Oxytocin: Love Potion #1? Human Hormone Increases Positive Communication Between Couples

Relationships are difficult and most of us probably think at some point that communicating positively with our partner when discussing stressful issues, like home finances, is an impossible task.  What if there was a safe way to take the “edge” off these discussions?  The biology of human social relationships is just beginning to emerge as groundbreaking research on social cognition conducted in animals is now informing research in humans. 
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

Missing Planets Attest To Destructive Power Of Stars' Tides

Astronomers have found hundreds of extrasolar planets in the last two decades, and new research indicates they might have found even more except for one thing -- some planets have fallen into their stars and simply no longer exist.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

Anti-aging Cosmetic Reduced Wrinkles In Clinical Trial

Scientists testing a cosmetic anti-aging product sold commercially have shown it can clinically reduce wrinkles and improve the appearance of skin damaged by everyday exposure to sunlight.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

How Mercury Emissions Reach Tuna And Other Seafood, And Why Mercury Contamination Is Likely To Worsen

A new study documents for the first time the process in which increased mercury emissions from human sources across the globe, and in particular from Asia, make their way into the North Pacific Ocean and as a result contaminate tuna and other seafood. Because much of the mercury that enters the North Pacific comes from the atmosphere, scientists have predicted an additional 50 percent increase in mercury in the Pacific by 2050 if mercury emission rates continue as projected.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

Chemical Found In Medical Devices Impairs Heart Function

A chemical commonly used in the production of such medical plastic devices as intravenous bags and catheters can impair heart function in rats.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

Flu Vaccine Given In Microneedle Skin Patches Proves Effective In Mice

Flu vaccine delivered through skin patches containing microneedles has proven just as effective at preventing influenza in mice as intramuscular, hypodermic flu immunization. A team of researchers believes the new microneedle skin patch method of delivering flu vaccine could improve overall seasonal vaccination coverage in people because of decreased pain, increased convenience, lower cost and simpler logistics over conventional hypodermic immunization.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

Novel Role Of Protein In Generating Amyloid-beta Peptide

A defining hallmark of Alzheimer's disease is the accumulation of the amyloid-beta protein, otherwise known as "senile plaques," in the brain's cortex and hippocampus, where memory consolidation occurs. Researchers have identified a novel protein which, when over-expressed, leads to a dramatic increase in the generation of the amyloid-beta protein.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Single Gene Defect Can Cause Stroke, Other Artery Diseases

For the first time, scientists have discovered a single gene defect that causes thoracic aortic aneurysms and dissections as well as early onset coronary artery disease, ischemic stroke and Moyamoya disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Magnesium Detected In MESSENGER Flyby Of Mercury

NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft served up another curveball after a second flyby of the hot inner planet Oct. 6 detected magnesium -- an element created inside exploding stars and which is found in many medicine cabinets on Earth -- clumped in the tenuous atmosphere of the planet.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Dietary Fats Trigger Long-term Memory Formation

Having strong memories of that rich, delicious dessert you ate last night? If so, you shouldn't feel like a glutton. It's only natural. This study points to new approaches for treating obesity and eating disorders.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Lung cancer risk higher for women smokers

Women who smoke are more likely than male smokers to develop lung cancer, research suggests. It also finds that female smokers are more likely to be diagnosed with the disease at an earlier age and have a greater risk of getting adenocarcinoma, a common form of lung cancer. The findings are significant because those studied had smoked far less than men over their lifetimes.

"Our findings suggest women may have an increased susceptibility to tobacco carcinogens. They are alarming because they show that women, despite smoking less than men, get lung cancer at an earlier age," said Dr Martin Frueh, a medical oncologist, who led the study of 683 lung cancer patients in St Gallen, Switzerland. The researchers also found that female non-smokers were more likely to develop the disease than their male counterparts.

Lung cancer is the UK's most lethal cancer. Every year 38,000 people - 22,000 men and 16,000 women - are diagnosed with it, and 34,000 die. In the 1950s six times more men than women developed lung cancer. But the ratio is now seven to five, reflecting changes in smoking behaviour.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 2 May 2009 | 11:01 pm

Let's send Britons back to the wild places

We live in a golden age of discovery. While the great explorers - Livingstone and Stanley, Burton and Speke, Shackleton and Scott - filled in blanks on a map, it is we who now learn how the world works and our effect on it. We not only discover new species of fauna and flora, but how they respond to changing climate and human interference. Such discoveries are crucial to the future of this threatened planet.

The Royal Geographical Society, of which I was director from 1975 to 1996, is in the grip of an acrimonious debate about how best to deliver this research. Since it was founded in 1830, it has sent out expeditions, while also supporting, through grants, the expeditions of others. While funding for the latter continues, the RGS's own research projects have been halted.

The RGS's council feels it is achieving enough by giving larger grants to six of the external projects it considers important. Many, mostly younger fellows, feel this is not good enough: to maintain the spirit of its royal charter, the society should promote its own discoveries. They have forced a ballot on this and the result will be announced in the middle of May.

They have a point. In the postwar decades, the RGS organised 18 of its own projects, many bringing together researchers in geography, botany, zoology, entomology, ecology and many other -ologies. They varied in terrain (initially polar regions, but when that became too expensive, temperate deserts, rainforests, mountains or savannahs) and in size, duration and objectives. Eleven of these were organised during my 21 years. I led one (in the Amazon), chaired another (in Jordan) and was involved to some extent in all the others. The 12-year programme in eastern Jordan was to help the Bedouin.

These projects yielded a mass of scientific research. They attracted top scientists, both from Britain and the host countries, and helped - in some cases transformed - careers. This great British society did all the logistics and paperwork so that scientists could immediately get down to work.

So many people wanted to join the project I led in Brazilian Amazonia that, during its 15-month main phase, it involved 150 senior researchers with 50 technical assistants, sometimes working in unexplored rainforests, producing seven books, more than 100 papers and introducing some 200 species new to science. The greater understanding of how those ecosystems function is still being used in the crucial effort to combat forest destruction.

We were in a beautiful part of the Amazon with breathtaking biodiversity. Although we had so many people working in tough terrain, there were remarkably few mishaps. One man was bitten by piranhas but made it back to the camp before an artery burst; a herpetologist was bitten by one of his deadly snakes, but our nurse saved him; I slipped off some rapids and was swept down river and, much more seriously, the camp occasionally ran out of beer.

And this was all great value for money. Because the research aims were of high quality, every RGS project covered its costs with targeted grants from research councils, grant-giving foundations and industry. The director and staff involved in expeditions had to work hard, but we enjoyed this because of the benefit to science, the environment, the society and because mounting expeditions is an exciting challenge.

One reason why these projects were so successful was that most were in response to invitations by the host countries, who met most of the cost. We established enduring links, with many of the researchers we worked with now scientific leaders in their countries.

In a recent speech, Professor Jacqueline McGlade, director of the European Environment Agency, said how critically its work and decisions depend on a flow of good research data. She repeatedly praised the charity Earthwatch for delivering this.

So I find it very sad that the RGS, with its great reputation and tradition, is not sending research teams overseas at this time of huge environmental uncertainty. Therefore I shall be voting for the RGS to set out once again.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 2 May 2009 | 11:01 pm

BLM to get $300 million for stimulus projects (AP)

AP - The Interior Department is sending more than $300 million in federal stimulus money to the Bureau of Land Management to update its facilities and jump-start renewable energy projects across the country, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Saturday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 May 2009 | 10:38 pm

Old Age More Miserable for Women (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Women live longer than men, on average, but its no secret that age takes its toll.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 May 2009 | 6:08 pm

Trial by fire: New antibody method gets big test

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Researchers in two U.S. laboratories are preparing for the arrival of blood samples from Mexican flu victims to make a serum that might offer some protection from a dangerous new flu virus.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 2 May 2009 | 3:36 pm

Sri Lanka rejects evidence of civilian bombings (AFP)

AFP - Sri Lanka's defence ministry on Saturday rejected satellite imagery issued by the United Nations in support of allegations that security forces shelled a civilian area.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 May 2009 | 9:26 am

Dawkins is more persuasive when he's not god-bashing

His reasoned arguments for the power of natural selection carry more weight than his anti-religious diatribes

It goes without saying that Richard Dawkins has a talent for causing offence to people of a religious persuasion. I'm sure he believes this offence is justified by the noble cause of rooting out dangerous superstition, but a recent comment he left on his own blog RichardDawkins.net, beneath a piece by Jerry Coyne, suggests he is about to take his campaign to a whole new level:

I suspect that most of our regular readers here would agree that ridicule, of a humorous nature, is likely to be more effective than the sort of snuggling-up and head-patting that Jerry is attacking. I lately started to think that we need to go further: go beyond humorous ridicule, sharpen our barbs to a point where they really hurt ... I think we should probably abandon the irremediably religious precisely because that is what they are – irremediable. I am more interested in the fence-sitters who haven't really considered the question very long or very carefully. And I think that they are likely to be swayed by a display of naked contempt. Nobody likes to be laughed at. Nobody wants to be the butt of contempt.

As someone who sat on this very fence for many years, I think contempt probably would have pushed me in the other direction – into the arms of the irredemiably religious. Nothing reinforces tribal identity like the contempt of your rivals. Ask a Glasgow Rangers supporter – or a Celtic supporter for that matter.

It's a shame Dawkins has such a gift for insulting the people he's trying to convert, because he also has an extraordinary gift for lucid argument. This came into full play in his Open University Annual Lecture in March at the Natural History Museum in London, which can now be watched in full on the university's website.

In the lecture he argues that Charles Darwin was the most revolutionary scientist ever. It wasn't that he revolutionised the practice of science, to the extent that Newton and Einstein have, but he utterly revolutionised the world outside science. His was the most seditious idea of all.

Before Darwin the only known alternative to the possibility that there had been an intelligent designer behind the wonders of nature was random chance, which was no alternative at all.

It wasn't even that the concept of natural selection was original when Darwin put his thoughts to paper. A Scottish landowner and fruit farmer Patrick Matthew had written a book in 1831 on Naval Timber and Arboriculture. In an appendix, Matthew recognised that the principles of artificial selection could also apply to natural selection and speculated that "the progeny of the same parents under great differences of circumstance might in several generations even become distinct species incapable of co-reproduction."

But it was Darwin not Matthew who recognised the power of this revelation, says Dawkins.

Matthew's response would seem to have been the Victorian equivalent of big deal, so what else is new. Is this the response of a man who seven years before Darwin and twenty-seven before Wallace found himself in possession of the central unifying idea that dominates all biology and explains everything about life?

When he's not god-bashing, Richard Dawkins can be very persuasive.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 2 May 2009 | 8:51 am