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Most H1N1 Patients With Respiratory Failure Treated With Oxygenating System Survive IllnessDespite the severity of disease and the intensity of treatment, most patients in Australia and New Zealand who experienced respiratory failure as a result of 2009 influenza A(H1N1) and were treated with a system that adds oxygen to the patient's blood survived the disease, according to a study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am First Neotropical Rainforest Was Home Of The Titanoboa -- World's Biggest SnakeResearchers working in Colombia's Cerrejón coal mine have unearthed the first megafossil evidence of a neotropical rainforest. Titanoboa, the world's biggest snake, lived in this forest 58 million years ago at temperatures 3-5 C warmer than in rainforests today, indicating that rainforests flourished during warm periods.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Dyslexia Varies Across LanguagesChinese-speaking children with dyslexia have a disorder that is distinctly different, and perhaps more complicated and severe, than that of English speakers. Those differences can be seen in the brain and in the performance of Chinese children on visual and oral language tasks, reveals a new report.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Live Recordings Of Cell CommunicationA new advanced method for nano-scale imaging of vesicle-fusion could add to our understanding of diseases of the nervous system and viral infections. In the long term, this could be useful in developing a cure for neurological diseases and mental disorders (e.g. schizophrenia, depression, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease).Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Parasite Growth Hormone Pushes Human Cells To Liver CancerScientists have found that the human liver fluke (Opisthorchis viverrini) contributes to the development of bile duct (liver) cancer by secreting granulin, a growth hormone that is known to cause uncontrolled growth of cells.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Mystery About Proteins That Package The Genome SolvedResearchers have solved a century-old mystery about proteins that play a vital role in the transfer of the human genetic code from one cell to another. The discovery could lead to finding new ways to help the body fight a variety of diseases, including cancer.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Signs Of Macular Degeneration May Predict Heart DiseaseA large study found strong evidence that older people who have age-related macular degeneration (AMD) are at increased risk for coronary heart disease (CHD), although not for stroke. This result adds to mounting evidence that AMD and cardiovascular disease may share some risk factors--smoking, high blood pressure, inflammatory indicators such as C-reactive protein, genetic variants such as complement factor H--and disease mechanisms.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am H1N1 Critical Illness Can Occur Rapidly; Predominantly Affects Young PatientsCritical illness among Canadian patients with 2009 influenza A (H1N1) occurred rapidly after hospital admission, often in young adults, and was associated with severely low levels of oxygen in the blood, multi-system organ failure, a need for prolonged mechanical ventilation and frequent use of rescue therapies, according to a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Researchers Pave The Way For Effective Liver TreatmentsA combination of bioengineering and medical research has led to a new discovery that could pave the way for more effective treatments for liver disease.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am First Spider Known To Science That Feeds Mainly On Plant FoodThere are approximately 40,000 species of spiders in the world, all of which have been thought to be strict predators that feed on insects or other animals. Now, scientists have found that a small Central American jumping spider has a uniquely different diet: the species Bagheera kiplingi feeds predominantly on plant food.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am 'Alternative Nobel' to Africa, New Zealand (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 4:26 am New repellent foils cling-on bugsAn environmentally-friendly repellent that leaves pests unable to cling to surfaces is unveiled by Cambridge scientists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Oct 2009 | 4:20 am Circus founder calls his trip to space a success (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 4:00 am Gazprom strikes preliminary gas deal with China (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 3:48 am Global warming 'to triple rain over Taiwan' (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 3:42 am The nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 3:21 am Cyborg beetlesWhy remote-control insects are creating a buzzSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Oct 2009 | 3:14 am Tropical Storm Patricia approaches Mexico (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Oct 2009 | 3:07 am Lizards filmed 'walking on water'Remarkable slow motion film is taken of two lizards from Belize that seem to do the impossible - walk on water.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Oct 2009 | 2:59 am Finger points to a new da Vinci portrait being discoveredA new Leonardo da Vinci portrait may have been discovered after a fingerprint thought to belong to him is found on it.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Oct 2009 | 2:52 am Peace and waterLack of peace deepens Middle East water crisisSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Oct 2009 | 11:20 pm Hand Washing Detectors Could Save LivesWhen hospital workers fail to wash their hands, a new technology notices -- and sounds an alert.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Oct 2009 | 11:15 pm Cambodians broker peace deal - between humans and elephantsConservationists broker deal between elephants and villagers to save lives and protect elephant habitat.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Oct 2009 | 11:02 pm Age no concern at World Masters Games (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Oct 2009 | 9:50 pm Gene Mutation May Speed Learning (HealthDay)HealthDay - MONDAY, Oct. 12 (HealthDay News) -- People with a specific genetic mutation seem to be "smarter," in the sense of being able to adapt to changing situations and continue to make correct decisions quickly, a new German study suggests.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Oct 2009 | 9:48 pm China vows crackdown on industry overcapacity (Reuters)Reuters - China's cabinet has laid out detailed plans to curb overcapacity in industries such as steel, aluminum, cement and wind power, warning that the country's economic recovery could otherwise be hampered.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Oct 2009 | 8:48 pm Mother can pass on cancer in wombScientists have proved that it is possible for a mother's cancer cells to be passed to her unborn child.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Oct 2009 | 5:26 pm Mars Rover FAQ: The Martian Lives of Spirit and Opportunity (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - At times, it seems like NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity will last forever on the red planet.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Oct 2009 | 5:03 pm Hunting Arctic Asteroid Impact With HovercraftTwo polar scientists hot on the trail of an arctic mystery have a new tool for exploration: a hovercraft, specially outfitted for week-long trips over the ice with scientific instruments and solar panels.
Their quarry is a nearly 22,000 square-mile patch of disturbed Arctic sea floor that could be evidence of a massive asteroid strike. John Hall, a now-retired geoscientist, discovered the anomaly during his late-’60s graduate work aboard Fletcher’s Ice Island, a huge berg U.S. scientists inhabited for several decades. Since then, no scientific vessel has been back over the area to collect more data. The massive icebreakers that have crunched through the Arctic since the 1990s can’t reach the spot, said Yngve Kristofferson, a scientist and explorer at the University of Bergen in Norway. Kristofferson became intrigued with Hall’s data and in 2004, the two of them met in Bergen to talk Arctic science from eight in the morning to 10 in the evening. At the end of their time together, they came to a decision: They needed a hovercraft. Luckily, Hall is a partial heir to the fortune his grandfather made as head of the American Chicle Company, the trust that ran the American bubble gum game early in the 20th century, so he was able to buy the vehicle with private funds. A customized Griffon Hovercraft 2000TD, it is now going through the paces, hitting the Arctic from its home at Longyearbyen for the first time in 2008, and hoping to reach its full potential next spring. Hall delivered a speech detailing the craft’s capabilities and mission at Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory on Oct. 6. “The neat thing with a hovercraft is that you drive with the same ease over 10 centimeter-thick ice as you do with five meter thick ice,” Kristofferson told Wired.com. Despite their futuristic reputation, hovercraft have been commercially available for decades. The concept is actually quite simple. A big engine or turbine pumps air into a rubber skirt that allows the vehicle to tread lightly on whatever it’s touching. The R/H Sabvabaa, for example, weighs six tons but exerts no more pressure on any patch of ice than a seagull standing on one leg would by standing on it. The rest of the power from the engine is devoted to propulsion, allowing the craft to skip along at speeds up to 50 miles per hour.
For the strange terrain of the Arctic, it works perfectly, Hall and Kristofferson wrote in an article in the journal The Leading Edge in August. “The craft has proved to be useful for a variety of scientific tasks,” they wrote. “It appears more efficient than any other platform for ice-thickness measurements and oceanographic work.” Their hovercraft push comes as money has flooded into Arctic research. With Arctic ice melting, the nations adjacent to the ocean are rushing to stake their claims not just on the water, but on the oil and natural gas that lie under the sea floor, leading to calls to establish a National Park to protect the area. The most fascinating target for the hovercraft is the area of very thick ice closer to Ellesmere Island and northern Greenland. Not even nuclear-powered icebreakers have ventured into the region. It was just Hall’s good fortune to have been aboard the floating ice island doing research when it passed near this apparent sea floor anomaly. The duo, along with several other colleagues, described the discovery in a 2008 paper in the Norwegian Journal of Geology. “The upper couple hundred meters of sediment at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean is just like a carpet that is draped over the topography except for these areas where 150 meters are just blown away and the seabed is severely deformed,” Kristofferson said. To Kristofferson and Hall, the evidence suggests that a pressure wave caused by a pieces of a large asteroid crashing into the Arctic Ocean created these strange features. “Our working hypothesis is that the spectrum and scale of the observed disturbances are best explained as the effect of a shock wave generated by the impact of an extraterrestrial object,” they wrote. But the hypothesis remains just that without more data. The hovercraft works well, but with its on-board fuel, its range is limited to around 500 miles. For that reason, the scientists imagine they’ll use a larger vessel as a base of operations. “What we really want to do is go along with an icebreaker into the Arctic. You can greatly enhance the scientific output if you have a hovercraft. If you have more of them, even better,” Kristofferson said. “We can go out and do our own science and be away for many days. If the icebreaker gets stuck, we’re not stuck.” Still, both Hall and Kristofferson know they face an uphill battle to get other scientists to take both the hovercraft and asteroid impact ideas seriously. “The task is to figure out the real message in the data—the dream challenge for any scientist,” Kristofferson told the Lamont Doherty alumni magazine earlier this year. “So far, we have mostly met shaking heads, which just makes it more fun.” Image: Hall and Kristofferson. 1. The hovercraft. 2. Fletcher’s Ice Island Camp. Click through for more images of the hovercraft.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 12 Oct 2009 | 3:43 pm BLOG: Alien Invaders or Bizarre Cloud?This unusual cloud has trigged speculation of visitors from outer space.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Oct 2009 | 3:00 pm SLIDE SHOW: 'Small World' Blends Science and ArtExplore our favorite photos from Nikon's Small World Photomicrography Competition.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Oct 2009 | 3:00 pm Scientists prove cancer can be passed on in the womb• First proven case of cells crossing placental barrier Scientists have established beyond doubt that in rare cases cancer can be transmitted in the womb, following the birth of a baby to a woman with leukaemia. A team at the Institute of Cancer Research, a college of the University of London, working with colleagues in Japan, found that the cancer had defied accepted theories of biology. Leukaemia cells had crossed the placenta and spread from the 28-year-old mother to her unborn baby. There have been suspicions for years that cancer could be passed on in the womb. About 17 cases of suspected mother-to-child transmission have been noted – usually leukaemia or melanoma. But until now researchers have been unable to establish whether it had happened and, if so, how. If the cells did cross the placental barrier, the child's immune system should have recognised them as foreign invaders and destroyed them. In the latest case no one knew the mother, who was Japanese, had cancer during her pregnancy. She had a normal delivery in hospital, giving birth to an apparently healthy baby girl. But just over a month later the mother developed vaginal bleeding, which became uncontrollable. She was diagnosed with an advanced stage of leukaemia and died. When the baby was 11 months old she was brought to hospital with a swollen right cheek. Tests showed she had a tumour in her jaw and the cancer had spread to her lungs. Although the cancers were not the same – the baby had a lymphoma and is now in remission – the Japanese doctors suspected a link to the leukaemia that had killed her mother. They called in the team at the Institute of Cancer Research, which has done a lot of work in recent years on the genetics of cancers of identical twins. In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers explain how they used genetic "fingerprinting" techniques to establish that the child's cancer cells came from the mother. They found the cancer cells of mother and baby carried the identical mutated cancer gene (called BCR-ABL1), but the infant had not inherited this gene. This meant that the child could not have developed the cancer in isolation – the cells must have come from the mother. To investigate how leukaemia cells could have crossed the placental barrier and survived in the baby, the scientists looked for evidence of some form of immunological acceptance or tolerance of the foreign cells by the foetus. They examined the genes of the cancer cells in the infant and found a deletion mutation – some DNA missing in the region that controls expression of the major histocompatibility locus (HLA). This was significant because HLA molecules primarily distinguish one individual, and his or her cells, from another, so the absence of these on the cancer cells meant the infant's immune system would not have recognised that they were foreign. Professor Mel Greaves, who led the study, said: "It appears that in this and, we presume, other cases of mother-to-offspring cancer, the maternal cancer cells did cross the placenta into the developing foetus and succeeded in implanting because they were invisible to the immune system. We are pleased to have resolved this longstanding puzzle. "But we stress … the chances of any pregnant woman with cancer passing it on to her child are remote." Dr David Grant, scientific director at Leukaemia Research, said: "The important message from this … is that leukaemia cells can be destroyed by the immune system. Harnessing the power of the immune system to cure and protect patients from leukaemia is one of our priority areas of research." 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 | 12 Oct 2009 | 1:44 pm Red-nosed circus billionaire returns to EarthKOROLYOV, Russia (Reuters) - Canadian circus billionaire Guy Laliberte returned to Earth on Sunday wearing his trademark clown's red nose, landing as planned in Kazakhstan after a landmark space performance to highlight water scarcity.Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Oct 2009 | 1:19 pm Surprising Ship 'Contrails' Seen From SpaceA NASA satellite has captured an image of ship "tracks" – clouds that form around ship exhaust.Source: Livescience.com | 12 Oct 2009 | 1:07 pm 2012 Doomsday Not Likely, Mayans InsistMayans emphatically deny that 2012 marks the end of the world.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Oct 2009 | 12:30 pm Iran says British Museum broke pledge on artifactTEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran accused the British Museum on Monday of breaking a promise to lend it an artifact relating to Cyrus of Persia's conquest of Babylon in the 6th century BC.Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Oct 2009 | 12:25 pm Kinder, Gentler Spider Eats Veggies, Cares for Kids
Each of the world’s 40,000 spider species survives by hunting and killing — except, that is, for Bagheera kiplingi, the world’s first vegetarian arachnid. Found in Central America, the order-defying jumping spider eats nutrient-rich structures called Beltian bodies, which are found on the tips of Acacia trees. Trees produce the bodies to feed ants that defend them, which is a textbook example of what’s called co-evolutionary mutalism, and one that B. kiplingi has evolved to exploit. In a paper published Monday in Current Biology, researchers describe the spider’s ant-evading habits and provide a molecular analysis of its body composition, proving that B. kiplingi is indeed what it eats: plants, with a few larval ants on the side. (After all, 400 million years of evolutionary habits die hard.) A few other spiders have been documented consuming nectar, but only as a snack. No other spider is so predominantly vegetarian. And that’s not all: It looks like B. kiplingi males help care for eggs and young — something entirely unprecedented in the spider world. The researchers are now studying whether there’s a link between B. kiplingi’s predilection for plants and parental concern. Maybe going veggie softened its heart. Image: Current Biology See Also:
Citation: “Herbivory in a spider through exploitation of an ant-plant mutualism.” By Christopher J. Meehan, Eric J. Olson, Matthew W. Reudink, T. Kurt Kyser, and Robert L. Curry. Current Biology, Vol. 19, Issue 19, October 13, 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 | 12 Oct 2009 | 11:47 am Scientist on French terror chargeFrench magistrates file preliminary charges against a particle physicist accused of links to al-Qaeda.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Oct 2009 | 11:43 am BLOG: Power Mat to Cords: This Is It!Power mats let you lose the spaghetti dinner-like mess of cords under your desk.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Oct 2009 | 10:40 am 'Big step' needed on UK landfillThe UK's environment Secretary Hilary Benn tells the BBC a radical rethink is needed on how we dispose of waste.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Oct 2009 | 10:39 am Climate Action May Shift Warming OddsAggressive action to cut emissions may help to curb the catastrophic effects of warming.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Oct 2009 | 10:30 am Photonic Six Pack Provides Better Quantum Communication
To send a quantum message, it helps to have a photon six-pack. When bound together by a process called quantum entanglement, a set of six photons can withstand the hard knocks that ordinarily would erase quantum information, researchers have shown.
Papers describing the new experiment appear in the Oct. 9 Physical Review Letters and the October Physical Review A. “This is an exciting landmark in experimental capabilities,” comments physicist Aephraim Steinberg of the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the work. Creating the six-photon entanglement is an impressive technical achievement, he says. “This is the first demonstration of such large entangled states” with high quality. Quantum communication offers an absolutely secure way to send secret messages, such as encoded military secrets or financial transactions. But quantum information is fragile, quickly destroyed by even slight interactions with the environment.
While a conventional bit of information can have only one value, 0 or 1, a quantum bit, or qubit, exists as a combination of 0 and 1 simultaneously. A qubit stays in this undecided state until something, whether a stray atom or a scientist trying to measure its properties, interacts with it, forcing it into a single state. This collapse of possibilities, known as quantum decoherence, can be detected farther down the line to catch eavesdroppers. But it can also keep qubits from reaching their destination intact. Fortunately, theorists have shown that some quantum-mechanical systems are immune to certain interactions. One of these resilient systems is a set of four or more photons that are intimately bound, or entangled, a property of quantum systems that links particles’ fates even when they are separated by large distances. Delicate quantum bits find safety in numbers. The more photons are entangled, the more data can be encoded and transmitted reliably. Four photons can encode one robust qubit of information, and six photons can encode two, theorists have calculated. Now, a team of physicists led by Magnus Rådmark of Stockholm University has experimentally demonstrated a set of six entangled photons that can fly down flawed, noisy fiber-optic cables and emerge unscathed. “You’ll get exactly the same state out as you sent in, even if the fiber is being stressed and the temperature is changing, and all of the environmental factors that would normally make it a no-go,” Steinberg says. The key to preserving the state is to make sure all six photons are altered in exactly the same way. Temperature changes around the fiber-optic cable can alter the way it bends light, which in turn can rotate photons unpredictably. But if the photons travel in a close pack, they will all feel the same twists and bends. “If I take all six photons and rotate them in the same way, I will get exactly the same state I started with,” says Mohamed Bourennane of Stockholm University, a coauthor on the papers. “It’s like nothing has happened.” As a bonus, this property means that the sender and receiver don’t need to agree on which way is up. Changing the reference frame is just another rotation, the same kind of noise the photons ignored in the fiber. The photon sextet could also be useful in quantum computing, which could in principle manipulate entangled qubits to solve certain problems that are impossibly difficult for conventional computers.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 12 Oct 2009 | 10:10 am 'Veggie' spider shuns meat dietThe first spider in the world known to have a predominantly vegetarian diet is described by scientists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Oct 2009 | 10:08 am Rare Vegetarian Spider DiscoveredOne jumping spider has turned vegetarian.Source: Livescience.com | 12 Oct 2009 | 10:05 am (Mostly) Vegetarian Spiders Negotiate with AntsUnlike most spiders, this Central American jumping spider species feeds on leaf-tips, rather than on insects - at least most of the time!Source: Livescience.com | 12 Oct 2009 | 9:57 am Darker Side of Columbus Emerges in ClassroomsStudents are coming away with a more nuanced picture of Christopher Columbus.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Oct 2009 | 9:40 am Gravity-Mapping Satellite to Help Predict ClimateA satellite will measure Earth's uneven gravity in an effort to understand climate.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Oct 2009 | 8:40 am Clever New Device Sees Through WallsA new radio technology can see through walls and smoke.Source: Livescience.com | 12 Oct 2009 | 8:27 am How Loud is Your iPod?Some college students listen to their iPods at volumes that may lead to hearing damage, according to a new studySource: Livescience.com | 12 Oct 2009 | 7:44 am Raw Fish Spread Liver CancerEating the wrong fish could give you a parasite that promotes liver cancer.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am
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