Brain Develops Motor Memory For Prosthetics

A new study shows that the brain can develop a stable, neural map of a how to control a prosthetic device, providing hope that physically disabled people can one day master control of artificial limbs with greater ease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

'Long-haired' Water Molds Are The Most Virulent

The water mould Saprolegnia can cause skin disease in salmon during its freshwater phase. The mould attacks both fish and eggs and has at times caused great economic loss for the fish farming industry, both in Norway and in other salmon-producing countries. Saprolegnia infection may be seen with the naked eye as white patches on the skin or as "cotton-like" patches on eggs.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

New Generation Of Solar Cells Promises Efficiency

Scientists have produced thin film solar cells made from compound semiconductors which are already reaching a 12 percent efficiency. Thin film solar cells are considered the next generation of solar cells and are expected to be considerably cheaper because they need much less material and energy in their production than today’s photovoltaic modules.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

Reprogrammed Mouse Fibroblasts Can Make A Whole Mouse

Scientists report an important advance in the characterization of reprogrammed induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs. Researchers used established methods to reprogram mouse cells to isolate five new iPSC lines, and then found that, using one of these lines, they were able to make by tetraploid complementation embryos that survived until birth, and one embryo that also survived to adulthood.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

Even Healthy Lungs Labor At Acceptable Ozone Levels

Ozone exposure, even at levels deemed safe by current clean air standards, can have a significant and negative effect on lung function, according to researchers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

Technology On Way To Forecasting Humanity's Needs

Much as meteorologists predict the path and intensity of hurricanes, some researchers believe we will one day predict with unprecedented foresight, specificity and scale such things as the economic and social effects of billions of new Internet users in China and India, or the exact location and number of airline flights to cancel around the world in order to halt the spread of a pandemic.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

Copper Can Help In The Battle Against Influenza A H1N1, Says Scientist

A leading microbiologist says his research has found copper is effective in inhibiting the influenza A H1N1 virus.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pm

DNA Of Ancient Lost Barley Could Help Modern Crops Cope With Water Stress

Researchers have recovered significant DNA information from a lost form of ancient barley that triumphed for over 3,000 years seeing off: five changes in civilization, water shortages and a much more popular form of barley that produces more grains. This discovery offers a real insight into the couture of ancient farming and could assist the development of new varieties of crops to face today's climate change challenges.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pm

Physicists Create First Nanoscale Mass Spectrometer

Using devices millionths of a meter in size, physicists have developed a technique to determine the mass of a single molecule, in real time.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pm

Emphysema Severity Directly Linked To Coal Dust Exposure

Coal dust exposure is directly linked to severity of emphysema in smokers and nonsmokers alike, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pm

Deadline broken, talks continue for health bill (AP)

AP - President Barack Obama is likening overhaul of the nation's health care system to one of the government's greatest triumphs: the NASA program that landed astronauts on the moon 40 years ago.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 10:47 am

China announces first panda from frozen sperm (AP)

AP - China announced the first successful birth of a panda cub from artificial insemination using frozen sperm, giving a new option for the famously unfertile endangered species, officials said Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 10:21 am

Panda cub born from frozen sperm

The world's first baby panda conceived with cryogenically frozen sperm has been born

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Jul 2009 | 9:42 am

Climate change pact 'needs' China

There can be no global climate change agreement without China on board, UN chief Ban Ki-moon says in Beijing.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Jul 2009 | 9:40 am

Extra battery work for astronauts on spacewalk 4 (AP)

AP - Astronauts are aiming for an extra-long spacewalk Friday to give the international space station more fresh batteries.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 9:10 am

Report: Calif. needs to think small to save water (AP)

AP - The study by the nonprofit Pacific Institute urges regulatory agencies and lawmakers to focus on farm investments rather than large infrastructure projects such as the Temperance Flat Reservoir. Doing so could ensure more reliable water supplies as a warming planet increases the length and frequency of droughts, the report suggested.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 8:38 am

Gov't considers 7 states for mercury site (AP)

AP - The federal government is trying to find a location to store the nation's excess mercury deposits, with seven states being considered. But the government is quickly finding out that very few people want the stuff.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 7:37 am

Pedal power: Kenyan students invent bike phone charger

Two Kenyan university students invent a device that allows bicycle riders to charge their mobile phones.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Jul 2009 | 7:18 am

UN's Ban urges China to step up on climate change (AFP)

AFP - UN chief Ban Ki-moon called on China Friday to exercise greater leadership in world efforts to curb climate change, saying a new global framework deal cannot be reached this year without Beijing.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 7:02 am

The truth about Arab science

Can we look forward to a boom in Arab science or will poverty, bureaucracy and religion be insurmountable obstacles?

Hannah Clark has certainly earned, both literally and figuratively, the title of the "girl with two hearts" bestowed upon her by the media. When she was just two years old, she had the dubious distinction of becoming the first person in Britain to possess a "piggyback" heart.

For more than a decade, Hannah lived on a potent cocktail of medication designed to stop her body rejecting her second heart. But suppressing her immune system in this way made her susceptible to infections and, by the age of 12, she had developed cancer. During chemotherapy, her body began to reject the donor organ which led doctors to take the dramatic decision to remove it. Through all this, although she lost her second heart, Hannah didn't lose heart. Now, aged 16, she has fully recovered, her doctors said in a recent article in the Lancet.

This is a truly heart-warming testament to the power of modern medicine to turn tragedy into triumph. And I could not help feeling a little rush of pride that the doctor who made all this possible was an Egyptian: Magdi Yacoub, who is actually also a neighbour of sorts, as his Cairo home overlooks my family's. Dishearteningly, and almost inevitably, Yacoub, the son of a surgeon, did not find his success in Egypt but in Britain, where he built up a career as one of the world's most pioneering heart surgeons and researchers. Dubbed the "King of Hearts" by the Royal Society, this naturalised Brit did not usurp the throne but he did receive a knighthood.

And numerous other examples abound of Arab minds – such as the Nobel prize-winner Ahmed Zewail – deserting the Arab science desert and thriving elsewhere. Why is it that a region that was once the world's scientific powerhouse has now become its outhouse? In an article last year, I explored some of the reasons which included: "The dominant patronage culture in academia, the shortage of research funding, the almost complete absence of private research, the difficulty of registering and protecting intellectual property, as well as the rote-based education system."

Some experts observe that Islam's scientific heritage equips Muslims to look positively upon modern science. In fact, many Muslims believe that modern science confirms the Qur'an. "In those countries where fundamentalism has taken hold among the youth in the universities, it is striking to observe that the fundamentalist students are in a majority in the scientific institutions," says Farida Faouzia Charfi, a science professor at the University of Tunis. "[Islamists] want to govern society with ideas of the past and the technical means of modernity."

But this selective interest in science is a double-edged sword because it encourages people to disregard inconvenient scientific truths if they conflict with or contradict their faith. Attitudes aside, another important factor that is often missing from the equation is the simple question of resources. I think it's no coincidence that the start of Europe and the west's golden age and the Arab and Muslim world's gradual decline occurred at about the time when Muslims ceded their grip on global trade to Europeans who also "discovered" a resource-rich "new world" in the process.

But things are looking up, according to Nadia al-Awady, a freelance science journalist based in Cairo. Writing in Nature, she links the surge in science coverage in the Arab media with a related boom in Arab research and development activities. Since 2006, there has even been an Arab Science Journalists Association (ASJA).

"Although the science staff of media organisations in the United States and Europe face cutbacks, a survey of ASJA members in January 2009 indicated that full-time jobs for Arab science journalists have remained relatively stable over the past five years," reports al-Awady.

However, quantity does not always mean quality, as al-Awady herself freely admits. "As I sit at my desk in Cairo, it is easier for me to know what is happening in American universities halfway across the globe than to know what is happening within the walls of Egypt's National Research Centre just across the street… Another problem for science journalism stems from a more general issue. Many media platforms are government-owned and, as a result, many journalists provide uncritical coverage of government announcements."

In addition, for someone whose role is to be a chronicler of science, al-Awady holds some pretty unscientific views. Writing for Islam Online, she goes against the scientific consensus and describes homosexuality not as a natural sexual orientation but as an individual lifestyle choice or a psychological condition that can be "cured".

More tellingly and even less scientifically, she cautions her readers, in case her scientific arguments have failed to persuade them: "Islam is a way of life. It is a system of beliefs based on divine revelation… As a Muslim, one cannot choose to follow parts of Islam and disregard others."

This illustrates well how scientific truth is sacred until it contradicts the holier truth of the Qur'an. During Islam's scientific boom years, such an attitude could just about survive alongside scientific inquiry – although many of Islam's greatest scientists were sceptics, theists or agnostics.

However, in the modern world, science fact increasingly contradicts religious myth and, for the Arab world to advance, it needs not only to invest more in research, it also has to hold universal truths above religious ones.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Jul 2009 | 7:00 am

Splashdown! The Ship That Picked Up the Apollo 11 Astronauts

The USS Hornet was on hand 40 years ago to pick up the Apollo 11 astronauts after their Columbia Command Module splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969.

Today, the aircraft carrier is preserved as a museum in Alameda, California. Its main deck is littered with historic warplanes and space artifacts including an Apollo command module and Mobile Quarantine Facility from subsequent missions, pictured below. The first footsteps the Apollo 11 crew took on Earth after walking on the moon are traced on the deck.

Wired.com recently took a tour from the flight deck to the bowels of this 19-story ship. This gallery contains two or three scenes per page of the coolest corners, cables and controls from our visit to this impressive, history-filled vessel.

One of the reasons the USS Hornet was saved rather than scrapped is because it recovered the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, which is in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

The Apollo capsule currently kept on the Hornet, pictured here, is nearly identical to the one that returned Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins safely to Earth.

This capsule was also recovered by the Hornet, after it was launched into space unmanned and used to test the heat shield’s strength for landing. The capsule held up so well, NASA decided to put it to a tougher test by dropping it on land. That exercise resulted in an impressively small dent.

The Apollo 11 crew spent five days in a Mobile Quarantine Facility, like the one pictured here (an Airstream trailer), as the Hornet transported them to Hawaii. The unit was then lifted by a crane into a plane and flown to Houston where it was hooked up to a larger living space at Johnson Space Center.

“It was the first time we went to the moon, so there was a whole quarantine issue,” said museum curator Pete Sutherland. “They thought, maybe there were germs up there that could wipe out all life on earth.”

The Apollo 11 MQF is in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, but this one on the USS Hornet is the only one of the four built that visitors are allowed to step inside. This one was used by the Apollo 14 crew.

“The NASA scientists were looking for something that would fit for all their particular parameters they needed for it to work, and it just turned out that Airstream had something that was pretty much already there,” Sutherland said.

Richard Nixon famously welcomed the astronauts back from outside the MQF on the USS Hornet.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Jul 2009 | 4:00 am

Circus Performer's Promise: No Fire-Eating in Space (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - A former fire-eating circus performer promised to leave his matches at home when he blasts off for the International Space Station this fall as the next space tourist.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Jul 2009 | 2:18 am

Human Centrifuge Preserves Muscle at Zero-G

Preventing muscle loss in space is simple: Just spend an hour a day in a giant human centrifuge that’s spinning at 30 rotations per minute. And don’t lose your lunch.

In the first human experiment looking at the effects of artificial gravity on muscle mass, researchers discovered that a force of 2.5 G applied to the feet for an hour a day halts the muscle wasting normally associated with weightlessness.

“We’ve all seen footage of astronauts on stationary bicycles or attached to a treadmill with bungee cords,” said physiologist Doug Paddon-Jones of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, who co-authored the paper published this month in the Journal of Applied Physiology. “We tried the kind of obvious thing and said, ‘Let’s try to put the gravity back.’”

Scientists still don’t know why the “use it or lose it” adage holds true for muscles. But astronauts start losing muscle mass within days of entering a zero-gravity environment, and the longer they stay in space, the more their muscles shrink. Back on Earth, elderly hospital patients can lose more than a kilogram of muscle in just three days of lying in bed.

To test whether artificial gravity can counteract such muscle wasting, researchers subjected 15 healthy men to a zero-gravity simulation. For three weeks, the participants lay in bed with their heads tipped down at a 6 percent tilt. Half the group was lucky enough to get out of bed for an hour a day to spin around in the NASA Short-Range Human Centrifuge.

Before enrolling in the study, subjects had to pass a “centrifuge-tolerance test” to make sure they wouldn’t vomit.

“Most tolerated it fairly well,” Paddon-Jones said. “For some it was quite an adventure. But if you put people in bed for 21 days, they look forward to these sorts of things.”

The researchers took blood samples and muscle biopsies at the beginning and end of the experiment. Like bone, muscle tissue is in a constant state of flux, with new cells being built as the old ones are broken down. To measure muscle synthesis, the scientists gave participants an infusion of an amino acid labeled with a non-radioactive tracer, and then measured how much of the tracer was incorporated into the muscle after one hour.

By the end of the study, synthesis of new muscle in the total bed rest group had dropped by almost 50 percent, while the centrifuge group kept making muscle at a normal rate. Muscle breakdown stayed constant in both groups, consistent with previous research showing that muscle wasting is caused by a drop in muscle production, not an increase in muscle destruction.

A second group of researchers looked at the size of muscle fibers from the subjects’ thighs and calves. Again, the men treated with artificial gravity fared better: While the total bed rest group lost 20 percent of the cross-sectional area of their muscles, the centrifuge group had no evidence of muscle loss.

Despite the positive results, the centrifuge isn’t ready for space travel. For one thing, it’s more than 20 feet long and would take up a huge amount of space on an aircraft. “It’s something that needs to be adapted and modified before we could put it into use for long-duration space flight,” Paddon-Jones said, “but I think the results are absolutely real.”

It’s hard to imagine sticking Grandma in a centrifuge to protect her muscle mass. But the researchers say elderly patients could also benefit from their research. “We’re always looking for Earth-based applications,” Paddon-Jones said. “Doctors might take this and say, ‘Look, it looks like one hour of standing up makes a difference. If we can get our elderly inpatients to simply increase the amount of time that they stand each day, can we have the same sort of benefit?’”

See Also:

• Do You Have the Right Stuff to Be a NASA Pillownaut?
• Q&A: NASA Scientist Answers Your Questions About Lying in Bed for …
• NASA Offers $5000 a Month For You to Lie in Bed
• No Pain, No Gain in Space: Astronauts Need Better Workouts
• High-Tech Weights for Space Workout

Image 1: John Glowczwski, UTMB. Image 2: NASA/JSC.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Jul 2009 | 12:59 am

Toucan's Bill Acts as Giant Radiator (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Some animals sweat to cool off. Toucans can't. Instead, they use their enormous orange bills as radiators to dump heat and stay chilled.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Jul 2009 | 10:52 pm

Live Mice Made from Skin Cells

Ordinary skin cells from mice have been used to create live mice that then had babies.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Jul 2009 | 10:19 pm

Cirque du Soleil founder to be next space tourist

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A Canadian billionaire who turned a passion for acrobatics and circus acts into a global entertainment empire will look for inspiration in space in September when he becomes the latest "space tourist."
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Jul 2009 | 10:09 pm

Stem Cells Grow Into Live Mice

A new kind of stem cell, derived from skin cells, has been used to create live mice.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Jul 2009 | 9:30 pm

First stem cell transplant on Chilean leukemia patient (AFP)

AFP - A middle-aged leukemia patient has became Chile's first patient to receive stem cells from an umbilical cord in a radical procedure that could cure the disease, health officials here said Thursday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Jul 2009 | 8:52 pm

Non-embryonic stem cells pass major hurdle in mice (AP)

AP - Two teams of Chinese scientists have made a major advance in mice in the development of a new kind of stem cell that doesn't involve destroying embryos.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Jul 2009 | 8:47 pm

Serious Illness on an Airliner: What To Do

To help pilots decide whether to land for a medical emergency or safely proceed to the destination, flight attendants can send a sick passenger's vital signs data to a doctor-staffed center via broadband satellites.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Jul 2009 | 8:14 pm

Toucan's Giant Bill Keeps It Cool

The gigantic schnoz of the toucan helps the bird lose its body heat.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Jul 2009 | 8:05 pm

Wireless America: 56%

Laptops and mobile phones are the main methods. Kindles still rare.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Jul 2009 | 8:00 pm

Archaeologists find graveyard of sunken Roman ships

ROME (Reuters) - A team of archaeologists using sonar technology to scan the seabed have discovered a "graveyard" of five pristine ancient Roman shipwrecks off the small Italian island of Ventotene.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Jul 2009 | 7:54 pm

Toucan's Bill Acts as Giant Radiator

One tropical bird uses its enormous bill to cool off.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Jul 2009 | 7:12 pm

We're a force of nature

What humanity does has important consequences, so we must manage our global life-support system

We live in epoch-making times. I mean this literally, rather than as a tool to dramatise the global economic crisis or latest political scandal. An epoch describes a geological time period. The end of the last glaciation, some 11,000 years ago, saw the transition from the cool Pleistocene to the warmer Holocene. This relatively stable epoch saw humans turn to agriculture and our population rise considerably. Now geologists, ecologists and climate scientists, myself included, are reporting we have entered a new and much less stable geological epoch: the Anthropocene.

Just as changes to the Earth's orbit, volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts in the distant past have set the world on radically new courses, humanity itself has now become a collective force of nature, with far-reaching consequences. But what does this startling discovery – that humanity has become a globally significant geophysical force – mean for society, solving environmental problems, and perhaps more profoundly, how we see ourselves?

People have always had an impact on the environment. The difference now is that rather than influencing only local environments in limited ways, humanity is having planet-wide impacts on the Earth's workings. The best known global change is the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and resulting climatic changes. Some of the CO₂ in the atmosphere dissolves into the oceans, making them more acid, which is degrading marine ecosystems. To put this in context, the oceans are more acidic today that they have been for at least 800 millenia. The atmospheric CO2 increase has also boosted plant growth in some places, changing the world's forests and grasslands. In short, the global cycling of carbon has been significantly altered.

The impacts of human activity on the other great global chemical cycles are similarly profound. To increase crop yields, more nitrogen is added to ecosystems through fertiliser use, than is added by all natural processes combined. But fertiliser run-off leads to 'dead-zones' of low-oxygen water that currently affect 245,000 sq km of the world's ocean.

Furthermore, scientists estimate that each year humans move more rock, sediment and soil than all natural processes , that at least three times as much fresh water is held in reservoirs than in rivers, and at least a third of all land has been appropriated for human use.

The heavy hand of humanity reaches into the living world too. Each year, we extract 7m tonnes of bushmeat from tropical forests, 95m tonnes of fish from the oceans, and raze 80,000 sq km of forest. The result: we are at the leading edge of the sixth mass extinction in Earth's history. Extinction rates today are at least 100 times higher than 'background' rates. Previous extinctions, such as that which wiped out the dinosaurs 65m years ago, are joined by a human-induced loss of life.

Many of these trends look set to continue or accelerate, with potentially dire consequences. Recent events may provide a taste of what's to come: in 2007 and 2008 food protests erupted across three continents, in part because of the switch of some land from food to biofuel production. In the same period, about 1% of humanity had their homes damaged or destroyed by extreme weather events. Interlinked feedback loops amongst political, economic and environmental spheres could lead to grave problems without foresight and planning.

The big question in the Anthropocene is: can we learn to manage our own global life-support system and avoid crossing dangerous thresholds? The answer so far, if progress in 14 years of UN climate change talks is a measure, is probably no.

But perhaps there are grounds for cautious optimism. The word "Anthropocene", coined by Nobel prize winner Paul Crutzen, has greatly assisted researchers in understanding how the Earth and human society function together. Perhaps pushing the concept into wider usage would enable politicians, business leaders, social movements and NGO's to similarly benefit from thinking along integrated, quantitative and evidence-based lines.

Of course, scientific knowledge itself cannot set goals for society. Choosing how to manage our life support system is within the realm of politics. Scientists can identify the likely (and unlikely) outcomes of choices we face. For instance, humanity's impact on the environment has been greatest over the last 50 years. In this time human numbers have doubled and the global economy increased more than fifteen-fold. Our socio-economic system and the fossil fuels that power it lie at the heart of understanding how humans have become a force of nature, and therefore how to alter our future impacts.

Big ideas from science are often discomfiting. The Anthropocene is no exception. There is a temptation to see humanity as "bad" for despoiling the environment, or to deny the evidence through fear of acknowledging the need for profound changes. I see it as an update on how we view our place in the universe. First, Copernicus discovered that the Earth revolves around the sun, and humanity is not at the centre of the universe. Then, Darwin established that we are not even at the heart of life on Earth. Now Crutzen has reversed this trend by naming a new human-dominated geological epoch. . The future direction of the only place in the universe where we know life exists is in our hands. Suddenly, after almost 500 years, humanity is centre stage again. Let's not blow it.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Jul 2009 | 7:00 pm

Toucan's Bill Doubles as Radiator

Heat-sensing video shows how the toucan's bill radiates heat to reduce the bird's body temperature when asleep.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Jul 2009 | 6:58 pm

Space agency in hunt for catchy new acronym

The European Space Agency has opened its first British research centre. Now the race is on to find a suitable name for the facility

The European Space Agency landed in Britain this week.

At a packed ceremony at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, the agency's director-general, Jean-Jacques Dordain, took to the stage and quipped about arriving one hundred years after Louis Blériot.

I read a lot about Blériot as a boy, and was bowled over by the man's bravery. The French aviator was the first to fly over the channel in a monoplane and picked up £1,000 for the trouble. I had completely forgotten that he sported such a spectacular moustache. He could have flown here without a plane, had his countrymen propelled him along the shores of Calais with enough vigour.

Dordain and five other ESA directors were visiting for the official opening of the space agency's first facility in Britain. It will be based in Harwell in Oxfordshire, and will focus on climate change issues, robotics and turning space technology into useful services on Earth.

The room was mobbed. And so was Major Tim Peake, the former military helicopter test pilot, who was named as Britain's first official ESA astronaut earlier this year. As you'd hope, he was unfazed by the barrage of children and plenty of grown-ups who wanted to talk to him. It's clear he's a great ambassador for space exploration.

No ceremony would be complete without a dash of pomp. Britain's science minister, Lord Drayson, who seems to have played a cracking hand at a major ESA meeting last year, gave Dordain a plaque. It was engraved to show Arthur C. Clarke's diagrams of geosynchronous orbits using the most powerful laser in the country, the Vulcan at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire. In return, Dordain gave Drayson an ESA flag, on the promise that he lets Tim Peake take it into space when he's finished his training.

But back to Britain's new ESA centre. The space agency has facilities in all of the major member states. There is ESTEC in Noordwijk, in the Netherlands; there's ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany; ESRIN in Frascati, Italy and ESAC in Villanueva de la Cañada near Madrid in Spain. And there are more besides.

At the press conference to mark the opening of the British facility, the BBC's Jonathon Amos asked Dordain if ESA had an acronym for the centre yet. They don't. He asked us if we had any ideas. We didn't.

But I'm sure we can come up with something to help ESA out. It looks like the first two characters have to be ES for European Space. The rest is all to play for though.

I propose ESCORT (European Space Curators of Rare Tat). It recognises the new centre's future role in curating moon rock and meteorites, with a nod to the favoured mode of transport in the region. I can say that, I grew up there.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Jul 2009 | 6:50 pm

WATCH: Remembering Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite on fish farming, environmental awareness, energy and more.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Jul 2009 | 6:45 pm

Jumbo Squid Scare Californians But Aren't Man-Eaters

A biologist says that jumbo squid appearing in the waters off San Diego are not man-eaters, despite the reports of freaked-out divers.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Jul 2009 | 6:42 pm

Strange Eye-Shaped Galaxy Has Black-Hole Iris

Not to be outdone by the 10th anniversary of its sibling, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope delivered this crazy looking eye-shaped galaxy image.

The iris of the eye is actually a ring of stars surrounding the area around an enormous, invisible black hole that is around 100 million times the mass of the sun and far larger than our galaxy’s central black hole. The stars show up white and the space around the black hole is blue in this color-coded infrared image.

“The ring itself is a fascinating object worthy of study because it is forming stars at a very high rate,” Kartik Sheth, an astronomer at NASA’s Spitzer Science Center, said in a press release.

In infrared light, shorter wavelengths look blue, and longer wavelengths appear red. Astronomers think the smaller blue galaxy peeking through the spiral arms may have actually punched a hole in the larger galaxy.

Spitzer captured this image during the cold part of its mission, which lasted more than five years and ended in May when the telescope ran out of coolant to keep some of its instruments chilled. It will start the warm part of its mission with the remaining working instruments within weeks.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/The SINGS Team (SSC/Caltech)

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Jul 2009 | 6:32 pm

Black Hole Creates Eye in Middle of Cosmic Storm

New image from Spitzer telescope shows coiled spiral galaxy with massive black hole.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Jul 2009 | 6:30 pm

How 'Jeweled' Beetles Get Their Shine

Study finds variation in raindrop sizes is result of drops bursting as fall to ground.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Jul 2009 | 6:06 pm

Harrabin's Notes

Where is the fairness in a green transport plan?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Jul 2009 | 6:04 pm

Hot secret behind toucan's bill

Infrared footage shows how the toucan uses its enormous bill to keep cool, say researchers.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Jul 2009 | 6:04 pm

Toucan Beak Is New Kind of ‘Heating Bill’

The toucan beak isn’t just beautiful, it’s also an adjustable thermal radiator that the bird uses to warm and cool itself.

Researchers have discovered that the toucan can heat and cool its bill at an astonishing rate, changing its temperature by up to 10 Celsius degrees (18 Fahrenheit degrees) within a few minutes.

“Bird bills are not ‘dead tissues’ incapable of playing a role in heat balance, but are active contributors to thermoregulation,” biologist Glenn Tattersall of Brock University in Canada wrote in an e-mail. “Birds do not sweat, so must cope with other mechanisms to deal with elevated temperatures.” Tattersall and colleagues from Brazil published their findings Thursday in Science.

Scientists have been intrigued by the oversize toucan bill for centuries. In 1780, French naturalist Georges-Louis Buffon called it a “grossly monstrous” appendage, and Darwin puzzled over its potential role in sexual selection in The Descent of Man. Toucans have the biggest beak-to-body ratio of any bird on the planet, but no one has figured out why the animal evolved a bill one-third the length of its body.

Now, using infrared thermography, a type of temperature-sensing video originally developed by the U.S. military, scientists have tracked the pattern of heat distribution across the toucan’s body under changing outside temperatures. When the bird got too hot, it released heat by sending blood to its highly vascular but uninsulated beak. In cooler weather, the toucan constricted blood vessels in its beak to conserve heat and stay warm.

“I am not aware of another example of this sort in birds,” wrote developmental biologist Arhat Abzhanov of Harvard University, who was not involved in the research. “This is a fascinating study that shows how bird beaks, in addition to their already multiple important functions, can perform rather unexpected roles, such as helping to control heat exchange.”

The beak acts as a thermal “window” that can open and close to regulate the toucan’s body temperature. The prominent proboscis is also remarkably adjustable: Depending on air temperature, wind speed and blood flow, the beak can account for anywhere from 5 percent to nearly 100 percent of total body-heat loss.

“It might come as a surprise to many bird biologists that the bill is capable of this,” Tattersall wrote, “but the digital images cannot be refuted.”

Like most mammals, including humans, the toucan drops its body temperature to conserve energy while sleeping. In the time-lapse video below, a toucan heats up its bill while falling asleep, then cools it down after reaching the optimal sleeping temperature. Once it has fallen asleep, the bird also tucks its beak under its feathers, presumably to avoid unwanted heat loss. (The 48-second video compresses two hours.)

See Also:

• Scientists Hatch a Few Odd Birds
• Fossil Catches Dinosaur Red-Handed, Evolving Into Bird
• Parrot Proves It’s No Birdbrain
• Beauty and the Beak: Bald Eagle Goes Bionic
• The Fastest-Evolving Bird

Image: Thiago Filadelpho

Video: © Science/AAAS

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

The price of keeping cool: a huge bill

Researchers claim the birds don't primarily use the huge appendage for sexual display, or as a tool for getting at hard-to-reach fruit, or to scare other birds – but as a giant radiator

To Charles Darwin it was emblematic of sexual desirability. To French naturalists it was "grossly monstrous". But even to the uneducated eye, it was conspicuous as an alarmingly oversized appendage.

The toucan's bill is one of the most bizarre products of evolution, but in the past 200 years scientists have failed to agree why it has grown so huge. Some argue it helps the birds collect hard-to-reach fruit, while others say it is a warning to rivals, or helps them raid other birds' nests for food.

Research by Canadian and Brazilian scientists puts forward a completely new theory that helps explain how the toucan got its bill. In a report in the journal Science, they claim the appendage doubles as a giant radiator that keeps the birds cool in the heat of the tropics.

Glenn Tattersall, a comparative physiologist at Brock University in Ontario, used a heat-sensitive camera to film toco toucans, which have the largest bills of all the toucans. The adults' bills can grow to 20cm – a third of their body length.

The thermal camera revealed that the birds use their bills to control their body temperature by adjusting blood flow into the appendage. By opening or closing blood vessels in the beak, the birds can lose as little as 5% or as much as 100% of their body heat through their bill.

The study puts toucans' beaks on a footing with elephants' and rabbits' ears as nature's solution to life in a hot climate.

Thermal images of the birds show that at sunset, as they were preparing for sleep, their bills cooled by around 10C in a matter of minutes. The large, exposed beak makes up around 40% of their overall surface area, so it rapidly radiates body heat and helps them to fall asleep. Immediately before nodding off, the birds cover their bills with their wings.

Tattersall describes in Science how the bill might also help the birds cool down after the exertion of flying. One bird in the study warmed up from 31C to 37C within 10 minutes of taking to the air. "When the blood vessels in the bill are dilated, the bird can lose nearly five times as much heat as they produce," Tattersall said.

He suspects that other birds use their bills as cooling systems too, which might explain why birds in polar regions tend to have smaller beaks than those in warmer climates.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Jul 2009 | 6:00 pm

X-Ray Telescope’s First 10 Years of Awesome Images

Ten years ago today, NASA launched the Chandra X-Ray Observatory aboard the space shuttle Columbia. And it has provided stunning images from the high-energy side of the electromagnetic spectrum ever since.

Things have gone so well that the the Chandra team gave themselves a well-deserved pat on the back.

“Chandra’s discoveries are truly astonishing and have made dramatic changes to our understanding of the universe and its constituents,” Martin Weisskopf, Chandra project scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said in a press release.

NASA created a list of Chandra’s top 10 scientific discoveries, but we’re suckers for the pretty pictures it produces of supernova remnants and pulsar jets and the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

We’ve entered a selection of Chandra images into the Reddit widget for you to vote on — or you can add your own. (Sorry, we can’t host them; you’ll have to link them from NASA’s website.)

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Jul 2009 | 5:39 pm

MPG Today Barely Better than Model T Era

Average fuel efficiency of U.S. vehicles is just 3 mpg better than the Ford Model T.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Jul 2009 | 5:28 pm

WATCH: Urban Agriculture Blooms

Take a tour of New York City's sustainable agriculture barge.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Jul 2009 | 5:00 pm

Spaceman

UK to 'power' European space activity
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Jul 2009 | 4:59 pm

Methane Mystery: L.A. Emitting Twice as Much

L.A. may be emitting as much as twice methane as previously estimated.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Jul 2009 | 4:32 pm

Pig Cells Implanted in Diabetics

Although still in the trial phase, pig cells may help delay the effects of Type 1 diabetes.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Jul 2009 | 4:30 pm

Wireless power system shown off

A US firm has demonstrated its technique that sends power through the air, powering and charging devices wirelessly.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Jul 2009 | 4:28 pm

Chinese experts grow live mice from skin cells

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese researchers have managed to create powerful stem cells from mouse skin and used these to generate fertile live mouse pups.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Jul 2009 | 4:03 pm

Living, Breeding Mice Grown From Skin Cells

Cells from flakes of skin have grown into living, breeding mice, through a bit of biotechnological wizardry.

This feat helps confirm that reprogrammed adult cells, considered a potentially convenient source of stem cell therapies, share the shape-changing powers of embryonic stem cells.

The goal was to create an animal made entirely from reprogrammed cells, and to confirm that reprogrammed cells “are as good as embryonic stem cells,” said Beijing National Stem Cell Bank director Qi Zhou, co-author of the study published Thursday in Nature.

Much more research is needed to meet the second of Zhou’s criteria, but fulfilling the first is remarkable enough. Just three years ago, it would have been inconceivable.

That’s when Japanese stem cell biologists Shinya Yamanaka and Kazutoshi Takahashi described how four development-regulating genes (carried by viruses into the adult cells of mice) transformed those cells into something very much like an embryonic stem cell.

Embryonic stem cells are able to become any tissue type in the body. Scientists and doctors hope they’ll someday be used to regrow lost limbs and rejuvenate diseased organs. For now, those miracle cures are years, if not decades, away. But even if the cures materialize, embryonic stem cells are difficult to produce. They could end up being rare and expensive.

So when the mouse cell-reprogramming trick was replicated with cells taken from humans, turning skin flakes into brain and bone and muscle cells, scientists rejoiced. A flood of research followed. Hardly a week now goes by without news of improvements to the methods, which tended to result in cancer-prone tissues, or of reprogrammed cells being coaxed into yet another type of tissue.

But at this early date, despite all the progress, many questions still remain. The reprogrammed adult cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells, are still far more experimental than embryonic stem cells. Their ultimate medical viability is uncertain. It’s not even absolutely clear whether iPS cells can truly become any cell type, or just many of them.

The mice grown by Zhou’s team, described in a study published Thursday in Nature, don’t answer all these questions, but they’re a powerful demonstration of the cells’ flexibility.

“It gives us hope for future therapeutic interventions,” said Fanyi Zheng, a Shanghai Institute of Medical Genetics cell biologist.

Zhou and Zheng’s team reprogrammed mouse skin cells, then injected them into embryos designed to contain double sets of chromosomes. Though these embryos’ original cells couldn’t survive for more than a few days, they provided a jump-start to the reprogrammed cells, which grew as though they were part of a normal embryo.

This test is considered a gold standard of pluripotency: Because the original double-chromosomed cells are doomed, the embryo can only become an adult if the added stem cells turn into every necessary cell type. Embryonic stem cells passed this test a decade ago. Now iPS cells have, too.

From 1,500 engineered embryos, the researchers ended up with 27 mice. The mice have since reproduced, as have their offspring.

“They have shown that iPS cells can satisfy the most stringent criteria of pluripotency,” said George Daley, a Harvard Medical School stem cell biologist who was not involved in the study.

But Daley and other researchers stressed that passing the test doesn’t mean reprogrammed cells and embryonic stem cells are equivalent.

“Here’s another way in which these cells are functionally similar to [embryonic stem cells], but it’s not to say that they’re identical,” said Sean Morrison, director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Stem Cell Biology. There may be things that can only be done with iPS cells, and things that could be done more effectively with embryonic stem cells, he said.

Many researchers also suspect there are subtle differences between reprogrammed cells derived from different sources. A reprogrammed skin cell, for example, may not behave identically to a reprogrammed muscle cell.

“Many questions about the efficiency and fidelity of the process remain,” said Daley.

Zhou and Zheng’s team hasn’t yet analyzed why some embryos succeeded while most failed. Because conducting their experiment with human cells and embryos would be considered immoral, analysis is needed to identify telltale signs of future flaws to determine which human cells are safest for reprogramming.

According to Konrad Hochedlinger, a Harvard Medical School cell biologist, “It will be important now to figure out which lines are good, and which lines are not so good.”

See Also:

• Skin Cell-to-Stem Cell Alchemy ‘Like Turning Lead Into Gold …
• Salamander Discovery Could Lead to Human Limb Regeneration
• Turning Skin Cells to Stem Cells, Without Cancer
• Skin Cell-to-Stem Cell Pioneer Driven by Ethical Concerns

Citation: “iPS cells produce viable mice through tetraploid complementation.” By Xiao-yang Zhao, Wei Li, Zhuo Lu, Lei Liu, Man Tong, Tang Hai, Jie Hao, Chang-long Guo, Qing-wen Ma, Liu Wang, Fanyi Zeng & Qi Zhou. Nature, Vol. 460, No. 7254, July 23, 2009.

Image: Nature

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes, Wired Science on Twitter.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Jul 2009 | 4:00 pm

U.N. agency gives science journals to LDC researchers

GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations agency said on Thursday it was giving researchers in least developed countries subscriptions to scientific journals worth $400,000 a year, to help spur more worldwide inventions.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Jul 2009 | 3:14 pm

BIG PIC: Jupiter's Bruise

Gemini captures images of an enormous bruise on Jupiter.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Jul 2009 | 3:02 pm

Could Extinct Animals Be Resurrected from Frozen Samples?

Extinct animals could be cloned from DNA found in frozen tissue samples and maybe the reconstructed genomes of ancient species.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Jul 2009 | 2:33 pm

BLOG: Plug Your iPod Into This Swimsuit

A solar-powered swimsuit comes with a miniature plug-in for your MP3 player.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Jul 2009 | 2:30 pm

Swiss scientists aim to build a synthetic brain within a decade

The brain would provide insights into how our perceptions of the world are interpreted and stored, and how consciousness arises

The world's first synthetic brain could be built within 10 years, giving us an unprecedented insight into the nature of consciousness and our perception of reality.

Scientists working on the Blue Brain Project in Switzerland are the first to attempt to "reverse-engineer" the mammalian brain by recreating the behaviour of billions of neurons in a computer.

Professor Henry Markham, director of the project at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, has already simulated parts of the neocortex, the most 'modern' region of the brain, which evolved rapidly in mammals to cope with the demands of parenthood and social situations.

Markham's team created a 3D simulation of around 10,000 brain cells to mimic the behaviour of the rat neocortex. The way all the cells connect and send signals to each other is just as important as how many there are.

"You need one laptop to do all the calculations for one neuron, so you need ten thousand laptops," Markham told the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford yesterday. Instead, he uses an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer.

The artificial brain is already revealing some of the inner workings of the most impressive 1.5kg of biological tissue ever to evolve. Show the brain a virtual image and its neurons flicker with electrical activity as the image is processed.

Ultimately, scientists want to use synthetic brains to understand how sensory information from the real world is interpreted and stored, and how consciousness arises. They may also give scientists a new way to study brain disorders and neurodegenerative diseases without having to experiment on animals.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Jul 2009 | 2:16 pm

Eclipse Shadow on Earth Seen From Space

A total solar eclipse cast a huge shadow on Earth Wednesday, captured by a Japanese satellite.

Shown here covering Taiwan at 9:30 a.m. local time at nearly the height of the eclipse, the shadow covered some locations as long as six minutes, making it the longest solar eclipse of the century. The next one this impressive will not occur until 2132.

This image combines data from the MTSAT stationary satellite of the daytime portion of the globe with previous data from NASA of the nighttime portion.

See Also:

• The Eclipse, as Seen by the People (With Flickr Accounts)
• Strange Eye-Shaped Galaxy Has Black-Hole Iris
• X-Ray Telescope’s First 10 Years of Awesome Images
• Eclipse of the Century Live Online Tonight
• Tonight’s Lunar Eclipse: Last Chance Until 2010
• Total Eclipse of the Moon: Your Photos

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

Image: WebGMS–MTSAT/GMS (HIMAWARI) /NASA

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Jul 2009 | 2:12 pm

BLOG: Tech Destroys Email After Reading

A new program makes emails and other posts automatically self-destruct.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Jul 2009 | 2:00 pm

Broadband ahoy

Kenya's undersea high-speed internet cable goes live
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Jul 2009 | 1:29 pm

Powerful idea

How a Malawian windmill added inspiration at TED
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Jul 2009 | 1:20 pm

Female Cats Are Right-Pawed, Males Are Lefties

Female cats tend to use their right front paw while male cats prefer their left.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Jul 2009 | 1:00 pm

China delays launch of first space telescope to 2012

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has delayed the launch of its first space telescope, designed to detect black holes, by two years to 2012 for cost reasons, the Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Jul 2009 | 12:35 pm

Bug brings hope for fight against Japanese knotweed

Tiny sap-sucker could stop relentless march of invasive weed

It arrived quietly nearly 200 years ago and now threatens numerous British plants, allotments, gardens, pavements, buildings, railways and water courses.

Japanese knotweed - capable of growing 3 metres in as many months - costs a fortune to control and has so far resisted attempts to stem its relentless progress.

Now researchers are sending for help to Japan, the knotweed's homeland, for a tiny bug that depends on the plant for its lifecycle. They work for Cabi, an international agricultural research body, which has been studying how Aphalara itadori, named after its host plant, might provide a solution.

Authorities in England and Wales are consulting the public on whether they should issue licences allowing the release of the bugs, alien to Britain, to see whether they can make such a meal of the dreaded knotweed that they stop its seemingly inexorable march. The bugs suck the sap during their immature, nymph stage.

Dick Shaw, one of those involved in the project, told Radio 4's Today programme that the bugs made the weed stunted and less competitive. "It is the only long-term, sustainable solution we can see. We can't continue what we are doing and doing nothing is not an option … It is not in the interests of a biocontrol agent to kill its host because then it loses its food so it tends to just suppress it."

He said the bug had "gone through very thorough pest risk analysis which is more than can be said about other invasive [species]".

Cabi says the sap-sucker emerged as the best option from more than 200 such control agents studied over six years. Tests had been made on 90 other plants, including related native species, crops and ornamental species, to check the bug did not take a liking to them too. Previous attempts at biological controls have a mixed track record. The cane toad was introduced to Australia to control pest beetles in 1935 - against scientists' recommendations - and is now a voracious threat to much else.

The harlequin ladybird was introduced in several European countries for biological control before it managed to cross the Channel and threaten British ladybirds.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Jul 2009 | 11:09 am

UK space sector 'to double value'

The value of the space sector to the UK economy is set to double over the next decade, claims a new report.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Jul 2009 | 10:56 am

Honeybees produce anti-microbial resin to keep their hives buzzing

Honeybees keep disease at bay by sterilising their hives with antimicrobial resin, scientists discover.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Jul 2009 | 9:43 am

The genius of the natural world

From bacteria-free surfaces based on shark skin to carbon-sequestering cement, Janine Benyus says humanity should look to nature for technological inspiration

TED stands for Technology Entertainment and Design, but the 'E' could just as soon stand for environment. It's one of the recurring themes at the conference, and Janine Benyus called on the audience to look to the natural world for technologies that can help humanity live in greater harmony with the world.

If I could reveal anything that is hidden from us in modern cultures, I would reveal something that we might have forgotten. We are part of a brilliant planet and surrounded by genius.

Benyus works in the field of bio-mimicry, looking to the natural world to learn how to design things elegantly, more efficiently and in harmony with nature.

Her young boy, Cody, keeps her in touch with the natural world around her. When he was about 8-years-old, he looked at a wasp's nest and asked his mother how she made it. Even at his young age, he thought if something was well built that it must be built by us, by humans.

How did we not know that we're not the first ones to build, to process cellulose, or to make paper, to heat and cool a structure? We're not the first ones to build houses for our young.

JR West, makers of high-speed bullet trains, found that when they entered tunnels the train built up pressure and created the equivalent of a sonic boom. Engineers looked at how the kingfisher entered the water and redesigned the train. It solved the problem of the tunnel noise, made the train 10% faster and 15% more efficient.

How does nature repel bacteria? The Galapagos shark swims slowly, but a pattern on its skin prevents bacteria adhering to it. Sharklet Technologies studied and adapted the pattern and found that it was better at keeping surfaces bacteria free than using anti-bacterial washes. Resistance to such cleaners is a significant problem as hospital-acquired infections kill more people in the US than AIDs, cancer and car crashes combined.

Taking a page from coral reefs, Calera has developed a technology that sequesters a half a ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of cement produced.

She talked about self-assembling solar cells, and bridge beams and car frames that use a minimum amount of material and have the ability to heal themselves.

The natural world uses only 5 polymers, but we use over 350 polymers to create products we use. Can we learn from hives of bees to find the best way to use energy? Like a swarm of insects, appliances in our home could talk to each other to minimise peak power use.

To help collect these lessons from nature, she created the website Ask Nature to organise all biological information according to its engineering purpose. What processes in nature create mechanical energy or process information?

We are part of a long line of organisms. How can we live here gracefully over the long haul? How can we create conditions conducive to life?

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Jul 2009 | 9:00 am