Why More Autumn Leaves Are Red In America And Yellow In Europe: New Theory

Walking outdoors in the fall, the splendidly colorful leaves adorning the trees are a delight to the eye. In Europe these autumn leaves are mostly yellow, while the United States and East Asia boast lustrous red foliage. But why is it that there are such differences in autumnal hues around the world? A new theory proposes taking a step 35 million years back to solve the color mystery.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Carbon Nanoparticles Toxic To Adult Fruit Flies But Benign To Young

Researchers have discovered that certain types of carbon nanoparticles can be environmentally toxic to adult fruit flies, although they were found to be benign when added to food for larvae. The findings may further reveal the environmental and health dangers of carbon nanoparticles.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

New Nanolaser Key To Future Optical Computers And Technologies

Researchers have created the tiniest laser since its invention nearly 50 years ago, paving the way for a host of innovations, including superfast computers that use light instead of electrons to process information, advanced sensors and imaging.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Obesity Increases Risk Of Prostate Cancer Recurrence For Both Blacks And Whites

A new look at a large database of prostate cancer patients shows that obesity plays no favorites when it comes to increasing the risk of recurrence after surgery. Being way overweight is equally bad for blacks and whites, say researchers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Drug Labels Should Disclose Lack Of Comparison With Existing Medications, Experts Urge

The labeling information that comes with prescription drugs tells you what's known about the medication, but several researchers think it's high time that the labeling tell you what isn't known.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Carnitine Supplements Reverse Glucose Intolerance In Animals

Supplementing obese rats with the nutrient carnitine helps the animals to clear the extra sugar in their blood, something they had trouble doing on their own, researchers report.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

'Smell Of Death' Research Could Help Recover Bodies In Disasters And Solve Crimes

In an advance toward the first portable device for detecting human bodies buried in disasters and at crime scenes, scientists are reporting early results from a project to establish the chemical fingerprint of death. The study could also lead to an electronic device that could determine the time elapsed since death quickly, accurately and onsite.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

Bone's Material Flaws Lead To Disease

The weak tendons and fragile bones characteristic of osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, stem from a genetic mutation that causes the incorrect substitution of a single amino acid in the chain of thousands of amino acids making up a collagen molecule, the basic building block of bone and tendon.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

Braille Displays Get New Life With Artificial Muscles

Research with tiny artificial muscles may yield a full-page active Braille system that can refresh automatically and come to life right beneath your fingertips.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

Scientists Take Early Steps Toward Mapping Epigenetic Variability

Scientists have taken the first steps toward mapping epigenetic variability in cells and tissues. Mapping the human epigenome, similar to the human genome project in the 1990s, could someday allow for quicker and more precise disease diagnoses and more targeted treatments of many chronic ailments.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

In pictures

The team that keeps underground waterways flowing
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 17 Aug 2009 | 3:51 am

Bill becomes hurricane, expected to strengthen (Reuters)

Reuters - Tropical Storm Bill became the first hurricane of the 2009 Atlantic season on Monday but remained far from any land, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Aug 2009 | 3:37 am

Nasa assembles Ares test rocket

The US space agency has completed the assembly of its Ares I-X rocket ahead of a test flight scheduled for October.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 17 Aug 2009 | 3:34 am

Invasion of the 'island snatchers'

Half of all weeds come to dominate the ocean island habitats they invade, a new analysis reveals.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 17 Aug 2009 | 3:18 am

Vast majority of dollar bills in US capital bear cocaine traces

The largest study of banknotes finds that 95% of dollar bills in Washington DC bear traces of the illegal drug cocaine.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 17 Aug 2009 | 3:09 am

Side effects of the race to beat swine flu

The big worry is that the government's exuberant use of Tamiflu will hasten the appearance and spread of resistant mutants

A giant experiment started in England on Thursday 23 July. The algorithm-driven free "prescription" of Tamiflu through the National Pandemic Flu Service is without precedent. Never before has an antimicrobial agent been used on such a vast scale without medical control.

It could be said that policymakers have only themselves to blame for making this inevitable. Pronouncements about pandemic planning in recent years – and the plan itself – for all practical purposes redefined a pandemic as a horror-laden event in which mortuaries would be overflowing, with people dropping dead in the street and normal civic functions grinding to a halt. So it is not surprising that when swine flu met the standard pandemic criterion – community spread in more than one continent – WHO was lobbied (unsuccessfully) by the UK to postpone its declaration and incorporate severity into its definition.

But in spite of all the subsequent pronouncements that swine flu is mild for most, causing an illness no worse than seasonal flu (which rarely hits the headlines and whose sufferers rarely get Tamiflu unless they are in high-risk groups), it appears that policymakers still considered that the public wanted more to be done. And the perception of Tamiflu as a life-saving cure – however overblown – has defined the necessary action.

The pandemic plan caused the government to buy lots of Tamiflu. A cynic might say that not using up a big stockpile with a finite shelf life when there is a use for it would be an affront to the tidy civil service mind, which has a horror of untidiness and leaving loose ends and which is driven by the need to prevent waste at all costs.

There is no doubt that Tamiflu brings benefits. The earlier it is given the greater they are. The ideal is to take it before the onset of symptoms. Even after a couple of days it shortens the illness by a day or so. It is less certain how effective it is in preventing the development of severe complications, although it is reasonable to assume that it may reduce their frequency. Its effect in reducing the transmission of the virus from person to person is probably not very great. Influenza virus sufferers are excreting virus before the onset of symptoms so taking Tamiflu a day or so later means that they will already have had plenty of opportunities to infect their close contacts.

So the benefits to be expected from giving Tamiflu – even on a grand scale – are real, but limited. And there are downsides. Some will experience side effects. These are well known. Nausea and vomiting has been taken up by the tabloids. In most of the anecdotes it is impossible to know whether the symptoms have been caused by the drug, or by the influenza for which the complainant was being treated.

The big worry is that the exuberant and poorly controlled use of Tamiflu will hasten the appearance and spread of resistant mutants. It used to be thought that these were feeble viruses that spread poorly. No longer. H1N1 seasonal viruses that are highly resistant and effective spreaders suddenly appeared throughout Europe in the 2007-2008 winter flu season. Only time will tell whether swine flu will go down the same road. As a general principle the use of a single antimicrobial agent sooner (if poorly controlled) or later (when under medical control) selects for resistance. Exceptions are few and far between. So the operations of the National Pandemic Influenza Service carry a big risk. The race is between resistance and the vaccine.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 17 Aug 2009 | 2:54 am

The Nation's Weather (AP)

AP - Two major storms were forecast to produce significant weather activity across the nation Monday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Aug 2009 | 2:45 am

Scientists pioneer DNA microchips

Researchers have found a way to create a new generation of tiny microchips that use DNA - rather than traditional silicon - to achieve potentially revolutionary advances in computing.

A team based at IBM's Alamaden research facility in San Jose, California, has found a method for building chips that they believe could eventually replace the current standards for creating electrical circuits using silicon wafers.

The technique, which was developed in conjunction with the California Institute of Technology, creates tiny microchips using strands of DNA and carbon nanotubes – microscopic cylinders constructed from carbon molecules.

In a paper published in the Nature Nanotechnology journal, the team describes a method that uses so-called "DNA origami" – pieces of genetic material which can be arranged into patterns similar to those used in the microchips common in computers and other electronic devices.

After creating a scaffold of DNA, nanotubes are then inserted into the design to build a microchip that is several times smaller – and therefore faster – than anything that today's most advanced techniques can achieve.

According to the paper, the procedure can produce chips with gaps as small as 6 nanometers. Most chips produced commercially currently operate at the 45nm scale, while cutting edge techniques are able to produce chips that operate at the 22 nanometer level.

"This is the first demonstration of using biological molecules to help with processing in the semiconductor industry," IBM research manager Spike Narayan told Reuters.

"Basically, this is telling us that biological structures like DNA actually offer some very reproducible, repetitive kinds of patterns that we can actually leverage in semiconductor processes."

With traditional chip manufacturing under pressure – not only from the increasing difficulty of shrinking circuits to keep up the pace of development, but also from growing financial concerns over the high price of producing chips – companies are looking for new ways to advance the procedure.

But those expecting a computer revolution will need to wait: IBM says the techniques it is developing are still at least 10 years from becoming commonplace.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 17 Aug 2009 | 12:33 am

Space invaders? Minister warned over 'UK Roswell'

An ex-head of the military warned the defence secretary that a UFO claim dubbed "Britain's Roswell" could be a "banana skin", official files show.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 17 Aug 2009 | 12:26 am

Pandas could be extinct in 2-3 generations: report (AFP)

AFP - China's giant panda could be extinct in just two to three generations as rapid economic development is infringing on its way of life, state media said on Monday, citing an expert at conservation group WWF.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Aug 2009 | 11:09 pm

12 foreign ecotourists robbed on trip in Peru (AP)

AP - Peruvian police say gunmen robbed 12 foreigners on an ecological tourism trip to the Manu nature reserve on a popular forest route.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Aug 2009 | 9:26 pm

Child leukaemia 'genes' revealed

Genetic flaws that increase the risk of the most common form of childhood leukaemia have been uncovered by British scientists.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Aug 2009 | 5:14 pm

Children risk cancer by eating salami and ham, warns charity

• Bad habits 'could lead to bowel disease in later life'
• Study finds widespread ignorance over symptoms

Parents should not put ham or salami in their children's packed lunches because processed meat increases the risk of developing cancer, experts in the disease are warning.

The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) wants families to instead use poultry, fish, low-fat cheese, hummus or small amounts of lean meat as sandwich fillings when making up school lunchboxes.

Children should avoid eating processed meat altogether because unhealthy habits acquired while young can have serious consequences later, said the WCRF.

"Including sandwich fillers such as ham and salami could mean children get into habits that increase their risk of developing cancer later in life," the charity said.

"It makes sense for children to adopt a healthy adult eating pattern from the age of five. WCRF advises it is best to avoid it [processed meat] as well as many of the habits we develop as children last into adulthood."

If everyone ate no more than 70g of processed meat – the equivalent of three rashers of bacon – a week, about 3,700 fewer people a year in Britain would be diagnosed with bowel cancer, according to the WCRF.

In 2007 the charity there was convincing scientific evidence that consumption of processed meat increases the risk of bowel cancer. Although research had only studied its impact on adults, children should avoid it too, said the WCRF.

Marni Craze, the charity's children's education manager, said: "If children have processed meat in their lunch every day then over the course of a school year they will be eating quite a lot of it. It is better if children learn to view processed meat as an occasional treat if it is eaten at all."

The charity also wants parents to avoid giving their children high-fat or high-calorie foods in their packed lunch, such as sugary drinks, because they could help make them overweight. Excess weight is increasingly viewed by scientists as a major contributory factor to cancer after smoking.

Some high-energy products are promoted as ideal for children's lunchboxes, it points out. For example, Sainsbury's has Peperami in the lunchbox section of its website, despite the product containing 44% fat.

John Bullock, of BPEX, which represents British meat producers, said: "The amounts of these products in children's lunchboxes will be very small. The WCRF's global study in 2007 said there may be a link between eating processed meat and the risk of cancer, but we need more scientific evidence to tell us definitely whether or not that's the case.

In a separate study published today, Cancer Research says widespread ignorance about the symptoms of cancer is contributing to people dying of the disease.

One in seven people in Britain (14%) could not name a single sign of cancer and only small numbers of people named moles (16%), weight loss (16% of men and 22% of women), skin problems (25%) and bowel, urinary or toilet difficulties (19%), the charity found. In a poll of 3,947 people, 54% identified a lump as a being a possible indicator of cancer.

Sara Hiom, of Cancer Research, said up to 5,000 cancer deaths a year could be avoided if cancers were diagnosed earlier. The charity is working with the Department of Health on a major project to improve people's chances of surviving cancer through earlier diagnosis, by increasing public awareness of signs and symptoms of the disease.

"We're not expecting people to be able to recall every symptom, but being generally aware of changes that could be a sign of cancer could make a crucial difference for people who do develop the disease," said Hiom.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Aug 2009 | 5:06 pm

What would an alien look like?

Astrobiologist Dr Lewis Dartnell from University College London joins us in the studio to speculate about what form life might take elsewhere in the Solar System and beyond. What is life anyway? Are we all Martians?

Lewis will deliver one of a series of public lectures about cosmology at UCL this week as part of the Your Universe festival.

On the panel we have the Guardian's Nell Boase and environment correspondent David Adam.

In the newsjam, we look at why mountains closer to the equator are bigger, how the humble leaf could provide the answer to the planet's energy problems, how the "love hormone" oxytocin may determine how sociable we are, and research suggesting that having a sunny outlook on life is good for your health.

Steven Cowley, director of the UK fusion lab, tells the Guardian's Kevin Anderson what obstacles lie in the way of clean, plentiful energy from nuclear fusion.

The panel also discusses an article on the Guardian's website by Chris French, editor of the Skeptic magazine in the UK, in which he explains why he thinks teaching teenagers anomalistic psychology – spoon bending, telekinesis, faith healing and suchlike – is a good thing.

WARNING: contains strong language (right at the end).

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Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Aug 2009 | 5:01 pm

WHO chief urges swine flu vigilance

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - The world must remain on its guard against H1N1 influenza, which has been mild so far but could become more serious as the northern hemisphere heads into winter, the head of the World Health Organization said on Sunday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 16 Aug 2009 | 4:06 pm

Sunken steel cages could save coral reefs

• Low-level electric current attracts coral to structure
• Maldives resort reports encouraging growth

Scientists are reporting encouragingly rapid coral growth on giant underwater steel cages – structures that they hope will help to regenerate battered reefs and improve protection of some vulnerable coastlines from rising sea levels.

Coral reefs support a quarter of life on Earth and last month David Attenborough warned that carbon dioxide is already above the levels that will condemn corals to extinction.

And while the metal cages, fed with electric current, are not a solution to the global problem of dramatically contracting reefs, they do appear to be providing promising results in small, local projects, and – in some cases – rescuing resorts where coral was vanishing fast.

A team of researchers on Vabbinfaru island in the Maldives submerged a huge steel cage called the Lotus on the sea floor. The 12-metre structure, which weighs 2 tonnes is connected to long cable which supplies a low-level electric current. The electricity triggers a chemical reaction, which leads to calcium carbonate coming out of solution in the water and being deposited on the structure.

Corals seem to find that irresistible, perhaps because they use the same material to grow their protective skeletons, and the Lotus has been so thoroughly colonised by coral that it is difficult now to make out the steel shape beneath all the elaborate shapes and colour.

The idea was initially developed by an American architect, Wolf Hilbertz, who sold the concept to various resorts around the world. The Lotus is the largest and most successful of those, and has helped researchers to test the technique.

The El Nino Pacific-warming phenomenon of 1998 killed 98% of the reef around Vabbinfaru, so the researchers there have been able to compare the growth rates for corals grafted on to concrete structures on "desert" patches of seafloor, and those stuck on to the Lotus. Abdul Azeez, who is leading the Vabbinfaru project, said coral growth on the structure is up to five times as fast as that elsewhere.

The electric reef may also make the corals fitter and better able to withstand warming events, perhaps because the creatures waste less energy on making their skeletons. A smaller prototype device was in place during the 1998 warming event and more than 80% of its corals survived, compared to just 2% elsewhere on the reef.

Hilbertz, who died in 2007, believed that his structures could be multiplied across the world to repopulate reefs and protect shorelines. But many experts think the cost and effort involved make it impossible to do except on a small scale.

"I would like to be able to carry out genetic analysis of the algae in the coral to find out whether we can transplant heat-tolerant ones to parts of the reef where it is more exposed and so build coverage there," says Robert Tomasetti, a marine biologist also based at Banyan Tree resort in Vabbinfaru. "We don't have that level of equipment so we're really just growing pretty reefs for the tourists but not in a construction way to protect the island."

While welcoming the positive impact that the project has had on Vabbinfaru, Shiham Adam, the director general of the Maldivian government's Marine Research Centre in Male warned that the wider picture for his country remained bleak. "Sprucing up small bits of reef can add value to a tourist resort but it certainly won't help protect the Maldives from sea level rise," he said.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Aug 2009 | 3:58 pm

Gene variant predicts hepatitis treatment success (AP)

AP - Scientists say they've found a big reason why treatment for chronic hepatitis C infection works better for white patients than for African-Americans. It's a tiny variation in a gene.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Aug 2009 | 11:06 am

Pollution Reduces Rain Vital to Crops

Air pollution in China has cut the amount of light rainfall by 23 percent over the past 50 years.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Aug 2009 | 9:12 am

Caffeine Causes and Cures Headaches (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Norwegian scientists' large, cross-sectional study of more than 50,000 people has found that caffeine seems to both cause and prevent hurting heads. In a study published in the Journal of Headache Pain, scientists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway, concluded that people who consume high amounts of caffeine each day are more likely to suffer occasional headaches than those with low caffeine consumption.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Aug 2009 | 8:21 am

Caffeine Causes and Cures Headaches

Those who suffer from occasional headaches might try cutting back on caffeine.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Aug 2009 | 8:16 am

Augmented Reality Reveals History to Tourists

Tourists with a smart phone take a picture of an ancient object and then instantly see what it originally looked like.
Source: Livescience.com | 16 Aug 2009 | 8:07 am

June's record ocean warmth worries fishermen, environmentalists (McClatchy Newspapers)

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — Ocean surface temperatures around the world were the warmest on record for the month of June, according to federal scientists, though they caution that one month doesn't necessarily imply global warming.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Aug 2009 | 4:00 am