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Migrating Monarch Butterflies 'Nose' Their Way To Mexico, Neurobiologists DiscoverSince the late 1970s scientists have studied the fascinating annual migration of monarch butterflies from across eastern North America to a single location in Mexico. Neurobiologists have now found that a key mechanism that helps steer the butterflies to their ultimate destination resides not in the insects' brains, as previously thought, but in their antennae, a surprising discovery that provides an entirely new perspective of the antenna's role in migration.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm Smart Memory Foam Made Smarter: Metallic Foam Less Expensive To Make, Leading To More ApplicationsResearchers have figured out how to produce a less expensive shape-shifting "memory" foam, which could lead to more widespread applications of the material, such as in surgical positioning tools and valve mechanisms. They have created easily processable polycrystalline foams of a nickel-manganese-gallium alloy that changes shape when exposed to a magnetic field. These shape-changing properties resemble those of the much more expensive single crystals.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm Scandinavians Are Descended From Stone Age Immigrants, Ancient DNA RevealsToday's Scandinavians are not descended from the people who came to Scandinavia at the conclusion of the last ice age but, apparently, from a population that arrived later, concurrently with the introduction of agriculture. This is one conclusion of a new study straddling the borderline between genetics and archaeology.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm Hummer Owners Claim Moral High Ground To Excuse Overconsumption, Study FindsHummer drivers believe they are defending America's frontier lifestyle against anti-American critics, according to a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm Sleep Loss Linked To Increase In Alzheimer's PlaquesChronic sleep deprivation in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease makes Alzheimer's brain plaques appear earlier and more often, researchers report. They also found that orexin, a protein that helps regulate the sleep cycle, appears to be directly involved in the increase.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm Diabetes Most Prevalent In Southern United States, Study FindsDiabetes prevalence is highest in the Southern and Appalachian states and lowest in the Midwest and the Northeast of America. Researchers have used two public data sources to investigate the prevalence of diagnosed and undiagnosed diabetes mellitus at the State level.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 3:00 pm Children Who Are Spanked Have Lower IQs, New Research FindsChildren who are spanked have lower IQs worldwide, including in the United States, according to groundbreaking new research.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm Superheavy Element 114 Confirmed: A Stepping Stone To The 'Island Of Stability'Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have confirmed the production of the superheavy element 114, ten years after a group at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, first claimed to have made it. The search for 114 has long been a key part of the quest for nuclear science's hoped-for Island of Stability.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm Environmental Chemicals Found In Breast Milk And High Incidence Of Testicular CancerA comparison of breast milk samples from Denmark and Finland revealed a significant difference in environmental chemicals which have previously been implicated in testicular cancer or in adversely affecting development of the fetal testis in humans and animals.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm Pancreatic Cancer: Researchers Find Drug That Reverses Resistance To ChemotherapyFor the first time researchers have shown that by inhibiting the action of an enzyme called TAK-1, it is possible to make pancreatic cancer cells sensitive to chemotherapy, opening the way for the development of a new drug to treat the disease.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm AP IMPACT: School drinking water contains toxins (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 4:22 am Fanged frog, 162 other new species found in Mekong (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 4:16 am Ask AP: Wind power and wildlife, jobless benefits (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 4:13 am MRI, solar cells, aging work lead Nobel predictions (Reuters)Reuters - Scientists who discovered the secrets of how cells age, who made efficient solar cells possible and who figured out how to watch the brain work in real time are all leading contenders for Nobel prizes, Thomson Reuters predicted on Thursday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 3:43 am MRI, solar cells, aging work lead Nobel predictionsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists who discovered the secrets of how cells age, who made efficient solar cells possible and who figured out how to watch the brain work in real time are all leading contenders for Nobel prizes, Thomson Reuters predicted on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 3:43 am The Nation's weather (AP)AP - Wet weather was forecast to persist over the Eastern U.S. on Friday as a strong system continued tracking through the country.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 3:12 am Four-winged dino may be missing link in bird debate (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 2:58 am New Mekong species at risk from climate change: WWF (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 2:56 am 'India's moon water probe could yield more finds' (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 1:40 am AP: Palau creates world's first shark sanctuary (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Sep 2009 | 12:02 am AIDS vaccine protects people, shocks researchersWASHINGTON (Reuters) - An experimental AIDS vaccine made from two failed products has protected people for the first time, reducing the rate of infection by about 30 percent, researchers said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 8:39 pm Children Who Get Spanked Have Lower IQs (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Spanking can get kids to behave in a hurry, but new research suggests it can do more harm than good to their noggins. The study, involving hundreds of U.S. children, showed the more a child was spanked the lower his or her IQ compared with others.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 7:16 pm Children Who Get Spanked Have Lower IQsSpanking could shave points off kids IQs.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Sep 2009 | 7:13 pm Palau pioneers 'shark sanctuary'With half of the world's sharks threatened with extinction, Palau creates the world's first "shark sanctuary".Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 7:03 pm Recession barely dents 'eco-debt'The global recession has barely dented the trend to over consumption according to a report out today.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 6:56 pm Burning problemIs Africa's charcoal trade worsening climate change?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 6:02 pm Butterflies carry 'GPS clock' in their antennaeNorth America's Monarch butterflies use a "clock" sensor in their antennae to guide them on winter migration to Mexico.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 6:00 pm NASA finds ice on the moon and on MarsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - International space missions have found ice on the moon and more evidence of ice on Mars -- good news for future settlements and also for scientists looking for extraterrestrial life.Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 5:35 pm Dinosaurs had 'earliest feathers'Exceptionally well preserved dinosaur fossils uncovered in north-eastern China display the earliest known feathers.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 5:30 pm Arachnophobes look away now - it's a bumper autumn for spidersConservationists say there could be more spiders and daddy long legs than usual this autumn because of favourable breeding conditionsSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 5:27 pm Lack of sleep may play role in Alzheimer's: studyCHICAGO (Reuters) - A study in mice suggests lack of sleep may play a role in the development of Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Sep 2009 | 4:28 pm Photo: The Sun Gets Its Spots (Back)
Two sunspots are visible on our star’s face for the first time in more than a year, possibly ending an unexpected lull in solar activity.
Solar flares rise and fall on an 11-year cycle, so scientists thought sunspot activity would pick up some time in 2008. It didn’t. And this year has been quiet, too. No sunspots have been visible on the sun for 80 percent of the days this year. Sunspot activity is correlated with the total amount of energy we receive from the sun. If the sun’s activity were to change remarkably, it would have an influence on global climate. So, in the context of climate change, the fact that the current solar minimum has been the longest and deepest in more than a century has been of special interest. In May, a big sunspot seemed to augur a return to normal, but it faded away and sunspotless days returned. The latest activity might not mark the end of the solar minimum, however. People have been counting sunspots since Galileo first observed one in the early 17th century. Through the 28 documented cycles, stretching from 1745 to today, some variation in cycle length has been observed. That’s why NASA’s former chief sunspot watcher, Michael Kaiser, told us earlier this year that the minimum was “not out of the extreme ordinary.” The photo above is of one of the sunspots, AR 1026. It was sent to Wired.com by solar photographer Trevor Little. Little lives in southern England and snaps his gorgeous photos with “a Solarmax 60 telescope and a Lumenera Skynyx 2-0m CCD camera.” If you’re an astronomer and you want to share images with Wired Science, please tweet us @wiredscience or send an e-mail to our editor, Betsy Mason. (For you sticklers out there, the polarity of solar storms alternates, so technically, a full solar cycle is 22 years long.) See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Sep 2009 | 4:27 pm Exhausted? How to Get Your Willpower BackWillpower is like a muscle: it needs to be challenged to build itself.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Sep 2009 | 3:04 pm Butterfly Antennas Serve as GPSButterfly antennas help these little insects to navigate during their long migrations.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Sep 2009 | 2:15 pm Craters Show 1970s Viking Lander Missed Martian Ice by Inches
Meteorites that crashed into the Martian surface last year exposed buried ice to the digital eyes of NASA spacecraft.
Scientists have used those images to deduce that there is a lot more ice on Mars — and that it’s closer to the equator — than previously thought. In fact, subterranean Martian ice should extend all the way down beyond 48 degrees of latitude, according to the model, which was published in Science Thursday. That happens to be where the Viking Lander 2 was in operation from 1976 to 1980. As part of its science program, the Lander dug a trench about 6 inches deep. The new model predicts that if it had gone an extra 3.5 inches — a bit longer than a credit card — it would have hit ice. It’s difficult to project backwards in time what that discovery would have done to the Martian science program, but its impact could have been large. “To find ice that far from the pole where Viking 2 was, it would have changed the way everyone looked at Mars for the next 20 years,” said NASA Goddard archivist, David Williams, who curates the Viking project historical site. “It would have been a whole different model for Mars… If they’d dug down just a little more, they’d have this complete opposite view of Mars.”
At the time, scientists didn’t really know a lot about the Red Planet. Finding ice underground might not have been that surprising, but largely because the planetologists didn’t have a lot of firm theories about water on Mars. They thought there was ice at the poles, Williams said, but not much more than that. Unlike the Phoenix Lander, the Viking 2 Lander’s trenching tool wasn’t designed to search for or find ice. Its job was to deliver Martian soil to a series of tests. As such, Viking 2 wouldn’t have been able to do much with any hard ice that it found, said Steven Squyres, an astronomer at Cornell and lead investigator of the Mars Rover missions. Its arm just wasn’t powerful enough. Squyers also noted that the Viking missions were a tremendous success, without a water ice find. But the Viking 2 Lander’s work did give the impression that water ice did not exist near the Martian surface in the mid-latitudes. We’ll never know how NASA’s “Follow the Water” missions to Mars might have changed if, for some reason, the Lander had been commanded to dig just a bit deeper and hit a hard, icy surface. It goes to show that sometimes scientific discoveries can come down to a few inches and some luck, even on the surface of a planet hundreds of millions miles away.
See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Sep 2009 | 1:38 pm Feathered dinosaur finds have Chinese scientists all aflutterNew discovery unearthed in rock formations in north-eastern China confirms birds evolved from dinosaurs, scientists claim The discovery of five remarkable new fossils has confirmed that birds evolved from dinosaurs, Chinese scientists claimed tonight. Because the fossils - unearthed in rock formations in north-eastern China - are older than previous discoveries of similar creatures, the find adds weight to the theory that birds descended from predatory dinosaurs. The fossils all have feathers or feather-like structures. The clearest and most striking of the specimens can be seen to have four wings, extensive plumage and profusely feathered feet. One of the scientists who made the discovery, Xu Xing, will reveal details of his find in Bristol tomorrow at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontologists. "These exceptional fossils provide us with evidence that has been missing until now," Xing said. "Now it all fits neatly into place and we have tied up some of the loose ends." The new finds date back to between 151 and 164 million years ago, which suggest they are older than Archaeopteryx, previously thought to be the oldest undisputed bird. Xing, who is based in Beijing, said: "The fossils provide confirmation that the bird-dinosaur hypothesis is correct, and supports the idea that birds descended from theropod dinosaurs (the group of predatory dinosaurs that includes allosaurus and velociraptor)." The fossils were found in the province of Liaoning. Xing told the Guardian he was shocked when he first saw the best of the specimens. "This was really unexpected. One thing that would shock you is that this is covered with feathers everywhere except the beak and the claw. It is the first feathered species known so far; the earliest known feathered species." There have been fakes before. A creature that came to be known as "Archaeoraptor", with the body of the bird and the tail of a dinosaur, sent the world of palaeontology into a flutter after apparently being found in China. It was later proved a fake, not unearthed by scientists, but bought at a rock show in the US. China is an increasingly important centre for palaeontology because so much of the country's rocks remain unexplored. A sizeable contingent from China are attending the conference in Bristol, one of the largest gathering of palaeontologists ever. Xing said: "The first question we wanted to know is: is it fake or real? We checked in detail and convinced ourselves there was no problem. We are 100% sure we are looking at a real species, not a fake one. It's one of the most important for understanding the origin of birds." Long feathers cover the arms and tail, but also the feet, suggesting that a four-winged stage may have existed in the transition to birds. The fossils will also help scientists work out the mechanics of how early birds flew. The specimens have been identified as types of Anchiornis huxleyi. This was previously thought to be a primitive bird, but according to the scientists, closer inspection of these new finds reveals that it should be assigned to the Troodontidae — a group of dinosaurs closely related to birds. The details of the find will also be announced to the wider scientific community in Nature magazine next week. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Sep 2009 | 1:19 pm Killer HurricanesWhy Do Certain Storms Become Mass Murderers?Source: Livescience.com | 24 Sep 2009 | 1:04 pm BLOG: Ice Patches Spotted on MarsA snowball's chance on Mars? New images of ice on the Red Planet suggest it's not bad.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:35 pm Butterflies Use Antenna GPS to Guide Migration
Scientists have finally located the 24-hour clock that guides the migration of monarch butterflies. Instead of being in the brain where most people expected, it turns out the circadian clock is located in the butterflies’ antennae. Every fall, monarchs make an impressive 2,000-mile trek south, using the sun to guide them to the exact same wintering spot in central Mexico. But because the sun is a moving target, changing position throughout the day, biologists have long speculated that in addition to having a “sun compass” in their brains, butterflies must use some kind of 24-hour clock to guide their migration. Now, researchers have located this special GPS system, but it’s not what everyone expected. “The assumption was that we knew where in the brain the molecular clock for this process was,” said biologist Steven Reppert of the University of Massachusetts, who co-authored the paper published Thursday in Science. “Almost everyone you would ask prior to this work would say, ‘Well, of course the clock has to be in the brain. Where else would it be?’” Reppert and his team had been studying the ability of butterfly antenna to sense odors when they uncovered something surprising: When they clipped off the insects’ antennae and tethered them in a flight simulator, the butterflies no longer flew in a uniform direction.
“It was remarkable, the difference,” Reppert said. “The ones without antennae still flew straight, but as a population they were flying in all different directions, compared to the population of migrants with intact antennae that was all going in a southwesterly direction.” Without their feelers, the butterflies lost the ability to navigate using the sun, as if they could no longer adjust their direction based on the time of day. But when the researchers looked for molecular changes in the brains of the antennae-less butterflies, they found that circadian rhythms in the brain were unaffected by clipping the antennae. “This raised the heretical prospect that the timing mechanism may actually be in the antennae,” Reppert said. The researchers tested their hypothesis by painting the antennae of half their butterflies with black enamel, which blocked all input from the sun, and the other half with clear paint that allowed the sun’s rays through. While the monarchs covered with clear paint kept flying south, the butterflies with blacked-out antennae started to drift consistently north, suggesting that their molecular clock was running about an hour off schedule.
Reppert says the new finding not only changes how scientists think about butterfly antennae, but may also suggest a similar role for an antennal clock in other types of insects, such as bees and ants, that also operate elaborate navigation systems. Like butterflies, honeybees use a sun compass to find flowers and communicate their specific position to the rest of the hive, and they could be using a circadian clock in their antenna to adjust the sun’s position to the time of day. “I think it’s a really interesting and elegant paper,” said butterfly researcher Karen Oberhauser of the University of Minnesota, who was not involved in the research. But given the incredible sensory powers of insect antennae, she said she’s not too surprised that the feelers can also keep time. “Our sensory systems are really localized to our heads, but insects can taste with their feet and smell with their antennae, and probably their abdomens have pretty complex sensory systems, too,” Oberhauser said. “Because insect sensory systems are so different than our sensory systems, it’s sometimes difficult for us to even ask the right questions. That’s what’s so interesting about the work that’s being done in the Reppert lab— they’re really delving into these detailed questions.” Image 1: Monarch Watch/Chip Taylor. Image 2: M. Twombly, copyright AAAS/Science. See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:19 pm Birth of a Killer: How Hurricanes BeginAs more people move to the coastlines in a warming world, Humanity is on a collision course with disastrous super-storms of the future.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:05 pm Bitter Legacy of Hurricanes PastDriven by warm ocean waters, some storms can unleash a lethal package of high wind, devastating rain and surging tidal waters.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:04 pm The Hundred Year Storm: Why Certain Hurricanes Turn KillerWhen Hurricane Ike attacked Texas, it echoed a super-storm one century ago; a terrifying deja vu of the deadliest natural disaster in American history.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:03 pm A More Perfect Storm: How Hurricanes IntensifyUnder certain horrifying conditions two eye-walls will form, adding energy to an already dangerous cyclone. This Earth's recipe for cooking up a killer like Katrina.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:01 pm Lack of sleep may raise Alzheimer's riskYoung and middle-aged adults who suffer from insomnia and other sleep disorders may be more likely to develop Alzheimer's in later life, research in mice suggests Chronic lack of sleep may promote the development of Alzheimer's disease, two new studies suggest. The findings may have implications for people suffering from insomnia and other sleep disorders. Researchers monitored levels of amyloid beta, a protein fragment known to be linked to Alzheimer's, in the brains of sleep-deprived mice with symptoms of the disease. They found that preventing the mice from sleeping caused a 25% increase in amyloid beta levels. The peptide builds up in the brains of Alzheimer's sufferers to form damaging plaques. Amyloid beta levels were generally higher when mice were active than when they were sleeping, and animals that stayed awake longer had higher amounts of the peptide in their brains. The research will be published tomorrow in the journal Science. Another study, also published in Science, links the finding to humans, showing that amyloid beta levels in the spinal fluid of volunteers increased when they were awake and fell during sleep. Professor David Holtzman from the Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St Louis, US, where both studies were carried out, said: "The results suggest that we may need to prioritise treating sleep disorders not only for their many acute effects, but also for potential long-term impacts on brain health." The scientists also found a link with orexin, a protein involved in regulating the sleep cycle. When orexin was injected into the brains of mice, the animals stayed awake longer and levels of amyloid beta in their brains increased. A drug that blocked the action of orexin led to a significant reduction in levels and increased the amount of sleep. Three weeks of chronic sleep deprivation was enough to accelerate the deposition of amyloid plaque in the brains of the mice. But after two months of treatment with the orexin blocker, the deposits had shrunk by more than 80% in some cases. "This suggests the possibility that a treatment like this could be tested to see if it could delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease," said Prof Holtzman. He pointed out that as people age and their risk of Alzheimer's increases, they usually sleep for shorter periods. Further studies are being considered to see whether chronic sleep loss in young and middle-aged adults increases the risk of Alzheimer's in later life. Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, affecting an estimated 700,000 people in the UK. The figure is expected to double within a generation. Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said: "This study appears to indicate for the first time that sleep disorders could have a connection to the development of dementia, though the study is only in mice. People who experience sleep disturbance should not be unduly worried about these preliminary findings. "We urgently need more research into the causes of dementia to provide hope of a treatment to the 35 million people worldwide with the condition." Professor Clive Ballard, director of research at the Alzheimer's Society, said: "It is interesting that there may be a link between sleep and the build-up of the protein associated with the development of Alzheimer's disease. However, there are many other biological factors that may have an impact on the protein's production, so further research in this area would be needed." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm Cat Scan of Katrina: Inside a Super StormNew science tools probe the anatomy and physiology of large coastal hurricanes. Researchers dissect the data of dangerous super-storms past to predict the life-cycles of future typhoons.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Sep 2009 | 11:59 am Inside Killer HurricanesWhy do certain storms become mass-murderers? New science discoveries reveal the inner secrets of super-storms, buying vital hours - or even days - for disaster prevention.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Sep 2009 | 11:57 am Huge Anglo-Saxon gold hoard foundThe 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 | 11:38 am HIV Vaccine Instills 'New Hope'For the first time, a vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Sep 2009 | 11:15 am WATCH: Doomsday VirusCould a single virus destroy humankind?Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Sep 2009 | 11:15 am Ethics bypassed in drug trialsMedical progress must not involve dumping risk on to vulnerable people in developing countries Today's report of a small but well-received advance in discovering an effective anti-HIV vaccine raises some difficult questions. This particular study, which is supported by big public health bodies, was looking for a vaccine to protect expressly against a strain of HIV found mainly in Thailand, so it dodges the ethical minefield that is outsourced clinical trials. But when India expects to multiply its clinical trial business by a factor of five between 2008 and 2010, it is clear something is going on that is worth exploring. A research paper earlier this year found evidence of a large increase in outsourced trial sites, and that India was a favoured destination. Indian trials cost about a tenth of those in the US, and there is a good supply of trained personnel as well as a pool of volunteers that make it quicker and easier to launch trials than in the US. The World Health Organisation (WHO) supports those findings. Concern at the uncontrolled spread of trials led, in 2003, to the setting up of a register of international clinical trials, which India joined in 2005. Indian medical journals have now agreed not to publish the results of trials started after 2008 unless they have been registered with the WHO and the companies concerned have signed up to its ethical guidelines. The US national bioethics committee found in a survey that a quarter of clinical trials in developing countries are not ethically assessed. And despite India's membership of the WHO, clinical trial register, concerns persist – as this interview with an Indian medical ethicist from a few months ago shows. Dr Amar Jesani warns that it is the most vulnerable who are being recruited for trials, and that undertakings to get informed consent may be avoided. He has a basic check list: no violation of human rights, the trial must be relevant to local needs and a successful drug should be available locally at an affordable price. Now China has overtaken India as the largest destination for clinical outsourcing. A three-year LSE-backed project bringing together European researchers with Chinese counterparts finishes this month with a planned report and textbook intended to guide best practice, particularly in the field of stem-cell research, where the hunger for treatment allows unsafe practices to flourish. The LSE reckons the industry is now worth $50bn. Randomised control trials, it points out, are the gold standard – and they don't come cheap. But we must be absolutely scrupulous in ensuring that we are not just outsourcing more risk to the most disadvantaged. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Sep 2009 | 10:30 am Brain Scans Reveal What You’ve Seen
Scientists are one step closer to knowing what you’ve seen by reading your mind.
Having modeled how images are represented in the brain, the researchers translated recorded patterns of neural activity into pictures of what test subjects had seen. Though practical applications are decades away, the research could someday lead to dream-readers and thought-controlled computers. “It’s what you would actually use if you were going to build a functional brain-reading device,” said Jack Gallant, a University of California, Berkeley neuroscientist. The research, led by Gallant and Berkeley postdoctoral researcher Thomas Naselaris, builds on earlier work in which they used neural patterns to identify pictures from within a limited set of options. The current approach, described Wednesday in Neuron, uses a more complete view of the brain’s visual centers. Its results are closer to reconstruction than identification, which Gallant likened to “the magician’s card trick where you pick a card from a deck, and he guesses which card you picked. The magician knows all the cards you could have seen.” In the latest study, “the card could be a photograph of anything in the universe. The magician has to figure it out without ever seeing it,” said Gallant. To construct their model, the researchers used an fMRI machine, which measures blood flow through the brain, to track neural activity in three people as they looked at pictures of everyday settings and objects. As in the earlier study, they looked at parts of the brain linked to the shape of objects. Unlike before, they looked at regions whose activity correlates with general classifications, such as “buildings” or “small groups of people.” Once the model was calibrated, the test subjects looked at another set of pictures. After interpreting the resulting neural patterns, the researchers’ program plucked corresponding pictures from a database of 6 million images. Frank Tong, a Vanderbilt University neuroscientist who studies how thoughts are manifested in the brain, said the Neuron study wasn’t quite A pure, draw-from-scratch reconstruction. But it was impressive nonetheless, especially for the detail it gathered from measurements that are still extremely coarse. The researchers’ fMRI readings bundled the output of millions of neurons into single output blocks. “At the finer level, there is a ton of information. We just don’t have a way to tap into that without opening the skull and accessing it directly,” said Tong. Gallant hopes to develop methods of interpreting other types of brain activity measurement, such as optical laser scans or EEG readings. He mentioned medical communication devices as a possible application, and computer programs for which visual thinking makes sense — CAD-CAM or Photoshop, straight from the brain. Such applications are decades away, but “you could use algorithms like this to decode other things than vision,” said Gallant. “In theory, you could analyze internal speech. You could have someone talk to themselves, and have it come out in a machine.” See Also:
Image: From Neuron. Images seen by test subjects are in the left column. In the middle the image reconstructions returned by the researchers’ older, structure-focused analysis. At right are the image reconstructions produced by the newer, category-including model. 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 | 24 Sep 2009 | 9:54 am The Truth About LyingPeople lie less than you might think, says the man who wrote the definition of lying.Source: Livescience.com | 24 Sep 2009 | 9:54 am White buck caught on cameraA magnificent white buck is snapped in the Forest of Dean.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 8:46 am Soil goodsA farmer's view of the government's soil protection planSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 8:44 am EU in tussle over CO2 emissionsThe European Commission considers pursuing a legal fight with the EU's top court over Europe's carbon trading scheme.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Sep 2009 | 8:43 am BLOG: Making Hemp Drug-FreeEliminating drug-producing genes in Cannabis could lead to legal hemp production.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Sep 2009 | 8:35 am Human Ancestors Conflicted on MonogamyA study suggests Neanderthals were promiscuous while Australopithecus, less so.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Sep 2009 | 7:45 am Earth's Climate Outside 'Safe Operating Space'Current environmental trends may lead to a cycle of global catastrophic change.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Sep 2009 | 6:45 am Discovery of water boosts prospects for lunar baseNasa's long-term goal of establishing a permanent, crewed base on the moon has been bolstered by the revelation there are large quantities of water locked in its soil Nasa's plans to establish a human outpost on the moon have received a surprise boost following the discovery of large amounts of water on its surface. Three spacecraft detected a thin sheen of water locked up in the first few millimetres of lunar soil that could be extracted and used to sustain astronauts on expeditions to our nearest celestial neighbour. Instruments aboard the spacecraft suggest that a cubic metre of soil on the lunar surface could hold around a litre of water. The discovery of water on the moon will bolster Nasa's long-term goal of establishing a permanently crewed outpost there. The space agency is developing a new generation of rockets and crew capsules capable of reaching the moon which are due to fly within five years of the space shuttle fleet being retired next year. "From the long-term space exploration point of view, it opens an entirely new option to consider as a water resource," said Carle Pieters, a planetary scientist at Brown University in Rhode Island, who led the study. "It has surprised everyone." Since the Apollo missions brought back the first clumps of lunar soil and rock in the 1960s, scientists have worked on the assumption that the moon is bone dry. Small traces of water found in some of the samples were dismissed as contamination picked up while the material was being handled on Earth. The latest discovery came when scientists analysed sunlight glancing off the moon's surface with detectors aboard the Chandrayaan-1 probe, India's first mission to observe the moon. The reflected light was found to be missing infrared wavelengths that are absorbed by water molecules. The results were backed up by further observations from spectrometers aboard Nasa's Deep Impact and Cassini probes. The research will be published in the US journal Science tomorrow. Writing in the journal, Paul Lucey, a planetary scientist at the University of Hawaii, who was not involved in the study, comments: "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. " The research paper from the Deep Impact team, led by Jessica Sunshine at the University of Maryland, adds: "Observations of the moon not only unequivocally confirm the presence of [water] on the lunar surface, but also reveal that the entire lunar surface is hydrated during at least some portions of the lunar day." The water appears to be more abundant at the moon's frigid poles, suggesting that water forms in the soil and gradually moves to cooler regions. Scientists believe the moon formed when a Mars-sized body collided with the Earth some 4.4 billion years ago. In the past 2bn years, asteroids and comets have ploughed into the moon, dumping an estimated ten thousand billion tonnes of water onto its surface. Water is quickly broken down on the lunar surface, but Roger Clark, who led the Cassini study at the US Geological Survey in Colorado, said the new results "could be indicating the presence of that ancient water". Data from the spacecraft found the lunar soils became increasingly damp during sunlight hours, but dried out again at the end of the lunar day. The waves of damp and dry conditions suggest water is created on the moon every day, when hydrogen nuclei in the solar wind slam into oxygen-rich silicate minerals on the moon's surface. If water is created in this way, it could happen on all airless planets throughout the inner Solar System that have oxygen-rich rocks scattered on their surfaces. Next month, Nasa will intentionally crash a probe called LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation Sensing Satellite Mission) into the Cabeus A crater near the lunar south pole, in the hope of finding signs of water in the shower of debris it produces. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Sep 2009 | 5:04 am Vaccine reduces HIV infection by thirdFirst 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. All the volunteers were given counselling and condoms to help them avoid HIV. Then half were randomly picked to receive the vaccine, while the other half got dummy shots. Until the trial ended, nobody knew who had been given the genuine vaccine and who had not. A relatively small number of people became infected with HIV – 51 of the 8,197 people given the vaccine, and 74 of the 8,198 who received dummy shots – but the difference was statistically significant, which means scientists believe it could not have happened by chance. It worked out at 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. In 2007, the drug company Merck abandoned what had looked at the time like the most promising avenue of research after disappointing trial results. Today 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 "a 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 it's 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 the 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 full results of the trial will be presented at an international Aids vaccine conference in Paris in October. The executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, an alliance of research bodies and funders like the Gates Foundation, said the results showed a vaccine was an achievable goal. "This is a historic day in the 26-year quest to develop an Aids vaccine," said Dr Alan Bernstein. "This trial is the first demonstration in humans that, with more research, it will be possible to develop a vaccine that is fully protective against HIV." Deborah Jack, chief executive of the National Aids Trust in the UK, said a vaccine, by far the most effective way of tackling serious infectious diseases, was desperately needed. More work was needed, but the promising findings "justify the continuing investments and efforts of the international community, including the UK government, to develop a vaccine." The Terrence 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." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Sep 2009 | 4:20 am
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