Science Headlines for April 7, 2009

Is There A Seat Of Wisdom In The Brain?

Researchers have compiled the first-ever review of the neurobiology of wisdom -- once the sole province of religion and philosophy.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Pentagonal Ice Discovered: Could Be Used To Modify Weather

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have discovered a five-sided ice chain structure that could be used to modify future weather patterns.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Large Number Of New Prions Discovered: Scientists Redefining What It Means To Be A Prion

Special proteins known as prions, which are perhaps best known as the agents of mad cow and other neurodegenerative diseases, can also serve as an important source of beneficial variation in nature. Researchers have found a large number of new prions, greatly expanding scientists' notion of how important prions might be in normal biology and demonstrating that they play many and varied roles in the inheritance of biological traits. Prions are misfolded proteins that clump together in cells. The most infamous known prion -- PrP -- causes bovine spongiform encephalitis, also known as "mad cow" disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Workhorse Immune Molecules Lead Secret Lives In The Brain

Molecules assumed to be in the exclusive employ of the immune system have been caught moonlighting in the brain -- with a job description apparently quite distinct from their role in immunity. Neurobiologists have shown that members of a large family of proteins critical to immune function (collectively known as HLA molecules in humans and MHC molecules in mice) also play a role in the brain.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Sun Dial Uses Mobile Phones To Alert Muslims To Prayer

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a mobile application known as Sun Dial, which alerts Muslim users when it's time to perform the five daily prayers known as salat. The device is currently being discussed this week at the human-computer interaction conference, CHI, in Boston.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Stem Cell Therapy Grows New Blood Vessels

New research has identified how to use selected stem cells from bone marrow to grow new blood vessels to treat diseases such as peripheral artery disease. It's one of the complications of diabetes caused by reduced blood flow which, in severe cases, can lead to amputation of a limb.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Lice Genomes Uniquely Fragmented: How Did It Evolve?

Parents and school nurses take note. Lice are a nuisance and vectors of serious diseases, such as epidemic typhus, in developing regions. New research indicates that lice may be quite unique in the animal world. In a study published in Genome Research, scientists analyzed the mitochondrial genome of the human body louse and discovered that it is fragmented into pieces -- a remarkable finding in animals that will spark discussion about how it evolved.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

'Molecular Ripcord' For Chemical Reactions

Researchers have developed an entirely new method for starting chemical reactions. For the first time, they used mechanical forces to control catalytic activity -- one of the most fundamental concepts in chemistry. This allowed them to initiate chemical reactions with mechanical force. This discovery paves the way to developing materials capable of repairing themselves under the influence of mechanical tension.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Intestinal Parasites Alter Immunity In Cholera Patients

Cholera patients also infected with parasitic intestinal worms have a significantly reduced immune response to the cholera toxin, according to a new report. Results of the study suggest that parasitic infection could reduce immunity to future cholera infection and may compromise the effectiveness of cholera vaccines.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Experimental 'Gene-silencing' Treatment Has Wide-ranging Side Effects

The side effects of an experimental "gene-silencing" treatment that is currently being investigated for a variety of diseases are even more wide-ranging than previously discovered, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Shipping Containers Converted Into Homes

A company converts shipping containers into sleek, energy-efficient homes.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Apr 2009 | 2:10 pm

Rare megamouth shark caught, eaten in Philippines (AP)

AP - Fishermen in the Philippines accidentally caught and later ate a megamouth shark, one of the rarest fishes in the world with only 40 others recorded to have been encountered, the World Wildlife Fund said Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 12:47 pm

French claim full face transplant

A French surgeon says he has now effectively carried out a full face transplant after two operations in a fortnight.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2009 | 12:37 pm

In double transplant, left hand works first (AP)

AP - When patients had both hands transplanted, their brains re-established connections much more quickly with the left hand than the right, a team of researchers in France reports.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 11:50 am

Arctic ice shows winter thinning

Arctic winter sea-ice reaches a larger maximum area than in 2008 but is still in long-term decline, say scientists.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2009 | 11:49 am

Tiny rock excites astrochemists

A micrometeorite with a "unique" chemical composition is broadening ideas of how planets can form.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2009 | 11:31 am

Soyuz successor contract awarded

RSC Energia is selected to lead the development of a next-generation Russian manned spacecraft.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2009 | 10:47 am

Caution urged on green tax effect

The think-tank IPPR warns the UK Chancellor not to use green taxes to plug the hole in government finances.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2009 | 10:15 am

Hurricane Season 2008 (weather.com)

weather.com -
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 10:05 am

BG says owns almost all of Pure Energy (AFP)

AFP - Oil and gas group BG said Tuesday that it owns almost 100 percent of Australian peer Pure Energy.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 8:25 am

Calif. river system is nation's most endangered (AP)

AP - California's two longest rivers have been named the country's most endangered waterways because of outdated water management and poor flood planning, according to an environmental advocacy group.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 8:05 am

Women Smell Better than Men (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Body odor reveals more than when we last showered - it also packs important biological information. And apparently women are better at catching the scent of body odor than men, a new study found.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 4:31 am

Women Smell Better than Men

Women are better at catching the scent of body odor than men, a new study found.
Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2009 | 4:26 am

Empire State gets a green makeover

The Empire State Building, the symbol of New York's pre-eminence that held the title of the world's tallest skyscraper for 41 years, is seeking to pierce through the pall of economic gloom that has descended on Manhattan by turning itself green.

The owners of the building announced yesterday they were investing an additional $20m to reduce its carbon footprint and energy consumption. The retrofit is being added to a renovation of the art deco structure that starts this summer already costing half a billion dollars.

It takes a certain pluck to announce such a substantial investment in the middle of a recession. But then the Empire State Building was born in hard times.

Work on the site in midtown Manhattan began in January 1930, months after the Wall Street crash. It went up as the New York and US economies went down.

Now the current owners of the 102-storey office block, Wien & Malkin, hope to buck the economic trend again by improving the building and charging higher rents. Part of the hard sell to potential new clients will be its "greenness" once the work is completed in 2013.

The plan aims to cut the use of energy by almost 40%, which would in turn reduce the emissions of CO₂ from the building by some 105,000 metric tonnes a year. That is no easy feat, bearing in mind that the Empire State has some 6,500 windows, 73 elevators and a total floorspace of 2.6 million square feet.

All the windows will have an extra layer of insulation added by secreting a coated film between two glass panes - done in situ to avoid pollution caused by transporting the glass from an outside destination. Insulation will be added behind radiators, and the cooling system in the basement will be replaced with new more efficient machines.

Individual workers in the office spaces will be encouraged to take responsibility for their own emissions by being given access through their computers to monitors which will tell them how much energy is being expended in their part of the building.

None of the changes though will be visible to the outside world. The owners have decided that the famous coloured lights - the top of the Empire State turns green, for instance, on St Patrick's day and was a patriotic red, white and blue for several months after 9/11 - will remain intact, arguing they are responsible for relatively little energy consumption.

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 | 7 Apr 2009 | 12:55 am

Early warning clue for dementia

Hyperactivity in a part of brain that deals with memory may give early warning of dementia decades later, research suggests.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:26 pm

NASA astronaut to send Twitter updates (AFP)

AFP - NASA, which used Twitter to send updates about the Mars Phoenix Lander program, is turning to the micro-blogging service again.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:19 pm

Escape pods: Kew Millennium Seed Bank

These strange alien structures are some of the seeds and pollen collected by Kew in the past 10 years

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:15 pm

Gravity satellite feels the force

Europe's Goce satellite switches on the super-sensitive instrument that will make ultra-fine measurements of Earth's gravity.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:07 pm

Drug trial gives hope of longer life to women fighting ovarian cancer

• Drug could be available within five years
• First new treatment in a decade is by British team

British scientists have developed and clinically tested a drug that could prolong the lives of thousands of women suffering from one of the most aggressive cancers.

Ovarian cancer kills 4,500 women a year and has proved particularly difficult to treat. It is more than a decade since medics have had a new weapon at their disposal with which to tackle the disease, but if further trials confirm the effectiveness of the new drug, it could be available within five years, say researchers.

A clinical trial of the drug, codenamed CNTO328, has been carried out at Centre for Experimental Cancer Medicine, part of Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Eight of the 18 women involved found their tumours stabilised or shrank while they were taking part, which should mean they live longer than doctors originally expected. It is an unusually high proportion for an experimental cancer drug study. Typically only between five and 20% of participants secure any benefit from taking untried treatments.

Each year 6,800 women are diagnosed with cancer of the ovaries. About half die within three years, partly because so few drugs exist to stop it spreading in the body - no new treatment has been introduced for more than a decade. It is the fifth most common cancer among women and the fourth biggest killer after lung, breast and bowel cancer.

Professor Iain McNeish, a professor of gynaecological oncology at Barts and chief investigator of the trial, said: "We have taken the drug from the laboratory into patients and the results are promising.

"The hope with this group of patients was to slow down the progress of their ovarian cancer, improve the quality of their life and possibly make them live longer. We have been quite successful in doing that. If this becomes a treatment, this is a whole new approach to treating ovarian cancer," he added.

The drug is an antibody which works by targeting a molecule called Interleukin 6, which is made by cancer cells and is vital to help them multiply, spread and develop their own blood supply.

Interleukin 6 is found in many cancers but plays a key role in ovarian cancer's movement into the abdomen. The antibody binds to the Interleukin 6, blocks its progress by ensuring that it cannot bind itself to the cancer cells to assist their growth and thus renders it harmless.

McNeish hopes that, if further trials confirm the drug's potential, it could prove as effective in tackling ovarian cancer as Herceptin has been in breast cancer. CNTO328 works in a similar way to Herceptin, which has revolutionised breast cancer treatment in recent years.

"The dream scenario is that a combination of the existing chemotherapy drugs and this type of antibody will be a big breakthrough and open up a new avenue for the treatment of ovarian cancer", said McNeish.

The new drug is the result of a collaboration between Professor Fran Balkwill, an expert in cancer and inflammation at the Institute of Cancer at the same medical school as McNeish, and a Dutch biotech company called Centocor, which is now owned by Johnson & Johnson.

Eighteen women with the disease from north-east London and Essex joined the trial which began in late 2007.

All 18 were expected to live for less than a year when they began receiving the drug because their cancer had returned after undergoing several courses of chemotherapy.

Ten died but the health of eight did improve. Seven of those eight are still alive.

"At the end of the trial, eight of the women were either stable or getting better. Their cancer had stopped growing. That doesn't sound great, but in ovarian cancer that's pretty good because [without the drug] the disease would have progressed in all of them," said McNeish.

In addition, the drug did not produce the side effects involved in chemotherapy, such as hair loss, vomiting and constant fatigue. While treatment of and survival rates for other forms of cancer have improved, mainly due to the emergence of new drugs, the prospects for those with ovarian cancer have remained poor.

The low number of women still alive five years after diagnosis - 30% - has not changed in 30 years. In contrast, over the same period survival amongst breast cancer sufferers has increased from 50% to 80%.

Annwen Jones, chief executive of the charity Target Ovarian Cancer, said there were too few drugs available to treat the condition because of a lack of research. "This early stage trial certainly shows promise, because it appears that the growth of tumours has been slowed down in a good proportion of the patients who took part in the study.

"Women being treated for ovarian cancer could be forgiven for despair, particularly when they grow resistant to chemotherapy and there are no drugs that can get them over this hurdle. Research projects like this are vital if we are to develop desperately needed new treatments," she said.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Our flexible friend

There is growing evidence that the brain can be trained to compensate for dead or damaged areas. As Ian Sample reports, this could benefit those suffering anything from a stroke to depression or relationship problems

On 8 March 1969, an extraordinary experiment was reported in the pages of Nature, Europe's leading science journal. It involved a group of people who took turns to sit in an old dentist's chair and describe the room around them. They commented on the presence of a phone on the table, a nearby vase, people's expressions and how they wore their hair. It was remarkable because all were completely blind.

The scientific establishment took a dim view of the work and, for the most part, dismissed it as implausible. But today it stands as one of the first, and most striking, demonstrations of neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to adapt. The blind people had learned to "see" through the sensation of touch.

Here's what happened. The back of the chair had been fitted with hundreds of tiny stimulators that were hooked up to a video camera. As the camera panned the room, those in the chair felt tiny vibrations that seemed to dance across their skin as the image moved. With practice, the blind volunteers' brains learned to turn these vibrations into a mental picture of the room. Some became so good at it that they ducked when a ball was tossed at the camera.

What was regarded as fringe science 40 years ago is currently at the cutting edge of neuroscience. With the right training, scientists now know the brain can reshape itself to work around dead and damaged areas, often with dramatic benefits. Therapies that exploit the brain's power to adapt have helped people overcome damage caused by strokes, depression, anxiety and learning disabilities, and may one day replace drugs for some of these conditions. Some studies suggest therapies that tap into the brain's neuroplasticity are already making a big difference. Children with language difficulties have been shown to make significant progress using computer training tools that are the equivalent of cerebral cross-training. Work is underway to investigate whether it is possible to stave off a loss of brain plasticity in older age, which might help to address memory problems linked to Alzheimer's disease. Some psychoanalysts are adopting techniques to help people overcome relationship troubles, obsessions, worries and bad habits.

The idea of brain plasticity has been discovered and forgotten many times over the centuries. The ancient Greeks accepted the idea, with Socrates believing that people could train their brains the way gymnasts train their bodies. Around the time of Galileo, the idea fell out of favour, as scientists began to see the world mechanistically, with each object, organ and even parts of an organ being attributed well-defined, unchanging roles. It was these ideas that led to the notion of our brains being "hardwired", an idea that today is steadily being overturned.

Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist at the University of Toronto and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Brain That Changes Itself, says our ongoing belief that our brains are hardwired has held up medical progress. "Our best and brightest neuroscientists thought our brains were structured like complex machines, with each part performing one function in one location, and that had implications. If you were born with a part that was defective, and say it gave you a learning disorder, it meant there was nothing you could do, you had to learn to live with it. If you sustained a brain injury or had a stroke and part of your brain broke down, there was nothing you could do. Brain exercises made no sense, and even more fundamentally, human nature was as fixed as the brain from which it emerged," he says.

Neuroplasticity does not see the different regions of the brain as completely versatile and certainly not interchangeable. But it recognises that if part of the brain is damaged, it can be possible to train other areas to take on, at least to some extent, the job of the lost brain matter.

One of Doidge's case studies, Cheryl Schiltz, demonstrates how brain plasticity can transform a damaged life. Her story began in 1997, when, at the age of 39, she picked up an infection after a routine operation. To clear it up, she was given a course of the antibiotic, gentamicin. When used in excess, the drug can sometimes destroy cells in the inner ear, causing hearing loss, but it is cheap and effective, so is widely used. In Schiltz's case, gentamicin destroyed her vestibulary system, the looping canals of the inner ear that allow us to tell up from down. Tests showed she had only 2% of her vestibulary function left.

What happens to a person who cannot balance is striking. Schiltz felt as if she was constantly falling, and as a result, she usually did. When she hit the floor, the feeling didn't go away. Sometimes, it was as if a trapdoor had opened and she was free-falling into an abyss.

Her doctor found an ingenious way to treat her. He fitted her with a bizarre-looking helmet fitted with motion sensors. These fed signals to a metal strip that she placed in her mouth. Now, as she tipped forward, she felt a tingle ripple to the tip of her tongue. As her head moved to the side, the tingle rolled sideways.

The first time Schiltz put the device on she began to cry. The wobbles subsided. She felt safe. She could stand up. Over time, her brain learned to turn the feeling in her tongue into a sense of balance. After prolonged training sessions, Schiltz needed the helmet less and less. Her doctor thinks her brain tuned into the tiny signals coming from what remained of her vestibulary system, and recruited other brain nerves to help out.

There is a darker side to brain plasticity that Doidge has seen in some of his own patients. He has treated several men whose relationships were in tatters because of what Doidge calls an "epidemic" of internet porn addiction. The men had spent so much time viewing pornographic images, they had become impotent with their partners, and some developed extreme sexual tastes. Doidge believes that neuroplasticity was at work here, with the men's brains altered by an almost limitless supply of pictures, available any time at the click of a mouse. Most of the men recovered after being banned from using their computers and going cold turkey.

Some psychiatrists suspect that a common technique called cognitive behaviour therapy, which helps people to change their perspective on events in their lives, may work because of the brain's plasticity.

In his book, Doidge uses ideas of neuro-plasticity to promote ways of overcoming conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other common problems, such as persistent worries and anxieties. In some instances, he suggests that people force themselves to do a rewarding task as soon as they get the urge to worry or check whether the stove is off for the seventh time. "You have a real civil war for four to six weeks, because your brain is pulling you one way and you are pushing in another, but when it works, it is very powerful," he says.

Doidge says he is not anti-medication, but wonders if therapies that tap into neuro-plasticity will soon replace drug treatments for certain conditions. "We can change our brains by sensing, imagining and acting in the world. It's economical and mostly low-tech, and I'm very, very hopeful".

The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge is published by Penguin.

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 | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Italian officials reject claims of early earthquake warning

The Italian government downplayed claims yesterday it had been warned several weeks ago of a major earthquake about to strike the Abruzzo region.

Giampaolo Giuliani, a researcher at the National Physical Laboratory of Gran Sasso, raised the alarm last month after sensors in the L'Aquila region detected radon gas escaping from the ground.

Following Giuliani's warning, vans with loudspeakers were driven around the medieval town, urging residents to evacuate their homes, despite there being no proof that radon gas can be used to predict earthquakes.

Giuliani was forced to tone down his warnings and remove information from the internet after being reported to the police for "spreading alarm".

Guido Bertolaso, head of the civil protection agency, told reporters yesterday: "There is no possibility of predicting an earthquake, that is the view of the international scientific community."

Italy is one of the most seismically active countries in Europe and tremors are a common occurrence. In 1915, 30,000 people were killed in an earthquake that struck Avezzano, 25 miles south of yesterday's disaster. In 1980, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake, south of Naples, killed more than 2,700 people and injured several thousand more. Another hit in 1997, killing 11 and destroying 80,000 homes.

The Apennine mountain range, which runs up the backbone of Italy, is riddled with faultlines, or weaknesses in the Earth's crust. Most are caused by the gigantic African tectonic plate grinding northwards into the Eurasian plate upon which the country sits. Geological movement in the region is slowly pulling the crust apart beneath the mountain range, which is imperceptibly collapsing.

Yesterday's earthquake is thought to have triggered along a faultline some tens of miles long. As the fault was pulled open, rock on either side slipped, sending out powerful shockwaves.

Residents in L'Aquila said the government had failed to take action despite tremors in the region growing worse over the past few months.

One resident told the AFP news agency: "It's a scandal, what has happened. For the past three months there have been regular tremors, and they have been getting stronger and stronger. The authorities were well aware."

Tiziana Rossetto, an earthquake engineer from Umbria in Italy, who is based at University College London, told the Guardian the scale of the destruction was largely due to the location of the earthquake rather than its magnitude.

She added: "The city centres are made up of masonry buildings held together with mortar and sometimes cement, and those buildings are not going to fare well. The majority of the buildings, even the more modern ones, are not up to modern standards, and that is common across Europe."

Europe introduced new building regulations in the mid-1980s and 1990s that require builders to expect a 10% chance of a damaging earthquake within a 50-year period. But only a minority of buildings in the city and surrounding rural areas have been built since then.

Under new regulations, buildings are designed with stronger upright columns, which allow them to sway when an earthquake hits, but lessens the chances of them collapsing completely.

Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Aon Benfield Hazard Research Centre at UCL, said: "The event reinforces the point that if buildings are not sufficiently well constructed, moderate earthquakes can be lethal even in the most developed nations."

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 | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Agricultural Clues of Early North American Civilization

North America's cradle of civilization can be traced 3,800 years back to the lower Illinois River valley.

It's there that archaeologists have found evidence of the continent's first so-called agricultural complex — a set of different crops, rather than a single domesticated plant species.

A rough biological analogue of an agricultural complex is a multicellular animal: It represents a higher level of both complexity and possibility, in which the ability to process more types of energy and better adapt to shifting environmental conditions.

As described Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, molecular-scale imaging of botanical remains from the Riverton, Illinois archaeological site shows that at least five crops were harvested 3,800 years ago: bottle gourds, sunflowers, marshelders and two varieties of chenopods (pictured at right).

Two other plants, the Cucurbita pepo squash and little barley, appear to have been consumed, though evidence of their domestication is not as clear.

Turn back the clock another 200 years, and no such complex is apparent.

The findings provide an early window into the dietary habits of the region, and could ultimately help anthropological sleuths trace a narrative of cultural evolution from hunter-gatherer to complex society.

In the meantime, they suggest the makings of a retro-historical Thanksgiving feast.

Citation: "Initial formation of an indigenous crop complex in eastern North America at 3800 B.P." By Bruce D. Smith and Richard A. Yarnell. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 14, April 6, 2009.

Image: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

See Also:

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 6 Apr 2009 | 10:44 pm

Tiny Newfound Frog Fits on a Fingertip

Noble’s Pygmy frog finally found in Andes mountain park, fits on fingertip.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Apr 2009 | 10:17 pm

That's the spot: How scratching brings relief

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Scratching an itchy spot turns off an itch "switch" in the spinal cord, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a finding they think could lead to better treatments for itching disorders.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Apr 2009 | 10:03 pm

Smallest Letters

Holographic projections are read by mapping 2D electron wavefunctions revealing an S and a U.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Apr 2009 | 9:46 pm

Many suicidal men had problems in childhood: study

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Teenage and young adult men who make serious suicide attempts often had emotional problems at age 8, while most suicidal women succumb to depressions that develop after puberty, Finnish researchers said on Monday.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Apr 2009 | 9:41 pm

Double Hand Transplant Reawakens Brain Control

The brains of patients who've received double hand transplants can recreate lost neurological control systems, according to new brain data from a French surgical team.

The doctors extensively analyzed two patients, of the six total who had the surgery, for evidence of how they learn to reuse their hands.

It's well-known that after a limb has been amputated, a body's nervous system reorganizes the neurons that formerly controlled the region to take on other tasks. But the reverse process — what happens when hands get reattached — can only be studied by, well, reattaching limbs.

"It's not as complex as it might seem," Jon Kaas, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University who reviewed the study for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The main thing is to try to reconnect the severed nerves that go into the hand."

Transplantation of complex structures like hands and faces is far from old hat for surgeons. It's only in the last decades that transplanting "composite" body parts made of multiple types of tissue has become possible. When a surgeon transplant a liver, it's mainly liver cells that are transplanted. Transplanting a hand requires reconnecting bone, muscle, tendon and — most importantly — nerves.

The French doctors measured the regions of the brain known to control the movement of muscles and found that to a certain extent, the patients' brains had detected the hands and could use them years after the transplants.

"Our findings show that newly transplanted muscles can be recognized and integrated into the patient's motor cortex," they write.

That's because after surgeons carefully find all the tiny nerves they can from the former stump and attach them to the donated hands, the nervous system does a remarkable thing. It begins to regenerate nerves at the rate of about 1 millimeter a day. Over a period of months, control and sensation returns to the patients and the hands begin to act and feel like their own appendages.

The nervous system, even without hands, retains some of the structures that receive and send messages to the hands. In fact, it's that residual knowledge that leads to the phenomenon of "phantom limbs," in which the brain mistakenly tries to use the hand or limb. But when a hand is reattached, the brain's ability to control and feel the hands kicks back in.

"When the hand is transplanted and the original connections, to some extent, are being re-established, you're reversing that process of plasticity and going back to something closer to the original organization of the brain," said Kaas.

Though transplanting composite tissue makes for a far more complex and difficult surgery, the worst risk remains the same as for any transplant — that the body will reject the foreign tissue. For that reason, all hand-transplant recipients will have to take immunosuppresants for the rest of their lives, and cope with the increased risk of infection that entails.

The two hand transplantees who were studied for the new paper have not had transplant or life-endangering complications, but they have experienced differing rates of both sensory and motor control. For reasons that are unknown and might be purely coincidental, both patients were right-handed but experienced better control of the transplanted left hands.

Kaas said not to make too much of that, though, until a larger sample set is available to study.

"It could depend on just technical things," he said. "It could depend on how well the hand is connected or how much damage there was done to the nerves and muscles."

On the other hand, there could be some unknown reason for what the French researchers found.

"Whether the left/right asymmetry that we observed is due to a superior peripheral reconnection for the left compared with the right hand, to other plastic factors intrinsic to brain reorganization processes induced by hand transplant, or to preexisting lateral differences, remains an open question," they concluded.

See Also:

Image: PNAS.

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 | 6 Apr 2009 | 9:33 pm

Poverty Linked to Poor Memory Skills in Kids

Those who had known nothing but poverty scored about 20 percent lower on working memory.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Apr 2009 | 9:13 pm

Robot Mimics Human Child

CB2 was designed to mimic a child of age 1 or 2. And it is creepy looking.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Apr 2009 | 8:48 pm

French surgeons give burn victim new face, hands

PARIS (Reuters) - French surgeons have replaced parts of a burn victim's face and hands using donor tissue, in what their hospital said was the world's first combined operation of that kind.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Apr 2009 | 8:34 pm

Shroud of Turin Secretly Hid by Templars

The Knights Templar may have hid a cloth bearing the likeness of Jesus for 150 years.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Apr 2009 | 8:31 pm

Arctic sea ice thinnest ever going into spring (AP)

AP - The Arctic is treading on thinner ice than ever before. Researchers say that as spring begins, more than 90 percent of the sea ice in the Arctic is only 1 or 2 years old. That makes it thinner and more vulnerable than at anytime in the past three decades, according to researchers with NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Apr 2009 | 8:19 pm

Powerful Ideas: Wringing Oil from Algae

The speed at which algae grow make them the best choice for supplying biofuels.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Apr 2009 | 8:11 pm

Relief from itch seen in nerves; may aid treatment (AP)

AP - Scratch an itch and you get ... aaaaaah. Now scientists have watched spinal nerves transmit that relief signal to the brain in monkeys, a possible step toward finding new treatments for persistent itching in people.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Apr 2009 | 7:49 pm

Gene Mutation Tied to Skin Cancer

Melanoma, a virulent form of skin cancer, is among the deadliest of cancers.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Apr 2009 | 7:40 pm

Antarctic Ice Bridge Breaks Up

A bridge connecting the Wilkins Ice Shelf to the Antarctic Peninsula breaks up.
Source: Livescience.com | 6 Apr 2009 | 7:31 pm

Researchers find genes that affect radiation damage (Reuters)

Reuters - Researchers have identified a batch of genes that affect how the human body responds to radiation, and said on Monday this might help doctors fine-tune radiation therapy for diseases such as cancer.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Apr 2009 | 7:00 pm

Researchers find genes that affect radiation damage

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have identified a batch of genes that affect how the human body responds to radiation, and said on Monday this might help doctors fine-tune radiation therapy for diseases such as cancer.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Apr 2009 | 7:00 pm

Row over Italian quake 'forecast'

A scientist's claim to have forecast an earthquake that killed dozens of people in central Italy is challenged by authorities and experts.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Apr 2009 | 6:31 pm

A New Explanation for Ancient Mass Extinction

A new explanation for the most massive extinction in Earth's history could have a very modern lesson.

German and Russian climatologists say that toxic gases emitted by giant salt lakes 250 million years ago could have caused the Permian-Triassic die-off, during which 90 percent of all terrestrial plant and animal species perished.

Previous explanations included volcanic eruptions and asteroid strikes that could have shrouded the planet in dust, or the oceanic release of atmosphere-choking methane hydrate.

But when they measured the emissions of salt seas in southern Russia, the researchers realized that the Zechstein Sea — a France-sized, hyper-saline inland ocean located in what is now Central Europe — could have emitted enough chlorine gas to cause mass plant die-offs, triggering a chain reaction of ecological catastrophe.

The size and evaporation rates of modern salt seas are expected to increase as the planet warms. The researchers don't expect that our seas will cause another extinction event, but say their toxic effect is underestimated by climate modelers.

Citation: "Late permian changes in conditions of the atmosphere and environments caused by halogenated gases." By L. Weissflog, N. F. Elansky, K. Kotte, F. Keppler, A. Pfennigsdorff, C. A. Lange, E. Putz and L. V. Lisitsyna. Doklady Akademii Nauk, Doklady Earth Sciences, Vol. 424, No. 6, April 2009.

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Image: Flickr/Brandon Keim

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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 6 Apr 2009 | 6:17 pm

No Pain, No Gain in Space: Astronauts Need Better Workouts

Without stricter workouts, the bodies of long-distance space travelers will be ravaged by the time they return to Earth, or reach another planet.

A NASA-funded study of astronauts freshly returned from six-month stays aboard the International Space Station found that their calf muscles were about 15 percent smaller and 25 percent weaker than when they left.

"By clinical standards, this is a massive loss," said Scott Trappe, director of Ball State University's Human Performance Laboratory, in a press release. "This approaches what we see in aging populations in comparisons of a 20-year-old versus an 80-year-old."

The physiological effects of zero-gravity, where bones and muscles accustomed to carrying Earth-gravity loads quickly wither from lack of use, have been well-documented in astronauts. Even a month in space causes significant damage.

To stay healthy, astronauts aboard the ISS already exercise regularly. The average regiment includes five hours a week on a treadmill or exercise bike, and several sessions with the interim resistive exercise device, or iRED, a machine devised specifically to keep legs strong in zero-gravity.

On Earth, the iRED seems to work just fine. But Trappe's research tell a different story for space, and emphasize the need for improvements in spacefarer exercise.

"Future long-duration space missions should modify the current ISS exercise prescription and/or hardware to better preserve human skeletal muscle mass and function," write Trappe's team in a study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

Trappe's findings are the first to involve muscle biopsies from International Space Station astronauts. Their six-month tours compare to the time necessary for a manned mission to reach Mars.

In November 2008, NASA replaced the iRED with an Advanced Resistance Exercise Device, which is expected to provide a more effective workout.

Exercise regimens will also be supplemented with astronaut-specific regimes developed in part by insights from NASA's controversial Bed Rest Study, in which participants spent 90 days in bed — the closest researchers can come on Earth to duplicating the long-term effects of weightlessness.

More and harder weight training will likely be prescribed.

"Intensity wins, hands down," said Trappe.

Citation: "Exercise in space: human skeletal muscle after 6 months aboard the International Space Station." By Scott Trappe, David Costill, Philip Gallagher, Andrew Creer, Jim R. Peters, Harlan Evans, Danny A. Riley, and Robert H. Fitts.

Image: International Space Station

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 6 Apr 2009 | 6:14 pm

Original 'Schindler's List' Found in Sydney Library

A list of Jews saved from the Holocaust by Oskar Schindler is found.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Apr 2009 | 6:11 pm

Thinning Arctic sea ice alarms experts

Volume of Arctic sea ice last summer may have been lowest on record – and possibly worst in 8,000 years

The total volume of sea ice in the Arctic is likely to have reached a record low last summer, despite previous reports that the area of ice recovered slightly from the previous year's dramatic decline, leading experts have warned.

The latest alarm about the fate of the Arctic sea ice, due to an unusually high proportion of thinner "first-year" ice, raises the prospect of an acceleration in the loss of ice during the warmer summer months, considered a key indicator of climate change.

Adding to the concern, Nasa and the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC)in the US today warned that even in the colder winter months sea ice is failing to recover substantially. The most recent winter maximum, reached on 28 February this year, was the fifth lowest since satellite records began in 1979, and meant the last six years were the sixth lowest on record, the organisations said.

Separately, the journal Science reported a study two weeks ago in which scientists assessed the most reliable 13 from 21 global climate models and claims. Based on these, they have "new confidence" that the most likely date by which summer sea ice will effectively disappear is 2037. Previous estimates ranged from the UN's forecast of the end of this century, to less than five years from now.

The latest volume estimates come from the NSIDC, at the University of Colorado, and are based on a study mapping the age of different ice flows in the Arctic ocean. These show a dramatic loss of the thicker "multi-year" ice in recent years, particularly after the summer of 2007, when the sea ice lost an area the size of Alaska in a single season.

In 2008, the NSIDC reported that summer sea ice area recovered by 9% but was still the second lowest recorded. However, based on the latest data about the much greater area of thin first-year ice and losses of multi-year ice, especially that of five years or more, they believe that in volume terms last summer was the lowest since records began in the 1930s – and probably for at least 700 years and possibly up to 8,000 years, said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the Boulder-based centre. "Our estimate is that it was probably the lowest volume on record," Meier told the Guardian. "Certainly 2007 and 2008 [were] the two lowest [years for] volume and extent."

Loss of volume is an example of climate feedbacks: as more ice melts, thinner ice that replaces it over winter is more vulnerable to melting the following summer and to being blown out of the Arctic into the warmer Atlantic, while thicker multi-year ice melts more quickly when not buffered by frozen water.

Meier said recent sea ice losses were a result of natural variability in clouds, winds and ocean currents and the average rise in global temperatures, which is stronger at the poles: "You can always have natural variability ... but the long-term trend is for a thinner and less extensive sea ice cover."

Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Meteorological Office, said a separate study had shown an increase in older, thicker ice in the Arctic last summer, and urged caution about warnings that the ice will disappear very quickly. "It's very likely the summer sea ice will disappear over the next 60 years, but precisely when I think is still an open question," she said.

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Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 6 Apr 2009 | 5:56 pm

Hubble Snaps Image of Triple Galaxy, as Ordered by the People

The Hubble Space Telescope took a closer look at this triple galaxy group on April 1 and 2 after 140,000 people around the world voted on six potential targets. The areas have previously only been photographed by ground-based telescopes.

The Arp 274 galaxy group won the competition with more than 67,000 votes. Hubble's image suggests the galaxies may not be close enough together to interact as they appear to be in the image taken by the Palomar Observatory near San Diego.

The galaxies to the right and left show blueish lights, evidence of rapid star formation. Older stars are more yellow. The group is located in the constellation Virgo, 400 million light years away from Earth. The two bright stars at the right of the image are actually located in our own galaxy.

NASA held the contest as part of the International Year of Astronomy in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the telescope.

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