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Amphetamine Use In Adolescence May Impair Adult Working MemoryRats exposed to high doses of amphetamines at an age that corresponds to the later years of human adolescence display significant memory deficits as adults -- long after the exposure ends, researchers report.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am High Tech For BicyclesCarbon fiber composite materials (CFRPs) not only make cars and airplanes lightweight but also benefit the light weight constructions for valuable bicycle concepts. German researchers have developed a spring-loaded seat post made of CFRPs.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Possible Link Between Autism And Oxytocin Gene Via Non-DNA Sequence MutationResearchers have uncovered a new genetic signature that correlates strongly with autism and which doesn't involve changes to DNA sequence. The changes are to the way the genes are turned on and off. The finding may suggest new approaches to diagnosis and treatment of autism. The researchers found higher-than-usual numbers of gene-regulating molecules called methyl groups in a region of the genome that regulates oxytocin receptor expression in people with autism.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Advance In 'Nano-Agriculture:' Tiny Stuff Has Huge Effect On Plant GrowthWith potential adverse health and environmental effects often in the news about nanotechnology, scientists are reporting that carbon nanotubes could have beneficial effects in agriculture. Their study found that tomato seeds exposed to CNTs germinated faster and grew into larger, heavier seedlings than other seeds. That growth-enhancing effect could be a boon for biomass production for plant-based biofuels and other agricultural products, they suggest.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Damaging Inflammatory Response Could Hinder Spinal Cord RepairThe inflammatory response following a spinal cord injury appears to be set up to cause extra tissue damage instead of promoting healing, new research suggests. Scientists analyzing this inflammatory response in mice discovered that the types of cells recruited to the site of the injury are dominated within a week by those that promote inflammation. When chronic, inflammation can prevent healing, and these inflammatory cells are believed to remain at the injury site indefinitely.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Designer Molecule Detects Tiny Amounts Of Cyanide, Then GlowsA small molecule designed to detect cyanide in water samples works quickly, is easy to use, and glows under ultraviolet or "black" light. Although the fluorescent molecule is not yet ready for market, its creators report that the tool is already able to sense cyanide below the toxicity threshold established by the World Health Organization.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Experts Issue Call To Reconsider Screening For Breast Cancer And Prostate CancerTwenty years of screening for breast and prostate cancer -- the most diagnosed cancer for women and men -- have not brought the anticipated decline in deaths from these diseases, argue experts in an opinion piece.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am It Takes Two To Tutor A SparrowIt may take a village to raise a child, and apparently it takes at least two adult birds to teach a young song sparrow how and what to sing.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Alcohol Tolerance 'Switch' FoundResearchers have found a genetic "switch" in fruit flies that plays an important role in making flies more tolerant to alcohol. This metabolic switch also has implications for the deadly liver disease cirrhosis in humans. A counterpart human gene contributes to a shift from metabolizing alcohol to the formation of fat in heavy drinkers. This shift can lead to fatty liver syndrome -- a precursor to cirrhosis.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Trigger Of Deadly Food Toxin Discovered; Finding Could Help Prevent Liver CancerA toxin produced by mold on nuts and grains can cause liver cancer if consumed in large quantities. Researchers for the first time have discovered what triggers the toxin to form, which could lead to methods of limiting its production.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Maldivians face life as 'climate refugees': president (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 3:33 am NASA: Huge fires across parts of NKorea last week (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 3:22 am The nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 2:58 am India: Climate deal can't sacrifice poor nations (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Oct 2009 | 2:50 am British scientists step closer to womb transplantsBreakthrough could offer alternative to surrogacy but extra funding is needed to complete human womb transplant studies British scientists believe they are a step closer to carrying out the first successful womb transplant. They have worked out how to transplant a womb with a good blood supply which could mean it lasts long enough to carry a pregnancy to term. A breakthrough would offer an alternative to surrogacy or adoption for women whose own wombs have been damaged by diseases such as cervical cancer. Around 15,000 women of childbearing age are currently living with a womb that does not work or were born without one. Richard Smith, consultant gynaecological surgeon at Hammersmith hospital in London, presented his latest research on rabbits at a US fertility conference. He said more than 50 women have approached him about transplants. He and colleagues need cash to move their research forward but have been denied grants by several medical research bodies – the team needs £25,000 for the next stage of research and £250,000 to complete a set of studies. The experts have set up a charity – Uterine Transplant UK – and believe the first successful human transplant could be carried out within two years if they raise enough funds. Their most recent study involved five donor rabbits and five recipients, which were operated on at the Royal Veterinary College in London. Five rabbits received a womb using a "vascular patch technique" which connected major blood vessels, including the aorta. Of the five, two rabbits lived to 10 months and examinations after death showed the transplants were a success. Smith's next step is to get rabbits pregnant through IVF to see how the womb copes, before moving on to larger animals. Previous animal attempts have failed and the only human-to-human transplant ended with the womb having to be removed. Saudi surgeons gave a 26-year-old woman a new uterus in 2000 after her own was removed following a life-threatening haemorrhage. The womb shrivelled within a few months. Smith believes this was because surgeons had not worked out how to connect the blood vessels properly. His own previous research relied on blood vessels that were too small, which then became blocked. The latest experiment involved transplanting the womb with all its arteries, veins and bigger vessels. Smith said: "I think there are certain technical issues to be ironed out but I think the crux of how to carry out a successful graft that's properly vascularised – I think we have cracked that one." Other researchers have carried out similar experiments with pigs, goats, sheep and monkeys. In a human transplant, any baby would have to be delivered by caesarean section because the transplanted womb is unlikely to withstand natural labour. The babies would also need to be conceived through IVF as surgeons believe women could be at higher risk of ectopic pregnancy if they have a womb transplant. Smith said there was not much interest in the procedures among the medical profession but the demand and interest from patients was huge. He said: "There's a lot of dismissal in the profession in terms of this being a step too far in terms of fertility management. "But for a woman who's desperate for a baby, this is incredibly important." Smith, who presented his findings at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) conference in Atlanta, said the womb would only stay in place long enough for the woman to have the children she wanted. "The plan is that once a woman has had her children, the uterus comes back out and she can come off immunosuppressants." He added: "Nobody should move this into a human setting until everything has been done to make this as safe as possible." Around 100 to 200 women in the UK use surrogate mothers each year. Tony Rutherford, chairman of the British Fertility Society, said: "I think there is a big difference between demonstrating effectiveness in a rabbit and being able to do this in a larger animal or a human. "My understanding is that doing this in larger animals has been more difficult. "This is something that is ongoing research. "I don't think it is something that is going to be available in clinical practice for some years to come." Clare Lewis-Jones, from Infertility Network UK, said: "Women unable to conceive and carry their own baby face real emotional heartache and if this is proven to be a safe procedure, it may benefit some women and enable them to carry a baby without having to resort to surrogacy. "However, before this treatment could be made available, a great deal of thought and discussion on all the issues including the ethical ramifications and need for counselling would be required." 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 | 22 Oct 2009 | 2:46 am Earth WatchAre reptiles chasing frogs along extinction road?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 22 Oct 2009 | 1:28 am WATCH: Spider Sex Dangerous For SomeExplore the tangled web of the Australian redback spider's mating rituals.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Oct 2009 | 10:00 pm 70 Years of Telescopes Tuned to Cosmic Radio<< previous image | next image >>
Radio astronomy began with static. Bell Laboratories wanted to get rid of it and went looking for its causes. With a hand-built radio telescope, Karl Jansky discovered a clear signal of something else amidst the noise from thunderstorms near and far: a steady static that appeared to emanate from the center of the Milky Way. The field of studying radio waves arriving at Earth from outer space was born. Jansky didn’t know what could be causing the radio waves, and Bell Labs pulled him off the project soon after his big discovery. Still, he’s considered the father of radio astronomy. This gallery illustrates the progression of radio telescopes from Jansky’s primitive ’scope to the huge arrays of antennas now installed in the world’s deserts and perhaps, one day, on the moon. Image: National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 21 Oct 2009 | 6:35 pm Seasonal ladybug swarms pester even bug experts (AP)AP - Pest-control specialist Gene Scholes even gets bugged by them — legions of ladybugs lately swarming his rural Missouri home and other stretches across the country, exploiting gaps in door and window seals for cozier climes inside.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 6:35 pm Primate fossil called only a distant relative (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 6:34 pm Fossils of tiny dinosaur on first public displayLOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Fossils from the smallest dinosaur found in North America, a fleet-footed species only 28 inches long and weighing less than a rabbit, have gone on public display for the first time at a Los Angeles museum.Source: Reuters: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 6:16 pm Fossils of tiny dinosaur on first public display (Reuters)Reuters - Fossils from the smallest dinosaur found in North America, a fleet-footed species only 28 inches long and weighing less than a rabbit, have gone on public display for the first time at a Los Angeles museum.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 6:16 pm Collection yields one of the smallest known dinosaursA new species of dinosaur, the smallest to be discovered in North America, is identified from fossils found 30 years ago.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Oct 2009 | 5:35 pm Twitter Use Surveyed19 percent of Internet users say they use Twitter, up from 6 percent in April 2008.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Oct 2009 | 5:15 pm Leaping wolf snatches photo prizeThe captivating image of a wolf wins the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Oct 2009 | 5:11 pm 'Sidewalk Astronomy' to Sweep the U.S. This Weekend (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - People across America will have a chance to gaze up at Jupiter and its four largest moons this weekend the same way Galileo did almost 400 years ago.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 4:30 pm UK population 'to rise to 71.6m'The UK population could hit 71.6m by 2033, the fastest rate in a century, if current growth trends continue, says the Office for National Statistics.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Oct 2009 | 4:19 pm 1889 Pennsylvania Flood Was as Big as Mississippi River
PORTLAND, Ore. — The devastating flow released when a dam burst upstream of Johnstown, Pa., in May 1889 transformed a small, normally tranquil river into a raging torrent that briefly rivaled the mighty Mississippi, a new study reveals.
Despite the event’s massive death toll, few detailed studies of the flood have been done, says Dan Ingram, curator at the Johnstown Area Heritage Association. “There’s a ton of anecdotal information, but few people have ever looked at it in a scientific way,” he notes.
As devastating as that torrent would have been, the flow rate that slammed into Johnstown was even higher, the researchers estimate. Large amounts of rocks, trees and other debris swept along by the initial surge of floodwaters were temporarily trapped against a narrow bridge about four kilometers downstream of the dam. The deluge released by the dam’s collapse carried more than 12,000 cubic meters of debris-filled water each second. Flow rates in the Mississippi River typically vary between 7,000 and 20,000 cubic meters per second, says Davis Todd. Eyewitnesses in Johnstown said the mid-afternoon flood arrived as “a wall of black mist,” says Ingram. That initial surge was quickly followed by a 10-meter-deep torrent chock-full of earth, trees, debris from hundreds of buildings and even the locomotives of trains swept off the rails running along the river’s banks. The new findings will help Ingram and his colleagues better explain the devastating force of the flood, as well as how the disaster unfolded. “This is one of those events that everyone’s heard of but nobody knows the story behind,” he notes. Images: 1) Andrews, E. Benjamin. History of the United States, volume V. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. 1912. 2) Johnstown Area Heritage Association. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 21 Oct 2009 | 4:11 pm Flapping Bacterial FlagellaH. pylori bacterium stuck in a mucin gel at different pHs. As the pH increase, the gel thins, allowing the bacterium to more easily move it's flagella.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Oct 2009 | 3:16 pm The Ultimate Sacrifice: What Some Bugs Will DoYellow jackets, like honey bees and fire ants, exist in a sophisticated social hierarchy. Unlike other animals that travel in packs, these social insects will literally sacrifice their own survival in support of their hives, nests and colonies.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Oct 2009 | 2:41 pm Modern Men Are WimpsInactivity has led to a decline in physical abilities, author claims.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Oct 2009 | 2:34 pm BLOG: Exoplanet Holds Building Blocks of LifeBasic chemicals needed to produce life are found on a planet 150 light-years from Earth.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Oct 2009 | 2:30 pm Super freaking wrongSteven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's new book promotes a contrarian view of climate change that has no scientific merit Superfreakonomics is a super freaking mess. US publisher Harper Collins promotes the sequel to the pop-economics bestseller Freakonomics, authored by economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner, as "bigger, more provocative, and sure to challenge the way we think all over again". Too often, however, the book provokes by just getting things wrong – including matters involving life and death. Levitt and Dubner begin by arguing that if you're intoxicated, "driving is safer than walking" – based not on actual research but on "shoddy statistical work". The authors boast about their time spent interviewing a $500-an-hour call girl, describing her as "essentially a trophy wife who is rented by the hour", while getting the economics and history of prostitution wrong. But the most serious concerns are raised by their treatment of climate change. Superfreakonomics promotes a contrarian view of climate change, calling global warming a "religion" and lionising Microsoft billionaire and scientific dilettante Nathan Myhrvold. Myhrvold unscientifically pooh-poohs solar power and promotes the "cheap and simple" solution to global warming of pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to blot out the sun. But this Bond-villain fantasy solution cannot come to pass, the Superfreaks bemoan, because the "people like Al Gore" think "it's nuts". The chapter "What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common?" essentially cribs from previous contrarian work, repeating confused arguments against climate science by conservative columnist George Will, and following slavishly a 2006 Rolling Stone profile by Jeff Goodell of Star-Wars physicist Lowell Wood and climate scientist Ken Caldeira. Like Will, Levitt and Dubner complain about a "drumbeat of doom" growing louder from "doomsayers" even though a "little-discussed fact about global warming," is that the average global temperature "has in fact decreased". Of course, this "little-discussed fact" is one of the most popular canards among global warming sceptics – from Tea Party activists to the heads of the American Farm Bureau and the US Chamber of Commerce – and this decade is the warmest in recorded history. The Superfreaks also repeat Will's obsession with a supposed consensus about "global cooling" in the 1970s, falsely portraying articles that discussed scientific controversy over a wide array of climatic changes as "predicting the effects of global cooling". Most tellingly, Levitt and Dubner shockingly misrepresent the one climate scientist they interviewed, the Carnegie Institution's Ken Caldeira, a renowned climate modeler. They say Caldeira believes that "carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight". In fact, Caldeira says, "Carbon dioxide is the right villain." They say Caldeira has found that trees are an "environmental scourge". In fact, Caldeira, whose research actually finds that tropical and boreal forests have different effects on climate change, has written that "Clear-cutting mountains to slow climate change is, of course, nuts." They write Caldeira "endorses" the "solution" of injecting millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere as a response to global warming – forever. In fact, "geo-engineering is not an alternative to carbon emissions reductions," Caldeira has explained. "If emissions keep going up and up, and you use geo-engineering as a way to deal with it, it's pretty clear the endgame of that process is pretty ugly." It would be, he says, "a dystopic world out of a science fiction story". "As a long-term strategy," Caldeira said in 2006, "it's nuts." After economists, scientists, journalists and energy experts condemned Superfreakonomics for its error-ridden, fatuous contrarianism, the authors reacted with rage and confusion, accusing critics of ideological bias, falsehood and smears. Superfreakonomics is a circus sideshow. Levitt and Dubner may think they're being super, but this time they're actually just the freaks. 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 | 21 Oct 2009 | 2:00 pm Change of view for Houston among mayoral hopefuls (AP)AP - The nation's fourth-largest city, once dominated by Big Oil, is warming to greener options as it chooses a new mayor.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 1:30 pm 'Missing Link' Primate Fossil DebunkedIda, the fossil discovery announced last May, was only a distant relative of humans.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Oct 2009 | 1:15 pm Why Extremist Views DominatePeople with extreme views seem more willing to share their opinions than others.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Oct 2009 | 12:28 pm Out of LSD? Just 15 Minutes of Sensory Deprivation Triggers Hallucinations
You don’t need psychedelic drugs to start seeing colors and objects that aren’t really there. Just 15 minutes of near-total sensory deprivation can bring on hallucinations in many otherwise sane individuals.
Psychologists stuck 19 healthy volunteers into a sensory-deprivation room, completely devoid of light and sound, for 15 minutes. Without the normal barrage of sensory information flooding their brains, many people reported experiencing visual hallucinations, paranoia and a depressed mood. “This is a pretty robust finding,” wrote psychiatrist Paul Fletcher of the University of Cambridge, who studies psychosis but was not involved in the study. “It appears that, when confronted by lack of sensory patterns in our environment, we have a natural tendency to superimpose our own patterns.” The findings support the hypothesis that hallucinations happen when the brain misidentifies the source of what it is experiencing, a concept the researchers call “faulty source monitoring.” “This is the idea that hallucinations come about because we misidentify the source of our own thoughts,” psychologist Oliver Mason of the University College London wrote in an e-mail to Wired.com. “So basically something that actually is initiated within us gets misidentified as from the outside.” Mason and colleagues published their study in October in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.
To choose people for their study, the researchers asked more than 200 volunteers to complete a questionnaire called the “Revised Hallucinations Scale,” which measures the predisposition of healthy people to see things that aren’t really there. The scientists picked participants who scored in either the upper or lower 20th percentile, so they could compare how short-term sensory deprivation affects a range of individuals. Study participants sat in a padded chair in the middle of an anechoic chamber, a room designed to dampen all sound and block out light. The researchers describe the setup as a “room within a room,” with thick outer walls and an inner chamber formed by metallic acoustic panels and a floating floor. In between the outer and inner walls are large fiberglass wedges. “This results in a very low-noise environment in which the sound pressure due to outside levels is below the threshold of hearing,” the researchers wrote. Though participants had a panic button, none of them used it. After spending 15 minutes deprived of sight and sound, each person completed a test called the “Psychotomimetic States Inventory,” which measures psychosis-like experiences and was originally developed to study recreational drug users. Among the nine participants who scored high on the first survey, five reported having hallucinations of faces during the sensory deprivation, and six reported seeing other objects or shapes that weren’t there. Four also noted an unusually heightened sense of smell, and two sensed an “evil presence” in the room. Almost all reported that they had “experienced something very special or important” during the experiment. As expected, volunteers who were less prone to hallucinations experienced fewer perceptual distortions, but they still reported a variety of delusions and hallucinations. The researchers were not altogether surprised by such dramatic results from only 15 minutes of sensory deprivation. Although few scientists are studying sensory deprivation today, a small body of research from the 1950s and 1960s supports the idea that a lack of sensory input can lead to symptoms of psychosis. “Sensory deprivation is a naturalistic analogue to drugs like ketamine and cannabis for acting as a psychosis-inducing context,” Mason wrote, “particularly for those prone to psychosis.” We still don’t know why some people are more likely to have hallucinations than others, but Fletcher says that some researchers consider the phenomenon particularly important because it suggests that symptoms of mental illness occur on a continuum with normality. “Perhaps this reflects different ways of dealing with sense data, which under certain circumstances might be advantageous,” Fletcher wrote. Next, the researchers hope to study how sensory deprivation affects schizophrenic patients and people who use recreational drugs that increase the risk of psychosis. “There are claims that schizophrenic patients paradoxically find that their psychotic symptoms such as hearing voices are improved by sensory deprivation,” Mason wrote, “though the evidence for this is very long in the tooth indeed. What happens to people who already hear voices when in the chamber?” Via MindHacks. Image: daveknapik/Flickr See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 21 Oct 2009 | 12:28 pm Music Benefits Exercise, Studies Show (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - With the Fall marathon season in full swing, thousands of runners are gearing up for the big day. Just as important as their broken-in shoes and heart rate monitor is their source of motivation, inspiration and distraction: their tunes.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 12:26 pm Bringing the Internet to the WildernessOne architect of the Internet works to bring wireless to the wilderness for research, emergencies.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Oct 2009 | 12:22 pm Deadly Spider Demands Long Courtship -- or ElseFemale black widow spiders demand 100 minutes of wooing -- or they eat their suitors.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm Ocean Garbage Causing $1 Billion in DamageThe 6.4 million tons of rubbish in the world's oceans leads to huge expenses, a report finds.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Oct 2009 | 11:58 am Primate fossil 'not an ancestor'The exceptionally well-preserved fossil primate known as "Ida" is not a missing link as some have claimed, according to a study.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Oct 2009 | 11:56 am India-China climate change dealTwo of the world's biggest polluters, India and China, sign an agreement to work together on addressing climate change.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Oct 2009 | 11:49 am Obama Win Turned Male Republicans Into Girlie Men
Those who remember the street parties of Election Night 2008 might think the testosterone levels of Obama voters had shot up in triumph. That would be wrong. Instead, liberal testosterone levels stayed stable, while those of male Republican voters plummeted. The latter also reported feeling submissive and unhappy. There are many ways to read these results, which are based on saliva samples taken from 183 men and women as the polls closed, and again when President Obama’s victory was officially announced. First, male voters get the same vicarious boost from a candidate’s political victory as they would their favorite sports team beating a rival. That’s the main academic finding of the study, published Wednesday in Public Library of Science ONE, but one that seems rather self-evident.
But if testosterone usually just dips at night, it positively plummeted for Republican men. Indeed, Republican men “felt significantly more controlled, submissive, unhappy and unpleasant at the moment of the outcome” than those who voted for Obama, the researchers wrote. “Moreover, since the dominance hierarchy shift following a presidential election is stable for four years, the stress of having one’s political party lose control of executive policy decisions could plausibly lead to continued testosterone suppression in males.” Women of both political parties, it should be noted, experienced no significant testosterone changes on election night. Image: Mborowick/Flickr See Also:
Citation: “Dominance, Politics, and Physiology: Voters’ Testosterone Changes on the Night of the 2008 United States Presidential Election.” By Steven J. Stanton, Jacinta C. Beehner, Ekjyot K. Saini, Cynthia M. Kuhn, Kevin S. LaBar. PLoS ONE, October 21, 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 | 21 Oct 2009 | 11:44 am Bone Crunching Debunks ‘First Monkey’ Ida Fossil Hype
Originally promoted as the stem of the primate family tree, it now appears that Darwinius masillae — better known as “Ida,” the fossil that “changes everything” — belonged to a fringe branch. This is the conclusion of researchers who analyzed primate fossils to determine where their own discovery, dubbed Afradapis and closely related to Darwinius, belongs on the tree. Far from spawning the ancestors of humans, the 47 million-year-old Darwinius seems merely to have gone extinct, leaving no descendants. “It’s the first phylogenetic analysis of this important animal,” said study co-author Jonathan Perry, a Midwestern University paleoanthropologist. “By our analysis, the taxon Darwinius does not appear to be” at the root of all simians, said Perry. “It’s on the opposite side of the tree.” The analysis of Perry’s team, published Wednesday in Nature, would likely be of purely academic interest had Darwinius been introduced according to paleontological custom. That would have been in carefully written papers presented for review to the scientific community, who already had some informal familiarity with the research. But that’s precisely what didn’t happen.
Known from a single specimen purchased by the University of Oslo from a private fossil collector and studied in total secrecy, Darwinius was announced to the world at a May press conference featuring New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. The scientific article describing Darwinius, published in PLoS ONE, came in tandem with a TV special and book, both entitled The Link. “This is the first link to all humans,” said Jørn Hurum, a member of the Darwinius team, at the press conference. His colleague Jens Franzen likened its scientific impact to “an asteroid falling down to Earth.” Hurum said the fossil, named “Ida” in honor of his daughter, would be a paleontological “Mona Lisa for the next 100 years.” Ida was front-page news; Google celebrated it with an iconic logo cartoon. The only people unimpressed by their conclusions were scientists. As prominent paleontologists soon pointed out, Hurum’s team was pushing a theory that most researchers had already dismissed, that anthropoids — monkeys and apes, including ourselves — are descended from lemur-like members of a primate subfamily called adapids, of which Darwinius was one. According to Hurum’s team, Darwinius possessed many of the physical traits expected in the earliest ancestral anthropoid, so it must be that ancestor. And since Darwinius was clearly an adapid, then adapids were at the root of the anthropoids. But their paper made no reference to extensive fossil and genetic evidence suggesting otherwise. At the time, asked by The New York Times about his team’s promotion, Hurum said that “any pop band is doing the same thing,” and that “we have to start thinking the same way in science.” Contacted by e-mail about the Nature study, he said, “At last the scientific discussion starts!”
To better understand Afradapis’ place in the primate narrative, Perry’s team studied fossil measurements gathered from 117 living and extinct primate species. In what’s known as a cladistic analysis, they ran the measurements through a computer program that determined the most likely evolutionary configuration of the species. No such analysis was performed by Hurum’s team on Darwinius. And according to Perry’s cladistics, both Darwinius and Afradapis are located where conventional wisdom expected them to be — on an early twig of the branch that produced lemurs, and far from the lineage that spawned monkeys and great apes. The study “is spot-on in its interpretation of the phylogenetic position of Darwinius,” said Richard Kay, a Duke University evolutionary anthropologist whose review of The Link was entitled, “Much Hype and Many Errors.” Christopher Beard, a Carnegie Museum of Natural History paleontologist who originally called Darwinius “a third cousin twice removed,” also agreed with the Nature results. Darwinius “is only very distantly related to living and fossil anthropoids,” said Beard. Hurum retorted that “there’s a lot of ways to do cladistics,” and said the Nature authors used only some of their Darwinius measurements, ostensibly omitting those that might have provided a different evolutionary narrative. Philip Gingerich, a University of Michigan paleontologist and member of the Darwinius team, said the Nature team’s explanation of Afradapis was “implausible,” given how much it looks like a monkey — and Darwinius looks even more monkey-like. This back-and-forth is typical of science and especially paleoanthropology, a research field predicated on competing interpretations of tiny bone fragments. It’s also the sort of dialogue that was missing from Darwinius’ overhyped debut. “Ultimately it’s about science, and how sound the science is,” said Perry. Images: 1. Darwinius masillae, from PLoS ONE. 2. The adapiform branch of the primate family tree, from Nature. D. masillae is highlighted, and located beside Afradapis; the great apes, including humans, trace their origins to the stem and crown Anthropoidea. See Also:
Citation: “Convergent evolution of anthropoid-like adaptations in Eocene adapiform primates.” By Erik R. Seiffert, Jonathan M. G. Perry, Elwyn L. Simons & Doug M. Boyer. Nature, Vol. 461 No. 7267, October 22, 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 | 21 Oct 2009 | 11:42 am Women denied cancer drugThe National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence proposes to reject a breast cancer drug despite its own rule changes on end-of-life treatments A drug which can give women with advanced breast cancer extra weeks or months of life has been turned down by a government watchdog body for use in the NHS. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) says it proposes to reject Tyverb (lapatinib) in spite of changes in the rules brought in specifically to allow people at the end of their lives to have the chance of new and often expensive treatments. Tyverb is the only drug licensed for women with advanced breast cancer whose tumours test positive for a protein called HER2 and for whom Herceptin, a Nice-approved drug, is no longer working. In much of the rest of Europe, Tyverb is then given, in combination with a standard chemotherapy drug called capecitabine. Around 2,000 women in the UK could be eligible for the drug, which has the additional benefit of being taken in pill form, which means that women can stay at home and attempt to live normal lives. Nice turned down Tyverb earlier this year, saying it was too expensive for the benefit to patients it offered, but the British manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, appealed. GSK asked for the drug to be considered under the new rules for end-of-life treatments. GSK has also offered a cost-sharing deal. It has launched a patient access scheme, already taken up by 26 NHS trusts. Under the arrangements, the company will pay for the first 12 weeks of treatment of any patient. Yesterday, however, Nice published a new appraisal of the drug, which still says the drug is too expensive. Tyverb "is not recommended for the routine treatment" of women with advanced breast cancer once Herceptin has failed, it says, although they can be given it in clinical trials. The appraisal is now open to consultation. GSK said yesterday that it was disappointed. "Nice developed additional criteria specifically to help secure greater patient access to new treatments that offer precious extra time at the end of life," said Simon Jose, General Manager of GSK UK. "It is disappointing that, despite acknowledging Tyverb meets these criteria, and GSK offering to bear the cost of lapatinib for up to 12 weeks, NICE is still proposing to reject lapatinib. We will continue to offer our patient access programme to individual NHS trusts to ensure patients have access to Tyverb." The new rules were launched in January, after a review by the cancer tsar, Mike Richards, and with the backing of the then health secretary, Alan Johnson. Nice announced a new flexibility over end-of-life cancer drugs, undertaking to approve some that would ordinarily have failed the cost hurdle. It followed an outcry over the rejection of six kidney cancer drugs. One of those, Sutent (sunitinib), was approved by Nice as a result. Tyverb is only the second drug to be approved under these provisions. One of Nice's reservations concerns the amount of extra life that Tyverb offers women. The evidence from trials suggested they lived for an extra 2.4 months on average. Under the new end-of-life rules, a drug should normally give an extra three months survival. "The appraisal committee considered the updated economic evaluation presented by the manufacturer, but was not persuaded that the adjusted estimates of overall survival presented were robust. The committee therefore concluded lapatinib is not a cost-effective use of NHS resources," said Dr Gillian Leng, deputy chief executive. But she said Nice's experts would like women to be able to get the drug in the context of trials. "Although lapatinib is not a cure and only offers a few weeks' additional survival benefit, it is an innovative technology that could potentially help patients with brain metastases [tumours that have spread to the brain], which is why we have recommended this treatment when it is provided as part of clinical trials. We hope this additional research will aid us in subsequent reviews," she said. The cost of the drug, together with capecitabine which is also in pill form, is around £25,000 a year. Nice, however, bases its decisions on the cost of a QALY (quality-adjusted life year) – a complicated formula that involves comparisons with other treatment options and also the cost to the NHS of administering the treatment. In the case of Tyverb, Nice says the cost per QALY is £59,400, which is nearly double its normal ceiling of £30,000. Nice has said the ceiling should be higher for drugs used at the end of life, but has not specified a figure. Dr Alison Jones, medical oncologist at the University College London Hospital and the Royal Free Hospital who has worked with GSK on the drug, said she felt women ought to be able to get it. "This is a useful drug for patients with breast cancer. It is not the cure. This is second-line disease and you don't expect stunning results," she said. "Anywhere else in Europe you can have it. I think it should be here." 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 | 21 Oct 2009 | 11:11 am 'Eighth wonder' Ida not related to humans, claim scientistsUS palaeontologists dismiss initial claims about the 47million-year-old fossil found in Germany's Messel Pit Her arrival was announced with unrestrained razzmatazz. She was the "eighth wonder of the world", "our Mona Lisa" and an evolutionary "Rosetta Stone", according to the researchers who unveiled her. The female in question was Ida, a 47million-year-old primate, whose exquisitely preserved fossil was touted as the remains of our earliest human ancestor. She was, they said, the "link" between us and the rest of the animal kingdom. Or maybe not. Writing in the journal, Nature, a team of palaeontologists from New York claim that Ida is not related to humans at all. Instead, they conclude, the $1m fossil looks more like a small lemur or maybe a loris. The challenge is being seen as the opening salvo in what is shaping up to be a hearty academic slugging match. At stake is not only the significance of one of the most extraordinary fossils unearthed, but the reputations of some of the world's leading researchers. So far, relations between the two sides are strained but courteous. "Our analysis and results have convinced us that Ida was not an ancestor of monkeys, apes, or humans, and if anything has more relevance for our understanding of lemur and loris origins," said Erik Seiffert, a fossil hunter at Stony Brook University in New York who led the Nature study. Researchers behind the Ida fossil, known formally as Darwinius masillae, immediately defended their own interpretation, which is based on two years of meticulous measurements of the remains. "We expected a challenge like this and it's interesting it has taken five months for the first attack to come," said Jørn Hurum, a palaeontologist at Oslo University's Natural History Museum. "What we claim about Ida is really quite controversial." "Seiffert and his team claim Darwinius didn't have much anatomical detail to study because it is so crushed, but none of the authors have ever seen the original specimen. She's not that crushed, there's a lot of information in the fossil. We really trust and stand by our interpretation," Hurum said. Hurum bought Ida for $1m after agreeing to meet a private dealer in a vodka bar in Hamburg where he was shown a series of photographs of the fossil. At the time, its exact place in evolutionary history was unclear. What Hurum did know was that Ida came from a time when the primate lineage that led to monkeys, apes and humans split from another group of animals that became lemurs and lorises. Hurum took a gamble. "It would have been quite an expensive lemur," he told the Guardian at the time. The Ida fossil, which was found in the Messel Pit on the outskirts of Hamburg, was revealed to the public in what amounted to the greatest publicity coup in modern science. The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, appeared alongside the fossil, wearing a T-shirt carrying the TV tie-in logo, "The link." A book about Ida was already coming off the presses. Ida was an immediate media sensation. The fossil received blanket coverage around the world and newspapers hailed her as the "missing link" between humans and animals. The Guardian even gave away free wallcharts of "humanity's long lost ancestor." The controversy erupted after Seiffert's team unearthed the fossilised remnants of a similar, but much younger primate in northern Egypt. Analysis of the 37million-year-old lemur-like fossil showed it was a close relative of Ida and had several dental features that are commonly seen in apes and humans. Seiffert's team fed information from the new fossil and 117 living and extinct primates into a computer model to find out where the new species sat in the tree of life. Writing in Nature, Seiffert explains that while the new fossil, named Afradapis, is related to Ida, both emerged along the evolutionary path that led to lemurs and lorises. Their anatomical similarities with later primates evolved independently from those seen in monkeys, humans and apes, he explained. "They are trying to explain all of the traits we see in Darwinius in terms of parallel evolution," said Hurum. Parallel evolution is when two groups of animals evolve similar features without being related to one another. In an email, Philip Gingerich, a leading paleontologist at Princeton University who worked on Ida, said both fossils were almost certainly part of the lineage that led to monkeys, apes and humans. He wrote that it was "puzzling" to see Seiffert's team claim they were related to a group that became lemurs and lorises "with which it shares no resemblance". Further work by Seiffert's team appears to add insult to injury. According to their study, neither Ida nor Afradapis have any living descendants, meaning they became extinct at the end of a sidebranch of the evolutionary tree. "This will be part of a discussion that will run for weeks and months to come," Hurum 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 | 21 Oct 2009 | 10:58 am Experts study thriving HIV "controllers" in vaccine searchPARIS (Reuters) - AIDS researchers want to expand their study of a rare group of HIV-infected people, whose immune systems naturally and mysteriously prevent the virus thriving in their bodies, to span the globe.Source: Reuters: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 9:56 am Melting Glaciers Behind Mysterious Increase in PollutionClimate change may release more pollution into lakes and rivers.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Oct 2009 | 9:48 am Green skyscraperChina tower blazes a path in green building technologySource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Oct 2009 | 9:44 am Binging Rats Get Hooked on Junk FoodJunk food can elicit the same kind of addictive behavior in rats as heroin.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Oct 2009 | 9:40 am Chemicals Needed for Life Detected on Second Distant PlanetOrganic molecules have been detected on a second exoplanet.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Oct 2009 | 9:37 am SpacemanDoes it matter if the UK doesn't build spacecraft?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Oct 2009 | 9:34 am Melting Arctic Could Unleash Vast CO2 StoresArctic lands and oceans store up to a quarter of the carbon absorbed each year.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Oct 2009 | 8:10 am Some Turtles Prefer City LifeResearch shows one turtle species in Australia thrives in urban areas.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Oct 2009 | 7:52 am World must use GM crops, says UK science academyLONDON (Reuters) - The world needs genetically modified crops both to increase food yields and minimize the environmental impact of farming, Britain's top science academy said on Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 21 Oct 2009 | 7:37 am What is Transient Ischemic Attack?Transient ischemic attack is a cause for alarm.Source: Livescience.com | 21 Oct 2009 | 7:30 am Flower Power: Blooming Plants Spawned ForestsThe rise of flowering plants altered the course of life on Earth.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 21 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am 'Scary' UK climate ad faces probeA £6m government ad warning about climate change is to be investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Oct 2009 | 4:26 am Turtles prefer the 'city life'Suburban turtles in Australia outperform their counterparts living in nature reserves, surprising scientists.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Oct 2009 | 3:43 am
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Enter Davis Todd and her colleagues, who recently embarked on a project to analyze the Johnstown Flood. Using modern-day surveys of the area around the dam as well as archival photos, the researchers estimate that the 1.6-square-kilometer reservoir behind the dam held about 15 million cubic meters of water. The pressure of those accumulated waters, as well as erosion that occurred as water spilled over the top of the dam, triggered a sudden and catastrophic failure, says Davis Todd. Peak discharge through the 90-meter-wide, 13-meter-high breach in the dam exceeded 8,500 cubic meters per second — about three times the flow rate across Niagara Falls.
