Too Much Protein, Eaten Along With Fat, May Lead To Insulin Resistance

A clue about the blood chemistry of obese people who develop insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes, has been confirmed in animal studies and human confirmation studies are coming.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Rhythmic Genomics: The Yeast Metronome And The Walk Of Life

New genome sequence information from the humble baker's yeast has revealed surprising variation in a set of genes that can be thought of as nature's oldest clock. Scientists have shown how ribosomal RNA genes that are essential to all Earth's organisms provide insight into how genomes maintain their integrity on their evolutionary journey.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Astronomers Help Solve Mystery Of Starlight's Origins Using A Telescope And Huge Balloon

Scientists have helped unveil the birthplaces of ancient stars using a two-ton telescope carried by a balloon the size of a 33-story building.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Adult Brain Processes Fractions 'Effortlessly'

Although fractions are thought to be a difficult mathematical concept to learn, the adult brain encodes them automatically without conscious thought, according to new research. The study shows that cells in the intraparietal sulcus and the prefrontal cortex -- brain regions important for processing whole numbers -- are tuned to respond to particular fractions.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Cheap And Efficient White Light LEDs With New Design

Roughly 20 percent of the electricity consumed worldwide is used to light homes, businesses, and other private and public spaces. Though this consumption represents a large drain on resources, it also presents a tremendous opportunity for savings. Improving the efficiency of commercially available light bulbs -- even a little -- could translate into dramatically lower energy usage if implemented widely.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Waist Size Found To Be Predictor Of Heart Failure In Both Men And Women

Adding to the growing evidence that a person's waist size is an important indicator of heart health, a new study has found that larger waist circumference is associated with increased risk of heart failure in middle-aged and older populations of men and women.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Unemployed? Get a Face Lift!

One type of plastic surgery has been at least partly buoyed by the bad times.
Source: Livescience.com | 9 Apr 2009 | 1:09 pm

Seattle Skyline Could Collapse in Big Quake

Seattle is in serious danger of being flattened by a major earthquake, say experts.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 9 Apr 2009 | 1:00 pm

Plastic Found in One-Third of Leatherback Turtles

Necropsies of leatherback turtles revealed plastic inside more than a third of the animals.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 9 Apr 2009 | 1:00 pm

New Molecular Mechanism Linking Viral Infection To Cancer Susceptibility Discovered

Portuguese scientists discovered a new molecular mechanism that allows gamma herpes viruses to chronically infect patients and helps to explain why these patients present an abnormally high incidence of the lymphocyte (or white blood cell) cancer lymphoma, particularly when their immune system is compromised.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 12:00 pm

Red In The Face? People Use The Color Of Your Skin To Judge How Healthy You Are

People use the color of your skin to judge how healthy you are. Scientists in the School of Psychology have shown that there is truth to the received wisdom that a "rosy" complexion denotes healthiness, whilst a "green" or "pale" color indicates illness.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 12:00 pm

How Do Microglia Examine Damaged Synapses?

Microglia, immune cells in the brain, are suggested to be involved in the repair of damaged brain. However, it is unknown how microglia diagnose damaged circuits in an in vivo brain. Now a Japanese group has successfully taken a live image how microglia survey synapses in the brains of mice by using two-photon microscopic technology.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 12:00 pm

New Link Between The Evolution Of Complex Life Forms On Earth And Nickel And Methane Gas

The Earth's original atmosphere held very little oxygen. This began to change around 2.4 billion years ago when oxygen levels increased dramatically during what scientists call the "Great Oxidation Event." The cause of this event has puzzled scientists, but researchers writing in Nature have found indications in ancient sedimentary rocks that it may have been linked to a drop in the level of dissolved nickel in seawater.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 12:00 pm

Prize for 'Sun in the box' cooker

A solar cooker made from a cardboard box, invented in Africa, wins a competition for bright environmental ideas.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Apr 2009 | 11:30 am

Shares tumble as Bioxell lead drug fails in trial (Reuters)

Reuters - Italian biotech Bioxell SpA said its Elocalcitol drug to treat overactive bladder (OAB) failed to reach its main target in a mid-stage clinical trial, and that it would cut costs, sending its stock to an all-time low.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 11:24 am

North Korea parliament renews Kim's leadership (Reuters)

Reuters - North Korea re-elected Kim Jong-il as its supreme military leader at its newly seated parliament on Thursday, marking his return to center stage as the country celebrates what it calls a triumphant satellite launch.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 11:23 am

Balloon telescope's star vision

The "baby-boomer Universe" is seen in unprecedented detail by a telescope slung beneath a balloon.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Apr 2009 | 11:07 am

Arctic team: 'we have a problem'

It has emerged that British explorers studying the Arctic are struggling with a series of technical problems.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Apr 2009 | 10:59 am

FameLab talent search is launched

A search gets under way for the next generation of graduates who are able to communicate science to the public.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Apr 2009 | 10:31 am

Obama looking at cooling air to fight warming (AP)

AP - Tinkering with Earth's climate to chill runaway global warming — a radical idea once dismissed out of hand — is being discussed by the White House as a potential emergency option, the president's new science adviser said Wednesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 10:17 am

Hurricane Season 2008 (weather.com)

weather.com -
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 10:05 am

Rocks and minerals – up close and personal

Highly magnified images of rocks and minerals from the world's largest private collection by Professor Richard Weston

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 9 Apr 2009 | 9:19 am

Gazprom: pipeline blast halts Turkmen gas (AP)

AP - Russia's natural gas monopoly Gazprom says a blast on a Central Asian pipeline has halted the supply of Turkmen gas to Russia.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 9:02 am

Snake diet find aids anti-venom

Research relating the venom of poisonous snakes to their diet could lead to improved treatment for bites.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Apr 2009 | 6:19 am

Kids Curb Marital Satisfaction (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Parents all know that children make it harder to do some of the most enjoyable adult things. Bluntly put, kids can get between you.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 5:13 am

US government admits its power grid is vulnerable to cyber attack

The US government admits the power grid is vulnerable, following media claims it has been breached by foreign spies.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Apr 2009 | 2:30 am

UN demands more climate ambition

The year's first round of UN climate talks ends with developing countries and the UN itself calling for more ambition.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Apr 2009 | 1:02 am

Feds vote to halt Calif. chinook salmon fishing (AP)

AP - California's commercial chinook salmon fishing season will be called off again after a record low number of fish returned to spawn last year, federal fisheries managers announced Wednesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Apr 2009 | 12:32 am

High-Tech Weights for Space Workout

When space-age technology can't keep astronaut muscles from withering, there's only one thing left for NASA to do: upgrade.

The Advanced Resistance Exercise Device, or aRED, was installed two months ago inside the International Space Station. Smaller and more powerful than any earthly all-in-one gym set, aRED is expected to provide astronauts with much-needed muscle work.

"When we think about the space environment, you have to reset the baseline," said Scott Trappe, director of Ball State University's Human Performance Laboratory. "On Earth, it's hypertrophy: 'How big can I get my muscles?' In space, it's 'How can I protect what I have?'"

In the first-ever analysis of muscles from International Space Station astronauts, Trappe's team found that six months in near zero-gravity had produced a 15 percent loss in muscle volume and 25 percent loss in strength.

The findings, published last week in the Journal of Applied Physiology, are concerning on multiple levels.

Space station astronauts already follow a strict workout routine designed to prevent the loss of bone and muscle seen in the crew of the Mir and Skylab space expeditions.

If the consequences of those missions are any guide, astronauts may have a difficult time recovering their full strength, and some may never regain it. And six months is the minimum time needed for a manned mission to reach Mars.

However, the exercise of space station astronauts is limited to the machines they're given. Though a treadmill and stationary bicycle work fine, they're intended primarily for aerobic conditioning. Muscle strength is the responsibility of the Interim Resistance Exercise Device, or iRED — and, with a maximum resistance of just 300 pounds, it can't do the job.

"Astronauts are working out hard, but the loading characteristics aren't there," said Trappe. "They're losing more muscle mass than they should be."

Simply maintaining muscle mass in space, said Trappe, requires a high-weight, low-repetition workout. The aRED is the first piece of NASA exercise equipment to meet this need. Providing resistance in each exercise are two piston-driven vacuum cylinders that are a bit like oversize bicycle pumps. Resistance increases as a piston is pulled in or out, so weights are set by adjusting the length of a mechanical arm that attaches pistons to lift bar.

Attached to the pistons is a flywheel, explained NASA astronaut strength conditioning and rehabilitation specialist Jim Loehr. Pushing the pistons out sets the flywheels spinning. That rotation, combined with vacuum pressure, provides a counter force against direction reversal so that a leg press in space requires effort as the weight is returned to its starting position, just as it does on Earth.

"ARED was designed to provide a constant force throughout the range of motion," said Loehr, mimicking the physiological gold standard of free weight resistance. In contrast, the iRED was a 21st century version of a Bowflex machine, with unidirectional resistance provided by an ingenious arrangement of rubber bands that provide an "ascending force curve that doesn't match traditional free weights," and can lose strength over time.

For some exercises, like squats, a person needs to lift twice as much weight in space to get the same result as on Earth. So iRED's maximum weight of 300 pounds translates to just 150 pounds squatted on Earth. Maintaining leg strength becomes extremely difficult with that amount of weight. And it's the legs, accustomed to constantly supporting our bulks against Earth gravity, that weaken first in space. ARED's maximum load of 600 pounds means astronauts can squat the equivalent of 300 pounds on Earth, which should be enough to keep their legs in shape.

Another problem with a Bowflex-style apparatus, said Trappe, is safety. "They have all these rubber cords and things attached to it that could snap," he said, explaining that people fail to appreciate the extraordinary demands placed upon exercise machines in space.

In the fragile bubble of life that is a spacecraft, it's imperative that machines never fail. A loose screw or frayed wire, an injury to an exercising astronaut, could start a chain of events that dooms a mission.

And once safety is accounted for, there's science to worry about. Instruments are so sensitive that the slightest vibration could throw off their readings, jeopardizing an experiment or even navigation.

Combine those demands with the need for full-body workout and a cramped environment, and it's very hard to make an effective machine, said Trappe, but aRED might be it. It can mimic everything from squats to bicep curls to bench presses, has its every vibration is dampened, and has undergone hundreds of thousands of trial repetitions without wearing down.

The first wave of ISS astronauts to use the aRED are training on it now, and their bodies will be evaluated upon return.

Asked whether astronauts could use chemicals to enhance their physiques, Trappe said the chances were slim: in addition to individual differences in pharmacological response, drugs may work differently in space than on Earth.

"There's no doping in space," he said.

 

See Also:

• NASA Offers $5000 a Month For You to Lie in Bed
• Q&A: NASA Scientist Answers Your Questions About Lying in Bed for 90 Days
• NASA Bed Rest Lab Photo: Could You Spend 90 Days Here?
• No Pain, No Gain in Space: Astronauts Need Better Workouts

Image: International Space Station/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Apr 2009 | 11:46 pm

Pollution link with birth weight

Exposure to traffic pollution could affect the development of babies in the womb, US researchers have warned.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Apr 2009 | 11:42 pm

White House Sees 'Radical' Climate Ideas as Last Resort

White House would look at shooting particles into the atmosphere to cool the climate.
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Apr 2009 | 11:03 pm

Candyfloss provides a sweeter way to heal nerve injuries

Candyfloss is not normally seen in research laboratories. For Riyi Shi, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Purdue University, Indiana, it may soon help heal nerve injuries. Shi has used the fine sugar filaments, known as cotton candy in the US, to construct a scaffold of hollow polymer tubes to support natural nerve regrowth.

Sugar, explains Shi, is used to create pores or voids in scaffolds to support new tissue growth. But for nerve scaffolds, you need very tiny tubes: "One day, Jianming Li, my graduate student, came up with the idea of using cotton candy. He noted that if we could coat the fibres with a water insoluble polymer, we could obtain tubes once the sugar dissolved."

They heated sugar (sucrose) so it caramelised, then drew out sugar fibres. These were thinly coated in poly L-lactic acid (PLLA), a biomedical compatible polymer, and then the sugar core was dissolved.

A nerve cell consists of a cell body and a projection called an axon that carries the nerve signal. Thousands of such axons are bundled together to form peripheral nerves. Shi and Li's artificial polymer tubules have a diameter of around 50 microns - about half the width of a human hair. Their bonus discovery? Tiny pores ideal for supplying nutrients to growing nerve cells and removing waste products.

This is a first step towards regenerating nerve axons to prevent atrophy of muscles and organs. For conventional repair, surgeons take nerve grafts, even though this means losing skin sensation.

"We would actually slip our hollow fibre bundles into a biocompatible sleeve and implant this hybrid construct. The sleeve would provide stability and give surgeons something to suture," says Shi. "PLLA is biodegradable and after six to 12 months the PLLA would be resorbed and replaced by host tissue."

The professor of neuroscience John Priestley works in the Neuroscience Centre at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. He's also involved in developing a nerve scaffold (Neurotex) made from natural silk fibres in a silk conduit.

"For about 20 years, people have being trying to produce synthetic tubes that can be used to bridge gaps in nerves and replace the need for using an autologous graft," says Priestley. "The Purdue scaffold looks a very interesting approach - it's certainly an advance - but until it's been tested in vivo, it's difficult to comment further."

Whether you call it cotton candy or candyfloss, the popular fairground treat may soon prove a sweet bioengineering solution.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 8 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Adults Retain 'Good' Baby Fat

You still have some of the baby fat that researchers have long thought melted away after childhood.
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Apr 2009 | 10:15 pm

Tiny Flower Turns Pig Poop into Fuel

The tiniest flowering plant could prove well-suited to two very big jobs: cleaning industrial animal pollution and providing clean biofuel.

Able to thrive on nutrients in animal waste, duckweed produces far more starch per acre than corn, say researchers. It could be an alternative to corn-based ethanol biofuel, which is disfavored by environmentalists because of waste generated in farming it.

"Based on our laboratory studies, we can produce five to six times more starch per unit of footage," said Jay Cheng, a biological engineer at North Carolina State University.

More than a decade ago, Cheng and fellow NC State forestry professor Anne-Marie Stomp wondered whether fast-growing duckweed, commonly seen in shallow ponds, might remediate animal waste. Excrement from the billions of animals raised every year in America's factory farms has fouled watersheds, especially in the South, and fed oxygen-gobbling algae blooms responsible for rapidly-spreading coastal dead zones.

Duckweed, they discovered, has an appetite for animal waste, quickly converting it to leafy starch that can then be converted into ethanol. The current source for most U.S. ethanol is industrial-scale corn farming, which requires large amounts of toxic pesticides and dead zone-feeding, fuel-intensive fertilizers. When the costs are added up, corn-based ethanol may prove little cleaner than gasoline.

Duckweed could help solve both problems at once.

"We did small-scale tests in the laboratory to convert duckweed starch to ethanol using the same technologies as the fuel industry currently uses in corn," said Cheng. "With the same technology, we can easily convert it."

Duckweed consumes nitrogen, phosphorous, calcium and iron, making it a potential source of remediation not only for the lagoons in which farm waste accumulates, but any type of wastewater.

Because duckweed is found in all but the coldest climates, there's little chance of it causing problems as an invasive species, said Cheng. The researchers have moved from the laboratory to a pilot-scale operation on a commercial farm.

"Now that the concept is proven, we're trying to scale up, testing harvesting systems and doing some economic analyses," said Cheng. "The production rate is higher than corn starch, but to do it commercially, the economics will determine if it's feasible."

See Also:

• In Search of New Fertilizer Tech (No, Really)
• Better Fuel Through Pig Manure
• Corn-Based Biofuels Spell Death for Gulf of Mexico
• Reactive Nitrogen: The Next Big Pollution Problem
• Ocean Dead Zones May Be Worse Than Thought

Images: 1. Flickr/Caroline Jewel  2. Flickr/DefMo

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Apr 2009 | 10:06 pm

Spray Aids Premature Ejaculation

European men who had been diagnosed with premature ejaculation problems found help with a topical spray
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Apr 2009 | 10:03 pm

Obama adviser raises possibility of geo-engineering to tackle warming

The global warming situation has become so dire that Barack Obama's chief scientific adviser has raised with the president the possibility of massive-scale technological fixes to alter the climate known as 'geo-engineering'.

John Holdren, who is a member of the president's cabinet, said today the drastic measures should not be "off the table" in discussions on how best to tackle climate change. While his office insisted that he was not proposing a dramatic switch in policy, Holdren said geo-engineering could not be ruled out.

"It's got to be looked at. We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table," Holdren said in an interview with Associated Press. He made clear these were his personal views.

The suite of mega-technological fixes includes everything from placing mirrors in space that reflect sunlight from the Earth, to fertilising the oceans with iron to encourage the growth of algae that can soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide. Another option is to seed clouds which bounce the sun's rays back into space so they do not warm the Earth's surface.

Such global-scale technological solutions to climate change may seem fantastical, but increasing numbers of scientists argue that the technologies should at least be investigated.

Holdren's comments do not mean that the US government is raising the priority of geo-engineering. A spokesman for the US Government's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) - which Holdren directs - said "the administration's primary focus is still to seek comprehensive energy legislation that can get us closer to a clean energy economy, and can create green jobs while reducing dependence on foreign oil."

Advocates of the technology have welcomed the comments. Stephen Salter, an engineer at Edinburgh University and a pioneer of techniques to seed clouds so that they reflect the Sun's rays back into space, said: "Everyone working in geo-engineering works with some reluctance: we hope it'll never be needed, but we fear it might be needed very very urgently. Holden is echoing that exactly. It's very encouraging – we've had extremely negative reactions from the UK governments."

Salter said that geo-engineering techniques were the only methods that would lower world temperatures quickly enough. Even if the world stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow, he said, the world would continue to get hotter for several decades. "Opponents say it would take the pressure off getting the renewables developed. I've been working on renewables since 1973 and stopped because we're too late, we wasted too much time. We may have a panic very soon because of the way the Arctic ice is going."

Greenpeace chief scientist Doug Parr, however, has said: "The wider point is not the pros and cons of particular technologies, but that the scientific community is becoming so scared of our collective inability to tackle climate emissions that such outlandish schemes are being considered for serious study. We already have the technology and know-how to make dramatic cuts in global emissions - but it's not happening, and those closest to the climate science are coming near to pressing the panic button."

Holdren acknowledged that some of the potential geo-engineering solutions could have side effects, and that such actions should not be taken lightly.

Though cloud-seeding, for example, would cool the earth, it would also lead to more acidic oceans, since the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere - and therefore the CO2 absorbed into the seas - would keep increasing. But Holdren added: "We might get desperate enough to want to use it."

His comments seemed to go against those he made in a speech to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007. There, he highlighted geo-engineering's potential to help cool the atmosphere or to remove greenhouse gases, but acknowledged the methods would likely require significant investment, and also warned against expecting a single technological solution to solve energy and climate problems. "Belief in technological miracles is generally a mistake," he said.

Writing last year in a special edition of the Royal Society journal Philosophical Transactions that was dedicated to geo-engineering, Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge said: "While such geo-scale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing. There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium."

In a series of papers, experts said that a reluctance "at virtually all levels" to address rising greenhouse gas emissions meant carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were on track to pass 650 parts per million, which could bring an average global temperature rise of 4C. They called for more research on geo-engineering options to cool the earth.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 8 Apr 2009 | 9:42 pm

Tanorexia: The Insidious Lure of Tanning Beds

Indoor tanning raises the risk of skin cancer and causes wrinkles. So why do it?
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Apr 2009 | 9:24 pm

"Brown fat" may help adults lose weight

BOSTON (Reuters) - A sparse form of fat that helps keep newborns warm is more common in adults than previously thought and that discovery that could lead to a new way to lose weight, researchers said on Wednesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 9:02 pm

Federal regulators deny protection to Calif. fish (AP)

AP - Federal authorities say a small fish in Northern California's Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta does not deserve protection on the federal endangered species list.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 8:49 pm

10 Surprising Sex Statistics

Whether it's penis size, papillomavirus risk, or profligate pregnancies, it's good to know the numbers.
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Apr 2009 | 8:40 pm

How Charles Darwin Got Married

Charles Darwin brought to the question of marriage the same patient exactitude with which he contemplated finches and earthworms, though he didn't quite maintain his dispassion.

"Not forced to visit relatives, and to bend in every trifle," wrote Darwin on the "Not Marry" side of the infamous two-column list he used to weigh the pros and cons of lifelong union to young Emma Wedgewood. "Anxiety and responsibility — less money for books etc. — if many children forced to gain one's bread."

But love's rewards and fears of solitude eventually swayed him. "Imagine living all one's day solitarily in smoky dirty London House," he wrote on the other side of the list. "Picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps."

Charles and Emma married in 1839 and were, by all accounts, a loving couple, raising seven children to adulthood and finding compromise between Charles' theory of evolution and Emma's Christian beliefs.

"Better than a dog anyhow," he wrote.

To see the list, visit The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. For more on brains, decision-making and marriage — neuroscience journalist Jonah Lehrer calls Darwin's list-making approach "completely useless" — read "The Science of When to Get Married."

See Also:

• Darwin, Earthworms and the Importance of Individuality
• Cousin Marriage OK by Science

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Apr 2009 | 7:40 pm

The Tech War on Tornadogenesis

The biggest, most expensive, tech-heavy effort to understand how and why tornadoes form begins next month.

Pulling together truck-mounted radar, UAVs, wind meters bolted to car roofs, webs of stationary sensors and a generous dash of adventure, 100 scientists with 40 vehicles will spend a month tracking the huge formations of clouds called supercells that occasionally spawn twisters. From a mobile field command vehicle, this army of scientists will conduct a data-gathering war on nature's baddest storms.

In the best case scenario, the VORTEX2 project could get the kind of high-resolution, clean data that research weathermen need to understand exactly why some storms generate killer clouds while most just threaten to.   

"Never before have we gotten everyone together at the same time to focus on the same storm," said Howie Bluestein, a meterologist at the University of Oklahoma and a key member "You need to observe many different variables in space on a very, very fine scale while the tornado is forming."

Of all the weather phenomena in the world, the unpredictable, violent and telegenic tornado commands special attention. Tornadogenesis remains mysterious largely because it's hard to have everyone in place at just that moment when the funnel cloud actually forms. If you're not there when it happens — and just as importantly, when it almost happens — it's difficult to know which variables drive tornado formation. The first VORTEX program, carried out in 1994 to 1995, made some progress on the issue and has been credited with an uptick in the accuracy of tornado warnings since that time.

Tornadoes form within large thunderstorms. These storms tend to start rotating horizontally, but rising warm air moves up through the center of the storm, changing the axis of rotation and creating a vertically rotating column of clouds. But what turns that "rotating wall cloud" into a tornado is a bit of mystery. Scientists have several ideas about the role cool downdrafts and vertical wind shear play in this crucial step from beautiful storm to sublime tornado, but it's a tough problem with relatively limited data sets.

With $9 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, VORTEX2 could change that. It will deploy 40 vehicles into the Oklahoma prairie at one time, including an array of gadgets that work well alone but that together will allow for a new level of understanding. They hope to track up to 20 possibly tornado-producing storms.

"There are some hypotheses out there that can be tested," Bluestein said. "There are also things that we know nothing about that we might serendipitously discover."

The key technology for studying tornadoes is radar. VORTEX2 will use 10 different types of mobile radar systems operating on different wavelengths. The workhorse Doppler (or DOW: Doppler on Wheels) X-band radar systems consist of big, generally parabolic dishes mounted on the backs of large trucks, which are positioned 10 to 20 kilometers from the big storms.

"The main means by which we study tornadoes observationally is to use mobile Doppler radars because we can get close to the tornado without getting in it," Bluestein said. "And we can get a high resolution look at the wind field and a distribution of hydrometeors and debris in and around the tornado."

(Hydrometeor is the catch all term for different types of solid or liquid precipitation — rain, hail, snow, ice, etc. — that tornadoes generate.)

The X-band radar works from long-distances, but its maximum resolution is only in the hundreds of meters. For more detailed work, scientists roll out the W-band.

"This particular radar operates at a very high frequency," Bluestein said. "It's one of a kind and it'll be able to see things at 10 meters across a couple miles away."

While the radar trucks are rumbling towards the scene, fleets of cars with wind speed and temperature sensors mounted on their roofs will also be racing to encircle the storm. It's not recreational tornado chasing, but it does have its dangers, or perks, depending on your constitution.

"Some of them have to drive into bad areas," Bluestein said. "You actually surround the storm, so some of them have to go through the storm, so they'll get battered by hail and heavy rain and so on. While we try and stay out of it, they go into it."

These specially outfitted cars, called mesonets, have been in use since the mid-'90s, but they keep getting computer upgrades. You can watch Sean Waugh, a student researcher at the National Severe Storms Laboratory and dedicated amateur storm chaser, build a new one from a standard van in the video below.

As the cars and trucks race around, stationary sensors called sticknets will gather data along the routes most likely to be affected by the storm. And over the top of all this action, like drones in the war over Afghanistan, unmanned aerial vehicles will be patrolling the sky, at least in limited action. One might think they'd just get blown out of the sky, but Bluestein is hopeful they'll be able to withstand the atmospheric conditions.

"If they succeed, we'll be able to get thermodynamic measurements that you could never make," he said.

And though the VORTEX2 project has the ultimate purpose of saving lives and the days will be long, there will still be some fun in it for storm-lovers like Waugh who drives 20,000 miles a year chasing clouds, lightning and hail.

"You see a nice, big sculpted storm with a nice tornado underneath and it's chunking out softball-size hail, it's all worth it," Waugh said. "Golf-ball-sized are OK, but we don't really get really excited unless it's baseballs or larger."

See Also:

• Urban Sprawl, Climate Change Fueled Atlanta Tornado
• A Tornado Grows in Brooklyn; Is Climate Change the Culprit
• 'Wizard of Oz' Storm Makes Pigs Fly
• China Leads Weather Control Race
• NASA Weather Error Provokes Tempest in a Teapot

Image 1: NOAA. Image 2: VORTEX2. Image: NSSL. Video: Sean Waugh.

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 | 8 Apr 2009 | 7:32 pm

For chimps, candy is dandy but steak is quicker

WASHINGTON (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 | 7:13 pm

Scorpion-Like Hermits First to Scurry to Land

The world's first land animals likely crammed their scorpion-like bodies into snail shells.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Apr 2009 | 7:00 pm

Kids Curb Marital Satisfaction

Bluntly put, kids can get between you.
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Apr 2009 | 6:58 pm

Report From Antarctica: Heaps of Trash or Historical Treasures?

NEKO BAY, Antarctica — On the 2 percent of Antarctica that isn't covered in ice, the juxtaposition of man-made refuse and Planet Earth-worthy wildlife tableaux is far from rare. But cleaning up that prime real estate is complicated by the nature of the debris, much of which is deemed "historical" and thus unmovable.

There aren't exactly piles of trash covering Antarctica, but the waste’s location on biologically active shores makes it most disruptive to both wildlife and other human visitors. On a rocky outcrop overlooking Neko Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula, a sheet of red corrugated iron shares space with several hundred gentoo penguins.

Over the last few days, we’ve seen several signs of previous human activity, including a wrecked early–20th-century whaling vessel, some wooden water boats, a rusting sledge and a decrepit shack. Determining which structures hold legitimate historical or cultural value and which should be removed is a contentious task without any clear answers.

The answer for some structures is obvious. Even the strictest conservationist would concede the cultural and historical value of sites like Captain Scott’s hut on the Ross Sea or Mawson's camp in Cape Denison. But significant quantities of disused buildings and machinery dating from the last several decades are a different story.

"An old whaling station is a real mess," said Robert Swan, a stubborn Antarctic conservationist and the first man to walk to both poles. "It’s revolting, but actually it’s not, because it’s a statement saying 'Don’t think of Antarctica as pristine: We were about to come and pillage the place.'"

A few dismal landscapes may have a cautionary function "as a reminder of what could have been," had humanity not declared the Antarctic off-limits, said Graham Charles, a guide and adventurer who has worked in the Antarctic for 15 years. "The rest of them are junk piles, and it’s just abysmal."

There’s plenty of accumulated trash to ship off the continent. From 1994 to 2002, Swan helped the Russian Bellingshausen station on King George Island offload 1,500 tons of garbage that had accumulated since the Cold War. The effort cost $6 million and took eight years, but native penguins soon reclaimed their beach, and the station is a much more pleasant place to visit and live.

Retroactive efforts like the Bellingshausen cleanup will likely continue to take significant amounts of both money and time, but legal frameworks in the last 20 years have helped address waste problems at more recent bases: According to Antarctic law, any active bases must remove all trash from the continent. How each nation manages this mandate varies widely, and regulation is nearly nonexistent.

"Most bases are diligent enough to take their trash out on a ship," Charles said. "But a lot of them have just turned over the soil and buried it."

The designation of "historical" structures and sites remains uncodified and controversial, but there is still plenty of uncontroversial trash that still must be shipped out of Antarctica. Without regulation or public accountability, however, illegal Antarctic dumping is likely to continue. In the meantime, penguins, seals and human visitors alike are learning to live with wood and iron.

—Jeff Marlow for Wired.com

See Also:

• Report From Antarctica: Countries Maneuver for Potential Future Land Grab
• Balloon Circles Antarctica in Antimatter Hunt
• Huge Chunk of Antarctic Ice Breaks Loose
• March of Penguins Turning Into Trail of Tears
• Should Antarctic Visiting Rights Be Sold to Highest Bidder
• New High-Res, Browsable Antarctic Photo Map From NASA

Images 1-3: John Luck. Images 4-5: Jeff Marlow.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Apr 2009 | 6:55 pm

U.S. FDA demands data on older medical devices

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Makers of 25 types of medical devices including metal hip joints and spinal screws must supply safety and effectiveness data so the government can decide if the products need a more thorough review, U.S. regulators said on Wednesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 6:49 pm

Ancient Life Tapped for Solar Technology

An ancient life form has been tapped to create one of the newest technologies for solar energy.
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Apr 2009 | 6:30 pm

U.S. space tourist, crew return to Earth

ALMATY (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 | 6:13 pm

Scientists dismiss prediction of Italy earthquake

ROME (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 | 8 Apr 2009 | 5:18 pm

NJ Men Fined $250 for UFO Hoax

Russo and Rudy revealed their hoax on April Fool's day. Now they'll pay.
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Apr 2009 | 5:03 pm

Satellite data shows Arctic on thinner ice

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Arctic sea ice, a key component of Earth's natural thermostat, has thinned sharply in recent years with the northern polar ice cap shrinking steadily in surface area, government scientists said on Monday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 4:52 pm

Experts find gene trigger for deadly skin cancer

LONDON (Reuters) - Up to 70 percent of melanoma skin cancers may be triggered by a gene mutation that causes cells to become cancerous after excessive exposure to the sun, researchers said Monday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 4:51 pm

PM hails 'green economy' Budget

Trials 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 | 4:50 pm

More may not be better for bladder cancer: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters Life!) - Patients who get more intensive treatment for early bladder cancer do not fare any better than patients who get less treatment, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 4:48 pm

U.S. regulator approves rapid test for bird flu

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it had approved a fast test for H5N1 bird flu that can show in less than an hour if people are infected.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 4:47 pm

China looks to expand stake in stem cell technology

BEIJING (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 | 4:36 pm

New era for fossil fuels as first carbon capturing power plant begins work

French power station leading the way in the world's sluggish move towards using environmentally vital CCS technology

The world's first retrofit of a power plant with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will begin operating this month in the south of France.

At a power plant at Lacq, energy company Total has upgraded an existing gas-fired boiler with CCS technology – a crucial step towards reducing carbon emissions from fossil-fuel power plants worldwide.

With renewable energy sources a long way from covering the world's increasing demand for energy, many experts believe that developing reliable technology to allow countries to burn fossil fuels without releasing dangerous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Experts welcomed Total's achievement but added that it highlighted how Britain was being left behind in the development of an important technology to head off climate change.

"CCS remains the most important initiative that needs to be implemented both here and around the world in reducing emissions from coal, gas and oil-fired power stations," said Environment Agency chairman Chris Smith.

"[But this project] re-emphasises the importance of making sure that Britain takes an early opportunity to put itself in the lead worldwide in taking the technology forward."

Stuart Haszeldine, professor of geology and an expert in CCS at the University of Edinburgh, was more scathing. "The UK has been first to stoke up interest in CCS, in the 1990s. But since then, CCS has not received any significant government support to make any real projects happen."

He said the technology was essential for the UK to meet its climate change targets. "We have to completely clean up CO2 emissions from gas as well as coal by 2030, if the UK is to meet the legally binding decreases set by the climate change committee," said Haszeldine. "Projects like Lacq will help to make cleanup cheaper and bring that reality closer."

The 60m euro Lacq project will transport and store 60,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year in the nearby depleted gas field at Rousse – once the biggest onshore natural gas field in Europe, but which is now almost empty. It is the first to link together all parts of the carbon capture chain from burning natural gas to isolating CO2 from flue gases and burying it underground.

Reusing an existing pipeline that has been transporting natural gas from Rousse to Lacq for 50 years, Total engineers plan to push the carbon dioxide from the power plant in the other direction, injecting the gas into the Rousse reservoir at a depth of around 4,500m. The Lacq project will run for two years, after which engineers will monitor the Rousse gas field to demonstrate that the carbon dioxide remains safely trapped inside.

Last year, the Schwarze Pumpe power station in north Germany became the first demonstration experiment to build a a 12MW fossil fuel-fired boiler from scratch with full CCS – it will bury 100,000 tonnes of CO2 a year 3,000m below the surface of the depleted Altmark gas field.

CCS is seen as the technolology that could save the planet from the expected increased use of coal in power stations around the world. At its best, it could trap up to 90% of a power plant's carbon emissions and, though each element of the capture, transportation and storage process is already proven and in use, only the Schwarze Pumpe plant has put the chain together until now.

Despite agreement from almost all sides that CCS must be made commercial if the world can ever hope to meet its carbon-reduction targets, a full-scale system remains years away, largely because of the costs involved in its development. As a result, many leading power companies have been reluctant to fund CCS individually, arguing that governments should also shoulder some of the financial risks.

The UK government wants to fund a single demonstration plant using post-combustion capture technology and is running a competition to decide which new power station will get the go-ahead. Within the next few weeks, ministers are expected to announce proposals on how to fund further CCS projects in the UK beyond the competition.

But the British government's procrastination has forced many CCS projects planned in the past decade to be abandoned or moved abroad. These include BP's plans to build a carbon capture plant at Peterhead and Centrica's Eston Grange project.

Haszledine also criticised the lack of research effort in the UK, saying just over £6m has been spent on CCS research in the UK in the past decade compared with $2bn to date in Canada, and annual spends of around £40m in Norway and several hundreds of millions of dollars in Australia. New CCS demonstration projects are due to start operating later this year in the United States and Australia.

At Lacq, Total has fitted one of the plant's 30MW gas-fired boilers with oxyfuel technology, where the fossil fuel is burned in an atmosphere enriched with oxygen. The resulting exhaust gas is then composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide and water vapour, which can be easily separated and stored.

"Total needs to master this new technology," said Luc de Marliave, climate change coordinator at the energy company. "Oxycombustion had never been tested at this scale in such an integrated CCS scheme."

Philippe Paelinck of Alstom, the engineeering company that designed and built the CCS equipment at Lacq, said the experiment was an important milestone. "We first proved the feasibility of retrofitting an installation to carbon capture and storage, but also this will be the first demonstration in Europe of CCS with [existing] integrated CO2 pipeline transportation and storage."

De Marliave said Total chose to test oxyfuel because it could potentially save costs in future. "Our calculations showed that, with oxycombustion in that type of application, you could reduce the cost of capture – which is a large part of the cost of the CCS chain – around two-thirds of the cost roughly. For just capture, existing post combustion technologies would cost you something like 70 euros per tonne of CO2. Oxycombustion could reduce this to 35 euros per tonne."

Despite that, he said Total was still open to the investigating the other types of CCS technology, both pre- and post- combustion. "We are not set on one technology. We selected oxycombusiton for the pilot but it doesn't mean that we are not very much interested in post-combustion as well."

Plans for government-funded CCS demonstration plants across Europe have been moving slowly. The EU wants 12 demonstration plants in operation next decade and has reserved 300m carbon credits from the next stage of the European emissions trading scheme to help fund the technology.

In January, the European Commission proposed earmarking €1.25bn to kickstart carbon capture and storage (CCS) at 11 coal-fired plants across Europe, including four in Britain: the Kingsnorth plant in Kent, Longannet in Fife, Tilbury in Essex and Hatfield in Yorkshire would share €250m under the two-year scheme.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 8 Apr 2009 | 4:28 pm

Dramatic Image Shows Volcano's Lightning

Arrays set up before Redoubt eruption gather data on lightning in volcanic plume.
Source: Livescience.com | 8 Apr 2009 | 4:04 pm

Era of personal medicine awaits

A revolution is promised by US scientists who plan to read the genetic codes of thousands of individuals.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Apr 2009 | 4:02 pm

Stalagmites Reveal Rapid Sea Level Rise

Ancient stalagmites from a submerged cave show sea levels rise faster than expected.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Apr 2009 | 2:44 pm

Space Tourist Returns to Earth, Gets Long Kiss

A crew of three, including a U.S. space tourist, touch down safely in Kazakhstan.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Apr 2009 | 2:37 pm

Strong Sonar Causes Deafness in Dolphins

Blasts of sonar can cause a dolphin to temporarily lose its hearing, research shows.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Apr 2009 | 2:08 pm

Wild Chimps Exchange Meat for Sex

Female chimps are more likely to copulate with males if they are given meaty meals.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Apr 2009 | 2:00 pm

Robot Gardener Plants, Tends and Harvests

Fruit without the fuss is the promise of a new robot being developed at MIT.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 8 Apr 2009 | 1:17 pm

Russian space capsule lands safely with 3 aboard (AP)

AP - A Russian spacecraft carrying a crew of three including U.S. billionaire space tourist Charles Simonyi landed safely in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, officials said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Apr 2009 | 11:46 am