New Family Of Antibacterial Agents Uncovered

As bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics continue to increase in number, scientists keep searching for new sources of drugs. Researchers have now found a potential new antibiotic agent in the tiny freshwater animal Hydra.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am

Probiotics May Prevent Certain Allergies In Cesarean-delivered Children But Not In All Children

According to a recent study, no allergy-preventive effect is extended to age 5 years by perinatal supplementation with probiotics in babies at risk for developing allergies; protection is conferred only to Cesarean section babies.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am

New Drug Holds Out Promise Of Normal Diet For Sufferers Of Devastating PKU Genetic Disease

A new pharmaceutical being developed is offering sufferers of the genetic disease phenylketonuria the hope of being able to eat a normal, protein-rich diet.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am

Birth Control Pill: Oral Contraceptive Use May Be Safe, But Information Gaps Remain

Oral contraceptives have been used by about 80 percent of women in the United States at some point in their lives. For women without pre-existing risks for heart disease, the early formulations were generally safe and the newer ones appear to be even safer, but all the risks and benefits are yet to be established, according to specialists in women's heart disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am

Huge Population Of Endangered Asian Elephants Living In Malaysian Park

New data released by the Wildlife Conservation Society and Malaysia's Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) reveals that a population of endangered Asian elephants living in a Malaysian park may be the largest in Southeast Asia.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am

Study Refutes Notion That Eating A Certain Cereal Will Result In More Male Babies

Could eating cereal really make it more likely for someone to have a boy baby than a girl baby? Not according to a new statistical analysis that refutes earlier findings.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 18 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am

'Two-faced' Bioacids Put A New Face On Carbon Nanotube Self-assembly

Researchers have demonstrated an inexpensive way to induce carbon nanotubes to "self-assemble" in long, regular strands, a useful technique for studying nanotube properties and potentially a new way to assemble nanotube-based devices.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm

Smoking During Pregnancy May Impair Thyroid Function Of Mom And Fetus

Cigarette smoking during pregnancy is associated with potentially harmful changes in both maternal and fetal thyroid function, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm

Diabetes Associated With Different Types Of Brain Injury In Patients With Dementia

Patients with dementia and diabetes appear to display a different pattern of injuries in their brains than patients with dementia but without diabetes, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm

Easy Assembly Of Electronic Biological Chips

A handheld, ultra-portable device that can recognize and immediately report on a wide variety of environmental or medical compounds may eventually be possible, using a method that incorporates a mixture of biologically tagged nanowires onto integrated circuit chips, according to researchers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jan 2009 | 7:00 pm

Common Genes Link Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia (HealthDay)

HealthDay - FRIDAY, Jan. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia appear to share common genetic causes, a new, far-reaching Swedish study concludes.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jan 2009 | 4:48 am

Komodo dragon in Va. bites the hand that feeds it (AP)

AP - A Komodo dragon at the Virginia Aquarium bit the hand that fed it — literally — but aquarium officials said the incident Friday was likely more due to excitement than betrayal as the popular expression implies.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jan 2009 | 1:22 am

Interior issues offshore drilling plan (AP)

AP - The Interior Department on Friday issued a detailed proposal for widespread oil and gas drilling off both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts in areas that have not had energy exploration for decades.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jan 2009 | 12:33 am

Bad Science: The things you can perk up with a cup of coffee

'Danger from just seven cups of coffee a day," said the Daily Express on Wednesday. "Too much coffee can make you hallucinate and sense dead people, say sleep experts. The equivalent of just seven cups of instant coffee a day is enough to trigger the weird responses." The story appeared in almost every national newspaper.

This was weak observational data. That's just the start of our story, but you should know exactly what the researchers did. They sent an email inviting students to fill out an online survey, and 219 agreed.

The survey is still online (in all its time-consuming glory, I just clicked answers randomly to see the next question). It asks about caffeine intake in vast detail, and then uses one scale to measure how prone you are to feeling persecuted, and uses another, the Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale (LSHS), 16 questions designed to measure "predisposition to hallucination-like experiences".

Some of these questions are about having hallucinations and seeing ghosts, but some really are a very long way from there. Heavy coffee drinkers could have got higher scores on this scale by responding positively to questions like: "No matter how hard I try to concentrate on my work, unrelated thoughts always creep into my mind"; "Sometimes a passing thought will seem so real that it frightens me"; or "Sometimes my thoughts seem as real as actual events in my life". That's not seeing ghosts or hearing voices.

There could have been alternative explanations for the observed correlation between caffeine intake and very slightly higher LSHS scores. Maybe some students who drink a lot of coffee are also sleep deprived, and marginally more prone to hallucinations because of that. Maybe they are drinking coffee to help them get over last night's marijuana hangover. Maybe people who take drugs instrumentally to have fun and distort their perceptions also take drugs like caffeine instrumentally to stay alert. You can think of more, I'm sure. The researchers were keen to point out this shortcoming in their paper. The Express and many others didn't seem to care.

If you read the academic paper you find that the associations reported are weak. For the benefit of those who understand "regression" (and it makes anybody's head hurt), 18% of the variance in the LSHS score is explained by gender, age and stress. When you add in caffeine, 21% of the variance in the LSHS score is explained: only an extra 3%, so caffeine adds very little. The finding is statistically significant, as the researchers point out, so it is unlikely to be due to chance, but the fact is that it's still weak, it explains only a tiny amount of the overall variance in scores on the "predisposed-to-hallucinations" scale.

Lastly, most newspapers reported a rather dramatic claim, that seven cups of coffee a day is associated with a three times higher prevalence of hallucinations. This figure does not appear in the paper. It seems to be an ad hoc calculation done afterwards by the researchers, and put into the press release, so you cannot tell you how they did it, or whether they controlled appropriately for problems in the data, like something called "multiple comparisons".

Here is the problem. Apparently this three times greater risk is for the top 10% of caffeine consumers, compared with the bottom 10%. They say that heavy caffeine drinkers were three times more likely to have answered affirmatively to just one LSHS question: "In the past, I have had the experience of hearing a person's voice and then found that no one was there."

Now this poses massive problems. Imagine that I am stood facing a barn, holding a machine gun, blindfolded, firing off shots whilst swinging my whole body from side to side and laughing maniacally. I then walk up to the barn, find three bullet holes which happen to be very close together, and draw a target around them, claiming I am an excellent shot.

You can easily find patterns in your data once it's collected. Why choose 10% as your cut-off? Why not the top and bottom quarters? Maybe they have accounted for this problem. You don't know, I don't know, they say they have, to me, in emails, but it wasn't in the paper, we can't all see the details. I don't think that's satisfactory for a headline finding, and the first claim of a press release.

There is another problem: putting a finding in the press release but not into the paper is a subversion of the peer review process. People will read this coverage, they will be scared, and they will change their behaviour. But the researchers' key reported claim, with massive popular impact, was never peer reviewed, and crucially the technical details behind it are not in the public domain.

I'm sorry to see academics not blameless in this dreary situation.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 17 Jan 2009 | 12:01 am

Inauguration Worry: No Place to Pee (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - My sister and I are going to the inauguration. It's not only an historic occasion for the country, it's also a walk down memory lane for us. On Jan. 20, 1961, when I was 10 and she was 15, our parents took us to watch John F. Kennedy become the youngest, and first Roman Catholic, president of the United States. We are, of course, all fired up about this trip, but we do have one worry. We aren't worried about the crowds, we don't care about seeing anything up close, and we are prepared for the cold. What worries us most is finding a place to pee. ...
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jan 2009 | 10:40 pm

Lunar rover to travel inaugural parade route: NASA (AFP)

AFP - A prototype of NASA's Lunar Electric Rover will make the journey along Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue Tuesday in honor of Barack Obama's presidential inauguration, the space agency said Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jan 2009 | 10:39 pm

Arctic front freezes US, Canada in record cold snap (AFP)

AFP - A record cold snap gripped the American Midwest Friday as temperatures plummeted to lows of minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34 degrees Celsius) and officials scrambled to protect the homeless and vulnerable.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jan 2009 | 10:32 pm

Are Paperless Receipts the Future in Retail?

TransactionTree recently released a breakthrough paperless receipt service.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jan 2009 | 9:54 pm

Video Game Violence Not Why Most Play

Contrary to popular belief, violence does not make video games more enjoyable, a new study suggests.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jan 2009 | 9:37 pm

Airline Accidents More Survivable

Thanks to better training, everyone has survived recent airline accidents.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jan 2009 | 8:35 pm

SLIDE SHOW: Images in the News

From methane on Mars to Neanderthal weaponry, join us for a visual tour of the week's news.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jan 2009 | 8:10 pm

Mars to NASA: Forget Water, Follow the Methane

In the search for life beyond Earth, NASA is following a new trail on Mars: methane gas.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jan 2009 | 8:10 pm

Tories plan 'energy revolution'

Street plugs for electric cars, smart meters, and energy saving loans are among Tory plans to "decarbonise" the UK.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jan 2009 | 7:54 pm

Growing Bird Populations Show Conservation Successes

Many birds are thriving today.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jan 2009 | 7:45 pm

First Look Inside Dark Moon Craters

NASA radar aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft up and running, ready to scout craters for water ice.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jan 2009 | 6:44 pm

New 'Joy of Sex' Slim on Science

Even updated, "The Joy of Sex" is by no means a scientific treatise: its most popular section will likely remain "Main Courses."
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jan 2009 | 6:40 pm

NASA chief Griffin says goodbye to employees (AP)

AP - NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said goodbye Friday to the space agency's employees, thanking them for their hard work during his four years on the job and urging them to support his successor.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jan 2009 | 6:18 pm

Methane discovery hints at living Martian microbes

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Plumes of methane in the atmosphere of Mars provide evidence of the possible existence of microbes living below the Martian surface that produce the gas as some do on Earth, U.S. scientists said on Thursday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 16 Jan 2009 | 5:52 pm

Scientists find way to remove lead from blood

HONG KONG (Reuters) - South Korean scientists may have found a way to remove dangerous heavy metals such as lead from blood by using specially designed magnetic receptors.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 16 Jan 2009 | 5:50 pm

Year of Astronomy Marks Galileo's First Observations

Astronomers officially launch the International Year of Astronomy.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jan 2009 | 5:19 pm

Light pollution forms 'eco-traps'

Polarised light from building and roads is triggering potentially dangerous changes in many species' behaviour, a study shows.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jan 2009 | 5:15 pm

Experts: Airliner crashes more survivable recently (AP)

AP - Four recent major airline accidents have something in common: Everyone survived.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jan 2009 | 5:05 pm

Sharks, not humans, most at risk in ocean

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Three shark attacks in Australia in two days this week sparked a global media frenzy of "Jaws" proportions, but sharks are more at risk in the ocean than humans with man killing millions of sharks each year.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 16 Jan 2009 | 4:53 pm

Turning tide

Why Nepal is turning its back on hydropower
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jan 2009 | 4:47 pm

Some Airports More At Risk for Bird Strikes

Proximity to water and quieter airplane engines increase the risk of bird strikes.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm

Human spaceflight: Britain needs a real-life Dan Dare

For those who were brought up in the 1950s and read the Eagle's Dan Dare comic strip – a group of people that probably still includes a large proportion of the UK government and indeed the space industry itself – it must seem odd that the UK stands alone in the developed world in having abandoned the "great adventure" of human spaceflight since 1986.

Britain was the nation that produced international space names like Arthur C. Clarke, Colin Pillinger of Beagle 2 Mars probe fame and astrophysics genius Stephen Hawking. But these are Earthbound names. Why don't we have astronauts like everyone else?

This will certainly be uppermost in science minister Lord Drayson's mind when he shortly receives an expert space exploration review that may well chart how to get Britons into space. He is after all the minister who took up his new post last year enthusing about "icon astronauts".

He will be looking for ways to fire the enthusiasm of a new generation of scientists and engineers. The manufacturing sector is crying out for a young, technically competent workforce, and space travel provides youngsters still in education with lots of interest and excitement.

Meanwhile, the rest of Europe presses ahead with its astronaut programmes. ESA is currently interviewing the remaining 40 candidates out of an original 8,000 applicants for four new astronaut posts. Some are understood to be British.

Ever since Margaret Thatcher's government pulled the plug on any prospect of Britain joining the US, Europe and the rest of the developed world by flying its own astronauts, the nation has had to confine itself to admiring from afar the non-government "group of five" British astronauts, including Helen Sharman, who flew to the Mir space station courtesy of the then Soviet government in 1991, three UK-born US citizens working for Nasa – Mike Foale, Piers Sellers and Nick Patrick – and the Cambridge-born US millionaire Richard Garriot, who bought a $30m ticket to fly on Soyuz in 2008.

The real issue is cost, because human spaceflight is relatively expensive. So what are the chances of a British government ever changing its narrow "value-for-money" attitude?

Within the next few months the science minister will receive a review from the British National Space Centre (BNSC) about this very issue. The study was set in motion by the previous minister, Ian Pearson, after an expert working group advised in 2007 that the UK was missing out.

It said a low-cost start to national human spaceflight – undertaking cheap "precursor missions" to the International Space Station (ISS) via Soyuz spacecraft – should be considered further. That way, the UK could establish a modest corps of four or so astronauts and build up space experience.

One of the astronauts' key tasks would be to go out to schools and colleges and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.

The working group's conclusions seem logical, but two key factors stand in the way of a UK astronaut corps. First, the Treasury exerts tight control over public projects that have no immediate or near-term potential for industrial spinoffs. Space is profitable (look at the GPS and telecom satellite industry), but many consider human spaceflight, with its spectacular orbital antics, to be a luxury.

The promises made in the 1980s of breakthroughs in drug research or the growth of perfect crystals in zero gravity that would revolutionise the electronics industry have failed to materialise.

The Treasury looks at the $100bn cost of the ISS, ignoring the fact that it is a collaborative international exercise, and tells successive governments "don't go near it, it will cost us billions".

The second obstacle to UK human spaceflight is the nation's robotic science lobby. Since the 1960s, astronomers in Britain have been bolted into a satellite and robotic space probe approach that has no truck with astronauts. To most UK space scientists they are a threatening distraction and in 2008 the Astronomer Royal Martin Rees made his antipathy to human spaceflight well known.

The UK only spends £220m a year on civil space matters (a quarter of the spending of equivalent European nations like France and Germany). Imagine the reaction of an established space researcher, said Rees, if he were told that the already thin space budget was going to be reduced further in order to train "icon astronauts" to inspire the young.

Human spaceflight advocates like the British Interplanetary Society point out that the rest of the developed world seems to be able to afford not only to build satellites but also to fly its own national astronauts.

Modest Sweden, for example, is sending its astronaut Christer Fuglesang to the ISS again this year on a science mission, in addition to building new satellites and operating a rocket range at Kiruna in the Arctic-Circle – all on a budget of just $100m a year.

The government's current anti-astronaut stance may soon be tested to the limit. If this year's review is positive about the value of British astronauts, the apparently pro-astronaut Lord Drayson may find himself at odds with both the Treasury – which will cite the recession as a reason to limit budgets – and with the space science community, which is dominated by the robotic lobby and will fight to protect its funding.

Lord Drayson could face an even more sticky scenario. What if the chief of ESA, Jean-Jacques Dordain, rings Whitehall saying: "Good morning minister, please advise me. We want to appoint one of your excellent British candidates to become our fourth new ESA astronaut, after the German, the Frenchman and the Italian. Will you be contributing to our human spaceflight programme now, and when will we receive the first cheque?"

This will not be an easy decision for the minister to make. Dan Dare was fortunate indeed in never having to face such a dilemma.

Nick Spall is a freelance writer and coordinator of the British Human Space Flight Campaign

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jan 2009 | 2:53 pm

Inauguration Worry: No Place to Pee

Many Americans are trekking to Washington, D.C., to witness the inauguration. Will there be enough toilets?
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jan 2009 | 2:25 pm

Singing Began in Fish, Perfected by Birds

Bird song is far more complex than originally thought.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jan 2009 | 2:19 pm

Boy Gets Tongue Stuck to Frozen Streetlight Pole

A 10-year-old boy in Hammond, Ind. got his tongue stuck streetlight pole Wednesday evening.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jan 2009 | 2:15 pm

Study: You Touch It, You Buy It

Touching an object can create attachment that leads consumers to pay more.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jan 2009 | 2:11 pm

How did the zebra get his stripes?

How The Zebra Got His Stripes is not, tragically, one of Rudyard Kipling's Just-so stories – although it feels like ought to be, alongside How The Camel Got His Hump, the whale his throat and the rhinoceros his skin.

A new scientific review has attempted to answer that seemingly simple question, along with the reasons behind the colouration of a whole monochrome menagerie, from pandas to ring-tailed lemurs. Less poetic than Kipling it may be, but the conclusion, from Dr Tim Caro at the University of California, Davis, is that in many cases scientists know very little for sure about why animals are coloured the way they are. The field is still hotly debated.

Even Charles Darwin and the co-discoverer of natural selection Alfred Russel Wallace tussled over the evolutionary reason for the zebra's stripes.

For Wallace, the patterns helps the animals to blend into the background at dusk:

It may be thought that such extremely conspicuous markings as those of the zebra would be a great danger in a country abounding with lions, leopards and other beast of prey; but it is not so… It is in the evening, or on moonlight nights, when they go to drink, that they are chiefly exposed to attack… in twilight they are not at all conspicuous, the stripes of white and black so merging together into a gray tint that it is very difficult to see them at a little distance. Wallace, Darwinism

Darwin dismissed this notion:

The zebra is conspicuously striped, and stripes on the open plains of South Africa cannot afford any protection. Burchell in describing a herd says, "their sleek ribs glistened in the sun, and the brightness and regularity of their striped coats presented a picture of extraordinary beauty." Darwin, Descent of Man

The mystery remains unsolved. Scientists have suggested everything from the stripes setting up cooling convection currents around the body to deterring tsetse flies, but no one has the definitive answer.

As Caro points out in his review in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, there is no one explanation for why black and white animals look the way they do. Horizontal black and white bands on, for example skunks and stink badgers are probably a text-book example of warning colouration (or aposematism). As Caro writes:

Attackers are warned first by a sudden erection of a white tail, then a handstand and possibly bipedal advance, that a jet of foul smelling fluid could be accurately ejected at them from anal glands.

Black and white face masks, sported for example by the raccoon dog and black-footed ferret, may also serve similar warning functions. But Caro believes that in other species it may serve a signalling function to other members of the same species. The iconic eye-spots on the giant panda and other species are anti-glare devices, he suggests. Without them, the white of their face would reflect light into their eyes, making it more difficult to see.

The panda's large blocks of black and white on its body (along with other species such as the tapir and giant tree rat) may also serve to disrupt the outline of the body so making it harder to spot. For the panda, though, this explanation seems a little hard to swallow.

The experiments to eliminate the various explanations for any one species are hard to do well, so there is a dearth of good evidence. For the most part, scientists are still relying on just-so stories.

What's your explanation for bar-coded beasts?

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jan 2009 | 12:06 pm