Adapting Space-industry Technology To Treat Breast Cancer

Researchers are collaborating on a study to determine if an imaging technique used by NASA to inspect the space shuttle can be used to predict tissue damage often experienced by breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. The study is examining the utility of three-dimensional thermal tomography in radiation oncology.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

Smart Drug Delivery System; Gold Nanocage Covered With Polymer That Responds To Light

A tiny cage of gold covered with a smart polymer responds to light, opening to empty its contents and resealing when the light is turned off. The smart nanocages could be used to deliver drugs directly to target sites, thus avoiding systemic side effects.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

Childhood Physical Abuse Linked To Arthritis, Study Finds

Adults who had experienced physical abuse as children have 56 percent higher odds of osteoarthritis compared to those who have not been abused, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

Art Restoration: Technique Removes Old Polymer Layers From Sensitive Historic Artworks

Italian researchers have developed a technique to effectively remove old polymer layers from sensitive historic artworks. The new cleaning system involves only a tiny proportion of volatile organic compounds.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

Hidden Solar Cells: 3-D System Based On Optical Fiber Could Provide New Options For Photovoltaics

Converting sunlight to electricity might no longer mean large panels of photovoltaic cells atop flat surfaces like roofs.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

Speed Limit To The Pace Of Evolution, Biologists Say

A major conclusion of the work is that for some organisms, possibly including humans, continued evolution will not translate into ever-increasing fitness. Moreover, a population may accrue mutations at a constant rate --- a pattern long considered the hallmark of "neutral" or non-Darwinian evolution --- even when the mutations experience Darwinian selection.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

Wolves, Moose And Biodiversity: An Unexpected Connection

Moose eat plants; wolves kill moose. What difference does this classic predator-prey interaction make to biodiversity? A large and unexpected one, say wildlife biologists.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Antibiotic Use During Pregnancy And Birth Defects: Study Examines Associations

Penicillin and several other antibacterial medications commonly taken by pregnant women do not appear to be associated with many birth defects, according to a new report. However, other antibiotics, such as sulfonamides and nitrofurantoins, may be associated with several severe birth defects and require additional scrutiny.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

African Desert Rift Confirmed As New Ocean In The Making

In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial. Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Developmental Drug May Help Bone Fractures Heal After Radiation Exposure

A drug currently under development may help bone fractures heal more quickly after radiation exposure, according to a new study. This drug could be beneficial both in patient care situations and for emergency preparedness.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

BSE Sensex provisionally close down 3.5 pct (Reuters)

Reuters - The BSE Sensex provisionally closed 3.5 percent lower on Tuesday, led by energy giant Reliance Industries, as weak global markets dampened investor sentiment.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 3:36 am

Africans protest low emissions targets at UN talks (AP)

AP - African countries suspended meetings at U.N. climate talks Tuesday to protest what they call the low targets that industrial countries have set for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 3:26 am

Over 1,000 fish species 'threatened with extinction' (AFP)

AFP - More than 1,000 freshwater fish species are threatened with extinction, reflecting the strain on global water resources, an updated global "Red List" of endangered species showed Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 3:12 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Wet conditions were forecast to persist over the Great Lakes and move into the Northeast on Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 2:58 am

Pig DNA mapped: may help with vaccines

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An international team of researchers said Monday it had mapped the DNA of a domestic pig, work they say could help lead to better breeding techniques as well as improve vaccines against diseases such as swine flu.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 2:39 am

One of Tsavo's lions ate mostly human prey

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Two man-eating lions terrorized Kenya during the building of a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River in the late 19th century, but only one was making regular meals of human prey, researchers said on Monday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 2:39 am

A marvellous hummingbird display

The amazing mating display of the marvellous spatule hummingbird is filmed in super slow motion for the first time.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 3 Nov 2009 | 2:13 am

Merkel set for landmark speech to US Congress (AFP)

AFP - German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivers a major speech to the US Congress Tuesday, nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, amid tough questions on Afghanistan and climate change.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Nov 2009 | 1:46 am

Tropical storm Mirinae leaves four dead in Vietnam (AFP)

AFP - Tropical storm Mirinae killed four people and left two missing after slamming into coastal Vietnam, the national flood and storm control committee said Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Nov 2009 | 11:35 pm

Winner named in lunar lander X Prize contest (AP)

AP - A team of California rocketeers has won a $1 million prize in a simulated lunar landing contest backed by NASA.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Nov 2009 | 8:01 pm

82 healthy sea turtles hatch at San Diego SeaWorld (AP)

AP - The population of endangered green sea turtles at SeaWorld in San Diego grew by 82 in October when the eggs hatched on Shipwreck Beach without human help.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Nov 2009 | 6:21 pm

Species' extinction threat grows

More than a third of species assessed by a global biodiversity study are threatened with extinction, scientists warn.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Nov 2009 | 5:17 pm

Scientists versus politicians

Governments have a history of not listening to their scientific advisers

In 1632, the Italian observer Galileo advised the highest temporal authority that the Earth went round the sun. He was promptly prosecuted by the Inquisition and, in 1633, forced to retract his advice. Famously, Galileo was proved right and the Vatican looked silly for the next 300 years.

This story – like the clash between David Nutt, until last week chairman of the advisory council for the misuse of drugs, and the health secretary Alan Johnson – illustrates the pitfalls that face any government scientific adviser: it can be dangerous and even counter-productive to tell popes, princes or politicians something that they do not want to hear. But if you publish your objective advice so that everyone knows what you said, then its value can be assessed and confirmed independently, and in the long run everybody wins. The catch is that politicians, popes and princes want things that can be said unequivocally, while scientists know that their advice is necessarily provisional, and sometimes open to dispute.

This tension between physical reality and the untidier realities of democracy has been demonstrated repeatedly since science and government formalised a relationship around the time of the second world war, in a partnership that delivered radar, the jet engine, rocketry, antibiotics, and nuclear technology. It also resulted in cynicism and bitter suspicion between the two cultures, and this was multiplied by the cult of secrecy.

During the second world war, to cut aircraft losses, physicists at the operational research section of Bomber Command examined the design and performance of the Lancaster bomber and concluded that the gun turrets were heavy and aerodynamically unsatisfactory. Without gunners and gun turrets the bomber would have gained an extra 50mph, and become more manoeuvrable, and many lives might have been saved.

The recommendation was ignored. It remained an official secret for decades and may never have been passed up the line. "As a rule, the commander-in-chief was told only things the commander-in-chief wanted to hear," reflected Freeman Dyson, now at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton University.

The unhappy mismatch between secret advice and public decision-making continued in the postwar years, with often-suppressed but furious argument about nuclear weapons development, Britain's short-lived space programme, smoking and the cost to public health, and the need for basic research into computing, genetics and oceanography.

In 1986, Ministry of Agriculture scientists identified the first cases of a new disease of dairy cattle called Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, but were swiftly discouraged from discussing this in public. Between 1986 and 1996, government ministers authorised the slaughter of 155,000 cows while assuring the public, on the best scientific authority, that British beef was absolutely safe and that BSE could not possibly spread to humans.

In the same decade, the Conservative government also dismissed 1,800 Ministry of Agriculture science staff and cut the ministry's research budget by at least a quarter. In 1996, the first case of new-variant CJD, the human form of mad cow disease, was identified, and it emerged that actually, the advice the government had been given had been entirely different. Yes, government ministers had been told that scientists could not show that British beef was in any way dangerous to humans. But they could not prove that it was safe, either. There was no conclusive evidence either way.

Lessons were learned from this sorry episode. Since then, government scientific advisers have frequently said in public much the same things that they have told ministers: how foot and mouth disease should best be handled; why mass vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella enhances public health; why research into embryo stem cell therapy should be pursued; what should be done about global warming. Politicians, on the other hand, have to think about how voters will react, and tend to move more slowly than scientists would like.

Recently, outside the closed world of defence, the relationship between government and science has been relatively healthy: in Britain, at any rate. Between 2000 and 2008, the US administration quizzed potential scientific advisers about their political and religious attitudes before making appointments, which may explain why President Bush was able to claim, repeatedly, that the science of global warming was still uncertain. He had been told only what he wanted to hear, and practically admitted as much. When asked once where he got his information from, Bush replied, "The best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff."

Tim Radford was science editor of the Guardian until 2005.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 2 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

The problem with digital memory

Digital memory means we can store more than ever before. But isn't it important, sometimes, to forget?

Why Total Recall is more than just a bad film

Gordon Bell is that most single-minded of creatures – a retired man with a hobby. Except that when the computer scientist got to pensionable age he didn't vandalise an allotment, but embarked on a bizarre project for Microsoft. He began storing his memories on a computer, for safekeeping. Thousands of emails, photos, childhood mementoes and commemorative T-shirts: all are in the Bell archive. And every minute of every waking hour, a little camera around Bell's neck snaps a picture – while an audio recorder stores all conversations.

"Forgetting is not a feature," the 75-year-old believes. "It's a flaw."

Anyone who has ever dried up in an exam or groped around for their car keys would surely agree. When Amazon can remember every book you ever bought, and Google promises you never need junk another email, the catch is hard to spot. But the American technologist does have a nay-sayer: Viktor Mayer-Schönberger. Both men agree that ultra-cheap digital memory means we can remember more than ever before; both men have a book out. But where Bell has the better title (Total Recall versus Mayer-Schönberger's Delete; an Arnold Schwarzenegger smack-down beats a keyboard function), it's the Austrian academic whose arguments are more sympathetic.

Unlike Bell, most web users don't set out to store their memories – they just want to share photos, or post a bolshie comment online. They don't realise that they are leaving digital evidence that may some day be used against them.

Mayer-Schönberger tells the story of a would-be teacher, Stacey Snyder, who was denied qualifications after university officials found her party pictures on MySpace – and deemed her unfit for a classroom. An extreme example? Sure, but plenty of cautious romantics Google their dates before actually meeting them.

Perhaps the most compelling argument for forgetting is that it enables one to move on. A couple of years ago, a Californian woman came to public attention. At 41, AJ could remember everything – even what she had for breakfast 30 years ago. Surely this was a gift? Not to her.

"There are all . . . these moments you have to make a choice and then it's 10 years later, and I'm still beating myself up over them. Your memory is the way it is to protect you. I feel like it just hasn't protected me."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 2 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

Nutt: My views on drug classification

David Nutt, the government's former chief drugs adviser, on how he formulated his controversial views on drugs

Formulating policy in relation to drugs is obviously quite a difficult thing to do. I comment on it, as I always have, from the perspective of a psychiatrist who is interested in drugs and drugs and the brain.

We have a range of expertise on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD); we're very strong in terms of chemistry and pharmacology, and psychology; and we have a definite knowledge, interest and responsibility to look at social harms as well. We provide one arm of the policy-formulating perspective. In addition, there are a number of other agencies, organisations and individuals who contribute to policy formation.

There are also international partners – we have signed up to international treaties – which determine that, in essence, the UK follows United Nations policy on drugs. This can be quite a tough constraining influence on how countries regulate drugs (although some countries, such as the Netherlands, have managed to be more flexible, even though they still sign up to the international conventions).

Then, of course, there are other factors feeding into political decisions about drugs: what the general public thinks (or is thought to think); and then there's the media. In recent years, the whole process of determining drug classification has become quite complex and highly politicised.

Cannabis – a potent problem

I am going to focus on cannabis because it is the only drug that has been downgraded in the history of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, an interesting point in itself. The issues relating to cannabis pose a challenge to whether the act is working as it was originally intended.

The ACMD was requested by the home secretary in 2007 to review the status of cannabis because: "Though statistics show that cannabis use has fallen significantly, there is real public concern about the potential mental health effects of cannabis use, in particular the use of stronger forms of the drug, commonly known as skunk."

So there was a skunk scare. Cannabis had gone from class B to C, but, supposedly, skunk use had been increasing and it was getting stronger, so we were asked to review whether the decision to go from B to C was still appropriate. In our report we came to several conclusions:

• Cannabis is a harmful drug and there are concerns about the widespread use of cannabis amongst young people.

• A concerted public health response is required to drastically reduce its use.

• Current evidence suggests a probable, but weak, causal link between psychotic illness and cannabis use.

• The harms caused by cannabis are not considered to be as serious as drugs in class B and therefore it should remain a class C drug.

There has been a lot of commentary and some research as to whether cannabis is associated with schizophrenia, and the results are really quite difficult to interpret. What we can say is that cannabis use is associated with an increased experience of psychotic disorders. That is quite a complicated thing to disentangle because, of course, the reason people take cannabis is that it produces a change in their mental state. These changes are akin to being psychotic – they include distortions of perception, especially in visual and auditory perception, as well as in the way one thinks. So it can be quite hard to know whether, when you analyse the incidence of psychotic disorders with cannabis, you are simply looking at the acute effects of cannabis, as opposed to some consequence of cannabis use.

If we look on the generous side there is a likelihood that taking cannabis, particularly if you use a lot of it, will make you more prone to having psychotic experiences. That includes schizophrenia, but schizophrenia is a relatively rare condition so it's very hard to be sure about its causation. The analysis we came up with was that smokers of cannabis are about 2.6 times more likely to have a psychotic-like experience than non-smokers. To put that figure in proportion, you are 20 times more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke tobacco than if you don't.

There is a relatively small risk for smoking cannabis and psychotic illness compared with quite a substantial risk for smoking tobacco and lung cancer.

The other paradox is that schizophrenia seems to be disappearing (from the general population) even though cannabis use has increased markedly in the last 30 years. When we were reviewing the general practice research database in the UK from the University of Keele, research consistently and clearly showed that psychosis and schizophrenia are still on the decline. So, even though skunk has been around now for 10 years, there has been no upswing in schizophrenia. In fact, where people have looked, they haven't found any evidence linking cannabis use in a population and schizophrenia.

Media bias

I want to move on now to look at how people gather information about drugs and the challenges of communicating the best evidence relating to drug harms to the public. This is difficult in the face of what you might call a peculiar media imbalance in relation to drugs. The following data illustrates a remarkable finding. It derives from the PhD of a Scottish graduate, Alasdair JM Forsyth, who looked at every single newspaper report of drug deaths in Scotland from 1990 to 1999 and compared them with the coroners' data.

Over the decade, there were 2,255 drug deaths, of which the Scottish newspapers reported 546. For aspirin, only one in every 265 deaths were reported. For morphine, one in 72 deaths were reported, indicating that editors were not interested in this opiate. They were more interested in heroin, where one in five deaths were reported, and methadone, where one in 16 deaths were reported.

They were also more interested in stimulants. With amphetamines, deaths are relatively rare at 36, but one in three were reported; for cocaine it was one in eight. Amazingly, almost every single ecstasy death – that is, 26 out of 28 of those where ecstasy was named as a possible contributory factor – was reported. So there's a peculiar imbalance in terms of reporting that is clearly inappropriate in relation to the relative harms of ecstasy compared with other drugs. The reporting gives the impression that ecstasy is a much more dangerous drug than it is. This is one of the reasons I wrote the article about horse riding that caused such extreme media reactions earlier this year. The other thing you'll notice is that there is a drug missing, and that's cannabis. Also missing is alcohol, which will have killed a similar number – 2,000-3,000 people – in Scotland over that time, maybe more. Of course, cannabis wouldn't have killed anyone because it doesn't kill. And that's one of the reasons why we thought cannabis should be class C, because you cannot die of cannabis overdose.

Assessing harm

We've tried very hard for at least the last 10 years to put together a structure for assessing drug harms. This eventually became a research paper, Development of a Rational Scale to Assess the Harms of Drugs of Potential Misuse, published in the Lancet in 2007. Despite – or perhaps because of – its novelty and remit, it was very hard to get a paper published that challenged some of the current (mis)perceptions about drugs.

In principle, we broke down drug harms into the following parameters: physical harm (acute, chronic and intravenous), dependency (intensity of pleasure, psychological dependence, physical dependence), and social harms (intoxication, other social harms and health-care costs).

We looked at all the drugs in the Misuse of Drugs Act and added some others that weren't already covered by it. For example, we included ketamine, which wasn't covered by the act at the time, solvents, and tobacco and alcohol, because we thought it was very important that harms of illicit drugs were assessed against the harms of drugs that people know and use. This analysis eventually established a ranking order presented opposite.

A number of important points emerged. The ranking suggested that there are clearly some very harmful drugs (you might say these would be class A drugs) and there are some drugs that aren't very harmful, such as khat or alkyl nitrites, which aren't controlled by the act at all.

Interestingly, some class A drugs scored much lower than other class A drugs, suggesting that there is some anomaly in terms of that part of the current statutory classification system.

The ranking also suggests that a tripartite classification system might make sense, with drugs ranking as more harmful than alcohol being class A and those ranking lower than tobacco as class C. The exercise also highlighted how dangerous alcohol is. I believe that dealing with the harms of alcohol is probably the biggest challenge that we have in relation to drug harms today.

One problem is that sometimes you get into what I think of as an illegality–logic loop. This is an example of a conversation I've had many times with many people, some of them politicians:

MP "You can't compare harms from a legal activity with an illegal one."

Professor Nutt "Why not?"

MP "Because one's illegal."

Professor Nutt "Why is it illegal?"

MP "Because it's harmful."

Professor Nutt "Don't we need to compare harms to determine if it should be illegal?"

MP "You can't compare harms from a legal activity with an illegal one."

I have been surprised how difficult this concept is to get across to some people, whether they are politicians, fellow scientists or members of the general public.

This is an edited extract from a July 2009 lecture by Professor David Nutt, a transcript of which was published last week by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at Kings College London. crimeandjustice.org.uk/estimatingdrugharms.html

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 2 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

Lizards, rodent, frog added to endangered list (AP)

AP - A rare tree frog found only in central Panama could soon croak its last, as deforestation and infection push the species toward extinction, an environmental group said Tuesday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Nov 2009 | 5:01 pm

Lawsuit against gene patents can proceed: judge

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A lawsuit challenging patents on two human genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer can move forward, a U.S. federal judge ruled on Monday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 2 Nov 2009 | 4:59 pm

Study: Man-eating lions consumed 35 people in 1898 (AP)

AP - The nightly attacks by two man-eating lions terrified railway workers and brought construction to a halt in one of east Africa's most notorious onslaughts more than a hundred years ago. But the death toll, scientists now say, wasn't as high as previously thought.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Nov 2009 | 3:48 pm

Giant Crack in Africa Will Create a New Ocean

A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm.
Source: Livescience.com | 2 Nov 2009 | 3:23 pm

Scientists line up to attack Alan Johnson over sacking

• More government experts support David Nutt
• Affair 'will make it difficult to recruit the best people'

The home secretary, Alan Johnson, is facing growing anger from scientists and government advisers over his decision to force the resignation of his senior drug adviser, David Nutt.

Two other senior scientific advisers to the Home Office told Nutt they were "horrified" at his treatment. The former chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) told the Guardian that Dr Michael Rodd, a specialist in computing who sits on the Home Office Science Advisory Committee, and Professor Sheila Bird, a Cambridge University statistics expert who sits on the same committee, had written to him privately saying "they were unhappy with the way the Home Office had dealt with my case". Neither could be reached for comment.

Other senior scientists and former government advisers also criticised Johnson today, arguing the episode would create a gulf between researchers and politicians and prevent the best scientists from offering their expertise to the government in future. "I thought it was an appalling decision and totally inappropriate," said Lord Krebs, a former Food Standards Agency chief, who has also led several independent scientific studies for government.

"It will send shockwaves through the scientific community and make it more difficult for the government to recruit the best people to help with scientific advice to underpin public policy."

If the government wanted to ignore scientific advice, he said, they should explain why. "Alan Johnson could have said, 'we hear what you say but the science is not yet sufficiently robust enough for us to take action'," said Krebs.

Krebs said he had spoken to many scientists and former government advisers over the weekend, and "not one person … has been other than horrified about it and feeling that this called into question the whole validity of the government's approach to independent scientific advice".

Michael Donmall, head of the National Drug Evidence Centre and a former member of ACMD, said: "No independent advisory council should be expected to rubber-stamp government policy decisions. This totally undermines the whole value and role of the advice … in this case it appears that government has neither heeded the advice of the ACMD, nor entered into an informed debate about the issues."

He added: "Sometimes it is necessary to be outspoken in order to bring public attention to the way it is possible for political expediency to run roughshod over expert advice."

Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust and a member of the prime minister's Council for Science and Technology, said the episode risked alienating scientists and politicians.

"There's an important relationship of trust here – governments have to trust scientists to give their best possible advice and be conscientious, and, equally, scientists have to trust governments that their advice will be listened to and the interplay between them will be as transparent as possible," he said. "If that trust is lost, that would be a bad thing."

Nutt's sacking came days after the government supported the independence of scientific advisers in its official response to an inquiry by the House of Commons science and technology select committee on the use of scientific advice in government.

In its report, the committee said scientists should not be criticised for publishing scientific papers or making statements as professionals, independent of their role as government advisers, and that "it is important to safeguard the independence of the [science] advisory system. In situations where the independence of a [science advisory council] chairman or member is or might be threatened for political reasons, support should be offered by the DCSA [departmental chief scientific adviser] and/or the GCSA [government's chief scientific adviser]".

In response, the government said: "The committee can be assured that the GCSA will take steps to support [scientific advisers] should he believe that their independence is being impinged upon."

Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser to the government, said Nutt had "stepped over the line" by criticising ministers' decision to go against his advice.

"It is fine for him to reassert the advice but it is a step further to criticise a minister for not taking it," said King.

"His advice was extremely sound and I wish the government had followed it but this has created a crisis in a way which is not being discussed in the media. I spent a lot of my time in government trying to recover public trust in the scientific community and all of this work could be undone by creating confrontation between scientists and ministers."

He added the home secretary should have let Nutt's criticism pass.

Lord Drayson, the science minister, has yet to comment officially on Nutt's dismissal but has expressed his concerns on Twitter. In a series of tweets over the weekend, he said Johnson had "assured me of the importance both he and his department places on the academic freedom of advisers [and] of the importance both he and his department places on the independence of the advice they provide".

His office said Drayson would be investigating the matter further on his return to the UK tomorrow. The minister also acknowledged the strength of feeling among scientists. "I recognise how seriously concerned the science community is by this."

Chris Gaskell, chairman of the science advisory council at the environment department, said the case served to "highlight the tensions that sometimes exist when advice is offered on the basis of scientific evidence and other evidence is taken into account".

Both sides needed to "understand and respect" each other, he said. "We are fairly clear what our role is. We advise, we don't make policy." Science evidence was "a very important component but often not the whole evidence base and therefore has to take its place" in the total evidence feeding into policy. But, he added, explanation should be given if particular evidence did not "hold sway".

Krebs said the sacking was surprising because, on the whole, the government listened to scientific advice. "On some occasions, contrary to what Alan Johnson says, I've heard ministers say I can't formulate the policy until the scientists have given me the answer. They'll hide behind science when it suits them," he said. "That makes this all the more shocking."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 2 Nov 2009 | 2:15 pm

Ancient Civilization Cut Path to Demise

The ancient South American Nasca civilization may have caused its own demise by clear-cutting huge swaths of forest, a new study found.
Source: Livescience.com | 2 Nov 2009 | 2:08 pm

Green Consumer Confidence Index Reveals Reserve, Optimism

Green product purchases remain flat due to the anemic economy.
Source: Livescience.com | 2 Nov 2009 | 1:59 pm

Windows 7 App Turns Your Laptop into Virtual WiFi Hotspot

Can turn a laptop into a virtual WiFi hotspot that can send an Internet connection to any nearby WiFi-enabled devices.
Source: Livescience.com | 2 Nov 2009 | 1:44 pm

Apple Aims to Offer TV Programs via iTunes for $30/Month

Apple is trying to convince TV networks to let them broadcast shows to iTunes users.
Source: Livescience.com | 2 Nov 2009 | 1:32 pm

Gamma-Ray Mystery Traced to Star-Birth Frenzy

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Astronomers have for the first time traced gamma rays, the most energetic form of light, to galaxies undergoing a frenzy of star birth. The finding, which has revealed a new class of galactic gamma-ray sources, is not unexpected. But it provides new hints about the origin of many cosmic rays, the high-speed protons and other charged particles of extraordinarily high energies that bombard Earth.

According to the prevailing theory, cosmic rays are accelerated to energies of billions to trillions of electron volts by the expanding shock waves generated when massive stars explode as supernovas. (Cosmic rays with even higher energies are thought to be powered by supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies.) Kinks in a galaxy’s magnetic field keep the particles, mainly protons and other charged particles, bouncing back and forth like ping-pong balls between the advancing shock wave and the region just in front of it, revving up the particles to these high energies, the model suggests.

Massive stars live for only a few million years before exploding — an eyeblink in astronomical terms. Galaxies that produce lots of newborn stars therefore have lots of dying stars that explode as supernovas and ought to have an abundance of cosmic rays.

Testing the theory that supernova shock waves generate cosmic rays hasn’t been easy, however, because galactic magnetic fields bend the direction of travel of all charged particles, including cosmic rays, preventing astronomers from tracing any but the highest energy particles — which can escape the magnetic fields — back to their home galaxies.

But when cosmic rays collide with other atomic nuclei in surrounding gas or dust, they produce gamma rays, the most energetic form of light. And unlike charged particles, light can’t be bent by magnetic fields.

A new generation of gamma-ray telescopes, including the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope launched in 2008, and VERITAS, an array of four 12-meter telescopes atop Mount Hopkins in Arizona, has now succeeded in detecting gamma rays from three galaxies undergoing intense waves of starbirth. The finding helps to confirm the connection between supernovas and cosmic rays.

Researchers reported the findings November 2 at the 2009 Fermi Symposium (named for the Fermi Gamma-ray telescope, the main focus of the conference). VERITAS observed gamma rays ranging from 700 billion eV to several trillion eV from the galaxy M82, which is some 12 million light-years from Earth. M82 is classified as a starburst galaxy because within a small, central region it makes stars at a rate 10 times higher than that of the entire Milky Way.

Although M82 is one of the closest starburst galaxies, “it took us two years of all-out observations of M82 to acquire all the necessary data,” said VERITAS researcher Wystan Benbowof the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. Starburst galaxies produce a diffuse gamma-ray glow that is about one-millionth the brightness of galaxies that have active, supermassive black holes at their centers — the only type of galaxy from which gamma-ray telescopes had previously recorded emissions.

Finding gamma rays in a starburst galaxy “had been long predicted, but nobody had ever done it before this year,” noted Benbow, whose team also reported the discovery online November 1 in Nature.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which records lower-energy gamma rays than does VERITAS, also found gammas from M82 and from another starburst galaxy, NGC 253, reported Keith Bechtolof the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif. In addition, Fermi recorded a diffuse gamma-ray glow from a region of intense star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, said Jürgen Knödlseder of the Center for the Study of Space Radiation in Toulouse, France.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is close enough to the Milky Way that Knödlseder and his colleagues could tell that the gamma rays emanated from a region that has highly ionized gas. Such sites are places where massive stars, which produce ionizing radiation, are expected to be common. The finding “implies that massive star-forming regions are the main source of cosmic rays in the Large Magellanic Cloud,” Knödlseder said.

Bechtol noted that the two starburst galaxies, M82 and NGC 253, have a higher rate of supernova production and emit more gamma rays than the Large Magellanic Cloud, another clue that supernovas and cosmic rays are intrinsically linked.

After hearing the news, “I didn’t fall out of my chair but I got a big smile on my face,” says theorist Brian Fields of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who is not a member of either discovery team. Had Fermi and VERITAS not found gamma-ray emissions from starburst galaxies, he notes, “it would have been back to the drawing board” for understanding the origin of cosmic rays.

Although the discoveries “bolster our confidence that cosmic rays are accelerated by supernova remnants,” they do not clinch the case, said gamma-ray theorist Charles Dermer of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., a member of the Fermi collaboration.

The clincher may come, he says, if an ongoing analysis of Fermi data finds that gamma-ray emissions from starburst galaxies peak at an energy of 70 million eV. That corresponds to the energy generated when a subatomic particle called a neutral pion decays into two gamma rays. Because galactic pions can only be generated by cosmic-ray collisions, finding this peak would provide compelling proof for the theory, Dermer said.

Images: 1) M82 / NASA, ESA, CXC, and JPL-Caltech. 2) Gamma-ray emissions coming from M82 / CfA/V.A. Acciari. 3) Steve Criswell, SAO.

See Also:

• Mysterious Gamma-Ray Bursts May Have Ties to Failed Black Holes
• Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Blazar: Time-Lapse Video of Gamma-Ray Sky
• Lightning-Storm Gamma Rays Could Harm Air Travelers
• Gamma Ray Space Scope Delivers First All-Sky Image

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 2 Nov 2009 | 12:55 pm

Lions Had a Taste for Human Flesh

In 1898, two man-eating lions terrorized railway workers, claiming 35 lives.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 2 Nov 2009 | 12:45 pm

Oldest Preserved Spider Web Dates Back to Dinosaurs

The world’s oldest known spider web has been discovered on a beach in Sussex, England, trapped inside an ancient chunk of amber.

Scientists found the rare amber fossil in December, and have now confirmed that it contains remnants of spider silk spun roughly 140 million years ago by an ancestor of modern orb-weaving spiders. After slicing the amber into thin sections and examining each piece under a high-powered microscope, the researchers discovered that the ancient silk threads share several features common to modern spider webs, including droplets of sticky glue used to hold the web together and capture prey.

According to paleobiologist Martin Brasier of Oxford University, the gooey droplets suggest that spiders were starting to spin webs that were better adapted for catching flying insects. “Interestingly, a huge radiation took place in flying insects and bark beetles about 140-130 million years ago,” Brasier wrote in an email to Wired.com. “So we may be seeing a co-evolution of spiders and insects here.”

The new discovery is the first example of an amber fossil from the early Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs like spinosaurs and psittocosaurs roamed the Earth.

“Silk is a relatively delicate material and it is rarely preserved in the fossil record, except when entombed in amber,” Brasier and colleagues wrote about the discovery in the upcoming December issue of the Journal of the Geological Society. The researchers think pieces of organic material, including the spider silk, became embalmed during a severe wildfire, when amber resins seeped out from the charred bark of coniferous trees and were eventually swept away by flooding.

In addition to ancient spider silk, the amber chunk contains well-preserved soil microbes, including the oldest known examples of actinobacteria, a common type of bacteria that plays a major role in soil formation.

Image 1: A spider and web trapped in amber, Mila Zinkova/Wikipedia Commons. Image 2: Light micrograph of new amber fossil showing a web of tiny silk threads, plus droplets of sticky glue. Courtesy of Martin Brasier.

See Also:

• 1 Million Spiders Make Golden Silk for Rare Cloth
• Even-More-Gigantic Giant Orb Spider Discovered
• Metals Give Spiderman a Boost
• Kinder, Gentler Spider Eats Veggies, Cares for Kids
• Amber Ale: Brewing Beer From 45-Million-Year-Old Yeast

Follow us on Twitter @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 2 Nov 2009 | 12:22 pm

AI Spacesuits Turn Astronauts Into Cyborg Biologists

Equipped with wearable AI systems and digital eyes that see what human eyes can’t, space explorers of the future could be not just astronauts, but “cyborg astrobiologists.”

That’s the vision of a research team led by Patrick McGuire, a University of Chicago geoscientist who’s developed algorithms that can recognize signs of life in a barren landscape.

“When they look at scenery, children gravitate towards the thing that’s different from the other things,” said McGuire. “That’s how I looked at the cyborg astrobiologist.”

At the heart of McGuire’s system is a Hopfield neural network, a type of artificial intelligence that compares incoming data against patterns it’s seen before, eventually picking out those details that qualify as new or unusual.

As described in a paper published Thursday in arXiv, the system successfully differentiates lichen from surrounding rock — a proof-of-principle test that lays the foundation for adding other types of data.

For the last several years, McGuire worked on CRISM, a Mars-orbiting imager that detects infrared and other invisible-to-human-eye wavelengths of light, allowing it to identify different types of rock and soil. McGuire envisions the digital eyes of cyborg astrobiologists as scaled-down versions of CRISM, their data perpetually crunched by the Hopfield networks on their hips.

“You would have a very complex artificial intelligence system, with access to different remote sensing databases, to field work that’s been done before in the area, and it would have the ability to reason about these in human-like ways,” said McGuire.

The lichen tests were conducted in Spain and at Utah’s Mars Desert Research Station, where two of the researchers donned spacesuits and lived for two weeks in the field as astronauts. They carried hand-held digital microscopes and cell phone cameras, which sent the data via bluetooth to netbooks running McGuire’s Hopfield network.

The lichen identification was based on color data. McGuire next plans to train the network to process different textures. Ultimately he wants to conduct analysis at different scales, from the microscopic up to landscape-wide.

McGuire cautioned that his team’s system is “nowhere near” its ready-for-Mars ideal, and it will likely be decades before people explore the surface of Mars in person. In the meantime, cyborg astrobiologists might search the South Pole for Martian meteorites, and feature-identifying algorithms could be uploaded to Mars-roving robots.

“Then you’d have a robotic astrobiologist, and the humans would be back here on Earth, in Mission Control,” he said. “The algorithms help us out, but humans are ultimately responsible.”

Images: Patrick McGuire

See Also:

• The Hunt for Extraterrestrial Life Gets Weird
• The New Exoplanetology: ‘I Learned It by Watching You, Earth’
• Building a Better Alien-Detection System
• Computer Program Self-Discovers Laws of Physics
• Humans No Match for Go Bot Overlords

Citation: “The Cyborg Astrobiologist: Testing a Novelty-Detection Algorithm on Two Mobile Exploration Systems at Rivas Vaciamadrid in Spain and at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.” P.C. McGuire, C. Gross, L. Wendt1, A. Bonnici, V. Souza-Egipsy, J. Ormö, E. Díaz-Martínez, B.H. Foing, R. Bose, S. Walter, M. Oesker, J. Ontrup, R. Haschke, H. Ritter. arXiv, October 29, 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 | 2 Nov 2009 | 11:55 am

BIG PIC: Ship Built of WTC Steel Sails Home

The USS New York, forged with steel from the towers destroyed on 9/11, sailed to NYC.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 2 Nov 2009 | 11:35 am

T. Rex Teens Fought, Disfigured Each Other

A battle that happened during the Late Cretaceous reveals just how fierce T. rex was.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 2 Nov 2009 | 11:35 am

Counting carbon

Distant targets will not halt dangerous climate change
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Nov 2009 | 10:54 am

Probe to Track Warming's Effects on Water

A new satellite will track Earth's water cycle and how it's changed by global warming.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 2 Nov 2009 | 10:45 am

Human Evolution: Where We Came From

A chronology of hominids tells the story of some of the most significant ancestors we know about and how they're all linked by evolution.
Source: Livescience.com | 2 Nov 2009 | 9:47 am

POLL: Your View of Human Evolution

The theory is based on solid evidence from several fields and different lines of research, but it remains highly controversial.
Source: Livescience.com | 2 Nov 2009 | 9:27 am

Domestic Pig DNA Decoded

The decoding of pig DNA could help in the search for a new swine flu vaccine for pigs.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 2 Nov 2009 | 9:15 am

South African telescope hit by broadband problems

• Astronomers forced to send findings by road
• Embarrassed politicians call on telephone firm to resolve issue

It can see to the edge of the observable universe. It can peer back in time to the aftermath of the Big Bang. Just don't ask it to send the secret of creation by email.

The R332m (£25m) Southern African Large Telescope (Salt) is an internationally renowned science facility with everything but fast broadband. Its astronomers have found download speeds so slow that they are forced to send their cosmic findings by road.

The problem is all too familiar to South African residents: painfully slow service delivery. Politicians have called on a telephone company to resolve the matter "before the country's standing as a credible international scientific partner is irreparably damaged".

Salt, on a hilltop outside Sutherland in the Karoo desert, is the biggest telescope in the southern hemisphere with a 11m-wide mirror capable of detecting a candle flame on the moon. Its investors include Germany, Poland, Britain, India, New Zealand and the American Museum of National History.

But while it can capture data 10bn light years away, Salt is 11 miles short of the nearest fibre optic internet cable. Five years of negotiations to make the small step for man have reportedly stalled because Telkom, the South African telecoms operator, is demanding R10m (£775,000).

Dr David Buckley, astronomy operations manager at Salt, said transmitting data from a single night's observation takes 24 hours or more, whereas ideally it would be done continuously in real time.

Asked if astronomers could use a website such as YouTube, Buckley replied: "Oh hell, no. We have to control what people do there. If you try things like that, it clogs the whole system. We certainly know it if people start downloading movies."

Buckley and his colleagues frequently resort to putting their precious data on disk and making the 230-mile drive to the South African Astronomical Observatory where it is processed. "We bring the data ourselves in a standard minibus or car," he continued.

"This is something we work with in South Africa: pathetic broadband. It's extremely frustrating because we started negotiations with Telkom in 2004 for broadband that would be efficient and affordable. They now appear to be reneging and we're back to square one."

South Africa's main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, condemned the impasse. "If Telkom had installed the link from Salt when it was first approached five years ago, rather than dragging its feet, it would not be quibbling about the costs now," said Marian Shinn, deputy shadow minister of science and technology.

"Salt is the pioneer project of our growing collaboration on international space research programmes. If we cannot get the data to our offshore partners on this project we can kiss our investment in space science goodbye."

Shinn warned that the fiasco could jeopardise South Africa's bid to host the R1.6bn (£125m) Square Kilometre Array radio telescope. But Telkom insisted that progress was being made. A spokesman said: "The current project is progressing well and the first nodes will become operational during December 2009."

In September, a pigeon called Winston beat Telkom's broadband service when he carried a 4GB memory stick from Howick to Durban in two hours – in which time the ADSL line had sent just 4% of the data.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 2 Nov 2009 | 9:13 am

Wireless Devices Overwhelm Nature's Signals

The "electronic fog" of manmade signals could dampen scientific discoveries.
Source: Livescience.com | 2 Nov 2009 | 9:05 am

'Breaking' Curveballs Are Just an Illusion

In baseball, the curveball doesn’t break, we just think it does, says neuroscientist Zhong-Lin Lu.
Source: Livescience.com | 2 Nov 2009 | 8:46 am

Civilization Collapsed After Cutting Key Trees

When the Nazca people cleared forests to grow crops, their fields washed away.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 2 Nov 2009 | 8:40 am

Jerky Curveball: It's All An Illusion

Look at the spinning ball directly. It seems to fly straight. But look at the blue dot and the ball's spin fools your brain into thinking that the ball is curving. A flying baseball passes from central to peripheral vision so it appears to jerk.
Source: Livescience.com | 2 Nov 2009 | 8:14 am

Sahara Sun 'to help power Europe'

A sustainable energy initiative that will start with a huge solar project in the Sahara desert is announced by a consortium of 12 European businesses.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Nov 2009 | 7:17 am

Air Pressure Changes Trigger Landslides

Regular changes in air pressure -- minute disturbances -- can trigger landslides.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 2 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

Dawkins et al bring us into disrepute

There's a schism alright, and I seem to find myself on the unfashionable side of it

The question: Is there an atheist schism?

As a professional philosopher my first question naturally is: "What or who is an atheist?" If you mean someone who absolutely and utterly does not believe there is any God or meaning then I doubt there are many in this group. Richard Dawkins denies being such a person. If you mean someone who agrees that logically there could be a god, but who doesn't think that the logical possibility is terribly likely, or at least not something that should keep us awake at night, then I guess a lot of us are atheists. But there is certainly a split, a schism, in our ranks. I am not whining (in fact I am rather proud) when I point out that a rather loud group of my fellow atheists, generally today known as the "new atheists", loathe and detest my thinking. Richard Dawkins has likened me to the pusillanimous appeaser at Munich, Neville Chamberlain. Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True, says (echoing Orwell) that only someone with pretensions to the intelligentsia could believe the silly things I believe. And energetic blogger PZ Myers refers to me as a "clueless gobshite" because I confessed to seeing why true believers might find the Kentucky Creationist Museum convincing. I will spare you what my fellow philosopher Dan Dennett has to say about me.

There are several reasons why we atheists are squabbling – I will speak only for myself but I doubt I am atypical. First, non-believer though I may be, I do not think (as do the new atheists) that all religion is necessarily evil and corrupting. This claim is on a par with golden plates in upstate New York. The Quakers and the Evangelicals were inspired and driven by their religion to oppose slavery, and a good thing too. Of course there has been evil in the name of religion – the pope telling Africans not to use condoms in the face of Aids – but as often as not religion is not the only or even the primary force for evil. The troubles in Northern Ireland were surely about socio-economic issues also, and the young men who flew into the World Trade Centre towers were infected by the alienation and despair of the young in Muslim countries in the face of poverty and inequalities.

Second, unlike the new atheists, I take scholarship seriously. I have written that The God Delusion made me ashamed to be an atheist and I meant it. Trying to understand how God could need no cause, Christians claim that God exists necessarily. I have taken the effort to try to understand what that means. Dawkins and company are ignorant of such claims and positively contemptuous of those who even try to understand them, let alone believe them. Thus, like a first-year undergraduate, he can happily go around asking loudly, "What caused God?" as though he had made some momentous philosophical discovery. Dawkins was indignant when, on the grounds that inanimate objects cannot have emotions, philosophers like Mary Midgley criticised his metaphorical notion of a selfish gene. Sauce for the biological goose is sauce for the atheist gander. There are a lot of very bright and well informed Christian theologians. We atheists should demand no less.

Third, how dare we be so condescending? I don't have faith. I really don't. Rowan Williams does as do many of my fellow philosophers like Alvin Plantinga (a Protestant) and Ernan McMullin (a Catholic). I think they are wrong; they think I am wrong. But they are not stupid or bad or whatever. If I needed advice about everyday matters, I would turn without hesitation to these men. We are caught in opposing Kuhnian paradigms. I can explain their faith claims in terms of psychology; they can explain my lack of faith claims also probably partly through psychology and probably theology also. (Plantinga, a Calvinist, would refer to original sin.) I just keep hearing Cromwell to the Scots. "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." I don't think I am wrong, but the worth and integrity of so many believers makes me modest in my unbelief.

Fourth and finally, I live in the American South, surrounded by ardent Christians. I want evolution taught in the schools and I can think of no way better designed to make that impossible than to spout on about religion, from ignorance and with contempt. And especially to make unsubstantiated arguments that science refutes religion. I never conceal my nonbelief. I defend to the death the right of the new atheists to their views and to their right to propagate them. But that is no excuse for political stupidity. If, as the new atheists think, Darwinian evolutionary biology is incompatible with Christianity, then will they give me a good argument as to why the science should be taught in schools if it implies the falsity of religion? The first amendment to the constitution of the United States of America separates church and state. Why are their beliefs exempt?

Back in 1961, in the depths of the cold war, terrified as we were by the threat of nuclear annihilation, John Whitcomb Junior and Henry Morris published The Genesis Flood, a six-day-creationist account of origins. Because of its dispensationalist message – God clears things out every now and then, as he did at the time of Noah, and we should expect the next (literal) blow up fairly shortly – it became the fundamentalist bible. But don't worry. It's all part of God's plans, even the Russian bomb. Today, nearly a decade after 9/11, terrified as so many still are by the terrorist threat, the atheistic fundamentalists are finding equally fertile soil for their equally frenetic messages. It's all the fault of the believers, Muslims mainly of course, but Christians also. But don't worry. In the God Delusion, we have a message as simplistic as in The Genesis Flood. This too will solve all of your problems. Peace and prosperity await you in this world, if not the next.

Forgive me if I don't sign on.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 2 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

Vision of the Future: Custom Corneas

The same tech used in the Hubble telescope could offer LASIK patients better sight.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 2 Nov 2009 | 4:30 am

Logging 'caused Nazca collapse'

New evidence suggests the fate of the ancient Nazca society of Peru was entwined with that of the huarango tree.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Nov 2009 | 4:04 am

Climate change burns Yosemite

How things will heat up for California's Yosemite National Park.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Nov 2009 | 3:17 am

Deforestation sped demise of Nasca in Peru: study

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - The mysterious people who etched the "Nasca Lines" across deserts in Peru hastened their own demise by clearing forests 1,500 years ago, according to a study on Monday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 2 Nov 2009 | 1:57 am

Spaceman

Spain makes its 'breakthough' in space
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Nov 2009 | 1:54 am