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Indoor Air Pollution Increases Asthma Symptoms, Study SuggestsA link between increasing levels of indoor particulate matter pollution and the severity of asthma symptoms among children has been found. The study, which followed a group of asthmatic children in Baltimore, Md., is among the first to examine the effects of indoor particulate matter pollution.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm Spun-sugar Fibers Spawn Sweet Technique For Nerve RepairResearchers have developed a technique using spun-sugar filaments to create a scaffold of tiny synthetic tubes that might serve as conduits to regenerate nerves severed in accidents or blood vessels damaged by disease.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm Study Links Internet Addiction To Aggression In TeensInternet-addicted teens seem more prone to aggression than other adolescents, according to new findings from Taiwanese researchers. However, Americans who study violence are not ready to make any conclusions about a possible link.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm Stalagmites Confirm 9,000-Year Lower Brazil RainfallClimate researchers expected to see wet/dry periods in Brazil's Nordeste region similar to the rest of South America in the past 9,000 years. But the area experienced the opposite, drought when rain was expected. Using stalagmite data, researchers identify unexpected air circulation as the cause.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm New Oil Deposits Can Be Identified Through Satellite ImagesA new map of the Earth’s gravitational force based on satellite measurements makes it much less resource intensive to find new oil deposits. The map will be particularly useful as the ice melts in the oil-rich Arctic regions.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm Muscular Dystrophy Mystery Solved; Scientist Moves Closer To MD SolutionWhile scientists have identified one protein, dystrophin, as an important piece to curing muscular dystrophy, another part of the mystery has eluded scientists for the past 14 years. Now, scientists have identified the location of the genetic material responsible for a molecular compound that is vital to curing the disease.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm DNA Identification Of Czar's Children AvailableMitochondrial and nuclear DNA analysis of recently unearthed remains identify the missing members of the family of Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia, murdered in 1918.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Immune Molecule That Attacks Wide Range Of Flu Viruses DiscoveredResearchers report the characterization of an immune system molecule that targets what appears to be an "Achilles heel" of a wide range of influenza viruses -- including the viruses responsible for past global pandemics, those causing current common infections, and strains of bird flu believed to pose future world threats.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm 'Dark Cells' Of Living Retina Imaged For The First TimeA layer of "dark cells" in the retina that is responsible for maintaining the health of the light-sensing cells in our eyes has been imaged in a living retina for the first time. The ability to see this nearly invisible layer could help doctors identify the onset of many diseases of the eye long before a patient notices symptoms.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm 'Neurological Work-arounds' Offer Hope For Conditions Ranging From Addiction To SchizophreniaResearchers have known that the brain has a remarkable ability to "reprogram" itself to compensate for problems such as traumatic injury. Now, a research article published in the journal Genetics suggests that the brain might also compensate for problems with key neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine. This may open the doors to entirely new lines of research and treatments for disorders like addiction, depression, Parkinson's disease, and schizophrenia.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 4:00 pm Obama calls for generic biotech drugs (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 11:32 am "Bodies" exhibition probed in PolandWARSAW (Reuters) - Polish prosecutors are investigating whether a controversial exhibition displaying human cadavers amounts to desecration of the human body, a spokesman said Friday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 11:25 am Gordon Brown to announce plan to boost school sciencePlan part of new initiative intended to ensure Britain produces 'the great scientists of tomorrow' Gordon Brown will today announce ambitious targets to increase the numbers of pupils studying sciences and maths in state schools. The plan is part of an initiative intended to ensure that Britain produces "the great scientists of tomorrow". Brown will argue that investment in science is key to the UK's future competitiveness. He will signal his ambition to shift the UK economy away from its over-dependence on financial services and towards science and technology. In a speech being delivered in Oxford, the prime minister will promise not to let science become "a victim of the recession", vowing to protect its funding from competing demands for government support during the downturn. He will announce initiatives to encourage graduates with science, maths and IT degrees who lose their jobs during the recession to retrain as teachers – part of a drive to ensure that almost all state schools offer physics, chemistry and biology as separate subjects within five years. "The time has come to build a society that seeks high-value engineering, not financial engineering," he will say. "A nation that values Britain's great history of scientific achievement and that backs Britain's capacity for scientific discovery. "We have a scientific record to be proud of. The question now is how we build on this strength to make Britain the best country in the world in which to be a scientist in the months and years to come." "Some say that now is not the time to invest, but the bottom line is that the downturn is no time to slow down our investment in science." Brown will also promise to "promote a positive public debate about the proper role of science in the service of humanity" in order to improve public understanding and awareness of science. Brown will set out a "national ambition" for the UK to educate the next generation of world-class scientists. He will offer a guarantee that within five years, 90% of all state schools will offer the "triple science" option of single-subject teaching of physics, chemistry and biology. At present, only 32% of state schools offer triple science – up from 22% in 2005. The aim is to at least double the number of state school pupils taking the three science subjects from its current level of 8.5% over the next five years, involving 100,000 children a year. The prime minister will also set a new target of increasing the number of young people sitting A-level maths from 56,000 now to 80,000 by 2014. 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 | 27 Feb 2009 | 11:25 am The Nation's Weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 10:55 am Fourth Sumatran tiger killed in Indonesia: official (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 8:22 am Your Spit Is Special
Mothers around the world have got it right: every one of us is special. We all have our own unique talents, skills . . . and mouth bacteria. More than 600 microbe species live in our saliva. Few of these are shared from person to person, and your neighbor's mouth is likely to be just as different from yours as the mouth of someone on the other side of the Earth, according to a study Thursday in the journal Genome Research "That was surprising to us," said co-author Mark Stoneking of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. "We expected, given all the variation in diet and culture around the world, that we'd see some differences." The scientists took saliva samples from a total of 120 people in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. By sequencing and analyzing genes in the saliva, they identified 101 known bacterial genera, including 39 that had never been found in the mouth before. In addition, the researchers found at least 64 unknown genera. "We wanted to look at global diversity in saliva, because no one's done that before," Stoneking said. Mouth microbe makeup varied greatly from person to person, but not in any geographically structured way. Two people from Louisiana were likely to be as different as a Bolivian and a South African. The lack of any geographic pattern suggests that scientists hoping to learn about human populations might want to stay out of the mouth. Other studies have reconstructed ancient human migrations by analyzing regional differences in certain gut bacteria. But such research requires stomach biopsies, and Stoneking and his colleagues hoped salivary bacteria could provide a less invasive alternative. "We're still hopeful," Stoneking said. "If we were to look at variation within particular bacteria, we might find some differences. That's what we're trying to do now." The results also help establish on a broad scale what bugs should be present in a healthy person's mouth, which could be important in future disease scans. "Saliva is an easy thing to sample," said Ruth Ley of Cornell University, who was not involved in the study. "It's worth finding out if it can be used as a biomarker for a disease state or a predisposition to one. And for that, baseline 'normal' data are important." Also important is the reminder that microorganisms populate our every nook and cranny. "This study confirms that the amount of microbial diversity on and in our bodies is really impressive," said Noah Fierer of the University of Colorado, who led research last year that found the human hand hosts on average 150 different bacteria species. "We're basically a walking microbial ecosystem." In fact, the argument could be made that we're more microbe than human. Scientists estimate that microorganisms living on and inside us outnumber human cells more than 10 to one. "A lot of people get freaked out when they hear that," Fierer said. "But a lot of microbes are either completely innocuous or beneficial." Some gut bacteria, for example, stimulate immune-system development, help us digest carbohydrates and fats, and synthesize vitamins for us. These creatures have co-evolved with us for eons, and their biology is inextricably tied to ours. And in many cases, we don't even know their names. But that's changing. In 2007, the National Institutes of Health pledged $115 million to catalogue the myriad microbes that make us their homes. The resulting Human Microbiome Project started last year. Similar efforts are underway in Europe and Asia as well. A better understanding of our rich microbiota, the reasoning goes, can only improve human health in the future. A recent study, for example, found that obese and lean people have different bacterial communities living in their guts. When obese people lost weight, their microbe profiles shifted to look more like those of the lean. Knocking out the weight-gainer species could help curb the world's obesity epidemic. Other gut-bacteria imbalances are tied to cancer, asthma, and autoimmune diseases. See Also:
Citation: "Global Diversity in the Human Salivary Microbiome." By Ivan Nasidze, Jing Li, Dominique Quinque, Kun Tang, Mark Stoneking. Genome Research Vol. 19, March 2009. Image: Flickr/foxtongue Source: Wired: Wired Science | 27 Feb 2009 | 7:32 am Psychedelic fish 'is new species'Scientists hail the discovery of a new species of fish - it bounces along the seabed and has psychedelic colouration.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Feb 2009 | 7:28 am Future warThe MoD showcases its latest gadgetsSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Feb 2009 | 7:27 am 'Bog oaks' reveal ancient forestNaturalists in Cambridgeshire say they are astounded by the large number of ancient trees emerging from the peat soil.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Feb 2009 | 6:07 am Auction house to sell 2 meteorites found in Texas (AP)AP - Two pieces of a meteor that blazed across the Texas sky earlier this month are going from the asteroid belt to the auction block.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 4:29 am Doctors plan voice box transplantBritish doctors are debating whether it is ethical to start clinical trials to allow voice box transplantation.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Feb 2009 | 3:15 am Doodling Is Good For Your Noodle (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Doodling is often frowned upon in meetings and classrooms, but now scientist say it might help you remember details in an otherwise boring presentation. The back-of-the-envelope speculation as to why? Doodlers don't daydream as much.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 3:03 am Doodling Is Good For Your NoodleDoodling may help you remember details in an otherwise boring presentation.Source: Livescience.com | 27 Feb 2009 | 2:55 am Earliest footprints found in KenyaThe footprints, dated to between 1.51 million and 1.53 million years ago, were discovered in sedimentary rock Footprints found on a sandy plain in eastern Africa have been hailed by scientists as the earliest evidence of modern upright walking. The footprints, dated to between 1.51m and 1.53m years ago, were discovered in sedimentary rock at Ileret, Kenya, researchers report in today's edition of the journal Science. The findings mark one of the most important discoveries in recent years regarding the evolution of human walking. With a large toe parallel to the other toes, the prints indicate a modern upright stride, the researchers said. They are likely to have been made by the early hominid Homo ergaster or early Homo erectus. The series of footprints, including one apparently from a child, were left by individuals walking on a muddy river bank. Judging from stride length, they estimated the individuals were about 5ft 9in tall. "It was kind of creepy excavating these things to see all of a sudden something that looks so dramatically like something that you yourself could have made 20 minutes earlier in some kind of wet sediment just next to the site," one of the researchers, archaeologist David Braun of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, told Reuters. "These could quite easily have been made on the beach today," he said. These are the second-oldest known footprints of human ancestors. Older footprints, dating to 3.6m years ago found in Tanzania have been attributed to the less advanced Australopithecus afarensis. Those prints indicate an upright posture but with a shallower arch and a more ape-like, divergent big toe. 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 | 27 Feb 2009 | 2:53 am Footprints show human ancestor with modern strideWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Footprints found in Kenya that resemble those left in wet sand by beach goers today show that 1.5 million years ago a human ancestor walked like we do with anatomically modern feet, scientists said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 2:41 am Finding genes that make teeth grow all in a row (AP)AP - Ever wonder why sharks get several rows of teeth and people only get one? Some geneticists did, and their discovery could spur work to help adults one day grow new teeth when their own wear out.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 2:27 am A Sketchy Brain Booster: Doodling
Good news, doodlers: what your colleagues consider a distracting, time-wasting habit may actually give you a leg up on them by helping you pay attention. Asked to remember names they'd heard on a recording, people who doodled while listening had better recall than those who didn't. This suggests that a slightly distracting secondary task may actually improve concentration during the performance of dull tasks that would otherwise cause a mind to wander. "People may doodle as a strategy to help themselves concentrate," said study co-author Jackie Andrade, a University of Plymouth psychologist. "We might not be aware that we're doing it, but it could be a trick that people develop because it helps them from wandering off into a daydream." Andrade's findings, published Thursday in Applied Cognitive Psychology, are an interesting wrinkle on cognitive load theory: the mind has a limited amount of attention to give and, once occupied, stops processing other stimuli. Cognitive load is exploited by magicians, whose verbal and physical flourishes distract from sleight-of-hand. It also explains why driving while talking on a hands-free headset is no safer than driving while holding a phone. And it could be the reason why doodling is so much better than daydreaming. "It takes a large cognitive load to daydream. That has a big impact on the task you're meant to be doing," said Andrade. "Doodling takes only a small cognitive load, but it's just enough to keep your mental resources focused on the main task." Andrade's team asked 40 people to listen to a recording containing the names of people and places. Afterwards the people wrote down the names they could remember. While listening, half of the test subjects were also required to shade in shapes on a piece of paper. Afterwards, they remembered one-third more names than test subjects who didn't doodle while listening. "The exciting thing is that people actually got better while doing two things at once," said Andrade. "Doodling is not as bad a thing as we might think." Citation: "What does doodling do?" By Jackie Andrade. Applied Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 3, Feb. 26, 2009. See Also:
Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 27 Feb 2009 | 1:46 am US lawmakers urge 'greener' Capitol (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Feb 2009 | 12:48 am Doodling should be encouraged in boring meetings, claims psychologistThe next time you are caught doodling in a meeting, declare that you are simply trying to boost your concentration. Rather than being frowned upon, doodling should be actively encouraged in meetings because it improves our ability to pay attention, a British psychologist claims. A study that compared how well people remembered details of a dull monologue found that those who doodled throughout retained more information than those who tried to sit and listen. Jackie Andrade, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Plymouth, UK, believes that when people are stuck in a boring meeting or listening to a tedious conversation, their minds naturally begin to wander. "A simple task like doodling may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task," she said. "In everyday life, doodling may be something we do because it helps to keep us on track with a boring task, rather than being an unnecessary distraction that we should try to resist doing." Andrade asked 40 volunteers to listen to a monotonous two-and-a-half minute telephone message and jot down the names of people who had been invited to a party. Half of the participants were asked to shade in shapes on a piece of paper while they listened to relieve the boredom. The shading task was chosen instead of more creative doodling because it was less likely to make people feel self-conscious. After hearing the recorded message, the volunteers were given a surprise memory test to see how much of it they could remember. The script of the message mentioned eight names of people who could make the party, three who could not and eight place names. Writing in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, Andrade describes how doodlers scored better on writing down the names of people attending the party, and were also able to recall the names more accurately afterwards. On average, the doodlers recalled 7.5 names and places – 29% more than the average of 5.8 remembered by the control group. "If you are in a boring meeting, the best thing you can do is try to make it more interesting, but if that's not going to happen, your best bet is to doodle," she said.. "It's not so much that doodling is good for your concentration, but that daydreaming is bad. If you are thinking about where you are going to go on holiday, that is probably going to be more cognitively demanding than a doodle." 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 | 27 Feb 2009 | 12:05 am The dinosaur hunterSteve Sweetman took up palaeontology just eight years ago, but already he has discovered 48 new prehistoric species while scouring the coast of the Isle of Wight. Patrick Barkham joins him on the hunt Beneath the turf lies one metre of sandy soil. Next comes a rusty brown layer from the last ice age, where you might find remains of woolly mammoths. Below that are several metres of sandstone, deposited by ancient rivers, which burns red in the light of the afternoon sun. Towards the base runs a small slice of flecked grey rock, crumbling on to the beach as fast as the rest of this cliff face on the Isle of Wight. "This is the good stuff, the pay dirt," says Dr Steve Sweetman, whisking an oyster knife out of his pocket and prising small pieces of fossilised charcoal from the rock. "This is what dinosaurs come out of. It's a chaotic mix and there is no grading of grains - small and large are all mixed up together. It's just full of fossils." Brook Bay on the south side of the Isle of Wight is a bleak prospect in winter. The relentless roar of the sea is broken only by the lonely pew of an oystercatcher. But going dinosaur hunting with Sweetman is an illuminating experience. With a small magnifying glass hung round his neck, he swoops on an ordinary-looking rock and kicks it. "That's a dinosaur print," he says matter-of-factly. The size of his yellow collecting bucket, the rock is a perfect cast of a three-toed foot of a huge, herbivorous iguanodon. Sometimes you can even see the wrinkles of dinosaur skin imprinted in the rock. In the last four years, Sweetman's trips to the beach have unearthed an astonishing 48 new prehistoric species, including eight previously undiscovered kinds of dinosaur. The new species, including crocodiles, lizards, frogs, salamanders and six tiny mammals, some as small as a shrew, come from the Early Cretaceous period, 125 to 130m years ago. Most spectacularly, Sweetman has found a new velociraptor-type creature, the rapacious dinosaur that terrorised the children in Jurassic Park's memorable kitchen scene. In reality, this fearsome, pack-hunting beast was only the size of a turkey; Sweetman has found a bigger species measuring six metres from nose to tail. "If this one I found hunted in packs, it could have attacked anything that walked the planet," he says. In the 167 years since dinosaurs were given their name by the British anatomist and palaeontologist Richard Owen, only about 1,000 species have been named. How, then, has one man found so many, so recently? Sweetman, a research associate at the University of Portsmouth, came to academia late but became fascinated by fossils at the age of four, when he was given a fossilised sea urchin by his mother. "After that, I was just bitten," he says. Growing up on the Isle of Wight, he read about US palaeontologists using sieves to sift through large quantities of mud and, as a teenager, rigged up his own version using an old bath and a flour sieve. Among his discoveries were some bone and teeth fragments. He talked to experts but, at that time, they didn't know what they were so he put them in a box and forgot about them. He studied geology at Oxford but didn't have the money to do a PhD. Apart from the occasional weekend looking for fossils for fun, he left his passion behind and became an oil trader in the City, later running a marine consultancy business. In 2001, he returned with his wife to the Isle of Wight and bought a small farm to keep horses. Just as he was packing his belongings for the move, a BBC TV programme set on the island encouraged members of the public to show their fossil finds to their experts. Sweetman took along some of his old finds. In the intervening years, palaeontology had progressed substantially and, this time, the scientists were really interested in his boyhood finds. His passion was reignited and, after a chance meeting with a palaeontologist from the University of Portsmouth, he was amazed to be offered a fully funded PhD. Sweetman's home is unquestionably the right place for a fossil hunter. Nicknamed "Dinosaur Island", the Isle of Wight's constantly shifting coastline regularly exposes new treasures deposited when the island was roughly where Gibraltar is today and part of an archipelago that included parts of the west country, France and Spain. Every day, particularly after storms, men (it is almost always men) with rucksacks and geological hammers can be seen scouring recently eroded cliffs for newly exposed fossils. Sweetman is not one of these orthodox fossil hunters. He discovered his riches not in the usual seams but in "plant debris beds", a "chaotic" sediment within the Wessex Formation which stretches from the Isle of Wight to Lulworth Cove on the Dorset coast. While most of this ancient rock was laid down by river flooding, Sweetman's tiny crumbly section was created by torrential Early Cretaceous rains that sent floodwater through forests picking up trees, burnt wood from wild fires and, crucially, carcasses of dead dinosaurs. "The floods sloshed this stuff down on to the flood plain where they were deposited in depressions, including abandoned river channels and ponds," explains Sweetman. For years it was thought to be useless; so churned up that there was little chance of complete bones being preserved. Sweetman developed a different theory. While fossilised species did not remain intact, the decaying plant material caught within the debris removed oxygen from the sediment and so helped preserve bone fragments, tiny bones and teeth caught in the torrent. "It is from these beds that I've found most of my dinosaur fossils," says Sweetman. "It is great to find a window into that period of geological history. Land animals were evolving rapidly at that time and there are very few sites of similar age around the world. Where they are found, they tend not to have anything like the diversity we have here." The other reason Sweetman has been so successful is that, even among palaeontologists, he seems to be at the methodical end of the spectrum. He chisels away mud, loads it into two buckets and heaves it into his 4x4. In scores of trips to the beach, he has taken away three tonnes. He enjoys the solitude: "When you've got three daughters and your hair is falling out, a bit of quality, peaceful time is perfect." After heaving his buckets of mud into his barn, he dries the mud and then washes it through water with a sieving machine, which Sweetman has altered so it filters the very finest material. When he is left with various grades of gravel, he studies each fragment - grains that look like ground black pepper - under his microscope. A bucketload of mud takes a week to sift through. The end result is half a thimble-full of fragments of fossilised bones (a 0.25mm newt finger bone, for instance) and other microscopic teeth and fish scales. "I'm the first person to systematically apply a technique on the Isle of Wight using sediment that scientists said wouldn't reveal anything interesting," he says. "It's a tedious process, but what made it doable and even enjoyable was that virtually everything I was finding was new and exciting." Sweetman's discoveries have not yet changed our understanding of the Early Cretaceous period, which is well before the dramatic mass extinction of the dinosaurs about 65m years ago. As he modestly puts it, he is filling in the gaps. "Anywhere that produces a wealth of different species is very important because it is shining light on a period about which little is known but [when] lots is going on," he says. "With these discoveries I can paint a really detailed picture of the creatures that scurried at the feet and in the shadows of the dinosaurs." While his discoveries end up in natural history museums, there is a lucrative underground trade in fossils. Some private collectors spend six-figure sums on dinosaur remains. Sweetman is not worried that his success will lead to the Isle of Wight being besieged by trophy hunters: the fragments he finds have no commercial value, he says. Are there more species of big dinosaur still to be discovered in the rocks? "Yes, definitely, and much better bits of things that we've already got. I've got tantalising evidence of maybe three [prehistoric] birds but I've only got teeth. If we could find their bones we could probably name them." Finding new species must lead to that most deliciously egotistical of pleasures - naming a species after yourself. Actually, says Sweetman, the naming of dinosaurs is governed by strict conventions. "You don't call things after yourself, but you can call them after your wife or dog." He has named one of his species after a private collector who handed him a crucial specimen - but you have to be careful: a dinosaur namer's academic credibility rests on not being later proven to have simply re-named an already-discovered species. "There's nothing worse than erecting a new name only to find it's a synonym of something already in use, because that just creates confusion." What a scientist wants is to be credited as the author of a new species. And so "Sweetman 2009" after the name of a new dinosaur gives him "a lot of satisfaction. It's immortality in a way. But you've got to get it right." 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 | 27 Feb 2009 | 12:01 am Obama budget has more money for space explorationWASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's budget plan for fiscal year 2010 gives more money to NASA and spends more on space overall, officials said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 Feb 2009 | 11:46 pm HIV Evolution Outpaces Vaccines
The AIDS virus is rapidly evolving to recognize and evade human immune systems, making the development of a vaccine even less likely than it already is. Researchers already knew that HIV adapts on a person-by-person basis, but they didn't know if those changes were passed to the viral population at large. Gene sequencing of HIV samples taken from 2,800 people show that changes have spread throughout the world. The adaptations involve genes responsible for coding proteins that are recognized by white blood cells. Troublingly, the most rapidly-evolving HIV genes appear to be those used by the human immune system to identify its enemies. "The virus is out-running human variation," said study co-author Rodney Phillips, an Oxford University immunologist, in a press release. The findings, published Wednesday in Nature, are the latest setback for the beleaguered field of AIDS vaccine development. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on vaccines, none of which have worked, with the most high-profile vaccine — developed by Merck and the National Institutes of Health — appearing to increase infection risks. However, though HIV's rapid adaptations may make vaccines — necessarily targeted at a frozen-in-time viral profile — obsolete, it's not necessarily outrunning the evolution of human immune response. That's a small consolation, but consolation nonetheless. "It could equally be that as the virus changes, different immune responses come into play and are actually more effective," said Philip Goulder, an Oxford University pathologist and study co-author. Citation: "Adaptation of HIV-1 to human leukocyte antigen class I." By Yuka Kawashima, Katja Pfafferott, John Frater, Philippa Matthews, Rebecca Payne, Marylyn Addo, Hiroyuki Gatanaga, Mamoru Fujiwara, Atsuko Hachiya, Hirokazu Koizumi, Nozomi Kuse, Shinichi Oka, Anna Duda, Andrew Prendergast, Hayley Crawford, Alasdair Leslie, Zabrina Brumme, Chanson Brumme, Todd Allen, Christian Brander, Richard Kaslow, James Tang, Eric Hunter, Susan Allen, Joseph Mulenga, Songee Branch, Tim Roach, Mina John, Simon Mallal, Anthony Ogwu, Roger Shapiro, Julia G. Prado, Sarah Fidler, Jonathan Weber, Oliver G. Pybus, Paul Klenerman, Thumbi Ndung’u, Rodney Phillips, David Heckerman, P. Richard Harrigan, Bruce D. Walker, Masafumi Takiguchi & Philip Goulder. Nature, Vol. 457 No. 7233, Feb. 25, 2009 See Also:
Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 26 Feb 2009 | 11:22 pm Stem cell research supporters offer Senate billWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two prominent supporters of stem cell research said on Thursday they had reintroduced a Senate bill that would allow federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, in anticipation of President Barack Obama's support for the work.Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 Feb 2009 | 10:54 pm Research reveals some of Alzheimer's secretsCHICAGO (Reuters) - Scientists are unraveling some of the mechanisms behind the plaques in the brain that are a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, offering new leads for drugs to treat the fatal brain-wasting disease.Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 Feb 2009 | 10:40 pm Eyes of the Gods: Detail-Revealing New Time-Lapse MoviesAdapting a technique from NASA's interplanetary missions, photographers can now expose everything from darkest to brightest in a single frame, then combine many frames to make a breathtaking time lapse movie.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Feb 2009 | 10:33 pm Moon and Venus Converge Friday NightIt has been a superb winter for viewing the queen of the planets, Venus.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Feb 2009 | 10:17 pm Ready for the offAn Arctic team is set to measure sea ice thicknessSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Feb 2009 | 10:10 pm Fuel and Fun from Programmed MicrobesTo brew fuel in beer vats, the new field of synthetic biology programs the genetic code of yeast the way you would program a computer -- one gene at a time.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Feb 2009 | 10:06 pm Study of spit offers insight into human healthLONDON (Reuters) - Bacteria found in people's spit does not vary much around the world, a surprising finding that could provide insights into how diet and cultural factors affect human health, researchers said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 Feb 2009 | 10:04 pm Complexity of Spit RevealedA new study tries to clean up the mysteries around saliva, including the microbes that live in it and why we each have a salivary signature.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Feb 2009 | 10:02 pm Scientists meet to save Lascaux cave from fungus (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Feb 2009 | 9:57 pm New 'Super-Dirt' Saves Horses and RidersNew human-engineered composite 'sand' on horse tracks prevents injury and never gets muddy.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Feb 2009 | 9:38 pm 13,000-year-old tools unearthed at Colorado home (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Feb 2009 | 8:34 pm Indonesia's psychedelic fish named a new species (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Feb 2009 | 8:20 pm National Science Foundation Seeks Budget IncreaseThe National Science Foundation today requested a budget of $7.0 billion for the 2010 fiscal year.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Feb 2009 | 8:11 pm Second team finds natural super flu fighterWASHINGTON (Reuters) - An antibody being developed by a Dutch drug company chokes off both seasonal flu and the H5N1 avian flu virus and might offer a way to develop better treatments and vaccines, researchers reported on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 Feb 2009 | 7:43 pm Magnets disrupt crocodile radarUS researchers attach magnets to crocodiles' heads to confuse their sense of direction - making them less of a threat to humans.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Feb 2009 | 7:33 pm Walk Like Us: 1.5 Million-Year-Old Footprints Look Modern
The 1.5 million-year-old footprints, found in sediment deposits in northern Kenya, are the oldest identified since Mary Leakey found 3.75 million-year-old tracks preserved in volcanic ash in northern Tanzania. Those prints belonged to Australopithecus afarensis, and provided clear evidence of bipedalism. Though the short-legged, long-trunked A. Afarensis was able to walk upright, its feet were still apelike, possessing a telltale splayed-out big toe. Because the early fossil record contains no foot bones, scientists didn't know when modern feet — a defining human characteristic necessary for long-distance running — evolved. The new footprints, described Thursday in Science, apparently belong to Homo erectus. Maker of the first stone tools, H. erectus was also the first hominid to leave Africa, migrating to Asia about two million years ago. By scanning the footprints with lasers and measuring sediment compression, then comparing the results to A. afarensis and Homo sapiens, researchers determined that H. erectus had a modern foot and stride: a mid-foot arch, straight big toe and heel-to-toe weight transfer.
Citations: "Early Hominin Foot Morphology Based on 1.5-Million-Year-Old Footprints from Ileret, Kenya." By Matthew R. Bennett, John W.K. Harris, Brian G. Richmond, David R. Braun, Emma Mbua, Purity Kiura, Daniel Olago, Mzalendo Kibunjia, Christine Omuombo, Anna K. Behrensmeyer, David Huddart, Silvia Gonzalez. Science, Vol. 323 Iss. 5918, Feb. 26, 2009. "Stepping Out." By Robin Huw Crompton and Todd C. Pataky. Science, Vol. 323 Iss. 5918, Feb. 26, 2009. Images: Matthew Bennett/Bournemouth University See Also: Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 26 Feb 2009 | 7:08 pm The Shoe Fits! 1.5 Million-Year-Old Human Footprints FoundEarly human footprints showed they had anatomically modern feet.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Feb 2009 | 7:07 pm Immorality a Lot Like Rotten Food
Immorality is literally disgusting: it appears to provoke an ancient brain system designed to identify rotten food. Disgust was observed in test subjects who, given an unfair offer in a money-splitting game, literally turned up their noses. The response was the same as to foul-tasting drinks and disgusting pictures. "Our idea is that morality builds upon an old mental reflex," said study co-author Adam Anderson, a University of Toronto psychologist. "The brain had already discovered a system for rejecting things that are bad for it. Then it co-opted this and attached it to conditions much removed from something tasting or smelling bad." Though philosophers have traditionally considered morality to be the pinnacle of purely rational thought, scientists have wondered whether emotion might also play a role. Foremost among these emotions is disgust. The latest findings, published Thursday in Science, suggest a key role for the neurobiology of disgust, though Anderson notes that it's not the entirety of morality. "You reject food that's unsafe to eat," said Anderson. "In moral cognition, you reject an action. We can't point to what comes first, but I don't think it's disgust. They're wrapped together, and disgust influences the decision being made." Anderson's team recorded the facial reactions of people as they drank sweet, tasteless and bitter liquids, then looked at sad, neutral and disgusting photographs. From their reactions the researchers created a composite image; disgust clearly produced "activation of the levator labii region" — in layman's terms, a scrunched nose and raised upper lip. Test subjects then played a game in which two people split 10 dollars, with the first player deciding the split and the second given the choice of taking or leaving it. Presented with unbalanced allotments — nine dollars for the first player, one dollar for the second — most test subjects called the offers unfair, said they felt disgusted, and rejected the money with an expression of distaste on their face. In evolutionary terms, levator labii activation makes sense: foul odors or stray food particles are blocked from entering the nose and mouth. It also makes sense, said Anderson, for this tendency — rather than, say, the confusion of fear, or the blind aggression of anger — to be adapted for guiding responses to unacceptable social situations. In a critique accompanying the article, University of Pennsylvania psychologists Paul Rozin and Jonathan Haidt, along with University of Virginia psychologist Katrina Fincher, were unconvinced by the results. "It's unclear whether it's 'the same' disgust" aroused by immorality as by rotten food, they write, "or just common elements in the output system." Reactions to moral situations, they say, need to be tested before the role of disgust is clear. But to Anderson, if people look disgusted and say they feel disgusted, then they're disgusted — and even if they didn't feel exactly the same about lowball offers as nauseating drinks, there was plenty of overlap. "It's less important that the reactions are absolutely similar than generally similar," he said. Disgusted test subjects reported feeling other emotions, including anger, fear and sadness, though disgust was most pronounced. To see if other types of cultural socialization might produce moral reactions with different physiological guides, Anderson plans to conduct the experiment with people from non-English speaking cultures. "In a more collectivist culture, where part of being a person is being enmeshed in this larger cultural framework, maybe people would feel sadness as someone cheats them," he said. Asked whether the findings suggest that moral judgments are dictated by physiology, Anderson stressed that morality is far more complicated. "It involves a lot of thinking. Our results show that part of our moral compass is being guided by these older brain structures — but that's not the whole story," he said. "This system doesn't make decisions of fairness and unfairness. That happens in a higher-order part of the brain that feeds down to the primitive system, which feeds back up to the thinking centers. Emotion and cognition are intertwined." Neither do the findings suggest a free pass for wrongdoers who would dismiss morality as a side effect of evolutionary jury-rigging. After all, babies are capable of disgust, but can't make adult judgments. "Moral judgments involve something that's cultivated," said Anderson. "When you start talking about the brain, it doesn't release people from culpability or responsibility." Citation: "In Bad Taste: Evidence for the Oral Origins of Moral Disgust." By H. A. Chapman, D. A. Kim, J. M. Susskind,
A. K. Anderson. Science, Vol. 323 Iss. 5918, Feb. 26, 2009. See Also:
Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 26 Feb 2009 | 7:06 pm 1.5 Million-Year-Old Footprints FoundRutgers Professor Jack Harris recounts the discovery of 1.5 million-year-old hominid footprints near Ileret, Kenya.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm Earliest 'human footprints' foundFootprints dating from 1.5m years ago found in Kenya show modern foot shape and walking style had already developed by then.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm Disgust Makes Us Truly Sick"You make me sick" —this metaphor for disapproval can also be very real disgust.Source: Livescience.com | 26 Feb 2009 | 7:00 pm New MoD tech 'could save lives'The MoD has unveiled some new technology as part of its Defence Technology Plans which, it hopes, will keep soldiers safer.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Feb 2009 | 6:48 pm Wooden sarcophaguses found in Egypt tombCAIRO (Reuters) - Japanese archaeologists working in Egypt have found four wooden sarcophaguses and associated grave goods which could date back up to 3,300 years, the Egyptian government said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 Feb 2009 | 4:58 pm Arctic explorers prepare to leave for climate survey expeditionPen Hadow and his team are embarking on a three-month Arctic expedition that will see them endure temperatures as low as -90C, drag sleds of up to 120kg and face threats including polar bears attacks Three British explorers hope to set off tomorrow to trek and swim more than 1,000 km across ice pans, frozen ridges and open ocean to help scientists discover how long it will be before the Arctic sea ice disappears due to climate change. Pen Hadow, Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels plan to fly six hours north from their base at Resolute in northern Canada to a point at the edge of the year-round sea ice and from there set off with sledges laden with measuring equipment to take at least 10m readings of the density and thickness of the frozen sea water beneath their feet. Speaking to the Guardian from Resolute today , on his 47th birthday, Hadow said: "We've been planning this for five years, so we're hugely excited, but equally we'd be mad to not be anxious. The first few weeks are so extreme. We're going into one of the most extreme environments on the planet with very little protection: we're just out there in the clothes we stand up in, we have barely got any supplies." In an exclusive video for the Guardian from a rehearsal expedition near the team's Canadian base, Pen Hadow said that preparations had gone well. "The weather's been pretty harsh until today and we've had some time out and about doing some final tests for our pioneering technology." The planned departure of the £3m Catlin Arctic Survey though is far from certain, because a storm is moving towards the team's drop off point on the sea ice. Hadow said it was "75% likely" they would set off tomorrow. The expedition was prompted by mounting concern over large declines in the Arctic sea ice area, which the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in the US calculates is, on average, declining by an area the size of Scotland every year, raising fears about a spiralling cycle of warming and melting as the darker exposed ocean heats up, exacerbating global climate change. The losses have prompted experts to bring forward forecasts for when the summer sea ice will disappear from a century to about 30 years, and in one case as little as four years. However experts at the UK's Met Office have cautioned against over-gloomy warnings, saying it is too soon to say how much of the recent more dramatic losses were due to natural variability. The survey will take automatic radar soundings of the depth and density of ice pans, and stop to make regular cores for more detailed measurements of the ice and sea water below, in an attempt to help experts be more certain of not just the area of ice but the total volume of frozen water, four fifths of which is below sea level, said Hadow. Hartley, an award-winning photographer, will take photographs and video, and the team will carry a voice recorder for their visual impressions of the landscape. The results, which will be fed back to scientists in the UK and US by satellite, will be used to test and improve models, and could also help calibrate satellite measurements which have been collected for 30 years. "At a global scale we need to understand how our planet works, particularly this early warning system which is the sea ice in the north pole region," said Hadow. "Never has that been more urgently needed, and the only people with the skills and experience and the commitment to the rigours are sea ice/polar explorers." During the up to three month expedition they will drag sleds weighing up to 120kg and endure temperatures that with the wind-chill factor could dip as low as -90C. There will be the constant threat of falling through the ice, polar bear attacks, sudden illness, accidents with the sleds on often rough and steep ground, and carbon monoxide poisoning from the small stoves they use to melt ice and heat food in their tent at night. They each expect to lose a significant amount of weight as they cannot carry enough food to compensate for the hard work. In 2003, Hadow became the first known human to trek solo and unaided by resupply planes from Canada to the north pole at 90 degrees north. This time the team will have resupplies, though these have had to be cut back because of difficulties raising the last bit of sponsorship and the falling value of the pound. As well as insurance giant Catlin, expedition supporters include the United Nations Environment Program, the Prince of Wales and conservation charity WWF. • You can follow Hadow and his team's expedition via the Guardian's environment website with regular pictures and video from the ice and blogs from the explorers. There is also more information on the Catlin Arctic Survey website 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 | 26 Feb 2009 | 4:57 pm More seeds for 'doomsday vault'Almost 90,000 food crop seeds from around the world arrive at a "doomsday vault" in the Arctic, as it marks its first anniversary.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Feb 2009 | 2:08 pm 'Dirty' to be scrubbed from the dictionaryA study that applied evolutionary theory to language has pinpointed the oldest words in the language and those likely to go the way of the dodo The unrelenting force of evolution is about to take an unexpected toll on the English language by forcing some of our favourite words into extinction. The word "dirty" is most in danger of going the way of the dodo, and could vanish from use completely within 750 years, researchers said. Next to lose out in the linguistic fight for survival are likely to be the words "guts", "throw" and "stick", which could be permanently displaced by new words within 1,000 years, according to a team led by Mark Pagel, a biologist at Reading University, who applied the theory of evolution through natural selection to the family of Indo-European languages, which can be traced back at least 9,000 years. The study showed that while some words evolved rapidly into new ones, others endured and remained the same for thousands of years. The oldest words in the language, such as "I", "we" and the numbers one, two and three, have barely changed over the past 9,000 years, probably because they are so fundamental to everyday communication. The most resilient words were found to be those that are used most frequently, but are also likely to be nouns or numerals. Other types of words, such as adjectives and adverbs, evolve more quickly, making them susceptible to dying out and being replaced. Half of the words we use today would be unrecognisable to our ancestors 2,500 years ago. "Based on our statistics, the next word to go under is the word dirty, some time in the next 750 years. It has the most rapid rate of evolution of all of the words we studied," said Pagel. The languages he looked at had 46 different words for dirty. "If we were to fast forward 750 years, we expect people will be using a new sound for the concept of dirty. They'll point to a dirty floor and use a new sound to describe it," Pagel said. The research predicts the future of specific words by likening them to genes, which can be passed on faithfully or mutated and modified as time goes by. "Genes ensure copies of themselves are made by forcing us to have sex and babies. Words are copied when people hear them and repeat them by reproducing the same sound," said Pagel. "Long-lasting words somehow resist the tendency people have to change them." Signs of recent linguistic evolution can be found in most living rooms, where the large object that several people can sit on at once is more likely to be a sofa than a couch, a settee, a davenport or a chesterfield. 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 | 26 Feb 2009 | 1:16 pm Going to wasteBulgaria struggles with disposal of spent nuclear fuelSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Feb 2009 | 12:30 pm
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