Survivors Of Childhood Central Nervous System Cancer Face Persistent Risks As Adults

Long-term survivors of childhood central nervous system malignancies remain at risk for death and are at increasing risk for developing subsequent cancers and chronic medical conditions over time, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Dinosaurs May Have Been Smaller Than Previously Thought

The largest animals ever to have walked the face of the earth may not have been as big as previously thought, according to a new article.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Cancer Screening Fear Is Fueled By Lack Of Information, Major Study Of Women's Attitudes Finds

Fear plays a major role in whether women decide to go for cancer screening or not. But healthcare providers underestimate how much women need to know and wrongly assume that they will ask for information if they want it. Researchers reviewed 19 studies (1994-2008) that explored the attitudes of 5,991 women from 14 to their 80s to breast and cervical cancer screening. Figures from the UK and USA show that there is a big gap between the number of women invited for screening and the number who actually attend.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Human Eye Inspires Advance In Computer Vision

Researchers have developed novel algorithms that allow computer visualization software to see moving objects faster and with greater accuracy.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Light Sensor Breakthrough Could Enhance Digital Cameras

New research could lead to substantial advancements in the performance of a variety of electronic devices including digital cameras.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Green Tea May Slow Prostate Cancer Progression

Men with prostate cancer who consumed the active compounds in green tea demonstrated a significant reduction in serum markers predictive of prostate cancer progression.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 23 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Lap Band Weight Loss Surgery Reduces Teens' Risk Factors For Heart Disease, Diabetes

In teenagers, laparoscopic gastric banding surgery for treatment of extreme obesity can significantly improve and even reverse the metabolic syndrome, a new study found.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Chemists Form World's Smallest Droplet Of Acid

Exactly four water molecules and one hydrogen chloride molecule are necessary to form the smallest droplet of acid. Chemists have carried out experiments at ultracold temperatures close to absolute zero temperature using infrared laser spectroscopy to monitor the molecules. According to their calculations, the reaction at these extremely cold temperatures is only possible if the molecules are aggregating one after the other.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

PET Scans May Improve Accuracy Of Dementia Diagnosis

A new study shows that the use of positron emission tomography (PET) scans may improve the accuracy of dementia diagnoses early in disease onset for more than one out of four patients.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Scientists Bring 'Light' To Moon's Permanently Dark Craters

A new lunar topography map with the highest resolution of the moon's rugged south polar region provides new information on some of our natural satellite's darkest inhabitants - permanently shadowed craters.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Tree Shrew Lavatory

A tree shrew licks nectar from the underside of the pitcher plant's lid, and if necessary defecates, before scrambling away. On its way out, the mammal wipes its genitals on the leaf to scent mark the plant.
Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jun 2009 | 2:21 pm

Sharks' Killer Strategy Revealed (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Killers tend to strike where they will be most successful, often near home, detectives say. The same is true for great white sharks, according to a new study.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jun 2009 | 2:16 pm

Govt still considering freeing fuel prices - Murli Deora (Reuters)

Reuters - The government is looking at ending subsidies on petrol and diesel retail prices but has no immediate plans to raise pump prices after the rise in global oil prices, Oil Minister Murli Deora said on Monday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jun 2009 | 1:49 pm

Amazing Volcano Photo Reveals Shock Wave

An amazing new picture from space reveals a volcanic eruption in its earliest stage.
Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jun 2009 | 1:44 pm

Sharks' Killer Strategy Revealed

Scientists investigate shark attacks the same way police investigate serial crimes – with geographic profiling.
Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jun 2009 | 1:40 pm

Can First-Time Home Buyers Save the Economy?

Last summer, many Americans stayed home. This summer, we might buy one.
Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jun 2009 | 1:22 pm

Greenpeace in Kingsnorth coal boat protest (AFP)

AFP - Six people were arrested after Greenpeace activists boarded a boat carrying coal for Kingsnorth power station in Kent, police said on Monday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jun 2009 | 1:06 pm

Whaling commission seeks to avoid quotas split (AFP)

AFP - The organisation that regulates world whaling opened a crucial conference on Monday with leaders seeking to avoid a disastrous split on the 85 nation body.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jun 2009 | 12:23 pm

Powerful Ideas: Miles-High Kites Could Generate Electricity

Rotors spinning miles high could help supply electricity worldwide.
Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jun 2009 | 12:21 pm

Great White Sharks Hunt Like Serial Killers

Jack the Ripper had plenty in common with great white sharks, according to new research.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 22 Jun 2009 | 12:21 pm

The Weirdest Object in the Solar System?

Haumea has fastest spin, odd shape, and a trail of icy shards from a long-ago collision.
Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jun 2009 | 11:45 am

Are we witnessing the end of science?

Almost all the great revolutions in scientific thinking may be behind us, but the way modern science is conducted stifles radical new ideas

Wired magazine is well known for its catchy cover lines. I won't forget one from 2007. Alongside a mocked-up image of a yellowing lab notebook and magnifying lens, it proclaimed: "The end of science: The quest for science used to begin with grand theories; now it begins with massive amounts of data."

Scientists and science commentators often say that if yesterday's science needed outstanding individuals such as Darwin and Einstein, tomorrow's theories will be shaped by the vast quantities of data pouring forth from networked computers and from the labours of big research teams working in areas such as particle physics, the human genome and astronomy.

The End of Science was also the title of a book published in 1996 by science writer John Horgan, though Horgan thought the pursuit of science was coming to an end for different reasons. He claimed that the basic scaffolding of the natural world is now mostly understood – the big bang theory, the structure of DNA and evolution by natural selection and the periodic table of elements are not going to change. Yes, many refinements are needed in our understanding of how things work, but as we are closer to reality in so many fields, the chances of seeing revolutionary new thinking will be that much less.

Will we never witness a scientific revolution again? And will tomorrow's theories be guided by big data rather than revolutionary ideas?

I recently put these questions to particle physicist Alison Wright, chief editor of the journal Nature Physics and to Lewis Wolpert, pioneering biologist from University College London, when I chaired a debate on the future of science.

Lewis's view is that fundamental biology is now unlikely to throw up any new surprises: there is much we don't know, but the fundamental architecture won't change. Alison takes a similar view for physics and says that we shouldn't expect any new shocks to the system, though, unlike Lewis, she recognises that you can never say never.

I'm with Alison on this – something tells me that physics has the potential to take off in directions that we cannot predict. Many physicists would like to see a single theory explain all of the fundamental forces of nature, or at the very least see experimental verification of the Standard Model of particle physics.

There are good reasons for this. Unification in physics has a long history – electricity and magnetism were unified in the 1800s, and later mass and energy were found to be interchangeable. In the latter half of the 20th century, two further forces were unified: electromagnetism and the "weak" force. But for the past 30 years, experimental verification of theory in physics has been more limited. This may well be because scientists have lacked the right equipment – results from the Large Hadron Collider at Cern could break the logjam.

But you do see something similar going on in physicists' attempts to unpack the composition of the universe. According to the big bang model, our universe is made up of around 4% of normal (atomic) matter; 22% dark matter and 74% dark energy. Some research groups claim to have found a signature for dark matter – but their results have not been corroborated by others. As for the idea of dark energy, Alison describes it as a "sticking plaster" that masks the fact that we don't really know what it represents.

But if we assume for a minute that physics holds the potential for a revolution in thinking, would we be able to see one coming?

Revolutions in scientific thinking are always difficult – but perhaps one reason why we may see fewer of them in the future is because of the highly professional way in which modern science is organised. It takes a lot of courage to challenge conventionally accepted views, and it needs a certain amount of stamina to constantly battle those who want to protect the status quo. Mavericks do not do well in large organisations, which is what some scientific fields have become.

Progress in science needs researchers who are not afraid – or who are encouraged and rewarded – to ask awkward and difficult questions of theory and of new data. It is easier to question mainstream views if you are independently wealthy, as many scientists in previous ages tended to be. But I wonder how many of us would do so if we were employed by the state and our career progression depended on the validation of our peers?

Ehsan Masood is a science writer and chaired Nature's Big Science Debate on the future of physics and biology, which took place on 8 June

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 22 Jun 2009 | 11:26 am

Nuclear mystery

The story of a US hero and a missing nuclear bomb
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 22 Jun 2009 | 11:14 am

Great white sharks can behave like serial killers

Researchers discover common traits including hunting strategically and learning from previous attempts

Great white sharks and serial killers have common behavioural traits including stalking specific victims, a new study has found.

The sharks lurk out of sight to observe their prey, hunting strategically and learning from previous attempts, the research, published in the Journal of Zoology, found.

Researchers used a method of profiling serial killers to work out how the great white shark hunts.

"There's some strategy going on," the study's co-author, Neil Hammerschlag, said. Hammerschlag, a shark researcher at the University of Miami, observed 340 great white shark attacks on seals off an island in South Africa.

He said the sharks could have waited where the seals congregated if they were random, opportunistic killers, but instead had a distinct mode of operation.

"It's more than sharks lurking at the water waiting to go after them," he added.

Research found the creatures were focused, stalking from a base of operations around 90 metres from their victims.

The location was close enough for them to see their prey but not close enough for them to be observed.

They attacked when light was low and preferred their victims to be young and alone, trying to strike when no competing sharks were nearby.

Researchers said the difference between great whites and serial killers was that the sharks killed to survive rather than for thrills.

"They both have the same objective, which is to find a target or prey or victim," co-author D. Kim Rossmo, a professor of criminal justice at Texas State University-San Marcos, said.

"They have to lurk. They want to be efficient in their search," Rossmo, who was a police officer in Canada for more than 21 years, said.

Research linking sharks and serial killers began when the late Canadian shark scientist R Aidan Martin read about geographic profiling, which tries to find criminals by looking for patterns in where they strike.

He contacted Rossmo, a pioneer in that field of investigation, and they applied the methods of tracking down criminals to researching shark strategy.

In the latest study, Martin and Hammerschlag watched sharks from sunrise to sunset, applied geographic profiling and found patterns of stalking, Hammerschlag said.

They also found older sharks fared better and were more stealthy than younger, smaller sharks, demonstrating that learning was taking place.

Although the study focused on only one location, the same principles were likely to be applicable to other hunting grounds.

George Burgess, a shark attack researcher at the University of Florida who did not take part in the study, said: "Sharks are like many other predators that have developed patterns to their attacking that are obviously beneficial as a species."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 22 Jun 2009 | 9:04 am

Great whites 'plan' seal attacks

Great white sharks use a premeditated hunting strategy akin to that used by some human serial killers, researchers say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 22 Jun 2009 | 8:41 am

Quotations of the day (AP)

AP - "As long as our country has become a proud nuclear power, the U.S. should take a correct look at whom it is dealing with. It would be a grave mistake for the U.S. to think it can remain unhurt if it ignites the fuse of war on the Korean peninsula." — North Korea's main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jun 2009 | 8:03 am

Charles Darwin - man of letters

Charles Darwin was a true man of letters. He not only wrote prolifically, he also read voraciously, as our three special guests at the Guardian Hay Festival earlier this month testified.

Darwinophile and momentary Poet Laureate Ruth Padel suggests that anyone who wants to read Darwin should start with The Voyage of the Beagle, which she finds "fresh, vivid and personal".

"His writing style really tells you something about the man himself ... he was passionately interested in what he was talking about – life."

He also loved reading Milton, Byron, Shelley, Shakespeare and Wordsworth, but became hardened to poetry in later life. He wrote that, "My mind has become just a machine for grinding laws out of minute particulars and facts."

Steve Jones, science writer and professor of genetics at University College London, doesn't make any bones about Darwin's more scholarly scientific treatises, in which he went into "excruciating detail" about barnacles and suchlike. "I've read them ... or to be more accurate I've flipped through them."

But he highly recommends The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, "terminally weird and terminally ahead of its time", and the first published book to feature photographs - bizarre displays of the human expressions of horror, amusement and terror.

Jones also recommends Darwin's final book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, in which he provides the extraordinary insight that "without earthworms there would be no civilisation."

Our third guest, Gillian Beer, former professor of literature at Cambridge University, describes the breadth of Darwin's literary taste as revealed in the exhaustive reading lists he kept from the late 1830s to 1858.

As a student at Edinburgh University he read more novels than anything else - his family thought he read too many as a child. This love of fiction persisted even towards the end of his life, after he had lost all other aesthetic sense. He blessed novelists, but thought there should be a law against unhappy endings.

As for his own writing, he was driven to describe his natural subjects in exceptional detail because he couldn't draw. His style vacillated between his famously big ideas and extreme detail, as in his "rapturous" description of barnacles.

Our regular, full-length Science Weekly podcasts return on 6 July.

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• Mail us at science@guardian.co.uk
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Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 22 Jun 2009 | 7:57 am

Whaler watching

A compromise on whaling that just may work
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 22 Jun 2009 | 7:50 am

Extreme Life Thrives Where the Livin’ Ain’t Easy

Once upon a time, scientists routinely found life in places where it wasn’t supposed to exist. That doesn’t happen anymore, and not because the pace of discovery has slowed. If anything, it’s accelerated. It’s simply become clear that life can exist almost anywhere on Earth.

After 3 billion years of evolution, life has flowed into every last nook and cranny, from the bottom of the sea to the upper edge of the stratosphere. From blazing heat and freezing cold to pure acidity and atomic bomb-caliber radiation, there’s seemingly no stress so great that some bug can’t handle it.

This gallery highlights a few particularly tough species of bacteria and archaea, a lesser-appreciated but equally-vast branch of the organismal tree. Until the late 1970s, archaea was lumped in with bacteria, which are far more complicated and contain, among other things, a cell nucleus — a serious difference in the single-celled world. That confusion speaks to the embryonic state of human microbial knowledge. Less than 1 percent of Earth’s microorganisms have been identified, and most of those won’t even grow in a lab.

In some cases, the bugs are labeled as being uniquely durable, but the labels almost certainly won’t stick. Hardly a month passes without some newly characterized species setting a new microbial benchmark. Indeed, the very concept of species might not apply. Bacteria and archaea exchange genes “horizontally,” without the need for reproduction. It’s as if, while encountering someone on the street, you could trade for whatever genes came in handy at the time. This fungibility makes a mockery of old-fashioned, animal-based notions of species, and some microbiologists want to abandon the concept altogether.

Speaking of the common gut bacteria Escherichia coli, biology pioneer Lynn Margulis once said, “If you put a particular plasmid into E. coli, all of a sudden you have Klebsiella and not E. coli. You’ve changed not only the species, but the genus. It’s like changing a person to a chimpanzee. Can you imagine doing that, putting a chimpanzee in the refrigerator, and getting him out the next morning, and now he’s a person?”

It’s pretty hard to imagine, and the idea of microbes as an Earth-spanning ur-organism might take some getting used to. In the meantime, here are some examples of life’s awesome adaptability.

Image: WikiMedia Commons/U.S. National Parks Service

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 22 Jun 2009 | 4:01 am

Ground zero in timber wars shows signs of peace (AP)

AP - On a steep slope of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, a crew of young men with chain saws and hardhats worked their way through an old neglected clearcut, cutting brush and young trees and piling the remains to be burned later.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jun 2009 | 4:01 am

Critics: Burial site for Hudson PCBs is inadequate (AP)

AP - Later this month, the first trainloads of PCB-tainted sludge dredged from the Hudson River will arrive and, in the eyes of critics, will turn a stretch of West Texas into New York's "pay toilet."

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jun 2009 | 1:41 am

Great white sharks hunt just like Hannibal Lecter (AP)

AP - Great white sharks have some things in common with human serial killers, a new study says: They don't attack at random, but stalk specific victims, lurking out of sight.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Jun 2009 | 12:59 am

Whaling talks target compromise

Officials have gathered in Madeira to hammer out a deal on whaling, with Japan and Iceland likely to insist on their right to hunt.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 22 Jun 2009 | 12:39 am

Giant Glaciers Can Shrink Rapidly

Huge glaciers like those in Greenland and Antarctica can shrink or retreat rapidly, study finds.
Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jun 2009 | 12:08 am

Pets Pass Superbug to Humans

Transmission of an infectious superbug from dogs and cats to humans, and back again, is an increasing problem.
Source: Livescience.com | 22 Jun 2009 | 12:05 am

Repairs 'affecting' swift numbers

Repairs and demolition work being carried out on properties is affecting swift numbers, conservationists say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Jun 2009 | 11:34 pm

Giant Dinosaurs Get Downsized (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Some dinosaurs were the largest creatures ever to walk on land, including the classic long-necked, whip-tailed Diplodicus, but a new study suggests it and its many extinct brethren weighed as little as half as much as previously thought.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Jun 2009 | 11:05 pm

Giant Dinosaurs Get Downsized

Dinosaurs didn't weigh nearly as much as previously thought, a new study suggests.
Source: Livescience.com | 21 Jun 2009 | 11:02 pm

Obituary: Ephraim Katzir

Scientist and president of Israel during the Yom Kippur war

The celebrated scientist Ephraim Katzir, who has died aged 93, was Israel's fourth head of state, and his presidency was distinguished by extraordinary highs and lows. He had only held office for four months when Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked Israel without warning, on 6 October 1973. Katzir reassured a shocked nation and quelled recriminations following the resultant, bloody, Yom Kippur war. In April 1974, he accepted the forced resignation of the prime minister Golda Meir, yet admitted "we are all to blame" for prewar hubris.

Katzir often bore the brunt of public ire. In May 1974 he was booed at a funeral for 20 teenagers killed by a Palestinian raid on the northern town of Ma'alot. Three years later, he received another jolt when the Likud party won power for the first time. A Labour nominee, Katzir then had to represent a government whose ethos differed markedly from his own.

By contrast, during Katzir's last year in office he played host to Egypt's president Anwar Sadat - the first such visit to Israel by any Arab leader, and a considerably more joyous Egyptian "invasion" than that of 1973. Sadat called Katzir "an excellent man" in his memoirs. Katzir encouraged the foundation of Jewish studies departments in overseas universities. Innovative and caring at home, if somewhat low-key and modest, he visited families in distress and instituted awards for volunteerism.

Katzir turned down a proffered second term as president in 1978 and eagerly resumed his academic career. In 2001 he co-edited a book on conformational diseases and, as late as May 2004, aged 88, he was still chairing sessions at scientific conferences.

He was born Ephraim Katchalsky in Kiev, then in Tsarist Russian Ukraine, and formally hebraicised his surname to Katzir when he became president. He grew up in Jerusalem having arrived in Mandate Palestine in 1922 with his family. He studied biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1932, received his PhD degree there in 1941 and later carried out postgraduate research at Harvard and Columbia universities. Both he and his elder brother, Aharon, a molecular chemist, were steeped in the values of Labour Zionism. They served in the pre-state militia, the Haganah, for which they developed crude explosives.

Immediately after Israel declared its independence, in May 1948, Ephraim returned home from research abroad. He was appointed commander of the science corps of the new Israel Defence Forces (IDF), which allegedly built chemical weapons.

When war ceased in 1949, Katzir founded and became head of the department of biophysics and professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. He deepened understanding of the genetic code and immune responses; pioneered research into poly-amino acids; did seminal work on synthetic protein models; helped develop Copaxone, a drug that combats multiple sclerosis; and invented a naturally dissoluble synthetic fibre for stitching internal wounds. In time, he was respected internationally as a founder of biotechnology.

To Katzir, science was no mere esoteric pursuit, but a priceless national asset. In 1966 he became Israel's first chief scientist of the IDF, a post he held for three years. He encouraged increased state funding of scientific research in industry and agriculture, championed educational facilities in Israel's poorer towns, and wrote and lectured widely on the moral responsibility that scientists owe society.

His brother Aharon became a pioneer of biopolymer electrochemistry (used in robotics in outer space) and a leading consultant to Israel's secret nuclear project. Once mooted as a future state president himself, in May 1972 he was killed by Japanese Red Army terrorists at Israel's Lod airport.

Ephraim led a US team on a famous 1961 inspection of the nuclear plant in Dimona. Though critics blamed him for misleading the Americans about its weapons capability, in 1974 he let slip that "it has always been our intention to develop a nuclear potential - we now have that potential."

Occasionally, the loyal civil servant expressed political qualms. In 1989, during the first intifada, Katzir told one interviewer: "The Zionist dream was not to create a Jewish state in which Arabs are beaten up; our dream was to have a state of which the Jewish people could be proud."

Katzir's post-presidency years were amazingly active. He helped to create Tel Aviv University's biotechnology department, wrote hundreds of learned papers and tirelessly promoted younger scholars. He received the Japan prize for work on immobilised enzymes in oral antibiotics in 1985, and the French Légion d'honneur in 1990. A foreign member of the Royal Society and the Royal Institution, Katzir was the first Israeli to enter the US National Academy of Sciences.

At 22 he had married Nina Gottlieb, a Polish-born English teacher; she died in 1986. Two daughters also predeceased Katzir, who is survived by his son, Meir, and three grandchildren.

• Ephraim Katzir (Katchalsky), biochemist and politician, born 16 May 1916; died 30 May 2009

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 21 Jun 2009 | 11:01 pm

Obituary: Herbert Scheinberg

Physician and expert on hereditary diseases

Wilson's disease is a rare disorder of copper metabolism, an "orphan disease" - a condition so uncommon that its diagnosis and treatment had been neglected. The disease was recognised by the British neurologist Kinnear Wilson in 1912, but a simple means of detecting it did not exist until the 1950s, when Herbert Scheinberg, who has died aged 89, developed a test for it while working with Dr David Gitlin at Harvard medical school.

Sufferers from Wilson's disease, who inherit the gene from both parents, accumulate toxic quantities of copper in the brain, liver and other organs. At least one person in 30,000 suffers from it; most develop neurological or mental symptoms in early adult life, but many are misdiagnosed for years. They also develop a golden-brown ring, consisting of copper compounds, around their irises. The disease, fatal if untreated, is relatively common in Bedlington terriers, which has helped research.

Scheinberg and Gitlin developed a biochemical test that detects a deficiency of caeruloplasmin, a protein that carries copper from the body. With a liver biopsy, it enables diagnosis in the early stages of the disease.

Scheinberg was born in Manhattan, New York, and educated at DeWitt Clinton high school in the Bronx. He graduated from Harvard University in chemistry in 1940, and in medicine in 1943. After service at a military hospital in Maryland he returned to Harvard as a junior fellow and stayed there until 1955, when he became a professor of medicine at the newly founded Albert Einstein college of medicine in New York. He led the division of genetic medicine until he retired in 1992.

His early research work was on the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. After developing the Wilson's test he worked with the world's two other experts in the disease - Irmin Sternlieb, in New York, and John Walshe at Cambridge University. Walshe developed a remedy, initially penicillamine tablets and later trientine, that helps the body to excrete copper in the urine. After initial treatment, patients avoid copper-rich foods, including chocolate, shellfish and nuts, and need only low doses of drugs. Scheinberg contacted Walshe when he published his treatment in 1950, and the two men became friends.

Later in his career Scheinberg developed a test for Menkes disease, a rare condition in which patients cannot retain sufficient copper.

Scheinberg's hobby was astronomy, and he travelled to see all the major eclipses of the sun. He had great tenacity, following through his ideas to the end, and he wrote letters to the New York Times on many topics, including Charlie Chaplin, his favourite entertainer.

Scheinberg's first wife, Tess Levine, died of a brain tumour a month after giving birth to their daughter. In 1957 he married Denise Mangravite; they had a son and daughter. Latterly he developed Alzheimer's disease and was moved to a nursing home. He is survived by Denise and his three children.

• Israel Herbert Scheinberg, physician and medical researcher, born 16 August 1919; died 4 April 2009

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 21 Jun 2009 | 11:01 pm

Nigerian militants attack three Shell oil sites (Reuters)

Reuters - Nigeria's main militant group said on Sunday it had attacked three oil installations belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the Niger Delta, widening a month-old offensive against Africa's biggest energy industry.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Jun 2009 | 10:03 pm

Ancient Holy Land quarry uncovered, team says

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli archaeologists said on Sunday they had discovered the largest underground quarry in the Holy Land, dating back to the time of Jesus and containing Christian symbols etched into the walls.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 21 Jun 2009 | 7:15 pm