HIV’s Ancestors May Have Plagued First Mammals

The retroviruses which gave rise to HIV have been battling it out with mammal immune systems since mammals first evolved around 100 million years ago -- about 85 million years earlier than previously thought, scientists now believe.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm

Pulling Together Increases Your Pain Threshold

A study of rowers has shown that members of a team who exercised together were able to tolerate twice as much pain as when they trained on their own.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm

Ants Vs. Worms: New Computer Security Mimics Nature

In the never-ending battle to protect computer networks from intruders, researchers are working with security experts to develop a new defense modeled after one of nature's hardiest creatures -- the ant.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm

Math Used As A Tool To Heal Toughest Of Wounds

Scientists expect a new mathematical model of chronic wound healing could replace intuition with clear guidance on how to test treatment strategies in tackling a major public-health problem. The researchers are the first to publish a mathematical model of an ischemic wound -- a chronic wound that heals slowly or is in danger of never healing because it is fed by an inadequate blood supply.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm

Room's Ambience Fingerprinted By Phone

Your smart phone may soon be able to know not only that you're at the mall, but whether you're in the jewelry store or the shoe store.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm

Revolutionary Drug Could Be New Hope For Adrenal Cancer Patients

Medical researchers are starting a clinical trial for a drug designed to combat adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC), a rare but deadly cancer that attacks the adrenal glands. They hope the new compound, OSI-906, which is administered orally, will stop ACC tumor growth -- perhaps even promote tumor shrinkage -- without the toxic side effects of current chemotherapies. The trial will focus on patients with inoperable tumors who have relapsed or failed to respond to conventional therapies.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm

Certain Cancers More Common Among HIV Patients Than Non-HIV Patients

Researchers have found that non-AIDS-defining malignancies such as anal and lung cancer have become more prevalent among HIV-infected patients than non-HIV patients since the introduction of anti-retroviral therapies in the mid-1990s.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am

Discovery Brings New Type Of Fast Computers Closer To Reality

Physicists have successfully created speedy integrated circuits with particles called "excitons" that operate at commercially cold temperatures, bringing the possibility of a new type of extremely fast computer based on excitons closer to reality.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am

New Nanochemistry Technique Encases Single Molecules In Microdroplets

Inventing a useful new tool for creating chemical reactions between single molecules, scientists have employed microfluidics to make microdroplets that each contain a single molecules of interest. By combining this new microfluidic with techniques to merge multiple droplets, the research may ultimately lead to new information on the structure and function of important organic materials such as proteins, enzymes, and DNA.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am

New Antibacterial Chemical Compound Discovered

Scientists have identified a novel chemical compound that targets drug-resistant bacteria in a different way from existing antibiotics. The discovery could lead to new treatments to overcome antibiotic resistance in certain types of microorganisms.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am

Attenborough's classics go online

Sir David Attenborough selects 50 of his most memorable natural history moments.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Sep 2009 | 4:34 am

Leaders warn time running out for climate deal (AP)

AP - U.N. climate talks kicked off Monday in Bangkok with leaders calling for delegates to break the deadlock over a global warming deal and warning failure to act would leave future generations fighting for survival.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 4:16 am

High tech may pinpoint Antarctica sea rise risks

OSLO (Reuters) - Dismayed by ice and storms, British explorer Captain James Cook had no regrets when he abandoned a voyage searching for a fabled southern continent in 1773.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 4:06 am

UN climate chief says time running out for deal (AFP)

AFP - The UN climate chief warned Monday that time was running out to break a deadlock on a global warming pact, telling delegates in Bangkok that failure to do so by December would threaten future generations.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 3:58 am

Rocket readied at Kazakh steppe for ISS mission (AP)

AP - Workers at Russia's manned space-launch facility lifted to the launch pad on Monday a rocket that is to send Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte and two astronauts to the International Space Station.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 3:37 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Monday's main weather event was forecast to develop in the Midwest as a deepening area of low pressure in the northern Great Lakes swung a cold front through the Upper Great Lakes.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 3:05 am

Death toll from Philippine storm reaches 100 (AP)

AP - Rescuers pulled the dead from swollen rivers Monday and thousands were without drinking water, food and power as the death toll from the worst flooding in the northern Philippines in more than four decades climbed to 100.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 2:47 am

Warmer weather threatens moose in Minnesota (AP)

AP - The moose calf didn't seem to want to get out of the water.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 28 Sep 2009 | 2:42 am

LHC gets warning system upgrade

Engineers hope an early warning system being installed at the Large Hadron Collider could prevent incidents of the kind which shut the machine last year.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 28 Sep 2009 | 2:25 am

Australia 'uranium' dust concerns

Environmentalists in Australia fear waves of red dust blown in from the outback may contain radioactive particles.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Sep 2009 | 10:59 pm

Water on the Moon Buoys India's Space Program (Time.com)

Time.com - The scientific breakthrough boosts India's ambitious plans for future space missions and will help the country compete in the commercial satellite launching business
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Sep 2009 | 10:55 pm

850 Mostly Blind, Pale Creatures Discovered Underground (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Down under in Australia, down underground, scientists have found 850 previously unknown species living in subterranean water, caves and micro-caverns.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Sep 2009 | 10:41 pm

850 Mostly Blind, Pale Creatures Discovered Underground

Some 850 new species have been discovered in caves and underground caverns in Australian Outback.
Source: Livescience.com | 27 Sep 2009 | 10:31 pm

Oil spill shutters part of Houston Ship Channel (AP)

AP - The Coast Guard says crews are working to clean up a 10,500-gallon oil spill that has closed traffic along three miles of the Houston Ship Channel.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Sep 2009 | 6:51 pm

Why women have sex

According to a new book, there are 237 reasons why women have sex. And most of them have little to do with romance or pleasure

Do you want to know why women have sex with men with tiny little feet? I am stroking a book called Why Women Have Sex. It is by Cindy Meston, a clinical psychologist, and David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist. It is a very thick, bulging book. I've never really wondered Why Women Have Sex. But after years of not asking the question, the answer is splayed before me.

Meston and Buss have interviewed 1,006 women from all over the world about their sexual motivation, and in doing so they have identified 237 different reasons why women have sex. Not 235. Not 236. But 237. And what are they? From the reams of confessions, it emerges that women have sex for physical, emotional and material reasons; to boost their self-esteem, to keep their lovers, or because they are raped or coerced. Love? That's just a song. We are among the bad apes now.

Why, I ask Meston, have people never really talked about this? Alfred Kinsey, the "father" of sexology, asked 7,985 people about their sexual histories in the 1940s and 50s; Masters and Johnson observed people having orgasms for most of the 60s. But they never asked why. Why?

"People just assumed the answer was obvious," Meston says. "To feel good. Nobody has really talked about how women can use sex for all sorts of resources." She rattles off a list and as she says it, I realise I knew it all along: "promotion, money, drugs, bartering, for revenge, to get back at a partner who has cheated on them. To make themselves feel good. To make their partners feel bad." Women, she says, "can use sex at every stage of the relationship, from luring a man into the relationship, to try and keep a man so he is fulfilled and doesn't stray. Duty. Using sex to get rid of him or to make him jealous."

"We never ever expected it to be so diverse," she says. "From the altruistic to the borderline evil." Evil? "Wanting to give someone a sexually transmitted infection," she explains. I turn to the book. I am slightly afraid of it. Who wants to have their romantic fantasies reduced to evolutional processes?

The first question asked is: what thrills women? Or, as the book puts it: "Why do the faces of Antonio Banderas and George Clooney excite so many women?"

We are, apparently, scrabbling around for what biologists call "genetic benefits" and "resource benefits". Genetic benefits are the genes that produce healthy children. Resource benefits are the things that help us protect our healthy children, which is why women sometimes like men with big houses. Jane Eyre, I think, can be read as a love letter to a big house.

"When a woman is sexually attracted to a man because he smells good, she doesn't know why she is sexually attracted to that man," says Buss. "She doesn't know that he might have a MHC gene complex complimentary to hers, or that he smells good because he has symmetrical features."

So Why Women Have Sex is partly a primer for decoding personal ads. Tall, symmetrical face, cartoonish V-shaped body? I have good genes for your brats. Affluent, GSOH – if too fond of acronyms – and kind? I have resource benefits for your brats. I knew this already; that is how Bill Clinton got sex, despite his astonishing resemblance to a moving potato. It also explains why Vladimir Putin has become a sex god and poses topless with his fishing rod.

Then I learn why women marry accountants; it's a trade-off. "Clooneyish" men tend to be unfaithful, because men have a different genetic agenda from women – they want to impregnate lots of healthy women. Meston and Buss call them "risk-taking, womanising 'bad boys'". So, women might use sex to bag a less dazzling but more faithful mate. He will have fewer genetic benefits but more resource benefits that he will make available, because he will not run away. This explains why women marry accountants. Accountants stick around – and sometimes they have tiny little feet!

And so to the main reason women have sex. The idol of "women do it for love, and men for joy" lies broken on the rug like a mutilated sex toy: it's orgasm, orgasm, orgasm. "A lot of women in our studies said they just wanted sex for the pure physical pleasure," Meston says. Meston and Buss garnish this revelation with so much amazing detail that I am distracted. I can't concentrate. Did you know that the World Health Organisation has a Women's Orgasm Committee? That "the G-spot" is named after the German physician Ernst Gräfenberg? That there are 26 definitions of orgasm?

And so, to the second most important reason why women have sex – love. "Romantic love," Meston and Buss write, "is the topic of more than 1,000 songs sold on iTunes." And, if people don't have love, terrible things can happen, in literature and life: "Cleopatra poisoned herself with a snake and Ophelia went mad and drowned." Women say they use sex to express love and to get it, and to try to keep it.

Love: an insurance policy

And what is love? Love is apparently a form of "long-term commitment insurance" that ensures your mate is less likely to leave you, should your legs fall off or your ovaries fall out. Take that, Danielle Steele – you may think you live in 2009 but your genes are still in the stone age, with only chest hair between you and a bloody death. We also get data which confirms that, due to the chemicals your brain produces – dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine – you are, when you are in love, technically what I have always suspected you to be – mad as Stalin.

And is the world mad? According to surveys, which Meston and Buss helpfully whip out from their inexhaustible box of every survey ever surveyed, 73% of Russian women are in love, and 63% of Japanese women are in love. What percentage of women in north London are in love, they know not. But not as many men are in love. Only 61% of Russian men are in love and only 41% of Japanese men are in love. Which means that 12% of Russian women and 22% of Japanese women are totally wasting their time.

And then there is sex as man-theft. "Sometimes men who are high in mate value are in relationships or many of them simply pursue a short-term sexual strategy and don't want commitment," Buss explains. "There isn't this huge pool of highly desirable men just sitting out there waiting for women." It's true. So how do we liberate desirable men from other women? We "mate poach". And how do we do that? We "compete to embody what men want" – high heels to show off our pelvises, lip-gloss to make men think about vaginas, and we see off our rivals with slander. We spread gossip – "She's easy!" – because that makes the slandered woman less inviting to men as a long-term partner. She may get short-term genetic benefits but she can sing all night for the resource benefits, like a cat sitting out in the rain. Then – then! – the gossiper mates with the man herself.

We also use sex to "mate guard". I love this phrase. It is so evocative an image – I can see a man in a cage, and a woman with a spear and a bottle of baby oil. Women regularly have sex with their mates to stop them seeking it elsewhere. Mate guarding is closely related to "a sense of duty", a popular reason for sex, best expressed by the Meston and Buss interviewee who says: "Most of the time I just lie there and make lists in my head. I grunt once in a while so he knows I'm awake, and then I tell him how great it was when it's over. We are happily married."

Women often mate guard by flaunting healthy sexual relationships. "In a very public display of presumed rivalry," Meston writes, "in 2008 singer and actress Jessica Simpson appeared with her boyfriend, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, wearing a shirt with the tagline Real Girls Eat Meat. Fans interpreted it as a competitive dig at Romo's previous mate, who is a vegetarian."

Meston and Buss also explain why the girls in my class at school went down like dominoes in 1990. One week we were maidens, the following week, we were not. We were, apparently, having sex to see if we liked it, so we could tell other schoolgirls that we had done it and to practise sexual techniques: "As a woman I don't want to be a dead fish," says one female. Another interviewee wanted to practise for her wedding night.

The authors lubricate this with a description of the male genitalia, again food themed. I include it because I am immature. "In Masters & Johnson's [1966] study of over 300 flaccid penises the largest was 5.5 inches long (about the size of a bratwurst sausage); the smallest non-erect penis was 2.25 inches (about the size of a breakfast sausage)."

Ever had sex out of pity and wondered why? "Women," say Meston and Buss, "for the most part, are the ones who give soup to the sick, cookies to the elderly and . . . sex to the forlorn." "Tired, but he wanted it," says one female. Pause for more amazing detail: fat people are more likely to stay in a relationship because no one else wants them.

Women also mate to get the things they think they want – drugs, handbags, jobs, drugs. "The degree to which economics plays out in sexual motivations," Buss says, "surprised me. Not just prostitution. Sex economics plays out even in regular relationships. Women have sex so that the guy would mow the lawn or take out the garbage. You exchange sex for dinner." He quotes some students from the University of Michigan. It is an affluent university, but 9% of students said they had "initiated an attempt to trade sex for some tangible benefit".

Medicinal sex

Then there is sex to feel better. Women use sex to cure their migraines. This is explained by the release of endormorphins during sex – they are a pain reliever. Sex can even help relieve period pains. (Why are periods called periods? Please, someone tell me. Write in.)

Women also have sex because they are raped, coerced or lied to, although we have defences against deception – men will often copulate on the first date, women on the third, so they will know it is love (madness). Some use sex to tell their partner they don't want them any more – by sleeping with somebody else. Some use it to feel desirable; some to get a new car. There are very few things we will not use sex for. As Meston says, "Women can use sex at every stage of the relationship."

And there you have it – most of the reasons why women have sex, although, as Meston says, "There are probably a few more." Probably. Before I read this book I watched women eating men in ignorance. Now, when I look at them, I can hear David Attenborough talking in my head: "The larger female is closing in on her prey. The smaller female has been ostracised by her rival's machinations, and slinks away." The complex human race has been reduced in my mind to a group of little apes, running around, rutting and squeaking.

I am not sure if I feel empowered or dismayed. I thought that my lover adored me. No – it is because I have a symmetrical face. "I love you so much," he would say, if he could read his evolutionary impulses, "because you have a symmetrical face!" "Oh, how I love the smell of your compatible genes!" I would say back. "Symmetrical face!" "Compatible genes!" "Symmetrical face!" "Compatible genes!" And so we would osculate (kiss). I am really just a monkey trying to survive. I close the book.

I think I knew that.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 27 Sep 2009 | 5:06 pm

Met Office warns of catastrophic warming

• Study says 4C rise in temperature could happen by 2060
• Increase could threaten water supply of half world population

Unchecked global warming could bring a severe temperature rise of 4C within many people's lifetimes, according to a new report for the British government that significantly raises the stakes over climate change.

The study, prepared for the Department of Energy and Climate Change by scientists at the Met Office, challenges the assumption that severe warming will be a threat only for future generations, and warns that a catastrophic 4C rise in temperature could happen by 2060 without strong action on emissions.

Officials from 190 countries gather today in Bangkok to continue negotiations on a new deal to tackle global warming, which they aim to secure at United Nations talks in December in Copenhagen.

"We've always talked about these very severe impacts only affecting future generations, but people alive today could live to see a 4C rise," said Richard Betts, the head of climate impacts at the Met Office Hadley Centre, who will announce the findings today at a conference at Oxford University. "People will say it's an extreme scenario, and it is an extreme scenario, but it's also a plausible scenario."

According to scientists, a 4C rise over pre-industrial levels could threaten the water supply of half the world's population, wipe out up to half of animal and plant species, and swamp low coasts.

A 4C average would mask more severe local impacts: the Arctic and western and southern Africa could experience warming up to 10C, the Met Office report warns.

The study updates the findings of the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which said the world would probably warm by 4C by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. The IPCC also listed a more severe scenario, with emissions and temperatures rising further because of more intensive fossil fuel burning, but this was not considered realistic. "That scenario was downplayed because we were more conservative a few years ago. But the way we are going, the most severe scenario is looking more plausible," Betts said.

A report last week from the UN Environment Programme said emissions since 2000 have risen faster than even this IPCC worst-case scenario. "In the 1990s, these scenarios all assumed political will or other phenomena would have brought about the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by this point. In fact, CO₂ emissions from fossil-fuel burning and industrial processes have been accelerating."

The Met Office scientists used new versions of the computer models used to set the IPCC predictions, updated to include so-called carbon feedbacks or tipping points, which occur when warmer temperatures release more carbon, such as from soils.

When they ran the models for the most extreme IPCC scenario, they found that a 4C rise could come by 2060 or 2070, depending on the feedbacks. Betts said: "It's important to stress it's not a doomsday scenario, we do have time to stop it happening if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon." Soaring emissions must peak and start to fall sharply within the next decade to head off a 2C rise, he said. To avoid the 4C scenario, that peak must come by the 2030s.

A poll of 200 climate experts for the Guardian earlier this year found that most of them expected a temperature rise of 3C-4C by the end of the century.

The implications of a 4C rise on agriculture, water supplies and wildlife will be discussed at the Oxford conference, which organisers have billed as the first to properly consider such a dramatic scenario.

Mark New, a climate expert at Oxford who has organised the conference, said: "If we get a weak agreement at Copenhagen then there is not just a slight chance of a 4C rise, there is a really big chance. It's only in the last five years that scientists have started to realise that 4C is becoming increasingly likely and something we need to look at seriously." Limiting global warming to 2C could only be achieved with new technology to suck greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. "I think the policy makers know that. I think there is an implicit understanding that they are negotiating not about 2C but 3C or 5C."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 27 Sep 2009 | 5:06 pm

Editorial: Outsourcing clinical trials

Human exploitation is a simple concept: one man gains at the expense of another. It is easy to see the rapid trend towards testing new drugs in less developed countries as a contemporary paradigm, whereby possibly desperate individuals are offered experimental drugs that may work – and may not – and which they cannot afford but the west can. There are 50,000 clinical trials under way at any one time. Last month Pfizer paid out £49m to settle claims after a controversial trial for a meningitis drug in Nigeria. China and India – where the business is expected to grow fivefold in two years – offer the major pharmaceutical companies a health infrastructure, technicians and vast populations, often with untreated or undertreated conditions. It is quicker to recruit volunteers, cheaper to conduct and monitor trials and, it is feared, easier to get past ethical rules.

The picture is not entirely gloomy. Last week, the Pan-African Clinical Trials Registry was launched, the first in Africa approved by the World Health Organisation, to promote transparency. Earlier this month Bionet-China, a combined European-Chinese project to develop ethical guidelines for outsourced trials, stem cell treatments and tissue banks, wound up with a resounding call for tougher controls. Nor is the traffic all one-way. Defenders of outsourcing point not only to the treatment it can provide (although it is not always available after the trial has ended) and the investment it can bring to health infrastructure. Life-saving drugs can be available faster and more cheaply than if trials were conducted in the US or Europe. And some trials, like last week's relatively successful trial of an HIV vaccine in Thailand, and trials in Africa of anti-malarial or TB drugs, are specifically intended to find treatments for local diseases.

But not often enough, according to research published in the New England Medical Journal earlier this year that highlighted the growth in globalisation. Both Chinese and Indian practitioners warn that ideas such as informed consent are more easily honoured on paper than in reality. In other cases, drug trials carried out had little relevance to the local population. The field is full of protocols and statements and undertakings. But there is not enough scrutiny. Wemos, a Dutch-based organisation that lobbies for better healthcare in developing countries, has found that the European Medicines Agency inspected only 45 trials for "good clinical practice", of which only a handful were outside Europe and the US. Now it has launched a campaign for fair drugs calling for more rigorous scrutiny of the ethical conduct of drug trials before a European licence is granted. It is essential reading.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 27 Sep 2009 | 5:05 pm

Science Weekly: The paranormal

Prof Chris French is coordinator of the anomalistic psychology research unit at Goldsmiths, University of London. He defines his field as the psychology of paranormal beliefs and of ostensibly paranormal experiences, cognition and emotion. Or 'the study of weird stuff'.

Chris is also the editor of the [UK] Skeptic magazine (listen out for the subliminal plug) and writes a column for the Guardian's science website.

We look at research carried out by Jonathan Pieslak at the City University of New York on the pumped-up music American troops use to get into the right frame of mind to face life-threatening combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You can read Ian Sample's blog about the research, "How the iPod became an instrument of war", which includes audio excerpts of the music and interviews not included in the podcast.

Our pod panellists discuss the discovery of water on the moon and their dream inventions.

Following comments about the Aids film House of Numbers in last week's podcast, we had a complaint about comments made by Caspar Melville. The complaint was from Caspar Melville. He explains why.

Where do you think you exist? In your head? In your stomach perhaps? It was a question asked at an event at University College London as part of The Brain Unravelled event. Liliane Lijn and Prof Frank Burnet tell us all about it.

The Guardian's environment correspondent David Adam joins us in the studio.

WARNING: contains very strong language and Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Post your comments about the programme below.

Join our Facebook group.

Listen back through our archive.

Follow the podcast on our Science Weekly Twitter feed and receive updates on all breaking science news stories from Guardian Science.

Subscribe free via iTunes to ensure every episode gets delivered. (Here is the non-iTunes URL feed).

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 27 Sep 2009 | 5:01 pm

How the iPod became a tool of war

Motivational music has been used by the military for centuries, but in modern wars, soldiers are taking along their own playlists

It was a throwaway statistic in an article about the heavy metal band Slayer that got Jonathan Pieslak thinking. During the Gulf war, he read, some 40% of the band's fan mail came from soldiers stationed in the Middle East.

Professor Pieslak is a music theorist at the City College of New York. Over the past few years he has interviewed US soldiers about the music they listen to and - more importantly - what they listen to it for.

You wouldn't expect much Chris de Burgh or Barry White to come floating over the barbed wire fences around military camps in Iraq or Afghanistan, and Pieslak's research confirms the hunch. The playlists are dominated by Slayer, Metallica, Eminem and others.

What's interesting about the work is not so much which bands soldiers are drawn to, but the extraordinary terms they use to describe the power the music has on them. Some talk about tracks turning them into monsters, making them inhuman so they can do inhuman acts.

The subjects of Pieslak's interviews are among the first generation to take MP3 players to war. Some, only half joking, say iPods should be standard issue for soldiers. The psychological effect the music has, and highly stressful situations, make for a powerful mix.

There's some fascinating psychology and ethics in this, but also questions for neuroscientists. How does the combination of the group, a stressful situation, and very specific tracks, or types of music, combine to produce such a powerful motivational, even transformative effect? What does this tell us - if anything - about people listening to this kind of music in their daily lives as civilians?

Pieslak has kindly made some of his audio files available for us to post. We also interview him on this week's science podcast.

The audio files we don't include in the podcast are added below.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 27 Sep 2009 | 5:00 pm

Feds reviewing humpback whale endangered status (AP)

AP - The federal government is considering taking the humpback whale off the endangered species list in response to data showing the population of the massive marine mammal has been steadily growing in recent decades.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Sep 2009 | 4:18 pm

Dead Salmon 'Responds' to Pictures of People

A dead salmon has become a scientific celebrity after its brain supposedly lit up when shown pictures of humans during a brain scan.
Source: Livescience.com | 27 Sep 2009 | 9:03 am