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Air Pollution May Trigger AppendicitisA new study suggests that air pollution may trigger appendicitis in adults.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Cosmic Ray Decreases Affect Atmospheric Aerosols And CloudsBillions of tons of water droplets vanish from the atmosphere in events that reveal in detail how the Sun and the stars control our everyday clouds. Researchers have traced the consequences of eruptions on the Sun that screen the Earth from some of the cosmic rays -- the energetic particles raining down on our planet from exploded stars.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Psychiatric Symptoms May Predict Internet Addiction In AdolescentsAdolescents with psychiatric symptoms such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, social phobia, hostility and depression may be more likely to develop an Internet addiction, according to a new report.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am How Will Future Sea-level Rise Linked To Climate Change Affect Coastal Areas?The anticipated sea-level rise associated with climate change, including increased storminess, over the next 100 years and the impact on the nation's low-lying coastal infrastructure is the focus of a new, interdisciplinary study led by geologists.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am High Mortality Rates May Explain Small Body SizeA new study suggests that high mortality rates in small-bodied people, commonly known as pygmies, may be part of the reason for their small stature. The study helps unravel the mystery of how small-bodied people got that way.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Ultra-cold Systems Of Atoms: Pushing The Cold Frontier In An Orderly FashionWorking toward ever lower temperatures is only part of the battle for physicists studying ultra-cold systems of atoms. A group of researchers has now found a way to deal with disorder as well, as they pump entropy away from an atomic gas.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Higher Folates, Not Antioxidants, Can Reduce Hearing Loss Risk In MenIncreased intakes of antioxidant vitamins have no bearing on whether or not a man will develop hearing loss, but higher folate intake can decrease his risk by 20 percent, according to new research.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Antibiotic May Be New Stroke TreatmentThe antibiotic minocycline may revolutionize the treatment of strokes. A new study describes the safety and therapeutic efficacy of the drug in animal models.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Alfalfa Sprouts Key To Discovering How Meandering Rivers Form And MaintainRestoring rivers to their natural state is now hit-and-miss, primarily because scientists don't really know what makes a river meander. A scale model using alfalfa sprouts to represent vegetation now shows that strong banks and fine sediment are key. With the help of this large flume model, researchers hope to explore effects of climate change and land use on Earth's meandering streams and rivers.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Acidic Clouds Nourish World's OceansAcidic clouds are feeding bioavailable iron to the oceans -- a discovery which sheds light on the natural processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am 3 Americans share 2009 Nobel Prize in physics (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 4:20 am Communication pioneers win 2009 physics NobelSTOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A pioneer in fiber-optics and two scientists who figured out how to turn light into electronic signals -- work that paved the way for the Internet age -- were awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 4:17 am Kuwait delays oil output capacity boost to 2030 (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 4:11 am Nobel recognises communicationsThe Nobel Prize for physics lauds the technology that underpins modern telecommunications and camera technology.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Oct 2009 | 3:53 am The disbelieversThe sceptics who are taking on the conspiracy theoristsSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Oct 2009 | 3:47 am Oil states say no talks on replacing dollar (Reuters)Reuters - Big oil producing nations denied on Tuesday a British newspaper report that Gulf Arab states were in secret talks with Russia, China, Japan and France to replace the U.S. dollar with a basket of currencies in trading oil.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 3:37 am The nation's weather (AP)AP - Wet weather was expected to sweep through the Central US on Tuesday, as a strong storm moves off the Rockies and into the Plains.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 3:26 am Global CO2 emissions could fall by three pct: IEA (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 3:01 am Stags locked in 'mortal combat'A fight to the death between two stags is witnessed by a BBC Autumnwatch crew filming on the island of Rum.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Oct 2009 | 2:48 am Samoans plan new lives away from the sea (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Oct 2009 | 12:46 am DNA sequencing in a holey new wayIBM researchers announce an effort to trap DNA molecules in tiny holes in an effort to decode their genetic instructions.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Oct 2009 | 11:06 pm Scientist reproduces Turin shroudThe Shroud of Turin is reproduced by an Italian scientist in another attempt to prove that the cloth image of Christ's face is a fake.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Oct 2009 | 10:49 pm Air Pollution May Cause Appendicitis: Study (HealthDay)HealthDay - MONDAY, Oct. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Air pollution is already linked to respiratory and cardiovascular ills, and now researchers say the dirty air you breathe may also cause appendicitis.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Oct 2009 | 9:49 pm Italian group claims to debunk Shroud of Turin (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Oct 2009 | 7:11 pm U.S. trio wins medicine Nobel for telomeraseSTOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Three Americans won the Nobel prize for medicine on Monday for revealing the existence and nature of telomerase, an enzyme that helps prevent the fraying of chromosomes that underlies aging and cancer.Source: Reuters: Science News | 5 Oct 2009 | 6:44 pm Nobel prize-winning medical research long and costlySAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Nobel-winning medical science that points the way to a cancer cure was sparked by curiosity, not business sense, a new laureate said on Monday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 5 Oct 2009 | 6:43 pm Facelift for Scotland's 'Hubble'A 19th Century telescope is set for a new lease of life after its home is refurbished in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Oct 2009 | 5:54 pm Logbooks may yield climate bountyResearchers turn to 18th Century ships' logbooks for weather data that could help our understanding of climate change.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Oct 2009 | 5:44 pm Shroud of Turin Replica Casts Doubt on OriginalThe Shroud of Turin was a fake, according to a group that reproduced the revered cloth.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Oct 2009 | 3:30 pm Ancient Rome's Real Population Revealed (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - The first century B.C. was one of the most culturally rich in the history of the Roman Empire - the age of Cicero, Caesar and Virgil. But as much as historians know about the great figures of this period of Ancient Rome, they know very little about some basic facts, such as the population size of the late Roman Empire.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Oct 2009 | 3:16 pm Ancient Rome's Real Population RevealedBuried coins suggest dip in population explains discrepancy in Roman censuses.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Oct 2009 | 2:16 pm 7 Glow-in-the-Dark Mushroom Species Discovered
Seven new glowing mushroom species have been discovered in Belize, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia and Puerto Rico. Four of the species are completely new to scientists, and three previously known species were discovered to be luminescent. All seven species, as well as the majority of the 64 previously known species of luminescent mushrooms, are from the Mycena family. “What interests us is that within Mycena, the luminescent species come from 16 different lineages, which suggests that luminescence evolved at a single point and some species later lost the ability to glow,” said biologist Dennis Desjardin of San Francisco State University, lead author of the study published Monday in the journal Mycologia. The new discoveries might help scientists understand when, how and why mushrooms evolved the ability to glow. Desjardin suspects that luminescence might attract nocturnal animals, which would then help the mushrooms spread their spores. Image above: Mycena silvaelucens (forest light) was collected in the grounds of an Orangutan Rehabilitation Center in Borneo, Malaysia and was found on the bark of a standing tree. The mushrooms are tiny with each cap measuring less than 18 millimeters in diameter. / Brian Perry, University of Hawaii
Above: Mycena luxaeterna (light eternal) was collected in Sao Paulo, Brazil and was found on sticks in an Atlantic forest habitat. These mushrooms are tiny with each cap measuring less than 8 millimeters in diameter and their stems have a jelly-like texture. The species’ name was inspired by Mozart’s Requiem. /Cassius V. Stevani, Chemistry Institute, University of Sao Paulo
Above: Mycena luxarboricola (light tree dweller) was collected in Paraná, Brazil and was found on the bark of a living tree in old growth Atlantic forest. These mushrooms are tiny with each cap measuring less than 5 millimeters in diameter. / Cassius V. Stevani, Chemistry Institute, University of Sao Paulo See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 5 Oct 2009 | 2:15 pm Newfound Tiny Tyrannosaur Had Horns (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - The tyrannosaur family tree just got a little bigger. A newfound relative of Tyrannosaurus rex was a smaller, and more graceful, carnivore than its fearsome cousin, but it sported some bizarre features, including a horn and a long snout.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Oct 2009 | 1:51 pm Nobel Winners Isolate Protein Behind Immortality, Cancer
This year’s Nobel Prize in medicine went to a trio of scientists who discovered the enzyme telomerase, which allows cells to divide without any limits, making them effectively immortal. It may be nature’s greatest double-edged sword. Coax cells into producing telomerase, and they will survive indefinitely, but they will also become cancerous. To safeguard against cancer, adult cells keep track of how many times that they have multiplied, and once they have reached a pre-set limit — often around 80 divisions — they die. Telomerase interferes with this record keeping. If you can find a drug or gene therapy that interferes with telomerase, it could fight the unchecked growth of cancer cells, said Mark Muller, a cancer researcher who studies telomeres at the University of Central Florida. “Ninety percent of all cancer cells are telomerase rich,” Muller said. Several companies, including Geron, have started testing drugs that gum up the telomerase enzyme, so that it can’t extend the lives of cancer cells.
Telomerase lengthens telomeres, repetitive DNA sequences that sit at the ends of chromosomes. Each segment of a telomere is like a ticket that gives it permission to divide. When cells run out of those credits, they cease dividing. Geron is developing a modified DNA molecule that gets stuck inside of telomerase, so that it can’t build up the ends of telomeres in cancer cells. The company is also working with a vaccine that trains cancer patients’ immune systems to attack cells that produce telomerase. In adults, almost all of the cells that produce telomerase are cancerous. Those cancer treatments took shape almost 20 years after academics made a breakthrough discovery. In the early 1980’s Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak identified telomerase and learned how it works. Some scientists speculated people could live longer by using the enzyme to buy extra time for their aging cells, but that idea remains risky and unproven. “By itself, lengthening telomeres would probably just increase the rate of tumor formation,” said Chris Patil, a researcher at the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato, California. “Experiments with mice have shown that lengthening telomeres extends lifespan, but only if you introduce multiple other mutations to block cancer.” Considering the risks of telomere-extension therapy, he thinks that scientists have bigger fish to fry. “In the absence of a comprehensive understanding, it’s very dangerous,” Muller said. “We have to figure out how to do maintenance on our telomeres.” Muller thinks humans could live for 90 to 210 years once scientists know more about the molecular basis of aging. “If we could figure out how to do maintenance, we could extend our lives,” he said. “But it has to be done very carefully, and we’d have to have a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism. ”
Images: 1) Chromosomes in a dividing cell. National Institutes of Health. 2) Wired forecasted telomeric gene extension therapy in the Found section of issue 15-09 by Alex Katz, Erik Pawassar, and Chris Baker. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 5 Oct 2009 | 1:51 pm Infrared Video: 500,000 Bats Emerge From CaveBats use echolocation to see in the dark, but unfortunately human scientists cannot do the same. That poses a problem for ecologists who want to know, for example, how many Brazilian free-tailed bats live in the Carlsbad Caverns of New Mexico. Researchers can’t shine a light on them because that disrupts their behavior, but they can’t see them without light. The answer? Infrared cameras, of course. By installing infrared sensors, life scientist Nickolay Hristov of Winston-Salem State University and Thomas Kunz of Boston University were able to study the bat colonies in great detail from less than 50 feet away. They discovered that only something like 4 million bats live in the large colonies, an order of magnitude less [pdf] than previously estimated by visual inspection methods in the 1950s. Beyond the science, their work also yielded tremendous video, which was posted at The Scientist. Embedded above, the team’s infrared camera captured half a million bats emerging from the cave to feed at night. The next step in this see-in-the-dark science will be taking data with multiple cameras, so that the scientists can triangulate the precise positions of the bats during flight, Hristov said. 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 | 5 Oct 2009 | 1:43 pm Roman Coin Hoards Show More War Means Fewer Babies
Coins buried by anxious Italians in the first century B.C. can be used to track the ups and downs of the Roman population during periods of civil war and violence. In times of instability in the ancient world, people stashed their cash and if they got killed or displaced, they didn’t come back for their Geld. Thus, large numbers of coin hoards are a good quantitative indicator of population decline, two researchers argue in in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science Monday. And it turns out that during the periods we know to have been violent — the Second Punic War, the Social War and various civil wars — hoarding behavior soars, providing a statistical peek into the life of your average Italian 2,000 years ago. “During that period, we have a good literary record. Caesar died because he was killed by assassins,” said Peter Turchin, a population ecologist at the University of Connecticut. “We don’t know what happened to common people. [Coin hoards] tell us what happened to common people.”
The new work could help settle a long-standing historical debate about the Roman population. Census figures from the end of the second century B.C. show a population of adult males of around 400,000. Then, the record goes blank, and census figures from around a hundred years later show a population of 4 to 5 million. Some of the population explosion is explained by the extension of Roman citizenship to various groups, but far from all of it. From this evidence, a group of historians known as the “high-count” hypothesizers have argued there was excellent population growth during that period. Another group of historians had an alternate explanation for the appearance of population growth. They figured that the later census takers had started to count women and children, rather than just adult males, as part of the official population stats. Without more information about the ancient world, it was difficult to settle the argument one way or another. Turchin, though, knew from previous work that warfare and instability don’t tend to deliver robust population growth in societies. “Population growth and instability are negatively correlated,” Turchin said. He teamed up with Walter Scheidel, a Stanford classicist and historian, to create a model of population growth and decline based on coin-hoard data gathered over the years. Their model’s predictions match well with the early census data. The population projections they derive make the “high-count” hypothesis “highly implausible,” they argue. That has important implications for Roman history, but not too much history will actually be rewritten. It was the high-counters who were hoping to revise the Italian population up from what earlier historians had assumed. Image: A hoard of Roman coins from the Bristol Museum. 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 | 5 Oct 2009 | 1:06 pm Newfound Tiny Tyrannosaur Had HornsNewly described fossil of tyrannosaur family member has horns, long snout, small skull.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Oct 2009 | 1:04 pm Termite Altruism Might Have Roots in War
When a warring termite colony loses its king and queen — the only members capable of reproduction — then its survivors merge with the victor colony, treating genetically unrelated former enemies as if they were siblings. In the short term, this makes no sense. But in the long term, because replacement royalty is recruited from among worker bugs, it’s the losers’ best shot at eventually reproducing. “You could go off and start your own colony, but that’s risky,” said Philip Johns, a Bard College evolutionary biologist. “This way, there’s a good chance a king or queen may die, and then you have a chance at taking over.” The drama of termite succession, described Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the latest addition to a long, rich history of research into insect altruism, which has fascinated and perplexed scientists since Darwin. At its most extreme, insect altruism takes the form of eusociality, in which entire insect castes are unable to reproduce, and devote their lives to caring for other colony members. This is what makes giant insect colonies possible. But through a framework of classic evolutionary genetics, it doesn’t compute. Organisms are supposed to be driven to reproduce their genes.
The conundrum was solved for a while by Bill Hamilton, an evolutionary biologist who showed that eusociality could be explained by the relatedness of colony members. In some insect species, workers share more genes with their siblings than with their own hypothetical offspring. But Hamilton’s position has become controversial, partly because of termites species who aren’t so closely related to their siblings, but practice eusociality nonetheless. The cooperation described in the PNAS paper is especially striking: The species weren’t related to one another at all, yet came together like family. When the researchers studied the newly joined colonies 18 months later, however, the merging made sense. They found individuals from both original colonies, as well as new, hybrid members. Kings and queens could be chosen from among the newcomers, and termite royalty is frequently replaced: In termite battles, they’re always the first targets. The species used in the study, Zootermopsis nevadensis, is especially primitive, with colonies comprising a few dozen members. It’s believed to resemble the first termite species to evolve eusociality. Later on, when colonies expanded from a few dozen members to millions, and entire sterile castes there no longer had any meaningful chance of being picked to reproduce, it didn’t matter. “There’s a point of no return,” Johns speculated. “The colonies have huge advantages over non-eusocial colonies.” They out-competed one another. Johnson was hesitant to extrapolate from the findings to the origin of human altruism, but said that other researchers have suggested human altruism evolved in a crucible of similar group-level competition. “They posit what early human societies were like: small populations, high rates of encountering others. And when they did meet, there was a fight,” Johnson said. Image: Cornell University See Also:
Citation: Nonrelatives inherit colony resources in a primitive termite.” By Philip M. Johns, Kenneth J. Howard, Nancy L. Breisch, Anahi Rivera and Barbara L. Thorne. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 39, October 5, 2009. 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 | 5 Oct 2009 | 1:00 pm Maldives ministers plan underwater cabinet meetingMaldives ministers train in preparation for an underwater cabinet meeting highlighting the effects of climate change.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Oct 2009 | 12:59 pm Cancer Researchers Win Nobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize in medicine went to three Americans who inspired new lines of cancer research.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Oct 2009 | 11:30 am Shroud of Turin Called a FakeAn Italian scientists says he has created a fake Shroud of Turin ... just like the other one, he says.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Oct 2009 | 11:16 am Why motorway bridges could replace bat cavesConcrete bridges could make better roosts for some species of bat than natural caves, according to research.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Oct 2009 | 11:14 am Nobel prize for medicine awarded for work on cancerDiscovery of how chromosomes are protected earns US trio top prize in medicine. Ian Sample reports The discovery of a biological gatekeeper that prevents genetic code from fraying with age has won a trio of American scientists this year's Nobel prize for medicine. The prestigious award – and the 10m Swedish kronor (£818,000) prize money – is shared by Elizabeth Blackburn, 60, Carol Greider, 48, and Jack Szostak, 56. It is the first time the prize has honoured two women at once. The researchers identified one of the most critical and intriguing processes in living organisms, one that has deep implications for understanding ageing, a variety of cancers and inherited diseases. Announcing the award at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the Nobel assembly said the discoveries "added a new dimension to our understanding of the cell". Blackburn, a biochemist at the University of California in San Francisco, made headlines once before when she was fired from President George W Bush's council on bioethics for criticising his opposition to embryonic stem cell research. She said later the administration had the "strange impression that science was the enemy of morality". She was born in Tasmania and received a PhD from Cambridge University before carving out a career in the US. Greider, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, was Blackburn's student when the two made their discovery. Szostak, the third winner, was born in London and grew up in Canada. He moved to the US and joined Harvard Medical School in 1979. Blackburn received the news in a 2am phone call. "It's lovely to have the recognition and share it with Carol Greider and Jack Szostak," she told Associated Press. Szostak said: "When we started the work, we were really just interested in the very basic question about DNA replication, how the ends of chromosomes are maintained. At the time we had no idea there would be all these implications. "This process of maintaining the ends of DNA molecules is very important and plays an important role in cancer and ageing, which are really still being fully worked out," he added. Their experiments solved one of the great mysteries of biology, one scientists had wrestled with since the dawn of genetics. They revealed how cells make a faithful copy of their chromosomes when they divide. Chromosomes are strands of DNA that carry genes, and there are 23 pairs in almost every cell in the body. The first hint of a breakthrough came when Blackburn was studying chromosomes in a simple pond-dwelling organism called tetrahymena. She noticed that at the end of each of the creature's chromosomes was a repeating sequence of DNA, spelt out by the letters CCCCAA. What it meant was not clear. Her work caught the eye of Szostak. He had developed "mini-chromosomes" from strands of DNA and was investigating what happened when he injected them into yeast cells. The problem he encountered was that each time the cells divided, the mini-chromosomes degraded, until eventually they vanished completely. The two decided to join forces and make mini-chromosomes with the CCCCAA sequences at either end. When these were injected into yeast, the DNA sequence protected the chromosomes when they were copied, just as the plastic tips at the ends of shoelaces stop them from fraying. The researchers called the genetic caps "telomeres", from the Greek for "end part". Two years later, in 1984, Greider, who was working as Blackburn's PhD student, discovered "telomerase", the enzyme in the body that makes telomeres. Further studies revealed that healthy telomeres delay the ageing process in cells, a finding that prompted a flurry of research into potential anti-ageing treatments. Related studies investigated whether overactive telomerase made cells immortal, causing them to grow out of control and form cancers. Some rare inherited diseases are now known to be caused by defects in the telomerase enzyme, including certain forms of aplastic anaemia, in which faulty cell division in bone marrow stem cells leads to anaemia. The Nobel prize for medicine has been awarded to 10 women since it was established in 1901, but this is the first time two women have shared the prize. "It was their work that has opened up the whole field of telomere biology, with all its promise for cancer cures and prolonging life span," said Thomas Vulliamy, a molecular biologist at Queen Mary, University of London. "Closer to home, it has been important for us in helping to explain how a debilitating inherited disease, which worsens in each generation, comes about through impaired telomere maintenance." 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 | 5 Oct 2009 | 10:46 am BLOG: Apollo 11 Site in High DefApollo hardware is evident as bright artifacts on the lunar surface in newly released images.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Oct 2009 | 10:30 am Scientists say nanoparticles may help kill tumorsLONDON (Reuters) - British scientists are developing ways to use nanoparticles as tiny magnets that can heat up and kill cancer cells without harming healthy cells around them.Source: Reuters: Science News | 5 Oct 2009 | 10:22 am Glow-in-the-Dark Mushrooms DiscoveredNewly identified mushrooms glow in the dark.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Oct 2009 | 10:02 am BIG PIC: Glow-in-the-Dark MushroomsSeven new glow-in-the-dark fungi shed light on the evolution of luminescence.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Oct 2009 | 10:01 am Pet Turtle Disease Could Spread to HumansA pet turtle is diagnosed with a infectious bacterial disease that could spread to people.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Oct 2009 | 9:50 am Italian scientist reproduces Shroud of TurinROME (Reuters) - An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake.Source: Reuters: Science News | 5 Oct 2009 | 9:30 am Balloon Probe Seeks Clues to Universe's BeginningsA high-flying, balloon-borne instrument seeks clues to how the universe began.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Oct 2009 | 8:30 am Cities Chop Down Stinky Ginko TreesNow Iowa city and others are chopping the stinkers down.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Oct 2009 | 7:34 am Dark Energy Hunters Catch a Wave
A new project to create a 3D map of space so large that scientists can find a 500 million-light-year-size remnant from the early universe inside it began operation last month. The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey opened its eyes to the universe, taking in data from hundreds of galaxies and quasars in the constellation Aquarius, from its perch on the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. Eventually, it will image two million galaxies and quasars. “The data from BOSS will be some of the best ever obtained on the large-scale structure of the universe,” said David Schlegel, an astronomer heading the team from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in a press release. BOSS was built atop the Sloan Digital Sky Survey infrastructure, which created a smaller map of the universe in our neighborhood. The scientists put in new CCDs to better capture the infrared light that arrives redshifted from its trip across billions of light-years. They also remade the fiber optics system so they could capture more objects. “We’ve rebuilt this telescope to make a much bigger map of the sky. We put in more optical fibers. We jammed in as many as we could fit,” Schlegel said. “It’s a mix of high-tech and low-tech. Every object we observe, we machine these plug plates and plug in these optical fibers.” (See the image at the top of the page.) Over vast areas millions of light-years across, the astronomers will map the enormous imprint of compression waves that blew through the early, hot universe and became etched into the distribution of matter. It’s like measuring a sound wave pushing air molecules around, Schlegel said, but what the wave has moved is galaxies instead of molecules.
“These sound waves have been imprinted on the structure of everything in the universe. Most famously, they are seen in the microwave background,” Schlegel told Wired.com. “But you can also see it imprinted on all the structures of the galaxies today.” That imprint, called the baryon acoustic oscillation, will yield important insights about the nature of dark energy, about which we know next to nothing. Scientists will be able to use the BAO as an enormous ruler for measuring how the universe has expanded. “It’s a big-ass ruler,” said Schlegel. “It happens to be about 500 million light-years. Even for us, that’s big.” BOSS will be observing the sky for the next five years. What the scientists hope the ruler will allow them to do is understand the period of accelerating expansion that began about six billion years ago. “What we think happened is that we’ve entered this period of acceleration of the universe just in the last six billion years,” Schlegel said. “When the universe was half as old as it is now, it was decelerating and then all of a sudden it started accelerating, which we don’t understand.” The problem is that we don’t have good data from that time period. Thanks to intensive study of the cosmic background radiation, we have expansion information from when the universe was only 400,000 years old. Then we have very recent observations from supernovae. “But we don’t have much in between,” Schlegel said. If BOSS can fill in that gap, we could not only learn about this mysterious something we call dark energy, but also grasp what happened during the universe’s adolescent growth spurt. 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 | 5 Oct 2009 | 7:33 am Aging Breakthrough Gets Nobel Prize in MedicineThe Nobel Prize in medicine went to a trio of researchers this year for their discovery of telomeraseSource: Livescience.com | 5 Oct 2009 | 7:08 am Animals Survived Apocalypse by BurrowingA pig-sized animal seems to have survived the Permian Extinction by digging burrows.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 5 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am Green Roofs Curb Global Warming, Study FindsGreen roofs can sponge up carbon dioxide.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Oct 2009 | 6:49 am For Women, Sex and Happiness Go Hand-in-HandWhether a woman is sexually satisfied can impact her mental health.Source: Livescience.com | 5 Oct 2009 | 6:18 am Key cancer spread gene foundScientists have pinpointed a gene linked to more than half of all breast cancers, and many other types of tumour.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Oct 2009 | 5:28 am Climate threat London wildlifeLondon climate change report outlines threat to biodiversity from global warming and urges more 'urban greening' Global warming will threaten London's wildlife habitats by increasing the risk of flooding in the winter and drought in the summer, according to a report published today. Despite being one of the world's largest and most densely populated cities, the capital boasts a wide diversity of habitats that are hugely important to the wildlife that depend on them. The report by the London Climate Change Partnership warned that a global increase in temperature could expose London's scarce wetland areas to drought and fire in the summer months. Warmer, wetter winters could also increase pressure on rivers, which in turn could flood and wash out important nesting and breeding sites. The report suggests the best way to combat the increase in temperature is by adopting "urban greening" schemes. These would include river restoration, incorporating grass roofs and walls into building designs and increasing the number of trees planted in the capital. Alison Barnes, from the government's countryside watchdog Natural England, said: "Climate change is going to affect us all – both Londoners and the city's wildlife. "We know that more habitat will increase the chances of vulnerable species being able to cope with the peaks of heat, drought and flood that the climate change predictions suggest. "However, there is also growing evidence that greening London can protect people too, by helping to keep the city cool and by soaking up storm water, thus reducing the incidence of flooding." The report was released to coincide with the United Nations' World Habitat Day. Gerry Archer, chairman of the London Climate Change Partnership, added: "We need to find ways to accommodate a rich and changing biodiversity which is vital for our future and this report shows how our adaptations to climate change can benefit Londoners directly whilst also being friendly to wildlife." 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 | 5 Oct 2009 | 4:13 am
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