Proteins Strangle Cell During Division

A Swedish research group has discovered a new mechanism for cell division in a microorganism found in extremely hot and acidic conditions. The results of the research offer insights into evolution, but also into the functioning of the human body.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Dec 2008 | 1:00 am

Cell Movements Totally Modular, Study Shows

A study describing how cells within blood vessel walls move en masse overturns an assumption common in the age of genomics -- that the proteins driving cell behavior are doing so much multitasking that it would be near impossible to group them according to a few discrete functions. But now researchers have shown that distinct groups of proteins each control one of four simple activities involved in the cells' collective migration.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Dec 2008 | 1:00 am

Carbon Dioxide Helped Ancient Earth Escape Deathly Deep Freeze

The planet's present day greenhouse scourge, carbon dioxide, may have played a vital role in helping ancient Earth to escape from complete glaciation, say scientists.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Dec 2008 | 1:00 am

Type Of Breast Reconstruction Impacts Radiation Therapy Outcomes, Study Finds

For breast cancer patients who underwent a mastectomy and who undergo radiation therapy after immediate breast reconstruction, autologous tissue reconstruction provides fewer long-term complications and better cosmetic results than tissue expander and implant reconstruction, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Dec 2008 | 1:00 am

Winter Brings Flu, Summer Brings Bacterial Infections

In the same way that winter is commonly known to be the "flu season," a new study suggests that the dog days of summer may well be the "bacterial infection" season.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Dec 2008 | 1:00 am

Juries Not As Racially Diverse As The Communities From Which They Are Drawn, Study Finds

Results reveal that there is a wide range of factors that conspire to prevent juries from being as racially diverse as the communities they represent.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Dec 2008 | 1:00 am

Climate Change Wiped Out Cave Bears 13 Millennia Earlier Than Thought

Enormous cave bears, Ursus spelaeus, that once inhabited a large swathe of Europe, from Spain to the Urals, died out 27,800 years ago, around 13 millennia earlier than was previously believed, scientists have reported. The new date coincides with a period of significant climate change, known as the Last Glacial Maximum, when a marked cooling in temperature resulted in the reduction or loss of vegetation forming the main component of the cave bears' diet.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Dec 2008 | 7:00 pm

Presence Of Gum Disease May Help Dentists And Physicians Identify Risk For Cardiovascular Disease

Individuals reporting a history of periodontal disease were more likely to have increased levels of inflammation, a risk factor for heart disease, compared to those who reported no history of periodontal disease, according to new research. The findings suggest persons with increased levels of inflammatory markers associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease might be identified by asking about oral health history.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Dec 2008 | 7:00 pm

New Drug For Skin Cancer Approaching Commercialization

A drug that is activated by light can be a quick, simple, and cheap treatment for tens of thousands of patients with skin cancer in Sweden alone.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Dec 2008 | 7:00 pm

Clue To Safer Obesity Drugs: Mechanism Links Serotonin With Regulation Of Food Intake

Once hailed as a miracle weight-loss drug, Fen-phen was removed from the market more than a decade ago for inducing life-threatening side effects, including heart valve lesions. Scientists are trying to understand how Fen-phen behaves in the brain in order to develop safer anti-obesity drugs with fewer side effects.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Dec 2008 | 7:00 pm

Native hunters say climate affecting herds (AP)

AP - Chief Bill Erasmus of the Dene nation in northern Canada brought a stark warning about the climate crisis: The once abundant herds of caribou are dwindling, rivers are running lower and the ice is too thin to hunt on.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Dec 2008 | 11:25 am

Glimmer of hope for rare monkey

A new sub-population of the Critically Endangered Tonkin snub-nosed monkey has been recorded in northern Vietnam.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Dec 2008 | 9:32 am

Endeavour to begin return trip to Fla. on Monday (AP)

AP - NASA says space shuttle Endeavour will begin its cross-country return trip to Florida on Monday, one day later than expected.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Dec 2008 | 9:20 am

Ghana votes for new president to usher in oil era (Reuters)

Reuters - Ghanaians queued up and began voting on Sunday to pick a new president in a tight race between two foreign-educated lawyers competing to lead the West African nation as it prepares to cash in on offshore oil reserves.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Dec 2008 | 8:35 am

Men lack confidence in boardroom and bedroom

Men used to have the upper hand when it came to confidence in the boardroom, bedroom and the bar.

But, according to new research, men are struggling with a crisis of confidence, with almost half confessing that they feel anxious most of the time - particularly at work and especially around women.

The majority of almost 2,000 men aged 16 to 65 questioned by OnePoll, an independent market research company, admitted struggling to feel confident about their place in society. About half confessed to feeling most insecure when at work, while another 40 per cent also felt inadequate during nights out with friends.

All those questioned by the survey, commissioned by Braun, admitted to feeling increasingly emasculated by women and said their feelings of inadequacy soar when women are present.

Most intimately, one in four men revealed they are racked by feelings of inadequacy during sex, saying that film and television programmes like Sex and the City had made them anxious about not having enough stamina and imagination in the bedroom.

'Men are more likely than women to have fragile self-esteem, as they judge their status in society through success in a single sphere, such as their career, the size of their pay packet or the model of their car,' said David Sharpley, of the British Psychological Society. 'These are all subject to a high degree of ambiguity and risk. Because men are generally poor at introspection and communicating their emotions, this uncertainty can cause the collapse of their self-esteem.

'But then, because men tend to bottle their emotions, they instinctively fake the confidence they once felt. This exacerbates the problem many times over, because it makes it harder for men to ask for help or for others to see that they need support.'

Dr John Tomlinson, a former GP and trustee of the Sexual Dysfunction Association, said he was hearing from an 'enormous' number of 18- to 40-year-olds worried about sexual problems. 'Advertising - such as David Beckham's Armani underwear campaign - glamorises the well-toned male body, which men find daunting because they assume it is what women expect,' he said.

More than half of those questioned confessed they had no constructive male role model - instead having to resort to fictional characters such as James Bond or Indiana Jones - and that they wished their 'self-image' was stronger, and more masculine and positive.

But instead of becoming more assured with age, three in four men admitted that their lack of assurance had increased as they got older. The majority of those questioned said they felt most confident when they were between 21 and 30. Just 11 per cent of 40-year-olds and 4.6 per cent of 50-years-olds said they felt more confident now than in their youth.

Respondents also revealed being haunted by the conviction that other men are more confident than they are. Almost half of those questioned believed their boss was more self-assured than they were.

One in three men said they turn to alcohol for Dutch courage to help break the cycle. A surprising one in five had lucky charms, with a third admitting they own 'lucky' jewellery, one in four wearing auspicious socks and one in five putting their faith in lucky pants.

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Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Dec 2008 | 12:05 am

New genetics study reveals Spain's forced conversions in 15th and 16th centuries

An international team of scientists has uncovered striking evidence that mass conversions to Catholicism by Sephardic Jews and Muslims took place in the 15th and 16th centuries in Spain and Portugal.

The discovery shines new light on one of the bitterest episodes in the history of the Iberian Peninsula when the region entered a period of terrible religious oppression. The Moors, who at first adopted a policy of religious tolerance when they conquered Spain, later introduced laws that forced Christians and Jews to convert to Islam. Then, after Christians had achieved key victories over the Moors, they expelled all Jews and Muslims who would not convert to their religion.

In the past, it was assumed these two acts triggered two separate, massive waves of expulsions. The discovery controversially challenges this belief. The new study, reported in the American Journal of Human Genetics last week, indicates that large numbers of people, particularly Spanish and Portuguese Jews wishing to stay in Spain, converted to Catholicism rather than lose their homes and livelihoods.

The research was carried out by a team led by Professor Mark Jobling of Leicester University and Francesc Calafell of the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. They found that 20 per cent of men in Spain and Portugal today still have distinctive Sephardic Jewish ancestry while 11 per cent have DNA that reflects Moorish ancestors.

'The Jewish link was particularly surprising,' said Calafell. 'We had certainly not expected it.' The evidence from DNA studies indicates that rather than practise their religious beliefs, many Spaniards and Portuguese chose to give them up in order to avoid expulsion. Their decision to do so is revealed through the genetic make-up of modern Spanish Catholic men who were often unaware of their ancestry.

The team's study was based on analyses of Y chromosomes of Sephardic Jewish communities in places where Jews migrated after being expelled from Spain in the 1490s. In addition, the scientists characterised the Y chromosomes of the Arab and Berber army that invaded Spain in AD 711 from data on people living in Morocco and the Western Sahara.

Then they compared these Y chromosomes with more than a thousand men currently living in Spain and Portugal. Use of the Y chromosome, which confers masculinity, was crucial because it remains unchanged as it is passed from father to son. In this way, the researchers were able to determine if a man's Y chromosome came from a Jewish or Moorish predecessor or another source.

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Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Dec 2008 | 12:05 am

'As we clambered off the yacht, we felt like explorers'

The baby sea lion looked as if it was sleeping, resting peacefully under a mangrove tree seemingly hiding from the sun. I went closer and realised it was dead: the third carcass I had seen on my first day in the Galapagos Islands.

I had come to this archipelago of 19 islands, sprinkled 600 miles off Ecuador, expecting to be startled by teeming life. The baby sea lion silently decaying, like the dead frigate bird I had seen earlier, was a reminder that nature is as merciless as she is wondrous. The weak die and the strong survive; this was Darwinism in the very place that inspired Charles Darwin to develop his theory of natural selection. It was Darwin who had brought me here, on the eve of the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, to see for myself this zoo without cages, these islands that changed the world.

The best way to see the Galapagos is by boat and there is no better boat than La Pinta. The yacht offers conclusive proof that evolution extends beyond living creatures and includes ships: HMS Beagle, Darwin's vessel, was 28m long and was among a class of ship nicknamed 'coffin brigs' because of their tendency to sink; by contrast, La Pinta is a gleaming beauty, 60m long, with three decks, panoramic lounge bar, library, gym and hot tub.

Before I began my adventure I was nervous about who the other passengers might be; I suspected that luxury cruises attracted the overprivileged and obese - not so much survival of the fittest as arrival of the fattest. In fact, they were nothing like my stereotype, and since there were only 32 of us, we socialised in a way that would have been impossible on a larger ship.

The majority were retired - possibly because one would need a sizeable pile in the bank to be able to afford this cruise. It made me think that, if I were in charge, I would offer some heavily subsidised places for younger holidaymakers just to help liven up the atmosphere on board. Although the group were mostly Americans and Britons, there were also Italians, Dutch and a German couple whom I found particularly intriguing. The man was in his late sixties and wore an eyepatch, while his wife was younger and always wore something gold. His amiable smile and one twinkling eye convinced me he was a Bond villain scouting for a base from which to plot ruling the world. The other option - that he was simply an older fellow from Cologne on holiday with his wife - seemed too fanciful to be credible.

The Spaniards who visited in the 16th century called this place las Islas Encantadas - 'the Enchanted Islands' - ships drifted out of sight of the islands because of the strong currents, and the sailors assumed it was the land that was vanishing and not the ships that were moving. It was those currents and the remoteness of the islands that made the environment unique, because they forced the species arriving by air or ocean currents to adapt to the special conditions of the various islands of the archipelago, which was formed by volcanoes rising from the sea bed.

Today it isn't buccaneers who come visiting, it's lawyers specialising in intellectual property; but as we clambered off our yacht on to pangas - motorised dinghies that sliced through the turquoise brine - we felt less like privileged tourists and more like free-spirited explorers.

The pangas deposited us on the beach of North Seymour Island and I was greeted by a landscape of rust and ash - red lava rock and palo santo trees the colour of bleached bones, twisted and broken like disturbed skeletons. I picked a path through the espino, cacti and scurrying lava lizards as sea lions padded nonchalantly past. Above us hovered Galapagos doves with their distinctive red feet and blue eyes. I saw my first blue-footed booby, a rather comical-looking bird I assume was first discovered by a 12-year-old boy. The boobies are famed for their courtship dance where they kick their feet high in the air and spread their wings while whistling and honking.

A baby sea lion waddled over to a female, who cast an eyelashed glance at the pup before scornfully flicking it into the air. Female sea lions only feel affection for their own babies, so if a mother dies its children are doomed. We came across a male sea lion howling in pain from two large bite marks on its body.

'This one looks like it's been in a fight with the dominant beach-master sea lion,' said Pablo, one of the three naturalists on board the yacht. 'The beach-master can have up to 30 females in his harem and he will chase away younger males because they are a threat.' Sounds like Luton on a Saturday night, I thought to myself.

Despite the exoticism of the animal species in the Galapagos, I found myself comparing the wildlife on the islands with my own species: the male wingless cormorant trying to impress the female by presenting a string of seaweed, only to be spurned until he offered a more substantial clump; the male frigate bird that I watched, attempting to score with the females by inflating his red throat pouch until it was the size of a balloon.

When he visited the Galapagos, Darwin was surprised by the tameness of the creatures, which did not run from humans because they had not yet learnt to fear them. As our panga skimmed across the glass-splintered sea, the sparkling water looking as though it had been dusted by crushed emeralds, I saw sea lions playfully leaping out of the water as frigate birds fluttered above like flapping origami. On another island, finches landed on branches inches from my face.

Liz and Martin, a retired couple from Kent, had come to the Galapagos mostly to spot birds. 'For anyone who loves birds the Galapagos are a must,' Liz told me. 'What's so great about seeing a bird here rather than in England?' I asked. 'Well, for one thing you can tell by their songs that a bird is foreign,' Martin replied. 'So,' I asked, 'when birds chirp in Spanish do they have upside-down exclamation marks before they start singing?'

The couple look at me blankly. Not being a bird enthusiast, I found it hard to get excited by finches and frigates, but Pablo promised there was plenty more to come. He was right.

The Galapagos do not thrill only with their wildlife: the pink flamingos standing on one leg in the brackish water, the flame-red Sally Lightfoot crabs scuttling on the black rocks, the tropical penguins and the green sea turtles, the dazzling yellow-tailed surgeonfish, sea stars and king angelfish that shimmered in the water under our glass-bottomed boat. No, it was the very landscape of the islands I found enthralling: the red sand beach of Rabida Island, the result of hot lava flowing millions of years ago; pink-smudged sunsets floating above the astonishing whirls and twirls of black molten rock hardened into a lunar landscape on Sullivan Bay; the dun and chalk Kicker Rock, a monumental work of sculpture shaped by wind and sea.

On Santiago Island, the fourth largest in the archipelago, I saw hundreds of marine iguanas thawing in the sun. The reptiles, which Darwin dubbed 'imps of darkness', were so black they melted into the landscape. It was hard to tell rock from reptile except for the shooting white arcs that would explode from their noses: their diets contain excess salt that has to be expelled by sneezing. Their motionlessness made them perfect subjects for photography and Garry Gale, for one, was delighted. A 71-year-old engineer from Toronto, he was visiting the Galapagos with his fiancée Heather and it was the photographic opportunities that had brought them to the islands.

Me, I didn't want to look through a lens; I wanted to look directly at these prehistoric creatures and wonder what they made of these strange intruders into their world. What had the forebears of these iguanas made of Alexander Selkirk - Daniel Defoe's inspiration for Robinson Crusoe - who visited the islands in 1708? What had the turtles thought when they saw HMS Beagle? Had they spied a giant wooden fish and wondered how it could float on water? What did the finches think when they saw gigantic white birds gliding out of the sky and landing on their islands, carrying hundreds of shuffling two-legged strangers?

'Attention! Attention! Killer whale spotted!' The crackling sound from the walkie-talkie shook me out of my reverie. Two killer whales had been sighted off the coast. We leapt into the pangas and raced towards our targets. Each time we spotted a sliver of black and white in the distance, it had vanished by the time we reached the spot. Having spent the morning feeling like Darwin, I was now Captain Ahab chasing the elusive whale. It wasn't an idle comparison - Herman Melville passed through here in 1841 gathering material that later wound up in Moby Dick. But unlike Ahab, whose pursuit of Moby Dick became an obsession, our search for the whales lasted less than an hour, after which we returned to our luxury yacht, where waiters were on hand to serve us hot chocolate.

That afternoon, the group gathered in the conference room for a lecture on Darwin and the Galapagos. Pablo explained how Darwin was only 26 in the autumn of 1835 when he spent five weeks on the archipelago - this 'world within itself' as he described it - as part of a five-year voyage aboard the Beagle. The observations he made in the Galapagos of finches that appeared to be slightly different on each island convinced him it was the specific conditions of the individual island that was forcing the finches to adapt and evolve. And so was born a theory that fundamentally altered how people saw nature and life on earth.

Well, most people anyway. That evening, over dinner, I sat with Garry and Heather, who worked with patients who had lost limbs, fitting prostheses. I asked how it felt, as a woman of science, to be visiting the Galapagos?

'I don't believe in evolution, if that's what you mean,' said Heather.

'I'm sorry?'

'I don't believe in evolution,' she repeated. 'I just can't believe we're descended from chimps.'

'But what about Darwin, the finches, natural selection...?'

'I don't buy it,' she said. 'Who made the finches in the first place? And anyway the Bible has lasted so long, makes you think there has to be something to it, don't you think?'

'It certainly makes you think,' I replied.

The Galapagos Islands are named after its famous tortoises - galápago is Spanish for 'saddle', referring to their saddleback shells - and I had been looking forward to seeing them all week. I finally saw them on Santa Cruz Island. They were grazing quietly, apparently freely, but all suspiciously clumped together in one field. We had been warned not to get too close - advice Darwin had evidently not followed, since he had ridden the tortoises as if they were horses, getting 'on their backs and then giving a few raps on the hinder parts of their shells'. These days riding the tortoises is discouraged but I did see one giant tortoise clamber on to a female and start having what looked like a good time. This prompted a flurry of activity among the group, who rushed forward, directing their zoom lenses at the shell-shocked couple. It felt rather intrusive.

The most famous tortoise in the Galapagos is Lonesome George, who is nearing 100 years old and is 'Lonesome' because he is the only surviving tortoise from Pinta Island and finding him a mate has proved unsuccessful. He is the last of the line, evidence of the damage humans (for whom tortoises once meant fresh meat) and 'introduced species' such as dogs, pigs and rats can do to a fragile ecosystem.

Today's tourists don't stack and un-shell tortoises, but as I lined up patiently to grab a glimpse of Lonesome George, and later as I wandered past the cheap souvenir shops in Santa Cruz, I did wonder about the damage the 160,000 tourists who come to the islands every year are doing. Are they destroying the very thing they are coming to see? It was a question I put to Timothy Silcott, who works for the Charles Darwin Foundation, an environmental charity based in the Galapagos. 'Tourism is incredibly important to the Galapagos,' he told me. 'It helps sustain the economy of the islands. The problem is not the number of tourists coming here as much as the related economy that sprouts up to support the tourists.'

Yachts like La Pinta are relatively benign compared with hotel tourism: in the past 15 years, Silcott told me, the number of hotels on the islands has risen from 33 to 65 and the number of restaurants and bars from 31 to 114. The hotels and bars encourage migrants from mainland Ecuador to move to the islands for work, increasing the population and putting strain on the environment.

'The regulations for visiting the Galapagos are pretty solid,' Silcott said. 'You can't set foot on the islands without a guide; the itinerary is agreed a year in advance; you can't have a group bigger than 16; and no smoking or eating is allowed inside the national park [which covers 97 per cent of the archipelago].'

So what should an ethically minded traveller do if they want to visit the Galapagos? 'Try to use a tour operator that uses local staff,' he suggested, 'and one committed to protecting the environment through recycling - and steer clear of hotels and stick to yachts.'

A hundred and seventy-three years after Charles Darwin visited the islands, they are still the closest thing to Eden on Earth. On our last evening we gathered for a final cocktail and Pablo presented a slide show of photographs he had taken during the week. It had been an exhilarating seven days, filled with images and moments I will not easily forget, and yet the most remarkable thing about my time was not what I did see but more what I did not. Tourists glimpse only a tiny fraction of every island that they visit; beyond the pre-planned trails, the Galapagos, mercifully, remain as they have always been - wild, untamed and mysterious: beyond imagination and beyond reach.

Essentials

Sarfraz Manzoor travelled with Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000; coxandkings.co.uk), which offers a 10-night Galapagos itinerary combining a seven-night cruise on La Pinta with three nights' B&B at the Hilton Colon Quito.

The private trip costs from £4,305, including flights with Iberia via Madrid, a Quito city tour, full board on the cruise, private transfers and all excursions on the islands.

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Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Dec 2008 | 12:04 am

Drug offers new Alzheimer's hope

A drug commonly used to control epilepsy could soon have a new role as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. Researchers have found that sodium valproate, marketed in Britain as Epilim, stimulates the body's natural defences against the disease.

They found that the drug boosted production of an enzyme which prevents the build-up of proteins in brain cells. These accumulations, or plaques, of protein have been shown by researchers to trigger the onset of Alzheimer's.

Crucially, valproate has already been passed by Britain's stringent drug safety watchdog as an epilepsy drug, and could be brought into widespread use fairly rapidly if research results are confirmed, scientists told The Observer.

'We are still in the early days of our work, but are very excited about the potential of valproate,' said the team leader, Professor Tony Turner, of Leeds University's Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, is a devastating condition in which victims are stripped of their intellectual powers. There is no cure and patients in later stages have to be cared for by their children or in homes or hospitals. It is caused by the accumulation of a protein called amyloid-beta peptide in brain cells. It is believed that amyloid normally plays a minor role in brain growth; however, its presence - in large amounts - is toxic to the brain.

In young and middle-aged people, amyloid is prevented from building up by the enzyme neprilysin (Nep). However, around the age of 60, the brain's output of Nep declines in many individuals, with devastating results. Amyloid plaques spread and brain cells are killed off, resulting in loss of memory, confusion, mood swings, language breakdown, and general withdrawal as a person's senses decline. Gradually, bodily functions are lost.

Jonathan Miller, former president of the Alzheimer's Disease Society, once said: 'The body remains as a constant reminder of a person who was once loved, and indeed still is. It is a hideous memento of what you have lost.'

Drugs that could counter Alzheimer's are being sought urgently by pharmaceutical companies and most efforts have concentrated on chemicals that could destroy amyloid plaques once established in the brain. But Turner, whose work was funded by the Medical Research Council, took a different approach and directed his efforts to reboosting production of Nep, the brain's own anti-amyloid agent.

'We could have tried introducing, [to see if] healthy genes would start brain cells making Nep again,' he said. 'However, that would have been very complicated.' Instead his team looked at a range of chemicals that they thought might switch on production of Nep in the brain; one of them was valproate, which was highly effective in reboosting production. 'The potential of the drug to clear amyloid from the brains of Alzheimer's patients is obvious,' said Turner.

Scientists have warned that an effective anti-Alzheimer's drug is desperately needed. There are 500,000 people living with the disease in Britain, a figure set to double within a generation as the population gets older and becomes more susceptible to the condition. At this level, Alzheimer's will have a significant impact on the nation's economy. It is already estimated that dementia costs the UK more than £17bn a year. In addition, two-thirds of people with late onset dementia live at home, which means families bear the main stress and the biggest burden of the disease.

'What is really exciting is that valproate is a well-tested and well-tolerated drug that has been given to patients with epilepsy for several decades,' Turner added. 'That means that, if further studies show it is efficacious, we could start giving it to patients in only a few years, and not have to wait for lengthy clinical safety trials to be completed.

'However, I must stress that we still have a fair amount of work to do before that becomes possible.'

Dementia: the facts

1 in 14 people over 65 in the UK have dementia, of which Alzheimer's is the most common type. This figure rises to one in six over 80.

2 per cent of government funding through the Medical Research Council was spent on dementia research in 2003-4.

£11 is spent on research into dementia for each person with the condition in the UK. The figure compares with £105 in America.

4.6 million people around the world will develop dementia this year.

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Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Dec 2008 | 12:04 am

Scientists tell United Nations that Earth needs an asteroid shield

A group of the world's leading scientists has urged the United Nations to establish an international network to search the skies for asteroids on a collision course with Earth. The spaceguard system would also be responsible for deploying spacecraft that could destroy or deflect incoming objects.

The group - which includes the Royal Society president Lord Rees and environmentalist Crispin Tickell - said that the UN needed to act as a matter of urgency. Although an asteroid collision with the planet is a relatively remote risk, the consequences of a strike would be devastating.

An asteroid that struck the Earth 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs and 70 per cent of the species then living on the planet. The destruction of the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908 is known to have been caused by the impact of a large extraterrestrial object.

'The international community must begin work now on forging three impact prevention elements - warning, deflection technology and a decision-making process - into an effective defence against a future collision,' said the International Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation, which is chaired by former American astronaut Russell Schweickart. The panel made its presentation at the UN's building in Vienna.

The risk of a significantly sized asteroid - defined by the panel as being more than 45 metres in diameter - striking the Earth has been calculated at two or three such events every 1,000 years, a rare occurrence, though such a collision would dwarf all other natural disasters in recent history.

The panel added that developments in telescope design mean that, by 2020, it should be possible to pinpoint about 500,000 asteroids in orbit round the Sun and study their movements. Of these, several dozen will be revealed to pose threats to Earth, the panel added.

However, the group warned it would be impossible to predict exactly which of these 'at-risk' asteroids would actually strike until it was very close to our planet. By then, it would be too late to take action.

As a result, the panel said it would be necessary to launch missions to deflect or destroy asteroids that have only a one in 10, or even a one in 100, risk of hitting our planet. 'Over the next 10 to 15 years, the process of discovering asteroids will likely identify dozens of new objects threatening enough that they will require proactive decisions by the United Nations,' the report added. In addition, such missions will have to be launched well ahead of a predicted impact, so that slight deflections by spaceships can induce major changes in an asteroid's paths years later. The world will not be able to rely on Bruce Willis saving it from an asteroid at the last minute as he does in Armageddon, in other words. Considerable planning and forethought will be needed.

Funding such missions will therefore require far greater investment than is currently being made by international authorities. At present, about $4m (£2.7m) a year is spent by Nasa on asteroid detection, while the European Space Agency's planned mission to study the asteroid Apophis - which astronomers calculate has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking the Earth this century - is likely to be a modest project costing only a few tens of millions of dollars.

By contrast, any effective protection system will require funding of about $100m (£68m) a year to provide a full survey of the skies, combined with investment in spacecraft that can reach an asteroid and then deflect it. This would be achieved either by crashing the spacecraft on to the asteroid or by triggering a nuclear explosion in space.

However, the cost of such missions should not be used as an excuse for failing to act, added the panel. 'We are no longer passive victims of the impact process,' it concluded. 'We cannot shirk the responsibility.'

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Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Dec 2008 | 12:04 am

Melting ice may slow global warming

Collapsing antarctic ice sheets, which have become potent symbols of global warming, may actually turn out to help in the battle against climate change and soaring carbon emissions.

Professor Rob Raiswell, a geologist at the University of Leeds, says that as the sheets break off the ice covering the continent, floating icebergs are produced that gouge minerals from the bedrock as they make their way to the sea. Raiswell believes that the accumulated frozen mud could breathe life into the icy waters around Antarctica, triggering a large, natural removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

And as rising temperatures cause the ice sheets to break up faster, creating more icebergs, the amount of carbon dioxide removed will also rise. Raiswell says: ' It won't solve the problem, but it might buy us some time.'

As the icebergs drift northwards, they sprinkle the minerals through the ocean. Among these minerals, Raiswell's research shows, are iron compounds that can fertilise large-scale growth of photosynthetic plankton, which take in carbon dioxide from the air as they flourish.

According to his calculations, melting Antarctic icebergs already deposit up to 120,000 tonnes of this 'bioavailable' iron into the Southern Ocean each year, enough to grow sufficient plankton to remove some 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the annual carbon pollution of India and Japan. A 1 per cent increase in the number of icebergs in the Southern Ocean could remove an extra 26 million tonnes of CO2, equivalent to the annual emissions of Croatia.

Raiswell, a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow, said: 'We see the rapid ice loss in Antarctica as one obvious sign of climate warming, but could it be the Earth's attempt to save us from global warming?' He added that the effect had not been discovered before because scientists assumed that the iron in the iceberg sediment was inert and could not be used by plankton.

In a paper published in the journal Geochemical Transactions, Raiswell and colleagues at the University of Bristol and the University of California describe how they chipped samples off four Antarctic icebergs blown ashore on Seymour island by a storm in the Weddell Sea.

They found that they contained grains of ferrihydrite and schwertmannite, two iron minerals that could boost plankton growth. 'These are the first measurements of potentially bioavailable iron on Antarctic ice-hosted sediments,' they write. 'Identifying icebergs as a significant source of bioavailable iron may shed new light on how the oceans respond to atmospheric warming.'

No rivers flow into the Southern Ocean and the only previously identified major source of iron for its anaemic waters is dust blown from South America. The team says that icebergs could deliver at least as much iron as the dust.

A key question is how much of the carbon soaked up by the growing plankton is returned to the atmosphere. 'We simply don't know the answer to that,' Raiswell said. Seeding the oceans with iron will only benefit the climate if the plankton sink to the bottom when they die, taking the carbon with them.

David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, said: 'It's a very interesting new line of research and one that should be looked at in more detail.'

He said the number of icebergs in the Antarctic was expected to rise by about 20 per cent by the end of the century, which could remove an extra 500 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, if they all seeded plankton growth.

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