Police With Higher Multitasking Abilities Less Likely To Shoot Unarmed Persons

In the midst of life-threatening situations requiring split-second decisions, police officers with a higher ability to multitask are less likely to shoot unarmed persons when feeling threatened during video simulations, a new study suggests.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

New Way To Produce Electronic Components Can Lead To Cheap And Flexible Electronics

Flexible display screens and cheap solar cells can become a reality through research and development in organic electronics. Physicists in Sweden have now developed a new and simple method for producing cheap electronic components.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Numerous CT Scans Over Lifetime May Increase Cancer Risk

Patients who undergo numerous CT scans over their lifetime may be at increased risk for cancer, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

'Matchmaker' Protein Maintains Neuronal Balance

A newly identified protein helps maintain a critical balance between two types of neurons, preventing motor dysfunction in mammals.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

A 'Bionic Nose' That Knows

Chemist have developed device to detect microscopic signs of cancer, bombs and impure water. Both cancer cells and the chemicals used to make bombs can foil detection because they appear in trace amounts too small for conventional detection techniques. Scientists have developed the ultimate solution: a molecule that can magnify weak traces of “hidden” molecules into something we can detect and see.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Rocket Launches May Need Regulation To Prevent Ozone Depletion, Says Study

The global market for rocket launches may require more stringent regulation in order to prevent significant damage to Earth's stratospheric ozone layer in the decades to come, according to a new study. Future stratospheric ozone losses from unregulated launches will eventually exceed ozone losses from CFCs.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Discovery Of Tuberculosis Bacterium Enzyme Paves Way For New TB Drugs

Scientists have paved the way for the development of new drug therapies to combat active and asymptomatic (latent) tuberculosis infections by characterizing the unique structure and mechanism of an enzyme in M. tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes the disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Amniotic Fluid May Provide New Source Of Stem Cells For Future Therapies

For the first time, scientists have shown that amniotic fluid (the protective liquid surrounding an embryo) may be a potential new source of stem cells for therapeutic applications.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Researchers Help Save Rare Venomous Mammal From Extinction

Scientists are studying the solenodon, an endangered large shrew-like mammal that kills its prey with a venomous bite. A new project aims to help conserve two types of endemic land mammal in the Dominican Republic.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

New Risk Factor For Melanoma In Younger Women

Researchers may have found a more potent risk factor for melanoma than blistering sunburns, freckling, or family history of the deadly skin disease. In a new study, scientists report that a genetic variation leads to a nearly four-fold increase of melanoma in women under the age of 50. A genetic test may help identify pre-menopausal women at higher risk.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

6,000 Rare Dolphins Found in South Asia (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - A huge population of rare dolphins threatened by climate change and fishing nets has been discovered in South Asia. Researchers with the Wildlife Conservation Society estimate that nearly 6,000 Irrawaddy dolphins, marine mammals that are related to orcas or killer whales, were found living in freshwater regions of Bangladesh's Sundarbans mangrove forest and adjacent waters of the Bay of Bengal. There has been hardly any marine mammal research done in this area up to this point. ...
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 1:06 pm

Gene Mutation Doubles Risk of Aggressive Colon Cancer in Blacks (HealthDay)

HealthDay - WEDNESDAY, April 1 (HealthDay News) -- A genetic mutation may explain why blacks are more likely than whites to have a more aggressive form of colorectal cancer, U.S. researchers report.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 1:03 pm

Rare Irrawaddy dolphins found along Bangladesh coast

Population of 6,000 endangered dolphins under threat from climate change and fishing, US conservationists warn

Conservationists claim to have found thousands of rare Irrawaddy dolphins on Bangladesh coast, but warn that the newly discovered population is under threat from climate change and fishing.

Researchers from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said they have found nearly 6,000 Irrawaddy dolphins living in the freshwater regions of Bangladesh's Sundarbans mangrove forest and nearby waters in the Bay of Bengal.

The largest known populations of Irrawaddy dolphins to date have numbered in the low hundreds or less — at least 125 in the Mekong river, 77 in the Malampaya Sound in the Philippines and up to 100 in the Mahakam River, Indonesia.

Until this new Bangladesh population was found, figures from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated the Sundarbans population to be around 450. WCS says it used rigorous scientific techniques in an area where little marine mammal research has taken place to document the new population.

The discovery of a new population is an important finding as scientists and conservation groups do not know how many Irrawaddy dolphins remain across south and south-east Asia. The species, related to orcas or killer whales, were listed in 2008 as "vulnerable" on the IUCN's "red list" of endangered species due to declines in known populations.

"This discovery gives us great hope that there is a future for Irrawaddy dolphins," said Brian D Smith, the study's lead author. "Bangladesh clearly serves as an important sanctuary for Irrawaddy dolphins, and conservation in this region should be a top priority."

"With all the news about freshwater environments and the state of the oceans, WCS's discovery that a thriving population of Irrawaddy dolphins exists in Bangladesh gives us hope for protecting this and other endangered species and their important habitats," said Steven E Sanderson, the president and chief executive of the WCS.

The results of the study were announced yesterday at the world's first international conference on marine mammal protected areas in Maui, Hawaii, and published in the Journal of Cetacean Research and Management.

But the scientists warned that the dolphins are becoming increasingly threatened by accidental entanglement in fishing nets. Declining freshwater supplies also pose a threat — from upstream water diversions such as dams and by rising sea levels caused by climate change that will see the loss of freshwater habitats.

These problems also threaten Ganges River dolphins, an endangered species that also inhabits the Sundarbans. The recent likely extinction of the Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji, is a potent reminder of how vulnerable freshwater dolphins are to extinction via the impacts of humans, the organisation said.

The Irrawaddy dolphin grows to some 2-2.5m in length (6.5-8ft) and lives in large rivers, estuaries, and freshwater lagoons in south and south-east Asia.

As recently as 1996 they were listed as "data deficient" as not enough was known about the species and its range and habitats.

Since then, the IUCN said, five populations have been listed as critically endangered, and the range of the populations and their numbers have declined as they have been caught as bycatch and faced habitat degradation.

The WCS has asked Bangladesh authorities to establish a sanctuary for the dolphins in the Sundarbans mangrove forest.

Ainun Nishat, the Bangladesh head of International Union for Conservation of Nature, said the finding was an indication that "ecology in the area is not dead yet."

"There is plenty of food, mainly fish, in the area for the dolphins to eat," said Nishat, who was not involved in the study. "What is now needed is to restrict fishing in the area to protect the dolphins."

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 1 Apr 2009 | 11:51 am

Monkey business: Zoo a step ahead of pranksters (AP)

AP - If you get a message to call a "Mr. Don Key" on Wednesday, the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines is one step ahead of you. The zoo, in an effort to stop the numerous prank calls it typically gets on April Fools' Day, has set up four hotlines for pranksters looking to dupe others. Numbers have been set up for such April Fools standbys as "Mr. Albert Ross," "Mr. C. Lyon," "Ms. Anna Conda," and the aforementioned "Mr. Don Key."
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 10:59 am

Climate change fans Nepal's fires

Longer and drier seasons, combined with freak precipitation, may point a finger towards a climate impact.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Apr 2009 | 10:29 am

Hurricane Season 2008 (weather.com)

weather.com -
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 10:06 am

Gates joins Chinese government to tackle TB 'timebomb'

Computer industry billionaire Bill Gates funds project to combat deadly new TB strains

The head of the World Health Organisation today warned that the spread of a new drug-resistant form of tuberculosis was a timebomb that could explode with devastating effect on human life and economic activity.

At a meeting to coordinate international counter-measures in Beijing, China, the WHO director-general, Margaret Chan, called on governments to strengthen healthcare and disease monitoring systems to counter the deadly new strains, which now account for 530,000 of the 9m annual cases of TB.

Most go unreported and many result in death because current treatments are increasingly ineffective.

"Call it what you may, a timebomb or a powder keg," Chan said at the opening of the three-day conference of health ministers.

"Any way you look at it, this is a potentially explosive situation."

In a sign of growing alarm, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joined the Chinese government to announce a $33m (£23m) project to pioneer new forms of diagnosis and medication.

TB is a bacterial infection that predominantly attacks the lungs. It spreads through coughing, sneezing, speaking or kissing.

During the 20th century, health authorities made progress in controlling the disease but, in recent years, virulent new strains have emerged in poor countries in which antibiotics are often misused.

The most deadly strain is almost impossible to treat.

Chan said less than 5% of estimated cases of drug-resistant TB were being detected and fewer than 3% of sufferers received treatment that reached WHO standards.

Countries attending the meeting were expected to start drawing up five-year national plans to prevent and control the spread of drug-resistant TB.

"I urge you to make the right policy decisions with appropriate urgency," Chan told health ministers representing countries with more than 80% of the cases.

"At a time of economic downturn, the world simply cannot afford to let a threat of this magnitude, complexity and cost spiral out of control."

After India, China has the highest rate of multi-drug-resistant TB, which sufferers spread to 10 to 15 people per year on average.

Russia is also suffering because of healthcare shortages, while South Africa is vulnerable because the HIV-Aids epidemic has hit immunity systems.

Chinese doctors report that TB is becoming more virulent, although treatment is nominally free.

Earlier this week, Wang Maobo, the vice-director of the disease prevention and control centre of Yantai City, Shandong province, reported a steady increase in TB cases and high death rates, particularly among poor communities.

Computer industry billionaire Bill Gates said the Gates Foundation chose to fund the TB project in China because the scale of the problem was great and the government had the ability to set an example for the world.

"Because of its skill, its scale, its TB burden, its love of innovation and its political commitment to public health, China is a perfect laboratory for large-scale testing of new tools and delivery techniques to fight TB," Gates said at a news conference.

He said the project would initially cover 20 million people and then be expanded to 100 million over five years.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 1 Apr 2009 | 9:33 am

Baby chicks do basic arithmetic

Newborn chicks are able to "count" objects as they are moved behind screens, say researchers.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Apr 2009 | 9:03 am

Saudi government cracks down on Shiite dissidents (AP)

AP - A cleric's threat of secession has brought a swift government crackdown in this poor, radical Shiite town in Saudi Arabia's increasingly restive religious minority heartland atop the Sunni kingdom's main oil reserves.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 7:19 am

How infection may spark leukaemia

Scientists show how some common infections could trigger childhood leukaemia by perturbing the immune system.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Apr 2009 | 7:03 am

People who live in the tropics have more baby girls

People who live in the tropics have more baby girls, work reveals.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Apr 2009 | 6:39 am

North Korea launch will violate U.N. resolutions: officials (Reuters)

Reuters - South Korea and Japan warned North Korea on Wednesday it would still violate U.N. resolutions if it tried to put a satellite into space, just days ahead of a planned rocket launch both see as a disguised missile test.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 6:26 am

Stem cells

Firms need to act now so patients will benefit in future
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 1 Apr 2009 | 5:01 am

Earth's Population Limit Exceeded, White House Adviser Says

And we need to manage water and wild land better.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Apr 2009 | 2:42 am

U.S. space programs need better oversight: group

COLORADO SPRINGS (Reuters) - U.S. government spending on unclassified satellites and space programs is out of control and soared 42 percent to $16.9 billion in fiscal 2009 from $11.9 billion in 2005, the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense said on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 2:32 am

Long-Necked Dinos Hung Their Heads

Imagine having a 29-foot neck. You might want to hang your head.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Apr 2009 | 2:24 am

CT scan reveals hidden face under Nefertiti bust (AP)

AP - Researchers in Germany have used a modern medical procedure to uncover a secret within one of ancient Egypt's most treasured artworks — the bust of Nefertiti has two faces. A team led by Dr. Alexander Huppertz, director of the Imaging Science Institute at Berlin's Charite hospital and medical school, discovered a detailed stone carving that differs from the external stucco face when they performed a computed tomography, or CT, scan on the bust.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 1 Apr 2009 | 1:11 am

6,000 Rare Dolphins Found in South Asia

Largest known population of Irrawaddy dolphins is found in South Asia.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Apr 2009 | 12:19 am

Old, Brutal Surgeries Inspire Elegant Modern Devices

By combing through old scientific journals, medical-device companies are finding effective, but brutal treatments for common diseases that could be transformed by modern technology into safer, noninvasive procedures.

Pairing a century's worth of surgical history of glaucoma treatment with recent advances in materials design, a California company called The Foundry developed a highly engineered device that can drain fluid out of the eye just like a nasty early-20th-century procedure that involved cutting a hole in the eye.

Other diseases such as hypertension and emphysema may also benefit from modernization of antiquated surgical procedures, potentially opening up a lucrative market for medical-device companies.

"We first make sure we're looking at a very big opportunity and then look at the historical record," said Hanson Gifford, head of The Foundry, a company that invents and incubates medical devices like the new  device. "Certainly looking through the medical records is a lot cheaper than going and doing a bunch of human or animal studies."

Unlike pharmaceuticals, which depend on complex intracellular interactions and can be very expensive to develop, medical devices sit on a rich and long history of manipulating the plumbing of the physical body. For centuries, anatomists and physiologists have cut into cadavers, as well as live bodies, to figure out where the heart pumps blood, which nerves connect where, and how the physical materials of the body — flesh, blood, bones — act under human interventions. They figured out a lot about the mechanics of the corpse, long before they knew anything about cells or viruses or genomes.

The Foundry's glaucoma device is based on a treatment popularized in 1906. German surgeons discovered a simple solution for glaucoma — where the eyes' lubricating liquid gets blocked, creating pressure that kills off the optic nerves: They simply sliced open a hole in the eye to let fluid drain out.

It worked, according to the medical reports of the day. The pain was tolerable — it only required cocaine and adrenal shots, not general anesthesia — but it left patients with a hole in the eye that could be made too big, dangerously reducing eye pressure, or that spontaneously closed up, eliminating its positive effects.

So the technique was abandoned, despite a 1930s review that found the procedure, called cyclodialysis (.pdf), worked 80 percent of the time when used on the right types of glaucoma.

Now, rather than physically cutting a pathway for the fluid, a newly-designed implant could act as a tiny pipe that drains fluid out from the front of the eye. This might solve the problems long-associated with the procedure — and a spin-off company has $7 million in venture capital to give it a go.

The glaucoma treatment is one of a number of old, brutal surgical procedures that have been revived or modified by new technologies and materials. Inserting older materials into the body would create scarring or lead to infection, but increasing knowledge of what materials work best inside the body allows scientists to engineer new devices to solve old problems.

For example, Solx, another company working on a similar glaucoma treatment, uncovered a 1983 paper about a jeweler in the Indian state of West Bengal who had a piece of 22-karat gold (.pdf) embedded in his eye for a decade. For all those years, the gold didn't cause irritation in the eye, so Solx's scientists created a shunt out of the material.

Old medical records are particularly useful, because the problems doctors are trying to solve are old, but the amount of materials, data and knowledge that humans have accumulated about their bodies has increased.

And some of these old surgeries, which had ridiculously high risk levels, probably wouldn't be greenlighted today.

"That’s one of the good things about medical devices in general," Gifford said. "Technology rolls on but people keep getting sick from the same diseases over the ages."

And that technology has been developing at an increasing rate since medicine started to incorporate all that anatomical and physiological knowledge with the widespread use of anesthesia in the mid-19th century and antibiotics during the 20th.

"Before anesthesia, the only thing to recommend any technique was how fast it was, because you had to be able to keep the person held down and from dying of shock," said Sara Piasecki, the head of historical collections and archives at Oregon Health Sciences University's History of Medicine Library.

Without antibiotics, though, even good procedures could end up being ruined by infection, so efficacy was hard to assess. Still, human bodies have remained fundamentally the same. So much so that in time-pressured situations, like battlefield medicine, surgery hasn't changed much at all.

"We still saw off legs with a saw the way that they did back in colonial days — the way they did way back before colonial days," said Dave Lounsbury, M.D., a retired U.S. Army colonel and co-editor of War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq. "At the risk of being brutish, though there is fancier equipment, the procedure is fundamentally the same. Blood transfusion today in Afghanistan is identical to the way it was in World War I." 

Surgery outside trauma wards, however, has been transformed by laparoscopic and endoscopic operations carried out through small incisions and enabled by fiber optics and tiny cameras.

"They are used in virtually every kind of surgery except for plastic surgery," said Dale Smith, chairman of the department of medical history at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. "Almost everybody else is using scopes."

One danger of looking back to previous eras of medicine, though, is that they had far different standards for what constituted good data. Smith said that clinical-trial data collection techniques "are orders of magnitude improved."

"Evidence-based medicine is a term that was created in the 1980s," Smith said. "And medicine prior to the Second World War was really a very different activity."

Still, Gifford's team at The Foundry continues to find gold in the medicine of the past. A few years ago, they were approached by a physician-inventor talking about a radically different type of treatment for hypertension, a disease which affects about a third of the adult population in the developed world. Instead of the drugs that are currently used — and do a pretty good job for most people who can afford them — he proposed reducing the amount of nerve activity running from the kidneys to the sympathetic nervous system.

It wasn't a standard treatment, but it turned out to have deep medical roots. From the 1930s through the 1950s — before hypertension drugs became available — denervation of the area near the kidneys had successfully treated the disease. (See box)

"We started to track down all this historical evidence and said, 'All this is really going to work,'" Gifford said.

Of course, there were problems with the treatment. First, the surgery was brutal, and both kidneys couldn't be done at the same time. Second, too much denervation could result in the inability of the sympathetic nervous system in the lower body to do simple things like control blood flow in the legs.

A study published this week in The Lancet summed up the problems with this nasty laundry list: "prolonged hospitalization, postural hypotension, syncope, impotence and even difficulty in walking."

Perhaps, though, new technology could be used to create a kindler, gentler way of destroying nerves, without going too far.

The solution that The Foundry found is a catheter-based radio-frequency generator that is threaded up through the femoral artery and then destroys the nerves. The Foundry created a new company, Ardian, to commercialize it, and the results of the first study using the device were in  The Lancet paper. It's minimally invasive and seems to have fewer side effects than the old treatment.   

By killing the nerves in 45 patients with "resistant" hypertension — i.e., they don't respond well to drugs — the Ardian-funded team was able to lower the subjects' blood pressure substantially for a year. And none of the patients experienced kidney trouble or the other complications associated with the classic surgical procedure. 

Michael Doumas and Stella Douma, in an accompanying commentary, call the paper "a breakthrough study," that, though more research is necessary, provides "hope for the management of a difficult clinical condition."

That hope is valuable, especially with millions of wealthy developed-world citizens walking around with untreated hypertension. Last week, Ardian raised $47 million from investors including Medtronic and Morganthaler Ventures.

While The Foundry has experienced remarkable success looking into history, there are undoubtedly more medical procedures hidden in government vaults and dusty libraries that could be mined by today's medical-device makers.

"You can look at almost any area of surgery and find techniques that were once pioneering and commonly accepted that have since fallen by the wayside for less invasive surgeries or drug therapies," OHSU's Piasecki said.

With new advances in surgical procedures, stents, shunts and pumps, some of those more invasive surgeries could be made over on their way from the library to the operating room. What might be next?

"I haven't done any research, but there was probably a surgical intervention for erectile dysfunction before there was Viagra," Piasecki noted.

Image: Otto Barkan, California Medicine, Vol. 67, No.

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 | 1 Apr 2009 | 12:19 am

Rosy Complexion Is Sign of Health

A rosy complexion is judged to be healthier, and therefore maybe more attractive.
Source: Livescience.com | 1 Apr 2009 | 12:15 am

U.S. space industry not yet seeing economic slowdown

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (Reuters) - The U.S. economy is in recession, but the satellite industry's prospects are still flying high -- at least for now, military officials and industry executives said on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 11:55 pm

Scientists Make Blackest Material Ever

Scientists have fashioned what may be the blackest material in the universe: a sheet of carbon nanotubes that captures nearly every last photon of every wavelength of light.

The substance absorbs between 97 percent and 99 percent of wavelengths that can be directly measured or extrapolated. It's the closest that scientists have yet come to a black body, a theorized state of perfect absorption whose closest analogue is believed to be the opening of a deep hole.

The material, described Monday by Japanese nanotechnologists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is made from a flat array of vertically-aligned, single-walled carbon nanotubes. Photons that aren't immediately absorbed by a single nanotube deflect off and are absorbed by its neighbors.

"This interaction," write the researchers, "repeats until the attenuated light is completely absorbed by the forest." To the naked eye, the substance appears perfectly flat; in effect, it's a sheet of deep holes.

By comparison, the blackest paints and coatings absorb between 84 and 95 percent of all light. Researchers say the material would be useful in solar panels or to collect heat in the frigid vacuum of space.

Citation: "A black body absorber from vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes." By Kohei Mizuno, Juntaro Ishii, Hideo Kishida, Yuhei Hayamizu, Satoshi Yasuda, Don N. Futaba, Motoo Yumura, and Kenji Hata. 

Images: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

See Also:

• Carbon Nanotube Muscles Strong as Diamond, Flexible as Rubber
• Hypnosis Lets Regular People See Numbers as Colors

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 31 Mar 2009 | 11:40 pm

Long-necked dinos didn't reach for the skies (AFP)

AFP - A fondly-held belief about long-necked sauropods, the giant four-footed dinosaurs beloved of monster movies and children, is most probably untrue, a dino expert said on Wednesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 11:13 pm

Spacewatch: Launch countdown

The ISS (International Space Station) has left our evening skies and will next be seen before dawn on about 23 April. By the month's end it should be back making zenith passes over southern England, with its newly completed suite of solar power arrays making it our brightest nighttime object after the Moon.

By then, too, the European Space Agency should have launched two new astronomical observatories, Herschel and Planck. Liftoff is planned for the 29th via an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana. Both craft will travel towards a so-called Lagrangian L2 point, 1.5m km beyond the Earth on the Earth-Sun line, where the gravitational forces balance. The same stable vantage-point has been chosen for the James Webb space telescope (JWST), due for launch in 2013.

While the JWST will have a mirror 6.5 metres across, the 3.5-metre one of Herschel is still the largest to be launched into space until now. Indeed, it has more than twice the light-gathering area of the Hubble space telescope. Not that Herschel will be collecting light. Rather it operates at far infrared and sub-millimetre wavelengths where the radiation comes from the cooler objects in space.

These include solar system bodies such as comets, asteroids, planets and their moons, as well as the clouds of gas and dust where new stars are forming. It will also study the most distant galaxies in the universe.

Planck, as I hope to report next time, will look even further back in time.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 31 Mar 2009 | 11:01 pm

Computer exercise helps stroke victims "see" again

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Millie Sauer did not even know she had suffered a stroke until she tried to read a book as she recovered from surgery and saw only a gray blur for part of the page.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 9:27 pm

Musical Training Helps Scientist Hear Atoms' Movement

Hari Manoharan recently created the world’s smallest letters – an S and a U, for Stanford University – each only one third of one billionth of a meter across and crafted from a flow of electrons on a copper surface.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:54 pm

Dance of the Supermodel Worm

Though she's brainless, C. elegans has outwitted scientists for decades. Now that they've learned the secret to her magic motion, she's about to become the best understood organism in the world.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:42 pm

Pope's Condom Condemnation Distorts Truth

The pontiff distorted scientific evidence to promote Catholic doctrine.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:03 pm

Stroke patients regain sight after intensive brain training

People left partially blind by a stroke learned to use undamaged parts of their brains to improve their vision

Thousands of people left partially blind by strokes could regain some of their sight by doing exercises to retrain their brains, according to a study.

Patients who completed an intensive course designed by neuroscientists showed a marked improvement in their vision, with some being able to see well enough to drive a car once again.

Other patients who had struggled to get around in unfamiliar places became confident enough to go shopping and do other everyday tasks such as crossing the road, the scientists said.

The exercise regime, which required patients to spend around an hour a day at a computer for at least nine months, forced them to process visual signals with parts of their brain that had not been damaged by the stroke.

The exercises worked even if people had suffered a stroke more than a year previously, giving hope to many older patients whom doctors often expect to make no further recovery.

"When we started the study, we were not sure what to expect because of the current dogma that in fact you can't retrain vision after a stroke," said Krystel Huxlin, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester Eye Institute in New York state, who led the study. "It turns out you can recover vision after stroke. It's very hard to do, and it takes a lot of exercising of your visual brain, but it is possible."

As many as 60% of people who have had a stroke have impaired vision as a result. In most cases, the stroke destroys cells in the visual cortex, leaving people with large blindspots on one or both sides.

Huxlin's team wondered whether stroke patients could be trained to work around the part of their brain damaged by stroke, using other regions to make sense of visual information still getting through from their retinas.

To find out, the researchers recruited four women and three men in their 30s to 80s who had suffered a stroke between eight months and three-and-a-half years previously. All had lost between a quarter and a half of their field of vision following a stroke.

In a series of tests, the volunteers were asked to stare at a dot on a computer screen. As they focused, a group of moving dots appeared on the screen outside their field of view.

Even though the patients could not see the dots at first, they were asked to guess whether they were moving to the left or right. At first, the patients got the right answer around half of the time, but after weeks of training their success rate went up to 80 or 90%.

After many months of training, patients found their vision improved and the blindspots caused by stroke became smaller. They were learning to process visual information that was previously only barely registering in their subconscious brain.

The research, which appears in the Journal of Neuroscience, overturns previously held beliefs about the ability of the brain to adapt to such serious damage.

"A lot of neurologists and clinical practitioners are not really aware that it is possible to recover vision after stroke," said Huxlin. "People who've had a stroke affecting the visual cortex are usually sent home and told there's nothing that can be done for them."

He said the exercise regime led to substantial improvements in the patients' lifestyle. "As their vision improves, they feel more confident to go out in unfamiliar places or in crowded places, and get around and not lose their way or bump into things. In some cases the improvements are big enough that patients have been able to regain their driving licences."

Joanne Knight, director of research at The Stroke Association, said: "Every year 150,000 people in the UK have a stroke and many stroke survivors have to deal with visual problems which can severely affect their mobility, ability to judge distances and likelihood of falling. We welcome this research and look forward to further in-depth studies into vision rehabilitation for stroke survivors."

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:00 pm

U.S. Military to Track Satellites

The U.S. military now says that by Oct. 1 it will start tracking all 800 working spacecraft.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Mar 2009 | 7:39 pm

Human Thoughts Control a Robot

A special helmet reads brain activity, and then the arms and legs of Asimo move.
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Mar 2009 | 7:22 pm

World's Largest Laser Ready to Fire Up

The Department of Energy's $3.5 billion laser, designed to simulate the energy of a nuclear explosion, is ready to fire up all of its 192 beams, AP reported Tuesday.

After more than a decade, that included several delays and cost overruns (it was initially supposed to cost $700 million), the world's most powerful laser has been certified by the DOE and is ready to begin experiments, some of which physicists hope could lead the way to fusion energy.

The National Ignition Facility, located in a building with a footprint the size of three football fields at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, was designed to help the DOE ensure the country's aging nuclear weapons stockpile remains reliable without detonating any bombs.

But recently, Livermore Lab has been repositioning itself as a more multi-dimensional facility as funding for nuclear weapons shrinks. The stockpile stewardship mission has been downplayed while the potential for an unlimited energy source has been touted.

Over the next year, NIF will increase the power until it reaches the temperature and pressures at the center of the sun by aiming all 192 laser beams into a chamber where they will be focused simultaneously on a deuterium-tritium target the size of the tip of your little finger. This is more than 60 times the energy of any other laser.

"Now the proof is in the shooting," NIF director Edward Moses told AP. "We've got to put all this together and shoot the targets. It's the first time anyone has ever done experiments at this scale."

Check out Wired Science's visit to NIF last year in the video below.

 

See Also:

• Video Podcast #6: 192 Lasers, Nuclear Weapons and Fusion Power
• The Complete Wired Science Video Podcast Collection
• Texans Build World's Most Powerful Laser
• Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos
• Fusion Research is Another U.S. Budget Casualty

Image: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/DOE

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 31 Mar 2009 | 7:06 pm

Hubble-bound shuttle arrives at Florida launch pad

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The space shuttle that will carry NASA's last crew to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope was moved to its Florida launch pad on Tuesday in preparation for liftoff on May 12.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 6:17 pm

Earth population 'exceeds limits'

Science advisor in the US State Department Nina Fedoroff says humans have exceeded the Earth's "limits of sustainability".
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Mar 2009 | 6:17 pm

Honda unveils helmet that lets wearer control a robot by thought alone

A human wearing the Honda helmet managed to control the robot Asimo without moving a muscle

An elaborate electronic helmet that allows the wearer to control a robot by thought alone has been unveiled by researchers in Japan.

Scientists at the Honda Research Institute demonstrated the invention today by using it to move the arms and legs of an Asimo humanoid robot.

To control the robot, the person wearing the helmet only had to think about making the movement. Its inventors hope that one day the mind-control technology will allow people to do things like turn air conditioning on or off and open their car boot without putting their shopping down.

The helmet is the first "brain-machine interface" to combine two different techniques for picking up activity in the brain. Sensors in the helmet detect electrical signals through the scalp in the same way as a standard EEG (electroencephalogram). The scientists combined this with another technique called near-infrared spectroscopy, which can be used to monitor changes in blood flow in the brain.

Brain activity picked up by the helmet is sent to a computer, which uses software to work out which movement the person is thinking about. It then sends a signal to the robot commanding it to perform the move. Typically, it takes a few seconds for the thought to be turned into a robotic action.

Honda said the technology was not ready for general use because of potential distractions in the person's thinking. Another problem is that brain patterns differ greatly between individuals, and so for the technology to work brain activity must first be analysed for up to three hours.

The project will also benefit from miniaturisation to make the helmet wearable on the move. At the moment it comes attached to computer equipment the size of a domestic refrigerator.

The demonstration is the latest by the diminutive robot Asimo, which stands slightly higher than four feet (130cm) tall. The multimillion-pound machine has already been taught to walk, talk and fetch drinks. It notched up a world first last year when it conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. One double bass player likened the experience to being conducted by a metronome.

Asimo, which stands for Advanced Step In Innovative Mobility, is one of a very few robots that can walk reliably on two legs. It is fitted with twin cameras in its head and is powered by 34 individual motors. Honda hopes that by 2020 the robot will be cheap enough, and capable enough, to help pensioners and nurses with simple tasks.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 31 Mar 2009 | 5:56 pm

'Supersize' lions roamed Britain

Giant lions were roaming Europe and North America as recently as 13,000 years ago, Oxford University scientists say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Mar 2009 | 5:33 pm

Surviving Salmonella: What You Can Do

Lettuce, chicken, tomatoes, peanut butter and now pistachios. Pistachios?
Source: Livescience.com | 31 Mar 2009 | 5:32 pm

Six embark on 105-day simulated trip to Mars

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Six European men embarked on a 105-day simulated trip to Mars at a Russian space institute on Tuesday to test how humans would cope with the long isolation.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 31 Mar 2009 | 5:18 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 | 5:13 pm

Nefertiti Bust Has Two Faces, Radiology Reveals

A stone carving of Nefertiti's face lies beneath the exterior face of the Egyptian queen.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:40 pm

Intrepid Volunteers Simulate Mars Mission

Six volunteers will be isolated for three months to simulate a manned mission to Mars.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:00 pm

SLIDE SHOW: Dust Storms Around the World

Take a look at the destruction of dust storms around the world.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:00 pm

Damaged goods

Carbon labels won't curb climate change but may hurt Africa
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:37 pm

Columbus: Not Guilty in Spreading Anthrax

Anthrax had already established itself in America before Christopher Columbus arrived.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

Is Tobacco the Next Anti-HIV Weapon?

The secret to producing a pricey HIV drug could be the humble tobacco plant.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:40 pm

Mars 'journey' experiment begins

Six European volunteers begin a simulated journey to Mars to see if humans could cope with the long isolation.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:01 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

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

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