Brain Damage Seen On Brain Scans May Predict Memory Loss In Old Age

Areas of brain damage seen on brain scans and originally thought to be related to stroke may help doctors predict a person's risk of memory problems in old age, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

'Hidden Portal' Concept Described: First Tunable Electromagnetic Gateway

While the researchers can't promise delivery to a parallel universe or a school for wizards, books like Pullman's Dark Materials and JK Rowling's Harry Potter are steps closer to reality now that researchers in China have created the first tunable electromagnetic gateway.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Possible Genetic Links Between Environmental Toxins And Multiple Myeloma

Several SNPs associated with bone disease in myeloma have been identified. Several of these SNPs are believed to be associated with toxin metabolism and/or DNA repair. Although these findings are still preliminary, they could explain an increasing incidence of myeloma, including the unexpected findings of myeloma among younger (under 45 years of age) responders to the 9/11 World Trade Center site.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

One Nano-step Closer To Weighing A Single Atom

By studying gold nanoparticles with highly uniform sizes and shapes, scientists now understand how they lose energy, a key step towards producing nanoscale detectors for weighing any single atom.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Sleep Patterns In Children And Teenagers Could Indicate Risk For Depression

Sleep patterns can help predict which adolescents might be at greatest risk for developing depression, a researcher has found in a five-year study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Mango Seeds May Protect Against Deadly Food Bacteria

Life in the fruit bowl is no longer the pits, thanks to a Canadian researcher who has found a way to turn the throwaway kernels in mangos into a natural food preservative that could help prevent Listeriosis outbreaks.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

White Tea Could Keep You Healthy And Looking Young

Next time you're making a cup of tea, new research shows it might be wise to opt for a white tea if you want to reduce your risk of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis or even just age-associated wrinkles. Researchers tested the health properties of 21 plant and herb extracts. They discovered all of the plants tested had some potential benefits, but were intrigued to find white tea considerably outperformed all of them.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

Mighty Mice: Treatment Targeted To Muscle Improves Motor Neuron Disease

New research with transgenic mice reveals that a therapy directed at the muscle significantly improves disease symptoms of a genetic disorder characterized by destruction of the neurons that control movement. The study highlights a promising new treatment for this currently incurable and non-treatable neurodegenerative disorder.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

Early Modern Humans Used Fire To Engineer Tools From Stone; Complex Cognition Older Than 72,000 Years?

New evidence has been found showing that early modern humans living on the southern coast of Africa 72,000 years ago employed pyrotechnology -- the controlled use of fire -- to increase the quality and efficiency of their stone tool manufacturing process. This technology required a novel association between fire, its heat, and a structural change in stone with consequent flaking benefits; findings ignite notion of complex cognition in these early engineers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

Camera Flash Turns An Insulating Material Into A Conductor

An insulator can now be transformed to conduct electricity by an ordinary camera flash. Researchers have found a new way of turning graphite oxide -- a low-cost insulator made by oxidizing graphite powder -- into graphene, a hotly studied material that conducts electricity. Scientists believe graphene could be used to produce low-cost carbon-based transparent and flexible electronics.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

India against US trade barrier for climate policy (AP)

AP - India's chief climate change negotiator says his country wants a global warming agreement that forbids trade barriers against nations that refuse to accept limits on their carbon emissions.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 4:19 am

S. Korean firm to open major dog cloning centre (AFP/File)

AFP/File - A South Korean biotechnology firm will early next year open a centre capable eventually of producing up to 1,000 cloned dogs annually, a company executive said Friday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 4:14 am

Return to the moon in doubt

Space experts tell Obama that Nasa will have to scrap lunar and Mars missions without big increase in budget

Nasa's plans to land astronauts back on the moon by 2020 are about to disappear into a giant black hole, according to a panel of space experts appointed by Barack Obama.

Less than a month after the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's first lunar landing, the group will tell White House advisers today that the space agency simply does not have enough money to do it again.

Without a significant increase in funding – unlikely with the federal deficit approaching $1.3trn – Nasa will almost certainly have to scrap the next-generation Ares I rocket that has already cost more than $9bn to develop.

The longer-term part of the agency's $81bn Constellation project – to land humans on Mars by the middle of the century, touted by George Bush in his 2004 vision for space exploration – will remain in the realms of science fiction, at least for now.

"This is a big surprise," said Edward Ellegood, a space policy analyst at Florida's Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. "Up until this point Nasa, privately at least, was confident that Constellation was a little behind schedule but on track. Now this changes everything. That it no longer fits within the budget is disturbing."

The pessimistic outlook for America's manned spaceflight programme comes from a panel of experts and former astronauts led by the retired Lockheed Martin chairman Norman Augustine and appointed by Obama to analyse Nasa's spending and operations. The group has come up with broad-based scenarios for the future direction of the agency in a report to be published next week and outlined to presidential staff at a briefing in Washington today. Among the options are to extend the working life of the ageing space shuttle fleet beyond next year's scheduled retirement until 2015, while developing a cheaper transport to the Moon; pressing ahead with Constellation as quickly as existing funding allows; or creating a new, larger rocket that would allow exploration of the solar system while bypassing the Moon.

None of the options meet Nasa's stated goal of returning to the Moon by the end of the next decade, or even leaving lower Earth orbit for at least another two decades, because the space agencies existing annual budget of about $18 billion is spread too thinly, the panel says.

Nasa is committed to seven final shuttle missions by next summer, maintaining the international space station until at least 2016, developing Ares and myriad unmanned scientific projects.

"It will be difficult with the current budget to do anything that's terribly inspiring in the human spaceflight area," Augustine said.

Nasa's budgetary woes are also hampering efforts to keep an eye on asteroids that might travel too close to Earth. The agency needs about $300m to expand a network of telescopes and meet the government's target of identifying, by 2020, at least 90% of the giant space rocks that pose a threat to Earth. Congress has not come up with the money and is unlikely to, according to the National Academy of Science.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Aug 2009 | 3:46 am

The power of prayer

I feel no closer to JC after six weeks on this course, as the value of prayer dominates the group's thoughts

Today, no facts, no hearsay, no tenacious gripping of far-from-convincing evidence, and frankly, not much evangelical Christianity. This is a huge relief. The Alpha course this week takes us far from the crutch of historicity and into the realm of prayer.

We begin, as we do each week, with a talk from Toby, and as ever it is engaging stuff. We discuss the meaning of words such as "amen" and the use of the Aramaic word that Jesus uses to describe God: "abba". It means "daddy" or "papa", and we talk about how this childlike language reflects the relationship we can have with God. I wonder what Freud would make of that.

We break down the Lord's prayer line by line. This is a perplexing exercise. Like every person above a certain age who went to a Christian-ish school, I can vomit forth the Lord's prayer quicker than Usain Bolt can do his thing. Having regurgitated it pretty much every school day from the age of five, I'm not sure I have ever considered what any of the words mean. This, yet again, galvanises my emerging belief that Christianity relies heavily on being culturally ingrained, but only superficially analysed by the flock.

The Alpha course likes to state that many more people pray than are Christians. There is a forceful emphasis on the notion that Christianity is a "relationship with God". But I don't know what that means. Prayer, Toby says, coupled with reading the Bible, is the best way to nurture this relationship. He tells us that we are "hardwired for prayer". Now, there certainly is plenty of scientific research into the neuroscience of religiosity, but it is a murky, new and difficult field. And I'll be damned to fiery Hades if I'm going to accept this assertion from a vicar, albeit an extremely bright one. The press, understandably, love the science of religious belief, and love to repeat the meme that we are "hardwired for religion". My problem with this is that I most certainly am not.

The discussion moves away from what prayer means in religious terms, and into how it actually works. Toby tells us of William Temple, the archbishop of Canterbury during the second world war, who once said, "When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't pray, they don't."

Temple's maxim, as any first-year psychology undergraduate knows, is willing submission to the quintessentially human characteristic known as "confirmation bias". Simply, we tend to notice things that affirm our prejudices and tend to ignore or forget those that don't. Everyone does it, and astrologers have wrested a multibillion-pound business out of this human foible. When we split into groups, discussion about this phenomenon dominates, as it seemed rude to simply interrupt Toby when he was talking and tell him that his answered prayers were simply a psychological quirk. And besides, very little I could say or show would alter his faith that his prayers are sometimes answered.

It's all too easy to write off prayer as simply pointlessly talking at ghosts. Certainly, ignoring well-understood phenomena such as confirmation bias and blindly believing that prayer results in increased coincidence is silly. But the truth is that I, and I guess most people, don't spend nearly enough time simply being quiet and still and thinking in peace. Prayer has no external effect, just like blowing candles on your birthday cake doesn't. But that doesn't mean there is no value in it. The humility of asking for help is a thing to be cherished, even if that is simply giving yourself the space to work things out for yourself. The flipside to this is when just listening to the thoughts in your head results in justification for hideous acts. So when Lucinda, an almost-Christian from an evangelical family, specifically raises this week's titular question, Toby's answer is a sentiment that I like, but one that is rare in religion: "I don't know. You have to work it out for yourself."

I'm not feeling any closer to JC after six weeks on this course, and I'm not getting sucked in. I don't think anyone is, yet. The numbers have dwindled to six after six weeks. When I check against the official Alpha doctrine, and compare our discussions to the books and DVDs that are part of the curriculum, but which we don't use, ours are far more freeform and interesting. But I felt very positive about this session. There was none of the futile grasping at unexceptional evidence for extraordinary claims. Instead there was a sense of how being calm and still can help you sort out your thoughts. This moment was lost, like tears in rain, when a smelly drunk bust into the church and growled at us for not being more welcoming to him. Next week, Toby notes, we'll lock the door.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Aug 2009 | 3:30 am

The Nation's Weather (AP)

AP - Thunderstorms were forecast to continue across the Southeast coast Friday as a weak trough in the upper atmosphere trough continued to sit across the region.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 2:59 am

Hurricane Guillermo forms in the Pacific (AP)

AP - Hurricane Guillermo has formed far out in the Pacific Ocean.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Aug 2009 | 2:41 am

Blue tits embrace 'aromatherapy'

Blue tits use aromatic medicinal plants such as mint and lavender to disinfect their nests, scientists have discovered.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 14 Aug 2009 | 2:23 am

Moving out

Natural History Museum specimens get new home
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Aug 2009 | 11:36 pm

Monkeys, like people, prefer mimics: study (AFP)

AFP - Imitating others has long been seen as a useful way to explore the world -- monkey see, monkey do -- but imitation could also make monkeys popular, a study has found.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Aug 2009 | 11:34 pm

Australia PM says no intention to call snap poll (Reuters)

Reuters - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Friday he had no intention of calling a snap election, despite parliament's rejection of his government's promised plan for an emissions trading scheme.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Aug 2009 | 11:23 pm

Anti-boat gun

New technology designed to stay ahead of terrorists
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Aug 2009 | 10:40 pm

They Snooze Less, But They Don't Lose (HealthDay)

HealthDay - THURSDAY, Aug. 13 (HealthDay News) -- A lucky few can get by just fine on six hours of sleep, and a new study suggests a genetic mutation might help explain why.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Aug 2009 | 9:48 pm

Scientists find rare gene behind short sleepers (AP)

AP - Scientists have discovered a gene that helps a mother and daughter stay alert on about six hours sleep a night, two hours less than the rest of their family needs.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Aug 2009 | 9:25 pm

Drug compound kills breast cancer stem cells

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. researchers have discovered a compound that can kill breast cancer stem cells, a kind of master cancer cell that resists conventional treatment and may explain why many cancers grow back, they reported on Thursday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 13 Aug 2009 | 9:15 pm

Early toolmakers were 'engineers'

People in South Africa were using "heat treatment" to improve their stone tools about 72,000 years ago, a study suggests.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Aug 2009 | 7:48 pm

NASA Orders Extra Fuel Tank Tests for Shuttle Launch (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - WASHINGTON - NASA has ordered some last-minute tests on the space shuttle Discovery's giant fuel tank to see if the spacecraft is safe to blast off later this month.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Aug 2009 | 6:36 pm

Behind the Scenes at Harvard’s Museum of Natural History

Among the treasures hidden from sight at Harvard’s Museum of Natural History are the world’s biggest egg, Stephen Jay Gould’s seashells and Vladimir Nabokov’s collection of butterfly genitalia.

So when the museum’s curator asked photographer Mark Sloan if he’d be interested in photographing the most unique specimens from their behind-the-scenes collection, Sloan was glad to oblige. In exchange, he got the tour of a lifetime.

The results were collected in the book The Rarest of the Rare, and a selection are now on display at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.. However, the photograph above — of a 300-year-old egg laid by an elephant bird, a flightless species that weighed more than half a ton — never made it into the book.

“It came with its own curator. He sat there with that egg for the entire duration of my photo shoot, which was quite long. He had white gloves on and was the only one who could touch it,” said Sloan. “The one time the curator went out to the bathroom, my assistant pretended to flick the egg.”

The museum preferred the flick-free version.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 13 Aug 2009 | 6:00 pm

Could a tiny insect halt the invasion of Japanese knotweed?

The government believes it has found a way to stop the spread of Japanese knotweed in Britain

Close to where the green twist of Kenidjack Valley gives way to the Atlantic Ocean there rises an old stone chimney and the ruins of a mine. Women and children once dug arsenic from the Cornish earth here so the deadly poison could be sold to American cotton farmers to kill the boll weevil, a migrant beetle that threatened to destroy the cotton industry. Long after the mining ceased, this verdant valley has been threatened with an invasive migrant of its own: Japanese knotweed.

Introduced into Britain in the 19th century as an ornamental plant, Japanese knotweed is terrifyingly tenacious. The nearest living thing to a triffid, it will grow a metre high in four weeks, push through concrete and tarmac and quickly create an impenetrable thicket 3m high. Its roots can spread at least 7m horizontally underground and 5m deep and the plant can lie dormant – but very much alive – underground for a decade. Its unusually deep leaf litter smothers rival plants. And its best weapon of all? It can reproduce from a fragment of stem or leaf the size of a drawing pin.

Japanese knotweed is infesting the countryside and cities alike, and appears to relish our warming climate. The cost of eradicating the plant from Britain was put at £1.56bn in 2003. Today, faced by estimates that its clearance would cost £2.6bn, the government has unveiled a tiny – and unprecedented – new solution, just 2mm in size: a species of jumping plant lice.

It is claimed that this Japanese psyllid, an insect called aphalara itadori, could bring down the mighty knotweed by guzzling its sap. If released to do its worst, it would be the first ever "biological control" deliberately introduced into Britain. But many people are decidedly twitchy about biological controls. What else might this exotic insect eat after it has devoured the Japanese knotweed? Could it trigger an environmental catastrophe comparable to that of the cane toad in Australia?

According to the scientists studying invasive species and biological controls, there is no comparison between toxic cane toads, which have rapidly colonised most of northern Australia, living at densities of up to 2,000 toads a hectare, and this tiny psyllid. The Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International (Cabi), an independent research group specialising in invasive species, points out that the cane toads were an exception: of more than 1,000 releases of biological controls around the world, they say only eight have had an impact on species other than their targets and all bar one of these had been predicted by scientists before their release.

The psyllid could be released next spring – if a public consultation begun last month is successful. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) cites five years' research by Cabi, during which the insect was tested on 87 other types of plant, including flora closely related to Japanese knotweed. Only a few, non-native knotweeds might be threatened, they found. "We definitely want to stop Japanese knotweed and all the research suggests this [insect] is a good way of doing it," says a Defra spokeswoman. If introduced, it would be tested on specific sites before being released more widely across the country.

Back at the Kenidjack Valley, Cornwall, the plant has been beaten down without the insect's aid. Ten years ago, all but the tower of the ruined mine was hidden by its smothering growth, which threatened to demolish the historic building. "It was just completely lost to the knotweed," says National Trust warden Bob Robinson.

Every Japanese Knotweed plant in Britain is female and reproduces through its rhizomes or fragments of its own vegetation. Strimming it is the worst thing you can do: it creates millions of tiny pieces, each of which can sprout into a new plant. In Kenidjack, the weed quickly spread down the valley: when local residents hacked it from their gardens, tiny fragments fell into the stream and seeded along the bank. For the past three years, local landowners, the county council, the National Trust and other agencies have worked together on an incredibly pain- staking and expensive clearance programme: cutting the knotweed by hand, carefully disposing of the waste and injecting each individual stump with specialist weedkiller. This summer, the valley has been returned to a native normality, with bluebells and bracken.

The Japanese knotweed is not defeated, however; it still lies dormant underground. "Rather than killing it stone dead, it puts it into hibernation," says Robinson of their efforts. Each year, workers must scour the valley for regrowth, which is sprayed back. Walking around, Robinson and I find plenty of tiny but ominous sprouts of red twigs with small leaves that quickly turn from red to green as the plant shoots up: if Kenidjack was left untreated by chemicals it would be smothered in knotweed again in a few summers.

People who have fought Japanese knotweed lower their voice to a reverent whisper when they talk of James MacFarlane, vegetation adviser for Cornwall County Council. Know thine enemy seems to be MacFarlane's theory; he has studied it for years, growing plants himself to see how it forces through concrete. Japanese knotweed, he explains, gets its superpowers from the fact that it is a primary volcanic coloniser in Japan, one of the first plants to sprout up immediately after a volcanic eruption. It can survive being covered by ash. It can tolerate sulphur, heavy metals and toxic gases. "One certainly has respect for it," he says. "It will go through tarmac for a treat."

MacFarlane has found it growing out of a drainpipe in Redruth and pushing through roads. He knows it will reproduce from a 0.7g fragment but he suspects it can grow from something even smaller. It even appears capable of surviving being washed out to sea, bobbing in the ocean and then taking root when it is washed ashore again.

It was as long ago as 1906 that Japanese knotweed was first recorded in Cornwall growing in the wild. But it only really became a problem in the last few deades, surging across entire valleys and infesting brownfield sites. MacFarlane believes the real accelerator has been the moving of topsoil and building material around the country for big building projects and motorways. He now monitors 1,800 Japanese knotweed sites in the county. On one earmarked for development close to Camborne, it cost £2m to remove the plant. But Japanese knotweed is not just a Cornish problem. MacFarlane sees it wherever he travels: London, Sheffield, and particularly on building sites in urban areas. A serious knotweed infestation had to be cleared from the Olympic park in east London.

"I rarely go through a city in this country without seeing it. It's the lack of knowledge that results in a greater spread," he says. "Ireland has a tremendous problem and they haven't yet realised it." Officials from France and Switzerland have visited Cornwall to see how the council has tackled it.

Cornwall, according to MacFarlane, has got on top of Japanese knotweed using orthodox chemicals but also by education and cajoling developers to save money in the long term by eradicating it from brownfield sites before they start building. Advocates of biological control such as the psyllid point out that it is more environmentally friendly than chemicals and MacFarlane admits he is "broadly in favour" of the insect. But he argues it is just one tool.

"If people consider it is the answer, that is unrealistic. It's not going to be an instant solution," he says. He believes the insect will not wipe out Japanese knotweed and, at best, it might reduce it to the unproblematic shrub it is in Japan, where natural predators including the psyllid keep it from becoming an infestation when it pops up in gardens and on roadsides. "Hopefully if it works well there will be a balance between the plant and the predator and they will live in coexistence."

MacFarlane has another fear: that the release of this insect will encourage people to complacently believe we can find a biological magic bullet for every invasive foreign species that is accidentally – or stupidly – introduced into Britain. "It does not mean someone will find a solution to every problem we introduce," he says. According to Simon Ford, a nature conservation adviser for the National Trust who spearheaded its fight against Japanese knotweed, the UK is "understandably and rightly" very cautious about biological controls such as the knotweed-eating psyllid.

"I do have reservations but that doesn't mean to say I'm against the idea. I'm really impressed by the science behind it. We've got to be sure any work will be on initial small trial sites so we can see how it goes without just throwing it into the world," he says. One danger is that Japanese knotweed is a member of the dock family and so the insect might develop a taste for eating rare native relatives such as the shore dock.

Of course we have long allowed foreign plants to take root in Britain. From buddleia to sycamore, many are much loved and considered almost native now. But new arrivals are more likely to reach plague proportions as our climate warms. Cotoneaster, holm oak and turkey oak are spreaing more rapidly now, while montbretia, the hottentot fig and the three-cornered leek are also cited as problem species. Other introduced plants have brought new diseases with them that imperil native plants: rhododendrons have been responsible for the arrival of sudden oak death, for example.

"It's becoming much more of a problem fighting these invasion plants. The National Trust is putting a lot of time, energy and money into it," says Robinson. "If the psyllid proves to be a success then I'm all for it but it is that worry – has it been tested enough to make sure it's not going to become a hazard in itself?"

How to spot Japanese knotweed

In the spring, Japanese knotweed shoots are dark red in colour. They can grow 4cms in a day and quickly form bamboo-like stems from which sprout green leaves, shaped rather like shields. It can quickly reach up to three metres in height and in high summer is not unattractive, displaying spikes of small, creamy white flowers. It sheds its leaves in autumn to leave dead, light-brown hollow stalks that look similar to bamboo. Its roots, or rhizome, are dark brown with a bright-orange inside and can snap easily, like a carrot. Japanese knotweed is a particularly common sight on derelict ground in cities.

And how to tackle it

• Don't ignore it. A small Japanese knotweed plant quickly becomes a major infestation.

• Do not strim, flail or chip it. It can reproduce from tiny fragments of rhizome, twig or even leaf. It is extremely unlikely you can eradicate it by digging it out, because the roots stretch down so deep into the soil.

• Herbicides can check its growth but only the most powerful chemical treatments will eventually clear it. These are unsuitable for spraying near water. One approach is to allow the weed to grow to about 1m, in early summer, and spray then. You will need to re-spray regrowth in midsummer and again in September if necessary. Another approach is to cut it back and apply to the stumps a powerful weedkiller such as Roundup's treatment for tree stumps and roots.

• Be careful not to allow cuttings into any drains, streams or waterways.

• Do not compost cuttings or put them in the rubbish bin. It is an offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act to cause Japanese knotweed to grow in the wild so if you dispose of it carelessly you will be breaking the law. Do not dump it in the garden waste bin of your local recycling centre. Japanese knotweed (and contaminated soil) is classed as "controlled waste", which means you must only dispose of it at certain, licensed landfill sites: check with your local council. If you are allowed to have a fire, burning the waste on site is another way to dispose of it. There are also commercial companies that specialise in the eradication of Japanese knotweed.

• More advice at environment-agency.gov.uk

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 Aug 2009 | 5:05 pm

Adopt a Star, Help Fund Science (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Though it's impossible to own a star, now you can adopt one.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Aug 2009 | 4:20 pm

Mermaid Sightings Claimed in Israel

Reports of mermaid sightings have come from the Israeli town of Kiryat Yam.
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Aug 2009 | 3:56 pm

Antarctic glacier 'thinning fast'

One of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is thinning four times faster than 10 years ago, research seen by the BBC suggests.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Aug 2009 | 3:19 pm

Early Humans Shaped Stone Tools with Fire

Human forged stone weapons and tools much earlier than once thought.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Mars' Victoria Crater Seen from New Angle

An image of the Victoria Crater on Mars was captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Aug 2009 | 1:57 pm

Planetary Smash-Up Leaves Ring Around Star

A high-speed collision between two fledgling planets leaves a debris ring.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Aug 2009 | 1:20 pm

Obituary: Jean Jones

Meticulous editor and historian of science

When, in 1991, 12 Nobel laureates in economics opened Morals, Motives and Markets, an exhibition on the Enlightenment theorist Adam Smith at the then Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, they pronounced themselves stunned to have learned more about his context and underlying philosophical views in two hours than they would have ever guessed. This was the museum's third radical exhibition concentrating on ideas, all of them devised by Jean Jones, who has died aged 74.

The initial exhibition in 1986, A Hotbed of Genius, and the first to celebrate the Scottish Enlightenment, concentrated on the life and works of David Hume, Smith, James Hutton and Joseph Black: it showed how a "scientific" approach evolved in Scotland in the mid-18th century and permeated all human inquiry. The second exhibition, three years later, Revolutions in Science 1789-1989, further explored the evolution of scientific thought and practice in the past two centuries, showing the central roles played by instrumentation and technology.

Jean was a bluestocking of the old school. The younger daughter of RJ Roberton JP, a land agent and farmer of Morebattle, Roxburghshire, she was educated at home; at St Leonards school in St Andrews, specialising in the sciences; and at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she read English, graduating in 1956. Later she pursued social studies at the London School of Economics, geology through the Open University, and took an MBA at Edinburgh University.

Aside from the history of science, she was an expert on literature, from Beowulf and the Sagas to the complete novels of Anthony Trollope, Patrick O'Brian and African writers of the 1960s. She was also a musician, an accomplished horsewoman and competitive sportswoman.

Tall, stylish and quietly humorous, Jean had a remarkable memory, modesty and a capacity for loyal and lasting friendships. A lifelong republican and advocate of equal rights for women, she was also an ardent supporter of other private scholars. She repudiated the fiercely defended disciplinary boundaries that invariably inhibited co-operation and mutual understanding.

Her life as a freelance editor began in 1957 at Blackies, which also published her first book, Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. In 1960 she became a subeditor at Encyclopaedia Britannica, and edited books on non-fiction subjects ranging from pottery to Zoroastrianism. Her early interest in geology was revitalised in the late 1970s by editing and researching the life and works of James Hutton, the founder of modern geology, on whom she became an acknowledged expert. In 1999, together with her husband, Peter Jones, she edited the only reprint of Hutton's huge work of 1794, An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, in which he responds to almost all the philosophical, economic and political tenets of Hume, Smith and their contemporaries.

She reflected on everything written by an author, to ensure accurate interpretation of their achievements. Work on Hutton led to close interest in his lifelong friend, Joseph Black, the founder of modern chemistry – and Hume's doctor – who also combined his university duties with industrial consultancies. A 20-year project of co-editing Black's complete letters with Robert Anderson, former director of the British Museum, was accepted by the publishers two weeks before she died.

On travels with Peter, she was never happier than when hiking and sketching in the Scottish Borders or on the glaciers of New Zealand or Alaska. She was secretary of the Friends of the Royal Museum, a voluntary guide to the collections – to which she wrote a guide book – and invented a successful memory card game, Tartan Snap, which became popular in the 1980s. Her final years, before the onset of a debilitating illness, were devoted to research into 18th-century science, and to watercolour and gouache painting.

She had met Peter in the Uffizi gallery in Florence, and they married in 1960. He subsequently became professor of philosophy and director of the institute for advanced studies in the humanities at Edinburgh University; she took an active role in his academic seminars and in hosting weekly dinner parties for international guests. She is survived by him and their two daughters, Rachel and Laura.

• Elizabeth Jean Jones, scholar, editor and historian of science, born 3 March 1935; died 3 May 2009

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 Aug 2009 | 12:44 pm

Green domain sparks war of words

The battle to take control of the .eco internet domain aimed at green groups escalates.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Aug 2009 | 12:10 pm

Some People Just Need Less Sleep

Some people are hard-wired to need less beauty sleep than others.
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Aug 2009 | 12:07 pm

Fire Used to Make Better Tools 75,000 Years Ago

Humans used fire to improve stone tools much earlier than thought, archaeologists found.
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Aug 2009 | 12:04 pm

Monkeys (and Humans) Prefer Mimics

Capuchin monkeys show affiliation for those who imitate them, similar to humans.
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Aug 2009 | 12:04 pm

Party people: Gregarious types may have more oxytocin receptors

New research suggests the 'love hormone' oxytocin may determine how sociable we are

Can a single chemical be responsible for all the intimate connections we feel with other people? Oxytocin isn't called the "love hormone" for nothing. It has plenty of other functions, of course, among them triggering milk secretion during breastfeeding, and helping the cervix to dilate during labour.

But it's oxytocin's role in bonding that is most intriguing. Blocking the activity of oxytocin in rats or sheep causes mothers to reject their young. Injecting virgin female rats with oxytocin causes them to adopt other rats' pups as their own.

Oxytocin is also thought to be important in the formation of pair bonds. In humans its release can be stimulated by sex or simply by physical contact with a loved one, and it has a powerful relaxing effect. In prairie voles, blocking the effects of oxytocin prevents them from forming monogamous couples.

One study has even suggested that oxytocin might be involved in the bond between man and his best friend. Apparently, dog owners who are more attached to their pets have higher concentrations of oxytocin in their urine after interacting with them.

Other experiments have suggested that oxytocin could underlie trust. Subjects who inhaled oxytocin in a nasal spray were more likely to hand over cash to strangers, knowing that they might not get it back.

New research published in the journal Science this week has revealed more about oxytocin's role in social bonding. Finches, the subjects of this study, don't have oxytocin, but like other birds they have a very similar molecule called mesotocin.

When the scientists at Indiana University in the US gave drugs that block mesotocin receptors to zebra finches – which are normally highly social creatures – the birds spent much less time with familiar individuals and more time with unfamiliar individuals. They also preferred to hang out in smaller groups.

By contrast, zebra finches given extra mesotocin became more social and spent more time with familiar faces.

This fits with the idea of oxytocin acting to promote bonding between individuals. Intriguingly, the same paper suggests that the distribution of oxytocin receptors in the brain might help to explain why some animals are more social than others.

When the researchers compared three flocking finch species with two territorial, aggressive species, they found that the more social species had more mesotocin receptors in a part of the brain called the lateral septum. Blocking these receptors made the birds become less social.

Lead author James Goodson speculated that if the finding can be applied to mammals, then the concentration of receptors for oxytocin in the lateral septum might predict how gregarious somebody is likely to be.

"The lateral septum is structurally very similar in reptiles, birds and mammals," he said. "To our knowledge, it plays an important role in the social and reproductive behaviours in all land vertebrates."

Some scientists are interested in whether oxytocin can be used to improve relationships. Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Zurich found that couples given oxytocin before a "conflict discussion" displayed more "positive communication behaviours", such as eye contact and open body language, than couples given a placebo. They also had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

Its involvement in social behaviours has even led to oxytocin being investigated as a potential treatment for autism.

But another recent study serves as a warning not to get too carried away. Researchers at the University of Haifa in Israel found that volunteers who inhaled oxytocin before playing a competitive game felt more envy when they lost and more schadenfreude when they won.

So while it's tempting to romanticise oxytocin, we would do well to remember that the "love hormone" isn't always a fomenter of happy relationships.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Lucky Sleep Mutants Need Fewer Zzzzzs

No one knows why some lucky folks thrive on five or six hours of sleep per night, while the rest of us suffer if we don’t get eight hours of shut-eye. But now scientists have discovered a genetic mutation that could be responsible for the eternal perkiness of short-sleepers.

Combing through a database of sleep-study volunteers, the researchers found two people who needed far less sleep than average. Both had abnormal copies of a gene called DEC2, which is known to affect circadian rhythms and oxygen regulation in mammals. When the scientists bred mice to have the same mutation, the mice slept less and were more active than their regular rodent peers.

So far, the researchers don’t know why swapping a single base pair in the DEC2 gene makes mammals need less sleep. But unlike most people who skimp on sleep for long periods of time, subjects with the mutation don’t experience the negative health effects of sleep deprivation, such as mood or metabolic changes.

“Finding the mutation is just the first step,” said sleep researcher Ying-Hui Fu of the University of California, San Francisco, who co-authored the paper in Science Thursday. “To understand the mechanism is really what’s important for us. We want to understand the how, what and why of sleep — how does it affect our health?”

Scientists say the average adult needs eight to 8.5 hours of sleep each night to function optimally, but the short-sleepers reported feeling great on a lifetime average of only 6.25 hours per night. And unlike most of us, who catch up on sleep whenever we take vacation, the mutation carriers stuck to their short sleep schedule even when they had no responsibilities.

But unfortunately for those of us who’d like more time in our day, the short-sleep mutation appears to be very rare. Out of 70 families in the UCSF sleep study database, only one carried the mutation. And Fu said she doesn’t know how many people worldwide might be affected.

A commentary about the research, also in Science, calls the discovery “a starting point for studying the regulation of timing and organization of sleep.” But because only two people with the mutation have been identified thus far, the authors said the research needs to be replicated in independent studies of other short-sleep individuals.

Fu agrees that more research on the mutation is needed. She’s especially interested in understanding how the mutation decreases the need for sleep, and whether it might eventually be used to help others get by on less sleep.

“My fantasy is that as we understand more about how sleep quantitatively affects other health pathways, and we understand more about the mechanism of sleep and how it’s regulated in terms of how much we need, someday we’d be able to modulate it in a safe way,” Fu said. “So people could sleep less without it affecting their health.”

Image: Flickr/supersarasw.

See Also:

• Freaky Sleep Paralysis: Being Awake in Your Nightmares
• Sleep Disorders Traced to Genes
• Sleep Hacking Produces Results — For a Time
• The Uncertain Science of Sleep
• Sleep Drug Makers Say Americans Need More Sleep

Follow us on Twitter @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 13 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Carnivorous Plants Are DIY Ecosystem Monitors

If you don’t have the money to fund an ecological assessment of your backyard, try using a carnivorous pitcher plant instead.

Three years ago, Parks Canada ecologist Sheldon Lambert was looking for a simple way to monitor the health of bogs in Cape Breton Highlands National Park. The park didn’t have much money, but it had plenty of carnivorous pitcher plants.

Lambert found Aaron Ellison, a Harvard University biologist who uses pitcher plants as models for testing ecosystem dynamics, and the two were soon using them as inexpensive biosensors.

“It’s the canary in the coal mine here,” said Ellison. “The morphological and growth response of the plants happens within a single growing season.”

Pitcher plants capture their prey in pools of rainwater that form in their cupped leaves, and evolved to eat meat in order to survive in nutrient-poor soils. These characteristics make them exquisitely sensitive to atmospheric pollution and environmental change.

When nitrogen levels are high because of a big meal, acid rain or farm fertilizer runoff, the plants’ metabolisms adjust to concentrate on photosynthesis rather than eating. Their leaves flatten out. If a bog’s water level or the composition of its soil changes, then the pitcher plants’ population density also shifts.

If the plants change in one location, they’ll signify a local problem. But if the plants in many bogs “are changing in the same way, the assumption is that there might be changes in other ecosystems that are worth studying,” said Lambert.

Since 2006, Lambert has set up pitcher-plant monitoring sites in 12 sites in the Cape Breton park. Researchers from Newfoundland’s Gros Morne and Terra Nova national parks established their first sites last year.

Each site contains a set of GPS coordinates along which plant measurements can be taken from year to year. The measurements are supplemented by water measurements from PVC pipe wells, and aerial photographs taken with kite- and balloon-mounted cameras.

That early data is now being used to establish baseline conditions of bog health. Lambert hopes they’ll be used for decades to come.

“The issue with ecological monitoring, what it really needs, are longer data sets. Then you can notice natural variability. The continuity is what makes them worthwhile,” said Lambert. “And the data sets that have longevity are the ones that are cheap and easy to do. This is both.”

See Also:

• In the Bowels of Carnivorous Plants, a Tiny Model of the World
  
• A Listening Party for Nature
• Crawling the Web to Foretell Ecosystem Collapse

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 13 Aug 2009 | 11:52 am

Timber Structure Older than Stonehenge Found in London

Archaeologists working in peat bog find London's oldest timber structure.
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Aug 2009 | 11:14 am

Lion cubs make first appearance in new enclosure at London Zoo

A pair of endangered Asian lion cubs make a public appearance in their new enclosure at London Zoo.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Aug 2009 | 11:13 am

BLOG: Bad Tasting Animals Survive

Tasting bad appears to be a useful anti-predator defense strategy for some animals.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Aug 2009 | 11:00 am

Cave Complex Allegedly Found Under Pyramids

A massive complex of passageways is found beneath the pyramid field at Giza.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Aug 2009 | 10:54 am

BLOG: Preventing Man-Made Quakes

The thought of triggering earthquakes in our search for renewable energy is terrifying.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Aug 2009 | 9:38 am

Neanderthals Likely Didn't Like Brussels Sprouts

A gene found in Neanderthal bone would have made Brussels sprouts taste bitter.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Aug 2009 | 9:18 am

Chocolate Helps Hinder Heart Disease

Eating chocolate can help heart attack survivors cut their risk of heart disease.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Aug 2009 | 9:15 am

Earth Watch

India's water crisis points up global people problem
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Aug 2009 | 7:39 am

Nanoparticles Reveal Ancient Artwork

Silver nanoparticles help scientists uncover the original colors of ancient art.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 13 Aug 2009 | 7:18 am

Dutch Prefer Toilets to Friends and Sex?

Survey purportedly found that folks there prefer a trip to the bathroom over anything else.
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Aug 2009 | 7:02 am

7 Billion People by 2011

Earth's population will reach 7 billion people in 2011, a new report predicts. That's sooner than had been expected.
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Aug 2009 | 6:46 am

Meteor show reaches peak

Skygazers have observed a dazzling sky show, as the annual Perseid meteor shower reached its peak.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Aug 2009 | 6:43 am

Physicists hold breath as LHC prepares to rise from the ashes

If all goes to plan, the LHC will come back to life in November. Sam Wong explains the measures being taken to prevent another catastrophic failure, and gauges the mood of physicists at Cern. Can they bag the Higgs before the Americans?

It's been nearly a year since the world's biggest science experiment, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), was fired up for the first time in a flurry of excitement at Cern, the European Centre for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. But ever since a catastrophic explosion in the particle accelerator's tunnel just nine days after startup, the gargantuan machine has sat idling, to the acute frustration and no little embarrassment of all involved.

The incident on 19 September, variously described as an "electrical failure", "engineering breakdown" and "technical malfunction", was a major setback to physicists hoping to discover the Higgs boson (or "champagne bottle boson", as we rechristened it). It was caused when a short-circuit in a connection between superconductors in the tunnel burned a hole in a vessel containing liquid helium – resulting in an explosion.

Engineers have been working hard to get the $9bn supermachine up and running. They have now finished testing the 10,000 high-current, superconducting connections and repairing those in which the resistance was found to be abnormally high.

They've also installed highly sensitive warning systems in an attempt to avoid a repeat of the liquid helium leak.

There's more work to be done, though, including calibrating the detectors, installing 160km of new cabling around the tunnel, and cooling down the sectors that had to be warmed up to allow repairs (when it's colliding particles, the accelerator tunnel is cooled close to absolute zero).

All in all, the atom smasher's refit will rack up a bill in the region of 40m Swiss francs (£23m).

Last week, Cern announced that the LHC will finally begin firing protons around its 27km circular tunnel again in November. Initially, it will run at an energy of 3.5 tera-electronvolts (TeV) per beam – just half of what it's meant to achieve at full blast, but still several times more than the LHC's American competitor, the Tevatron at Fermilab, can manage. After operating at this lower level for a period, the energy will be increased to 5TeV per beam.

According to Cern spokesman James Gillies, the mood at Cern is optimistic.

"We're looking forward to getting going," he said. "There's consensus that the choices that have been taken to run the machine safely at 3.5TeV per beam are good choices. They allow the machine operators to learn how to drive the machine, if you like, under what should be very easy conditions for them, and they don't compromise the physics."

Gillies is confident that there won't be another serious mishap this time around.

"There will be small things, and that's part of life, but I don't think we're going to see another major setback like the one we had last year."

Once a good amount of data has been collected at lower energy levels, the LHC will have to be shut down again while it is geared up to reach 7TeV per beam. This will require dozens of superconducting magnets to be "retrained" – conditioned by gradual exposure to higher and higher currents.

The energy of a collision between two particles in the tunnel is converted into the mass of any new particles that are created, in keeping with Einsteins's celebrated equation E=mc². The more energetic the collision, the more massive the particles that might be created, as physicist Adam Yurkewicz explains on the LHC's US blog.

"For example, to discover a dark matter particle, the energy of the collision is converted into the mass of the new particle. Right now, we don't know exactly what mass the dark matter particle has, so the higher the collision energy, the more massive particle we could potentially make. Our potential to discover something new depends on the energy of the collisions."

For this reason, physicists are eager to get the collider running at full energy as soon as possible. But according to Peter Kalmus, emeritus professor of physics at Queen Mary, University of London, there are other considerations.

"We're looking for something that is almost bound to be rare," he said. "One has to have a very well understood apparatus, not just the accelerator but also the detectors that would be looking for it. It seems to me that people probably need, I would think, certainly much more than a year of operating the machine just to make sure that they understand all the nitty-gritty of quirks in the equipment."

Kalmus believes Cern are still the favourites to get their hands on the elusive Higgs before their American rivals.

"I think Cern ought to have the edge, but there is still a chance that Fermilab could come up with it," he said.

The Higgs boson would certainly be the prize in any hunt, but it is by no means the only target in the LHC's sights. Physicists also hope to verify the existence of supersymmetry – the idea that the known particles have heavier partners that have yet to be discovered.

"If they exist, and if the masses are not very much higher, then they could be discovered with the lower energy machine," says Kalmus.

There will be an anxious wait for the physics community between now and November. For researchers desperate to get their hands on some data, the resurrection of the LHC can't come a minute too soon.

"Collisions this year will bring joy, but first probably relief," Yurkewicz writes. "Relief at not having to answer questions about the LHC not working, and relief for graduate students who would have data they could analyse in order to graduate.

"Many of us will be holding our breath for the next few months. After we see some collisions we can experience that joy, and then start down the long path towards answering some of the fundamental questions we have about the universe."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 Aug 2009 | 6:40 am

Thanks, Fido! Cancer Drugs Tested on Pets

Pets with cancer can help scientists develop novel therapies against the disease
Source: Livescience.com | 13 Aug 2009 | 6:14 am

'Many hurricanes' in modern times

Hurricanes in the Atlantic are more frequent than at any time in the last 1,000 years, according to research.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Aug 2009 | 4:51 am