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Did Burst Of Gene Duplication Set Stage For Human Evolution?Roughly 10 million years ago, a major genetic change occurred in a common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans. Segments of DNA in its genome began to form duplicate copies at a greater rate than in the past, creating an instability that persists in the genome of modern humans and contributes to diseases like autism and schizophrenia. But that gene duplication also may be responsible for a genetic flexibility that has resulted in some uniquely human characteristics.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Pubic Hair Provides Evolutionary Home For Gorilla LiceThere are two species of lice that infest humans: pubic lice, Pthirus pubis, and human head and body lice, Pediculus humanus. A new article suggests one explanation for the separation of the two species.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Dangerous Printer Particles IdentifiedThe identity and origin of tiny, potentially hazardous particles emitted from common laser printers have been revealed by a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Born To Be Wild? Thrill-seeking Behavior May Be Based In The BrainWhat draws some people to daredevil behavior while others shy away from it? The results of a new study in Psychological Science show that high sensation seekers respond very strongly to arousing cues, but have less activity in brain areas associated with emotional regulation. These findings may indicate the way by which sensation seeking results in negative behaviors, including substance abuse and antisocial behavior.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Could Carbon Dioxide Replace Antibiotics In Surgery?Filling a surgical wound with carbon dioxide gas could reduce infection and improve healing. A wound could continuously be flooded with carbon dioxide gas during surgery. Carbon dioxide could prevent airborne bacteria from reaching the wound and would also suffocate germs. CO2 is already used for this purpose in the food packaging business. Humidified CO2 would also keep the wound warm and moist, which should reduce tissue damage and speed-up healing.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Leukemia Stem Cells Have More In Common With Embryonic Stem Cells Than Adult Stem CellsResearch using a mouse model of human leukemia has provided critical insight into the genetic factors related to the generation and maintenance of myeloid leukemia stem cells. The study is likely to have a profound impact on the future design of therapeutic approaches targeted against cancer stem cells.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm What Men Must Know About WomenScience offers tips for snagging, and keeping, a woman.Source: Livescience.com | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:30 pm What Would Darwin Do?If Darwin were alive today, he would be thrilled, excited and a little shocked at how his theory is treated today.Source: Livescience.com | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:26 pm World celebrates Darwin's 200th anniversaryCAMBRIDGE, England (Reuters) - His beetle cabinet is back in his old college rooms, his home is a national treasure and the islands that led Charles Darwin to evolutionary theory are under threat from tourism two centuries after his birth.Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:16 pm US, Russian satellites collide in space (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:05 pm New Clues To Pancreatic Cells' Destruction In DiabetesResearchers have found what appears to be a major culprit behind the loss of insulin-producing b cells from the pancreases of people with diabetes, a critical event in the progression of the disease.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm High Level Of Adverse Drug Reactions In Hospitals FoundIn a study of more than 3,000 patients, researchers have found that one in seven admitted to hospital experience adverse drug reactions to medical treatment.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm Why Sleep Is Needed To Form MemoriesIf you ever argued with your mother when she told you to get some sleep after studying for an exam instead of pulling an all-nighter, you owe her an apology, because it turns out she's right. And now, scientists are beginning to understand why. Scientists describe for the first time how cellular changes in the sleeping brain promote the formation of memories.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm Decoding Funny Faces To Detect Mental IllnessResearchers have discovered that brain imaging can identify mental illness before it starts. Until now, detecting mental illness before symptoms appear has been nearly impossible.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm Scientists eye debris after satellite collision (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 12:19 pm Searches and cleanup continue in Oklahoma (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 12:05 pm Growing threatSpace collisions highlight the need orbital vigilanceSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Feb 2009 | 12:03 pm Russian and US satellites collideUS and Russian satellites collide in space, creating a cloud of debris above Siberia in the first reported accident of its kind.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Feb 2009 | 11:37 am Total oil group reports record French profits (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 11:33 am U.S., Russia track satellite crash debrisMOSCOW (Reuters) - Space officials in Russia and the United States were on Thursday tracking hundreds of pieces of debris that were spewed into space when a U.S. satellite collided with a defunct Russian military satellite.Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 10:51 am Darwin day in the UKHundreds of celebrations are taking place around the world today on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. Darwin Day lists more than 650 events in 42 countries marking the life of the naturalist and author who was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 12 February 1809. Today is also the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin's most famous work. Many events in Britain involve a mix of birthday cake, evolutionary education and artefacts from Darwin's life, though Bristol zoo has a novel offering – visitors with beards, real or fake, get in free before noon. Among the biggest celebrations is at the Natural History Museum in London which is putting on films, talks and pea soup, cooked to the recipe of Darwin's wife, Emma. Its Darwin show is the biggest ever exhibition about the naturalist. Visitors can retrace Darwin's HMS Beagle voyage and learn about his work in London and at his home in Downe, Kent. Many specimens and artefacts are on show for the first time. Later, at 5.45pm, a wreath-laying ceremony will take place at Darwin's grave in Westminster Abbey. Shrewsbury, which is holding a Darwin festival, is marking the birth of its most famous son with a guided walk of some of the naturalist's haunts. He was born in Mount House, near the town centre, the son of Robert, a respected doctor, and Susannah, a member of the Wedgwood pottery family. At noon, fans will toast Darwin at the Bellstone, a rock in central Shrewsbury where the naturalist had an early introduction to geology. According to Darwin, a Mr Cotton explained to him that this type of stone was only found much further north in Cumbria or Scotland and went on to assure him that "the world would come to an end before anyone would be able to explain how this stone came where it now lay." It was in fact moved by ice sheets. Also today, the Royal Mail launches six Darwin stamps in the shape of jigsaw pieces to symbolise the interconnectedness of the world. First-class stamps show a portrait of Darwin while others in the series depict animals associated with him. Tomorrow Darwin's Kent home of 40 years, Down House, will reopen after renovation. On display are the rooms where he wrote On the Origin of Species, as well as notebooks and objects from his travels. For those unable to get to an event, Darwin's complete publications and 20,000 private papers are available online. Or check your pocket. If you have a Bank of England £10 note, it will show a hummingbird, the Beagle and a Darwin portrait. 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 | 12 Feb 2009 | 9:20 am Space odysseyGhana's rocket man aims for the Moon and beyondSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Feb 2009 | 8:48 am Darwin as a religious figureI have just been sent a beautiful hardback edition of the Origin of Species from Penguin, which not only has a cover design by Damian Hirst but a blurb from him too. I don't rate his words much more highly than his art, but in this case they actually have something to tell us: they are the clearest possible example of the use of Darwin as a religious object. I know that out in the creation/evolution wars on the net, "Darwinism" is a term used by people who don't understand evolutionary biology and who want to equate science with religion as alternate and competing ways of reaching the truth. I am not trying to do that. I think that science is a distinct mode of thought and practice and religion isn't and can turn almost anything to its purposes. So I want to use "Darwinism" as a term meaning what people who don't understand evolutionary biology think that it says, whether they're for it or against it. In this sense. Hirst is clearly a Darwinist. "Darwin's idea, 'Evolution Through Natural Selection' actually explains the I don't want to draw attention to his rhythmic alternation between hyperbole and horseshit. That's common to all sorts of advertising prose. What's interesting is that the attributes of overwhelming power and perfection which he ascribes to natural selection are those which once would be applied to God, and, after God failed, were applied to Art. Hirst and his friends, if they are Artists, stand as a pretty final testimony to the failure of Art to connect us to transcendent truth; so what remains but science? The connection is made quite explicit in the next section of Hirst's blurb:
A scientific theory is being bent here here into doing something that it simply cannot manage to. Hirst's Darwinism has nothing to do with evolutionary biology. Natural selection doesn't and couldn't explain the meaning of life except to point out that death is essential to the process. Life is individual and the only measure of success that natural selection offers is posthumous: to have as many descendants as possible. Hirst's encomium might make more sense if it were taken as praise of the book, rather than the theory of evolution by natural selection. The Origin is a splendid book, and Darwin was a very good writer. But that has nothing to do with the merit of his theory, which would be just as true if only Wallace had discovered it – and who reads Wallace today? But in this too it is an example of Darwinism – which is distinct from evolutionary biology – becoming a quasi-religious cult. The emulation of Darwin's heroic virtue and his passionate search for truth in science replaces the emulation of holy men and their search for truth in god. Is this really progress? I think it might be or it would be if the practice of science could ever become as widespread as the practice of prayer. Behaving as scientists are supposed to do – looking humbly and devotedly for the truth wherever it may be found – is a morally good thing. But there's no reason to suppose that science ever will in fact become a mass pursuit. All the figures that we have suggest that it is a less and less popular career path. And treating Darwin, or any other scientist, as a wonder-worker just turns science into a priesthood. That doesn't do anyone any good, neither scientists nor the rest of us. Darwin was a good man and his theory was a great one. But believing it, even understanding it, won't make the goodness and the greatness rub off on the believers. Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 12 Feb 2009 | 8:19 am Shark attack diver in Australia loses hand (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 6:04 am 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 | 12 Feb 2009 | 4:47 am The Strangest Valentine's Day StoriesThe approach of Valentine's Day generates more meaningless articles and borderline news than any other holiday.Source: Livescience.com | 12 Feb 2009 | 3:03 am Gene explosion set humans, great apes apartWASHINGTON (Reuters) - An eruption of a poorly understood kind of genetic change set humans apart from great apes, and also sets chimps, gorillas and orangutans apart from monkeys, researchers reported on Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 2:45 am Obama 'must act now' on climateThe planet will be in "huge trouble" unless Barack Obama tackles climate change rapidly, says a top US scientist.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Feb 2009 | 2:36 am Russian and US satellites crash in spaceNasa scientists are closely monitoring the skies after two satellites crashed into each other over Siberia, in what experts have said is the first collision of its kind. The accident, which took place more than 400 miles above the earth's surface on Tuesday, has left a large cloud of debris drifting in space. Nasa officials are keeping watch to see if the wreckage could endanger other spacecraft, although they said it was unlikely that the International Space Station could be damaged. "It will be weeks at least before the true magnitude of these clouds are known," Nasa said in an alert message. "The risk to the space station is considered to be very small and within acceptable limits." The agency said that it was more concerned about the threat to an array of monitoring satellites, which it said were of "highest interest for immediate consideration". Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Les Kodlick of the US strategic command, said: "We believe it's the first time that two satellites have collided in orbit." The command's joint space operations centre was tracking 500 to 600 new bits of debris, some as small as 10cm (3.9 inches) across, in addition to the 18,000 or so other man-made objects it has catalogued, he said. The incident is thought to have involved a 12-year-old satellite belonging to the US company Iridium and a defunct Russian Cosmos satellite that was put into orbit in 1993. The craft, which weighed 560kg and 950kg respectively, apparently smashed into each other at high speed. Both satellites were used for telecommunications, with the US satellite an active part of Iridium's network of 66 craft which provide satellite telephone access to more than 250,000 people worldwide. It is unclear what caused the crash, but the Russian satellite is thought to have shut down some time ago and would have had no steering mechanism. Although there have been collisions in the past, they only involved spent rocket parts or small satellites. The scale of this crash, said officials, was unprecedented. "In the past almost 20 years there have been three other accidental collisions between objects in orbit, but they've all been very minor," said Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist at Nasa's orbital debris programme. "The most debris ever produced in an event was four … this is two intact spacecraft colliding and we have hundreds of debris out there." In the past abandoned or dysfunctional satellites have caused problems, with some pushed into extremely wide "graveyard" orbits that move them out of the way of other spacecraft. In several cases, rogue satellites have been shot out of the sky to prevent them crashing to Earth. 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 | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:57 am At 200, Darwin Evolves Beyond Evolution
Two hundred years after Darwin's birth, the theory of evolution is still evolving — and finding relevance in realms far outside the biological. Evolution is being scaled up to the level of populations, even whole ecosystems. Moreover, scientists say evolution is intertwined with other dynamics in ways science is just starting to understand. "The process of evolution is fundamental to the universe,” said Carl Woese, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign microbiologist and one of the first proponents of this newly revised evolutionary framework. “Biology is the most obvious manifestation of it.” Darwin described how changes in an organism are passed from generation to generation depending on their contribution to survival. Biologists later combined this with genetics, which hadn’t been discovered in Darwin's time. The fusion — called neo-Darwinian evolution — describes evolution as we know it today: Genetic mutations produce changes that can become part of a species' heritage and, when enough changes accumulate, produce new species. It’s one of the most powerful descriptions of the world dreamed up by humans, central to understanding the natural world and applicable to engineering, economics and even software design. But to Woese and other scientists, neo-Darwinism isn’t so simple. Change and selection need to be studied at other levels — and there are lots of big, unanswered questions. Bacteria, for example, engage in what's known as horizontal gene transfer: Genes drift from one microbe to another without any need for reproduction. What this means for microbiology isn't yet clear, let alone biological history — how did multicellular organisms evolve, anyway? But it’s hugely important to figure out. Another mystery is the tendency of some genes to mutate at unusually high rates. The driver appears to be a process called biased gene conversion, which goes against the notion that evolution is driven by beneficial adaptations. Natural selection still operates on its outcome, but is not driving the process itself. Scientists are also studying evolution at levels beyond the single organism. Some insect colonies — ants and honeybees being the best-known examples — can be collectively regarded as individuals, known as superorganisms. Superorganism dynamics are still a mystery — how, for example, does a colony evolve different traffic rules? — but they may apply to other ecological collectives, including human societies. When taking this macro-scale approach, some of the trickiest non-Darwinian evolutionary phenomena become apparent. Properties emerge at critical points — known as saltations — in complexity, but again can't be explained by mutation and selection in a sub-unit of the whole. Superorganisms, for example, are sometimes the only way to make sense of phenomena like eusociality, in which individual insects care for offspring unrelated to them. Another example of this may be the jump from unicellular to multicellular life; another may be the fantastic forms taken by human societies in a networked age, with millions of once-isolated people linked by data networks whose visual representations are uncannily similar to the neural connections of a brain. Evolution has moved not only beyond the individual, but beyond the biological. It is being used to understand the transition of a few primitive compounds to the chemical building blocks of life. Somewhat more pertinently, language seems to evolve towards efficient, easily propagated linguistic constructs. Applying an evolutionary framework to language may seem strange, but at least it's relatively simple. Cultural evolution, on the other hand, may be just as complicated as biological evolution. Selection and mutation — and whatever other biological analogues apply — may act simultaneously at the levels of the meme, of traits like boat design or tool use, and of entire bodies of thought. What, exactly, is a cultural organism — and how does its evolution affect the development of, say, individual humans and their community, which itself might be an organism? Maybe by the time Darwin turns 300, we'll have some answers. Images: WikiMedia Commons / Polaroid.sx70, from our Darwin Photoshop Tennis contest. See Also:
Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:42 am Egypt unveils ancient mummy, part of new discovery (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 12:43 am The life and times of Charles DarwinAn interactive guide to the social and historic context of Darwin's discovery of evolution by natural selectionSource: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 12 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am Darwin's CreaturesDarwin derived his theories through painstaking observations of the natural world, from the humble barnacle and earthworm to orchids, birds and humansSource: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 12 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am Playing Darwin with CreationAdam Rutherford: The theory of evolution is pretty much the most important idea in the history of humankind. So how does it feel playing the man who came up with it? AR: In a sense, you've kind of done Darwin before. Dr Stephen Maturin in the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is essentially Charles Darwin when he was on the Beagle. Was that a useful starting point for you? AR: What was it like having Randal Keynes there, one of Darwin's great, great-grandchildren to advise? PB: I must say that all the advisors – John Collee who wrote Creation, and peculiarly also wrote Master and Commander, he wrote the script with Jon Amiel – they were all so knowledgeable and were all fact checking all the time. There was a litany of geologists and so forth there to help get the science right. Darwin is one of those people that you feel like you know a lot about, and then when you get down to it you realise that everything you know about him can be written on the back of a £10 note next to that picture of the old guy with a beard. It was very useful to have people around with real knowledge. Randal really loved the script. To have that sort of family seal of approval felt incredibly important and gave us a real sense of safety that we were on the right track. AR: Let me ask you about playing great scientific thinkers. You were also in A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe. Is there any particular trick to playing geniuses with such immense intellect? PB: Well, I think you have to surrender to the fact that you're not going to be able to be that person. I'm going to be found out as not being the person that really came up with evolution theory and it's all right, I can calm down about it. The film is set during the writing of [the] Origin [of Species], which, as I'm sure you know, is 20 years after he returned from the Galapagos. The film is largely about his procrastination and his inability to write, and it making him sick, and the death of his daughter, and the effect that that had on his relationship with his wife, and their very, very separate and different means of dealing with it. So there's a lot to be getting on with that doesn't demand that I produce perhaps the most intelligent man that ever lived. AR: You mentioned the importance of Annie who died while he was writing the Origin. Scientists often get played or portrayed as being very emotionless, so how do you draw that story of intense personal grief? AR: And what's it like playing opposite your own wife [Oscar Winner] Jennifer Connelly, her playing Emma Darwin? PB: Well, I think we did get a lot for free in terms of the physicality that real married people have with each other. I think when you're trying to produce a relationship on screen that doesn't actually exist, perhaps sometimes there's a temptation to look at each other more, to touch each other more, whereas there's a slight absentminded closeness that you see between Jennifer and I in the movie which is really, really useful. AR: And in terms of the conflict between Darwin coming to a point of at least agnosticism from being religious, and Emma retaining her religion, how do you develop that sort of conflict between the two of you? AR: We're touching on the religious aspects and the religious impact that the Origin had. While you were filming did you get a sense of why it's so important that this story is told at this point in history, because the understanding of evolution is pitifully low according to every survey that comes out. PB: Yes. I mean, I'm sort of flabbergasted by the... I think it's in Kansas, you'll have to fact check that, that they're not teaching evolution theory anymore, and apparently there was an online poll of English teachers, British teachers and it was something like 60% thought it should be taught alongside creationism, which for me is really shocking, but... Like I say, I don't think it is a film about atheism, but for me, as an atheist, to have a viable alternative is incredibly important. The difficulty of looking at a system like natural selection if you have any sort of moral sense yourself, is almost what makes it beautiful. It's a spur to try and rise above our own nature. Human beings have brains that are big enough to take them out of that brutality, and that is a faith of sorts, because it's in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. AR: Darwin was quite reluctant to get drawn into any of these sorts of discussions and he left that to his supporters, and naysayers. I get the impression from the film that to a certain extent it's really going to be set out for all to see and it's almost like it's not in tune with how he lived his life. AR: So Darwin's religion is not the central idea behind the film? PB: Well, religion is sort of a function in the script, in that [Emma] is a fervent Christian and it's her way of dealing with the loss of her daughter, which it is for a lot of people. They had this incredibly modern relationship, with this fantastic system of writing. They were obviously in the same house but they would write each other letters and discuss things in letters, and it seems so grown-up and so modern. They were really honest, brutally honest with each other about their feelings and this was one subject that was very difficult for them to discuss together and that is what religion is for in the movie in terms of the mechanics of the story. AR: So, they wrote these letters to each other and he was so obsessively meticulous with all of his note-taking. I think Emma and Charles played backgammon pretty much every night for the whole of their lives, and he kept a score book… PB: We didn't get to that in the film. It's a real regret of Jen and mine is that the backgammon didn't make it into the film. AR: You've done Darwin as a young man on the Beagle. Now you've done him as middle-aged man writing the most important book ever written. Any plans to play him as an old bearded man walking around the church while the family are inside praying? PB: I would love to. [In the film] we actually get to him walking around the church and not entering it. But I would love to play the old Darwin, simply to be able to say I've had the biggest beard in cinematic history. AR: Well I sincerely hope that that happens, I'm sure there's a good story in it. Good luck with the film. I can't tell you what it's like to be a film geek and a Darwin obsessive and to have the two of them come together. PB: Oh good, me too. He is a hero of mine and I think in the absence of Jesus, he's a really useful hero to have. 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 | 12 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am New Foot-long Tapeworms Identified (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - A major group of tapeworms, parasitic flatworms that can grow to more than 30 feet long in the digestive tracks of humans, fish and other animals while absorbing their nutrients, has been discovered by Canadian researchers.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 11:46 pm Videogames seen good for childrenBRUSSELS (Reuters) - Videogames can be good for children, encouraging creativity and cooperation, a European Union report concluded Wednesday which ran counter to the violent reputation of some titles.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 11:42 pm The science of romance: Brains have a love circuit (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 11:15 pm New Foot-long Tapeworms IdentifiedA major group of tapeworms, parasitic flatworms that live on host nutrients, has been discovered.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Feb 2009 | 10:31 pm Doctors find telltale cells in leukemia patientsBOSTON (Reuters) - Tell-tale cells may be able to warn people they are at risk of the most common type of leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 10:23 pm Two Big Satellites Collide Over SiberiaTwo communications satellites have collided in the first-ever crash of two intact spacecraft.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Feb 2009 | 10:22 pm Galapagos damage 'must be curbed'The Galapagos Islands face irreversible damage unless the growth in tourism is curbed, according to conservationists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Feb 2009 | 10:18 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 | 11 Feb 2009 | 10:04 pm Sweet! Cotton candy may help labs grow tissue (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 8:40 pm Cotton Candy Can Help Labs Grow TissueCotton candy may have a new role in helping scientists grow human replacement tissue.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Feb 2009 | 8:22 pm New technology sheds light on rise of blood cellsLONDON (Reuters) - German scientists using new imaging technology said on Wednesday they have watched a single cell give rise to blood cells, bolstering understanding of stem cells.Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Feb 2009 | 8:01 pm SLIDE SHOW: Inside a Mummy 'Storeroom'A tomb containing 30 mummies -- including that of a dog -- is opened in Egypt.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Feb 2009 | 7:22 pm Charles Darwin: Strange and Little-known FactsThe public is remarkably ignorant of the real story of the father of evolution.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Feb 2009 | 6:06 pm Murder most fowlNest-raiding lizard is prime suspect in egg snatchSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Feb 2009 | 5:58 pm Explorers to Measure Ice Loss at Arctic CircleA British team plans to raft and wade to the Arctic Circle to measure ice thickness.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Feb 2009 | 5:40 pm Biggest Solar Deal Ever Announced — We're Talking Gigawatts
The largest series of solar installations in history, more than 1,300 megawatts, is planned for the desert outside Los Angeles, according to a new deal between the utility Southern California Edison and solar power plant maker, BrightSource. The momentous deal will deliver more electricity than even the largest nuclear plant, spread out among seven facilities, the first of which will start up in 2013. When fully operational, the companies say the facility will provide enough electricity to power 845,000 homes — more than exist in San Francisco — though estimates like that are notoriously squirrely. The technology isn't the familiar photovoltaics — the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity — but solar thermal power, which concentrates the sun's rays to create steam in a boiler and spin a turbine. "We do see solar as the large untapped resource, particularly in Southern California," said Stuart Hemphill, vice president of renewable energy and power at Southern California Edison. "It's barely tapped and we're eager to see it expand in our portfolio." BrightSource is the reincarnation of Luz International, which built the only currently operating solar thermal facility during the 1980s in the Mojave Desert. After natural gas and energy prices plunged in 1985, that operation became unprofitable. The group's engineers and founders moved the business to Israel, where they continued to work on their technology. The new deal breaks the company's own record for the largest ever solar deal. The new installations, when completed, will produce 3.7 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year. Previously, they'd cut a deal to deliver 900 megawatts of power to the Northern California utility, PG&E. "Coupled with our earlier partnership with PG&E, this agreement proves that the energy industry recognizes the important role that solar thermal will play in the energy future," John Woolard, CEO of BrightSource, said in a press conference with reporters. While Brightsource is a leader in the field, a variety of other companies compete in the solar thermal space. Google.org and other investors have backed eSolar's with $130 million funding. Abu Dhabi's clean-tech fund, Masdar, has funded a $1.2 billion solar thermal company called Torresol. Yet another player, Abengoa, recently signed a $4 billion deal with Arizona Public Utilities, and Stirling Energy Systems, a company that has adapted the Stirling Engine, a 200-year-old invention, for concentrated solar power, even pulled in a $100 million investment. The first of the seven installations will be in Ivanpah, California and will be rated at 100 megawatts of peak power. The companies expect it to produce 286,000 megawatt hours of electricity per year. When all the installations are finished, they'll stretch over 10,500 acres of land. Southern California Edison's Hemphill said that the new plants would provide a valuable hedge against volatile natural gas prices, noting that his company had seen natural gas prices as low as $4 per thousand The 1980s-era solar thermal plants use the oldest solar thermal technology around, known as a parabolic trough. Mirrors shaped like a paper-towel roll cut in half concentrate the sun's rays on a liquid. That heat can be transformed into various types of energy. The Luz fields made electricity, but Frank Shuman built a plant based on this principle to pump water in Egypt in the first decade of the 20th century. The new design sounds more exciting. Mirrors that track the sun — heliostats — sit in a massive field around a tower with a boiler. All those mirrors concentrate the sun's heat on the boiler, which makes steam and drives a turbine. Solar thermal is seen as a promising source of energy for city-scale power because it works on very well established principles. Photovoltaics have come down in price — and thin-film plastic solar cells could get even cheaper — but the conversion of sunlight to electricity remains a novel source of energy. The first working cells were only built half a century ago, and they were truly something new in the world. Steam-driven turbines, on the other hand, make almost 90 percent of the world's electricity and their ancestry stretches back to the start of the Industrial Revolution. Solar thermal engineers, then, can use the knowledge gained from more than a century of tinkering at coal, natural gas, and nuclear fission plants. 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 | 11 Feb 2009 | 5:38 pm Facing Tests for Genetic Disorders, Parents Avoid PregnancyParents of children with genetic disorders tend to avoid future pregnancies rather than be tested.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Feb 2009 | 5:02 pm Prostate cancer test set to transform treatmentMen with prostate cancer could soon be given a cheap and easy test to reveal whether their disease is likely to be life-threatening or not. Doctors are developing the test after discovering that men with an aggressive form of prostate cancer carry elevated levels of a particular molecule in their urine. The test, which is expected to be available within three to five years, could transform prostate cancer treatment by identifying men with the most dangerous form of the disease early on. The discovery might lead to a new generation of anti-cancer drugs that prevent tumour cells from spreading to other parts of the body through a process called metastasis. Existing screening programmes for the disease rely on a test that measures levels of a protein called prostate specific antigen (PSA) in a blood sample. Men who have a high reading are sent for additional tests and will often have to undergo a biopsy, a painful procedure to remove tissue from the prostate for lab testing. Writing in the journal Nature, scientists at the University of Michigan describe how the new test could help doctors target prostate cancer treatment more effectively by identifying which form of the disease patients have. "One of the main issues with prostate cancer is trying to distinguish aggressive prostate cancer that goes on to metastasis from the slow-growing version of the disease, and what we end up doing as physicians is over-treating our patients because we can't distinguish between them," said Arul Chinnaiyan, who led the study. The researchers analysed more than 1,000 molecules from 262 tissue, blood and urine samples, each of which came from patients with different types of the disease. From these, they were able to spot 10 molecules that were commonly found in advanced, fast-growing prostate cancer. In particular, the scientists found one molecule, sarcosine, was strongly linked to prostate cancer that was likely to spread around the body. In the study, high levels of sarcosine was a more reliable indicator that a patient's disease was progressing than the PSA test. Prostate cancer is the most common form of male cancer in developed countries and cases are rising among men under 50. Every year, more than 32,000 British men are diagnosed and 10,000 die from the disease. The discovery of sarcosine may have far more profound implications for cancer treatment. Scientists believe that cancer cells need the molecule to spread around the body, so drugs that stop it working could effectively contain cancers and stop them spreading to other organs. Scientists are planning further tests to investigate whether sarcosine is also crucial for other types of cancer to spread. "This is the molecule that the cancer cells use when they want to spread. If it turns out to be involved in metastasis in other cancers, then this discovery will be huge," said Christopher Beecher, a co-author on the study. The study is a landmark success for a new field of science called metabolomics, which looks at how cells release chemicals during normal metabolism. Other scientists are using the technique to see whether it can distinguish between healthy and abnormal embryos produced in IVF clinics. 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 | 4:06 pm Egyptian mummies found inside 2,600-year-old tombAncient Egyptian mummies have been unearthed inside a 2,600-year-old tombSource: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 11 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm UK's CO2 plan 'certain to fail'The UK's plans to cut emissions by 80% by 2050 are almost certain to fail, according to a US scientist.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Feb 2009 | 3:54 pm 'Dinosaur Island' Yields 48 New Prehistoric AnimalsNearly 50 new species of prehistoric animals are discovered on the Isle of Wight.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Feb 2009 | 3:40 pm Fossils Reveal Truth About Darwin's TheoryCreationists claim there are no transitional fossils, aka "missing links." Scientists know this claim is false.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Feb 2009 | 2:42 pm Tornadoes in Winter?Twisters can strike any time of year, in many parts of the country, and frighteningly often at night.Source: Livescience.com | 11 Feb 2009 | 2:33 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 Water quizHow much do you know about the precious resource?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Feb 2009 | 1:46 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 German guile won Queen NefertitiDocuments suggest a German archaeologist used trickery to smuggle home a famous sculpture of Queen Nefertiti.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Feb 2009 | 12:28 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
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