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Space Waste: Handling Garbage When Your Dumpster Is 100 Million Miles Away?In space, no one takes out the trash. Garbage can pile up, spoil and become a health hazard for astronauts in the cramped living quarters of a space station.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 4:00 pm Key Advance Toward Treatment For Most Common Adult Form Of Muscular DystrophyUsing a drug-discovery technique in which molecules compete against each other for access to the target, scientists have identified several compounds that, in the laboratory, block the unwanted coupling of two molecules that is at the root of muscular dystrophy.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 4:00 pm Sweet Molecule Could Lead Us To Alien LifeScientists have detected an organic sugar molecule that is directly linked to the origin of life, in a region of our galaxy where habitable planets could exist.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 4:00 pm 'Let The Sunshine In' To Protect Your Heart This WinterThe temperature might not be the only thing plummeting this winter. Many people also will experience a decrease in their vitamin D levels, which can play a role in heart disease, according to a new article.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 4:00 pm Household Exposure To Toxic Chemicals Lurks Unrecognized, Researchers FindMany women are surprised to learn the extent of personal, in-home contamination caused by exposure to everyday consumer products, according to a team of researchers. The study, published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, is one of the first accounts of participants' responses to learning personal exposure data, research critical to environmental science and public health.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 4:00 pm Nontoxic Nanoparticle Can Deliver And Track Drugs, According To New ResearchA nontoxic nanoparticle is proving to be an all-around effective delivery system for both therapeutic drugs and the fluorescent dyes that can track their delivery.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 4:00 pm How Geothermal Heat Pumps Could Power the Future (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Editor's Note: Each Wednesday LiveScience examines the viability of emerging energy technologies - the power of the future.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 1:16 pm How Geothermal Heat Pumps Could Power the FutureA geothermal heat pump can work anywhere.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Nov 2008 | 1:08 pm Breast Cancer Common Among Women With Family History But Without BRCA1 Or BRCA2New data assesses breast cancer risk among women with a strong family history of breast cancer, but without a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation. This may facilitate earlier detection and prevention among high-risk women.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 1:00 pm New Tool Trains Athlete Brains To React 53 Percent FasterResearchers have discovered how to train the brain of athletes to improve their overall athletic performance.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 1:00 pm Hubble Resolves Puzzle About Loner Starburst GalaxyAstronomers have long puzzled over why a small, nearby, isolated galaxy is pumping out new stars faster than any galaxy in our local neighborhood. Now NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has helped astronomers solve the mystery of the loner starburst galaxy, called NGC 1569, by showing that it is one and a half times farther away than astronomers thought.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 1:00 pm Some Cancers Found By Mammograms Would Have Naturally Regressed, Study SuggestsBreast cancer rates increased significantly in four Norwegian counties after women there began undergoing mammography every two years, according to a new report. Rates among regularly screened women remained higher than rates among women of the same age who were screened only once after six years, suggesting that some of the cancers detected by mammography may have spontaneously regressed had they not been discovered and treated.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 1:00 pm Jonathan Jones: My love-hate relationship with the Science MuseumIn Joseph Wright of Derby's paintings, 18th-century Britons gather to witness scientific wonders. Children stand transfixed or terrified, adults just as rapt, as scientists visually display the marvel of nature. Wright's picture An Experiment On a Bird in the Air Pump portrays a cruel and terrifying experiment; his more benign painting The Orrery shows people contemplating a model of the solar system. Both paintings are reproduced as wall decorations in a gallery on the top floor of London's Science Museum that contains examples of the actual instruments Wright portrays - air pumps, orreries, and other 18th-century scientific equipment in dark polished wood and glistening brass. It's a quiet gallery - a lot quieter than the Launchpad space whose entrance is right next to this historical display. At the Launchpad children of all ages can help feed lentils into an endless lentil-moving machine, look through a periscope, fire balls, grab illusory watches, photograph their shadows ... And it's just one of the interactive environments where, all over the Science Museum, boring old museum displays are replaced by scientific fun. I have a love-hate relationship with this museum. It sometimes seems a shame that all of the collections of scientific artefacts and classic technology are potentially eclipsed, for young visitors, by the video dancefloor. But the other day, it gave me a lesson in science as spectacle. I was just on the point of being disdainful of the way visitors seem to be encouraged to ignore the historical collection of Enlightenment scientific tools, to rush past it into the Launchpad. I was wondering if they should just have a sign over the gallery that said "Boring Stuff". But then we decided to go into the Launchpad theatre to see a lecture for children called The Rocket Show (we did have a child with us, by the way). And this was a rocket show. How would you demonstrate Newton's laws? Well, the way the lecturer at the Science Museum went about it was first of all to set light to a balloon full of hydrogen. A ball of flame hung briefly in the air in the crowded lecture theatre. He then proceeded to make a rocket out of a Pringles tube filled with - that's right, hydrogen. And he lit it, sending the rocket upward at very high speed in a rush of flame. He said some stuff about actions having reactions as well. If you didn't leave remembering Newton's laws you certainly did register the majesty of natural forces. And you might well fall in love with the adventure of science from seeing this. The children were enthralled. The adults were enthralled. I realised that the spirit of Joseph Wright of Derby is very much alive at the Science Museum. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 26 Nov 2008 | 12:47 pm UK to have European space centreThe European Space Agency (Esa) is to open a research centre in the UK.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2008 | 12:36 pm Rains bring mudslide fears to Calif burn areas (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 12:12 pm OPEC likely to debate, not decide another supply cut (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 11:43 am Astronauts busy collecting recycled urine samples (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 11:21 am Japan polar bear mating stymied by gender mixupTOKYO (Reuters) - Handlers of a popular polar bear, brought to mate with a female in a zoo in northern Japan, found their breeding plan was doomed when they noticed that he, in fact, was a she.Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 10:39 am Supermarkets 'to halve bags used'Four of the UK's leading supermarkets say they are on track to halve the numbers of plastic bags handed out.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2008 | 10:30 am Jackie Leach Scully: In so many discussions of ethics and belief today, fantasy takes the place of empiricismJackie Leach Scully: As the debate over 'choosing' deaf children shows, in so many discussions of ethics and belief today, fantasy takes the place of empiricismSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 26 Nov 2008 | 9:00 am Food securityIs there a case for continuing farm subsidies?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2008 | 8:36 am ISS astronauts fix faulty urine processor: NASA (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 8:17 am Marine archaeologists find remains of slave ship (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 5:14 am Universal test 'would slash Aids'Universal testing for HIV, followed by immediate treatment could cut full-blown Aids cases by up to 95%, a study says.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2008 | 5:12 am Think tank calls for 'home MOTs'A Government advisory body says major changes must be made to technology and policy to meet the UK's emissions goals.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2008 | 3:55 am Shipwreck may hold key to Turks and Caicos' lineageMIAMI (Reuters) - A pair of glass-eyed idols led marine archeologists to the wreck of a Spanish ship that once carried an illegal cargo of African slaves believed to be the ancestors of many of today's inhabitants of the British colony of Turks and Caicos.Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 Nov 2008 | 2:34 am Give Thanks? Science Supersized Your Turkey Dinner
Your corn is sweeter, your potatoes are starchier and your turkey is much, much bigger than the foods that sat on your grandparents' Thanksgiving dinner table. Most everything on your plate has undergone tremendous genetic change under the intense selective pressures of industrial farming. Pilgrims and American Indians ate foods called corn and turkey, but the actual organisms they consumed didn't look or taste much at all like our modern variants do. In fact, just about every crop and animal that humans eat has experienced some consequential change in its DNA, but human expectations have changed right along with them. Thus, even though corn might be sweeter now, modern people don't necessarily savor it any more than their ancestors did. "Americans eat a pound of sugar every two-and-a-half days. The average amount of sugar consumed by an Englishman in the 1700s was about a pound a year," said food historian Kathleen Curtin of Plimoth Plantation, a historical site that recreates the 17th-century colony. "If you haven't had a candy bar, your taste buds aren't jaded, and your apple tastes sweet." The traditional Thanksgiving dinner reflects the enormous amount of change that foods and the food systems that produce them have undergone, particularly over the last 50 years. Nearly all varieties of crops have experienced large genetic changes as big agriculture companies hacked their DNA to provide greater hardiness and greater yields. The average pig, turkey, cow and chicken have gotten larger at an astounding rate, and they grow with unprecedented speed. A modern turkey can mature to a given weight at twice the pace of its predecessors. In comparison with old-school agriculture or single-gene genetic modification, these changes border on breathtaking. Imagine your children reaching full maturity at 10 years old. This human-directed evolution has generated animals and plants that share little more than a name with their wild or pre-industrial farm-domesticated relatives. The accumulation of agricultural breeding knowledge and consumer testing has resulted in plants and animals that are physically shaped by consumer tastes. Americans like a medium-size corn kernel, so kernels aren't too big or small. American consumers like white meat, so turkeys are grown with larger breasts. The breeding programs of the last half-century are, in some ways, a tremendous scientific accomplishment. For example, the United States pumped out 33 times more pounds of turkey at a lower cost to consumers in 2007 than our farmers did in 1929. Turkeys more than doubled in size in that time from an average of 13 pounds to an average of 29 pounds, and as seen in the chart above, show no signs of stopping. If the trend continues, we could see an average turkey size of 40 pounds by 2020. According to the National Wildlife Turkey Federation, the largest wild turkey on record is 38 pounds. In fact, in commercial and academic turkey-breeding programs, adult male turkeys, called toms, can reach 50 pounds at the tender age of five months, said John Anderson, a longtime turkey breeder at Ohio State University. "We get 50 pounders at 20 weeks, but that's at the top edge of our normal distribution," Anderson said. "We've got some adult male-line birds that went over 80 pounds."
"You can spread the one tom around better. It adds a whole new level of efficiency. You can spread him over more hens," Anderson said. "It takes the lid off how big the bird can be. If the size of the bird keeps them from mating, then you're stuck." This process, compounded over dozens of generations, has yielded turkeys with genes that make them very big. In one study in the journal Poultry Science, turkeys genetically representative of old birds from 1966 and modern turkeys were each fed the exact same old-school diet. The 2003 birds grew to 39 pounds while the legacy birds only made it to 21 pounds. Other researchers have estimated that 90 percent of the changes in turkey size are genetic. Perhaps the most obvious change in turkey genetics is that, unlike the colorful pictures we all drew in elementary school, modern, factory-farmed birds are all white. The Broad Breasted White turkey became the dominant commercial breed in the middle of the 20th century. These fast-growing, big birds are more energy efficient than their forebears. They can convert 2.5 pounds of feed into a pound of body weight. Legacy breeds take a longer time to add weight and can need over 4 pounds of feed to add a pound of weight. But all that bulk comes with consequences. Commercial turkeys can't fly and researchers have even invented a way of quantifying how impaired the birds' walking has become. The 1-to-5 scale ranges from "birds whose legs did not have any defect" to bowlegged birds who have "great difficulty walking." After 30 years of breeding, Ohio State's big birds average a 3. The birds also have a hard time regulating their own food intake. In essence, they eat too much and get fat. "Commercial broiler breeder strains, selected for rapid growth and high meat yields, do not adequately regulate voluntary feed intake commensurate with their energy needs," wrote two USDA scientists last year. "Consequently, these birds must be given a limited amount of feed to avoid overconsumption that can lead to excessive accumulation of energy stores [fat tissue]." And some food lovers argue that fast growth and genetic change have robbed turkey meat of its distinctive taste. Some are turning to heritage-breed turkeys like the Blue Slate variety that pack pre-industrial genomes. "One thing I would say about a modern turkey is that they have a lot less flavor," said food historian Curtin. "If you've ever had a chance to taste a heritage breed, there's subtleties in turkey." Turkey isn't the only element of the iconic Thanksgiving dinner that science has given an overhaul. Corn breeding has made corn six times sweeter than the variations that the Pilgrims probably encountered back in 1620.
The maize would have looked like the ear pictured on the left. Eventually, this type of corn was crossed with the Virginia Southern dent on the right to create the field corn that we feed to animals. You wouldn't want to eat any of these. "It wouldn't have been particularly sweet," Tracy said. Sweet corn is the result of a mutation that replaces some of the corn's starchiness with sugar. It spread from the Iroquois to European settlers in the late 1770s. While it's considerably sweeter than the nasty stuff the Pilgrims ate — due to a mutation in a gene called Sugary1 — it wouldn't taste much like the corn we know. "From that time, it has gone through quite a few changes. Today, through conventional breeding, we have genes in it that make it sweeter, maintain its quality longer, and make it much more tender," Tracy said. "If people had the opportunity to taste Jeffersonian sweet corn and modern sweet corn, there'd be no question what they'd prefer." That original sweet corn was only about 10 percent sugar, but it also was about 25 percent phytoglycogen, lending it a nice, creamy texture. In the next major corn transition — to supersweet corn in the 1970s through a variation in the Shrunken2 gene — that creamy texture was lost, even as the sweetness of the corn skyrocketed. Among the thirteen genes known to affect corn sweetness, however, industrious agronomists have found an even better gene to work with, called SE, and they made "sugar enhanced corn." "That's the most popular for fresh market today," Tracy said. "It gives a sugar level of 20 to 25 percent and it turns out to be very tender." But even as modern consumers prefer the SE corn — and often find the supersweet corn too sweet — the Shrunken2 corn is making a comeback as retailers prefer its longer shelf life.
Retailer and food processor demands, rather than your fresh-vegetable interests, play a major role in the evolutionary history of potatoes as well. Though they were not present at that original feast, they have been a major part of the holiday since Lincoln created it in 1863. Potatoes are now driven by a decidedly nonfestive activity: the making of french fries and potato chips. Almost a mirror of corn genetics, agronomists have ratcheted up the starch in potatoes and turned down the sugar, said Gregory Porter, a potato specialist at the University of Maine. "High-starch french fries, when they fry, don't get soggy," Porter said. "Low sugars are important because high sugars in potatoes would result in a dark brown discoloration. High-starch potatoes result in a nice golden-colored fry." So the modern potatoes of today, even the round ones that look more like their colonial predecessors, have undergone major biological changes. "When you look at potatoes that would have initially come in the 1700s, those potatoes weren't being selected for processing ability," Porter explained. "Those potatoes probably would have been round and had lower starch content and high sugars. They would not have made good french fries or potato chips." WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter , Google Reader feed, and webpage; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 26 Nov 2008 | 1:33 am Huge Cave Bears: When and Why They DisappearedVegetarianism and cool temps made cave bears extinct long before other Ice Age animals died out.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Nov 2008 | 1:00 am 'World mandate' on climate actionAn opinion survey carried out in 11 countries finds consensus on the need for action on climate change.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2008 | 12:09 am Last night's TVSporting magnificent quiffs that speak of hours in front of the mirror, three handsome lads swagger around, eyeing up the young women. Harassed dads try to keep their daughters in line, but one lad manages to hook up with a girl. Dad looks on and flashes a menacing smile. The youth covers his snigger with an anxious hand. This, as David Attenborough explained in Natural World: Clever Monkeys (BBC2), was a display of Machiavellian intelligence: the concealment signals an apology to the dad, which is an example of using your brain to control society. And, when it comes to that, Peter Mandelson has nothing on the gelada monkeys of Ethiopia's Semien Mountains. I know what I'll do, the deviously manipulative Daddy Gelada thought: I'll grab a helpless baby, plonk him on my back and then that poser in the quiff will never dare attack me. But kids are an amoral lot these days, and the dashing young blade set upon Daddy anyway, mauling baby and ruffling quiff. Some monkeys, it turned out, possess grammar (once thought uniquely human), as well as an ability to think and talk about things beyond their immediate experience. Inevitably, this intelligence turned out to be Machiavellian, too: a weedy white-faced capuchin shouted "snake" (in monkey talk) when there was none, in order to scare off his rivals and steal their food. The story of how monkeys had learned to farm and go to war with each other seemed to mirror our own evolution - although that may have been because Attenborough had been given a big red dial labelled "monkey/man comparison overdrive" which he kept ramping up to 11. It left me wanting to go back 40m years, to the days when we might have been pygmy marmosets happily farming sap from trees in South America. But I suppose there is always the danger we would instead find ourselves among the noisy troops of baboons and geladas, who had quit the forests for the plains. These more complex societies required greater intelligence, said Attenborough, but brightness did not bring happiness. Low-ranking baboons suffered ulcers and high blood pressure; when deposed, once high-ranking baboons showed signs of depression. When our ancestors left the trees, said Sir David, they changed, too, becoming more predatory and dangerous than the apes and monkeys they left behind. "Becoming clever," he said, "can mean being controlling, stressed, perhaps unhappy." Forget brains: surely the recipe for unhappiness is wrestling with your unruly quiff in the reflection at the waterhole every morning. Machiavelli reappeared in True Stories: Mr Untouchable (More4), a documentary about Leroy "Nicky" Barnes, who credited the sly Italian with transforming him from a hopeless drug addict to the self-styled king of the 1970s Harlem heroin trade. "Machiavelli, very devious character," explained Barnes's sad-eyed former right-hand man Joseph "Jazz" Hayden, helpfully. A familiar cast of grizzled ex-gangsters and braces-popping feds talking over a predictable soundtrack of Curtis Mayfield's Pusherman and Superfly gave this long programme a stereotypical and superficial start. It took a while before it dawned on me that the chunky gold signet ring belonging to some big-talking bloke we never actually saw was not a hideously cliched dramatic re-enactment but Barnes himself. Living a new life under a witness protection programme, he agreed to be filmed in the shadows, surrounded by money and cigars, spouting boastful guff such as: "If you're in powder, you've got to be vicious." He wasn't apologising for flooding black neighbourhoods with heroin, cheating on his wife (who in the glory days was said to have "a black belt in shopping"), or "ratting" on his old mates when he was inside. As he put it, "If you're going to say, 'Fuck the King', then the King is gonna sing." The film refrained from directly judging Barnes, but moral clarity was found in the fuzzy voice of his former associate Frank James, interviewed on the phone from prison. While Barnes gloated about being free when his former mates who "fucketh" with him were still doing time, James hoped Barnes would use the documentary to spread the word to young people that crime did not pay. Barnes did not. James was also the very first voice you heard, on the hotline from where he has been incarcerated for 24 years, reflecting on the fetishisation of Barnes: his fictionalised appearance in American Gangster, the rappers who still pay him homage, and the contradictions of this documentary. "Nick needs this to survive. He needs the notoriety. The only thing we're really doing, we're giving him a transfusion. We're resurrecting him." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 26 Nov 2008 | 12:02 am Genes that raise heart risks amplified in diabetics (Reuters)Reuters - Genes that increase the risk of heart disease in the general population carry an even greater risk of heart trouble in diabetics, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Nov 2008 | 11:36 pm Thanksgiving in space: stiff turkey, bland yams (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Nov 2008 | 11:06 pm Remains of Slave Ship FoundMarine archaeologists finds remains of slave ship wrecked of Turks and Caicos Islands.Source: Livescience.com | 25 Nov 2008 | 10:29 pm Hubble Captures Images of Rare Mammoth Stars
The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed two of the most massive stars in our galaxy as never before. Located 7,500 light years away from Earth in the Carina Nebula, these stars are rare ultra-hot, super-bright stars that emit primarily ultraviolet radiation, that gives them a blue hue. WR25, the brightest of the stars near the center of the image, is actually a large star 50 times the size of our sun with another star half that size orbiting around it. To the upper left of WR25, the third brightest star in this image is really a triple star cluster. Two are so close together that telescopes with less resolution can't resolve them. The third star may take hundreds of thousands of years to orbit around them. The second brightest star, to the left in the image, is actually a less massive star that appears bright because it is much closer to earth than the others. Astronomers, led by Jesus Maiz Apellaniz at the Instituto de Astrofisico De Andalucia in Spain, believe radiation from the two star clusters may be causing a giant gas globule (shown in the image below) in the Carina Nebula to evaporate, inducing new stars to form and giving the globule its strange shape. Hubble got back up and running in late October with its on-board back-up system after its primary camera malfunctioned. NASA is working to fix a spare system on the ground that could be delivered to the telescope by the space shuttle. A repair mission originally scheduled for October 14, before the breakdown, has been pushed back.
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Images: NASA/ESA Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 Nov 2008 | 10:02 pm Thanksgiving sky: Jupiter, Venus, moon together (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Nov 2008 | 9:21 pm Jupiter's Core Twice as Big as ThoughtComputer simulations get up close to Jupiter's core.Source: Livescience.com | 25 Nov 2008 | 9:07 pm Divers Find Remains of Illegal Slave ShipThe wreck of an illegal slave ship is found off Turks and Caicos Islands.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 25 Nov 2008 | 7:43 pm Pain is Partly in Your MindPain may not be all in your mind, but some of it seems to be.Source: Livescience.com | 25 Nov 2008 | 7:39 pm Europe debates space station costA budget for the space station is the big sticking point at the meeting of member states of the European Space Agency.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Nov 2008 | 7:22 pm Quasars Kick the Living Daylights Into Galaxies
Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, is in puzzlingly short supply in distant young galaxies, and astronomers think black holes could be to blame. By studying a sample of galaxies 11.5 billion light years away, scientists were able to get a snapshot of their early formation. Because the light from the distant galaxies has taken so long to travel to Earth, they appear as they were when the universe was just two billion years old. Using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India to observe the galaxies in radio light, Steve Curran and colleagues at Australia’s University of New South Wales found that hydrogen appears to be missing. The discovery is especially surprising, because if anything, hydrogen is expected to be more plentiful in the early universe. "Since hydrogen gas is consumed by star formation, we may expect more hydrogen gas in the distant, and therefore earlier, universe," Curran said in a press release. Instead, the astronomers suggest that radiation emitted from black holes at the centers of the galaxies could be destroying the hydrogen gas. When Curran's team observed the same galaxies with optical telescopes, they found that the galaxies are emitting large amounts of light. This radiation is probably coming from regions in the galaxies’ centers called quasars (pictured in above illustration), where matter falls into a black hole and releases vast amounts of energy. "At such distances, only the most optically bright objects are known," Curran said. "The intense radiation from the matter accreting into the black hole in these quasars is extreme and we believe that this radiation is ripping the electrons from the atoms, destroying the hydrogen gas." What’s left would be a soup of free ionized particles called a plasma, which would not be detectable in the radio frequencies observed. Because quasars occur predominantly in the early universe, this mechanism could explain why the distant young galaxies appear to contain less neutral hydrogen atoms than their nearby, older counterparts. See Also:
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 Nov 2008 | 6:57 pm Nasa jubilant at urine solutionAstronauts fix a urine-recycling unit on the International Space Station, needed to support a six-person crew next year.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Nov 2008 | 6:44 pm World of wasteHow families from four countries deal with their detritusSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Nov 2008 | 6:33 pm UK 'support' for waste paymentsA survey for BBC News suggests that most people in the UK support the principle of pay-as-you throw waste charging.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Nov 2008 | 6:22 pm Take classification decisions out of politicians' hands, say drug advisersThe power to decide the classification of illegal drugs should be taken out of the hands of the home secretary and given to a small, independent committee of experts, according to a proposal being considered by the government's top advisory body on drug classification. The new group would act rather like the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, which since May 1997 has decided interest rate levels. Under the proposals discussed today by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, a "classification committee" of scientists, social scientists and experts in the drug field would decide which class a drug should occupy based on evidence of the harm it causes to individuals and society. In a separate development, the ACMD's chair Prof David Nutt told the meeting that the advisory group would be undertaking a review of the classification of psychedelic drugs including LSD, psilocybin ("magic mushrooms") and possibly the currently legal drug salvia. He said that the ACMD's technical sub-committee had decided that the classification of LSD and psilocybin as class A drugs was due for a review. The committee had not looked at the evidence for harm caused by these substances for some time, he said. Sir Gabriel Horn, a professor of behavioural neuroscience at Cambridge University, told the committee that the whole drug classification system needed to be reformed because national drug use has changed so much since the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act was brought in. The amount of cocaine use is now 30 times higher and there are up to 80 times as many deaths from injecting drugs. Horn advocated taking decisions about drug classification out of the hands of politicians to avoid the kind of political row that has accompanied the government's decision to move cannabis from class C to class B. "It appeared that a decision had been taken at the very highest levels in government that cannabis should be classified B before the advice had been received in the report from the [ACMD]," he said. "I think that is a very unwise step. I think it is a dangerous step." He said interest rate decisions used to be embroiled in similar political wrangling before the government devolved decision-making to the Bank of England. "There used to be in days gone by huge controversy as to whether the chancellor of the exchequer should go one way or the other ... Now we don't have that." Horn was presenting a report from an Academy of Medical Sciences committee, which he chaired, on the harm caused by drugs, although he said the proposals about a classification committee were a "personal view". Former shadow home secretary David Davis MP was scathing about the idea. "I hope his level of analysis of his own subject is better than his level of analysis of the monetary history of the country," he told the Guardian, referring to the monetary policy committee's failure to foresee the current financial crisis. Davis said that the issues surrounding drug classification were too complex for any scientific committee to tackle without political input. "They relate to social issues and issues of judgement such as the relationship between certain drugs and crime, the impact of classification on the behaviour of the police and the behaviour of the population – all of which are not susceptible to the laws of physics or even the laws of biology," he said. He added that the proposal would not succeed in taking the politics out of drug policy. "In truth the political battle would move to who was on the committee," he said. Horn said that members of the committee should not be appointed by the home secretary, as is the case with the ACMD, but by "trusted" institutions such as the Royal Society and the British Academy in order to free the committee from political influence. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 25 Nov 2008 | 6:14 pm Drug Companies Cook Books, Misleading Doctors
The difference between what drug companies tell the government and doctors suggests that they're cooking the books, which could mislead doctors making prescriptions. Of 33 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2001 and 2002, one-fifth of supporting clinical trials were not published in medical journals, according to a new study. And those results that were published were often more positive than what companies presented to the FDA in their applications. As a result, potentially unreliable data is being used to promote drugs on which billions of dollars and thousands of lives may ride. "Some studies aren't published at all. Then, when they are, there are little changes that make the papers look more favorable towards the product," said review co-author Lisa Bero, a University of California, San Francisco health policy expert. If new — and typically more expensive — drugs are only slightly better than existing drugs, but otherwise are comparable, this is largely an ethical and financial problem. But if the drugs later prove harmful, the damage can be profound. In 2004, Merck's blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx was pulled from the market after killing an FDA-estimated 27,000 people. The drug doubled heart attack risk — a side effect that critics say was glossed over in the company's studies, which in retrospect were partly marketing propaganda. Another Merck blockbuster, the cholesterol-lowering drug Vytorin, has proven ineffective. GlaxoSmithKline's best-selling diabetes drug Avandia was allowed to remain on the market, but only with a label stating its apparent cardiovascular risks. None of those drugs were among the applications reviewed in by Bero, and her team reviewed only efficacy rather than safety data. But the underlying problem was similar: Doctors and researchers who trusted in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals were given a false impression of the medicines. "It's more of the same," said Arthur Levin, director of the nonprofit Center for Medical Consumers. "It confirms that this is not an open, transparent process. There is still the opportunity for sponsors of new products to try and tip the scales in their favor." Among the differences between results submitted to medical journals and to the FDA were trials that didn't favor a company's product, Bero found. Only half of 43 such outcomes were reported in the literature. More subtly, but just as importantly, key pieces of trial data vanished. "The main thing that jumped out at me was the addition and deletion of primary outcomes. Those are the most important outcomes of a trial. To find that one disappeared from a paper, or just appeared in a paper, is pretty amazing to me," said Bero. FDA spokeswoman Rita Chappelle stressed that the agency bases its decisions on application data, not medical literature. Once a drug is approved, she said, the agency's scientific review is made available to the public. "This allows anyone to see what studies were done and what the results were," she said. But in a commentary accompanying Bero's review, published yesterday in Public Library of Science Medicine, Mayo Clinic researcher An-Wen Chan wrote that the content and availability of FDA releases "is variable, and sections are often redacted." Such information, agreed both Chappelle and Levin, is also harder for doctors to read than traditional journal articles. However, even if the FDA makes application data available, and no changes are made to journal publications, the troublesome fact remains that commercially funded studies systematically favor their sponsors. Bero calls for the FDA to be overhauled to run clinical studies itself, as is done by comparable agencies in Italy and Spain. "The Italian FDA collects money from every drug company that sells drugs in Italy, pools that, and funds drug trials. They fund the sort of head-to-head drug comparisons that companies don't like to fund. And they have independent people peer-reviewing the trials. It's a great model," she said. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association of America, the drug industry's trade group, defended the current system in a prepared statement. “The critical information that health care providers need to make appropriate prescribing decisions are found in the Food and Drug Administration-approved drug label, which synthesizes key details, including important drug safety information that may not be included in a published paper," said senior vice president Ken Johnson. Reporting Bias in Drug Trials Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration: Review of Publication and Presentation [PLoS Medicine] WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 Nov 2008 | 6:00 pm Hubble Spills Star's Secret: They're TripletsNew Hubble Space Telescope images reveal a massive star is actually three.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 25 Nov 2008 | 5:43 pm Vitamins C and E Get an FVitamin pills don't ward off cancer and heart disease, and in some cases they make things much worse.Source: Livescience.com | 25 Nov 2008 | 5:37 pm Mega Wind Farms Could Steer StormsVast wind farms planned in the United States could play a role in modifying weather.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 25 Nov 2008 | 5:01 pm Backyard Skywatchers Find Tool Bag Lost in SpaceA tool bag lost in space is making appearances above North America and Europe.Source: Livescience.com | 25 Nov 2008 | 4:52 pm In pictures: Tribal Portraits: Vintage & Contemporary Photographs from the African ContinentTribal Portraits: Vintage & Contemporary Photographs from the African Continent is at Bernard J Shapero Rare Books until 23 DecemberSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 25 Nov 2008 | 4:50 pm Space Station's Urine Recycling Unit Passes TestAstronauts finally get their urine recycling unit working on board the space station.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 25 Nov 2008 | 3:40 pm Space Station's Urine Recycler Passes Key TestAfter days of glitches, the space station's new urine recycler has passed a key test.Source: Livescience.com | 25 Nov 2008 | 3:39 pm Cold causes more stranded sea turtles on Cape Cod (AP)AP - A cold snap has caused a high number of endangered sea turtles to wash ashore dead on Cape Cod beaches.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Nov 2008 | 3:36 pm Scientists shed light on causes of epilepsyLONDON (Reuters) - A breakdown in a reaction between immune cells and blood vessels in the brain appears to play a key role in epilepsy, Italian researchers said on Monday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 Nov 2008 | 3:21 pm NASA finds apparent fix for urine recycling systemHOUSTON (Reuters) - NASA appears to have resolved problems with a new urine recycling system on the International Space Station, bolstering hopes it will be able to expand the research outpost's crew next year, officials at the U.S. space agency said on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 Nov 2008 | 3:12 pm Ocean Acidity Rising at Surprising PaceOceans off the Pacific Northwest are increasing in acidity ten times faster than predicted.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 25 Nov 2008 | 3:07 pm Turkey Genome to Be SequencedScientists are planning to sequence the genome of the tasty gobbler.Source: Livescience.com | 25 Nov 2008 | 2:50 pm Minister calls for UK space facilityThe science minister Lord Drayson called today for a major new space facility to be built in Britain in a speech to the European Space Agency (Esa). Government officials are drawing up plans for a space centre that will focus on observing climate change from space and developing robotics for future missions. The facility would be based at Harwell in Oxfordshire. Speaking at the agency's ministerial meeting in the Hague, Lord Drayson said British scientists would receive "a real boost" from a UK-based Esa facility, which would also "enable Esa to make the most of the UK's world-class expertise in environmental change, climate science and robotics". The British space industry is already worth £5.8 billion a year and supports at least 16,000 jobs, but the government is concerned that too few of Esa's projects are contracted to scientists and engineers in Britain. Lord Drayson also confirmed Britain's plans to back Esa's flagship environmental monitoring satellite network, GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security Programmes), though he did not elaborate on the level of funding the government is willing to commit. Climate scientists have written to prime minister Gordon Brown amid concerns that the government is poised to slash the £128m it has already promised for the project. The GMES network is the world's most ambitious environmental surveillance project, featuring satellites and ground stations to monitor the effects of climate change. Meanwhile, the toolbox dropped by astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station last week has been filmed from Earth. Stefanyshyn-Piper and fellow astronaut Steve Bowen spent more than seven hours greasing a rotary joint on the station's starboard solar array system last week. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 25 Nov 2008 | 2:40 pm Blood tests may show inherited diseases in fetusesHONG KONG (Reuters) - Doctors may soon be able to diagnose inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis, thalassaemia and sickle cell anemia in fetuses by simply testing a blood sample taken from the mother.Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 Nov 2008 | 2:30 pm Oiligarchy: A game with a messageTrash the environment for profit to win! An utterly partial guide to the oil industry, as you 'walk a mile' in a mogul's shoes. Naomi Alderman is pushing this linkSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 25 Nov 2008 | 2:12 pm Male Lizards Do Push-Ups to Get AttentionWhen a male anole lizard wants to alert others he does four-legged push-ups.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 25 Nov 2008 | 2:07 pm Origin of Sex Pinned DownScientists find early stage of sex chromosome evolution in strawberry plants.Source: Livescience.com | 25 Nov 2008 | 1:51 pm Lizards attract attention by doing push-upsPuerto Rican lizards put on elaborate displays of push-ups to grab the attention of others when the forest is noisy, scientists have discovered. Researchers built robotic lizards that mimicked the animals' movements and found that the eye-catching shows made real lizards pay more attention. In the wild, Puerto Rican anole lizards perform push-ups before sending out more complex signals by bobbing their heads up and down and unfurling flaps of skin beneath their chins called dewlaps. Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists say the findings are confirmation of a 30-year-old hypothesis that when the environment is noisy or visually busy, animals use more conspicuous signals to communicate. "The trouble for an animal that tries to send an information-rich signal under low-light conditions or when the wind is blowing branches and leaves around is that the signal will not transmit very far. To solve that conundrum, the theory goes, you start the communication with a conspicuous component to attract the attention of your receivers," said Ord. Scientists have documented cases of animals using trills and barks to grab the attention of nearby animals, but this is the first time a mute species has used body language to achieve the same goal, Ord said. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 25 Nov 2008 | 1:37 pm Video: Robotic lizard doing push-upsWatch a robotic lizard attract attention with four-legged press-ups before unfurling its 'dewlaps'Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 25 Nov 2008 | 1:27 pm Vote: Should cannabis be reclassified as a class B drug?Should cannabis be upgraded from a class C drug to class B?Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 25 Nov 2008 | 12:31 pm
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