Science Headlines for November 19, 2008

Black Holes Are The Rhythm At The Heart Of Galaxies

The powerful black holes at the center of massive galaxies and galaxy clusters act as hearts to the systems, pumping energy out at regular intervals to regulate the growth of the black holes themselves, as well as star formation, according to new data from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:00 pm

Broccoli May Lower Lung Cancer Risk In Smokers

The cancer preventive properties of broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables appear to work specifically in smokers, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:00 pm

NASA Tests First Deep-Space Internet

NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet. Engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about more than 32 million kilometers (20 million miles) from Earth.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:00 pm

What The Social Lives Of Brewer’s Yeast Say About Evolution

An ingenious social behavior that mobilizes yeast cells to cooperate in protecting each other from stress, antibiotics and other dangers is driven by the activity of a single gene, scientists report in the journal Cell. The cooperating cells use the same gene, dubbed FLO1, as a marker for detecting "cheaters:" cells that try to profit from the group's protection without investing in the group's welfare.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:00 pm

The Psychology Of Deja Vu

All of us have experienced being in a new place and feeling certain that we have been there before. A new report published in Current Directions in Psychological Science describes recent findings about deja vu, including the many similarities that exist between déjà vu and our understanding of human recognition memory.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:00 pm

New Equation Provides More Accurate Estimates Of Kidney Function

A newly developed equation produces more accurate estimates of the glomerular filtration rate, a key indicator of kidney function in patients with chronic kidney disease, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:00 pm

Ginkgo Biloba Does Not Reduce Dementia Risk, Study Shows

The medicinal herb Ginkgo biloba does not reduce the risk of dementia or Alzheimer's disease development in either the healthy elderly or those with mild cognitive impairment, according to a large multicenter trial.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 4:00 pm

Light Inside Sponges: Sponges Invented (and Employed) The First Fiber Optics

Fiber optics as light conductors are obviously not just a recent invention. Sponges (Porifera), the phylogenetically oldest, multicellular organisms (Metazoa) are able to transduce light inside their bodies by employing amorphous, siliceous structures. Already more than ten years ago, the finding of photosynthetically active organisms inside sponges raised the question, how they could survive there in an otherwise presumably dark space. As early as that time, marine biologists have hypothesized, that light might be transferred inside the sponge body.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 4:00 pm

Long-lost 'Furby-like' Primate Discovered In Indonesia

Anthropologists have discovered a group of primates not seen alive in 85 years. The pygmy tarsiers, furry Furby-like, or gremlin-looking, creatures about the size of a small mouse and weighing less than two ounces, have not been observed since they were last collected for a museum in 1921.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 4:00 pm

ECG Tests No Better Than Routine Clinical Assessment At Predicting Future Heart Disease, Study Finds

ECG tests commonly given to people with suspected angina to predict the likelihood future of heart disease have limited accuracy, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 4:00 pm

Animal rights video shows turkey abuse in W.Va. (AP)

AP - A video released by an animal rights group on Tuesday claims to show horrific abuse of turkeys at West Virginia farms operated by major global poultry grower Aviagen Inc.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm

World's oldest polar bear dies at Canadian zoo

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Canadian zoo officials on Tuesday were mourning the death of what is believed to be the world's oldest polar bear.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:48 pm

'Stealing' Keys by Camera Proven Easy

A quick picture with a camera phone could be all a criminal needs to copy your keys.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:36 pm

Bison: It's What's For Dinner

40 percent said they have tried bison, and 83 percent thought it was as good or better-tasting than beef.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:34 pm

Astronaut Plumbers Get to Work on Space Station (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - A crack team of astronaut plumbers will get down to business aboard the International Space Station on Wednesday to hook up a new system that recycles urine into drinking water.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:15 pm

Witch Doctor Skeleton Unearthed in Israel

A 12,000-year-old skeleton found in a communal grave may be the remains of a shaman.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:06 pm

Woman gets first trachea transplant without drugs

LONDON (Reuters) - A Colombian woman has received the world's first tailor-made trachea transplant, grown by seeding a donor organ with her own stem cells to prevent her body rejecting it, an international research team reported on Wednesday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:02 pm

Penguin, Now Extinct, Discovered in New Zealand

After one species of penguin was hunted to apparent extinction, another emerged.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:56 pm

Our Ancestors Had Floppy, Flexible Feet (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Our ape-like ancestors might have walked like today's gibbons, whose super bendy feet give them a floppy strut.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:44 pm

Our Ancestors Had Floppy, Flexible Feet

Gibbons use their flexible feet to walk upright.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:27 pm

Scientists find new penguin, extinct for 500 years (AP)

AP - Researchers studying a rare and endangered species of penguin have uncovered a previously unknown species that disappeared about 500 years ago.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:22 pm

EU agrees cod stocks rescue plans

European fisheries ministers agree a plan aimed at increasing dwindling cod stocks, including better nets and new quotas.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:21 pm

German group SolarWorld bids 1bln euros for Opel (AFP)

AFP - German solar energy company SolarWorld unveiled on Wednesday a surprise billion-euro (1.26-billion-dollar) takeover bid for Opel, a unit of US General Motors, which would create the "first green European car company."

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:01 pm

Penguin Species Discovered Too Late

Newly discovered species went extinct 500 years ago.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:00 pm

Stem cells restore hearing, vision in animals

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Stem cells from tiny embryos can be used to restore lost hearing and vision in animals, researchers said Tuesday in what they believe is a first step toward helping people.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 12:01 pm

Power of the Future: A Timeline to Energy Independence

When might we expect exciting alternative technology to become our ho-hum everyday energy supply?
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Nov 2008 | 11:42 am

Lost tool bag forces changes to planned spacewalks (AP)

AP - Flight controllers were revamping plans Wednesday for the remaining spacewalks planned during space shuttle Endeavour's visit to the international space station, after a crucial tool bag floated out to space during a repair trip.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 11:24 am

Better Than Bombs: Rocket Balls

They propel themselves every which way, bouncing off hardened walls and breaking through doors.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Nov 2008 | 10:45 am

Lost in space: Tool trouble for astronaut

Spacewalking astronauts working on the International Space Station lose a tool bag in orbit.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Nov 2008 | 10:34 am

Cell Phone Recycler Lists Most Commonly Recycled Models

The average American replaces their cell phone every 18 months.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Nov 2008 | 10:32 am

Sarah Boseley on the stem cell transplant of an organ

Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 19 Nov 2008 | 10:00 am

Bird's eye view

Darwin's pigeons, a lost warbler and the smelly seabirds
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Nov 2008 | 9:00 am

Ancient turtle discovered on Skye

The earliest turtles to live in water have been discovered on - and named after - the Scottish island of Skye.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:59 am

Technology to eradicate malaria

Emerging technologies could boost supplies of essential plant-based drugs to combat and ultimately help eradicate malaria, says a report.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:40 am

Bolivian farmer leads to dinosaur discovery

ICLA, Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivian farmer Primo Rivera had long wondered about the dents in a rocky hill near his home. Paleontologists solved the mystery this month: they are fossilized dinosaur footprints -- the oldest in Bolivia.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 5:16 am

God and Evolution Can Co-exist, Scientist Says

A Christian scientist is going public with his belief in God and acceptance of evolution.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:26 am

Spacewalkers tackle station repair work

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Two shuttle Endeavour astronauts on Tuesday finished the first of four spacewalks outside the International Space Station, part of a plan to eventually restore full power to the growing outpost.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:29 am

Rare penguin took over from rival

Human arrival in New Zealand led to the extinction of one penguin species to the advantage of another, scientists suggest.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:55 am

Windpipe transplant breakthrough

Surgeons in Spain claim a major breakthrough by giving a woman a new windpipe with tissue grown from her own stem cells.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:28 am

Supercomputers Break Petaflop Barrier, Transforming Science

A new crop of supercomputers is breaking down the petaflop speed barrier, pushing high-performance computing into a new realm that could change science more profoundly than at any time since Galileo, leading researchers say.

When the Top 500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers was announced at the international supercomputing conference in Austin, Texas, on Monday, IBM had barely managed to cling to the top spot, fending off a challenge from Cray. But both competitors broke petaflop speeds, performing 1.105 and 1.059 quadrillion floating-point calculations per second, the first two computers to do so.

These computers aren't just faster than those they pushed further down the list, they will enable a new class of science that wasn't possible before. As recently described in Wired magazine, these massive number crunchers will push simulation to the forefront of science.

Scientists will be able to run new and vastly more accurate models of complex phenomena: Climate models will have dramatically higher resolution and accuracy, new materials for efficient energy transmission will be developed and simulations of scramjet engines will reach a new level of complexity.

"The scientific method has changed for the first time since Galileo invented the telescope (in 1509)," said computer scientist Mark Seager of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Supercomputing has made huge advances over the last decade or so, gradually packing on the ability to handle more and more data points in increasingly complex ways. It has enabled scientists to test theories, design experiments and predict outcomes as never before. But now, the new class of petaflop-scale machines is poised to bring about major qualitative changes in the way science is done.

"The new capability allows you to do fundamentally new physics and tackle new problems," said Thomas Zacharia, who heads up computer science at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, home of the second place Cray XT5 Jaguar supercomputer. "And it will accelerate the transition from basic research to applied technology."

Breaking the petaflop barrier, a feat that seemed astronomical just two years ago, won't just allow faster computations. These computers will enable entirely new types of science that couldn't have been done before. This new generation of petascale machines will move scientific simulation beyond just supporting the two main branches of science, theory and experimentation, and into the foreground. Instead of just hypotheses being tested with experiments and observations, large-scale extrapolation and prediction of things we can't observe or that would be impractical for an experiment, will become central to many scientific endeavors.

"It's getting to the point where simulation is actually the third branch of science," Seager said. "We say that nature is always the arbiter of truth, but it turns out our ability to observe nature is fundamentally limited."

Climate modeling is one area that is ripe for a boost. In the past couple years, the general public has come around to the idea that climate change is real, and scientists are moving on to the potential impacts, how we might adapt and the technology that will help us cope. To do this in any meaningful way, the predictive models need to have a much higher resolution and be much more precise.

"These kinds of questions require much higher fidelity than we had before," Zacharia said. "Very important decisions are going to be made by policy makers based on this science."

Currently, the state of Tennessee, which is more than 400 miles long, is represented by only two pixels in most global climate models. The new computers will drastically increase resolution, in both space and time, and improve accuracy.

In the race to achieve this promise, Oak Ridge had made a push to top the speed list this year with its Cray XT5 Jaguar, but Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico tweaked its IBM Roadrunner to get just enough more juice to keep the crown. Both more than doubled the performance of Livermore Lab's BlueGene/L IBM computer that led the pack a year ago.

Though there may be disappointment in Oak Ridge over losing by a nose, the lab also has the eighth fastest computer, a smaller version of the Jaguar. When combined with its bigger sibling in the next few weeks, the Jaguar will boost the lab's total capability to around 1.6 petaflops. In the same one-acre room resides the 15th fastest computer, and Oak Ridge is in the process of assembling yet another supercomputer for the National Science Foundation. All told, the lab could reach 2.5 petaflops.

Speeds and Feeds: Oak Ridge's Jaguar Supercomputer:

Type: The Cray XT computer is a distributed-memory massively parallel MIMD supercomputer.
What Is It: A petaflop computer can process one quadrillion floating-point calculations per second. That's 1,000,000,000,000,000 calculations every second.
Processors: 182,000 AMD quad-core Opterons, running at 2.3 gigahertz.
Memory Capacity: 362 terabytes of memory (with 578 terabytes per second of memory bandwidth).
OS: Cray XTs run UNICOS/lc, a flavor of Unix with networking and file-system enhancements from BSD.
Recent History: The peak performance for a supercomputer has more than doubled in the last year, from 0.5 petaflops to the current high of 1.1.
The Future: Raymond Kurzweil believes the human brain has a power of 10 petaflops. By Kurzweil's reckoning, we should equal the human brain's calculating power in less than 7 years.

But it's not just about the speed.

"This is not an Olympic sprint where somebody gets a medal at the end," Zacharia said. "That's not the point."

The Jaguar was designed to be optimal for science. Oak Ridge surveyed scientists in many fields including energy, climate and combustion, and built the computer to suit their needs. It has three times the memory capacity of any other computer, Zacharia said -- 362 terabytes of memory.

The designers paid special attention to making the transition to Jaguar as easy as possible for scientists, allowing them to use applications they have already developed instead of spending years coding new ones to suit the computer.

"I believe we have the best, most capable computer in the world for science," he said.

Only fully assembled in early September, nine months ahead of schedule, Jaguar has already helped scientists who have been eagerly anticipating the petaflop capability.

"The past six weeks we have already run many of the scientific applications people have been waiting for for a long time," Zacharia said.

Jaguar and its peers, which will undoubtedly be multiplying in the coming years -- Livermore Lab is currently assembling a petaflop computer that will join the club in 2011 -- promise to take some scientific fields to the next level by enabling far more complex simulations. This in turn will inspire scientists to imagine new questions, which will in turn need even bigger supercomputers to answer.

"That's exactly how science thrives on these big facilities," Zacharia said. "Any fundamentally new science facility captivates and drives the imaginations of scientists worldwide."

Jaguar's power will be unleashed on scientific problems including drug discovery, photovoltaics and new materials. A single simulation will be able to handle every aspect of a complex problem, such as the performance of a scramjet engine, including the airflow around it, its internal combustion, the strength of its materials, the effect of intense heat and aerodynamic forces.

"With the advent of petaflop computing, it's possible to do this simulation," said Seager, who is collaborating with scientists at other labs and universities to do just that.

Today's computer scientists can barely contain their excitement as they imagine what is now possible.

"It's very exciting to be alive today and doing computer science," Seager said. "Now we can do some spectacular things."

See Also:

Images: 1) Cray XT5 Jaguar / Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 2) BlueGene/L / Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Video: Time-lapse view of Jaguar's assembly/Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:24 am

Sarah Boseley: Where lives are cheap

Thousands of 12- and 13-year-old girls will be lining up outside their school medical offices this term, some of them shivering, stomachs lurching, waiting for a jab in the arm that it is hoped will prevent them suffering cervical cancer - a particularly unpleasant form of the disease which kills more than 900 women a year in the UK.

There is every sign that takeup of the vaccine will not be universal. In a pilot study, 20% of parents did not give permission for their daughter to have the jab - whether from apathy or anxiety. Girls are being told that if they feel strongly, they can go to their GP and get vaccinated anyway, but that will surely be rare. And takeup will certainly slump for the boosters, months later.

In spite of a health service information campaign and assiduous marketing by the two firms who vied for the NHS contract - the British company GlaxoSmithKline (the winner) and Merck - many people seem to know little about the vaccine, and the usual worries have already surfaced. Is it safe? Does it have side-effects? The legacy of MMR will run for many years.

In the US, websites have started up and the anti-vaccine rumour machine has been grinding away for a while now. Some of the doubts are reasonable - we cannot know what the long-term effect of the jab will be, because it has been tested for less than seven years so far, though the chief worry is that the protection will wear off. Others, such as alarming side-effects, are not well substantiated.

But while Britain and the US are dithering and doubting, there is an urgent need for the vaccine. The real damage done by this horrible disease is in the developing world. There are about 500,000 cases worldwide every year, and more than half the women die. About 80% of the deaths are in poor countries.

These countries don't have screening programmes. They don't have the surgery and radiotherapy to treat cervical cancer, either. The women who die are often mothers and breadwinners, leaving struggling families. A simple vaccine - two or three injections for every girl - could transform their prospects.

But Merck charges $360 for the three-dose vaccine course, presumably needing to recoup the $100m it is said to have spent on marketing in the US on top of development costs. GlaxoSmithKline will have struck a deal at a lower price in Britain to win the NHS contract, but this is still out of reach for countries in Africa and Asia. Merck is not insensitive to this potentially damaging issue and has committed itself to giving away enough vaccine to immunise a million women in the developing world. But the anticipated demand, should an affordable vaccine become available, is for the immunisation of 58 million girls in 60 countries by 2020.

Enormous hopes were building right up until the end of last month. Gavi, the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation - set up with the help of Bill and Melinda Gates - was expected to support global rollout of the cervical cancer vaccine. It didn't happen. In the face of global financial meltdown, there were nerves about the chances of raising enough money for a programme that will have to begin in schools - it can't just be added to the infant immunisation schedule.

Gavi will return to the issue. It has negotiated a cost in principle from the drug companies of less than $10 a head, of which governments would pay just 30 cents. A big new funding campaign among donor countries would still be needed, even at this price. But when we are spending so much vaccinating girls whose risk of cancer is really pretty low, surely offering the same chance to girls whose lives could genuinely be saved is a no-brainer?

sarah.boseley@guardian.co.uk

Ian McEwan on what Obama's election means for the environment

Ian McEwan: The only one who can unite humanity for this life-or-death struggle against climate change is Barack Obama
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 19 Nov 2008 | 12:15 am

Sex appeal of Action Man scars revealed

They give Action Man a certain ruggedness and bestow instant testosterone on movie heroes, but according to psychologists, facial scars can also make men more attractive to the opposite sex.

Men with mild facial scars were typically ranked as more appealing by women who were looking for a brief relationship, though they were not considered better as marriage material, a study found.

In the same experiments, women with facial scars were judged to be as attractive as those without, the researchers said.

Psychologists at the universities of Liverpool and Stirling asked 115 women and 64 men to rate the attractiveness of eight opposite sex strangers. Half were asked to look at original face shots, while the other half viewed images that had been digitally manipulated to add scars to their cheeks, jawbones or foreheads.

While facial scars made no difference to the perceived attractiveness of women, scarred men ranked 5.7 percentage points higher in the appeal ratings than those with undamaged skin.

"A large scar is unlikely to make you more attractive, but there are some scars that women do seem to find appealing. There's the whole James Bond thing, where a person is attractive but probably not the best marriage material," said Robert Burriss, a psychologist at the University of Liverpool who led the study.

The study appears in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Spacewatch

The shuttle Endeavour docked with the ISS (International Space Station) on Sunday and they should still be together when the complex returns to visibility in our evening sky on Saturday - watch for times in our satellite predictions on that day. Billed as a "home improvement" mission, the flight is to install a new galley, two more sleep stations and a new toilet, plus a recycling system to convert urine into pure drinking water. The extra facilities should allow the ISS's permanent crew to grow from three to six next year. The undocking of Endeavour from the ISS is due at 15:40 GMT on the 27th and the two should soar separately across our sky on that evening and the next before Endeavour lands on the 29th. A Russian Progress supply craft is due to be launched on the 26th and may also be sighted as it travels along a similar path, though it is less conspicuous.

India's Chandrayaan 1 mission, now safely in lunar orbit, released an impact probe last Friday that returned images of the surface as it made a suicidal dive towards the crater Shackleton near the Moon's south pole. The experiment tested technology needed for Chandrayaan 2 which is planned to deliver a lunar lander and a rover in 2011.

Nasa's Phoenix mission is now at an end with the craft succumbing to the deep freeze of a Martian polar winter. There were worries too last week for the Spirit rover when its power levels dropped dangerously low following a dust storm that coated its solar arrays.

Space exploration

Letters: Clash of rights over medical research and privacy

Letters: How disappointing it was to read your article on the NHS medical research plan, which appeared to reject proposed changes to the present situation
Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 19 Nov 2008 | 12:14 am

Big cat fossil found in North Sea

A fossilised bone from a sabre-toothed cat has been dredged up from the seabed by a trawler off the UK coast.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Nov 2008 | 11:38 pm

Tiny, long-lost primate rediscovered in Indonesia

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - On a misty mountaintop on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, scientists for the first time in more than eight decades have observed a living pygmy tarsier, one of the planet's smallest and rarest primates.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 18 Nov 2008 | 11:32 pm

Space crunch

Balancing space ambitions against limited funds
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Nov 2008 | 11:18 pm

Migraine's Silver Lining: Lower Risk of Breast Cancer

The first time I experienced migraine with aura, I was shopping. I
Source: Livescience.com | 18 Nov 2008 | 11:16 pm

Tech that trumps traffic tangles

The location data of satellite navigation systems looks set to improve traffic monitoring and town planning.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Nov 2008 | 10:46 pm

Big hop forward: Scientists map kangaroo's DNA (AP)

AP - Taking a big hop forward in marsupial research, scientists say they have unraveled the DNA of a small kangaroo named Matilda. And they've found the Aussie icon has more in common with humans than scientists had thought. The kangaroo last shared a common ancestor with humans 150 million years ago.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Nov 2008 | 10:01 pm

Future Cars More Recyclable

Aluminum is good for fuel economy, reduced emissions, high recyclability and improved safety.
Source: Livescience.com | 18 Nov 2008 | 9:18 pm

Video - Floating Droplets

Long and close-up views of droplets rolling while suspended over a vibrating oil bath.
Source: Livescience.com | 18 Nov 2008 | 9:02 pm

Archeologists say they found witch doctor skeleton (AP)

AP - Archeologists believe a 12,000-year-old skeleton found in a grave containing 50 tortoise shells, a leopard pelvis, a cow tail and part of an eagle wing is the remains of a witch doctor.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Nov 2008 | 8:11 pm

Big Hop Forward: Scientists Map Kangaroo DNA

Scientists unravel the DNA of a small kangaroo named Matilda.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Nov 2008 | 6:20 pm

Superstrong Space Magnets Are Just as Weird as We Thought

Dead stars known as magnetars — the most-magnetic objects in the universe — are a little less mysterious, thanks to new observations from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and Integral space telescopes.

Magnetars are are a type of star remnant called a neutron star. They have magnetic fields 10 million times larger than the strongest magnet ever created on Earth. Only 15 of these bizarre objects have ever been spotted.

A magnetar forms when an extremely massive star has exhausted its fuel for internal combustion, and collapses into itself. The gravity is so strong that all the matter in the star condenses into neutrons, and the resulting stuff is so dense that a teaspoon of it would weigh about a hundred million tons.

"Neutron stars are very interesting objects," said astrophysicist Maxim Lyutikov at Purdue University who worked on the new study. "They have the mass of a star, in a radius of only 10 kilometers [6.2 miles]. They are as dense as nuclear matter, and they rotate extremely fast."

On top of neutron stars' already wacky characteristics, magnetars add one more: a magnetic field a thousand times stronger than that of ordinary neutron stars. No one knows why some stars become magnetars, and some experts suggest they may even be the same as regular neutron stars, just seen at a unique phase of life.

The new observations, published in the Astrophysical Journal, confirmed the presence of a theorized cloud of electrons surrounding some magnetars. This cloud seems to be interacting with the light emitted from the stars, causing them to radiate a unique spectrum of X-rays, rather than the usual spread of light frequencies expected from normal stars. The electron clouds seen around the magnetars are much denser than any observed around other neutron stars, and they help explain the unique patterns of radiation they emit.

"It’s a very nice piece of the puzzle that fits in to the general scheme of how we think magnetars work," Lyutikov told Wired.com.

See Also:

Image: Sky & Telescope/Gregg Dinderman

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 18 Nov 2008 | 5:17 pm

Facial scars are attractive to the opposite sex

They give Action Man a certain ruggedness and bestow instant testosterone on movie heroes, and according to British psychologists, facial scars can also make men more attractive to the opposite sex.

Men with mild facial scars were typically ranked as more appealing by women who were looking for a brief relationship, though they were not considered better as marriage material, a study found.

In the same experiments, women with facial scars were judged to be as attractive as those without, the researchers said.

The sexual allure of the facial scar has long puzzled psychologists. Many believe they are seen by women as a sign of masculinity and an exciting, risk-taking personality, though in Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well, an old lord, Lafeu, takes a different slant, commenting: "A scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good livery of honour."

Psychologists at the universities of Liverpool and Stirling decided to investigate the effects of facial scars by asking 115 women and 64 men to rate the attractiveness of eight strangers of the opposite sex. Half were asked to look at original face shots, while the other half viewed images that had been digitally manipulated to add scars to their cheeks, jawbones or foreheads.

While the scars made no difference to the perceived attractiveness of women, scarred men ranked 5.7 percentage points higher in the appeal ratings than those with undamaged skin.

For each picture, volunteers were asked to guess whether the scar was from a fight, an accident or illness. The men's scars were often blamed on a violent encounter, while those on women were often attributed to accidents.

"When scarring is seen as the result of a violent encounter, it signifies strength or bravery in a guy, or it could be due to an accident, and so evidence of a risk-taking personality. Either way, it's another way of assessing a man's masculinity," Burriss said. Men without scars could be seen as more caring and cautious, and so more suitable for a long term relationship, he added.

The study appears in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Japanese scientists clone embryo of endangered rabbit (AFP)

AFP - Japanese scientists said Tuesday they had created a cloned embryo from the dead body of an endangered species of rabbit and are hoping for a birth.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Nov 2008 | 5:08 pm

Toxic Toads Killing Australian Crocs

Invasive cane toads are killing alarming numbers of freshwater crocodiles in Australia.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Nov 2008 | 4:48 pm

Kangaroo genes close to humans

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's kangaroos are genetically similar to humans and may have first evolved in China, Australian researchers said Tuesday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 18 Nov 2008 | 4:43 pm

CO2 Seeping Into Water Supply

CO2 levels in groundwater are going up faster than atmospheric levels.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Nov 2008 | 4:20 pm

Spacewalking Astronauts Tackle Dirty Job

Spacewalking astronauts start the dirty job of fixing the space station's solar wings.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Nov 2008 | 4:11 pm

BLOG: Grave of First-Known Family Found

A cluster of Stone Age graves may belong to the oldest known nuclear family.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Nov 2008 | 3:40 pm

Britain talks down geoengineering as a solution to climate change

Research into drastic solutions to climate change such as cloud seeding, sun shades in space and ocean fertilisation risks hampering global climate negotiations by giving some countries an excuse for not agreeing to short-term emissions reductions, a UK government minister warned today.

The remarks by Joan Ruddock, a minister in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, appear to be a thinly veiled dig at the Bush administration, whose delegation attempted to insert a section into last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on developing technology to block sunlight and cool the planet. The proposed text referred to it as an "important insurance" against the impacts of climate change.

Speaking to MPs on the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills select committee, Ruddock was defending the government's unwillingness to fund research into so-called geoengineering – large-scale, untested interventions that either soak up carbon dioxide or prevent sunlight warming the planet

"The concern is that people who don't want to enter into agreements that mean they have to reduce their emissions might see this as a means of doing nothing, of being able to say, 'science will provide, there will be a way out'," she said, "it could be used politically in that way which would be extremely unfortunate."

She added that funding research on such projects would deflect engineers away from more pressing solutions to climate change such as carbon capture and storage – extracting carbon dioxide from the emissions put out by fossil fuel power stations and injecting it underground.

The science minister Lord Drayson added that many of the proposals – such as launching huge mirrors into space, adding particles into the atmosphere to deflect light or seeding algal blooms in the ocean using iron fertiliser – were extremely costly and had risks that were poorly understood. "Some of the projects that are being postulated under geoengineering do strike one as being in the realm of science fiction," he said.

But Steve Rayner, professor of science and civilisation at the Said Business School in Oxford, pointed out that not all options were expensive. Some such as iron fertilisation would be within reach of wealthy individuals - he called them, "a 'Greenfinger' rather than 'Goldfinger'."

Currently, the research councils – which decide how public science funding is spent – do not fund any projects into geoengineering directly, although the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council has allocated £3m for an "ideas factory" into potential projects next year.

According to Dr Phil Williamson at the University of East Anglia, who wrote the Natural Environment Research Council's submission to the select committee hearing, around £50m of the government's research spend is peripherally related to geo-engineering.

The select committee's chair, the liberal democrat MP Phil Willis, said he was disappointed with the government's position of adopting only a "watching brief" over the emerging field. "That seems to me a very very negative way of actually facing up to the challenge of the future," he said. "It's a very pessimistic view of emerging science and Britain's place within that emerging science community."

He said government should support many different avenues to tackling climate change. "There have to be plethora of solutions. Some of which we do not know whether they will work, but that is the whole purpose of science."

But the chief scientific advisor to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Prof Bob Watson, said that funding should be focussed on the most immediate solutions. "I think the question is whether [geoengineering] is the highest priority at the moment given scarce resources.

"First [priority] is actually putting investment into current technologies and pre-commercial technologies such as carbon capture and storage," he said, "Clearly I think this is something which has to be move quickly. I would call it an Apollo-type programme... we need to go in parallel and try multiple approaches simultaneously." He advocated that the EU, US and Japan work together on research into CCS.

Some scientists and engineers will also be disappointed with the government's dismissal of the field. In the introduction to a collection of scientific papers published by the Royal Society in September on the topic Prof Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Prof Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge wrote: "While such geoscale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing... There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium."

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