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First-time Mothers At Greater Risk Of Psychosis In Month Following ChildbirthA study of risk factors associated with psychotic illness after childbirth shows that first-time mothers are at the greatest risk of developing psychosis in the month following the birth of their child -- even if they have never been treated in hospital for mental illness in the past.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Omega-3 Fatty Acids Prevent Medical Complications Of Obesity, Study SuggestsDiets rich in omega-3 fatty acids protect the liver from damage caused by obesity and the insulin resistance it provokes. This research should give doctors and nutritionists valuable information when recommending weight-loss diets and help explain why some obese patients are more likely to suffer some complications associated with obesity. Omega-3 fatty acids can be found in canola oil and fish.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Fat-free Diet Reduces Liver Fat In Fat-free Mice, Researchers ReportResearchers have uncovered crucial clues about a paradoxical disease in which patients with no body fat develop many of the health complications usually found in obese people.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Reducing Carbon Dioxide Through Technology And Smart GrowthA new study on climate change, published by Environmental Science and Technology, shows that "smart growth" combined with the use of hybrid vehicle technology could reduce cities' carbon dioxide emissions -- the principal driver of global warming -- significantly by 2050.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm New Shock Absorber Harvests Energy From Bumps In The Road, Increases Fuel EconomyUndergraduate students have invented a shock absorber that harnesses energy from small bumps in the road, generating electricity while it smooths the ride more effectively than conventional shocks. The students hope to initially find customers among companies that operate large fleets of heavy vehicles. They have already drawn interest from the US military and several truck manufacturers.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Mother-of-pearl From Shells Could Inspire Regeneration of Human BonesScientists have studied nacre's growing mechanism of gastropods, a step for the artificial reproduction of this material in laboratories which could make possible its use in biomedicine. Although molluscs have been producing nacre for million years, humans have not been able to reproduce it artificially. One of its possible applications would be the regeneration of human bones.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Why Hollywood Serial Slashers Wear MasksIt has to do with psychology and the fear of anonymous death.Source: Livescience.com | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:38 pm Male Whales Prefer Enormous FemalesMale humpback whales fight over big females, new video-based research finds.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:37 pm Reflecting on the Many Uses of GlassGlass research has changed everything from architecture to communication, but has become a fractured endeavor.Source: Livescience.com | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:23 pm The Most Tragic Love Stories in History (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Nothing celebrates Valentine's Day quite like a good love story. And by good, we mean tragic, of course. Though Shakespeare's plays are littered with doomed lovers - unrequited passion and death makes for good reading, apparently - couples equally as star-crossed can be found in the world's history books.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:20 pm The Romantic Evolution of True LoveAre humans really naturally pair-bonded, that is, designed to court and mate one person 'til death do us part?Source: Livescience.com | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:19 pm Method For Detecting 23 Drugs And Medicines In Saliva DevelopedScientists have developed a technique for detecting the presence of 23 illicit drugs and medicines in saliva samples. The method is already being used by the DGT in Spain, as part of a European study on the frequency of alcohol and drug consumption amongst drivers.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm Stem Cells From Skin Cells Can Make Beating Heart Muscle CellsA little more than a year after scientists showed they could turn skin cells back into stem cells, they have pulsating proof that these "induced" stem cells can indeed form the specialized cells that make up heart muscle.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm HIV Antiretroviral Medications Linked To Heart AttacksNew research findings help explain why some HIV patients treated with antiretroviral medications experience increased incidence of heart attacks.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm New Target For Medicine To Combat Alzheimer's: Scientists Confirm Protein's Key RoleScientists have demonstrated that a particular protein is extremely well suited to be a target for a new medicine against Alzheimer's disease.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm Space crash debris to orbit Earth for 10,000 years (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 12:43 pm Social sciences should steer clearThe question: What are the limits of Darwinian explanations?"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." So asserted Theodosius Dobzhansky, to which one might respond that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of physics. But what has quantum mechanics to do with behavioral ecology? The enthusiasm of many social scientists for the Darwinian paradigm resembles this ontological leap. An evolutionary psychologist may contend that a preference for blondes is the outcome powerful adaptations, how powerful can it be if only a small minority of humans are blonde? Darwinism provides a deductive tool, but many of the inferences leave much to be desired in explaining the world as it is. Its limits have long been evident within evolutionary biology. The modern synthesis was ascendant between 1940 and 1960. fusing genetics and classical Darwinian theory. It offered a compelling adaptationist narrative, but with it there were differences of opinion. For example, some researchers argued that genetic variation was maintained by balancing forces, while another faction emphasised ephemeral bouts of positive selection. But reality has a way of surprising science; in 1966 molecular methods revealed that there was too much genetic variation explainable by either selective model. The consensus position today is that most variation is due to drift. It is then somewhat curious that Darwinism has come into vogue in the social sciences after its high tide in evolutionary biology. There have been attempts to explain religion, art and history in the framework of adaption. But just as the spherical cow is logically rigorous but of limited empirical insight, so the relentless tautologies of adaptationism leave us in the dark as to how human cultural and social diversity came about. Why are we not all Mormons if human societies are maximized to replicate? Quite often adaptationist thinking tells us how societies should be, but not how they are. The Darwinian society maybe as common as H. economicus. With the decline of Marxism and Freudianism, adaptationism has emerged to fill some of the theoretical void in the human sciences. But a true test of a theory is not how elegant it is, but its powers of prediction. Classical Darwinism maps plausibly onto slivers of reality, but so much of the background remains unexplained. There is currently a massive decline in worldwide birthrates, resulting in decreased reproductive fitness. In the long run the rate of decrease will no doubt reverse as predicted by evolutionary theory. But as John Maynard Keynes observed, "in the long run we are all dead." Darwin's original theory was formulated under the assumption of geological time, but it is fluctuations on the scale of human generations which are some of the most intractable and fascinating questions in the social sciences. On this timescale Darwinian explanations begin to resemble astrology in both seductive appeal and triviality. Instead of illuminating the forces which shape the state of human society, they might tell us more about psychological biases which shape our explanatory preferences. 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 | 13 Feb 2009 | 12:03 pm Pipes of peaceWhy water can be a path to peace rather than warsSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Feb 2009 | 11:40 am Let's get our fats rightThe Food Standards Agency, as we know, is guided by science. Just now it is telling us that we ought to be eating less saturated fat. In a high-profile campaign we are urged to cut down on butter and hard cheese, to select the leanest of meats, and to replace whole milk with the fat-reduced version. To an ageing farming hack like me, this is all rather mystifying. Far be it for me to question the agency's scientific expertise, but I'm old enough to remember a certain Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT), published in the early 1980s. Launched 10 years earlier, it was one of the largest, expensive scientific experiments in the history of medicine, costing more than £100m and involving 60,000 men. It set out to discover whether switching middle-aged men to lower-fat diets could reduce blood cholesterol levels and cut death rates from heart disease. Those in the intervention group were urged to cut back on meat, eat only low-fat cheese and restrict their consumption of eggs to no more than two a week. Cakes, puddings and pastries were, of course, banned. As a result of these sacrifices, the group's consumption of saturated fat fell by an average of a quarter. Yet their blood cholesterol levels fell by only 5%, and they were no less likely to die from heart attacks than those who had carried on with their usual diets. A few months later a large-scale World Health Organisation trial came out with a near identical result. As far as the FSA is concerned these costly trials might never have taken place. Its new campaign takes us right back to the 1970s when the discredited fat-causes-heart-disease theory was robbing us of our finest traditional foods. The agency might as well have backed their new ads with the music of T Rex or Ziggy Stardust. I'd like to ask how our health is likely to be improved by discarding the fat fraction of whole milk, which only amounts to 4% in any case. When the milk is from cows grazing fresh pasture, this fat is rich in vitamins A and D, which strengthens the immune system and protects against cancer, as well as omega-3 essential fatty acids and the omega-6 essential fatty acid, CLA, which protects against heart disease and cancer. An equally compelling case can be made for the nutritional benefits of beef and lamb, particularly when they're raised the traditional way on herb-rich grasslands. Yet the FSA chooses to campaign against such health-giving foods, an action that can only benefit food manufacturers who fill the supermarket shelves with processed, unhealthy fakes. It's principally the food corporations and the drug companies that perpetuate the myth of saturated fat and heart disease. Drugs and yellow-fat spreads that promise to reduce blood cholesterol represent a vast and lucrative market, though there is no evidence they will extend our lives. Let's remember that for years the food industry pedalled us spreads full of deadly hydrogenated fats while claiming they were "heart friendly". Why the FSA should choose to back such products and denigrate real and wholesome foods from our farms is quite beyond me. The agency's chief error is to insist on lumping all saturated fats together, whatever their origin, then labelling them all as bad. Why, for instance, is it not investigating how the revolution that's taken place in animal production in recent years has affected the nutrient composition of staple foods? We used to produce meat and dairy foods from animals grazing pasture. Now many livestock are shut up in sheds and raised on grains and imported soya. This shift has significantly changed the composition of modern animal fats, increasing the saturated fat content of foods and reducing the level of healthy, unsaturated fats. The World Heath Organisation, while acknowledging that dietary fat can influence the risk of heart disease, stresses that the exact composition is an important factor. There is plenty of evidence that ruminant animals raised the natural way – on fresh pasture – produce meat and dairy products with higher levels of antioxidants and health-protecting fatty acids than those raised by the American "feedlot" system based on soya-meal and grain. Surely this merits more of the FSA's resources than the present simplistic attack on the nutritious wholefoods of the British countryside? 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 | 13 Feb 2009 | 11:30 am Hurricane Season 2008 (weather.com)weather.com -Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 11:07 am Tracking reveals songbirds' routeThe migration routes of two species of songbirds have been tracked for the first time, say scientists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Feb 2009 | 10:30 am Dung is key to tracking elusive Cambodian tiger (AP)AP - A dog trained to sniff for tiger droppings will help conservationists determine if the big cats still roam one of Cambodia's largest nature reserves.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 9:53 am America on tapClose neighbours try to reconcile water visionsSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Feb 2009 | 9:26 am Earth WatchWhy a new deal on whaling now looks unlikelySource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Feb 2009 | 9:19 am Bleak forecast on fishery stocksChanging ocean temperatures will force many fish species to migrate towards the poles, hitting fish stocks, scientists warn.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Feb 2009 | 3:47 am Iridium says in dark before orbital crashWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iridium Satellite LLC said Thursday it had no advance warning of an impending collision between one of its communications satellites and a defunct Russian military satellite above Siberia.Source: Reuters: Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 3:19 am Backstage at KewAudio tour of the botanical gardens' largest glasshouseSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Feb 2009 | 2:43 am New Shock Absorbers Generate ElectricityThe shocks harness energy from small bumps in the road.Source: Livescience.com | 13 Feb 2009 | 2:29 am Gestures 'develop infant speech'Toddlers who use gestures more often have better vocabularies on reaching school age, US researchers say.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:24 am Missile warning technology loftedEurope's Ariane 5 rocket launches two satellites to test technology for a missile early warning system.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Feb 2009 | 12:44 am Skin Cells Reprogrammed As Heart Cells Beat in a Dish
Just in time for Valentine's Day, skin cells have been turned into heart tissue beating in a dish. The tissue isn't ready for transplantation, but it's a moving proof-of-principle for induced pluripotency, which genetically reprograms adult cells into a near-embryonic state, capable of becoming almost any cell type. "This is the first demonstration that human induced cells can form different types of heart cells in a dish," said study co-author Tim Kamp, a University of Wisconsin cell biologist. The latest findings, published Thursday in Circulation Research, suggests that failing hearts might be mended. "We didn't know whether they could form heart cells efficiently," said Kamp. "But they successfully formed heart cells with all the electrical and organizational properties we'd expect." In the last few years, induced pluripotency has been hailed as an uncontroversial alternative to embryonic stem cells, production of which requires the destruction of embryos. Reprogramming flakes of skin would be a far easier alternative. However, reprogrammed cells aren't yet safe enough for clinical use — the mutations involved leave cells prone to forming tumors — but scientists are trying to make the mutations safer. They also need to determine which afflictions might be treated with reprogrammed cells. Video: University of Wisconsin See Also:
Citation: "Functional Cardiomyocytes Derived from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells." By Jianhua Zhang, Gisela F Wilson, Andrew G Soerens, Chad H Koonce, Junying Yu, Sean P Palecek, James A Thomson, and Timothy J Kamp. Circulation Research, Vol. 104 No. 3, Feb. 12, 2009. Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 13 Feb 2009 | 12:13 am Study ties passive smoking to dementiaLONDON (Reuters) - Passive smoking appears to significantly raise a person's risk of dementia and other forms of cognitive problems, British and U.S. researchers said on Friday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 12:10 am 'Amazing' songbird migration patternsSongbirds fly faster and further than anyone has realised, according to scientists who have tracked their migration routes for the first time. The researchers said they were "flabbergasted" by the findings, which will help biologists predict how climate change and habitat loss will affect the birds. Songbirds are the most common type of bird, but until now little has been known about their annual journeys because they are too small to carry satellite-tracking devices. Instead, the scientists strapped tiny backpacks that record sunrise and sunset times onto wood thrushes and purple martins, and this data allowed them to plot the birds' flights between Pennsylvania and South America. The researchers found the birds could fly more than 300 miles per day. In contrast, previous studies had put their daily range at under 100 miles per day. The study also discovered that the birds flew much faster on their journey home in spring: one purple martin, a type of swallow, took 43 days to reach Brazil on its autumn outward leg but in spring returned to its breeding colony in only 13 days. "To have a bird leave Brazil on 12 April and be home by the end of the month was just astounding. We always assumed they left some time in March," said Bridget Stutchbury, a biologist at York University in Toronto, Canada, who led the study. The backpacks used technology developed by the British Antarctic Survey and were attached to the birds with thin straps around the legs. The weight lay at the base of the bird's spine so as not to disturb its balance. Stutchbury said: "Never before has anyone been able to track songbirds for their migratory trip. We were flabbergasted by the birds' spring return times. "Until now, our hands have been tied in many ways because we didn't know where the birds were going. They would just disappear and then come back in the spring. It's wonderful to now have a window into their journey." The study, which is reported tomorrow in the journal Science, found prolonged stopovers are common during autumn migration. The purple martins spent up to a month in Mexico en route to their winter homes, for instance. It also showed that wood-thrushes from a single breeding population tend to spend the winter close together: all five tracked birds wintered in a narrow band in eastern Honduras or Nicaragua. The research could also inform environmental concerns about songbirds, which have declined across the world over the past 30 or 40 years. "Tracking birds to their wintering areas is also essential for predicting the impact of tropical habitat loss and climate change," Stutchbury said. 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 | 13 Feb 2009 | 12:06 am Scientist v statesman: who can call the battle of the bicentennial men?Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day two centuries ago, thanks be to the false god of coincidence. But which, you cry, was the greater? Was it the man who transformed our understanding of the human race, or the man who made the mightiest nation on Earth also the custodian of liberty and democracy? Was it the scientist or the statesman? Darwin claims the crown for the scale of his intellectual revolution, but was he no more than an observer, a describer, a cataloguer? Did he not fail Marx's test, that any philosopher can interpret the world while "the point is to change it"? On the other hand, Lincoln may have ensured that America became a force for world freedom, but was he not just a lucky war leader, and of a cause whose time had anyway come? The comparison is silly, but not the question. We can leave the two men as giants - except I suppose to a born-again Confederate creationist - but we can still set the pursuit of science against that of politics and ask which deserves the greater respect. Science may nowadays enjoy the status of medieval religion, but writing in this week's TLS, the ultra-Darwinian, Richard Dawkins, still presents his cause as that of a persecuted fraternity. In Britain, he wails, "only 69% want evolution to be taught at all. In America 40% believe that life on Earth has existed in its present form since the beginning of time". He claims that science teachers are "under growing pressure from creationist lobbies, usually inspired by American or Islamic sources". This is intellectual paranoia. The purported British figure of 31% "anti-evolutionist" probably reflects no more than an exasperation with boring science teaching. That is the fault of mis-selling by the currently all-powerful science lobby, not of Darwinism. If any scientific cause can be said to have triumphed in the last half century it is that of evolution. As Dawkins points out: "The least you can say about evolutionary theory is that it works. All but pedants would go further and assert that it is true." State subsidy to biological research dwarfs any tax relief to religious fundamentalists. The university megaliths spawned by Darwin's descendants mock the modest encampments of academic theology. Big science is very big. Darwin needs no apologists. Where in comparison stands Lincoln? This waffling country lawyer was killed by a madman after just five years in office and before anyone could tell what he would make of reconstruction. He might be just another ambitious politician had Robert E Lee not made the fatal mistake of invading Pennsylvania and losing the civil war. Lincoln's greatest stroke of luck was to have a reporter within earshot when he recited a few lines at the Gettysburg cemetery in 1863. They were to the unsensational effect that "government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the Earth". This was no more than had been asserted by the founding fathers, but the moment was apt. Lincoln saved the northern continent of America from the Balkanisation that overtook the south and certainly hastened the freeing of the slaves, but union would have come in time, as would emancipation. He built a coalition able to resist separatism - a debatable goal these days - and bound his nation to a common purpose. But he was a symbolic figure in a continuum rather than a revolutionary. Darwin was also part of a continuum. He built on the work of his grandfather, Erasmus, from whom he learned of biological variation and the survival of the fittest. As for natural selection, he came near to sharing the fate of Humphrey Gainsborough (co-inventor of the steam engine) and the early "discoverers" of America, in being almost beaten to the post by a rival biologist, in his case Alfred Russel Wallace. But this means only that history would have invented Darwin, as it would Lincoln, had they not existed. A more vivid contrast is between their respective fields of endeavour. In the two centuries since Darwin's birth, the profession of biological science has progressed immeasurably. Not only did his discoveries break through barriers and smother prejudices, so did his method, his open-mindedness and readiness to free the eye to see nature afresh. Politics has no such joyous narrative. Lincoln had only its crooked timber from which to work. His forerunner as president, John Adams, gloomily remarked: "While all other sciences have advanced, government is at a stand; little better practised now than three or four thousand years ago." Barbara Tuchman's compendium of military disaster, The March of Folly, sits on my desk as a daily reminder of the truth of that remark. To her it was amazing that, "elsewhere than in government", men could have raised rocks to soaring cathedrals, woven silk from worms, forged symphonies from base metal, voyaged to the moon and controlled or eliminated disease. To Tuchman, politics, even sanitised as statesmanship, seemed immune to such progress. Time and again - not least at present - the occupation of Lincoln has behaved in a way that seems no different from the chicanery of the Athenian demos. This week alone we had to witness the British government testing to destruction Darwin's survival of the fittest. Gordon Brown continued to wreck the British economy by his squirming subservience to bankers, while Jacqui Smith was so terrified by press scrutiny of her expenses that she crushed reason with prejudice over drugs. Compared with the dazzling horizons traversed by Darwin, Lincoln's world seems a squalid compromise, a sequence of reactionary policies, stupid wars, self-interest, cowardice and corruption, in which ever smaller men make ever greatest mistakes. Yet just as comparing two men born on the same day is essentially silly, so is the pitting of science against politics. Science is a linear dialectic, from thesis to antithesis to synthesis, from evidence to conclusion. Its challenges are notionally resolved by recourse to facts. Darwinians might feel threatened by religious fundamentalists, but the contest is of wisdom against fools. Politics has no such angels on its side. Its arguments are rarely susceptible to evidence - other than from unread history. Its conflicts are visceral and concern the interest of groups, taxes, privileges and vendettas. Politics reflects the basest emotions, and resolving them is difficult beyond the imagining of science. When Auden opined that no poem had "saved one Jew from the gas chambers", he might have been speaking for science as much as for literature or art. Only politics has that power to hand. I believe in the primacy of politics as a human activity for the simple reason that it is more important than anything else. Science must dance to its tune, not vice versa. The calibre of politicians is a crucial determinant of human happiness. Theirs is not a profession but the consummation of social activity. That is why Darwin died in his bed and Lincoln to an assassin's bullet. That is why Darwin gets my admiration, but Lincoln gets my vote. 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 | 13 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am King predicts century of resource warsThe Iraq war was just the first of this century's "resource wars", in which powerful countries use force to secure valuable commodities, according to the UK government's former chief scientific adviser. Sir David King predicts that with population growth, natural resources dwindling, and seas rising due to climate change, the squeeze on the planet will lead to more conflict. "Future historians might look back on our particular recent past and see the Iraq war as the first of the conflicts of this kind - the first of the resource wars," he told an audience of 400 in London as he delivered the British Humanist Association's Darwin Day lecture. Implicitly rejecting the US and British governments' claim they went to war to remove Saddam Hussein and search for weapons of mass destruction, he said the US had in reality been very concerned about energy security and supply, because of its reliance on foreign oil from unstable states. "Casting its eye around the world - there was Iraq," he said. This strategy could also be used to find and keep supplies of other essentials, such as minerals, water and fertile land, he added. "Unless we get to grips with this problem globally, we potentially are going to lead ourselves into a situation where large, powerful nations will secure resources for their own people at the expense of others." King was the UK government's chief scientific adviser in the run-up to the start of Iraq war in March 2003, but said he did not express his view of its true motivation to Tony Blair. "It was certainly the view that I held at the time, and I think it is fair to say a view that quite a few people in government held," said King, who is now director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University. However, before the war loomed he had made an effort to persuade the Bush administration to adopt more climate-friendly policies. "I went into the White House in 2001 to persuade them that de-carbonising their economy was the way forward. I didn't get much shrift at that time. What I can tell you is that, if I had managed to persuade the government of America that investing (instead of going into Iraq) in de-carbonising their economy with roughly a tenth of [the estimated $3 trillion the US spent on the war], they would have managed it." Commenting on the idea of "resource wars", Alex Evans, of the Centre for International Co-operation at New York University, who last month wrote a report on food security for the Chatham House thinktank, said he believed King was right, but overly pessimistic. "You always get conflict over the allocation of scarce resources," he said. "The question is whether it is violent conflict ... If the political system can't cope, that's when it gets violent." King's lecture - Can British Science Rise to the Challenges of the 21st Century? - also warned politicians not to allow the financial crisis to distract them from tackling climate change. "I would like to see [in] every speech Gordon Brown makes on the fiscal crisis, that he also includes the global warming crisis," he said, but added: "It's fine for the prime minister to make a good speech on climate change, but you need all members of the cabinet, because reducing carbon by 80% by 2050 will require every part of government to respond." King summed up by saying that with growing population and dwindling resources, fundamental changes to the global economy and society were necessary. "Consumerism has been a wonderful model for growing up economies in the 20th century. Is that model fit for purpose in the 21st century, when resource shortage is our biggest challenge?" guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 13 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am Debris From Space Collision Poses Threat to Other SatellitesScientists are tracking the debris from a Tuesday satellite collision.Source: Livescience.com | 12 Feb 2009 | 10:48 pm Scientists flabbergasted by speedy birds (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 10:48 pm Researchers say animals plan for the future (AP)AP - Monkeys perform mental math, pigeons can select the picture that doesn't belong. Humans may not be the only animals that plan for the future, say researchers reporting on the latest studies of animal mental ability. "I suggest we humans should keep our egos in check," Edward A. Wasserman of the University of Iowa said Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 10:47 pm Crash of US, Russian satellites a threat in space (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 10:44 pm More Details Emerge on Possible Mars Hot SpringsMounds found on Mars resemble Earth hot springs, but case isn't closed yet.Source: Livescience.com | 12 Feb 2009 | 10:41 pm Obesity may raise migraine risk, U.S. study findsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Obesity may raise the risk of getting migraines, the latest health problem to be associated with being much too heavy, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 10:14 pm Far-off food puts vast penguin colony under threatOne of the largest penguin colonies in the world is under threat because the birds are being forced to swim further to find food. Magellanic penguins living in the Punta Tombo colony on the coast of Argentina are feeding 25 miles further from their nesting sites than they did only a decade ago, according to scientists who attached satellite tags to the birds. The extra distance spent searching for food during the breeding season takes its toll on the penguins and reduces their chances of having young, said Dr Dee Boersma at the University of Washington. "That distance might not sound like much, but they also have to swim another 25 miles back, and they are swimming that extra 50 miles while their mates are back at the breeding grounds, sitting on a nest and starving," she added. The colony has already declined by a fifth in the past 22 years, and now numbers 200,000 breeding pairs of penguins. Of the 17 species of penguins, 12 are experiencing rapid population declines. Boersma has studied penguin colonies for the past 25 years and tracks their movements by attaching satellite tags to the animals' backs. While the penguins are incubating an egg, they can swim 270 miles looking for food and be at sea for two to three weeks. The birds' changing behaviour appears to be driven by changes in the environment, including overfishing, which is reducing local stocks of anchovies, and the return of large predators such as foxes and pumas that have previously been controlled by rangers. "Penguins are having trouble with food on their wintering grounds and if that happens they're not going to come back to their breeding grounds," said Boersma. "If we continue to fish down the food chain and take smaller and smaller fish like anchovies, there won't be anything left for penguins." Magellanic penguins nest in burrows and at Punta Tombo they are frequently flooded by rainstorms that can kill small chicks. Analysis of the penguins' movements showed many are moving to colonies up to 250 miles farther north. 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 | 10:00 pm Physics lab allays Angels & Demons antimatter fearGENEVA (Reuters) - The European physics laboratory that reassured us it wouldn't destroy the Earth in a "Big Bang" experiment last year is now telling people not to fret about antimatter.Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 9:39 pm The Most Tragic Love Stories in HistoryNothing celebrates Valentine's Day quite like a good love story. And by good, we mean tragic, of course.Source: Livescience.com | 12 Feb 2009 | 9:03 pm France to maintain ban on Monsanto GMO maize: PM (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 8:42 pm Migrating songbirds get home fast in spring: studyWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Migrating songbirds can get back up north to their breeding grounds in astonishingly quick time, with some traveling up to 360 miles a day, researchers reported on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 8:33 pm Babies who gesture have bigger vocabularies: studyCHICAGO (Reuters) - Babies who use many gestures to communicate when they are 14 months-old have much larger vocabularies when they start school than those who don't, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 8:24 pm Obesity: Blame the ancestorsThe modern scourge of obesity could owe more to the lifestyle of our ancient ancestors than previously thought, according to scientists. Anthropologists claim our urge to eat supersized portions can be traced back to the dramatic growth of the human brain and body that occurred in the face of environmental changes two million years ago. The expansion of the human brain, which coincided with the arrival of the first hunter-gatherer economies, required early humans to bolster their diets by seeking out more energy-rich food, researchers said. William Leonard, a professor of anthropology at Northwestern University in Illinois, said the transition from a highly active subsistence level of living to today's more sedentary lifestyle has played a major role in the rise of obesity, because while we still eat energy rich diets, we are far less physically active. Today, roughly a quarter of the energy we burn up while resting is used by our brains. Other primates, such as chimps and gorillas, use between a half and a third of that. To make sure our brains have enough energy, humans eat diets that are much richer in calories and nutrients than other primates. "While our large-bodied ape relatives, chimps, gorillas and orangutans, can subsist on leaves and fruit, we needed to consume meat and other energy-rich foods to support our metabolic demands," said Leonard. To find that food, our ancestors had to hunt over large areas of land, meaning they burned up a lot of the calories they consumed. With the shift to less active lifestyles, humans now have a diet that contains far more calories than they need to survive, Leonard will claim at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Chicago. "Think about our ancestors. Human hunter-gatherers typically moved eight miles a day in the search for food. In contrast, we can simply pick up the phone to get a meal delivered to our door," Leonard said. The decline of physical exercise in modern lifestyles contributed to other long-term health problems beyond obesity, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease, he said. 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 | 8:00 pm Iridium/Cosmos Satellite CollisionThe Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 communications satellites collided over northern Siberia. The impact between the Iridium Satellite and the 16-year-old satellite launched by the Russian government occurred at a closing speed of well over 15,000mph.Source: Livescience.com | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:58 pm Cold's "family tree" may lead to cure: studyWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers who mapped the DNA of more than 100 different cold viruses said on Thursday they discovered a shortcut in their life cycle, which may explain why they can inflict misery so quickly.Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:38 pm Scientists get first draft of Neanderthal genomeCHICAGO (Reuters) - Gene sleuths who have come up with a rough draft of the Neanderthal DNA code said on Thursday the ancient relatives of modern humans shared with us one gene for speech, but little else.Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:23 pm Complete Neanderthal Genome MappedThe complete Neanderthal genome is mapped, shedding light on human origins.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:21 pm What Makes Us Human? Neanderthal Genome Holds Clues
CHIGAGO — The rough draft of the Neanderthal genome is complete. Using 38,000-year-old bone fragments and new shotgun sequencing technology, researchers have sequenced 3.7 billion base pairs of Neanderthal DNA. That's more than the 3 billion base pairs expected in the final draft of the genome, but many of the snippets of genetic code are repeats. At this stage scientists have just 63 percent of the hominid genome completely sequenced. Still, even with a rough draft, scientists can begin to isolate the genetic variations that are uniquely, irreducibly human. "The first big goal of this project, which is really about understanding our evolution, is this catalog of [evolutionary] changes," said the project leader, Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. "The second goal is finding evidence of positive selection, of where something changed in our ancestors that really made a difference in how we reproduce and survive." Neanderthals are our closest relatives on the hominid family tree. We split from them about 500,000 years ago and for the next 475,000 years or so, modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted on the planet and sometimes even in the same region. The relationship between humans and our cousins has inspired lots of ideas about sex and war. Recently scientists have speculated that Neanderthals and humans in Europe could have interbred, while others have speculated that humans killed off the Neanderthals. The draft genome does not yet provide enough evidence to answer some of the big questions about the relationship between humans and our cousins, but already little details are emerging. For example, last year the team revealed that a gene known to be important in the development of speech was present in the Neanderthal genome. "There's no reason to think they [couldn't] articulate as we do, although there are many more genes related to speech," Pääbo told reporters at the AAAS annual meeting in Chicago, which runs through Monday. We also know that Neanderthals were sophisticated toolmakers and were highly intelligent, although that remains a subject of debate. The question becomes, then, what switch was thrown that allowed modern humans to surpass all previous hominid species and become the world-dominating predator that we are? "Why are Neanderthals so important to us and why do we want to know about their genome? Because the Neanderthals represent the last divergent branch of the human evolutionary bush," said Jean-Jacques Hublin, who studies evolution at the Planck Institute. "Studying the Neanderthal genome tells us what makes modern humans really modern and really human." In small ways, studying the Neanderthal genome tells us something about Neanderthals, too. For example, Pääbo revealed that Neanderthals didn't possess a mutation often found in humans that allows us to metabolize lactose, which lets cow's milk do a body good. "We can start looking at interesting genes to start seeing what Neanderthals might have been like," he said. With the draft completed, the researchers will try to collect more DNA and sequence it faster to get a "deeper" read on the genome, increasing its accuracy and filling in the gaps. They now have five archaeological sites from which they can recover genetic fragments, including a new excavation in Spain that is taking precautions to prevent destroying or contaminating the fragile genes. The more complete and redundant sequencing effort will allow the scientists to isolate genes unique to the Neanderthals, not just variations on human genes. By sequencing 15 or 20 times as many base pairs as exist in the Neanderthal genome, the researchers will be able to separate mistakes from unique genes. "We're going to sequence things much deeper, get 15 to 20 times coverage," Pääbo said. "Then, we'll be able to believe things that are Neanderthal-specific." But don't get your hopes up for creating a Neanderthal clone, a real-life Encino Man meets Jurassic Park. Researchers say that will remain technically impossible. — Alexis Madrigal, Wired.com staff writer Image: Flickr/erix! 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 | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:14 pm New Observations to Shed Light on Moon MysterySELENE (Kaguya) observations help explain difference's between Moon's far side and nearside.Source: Livescience.com | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:10 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 | 7:08 pm Simulation targets early cosmosScientists use a supercomputer to simulate what the Universe was like as the first galaxies were forming.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:07 pm Common Cold DNA Deciphered, Congestion ContinuesScientists crack genetic code of common cold; discovery could lead to new treatments.Source: Livescience.com | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:01 pm Pointing boosts toddlers' language skillsEncouraging toddlers to use hand gestures can improve their vocabulary and boost their chances of doing well at school a few years later, according to new research. Pointing and other hand signals seem to give babies a head start in learning language skills, possibly by helping them to make connections between words and the objects in the world around them, psychologists found. The research highlights how interacting with toddlers can have a marked impact on their brain development, even before they have started talking, the researchers said. Children are known to perform better at school if they have a large vocabulary when they start, but precisely why some are able to master more words than others before reaching school age has been hard to pin down. The parents' education plays a major role, because more-educated parents use a wider range of words, but psychologists suspected other factors were also important. Meredith Rowe and Susan Goldin-Meadow, from the University of Chicago, worked with 50 young families from different socio-economic backgrounds to investigate why some toddlers seemed to grasp language more quickly than others. They filmed 14-month-old children during an hour and a half of play with their parents and noted down the words and gestures that were used. Later, when the children were aged four and a half, they were given a vocabulary test to assess their language skills. The video sessions showed that better-educated parents used gestures more often, and as a result, their children learned to use hand signals themselves in a variety of ways. On average, toddlers from well-educated families used gestures to convey 24 different meanings during a 90-minute play session. Toddlers from less-educated families used gestures to convey only 13. "At 14 months of age, children are in the very early stages of productive language, they are saying very few words," said Rowe. "We didn't see any differences in their spoken language, but we did see a difference in their gestures and that's what we think is so striking." The study, published in the journal Science, goes on to find that once in school, the children who gestured most as toddlers scored on average 26% higher in the language test than the other children. By learning to gesture, toddlers pick up new words more quickly because it prompts parents to name the object the gesture is directed at. For example, if a child points at a doll, the parent might repeat the word "doll" a few times, boosting the child's chances of remembering the word. Writing in the journal, the psychologists suggest that teaching babies to gesture early on could help to boost their performance at school. "Whether or not early gesture plays a direct or indirect role in word learning, it is clear that gesturing partially accounts for the relation between socio-economic status and later vocabulary skill," they write. "The next step is to explore whether increases in gesturing lead to vocabulary gains in early childhood." 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 | 7:00 pm Team in Germany maps Neanderthal genome (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 6:26 pm Satellite Debris Poses Little Risk to Space StationDebris from a satellite crash is unlikely to affect the space station.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Feb 2009 | 5:21 pm France defends GM ban after report says safe in foodPARIS (Reuters) - A report by the French food safety agency that says genetically modified maize is safe for humans does not call France's ban on the crop into question, Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Feb 2009 | 5:10 pm Neanderthals 'distinct from us'Scientists studying the DNA of Neanderthals say they can find no evidence that this ancient species ever interbred with modern humans.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Feb 2009 | 3:51 pm Nano Ink 'Tattoo' Could Monitor DiabetesAn injectable nano ink "tattoo" would help diabetics monitor their glucose levels.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Feb 2009 | 3:41 pm Scientists unravel Neanderthal genomeScientists have unravelled the genetic make-up of the Neanderthal, the long-faced, barrel-chested relative of modern humans. Anthropologists analysed more than a billion fragments of ancient DNA plucked from three Croatian fossils to reconstruct a first draft of the Neanderthal genome. The extraordinary feat gives scientists an unprecedented opportunity to clarify the evolutionary relationship between humans and Neanderthals that may ultimately shed light on the great mystery of how we became the most formidable species on the planet. Neanderthals were the closest relatives of modern living humans. They lived in Europe and Asia until they became extinct around 30,000 years ago. The reason they died out is not clear, but likely factors are dramatic swings in the climate that affected the availability of food, and competition with early humans. By comparing the genomes of modern humans with Neanderthals and chimps, scientists hope to unravel the genetic differences that define what it is to be human. The Neanderthal genome was built up from strands of DNA, most of which came from a 38,000-year-old fossilised leg bone unearthed in a cave in Vindija, Croatia. Other material came from older remains dating back 70,000 years. Together, the fragments make up more than 60% of the Neanderthal genome. Svante Pääbo, who led the project at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig, Germany, said the team would spend the rest of the year analysing the DNA. They will focus on genes linked to modern human evolution, such as FOXP2, which is involved in speech and language. The draft genome was announced at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago. Two years ago, the same group used the ancient DNA to pinpoint the moment, about 500,000 years ago, when modern humans split from Neanderthals. The analysis should clear up once and for all the ongoing debate as to whether Neanderthals and modern humans continued to mate with each other after separating along the path of evolution. Remains of Neanderthals dating back to 400,000 years ago suggest they were proficient at crafting basic tools and weapons and buried their dead. The last Neanderthals died out shortly after Homo sapiens migrated to Europe and settled. Neanderthals were stocky and well-adapted to a cold climate, with brains that were on average larger than those of modern humans. Some fossil evidence suggests they were occasionally cannibalistic, though they more commonly hunted large animals including horses and mammoths. 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 | 3:01 pm Civil War Collection Launches OnlineThe largest online collection of Civil War items includes unusual letters to Lincoln.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Feb 2009 | 2:40 pm Darwin was right. Up to a pointWhat, one wonders, would Charles Darwin or indeed his pugnacious supporter Thomas Henry Huxley have made of the recent rash of posters aimed at those who have nothing better to do than look at the sides of buses? These now serve to inform the world at large that, by the way, there may not be a God (although if you keep staring at buses you may also read precisely the opposite message). With atheist banners passing him by Darwin, I imagine, would have harrumphed and in his characteristic manner passed the problem to his devoted chum. Huxley, I further suspect, would have quietly deplored the fact that the lower orders might take this sort of thing seriously, but would probably also look on it as another useful opportunity to further his secular agenda. So what's new? Darwinian has reached near saturation and among the customary pieties there is little doubt that it will conveniently serve as a love-in, with much mutual self-congratulation, for atheism. But perhaps now is the time to rejoice not in what Darwin got right, and in demonstrating the reality of evolution in the context of entirely unexceptional natural processes there is no dispute, but what his inheritance is in terms of unfinished business. Isn't it curious how evolution is regarded by some as a total, universe-embracing explanation, although those who treat it as a religion might protest and sometimes not gently. Don't worry, the science of evolution is certainly incomplete. In fact, understanding a process, in this case natural selection and adaptation, doesn't automatically mean that you also possess predictive powers as to what might (or even must) evolve. Nor is it logical to assume that simply because we are a product of evolution, as patently we are, that explains our capacity to understand the world. Rather the reverse. But wait a moment; everybody knows that evolution isn't predictable. Yes, a rich and vibrant biosphere to admire, but no end-product any more likely (or unlikely) than any other. Received wisdom pours out the usual litany: random mutations, catastrophic mass extinctions and other mega-disasters, super-virulent microbes all ensure that the drunkard's walk is a linear process in comparison to the ceaseless lurching seen in the history of life. So not surprisingly nearly all neo-Darwinians insist that the outcomes – and that includes you – are complete flukes of circumstance. So to find flying organisms on some remote planet might not be a big surprise, but certainly no birds. Perhaps all life employs cells, but would anybody dare to predict a mushroom? In fact the evidence points in diametrically the opposite direction. Birds evolved at least twice, maybe four times. So too with the mushrooms. Both are among the less familiar examples of evolutionary convergence. Convergence? Simply how from very different starting points organisms "navigate" to very much the same biological solution. A classic example are our camera eyes and those of the squid; astonishingly similar but they evolved independently. But let's not just concentrate on the squid eye, from molecules to social systems convergence is ubiquitous. Forget also the idea that in biology nearly anything is possible, that by and large it is a massive set of less than satisfactory compromises. In fact, paradoxically the sheer prevalence of convergence strongly indicates that the choices are far more limited, but when they do emerge the product is superb. Did you know eyes can detect single photons and our noses single molecules? Evolution has reached the limits of what is possible on planet Earth. In particular our doors of perception can only be extended by scientific instrument, enabling a panorama from the big bang to DNA. Yet how the former led to the latter, how it was that complexity emerged and is sustained even in that near-miracle of a chemical factory we call the cell is still largely enigmatic. Self-organisation is certainly involved, but one of the puzzles of evolution is the sheer versatility of many molecules, being employed in a myriad of different capacities. Indeed it is now legitimate to talk of a logic to biology, not a term you will hear on the lips of many neo-Darwinians. Nevertheless, evolution is evidently following more fundamental rules. Scientific certainly, but ones that transcend Darwinism. What! Darwinism not a total explanation? Why should it be? It is after all only a mechanism, but if evolution is predictive, indeed possesses a logic, then evidently it is being governed by deeper principles. Come to think about it so are all sciences; why should Darwinism be any exception? But there is more. How to explain mind? Darwin fumbled it. Could he trust his thoughts any more than those of a dog? Or worse, perhaps here was one point (along, as it happens, with the origin of life) that his apparently all-embracing theory ran into the buffers? In some ways the former possibility, the woof-woof hypothesis, is the more entertaining. After all, being a product of evolution gives no warrant at all that what we perceive as rationality, and indeed one that science and mathematics employ with almost dizzying success, has as its basis anything more than sheer whimsy. If, however, the universe is actually the product of a rational Mind and evolution is simply the search engine that in leading to sentience and consciousness allows us to discover the fundamental architecture of the universe – a point many mathematicians intuitively sense when they speak of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics – then things not only start to make much better sense, but they are also much more interesting. Farewell bleak nihilism; the cold assurances that all is meaningless. Of course, Darwin told us how to get there and by what mechanism, but neither why it is in the first place, nor how on earth we actually understand it. To reiterate: when physicists speak of not only a strange universe, but one even stranger than we can possibly imagine, they articulate a sense of unfinished business that most neo-Darwinians don't even want to think about. Of course our brains are a product of evolution, but does anybody seriously believe consciousness itself is material? Well, yes, some argue just as much, but their explanations seem to have made no headway. We are indeed dealing with unfinished business. God's funeral? I don't think so. Please join me beside the coffin marked Atheism. I fear, however, there will be very few mourners. 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 | 2:26 pm Crash Highlights Lack of Space Traffic ControlPrivately operated satellites aren't always monitored and kept clear of space traffic.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Feb 2009 | 2:00 pm Wired Science Reports Live From World's Largest Popular Science Conference
CHICAGO — Science moves in little steps, advancing by the accumulated weight of thousands of individuals in fields as narrow as a carbon nanotube. That can make your average science conference a little dull, as the latest incremental advances in one type of treatment in one study on a single type of cancer cell are presented. The American Association for the Advancement of Sciences annual meeting, however, is not that kind of conference. The big issues take center stage, at least those that scientists can solve. Liquids maybe, liquidity, not so much. This year, origins of all types will be in focus: what formed our planet, how life began, where humans became humans, and why we started to talk. Lawrence Krauss, director of the Origins Institute at Arizona State, is delivering the cosmologically cheery talk, "Our Miserable Future," which ties together the the extreme time scales of existence. "The interesting thing when it comes to the universe: The end of the universe and the beginnings of the universe are tied together," Krauss said. "The future of the universe was determined by what happened in the first moments." "It was the AAAS that caused me to write my first book. I gave a lecture on cosmology and on dark matter," Krauss said. "The reaction was so great, I realized that it was an area that people think might be worth learning about." Right now, the methods that scientists use are in the process of a major transformation. Across just about every field of knowledge, the unprecedented computing power of recent years is transforming science. Branching out from their own origins in particle physics and defense applications, large-scale simulations and other quantitative methods practically define big science now. Even biologists have fallen under the sway of large scale computing as they seek to understand the behavior of cells and genes and proteins. With leading scientists from around the world gathering to talk shop, the conference can become the battleground (or the court room) for the science that matters to people. Last year, the wisdom of biofuels was a heated issue in session after session. This year, it's economics, the dismal science, that's on many people's minds. The Feb 13-16 conference takes place amidst incredible economic turmoil -- but take solace that on the cosmic scale, life's actually doing quite well. In the long, long, long run, Krauss said that things don't end well. For anything. Later in the life of the universe as it continues to expand faster and faster, the universe will become so cold and devoid of energy that all life will eventually perish, taking its credit card debt with it. "Life must end," he said. 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 | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:59 pm Orbiting Carbon Lab to Provide Missing Climate Data
A NASA satellite launching later this month will measure the Earth's carbon dioxide levels in unprecedented detail, helping inform plans of attack against climate change. Set to launch on February 23, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory will map the entire planet from 440 miles up, pinpointing where carbon dioxide is being emitted and where the greenhouse gas is being pulled from the air. Identifying such sources and sinks will shed light on how carbon circulates from land to air to sea and back again — a process that remains poorly understood. "We're extremely excited about OCO," said atmospheric chemist Charles Miller of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which designed and operates the satellite. "We believe it will revolutionize our understanding of carbon cycling." Over the last 250 years, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen by about 40 percent, from 280 parts per million to more than 380. Climate scientists believe the increase in this heat-trapping gas is a chief driver of the planet's warming trend. Earth's average temperature has risen by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 100 years. But things could be much worse if it weren't for what are known as carbon sinks: Sixty percent of the carbon dioxide emitted by man has been absorbed out of the atmosphere. But scientists aren't sure where most of the sinks responsible are located, or what determines their efficiency over time. "The fundamental focus of the OCO mission is the sinks," said project leader David Crisp, a physicist at JPL. "If we can't understand the processes controlling the buildup of CO2 in our atmosphere today, it will be impossible to make reliable predictions about how CO2 will affect climate in the future." And sampling the entire planet from space is the best way to learn more, Crisp said. A system of 100 surface sensors scattered around the world makes very precise measurements of carbon dioxide, but the picture it paints is far from complete. And there are few of these stations in Africa, South America, and other parts of the Third World, meaning much of the planet is not being monitored. "One hundred stations is just not enough," Crisp said. "I could put 100 stations in Iowa and not really have enough to say what's going on there." OCO will measure atmospheric carbon dioxide using spectrometers — precision instruments that can distinguish 17,500 different colors over the spectrum of visible light. By analyzing the sunlight bouncing off of Earth, the satellite's spectrometers will identify the telltale wavelengths of light absorbed by carbon dioxide, revealing how much of it is in the air. The satellite will take 12 readings every second. Finding sources and sinks is a significant technological challenge, Miller said. OCO will need to distinguish carbon dioxide levels differing by as little as 0.3 percent. "This is the most difficult measurement of a trace gas ever attempted from space," Crisp said. "It's my team's job to prove that this really works." Crisp's team will be able to check the accuracy of OCO's readings against the ground-based system, and with Japan's Greenhouse Gas Observing Satellite, or GOSAT, which beat OCO into space by a month. GOSAT is also using spectrometry to measure atmospheric CO2 and methane, another greenhouse gas. GOSAT will run for 5 years, sharing its data with NASA and other institutions. Crisp welcomes the opportunity to cooperate. "About every six months, the two teams are going to get together, and we're going to compare notes and see how we're doing," he said. OCO is a small spacecraft, measuring 7 feet tall by 3 feet across and weighing about 1000 pounds. Once aloft, it will join a constellation of five other scientific satellites called the A-Train, which gather data on clouds, aerosols, ozone, and other components of the atmosphere. The A-Train zips roughly from pole to pole, making a complete trip around the Earth in 100 minutes. The "A" stands for afternoon, because the spacecraft are all in a sun-synchronous orbit, which means it is always 1:30 p.m. on the ground beneath them, wherever they are. OCO's total cost, from design and development to launch and operation, is $270 million. The spacecraft's mission has funding for two years, but if the telescope produces good data and money can be found, it may get an extension. See Also:
Image: NASA/JPL Source: Wired: Wired Science | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:57 pm
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