Nine Lives: Cats' Central Nervous System Can Repair Itself And Restore Function

Scientists studying a mysterious neurological affliction in cats have discovered a surprising ability of the central nervous system to repair itself and restore function.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

Mechanism For Social Development Found To Be Absent In Autistic Children

Two-year-olds with autism lack an important building block of social interaction that prompts newborn babies to pay attention to other people. Instead, these children pay attention to physical relationships between movement and sound and miss critical social information.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

Common Fragrance Ingredients In Shampoos And Conditioners Are Frequent Causes Of Eczema

Considerably more people than previously believed are allergic to the most common fragrance ingredient used in shampoos, conditioners and soap. Researchers found that over five percent of those who underwent patch testing were allergic to the air oxidized form of the fragrance ingredient linalool.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

New Radiation-free Targeted Therapy Detects And Eliminates Breast Cancer Tumors In Mice

Combining a compound known as a gallium corrole with a protein carrier results in a targeted cancer therapy that is able to detect and eliminate tumors in mice with seemingly fewer side effects than other breast-cancer treatments, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

'Alarming' Use Of Energy In Modern Manufacturing Methods

Modern manufacturing methods are spectacularly inefficient in their use of energy and materials, according to a detailed MIT analysis of the energy use of 20 major manufacturing processes.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

'Green' Hair Bleach May Become Environmentally Friendly Consumer Product

Scientists from Japan are reporting development of what could be the world's first "green" hair bleach, an environmentally friendly preparation for lightening the color of hair on the head and other parts of the body without the unwanted effects of the bleaches used by millions of people each year.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

Dust Masks Acid Rain 'Time Bomb' in China

China's dust storms neutralize sulfuric and nitric acid particles before they fall to Earth.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 31 Mar 2009 | 1:40 pm

Did Great Salt Lakes Trigger Mass Extinction?

Toxic gases fuming from salt lakes may have caused the world's worst extinction.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 31 Mar 2009 | 1:22 pm

Russian movie gives Kremlin's view of Georgia war (AP)

AP - A nerdy American entomologist hunting for a rare butterfly is the central character of a new film offering the Kremlin's version of the August war with Georgia.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 1:04 pm

Genes tell butterflies to head south

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have uncovered a group of 40 genes that appear to make North America's monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles south each autumn.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:58 pm

Wind and snow building up again in nervous Fargo (AP)

AP - Strengthening wind blew heavy, wet snow around the city Tuesday, adding to the strain on residents' spirits and on the patchwork system of sandbag levees protecting them from the bloated Red River.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:41 pm

Cairn Energy swings into operating profit (AFP)

AFP - Cairn Energy, the Edinburgh-based oil exploration firm with large drilling interests in India, said on Tuesday it had swung into an operating profit during 2008 after a loss the previous year.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:27 pm

American scientists to demonstrate against animal rights extremists

Researchers in California are staging a rally in support of animal testing after a spate of attacks by anti-vivisection groups

Scientists in California have endured a wave of attacks from animal rights activists of late.

Next month, they will be demonstrating in defence of their research and are inviting others to give their support. The rally will mirror those held by Pro-Test, an organisation that arose in Oxford after activists targeted the university.

The event will take place at the Los Angeles campus of the University of California on April 22 and coincides with a demonstration being held by anti-vivisection groups.

The Pro-Test group in Oxford has given a welcome voice to a silent majority who accept that if society wants to make progress in developing treatments for some devastating medical conditions, a certain amount of research involving animals is necessary.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:04 pm

New Theory On Largest Known Mass Extinction In Earth's History

The largest mass extinction in the history of the earth could have been triggered off by giant salt lakes, whose emissions of halogenated gases changed the atmospheric composition so dramatically that vegetation was irretrievably damaged. At the Permian/Triassic boundary, 250 million years ago, about 90 percent of the animal and plant species ashore became extinct. Previously it was thought that volcanic eruptions, the impacts of asteroids, or methane hydrate were instigating causes.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:00 pm

Licorice May Block Effectiveness Of Drug Widely Used By Transplant Patients

Chemists in Taiwan are reporting that an ingredient in licorice -- widely used in various foods and herbal medicines -- appears to block the absorption of cyclosporine, a drug used by transplant patients to prevent organ rejection. This drug interaction could potentially result in illness and death among transplant patients and others taking cyclosporine and licorice together, they caution.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:00 pm

Tiny But Toxic: Mechanism Of Neurodegeneration In Alzheimer's Disease Discovered

Particles of amyloid beta that have not clumped into plaques severely disrupt neurotransmission and delivery of key proteins in Alzheimer's disease, scientists show.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:00 pm

Pregnancy: Bad Oral Hygiene Can Lead To Complications In Pregnancy And Problems For Babies

Bacteria from a mother's mouth can be transmitted through the blood and amniotic fluid to her unborn child. This could contribute to the risk of a premature delivery, a low birth-weight baby, premature onset of contractions, or infection of the newborn child. This evidence could have an important implication for women and babies' heath since simple improvement of dental hygiene may help to reduce the incidence of unknown complications in pregnancy and newborn babies.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:00 pm

South Downs National Park agreed

UK ministers announce creation of a new national park for England, a mere 60 years after it was recommended.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Mar 2009 | 11:55 am

Can talking to plants really bear fruit?

The Royal Horticultural Society holds an experiment to test often-derided claims that talking to plants can help them grow.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Mar 2009 | 11:41 am

Genes tell butterflies to head south (Reuters)

Reuters - Scientists have uncovered a group of 40 genes that appear to make North America's monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles south each autumn.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 10:27 am

New hope for endangered bald ibis

Conservationists visiting Syria say there could be a chance of boosting a once sacred bird's numbers.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Mar 2009 | 10:16 am

Cold War-like stand-off over access to US space station toilet

A Russian cosmonaut says the US toilet and exercise bike have been put out of bounds to non-American crew.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Mar 2009 | 10:14 am

Heavens above

Astronomers mark 400 years of Galilean star-gazing
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Mar 2009 | 9:47 am

New plan to reduce planes' C02 emissions (AP)

AP - Aviation groups in Europe announced a plan Tuesday to change the way commercial planes land in order to reduce their global-warming emissions of carbon dioxide.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 9:31 am

In pictures

A look at the South Downs - the latest national park
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:34 am

Polypill 'could become a reality'

A cheap five-in-one pill can reduce the risks of heart attack and stroke, research conducted in India suggests.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Mar 2009 | 6:39 am

Deformed Skull Suggests Human Ancestors Had Compassion

A newly-reconstructed deformed fossil skull suggests that our human ancestors probably cared for deformed offspring for years.

The skull indicates that the human to which it belonged about 530,000 years ago would have been severely handicapped — and yet survived at least five years and possibly several years longer. That suggests that the child's parents must have provided the child with care, despite his or her obvious deformities.

"Her/his pathological condition was not an impediment to receiv[ing] the same attention as any other Middle Pleistocene Homo child," the the team of Spanish researchers write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The way that humans take care of the sick and infirm within their communities is considered a unique trait. Researchers call it conspecific care, but most laypeople would probably call it compassion. Other primates don't display similar behavior, so we know humans evolved the ability at some point, even if scientists can't quite pinpoint when. The work could mean that humans as far back as half a million years ago had differentiated from our primate ancestors.

By reconstructing the skull from a bunch of pieces, the team was able to determine that the child likely suffered from craniosynostosis, a debilitating genetic disorder in which some pieces of the skull fuse too quickly, causing pressure to build in the brain. While they couldn't tell the exact level of mental retardation likely to result from the malformation, it would have been considerable, requiring large amounts of extra care from the prehistorical human community.

But Stanford University anthropologist David DeGusta points out that several species of primates have been observed to care for abnormal young. That's a different type of behavior, he said, from adults caring for other adults.

"The survival of an infant with significant pathology has been observed in a range of primate species," he wrote in an email to Wired.com. "Extra caregiving behavior towards such infants has been documented in wild monkeys. Caring for infants is, after all, a key adaptation of mammals in general."

Several studies have shown that young, deformed primates were cared for by their mothers anyway, he said. For example, a 1973 paper reported that blind macaque infants were cared for by their mothers for up to a year.

"Defective infants are not killed by the group even in crowded conditions; compensatory care is given during the first year, primarily by the mother and to a certain extent by other animals in the group," wrote the paper's author, Gershon Berkson, who was a physical anthropologist at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Care, in this case, would have extended beyond infancy, but DeGusta argued that five year olds were still largely dependent on their parents. 

"This individual probably depended more so on parents, but the other 5 year olds were still at the mercy of adults," DeGusta said.

DeGusta also had a more methodological objection to many studies that attempt to infer behavior from skeletal remains.

"We just know that this individual survived. We don't know the circumstances," he said. "I'm not saying their interpretation is unreasonable, but we're trying to do science, so we have to ask, 'How would we know that we were wrong?'"

DeGusta argues that it's hard to judge caring behavior from a very limited fossil record, particularly when the primate record seems to indicate that great apes can survive a variety of horrific injuries.

"My contribution, such as it was, was to say, what's the baseline here? What kind of illnesses and injuries can non-human primates survive?" he said. "We'd love to know things like when does caretaking begin? ... So far, though, those behaviors don't leave clear, unambiguous records."

See Also:

• Self-Esteem Starts With Self-Compassion
• Is Free Will an Illusion?
• Humans and Chimpanzees Share Roots of Language
• Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee?
• Should Chimpanzees Be Given Human Rights?
• Why Humans Aren't Chimps: We Eat Better

Image: National Academy of Sciences.               

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 | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:33 am

World's Most Powerful Laser Starts

The force of the sun itself has been harnessed in the world's most powerful laser.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:27 am

Spanking Brings Couples Closer

For couples that just can't find a spark, spanking could be the answer.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:17 am

U.S. military vows to track 800 satellites by October 1

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (Reuters) - Spurred by last month's collision of two satellites high above the Earth, the U.S. military plans to begin tracking all 800 maneuverable spacecraft currently operating in space by October 1, a senior U.S. Air Force official said on Monday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:52 am

U.S. military vows to track 800 satellites by October 1 (Reuters)

Reuters - Spurred by last month's collision of two satellites high above the Earth, the U.S. military plans to begin tracking all 800 maneuverable spacecraft currently operating in space by October 1, a senior U.S. Air Force official said on Monday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:52 am

'Polypill' can halve risk of heart disease

Healthy people who take a cheap five-in-one combination "polypill" of aspirin and cholesterol and blood pressure-­lowering drugs, could slash heart disease and strokes by half, the authors of a study presented yesterday say.

The polypill concept has been around for some years, but the news from the American College of Cardiology annual conference brought it closer to a reality. The combination drug, manufactured cheaply by an Indian generics company, has been tested in 412 volunteers. Others in the trial in 50 centres in India, which included more than 2,000 people, took the blood pressure and cholesterol-­lowering drugs individually.

The object of this early trial, also published online by the Lancet, was to see whether the cocktail of drugs in one pill worked as well as the drugs taken ­separately.

The researchers found that the Polycap, as the pill has been named, reduced blood pressure and heart rate just as effectively. It also lowered cholesterol, but not quite as much as the statin it contains would have done on its own.

But the researchers, Dr Salim Yusuf of the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario in Canada, and Dr Prem Pais of St John's Medical College in Bangalore, India, and colleagues point out that there are major advantages to combining five pills in one. People who have been told they are at slight or moderate risk of a heart attack or stroke but are otherwise healthy are far more likely to take a single daily pill than a large number of different drugs.

The largest and most important target for the polypill would be the developing world, where heart attacks and strokes are soaring and a wide range of medicines are not available or are too expensive.

It would also find a market in wealthy countries, however, because of its convenience. Each year almost 200,000 Britons are killed by heart and artery disease. A fifth of all deaths before the age of 75 in men and 10% of those in women are due to ­cardiovascular disease.

Professor Malcolm Law, from the ­Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London, who was one of the pioneers of the polypill, said: "We have long advocated the polypill as a safe and effective way of greatly reducing the incidence of heart attacks and strokes in the population.

"This study shows that it's possible to make such a product that is effective and doesn't have adverse side effects."

He said a polypill such as the one used in the study would be easily affordable and greatly reduce the cost burden of doctors' appointments, blood and cholesterol tests, and treatment.

"These drugs are off-patent and cost pennies," said Law. "You might be talking in terms of 50p a day. There's no way it's going to drain resources.

"It's not going to make megabucks for anyone, but it's a public health thing."

The volunteers in the study had a relatively low risk of heart attacks and strokes. Each had at least one risk factor, such as raised blood pressure, a smoking habit or obesity. In a higher risk population, the polypill might be expected to reduce rates of heart attacks and strokes by around 75%, said Law.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:48 am

Laser experiment powers up

The US completes construction of a huge physics experiment that aims to recreate the blistering conditions at the Sun's core.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:23 am

Combo Pill Could Cut Heart Disease Risk

A new pill combines aspirin, cholesterol medicine and blood pressure drugs.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Mar 2009 | 11:33 pm

Why Chimps Are Stronger Than Humans (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - The brutal attack last month by a pet chimpanzee on a Connecticut woman was a stark reminder that chimps are up to four times stronger than humans.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Mar 2009 | 11:21 pm

Why Chimps Are Stronger Than Humans

We pay a price for our fine motor skills.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Mar 2009 | 11:12 pm

Cosmonauts banned from using astronauts' toilet

Russian complains he is not allowed to use American facilities as commercial interests dent space cooperation

It was supposed to be the final frontier, where the petty jealousies of earth and other planetary concerns were left behind. But space is not the haven of international harmony it used to be. Once upon a time, astronauts on the international space station shared resources - food, equipment, facilities. But now, a veteran Russian cosmonaut has complained that he is not even allowed to use his American colleagues' exercise bike - or his toilet.

According to Gennady Padalka, commercial squabbles on earth are starting to compromise morale in space. For seven glorious years after his first space mission in 1998, Padalka said he and his American astronauts had cooperated brilliantly. All this changed in 2005 when space missions were put on a commercial footing, he said, and Moscow started billing the US for sending its astronauts into orbit.

Padalka told Novaya Gazeta newspaper that officials had rejected his request to work out on the American exercise bike during their pre-training mission. Worse than that, they had also ruled that American and Russian crew members should use their own "national toilets", with Russian crew banned from using the luxurious American astro-loo.

"What is going on has an adverse effect on our work," Padalka, 50, was quoted as saying in an interview before he and his crew mates blasted off to the international space station last Thursday. They arrived safely on Saturday.

Padalka, who will be the station's next commander, said the arguments date back to 2003, when Russia started charging other space agencies for the resources used by their astronauts. Other partners in the space station responded in kind.

"Cosmonauts are above the ongoing squabble, no matter what officials decide," said Padalka. He went on: "We are grown-up, well-educated and good-mannered people and can use our own brains to create normal relationship.

"It's politicians and bureaucrats who can't reach agreement, not us, cosmonauts and astronauts."

The standoff over the gym machine appears to mirror the dismal relationship between Moscow and Washington under the former US president George Bush and Russia's Vladimir Putin.

He said he had inquired before the mission whether he could use an American machine to stay fit.

"They told me: 'Yes, you can'. Then they said 'no'. Then they hold consultations and they approve it again. And now, right before the flight, it turns out again that the answer is negative."

While sharing food in the past helped the crew feel like a team, the new rules oblige Russian cosmonauts and US and other astronauts to eat their own food, Padalka said, conceding that the US astronauts generally had tastier stuff.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 30 Mar 2009 | 11:01 pm

Obituary: Ahmad Hasan Dani

Pakistan's foremost archaeologist and author of 30 books

Professor Ahmad Hasan Dani, who has died aged 88, was Pakistan's leading archaeologist and an authority on south and central Asian archaeology and history. Whether addressing international conferences or guiding schoolchildren on cultural rambles around Islamabad, Dani conveyed an enthusiasm for learning that was infectious.

In 1945 he had worked with the great British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler on the ruins at Moenjodaro, the 4,500-year-old city settlement in Sindh province, southern Pakistan. Dani revealed fascinating details about the site, proclaiming it "the first planned city in the world" and demonstrating that its Indus Valley civilisation was one of humanity's great foundational cultures, alongside Egypt, Mesopotamia and China. He described a sophisticated people who understood irrigation, traded with Arabia and ruled from Afghanistan to Rajasthan. He also showed how they practised yoga and created statuettes of bangled dancing girls and stern-faced priest-kings that delight viewers to this day.

Rejecting academic super-specialisation, Dani synthesised disciplines to reconstruct the distant past. He was fluent in 15 languages, including French, Tamil and Turkish. He wrote 30 books. His last publication, a History of Pakistan (2007), which culminates in the republic's creation in 1947, encapsulates 50 years of research.

Dani was born in Basna, a village near Raipur, in central India. His parents were Kashmiri by origin and Ahmad was the first in his family to be educated. He studied Sanskrit at Banaras Hindu University, graduating as its first Muslim student in 1944. He excavated with Wheeler at Moenjodaro and Gandhara and worked at the Department of Archaeology of British India at the Taj Mahal, Agra, before leaving for East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1947.

From 1950 to 1962, Dani was East Bengal's superintendent of archaeology, a history professor at Dhaka University and the curator at Dhaka museum. He compiled definitive works on Bengali Muslim architecture between completing his PhD thesis on the prehistory of eastern India at London University in 1955, and working as a research fellow at the School of African and Oriental Studies (1958-59).

Dani left for Peshawar University, where he created the department of archaeology and became its first professor. In 1971 he established the social sciences faculty at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, serving as dean until his retirement in 1980. In 1993 he established the Islamabad museum.

From the 1960s, Dani shone light on Graeco-Indian remains in northern Pakistan. At the ancient city of Taxila, descendants of Alexander the Great's troops had mixed with locals, adopted Buddhism and crafted statues and temples that bore unmistakable traces of an Aegean provenance. In 1997 Dani became founding director of the Taxila Institute of Asian Civilisations.

He also supervised exploration of a shrine at Murree, a hill station in Pakistani Punjab. Some believe it houses the remains of Mary, mother of Jesus.

At Rehman Dheri and Baluchistan, he helped unearth traces of a proto-urban civilisation that may predate Mesopotamia by millennia. From 1978 he and German colleagues discovered rock art from the Karakoram mountains dating back 40,000 years. In 2007 he alighted on a human footprint, possibly a million years old, imprinted in sandstone near the Margalla hills, north of Islamabad.

Often Dani swam against the tide. He suggested that Sufi meditation derived from earlier Buddhist customs; proved a casket bearing an alleged ancient Persian princess was a fake; and disputed the theory that today's southern Indians descend from Indus Valley refugees driven out by marauding Aryans.

He led path-breaking Unesco expeditions along the old Silk Road to China in 1990 and the Soviet Union in 1991. He popularised history through newspaper articles and ran cultural trips for Pakistanis as well as European, American and Japanese tourists, and lectured internationally.

Imploring Pakistanis to celebrate their pre-Islamic ancestors, Dani criticised nationalists and religious zealots who destroyed traces of preceding cultures. He also insisted that his countrymen radically reappraise their outlook on history.

The greatest influence on Pakistan, he argued, was neither the Hindu south nor the Arab west but central Asia, in its Buddhist, Persian and later Sufi guises. As chair of the Pakistan-Central Asia Friendship Association, he wanted to revive "a genuine relationship - cultural, historical, commercial as well as religious", and advocated reopening routes to the north that Soviet rule had shut down in 1920.

Dani's many international awards included the Légion d'honneur in 1998. He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Safiya Sultana, sons Anis, Navaid and Junaid, daughter Fauzia, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

• Ahmad Hasan Dani, archaeologist, linguist and historian, born 20 July 1920; died 26 January 2009

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 30 Mar 2009 | 11:01 pm

U.S. unveils Orion spacecraft to take crew to Mars

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA gave visitors to the National Mall in Washington a peek at a full-size mock-up of the spacecraft designed to carry U.S. astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars one day.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 30 Mar 2009 | 10:21 pm

Poverty Goes Straight to the Brain

Growing up poor isn't merely hard on kids. It might also be bad for their brains. A long-term study of cognitive development in lower- and middle-class students found strong links between childhood poverty, physiological stress and adult memory.

The findings support a neurobiological hypothesis for why impoverished children consistently fare worse than their middle-class counterparts in school, and eventually in life.

"Chronically elevated physiological stress is a plausible model for how poverty could get into the brain and eventually interfere with achievement," wrote Cornell University child-development researchers Gary Evans and Michelle Schamberg in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For decades, education researchers have documented the disproportionately low academic performance of poor children and teenagers living in poverty. Called the achievement gap, its proposed sociological explanations are many. Compared to well-off kids, poor children tend to go to ill-equipped and ill-taught schools, have fewer educational resources at home, eat low-nutrition food, and have less access to health care.

At the same time, scientists have studied the cognitive abilities of poor children, and the neurobiological effects of stress on laboratory animals. They've found that, on average, socioeconomic status predicts a battery of key mental abilities, with deficits showing up in kindergarten and continuing through middle school. Scientists also found that hormones produced in response to stress literally wear down the brains of animals.

Evans and Schamberg's findings pull the pieces of the puzzle together, and the implications are disturbing. Sociological explanations for the achievement gap are likely correct, but they may be incomplete. In addition to poverty's many social obstacles, it may pose a biological obstacle, too.

"A plausible contributor to the income-achievement gap is working-memory impairment in lower-income adults caused by stress-related damage to the brain during childhood," they wrote.

To test their hypothesis, Evans and Schamberg analyzed the results of their earlier, long-term study of stress in 195 poor and middle-class Caucasian students, half male and half female. In that study, which found a direct link between poverty and stress, students' blood pressure and stress hormones were measured at 9 and 13 years old. At 17, their memory was tested.

Given a sequence of items to remember‚ teenagers who grew up in poverty remembered an average of 8.5 items. Those who were well-off during childhood remembered an average of 9.44 items. So-called working memory is considered a reliable indicator of reading, language and problem-solving ability — capacities critical for adult success.

When Evans and Schamberg controlled for birth weight, maternal education, parental marital status and parenting styles, the effect remained. When they mathematically adjusted for youthful stress levels, the difference disappeared.

In lab animals, stress hormones and high blood pressure are associated with reduced cell connectivity and smaller volumes in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. It's in these brain regions that working memory is centered. Evans and Schamberg didn't scan their human subjects' brains, but the test results suggest that the same basic mechanisms operate in kids.

"Brain structures change with stress and are affected by early-life stress in animal models," said Rockefeller University neuroendocrinologist Bruce McEwen. "Now there are beginnings of work on our own species. The Evans paper is an important step in that direction."

McEwen also noted that, at least in animals, the effects of stress produce changes in genes that are then passed from parent to child. Poverty's effects could be hereditary.

The findings, though compelling, still need to be replicated and refined. "They're not really saying which causal events were stressful. They're just measuring biological markers of stress," said Kim Noble, a University of Pennsylvania psychobiologist who studies the relationship between child poverty and cognition. Other mental consequences of poverty also need to be measured.

"I think that different cognitive outcomes have different causes," said Noble. "Something like working memory might be more associated with stress, whereas language might be associated with hours spent reading to your children."

But Noble still said the study "was very well-done. They have an impressive data set." And though some details remain incomplete, she said, evidence of connections between poverty and neurobiology are strong enough to justify real-world testing.

"Policy changes that affect environments that might affect cognitive development and brain change — that's the ultimate future of the field," she said.

Citation: "Childhood poverty, chronic stress, and adult working memory." By Gary W. Evans and Michelle A. Schamberg.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106 No. 13, March 30, 2009.

See Also:

• I, Nanny: Robot Babysitters Pose Dilemma 
• Baby Einstein Turns Kids Into Baby Homer Simpson
• New Anti-Obesity Drugs Could Stunt Kids' Brains
• Seizure Medication Linked to Infant Mental Deficits
• Seeing Red: Tweak Your Brain With Colors

Image: Flickr/ActionPixs (Maruko)

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 30 Mar 2009 | 9:00 pm

Eastern Congo volcanoes show eruption warning signs

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Two volcanoes may erupt in heavily populated eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where years of fighting have already forced 1 million people from their homes, scientists and aid agencies said.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 30 Mar 2009 | 8:32 pm

Temple in Cyprus Said to Be 4,000 Years Old

Other scientists are not sure its more than 2,000 years old, however.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Mar 2009 | 7:32 pm

Mysterious East Coast Boom Was Falling Russian Rocket

Reports of boom, streak of light over Norfolk skies could have been rocket re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Mar 2009 | 6:56 pm

NASA in Colbert conundrum over Space Station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA's outreach to the public to drum up interest in the International Space Station started innocently enough with an online contest to name the station's new living quarters.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 30 Mar 2009 | 6:35 pm

Obama Climate Envoy Gets Applause in Europe

U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern drew applause from a crowd of 2,600 delegates to U.N. climate negotiations.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Mar 2009 | 5:54 pm

Cosmonaut Grumbles Over No-Sharing Policy

A cosmonaut says rules about keeping space station food and facilities separate hurts morale.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 30 Mar 2009 | 5:52 pm

La Vida Cyborg!: Connectivity Can Compromise Dignity

You are fast becoming a communicative cog in a vast super-organism. Can you maintain your individuality? Your privacy? Your sanity? [Story]
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Mar 2009 | 5:14 pm

Shell Tools Offer New Take on Human Evolution

Some hunter-gatherer groups likely used shells, not stones, as tools.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 30 Mar 2009 | 4:13 pm

Pets Wait Out ND Flood in Shelters

Hundreds of animals are being kept safe from the flood in a fairgrounds pavilion.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 30 Mar 2009 | 3:48 pm

Reporting From the Front Lines of the Texas Evolution Debate

Just hours before the Texas State Board of Education held its final hearings on the science education standards that would be put in place for the next decade, I set my kitchen timer for three minutes. I practiced my testimony among open jars of peanut butter and jelly strewn about from making kids' lunches. Ding. I still had my conclusion to read. What could I cut?

For months I had been slinking around the controversy in Texas. I had gone to every public hearing, sitting on the floor in the back of the packed room. Behind rows of folding chairs, I had gotten to know the voices, if not the faces, of the board members.

At issue was the wording of a science standard that states students must be taught the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. Since Kansas passed similar legislation in 2005 and Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2006, scientists have viewed these three words as a means for inserting the creationist theology that goes under the name "intelligent design" into science classes.

The language has never persisted. Federal Courts have struck down teaching of supernatural explanations of the origin of the species, citing separation of church and state. Still, scientists see those words as a serious affront to the teaching of rigorous science.

I handed 35 copies of my written testimony to the clerk and clutched a version in my sweaty palms. I listened as a fifth and sixth grade teacher with 35 years of experience said that denying the teaching of weaknesses in evolution was akin to shutting down creative inquiry.

The 15 board members were seated in an oval, the state seal of Texas emblazoned into the leather chair backs just above their heads. I looked around the oval, knowing that seven members would never agree with me.

"Thank you to the Board of Education for taking my testimony," I began. "For the last decade I have worked in the textbook publishing industry: writing, editing and developing curricula for science textbooks. While I am certain of my expertise writing scientific text, I don't want, nor should you want me to have, the responsibility for writing textbooks containing information that is not scientific fact."

I concluded with the paragraph that hadn't fit when I practiced in my kitchen. "I urge you to uphold language that supports the rigorous teaching of evolution to our students. I wouldn't want students to read fiction in a history book and try to determine which part of their text is historical fact. Why would you want students to read non-scientific ideas in a science book?"

Questions followed. "If the language 'strengths and weaknesses' were included in the standard, would you feel the need to include weaknesses of evolution in your text?"

My voice was tight and throaty. "It's really hard to come up with scientifically based weaknesses to evolution." The intelligent-design supporters exploded in protest.

The chairman banged his gavel repeatedly. "I will not have that kind of outburst in this room. If it happens again, I'll clear the room and we'll only have the testifiers in here. I'll do it!"

Next question. "If the language 'analyze and evaluate' were included in the standard would you feel an onus to include weaknesses of evolution in your text?"

My mind raced. Is there any way 'analyze and evaluate,' which seems like reasonable language, might be just another way to say 'strengths and weaknesses?'

"Not an onus." I finally squeaked.

What makes this debate so heated? In the hearing room, when creationists bring up weaknesses in evolution, scientists are baffled. When evolutionists say that nothing in biology makes sense without evolution, creationists are baffled.

Science is about explaining the how of the natural world: how the universe began, how life originated, how the diversity of species occurred. Scientists feel no need for their work to answer why the universe exists, why we are here. For scientists, those are questions better left to philosophy, religion and after-work hours.

Perhaps creationists find theories that only answer how to be completely unsatisfactory. Maybe for creationists, any theory that doesn't answer why contains weaknesses.

Is this discrepancy the reason the "weaknesses" of evolution that creationists speak of so passionately are so casually dismissed by scientists? Gaps in the fossil record, the geologically fast explosion of species in the Cambrian, and the complexity of the bacterial flagella are issues that are not fully understood. But scientists insist that given tools, time and the fundamental ideas of evolution, they will be solved.

Even if science could give creationists solutions to some of these issues, evolution is never going to answer their most pressing questions: Why are we here? Why were we given consciousness? What is the meaning of life? Only alternative, supernatural explanations of the natural world, the type espoused by intelligent design, can answer those questions.

Maybe evolutionists and creationists can't find common ground because they really aren't even having the same argument. Scientists are fighting to preserve their ability to answer how unimpeded by why. Creationists are fighting to have answers to why, unthreatened by answers to how.

As I walked away from the podium, a man approached me holding a magazine with a tree of life strewn across the cover. "Have you heard about lateral gene transfer? Don't you think it proves evolution isn't real?"

"No." I snapped. "It doesn't prove it at all." I hurried toward the back of the room and sat down in my comfortable spot on the floor.

-- by Juli Berwald for Wired.com

Listen to audio of the hearings

See Also:

• Your Webside Seat to the Texas Evolution Showdown
• Lonestar Scientists Posse Up to Defend Evolution in Schools
• On Darwin's Birthday, Dover Still Isn't Over
• Evolution on Trial in Texas Board of Education Battle
• Evolution Wins as Creationists (Accidentally) Switch Sides in Florida
• A Libertarian Solution to Evolution Education Controversy: No More Public Schools
• McCain's VP Wants Creationism Taught in School
• Why Evolution Is Important in the Classroom
• Famed Microbiologist on Teaching Evolution: Don't Start Until College

Image: Board Members (center) and Patricia Hardy talk with science advisor Ronald Wetherington during a meeting of the Texas State Board of Education Thursday, March 26, 2009. AP Photo/Harry Cabluck

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