Science Headlines for January 7, 2009

Viagra's Other Talents: Help A 'Signaling' Protein Shield The Heart From High Blood Pressure Damage

Researchers report what is believed to be the first direct evidence in lab animals that the erectile dysfunction drug sildenafil amplifies the effects of a heart-protective protein.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm

Asthma Attacks Triggered By Exertion At Work And Play

Exertion at work and play can trigger deadly asthma attacks, according to new research. If you're an asthma sufferer, make sure the medical history at your doctor's office includes your employment and recreation plans. A new screening tool may save you a trip to the emergency room later on.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm

Four, Three, Two, One . . . Pterosaurs Have Lift Off

Pterosaurs have long suffered an identity crisis. Pop culture heedlessly -- and wrongly -- lumps these extinct flying lizards in with dinosaurs. Even paleontologists assumed that because the creatures flew, they were birdlike in many ways, such as using only two legs to take flight.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm

Journey Of A Green Turtle From Indonesia Into Australian Opens Mystery Of 'Oceanic Superhighway'

The remarkable journey of a green turtle from Indonesia into Australian waters is helping conservationists to track the migratory route of this species to the Kimberley-Pilbara coast - one of the few relatively pristine coastal areas left on Earth.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm

Space Technology To Soothe Roadster Ride

Space missions are highly complex operations, not only because the satellites or space probes are unique pieces of top-notch intricate high-tech, but also because it is so challenging to get them to their assigned position in space without damage. The technology used is now being transferred to the car industry to increase comfort.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm

Uncultured Bacteria Found In Amniotic Fluids Of Women Who Experience Preterm Births

Researchers have made a significant advancement in understanding the cause behind why some pregnant women suffer from inflammations in the inner womb without any signs of an infection. Using gene-cloning techniques, researchers discovered that approximately 60 percent of the bacteria present in women with intra-amniotic inflammations were missed by traditional culture testing -- considered the gold standard for finding bacterial infections.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm

Physicists Squeeze Light To Quantum Limit

Physicists have demonstrated a way to squeeze light to the fundamental quantum limit, a finding that has potential applications for high-precision measurement, next generation atomic clocks, novel quantum computing and our most fundamental understanding of the universe.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm

Clues About The Evolution Of Epilepsy

Two children have a seizure. One child never has another seizure. Twenty years later, the other child has a series of seizures and is diagnosed with epilepsy. A new study is looking at what could possibly happen in the development of these two children that would lead to such extreme variations in their neurologic health.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm

Genetic Roots Of Cacao Trees Traced

By examining the DNA of cacao trees, scientists have traced the genetic roots of the key ingredient in chocolate.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm

Brain Circuit Abnormalities May Underlie Bulimia Nervosa In Women

Women with bulimia nervosa appear to respond more impulsively during psychological testing than those without eating disorders, and brain scans show differences in areas responsible for regulating behavior, according to a new report.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm

Brown Pelicans Turning Up Injured and Confused

Brown pelicans are turning up on California shores bruised and confused.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Jan 2009 | 2:09 pm

Familiar face? "Love" hormone may help, study says

LONDON (Reuters) - The "love" hormone linked to feelings of sexual pleasure, bonding and maternal care also appears to help us recognize familiar faces, Swiss researchers said on Tuesday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:55 pm

Naomi Alderman: perfection through technology

In certain ways, our world is now startlingly, almost unimaginably accurate. The metre, which used to be calibrated to the charming and comprehensible platinum-iridium metre bar is now defined as the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in 1⁄299,792,458 of a second. Not something one could hope to measure at home. The kilogram is still defined by a physical object but time, once measured by observing the sun, moon and stars is now defined by reference to the vibrations of an atom of caesium. And in the closing moments of 2008, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service added a leap second to the year.

Given that most of us can't accurately estimate a minute in our heads, and that less than one leap second a year is added, the lack of leap seconds wouldn't make a noticeable change within the lifespan of the average person. Nonetheless, we add the seconds and aim for perfect accuracy; it's inspiring, really.

And yet despite the elegant perfection of our measuring systems, things continue to go wrong. The millennium bug might not have lived up to expectations, but the 2008 leap year caused Microsoft's Zune – an MP3 player designed to rival Apple's iPod – to freeze up, with much ensuing hilarity. Barack Obama failed to issue a statement responding to the "Zune apocalypse", but plenty of other users were understandably annoyed by this New Year's Eve inconvenience.

It is infuriating when technology fails to work properly; and perhaps more so because technology holds such a promise of perfection. Unlike human beings, computers can do the same task a million times in exactly the same way, don't get tired or need a change, and don't suddenly start to introduce their own interpretation into whatever task they're undertaking. From Metropolis to Iain M Banks' Culture novels, the prospect of a society run by technology has been both threatening and enticing for broadly the same reason: its anticipated total efficiency. Though our real experience of using technology is often more Millennium Falcon than Starship Enterprise, that imagined efficiency and perfection persists; and it's hard not to get angry when it goes wrong.

The other day I found myself shouting at a poor woman from PayPal over a glitch in their website. Admittedly, something had gone quite wrong with their site: a page asking me to "restore my balance" urged me to click "continue" and then "click the red 'restore my balance'" link which … led me back to the original page with that instruction. And, admittedly, PayPal are typical of many internet-native companies in making it irritatingly difficult to speak to a real person. I had to endure several automated menus and an automated explanation of a problem I wasn't having, which was then emailed to me without my requesting or agreeing to it before I got to speak to the poor PayPal employee herself. But nonetheless, it wasn't my finest hour; it's never the CEOs who have to listen to enraged customers shouting about the inadequacies of their products, and maybe it'd do us all some good to restrain our expectations a little.

So if you're reading, Anna, this article's for you and I'm very sorry. We may live in a world where the time is atomically guaranteed accurate to the leap second, but technology will always continue to go wrong and perhaps, in this year where very many things are predicted to go quite wrong, we could all do with a little less anger and a little more acceptance.

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 | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:30 pm

Japan to monitor greenhouse gases from space

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's space agency will launch a satellite later this month to monitor greenhouse gases around the world, officials said Wednesday, hoping the data it collects helps global efforts to combat climate change.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:27 pm

Brains wanted

Tom Feilden on the shortage of brains donated to science
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:41 pm

Yellow submarine to probe Antarctica glacier

PUNTA ARENAS, Chile (Reuters) - A yellow robot submarine will dive under an ice shelf in Antarctica to seek clues to world ocean level rises in one of the most inaccessible places on earth.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:36 pm

Tetris: an excellent treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder?

Tetris is good for easing the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), scientists have found. Yes, you read that correctly: the infuriating, mind-swallowing piece-twiddling row-building game actually has a medical value.

The research, which was conducted at the department of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, suggests using Tetris as a "cognitive vaccine" against flashbacks from traumatic events. It's published on the open-source science research Public Library of Science (PLoS) website.

Here's how they set out their recommendations:

The rationale for a 'cognitive vaccine' approach is as follows: Trauma flashbacks are sensory-perceptual, visuospatial mental images. Visuospatial cognitive tasks selectively compete for resources required to generate mental images. Thus, a visuospatial computer game (e.g. "Tetris") will interfere with flashbacks. Visuospatial tasks post-trauma, performed within the time window for memory consolidation, will reduce subsequent flashbacks. We predicted that playing "Tetris" half an hour after viewing trauma would reduce flashback frequency over 1-week.

In other words, if you're looking at falling squares, lines, hoooks and whatever those twiddly ones that are two overlapping lines of two are called, then you don't have time to visualise your previous bad experiences.

I'm glad I wasn't asked to take part:

Forty participants watched a 12-min film of traumatic scenes of injury and death (n = 20 per group). Film viewing was followed by a 30-min interval before simple random assignment to one of two experimental conditions. There were no baseline differences between the two groups in terms of age, depressive symptoms or trait anxiety or gender. Mood was equivalent between the groups prior to watching the film, and as predicted, both groups experienced comparable mood deterioration following the film (emphasis added).

(Tell me about it. Someone at work was looking for gruesome scenes from ER involving helicopters and instead found a real-life one. I'm recommending Tetris to him.)

Afterwards, one group just sat quietly, and another played Tetris, for ten minutes. They then kept a diary about flashbacks they'd had; this showed that the group which had played Tetris had significantly fewer (with a probability that it was chance less than 1%).

It's a remarkable finding; though looking at the long list of references, the idea of visual "distraction" as a method of desensitising people from visual memories has been around since at least early this decade.

But who'd have thought we'd find a potentially workable cure in a game that for a while 20 years ago seemed like a Russian plot to turn all our population into obsessive cursor-button pokers? (Wait, did it work?)

So maybe that's going to be the new treatment for returning soldiers from the front: Nintendo Gameboys loaded with Tetris. Then, all we'll have to worry about will be curing their Tetris addiction.

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 | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:31 pm

Japan to monitor greenhouse gases from space (Reuters)

Reuters - Japan's space agency will launch a satellite later this month to monitor greenhouse gases around the world, officials said Wednesday, hoping the data it collects helps global efforts to combat climate change.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:28 pm

Brain Food: How to Eat Smart

Five things you should know about feeding your brain.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:18 pm

Grand Canyon, Loch Ness compete as nature wonders (AP)

AP - The Grand Canyon, Mount Everest and Loch Ness will vie with more than 200 other spectacular places in the next phase of the global competition for the New 7 Wonders of Nature, organizers said Wednesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:11 pm

The Green Home in 2009

This year's home trends will focus on going lean and green.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Jan 2009 | 11:55 am

Increase of sick brown pelicans baffles experts (AP)

AP - Wildlife experts are trying to figure out why sick, disoriented and bruised California brown pelicans are being found in record numbers along more than 1,000 miles of coastline.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 9:35 am

Richard Dawkins tells us about the success of the Atheist Bus Campaign

Supporters raised £140,000 which will be spent on posters featuring slogans doubting the existence of God.

Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Jan 2009 | 8:34 am

Genome hunters set sights on creatures great and small

Platypus, pig, pangolin, bat, louse, worm ... Jane Charlesworth reveals the genomes that sequencers hope to crack in 2009

Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Jan 2009 | 8:30 am

Green revolution: still possible amid deep recession? (The Christian Science Monitor)

The Christian Science Monitor - In 2008, oil prices spiked then collapsed, climate-change talks stuttered, and nuclear power reemerged.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 8:00 am

Japan wants anti-whaling ship barred from ports (AP)

AP - Radical conservationists who have been chasing Japanese whalers in the Antarctic Ocean said Wednesday they were heading to Australia to refuel their ship, a day after Japan argued they were pirates who should be barred from refueling.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 5:56 am

New Jersey UFO Likely a Hoax (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - It seems likely that a mysterious set of UFO lights that appeared over Phoenix, Arizona last year made an unexpected reappearance over New Jersey on Monday night.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 4:58 am

New Jersey UFO Likely a Hoax

A mysterious set of UFO lights that appeared over Phoenix, Arizona last year likely made an unexpected reappearance over New Jersey on Monday night.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Jan 2009 | 4:41 am

Fizzling out

No iPhone buzz for fans at Apple's last Macworld show
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:53 am

Psychedelic Mice Reveal Clues to Disease Transmission

Mice get salon treatment in a recent study of hantavirus.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:30 am

Church grabs chance to attack birth control pill

Roman Catholic leaders have pounced on a "confession" by one of the inventors of the birth control pill who has said the contraceptive he helped create was responsible for a "demographic catastrophe".

In an article published by the Vatican this week, the head of the world's Roman Catholic doctors broadened the attack on the pill, claiming it had also brought "devastating ecological effects" by releasing into the environment "tons of hormones" that had impaired male fertility.

The assault began with a personal commentary in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard by 85-year-old Carl Djerassi. The Austrian chemist was one of three whose formulation of the synthetic progestogen Norethisterone marked a key step towards the earliest oral contraceptive pill.

Djerassi outlined the "horror scenario" that occurred because of the population imbalance, for which his invention was partly to blame. He said that in most of Europe there was now "no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction". He said: "This divide in Catholic Austria, a country which has on average 1.4 children per family, is now complete."

He described families who had decided against reproduction as "wanting to enjoy their schnitzels while leaving the rest of the world to get on with it".

The fall in the birth rate, he said, was an "epidemic" far worse - but given less attention - than obesity. Young Austrians, he said, were committing national suicide if they failed to procreate. And if it were not possible to reverse the population decline they would have to understand the necessity of an "intelligent immigration policy".

The head of Austria's Catholics, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, told an interviewer that the Vatican had forecast 40 years ago that the pill would lead to a dramatic fall in the birth rate in the west. "Somebody above suspicion like Carl Djerassi ... is saying that each family has to produce three children to maintain population levels, but we're far away from that."

Schönborn told Austrian TV that when he first read Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical condemning artificial contraception he viewed it negatively as a "cold shower". But he said he had altered his views as, over time, it had proved "prophetic".

Writing for the Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano, the president of the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, José María Simón, said research from his association also showed the pill "worked in many cases with a genuinely ... abortive effect".

Angelo Bonelli, of the Italian Green party, said it was the first he had heard of a link between the pill and environmental pollution. The worst of poisons were to be found in the water supply. "It strikes me as idiosyncratic to be worried about this."

A leading gynaecologist and member of the New York Academy of Science, professor Gian Benedetto Melis, called Simón's claims "science fiction", saying that the pill blocked ovulation only.

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 | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:20 am

Spacewatch: 7 January 2009

The planet Venus blazes in the SSW at nightfall, stands at its greatest angular distance from the Sun (47°) on the 14th and remains conspicuous as an evening star until it plunges into our evening twilight in late March. Viewed through a telescope, its dazzling cloud covered disc grows from a small almost-first-quarter phase tonight, to a large slender crescent as it moves towards the Sun's near side. Indeed, by February it should be possible to make out the crescent through binoculars.

The changing phases of Venus were first observed by Galileo in the autumn of 1610, providing key evidence in his championing of the Copernican (Sun-centred) cosmology. In fact, his first use of a telescope for astronomy came in the previous year and in 2009 we celebrate its 400th anniversary as the International Year of Astronomy.

Until the first Venus flyby by Mariner 2 in 1962, there was speculation that the Earth-sized planet might harbour primeval forests below its opaque clouds. This and succeeding probes, culminating in ESA's Venus Express which began to orbit Venus in 2006 and is due to conclude its mission this year, have told a very different story. The clouds are of sulphuric acid and float in an atmosphere largely of carbon dioxide. This crushes the surface at a pressure some 92 times that of the Earth's atmosphere and keeps it at a roasting 462C. Not what we might expect for a planet named for the goddess of love and beauty.

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 | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:14 am

New book reveals the many forms of the snow crystal

Leading snow crystal scientist publishes book in bid to persuade the world that no two flakes are exactly alike

Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:09 am

Obituary: Tim Miles

Obituary: Researcher with a radical approach to the understanding and remedying of dyslexia

Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:09 am

Snowflakes under the microscope

Know your flakes: A pictorial guide to the hidden world of ice crystals

Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:08 am

Study backs deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Deep brain stimulation dramatically improves Parkinson's disease symptoms such as trembling and slowness of movement, offering hope to many with the incurable ailment, researchers said on Tuesday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 10:07 pm

Bright Flash in Heavens Has No Earthly Explanation

File this one under: Things that go flash in the night.

While conducting a routine search for distant supernovae, astronomers observed a bright burst of light that they can’t account for. On Feb. 21, 2006, the Hubble Space Telescope first imaged the source of light, which continued to brighten over the next 100 days, peaked, and then finally faded to oblivion over another 100 days.

The time scale of brightening, as well as the particular characteristics of the colors of light seen, do not match any known astronomical phenomena.

“So far it’s unlike anything previously observed,” said Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory astronomer Kyle Barbary during a press briefing Tuesday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, California.

While supernovae normally take three weeks to reach their peak brightness (or at most 70 days), this object, called SCP 06F6, took significantly longer. During the span that the light was visible, the team observed it with not only Hubble, but also with the Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Subaru Telescope and W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

The scientists can tell very little about the source of the flash — not even how far away it is, or how intrinsically bright. That means it could have come from some event in our own galaxy, or from some distant region of the universe. There is no visible star or galaxy at the site of flash to offer hints of what caused it.

Since the astronomers first announced the mystery sighting, many experts have offered guesses about what type of phenomenon could be behind it. Suggestions include a new type of supernova (such as the collapse and explosion of a unique star), a collision between a white dwarf star and a black hole, or even an exotic star made out of hypothetical “mirror matter.”

But none of the explanations are completely satisfying, Barbary said. “None of these are conclusive. There are sort of problems with each one that make none of them a sure bet.”

Some are even joking that it could have been caused by an alien civilization that had just turned on its own version of the Large Hadron Collider and blown itself up.

Since the object has completely faded away from sight by now, options for getting to the bottom of the mystery are slim.

“I think probably the only way to learn much more is to maybe find more of these things and look for similarities,” Barbary said.

See Also:

Image: NASA, ESA, and K. Barbary (University of California, Berkeley/Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Supernova Cosmology Project)

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 6 Jan 2009 | 9:43 pm

Electric Cars Get a Makeover

Electric car makers polish the image of what could be a hard sell in the current recession.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Jan 2009 | 9:14 pm

Reuse Revolution

How to do it.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Jan 2009 | 8:37 pm

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 performance
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 8:15 pm

Bush establishes 3 marine monuments in Pacific (AP)

AP - In the largest marine conservation effort in history, President George W. Bush on Tuesday designated what he called "three beautiful and biologically diverse areas of the Pacific Ocean" as national marine monuments.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 7:59 pm

Great White Shark 'Autopsy' to be Webcast Live

The shark is dead, but the webcast of its necropsy, or animal autopsy, will be live.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Jan 2009 | 7:56 pm

Video: New 3-D Fly-Through of Supernova Remnant

New observations of a star that exploded 330 years ago have been combined into a three-dimensional fly-through.

The video begins with a rendering of the dense neutron star left over from the supernova explosion and takes you flying through and around visualized data gathered by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope.

The video is special because it's not an artist's rendering, said Tracey Delaney, the MIT astrophysicist whose team created the work.

"The data is in there," she said in a teleconference with reporters from the annual American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, California.

The Cassiopeia A supernova remnant is the brightest extrasolar source of radio waves in the Milky Way. Back in 1999, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory found that a neutron star sat in the middle of the expanding shockwave of debris. Scientists are using Delaney's new multi-spectrum observations to study the nature and structure of star explosions, which are some of the most energetic events known to humans. In a Type IIb supernova, like Cas A, a massive star collapses in on itself, before the material bounces off the dense core and rushes outward.

Image: NASA/CXC/D.Berry

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 | 6 Jan 2009 | 7:27 pm

Japan Taps Seabeds for Rare Metals

Japan plans to explore its seabeds in search of rare metals used in electronics.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Jan 2009 | 7:14 pm

Frigid temps loom for N'east, Midwest: forecasts (Reuters)

Reuters - The U.S. Northeast and Midwest can expect an extended winter chill, including bitter cold temperatures next week, that should boost demand for home heating fuels, forecasters and oil traders said on Tuesday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 6:46 pm

U.S. still probing security satellite failure

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four months after the newest U.S. missile-warning satellite built by Northrop Grumman Corp failed in orbit, officials are still investigating what happened.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Jan 2009 | 5:52 pm

SLIDE SHOW: Age of the Gladiators

Artifacts from ancient Pompeii reveal the popularity of gladiator battles.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Jan 2009 | 5:36 pm

Baby Jupiter's huge weight gain

The planet Jupiter must have gained mass fast during its infancy, according to astronomers.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Jan 2009 | 5:31 pm

Car Parts Made from Coconuts

Researchers in Texas are making car parts out of coconut husks, which are otherwise thrown away.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Jan 2009 | 5:27 pm

Atheist bus campaign spreads the word of no God nationwide

Anyone who has spent a chilly half-hour waiting for a double-decker may already have doubted the existence of a deity. But for those who need further proof, a nationwide advertising campaign aimed at persuading more people to "come out" as atheists was launched today with the backing of some of Britain's most famous non-believers.

The principal slogan – "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" – can already be seen on four London bus routes, and now 200 bendy buses in London and 600 across the country are to carry the advert after a fundraising drive raised more than £140,000, exceeding the original target of £5,500.

The money will also pay for 1,000 advertisements on London Underground from next Monday and on a pair of giant LCD screens opposite Bond Street tube station, in Oxford Street. Organisers unveiled a set of quotes from public figures – including Albert Einstein, Douglas Adams and Katharine Hepburn – who have endorsed atheism, or at least expressed scepticism about a Creator. The words "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet" are quoted from the poet Emily Dickinson.

At the launch in a heated marquee next to the Albert Memorial, the television comedy writer Ariane Sherine, creator of the campaign, said: "You wait ages for an atheist bus and then 800 come along at once. I hope they'll brighten people's days and make them smile on their way to work."

She suggested the campaign in a Guardian Comment is free blogpost last June, saying it would be a reassuring alternative to religious slogans threatening non-Christians with hell and damnation. At today's launch she said the sheer number of donations, which were still coming in, demonstrated the strength of feeling. "This is a great day for freedom of speech in Britain. I am very glad that we live in a country where people have the freedom to believe in whatever they want."

Joining Sherine were Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, Hanne Stinson, from the British Humanist Association (BHA), the philosopher AC Grayling and Graham Linehan, who wrote Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd. There were messages of support from the actor Stephen Fry and the writer Charlie Brooker.

According to the BHA, "huge numbers" of people in Britain have non-religious beliefs – between 30 and 40% of the population, with a higher figure, between 60 and 65%, in young people.

Hanne Stinson said: "We all, whether we have religious or non-religious beliefs, have a right to be heard, and no one particular set of beliefs has any more right to influence the public debate than any other. The message isn't aimed at people with religious beliefs – it's aimed at atheists and agnostics."

Most commentators recognised the slogan as a simple statement of non-religious belief and appreciated that it was designed to reassure people there was no reason to worry about being non-religious, she said. "People can lead a happy, enjoyable and rewarding life without religion."

Prior to the launch, Sherine was concerned that the posters would be banned from buses operated by Stagecoach, the second largest public transport company in the UK. Its co-founder Brian Souter is a member of the Church of Nazarene, an international evangelical Christian denomination.

A Stagecoach spokesman said all adverts on its buses were vetted before being published. "This particular advert is being carried on a number of bus operators' vehicles across the UK. We took advice from the Advertising Standards Authority in advance of publication and we have been advised the advert complies with the relevant guidelines and legislation."

The theology thinktank Theos welcomed the campaign, saying it was a "great way" to get people thinking about God. "The posters will encourage people to consider the most important question we will ever face in our lives. The slogan itself is a great discussion starter. Telling someone 'there's probably no God' is a bit like telling them they've probably remembered to lock their door. It creates the doubt that they might not have."

A statement from the Methodist Church thanked Dawkins for encouraging a "continued interest in God".

The success of the British initiative has inspired atheists around the world. The American Humanist Association launched a bus advertising campaign last November with the slogan, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake", appearing on the sides, rear and insides of Washington DC's 230 buses.

The subsequent news coverage generated mostly negative phone calls and emails, with the largest number going directly to the organisers. Hundreds of complaints were sent to Metro, the government body responsible for the city's buses and subways. The poster provoked two counter-campaigns by devout Christians.

From Monday, buses in Barcelona bearing a Spanish translation of the British slogan will hit the streets, to the consternation of the city's Catholic hierarchy, while Italy's Union of Atheist, Agnostics and Rationalists plans to roll out atheist buses.

Atheists in Australia have fared badly with their campaign. Attempts to place slogans such as "Atheism – sleep in on Sunday mornings" on buses were rejected by Australia's biggest outdoor advertising company, APN Outdoor.

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 | 6 Jan 2009 | 5:20 pm

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