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New Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) Clinic Offers Noninvasive Treatment For Major DepressionRush University Medical Center has opened the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) Clinic to offer patients suffering from major depression a safe, effective, non-drug treatment. TMS therapy is the first FDA-approved, non-invasive antidepressant device-based treatment clinically proven for treatment of depression. Psychiatrists at Rush University Medical Center were among the first to test the technique and Dr. Philip Janicak, professor of psychiatry and lead investigator at Rush for the clinical trials of TMS, helped to develop this therapy.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm New Way To Attack Inflammation In Graves' Eye DiseaseA small group of patients with severe Graves' eye disease experienced rapid improvement of their symptoms -- and improved vision -- following treatment with the drug rituximab. Inflammation around their eyes and damage to the optic nerve were significantly reduced. The same patients had not previously responded to steroids, a common treatment for Graves' eye disease.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm 1930s Drug Slows Tumor Growth: Gonorrhea Medication Might Help Fight CancerDrugs sometimes have beneficial side effects. A glaucoma treatment causes luscious eyelashes. A blood pressure drug also aids those with a rare genetic disease. The newest surprise discovered by researchers is a gonorrhea medication that might help battle cancer.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm New Computer Simulator Helps Design Military Strategies Based On Ants' MovementsResearchers in Spain have designed a system for the mobility of military troops within a battlefield following the mechanisms used by ant colonies to move. The scientists have used settings of Panzer General, a commercial war video game, for the development of this software.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm Magnetic Nanoparticles To Simultaneously Diagnose, Monitor And TreatThe future for magentic nanoparticles (mNPs) appears bright With the design of "theranostic" molecules. Magentic nanoparticles could play a crucial role in developing one-stop tools to simultaneously diagnose, monitor and treat a wide range of common diseases and injuries.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm Drunken Fruit Flies Help Scientists Find Potential Drug Target For AlcoholismDrunken fruit flies have helped researchers identify networks of genes -- also present in humans -- that play a key role in alcohol drinking behavior. This discovery provides an indication of why some people seem to tolerate alcohol better than others, and points toward a potential target for drugs aimed at preventing or eliminating alcoholism.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm Hybrid Composite For Root Canal TreatmentA dentist carrying out root canal treatment will need to use a variety of compounds. These do not always bond together properly and sometimes expensive follow-up treatment has to be performed. But a new class of material meets the requirements, and solves the problem.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am Computational Method Points To New Uses, Unexpected Side Effects Of Already Existing DrugsScientists have developed and experimentally tested a technique to predict new target diseases for existing drugs. The researchers developed a computational method that compares how similar the structures of all known drugs are to the naturally occurring binding partners -- known as ligands -- of disease targets within the cell.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am Air Pollution Increases Infants' Risk Of BronchiolitisInfants who are exposed to higher levels of air pollution are at increased risk for bronchiolitis, according to a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am The Skeleton: Size Matters; New Role For Master Patterning Genes In Defining Number Of Vertebrae In SpineIt has long been known that the identity of each vertebra is due to the activation of a class of genes called "Hox." Now, researchers in Portugal show that besides determining the identity of the vertebrae, Hox genes also have a say in how many are going to be formed at all.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 7 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am British treasury chief urges climate agreement (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Nov 2009 | 3:05 am Island village hit by suspected swine flu (AP)
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Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 7 Nov 2009 | 2:13 am Dinosaur prints found on NZealand's South Island (AFP)
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Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Nov 2009 | 10:50 pm Tens of thousands of homes flooded in Mexico (AP)
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Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Nov 2009 | 9:02 pm Seattle Team Wins $900,000 in Space Elevator Contest (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - A Seattle-based team has won $900,000 in this year's Space Elevator Games, a NASA-sponsored contest to build machines powered by laser beams that can climb a cable in the sky.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Nov 2009 | 9:02 pm Are drugs laws working? Ask a scientistIt's pleasing to see, in the storm of commentary over Professor David Nutt's sacking as the government's chief drugs adviser, that everyone outside politics now recognises the importance of scientific evidence in devising laws. But a strange reasoning twitch has appeared, in the arguments of politicians and rightwing commentators. Science can tell us about the molecules, they say, about their effect on the body and the risks. But policy is separate: a matter for judgment calls on social and ethical issues. Only politicians, they say, can determine the correct way to send out a clear message to the public. It is not a matter for science. This is wrong. Alongside research into the risks of drugs, lots of work has also been done on the deterrent impact of different laws, classifications and levels of enforcement. As every piece of research has its own imperfections (and nobody has yet conducted a randomised controlled trial on drugs policy) you can make your own mind up about whether you find the results compelling. One strategy is to compare different countries. A World Health Organisation study from 2008, published in the academic journal PLOS Medicine, compared drug use and enforcement regimes around the world. It was clear: "Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones." Alternatively, you can compare drug use between states within one country, if they have very different enforcement regimes, as when parts of the US liberalised their laws a few decades ago. In 1976 Stuart and colleagues found that cannabis use in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was not affected by reductions in cannabis penalties, when compared with three neighbouring communities which kept penalties the same. In 1981 Saveland & Bray looked at national drug use surveys from 1972 to 1977 and found cannabis use was higher in "decriminalised" states, before and after changes in the law. When they looked at rates of change, although cannabis use was increasing everywhere, the most rapid increase was in the states with the most severe penalties. In the same year, Johnson and colleagues used survey data on high school use and found decriminalisation had no effect on attitudes or beliefs about drugs. These studies are old, but only because the liberalisations they rely on for data happened a long time ago. Another line of evidence comes from "before and after" studies, when laws are changed. Cannabis use in the UK dropped after cannabis was moved from class B to class C. Prohibition of alcohol in the US from 1920 to 1933 is the most famous example: alcohol use fell dramatically when prohibition began, and the price of alcohol rose to 318% of its previous level. By 1929 this initial impact had begun to wear off and rapidly: alcohol consumption had risen to 70% of pre-prohibition levels, and was still rising when prohibition was repealed, and the price had fallen to 171% of pre-prohibition levels. This reversion to old patterns of use occurred despite escalating spending on enforcement, up 600% over the same period. There are many more examples. This is not an unresearchable question. There are other factors at play in all of these studies, and if they are not sufficiently rigorous for the government, or a brief informal dip into the literature is not enough, (it shouldn't be) then they should commission more research: because it is a tenet of evidence-based policy that if you discover a gap, you commission work to fill it. This work is important for one simple reason. If you wish to justify a policy that will plainly increase the harms associated with each individual act of drug use, by creating violent criminal gangs as distributors, driving the sale of contaminated black market drugs, blighting the careers of users caught by the police, criminalising three million people, and so on, then people will reasonably expect, as a trade-off, that you will also provide good quality evidence showing that your policy achieves its stated aim of reducing the overall numbers of people using drugs. 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 | 6 Nov 2009 | 6:28 pm 'Civil disobedience has a role to play' | Al GoreAl Gore was born to be the most powerful man on Earth, but fell just short of his political destiny. Can the former law-maker now win his place in history as the man who helped save the planet? Perhaps the best way to understand the extraordinary transformation of Al Gore is to study the changing rhetoric of his enemies. A mere nine years ago, back when George Bush was just a cheeky rogue with an adorable line in malapropisms, presidential candidate Gore was famously derided as wooden and dull. Having failed to win the presidency – though of course that depends, as ever, on your definition of the word "win" – he next became a pitiable loser, then a laughable climate-change wonk, then the Oscar-winning, peace prize-winning, Live Earth-organising darling of liberal Hollywood. And so it says something hugely flattering about his present-day stature, surely, that the new official anti-Gore line is that he is quite simply evil: an anti-American hypocrite, a supporter of world government, and, like Barack Obama, probably a communist or a fascist or both. A recent documentary about Gore made by Irish global warming denialists, Not Evil Just Wrong, made the mistake of diverging from this stance, prompting fury among parts of its intended audience in the US. Not evil? Get real. In person, Gore is neither wooden nor, in any obvious way, evil. What he is, is reserved: settling back into an armchair at a fancy hotel in Los Angeles, he answers questions obligingly and at length – sometimes at very great length – but without the effort to connect that seems to be a compulsion of most politicians. He is trim, strikingly handsome, in a dark blue suit and black cowboy boots, and looks mysteriously unsleepy, despite having just flown in from a three-day trip to China. (After LA, he's due home for one night in Nashville, then off on a book tour that will take him to South Africa and Egypt. Denialists enjoy attacking Gore's personal carbon footprint, even though, as denialists, it's not clear what they're objecting to.) Not long ago, Time magazine called him "improbably charismatic", which is accurate, though this may be a consequence of his new incarnation: for a successful politician, Gore comes across as surprisingly distant, but as professorial climate change experts go, he's a rock star. Gore, optimistically, attributes the hardening tone of his critics to "the sunset phenomenon, where there's a spectacle just before the subsiding": as the remaining climate change doubters and vested interests begin to realise that the game is up, he suggests, they're bound to make one last stand. "This self-interest on the part of some of the carbon polluters – who are becoming a bit intense in their efforts – reflects their awareness that public opinion has been shifting very significantly," he says. "When I say 'they', I don't mean to indict all of them, because the business community is now very much split… but that realisation has produced a desire on the part of some of these carbon polluters to dig in their heels." He points to the US Chamber of Commerce's new hardline stance against action on the environment, which prompted several major American corporations to resign from it. (They included Apple, on whose board Gore sits, though he says he first heard of that decision when he read about it in the paper.) "They're calling for a new Scopes trial," says Gore, referring to the Chamber's efforts to liken a belief in global warming to creationism. "Ha! The Scopes trial happened in my home state, and I can tell you, one was quite enough." But many firms are beginning to take a different approach, he notes, for example those who have joined the 10:10 campaign in the UK, which is supported by the Guardian; Gore calls 10:10 "brilliant", and sees no reason why it couldn't work in the US, too. Gore's new book, Our Choice: A Plan To Solve The Climate Crisis, gives global warming deniers short shrift, and shows little concern for displays of political bipartisanship: he likens the doubters to the "birthers" intent on proving that Obama is a Kenyan – not just mavericks, but fantasists who inhabit a different version of reality. "The golden thread of reason that used to be stretched taut to mark the boundary between the known and the unknown is now routinely disrespected," he writes, in a typically Goreish sentence, immediately prior to quoting Theodor Adorno, King Solomon and Aesop. Primarily, though, Our Choice is a sumptuously illustrated coffee-table book of potential solutions, explaining both Gore's favourites (geothermal energy, biochar, "smart" electrical grids) and those about which he's deeply sceptical (nuclear power, carbon capture and pumping sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere, a plan he describes as "insane"). When making his Oscar-winning 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore arguably had it easy: it's fairly straightforward to grip an audience when you're portraying scenes of apocalyptic destruction. The new book pulls off a considerably more impressive feat. It focuses on solving the crisis, yet manages to be absorbing on a topic that is all too often – can we just come clean about this, please? – crushingly boring. Importantly, it seeks to enlist readers as political advocates for the cause, rather than just urging them to turn down the heating. "It's important to change lightbulbs," he says, in a well-burnished soundbite, "but more important to change policies and laws." Or perhaps to break laws instead: peaceful occupations of the kind witnessed recently in the UK, he predicts, are only going to become more widespread. "Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play. And I expect that it will increase, no question about it." People sometimes express incredulity that Gore, who was groomed for the presidency almost since birth, seems so resolved that he'll never return to electoral politics. But here's a vivid example of the benefits of life on the outside: how many serving politicians would feel able to come so close to urging people to commit trespass? Gore is particularly compelling on psychology: his book addresses head-on the fact that merely repeating grave pronouncements about the climate crisis isn't a remotely effective way to get governments or individuals to act. Instead, he explores ways to link long-term environmental goals to everyday incentives that people and businesses can actually get their heads around, most obviously by putting a price on carbon via cap-and-trade and other mechanisms: "If the only tool we use to analyse what's valuable is a price tag, then those things that don't have price tags begin to look like they have no value," he writes. He's also passionate about the potential psychological impact of Dscovr, the Nasa satellite project he proposed while serving as Bill Clinton's vice-president (which Dick Cheney mothballed, and Obama has resurrected). Among other things, it would provide a continuous view of the sunlit side of the Earth, available via the internet – a sort of real-time version of the famous Earthrise photograph, serving as a constant reminder and update on the fragile state of our planet. But it is, naturally, the state of Gore's personal psychology that interests people just as much. Everyone has their hypotheses. They want to know if his environmental campaigning has somehow brought him peace, after the almost unimaginable disappointment of the 2000 election. Or they speculate that he feels guilty for not focusing sufficiently on the climate during that campaign, and is making up for lost time, or guilty for not fighting harder over Florida, given all that subsequently happened under Bush. Our Choice, like An Inconvenient Truth, declares that we are at a historic decision point, at which we can choose to hesitate, with disastrous consequences, or to rise to the occasion – which is virtually an invitation to engage in armchair psychoanalysis. Didn't Gore himself blink, at an analogous crucial moment, with momentous results for himself, and the world? In the years immediately following the disputed presidential election – after growing a beard and gaining weight – Gore drew on deadpan humour to help process the experience, and to put audiences at their ease. "You win some, you lose some, and then there's that little-known third category," he would say. Or: "I don't want you to think I lie awake at night, counting and recounting sheep." But these days the gags have subsided. "To place the disappointment, which I felt keenly, into some perspective, there are millions upon millions of people who have suffered infinitely larger losses than I suffered," he says now. "They move on with their lives, and if they can, I certainly can. If we walked through the lobby of this hotel and down the sidewalk outside, we'd run into a lot of people who, without us knowing it, are carrying enormous burdens of loss and disappointment. It's part of the human condition." It does seem, though, as if taking on the biggest conceivable global challenge has helped heal the wound, and perhaps even provided him with a satisfaction that being vice-president didn't. "It's a blessing to have work that feels fulfilling," he says. "There's a passage in the Bible – not that I wear religion on my sleeve; I do not – but there's a passage that's long had meaning for me: 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might'... There's that wonderful old English movie, Chariots Of Fire, when the runner says at one point, 'When I run, I feel God's pleasure.' He was expressing a universal human emotion that I think is applicable." It is easy to forget exactly how unlikely it is that Gore should be doing anything, at this point, other than serving as an elected politician. The son of the Tennessee senator Albert Gore, he was born in Washington DC and grew up immersed in politics; by the time he went to Harvard, he'd gone public with his ambition to become president. He met his future wife, Tipper, at his high school prom in 1965, and served in Vietnam as an army journalist, despite opposing the war; by 1977 he was a Congressman, aged 29. He upgraded to the Senate in 1985, where he played a key role in securing funding for the nascent internet – even if he didn't quite invent it, as some critics falsely alleged that he'd claimed – and ran unsuccessfully to be the Democrats' presidential nominee in the 1988 election. In 1989, his son Albert, then six, was hit by a car while crossing the road and nearly died: Gore said the experience transformed him, and put him off running for president; instead, he joined Clinton's ticket in 1992. During 2007 and 2008, it was frequently suggested that he should run again – indeed, that he had a moral duty to run again – and he never quite fully dismissed the notion until he endorsed Obama. More than any other living figure on the US national stage, perhaps, Capitol Hill and the White House have dominated his life. And yet here he is, aged 61, living in Nashville, in an 18-room mansion that has been retrofitted to rely entirely on renewable energy, shuttling across the globe, positioning himself cleverly both as the ultimate insider and an activist willing to go far further than the insiders would dare. He serves as an adviser to Google, as well as an Apple board member, chairs a sustainable investment fund, and is a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital fund with environmental interests. (He is, as a result, often accused of a conflict of interest, but responds that all his profits go to his nonprofit organisation, the Alliance for Climate Protection.) "He's got access to every leader in every country, the business community, people of every political stripe," Tipper Gore told Time magazine. "He can do this his way, all over the world, for as long as he wants. That's freedom. Why would anyone give that up?" Contrary to the general consensus among activists and journalists, Gore remains optimistic about the Copenhagen talks in December – optimistic that the US Senate will pass a bill to clarify Washington's position, arming Obama with much-needed moral authority, and thus optimistic that a worthwhile agreement, which hinges on a US commitment, will emerge from the gathering itself. "I was in China two days ago, and the premier of China asked me, in essence, why I'm optimistic that the Senate will pass legislation when the conventional wisdom says otherwise. And the answer is that I have been a part of conversations between Democrats and Republicans that give me a very different view from what the consensus is in the journalistic community." He refers to the op-ed by South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham and Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry in the New York Times, calling for legislation to pass. "There are other surprises like that in store." Of the potential Copenhagen deal, Gore says, "I expect it to be far weaker than the one I would like to see. However, the important achievement [will be] to put a price on carbon, and reset expectations among business, government, NGOs and others." He likens the situation to the Montreal Protocol on the ozone layer. "The world acted fairly quickly, but the agreement they reached was criticised for being insufficient." Yet, he points out, when the treaty was revised, "many of the businesses that had opposed [it] were there to argue in favour of toughening it significantly. Because once they began to comply... they realised that it was not as difficult as they had feared. And once they'd made the commitment to the change, they were eager to get on with it." It made more sense, financially and in PR terms, to go all the way instead of halfway. Is it important for Obama to go to Copenhagen himself? "Oh yes. And I expect that he will. He hasn't told me that he will, and no one representing him has told me that he will. But I feel certain that he will." In Gore's position, of course, optimism infused with urgency is the only rational stance to take in public. Unless you either don't believe in human-caused global warming, or you think it's definitely too late to do anything about it, there's no real upside to saying anything other than that the situation is grave yet addressable. But Gore, you get the feeling, really is an optimist, all the way through. His repeated references to JFK's promise to put a man on the moon may not, as a climate change analogy, bear close scrutiny: putting a man on the moon didn't require the average American to do anything at all. Still, the crisis needs its Kennedy, and Gore – for all his improbable, un-Kennedy-like brand of charisma – seems to be that man. "We have a tendency as human beings to confuse the unprecedented with the improbable," he says. "If something has never happened before, we tend to assume it will not happen in the future... [but] throughout history, there have been examples of human societies confronting dire threats, and finding, in their response, that they were capable of more than they thought they were capable of." What everything depends on now, he says, is "how soon we reach a critical mass of political awareness that can... give us the ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption." We will win or we will lose: outside of dodgy Floridian elections, there actually isn't a third category. • Our Choice: A Plan To Solve The Climate Crisis, by Al Gore, is published by Bloomsbury at £14.99. To order a copy for £13.99 (including UK mainland p&p), go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846. 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 | 6 Nov 2009 | 5:11 pm Relationships: The buddy beautifulFriends can be good for your physical as well as your emotional wellbeing Aristotle defined a friend as "a single soul dwelling in two bodies". Members of Facebook whose "friends" reach triple figures may have a looser definition, but how many friends we have, and how easily we make, maintain and lose them, has a significant impact on our emotional wellbeing. It's no surprise, then, that friends can improve just about every aspect of our life. Recovery from a major operation? Tick, says a 2009 study in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, an organisation not known for touchy-feely nonsense. This recovery included, incredibly, a reduction in the level of pain felt by patients with the most friends. Likewise, friends can protect us (a bit) from the aftershocks of bereavement, divorce, even the onset of dementia. They don't even have to be great friends – some of the positive effect is simply down to the company: have a pint with a mate and you're by definition not socially isolated. Some friendships seem easier than others. "Some need little contact and are low maintenance, but you always pick up with them where you left off," says educational psychologist Karen Majors. "There are friends you're just more comfortable with. Others may be more interesting, but they may be more prickly. Really good friends don't take offence. Friendships can end because they stop being equal. You may take different routes, have different experiences, which make it harder to maintain a friendship." We first recognise the importance of friends in childhood, when we're not really sure how to make them. "As children, we're attracted to those we perceive to be similar to us," says Majors. "From early on, girls' friendships are about shared intimacy and childhood secrets. But in school friends can turn on you, which can be traumatic. Children practise making and breaking friendships." While some of us may retain a few childhood friends, the biggest opportunity for friendship comes in higher education. A study of long-term friendships by Purdue University in the US found that friendships formed during college years stayed close 20 years later, if they scored highly in closeness and communication to begin with. These friendships survived great distances and an average of six house moves. "At college [university] you can cultivate close friendships because you're in such close proximity for sustained periods," says Glenn Sparks, Purdue's professor of communication. "These relationships are rare and hard to replicate; they're very unusual outside family relationships. Even when distance, jobs, family tended to pull them apart, these friends would say that once they re-established contact, they didn't miss a beat." I have a university reunion next year. After speaking to Sparks, it seems I would not be reaping the rewards for the emotional investments I made earlier in life if I didn't go. So I'll be off then. 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 | 6 Nov 2009 | 5:11 pm The Dad's Army of British cryonicsIn sleepy Sussex is a group of dedicated cryonicists who believe they hold the secret to eternal life. Simon Hattenstone joins them for a demonstration – but first they need to make sure the hosepipe isn't too leaky In a bungalow in Peacehaven, by the east Sussex seaside, a 72-year-old man and his 62-year-old wife are planning their future. There's no discussion of anything morbid, like death, because, as far as they are concerned there is no such thing as death. When they stop breathing, they will pass into a state of suspended animation. They will be frozen in a giant flask of liquid nitrogen at almost -200C, which will preserve their brains and organs in as fresh a state as possible until technology has advanced to the stage where they can be revived. Many cryonicists choose to have only their heads frozen – because that contains all the vital matter – and by the time people can be brought back to life it will be easier, and preferable for some, to attach a new body. But Alan and Sylvia Sinclair will have their whole bodies frozen. For Alan, who used to run a rest home for the elderly with Sylvia, it all started with the death of Queen Mary in 1953. "I was aware from a very young age that life is very short. It occurred to me that no matter what you've got, you're still going to die. I remember thinking, 'I enjoy things: why does anybody want to die?' " He looks at me. "Do you?" Has he never thought there comes a right time to go? "No, I'm always too busy. In the rest home there were people who were quite happy to go to sleep and not wake up. I couldn't understand that." Some 30 years later, when he was 45, he watched a Miriam Stoppard TV programme on cryonics and within days he had joined up. Sylvia says everybody thinks she just followed suit, but no. "I thought about it for another couple of weeks before I made my mind up." Alan now runs Cryonics UK, and every month he holds meetings with fellow cryonicists and potential converts to discuss the practicalities and potential problems of their suspension – of which there are many. First, upon so-called "death", a team of experts must rush to their sides, pump out their blood and fill them with antifreeze. This is complicated because virtually all the members of Alan's suspension team at Cryonics UK have practised only on dummies, rather than real people – and if, for example, air bubbles enter the pumping system, the brain will be irreversibly damaged. Second, there are no storage facilities in Britain, so patients will have to be transferred to the US or Russia. Third, science has some way to go before we can bring people back to life. But Alan has always been an optimist. He knows the situation is far from perfect, but he is doing his bit for eternal happiness. Parked outside the bungalow is an old ambulance, customised with suspension equipment. It's surprisingly archaic – basically a suitcase with a load of tubing inside, reminiscent of an old-fashioned wine-making kit. Alan credits himself with devising the slogan, "Ambulance to the future." In the lounge, a dozen people are listening to Alan run through the weekend's agenda. Alan is the oldest; Dave, at 24, is the youngest. His girlfriend, who is only 20, cannot be here. "She was going to join us from the Wirral, but ironically a death in the family has stopped her," he says, sounding remarkably chipper about the setback. There is jukebox in room, though Alan and Sylvia have yet to buy records to play on it, and scattered around the room are clocks of all ages and designs, each telling a different time. Most of the people wear a silver bracelet, saying they are paid-up cryonicists and that when they stop breathing they expect to be frozen in the agreed manner. Some also wear tags around their necks. Alan, who looks much younger than his 72 years, speaks in a meandering monotone, while Sylvia makes tea. "Sylvia is going to put arsenic in our tea." It's an ongoing joke, and one that gets to the nub of their problem. The cryonicists are not dying quickly enough, so the opportunity to hone their skills is limited. Alan says he once carried out a suspension, but he doesn't look back at it with pride – it didn't go as smoothly as it might have. Another man in the room, an ageing hippy called Tim with a thinning ponytail and a philosophical bent, says he has carried out three suspensions – one, in Britain, just involved shipping the body to America, while in the US he was part of a team that performed the cryonics Full Monty, from collection to pumping, decapitation and storage. The others have no on-the-job experience. Danielle, a middle-aged woman from Wales, says she can't stay the whole weekend because she's due back home tonight to sing in Aberystwyth. She's not quite a professional, but is proud of her voice. "That's why I want the full-body thing, cos I don't think I'll get a larynx as good as this." It was Benjamin Franklin who first suggested, in 1773, that it might be possible to preserve human life in a suspended state for centuries. And that was that for close on 200 years, until physics lecturer Robert Ettinger published The Prospect Of Immortality in 1962, in which he argued that, since we keep food fresh by freezing it, we can do the same with the human body until such time as we have discovered how to defeat death. The term "cryonics", derived from the Greek kryos, meaning cold, was coined in 1965 when Karl Werner founded the Cryonics Society of New York, and the premise is that memory, personality and identity are stored in cellular structures, principally in the brain. So, if you can preserve the brain in decent nick, technology permitting, you can eventually restore people with their personalities intact. The cost varies from $28,000 for head-only preservation to $155,000 for full body. The largest cryonics organisation, with more than 800 members waiting to be preserved, is the US company Alcor. It was established in 1972 and has frozen 87 patients. The Cryonics Institute, also American, and founded by Ettinger in 1976, has frozen 95. The two groups are rivals. When men walked on the moon at the end of the 60s, eternity did not seem such a huge leap for mankind. But progress has not quite kept up with our dreams. Back in Peacehaven, Tim asks Alan how he has been. "Fine," he says. Then he pauses and says that's not quite true. "Well, not so fine, actually. I almost went the other day. My heart rate went up to 230 – I thought that was it. I was exercising, just walking on the machine, and it went..." He says this with a peculiar mix of panic and excitement. The plan for this weekend is to make a cool-down box for the newly (temporarily) deceased. Alan can get impatient with members who say it's all too complicated, and there's too much to remember. In the end, he says, it's just a basic plumbing process – out with the blood, in with the antifreeze. "I don't mean to be rude, but I try everything out on Sylvia, and if she can do it, anybody can." Fortunately, Sylvia is in the kitchen making another cup of tea. Even more important than the ice box is this weekend's star guest, Mike Darwin. He is yet to arrive, and Alan briefs the gathered few with a mixture of awe and dread. Darwin was born Michael Federowicz in Indianapolis, Indiana. He worked as a dialysis technician and adopted the name Darwin for his cryonics persona. At the age of 17, he carried out his first suspension for the Cryonics Society of New York at the request of Saul Kent, another significant figure in the cryonics world. In the 80s he went on to become president of Alcor, but was dismissed in controversial circumstances. Sinclair says Darwin is probably the world's leading cryonics authority. But the news is not all good. "He's well worth listening to unless he's in a depressive state – then it all becomes a bit pointless." A few minutes later a man enters the room. He bears a disarming resemblance to the infamous prisoner Charles Bronson – shaved head, beard, sweat pouring off him, muscular, starey eyes. It can only be Darwin. Alan tells him he didn't recognise him. "That's because I've lost 56 pounds since you last saw me," Darwin says. He sits down. It's a hot day, and his shirt is soaking. Within minutes he is arguing with Sinclair and his followers, making it emphatically clear that he is unimpressed with their Dad's Army approach to eternity. Darwin has spent decades suspending dogs, rabbits and humans, and he can't see how such an inexperienced, higgledy-piggledy group can hope to succeed. "The approach has to be widespread, aggressive. We have to be as rich and as big as Scientology. We must have that level of commitment." He stops. "Maybe that's not the best example." The thing is, he says, he knows the demand is there, if they can only get the technology right. He tells a story about post-Soviet Russia, where he is working with a new cryonics group, KrioRus. As he does so the sweat pours through his shirt until it is the dry patches that stand out. "Eighteen years ago, you wake up and there's no health service, no social security, no scouts, no government, no benefits, no retirement benefit and no God. The whole belief system goes – that's what happened in Russia. And yet people were asked, 'Would you want to live for ever?', and 20% of the population say yes, they want to live for ever, under any conditions." His eyes get bluer and bluer until they turn green. Darwin does not simply proselytise for cryonics, he proselytises for cryonics as big business. But, he says, you're not going to get anywhere until you start giving it the time and expertise it needs. "In America, we didn't do it until we started regular animal experiments. You need to establish a teaching and training environment. Read the book The Knife Man, about John Hunter, one of the greatest men in your country. The greatest surgeon in London, and they wouldn't even let him lecture in the official facilities. He had to build his own building in his home to teach his students." Darwin feels he has much in common with Hunter, a prophet without honour. "He created disciples, students who went all over the world and took what he taught them. That's what we were trying to do; establish an environment to create a self-perpetuating professionalism." "That's what we're trying to create," Alan protests. "No," Darwin says. "No, no you didn't and you couldn't for several reasons. One, you couldn't do the animal experiments – the culture here prohibits it. I'm sorry to highlight disagreements, but this is where we are at. The key to a stable cryonics organisation is to store patients. The instant you do that, people take you serious, because you have taken on the commitment to care for people for a long, long time. The men from the boys are quickly separated at that point. Two-thirds of the people who were on my suspension team in the 70s and 80s are now on liquid nitrogen – people I laughed with, had dinner with, shared personal animosity with, shared great triumphs with, shared personal friendships with. That is what really holds the group together, and it becomes a tangible place that people can show and go to." "I always intended to do storage," Alan says, "but I thought I was too old." Darwin gets a "gotcha" glint in his eye. "Alan, you've just given the reason why it didn't happen. You were the principal person people looked to here for leadership, and when you said, 'I don't want to be stored here', that was a no-confidence buster for everybody else." Silence. Darwin: "I want to advance my field – cryonics." Alan: "So do we all, but we can't work full-time on it." Darwin: "With no experience, you will fuck that patient up. Every time. Not just once. Every time. Get training and practise." That, Darwin says, is the key to progress. "The teaching environment was wrecked by Jerry's arrest, then they got rid of me, and then they got rid of everyone systematically." Nobody blinks when he mentions the arrest. Alan: "What practice can we do?" Darwin sets them a challenge: "Do a really honest demonstration, with pre-set goals, and see how many mistakes you make." The cryonicists break for lunch. The morning session has been heavier than even Sinclair expected. Sylvia has ordered in fish and chips for everybody. A good bit of stodge restores calm. I ask Sinclair about the arrest that Darwin had mentioned. "Ah that," he says. It's an old story. Jerry Leaf, a cardiothoracic surgery researcher, was vice-president of Alcor and Darwin's partner. Between them they invented a blood substitute capable of sustaining life in dogs for four hours at near-freezing temperatures. "Jerry's arrest... totally bloody ridiculous. He had suspended a woman. She was 97 years of age, she had senility, they moved her from the nursing home to the facility and she died there. Anyway, the police came in and tried to arrest them all for trying to hide her. There was a great big court case." What was reported as "the strange case of the frozen head" in the Los Angeles Times occurred in 1987, following the death of Dora Kent, the mother of Alcor benefactor Saul Kent. Dora Kent, who was actually 83, was moved from a convalescent home to Alcor by her son. Alcor officials told police she had died a natural death and only then was her head surgically removed by Leaf. After Alcor applied for a permit to cremate Kent's headless body, the Riverside County coroner's office launched an investigation, noting that she was not under a doctor's care at the time of her death. Investigators sought the right to defrost and examine Kent's head, but a Superior Court judge ruled that this would be an unconstitutional infringement on a person's right to choose how to dispose of his or her remains. The coroner, Raymond Carillo, ruled that tests on Kent's body tissues revealed her death was a homicide, resulting from a lethal dose of a barbiturate. Alcor officials admitted that she had been given the drug Nembutal, but insisted it was used after her death to help preserve brain cells. Leaf was arrested, but in 1990, after three years, the investigation was closed due to lack of evidence. When Alcor was cleared, Darwin told the Los Angeles Times: "This was a terrible injustice and it has meant three years of fear and anxiety for us. Any time you are accused of grand theft, homicide and other untruths, it is damaging to you both personally and professionally." A year later, Leaf died following a heart attack and was cryonically suspended by the Alcor team led by Darwin. In 1992, Darwin left Alcor for undisclosed reasons. Today, he is a freelance cryonicist working with the Russian organisation KrioRus. Mark, Tim and David are sitting at a table eating their fish and chips. All wear their bracelets and are fully paid-up cryonicists – though it emerges that they are paying very different prices. David pays £6 a month for life insurance, and he will be suspended by the Cryonics Institute, a not-for-profit organisation located in Michigan, US. Mark looks flabbergasted. "I'm curious to why you're only paying £6 a month. Mine's a lot more than that." He looks at him, and suddenly he understands. "Oh, you're quite young. I'm 45." They are still recovering from Darwin's assault on their amateurishness. All three think he was too negative. "It made me angry that someone significant in cryonics was prepared to sit there and say, 'You can't do it because that's not what cryonics people do,'" Tim says. "They say we'll have to make it work. It didn't make sense to me." "It's not just negativity, it's perfectionism," Mark says. "But perfect is never achieved." We talk about the type of people who are attracted to cryonics. All three agree they are likely to be men, often with an interest in science and an underlying optimism. Mark, a software engineer, says, "There are quite a few software or IT people involved. Software engineers tend to think too much and go outside the normal boundaries of the general population because they spend all their time abstracting about things." Why do they want to live for ever? Tim says the first time he thought about it was when he heard that Walt Disney had been frozen. It turned out not to be true, but he couldn't get the thought out of his head. "It started when I was six and I realised it was a rubbish idea to be dead. I was frightened of death. Basically, I started to think of ways to solve it." "It's not fear in my case," Mark says. "I was interested as a kid in time travel and time travel is technically not possible, so this is the best solution." David, a care officer for adults with physical and mental disabilities, says dying is for the defeatist. "I realised that if I lost my life, I'd lose everything I'd ever achieved, loved, enjoyed. It would be as if I never lived, because from the cessation of life there is nothing more." How would they like the world to have changed when they return? "It would be nice to come back and have a proper democracy," Mark says. David's having none of that liberal nonsense. "My opinion is, there's been no real democracy since the Greek city state of Athens, and if there were real democracy there would be a problem because mob rule isn't the way forward. We're living on a planet with six billion suicidal maniacs. Do I really want to trust everything to their vote?" The six billion maniacs to whom he is referring are the world's non-cryonicists, who have accepted death as an inevitability. Mark: "You sound a bit paranoid to me." David: "I am paranoid – about my personal security. I'm the kind of person who will tend to listen to exit instructions on a plane. When I'm sat in a room, I don't sit with my back to the door..." Why? "Because I want to keep myself alive at all costs." I ask if they have read Gulliver's Travels, the novel in which Jonathan Swift imagines a group of immortals called Struldbrugs, who continue to age and are hated by the rest of the population because they are so ugly, useless and parasitical. What if life were like that for them when they came back? David says that's not even worth considering. "If geneticists like Aubrey de Grey get their way, ageing won't be an issue. But even if it were an issue, personally I'd rather be ugly and hated than dead." Most of David's nearest and dearest are cryonicists and that creates a special bond. "I think it's more of a meaningful long-term relationship dynamic if somebody's planning to live for ever than die in a few short decades. I'm more into that kind of relationship." Ultimately, it's a sense of duty that drives him on towards immortality. "Cryonics is a potentially life-saving medical treatment, so to not get cryonics is to have passive euthanasia and I'm not suicidal." Tim says a strange thing happened to him recently – he suffered a crisis of cryonics conscience. "I knew it was going to happen and I was a bit annoyed when it did. But once you have a family you think, 'I'm supposed to die. That's the way it works.' When you're a single person you're self-obsessed, you want to live for ever, and that's as simple as it is. I had a daughter and I did think, 'This is all wrong, I am actually supposed to die, it's just an inevitable process and I need to pull myself together', and I nearly packed up." Why didn't he? "That's a good question." The cryonicists screw up their fish and chip paper, put it in the bin and head to the laboratory – which is nothing more than Alan's back room with a table and a case sat on it. Tim's put any doubts to the back of his mind. He's raring to go. "There's a patient on the table dying. Hurry up." But, of course, the patient is imaginary. Tim takes the lead, explaining the ins and outs of the tubing to his less experienced fellow travellers. Meanwhile Mike Darwin watches, arms crossed reprovingly, his concern for the patient growing by the second. "Right, I started timing you three minutes ago," he says. A good few minutes later Tim and his not-so-crack team are still working out where the red and blue bits plug into. "The only thing that goes wrong is if you switch it on without all the bits plugged in. It doesn't like it and it has been known to go bang," he says cheerily. Darwin can't contain himself. "If I had that kit here, I'd be scared shitless. Shitless. There are some critical things wrong with the setup of that circuit." He tells the team they have made so many mistakes the patient would have suffered irreversible brain damage by now. Darwin suggests technology has regressed since he was in his cryonic prime 20 years ago. But the water is pumping through the system, and Sinclair's team are fully focused on saving their imaginary patient. Whatever Darwin tells them, they believe they are ahead of their time, not behind it. "One of the theories I hear bandied around is that the people who are involved now are a bit weird," Tim says. "We're the kind of people who would have bought the laser discs before they became mainstream, with the old Laserdisc player. Apparently, it's called being an early adopter. The people who think it's weird are just too frightened to put the effort in." David nods in furious agreement, and repeats his mantra. "We're living on a planet with six billion suicidal maniacs." 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 | 6 Nov 2009 | 5:10 pm This column will change your life: Hands up who's got a backlog | Oliver BurkemanThere's a perverse comfort in being behind, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try to deal with it Depending on which estimate you believe, there's currently a worldwide backlog of between 4m and 10m patent applications. That's 4m to 10m potentially revolutionary inventions, from life-saving drugs to solar-powered pencil sharpeners, piling up on patent examiners' desks. And the number is growing all the time. If the US patent office closed its doors tomorrow, it would take its staff two years to clear America's share of the backlog, and by the time they finished, a new one would have accumulated. As most of us know from our own backlogs – of email, of things to read, or sundry uncompleted tasks – this way of life is a vicious cycle, because backlogs generate overheads, which means less time to stay on top of incoming work: you have to run faster just to stand still. When you email someone to say you'll respond to their email properly later, that's more work. In September, the world's patent officials gathered in Geneva for a two-day symposium on dealing with the crisis; that was more work, too. When it comes to personal backlogs, other factors conspire against our ever clearing the decks. Backlogged work is uniquely unappetising, because it feels mouldy and stale, so it invites procrastination, while new tasks seem fresh and unsullied by past efforts to be done with them. Time-management advice so rarely addresses backlogs that implementing a fancy new system is likely to make things worse; either that, or you resolve to put off getting organised until you have caught up, but then never do. Besides, there's some perverse but real comfort in being always behind. A line attributed to the book collector A Edward Newton pinpoints the yearnings that drive us to over-commit: "The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity." One response is to admit defeat, as the lawyer and copyright activist Lawrence Lessig did in 2004 when he declared "email bankruptcy", sheepishly informing thousands of correspondents, via automated message, that their unanswered emails would be staying unanswered. Throwing up your hands like this can work: if you have been email-backlogged yourself, you'll know the phenomenon whereby supposedly urgent requests from colleagues, neglected for a day or six, have a curious way of resolving themselves without any action on your part. But if you're not going to give up, it's time to do what productivity expert Mark Forster calls "declaring a backlog". First isolate the backlogged work: move emails to a backlog folder; put papers in a box marked "backlog"; create a To Do list of backlogged tasks. (Think of this stage as like applying a tourniquet.) Next, get organised, setting up better systems for dealing with new stuff. Last, attack the backlog little and often, for example in 30 minutes at the start of each day. This simple act has semi-magical effects. It turns a Sisyphean undertaking into a finite, addressable one. Somehow – though this might just be me – it freshens the tasks in question, removing their staleness. And it eliminates guilt: instead of psychically hauling a backlog around wherever you go, experiencing it as a personal failing, you externalise it, confront it and, bit by bit, deal with it. It's not exactly fun, but it works. Think about it this way: at least you are not a patent examiner. Unless, of course, you are, in which case please disregard that last part. oliver.burkeman@guardian.co.uk guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Nov 2009 | 5:10 pm Life after deathCryonicists freeze bodies after death in the quest for eternal life. Murray Ballard photographs those people involved Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Nov 2009 | 5:06 pm World leaders needed at talks to cut climate deal (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Nov 2009 | 3:25 pm Art Meets Science in Amazing ImagesCheck out some award-winning scientific images and the stories behind them.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Nov 2009 | 3:24 pm Glow-in-the-Dark Shark Turned on by HormonesThe safe answer to how a lantern shark turns its luminescence on and off is: “Any way it wants.” Now researchers have looked into the belly of the beast and found that three hormones act as on-off switches for these glow-in-the-dark sharks. It is the first discovery of hormones controlling bioluminescence in animals, the scientists report in the November 15 Journal of Experimental Biology.
In all animals investigated up to this point, luminescence is triggered by nerve cells. Finding a parallel pathway to bioluminescence — one that’s controlled by hormones, not nerves — strongly supports the notion that light-emitting powers have evolved multiple times in animals, comments marine scientist Jim Gelsleichter of the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, who was not involved in the research. The light-emitting cells in some sharks aren’t connected to prominent nerve cells, and the slow onset of their glow hinted that something other than nerves were involved. Exposing patches of skin from lantern sharks to hormones and to nerve signaling molecules confirmed that hormones turn on the sharks’ bluish glow.
Melatonin, which in humans is an important hormone for sleep regulation, induced a slow, long-lasting glow in the skin patches that persisted for several hours, researchers show. This light probably serves to camouflage these velvet belly lantern sharks, Etmopterus spinax, counter-illuminating them from below as they descend to darker depths of the sea, says Julien Claes, coauthor of the study with Jérôme Mallefet of the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. Prolactin, which plays a major role in reproductive physiology in people, spurred a quicker shine that lasted up to an hour the scientists report. The prolactin-induced glow might be a means of communication with other sharks and potential mates, the scientists speculate. A third hormone, alpha-MSH, turns the shark’s lights off. Several common nerve signaling molecules had no effect, the researchers found. In bony fishes, nerves control luminescence and skin coloration — an “on” switch that is speedy and precise, allowing very fine-tuned control, notes Gelsleichter. A flounder, for example, that’s moved from a light to a dark background quickly changes color to match the backdrop. “If you put it on a checkerboard, it would probably turn checkerboard, there’s such fine nervous control and it’s very quick,” he says. But in sharks and the closely related rays, hormones control skin coloration. Like luminescence, this color change is “slower and not as finely regulated,” says Gelsleichter. “If you take a stingray from a light background and put him against a dark background — it will take him a little longer. He’ll almost get it right.” Even if melatonin doesn’t allow super fine-tuning, it’s actually a very good choice for regulating light for the sharks. Known as the “dark hormone” for its role in sleep and in seasonal shifts in animal physiology and behavior, melatonin is released by the pineal gland, which receives information about the amount of light in the external environment. Many animals secrete more melatonin when the long nights of winter arrive. Similarly, whenever a shark descends it will encounter darker waters, so a hormone that already is tuned into the dark is an ideal one to co-opt for turning on light, notes Seppo Saarela of the University of Oulu in Finland. While Claes says he is reluctant to generalize, he suspects that other bioluminescent sharks also have hormone switches in their light-producing organs, the photophores. About one in eight shark species does some kind of glowing, says Claes, and he intends to investigate other species. “It’s amazing — this work just shows that bioluminescence is a very complex phenomenon. We are still really at the beginning of this story.” Video: NOAA See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 6 Nov 2009 | 3:01 pm Another reason to cover your cough: pets at riskWASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who think they may have H1N1 flu need to stay away from work, avoid sneezing on their spouses and children and now, they have someone else to worry about infecting too -- their pets.Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Nov 2009 | 2:56 pm Science NationScience for the People: Surprising discoveries and fascinating researchers.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Nov 2009 | 2:34 pm Virtual NewscastScientists at Northwestern's Intelligent Information Laboratory are working on a project that creates customized newscasts, read by online avatars based on individual preferences. The program automatically generates a virtual news show.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Nov 2009 | 2:32 pm Minister 'backs adviser autonomy'The government will produce guidelines on the independence of its scientific advisers, Science Minister Lord Drayson says.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Nov 2009 | 2:24 pm Vet School 2.0: Stick Your Hand Up a Virtual Cow Butt
There’s nothing tidy about sticking your arm deep into a cow’s backside, getting up to your elbows in warm and gooey bovine innards.
But for new vet students, there’s no avoiding the procedure: To diagnose pregnancy or check for infection, you’ve got to reach into a cow’s rectum and feel for the uterus, ovaries and stomach. Unfortunately, proper palpation is a tough skill to teach, because once your arm is buried inside a cow butt, no one can see what you’re doing. That’s why veterinarian and computer scientist Sarah Baillie has created the “Haptic Cow,” a virtual, touch-feedback device that mimics the feeling of real bovine anatomy, placed inside a fiberglass model of a cow’s rear end. “With this technology, students can feel something that feels like the inside of a real cow, but I or another instructor can be following their movements on a monitor,” said Baillie, who teaches at the Royal Veterinary College in London. “This means we can say, ‘Come back a bit or go left a bit.’ It actually means you can direct them.” Not only can professors follow a student’s exact movements and critique the technique, but they can also keep track of how much force is being applied. If a fledgling vet gets too rough and exceeds the number of Newtons considered safe by experienced vets, virtual Bessie will belt out a cautionary “Moo-oo!”
Baillie first came up with the idea for the virtual cow several years ago, after an injury forced her to leave veterinary practice and retrain in computer science. She’d spent years trying to teach students how to palpate cows on the farm, so when she learned about touch-feedback technology that could simulate the feel of human anatomy, she recognized a perfect opportunity to blend her two careers. “It took me a long time to get it right,” Baillie said. “It would be no underestimate to say that the code that creates the feel has been iterated on hundreds of times. But when I got it right, I knew it was right, because I’ve actually felt the inside of a cow many, many times.” The current model of the Haptic Cow uses a touch feedback device from SensAble Technologies, hooked up to a computer that’s programmed to deliver just the right amount of force in response to a student’s touch. Instructors can set up different scenarios to help students learn the difference between the soft sensation of a healthy pregnant uterus and the firmer, doughier feel of an infected animal. The virtual cow has been incredibly successful, and it’s now being used by four of the seven veterinary colleges in the United Kingdom. Baillie was recently named “Most Innovative Teacher of the Year” in the U.K. by the 2009 Times Higher Education Awards, and the organization called her project “possibly the most significant innovation in veterinary education in the past 50 years.” But Baillie’s not yet content— in addition to trying to commercialize her cow for use in the United States and Canada, she’s also working on a Haptic Horse and a Haptic Cat. “It’s particularly good for cats,” she said, “as they have a certain limit to their tolerance.” Image: A vet student practices on the Haptic Cow, while Sarah Baillie and a real cow look on. Courtesy of Sarah Baillie/Royal Veterinary College. See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 6 Nov 2009 | 2:04 pm Leaders 'likely' to go to summitAt least 40 world leaders are likely to attend December's UN climate summit in a bid to secure a new global treaty.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:50 pm Music Improves Brain FunctionResearchers examine how the brain experiences and benefits from musical training.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:42 pm Signature of Antimatter Detected in Lightning
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Designed to scan the heavens thousands to billions of light-years beyond the solar system, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has now recorded some more down-to-Earth signals. During its first 14 months of operation, the flying observatory has detected 17 gamma-ray flashes associated with terrestrial lightning storms.
During two recent lightning storms, Fermi recorded gamma-ray emissions of a particular energy that could only have been produced by the decay of energetic positrons, the antimatter equivalent of electrons. The observations are the first of their kind for lightning storms. Michael Briggs of the University of Alabama in Huntsville announced the puzzling findings Nov. 5 at the 2009 Fermi Symposium. It’s a surprise to have found the signature of positrons during a lightning storm, Briggs said. During lightning storms previously observed by spacecraft, energetic electrons moving toward the craft slowed down and produced gamma rays. The unusual positron signature seen by Fermi suggests that the normal orientation for an electric field associated with a lightning storm somehow reversed, Briggs said. Modelers are now working to figure out how the field reversal could have occurred. But for now, he said, the answer is up in the air. Recording gamma-ray flashes — which have the potential to harm airplanes in storms — isn’t new. The first were found by NASA’s Compton Gamma-ray Observatory in the early 1990s. NASA’s RHESSI satellite, which primarily looks at X-ray and gamma-ray emissions from the sun, has found some 800 terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, Briggs noted. Image: Flickr/thefost See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:25 pm LHC goes phut as bird drops baguette into machinery• Hadron collider halted again by power cut It is the machine that scientists hope will recreate the conditions present at the beginning of time. But scientists at the £3.6bn Large Hadron Collider (LHC) found their plans to emulate the big bang postponed this week when a passing bird dropped a "bit of baguette" into the machine, causing it to overheat. Cern, the European particle physics laboratory, launched the LHC with much fanfare on 10 September last year. Physicists hope to use the collider to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, or God particle, which gives matter in the universe its mass. But the collider, which when running will collide protons travelling at 99.9% of the speed of light, has been out of action for over a year after a helium leak caused it to be shut down on 19 September 2008, nine days after its start-up. The particle accelerator, which is buried 100m underground near Geneva, is currently undergoing tests ahead of its proposed restart date later this month, but the testing process was stopped on Monday after the power supply to the collider was cut. A Cern spokeswoman, Christine Sutton, said scientists had headed above ground to investigate when they made their discovery. "The problem related to the high voltage supply," Sutton said. "We get mains voltage from the grid, and there was an interruption in the power supply, just like you might have a power cut at home. The person who went to investigate discovered bread and a bird eating the bread." Sutton said the bird and its bread were discovered at a compensating capacitor – one of the points where the mains electricity supply enters the collider from above ground. The incident cut power to one of the collider's cooling plants, causing temperatures to rise by more than 3C in part of the tunnel. Superconducting magnets within the LHC require a temperature of 1.9C above absolute zero (-273.15C) to steer, and ultimately collide, particles around the 16.8 mile (27km) circuit. This latest incident, although far less severe, appears to bear some similarities to the fault that caused the LHC to shut for more than a year after its launch. On that occasion faulty wiring led to an electrical failure, causing a rise in temperature which led to helium, cooled to minus 271C, being released into the machine. The 2008 fault damaged a 400 metre stretch of the collider and cost Cern £23m. Scientists had to redesign safety systems to prevent a repeat, a process which has taken over a year. However in this latest incident the magnets were only stopped for three days, while the LHC could be recooled, and Sutton said the power cut did not pose a risk to either life or the future of the project. "The beams [of protons] would have been dumped, we have very safe mechanisms that come instantly into play," she said. "They deposit beams into a huge block of graphite which is cooled to take up the energy of the beam. This is something Cern has a lot of experience of, perhaps power cuts will usually be caused by a more obvious kind of interruption than a bird eating a baguette – particularly by lightning, for example, but these incidents will happen." 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 | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:27 pm Horror Movies: Why People Love ThemIf horror movies scare us so much, why do we watch them?Source: Livescience.com | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:25 pm Study suggests peat CO2 credits more valuableJAKARTA (Reuters) - An Indonesia-based study shows carbon-rich tropical peat lands trap more greenhouse gases than first thought, driving up their potential value on the carbon market and strengthening a case for their protection.Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:03 pm Rugged, Scarred Terrain Seen in New Mars ImagesNew Mars Express images showcase huge crater, chaotic Martian terrain.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Nov 2009 | 11:45 am Some of the Universe's First Galaxies DiscoveredAstronomers find early, distant galaxies that could illuminate universe's first light.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Nov 2009 | 11:43 am Minister promises guidelines on independence of scientific advisersScience minister Lord Drayson says the scientific community is right to be upset about the sacking of David Nutt, but defends the government's right to ignore scientists' advice The science minister, Lord Drayson, has committed the government to producing guidelines by Christmas to ensure the independence of its scientific advisers. The move comes after ministers faced days of criticism from senior scientists over the sacking of the government drugs adviser David Nutt. "What's happened is that the dismissal of Prof Nutt and the circumstances around that has upset, rightly, the scientific community and led to a lot of concern," said Drayson. "The government understands the importance of independent academic advice." He said the events of the past few days had brought the concerns of scientists and their relationship with government to the top of the agenda. "If I had been consulted by the home secretary [before he sacked David Nutt], I would have had an opportunity to have said to him that there is a rumbling concern within the academic community with regards to the independence of scientific advice." Drayson was in Japan last week when Nutt was sacked and returned to the UK on Tuesday. He has spent the past few days in meetings with cabinet colleagues, government science advisers and members of the scientific community in an attempt to find out why he was not consulted about the sacking and also how the government could come up with a solution. The minister's initial response, leaked in an email earlier this week, was to say he was "pretty appalled" by the decision. But he later said that both the home secretary and the prime minister had assured him they understood the importance of independent scientific advice and academic freedom. To remedy the situation, Drayson said he would take forward the guidelines issued by senior scientists today as a way to keep scientific advice free from political interference. More than 20 academics drafted the guidelines, which they said "would enhance confidence in the scientific advisory system and help government to secure essential advice". Signatories included the former chief of the Medical Research Council Colin Blakemore, former government chief scientist Robert May, the president of the Royal Society Martin Rees and the director of the Science Museum Chris Rapley. In addition, there are chairs and other members of independent scientific advisory committees and the heads of several academic and research bodies. The guidelines argued that "disagreement with government policy and the public articulation and discussion of relevant evidence and issues by members of advisory committees can not be grounds for criticism or dismissal." When scientific advice is rejected, the experts said, the reasons should be explained explicitly and publicly. Drayson welcomed the suggestions. "I think what's important now is that some good comes out of this. That means me working inside government to make sure that these points are understood, come out and very clearly reassure people. These principles that have been set out are a very helpful foundation." Among the ideas he will examine are the publication of all scientific advice, regardless of whether the government decides to follow it, and setting up an independent press office for science advisory committees to communicate their ideas directly to the public. The minister will work with the signatories of the guidelines and the science advisory network in government, under chief scientist John Beddington, to come up with a clear set of "rules of engagement" by Christmas. "This incident has highlighted that people are not as clear as they need to be and that lack of clarity is on both sides." He said scientists also had to change some of their views of government. "A small number of scientists have gone on the record in the past few days and said the government has to take scientific advice. Well, with respect, it doesn't. Government has to get the best possible scientific advice it can and then government needs to reflect carefully on that advice, then it is the role of ministers to make the decisions. What they have to do is explain why they have made those decisions. And, if it differs from the advice they've been given, to explain why." 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 | 6 Nov 2009 | 11:35 am Newborns Pick Up Language in the WombA baby's first cry is audibly shaped by the language heard while in the womb.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Nov 2009 | 11:30 am A Simple Sneeze Raises Fear of DeathThe sound of achoo can cause people to overestimate the risk of other health hazards.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Nov 2009 | 11:06 am Close Encounter with Saturn Moon’s Fantastic Plumage
Earlier this week, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft took its deepest dive ever through the center of the icy plume shooting out from the southern pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. NASA reports that the spacecraft survived Monday’s flyby in good health, and is now transmitting eagerly awaited data and images back to Earth. At its closest point, Cassini dipped just 60 miles above the surface of Enceladus. Although previous flybys have gotten even closer, this trip included the spacecraft’s deepest foray into the south polar plume, which was discovered in 2005 and is known to contain water vapor, sodium and organic molecules. As Cassini gathers more and more information about the composition and density of the plume, scientists hope they’ll be able to identify the source of the gas. If the source is a liquid ocean underneath Enceladus’ icy crust, it could harbor life if conditions are right. To fly through the plume safely, however, mission managers had to conduct extensive pre-trip studies and make sure the spacecraft didn’t use too much propellant. Cassini captured the unprocessed image above using its narrow-angle camera at a distance of about 120,000 miles away from the moon. As sunlight bounces off the moon’s crescent edge, it highlights the mysterious misty plume at the southern pole. Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 6 Nov 2009 | 10:56 am Yucatan wondersPhotos highlight the wildlife at risk in the Central AmericaSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Nov 2009 | 10:13 am WHO says pandemic flu on rise in China, JapanGENEVA (Reuters) - H1N1 swine flu is on the rise in China and Japan after triggering an unusually early start to the winter influenza season in Europe, Central Asia and North America, the World Health Organization said on Friday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Nov 2009 | 10:07 am BLOG: Shooting Violence: A Reason Why?Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood Army base.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Nov 2009 | 10:00 am Studies 'overstate species risks'Some large-scale studies appear to overestimate the threats of climate change on biodiversity, a study suggests.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Nov 2009 | 9:25 am Wikipedia: How Accurate Is It?Students and doctors alike rely heavily on Wikipedia for information, but it's far from perfect. LiveScience gives you a breakdown on how to best use results from that next Wiki search.Source: Livescience.com | 6 Nov 2009 | 8:56 am Following the Adventurous Ant TrailBiologist John Longino and his group study ant biodiversity in Central AmericaSource: Livescience.com | 6 Nov 2009 | 7:47 am Bright Bacteria Wins Synthetic Biology CompetitionAn undergrad team modified E. Coli to make it bright enough to see with the naked eye.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am Hu says China seeks peaceful use of airspaceBEIJING (Reuters) - China supports the peaceful exploration and use of space, President Hu Jintao said on Friday, days after its top air force officials sparked concerns with talk of a "Great Wall of steel in the blue sky."Source: Reuters: Science News | 6 Nov 2009 | 6:57 am WATCH: Swine Flu: A Look InsideFind out where H1N1 originated and what happens to the virus once it gets inside our bodies.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am Can Humans Infect Pets With H1N1?The case of an Iowa cat that contracted swine flu has experts re-thinking the disease.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 6 Nov 2009 | 5:45 am The quest to save world's rarest duck - the Madagascar pochardConservationists have taken the first step in their mission to save the critically endangered Madagascar pochard.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Nov 2009 | 4:25 am How 'spirit bears' use their appearance to fish successfullyBeing invisible to fish is what helps a rare white morph of black bear, known as a spirit bear, survive, scientists discover.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Nov 2009 | 4:23 am Earth WatchAll's fair in the climate change blame gameSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Nov 2009 | 4:19 am Babies 'cry in mother's tongue'German researchers say babies begin to pick up the nuances of their parents' accents while still in the womb.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Nov 2009 | 3:38 am Getting warmWhere key players stand on a deal to halt climate changeSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:57 am Nanoparticles could damage DNA at a distanceLab tests show that metal nanoparticles can affect DNA without actually coming into contact with it – though the results are difficult to extrapolate to the human body Nanoparticles of metal can damage the DNA inside cells even if there is no direct contact between them, scientists have found. The discovery provides an insight into how the particles might exert their influence inside the body and points to possible new ways to deliver medical treatments. The preliminary work also raises questions about the safety of nanoparticles – which are a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair and used in everything from sunscreens to electronics – though the researchers point out that the doses they used in their study were higher than anything a person might come into contact with. They also said it was difficult to extrapolate results from their laboratory tests to the human body. In the experiment, scientists from the University of Bristol grew a layer of cells and exposed one side to cobalt-chromium nanoparticles. On the other side of this cellular barrier were human cells called fibroblasts. Though the nanoparticles never crossed the cellular barrier, they managed to damage the DNA of the fibrolasts via a cascade of biological signals in the intervening cells. "We imagined a possibility that, in some way, that material had caused a change in the top cell layer and maybe there's some sort of signalling going on from the top cell to the middle cell to the bottom cell," said Patrick Case of the University of Bristol, who led the work. Case's team found that the DNA in the fibrolasts had around 10 times as much damage, in terms of breaks in the genetic material, compared with control conditions. DNA damage can lead to various diseases, including cancer, but Case said the changes observed in his experiments did not lead him to believe the fibrolasts were becoming cancerous. The research team deliberately exposed the barrier cells in their experiment to a dose of nanoparticles thousands of times higher than anything that would occur naturally. "We used high doses of them because we wanted to make sure that the dose we used would cause damage to cells if the cells were exposed. When we measured the damage on the other side of the barrier, to our great surprise, not only did we see damage on the other side of the barrier but we saw as much damage as if we'd not had the barrier at all and had put the materials in contact with the cells underneath." The results were published yesterday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Ashley Blom, head of orthopaedic surgery at the University of Bristol, said: "This work has raised some really interesting questions and given us insight into how barriers in the body might work. The body has lots of different barriers – blood-brain barrier, the skin, the lining of the gut , the placenta – and it may be that this mechanism works in some of these barriers. "The problem is when you start translating lab work into clinical work. It never works out in the human body like it does in lab-based experiments." He said that the human body may contain other barriers and mechanisms that scientists still do not understand and which may counteract or enhance the mechanism found by Case. "So I'm cautious in extrapolating this to the human body. But if barriers in the human body do work in this way, the first exciting thing is, can we deliver novel therapies across barriers without having to cross them?" This would mean that a condition that affects the brain could be treated with something that does not cross the blood-brain barrier and does not come into contact with the brain. "There are wonderful implications for treatments using nanotechnology." The research also has implications for natural nanoparticles already in human bodies, which might act across membranes to trigger diseases. "Maybe small particles like prions and viruses may utilise some of these mechanisms," said Blom. 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 | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:46 am
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