Cystic Fibrosis Treatments May Have Unseen Long-term Benefits

Cystic fibrosis medicines that help to break down mucus in the lungs may carry an unexpected long-term benefit, a study suggests. The treatments not only help breathing in the short term -- they may also make lung infections develop to be less harmful in the long run, research shows.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

Solar Power: New SunCatcher Power System Ready For Commercial Production In 2010

Four newly designed highly efficient solar power collection dishes will be used in commercial-scale deployments beginning in 2010.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

By Manipulating Oxygen, Scientists Coax Bacteria Into Never-Before-Seen Solitary Wave

Bacteria know that they are too small to make an impact individually. So they wait, they multiply, and then they engage in behaviors that are only successful when all cells participate in unison. There are hundreds of behaviors that bacteria carry out in such communities. Now researchers have discovered one that has never been observed or described before in a living system.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

Mathematical Model Shows Why Defeating Insurgent Groups Like Taliban Is So Difficult

Insurgent groups like the Taliban can only be effectively engaged with timely and accurate military intelligence, and even good intelligence may only succeed in containing the insurgency, not defeating it, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

Set Of Genes Contributes To Stress; Possible Drug-Taking Behavior Discovered

A researcher has found a set of genes that modulates stress responses that could cause some people to take drugs, specifically alcohol consumption.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

Hydrogen Technology Steams Ahead

Could the cars and laptops of the future be fueled by old chip fat? A group of engineers believe so, and are developing an energy efficient, environmentally-friendly hydrogen production system. The system enables hydrogen to be extracted from waste materials, such as vegetable oil and the glycerol by-product of bio-diesel. The aim is to create the high purity hydrogen-based fuel necessary not only for large-scale power production, but also for smaller portable fuel cells.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

Successful New Treatment For Hodgkin's Lymphoma, Reduces Long-term Risks

A new chemotherapy regimen for pediatric Hodgkin's lymphoma patients has been identified. The new treatment enhances efficacy through dose-dense drug delivery while simultaneously reducing the long-term risks presented by high cumulative dose chemotherapy.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pm

Arctic Climate Under Greenhouse Conditions In The Late Cretaceous

New evidence for ice-free summers with intermittent winter sea ice in the Arctic Ocean during the Late Cretaceous -- a period of greenhouse conditions -- gives a glimpse of how the Arctic is likely to respond to future global warming.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pm

Evolutionary Event Underlying Origin Of Dachshunds, Dogs With Short Legs, Discovered

A single evolutionary event appears to explain the short, curved legs that characterize all of today's dachshunds, corgis, basset hounds and at least 16 other breeds of dogs, researchers report. In addition to what it reveals about short-legged dogs, the unexpected discovery provides new clues about how physical differences may arise within species and suggests new approaches to understanding a form of human dwarfism.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pm

Baking Soda: For Cooking, Cleaning, And Kidney Health?

A daily dose of sodium bicarbonate -- baking soda, already used for baking, cleaning, acid indigestion, sunburn and more -- slows the decline of kidney function in some patients with advanced chronic kidney disease, reports an upcoming study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pm

Scientists save India's moon mission from failure (AP)

AP - India's only satellite orbiting the moon came close to failure after overheating but scientists improvised to save it and have achieved more than 90 percent of the mission's objectives, an official said Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 10:37 am

Ask AP: Nuclear power, St. Paul's supposed bones (AP)

AP - Wind and solar power get a lot of attention when the future of energy comes up for discussion. But are there any plans to generate more power by building new nuclear plants?

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 10:25 am

San Diego menaced by jumbo squid

Scuba divers off the Californian city of San Diego report unnerving encounters with large numbers of Humboldt squid.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 17 Jul 2009 | 10:23 am

UN: pollution accord enters into force in October (AP)

AP - The United Nations says an international accord requiring governments to publicly identify sites of environmental pollution will come into force on Oct. 8.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 9:41 am

Oil and wine

How one Italian vineyard became a battleground
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 17 Jul 2009 | 9:11 am

Space shuttle Endeavour closes in on space station (AP)

AP - Space shuttle Endeavour is closing in on the international space station following a two-day chase.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 8:20 am

India's first unmanned moon probe malfunctions

BANGALORE, India (Reuters) - India's first unmanned moon probe has malfunctioned and may have to curtail its two-year mission, India's space agency said Friday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 7:09 am

1st US 2-hand transplant patient yearns to feel (AP)

AP - The nation's first double hand transplant patient can wriggle his new fingers a litte bit now and grab a tennis ball, but what he really wants to do is be able to feel his wife's hands when he holds them.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 5:09 am

The bigger they get, the faster they go – the rise of the 'superhuman' athletes

• Weight categories urged to make sprint races fairer
• Usain Bolt 11 inches taller than his 1929 counterpart

When Usain Bolt became the fastest man on earth at the Bejjing Olympics, he would have left the legendary sprinter Jesse Owens floundering a full five metres behind him.

The physiological reason behind Bolt's achievements is the subject of endless debate, but new research points to simple evolution: elite athletes have got taller, bigger and thus faster in the last 100 years, it suggests.

At 6ft 5in, Bolt is a full seven inches taller than Owens, who broke the 100m record in 1936, and three inches taller than Carl Lewis, who broke it in 1987. The Jamaican is heavier than both previous world record holders too.

That's no coincidence, according to scientists who analysed the heights and weights of the swiftest swimmers and sprinters since 1900.

"Elite athletes are getting heavier and taller," said Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University in the US. He said that while both measurements showed a marked increase, "they are growing taller faster."

In a paper published today in the Journal of Experimental Biology, Bejan has shown that over the last 100 years elite swimmers have grown on average 4.5 inches, more than double that of the normal population (2 inches), while elite sprinters have shot up 6.4 inches. The height difference between Bolt and Eddie Tolan, the 5ft 6in record holder in 1929, is even more marked at 11 inches.

"The global trend is peanuts compared to the evolution of the very few who signify the sport," Bejan said.

Bejan, an engineer who developed a new law of physics governing the design of matter as it moves through air and water, used this principle to study the evolution of elite athletes over time.

Using what he called the Constructal Law, combined with the theoretical rules of animal locomotion which state that larger animals should move faster than smaller animals, he predicted that athletes would be taller and heavier.

"We had a hunch and when we researched the records, we found that, yes, body masses have being going up in time in a statistically significant way. We have had this prediction verified."

Using his insights, researchers also predicted what running speeds would have been during the Greek and Roman empires by using the measurements of statues and effigies. Their analysis showed that body weights would be around 70% less than today. "Using our theory, a 100m dash that is won in 13 seconds would have taken about 14 seconds back then," he said.

Bejan predicts that the trend for speed records to be dominated by taller, heavier athletes will continue. He warned, however, that the trend could be dangerous, and has called on the Olympic authorities to introduce weight classes in these sports to ensure a level playing field.

"Not doing so is dangerous because it creates an industry for the superhuman. I don't think that's what society really needs. In the communist era, entire governments were farming for gold medals. People were looking for better and better specimens and better individuals."

Bejan argues that the same principle that makes heavier weightlifters, boxers or wrestlers stronger also governs running and swimming. He said:"These three sports are static and were obviously connected by the fact that larger volume of muscle is capable of generating larger forces, to lift, to punch, to wrestle to the mat. The physics of locomotion is just a little bit more complicated. The same muscles which we know to be larger must lift the body against gravity and then there is a second element – those muscles must push forward in order to overcome resistance, either in air or water."

"An animal that moves is a weightlifter first and a thrower of its own weight forward second. If the winner's podium is to include athletes of all sizes, then speed competitions will have to be divided into weight categories."

Not everyone in athetics agrees. Michael Afilaka, performance coach for UK Athletics, said: "In terms of athletes getting heavier, that's the nature of the society we're living in, full stop. But you have to tick all the boxes. You have to be fit and perform at the highest level. In 2007, Usain Bolt got killed in Osaka and if you asked him what he did differently in 2008, he would say he trained like a dog."

Afilaka, who coached Jeanette Kwayke, a 5ft 6in sprinter who reached the 100m Olympic final last year, said: "The word on the street is that the big big 'un will always beat the little little 'un, but that's not the case. Look at the women's sprint in the 1990s. All the women were lanky, all 5ft 11in, 6ft. But in 1992 and 1996, it was won by Gail Devers, who was 5ft 3in. The common denominator is the energy."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 17 Jul 2009 | 4:00 am

Teen Behaviors Stem From Genetics, Environment (HealthDay)

HealthDay - THURSDAY, July 16 (HealthDay News) -- Teens' alcohol use and behavior problems are influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, a new study finds.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 3:49 am

Spliced-in gene lays dogs low

CHICAGO (Reuters) - An extra gene may explain why dachshunds, corgis and basset hounds have short, stubby legs, U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a finding that may also lend new clues about human dwarfism.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 2:12 am

NASA probes new space shuttle fuel tank problem

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA will hold off launching any more space shuttles until it understands why strips of insulating foam peeled off the fuel tank used by shuttle Endeavour, the U.S. space agency shuttle program manager said on Thursday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 1:44 am

NASA Weighs Heat Shield Dings on Shuttle (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - NASA is not too worried about debris that appeared to fall from the space shuttle Endeavour's external fuel tank during its liftoff Wednesday, but is perplexed about why the bits of foam insulation fell from an unexpected spot.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 12:30 am

Moon landing tapes got erased, NASA admits

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The original recordings of the first humans landing on the moon 40 years ago were erased and re-used, but newly restored copies of the original broadcast look even better, NASA officials said on Thursday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 17 Jul 2009 | 12:15 am

Retailers miss plastic bag target

Efforts to reduce the number of plastic carrier bags given to supermarket customers by 50% narrowly fail.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jul 2009 | 11:39 pm

U.S. Interior proceeding with contested offshore plan (Reuters)

Reuters - The U.S. Interior Department on Thursday said that it will go ahead with an offshore oil and natural gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico scheduled next month, despite some legal concerns about the Bush-era drilling plan.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jul 2009 | 11:22 pm

NASA lost moon footage, but Hollywood restores it (AP)

AP - NASA could put a man on the moon but didn't have the sense to keep the original video of the live TV transmission.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jul 2009 | 11:11 pm

In praise of ... British archaeology

"It takes very special qualities to devote one's life to problems with no attainable solutions and to poking around in dead people's garbage," the prehistorian Paul Bahn once joked, but there are plenty of people who want to do it. The last two decades have seen an explosion in British archaeology, prompted partly by planning laws that have made quick rescue digs a routine feature on building sites. This, and television's Time Team series, have encouraged the idea that archaeology has to be done in a tremendous rush, a scramble to get trenches dug, with the aim of making spectacular finds or proving theories within hours. Sometimes it happens: the sealed Roman lead coffin found at London's Spitalfields market a decade ago is an example. It even contained remains of a pillow made of bay leaves. But mostly archaeology is a sedate and confusing process, the gradual accumulation of evidence and artefacts - and with the recession slashing spending on new commercial developments, the days of high-speed archaeology may be ending. That will put the spotlight back on the sort of public archaeology promoted over the next fortnight by the Festival of British Archaeology, which from Saturday will encourage people to take part in trial digs, or walks, or all sorts of other activities across the country. One focus is Doggerland - the hills and valleys that linked Yorkshire to mainland Europe 10,000 years ago and are now under the North Sea. Research on site, of course, might need a pump, not a trowel.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jul 2009 | 11:01 pm

NASA suspends shuttle flights pending investigation

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA will suspend flights of its space shuttle fleet until it understands why strips of insulating foam peeled off the fuel tank used by shuttle Endeavour during Wednesday's launch, officials said.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:53 pm

Silchester dig reveals how ancient Britons built a thriving city

The streets and foundations of the oldest town in Britain are emerging on a low hill near Basingstoke in Hampshire – and they may cause history books to be shredded.

Almost a century before the Romans arrived in 43 AD, a town of up to 10,000 people was laid out at Silchester, with all the characteristics credited to the invaders: a regular grid pattern of streets and narrow alleys dividing plots, supplied with water from wells and springs – a wealthy place minting its own coins and trading in luxury goods with continental Europe.

Even the name it kept through centuries of Roman rule, Calleva Atrebatum, dates back to its iron age founders. A layer of charred wood suggests the town was destroyed by fire, possibly in the revolt led by Boudicca in 60AD.

The site is surrounded by Roman walls built more than a century later, still 4m tall in places, but the emerging evidence suggests its glory days were pre-Roman.

"We're turning up more questions every day, but the evidence is all pointing in one direction," said Professor Mike Fulford, of Reading University. "The only rivals for the title of oldest town would be St Albans or Colchester – but there is nothing to suggest anything on this scale."

He believes it the town was founded by Commius, a leader of the Attrabates tribe in Gaul, who fell out with his former allies and had to flee Julius Caesar in 50BC. The site he chose, in an area where his tribe probably already had links, was well inland so safe from Roman galleys, on a low spur of defensible land which still has remarkable views in every direction, with ample water and surrounded by forests full of game.

Visitors will be invited to walk a main street over 2,000 years old this weekend, and inspect artefacts including an Iron Age brooch found just two days ago, as part of the Festival of British Archaeology.

Hundreds of sites will be open over the next fortnight. The festival, organised by the Council for British Archaeology, is now the largest of its kind in the world. This year there are more than 600 events, most including free lectures, walks, and sessions making anything from iron age pots to medieval stew.Many of the festival sites are usually closed to the public, but at Silchester the student and volunteer diggers are used to being stared at. Over 12 years there have been regular open days, but people wander across the farm fields most days to a site which keeps producing surprises. The standard Roman north-south, east-west grid was only imposed after the fire: this summer they are working on a large house repeatedly rebuilt over centuries, aligned not with the new Roman roads but with the original Iron Age street grid – and on the summer solstice.

The site has long been regarded as one of the most enigmatic in Britain, a major town with a forum, a huge basilica, baths and temples, completely abandoned in the 5th century, its wells deliberately filled in – and never occupied again by anyone. The circuit of battered but imposing walls rearing up from green fields still encloses only a medieval church and a Victorian farmhouse.

Professor Fulford first began digging there as a junior lecturer in the 1970s, and now expects the site will more than last until his retirement in five years. It was extensively excavated in the 19th century, but his team has found a mass of material which the Victorians either missed or could not interpret, including dogs buried all over the town, one carefully placed into its grave standing up, still on guard after 1600 years.

Recent finds include skeletons of young dogs with marks of flaying – suggesting that among its many flourishing Iron Age industries, Calleva Attrebatum was the centre of a trade in warm fluffy puppy fur cloaks.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:04 pm

First life at Darwin Centre

The new centre will be home for more than 220 scientists, giant plants and a vast display cabinet

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jul 2009 | 9:50 pm

NASA dusts off forgotten artifacts in new exhibit (AP)

AP - The spacesuit was one of three made for the last man to set foot on the moon, but Doug Fisher found it balled up and forgotten at the bottom of a cardboard box.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Jul 2009 | 9:30 pm

Spy Satellite Sea Ice Images Finally Made Public

Super high-resolution spy satellites have been imaging sea ice at the poles for the last decade on behalf of earth scientists. But the images has been kept from the public and nearly all scientists, too.

Over the last 10 years, a tiny group of scientists with security clearance was able to see some of the images, but couldn’t use them publicly.

Now, mere hours after a National Academy of Sciences committee recommended that the intelligence community “should release and disseminate all Arctic sea ice” imagery that can be created from the classified satellite data, the United States Geological Service has published the set of high-res images.

The new data provides what NAS committee member Thorsten Markus called “a dramatic improvement” in what we can see. The previously off-limits sea ice data has a resolution of one meter. The previous scientific standard sea ice images from the Landsat program have a resolution of 15 meters.

Markus saw some of the sea ice images last December when the committee reviewed the scientific value of the spy satellite data.

“It’s a very nice data set,” Markus said. “I think people will jump on it, quite frankly.”

With the new info in hand, scientists should be able to build better models of smaller sea-ice features like melt ponds and ridges. Both are believed to have important roles in sea ice dynamics, but how important they are remains unclear.

It’s not just the high resolution of the satellite data that’s got scientists excited. The intelligence community has also been snapping photos of more locations and for longer than anyone else.

“[The data] is better in quality, it’s longer in duration and it’s broader in coverage,” said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, who did not contribute to the new report, but is looking at similar issues for the National Academy of Sciences.

Gleick noted that the information release could be part of a larger trend in which the scientific and intelligence communities realize that they share a concern for environmental problems.

“The intelligence community is increasingly aware that some of these global environmental issues are also security issues. And in that sense, working with the scientific community in an open way helps both communities,” Gleick said. “If we can reduce environmental threats and reduce security risks at the same time by releasing more data, then we’re all better off. That’s the key. And that’s why there is more cooperation in this area.”

In this case, the data release went incredibly smoothly. Less than a day after the NAS panel briefed Congress Tuesday, and within hours of the report’s official publication, the website with the images went live.

“I was shocked, in a positive way,” said Markus. “Normally, you do a recommendation and then nothing happens for months. This is quite unusual.”

See Also:

• Melting Arctic Prompts Calls for ‘National Park’ on Ice
• Stories From The Near Future
• A Thin Silver Lining to Antarctic Ice Collapse
• Arctic Ice Melts Faster Than Predicted
• A Handy Guide to Climate Change Tipping Points

Image: Beaufort Sea, from the new data set. You can download the full 265 megabyte TIFF at the Global Fiducials Library [zip].

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 | 16 Jul 2009 | 9:21 pm

Climate Dominoes Falling Slower Than Expected: Study

Climate change may have a more gradual effect on a key ocean current than once thought.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jul 2009 | 9:20 pm

Steady hands

A unique exercise - how to dismantle a nuclear bomb
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jul 2009 | 9:04 pm

Ex-Boeing engineer guilty in space shuttle spy case

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A former Boeing engineer was convicted on Thursday of passing space shuttle secrets to the Chinese government in the United States' first economic espionage trial.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 16 Jul 2009 | 8:51 pm

WATCH: King Tut Treasures at Carnarvon Castle

Long-hidden artifacts from King Tut's reign are now on display at Carnarvon Castle.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jul 2009 | 8:45 pm

Is the Apollo 11 Moon Landing Flag Still Standing?

That's just one of many questions researchers hope will be answered this year by new pictures of old Apollo landing sites.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:54 pm

Copies of Moon Landing Videos Restored

Hollywood helps NASA restore historic, grainy images of the first moon mission.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:15 pm

Wow! Moths Jam Bat Sonar

Tiger moths can thwart attacks from bats by effectively jamming the bats' sonar, doing so by emitting sudden bursts of ultrasound, scientists now find.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jul 2009 | 6:43 pm

Robots Could Replace Teachers

More and more of us will learn from robots in the future, but human teachers will still be the norm, according to a "new science of learning."
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jul 2009 | 6:08 pm

Advances seen in treatment of knee ligament injury

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New surgical techniques are helping to improve treatment of a lesser-known type of knee ligament injury, according to a research review.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 16 Jul 2009 | 6:03 pm

Lizard Swims Like Snake Through Sand

Sandfish lizard uses wave-like motion to move through sands of Sahara.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jul 2009 | 6:03 pm

Neanderthals Were Few and Poised for Extinction

Neanderthals were sparse.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jul 2009 | 6:02 pm

Swimming Through Sand

A sandfish crawls on the sand before it burrows down and slithers like a snake to 'swim' through the sand.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jul 2009 | 6:01 pm

Video: Moth Blocks Bat Attack by Jamming Sonar

Navy engineers aren’t the only ones who can jam sonar. Scientists have discovered a species of tiger moth that thwarts hungry bats by emitting extra-loud clicks to block the bats’ ability to echolocate.

Researchers have long known that some species of moths send out clicks in response to bat sonar, but until now, no one has been able to prove that the clicks actually interfere with echolocation. “The idea of a jamming mechanism has been thrown around for 50 years, but nobody has really put a moth and a bat together in a flight room to see what happens,” said ecology graduate student Aaron Corcoran of Wake Forest University, co-author of the study published Thursday in Science.

Corcoran and his colleagues pitted a particularly noisy species of tiger moth, the Bertholdia trigona, against big brown bats trained to hunt in a flight room. As long as the moths were able to click, the bats couldn’t catch them, even though the moths were tethered on a string.

But when the scientists pierced a small hole in the moths’ sound-producing structures, called tymbals, the silenced moths quickly became lunch.

“It’s the first good, solid case of this going on,” said insect behavior expert James Fullard of the University of Toronto at Mississauga, who was not involved in the study. “For this bat and this moth, it looks pretty convincing that jamming is what’s going on.”

Not all clicking moths can jam sonar, Fullard said, and that’s part of what makes this discovery so exciting. Previous research revealed that two other varieties of tiger moth make clicks that are too quiet to interfere with bat echolocation. Instead, he said, these moths likely use the clicks as a warning: Because most moths that click back at bats are poisonous, scientists think the noise may communicate, “Don’t eat me, I taste bad.”

But B. trigona isn’t poisonous, and the Wake Forest researchers experimented with young bats that had no prior exposure to clicking moths, so they hadn’t already learned to equate clicking with a bad taste. Nor did it seem like the bats were just startled by the clicking moths. Even after multiple attempts on multiple nights, the bats still couldn’t catch the intact B. trigona.

“Mammals habituate to startle rather quickly,” Corcoran said. “We went through seven days of trials, but the bats never habituated. They were put off by the clicks right away and throughout the whole experiment.”

The researchers haven’t yet proven how the moth’s sonar-jamming mechanism works, but they have two leading hypotheses: The moth’s clicks may act as false echoes, essentially making the bat “see” double, or they may interrupt the bat’s own echoes, making its prey appear closer than it is.

Unlike other moths, B. trigona appears to be particularly suited for jamming sonar because it can make up to 4,500 clicks per second. Near-constant noise is important because it prevents a bat from hearing the echoes of its own sonar clicks.

“If the timing is just right, if a click arrives in the two millisecond window shortly before the arrival of a real echo, it’s going to throw off the ranging software of the bat,” said echolocation expert Bill Conner, who led the project. “That’s why this animal, we think, evolved sounds that cover all of acoustic time. If you listen to the recordings, the moths produce clicks all of the time, and that greatly increases the probability that some clicks will fall into that precise time window.”

The group first spotted the noisy B. trigona in a cloud forest in Ecuador, but they were particularly excited to discover the moth as far north as Arizona. To search for evidence of sonar jamming outside the lab, the researchers have now set up a field station in the Chiricahua National Monument of southeast Arizona, where 18 species of bats interact with more than 30 kinds of tiger moths, including B. trigona.

“There will always be some researchers who will say, ‘Well you’ve proven that you can jam sonar in the laboratory, but does it really happen in the field?’” Conner said. “That’s the reason for the follow-up.”

See Also:

• Make Like a Dolphin: Learn Echolocation
• Learning From Bats
• Navy Taps Dolphin Brains for Next-Gen Sonar
• ‘Bat-Bot’ Sounds Out Surroundings
• Dolphin-Safe Entertainment

Image: Nickolay Hristov

Video: Science/AAAS

Follow us on Twitter @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 16 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

SLIDE SHOW: Journey to the Moon

Take a look back on one of the most significant achievements in human history: the Apollo moon landing.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jul 2009 | 5:38 pm

Park Attendance Rising in Poorer Countries

Tourists are flocking to parks in poorer countries, but not in the United States.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jul 2009 | 5:38 pm

BLOG: NASA Puts Future Shuttle Flights on Hold

A foam issue on the shuttle's fuel tank, which affected Endeavour, has NASA halting flights.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jul 2009 | 5:38 pm

Newly Restored Video of Apollo 11 Moonwalk

NASA has released newly restored video of the Apollo 11 Moon landing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of this feat.

Fifteen key moments are available, including Neil Armstrong’s first step on the Moon and Buzz Aldrin and Armstrong planting the American flag. The videos are part of a larger project to restore more video of the moonwalk.

A team of Apollo-era engineers who were responsible for the live broadcast of the moonwalk in 1969 gathered the best available video of the event from around the world and worked with experts who specialize in restoring old Hollywood classics.

In 1969, the live broadcast was recorded, along with biomedical, voice and other data, onto one-inch telemetry tapes as a backup if the live feed failed. But those tapes were lost, and a three-year hunt for them was unsuccessful.

So engineers were left with recordings of the TV broadcast, which lost a lot of resolution as they traveled from the Moon to ground-based tracking stations, to satellites via microwave links and through analog landlines to Mission Control in Houston.

“The restoration is ongoing and may produce even better video,” engineer Richard Nafzger at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who oversaw television processing at the ground tracking sites during Apollo 11, said in a press release. “The restoration project is scheduled to be completed in September and will provide the public, future historians, and the National Archives with the highest quality video of this historic event.”

NASA TV will be streaming the footage in HD from noon to 7 p.m. EDT July 16 and 17.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 16 Jul 2009 | 5:36 pm

Fuel-cell legacy

The push space has given to tomorrow's power plants
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jul 2009 | 5:12 pm

Mysterious, Glowing Clouds Appear Across America’s Night Skies

Mysterious, glowing clouds previously seen almost exclusively in Earth’s polar regions have appeared in the skies over the United States and Europe over the past several days.

Photographers and other sky watchers in Omaha, Paris, Seattle, and other locations have run outside to capture images of what scientists call noctilucent (”night shining”) clouds. Formed by ice literally at the boundary where the earth’s atmosphere meets space 50 miles up, they shine because they are so high that they remain lit by the sun even after our star is below the horizon.

The clouds might be beautiful, but they could portend global changes caused by global warming. Noctilucent clouds are a fundamentally new phenomenon in the temperate mid-latitude sky, and it’s not clear why they’ve migrated down from the poles. Or why, over the last 25 years, more of them are appearing in the polar regions, too, and shining more brightly.

“That’s a real concern and question,” said James Russell, an atmospheric scientist at Hampton University and the principal investigator of an ongoing NASA satellite mission to study the clouds. “Why are they getting more numerous? Why are they getting brighter? Why are they appearing at lower latitudes?”

Nobody knows for sure, but most of the answers seem to point to human-caused global atmospheric change.

Noctilucent clouds were first observed in 1885 by an amateur astronomer. No observations of anything resembling noctilucent clouds before that time has ever been found. There is no lack of observations of other phenomena in the sky, so atmospheric scientists are fairly sure that the phenomenon is recent, although they are not sure why.

Over the last 125 years, scientists have learned how the clouds form. At temperatures around minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, dust blowing up from below or falling into the atmosphere from space provides a resting spot for water vapor to condense and freeze. Right now, during the northern hemisphere’s summer, the atmosphere is heating up and expanding. At the outside edge of the atmosphere, that actually means that it’s getting colder because it’s pushed farther out into space.

It’s not hard to see how a warming Earth could change those dynamics: as the globe heats up, the top of the atmosphere should get colder.

“The prevailing theory and most plausible explanation is that CO2 buildup, at 50 miles above the surface, would cause the temperature decrease,” Russell said. He cautioned, however, that temperature observations remain inconclusive.

The global changes that appear to be reshaping noctilucent cloud distribution could be much more complex, said Vincent Wickwar, an atmospheric scientist at Utah State University whose team was first to report a mid-latitude noctilucent cloud in 2002. Temperature does not explain their observations from around 42 degrees latitude.

“To get the noctilucent clouds you need temperatures that are about 20 degrees Kelvin colder than what we see on average up there,” Wickwar said. “We may have effects from CO2 or methane but it would only be a degree or a fraction of a degree.”

Instead, Wickwar’s explanation is that a vertical atmospheric wave discovered in their LIDAR data lowered the temperature in the region above their radar installation near Logan, Utah. But then you have to ask, he noted, “Where’d the wave come from?”

They don’t really have an answer yet. Other facilities around the world with similar LIDAR capacity haven’t reported similar waves. And the Rocky Mountains, near Wickwar’s lab, can cause atmospheric waves, which could be a special feature of his location.

Other theories abound to explain the observed changes in the clouds. Human-caused increases in atmospheric methane, which oxidizes into carbon dioxide and water vapor, could be providing more water for ice in the stratosphere. Increases in the amount of cosmic or terrestrial dust in the stratosphere could also increase the number of brightly shining clouds.

Two years into Russell’s NASA project, more questions exist than firm answers. They will have at least three and a half more years, though, to gather good data on upper atmospheric dynamics.

The recent observations of noctilucent clouds at all kinds of latitudes provide an extra impetus to understand what is going on up there. Changes are occurring faster than scientists can understand their causes.

“I suspect, as many of us feel, that it is global change, but I fear we don’t understand it,” Wickwar said. “It’s not as simple as a temperature change.”

Image: 1. The sky over Omaha on July 14th, snapped by Mike Hollingshead at Extreme Instability 2. Noctilucent clouds lit up the Paris sky behind the Bastille Day fireworks show at the Eiffel Tower. Captured by flickr user, breff 3. A rendering of the noctilucent clouds created from data obtained by Russel’s NASA project, AIM. Video: NASA.

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 | 16 Jul 2009 | 5:00 pm

Stark beauty of the Apollo TV coverage

Like the moon landings themselves, the 60s and 70s TV coverage had to make the most of crude technology and rely on human resourcefulness. If only it hadn't had a similar disappointing legacy

Unless you are the sort of gullible fool that spends most of their day adjusting their tinfoil hat, you're hopefully enjoying all the wonderful TV celebrating the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 touching down in the Sea of Tranquility – if you are an aluminium headdress tweaker, you are more than likely scoffing at the poor "special effects", lack of stars and inconsistent shadows in the footage while your imaginary girlfriend tells you how smart and sexy you are.

BBC4, possibly the best channel in the world, has been typically magnificent in its programming. It had the essential and graceful documentary For All Mankind on recently, as well as plenty of shows that make full use of the BBC's archive of science reportage from the space age (seems odd calling a historical time period such a futuristic name, but that just highlights how far we have failed to come since then).

One thing I've particularly enjoyed is The Sky At Night's Apollo 11 A Night to Remember special, screened at the beginning of July and just released on DVD. It cobbles together the best bits from the BBC as well as NASA footage that was still being processed at the time. As wonderful it is to see all this stuff, the most striking thing is how much science reportage, and indeed television, has changed over the past four decades.

For starters, the screen just has the news. No idents or DOGs, just the picture with the occasional caption flashed up. The editing is also radically different: much less frantic; sometimes, holding shots for – get this – several minutes without cutting away. It's like TV was directed by Béla Tarr back then.

Now for the presenters: Patrick Moore is quite a bizarre character but - here's the difference between now and then - he wasn't chosen for the job because he's a bizarre character. He was picked for his knowledge and passion for the subject of space – and he's been presenting The Sky at Night for 51 years, missing only, I think, one episode. That's a record for both presenter and show that is unlikely to be topped, ever. The Apollo coverage also shows another reason how received pronunciation can be beneficial. The Apollo stuff seems to have been sound-mixed on the fly: there are voices from mission control, the astronauts, bystanders, as well as machine and rocket noises. But the plummy BBC voices cut through absolutely everything. They're not the loudest thing you hear, but they're certainly the clearest.

The other main presenter is James Burke. I'd practically forgotten this ex-Tomorrow's World presenter and science correspondent ever existed, but seeing him again brought memories flooding back. I remember Burke covering the Apollo/Soyuz docking, crawling around hardwood mockups of the spacecraft, showing how cramped things would be. I also remember his landmark series Connections, a relentlessly fascinating show charting the advent of knowledge and technology: how it all is part of a greater whole, how inventions lead to more of the same. It blew my pre-teen mind and, some 30 years later, much of it still sticks in the brain, nestled alongside the comparatively useless cultural trivia that now pays my rent. Just look at this sequence of Burke at work – no frills, no fuss but, damn he's good.

There are two kinds of people: those good at doing jobs and those good at getting jobs. These are rarely the same person, especially today. We used to have wonderful presenters (who weren't media-trained and didn't have a burning desire to be on telly). People such as Magnus Pyke and Jacob Bronowski. Presenters with letters after their name; letters other than OMG!! and LOL!!! at any rate. Moore is still around but if you want to present factual programmes on TV now, you'll have to demean yourself by dressing like Timmy Mallet as Adam Hart-Davis does.

It's not just me being a (slightly) old fogey – I've watched these gems with friends in their 20s, and they've been just as riveted by the elegance and informativeness of older reporting. We don't need 3D graphics, sound effects, cutaways, etc. Just presenters clever enough to hold our interest and directors brave enough to hold off the edit button. It seems the less hi-tech the delivery, the more interesting and educational the end result.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jul 2009 | 4:49 pm

Migrating Planets May Have Kicked Asteroids Into Orbit

Nice model of solar system evolution says migration of gas giants pushed asteroids into asteroid belt.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jul 2009 | 4:23 pm

Sun's Activity Cycle Linked to Earth Climate

Changes in sun's activity have effect on Pacific similar to El Nino and La Nina.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jul 2009 | 4:17 pm

Houston, we have a problem: moon walk footage erased

• High-res images of lunar walk probably taped over
• Loss of tapes went unnoticed for 35 years

It was humankind's crowning achievement, with millions around the world glued to their television sets as US astronaut Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon 40 years ago.

But in the scientific equivalent of recording an old episode of EastEnders over the prized video of your daughter's wedding day, Nasa probably taped over its only high-resolution images of the first moon walk with electronic data from a satellite or a later manned space mission, officials said today.

It means that the familiar grainy and ghosting images of Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind" are all that remain from the mission, though the space agency has managed to digitally restore the footage into new broadcast-quality pictures that it released today.

"I don't think anyone in the Nasa organisation did anything wrong. It slipped through the cracks and nobody's happy about it," said Dick Nafzger, one of the last Apollo-era video engineers still working for the agency at Maryland's Goddard Space Flight Centre.

In a technological feat that rivalled even putting Armstrong and his shipmate Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface, and one that has been largely overlooked since, a team of Nasa engineers and contractors fed live video from the moon, via a series of relay stations in Australia and the US, to homes around the world.

While Armstrong, Aldrin and Apollo 11 pilot Michael Collins trained for the mission, Nafzger and his partners were tasked with working out how to broadcast live from 240,000 miles away.

The images of Armstrong and Aldrin stepping on to the lunar surface and planting the US flag in the grey dust were seen by an estimated 600 million people. The tape recordings, taken for backup, were an afterthought, Nafzger told reporters in Washington today.

"We all wish that somebody had said 'those tapes are special, let's pull them aside'," he said.

Instead, their loss apparently went unnoticed for 35 years, until 2004, when an archive in Australia alerted Nasa that it believed it had found the lost tapes from the Apollo 11 mission. It shipped the tapes to Goddard, where Nasa maintains what officials say is the only machine in the world capable of reading the old tape technology. The first tapes did not have moon footage, but touched off a massive search for those that did in archives stored in dusty basements across the world.

Nasa believed the original tapes might contain digital data sent from the moon that could be converted into much sharper pictures of the landing than those broadcast on the day, which were taken by a television camera pointed at a giant wall monitor at mission control in Houston - effectively a copy of a copy.

But a standard Nasa money-saving measure in those days was to reuse the 14-inch tape reels after several years in storage. Agency officials ultimately concluded that the original Apollo 11 tapes were buried among an estimated 350,000 that were recycled in the 1970s and 1980s and the data was lost for ever.

The newly released footage was taken from four copies, including one in a CBS television archive. It is undergoing restoration by a firm that specialises in cleaning up old Hollywood movies.

"I don't believe that the tapes exist today at all," Stan Lebar, the designer of the original lunar camera, told America's National Public Radio. "It was a hard thing to accept. But there was just an overwhelming amount of evidence that led us to believe that they just don't exist any more."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jul 2009 | 4:11 pm

Ex-astronaut Bolden to lead Nasa

The US Senate has confirmed Charles Bolden as the new administrator of the American space agency (Nasa).
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jul 2009 | 4:10 pm

Docking of command and lunar modules

Just over three hours after launch, the command module Columbia docks nose-to-nose with the lunar module Eagle

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jul 2009 | 4:08 pm

King Tut Explorer's Photos, Treasures Revealed

Long-hidden photos and treasures from a King Tut tomb explorer are revealed.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jul 2009 | 3:47 pm

Asteroid Belt Loaded with Former Comets

Many asteroids were once comets that were displaced by the gravity of outer planets.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jul 2009 | 3:45 pm

Scientist's Best Advice: Don't Fear the Truth

John A. Vucetich of Michigan Technological University has long been an outspoken advocate for environmental policies that protect wildlife.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jul 2009 | 3:16 pm

Spectacular Wide-Field View of Eagle Nebula in High-Res

The fascinating Eagle Nebula is a dust filled stellar nursery filled with dust and lit up by bright infant stars. This new image, captured by the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter Telescope at La Silla, Chile, is one of the widest high-resolution shots of the nebula ever taken.

The “Pillars of Creation,” made famous by a photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, can be seen near the center of the image and the “Spire” appears to the left. The pillars are being shaped out of dust by the strong winds and intense ultraviolet light created by star births.

The nebula gets its name from its overall shape, which looks a little like an eagle with the pillars for talons.

See Also:

• Hubble Images Capture Universe’s Beauty, Awe
• Hubble Snaps Image of Triple Galaxy, as Ordered by the People
• Hubble Captures Image of Strange Giant Galaxy
• Hubble Snaps Fantastic Galaxy Collision
• Hubble Captures Images of Rare Mammoth Stars
• Glorious and Ghostly New Photo of Swan Nebula Star Birth
• Spectacular Space Photo of the Christmas Tree Cluster

Follow us on Twitter at @betsymason and @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 16 Jul 2009 | 2:31 pm

New element named 'copernicium'

The latest addition to the Periodic Table is named after an astronomer who "changed our view of the world".
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jul 2009 | 2:17 pm

40 Years After Moon Landing: Why Aren't People Smarter?

Despite a long tradition of free, compulsory public education, as a whole we don't seem to be getting much smarter.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Jul 2009 | 2:15 pm

Damage Eyed After Shuttle Launch

Launch photos are studied for debris breaking off Endeavour during launch.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jul 2009 | 2:00 pm

Scientists to deploy guerilla tactics at music festival

Taste a brain made of cake, spy the moons of Jupiter, dance to fractals, hunt for the Higgs, and ponder how utterly astounding it is that you are reading these words at all. Guerilla Science is scientific outreach, says Frank Swain, but not as we know it

Of the thousands heading to Suffolk this weekend for the Latitude Festival, most will be looking forward to a few days of music, camping and socially acceptable breakfast drinking. One thing they're probably not expecting is a lecture on astrophysics. But that's just what a small group of graduates are hoping to give them.

Guerilla Science brings unconventional forms of science entertainment to music festivals. An independent organisation founded by Oxford chemistry graduate Richard Bowdler in 2007, it puts on science-themed talks, live experiments, installations, art, films and performances at music festivals across the UK.

In their own words: "We want you to taste a brain made of cake, spy the moons of Jupiter, dance to fractals, hunt for the Higgs, and ponder how utterly astounding it is that you are reading these words at all."

As well as the aforementioned lecture on astrophysics, their 2009 festival science tent will overflow with a wide range of performances and workshops. Speakers include particle physicists working with the Large Hadron Collider, author Dr Jamie Ward, an expert on synaesthesia and the entwining of the senses, and acclaimed comedian Helen Keen with her one-woman show about the history of rockets.

Less mainstream activities include a beatbox laboratory, a series of themed pub quizzes (hosted by yours truly), a furnace for smelting experimental materials, a mobile observatory and a three-act dramatic play on the philosophical implications of brain disorders.

It's the first experiment of its kind in the UK, with the group hoping to "spread science by stealth", engaging those normally indifferent to science by popping up in the last place people expect to find them.

Predictably there'll be festival-goers who, deep in a fug of warm beer and spliff smoke, miss the irony of stumbling into a lecture on the neuroscience of ecstasy. Many music festivals already boast elements of theatre, art, comedy, poetry, politics and literature, so why not science?

Festivals and science may seem a strange pairing, especially when the science tent faces out onto another selling crystal healing. But there's no reason why herbalists and homeopaths should be given a free run at these events.

The Guerilla Scientists insist that hedonism and intellectual pursuit make a natural couple. "Science is not about the soulless study of statistics, it is about questioning and celebrating what it means to be alive – which is exactly what music festivals are for," says Zoe Cormier.

Now in its third year, the organisers have already held a series of scientific events in pubs across the capital, and are planning to erect their science tent at two festivals over the summer. As well as making their debut appearance at the Latitude Festival in Henham Park, they will return to the Secret Garden Party festival in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, for the second year running.

Though funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (an independent public body of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills), the project is made possible by the willingness of researchers to donate their time to public engagement. What makes these scientists so eager to be involved?

Programme manager Jen Wong says: "We offer a different way of communicating and experiencing science, and the chance for researchers to take their area of expertise and interest into a wholly new environment. It's a new experience for them and a new experience for the festival goers."

Wong is also keen to stress that Guerilla Science is not solely concerned with bringing science to the masses, but in establishing a platform for a cultural exchange between scientists and those in different walks of life. She explains: "Working with freestyle rapper MC Inja inspired us to create the 'equation-off' – a battle where scientists compete face-to-face to solve a mathematical proof. So we've taken traditional elements of hip-hop and introduced them to those of science."

Science communication, and how best to do it, is a hot topic in the UK at the moment. The government's own consultation paper on the subject A Vision for Science and Society, published in 2008, was roundly criticised by social researchers for failing to recognise the basics of public engagement with science. To wit: top-down pedagogy is out, encouraging grassroots public involvement with science is in.

Taking this criticism to heart, the government's Science: [So What? So everything] campaign, originally built on the implicit assumptions of the consultation document, recently turned to the blogosphere to bridge a gap in its science communication strategy.

So have the young scientists behind Guerilla Science got it right where our own ministers went wrong? Memory expert Ed Cooke, author of Remember, Remember and science tent veteran, certainly thinks so: "This epitomises the way education should be: voluntary, open, comprehensible and inspiring."

Frank Swain is a freelance writer and science guerilla. He runs the blog SciencePunk.com

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Jul 2009 | 1:22 pm

Spaceman

Apollo memories and 'old space'... but where next?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jul 2009 | 12:52 pm

For Tank Fish Two Is Not Enough Company

Aquarium fish kept alone or in pairs show higher stress than those kept in big groups.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 16 Jul 2009 | 12:45 pm

False positive

What this image tells us about screening terrorists
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jul 2009 | 11:21 am

Green deserts

Could climate change be good news for dry areas?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:45 am