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NASA Space Balloon Mission Tunes In To Cosmic Radio MysteryListening to the early universe just got harder. Astronomers have discovered cosmic radio noise that booms six times louder than expected.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm To Climate-change Worries, Add One More: Extended Mercury ThreatMercury pollution has already spurred public health officials to advise eating less fish, but it could become a more pressing concern in a warmer world.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm 'It Takes Two To Know One': Shared Experiences Change Self-recognitionLooking at yourself in the mirror every morning, you never think to question whether the person you see is actually you. A new study challenges this common-sense notion about our own self image. The study shows for the first time that the image we hold of our own face can actually change through shared experiences with other people's faces.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm New Bartonella Species That Infects Humans DiscoveredResearchers have produced the first link between a species of bacteria most commonly found in sheep and human illness.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Avian Flu Becoming More Resistant To Antiviral DrugsA new study shows the resistance of the avian flu virus to a major class of antiviral drugs is increasing through positive evolutionary selection, with researchers documenting the trend in more than 30 percent of the samples tested.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Big Raindrops Favor Tornado Formation, Simulations SuggestOne of the largest sources of uncertainty in weather prediction involves how microscale structures influence larger-scale phenomena. For instance, previous studies have demonstrated that the structure, dynamics, and evolution of thunderstorms are very sensitive to cloud microphysical parameters.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Cassiopeia A Comes Alive Across Time And SpaceTwo new efforts have taken a famous supernova remnant from the static to the dynamic. A new movie of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows changes in time never seen before in this type of object. A separate team has produced a dramatic 3-D visualization of the same remnant.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Cellular Task Force To Safeguard Genome StabilityThe maintenance of genome stability is crucial for protecting an organism against the onset of cancer and the study of the mechanisms controlling genome stability represents one of the most promising frontiers in cancer research.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Spookfish Uses Mirrors For EyesA remarkable new discovery shows the four-eyed spookfish to be the first vertebrate ever found to use mirrors, rather than lenses, to focus light in its eyes.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm 'Scrawny' Gene Keeps Stem Cells HealthyStem cells are the body's primal cells, retaining the youthful ability to develop into more specialized types of cells over many cycles of cell division. How do they do it? Scientists have identified a gene, scrawny, that appears to be a key factor in keeping a variety of stem cells in their undifferentiated state. Understanding how stem cells maintain their potency has implications for basic biology and also for medical applications.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Mummy thought to be Queen Seshestet found in EgyptCAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian archaeologists have found the remains of a mummy thought to be that of Queen Seshestet, the mother of a pharaoh who ruled Egypt in the 24th century BC, the government said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 12:21 pm 'Wolfman' returnsExplorer Jim McNeill tracks down Arctic wolvesSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Jan 2009 | 12:07 pm Russia and Ukraine still deadlocked after gas talks (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 11:46 am USDA taking applications for Cattail eradication (AP)AP - Federal wildlife officials are taking applications from farmers who want the government to remove cattail-infested wetlands, the preferred habitat of sunflower-snacking blackbirds.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 9:40 am More species invasions feared for Great Lakes (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 9:34 am Gaza must not become 'Iran satellite': Peres (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 9:26 am Freezing China warns of repeat of New Year gridlock (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 9:25 am Every animal counts - zoos begin their annual stock-takeZookeepers across Britain are counting every one of their animals and insects as part of a huge new year stock-take.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:33 am Australia to allow anti-whaling ship to dock (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:08 am 9 Genes Are Linked to Alzheimer's (HealthDay)HealthDay - WEDNESDAY, Jan. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have identified nine genes that might make people more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 4:47 am 'Tetris' Game Quells Bad Flashbacks (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Tetris, one of the most popular video games ever, could help reduce flashbacks among people with post-traumatic stress disorder. A study of healthy volunteers who played the falling-blocks game for 10 minutes a half hour after viewing traumatic images of injury, including advertisements highlighting the dangers of drunk driving, showed that 20 game-playing subjects had significantly fewer flashbacks to those scenes in the following week than the 20 subjects who saw the images but didn't play the game. ...Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 3:26 am Low blood oxygen on Everest offers treatment hopeLONDON (Reuters) - A team of British doctors conducting experiments in the "Death Zone" of Mount Everest has recorded the lowest levels of blood oxygen in humans, far below those of critically ill patients.Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 2:18 am How big Jurassic flying reptiles got off ground (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 12:28 am Britain endures coldest snap for more than 20 yearsHarbours froze over, balcony railings in Plymouth sheared away from a block of flats and a polar explorer arrived in London to test the ice in the fountains of Trafalgar Square as Britain endured the coldest snap for more than 20 years. Benson in Oxfordshire survived the coldest temperatures overnight: -11.8C, the chilliest night there for 11 years. And in the fens, near Earith, Cambridgeshire people skated on frozen ponds. Culdrose in south-west Cornwall had its second coldest night on record at -7.8C. Padstow harbour in north Cornwall froze over. In Plymouth, Devon, it fell to -7C, the coldest for 21 years. Meanwhile, police in Devon were searching for a pensioner who claimed she had been forced to sleep in her car on Dartmoor after being evicted from her home. The woman, Robyn Field, telephoned a national radio programme. Roads in many areas were treacherous. A man was killed when his car crashed down an embankment on the A299 near Faversham in Kent. The polar explorer Pen Hadow, who is leading a team of scientists to test the thickness of the Arctic Ocean ice cap, was able to practise taking such measurements in Trafalgar Square. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 8 Jan 2009 | 12:09 am Met Office warns elderly may need summer aid to keep homes coolAs temperatures stay stubbornly well below freezing, it may feel like the last issue on anyone's mind, but the government has been warned it may need to start thinking about introducing emergency hot weather payments to help poorer households keep cool. The Department for Work and Pensions is studying a specially commissioned report from the Met Office which concludes that the weather may become so hot that Britain's poor and elderly people may need state help to pay their summer energy bills as they reach for air conditioners to prevent themselves dying from heat exhaustion. The Met Office said yesterday: "We may be going through probably the coldest spell since 1996, but it is probably a bigger medium-term problem that we are going to see some very hot summers, of the kind we saw in 2003 and 2006." The report was completed last year, the Met said, and was one of a number of studies undertaken, including for energy companies, so they could prepare for high summer energy demand fuelled by air conditioners. The Met Office has argued that summers as hot as 2003 could happen every other year by 2050, as a result of climate change. The 2003 heatwave led to the death of 15,000 people in France and there were 2,000 heat-related deaths in the UK. In a report released last month on behalf of the World Meteorological Organisation, the Met Office said the global mean temperature for 2008 was 14.3C, making it the 10th warmest year since measurements began in 1850. The 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997 and global temperatures for 2000-2008 now stand almost 0.2C warmer than the average for the decade 1990-1999. A department spokesman said last night officials were studying the report, but had no plans to introduce hot weather payments at present. That is just as well for Whitehall budgets after Gordon Brown in the autumn trebled cold weather payments from £8.50 to £25 a week for this winter. As of Monday, nearly 4m payouts had been triggered in 76 different areas, costing the government £120m, as weather stations recorded icy conditions. The payments are triggered when the temperature slides to freezing or below for seven consecutive days. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 8 Jan 2009 | 12:09 am Mobile phones - not the hazard we thoughtPreviously, the only good thing about being in hospital, apart from staying in bed all day, was the freedom from mobile phones. Not any more. This week, the Department of Health said that NHS trusts should allow "the widest possible use" of mobile phones in hospitals. There is evidence that electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobiles can interfere with some electronic medical equipment, resulting in anything from a juddering screen to displaying incorrect figures to even switching off; and hospitals will still forbid the use of phones in wards with life-saving equipment, possibly soon to be the last public refuge from annoying ringtones. Even airlines are starting to introduce hardware that allows the safe use of mobiles at altitudes of more than 3,000m, the "cruise" phase of a flight (mobiles are still thought to pose an interference risk with flight navigation and communication systems during take-off and landing). The use of a mobile phone has never been proved to be responsible for the crash of any large passenger plane, but according to the Civil Aviation Authority mobiles were linked to around 20 incidents of aircraft malfunction between 2000 and 2005. Mobile phones are still banned from petrol station forecourts, for fear that the battery could produce an incendiary spark, but Adam Burgess, senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Kent and author of Cellular Phones, Public Fears and a Culture of Precaution, says that the forecourt fires previously blamed on mobile phones are now believed to have been caused by body static. "We live in a more anxious society than ever, where we assume there is danger everywhere," he says. With the previous ban on mobiles in hospitals, Burgess points out, "there has been a financial motive in keeping charges for the fixed line hospital phones rolling into Trust coffers". All this isn't to say that mobile phones are definitively safe - there are still questions about the effects of radiation from phones on health. But if we do all have to go into hospital to have lesions on our brains removed, at least we will be able to use our phones. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 8 Jan 2009 | 12:08 am Everest trip helps critically illBlood oxygen levels recorded on a trip by medics to Everest could help the treatment of critically ill patients.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Jan 2009 | 12:07 am Brain-cooling devices developedScientists are developing new ways to cool heart attack and stroke victims' brains to protect them from damage.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Jan 2009 | 12:06 am Black holes may precede galaxies, astronomers sayWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Black holes -- those massive, invisible objects that suck in everything around them -- may have appeared before the galaxies that host them, astronomers said on Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 11:44 pm Garage Invention Could Turn Restaurants Into Power Plants
Would you like power with those fries? A new garage-engineered generator burns the waste oil from restaurants' deep fryers to generate electricity and hot water. Put 80 gallons of grease into the Vegawatt each week, and its creators promise it will generate about 5 kilowatts of power. That's about 10 percent of the total energy needs of Finz, a seafood restaurant in Dedham, Massachusetts, where the first Vegawatt is being tested. At New England electricity rates, the system offsets about $2.50 worth of electricity with each gallon of waste oil poured into it. Vegawatt's founder and inventor, James Peret, estimates that restaurants purchasing the $22,000 machine will save about $1,000 per month in electricity costs, for a payback time of two years. "You take this waste resource and make it a profit center," said Peret, who spent four long years cooking up the project in his garage. "When I started telling people, they said, 'Someone's gotta have done this.' I'd run into more people. They'd say, 'Why hasn't anyone done this?' My only response was, 'I don't know; it seems like a good idea.'"
"Now the restaurant owners are going to be motivated to put every single drop of waste oil into this thing, because it will pay for itself," Peret said. And importantly, it provides convenience for restaurateurs or Burger King managers, instead of subtracting it, like so many green solutions seem to. Restaurants that fry delicious things like chicken and french fries generate dozens of gallons of waste oil that have to be stored in barrels out back. Because used cooking oil is considered a low-grade hazardous material, they haven't been allowed to just throw it away; they generally had to pay rendering-plant operators to come. But it is now a sellers' market for grease. Higher crude prices have made other types of oil more expensive. Biodiesel makers and renderers have become increasingly willing to pay up to 40 cents a gallon for the stuff. There have even been reports of "biodiesel pirates" stealing fryer grease. In fact, Vegawatt is derived from the home-brew fuel movement that many trace back to Dr. Thomas Reed, who popularized a recipe to convert waste cooking oil into biodiesel more than 20 years ago. Peret converted his truck to run on straight vegetable oil, or SVO to home brewers. But he was troubled by the inefficiency of the process. "If you want to run waste vegetable oil in your car, it's not as simple as going behind a restaurant and filling up," Peret said. "People that do this spend the majority of their free time collecting fuel from restaurants." Peret realized he could use the same engine technology to power an on-site generator and defray a restaurant's electricity costs. "It's not difficult to go from spinning tires to spinning magnets," he said So he created a test unit — which you can see at the back of his garage in the top photo — that's basically a diesel generator hacked to run waste cooking oil. It feeds power directly into the restaurant's electrical system through a 30 amp hook-in. Vegawatt is more efficient than a typical coal or natural gas plant. Peret said it can capture 70 percent of the fuel's caloric value. That's because the generator captures and uses the waste heat it generates. "All the water [the restaurant] would send to its boiler, instead of sending it straight there from the city, we run it through our heat exchanger first," Peret said. "Depending on the flow, [the water] can go into the hot water heater at 120 degrees." (This non-electrical energy savings is included in the 5-kilowatt rating cited above.) The big power plants, though technically very efficient, waste most of the fuel they burn. After accounting for all the sources of energy waste "what you are
left with ... is just 27.6 units of usable energy out of every 100 units
you started with," energy researcher Benjamin Sovacool explained in his
recent book, The Dirty Energy Dilemma. "In terms of making
toast, it would have been nearly four times more efficient just to burn
a lump of coal and place your bread over the flame." Biomass energy sources — like waste wood, switchgrass or cooking oil — are best when used right near the source of their creation. Dragging the stuff creates more emissions and raises the cost of the
fuel. Vegawatt doesn't have that problem. By company estimates, the Vegawatt generates 50 percent less carbon dioxide than a comparable amount of electricity from a coal power plant. "In terms of the amount of energy that it takes to transport this
waste, it's a french fry," Peret said. "You just feed the guy who is
picking up the bucket and pouring it into the system." Forest Gregg, an alternative-fuels expert and author of last year's SVO: Powering Your Vehicle with Straight Vegetble Oil, called it a "nifty application and a great business idea." Gregg also drew attention to a strong part of Vegawatt's pitch: that it won't require "intervention or maintenance by restaurant staff." That's because when users buy a system — or lease it for $450 a month — they get a service contract with the company for cleaning and maintenance. The owner of the very first Vegawatt, George Carey (pictured above), seems pleased with the unit, too. He heartily endorses the company on its website, saying, "The Vegawatt system enables me to significantly reduce my energy costs, generate clean energy on-site, and very importantly, reduce the heavy energy footprint of my restaurant." 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 | 7 Jan 2009 | 11:38 pm U.S. scientists learn how to levitate tiny objectsCHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. scientists have found a way to levitate the very smallest objects using the strange forces of quantum mechanics, and said on Wednesday they might use it to help make tiny nanotechnology machines.Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 10:03 pm Humans can survive much lower oxygen levels than thoughtScientists who climbed to the summit of Everest and took samples of their own blood have shown that the human body can survive with much lower oxygen levels than was previously thought possible. They say the findings, based on blood taken at higher altitudes than ever before, will help doctors to treat patients in intensive care more effectively. The purpose of the Caudwell Xtreme Everest expedition in 2007 was to probe the limits of human physiological capabilities – in particular, the exhausting low-oxygen conditions at altitude. On their way to the roof of the world, the doctors more than once rescued other climbers who had succumbed to altitude sickness, the very phenomenon they were trying to understand. In one case, they abandoned vital scientific data to save the life of a 22-year-old Nepalese climber called Usha Bista. During the expedition, measurements were taken from nearly 200 volunteers who climbed to Everest base camp at 5,300 metres. Fourteen climbers went higher, with eight reaching the summit. Expedition leader Dr Mike Grocott of University College London said the average blood oxygen level was astonishing. "It's extraordinarily low," he said. "[In the hospital] we only see this in patients who are just about to go into or are already in cardiac arrest." The average arterial oxygen level of his team was 3.28 kilopascals, or kPa, with the lowest value 2.55kPa. The normal value in humans is 12-14kPa. "A patient below 8kPa would be considered critically low," said Grocott. Such levels have never been seen before in healthy humans, although comparable figures have been recorded in diving seals and hibernating mammals. Grocott hopes that by understanding how the body deals with low oxygen at altitude his team can improve critical care techniques in hospitals. "These extraordinary low levels of oxygen found in high-altitude climbers may cause doctors looking after critically ill patients to reevaluate treatment goals in some patients who have been ill for some time and might have adapted to low levels of oxygen in the blood," he said. Traditionally, critical care doctors try to maintain oxygen levels in patients by artificial ventilation on 100% oxygen. The mechanical forcing of the lungs can cause damage, and pure oxygen acts as a poison that leads to lung swelling. The new results suggest that doctors may not need to use such harsh techniques. "We have tended to be conservative for obvious reasons," said Grocott. "You may be able to get away with giving them a lower level of oxygen." Testing whether this is the case will need clinical trials. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Jan 2009 | 10:00 pm Study: Black holes seem to form before galaxies (AP)AP - When galaxies initially formed, they weren't the first in the cosmic neighborhood. The supermassive black holes, which reside at the center of galaxies, probably moved in first, a new astronomy study suggests.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 9:35 pm Space Is Closer Than You ThinkThe fuzzy border between Earth's atmosphere and space gets a new map.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Jan 2009 | 9:08 pm 'Tetris' Game Quells Bad FlashbacksPlaying Tetris could be a key to reducing flashbacks among people with post-traumatic stress disorder.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Jan 2009 | 8:52 pm Shrunken Heads Could Tell Political Tale
Nobody knows for sure, but now we know that the Nazca, famed for their desert-spanning geoglyphs, shrunk the heads of their own people. Head shrinking is done by removing the skull, cooking the skin until it is about a third smaller, and then filling it with rocks and sand. When researchers analyzed severed, shrunken heads found on the southern Peruvian coast, they saw the same location-specific dietary chemical signatures identified in corpses (whose heads were not shrunk) buried in the region. This makes the trophy-of-war hypothesis a bit less likely, though the Nazca may simply have gone to war against themselves. (War was certainly a recurrent theme in their artwork, as seen in the pottery detail above.) Next on the research continuum is more shrunken head analysis: Were they always taken from locals? Or did patterns change over time? This could illuminate political developments among the Nazca, who vanished 1200 years ago. "This small scale agrarian society was succeeded by an empire with regional authority," said Ryan Willams, curator of Chicago's Field Museum, in a press release. "For the first time people were governed by others who lived hundreds of miles distant. Understanding how this came about may help us better understand how these forms of government first emerged." Citation: "The geographic origins of Nasca trophy heads using strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotope data." By Kelly J. Knudson, Sloan R. Williams, Rebecca Osborn, Kathleen Forgey and Patrick Ryan Williams. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Vol. 28, No. 1, Jan. 5 2009. Images: The Field Museum See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Jan 2009 | 8:48 pm Pharmaceutical Love Potion: Not Yet...
For those of you perplexed by love's elusiveness, take heart: Science is on the case. But even if researchers can turn love into peer-reviewed literature, they might not be able to bottle it. "People think we're going to get a love potion, and that's nonsense," said Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University evolutionary anthropologist. "I don't think they understand how complex the brain is, and what a powerful role experience plays." Fisher's comments were prompted by an essay, entitled "Love: Neuroscience reveals all" and published Wednesday in Nature, on emerging research into those four little letters that make the world go round. This research shows how a "biochemical chain of events," as essay author and Emory University neurobiologist Larry Young calls it, produces neurological patterns associated with subjective experiences described as love. (If that sounds overly technical, it's meant to: Identifying brain patterns is just one step in explaining how they become thoughts and feelings.) Studies on the more-or-less monogamous prairie vole, for example, suggest that a neurotransmitter called oxytocin is important to mate bonding. Oxytocin interacts with another transmitter, pleasure-inducing dopamine. In humans, brain regions associated with dopamine are activated in mothers looking at pictures of their children, and lovers at each other — and, perhaps instructively, in drug addicts taking heroin or cocaine. Also, a gene associated with paternal care and long-term bonding in prairie voles led to the identification of a human gene variant that correlates loosely with the ability of men to form caring, stable relationships. To Young, all this means that science may soon treat lovelessness as easily as it now treats depression and anxiety. "Drugs that manipulate brain systems at whim to enhance or diminish our love for another may not be far away," he writes. Not so fast, said Fisher. The alterations required to manipulate love, she said, are likely so complex and far-reaching as to be unattainable in a pill. "There are cognitive processes and limbic reactions associated with basic emotions," said Fisher. "And you can change brain chemistry, but you're still not going to change memories and experiences in a human being." And the feeling of trust in somebody by having them sniff some oxytocin is fleeting, she said. "You need to alter brain chemistry on an absolutely regular schedule in order to sustain any kind of feeling," she said. Fisher also disagreed with Young on the nature of biological love: Rather than a single reproductive imperative repurposed into other feelings, she believes there are three distinct brain systems for sex, romance and attachment. "The sex drive enables you to seek a range of partners," she said. "Romantic love allows you to focus mating energy. Attachment sustains that relationship as long as necessary to raise your baby." Whether Fisher or Young is right remains to be seen. However, that such a basic argument remains unsettled is a testament to the youthfulness of the science, and bodes ill for would-be manufacturers of pharmaceutical romance. "People have been looking for love potions since hunter-gatherer societies," she said. "There is already a way to change biology. All you have to do is walk into a bar and get drunk. People look quite different. But it doesn't last." Citation: "Love: Neuroscience reveals all." By Larry J. Young. Nature, Vol. 457, Jan. 8, 2009. Image: kundstrom/Flickr See Also: WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Jan 2009 | 8:28 pm How Huge Flying Reptiles Got AirbornePterosaurs used all four legs to launch their hefty bodies into the air.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Jan 2009 | 7:55 pm Yo Galaxy's Mama Is a Black Hole
Lurking deep inside the center of almost all galaxies is a ravenous, super-massive black hole, and new research suggests the black hole may have given birth to its galaxy. This could be the answer to a long-standing astronomical chicken-and-egg problem. By observing a series of galaxies and measuring the motions of swirling gas inside them, astronomers were able to weigh the galaxies and their resident black holes. They found that in general, there is a direct relationship between the size of a black hole and the size of the central bulge of stars and gas in the galaxy around it: Black holes usually weigh about one one-thousandth of the mass of the galactic bulge. But when the researchers looked at galaxies that were farther away, and thus effectively dating from earlier periods in the universe’s history (because the more distant we look, the longer an object’s light has taken to reach us, so the older it is), they found a surprising pattern. The usual mass ratio between black hole and galaxy didn’t hold up. Instead, the black holes in the farthest away galaxies — the ones we are seeing in the youngest stage of development — were much larger than expected. "The simplest conclusion is that the black holes come first and they somehow grow the galaxy around them," said astronomer Chris Carilli of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory during a briefing Wednesday at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Long Beach, California. If this is true, it raises many significant questions about why the black holes and galaxies are so linked, and how black holes help galaxies grow. "We don't know what mechanism is at work here, and why, at some point in the process, the 'standard' ratio between the masses is established," said Caltech astronomer Dominik Riechers in a press release. Riechers also worked on the study. Some theorize that the strong winds and jets surrounding black holes could help feed star formation and induce galaxies to grow. But the violent environments of black holes have also been thought too chaotic to harbor stable star formation. The researchers hope to better understand the seemingly symbiotic relationship between galaxies and their gobbling black hole inhabitants when new observation tools come online soon. The Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA) being built in New Mexico, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, expected to be completed by 2012, should dramatically increase the sensitivity and resolution available for studies of distant galaxies. "We really do need to confirm this with further observations," Carilli said. "In fact the future looks extremely bright for these kinds of studies." See Also:
Top Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech Inset Image: NRAO/AUI/NSF, SDSS Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Jan 2009 | 7:52 pm Runaway Stars Go BallisticNew Hubble images reveal 14 young, runaway stars.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Jan 2009 | 7:31 pm Could we reduce love to a pill? Maybe, says expertWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Could a pill or a squirt up your nose save your marriage? Maybe, according to a researcher who is studying the chemical basis of that most elusive of emotions -- love.Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Jan 2009 | 6:35 pm Perfect Space Storm Could be Catastrophic on Earth, Study ConcludesA new study outlines grim possibilities on Earth for a worst-case scenario solar storm.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Jan 2009 | 6:22 pm Grand Canyon, Loch Ness Vie for 'Wonder' StatusTwo hundred spectacular sites compete for the new 7 Wonders of Nature.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Jan 2009 | 6:08 pm Love potions could become marriage guidance toolMarriage counsellors may soon be taking a more Shakespearean approach to solving troubles of the heart, by administering love potions to boost couples' feelings for one another, according to a leading scientist. Greater understanding of the brain chemistry of love has revealed hormones that could be given to couples to rekindle faded passions or diminish problematic feelings, says Larry Young, an expert in the neuroscience of social bonding at Emory University in Atlanta. Writing in the journal Nature, Young says scientists are close to reducing the mental state of love to a biochemical chain of events, paving the way for powerful new treatments for the lovelorn. Trials are already under way to see if offering hormones to warring couples improves on conventional marital therapy, he writes. Advances in genetics are also on course to transform relationships by making available tests to reveal how committed a prospective partner may be, he adds. Scientists have identified two hormones, oxytocin and vasopressin, which appear crucial in forming a close bond with another person. Tests in sheep found that an injection of oxytocin was enough to make a ewe form an immediate bond with lambs that were not her own. Men with a gene that makes them less responsive to vasopressin are less likely to marry their partners and more likely to have a marital crisis if they do, Young explains. The hormones are released in the brain during childbirth or sexual stimulation. "The view of love as an emergent property of a cocktail of ancient [brain chemicals] raises important issues for society. For one thing, drugs that manipulate brain systems at whim to enhance or diminish our love for another may not be far away." Young writes. Young's research suggests the biochemical basis of love taps into the same brain circuitry as addiction, explaining the strong urges the emotion evokes. While little is known about the genetics at play in personal relationships, further studies may identify new genes that companies could exploit to develop partner "compatibility tests". "Perhaps genetic tests for the suitability of potential partners will one day become available, the results of which could accompany, and even override, our gut instincts in selecting the perfect partner. Either way, recent advances … mean it won't be long before an unscrupulous suitor could slip a pharmaceutical love potion in our drink." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Jan 2009 | 6:05 pm Poetry or science?Is romantic love just a chemical cocktail?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Jan 2009 | 6:04 pm Loud Golf Clubs May Damage HearingLoud titanium drivers may be too loud.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Jan 2009 | 6:00 pm Continental to Make Algae Biofuel Test FlightA Continental jet takes off from Houston with a special fuel blend -- half algae.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Jan 2009 | 5:45 pm Black holes 'preceded galaxies'Astronomers believe they have solved a cosmic chicken-and-egg question: what came first - black holes or galaxies?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Jan 2009 | 5:35 pm James Ironside: Research into a range of brain diseases is being held back by a lack of tissue samplesJames Ironside: Research into a range of brain diseases is being held back by a lack of tissue samples. More donors are urgently neededSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Jan 2009 | 5:00 pm 'Spookfish' has mirrors for eyesA deep-sea fish caught in the Pacific has eyes which use mirrors as well as lenses, scientists discover.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Jan 2009 | 4:03 pm BLOG: How Pterosaurs Became AirborneHow did pterosaurs launch their 500 pounds of reptilian heft into the air?Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Jan 2009 | 3:25 pm Deadly Spider Thriving in AustraliaThe funnel-web spider, whose bite can kill within 76 minutes, is thriving this season.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Jan 2009 | 3:05 pm Concern for California's pelicansWildlife experts in US state of California are concerned about a mysterious illness affecting pelicans from San Diego to San Francisco.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Jan 2009 | 2:54 pm Big-Headed Crickets Are Better FightersThe ancient Chinese knew what scientists have just rediscovered.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Jan 2009 | 2:47 pm Tech fair offers greener visionAnalysts at the Consumer Electronics Show say green credentials of tech products will become critical to success.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Jan 2009 | 2:45 pm Autism test would deprive the world of geniusesA new book on the greatest British physicist since Newton speculates that both his profound mathematical abilites and his extreme social awkwardness stemmed from undiagnosed autism. The claims – from a biography of Paul Dirac by Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man – tie in with an article on the BBC website from leading autism researcher Prof Simon Baron-Cohen. Baron-Cohen says we need a public debate about the prenatal diagnosis of autism. Although such a test is not yet available, it soon could be. Baron-Cohen points out that the use of embryo selection during IVF to reject babies with autism genes might have the effect of preventing some individuals with brilliant mathematical abilities from being born. Dirac was one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. For example, in 1930 he predicted that the electron has an equivalent anti-particle, the positron – a notion that was greeted with scepticism and derision by some physicists at the time but was proved correct in experiments two years later. He is the youngest theoretical physicist ever to win a Nobel Prize, and a year earlier in 1932 he was made Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. At 29 he was a few months older than Sir Isaac Newton when he took up the same position in 1669. Its current holder is Prof Stephen Hawking. The physicist Freeman Dyson summed up Dirac's effortless brilliance thus:
Perhaps not surprisingly, Dirac was also an extemely unconventional person (Farmelo's title is a quotation from Dirac's contemporary Niels Bohr). Even Einstein found him peculiar. "I have trouble with Dirac," he wrote to a friend. "This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful." Dirac was prone to very long silences and was famous for his apparently emotionless responses to events. He also often took a very literal interpretation of statements by other people. All are characteristics of autism. When Farmelo spoke to Baron-Cohen about the condition he said he was struck by two things. First, that autistic men often have foreign wives, "perhaps because the women were more tolerant of unusual behaviour in foreign men than in men from their own culture." Dirac was married to a Hungarian woman for 50 years. Baron-Cohen also said that autistic people are often extremely loyal. "When they believe that a friend has suffered an injustice, they are often so indignant that they will disrupt or abandon their almost invariable daily routines to rectify it," wrote Farmelo. Dirac demonstrated great loyalty to his friends the physicists Pyotr Kapitsa and Werner Heisenberg. There are also signs that Paul's father Charles was autistic and there was a history of depression and suicide in the Dirac family Whatever the difficulties in diagnosing autism in a man who died in 1984, Baron-Cohen's argument is that preventing cases of the condition by screening the genes for autism out of the population could stop brilliant individuals such as Dirac ever being born.
If a prenatal test for autism becomes available, should medical science be used to 'cure' the condition? guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Jan 2009 | 2:43 pm Stonehenge Acoustics Ideal for Trance-Like TunesWas Stonehenge the "it" venue for Neolithic-era ravers?Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Jan 2009 | 2:30 pm Brown Pelicans Turning Up Injured and ConfusedBrown 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 saysLONDON (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 China alert over bird flu deathChinese authorities shut down and clean poultry markets in Hebei province, after the first human death in nearly a year.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:55 pm Naomi Alderman: perfection through technologyIn 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 FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Jan 2009 | 1:30 pm Japan to monitor greenhouse gases from spaceTOKYO (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 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:
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:
(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 FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:31 pm Brain Food: How to Eat SmartFive things you should know about feeding your brain.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Jan 2009 | 12:18 pm The Green Home in 2009This year's home trends will focus on going lean and green.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Jan 2009 | 11:55 am
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