|
|
|
|
While Adolescents May Reason As Well As Adults, Their Emotional Maturity Lags, Says New ResearchA 16-year-old might be quite capable of making an informed decision about whether to end a pregnancy -- a decision likely to be made after due consideration and consultation with an adult -- but this same adolescent may not possess the maturity to be held to adult levels of responsibility if she commits a violent crime, according to new research into adolescent psychological development.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm 'Significant Risk' Of Oil Production Peaking In Ten Years, Report FindsA new report argues that conventional oil production is likely to peak before 2030, with a significant risk of a peak before 2020. The report concludes that the UK Government is not alone in being unprepared for such an event -- despite oil supplying a third of the world's energy.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm New Target For Treating Leukemia IdentifiedNew research integrates sophisticated interdisciplinary approaches to solve a molecular mystery that may lead to alternative therapeutic strategies for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The study identifies a previously unrecognized AML target that responds well to pharmacological inhibition and may be an excellent candidate for use in future clinical trials.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm 'Treason' By Immune System Cells Aids Growth Of Multiple MyelomaScientists have found that multiple myeloma cancer cells thwart many of the drugs used against them by causing nearby cells to turn traitor -- to switch from defending the body against disease to shielding the myeloma cells from harm.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm New Aluminum-water Rocket Propellant Promising For Future Space MissionsResearchers are developing a new type of rocket propellant made of a frozen mixture of water and "nanoscale aluminum" powder that is more environmentally friendly than conventional propellants and could be manufactured on the moon, Mars and other water-bearing bodies.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm Loyal Alligators Display Mating Habits Of BirdsAlligators display the same loyalty to their mating partners as birds. The ten-year-study reveals that up to 70% of females chose to remain with their partner, often for many years.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm Genetic Effects Of Radiation: Study Will Help Understand Radiation Exposure In Cancer Survivors And Their ChildrenA massive international study is underway to investigate the possible genetic effects of radiation and cancer drug exposures on future generations.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Stem Cells Which 'Fool Immune System' May Provide Vaccination For CancerA new study reveals the potential for human stem cells to provide a vaccination against colon cancer. This discovery builds upon a century old theory that immunizing with embryonic materials may generate an anti-tumour response. However, this theory has never before been advanced beyond animal research so the discovery that human stem cells are able to immunize against colon cancer is both new and unexpected.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Trackway Analysis Shows How Dinosaurs Coped With Slippery SlopesA new investigation of a fossilized tracksite in southern Africa shows how early dinosaurs made on-the-fly adjustments to their movements to cope with slippery and sloping terrain. Differences in how early dinosaurs made these adjustments provide insight into the later evolution of the group.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am New Coastland Map Could Help Strengthen Sea DefensesA new map plots the most accurate predictions yet for land uplift and subsidence and shows that southern Ireland and Wales, and southern and eastern England are continuing to sink, whilst Scotland is rising, at rates less than previously predicted.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Imelda Marcos' shoe collection saved from floods (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 4:19 am New Kingsnorth coal plant delayedCampaigners welcome a decision to put on hold controversial plans for a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Oct 2009 | 4:00 am The nation's weather (AP)AP - Strong storms with heavy rainfall are expected to sweep through the Central and Eastern US on Thursday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 3:38 am US Solar Decathlon seeks best sun-powered homes (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 3:20 am Saudis ask for aid if world cuts dependence on oil (AP)AP - There are plenty of needy countries at the U.N. climate talks in Bangkok that make the case they need financial assistance to adapt to the impacts of global warming. Then there are the Saudis.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 3:18 am How cities drive plants extinctHow towns and cities cause the extinction of local plants is revealed for the first time by a new analysis.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Oct 2009 | 3:06 am Calif. citrus farmers fear tree-killing disease (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Oct 2009 | 2:15 am Birds of a feather? "Low-quality" females pick low-quality mates"Low-quality" female birds prefer to mate with low-quality males, say researchers - raising evolutionary questions.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Oct 2009 | 12:53 am Airline's green claim vanishes into FinnairFinland's national carrier blitzes Europe with plain stupid marketing strategy that amounts to eco-vandalism The national airline of Finland has a new marketing strategy. Finnair wants us to fly to Asia via Helsinki. It's a sensible business plan, I guess. There aren't so many Finns wanting to fly to Asia, so they encourage others to fly to Finland and join them on the long haul. The company is currently blitzing Europe cities such as London with posters claiming that flying Finnair to Asia is both quicker and "eco-smart". So is this greenwash? I took this up with Kati Ihamäki, who was last year appointed the company's vice-president for sustainable development "as part of [Finnair's] quest to become the airline of choice for environmentally conscious passengers in international travel". Her case is this. First, Helsinki is on a direct route to much of Asia from both Europe and North America. It may not look like it from most maps, but you'll see what she means if you check out a globe, or look at this Great Circle Mapper. Fair enough, but most direct routes to China, India and south-east Asia already fly over Finland. So why bother to land and take off again? Her answer is that breaking the journey means planes can carry less fuel. Most of the payload when a long-haul flight takes off is not passengers or cargo but fuel. It can be five times the "payload", so breaking the journey into smaller hops cuts the fuel load. But there is a catch. Planes use most fuel during take-off and getting to cruising altitude. Typically this process burns as much fuel as cruising for 700-800 kilometres. Taking off twice (say, once in London and once in Helsinki) will therefore burn up more fuel than taking off once. So there is a balance. And Ihamaki's case is that on those really long hauls to Asia — anything over 10 hours, she writes in a blog on the company site — the balance is in favour of a stopover. You can cut your emissions when flying from New York to New Delhi by 28% if you make a stop-off at Helsinki, Finnair claims (pdf). Others agree that stopovers are best on the longest journeys. When Britain's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution investigated air travel (pdf) a few years ago, it found that the fuel burned "per passenger kilometre" was highest for short-haul flights (where most of the journey is fuel-intensive takeoff and climbing) and for very long-haul flights (through carrying so much fuel). But the commission found a modest "sweet spot" in the middle. At around 4,300 kilometres (2,672 miles), emissions were as much as 10% less than for very long or short flights. So does that make Finnair right? Not quite. For one thing, a flight from London (or Frankfurt, or Amsterdam) to Helsinki is less than half the "sweet spot" distance. By my calculation, based on the Royal Commission's findings, Finnair is right that if you are flying from London to Hong Kong it is better to stop over at Helsinki than go direct. But Finnair's scientists agreed with me that for a journey from London to Beijing it makes virtually no difference, and for Delhi or Mumbai you would emit fewer greenhouse gas emissions on a direct flight. So Finnair have their science right. But their marketing is hype. It is by no means always "eco-smart" to fly to Asia via Helsinki, because the emissions from the short hop to Finland's capital often outweigh the benefits on the rest of the journey. Worse still, a lot of the stop-over flights Finnair offers from Europe to Asia via Helsinki are plain stupid. Its schedules advertise crazy dog-leg journeys like Moscow to Bangkok via Helsinki. That is: flying west to Helsinki before taking a flight east that is even longer than going direct from Moscow. Istanbul to Bangkok via Helsinki is equally crazy. But those "eco-smart" guys are desperate to sell you a ticket. Finnair has opened a debate. In the coming years, as the airline business struggles to come to terms with internationally imposed limits on emissions, there will be a lot of new thinking: about taking more direct routes; reducing those irritating and fuel-burning holding circles before landing; cutting out super-long haul. All that is good. But Finnair's blanket claim that flying via Helsinki is eco-smart does not hold water. It is a marketing ruse, based on cherry-picking data, to help fill more planes to Asia. It is, for many journeys, greenwash. And encouraging us to think that it can be "eco-smart" to fly to Asia at all is an act of eco-vandalism. A cynic would say the best eco-news from Finnair this year is that collapsing demand has forced it to cancel 14% of its flights. Now that really is eco-smart. 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 | 8 Oct 2009 | 12:00 am Big Asteroid Less Likely to Hit Earth (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - The large asteroid Apophis poses less of a threat of walloping the Earth in the year 2036 than previously thought, new research finds.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 10:26 pm Trio wins chemistry Nobel for solving ribosome riddleSTOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Three scientists who produced atom-by-atom maps of the mysterious, life-giving ribosome won the Nobel chemistry prize on Wednesday for a breakthrough that has allowed researchers to develop powerful new antibiotics.Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 10:14 pm Potential Pieces of Autism Puzzle Revealed (HealthDay)HealthDay - WEDNESDAY, Oct. 7 (HealthDay News) -- New genes and genomic regions that might be associated with autism have been identified by an international research team.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 9:51 pm Stem Cell Research Offers Hope for Colon Cancer Vaccine (HealthDay)HealthDay - WEDNESDAY, Oct. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Human stem cells may provide a means of creating a vaccine against colon cancer and other types of cancers, say American and Chinese scientists.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 9:51 pm Warning over global oil 'decline'There is a "significant risk" that global production of conventional oil could "peak" and decline by 2020, a report suggests.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Oct 2009 | 8:50 pm Q&A: What happened at Kingsnorth?The plans, the protests and the power station What is Kingsnorth?Kingsnorth is a power station on the Medway estuary in Kent. It and it's nearby sister power station, Grain, are owned by the energy company E.ON. Kingsnorth has four units that between them generate 1940 megawatts. The units are capable of burning both coal and oil and could also accept up to 10% biomass. Kingsnorth generates power for more than 1.5m homes. What was planned?In October 2006, E.ON announced plans to build two new coal burning units. If approved it would be the first new coal plant in the UK for three decades. How did environmentalists react?With anger. The project soon began to become a focal point for climate change protests. For example, in August 2008 the Climate Camp network set up a protest next to the power station. The protests drew support from scientists and celebrities – the actor Robert Redford for example endorsed the cause. Why is coal so controversial?Because it is one of the most carbon intensive of the fossil fuels, meaning that per unit energy you get by burning it you emit more CO2 than for gas or oil. What do coal's supporters say?That coal is vital for energy security and to keep the lights on. Between now and 2020 about a third of the UK's generating capacity must be replaced. Coal's supporters argue that renewable energy cannot fill the gap fast enough and that relying on gas or oil would leave the UK vulnerable to fluctuating prices, or being held to ransom by foreign suppliers such as Russia. What about new technologies?In April 2009 the UK government announced that no new coal fired power stations would be built unless they bury at least 25% of emissions using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. From 2025 that requirement goes up to 100%. Although elements of CCS are up and running and there are a handful of small-scale demonstration projects, the technology is a long way from commercial reality and some environmentalists fear that the "clean coal" slogan is an excuse for business as usual. What about the Kingsnorth six?They are a group of Greenpeace climate change activists who with the help of a diversion by other protesters broke into the Kingsnorth site in October 2007 and scaled a chimney. They painted the word Gordon on its side. How did they defend their actions?They were charged with causing £30,000 of criminal damage, but argued in court that preventing climate change was a lawful excuse for their actions. Their barrister called Nasa climate scientist Dr James Hansen as an expert witness. He told the court that humanity was in "grave peril". "Somebody needs to step forward and say there has to be a moratorium, draw a line in the sand and say no more coal-fired power stations," he said. The court also heard from David Cameron's environment adviser, the millionaire environmentalist Zac Goldsmith, and an Inuit leader from Greenland, both of whom testified about the effects of climate change around the world. They were acquitted in September 2008. What does the decision to shelve the Kingsnorth plans mean?E.ON has said the decision was taken because of reduced energy demand due to the recession, but environmentalists will see it as proof that protest can be effective. The most hopeful protesters may see it as the beginning of the end of coal power in the UK. 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 | 7 Oct 2009 | 7:35 pm Feds give sea otters habitat protection in Alaska (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 7:33 pm Private schools 'dominate' scienceForty-two per cent of the UK's top scientists and scholars were privately educated and the trend is set to continue, a report says.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Oct 2009 | 5:38 pm 'Blue Stonehenge' May Be Funeral ComplexThe mysterious monument dubbed "Bluehenge" may have been used as a burial site.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Oct 2009 | 5:15 pm Environment: what would the Tories do?The Tories oppose airport expansion and are backing green technology and renewable fuels, but will they be able to honour their energy-efficiency commitments? Despite strong rhetoric from Labour on the environment, its failure to deliver enough meaningful action has left many environmental campaigners disappointed. Some measurements put overall carbon dioxide emissions higher than in 1997 and a pledge to deliver a 20% cut by 2010 is doomed to fail. There has been little progress on renewable energy and Labour has managed to find itself on the wrong side of the debate on the two hot environmental issues of the day – the expansion of Heathrow and the construction of a new coal-power station at Kingsnorth in Kent. So would a Conservative government offer a greener future? The pre-recession days when the two main parties battled to be the most eco-friendly have long gone, but there are still votes in the environment, and the Conservatives have set out a strong stall. Just this week, they restated their opposition to Heathrow's proposed third runway, and promised to make it a manifesto commitment, along with blocks on further expansion at Gatwick and Stansted. A new high-speed rail network will take up some of the domestic slack between London and northern cities such as Manchester. The Tories have also talked up the need to modernise Britain's ageing electricity grid, and envisage a new "smart" system with householders able to sell power back to the system and check their fuel use on state-of-the-art meters. Central to their energy plans would be the adoption of a feed-in tariff, to pay householders a fixed premium for spare electricity they generate. The system is credited with boosting uptake of renewables in countries such as Germany, but has been resisted by Labour. On a larger scale, they believe carbon capture and storage is reliable enough to force every coal power station to reduce its carbon emissions to the level of a modern gas plant. On housing, they have pledged to find the money for £6,500 of energy-efficiency improvements to every home, and want to generate enough methane from farm and food waste to replace some 50% of natural gas used in central heating. So far, so good, but environmental promises have a habit of being scrapped, or at least kicked out to endless consultations. Labour officials question the sums, particularly the energy-efficiency pledge, which they point out will cost £160bn if delivered to every UK house. Conservative MPs voted against green investment in the budget, they say, and Conservative councils have opposed 60% of wind farms since Cameron became leader. Dave Timms of Friends of the Earth says there are reasons for both encouragement and alarm in the Conservative approach. While green campaigners do not doubt the personal commitment of Cameron and other senior Tories on the issue, there are vocal elements within the party that remain distinctly off-message. "It's not a question of personal commitment, it's whether they can win the battle with the other departments," Timms says. For all political parties, it remains easier to set environmental targets than to meet them. The first may help get the Tories into government, but only the second will help save the planet. 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 | 7 Oct 2009 | 5:06 pm Nasa set to make new crater in the moonNasa's attempt to smash two probes into the moon's surface could prove the presence of water and hint at a faster, cheaper future for space exploration As Britain tucks into its lunch on Friday, hundreds of scientists, engineers and astronomers on the other side of the planet will be nervously watching the skies. Across California and Hawaii, hundreds of eyes will be trained on the moon, watching for the moment when a hi-tech orbiter – weighing more than 2 tonnes and travelling at 5,600mph – plunges headlong into the lunar surface. The collision will throw a massive cloud of dust and debris up into space before, just a few minutes later, another, smaller, spacecraft follows suit and plummets to its doom. For most people, it sounds like the stuff of nightmares. But when the impact takes place, the scientists working on the LCROSS mission will not be weeping but cheering – because this crash is happening on purpose. Indeed, smashing into the moon's surface is the primary objective of LCROSS (the name stands for Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite). The basic idea behind the project, which launched into space in June, is to try to find out where water might exist in the darkest recesses of the moon's south pole. The best way to do that, apparently, is to throw a spacecraft at it and then examine the debris thrown up by the impact. More precisely, LCROSS hopes to plunge itself into an area of the moon that appears to be the most likely candidate for harbouring water, and push up a cloud of dust (known as the ejecta) that will allow scientists to photograph and study it for evidence of H2O. "When the impact occurs there is a brief flash that lasts about 100 milliseconds, followed by the material that has been excavated by the event is lifted up and will fall back into the moon — back into the crater," says Dr Kim Ennico, a scientist based at the Nasa Ames research centre in California, where most of the work on LCROSS has taken place. That flash of light won't be visible to the naked eye, but for those west of the Mississippi and lucky enough to have a telescope of at least 10 inches, it will be the first time that sunlight has ever been cast on the material scooped out of the shadows that cover the moon's south pole. "We just get a brief glimpse of it; it will travel, we hope, as high as 10km above the surface," Ennico says. "That ejecta curtain, that plume, is going to last only one to one and a half minutes before it falls down and it's out of view." Extraterrestrial ballet It is easy to imagine that crashing a spacecraft into the moon involves little more than flinging it in the right direction — much like, say, throwing a ball or firing a missile. In fact, the opposite is true: when the mission reaches its climax at around 12.30pm UK time on Friday, it will be the culmination of more than two years of precise planning. Indeed, the entire mission reads like a delicate extraterrestrial ballet. Soon after taking off from Florida, LCROSS used gravity to slingshot itself into a wide orbit around the Earth that would eventually coincide with the moon. Soon, as it closes in on the moment of impact, the craft will divide in two. The Saturn fuel tank will detach from the body of the main LCROSS unit – which, stuffed with cameras and sensing equipment, acts the mission's brain. The empty fuel tank will then hit the moon at a sharp angle while the shepherding craft spends several minutes filming the first impact, analysing the dust cloud and sending information back to ground control. In addition to those observations, an array of telescopes and cameras on Earth and in space will be watching to grab images. Then, finally, the second vehicle will also smash into the moon's surface – providing another bite of the cherry for those observing from thousands of miles away. "These and several other telescopes participating in the LCROSS observation campaign will provide observations from different vantage points using different types of measurement techniques," says Jennifer Heldmann, who is leading the observation effort. This is not the first time that a spacecraft has been used as an ad hoc missile. Four years ago another Nasa mission, Deep Impact, purposely collided with the Tempel 1 comet to try and unlock the "primordial soup" inside it. Earlier this summer, meanwhile, the Japanese Kaguya satellite was purposely crashed into the moon after having spent a year orbiting it. But LCROSS is different from preceding kamikaze missions: bigger, more complex and — perhaps — more important than similar previous ventures. After all, finding water on the moon has long been a dream for scientists, who want to understand more about its history — important for its own purposes, but also as a way of shedding more light on our own planet's background. But LCROSS could also have more practical applications if it succeeds in providing evidence of water deposits in the unseen trenches of the lunar landscape. The target being tracked by the team at Ames is a 98km-wide hole called Cabeus, which lies just a short distance from the Shackleton crater – the proposed location for Nasa's crewed lunar outpost, which it hopes to have completed by 2024. Discovering a potential water supply has obvious benefits for that scheme, not least providing astronauts with a potential reservoir that they can tap into rather than rely on shipments from Earth. And while the existence of usable water inside Cabeus is still a hypothesis, the decision to target that crater is based on detailed information. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Indian Chandrayaan satellite appeared to confirm the existence of water in the region — subsequently confirmed by data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the vessel that LCROSS hitched a ride into space alongside. Bigger impact Finding water on the moon would be a major breakthrough — LCROSS lead Anthony Colaprete has called it the "principal resource" in space exploration. Jack Burns, a University of Colorado astrophysicist who heads the science committee for Nasa's advisory council, goes even further. "I rank this as a game changer for lunar science," he said in the wake of Chandrayaan's findings. "In my mind this is possibly the most significant discovery about the moon since the Apollo era." With all this at stake, the team behind LCROSS hopes it can find actual water rather than just evidence of it. But even if it does not succeed in achieving that, the mission has already broken new ground – not simply because of its unique objective, but also in the way it was put together. Only approved in 2006, it could also herald a new generation of fast and inexpensive space missions. Although the numbers involved in bringing LCROSS to fruition are not small – the project has cost around $79m and occupied a team of more than 50 for more than two years – it is a drop in the ocean compared with the $18.69bn the agency has budgeted for 2010 alone. Such high speed and low cost is rare, and while LCROSS did not have to fund its launch directly (it piggybacked on an empty slot in the LRO mission instead) it defrayed other costs by using off-the-shelf components and constructing the satellite in an innovative way. Dr Ennico, who worked on some of the cameras and instruments on board the craft, says that while the time and cost constraints proved challenging, they also helped shape a new view of how to approach space missions. "I am used to the old Nasa paradigm of taking lots of years to build instruments – but that's usually when you're going after something you've never done before: you don't know what you're going to expect, it's new science and it's new areas you're going to probe, so you have to build a unique instrument," she says. "We found that there were instruments available that are used in industry – they're used in auto car racing, they're used in the military, they're used in environmental fieldwork ... in a sense, we turned it upside down." That flexible approach also meant that many of the usual, rigid frameworks that apply to space travel have been dropped for LCROSS. For instance, the team has tweaked its target: just last week, they shifted from a plan to crash into the 48km Cabeus A crater to its larger neighbour, Cabeus proper, after data from LRO suggested that the new target would have a higher concentration of hydrogen. A faster, cheaper future "It's definitely a different paradigm for Nasa," says Dr Ennico, "But it is a part of the Nasa of old – in which Nasa was launching a lot of missions very quickly on very tight time schedules." That is an important message for Nasa, at a time when America, and the world, is again scrutinising space exploration. The shuttle project is about to shut down, and interest in expensive space missions faces opposition from politicians faced with more straightforward economic problems. The age-old criticisms of the agency – expensive, slow and pointless – remain. Even a recent report from the group reviewing America's plans for human space flight, the Augustine Committee, suggested that Nasa simply doesn't have the money to do what it plans to. It's nearly 50 years since John F Kennedy made one of the great rallying cries for space exploration on the field at Rice University in Houston. Why do humanity's best choose to undertake difficult tasks, such as climbing mountains and crossing oceans? "We choose to go to the moon," he said, famously. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard." And while it is unlikely that Kennedy would ever have got away with suggesting that we choose to go to the moon to crash, LCROSS does offer some hope of a faster, cheaper future for space exploration. So when those telescopes watch the moon on Friday, they won't just be anticipating a plume of dust — they will also be hoping that the hard things are about to get a little easier. 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 | 7 Oct 2009 | 4:30 pm Big dino prints found in Jurassic park in France (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 4:27 pm Human Genome Map Gets RedrawnAn updated view of the human genome could aid in the fight against inherited diseases.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Oct 2009 | 3:00 pm Nobel Prize for the Chemistry of Protein Production
This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to three molecular biologists who study ribosomes, the protein factories within cells. Ribosomes were discovered in the 1950’s by George Palade, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the makeup of cells, but scientists weren’t able to take a close look at those organelles till the end of the century. Thomas Steitz, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, and Ada Yonath developed tricks for examining the tiny structures with x-rays and electron beams. The high-resolution 3D images they acquired will help chemists develop a host of better medications. “Scientists around the world are using the winners’ research to develop new antibiotics that can be used in the ongoing battle against antibiotic-resistant microbes that cause so much illness, suffering and death.” said Thomas Lane, president of the American Chemical Society, in a press release. Dozens of antibiotics — including tetracycline and clindamycin — work by gumming up the ribosomes inside bacteria. Each of those medications is made up of relatively small molecules that can wedge themselves into crevices in the ribosome, destroying the microbes’ ability to make protein, and thus rendering them helpless. Armed with 3D images of antibiotic molecules wedged into ribosomes, medicinal chemists can refine their strategy for fighting bacteria. They can find new weak spots in bacterial ribosomes. That approach is a lot like the way that the Rebel Alliance destroyed the first Death Star: by looking at its blueprint and finding a weak spot. Except, in this case the researchers are looking for vulnerable nooks and crannies in a blob of RNA and protein, rather than a thermal exhaust port. Dozens of 3D images that show antibiotics sticking to ribosomes are available in the Protein DataBank, and you can look at them yourself with a tool called First Glance. Just type the Protein DataBank ID number for the ribosome that you want to look at, and then start exploring. Here are some of the best structures: Ribosome with Clindamycin: 1YJN
Image: A ribosome reads an mRNA sequence and produces protein according to its genetic code. Credit: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Oct 2009 | 2:48 pm Alligator Swamps Are Lousy With Monogamy
Alligators don’t seem to be the promiscuous, indiscriminate reptiles scientists once though they were. A new 10-year study of alligator mating habits shows that most female crocodilians prefer to mate over and over with the same male, despite encountering a vast array of eligible alligator bachelors each year. As the only surviving members of a class of reptiles called archosaurs, which included dinosaurs and the ancient ancestors of birds, alligators are in a unique position to help scientists understand the mating patterns of dinosaurs and birds. For the past 10 years, ecologists have been tracking female alligators at the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana and recording their mate preferences by looking at the DNA of their young. The data, published today in Molecular Ecology, reveals that up to 70 percent of female alligators choose the same partner year after year.
Finding mate fidelity in alligators is surprising because most reptiles are polygamous, often mating with multiple partners during the same breeding year and producing young from multiple fathers. Alligators do exhibit multiple paternity — in this study, roughly 50 percent of nests contained eggs from more than one father — but surprisingly, females appeared to pick the same male (or males) year after year. Because of the dense population of alligators at the wildlife refuge, the researchers don’t think the repeat pairings were a result of chance. Instead, it appears that female alligators are actively choosing specific males that they’ve mated with in the past. Only a few other reptilian species exhibit this type of mate preference, and this is the first time anyone has shown fidelity in alligators. The researchers are still trying to understand what drives alligator mate choice, and how picking the same mate might benefit future generations. Unlike most other reptiles, female alligators spend significant energy nurturing their young, both by sitting on their nests and defending their babies once they’re born. It’s possible that a successful pairing in the past means a higher chance of successful breeding in the future, but the scientists say further study is necessary to prove what makes an alligator stay faithful. “In this study, by combining molecular techniques with field studies we were able to figure something out about a species that we never would have known otherwise,” Lance said. “Hopefully future studies will also lead to some unexpected and equally fascinating results.” Images: Phillip “Scooter” Trosclair See Also:
Follow us on Twitter @wiredscience, and on Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Oct 2009 | 2:25 pm Albatross Search for FoodAdult black-browed albatross soar above the Southern Ocean looking for food to feed their young chicks waiting on Bird Island, South Georgia. Such seabirds feed mainly on squid, fish and krill, and scraps left from killer whales.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Oct 2009 | 2:02 pm More Than Meets the Eye: How the CCD Transformed Science
The 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics went, in part, to the inventors of the charge-coupled device George Smith and Willard Boyle this week. Their innovation, sketched out in 1969, is now the imager in millions of digital cameras and telescopes.
The very first prototype, pieced together months after Smith and Boyle laid out its working principles, is pictured above. A charge-coupled device, in most applications, translates light into an electronic signal. Photons of light striking an array of capacitors create an electrical charge proportional to their intensity, which the charge-coupler transforms into voltage. That signal can be digitized and transformed by the dull magic of high-performance computing into Hubble’s images. Millions of CCDs are made each year for mass market cameras, but they also proved a transformational technology in science by providing a much more sensitive light sensor than previously existed. After being overlooked for decades, the Nobel win was a mild surprise but well deserved. “There wasn’t anything that could compete in scientific imaging,” said Tony Tyson, an astronomer at the University of California, Davis, who built the first CCD camera for scientific applications in the late 1970s. “You’re interested in getting very high signal-to-noise ratios. There’s nothing that really competes with CCDs.” For the really dim things astronomers look at, the number of photons of light coming from a source is so small that each one counts. Out of every 100 photons, a CCD can record more than 90 of them. Photographic plates can barely reach 10 percent. And your eyes? Their quantum efficiency is in the 1 to 4 percent range.
According to lore, Smith and Boyle sketched out the design for the ubiquitous imaging device in an hour, over lunch at Bell Labs in October 1969. Working under the intense pressure applied by their taskmaster of a boss, Jack Morton, the pair had the device fabricated within a couple of months. George Smith took a photo of it, which you can see at the top of the page. The road, though, from the creation of the prototype to the development of an actual technology that could be used by scientists and photographers was long and hard. Though CCDs would come to dominate astronomy, the device, as invented, was nowhere near high enough resolution to be worthwhile. With its poor signal-to-noise ratio, it was not immediately clear that the CCD was destined for greatness. “I joined the company in 1969, the very year that Dick Boyle and George Smith invented this thing,” Tyson said. “I actually, frankly viewed it as a toy. It was so small and awfully noisy.” Historians Robert W. Smith and Joseph N. Tararewicz note that “astronomers could not simply procure a CCD ‘off the shelf’ soon after the device’s invention at Bell Labs.” In fact, a number of other imaging systems were suggested for what became the Hubble Space Telescope including a panoply of image tubes. Some astronomers, though, saw the potential for CCDs down the road. They were in Smith and Tararewicz’s terms, “counting on invention.” In the face of budget cuts in 1974 that threatened the installation of the still speculative, expensive CCD technology on the Large Space Telescope (Hubble), an astronomer delivered an impassioned plea for the technology. “To decide now, eight years before the LST can possibly fly, on what is already an out-dated detector, less than state-of-the-art, will be regarded in the future, I think as a poor choice of the options which are conceivable in other directions for cutting the cost of the LST,” Margaret Burbidge, a prominent astrophysicist, wrote. “It is like deciding to treat a sick patient by cutting out his heart on the grounds he would be saved the energy used by the heart muscles in pumping the blood around the body.” Hard work by hundreds of scientists and engineers pushed CCDs closer to reality over the next few years. Companies like Fairchild, Kodak and Tektronix, rather than Bell Labs, developed the technology into usable form. Military, scientific and consumer applications were all benefiting from the money being thrown at the CCD problems from different directions, but it was still tough. “It was a very painful development,” Tyson said. “There were all these problems making really large cameras and getting uniform CCDs out of companies that were already pushing the envelope.” Still, scientists like Tyson persevered. After nearly a decade, he put his latest camera on the 40-inch telescope at Mt. Palomar Observatory and was able to measure the distribution of the faint blue galaxies. That work became an important piece of evidence that dark energy — the mysterious force propelling the acceleration of the universe outward — actually exists. Now, nearly every major astronomical observatory uses CCDs. They also remain the gold-standard for medical imaging, or really any type of science that needs to capture photons. Though CMOS imaging technology is making inroads in consumer technology, there’s “still nothing like a huge CCD,” Tyson said, for high-end science. Tyson’s latest project is the Large Synoptic Sky Survey, which will incorporate a 3,200-megapixel camera. Plotted against time, CCD performance, measured in pixels, has grown at close to the same dizzying logarithmic rate that computing power has (see below). Clearly, that hour of lunch at Bell Labs opened up a technological development path that was as broad and deep as nearly any in the 20th century. And after decades of being overlooked for the biggest prize in science, the inventors of the CCD are finally getting their due. “Back, say, 30 years ago when I was at Bell Labs, we thought that CCDs could very well be a Nobel Prize,” said Cherry Murray, dean of engineering and physical science at Harvard University and a one-time colleague of Smith and Boyle at Bell Labs. “It had been overlooked for so long … It’s nice to see.”
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 | 7 Oct 2009 | 1:45 pm Nobel prize shows need for funding: scientistsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ada Yonath, one of the winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, talked the U.S. government into spending $4.7 million on her research that eventually involved a Dead Sea salt-loving microbe.Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 1:02 pm BLOG: Doomsday Asteroid Collision Less LikelyAsteroid Apophis is less of a threat to Earth than once thought.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Oct 2009 | 1:00 pm BLOG: Make Your Own BarcodeCelebrate the anniversary of the invention of the barcode by making your own.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Oct 2009 | 1:00 pm Anatomy of a Dying StarA simulation of a star's final hours may help scientists uncover what triggers its death.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Oct 2009 | 1:00 pm More Than a Storm ChaserGraduate student studies storms not for the thrill of the chase, but to better understand weather.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Oct 2009 | 12:05 pm Australian Dust Storms Feed Life ExplosionDust storms lead to a boom in microscopic life, validating ocean fertilization plans.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm Score one for sanityLo and behold, looky what was aired on American public television last night: an actual show about Charles Darwin. And it didn't make him out to be the enemy of heaven. In fact it was quite moving and sympathetic, and one might even say schmaltzy (good Yiddishism for you), dwelling as it did on the deaths of two of his children. 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 | 7 Oct 2009 | 11:59 am France ready to hand back Egyptian muralsPARIS (Reuters) - France is ready to hand back five fragments of ancient Egyptian tomb wall paintings acquired by the Louvre museum between 2000 and 2003, Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said on Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 11:39 am Nobel winner condemns UK science funding reformCambridge chemist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan shares prize for showing how cells translate genetic code into complex life Britain's latest Nobel prize winner has attacked government plans to divert research funding from basic science into projects that are expected to have a quick financial pay-off. The shake-up in science funding announced earlier this year is a "huge mistake" that jeopardises Britain's ability to make discoveries needed to drive technological progress, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan said. Ramakrishnan, 57, was named today as a joint winner of the Nobel prize in chemistry for helping to discover how cells transform genetic code into living matter. He shares the award – and 10m Swedish kronor (£900,000) – with Thomas Steitz at Yale University, Connecticut, and Ada Yonath, the first Israeli woman to win a Nobel prize, at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot. Ramakrishnan, an Indian-born American, came to Britain from the states 10 years ago to work at one of the most prestigious scientific centres in the country, the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge. "There is a lot of focus now on trying to get very quick pay-offs in research. It is a huge mistake. Basic science has paid off far more than any directed research," Ramakrishnan said. "If you don't invest properly in fundamental science, then you won't have the foundations to develop the technologies and applications of tomorrow. Ten years down the line, your technology will be based on obsolete foundations." The three scientists were awarded the prize for making detailed atomic maps of "ribosomes", the complicated biological machines lurking inside cells that translate genetic code into complex life, from bacteria to humans. The work gave scientists an important insight into how the body makes tens of thousands of proteins that make muscle, skin and bone and let us hear, feel, taste and think. Understanding the structure of ribosomes in bacteria has allowed scientists to develop a new generation of antibiotics. Ramakrishnan received the call from the Royal Swedish Academy this morning after being forced to push his bicycle to work due to a flat tyre. "I was a bit grumpy, and when the lady from the Swedish Academy called, I thought it was an elaborate prank played by a friend of mine. I refused to believe her. "When the head of the academy came on the phone, I said, 'I don't know who you are, but you certainly have a good Swedish accent.' It was only after I spoke with one or two people I knew that I believed them," he said. "I'd be lying if I said I hadn't fantasised about the prize, but you can't do science in that hope. The ribosome, and particularly its atomic structure, is one of the major discoveries of the past decade or so, but the problem is there are many, many people who contributed to it. I am fortunate to be one of those chosen." This year's Nobel prize is the 14th awarded to an LMB scientist. Previous winners include Francis Crick and James Watson, who elucidated the double helix structure of DNA; César Milstein and Georges Köhler, who revolutionised medicine with research on monoclonal antibodies; and Fred Sanger who won the prize twice for work on insulin and, later, genetic sequencing. Yonath made the initial breakthrough at the end of the 1970s, when she tried to take x-rays of crystallised ribosomes – a feat many scientists considered impossible. She told a news conference by phone that the prize was "above and beyond my dreams". Jeremy Berg, director of the US National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which funded all three scientists, said he was amazed at Yonath's persistence. "I remember at the time being just completely stunned that she was somewhere between brave enough and crazy enough, because it was way, way, way beyond the technnology available at that point," Berg said. 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 | 7 Oct 2009 | 11:08 am Beyond the Genome
When scientists finished sequencing the human genome, the answers to diseases were supposed to follow. Six years later, that promise has gone unfulfilled. Genetics just isn’t that useful for predicting who gets sick, and why. The blueprint of life turned out to be an intriguing parts list. “It’s much more complex than we had thought. There aren’t going to be easy answers,” said Teri Manolio, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute’s Office of Population Genomics. “The genome is constantly surprising us. There’s so much that we don’t know about it.” Manolio is the lead author of a Nature article entitled “Finding the missing heritability of complex diseases.” Published Wednesday, it’s part of a major change in how scientists see the genome. In April, several articles in the New England Journal of Medicine featured researchers arguing over why genome-wide association studies — in which thousands of genomes are compared in a hunt for disease-linked patterns — had found so little. Several months later, a massive hunt for schizophrenia genes was described as the field’s “Pearl Harbor.” At a conference this summer at the Jackson Laboratories, the shortcomings of gene-centered explanations were a starting point for talks by some of the world’s most prominent geneticists. It’s not that genes are suddenly unimportant. Researchers are just acknowledging their variations as pieces of an extraordinarily complicated puzzle, along with how genes are turned on, how many copies are made of each, the shape of the genome itself, and how all of the genome’s protein products mix and interact. Wired.com talked to Manolio about the future of genomics research. Wired.com: What do you mean by “missing heritability”? Teri Manolio: We know that diseases cluster in families. In some diseases, the risk might be two or three times higher than normal, or 30 times higher, for a relative of someone with a disease. But when we do these genomic studies, we find maybe a 50 percent increase in risk. That gap is what’s missing.
Wired.com: The numbers can get tricky. If you’ve found that someone with a certain genetic variant has double the risk of developing a disease, but the heritable risk is a hundred-fold, then we’ve only connected two percent of the heritability to genetics? Manolio: That’s a fair way of putting it. The gap varies. In some diseases, we’re describing half of the genetic heritability. But that’s unusual. Only macular degeneration has numbers that high. In many diseases, it’s around five percent. Wired.com: How much of the gap is caused by our inability to link genetics to conditions, and how much has non-genetic causes? Manolio: There’s a lot of thought that this might be DNA and environment together. If you’re not exposed to adverse environmental factors, then you may never develop a given disease. With a bad enough environmental exposure, you may get a disease regardless of your genetic makeup. Wired.com: What about aspects of our DNA that we’re just starting to study, like variations in the number of copies we have of each gene, or how genes are activated or physically arranged inside a cell? Manolio: All of those have been suggested. At least so far, it doesn’t look like copy numbers explain a huge amount of this. But there are other places to look, and I suspect that the answer is going to be, “all of the above.” Wired.com: How does all this fit with what the public expected of genomics? It seems we had different expectations than the scientific community. Manolio: Well, to be honest, I think we were a bit naive about things, too. We’d hoped that when we identified where all the genes are, and all the coding regions and all the variations one could have, then that would explain everything. Those were the hopes, and then reality came crashing in. Wired.com: What about personalized genomics testing? That’s been the big consumer application of genomics so far. Manolio: Since we’re not explaining a huge mount of the inherited tendencies between people, then the information you get from a genotyping company may not be very apparently useful for predicting your risk of disease in the future. That’s what emerges from many of these studies: There are likely many other factors that increase your risks, and these factors are known and explain more than genomics does now. Genomics is a promising research tool, but right now it’s really a research tool. Wired.com: How do we find the missing heritability? Manolio: We’ll follow multiple avenues of research. We have to be humble about how this works. Wired.com: Do we have the tools? Manolio: Our sequencing is in good shape — the costs are coming down, we can get everyone’s base pairs read — but interpreting them is a real challenge. Technologies for epigenetics research are still developing. And there will be other needs coming down the pipeline. Wired.com: Want to put a timetable on the research? Manolio: I don’t think we can. In the next few years, we’ll see lots of variants associated with diseases. Many will be further investigated, and their functions determined. That’s one of the missing links here: what’s the function of all these things? We have over 400 variants identified in a whole variety of traits, but only in a few do we understand how they change a gene’s function, and how that may change biology. But these are great clues to biology. Wired.com: Is that a better way of thinking about genetics — not in terms of answers, but clues? Manolio: Absolutely. And if you’re a glass half-full person, then four years ago, we had practically no associations that we could replicate in multiple populations. Now there are hundreds. All of these are clues, and that’s wonderful. We just need to be patient in figuring out what they mean. Image: From “Circos: an Information Aesthetic for Comparative Genomics.” See Also:
Citation: “Finding the missing heritability of complex diseases.” By Teri A. Manolio, Francis S. Collins, Nancy J. Cox, David B. Goldstein, Lucia A. Hindorff, David J. Hunter, Mark I. McCarthy, Erin M. Ramos, Lon R. Cardon, Aravinda Chakravarti, Judy H. Cho, Alan E. Guttmacher, Augustine Kong, Leonid Kruglyak, Elaine Mardis, Charles N. Rotimi, Montgomery Slatkin, David Valle, Alice S. Whittemore, Michael Boehnke, Andrew G. Clark, Evan E. Eichler, Greg Gibson, Jonathan L. Haines, Trudy F. C. Mackay, Steven A. McCarroll & Peter M. Visscher. Nature, Vol. 461, No. 7265. October 8, 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 | 7 Oct 2009 | 11:00 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 | 7 Oct 2009 | 10:58 am Trent polluters face prosecutionThose responsible for polluting a stretch of the River Trent in Staffordshire with cyanide will be prosecuted, says the Environment Agency.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Oct 2009 | 9:48 am Nobel Chemistry Prize Goes to US, Israeli TrioThe Nobel Prize went to 3 chemists for their work mapping the mechanisms that create life.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Salt and Paper Make Disposable BatteriesA salty piece of paper is used as a new cheap and disposable battery.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Oct 2009 | 8:45 am New Shroud of Turin Evidence: A Closer LookEvidence is mounting that the holy relic is a fake.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Oct 2009 | 8:44 am Nobel Prize for chemistry of lifeThe Nobel Prize for chemistry is awarded to scientists who studied the structure of the every cell's "protein factory".Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Oct 2009 | 8:34 am Huge new ring spotted around SaturnWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have spotted a huge new ring around Saturn -- the largest planetary ring seen yet in the solar system.Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 8:24 am Reform tsar struggles to take Russia into nanoworldMOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian economic reform architect Anatoly Chubais hopes to marshal oligarch investment into establishing Russia as a world leader in high-tech nanoscience, helping wean his country off dependency on raw material sales.Source: Reuters: Science News | 7 Oct 2009 | 8:20 am Albatross Snags Scraps from Killer WhaleKiller whales help some albatross snag dinner.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Oct 2009 | 8:05 am Supermassive Black Holes Collide to Become Even More Super and Massive
New X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory added to an image previously captured by the Hubble Space Telescope created this amazing composite image of two black holes on the verge of colliding.
The two supermassive black holes, which show up as two points of light in the center of the galaxy NGC 6240, are only 3,000 light-years apart. Astronomers think the two will eventually combine into a single, larger black hole. Also combining to make a whole greater than the sum of its parts are the two pieces of this image, shown below. Space photos are often a combination of multiple images and sets of data, designed to bring out the details and beauty of the subject. In this case, Chandra’s X-ray data and Hubble’s optical data come together to create an image so stunning that it looks like it must be an artist’s rendering.
Images: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/C.Canizares, M.Nowak. Optical: NASA/STScI. See Also:
Follow us on Twitter @betsymason and @wiredscience, and on Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 7 Oct 2009 | 8:01 am Enormous New Ring Found Distantly Orbiting SaturnEnormous new ring found distantly orbiting Saturn; likely source of moon's dark side.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Oct 2009 | 7:46 am Does Taste Decrease with Age?Losing the ability to taste may be a sign of a health problem.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Oct 2009 | 7:27 am Underground City Envisioned in NevadaA new design concept imagines how communities can cope with climate change.Source: Livescience.com | 7 Oct 2009 | 7:26 am BLOG: Giant Ring Seen Around SaturnScientists find a huge, puffy and tenuous ring of ice and dust around Saturn.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Oct 2009 | 7:15 am Louvre 'open' on Egyptian archaeological returnFrance's Louvre Museum says it is open to the idea of returning ancient fresco fragments which sparked a row with Egypt.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Oct 2009 | 7:13 am SLIDE SHOW: Albatrosses Find Fast Food at SeaCameras strapped to the backs of albatrosses reveal they trail killer whales for food.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 7 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am 'Huge' dino footprints unearthedFossil hunters discover huge dinosaur footprints, said to be among the biggest in the world, in eastern France.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Oct 2009 | 5:33 am Beaver receiverWhy New Yorkers are sending texts to river wildlifeSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 7 Oct 2009 | 5:30 am
|
