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Global Warming From Carbon Dioxide Will Increase Five-fold Over The Next Millennia, Scientists PredictScientists have found that heating from carbon dioxide will increase five-fold over the next millennia.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm New Catalyst Paves The Path For Ethanol-powered Fuel CellsScientists have developed a new catalyst that could make ethanol-powered fuel cells feasible. The highly efficient catalyst performs two crucial, and previously unreachable steps needed to oxidize ethanol and produce clean energy in fuel cell reactions.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Astronomers Get A Sizzling Weather Report From Distant PlanetAstronomers have observed the intense heating of a distant planet as it swung close to its parent star, providing important clues to the atmospheric properties of the planet. The observations enabled astronomers to generate realistic images of the planet by feeding the data into computer simulations of the planet's atmosphere.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm First Gene Discovered For Most Common Form Of EpilepsyResearchers have uncovered the first gene linked to the most common type of epilepsy, called Rolandic epilepsy. One out of every five children with epilepsy is diagnosed with this form, which is associated with seizures starting in one part of the brain.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm New Role For Serotonin 'Ironed Out'Investigators have found a surprising link between brain iron levels and serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in neuropsychiatric conditions ranging from autism to major depression. The new study also demonstrates the utility of a powerful in silico approach for discovering novel traits linked to subtle genetic variation.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Adolescents With Unpopular Names More Prone To Committing CrimeA new study examined the relationship between first name popularity in adolescents and tendency to commit crime. Results show that, regardless of race, juveniles with unpopular names are more likely to engage in criminal activity.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm Climbing Catfish Hikes Remote VenezuelaA newly found species of catfish climbs by grasping with its mouth and its pelvic fin.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Jan 2009 | 2:00 pm Mars Rover Team Diagnosing Unexpected BehaviorThe team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit plans diagnostic tests this week after Spirit did not report some of its weekend activities, including a request to determine its orientation after an incomplete drive.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm Humans With Rare Defects In The Insulin Receptor Signaling Pathway Provide Insight Into A Common Metabolic DefectAnalysis of individuals with rare, molecularly defined defects in the signaling pathway activated by the hormone insulin (which controls blood glucose levels) has provided new insight that might be applicable to the many individuals with obesity-related resistance to insulin, something that predisposes individuals to type 2 diabetes.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm Reptile Fossil Reignites Debate Over New Zealand SubmergenceThe fossil of a lizard-like New Zealand reptile has been identified by a team of scientists. The fossil, dating back 18 million years, has triggered fresh arguments over whether the continent was fully submerged some 25 million years ago.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm Previously Unidentified Bacteria May Cause Preterm BirthA new study suggests that that previously unidentified bacteria may play a key role in intra-amniotic inflammation and ultimately preterm births.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm Shell posts $2.8 bln loss on tumbling oil prices (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 12:47 pm Arctic's thaw brings security risks for NATO (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 12:22 pm Glitch as Mars rover phones homeThe Mars rover Spirit failed to move on Sunday and is still confused about its location, according to Nasa.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Jan 2009 | 12:18 pm The Nation's Weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 11:42 am Common descentHow a loathing of slavery drove Darwin's thinkingSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Jan 2009 | 9:42 am Distant planet's roasting orbitNasa's Spitzer space telescope observes a far-off planet that experiences wild temperature swings.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Jan 2009 | 9:39 am Bird discovery shows China's ecological potential (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 9:31 am South Korean bio firm says dog cloning to be cheaperSEOUL (Reuters) - Cloning a Chow Chow is expected to be easier and perhaps as much as 50 percent less costly, a South Korean biotech firm said on Thursday as it unveiled a new cloning technology.Source: Reuters: Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 8:35 am SKorean firm claims advance in dog cloning (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 7:15 am Scientists probing erratic behavior by Mars rover (AP)AP - Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., are trying to figure out why the Mars rover Spirit is acting erratically.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 5:58 am Liberia faces second worm waveThe UN warns Liberia could soon face a second wave of crop-destroying armyworms as the pests reproduce.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Jan 2009 | 2:28 am Twitterers #Remember_Challenger Disaster
Space-loving Twitterers recalled their memories of the Challenger disaster Wednesday, which tragically disintegrated during its takeoff 23 years ago, killing all seven astronauts aboard. The online memorial began this morning when the folks at the Google Lunar X-Prize asked their 1,100 followers, "The Challenger disaster certainly means a lot of things to a lot of people. What does it mean to you?" Over the course of the day, dozens of memories were collected under the hashtag #Remembering_Challenger. Many of them came from adults who watched as school children. An astonishing number of Twitterers recalled watching the disaster from their primary school classrooms. "the 8th graders, who we all looked up to, brought a TV down to our 1st grade classroom with a tape to show us," wrote @drewbenn in one poignant Tweet. The unusually large school-age audience was probably due to the presence of Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, on the flight. McAuliffe had been selected through the Teacher in Space Project. More than 11,000 teachers had competed for that spot. It's hard to know how the accident affected those that weren't selected. "watched it in my classroom with my teacher who was a runner up to be on the Challenger," wrote @bevinhernandez, perhaps referring to Barbara Morgan, McAuliffe's understudy. The experience, amplified by the still-new cable news cycle, shocked the nation. @bethlindsay noted, "was home sick, in 11th grade; this event is my first memory of TV coverage of a tragedy run ad nauseum." The image that many seem to remember are the smoke trails, pictured above. @tavigreiner tweeted, "I'll never forget that 'Y in the sky' and the heart-wrenching realization of what it meant." @annwillmott concurred, "the sight of those 2 streams of smoke going off in opposite directions is burned into my brain." On the other end of the media experience, current NASA public relations officer, Veronica McGregor, was watching from the CNN newsroom. "01-28-86. My 1st day as an intern at CNN. Newsroom chatter as shuttle lifted off. Then silence. Panic. Grief," wrote @veronicamcg. Across the country, NASA watchers and suppliers held their breath. No one was sure what the disaster would mean for the country's space program. @girliegreenie watched "At my first apartment no furniture & just a few cans of food. A friend brought me a tiny TV. Fearing end of NASA." @jrah had a weightier role to consider. He wrote, "I was working for Honeywell at the time and we were so worried if our controls had caused it." But it wasn't just schoolchildren or those in the aerospace
industries. Everyday people, in both mundane and exotic situations, were
shocked and saddened by the news of the tragedy.
The
disaster stalled the Shuttle program for 32 months before safety
recommendations from a special commission could be implemented. On the
human side of the tragedy, though, by giving their lives for space
exploration, the Challenger crew became legends. "I wasn't even born at the time, but the Challenger crew were heroes, and they are missed. #Remembering_Challenger," summarized @astro_logic. 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 | 29 Jan 2009 | 1:44 am Scientists Rank Global Cooling Hacks
Not all climate hacks are created equal. The dozens of ways that scientists, as well as crackpots, have proposed to geoengineer the world's climate won't all be equally effective. In fact, some of them, particularly the ones that rely on sucking up carbon dioxide instead of blocking out solar radiation, will hardly have any impact at all, a new study in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics found. "By 2050, only stratospheric aerosol injections or sunshades in space have the potential to cool the climate back toward its pre-industrial state," earth scientists Tim Lenton and Naomi Vaughan of East Anglia University in England write. Many global cooling approaches have been floated. The broad range of the proposals — from injecting the upper atmosphere with sun-blocking particles to creating plankton blooms by feeding them extra iron to burying carbon-filled "biochar" in soil — has made comparing them very difficult. The new study provides the first useful comparisons of a wide variety of geoengineering ideas. The study did not calculate the costs or environmental impacts of any of the techniques, but for most of the climate hacks, they could be large. For those reasons, the authors of the paper recommend reducing the amount of our emissions, not just banking on geoengineering to bail us out. "Climate geoengineering is best considered as a potential complement to the mitigation of CO2 emissions, rather than as an alternative to it," they write. The study of climate change tries to compute the change in the energy balance between energy coming from the sun — shortwave radiation — versus the longwave radiation emitted by the Earth. When there's more carbon dioxide, less longwave radiation escapes and the world heats up. Scientists calculate that humans' carbon dioxide emissions from 1800 to 2005 are causing 1.6 watts of extra energy per square meter of surface area to stay in Earth's atmosphere. If CO2 levels double again, that number goes to 3.71 watts. So, logically enough, the scientists decided to evaluate geoengineering schemes with the same watts-per-square-meter metric. How much cooling or climate balancing could each scheme provide? Though "not intended to be definitive" the researchers claim their numbers are at least as good as previous analyses of individual techniques. The clear winners, cost aside, are strategies that would block out
some solar radiation. Perhaps the most currently workable version of
this technique is injecting millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the
atmosphere. Of course, the injections would have to continue until the
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were brought back down and the environmental costs could be high. Another high-impact technique would increase the albedo — or reflectivity — of the
tops of clouds. The results are presented in the table below. Short descriptions of each technique follow. For more detailed information on each technique, check out the full text of the paper (.pdf), which is available online.
Via > Heliophage 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 | 29 Jan 2009 | 1:12 am Chemicals 'may reduce fertility'Chemicals commonly found in food packaging, upholstery and carpets may be damaging women's fertility, scientists say.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Jan 2009 | 1:02 am How "cuckoo's shoes" help the understanding of nature's plantsA new online database gives the Gaelic names for Scottish fauna and flora and their English translations.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Jan 2009 | 12:33 am Ocean climate fix remains afloatPlans to curb climate change by artificially "fertilising" ocean plankton blooms could be boosted by a new study, scientists say.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Jan 2009 | 12:31 am Key food, biofuel crop sorghum's genome decipheredWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have deciphered the genetic make-up of sorghum, a drought-tolerant crop and important food and biofuel source, and said the breakthrough could help develop better crops for arid regions.Source: Reuters: Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 12:14 am Zoloft, Lexapro best new antidepressants: studyLONDON (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc's Zoloft and Forest Laboratories Inc's Lexapro are the most effective and well-tolerated antidepressants among a group of 12 new drugs, according to an analysis published on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 29 Jan 2009 | 12:13 am Spirit's Low on Mars
1800 Martian days after it landed on the planet, the Mars Spirit Rover is acting strangely. The unexpected bad behavior isn't strange like HAL, but it could be strange like an old laptop. For some unknown reason, the rover has had on-and-off problems accessing its permanent memory and completing standard operations like driving around taking pictures of Mars. "We don't have a good explanation yet for the way Spirit has been acting for the past few days," said the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Sharon Laubach, chief of the team that writes and checks commands for the rovers. Spirit's fellow Martian rover Opportunity appears to be in fine condition. Both bots have been roving the midsection of Mars for more than 20 times the planned 90-day length of their missions. The NASA-JPL team will run diagnostic tests on the rover this week. The problems could be short-lived. It's possible that cosmic rays hit some vital electronics, causing them to temporarily malfunction. But if there is a serious problem with Spirit, it would come at an inopportune time. The next (bigger, badder) rover mission, the Mars Science Laboratory, was recently delayed for two years and won't launch until fall of 2011. (The MSL recently received the nickname, Rickroll, when fans of Rick Astley took over a Wired Science poll.) The Mars rovers' project manager, John Callas of JPL, remained upbeat, however. "Right now, Spirit is under normal sequence control, reporting good health and responsive to commands from the ground," Callas said. Image: NASA/JPL 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 | 29 Jan 2009 | 12:02 am Obituary: Sir James BaddileyThe distinguished scientist Sir James Baddiley, who has died aged 90, spent most of his career at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where he established a vibrant research group that later became the Microbiological Chemistry Research Laboratory, or MCRL, of which he was director from 1975 until 1983. The MCRL maintained an international reputation for its work on the structure, synthesis and function of bacterial cell walls, particularly in relation to teichoic acids, a group of polymers that form major components of the cell wall and membrane in gram-positive bacteria. It attracted large numbers of foreign students and visiting scientists, as well as providing training for MSc and PhD students, many of whom have gone on to achieve distinction in their own right. Baddiley was born and brought up in Manchester, where his father was director of research at the ICI dyestuffs division. He attended Manchester grammar school and Manchester University, where he was accepted as a PhD student by Alexander Todd (later Lord Todd, a Nobel laureate in 1957). Todd's group had begun the fundamental work on the chemistry of nucleosides, nucleotides and nucleic acids that provided the basis for subsequent work elucidating the central role of these compounds in cell biology and heredity. In addition to those that occur as structural elements in nucleic acids, nucleotides occur as coenzymes - compounds that act together with enzymes to bring about vital biochemical transformations in cells - and Baddiley's project was to devise methods for the chemical synthesis of these nucleotides to obtain definitive proof of their structure. In 1944 he moved with Todd to Cambridge University and was awarded an ICI research fellowship. Here Baddiley made a series of contributions to the chemistry of nucleotides, culminating in the first structurally definitive synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the nucleotide that is responsible for energy control and transfer, as well as many other vital functions in all living cells. He then joined the Wenner-Gren Institute in Stockholm, where he held a fellowship from the Swedish Medical Research Council, in the Lister Institute in London and at Harvard, where he held a Rockefeller fellowship. At the Lister, he established the structure of several nucleotide coenzymes, most notably coenzyme A (CoA), which is involved in the synthesis and metabolism of fatty acids and in the citric acid cycle. In 1954 he was appointed to the chair of organic chemistry at King's College, University of Durham (later part of Newcastle University), and in 1977 to the chair of chemical microbiology. In a memoir, Baddiley noted with appreciation that the head of chemistry, Kenrick (later Lord) Wynne-Jones, encouraged his application by making it clear that he could choose any area of research and could be relieved of much of the departmental administration. Early work in Newcastle established the structure of two unknown nucleotides - cytidine diphosphate glycerol and cytidine diphosphate ribitol - that had been detected in bacterial extracts during his time at the Lister. This work led on to the discovery of teichoic acids - major components of the cell walls and membranes of gram-positive bacteria. Studies on the structure, function and biosynthesis of these polymers (named from the Greek, teichos, a fortified wall) formed the major part of Baddiley's work over the rest of his time in Newcastle. On leaving Newcastle in 1981 Baddiley was awarded a Science and Engineering Research Council senior research fellowship, and moved to the biochemistry department at Cambridge. There, he engaged in a review of the development of biotechnology that led to the establishment of the Institute of Biotechnology, with Baddiley as the first chairman of its steering committee. He was appointed a fellow of Pembroke College, and made numerous contributions to the college and the university, serving on several committees. He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1961 and to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1962, received honorary degrees from Heriot-Watt and Bath universities, and was knighted in 1977. His early interest in rock climbing gave way to other pursuits, but he retained a fondness for fine art, classical music and the pleasures of good company and conversation. In 1944, he had married Hazel Townsend, a young textile designer who was active in setting up the University Wives International Group in Newcastle and did much to support the wives and families of students and academic visitors from overseas. She died in 2007 - a devastating loss to Baddiley. In recent years the tradition of work on bacterial cell walls in Newcastle has been revived through the establishment of the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology - one of the world's largest and most prominent research centres for the study of problems in bacterial cells. In recognition of the re-emergence of this discipline in Newcastle and of the huge contribution made by Baddiley in this area, an annual Baddiley lecture was established in Newcastle earlier this year. He was able to attend and was on great form, much enjoying the lecture by Sir John Walker (Nobel laureate, 1997), which described his work on the biosynthesis of ATP, the nucleotide whose chemical synthesis had been one of Baddiley's early achievements. He is survived by his son Christopher and two grandchildren. • James Baddiley, microbiologist, born 15 May 1918; died 19 November 2008 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 | 29 Jan 2009 | 12:01 am Mars Rover's Unexpected Behavior Puzzles NASA (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - NASA engineers are scratching their heads over some unexpected behavior from the long-lived Spirit rover, which began its sixth year exploring Mars this month.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Jan 2009 | 11:46 pm Stand Down: Black Holes Won't Destroy Earth (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - The world's largest, most powerful particle smasher probably won't generate any planet-gobbling black holes, according to a new analysis.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Jan 2009 | 11:15 pm Stand Down: Black Holes Won't Destroy EarthWorld's most powerful particle collider won't produce Earth-gobbling black holes.Source: Livescience.com | 28 Jan 2009 | 10:46 pm Obama's Science Agenda: Aggressive and DauntingHoldren, Chu, Browner and other officials have a lot on their shoulders.Source: Livescience.com | 28 Jan 2009 | 9:14 pm 'Iceman' Oetzi Attacked Twice, Suggests StudyResearch on a 5,000-year-old mummy paints a brutal picture of his final days.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jan 2009 | 8:30 pm Government wins third runway voteMPs vote to support plans for a new runway at Heathrow, as a second MP quits a government post in protest.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Jan 2009 | 8:24 pm Odd planet's extreme global warming: Highs of 2240 (AP)AP - Astronomers have found a planet with a galactic case of hot flashes.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Jan 2009 | 8:18 pm Study: Why We Get SleepyStudy finds brain cells called astrocytes fuel the urge to sleep by releasing adenosine.Source: Livescience.com | 28 Jan 2009 | 7:48 pm Spectacular New Image of Black Hole JetsThe APEX Telescope in Chile has produced a spectacular, high-resolution image of jets and lobes emanating from the supermassive black hole at the center of Centaurus A, our nearest giant galaxy. The galaxy is located 13 million light years from Earth and is actually the combination of an elliptical galaxy merging with a spiral galaxy. It has a very active star forming region and is a strong source of radio radiation emitted in the form of jets. The image is the first taken of the black hole at submillimeter wavelengths, revealing the radio jets of subatomic particles being ejected at about half the speed of light. The lobes north and south of the central dust disc can also be seen. The glow to the lower right of the galaxy is the shockwave created by the lobe colliding with the surrounding gas. The image is a composite made up of images taken with different instruments at different wavelengths. The Chandra X-ray Observatory imaged X-ray wavelengths, and the MPG/ESO Telescope brought out the background stars and dust disc. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 28 Jan 2009 | 7:34 pm Ocean iron plan approved as researchers show algae absorb CO2Seeding the oceans with iron is a viable way to permanently lock carbon away from the atmosphere and potentially tackle climate change, according to scientists who have studied how the process works naturally in the ocean. The study, from researchers at the University of Southampton, is published following the announcement earlier this week that scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany were finally given the go-ahead for a controversial experiment to drop several tonnes of iron into the Southern Ocean. Some environmentalists are concerned that the long-term ecological effects of iron seeding are unknown. Ocean geo-engineering using iron as a fertiliser for microscopic creatures in the ocean is seen as a possible way to slow down global warming. Marine algae and other phytoplankton capture vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, but this growth is often limited by a lack of essential nutrients such as iron. Artificially adding these nutrients would make algae bloom and, as the organisms grow, they take up CO2. When they die, some of the organisms sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking their carbon with them. But there has been little scientific work previously on whether the CO2 stays locked up for a significant period of time. Understanding how much iron is needed, how it should be added and what effect it would have on the local ecology is crucial in assessing whether iron fertilisation would be a useful tool in reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In the latest research, published tomorrow in Nature, the Southampton scientists studied a natural source of iron into the sea near the Crozet Islands at the northern boundary of the Southern Ocean, 1,400 miles south-east of South Africa. Their work showed that iron – which is added by the volcanic rocks to the north but not to the south of the island – successfully tripled the growth of phytoplankton and also the amount that sank to the bottom of the sea. Peter Burkill, director of the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Sciences in Plymouth, said: "This is a significant result. It suggests that ocean iron fertilisation might work for reducing atmospheric CO2 through export of carbon into the ocean's interior. But the next step from natural experiments, such as this one, to artificial ones is crucial. We now need to know what the ecological impacts of artificial fertilisation experiments are." Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia, said that previous small-scale artificial ocean fertilisation experiments had already shown that plankton are stimulated by iron, but there had long been questions about how deep the carbon is sequestered. "This paper suggests that Southern Ocean iron fertilisation can be quite effective at sending the carbon into the deep ocean." The Southampton study also made progress in understanding how iron fertlisation might work best. Their work showed that the amount of carbon that sank per unit of iron added, called the downward flux, was 77 times lower around Crozet than the flux measured in the only other survey of a natural iron source, carried out several years ago by French scientists in the Kerguelen Islands in the Southern Ocean. Richard Sanders of the University of Southampton, who took part in the study, said that the difference in algal blooms between different locations might be a result of several factors, including the type of iron compound used and also how it gets into the water. Around the Kerguelen Islands, the iron source comes from the relatively shallow sea floor. "Around the Crozet islands the iron seems to be coming in horizontally. It's possible that iron that comes off the land in this manner is different in some way," said Sanders. In addition, the Crozet iron is mainly in the form of small rock particles that do not dissolve in the water. Sanders says that the results have implications for the way iron-seeding experiments might be carried out in the future. For a start, they would probably require more iron than previously thought for any serious geo-engineering purpose and the compounds they choose to drop into the sea would need to be carefully chosen so that they stayed in the water long enough to take effect, rather than simply sinking straight to the bottom. Later this year, the team from the Alfred Wegener Institute will go out on the Polarstern research ship to examine some of these questions. They plan to place several tonnes of iron sulphate onto the surface of the Southern Ocean , primarily to study the role of iron in the biochemistry of the ocean. Karin Lochte, director of the institute said that its project would "help in arriving at a substantiated and fact-based political decision on whether or not iron fertilisation in the ocean is a useful technique that could contribute to climate protection." Environmentalists from the Canadian group ETC raised concerns last week about the research trip, arguing that it flouts an international moratorium not to dump iron into the oceans and its effects on local ecology were unpredictable. Watson said: "It's interesting that [the Polarstern] has been at the centre of a lot of controversy because they wanted to do an artificial experiment with 10 or 15 tonnes of iron. As this [Southampton] paper shows, much larger amounts of iron are being added daily by natural processes around the Crozet Island, and it doesn't seem to have done the Antarctic ecosystem any harm." 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 | 28 Jan 2009 | 6:47 pm People with Super-Memories Forget NothingImagine never forgetting anything. Virtue? Curse?Source: Livescience.com | 28 Jan 2009 | 6:40 pm Drought-Resistant Grass Genes Could Spur 21st Century Crops
Future generations of drought-resistant food and biofuel crops may have their roots in the genome sequence of sorghum, a tropical grass that's able to thrive in hot, dry conditions. Having transcribed its DNA, scientists can now set about connecting genes to hardiness, then applying their insights to the development of crop strains suited to a 21st century climate. "It can grow on marginal land. A lot of our own crops can't," said Joachim Messing, a Rutgers University plant geneticist and co-author of the study published Wednesday in Nature. "A year ago I was in Mozambique, and the corn looked terrible, but the sorghum was strong and tall. It doesn't need all these things that other plants need." Drought resistance is one of a battery of traits that agronomists hope to refine in the next several decades, during which Earth's population will swell by two billion people — all clamoring for food that modern agriculture cannot presently deliver. Developed world farms are already running at maximum capacity, with arable land already planted and the Green Revolution's fertilizer- and pesticide-based limits reached. Remaining land is often dry and salty, and farms around the world are threatened by weather extremes predicted as consequences of global warming. New, hardier crop strains are needed — and perhaps they could be engineered by applying sorghum's lessons to other plants. The rigorously deciphered genetic heritage of sorghum and other plants could help "meet the demands of a world faced by an ever-increasing population and by an erratic climate," wrote biologists Tajuki Sasaki and Baltazar Antonioni of Japan's National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in a commentary accompanying the study. "It constitutes the most powerful tool we have for revealing ways to increase the amounts of food and energy provided by plants," they wrote. Messing and his colleagues didn't analyze the function of the genes assembled by sorghum's 750 million base DNA pairs, but they did notice that sorghum possesses extra copies of a previously-identified family of drought resistance-related genes. These genes, he said, could prove central to regulating sorghum's metabolism. "The regulation of drought tolerance is very complex, involving many genes," said Messing. "Harsh conditions trigger a lot of other metabolic functions in the plant." Though sorghum is used primarily for animal feed in the developed world, these genes could be put into other grass species, from wheat to rice. If some cultures find genetic engineering to be unpalatable, other plants could be selectively bred to over-express the genes. Insights from sorghum could also translate to biofuel development, which has been hindered by the difficulty of breaking down plant cellulose. One sorghum strain is high in cellulose, while another is low: by crossing them, said Messing, scientists could learn how to produce less-woody crops. Citations: "The Sorghum bicolor genome and the diversification of
grasses." By Andrew H. Paterson, John E. Bowers, Remy Bruggmann, Inna
Dubchak, Jane Grimwood, Heidrun Gundlach, Georg Haberer, Uffe Hellsten,
Therese Mitros, Alexander Poliakov, Jeremy Schmutz, Manuel Spannagl,
Haibao Tang, Xiyin Wang, Thomas Wicker, Arvind K. Bharti, Jarrod
Chapman, F. Alex Feltus, Udo Gowik, "Sorghum in sequence." By Takuji Sasaki and Baltazar A. Antonio. Nature, Vol. 457 No. 7229, Jan. 28, 2009 Image: Flickr/Simon Blackley See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 28 Jan 2009 | 6:11 pm Exoplanet Sees Extreme Heat WavesNew research reveals shock-waves storms echoing across an exoplanet.Source: Livescience.com | 28 Jan 2009 | 6:03 pm Extreme Exoplanet's Wild RideWhile many exoplanets are extreme environments, this one could take the cake. As the planet, HD 80606b, whips around its star in a tremendously oblong orbit, its temperature rises from 980 to 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit in just six hours. Astronomers recently measured this intense heating using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to take infrared measurements of the heat emanating from the planet as it veered in close to its star. "We're looking at a planet that is subject to extraordinarily extreme conditions," University of California, Santa Cruz astronomer Gregory Laughlin, lead author of the research published Wednesday in Nature. "The planet is able to heat up and cool down much more quickly than Earth." The giant world (weighing about four times the mass of Jupiter) orbits its star every 111.4 days, swinging out from distances roughly equivalent to a spot between Venus and Earth in our own solar system in to a distance much closer than Mercury is from the sun. At its closest point to the star, HD 80606b is pummeled with sunlight 825 times stronger than the heat it gets at the farthest point in its orbit. The intense heat and radical temperature swings on the planet make it very unfriendly to life. "There's certainly no way that life could survive," Laughlin said. "It's an utterly uninhabitable environment." Laughlin and his team lucked out by discovering that the planet passes behind its star in an eclipse just before the moment of its closest approach. The eclipse allowed the astronomers to separate the planet's heat from the star's heat, and measure precisely how hot the planet gets as it cozies up to its star. By feeding the temperature measurements into a computer simulation, the researchers were able to model the planet's weather and reveal that global storms and shockwaves erupt on HD 80606b as it dives in near to its star. "The initial response could be described as an explosion on the side facing the star," said Jonathan Langton a co-author at UC Santa Cruz, in a press release. "As the atmosphere heats up and expands, it produces very high winds, on the order of 3 miles per second, flowing away from the day side toward the night side. The rotation of the planet causes these winds to curl up into large-scale storm systems that gradually die down as the planet cools over the course of its orbit." The computer simulations also created realistic images of what the planet would look like if it could be directly observed. "We can't get a direct image of the planet, but we can deduce what it would look like if you were there," Laughlin said. "The ability to go beyond an artist's interpretation and do realistic simulations of what you would actually see is very exciting." Citation: "Rapid heating of the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet." By Gregory Laughlin, Drake Deming, Jonathan Langton, Daniel Kasen, Steve Vogt, Paul Butler, Eugenio Rivera & Stefano Meschiari. Nature Vol. 457, 29 January 2009. See Also:
Image: Computer simulation pictures of heat patterns on HD 80606b. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/D. Kasen, J. Langton, and G. Laughlin (UCSC) Source: Wired: Wired Science | 28 Jan 2009 | 6:00 pm Super-rich still want to boldly go into spaceDAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The economic downturn has not dampened rich people's enthusiasm for space tourism, the world's first commercial space flight company says.Source: Reuters: Science News | 28 Jan 2009 | 5:27 pm Boys With Unpopular Names More Likely to Break LawBoys with common names like Michael and David are less likely to commit crimes than those named Ernest or Kareem.Source: Livescience.com | 28 Jan 2009 | 5:21 pm EU calls for US action on climateThe European Commission calls on President Obama to cap US carbon emissions and sign up to a global carbon trading system.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Jan 2009 | 5:11 pm Odd Planet Reaches Searing 1,200 DegreesAstronomers find a planet four times the size of Jupiter with extreme hot flashes.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jan 2009 | 5:00 pm Bird Flu - A Worldwide Pandemic?“H5N1” has killed nearly two thirds of those in whom it has been diagnosed. And it apparently makes so many different animal species sick that some public health officials warn of a worldwide pandemic.Source: Livescience.com | 28 Jan 2009 | 4:27 pm Book Tells Horror of 18th Century SurgeryA 300-year-old medical guidebook reveals how horrible things were way back then.Source: Livescience.com | 28 Jan 2009 | 4:18 pm Dr. Dave's Super Slo-Mo LabExpanding an Instant. Your world at super slow motion.Source: Livescience.com | 28 Jan 2009 | 4:04 pm Overcrowded Snowy Owl Swoops SouthBirders in the South are reporting sightings of the normally more northern snowy owl.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jan 2009 | 4:00 pm BLOG: Your Vote Steers HubbleYou can help decide what the Hubble Space Telescope will photograph next.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jan 2009 | 3:45 pm Worm savioursCould this creature be key to human health?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Jan 2009 | 3:20 pm Hidden Cameras Capture Remote JaguarsRemote cameras capture rare photos of jaguars in the wild.Source: Livescience.com | 28 Jan 2009 | 3:14 pm Lizards Evolved Quickly to Avoid Death by AntsLizards evolve at stunning speed in response to fire ant invasions.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jan 2009 | 3:05 pm Emperor Penguins Marching Toward ExtinctionEmperor penguins are at serious risk of extinction due to global warming.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jan 2009 | 3:00 pm Triceratops Butted Heads Like Modern BighornsA new study shows how Triceratops used their horns for sparring.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jan 2009 | 2:16 pm Jonathon Harrington: Why I planted genetically modified maize on my Welsh farmI find myself accused of a number of heinous acts including "infecting" Wales with GM, acting irresponsibly and possibly of breaking the law. Not bad for a Welsh peasant who simply wishes to try – with the support of the scientific community – to facilitate the introduction of a new and valuable technology into Welsh agriculture. So what is the precise nature of my supposedly "ill-informed", "illegal" and "irresponsible" behaviour? The seeds I planted are maize varieties on the EU's "common list" of approved crops. As such, my legal advice is that it is lawful to plant them within the EU. But according to some of my detractors those rules apparently do not apply in Wales. Then there is the charge that I have "infected Wales with GM". With what I ask? Genetic modification is a process as opposed to a product and as such cannot be bought or sold any more than "keyhole surgery". The analogy of GM technology as a contagion is simply false. It can of course be used for a variety of purposes: to give plants immunity from pest attack or resistance to disease or more recently the ability to withstand drought. There are a number of potential benefits the technology could offer Welsh farmers if the assembly government showed a more positive attitude towards it. Of these, maize is possibly the crop with the most potential for us to exploit in that we could use a range of different herbicides which would, for example, not drain into our beautiful river systems. These would also allow us to establish grass leys during the growing season so absorbing the considerable amounts of nitrogen not taken up by the maize crop. This in turn would reduce the often excessive amounts of soil eroded onto our roads and rivers and thereby reduce pollution and conserve our valuable arable land for future production. Have I removed consumer choice? Again, I believe not. That choice was taken away several decades ago – unless you choose to survive entirely on wild fruit and nuts. We are all either wearing or consuming plant products that have been bred using technology that involves artificially manipulating plant genes. I can't think of a single crop plant in the UK that has not been bred by artificially mutating its genes using chemicals or radiation. The group of techniques that are commonly referred to as genetic manipulation are simply more precise and safer ways of doing the same thing. What about the danger of my plants cross-pollinating with other plants and varieties? This is a potential outcome, but since nobody in the UK produces maize for seed and there are no other plants in the UK that are sufficiently closely related to maize to cross-pollinate with it this cannot be a justifiable accusation. So what have I achieved by my actions? Well I have at last brought the issue to the minds of many people who sought to sweep it under the carpet. And I have done this without endangering anyone and without touching the public purse. More importantly, the stance of the Welsh Assembly and others is helping to deny a valuable technology to millions. Like most new technologies, GM comes with some potential downsides but these are far outweighed by the enormous advantages it offers: the potential to increase dramatically both yields and the quality of crops harvested. In over 10 years of its use around the world millions of meals have been made from GM plants but no health problems have been reported. Moreover, GM crops are still in their infancy and future potential gains are extremely exciting. Think of the many thousands of people in Asia who suffer blindness from a lack of vitamin A in their diet – rice, their primary source of carbohydrate, contains no vitamin A. Yet the insertion of genes into rice plants could help reduce this appalling condition dramatically, and this has been made available free of charge by its developers. Then there are the many farmers who would prefer not to spray their crops with an insecticide when they could grow a variety – say of cotton – resistant to certain pests. We should not deny the millions of people who might benefit from this science by demanding that it be stopped. If the politicians we employ wish to persist with their ostrich-like attitude then I am sure that the weight of scientific evidence will eventually show them for the luddites they are. For those of us who live in the real world we need to take advantage of every piece of technology we can find to develop our agriculture and help to feed the nearly 1bn of our fellow human beings who are short of food. • Jonathon Harrington is chartered biologist working in the field on advanced crop technologies. He also has a small farm in the Black Mountains of Wales. He is a consultant for Cropgen, an organisation that promotes crop biotechnology. 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 | 28 Jan 2009 | 2:11 pm Rock Reveals Moon Had Liquid Metal CoreAnalysis of a lunar rock suggests the moon was magnetized by a liquid metal core.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jan 2009 | 2:05 pm Plastic chemical may stay in body longer: studyWASHINGTON (Reuters) - A controversial chemical used in many plastic products may remain in the body longer than previously thought, and people may be ingesting it from sources other than food, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 28 Jan 2009 | 1:48 pm
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