developed microscope that uses a sheet of light to scan a living organism from many different dimensions, scientists were able to track the complex cellular organization of a zebrafish embryo as it grows from a single cell to 20,000 cells.

"Imagine following all inhabitants of a town over the course of one day using a telescope in space," Philipp Keller of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, said in a press release.

"This comes close to tracking the 10 thousands of cells that make up a vertebrate embryo."

Previously, scientists had only been able to piece together the first hours of a couple invertebrate organisms with only a few hundred cells such as a nematode worm -- work that resulted in a Nobel Prize. But doing the same for a vertebrate animal was essentially impossible.

The montage (above) of three-dimensional images taken at 10-minute intervals shows cells dividing and moving around the embryo to form specialized tissues from two different angles. The new research was published today in Science.

"The digital embryo is like Google Earth for embryonic development," Jochen Wittbrodt of the University of Heidelberg said in a release. "It gives an overview of everything that happens in the first 24 hours and allows you to zoom in on all cellular and even subcellular details."

The new technique, called Digital Scanned Laser Light-Sheet Fluorescence  Microscopy, could be used on other animals such as mice, chicken and frogs, which would could help researchers better understand evolution at the cellular scale.

Already, the research has shown that the initial stages of heart development do not happen as scientists thought.

Video: European Molecular Biology Laboratory

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 9 Oct 2008 | 6:40 pm

One-Organism Ecosystem Discovered in African Gold Mine

In the hot, dark water of a South African mine, scientists have found the world's loneliest species.

Everywhere else biologists have studied life on our planet, they've found communities of life, but today, biologists announced they have discovered an ecosystem that contains just a single species of bacteria.

In all other known ecosystems, the key functions of life -- harvesting energy and elements like carbon and nitrogen from the environment -- have been shared among different species. But in the water of the Mponeng gold mine, two miles under the earth's surface, Desulforudis audaxviator carries out all of those functions by itself. In short, it's the tidiest package of life found yet. 

"It is possible to pack everything necessary for maintaining life into one genome," said Dylan Chivian of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

All known life forms need carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and an energy source to live. Plants need nitrogen, but can't just pull it from the atmosphere and start using it to make amino acids. Instead, they rely on archaea for that task. Interconnections like these form the basis of an ecosystem, often cheesily called the 'web of life'.

What makes D. audaxviator so special is that its genome, cobbled together from bacterial and archaeal genes, can carry out all life's functions by itself.

That could make the bug a prime candidate for any attempt to see if Earth's microbes could live in some other extreme environment within the solar system.

"Since it could live on its own on Earth, if it were given a matching habitat elsewhere, it could live," said Chivian. 

Images: 1. Inside a tunnel in the Mponeng mine. Courtesy Anglo Gold. 2. D. audaxviator's genome annotated by Chivian. Courtesy Science.

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter , Google Reader feed and web page; Wired Science on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 9 Oct 2008 | 6:19 pm

Pledge to protect Sumatran forest

Indonesia pledges to stop the loss of forests and species in Sumatra, one of the world's most ecologically important islands.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Oct 2008 | 6:04 pm

Susan Watts blog

The companies offering algae as a universal cure-all
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Oct 2008 | 5:48 pm

Video: Ozone Hole Not Gone Yet

   

Remember the hole in the ozone layer?

On this day back in 2000, the ozone hole got so big that residents of the tip of South America were warned to stay out of the sun. Without the protection from harmful solar radiation that the ozone layer naturally provides, those venturing outside risked getting sunburned in mere minutes of sun exposure, even with temperatures hovering around 70 degrees.

The environmental cause célèbre of the the late 1980s has fallen out of the news over the last couple decades, but the thinning of the ozone layer over Antarctica hasn't abated yet.

In fact, despite aggressive global public policy to limit the pollutants causing the hole — CFCs in hairspray, refrigerants, etc — atmospheric chemists predict the hole won't start measurably shrinking until 2024. That's because there's a lag between when we stop putting out pollutants and when they stop having an effect on the globe.

There's an obvious lesson here for global warming policy and atmospheric carbon dioxide: already, climate scientists say that humans' past CO2 production has basically locked in several degrees of global warming over the next several decades, no matter what policies we enact now. 

Video: The NASA-created video shows the size of the hole: purple areas have the least ozone while green have the most.

See Also:

• Oct. 9, 2000: Ozone Hole Exposes Chilean City

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter , Google Reader feed, and webpage; Wired Science on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 9 Oct 2008 | 5:09 pm

In bloom

A Dutch company cultivates algae for use in biofuel
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Oct 2008 | 4:56 pm

UV light fear over 'green' bulbs

Skin could be damaged by prolonged, close-up exposure to low-energy bulbs, health experts have warned.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Oct 2008 | 4:53 pm

Health officials issue warning over common energy-saving lightbulbs

Health officials have issued a warning over common energy-saving lightbulbs after research showed some types could potentially harm the skin and may even raise the risk of cancer
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 9 Oct 2008 | 4:13 pm

What Good Is Your Genome, Really?

So you know your genome. Now what are you going to do?

That’s the question a new study underway at the Scripps Translational Science Institute hopes to answer. Scripps will sign up 10,000 employees and their families for genomic tests from Navigenics, the personal genomics company, and track the lifestyle and health-related decisions they make over 20 years. Will knowing that they have a predisposition for, say, heart disease compel them to eat better or exercise more? Or will it burden them with fate? Such questions strike at the heart of the controversy over personal genomics, and Scripps’ will be the first extensive attempt to answer them.

The study, which Scripps investigator Eric Topol estimates will cost $20 million to get running over the next few years, will be funded by Microsoft (patients will use Microsoft’s Health Vault system to track their medical histories), Affymetrix (which will scan the 1.8 million markers for each patient), and Navigenics (which will interpret the scans and provide genetic counseling). Scripps will have all rights to publishing the study results and will make independent assessments of the results.

Topol says the Institute will be able to not only track the study prospectively, but will also be able to study possible genomic associations between the patients’ medical histories and their genomes. And while he acknowledges that there is some concern that genetic variations the scan will track, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs, are an incomplete measure of our genome, “it’s all we have right now. This is as good as we have.”

Topol says that once the 10,000 subjects have been scanned, the study will make assessments after three months, and then annually, to determine whether knowing their potential risks for disease spurs any significant changes in behavior. This is the great unknown promise of personal genomics, but it’s largely untested whether the information does have any individual consequences. “Is this actionable information?” asks Topol.  “Does it lead to good decisions, or to adverse things? The consensus is that this needs to be studied.”

Image: The Human Genome in book form. Credit: flickr/several_bees

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 9 Oct 2008 | 3:03 pm

Bug-Powered Fuel Cells Could Run on Waste

Bacteria that break down cellulose and other waste are outfitting fuel cell prototypes.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 9 Oct 2008 | 2:47 pm