5 Tips: How to Keep Your New Year's Resolution

Whatever you resolve to do differently in 2009, vow also to develop a strategy to make it happen.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Dec 2009 | 7:03 pm

Spectacular New Images Showcase Saturn's Rings

New pictures of Saturn released Tuesday reveal the ringed planet in all its splendor.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Dec 2009 | 6:33 pm

Sick of Main Street, Going Green and Year-End Roundups

Many of us would now like to look ahead to what we hope will be better times.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Dec 2009 | 5:34 pm

What Science Says about Enlightened Sex

Another year, another batch of boring resolutions. So why not resolve to have better sex?
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Dec 2009 | 2:57 pm

Report: Columbia Astronauts Killed in Seconds

The tragic loss of the shuttle Columbia killed its astronaut crew in seconds, NASA says.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Dec 2009 | 2:31 pm

New Columbia Accident Report to Help Astronaut Safety

Lessons learned from NASA's Columbia accident will help boost astronaut safety.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Dec 2009 | 2:28 pm

Future of Commercial Spaceflight Uncertain, But Promising

The future of commercial spaceflight is uncertain, but holds promise in 2009.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Dec 2009 | 2:28 pm

Making Digital Maps More Current And Accurate

European researchers have designed an innovative new system to help keep motorists on the right track by constantly updating their digital maps and fixing anomalies and errors. Now the partners are mapping the best route to market.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am

Physical Disability Brings Marital Happiness

A new study finds that the onset of physical disability boosts marital happiness more often than not.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am

Hope For Treating Kidney Cancer

Kidney cancer is typically without symptoms until it has spread to other organs, when it is also the most difficult to treat.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am

Single Letter In Human Genome Points To Risk For High Cholesterol

Write out every letter in the human genome, one A, C, T or G per millimeter, and the text would be 1,800 miles long, roughly the distance from New York to Colorado. Now, in the search for genes that affect how humans synthesize, process and break down cholesterol, scientists have found a single letter among this expanse of code that is associated with elevated LDL cholesterol levels, one of the leading health concerns that has come to dominate the 21st century.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am

Scientists Pull Protein's Tail To Curtail Cancer

When researchers look inside human cancer cells for the whereabouts of an important tumor-suppressor, they often catch the protein playing hooky, lolling around in cellular broth instead of muscling its way out to the cells' membranes and foiling cancer growth.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am

Hot Southern Summer Threatens Coral With Massive Bleaching Event

A widespread and severe coral bleaching episode is predicted to cause immense damage to some of the world's most important marine environments over the next few months.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am

Car Key Jams Teen Drivers' Cell Phones

Researchers have developed an automobile ignition key that prevents teenagers from talking on cell phones or sending text messages while driving.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm

New Breeding Ground For Endangered Whales? High Numbers Of Right Whales Seen In Gulf Of Maine

A large number of North Atlantic right whales have been seen in the Gulf of Maine in recent days, leading right whale researchers to believe they have identified a wintering ground and potentially a breeding ground for this endangered species.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm

Impaired Energy Metabolism Linked With Initiation Of Plaques In Alzheimer's Brain

Scientists have identified an initiating molecular mechanism in sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD). The study provides new information about generation of damaging amyloid beta (A-beta) plaques within the AD brain and underscores the importance of developing new preventative and disease-modifying therapies for AD, especially those aimed at interrupting pathological A-beta-production.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm

Novel Pathway Involved In Therapy-resistant Cancers Discovered

Scientists have begun to unpick the complex mechanisms underpinning the development of drug resistant cancers. They have identified a novel target that may help to combat the growing problem of therapy resistant cancers and pave the way for innovative therapeutic approaches.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm

Mars rovers roll on to five years

The US space agency's Mars rovers celebrate a longer-than-expected five years investigating the Red Planet.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 3 Jan 2009 | 9:27 am

Floods kill five in central Vietnam (Reuters)

Reuters - Unseasonable floods brought by rains this week have killed at least five people in central Vietnam while 10 others remained missing, the government and state-run media said Saturday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Jan 2009 | 2:42 am

Anti-whaling activists leave Antarctica to refuel (Reuters)

Reuters - Hardline anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd said it has been forced to temporarily abandon its pursuit of Japan's whaling fleet in the Antarctic while its ship refuels.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Jan 2009 | 1:34 am

Nice ruling on drug funding gives hope to cancer patients

Expensive drugs to prolong the life of terminally ill cancer patients in England are to be provided free on the NHS, after a change of policy yesterday by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice).

Nice issued fresh guidance to the medical committees which assess the cost-effectiveness of treatments, instructing them to be more liberal in the appraisal of drugs for people with incurable diseases. The charity Macmillan Cancer Support said 10,000 patients a year could benefit.

Under the old rules Nice was likely to refuse state funding for costly treatments that could not extend the life of patients by more than a few months.

Andrew Dillon, chief executive of Nice, said more generous rules would in future be applied to drugs that could offer at least three months more life than existing NHS treatments. His decision will apply to treatments for rarer conditions, each of which may affect up to 7,000 patients a year. It will benefit patients who are not expected to live more than two years.

One of the first tests of the new approach is likely to be Nice's final decision on whether the NHS should fund drugs that could prolong the life of more than 3,000 patients with advanced kidney cancer. It issued draft guidance in August rejecting state funding of Sutent (sunitinib), Avastin (bevacizumab), Nexavar (sorafenib) and Torisel (temsirolimus).

It accepted they could delay the progression of advanced kidney cancer by up to six months, but said the cost to the NHS would be well above the accepted limits.

Nice will take account of the new rules when it makes a final decision on whether to approve the drugs later this year.

A spokeswoman said it was likely that one or two drugs a year will get approval under the new rules that previously would have been rejected.

The new guidelines will not be retrospective. If Nice has already made a final decision to reject a drug, that will stand.

Dillon said: "The institute is conscious of its responsibility to support the development of novel treatments for smaller patient groups that provide innovative benefits over and above existing NHS care."

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said: "While this is a welcome step, it will not remedy the underlying issue which is about the disparity in access to life-saving drugs between the UK and the rest of Europe. If we are going to achieve a real improvement to the quality of access to drugs in this country then we need substantial reform of the system."

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 3 Jan 2009 | 12:04 am

Bad science: Thanks to HIV/Aids denialists like Christine Maggiore more will die

Happy New Year and everything, but know this: nothing has changed, people continue to have stupid ideas, newspapers continue to laud them, and lives will be lost. Here is just one: What if everything you thought you knew about Aids was wrong? That was the title of a book by Christine Maggiore, an HIV/Aids-denialist lauded in the American media. She is now dead.

Maggiore decided that HIV does not cause Aids, and that antiretroviral drugs do not treat it. She was HIV positive, which the media loved. She declined to take ARV drugs and specifically decided not to take HIV drugs during her pregnancy, despite the strong evidence that they massively lower the risk of maternal transmission. She insisted on breastfeeding her children, even though it has been shown that this increases the risk of maternal transmission. She also refused to have her children tested for HIV. Her daughter, Eliza Jane Scovill, died three years ago. The coroner attributed the death to Aids and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. She was three years old.

Last Saturday, two days after Christmas, Maggiore died of pneumonia, aged 52. She was an extremely effective advocate. She set up successful campaigning organisations and counselled HIV-positive pregnant women on how to avoid pressure from medics to use azidothymidine (AZT) during pregnancy to prevent maternal transmission of the virus. She appeared on the cover of Mothering magazine, with a "No AZT" sign painted on her pregnant tummy.

However, as always, this is about far more than one person. Maggiore's views on HIV were driven by the work of Peter Duesberg, a well-known Aids denier. He was unable to persuade other scientists that his views on HIV were correct, but he did very well with journalists, most notably Neville Hodgkinson, former science correspondent of the Sunday Times.

Over two years in the early 1990s the paper published a series of lengthy articles rejecting the role of HIV in causing Aids, calling the African Aids epidemic a myth. It was all a scam to make money and defend reputations, they said.

Things got so bad that Nature, probably the world's most important academic journal, published an editorial describing the Sunday Times coverage as "seriously mistaken, and probably disastrous".

Duesberg went on to great things, including South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki's disastrous presidential advisory panel on Aids. It was here that the country's Aids-denialist policies were set into play, with tragic consequences. One demographic modelling study estimates that if the South African government had used antiretroviral drugs for prevention and treatment at the same rate as the Western Cape, around 171,000 new HIV infections and 343,000 deaths could have been prevented between 1999 and 2007.

Aids is the opposite of anecdote: three million people died of it last year. Hundreds of thousands of lives, perhaps millions, have been lost because of a stupid idea, promoted by stupid people. To the best of my knowledge, not one has either apologised or clarified their stance. Just don't let anyone tell you pseudoscience is harmless.

bad.science@guardian.co.uk

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 3 Jan 2009 | 12:03 am

Where Words Come From (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - I want to tell you something. Wait, wait, I'm searching for the right word to begin. I just can't remember it. Oh, there it is ... We all fumble around for the right word, and once you get to a certain age, that fumbling often ends with, "Ah, another senior moment," and the secret worry that dementia is around the corner. Researchers at Rice University in Houston have just discovered that there is a particular part of the brain that guides us when choosing words. ...
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Jan 2009 | 11:34 pm

Infection cuts mosquitoes' lives short

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Infecting mosquitoes with a common bacteria can cut their lives short and reduce the likelihood they will transmit dengue and other diseases, Australian researchers reported on Friday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 2 Jan 2009 | 11:02 pm

More small quakes rattle Yellowstone National Park (AP)

AP - More earthquakes are rattling Yellowstone National Park.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Jan 2009 | 10:34 pm

Gov't resumes oil purchases for stockpile (AP)

AP - Taking advantage of low oil prices, the government is resuming purchases of crude oil for its emergency stockpile.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Jan 2009 | 10:06 pm

Diamonds suggest comets caused killer cold spell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tiny diamonds sprinkled across North America suggest a "swarm" of comets hit the Earth around 13,000 years ago, kicking up enough disruption to send the planet into a cold spell and drive mammoths and other creatures into extinction, scientists reported on Friday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 2 Jan 2009 | 8:05 pm

Diamond clues to beasts' demise

The controversial idea that space impacts may have wiped out woolly mammoths and early human settlers in North America receives new impetus.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Jan 2009 | 5:27 pm

Richard Dawkins: Blurring the human/animal boundary

In a late response to Edge.org's annual New Year challenge to the world's leading thinkers, Prof Richard Dawkins has submitted his entry. Edge.org asked scientists, philosophers, artists and journalists "What will change everything?"

Dawkins – author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion – muses on the effect of breaking down the barrier between humans and animals, perhaps by the creation of a chimera in a lab or a "successful hybridisation between a human and a chimpanzee".

Here's what he had to say.

Breaking the species barrier

Our ethics and our politics assume, largely without question or serious discussion, that the division between human and 'animal' is absolute. 'Pro-life', to take just one example, is a potent political badge, associated with a gamut of ethical issues such as opposition to abortion and euthanasia.

What it really means is pro-human-life. Abortion clinic bombers are not known for their veganism, nor do Roman Catholics show any particular reluctance to have their suffering pets 'put to sleep'. In the minds of many confused people, a single-celled human zygote, which has no nerves and cannot suffer, is infinitely sacred, simply because it is 'human'. No other cells enjoy this exalted status.

But such 'essentialism' is deeply un-evolutionary. If there were a heaven in which all the animals who ever lived could frolic, we would find an interbreeding continuum between every species and every other. For example I could interbreed with a female who could interbreed with a male who could ... fill in a few gaps, probably not very many in this case ... who could interbreed with a chimpanzee.

We could construct longer, but still unbroken chains of interbreeding individuals to connect a human with a warthog, a kangaroo, a catfish. This is not a matter of speculative conjecture; it necessarily follows from the fact of evolution.

Theoretically we understand this. But what would change everything is a practical demonstration, such as one of the following:

1. The discovery of relict populations of extinct hominins such Homo erectus and Australopithecus. Yeti enthusiasts notwithstanding, I don't think this is going to happen. The world is now too well explored for us to have overlooked a large, savannah-dwelling primate. Even Homo floresiensis has been extinct 17,000 years. But if it did happen, it would change everything.

2. A successful hybridisation between a human and a chimpanzee. Even if the hybrid were infertile like a mule, the shock waves that would be sent through society would be salutary. This is why a distinguished biologist described this possibility as the most immoral scientific experiment he could imagine: it would change everything! It cannot be ruled out as impossible, but it would be surprising.

3. An experimental chimera in an embryology lab, consisting of approximately equal numbers of human and chimpanzee cells. Chimeras of human and mouse cells are now constructed in the laboratory as a matter of course, but they don't survive to term. Incidentally, another example of our speciesist ethics is the fuss now made about mouse embryos containing some proportion of human cells. "How human must a chimera be before more stringent research rules should kick in?" So far, the question is merely theological, since the chimeras don't come anywhere near being born, and there is nothing resembling a human brain. But, to venture off down the slippery slope so beloved of ethicists, what if we were to fashion a chimera of 50% human and 50% chimpanzee cells and grow it to adulthood? That would change everything. Maybe it will?

4. The human genome and the chimpanzee genome are now known in full. Intermediate genomes of varying proportions can be interpolated on paper. Moving from paper to flesh and blood would require embryological technologies that will probably come on stream during the lifetime of some of my readers. I think it will be done, and an approximate reconstruction of the common ancestor of ourselves and chimpanzees will be brought to life. The intermediate genome between this reconstituted 'ancestor' and modern humans would, if implanted in an embryo, grow into something like a reborn Australopithecus: Lucy the Second. And that would (dare I say will?) change everything.

I have laid out four possibilities that would, if realised, change everything. I have not said that I hope any of them will be realised. That would require further thought. But I will admit to a frisson of enjoyment whenever we are forced to question the hitherto unquestioned.

What do you think?

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 2 Jan 2009 | 5:04 pm

Where Words Come From

Any research that informs us about language production is important because words are what make humans special.
Source: Livescience.com | 2 Jan 2009 | 4:40 pm

Coral reef growth is slowest ever

Growth of corals in the Great Barrier Reef has slowed to the most sluggish rate in 400 years, researchers say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Jan 2009 | 1:53 pm

Nanotech could mean sharper snaps

Research into creating tiny structures on light sensors could mean digital cameras take better pictures.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Jan 2009 | 1:11 pm

Collider head's repair confidence

The scientist in charge of the Large Hadron Collider still hopes the experiment can work after the machine's £14m repair.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Jan 2009 | 1:02 pm

Antibiotics before infections save lives: study

LONDON (Reuters) - Giving antibiotics to patients in intensive care units as a precaution saves lives, according to a major Dutch study published Wednesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 2 Jan 2009 | 12:38 pm