Long-sought Way To Make 'Nano-raspberries' May Fight Foggy Windows And Eyeglasses

In an advance toward preventing car windshields and eyeglasses from fogging up, researchers in China are reporting development of a new way to make raspberry-shaped nanoparticles that can give glass a permanent antifogging coating. 
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Why The Thumb Of The Right Hand Is On The Left Hand Side

It is the concentration of a few signaling molecules that determines the fate of individual cells during the early development of organisms. Molecular biologists report that a variety of molecular mechanisms accounts for the interpretation of the concentration of the signaling molecule Hedgehog.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Menopause Transition May Cause Trouble Learning

The largest study of its kind to date shows that women may not be able to learn as well shortly before menopause compared to other stages in life.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Immune Genes Adapt To Parasites

Thank parasites for making some of our immune proteins into the inflammatory defenders they are today, according to a population genetics study in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. The study also suggests that you might blame parasites for sculpting some of those genes into risk factors for intestinal disorders.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

Packing more digital images, music, and other data onto silicon chips in USB drives and smart phones is like squeezing more strawberries into the same size supermarket carton. The denser you pack, the quicker it spoils. The 10 to 100 gigabits of data per square inch on today's memory cards has an estimated life expectancy of only 10 to 30 years. And the electronics industry needs much greater data densities for tomorrow's iPods, smart phones, and other devices.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Psychologists Find That Head Movement Is More Important Than Gender In Nonverbal Communication

Psychologists and computer scientists have found that gender is less important than head motion in the nonverbal dynamics of how people converse.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Smart Wind Turbines to Switch Shapes

Scientists are creating intelligent wind turbines that shape-shift with the wind.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 May 2009 | 12:51 pm

Global CEOs back greenhouse gas cuts, carbon caps (AP)

AP - A global summit of business leaders urged governments to order steep and mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases Tuesday, favoring a cap-and-trade system instead of a tax to set a market price for carbon waste.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 May 2009 | 12:40 pm

The Chemistry of Life: The Plastic in Cars

100 gallons or more of oil used to make the plastic parts.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 May 2009 | 12:20 pm

Rocket mission set to double space station crew (AP)

AP - Three astronauts set to make history by doubling the permanent population of the International Space Station received the go-ahead Tuesday for this week's launch from Russia's remote space complex in Kazakhstan.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 May 2009 | 12:06 pm

Tool-making Birds: Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention For Clever Rooks

Researchers have found that rooks, a member of the crow family, are capable of using and making tools, modifying them to make them work and using two tools in a sequence.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 May 2009 | 12:00 pm

Cholesterol-lowering Drugs May Help Prevent Stroke Recurrence, Study Suggests

People who take cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins after a stroke may be less likely to have another stroke later, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 May 2009 | 12:00 pm

Nervous System May Be Culprit In Deadly Muscle Disease

Long considered a "muscle" disorder, Pompe disease may have a previously unknown neural component. In mouse models of the disease, researchers have discovered that signals from the spinal cord are too weak to reach the diaphragm -- the muscle that controls breathing. The finding suggests that therapies to treat the disease will need to take the central nervous system into account in order to be fully effective.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 May 2009 | 12:00 pm

Climate History Of Arctic Illuminated By Study Of 3.6-Million-Year-Old Meteorite Impact Crater In Siberia

Scientists have studied the El'gygytgyn meteorite impact crater in Arctic Siberia. They found, from analyses of the drill cores, new information about the formation of the impact crater, as well as information they can use more fully to understand the climate history of the Arctic.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 May 2009 | 12:00 pm

Rooks rival chimps in ability to use tools

Research reveals that rooks are intelligent enough to use tools in captivity to get food, even though they are not known as tool users in the wild

Hand-reared rooks are adept at using tools and can even make their own if they can get their claws on the right materials.

The birds, which belong to the corvid family along with crows, ravens and magpies, have been caught on video demonstrating tool skills that rival those of more sophisticated animals such as chimpanzees.

The footage is all the more extraordinary because rooks are not thought to use tools in the wild, unlike other corvid species such as New Caledonian crows, which use sticks to winkle insects from crevices in tree bark on their native islands in the South Pacific.

Researchers at the universities of Cambridge and Queen Mary, London, recorded how rooks reacted when provided with a choice of tools and a problem to solve. All had been raised in captivity, so had not been taught any tool tricks by their parents.

The birds almost always selected the right tool to use first time, allowing them to crack the puzzle and retrieve tasty morsels of food.

In one round of tests, the birds had to select a stone of the right size and drop it down a tube to open a trap door and release a little snack.

In later tests, the birds had to choose sticks and stones of the right weights and sizes to retrieve snacks, and even use one tool to get another.

In the most impressive display of avian intelligence, the rooks were faced with a juicy worm in a tiny bucket at the bottom of a glass tube. Each bird looked at the worm and then bent a length of wire left nearby into a hook and used it to haul the bucket up.

Corvids are among the most social of bird species, and it is thought their intelligence helps them to recognise each other. The birds do not appear to have evolved tool skills, but are simply intelligent enough to work out how they can help.

Nathan Emery, an expert on animal cognition at Queen Mary, said the test involving the worm at the bottom of a tube could be the "first unambiguous evidence of animal insight", since the birds set about making hooks from wire before trying any other way to retrieve the food.

"The finding is remarkable because rooks do not appear to use tools in the wild, yet they rival habitual tools users such as chimpanzees and New Caledonian crows," said Chris Bird, a Cambridge zoologist who led the study.

The study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, challenges long-held views over the evolution and uniqueness of certain forms of intelligence.

Commenting in the journal, the authors say their findings overturn the idea that our own species' intelligence improved dramatically once early humans began working with tools. "Caledonian crows and now rooks have been shown to rival, and in some cases outperform, chimpanzees in physical tasks, leading us to question our understanding of the evolution of intelligence," they write.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 26 May 2009 | 11:56 am

France urges US to catch up on emissions cuts (AP)

AP - The man hosting climate talks among the world's biggest polluters in Paris issued a report card Tuesday: the United States is lagging, Australia is catching up and China is "absolutely determined" to cut emissions to fight global warming.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 May 2009 | 11:27 am

The Nation's Weather (AP)

AP - Scattered showers and thunderstorms were expected from the Great Plains to East Coast on Tuesday as two weather systems combined.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 May 2009 | 11:12 am

Have divers found a vessel linked to Bonnie Prince Charlie?

Divers off Anglesey examine the wreck of a vessel which may have been sent to relieve Bonnie Prince Charlie after Culloden.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 May 2009 | 10:49 am

Virgin Atlantic annual profits almost double (AFP)

AFP - Virgin Atlantic said Tuesday that profits almost doubled in 2008/09, in contrast to a large annual loss at rival British Airways, despite choppy oil prices and a fierce recession.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 May 2009 | 9:45 am

Hi-tech aims to improve lifestyle

Facebook, mobiles and energy meters are helping to work out if people can be nudged into adopting healthier lifestyles.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 May 2009 | 9:29 am

Pelosi calls for US-Chinese climate cooperation (AP)

AP - U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a frequent, fierce critic of China, called for U.S.-Chinese cooperation to fight climate change in a speech Tuesday that skirted human rights and other contentious issues.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 May 2009 | 9:24 am

Rooks reveal remarkable tool-use

Rooks are able to craft, modify and use a variety of different tools in the lab, despite not using them in the wild.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 May 2009 | 7:43 am

Deforestation 'faster in Africa'

Africa's forests are disappearing faster than those in other parts of the world because of a lack of land ownership, a report says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 May 2009 | 6:57 am

How Machines Could Take Over

A defense expert weighs in on whether humanity faces the rise of the machines.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 May 2009 | 4:36 am

Five-million-year old sloth fossil found in Peru (Reuters)

Reuters - The nearly intact fossil of an ancient sloth that lived 5 million years ago has been unearthed in Peru, a find about 4 million years older than similar ones discovered in the Americas, researchers said.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 May 2009 | 2:58 am

Five-million-year old sloth fossil found in Peru

LIMA (Reuters) - The nearly intact fossil of an ancient sloth that lived 5 million years ago has been unearthed in Peru, a find about 4 million years older than similar ones discovered in the Americas, researchers said.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 May 2009 | 2:58 am

Earthquake diary

Drilling to the heart of a major earthquake zone
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 May 2009 | 11:41 pm

Gene links heart and gum disease

German researchers have found a gene which links heart attacks and dental disease.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 May 2009 | 11:29 pm

Rooks are latest bird to use tools (AP)

AP - Yet another animal has picked up a tool and put it to use.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 May 2009 | 11:09 pm

The moon shoot: film of Apollo mission on show again after 35 years in the can

Film-maker reveals how Stonehenge inspired inside look at the lunar landings

When Nasa handed Theo Kamecke $350,000 (£220,115) and asked him to chronicle humankind's first footsteps on the moon, the film-maker's thoughts did not turn to Flash Gordon or the Sea of Tranquillity, or even to little Laika, barking uselessly into space. They crept towards a famous pile of monoliths in Wiltshire.

"The year before the moonwalk, I happened to be in England and persuaded some guys to drive me to see the dawn at Stonehenge," he said. "When [the film] came up, I right away saw the connection … It took a lot of thinking and a lot of effort and just a force of will to drag those stones to an empty field in the times when you only had deer antler to dig with.

"And it was the same kind of thing of stretching technology to its ultimate limits to be able to get somebody off this planet and walking on another one."

Kamecke's decision to cut from footage of daybreak at Stonehenge to shots of the vast "crawler" tractor dragging the Apollo 11 Saturn rocket to the launchpad at Cape Canaveral sets the tone for Moonwalk One, which has not been seen for 35 years.

Working with a reduced budget and the vaguest of briefs ("The Nasa guy said, 'Give me a time capsule' and I said, 'That's what you're going to get, buddy'"), Kamecke set out to make a film that reflected on the epochal event even as it recorded it.

To give the moon landing a context that was as human as it was historical, Kamecke, then 30, travelled around the US to film the women who sewed the astronauts' gloves and suits, the men who pulverised their bodies in centrifuges and ejector seats, and the thousands of ordinary people who stared into the sky on 20 July 1969 and tried to comprehend that a fellow member of their species was now striding across the face of the moon.

After Moonwalk One had been shown in a few east coast cinemas, picked up a special prize at Cannes and been screened worldwide in 1974, Kamecke stashed the 12,000ft of original film in two octagonal cans under his desk and moved on to other things.

The film, which is now being restored and will be released on DVD next month before of the 40th anniversary of the flight of Apollo 11, was rediscovered after the British producer and director Chris Riley, a long-time fan and occasional pilferer of its contents, got in touch with Kamecke to ask if, by any chance, he still had the original. Kamecke did.

The 71-year-old film-maker and sculptor came to London this month to oversee the production, revisit the film and moan about British coffee.

Despite claiming not to have thought too much about Moonwalk One over the last four decades, Kamecke's recollections of the film and its aims remain sharp.

"I wanted to make a film that had kind of an epic quality that just captured the sense of life on Earth as our species stepped off the Earth," he said.

"Of course there were the usual kind of scenes that you would expect of the launch control or places where the ­technicians and astronauts were – which is all very sterile – and then there were the people who came down in the millions to spill ketchup on each other and eat ­hot dogs and dance and just celebrate it as a human moment … All over the world, people were glued to their television screens, just mouths agape, just wondering about this moment when something changed. They didn't know exactly what, but something changed at that point."

Of the many shots that made up the 96-minute original, two still stand out for Kamecke.

In one, "little old grandmothers" are using foot-pedal sewing machines for the fine stitching of the spacesuits. "[They were] hoping that it was their pair of gloves that the astronaut had on and it was just so charming," he said. "They were using machines that had been used since 1900 to stitch together these suits with which men were going to go into space."

In the other, a little Chinese boy stands beside a basin and washes his face on the morning of the moon landing.

"This was the moment when man was leaving his planet and here was this kid with just ordinary 20th century stuff and having no idea what the future was, which is what I wanted the film to be – we have no idea of the future – but the film asks that it be open-ended."

Kamecke, who now spends his time in the New York countryside making intricate sculptures from circuit boards, is pleased that Moonwalk One is being ­resurrected after its 40-year stay beneath his desk.

"It's really nice that it's happening and, if I had to guess back then, I probably would have guessed maybe 40, 50 years is going to have to go by before it's going to become interesting again."

Looking back, would he have done anything differently to what he calls his "open-ended time capsule"?

"That's a crazy question to ask a film-maker," he said. "They'd probably do everything differently and sometimes it would have been a mistake to do it differently, because sometimes it was perfect the way it was."

Kamecke's only regret, in fact, is that no one ever offered him the chance to travel 238,855 miles and take a stroll in one of the lovingly stitched suits whose creation he captured. "Oh, heck if somebody had asked me I would have said yes in a flash. Sure. But nobody asked me. It was before tourist space travel."

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 25 May 2009 | 11:05 pm

What the future looks like

As the planet faces the most dangerous century in its 4.5bn-year history, astronomer royal Martin Rees looks into his crystal ball

It would be foolhardy to venture technological predictions for 2050. Even more so to predict social and geopolitical changes. The most important advances, the qualitative leaps, are the least predictable. Not even the best scientists predicted the impact of nuclear physics, and everyday consumer items such as the iPhone would have seemed magic back in the 1950s.

But there are some trends that we can predict with confidence. There will, barring a global catastrophe, be far more people on Earth than today. Fifty years ago the world population was below 3 billion. It has more than doubled since then, to 6.7 billion. The percentage growth rate has slowed, but it is projected to reach 9 billion by 2050. The excess will almost all be in the developing world where the young hugely outnumber the old.

If population growth were to continue beyond 2050, one can't be other than exceedingly gloomy about the prospects. And the challenge of feeding such a rapidly growing population will be aggravated by climate change.

The world will be warmer than today in 2050; the patterns of rainfall and drought across the world will be different. If we pursue "business as usual",

CO₂ concentration levels will reach twice the pre-industrial level by around 2050. The higher its concentration, the greater the warming - and, more important still, the greater the chance of triggering something grave and irreversible: rising sea levels due to the melting of Greenland's icecap; runaway release of methane in the tundra.

Some technical advances - information technology, for instance - surprise us by their rapidity; others seemingly stagnate. Only 12 years elapsed between the launch of Sputnik and Neil Armstrong's "one small step" on the moon. Many of us then expected a lunar base, even an expedition to Mars, within 30 years. But it's more than 36 years since Jack Schmitt and Eugene Cernan, the last men on the moon, returned to Earth. Since that time, hundreds of astronauts have been into orbit, but none has ventured further.

The Apollo programme now seems a remote historical episode: young people all over the world learn that America landed men on the moon, just as they learn that the Egyptians built the pyramids; the motivations seem almost as bizarre in the one case as in the other. The race to the moon was an end in itself - a magnificent "stunt", driven by superpower rivalry. Thereafter, the impetus for manned flight was lost. But, of course, we now depend on space in our everyday lives (GPS, weather forecasting and communications). And robotic exploration has burgeoned. Unmanned probes to other planets have beamed back pictures of varied and distinctive worlds.

I hope that by 2050 the entire solar system will have been explored and mapped by flotillas of tiny robotic craft. Robots and "fabricators" may enable large construction projects, using raw materials that need not come from Earth. But will people follow them? The practical case for sending people into space gets ever-weaker with each advance in robots and miniaturisation. But I'm nonetheless an enthusiast for manned missions - to the moon, to Mars and even beyond - simply as a long-range adventure for (at least a few) humans.

Each mobile phone today has far more computing power than was available to the whole of Nasa in the 1960s. And advances proceed apace. Some claim that computers will, by 2050, achieve human capabilities. Of course, in some respects they already have. For 30 years we've been able to buy calculators that can hugely surpass us at arithmetic. IBM's "Deep Blue" beat Kasparov, the world chess champion. But not even the most advanced robot can recognise and move the pieces on a real chessboard as adeptly as a five-year-old child.

Deep Blue didn't work out its strategy like a human player: it exploited its computational speed to explore millions of alternative series of moves and responses before deciding an optimum move. Likewise, machines may make scientific discoveries that have eluded unaided human brains - but by testing out millions of possibilities rather than via a theory or strategy.

But will we continue to push forward the frontiers, enlarging the range of our consensual understanding? Some aspects of reality - a unified theory of physics, or a theory of consciousness - might elude our understanding simply because they're beyond the powers of human brains, just as surely as quantum mechanics would flummox a chimpanzee.

We can with some confidence predict continuing advances in computer power, in IT, in techniques for sequencing and interpreting and modifying the genome. But there could, by 2050, be qualitatively new kinds of change. For instance, one thing that's been unaltered for millennia is human nature and human character. But in this century, mind-enhancing drugs, genetics, and "cyborg" techniques may start to alter human beings themselves.

And we should keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to concepts on the fringe of science fiction. Flaky American futurologists aren't always wrong. They remind us that a superintelligent machine is the last instrument that humans may ever design - the machine will itself take over in making further steps. Another speculation is that the human lifespan could be greatly extended, something that would wreak havoc on all population projections. At the moment this hope leads some to bequeath their bodies to be "frozen" on their death, in the hope of some future resurrection. For my part, I'd still opt to end my days in an English churchyard rather than a Californian refrigerator.

We can make one firm forecast that's important for all "citizen scientists". There will surely be a widening gulf between what science enables us to do, and what applications it's prudent or ethical to pursue.

It's sometimes wrongly imagined that astronomers, contemplating timespans measured in billions, must be serenely unconcerned about next year, next week and tomorrow. But a "cosmic perspective" actually strengthens my own concerns about the here and now.

Ever since Darwin, we've been familiar with the stupendous timespans of the evolutionary past. But most people still somehow think we humans are necessarily the culmination of the evolutionary tree. No astronomer could believe this.

Our sun formed 4.5bn years ago, but it's got 6bn more before the fuel runs out. And the expanding universe will continue - perhaps for ever - becoming ever colder, ever emptier. As Woody Allen said, "Eternity is very long, especially towards the end". Any creatures who witness the sun's demise, here on Earth or far beyond, won't be human. They will be entities as different from us as we are from a bug.

But even in this "concertinaed" timeline - extending millions of centuries into the future, as well as into the past - this century is special. It's the first in our planet's history where one species - ours - has Earth's future in its hands, and could jeopardise not only itself, but life's immense potential.

Suppose some aliens had been watching our planet for its entire history. Over nearly all that immense time - 4.5bn years - Earth's appearance would have altered very gradually. But in just a tiny sliver of its history - the last few thousand years - the patterns of vegetation altered much faster than before. This signalled the start of agriculture. The pace of change accelerated as human populations rose.

Then there were other changes, even more abrupt. Within the last 50 years - little more than one hundredth of a millionth of the Earth's age - the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere began to rise anomalously fast. The planet became an intense emitter of radio waves (TV, cellphone, and radar transmissions.) And something else unprecedented happened: small projectiles launched from the planet escaped the biosphere. Some were propelled into orbits around the Earth; some journeyed to the moon and planets.

If they understood astrophysics, the aliens could confidently predict that the biosphere would face doom in a few billion years when the sun flares up and dies. But could they have predicted this unprecedented spike less than halfway through the Earth's life - these human-induced alterations occupying, overall, less than a millionth of the elapsed lifetime and seemingly occurring with runaway speed?

If they continued to keep watch, what might these hypothetical aliens witness in the next few decades? Will final spasm be followed by silence? Or will the planet itself stabilise? And will some of the objects launched from the Earth spawn new oases of life elsewhere?

The outcome depends on political choices. But those choices can be influenced by effective and idealistic scientists, environmentalists and humanists, guided by the knowledge and technology that the 21st century will offer.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 25 May 2009 | 11:01 pm

How Nasa put a man on the moon

1961 25 May President John F Kennedy says: "I believe this nation should ­commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

1967 27 Jan What would have been the first manned Apollo mission ends in tragedy when Virgil "Gus" ­Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire on the launch pad during a test at Kennedy Space Centre.

1968 11-22 Oct The next manned mission, Apollo 7, makes 163 orbits of Earth. 21-27 Dec Apollo 8 escapes Earth's gravitational field and loops around the moon.

1969 3-13 March Apollo 9 completes first human test of the lunar module. 18-26 May Apollo 10 orbits the moon and the lunar module drops to within nine miles of moon's surface. 16-24 July Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin land on the moon. President Richard Nixon tells them by phone: "For one priceless moment, in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one." 14-24 Nov Apollo 12 crew lands on the moon and brings back parts of the Surveyor 3 probe, which had landed there in 1967.

1970 11-17 April The crew of Apollo 13 get into difficulty – "Houston, we've had a problem," – after an oxygen tank explosion. Their dramatic return to Earth was turned into a film.

1971-72 Four more manned Apollo missions land on the moon. On 7-11 December, humans walk on the moon for the final time – so far.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 25 May 2009 | 10:49 pm

Axe that shattered creationism found at museum after 150 years

A lump of flint that challenged creationist history and was dubbed by an eminent archaeologist "the stone that shattered the time barrier" has been tracked down after 150 years in the vast stores of the Natural History Museum in London.

On 26 May 1859, six months before Charles Darwin shattered the biblical creation story when he finally plucked up the courage to publish his theory of natural selection, the stone hand axe from the bottom of a French quarry was presented to the world at a lecture at the Royal Society in London.

Neither John Evans nor Joseph Prestwich, the businessmen and amateur archaeologist and geologist who found it, nor their distinguished audience, could guess its true age, around 400,000 years. But they did know it came from "a very remote period", when the woolly mammoth and rhinos, whose bones were mixed up in the same layer, roamed the plains of northern France.

There was no way the mammoths and the man-made tool could be fitted into the traditional biblical timescale, calculated by the 17th-century Archbishop Ussher, that God made the world in 4004BC.

The axe then vanished for 150 years, until it was tracked down by another archaeologist and geologist team – Clive Gamble, a professor at Royal Holloway, and Robert Kruszynski of the Natural History Museum – who publish their quest in next month's Antiquity journal.

They hunted it through thousands of prehistoric stone tools in national collections. They tried the collections of the Society of Antiquaries, where the axe was last seen in public at a second lecture in June 1859. Kruszynski found it at the South Kensington museum, with a minute Victorian label recording the date and quarry where it was found at St Acheul outside Amiens. A photograph showed the quarrymen who uncovered the axe, one pointing to it still half-buried in gravel.

Gamble and Kruszynski will take their trophy to the Society of Antiquaries next month to mark the anniversary of the May lecture at the Royal Society.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 25 May 2009 | 10:37 pm

Tremor that spelt nuclear test

Sensors in Britain picked up a tremor that registered five on the Richter scale

At 1.06am today, sensors at the ­British Geological Survey's stations in Devon, Herefordshire and Aberdeen picked up a tremor that registered around magnitude five on the Richter scale.

Yet it was quickly clear this was no earthquake.

"Earthquakes and nuclear bombs have quite different seismographs," said the survey's David Booth. "Earthquakes happen along fault lines and you get compression waves, known as P-waves, and shear waves from the movement. With a bomb it is mostly just compression waves meaning the ­seismograph is a lot less complicated." The epicentre of the explosion was in the county of Kilju, deep in the mountains of north-eastern North Korea and the home of the P'unggye-yok nuclear test site used when the authorities last exploded a nuclear device in October 2006.

Analysts expecttoday's test to have been carried out in a similar way to the previous one, when a horizontal hole was drilled into the side of Mount Mantab.

"You drill a hole in the ground because you do not want the explosion to release any radioactive material at the surface," said Booth. "The explosion would have produced a vibration similar to a very large quarry blast – most likely a single thump which local people, within several ­kilometres of the blast, would certainly have noticed. The explosion produces a cavity deep underground – this may collapse to create a saucer shaped depression in the ground perhaps 100m across, but not necessarily immediately."

There are two main nuclear weapon technologies. The simpler is "gun type". Here a piece of fissile uranium is fired at a fissile uranium target, similar to firing a bullet down a gun barrel.

Implosion devices, as stockpiled by the US and UK, are more complex and use plutonium, and are more suited to a lightweight weapon.

In the implosion method, a fissile mass of plutonium, is surrounded by high explosives that compress the material with an imploding shock wave, resulting in an increased density and nuclear detonation.

North Korean scientists are believed to have spent the past three years improving their implosion technology.

"They get the plutonium from their nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. The 2006 attempt is believed to have been a bit of a dud," said Ian Davis, a security consultant. "This one is much bigger."

Russian defence experts estimated the explosion's yield at between 10 and 20 ­kilotons, many times more than the 1 kiloton measured in its first nuclear test.

Since the first nuclear test was carried out in July 1945, more than 2,000 have been carried out, more than half by the US military. The first British test was aboard HMS Plym off the Australian coast in 1952. It vaporised the ship.

Experiments are conducted to assess whether the device will detonate successfully and second to get a measure of the damage it is likely to inflict on people, buildings and infrastructure.

Tests have historically been divided into three categories depending on whether they are detonated in the air, underwater or underground. Signatories to the comprehensive test ban treaty halted all nuclear tests in 1996. Since then computer simulation and "subcritical tests" – explosions too small to produce a nuclear blast — have been used by the US and UK.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 25 May 2009 | 10:20 pm

Hay festival special

This week, two of the biggest science stories of the year broke - the first ever British astronaut and a 47-million-year-old fossil that tells us how humans and other primates are related to the rest of the animal kingdom.

We've decided to ignore those and instead Alok Jha and James Randerson have hopped on the train to Hay-on-Wye where they've been reading books, listening to lectures and soaking up the sunshine.

They're not alone. Joining them in Wales is the government's economic adviser on climate change Nicholas Stern, and one of the architects of New Labour Anthony Giddens, both of whom have lessons for Gordon Brown on the environment.

The energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband makes an unscheduled appearance to talk to documentary film-maker and green activist Franny Armstrong. She has some good things to say about Miliband's record, but on the airline industry they are a long way from agreeing. Armstrong challenges the minister on why the government wants to build a new runway at Heathrow.

Astronomer Royal Martin Rees is on hand to ponder the existence of extraterrestrials and express his hopes for space exploration, and biologist Steve Jones shares his Darwin reading list.

Finally, comedian Marcus Brigstocke talks to James and picks up this year's unofficial festival theme - he thinks we need a more inspirational climate change message.

Dont forget to ...

• Mail us at science@guardian.co.uk
• Get our Twitter feeds for programme updates and daily science news
• Join our Facebook group

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 25 May 2009 | 9:34 pm

Scientists identify gene that may explain hair loss

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Researchers in Japan have identified a gene that appears to determine cyclical hair loss in mice and believe it may also be responsible for hair loss, or alopecia, in people.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 May 2009 | 9:09 pm

Opposites attract in human search for mate

LONDON (Reuters) - When it comes to choosing a mate, opposites really do attract, according to a Brazilian study that found people are subconsciously more likely to choose a partner whose genetic make-up is different to their own.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 May 2009 | 7:54 pm

Opposites attract in human search for mate (Reuters)

Reuters - When it comes to choosing a mate, opposites really do attract, according to a Brazilian study that found people are subconsciously more likely to choose a partner whose genetic make-up is different to their own.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 May 2009 | 7:54 pm

Ukrainian gas repayments situation 'very difficult': Gazprom (AFP)

AFP - The situation regarding Ukrainian payments for Russian gas is "very difficult", the head of Russian gas giant Gazprom, said Monday, Russian news agencies reported.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 May 2009 | 6:06 pm

Faith in science

Huge audiences for science talks are a positive indication of the flourishing and lively constituency of interest in the subject

Two striking facts about the Hay festival this weekend have been (a) the weather – everyone has doubtless commented on the sunshine blazing down on what is usually a Somme-like vista of mud seen through slanting rain – and (b) the huge audiences for the science talks, with both of the big tents filled to capacity for two talks by Martin Rees and one by Steve Jones.

Whereas the weather might in fact be a cause for concern rather than celebration – is this another bit of proof that our basking comes at the expense of the ice caps – the other fact is genuinely a matter of celebration. The interest shown in science, the informed questions that followed the talks, and the queues at the signings afterwards, were indicators of the healthy fact that there is a lively constituency of interest in science, which in this 50th anniversary year of CP Snow's Two Cultures essay is a positive sign.

In the first of his two lectures Martin Rees talked about what we might expect, and what we should be concerned about, in our world in 2050. The points he made are to be found set out at greater length in his book Our Final Century (he had first entitled this Our Final Century? his publishers removed the question mark; the American edition, in line with the greater interest in immediate gratification over there, was entitled Our Final Hour) It's a good thing Rees keeps iterating his views about the risks we face from "error and terror", given the immense harm that would accrue from very small probability events: some we might avoid, some we might rethink, some we would at least understand as they happen to us.

His second lecture was on the cosmos, an infinitely fascinating topic whoever annotates the slides – but when it is Rees's eloquence, dry sense of humour and prodigious expertise doing it, the combination is unbeatable. That is why a thousand people paid for tickets to come and listen. From the discussion afterwards it was clear that at least many in the audience were at home with talk of parsecs and the Crab Nebula.

Steve Jones's lecture was equally packed. Celebrations of Darwin and discussions of evolutionary theory are everywhere in this anniversary year, constituting one of the biggest episodes of public education in science yet attempted. Darwin and Darwinism were therefore Jones's theme. One of the high points was an anecdote illustrating the way creationists can reconcile the contradiction of fact with what they would like to believe: Jones told us that he had spent a year teaching in Botswana some years ago, where a fundamentalist form of Calvinism has long subsisted. He asked one of his students there how he reconciled the study of biology with his faith. The student replied, "it's easy; I simply accept that you evolved, but we were created."

Hay is a place where grounds for optimism are to be found, in the survival of reading, in the flourishing of intelligent interest in science and ideas, in the liveliness of the public conversation. Great stuff.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 25 May 2009 | 5:00 pm

Two cultures split 'puts planet in peril'

Speaking at the Hay festival today, biographer Richard Holmes has urged scientists and artists to work together in the face of global warming

The author Richard Holmes has attacked the "dangerous" division between the arts and the sciences, warning that the split could prove fatal in the face of global warming.

Speaking at the Guardian Hay festival, the biographer insisted we have "a duty" to try to understand the scientific discoveries of the modern age, moving beyond the incomprehension and fear which have dogged relations between scientists and wider culture for hundreds of years.

"I believe passionately that the idea of two cultures is a terribly dangerous idea," he said. "The elephant in the room is what is happening to the planet, and it's scientific people who can tell us why the ice caps are melting. It's for all of us as citizens to understand science so proper decisions can be made. We need a complete understanding."

According to Holmes, whose latest book is an exploration of science in the Romantic era, which is shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, scientists have an equal responsibility to bridge the divide.

"Science needs to be able to describe itself to us, and we need to understand and listen and read," he continued. "If we don't, if we stay within a split culture, it could be a fatality."

He traced the roots of the division back to Copernicus's picture of planetary motion, which suggested that the sun doesn't, in fact, revolve around the Earth. "A revolting idea," said Holmes.

The division the Romantics made between the arts and the sciences is just as strong today, he continued.

"For Blake, Newton was a demonic figure of scientific rationality, who in a way brought death into the world," said Holmes. "[My book] allowed me to look at the idea of if there were two cultures in the Romantic period; did Romantic poets hate science or were they fascinated by whether it brought hope or menace. Again and again I came to the realisation that these are the same feelings we have today."

As evidence began to mount at the end of the 18th century that the universe is built on a much larger scale, artists reacted in many different ways, Holmes explained. With a newly expanded scope for creation, Shelley mused on "how many Christs had there to be to come down to each civilization", writing that, "His works have borne witness against him". ("Richard Dawkins would have loved Shelley," said Holmes.) Haydn, however, on looking through Herschel's telescope, composed his oratorio The Creation. "There is an argument that [chaos] is a description of Herschel's view of star creation - it could be absorbed by a musical composition into the biblical view of the creation," said Holmes.

But the challenge of global warming leaves little time for the barriers of mutual incomprehension to be surmounted, he argued, calling on scientists and artists to "talk intelligently to each other".

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 25 May 2009 | 3:42 pm

10 Events That Changed History

These historical events altered the course of civilization.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 May 2009 | 3:23 pm

Why We Stare, Even When We Don’t Want To

The stares of strangers endured by Connie Culp, recent face transplant recipient, might have little to do with cruelty or lack of empathy. These responses are likely a result of neurologic, biologic and evolutionary factors.

Prior to her operation, the center of Culp’s face was blank skin traversed by a single raw scar where she once had a nose, upper lip and cheeks. The disfigurement made her the target of something perhaps even less fixable: millions of years of evolutionary uncouth. When she went out in public, people gaped at her. After her operation, her face still looks unusual and the stares continue.

“We stare. Even if you don’t want to, even if your better judgment tells you ‘I need to be nice to this person. They’ve obviously suffered a tragedy,’ there’s something so alien and uncomfortable — it just doesn’t look like us,” said facial expression expert Erika Rosenberg, who focuses on evolution at UC Davis’ Center for the Mind and Brain. “It goes back to a very primal thing.”

To ensure the long-term survival of our species, we’re genetically predisposed to be attracted to symmetrical faces. The idea is that normal, healthy development free of disfiguring diseases or genetic mutations produces a symmetrical face. We unconsciously see symmetry as a marker of genetic quality. Our reaction to a face that is disfigured, however, also has links with short-term survival.

Humans are highly social animals. Rather than remaining among our family or herd from birth to death, we venture out. We spend our days mixing with great numbers of unfamiliar members of our species.

To do so safely, scientists believe we have evolved a rough screening process. When someone unfamiliar approaches you in the aisle of a grocery store, a glance at his face and its expression helps your brain to sort that person into one of two broad categories: safe or potentially unsafe. The amygdala (the brain area associated with judgment) depends upon the emotion conveyed by the person’s facial features to make that crucial call. Is he happy? Angry? Irritated?

To decide, your eyes sweep over the person’s face, retrieving only parts, mainly just his nose and eyes. Your brain will then try to assemble those pieces into a configuration that you know something about.

When the pieces you supply match nothing in the gallery of known facial expressions, when you encounter a person whose nose, mouth or eyes are distorted in a way you have never encountered before, you instinctively lock on. Your gaze remains riveted, and your brain stays tuned for further information.

“When a face is distorted, we have no pattern to match that,” Rosenberg said. “All primates show this [staring] at something very different, something they have not evolved to see. They need to investigate further. ‘Are they one of us or not?’ In other species, when an animal looks very different, they get rejected.”

And so, we stare. (An averted gaze is triggered in some people. This too can be overridden only with great difficulty.)

It doesn’t take much of a facial anomaly to trigger a transfixed response; a normal human face upside down will do it. Or one that is simply unmoving.

In her work with Paul Ekman, who pioneered the widely accepted theory that human emotion conveyed via facial expressions is biological in origin, Rosenberg studied a group of people with a condition that prevents their facial muscles from moving.

“They talk about how difficult it is to interact with people because people can’t handle looking at a face that doesn’t move,” Rosenberg said.

However, a surgery that allows them to lift their tongue has a “transformative effect on their lives,” noted Rosenberg. “Just being able to lift the tongue and move their faces enough to create a little smile. It shows you how profoundly important it is to have a face that works.”

It could be that the faces don’t match emotions we are familiar with, or it could be they don’t look like we expect humans to look, says Rosenberg. “Either way, there’s something very fundamental about having a normal working face that we need in our society.”

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 May 2009 | 2:53 pm

Men with More Daughters Become More Liberal

And women who have more sons are more likely to take on a conservative view.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 May 2009 | 2:43 pm

Cheney vs. Obama: Dueling Unprovable Claims

Both argue about the nation's safety. Their claims aren't provable, however.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 May 2009 | 2:28 pm

Is it Safe to Exercise in Your 70s?

If you want to begin a new exercise program, you should consult your physician.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 May 2009 | 2:10 pm

Lasers Could Find Friend or Foe Submarines Underwater

Navy researchers hope to use lasers for sonar detection or communicating with underwater submarines.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 May 2009 | 1:37 pm

Overfishing Goes Back Centuries, Log Books Reveal

Overfishing led to shrinking ocean populations and animal sizes centuries ago.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 May 2009 | 1:37 pm