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Half Of World's Population Could Face Climate-induced Food Crisis By 2100New research shows that rapidly warming climate is likely to seriously alter crop yields in the tropics and subtropics by the end of this century and, without adaptation, will leave half the world's population facing serious food shortages.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Structure Of Key Breast Cancer Target Enzyme UnraveledMost people know that breast cancer is the most common cancer among women affecting about 1 in 8 women in the United States and the second leading cause of cancer death in women, after lung cancer. Seventy-five to 80 percent of all breast cancer tumors are estrogen-fed. A key estrogen-related breakthrough has been discovered by a scientist in Buffalo, NY which can be the basis for developing customized novel breast cancer drugs that cause minimal side effects.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Astrophysicists Map Milky Way's Four Spiral ArmsA research team has developed the first complete map of the Milky Way galaxy's spiral arms. The map shows two prominent, symmetric spiral arms in the inner part of the galaxy. The arms extend into the outer galaxy where they branch into four spiral arms.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Big, Old Mice Spread Deadly HantavirusResearchers dusted wild deer mice with fluorescent pink, blue, green, yellow and orange talcum powders to show which rodents most often fought or mated with others and thus were most likely to spread deadly hantavirus. The study identified bigger, older mice as the culprits.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Physical Activity May Not Be Key To Obesity EpidemicA recent international study fails to support the common belief that the number of calories burned in physical activity is a key factor in rising rates of obesity.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Smoking During Pregnancy Fosters Aggression In ChildrenWomen who smoke during pregnancy risk delivering aggressive kids according to a new Canada-Netherlands study published in the journal Development and Psychopathology. While previous studies have shown that smoking during gestation causes low birth weight, this research shows mothers who light up during pregnancy can predispose their offspring to an additional risk: violent behavior.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Brown Dwarfs Don't Hang Out With StarsBrown dwarfs, objects that are less massive than stars but larger than planets, just got more elusive, based on a study of 233 nearby multiple-star systems by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble found only two brown dwarfs as companions to normal stars. This means the so-called "brown dwarf desert" (the absence of brown dwarfs around solar-type stars) extends to the smallest stars in the universe.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Nicotine Gum Effective For Gradual Smoking Reduction And CessationNicotine gum has been in use for over 20 years to help smokers quit abruptly yet close to two-thirds of smokers report that they would prefer to quit gradually. Researchers have now found that smokers who are trying to quit gradually can also be helped by nicotine gum.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Mothers Pass On Disease Clues To OffspringWhen there is a threat of disease during pregnancy, mothers produce less aggressive sons with more efficient immune systems, researchers have discovered. The new study provides the first evidence for a transgenerational effect on immune response based on environmental cues -- with maternal perception of disease risk in the immediate environment potentially determining offspring disease resistance and social dominance.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Structure Mediating Spread Of Antibiotic Resistance IdentifiedScientists have identified the structure of a key component of the bacteria behind such diseases as whooping cough, peptic stomach ulcers and Legionnaires' disease. The research sheds light on how antibiotic resistance genes spread from one bacterium to another. The research may help scientists develop novel treatments for these diseases and novel ways to curtail the spread of antibiotic resistance.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Gazprom expects gas monitoring deal signed Friday (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 1:02 pm Baby girl free of breast cancer gene breaks new groundThe little girl born free of the BRCA1 gene that so often causes breast cancer is not a designer baby in the strict sense of the phrase. Her parents did not choose her hair colour or select an aptitude for maths. But the birth breaks new ground because for the first time, embryo selection was made for the purpose of reducing, not eliminating, the baby's chances of getting breast cancer when she grows up – and because the discarded embryos might also have become cancer-free women. Genes are not the only trigger for breast cancer. Women with the genes that have been the most strongly identified with the disease, BRCA1 and BRCA2, have a risk up to seven times higher than other women of developing breast and ovarian cancer, but some will remain cancer free. And some who get cancer will be cured. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) involves testing a group of embryos derived from fertility treatment to ensure that the one returned to the womb does not carry unwanted genes. In the past, scientists have used it to prevent babies bring born who would certainly have suffered heart-rending, life-shortening diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and Huntingdon's disease. These inherited diseases are caused by single defective genes. If the embryo has the faulty gene, which runs in the family, the baby will certainly develop the disease. There has been comparatively little controversy over selecting embryos free of such genes, where parents want it. But the selection of babies free of specific cancer genes is more complex. In recognition of this, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which regulates IVF, including genetic testing on embryos, held a public consultation before deciding to grant permission for PGD to be carried out to screen for the breast cancer genes. Most people would be sympathetic to families where there is a long history of generations of women succumbing to breast or ovarian cancer – the genes can cause both – which results in daughters and grand-daughters living in fear that it may happen to them. The baby born in London after screening has a reduced risk of breast cancer, because she does not carry the BRCA1 gene which runs through her father's family, but she could still get it. While genes have not yet been discovered which are as strongly implicated as BRCA1 and BRCA2, there are many others, some identified and some not, which raise the breast cancer risk, as well as environmental factors. The age of puberty and the menopause, the number of children a woman has, how long she breastfeeds for and her weight have all been identified as major factors in a woman's breast cancer risk. The question now for ethicists will be how much further society wants to travel down the road of selecting babies free of specific genes which may, but also may not, cause disease. Some people are already uncomfortable at developments, such as the birth of "saviour siblings" - children specifically conceived and selected in embryonic form as a match for an older brother or sister who needs a cord blood transplant to save their life. The embryo selection procedure has to follow on from IVF (in vitro fertilisation). The woman's eggs are fertilised with her partner's sperm in a test-tube and the resulting embryos are allowed to develop for just three-days. At that point, one of the developing embryo's eight cells is removed and screened for genetic disorders, using one of a number of highly advanced scientific techniques. One of those that is free of the unwanted gene will be returned to the womb. Screening for genes implicated in other forms of cancer is already on the way. Scientists and doctors at University College London, have permission from the HFEA to use PGD to identify embryos free of a range of cancer genes, including genes for a form of bowel cancer and for a type of cancer of the retina called retinoblastoma. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 9 Jan 2009 | 11:56 am Beagle hunterOn a mission to find the most famous ship of scienceSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Jan 2009 | 11:50 am God, universal Darwinism, and the strong anthropic principleObjections to the strong anthropic principle come down to one thing: that you can't estimate the probabilities of something unique like the universe. According to this objection, all that the fine tuning of the underlying constants of the universe show is that if it were not as it is, we wouldn't be there to see it; but you can't go on from that to assume that it might have been otherwise. If we allow this reasoning against the strong anthropic principle there is an odd and possibly unintended consequence: it seems to disqualify some other popular forms of atheist argument. In particular, it destroys the metaphor of a cosmic casino and the argument that biology shows God is an arbitrary tyrant. It destroys the metaphor of a casino because, as Mary Midgley has pointed out, a casino is very carefully designed to regulate chance, and to allow only those probabilities that interest gamblers. The chance of a particular number coming up on an honest roulette wheel is indeed 1 in 37 (in Europe). But the probability of an honest roulette wheel appearing by chance is zero. It can only be the product of a directing intelligence. So to speak of the universe as a lottery or a casino is to assume the very kind of directing intelligence which the metaphor is meant to deny. If there is only one, we can't know what the chances are that it might have been otherwise. This is almost the opposite of the argument that because the universe is fine-tuned we can assume there is a benevolent purpose behind it. I want to point out that if you reject the argument that the fine tuning of the universe is significant, since any universe capable of being observed would have this fine tuning, you must also reject the corresponding argument that there is a malevolent purpose behind the whole show and that God can be held responsible, denied, or thought less probable because of the imperfections that we see. The same kind of argument from inevitability as lets us disqualify the anthropic principle as evidence for God also destroy the argument that a creator God responsible for the world we see would necessarily be malevolent. Modern science claims that pure materialistic processes account for the emergence of intelligence and empathy, love and freedom from insentient rocks and stars. It follows that even the qualities which make us able to understand the world as unjust, and cruel and – if you like – sinful, could only have emerged as a result of Darwinian evolution. Richard Dawkins has claimed that there is no life, there could be no life, anywhere in the universe that did not emerge as a result of these processes. And if he's right (which anyone who trusts in science must agree) then there is no more point in grumbling or complaining about the "devil's Chaplaincy" aspects of nature. The hideous, blundering cruelties of natural selection would confront intelligent aliens , anywhere in the universe as a matter of the same kind of logical necessity as led them to consider the fundamental constants of the universe and formulate the Strong Alienistic Principle. If the fine tuning of the universe does not constitute evidence for God, then the cruelties of Darwinian evolution cannot constitute evidence against him. So if you reject the strong anthropic principle, you must also reject all arguments from theodicy and all arguments, indeed, based on the premise that God could have done better. That is, if you want a God of whom anything comprehensible and coherent could be said. It's worth noting here that John Barrow, who was one of the discoverers of the anthropic principle, says that it doesn't make predictions at all but that it does help some scientists avoid dud conclusions from their data. I once heard him talk on the subject – one of the most impressive lecturers I have ever heard – and he said then that Paul Dirac had noticed in the 1930s that there were certain large numbers which characterised the structure of the universe. The ratio of the electrical force to the gravitational force is roghly the square root of the number of atoms in the universe. Dirac felt this must show something important. "But it turns out", said Barrow "that this is a fact about the age of the universe when stars have settled down to burn hydrogen, which is probably a precondition for their being observers who could notice this." It was also from Barrow that I learned that Florence Nightingale was the first person to use a pie chart to display data. But that's another story. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 9 Jan 2009 | 11:36 am Birth of first British baby screened to be free of cancer geneThe first British baby genetically screened before conception to be free of a breast cancer gene has been born, doctors said today. The baby girl grew from an embryo screened to ensure it did not contain the faulty BRCA1 gene, which would have meant she had a 50-85% of developing breast cancer. A spokeswoman for University College London hospital said the mother and daughter were doing "very well", adding that the family did not wish to reveal when the little girl was born. Paul Serhal, the medical director of the assisted conception unit at the hospital, said: "This little girl will not face the spectre of developing this genetic form of breast cancer or ovarian cancer in her adult life. "The parents will have been spared the risk of inflicting this disease on their daughter. "The lasting legacy is the eradication of the transmission of this form of cancer that has blighted these families for generations." In June the mother, then 27, told how she decided to undergo the screening process after seeing all her husband's female relatives suffer the disease. The woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, said at the time: "We felt that if there was a possibility of eliminating this for our children, then that was a route we had to go down." The technique, known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), has already been used in the UK to rule out inherited disorders such as cystic fibrosis and Huntington's disease. Breast cancer does not inevitably affect a child from birth and may or may not develop later in life. There is a chance it can be cured if caught early enough. Permission to carry out PGD for breast cancer had to be obtained from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority by the London clinic that performed the procedure. The body, which licenses IVF clinics and embryo research, approved the procedure after holding public consultation. Doctors at the private clinic housed at University College London hospital conducted tests on 11 embryos by removing just one cell from each when they were three days old. Six embryos were found to carry the defective BRCA1 gene. Two embryos that were free of the gene were implanted, resulting in a single pregnancy. Faulty genes are responsible for between 5% and 10% of the 44,000 cases of breast cancer in the UK each year. BRCA1 and its sister gene BRCA2 are the two most commonly involved. Women with a defective BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene are up to seven times more likely to develop breast cancer than those without the mutations. Dr Sarah Cant, the policy manager at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: "The decision to screen embryos to see whether they have a faulty breast cancer gene is a complex and very personal issue. "Women with a family history of breast cancer tell us that what might be right for one person may not be right for another. It's important for anyone affected to have appropriate information and support so they can make the right choice for them." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 9 Jan 2009 | 9:59 am Animals in Bulgaria zoo shiver without gas heating (Reuters)Reuters - About 1,300 animals in a Bulgarian zoo were left without gas to heat their enclosures Thursday, the latest victims of the Russia-Ukraine supply row.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 8:02 am Body repair 'could be ramped up'A combination of drugs could trick the body into sending its repair mechanisms into overdrive, say scientists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Jan 2009 | 7:47 am New stem cell therapy could help body heal itself after heart attackIan Sample on a revolutionary treatment that could help the body repair damage after a heart attack, or even heal broken bones Source: Science | guardian.co.uk | 9 Jan 2009 | 7:34 am Explorers say they set record in South Pole trek (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Jan 2009 | 7:03 am Venomous mammal caught on cameraRare footage of one of the world's most strange and elusive mammals is captured by scientists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Jan 2009 | 6:22 am Panda bites his third tourist in two years at Beijing zooA panda at Beijing zoo bites a man for the third time in two years.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Jan 2009 | 6:22 am Canadians claim South Pole recordA trio of Canadians claim a new record for the fastest trek across Antarctica to the South Pole.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Jan 2009 | 5:45 am Letters: Supermarkets, government and consumers can all help pig welfareLetters: In exposing the muck behind 'advanced industrial pig farming' you did the world a serviceSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 9 Jan 2009 | 12:08 am Earth Scientist Emerges as Possible Replacement for NASA Chief (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - WASHINGTON - Despite a last-ditch campaign by some supporters to keep NASA Administrator Mike Griffin on the job, the transition team of President-elect Barack Obama is now vetting a handful of replacement candidates, among them scientist Charles Kennel, who previously ran the agency's Earth science division, according to sources familiar with the situation.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 11:38 pm Heat may spark world food crisisHalf the world's population could face food crisis by 2100 as soaring temperatures cripple staple crops, scientists warn.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Jan 2009 | 10:59 pm Obama should ease security on science, panel saysWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The system for keeping U.S. science secrets safe is broken and needs to be revamped -- and immigration controls need to be eased for qualified scientists from other countries, the National Research Council advised on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 10:39 pm Bulls Cloned From Decade-Old Frozen Testicles
Testicles frozen for a decade have produced four healthy, cloned calves. Critically, the testicles hadn't been stored in chemical cryoprotectants — an detail that, when the same Japanese research team made clones from 16-year-old frozen mice, prompted predictions of woolly mammoths cloned from tissues preserved in Siberian permafrost. The latest findings, published Thursday in Public Library of Science ONE, come with the same speculation. Dig up some frozen tissue, stick a mammoth cell nucleus in an elephant's fertilized egg: Voila! A formerly extinct animal, now quite alive. It's far-fetched, no doubt, but becoming more realistic. A bull — a bull named Yasufuku, to be exact, renowned for the marbled quality of his progeny's beef — is far closer to a mammoth than a mouse. Though the researchers used Yasufuku's testicles, clones can be made with cells taken from other tissue — a useful technique, should no mammoth testicles be preserved. This type of cloning is harder to pull off, and scientists haven't yet figured out how to replace DNA damaged by Siberian deep-freezing. But researchers are also consistently amazed at the boundaries to which artificial reproduction can be pushed. "It's still very much a long shot, but it's not out and out impossible," said George Seidel, a Colorado State University animal reproduction expert, when I talked to him in November about mammoth cloning. "It's remarkable what one can do with embryos and get away with." See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Jan 2009 | 10:38 pm Millions isolated as northwest US deluged by flooding (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 10:18 pm How many scorpions? London Zoo does critter count (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 10:16 pm Mosquitoes match wing beats before mating (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 10:13 pm NASA: Keeping shuttle costs $3 billion yearly (AP)AP - The cost of continuing the life of the space shuttle past next year's planned retirement is $3 billion a year plus extending the risk of a deadly accident, NASA's chief said Thursday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 10:11 pm FDA to Evaluate Drugs Made by Genetically Modified Goats
For the first time, the FDA will evaluate a drug that comes from a genetically modified animal, a production method that could yield cheap drugs that could be use to treat rare conditions or stockpiled for pandemics and other emergencies. On Friday the agency will consider a protein-based blood thinner that is produced in the glands of transgenic goats and harvested from their milk. Known as ATryn, the drug is already on the European market, but if approved, it will be the first medication made by a GM animal to be sold in the United States. "The mammary gland itself has developed naturally to efficiently express a variety of proteins as nutrition for offspring," said Thomas Newberry, the vice president of GTC Biotherapeutics. "Our technology simply provides an extra bit of coding so the mammary gland also makes a protein with human therapeutic value." GTC Biotherapeutics, based in Framingham, Massachusetts, has mastered the art of making drugs flow from the teats of livestock. Its tricks could slash the price of manufacturing protein-based medications, which are notoriously expensive, allowing drug makers to churn out affordable treatments for exotic diseases. Doctors use a protein called antithrombin to treat a rare genetic disorder that causes dangerous blood clotting, but that molecule is in very short supply. ATryn contains the same chemical, but it is produced by animals rather than humans. "As an example, if you were to take all the donated human plasma in the U.S. and devote it to making plasma-derived antithrombin you could get about 100 kg per year," Newberry said. "We can produce 100 kg per year of ATryn from about 150 goats." Some protein-based drugs can be produced by microbes like yeast, but others require the special touch of mammalian cells. Giant pharmaceutical companies make batches of medication in sophisticated tanks called bioreactors, which are often filled with Chinese hamster ovary cells. But that method is very costly. By comparison, using goats as living, grass-chewing factories is elegant and inexpensive. Because the drug is only produced in their mammary glands, it doesn't cause health problems for the goats. "We link the DNA that codes for the human antithrombin protein to a sequence of lactation DNA," Newberry said. "This transgene is then inserted into the single-celled embryo of an animal and the extra gene is only switched on when the animal matures and begins lactating, expressing recombinant antithrombin into its milk and nowhere else in its body." ATryn has successfully completed human clinical trials, and only needs the green light from the FDA. At least one more company, PharmAthene is also heading down that road. It has begun human trials of Protexia, a substance that could protect soldiers from chemical weapons. It works by breaking down acetylcholine, the chemical that accumulates and causes seizures when someone inhales nerve gas.
Photo: ynskjen/Flickr Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Jan 2009 | 9:47 pm Study Reveals Why First Impressions Count (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Getting off on the wrong foot can doom a relationship before it begins, as we all know.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 9:21 pm Spookfish Sees Things Like Nobody Else Ever Has
The bottom half of its eyes point upwards. The upper half point downwards, and are backed with a layer of reflective guanine crystals that bounce a focused image into the retina. "In nearly 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, and many thousands of vertebrate species living and dead, this is the only one known to have solved the fundamental optical problem faced by all eyes — how to make an image — using a mirror," said Julian Partridge, a University of Bristol vision ecologist, in a press release. Lenses are the most common optically refractive structure, but also absorb some of the light passing through them. Mirrors are more efficient, making the spookfish's eyes especially well-suited to its half-mile-deep Pacific haunts. Very little sunlight penetrates those depths. Instead the fish is on the lookout for flickers of bioluminescent light produced by prey or predators. Researchers tested the eyes by taking flash photographs from above and below a live spookfish, then dissecting its eyes. Like the eyes, the specimen itself was unique: until Tubingen University neurobiologist Hans-Joachim Wagner captured one off the island of Tonga, a living spookfish had never been seen. Wagner and Partridge are co-authors of the findings, which will be published on January 27 in Current Biology. Citation: "A Novel Vertebrate Eye Using Both Refractive and Reflective Optics." By Hans-Joachim Wagner, Ron H. Douglas, Tamara M. Frank, Nicholas W. Roberts and Julian C. Partridge. Current Biology 19, Jan. 27, 2009. See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Jan 2009 | 8:10 pm Mosquito Buzz Actually a Love SongMatching the buzz of mating mosquitoes could be a way to curb disease.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:50 pm Self-Replicating Chemicals Evolve Into Lifelike Ecosystem
Life makes more of itself. And now so can a set of custom-designed chemicals. Chemists have shown that a group of synthetic enzymes replicated, competed and evolved much like a natural ecosystem, but without life or cells. "So long as you provide the building blocks and the starter seed, it goes forever," said Gerald Joyce, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute and co-author of the paper published Thursday in Science. "It is immortalized molecular information." Joyce's chemicals are technically hacked RNA enzymes, much like the ones we have in our bodies, but they don't behave anything like those in living creatures. But, these synthetic RNA replicators do provide a model for evolution — and shed light on one step in the development of early living systems from on a lifeless globe. Scientists believe that early life on Earth was much more primitive than what we see around us today. It probably didn't use DNA like our cells do. This theory of the origin of life is called the RNA World hypothesis, and it posits that life began using RNA both to store information, like DNA does now, and as a catalyst allowing the molecules to reproduce. To try to understand what this life might have looked like, researchers are trying to build models for early life forms and in the process, they are discovering entirely new lifelike behavior that nonetheless isn't life, at least as we know it. As Joyce put it, "This is more of a Life 2.0 thing." The researchers began with pairs of enzymes they've been tweaking and designing for the past eight years. Each member of the pairs can only reproduce with the help of the other member. "We have two enzymes, a plus and a minus," Joyce explains. "The plus assembles the pieces to make the minus enzyme, and the minus enzyme assembles the pieces to draw the plus. It's kind of like biology, where there is a DNA strand with plus and minus strands." From there, Joyce and his graduate student Tracey Lincoln, added the enzymes into a soup of building blocks, strings of nucleic bases that can be assembled into RNA, DNA or larger strings, and tweaked them to find pairs of enzymes that would reproduce. One day, some of the enzymes "went critical" and produced more RNA enzymes than the researchers had put in. It was an important day, but Joyce and Lincoln wanted more. They wanted to create an entire population of enzymes that could replicate, compete and evolve, which is exactly what they did. "To put it in info speak, we have a channel of 30 bit capacity for transferring information," Joyce said. "We can configure those bits in different ways and make a variety of different replicators. And then have them compete with each other." But it wasn't just a bunch of scientist-designed enzymes competing, like a miniature molecular BattleBots sequence. As soon as the replicators got into the broth, they began to change. "Most of the time they breed true, but sometimes there is a bit flip — a mutation — and it's a different replicator," explained Joyce. Most of these mutations went away quickly, but — sound familiar? — some of the changes ended up being advantageous to the chemicals in replicating better. After 77 doublings of the chemicals, astounding changes had occurred in the molecular broth. "All the original replicators went extinct and it was the new recombinants that took over," said Joyce. "There wasn't one winner. There was a whole cloud of winners, but there were three mutants that arose that pretty much dominated the population." It turned out that while the scientist-designed enzymes were great at reproducing without competition, when you put them in the big soup mix, a new set of mutants emerged that were better at replicating within the system. It almost worked like an ecosystem, but with just straight chemistry. "This is indeed interesting work," said Jeffrey Bada, a chemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who was not involved with the work. It shows that RNA molecules "could have carried out their replication in the total absence" of the more sophisticated biological machinery that life now possesses. "This is a nice example of the robustness of the RNA world hypothesis," he said. However, "it still leaves the problem of how RNA first came about. Some type of self-replicating molecule likely proceeded RNA and what this was is the big unknown at this point." Image: golbog/Flickr 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 | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:43 pm Whining and Dining: Love, Mosquito Style
To many people, a mosquito's high-pitched whine is even more annoying than the insect's itchy bite. But to mosquitoes of the opposite sex, that irritating noise is a powerful love song. Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species that transmits dengue and yellow fever to humans, engages in a wing-beating courtship duet that depends on very specific frequencies. "This study opens up a whole new sensory window for mosquitoes," said entomologist Lauren Cator of Cornell University, lead author of the study, published Thursday in Science. When males and females come together, they match up their wingbeat frequencies — but not at the male's rate of 600 beats per second, or the female's 400. Rather, they make minor adjustments that produce a harmonic, or multiple, of their tones, which rings in at about 1200 beats per second. Just right for love, apparently. Previously, it was thought that males could not hear anything above 800 beats per second. And many researchers believed females to be completely deaf. Dengue currently afflicts between 50 million and 100 million people worldwide. Most of the time, it causes only flu-like symptoms, but it can progress to a deadly hemorrhagic fever, which kills 20,000 people every year. Yellow fever, which is found in tropical areas of Africa and the Americas, infects 200,000 people annually, killing 30,000. Knowledge of the mating dance of the insects that carry these diseases may help scientists knock down their numbers, and thus reduce the transmission of dengue and yellow fever. Some proposed mosquito control efforts involve releasing into the wild huge numbers of males that are sterilized, genetically modified to produce dead-on-arrival offspring, or infected with bacteria that shorten their lives. The sterilization strategy has worked with other insects, such as screwworms, a livestock pest. Before releasing any modified male A. aegypti, scientists now have a way to make sure the insects are sexy enough: pop them in with a female, and see if both sexes harmonize. "Now we can test them beforehand and make sure they can mate," said Ben Arthur, a co-author on the paper. According to Cator, the team has a grant from the Gates Foundation to do just this. The scientists tethered male and female mosquitoes to pins using superglue, a delicate task at which Cator developed considerable skill over time. "Sometimes I feel more like an animal trainer than a biologist," she said. Then the team brought the insects within a few centimeters of each other (see video), measuring their wingbeat frequencies with a special microphone. They also performed anatomical studies of the mosquitoes' ears, finding that they likely can hear sounds up to at least 2000 beats per second. "This discovery is so novel, it will open up a whole new area of basic research, from neurophysiology to the behavioral ecology of mating strategies," said Gabriella Gibson, a medical entomologist at the University of Greenwich at Medway in the United Kingdom. In 2006, Gibson and her team were the first to show such harmonizing communication in mosquitoes, in a species that does not feed on blood. "It will also allow us to exploit insect mating behavior to reduce the burden of insect-borne diseases around the world." Citation: "Harmonic Convergence in the Love Song of the Dengue Vector Mosquito." By Lauren J. Cator, Ben J. Arthur, Laura C. Harrington, Ronald R. Hoy. Science Vol. 323, Jan. 9, 2009. See Also:
Image: Flickr/James Jordan Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:42 pm Study Reveals Why First Impressions CountBest to betray someone later in a relationship than at the get-go.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:32 pm Luxury Beef Bull ClonedThe ancestral bull of a high-end brand of beef is cloned by Japanese scientists.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Bug Love: Mosquitoes Sing Duet in HarmonySome mosquitoes attract mates with sophisticated love songs.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Rising Heat Threatens World Food Supplies
"We wanted to say: let's look at the worst cases we can think of in recent decades. Think about how hot that was. Everything in the future will be hotter. Even the coldest years will be hotter," said Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment. Naylor and University of Washington climatologist David Battisti averaged the temperature projections from the 23 global climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its most recent report. They calculated a 90 percent chance of massive temperature increases during the growing seasons of most of the world. Heat waves accelerate plants' development and the amount of water they require — a thirst that often is not slaked. The IPCC estimates that for degree Celsius the average growing season temperatures rise, grain harvests will fall by between 2.5 and 16 percent. If those numbers seem abstract, explain Battisti and Naylor in a paper published Thursday in Science, the historical record is not. During Western Europe's record heat wave of 2003, maize production fell by 30% in Italy and France, with wheat and fruit harvests declining by one-quarter. Three decades earlier, record heat in the Soviet Union disrupted the wheat harvest, causing a worldwide tripling of wheat prices — an early foreshadowing of how local problems can ripple through a globalized agricultural economy. The food crisis of 2008, when growing grain demands and fears of drought caused rice prices to spike by 50% in two weeks in March, made graphically clear the precariously interconnected nature of global agriculture. Some countries cut rice exports, driving prices even higher; others outlawed private hoarding of food; and riots broke out in 33 countries. All that took place without the sort of heat-induced stresses predicted by climatologists. For an example of what adding heat into the mix can do, write Naylor and Battisti, look to the ongoing famine in Africa's Sahel region. A decades-long drought finally ended, but was followed by rising temperatures. Farming has been crippled, perhaps permanently. An estimated 275,000 children die there each year from malnutrition. Temperatures will rise most and have the harshest consequences in the tropics and subtropics, where several billion people already walk a fine line between subsistence and impoverishment. But temperate regions will not escape unscathed, environmentally or economically. "As policymakers, as people, we tend not to deal with problems until they are very severe," said Per Pinstrup-Andersen, a Cornell University agricultural economist and World Food Prize laureate. "We know that we're going to have a huge problem unless we as a society begin to to take this seriously — and that means a lot more adaptation." Scientists must develop crops suited to Earth's new climate, Naylor and Battisti argue. Better techniques, such as highly efficient irrigation systems and spoilage-reducing harvesting methods, are also required. So are alternatives to fossil fuel-intensive fertilizers and pesticides. But investment in agricultural research has waned in recent decades, they write, at precisely a time when modern food output is "insufficient to meet near-term food needs in the world's poorest countries, to say nothing of longer-term needs in the face of climate change." Pinstrup-Andersen echoed their analysis. "Right now, the countries that should be investing in agricultural research are investing very little," he said. "This research will take a considerable amount of time to complete. We have time — but we have to start investing now." Those proscriptions are basic and relatively attainable. More controversial and complicated is reform to the global agricultural system. "Two-thirds of all developing countries are net food importers," said Steve Suppan, a senior policy analyst at the nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. In these countries, said Suppan, formerly agrarian economies were reorganized around service and manufacturing — but promised riches failed to materialize, leaving nations both impoverished and unable to feed themselves. Pinstrup-Andersen disagreed with Suppan's recommendation, saying that national food self-sufficiency would be expensive and disruptive, throwing isolated nations at the mercy of regional weather shifts. Instead, Pinstrup-Andersen recommended even more globalization, and harsh punishments for countries that turn protectionist. The fates of these countries are uncertain — unlike, said Naylor, the changing climate. "With the temperature projections, there's no disputing where we're heading," she said. "We have to face reality." Citation: "Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat." By David. S. Battisti and Rosamond L. Naylor. Science, Vol. 323, Jan. 9, 2009 Images: 1. Flickr/Hamed Parham 2. Projected global temperature increases/Science See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm Mosquitoes make sweet love musicSexy songs sung by mosquitoes in courtship could be key to curbing the spread of dengue fever, say scientists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Jan 2009 | 6:39 pm Computer puzzle may ease post-traumatic stressLONDON (Reuters) - Playing Tetris, rated one of the greatest video games of all time, immediately after traumatic events appears to reduce flashbacks that plague sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a British study.Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 6:03 pm Mummy of female pharaoh uncoveredEgyptologists find remains of a mummy thought to belong to a queen who ruled 4,300 years ago, Egypt's antiquities chief announced.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Jan 2009 | 5:25 pm the Theists strike backThe distinguished religious affairs commentator Clifford Longley has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the atheist bus, on the grounds that science suggests that there very probably is a God. The text of his complaint follows below: The statement "There's probably no God", as currently seen on the side of London buses, is untrue and dishonest, in so far as the word "probably" completely fails to reflect the true state of the scientific argument. In fact it would be honest and true to say the opposite – "There probably is a God." A fair reading of the material below could lead to no other conclusion. I therefore call on the ASA to order the withdrawal of this advertising, as incompatible with its code of practice. According to growing numbers of scientists, the laws and constants of nature are so "finely-tuned," and so many "coincidences" have occurred to allow for the possibility of life, the universe must have come into existence through intentional planning and intelligence. In fact, this "fine-tuning" is so pronounced, and the "coincidences" are so numerous, many scientists have come to espouse "The Anthropic Principle," which contends that the universe was brought into existence intentionally for the sake of producing mankind. Even those who do not accept The Anthropic Principle admit to the "fine-tuning" and conclude that the universe is "too contrived" to be a chance event. Dr. Dennis Scania, head of Cambridge University Observatories, said in a BBC science documentary, The Anthropic Principle:
Dr. David D. Deutsch, Institute of Mathematics, Oxford University: observed:
Dr. Paul Davies, noted author and professor of theoretical physics at Adelaide University, said:
When the late Sir Fred Hoyle was researching how carbon came to be created in the "blast-furnaces" of the stars, his calculations indicated that it is very difficult to explain how the stars generated the necessary quantity of carbon upon which life on earth depends. Hoyle found that there were numerous "fortunate" one-time occurrences which seemed to indicate that purposeful "adjustments" had been made in the laws of physics and chemistry in order to produce the necessary carbon. Hoyle summed up his findings as follows:
Dr. David D. Deutch remarked:
The August '97 issue of "Science" featured an article entitled "Science and God: A Warming Trend?" in which it stated:
In his best-selling book, A Brief History of Time, Sir Stephen Hawking (perhaps the world's most famous cosmologist) stated: "The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers (i.e. the constants of physics) seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life" (p. 125). "For example," Hawking wrote,
Hawking said this was evidence of "a divine purpose in Creation and the choice of the laws of science (by God)" (ibid. p. 125). If you would like further information regarding the science I would refer you to the Faraday Institute at St Edmund's College Cambridge (with which I have no connection.) 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 | 5:06 pm Fit As a Fiddle and Sharp As a Tack at 91Exercise shown to improve blood flow to brain and improve cognition.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Jan 2009 | 5:00 pm New drug combo may boost stem cell production (Reuters)Reuters - A novel drug combination using Genzyme Corp's Mozobil shows it may be possible to spur bone marrow into releasing extra adult stem cells into the bloodstream to repair the heart and broken bones, researchers said on Thursday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Jan 2009 | 4:51 pm Human Record Set for Lack of OxygenThe lowest levels of oxygen in humans were recorded from climbers breathing ambient air on Mount Everest.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Jan 2009 | 4:39 pm Space Laser Spots CataractsA compact fiber-optic probe developed for the space program has now proven valuable.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Jan 2009 | 4:03 pm Great Lakes Facing Wide Alien Species InvasionA federal study ID's 30 alien species that are likely to spread across the Great Lakes.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Stem cell therapy boosts body's ability to heal itselfA groundbreaking medical treatment that could dramatically enhance the body's ability to repair itself has been developed by a team of British researchers. The therapy, which makes the body release a flood of stem cells into the bloodstream, is designed to heal serious tissue damage caused by heart attacks and even repair broken bones. It is expected to enter animal trials later this year and if successful will mark a major step towards the ultimate goal of using patients' own stem cells to regenerate damaged and diseased organs. When the body is injured, bone marrow releases stem cells that home in on the damaged area. When they arrive, they start to grow into new tissues, such as heart cells, blood vessels, bone and cartilage. Scientists already know how to make bone marrow release a type of stem cell that can only make fresh blood cells. The technique is used to collect cells from bone marrow donors to treat people with the blood cancer leukaemia. Now a team led by Sara Rankin at Imperial College London has discovered a way to stimulate bone marrow to release two other types of stem cell, which between them can repair bone, blood vessels and cartilage. Giving mice a drug called mozobil and a naturally occuring growth factor called VEGF boosted stem cell counts in their bloodstream more than 100-fold. "This has huge and broad implications. It's an untapped process," said Rankin, whose study appears in the US journal Cell Stem Cell. "Suppose a person comes in to hospital having had a heart attack. You give them these drugs and stem cells are quickly released into the blood. We know they will naturally home in on areas of damage, so if you've got a broken bone, or you've had a heart attack, the stem cells will go there. In response to a heart attack, you'd accelerate the repair process." Rankin likens the body's natural repair mechanism to a village with a single fire engine. When a fire breaks out, the engine makes its way there and starts to hose it down. "What we're doing is sending signals to the fire station to release a hundred more fire engines, so the impact is much greater," she said. Rankin added: "The body repairs itself all the time. We know that the skin heals over when we cut ourselves and, similarly, inside the body there are stem cells patrolling around and carrying out repair where it's needed. However, when the damage is severe, there's a limit to what the body can do. "We could potentially call up extra numbers of whichever stem cells the body needs, in order to boost its ability to mend itself and accelerate the repair process." The group hopes to begin trials of the therapy later this year to investigate how effective it is at repairing tissue damage in rodents. "All the evidence suggests these cells will make a significant difference to the natural repair process," Rankin said. The therapy might also prove useful in treating patients with immune disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis. One of the stem cell types released from bone marrow dampens down the immune system, and so could help keep so-called "autoimmune" diseases under control. A possible danger with some other stem cell therapies in the pipeline is their use of embryonic stem cells. Because these can turn into any type of tissue, there is a risk they could grow into cancer cells when injected into patients. The Imperial group's treatment uses stem cells that can only grow into blood vessels, bone and cartilage, so the risk of causing cancer is removed. Paul Fairchild, director of the Oxford Stem Cell Institute at the James Martin 21st Century School , said: "This study brings closer to reality the prospect of tapping into the body's own resources of stem cells in order to repair diseased or injured tissues. Nevertheless, many questions remain to be answered, such as whether a procedure that releases stem cells from the bone marrow by interfering with their retention and migration will spare their ability to migrate to the very sites of injury or trauma where they are most needed." Peter Weissberg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, which co-funded the research, added: "It has long been known that the bone marrow contains cells that can replace lost or aged blood cells. It now seems increasingly likely that the bone marrow also contains cells that have the capacity to repair damaged internal organs, such as the heart and blood vessels, but that too few of them are released to be effective. "This research has identified some important molecular pathways involved in mobilising these cells. It may be possible to develop a drug that interacts with these pathways to encourage the right number and type of stem cells to enter the circulation and repair damage to the heart." 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 | 3:59 pm Skull study evidence of 'hobbit' species, claims US anthropologistStudy performed using an 18,000-year-old fossil found in southeast AsiaSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 8 Jan 2009 | 3:30 pm Jupiter-Sized Planets Grow Up FastGas giant planets like Jupiter have to form quickly or not at all, new research finds.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Jan 2009 | 3:16 pm Shark 'Autopsy' Webcast: Science or Stunt?The webcast done today of a great white shark necropsy, or animal autopsy, is apparently part of a growing trend.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Jan 2009 | 2:56 pm Neanderthals: Done in by Competition, Not ClimateModeling suggests Neanderthals were simply outcompeted by Cro-Magnon.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Jan 2009 | 2:31 pm First flight of algae-fuelled jetContinental Airlines is the latest to to test-fly a jet biofuel, this time with a product derived partially from algae.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Jan 2009 | 1:51 pm Auckland museum stages public shark dissectionWas dissection before 1,500-strong crowd important research or publicity exercise, asks James SturckeSource: Science | guardian.co.uk | 8 Jan 2009 | 1:30 pm Spookfish Have World's Strangest EyesThe four-eyed spookfish may have seemed strange enough.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Jan 2009 | 1:25 pm Ancient Greeks' homes may have doubled as bars and brothelsThe Ancient Greeks may have made cash on the side by turning parts of their homes into bars and brothels, researchers have found. Excavations at sites across the Greek mainland have uncovered hundreds of drinking cups and erotic objects in homes dating back to the 5th and 4th centuries BC, suggesting rooms and courtyards were used for dubious commerical practices. The discovery may solve the longstanding mystery of why archaeologists have found so little evidence of bawdy Greek tavernas, despite featuring so prominently in classical literature. "This has a real impact on how we view the economy in classical Greece," Clare Kelly Blazeby at Leeds University told New Scientist magazine. "A lot of trade and industry was based within the home." She reviewed archaeolgoical remains unearthed at several prominent sites dating from 475 to 323 BC, including the Villa of Good Fortune in Olynthus, and a residence known as building Z in Athens. To many archaeologists, the vast numbers of mugs, erotic graffiti and objects found at the sites indicate no more than well-off families that threw lavish parties. But Kelly Blazeby will tell the Archaeological Institute of America meeting in Philadelphia this week that a more plausible explanation is that residents turned over rooms in their houses to selling wine, gambling and even prostitution. "If you look at the remains coming from ancient Greek homes, it seems very clear to me that these buildings had another function, that some areas were used for commercial purposes," she said. "It's amazing how entrenched people in the field are. We are trying to change archaeologists' minds by pointing out that houses could be used economically as well being residences." Building Z was discovered in an area of Athens that at the time was popular with prostitutes. Archaeologists working at the site found large numbers of ancient cups, but also noticed that the room had unusual cubicles around the edge. "It may have been a place where men went to drink and where they could choose a prostitute," said Kelly Blazeby. The Villa of Good Fortune is unusual in having two "androns", or men's rooms, with floors patterned with mosaics relating to good luck and drinking, prompting some researchers to speculate it was an ancient casino. 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 | 1:06 pm
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