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Doctors Identify Patients At High Risk Of C. DifficileDoctors have developed and validated a clinical prediction rule for recurrent Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infection that was simple, reliable and accurate, and can be used to identify high-risk patients most likely to benefit from measures to prevent recurrence.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 3:00 am Antarctic Marine Biodiversity Data Now OnlineThe International Polar Year concluded in March 2009 with a tangible legacy in the form of a network of databases on marine biodiversity that will serve as clearinghouse for all biodiversity-related data gathered since the very first Antarctic research expeditions. The network gathers data describing the species themselves as well as information about their collection history, allowing scientists and conservationists to access the first rigorous census of Antarctic marine life.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 3:00 am How Brain Cells Work Together To React: New Analytical Tool Tackles QuestionScientists have developed a new analytical tool to answer the question of how our brain cells record outside stimuli and react to them. Researchers in Israel and colleagues have formulated the novel principle of Minimum Mutual Information (MinMI) to tackle the issue.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 3:00 am Last Step Leading To Blood Cell Formation ElucidatedScientists have proved the existence of hemogenic endothelial cells. The findings answer the question – unsolved until now – of how blood cells are generated during embryonic development and will enable scientists in the future to produce blood cells in the laboratory in a more target-specific manner. These new insights represent an important contribution to future clinical therapeutic approaches.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 12:00 am Hidden Face In Nefertiti Bust Examined With CT ScanUsing CT imaging to study a priceless bust of Nefertiti, researchers have uncovered a delicately carved face in the limestone inner core and gained new insights into methods used to create the ancient masterpiece and information pertinent to its conservation, according to a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 12:00 am The Secret To Chimp StrengthAn evolutionary biologist argues that humans may lack the strength of chimps because our nervous systems exert more control over our muscles. Our fine motor control prevents great feats of strength, but allows us to perform delicate and uniquely human tasks.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 12:00 am To Swim Or To Crawl: For The Worm It's A No BrainerA study at the University of Leeds has shown, for the first time, that C. elegans worms crawl and swim using the same gait, overturning the widely accepted belief that these two behaviors are completely different.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm Earthshine Reflects Earth's Oceans And Continents From The Dark Side Of The MoonResearchers have shown for the first time that the difference in reflection of light from the Earth's land masses and oceans can be seen on the dark side of the moon, a phenomenon known as earthshine.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm New Tests Provide New Insight Into Why Patients Are In Heart FailureA failing heart makes a lot of a hormone needed to eliminate the excess salt and water bloating the body but not enough of the enzyme needed to activate it, researchers say.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 9:00 pm Is Love At First Sight Real? Geneticists Offer Tantalizing CluesLeave it to geneticists to answer a question that has perplexed humanity since the dawn of time: does love at first sight truly exist? Scientists discovered that at the genetic level, some males and females are more compatible than others, and that this compatibility plays an important role in mate selection, mating outcomes, and future reproductive behaviors.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm Judge: Okay to Collect Dead Son's SpermMom says her son had always wanted children.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Apr 2009 | 12:21 pm Beach rubbish problem 'piling up'The BBC's Alex Bushill talks to volunteers helping to clean up a beach in Devon.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Apr 2009 | 12:14 pm Russia space capsule carrying US billionaire lands (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 11:15 am Hurricane Season 2008 (weather.com)weather.com -Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 10:05 am US space tourist lands on EarthRussian capsule carrying a US space tourist and two astronauts lands safely in Kazakhstan, Russian officials say.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Apr 2009 | 9:28 am Fishy battleEU moves to aid fish farms hit by foreign competitionSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Apr 2009 | 9:22 am U.S. space tourist, crew return to EarthALMATY (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz space capsule carrying U.S. billionaire Charles Simonyi and a Russian-American crew touched down safely in Kazakhstan on Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 9:05 am Russian Spacecraft Carrying Billionaire Space Tourist Lands Safely (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - A billionaire space tourist and two professional astronauts returned safely to Earth Wednesday aboard a Russian spacecraft, bringing a successful end to their respective missions to the International Space Station.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 9:00 am Rising threat?What rising sea levels could mean for the AmericasSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Apr 2009 | 8:14 am Santa Barbara County reverses oil drilling stand (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 5:07 am Dark Morals Lurk Inside YouSome morals are simple. Dark morals, not so.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Apr 2009 | 4:59 am PM heralds 'green economy' BudgetTrials of electric cars are among measures to be announced in this month's Budget, Gordon Brown reveals.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Apr 2009 | 3:44 am China looks to expand stake in stem cell technology (Reuters)Reuters - China will build Asia's biggest base to develop uses for stem cell medical technology, which the health minister described as having huge potential for development, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on Wednesday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 3:09 am China looks to expand stake in stem cell technologyBEIJING (Reuters) - China will build Asia's biggest base to develop uses for stem cell medical technology, which the health minister described as having huge potential for development, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 3:09 am Chimps Barter for Sex (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - The oldest profession isn't restricted to humans. A new study found that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 2:16 am Chimps Barter for SexA new study found that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Apr 2009 | 1:58 am Quake-prone Italy lags in quake-proofing buildings (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 1:22 am U.S. plans new government-owned satellitesWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defying congressional opposition, the U.S. government on Tuesday said it would buy expensive new spy satellites and order more imagery from two commercial providers to plug gaps in satellite coverage.Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 12:36 am Humans and Aliens Might Share DNA Pattern
The building blocks of life may be more than merely common in the cosmos. Humans and aliens could share a common genetic architecture. That's the tantalizing implication of a pattern found in the formation of amino acids in meteorites, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and simulations of primordial Earth. The pattern appears to follow basic thermodynamic laws, applicable throughout the known universe. "This may implicate a universal structure of the first genetic codes anywhere," said astrophysicist Ralph Pudritz of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. There are exactly 20 known amino acids — complex molecules that combine to form proteins, which in turn compose the nucleic acids from which the simplest self-replicating structures are built. Ten were synthesized in the famous 1953 Miller-Urey experiments, which modeled conditions believed to exist in Earth's early atmosphere and volcano-heated pools. Those 10 amino acids have also been found in meteorites, prompting debate over their role in sparking life on Earth and, perhaps, elsewhere. Pudritz's analysis, co-authored with McMaster University biophysicist Paul Higgs and published Monday on arXiv, doesn't settle the former debate, but it does suggest that basic amino acids are even more common than thought, requiring little more than a relatively warm meteorite of sufficient size to form. And that's just the start. If the observed patterns of amino acid formation — simple acids require low levels of energy to coalesce, and complex acids need more energy — indeed follow thermodynamic laws, then the basic narrative of life's emergence should be universal. "Thermodynamics is fundamental," said Pudritz. "It must hold through all points of the universe. If you can show there are certain frequencies that fall in a natural way like this, there is an implied universality. It has to be tested, but it seems to make a lot of sense."
Pudritz and Higgs tabulated the types and frequencies of amino acids found in primordial Earth experiments, then correlated the results on a graph of temperature versus atmospheric pressure at which the acids likely formed. The 10 amino acids synthesized in primordial Earth experiments tended to arise at relatively low temperatures and pressures, and are chemically simple. Other, more complex acids formed less frequently, and require more temperature and pressure. Their distribution follows a clear, possibly thermodynamic, curve. "The most frequent amino acid that forms is the one that's least-demanding, energetically. There's less and less amino acids that require more energy to form. That's very sensible, from a thermodynamic point of view," said Pudritz. Internal conditions of meteorites are unknown, but some scientists believe that certain large meteorites are both warm and hydrated, making them roughly analogous to the relatively temperate environment of Earth's youth. "There's a theory," said Pudritz, "that they could be made in the warm interiors of large-enough meteorites." This is necessarily speculative, but it would explain why the 10 amino acids most common in primordial Earth experiments are also the most common acids found in meteorites. Pudritz and Higgs speculate that these 10 common amino acids sufficed to generate the earliest replicating molecules, with other, rarer acids incorporated into the nascent genetic code as they formed or arrived — a process called "stepwise evolution," culminating in the genes that gathered 3.6 billion years ago in a common ancestor of all complex life. If simulations of interactions between these 10 acids indeed produce molecules that can copy themselves, said Pudritz, then it's possible that they formed a similar ur-genetic code. "There's a possible universality," he said, "for any code that would use amino acids." Citation: "A thermodynamic basis for prebiotic amino acid synthesis and the nature of the first genetic code." By Paul G. Higgs, Ralph E. Pudritz. arXiv, April 6, 2009.
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Images: 1. Case University/Valadkhan Lab. 2,3: arXiv Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Apr 2009 | 12:26 am For chimps, candy is dandy but steak is quickerWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Human females may get offended at dates who expect a little something extra after they buy a steak dinner, but for chimpanzees, the exchange may be a fair one, German researchers reported on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 12:06 am Butterflies hit by damp summersRecent wet summers have hit the UK butterfly population hard, say conservationists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Apr 2009 | 12:02 am Chimpanzees swap meat for sexChimpanzees enter into long-term deals, exchanging meat for sex, say researchers who studied behaviour in Ivory Coast.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2009 | 11:20 pm An Evolutionary Explanation for Sexual Smell Differences
There's a reason why women have stronger senses of smell than men. They can't afford not to. "Women have a larger interest in reproductive events because they have fewer opportunities for passing on their genes than men," said George Preti, a Monell Chemical Senses Center organic chemist. In a study published Monday in Flavour and Fragrance, Preti and colleagues found that women were able to detect body odors masked by other fragrances. Male noses quickly lost the scent. "Men produce thousands of gametes every day, women just one every month," Preti said. "Their investment in a reproductive event is higher than men's, so they're more biologically attuned to who they're mating with." Preti and other pheromone researchers suspect that mammalian olfactory systems actually evolved to detect chemical traces of genetic incompatibility in the odors of potential mates. Of the odor-masking compounds used in the study, said Preti, the most effective were eventually used in two brands of commercial deodorant. Citation: "Cross-adaptation of a model human stress-related odour with fragrance chemicals and ethyl esters of axillary odorants: gender-specific effects." By Charles J. Wysocki, Jennifer Louie, James J. Leyden, David Blank, Manjindar Gill, Les Smith, Keith McDermott, George Preti. Flavour and Fragrance Journal, April 7, 2009. See Also:
Image: Flickr/Andres Rodriguez Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Apr 2009 | 11:17 pm Families still living nightmare of false memories of abuseDespite the falling away of media interest, families are still being torn apart when 'recovered' memories of childhood sexual abuse are introduced into the minds of vulnerable people I have three wonderful daughters – two teenagers and one young adult. I can hardly imagine anything more horrible than the prospect that one of them might one day enter therapy for help with some common psychological problem such as anxiety, insomnia or depression and, at the end of that process, accuse me of childhood sexual abuse on the basis of "recovered" memories. Even though I would know with absolute certainty that such allegations were untrue, the chances are that nothing I could say or do would convince my accusers of this. A few days ago I sat in a lecture theatre mostly filled with middle-aged or elderly parents living through this exact nightmare. Typically, their adult children had started therapy with no pre-existing memories of being sexually abused, but had become convinced during the therapeutic process that they had indeed been victimised in this way. So convinced were they that the "recovered" memories were true, they more often than not accused their parents directly of this vile act and then cut off any further contact, leaving their parents devastated and confused, their lives shattered. The occasion in question was the 15th Annual General Meeting of the British False Memory Society. The BFMS began life in 1993, the year after the formation of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in the US. Accused parents were at the forefront of founding both organisations. Both have scientific and professional advisory boards to support them in their aims, which include providing support – including legal assistance where necessary – to those affected by such accusations, providing information and advice to professionals, and improving our understanding of false memories by encouraging and supporting academic and professional research. One serious problem appears to be that many people mistakenly believe that the false memory controversy is "yesterday's news". They are aware that there was a huge increase in such allegations back in the 1980s and 1990s. They may even be aware that many professionals and academics have reacted against such claims, most notably Elizabeth Loftus, whose pioneering work in this area has done more to increase our understanding of the true nature of false memories than any other scientist. But it is simply not the case that this is a dead issue. Although the incidence of new cases is much reduced from when the controversy was at its peak, new cases do still come to light with depressing frequency, as the files of the BFMS can attest. Furthermore, the fallout from the peak period is still very much with us. There are still many families throughout the world being torn apart by these accusations, many of whom will sadly never achieve any kind of reconciliation. One intriguing aspect of this awful situation is why the media generally appeared to lose interest. The press and broadcasters are often guilty of focusing on the human interest angle of stories at the expense of good solid scientific evidence, the MMR controversy being a case in point. As most scientists know, there never really was a "controversy" over MMR, with the consensus among medical experts being that there is no link between MMR vaccination and autism. But the human interest value of tearful interviews with sobbing mothers supported by the views of a few maverick scientists was always going to be enough to bias the media coverage of this issue, with tragic consequences. In the case of the false memory controversy, however, there was human interest on both sides of the story. Obviously, sensationalist accounts of "recovered" memories of brutal childhood sexual abuse – or even better, ritualised Satanic abuse leading to the development of "multiple personalities" – were always going to be tempting to a certain type of journalist, despite the lack of any good scientific evidence supporting such claims. But we also had the other victims to consider: the accused family members and those around them. Why were their stories given so little coverage? I got some answers at the BFMS meeting. There are some cases where the accused are willing to go public but are prevented from doing so by legal gagging orders and are thus not free to present their side of the story. But much more common is the situation where the accused do not want to jeopardise their chances of obtaining the one thing they want more than anything else in the world: reconciliation with their estranged children. Furthermore, to go public with such stories inevitably will invite suspicion. Unless one is very familiar with the scientific research relating to false memories, there may well be the temptation to assume that there's no smoke without fire. There is a general perception that the public mood is much more volatile with respect to the issue of paedophilia than it used to be. Remember the attack on a paediatrician in Portsmouth by an illiterate mob who did not know the difference between a paediatrician and a paedophile? The episode has often been cited as a prime example of the dangers of adopting a vigilante mentality. The fact that the story appears to be an urban myth is often missed by journalists, who refer to it in sensationalist stories published in the very newspapers that attempted to whip up such sentiments in the first place. According to an article by Brendan O'Neill on the BBC news website, the incident that gave rise to these stories involved a female paediatrician consultant, Dr Yvette Cloete, in Newport, Gwent (not Portsmouth), who returned from work to find "paedo" sprayed on her door, probably by local youngsters. Distressing as this incident was for Dr Cloete, it is a long way from an excited mob threatening physical violence. But for all that, the perception that there may be a violent backlash against anyone even suspected of paedophilia is a strong factor in explaining the reluctance of many accused to go public. There are now many cases of "retractors" whose stories could potentially be featured in media coverage. Retractors are individuals who initially believed that their memories of abuse were real but later came to realise they were not. Again, one cannot overstate the courage of such individuals in acknowledging that they have put other family members through unimaginable pain and suffering on the basis of a sincerely held but mistaken belief. Understandably, however, such individuals are often too upset and possibly ashamed to want to tell their stories publicly. It is hard to find a silver lining inside such a grim and depressing cloud, but there is one. Although it may be of little consolation to those who continue to suffer as a consequence of "recovered" memories, the controversy did trigger a huge amount of research into false memories. Since the mid-1990s, hundreds of papers have been published on the topic and it is probably fair to say that the results have come as something of a surprise even to the researchers themselves. Numerous experiments have shown that is much easier than anyone might have supposed to implant false memories in a large minority of the population. Reliable experimental procedures have been developed to study susceptibility to false memories and we now understand a great deal about the conditions that are most likely to give rise to false memories (for an excellent introduction to the field, read Richard J. McNally's Remembering Trauma). It turns out that the conditions typically found in the psychotherapeutic context fit the bill perfectly. Specifically, a vulnerable individual being informed by the therapist, an authority figure, that their current psychological symptoms strongly indicate that they must have been abused as children even if they can no longer remember the abuse due to repression. Once this has been accepted by the client, they are encouraged to engage in a range of mental exercises to "recover" these memories, but which in fact are highly likely to result in the formation of false memories. It is not surprising that many people find it easy to believe that when apparent memories of childhood abuse are reported for the first time during psychotherapy, they probably are based upon events which did take place. After all, we know that such abuse really does take place with alarming frequency and can sometimes have devastating effects upon the victims. We're also all familiar with the Freudian notion of repression – the idea that when something happens that is so awful, the mind will automatically bury it as a defence mechanism so that one could not remember it consciously no matter how hard one tried. This idea has been at the centre of countless novels and movies, which often portray the heroic struggle of the victim and therapist to dig deep into the unconscious mind to retrieve those corrosive memories so that healing can begin. The problem is that there is very little evidence to support the existence of repression as conceptualised by Freud. The evidence strongly suggests that far from being unable to remember sexual abuse, victims typically find it all too difficult to keep such memories out of their consciousness. My own interest in this topic was initially triggered by my wish to try to explain reports of anomalous experiences such as alien abduction claims and hypnotic past-life regression. Although many people find it plausible that psychotherapy allows people to retrieve repressed memories of childhood abuse, should it not give us pause for thought that exactly the same "memory recovery" techniques, including hypnotic regression and guided imagery, can give rise to apparent memories of being taken on board spaceships and medically examined by aliens, or a former incarnation as Napoleon? The writer and broadcaster Karl Sabbagh addressed the meeting on Saturday and considered an uncomfortable topic that will have occurred to any intelligent person reflecting upon the work of organisations like the BFMS and its American counterpart. Even if most of the parents attending the meeting were in fact innocent victims of false memory, isn't it possible that at least some are perpetrators of abuse hiding behind the scientific evidence for false memories? I had, of course, reflected at length on this issue myself and it has to be acknowledged that it is a possibility. However, I feel that if I were a perpetrator I may well protest my innocence but I doubt I would join a group that aims to keep this issue in the public eye. I would instead want to sweep it under the carpet and hope that everyone would forget about it. As Sabbagh asks in his new book Remembering our Childhood: How our Memory Betrays Us, "After all, if sex abusers all band together and pretend to be innocent, why aren't there established societies of murderers, burglars, and embezzlers doing the same thing?" Chris French is a professor of psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he heads the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit. He is a member of the scientific and professional advisory board of the British False Memory Society, and edits the UK version of the Skeptic magazine 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 | 11:12 pm Powerful sonar causes deafness in dolphins: study (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 11:05 pm North Korean rocket launch caught on film by satelliteA striking satellite image released yesterday shows the moment North Korea launched a long-range rocket on Sunday in defiance of international pressure. The image was taken from an altitude of 308 miles (496km) by the WorldView-1 satellite moments after the rocket blasted off at 11.10am local time. North Korea's official news agency said the Taepodong-2 rocket placed a satellite in orbit that is now broadcasting revolutionary songs. The Pentagon claimed the launch failed and the rocket broke up and fell into the Pacific Ocean. The launch triggered an emergency meeting of the UN security council amid fears the launch was a covert military exercise. The rocket is capable of carrying warheads and has a range of 4,160 miles, putting Alaska and Hawaii within its reach. The WorldView-1 satellite is operated by the US imaging company Digital Globe, which snapped the North Korean rocket on its launchpad last week using another satellite called Quickbird. Allison Puccioni, a senior image analyst for IHS Jane's, said it was the first time a satellite had captured a rocket mid-launch. "The significance of this image is quite extraordinary," she said. "I have never seen anything like it." The image shows a long contrail left behind by the rocket as it reaches supersonic speeds over the Korean peninsula. The rocket itself appears in white at the end of the contrail. Puccioni said analysts are still studying the image, which appears to show the rocket at an angle. "It looks as though there's been a slight change in its trajectory," she said. The rocket may have been caught during a stage separation. The camera aboard the WorldView-1 satellite has a resolution of 50cm and would have been over North Korea from 11am to midday on the morning of the launch. It travels at 17,000mph and can only take one picture as it hurtles overhead. Puccioni suspects Pyongyang had timed the controversial launch to coincide with the satellite's arrival, in the hope of maximising publicity of the launch. 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 | 11:01 pm Obituary: Philip Poole-WilsonEminent cardiologist known for challenging accepted ideas Heart failure was very much the favourite subject of the distinguished cardiologist Professor Philip Poole-Wilson. Sadly, it was also the cause of his death, at the age of 65, while travelling to lecture medical students. "I am lucky that my hobby is cardiology," he would say to explain his huge enthusiasm about making a difference for patients with heart disease. Such dedication was recognised by his patients, who came to London from all over the world to gain his opinion on what was the best treatment for their condition, and by the doctors who trained under him. His enthusiasm was infectious, and was coupled with an astute ability to spot young talent. It is not surprising that almost 30 of his trainees ultimately became professors of cardiology around the globe. Poole-Wilson was born in London, but moved to Cheshire as a child. Educated at Marlborough college, Wiltshire, he was recognised for his academic brilliance and enthusiasm on the sports field. His father was an eminent urologist and his mother a keen amateur racing driver. Initially he decided to study natural sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge, winning a scholarship, but he decided at the end of his third year that pure physiology was not for him, and he won an exhibition to St Thomas' hospital medical school in London, qualifying in 1967. As a junior doctor he worked at the Brompton and Hammersmith hospitals, returning to St Thomas' as a registrar in 1971. He continued to enjoy sports, including rugby and cricket, and excelled as a debater. Unusually, he had a broad range of research interests, including laboratory studies, clinical research with patients, and, increasingly, public health issues. His ability was recognised early in his career when he won a British American travelling research fellowship for a year to UCLA, California, enabling him to move with his wife, Mary, and their first child to the US in 1973. He continued his research on ion channel dysfunction in cardiac myocytes (muscle cells) on his return to St Thomas' in 1974, when he was shortlisted for the Young Investigator's Award by both the British Cardiac Society and the American College of Cardiology. He was never more animated than when helping new collaborations to take place between great minds in different countries. His colleagues, typically highly critical of their own kind, recognised his unusual ability to get things done and to challenge accepted dogma. He enjoyed asking difficult questions, or, to use his words, "stirring things up". His colleagues knew that when he got to his feet at the end of their lecture, the question would be kindly meant but not straightforward to answer. Poole-Wilson was appointed as senior lecturer at the Cardiothoracic Institute and honorary consultant physician at the National Heart hospital, both in London, in 1976. Four years later, he was promoted to reader, and quickly thereafter to professor. In 1988 he became the Simon Marks British Heart Foundation professor of cardiology at London's National Heart and Lung Institute, a post he held until becoming emeritus in October 2008, building up an internationally renowned department. Committed to transparency, he simplified processes and clarified the vision of all organisations with which he became involved. Philip served as the president of the France-based European Society of Cardiology from 1994 to 1996, helping to strengthen the society's role in Europe and further afield. From 2003 to 2005 he was president of the World Heart Federation in Switzerland. He was a tireless advocate of the need for people and countries to work together to the greater good, learning from each other and not repeating mistakes. Of particular concern to him was the need to draw attention to the epidemic of chronic cardiovascular disease in developing countries at a time when more attention was focused on infectious disease. He had returned from a trip to India a few weeks before his sudden death, demonstrating his ongoing support of collaborative research projects between different parts of the world. His awards included the Gold Medal of the European Society of Cardiology (1996), Le Prix de Médecine de L'Institut des Sciences et de la Santé, Paris (2001), and the Mackenzie Medal of the British Cardiovascular Society (2007). He continued to see patients until he retired, and engendered huge loyalty among them. Always caring and meticulous, his observations on the natural history of disease and the risks and benefits of intervention were welcomed by his colleagues, even if they did not always share his healthy scepticism. He was instrumental in setting up the British Society for Heart Failure, drawing attention to the size of the problem and the need for the NHS to improve the standards of care for patients with this debilitating condition. Although he (miraculously) found time to pour energy into his other interests - including ornithology, opera, gardening, and his family - work was his hobby, and he died pursuing that hobby. The world of cardiology has lost a hugely important figure, but his legacy of challenging accepted ideas will live on, not least in the huge number of scientific papers and book chapters that he wrote. He is survived by his wife, Mary, two sons and a daughter. • Philip Alexander Poole-Wilson, cardiologist, born 26 April 1943; died 4 March 2009 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 | 11:01 pm One 20-year-old a day diagnosed with dangerous skin cancer in UKOne young woman in her 20s is being diagnosed with the most serious form of skin cancer almost every day, Britain's largest cancer charity warns today. Cancer Research UK says malignant melanoma, which can be fatal, is on the rise, boosted by sunbed use and "binge tanning" on foreign holidays. Among young women aged 20 to 29 there are almost twice as many melanoma cases as breast cancers, though melanoma is largely avoidable, the charity points out. In 2005, the latest year for which figures are available, 340 women in their 20s were diagnosed with the malignant cancer. But the number of women affected is rising in all age groups. Among those in their 30s the cancer is the third most common after breast and cervical cancer. About 50 women in their 30s and 40s die of malignant melanoma every year. The death toll overall is much higher. About 1,800 people die each year of skin cancer. By 2024, estimates Cancer Research UK whose new campaign warns of the danger of sun exposure, skin cancer will be the fourth most common cancer in men and women, with 15,500 diagnoses a year instead of the current 9,000. "Spending time on sunbeds is just as dangerous as staying out too long in sun," said Caroline Cerny, the charity's SunSmart campaign manager. "Sunbeds don't offer a safe way to tan. "The intensity of UV [ultraviolet] rays in some can be more than 10 times stronger than the midday sun. Excessive exposure to UV damages the DNA in skin cells, which increases the risk of skin cancer and makes skin age faster. If people take care not to burn in the sun and don't use sunbeds, the majority of malignant melanoma could be prevented." Use of a sunbed before the age of 35 can raise the risk of melanoma by 75%. A recent study showed that 9% of 11- to 17-year-old girls had used the beds. Sara Hiom, the charity's information director, said: "Young skin is delicate so easily damaged. Every time young people use a sunbed they are harming their skin and increasing their risk of skin cancer." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 7 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm Earthquake Predictions Remain Faulty at BestIt is not yet possible. In fact, it won't be for a long, long time.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2009 | 10:18 pm Titan's Strange Shape May Explain Polar Lakes
Surprising results from the Cassini orbiter may help crack one of Titan’s tightly-held secrets: why its hydrocarbon lakes are confined to the poles. The new data suggest a vast network of lakes beneath the surface of Saturn’s largest moon and could also provide insight into how the satellite formed. Similar to most planet-like bodies in the solar system, Titan is squashed at the poles and bulging at the equator, like a giant beach ball with someone sitting on it. What surprised Zebker and his colleagues was how squashed it is. The bulging equator is fatter than it should be. An underground network of liquid hydrocarbons that envelops the satellite beneath its icy crust, could explain the lakes’ isolation. This subterranean sea would follow the shape of Titan’s gravity field, which is not well understood. “If Titan’s gravity field were rather spherical, the poles would be
closer to that ‘water table’ than would the equator because they’re
squished down a bit,” Zebker said. “Basins that sunk down in the poles
would preferentially fill up with liquid.” Another team is using Cassini data to measure the shape of Titan’s gravity field, which will help confirm this idea. “It’s the same physics,” Zebker said. “But since the materials are reversed, you get mountains that are actually lowlands.” “It’s got a bulge that is more consistent with what you would expect
if Titan were three-quarters of the distance to Saturn than it
currently is,” Zebker said. “I can’t see what the justification for it is,” said Bruce Bills, a
researcher at the Jet Propulsion Lab who primarily studies topography
and gravitational effects on Mars and Venus. He doubts whether Titan
would keep its shape if its orbit changed. “If you moved it to a
different position, it would quickly adjust to the new conditions,” he
said. “There could be some other mechanisms to explain this discrepancy—who knows what’s going on inside there,” Zebker said. “From this one experiment, we can’t really distinguish all these various possibilities very well. It’ll be very important to do a detailed analysis using the actual gravity field and see if that helps us to discard these various mechanisms.” See Also:
Image: NASA/JPL and the Cassini Project Office Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Apr 2009 | 9:53 pm Ride the Beamline to Nuclear FusionA pulse of laser light journeys towards generating 500 terawatts of ultraviolet energy, creating the temperatures and pressures found inside stars, giant planets and nuclear weapons.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2009 | 9:41 pm Exercise Good Even After Heart FailureThe benefits of exercise keep mounting.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2009 | 9:27 pm Video: NanoCamo Is the Next Small Thing in Fashion
A new nanoassembly technique could make chameleon-like camouflage possible. By using specially-designed proteins as nanomotors, Sandia National Laboratory researchers have created a system that can assemble quantum dots into bright, fluorescent rings. In this video, you can watch the formation of those rings, which are about five microns across, less than a tenth of the width of a human hair. If these quantum dots were embedded on the surface of an object, the formation of the rings would cause the object to change color to the naked eye. Reverse the process and the color would change back. That raises the possibility of fast color changes of the sort that some animals use to blend in with their environments. “Camouflage outfits that blend with a variety of environments without need of an outside power source — say, blue when at sea and then brown in a desert environment — is where this work could eventually lead,” George Bachand, the principal investigator at Sandia said in a press release. But that's probably a decade or more away, Bachand said. See Also:
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 | 7 Apr 2009 | 9:25 pm Bankrupt planetBanks are bailed out, but ecological debt risesSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Apr 2009 | 7:22 pm Scientists dismiss earthquake predictionROME (Reuters) - Earthquakes like the one that killed more than 200 people in Italy this week are still impossible to predict, and a local scientist's claims to have done so should be treated with caution, geophysicists say.Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 6:27 pm Hubble Captures Image of Strange Giant Galaxy
The Hubble Space Telescope shot this image of a strange giant galaxy that is somewhere between a spiral and an elliptical galaxy. NGC 7049 is a type of galaxy called a Brightest Cluster Galaxy. The halo is made up of diffuse stars, and the faint points of light are globular clusters, which are densely packed groups of stars that orbit the galactic core, some of which are among the first stars born in the galaxy. NGC 7049 has relatively few globular clusters, which may enlighten astronomers about how halos are formed. The galaxy is part of a lesser known constellation in the southern sky called Indus, or the Indian. See Also: Image: NASA/ESA/W. Harris, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Apr 2009 | 6:25 pm 10 Ways Biosensors May Improve HealthBrowse through the many ways wearable computers can improve human life.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Apr 2009 | 5:46 pm Tornado Chasers Gear Up for 2009 SeasonNext month an army of scientists will crisscross the nation in search of twisters.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Apr 2009 | 5:46 pm Otherworldly Scenes Found on SeafloorStrange communities of extreme microbes found in hostile environments at the bottom of the sea.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2009 | 5:24 pm Scientists to chase tornadoes to learn secrets (AP)AP - For most people, tornadoes are something to flee. But next month a small army of scientists will be doing just the opposite, crisscrossing the nation's middle in search of twisters.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 5:05 pm EU: Earth warming fasterOSLO/BONN (Reuters) - Global warming is likely to overshoot a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) rise seen by the European Union and many developing nations as a trigger for "dangerous" change, a Reuters poll of scientists showed on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 5:03 pm GPS-Laced Inhalers Track Asthma TriggersTo identify environmental sources of asthma, researchers equip inhalers with GPS.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Apr 2009 | 4:46 pm Scientist Has Starquakes on the BrainAndrew Steiner spends his days figuring out what causes the behavior of earthquake-like phenomena on the surface of neutron stars.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2009 | 4:45 pm After Transplant, Brain Rewires Left Hand FirstResearch shows the brain can rewire itself to control replacements for long-lost hands.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Apr 2009 | 4:06 pm Biggest Tornado Chasing Effort Ever PlannedThe blitz will run May 10 to June 13.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2009 | 3:41 pm Lunar Reflections Reveal Earth's SurfaceA new technique for studying faraway planets relies on reflections seen in their moons.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Apr 2009 | 3:06 pm Schizophrenic Brains Not Fooled by Optical Illusion
Schizophrenia sufferers aren't fooled by an optical illusion known as the “hollow mask” that the rest of us fall for because connections between the sensory and conceptual areas of their brains might be on the fritz. In the hollow mask illusion, viewers perceive a concave face (like the back side of a hollow mask) as a normal convex face. The illusion exploits our brain's strategy for making sense of the visual world: uniting what it actually sees — known as bottom-up processing — with what it expects to see based on prior experience — known as top-down processing. "Our top-down processing holds memories, like stock models," explains Danai Dima of Hannover Medical University, in Germany, co-author of a study in NeuroImage. "All the models in our head have a face coming out, so whenever we see a face, of course if has to come out." This powerful expectation overrides visual cues, like shadows and depth information, that indicate anything to the contrary. But patients with schizophrenia are undeterred by implausibility: They see the hollow face for what it is. About seven out of 1000 Americans suffer from the disease, which is characterized by hallucinations, delusions, and poor planning. Some psychologists believe this dissociation from reality may result from an imbalance between bottom-up and top-down processing — a hypothesis ripe for testing using the hollow mask illusion. In healthy viewers, the illusion is so powerful that even when aware of the illusion (see video below), they are unable to see the concave face — the mind just flips it back. Though the illusion is strong for faces, it doesn't work well with other objects, or even with upside-down faces. This bias is likely due to the special relationship we humans have with faces. Many neuroscientists believe we have brain regions dedicated to processing faces, and some brain injuries can leave patients unable to recognize faces, even though their vision and other memories remain intact. Dima and Jonathan Roiser of University College London wanted to understand why people with schizophrenia aren't fooled. They put 13 schizophrenia patients and 16 healthy control subjects in an fMRI scanner that measures brain activity, and showed them 3D images of concave or convex faces. As expected, all of the schizophrenic patients reported seeing the concave faces, while none of the control subjects did. Dima and Roiser analyzed the fMRI data using a relatively new technique called dynamic causal modeling, which allowed them to measure how different brain regions were interacting during the task. When healthy subjects looked at the concave faces, connections strengthened between the frontoparietal network, which is involved in top-down processing, and the visual areas of the brain that receive information from the eyes. In patients with schizophrenia, no such strengthening occurred. Dima thinks when healthy subjects see the illusion, which is somewhat ambiguous, their brains strengthen this connection such that what they expect — a normal face — becomes more influential, overpowering the actual, though unlikely, visual information. Schizophrenia patients, meanwhile, may be unable to modulate this pathway, accepting the concave face as reality. Schizophrenics aren't the only ones who see the concave face — people who are drunk or high can also 'beat' the illusion. A similar disconnect between what the brain sees and what it expects to see may be occurring during these drug-induced states. Citation: "Understanding why patients with schizophrenia do not perceive the hollow-mask illusion using dynamic causal modelling" by Danai Dima, Jonathan P. Roiser, Detlef E. Dietrich, Catharina Bonnemann, Heinrich Lanfermann, Hinderk M. Emrich, Wolfgang Dillo, NeuroImage, In Press, Available online 24 March 2009. See Also:
Image: Flickr/atöm Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Apr 2009 | 3:05 pm Italy's Buildings Vulnerable to Quake DamageItaly's buildings are not well designed to withstand temblors like Monday's quake.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Apr 2009 | 2:50 pm Report From Antarctica: Countries Maneuver for Potential Future Land Grab
KING GEORGE ISLAND, Antarctica — More than 30 years before the moratorium on mining in Antarctica is set to expire, countries are quietly positioning themselves for a potential land grab.  Geobiologist Jeff Marlow traveled to Antarctica during the past two weeks as part of an international expedition exploring conservation and environmental issues, sponsored by BP. In a series of reports for Wired.com, he shares his experience seeing the area first-hand alongside a number of Antarctic climate, conservation, and biology experts. The journey brought a number of issues to the fore, including trash accumulation, ecosystems knocked out of balance by warming temperatures, and simmering political tensions over the region.Marlow is from Denver and is currently earning a Ph.D. at Imperial College London, working on the European Space Agency's ExoMars rover. The 1961 Antarctic Treaty stipulates that the continent should be owned by none and open to all for scientific purposes and other peaceful pursuits. The Protocol on Environmental Protection — added to the books in 1991 — banned all mineral exploitation for 50 years. "The treaty stopped a lot of land claims from being made," said Derek Pieper, a member of our recent scientific expedition to Antarctica. Pieper researches environmental management at Oxford University. "Countries aren’t as aggressive about claiming stuff as they used to be.” No economically significant mineral deposits have yet been found on Antarctica, largely because more than 97 percent of it is covered with ice. But more than 500 million years ago, it was part of a supercontinent known as Gondwana that also included modern-day South America, Australia and Africa which are rich in copper, diamonds, gold and coal, so Antarctica has potential. Forty-seven nations have signed on to the Antarctic Treaty, and it is often regarded as one of the more effective works of international law. But subtle maneuverings for territory and economic stakes predate any cooperative framework. The United Kingdom claimed a slice of the continent in 1908, and New Zealand, France, Australia, Norway, Chile and Argentina followed suit in the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. Chile and Argentina remain most vociferous about their overlapping claims. In both countries, it is illegal to display a map not showing the nation’s claimed Antarctic territory. Approaching King George Island is like driving into the fluorescent anomaly that is Las Vegas: The island is overdeveloped and overrun with human activity in an environment that has no business supporting human enterprise. The 500-square-mile piece of black rock is home to stations from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, South Korea, Poland, Russia, Uruguay, the Netherlands, Ecuador, Germany, Peru and the United States. Of course, this sprawl is on a much tamer, Antarctic scale, and no one is going to confuse the island with Sin City. But the trends of settlement do raise important issues that concern the very future of Antarctica. Today, it’s easy to get the feeling that the bases on King George Island remain slightly superficial. The island is the most accessible part of greater Antarctica, remaining ice-free for most of the year. This geographical factor affords nations the opportunity to construct permanent stations and thereby become full members of the Antarctic Treaty, a privilege that involves them in the decision-making process.
Meanwhile, several of the stations have gone out of their way to promote civic life, hoping to further legitimize their territorial claims by exerting their cultures on King George Island settlements. The Polish Henryk Arctowski station used to welcome female visitors with flowers grown in an on-site greenhouse, before bureaucratic obstacles got in the way. China’s Chang Cheng Station was inaugurated with a "dove of peace" ritual in which hundreds of Chinese pigeons were released, nearly all of which froze to death within hours. Perhaps the boldest move in civil society development came in 2004, when a prefabricated Russian Orthodox church was shipped in pieces from Siberia to Bellingshausen station on King George Island. Today, the onion-domed church overlooks Maxwell Bay, standing in stark contrast to the tuna-can abodes of other inhabitants. There is certainly an impressive amount of great science being done in Antarctica, but many of the bases on the island are more settlements than research stations. And through the quiet development of civil life on the island, battle lines for the future are already being drawn. — Jeff Marlow for Wired.com Image 1: Overlooking Bellingshausen, where many nations operate ostensible research stations. Photo: Jeffrey Marlow. Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Apr 2009 | 2:47 pm Fiction beats science in the space race for fresh phrasesScience fiction is a more fertile ground for the coining of brave new words than science itself, says Hugo prize-winning author Jeff Prucher The phrases deep space, zero gravity and computer virus may all sound like they originated in science but, according to the Hugo prize-winning author Jeff Prucher, they were first used by science fiction writers. The first known use of the term "zero gravity" - a defining feature of life in outer space - is from Jack Binder in 1938, said Prucher. "Starting at the zero-gravity of earth's core, accumulative acceleration is easily built up in a four-thousand-mile tube," Binder, who achieved greater fame for his work as an artist, wrote in a short story over 70 years ago. Arthur C Clarke coined the phrase "zero-g" in Islands in the Sky, Prucher added. This 1952 novel by the prolific Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, sees a man wins a trip to a space station 500 miles from earth. Deep space, said Prucher, appears to have been coined by EE "Doc" Smith, a chemical engineer who became the father of the space opera genre, in 1934. "Bradley swore a mighty deep-space oath and braced himself against certain annihilation," wrote Smith in his novel Triplanetary. "One of the other defining features of outer space is its essential emptiness. In science fiction, this phrase most commonly refers to a region of empty space between stars or that is remote from the home world," said Prucher. "The more common use in the sciences refers to the region of space outside of the Earth's atmosphere." The "fertile mind" of EE Smith also gave us the concept of a pressure suit, Prucher went on, "a suit that maintains a stable pressure around its occupant; useful in both space exploration and high-altitude flights". Curiously, the author said, Smith's pressure suits were furred, "an innovation not, alas, replicated by NASA". Gas giant, said Prucher, referring to a large planet such as Jupiter which is composed mainly of gaseous material, was first used by James Blish in the short story Solar Plexus. "A quick glance over the boards revealed that there was a magnetic field of some strength near by, one that didn't belong to the invisible gas giant revolving half a million miles away," wrote Blish. "The odd thing about it is that it was first used in a reprint of the story [in 1952], 11 years after the story was first published," said Prucher. "Whether this is because Blish conceived of the term in the intervening years or read it somewhere else, or whether it was in the original manuscript and got edited out is impossible to say at this point." Spaceships started using ion drives, which move the craft forwards by emitting charged particles in the opposite direction to travel, in the 1970s, but the term is first thought to have been used in Jack Williamson's The Equalizer in 1947, said Prucher. "It had its own ion drive, a regular crew of six, and plenty of additional space for our party," runs Williamson's novel. The verbal analogy between biological viruses and self-replicating computer programmes was first made by Dave Gerrold in his 1972 story When Harlie Was One, about a computer (the acronym stands for Human Analog Robot Life Input Equivalents) which believes it is human. Prucher, a freelance lexicographer who won best related book at last year's Hugos for his dictionary of science fiction Brave New Words, picked out the phrases in an article for Oxford University Press. He ran into some bother over his crediting of the term genetic engineering to Jack Williamson's 1941 novel Dragon Island with one critic pointing out that Williamson has admitted that "some scientist beat me by a couple of years". "Thanks for pointing that out," Prucher replied to his critic. "Add it to the list of Words You Might Think Came from Science Fiction but Actually Came from Science." 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 | 2:36 pm Ultra-Rare Shark Caught and EatenA megamouth shark is caught, carved up, and eaten by fishermen from the Philippines.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Apr 2009 | 2:30 pm Lowly Worms Wiggle With StyleHow does a worm crawl? And how does it swim?Source: Livescience.com | 7 Apr 2009 | 2:28 pm Shipping Containers Converted Into HomesA company converts shipping containers into sleek, energy-efficient homes.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Apr 2009 | 2:10 pm Buddhism and the brainThe Mind and Life conference brings together two powerful ways of understanding mind and its place in the world Every day this week in Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama will sit down with a group of psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers to discuss current western understanding of the mind and its possible connections to Buddhist theory and practice. The conference, entitled Attention, Memory And The Mind, is the 18th in a series of similar meetings which stems back to 1987, and which have previously explored topics such as Quantum Physics and Eastern Contemplative Sciences, Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying and Mindfulness, Compassion and the Treatment of Depression. The aim of these encounters, organised by the Mind and Life Institute, is to further the already productive dialogue between Buddhist and scientific studies of the mind. Past conferences have spurred the development of research programmes that examine the effects of Buddhist contemplative techniques and how they might be applied more widely to benefit humanity. They have, for example, been instrumental in the work of Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin, whose brain imaging studies found that experienced meditators show increased activity in the left prefrontal cortex of the brain, an area associated with emotional well-being, as well as having stronger immune systems. The Buddhism-science interface is less incongruous when viewed from a perspective shorn of western cultural assumptions about what makes a religion - as B Alan Wallace has argued, Buddhism contains elements which correspond closely to western notions of philosophy, psychology, and science. Of course, it does also feature religious aspects – it has plenty to say about what may happen during and after death, makes suggestions about how to live an ethical life, and lays importance on shared rituals and practice among a community of members. However, at its core is not worship of an external creator or the rigid promulgation of codes of behaviour, but a path of practice designed to test its ideas, a path in which asking questions is more important than having the answers and openness to the evidence is more valuable than being right. Perhaps because of this emphasis on fearless inquiry and empirical observation, and perhaps because it developed in societies unburdened by several centuries of schism between science and church, Buddhism's modern encounter with the former – epitomised by the Dalai Lama – has been characterised mostly by enthusiasm rather than defensiveness. That enthusiasm has then been fuelled further by the discovery that, at their best, both Buddhism and science share methodological similarities, including a commitment to testing hypotheses about the nature of reality by repeated experiment. Of course, that is not to say that Buddhism is science (or vice-versa). While scientific endeavour is based on observation of material phenomena in the external world, Buddhism – with its practices of meditation, contemplation and visualisation – actively enlists the subjective mind in an investigation of itself, in the belief that over time, such an inquiry can help it first see and then become free of the biases and projections that perpetuate false views and are the root cause of suffering. With increasing awareness about how such biases of the observing mind affect the collection of data, as well as the realisation – in fields such as quantum physics and consciousness studies – that the subjective stance of the experimenter cannot and perhaps should not be isolated from their experiments, the contemplative approach comes to seem ever more a useful complement to scientific method. As the Dalai Lama himself has joked, while the western world was busy exploring outer space, Tibetan Buddhists had already long been charting inner space. Organised Buddhism in the west remains tiny compared to more established religions, and its transplantation outside of an Asian context carries many challenges. But after just 40 or so years, its influence - through the gradual permeation of its practices and philosophy into areas such as healthcare provision – is already considerable. This is in large part because of its willingness to dialogue with, learn from and contribute to western modes of knowing with which it has a natural affinity. Only by engaging with the powerful forms and methods of inquiry developed by science can religion make a credible (and necessary) case for its continued relevance to modern society. The Dalai Lama, through his ongoing commitment to ventures such as the Mind and Life conferences, has shown his willingness to make such an engagement. If other religious traditions are to avoid being increasingly sidelined and ridiculed, they will need leaders of comparable stature – meaning those at the very highest level - to make a similar stand for the rigorous pursuit of truth, using scientific as well as spiritual method. 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 | 2:00 pm French claim full face transplantA 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)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Apr 2009 | 11:50 am Arctic ice shows winter thinningArctic 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
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