If The Shoe Flits, Duck: Real-life Example Of Humans' Dual Vision System

The reactions of former President George W. Bush and Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki when an Iraqi reporter flung his shoes toward the two men during a Baghdad news conference confirmed the results of an experiment being conducted by neuroscientists.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

Newborn Weights Affected By Environmental Contaminants

Recent epidemiological studies have revealed an increase in the frequency of genital malformations in male newborns (e.g., un-descended testes) and a decrease in male fertility.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

Magnetic Super-atoms Discovered

Scientists have discovered a "magnetic superatom" -- a stable cluster of atoms that can mimic different elements of the periodic table -- that one day may be used to create molecular electronic devices for the next generation of faster computers with larger memory storage.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

Reengineering A Food Poisoning Microbe To Carry Medicines And Vaccines

Scientists have used genetic engineering to tame one of the most deadly food poisoning microbes and turn it into a potential new way of giving patients medicine and vaccines in pills rather than injections. 
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

Gene Vital To Early Embryonic Cells Forming A Normal Heart And Skull

New research highlights the critical role a certain gene and its protein play during early embryonic development on formation of a normal heart and skull.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

College Drinking Problems, Deaths On The Rise

Alcohol-related deaths, heavy drinking episodes and drunk driving have all been on the rise on college campuses over the past decade, a new government study shows.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

Europe Wants Space Station Extended to 2025

The European Space Agency is working to keep the space station alive longer.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jun 2009 | 3:30 pm

New Method Separates Cancer Cells From Normal Cells

Researchers have demonstrated a novel and simple method that can direct and separate cancer cells from normal cells. The device, which takes advantage of a physical principle called ratcheting, is a very tiny system of channels for cell locomotion. Based on this method, they have proposed that cancer cells possibly could be sequestered permanently in a sort of "cancer trap" made of implantable and biodegradable materials.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 3:00 pm

New Exotic Material Could Revolutionize Electronics

Move over, silicon -- it may be time to give the Valley a new name. Physicists have confirmed the existence of a type of material that could one day provide dramatically faster, more efficient computer chips.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 3:00 pm

Deforestation Causes 'Boom-and-bust' Development In The Amazon

Clearing the Amazon rainforest increases Brazilian communities' wealth and quality of life, but these improvements are short-lived, according to new research published in Science. The study shows that levels of development revert back to well below national average levels when the loggers and land clearers move on.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 3:00 pm

Genes That Regulate Human Circadian Rhythm Significantly Disturbed In Individuals With Arthritis

The genes that regulate human circadian rhythm, or 'the body clock', are significantly disturbed in individuals with arthritis, according to a new study. Notably, a specific genetic pathway has been identified as responsible for interactions between the genes that regulate the body clock and those that may worsen symptoms of arthritis.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 3:00 pm

Europe seeks ISS extension (AFP)

AFP - The European Space Agency said Tuesday it was in talks to extend the life of the International Space Station and get seats for its astronauts on future flights to the orbital outpost.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 2:37 pm

Crash & Splash: NASA Probes to Dash Toward Moon (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - The last thing one usually wants on a spaceflight is a crash, but that's exactly what NASA is hoping for when it launches two new probes at the moon's south pole this week on the first U.S. lunar mission in more than decade.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 2:30 pm

Road Rage: Why We Lose It

What turns the meek and mild into aggressive drivers?
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jun 2009 | 2:06 pm

On the Streets of China, Electric Bikes Are Swarming (Time.com)

Time.com - Cheap, green electric bikes are more popular than cars in China'scrowded cities, helping to offset the country's pollution problems
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 1:40 pm

Successor to Silicon?

A new method and material could lead to dramatically faster, more efficient computer chips.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jun 2009 | 1:17 pm

Australian Forests Best at Locking Up Carbon

The highest amount of carbon is found locked in an Australian mountain ash forest.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jun 2009 | 1:14 pm

How an Airplane-Sized Bird Replaced Its Feathers (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - An extinct bird the size of a Cessna airplane and weighing as much as an average human was one of the largest birds to have ever flown the friendly skies.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 12:48 pm

How an Airplane-Sized Bird Replaced Its Feathers

Bird size is limited by the time it takes to replace feathers.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jun 2009 | 12:35 pm

German firms eye huge African solar project: report (AFP)

AFP - German firms plan to club together next month to turn into reality a dream to generate electricity for Europe in the deserts of north Africa using solar power, a newspaper report said Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 12:00 pm

Honeybees create a buzz at Kew year after they were wiped out by disease

Some 20,000 honeybees released in wildflower meadow at Kew Gardens to encourage people to grow bee-friendly flowers

Honeybees are making a comeback to Kew Gardens today as part of a campaign to encourage people to grow bee-friendly flowers in their gardens.

Jordans Cereals is releasing 20,000 honeybees into two hives in a wildflower meadow at the world famous botanical gardens in London, marking a return after a year without the insects.

Bees in Kew's hives died at the same time as many colonies across the country, with the widespread losses thought to be as a result of problems including disease and environmental pressures.

The honeybee population has fallen by 10%-15% in the last two years, according to the government, but a survey of British Beekeepers' Association members suggests losses could have been as high as 30% between November 2007 and March 2008.

The honeybees at Kew are part of Jordans Cereals' Big Buzz campaign which also includes a give-away of 30,000 bee-friendly lavender and rosemary plants and 5,000 packs of seeds – equivalent to around 35 million wildflowers. The cereal company, which has a nature-friendly farming scheme, is calling on the Highways Agency and local councils to make publicly owned land more bee-friendly and plans to teach children about the value of bees through exhibitions.

Annette Dalton, horticultural manager at Kew Gardens, said: "We want to do our bit to help the British honeybee and we hope this will show visitors to the Gardens the important interaction between plants and insects. Without pollinators like bees, plants would not set seed and our food supplies."

She said the wildflower display was full of bee-friendly plants such as oxeye daisy and wild clary, with winter and spring flowering trees and shrubs nearby to feed the bees all year round.

Bill Jordan, founder of Jordans, said the relationship between bees and flowers had been damaged and people had to step in and fill the breach: "Bees are so much more than the soundtrack to lazy summer days - they're the most incredible of all nature's pollinators."

The campaign is supported by conservation groups, leading bee experts, celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and London Mayor Boris Johnson.

Bees play a vital part in pollinating many of the crops grown in the UK, but have been hit by agricultural changes which have reduced the availability of the wildflowers that are so important in providing food for the insects.

Diseases such as the varroa mite have infected hives, killing the bees, while climate change and pesticide use have also been suggested as possible factors in the insects' decline.

Research into the decline of honeybees has been boosted this year with an £8m injection of government cash and a £10,000 fund to map the rare British black variety. Earlier this month, several conservation and wildlife charities launched a scheme to reintroduce the short-haired bumblebee to the UK using populations transported from New Zealand.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jun 2009 | 11:35 am

Blue butterfly colonies thriving

The large blue butterfly has made an astonishing comeback following re-introduction efforts, scientists say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jun 2009 | 11:19 am

Asia's economic growth bolsters climate change: ADB (AFP)

AFP - Asia's rapid economic growth in recent years has contributed significantly to climate change and environmental pollution, the head of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) warned on Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 10:45 am

'Teenage' Andes could collapse

The largest mountain chain on the American continent is shrinking in some areas.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jun 2009 | 10:43 am

China city kills 36,000 dogs after rabies deaths (Reuters)

Reuters - A Chinese city has killed 36,000 stray and pet dogs in a bid to wipe out rabies, state media said on Tuesday, as the country considers a draft law recognizing animal rights and making such a cull illegal.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 10:11 am

The Nation's Weather (AP)

AP - Scattered showers and thunderstorms are expected to jolt an area stretching from the Mid-Mississippi Valley to the South Carolina coast Tuesday. Severe weather is also expected to hit the Central Plains and the Tennessee Valley.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 10:02 am

Floods, heatwaves and withering vines: how scientists see the US in 75 years

Hard-hitting report describes how America will be affected region by region if no action is taken on climate change

The Obama administration's long-awaited scientific report on the sweeping and life-altering consequences of a failure to act on global warming – Global climate change impacts in the United States – is released today.

It provides the most detailed picture to date of the impacts on the US in the worst case scenarios, when no action is taken to cut emissions. Examples include: floods in lower Manhattan; a quadrupling of heatwave deaths in Chicago; withering on the vineyards of California; the disappearance of wildflowers from the slopes of the Rockies; the extinction of Alaska's wild polar bears in the next 75 years.

What lies ahead by region

North-east

The winter snow season could be cut in half in southern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine — maybe as short as a week or two, under the higher emissions scenario. This would destroy winter traditions like skiing and skating and outdoor ponds. Native cranberries and blueberries would disappear; dairy herds, the biggest agricultural industry, would decline under the higher emissions scenario.

South-east

Summer temperatures in Florida could rise by 4.1C (10.5F), with the heat effect multipled by decreased rainfall under the higher emissions scenario. There would be increased hurricane intensity and rising sea levels leads to loss of wetlands and coastal areas. It would lead to a severe decline in quality of life.

Mid-west

Frequent, severe and longer lasting heatwaves in cities – as many as three a year in Chicago under the higher emissions scenario.

Water levels in the Great Lakes could fall by up to two feet by the end of the century under the higher emissions scenario.

South-west

Continued strong warming will threaten flow of Colorado river.

Alaska

Has been warming at twice the rate of the rest of the US over last 50 years.

Temperatures could rise up to a further 5.4C (13F) under the higher emissions scenario. The region should be prepared for drought and increased risk of wildfire.

North-west

Declining snowpack is already threatening agriculture. Many salmon species are already threatened

Costs

Human health: Rise in deaths due to heatwaves, decline in health because of poor air quality and increase in water borne and insect borne diseases.

Agriculture: Although some crops will benefit from the longer growing season, heavy downpours could wreak havoc on others. Farmers will be forced to use more pesticides and weed killers against invasive plants. Poison ivy will bcome more abundant and more toxic. Higher emissions scenario would cause a 10% decline in dairy herd in Appalachia.

Energy: Rising heat index will increase demand on electricity for air conditioning. But water shortages could restrict electricity generation.

Oil infrastructure, along coast of Louisiana and Florida, is also vulnerable to rising sea levels and intensifying hurricanes.

Transport: Storm surges and rising sea levels could block the use of ports and coastal airports, roads and rail lines. Six of the top 10 freight gateways are threatened by rising sea levels. Entire road networks on the Gulf Coast could be at risk.

Ecosystems: Large-scale shifts in species likely to continue. Deserts will become hotter and drier, oceans more acidic. Salmon and trout populations will contract.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jun 2009 | 9:47 am

Baboon mums exploit 'chaperones'

Male and female baboons form platonic friendships. But while the females clearly benefit, it is a mystery what males get from such relationships.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jun 2009 | 9:11 am

Green China

Is China to blame for the world's environment woes?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jun 2009 | 8:46 am

Rheumatoid arthritis could be stalled with drug combination

Findings indicate use of an advanced antibody drug in early stages could lead to remission in some patients

Treatment of rheumatoid arthritis may be turned on its head after a landmark trial, it was revealed today.

One expert said the findings, indicating the use of an advanced antibody drug at an early stage of the disease, could lead to a "paradigm shift" in therapy.

Almost 500,000 people in the UK are affected by rheumatoid arthritis (RA), which occurs when the body's immune system attacks its own joints.

About 40% of sufferers are forced to stop work during the first five years of their illness. The direct and indirect cost of RA in the UK is estimated at between £3.8bn and £4.75bn a year, largely due to lost work.

Currently, most patients go through a set order of treatments as the disease progresses. Early on, they may be given ordinary anti-inflammatory painkillers, such as ibuprofen. The next step is treatment with disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs, which slow down progression and delay joint damage. One of these, methotrexate, is the "gold standard" RA therapy.

In severe cases, newer drugs called biologics may be used. They include several that block tumour necrosis factor (TNF), an immune system signalling molecule. Anti-TNFs work, but they are expensive and can have severe side effects.

Under current guidelines, it is only after patients have failed to respond to an anti-TNF that they qualify for the antibody drug rituximab, marketed as MabThera.

Originally developed to treat leukaemia, the injected drug targets specialised white blood cells that play a key role in the immune response behind RA.

The new trial findings show that administering rituximab early, alongside methotrexate, can virtually stop the disease in its tracks. A total of 755 patients took part in the Image trial, led by Professor Paul-Peter Tak from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. All were recently diagnosed and had generally suffered the disease for less than a year.

They were given either methotrexate on its own, or methotrexate together with rituximab.

After a year of treatment, almost three times as many patients on the combination therapy had gone into remission than those on methotrexate alone – 30.5% compared with 12.5%.

During the second six months of the trial, on-going joint damage was almost completely halted in patients treated with rituximab. The findings were presented last week at the annual meeting of the European League Against Rheumatism (Eular) in Copenhagen, Denmark.

John Isaacs, a leading rheumatologist professor, from the Institute of Cellular Medicine at the University of Newcastle, said: "These positive data clearly show the efficacy of using rituximab earlier in the RA treatment pathway, and could signal a paradigm shift in the use of this drug to treat RA."

A task force of Eular experts is developing new evidence-based guidelines for the management of rheumatoid arthritis. They will be issued later this year and are certain to be influenced by the Image trial results.

The Eular's president-elect, Professor Paul Emery, from the University of Leeds, said: "These guidelines should help ensure that patients with RA get access to the best treatments as early as possible, thereby minimising long term disability."

A course of rituximab treatment costs £3,492 – significantly less than the £12,000 cost of a typical anti-TNF drug.

Coupled with the new trial data, this is likely to have a bearing on how rituximab is made available to RA patients.

Ailsa Bosworth, from the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, said: "These results are a very encouraging sign for the future for patients in the early stages of their RA.

"With one in 100 people affected by RA in the UK, slowing the joint damage that leads to permanent disability is incredibly important. Having had RA myself for nearly 30 years, and having been through 14 operations because of the destruction caused to my joints so far, if I could have prevented the damage when I was first diagnosed it would have changed my life."

A spokeswoman for the Arthritis Research Campaign, the charity that pioneered anti-TNF therapy, said it was important to target patients whose disease was likely to become severe.

"Research is on-going to establish which patients will benefit most from rituximab and anti-TNF therapy early," she said.

"Currently these drugs are only given later in the disease, when other drugs have failed, partly because of cost, but partly because it's unclear whether everyone with rheumatoid arthritis needs to be on such heavy-duty medication.

"This research would indicate that in some patients remission can be achieved by hitting the disease early."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jun 2009 | 8:31 am

Butterfly that mimics ants gives conservation clue

OSLO (Reuters) - A blue butterfly died out in Britain 30 years ago because of disruptions to a life cycle that includes pretending to be an ant, according to a study published Tuesday that points to smarter ways to protect wildlife.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 6:23 am

Bangla 'green revolution' starts with solar power (AFP)

AFP - Like all rural Bangladeshis, Saidul Islam knows the hardships of summer, when his tin-roofed house turns into a furnace with not enough electricity to power even a fan.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 4:26 am

Coming Soon: Lung-Cancer Spray? (HealthDay)

HealthDay - MONDAY, June 15 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists may someday be able to fight lung cancer using gene therapy delivered by an inhalable spray.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 3:49 am

Drayson supports oversight call

Lord Drayson says he supports a move to re-establish the old House of Commons Science and Technology committee.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jun 2009 | 2:04 am

South America's wildlife wonders

Conservationists reveal a host of new species discovered on the Ecuador-Peru border.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jun 2009 | 1:59 am

Common skin cancer drug smoothes wrinkles: study

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A cream used to treat the early signs of skin cancer may erase wrinkles and leave behind younger-looking skin, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 16 Jun 2009 | 12:31 am

End of the World in 2012 (Cont.)

This hoax has been floating around in various forms for years now.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jun 2009 | 12:06 am

Hard work and Battenburg: what it took to bring back the large blue

Conservationists led by Sir David Attenborough will pay tribute to the remarkably successful reintroduction of the large blue

Ants, Battenberg cake and 37 years of heroic labour by one scientist will be celebrated today as the ingredients that brought the large blue butterfly back from the dead.

This rare and mysterious insect became extinct in Britain 30 years ago but conservationists, led by Sir David Attenborough, will pay tribute to its remarkably successful reintroduction by visiting grassland in Somerset where the butterfly now flies in larger numbers than anywhere else in western Europe.

The large blue was revived only after the endeavours of Jeremy Thomas, professor of ecology at the University of Oxford, who unravelled the butterfly's baffling lifecycle and masterminded its top-secret reintroduction using large blue eggs taken from the island of Öland in Sweden.

For decades, the large blue was greatly prized by butterfly collectors. Despite their best efforts to breed perfect specimens in captivity, they failed, and so they caught thousands of wild specimens which drove the species to extinction in parts of north Cornwall and the Cotswolds. But even after collecting was banned from sites, the butterfly continued to disappear.

When the butterfly was reduced to just two colonies in 1972, Thomas, who also works for the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, was dispatched to live with the butterfly to solve the mystery of its decline.

In a race to save it from extinction, every summer for six years, he "measured everything", counting thousands of eggs, and laying trails of Battenberg cake to attract ants and locate their nests where, bizarrely, the large blue caterpillar spent most of its life. "It was a bit like a detective story," said Thomas.

Entomologists had already uncovered the large blue's dependence on ants but did not fully understand it. The large blue caterpillar drops to the ground after hatching and tricks ants into taking it into their nest by secreting a seductive fluid and even "singing" to the ants so they believe it is a queen ant grub. In the comfort of the nest, the parasitic caterpillar devours ant grubs all winter, pupating and emerging from the ground as a butterfly in June.

Crucially, Thomas discovered the large blue was only able to trick successfully one species of ant, Myrmica sabuleti. If it entered the nests of other ant species, the caterpillar was likely to be attacked and killed.

In research published in the journal Science, Thomas charted how the Myrmica sabuleti ant requires warm ground, only created by short, well-grazed grass, to survive. A near-imperceptible difference of just a centimetre in grass length could change the soil temperature by 2C-3C, causing the ant — and the large blue with it — to perish.

The widespread decline in grazing sheep and cattle and myxomatosis, which decimated wild rabbits after the 1950s, caused traditional grassland to grow too tall and cool for ant and butterfly.

Thomas's discovery was just too late to save Britain's last population of large blues, which died out in 1979. Undeterred, he and David Simcox, his colleague at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, reintroduced the butterfly 25 years ago on a carefully restored and managed meadow in Devon known only as Site X. To this day, the location of Site X is still a closely guarded secret to thwart rogue butterfly collectors.

Now reintroduced to six other sites, the large blue has spread to a total of 28 colonies in the Polden Hills, Somerset. This includes one National Trust site, Collard Hill, which is now open to the public. The large blue can even be spotted from the train: some of its largest populations fly on railway embankments close to Castle Cary, Somerset, which are managed by Network Rail to encourage the butterfly. Other landowners who helped revive it are the Somerset Wildlife Trust and even the owners of Clark's shoes, based in nearby Street.

"The restoration of the large blue butterfly to Britain is a remarkable success story, illustrating the power of ecological research to reverse damaging environmental changes," said Sir David Attenborough. "It is, moreover, a tribute to the dedication of many practical conservationists who have skillfully recreated its specialised habitat in our countryside."

Martin Warren, chief executive of Butterfly Conservation, said Thomas's "painstaking" research was a "watershed moment" for conservation because it showed the importance of managing habitat after a mistaken focus on letting nature take its course during the 1970s. The Adonis blue, the silver-spotted skipper and the heath fritillary have all been saved from near extinction using ideas from Thomas's scientific research.

"[The research] was the turning point not just for the large blue but was a watershed moment for conservation because it showed the need for the management of habitat to conserve rare species," said Warren.

Praising the labours of Simcox, and landowners such as Network Rail, Thomas said the success showed that other rare insects could brought back from the brink . "Up until then, everything had failed. There was very little insect conservation being attempted," he said. "It is a practical demonstration that it can be done with a species of butterfly or insect elsewhere in the world."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Jun 2009 | 11:05 pm

See Them While You Can: Endangered Butterfly Gallery

With so many creatures facing extinction, it’s heartening to read of the Large Blue butterfly’s resurgence.

One of six members of the Maculinea family, it was once found throughout England but had vanished by the early 1970s. That’s when University of Oxford ecologist Jeremy Thomas went to study the island’s last remaining population.

Before Thomas’ work, scientists knew the outlines of Maculinea arion’s fascinating life cycle. After hatching from eggs laid on thyme flowers, the tiny caterpillars fall to the ground and secrete chemicals that make them smell like ants, who promptly mistake them for ant larvae and bring them back to the colony. Under the ants’ protection, the caterpillars spend the next 10 months feasting on real ant larvae, then build cocoons near colony entrances. Two weeks later the butterflies wriggle free, walk out and make a winged getaway.

Thomas found that this chemical trickery worked on only a single species of ant, Myrmica sabuleti, and M. sabuleti was also in trouble. Because well-meaning farmers had stopped grazing their livestock in the butterflies’ habitat and a virus had depleted wild rabbit populations, hillside grasses grew so long that soil temperatures dropped by several degrees, or just enough to become inhospitable to M. sabuleti.

By 1979, the last Large Blue butterfly colony was dead, but Thomas’ observations survived. Conservationists reintroduced grazing animals, cleared the hillsides and imported large blue butterflies from Sweden. As of last year, butterfly populations have returned to pre-decline levels.

Thomas’ original data was published Monday in Science, and provides a welcome respite from tales of conservation woe. Dozens more butterfly species, including the rest of the Maculinea family, are endangered or threatened. A handful are shown in this photo gallery, but most don’t even have a picture on the internet. If they disappear, their beauty could be remembered as nothing more than a disembodied name.

Image: David Simcox

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Jun 2009 | 11:02 pm

Education and business hand in hand

But universities and colleges must have freedom to deliver what students want, says new secretary of state Peter Mandelson

Last week, the government created the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which will have responsibility for higher and further education policy. Nobody would disagree that our universities and colleges are as much about the cultural bedrock of our society as the competitiveness of the economy. So why bring them into a department whose core remit is Britain's economic development?

The simple answer is that the mission of the new department is to build Britain's resources of skill, knowledge and creativity. These things drive our competitiveness directly, but also indirectly by reinforcing our cultural awareness, confidence and sense of our past and future.

Character and competitiveness are not mutually exclusive. They should not be regarded as alternatives. Higher and further education underwrite them both by enabling people to make the most of their talents and their lives.

A decade of investment in our universities has turned them into nothing short of a national treasure. With just 1% of the world's population, the UK undertakes 5% of its scientific research.

The UK ranks second only to the US in the global share of citations and international students. Putting the protection of that excellence under the remit of a department dedicated to Britain's future prosperity makes a lot of sense.

With record numbers of students, in reality the university sector in the UK is already driving Britain's economic success. Universities contributed £45bn to the UK economy in 2003-04, supporting 580,000 jobs and earning £3.6bn in exports. The spillover benefits for our society and the economy in innovation and a sophisticated workforce dwarf that.

Further education in Britain is every bit as important: 75% of the UK's 2020 workforce is aged over 25 and already out of formal or higher education. Offering skills and training throughout people's working lives has to be part of equipping Britain for globalisation. This means expanding apprenticeships in the UK, delivering on-the-job training and supporting those out of work in getting new jobs.

An average of 3 million people currently benefit from the UK's further education system every year. The colleges and learning providers that deliver these services are often an important part of their communities and work closely with local employers and businesses. Maintaining and improving this service, so that it continues to deliver the skills British people need over their working lives, is an integral part of a sustained recovery, and vital for our long-term economic strength.

Britain now needs to build on these strengths on the basis of a few basic principles. First, a high degree of autonomy for universities and further education has been central to their success.

There is a need to make sure we set the right overall strategic direction in the UK in terms of some of the key skills and specialist knowledge that we will need to excel in a global economy. But we also need to recognise that universities and colleges understand best what their students need and how to deliver it. They need a strong and stable funding environment in order to build and consolidate their strengths - which is why we are investing record sums of money this year.

Ringfenced budget

Second, it is possible to further boost the role of universities in generating our economic growth without in any way compromising the place of fundamental science or curiosity-driven research in their mix. That is why we have committed to a ringfenced science budget and will keep the dual support system for research funding.

But, of course, this can also mean getting better at commercialising the research we already do. It can mean further encouraging collaboration between researchers and industry. This is an opportunity that businesses in Britain have sometimes been slow to take up.

Over the next few months, we will be publishing a framework for the future shape of our higher education system, followed by an independent review on student fees. The framework will make it clear that we remain absolutely committed to a higher education sector that prizes excellence of all kinds. It will set out how the sector will maintain its contribution to Britain's economic competitiveness in a global economy and extend the opportunity and social mobility that come with education as widely as possible.

The government has invested tens of billions of pounds over the last decade in our science base, universities, new further education facilities and widening access to training. These are investments in our national capacities and they are as fundamental as electricity to a modern globalised economy like Britain.

There will always be some who think that higher and further education policy does not belong in a department with business in its title. They assume that universities and colleges will somehow diminish in priority in a new department, or that economic outcomes will be the only benchmark for policy. They are wrong.

The needs of business and those of higher and further education are not always the same, and never will be. But they can and do touch and reinforce each other in important ways. At the end of the day, they are two parts of a single picture of a Britain that has the knowledge, confidence and character to prosper in a changing world.

• Lord Mandelson is the secretary of state for business, innovation and skills

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Jun 2009 | 11:01 pm

It's science, and it's snot boring

The author of Why is Snot Green explains how a bit of emotion can turn a teacher into a master of inspiration

I'll be brutally honest - my early experiences with classroom science were not good. Like many others of my generation, I was subjected to endless droning sermons about photosynthesis and the periodic table of elements, against a suitably church-like backdrop of wooden pews and benches. I spent approximately 98% of my time wishing to God I was somewhere else, anywhere else. And what did I learn? Not much.

In truth, I remember little of my grammar-school science lessons beyond such "highlights" as setting fire to my tie in chemistry, or playing catch with the hapless gerbils in the biology lab. To me, science was dull, uninteresting, and wholly irrelevant to my teenage existence.

Now contrast this with my recent experience at the Carolina Friends school - an independent secondary school near my current home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A few months ago, I was invited to their bi-annual Science Day as a guest speaker and judge for the poster-project competition. The atmosphere that greeted me was incredible.

Local scientists ran drop-in experiments with rockets and infrared cameras. The kids mingled and discussed their work with scientists, teachers and each other. And when I turned their own science questions into an audience-participation performance, they treated me like a rockstar - rather than the decidedly uncool, balding beardy I know myself to be. Eyes sparkled. There was laughter. Applause. It was a world removed from the science lessons of my youth.

Now I'm not saying that American school science is better than that of the UK. Far from it. In fact, science education in the US has been floundering for years - notably under ex-president Bush and his No Child Left Behind policy (otherwise known as Lowering the Bar). In the US, as in the UK, interest in science at school is waning, university applications for science courses are way down, and local science jobs are increasingly taken by graduates from Asia and mainland Europe. So Carolina Friends is the exception, rather than the rule.

But it does reaffirm something I've long known to be true: that there are good ways and bad ways of going about the teaching of science. And for all too long the focus of science education, in both the UK and US, has been too much on the what, and not enough on the how and why. On what should be taught, rather than how it should be taught. On what science "knows", rather than how science is done ... or why we should care about it at all.

To be clear, I don't blame teachers for this. I understand the pressures and constraints they face. The dictates of standardised curricula. The endless testing. The limited time for exploratory learning, field trips, lab-based practical classes, and exciting events. And I'm aware that, even in spite of these pedagogic straitjackets, there's still fantastic work being done in classrooms all over the UK - by teachers who go above and beyond to inspire their students, even as they struggle to race them through their textbooks and examinations.

Nor am I saying there is one perfect way to teach science. Students, classes and teachers differ. All individual learning styles must be considered and embraced. But there are, I believe, principles that can be followed to keep science education on the right track. And these apply as much to supportive parents, curriculum authors and policymakers as they do to teachers.

The single most important of these principles is this: don't assume your audience is interested; assume they're not, then convince them that they should be.

You see, since the very beginnings of science education and the so-called Public Understanding of Science movement, the whole approach has essentially been an argument to ethos. Never mind what science is, you should learn it because it's good for you. It's the educational equivalent of shouting: "Eat your greens!" And that's no way to get someone to swallow.

Instead, why not begin lessons, discussions or curricula with appeals to logos and pathos? Discuss why science is important, don't just assert that it is - kids are too smart for that. Have them consider why they should bother with science, how their lives can be enriched and improved - what has science ever done for us, and what's in it for them? And make it personal. Why did you study science? What was in it for you? Believe me, inquiring minds want to know.

Then appeal to the senses and emotions. Show them that science is more than just a collection of cold, hard facts and scribbled theorems. It's an inspiring, uplifting viewpoint on the world. It gives us visions of the grandeur of the stars, planets and galaxies; of the incredible beauty and variety of life on earth. Science tells us how animals evolve, how mountains are built, how oceans are formed, how clouds steam and swirl their way across the sky, and how snow, hail, thunder and lightning are created within.

Don't get stuck on the small stuff, on the details. Think big, talk big, and encourage students to do the same. You can always bring it back down to earth (and the textbook) later on. Once a child's spirit of wonder is stifled or snuffed out, it's difficult to rekindle. So work with it. Cultivate it. Make it your mission to transmit as much about how you feel about science as you do about its many theories and factoids. Above all, don't make it feel like a lesson to be learned. Make it an emotional - yes, emotional - journey of discovery.

Most of this I learned during my time working at the Science Museum in London. The museum's learning teams are internationally renowned masters of inspiration and discovery-based learning. See a Science Museum show, or visit its famous Launchpad gallery, and you'll see a hundred kids enraptured, captivated by the electric crackles, fiery explosions, and frozen bananas shattering like glass.

Visiting the original children's gallery at the Science Museum is one of my earliest childhood memories. I'm quite sure that visit planted a deep seed of scientific wonderment in my brain, as it still does millions of kids every year. That's what we need to do in our homes and classrooms. Plant a seed for science. Then nurture it throughout the child's entire educational life.

There's already some great work being done by parents, teachers, authors (hint, hint) and television producers all over the world. But we're not there yet. Still - I have hope that, one day soon, we will be. And until then, I, for one, will be keeping at it.

• Glenn Murphy is author of the bestselling children's popular science books Why Is Snot Green? and How Loud Can You Burp? His new book, Stuff That Scares Your Pants Off, is published by MacMillan Children's Books, and has just been released across the UK. To order a copy for £4.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846. How Loud Can you Burp is one of the books on Booktrust's Booked Up list.Booked Up gives a free book from a choice of 12 to every 11-year-old in the country. For more information see bookedup.org.uk

Over to you

Is your school doing exciting, creative things? We want to hear about it. Education Guardian's Creative Summer project aims to show what schools are doing to brighten the curriculum and to relieve the exam season. Send your pictures, poems, project ideas, plays and schemes to us at creativityintheclassroom@guardian.co.uk. We look forward to hearing from you

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Jun 2009 | 11:01 pm

High-Altitude Wind Machines Could Power New York City

The wind blowing through the streets of Manhattan couldn’t power the city, but wind machines placed thousands of feet above the city theoretically could.

The first rigorous, worldwide study of high-altitude wind power estimates that there is enough wind energy at altitudes of about 1,600 to 40,000 feet to meet global electricity demand a hundred times over.

The very best ground-based wind sites have a wind-power density of less than 1 kilowatt per square meter of area swept. Up near the jet stream above New York, the wind power density can reach 16 kilowatts per square meter. The air up there is a vast potential reservoir of energy, if its intermittency can be overcome.

Even better, the best high-altitude wind-power resources match up with highly populated areas including North America’s Eastern Seaboard and China’s coastline.

“The resource is really, really phenomenal,” said Christine Archer of Cal State University-Chico, who co-authored a paper on the work published in the open-access journal Energies.”There is a lot of energy up there, but it’s not as steady as we thought. It’s not going to be the silver bullet that will solve all of our energy problems, but it will have a role.”

For centuries, we’ve been using high-density fossil fuels, but peaking oil supplies and climate concerns have given new life to green technologies. Unfortunately, renewable energy is generally diffuse, meaning you need to cover a lot of area to get the energy you want. So engineers look for renewable resources that are as dense as possible. On that score, high-altitude wind looks very promising.

Wind’s power — energy which can be used to do work like spinning magnets to generate electricity — varies with the cube of its speed. So, a small increase in wind speed can lead to a big increase in the amount of mechanical energy you can harvest. High-altitude wind blows fast, is spread nicely across the globe, and is easier to predict than terrestrial wind.

These properties have led inventors and scientists to cast their hopes upward, where strong winds have long been known to blow, as Etzler’s dreamy quote shows. During the energy shocks of the 1970s, when new energy ideas of all kinds were bursting forth, engineers and schemers patented several designs for harnessing wind thousands of feet in the air.

The two main design frameworks they came up with are still with us today. The first is essentially a power plant in the sky, generating electricity aloft and sending it down to Earth via a conductive tether. The second is more like a kite, transmitting mechanical energy to the ground, where generators turn it into electricity. Theoretically, both approaches could work, but nothing approaching a rigorous evaluation of the technologies has been conducted.

The Department of Energy had a very small high-altitude wind program, which produced some of the first good data about the qualities of the wind up there, but it got axed as energy prices dropped in the 1980s and Reagan-era DOE officials directed funds elsewhere.

The program hasn’t been restarted, despite growing attention to renewables, but that’s not because it’s considered a bad idea. Rather, it is seen as just a little too far out on the horizon.

“We’re very much aimed these days at things that we can fairly quickly commercialize, like in the next 10 years or so,” said National Renewable Energy Laboratory spokesperson George Douglas.

Startups like KiteGen, Sky Windpower, Magenn, and Makani (Google’s secretive fundee) have come into the space over the last several years, and they seem to be working on much shorter timelines.

“We are not that far from working prototypes,” Archer said, though she noted that the companies are all incredibly secretive about the data from their testing.

Magenn CFO Barry Monette said he expects “first revenue” next year when they sell “two to four” working prototypes of their blimpy machine, which will operate at much lower altitudes.

“We do think that we’re going to be first [to market], unless something happens,” Monette said.

In the long term, trying to power entire cities with machines like this would be difficult, largely because even in the best locations, the wind will fail at least 5 percent of the time.

“This means that you either need backup power, massive amounts of energy storage, or a continental- or even global-scale electricity grid to assure power availability,” said co-author Ken Caldeira, an ecologist at Stanford University. “So, while high-altitude wind may ultimately prove to be a major energy source, it requires substantial infrastructure.”

To see the individual designs of the various high-altitude wind machines, click through the images and videos on the following pages.

See Also:

• Windmills in the Sky
• Google’s Power Play
• Researcher Pushes Enormous Floating Solar Islands
• Carbon Burial Research Grows as Huge Experiment Begins

Image: Magenn

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 | 15 Jun 2009 | 10:36 pm

Europe's Mars mission scaled back

A major component of Europe's ExoMars rover mission is being dropped to contain costs.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Jun 2009 | 10:13 pm

Contracts give impetus to Galileo

Europe's satellite-navigation system takes a big step forward with the signing of new industrial contracts.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Jun 2009 | 9:11 pm

How Alcohol Changes the Brain ... Quickly

The brain begins to run on the sugar in alcohol instead of using glucose.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2009 | 8:49 pm

Phallic Mushroom Discovered

New mushroom species found on African island.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2009 | 7:54 pm

Survey: Far More Conservatives Than Liberals

Forty percent of Americans call themselves conservative. But only 23 percent of Americans are Republican.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2009 | 6:34 pm

SLIDE SHOW: Warp Drive Propulsion

Take an exclusive look at what a future warp ship could look like.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Jun 2009 | 6:30 pm

Soldier to Get Windfall From Rare U.S. Book

An soldier will likely reap thousands from a 1788 edition of "The Federalist."
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Jun 2009 | 6:10 pm

'April's Mom' Hoax Played on Faith

A pregnant young woman spent months blogging about her compelling personal journey of anguish.
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2009 | 6:03 pm

Mysterious Gamma-Ray Bursts May Have Ties to Failed Black Holes

Gamma-ray bursts are the most massive explosions in the universe since the Big Bang, and yet scientists still know relatively little about them. Dark bursts, such as the one in the center of the artist’s rendering above, remain especially mysterious.

New research published last week on the arXiv website, and not yet peer reviewed, suggests that gamma-ray bursts may be the result of a strange effect that can stop a black hole from forming.

The current thinking is any star more than three times the size of the sun will eventually collapse into a black hole. But Ilya Rozen of the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow thinks a phase change of matter into a very different form creates a vacuum in an imploding star that results in a burning wall he predicts would stop a black hole from forming and emit powerful gamma-ray bursts.

Scientists led by Daniel Perley of UC Berkeley studied bursts like the one pictured above. They were first detected by NASA’s Swift satellite and then studied using the Keck telescope in Hawaii. The image depicts a galaxy that contains strangely dense clouds of dust that dampen the burst’s visible light. They concluded that the dust in those galaxies obscures a lot of star births, but not the high-energy gamma rays or X-rays emitted by gamma-ray bursts.

Gamma-ray bursts are so powerful that they release more energy than stars like the sun will emit during their entire life spans. No true bursts have been detected in the Milky Way, most are billions of light years away from Earth.

Post updated to clarify that the image is an artist’s rendering.

See Also:

• Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Blazar: Time-Lapse Video of Gamma-Ray Sky
  
• GLAST Successfully Launches, Prepares to Scan Sky for Gamma-Rays
  
• Spectacular New Image of Black Hole Jets
• Hubble Captures Image of Strange Giant Galaxy
• Hubble Snaps Image of Triple Galaxy, as Ordered by the People
  

Image: NASA/Swift/Aurore Simonnet

Follow us on Twitter: @betsymason and @wiredscience.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Jun 2009 | 5:18 pm

NASA delays launch to Wednesday

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA is planning to delay the launch of its new moon probe for two days so it can try to launch space shuttle Endeavour Wednesday on a construction mission to the International Space Station, officials said on Sunday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Jun 2009 | 4:52 pm

Darwin and art

How the father of evolutionary theory inspired artists
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Jun 2009 | 4:52 pm

Disease Spreads in Rural Communities Too

Even though rural people are more spread out, they may be more at risk to disease.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Jun 2009 | 4:40 pm

Should Couples Be Able to Pick Babies By Gender?

Sex-selection techniques allow parents to pick a boy or girl. Is that right?
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2009 | 4:23 pm

Woman Wakes Up in Morgue

You have to wonder if this 84-year-old Polish woman had an out-of-body experience...
Source: Livescience.com | 15 Jun 2009 | 3:28 pm

Nanotubes may suppress immunity

The findings from animal research suggest workers involved in the manufacture of the materials may be at risk

Inhaling carbon nanotubes can suppress the immune system, according to scientists. The findings raise possible health concerns for those working in the manufacture of the materials.

Carbon nanotubes are rolled-up sheets of graphite thousands of times thinner than a human hair. Because they are immensely strong and are good electric conductors, they are poised for use in a wide range of fields from engineering to medicine. However, there are concerns over the similar shape of nanotubes and asbestos fibres, which are known to cause damage to the lungs in conditions such as mesothelioma.

Scientists are therefore trying to work out if there are any adverse effects that nanotubes might have on human health.

In the new study on mice, researchers found that inhaling nanotubes affected the function of T cells, a type of white blood cell that organises the immune system to fight infections.

"One of the take-home messages is you have to consider not just effects in the lung if it's something you inhale but also effects outside of the lung," said Jacob McDonald of the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who led the work. "These nanotubes appear to have an interesting, subtle yet significant response, systemically, on different organ systems that warrants careful consideration."

Writing today in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers said that although carbon nanotubes were unlikely to pose risks to the general public when incorporated into products, anyone working in their production and processing was more likely to be exposed to larger amounts over a longer period. "Immune dysfunction is a concern for those who work in this industry," they wrote.

In the experiment, McDonald's team exposed mice to airborne suspensions of commercially bought nanotubes for around six hours a day for two weeks.

"The occupational hazard limit that's given [for people] is a concentration of 5mg per cubic metre in the air," said McDonald. "The amount we were giving the mice was 1mg per cubic metre, which is still probably higher than a human would get if there's good control technology where they're working."

Thomas Faunce, director of the Globalisation and Health Project and associate professor in the College of Law and Medical School at the Australian National University, said: "One needs to be cautious about overreacting to what is in many ways a preliminary finding, but if this research is supported by subsequent studies it supports the case for specific exposure regulation applied to these nanoparticles."

In any case, said McDonald, the suppression of the immune system in mice was halted by administering a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug such as ibuprofen.

"Considering dose levels, it's not something I think is going to be prohibitive in terms of using the materials," said McDonald. "Like any other material, we need to exercise some caution and you don't want to inhale large amounts of it."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Jun 2009 | 3:23 pm

BLOG: Can Brown Dwarfs Have Weather?

Astronomers spot brightness alterations in a brown dwarf's atmosphere.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Jun 2009 | 3:00 pm

Antivenoms Can't Stop Deadly Jellyfish Sting

A box jellyfish antivenom is proven ineffective against the animal's deadly sting.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Jun 2009 | 2:30 pm

Earth Watch

Conservation feels the world's financial squeeze
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Jun 2009 | 2:23 pm

NASA to Try Shuttle Launch on Wednesday

A potentially dangerous hydrogen gas leak delayed the launch from Saturday.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 15 Jun 2009 | 1:22 pm