NFL Players' Health Compared To That Of Other Healthy Young Men

Despite being larger in size and heavier in weight, an analysis of the cardiovascular disease risk factors of about 500 National Football League players finds that they have a lower incidence of impaired fasting glucose and similar prevalence of abnormal cholesterol levels as compared to a sample of healthy young-adult men, but have an increased prevalence of high blood pressure.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

One-two Punch In Battle Against HIV: New HIV Microbicide, And A Way To Mass Produce It In Plants, Developed

In what could be a major pharmaceutical breakthrough, scientists have devised a one-two punch to stop HIV. First the report describes a new protein that can kill the virus when used as a microbicide. Then the report shows how it might be possible to manufacture this protein in quantities large enough to make it affordable for people in developing countries.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

Ancient Volcanic Eruptions Caused Global Mass Extinction

A previously unknown giant volcanic eruption that led to global mass extinction 260 million years ago has been uncovered.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

Some Neural Tube Defects In Mice Linked To Enzyme Deficiency

Women of childbearing age can reduce the risk of having a child born with a neural tube defect such as spina bifida by eating enough folate or folic acid. New research using mice confirms the importance of another nutrient, inositol, to protect against the development of neural tube defects.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

Physics: Interferometer Gets More Quiet Mirrors

In physics many subtle phenomena can be studied by allowing waves to interfere with each other. In an interferometer, light waves travel by two different paths, directed from place to place by strategically places mirrors, and converge at a detector, where they produce a striped interference pattern.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

Fallow Deer Become Hoarse In The Hunt For A Mate

Fallow deer become hoarse when trying to attract a mate, according to scientists.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

How Oxidative Stress May Help Prolong Life

Oxidative stress has been linked to aging, cancer and other diseases in humans. Paradoxically, researchers have suggested that small exposure to oxidative conditions may actually offer protection from acute doses. Now, scientists have discovered the gene responsible for this effect. Their study explains the underlying mechanism of the process that prevents cellular damage by reactive oxygen species.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Saved By Junk DNA: Vital Role In The Evolution Of Human Genome

Stretches of DNA previously believed to be useless 'junk' DNA play a vital role in the evolution of our genome, researchers have now shown. They found that unstable pieces of junk DNA help tuning gene activity and enable organisms to quickly adapt to changes in their environments.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Breast Cancer Etiology May Vary By Subtype

Women's reproductive and lifestyle characteristics can be linked to different invasive breast cancer subtypes. Data on 2,544 breast cancer cases suggests that traditional risk factors for development of the condition are associated with different kinds of tumor.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Neurological Disorder In Golden Retriever Dogs Caused By A Mutation In Mitochondrial DNA

Sensory ataxic neuropathy (SAN) is a recently identified neurological disorder in Golden Retriever dogs with onset during puppyhood. Affected dogs move in an uncoordinated manner and have sensory deficits. Researchers in Sweden have now revealed that SAN is caused by a mutation in mitochondrial DNA.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

GOP attacks Democrats for climate proposal (AP)

AP - Republicans on Saturday attacked the climate change proposal crafted by congressional Democrats and endorsed by President Barrack Obama as doing little to reduce global warming while saddling Americans with high energy costs.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 May 2009 | 11:49 am

Stem cell breakthrough gets closer to the clinic (AFP)

AFP - The technology for versatile, grow-in-a-dish transplant tissue took a step toward clinical use Thursday when researchers announced they have found a safe way to turn skin cells into stem cells.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 May 2009 | 11:46 am

Official: New signs of NKorea missile preparations (AP)

AP - Spy satellites have spotted signs that North Korea may be preparing to transport another long-range missile to a test launch site, South Korean officials said Saturday, as the U.S. defense secretary issued his harshest warning to the North since its recent nuclear test.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 May 2009 | 10:10 am

Your questions

We answered your questions about quake zone.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 May 2009 | 9:59 am

The Nation's Weather (AP)

AP - A deep trough of low pressure will sink southward Saturday from Canada and into the Great Lakes and Northeast, allowing cool air to sweep into a region of the country from the Northern Plains through the Northeast.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 May 2009 | 8:57 am

ADB calls for low-carbon transport systems (AFP)

AFP - The Asian Development Bank Saturday called on its Asian government borrowers to design mass transport systems in a way that would slow the rapid growth of their greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 May 2009 | 8:06 am

Discovery Could Eliminate Harmful Gene Mutation in Dogs (HealthDay)

HealthDay - FRIDAY, May 29 (HealthDay News) -- A genetic mutation that causes a neurological disorder called sensory ataxic neuropathy (SAN) in Golden Retriever dogs has been identified by Swedish scientists.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 May 2009 | 3:48 am

Prison for NY man who caused yucky green pollution (AP)

AP - The owner of a Long Island titanium factory has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison for storing 12 tons of corrosive hazardous waste on his property, resulting in a mess prosecutors say looked like a scene from a horror movie.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 May 2009 | 1:03 am

Quacks, hacks and pressing problems with press releases

Obviously we distrust the media on science: they rewrite commercial press releases from dodgy organisations as if they were health news, they lionise mavericks with poor evidence. But journalists will often say: what about those scientists with their press releases? Surely we should do something about them confusing us with their wild ideas?

Now you may be inclined to think that a journalist should be capable of doing more than simply reading, and then rewriting, a press release; but we must accept that these are troubled times.

Through our purchasing behaviour, we have communicated to newspapers that we want them to be large and cheap more than we want them to be adequately researched. So in this imperfect world it would be useful to know what's in academic press releases, since these are the people of whom we are entitled to have the highest expectations. A paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine this month shows we have been failed.

Researchers at Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire took one year's worth of press releases from 10 medical research centres, a mixture of the most eminent universities and the most humble, as measured by their US News & World Report ranking. These centres each put out around one press release a week, so 200 were selected at random and analysed in detail.

Half of them covered research done in humans, and as an early clue to their quality, 23% didn't bother to mention the number of participants – it's hard to imagine anything more basic - and 34% failed to quantify their results. But what kinds of study were covered? In medical research we talk about the "hierarchies of evidence", ranked by quality and type. Systematic reviews of randomised trials are the most reliable: because they ensure that conclusions are based on all of the information, rather than just some of it; and because – when conducted properly – they are the least vulnerable to bias.

After these, there are observational studies ("people who choose to eat vegetables live longer") which are more prone to bias, but may be easier to do. Then there are individual case reports. And finally, there is "expert opinion".

In the Dartmouth study, among the press releases covering human research, only 17% involved randomised trials while 40% were on the most limited studies: ones without a control group, small samples of fewer than 30 participants. That's not necessarily a problem. Research is always a matter of compromise: to randomise every single patient would be quite a piece of work.

So people conduct imperfect research, knowing that it is the best we can do with the resources available, knowing that the results must be interpreted with caution and caveats. This isn't "bad science" – the errors come at the level of interpretation, where people fail to acknowledge the limitations of the evidence.

That failure is a crime, but is it limited to quacks and hacks? No, and that is the key finding of this new paper, which found 58% of all press releases from its sample of academic institutions lacked relevant cautions and caveats about the methods used and the results reported.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 29 May 2009 | 11:05 pm

Preview: Cheltenham Science Festival

Cheltenham's Science Festival will surprise at every turn this year, with guests from the provocative, such as neurochemist and individuality explorer Susan Greenfield, to the unexpected, such as Heston Blumenthal, here having his culinary alchemy dissected, Likewise, the topics covered range inventively from stem-cell research to the science of curry. But this year's most popular event is most likely to be Can Science Make You Happy?

• Various venues, Wed 3 Jun to 7 Jun, call 0844-576 8970 or visit cheltenhamfestivals.com/science

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 29 May 2009 | 11:01 pm

The Arctic's oil reserves mapped

An estimated 30% of the world's undiscovered gas and 13% of its undiscovered oil may be in the Arctic, according to scientists.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 May 2009 | 10:58 pm

Space Shuttle Atlantis May Begin Trek Home on Sunday (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - The space shuttle Atlantis may begin a cross-country trek atop a tricked out jumbo jet as early as Sunday to fly from a California landing site to its Florida home, weather permitting, NASA officials said.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 May 2009 | 10:46 pm

Tropical Depression One - Final Advisory (weather.com)

weather.com -
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 May 2009 | 10:05 pm

Scientists stumble across 4,600m volcano

Scientists scouring the ocean floor to study the nature of tsunamis have discovered a massive underwater volcano off Indonesia's western coast. The 4,600m (15,000ft) mountain spans 30 miles at its base, marine geologist Yusuf Surachman Djajadihardja, said yesterday. Its discovery was "completely unexpected", he said. It was not immediately clear if the volcano is active, but he said if it were and it erupted, it would be "very, very dangerous". An international team of scientists discovered the volcano 205 miles west of Sumatra island while carrying out a survey of the Indian Ocean floor this month.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 29 May 2009 | 9:14 pm

Extremophile Hunter Searches for 'Impossible' Life

The search is on for extremophiles, living things that thrive where life would seem to be impossible -- from the glaciers of the Alaskan arctic, to the ice sheets of Antarctica, that may provide insights about life elsewhere in cosmos.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 May 2009 | 8:50 pm

Dying To Play Video Games, Except Not Really

Carbon monoxide poisoning and video games don't mix.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 May 2009 | 8:43 pm

Time-Lapse Videos of Massive Change on Earth

Over the past decade, the number of people on Earth shot up by more than 13 percent, to nearly 6.8 billion people. To make room for all the hungry, breeding, CO2-emitting bodies on our small planet, we’ve ravaged Earth’s surface with staggering feats of deforestation, irrigation and urbanization — and NASA satellites have captured it all. Here are a few videos, compiled from images posted on NASA’s Earth Observatory, of some of the most impressive conquests of man over environment.

Urbanization of Dubai
Nothing says environmental exploitation like building your own palm tree-shaped archipelago. Dubai, of the United Arab Emirates, has dredged sand from the sea floor to build hundreds of artificial islands along its coast, hoping to attract wealthy tourists. Many projects have been put on hold since the global credit crunch hit the region.

Sucking Out the Aral Sea
In the 1960s, central Asia’s Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world. As a result of irrigation and damming, it had shriveled to 10 percent of its original size (marked by the thin black line) by 2007. It is now three separate, highly salinic, lakes.

Clearing the Amazon
Over the past three decades, the state of Rondônia in western Brazil cleared almost 35 percent of its rainforest. According to NASA’s website, the pattern of deforestation is common in the Amazon. People build roads, then clear some of the land for small farms. After a few years, the land erodes and becomes depleted. The farmers, suffering from low crop yields, convert the land for cattle, then clear more forest for crops, and so on until large cattle holders buy the land.

Post-War Clean-Up of Mesopotamia’s Wetlands
Sometimes, change is a good thing. The marshes of Mesopotamia had been drained and decimated by Saddam Hussein in the 1990s. When his regime ended in 2003, Iraqis began reclaiming the marshes. This shows the reflooding of the marshlands and regrowth of vegetation. But serious concerns remain: the water used for reflooding may not be sustainable as the population recovers and expands its agricultural efforts, and the region may have already suffered an irreversible loss of species diversity.

Drought in Utah
Southern Utah’s Lake Powell was once teeming with boaters, fishers and vacationers. But from 2000 to 2005 its water level dropped from 20 million to 8 million acre-feet, due to severe drought. Water levels have rebounded a bit, but are expected to plummet to levels even lower than those of 2005 during the next serious drought.

Image: NASA Earth Observatory

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 29 May 2009 | 7:52 pm

BLOG: Clouds Form on Spores

A third of the material that clouds form around is not just dust but stuff of biological origin.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 May 2009 | 7:41 pm

How Pixar’s Up House Could Really Fly

The conceit of the new Disney/Pixar cartoon epic, Up, is that an old guy’s house gets attached to a bunch of helium balloons which lift it up out of the city and on a wonderful adventure.

That got Wired Science thinking: Could that actually work? And if so, how many balloons would you need?

We called Wolfe House Movers, which specializes in moving old structures and had Kendal Siegrist, a manager, take a look at the images from the movie to see how much the house might weigh.

“A building like that, you’d figure right around 100,000 pounds,” Siegrist said.

Then we did some calculations. Air weighs about 0.078 pounds per cubic foot; helium weighs just 0.011 pounds per cubic foot. A helium balloon experiences a buoyant upward force that is equal to the air it displaces minus its own weight, or 0.067 pounds per cubic foot of helium balloon.

One more simple calculation — 100,000 pounds divided by 0.067 pounds per cubic foot — and you’ve got that it would take 1,492,537 cubic feet of helium to lift the house. Of course, you’d need some more balloons to keep getting it higher, but that’s our minimum.

Now, let’s assume you’ve got a bunch of spherical balloons three feet in diameter. They’ve got a volume in 14.1 cubic feet, so you’d need 105,854 of them filled with helium to lift the house. Eyeballing the cluster of balloons above the house in Up, let’s say on average, it’s 40 balloons across and deep and 70 balloons tall. Do the math and there could be 112,000 balloons in there.

“That’s a great idea,” Siegrist said, laughing. “I’d love to do that with the balloons.”

Cluster Ballooning fans actually do this sort of thing, but with people in harnesses, not enormous houses, and they generally use a lot less balloons. They tend to use bigger balloons, say, six feet in diameter. You’d only need 13,208 of those.

But even if you could get the balloons and one hell of a strong cable, could a house be pulled from the top like that?

“If you go try picking it up, depending on what you’re doing, you can,” Siegrist said, “but for the most part, you want the house to bear the weight on its foundation.”

The way real, professional house movers like to do it is to get into the house’s basement and lift from below.

“The theory of our business is to replace the foundation with steel beams and then the steel beams can be transported wherever you need to, with the house just getting a free ride,” he said.

See Also:

• Movies
• Books as Disgusting as Movies, Say Scientists
• Scientists Create Sleek Spacesuits Just Like in the Movies
• Planets Collide! Not Just In The Movies Anymore
• Before Memory Science, There Was Science Fiction

Images: 1. Disney/Pixar. 2. Clusterballoon.org

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 29 May 2009 | 7:38 pm

Armpits: 'Rain Forests' For Bacteria

Even healthy skin is covered in a greater variety of bacteria than previously thought.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 May 2009 | 7:21 pm

The New Exoplanetology: ‘I Learned by Watching You, Earth’

A new technique for finding wet exoplanets got a field test when astronomers pretended to be aliens.

“If you were on another planet, you’d look at Earth and say, ‘That looks like the most interesting planet around that star,’” said Nicolas Cowan, a grad student at the University of Washington and lead author of the study. “Any critter with half a brain can look at Earth and say, ‘That’s the one that looks different.’ The question is how to quantify what it is that makes it look interesting.”

Astronomers used a telescope aboard the Deep Impact spacecraft — which crashed a probe into a comet in 2005 and is on its way to another — to stare at Earth for two separate 24-hour periods. They tracked the changes in light and color that crossed the Earth’s surface as it rotated, and connected them back to continents and oceans. The results will be published in the August issue of Astrophysical Journal.

Though the spacecraft was only 30 million miles away from Earth, light years closer than the nearest extrasolar planet, it was far enough to blur out the distinctive features of the Earth’s surface.

“It’s like watching a movie if you had really poor eyesight,” said co-author Eric Agol of the University of Washington. “You’ll see the screen getting lighter and darker, you might see different colors, but it wouldn’t give you very much information about what’s going on on the screen.”

Once the team had data on the color variations of the blurry dot’s surface, they used a mathematical analysis to pick out which colors were the most important.

“The technique is largely used for pattern recognition,” Cowan said. “It’s trying to fake human intuition for a computer.”

They found that some areas of the Earth are reflective at long, or red, wavelengths, and others are reflective at short, or blue, wavelengths. When Cowan and his colleagues mapped the red and blue zones and compared them to a map of the Earth, the red areas corresponded to continents and the blue ones lined up with oceans.

The same technique could pick out oceans and continents on other blurry dots orbiting other stars.

“We’d like to be able to tell when we’re looking at an extrasolar system, are we looking at something potentially habitable and even more interestingly, something inhabited,” said co-author Timothy Livengood of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. “So we look back at our one example, ourselves, to see if our models are any good.”

“If you wanted to do that by hand it would’ve been cheating, because we know that Earth has oceans,” Cowan said. “We were trying to see if the data could support that without imposing our own ideas about what the Earth actually looks like.”

The technique has a number of limitations. Because it averages colors over a north-south slice of the planet as it rotates, it can only detect changes from east to west. This is great for telling Africa from the Atlantic, but would miss things like lakes at the poles or planets made entirely of oceans. Earth is the only planet we know of with distinct oceans and continents, and we don’t fully understand their origins. Extrasolar planets may have to be remarkably Earth-like for this method to find them.

“People run into this problem a lot in astrobiology,” Cowan said. “We’re looking for a planet that has life on it, and because Earth is the only one we know of, we end up looking for planets just like Earth. That’s probably a little narrow-minded. We’re being conservative, saying ‘Let’s start with the one example that we know.’”

Still, the technique is a much quicker way to get a broad idea of what a planet looks like than other standard methods. Taking a full spectrum of the planet and looking for “fingerprints” of individual molecules can take months. This method takes one of the target planet’s days. Livengood said the technique could be used to quickly pick out planets to observe in greater detail, making missions more efficient.

“If we can minimize the amount of time spent observing, we’ve just made it a much more practical mission,” he said.

Knowing the technique works could help shape the next generation of telescopes, and perhaps even speed up the search for other Earths.

“People assumed that the cool science was only going to happen when we had really enormous spectrographs up in space to image the atmospheres,” Cowan said. “Turns out we can leapfrog that.”

“It’s very interesting and promising, but it’s a step in a very complex and challenging goal,” said astronomer Eric Ford at the University of Florida. “It’s another step along the way to figure out how we’ll be able to study these planets and what we’ll be able to learn and what types of observations we need to make to learn it. I’m sure it will motivate further work.”

Images: NASA, Nicolas B. Cowan, and The EPOXI Team

See Also:

• Scientists Create First Map of an Extrasolar Planet
• Extrasolar Planet Found That Could Support Liquid Water
• Planet-Hunting Space Telescope Readies for Launch
• Alpha Centauri May Have Earth-like, Habitable Planets
• Hubble Finds Carbon Dioxide on Extrasolar Planet
• Top 5 Most Extreme Exoplanets

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 29 May 2009 | 6:44 pm

Scientists Reveal the Secret to Hockey’s Wrist Shot

How professional hockey players get off that perfect wrist shot.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 May 2009 | 6:05 pm

City WiFi Tech Gets New Green Lease on Life

WiFi network technology originally developed to connect people to the internet are acquiring a green tinge as they are pressed into service as the backbone of the smart grid.

Cable, DSL, and cellular won the battle to deliver internet service for most people, but the physical network for the Internet-of-Things remains to be built. And some of the losers of that battle could end up being better a better match for the smart grid, which needs a different set of specs than cable and phone companies.

Thursday, Trilliant, a smart grid network builder, acquired Skypilot, a broadband wireless company that used to specialize in long-range, high-capacity WiFi for rural areas and cities.

“The unique technology in Skypilot was helpful in the municipal WiFi market but maybe not determinative,” said Eric Miller, senior VP at Trilliant. “But you take that technology and move into the utility market, and it’s a breakthrough technology.”

The acquisition follows a move by another former municipal WiFi player, Tropos, into smart grid networking. This month, Cisco started talking big about energy, too. It’s a natural area for these companies to expand their businesses because the smart grid is fundamentally about about networking the pieces of the energy system. Right now, the power plants, transmission machinery, and consumption spots are physically connected, but they can’t communicate. Your utility can’t tell you in real-time how much power you’re using. Their engineers just know they need to have X amount of power plants running the normal power needs of Y customers.

“Historically, power supply infrastructure has been created to serve load as a passive element of the system,” a Department of Energy report noted.

In other words, right now the grid is just a bunch of wires.

Without good information, utilities have to be very risk averse, and even so, brownouts and blackouts are estimated to cost the country $150 billion a year. Add in that it’s harder to incorporate renewable energy sources like wind and you can see why the Obama administration pumped at least $4.5 billion into upgrading the system.

Now, though, the real network solutions have to emerge. Utilities need bandwidth and sensors and standards for different pieces to interconnect.

“There’s a couple of challenges that aren’t met by most of today’s communications systems and one of them is bandwidth,” said Jesse Berst, a smart grid analyst with SmartGridNews.com. “Most of the systems being offered today have enough bandwidth for starter applications including smart metering, but the real power of the smart grid is when you have telemetry all up and down the system and every piece of the system is monitored.”

Finding really, really reliable bandwidth is tough enough, but unlike other communications networks, utilities don’t have the luxury of by-passing any consumers. They have to serve everyone, which means the network they deploy will have to hit every single customer. That’s one reason some utilities are looking to technologies like Sypilot’s instead of using previously existing infrastructure.

“Most utilities are going to choose a separate technology for that last mile rather than going over the internet connection that’s going into the house,” Berst predicted. “It’ll still use internet protocol, talk the same language, but it’ll be a separate connection because utilities don’t want to rely on Comcast if there is a problem.”

See Also:

• DOE Report: Wind Could Power 20 Percent of US Grid by 2030
• Could the Electric Grid Support Far More Wind and Solar?
• Google Smart Meter App Not Ready for Finals
• Clean Tech

Photo: flickr/ethanlindsey

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 29 May 2009 | 6:00 pm

Volcanic Eruption Implicated in Mass Extinction

A study has found evidence in China that a volcanic eruption was responsible a mid-Permian mass extinction event.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 May 2009 | 5:56 pm

Resistance to malaria drug growing

Growing resistance to the world's most effective drug treatment for malaria in Cambodia is a development that could threaten the lives of millions of people, scientists warned today.

Malaria experts said that the problem in Cambodia must be contained as there were no other effective drug treatments available. The drugs are now taking up to four or five days to clear all malaria parasites from the blood rather than two or three days, according to the UK study by the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit.

Dr Glenn McConkey, a malaria expert at Leeds university, said: "This could be a major threat in terms of drug resistance."

He said there was a danger that the prevalence of resistance to artemesinin could become as widespread as that to chloroquine, which used to be the mainstay of drug treatment.

"It's a matter of time before resistance to artemesinin in widespread. The concern is that it will spread before we can develop a new drug to replace it," said McConkey.

Professor Brian Greenwood, professor of tropical medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said resistance to the drug was at present only partial and patients should still be cured if they took artemisinins in combination with another antimalarial, as recommended by the World Health Organisation.

He said that Cambodian pharmacies were supplying patients with artemisnin alone, or flawed courses of the drug were sold that did not contain enough active ingredients to kill the malaria parasite.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 29 May 2009 | 5:53 pm

US launches cyber security plan

President Obama unveils plans for a US cyber security tsar, saying digital infrastructure is a "strategic national asset".
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 May 2009 | 5:35 pm

Birth of the love cats

So cats weren't tamed by humans after all. We have to lower our expectations when it comes to pets

Changes are afoot in the field of cat studies or, to use the technical term, apaw. New research into quite how cats went from being wild to apparently domesticated has shed greater light on the loving gaze shared each morning by pet and owner over a bowl of reconstituted meat.

An article in the latest Scientific American looks again at the history of feline domestication. It has long been held that cats were first tamed in ancient Egypt some 3,600 years ago. Thanks, however, to the discovery of a cat-shaped corpse buried some 9,500 years ago alongside their human associate in a shallow grave in Cyprus, the game has been changed. The new thinking is that wildcats of the type Felis silvestris lybica began to dwell alongside humans as farming developed in the fertile crescent of the Levant. Wildcats were tempted into human settlements by the prospects of scraps and, crucially, a ready supply of Mus musculus domesticus, aka the house mouse, an ancient Jerry to their pre-classical Tom.

In other words, we didn't domesticate cats, they domesticated themselves. The animal was not tamed by the human, it looked the human up and down, liked what it saw and decided it would put on its cutest expression and pretend to be friends – a small price to pay for a high-mouse diet.

Cat owners reading, this, perhaps with Tango or Whiskey (or both) sitting nonchalantly on top of their paper, may not be overly surprised to learn of these zoological developments. Unlike obliging, loving, slavering dogs, cats can often give the distinct impression of only being in it for the tuna-flavoured biscuits. The fact that this might be a habit established over millennia only proves the consistency of their interests.

That said, the postulations of the academics ought to give those same owners pause for thought. For every moment of insistent miaowing for meat, there is also the soft purring your cat emits while it submits willingly to your caress, seemingly because it likes it. It is all too easy for humans to imagine a sophisticated relationship between themselves and their familiar. As opposed, say, to it being just an extended period of transactions designed to guarantee the continued delivery of Whiskas.

Anthropomorphism is sometimes decried by ecologists who would prefer it if attempts to preserve endangered species were more evenly spread, rather than concentrated on creatures who look like they'd make nice company at a dinner party. Polar bears are perceived as cute and friendly, despite their penchant for bloody destruction\, while snakes are devious and ruthless despite donating upwards of 30% of their income to charity (or so I was told by a snake oil salesman). This tendency applies tenfold to our domestic animals, despite the fact that we have not even the slightest clue as to their actual thoughts and feelings.

It seems that now might be the time to revise downwards our expectations of cats. To continue to imagine, as I have done myself, that a cat actually loves you may only lead to heartbreak when the next study comes out revealing that, far from having an emotional bond with his human host, Felix has in fact conducted due diligence on his owner before deigning to move in.

The other extreme, of refusing to countenance any bond with your beast, would also prove unproductive I suspect. Why take an animal into your home if you're intent on spending half the time trying to get it to pay for its dinner? Instead, I think, the model for our cats should be roughly the same as for our MPs: acknowledge that we need them, but let our trust in them be a wary one. And, as it seems to be the rage, make them subject to potential recall, with their effectiveness judged at the ballot box under the AV-plus system.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 29 May 2009 | 5:30 pm

Ants get their place in Smithsonian exhibit (AP)

AP - Running a museum is no picnic, but the Smithsonian is attracting ants anyway.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 May 2009 | 5:13 pm

SLIDE SHOW: The Week's Top Stories

Browse through images of the Discovery News' top stories this week.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 May 2009 | 4:20 pm

Torso Reveals Cancer Risk for Astronauts

Radiation detectors laced into dummy torsos that flew in space bear sobering news.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 May 2009 | 4:10 pm

Space storm's 'epicentre' found

The precise spot at which a space storm struck the Earth's outer atmosphere has been pinpointed for the first time.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 May 2009 | 4:06 pm

"Take AIM at Climate Change" - Music Video

AIM = Adapt Innovate Mitigate. What happens at Earth's poles will rock your world. From POLAR-PALOOZA, a multimedia initiative with NSF & NASA support.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 May 2009 | 3:59 pm

Solar Alignments Cause 'Manhattanhenge' This Weekend

Twice this summer, the sun will set in alignment with Manhattan's cross street.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 May 2009 | 3:55 pm

Swine flu spreading faster in UK than anywhere else in EU

Britain is the only member state where more people have caught the disease at home than abroad, raising concerns about the effectiveness of public health measures

Swine flu is spreading more rapidly in Britain than anywhere else in the European Union, according to the latest figures on the outbreak.

European health officials confirmed that as of this morning, 456 people had caught the H1N1 virus across 21 EU member states, with almost half of those infected living in the UK.

More concerning is that the virus appears to be spreading more quickly from person to person in Britain than elsewhere, raising questions over public health measures to contain it.

Most European cases of swine flu are people who have flown home after picking up the infection in Mexico or the US. Britain is the only member state where more people have caught the disease at home than abroad.

Figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control show that of 203 confirmed cases of swine flu in Britain, 146 people caught the virus without leaving the country. In Spain, which has 143 confirmed cases, only 43 people caught the infection at home.

Sheila Bird, professor of biostatistics at Cambridge University, criticised Britain's Health Protection Agency for failing to publish the information, which emerged only in a European report on the epidemic.

"When you see a big difference in the rate of person-to-person transmissions between the UK and other countries, the immediate questions are is this due to better surveillance in the UK, or is it due to poorer public health measures?" she said.

"It's not just scientists who need to know this information. In the prevention of a new infectious disease, part of the work is done by the public, and they need to know what to be alert to," she added.

A spokeswoman for the Health Protection Agency said outbreaks at schools in London and Birmingham had contributed "significantly" to the spread of the disease within Britain.

Yesterday, the Department of Health reported 12 new cases in England, bringing the UK total to 215. The new cases include 10 children from Welford Primary School in Handsworth, Birmingham, where 60 cases have already been confirmed. The other two cases include a child in London and an adult in the north-west, who caught the infection from an unknown source.

On Thursday, a seriously ill 37-year-old man was admitted to the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow with the infection. Eton College in Berkshire was closed for a week from yesterday after a 13-year-old pupil was diagnosed with swine flu.

There have been 8,585 probable and confirmed US cases of the the new H1N1 strain, with 12 deaths and 507 hospitalisations.

Work has begun on a swine flu vaccine, which is expected to go into clinical trials in the next few months. But it is unlikely to be ready for widespread use until October.

A spokesman for the Health Protection Agency said: "The agency is committed to keeping the public and health professionals up to date with the current situation on swine flu. We publish figures every day to provide the latest on confirmed cases and have lots of guidance and advice on our website - hpa.org.uk - including information on whether the infections were acquired here or abroad, what age groups are being affected and other important epidemiological data."

• This article was amended on Friday 29 May 2009. In the article above a quote from the Health Protection Agency was added to clarify their current position on the swine flu issue.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 29 May 2009 | 3:55 pm

Red Glow Sheds Light on Ocean Health

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Leaders Called Upon to Support Sexual Health

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Source: Livescience.com | 29 May 2009 | 3:00 pm

Russian rocket docks at space station

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft docked successfully with the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, a spokesman for Russian mission control said.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 29 May 2009 | 2:52 pm

Russia opens WMD disposal plant

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Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 May 2009 | 2:35 pm

One of the most elusive big cats, the jaguar, gives up some secrets

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Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 May 2009 | 2:15 pm

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Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 May 2009 | 2:15 pm

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Source: Livescience.com | 29 May 2009 | 2:05 pm

Climate pressure 'building on US'

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Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 May 2009 | 1:19 pm

Crew doubles aboard space station

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Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 May 2009 | 12:37 pm

Anything but the god particle

To mark the 80th birthday of the man behind the elusive particle, we're holding a competition to rename the damned thing

I once asked a brilliant physicist at Manchester University what he thought of the name the media use for the Higgs boson, the mysterious particle that is regarded as the universal origin of mass. That name, of course, is the God particle.

It is partly with thanks to names like "God particle" and spurious end-of-the-world scenarios that the Large Hadron Collider at Cern near Geneva got so much coverage when it was switched on last year. And broke.

Cern is just one lab that is in the business of hunting for the particle. The other is the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago. That machine is the most powerful particle accelerator in the world (that works).

But back to the physicist in Manchester. He paused. He sighed. And then he said: "I really, really don't like it. It sends out all the wrong messages. It overstates the case. It makes us look arrogant. It's rubbish." He then added: "If you walked down the corridor here, poked your head into people's offices and asked that question, you would likely be struck by flying books."

Today it's the 80th birthday of Peter Higgs, the Edinburgh-based physicist whose work pointed to the existence of the particle in the early 1960s. In previous interviews, I've asked him what he makes of the name, God particle. He hates it. He worries it might offend people who are religious, but I think he hates it for other reasons too.

When I've written about the God particle here before, I've suggested we might do well – or more accurately that physicists might do well – to think up another name for it. So today, in honour of Peter Higgs entering the realm of the octogenarians, we're launching a competition to rename the God particle. Who said Friday can't be fun?

Below I've set out the best criteria I can find for how to come up with a good name for a new particle. Depending on the number of entries, we'll select the winner by: consulting physicists; testing the entries on the humanities graduates who run the Guardian's newsdesk, aka "The Gate Keepers"; or by printing them out on a sheet of paper and asking the chef to throw a dart at it*.

The winner will receive a copy of Science: A Four Thousand Year History by Patricia Fara, and a surprise Higgs boson-themed gift.

But first, some history. The line of progress is rarely straight and clear in physics, as Sheldon Glashow said in his Nobel lecture in 1979. Peter Higgs did not pluck the idea for what is officially called the Higgs boson out of thin air. His work was influenced by several scientists, including the Nobel laureates Werner Heisenberg, Phil Anderson and Yoichiro Nambu.

Peter Higgs wasn't the only one to come up with the idea either. Two Belgian physicists, Francois Englert and Robert Brout, published very similar work a week or two earlier than Higgs. And a third group, including Gerald Guralnik, Richard Hagen and Tom Kibble at Imperial College in London followed soon after.

The particle became known as the Higgs boson in 1972 after Ben Lee, a former head of theoretical physics at Fermilab, used the name to describe the idea. Even Higgs often distances himself from the name, referring to it as the "so-called Higgs boson".

For physicists, the name seems to have stuck, but not for the media.

For the origins of the name so loved by journalists, we have to go back to Fermilab. In the early 1990s, the former director of the lab, Leon Lederman, wrote a great book on particle physics that he called "The God particle", which was to be the main target for an enormous but ultimately ill-fated machine called the Superconducting Supercollider. In the book, he justifies the name by saying the particle is "so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname ..."

So that's how we got to where we are today. Physicists call it the Higgs boson, but it could easily be the B-E-H-G-H-K boson (make an acronym out of that if you can). And we in the media just can't stop ourselves calling it the God particle.

So, it's time for another name, and Higgs' birthday seems as good a day as any to start searching for one.

The best rules for naming new phenomena in physics I can find come courtesy of yet another very smart Fermilab physicist, Joe Lykken.

He has three simple rules:

1) Names should be serious and accurate
2) It is good to name things after people, but only if you can resist the pressure to hyphenate with two or three extra names
3) Names should be evocative and inspiring.

The Higgs boson scores well on 1 and 2, but in my view fails miserably on 3. Equally, God particle fails spectacularly on 1 and 2, but does rather better on 3.

I'm off to think up a name now. Where's Bill Watterson when you need him?

The closing date is midnight Monday 1st June 2009

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* The winner will be chosen by a team of independent physicists. Their decision will be final. The winner will be notified via the email address registered to their username.

Source: Evolution, genetics, medicine, physics & astronomy news | guardian.co.uk | 29 May 2009 | 12:30 pm

Greenland Ice Melt May Threaten Northeast

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Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 May 2009 | 12:15 pm

Why We'll Always Fear Snakes

My daughter has a snake, a tiny 8-inch-long, innocuous corn snake, and I hate that thing.
Source: Livescience.com | 29 May 2009 | 11:01 am