Why Eczema Often Leads To Asthma

Many children who get a severe skin rash develop asthma months or years later. Doctors call the progression from eczema to breathing problems the atopic march. Now scientists have uncovered what might be the key to atopic march. They've shown that a substance secreted by damaged skin circulates through the body and triggers asthmatic symptoms in allergen-exposed laboratory mice.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Drug Deliver With Nanotechnology: Capsules Encapsulated

When cells cannot carry out the tasks required of them by our bodies, the result is disease. Nanobiotechnology researchers are looking for ways to allow synthetic systems take over simple cellular activities when they are absent from the cell. This requires transport systems that can encapsulate medications and other substances and release them in a controlled fashion at the right moment. Scientists have now developed a microcontainer that can hold thousands of individual "carrier units" -- a "capsosome" as a new approach to drug delivery.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Microscopic Manufacturers Produce Eco-friendly Plastics

Last year's energy crisis highlighted an unforeseen by-product of the looming fuel shortages of the 21st century. Petroleum-based products such as plastics that society takes for granted but now requires to function will run out with the oil. Scientists are looking to microorganisms to pick up the slack and help produce environmentally friendly plastics, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Climate Change Odds Much Worse Than Thought

The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago -- and could be even worse than that. The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Of Body And Mind, And Deep Meditation

Chinese researchers have unlocked the mechanism of an emerging mind-body technique that produces measurable changes in attention and stress reduction in just five days of practice.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

How Crabs That Live In Hydrothermal Vents Reproduce

New observations of the reproductive biology of crabs living around hydrothermal vents help explain their distribution and provide clues about the selection pressures prevalent in these hostile environments.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Shuttle crew rests up ahead of return to Earth (AFP)

AFP - Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis took some rest time Wednesday ahead of their return to Earth later in the week following a successful mission to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 May 2009 | 1:39 pm

Magnets in Ant Antennae Work as Internal GPS

Tiny magnets found in ant antennae may explain the insects' sense of direction.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 20 May 2009 | 1:10 pm

Honeybee Decline Slows Slightly

The mysterious decline of honeybee colonies has slowed slightly since last fall.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 20 May 2009 | 1:00 pm

Road test

Washington embarks on the route to cleaner air
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 May 2009 | 12:21 pm

River Delta Areas Can Provide Clue To Environmental Changes

Sediments released by many of the world's largest river deltas to the global oceans have been changed drastically in the last 50 years, largely as a result of human activity.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 May 2009 | 12:00 pm

New Way Of Treating The Flu

What happens if the next big influenza mutation proves resistant to the available anti-viral drugs? This question is presenting itself right now to scientists and health officials this week at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, as they continue to do battle with H1N1, the so-called swine flu, and prepare for the next iteration of the ever-changing flu virus. Now promising new research could provide an entirely new tool to combat the flu.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 May 2009 | 12:00 pm

Trace Elements Unbalanced In Dialysis Patients

Abnormal levels of trace elements may explain dialysis morbidity. A systematic review has shown that, compared to healthy controls, dialysis patients have significantly different blood concentrations of trace elements.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 May 2009 | 12:00 pm

Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have Three Times Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu, Study Suggests

The inactivated flu vaccine does not appear to be effective in preventing influenza-related hospitalizations in children, especially the ones with asthma. In fact, children who get the flu vaccine are more at risk for hospitalization than their peers who do not get the vaccine, according to new research. While these findings do raise questions about the efficacy of the vaccine, they do not in fact implicate it as a cause of hospitalizations, according to researchers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 May 2009 | 12:00 pm

Largest wind farm to be expanded

Europe's largest onshore wind farm is to be expanded further, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond announces.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 May 2009 | 11:29 am

Europe unveils British astronaut

Timothy Peake, a 37-year-old test pilot, is announced as Britain's first official astronaut.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 May 2009 | 11:27 am

Army test pilot will be Britain's first official astronaut

Six newly trained European astronauts could be among the first to walk on the moon since the end of the Apollo missions in 1972

A 37-year-old helicopter pilot has joined the European Space Agency as Britain's first official astronaut.

Timothy Peake, from Salisbury in Wiltshire, is one of six new recruits to join the space agency's ageing astronaut corps and was chosen from more than 8,000 applicants after a gruelling year-long selection procedure.

The appointment was announced at a special ceremony at the space agency's headquarters in Paris today and is unusual because Britain has a long-standing policy of refusing to fund human spaceflight.

Although Britain is the fourth largest contributor to Esa, its £200m annual donation is used exclusively for satellites and robotic missions.

Major Peake was a helicopter pilot with the Army Air Corps for 18 years, after which he joined the aircraft company Augusta Westland as a test pilot. He has clocked up 3000 hours of flying in more than 30 aircraft.

The final list of astronauts was reached after the Esa director general, Jean-Jacques Dordain, conducted in-depth interviews with 30 candidates over the past two weeks.

"These new astronauts will become, step by step, the representatives of Europe in space," said Dordain as he announced the six new recruits at a press conference this morning.

The recruits will begin 18 months of intensive training in September, when they will learn to work on the International Space Station and to fly aboard Russia's Soyuz rocket, which from next year will be the only means of transporting astronauts to and from the orbiting outpost. The next stage of training will ready them for specific missions.

None of the new recruits will train for missions aboard Nasa's space shuttle, which is due to be retired from service at at the end of 2010.

The astronauts could be among the first to walk on the moon since the end of the Apollo missions in 1972.

Esa's decision to select a British astronaut will put pressure on the government to contribute to the agency's human space programme, or bolster its support in other areas.

Mr Dordain said: "When we have top candidates, even when they are Brits, we cannot refuse a good one. It's clear that I hope that this will stimulate the British government, because with such a good guy, how can they continue to not contribute."

In 1991, Helen Sharman became the first Briton to go into orbit, in a one-off deal between the government and the Russian space agency. The chemist from Mars - the confectionery company - visited the Mir space station, which a decade later plunged into the South Pacific Ocean after being intentionally de-orbited in 2001.

Other British-born people have visited space after gaining US citizenship and joining Nasa's astronaut corps, or by paying the Russian space agency to fly as a tourist. The three serving Nasa astronauts born in Britain are Piers Sellers, Nick Patrick and Michael Foale.

The recruitment campaign will introduce much-needed fresh blood into Europe's astronaut corps, whose average age is around 50 years old. The eight existing astronauts are all men and come from France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands.

The new recruits may have a long wait before they are assigned to their first space mission. When the space shuttle is decommissioned next year, Esa will be competing with Nasa for seats aboard the Russian Soyuz rocket.

Esa does not yet have its own means of ferrying astronauts into space, but it is investigating the possibility of making its existing Ariane rocket safe enough to carry astronauts.

The five other astronauts are Samantha Cristoforetti from Italy, Alexander Guest from Germany, Andreas Mogensen, a Danish scientist working at the University of Surrey, Luca Parmitano from Italy, and a Frenchman, Thomas Pesquet.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 20 May 2009 | 11:27 am

Obama moves to curb car emissions

President Barack Obama unveils plans to make vehicles more fuel efficient, to cut US oil use and set the first national standards.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 May 2009 | 10:28 am

Ancient clay has internal clock

A new, accurate way of dating ancient ceramics is found, using water to unlock their "internal clocks".
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 May 2009 | 10:19 am

Kestrels for pest kills: birds replace pesticides in Israel

Farmers in the Middle East are encouraging owls and kestrels as an alternative to chemical pesticides
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 May 2009 | 9:36 am

Astronauts Take Time Off After Fixing Hubble (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - HOUSTON - After a tough week fixing up the Hubble Space Telescope, it's time for a break for the seven astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 May 2009 | 9:30 am

The Nation's Weather (AP)

AP - The Florida Peninsula was expected to continue receiving excessive rainfall on Wednesday from a slowly moving low-pressure system.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 May 2009 | 9:26 am

Atlantis astronauts who fixed Hubble earn day off (AP)

AP - After five grueling spacewalks to fix the Hubble Space Telescope, the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis gets a day off.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 May 2009 | 7:49 am

Obama unveils 'historic' car efficiency standards (AFP)

AFP - President Barack Obama has unveiled "historic" efficiency and greenhouse gas standards for US cars, forging a rare moment of unity between auto firms and environmentalists on climate change.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 May 2009 | 6:17 am

Early skeleton sheds light on primate evolution (AP)

AP - The nearly complete and remarkably preserved skeleton of a small, 47 million-year-old creature found in Germany was displayed Tuesday by scientists who said it would help illuminate the evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes and humans.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 May 2009 | 5:40 am

The Extreme Mammal Hall of Fame

The biggest (and smallest) and baddest (and cutest) mammals went on display Saturday in the new “Extreme Mammals” exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

Stretching across the globe and back 70 million years, the exhibit provides an exciting overview of the diversity of the sweaty, hairy, nursing class of animals to which humans belong.

If you’re in D.C., you can catch the exhibit through January 3, 2010. Or you can check out some of the specimens in this photo gallery of extreme mammals.

The image above is Indricotherium, the largest land mammal ever discovered. An adult could weigh 20 tons, more than a family of African elephants. It lived in the forests of central Asia about 30 million years ago, but died out as those forests turned into grassland. As you might surmise, its closest living relative is the rhinoceros. (Photo credit: D. Finnin/American Museum of Natural History.)

The Proboscis monkey (Nasalis gerardis) is nature’s Pinnocchio. A male’s nose can grow to 7 inches long. This extended sniffer is believed to attract the lady monkeys. (Credit: AMNH/ D. Finnin)

Petaurus breviceps). While the other exhibits feature models, six real, live sugar gliders will be on display. These tiny marsupials can jump for extended distances by using their skin like a parachute. (Credit: AMNH/ D. Finnin.)

Spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus). Spectacled bears weigh less than a pound when they are born, but grow into 300-pound adults. They also have pretty faces.”

Tasmanian devil skeleton (Sarcophilus harrisii) You knew that Tasmanian devils were among the more badass mammals on name alone, but it turns out they have the strongest bite-force of any mammal under a foot tall. (Credit: AMNH/R. Mickens)

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 20 May 2009 | 4:00 am

Stem Cell Study Offers Hope for Targeting Tumors (HealthDay)

HealthDay - TUESDAY, May 19 (HealthDay News) -- Genetically engineered adult stem cells, armed with a cancer-killing protein, have proven successful at targeting several types of tumors while sparing healthy cells, new research has found.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 May 2009 | 3:48 am

Brazil floods leave 45 dead, 378,000 homeless (AFP)

AFP - Severe flooding over the last month brought on by torrential rains has killed 45 people across northern Brazil and forced some 378,000 others to evacuate their homes, mainly to emergency shelters, officials said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 May 2009 | 3:39 am

EPA finds suspect materials in foreign drywall (AP)

AP - The Environmental Protection Agency has found sulfur and other materials in a small sampling of Chinese-made drywall, which some officials and residents blame for sickening fumes and corroding metal in homes in several states.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 May 2009 | 2:09 am

Astronauts release Hubble telescope back into space

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Rejuvenated by hours of repairs in space, the Hubble Space Telescope floated out of shuttle Atlantis' cargo bay on Tuesday to reclaim its place as the world's flagship observatory for astronomical research.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 20 May 2009 | 1:36 am

Survey finds slower decline of honeybee colonies (AP)

AP - The decline of honeybee colonies has slowed slightly since last fall, but a mysterious combination of ailments is still decimating the insect's population, federal researchers say.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 May 2009 | 11:42 pm

Warm and fuzzy feelings all in the brain: study

LONDON (Reuters) - The same part of the brain that makes us crave food and sex may also help determine whether somebody is a warm and sentimental "people" person, researchers said on Wednesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 May 2009 | 11:26 pm

Scientists debunk "Angels and Demons" antimatter

CHICAGO (Reuters) - "Angels and Demons," the recently released film version of the Dan Brown thriller, focuses on a plot to destroy the Vatican using a small amount antimatter pilfered from the European particle physics laboratory CERN, the world's largest particle accelerator.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 May 2009 | 11:17 pm

Some People Never Forget a Face

The ability can prove to be socially awkward.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 May 2009 | 11:12 pm

Brain scans can identify the most sociable people

People who value the company of others most have denser grey matter in two brain areas

It could be a taste of the future for job interviews and the beginning of the end for curmudgeonly work colleagues.

Scientists at Cambridge University have used medical scanners to pinpoint brain features that identify someone as being a likeable "people person" or a wallflower.

The scans revealed that people who most value the company of others have, on average, more dense grey matter in two areas of the brain known as the orbitofrontal cortex and the ventral striatum.

These brain regions are involved in what scientists call "reward circuits" for some of our most basic pleasures, such as sweet food and sex.

Graham Murray, a psychiatrist who led the study, said the findings may provide clues to how humans came to be sociable beings. The brain may first have evolved to give us pleasurable sensations from eating and reproducing, and later developed to incoporate more complex behaviours, such as interacting with other people, he said.

By unravelling the neural basis of sociability, scientists hope to learn more about medical conditions such as autism and schizophrenia, which can have a devastating effect on people's ability to interact with others.

Murray's team asked 41 men to respond to more than 140 statements about themselves, rating how much they agreed or disagreed with each. They included around 20 statements that focused on sociability, such as "I like to please people as much as I can", and "I make a warm personal connection with people".

MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans of the men's brains revealed a strong link between those who valued social bonds with others and the density of grey matter in the two brain regions.

Murray, whose study appears in the European Journal of Neuroscience, said the differences in brain structure might begin early on in our development, and are then reinforced as we grow up.

"It's likely there's a snowball effect. If these brain structures happen to be more dense from the start, that may help you to be more sociable. But in turn, by being more sociable you will foster further growth in those brain regions," he said.

The technology may not find its way into company's recruitment processes any time soon, Murray added. "Doing a brain scan might be going a bit far. If you want to know if someone's sociable or not, the best way is to ask one of their friends."

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 19 May 2009 | 11:07 pm

Spacewatch with Alan Pickup

The International Space Station has been making conspicuous transits across our night sky for almost a month, but its spell of visibility ends over the coming week as its orbit shifts westwards into the evening twilight. Our best remaining chance to glimpse it occurs at about 22:00 BST tonight when it reaches 73° high in the SSW as seen from London on its way from the W to the ESE. From Manchester, with the twilight even more obtrusive, it peaks at 49° on that pass.

Barring a late change to its flight schedule, the shuttle Atlantis is due to land on Friday afternoon, UK time, to conclude its servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Meantime, another of Nasa's so-called Great Observatories, Spitzer, has reached the end of its main mission. Launched in 2003 to work at infrared wavelengths, it used liquid helium coolant to keep its instruments operating at peak efficiency. Sadly, the final dregs of helium evaporated last Friday, so Spitzer has been forced to begin a "warm mission", with reduced sensitivity. Last week's good news is that the Kepler spacecraft has begun its search for Earth-like planets by staring continuously at an expanse of sky between Vega and Deneb, the bright stars that mark the two most northerly corners of our Summer Triangle. The week also saw Europe's successful launch of the Herschel and Planck observatories towards their vantage point 1.5 million km beyond the Earth's orbit.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 19 May 2009 | 11:01 pm

She's 47m years old – and she's our link to the rest of the animal kingdom

Another milestone in our evolutionary history was reached yesterday when the exquisitely preserved fossil of a 47-million-year-old primate was unveiled. Here Britain's pre-eminent natural history broadcaster describes the importance of being Ida

Humanity is very egocentric. We are ­fascinated with ourselves. I'm not sure that it is a particularly nice ­characteristic, but we are.

When we look around us at the natural world, there is often an ulterior motive. We desperately want to know where we came from. We love to think about us and about our ancestors.

Yesterday was humanity's first chance to come face to face with one such ancestor – and a remarkable ancient relative at that. Ida is one of the most immaculately preserved primate fossils ever found and, at 47m years old, she comes from a key moment in our evolutionary history.

This beautiful little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of the mammals: with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters. According to one of the scientists who has studied her, she is a "Rosetta stone" for ­understanding our early evolution.

One reason Ida is so special is her exquisite preservation, and that is because the Messel pit, near Darmstadt in Germany, is a very exceptional place. Forty-seven million years ago it was a volcanic lake surrounded by a steamy sub-tropical forest. Because of the unique conditions there, Messel – which is now designated a Unesco world heritage site – has yielded countless fabulous fossils including bats, pygmy horses, crocodiles and even insects with the colours on their wings still visible.

People who study fossils are nearly always studying the hard parts: the shells and the bones. They have to deduce from the shape of each bone what the muscles were like. From that they can deduce more about how the animal held itself and moved. If they are lucky they can maybe make suggestions about what the internal organs were like.

With this fossil you don't have to make suggestions. Almost uniquely, we not only have the bones, but we also have the fur and the flesh. So it is not a question of deduction, it is not a question of imagination or suggestions, it is fact.

Right before our eyes is exquisite detail of what the little primate looked like. There is the stomach, and inside is her last meal – a final vegetarian snack. There are very few fossils for which you can say that. After the demise of the dinosaurs around 65m years ago, suddenly the domination of the Earth was up for grabs. What succeeded them, of course, were the mammals, creatures like ourselves with warm bodies and with hair. But which one of those was going to lead to us?

The more you look at Ida the more you can picture, as it were, the primate in embryo. She represents the seed from which the diversity of monkeys, apes and ultimately every person on the planet came.

She lived long before our primate line had split into the species we know today – the spider monkeys, baboons and gorillas to name but a few. And crucially, she lived at around the time that a separate primate line, the one containing the lemurs and less well-known groups such as the lorises and bush babies, split off from the rest. She is a glimpse into the melting pot of early primate evolution.

Is Ida the missing link? Well, yes and no. Lines of ancestry are extremely difficult to work out from a series of fossils and there are still huge gaps in our understanding of the primate evolutionary story. But the physical proof of evolution has always demanded that there should be links or transitional forms. The famous Archaeopteryx – the first specimen of which resides in the Natural History Museum in London – for example, is one such transitional fossil between the reptiles and birds. Those who doubt that very simple generalised mammals gave rise to the primates could always ask, "show us the link". Well that link is no longer missing.

Jørn Hurum, the palaeontologist who acquired the fossil for science and assembled a world-class team to study it, deserves great credit. He had the insight and the instinct to see this thing and to know in his heart immediately that this was going to be of profound importance. It was certainly an act of scholarship and of scientific insight.

But to a certain degree, it was also an act of faith. He might have spent years, and quite a lot of money, on something that was going to prove to be a dead end. His gamble has paid off spectacularly.

To anybody who's interested in ­evolution, and the ultimate demonstration of the truth of evolution – the fact of evolution – this is a key discovery. And it is fitting that Hurum's team have chosen, in Darwin's 200th birthday year, to name the fossil after the father of natural selection. Ida's scientific name is Darwinius masillae.

Darwin was very sensitive about the implications of his explanation of evolution, and in particular how human beings fitted into the picture. It was a nettle that had to be grasped, but it would offend quite a lot of people he knew, his wife a devoted Christian, for one. Darwin could almost get away with explanations of evolution in other parts of the animal world. But the notion that we were connected to other animals, was one that was deeply upsetting to a lot of religious people.

It is really delightful that 150 years after Darwin first tentatively put forward the proposition that human beings were part of the rest of animal life, here at last we have the link which connects us. Ida is a link between the apes, monkeys and us with the rest of the mammals and ultimately the whole animal kingdom. I think Darwin would have been thrilled.

Based on an interview by Anthony Geffen for Atlantic Productions

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 19 May 2009 | 10:40 pm

Stem cells "seek and destroy" cancer cells: study

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Genetically engineered stem cells from bone marrow showed promise as a potential new way to deliver a cancer-killing protein to tumors, British researchers said on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 May 2009 | 10:17 pm

Scientists unveil ancient fossilized primate

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Scientists on Tuesday unveiled the well preserved fossilized remains found in Germany of a primate from 47 million years ago that may have been a close relative of the common ancestor of monkeys, apes and people.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 May 2009 | 9:59 pm

Unveiled ‘Holy Grail’ Fossil Gets Celebrity Treatment

Scientists unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossil with much pomp and circumstance today at the American Museum of Natural History.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 May 2009 | 7:44 pm

Isotope output at Canada reactor halted after leak

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian energy authorities have closed a nuclear reactor that produces a third of the world's medical isotopes after a small leak and warned that there could be a shortage of isotopes by as early as Saturday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 May 2009 | 7:31 pm

Nurture Beats Nature in At-Risk Teens

With a little bit of help, genetic tendencies to self-destruction can be blunted.

Drug abuse researchers from the National Institutes of Health report that counseling prevented risky behavior in teens carrying a gene variant linked to drug abuse and dangerous impulses.

The teens were part of an ongoing substance abuse prevention program in rural Georgia. For two and a half years, researchers monitored 641 adolescents, of whom 291 received several health-advice mailings while the rest underwent counseling sessions with their families.

At the end of the study they were tested for a variant form of a gene known as 5-HTTLPR. The gene affects transport through the brain of serotonin, a mood-regulating neurotransmitter, and its so-called short allele version has been associated with binge drinking and drug use.

Among teens who received the mailings, carriers of the short allele 5-HTTLPR were twice as likely to have engaged in risky behavior. In the counseling group, however, there was no difference between teens with the variant and without. The gene’s real-world effects had been nullified.

“This study is an excellent example of how we can target prevention interventions based on a person’s genetic make-up to reduce their substance abuse risk,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in a press release.

See Also:

• Popular Wakefulness Drug May Be Addictive
• Darker Skin Linked to Nicotine Dependence

Image: Flickr/a4gpa

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 19 May 2009 | 7:26 pm

'Whole Earth Telescope' Spies White Dwarf

Dozens of telescopes worldwide join forces to continuously study a dying star.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 May 2009 | 7:20 pm

Robot Rescue Party Aiding Mired Martian Rover

NASA’s Spirit rover is stuck in the Martian soil, but the agency’s full complement of robots in the neighborhood are working to free it.

For the past two weeks, Spirit has been mired in loose terrain near an area known to NASA as Home Plate. If you’ve ever driven a remote-controlled car into a molehill, you can understand the rover’s predicament. It’s up to its wheels in dirt and may be “high-centered,” or perched on its undercarriage, spinning its wheels.

But there’s some hope. From orbit, the Odyssey orbiter has begun downloading extra data from Spirit in hopes of figuring out what’s happened. Meanwhile, Opportunity tested out maneuvers for taking self-portraits of its chassis, so that Spirit can learn how to snap a shot of its own positioning. And perhaps most importantly, a wheel that NASA engineers thought had died still has a pulse. A recent test of its capacity to handle current came back with positive results.

“This is not a full exoneration of the wheel, but it is encouraging,” said John Callas, project manager for rovers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We’re taking incremental steps.”

Both Spirit and Opportunity have been traveling the midsection of Mars for more than 20 times the planned 90-day length of their missions. While Opportunity had its own five-week sand vacation in 2005, recently Spirit has had more trouble. In January, the rover malfunctioned for reasons that still aren’t clear.

As Wired Science reported yesterday, the next generation of rovers will be even more mobile than their predecessors — and less prone to getting stuck in difficult terrain.

But for the time-being, Callas’ team has to figure out how to get Spirit out. Matters are complicated by the failure of one of Spirit’s six wheels, which he says, “greatly compromises the mobility of the robot.” To figure out what to do, Callas is building a replica of the Martian terrain in Pasadena.

“We want to literally landscape it the way the rover is on Mars,” Callas said. “We have an engineering copy of the rover here that is virtually identical to the rover on Mars. We’ll bury it like Spirit is and then experiment on trying to get the rover out.”

To do that, it’ll take a few tons of sandy Martian-like material and then some excellent sculpting.

See Also:

• Spirit’s Low on Mars
• Mars Rover “Spirit” Needs Sunny Slope to Survive Winter
• Mars Category
• Interactive Timeline: Mars Phoenix Heads Into Extra Innings
• Weird New NASA Rovers Really Get Around
• Mars Rovers Shrug at Dust Storms, Get Back To Work

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and book site for The History of Our Future; Wired Science on Facebook.

Image: View from Spirit across Home Plate./NASA

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 19 May 2009 | 6:51 pm

Skeleton Sheds Light on Primate Evolution

A 47-million-year-old skeleton may help illuminate the early evolution of apes and humans.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 May 2009 | 5:50 pm

First Space Message Sent Using Mobile Phone Technology

Herschel observatory makes first use of cell phone tech in space.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 May 2009 | 5:42 pm

Obama Announces New Fuel Efficiency Standards

Plan would cut pollution and raise mileage standards.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 May 2009 | 5:21 pm

Komodo Dragon's Deadly Bite Explained

It is poison, not bacteria, that gives the Komodo dragon's bite its lethal power.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 May 2009 | 4:45 pm

Ancient Human Ancestor 'Ida' Discovered

A discovery of a 47-million-year-old fossil primate that is said to be a human ancestor was announced today.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 May 2009 | 4:23 pm

National Emission Limits to Conserve at a Cost

New fuel and emission standards will save oil for an extra $1,300 per vehicle.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 May 2009 | 4:05 pm

Really Cold War Looms Over Arctic Oil

Scenario: Desperate for the oil, nations begin to fight in 2020.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 May 2009 | 3:50 pm

Ida's world of pygmy horses and rodents with trunks

The earth 47m years ago was an extraordinary place, not least the deadly Messel pit

The world in which Ida lived was a critical time in primate evolution, but all around her was a riot of evolutionary experimentation by other mammal groups. It was a through-the-looking glass world of half-familiar, half-bizarre beasts with Mr Potato Head combinations of characteristics such as pygmy horses and rodents with trunks – and many of them were soon to die out.

A naturalist transported back in time would have found wandering through the steamy, sub-tropical jungle that Ida inhabited 47m years ago a deeply strange experience, says Jørn Hurum at the University of Oslo, the scientist who saved the Ida specimen for science. "There are some weirdos, but there are some things you would recognise," he says.

"It is a wonderful situation because you have all these paleocene mammals, these old-timers from the beginning of the big mammal explosion after the dinosaurs went extinct – they are still present. And then you have all the more modern mammals who are just appearing," he said. Some of these were herds of pygmy horses that trotted through the undergrowth. "The biggest ones were like sheep," says Hurum.

Sir David Attenborough, who is narrating a major BBC documentary about the early primate specimen, says: "At the end of the demise of the dinosaurs [65m years ago] ... suddenly the domination of the earth, as it were, was up for grabs. The reptiles had come to the end of their dominance. What was going to succeed them?"

At the Messel pit near Darmstadt, Germany, where Ida was excavated, palaeontologists have found a treasure trove of countless specimens, including more than 60 fossils of pygmy horses, some of which were pregnant mares and foals. Sharing the forest floor was a bizarre leaping rodent called Leptictidium that had a pointed head and may have sported a trunk. And our time-travelling zoologist would surely have been struck by a metre-long squirrel-like creature called Kopidodon that had opposable thumbs and big toes.

The forest around the Messel lake was even home to four species of marsupial and an anteater – both creatures that no longer appear in Europe.

Our intrepid explorer would have had to look out for eight different species of crocodiles – some of which lived exclusively on land. Diplocynodon darwini, whose name means "double dog tooth" grew to a fearsome 5m long. And crawling through the undergrowth was another giant, relatively speaking. Queens of the largest ant that has ever crawled the earth, Formicium, grew up to 2.5 centimetres long and had a wingspan over six times that.

The reason palaeontologists know so much detail about Ida and her contemporaries is the unique characteristics of the location where she died and was fossilised. In the Eocene period, Messel pit was a lake, formed after a massive volcanic explosion left a deep, steep sided crater. For much of the time, the surface layers of the lake were a hospitable place for fish, turtles, crocodiles, insects and many other creatures to inhabit. But Messel had a deadly secret. From time to time it would let forth a giant belch of poisonous volcanic gases.

"Anything that went to the lake to drink or flew across the surface or indeed lived on the surface would have been overcome by it," says Dr Philip Wilby, an expert in the process of fossilisation at the British Geological Survey in Keyworth. The thousands of bat specimens preserved at the site and many more flying insects are testament to how swift these deadly, suffocating events would have been, he said. The creatures would simply have dropped out of the sky.

"It was a lethal place," says Attenborough, but also unique. "There are categories of animals that occur in Messel that have never been seen anywhere else as fossils."

Killing off its inhabitants was not enough though. What made Messel pit really special is what happened next. Once the corpses had drifted down to the soft sediment at the bottom, they were not picked over by scavengers. Because of the Messel lake's great depth and the lack of oxygen at the bottom, there were no large creatures to disturb them – just the bacteria that slowly devoured them.

And these were key. "The bacteria are actually involved in preserving the fossil, by moulding or casting the tissues that would normally decay away," says Wilby. So in many Messel specimens, it is possible to make out the details of hair, skin – and in Ida's case even her stomach contents – that palaeontologists normally have no hope of seeing. What ends up being fossilised is not the hairs themselves but the mineral wastes excreted by bacteria that leave a detailed shadow in the shape of the soft parts they were devouring.

"It truly is one of the world's most remarkable fossil sites," says Wilby, "It's difficult to convey the excitement one feels when you split a slab of the shale in the pit to reveal a perfectly preserved fish skeleton or a brilliant metallic green beetle."

In 1995 Unesco-designated Messel pit (or Grube Messel to give it its German name) as a world heritage site. The citation stated that "the site is of outstanding universal value as the single best site which contributes to the understanding of the Eocene, when mammals became firmly established."

After decades of use as a quarry for oil shale, the local government had planned to use the site for landfill and had even got as far as building access roads for the garbage trucks. Only a concerted campaign by local scientists succeeded in mobilising an international effort to save the site.

The Unesco decision was a great relief says Wilby. "To have lost it would have been an absolute travesty."

• Atlantic Productions' programme, Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link, will be broadcast in the UK on Tuesday, 26 May at 9pm on BBC1. The full scientific paper on Ida is published in the journal PLoS ONE.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 19 May 2009 | 3:30 pm

Shuttle releases repaired Hubble

After five spacewalks, the repaired and upgraded Hubble telescope has been released from space shuttle Atlantis.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 May 2009 | 3:28 pm

5 Reasons to Fear Robots

5 reasons why robots are ready to take over.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 May 2009 | 3:26 pm

Mockingbirds Can Tell People Apart

If you've ever wronged a mockingbird, you may want to watch your back.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 May 2009 | 3:25 pm

Shrew Shot Venom Through Blood-Red Teeth

Scientists have found the fossil remains of a new species of mega-shrew that shot venom out of blood-colored teeth.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 May 2009 | 3:19 pm

Venomous Mega-Shrew Fossil in Spain

A scientist explains in Spanish that his team has found the fossil remains of a mega-shrew that was likely capable of shooting venom out of its red teeth.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 May 2009 | 2:55 pm

Sports Drinks Trumped By Cereal and Milk

A bowl of whole-grain cereal with milk is better than designer sports drinks.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 May 2009 | 2:55 pm

Astronauts Say Goodbye to Hubble, for Good

Astronauts release the Hubble Space Telescope after five days of risky repairs.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 May 2009 | 2:55 pm

Scientists hail stunning fossil

A beautifully preserved 47-million-year-old fossil gives scientists new insights into the early evolution of primates.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 May 2009 | 2:35 pm

Amazing fossil may connect primates with other mammals

Perfectly preserved fossil Ida, unveiled in New York today, provides unprecedented insight into our ancestry

Scientists have discovered an exquisitely preserved ancient primate fossil that they believe forms a crucial "missing link" between our own evolutionary branch of life and the rest of the animal kingdom.

The 47m-year-old primate – named Ida – has been hailed as the fossil equivalent of a "Rosetta Stone" for understanding the critical early stages of primate evolution.

The top-level international research team, who have studied her in secret for the past two years, believe she is the most complete and best preserved primate fossil ever uncovered. The skeleton is 95% complete and thanks to the unique location where she died, it is possible to see individual hairs covering her body and even the make-up of her final meal – a last vegetarian snack.

"This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all the mammals; with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters," said Sir David Attenborough who is narrating a BBC documentary on the find. "The more you look at Ida, the more you can see, as it were, the primate in embryo."

"This will be the one pictured in the textbooks for the next hundred years," said Dr Jørn Hurum, the palaeontologist from Oslo University's Natural History Museum who assembled the scientific team to study the fossil. "It tells a part of our evolution that's been hidden so far. It's been hidden because the only [other] specimens are so incomplete and so broken there's nothing almost to study." The fossil has been formally named Darwinius masillae in honour of Darwin's 200th birthday year.

It has been shipped across the Atlantic for an unveiling ceremony hosted by the mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg today. There is even talk of Ida being the first non-living thing to feature on the front cover of People magazine.

She will then be transported back to Oslo, via a brief stop at the Natural History Museum in London on Tuesday, 26 May, when Attenborough will host a press conference.

Ida was originally discovered by an amateur fossil hunter in the summer of 1983 at Messel pit, a world renowned fossil site near Darmstadt in Germany. He kept it under wraps for over 20 years before deciding to sell it via a German fossil dealer called Thomas Perner. It was Perner who approached Hurum two years ago.

"My heart started beating extremely fast," said Hurum, "I knew that the dealer had a world sensation in his hands. I could not sleep for 2 nights. I was just thinking about how to get this to an official museum so that it could be described and published for science." Hurum would not reveal what the university museum paid for the fossil, but the original asking price was $1m. He did not see the fossil before buying it – just three photographs, representing a huge gamble.

But it appears to have paid off. "You need an icon or two in a museum to drag people in," said Hurum, "this is our Mona Lisa and it will be our Mona Lisa for the next 100 years."

Hurum chose Ida's nickname because the diminutive creature is at the equivalent stage of development as his six-year-old daughter. Hurum said Ida is very excited about her namesake. "She says, 'there are two Idas now, there's me I'm living and then there's the dead one.'"

"It's caught at a really very interesting moment [in the animal's life] when it fortunately has all its baby teeth and is in the process of forming all its permanent teeth," said Dr Holly Smith, an expert in primate development at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who was part of the team. "So you have more information in it than almost any fossil you could think of."

The fossil's amazing preservation means that the scientific team has managed to glean a huge amount of information from it, although this required new X-ray techniques that had not previously been applied to any other specimens.

The researchers believe it comes from the time when the primate lineage, that diversified into monkeys, apes and ultimately humans, split from a separate group that went on to become lemurs and other less well known species.

Crucially though, Ida is not on the lemur line because she lacks two key characteristics shared by lemurs – a grooming claw on her second toe and a fused set of teeth called a tooth comb. Also, a bone in her ankle called the talus is shaped like members of our branch of the primates. So the researchers believe she may be on our evolutionary line dating from just after the split with the lemurs.

According to the team's published description of the skeleton in the journal PLoS ONE, Ida was 53cm long and a juvenile around six to nine months old. The team can be sure Ida is a girl because she does not have a penis bone.

"She was at this vulnerable age where you are no longer right with your mother," said Smith, "Just as you leave weaning you are not full grown, but you are on your own."

The unprecedented preservation of Ida meant working out how she died was more like a modern day crime scene investigation than the informed guess-work that palaeontologists usually make do with. The team noticed that she had a broken wrist that had begun to partially heal. The injury did not kill her, but they speculate that it contributed to her premature demise.

"It might be that her mother dropped her once or that she fell down from a tree earlier in her life," Smith said. She survived the accident, but her climbing abilities would have been impaired. Unable to drink from water trapped by tree leaves, she would have had to venture down to the lake to drink. This would have proved to be a fateful decision.

The huge range of magnificently preserved fossils at Messel suggest that the volcanic lake was a death trap. Scientists believe that it sporadically let forth giant belches of poisonous volcanic gases that would have immediately suffocated anything in, around and even over the water. Ida would then have fallen into the water and been preserved in the sediment deep at the bottom.

• Atlantic productions' programme, Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link, will be broadcast in the UK on Tuesday, 26 May at 9pm on BBC1. Colin Tudge's book, The Link, is published on 20 May by Little Brown.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 19 May 2009 | 2:30 pm

Is fossil Ida a missing link in evolution?

This 47m-year-old skeleton is one of the most significant primate fossil discoveries, hailed by some as 'the missing link' and by others, such as David Attenborough, as proof of evolution

As one of the most significant primate fossil finds ever made, Ida will be hailed by some as "the missing link" in our evolutionary history. But is that really true? Well, yes and no.

The phrase usually refers to the creature that links us to the apes, in particular the common ancestor of chimpanzees and ourselves. At 47m years old, Ida – or Darwinius masillae, to use her formal name – is much more ancient than that. But she is undoubtedly a very significant link in the primate lineage and the evidence from her extraordinarily well-preserved skeleton points to her being a very early member of our own primate line.

The fossil evidence of primate evolutionary history is sparsely populated – more missing than link. So almost any major primate fossil at a significant point in our ancestral line could be referred to by that over-used phrase.

Also, filling the gap is not the end of the story. "Every time you find a link that once was missing, you find two more, you've created two more that are missing. So it's never going to be a complete chain," said Sir David Attenborough, who is narrating a BBC documentary on the fossil.

Jørn Hurum, at the University of Oslo, the scientist who assembled the international team of researchers to study Ida is relaxed about using the phrase. "Why not? I think we could use that phrase for this kind of specimen," he said. "[People] have a feeling that if something is important it is a missing link."

However, in the paper published in PLoS ONE from the Public Library of Science on the fossil he is more circumspect. "Darwinius masillae is important in being exceptionally well-preserved and providing a much more complete understanding of the paleobiology of an Eocene primate than was available in the past," the authors wrote.

"[The species] could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates evolved [the line leading to humans], but we are not advocating this here."

The paper's scientific reviewers asked that they tone down their original claims that the fossil was on the human evolutionary line.

One of those reviewers, Professor John Fleagle at Stony Brook University in New York state said that would be a judgment for the scientific community. "That will be sorted out or at least debated extensively in the coming years once the paper is published," he said.

The official moniker for the fossil Darwinius masillae honours Charles Darwin's 200th anniversary year, plus the word "masilla" which was the name used by a local monastery in the 9th century for the Messel pit site where the fossil was found.

According to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, the guardians of the official Latin names for the world's plants, animals and other living things, Darwin has been immortalised in zoological nomenclature more than 1,350 times. But Hurum hopes that he would be particularly impressed with this one. "This is really one of those specimens that hopefully Darwin would have appreciated," he said.

"It's a discovery of great significance," agreed Attenborough. "To anybody who's interested in evolution, and the ultimate demonstration of the truth of evolution – the fact of evolution – this is a key discovery."

"It is really delightful and exciting and appropriate that 150 years after Darwin first tentatively put forward the proposition that human beings were part of the rest of animal life, that here at last we have the link which connects us directly ... Darwin would have been thrilled."

• Atlantic Productions' programme, Uncovering our earliest ancestor: The Link, will be broadcast in the UK on May 26 at 9pm on BBC1

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 19 May 2009 | 2:30 pm

Astronaut tests flying carpet in space

Japanese spaceman Koichi Wakata rides floating rug and dons self-deodorising underpants in zero-gravity experiments

Centuries after storytellers' imaginations first sent Persian rugs airborne, a Japanese astronaut has demonstrated a real flying carpet aboard the international space station.

Koichi Wakata conducted the test-flight in front of the cameras this month as part of zero-gravity experiments submitted by members of the public.

A video released by Jaxa, Japan's space agency, shows Wakata "surfing" atop a rectangle of white cloth, managing to keep his balance as he sails towards the camera. Later he repeats the trick, this time lying face down while gripping the sides of the "magic carpet".

The astronaut admitted that he had needed a little help from a familiar terrestrial product: he had stuck the soles of his feet to the carpet with adhesive tape.

Since arriving at Kibo (Hope), Japan's experimental module aboard the space station, Wakata has acted as a conduit for the whimsies of his space-curious compatriots, hundreds of whom sent in outlandish of requests.

Last month he completed several push-ups – surely no great feat in zero gravity – but his attempts to fold laundry came a cropper when he was confronted with a shirt and the floating arms and legs of a space overall. Whether his celestial laundry-folding technique is any better on terra firma wasn't clear.

The stunt was part of 16 experiments performed in recent weeks by Wakata, the first Japanese astronaut to take part in a long-term space mission.

Not all of them went according to plan. High surface tension frustrated his attempts to fire a water pistol, and he was only able to apply eye drops by moving his eye on to the ball of liquid on the tip of the container.

Wakata's fellow astronauts may have noticed that he does not change his underpants very often. That's not because of poor hygiene – it is part of an experiment to test a line of self-deodorising underwear threaded with anti-bacterial materials, which could be used on future space missions lasting months or even years.

The space-age underpants, T-shirts, shorts and socks, can be worn for a week without washing, and without assaulting the senses of passing astronauts.

The garments can absorb water, insulate the body and dry in minutes. Not only that, their developers say, they are comfortable and stylish.

The Endeavour space shuttle is scheduled to collect Wakata and bring him back to earth in June.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 19 May 2009 | 2:19 pm

Animal Biodiversity Keeps People Healthy

A study shows as populations of animals lose diversity, disease rates increase.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 May 2009 | 2:15 pm

Were Dinosaurs Gassed Out?

Carbon monoxide, spewed into the air, may have led to the dinosaurs' demise.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 May 2009 | 1:49 pm

Smart thinking

Finding ways to save energy in the 21st Century
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 May 2009 | 12:31 pm

Bill of health: Injured stork gets artificial beak

A stork with a damaged beak receives a new, artificial one, thanks to experts at a bird hospital in Hungary.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 May 2009 | 12:14 pm