Science Headlines for October 24, 2008

Genomic Changes Found In Brains Of People Who Commit Suicide

New light is being shed on the complex interaction of genetic and environmental factors as the result of growth in the field of epigenetics.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

Tiny Juvenile Dinosaur Fossil Sheds Light On Evolution Of Plant Eaters

Scientists have identified one of the smallest dinosaur skulls ever discovered as coming from a very young Heterodontosaurus, an early dinosaur. This juvenile weighed about 200 grams. This skull suggests how and when the family of herbivorous dinosaurs that includes Heterodontosaurus made the transition from eating meat to eating plants.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

Digesting The Termite Digestome: A Way To Make Biofuels?

If the biofuel known as bioethanol is to make a major contribution to our fuel supplies, then we may well require the assistance of some tiny insect helpers, says an assistant professor of entomology.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

Heart Failure Patients Have Higher Risk Of Fractures

Heart failure patients have four times the risk of fractures and 6.3 times the risk of hip fracture as other heart patients. Heart failure patients should be screened and treated for osteoporosis if necessary, researchers said.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

Science Of Speed: Building The Fastest Car In The World

When Andy Green puts his foot on the accelerator and tries to break the land speed record in 2011, he can be sure that some of the UK's top scientists have done everything possible to make sure he achieves his goal, and is safe in the process.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

New Hope For Multiple Sclerosis Sufferers

A drug which was initially designed to treat a form of leukemia has also proven effective against combating the debilitating neurological disease multiple sclerosis.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 3:00 pm

Sun-damaged Skin Responds Well To Laser Treatment

Researchers have found scientific evidence that the appearance of sun-damaged skin may be improved by treatment with a topical product that increases the skin's sensitivity to light, followed by laser therapy.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 12:00 pm

New Coral Reef Discovered In The Seychelles

Researchers have discovered a previously unknown coral reef in the Seychelles. Diving revealed an extensive coral reef to the south of the island, at a depth which would not be visible to the occasional snorkeler, according to researchers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 12:00 pm

Safer, More Effective TB Vaccine For HIV-positive People Developed

Scientists have engineered a new tuberculosis vaccine specifically designed for HIV-positive people that was shown to be safer and more potent than the current TB vaccine in pre-clinical trials.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 12:00 pm

Deprived Of A Sense Of Smell, Worms Live Longer

Many animals live longer when raised on low calorie diets. But now researchers have shown that they can extend the life spans of roundworms even when the worms are well fed -- it just takes a chemical that blocks their sense of smell.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 12:00 pm

Uncertain times

Security fears delay rangers' families return home
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:59 am

American, Russians return from space station (AP)

AP - A Soyuz capsule carrying an American and two Russians touched down on target in Kazakhstan on Friday after a descent from the international space station, safely delivering the first two men to follow their fathers into space.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:49 am

Stephen Hawking to retire from prestigious post (AP)

AP - Famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking will retire from his prestigious post at Cambridge University next year, but intends to continue his exploration of time and space.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:39 am

OPEC agrees output cut, oil slide goes on (Reuters)

Reuters - An emergency OPEC meeting on Friday reached swift agreement to chop production by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) as a first step toward halting a deep oil price slide.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:33 am

The Nation's Weather (AP)

AP - Rain stretched from the Great Lakes and Midwest to Florida early Friday, while the deep South and West were to be calm and clear.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:32 am

Goce gravity flight slips to 2009

Europe's Goce gravity mission is bumped to next year because of ongoing technical problems with its launcher.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Oct 2008 | 10:19 am

U.S. space tourist, Russians return to Earth

NEAR ARKALYK, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - A Soyuz capsule carrying a U.S. space tourist and two Russians bumped down safely in Kazakhstan on Friday, ending a string of mishaps on previous landings that have raised concerns about its safety.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 9:46 am

Video: Millionaire space tourist back on earth

A burger and a Coke are the first things space tourist Richard Garriott wants after spending 10 days on the international space station
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 24 Oct 2008 | 9:13 am

Safe return for second-generation spacemen

American space tourist who paid $30m is met by his Nasa astronaut father after Soyuz capsule touches down
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:27 am

No money, no spacecraft, Russian producer warns (AFP)

AFP - Russia's spacecraft producer Energiya will not provide any more Soyuz vessels for trips to the International Space Station unless funds could urgently be found, Energiya's president and general constructor warned on Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 6:29 am

Cold viruses activate killer genes, study finds (Reuters)

Reuters - The common cold virus activates dozens of immune system genes in the lining of the nose, including some natural antivirals that might be used as the basis of new drugs, researchers reported on Friday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 4:30 am

Soyuz space capsule lands safely

A spacecraft carrying two Russian crew and a US space tourist arrives back on Earth from the International Space Station.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Oct 2008 | 4:18 am

Greek dig unearths Neolithic household gear (AP)

AP - A 6,000 year-old set of household gear, including crockery and two wood-fired ovens, has been found in the buried ruins of a prehistoric farmhouse in northern Greece, officials said Thursday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 3:59 am

Hubble telescope set to reawaken

The Hubble space telescope will resume its science operations on Saturday after a successful reboot, Nasa officials say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Oct 2008 | 3:48 am

'Drastic' reforms on energy urged

"Urgent and drastic" changes are needed if the UK is to meet challenging EU targets on renewable energy, peers say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Oct 2008 | 1:50 am

New test detects most genetic diseases in embryos

Authority moves to quell fears of greater scope for 'designer babies' after breakthrough in testing
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 24 Oct 2008 | 1:18 am

Artifacts discovery might lead to lost tribe

MANILA (Reuters) - When Philippine police confiscated 22 bags of broken pottery from antiquity smugglers near an area where Muslim rebels operated, little did they know that they may have uncovered the remnants of a long-lost tribe.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 12:25 am

Tiny Skull Sheds Light on Strange Dinosaur Diets (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - A juvenile dinosaur weighing less than two sticks of butter was a toothy hodgepodge equipped with fang-like canines to tear into small mammals, reptiles and insects, as well as flat molars for plant munching.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Oct 2008 | 12:22 am

Tiny Skull Sheds Light on Strange Dinosaur Diets

One of the smallest dinosaur skulls belonged to a pipsqueak juvenile that ate both meat and plants.
Source: Livescience.com | 24 Oct 2008 | 12:08 am

Letter: India gives UK space

Letter: It was satisfying to see the coverage of India's Chandrayaan-1 mission to the moon
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 23 Oct 2008 | 11:17 pm

Hot drinks encourage warmer feelings

A steaming hot drink may be all it takes to see the world through rose-tinted glasses, psychologists have found.

Holding a warm cup of coffee was enough to make people think strangers were more welcoming and trustworthy, while a cold drink had the opposite effect, a study found.

The warmth of a drink also influenced whether people were more likely to be selfish or give to others, researchers report in the journal Science. A team led by John Bargh at the University of Colorado set about testing whether hot and iced drinks influenced perceptions of others after noting how frequently "warm" and "cold" are used to describe personalities.

In one test, 41 volunteers were asked to hold a cup of coffee while they took an escalator to a fourth-floor lab. Once there, they were asked to read about a fictional character and give their impression of them. The test was then repeated using an iced coffee drink.

The psychologists found the volunteers perceived the fictional strangers as significantly warmer characters after holding the hot drink. When ranked on a scale from one to seven, with one being cold and seven being warm, they rated people on average 11% warmer after holding the hot drink.

Scientists also checked whether temperature influenced people's own behaviour as well as their perception of others. They asked volunteers to pick up either a frozen or heated therapeutic pad used for sports injuries. After handling the pad for a few minutes, they were offered a drink for themselves, or a voucher to give to a friend. Those who handled the hot pads chose more often to give the voucher.

Raj Persaud quits as consultant at leading hospital

The disgraced celebrity psychiatrist Dr Raj Persaud has left his job at a leading hospital four months after being convicted of dishonesty by a disciplinary tribunal.

Persaud, who has lost media commissions after admitting plagiarism at a General Medical Council hearing in June, has stepped down as a consultant psychiatrist for the South London and Maudsley NHS trust. The move follows talks with trust officers this month when he was legally cleared to return to work after being struck off for three months by the GMC. The tribunal criticised him so heavily that there was widespread doubt that he would return to consultant status.

A spokesman for the Maudsley confirmed that Persaud had left. He said: "This is a private matter between the trust and Dr Persaud and I am afraid that we do not want to add anything to that." Persaud did not respond to approaches by the Guardian for comment.

Persaud, who spent 12 years at the Maudsley, made himself Britain's best-known "mind doctor". He was a regular on ITV's Good Morning programme and BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind, as well as a prolific contributor to newspapers and medical journals.

He was praised for making his subject interesting and accessible, but attracted increasing claims that his extraordinary output had to be based on others' unacknowledged work. He also made an enemy of the Scientology movement - opposing it in a way that many of his colleagues supported - and it was a plagiarism allegation from it that led to the hearing and his downfall. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, founded by the Scientologists, complained to the GMC that a hostile article by Persaud in the Independent in 2005 plagiarised several passages from another academic. The publicity then attracted claims from others.

Persaud, 49, married with two children, admitted nine cases of plagiarism but denied deceit, blaming overwork and misunderstandings for sloppiness in acknowledging sources.

During the four-day fitness-to-practise hearing in Manchester, he called on character witnesses including a range of celebrities and respected public figures, including the former foreign secretary David Owen.

He was found to have acted dishonestly after the panel heard evidence not just of plagiarism, but of attempts to put the blame on others such as subeditors, whom he wrongly accused of missing out attributions and quotation marks. The three members of the tribunal unanimously dismissed his defence and issued a scathing assessment of his behaviour.

Persaud grew up in a high-achieving family and was sent to Haberdashers' Aske's public school in Hertfordshire, before taking his first degree at University College London, and beginning his association with the Maudsley as a psychiatric trainee. He accumulated eight degrees and diplomas by the age of 43. He is married to an eye surgeon at Moorfields hospital, London.

Personable and fluent, Persaud made lasting friendships, and several media figures including Richard Madeley, Judy Finnigan and the broadcaster Martin Bashir said after the hearing that they wanted to work with him again.

Drax Group has £2bn plan for biomass power stations

Drax Group, the owner of Britain's most carbon-intensive power station, is turning green with a £2bn plan to build the country's first large-scale biomass plants which burn plant-based materials.

The three facilities in Hull, Immingham and probably the North Yorkshire village of Drax itself, will have the capacity to produce 900 megawatts of electricity - enough to supply 3% of the country's total needs - but environmental groups warned that Drax must ensure the crop fuel is sustainable.

The company, which runs a massive coal-fired power station at Drax, has told shareholders that some of the cash it was going to pay back by way of dividends will now be switched into building biomass. But it said this would reap long-term rewards.

"This is an exciting opportunity for Drax to develop its business and to deliver shareholder value by exploiting our core competencies, whilst achieving fuel diversification and carbon abatement," said Dorothy Thompson, Drax's chief executive.

"We are strongly of the view that investment in the generation sector will provide attractive returns. We believe our venture into dedicated biomass-fired generation underpins our commitment to reducing the carbon footprint of electricity generation."

Drax will build, own and operate the three plants in co-operation with Siemens of Germany through a 60/40 joint venture. Drax will manage and operate the plants, which should be running by 2014, while Siemens will provide the turbine technology.

The British power group has already secured rights to port sites at Immingham and Hull and is looking at the possibility of constructing a third facility near the coal-fired station which has itself been experimenting with burning plant-based materials such as old timber and straw alongside its base load of coal.

So far, the biomass sector is in its infancy, with only a very small number of larger plants planned and a handful of very small ones in operation.

The port sites suggest that the bulk of the wood and other materials that will be used in the biomass plants will be imported. Drax declined to say how much of the fuel would be imported but admitted it would take time to build up local supplies.

Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace, said biomass plants could help in the fight against climate change, but only if they make the most of the waste heat they produce and use fuel from carefully chosen sources. "Otherwise they're cutting down trees, shipping them across the world and then throwing away the energy they get from them. Drax already owns the single most polluting power station in Britain, and if they fail to get the technology right on these power plants they could be making their carbon footprint bigger."

The company said its full-year earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation would be "modestly higher" than the current market consensus, and trading conditions in commodity markets in which it operates have improved.

Drax disappointed some in the City by saying it would distribute all excess cash through dividends until 2010 when it would switch to paying out half of all underlying earnings.

Drax said it had the support of its main shareholders for its moves to go green.

Tiny dinosaur on verge of swearing off meat

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A rare juvenile skull of a 190 million-year-old dinosaur may help explain when an important group of plant eaters branched off from carnivorous cousins, U.S. and British researchers said on Thursday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Oct 2008 | 11:13 pm

Tiny dinosaur on verge of swearing off meat (Reuters)

Reuters - A rare juvenile skull of a 190 million-year-old dinosaur may help explain when an important group of plant eaters branched off from carnivorous cousins, U.S. and British researchers said on Thursday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Oct 2008 | 11:13 pm

Big Chinese companies join climate group

One of China's biggest companies will today become the first state-controlled business in the country to join an international agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The powerful Climate Group will announce three Chinese members, including the majority state-owned China Mobile, which has 420 million customers and is one of the country's 10 biggest companies. It is the world's biggest mobile phone operator.

The other two companies are Suntech, the world's third largest solar energy supplier, which is listed on the New York stock exchange, and privately owned Broad Air Conditioning, the leading manufacturer of non-electric air conditioning units.

The Chinese government and many businesses have set targets to reduce energy used and increase renewable energy. However the three Climate Group members are said to be the first to make more ambitious commitments to the organisation's aims, which include significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, publishing information on emissions, and supporting international climate change agreements.

China Mobile has agreed, initially, to reduce energy intensity of its $47bn (about £29bn) annual business by 40%, double the national target. This could pave the way for these and other Chinese companies to publish plans to reduce absolute emissions, and to join voluntary carbon trading schemes.

Other companies in China have already applied to join the London-based non-profit group, which is backed by some of the world's most powerful business figures, said Steve Howard, the Climate Group's chief executive. Of 100-150 world-leading companies they are targeting to set an example to businesses and policy makers, around 20 are in China, said Howard.

Lenovo, a big Hong Kong-listed computer company, also joined this summer through its US head office.

"The fact that one of the companies [China Mobile] has significant state ownership shows that action on climate change is a priority for the government and the private sector," said Howard.

The move was welcomed by the former British prime minister Tony Blair, who is working with the Climate Group. "China is a vital ally in the fight against global warming," he said.

The Climate Group's members already include global names such as BP, BSkyB and News Corporation, Duke Energy, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, Nike and Tesco.

Changhua Wu, the group's greater China director, said Chinese members joining was important in the run-up to a hoped-for international agreement in Copenhagen in 2009 to cut emissions.

NASA traces glitches that stopped Hubble

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA engineers have traced two glitches that shut down the orbiting Hubble space telescope and said on Thursday they rebooted one of the computers involved.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Oct 2008 | 10:10 pm

McCain's Mortality Risk Questioned in Medical Journal

There's a one-in-four chance that Sen. John McCain will die in the next four years, according to a contested interpretation of risks posed by the presidential candidate's history of skin cancer.

"His mortality risk translates to 22 percent over a first term," said John Alam, a biotechnology consultant and former cancer researcher who crunched the numbers on McCain's cancer history.

That figure is roughly twice the death risk of a white male of McCain's age, but without McCain's past melanoma. Some researchers, however, think Alam's model fails to account for McCain's continued health.

"If after five years there's no recurrence, his chance of survival for the next five years and the remainder of his life are significantly increased," said Stanley Leong, a University of California, San Francisco oncologist whose research was cited by Alam in the estimate, published today in The Lancet.

That a metastatic skin cancer removed from McCain's left temple in 2000 has not reappeared is among the limited health information currently known about the candidate, who has been criticized for failing to disclose his complete medical records.

A statement prepared by Mayo Clinic doctors is available on McCain's website and includes basic information about that melanoma — enough for Alam to plug the figures into a standard model of post-melanoma mortality risk prediction.

The model was developed in 1996, and uses four variables: the age and sex of a cancer patient, as well as the site of the tumor and its dimensions. McCain was 64 when the lesion was found; it was thick and located on his temple, both of which place him in the model's high-risk category. Alam calculated that McCain had a 12 percent annual chance of dying, some four times higher than the average white male of McCain's age.

But doctors have not found evidence of cancer in tests of McCain's sentinel lymph nodes, which are used as early warning signs of recurrence. Such tests didn't exist when Alam's model was developed; using sentinel lymph node research authored by Leong, he accounted for these by halving McCain's annual mortality risk to 6 percent.

"You can go a long time with no sign of the melanoma being around, and then it comes back," said Alam.

Leong, however, said that the highest risk of melanoma recurrence exists in the several years following its initial diagnosis and removal. Referring to newer mortality risk models that emphasize the early years of melanoma recurrence, he said that Alam should have reduced McCain's risk even further.

"We never say a patient will be cured," said Leong, but called McCain's continued health "very encouraging."

But Alam said that newer models don't yet have reliable long-term cancer survival data of the sort needed to make sense of McCain's situation.

Potentially complicating the discussion is Alam's admitted political and financial support of McCain's opponent, Senator Barack Obama. Alam insisted that his politics may have influenced his decision to analyze McCain's records, but not the analysis itself.

"The facts about the risk need to be on the table. My goal was to provide objective evidence of what the mortality risk is," he said. "My politics have no bearing on the facts."

Lynn Schuchter, a University of Pennsylvania oncologist who developed the original model used by Alam, agreed with both Alam and Leong: most recurrences do take place in the first five years following an initial skin cancer diagnosis, she said, but that's not a hard-and-fast rule.

"The fact that he's seven or eight years out is a good sign," she said, "but he's not out of the woods."

U.S. Senator John McCain and risk of melanoma-associated mortality (The Lancet) (.pdf)

Image: VictoryNH: Protect Our Primary

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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Oct 2008 | 10:02 pm

Bizarre Tactic Drives Worms Out of the Ground

Florida’s “worm grunters” are unintentionally mimicking the same vibrations as the worm’s most serious predator, the mole.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Oct 2008 | 9:56 pm

Warm hands lead to warm hearts, sneaky study shows (AP)

AP - Time to update that old saying "cold hands, warm heart." New research shows touching something warm can make you feel and act more warmly toward others. Whether someone is deemed to have a "warm" or "cold" personality makes a powerful first impression. That led Yale University scientists to wonder if physical warmth could promote psychological warmth, by subconsciously priming people to think better of others.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Oct 2008 | 9:30 pm

Toxic waste verdict disappoints

Ivorians express disappointment following a trial over the dumping of hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste in 2006.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Oct 2008 | 9:14 pm

Scientists find way to erase memories in mice

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It seems like a movie plot, but scientists have developed a way to erase specific memories in mice while leaving others intact and not damaging the brain.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Oct 2008 | 8:46 pm

How Ant Queens Are Made

How do some ants end up atop the colony's social hierarchy?

An ant's parents appear to play a key role in determining whether the insect will develop into a queen or a common worker, according to a new paper in the journal Science. Some male/queen combinations appear to have a royal touch, yielding reproductive queens at much higher levels than other pairings.

The new finding could overturn the long-held belief that there is little genetic influence in ant caste systems.

"It's a genetic compatability effect," Tanja Schwander, biological researcher at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and lead author of the paper. "The work shows that queens have to be compatible with a specific male to produce either workers or queens.

How social insect colonies function can give scientists insight into how social behavior evolved. Ant colony members generally have well-defined roles. Sterile workers take care of day-to-day tasks like finding food and rearing young while a queen mates and produces offspring. In the end, though, the workers' hard work is rewarded when the queen passes their very similar genes on to the next generation. E.O. Wilson coined the term superorganism for exactly this type of cooperative group.

Biologists had long theorized that environmental factors drove the differentiation of similar ant eggs into the wildly different castes of queens and workers. But there wasn't much actual data on the subject.

"People just assume that this is environmental," Schwander said.

But if a specific mother-father genetic combination is required to create a queen, it argues strongly that genetics play a role in determining the social structure of the colony. Schwander's conclusion matches that of a separate group of researchers publishing in the smaller journal American Naturalist on a different type of ant.

"Caste determination in most social insects likely involves both nature and nurture," said Chris Smith, a biologist at the University of Illinois and lead author of that paper.

Schwander's data wasn't easy to come by, which could explain why previous assumptions about insect colonies have remained untested. Heading out to the desert near Portal, Arizona, Schwander had to devise a system for capturing males and queens from different colonies in the Arizona desert.

The species in the study, Pogonomyrmex rugosus, has the useful property of streaming out of its colonies in response to summer rainfall, which can be simulated with exactly eight gallons of water applied with the the watering can (above).

When the insects ran out of the colonies, the biologists collected them in tent-like nets and selectively coaxed ants from different colonies into crossbreeding. All told, the study took three summers and months of lab work raising the products of these matings to find the genetic compatibility effect.

"It's hardcore field work," Schwander said.

Images:1. A close-up of Schwander's ant of choice: Pogonomyrmex rugosus/Science. 2. Schwander's team's ant-catching field set-up/Schwander.

Citation: "Genetic Compatibility Affects Queen and Worker Determination."
doi: 10.1126/science.1162590

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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Oct 2008 | 8:17 pm

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