Science Headlines for March 11, 2009

Thumbs Down For New Testosterone Patch To Boost Women's Sex Drive

A new testosterone patch, designed to pep up a woman's flagging sex drive after womb and ovary removal, may not work, and its long term safety is not proven, says Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2009 | 3:00 am

Oh, My Aching Back: Give Me A Shot Of Ozone

A minimally invasive interventional radiology treatment -- that safely and effectively uses oxygen/ozone to relieve the pain of herniated disks -- will become standard in the United States in the next few years, researchers predict.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2009 | 3:00 am

Nature’s Origami: Protein Folding Is 'Hit And Miss' Process

Sometimes known as "nature's origami", the way that proteins fold is vital to ensuring they function correctly. But researchers at the University of Leeds have discovered this is a 'hit and miss' process, with proteins potentially folding wrongly many times before they form the correct structure for their intended purpose.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2009 | 3:00 am

Airborne Ecologists Help Balance Delicate African Ecosystem

The African savanna is world famous for its wildlife, especially the iconic large herbivores such as elephants, zebras, and giraffes. But managing these ecosystems and balancing the interests of the large charismatic mammals with those of other species has been a perpetual challenge for park and game mangers. Now a new study reports the successful test of new remote-sensing technology to monitor the impact of management decisions on the savanna ecosystem.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2009 | 3:00 am

Many Terminally Ill Patients Feel Abandoned By Their Doctors

Terminally ill patients and their family caregivers often feel abandoned by their doctors and feel a sense of "unfinished business" with them, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2009 | 3:00 am

Corn-for-ethanol's Carbon Footprint Critiqued

To avoid creating greenhouse gases, it makes more sense using today's technology to leave land unfarmed in conservation reserves than to plow it up for corn to make biofuel, according to a comprehensive study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2009 | 3:00 am

Toxoplasmosis Parasite May Trigger Schizophrenia And Bipolar Disorders

Scientists have discovered how the toxoplasmosis parasite may trigger the development of schizophrenia and other bipolar disorders. They have shown that the parasite may play a role in the development of these disorders by affecting the production of dopamine -- the chemical that relays messages in the brain controlling aspects of movement, cognition and behavior.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2009 | 12:00 am

New Design Means Cheaper, More Sustainable Construction

People are always looking for ways to make something less expensive and more environmentally friendly -- and researchers have now figured out how to do both of those things at once when raising the large scale buildings of the future.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2009 | 12:00 am

Immune Reaction To Metal Debris Leads To Early Failure Of Joint Implants

Researchers have identified a key immunological defense reaction to the metals in joint replacement devices, leading to loosening of the components and early failure.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2009 | 12:00 am

Stem Cells Could Halt Osteoporosis, Promote Bone Growth

While interferon gamma sounds like an outer space weapon, it's actually a hormone produced by our own bodies, and it holds great promise to repair bones affected by osteoporosis. Researchers now explain that tweaking a certain group of multipotent stem cells (called mesenchymal stem cells) with interferon gamma may promote bone growth.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 12 Mar 2009 | 12:00 am

Iran says Total will have no 'active role' in gas project (AFP)

AFP - A top Iranian official said on Wednesday that French energy giant Total will have no "active role" in developing a huge gas field in Iran and that a new partner had been found for the project.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Mar 2009 | 1:50 pm

British Space Plane Concept Gets Boost

A futuristic British space plane could fly into orbit and land more cheaply.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2009 | 1:45 pm

Artificial Muscles to Bring Back Wink, Then Smile

An artificial muscle system promises to help people with facial paralysis blink and smile.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Mar 2009 | 1:45 pm

Shark Attacks Down in 2008 as Economy Tanks

People are spending less time at the beach, which may explain a dip in shark attacks.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Mar 2009 | 1:45 pm

Recycling Mystery: Styrofoam

Also known as expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam, it's a version of plastic #6 (polystyrene).
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2009 | 1:05 pm

Space Shuttle Discovery to Launch Tonight (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The space shuttle Discovery is poised to launch into orbit under a full moon tonight on a delivery mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Mar 2009 | 1:01 pm

Children of Older Men Suffer Lower IQ (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - A new study of old data on 33,000 young U.S. children finds those with older fathers had reduced cognitive abilities. The differences, however, are slight, and no study has been done to see how such children fare later in life.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Mar 2009 | 1:00 pm

Children of Older Men Suffer Lower IQ

Children with older fathers had reduced cognitive abilities.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Mar 2009 | 12:42 pm

Discovery poised for Wednesday night launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - U.S. space shuttle Discovery was prepared for launch on Wednesday on a mission to finish installing the International Space Station's power system and deliver Japan's first live-aboard crew member.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Mar 2009 | 12:09 pm

The Nation's Weather (AP)

AP - A major winter storm was sending freezing rain over New England and bringing snow and high winds to the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest on Wednesday. The cold front was to extend across the Ohio Valley, Tennessee Valley and the Southern Plains.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Mar 2009 | 11:47 am

Survival of the nicest

The emerging notion that genes can be selfless as well as selfish suggests that working for the greater good is natural

Charles Darwin's famous theory of natural selection and Richard Dawkins' focus on the so-called "selfish gene" are among the most widely misunderstood ideas of modern times.

At one end of the spectrum, creationists find the idea that we evolved from apes – or, worse still, that we can trace our lineage right back to single cell prokaryotes which emerged out of an inauspicious chemical soup of amino acids – insulting and believe that evolution is an elaborate excuse for amorality. At the other end of the spectrum, the uglier manifestations of social Darwinism have completely misinterpreted the metaphor "survival of the fittest" to justify their self-serving racist, imperialist and classist ideas.

But neither Darwin nor evolutionary biologists such as Dawkins advocate the idea that cut-throat, ruthless competition is the only game in town, and co-operation between individuals, communities and even species permeates their work. Darwin even wrote in the Descent of Man that evolution would eventually lead a species to "acquire a moral sense or conscience".

Still, while "selfish gene" theories can explain a lot of behaviour, including co-operation and reciprocal altruism, they do not satisfactorily explain everything. Looking out for number one, no matter how enlightenedly individuals do it, cannot explain away all variations in human and animal conduct.

An extreme example of this is the enigma of why certain people are willing to lay down their lives for non-kin – soldiers, firefighters, accidental heroes. By saving the lives of people not related to them, they are actually putting the survival of their own genes in jeopardy.

Dawkins suggests that this can be explained by "misfiring" – ie the application of an instinctive, genetic rule of thumb in situations it did not originally evolve to cover.

But could there be a "selfless gene" out there? Could we be more than simple conduits or vessels that self-serving genes take for a ride? A growing number of scientists are beginning to advocate the existence of such selfless genes – genetic code that works to advance the survival of the group, species or even ecosystem above that of the individual.

Examples include genes that restrict how many offspring a predator has so as to avoid wiping out its prey, or genes that restrict the size of individuals within a species to limit its demand for food and other resources.

Dawkins himself sees some merit in species selection but not in group selection, because of the existence of "cheaters" and "freeloaders". But a few candidate examples of group selection have been identified and, as they actively look for them, scientists are finding more. Evidence is emerging that groups with the least number of cheaters thrive, while those with the largest number often perish, hence placing an evolutionary check on freeloaders.

One slimy example is microbial biofilms, which are colonies of bacteria living on a "commonwealth" of slime that they secrete. Cheaters who live off the slime but do not contribute to it endanger the entire group, while colonies in which all bacteria pull their weight prosper.

By implication, this leads to the intriguing possibility that natural selection may operate, in one way or another, at the level of entire ecosystems. Some experiments have shown that ecosystem selection can and does occur, although other explanations cannot be ruled out.

If these ideas stand the test of time, they could revolutionise the way we view the natural world and our place in it. For instance, this might mean that ecosystems may react to climate change and other environmental pressures in unexpected ways that may not be explainable by the sum of their individual parts. In addition, it rings another alarm bell for humanity that if we don't stop behaving like a "cancer", nature may eventually find a way to evolve us out of the picture.

With imperfect and incomplete knowledge, it can be hard to tell how much science reflects reality and how much it reflects ingrained biases and prejudices. How much did the idea of the selfish gene fuel our individualistic, consumerist culture, and how much did the culture affect our interpretation of the scientific evidence? In contrast, how much is growing disenchantment with the notion that the dogged pursuit of self-interest will magically serve the greater good by harnessing greed skewing our view of the scientific evidence today?

To my mind, what is becoming increasingly clear is that co-operation is as "natural" as competition, and that altruism is as natural as selfishness, and we need to find the right balance between the two. More importantly, our biology is only one factor in a complex equation and, ultimately, we are masters of our own destiny.

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 | 11 Mar 2009 | 11:00 am

Power mission for space shuttle

Nasa's Discovery shuttle is set to launch on a mission to complete the power system of the space station.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Mar 2009 | 10:55 am

Poached skins matched to tigers

'Forensic' software is able to identify individual tigers by the unique stripe patterns on their coats, scientists report.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Mar 2009 | 9:53 am

Why monkey mums bow to baby temper tantrums

Angry bystanders force rhesus macaque mothers to give in to babies' temper tantrums, scientists find.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Mar 2009 | 8:58 am

U.S. museum finds "secret" message in Lincoln's watch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gold watch owned by Abraham Lincoln bears a message marking the start of the U.S. Civil War, but the president never knew of the "secret" inscription uncovered on Tuesday at the National Museum of American History.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Mar 2009 | 6:54 am

Experts use nanotech to deliver anti-cancer genes

LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists said on Tuesday they had developed a treatment that transports anti-cancer genes selectively into cancer cells using nanotechnology.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 11 Mar 2009 | 6:50 am

Experts use nanotech to deliver anti-cancer genes (Reuters)

Reuters - British scientists said on Tuesday they had developed a treatment that transports anti-cancer genes selectively into cancer cells using nanotechnology.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Mar 2009 | 6:50 am

Acidic seas fuel extinction fears

Increasing levels of acidity in oceans could trigger a mass extinction of sea life, a leading scientist warns.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Mar 2009 | 3:00 am

'Dracula' fish shows baby teeth

A miniature Burmese fish has developed extraordinary fangs made of bone, scientists report.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Mar 2009 | 2:33 am

Humans No Match for Go Bot Overlords

For the last two decades, human cognitive superiority had a distinctive sound: the soft click of stones placed on a wooden Go board. But once again, artificial intelligence is asserting its domination over gray matter.

Just a few years ago, the best Go programs were routinely beaten by skilled children, even when given a head start. Artificial intelligence researchers routinely said that computers capable of beating our best were literally unthinkable. And so it was. Until now.

"It's a silly human conceit that such a domain would exist, that there's something only we can figure out with our wetware brains," said David Doshay, a University of California at Santa Cruz computer scientist. "Because at the same time, another set of humans is just as busily saying, 'Yes, but we can knock this problem into another domain, and solve it using these machines.'"

In February, at the Taiwan Open — Go's popularity in East Asia roughly compares to America's enthusiasm for golf — a program called MoGo beat two professionals. At an exhibition in Chicago, the Many Faces program beat another pro. The programs still had a head start, but the trend is clear.

Arrayed by opposing players trying to capture space on its lined 19x19 grid, the black and white Go stones can end a game in 10¹⁷¹ possible ways — about 10⁸¹ more configurations than there are elementary particles in the known universe.

Faced with such extraordinary complexity, our brains somehow find a path, navigating the possibilities using mechanisms only dimly understood by science. Both of the programs that have recently defeated humans used variations on mathematical techniques originally developed by Manhattan Project physicists to coax order from pure randomness.

Called the Monte Carlo method, it has driven computer programs to defeat ranking human players six times in the last year. That's a far cry from chess, the previous benchmark of human cognitive prowess, in which Deep Blue played Garry Kasparov to a panicked defeat in 1997, and trounced Vladimir Kramnik in 2006. To continue the golf analogy, computer Go programs beat the equivalents of Chris Couch rather than Tiger Woods, and had a multi-stroke handicap. But even six victories was inconceivable not too long ago, and programmers say it won't be long before computer domination is complete.

There is, however, an asterisk to the programs' triumphs. Compared to the probabilistic foresight of our own efficiently configured biological processor — sporting 10¹⁵ neural connections, capable of 10¹⁶ calculations per second, times two — computer Go programs are inelegant. They rely on what Deep Blue designer Feng-Hsiung Hsu called the "substitution of search for judgment." They crunch numbers.

"People hoped that if we had a strong Go program, it would teach us how our minds work. But that's not the case," said Bob Hearn, a Dartmouth College artificial intelligence programmer. "We just threw brute force at a program we thought required intellect."

If only we knew what our own brains were doing.

Inasmuch as human Go prowess is understood, it's explained in terms of pattern recognition and intuition. "When there are groups of stones arranged in certain ways, you can build visual analogies that work very well. You can think, 'This configuration radiates influence to that part of the board' — and it turns out it's a useful concept," said Hearn. "The revolutionary people in the field have an intuitive sense, and can look at things completely differently from other people."

Image-based neuroscience supports this explanation, albeit vaguely. When researchers led by University of Minnesota cognitive neuroscientist Michael Atherton scanned the brains of people playing chess and compared them to Go-playing brains, he found heightened activation in the Go players' parietal lobes, a region responsible for processing spatial relationships. But these observations, said Atherton, were rudimentary. "The higher-level stuff, we didn't figure out," he said.

In a more recent brain-scanning study, Japanese researchers compared professional and amateur Go players as they contemplated opening- and end-stage moves. Both displayed parietal lobe activity. During the end stages, however, professionals had extremely high activity in their precuneus and cerebellum regions, where the brain integrates a sense of space with our bodies and motions.

Put another way, professionals fuse their consciousness into the decision tree of the game.

Go players have an ability "to think creatively and prune the search tree in an aesthetic sense," said Atherton. "They have a feel for the game."

Artificial intelligence researchers historically tried to harness this pattern-based approach, however poorly understood, to their Go programs. It wasn't easy. "When I've talked to Go professionals about how they come to their decisions, it's been difficult for them to describe why a move is right," said Doshay at UCSC, who designed a Go computer program called SlugGo. "Go is a game of living things, and you talk about it that way, as if the patterns might be alive."

But if turning cryptic statements from Go masters into working algorithms for determining the statistical health of game patterns was impossible, there didn't seem to be any other way of doing it. "It was possible to sidestep the cognitive issues by throwing brute force at chess," said Hearn, "but not at Go."

Compared to the challenge posed to a Go program, Deep Blue's computations — possible moves in response to a move, carried 12 cycles into the future — are back-of-the-napkin scribblings. "If you look at the game trees, there's about 30 possible moves you can make from a typical position. In Go, it's about 300. Right away, you get exponential scaling," said Hearn.

With every anticipated move, the possibilities continue to scale exponentially — and unlike chess, where captured pieces are counted immediately, Go territory can switch hands until the game's end. Running a few branches down the tree is useless: take one step, and it needs to be pursued, exponential scale by scale, until the game end.

According to Doshay, the number of Go's end-states — 10¹⁷¹ — is almost inconceivably smaller than the 10¹¹⁰⁰ different ways of getting there. Without patterns to eliminate whole swaths of choices from the outset, computers simply can't cope with it, at least not within time frames contained by the universe's remaining existence. But to Doshay, guiding computers with human-rules patterns was wrong from the beginning.

"If you want computers to do something well, you concentrate on the ways computers do things well," he said. "Computers can generate enormous quantities of random numbers very rapidly."

Enter the Monte Carlo method, named by its Manhattan Project pioneers for the casinos where they gambled. It consists of random simulations repeated again and again until patterns and probabilities emerge: the characteristics of an atomic bomb explosion, phase states in quantum fields, the outcome of a Go game. Programs like MoGO and Many Faces simulate random games from start to finish, over and over and over again, with no concern for figuring out which of any given move is best.

"At first, I was dismissive," said Hearn. "I didn't think there was anything to be gained from random playouts." But the programmers had one extra trick: they crunched the accumulated statistics, too. Once a few million random games are modeled, probabilities take form. Thus informed, the programs devote extra processing power to promising branches, and less power to less-promising alternatives.

The resulting game style looks human, but aside from a few rough human heuristics, the patterns articulated by our intuitions are unnecessary.

"The surprising, mysterious thing to me is that these algorithms work at all," said Hearn. "It's very puzzling."

Puzzling it might be, but the game is almost over. Hearn and others say that, having started to beat human professionals, Monte Carlo-based programs will only get better. They'll incorporate the results of earlier games to their heuristic arsenal, and within a few years — a couple decades at the most — be able to beat our best.

What is the larger significance of this? When computers finally triumphed at chess, the world was shocked. To some, it seemed that human cognition was less special than before. But to others, the competition is an illusion.

After all, behind every machine is the hand that made it.

"There's a strong tendency in humans to have a conceit about how far we've advanced," said Doshay. "But we've only really started programming computers."

Image: 1. Flickr/Sigurdga 2. David Doshay, with a 24-CPU Go-playing cluster. He's since expanded it to 72 CPUs running multiple Go modules. One module, still under development, is patterned after his Go teacher.

See Also:

Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 11 Mar 2009 | 12:10 am

Progress on ovarian cancer screening

Testing women across the UK for early signs of ovarian cancer - known as the "silent killer"- came a step closer as scientists published results from the largest screening trial ever.

In today's Lancet Oncology, the first analysis of the results of the trial, involving 200,000 women aged 50-74, are published. They bring a national screening programme significantly closer by showing that two separate methods of detecting early-stage cancers work.

However, the full results from the trial will not be available for six more years. "It needs to be seen in the context of what is a 25-year research programme," said project leader Professor Ian Jacobs, director of University College London's institute for women's health.

"It started in the mid-1980s and will finish in 2015. It's a massive, massive effort but all of the results we have got are lining up in the right direction.

"What we need to show everybody is not only that this screening programme can pick up the cancer early, but also that we are saving lives."

Ovarian cancer kills around 4,500 women every year, most of whom only realise they have it in its later stages. Often there are no symptoms, and when there are, they may be confused with something else. They include loss of appetite, indigestion, unexplained weight gain and lower back pain.

Women diagnosed with stage three cancer have a 27% chance of surviving for five years and those in the last phase - stage four - have only a 16% chance.

If ovarian cancer is diagnosed early, women have an 80-90% chance of surviving. Devising a safe and workable screening programme has been the goal of doctors and scientists for decades.

The researchers will not know for certain that screening women prevents deaths until the final data is collected.

The UK leads the world in ovarian cancer screening research, Jacobs said. The study is the biggest randomised trial ever. Two separate screening tests are being compared. One is a blood test which measures the levels of a protein called CA125, which is often higher in women with ovarian cancer. The other is an ultrasound scan that looks for abnormalities in the ovaries.

Half of the women in the study group were screened, 50,000 being given the blood tests and 50,000 given an ultrasound scan, while 100,000 had no screening.

The first screening session picked up ovarian cancers or borderline tumours in 87 women and missed 13 who were diagnosed with ovarian cancer within a year. Almost half of the 58 actual cancers were in the early stages.

There were also false alarms. In the ultrasound group, 845 women had surgery to remove their ovaries because the screening test suggested abnormalities but only 45 of them had ovarian cancer.

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 | 11 Mar 2009 | 12:01 am

Sea may rise more than a metre by 2100

• Increase much higher than previously forecast
• Change could displace 10% of world's population

Global sea levels could rise much higher this century than previously projected, raising the threat level for millions of people who live in low-lying areas, new research suggests.

Scientists at a climate change summit in Copenhagen say changes in the polar ice sheets could raise sea levels by a metre or more by 2100. The implications could be severe, they warn. Ten per cent of the world's population - about 600 million people - live in vulnerable areas.

The new estimate appears to significantly worsen the predictions of a report in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which said sea level could rise by up to 59cm this century. The IPCC report also said higher increases could not be ruled out, but that not enough was known about ice sheets to predict how quickly they could break up as temperatures increased.

Prof Konrad Steffen, of the University of Colorado, said new studies of ice loss in Greenland showed it had accelerated over the last decade.

"I would predict sea level rise by 2100 in the order of 1m," he said. "It could be 1.2m or 0.9m, but it is 1m or more seeing the current change, which is up to three times more than the average predicted by the IPCC. It is a major change and it actually calls for action."

Dr John Church, of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research in Tasmania, said: "The most recent satellite and ground based observations show that sea-level rise is continuing to rise at 3mm per year or more since 1993, a rate well above the 20th-century average. The oceans are continuing to warm and expand, the melting of mountain glaciers has increased and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are also contributing to sea level rise."

Prof Eric Rignot, a senior research scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said new studies since the IPCC report showed that melting and ice loss could not be overlooked. "As a result of the acceleration of outlet glaciers over large regions, the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are already contributing more and faster to sea level rise than anticipated."

Prof Stefan Ramstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany said: "Based on past experience, I expect that sea level rise will accelerate as the planet gets hotter."

The IPCC estimate had been based largely on the expansion of oceans from higher temperatures, rather than meltwater and the impact of glaciers breaking into the sea.

Ramstorf said research indicated sea levels rising between 75cm and 190cm by 2100. Even if the world manages to cut the emission of greenhouse gases driving global warming, the "best estimate" was about 1m, he added.

Steffen said: "Different groups may come to slightly different projections, but differences in the details of the projections should not cloud the overall picture where even the lower end of the projections look to have very serious effects."

John Ashton, the special representative for climate change at the Foreign Office, said: "We need to look at what is a reasonable worst case in the lifetime of people alive today."

More than 2,000 researchers from 80 countries are attending the conference, which is intended to spur politicians into taking action on global warming.

"The huge response from scientists comes from a sense of urgency, but also a sense of frustration," said Katherine Richardson, head of the Danish government's commission on climate change colicy, which organised the conference. "Most of us have been trained as scientists to not get our hands dirty by talking to politicians."

She said the IPCC report from 2007 was an "invaluable document", but it would be years out of date when negotiators convene in Copenhagen in December to try to agree a new global deal to regulate carbon emissions.

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 | 11 Mar 2009 | 12:01 am

Was Caravaggio the first photographer?

Revered as the baroque master of lifelike portraits and light and shadow, the 16th-century painter Caravaggio is now being touted as the first master of photographic technique, two centuries before the formal invention of the camera.

The Italian artist has long been suspected of turning his studio into a giant camera obscura, punching a hole in the ceiling to help project images on to his canvas. But new research claims that Caravaggio also used chemicals to turn his canvases into primitive photographic film, "burning" images he then sketched on to for works such as St Matthew and the Angel.

"We were already sure Caravaggio projected images of his sitters, but we have now found mercury salt in his canvases, which is light-sensitive and used in film," said Roberta Lapucci, conservation chief at Florence's SACI institute.

Lapucci said she investigated the use of chemicals after building a camera obscura with artist David Hockney. The technique of using lens and mirrors to project an image was written about by Leonardo da Vinci, and Caravaggio was reputedly inspired to use one by the philosopher Giovanni Battista della Porta.

"You get the image by turning the whole studio into the camera obscura, but you need darkness, and the problem is you cannot paint in darkness," she said. "X-ray fluorescence shows the presence of the mercury salt in his canvases. That is not uncommon because it was used in glue, but we are awaiting proof he was using it on the surface, in his primer."

The image burned into the primer would last about 30 minutes and only be visible in the gloom. "Therefore he used a white lead paint to sketch, mixed with barium sulphate which was luminous, and which we have found traces of. That way he could see where he was sketching."

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 | 11 Mar 2009 | 12:01 am

How To Destroy the World with Nanotechnology

If you want to destroy the world, don't bother building a hydrogen bomb, just steal some self-replicating nanobots and cover the Earth in a layer of all-consuming grey goo.

That's the moral of a hilarious video, which appeared this morning on the Mental Floss website.

"It was created with cutting-edge motion capture technology (which is why it took so darn long), and it dramatizes one of my favorite chapters of the book: How to Destroy Civilization with Nanotechnology", says Ransom Riggs, who directed the dark cartoon.

His film may be a comedy, but it raises a serious question: Is anyone afraid of nanotechnology?

Several teams of social scientists are hard at work, trying to answer that question, and movies like this could turn their world upside down.

Hat tip to Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing, for throwing this gem into the spotlight.

See Also:

Video: Mental Floss

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 10 Mar 2009 | 11:35 pm

Can NASA take a joke? Try space station Colbert (AP)

AP - Earth to Space Station Colbert: The cosmic joke may be on NASA. Comedian Stephen Colbert, who couldn't get his mock presidential campaign off the ground, is polling better by aiming higher. He's convinced his many fans to write in his name in NASA's online public vote to name a new room to be added to the international space station.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Mar 2009 | 10:26 pm

Whale shark saved in Philippines, may be smallest (AP)

AP - Activists in the Philippines have rescued what they believe might be the smallest offspring of the world's biggest fish a whale shark the size of a forearm, a conservation group said Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Mar 2009 | 9:53 pm

Spacewalking astronauts tidy up, tackle chores (AP)

AP - Two space station astronauts ventured out on a spacewalk Tuesday to do a little maintenance work before visitors arrive.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Mar 2009 | 9:38 pm

Giant Stingray Could Be World's Largest Freshwater Fish

Researchers catch and release giant stingray that could take crown of largest fish.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Mar 2009 | 8:31 pm

Spark of Love Found in Fish

Elephantfish emit electric field to detect nearby objects, and to find a mate.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Mar 2009 | 7:43 pm

Ancient golden jewelry found in Egyptian tomb (AP)

AP - Egyptian officials says archaeologists have found ancient golden jewelry in a pharaonic-era tomb that belonged to a senior official under Egypt's most powerful queen. The Supreme Council of Antiquities says five golden earrings and two rings were found in the tomb of Gahouti, the head of the treasury under Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt 3,500 years ago.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Mar 2009 | 7:25 pm

Smart Diet: Fish Boost IQ

Teenage boys who eat fish at least once a week score higher on intelligence tests.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Mar 2009 | 7:13 pm

Space Station Webcam Goes Live

Behold the mesmerizing mundanity of space!

NASA has transformed the external camera on the International Space Station into a live webcam — and the view is fascinatingly dull.

For its inaugural morning, the webcam showed a live space walk by US Commander Mike Fincke and Russian flight engineer Yury Lonchakov complete with commentary from an announcer ("That's Fincke in the red stripes"). We're sure that being on a spacewalk is exciting. Watching one, though, is a bit like staring at the IT guy crawling around under your desk trying to find the right power cord.

That said, if you're a lover of space, the webcam is awesome. Being able to watch the boring stuff actually teaches us an important lesson about the final frontier: space isn't all ray-guns and warp drives. It's grueling, precision work; keeping anything up there is really, really hard.

Keep an eye on the camera, too, for views of Earth. NASA promises that when the crew doesn't need the the camera, it'll be turned on the blue planet.

See Also:

Image: NASA.

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 | 10 Mar 2009 | 6:34 pm

Caravaggio Used Optical Tool to Trace Models

Caravaggio was among the first artists to "photograph" his models using an optical tool.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Mar 2009 | 5:54 pm

Stem cells: Making up for lost time

Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is necessary, but Congress must lift its restrictions as well

Much like the promise of stem cell research itself, President Barack Obama's policy switch on federal funding of it is not a panacea. Instead it reflects how public policy for medical research is critically compromised and how radically that undercuts our ability to break new ground.

Sacrificing science to a religious ideal of morality was a holy plank of the Bush administration, with the result a cascade of hypocritical consequences and frustration. On Monday, Obama promised to "bring the change that so many scientists and researchers, doctors and innovators, patients and loved ones have hoped for, and fought for, these past eight years," and vowed not only to pull down the walls blocking the research on stem cells but to also support research scientists with the belated goal of putting this country at the forefront of stem cell research globally.

It appeared to be a moment of triumph – cool modern rationality taking over the bully pulpit. And yet, Obama cautioned: "At this moment, the full promise of stem cell research remains unknown, and it should not be overstated," and then immediately undercut that last important clause. "But scientists believe these tiny cells may have the potential to help us understand, and possibly cure, some of our most devastating diseases and conditions." The truth is we aren't quite in the new era just yet.

Stem cell research was a victim of conservative dominance over science in the Republican era. It became a symbol of misguided morality steering research, rather than scientists forging new pathways to living longer, healthier lives. But the problem is we simply don't know how useful stem cells will actually prove to be. It will take decades to discover their full potential – if the potential is what we dream it to be at all. We've wasted precious time. Yesterday, unfortunately, Obama took the country far further rhetorically than concretely.

As easy as it is to blame our years of research stagnation entirely on Bush, the truth stretches back to the Republican controlled Congress of the Clinton era. In 1996 the Dickey-Wicker Amendment banned creating or destroying embryos for research purposes using federal funds. That ban on taxpayer funding for embryonic stem cell research still stands – it's a legislative question now, to be turned over to Congress to mull over.

If no embryo can be destroyed – and to experiment on them means to "destroy" them – where will the research go? Under Clinton – as it will be under Obama, I suspect – there was significant legal triangulating around that question. Federal funding couldn't destroy embryos, but it could allow work on embryos destroyed by private funds. And under Bush it was legal to work on embryos only, and entirely, with private funding.

Make sense? Not really, if morality is your issue.

In the meantime, we have some half a million frozen embryos lying in dubious moral state – suspended "life", so to speak – though the huge majority will never be implanted in a human body.

This is why these cells are so important – scientists believe there is a chance they can be coaxed into growing into any kind of cell in the body – a liver, perhaps, a chunk of heart. This is why when morality enters the equation the entire debate breaks down. The embryos already exist. The vast majority of them won't become "humans".

So what now? Until Congress gives the green light to "destroy" – ie experiment upon – stem cells, there will be a significant drag on progressing the research. Even then it will be eons before any results can be tested on humans.

To be sure, Monday's order was a big step. In 2001, when George Bush half-heartedly propped the door for federal funding on stem cell research (leaving the path to experimentation open to 70 lines of cells that were already in use, though only 20 of those proved to be useable), he set in motion a ridiculous, laborious, system where researchers used precious time and resources in the endless hunt for – entirely legal – private or state funding to continue or begin stem cell research. Time was wasted on ensuring the division in research quarters, between that which was federal funded and that which was state funded (pushing places like Stanford and other major American research institutions to house scientists in new buildings whose labs had never been touched by federal funds).

The United States should have been at the forefront of this work. It was a (non-federally funded) James Thompson, at the University of Wisconsin, who created the first human embryonic stem cell lines in 1998. But instead we are years behind in researching stem cell application for medicine and human health, leaving that work to the UK and other research centres globally. Internally we've allowed private or even state-funded research centres lag far behind.

Federal funding is critical for most of this research. There simply isn't enough in the private or state pots to push the work forward at any kind of reasonable clip. As a result, as much as they are championed, we really don't even know what the possibilities of stem cell research might be. And we need to be realistic. The cure for Parkinsons disease, and cancer and diabetes isn't around the corner, and it won't be until the US government allows scientists to do their jobs without the political sea changes that arise with every national switch in party power.

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 | 10 Mar 2009 | 5:00 pm

Nano-treatment to torpedo cancer

Nanotechnology raises hopes of destroying hard-to-treat cancers with highly targeted tumour-busting genes.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Mar 2009 | 4:52 pm

Sea Level to Surge 3 Feet by 2100, Experts Warn

Previous estimates of sea level rise have received a stark revision.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Mar 2009 | 4:33 pm

Phoenix Mars Lander Found Liquid Water, Some Scientists Think

Some Phoenix scientists posit that blobs on lander legs could be liquid brine; others contend is just ice.
Source: Livescience.com | 10 Mar 2009 | 4:09 pm

St. Francis Basilica Frescoes Bound With Milk

Italian artists used milk as a binder for the famous frescoes of St. Francis Basilica.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Mar 2009 | 3:47 pm

Severe Depression Can Break Heart

Depressed women are more than twice as likely to experience sudden cardiac death.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Mar 2009 | 3:45 pm

Inclement Weather Linked to Headaches

Research confirms there is a link between weather and headaches.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Mar 2009 | 3:15 pm

Lovelock labels Europe's carbon trading scheme a 'scam'

Gaia scientist joins former minister Michael Meacher in saying 'disastrous' scheme has profited industry but not helped to reduce emissions

Europe's carbon trading scheme has proved to be "disastrous" and a "scam" in which companies have profited with no effect on emissions, a leading politician and a scientist said yesterday.

The environmentalist James Lovelock — who developed the Gaia theory of the planet as a "living organism" — and the former environment minister, Michael Meacher, said that market approaches to green issues, such as the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), were destined to be distorted by business pressures. Lovelock described similar market mechanisms that attempt to put a price on "services" provided by the natural world as akin to "slavery".

"In principle [carbon trading] is not a bad idea but in operation it's been disastrous. Business has frankly made billions out of artificial reductions of what is called hot air with absolutely no environmental benefit at all," said Meacher, singling out the ETS for being distorted by commerce. "Governments under pressure from industry – the worst example is Germany – gave away far more allowances than industry actually needed."

As a result, he said, the carbon price collapsed and the ability for companies to claim carbon credits by investing in developing world emissions-cutting projects via the Clean Development Mechanism meant western economies had done little to de-carbonise their industries.

Lovelock said the scheme had failed. "Carbon trading was an idea with potential but the danger is that it so rapidly develops into a scam," he said.

The comments follow criticism of the ETS from industry insiders including the former chief executive of BP, Lord Browne, who said that the scheme has been ineffective. Vincent de Rivaz, the chief executive of the UK arm of EDF Energy, dubbed the carbon market the new "sub-prime". Lord Turner, the UK government's climate adviser, last week called for a floor price on European carbon permits.

Meacher expressed pessimism for future "market-driven environmental action", whether it was reducing carbon emissions through trading or protecting biodiversity by applying a price to "ecosystem services" such as medicines from rainforests. "I have real doubts because the whole process is distorted at every level. Industry pressures governments by saying 'if you do this it'll affect national welfare, it'll affect jobs and it'll lead to industry going out of this country, you have to do what we say'. And, one after another, governments fall for it."

Speaking at a debate on biodiversity organised by the journal Nature at Kings Place in London, Meacher also described the economic slowdown as a "priceless opportunity" to reduce climate change emissions and stop the destruction of tropical forests and coral reefs. "Those issues are only going to get on the agenda during a crisis," he said.

Lovelock was dismissive of putting a price on services from ecosystems such as oceans and forests. "To talk of these ecosystems as something we can own and draw benefits from, and buy and sell, is just like the attitude not so long ago to slavery, and just as reprehensible," he said.

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 | 10 Mar 2009 | 2:47 pm

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