Science Headlines for March 19, 2009

The Day The Sun Brought Darkness

On March 13, 1989 the entire province of Quebec, Canada suffered an electrical power blackout. Hundreds of blackouts occur in some part of North America every year. The Quebec Blackout was different, because this one was caused by a solar storm.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:00 pm

Depressed People Have Trouble Learning 'Good Things In Life'

While depression is often linked to negative thoughts and emotions, a new study suggests the real problem may be a failure to appreciate positive experiences. Researchers found that depressed and non-depressed people were about equal in their ability to learn negative information that was presented to them.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:00 pm

Strong Links Between Mothers' Diets And Health Of Their Children

A new report highlights the links between poor diet in mothers and ill health in their children, and calls for women of childbearing age to be made more aware of the importance of good nutrition.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:00 pm

Microscope Reveals How Soil Bacteria 'Breathe' Toxic Metals

Researchers are studying some common soil bacteria that "inhale" toxic metals and "exhale" them in a non-toxic form. The bacteria might one day be used to clean up toxic chemicals left over from nuclear weapons production decades ago.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:00 pm

Silicone Ear Looks Just Like The Real Thing

To look at Matthew Houdek, you could never tell he was born with virtually no ear. A surgeon implanted three small metal screws in the side of Houdek's skull. Each screw is fitted with a magnet, and magnetic attraction holds the prosthetic ear in place.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:00 pm

Spinal Taps Carry Higher Risks For Infants And Elderly, Study Shows

An X-ray-guided spinal tap procedure fails more than half of the time in young infants and should be used sparingly, if at all, for those patients, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:00 pm

Shellfish And Inkjet Printers May Hold Key To Faster Healing From Surgeries

Using the natural glue that marine mussels use to stick to rocks, and a variation on the inkjet printer, scientists have devised a new way of making medical adhesives that could replace traditional sutures and result in less scarring, faster recovery times and increased precision for exacting operations such as eye surgery.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

Missing Piece Of Plant Clock Found

A newfound molecule links morning and evening components of the plant daily clock, forming a connection long predicted to be an important element of a reliable biological timepiece.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

Unraveling The Roots Of Dyslexia

By peering into the brains of people with dyslexia compared to normal readers a study in Current Biology has shed new light on the roots of the learning disability, which affects four to ten percent of the population.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

Genetic Differences Help Protect Against Cervical Cancer

Women with certain gene variations appear to be protected against cervical cancer, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

Badgers to be given anti-TB jabs

Badgers in areas of England badly affected by TB in cattle will be vaccinated, the government announces.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Mar 2009 | 12:03 pm

Risk-free virtual anaesthetics

A "virtual needle" allows spinal anaesthesia to be taught without using live patients.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:59 am

Iran's first satellite 'completes mission' (AFP)

AFP - Iran's first ever home-built satellite, which was sent into orbit last month, has now completed its mission, state television reported on Thursday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:36 am

Global crisis 'to strike by 2030'

Rising population will create a "perfect storm" of food, energy and water shortages, the UK's chief science adviser says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:35 am

Iranian satellite completes mission: state TV

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's first domestically produced satellite has successfully completed its tasks in space, state television said on Thursday, seven weeks after the Islamic Republic sent it into orbit.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:30 am

Undersea volcano erupts off Tongan coast

Spectacular images from the eruption of an underwater volcano just 34 nautical miles from Tonga's capital

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:18 am

Feathers fly over new dinosaur find (AFP)

AFP - The discovery of a petite, plant-eating dinosaur with primitive plumage could mean that the dinosaur from which all others evolved had feather-like protrusions, according to the latest study.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:06 am

Vaccine may reduce infection in unborn babies

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - An important cause of neurological impairment in infants -- infection with cytomegalovirus while they are in the womb -- may be curbed with the use of a new vaccine.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 10:34 am

Hurricane Season 2008 (weather.com)

weather.com -
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 10:05 am

Astronauts set stage for spacewalk, solar wing (AP)

AP - The astronauts in orbit have set the stage for the installation of a new set of solar wings at the international space station.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:39 am

Food supplies reach Arctic team

Food finally reaches Arctic explorers on half rations after bad weather gounded their supply plane.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:06 am

New Stratospheric Bugs Probably Not Alien

Three new bacterial species found in the upper stratosphere are probably not alien visitors — but they're still quite remarkable.

The microbes were collected in a balloon sent by the Indian Space Research Agency to the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space, and are extremely resistant to ultraviolet radiation.

One species was dubbed Janibacter hoylei, a reference to astronomer Fred Hoyle, who believed that Earth's first life came from space. In a press release, the agency noted that the bugs "are not found on Earth" and that "the present study does not conclusively establish the extra-terrestrial origin of the microorganisms" — implying, of course, that they might be alien in origin.

Not so fast, said University of Washington astrobiologist John Baross.

"It is extremely unlikely that these organisms are extraterrestrial," wrote Baross in an email, "and they are likely to originate from soil on Earth."

Bacteria is often found in the stratosphere, and most can be traced to wind-borne dust particles. That the new species were previously unknown means little. Scientists have identified just one percent of all Earthly bacteria. And though the species hadn't been seen, their gene sequences were familiar; they represent a variation on known life, rather than an entirely new form.

But they might still be useful, said Baross. For years, researchers have wondered if bacteria might be capable not only of surviving space, but growing in it. If the new bugs turn out to thrive at the edges of Earth's atmosphere — baked by solar radiation and deprived of liquid water, at Antarctic temperatures — researchers can study them to learn how a spacecraft-riding terrestrial microbe contaminate another extreme-but-liveable environment, such as the surface of Mars.

Of course, Baross wants to prevent such contamination. But humanity might someday want to live on Mars — and that process could very well start with adding terraforming bacteria to the planet.

Image: Indian Space Research Organization

See Also:

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:00 am

Space station's wings get a lift from robot arms

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Astronauts used a pair of robotic cranes to unpack the International Space Station's last set of solar wing panels from shuttle Discovery's cargo bay on Wednesday, part of three-day effort to bring the orbital outpost up to full power.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:51 am

Tongan inspection team heads to undersea volcano (AP)

AP - Scientists sailed Thursday to inspect an undersea volcano that has been erupting for days near Tonga shooting smoke, steam and ash thousands of feet (meters) into the sky above the South Pacific ocean.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:07 am

Dinosaur find raises debate on feather evolution (AP)

AP - A small dinosaur that once roamed northeastern China was covered with a stiff, hairlike fuzz, a discovery that suggests feathers began to evolve much earlier than many researchers believe maybe even in the earliest dinosaurs. Scientists had previously identified feathers and so-called "dinofuzz" in theropods, two-legged meat-eaters that are widely considered the ancestors of birds.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 1:12 am

Scientists grow diabetes drug in tobacco plants

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have found a healthy use for tobacco after breeding genetically modified plants containing a medicine that could stop type 1 diabetes.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 12:37 am

The geneticist in the garage

Citizen scientists are setting up their own gene laboratories in the hope of inventing new and useful organisms. But are they a danger to us all?

Meredith Patterson is not your typical genetic scientist. Her laboratory is based in the dining room of her San Francisco apartment. She uses a plastic salad spinner as a centrifuge and Ziploc plastic bags as airtight containers for her samples. But the genetically modified organism (GMO) she is attempting to create on a budget of less than $500 (£350) could provide a breakthrough in food safety.

The 31-year-old ex-computer programmer and now biohacker is working on modifying jellyfish genes and adding them to yoghurt to detect the toxic chemical melamine, which was found in baby milk in China last year after causing a number of deaths, and kidney damage to thousands of infants. Her idea is to engineer yoghurt so that in the presence of the toxin it turns fluorescent green, warning the producer that the food is contaminated. If her experiment is successful, she will release the design into the public domain.

"I haven't had a huge amount of success so far," says Patterson. "But science is often about failing until you get it right." She has decided to invest in an electroporator she found on eBay for $150, which should speed things up. "It's actually not that hard. It's a bit like making yoghurt. And if there's material left over from the experiment, I can eat it," she says.

Evolving community

Patterson is just one of dozens of citizen scientists setting up their own gene laboratories in the hope of inventing new and useful organisms. A community is evolving to take advantage of low-cost, off-the-shelf genetic parts and increasing knowledge in biological engineering. International competitions such as the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) and io9 Mad Science contest have already produced a number of stars, with practical innovations in medicine, agriculture and biocomputing.

However, Helen Wallace of GeneWatch in the UK thinks biohacking could be dangerous. "It is increasingly easy to order genes by mail," she says. "Something like smallpox is hard to get, but there are other organisms that could become harmful. If you change a living organism's properties, you could also change its interactions with the environment or the human body." She adds: "Scientists are notorious for not seeing the unintended consequences."

Reshma Shetty is part of the team behind Ginkgo Bioworks, a Massachusetts-based company aiming to make DIY biotechnology a reality. She says: "Nowadays, biotechnology is like a medieval guild. Firstly, you have to get a PhD, but if you want to practise you then need venture capital, otherwise you don't have the tools." Ginkgo aims to make the process easier by offering off-the-shelf biological components and a third-party service for rapid prototyping. "This will take power away from patent owners like Monsanto and pave the way for more people to have a positive impact," she says.

Ginkgo has already constructed GMOs that release the odour of bananas, turn red or glow in the dark, and is developing a host of new organisms that will all be in the public domain. "They're not harmful pathogens," she says. "Complex organisms make use of the same components to do all this incredible stuff without any harmful chemicals … In 10 years, all sorts of new stuff will have been done."

Jim Thomas, of the environmental thinktank ETC Group, says: "The risk is we have limited knowledge of how these things work. GM crops have out-crossed [bred with non-GM plants] after we were told they wouldn't. GM biofuels have also been shown to damage surrounding food crops. Where is the oversight?"

MacKenzie Cowell is a founding member of Boston-based DIYbio, which provides tools and advice to biohackers. In May they will co-ordinate the first "Flash Lab", sending out 1,000 volunteers to take swabs from pedestrian crossing buttons around Boston. The data will be analysed to produce a BioWeatherMap of bacteria roaming the city.

Outbreak

"We think we'll pick up all sorts of surprising stuff," says Cowell. "I was sick for three days with the symptoms of salmonella last year, before finding out there had been an outbreak in New York where I was staying." This inspired him to start the project, which has been nicknamed "Google Flu". "We hope to get out and do these once a month," he says, "but it could happen far more frequently."

Benefits may come from increased access and transparency in science, but sometimes the authorities have difficulty recognising it. In 2004, the art professor Steve Kurtz was arrested as a suspected bioterrorist because Petri dishes with bacteria in them were found at his home in New York state, after his wife had died of a heart attack. Last year Victor Deeb, a retired chemist, had his basement laboratory taken apart by US environmental officials after a fire in the apartment upstairs. He was trying to make safe surface coatings for food containers using chemicals less hazardous than those found in household cleaners.

In Britain, regulations are far stricter. Chris French, a lecturer at Edinburgh University and local biological safety officer, says: "There's very little that can be done at a home address … GMOs are very strictly regulated by the Health and Safety Executive – and for sound reasons. Working with living things which can potentially escape and grow offers potential hazards."

Surgical tasks

This hasn't stopped UK university teams from developing a host of useful biological innovations over the last few years. One of the winners of last year's iGEM competition was Bristol University's Bacto-Builders project, using teams of E. coli bacteria to perform surgical tasks that single organisms would find impossible. Its project is moving forward in collaboration with the TiGEM genetics laboratory in Italy.

"We are in the nascent stages of some kind of DIY biotechnology network in the UK," says Kim de Mora, a biology PhD student at Edinburgh University. "But … it's going to be hard to set up a garage industry because of the regulations."

De Mora was part of a team that developed an arsenic detector for contaminated water in Bangladesh. E. coli bacteria were modified using BioBrick components to produce a warning signal in the presence of arsenic. If their working prototype is developed into a commercial product, it will be much cheaper than existing technologies. "The real potential of biotechnology will explode in the UK after people are given access at home," predicts De Mora.

In the meantime, iGEM's global Registry of Standard Biological Parts is doubling the size of its catalogue of organic building blocks every year. Within the next decade, millions upon millions of new synthetic organisms are sure to be created. The question is: who will be allowed to create them? At the moment, it looks like the future of biotechnology could be more diverse and volatile than anyone had imagined.

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 | 19 Mar 2009 | 12:27 am

Scientists grow diabetes drug in tobacco plants (Reuters)

Reuters - Scientists have found a healthy use for tobacco after breeding genetically modified plants containing a medicine that could stop type 1 diabetes.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Mar 2009 | 12:16 am

2 gas workers found dead 20 miles apart in SoCal (AP)

AP - Police in Southern California are investigating whether two separate shooting deaths of two workers at a regional gas company are connected.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Mar 2009 | 11:39 pm

The Energy Footprint of Bottled Water (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Our bottled water habit has a huge environmental impact, including the amount of energy it takes to make the plastic bottles, fill them and ship them to thirsty consumers worldwide.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:19 pm

Animal rights, circus lawyers differ on elephants (AP)

AP - Animal rights activists and Ringling Bros. argued in court Wednesday over the use of metal-tipped prods and chains to control elephants, offering their closing arguments to a federal judge who expressed reservations about regulating circus acts.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:03 pm

Open Data: Help Migratory Bird Observations Fly into the Digital Age

The only complete dataset of bird migration patterns in North America is trapped in a basement — and it's going to take the power of crowdsourcing to free it.

Stored on 6 million note cards stretching back to the 1880s, the records of migratory birds were created by a network of thousands of volunteers who recorded birds' comings and goings, then carefully shipped their observations to the government.

All that irreproducible, paper-based data now sits in a basement in Virginia. Short on cash, a group of biologists is taking a page from NASA's citizen-participation playbook. The North American Bird Phenology Program is asking volunteers to transcribe all that paper into a digital database.

"This dataset has almost disappeared quite a number of times," said Sam Droege, a U.S. Geological Survey biologist at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, referring to the 40 file cabinets laden with note cards. "If we lose this data, we don't really have a good picture of how things have changed in terms of migration arrivals in the past."

Avian migration is an increasingly important source of proxy information about climate change. Migratory species make their move when it gets too cold or too hot, so if they begin to arrive earlier or leave later, you can back out inferences — over long time periods — about changes in temperature. The Patuxent data, because it stretches back so far, can provide scientists with a baseline for their more recent measurements of bird behavior, so they can see how things have changed over the last century.

"We have a really robust dataset where we can look at fluctuations over 90 years of data being collected and then compare it to the recent stuff," Droege explained.

Mark Schwartz, a phenologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the chairman of the board for the USA National Phenology Network, agreed that the data was very valuable.

"The number of cards and the number of locations and the number of years it covers is really incredible," Schwartz said. "The extent of this database and the potential for this information to add to the already extensive data on birds seems to be quite amazing."

Many valuable datasets remain trapped in paper and untapped by modern researchers in many research organizations. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Database Modernization Program, for example, has already generated 57 million images and seven terabytes of data from old, often handwritten documents. But it's expensive to pay for scanning and transcription, which is where the crowdsourcing comes into play.

"You would normally just hire someone," Droege said. "We would ship it off to a company, and they would enter it into a database for us, and it would all be very professional and cost a million dollars. We don't have that budget so we had to think outside the box."

Jessica Zelt, who is coordinating the three-week-old effort, said that 400 people had already signed up to help. Participants who want to help go through a simple sign up and 15-minute online training, then are loosed upon the millions of cards scanned in the database as image files.

Peering at cards like the one below, volunteers enter the data into a simple web form. To maintain quality control, their entries don't automatically make it into the database. Each card will have to be transcribed twice — a strategy similar to that of reCAPTCHA. If everything matches, the data will enter permanent storage; Discrepancies will have to be inspected by Zelt. It's too early to tell how accurate the volunteers are going to be, she said.

The USGS project, The North American Bird Phenology Program, is part of a larger movement to look at the seasonal changes in animal and plant behavior known as phenology. As the climate changes, plants and animals try to secure optimal ecosystem positioning by adjusting their life cycles. For example, Isabelle Chuine at France's Center for Evolutionary and Functional Ecology, published a paper in Nature using detailed grape harvest records in Burgundy dating from as far back as 1370.

Here in the states, the USA National Phenology Network, which is partnering with the USGS effort, has already had marked success using citizens to track the timings of plant flowerings in their backyards as they shift due to climate change.

Some of Zelt's volunteers appear motivated to do high-quality work. Her star contributor is Stella Walsh, a 62-year-old early retiree and bird enthusiast, who tries to put in four hours a day.

"I listen to public radio and pound the records," she said. "If the cat wants a pat, she can hop up on my lap and get a pat while I'm pounding keys."

Walsh has already transcribed more than 2,000 entries from her apartment in Yarmouth, Maine.

"It's really odd, but I feel we have an obligation to these people who made all of this effort to make the observations and record them and send their cards in — to have that meaning something," Walsh said. "It's a debt that by doing the data-entering you're repaying."

She described running across cards handwritten by legendary birders and maybe even (oddly) the musician Kris Kristofferson's father. But though she's a bird-lover, Walsh, isn't willing to help just for sentimental reasons. She likes the scientific aspect of the work.

"I understand the value of the data," the self-described bird bander in-training said. "It's interesting to look at what the impact of rapid global climate change is having on both the migration and ranges of birds."

See Also:

Images: Jessica Zelt, USGS.

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 | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:22 pm

Space Tourists Pack Bags for 2011 Vacation

Looking for great vacation ideas for 2011? Put a space flight on your list of possible experiences as the first space tourist flights are expected to take off in the next two years.

The first short flights to space leaving from the United States will depart in 2011, with additional launches scheduled from Northern Sweden about a year later, Spacesport Sweden spokeswoman Johanna Bergstroem-Roos told AFP.

Spacesport Sweden is a partnership between the Esrange Space Center owned by the Swedish Space Corporation and three Swedish firms. The company is looking to popularize personal suborbital spaceflights.

The first flights will be run by Virgin Galatic, the space airline service from Virgin Airlines owner Richard Branson, in partnership with Spacesport Sweden.

Tickets for the flights aren't yet available through Travelocity or Expedia. Instead five Nordic travel agencies have been authorized to sell tickets starting at $200,000 a piece. And there are likely deals to be had in the future as prices are expected to come down over time.

Currently space flights offered by Space Adventures, a company that has sent tourists, such as former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi and South African businessman Mark Shuttleworth, into space cost millions of dollars.

Spacesport Sweden's spokesperson says the northern Swedish city of Kiruna could become a major launch pad for tourist space flight.

So far, about 300 tickets have been sold for the short flights, says Bergstroem-Roos.

See Also:

Photo: (Jurvetson/Flickr)

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 18 Mar 2009 | 8:56 pm

Vatican defends pope's stand on condoms as criticism mounts

YAOUNDE (Reuters) - The Vatican on Wednesday defended Pope Benedict's opposition to the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS as scientists and countries including his native Germany criticized it as unrealistic and dangerous.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 18 Mar 2009 | 8:34 pm

Animal rights activists torch neuroscientist's car

The FBI is investigating a wave of attacks against American researchers, which are getting depressingly personal

It can take a long time for the legal system to catch up with criminals. In Britain, seven animal rights activists, thought to be key figures in the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), were recently locked up, after waging a six-year campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences. Their tactics involved hoax bombs and false claims of child abuse.

On Saturday, anti-vivisectionists targeted David Jentsch, a neuroscientist at the University of California in Los Angeles, by setting fire to his car outside his house. It's the latest in a wave of attacks against California researchers and despite the FBI investigating, no-one has been arrested.

The US website of the ALF claims responsibility for the attack on Jentsch, who works on a range of devastating psychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia and addiction.

To give you a flavour of the kind of intimidation these scientists are facing in their daily lives, here's a quote from their statement:

We will come for you when you least expect it and do a lot more damanage (sic) than to your property. Where ever you go and what ever you do we'll be watching you as long as you continue to do your disgusting experiments.

It's repulsive stuff, and I don't just mean the spelling. That the FBI are not able to track these people down swiftly is staggering. We are not talking about criminal masterminds here.

The text above did remind me of a former journalism lecturer who taught my class the first law of thuggery. No one who's really going to attack you warns you they're going to do it first, he assured us. And he should know.

The spate of attacks against UCLA researchers began in 2006, when the ALF tried to leave a Molotov cocktail on the doorstep of a university psychiatrist, but got the wrong house. Since then, other attacks have included more fire bombs and sticking a hose through a broken window and flooding a house.

Britain brought in new laws to clamp down on animal rights extremists in 2005, but in spite of them, threats and intimidation continue against staff at companies linked to Huntingdon Life Sciences. A year later, in 2006, US Congress passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which in California at least, seems to be similarly inadequate.

Is it the detail of law that is lacking here, or are police forces understaffed, undermotivated or insufficiently funded to arrest these people?

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 | 18 Mar 2009 | 7:43 pm

Antarctica's Past Offers Clues to Future Melting

An Antarctic ice sheet collapse millions of years ago lends clues to future melting.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Mar 2009 | 7:16 pm

Video: How Bats Land Upside Down

The beating heart of science is sheer curiosity — not just about life's origins or the meaning of consciousness, but about how bats land upside down on cave ceilings.

In a study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, Riskin's team "sought to determine how bats land, to seek a link between landing kinematics and ceiling impact forces, and to determine whether landing strategies vary among bat species."

"Bats typically roost head-under-heels but they cannot hover in this position," write researchers led by Brown University biologist Daniel Riskin. "Thus, landing on a ceiling presents a biomechanical challenge."

The answer, in short: some bats land on all fours, and some on two legs. Those that live in trees tend to land hard, and those who live in caves land gently. And all of them have to flip upside-down first.

Citation: Bats go head-under-heels: the biomechanics of landing on a ceiling. By Daniel K. Riskin, Joseph W. Bahlman, Tatjana Y. Hubel, John M. Ratcliffe, Thomas H. Kunz and Sharon M. Swartz. Journal of Experimental Biology, Vol. 212 No. 7, April 1, 2009.

Video: Daniel Riskin

See Also:

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 18 Mar 2009 | 7:00 pm

Fossil hints at fuzzy dinosaurs

A fossil discovery in China prompts researchers to question the scaly image of dinosaurs.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Mar 2009 | 6:59 pm

Early Dinosaur Fossils Show Hints of Feathers

The origins of feathers could reach back to the earliest dinosaurs.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Mar 2009 | 6:52 pm

Mob Modeling: Crowd Behavior in a Computer

Simulated people, or "agents," run from a burning car. The simulation tries to predict how real people would react in such an emergency.
Source: Livescience.com | 18 Mar 2009 | 6:23 pm

Dying bees 'were not a priority'

Defra's top civil servant admits bee disease has not been a "top priority" but denies being complacent in tackling declining bee numbers.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 18 Mar 2009 | 6:21 pm

Audio: Does Science Condemn God?

Excerpts from a live discussion Credit: LiveScience.com / Courtesy: The Templeton Foundation and Skeptic Magazine [Story]
Source: Livescience.com | 18 Mar 2009 | 6:18 pm

A Mother's Touch: Handling Determines Future

Daughters' genes governing mothering style are switched on or off by their mothers' actions.
Source: Livescience.com | 18 Mar 2009 | 6:15 pm

Video - Earthquake Forecasts

Number cruncher John Rundle peers into California's seismic future.
Source: Livescience.com | 18 Mar 2009 | 6:10 pm

Temperature rise may trigger West Antarctic thaw

OSLO (Reuters) - The West Antarctic ice sheet may start to collapse if sea temperatures rise by 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit), triggering a thaw that would raise world ocean levels by 5 meters (16 ft), U.S. scientists said.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 18 Mar 2009 | 6:06 pm

Feathers Tied to Origin of Dinosaurs

Feather-like structures have unexpectedly been found in a new group of dinosaurs.
Source: Livescience.com | 18 Mar 2009 | 6:06 pm

Scientists Create March Madness Formula

Researchers devised a computerized, mathematical system to predict the final four.
Source: Livescience.com | 18 Mar 2009 | 6:03 pm

How To Make a Solar Cell with Donuts and Tea

Donuts and tea are the main ingredients in a MacGyver-style do-it-yourself solar cell, explained step-by-step in this video.

"It turns out these delicious little things contain everything we need to make a simple solar cell," said Blake Farrow, a Canadian scientist who filmed the video while visiting Prashant Kamat's lab at the University of Notre Dame.

Powdered sugar contains titanium dioxide nanoparticles, a substance that is also used in paint. When that powder is coated with an organic dye, like the colorful chemicals in pasionfruit tea, it can be used as the light-absorbing layer of a photovoltaic device.

"In dye-sensitized solar cells, colored materials like tea absorb some visible light and transfer the energy to good electron transporting materials, like white TiO₂, that cannot absorb on their own," said Farrow.

Once those electrons have been excited, they need somewhere to go. So Farrow sandwiched the TiO₂ between a clear electrode, and a graphite electrode that he fashioned by rubbing a pencil onto some glass. As a finishing touch, he added some electrolyte solution, improvised from everclear and iodine water purification tablets.

Dye-sensitized solar cells are cheaper and more durable than traditional photovoltaics, but they are less efficient. And by extracting the titanium dioxide from donuts, Farrow gives them a whole new layer of inefficiency.

See Also:

Video: Blake Farrow / YouTube
Photo: House of Sims / flickr
Story via: Mitch at Chemistry Blog

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 18 Mar 2009 | 5:48 pm

World faces 'perfect storm' of problems by 2030

Food, water and energy shortages will unleash public unrest and international conflict, Professor John Beddington will tell a conference tomorrow

A "perfect storm" of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions, the UK government's chief scientist will warn tomorrow.

In a major speech to environmental groups and politicians, Professor John Beddington, who took up the position of chief scientific adviser last year, will say that the world is heading for major upheavals which are due to come to a head in 2030.

He will tell the government's Sustainable Development UK conference in Westminster that the growing population and success in alleviating poverty in developing countries will trigger a surge in demand for food, water and energy over the next two decades, at a time when governments must also make major progress in combating climate change.

"We head into a perfect storm in 2030, because all of these things are operating on the same time frame," Beddington told the Guardian.

"If we don't address this, we can expect major destabilisation, an increase in rioting and potentially significant problems with international migration, as people move out to avoid food and water shortages," he added.

Food prices for major crops such as wheat and maize have recently settled after a sharp rise last year when production failed to keep up with demand. But according to Beddington, global food reserves are so low – at 14% of annual consumption – a major drought or flood could see prices rapidly escalate again. The majority of the food reserve is grain that is in transit between shipping ports, he said.

"Our food reserves are at a 50-year low, but by 2030 we need to be producing 50% more food. At the same time, we will need 50% more energy, and 30% more fresh water.

"There are dramatic problems out there, particularly with water and food, but energy also, and they are all intimately connected," Beddington said. "You can't think about dealing with one without considering the others. We must deal with all of these together."

Before taking over from Sir David King as chief scientist last year, Beddington was professor of applied population biology at Imperial College London. He is an expert on the sustainable use of renewable resources.

In Britain, a global food shortage would drive up import costs and make food more expensive. Some parts of the country are predicted to become less able to grow crops as higher temperatures become the norm. Most climate models suggest the south-east of England will be especially vulnerable to water shortages, particularly in the summer.

The speech will add to pressure on governments following last week's climate change conference in Copenhagen, where scientists warned that the impact of global warming has been substantially underestimated by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The latest research suggests that sea level rises, glacier melting and the risk of forest fires are at, or beyond, what was considered the worst case scenario in 2007.

Beddington said that shifts in the climate will see northern Europe and other high-latitude regions become key centres for food production. Other more traditional farming nations will have to develop more advanced pesticides or more hardy crops to boost yields, he said. In some countries, almost half of all crops are lost to pests and disease before they are harvested. Substantial amounts of food are lost after haversting, too, because of insufficient storage facilities.

Beddington said a major technological push is needed to develop renewable energy supplies, boost crop yields and better utilise existing water supplies.

Looming water shortages in China have prompted officials to build 59 new reservoirs to catch meltwater from mountain glaciers, which will be circulated into the water supply.

Beddington will use the speech to urge Europe to involve independent scientists more directly in its policy making, using recent appointments by President Barack Obama in the US as an example of how senior scientists have been brought into the political fold. Shortly after taking office, Obama announced what many see as a "dream team" of scientists, including two Nobel laureates, to advise on science, energy and the environment.

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Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 18 Mar 2009 | 5:19 pm

Walking With Dinosaurs comes to life

Dinosaurs have long been an object of fascination for children everywhere. But as a 10-year-old the closest I got to an interactive dinosaur experience was Raquel Welch in a fur bikini in One Million Years BC.

The new live arena show based on the BBC's award-winning Walking With Dinosaurs promises something different. Fifteen life-size dinosaurs, hunting, snorting and looming over the audience who take a 200 million-year journey through the prehistoric era – in just 90 minutes.

The Tyrannosaurus rex isn't the biggest dinosaur on show, that honour goes to the vegetarian (and frankly less interesting) brachiosaur, but there is no doubting who is the star of the show.

The group of school children at today's launch at the O2 in London were told by their teacher: "It's okay to be scared. They are just pretend."

When a baby T rex padded around the arena – not much bigger than a pony, as it turned out – the pupils looked suitably reassured. When its mother entered stage right, 23 feet tall and 43 feet long with steam billowing from its nostrils and an ear-splitting roar in its throat, rather less so.

"It was pretty much the loudest thing I had ever heard in my life," said eight-year-old Charlotte Bailey from Wray Common School in Reigate. "Apart from my sister screaming. I thought it was brilliant."

Made from steel and latex and using computer techniques seen in films such as Jurassic Park, the smaller dinosaurs have costumed puppeteers inside them, the larger ones are directed by remote control. The leader works like a puppet master, using a so-called "voodoo rig" attached to his arm.

Sonny Tilders, who designed and built the creatures, was one of the lead creative engineers on films including The Chronicles of Narnia and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. "My first thought was a mixture of excitement and terror," said Tilders. "It was a genuine leap into the unknown."

Former BBC executive Tim Haines, the series producer on Walking With Dinosaurs, said he could not have imagined the series he began work on 13 years ago would end up with a live arena show.

"We didn't want it to be another Jurassic Park," he remembered. "It was based on what scientists could tell us but in the end a little bit of imagination was required as well. These things died so long ago. But what imagination!"

Only two of the 15 dinosaurs appeared today and my particular favourite, the triceratops, was sadly not one of them. But it already looks likely to be one of the big draws of the summer. The show has already generated more than $110m (£79m) in ticket sales in the US and Australia, where it debuted two years ago.

* Walking With Dinosaurs – the Arena Spectacular, tours the UK for two months from July 1, beginning in Glasgow and ending at London Wembley Arena on 31 August.

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Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 18 Mar 2009 | 5:15 pm

Space Tourist Flights to Launch From Sweden

Suborbital space flights, at $200,000 each, will launch from Sweden, starting in 2012.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Mar 2009 | 5:12 pm

British ice expedition fighting for survival

Pen Hadow's North Pole expedition to measure the thickness of the polar ice fights for survival after supply plane forced to turn back due to bad weather

Pen Hadow's expedition to trek across the sea ice to the North Pole is now fighting for survival on half rations because their resupply plane had to turn back on Monday due to bad weather. One member of the team, the photographer Martin Hartley, has frostbite in his left big toe and all three are struggling to deal with temperatures of -40C.

The Catlin Arctic Survey mission aims to record scientific data about the state of the ice and sea below but the team have made slow progress because the pan of ice they are trekking across is moving in the opposite direction to the one they want to go in. Hartley calls it "a moving escalator of ice".

"We've just heard we're not going to get a re-supply today," Hartley said yesterday. "I had hoped we might celebrate my birthday with fresh supplies but right now there's no prospect of a party."

"The fact that a re-supply plane came so close but was unable to reach us is dispiriting", Hadow, the expedition leader, told colleagues at the CAS Operations Headquarters in London. "We're hungry, the cold is relentless, our sleeping bags are full of ice and, because we're not moving, the colder we get. Waiting is almost the worst part of an expedition as we're in the lap of the weather gods. This is basic survival".

The downbeat mood contrasts starkly with the optimism Hadow had expressed on 13 March when it looked like a re-supply was imminent. At roughly 500 miles from the North Pole he describes in this clip how they were directed by satellite to a suitable location for the plane to land on.

That attempt to reach the team failed, and in Hartley's audio diary on Monday the punishing conditions are obvious.

"My sleeping bag is full of ice and I'm not joking when I say that. It is full of ice - inside and out. My breath is frozen on the walls of the tent. Everything I touch is frozen solid...It is difficult to eat, the food we have is frozen into nothing short of the same texture as roofing tiles.

A fresh attempt to re-supply the team is being launched today.

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Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 18 Mar 2009 | 4:49 pm

Chernobyl Radiation Still Harming Animals

Surveys at forests around Chernobyl show residual radiation effects on birds and insects.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Mar 2009 | 3:20 pm

First Humpback Whale Sighting in Hong Kong

A 33-foot humpback is seen swimming in the East Lamma Channel near Hong Kong.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

Mussels' Sticky Feet Hold Clues to New Glues

The bandages of the future may come from oceanic tidal zones, where creatures who want to stay in one place have developed sophisticated ways of sticking to things.

Frustrated by the inadequacies of human-engineered medical adhesives, researchers hope to take a lesson from mussels, barnacles, tubeworms and other animals that can resist the ocean's buffeting currents.

"The interface between ocean and land has been an important zone in evolutionary history," said University of Utah biochemist Russell Stewart. "Marine organisms exploit multiple bonding mechanisms. By using multiple chemical bonds, they're able to bond to multiple substrates" — a fancy way of saying they can stick to anything.

Chemists recently made prototype bandages with an inkjet printer filled with adhesive proteins taken from mussels, whose remarkable "feet" — a tangle of fibers that anchor them to rocks — have made them the most widely-studied specialist in marine clinging. Mussels can also attach themselves to wood, iron, steel, each other, and even Teflon.

The shortcomings of modern medical adhesives are manifold. As anyone who's ever put a Band-Aid on an elbow knows, off-the-shelf medical glues aren't suitable for moving joints. Sutures — which can be thought of as a form of mechanical adhesion — can leave scars and leave bodies open to infection. Sealants made from blood-coagulating compounds are promising, but still prone to contamination. And surgical-grade glues are essentially Krazy Glue with different brand names. As the instructions on Krazy Glue packets make clear, it's a toxic substance not meant to be put inside a body, even if it could seal a tissue under repair by a surgeon — which, often, it can't.

The inside of a body, however, poses many of the same challenges as an intertidal zone. Marine glues need to stick to wet surfaces. They do so by employing a variety of chemical bonds to displace the water, right down to the last molecule. Then they need to keep their glue from dissolving in water.

"There are chemical changes and cellular changes within the body, and all sorts of causes" that can dissolve a medical adhesive, said University of North Carolina bioengineer Roger Narayan, coauthor of the inkjet adhesive study in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Tuesday.

Earlier research by co-author Jonathan Wilker, a chemist at Purdue University, showed that mussels strengthen their glue with molecules of iron, though the mechanical details of this process remain unclear. So do the molecular details of mussel adhesive itself. The glue is made from a mix of proteins that can be harvested and even synthesized — but much of its adhesive power comes from the proteins' structural arrangement. That's lost during harvesting, and can't yet be artificially replicated.

"There's a gradient of proteins in that structure," said Stewart. "The proteins have different functions: varnishes, primers, the parts that connect the adhesive" to the threads that compose the mussel's foot.

The difficulty in recreating mussel protein structures could explain why mussel-based medical adhesives are not yet on the market, despite nearly two decades of research. Stewart has chosen a less-complicated source of inspiration: the polycheate, a surf-dwelling worm that glues together grains of sand to make a tubular home for itself.

"The mussel has to glue a string to a wet rock, whereas a polycheate just has to glue two similar materials together. That's a much simpler bonding problem," said Stewart.

At the point of contact between surface and adhesive, said Stewart, polycheate and mussel glues — though composed of similar proteins — likely rely on a different mix of molecular bonds. Among them are the van der Waal forces of gecko foot fame, hydrogen bonds, covalent bonds, and salt bridges — a smorgasbord of molecular stickiness.

The bonds have been identified, said Stewart, but not their configuration, or their relationship to individual proteins. Researchers need to determine "the proportion of different bonds, and how those might work in some cooperative and unexpected manner."

Meanwhile, barnacles — the least-understood marine adhesive — don't use dopa, a protein central essential for mussel and polycheate glues. The lack of dopa, said Stewart, shows just how many ways nature has found to solve the problem of adherence in the surf.

"A lot of these things are not well-understood," said Narayan. "These sorts of studies are the first steps to better understanding these materials."

Image: Flickr/David Baron

See Also:

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 18 Mar 2009 | 2:40 pm

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