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Visual Decline As We Age: Genetics Or Environment?Which has a larger impact on the "normal" decline of visual function as we age, genetic or environmental factors? This question is explored in the February issue of Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Scientists Read Minds With Infrared Scan: Optical Brain Imaging Decodes Preference With 80 Percent AccuracyResearchers at Canada's largest children's rehabilitation hospital have developed a technique that uses infrared light brain imaging to decode preference -- with the goal of ultimately opening the world of choice to children who can't speak or move.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Are We Selling Personalized Medicine Before Its Time?We may be a long way off from using genetics to reliably gauge our risks for specific diseases, say researchers. Yet, many companies currently offer personalized genetic testing for diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and tout the ability of DNA testing to predict future health risks.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Don’t Go Changing: New Chemical Keeps Stem Cells YoungScientists have discovered a chemical that stops stem cells from turning into other cell types, allowing researchers to use these cells to develop new medical treatments more easily.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Grass Strips Help Curb Erosion, Herbicide TransportGrass filter strips placed in riparian zones not only curb soil erosion, but can help block and degrade the widely used herbicide atrazine, scientists report.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm An Infectious Hereditary Illness?Could a hereditary illness ever spread by contamination? Researchers studying Huntington’s disease have shown that the normal form of huntingtin protein can acquire an abnormal form without any modification of its genetic code. These researchers observed that clumps of abnormal huntingtin protein, characteristic of Huntington’s disease, could induce clumping in the normal form of the protein.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Magnetic Star Blasts Recorded in Real-TimeAstronomers are watching as a highly magnetized star showers the cosmos with radiation.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Feb 2009 | 2:15 pm Empathy Might Be in the Genes (HealthDay)HealthDay - WEDNESDAY, Feb. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Genes may play a role in a person's ability to empathize with others, suggests a U.S. study involving mice.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 2:02 pm Researchers link obesity to birth defectsLONDON (Reuters) - Obese women are more likely to give birth to children with spina bifida, heart problems, cleft palate and a number of other defects, British researchers said on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:57 pm Surgery makes artificial arms easier to controlCHICAGO (Reuters) - A new type of surgery may give amputees better control over their artificial arms, allowing them to point a finger, grasp a baseball bat or even give someone a pinch, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:42 pm Study debunks illegitimacy 'myth'The rate of illegitimate births in the population is lower than many people believe, according to a major study of male ancestry.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:39 pm Mexico unearths mass grave from Spanish conquestMEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Archeologists have found a mass grave in Mexico City with four dozen human skeletons laid out in neat lines that could reveal clues about the 16th century Spanish conquest that killed millions.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:36 pm Hot Dog! Tiny Breeds Have Warmer BodiesThe bigger the dog, the chillier its body, suggests a new study on different breeds.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:25 pm Twisted metal, cars in trees: tornado kills 15 (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:20 pm While Focusing On Heart Disease, Researchers Discover New Tactic Against Fatal Muscular DystrophyBased on a striking similarity between heart disease and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, researchers have discovered that a new class of experimental drugs for heart failure may also help treat the fatal muscular disorder.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm NASA's Swift, Fermi Probe Fireworks From A Flaring Gamma-ray StarAstronomers using NASA's Swift satellite and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope are seeing frequent blasts from a stellar remnant 30,000 light-years away. The high-energy fireworks arise from a rare type of neutron star known as a soft-gamma-ray repeater. Such objects unpredictably send out a series of X-ray and gamma-ray flares.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm Gene Variants Associated With Early Heart Attack IdentifiedThe largest study ever completed of genetic factors associated with heart attacks has identified nine genetic regions -- three not previously described -- that appear to increase the risk for early-onset myocardial infarction.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm New Technique Developed For Quick Detection Of SalmonellaA food science and human nutrition expert has developed a quick technique for testing for the presence of Salmonella.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm 10-year-old Sussex spaniel wins Westminster show (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 12:39 pm Apocalyptic climate predictions mislead the public, say expertsExperts at Britain's top climate research centre have launched a blistering attack on scientific colleagues and journalists who exaggerate the effects of global warming. The Met Office Hadley Centre, one of the most prestigious research facilities in the world, says recent "apocalyptic predictions" about Arctic ice melt and soaring temperatures are as bad as claims that global warming does not exist. Such statements, however well-intentioned, distort the science and could undermine efforts to tackle carbon emissions, it says. In an article published on the Guardian website, Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, calls on scientists and journalists to stop misleading the public with "claim and counter-claim". She writes: "Having to rein in extraordinary claims that the latest extreme [event] is all due to climate change is at best hugely frustrating and at worse enormously distracting. Overplaying natural variations in the weather as climate change is just as much a distortion of science as underplaying them to claim that climate change has stopped or is not happening." She adds: "Both undermine the basic facts that the implications of climate change are profound and will be severe if greenhouse gas emissions are not cut drastically." Dr Peter Stott, a climate researcher at the Met Office, said a common misrepresentation was to take a few years data and extrapolate to what would happen if it continues. "You just can't do that. You have to look at the long-term trend and then at the natural variability on top." Dramatic predictions of accelerating temperature rise and sea ice decline, based on a few readings, could backfire when natural variability swings the other way and the trends seem to reverse, he says. "It just confuses people." Pope says there is little evidence to support claims that Arctic ice has reached a tipping point and could disappear within a decade or so, as some reports have suggested. Summer ice extent in the Arctic, formed by frozen sea water, has collapsed in recent years, with ice extent in September last year 34% lower than the average since satellite measurements began in 1979. "The record-breaking losses in the past couple of years could easily be due to natural fluctuations in the weather, with summer ice increasing again over the next few years," she says. "It is easy for scientists to grab attention by linking climate change to the latest extreme weather event or apocalyptic prediction. But in doing so, the public perception of climate change can be distorted. The reality is that extreme events arise when natural variations in the weather and climate combine with long-term climate change." "This message is more difficult to get heard. Scientists and journalists need to find ways to help to make this clear without the wider audience switching off." The criticism reflects mounting concern at the Met Office that the global warming debate risks being hijacked by people on both sides who push their own agendas and interests. It comes ahead of a key year of political discussions on climate, which climax in December with high-level political negotiations in Copenhagen, when officials will try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 11 Feb 2009 | 12:07 pm Darwin and the DarwinistsThe question: What are the limits of Darwinian explanations?"Darwin was wrong", screamed the cover of a recent issue of the New Scientist, a theme dutifully picked up by the science correspondent of this newspaper amongst many others. Certainly, as a man of his time, race and class, his writing offers plenty of examples of racism and sexism, but these are not the charges being laid against him. So what egregious error was the great Charles being accused of in his 200th birthday year, packed as it is with celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species? That marvellous book would have earned Alice in Wonderland's disapproval, as it contains neither conversation nor pictures, but in one of Darwin's notebooks there is a little sketch of a branching tree, and it is here that his alleged mistake is embedded. Darwin's view of evolution was progressive. The tree illustrates his conception of how different life forms evolved, branching out from a single common ancestor. Over geological time better adapted, more varied, increasingly perfect organisms emerged (in one of his more poetic moments Darwin calls them "endless forms most beautiful"). In such a tree, we humans are naturally to be found amongst the topmost branches. Evolutionary biologists have recognised for many decades that such a tree diagram is misleading; all current life forms are by definition more or less equally evolved and adapted. Thus a bush rather than a tree of life is the preferred metaphor – perhaps much more like Darwin's own evocative phrase in the closing words of The Origin, where he contemplates the richness and variety of life forms to be found in the tangled bank of an English hedgerow. The alleged "newness" enabling the New Scientist to make its lurid claim is the evidence from modern genomics that the many branches of the bush are not as genetically distinct as once thought – a good deal of "gene hopping" between species, so called horizontal gene transfer – seems to have occurred. This is the phenomenon feared by ecologists worried about genetically engineering herbicide resistance into crops – sooner or later the genes conferring resistance will spread to weeds. So would Darwin have objected to this enlargement of the mechanisms of evolutionary change? Scarcely. As he repeatedly emphasised in later editions of The Origin, he was a pluralist, and I suspect would have been delighted at the rich new insights into the dynamics of living processes that genomics is revealing. Natural selection, sensu strictu, he insisted, was the main but by no means the only process by which species evolved. It is only the fundamentalists amongst orthodox ultra-Darwinians who might be perturbed. After all, for them individual genes seem to have achieved almost metaphysical significance, privileged above the mere passive vehicles of our bodies which they inhabit and whose every act they instruct. There is perhaps more to find fault with in Darwin's later books, The Descent of Man and The Expression of the Emotions, which have been taken as foundational gospels by the rather vulgar group who call themselves evolutionary psychologists. As a biologist and Darwinian I take it for granted that human psychology has been shaped by our evolutionary past. But EP's claims go far beyond this, arguing that "human nature" was fixed in the stone age and that there has not been evolutionary time subsequently to modulate these universals, such as women's having more orgasms when mating with men wearing rolex watches or men preference for sex with women who have optimal hip-waist ratios. (It is enough to visit the great picture galleries of Europe and observe what passed as soft pornography for our 17th century forebears to refute the latter claim). I suspect Darwin would have vigorously repudiated such so-called Darwinists, with their profoundly un-Darwinian notion of fixity, despite the fact that The Expression derives from Darwin's fascination with the similarities between the ways in which humans express our varied emotions and those of the great apes that he studied during his visits to the London zoo. Following Darwin, his modern successors, notably the psychologist Paul Ekman, claim that humans have but six basic emotions, disgust, fear, pleasure, surprise, anger and joy. The Expression contains a number of drawings and photographs of what to the modern eye appear as rather hammy Victorian actors miming these emotions, supposedly universally recognisable across cultures. Ekman reproduces them with modern actors, but to my eyes these appear no less hammy, and I find it difficult to distinguish between a supposed expression of disgust and one of surprise, even though, as a regular poker player, I judge myself to be quite competent at reading faces. Cultural anthropologists too are unhappy with the idea of a universal set of six basic emotions, listing amongst others distress, shame, contempt, "mutual interdependence", melancholy, and even Hwyl, a Welsh term for inspiration – amongst them. There is much current neuroscientific excitement about the presence in the human brain – and in those of other primates - of neurons that become active both when one is oneself performing an action or when one observes another carrying out the same action. These so-called "mirror neurons" have been argued to be part of the biological substrate for empathy. Be that as it may, as social animals, humans are highly skilled at recognising feelings and intentions in others. And this depends on far more subtle clues than exaggerated facial expressions. The Gulbenkian Foundation recently hosted a fascinating meeting between neuroscientists and actors. One display was particularly striking. The charismatic theatre director John Wright dressed two actors in expressionless blank face masks, and asked them to enact scenarios varying from victimhood to aggression. As expected, their body language changed as they made the transitions. But what was more striking is the way that to us, their audience, the blank masks too changed in appearance. That is, we read into the masks what we expected to find there. So it is what we read into other people's faces which is important, not just an "objective" interpretation of grimaces. Such reading must be inextricably culture-dependent, and sounds a bit like empathy to me. I suspect it would have greatly pleased Darwin. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 11 Feb 2009 | 12:06 pm India to help fertiliser units switch to natural gas (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 9:30 am Treasure islandsFrom the word's loneliest tortoise to bizarre sea lizards - meet the inhabitants of Darwin's GalapagosSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Feb 2009 | 8:45 am Drugs council to recommend downgrading of ecstasyThe government's drug advisory body is expected today to recommend moving ecstasy from a class A to a class B drug. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs will publish its long-awaited investigation into the harm caused by the drug, often used by clubbers. The publication of the report has been overshadowed by comments made by the ACMD's chairman, Professor David Nutt, who compared the dangers of ecstasy with those of riding a horse. Nutt later apologised for any offence he caused to the families of ecstasy victims. He is expected to repeat his apology at the launch of the publication today. Nutt said he had "no intention of trivialising the dangers of ecstasy" after his comments were reported at the weekend. He was publicly slapped down by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, who accused him of "insensitivity to the families of victims". Nutt said: "I am sorry to those who may have been offended by my article. I would like to apologise to those who have lost friends and family due to ecstasy use. I would like to assure those who have read my article that I had no intention of trivialising the dangers of ecstasy." But he maintained that the statistical comparison between the two activities was a "useful" one. Writing in the Journal of Psychopharmacology last month, Nutt said that taking the drug was no more dangerous than what he called "equasy", or people's addiction to horse riding. Ecstasy use is linked to around 30 deaths a year, up from 10 a year in the early 1990s. Fatalities are caused by massive organ failure from overheating or the effects of drinking too much water. Ministers have signalled that they will reject the council's advice. A Home Office spokesman said: "Ecstasy can and does kill unpredictably; there is no such thing as a safe dose. The government firmly believes that ecstasy should remain a class A drug." Evan Harris, the science spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, defended Nutt's comments, saying he was engaging in "rational debate" when he made his horse riding analogy. Speaking on GMTV, Harris said that the government ought to take an evidence-based approach to drugs classification. He said: "I would seek to educate all young people against taking drugs, including alcohol and cigarettes, which are even more harmful than some of the ones that are illegal. "But the problem with putting ecstasy in class A – and we will see what the report says – is that if thousands of young people take E every weekend and they see that it is in the same class as heroin and cocaine and crack cocaine, then it is hard to argue that those are particularly more dangerous than ecstasy." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 11 Feb 2009 | 8:33 am Indonesian city grapples with quake threatPADANG, Indonesia (Reuters) - Remember the name Padang. Geologists say this Indonesian city of 900,000 people may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake as it is in a seismic hot spot in one of the most quake-prone places in the world.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:42 am Planet-Hunting Space Telescope Readies for Launch
Another planet like Earth, that is. Soon, a new NASA telescope mission called Kepler may finally make that happen. Set to launch March 5 from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the $550 million Kepler telescope is designed to detect extrasolar planets that are the same size as Earth, orbiting around stars the same size as the sun, at a range similar to Earth's distance from the sun, and with orbits of about one year, like ours. "The whole mission was designed around this goal," said Kepler co-investigator William Cochran, an astronomer at McDonald Observatory at the University of Texas at Austin. "If we find no Earth-like planets, then we can say with great confidence that Earths like ours are rare." Although more than 300 exoplanets have been discovered around other stars, none have been quite as small as Earth, and even the ones that come close don't usually orbit in what's called the habitable zone — the range in which temperatures would be favorable for life. The results from Kepler could be important in trying to predict how common life, and even intelligent life, is in the galaxy. A famous calculation called the Drake equation aims to quantify how many extraterrestrial civilizations might exist in our galaxy that we could be able to communicate with. The equation, devised in 1960 by Frank Drake of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, or SETI, takes into account many factors, such as the rate of star formation in the galaxy, the fraction of stars with planets and the fraction of planets that are habitable. If Kepler can help estimate the frequency of Earth-size planets, astronomers will be a lot closer to making an accurate estimate with the Drake equation. Kepler differs from most planet-hunting projects, which use the Doppler-shift method to search for stars that wobble due to the small gravitational pull of an orbiting planet. With existing technology, that method can only detect planets that are more massive than Earth, whose gravitational pull is large enough to tug at their parent stars with a strength we would notice. Instead, Kepler will use a powerful optical telescope to detect the slight dimming of light that results when a planet moves between us and its star. This technique, as opposed to the Doppler method, does not depend on a planet's mass, so is better suited to reveal smaller planets. "This could be a really fabulous mission," said UCLA astronomer Benjamin Zuckerman, who studies extrasolar planets, but has no direct involvement in the Kepler mission. "The nice thing about this mission, if it works as well as they hope, is that whatever result it gets is interesting. Either they find something, or they can put a strong limit on the frequency of Earth-sized planets." After Kepler's launch, the telescope will begin continuously observing a single field of view, in which the brightnesses of 100,000 stars will be monitored for changes resulting from transiting planets. It will begin collecting data within days of its launch and the first results could be released by next fall. "The number of stars we are looking at is such that if it turns out Earth-like planets are common, we should find 30 to 50 of them," Cochran told Wired.com. If Kepler finds planets that could be Earth twins, it won't be able to detect whether or not they host life. Other missions, such as a potential NASA observatory called the Terrestrial Planet Finder or the European Space Agency's Darwin, will have to investigate those possibilities. After its launch, Kepler is set to observe for at least three and a half years, with the possibility of extending its run if things go well. The observatory could find Earth-size planets with quick orbits within months, but detecting planets with periods closer to one year will likely happen toward the end of Kepler's mission. "The only planets we can detect are those for which we are looking edge-on to the orbit," Cochran said. "Then for those where we are looking edge-on, the planets that we'll see most easily are the ones with the shortest periods." See Also:
Images: NASA Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:18 am No stomach for market turmoil? Thank your genesWASHINGTON (Reuters) - No stomach for the ups and downs of the financial market? Or maybe you lost everything in the global economic downturn? Genes important for mood and risk-taking likely played a clear role, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:07 am Senate Passes Stimulus Bill Containing $1.3 Billion for NASA (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate passed an $838 billion economic stimulus package Tuesday that includes $1.3 billion for NASA - more than double the amount the House approved Jan. 28 for the U.S. space agency in its version of the bill.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 12:17 am System peers under skin to reveal muscle actionsAMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch researchers have developed a system they say could help people learn to walk and balance sooner after an injury or stroke by displaying a virtual image of their body and moving muscles on a screen in real time.Source: Reuters: Science News | 10 Feb 2009 | 11:46 pm Can algae save the world - again?PLYMOUTH, England (Reuters) - Can algae save the world again? The microscopic green plants cleaned up the earth's atmosphere millions of years ago and scientists hope they can do it now by helping remove greenhouse gases and create new oil reserves.Source: Reuters: Science News | 10 Feb 2009 | 10:48 pm New Wrinkly Dog Breed Makes Westminster Debut
Champion Brando T Beefcake's ancestors fought bears and bulls. Possibly descended from Roman guard dogs, they defended their masters so fiercely that Adolf Hitler reportedly ordered them executed. Their judgment came in the form of survival. On Tuesday morning, the 140-pound dogue de Bordeaux, fresh off a night's sleep at the posh New Yorker hotel, was judged in a very different way.
"The space between the eyes is equal to about twice the length of the eye," they recommend. Of the tail, "The tip preferably reaches the hock but not below. Carried low, it is neither broken nor kinked but supple." Between those two extremes falls the narrative of the Dogue de Bordeaux breed, which made its debut at the 133rd Westminster Kennel Club dog show — the canine Super Bowl — after being formally recognized by the AKC. Joining the AKC's ranks marks a critical juncture in the breed's ongoing evolution. Like nearly every other breed, the dogue de Bordeaux (French for "Bordeaux mastiff") is a modern invention, separated by just a few hundred years from the handful of ancient dog types, themselves only recently derived from a few Far Eastern wolves. Its evolution will, to some extent, settle — but it won't stop. "The No. 1 effect we'll get in all this is consistency in the breed," said Vicki Saez, Beefcake's owner. "The AKC judges are not going to reward drastic difference." The dogue de Bordeaux's origins are somewhat mysterious. It belongs to the Molossers, a group including Saint Bernards, mastiffs and boxers, but little beyond that is known. Some people think that it was bred from bulldogs. Others say it was derived from Tibetan mastiffs or Julius Caesar–era Roman guard dogs. Whatever its origins, the breed found a home in France. These ancestral dogues, however, looked quite different from their descendants. Just a century ago, they came in a spectrum of shapes and sizes: big bodies and small bodies, big and small heads, scissor-biting jaws and overbiting jaws, brown and brindle coats. But like many European breeds, the dogue de Bordeaux nearly disappeared during World War II. Just 60 or 70 animals were left at the war's end, said Donna Deschambault, vice president of the Canine Federation of Canada and dogue de Bordeaux breeder. Its continued existence was uncertain. To save them, breeders added Saint Bernards to the genetic mix, giving the dogue its characteristic large head. French dog expert Raymond Triquet wrote formal standards for the dogue, instructing breeders on how their dogs should look and behave. The standards were soon adopted worldwide. "They've decided that we've done enough crossbreeding," said Andrea Switzer, a founder of the Dogue de Bordeaux Society of America. "They don't want to add more. This is our breed." In the United States, where dogues are best known from the movie Turner and Hooch, all this has culminated in Champion Brando T Beefcake. On Tuesday at Westminster, he won Best of Breed honors: His 11/10 proportions, trapezoidal head and symmetrical face wrinkles are the literal embodiment of everything a dogue de Bordeaux is supposed to be. But the breed, though secure, is not entirely safe. It could be argued that dogue de Bordeaux cross-breeding shouldn't have stopped: Dogues are prone to bloat, heart problems, a range of bone and joint afflictions, hemophilia and thyroid disease. Saez, like most dogue de Bordeaux breeders, tested Beefcake for
these conditions. But breeders are caught in a paradox: They want to
cultivate healthy animals, but also select individuals to fit precise
physical specifications. Conforming a breed shrinks its gene pool, making it difficult to remove genetic diseases. Compounding this problem is a lack of genetic tests. Though some tests exist for other breeds, none apply to the dogue. "Everything is genetic. It's a roll of the dice," said Deschambault. But Deschambault is optimistic. When the dogue's continued existence was uncertain, breeders necessarily allowed unhealthy animals to reproduce. Now there are thousands of dogues, and breeders can be picky. "Now that the population is high, we have to define a healthy dog," said Deschambault. "Standards reflect the dog of this generation, of this century. It's hard to say what the dogue will look like in another 100 years." See Also:
Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 10 Feb 2009 | 10:31 pm Small Farms Sprout in Economic DroughtTens of thousands of small farms were created since 2002, according to new data from the Census of Agriculture.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Feb 2009 | 10:14 pm Time To Put Darwin in His Place (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Charles Darwin would be 200 years old this week. And after all these years, people are still arguing about the theory of evolution that he fathered.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Feb 2009 | 9:30 pm Rare Green Comet Approaches EarthDiscovered by a Chinese undergrad, Comet Lulin will make its closest pass on Feb. 24.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Feb 2009 | 9:25 pm Boiling pointWhy we are failing to solve the world's water woesSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Feb 2009 | 7:34 pm Big particle collider to restart in September (AP)AP - Additional safety features being added to the world's largest atom smasher will postpone its startup until the end of September, a year after the $10 billion machine was sidelined by a simple electrical fault, the operator said Tuesday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Feb 2009 | 7:10 pm Atom Smasher to Try Restart in SeptemberA $10 billion particle smasher is due to restart this Sept. after being sidelined for a year.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm Google Smart Meter App Not Ready for Finals
The Googles are coming! The Googles are coming! Monday night, Google announced it is developing a software utility, PowerMeter, that allows you to track your energy usage. By communicating with an as-yet undeveloped set of hardware devices, the smart meter software could provide you with granular, real-time data about your energy usage. In the tech world, everybody used to break into hives at the slightest hint that the all-knowing, all-seeing Google was going to enter their business, providing free tools and doing everything better. But slowly people realized that Google isn't the best company to do everything. They don't always win, and they may well not win here either. First, where's all that data going to come from? Sure, Barack Obama's stimulus plan calls for 40 million more smart meters to be installed, but as we noted last year, the functionality of these little devices varies widely. Some track things in real-time, others don't. And they're expensive. The sensors required to track all of the major appliances in your home would be hundreds of dollars and Google isn't just going to send you a kit with all of the smart devices. Absent the data gathering ecosystem, all Google is really offering you is a graphing utility. And we've already seen plenty of companies, including the guys who made Flash, offer up similar or better products. To become the de facto window into your energy usage, Google will have to use their size and weight to bring some standardization to smart metering practices. To do that, they'll need hardware manufacturers to come out with very cheap Google-ready devices and then they'll have talk dozens of utilities into eschewing their own smart meter plans to follow Google's lead. Or they'll have to get the government to mandate that Google's approach is correct. This could be where Google earns its money. Some utilities aren't really interested in helping consumers cut their usage — what they're really after is just simply knowing how much power people are using at any given, so they know when they have to fire up their expensive, dirty peaker power plants. Smart-meter makers have responded with products that aren't always consumer friendly or even consumer facing. Google, on the other hand, has a vested interest in making sure that information is freely available in real-time and that it can be tied to real-time electricity pricing information. That's a very consumer-friendly approach — and we're glad to see someone pushing that agenda. They are already making their case in California. Expect them to apply legislative pressure all of the U.S., if they are really serious about controlling, err, organizing, your energy data. 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 | 10 Feb 2009 | 6:26 pm Time To Put Darwin in His PlaceThe terms "Darwinian evolution" and "Darwinism" are misleading.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Feb 2009 | 5:56 pm Moist Air May Hold Off FluGrandma may have been right about keeping a kettle on the stove in winter to moisten the air.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Feb 2009 | 5:47 pm Study: Birds shifting north; global warming cited (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Feb 2009 | 5:09 pm "Big Bang" collider startup postponed to SeptemberGENEVA (Reuters) - The giant particle collider built to reproduce "Big Bang" conditions will now be restarted in September to allow time for repairs, not the summer as planned, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said.Source: Reuters: Science News | 10 Feb 2009 | 4:58 pm Body Language Reveals WealthSubtle body language reveals a person's socioeconomic status.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Feb 2009 | 4:53 pm Birds Shifting North as Planet WarmsMore than half the bird species in North America are wintering 35 miles farther north.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Feb 2009 | 4:47 pm Mars' Biggest Volcano Could Shelter LifeThe shape of Olympus Mons suggests it may trap water, and possibly life, beneath.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Feb 2009 | 4:26 pm Should I interview Adnan Oktar?Out of the blue, I recently received an invitation from Turkish writer Harun Yahya to go to Istanbul for an exclusive interview. Yahya – whose real name is Adnan Oktar, aka Adnan Hoca – is an intriguing fellow indeed. He's probably the most well-known and vocal Muslim creationist. Unlike most Christian creationists, Oktar and his gang, a Turkish sect called the Science Research Foundation, don't believe the Earth is a few thousand years old. Oh no, they entertain a whole different flavour of stupid. Oktar is the author of a gargantuan tome called the Atlas of Creation, in which he tirelessly asserts that the fossil record demonstrates that all creatures were created as they are today. The book lays out a superficial and frequently inaccurate defence, mostly simply showing a fossil and a similar extant creature. But heavens to Betsy, there's a lot of it. Six kilograms and 800 naff glossy pages in fact. Gaudiness aside, the Atlas of Creation is dangerous. Biblical creation is obviously a story, an allegorical myth from humankind's childhood. To the untrained eye, the atlas looks both impressive and credible, despite being entirely specious. As I now receive unsolicited updates from his office, this week – Darwin's 200th birthday – I have been alerted to a laughable sewerage of Oktar's newest brainwrongs, including an article that states that "Darwin is the WORST FASCIST there has ever been, and the WORST RACIST history has ever witnessed. This is not an accusation or insult, it is a PHILOSOPHICAL, TECHNICAL FACT". Yikes! After asking around, I began to feel less special about the invitation. Staff at the Guardian, at Nature, even the UK's most charming public-transport atheist Ariane Sherine, have been invited into his lair too. So this is clearly the age-old creationist tactic not to win the debate, but to have the debate. Willingness to engage supposedly somehow validates the creationist position. Thus I am cautious. Nevertheless, this guy is very influential in Islamic creationism, and therefore might be worth talking to. I consulted Eugenie Scott, the wise and well-tempered head of the National Centre for Science Education – an organisation that makes it their business to defend evolution in the US. She said I should go, and suggested I press him on two issues: 1) Where do they get their funding from? Colossal as it is, the Atlas of Creation was sent out, unsolicited and for free, to thousands of educational and media outlets around the world, the Guardian included. It's gaudy but not gimcrack: production costs would have been truly phenomenal, and they would have had to lick a serious amount of stamps. Who's paying? 2) There doesn't appear to be any copyright permission or credits for all of the thousands of images in the Atlas. The legality of this last point is certainly perplexing. Why does Oktar remain unchallenged on this? There is a hilarious flipside to this question though. Page 244 has a picture of a caddis fly, with a legend that asserts – as virtually every page does – that the beast in question has always existed in its current form as demonstrated by a vaguely similar looking fossil, therefore evolution is bunk. Except it's not a caddis fly, it's a fishing lure, beautifully crafted by master tier Graham Owen, with the clearly visible hook piercing the man-made abdomen. Other exquisite examples of Owen's work also appear in the Atlas. The Guardian's Riazat Butt did sit down with Oktar and wrote it up on the Science blog. She asked, but he wouldn't answer the question of funding. The thread that followed was dominated by fervent supporters, totting up a robust 457 responses. Although I attract my fair share of trolls, creationists and a couple of tiresome stalkers, the same monikers don't haunt my blogs about evolution or creationism: it smacked of a coordinated defence. These people are not idiots, even if they are fools. Oktar is stalked by controversy that way outstrides his creationism. His favourite tactic is to get websites banned in Turkey, with notable successes including Richard Dawkins' site. But he is attached to more unpleasant dealings, including sex and blackmail scandals. In May 2008 he was sentenced to a three year custodial sentence for "creating an illegal organisation for personal gain". To be honest, I don't understand why he is not in jail. It is quite possible that after this article, the offer will be withdrawn. But is there anything to be gained from talking to him? By his own admission, Oktar is not a scientist, so that line of enquiry will surely be limited. His £4tn prize for anyone who can demonstrate a transitional fossil doesn't exactly suggest an open mind. Islamic creationism is a different but no less foul-smelling phenomenon to that of fundamentalist Christianity. It would be quite an adventure I'm sure, but I am torn. So, I put it to you, dear readers, should I go to Turkey to interview Adnan Oktar? And if yes, what should I ask him? guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 10 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Let's hope Sammy Wilson is rightCool your boots Guardianistas and enviro-squakers. Before you board your sustainably sourced wooden pedalos and set off for Northern Ireland with organic vegetables in hand ready to pelt the Democratic Unionist party's environment minister, Sammy Wilson for daring to air his reservations regarding anthropomorphic climate change, let's hear the man out. What does he think? Why does he think it? He's not convinced that climate change is caused by human activity, well let's suppose he's right. Brilliant. What a relief. Woohoo! Wilson believes the warming planet has nothing to do with us, so he must have read some pretty convincing science from some pretty reputable sources to arrive at that serene position – after all, he's advocating nothing short of an astonishing scientific paradigm shift. I can't wait for him to reveal his scientific sources. But I doubt that Wilson is a bad man. I think he's wrong but he's not saying that we should spend all that extra money instead on having a big party where we soak a plane in oil , set fire to it and watch as it flies into a refinery. No, he wants to free up money to tackle poverty, Aids, education and any number of other worthwhile projects – seemingly anything other than the environment. All laudable causes, but perhaps odd ones for the Northern Ireland Assembly's environment minister. Here's what he has to say: "Most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about it." Although I think what he must have meant is: "The people who shout 'Climate change is not man made have not read one article about it.'" But my being facetious is not going to convince him he's wrong. Only science can do that, using things like facts and evidence and research and well, you know, science. I've been very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with climate scientists on two trips to the Arctic with Cape Farewell in 2007 and 2008. One of the most interesting things I read while there was in Wallace Broecker and Robert Kunzig's excellent book, Fixing Climate, where they discuss the introduction of underground sewage removal and the resistance to it from people I imagine to be very similar to Sammy Wilson. As underground sewage removal was proposed and planned, these towering Wilsons of their day claimed that it was too expensive to take the filth from the streets and carry it away underground and that the links between ill health and crap all over the pavements were unfounded. They lost the argument, mercifully, it cost us some money, but on balance I'm glad that I don't have to navigate my way through my neighbour's excrement to reach the station. If only CO2 emissions were as visible as sewage. It's so hard to make the case for leaving crap all over the place when people can see you're standing on a heap of it. Back with today's Wilson, he says, "In 20 years' time we will look back at this whole climate change debate and ask ourselves How on earth were we ever conned into spending the billions of pounds which are going into this without any kind of rigorous examination of the background, the science, the implications of it all?" I'm trying not to resort to patronising sarcasm and abuse as I look at this, but it's getting harder and the heat under my collar when confronted by this level of mendacity or ignorance is enough to melt an ice cap. Read a book you idiot, or the UN Earth Audit, or the Stern review, or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's findings, or Google it, just read something, anything. Well almost anything, not Jeremy Clarkson. Oh, and check the source of what you've read. Of course scientific argument cannot be won by democracy. According to a survey last month the overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe global warming is manmade (97% in fact). Not because their huge grants depend on it either but because the evidence has led them to that conclusion. Please someone show me the climate scientist living in a 20-room mansion and rolling out of expensive nightclubs with Krug in hand to be driven home in an Aston Martin – those grants are not as large as some might have you believe. Even if you lump in the ones who work for oil companies, 82% of earth scientists believe the data on manmade climate change. Writing about the survey, Peter Doran, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences University of Illinois at Chicago along with Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, conclude that "the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes." Wilson doesn't yet. But with further reading, I'm sure he will. In the meantime Sammy show us your science or it's to the pedalos and organic veg. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 10 Feb 2009 | 3:32 pm Oldest Human Hair Found in Fossilized Hyena DungA 200,000-year-old clump of hyena dung yields the oldest known human hair.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Feb 2009 | 3:06 pm Six-Legged 'Sandbot' Walks on SandA six-legged robot walks on sand, helping scientists understand granular media.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Feb 2009 | 2:24 pm DNA May Reveal Origins of Medieval ManuscriptsResearcher testing method to trace medieval texts with DNA from animal skin parchment.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Feb 2009 | 1:48 pm New Device Reads Minds Pretty WellResearchers say they can glean simple preferences from a person's brain by shining near-infrared light into the noggin.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Feb 2009 | 1:30 pm Open thread: A profile too far?In 10 years' time all newborn babies could have their genetic code mapped at birth. A complete DNA read-out could help to detect, or predict, conditions such as diabetes and heart failure. However, the automatic mapping of babies' genes is bound to pose questions of privacy and how the information will be handled: could an employer refuse to hire someone likely to suffer from a chronic condition? Or could your insurance company decide inflate its prices after reading your file? If given the choice, would you agree to have your DNA sequence mapped, in spite of the external risks? Would you want to know which diseases you were likely to suffer from? guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsSource: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 10 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm Enchanted IslesRetracing Darwin's footsteps in the Galapagos IslandsSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Feb 2009 | 12:54 pm
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