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Vigorous Exercise May Help Prevent Vision LossVigorous exercise may help prevent both cataracts and age-related macular degeneration, according to a pair of studies that tracked approximately 31,000 runners for more than seven years.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 4:00 am World’s Oldest Swan Found Dead In DenmarkWhat was probably the world’s oldest mute swan has been found dead in Denmark. This unusual example of Denmark’s national bird lived to just past the ripe old age of 40. The previous record for a mute swan was 28 years old.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 4:00 am Tracking The Digital Traces Of Social NetworksResearchers have studied the massive online virtual world Second Life to test whether or not certain social theories are true. Having access to huge amounts of data gave them a way to answer how networks are created. Searching through anonymized data from Teen Grid, where only teenage players can socialize, the researchers found that teens' online friendships were disproportionately with people in their immediate geographic area -- likely with people they already knew.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 4:00 am Humans And Chimpanzees Genetically More Similar Than One Yeast Variety Is To AnotherThere may be greater genetic variation between different yeasts of the same species than between humans and chimpanzees. This is one of the findings of a new study. This study heralds a new era in evolutionary genetics research -- the mapping of an individual's DNA.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 4:00 am New Cancer Research Tool: Tool Analyzes Function Of Crucial Set Of Proteins In AnimalsScientists have developed a new tool that enables them to analyze the function of a crucial set of proteins in animals --- a finding that could lead to a host of better drugs for and deeper insights into the workings of cancer.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 4:00 am New Surgical Technique Shows Promise For Improving Function Of Artificial ArmsA surgical technique known as targeted muscle reinnervation appears to enable patients with arm amputations to have improved control of functions with an artificial arm, according to a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 4:00 am Cheap Roses Cost The EarthA stark warning was given by a U.K. expert on high ecological price paid for cheap roses.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 10:00 pm When It Comes To Elephant Love Calls, The Answer Lies In A Bone-shaking TriangleAn ecologist has been studying elephant communication for more than 15 years. During that time she's puzzled over which or their two seismic sensing systems -- either bone conduction or somatosensory reception -- elephants use most often in locating the source of a call. In her most recent field season last summer, she finally got an answer.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 10:00 pm New Genomic Test Can Personalize Breast Cancer TreatmentA set of 50 genes can be used to reliably identify the four known types of breast cancer, according to new research. Using this 50-gene set, oncologists can potentially predict the most effective therapy for each breast tumor type and thereby personalize breast cancer treatment for all patients.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 10:00 pm Ongoing Statin Therapy Associated With Lower Risk Of DeathPatients with high cholesterol levels who continually take statins appear to have a lower risk of death over four to five years, regardless of whether they already have diagnosed heart disease, according to a new report.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 10:00 pm Asthma May Start in the WombChildren born in areas with increased traffic-related pollution could be at greater risk of developing asthma.Source: Livescience.com | 14 Feb 2009 | 3:52 pm What Modern Men Want in Women (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - What do men want in a woman? Brains? Beauty? Vacuuming prowess?Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 3:06 pm Saudi king dismisses 2 powerful religious figures (AP)AP - In an apparent bid to reform the religious establishment, Saudi King Abdullah on Saturday dismissed the head of the feared religious police and a hard-line cleric who issued an edict last year saying it was permissible to kill owners of satellite TV stations that show "immoral" content.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 12:48 pm Scientists see boom for biotechnology (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 12:25 pm Hurricane Season 2008 (weather.com)weather.com -Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 11:06 am Light 'could detect Parkinson's'A light as bright as a million-watt bulb could help identify early signs of Parkinson's disease, British researchers say.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 14 Feb 2009 | 10:39 am Kisses unleash chemicals that ease stress levels (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 2:19 am NASA retargets Discovery launch for February 27CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) -- NASA managers on Friday delayed for a third time the launch date for space shuttle Discovery, now scheduled to lift off February 27 on an International Space Station construction mission.Source: Reuters: Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 2:11 am NASA delays space shuttle launch again (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 2:09 am Lost in Space: 8 Weird Pieces of Space Junk
Humans have ventured into space over the last 50 years, and all manner of junk has been left behind. From tiny bolts to whole space stations, people have discarded lots of stuff up there. Much of it eventually dies a fiery death as it falls through Earth's atmosphere, but some larger debris poses risks for astronauts and spacecraft that could collide with it. Here are some of the quirkier items left in space: 1. Spatula 2. Tool bag 3. Glove 4. Tank of ammonia 5. Gene Roddenberry's ashes 6. Pee 7. Pliers 8. Camera See Also:
Image: Illustration of amount and spread of space junk around Earth based on real data/ESA Source: Wired: Wired Science | 14 Feb 2009 | 12:58 am Global Shipping Industry Makes World Flat — Biologically
CHICAGO — The global shipping industry hasn't just tied together the world's nations economically, but biologically, too. The average Great Lakes port, such as Chicago, is only an average of two degrees of separation from 80 percent of the ports in the world, from Kuala Lumpur to Amsterdam, according to new analysis of more than 2 million ship movements presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences annual meeting. The biological upshot of that logistics reality is that the evidence on which scientists have based their studies of species (stretching back to the era of Charles Darwin) is being erased. The boundaries of previously distinct geographies with their own distinct forms of life have been blurred by invasive organisms hitching rides on shipping vessels. The world's bodies of water are getting more homogeneous, leading some biologists to refer to the current era of global biological flatness as "the homogecene." "This phenomenon of invasions is obliterating the patterns of biogeography that Darwin and Wallace relied on in formulating their theories of evolution," said David Lodge, a biologist at the University of Notre Dame. "I don't know that they would have been able to come up with the theory of evolution in the situation we're faced with now, where biogeographical provinces are increasingly mixed up." Invasive species have long been known to impact ecosystems by throwing natural systems out of whack, but it has been difficult to know how damaging they really are or what organisms are likely to show up in cherished environment like Lake Michigan or the Mediterranean Sea. But ecologists and economists are working to understand how global shipping works and find ways to monitor the riskiest ships. Species move easily between aquatic habitats that are worlds apart because ships take on ballast water to stay the same weight, no matter how much freight they're carrying. So, in port A, they pump in water to get heavier, then in port B, they pick up some goods and expel that water — along with all the organisms that they picked up back at port A. That's how scientists think the destructive and oft-pilloried Zebra mussel got into the Great Lakes. U.S. researchers, just by dint of proximity, have exhaustively studied the greater Great Lakes region, which includes all the bodies of water stretching out to the St. Lawrence Seaway and the ocean. But they're just one subnetwork out of many across the globe. "The Great Lakes are just one of many possible examples of leakages between shipping ports," Lodge said. "They have been and remain a continuing laboratory for scientific and policy work." Biologists know that the Great Lakes are filled with 57 invasive species. They are heavily-invaded, in the parlance of the scientists. Yet the Lakes aren't particularly heavily-trafficked in the scheme of global shipping, University of Georgia ecologist John Drake found. "We must either conclude that the Great Lakes are especially vulnerable or there are a lot more invasions going on out there in the rest of the world," Drake said. In fact, of the Great Lakes' 200 ports, only six are in the top 3,000 in the world and only Montreal is a major node on the global shipping network. It turns out, though, that the network within the system is very integrated and dense. Once an invader gets to Montreal, it's very easy for it to travel to the rest of the ports in the system, like a virus spreading through a college dorm. Even if the tight integration between Great Lakes ports makes them vulnerable to invasion, Drake said it's likely that just by studying the Lakes in greater detail, we've found more invaders. In other shipping ports around the world, Drake said scientists
would likely find far more invasive species than they know exist today.
While there's no clear answer to stopping these unintentional species transfers — nobody wants global shipping to stop — Drake and his colleagues are trying to develop systems to mitigate the risk of organisms hitchhiking on all those ships carrying Playstations and Porsches. They're looking at ways to flag risky vessels, the ones traveling from one area to a place that's environmentally similar. From there, Lodge said, special water-treatment tech could be used to sterilize the ballast water. Image: Courtesy of John Drake. 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 | 14 Feb 2009 | 12:45 am More data sharing urged to avoid satellite crashesWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tuesday's collision of two satellites in space may not be the last unless big changes are made in the way government and commercial satellite operators share data, an expert on satellite orbits warned on Friday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 12:40 am Sea sponge shows promise as superbug antidoteCHICAGO (Reuters) - A compound from a sea sponge was able to reverse antibiotic resistance in several strains of bacteria, making once-resistant strains succumb to readily available antibiotics, U.S. researchers said on Friday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 14 Feb 2009 | 12:21 am Funding and findings: the impact factorThis column is about tainted medical research, not MMR. Now don't get me wrong: it's still an interesting week to be right about vaccines. Brian Deer in the Sunday Times claimed that the medical cases in Andrew Wakefield's 1998 paper were altered before publication. The measles figures came out: they're up by 2,000% over the last seven years, and rising exponentially. On Friday, the Autism Omnibus court hearing in the US - a massive two-year case involving 5,000 children - ruled there was no evidence for MMR causing autism (nor for the mercury preservative thimerosal). There is no reason to believe that MMR causes autism. The anti-vaccine campaigners will continue to mislead, stifle, or even smear. But it's important to keep your head and not be polarised by the other side's foolishness: because there are plenty of genuine problems in vaccine research, even if the campaigners have focused on a bad - and perhaps simplistic - example. The British Medical Journal this week publishes a complex study that is quietly one of the most subversive pieces of research ever printed. It analyses every study ever done on the influenza vaccine - although it's reasonable to assume that its results might hold for other subject areas - looking at whether funding source affected the quality of a study, the accuracy of its summary, and the eminence of the journal in which it was published. Now, in my utopian universe, it wouldn't matter where a piece of research was published, or how bad its summary was, because everybody would read everything with a joyful and attentive anality. Back in the real world, it has been estimated that each month, journals publish more than 7,000 items - studies, letters, and editorials - relevant to GP care, as just one example. New research is important, but to read and critically appraise all this material would take physicians trained in epidemiology over 600 hours. So inevitably people will read summaries - the "take home message" - and only the bigger journals. We already know that industry-funded studies are more likely to give a positive result for the sponsors' drug, and in this case too, government-funded studies were less likely to have conclusions favouring the vaccines. We already know that poorer quality studies are more likely to produce positive results - for drugs, for homeopathy, for anything - and 70% of the studies they reviewed were of poor quality. And it has also been shown that industry-funded studies are more likely to overstate their results in their conclusions. But Tom Jefferson and colleagues looked, for the first time, at where studies are published. Academics measure the eminence of a journal by its "impact factor": an indicator of how commonly, on average, research papers in that journal go on to be referred to by other research papers. The average journal impact factor for the 92 government-funded studies was 3.74; for the 52 studies wholly or partly funded by industry, the average impact factor was 8.78. Studies funded by the pharmaceutical industry are massively more likely to get into the bigger, more respected journals. That's interesting, because there is no explanation for it. There was no difference in methodological rigour, or quality, between the government-funded research and the industry-funded research. There was no difference in the size of the samples used in the studies. And there's no difference in where people submit their articles: everybody wants to get into a big famous journal, and everybody tries their arm at it. An unkind commentator, of course, might suggest one reason why industry trials are more successful with their submissions. Journals are businesses, run by huge international corporations, and they rely on advertising revenue from industry, but also on the phenomenal profits generated by selling glossy "reprints" of studies, and nicely presented translations, which drug reps around the world can then use. Anyone who thought this an unkind suggestion might need to come up with an alternative explanation for the observed data. This study is a fascinating example of the academic community turning in on itself, and using the tools of statistics and quantitative analysis to identify a nasty political and cultural problem, and give legs to a hunch. This could and should be done more, in all fields of human conduct. But the greater tragedy is that the problem Jefferson and colleagues have revealed could easily be fixed. In an ideal world, all drugs research would be commercially separate from manufacturing and retail, and all journals would be open and free. But until then, since academics are obliged to declare all significant drug company funding on all academic articles, it might not be too much to ask that once a year, since their decisions are so hugely influential, all editors and publishers should post all their sources of income, and all the money related to the running of their journal. Because at the moment, the funny thing is that we just don't know how they work. 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 | 14 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am Scent of tragedy lingers in a 650-year-old perfume bottle buried by pogrom victim
In a unique experiment, scientists at the L'Oreal perfume institute in Paris tried to analyse the ingredients of a perfume whose precious container survived the Black Death, which annihilated a third of the population of Europe. The young Jewish woman who wore the pretty silver bottle dangling on a chain at her waist was probably murdered or driven out of Erfurt, the ancient capital of Thuringia, east of Frankfurt, a victim of savage pogroms as communities sought somebody to blame for the unstoppable march of the plague. There was too little left to analyse the components of the perfume, though the scientists proved the wadding packed into the bottle was cotton, not wool or flax - an extraordinarily rare material to have travelled from Egypt or the east to a small town in Germany. Too much had evaporated of the volatile perfumed oil, possibly from roses or jasmine, for analysis - and yet a faint green herby smell, a little like the ubiquitous 1970s hippy scent of patchouli, lingers in the bottle. "It does have a smell, how extraordinary," said Karin Sczech, a German archaeologist and curator of an exhibition which opens next week at the Wallace Collection in the West End of London. She sniffed deeply, having previously accepted the scientists' assurance that no trace survived of the perfume. "But there is something, surely." She has worked for the last 10 years on an extraordinary treasure hoard of gold, silver and gems found in 1998 under an ancient wall in Erfurt. There were cups and jugs, coins, rings, brooches, dress fasteners, belts, a love token formed as a fingernail-sized padlock, in all over 3,000 coins and 600 pieces of gold and silver, fabulously rare examples of secular medieval metalwork. The perfume bottle is part of the only surviving medieval cosmetic set, complete with ear cleaners and tweezers. The most beautiful piece in the hoard proved the owner was Jewish, a solid gold wedding ring modelled as a tiny Gothic temple, inscribed Mazel Tov - good fortune - in Hebrew, supported by dragons and clasped hands and containing a little gold ball so that it still chimes like a bell. It is the most glorious of only three ever found and would have been one of the owner's most precious possessions, buried at a time of anguish for Erfurt's Jews. In September 1347, 12 ships arrived in Sicily from Constantinople, loaded with luxury imports - and the Black Death, which began to spread northwards like a bushfire. Region after region was ravaged; records say so many died so quickly there were not enough living to bury the dead. Vicious rumours also spread that wealthy Jews were poisoning wells, and a wave of pogroms began. Sczech believes the Erfurt treasure, the most spectacular of several Black Death hoards found across Europe, was buried before the slaughter in late 1349 when 1,000 are believed to have been killed and any survivors driven out. "It was so carefully packed and hidden - we do not believe this was done in haste." Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 14 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am My mentorsI don't see myself as being very clever or gifted but have ended up with a fantastically rewarding job. I've been very lucky with the people who have guided and shaped my career. The first of these was Robert Crawford who was a consultant gynaecologist. He was a brilliant surgeon and taught me to operate in every situation. I loved watching him operate so much that I used to load his list up to extremes and he would often say to me that I had put too many demands on him, but he was so quick and so neat. I learned far more than just surgical techniques from him. After a furious row with the sister in charge of a ward I worked on about the way a woman had been treated, I explained to Robert that the woman had been put in jeopardy. He listened and then said, "Yes I'm sure you are absolutely right, but perhaps you might have gone about it differently." He then went on to say that his experience had been that a good unit was always a happy unit and that there are ways of saying things. I've never forgotten that lesson and have always strived not to put the brightest people together or those best at the job, but to people who work well together and are happy together. John McClair Brown was another wonderful man who helped steer my career. He was professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Hammersmith hospital. He was very austere and frightening but had an international reputation for his revolutionary work on the fallopian tube. When people came to watch him operate he'd always say: "You should go and see what Winston is doing in the laboratory." I asked him to read over my CV when I was applying for a job at King's College in south London. After reading it, he said "Well, Winston, I don't recognise myself when I read my CV either." He was wonderful. I didn't get that job and felt wretched about it. He asked me how I had got on and I explained I hadn't got it. He listened and then pronounced, "Funny people south of the river." It was just the best possible thing he could have said; he was very generous and encouraging. • Robert Winston's Evolution Revolution is published by DK 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 | 14 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am Beaches may harbor staph bacteria: U.S. studyCHICAGO (Reuters) - Swimmers at crowded public beaches are likely to bring home more than a bit of sand in their bathing suits, according to U.S. researchers, who said as many as one in three swimmers may be exposed to contagious staph bacteria.Source: Reuters: Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 11:50 pm Scientists Agree: It's in His Kiss
You may call it love, but scientists call it philematology. And according to experts in this field (yes, there are at least three of them), the 60's pop song got it right: It really is in his kiss. "Kissing is a mechanism for mate choice and mate assessment," Helen Fisher, a Biological Anthropologist from Rutgers University here at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said to a press conference crowded with science journalists hoping for a story or, perhaps, some advice. Over 90 percent of human society engages in what, if you get right down to it, seems like a very strange thing to do: putting faces together and trading spit. But because it is so pervasive, scientists think there must be a good reason for it, some kind of evolutionary advantage. And humans aren't alone in this ritual. Chimpanzees kiss, foxes and dogs lick each other's faces, some birds tap their bills together, and elephants put their trunks in each other's mouths. Humans have been kissing for ages. "Many kisses, particularly in the Roman novels, are slobbery," said Donald Lateiner of Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware who studies the history of kissing. "Every time that the past is excavated at Pompeii, there is good a chance there will be some additional data on sexual customs, if not kissing." So what's all the making out about? It may have to do with that elusive but essential ingredient to true love that we call chemistry. It turns out, it may not be that elusive after all. It may just actually be...chemistry. Saliva is like a chemical cocktail, and hooking up may have evolved to help us quickly tell if someone is a good mate or not, Fisher said. After all, haven't we all been attracted to someone and then the first kiss just killed it? It might be because he didn't have the right stuff in his spit. Lots of hormones are present in differing quantities in our saliva, and they may serve several romantic purposes. "There's evidence that saliva has testosterone in it, and there's also evidence that men like sloppier kisses with more open mouth," Fisher said. "That suggests to me that they are unconsciously trying to transfer testosterone to trigger the sex drive in women." This prompted one male reporter to ask, "Should I drool more when I kiss?" "Are you suggesting men would be more successful if they passed more saliva?" he asked. "People will want to know that." After Fisher first mistook "drool" said with an English accent for "drill" and asked if it was some sort of British kissing technique, she dodged the question saying she's not in the "should business," about what you should or shouldn't do. But, she did offer the advice that "you don't want to turn your partner off." And there may be more to this chemical assessment than just kissing, Fisher said. "I think kissing is the tip of the ice berg. I think we'll find that all kinds of other chemical systems are in play that we don't know about." Fisher says she has found from other scientists' research and from her own analysis of statistics on 40,000 people on the dating Web site Chemistry.com that there are four dimensions of temperaments, or biologically based traits, and each is associated with different chemical systems in the brain: Dopamine is associated with traits like novelty seeking, risk taking, curiosity and creativity; serotonin was linked to calm, caution cooperation, loyalty, and tradition; testosterone with decisiveness and emotional containment; and estrogen lumped together with oxytocin was linked to nurturing, patience and social skills. So Fisher devised a questionnaire and gave it to 28,000 people on Chemistry.com to see if how strongly people express each of these systems affects their partner choice. "It now appears that we are drawn to people with particular biological profiles," she said. And the kiss may be how we assess someone's profile. This drew the obvious question from a reporter: "Is it true that opposites attract?" Well, that depends on the person she said. Those adventurous ones who express dopamine strongly preferred people like themselves, and the same was true for the more traditional, serotonin expressers. But those high in testosterone preferred more estrogen and vice versa. But there has to be more to it than just pure chemical profiling, right? Neuroscientist Wendy Hill thinks it also plays a role in pair bonding. Now doesn't that sound more romantic? Hill suspects that despite the flowers and music she provided, this could be because the college health center is where the students go when they feel sick, not sexy, which may affect women more than men. So Hill is currently running a similar study in a far more seductive setting...an academic building. Sounds romantic, right? Though she hasn't yet analyzed the new oxytocin results, she thinks the couch, light Jazz CD, and electric candles (real candles are against Lafayette College fire regulations) will do the trick. What other burning questions did journalists have for the philematology experts? Several of them wondered why people are obsessed with oral hygiene. I'm not sure what that says about journalists. Image: Flickr/b-leam Source: Wired: Wired Science | 13 Feb 2009 | 11:43 pm Cooking Has Been Both Boon and Bane for Humans
CHICAGO — Raw-food devotees take note: Your diet is not in any way natural. Humans are as adapted to cooking our food as cows are to eating grass, or ticks are to sucking blood. "Cooking is a human universal," said Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting here Friday. While cooking kills parasites and other pathogens, Wrangham believes this health benefit is not its primary contribution. "The fundamental importance of cooking is that it provides increased sources of energy," he said. And that boost may be what facilitated the leap in size between Homo erectus and modern Homo sapiens. But, cooking may also have helped some modern humans into an obesity epidemic. Wrangham cited data showing that cooking increases the body's ability to digest starches (as found, for example, in bread, potatoes and bananas). Only about 50 percent of raw starches are digested, compared to 90 percent of cooked ones. The trend, and the numbers, are similar for protein: from 50 to 65 percent digestibility raw to better than 90 percent cooked. The reason: Heat breaks down starch and protein molecules, making it easier for digestive enzymes to attack them. Cooking also softens up food, meaning the body doesn't have to use as much energy to process it. We spend less time chewing cooked food, and we secrete fewer chemicals to break it down. A recent study gave rats identical diets, except half the animals were served softened pellets and the other half received hard ones. After 25 weeks, the rats eating soft food were significantly heavier and had 30 percent more body fat, Wrangham said. We cook almost everything, except some fruits and vegetables, and we need to. People on raw-food diets lose weight almost without fail, because they can't access enough calories. Half of all women eating exclusively raw foods become so thin that they stop menstruating, he said. And our bodies show the imprint of this dependence on cooking. We have small, soft teeth, and our guts are smaller than those of any other primate relative to body size. These traits go back a long way. Humans have controlled fire for at least 200,000 years, and perhaps for much longer. In fact, Wrangham speculates that cooking may have spurred a huge leap in the evolution of H. sapiens' ancestor, H. erectus. He's written a book on the idea called Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, which will come out in June. About 1.8 million years ago, the brain of H. erectus ballooned and its body got bigger. Its arms got shorter, its legs longer. It became, in short, less of an ape and more of a human. Mankind has not undergone anything approaching this anatomical transformation since. "No really big changes are seen after H. erectus," Wrangham said. He thinks cooking may have freed up enough energy and nutrients to feed H. erectus' burgeoning brain. And this is no trivial matter: Brain tissue burns through 16 times as much energy as a comparable chunk of skeletal muscle. But as yet, it is not known if H. erectus had mastered fire. Anthropologists have found what may be remnants of 2-million-year-old cooking fires, but the evidence is equivocal. It's also possible that a change in climate keyed H. erectus' developmental quantum leap. Around 1.8 million years ago, Africa was drying out. Forests were changing into savannas. And savannas have many more herbivores — nearly three times as many by weight as forests do — said biological anthropologist William Leonard of Northwestern University, who also spoke at the AAAS meeting Friday. So increased meat on the hoof may also be part of the picture. Whenever we began cooking, Wrangham's ideas bear on the United States' current obesity epidemic: 65 percent of Americans are overweight and 33 percent obese. We know that softened or otherwise processed foods are digested more easily, yet we do not take this into account in our diets. "We're very bad at calorie-counting at the moment," Wrangham said. "Counting calories does not take into account the processibility of food. Biophysics is just as important as biochemistry in nutrition." See Also:
Image: Flickr/Unloveable Source: Wired: Wired Science | 13 Feb 2009 | 10:37 pm Infectious Superbug Invades BeachesAdd the MRSA "superbug" to the list of concerns you bring to the beach nowadays.Source: Livescience.com | 13 Feb 2009 | 9:36 pm Successful bird Valentinos strut with sensitivityCHICAGO (Reuters) - Need some Valentine's Day advice? Take it from the birds -- luck with the ladies requires more than just a big tail, biologists advised on Friday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 8:34 pm Shower after swimming to avoid MRSA, scientist adviseHolidaymakers should shower after swimming in the sea to reduce their chances of picking up the superbug, MRSA, according to scientists. The warning follows one of the first major studies into dangerous microbes that bathers might encounter during a trip to the seaside. Researchers found that people who went swimming at a popular beach in Florida had more than a one-in-three chance of coming into contact with the Staphylococcus aureus microbe. A small proportion of these were the potentially life-threatening drug-resistant strain, MRSA. The bugs get into seawater when they are washed off the skin of people who may be unaware they are carrying the infection. "Staphylococcus are shed by individuals into the waters and if you do go into these waters you are likely to be exposed," said Lisa Plano who led the research at the University of Miami. In Britain, drug-resistant MRSA has largely been a problem confined to hospitals, but in recent years, health officials have noticed a rise in what are called community-acquired MRSA infections. These often affect young, active people who have never spent time in hospital. Estimates suggest that between 20% and 40% of people in Britain carry MRSA, mostly on the skin or in the nose. The disease tends to cause serious infections only when it gets into deep wounds or contaminates medical implants, such as artificial hip joints and heart pacemakers. "As infections with these organisms are on the rise, it is becoming increasingly more important to determine all the sites or sources where these germs might survive and be shared among people," Plano said. For the study, the scientists chose a beach that was far away from any sewage outlets. They recruited 1,303 beachgoers and divided them into two groups. The first sat on the beach for 15 minutes, while the second ventured into the water and took sterilised jugs with them to collect water samples. Analysis of the water found 37% of swimmers were in contact with Staphylococcus aureus, and 3% of these were the drug-resistant strain. Plano, who presented the results at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago yesterday, said they pointed to bathing as a possible risk factor for picking up MRSA. "The majority of the isolated MRSA were those likely to be of the more aggressive variety," she said. "This exposure might lead to colonisation or infection by water-borne bacteria, which are shed from every person who enters the water." She said there was no reason to avoid swimming in the sea, but recommended people take precautions to reduce the risk of spreading, or picking up the bugs, by showering before and after going for a swim. 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 | 8:00 pm Saliva: Secret Ingredient in the Best KissesKissing unleashes chemicals related to sexual stimulation.Source: Livescience.com | 13 Feb 2009 | 7:48 pm First Near-Full Face Transplant a Success, So Far
CHICAGO — The very first near-full human face transplant was detailed Friday by the surgeon who performed the procedure. In December, plastic surgeon Maria Siemionow, after years of extensive research on mice and cadavers, transplanted almost 83 square inches of skin, with the muscles, bone, upper lip and nose still attached from an anonymous donor onto a young woman who the doctor said "did not have a midface" after she sustained traumatic injury. After two months, the patient, whose name and likeness remain private, has experienced return of basic functions, like the sense of smell and the ability to drink from a cup. She has been discharged from the hospital and appears to be recovering. "She didn't have a nose," Siemionow told a room full of her colleagues here at the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences annual meeting. "Now, she can eat a hamburger and smell it and taste it." Heart, liver, kidney and even lung transplants have become common surgical procedures, but transplants of pieces of the body that contain many types of cells — skin, muscle and bone, for example — are much more difficult. The first hand transplant occurred in 1999. French scientists carried out the first partial face transplant in 2005. The new procedure, however, is far more involved: Siemionow transplanted 80 percent of the woman's face from the donor. The surgeon and her research team had spent years laying the groundwork for the procedure with time-consuming operations in animal models. A full facial transplant in a mouse takes a team of surgeons more than six hours. Over the last decade, the Cleveland Clinic team has completed more than 1,000 facial transplants of different types in mice to learn about the body's parameters for rejecting the foreign cells. White mice usually receive brown-furred facial transplants or vice versa, so the mice often look as if they are wearing leather helmets or Phantom of the Opera-style masks after the operations. In preparation for the human transplant, Siemionow and her colleagues did similar procedures with cadavers. No one in the audience reacted to the graphic nature of the images of the procedure, including the images of the faces which had been harvested from the cadavers, the skin splayed out like masks. Siemionow emphasized that the full facial transplant is a last resort for a "very specific" type of patient. Patients who need an entirely new face have limited options. They can have skin grafted onto their faces from their own bodies, but the skin from the thighs, arms, abdomen and other common sources look slightly different, producing the unsightly quilt-like effect that is familiar from burn-victim photographs. To avoid that problem, Siemionow looked into using one contiguous piece of skin from some other area on the body, but their research showed that no area of the patient's own body contains the necessary 100 square inches of skin necessary to cover the whole face. For a full facial skin transplant, there's no alternative to using a donor, Siemionow argues. Ethical questions have been raised about the procedures. While the transplant appears to have improved the first patient's quality of life, the immunosuppressants that the patients have to take for the rest of their lives could be unsafe. "One case is merely an anecdote. It doesn't create a scientific basis to say it's safe for a patient to do this," Carson Strong, a professor of human values and ethics at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, told the Washington Post in December. But Siemionow, even though she was not directly challenged on ethical grounds, headed her critics off with a logical speech about the rigor of their bioethical procedures and an emotional appeal to help victims like a young woman whose entire face had been burned off in Afghanistan. "Why would we transplant the face?" Maria Siemionow asked her colleagues. "Because it's very difficult to go around life having no face." 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 | 13 Feb 2009 | 7:36 pm Penguins Showing Strain Under Climate ChangeA major Magellanic penguin population declined more than 20 percent in two decades.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Feb 2009 | 7:24 pm 'CO2 reduction treaties useless'A new report says that treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol, which aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, are useless.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Feb 2009 | 6:37 pm Kissing helps us choose the right breeding partner, claims scientistThe 17th-century satirist Jonathan Swift once wondered "what fool it was that first invented kissing". Now scientists believe they have an answer. They have turned to evolution and believe smooching serves as a quick way of screening potential partners by marking out those who are the best prospects for a long-term relationship. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago that humans evolved three main systems in the brain for mating and reproducing. Sex drive motivated us to try a range of partners, romantic love focused our thoughts on one person at a time, and feelings of attachment encouraged us to stay in a relationship long enough to raise a child. Fisher said the act of kissing appeared to stimulate these brain circuits in a unique way. "Hooking up may have evolved as a fast-acting biological strategy for mate assessment," she said. "Men like sloppier kisses with more open mouths and more tongue movement. The hypothesis is they're trying to get small traces of oestrogen to see where the woman is in her menstrual cycle to indicate the state of her fertility." More than 90% of societies around the world kiss, and Fisher argues this makes it too common to have no real purpose. "You can the smell the health of their teeth and what they have been eating and drinking and smoking, and these are all devices we use to size up an individual before we do something like have sex with them, which is very metabolically expensive and very time consuming.. "I think that is just the beginning of what we are going to find out. This is just the tip of the iceberg. We are going to find many other mechanisms we unconsciously use to size up a person's biological traits." In a recent study, Fisher's team used a medical scanning technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of 49 men and women who said they were deeply in love. Of the volunteers, 17 had just fallen in love, 15 had been rejected and 17 said they were still in love after an average of 21 years of marriage. They concluded that romantic love can become long-term "if you kiss the right person", Fisher 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 | 6:00 pm Octuplets Reveal Limits to Human EmpathyHuman nature explains moral outrage over octuplets mom.Source: Livescience.com | 13 Feb 2009 | 5:41 pm Common Cold Genes Reveal Complex BugThe genetic code of the common cold reveals traits that could be targeted, but no cure.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Feb 2009 | 5:39 pm Tigers' latest hope: Maggie the dung-sniffing dog (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Feb 2009 | 5:05 pm Science v superstition, not religionWe are not going to understand the growth of creationism in modern England so long as we think of it as a primarily Christian phenomenon, or even a religious one. Take a look at the most recent surveys of creationist belief among teachers and among the general public. One was conducted by Theos, the Christian thinktank, and has been attacked by the BHA – more of this later – and the other measured attitudes towards creationism among school teachers. That found that nearly a third of teachers with science as a specialism saw nothing wrong with teaching creationism in class. Now, I have only come across one school where an open attempt was made to do this – the notorious Emmanuel Academy in Gateshead. But the headmaster there told me, and I have no reason to doubt this, that although he was himself an evangelical Christian, the impulse towards creationism in science classes had come from Muslim parents. So, does this prove that the problem is simply one of religion versus science? Not if the BHA is right about the decline of religious observance. Their most recent press release claims that less than 10% of the British population is religiously observant. But the figures for the rejection of evolution produced in the latest Theos survey completely dwarf the most generous estimates for religious observance. A third of the population think that God created the world some time in the last 10,000 years; this is more than 10 times the number of Muslims in Britain, assuming they are all creationists, which of course they aren't. It is also more than 10 times the most generous estimate for the the fundamentalist Christian population here. The figure only make sense on the basis that much of the population has abandoned both science and organised religion, and plunged back onto a swamp of superstition. There are huge differences between organised religions and disorganised credulity and if we care about truth we should recognise them. The Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church are much clearer about the truth of evolution than the general public. However, it is in the small print of the Theos survey that the real news is found. This is upsetting to any believers in the spread of scientific knowledge, whether they are religious or not. When the answers are broken down by age, it turns out that anyone who went to school in the 30 years since The Selfish Gene was published is less likely to believe in evolution than those who emerged from school earlier. The older you are, the more likely you are to be scientifically literate. Take the question of the age of the earth: 28% of respondents between the ages of 55 and 64 think it is less than 10,000 years old. This is a jaw-dropping figure, but when you look at people who have more recently emerged from school, 40% of 18 to 24-year-olds think that it is probably or definitely true that the earth is so young. When the question of intelligent design is raised – and this is one thing which evolutionary biology completely rules out – it turns out that 60% of the young adults believe in it to a greater or lesser extent, as opposed to 50% of those between 55 and 64. The most obvious thing about these figures – if you have spent time with the statistics of church attendance – is that the age groups where belief in science is weakest are also those where religious observance is almost unknown. In middle age, and later, when church attendance resumes, there is an uptick in belief in evolution. I don't know if there is a causation here or simply a correlation. What there clearly isn't is a pattern where increasing religious belief diminishes scientific understanding. In any case, these statistics would be good if they could promote thought as well as anxiety. Perhaps there are science teachers reading this who could cast light on the question. 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 | 5:04 pm What Modern Men Want in WomenWhat do men want in a woman? Brains? Beauty? Vacuuming prowess?Source: Livescience.com | 13 Feb 2009 | 4:46 pm Penis Jousting and 7 Other Great Animal Mating Rituals
When it comes to courtship, mankind has nothing on the animal kingdom. The evolutionary imperative of finding a suitable mate has produced a staggering array of rituals, from black grouse booty-shaking to mosquito duets and gender-bending octopi camouflage. It's a rare animal that doesn't seek romantic attention in a funky way. Some of these rituals are designed to convey reproductive fitness. Others are meant to trick reluctant mates into a one-night stand. And — hermaphrodites withstanding — it's nearly always the males who try to catch the attention of ladies. Maybe animals and humans aren't so different after all. Black Grouse: Sometimes simple is best: just plain, old-fashioned booty-shaking, with males showing off their bright white posterior feathers and engaging in ritualized battles that look a bit like capoeira. Video: Greatswamp
Abdopus aculeatus: This Indian Ocean octopus doesn't exactly display what people call courtship. Instead, the males mimic female coloration, allowing them to get close enough to a female to make mating possible. Sometimes, however, as in the video above, the guys just fight. Video: Chuffard
Hippopotamuses: Hippo ladies don't exactly go for metrosexuals. To impress them, males use their tails to fling their feces — a highly-efficient way of conveying olfactory cues about reproductive health. Image: Flickr/Stephanie Carter
Flatworms: Thankfully for humans, courtship doesn't involve figuring out which partner is male and female. Not so for the hermaphroditic flatworm, who settle their similarities with penis jousting contests. The winner gets to be the man in the relationship. Video: 0uploader
Horseshoe crabs: This primitive arthropod doesn't have any couple-specific rituals — at least, none that biologists can identify. But they make the list because they mate only during the summer, on beaches, under full moons. With that sort of romance, no wonder the species has survived for 350 million years. Video: Solatia
Bighorn sheep: Like the Black Grouse, they don't do anything radical — they just do it well. Males fight to impress the ladies, running into each other head-first at high speed, their horns making a sound that reverberates for miles. Video: tyhawk
Elephants: In stark contrast to the animal world's more combative and deceitful mating rituals stands the elephant. Males conduct their courtship over a period of weeks, squirting females with water, bringing them food and generally proving how nice they are. Image: Flickr/Doug8888
Mosquito: Most animal mating rituals involve a guy trying to impress a girl. Leave it to the lowly mosquito to rescue equality among the sexes: their song. Though the male's wings typically produce a sound with a frequency of 600 hertz, and the female's wings a 400 hertz song, each mating individual will adjust his her or sound so as to meet in the middle. The resulting harmonic convergence is, at 1200 hertz, a bit like love itself: more than the sum of its parts. Video: Wired Swan image: Flickr/Steve Beger Photography See Also:
Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 13 Feb 2009 | 4:40 pm SLIDE SHOW: The Week's Top StoriesThe week marking Darwin's 200th birthday was also packed with science news.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Feb 2009 | 4:31 pm Dawkins takes on the ex-bishopIt's not often you see two heavyweights limbering up for a prize fight among the dinosaurs of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Even rarer when the warm-up is set to the strains of Haydn. Last night Richard Dawkins and Lord Harries of Pentregarth (formerly Bishop of Oxford) did just that. They revisited the great evolution debate between Thomas Huxley (who was representing a poorly Darwin) and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in the same location in 1860. Both claimed victory, though the consensus is that Huxley won on points. Huxley was known as Darwin's Bulldog, due, I presume, to his pugnacious defence of Darwin, rather than his pug-like appearance. Wilberforce fiercely opposed the science of evolution, and in the debate slung mud, asking if Huxley's ape ancestors were on his mother or father's side. Huxley cut back saying that he'd rather claim kindred with an ape than with a man who made such poor use of his intellect. There was no such vitriol last night. Dawkins is more like Darwin's border collie: patient, intelligent and forcefully industrious. The discussion centred not on Darwin or evolution, but on unanswerable questions of religion. That was disappointing because what is really important about Darwin is that he gave us a watertight theory of evolution, and that idea is what we should celebrate. It took a member of the audience to remind the panel of that. Dawkins is now better known for being an atheist than for his outstanding record as an evolutionary biologist and a science communicator. Dawkins refuses to engage with the creationists who cause those of a more rational disposition such ire. He's wisely following the maxim that suggests you should never argue with an idiot: the best possible outcome is that you win an argument with an idiot. Instead, in the debate, he conversed jovially with someone who agrees with him on every point about evolution. The referee, Jeremy Paxman, tried to inject some controversy into proceedings but soon gave up as the atmosphere remained congenial. Harries is about as liberal as ex-bishops get, and an epochal distance from the biblical literalists with whom he shares a deity. And this was highlighted as a problem. Harries' views are aligned with Dawkins about the truth of evolution, but out of touch with a large proportion of his flock. It is not clear how Harries or the church plans to deal with that. Before the big fight, Harries had tried to up the stakes with a little trash talking in the press, but it wasn't convincing. In fact, together they sound like two old pals having a warm ding-dong over a pint. As a result, it was a thoroughly pleasant evening of gentle sparring. Although science didn't feature much, the tone was much more in line with Darwin's humble disposition, and a far cry from the irritable mudslinging that so often characterises the clash of evolution and religion. For the record, Dawkins won. On points. Listen to clips from the debate and Adam Rutherford speaking about it on Science Weekly from Monday 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 | 4:27 pm Virtual Dating Helps Couples Test WatersVirtual dating lets couples test the waters online before meeting face-to-face.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Feb 2009 | 3:58 pm Male birds pair up to attract femaleEvolutionary biologists have stumbled across a strangely familiar form of courtship in the jungles of Costa Rica. Video footage of the tropical manakin bird has found that males employ a wingman to help them find a mate. To attract females, the pair perform an elaborate song-and-dance routine, even though only the more dominant male ever gets to mate. David McDonald at Wyoming University recorded the birds singing while going through a number of dance moves, including "side-by-side jumping", "butterflying" and "leapfrogging", in which one bird hops over the other's head before being jumped over himself. The behaviour of the long-tailed manakins, Chiroxiphia mankins, has puzzled evolutionary biologists, because it seems to hold no advantage for the lesser male in the pair. To investigate further, McDonald studied the social structure of male manakins and found that only a small percentage, representing the most dominant males, ever got to mate. With so little chance of mating themselves, young male manakins are forced to play a supporting role to the alpha males. The dance routines attracted females who usually mated with the alpha male within hours or days of watching them dance. 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 | 3:43 pm Penguins in Peril, Research ShowsPenguin populations at a wildlife reserve in Argentina have been declining due to overfishing, climate changes and pollution.Source: Livescience.com | 13 Feb 2009 | 3:13 pm
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