Science Headlines for October 13, 2008

Millisecond Brain Signals Predict Response To Fast-acting Antidepressant

Images of the brain's fastest signals reveal an electromagnetic marker that predicts a patient's response to a fast-acting antidepressant. Such use of a brain scanner could someday minimize trial-and-error prescribing and speed delivery of care, say researchers. Depressed patients showed increased activity in a mood-regulating hub near the front of the brain while viewing flashing frightful faces -- the more the increase, the better their response to an experimental fast-acting medication called ketamine.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

Tumor Formation In Stem Cells Linked to Mitochondria

Researchers report on a previously unknown relationship between stem cell potency and the metabolic rate of their mitochondria -- a cell's energy makers. Stem cells with more active mitochondria also have a greater capacity to differentiate and are more likely to form tumors.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

Nerve Stimulation Therapy Alleviates Pain For Chronic Headache

A novel therapy using a miniature nerve stimulator instead of medication for the treatment of profoundly disabling headache disorders improved the experience of pain by 80-95 percent, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

New Robotic Repair System Will Fix Ailing Satellites

Researchers are developing a new robotic system to service more than 8,000 satellites now orbiting the Earth, beyond the flight range of ground-based repair operations. Currently, when the high-flying celestial objects malfunction -- or simply run out of fuel -- they become "space junk" cluttering the cosmos.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

Climate Change To Devastate Or Destroy Many Penguin Colonies

Half to three-quarters of major Antarctic penguin colonies face decline or disappearance if global temperatures are allowed to climb by more than 2°C.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

American Culture Derails Girl Math Whizzes, Study Finds

A culture of neglect and, at some age levels, outright social ostracism, is derailing a generation of students, especially girls, deemed the very best in mathematics, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

Ozone Pollution to Worsen Under Climate Change

Surface-level ozone is likely to increase as the planet warms, say researchers.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Oct 2008 | 2:19 pm

AIDS vaccine focus shifts after disappointments

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A global AIDS vaccine conference this week will seek fresh strategies against the HIV virus, with experts weighing the value of basic laboratory research against large-scale human clinical trials after a string of disappointments.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 1:31 pm

Helmet to Convey Messages by Thought, Alone

The U.S. Army is developing thought-based communication technology.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Oct 2008 | 1:25 pm

What it Takes to Be President (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Who would make a better president - a man with more than 30 years of experience in Congress or one with about six?

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 1:05 pm

Two more genes linked to common skin cancer

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have found two new genetic variations that appear to increase the risk of the most common skin cancer among people of European descent.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 12:28 pm

Tropical depression may form in Caribbean: NHC (Reuters)

Reuters - A tropical depression could form in the western Caribbean Sea over the next 48 hours but probably won't threaten the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico as it moves toward the Atlantic Ocean, the U.S. National Hurricane Center and most weather models forecast Monday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 12:01 pm

What Is Wild? Odor Attraction Is Different Among Different Wildtype Flies

Vinegar flies (Drosophila melanogaster) show a highly selective behavior towards odor stimuli. A series of behavioral studies showed that a single olfactory stimulus is often not sufficient for immediate attraction to potential food sources or oviposition sites. Interestingly, the behavior differed between investigated D. melanogaster varieties, so-called "wildtypes".
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 12:00 pm

Space Fly-by Reveals New Insights Into Titan's Life

Cracking the secrets of the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's mysterious moon, and how planetary atmospheres evolve, have come a step closer after evaluation of data from a successful fly-by of its surface by the Cassini spacecraft.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 12:00 pm

H. Pylori Bacteria May Help Prevent Some Esophageal Cancers

Some bacteria may help protect against the development of a type of esophageal cancer, known as adenocarcinoma, according to a new review of the medical literature. These bacteria, which are called Helicobacter pylori, live in the stomachs of humans.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 12:00 pm

Endoscopic Therapy May Offer An Alternative To Surgery In Patients With Esophageal Cancer

New research has evaluated the long-term efficacy of endoscopic mucosal resection, or EMR, in the treatment of patients with early stage esophageal cancer or Barrett's esophagus. Two separate studies suggest EMR is an effective treatment alternative to surgery and generally yields positive long-term results.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 12:00 pm

Search for the origin of 'yeti hair' ends up with a goat

Scientists in the US who examined hairs claimed to belong to a yeti in India say that in fact they belong to a species of Himalayan goat.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Oct 2008 | 11:20 am

Taming waters

South Asia grapples with its inadequate flood defences
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Oct 2008 | 10:50 am

OHB Uses Galileo Bid to Send a Message to Competitors

OHB will bid against a much larger consortium to build Galileo satellites.
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Oct 2008 | 10:46 am

Distant Spacecraft Scans Earth for Signs of Life

Earth from afar, scientists hope to discern what signs of habitability to look for on other planets.
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Oct 2008 | 10:46 am

Distant Spacecraft Scans Earth for Signs of Life (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - A new study is underway to search for signs of habitability ... on Earth.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 10:45 am

Producer prices slip in September (AFP)

AFP - The cost of goods leaving the nation's factories fell in September, partly owing to lower oil prices, official data showed on Monday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 10:33 am

Test explores if robots can think

An experiment takes place at Berkshire's University of Reading to see if robots are capable of intelligent thought.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Oct 2008 | 10:09 am

More using prescription drugs to boost brain power

Increasing numbers of people are using prescription drugs to boost alertness and brain power, raising safety and ethical concerns, say experts.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Oct 2008 | 9:08 am

Mich. voters to decide stem cell research measure (AP)

AP - Michigan voters will be thrust into the crossroads of science, ethics and religion next month when they decide whether to loosen the state's restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Oct 2008 | 8:56 am

What it Takes to Be President

Who would make a better president — a man with more than 30 years of experience in Congress or one with about six?
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Oct 2008 | 4:55 am

Predators could be superweed fix

A plant-eating predator from Japan could be used to control a superweed spreading throughout the UK, scientists believe.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Oct 2008 | 4:48 am

Home Lighting Could Be Wireless Network

LED lights may soon wirelessly connect your computer, phone or car to the Internet.
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Oct 2008 | 4:45 am

Past Presidents: What Made Them Great?

Who would make a better president — a man with more than 30 years of experience in Congress or one with about six?
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Oct 2008 | 4:35 am

World 'to fail' on nature target

The world's governments will fail to meet their agreed target of curbing biodiversity loss by 2010, conservationists tell the BBC.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Oct 2008 | 4:35 am

Starwatch

The two brightest planets are on show, though we need to be quick to spy Venus before it drops below the horizon
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 13 Oct 2008 | 12:46 am

Has Grade Inflation Hit the Smart Meter Market?

SAN FRANCISCO, California -- Saturday morning, my doorbell unexpectedly buzzed. Thinking my girlfriend had forgotten her keys, I skated down the stairs to find a man from Pacific Gas and Electric blinking at me through our gate. He was there to install a smart meter, the man explained.

Ah, yes. I knew PG&E had committed to installing 9.3 million smart meters and now, my time had come. Here would be my opportunity to track my energy usage, spreadsheet it, look for patterns, respond to spikes in demand on hot summer days... I'd heard so many good things about smart meters (indeed, written some) and what they'd do for me that I was in nerd heaven.

"Can I take a picture of it?" I asked, hopping away to grab my camera.

When I got back downstairs, the installer, Dave Fong, had arrayed the obviously branded new meter on my stairs. I snapped pics like a tourist of the future.

But then I began to pepper Dave with questions. His answers struck me as legit, honest, and quite depressing.

Though he installed the meter yesterday, it wouldn't do anything special for PG&E or me until the transmitters went in to create the network through which my meter would communicate with the world. And the transmitters wouldn't be in for a couple of years.

But, surely, after the transmitters went in, I'd be able to track every kilowatt hour of my energy usage? Nope, Dave said. Special web apps for understanding my power user profile like I'd seen from Tendril or Greenbox? Not that he's heard of. The best I was going to get was daily energy usage reports. That's low resolution data, like your Toyota Prius telling you your gas mileage over the course of a week. The feedback loop just wouldn't be strong enough to change wasteful behaviors.

In fact, the primary purpose for these smart meters, Dave told me, was to simplify billing issues for PG&E.

"Meter readers are under intense time pressure," Fong said. "They are literally running from meter to meter."

Taking too long earns meter readers demerits, and so do mistakes. If meter readers accidentally charge you for $350 of gas instead of $35, it causes major headaches. The new smart meters will eliminate the meter readers and the pesky problems humans introduce.

But will the new meters do anything to change the energy usage patterns that have Americans using five times more energy than the world average? Anecdotally, it sure doesn't sound like it.

Image: Alexis Madrigal/Wired.com. My new smart meter. Fong, whose shadow is visible on the right, once lost twenty bucks to a meter reader whe he bet him he couldn't read a meter from 20 paces. Indeed, the reader nailed it.

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 13 Oct 2008 | 12:20 am

Telescope Tech Will Speed Search for Extraterrestrial Life

The hunt for extraterrestrial life is getting a major boost from revolutionary new technology that will give some of the world's largest telescopes the capability to detect Earth-size planets outside of our solar system, a feat not equaled even by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The technique, called nulling interferometry, combines the light captured by several large telescopes to mimic a single giant telescope with enough power to detect a quarter on the moon from Earth.

"The goal is nothing less than finding the first ever Earth-like planet orbiting around a star," said planet hunter Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley. "We've never found one."

The smallest rocky planet detected to date has around four times the mass of Earth. This planet, as well as most of the 300 exoplanets discovered to date, have been detected by the "wobble" or shift in the light spectrum of the star caused by the slight gravitational tug of the orbiting planet. Another planet-hunting method, called gravitational microlensing, takes advantage of the way the gravity of an exoplanet's star bends and focuses the light from a more distant star like a lens. Small deviations in the light from the distant star indicate that a planet is orbiting the lensing star.

Nulling interferometry will surpass both of these strategies in the search for smaller, earth-like worlds that orbit their star at a distance — in the "habitable zone" — that could harbor life. The technique involves incredibly precise measurements of the position of a star, so that the minutest wobble caused by the gravity of an orbiting planet 100,000 times smaller can be detected.

"It will be able to determine if a star budges a little bit as an Earth-like planet orbits that star," said Marcy, who is an expert in using the wobble technique, which can't detect very small planets. "The real holy grail of planet-hunting is to find other earths and ascertain whether they are habitable."

The array of telescopes in Chile's Atacama Desert collectively known as the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) is currently being outfitted with a nulling interferometry device called PRIMA. The technology will give the combined telescopes precision equivalent to the distance a human hair grows in a minute — 0.0003 millimeter — from 100 meters away.

"PRIMA will revolutionize exoplanet detection and our understanding of other solar systems," said Fred Kamphues, a telescope expert at Dutch company TNO, which built a key part of the device called the Star Separator.

The technology consists of many smaller mirrors, moved by pistons at precise levels smaller than an atom. The effect is to direct the light from each telescope into underground tunnels in such a way that the light waves from the star cancel each other out, revealing the faint light of an orbiting planet.

PRIMA has been tested on two of the four large telescopes in the array and will be installed on the two others as well as two smaller auxiliary telescopes. The combined system will start hunting for planets in about six months.

The VLTI, which is run by the European Space Agency, will be the most effective small-planet hunting telescope on Earth. The VLTI's four large telescopes have mirrors that are 27 feet across, currently among the largest in the world, but it could lead the planet-hunting pack even when new, much larger telescopes are built.

"I think that with the planned new facilities and future observatories under study, it is quite likely that we will find extraterrestrial life within the next 100 years," Kamphues said.

Marcy believes astronomy's future over the next century "is not to build ever larger mirrors, but to build smaller mirrors separated by large distances."

The United States had a big technological lead in nulling interferometry earlier in the decade with plans to install a system to combine the light from the two 33-foot Keck telescopes and a surrounding array of six smaller telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The project was supposed to be completed by 2004, but was stalled by funding cuts at NASA, allowing the Europeans to jump ahead.

"In effect, now the ball has been dropped," Marcy said. "There just isn't enough money right now."

Even more unfortunate for U.S. astronomers was the drying up of funds for the Space Interferometry Mission, an effort to launch into space twin telescopes, connected by a 20-foot-long aluminum arm that could function as an interferometer. SIM wouldn't be hampered by peering though the murk of Earth's atmosphere which would make it far more effective than ground-based systems.

A decade of work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California to design the planet-hunting space telescope is on hold indefinitely, leaving the scientists and engineers distraught. With the current economic situation, and the push to complete the Space Shuttle's replacement, it could be a very long time before the project comes to fruition.

"We're just dearly hoping that some time NASA will find the funding to build SIM," Marcy said. "It would literally be twenty times better than PRIMA."

It is hard to believe the mission won't be completed some day, however. The possibility that we could answer the ultimate question of whether we are alone in the universe is just too tantalizing.

"We can taste the answer to this question," Marcy said. "That is a quest the human spirit won't let go."

Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides contributed to this report.

See Also:

Photos: The Very Large Telescope Interferometer/TNO; Star Separator/TNO; Space Interferometry Mission/NASA