Trial Of New Treatment For Advanced Melanoma Shows Rapid Shrinking Of Tumors

Researchers have made significant advances in the treatment of metastatic malignant melanoma -- one of the most difficult cancers to treat successfully -- according to a new study. In the phase I extension study, researchers have seen rapid and dramatic shrinking of metastatic tumors in patients treated with a new compound that blocks the activity of the cancer-causing mutation of the BRAF gene, which is implicated in about 50 percent melanomas and 5 percent of colorectal cancers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm

Lasers From Space Show Thinning Of Greenland And Antarctic Ice Sheets

The most comprehensive picture of the rapidly thinning glaciers along the coastline of both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets has been created using satellite lasers. The findings are an important step forward in the quest to make more accurate predictions for future sea level rise.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm

Schizophrenia Gene Linked With Abnormal Neurogenesis In Adult And Postnatal Brain

Scientists now have a better understanding of a perplexing gene that is associated with susceptibility for a wide spectrum of severely debilitating mental illnesses. Two independent research studies provide fascinating insight into the molecular mechanisms that link disrupted-in-schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) with the proper development and migration of neurons in the hippocampus, a brain area involved in learning and memory and associated with the pathology of schizophrenia.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm

First Bose-Einstein Condensate With Calcium Atoms Produced

Physicists in Germany have succeeded for the first time worldwide in producing a Bose-Einstein condensate from the alkaline earth element calcium. The use of alkaline earth atoms creates new potential for precision measurements -- for example, for the determination of gravitational fields.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm

Our Emotions Can Lead Us Astray When Assessing Risks, Says New Study

If you find yourself more concerned about highly publicized dangers that grab your immediate attention such as terrorist attacks, while forgetting about the more mundane threats such as global warming, you're not alone.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm

New Way Deadly Food-borne Bacteria Is Spread

A researcher has uncovered a previously unknown mechanism that plays an important role in the spread of a deadly food-borne bacterium.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm

Novel 'On-off Switch' Mechanism Stops Cancer In Its Tracks

A tiny bit of genetic material with no previously known function may hold the key to stopping the spread of cancer, researchers in the U.S. and China report.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am

Hot Microbes Cause Groundwater Cleanup Rethink

Australian researchers have discovered that micro-organisms that help break down contaminants under the soil can actually get too hot for their own good.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am

Stimulating Sight: Retinal Implant Could Help Restore Useful Level Of Vision To Certain Groups Of Blind People

MIT engineers have designed a retinal implant for people who have lost their vision from retinitis pigmentosa or age-related macular degeneration, two of the leading causes of blindness. The retinal prosthesis would help restore some vision by electrically stimulating the nerve cells that normally carry visual input from the retina to the brain.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am

Stopping Excessive Bone Growth Following Trauma Or Surgery: New Treatment Could Help Soldiers Wounded In Combat

A recent United States Army study found that excessive bone growth, also known as heterotopic ossificiation (HO), affects up to 70 percent of soldiers who are severely wounded during combat. The excessive bone forms within muscles and other tissues causing severe pain, reduced mobility and even local paralysis if untreated. A new study found a way to prevent HO in animal models by shutting the process off in its early stages.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am

Huge Anglo-Saxon gold hoard found

The UK's largest haul of Anglo-Saxon gold artefacts, from the 7th Century, is found with a metal detector in a field.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 4:33 am

Breakthrough vaccine reduces HIV infection by a third

First evidence of possible vaccine as US military-backed medical trial in Thailand cuts HIV infection rate by a third

A medical trial in Thailand has raised hopes of a major breakthrough in the fight against Aids after scientists said an experimental vaccine had reduced the risk of HIV infection by a third.

The world's largest HIV/Aids vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers was the first in which infection has been prevented, according to the US army, which sponsored the trial with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

A combination of two vaccines was tested on HIV-negative Thai men and women aged 18 to 30 at average risk of becoming infected, with half of the participants given dummy shots. New infections occurred in 51 of the 8,197 people given the vaccine, and in 74 of the 8,198 who received dummy shots. That worked out to a 31% lower risk of infection for the vaccine group.

Colonel Jerome Kim, who helped to lead the $105m (£64m) study for the US army, said it was "the first evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive vaccine".

Recent failures had led many scientists to believe that such a vaccine might not be achievable.

The National Institute's director, Dr Anthony Fauci, warned it was "not the end of the road", but said he was surprised and very pleased by the outcome.

"It gives me cautious optimism about the possibility of improving this result" he said. "This is something that we can do."

Every day, 7,000 people worldwide are newly infected with HIV; 2 million died of Aids in 2007, the UN agency Unaids estimates.

The Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, an international group that has worked towards developing a vaccine, welcomed the results of the trial, the third major study since 1983, when HIV was identified as the cause of Aids, as "an historic milestone".

The executive director, Mitchell Warren, said: "There is little doubt that this finding will energise and redirect the Aids vaccine field."

Frances Gotch, professor of immunology at Imperial College London said the results appeared to be statistically significant and may have been the effect of the two different vaccines working in tandem to more powerful effect.

"The fact that they have seen a response with people with such a low incidence of infection is impressive," Gotch, who is also the principal investigator for the International Aids Vaccine Initiative, told the Guardian.

"Of course its not 100% of people [protected] but 31% could make an enormous difference in the world. I think this is something we can work with."

Thailand's ministry of public health conducted the study, which used strains of HIV common in Thailand.

Scientists stressed it was not known whether such a vaccine would work against other strains elsewhere in the world. The study was done in Thailand because US army scientists carried out pivotal research in that country when the Aids epidemic emerged there, isolating virus strains and providing genetic information on them to vaccine makers.

The study tested a two-vaccine combination in a "prime-boost" approach, where the first one primes the immune system to attack HIV virus, and the second one strengthens the response.

Alvac uses canarypox, a bird virus, altered so it can't cause human disease, to ferry synthetic versions of three HIV genes into the body. AidsVax contains a genetically engineered version of a protein on HIV's surface.

It is unclear whether vaccine makers will seek to license the two-vaccine combination in Thailand. Before the trial began, the US Food and Drug Administration said other studies would be needed before the vaccine could be considered for US licensing.

The UK's leading Aids charity, the Terrance Higgins Trust, said it was treating the results with "cautious optimism".

"This is the first step on a very long road," said the policy manager, Vicky Sheard.

"There's a lot of research needed into how a vaccine can be rolled out, how costly it's going to be, whether it's going to be effective against different strains."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Sep 2009 | 4:20 am

UN 'inaction'

Delays thwart Nepal's vital climate change plan
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 4:02 am

Trial HIV vaccine cuts infection

An experimental HIV vaccine has for the first time cut infection rates, in a major trial in Thailand, researchers say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 3:51 am

Is China Turning Into the Climate Change Good Guy? (Time.com)

Time.com - The fastest growing economy in the world announces surprising moves. How much will it be able to deliver?
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 3:35 am

Safe haven

A new home for two of the world's rarest primates
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 3:06 am

El Nino shift could boost hurricanes, droughts: study (AFP)

AFP - Global warming periodically shifts El Nino thousands of miles to the west, potentially intensifying Asian droughts and weakening its dampening effect on Atlantic hurricanes, reports a study published Thursday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 2:58 am

The Nation's weather (AP)

AP - The East was forecast to remain wet Thursday while another system developed in the Plains.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 2:58 am

Water gushes down streets in drought-stricken LA (AP)

AP - Although the Los Angeles River looks more like a rain-starved trickle these days, parts of this drought-stricken city have been awash in an unusual sight — torrents of floodwater sweeping cars off streets and barbecues out of backyards.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 2:27 am

Spacecraft see 'damp' Moon soils

Data from three spacecraft, including an Indian probe, detect very fine films of water coating dirt particles on the Moon.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 1:36 am

Largest ever hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold

First pieces of gold were found in a farm field by an amateur metal detector who lives alone on disability benefit

A harvest of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver so beautiful it brought tears to the eyes of one expert, has poured out of a Staffordshire field - the largest hoard of gold from the period ever found.

The weapons and helmet decorations, coins and Christian crosses amount to more than 1500 pieces, with hundreds still embedded in blocks of soil. It adds up to 5kg of gold – three times the amount found in the famous Sutton Hoo ship burial in 1939 – and 2.5kg of silver, and may be the swag from a spectacularly successful raiding party of warlike Mercians, some time around AD700.

The first scraps of gold were found in July in a farm field by Terry Herbert, an amateur metal detector who lives alone in a council flat on disability benefit, who had never before found anything more valuable than a nice rare piece of Roman horse harness. The last pieces were removed from the earth by a small army of archaeologists a fortnight ago.

Herbert could be sharing a reward of at least £1m, possibly many times that, with the landowner, as local museums campaign to raise funds to keep the treasure in the county where it was found.

Leslie Webster, former keeper of the department of prehistory at the British Museum, who led the team of experts and has spent months poring over metalwork, described the hoard as "absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells".

"This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries," she predicted.

The gold includes spectacular gem studded pieces decorated with tiny interlaced beasts, which were originally the ornamentation for Anglo-Saxon swords of princely quality: the experts would judge one a spectacular discovery, but the field has yielded 84 pommel caps and 71 hilt collars, a find without precedent.

The hoard has just officially been declared treasure by a coroner's inquest, allowing the find which has occupied every waking hour of a small army of experts to be made public at Birmingham City Museum, where all the pieces have been brought for safe keeping and study.

The find site is not being revealed, in case the ground still holds more surprises, even though archaeologists have now pored over every inch of it without finding any trace of a grave, a building or a hiding place.

The field is now under grass, but had been ploughed deeper than usual last year by the farmer, which the experts assume brought the pieces closer to the surface. Herbert reported it as he has many previous small discoveries to Duncan Slarke, the local officer for the portable antiquities scheme, which encourages metal detectives to report all their archaeological finds. Slarke recalled: "Nothing could have prepared me for that. I saw boxes full of gold, items exhibiting the very finest Anglo-Saxon workmanship. It was breathtaking."

As archaeologists poured into the field, along with experts including a crack metal detecting scheme from the Home Office who normally work on crime scene forensics, Herbert brought one friend sworn to secrecy to watch, but otherwise managed not to breath a word to anyone – even the fellow members of his metal detecting society when they boasted of their own latest finds.

None of the experts, including a flying squad from the British Museum shuttling between London and Birmingham, has seen anything like it in their lives: not just the quantity, but the dazzling quality of the pieces have left them groping for superlatives.

They are still arguing about the date some of the pieces were made, the date they went into the ground, and the significance of most seemingly wrenched off objects they originally decorated. There are three Christian crosses, but they were folded up as casually as shirt collars. A strip of gold with a biblical inscription was also folded in half: it reads, in occasionally misspelled Latin, "Rise up O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate the be driven from thy face."

Kevin Leahy, an expert on Anglo-Saxon metal who originally trained as a foundry engineer, and who comes from Burton-on-Trent, has been cataloguing the find and describes the craftsmanship as "consummate", but the make up of the hoard as unbalanced.

"There is absolutely nothing feminine. There are no dress fittings, brooches or pendants. These are the gold objects most commonly found from the Anglo-Saxon ere. The vast majority of items in the hoard are martial - war gear, especially sword fittings."

If the date of between AD650 and AD750 is correct, it is too early to blame the Vikings, and just too early for the most famous local leader, Offa of Offa's Dyke fame.

Leahy said he was not surprised at the find being in Staffordshire, the heartland of the "militarily aggressive and expansionist" 7th century kings of Mercia including Penda, Wulfhere and Æthelred. "This material could have been collected by any of these during their wars with Northumbria and East Anglia, or by someone whose name is lost to history. Here we are seeing history confirmed before our eyes."

Deb Klemperer, head of local history collections at the Potteries museum, and an expert on Saxon Staffordshire pottery, said: "My first view of the hoard brought tears to my eyes – the Dark Ages in Staffordshire have never looked so bright nor so beautiful."

The most important pieces will be on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery from today until Tuesday October 13, and will then go to the British Museum for valuation – a process which will involve another marathon collaboration between experts. Their best guess today is "millions".

Leahy, who still has hundreds of items to add to his catalogue, has in the past excavated several Anglo-Saxon sites including a large cemetery of clay pots full of cremated bone. He said: "After all those urns I think I deserve the Staffordshire find."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Sep 2009 | 11:56 pm

MRI, solar cells, aging work lead Nobel predictions

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists who discovered the secrets of how cells age, who made efficient solar cells possible and whose work led to real-time imaging of the brain are all leading contenders for Nobel prizes, Thomson Reuters predicted on Thursday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Sep 2009 | 10:30 pm

Storm scenario

Exercise tests readiness for North Sea flood
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Sep 2009 | 9:53 pm

It's Official: Water Found on the Moon (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Sep 2009 | 9:01 pm

Indian mission finds water on moon

Two other studies back findings from Chandrayaan-1

An Indian space mission claims to have found water on the moon, raising hopes that a manned base could be established there within the next two decades.

It has been widely believed that the moon was dry, but data from India's Chandrayaan-1 mission allegedly found clear evidence of water there, apparently concentrated at the poles and possibly formed by the solar wind.

What's more, water appears to still be forming, advancing the possibility that human life could be sustained there. Scientists hope that astronauts could one day not only drink the water but extract oxygen from it to breathe and hydrogen to use as fuel.

The man who led the mission, Dr Mylswamy Annadurai, told the Times today how pleased he was at the discovery, which significantly enhances India's position in its space race with China.

"It's very satisfying," he said. "This was one of the main objectives of Chandrayaan-1, to find evidence of water on the moon."

The reports from the Indian mission were backed up by the findings of two other studies to be published in the journal Science on Friday, showing that the water may be actively moving around, forming and reforming as particles mixed up in the dust on the surface of the moon.

Carle Pieters, of Brown University on Rhode Island, and colleagues reviewed data from India's Chandrayaan-1 mission – India's first mission to the moon – and found spectrographic evidence of water. The water seems thicker closer to the poles, they reported.

"When we say 'water on the moon,' we are not talking about lakes, oceans or even puddles. Water on the moon means molecules of water and hydroxyl (hydrogen and oxygen) that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top millimetres of the moon's surface," Pieters said in a statement.

Jessica Sunshine of the University of Maryland and colleagues used infrared mapping from Nasa's Deep Impact spacecraft to show water all over the moon, while Roger Clark of the US Geological Survey and colleagues used a spectrometer – which breaks down light waves to analyse elements and chemicals reflecting them – from the Cassini spacecraft to identify water.

"These reports of lunar surface water coincide with intense interest in water at the poles of the Moon," Paul Lucey of the University of Hawaii, who was not involved in the research, wrote in a commentary.

"There may be much 'wetter' regions to be discovered far from the sites that have been sampled to date," Lucey added.

"It is also possible that rare water-bearing minerals previously observed in lunar samples, but argued to be terrestrial contamination, might be indigenous. Perhaps the most valuable result of these new observations is that they prompt a critical re-examination of the notion that the Moon is dry. It is not."

Next month, Nasa's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite or LCROSS mission will try to detect water by deliberately crashing a large spacecraft on to the moon.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Sep 2009 | 7:34 pm

Water Found on the Moon

Scientists’ understanding of the moon could be all wet. Its surface is surprisingly dewy and its interior contains more water than previous analyses of moon rocks have indicated, according to new studies.

Observations from three spacecraft suggest that water is widely distributed over a thin layer of the lunar surface rather than locked up in icy enclaves predicted to lie at the moon’s poles. The results, detailed in a trio of papers posted online September 24 in Science, suggest that liquid water may be more available to future moon explorers than had been thought. Concentrations in sunlit soil might average about 1,000 parts per million, the equivalent of roughly a quart of water per ton of material. That water doesn’t remain on the moon, but comes and goes each lunar day.

In contrast, water molecules bound to phosphate minerals within volcanic rocks — material that formed well beneath the lunar surface — date back several billion years, says Francis McCubbin of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington D.C. A fourth, unpublished study led by McCubbin finds a surprisingly high abundance of this interior water, which may shed new light on how the moon formed.

The researchers who made the surface observations caution that their observations, which are based on low-resolution spectroscopy of minerals on the lunar surface, cannot clearly distinguish between water and the hydroxyl ion, which can serve as a marker for water.

Nonetheless, Roger N. Clark of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz., asserts that “this is the first detection of water on the moon and we see it all over, not just in the polar regions.” Clark, a coauthor of two of the Science papers, led a team that found evidence of water in spectra taken by the Cassini spacecraft as it flew past the moon in 1999. Clark says he knew his team had a real signal a while ago, but he says he waited to publish because “the detection was so fantastic, I felt we needed confirmation.”

Confirmation has now come in the form of spectra taken by instruments aboard NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft and Chandrayaan-I, India’s first mission to the moon. Each of the papers in Science reports data from one of the spacecraft.

Last week, other researchers reported that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft had found hydrogen on the moon’s surface, a possible marker of water (SN Online: 9/18/09).

The three Science papers “present a strong case for surficial water on the moon, and this could certainly be the result of delivery by icy impactors or solar wind interactions long after the moon formed,” comments Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who is not a member of any of the teams.

Data collected by Deep Impact one-quarter of a lunar day apart reveal that layers of water only a few molecules thick form, evaporate into space and then reform each lunar day, notes Jessica Sunshine of the University of Maryland in College Park, lead author of the Deep Impact study.

An obvious driver of such a cycle would be hydrogen ions delivered by the solar wind. The ions could interact with oxygen-rich minerals on the lunar surface to produce water, Sunshine suggests. Heat from the sun could then vaporize the water each lunar noon. Although the long-term effects of this interaction on the moon are unknown, “this same process should be occurring on airless, silicate-rich bodies throughout the inner solar system,” she says.

In McCubbin’s study of the lunar interior, he and his colleagues calculate that phosphate minerals contain a concentration of water as high as several thousand parts per million. This result, combined with lower abundances of water in other volcanic material reported in 2008 by Alberto Saal of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island points to an average overall abundance of water in the lunar mantle significantly higher than the previous estimate of 1 part per billion.

It’s been a long-standing assumption, notes Canup, that if the moon formed when a giant, Mars-sized impactor smacked into the young Earth, any water would have been vaporized by the high temperatures generated during such a cataclysm and that vapor would have escaped into space. However, that assumption “has yet to be evaluated with direct models,” she adds.

McCubbin agrees that there may have been some way for water to be retained in this accepted model of the moon’s formation. Any alternative explanation of moon formation will have to account for all the water now known to reside inside the moon.

On October 9, a NASA spacecraft called LCROSS will deliberately crash into a cratered area of the moon’s south pole, where frozen water likely resides. The resulting plume of kicked-up soil should reveal the abundance of water there.

Says Canup: “Our picture of a bone-dry moon is clearly in need of updating.”

Image: Schematic showing the stream of charged hydrogen ions carried from the sun by the solar wind. / University of Maryland, F. Merlin, McREL
See Also:

• Science News stories on Wired Science
• Scrappy Post-Apollo Lunar Science Sets Stage for New Missions
• Moon Mission Accidentally Burns Up Fuel Reserves
• Bring Back NASA’s Crazy Idea Factory
• The New Exoplanetology: ‘I Learned It by Watching You, Earth
• Humans Aren’t Going to Mars — or Anywhere Else — Without More Money

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Sep 2009 | 6:47 pm

Record breeding year for Scotland's sea eagles

Sea eagles in Scotland have had their best breeding season since the species' reintroduction, RSPB Scotland says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Sep 2009 | 6:19 pm

Missions find evidence of water on the moon

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three separate missions examining the moon have found clear evidence of water there, apparently concentrated at the poles and possibly formed by the solar wind.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Sep 2009 | 6:12 pm

Bid to protect England's topsoil

England's soil needs safeguarding to ensure it continues to store carbon dioxide, the government says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Sep 2009 | 6:10 pm

It's Official: Water Found on the Moon

Observations from three spacecraft show signal of water across moon's surface.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Sep 2009 | 5:05 pm

Celebs and scientists' dream gadgets

Leading figures from the worlds of entertainment, science and business reveal the whacky gizmos they wish existed

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Sep 2009 | 5:00 pm

What is your dream invention?

Forget iPhones, Tivos and home DNA testing kits, what mind-blowing gadget do you really want? Here, politicians, scientists and athletes let their imaginations wander

Many moons ago, I woke up on a night bus in the early hours of the morning somewhere south of civilisation. I had no idea how to get home, and even if I did, I had little in the way of money to get there. I needed the magic button.

The magic button is a wonderful thing. Push it, and the next thing you know you're tucked up in bed, your only distraction the slowly turning pages of a book and the gravelly voice of Mariella Frostrup reading a wholesome bedtime tale from a rocking chair in the corner.

I've been waiting for the magic button to be invented since I was first dragged to church for some well-meant pre-pubescent indoctrination. It would have served me well at school discos, in the long pauses at college tutorials, and almost daily in adult life. If only someone would go and invent it.

To raise awareness of the annual National Science and Engineering Competition, organisers have cast around for sports stars, scientists and media types and asked them to name their own dream inventions. It's fair to say they range from the brilliant to the downright peculiar by way of the deeply worthy.

The competition itself is for budding scientists and engineers aged 11 to 18 who have worked on brilliant ideas of their own. They don't need to be school projects: something you've worked on as a hobby is just as eligible. The best will be picked after the competition ends on 30 October, and two entrants will be named Young Scientist and Young Engineer of the Year.

But back to those dream inventions. Jockey Richard Dunwoody wants ear muffs for his horse. That's right, ear muffs for his horse. Olympic rowing champion James Cracknell wants to be able to teleport, presumably because it's so time-consuming rowing everywhere. And her of the jumpsuit, Anneka Rice, wants to to be fitted with a chip that does everything all the stuff in her handbag does. But what to dance around, Anneka?

The BBC broadcaster John Humphrys, whose on-air engagement in science occasionally gets past the "fancy that?" stage, wants a gadget to tell him when interviewees are talking rubbish. "On reflection, it would probably make my role redundant," he says.

You can't help but admire the imagination of Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, the former chairman of Shell. His response in full: "If only we could use DNA analysis on chewing gum on the streets to identify who spat it there and then invent a sticky substance to be applied to their shoes for a year, which would selectively collect chewing gum, thus punishing the offender and at the same time cleaning the streets." Brilliant, if a tinge Draconian.

Selfless former England footballer Gary Lineker, said: "If only I had a time machine so I could go back and play one extra game for England and become England's all time highest-ever scorer."

Two of our politicians wish for a vaccine for HIV, the virus that causes Aids. Hats off to science minister Lord Drayson and Lib Dem shadow science minister Evan Harris.

Plenty of people wanted gadgets to save the environment. Adam Afriyie, the Tory shadow science minister, wants to capture the power of the sun "so we could have limitless energy without damaging the planet". TV's Michaela Strachan wants aeroplanes that don't churn out tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Oxford University neuroscientist Colin Blakemore hit on "an attractive solution to global warming and the energy crisis" with a flash of genius: "What about synthetic wisteria, capable of performing artificial photosynthesis, capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting sunlight to electricity, with its roots connected to the National Grid?" Let's hope Monsanto are reading.

Jim Al-Khalili, a physicist at the University of Surrey, wants a gadget to answer one of the great mysteries of the microworld: "If only we physicists could truly understand what atoms do when no one is looking. Quantum theory tells us what to expect when we look at atoms, but not what they get up to in secret."

Occasional Guardian Science podcast guest and Comment is Free writer Adam Rutherford has a tortured acronym ready for his dream invention. "One blast from the PRATDiC (Perspective Relative Appreciation Time Distortion Cannon) and you'd instantly see the benefits of how science and technology has taken us from bone tools to the stars. The result: an insatiable desire to get out there and start experimenting and building stuff."

And that's the point. Fifty years ago, the internet had barely been dreamed of. Global warming was a niche concern. The first VCRs had only just clunked onto the market. What gadgets will we want, or need, in the next 50 years? It's up to the young scientists and engineers of today.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Sep 2009 | 5:00 pm

Castro praises Obama on climate

Ex-Cuban President Fidel Castro praises President Obama's speech at the UN for its words on climate change.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Sep 2009 | 4:44 pm

Official: Water Found on Moon (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Sep 2009 | 4:31 pm

Senate blocks bid to keep offshore drilling policy (AP)

AP - The Senate on Wednesday voted against an attempt by Republicans to keep in place a plan by the Bush administration to allow oil and gas drilling along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Sep 2009 | 4:29 pm

It's not lunacy, probes find water in moon dirt (AP)

AP - The moon isn't the dry dull place it seems. Traces of water lurk in the dirt unseen.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Sep 2009 | 3:42 pm

Water Found on the Moon

Our moon may not be so dead and dry after all, in fact, findings suggest there's water everywhere.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm

What Seniors Need to Know about the Flu

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that up to 20 percent of the population gets the flu each year.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Sep 2009 | 2:59 pm

Evolution Can't Go Backward (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - In a kind of evolutionary bridge-burning, once a gene has morphed into its current state, the road back gets blocked, new research suggests. So there's no easy way to turn back.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Sep 2009 | 2:36 pm

BLOG: Spiders Spin Silk for Textile

A whopping one million wild spiders contributed silk to a golden, undyed cloth.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Sep 2009 | 2:30 pm

Mass Extinction Event Spared Europe (Mostly)

The comet impact that wiped out the dinosaurs had little effect on life in Europe.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Sep 2009 | 2:30 pm

Evolution Can't Go Backward

Molecular research suggests evolution is irreversible.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Sep 2009 | 2:21 pm

Greenland, Antarctica Ice Melt Accelerates

Melting along two major ice sheets is speeding up and is in a self-feeding loop.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Sep 2009 | 2:15 pm

1 Million Spiders Make Golden Silk for Rare Cloth

A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders goes on display today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

To produce this unique golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting golden orb spiders from telephone poles in Madagascar, while another dozen workers carefully extracted about 80 feet of silk filament from each of the arachnids. The resulting 11-foot by 4-foot textile is the only large piece of cloth made from natural spider silk existing in the world today.

“Spider silk is very elastic, and it has a tensile strength that is incredibly strong compared to steel or Kevlar,” said textile expert Simon Peers, who co-led the project. “There’s scientific research going on all over the world right now trying to replicate the tensile properties of spider silk and apply it to all sorts of areas in medicine and industry, but no one up until now has succeeded in replicating 100 percent of the properties of natural spider silk.”

Peers came up with the idea of weaving spider silk after learning about the French missionary Jacob Paul Camboué, who worked with spiders in Madagascar during the 1880s and 1890s. Camboué built a small, hand-driven machine to extract silk from up to 24 spiders at once, without harming them.

“Simon managed to build a replica of this 24-spider-silking machine that was used at the turn of the century,” said Nicholas Godley, who co-led the project with Peers. As an experiment, the pair collected an initial batch of about 20 spiders. “When we stuck them in the machine and started turning it, lo and behold, this beautiful gold-colored silk started coming out,” Godley said.

But to make a textile of any significant size, the silk experts had to drastically scale up their project. “Fourteen thousand spiders yields about an ounce of silk,” Godley said, “and the textile weighs about 2.6 pounds. The numbers are crazy.”

Researchers have long been intrigued by the unique properties of spider silk, which is stronger than steel or Kevlar but far more flexible, stretching up to 40 percent of its normal length without breaking. Unfortunately, spider silk is extremely hard to mass produce: Unlike silk worms, which are easy to raise in captivity, spiders have a habit of chomping off each other’s heads when housed together.

To get as much silk as they needed, Godley and Peers began hiring dozens of spider handlers to collect wild arachnids and carefully harness them to the silk-extraction machine. “We had to find people who were willing to work with spiders,” Godley said, “because they bite.”

By the end of the project, Godley and Peers extracted silk from more than 1 million female golden orb spiders, which are abundant throughout Madagascar and known for the rich golden color of their silk. Because the spiders only produce silk during the rainy season, workers collected all the spiders between October and June.

Then an additional 12 people used hand-powered machines to extract the silk and weave it into 96-filament thread. Once the spiders had been milked, they were released into back into the wild, where Godley said it takes them about a week to regenerate their silk. “We can go back and re-silk the same spiders,” he said. “It’s like the gift that never stops giving.”

Of course, spending four years to produce a single textile of spider silk isn’t very practical for scientists trying to study the properties of spider silk or companies that want to manufacture the fabric for use as a biomedical scaffold or an alternative to Kevlar armor. Several groups have tried inserting spider genes into bacteria (or even cows and goats) to produce silk, but so far, the attempts have been only moderately successful.

Part of the reason it’s so hard to generate spider silk in the lab is that it starts out as a liquid protein that’s produced by a special gland in the spider’s abdomen. Using their spinnerets, spiders apply a physical force to rearrange the protein’s molecular structure and turn it into solid silk.

“When we talk about a spider spinning silk, we’re talking about how the spider applies forces to produce a physical transformation from liquid to solid,” said spider silk expert Todd Blackledge of the University of Akron, who was not involved in creating the textile. “Scientists simply can’t replicate that as well as a spider does it. Every year we’re getting closer and closer to being able to mass-produce it, but we’re not there yet.”

For now, it seems we’ll have to be content with one incredibly beautiful cloth, graciously provided by more than a million spiders.

Images: 1) AMNH/R. Mickens 2) Nicholas Godley and Simon Peers

See Also:

• Metals Give Spiderman a Boost
• Cow Used in Man-Made Spider Web
• Nanomaterial Fuses Spider Silk and
• Of Bees, Rats and Dwarf Goats
• Nanotech Discovery Could Lead to Spiderman Suit

Follow us on Twitter @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Sep 2009 | 1:39 pm

Antarctic coastal ice thinning surprises experts

OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists are surprised at how extensively coastal ice in Antarctica and Greenland is thinning, according to a study Wednesday that could help predict rising sea levels linked to climate change.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Sep 2009 | 1:30 pm

9 Environmental Boundaries We Don’t Want to Cross

Climate change threatens to turn the planet into a stormy, overheated mess: That much we know. But according to 28 leading scientists, greenhouse gas pollution is but one of nine environmental factors critical to humanity’s future. If their boundaries are stretched too far, Earth’s environment could be catastrophically altered — and three have already been broken, with several others soon to follow.

This grim diagnosis, published Wednesday in Nature, is the most ambitious assessment of planetary health to date. It’s a first-draft users’ manual for an era that scientists dub the “anthropocene,” in which nearly seven billion resource-hungry humans have come to dominate ecological change on Earth. The scientists’ quantifications are open to argument, but not the necessity of their perspective.

“It’s a crude attempt to map the environmental space in which we can operate,” said Jon Foley, director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment and one of the paper’s lead authors. “We need to keep our activities in a certain range, or the planet could tip into a state we haven’t seen in the history of our civilization.”

Thresholds for atmospheric carbon dioxide and ozone have already been described, and are widely known to the public. But the scientists say five other factors are just as important: ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, land use, freshwater use and biodiversity. They say chemical pollution and atmospheric aerosols may also be essential, but can’t yet be quantified.

Values for the proposed boundaries are still just estimates, and don’t account for how pushing one could affect another — how, for example, acidification that kills plankton could make it harder for the ocean to absorb CO2 and rebound from nitrogen pollution. Ecological models still can’t capture the entirety of Earth’s biological, geological and chemical processes, and it’s impossible to run whole-Earth experiments — except, arguably, for the experiment that’s going on now.

Despite those uncertainties, one aspect of Earth’s behavior is becoming clear. Records of global transitions between geological ages, and of regional changes between environmental stages, suggest that planet-wide change could happen relatively quickly. It might not take thousands or millions of years for Earth’s environment to be altered. It could happen in centuries, perhaps even decades.

Exactly what Earth would look like is difficult to predict in detail, but it could be radically different from the mild environment that has prevailed for the last 10,000 years. It was temperate stability that nurtured the rise of civilization, and it should continue for thousands of years to come, unless humanity keeps pushing the limits.

“The Earth of the last 10,000 years has been more recognizable than the Earth we may have 100 years from now. It won’t be Mars, but it won’t be the Earth that you and I know,” said Foley. “This is the single most defining problem of our time. Will we have the wisdom to be stewards of a world we’ve come to dominate?”

Foley’s team put the atmospheric carbon dioxide threshold at 350 parts per million, a level the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change says should keep Earth’s average temperature from rising by more than four degrees Fahrenheit. Current atmospheric CO2 levels are already approaching 400 parts per million.

Also exceeded are limits for species loss, which the scientists set at 10 per year per million species, and nitrogen use, pegged at 35 million tons per year. The current extinction rate is ten times higher than advised, ostensibly compromising the ability of ecosystems to process nutrients. The use of nitrogen — which is needed for fertilizer, but causes oxygen-choking algae blooms — is nearly four times higher than recommended.

On the positive side, atmospheric levels of ultraviolet radiation-blocking ozone are safe, thanks to a 1987 ban on ozone-destroying chemicals. Total rates of ocean acidification, freshwater consumption and land use are also acceptable, but those thresholds are expected to be exceeded in coming decades.

The seven boundary points are certain to be controversial, and Nature commissioned seven separate critiques by leading experts in each field.

William Schlesinger, president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, said the recommended nitrogen limit “seems arbitrary.” Echoing his words was Steve Bass of the International Institute for Environment and Development, who said the 15 percent cap on land devoted to agriculture could as easily be 10 or 20 percent.

International Water Management Institute researcher David Molden said the 4,000 cubic kilometer ceiling on freshwater use — roughly one-third of all freshwater — “may be too high.” Myles Allen, an Oxford University climatologist, argued that CO2 emissions should be counted in a different way. Cristian Samper, director of the U.S. Natural History Museum, said that taxonomic family loss is a more relevant measure than species loss.

According to Foley, who called his team’s threshold values a “cave painting” version of the true limits, the paper is less important for its details than its approach. And though the critics argued over the numbers, all agreed that exceeding them will be disastrous.

“Planetary boundaries are a welcome new approach,” wrote Molden. “It is imperative that we act now on several fronts to avert a calamity far greater than what we envision from climate change.”

Peter Brewer, an ocean chemist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, criticized the paper’s lack of proposed solutions. Given the ongoing failure of governments and citizens to follow their scientists’ advice on climate change, more than dire warnings is clearly needed.

“Is it truly useful to create a list of environmental limits without serious plans for how they may be achieved?” Brewer wrote. “Without recognition of what would be needed economically and politically to enforce such limits, they may become just another stick to beat citizens with.”

“It’s unsatisfactory, I agree. We don’t answer the question of how to keep humanity from crossing the boundaries,” said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Stockholm Environment Institute and a lead author of the Nature paper. “That’s the next challenge. To stay within planetary boundaries, we need tremendous social transformation.”

See Also:

• Scientists Seek Warning Signs for Catastrophic Tipping Points …
• Latest Extinction is the Greatest
• Ocean Dead Zones May Be Worse Than Thought
• Western Oceans Quickly Going Acidic, Say Scientists
• It’s a New Geological Age. Now Name It!
• Humans Halfway to Causing Dangerous Climate Change
• Mapping the Humanized World

Note: The Nature paper is an edited version of the full article, which is available from the Stockholm Resilience Institute.

Citations: “A safe operating space for humanity.” By Johan Rockström, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin, III, Eric F. Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton, Marten Scheffer, Carl Folke, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Björn Nykvist, Cynthia A. de Wit, Terry Hughes, Sander van der Leeuw, Henning Rodhe, Sverker Sörlin, Peter K. Snyder, Robert Costanza, Uno Svedin, Malin Falkenmark, Louise Karlberg, Robert W. Corell, Victoria J. Fabry, James Hansen, Brian Walker, Diana Liverman, Katherine Richardson, Paul Crutzen, Jonathan A. Foley. Nature, Vol. 461 No. 7263, September 24, 2009.

“Thresholds risk prolonged degradation.” By William Schlesinger. Nature, Vol. 461 No. 7263, September 24, 2009.

“Keep off the grass.” By Steve Bass. Nature, Vol. 461 No. 7263, September 24, 2009.

“Tangible targets are critical.” By Myles Allen. Nature, Vol. 461 No. 7263, September 24, 2009.

“Identifying abrupt change.” By Mario J. Molina. Nature, Vol. 461 No. 7263, September 24, 2009.

“The devil is in the detail.” By David Molden. Nature, Vol. 461 No. 7263, September 24, 2009.

“Consider all consequences.” By Peter Brewer. Nature, Vol. 461 No. 7263, September 24, 2009.

“Rethinking biodiversity.” By Cristian Samper. Nature, Vol. 461 No. 7263, September 24, 2009.

Images: 1. NASA 2. Encyclopedia of Earth

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes, Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecosystem and planetary tipping points.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Sep 2009 | 12:39 pm

The Pinwheel Galaxy Captured in Dazzling Color

The Pinwheel Galaxy is one of the most fantastic spiral galaxies to view from Earth because it is facing us, displaying the full glory of its awesome shape. This new three-color composite image was captured by the Isaac Newton Telescope in La Palma, Spain.

Known more officially as Messier 101 or NGC 5457, this classic spiral galaxy is 27 million light years from Earth in the Ursa Major constellation, also known as the Big Dipper. Its slight asymmetry is thought to be the result of an encounter with another galaxy in the recent (astronomically speaking) past. This event also left many huge clouds of glowing gas and plasma known as H II regions.

Though the galaxy, which measures 170,000 light-years across, is visible with the naked eye as a fuzzy spot, large telescopes are needed to see any detail.

Image: Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes / Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias

See Also:

• More Mindblowingspacephotos
• Strange Eye-Shaped Galaxy Has Black-Hole Iris
• Hubble Snaps Fantastic Galaxy Collision
• Best View Ever of a Galaxy Near You
• Hubble Snaps Image of Triple Galaxy, as Ordered by the People
  
• New View of the Center of the Galaxy
• Hubble Captures Image of Strange Giant Galaxy

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Sep 2009 | 12:04 pm

DNA trawl shows long history of India's castes

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A genetic search of India's diverse populations shows most people have mixtures of European and ancient south Indian genes, and helps illustrate the deep roots of the country's caste system, researchers reported on Wednesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Sep 2009 | 11:27 am

Alaskans bank on annual oil royalty dividend (AP)

AP - Isaac Nukapigak plans to spend his annual reward for living in Alaska just catching up with the basics of survival in his remote whaling village, where gasoline can top $9 a gallon and a gallon of fresh milk can set you back almost $15.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Sep 2009 | 11:23 am

Thinning glaciers drive polar ice loss

Satellite survey of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets reveals extensive network of rapidly thinning glaciers that is driving ice loss in the regions

A comprehensive satellite survey of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has revealed an extensive network of rapidly thinning glaciers that is driving ice loss in the regions.

The most profound loss of ice was seen along the continental coastlines, where glaciers speed up as they slip into the sea. In some regions, glaciers flowing into surrounding waters were thinning by nearly 10m a year.

Scientists used data from Nasa's ICESat (Ice, Cloud and and land Elevation Satellite) to piece together a picture of the changing fortunes of glaciers on the ice sheets. The satellite bounces laser light off the ground, allowing researchers to measure the terrain with extraordinary precision.

The survey, compiled from 50m satellite measurements taken between February 2003 and November 2007, shows glaciers thinning at all latitudes in Greenland and along key Antarctic coastlines. Thinning penetrated deep into the interior of the ice sheets and continues to spread as ice shelves melt into the sea.

"We were surprised to see such a strong pattern of thinning glaciers across such large areas of coastline. It's widespread and in some cases, thinning extends hundreds of kilometres inland," said Hamish Pritchard who led the study at the British Antarctic Survey.

In Greenland, glaciers in the south-east were found to be flowing at speeds of more than 100m per year, during which they thinned by 84cm. More slow-going glaciers lost around 12cm a year.

In a vast region of western Antarctica that drains into the Amundsen Sea, the Pine Island glacier and neighbouring Smith and Thwaites glaciers are thinning by 9m a year, the satellite measurements show. The study is published in the journal Nature.

Previous satellite surveys of polar regions have relied upon radar measurements that cannot map the Earth's surface with the same precision as the ICESat laser rangefinder. The satellite allows scientists to take 65m-wide snapshots of the ground, giving an unprecedented view of glaciers on the steep terrain where ice meets ocean.

This satellite survey helps scientists explore how different aspects of climate change are driving ice loss in polar regions. Higher air temperatures can increase surface melting, but warm ocean currents accelerate ice loss more when glaciers flow into the sea.

"The majority of the thinning we see is not due to increased melting from higher atmospheric temperatures, but because the glaciers are flowing faster thanks to their interaction with the oceans," said Prof David Vaughan, a co-author on the study.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Sep 2009 | 11:05 am

Rare Indian lotus 'disappearing'

Conservation efforts to save India's last surviving examples of a water-lily must be stepped up, a leading botanist says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Sep 2009 | 11:04 am

WATCH: Legacy of the Black Blizzards

Find out if the huge dust storms that blanketed the Midwest during the 1930s could return.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Sep 2009 | 11:00 am

Test judges severity of prostate cancer

Biomarker separates those who need urgent treatment from those with non-aggressive tumours

Scientists have discovered a way to diagnose which men with prostate cancer need urgent treatment, putting them at risk of unpleasant side-effects, and which can safely live with their tumour.

Researchers at Liverpool University hope their breakthrough will lead to a blood test that could transform the prospects for those diagnosed with the most common form of male cancer.

The research published today in the British Journal of Cancer found that two thirds of the 500 men in the study did not need aggressive treatment for their tumour. The side-effects of eradicating prostate cancer tumours often include impotence and incontinence.

The team from Liverpool's school of cancer studies have discovered a biomarker which separates two groups. Men with a protein called heat shock protein-27 (Hsp-27) in samples of prostate tissue taken at the time of their diagnosis with the cancer were almost twice as likely to have died from it during the 15-year follow-up period as those without.

"The biomarker separates men with prostate cancer into two groups – those who require urgent treatment now because their cancer is going to be aggressive and those who we can reassure and say you don't need to pull all your savings out of the bank and take that holiday in Bermuda, you can carry on with your job," said Professor Chris Foster, a Cancer Research UK-funded pathologist at the school. "We can say we know you have prostate cancer but it is not aggressive."

The work, which originates in the pathology lab from the study of tissue taken from tumours during biopsy, may lead to new treatments for prostate cancer, Foster believes, which will not attempt to kill the cancer, but contain it, so that it does not spread elsewhere and do harm.

"The intent of what we do is rather than try to kill a prostate cancer, as you would a weed with weed killer, to develop therapeutic approaches to alter the behaviour of the aggressive cancer cells," he said. The aim would be to move the men with aggressive cancer into the same state as those with non-aggressive cancers. The same approach might be possible with other cancers, such as breast cancer.

"These results are an important step towards tackling the long-standing question of how to treat men with prostate cancer once it has been diagnosed," said Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK.

"The need for treatment varies greatly between patients – men with non-aggressive cancer can live with it for many years without needing therapy, while aggressive cancers require prompt treatment with combinations of surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. But it is very difficult to distinguish who has which type of cancer.

"A marker molecule which identifies aggressive prostate cancer would help us target active treatment to patients who need it – avoiding unnecessary therapy, which can have side-effects, to those who don't."

She added: "The next stage would be to test this protein in large clinical trials to decide if how useful it could be for diagnosis or treatment."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Sep 2009 | 9:45 am

BIG PIC: Saturn's Rings Edge-On With Sun

A new image reveals Saturn just as the planet's tilt aligns the rings with the sun.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Sep 2009 | 9:15 am

Engineering Better Disease Detectors, Energy Storage

Researcher develops biomaterials to aide in disease detection, energy storage.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Sep 2009 | 8:45 am

Female Monarch Butterflies Disappearing

A recent look at monarch butterfly populations shows a big drop in the number of females.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Sep 2009 | 8:31 am

Heat helps in cancer treatment

BERLIN (Reuters) - Cancer patients whose tumors are targeted with heat treatment as well as chemotherapy are more likely to stay alive and cancer-free for longer than those who receive only chemotherapy, researchers said on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Sep 2009 | 8:22 am

Archaeologists find suspected Trojan war-era couple

ANKARA (Reuters) - Archaeologists in the ancient city of Troy in Turkey have found the remains of a man and a woman believed to have died in 1,200 B.C., the time of the legendary war chronicled by Homer, a leading German professor said on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 23 Sep 2009 | 8:09 am

Powerful Ideas: River Turbines Could Electrify New York City

Floating docks could provide clean energy and new space for parks, researchers now propose.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Sep 2009 | 7:37 am

BLOG: Giant Squid Caught Off La. Coast

A giant squid weighing more than 103 pounds is caught off the coast of Louisiana.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Sep 2009 | 7:31 am

People in Vegetative State Can Learn

Patients in a vegetative state or minimally conscious state can learn, scientist say
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Sep 2009 | 7:09 am

NASA Makes Cloud to Study Particles

NASA generates an artificial cloud to learn more about night-shining clouds.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 23 Sep 2009 | 7:01 am