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Huge Burden Of Diabetes Shown By New SurveyIn the United States, nearly 13 percent of adults age 20 and older have diabetes, but 40 percent of them have not been diagnosed, according to epidemiologists. Diabetes is especially common in the elderly: nearly one-third of those age 65 and older have the disease.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm New Tree Of Life Divides All Lower Metazoans From Higher Animals, Molecular Research ConfirmsNew and comprehensive molecular research confirms a deep evolutionary division among animals. This new tree of life divides all so-called "lower" metazoans (Placozoa, corals, sponges, and jellyfish) from "higher" animals (all other metazoans, from flatworms to chordates). Placozoans have also passed over comb jellies and other organisms as an animal that most closely mirrors the root of this tree of life.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Mind Out Of Balance, Body Out Of BalanceMany of the 40 million American adults who suffer from anxiety disorders also have problems with balance. As increasing numbers of children are diagnosed with anxiety, researchers have discovered that the link between balance and anxiety can be assessed at an early age and that something can be done about it before it becomes a problem.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Risk Factors That Affected World Trade Center Evacuation IdentifiedResearchers have identified factors that affected evacuation from the World Trade Center Towers on Sep. 11, 2001. A research methodology known as participatory action research (PAR) was used to identify individual, organizational, and structural (environmental) barriers to safe and rapid evacuation.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Rewrite The Textbooks: Transcription Is BidirectionalResearchers have now unraveled how yeast generates its transcripts and have come a step closer to understanding their function. The study redefines the concept of promoters (the start sites of transcription) contradicting the established notion that they support transcription in one direction only.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Aspirin May Prevent Liver Damage That Afflicts Millions, Study FindsSimple aspirin may prevent liver damage in millions of people suffering from side effects of common drugs, alcohol abuse, and obesity-related liver disease, a new Yale University study suggests.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Risk Factors For Contralateral Breast Cancer IdentifiedA preventive procedure to remove the unaffected breast in breast cancer patients with disease in one breast may only be necessary in patients who have high-risk features as assessed by examining the patient's medical history and pathology of the breast cancer.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm Scientists Use Lasers To Measure Changes To Tropical ForestsNew technology deployed on airplanes is helping scientists quantify landscape-scale changes occurring to Big Island tropical forests from non-native plants and other environmental factors that affect carbon sequestration.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm New Asthma Research Opposes Current Drug Treatment, Study SuggestsJust as the FDA is reconsidering the use of stimulants to treat asthma, a new study offers evidence to support a theory that an opposite approach to asthma treatment may be in order. Scientists are investigating whether beta-2 adrenoreceptor antagonists (beta blockers) might be a safer, more effective strategy for long-term asthma management. A new study shows the absence of asthma-like symptoms in mice lacking the key gene that produces the receptor.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm 12,900 Years Ago: North American Comet Impact Theory DisprovedNew data disproves the recent theory that a large comet exploded over North America 12,900 years ago, causing a shock wave that traveled across North America at hundreds of kilometers per hour and triggering continent-wide wildfires. Scientists tested the theory by examining charcoal and pollen records to assess how fire regimes in North America changed between 15 and 10,000 years ago, a time of large and rapid climate changes.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm UK gets biofuels research centreA £27m centre for developing economically and environmentally sound biofuels has been launched in the UK.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Jan 2009 | 12:09 pm High Court bid to block eco-townsThe High Court is expected to rule later on a legal challenge to the government's flagship eco-towns scheme.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Jan 2009 | 12:08 pm Obama chooses Arab network for first TV interview (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 12:01 pm EU chief says Ukraine won't reopen gas deal (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 11:18 am Forest fallsWhat does the loss of tropical forests mean for nature?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Jan 2009 | 11:04 am Officials confirm talks on Japanese whaling deal (AP)AP - The International Whaling Commission is considering a plan to allow Japan to hunt whales locally in return for scaling back its activities in the Antarctic Ocean, officials said Tuesday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 9:49 am DR Congo gorilla numbers up 12.5%DR Congos population of mountain gorillas rises by 12.5% in two and a half years, a census shows.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Jan 2009 | 9:38 am Cutting calories by a third may improve memory, researchers sayReducing what you eat by nearly a third may improve memory, according to German researchers.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Jan 2009 | 7:42 am Australia denies whaling 'deal'Two Australian cabinet ministers reject reports of a possible compromise with Japan to allow some commercial whaling.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Jan 2009 | 5:41 am Obama orders push to cleaner, more efficient cars (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 5:14 am Liberia worms trigger emergencyLiberia's president declares a state of emergency in response to a plague of crop-destroying army worms.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Jan 2009 | 5:14 am Popular or Not? Your Genes May Help Decide (HealthDay)HealthDay - MONDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Tucked away in the twisted strands of DNA that make you human are genes that may determine whether you are sociable or shy.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 4:48 am Scientists Zero In on Earth's Original Animal (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Sea sponges have been thought by some scientists to be the most primitive living animals, the closest living things to approximate Earth's original animal, down at the base of the tree of life for the animal kingdom.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 3:25 am Octuplets stun doctors at California hospitalLOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California woman shocked doctors by giving birth on Monday to octuplets, believed to be only the second set of eight babies born in the United States.Source: Reuters: Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 3:09 am Surrounded by friends? It's all in your genesWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Are you a social butterfly, or do you prefer being at the edge of a group of friends? Either way, your genes and evolution may play a major role, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 2:50 am Global warming is 'irreversible'A team of environmental researchers in the US warns many effects of climate change are irreversible.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Jan 2009 | 2:04 am Animal Kingdom Gets a New Root
The animal kingdom has gained a cousin and lost a mother. In a fundamental reconfiguration of the tree of life, scientists now say that the last common animal ancestor is not — as was commonly believed — a sponge or comb jelly, but rather an as-yet-unknown forerunner of amoeba-like creatures called placozoans. "It's a question that has plagued animal biologists for a couple hundred years: What could be the mother of all animals?" said Rob DeSalle, an evolutionary biologist at the American Museum of Natural History. "We've turned it upside down." Since Carl Linnaeus put life in taxonomic order in 1735, scientists have proposed a variety of original or ur-animals, from Ernst Haeckel's hypothetical, embryo-like gastraea to larval jellyfish called planula. But in recent years, zoologists have favored either sponges or comb jellies as occupying a bifurcation point between Bilateria — creatures with bilateral symmetry, including humans and most of the animal kingdom — and the jellyfish, corals and polyps belonging collectively to Cnidaria. Those hypotheses were based on relatively rough comparisons of anatomy and a handful of genes. Molecular sequencing and supercomputer-enabled data analysis give biologists a clearer picture of life's narrative — but DeSalle's analysis, published Monday in Public Library of Science Biology, has merely moved the mystery to another level. Comb jellies and sponges don't appear to have predated Bilateria, but rather belong with Cnidaria in a single branch of the animal kingdom, originating in the lowly placozoans. But while some scientists, among them DeSalle, thought that placozoa might represent the last common ancestor of all animals, it appears to belong solely to this newly defined branch, leaving the ur-animal shrouded in mystery. "It fits in with what you might think is the most basal animal. It's only got three cell layers and four cell types. Its motility is primitive. It lives in warm oceans. It's got all the earmarks of the thing that gave rise to all animal life," said DeSalle. "But that's not what the results show. And though placozoa is the ur-cousin of complicated life, we still don't know the ur-mother." DeSalle's team fed data on 9,400 biological characteristics — from mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences to RNA molecular structure — from 70 species spanning every major class of animal on Earth into a program that searched for patterns of relationships, determining which order made linear sense. Out of this came the new tree, with DeSalle's would-be ur-animal at the start of one branch. Identified just 100 years ago crawling on an aquarium wall, placozoans have not even been studied in their ocean habitat, but its genome was sequenced in 2008. University of Texas taxonomist David Hillis called placozoa "among the most interesting animals that almost no one has ever heard about," but was less enthusiastic about the conclusion, which he said "represents a fine distinction in how we reconstruct the ancestral animal." But such fine distinctions are fascinating to DeSalle. Since placozoa don't have a nervous system and jellyfish do, the findings suggest that nervous systems evolved at least twice, independently of each other. This insight could stimulate research that provides a deeper understanding of our own nervous systems. "Evolution has done all these experiments, and when you reconstruct common ancestors, you're reconstructing the results of the experiment," said DeSalle. "If you want to look at the development of our brains, of our nervous system, of anything we have as a result of experiments that nature has done, the best way to do it is to reconstruct our ancestors." DeSalle said a common animal ancestor is likely to come from Deuterostomia, a group of phyla that includes sea cucumbers. Citation: "Concatenated Molecular and Morphological Analysis Sheds Light on Early Metazoan Evolution and Fuels a Modern 'Urmetazoan' Hypothesis." By Bernd Schierwater, Michael Eitel, Wolfgang Jakob, Hans-Jürgen Osigus, Heike Hadrys, Stephen Dellaporta, Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis and Rob DeSalle. Public Library of Science Biology, Jan. 26, 2009. Image: Trichoplax, the only known placozoan / Wolfgan Jakob See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 27 Jan 2009 | 1:19 am Scientists Zero In on Earth's Original AnimalA group of amoeba-shaped creatures could be the closest living surrogate to the ancestor of all animals.Source: Livescience.com | 27 Jan 2009 | 1:00 am New "test tube" technique offers pregnancy hopesLONDON (Reuters) - A British team has for the first time successfully used a new "test tube" fertilization technique that better predicts which of a woman's eggs will most likely result in pregnancy, a top fertility expert said on Monday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 12:48 am "Star Trek" creator and wife's ashes space-boundLOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and late wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry are about to go on their final mission.Source: Reuters: Science News | 27 Jan 2009 | 12:47 am The Fastest-Evolving Bird
It's official: birds within the family Zosteropidae, also called white-eyes, evolve more rapidly than any other known bird. The family's apparent evolutionary proclivities earned them the nickname of "Great Speciators" after Jared Diamond and Ernst Mayr, on a visit to the Solomon Islands some 30 years ago, noticed a different species on nearly every island they visited. Their supposition remained largely anecdotal — until now. Genetic analysis of the 100 Zosteropidae species shows that most emerged in the last five million years. In evolutionary terms, they're roadrunners, with a speciation rate approached among vertebrates by only African cichlids, a family of fish whose home range varies greatly in climate and geography. Compared to the cichlids, Zosteropidae occupies a relatively homogeneous range. Their fantastic speciation may be a result of their sedentary — and thus reproductively isolating — ways, but that's still hypothetical. “This leaves the question: are the white eyes really special, or have we simply caught them at a special time in their evolution?" said study co-author Christopher Filardi, a biologist at the American Museum of Natural History, in a press release. "That we don’t know, but our results indicate that high rates of diversification may have as much to do with a species’ ‘personality’ as they have to do with more classical geographic or geological drivers of speciation.” The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Citation: "Explosive Pleistocene diversification and hemispheric expansion of a 'great speciator.'" By Robert G. Moyle, Christopher E. Filardi, Catherine E. Smith, and Jared M. Diamond. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106 No. 4, Jan. 26, 2009. Image: Christopher Filardi See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 27 Jan 2009 | 12:43 am Ian Sample reports on the extraordinary information being sent back from MarsHigh in the sky above Mars, it is snowing right now. Very gently snowing. The snow does not settle on the rubble-strewn land below - not these days, anyway - but instead vaporises into the thin atmosphere long before it reaches the ground. The first flakes of snow, on a planet that until fairly recently was believed to be waterless, were spotted just a few months ago. A Nasa lander near the planet's north pole was scanning the sky with a laser when it noticed the telltale signs of snowfall. The probe, called Phoenix, announced the news in a radio signal that was picked up by an overhead orbiter and beamed back to Earth. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. The news of snow falling is just one piece of an extraordinary wealth of information that has recently been sent back from Mars by orbiters, landers and rovers. Together, they have mapped the surface in unprecedented detail, cracked open rocks, sniffed the atmosphere and dug down into the soil. What they have found points to an unimagined Martian history, one where life may have once gained a foothold and may even cling on still in the frigid soils of the permafrost. Mars is a planet where scale is redefined. It is half the size of Earth, but home to what is probably the largest mountain in the solar system, the 16-mile-high Olympus Mons. Just beneath its equator is a truly grand canyon that also sets a solar system record. The Valles Marineris is as long as the US is wide, and in places reaches 10km deep. The dream that refuses to die is that one day humans will climb Olympus Mons, and descend into Marineris. But in the meantime, a different sort of exploration is going on - less glamorous, but arguably far more revelatory. Earlier this month, Nasa celebrated the anniversary of the landing of two rovers that were sent to opposite ends of the planet exactly five years before, to study its ancient equatorial geology. The rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, were designed to survive the harsh environment for just 90 days, but somehow they have survived, and they continue to astound Nasa scientists with the new data they send home. Spirit has explored a world as fantastic as any imagined by JG Ballard. It touched down a short distance from the Columbia Hills in a region named Home Plate, a plateau 80 metres wide. Spirit found the plateau to be surrounded by deposits of opal. As the rover trundled around, its wheels kicked up soil rich in sulphate. Together, these two pieces of information identify Home Plate as an old volcano. "If you were here billions of years ago, it would be exploding, fire-fountaining, with ash coming up and shallow pools of hot water evaporating into the Martian atmosphere," says Ray Arvidson, deputy principal investigator on the rover mission at the University of Washington in St Louis. Warmth and water rank highly on Nasa's checklist of criteria for the emergence of life, and scientists have been making a credible case for water on Mars since at least the mid-1970s, when pictures sent back from the Viking orbiters showed deep channels, canyons and even features that resembled ancient lake shorelines. In 2006, Nasa had announced the then strongest evidence yet for liquid water on the planet, when its Mars Global Surveyor orbiter spotted what appeared to be stains on gully walls caused by gushing water. On the other side of the planet, Spirit's twin, Opportunity, has been having its own solar-powered adventures, driving around and analysing rocky features on an expanse called the Meridiani Planum. From data sent back to Earth, scientists know that the rover landed on several hundred metres of sedimentary deposits that must have formed in ancient lakes. The soil is inhospitable, similar to that in parts of Rio Tinto in southern Spain, where water bubbles up through iron sulphide deposits, forming sulphuric acid that dries into an acidic mud over the long, dry summer. The rovers are guided across the Martian landscape by a team of 14 drivers based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. They arrange their working day to coincide with the Martian night, so they can work out the details for the next day's excursions while the rovers are asleep. The Martian day is 40 minutes longer than on Earth, so the team is constantly shifting the hours it works. Before shutting down each night, the rovers send pictures and other data of their positions to an orbiter called Mars Odyssey, which relays them back to mission control. There, the drivers confirm the rovers' locations and decide where to send them next. When the rovers wake up, they receive a day's worth of commands telling them what direction to drive in and for how long. All of the moves are run through a simulator on Earth to ensure the rovers won't crash into any boulders or drive off the edge of a cliff. The process is arduous but it is the only way to drive a golf cart-sized buggy around a planet 100m miles away. Because the driving instructions are relayed via Mars Odyssey, they can take between 1½ hours and a day to reach the rovers. Remarkably, though long out of warranty, Spirit and Opportunity are carrying only a few mechanical injuries. Spirit, which parked up for the Martian winter with its solar panels angled towards the sun, has recently been ordered to drive south to investigate what look like once-exploding volcanoes that have since been eroded. Opportunity has scrambled out of the 800m-wide Victoria crater and is now setting off on a journey of more than a kilometre to a giant crater called Endeavour. The rocks scattered around the basin of the Endeavour crater have been scanned by cameras aboard orbiters hurtling overhead. They are unlike anything scientists have seen before. Despite intense radiation (unlike Earth, Mars has no magnetic field to deflect particles spraying out of the sun) and temperatures that dip below -95C, the rovers keep going. So far, they have sent back a quarter of a million pictures from Mars and 36 gigabytes of scientific data. While Spirit and Opportunity poked and prodded rocks dating back billions of years, the Mars Phoenix lander was sent to explore more recent conditions on the planet. The probe touched down after a flawless descent in the Martian arctic last year, in an area known as Vastitas Borealis, or "northern waste". On arrival, Phoenix's lead scientist, Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona, expected the lander to find precisely what Spirit and Opportunity had already seen: a landscape smothered in acidic, salty soils that could hardly be considered hospitable. There was good reason to think as much: the planet is frequently hit by giant dust storms that can measure thousands of kilometres wide. When they strike, they whip up the soil and scatter it around on a global scale. The soil in one place, scientists thought, would be similar to that in another. But built into Phoenix was a robotic arm that allowed it to reach down and gather clods of Martian soil to test with its onboard chemistry lab. And as Phoenix's arm scraped away at the frozen surface, it revealed clear patches of ice that quickly evaporated, making it the first probe to touch water on another planet. On closer inspection, it became clear that the soil at Phoenix's feet, in the planet's arctic circle, was very different to that found by Spirit and Opportunity at the equator. It was slightly alkaline, like sea water, and contained calcium carbonate, which usually forms in the presence of water. "It told us that Mars is not the same everywhere, as people were suggesting," says Smith. "If the soil was acidic and salty everywhere, you would have trouble imagining life even getting started in a place like that, but we found conditions much like those you see in the Earth's oceans, and for those of us looking for habitable zones on Mars, that's good news." Scientists poring over data coming back from Phoenix are using it to work out what may have happened in the planet's past. Their best guess links the soil conditions to wild swings in the planet's orientation. As the Earth orbits the sun, it leans over on its axis at an almost constant 23.5 degrees, and in doing so underpins the regularity of our seasons. Today, Mars is leaning over at around 25 degrees, but five million years ago, that could have been 40 or even 50 degrees. By showing more of its polar caps to the sun, the Martian ice will have warmed up and vaporised. The atmosphere would have become thick with ice clouds that later released snow, which fell to the ground and made the ground damp. That, at least, is the leading theory. Further tests by the Phoenix lander found traces of a substance called perchlorate in the Martian soil. On Earth, some microbes use perchlorate as a source of energy, Smith says. The picture that emerges from Phoenix is that millions of years ago, when Mars was tilted more toward the sun, the planet may have been hospitable to life. Whether it remained so for long enough for primitive life to get started is another matter. "We have nutrients in the soil, energy sources, and if there was liquid water five millions years ago, we're getting close to an environment where life could live," says Smith. "If you tossed some Earthly life up there that hadn't evolved for the climate, then it probably couldn't survive. But you have to wonder if, over a long period of time - say a billion years - if Mars slowly transformed itself from a more benign place to what we see today, whether little creatures could have evolved and maybe learned to survive. Life does amazing things on Earth. You can unfreeze the permafrost in Siberia and bring things back to life that have been encased in ice for a million years, so who knows?" Last week, the evidence for life on Mars received another boost, when scientists at Nasa reported enormous plumes of methane emanating from the planet's north during the summer months. Methane is not proof of life - it can just as well be released by geological processes - but the prospect that life might be responsible is tantalising none the less. Nasa lost contact with the Phoenix lander on 2 November last year, after it had sent back 25,000 images from the planet. The probe died, or perhaps went into hibernation, when a dust storm darkened the sky and blocked light from reaching the lander's solar panels. The probe's batteries are now drained, and there is only a minute chance that it will power up when the sun is high in the sky again later this year. In Arizona, Smith's team is turning its attention to an unsolved puzzle in the Phoenix data. Ironically, the presence of perchlorate in Martian soil ruined the probe's chances of detecting organic molecules, which would surely be there if life is present. By testing Martian soils concocted in the lab, and comparing the results with those from Phoenix, Smith believes he may answer the question yet. Arvidson, who was on the Phoenix team and continues to work on the Nasa rovers, says the evidence from the latest missions points to a Mars that at least in the past could well have supported life. "We've been to three locations and each has its own story of water interacting with the surface and beneath," he says. "The question now is, was it habitable for long enough for life to synthesise and establish an ecosystem? We're paving the way to answer that question, for the future missions that will really dig in and look for the smoking gun." Mars: the factsMars is the fourth rock from the sun and our outer neighbour in the solar system. Mars has two moons, named Phobos and Deimos, Greek for "fear" and "panic". They were named after the horses that pulled the chariot of the Greek war god Ares. Mars is nearly half the size of Earth but around one tenth the mass. Mars and Earth have the same land surface area. The gravity on Mars is a third of that on Earth. The Martian year lasts 687 Earth days, and each Martian day is 40 minutes longer. The Martian atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen and 0.13% oxygen. Mars has no magnetic field, so the surface is constantly bombarded by radiation from the sun. What's next?2009 - Phobos-Grunt A Russian mission to the Martian moon, Phobos, to bring back soil samples. 2011 - Mars Science Laboratory A Nasa rover twice the size of the Spirit and Opportunity probes. It will collect and analyse rocks and soil. Chief among its objectives is to find organic compounds and to check for environmental conditions that could have supported microbial life now or in the past. 2013 - Maven A Nasa orbiter designed to look at gases being given off from the Martian atmosphere. 2016 - ExoMars A European Space Agency mission to send an orbiter and rover to look for Martian life and possible surface hazards for future manned missions. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 27 Jan 2009 | 12:01 am Attenborough reveals creationist hate mail for not crediting GodSir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week's Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: "They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance." Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator." Attenborough went further in his opposition to creationism, saying it was "terrible" when it was taught alongside evolution as an alternative perspective. "It's like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five ... Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066." Attenborough, who attended the Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester in the 1930s, said he was astonished at manifestations of Christian faith. "It never really occurred to me to believe in God - and I had nothing to rebel against, my parents told me nothing whatsoever. But I do remember looking at my headmaster delivering a sermon, a classicist, extremely clever ... and thinking, he can't really believe all that, can he? How incredible!" In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of state-funded independent schools receiving private sponsorship, such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 27 Jan 2009 | 12:01 am Report: Some climate damage already irreversible (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jan 2009 | 11:33 pm Tough loveCan Obama create green jobs in the US auto industry?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Jan 2009 | 11:00 pm Emperor penguins face extinctionA mathematical model based on fading sea ice and the population growth of emperor penguins suggests their likely demise.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Jan 2009 | 10:52 pm Planet PowerSustainable energy technologies: How they work and where they come from.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jan 2009 | 10:21 pm Fresh warnings after storm kills 26 in southern Europe (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jan 2009 | 10:05 pm Baby Got Beat: Music May Be Inborn
Newborn babies enter the world kicking, screaming and already able to feel the beat. They exhibit the same pattern of brain activity as adults listening to an unexpectedly disrupted rhythm, which could be a clue to the nature of the human relationship to music. "We're interested in finding out what the origins of music could be," said Henkjan Honing, head of the University of Amsterdam's Music Cognition Group. "Is music just a side effect of language?" The ability to follow a beat is called beat induction. Neither chimpanzees nor bonobos — our closest primate relatives — are capable of beat induction, which is considered both a uniquely human trait and a cognitive building block of music. Researchers have debated whether this is inborn or learned during the few first months of life, calibrated by the rocking arms and lullabies of parents. This question in turn touches on the nature of music: whether it's an innate human ability, or — as neuroscientists like Steven Pinker have suggested — an offshoot of language, an "auditory cheesecake." If beat induction is present at birth, perhaps music is its own reward. "We hear music, we clap along. Music becomes faster or slower, and we can dance to it," said Honing, lead author of the study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We have evidence for the first time that it's active at birth, not learned." Honing's team attached an electroencephalogram — a machine that measures general levels of brain activity — to 14 two- and three-day-old babies, then played a rock beat composed of a high hat, snare and bass drums. Immediately after each beat, the babies' brain activity increased. After several repetitions, the researchers dropped the bass from every fourth beat. (To hear what the babies heard, click here.) The babies' brains showed a momentary disturbance, known as a mismatch negativity, that is experienced by adults when expected stimuli fail to occur. "You can see in the brains of these babies that they expect something to happen, and it doesn't," said Honing. Though beat induction probably helps people time interactions during conversation, he said, the ability's origins are likely disconnected from language. "The regularity is hardly ever found there," he said. "The pulse is defined in most music, but you hardly ever find it in language." McMaster University auditory development specialist Laurel Trainor agreed with Honing that beat induction underlies musical rather than linguistic faculties, but cautioned that it could still be learned — albeit much earlier than expected. "Infants
are hearing from the sixth prenatal month," she said. "They are
certainly getting a lot of experience with rhythmic sounds before
birth, such as the mother's heartbeat," and even loud music.
But whether in our hearts or learned from a mother's heart, beat induction's musical essence raises questions about the purpose of music. Perhaps, write Honing and colleagues, musical capacity provides some as-yet-unidentified evolutionary advantage, with the ability to process it a basic part of humanity's biological heritage. "I'd be very intrigued to go one step up and see if babies are also sensitive to meter, as opposed to only beat induction," he said. "I'd like to see if they can appreciate the difference between a 2/4 and 4/4 beat, or a march and a waltz." Citation: "Newborn infants detect the beat in music." By Istvan Winkler, Gabor P. Haden, Olivia Ladinig, Istvan Sziller, and Henkjan Honing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 4, Jan. 26, 2009. Image: Flickr/Luis Argerich See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 26 Jan 2009 | 10:00 pm Even Babies Know Rock 'n' RollNewborns can follow a rhythm, a new study has found, suggesting rocking out is innate.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jan 2009 | 10:00 pm March of Penguins Turning Into Trail of Tears
Emperor penguin colonies will face extinction if the warming trend of the last 50 years continues over the next century. Despite dwindling concern among Americans about climate change, the warming climate continues to change life for animals, particularly at the Earth's poles. In a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, biologists report that the penguins are in trouble. "To avoid extinction, Emperor penguins will have to adapt, migrate or change the timing of their growth stages," they write. "However, given the future projected increases in [greenhouse gases] and its effect on Antarctic climate, evolution or migration seem unlikely for such long-lived species at the remote southern end of the Earth." Across the world, it's becoming clear that some species are better than others at adapting to a changing climate. Some breed faster, making genetic changes easier. But there is a more subtle form of adaptation called phenotypic plasticity which is used to describe how animals use the genes they have to change their behavior. For example, some species of plants can change the timing of their flowering more easily to take advantage of climate change. That's led to widespread changes in the ecosystem around Walden Pond in just the time since Henry David Thoreau prowled its shoreline, as some plants suffer and other plants benefit from the changing climate. Like some of Walden's flowers, some bird species in Antarctica have been breeding earlier to give their chicks a chance to grow up before the sea ice breaks up. The penguins, sadly, don't appear to be so flexible. The famously loyal and tough penguins breed miles inland through the dead of the Antarctic winter. If the sea ice on which they breed breaks up too quickly, the fluffy penguin chicks have to enter the sea before they are ready. Less sea ice also means less room for algae to grow, which in turn means fewer krill that eat the algae and ultimately less of the fish that the penguins eat. In the area the researchers studied, Terre Adelie, even 10 percent drops in the extent of sea ice reduced the population of penguins by about 50 percent. Taking that data, the researchers modeled the Terre Adelie population with input from ten climate change scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They calculated a 36 percent chance that the Emperor penguin population in the area would experience quasi-extinction, defined as a decline of more than 95 percent, by 2100. The researchers note that the Ross Sea has experienced what climate scientists believe to be short-term sea ice gain. For now, the area will form a "last sanctuary for emperor penguin populations" but "this region too will eventually experience reduced sea ice extent as concentrations of atmospheric [greenhouse gases] increase further," they conclude. Image: Carlie Reum/National Science Foundation 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 | 26 Jan 2009 | 10:00 pm Tendency to be popular and sociable may be inheritedThe perennial mystery of why some people cannot organise a hearty drinking session in a brewery may have been solved by researchers at Harvard University. According to a study, popularity is influenced by our genes, meaning some people are natural-born party animals, while others are more likely to lurk on the margins at social gatherings. The finding suggests congeniality is in part inherited, giving some people stronger networks of friends than others. Researchers studied more than 1,000 adolescents who were either identical twins or fraternal twins. By comparing information on the number and closeness of their friendships, they established that social networks were more similar among identical twins. The study points to a genetic link to popularity, because identical twins have the same genetic make-up, while fraternal twins share only around half of their genes. "We were able to show that our particular location in vast social networks has a genetic basis. In fact, the beautiful and complicated pattern of human connection depends on our genes to a significant measure," said lead researcher Nicholas Christakis at Harvard Medical School. Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Christakis and researchers at the University of California in San Diego claim that the number of times a person was named as a friend by others and the likelihood they knew each other, was strongly heritable. Whether a person was likely to be the centre of attention or spend more time on the edges of social groups was also genetically linked, the researchers add. They believe there could be an evolutionary explanation for a genetic influence on people's position in a network of friends. Writing in the journal, they suggest that someone on the edges of a community would be less likely to pick up infectious diseases from others. Meanwhile, someone at the centre of a group might benefit by getting more information than those on the periphery. James Fowler, a co-author at the University of California, San Diego, said: "One of the things that the study tells us is that social networks are likely to be a fundamental part of our genetic heritage. It may be that natural selection is acting on not just things like whether or not we can resist the common cold, but also who it is that we are going to come into contact with." He added: "Going forward, we are going to find that social networks are a critical conduit between our genes and important health outcomes." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 26 Jan 2009 | 10:00 pm Newborn Babies Feel the BeatPeople are born with an ear for music, suggests new research on newborns.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 Jan 2009 | 9:00 pm Obama Memos Aim to Improve Fuel EfficiencyObama directed the DOT to establish higher fuel efficiency standards for the 2011 model year.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jan 2009 | 8:50 pm Climate Change Could Choke Oceans for 100,000 Years
With warmer temperatures reducing its ability to absorb oxygen, much of the water would become barren and lifeless. Oceanic food chains could be profoundly disrupted. "What mankind does for the next several decades will play a large role in climate on Earth over the next tens of thousands of years," said geochemist Gary Shaffer of the University of Copenhagen. This is because, according to climate scientists, it will take at least that long for natural processes to remove fossil fuel emissions from the atmosphere, giving long-term consequences to humanity's short-term habits. Shaffer's team modeled two likely sets of emissions, as forecast by the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Under the first, known as the B1 scenario, nations move relatively rapidly towards a carbon-neutral global economy, with greenhouse emissions peaking by 2050. This would result in circa-2100 temperatures about 6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than now. Though terrestrially dramatic, such a rise would, according to Shaffer's calculations, produce long-term ocean warming peaking in several thousand years at about 2 degrees Fahrenheit. Such a rise would fall well within the range of ocean adaptation. But if countries continue to burn fossil fuels until they've become prohibitively expensive — the A2, or "business-as-usual" scenario — then atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations will increase until the century's end. Planetary temperature could rise by 12 degrees Fahrenheit within that time, triggering oceanic warming of at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next several thousand years. Current ocean ecosystems would be unable to sustain themselves. "Oxygen minimum zones could expand by 10 or 20 times. And the ocean would, in addition to having low oxygen, have a very different ecosystem," said Shaffer, lead author on the study published Sunday in Nature Geoscience. "It would affect the ability of the ocean to produce fish, shellfish, the types of things that people eat. It's not just oxygen: it's a switch in ecosystem structure." As with any simulation, uncertainty surrounds the ability of Shaffer's model, developed by the Danish Center for Earth System Science, to precisely anticipate the outcome of the planet's complex and intertwined geological, biological and meteorological processes. According to Andreas Schmittner, an Oregon State University geochemist and co-author of a study that simulated ocean oxygen levels for the next 2,000 years, Shaffer's team's model relies on "a number of strong assumptions." "It does not simulate changes in ocean circulation," he said. "The assumptions made to account for ocean circulation are therefore questionable." Shaffer acknowledged that the simulation was relatively low-resolution compared to those used for near-future, locale-specific predictions. But when primed with historical climate data, the model successfully reproduced climate changes measured since 1765. It also paralleled Schmittner's comparatively short-term projections. "It reemphasizes the valid point that global warming will lead to a decrease in ocean oxygen levels with potentially adverse consequences for marine life," said Schmittner. University of Virginia marine biologist Robert Diaz, an expert on oceanic dead zones, said the "results are are exactly in line with what I would expect for long-term patterns in ocean oxygen." Shaffer's team assumes that ocean circulation will be weakened by increases in high-latitude temperatures and rainfall: Because water becomes less dense as it warms, surface layers will be slow to sink, delaying the normal cycle of surface turnover and oxygen absorption. This is, Shaffer acknowledged, by no means certain. The converse effect — an acceleration of surface sinking and circulation — does not appear to have taken place when the last Ice Age chilled planetary waters. But even without a circulation slowdown, warm waters will absorb less oxygen, and the effects could be catastrophic. Depleted surface life, said Shaffer, will reduce the amount of nutrients falling to deep waters and the ocean floor. Since most bacteria that break down organic material require oxygen, they'd be replaced by nitrate- and phosphorus-fueled bacteria. The plankton that normally feed on them — and form the basis of marine food chains — would starve. The simulation also makes another assumption: that methane ice now buried under ocean sediments won't melt. Should that happen, some of the methane — a potent greenhouse gas — would bond with free oxygen, further choking oceans. The rest of it would bubble into the atmosphere, further warming Earth. Neither do Shaffer's projections account for the affects of ocean acidification produced by carbon dioxide-saturated water — a phenomenon that, independently of temperature changes, wreak havoc on coral reefs, crustaceans and shellfish.
"You put those together and you have a potent mix," he said. See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 26 Jan 2009 | 8:43 pm Masks Protect Against Colds, FluA new study finds surgical masks are your best protection against a cold or the flu.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jan 2009 | 8:24 pm Many Americans Much Happier NowKey groups of people in the United States have grown happier over the past few decades, while other have become less so.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jan 2009 | 6:46 pm First View of the Dark Side of the Sun
Soon we may get the first ever glimpse of the dark side of the sun. Well, no, there's no actual dark side of a luminous ball of burning gas, but there is an effective dark side, as in, the side of the sun we can't see at any given time. Scientists aren't content to get just half of the picture, so they've launched the STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories) mission, a pair of NASA spacecraft that will orbit the sun simultaneously to provide a complete view of all sides of the star at once. "Then there will be no place to hide and we can see the entire sun for the first time," STEREO project scientist Michael Kaiser of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center told Wired.com. The perfect spherical view will come on Feb. 6, 2011. Right now the satellites, which were launched in October 2006, are about 90 degrees apart, which allows a picture of about 270 degrees of the sun — the fullest view yet. "The who goal of all of this is to try to get a better handle to try to predict solar storms, which cause cell phone disturbances, and disruptions to communications and power." Kaiser said. "We'd like to be able to predict these things as far in advance as possible to give us a longer warning time." Solar storms are magnetic disruptions on the sun that release violent sprays of charged particles into space. These storms can produce magnificent displays of the Northern Lights. But some past storms have also cost airlines and satellite communications industries millions of dollars, and have led to large scale power blackouts (including one across the entire province of Quebec, Canada). Being able to reliably forecast these tempests in advance could make a huge difference in preventing disturbances on Earth. Predicting solar weather is also important for the future of manned spaceflight. If astronauts are exposed to the intense radiation from solar storms while traveling beyond the protective magnetic field of the Earth, they could suffer serious harm. Even astronauts close to home who venture out for a spacewalk during a storm are put in danger. "For future missions going to the moon and Mars, that's very important," Kaiser said. "Some of these solar storms can be very intense. If the astronauts were completely exposed to one of these storms the radiation could be high." The STEREO mission also aims to improve our basic scientific understanding of the dynamics within the sun, which could shed light on the workings of stars in general. See Also:
Image: One of the first photos taken by STEREO of flares on the sun. Credit: NASA Source: Wired: Wired Science | 26 Jan 2009 | 6:30 pm Woman pregnant after IVF egg-screening world firstA British woman has become the first in the world to conceive using a new IVF technique that could more than double the success rate of pregnancies. The 41-year-old woman was treated after suffering two miscarriages and having 13 courses of IVF, none of which led to a baby. The technique allows doctors to screen fresh eggs for abnormal chromosomes, which are a major cause of miscarriage. Many embryos that have damaged or missing chromosomes miscarry, but others go on to produce conditions such as Down's syndrome. The woman, who was treated by doctors at the Care Fertility Group in Nottingham, is expected to give birth in the next two months. Fertility clinics have long sought a way to check eggs or embryos for major chromosome abnormalities. A healthy egg carries 46 chromosomes – 23 pairs – but before it can be fertilised it needs to ditch 23 of these, which it packages into a structure called a polar body. The new technique checks the chromosomes in the polar body. Doctors at the clinic collected nine eggs from the woman after stimulating her ovaries with standard hormone-based drugs. Using the new screening technique, they found that only two had intact chromosomes and so were likely to implant and lead to a successful pregnancy. Both embryos were implanted into the woman and one went on to a pregnancy. Simon Fishel, director of the Care Fertility Group, said the milestone demonstrated the "wonderful ingenuity of humankind". The screening process costs £1,950 on top of standard IVF treatment, which can £3,500. "One of the main reasons why IVF doesn't work is chromosomal abnormality," said Fishel. "Full chromosome analysis offers huge hope to many couples who have a poor chance of conceiving, those who have had many failures, and for those who want to maximise their chance at each attempt. We now have the best tool for achieving this." Up to half the eggs of younger women, and up to 75% in women over 39, have abnormal chromosomes. The technique, called polar body array comparative genomic hybridisation, is the first that can check all of an egg's chromosomes to see if any are missing or duplicated. The process uses a laser to make a small incision in the outer membrane of the egg, from which doctors can extract the polar body containing the 23 chromosomes that were expelled before fertilisation. The doctors then use a computer-driven screening process to check if all of the chromosomes are present. "This screening method has the potential to improve birth rates, minimise the incidence of miscarriage and birth defects caused by chromosomal irregularity," Fishel said. Fishel's clinic has agreement from the government's fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, to offer the technology to any of their patients. Because the procedure is experimental, however, it will not yet be offered on the NHS. The HFEA has ordered UK fertility clinics to take steps to reduce the number of twins and triplets born to IVF couples. In most cases, this will involve transferring only one embryo to the womb at a time. Doctors believe the new technique will allow them to select the most promising embryos, increasing the chances of a succesful pregnancy. A previous trial conducted last year by the Care Fertility Group and an American team suggests the technology could double the number of embryos that implant in the womb, from 25% to 50%. Fertility doctors at other clinics cautiously welcomed the development today. Stuart Lavery, a senior consultant gynaecologist at Hammersmith Hospital in London, said: "Although it is still at a very early stage, this technique may offer a new diagnostic and therapeutic hope to couples who suffer from repeated implantation failure in IVF." "Previous methods of screening embryos to detect abnormality have not proven to be sufficiently effective in increasing live birth rates. We need further research in this area so questions of reliability, efficacy and safety can be fully answered." Tony Rutherford, chair of the British Fertility Society, said: "It is absolutely essential that these new techniques are subject to further rigorous research, and should only be offered to patients within the context of a robustly designed clinical trial, carried out in suitably experienced centres." Around 6,000 babies a year are born in the UK to otherwise infertile couples as a result of IVF. The technique was developed in the 1970s and the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in 1978. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 26 Jan 2009 | 6:00 pm Masturbation May Increase Risk of Prostate CancerMasturbation among men has been tied to an increased risk of prostate cancer.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jan 2009 | 5:27 pm Ocean Dead Zones Could Approach Mass ExtinctionProjections show that ocean dead zones could reach massive levels.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 Jan 2009 | 4:22 pm Do Huge NFL Players Help Teams Win?When the Cardinals meet the Steelers in the Super Bowl, each offensive lineman will weigh 300 pounds or more.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jan 2009 | 3:50 pm Obesity Caught Like Common ColdYet another claim that a common and contagious virus is linked to some cases of obesity is in the news.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jan 2009 | 2:58 pm Reptile Becomes Dad at Age 111A captive New Zealand tuatara is a new father -- at the ripe old age of 111.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 Jan 2009 | 2:56 pm Manners Lowered Brits' Chances of Survival on TitanicBritish Titanic passengers had a higher fatality rate than others.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 Jan 2009 | 2:46 pm Damien Hirst on his painting for On the Origin of SpeciesI was given a paperback copy of On the Origin of Species many years ago by a friend and I loved it, especially the contentious aspects of it. Being brought up a Catholic and questioning the nonsensical creation theory, it was exciting. At the time I was in the habit of visiting the Leeds City Museum, which displayed stuffed animals accompanied by labels explaining their origins. I also used to attend the World Wildlife Fund lectures on a Saturday afternoon. So it was an honour to be asked to create a cover for this 150th anniversary edition of On the Origin of Species. This particular painting is called "Human skull in space" (oil on canvas), and, as in a lot of my work, there's a nod to the scientific. The painting sits firmly in the tradition of "still life" and is made up of objects I've come to imbue with my own meanings, some of them Darwinian in origin, and that I guess are seen in other areas of my work. The painting has an X-ray-like quality to it, as if it is revealing something about the structure of the objects painted. I suppose the work, in a modest way, acknowledges Darwin's analytical mind and his courage to believe in those ideas that questioned the very fabric of existence and belief in his time. Copyright: Damien Hirst 2009 The anniversary edition of On the Origin of Species is published in hardback by Penguin Classics on 12 February (Darwin's birthday) guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 26 Jan 2009 | 2:41 pm Zeus Cult Sacrificed Animals on Mountaintop AltarThe ancient followers of Zeus took worship seriously, suggests new evidence.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 Jan 2009 | 2:15 pm Lizards' Dance Avoids Deadly AntsLonger-limbed lizards can make a quicker escape from pesky fire ants.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jan 2009 | 1:19 pm Indonesians among the few to witness solar eclipse (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jan 2009 | 12:20 pm New Zealand reptile becomes dad at 111 years old (AP)AP - A captive reptile in New Zealand has unexpectedly become a father at the ripe old age of 111 after receiving treatment for a cancer that made him hostile toward prospective mates.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jan 2009 | 12:18 pm
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