Stroke Patient's Own Stem Cells Used In Trial For First Time

Stroke patient Roland Henrich, 61, is the first patient in the United States to receive his own bone marrow stem cells intravenously as part of a Phase I study on the safety of the procedure.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Specific Lung Cancer Susceptibility Gene Identified

Cancer cell biologists have identified a distinct gene linked to increased lung cancer susceptibility and development. They say this gene -- known as RGS17 -- could result in a genetic predisposition to develop lung cancer for people with a strong family history of the disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Prehistoric Turtle Goes To Hospital For CT Scan In Search For Skull, Eggs, Embryos

Researchers recently took a 75-million-year-old turtle for a CT scan to look for its skull, additional eggs and possible embryos.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Giving Birth: Upright Positions Shorten First Stage Labor

Lying down during the early stages of childbirth may slow progress, according to a new systematic review. Researchers found that the first stage of labor was significantly shorter for women who kneel, stand up, walk around, or sit upright as opposed to lying down.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

One-story Masonry Building Survives Strong Jolts During Seismic Tests

A one-story masonry structure survived two days of intense earthquake jolts after engineering researchers put it to the test.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Veterinary Oncologists Advance Cancer Drugs For Humans And Pets

As more pet owners are choosing to treat their pets' cancers through advanced medicine, veterinarians gain valuable knowledge about the progression and treatment of cancers in humans through pet trials of new drugs. To help organize nationwide trials in tumor-bearing dogs using cancer drugs.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 6:00 pm

Archaeologists Discover Temple That Sheds Light On So-called Dark Age

The discovery of a remarkably well-preserved monumental temple in Turkey -- thought to be constructed during the time of King Solomon in the 10th/9th-centuries BCE -- sheds light on the so-called Dark Age.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

New Species Of Lichen Named After President Barack Obama

A lichen expert has discovered a new species of lichen, and named it after President Obama. He discovered the new species while doing a survey for lichen diversity on Santa Rosa Island, Calif. He made the final collections of Caloplaca obamae during the suspenseful final weeks of President Obama's campaign for the United States presidency. He completed the final draft of his research paper on the day of President Obama's inauguration.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Alzheimer's Disease: Dispute About How The Disease Might Kill Brain Cells Resolved

For a decade, Alzheimer's disease researchers have been entrenched in debate about one of the mechanisms believed to be responsible for brain cell death and memory loss in the illness.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Gene Fusion Discovery May Lead To Improved Prostate Cancer Test

A newly discovered gene fusion is highly expressed in a subset of prostate cancers, according to a new study. The findings may lead to more accurate tests for prostate cancer. The gene fusion biomarker may also represent an entirely new mechanism that cancer cells use to outgrow their healthy neighbors.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

Plan to boost electric car sales

Motorists will be offered subsidies of up to £5,000 to encourage them to buy electric and hybrid cars under government plans.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Apr 2009 | 11:46 am

Here, little piggy

I lived with pigs, as a pig - and I still eat bacon
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Apr 2009 | 9:48 am

Governments fall out over nuclear

Battlelines have been drawn between the UK and Scottish governments over future energy provision and nuclear power.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Apr 2009 | 8:09 am

Pet trade puts orangutans at risk

The trade in orangutans, particularly babies, is taking the Sumatran species towards extinction, a report concludes.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Apr 2009 | 4:40 am

Scientists Spot Stroke Genes (HealthDay)

HealthDay - WEDNESDAY, April 15 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists have identified a chromosomal region that may contain two genetic variants responsible for an increased risk of ischemic stroke.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 3:48 am

Iranian scientists claim they have cloned a goat (AP)

AP - Iranian scientists have cloned a goat and plan future experiments they hope will lead to a treatment for stroke patients, the leader of the research said Wednesday. The female goat, named Hana, was born early Wednesday in the city of Isfahan in central Iran, said Dr. Mohammed Hossein Nasr e Isfahani, head of the Royan Research Institute.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 1:09 am

Group sues feds over endangered species protection (AP)

AP - An environmental group is suing the federal government, saying the Obama administration has failed to address a backlog of animals and plants that need to be considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Apr 2009 | 12:04 am

Egypt to search 3 sites for Cleopatra's tomb (AP)

AP - Archaeologists will begin excavating sites in Egypt next week in an attempt to solve a mystery that has stymied historians for hundreds of years: Where is the final resting place of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Antony?
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:42 pm

Bank chief 'wrong' about science

The head of Imperial College London says the Bank of England governor was wrong to caution against more science spending.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:39 pm

The stimulus of science

A robust British recovery depends on prioritising innovation. Starting with a budget boost next week

As the prime minister and chancellor contemplate the tricky budget arithmetic, they will no doubt be considering how to ensure that Britain comes through this recession in the strongest competitive condition. To ensure continuing prosperity in the global economy, nothing is more important than the development and application of knowledge and skills.

Whether or not there is a case for a further fiscal shot in the arm, there are powerful reasons for a budget boost for science. When the recession is over, we will need to compete in a restructured, unfamiliar economy. Peter Mandelson has emphasised that the UK cannot succeed as "the kind of place that made its global living setting up special investment vehicles and selling derivatives". Financial services will no doubt continue to be important, but everyone now accepts that we must focus more on innovating and making things the rest of the world wants to buy.

Manufacturing doesn't just mean building cars and metal-bashing, it includes making pharmaceuticals and hi-tech electronics. A crucial part of the process is the research and development that allows better and greener products to come to market. Britain has traditionally had a strong science and engineering base. Over the last decade the government has given welcome priority to sustaining it. But the payoff for research and development sometimes takes decades, rather than years. If we are to recoup our investment we mustn't slip backwards, or even stand still.

Only by investing in science and research now can we take advantage of the massive market prospects as the world develops new, more environmentally friendly ways of making a living. As the Guardian reports today, the government today will announce bold plans to introduce electric cars to Britain; the power industry is looking at how to capture and store excess carbon dioxide; and the UK is rich in wind, tide and wave power. Someone is going to make a lot of money out of these opportunities. We must make sure Britain's scientists and engineers have a competitive edge. Nothing would do more to attract the brightest and best young people into physical sciences than a proclaimed national aim to lead the quest for clean energy.

If Britain wants to preserve its competitive science base in the face of strong competition, we cannot just cross our fingers and hope current levels of investment will see us through. The places where most public research is conducted - our leading universities - are major national assets. They will only stay that way if they can continue to attract and retain outstanding academics, by offering adequate funding and the opportunity to explore the most exciting research questions.

We are second only to the US in terms of scientific output; on some measures - particularly in output relative to investment - we lead the world. One of President Obama's first acts was to give a massive boost to America's scientific community. The National Science Foundation will see a 50% increase in its budget. The department of energy's science programme will receive $2bn. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, summed up Obama's stimulus package as "science, science, science and science".

The Royal Society was founded 349 years ago as a vehicle to promote scientific inquiry and its application for the good of mankind. As we prepare to celebrate our 350th anniversary, it is as important as it has ever been for the UK to value the generation of new knowledge. In his budget, the chancellor has the opportunity to send a powerful signal that Britain intends to remain successful by staying at the cutting edge. He can't afford not to.

• Martin Rees is Royal Society president public.affairs@royalsociety.org

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Diagnosis: Fir on the lung

The annals of medical anomalies bulge with stories from far-flung places where the idea of a reliable source is a chap sitting on a gate in a goatskin fleece who waves to passersby, even if there are none. And so to the Urals, where medics are reported to have removed a tiny fir tree from a man's lung, after he complained of chest pains. Before doctors opened him up, they were convinced he had lung cancer. Now, they're convinced he inhaled a seed, which sprouted inside him.

Surgeon Vladimir Kamashev at Izhevsk hospital was about to remove a large part of 28-year-old Artyom Sidorkin's lung, when he took a closer look, according to reports. He was stunned to see a 5cm-long spruce inside, the Russian news agency Pravda says.

A spokeswoman for the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London, is flummoxed. "A seed might be able to germinate in the damp, dark conditions of a lung, but it's still bizarre," she says.

The gruesome photo released with the story claims to show the spruce jutting from a clump of Sidorkin's lung tissue. The plant looks firm and healthy, with bright green needles. It's as if it had been grown in the best soil with plenty of sunlight. It lacks roots in the way fresh clippings do.

Lungs are good at getting rid of unexpected visitors. They are lined with mucus that traps everything from mould spores to flies. This is pushed out of the lungs by tiny hairs called cilia. You end up coughing it out, or swallowing it.

"The closest I've heard to this are balls of mould that grow in patients who have abnormalities in their lungs," says Simon Johnson, a reader in respiratory medicine at Nottingham University. "They can get up to a few centimetres, but you would know because you would be coughing up blood."

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

DNA database: proven guilty

Four months have passed since the European court of human rights landed a unanimous and unusually pointed judgment damning the "blanket and indiscriminate" DNA database in England and Wales, which keeps genetic tabs not just on criminals but on anyone falling under police suspicion. Save for a vague promise to consult on possible changes in several months' time, ministers have said almost nothing about what they will do, still less taken serious action. It is even rumoured the spirit of the ruling will be circumvented - by taking innocent people off the system but holding on to saliva samples, so they can be put back on as convenience requires.

To worry about this is not to deny that genetic fingerprinting has been a huge advance. Contamination and other complexities make the degree of certainty less absolute than is sometimes supposed, but it has indisputably helped to catch the likes of the Ipswich murderer Steve Wright. The same science can help the innocent walk free - as when Sean Hodgson was released last month after serving 27 years for a murder he did not commit. Legal aid and other restrictions in such cases must be swept away. But the man who understands all this better than anyone - the technology's inventor, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys - told yesterday's Guardian that hoarding the DNA of the innocent was causing public support to wilt.

This is not some technophobic reaction that can be educated away. A system that draws no distinction between those convicted and acquitted in court creates entirely rational anxieties. Foremost among them is discrimination, since some ethnic groups are more likely to be apprehended by police. One thoughtful judge, Stephen Sedley, argues for a database covering every citizen, which would certainly be more defensible than the current system.

It would not, however, deal with Strasbourg's concern, namely the threat to privacy. The loss of every child benefit record in the country is only the most spectacular recent example of leakage from a supposedly secure database. Family relationships and medical conditions are private concerns which can be unravelled in the double helix, so the potential for abuse with genetic data is particularly grave.

No other country holds so many records, even though each has to deal with serious crime. As an absolute minimum the home secretary should swiftly follow Scotland's example and destroy the records of suspects of non-violent crimes; instead her immediate reaction has been to remove only the mere handful of young children who were on the system. Strasbourg has got the DNA database bang to rights. The convict must now mend its ways - and fast.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Twins raise risk of postnatal depression

Mental health issue is raised as Twins and Multiple Births Association releases survey results

Mothers of twins or triplets have almost twice the average risk of postnatal depression, a survey by the Twins and Multiple Births Association showed today.

It found that 17% of mothers who had a multiple birth experienced PND, compared with an average of 10% among all mothers. Another 18% of mothers of multiples were not sure if the feelings they had amounted to postnatal depression.

The association said a few of the women walked out on their babies but returned. Others felt alone and cried regularly. Some harmed themselves and others contemplated suicide.

The survey found that mothers who suffered PND reported less sleep and less help from family and friends than non-sufferers. They were more likely to have received poor quality antenatal care or to have developed pregnancy complications. Some of the mothers said health visitors promised to drop off leaflets about depression, but did not do so. Others said doctors advised that they could not be treated for depression while breastfeeding.

Maggie Couston, a clinical psychologist and mother of triplets, said: "The months after my triplets' birth should have been a joyful experience, but I felt exhausted and isolated. My babies were the most precious thing in the world to me, but I thought I wasn't good enough for them, and frequently thought of ending things or walking away."

Judi Linney, the association's president and a former midwife, health visitor and public health director, said: "Many families struggle because not all of the NHS is sufficiently informed and equipped to meet the challenges of multiple births and pregnancies. Simple steps like improving access to multiple-specific parent education and providing practical support during the early days would do much to promote the health and wellbeing of mothers and their babies, and we call on the government to ensure this happens."

According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, about one in 10 new mothers develop PND, which can include feelings of helplessness or being over-anxious about the baby. Without treatment, the condition can last for months or years.

It has been found that women are more likely to suffer if they have had depression before, do not have a supportive partner, have a premature or sick baby, or lost their mother when they were a child.

The association said its findings came from a survey of more than 1,000 mothers of twins or triplets.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

A breath of fresh air

Packaged foods have had a rough ride but new ozone technology is delivering a healthier approach

Ozone in a bag. That's the novel method being developed by the food process engineer Dr Kevin Keener, of Purdue University, Indiana, to eliminate harmful bacteria on packaged foods such as spinach, tomatoes, and whole fruit. But rather than use an ozone generator to pump it in, Keener creates the ozone inside the bags only after they are sealed.

The rising popularity of fresh, packaged foods, from mixed-herb salads to fruit has its health dangers. Supermarket suppliers may use water washes enhanced with chlorine or ozone to eliminate possible bacterial contamination before packaging. However, a quick rinse might not be enough to dislodge powerful pathogens such as E coli O157

Keener's idea of creating ozone inside food packaging came from his work with atmospheric, non-equilibrium plasmas (ANEP). Ionisation generates free electrons that react with gas molecules in the air to become reactive molecules such as ozone, which then attack bacteria. To form ozone, oxygen (O2) splits into single atoms that reform in threes as ozone (O3). But ANEP requires a special treatment chamber for containment.

The generation game

"I started thinking about what we could do to recreate ANEP without the costly chamber process," says Keener. "My question became: 'Can we place the generation method outside the container and, if so, what would be our limitations?'"

He turned to the Purdue University research engineer Paul Klockow for help and, using off-the-shelf components costing less than $1,000, built a demonstration device. The prototype generates a high voltage potential (12kV) between electrodes consisting of coils of wire wrapped around dielectric (insulator) plates.

The electrode plates are placed above and beneath a sealed food bag and, once the device is turned on, generate a room-temperature plasma field inside, partly ionising the air and producing ozone. While the outside of the package may increase slightly in temperature, the contents are unaffected by this.

Bacteria are normally killed by a combination of concentration and time so a quick ozonated rinse before bagging won't necessarily do the job. "In a standard food manufacturing process using ozone, wash water or ozonated rinses only contact fruit or vegetables for seconds to minutes. Thus limiting the total concentration-time effect," says Keener.

Those limits are now overcome as the ozone reverts to oxygen over many hours. "In our system, because we are doing it in-package, we can deliver a specific ozone concentration which natural decay processes will convert back to normal after a known time," says Keener.

The longer the gaseous ozone remains present, the more bacteria - such as E coli and salmonella - will be killed. To test their system, Keener and Klockow placed a deadly strain of E coli O157 on spinach leaves. Food safety experts talk of achieving a minimum "5-log" standard, which means reducing bacterial numbers by 100,000-fold - killing an impressive 99.999% of them.

Ozone-in-a-bag technology achieves that and more, and the only drawbacks, so far, are spinach leaf discolouration. "The power required for this process is less than 50W to treat a gallon-size container. It is very low power, indicating a very efficient generation process," adds Keener.

By the time the treated food reached the supermarket it would be free of harmful bacteria and the ozone in the sealed package would also be gone. Keener's current research is looking at how to limit any adverse quality effects, such as reduced shelf life, by adjusting parameters such as gas composition and relative humidity.

"We are still in the evaluation phase for a lot of food applications," says Keener, who has received enquiries from equipment manufacturers and international companies. "We have done treatment with tomatoes and saw little to no changes in the quality." However, when starting with oxygen rather than ordinary air, green spinach was bleached white - finding the right parameters for foods is important.

From lab to factory line

Gaseous ozone would also, Keener suggests, have an advantage over rinses in penetrating "nooks and crannies" in vegetables such as cauliflower or broccoli. "Can we generate [ozone] inside or have infiltration of the ozone molecules into those places to kill residual bacteria?"

Another step to overcome will be the move from the laboratory to the food packing line. "Our process can generate significant concentrations of ozone within seconds (>100 ppm) and should be adaptable to existing conveyor speeds. It only requires a specified voltage and plate configuration designed to a specific product-package combination," says Keener.

Ian Connerton, professor of food safety at the University of Nottingham, says there are difficulties in dislodging certain bacteria from fresh food such as salads. "Most of the treatment is washing in potable [drinking] water," says Connerton. "The problem is that bacteria can get inside the salad leaf or stuck on the salad leaf so hard you cannot remove them."

Dr Gilbert Shama at Loughborough University is a chemical engineer with research interests in microbial decontamination. He maintains plasmas in air create short-lived charged oxygen and nitrogen species. "Some of these may combine to produce ozone but it would be difficult to attribute any microbial inactivation observed to one particular compound when so many lethal chemical species are produced," says Shama. "The principle, though, is a good one." However, he believes vitamin content, appearance, and taste of treated food would have to remain unaltered: "Consumers will not buy a tomato that looks as if it has been bleached."

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:01 pm

Why Leaves Turn Red

Scientists have long wondered if the red color of fall leaves was more than just a sign of death.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Apr 2009 | 10:53 pm

Strange 1761 Atmospheric Phenomenon Explained (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Unusual atmospheric phenomena were recorded worldwide in 1761, unexplained at the time.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:37 pm

Market force

Trading carbon can curb warming - if leaders are brave
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Apr 2009 | 9:16 pm

PROMISES, PROMISES: Plug-in cars goal hard to hit (AP)

AP - President Barack Obama's campaign pledge to put 1 million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015 is fraught with difficulties, from technical and engineering hurdles to the realities of the economy and the price of gasoline.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Apr 2009 | 8:48 pm

Firefox Has a Sweet Tooth

This just in: Red pandas like candy!

That's the latest from a group of researchers at Philadelphia's Monell Chemical Senses Center. The team gave zoo animals a choice between plain water and water sweetened with either natural or artificial sugars as part of a study on the genetics of taste.

Ferrets, genets, meerkats, mongooses and lions shunned the artificial sugars. That was unsurprising — previous studies suggest that cats can't taste sweets at all, thanks to a defect in their taste bud genes. But red pandas shocked everyone by guzzling water sweetened with aspartame.

This makes the red panda (also called lesser panda, cat bear, or firefox, though it's actually most closely related to skunks and weasels) the first known non-primate to appreciate the sugar substitute.

Surprised scientists found no significant difference between the sweet receptors of animals that can and can't taste aspartame. But they did find that red pandas' sweet-tasting genes are different from all the other species tested, which might explain its weird fondness for NutraSweet. The research is in press in the Journal of Heredity.

The team suggests that this kind of research could help make better artificial sugars, making life sweeter for diabetics and dieters. But clearly the more pressing need is lollipops for baby pandas. (Warning: potentially dangerous levels of cute!)

Need more red panda? Continue reading this post, or the Red River Zoo in Fargo, North Dakota has a red panda blog.

See Also:

• Top 10 Amazing Animal Videos
• Top 10 Incredible Animal Videos: Readers' Choice
• Top 10 Wired.com Animal Photos, Decided by Us
• Penis Jousting and 7 Other Great Animal Mating Rituals
• Clever Critters: 8 Best Non-Human Tool Users

Image 1: Flickr/ digitalART2 Image 2: Flickr/Taylor_Dundee

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Apr 2009 | 8:43 pm

Spam's Carbon Footprint (The E-mail Not the Meat)

Spam e-mails require energy that spews carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Apr 2009 | 8:32 pm

Spam Clutters Environment, Not Just Inboxes

 

Ever wondered about the environmental impact of all those off-brand erectile enhancer pitches and money transfer offers from African ex-royalty? Wonder no longer.

According to a report published by computer antivirus and spam filter seller McAfee, the annual sending, receiving and hand-deleting of 62 trillion email spams consumes 33 terawatt hours of energy every year. Producing that energy emits about 20 million tons of greenhouse gases.

In the translational shorthand of environmentalism, that's enough juice to power Chicago for two years, and the greenhouse equivalent of driving 1.6 million cars around the Earth.

The findings have met with a mixed reception. The report "strikes me as reminiscent of those insipid lost-productivity studies that blame the global recession on March Madness office pools," wrote Paul McNamara at Network World. "I'm just not ready to translate every human endeavor into an environmental forum."

Though nobody likes having every last decision turned into a morality play, there's nothing good about spam. March Madness pools at least make office life a bit more fun. Spam, on the other hand, is entirely worthless, and it accounts for between 85 and 97 percent of all email activity. And though worrying about spam's environmental impact is a bit like complaining about the Titanic's deck chairs, it's still worth fixing. Eradicating spam might not save the polar ice cap, but the world would be a bit cleaner without it.

Naturally, McAfee didn't commission the report out of charity. They say more than half of spam's carbon footprint is produced during its end-stage, when users scroll through messages and delete the junk. That's exactly where their product offerings fit. The report claims that spam filtering reduces end-stage energy consumption by nearly 75 percent.

But that confluence of interest doesn't necessarily invalidate the findings. My own spam filter — which is not, for the record, a McAfee product — has already plucked 22 messages out of my email stream today, and saved me the trouble of deleting them manually.

"It's not just a nuisance, it's not just clogging your inbox. It has a quantifiable environmental impact," said McAfee researcher Dave Marcus. "This is a different way of looking at something people can take control of."

See Also:

• Fight Spam and Preserve Ancient Books, All At Once
• Googling Is Not the (Environmental) Problem
• Google Smart Meter App Not Ready for Finals

Image: Brandon Keim

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Apr 2009 | 7:28 pm

Dig may reveal tomb of doomed lovers Anthony and Cleopatra

Archaeologists are to search three sites in Egypt that they say may contain the tomb of doomed lovers Anthony and Cleopatra.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Apr 2009 | 6:47 pm

Horse stem-cell technique to be tested in people

LONDON (Reuters) - A stem-cell repair technique that has already been used to fix hundreds of injured race horses is to be tested for the first time in people with damaged Achilles tendons.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Apr 2009 | 5:53 pm

Digital Paleontology Reveals Dinosaur Details (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - The pick and shovel can go only so far in digging up details about dinosaurs. Now supercomputers are revealing knowledge about their anatomy otherwise lost to history. Although some lucky paleontologists manage to reconstruct the complete skeletons of extinct creatures, there remains much about their anatomy that remains a mystery. For instance, while features of bones can tell one where muscles were attached, they do not tell you how long these muscles were. This can lead to startling differences in the pictures that artists draw of how the animals looked in life. ...
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Apr 2009 | 5:21 pm

Search for Anthony and Cleopatra's Tombs Begins

Excavation will begin in Egypt to find the tombs of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Apr 2009 | 5:00 pm

Greenhouse Designed to Grow Veggies on Moon

A lunar greenhouse is in the works so astronauts may someday dine on fresh vegetables.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Apr 2009 | 4:50 pm

Switching Tower Lights Could Save Birds

Changing some light bulbs could prevent more than half of migratory bird deaths.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Apr 2009 | 3:50 pm

Apples' autumn colour change clue

Domesticated apple trees' green leaves have re-ignited the debate surrounding autumn leaf colour change.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Apr 2009 | 3:47 pm

In pictures

Inside Star City, Russia's school for cosmonauts
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Apr 2009 | 3:45 pm

Colbert lost in space when NASA names station node

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NASA on Tuesday named its new living quarters on the International Space Station "Tranquillity," denying television comedian Stephen Colbert his attempt to get the new Node 3 named after himself.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Apr 2009 | 3:34 pm

Space Station Treadmill Named After Comedian

Stephen Colbert didn't get a module named after him but settled for a treadmill.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Apr 2009 | 3:00 pm

All Octopuses Are Venomous

Contrary to what was known, all octopuses are venomous.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Apr 2009 | 2:47 pm

Digital Paleontology Reveals Dinosaur Details

Supercomputers are now helping unearth details about dinosaurs that picks and shovels alone cannot.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Apr 2009 | 2:21 pm

Asexual Ants Give up on Males

A species of ants has completely ended its sex life and produces only females.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Apr 2009 | 2:00 pm

African lark soon to be extinct

The Sidamo lark could soon be the first bird on mainland Africa to die out since modern records began, a survey shows.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Apr 2009 | 1:45 pm

Big Test Looms for NASA’s New Rocket

The pieces are starting to assemble for the first test flight of NASA’s new rocket, Ares 1, scheduled to lift off this summer.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Apr 2009 | 1:43 pm

Why Dead Authors Can Thrill Modern Readers

Classic stories may appeal to an evolved social sensibility and help promote cooperative behavior.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Apr 2009 | 1:37 pm

House Panel Raises Conflict of Interest Concern at NASA (CQPolitics.com)

CQPolitics.com - The House Science Committee is taking aim at NASA over a recent contract award that its chairman says wasn't scrutinized enough for possible conflicts of interest.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Apr 2009 | 1:28 pm

Strange 1761 Atmospheric Phenomenon Explained

Unusual atmospheric phenomena were recorded worldwide in 1761, unexplained at the time.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Apr 2009 | 1:09 pm

Honeybees Don't Fall for Cheap Perfume

Honeybees consistently hone in on flowers that produce the best nectar.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Apr 2009 | 1:00 pm

North America's First Compostable Hot Cup Lid Released

You can now breathe a sigh of relief when you reach for that hot cup lid for your morning coffee.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Apr 2009 | 12:55 pm

Sports Drinks Might Work Even If Spat Out

They might help even if you spit them out.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Apr 2009 | 12:43 pm

Meet your cousin, the garden snail

A gene shared by birds, fish, reptiles, people – and snails – reveals the fundamental relatedness of all living creatures

In this, my inaugural column, I face a bit of a problem: I was heavily promoted by the editor when he introduced the Guardian's new online science columnists, and so I feel the need for a particularly dramatic and exciting subject. Fortunately, some recent science news provided me with one, courtesy of a paper by Grande and Patel in Nature:

Snails have nodal!

I know, you're positively floored. Amazing! Enthralling! Say no more; the implications are simply awesome.

Then I bounced the idea off my wife, who is usually more down-to-earth than I am, and she seemed to think I needed to provide a tiny bit more exposition, so I will oblige … but trust me, this is wonderfully interesting news.

Look at yourself in the mirror. You're probably mostly symmetrical: one eye and one ear on each side of your head, features that are at least roughly even, and any lopsidedness is most likely due to postnatal wear and tear.

Deep inside you, though, you are profoundly asymmetrical, and that asymmetry is essential for your well-being. The speech centres of your brain are mostly on the left side, the left side of your heart is larger and more muscular than the right, your stomach coils to the right and the bulk of your liver is on the left, and your large intestine loops just so, with your appendix on the right. With a few medically interesting exceptions, we all have guts consistently skewed in a particular orientation.

This asymmetry is established in the embryo. Beating microscopic hairs called cilia set up counter-clockwise currents that deflect sensors on the left side, which then switch on specific genes (one called nodal, in particular) on just the left side, which in turn activate other genes that bias the formation of organs to one side or the other.

Nodal acts as a little flag thrown up early in development to tell cells whether they are on the left or right side. Nodal also seems to be a universal signal in animals with backbones, the familiar fish, reptiles, birds and mammals, and is used in similar ways in all of those animals.

It was not, until now, found in animals such as molluscs and insects and nematodes, suggesting that perhaps they used a very different mechanism … an idea that we now have to rethink.

Look at a familiar garden snail. Snails are obviously asymmetrical — you don't even need to dissect them to see that. They have a coiled shell on their backs that, in some species, has a left-handed twist, while in other species it makes a right-handed spiral. What genetic mechanisms do these animals use to produce a consistent asymmetry?

This is the surprise: they use the same molecule we do, a copy of nodal. Snail nodal is expressed asymmetrically in the embryo and is crucial for generating adult asymmetries as well.

Doping snail embryos with a chemical that blocks the action of nodal prevents the formation of a coiled shell, yielding strange embryonic snails with perfectly straight, cone-shaped shells.

Obviously, our gene is not exactly the same as theirs — the snail gene has differences in sequence, and is activated on the right side instead of the left, and uses a different trigger than currents from beating hairs.

But it's still an astonishing similarity: a common gene that takes action in some of the earliest stages of development. And it works in animals as far apart in evolution as a snail and a human.

A single gene is a small thing, but it is yet another piece in the growing body of data that reveals the fundamental relatedness of all living creatures.

A snail is a strange-looking beast, at least to us, but right down at the core of its biology it is built with the same toolbox of genes that we use, and we share a common ancestry with it. A very distant ancestry, for sure — our last common ancestor lived over 600,000,000 years ago — but it should at least give you pause as you're exterminating the little pests in your garden this summer.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 15 Apr 2009 | 12:25 pm

Statins cut stroke risk by a fifth, study finds

LONDON (Reuters) - Cholesterol-lowering drugs cut the risk of strokes by about a fifth, according to a pooled analysis of 24 past clinical studies involving 165,000 people.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:53 am

Colbert, we have a problem

Nasa has announced it won't name a new room on the International Space Station after Stephen Colbert, despite the comedian winning the popular vote

Perhaps it was never going to happen. When Nasa invited the public to send in names for its new module on the International Space Station, they had no idea the presenter of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" would storm the vote.

Stephen Colbert urged viewers to write in to Nasa and suggest they name Node 3 after him. And they did in their thousands. Colbert received more than 230,000 votes out of a total of more than a million, Nasa said.

The vote appeared to leave Nasa in a bit of a fix, but of course this was a publicity exercise and nothing more. Nasa always said it retained the right to choose any name it liked. The extra attention was a gift.

It still left Nasa with some delicate manoeuvring to do. The agency said it liked the name Serenity. Others suggested naming the toilet after Colbert. Astronauts, apparently, said they didn't really care what the new room was called.

Last night, Nasa astronaut Sunita Williams appeared on Colbert's show to make the long-awaited announcement. Colbert's dreams of being immortalised in an orbiting tin can were dashed. Nasa has gone for the name that came eighth in the vote: Tranquility. How very Apollo.

Colbert doesn't go home empty-handed though. If Nasa has wags, then they have come up with a consolation prize of sorts. They have named a treadmill after Colbert. They have even invited him to Houston to try out the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT).

"We don't typically name US space station hardware after living people and this is no exception," Bill Gerstenmaier, Nasa's associate administrator for space operations, said. "We have invited Stephen to Florida for the launch of COLBERT and to Houston to try out a version of the treadmill that astronauts train on."

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 15 Apr 2009 | 11:04 am