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Family History Of Melanoma Linked To Parkinson's DiseasePeople with a family history of melanoma may have a greater risk of developing Parkinson's disease, according to a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm DNA Evidence Is In, Psychedelic Looking Bouncing Fish Is A New Species, Dubbed 'Psychedilica'"Psychedelica" seems the perfect name for a fish that is a wild swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes and behaves in ways contrary to its brethren, including bouncing like a ball along the seafloor instead of swimming. The fish, which has rare forward-facing eyes like humans, also has a secretive nature. That could be the reason they weren't spotted by divers until just last year nor described in the scientific literature until now.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm Sexual Lyrics In Popular Songs Linked To Early Sexual ExperiencesWith sexual activity among adolescents in the United States resulting in over 750,000 teenage pregnancies each year, researchers and public health officials are looking for those factors that might increase sexual activity in teens. Researchers have found that teenagers who preferred popular songs with degrading sexual references were more likely to engage in intercourse or in pre-coital activities.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm Are Women More Generous? New Study Sheds Light On Donation BehaviorWhy would women give more to the victims of Hurricane Katrina than to the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami? A new study sheds light onto the way gender and moral identity affect donations.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm 40-year Mystery Revisited: Newtonian System Mimics 'Baldness' Of Rotating Black HolesIn 1968, theoretical physicist and cosmologist Brandon Carter showed that a particle's wild gyrations while orbiting a rotating black hole nevertheless hold another variable fixed, which was named the "Carter constant," remaining somewhat mysterious 40 years later. Now Clifford M. Will, of Washington University has shown that, even in Newton's theory of gravitation, arrangements of masses exist whose gravitational field also admits a Carter-like constant of motion, in addition to energy and angular momentum.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm Hormone Disorder Drug Could Help Drinkers Stay SoberA drug prescribed for male and female infertility and menstrual disorders could hold the key to a more effective treatment for alcoholism, according to a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm New Research Identifies Faster Detection Of VirusesScientists can now detect viruses more specifically and faster than ever before. Viruses can currently be detected in fluids and their detection is of major importance in medical diagnostics. However, despite recent advances, current assays are time consuming and labor intensive. New research shows a more efficient and practical system in detecting the viruses by using micro-sized cantilevers to directly detect viruses binding to membrane proteins.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Antibiotic Resistance: Rising Concern In Marine EcosystemsA team of scientists are calling for new awareness of the potential for antibiotic-resistant illnesses from the marine environment, and pointed to the marine realm as a source for possible cures of those threats.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Babies Born In Pollen And Mold Seasons Have Greater Odds Of Developing Asthma SymptomsA new study suggests that newborns whose first few months of life coincide with high pollen and mold seasons are at increased risk of developing early symptoms of asthma.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Alps-like Mountain Range Exists Under East Antarctic Ice SheetFlying twin-engine light aircraft the equivalent of several trips around the globe and establishing a network of seismic instruments across an area the size of Texas, scientists have not only verified the existence of a mountain range that is suspected to have caused the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet to form, but also have created a detailed picture of the rugged landscape buried under more than four kilometers (2.5 miles) of ice.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm The Evolution of Human AggressionIs there evolutionary reasoning that explains our aggressive tendencies?Source: Livescience.com | 25 Feb 2009 | 12:59 pm Polar Year 'hailed as a success'The International Polar Year has come to a close, as results from the massive effort continue to pour out.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Feb 2009 | 12:42 pm Making a Living Studying NatureConnecticut College botanist Peter Siver studies some of the world’s tiniest organisms.Source: Livescience.com | 25 Feb 2009 | 12:00 pm Study: Antarctic glaciers slipping swiftly seaward (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 11:48 am T. Rex Gets Weighed (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Imagining dinosaurs in the flesh is tricky since the prehistoric subjects died out some 65 million years ago, but a new tool is helping to fill out the skeleton of T. rex and one of the largest-known duckbill dinosaurs, among other beasts.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 11:37 am Hurricane Season 2008 (weather.com)weather.com -Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 11:05 am Komodo dragon attacks Indonesian park ranger (AP)AP - A Komodo dragon climbed a ladder to a park ranger's hut and mauled his hand and foot, officials said Wednesday. The victim received severe lacerations but appeared to be recovering.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 10:30 am Oil chiefs urge offshore drilling (AP)AP - Executives of the biggest oil companies are taking their case for expanded offshore drilling to Congress, even as Democratic congressional leaders and the Obama administration promise to put some limits on energy development along the nation's coasts.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 8:13 am NKorea under growing pressure to scrap rocket launch (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 8:05 am China opens bidding on moon probe technologyBEIJING (Reuters) - China will open competitive bidding so that domestic schools and institutions can help build crucial parts of the country's moon exploration craft, an official newspaper said on Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 6:19 am Cold awakeningWorld's climate negotiators on visit to AntarcticaSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Feb 2009 | 4:57 am Aphids' sticky suicide missionsAphid soldiers are capable of tissue engineering efforts and even the ultimate sacrifice, researchers find.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Feb 2009 | 4:45 am 'Ghost peaks' mapped under iceA team completes its mission to survey Antarctica's Gamburtsev mountains - one of the most enigmatic ranges on Earth.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Feb 2009 | 1:33 am Florida tests using magnets to repel crocodilesMIAMI (Reuters) - Florida wildlife managers have launched an experiment to see if they can keep crocodiles from returning to residential neighborhoods by temporarily taping magnets to their heads to disrupt their "homing" ability.Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 12:40 am "Pig Brain Mist" Disease Mystery Concludes
More than a year after developing a mysterious neurological disorder eventually linked to their inhalation of aerosolized pig brains, 24 pork plant workers have regained their health. Their recovery, described Tuesday in a presentation scheduled for the American Academy of Neurology's annual conference, ends a story that began in November 2006, when three workers at a Quality Pork Processors plant in Austin, Minnesota reported strange and similar symptoms: fatigue, numb and tingling legs, pain, difficulty walking. Doctors didn't know what caused the problem, but tests found severe spinal cord inflammation, suggesting an autoimmune disorder: the patients' immune systems no longer recognize their bodies' nerves, and attacked them. Over the following months, the number of cases rose to 24, and past cases of a similar condition were uncovered at a meat processing plant in Indiana. Doctors scrambled to find a common clue. Both plants were among a total of three in the country to process pig brains for consumption — and each of the 24 workers at the Minnesota plant worked in the "head table" room. At the head table, pig heads were cut open and the brains forced out with a burst of compressed air. In the process — a process that took place about 1,400 times an hour — some of the brains were blown into a fine mist. Not everyone in the room got stick, but the closer people stood to the table, the more likely they were to be afflicted. "When you're breathing in pig brain tissue, your body develops an antibody against it," said Mayo Clinic neurologist James Dyck, who helped treat the workers. Antibodies are chemicals used by the immune system to tag foreign bacteria and substances. "There's enough overlap between pig brains and human brains that it was a problem." The workers' immune systems mistakenly targeted their own nerves. Fortunately, most responded to treatment with immunotherapy and steroids, and six improved without any treatment at all. None of the workers, however, have recovered fully. Exactly why the rash of cases emerged so suddenly isn't known. The factory shut down the pig brain processing center soon after the disease emerged, and no new cases have been reported. According to Dyck, the near-tragedy has a silver lining: doctors had a chance to study the emergence of autoimmunity — a phenomena underlying dozens of diseases, many of which are barely understood and difficult to treat — in a manner impossible inside a laboratory. "This is an experiment that occurred by accident," he said. "What is an immunodeficiency? How does that autoimmune process happen? What's getting attacked?" he said. "This is teaching us about how the body and the immune system works." See Also:
Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 Feb 2009 | 12:29 am NASA rocket failure blow to Earth watching network (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2009 | 12:23 am Psychologists find gene that helps you look on the bright side of lifeThose unfortunate enough to lack the 'brightside gene' are more likely to suffer from mental health problems such as depression If life looks cheery in spite of the gloomy weather, mass job insecurity and the suspicion that spending hours on Facebook is mangling your mind, you might want to thank your brightside gene. It seems that for some of us, seeing the glass as half full is hardwired into our genetic make-up, helping us shrug off the miseries of life and enjoy the positives. Research by British psychologists suggests that people who carry the gene pay less attention to negative things going on around them and focus instead on the happier aspects of life. By doing so, they end up being more sociable and are generally in better shape psychologically. Elaine Fox, head of psychology at Essex University, said the gene seems to underlie some people's ability to deal with daily stresses. Those without it are likely to have a gloomier outlook on life, and suffer more from mental health problems such as depression. "We've shown for the first time that a genetic variation is linked with a tendency to look on the bright side of life," she said. "This is a key mechanism underlying resilience to general life stress." In a study involving more than 100 volunteers, Fox's team checked how long it took people to react to good and bad images that flashed up on a computer screen. Among the positive pictures were a couple hugging and someone sailing along in a boat. The negative images included a photo of someone being mugged. Chris Ashwin, a co-author on the study and cognitive psychologist at Bath University, said the test reveals whether people are inclined to focus more on the good things in life or the bad. Genetic tests on the participants showed that a tendency to ignore negative images and dwell on the positive ones was strongly linked to a variation in a gene that controls serotonin, the brain's main feelgood chemical. Each of us inherits two versions of the gene, either two short ones, two long ones, or one of each. People who had two longs versions were most likely to focus on the positives, according to the study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. How the gene works is unclear, but Ashwin suspects it might dampen down activity in part of the brain called the amygdala, which plays a leading role in regulating our emotions. People with two short versions of the gene show more activity in that part of the brain and are more likely to be neurotic and anxious about their lives, the researchers said. The discovery raises the prospect of employers screening out applicants who take a glum view on life. But individuals vary too much for such a test to be effective, the researchers told the Guardian. Of course they're probably wrong, but who cares, working for a living is rubbish anyway. 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 | 25 Feb 2009 | 12:05 am Without Tears, Is There Still Sadness?
Now you see sadness, now you don't. A new study has found that removing just the tears out of pictures of people crying reduces the sadness that viewers perceive in the photos, even though the rest of the expression remains intact. The research subjects said when the tears were digitally erased, the faces' emotional content became ambiguous, ranging from awe-filled to puzzlement. "One of the startling things is that the faces not only look less sad but they don't look sad at all. They look neutral," said Robert Provine, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County neuroscientist who led the work. "Any photograph you see, you can put your finger on the screen and block out the tears. It's like the face is transformed." Scientists have spent plenty of time thinking about how humans communicate emotion in non-verbal ways, the signals that we've evolved for other members of the species. Paul Ekman of the University of San Francisco — and other researchers — have found that certain facial and bodily expressions mean the same thing from Bogota to Beijing. As described by Malcolm Gladwell in a 2002 profile, "Ekman had established that expressions were the universal products of evolution." But Provine argues in an article published in the open-access journal Evolutionary Psychology that Ekman left out a key component of basic human emotional signaling (PDF) -- the tear effect, which appears unique to our species. "With tears, you increase the richness of the face as an instrument for communication," Provine said. Eighty-three subjects evaluated 200 photographs showing 100 random facial expressions and 100 pairs like the photos above. On a seven-point scale ranging from "Not Sad at All" to "Extremely Sad," erasing the tears dropped the rating by about 1.25 points. The study suggests that the way humans read other people's emotions is markedly impacted by the presence (or absence) of tears. "The Ekman expressions are not the whole story. When you add tears, you're getting other combinations," Provine said. For example, Provine writes in the paper, "Does a happy face with tears appear more or less joyous, or something in between, perhaps described as 'bittersweet?'" While we might have an intuitive sense of the answer, the neuroscientist said the phenomenon deserves scientific scrutiny. "What we want to do is really reevaluate a lot of the studies of human facial expressions using tears as a variable," he concluded. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am Obituary: Martin WellsDistinguished biologist inspired by the hidden wonders of marine life Martin Wells, who has died aged 80, was not only a distinguished biologist with a passion for invertebrates, but also a colourful and stimulating personality who enthused generations of students with the sheer excitement and beauty of studying animals, especially cephalopods - squids and octopuses. He was also a writer of popular science books, essays and rigorous papers, a novelist, painter and a yachtsman. He was born in London, the only son of Frank, a documentary film-maker, and Peggy Wells. Frank's father was HG Wells, and his brother was George (Gip), a professor of zoology at University College London. Martin attended Dauntsey's school in Wiltshire and won an open scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1946. He had an inspirational biology teacher and, as a boy, used to "collect things out of the river and put them into aquariums. I went to nearby rivers for specimens because this was during the second world war and you couldn't get near the coast - it was mined." After national service with the RAF, much of which he spent on a hill in Germany, guiding planes involved in the Berlin airlift, he went to Cambridge, where he gained a first in zoology. This was followed by postgraduate research on insects under Professor Vincent Wigglesworth. Towards the end of Martin's first year of research, Professor Carl Pantin drew his attention to the fact that Reinhard Dohrn, the director of the privately funded Stazione Zoologica di Napoli, was looking for bright young scientists to raise the research profile of the laboratory. Martin and his wife, Joyce, a fellow graduate student whom he had married in 1953, both abandoned their PhDs and jumped at the chance to make this adventurous move. It was a move also from insects to cephalopods, more appropriate to employment at a marine biology station. Martin began his research into these creatures by studying tactile learning in octopuses. Acting on a suggestion from Professor JZ Young, who had already discovered a way of training octopuses to make visual discriminations, Martin and Joyce soon showed that these animals could discriminate between objects on the basis of touch, using the suckers on their arms. He also showed that octopus suckers contain chemoreceptors so the animal can learn to "taste" what it touches. This "tasting by touching" is extremely sensitive and enables octopuses to distinguish, for example, between clams and stones, as the arms explore their surroundings at night or in murky waters. Another fruitful and influential line of research followed Martin's discovery that in the cephalopod brain there is an analogue of the vertebrate pituitary gland: the optic gland, closely associated with sexual maturation. Martin and Joyce's 1959 paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology on this topic became a classic in the literature of invertebrate endocrinology, and it is fitting that new research, confirming and extending Martin's findings in this area, is currently being pursued by a group at the University of Naples. In the 1970s Martin's interest turned to various aspects of the cardiovascular and respiratory physiology of cephalopods. Collaborating with colleagues from around the world, he published a series of important, challenging papers that always attempted to relate physiology to the life of the whole animal in its environment. His more recent studies on the pearly nautilus have not only yielded fascinating data about the physiology of an animal that regularly moves from the surface to depths of more than 700m, but has taught us much about the reasons for the eventual failure, from an evolutionary perspective, of the shelled cephalopods (the ammonites and belemnites) that once dominated the ancient seas. On the basis of his early work in Naples, Martin was elected to a prize fellowship at Trinity College in 1956. In 1959 he was appointed to a university demonstratorship in the Cambridge zoology department. Soon afterwards, he became one of five founder fellows of Churchill College, and a tutor and director of studies in biology. Martin was awarded a Cambridge ScD in 1966 and the silver medal of the Zoological Society of London in 1968. He was made a reader in 1976. Over nearly five decades of varied activity, Martin threw himself into teaching, research, tutoring, parenting, writing (including six-minute BBC concert-interval talks on snails and bats), wine-making, painting, entertaining, fishing and sailing. He made an enormous contribution to the work of the Cambridge zoology department: in his lectures, he conveyed his infectious enthusiasm for the wonders of marine life, and he cheerfully accepted stints as acting head of department. With Joyce, he travelled extensively in search of cephalopods, and colleagues with whom to study them. Among many destinations that he visited (often as a visiting professor) were Duke University in North Carolina, Hawaii, Ghana, Dalhousie in Canada, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Texas and Uganda. The overused expression "a good work-life balance" could have been invented to describe Martin. Last year was an especially happy one for him. His first novel, Second Coming, was published; he had six weeks on his yacht, the Sepiola, in the Ionian sea; there was an exhibition of his paintings, and a memorable 80th birthday party in Churchill College. Martin and Joyce were visiting their son Simon and his family in Los Angeles when Martin died suddenly. He is survived by Joyce, their two sons, Dominic (professor of gene transfer at Imperial College London) and Simon (a film-maker), and four grandchildren. • Martin John Wells, zoologist, born 24 August 1928; died 1 January 2009 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 | 25 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am Ham, the real hero of the space raceThe real hero of the early American space programme was Ham the "astrochimp", who went up before any of the first American Mercury astronauts (India plans £1.7bn manned space mission by 2015, 24 February; Letters, passim). Trained for weeks to pull levers with a banana pellet reward for the right one and an electric shock for the wrong one, he could do this in his sleep and was really relaxed as he was strapped into his wired-up "biopack", set up to take all manner of readings. However, the rocket burned all its fuel at once, some of the valves malfunctioned, cabin pressure dropped, the fuel ran out and the engines shut down. The outcome of all this was that he pulled twice the anticipated gs on his way up, while all the wiring went haywire and whichever lever he pulled he got a shock. Sensing that things were going wrong, the emergency abort system kicked in and blasted his capsule off the rocket with a wrench. The re-entry retro rockets then shut down prematurely thus failing to slow the capsule down, resulting in another 15g on his way down. All this time, he's frantically pulling levers and getting nothing but shocks. Off course, the capsule landed 150 miles from its intended target and the excessive impact caused the heat shield to blow a hole in the bulkhead, and the capsule started to fill with water and sink. The helicopter arrived just in time to pull Ham and his spaceship out of the ocean. No more the easy-going guy out for a day in space, once his handlers got to him he started to hit, bite and scratch anyone who came near. Ham the chimp, the true hero of the space race. You obviously can't get a cat into a spacesuit. It needs a catsuit. 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 | 25 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am Obituary: Carleton GajdusekNobel prizewinner who first described the prion disease kuru Carleton Gajdusek, who has died aged 85, had the rare distinction of being a Nobel prizewinner and a convicted child molester. As a medical researcher he studied kuru, an incurable disease that affects the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea, and showed that it had a long incubation period, but progresses rapidly when it starts, and is unlike any previously understood infection. It does not provoke an immune response and cannot be destroyed by heat, radiation or formaldehyde. He called the causative agent a "slow virus" and showed that kuru was related to Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in humans and scrapie in sheep; we now call the organism a prion and know that it is a non-living entity that can reproduce itself. Gajdusek was born in Yonkers, New York, to east European immigrants. He studied biophysics at Rochester University, graduating in 1943, and medicine at Harvard, qualifying in 1946. He then did research at Caltech (the California Institute of Technology) under Linus Pauling and Max Delbruch, and research at Harvard under John Enders. All three scientists later became Nobel laureates. In the 1950s, doing his army service, Gajdusek helped show that the haemorrhagic fever killing US soldiers in South Korea was spread by migrating birds. In 1954, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) sent him to a camp in Bolivia for native American Okinawans transported there by the US navy after the second world war. There were so many deaths it was rumoured to be an extermination camp; but he showed that the deaths were by natural causes and fighting. The CDC offered him a job. "You're a screwball", said his boss, "but you're my kind of screwball." Gajdusek declined the offer and went to work with another Nobel-laureate-to-be, the immunologist Sir Macfarlane Burnet, in Melbourne. In 1957 Burnet sent him to Port Moresby, New Guinea, to set up part of a multinational study on child development, behaviour and disease, where he heard about a mystery illness called kuru affecting a tribe of the eastern highlands. The Fore, always willing to adopt new customs, had copied a neighbouring tribe, the Anga, some years earlier and taken up cannibalism. They abandoned it when missionaries told them that eating people is wrong. Their kuru was more recent and becoming more prevalent. Gajdusek began mapping its incidence, noting that nobody recovered. Dozens of blood samples revealed nothing untoward. By April 1957 he had 28 cases and 13 deaths. By June he had 200 deaths; most were women and children. Kuru sufferers shrieked, stumbled, jerked and twitched, were belligerent and prone to mirth. Gajdusek wanted to know if the disease was genetic, infectious, environmental or psychosomatic. He sent brains to be analysed in Australia and at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). He investigated what the Fore ate, drank or touched. He tried ad hoc treatments: vitamins, steroids, antibiotics. Nothing worked. Meanwhile, the Americans noted that the brains were similar to those of CJD patients. Burnet proposed sending out a multidisciplinary team. Gajdusek replied that he was that team. Around this time he visited the Anga. They did not have kuru but did have an interesting form of welcome: the youths persistently offered to fellate him and regarded it as great fun. After nine months, Gajdusek returned to NIH. There, an American scientist, William Hadlow, wrote saying how similar the brains looked to brains of sheep infected with scrapie. Gajdusek inoculated chimps with extracts of Fore brains, knowing it would be a long time incubating, and went back to the hospital he had founded for the Fore. He visited other tribes with paedophiliac traditions, and in 1963 brought to the US the first of his 56 adopted sons, a 12-year-old Anga boy, who landed barefoot in Washington with a bone through his nose. He put them all through high school, and many through university or medical school. In 1965, two years after they had been inoculated, the chimps started to become ill. Gajdusek consulted a British expert on sheep scrapie, who confirmed that the chimps had died of the same disease that killed the Fore. It was a triumphant moment for Gajdusek, says the science writer DT Max, author of The Family That Couldn't Sleep, a history of prion disease research: proof that the disease was caused by an infectious agent. By 1976, when he received his Nobel prize, Gajdusek had published 150 papers. He published a further 450 papers on "slow virus" diseases and ethnography. In 1974 an American neurologist and neuroscientist, Stanley Prusiner, entered the field and coined the term prion (for proteinaceous infectious particle, and incorporating the first two letters of his surname). Prusiner received a Nobel prize in 1997. In the 1990s a member of Gajdusek's lab had told the FBI that something fishy was going on and that clues might lie in Gajdusek's diaries. They contained nothing incriminating, apart from a Prufrock-like reference to his inhibitions. The FBI questioned Gajdusek's adopted sons and found one who was willing to testify; in a taped phone call from the boy, Gajdusek admitted they had masturbated each other. None of the other boys said Gajdusek had touched them and several were willing to give evidence in his favour. Many distinguished scientists pleaded for clemency for him. Gajdusek was 74 when he emerged after serving a year in prison, his health broken. He retired to Amsterdam, spending his winters in Tromso, Norway. He was unapologetic about his conviction, taking the view that "boys will be boys". He is survived by his adopted children. • Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, medical researcher, born 9 September 1923; died 12 December 2008 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 | 25 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am Plantwatch: It's been a good winterAfter one of the worst freezes in years, February has flipped into spring. Crocuses, daffodils and the other spring bulbs are bursting into flower, and tree buds are swelling up ready to break into leaf. But the signs of spring are at least a month later than the ridiculously warm winters of recent years. The cold spell hit tender plants hard, especially in south-west England, where many places are used to a mild frost-free winter. Succulents, tree ferns and fuschias were some of the worst hit. The sheer weight of snow even snapped the branches off trees, helped by the severe frosts that made the trees more brittle. But the snow did a power of good for many trees. Snow on the ground slowly drip fed water into the soil, which percolated deep around the tree roots. That gives trees plenty of moisture when their leaves open up. The frost helped kill many pests, especially foreign aliens recently imported into the country, such as the larvae of the horse chestnut leaf miner that has ravaged trees in the south of Britain. This winter also gave many plants the period of cold they are used to. Trees need to shut down and rest in winter, otherwise they become stressed and more susceptible to pests and diseases. And for crops such as blackcurrants, a decent spell of winter cold is needed to set flowers and fruits properly the following growing season. All in all, this was a good old-fashioned winter that lots of our plants needed. 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 | 25 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am Odd Life Found in Great LakesExtreme environment-loving life forms found in sinkholes of Lake Huron.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2009 | 10:33 pm Genentech says U.S. patent office upholds key patent (Reuters)Reuters - Genentech Inc said on Tuesday that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has confirmed its claims of the validity of a key patent that governs the biotechnology company's method of producing some of its drugs.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Feb 2009 | 10:30 pm Researchers make nerve cells from new "stem" cellsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers said on Tuesday they had made a type of nerve cell out of ordinary skin cells in a new approach to stem cell research.Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Feb 2009 | 10:23 pm Utilities Jumping into the Solar Game
In the last 24 hours, two power producers ordered up a gigawatt of solar power. That's twice the total solar capacity the United States had installed in 2007. PG&E, a California utility, and NRG, a national independent power producer, announced plans to build 500 megawatts of solar power each. NRG is partnering with Google.org-backed eSolar, a startup incubated by the legendary venture capital firm, Idealab, that is pursuing solar thermal power which uses mirrors to turn liquid into steam that drives a turbine. Meanwhile PG&E will be investing in photovoltaics, which directly convert light into electricity. The Solar Electric Power Association particularly celebrated the latter move, which they said heralded a new era for solar energy in which utilities, not individual consumers, would be the "most important customer" for the industry. The original bailout bill, passed last year and filled with energy provisions, changed the law so that utilities like PG&E became eligible to receive the 30 percent investment tax credit for solar projects. Five utilities from New Jersey's PSE&G to San Diego Gas & Electric have now announced plans for utility-owned solar projects. "Utility companies around the U.S. are exploring ownership of solar projects now that they have access to the [tax credit]," said Julia Hamm, the Solar Electric Power Association's executive director. The two announcements highlight the ongoing strength of renewable energy, despite the tough economic times. With most industries falling apart, tax incentives and the risk of carbon legislation continue to push renewable energy forward, even as some individual projects and companies experience trouble. Image: A rendering of an eSolar modular 46 megawatt plant. 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 | 24 Feb 2009 | 9:58 pm U.S. scientists build computer model for snowflakesCHICAGO (Reuters) - The random, symmetrical beauty of snowflakes has been recreated in a computer program, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Feb 2009 | 9:27 pm Botched launch ends U.S. satellite's missionCAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The U.S. government's first attempt to map carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere from space ended early on Tuesday after a botched satellite launch from California, officials said.Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Feb 2009 | 9:26 pm Drink a day raises cancer riskDrinking one glass of wine a day is enough to increase the risk of developing cancer, a UK charity warns women.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2009 | 9:00 pm Even small amounts of alcohol raise women's cancer riskA study involving more than a million women found that drinking the equivalent of just one small glass of wine a day significantly increased the risk of common cancers Women who drink a glass of wine a day are more likely to develop a range of cancers than are teetotallers, according to the largest study ever conducted into drinking and cancer. A daily drink was found to significantly raise the risk of breast, liver and rectal cancer, and is estimated to account for more than 7,000 extra cases of cancer each year in the UK. Researchers at the University of Oxford said the findings, which are part of the Million Women Study, make clear that even light, regular drinking can be a serious threat to health. Naomi Allen, a cancer epidemiologist who led the research, used medical records to identify cases of cancer among a group of 1,280,296 middled-aged women. Of the women who drank, the average intake was one unit per day, the equivalent to a small glass of wine or 8g of alcohol. A pint of beer would count as two units. Very few of the women consumed more than three drinks a day. Over a seven-year period, 68,775 women were diagnosed with cancer. While alcohol seemed to reduce the risk of some very rare cancers, such as kidney, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and thyroid tumours, it raised the risk of others. For every 1,000 women, drinking regularly once a day was linked to 11 extra breast cancers, one more oral cancer and one additional case of rectal cancer each year. Cases of oesophageal, laryngeal and liver cancer all rose by 0.7 extra cases per 1,000 women per year. The increase in cancer risk was the same whether women drank wine, beer, spirits or a mixture. "In the UK, cancers of breast, liver, rectum, mouth and throat together number about 118 per 1,000 women each year. Having one drink a day would cause 15 extra cases of cancer per 1,000 women [per year] up to the age of 75," Allen told the Guardian. Drinking twice a day would lead to a doubling of extra cases to 30. The research is published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Smoking is still by far the largest single cause of cancer, accounting for around one third of all diagnosed cases. Diet and diet-related factors, such as obesity, are thought to explain a further third, with alcohol accounting for around 5% of cancers. "It's for the government and Department of Health to make and change public health guidelines, but given that this is the largest study in the world to look at this, it's clear that even at low levels of alcohol consumption, there does seem to be a very significant increase in cancer risk, and most women are probably not aware of that," said Allen. "Alcohol intake has less of an impact on cancer rates than smoking, but it's still hugely significant and it's something people can modify if they want to. People have to be informed that it increases their cancer risk so they can take responsible action." In an editorial published alongside the research, Michael Lauer and Paul Sorlie at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Maryland, US, write: "From the standpoint of cancer risk the message of this report could not be clearer. There is no level of alcohol consumption that can be considered safe." Sara Hiom at Cancer Research UK said: "We know that too much alcohol increases the risk of a number of cancers. This latest study shows that even relatively low levels of drinking increase a woman's risk ... The more you cut down on alcohol, the more you reduce your cancer risk." 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 | 24 Feb 2009 | 9:00 pm Anger Can Cause Electrical Changes in HeartHow the heart reacts to anger can predict who is at risk for irregular heartbeats.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Feb 2009 | 8:15 pm Robert Bigelow: Lessons, Visions, Realities...Bigelow Aerospace’s CEO illuminates the foresight driving his company’s market positioning strategy.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2009 | 8:10 pm Robert Bigelow: Government Space vs. Private SpacePart #3 - Full, Uncut Conversation with CEO of Bigelow Aerospace.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2009 | 8:03 pm Robert Bigelow: Who Owns the Next 5 Decades in Space?Part #2 - Full, Uncut Conversation with CEO of Bigelow Aerospace.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2009 | 7:59 pm To Save Animals, Put a Price on Them
Rather than relying on warm, fuzzy feelings to protect animals, conservationists suggest appealing to something more reliable: greed. By selling financial contracts pegged to species health, the government could create a market in the future of threatened animals, making their preservation literally valuable to investors. "The incentive to conserve would increase as the likelihood of species survival decreases," said Cornell University biologist James Mandel. "If a species declines, investors have a bunch of paper that's now worthless." Mandel and the co-authors of the proposal, published in Frontiers of Ecology and the Environment, are not the first to put a price on nature. The U.S. government already pays developers to preserve habitat for some endangered animals, such as the red-cockaded woodpecker. Those simple programs, however, don't make full use of market powers, and are used only for endangered species. There's little reason for developers — say, Wyoming farmers with pronghorn antelope on their land, or oil companies prospecting on polar bear habitat in Alaska — to protect species that are merely in trouble. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife services lists 163 animal species as threatened. As habitat shrinks and human development expands, many of them will become officially endangered. With that categorization comes expensive recovery programs, costly lawsuits and halted projects. In this atmosphere, developers often hide evidence of endangered animals on their land — "shoot, shovel and shut up," as the saying goes — instead of saving them. Rather than waiting for situations to go critical, say Mandel's team, conservationists could immediately use the money they'd eventually spend to make animal protection profitable and more effective. "There's not much the government can do until a species is listed, and then they spend intense amounts of money, as they should. A species essentially goes from worthless to worth a lot, " said Mandel. "We're looking for some way to ease the transition, to put a price on a species before it becomes listed, and prevent the need for last-minute recovery." "Acting late is always more costly than acting early," said Josh Donlan, another study co-author and director of Advanced Conservation Strategies. Under their plan, the government would determine the cost of protecting a species if it becomes endangered. That money would be set aside to fund contracts with payouts pegged to species health. The contracts would be sold to landowners and developers whose actions directly affect the animals, though the contracts could be freely re-sold. Should animal numbers fall beneath a predetermined threshold, contracts would be voided, and money devoted to anticipated recovery programs. If the species thrives, investors would be rewarded, with profits growing in direct proportion to species health. "If there's a 99 percent chance that a species is going to survive," said Mandel, "you could trade that like a high-ranking bond. You know it's going to pay out." Many details would need to be worked out on a case-by-case basis. If priced too low, the contracts would represent an easy payoff for environmental destruction. And both the government and investors would need to be sure that, come animal-counting time, nobody cooked the scientific books. But the basic premise, said Ray Victurine, director of the conservation finance program at the Wildlife Conservation Society, "makes a whole lot of sense." Now it needs to be tested in the real world. "If you put all the pieces together, it has the potential to work," said Victurine, who was not involved in the study. "But it's going to work in very specific circumstances that have to be identified." Victurine said the idea was well-received at a conference of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the world's oldest environmental group, but that the audience didn't quite grasp the details. Their difficulty may stem from the tricky finances involved. After all, the contracts are better-known by another confusion-engendering name: derivatives. But unlike mortgage and credit derivatives that have crippled America's economy, said Mandel, these derivatives wouldn't be sold and re-sold until their risks were hidden. Instead they take risk currently assumed by the government, who foot endangered species bills, and place it with people who actually control species fate. "We want to take the risk out of the bureaucracy in Washington, and price it into everyday decisions for stakeholders," said Mandel. Citation: "A derivative approach to endangered species conservation." By James T. Mandel, C. Josh Donlan, and Jonathan Armstrong. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Vol. 7 No. 2, March 1, 2009. Image: Flickr/Striatic See Also:
Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Feb 2009 | 7:58 pm Freaky-Faced Fish Squirts Along in Indonesian WatersScientists have confirmed a bizarre new fish species, Histiophryne psychedelica, that has forward-facing eyes, like primates, as well as a fleshy chin and cheeks. It is one of the only known fishes to have eyes that aren’t on the side of its head.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2009 | 7:42 pm 5 of the Worst Space Launch Failures
Space flight is a tough business. In the 52 years since the beginning of American efforts to reach space, more than 160 launches, including that of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory on February 24, have failed. Here are some of the most devastating failures. December 6, 1957: Vanguard TV3
— Elise Kleeman for Wired.com See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Feb 2009 | 7:34 pm Mountain range as large as Alps found under Antarctic iceSubglacial mountains mapped by scientists 2.5 miles under ice A mountain range as large as the European Alps is hidden under 2.5 miles of ice in the east of Antarctica, scientists have revealed. The range includes peaks up to 3,000m above sea level and raises questions over how the massive ice sheets on the continent formed. The subglacial mountains were first detected by Russian researchers more than 50 years ago and are named after a Soviet geophysicist, Grigoriy Gamburtsev. But, despite a small survey carried out in the 1970s, the size and shape of the Gamburtsev mountain range has remained a mystery. "When we went out to the ice, we knew there was a potentially elevated region there, but we had no idea what it looked like," said Fausto Ferraccioli, a geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey who led the UK team within the international mapping project. "We now see that this mountain-range is the size of the Alps, but it looks like them too — it has all these fresh-looking peaks and valleys." The seven-nation research team that produced the map worked for weeks in the harsh conditions around Dome A, the highest point on the Antarctic ice sheet. The average temperature was a chilling -30C. To examine the buried mountains, they flew aeroplanes fitted with radar, magnetic and gravity sensors over the ice, with the measurements allowing them to "see" the rock beneath. Researchers constructed a map that revealed a mountain range at least 800km long and up to 400km wide, covering an area the same size as the Euopean Alps, at more than 200,000 square kilometres. Their survey also showed peaks of 3,000m above sea level and valleys down to 1,000m below sea level. The highest peak in the Alps, Mont Blanc, rises more than 4,800m above sea level but the valleys in this area are typically just 500m deep. This vast range between the peaks and valleys surprised the scientists — such high mountains, which are normally the result of collisions between tectonic plates, should not exist in the centre of an ancient continent. "We're in the middle of an ancient pre-Cambrian craton, so we shouldn't have mountains there at all," said Ferraccioli. The new maps also raise questions about how the ice sheets formed. The Gamburtsev mountains are thought to be the nucleus around which the vast 10m-square-kilometre East Antarctic ice sheet, the biggest mass of ice in the world, formed. If the ice grew slowly, the scientists would have expected to see a plateau under the sheet, with the moving ice and water having eroded the peaks of the mountains. "But the presence of peaks and valleys could suggest that the ice sheet formed quickly – we just don't know. Our big challenge now is to dive into the data to get a better understanding of what happened." Robin Bell, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, highlighted another surprise: "The temperatures at our camps hovered around -30C, but three kilometres beneath us at the bottom of the ice sheet we saw liquid water in the valleys. The radar [data] let us know that it was much warmer at the base of the ice sheet." Ferraccioli said the new map, completed as part of the International Polar Year, was just the start of their understanding of the Gamburtsev mountains. "I like to compare this to the first page of a new book — a huge new dataset which will provide us with an understanding of the mountains and the origin of the Antarctic ice sheet." The survey planes flew a criss-cross path which charted the area with 20 times more detail than previous maps of the area. The research team plans to release more data about the mountain range, including the maps of another 400km of mountains. The next steps include studying the different layers of ice in the sheet, to work out where they could drill to find the oldest ice. Such ice cores can provide detailed histories of past climate change on Earth and indicated how the planet will respond to greater concentrations of CO2 in its atmosphere. Scientists will also refine the magnetic and gravitational measurements to reveal further details of the submerged mountains. 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 | 24 Feb 2009 | 6:27 pm Is the Internet Warping Our Brains?A growing number of scientists think our brains are changing, maybe even evolving.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2009 | 6:17 pm Freaky Fish Has Eyes Like OursA scientist now has confirmed a new and elusive species of carnivorous frogfish with eyes that face forward.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2009 | 6:08 pm Climate Change Panel Issues New WarningIs it possible that the consequences of global warming have been underestimated?Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Feb 2009 | 6:08 pm T. Rex Gets WeighedLaser imaging reveals what dinosaurs might have weighed.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2009 | 5:28 pm Growing painsWe need biotech if we are going to feed the planetSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2009 | 5:13 pm Men, Women Admire Beauty Differently in BrainMen process beauty using the right side of their brains while women use their whole brains.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Feb 2009 | 5:08 pm Ancient statue found buried at Egypt Giza pyramidsCAIRO (Reuters) - Maintenance workers at Egypt's Giza Pyramids have found an ancient quartzite statue of a seated man buried close to the surface of the desert, the culture ministry said on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Feb 2009 | 4:22 pm NASA's Carbon Satellite Fails, See Video of Launch
NASA's new Orbiting Carbon Observatory, which was designed to map sinks and sources of carbon in Earth's atmosphere, failed to reach orbit after its launch from Vandenburg Air Force Base in California early Tuesday morning. According to a statement from NASA, a protective clamshell covering the satellite on the unmanned Taurus rocket failed to separate. The extra weight kept the satellite from reaching orbit. In the video at right, taken by Wired.com photographer Dave Bullock from the scene, we see and hear the launch. It ends before the failure, which occurred 10 minutes into the mission. The spacecraft crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Antarctica, according to a report from Reuters. An investigation will begin immediately to determine the cause of the mishap. NASA awarded Orbital Sciences Corporation, who designed and built the rocket, a $1.9 billion contract back in December to fly eight resupply missions to the International Space Station. "For the science community it's a huge disappointment," NASA launch director Chuck Dovale told Reuters. The $278-million, 300-pound satellite would have filled a critical data gap by identifying where carbon dioxide is being absorbed on Earth, information that could help guide future climate change mitigation strategies. See Also:
Image and Video: Dave Bullock/Wired.com Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Feb 2009 | 3:53 pm Pentagon Funds Cyber Range For Web WarriorsThe DOD invests in a virtual training ground for America's cyber warriors.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Feb 2009 | 3:20 pm Beauty is in the sex of the beholder, study findsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The brains of men and women respond differently to beautiful objects such as paintings, researchers reported on Monday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Feb 2009 | 2:50 pm NASA Launch Fails, Lands in OceanA rocket carrying a NASA global warming satellite lands in the ocean after a failed launch.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Feb 2009 | 2:45 pm Household Chemicals Linked to InfertilityExposure to common chemicals may contribute to infertility, suggests a new study.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Feb 2009 | 2:09 pm Climate Change Can Supercharge Plant GrowthFor plants in temperate regions, global warming brings good news and bad.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Feb 2009 | 1:20 pm Iraq marshes face grave new threatIraq's famed southern marshes are shrinking again because of record low rainfall and dam and irrigation systems upstream.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2009 | 1:02 pm Lost worldGetting to know the inhabitants of extinct volcanoSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2009 | 11:44 am
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