Science Headlines for August 3, 2009

From Graphene To Graphane, Now The Possibilities Are Endless

Ever since graphene was discovered in 2004, this one-atom thick, super strong, carbon-based electrical conductor has been billed as a “wonder material” that some physicists think could one day replace silicon in computer chips. But graphene, which consists of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice, has a major drawback when it comes to applications in electronics – it conducts electricity almost too well, making it hard to create graphene-based transistors that are suitable for integrated circuits. Now a condensed-matter physicist explains how the discovery of graphane, an insulating equivalent of graphene, may prove more versatile still.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Risk Factors Of Self-induced Vomiting And Other Disordered Eating Behaviors In Overweight Youth

Researchers have identified factors that may increase overweight adolescents' risk of engaging in extreme weight control behaviors such as self-induced vomiting, the use of diet pills, laxatives and diuretics, as well as binge eating.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Love Songs Of Bowhead Whales: Whales Sings With 'More Than One Voice'

It is now generally accepted that the bowhead whale is the longest lived mammal on the planet, with a lifespan of over 200 years. But that it can sing with "more than one voice" and that it changes its repertoire from year to year is news. This behavior is unique among baleen whales and is a newly discovered phenomenon.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Stress Signals Link Pre-existing Sickness With Susceptibility To Bacterial Infection

A new study shows that the stress signaling protein, AMPK, facilitates infection by harmful bacteria. AMPK is chronically elevated in some types of diseases, suggesting that this protein may cause patients with these diseases to be more susceptible to noxious infection.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

New Microbe Strain Makes More Electricity, Faster

In their most recent experiments with Geobacter, the sediment-loving microbe whose hairlike filaments help it to produce electric current from mud and wastewater, scientists supervised the evolution of a new strain that dramatically increases power output per cell and overall bulk power. It also works with a thinner biofilm than earlier strains, cutting the time to reach electricity-producing concentrations on the electrode.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Maternal, Paternal Genes' Tug-of-war May Last Well Into Childhood

An analysis of rare genetic disorders in which children lack some genes from one parent suggests that maternal and paternal genes engage in a subtle tug-of-war well into childhood, and possibly as late as the onset of puberty.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Newly Discovered Faults Illuminate Earthquake Hazard Along San Andreas

Researchers have discovered new faults that reveal how earthquake-induced stress is transferred below Southern California's Salton Sea.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Sharpest Views Of Star Betelgeuse Reveal How Supergiant Stars Lose Mass

Using different state-of-the-art techniques on ESO's Very Large Telescope, two independent teams of astronomers have obtained the sharpest ever views of the supergiant star Betelgeuse. They show that the star has a vast plume of gas almost as large as our Solar System and a gigantic bubble boiling on its surface. These discoveries provide important clues to help explain how these mammoths shed material at such a tremendous rate.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Hepatitis C Infection: Treatment Options Equally Effective, Likelihood Of Success Known Early On

Results of a long-awaited study of 3,070 American adults show that treatment with either of the two standard antiviral drug therapies is safe, and offers the best way for people infected with hepatitis C to prevent liver scarring, organ failure and death.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Targeted Therapy Delivers Chemo Directly To Ovarian Cancer Cells

With a novel therapeutic delivery system, scientists have successfully targeted a protein that is over-expressed in ovarian cancer cells. Using the EphA2 protein as a molecular homing mechanism, chemotherapy was delivered in a highly selective manner in preclinical models of ovarian cancer.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

'Feather-eating bugs' dull birds

Evidence is mounting that a birds are locked in an evolutionary battle with bacteria that eat their feathers.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:33 am

The Nation's weather (AP)

AP - A long cold front along the East Coast was forecast to begin pushing into the Atlantic Ocean on Monday. As this system exits, high pressure was expected to build in behind it, bringing drier and quieter weather activity to the Eastern Valleys.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 2:57 am

Sage grouse unlikely focus of Wyoming wind wars (Reuters)

Reuters - They used to mine coal in the abandoned town of Carbon. Now this patch of southern Wyoming is a battleground in the debate over what many hope will be the clean energy source of the future: wind power.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 1:06 am

Sage grouse unlikely focus of Wyoming wind wars

CARBON, Wyoming (Reuters) - They used to mine coal in the abandoned town of Carbon. Now this patch of southern Wyoming is a battleground in the debate over what many hope will be the clean energy source of the future: wind power.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 3 Aug 2009 | 1:06 am

Scientists find new strain of HIV

Gorillas are identified for the first time as a source of HIV after tests in Paris on an infected woman from Cameroon.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Aug 2009 | 7:20 pm

IEA official warns of shrinking oil supplies: report (AFP)

AFP - A disastrous energy crunch is looming because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading economist warned Monday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Aug 2009 | 7:04 pm

Don't alienate your advisers, chief scientist tells ministers

Ministers risk alienating their science advisers by dragging them into public rows over politically sensitive policy decisions, the government's chief scientist has warned. Leading academics will be discouraged from working with government if they fear being reprimanded for expressing their views, says Prof John Beddington, who took over the post from Sir David King last year.

Government relies heavily on independent advice from academics, but is in danger of eroding the relationship and squandering their expertise, Beddington told ministers.

The situation is particularly fraught when eminent scientists are asked to advise on politically sensitive issues, such as the government's drug policy. A debate over the risks of recreational drugs erupted into a public row in February when the former home secretary, Jacqui Smith, vetoed recommendations from her own drug advisers to downgrade ecstasy from its class A status.

A parliamentary report published last week directed further criticism at ministers for demonstrating a cavalier attitude to scientific evidence, which was often viewed as "at best a peripheral concern, and at worst as a political bargaining chip."

The report by the Commons innovation, universities, science and skills committee called on chief scientists within government departments to name and shame ministers who flout scientific advice when formulating policies.

Phil Willis, the chairman of the committee, said the report did not demand that every government policy be based on scientific evidence, but urged ministers not to make false claims for the evidence underlying their policies.

Beddington's concerns are made clear in a letter to the former home secretary released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act. The letter was copied to the Cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, the communities secretary, John Denham, and the Home Office's most senior civil servant, Sir David Normington.

The letter, sent three months before Smith stood down in June, stressed the "importance of creating and sustaining an environment in which the best brains of academe are willing and able to work effectively with government."

Beddington referred to the recent row over drug policy, in which Ms Smith told ministers she had telephoned Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), to say she was "surprised and profoundly disappointed" in him for comparing the risks of ecstasy with horseriding in an academic journal shortly before the council announced its recommendations on the drug.

The admonition of Nutt and the subsequent media coverage "will discourage scientists from working with government," and emphasised a need to "find a better way forward to ensure scientific evidence continues to contribute to debates even when such debates are politically sensitive," Beddington said.

"We, across government, need to develop some clear expectations. For example, that scientists who give of their time and expertise to assist policy-making, often without charge, are appropriately and publicly supported and valued by government, by universities and by the research assessment process," the letter continued.

In her reply to Professor Beddington's letter, Smith said: "The advice that the ACMD gives (both scientific and wider) is work that I value, demonstrated by the fact that I, and previous home secretaries, have accepted the vast majority of the council's recommendations."

The government draws on leading scientists to advise on policies that cross the breadth of Whitehall departments, including food safety and nutrition, environmental pollution, infectious disease preparedness and national security.

Sir David King, the former chief scientist, said it was crucial for scientists to give "honest, rigorous and independent advice" to government, but stressed that scientists must appreciate their advice might not always be taken.

"We have to accept that ministers and prime ministers make decisions that don't always go directly with the scientific advice. This is an advisorial system and we have to be tough-skinned about it," Sir David said.

"It is important that scientists are prepared to be hardnosed. There's little point of getting into the fray if you're not prepared to put up with the obvious outcome where a minister or a secretary of state have the responsibility to make the political decisions," he added.

"During the Bush period in the White House, scientific advice was not only ignored but sometimes absolutely overturned for no good reason at all. Documents were altered by the White House, including Environmental Protection Agency documents on climate change, with absolutely no scientific input to explain why. There's a situation where the scientific community have every right to say there's little point in working with this govenment," Sir David said.

The parliamentary report, Putting Science and Engineering at the Heart of Government Policy, said press offices within Whitehall departments could skew the advice scientific advisory panels and recommended a new press office be established to handle all advisory committee reports. It also called for the chief scientist to report directly to the prime minister.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 2 Aug 2009 | 5:05 pm

In praise of... celestial sleuthing

In a clockwork universe if you know where you are, the stars can tell you the local time; and if you know the time, the sky at night can put you in your place. Almost a decade ago Donald Olson, a physicist at Texas State University, used a late painting by Vincent van Gogh – The White House at Night, with the planet Venus in the evening sky – to find first the house, in a village near Paris, and then pinpoint the moment of the painting: 8pm, 16 June, 1890. Six years ago, Professor Olson with his long-standing collaborator Russell Doescher, identified the precise point along an Oslo Road that inspired Edvard Munch's The Scream. Last year the Texas team brought students to the English Channel, calculated the tide tables of 2,000 years ago, and proposed a new date for Julius Caesar's beachhead at Deal in 55BC. Now, in the August issue of the Griffith Observer, Olson and colleagues have used forensic astronomy to identify the time and place of creation for three more Munch paintings – in August 1893 at Asgardstrand, Norway. There are lessons for everybody in such celestial sleuthing. One is that even the most distracted artists were accurate observers. Another is lunar cycles, tide tables, planetary conjunctions and celestial charts may be as helpful a guide to history as human chronicles. And a third – 400 years after Galileo turned his telescope on the moon, and 50 years after CP Snow's famous Two Cultures lecture – is that ultimately, art and science are inseparable.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 2 Aug 2009 | 5:05 pm

Flawed gene link to ovary cancer

Scientists have identified a genetic flaw which appears to increase the risk of ovarian cancer by 40%.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Aug 2009 | 5:00 pm

King salmon vanishing in Alaska, smokehouses empty (AP)

AP - Yukon River smokehouses should be filled this summer with oil-rich strips of king salmon long used by Alaska Natives as a high-energy food to get through the long Alaska winters. But they're mostly empty.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Aug 2009 | 2:34 pm

Hawaii protecting coral reefs with big fines (AP)

AP - Wrecking coral will cost you in Hawaii.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Aug 2009 | 2:13 pm

Humans 2.0: Replacing the Mind and Body (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - When President Barack Obama said in his weekly radio address Saturday that innovation would be a key to the future of the nation, he probably was not thinking specifically of artificial brains or replacement eyeballs.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Aug 2009 | 11:03 am

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