Pushmi-pullyu Of B-cell Development Discovered

Scientists have identified two "molecular motors" that work in opposing directions to control the development of B cells in the immune system.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Broad Therapy For Muscular Dystrophy

Scientists have demonstrated that the glycosyltransferase Galgt2 can lessen symptoms in multiple models of muscular dystrophy. Muscular dystrophy is a group of inherited muscular disorders that are characterized by progressive skeletal muscle weakness, defects in muscle proteins, and the death of muscle cells and tissue.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Anxiety’s Hidden Cost In Academic Performance

The effect of anxiety on academic performance is not always obvious. But new research suggests that there may be hidden costs. The study found that anxious individuals find it harder to avoid distractions and take more time to turn their attention from one task to the next than their less anxious peers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Intelligent Wireless Systems Developed For Monitoring Cultural Monuments And Historical Structures

Historical buildings and structures should be maintained as cultural monuments in their rich architecture and with preferably authentic materials for the coming generations. Scientists have now developed an intelligent wireless systems for the long-term monitoring of historical buildings.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Best Possible Cut From Gemstones With New Machine

Emeralds, rubies and the likes are referred to as colored gemstones by experts. They sparkle and shine with varying intensity, depending on the cut. A new machine can achieve the best possible cut and extract up to 30 per cent more precious stone from the raw material.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

'Neurologger' Reads Bird Brains In Flight

Using a "neurologger" specially designed to record the brain activity of pigeons in flight, researchers have gained new insight into what goes through the birds' minds as they fly over familiar terrain. The study is the first to simultaneously record electrical brain activity integrated with large-scale navigational movements of free-flying birds, according to the researchers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Explosives Prevent Technology Theft

Product piracy causes billions worth of damage worldwide. A combination of visible and invisible copy protection is really effective against this. Explosive embossing is an economical procedure and can be used for mass-produced goods.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Tiny Levels Of Carbon Monoxide Damage Fetal Brain

A new study has discovered that chronic exposure during pregnancy to minuscule levels of carbon monoxide damages the cells of the fetal brain, resulting in permanent impairment.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

High Carbon Dioxide Levels Cause Abnormally Large Fish Ear Bones

Rising carbon dioxide levels in the ocean have been shown to adversely affect shell-forming creatures and corals, and now a new study has shown for the first time that carbon dioxide can impact a fundamental bodily structure in fish.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

New Piece Found In Colorectal Cancer Puzzle

Prostasin, a relatively unknown protease enzyme expressed in most epithelial cells, may play a role in the genesis of colorectal cancer. Researchers have associated a reduction in the expression of inhibitors of the enzyme with malignant cellular behavior.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

U.S. Swine Flu Cases Hit 1 Million

Swine flu has infected as many as 1 million Americans, U.S. health officials say.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 Jun 2009 | 2:30 pm

Adventurer targets first round world solar flight

DUEBENDORF, Switzerland (Reuters) - Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard unveiled Friday the prototype of a solar powered plane he plans to fly around the world to highlight the potential of alternative energy sources.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 2:17 pm

Adventurer targets first round world solar flight (Reuters)

Reuters - Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard unveiled Friday the prototype of a solar powered plane he plans to fly around the world to highlight the potential of alternative energy sources.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 2:17 pm

BLOG: Michael Jackson's Patent

Michael Jackson, a masterful dancer, held a patent for a dance-assisting device.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 Jun 2009 | 2:16 pm

House poised to pass climate change bill (Reuters)

Reuters - The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on Friday on one of the most significant environmental bills in U.S. history -- a sprawling measure that aims to wean industry off of carbon-emitting fuels blamed for global warming.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 2:10 pm

First Image of a Memory Being Made

For the first time, scientists have captured an image of a memory being made at the cellular level.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jun 2009 | 1:52 pm

Obama, Germany's Merkel to air differences at meeting (Reuters)

Reuters - U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will debate how to fix the global economy and fight climate change on Friday in a White House meeting that is likely to highlight a range of differences between the two leaders.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 1:30 pm

Smog Stresses Skin Cells (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Smog is nasty enough in the atmosphere, but now research suggests that ozone, a key component of smog, stresses out human skin cells.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 1:10 pm

New Form of Ice Cooked Up

Chemists just made the fifteenth form of the cold stuff for the first time after years of trying.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jun 2009 | 1:06 pm

Whaling chief says no guarantee of end to killing (AP)

AP - There are no guarantees that negotiators from pro- and anti-whaling nations will settle their dispute within a 12-month deadline they have set themselves, the new head of the International Whaling Commission said Friday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 12:58 pm

Wide-ranging energy measure ready for floor vote (AP)

AP - The House has set the stage for a historic vote on hotly contested legislation to combat global warming and overhaul U.S. energy policy.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 12:48 pm

Bacteria Plan for Future Events

Bacteria and yeast are shown to use one event to predict the arrival of another.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 Jun 2009 | 12:35 pm

Nanoparticles Explored for Preventing Cell Damage

Engineers explore using nanoparticles both as a preventative and a treatment for disease.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jun 2009 | 12:24 pm

Human Rituals: The Punctuation Marks of Life

Rituals are important worldwide, and they help us move through life's big transitions.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jun 2009 | 12:23 pm

Ad hoc no more

Pallab Ghosh on infrastructure management
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Jun 2009 | 12:19 pm

Brown proposes £60bn climate fund

Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants to set up a £60bn annual fund to help poor countries deal with climate change.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Jun 2009 | 11:46 am

Dolphin 'super pod' shifts north

Environmental charity Earthwatch says a massive migration of short-beaked common dolphins are a sign of climate change.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Jun 2009 | 10:40 am

UK 'space jewel' set for polish

An expert panel is asked to deliver a strategy that will grow an already highly successful British space industry.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Jun 2009 | 10:28 am

Wood harvest puts pandas at risk

People should be encouraged to chop down fewer trees for firewood in China's largest panda reserve, says a new report.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Jun 2009 | 8:52 am

Calif. board postpones decision on pollution tax (AP)

AP - California regulators on Thursday delayed a decision on whether to implement the nation's first statewide carbon fee on utilities, oil refineries and other polluting industries.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 8:00 am

Hundreds of Genes Could Be Linked to ADHD (HealthDay)

HealthDay - THURSDAY, June 25 (HealthDay News) -- Hundreds of gene variations that may be associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been identified by U.S. researchers.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Jun 2009 | 3:49 am

Round-the-world solar plane debut

Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard has unveiled a prototype of the solar-powered plane he hopes to fly around the world.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Jun 2009 | 2:16 am

A MASH Unit for Ailing Sea Mammals

SAUSALITO, California — The Marine Mammal Center — located on the site of a Cold War-era missile silo north of San Francisco, within sight of the Pacific Ocean at the end of a military road — has been doing cutting edge veterinary science since 1975.

Then, the vets were working out of shipping containers and keeping animals in kiddie pools. Now, after treating thousands of animals, one of the nation’s premiere seal and sea lion hospitals has a new, $32 million facility purpose-built for saving lives. We visited the brand new center when it opened to the public this month.

“You’re not going to find another marine mammal rehab facility like this,” said Jeff Boehm, a veterinarian and the center’s executive director. “We’ve borrowed from the technologies of aquariums, from other laboratories, veterinary facilities and the expertise and knowledge of the folks doing this work here.”

In the next 10 photos, we take you on a tour of the facilities, from the water treatment tech to the fish milkshakes, that help rescued animals get their strength back.

Photo: Jon Snyder

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 26 Jun 2009 | 12:24 am

Whale chief mulls ending hunt ban

Whaling Commission chairman suggests whale conservation could benefit from ending the commercial hunting ban.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Jun 2009 | 12:17 am

Idea to Stop Squealing Brakes

A fuzzy damper could absorb energy and dampen the squeal.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jun 2009 | 12:17 am

Fuzzy Future for the Internet 'Cloud'

Cloud computing is the wave of the future, but how will it be done?
Source: Livescience.com | 26 Jun 2009 | 12:10 am

White House: 7 years enough to shield biotech drugs (Reuters)

Reuters - Seven years is an appropriate time period to protect brand-name biotechnology medicines from cheaper generic rivals, White House officials said in a letter released on Thursday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Jun 2009 | 11:46 pm

Promiscuous Females Continue to Mystify

When female beetles were mated, the "low-quality" male sired more offspring than males of "high" quality.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Jun 2009 | 11:42 pm

Science and Engineering Graduate Enrollment Up

Enrollment in U.S. science and engineering graduate programs in 2007 grew 3.3 percent.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Jun 2009 | 11:33 pm

Baboon Finding Could Shed Light on Human Evolution

The genetic basis of complex traits may show parallels across different primate species.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Jun 2009 | 11:29 pm

Science Museum plans radical overhaul

One hundred years to the day since London's Science Museum came into existence, director Chris Rapley reveals plans for an ambitious overhaul including new galleries on climate change, the digital revolution and cosmology

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jun 2009 | 11:25 pm

Creswell Crags: 'It's here they found cave art in 2003'

Rebecca Clay from the new visitor centre at Creswell Crags in Derbyshire tells Martin Wainwright about its new ice age exhibition

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jun 2009 | 11:25 pm

World's Oldest Flute

Early modern humans were dancing to the tune of bird-bone flutes as early as 35,000 years ago.
Source: Livescience.com | 25 Jun 2009 | 11:24 pm

Britain's secret weapon: sewing needles

Military scientists used needles to design poisoned dart for use on enemy troops in second world war, secret file reveals

British biological warfare scientists developed a poisoned dart to rain down on enemy troops during the second world war and used sewing machine needles to make prototypes.

A "most secret" War Office file released today, entitled "research into the use of anthrax and other poisons for biological warfare", shows that scientists at the Porton Down military science park in Wiltshire were testing the use of poisoned darts to be dropped in cluster bombs, each containing 30,000 darts.

Trials on goats and sheep demonstrated that even if the dart was removed, the victim was likely to collapse within five minutes. When the dose was lethal, death followed within 30 minutes.

At one stage the logistics of producing 30 million darts in the United States was investigated and pronounced feasible. At first, scientists used a few needles bought at a branch of the Singer sewing machine company in nearby Salisbury, but they soon realised that local stocks would not be sufficient.

In January 1942, the man leading Britain's wartime chemical weapons programme, Dr Paul Fildes, made a direct approach to Singer. His letter opened : "It is a little difficult to explain what I want sewing machine needles for ... "

W Bellamy, of Singer's head office, replied: "From your remarks it would seem the needles are required for some purpose other than sewing machines. In any case, we should like to help you, if at all possible."

The Porton Down memorandum on the project describes the poisoned darts as "an entirely novel chemical weapon making use of agents which are lethal to man when injected into the body in very small doses".

"A small dart, which can be released in very large numbers from aircraft, carries the poison in grooves to the head. The speed of impact should be enough to bury the detachable head in the flesh deeply enough to prevent easy removal."

The scientists admitted the idea was not new, saying that unpoisoned darts had been considered during world war one, but had proved ineffective.The file does not name which poison was to be used, only describing it as T1125, a synthetic urethan.The darts themselves were made from grooved zinc alloy – the sewing machine needles – with a tail made from paper used to wrap sandwiches. They weighed a little under 4 grams and when dropped from high altitude could penetrate two layers of clothing and the flesh "for six inches until stopped by bone".

The scientists said the darts could be used against, cities, docks and ports, aerodromes and defensive positions but admitted that, once used, people would quickly learn that light cover – such as trees, aircraft and lorries – would give almost complete protection against the darts.

They were part of a programme that saw testing of anthrax and led to the creation of a hidden arsenal of anti-crop sprays, poison gas and germ weapons that experts say the government have been at pains to play down ever since.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jun 2009 | 11:05 pm

Vital role in the climate change debate

One hundred years after it first opened its doors, the Science Museum is more relevant than ever

A mischievous deity, determined to confront humanity with an especially vexed challenge, would ensure that the nature of the problem was complex and scientific and that the connection between the underlying personal actions and their consequences was not obvious. The sneaky god would also ensure that convincing evidence for the problem would emerge almost too late for a response, that there would be vested interests motivated to sow doubt and confusion, that there would be no self-correcting market mechanism, and that there would be inadequate or absent instruments and institutions to support effective action.

No wonder then that decarbonising the world's energy system to avoid dangerous climate change is proving to be intractable, for it embodies all these features. Despite the rhetoric and a host of initiatives by individuals, corporations and governments, human carbon emissions continue to increase, with no sign of the essential peak and decline. The latest research indicates that if the maximum does not occur by 2015, we will almost certainly have committed ourselves to changes in weather patterns that will adversely affect our food and water supplies, as well as triggering an ineluctable, long-term rise in world sea level.

One hundred years ago the future looked brighter. Our forebears saw science and engineering as the means to improve the human condition. They celebrated the fruits of industrialisation in cathedrals of innovation, such as the Science Museum. The practitioners were the celebrities of the day, and people flocked to see the wonders that were shaping the future. Many were inspired to become the scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who designed and built the modern world.

So as the Science Museum enters its second century today, what is its role? I believe little has changed from a century ago, except for the degree of urgency. Our unique collection provides us with a powerful means to make sense of the science that shapes our lives. We seek to raise curiosity and release creativity, and to do so in a way that engages and inspires our visitors to participate in shaping the future.

In particular, our climate change gallery, currently being designed, aims to change the way people think, talk and act about climate change. A glimpse into the museum's enormous reserve collection of objects (only 6% of the collection is on public display), or along the 20km of historical books and technical documentation in our library, can quickly convince of the ability of the scientists and engineers of the world to develop the array of technical solutions that can make a sustainable future possible.

What is not clear, is whether humanity has the capacity to marshal this technical capability and to exploit it in time. This is where the role of the museum as a trustworthy source of information, and its track record of presenting a balanced view of the evidence will be especially valuable in stimulating public debate. With many experts viewing the upcoming UN's Copenhagen Conference in December this year as "the last chance saloon" to put in place the international negotiating mechanism without which a globally coordinated effort cannot take place, the importance of such debate is paramount.

The Science Museum may be 100 years old, but it has never been more relevant.

• Professor Chris Rapley CBE is director of the Science Museum

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jun 2009 | 11:05 pm

Saturn: a brief guide

In the wake of claims that there may be life on one of its moons, John Crace offers a primer on our sixth planet

In pictures: Visions of Saturn

It's being touted as a stunning find. After decades of searching the outer limits of space for signs of life, it's been hiding away right under our noses all along. After Nasa's Cassini spacecraft picked up sodium salts near the south pole of Enceladus, Saturn's smallest moon, scientists believe there may be water beneath the surface. Just as Earth's oceans became salty after prolonged contact with rocks, so Nasa believes these sodium deposits are indicative of hitherto unknown underground reservoirs. And where there's water, there may be life.

"We need three ingredients for life, as far as we know - liquid water, energy and the basic chemical building blocks," says John Spencer, a Cassini scientist from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "We seem to have all three at Enceladus, including some fairly complex organic molecules".

But you shouldn't hold your breath. Even if there does turn out to be water on Enceladus, the odds are there's nothing else around apart from a few inorganic elements. And even if there did by some remote chance happen to be something resembling life, it's going to be microscopically small, is not going to get any bigger and is certainly not going to be chatting to us any time soon about the secrets of the universe.

Scientists aren't usually given to hype: so let's just say that this time they're guilty of wishful thinking. Here, then, is a brief reminder of what we do know about Saturn - and why there almost certainly isn't going to be life anywhere near it.

Where is it?

Situated a minimum of 746m miles from the sun - distances vary because of its orbit - Saturn is the largest planet in the solar system after Jupiter and takes nearly 30 years to orbit the sun.

What is it?

Although it has a small core of rock and ice, Saturn is essentially a giant gas ball, with a mass equivalent to roughly 95 Earths made of hydrogen with small amounts of helium and other trace elements. Average temperatures vary from 11,700C at its core to -175C at its cloud tops; the average wind speed is 1,120mph.

How can I spot it?

Saturn is best known for its rings, which were first observed by Galileo in 1610 and can be seen from Earth with a telescope or a decent pair of binoculars. They extend from 4,120 to 75,000 miles above Saturn's equator, and are composed mainly of water ice and amorphous carbon. Some believe the rings were once a moon of Saturn whose orbit decayed; others believe they are debris from the original material from which Saturn formed.

Moons

No one is quite sure just how many moons there are, as the orbiting blocks of ice in Saturn's rings are technically satellites and it's hard to distinguish between a large ring particle and a tiny moon. However, to date some 61 definite moons and three moons that might only be large dust clumps have been identified. The largest moon, Titan, is one and a half times the size of our own moon; Enceladus is the sixth largest of Saturn's moons at just 15% the size of our moon. The smallest moons are just six miles in diameter.

Exploration

Saturn was first identified in prehistoric times. The first space mission to Saturn took place in 1979 when Pioneer 11 flew within 12,425 miles of the planet. Over the next two years, the Voyager 1 probe sent back the first high-resolution images of the planet and between 2004 and 2008, the Cassini-Huygens craft orbited the planet 74 times, revealing an unknown ring on Saturn and hydrocarbon seas on Titan. Cassini was given a mission extension and, after the discoveries on Enceladus, Nasa scientists are keen to send up a more sophisticated probe as soon as possible.

Is there life on Saturn?

Now, what do you think?

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jun 2009 | 11:01 pm

The world looks to Washington

Zoom down from the planetary perspective of climate science to the Washington committee corridors where America's climate policy gets thrashed out, and everything looks ugly. The House of Representatives today votes on the Waxman-Markey bill to establish a carbon cap-and-trade system, which shows all the signs of having been through the congressional mangle. It comes festooned with unattractive concessions to industries ranging from coal to biofuels. Worse, there is artful fuzziness on the central question of how far American emissions must fall. Unsightly - and sometimes alarming - as these blemishes are, they must not distract from the reality that the House will do something historic if it listens to the advice of Barack Obama and passes legislation that remains more ambitious than anything he promised on the campaign trail. If, as is more doubtful, the Senate does the same over the next few months, then the US can finally put a decade of denial behind it and turn up at December's Copenhagen summit in a position to give at least some sort of a lead to the world.

That meeting is charged with replacing the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gases, which the US never ratified. Its exclusion is not the only feature that renders the framework totally inadequate today; just as serious is the lack of any meaningful obligation on developing countries, which could be ignored in the 1990s but cannot be overlooked any longer. New figures from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency yesterday showed that the CO2 emissions from the developing world account for more than half the global total for the first time. The conversations that count in Copenhagen will be those between capitals that were never bound by Kyoto, and most particularly between Washington and Beijing. The fumes China belches out are largely generated in the course of serving the western consumer, a position that gives Beijing the right to do nothing until America demonstrates its commitment to making the first move.

Egged on by his determined climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, Gordon Brown has grasped this logic, and appreciates that if every card is clung on to until the eleventh hour, Copenhagen will go the same way as the dismal Doha trade round. He will use a speech today to set out his approach, although his voice will command little direct authority, both because the UK negotiates through the EU and because it is not Brussels - which has had carbon targets for years - but Washington that holds the key to unlocking a deal.

The arrest this week of Nasa's climate scientist, James Hansen, as he protested at a coal-processing plant in West Virginia, seemed somehow to symbolise the struggle still faced by the forces of reason within the American establishment. Even before the amendments to Waxman-Markey, the pressures were evident in a cowardly change of language - environmentalists in the administration now talk less about the (obvious) need for carbon cuts than about those fuzzy objects, carbon profiles. They were evident, too, in the decidedly nervous noises that Steven Chu, the Nobel-winning energy secretary, has been making on the prospects for addressing America's ludicrously low rate of fuel taxation. Raising pump prices during a slump might be suicidal, but there should be other ways to start to wean Americans off their oil addiction - for example, putting a floor under the price of a gallon, which could then be increased over the years.

A dozen years of New Labour has repeatedly shown how, in the absence of a progressive strategy, mere tactics fill the void. Imperfect as it is, Waxman-Markey locks America into a plan, which is why it is so essential Congress endorses it today. Yes, the US is late to the climate-change fight; true, these steps are not big enough. But Washington is at last playing catch-up - and that is cause for modest optimism.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jun 2009 | 11:01 pm

Toothy 3-foot Piranha Fossil Found (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - If you thought piranhas were scary, be glad Megapiranha is no longer around.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Jun 2009 | 10:02 pm

TIMELINE: Largest Train Wrecks in History

Take a look at some of the largest railway disasters in the past 100 years.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 25 Jun 2009 | 10:00 pm

Blue Paint Traces Found on Elgin Marbles

Marble carvings that once adorned the Parthenon were originally coated in blue.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 25 Jun 2009 | 8:00 pm

BLOG: Greenland: The 800-Pound Gorilla?

Signs show that Greenland may have begun a big melt, with rising seas a possibility.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 25 Jun 2009 | 7:40 pm

Fish's Ears Get Bigger in Acidic Water

Fish ears grow up to 17 percent larger when CO2 levels are increased in water.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 25 Jun 2009 | 7:30 pm

Obama urges House to pass climate change bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday urged the House of Representatives to pass a historic climate change bill that he said will create millions of jobs.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 Jun 2009 | 6:40 pm

Whales Might Be as Much Like People as Apes Are

As the annual International Whaling Commission meeting stumbles to a close, unable to negotiate a compromise between whaling opponents and people who’ve killed more than 40,000 whales since 1985, scientists say these aquatic mammals are more than mere animals. They might even deserve to be considered people.

Not human people, but as occupying a similar range on the spectrum as the great apes, for whom the idea of personhood has moved from preposterous to possible. Chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos possess self-awareness, feelings and high-level cognitive powers. According to a steadily gathering body of research, so do whales and dolphins.

In fact, their capacities could be even more ancient than our own, dating to an evolutionary explosion in brain size that took place millions of years before the last common ancestor of the great apes existed.

“If an alien came down anytime prior to about 1.5 million years ago to communicate with the ‘brainiest’ animals on Earth, they would have tripped over our own ancestors and headed straight for the oceans to converse with the dolphins,” said Lori Marino, an evolutionary neurobiologist at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

The idea of whale personhood makes all the more haunting the prospect that Earth’s cetaceans, many of whom were hunted to the brink of extinction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, are still threatened.

At the annual International Whaling Commission being held this week in Portugal, officials failed to curb the continuing killing of some 1,000 whales every year, mostly by hunters from Japan, Norway and Iceland. Many scientists say populations are still too fragile to support commercial hunting or, in the case of Japan, “scientific research” that appears to kill an especially high number of pregnant females.

Mortality from hunting, however, may be the least of the whale’s worries. Industrial pollution has suffused their bodies with heavy metals and toxins. Noise pollution drowns out the vocalizations on which whales rely to find food and navigate. Overfishing punches holes in oceanic webs of life. Whales and dolphins are also accidentally caught in nets and struck by ships.

Such collisions appear to be pushing the North Atlantic right whale to oblivion, and the IWC says that ship strikes “should be reduced to zero as soon as possible.” But though the U.S. has set speed limits off its northeast coast, the World Shipping Council has fought such measures internationally. It’s also possible that Navy sonar tests, which may have caused mass beachings in the Bahamas, are to blame. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down restrictions on the tests. And though President Obama has noble intentions on ocean policy, pollution and overfishing is a global problem.

In the midst of this, research has continued on whales and dolphins, which have long been difficult to study. Whales can’t be kept in captivity. Scientists require expensive ships and tools that, despite their sophistication, produce relatively low-resolution readings of whale life.

Most findings come from bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, sperm whales and humpback whales — the species that scientists have painstakingly studied for a few decades, and now continue their work with improved gene sequencing and song analysis tools. In these four species, scientists see considerable social complexity and individual distinction. They talk of whales and dolphins in terms of cultures and societies, and say cetaceans possess qualities of personhood. They say the same is likely true of other species, who simply haven’t been studied yet.

“It’s only due to our lack of knowledge that humans remain this exclusive species,” said Shane Gero, a Dalhousie University marine biologist. “We’re getting a lot of long-term studies in cetaceans, hitting multiple generations, and we’re finally able to get at these questions.” Though there’s still more evidence for primate than cetacean personhood, Gero said accumulating research “will start tipping the scales.”

Gero trained under Dalhousie University biologist Hal Whitehead, who started studying whales in 1977. Researchers from his lab and that of St. Andrews University biologist Luke Rendell, another former Whitehead student, have studied sperm whales around the world. They’re responsible for much of what’s known about the whales’ social behavior, which involves wide variations in group formation, hunting and child-rearing. Groups even appear to communicate in their own unique dialect.

“Based on what we know, I’d guess that cetacean culture is intermediate between humans and chimpanzees. Not in material culture, but in most other respects,” said Whitehead.

Culture is an especially important measure of personhood in whales, since it’s difficult to administer the sorts of tests that have found chimpanzees to be capable of basic math, altruism, laughter and complex communication, the latter of which can be neurologically imaged in real-time.

But if cetaceans can’t take these tests, they have met one critical laboratory benchmark of higher cognition: self-recognition. With Wildlife Conservation Society cognitive scientist Diana Reiss, Lori Marino showed that bottlenose dolphins can use mirrors to investigate marks hidden on their bodies. “When they look in the mirror, they’re saying, ‘That’s me,’” said Marino. “They have a sense of self through time.”

And in a much-celebrated first documented example of tool use in marine mammals, a family of dolphins in Australia uses sponges to hunt.

Cetaceans even surpass most primates in their use of sound. “We’ve known for some time now that the communication systems of these animals is more complex than we can imagine,” said Marino. “People are starting to use some interesting statistical methods to look at their vocal repertoires, and they’re finding structural complexity that suggests there may be something like grammar, syntax, even language.”

Fueling the evolution of cetacean communication is an ability, observed in dolphins, humpback whales and sperm whales, to pass songs and codas between generations and individuals.

“One of the ways in which dolphins are unusual among mammals is their ability to imitate sounds. Most apes are barely able to modify the sounds that they make vocally, based on what they hear,” said Peter Tyack, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. “To be able to learn sounds and incorporate them is really important for human communication.”

According to Tyack, the individually distinctive calls of dolphins may even be equivalent to names. “That’s an open research question,” he said.

In addition to cultural evidence, researchers who’ve studied cetacean brains — many of which are among the largest in the animal kingdom — have found highly developed analogues to human structures. Whale brains appear to have undergone massive growth about 30 million years ago, a process linked in primates to the development of complex cognition and culture.

“The parts of the brain that are involved with processing emotion and social relationships are enormously complex, and in many cetaceans even more highly elaborated than in the human brain,” said Marino. “If we assume that the limbic system is doing what it’s doing in all mammals, then something very high-level is going on.”

As for the nature of a whale’s inner life, it’s difficult to say but possible to speculate.

“My strong suspicion is that a lot of sperm whale life revolves around social issues,” said Whitehead. “They’re nomadic, live in permanent groups, and are dependent on each other for everything. Social structure is vital to them. The only constant thing in their world is their social group. I’d guess that a lot of their life is paying attention to social relationships.”

These relationships would be “interestingly different from ours, for a variety of reasons,” continued Whitehead. “There’s nowhere to hide, they can use sound to form an image of each other’s insides — whether you’re pregnant, hungry, sick. In a three-dimensional habitat, it’s probably much harder to say something is mine, or yours, whether it’s a piece of food or a potential mate.”

Tyler Schulz, another researcher in Whitehead’s lab, recently refined a method for linking sperm whale codas to the individual who composed them. That should help researchers get an even better appreciation of personal traits.

“He found that in one group, most of the animals had a similar repertoire of calls, but the mother of a baby had a different one,” said Whitehead. “As we analyze the data, we’ll be able to figure out whether that was the mother’s originally vocabulary, and she was a weirdo, or if maybe that was just baby talk. We all know women who change their vocabularies when they have babies.”

Images: 1. steews4/Flickr.  2. NOAA.  3. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 4. Northern Territory Government

See Also:

• Chimps: Not Human, But Are They People?
• A Different Take on Great Ape Personhood
• Hidden Whale Culture Could Be Critical to Species Survival
• What It Sounds Like to Be a Whale
• Clever Critters: 8 Best Non-Human Tool Users

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes, including references and outtakes for this article; Wired Science on Twitter.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 25 Jun 2009 | 6:13 pm

Robot Surgeon Finds Tiny Shrapnel

The robot surgeon successfully found the shrapnel without human help.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 25 Jun 2009 | 5:30 pm

Science and tech committee reborn

The House of Commons has approved the re-establishment of the parliamentary Science and Technology Committee.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Jun 2009 | 5:20 pm

Upside down faces show monkeys recognise each other just like us

Experiments using a visual illusion have demonstrated that rhesus monkeys recognise faces in the same way that humans do.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Jun 2009 | 4:16 pm

One-Third of Sharks Now Face Extinction

A new study shows that a third of ocean sharks face the threat of extinction.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 25 Jun 2009 | 3:05 pm

Buzz for answers

Suggest a question for astronaut Buzz Aldrin interview
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 25 Jun 2009 | 2:34 pm

Canadian farmers opposed to GM wheat: survey

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan (Reuters) - Canadian farmers oppose the introduction of genetically modified wheat until market conditions change, a Canadian Wheat Board survey has found.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 Jun 2009 | 1:43 pm

Royal Society announces shortlist for science book prize

The shortlist is a smorgasbord of popular science writing offering a taste of evolutionary biology, statistics, archaeology, olfaction, good science and bad science

Today the Royal Society announced the shortlist for its science book prize. It's a strong field of contenders for the £10,000 prize money. Regular readers of the Guardian and fans of our Science Weekly podcast will already be familiar with the finalists. One of the shortlisted books was recently picked over by our Science Book Club, one of the authors writes a popular weekly column for the Guardian, and two have been guests on the podcast.

Sir Tim Hunt, who chairs the panel of judges, said: "There's clearly a large audience for books that explain science clearly and gracefully, and no shortage of authors. Choosing a final list of six books from the big boxes of books that arrived on our doorsteps – over 120 books were submitted – was a challenging pleasure."

Here's the shortlist:

What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life by Avery Gilbert (Crown Publishers)
Olfaction expert Gilbert takes us on a journey through the world of aroma, describing the latest scientific discoveries and exposing popular misconceptions about smell. Apparently the human nose is almost as sensitive as the noses of many animals, including dogs; blind people do not have enhanced powers of smell; and perfumers excel at their jobs not because they have superior noses, but because they have perfected the art of thinking about scents.

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (Harper Perennial)
Goldacre writes the popular Bad Science column on Saturdays in the Guardian. Like the column, his book is about the shoddy, misleading science we are bombarded with by the media and in advertising. The updated paperback edition includes a damning chapter on Matthias Rath, the vitamin-pill entrepreneur who unsuccessfully sued him for libel.

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes (HarperPress)
Holmes charts the rise of modern science in the late 18th century through the lives of botanist Joseph Banks, astronomer William Herschel, explorer Mungo Park and chemist Humphry Davy, and explores its influence on writers and romantic poets including Mary Shelley, Coleridge, Byron and Keats. Reviewing the book for the Science Book Club in May, Tim Radford wrote: "This is a rich, crowded book, with something luminous, provoking and instructive on every page. The discussions of the challenges of 18th century astronomy, or of the first faltering explorations of chemistry, are as illuminating as any formal scientific history, and twice as readable."

Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World's First Computer by Jo Marchant (William Heinemann)
Marchant tells for the first time the story of the 100-year quest to understand an ancient mechanism discovered at the bottom of the Mediterranean among the wreckage of an Ancient Greek shipwreck. What appeared to be a formless lump of rock turned out to be the most stunning scientific artefact to survive from antiquity. Marchant came into the studio in October to talk about the Antikythera mechanism for our Science Weekly podcast.

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow (Penguin)
Mlodinow uncovers the psychological illusions that prevent us understanding stockmarkets, lotteries, road safety ... and wine-tasting. According to the book jacket, he also "reveals the truth about the success of sporting heroes and film stars, and even how to make sense of a blood test". Mlodinow expounded his ideas about how randomness rules our lives on the Science Weekly podcast last year.

Your Inner Fish: The Amazing Discovery of Our 375-million-year-old Ancestor by Neil Shubin (Penguin)
An expert in evolutionary history, Shubin "shows that if we want to know why we hiccup, the answer is in the way fish breathe; and explains why it is that fish teeth are surprisingly similar to human breasts." Robin McKie reviewed Your Inner Fish for the Observer last year.

The winner won't be announced until 15 September, but in the coming months we'll be chatting to some of the judges and authors on the podcast, Tim Radford will rate the rival merits of the books, and we'll be offering the chance to win them all in a competition. Keep watching this space.

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Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Jun 2009 | 1:06 pm