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Vitamin E May Decrease Mortality Of Elderly Male Smokers, Yet Increase Mortality Of Middle-aged SmokersSix-year vitamin E supplementation decreased mortality by 41% in elderly male smokers who had high dietary vitamin C intake, but increased mortality by 19% in middle-aged smokers who had high vitamin C intake.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Shortening Telomeres Linked To Aging In Population Studies, But Original Telomere Length Varies Between IndividualsResearchers have shown that the shortening of telomeres in pace with increasing age, as demonstrated in population studies, does not apply at the individual level. The attrition rate seems to mainly depend on the original length of the telomeres, which indicates that some individuals can even have longer telomeres over time.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Perception Of Time Pressure Impairs PerformanceA psychology student recently studied 163 subjects performing the Iowa Gambling Task, a popular psychological assessment tool, to investigate the effect of perceived time pressure on a learning-based task. His study is the first to look at the relationship between perceived time pressure and IGT performance.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Hundreds Of Identical Species Thrive In Both Arctic And AntarcticThe Arctic and Antarctic have revealed a trove of secrets to Census of Marine Life explorers, who were especially surprised to find at least 235 species live in both polar seas despite a distance of more than 13,000-km distance in between. Among many other findings, scientists also documented evidence of cold water-loving species shifting towards both poles to escape rising ocean temperatures. The discoveries were made on a series of landmark, often perilous voyages during International Polar Year, 2007-2008.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Ancient Geologic Escape Hatches Mistaken For Tube WormsNew study finds Colorado fossils previously identified as tube worms are actually ancient methane venting structures. The findings could lead to new concerns for underground carbon dioxide storage plans.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Tandem Mission Brings Ocean Currents Into Sharper FocusWhen the two ocean-observing satellites OSTM/Jason-2 and Jason-1 begin their tandem mission in February, they'll be flying in a new configuration designed to get the most detailed measurements possible of the ocean surface. They'll enable scientists to distinguish much smaller ocean features than they could with only one satellite and see more quickly how these features change over time.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Big storm moves into S. Calif.; snow closes I-5 (AP)AP - A winter storm that could be the largest of the season is bringing heavy rain and mountain snow to Southern California.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 2:28 pm Polarized Venezuela cheers, deplores Chavez win (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 2:10 pm Genes That Control Body's Salt Levels Are Identified (HealthDay)HealthDay - MONDAY, Feb. 16 (HealthDay News) -- The largest study of the effects of genetics on blood pressure in humans has linked variant versions of genes that control levels of salt in the body with high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 2:02 pm Sex objects: Pictures shift men's view of womenMen are more likely to think of women as objects if they have looked at sexy pictures of females beforehand, psychologists said yesterday. Researchers used brain scans to show that when straight men looked at pictures of women in bikinis, areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated. Scans of some of the men found that a part of the brain associated with empathy for other peoples' emotions and wishes shut down after looking at the pictures. Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, said the changes in brain activity suggest sexy images can shift the way men perceive women, turning them from people to interact with, to objects to act upon. The finding confirms a long-suspected effect of sexy images on the way women are perceived, and one which persists in workplaces and the wider world today, Fiske said. "When there are sexualised images in the workplace, it's hard for people not to think about their female colleagues in those terms. It spills over from the images to the workplace," she said. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago yesterday, Fiske said the findings called into question the impact of sexualised images of women that might be pinned on workplace walls or sent around offices where there was a strong locker-room culture. "I'm not saying there should be censorship, but people need to be aware of the associations people will have in their minds," Fiske said. In the study, Fiske's team put straight men into an MRI brain scanner and showed them images of either clothed men and women, or more scantily clad men and women. When they took a memory test afterwards, the men best remembered images of bikini-clad women whose heads had been digitally removed. The brain scans showed that when men saw the images of the women's bodies, activity increased in part of the brain called the premotor cortex, which is involved in urges to take action. The same area lights up before using power tools to do DIY. "It's as if they immediately thought to act on theses bodies," Fiske said. In the final part of the study, Fiske asked the men to fill in a questionnaire that was used to assess how sexist they were. The brain scans showed that men who scored highest had very little activity in the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions that are involved with understanding another person's feelings and intentions. "They're reacting to these women as if they're not fully human," Fiske 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 | 16 Feb 2009 | 1:42 pm Songbirds Fly Three Times Faster Than ExpectedResearcher have tracked the migration of songbirds by outfitting them with tiny geolocator backpacks -- a world first -- revealing that scientists have underestimated their flight performance dramatically.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm New Test For Mysterious Metabolic DiseasesScientists have devised a much-needed way to monitor and find treatments for a mysterious and devastating group of metabolic diseases that arise from mutations in cells' fuel-burning mechanism.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm First Brain Study Reveals Benefits Of Exercise On Quitting SmokingResearch reveals for the first time, that changes in brain activity, triggered by physical exercise, may help reduce cigarette cravings. The study shows how exercise changes the way the brain processes information among smokers, thereby reducing their cravings for nicotine. For the first time, researchers used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to investigate how the brain processes images of cigarettes after exercise.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm Draft Version Of The Neanderthal Genome CompletedScientists they have completed a first draft version of the Neandertal genome.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm Natural born heroes?People who stay cool in a crisis may be natural born heroes, according to psychiatrists investigating how soldiers behave in stressful situations. Blood tests on war veterans showed that a minority were almost oblivious to stress and were able to think clearly in spite of the dangerous situations they found themselves in. The research has led to a test that can predict which people will respond well in a stressful situation and those who are more likely to panic. Deane Aikins, a psychiatrist at Yale University, said the remarkable composure of US Airways Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who made an emergency landing on the Hudson river last month, showed how well some people can cope with extremely stressful situations. The pilot's actions led to headlines referring to "grace under pressure" – Hemingway's description of heroism. "I think some people are born with it," Aikins said. "We would all be ready to scream in our chairs, but there are certain individuals who just don't get as stressed." In a study, Aikins took blood samples from soldiers before and after they took part in survival training exercises designed to test their skills at evading capture and enduring interrogation. In the majority of men, levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, increased sharply during the exercise. But Aikins found a few men whose stress levels hardly changed during the exercise. They performed best because they were able to stay calm, he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago yesterday. Interviews with the soldiers after the exercise showed that while all of them found the experience unpleasant, only those with low cortisol levels said they did not find it particularly distressing. "Certain people are cooler under pressure and they perform very, very well during these periods of time," Aikins said. Further tests revealed the men who coped best with stress had higher levels of a substance called neuropeptide Y, which reduces levels of cortisol in the body and blocks feelings of stress. The ability to cope with stress is linked strongly to soldiers' risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, which can cause them to experience anxiety attacks and flashbacks for years after the event. Aikins said his next goal was to identify mental exercises or drugs, such as the steroid DHEA, that could protect people from high levels of stress. If that can be done, it might reduce levels of post-traumatic stress disorder, which affects between 15% and 20% of active servicemen and women. Stephanie Bird, an ethics consultant, said that medicating people to dampen their stress reactions raised serious issues. "We clearly don't want to create a population of people who act without thinking," she said. Other research by Karestan Koenen at Harvard School for Public Health found people's risk of suffering post-traumatic stress disorder was influenced by their childhood. Children with a low IQ, a difficult temperament, or who came from a poor family or had a depressed mother were significantly more likely to report the disorder later in life than other children, she 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 | 16 Feb 2009 | 12:59 pm Fusion futureThe possibility of using star power on EarthSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Feb 2009 | 12:41 pm Study: 'Astonishing richness' in polar sea species (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 12:39 pm New waveSituation improving for scientists in Islamic countriesSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Feb 2009 | 12:17 pm NKorea hints at missile launch as Kim turns 67 (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 11:54 am Amazon dieback 'overstated'The Amazon rainforest may be less vulnerable to severe drying as a result of global warming than previously thought, a study suggests.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Feb 2009 | 11:26 am Turbines' impact on birds probedResearchers will look into whether bird and bat life can be affected by micro-turbines on homes.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Feb 2009 | 10:59 am Japanese turtle to get prosthetic limbs (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 10:48 am Ivory trade hits Asia's elephantsThe illegal ivory trade in Vietnam is threatening the survival of South East Asia's elephants, a wildlife monitoring group says.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Feb 2009 | 9:42 am Treasure stealersFarmers' battle against illegal metal detector usersSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Feb 2009 | 9:35 am Scientists dig for the guts of earthquakes (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 9:07 am DNA testing fails on ancient British polar bear remainsA scientist says she has been unable to extract DNA for analysis from ancient Scottish bear remains.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Feb 2009 | 6:28 am Mystery fireball streaks across Texas sky (AP)AP - What looked like a fireball streaked across the Texas sky on Sunday morning, leading many people to call authorities to report seeing falling debris.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 4:31 am Carbon Burial Research Grows as Huge Experiment Begins
CHICAGO — A landmark Energy Department project to bury carbon dioxide produced by humans has begun as workers sunk a huge drill bit into Illinois ground this week, signaling continued support for a climate change mitigation strategy that has fallen out of favor in many circles. The start of drilling marks the launch a geological sequestration project that will deposit a million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the ground by 2012. While that's nothing compared to the several billion tons of CO2 that humans emit yearly, it's the geology of the site that makes the development exciting. The CO2 will be piped into a geological formation that underlies parts of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky that could eventually hold more than 100 billion tons of CO2. "This is going to be a large-scale injection of 1 million metric tons, one of the largest injections to date in the U.S." project manager Robert Finley said here at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting Sunday. While the Department of Energy and private industry have been pushing to create cheaper renewable energy and investigating increased nuclear-power options to reduce carbon emissions, carbon capture and sequestration remains an attractive idea. It would allow regions of the country like the southeast, which don't have Texas or California-level wind or solar resources, to continue burning coal without contributing to climate change. To do that, many technological issues will need to be solved. Last year, the Bush administration canceled the DOE's most expensive carbon capture and sequestration project, FutureGen, and some utility executives have questioned whether storing CO2 will actually make sense. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that as much as 30 percent of the energy created by a coal plant would have to be spent on just pulling the CO2 out of its flue gas. But new materials for more selectively capturing CO2 from gas mixes continue to be created in labs like Omar Yaghi's at UCLA and at Georgia Tech under Chris Jones. Those innovations could make the capture part of "carbon capture and sequestration" easier than it currently is. Add in a carbon tax of some form and fossil-fuel power plant operators would have the incentive to start capturing a lot of carbon dioxide. Then, they'll just need somewhere to put it. The DOE thinks the United States has more than enough underground closet space.
But most current sequestration projects use the carbon dioxide to squeeze more oil and gas out of depleted fields. Those fields probably won't cut it for much larger amounts of CO2. For that, we'll have to turn to huge reservoirs deeper underground. That's why the Illinois demonstration project is so important. It will test a formation called the Mt. Simon sandstone, allowing scientists to track in near real-time what happens when they start putting large amounts of compressed carbon dioxide 6,500 feet below the surface. "We have numbers for what we think the capacity is in the U.S., but the only way to prove that is to actually drill a well," said Litynski. Drilling a 6,500-foot well doesn't come cheap — the Mt. Simon project has a, $84 million price tag. It's a collaboration between the DOE and industrial partners including Archer Daniels Midland, which is providing the land for the test site and will serve up CO2 from its ethanol fermenters. A group of scientists from state U.S. Geological Survey known as the Midwest Geological Carbon Sequestration Consortium are leading the research. They'll collect enormous amounts of data about how the CO2 plume moves through the pores in the sandstone. The Mt. Simon formation is particularly attractive because of a series of fortuitous events that have placed three layers of impermeable rock — known as "cap rock" — between the sandstone and the surface. Finley thinks that makes the project a very good bet to succeed in keeping CO2 buried away for what amounts to forever in human timescales. But the audience at the AAAS meeting who watched the researchers present their sequestration evidence weren't wholly convinced. They gave the presenters a rougher time than one normally sees at this meeting, where most questions are softballs. One audience member noted that the Mt. Simon project was sequestering 10,000 times less CO2 than we'd have to put into the ground each year to offset human emissions. It's the expense and time needed to scale up the tech that leads renewable energy advocates to complain that money used to make coal cleaner should instead be spent scaling up wind power or installing efficiency measures to reduce electricity demand. The Department of Energy's sequestration division has received $481 million in Federal funding to date, with a request for $160 million for next year, up from $1 million in 1995. Finley defended his project, taking the stance that the problems inherent in producing clean energy will require a wide variety of technologies, not one single solution. "From my point of view as someone working in this field ... the political rhetoric gets to the point where it's all supposed to be solar or wind or coal or natural gas," Finley said. "The reality for the situation is that we need all of these technologies." Images: 1) Top, workers drill testing holes to keep track of the groundwater around the Mt. Simon injection site. 2) A diagram shows the stratigraphic position of the Mt. Simon sandstone from a Midwestern Geological Sequestration Consortium presentation, like the one delivered by Finley at the AAAS meeting. 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 | 16 Feb 2009 | 2:07 am Reseasrch shows why some soldiers are cool under fireCHICAGO (Reuters) - Soldiers who perform best under extreme stress have higher levels of chemicals that dampen the fear response, a finding that could lead to new drugs or training strategies to help others cope better, a U.S. researcher said on Sunday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 16 Feb 2009 | 12:26 am HIV gene therapy trial promisingOne of the first attempts to use gene therapy to treat HIV produces promising results in preliminary clinical trials.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Feb 2009 | 12:07 am Science Weekly: Happy birthday Darwin!It's 200 years since his birth, and 150 years since On the Origin of Species was published. Yes, you guessed it, it's a show all about Charles Darwin. Adam Rutherford of Nature magazine tells us about a debate to mark the big day in Oxford last week where Bishop Richard Harries and biologist Richard Dawkins locked horns over evolution. We also have the highlights of the debates held here at Guardian HQ – this time Susan Blackmore and Nature's Henry Gee (among others) discussed if humans are still evolving. And we talk to Sir David King – former chief scientific adviser to the government – who gave this year's Darwin Day lecture. But he's not talking about Darwin. In the newsjam, we look at the controversy over the classification of dance drug ecstasy; one of the largest penguin colonies in the world is under threat; and scientists have unravelled the genetic make-up of the Neanderthal, the long-faced, barrel-chested relative of modern humans. Feel free to post your comments about this programme on the blog below. You can also join our Facebook group, where you can scrawl your thoughts on our wall. Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 16 Feb 2009 | 12:05 am Ice oceans 'are not poles apart'A marine census finds that at least 235 species live in both polar regions, despite being 12,000km apart.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Feb 2009 | 8:29 pm First carbon-free polar station opens in AntarcticaPRINCESS ELISABETH BASE, Antarctica (Reuters) - The world's first zero-emission polar research station opened in Antarctica on Sunday and was welcomed by scientists as proof that alternative energy is viable even in the coldest regions.Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 7:50 pm The Hunt for E.T. Comes Home — to Earth
CHICAGO — They might not be green or spit out cute catchphrases, but there could be forms of "alien" life right here on Earth. If life arose not just once, but multiple times on Earth, life as we don't know it could be here on our own planet, perhaps using different chemical processes than we've ever seen before. And because scientists have only studied a tiny slice of the world's microbes in depth, the microscopic remnants of a second (or third or fourth) biogenesis could be hiding right beneath our noses. "If life did happen many times, there could be something like a shadow biosphere that either was, or is, all around us," Arizona State Univeristy astrobiologist Paul Davies said here Sunday at the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences meeting. "It's entirely possible that some fraction of microbial life could turn out to be alien or 'weird' life as we prefer to call it." Davies' contention challenges the relatively accepted orthodoxy that life arose once on Earth and colonized the entire planet. This weird life would the best possible analog for extraterrestrial life. Finding it, or even creating it in a laboratory, would give researchers clues about both how life began on Earth and how common life is on other planets. If a second sample of life on Earth exists, it would raise the probability for extraterrestrial life and help provide knowledge about other plausible structures for life in the universe. This strange life could be far more simple than the life that we know after 4 billion years of evolution, or it could use different chemical machinery to carry out the processes of life, like using arsenic in the same way that all living things we know use phosphorous. But how do you find life as we don't know it? The easiest method would be to discover an ecologically isolated region, where no life that we currently recognize does or could live, and stumble upon a whole community of new life forms. "One thing we could do would be to draw up a wish list of horrible places and go there to look for weird life," Davies said. In some ways, that's what happened when researchers looked at hydrothermal vents in the ocean and found sulphur-eating microbes thriving in the absence of sunlight. But those creatures already have a spot on the tree of life and, if you go far enough back, share a common ancestor with all other life that we know on Earth. Truly "weird" life would have to be much weirder. It would function using different elements or have different basic genetic material. Stumbling upon this life could be quite difficult, as the likeliest spot for one of these life forms would appear to be one of the thousands of unexplored deep sea vents. But Davies thinks a fairly simple endeavor could determine whether arsenic-using life exists: Find a virus that incorporates arsenic and you have suggestive evidence that the cells exist. "The idea I did have is that if there are weird cells lurking somewhere, that they've probably got weird viruses that prey on them. Viruses get everywhere. The oceans are like virus soup," Davies said. "Just looking for viruses with arsenic in there seems fairly straightforward." And as Davis points out, "You just need to find one of these things somewhere, and it makes the point." But if nature doesn't offer it up, there's another route to understanding weird life on Earth or elsewhere. We can try to recreate life as we've never seen it before in a laboratory. Davies' sometime collaborator Steven Benner, a former University of Florida chemist, revealed at the conference this weekend that he had created a self-replicating chemical system that can evolve along Darwinian lines. It's not quite artificial life, but it's close. At first blush, it might sound like Gerry Joyce's work creating a similar but more self-contained system. Joyce's system, however, took the existing RNA chemistry as a given, whereas Benner's work added letters, i.e. amino acids, to the familiar adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. The RNA in Benner's experiment uses six amino acids. His work attempts more radical changes to what we think of as life than does the work of synthetic biologists like Craig Venter or chemists like Joyce. "One of your problems in synthetic biology, is that you have to decide where your interchangeable parts are going to come from," Benner said. "You have Craig Venter, he's going to try to shuffle genes that nature has produced. Jerry is the next level down. He's trying to use the ATGs and Cs and he'll do selections and cycles. Very cute stuff. We're trying to shuffle the atoms." While Benner acknowledged that the other scientists' work could increase our understanding of life on Earth — its origins and limits — he maintained that his approach was the only one likely to expand our conception of the possibilities for extraterrestrial lifeforms. "If you're going to look at alien life, you have to do it at our level because chemistry is the universal," Benner said. "I assure you that Craig Venter's genes are not going to be found anywhere else." While NASA and the public are focused on the final frontier, looking for extraterrestrial life in our solar system and on Earth-like planets beyond it, Davies and Benner could be the first to find or create life as we don't know it right here on the Earth. Image: Lava pillars near the Axial volcano, which erupted in 1998. A new microbe was found there in in 2006. NOAA Vents Program, via Science-AAAS. 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 | 15 Feb 2009 | 7:16 pm Study pinpoints genes tied to high blood pressureWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two genes that help the body get rid of excess sodium may be important causes of high blood pressure, U.S. scientists reported on Sunday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 6:20 pm Study takes step toward erasing bad memoriesLONDON (Reuters) - A widely available blood pressure pill could one day help people erase bad memories, perhaps treating some anxiety disorders and phobias, according to a Dutch study published on Sunday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 6:16 pm Same Species Found at Both Ends of Earth (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Scientists have determined that at least 235 species live in both polar seas despite the 8,000 miles (13,000 km) between the ends of the Earth.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 6:15 pm Uncovering ancient secrets beneath the surface (AP)AP - Scholars are reconsidering what ancient Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes knew of the concept of infinity, and archaeologists may have found a fossil brain millions of years old, thanks to new ways of looking beneath the surface of ancient objects.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 6:10 pm Cancer 'danger receptor' foundA "danger receptor" that may kick-start an immune reaction to cancer in the body has been found by UK researchers.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Feb 2009 | 6:01 pm Same Species Found at Both Ends of EarthScientists have determined that at least 235 species live in both polar seas.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Feb 2009 | 6:00 pm Global warming 'changing balance' of polar marine lifeGlobal warming is changing the distribution, abundance and diversity of marine life in the polar seas with "profound" implications for creatures further up the food chain, according to scientists involved in the most comprehensive study of life in the oceans ever conducted. Researchers from the Arctic Ocean Diversity (Arcod) project have documented rising numbers of warm-water crustaceans in the seas around Norway's Svalbard Islands. Arcod is part of the Census of Marine Life, a huge 10-year project involving researchers in more than 80 nations that aims to chart the diversity, distribution and abundance of life in the oceans. They say an increasing number of these species are extending their range towards the poles as previously cold waters between Norway and the North Pole become warmer and more hospitable. The team, led by Dr Rolf Gradinger, from the University of Alaska, also collected evidence from the polar Chukchi Sea, between Russia and Alaska, which showed that at least three species have extended their range northwards by up to 500km. The most notable is the snow crab, which has crossed the Bering Strait and is occurring in the Chukchi Sea for the first time. "This is an example of a general trend we are observing where water is warming further north and making this region more suitable for southerly species," Gradinger said. The Census is a huge 10-year project involving researchers in more than 80 nations that aims to chart the diversity, distribution and abundance of life in the oceans. The team also found that smaller species are replacing larger ones in some Arctic waters, a shift which could have profound implications further up the food chain. "We are finding two smaller species of plankton. This difference in size is big enough to cause a problem for the breeding populations of birds and whales as they will be forced to eat smaller species that has less energy content." Gradinger's team of scientists from the University of Alaska and the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology in Moscow has collected its findings over five years. Their research has been released in conjunction with another survey from the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML) following a series of expeditions during International Polar Year 2007-08. Both projects will contribute data on polar regions to the global Census of Marine Life, which is due to be released in 2010. "In oceanographical terms these [Arctic] changes are huge," said Gradinger. "A change in temperature of just a few degrees will see the loss of sea ice cover and with it the sea ice algae, small animals and crustaceans which depend on it. By 2050 the arctic oceans may be ice free, we will lose these animals and that will have implications further up the food chain." "From an Arctic perspective it's not only about an increase in temperature, it's a complete change in the ecosystem - salinity, ice melt, flow, currents - all of these together will have an impact." The Antarctic team also reported evidence that some species of pteropods - snail-like species also known as sea butterflies - are moving further towards the pole. "It is similar to the Arctic – animals adapted to cold water environments are having to head to the poles to keep to colder climes as northern waters warm," said Dr Julian Gutt of the CAML. By comparing notes, Arcod and CAML scientists found that at least 235 species live in both polar regions despite being 6,800 miles (11,000km) apart. Marine life that both poles share includes grey whales, birds, worms, crustaceans and pteropods. Scientists say the discovery opens a host of future research questions over where they originated and how they ended up at opposite ends of the earth. Another major finding from the 18 research expeditions conducted by CAML during 2007-08 has revealed that life on the seafloor around the Antarctic continent forms a single bioregion - not separate ecosystems, as previously thought. Sampling from 1m locations around the 5,300 miles (8,500km) of Antarctic seafloor - or benthos - has also confirmed that the system is united by a single high-speed current. "These findings are a major part of new information because so little was really known historically about these regions," said Ron O'Dor, the chief scientist of the census. Gradinger added: "It's extremely difficult to get information from polar seas because we don't have good historical data. But we must collect data now to evaluate the impact of climate change and the use of the seas for tourism, fishing and shipping. With the warming of Arctic commercial exploitation might increase and therefore it's important to document what species are occurring currently." Scientists from around the world have been involved in 17 different marine projects that will inform the census, a 10-year project that will provide a snapshot of life in the world's oceans. The Earth's ice oceans have already revealed some secrets that have excited scientists. Last year at team of British Antarctic Survey scientists working on the census found that seas surrounding an archipelago near the tip of the Antarctic peninsula are richer in animal life than the Galapagos Islands, challenging the notion that warm seas in tropical zones are higher in biodiversity. In February last year, giant sea creatures, including sea spiders the size of dinner plates and jellyfish with six-metre long tentacles, were found by Australian scientists working on a census project in the deep waters around Antarctica. 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 | 15 Feb 2009 | 6:00 pm 10 Fantastic Marine Biology Videos
Killer whales, cuddly otters, and jogging shrimp are great reasons to be excited about marine biology. But they are far more than a source of inspiration or entertainment. Each fascinating creature should remind us that a precious realm exists just beneath the surface of the sea, and it is our responsibility to protect it from overfishing and pollution. Here are some of our favorite clips from that remarkable world: 10. Octopus Escapes Through One Inch Hole 9. Manatee Crash 8. Flying Great White Shark 7. Shrimp on a Treadmill 6. Otters Holding Hands 5. TED talk by David Gallo 4. Deep Sea Squid with Elbows 3. Massive School of Jellyfish 2. Orcas Hunting by Making Waves 1. Mimic Octopus Image: A glowing fish from David Gallo's TED talk. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Feb 2009 | 5:01 pm Obama to lift ban on stem cell research soon: aideWASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will soon issue an executive order lifting an eight-year ban embryonic stem cell research imposed by his predecessor, President George W. Bush, a senior adviser said on Sunday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 3:01 pm Kissing: It really is all about chemistryCHICAGO (Reuters) - Valentine Lotharios beware: There's a lot riding on a kiss, new studies on the science of smooching suggest.Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Feb 2009 | 2:33 pm Earth-like planet will be found 'soon'A planet similar to Earth could be discovered in a distant solar system within three years, according to a leading astronomer. Planets that support life forms could be common in the universe, and about 100bn of them may exist in our own galaxy, said Dr Alan Boss, a researcher at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington. He told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago yesterday that, according to his calculations, there is roughly one Earth-like planet for every star that is similar to our own sun. The US space agency, Nasa, is due to launch a space telescope, called Kepler, dedicated to searching for planets that are similar to, or smaller than Earth. It will join the European Space Agency's Corot telescope, which spotted a large "super Earth" earlier this month. The Kepler telescope will gaze continuously at 100,000 stars in two constellations known as Cygnus and Lyra for more than three years. "Within three to four years from now, these telescopes will tell us just how frequently Earths occur. It's an exciting time to be alive," Boss said. "We will be absolutely astonished if Kepler and Corot don't find any Earth-like planets. If there's nothing lying in that region of space that corresponds to Earth, it would be a reason for mass harakiri in parts of the community," he added. The hunt for planets beyond our own cosmic neighbourhood solar system has already revealed more than 300 distant worlds, though the majority of these are unlikely to be hospitable. About a third of nearby suns have planets that are five or 10 times the size of Earth, but they orbit their stars more closely and hence are much hotter. The number of planets like Earth, which are orbiting in the "Goldilocks" region of space where the temperature is right for liquid water, could be much higher, an estimated 10,000bn billion in the observable universe, said Boss. "If we find that Earth-like planets are as common as I'm claiming, we'll make a very strong case that not only are they probably habitable, they are also going to be inhabited, but that will be up to the next generation of space telescopes to prove," Boss said. "Most likely, the nearby Earths are going to be inhabited with organisms which are more common to things that were found on Earth three or four billion years ago, so simple, single-celled creatures. What I suspect we'll find first is a nearby Earth-like world has some sort of methane-producing bacteria sliming its surface up. Just the fact that we can find evidence for life beyond Earth will answer the question: Are we alone? And we're going to find out the answer is 'No we are not'." Astronomers have pondered over the existence of planets beyond our solar system since before the days of Sir Isaac Newton, but it was not until 1988 that a planet was detected orbiting a star called Gamma Cephei, 45 light years away, by Canadian researchers. Almost all the planets discovered outside our own solar system have been spotted as they pass in front of the face of their parent star, or by the gravitational forces they exert on the star as they orbit it. 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 | 15 Feb 2009 | 1:59 pm
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