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Grazing Animals Help Spread Plant DiseaseResearchers have discovered that grazing animals such as deer and rabbits are actually helping to spread plant disease -- quadrupling its prevalence in some cases -- and encouraging an invasion of annual grasses that threaten more than 20 million acres of native grasslands in California.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am Adult-onset Diabetes Slows Mental Functioning In Several Ways, With Deficits Appearing EarlyAdults with diabetes experience a slowdown in several types of mental processing, which appears early in the disease and persists into old age, according to new research. Given the sharp rise in new cases of diabetes, this finding means that more adults may soon be living with mild but lasting deficits in their thought processes.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am Mystery Of South American Trophy Heads SolvedA recent study using specimens from Chicago's Field Museum establishes that Nazca trophy heads came from people who lived in the same place and were part of the same culture as those who collected them.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am Gold Nanoparticles For Controlled Drug DeliveryUsing tiny gold particles and infrared light, MIT researchers have developed a drug-delivery system that allows multiple drugs to be released in a controlled fashion.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am Teens Girls Smoke Now, Pay Later With Larger Waistlines As AdultsRemember the cool girls, huddled together in high school restrooms, puffing their cigarettes? Well, here's consolation for the nerds in the crowd: Those teen smokers are more likely to experience obesity as adults, according to a new study from Finland.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am Gene Expression And Splicing Vary Widely From One Tissue To The NextGenes talk to themselves and to each other to control how a given cell manufactures proteins. But variation in the control of the same gene in two different tissues may contribute to certain human traits, including the likelihood of getting a disease, said a team of geneticists and neuroscientists.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am Amazon Deforestation Trend On The IncreaseDeforestation in Brazil's Amazon forests has flipped from a decreasing to an increasing trend, according to new annual figures recently released by the country's space agency INPE.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Obesity Linked To Elevated Risk Of Ovarian CancerA new epidemiological study has found that among women who have never used menopausal hormone therapy, obese women are at an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer compared with women of normal weight.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Stars Forming Just Beyond Black Hole's Grasp At Galactic CenterThe center of the Milky Way presents astronomers with a paradox: It holds young stars, but no one is sure how those stars got there. The galactic center is wracked with powerful gravitational tides stirred by a 4 million solar-mass black hole. Those tides should rip apart molecular clouds that act as stellar nurseries, preventing stars from forming in place. Yet the alternative -- stars falling inward after forming elsewhere -- should be a rare occurrence.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Increased Risk Of Pneumococcal Disease In Asthma PatientsAdults with asthma are at increased risk of serious pneumococcal disease caused by Streptococcus pneumonia, the most common bacteria causing middle ear infections and community acquired pneumonia.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Milky Way 'bigger than believed'The Milky Way has 50% more mass and is travelling 120,000km per hour faster than once thought, a study shows.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Jan 2009 | 1:51 pm Scientists find a gene that makes cancer spreadCHICAGO (Reuters) - A single gene appears to play a crucial role in deadly breast cancers, increasing the chances the cancer will spread and making it resistant to chemotherapy, U.S. researchers said on Monday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 1:33 pm Plucky NASA Rovers Complete Fifth Year on MarsNASA's twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity have finished their fifth year on Mars.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Jan 2009 | 1:32 pm Ideas Sought to Protect Earth from Space RocksNow is your chance to protect Earth from being walloped by space rocks.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Jan 2009 | 1:29 pm Dead Stars Harbor AsteroidsStudies of asteroids around dead stars spawn new hope that Earth-like planets are plentiful.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Jan 2009 | 1:29 pm Rules on killing ravens relaxedFarmers are to be permitted to shoot more ravens - Britain's largest species of crow - to protect livestock.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Jan 2009 | 12:42 pm Japan wants anti-whalers barred from ports (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 12:23 pm Food for thoughtWhat's concerning farmers at annual conference?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Jan 2009 | 11:24 am Why creationism is not the biggest threat to schoolsThe world is full of terrible things and it may seem absurd to be shocked by the state of science teaching more than by war and famine or any of the more obvious candidates. But I was more shocked by the report showing that a significant minority of British science teachers can't see anything much wrong with creationism than by anything else last year. You can twist it and fiddle it how you like. You can hope that teachers can't tell the difference between "teaching" and "discussing" something, though this is in itself a rather dispiriting hope. You can hope that by "creationism" they mean no more than holding open the possibility of theistic explanation (though the trouble with that is that it has increasingly come to mean more) But the facts of the survey remain. 37% of primary and secondary school science teachers think that creationism should be taught in classrooms and only 28% think it is unsupportable as a theory. Riffling through the discussion of the paper's news story on this I came across an even more dispiriting comment, from "tegga":
It looks as if creationism has become a mark of some kinds of Muslim identity as well as of fundamentalist Christianity and this is a disaster. It takes a peculiar combination of intelligence and a certain sort of imagination to find scientific explanations more attractive than religious ones. Almost anyone will abandon or adapt religious teachings for the benefits of technology, (I have yet to meet a creationist who doesn't believe in MRSA) but that doesn't help with the present problem. Not many people will give up religion for science if they are forced to choose. I used to think that aggressive atheist propaganda was part of the problem here. If your primary purpose is to teach good science, it certainly doesn't help to insist that this entails atheism and to sneer at any believers who might be your allies. But it probably doesn't harm much either. Nothing said by intellectuals matters much in the face of the kind of classroom anarchy that Tegga describes. Where pupils can form mobs or threaten their teachers with replica guns when it is suggested they learn something they don't want to, all real learning is threatened; not just the knowledge of evolution or even of science. Science is at the very least one of the most glorious achievements of human civilisation. But it can't be learned, and it can't be practised, without first building a whole web of social knowledge about how to give and take instruction. This leads me to an unwelcome and apparently paradoxical conclusion. The spread of creationism may very well lead to a spread in faith schools to combat it. Some years ago, when a creationist was discovered to be head of science at an Academy in Gateshead, and a campaign was mounted to stop the same organisation taking over a school outside Doncaster, I went up and talked to the teachers, the parents, and some of the government figures responsible for the policy. One of the things I then learned was that the government is much more worried about the breakdown of discipline, and of social mechanisms for the transmission of knowledge, than it is about the kinds of knowledge being taught. In many ways the consequences of this government indifference have been terrible and have further demoralised teachers. But although their solutions (and especially the crazed reliance on testing) have been wrong, their diagnosis of the problem has to be right. That is one reason why they believe in faith schools. Religions have historically been systems for the transmission not just of doctrines or beliefs or customs, but of the underlying cultural rules which are necessary for anything else to be learned. They have been sources of discipline, and of compulsion, which is of course one reason why many people loathe them. But it turns out that without discipline, without some compulsion, nothing complicated gets learned at all, whether it's true or false. And if the teachers aren't respected the big boys will be – and they're worse. It is more important to learn that you do not threaten the teacher than to learn that Darwin was right. For one thing, it's much easier to unlearn creationism than to unlearn the lesson that the mob rules. This is not an argument for teaching that evolution might be false either in theory or in practice (would this be the time to repeat that both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic church teach and believe in evolution?). It's an argument that before you can even teach creationism, or science, or for that matter French, English, history and even cooking, you have to teach children how to learn and not let them forget it. To use a computer analogy; it's no use trying to run a stable program on a broken operating system. That is why, I think, the government will increasingly turn towards churches and other religious bodies to run schools. They have an operating system that works. This is of course an extremely risky strategy. It could very well lead to further social segregation; to further oppression of young girls and to all sorts of other undesirable consequences. But the alternatives are every bit as risky and governments, whatever else they do, must choose. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 6 Jan 2009 | 11:09 am Green RoomModern farming is slowly killing off valuable speciesSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Jan 2009 | 10:56 am Super stethoscopeHow FBI technology is driving a medical advanceSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Jan 2009 | 10:33 am Professor Gerry Gilmore on the Milky Way's collision courseOur home galaxy is set to collide with neighbouring Andromeda. Professor Gerry Gilmore explainsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 6 Jan 2009 | 9:16 am Bush to establish 3 marine monuments in Pacific (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 8:06 am Europe begins to feel gas pipeline pinch (The Christian Science Monitor)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 8:00 am Popping Smart Pills: the Case for Cognitive Enhancement (Time.com)Time.com - In a recent editorial in Nature, a group of bioethicists argue for using stimulants to enhance cognitive performanceSource: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 8:00 am Milky Way the galaxy not snack-sized anymore (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 5:01 am US vows 'huge' marine protectionThe US is to establish "the largest area of protected sea in the world", banning fishing and mining, around its Pacific islands.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Jan 2009 | 3:10 am Japanese whaler reported missingRescuers hold out little hope of finding a Japanese sailor alive after he goes missing from a whaling ship in the Antarctic.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Jan 2009 | 2:22 am Bush to Create Large Ocean SanctuariesBush will create three ocean sanctuaries with a total area bigger than California.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Jan 2009 | 1:28 am Pink iguanas unseen by Darwin offer evolution clueLONDON (Reuters) - Pink iguanas unknown to Charles Darwin during his visits to the Galapagos islands may provide evidence of species divergence far earlier than the English naturalist's famous finches, researchers said Monday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 12:10 am The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are forecast to collide in fewer than four billion yearsThe Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are forecast to collide in fewer than four billion yearsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 6 Jan 2009 | 12:06 am Response: Science can't explain the big bang - there is still scope for a creatorResponse: We should not dismiss the concept of intelligent-design lessons in school, says Thomas CrowleySource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 6 Jan 2009 | 12:05 am Milky Way spins faster, has more mass than thought: astronomers (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jan 2009 | 11:43 pm Cultural Evolution Not the Same as Biological Evolution
In biology, for instance, mutation and selection take place at the level of genes and organisms. But while cultural evolution also occurs at the individual level, the unit of selection — behavior — seems more susceptible to drastic change than a gene. "In cultural evolution, small mutation rates are not the right choice," said Arne Traulsen, an evolutionary game theorist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology. In a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Traulsen and colleagues modeled the effects of mutational variance in a standard game-theory model where individuals can be part of a community, steal from that community, or punish the thieves. Most models of behavioral evolution, said Traulsen, assume that individuals will imitate their successful neighbors, with a minor allowance made for random variation — the cultural equivalent of heredity with minor mutations. But in reality, people are unpredictable, prone to whimsical explorations and rash, seemingly irrational decisions. And when Traulsen reduced imitation and increased randomness, his simulations produced different end-states, with cooperation finally triumphing over thievery. These results are not important to predicting human behavior, said Traulsen, but underscore the importance of selection parameters to outcomes in the still-embryonic science of cultural evolution. "Genetic evolution as we see it in biology is only one aspect of evolution," he said. "Taking a genetic approach and putting it onto cultural evolution and saying the mathematics are the same is not smart." But the field is still so ambiguous and sketchily understood — entomologist Paul Ehrlich's chronicling of Polynesian canoe designs was the first rigorous description of cultural evolution — that Traulsen's conclusions are highly tentative. "It's possible that the mechanisms might differ, but it's just a gut feeling," said Manfred Milinski, a Max Planck Institute evolutionary biologist and cooperation theorist who was not involved in the research. "This is a great area, which will be harvested in coming years. There are many people who think that most of our behavior has come about from cultural evolution." Citation: "Exploration dynamics in evolutionary games." By Arne Traulsen, Christoph Hauert, Hannelore Brandt, Martin A. Nowak, and Karl Sigmund. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jan. 5, 2009. Image: PNAS See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 5 Jan 2009 | 11:33 pm Milky Way 50 Percent Larger, Astronomers Discover
Artist's conceptions of the Milky Way might give you the impression that astronomers have a precise notion of what our galaxy looks like, but you'd be wrong. In fact, new observations suggest that our home galaxy has been vastly underestimated. Those spiraling arms? Some scientists think it only has two, not four. Its size? For years, we thought that the Milky Way was substantially smaller than our closest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. Now, new measurements of how quickly our galaxy is rotating have led a team of Harvard astrophysicists to conclude that our galaxy is 50 percent more massive than previously thought, and likely does have four arms. "We should certainly think of the Milky Way no longer as the little sister of the local group," said Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "We should think of the Milky Way and Andromeda as more like fraternal twins." The question of what exactly our galaxy looks like is more difficult to solve than you might think. We're inside the galaxy, so we can't get direct perspective on our home. The best method is to measure how quickly the galaxy is rotating and back out to the amount of mass that would have to exist in the structure to generate that velocity. Using the Very Large Baseline Array of radio telescopes, Reid's team found that the Milky Way is rotating at about 600,000 miles an hour, 100,000 miles per hour faster than previous estimates. When you do the math, that translates into the 50 percent mass increase his team reported in a press conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting Monday. One major consequence of a heavier Milky Way is that we're likely to collide with the Andromeda Galaxy sooner, Reid said. The new measurements also seem to indicate that the galaxy must have the four arms that astronomers had long assumed before Spitzer Space Telescope observations last year called that into question. "By measuring distances to regions of very massive star formation, we can start to trace out the spiral arms of the Milky Way and begin to constrain how tightly wound the arms are and trace out how many of them there are," Reid said. With the new array of radio telescopes, the team has been able to make more precise measurements than ever before. "We're using trigonometric parallax. It's essentially what surveyors do here on Earth," he said. "If you know the length of one leg of the triangle and the angles between the legs, you can calculate all the lengths." In this case, they make an observation of the same region at two different times of the year, creating a triangle out of the earth's two positions and the star itself. As for the discrepancy with the Spitzer's findings about the number of arms our galaxy has, Reid explained that he thought the old stars measured by the other group of astronomers only showed up in two of the arms, while his young stars showed up everywhere. Why only two of the galaxy's four arms would contain older stars would take further research into the galaxy's makeup. "The central question here is: What does the Milky Way really look like?" Reid said. Image: A new image of the galactic core taken by the Hubble Space Telescope for Q. Daniel Wang of the University of Massachussets, Amherst. See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter , Google Reader feed, and project site, Inventing Green: the lost history of American clean tech; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 5 Jan 2009 | 11:23 pm Dutch study sheds light on virus that causes SARSLONDON (Reuters) - Dutch researchers have built a three-dimensional model of a type of virus that causes SARS in a step that could one day help in the battle against the deadly disease.Source: Reuters: Science News | 5 Jan 2009 | 11:02 pm Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2008
The Large Hadron Collider fired up for the first time, a temple of science opened its doors, several companies promised cheap genome sequencing and President-elect Obama hired a fantastic team of science advisers. After decades of work, researchers made rat stem cells, built the first memristor and watched a language evolve like an organism. But none of those accomplishments impressed us as much as the breakthroughs on this list. 10. Troubleshooting stem cell therapy In 2007, scientists learned how to reprogram skin cells into stem cells, without cloning or destroying embryos. It seemed too good to be true, and it was. The tissues grown from those cells had a nasty tendency to become cancerous, which made them useless for regenerative medicine — the science of building and fixing body parts. In 2008, several research groups figured out what was going wrong and solved the problem. Researchers had used an an adenovirus to slip four genes into each cell, but the microbe was causing lots of collateral damage. By switching to a different kind of virus, scientists at The Whitehead Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital were able to make the procedure safe. 9. Turning water into fuel Companies like Nanosolar and Solyndra slashed the cost of solar energy, but scientists are still looking for a clean way to store all that juice. Daniel Nocera of MIT has an elegant solution: Use electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen, store it in separate tanks, then recombine the gases in a fuel cell when you need power. Anyone can do this. Just hook a 9-volt battery to electrodes and dunk them into a jar of water. The problem is that it takes
a lot of energy to do this. If you want to fill tanks with those
gases, and use them to run a fuel cell, you'll need to do it very
efficiently. Nocera, and his team at MIT, found a catalyst that makes
the task of splitting H2O remarkably easy. It could store the energy harvested by solar cells and wind farms. Top image: Tom White, MIT 8. Marking greenhouse gas levels — 800,000-year high The numbers on Wall Street were dismal in 2008, but even more frightening figures came from Antarctica. When scientists traveled to the frozen continent and analyzed ancient pockets of air trapped deep in the ice, they learned that our atmosphere has 28 percent more carbon dioxide now than at any other time in the past 800,000 years. Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern provided some of the most compelling evidence to date that we are irreversibly warming our planet. He showed that the rise and fall of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere matched the melting and thawing of the polar ice caps, and identified a period in which the greenhouse gas was at an all time low. Another team, led by Jerome Chappellaz of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, drew the same conclusions by measuring methane levels in ice core. They remarked that another greenhouse gas, CH4, has not risen above 800 parts per billion in the past 650 millenia, and currently it is at over twice that level. 7. Building loudspeakers from carbon nanotubes Scientists have been tinkering with carbon nanotubes for decades, and this year the work has paid off. Chinese scientists have used the nanotubes to make transparent audio speakers and sheets of paper stronger than steel. The speakers work by a thermoacoustic effect: They vibrate and make noise when heated by an electrical current. The scientists demonstrated in YouTube videos that their prototype could blast a scratchy but understandable version of the Moldovan pop song "Dragostea din tei" while it was taped to the side of a waving flag. Another team at Florida State University made paper that is far lighter and stronger than steel by pressing sheets of carbon nanotubes together. Those composite materials, developed by Ben Wang and his team, could make aircraft parts and body armor. In a perfect sheet of the material, all of the carbon nanotubes should be pointing in the same direction. Wang figured out how to align the tiny cylinders with magnetic fields. Thanks to that discovery, and other advances, buckypaper could be on the market within a year. 6. Sequencing entire genome of a cancer patient, including tumor For the first time, doctors sequenced the entire genome of a cancer patient, and also read the genetic code of her diseased cells. That allowed them to pinpoint the exact mutations responsible for the illness. In the short run, that data will give cancer researchers a much better understanding of the disease, but their real triumph is bringing the medical community a step closer to offering personalized health care. Cancer is hard to fight because nearly every case is different, and yet doctors use a somewhat one-size-fits-all approach to treating patients. As new medications like gene therapy and RNA interference become widespread, oncologists will be able to tailor treatments for patients because of what's wrong with their genetic code. In the meantime, some physicians are using simple genetic tests to predict which medications will work well on their patients.
5. Breaking the petaflop barrier The latest generation of supercomputers can perform more than a quadrillion operations per second, and that remarkable capability will revolutionize the way scientists do research. It will allow them to identify meaningful patterns in unfathomably large mounds of data, and perform simulations with unprecedented accuracy. Meteorologists could know exactly where a hurricane will strike days before it makes landfall. Neuroscientists may be able to emulate a simple brain. So far, two machines have broken the petaflop barrier, and as more follow we'll see monumental advances in every field of science. Photo: Cray XT5 Jaguar courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory 4. Curing HIV in Germany Some people are remarkably resistant to HIV, and scientists have found two ways to give that immunity to others. In the first case, Berlin doctor Gero Huetter transplanted bone marrow from a virus-resistant donor to a man who had both HIV and leukemia. By doing that, he cured both diseases with one treatment. It sounds great, but Huetter had to kill off his patient's immune system with drugs and radiation before replacing it with a better one. Because that tactic is tremendously harsh and risky, it is unlikely that the miraculous procedure will catch on. Instead, his victory provided solid evidence that gene editing might offer a viable solution. Every virus-resistant person has two mutant copies of a gene called CCR5, and a new biotech tool called zinc finger nucleases can give anyone that mutation. Instead of transferring bone marrow from another person, doctors could take a few cells from a patient, modify them to be HIV-resistant and then put them back in. 3. Finding another building block of life in our galaxy This has been a very big year for astrobiology. Several teams of researchers have found the building blocks of life outside our solar system and others have spotted dozens of planets that aren't much bigger than earth. When astronomers in France pointed the IRAM radio telescope at a region of the Milky Way filled with newborn stars, they found signs of a sugar molecule called glycolaldehyde. It is an ingredient of RNA, the substance that may have played a key role in the dawn of life. Until then, the organic chemical had only been spotted at the chaotic core of our galaxy. Using the Hubble telescope, another group of researchers found the first evidence of water and carbon dioxide on a planet outside our solar system. 2. Growing a new organ from a patient's own stem cells Thanks to stem cell research, people with failing organs may not need to wait for a donor or take harsh medications that prevent their immune systems from rejecting transplanted tissue. One of the greatest examples of regenerative medicine — the science of building or fixing body parts — took place this year, when doctors removed some cells from a 30-year-old woman with tuberculosis and used them to grow a new trachea, replacing a segment that was destroyed by the bacterium. They took stem cells from her bone marrow, layered them onto a decellularized trachea from a deceased donor, and surgically implanted it in the woman. Four months later, Claudia Castillo could breathe well and showed no signs of the side-effects that patients have when they receive an organ from someone else.
1. Finding ice on Mars After a seven-month journey through space, the Phoenix lander touched down on Martian soil, and soon after discovered ice. On May 31, two days after the lander's robotic arm went to work, its camera caught a glimpse of something shiny under the craft. Lead researcher Peter Smith speculated that the landing rockets had blown a thin layer of soil away, exposing buried ice. The big announcement came on Jan. 19, after scientists compared two photos of a ditch called Dodo-Goldilocks. In the first image, several bright nuggets were visible, and four days later the chunks had disappeared. Taking the temperature and atmospheric pressure into account, the specks had to be ice that sublimated after being uncovered by the mechanical claw. The red planet may have an inhospitable climate, but at least it has water, and that will be tremendously useful when the first group of explorers lands there. Image: Frost in the Dodo-Goldilocks trench / University of Arizona, NASA Source: Wired: Wired Science | 5 Jan 2009 | 10:32 pm Pink iguana rewrites family treeA type of iguana missed by Darwin during his Galapagos trip promises to rewrite the animal's history in the islands.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jan 2009 | 10:26 pm Exercise Improves Old Brains (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - The moment of truth has arrived, again. The holidays have passed, the leftovers are dwindling and you have renewed your annual New Year's resolution to get back into shape... for real. Don't worry, you are not alone. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 63 percent of Americans have a Body Mass Index (BMI) in excess of 25 (defined as overweight), while a quarter are greater than 30 (obese).Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jan 2009 | 10:20 pm Rare Pink Iguana Evaded DarwinA pink-and-black Galapagos iguana is ID'd some 179 years after Darwin's visit.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Jan 2009 | 9:11 pm Get out of the way! Galactic collision will happen sooner than scientists thought
According to their most detailed measurements yet, scientists admitted to having grossly underestimated the mass of the Milky Way, and so the gravitational pull it exerts on our cosmic neighbours, including the giant Andromeda galaxy. The oversight means that the two galaxies, which are on a cataclysmic collision course, will slam into one another earlier than scientists had previously predicted. When the two galaxies meet, powerful shockwaves will compress interstellar gas clouds within them, triggering a dazzling flourish of newborn stars, in a last heavenly hurrah before the giant wreckage slowly dims and dies out. Fortunately the galactic disaster still lies unfathomably far into the future. Our solar system is around 28,000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way, itself one of more than 35 galaxies in our cosmic neighbourhood. The Andromeda galaxy, which is twice as wide, is around 2m light years away. Karl Menten, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, said that while the galactic collision would happen sooner than expected, there was no cause for alarm. "We still expect it to happen billions of years in the future," he said. A team led by Menten and Mark Reid at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Massachusetts used a radio telescope called the Very Large Baseline Array (VLBA) to make precise measurements of the Milky Way as it moved through space. As the galaxy rotates, parts that emit radiowaves move relative to Earth, allowing the researchers to work out how fast the galaxy is spinning. The scientists recorded intense radiowaves coming from the galaxy's four spiral arms, where new stars are born. Heat from the stars warms up molecules of alcohol in interstellar gas clouds, which release the energy as radiowaves. The measurements showed that our solar system is hurtling along at 600,000mph, 100,000mph faster than thought. "These measurements are revising our understanding of the structure and motions of our galaxy," said Menten. The speedier rotation of the galaxy means its mass must be similar to that of Andromeda, around 270bn times the mass of the sun, or 33% greater than earlier calculations have suggested. "No longer will we think of the Milky Way as the little sister of the Andromeda galaxy," said Reid. The research was presented at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California. Astronomers believe the crunch to end all crunches could happen around the same time our sun is due to burn up the last of its nuclear fuel, within the next 7bn years. It is highly unlikely that planets and stars will collide. Instead the two galaxies will merge to form a new, large galaxy. "The galaxies will be dramatically stirred up, but they are very squidgy, so they will stick together and eventually all the stars will die out, and it will become one huge, dead galaxy," said Gerry Gilmore at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge university, who was not involved in the study. "One thing we don't know yet is whether Andromeda will hit us square on, or whether it will be a glancing blow." If the galaxy strikes the side of the Milky Way, it is expected to be pulled back again for further collisions. The whole collision could take many millions of years. According to Gilmore, the research does more than bring forward the date of our galactic demise. The work also sheds fresh light on the nature of dark matter, the invisible substance believed to hold galaxies together. Gilmore said the findings point to more dark matter at the centre of the galaxy that may be colder and more compacted than astronomers thought. Other astronomers at the meeting reported an updated map of the Milky Way's spiral arms. It shows two prominent and symmetrical arms spiralling our of the galaxy's core, which then branch into four separate arms. Earlier observations had confused astronomers by revealing different numbers of spiral arms reaching out from the galaxy's centre. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jan 2009 | 9:10 pm Energy Savings from Shade Trees DocumentedShade trees on the west and south sides of a house can cut a summertime electric bill by about $25 a year.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jan 2009 | 9:10 pm Rare Pink Iguana Eluded Darwin and OthersA pink iguana comes out of hiding on the Galapagos Islands.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jan 2009 | 8:55 pm Human Trophy Heads Were No StrangersAncient South American people collected human heads.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jan 2009 | 8:43 pm Jobs' Health Message Makes Little Sense, Experts Say
Steve Jobs' latest health statement is contradictory and makes little sense, according to an expert who says it could mean Jobs has anything from hyperthyroidism to a new form of cancer. There are three medical threads running through the statement, said Robert Lustig, a prominent neuroendocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco — and they "don't add up to a very strong cable." On Monday morning, shortly before MacWorld 2009 — which, until he canceled, was scheduled to feature Jobs as keynote speaker — opened in San Francisco, the Apple CEO released an official statement about the ongoing weight loss that has left him gaunt and panicked his company's investors. "Doctors think they have found the cause — a hormone imbalance that has been 'robbing' me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis," he wrote. "The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I've already started treatment." His words set off an avalanche of speculation, ranging from knee-jerk skepticism — "'Hormone imbalance'? Please. Sorry, not buying it" — to thoughtful analyses of his 2004 pancreatic tumor removal or possible thyroid disorders. Common to all, however, is a paucity of meaningful detail. "His email is specifically vague, and I'm sure it's meant to be," Lustig said. "He doesn't want us to know what's going on." First is the hormone imbalance, suggesting an endocrine problem. Second is Jobs' loss of protein. He doesn't attribute this to loss by urination, which would suggest a plasma-cell cancer called multiple myeloma, or loss by defecation, which would implicate his pancreatic cancer history. If Jobs' weight loss were related to the latter, said Lustig, he would likely display other symptoms, including severe flushing and massive diarrhea, which have not yet been described. The third thread is the "straightforward" remedy for his "nutritional problem." According to Lustig, that conflicts with the rest of Jobs' statement. "Endocrine problems are not nutritional, and vice versa," he said. "Hyperthyroidism can cause weight loss. Endocrine deficiency could cause weight loss. But they don't rob your body of proteins, and the remedies aren't nutritional." Neither would nutrition suffice to treat cancer. "There's no way to put these threads together," said Lustig, though he refused to rule out a cancer-related complication. "It's not possible to dismiss anything in terms of this," he said, and called speculation "very silly." Dong Chan and Monica Skarulis, endocrinologists at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, agreed with Lustig's assessment of Jobs' statement as insufficiently detailed to merit speculation. "I have no knowledge of his condition," said Chan, "and will not comment." Asked whether armchair diagnoses are reasonable or productive, Skarulis replied, "Unfortunately, no. There are so many processes that lead to the final common pathway of weight loss, and the metabolic processes (hormonal and otherwise) that lead to [nutrient breakdown] are complicated. Need more data!" See Also:
Image: flickr/Ben Stanfield WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 5 Jan 2009 | 8:41 pm Pink Iguana That Darwin Missed Holds Evolutionary Surprise
For iguanas, it turns out that it's not easy being pink, either. Biologists report that a rare type of pink iguana found on a single volcano in the Galapagos Islands is a genetically-distinct species from its green cousins — and that it's probably critically endangered. "This form, which we recognize as a good species, is very important because it carries substantial evolutionary legacy," the authors of a new paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences wrote. "Thus far the rosada form is the only evidence of deep diversification along the Galapagos land iguana lineage." Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos islands in 1835 but didn't make it to the northernmost volcano, Volcan Wolf, which is the lone habitat for these pink lizards. Later travelers and scholars also seem to have missed or failed to report the curiously striped creature until 1986 when some Galapagos National Park rangers spotted the animals. Still, no scientists had looked into whether they represented a distinct species until now. What they found was surprising. Instead of being some slight variation on the Galapagos iguana theme, the pink lizards represent a distinct and early branch of the genetic tree. The genomic analysis of the species suggests that they broke from other iguanas about five million years ago, much deeper in history than most other Galapagos species, like Darwin's finches. In addition to the genetic differences, the pink iguanas also perform the characteristic mating ritual "head-bob" differently. The iguana and other animals on Volcan Wolf are threatened by an "invasion of feral goats" that are devastating the area's natural flora. In the interest of preserving this genetic diversity, the biologists wrote that "a conservation program aimed at evaluating the risk of extinction of this newly recognized species," should be initiated. They estimate that the iguana could already by termed "critically endangered." Citation: "An overlooked pink species of land iguana in the Galapagos" by Gabriele Gentile, Anna Fabiani, Cruz Marquez, Howard L. Snell, Heidi M. Snell, Washington Tapia, and Valerio Sbordonia in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0806339106 See Also:
Image: PNAS WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter , Google Reader feed, and project site, Inventing Green: the lost history of American clean tech; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 5 Jan 2009 | 8:25 pm Bugs Pose Bioterror ThreatAn entomologist warns in a new book that terrorists could use insects as biological weapons.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jan 2009 | 8:22 pm Milky Way Galaxy: Snack-Sized No MoreThe Milky Way is not a little sister to Andromeda after all, new research shows.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Jan 2009 | 7:58 pm Habitable Exoplanets Could Be Common in Our Galaxy
Earth-like planets may in fact be common in the galaxy, increasing the likelihood of extraterrestrial life. By observing the remains of smashed up asteroids around dead stars, astronomers were able to deduce their chemical composition. They found that the dust of many chewed-up asteroids resembles the materials inside Earth and the other small, rocky inner planets of our solar system. "We found evidence that this asteroid dust is similar to rocks on Earth," said UCLA astronomer Michael Jura in a press conference today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, California. "This strengthens suspicions that Earth-like planets are common." Asteroids and planets are made from the same stuff: the dusty material that circles around "Asteroids are leftover building blocks that didn’t get incorporated into the planets," Jura said. "What we have now is a tool to measure the bulk composition of planets." Jura and his team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to observe six dead white-dwarf stars that were coated with the debris of shredded asteroids that had collided into them. By viewing the stars through a spectrograph, which separates out light from different wavelengths, the scientists were able to observe the telltale signatures of certain chemicals in the light. Since that starlight is passing through the film of the asteroid debris, the light picked up signatures of the asteroids’ composition, too. The team found that the asteroid dust contains a glassy silicate mineral similar to minerals commonly found on Earth. They also detected a lack of carbon in the dust, which again echoes the solar system’s rocky planets and asteroids, which also have no carbon. Finding planets similar to our own is a priority for scientists yearning for a hint that we are not alone, because Earth-like worlds may be the likeliest place for extraterrestrial life. Jura said observing asteroid debris around dead stars represents a wealth of opportunity for learning about how planets are formed. The team hopes to find more stars with this asteroid film around them, and observe the current ones in further detail. See Also:
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech Source: Wired: Wired Science | 5 Jan 2009 | 7:36 pm Parasite Could Make Mosquitoes Die YoungScientists may be able to breed mosquitoes to carry a parasite that causes early death.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Jan 2009 | 7:10 pm Sightings May Solve Whale of a MysteryA large number of North Atlantic right whales have been spotted in the Gulf of Maine, suggest a rare wintering ground.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jan 2009 | 7:02 pm Why Obama's Hotel Is HauntedThe Hay-Adams Hotel is said to be haunted by Marian Adams. But there's a problem with this paranormal claim.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jan 2009 | 6:33 pm Holes give edge to new MoD armourScientists from the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) have devised ultra-hard vehicle armour to protect military personnel.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jan 2009 | 6:08 pm Going upHow a broomstick gave space elevators a liftSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jan 2009 | 4:53 pm Pollution May Drive Out One in Five from Hong KongA survey finds 1.4 million residents of Hong Kong are thinking about moving.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Jan 2009 | 4:38 pm Basalt rock wall found in ocean near TaiwanTAIPEI (Reuters) - A biodiversity researcher has found a huge basalt rock formation in the Taiwan Strait, resembling a city wall and rivaling similar monoliths on land.Source: Reuters: Science News | 5 Jan 2009 | 4:16 pm Fastest Wind Tunnel to Put NASA's Orion to the TestA new wind tunnel generates wind speeds up to 30 times the speed of sound.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Jan 2009 | 3:30 pm Mars Rovers Still Ticking on 5th AnniversaryFive years after landing on Mars, Spirit and Opportunity march on.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Jan 2009 | 3:30 pm Top 10 Things Launched Into Space in 2008
Space is getting crowded. The last 12 months have seen everything from a high profile space tourist, a powerful new space telescope, and everyone's favorite cuddly-looking microbes launched into space. Here are this year's tops. 10. IBEX Spacecraft to Study Solar System's Edge NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) lifted off in October on a mission to study the farthest fringes of the solar system. Its two bucket-sized sensors are designed to capture particles bouncing back toward Earth from the distant boundary between the hot wind from the sun and the cold wall of interstellar space. (Image: NASA/GSFC Conceptual Image Lab)
9. Navy Missile to Shoot Down Broken Spy Satellite In a giant kaboom, the U.S. Navy destroyed a broken American spy satellite by launching a heat seeking missile to collide with it on orbit. The bus-sized spy sat, USA-193, proved to be a dud shortly after it was launched, and was deemed by the military too great a risk to be left alone, since if it did eventually fall back to Earth it could spew out toxic hydrazine fuel. (Image: U.S. Navy) 8. Space Tourist Richard Garriott For just $30 million you too can visit outer space. Texan computer game developer Richard Garriott paid that lofty fee to Russia's Federal Space Agency for a chance to blast off aboard a Soyuz rocket in October. The son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, the younger Garriott became the first American second-generation space traveler when he took a 10-day vacation to the International Space Station. (Image courtesy NCsoft)
7. Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle The biggest European spacecraft ever built, the double-decker bus-sized Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle, launched in March to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. The unmanned cargo ship was the first new spacecraft in nine years to join the ranks of station-bound ships. After it completed its job, however, the spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere as planned during a fiery death dive back to Earth. (Image: NASA)
6. The Space Station's Biggest Room May saw the launch of the largest addition yet to the International Space Station, the Japanese Kibo laboratory. Meaning "Hope" in Japanese, the 36.7 foot (11.2 meter)-long Kibo will be used for science experiments, including some testing the effects of the space environment in an exposed outdoor porch area. The so-called "Lexus of space labs" was delivered by the shuttle Discovery and installed by an international crew. (Image: NASA)
5. Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope Aiming to help answer some of the most befuddling mysteries of the universe, such as the nature of dark matter, black holes and lighthouse-like spinning pulsars, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope will probe the universe in high-energy gamma ray light. Formerly known as the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), the NASA observatory was rechristened after Italian scientist Enrico Fermi following its successful launch in June. (Image: NASA/GSFC)
4. SpaceX Falcon 1 Rocket Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX)'s Falcon 1 became the first privately-developed rocket ever to launch into space after its successful September liftoff. In the wake of three failed launch attempts, the $100 million booster finally made it to orbit, proving that someone other than government-funded agencies can play the space game. The liquid-fueled rocket was designed to haul payloads of up to about 1,256 pounds (570 kilograms) to low-Earth orbit. (Image: Thom Rogers/SpaceX)
India made its first space mission beyond Earth orbit in October when it launched the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft on a planned two-year mission to the moon. The lunar orbiter included a small Moon Impact Probe that landed in November and planted the Indian flag on the lunar surface. (Image: ISRO)
2. China's Shenzhou-7 Mission Chinese astronauts completed their nation's first ever spacewalk in September during the Shenzhou 7 mission. The flight, China's third manned space mission, established the country's growing prowess as major space player. China is the third nation, after Russia and the United States, to successfully carry out a spacewalk. (Image: CCTV/Xinhua)
Tardigrades, or "water bears," are microscopic eight-legged critters known to survive extreme temperatures, tons of radiation, and nearly a decade without water on Earth. In September scientists declared they had proven their mettle in one more extreme environment: outer space. The adorable invertebrates technically launched at the end of last year, but only reached fame recently when they were found to have survived in perfect health upon their return to Earth. We thought they deserved to make this year's list cause they're so damn cute. Image at top: Brett's Blog Image at left: Goldstein Lab See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 5 Jan 2009 | 3:16 pm Corn Pests May Spread with WarmingClimate change could expand the range of stubborn corn pests, say scientists.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Jan 2009 | 2:30 pm Weather around the U.S.A. (AP)AP - Weather around the U.S.A.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jan 2009 | 2:00 pm Adam Rutherford: Here's how to discuss Charles Darwin's glorious idea without recourse to being dull and/or stupidIt may have escaped your attention, but 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and the 150th of the publication of the most important work of non-fiction in history: the Origin of Species. Although his birthday is not until 12 February, Radio 4 kicks off the proceedings today with the first of a four-part In Our Time special, and the first of five parts of Dear Darwin, in which leading academics and writers pen letters to Charles. BBC television follows in February, with a tangled bank of shows on all their channels. David Attenborough's contribution will no doubt be a highpoint. Being the Guardian, we covered this anniversary last year in some depth. As the rest of the world goes evolution nuts, there will be heated debate as a result. Mild-mannered, polite and charming though Darwin was, he gets tiresomely tossed from pillar to post by every grumpy tub-thumper on all sides of every debate. Darwin's religious beliefs will be analysed, misinterpreted and twisted, with, I predict, much guff yet little fragrance. His idea – that all life has common ancestry – is accepted as fact as sure as the Earth orbits the Sun by all who understand it. Yet whichever survey you believe, the basic principles of natural selection and indeed evolution remain challenged and unaccepted by far too many. 2009 is an opportunity to correct this intellectual travesty. What's most important about Charles Darwin is the science. Nature has published (pdf) a resource for educators (and everyone else) that details 15 studies in recent years that support natural selection as fact – ranging from the fossil whale ancestor Indohyus to the Alien-esque double jaws of the moray eel. To study evolution is to study life. So let's ignore all the hoo-ha that will come and focus on Darwin's brilliant, glorious idea. In order that we might have some rousing discussions about evolution without recourse to being frustratingly dull or just plain stupid, here are my suggested rules of engagement: 1) Evolution is a fact. That simply means that species are not immutable: they can change over generations, and indeed this has been observed many times, in real time by real people. If you don't concede this, we can't be friends. 2) Evolution by means of natural selection is the scientific theory that describes the mechanism by which evolution occurs. Darwin outlines this in immense detail in the Origin of Species, and 150 years' worth of research by some very, very clever people have thus far failed to prove him wrong. 3) If you say "it's just a theory", you're an idiot. You should attempt of your own volition to find out why this is idiotic. Until then, you don't deserve typey fingers. 4) Charles Darwin's religion is interesting, but no more so than anyone who begins life in a casually Christian household, and over the course of his life comes to a less certain conclusion. This doesn't enlighten evolution any. I am not aware of any explicit reference to his being an atheist, but he did reject the notion of an interventionist God. Claims that he found God again on his deathbed are not supported. 5) Darwin does not belong to atheists. Yes, he came up with an idea that challenges some aspects of religion. Every atheist before or since did not. Natural selection did help dislodge two key tenets of religion: 1) the inerrancy of the biblical story of creation in six days; and 2) the uniqueness of humankind. But the truth is that the creationist view of biblical literalism was already waning by the time the Origin was published in 1859. As for special creation, I believe that the fact we evolved to be the most sophisticated and dominant creature on the planet makes us more special than if we were singled out in concept. Any attempt to adopt him to promote a cause other than science is dishonest. 6) Evolution by natural selection is not controversial among biologists. There may be a handful of scientists who think that the grandeur of all life has not arisen by means of natural selection, but they are morons. There are many controversies within evolution, but none rest on natural selection being incorrect. 7) The truth of natural selection was waiting to be described, but Darwin really nailed it and fully deserves the credit. Yes, Alfred Russell Wallace independently came up with the same theory, but, sorry buddy, you came second. 8) Charles Darwin was not responsible for the concept of social Darwinism. Thomas Malthus and Herbert Spencer had already advanced ideas about competition driving social development before 1859 (Spencer who gave us the tautologous maxim "survival of the fittest"). In short, to try to connect Darwin with Hitler is to be a wrongheaded simpleton. 9) Don't forget, this is a celebration. Darwin is one of the most important thinkers ever, and bicentennials of this magnitude don't come around often. His work fundamentally altered the position of humankind in the universe. His ideas connect all life on one magnificent infinitely branching tree, and gives us understanding of all living things. And he had a preposterous beard. 10) Darwin was the man, and deserves his place as one of the founders of modernity. Lest we forget, it's also the Year of Astronomy. In 1609 Galileo made his first observations using telescopes. Magnifico! Please feel free to add some more. If we try to stick to these, we can all have a marvellous time celebrating and learning about the greatest idea in history. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jan 2009 | 12:45 pm New reptiles found in Tanzania's shrinking forestsLONDON (Reuters) - Seventeen previously unknown species of reptiles and amphibians have been found in the threatened rainforests of eastern Tanzania, Italian and Tanzanian scientists reported on Monday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 5 Jan 2009 | 12:36 pm
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