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Heating, Air-Conditioning And Carpets May Be Hazardous To Your HealthDamp environments, poorly maintained heating and air-conditioning systems and carpeting may contribute to poor indoor air quality, according to experts. Americans spend about 90 percent of their time indoors, where they are repeatedly exposed to indoor allergens and airborne particles that can lead to respiratory symptoms and conditions.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm Star Trek-like Replicator? Electron Beam Device Makes Metal Parts, One Layer At A TimeA group of engineers working on a novel manufacturing technique at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., have come up with a new twist on the popular old saying about dreaming and doing: "If you can slice it, we can build it." That's because layers mean everything to the environmentally-friendly construction process called Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication, or EBF3, and its operation sounds like something straight out of science fiction.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm Avatars Can Surreptitiously And Negatively Affect User In Video Games, Virtual WorldsAlthough often seen as an inconsequential feature of digital technologies, one's self-representation, or avatar, in a virtual environment can affect the user's thoughts, according to new research.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm New 'FinFETs' Promising For Smaller Transistors, More Powerful ChipsResearchers are making progress in developing a new type of transistor that uses a finlike structure instead of the conventional flat design, possibly enabling engineers to create faster and more compact circuits and computer chips.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm Surgical Masks Vs. N95 Respirators For Preventing Influenza Among Health-care WorkersSurgical masks appear to be no worse than, and nearly as effective as N95 respirators in preventing influenza in health care workers, according to a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm Discovery In Worms Points To More Targeted Cancer TreatmentResearchers have found a link between two genes involved in cancer formation in humans, by examining the genes in worms. The groundbreaking discovery provides a foundation for how tumor-forming genes interact, and may offer a drug target for cancer treatment.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm Drugs To Treat Anemia In Cancer Patients Linked To ThromboembolismMedications frequently given to cancer patients to reduce their risk of anemia are associated with an increased risk of deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism, according to new research.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am Drug Shrinks Lung Cancer Tumors In MiceA potential new drug for lung cancer has eliminated tumors in 50 percent of mice in a new study. In the animals, the drug also stopped lung cancer tumors from growing and becoming resistant to treatment. The authors of the research are now planning to take the drug into clinical trials, to establish whether it could offer hope to patients with an inoperable form of lung cancer.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am High Fructose Corn Syrup: A Recipe For Hypertension, Study FindsA diet high in fructose increases the risk of developing high blood pressure (hypertension), according to ne research. The findings suggest that cutting back on processed foods and beverages that contain high fructose corn syrup may help prevent hypertension.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am Warm-blooded Dinosaurs Worked Up A SweatWere dinosaurs "warm-blooded" like present-day mammals and birds, or "cold-blooded" like present day lizards? The implications of this simple-sounding question go beyond deciding whether or not you'd snuggle up to a dinosaur on a cold winter's evening. In a new study, researchers have found strong evidence that many dinosaur species were probably warm-blooded.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am Blackout darkens much of Brazil and Paraguay (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 2:55 am Massive blackout leaves Brazil on edge (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 2:39 am KBR hit by Iraq, Afghan waste disposal lawsuits (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Nov 2009 | 1:58 am Bangla PM says failure not acceptable in Copenhagen (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Nov 2009 | 11:36 pm Under the seaVulnerable species found in the UK's coastal watersSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Nov 2009 | 9:55 pm Vatican looks to heavens for signs of alien life (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Nov 2009 | 7:41 pm Ricin 'antidote' to be producedAn anti-toxin that protects against ricin poisoning is to move into production for the first time, after eight years of research.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Nov 2009 | 6:16 pm Missing link dinosaur discoveredScientists discover a fossilised dinosaur skeleton that is the missing link between the earliest dinosaurs and giant sauropods.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Nov 2009 | 6:11 pm Key to Success? Dinosaurs May Have Been Warm-Blooded (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Many dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded just like mammals or birds, potentially explaining their extraordinary success before their extinction.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Nov 2009 | 6:05 pm Key to Success? Dinosaurs May Have Been Warm-BloodedMany dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded just like mammals or birds.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Nov 2009 | 6:00 pm If you thought dinosaurs were slow, lumbering creatures, think againA new study of their skeletons suggests dinosaurs like T rex were nimble, warm-blooded creatures Tyrannosaurus rex was an athletic, warm-blooded animal that jogged rather than lumbered around its territory, according to a new study. Researchers led by Herman Pontzer at the University of Washington, St Louis, examined the anatomical details of 14 dinosaurs of different sizes to work out how much energy the animals might have needed to move around. He found that, for dinosaurs weighing from a few kilograms to tonnes, the power their muscles needed was far too high for the animals to have been cold-blooded. "We found that the energy costs of locomotion for them, the amount of oxygen they'd have to consume to walk and run, would have far exceeded the rate of energy use that cold-blooded animals are able to sustain," said Pontzer. "This says they may well have been warm-blooded and, if so, we can't think of them as slow, lumbering reptiles any more." His results are published today in the journal PLoS ONE. Scientists have been arguing since the 1950s over whether dinosaurs were warm or cold blooded, because each type of metabolism implies different physical attributes. Cold-blooded animals, such as modern lizards, are heavily dependent on the temperature around them to stay active – so they are limited to living, for the most part, in relatively warm parts of the world and are only active during the day. Warm-blooded animals, such as modern mammals and birds, can live anywhere and move around or hunt for food at any time of day. Maintaining a stable internal temperature, however, costs a lot of energy and requires the animals to feed more regularly. "If you take the classic view of dinosaurs being cold-blooded animals, they'd be limited in the same way as cold-blooded animals today," said Pontzer. "They wouldn't have been able to be successful in as many parts of the landscape, they wouldn't have been as active [or] have some of the same characteristics in terms of mental and physical capabilities as warm-blooded animals." If dinosaurs were warm blooded, it could explain their success in taking over large parts of the prehistoric world for hundreds of millions of years throughout the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Pontzer's analysis grew out of an approach he had already developed for understanding and predicting movement costs in living animals. His recent work had showed, for example, that the energy cost of walking and running was associated with leg length. The distance from the hip joint to the ground predicted the observed energy cost of movement with 98% accuracy for a wide variety of land animals. "We want to understand how limb design determines the energy costs of walking and running. Specifically the shape of the bones as well as the posture an animal uses dictates how much muscle they need to turn on every step to walk or run," he said. "It became obvious that these methods would be really applicable to dinosaurs so we took detailed anatomical models of these dinosaurs and we applied the methods." 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 | 10 Nov 2009 | 6:00 pm New Zealand shark bite turns into surprise octuplet CaesareanA pregnant shark at a New Zealand aquarium was bitten by another shark, unexpectedly releasing four baby sharks as stunned visitors watched.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Nov 2009 | 5:21 pm How Dinosaurs Got Their Iconic LookThink of a dinosaur and what may come to mind is a large, lumbering animal with four legs, a long neck, a tiny head and tail. Now a new species helps to explain how this iconic dino body shape evolved.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 10 Nov 2009 | 5:00 pm Copenhagen climate talks: Time to change, no time to wasteNext month, 192 countries will meet to set targets on carbon emissions. The summit will pit the developed world against the developing world in a last-ditch bid to limit warming to 2C The world's first global treaty to combat climate change, the Kyoto Protocol, was agreed in December 1997 after exhausting, all-night negotiations in Japan that saw arguments, desperate phone calls back to leaders in capital cities and inspired diplomacy. The Guardian reported: "A more bizarre way of reaching agreement to tackle global warming cannot be imagined. Half of those involved were asleep on the floor, unaware that history was being made." The final text of the agreement was still in the form of the conference chairman's scribbled notes as the politicians flew home. Fast-forward a dozen years and the world is once again grappling with the need to find a way to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that scientists are now confident drive climate change, and could raise the Earth's temperature to catastrophic levels within our lifetimes. The stakes are higher than ever. Reports and studies over the intervening years have spelt out the likely cost of failure: floods, droughts, famines and refugees. Nothing is certain, but – and this is a fact conveniently overlooked by climate sceptics – although climate change may not turn out to be as bad as everyone says, it could be an awful lot worse. The only way to know for sure is to wait and see, by which time it will be too late. Voluntary action, by people or countries, is unlikely to be enough. Energy companies may brand their gigantic sales of oil and gas with greenwashing images of windmills, but they continue to sell oil and gas. Airlines see the shrinking world largely through dollar signs. Fast developing countries such as China and India sit on vast stocks of coal that are already driving a second industrial revolution and forcing their emissions above those of the older polluters in the west. Forests offer a financial lifeline to millions who live in squalor in Indonesia, Brazil and elsewhere, but only if they can be chopped down and shipped away, releasing huge clouds of carbon dioxide. And at the top of the carbon food chain sits the western consumer, with his/her weekends in Prague, all year-round asparagus, plasma televisions and reluctance to pay more for the energy our lifestyles rely on. The magnitude of the task involved in throwing a noose around that lot was what convinced world leaders they needed agreements like Kyoto. Firm targets to reduce greenhouse gases would surely force governments to introduce policies to steer their people away from their extravagantly polluting lifestyles and livelihoods. How they did it would be up to them, as long as the numbers added up. As many people in Kyoto suspected at the time, the reality has been very different. At the demand of the United States, the Kyoto rules were tweaked to allow rich countries to buy their way out of their targets, a move that gave birth to the multi-billion carbon trading industry. Then, having smuggled this slow-puncture into the world's efforts to reduce emissions, President Bush walked away from Kyoto altogether, in protest at it only setting targets for rich countries. From that moment, Kyoto was destined for the dustbin as a serious means to tackle climate change, and the world began to focus on bringing the US back on board. The December meeting that spawned Kyoto was one of a series of annual UN climate conferences. The circus has since passed through Buenos Aires, Bonn, The Hague, Marrakech, New Delhi, Milan, Montreal, Nairobi, Bali and Poznan. And the pressure to produce a meaningful successor agreement has grown. The first phase of Kyoto expires in 2012 and two years ago the world set itself a deadline to agree something to follow. That deadline expires in six weeks. Next month Copenhagen will host the highest profile, best attended, most widely publicised, eagerly awaited and closely scrutinised UN climate talks so far. Could this be the moment the world finally gets to grips with climate change? With President Barack Obama having pledged to engage the US properly, hopes have been high that Copenhagen will unite the world. Like Kyoto, any deal agreed at Copenhagen would not decide policy. It would not ban flights, or push nuclear power, or force people to go back to living in mud huts. A Copenhagen treaty would set new targets for overall pollution levels, and again rely on governments to meet them. Britain has already set some of the strictest carbon targets in the world. Whatever happens next month, British politicians have already decided they must spend the next few decades promoting renewable energy, electric vehicles and central heating based on methane from rotting food waste. But, in the words of one online sceptic: what's the point of Britain doing anything while China is building a new coal power station every week? (It's actually two a week). This is where Copenhagen is critical. The world has changed since Kyoto and climate change threatens rich and poor countries alike. To reduce global emissions China, the US and their kin must take action: global climate change needs global attention. Copenhagen offers a chance to forge a new agreement with all the major players. Then there is the science. Few insiders still believe it is possible, but in theory a Copenhagen treaty could offer the world its last chance to limit global warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels, which the EU defines as dangerous. For this to happen, the world's scientists think global carbon emissions must start to fall rapidly during the next decade. This demands severe and legally-binding targets for all developed countries and significant voluntary cuts by the rest. Those are two of the goals that the British government has set for Copenhagen. The third is to find a way of chanelling billions of pounds from rich to poor countries, both as a moral acknowledgement that climate change is still largely the fault of the developed world, and to offer pragmatic assistance to those who will be most directly affected by changing weather patterns. Many senior figures have already played down expectations. They say President Obama needs more time to soften opposition at home. China will not move without the US, and so the whole process will be bogged down by the tension that wrecked Kyoto. Copenhagen can only produce a political agreement, a framework. The real work will have to follow next year. Others point out that Kyoto took several years to finalise, so there is no need to worry, no real need to squeeze everything into the pivotal last days of the talks. Lord Smith, the chairman of the Environment Agency, this week labelled the Copenhagen talks only as a "crucial start" in the fight against climate change. In fact, it may not even be at the end of the beginning. Green campaigners insist anything is still possible. Kyoto, they point out, was saved from collapse at the eleventh hour, while the Bali talks in 2007 were rescued when US opposition wilted in the pressure cooker of the conference chamber. Perhaps President Obama could yet save the day. What truly matters is that at the end of Copenhagen a global deal, if not signed, sealed and delivered, remains on the table. As the Guardian noted in 1997: "Kyoto has kept the climate change [fight] alive. The only way targets can go from here is up." 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 | 10 Nov 2009 | 4:10 pm New Study Finds Middle Child of Black Hole Family (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - Black holes usually come in either the little or big variety, but astronomers have found compelling new evidence that supports the existence of a long-sought middleweight class of the deep space objects.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Nov 2009 | 3:32 pm 300-Pound Gorilla Voluntarily Monitors His Blood PressureImagine trying to monitor the blood pressure of a 300-pound gorilla. A new device, described in the following release from Georgia Institute of Technology Research News, makes that job a lot easier: Zoo Atlanta recently became the first zoological institution ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 10 Nov 2009 | 3:14 pm Wild Solar System Spotted Around Distant Star (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - A young star observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope appears to be home to a wild and young planetary system that shares some of the frenetic dynamics thought to have shaped the early years of our own solar system.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Nov 2009 | 3:02 pm World’s Freakiest Worm Gets Expanded Family Tree
Five years after discovering some of the strangest creatures in the world — mouthless worms that live in the bones of dead whales — scientists have taken a peek into their genes. Though not complete, the glimpse shows these creatures to be far more complicated than was known.
The worms, found in a gray whale skeleton off the coast of California, prompted scientists to designate them as representatives of an entirely new genus, dubbed Osedax. They belonged to a taxonomic family of marine worms that lack mouths and anuses, and rely entirely on bacteria to absorb and excrete nutrients. But Osedax was unique: Adult males were extremely small, and lived in colonies inside the females. Even more strikingly, they occupied an evolutionary niche comprised entirely of fallen whales. “Picture the bottom of the ocean. Anything below 1000 meters is fed entirely by ‘marine snow’ — the things that are supported by photosynthesis at the top of the ocean, and the things that eat them, and eventually fall to the ocean floor,” said Robert Vrijenhoek, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. “When a whale drops into your neighborhood, it’s roughly equivalent to 2000 years of marine snow falling in a millisecond.”
In a study published Tuesday in BMC Biology, Vrijenhoek looked for similarities and differences in five genes across the species. In much the same way that comparing genes from humans and Neanderthals would hint at the existence of other members of the Homo genus, the analysis suggested at least 12 more as-yet-unidentified lineages of Osedax. The worms might still be out there, though some may have gone extinct. It’s believed that modern whaling, which drove many whale species to the brink of extinction, may have had equally profound effects on Osedax. The genetic results also raise the question of just how long the whalebone-eating worms have existed. The five species appear to have shared a common ancestor at least 45 million years ago, when whales arose and diversified. But Osedax might have emerged even earlier, during the Cretaceous, and moved to whales when marine dinosaurs died out. To figure that out, scientists will need to look for traces of Osedax in the fossils of dinosaurs and early whales. In the meantime, Vrijenhoek and others are learning more about how the worms live now. Since whale carcasses are hard to come by, the researchers have lured them with carcasses of other animals. “The worms can live perfectly happily on cowbones,” said Vrijenhoek. “We’ve also put down sea lion bones and pig bones. The worms don’t seem to care.” Images: 1) MBARI. 2) University of Copenhagen. To see Osedax in real-time, visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s ocean-floor webcam, near which the researchers recently sank a pig. See Also:
Citation: “A remarkable diversity of bone-eating worms (Osedax; Siboglinidae; Annelida).” By Robert C. Vrijenhoek, Shannon B. Johnson and Greg W. Rouse. BMC Biology, Vol. 7, No. 74, published online November 10, 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 | 10 Nov 2009 | 1:52 pm Giant Asteroid Impact Could Have Stirred Entire Ocean
The collision of a large extraterrestrial object with Earth almost 2 billion years ago may have stirred the seas worldwide and delivered a huge serving of oxygen to the deep ocean.
Banded iron formations, massive deposits rich in iron oxides, have accumulated at several periods in Earth’s long-distant geological past, mostly when atmospheric concentrations of oxygen were low (SN: 6/20/09, p. 24). One extended episode of banded iron formation (or BIF) buildup suddenly — and without an obvious explanation — ended about 1.85 billion years ago, says Cannon. Over a very short interval, he notes, “the environment shifted from one happily making banded iron to one that wasn’t.” In northern Minnesota and other areas nearby, the formations lie directly underneath a thick layer of material only recently recognized as ejecta from the Sudbury impact. Mark Jirsa, a geologist with the Minnesota Geological Survey in St. Paul, was a member of the team that identified the ejecta layer. “We intuitively connected the Sudbury impact with the shutdown of BIF accumulation,” he says. “But now [Cannon and Slack] have come up with a model for how that might have happened.”
About 1.85 billion years ago, Earth’s now separate landmasses were joined in a single supercontinent. That also means there was one large ocean, says Cannon. Many scientists suggest that the object that slammed into Earth then — probably an asteroid abut 10 kilometers across — splashed down in that ocean, in waters about 1 kilometer deep on the shallow shelf surrounding the supercontinent. Models hint that the tsunami spawned by the event would have been 1 kilometer tall at the impact site and remained at least 100 meters tall about 3,000 kilometers away, Cannon adds.
While Cannon and Slack’s model explains how BIF accumulation might have suddenly ceased 1.85 billion years ago, it doesn’t prove that’s how it happened, Jirsa warns. Nevertheless, he notes, “scientists are closer to an explanation than we previously were.” The geological record suggests that environmental changes were happening in oceans worldwide even before the Sudbury impact, he adds, “and the role that the impact played, if any, in shutting down BIF accumulation isn’t well understood.” Images: 1) Geological map of the Sudbury Nickel Region, A.P. Coleman, 1913. / Aerial radar and digital elevation maps, Planetary and Space Science Centre, University of New Brunswick. / Wired.com. 2) Flickr/unforth. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 10 Nov 2009 | 1:39 pm Flu Spray vs. Shot: Is One Better?My four-year-old got her swine flu vaccination yesterday. At the time, I was relieved when the school nurse pulled out a spray rather than a syringe. There were no tears -- or at least fewer than if she had gotten ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 10 Nov 2009 | 12:42 pm Researchers Plan Ice Cream That's Good For YouFood chemists hope to concoct a healthy and satisfying ice cream.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Nov 2009 | 12:33 pm Making Ice Cream HealthyUniversity of Missouri researchers describe how they are working to make ice cream good for you by adding fiber and nutrients.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Nov 2009 | 12:18 pm Three more drug advisers resignScientists quit after meeting home secretary after sacking of Professor David Nutt Three more government drug advisers resign over the home secretary's sacking of Professor David Nutt as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). The three all resigned after a face-to-face meeting with Alan Johnson, the home secretary, which was called in an attempt to heal the rift between the scientists and the government over Nutt's sacking. The loss of three more members of the council brings the total who have gone to six out of an original membership of 31 the home secretary appointed to advise him on drugs policy. Many of those remaining, who include police officers and judges, are there as representatives of organisations and are unlikely to tender personal resignations. The three further resignations came from across industry and academia. Ian Ragan was appointed to the ACMD in February last year, and is director of a consultancy for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, CIR Consultancy Ltd. John Marsden, a research psychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry, was appointed to the committee in January last year. And Simon Campbell, a member of the committee since April 2008, is a synthetic organic chemist and former head of Worldwide Discovery and Medicinals R&D Europe at Pfizer. He also sits on various scientific bodies including the Cancer Research UK discovery co-ordinating committee, and is a fellow of the Royal Society. The three are believed to have argued for Nutt's reinstatement. The Liberal Democrat science spokesman, Evan Harris, said: "The latest resignations represent a deepening in the crisis of confidence of scientists in the Government – in particular in the home secretary. That they come after Alan Johnson met the ACMD demonstrates that he just doesn't get it when it comes to the importance of respecting the academic freedom and integrity of independent, unpaid science advisers." A joint statement from the Home Office and the ACMD, issued after the meeting, said that the talks had been "very constructive", but it stressed that discussions were "continuing" between the department, the government's chief scientific advisors and the drug advisers about how they could work together in future. The scientists in particular wanted assurances their reports and recommendations would in future be taken seriously, and sought an agreement over how their advice was handled by ministers. "The home secretary emphasised the value he placed on ACMD's advice, the important contribution the ACMD had made to the government drug's policy in the past and how he expected it to continue to do so in the future," the statement said. "The ACMD summarised their concerns regarding how their advice is received by the Home Office and over the dismissal of Professor Nutt."\ Nutt, a pharmacologist at Bristol University and Imperial College London, was sacked last month after criticising the government's decision to upgrade the legal classification of cannabis, arguing that it was less harmful than alcohol and cigarettes. Johnson said that Nutt had "crossed a line" into politics with remarks that amounted to "lobbying against government policy". Dr Les King, the former head of the drugs intelligence unit of the Forensic Science Service, and Marion Walker, the clinical director of Berkshire Healthcare NHS foundation trust's substance misuse service, resigned in the immediate aftermath of Nutt's sacking. A letter sent by the ACMD before the meeting to the home secretary said it was clear that a majority of its members had serious concerns about the role and treatment of the council and its work as a result of Nutt's dismissal: "For some members, these matters are of such seriousness as to raise the question whether they can, in good conscience, continue on the Council." 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 | 10 Nov 2009 | 12:17 pm Landslide triggered by rains kills 42 in India (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Nov 2009 | 12:07 pm Spirit Rover Wiggles Her Wheels
The Spirit Mars rover wiggled her wheels for the first time in months. The rover has been stuck in Martian soil for half a year. The movement, seen in the image above, doesn’t mean that Spirit has been extricated, but it did provide some excitement for the rover’s operators and fans. “First drive sequence in 145 sols,” wrote Scott Maxwell, aka @marsroverdriver. Planetary Society blogger, Emily Lakdawalla, summed up the general excitement among Mars watchers. “[I]t’s a thrill to see Spirit doing anything like roving again,” Lakdawalla wrote. Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 and have been exploring the planet ever since. In recent months, while Spirit’s been stuck, she’s also been a bit glitchy, experiencing what the engineers are calling “amnesia.” Despite the problems, the rovers are considered a tremendous success for NASA, having traveled the planet for 20 times longer than the 90 days that were originally planned for. NASA will hold a press conference on Thursday to discuss further attempts to free the rover. Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers have mocked up the Martian surface to model her predicament in hopes of finding just the right series of moves to unstick her wheels.
Images: 1. NASA / JPL / animation by Damien Bouic. 2. Dave Bullock/Wired.com See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 10 Nov 2009 | 12:04 pm 3 Telescopes Combine for Stunning Milky Way PhotoImages of Milky Way hub from Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra combined into composite.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Nov 2009 | 11:33 am Google Offers Free Wi-Fi at AirportsI was just at Baltimore and Boston airports this past weekend and had a couple of hours to spare at each one. Had my laptop, too. But didn't log in because I didn't want to pay the $10 or $20 ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 10 Nov 2009 | 11:20 am Miniature Robots to Swarm the OceansRobots will be employed to help scientists probe changes in the ocean.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Nov 2009 | 11:10 am English libel law stifles freedom of expression worldwideOur libel law is out of kilter with the rest of the democratic world, encouraging 'libel tourism' and the erosion of free speech in other countries, writes Simon Singh I have just returned from the launch of Free Speech is Not For Sale, the report of a year-long inquiry into the impact of English libel law on freedom of expression. The report, written by Index on Censorship and English PEN, is a stark summary of why authors, journalists, bloggers, scientists and other academics around the world fear being sued for libel in the English courts. It is well known that writers face an uphill struggle winning a libel case in England. Not only is the writer guilty until proven innocent under English libel law, but there is no robust public interest defence and the definition of fair comment is very narrow. Worse still, the horrendous costs of a libel case mean that losing can result in a legal bill running to over £1m (even if the damages are just £10,000). Those who defend the status quo often argue that the only defence required is accuracy, and that writers simply need to get their facts right in order to win a libel action. Unfortunately, the sheer cost of mounting a libel case means that writers often apologise for an article rather than defending it, even if they are confident about the accuracy of the contents. There is the possibility of losing, which could bankrupt both the writer and the publisher. But even if the ultimate judgement is favourable, this does not mean the defendant will recover all his or her costs, which could result in a net loss running to over £100,000. This is exactly what happened when the Guardian and Ben Goldacre were sued for libel by vitamin manufacturer Matthias Rath, who had published adverts in South Africa denouncing Aids drugs as ineffective, while promoting his own supplements. Ben defended his article and eventually the case was dropped, but the Guardian has not recovered all its legal costs. It is still £175,000 out of pocket and Ben was put under severe stress for 18 months. The new report has several recommendations, including cost-cutting (by capping costs and setting up a fast and cheap libel tribunal) and levelling the playing field (by creating an effective public interest defence and by forcing claimants to prove damage and falsity). The need for change is urgent. The report concludes with an appendix of case studies, including my own ongoing libel case against the British Chiropractic Association. However, these cases represent only the tip of the iceberg. There are many others, such as that brought against the English cardiologist Peter Wilmshurst. He is being sued by a US company, NMT Medical Inc, for an article written by a Canadian medical journalist and published on an American website. The journalist was reporting a lecture given by Wilmshurst at a major medical conference in the US. The company could have chosen to sue Wilmshurst in America, but I very much doubt that the case would have got past first base. Instead, NMT sued Wilmshurst in London, which has become the libel capital of the world. This is a classic example of "libel tourism", which has arisen because English law is so out of kilter with the rest of the democratic world. I suspect his lawyer advised him to back down and apologise at the outset, which would have been the cheapest and quickest solution, but it seems Wilmshurst has chosen to fight on despite all the adversities that the English justice system throws at him. Even more worrying than Wilmshurst's case (and the PEN and Index on Censorship case studies) are all the articles that are watered down before they are published and all the articles that are not even published or commissioned for fear of libel, the so-called "chilling effect" of libel. Today's report is a clear reminder that English libel laws need to change. America has already realised that there is something fundamentally wrong with our system and is taking action. American states are beginning to pass laws to protect their citizens from libel actions in the English courts. In short, English libel judgments will soon carry no weight in America. In another move aimed at protecting Americans from our libel law, a Commons select committee has received a submission from American publishers who are considering stopping the export of their newspapers to the UK and blocking their websites here. I have previously written that the problem with English libel laws is not so much that they stop me from writing about important issues, but rather that they stop you from reading about such issues. If the US stops exporting its free press to us, this will be the ultimate proof. Simon Singh is an author, journalist and TV producer specialising in science and mathematics
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 | 10 Nov 2009 | 11:07 am Rickroll'd By Your iPhone?Say it ain't so! The first virus written for the iPhone is currently making the rounds in Australia. But here's the catch, according to The Security Fix over at WaPo: The contagion, dubbed "Ikee," spreads only among iPhones that have ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 10 Nov 2009 | 10:41 am A Whale of a Truce?Yet another guest post from our friend Debbie Salamone of the Pew Environment Group's Campaign to End Overfishing in the Southeast: President Barack Obama will meet the new Japanese prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, on November 12-13 -- about the same ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 10 Nov 2009 | 10:26 am Marine Corps Celebrates 234 YearsToday is the 234th anniversary of the founding of the United States Marine Corps (USMC). The USMC birthday comes on the eve of Veterans' Day, which was established to commemorate the signing of the armistice that ended World War I ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 10 Nov 2009 | 10:24 am Sesame Street Anniversary: Where Are the Realistic Animals?Sesame Street celebrates its 40th anniversary today. As The Guardian in London reports, the popular children's television show is responsible for the "misguided belief that certain areas of Brooklyn are populated by freakishly tall canaries and their severely depressed elephant ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 10 Nov 2009 | 10:18 am Puncturing an Ancient SupervolcanoYou have to wonder about the wisdom of drilling an active volcano. But at Italy's Campi Flegrei, that's exactly what scientists are planning to do, in an effort to learn about an ancient volcanic monster that could one day blow ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 10 Nov 2009 | 10:15 am Koalas could be extinct in 30 years: conservationists (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Nov 2009 | 10:08 am Fish Migrating Off Your Plate ...... And you can't just stab it with a fork to make the slippery beast stay put. This is one of the many other ways climate change is making itself unmistakable: Fish are emigrating as their waters warm. Fishermen are ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 10 Nov 2009 | 10:07 am Women More Loyal When Cancer StrikesMen are more likely to leave their sick wives than the other way around.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Nov 2009 | 10:03 am Yangtze delta warned to prepare for effects of climate changeDelta has been warming faster than global average for a decade, and the impact is already being felt, according to WWF China China's most populous river needs massive investment and careful planning to ease the impact of climate change, which is causing floods, droughts and storms to intensify, a new report (pdf) said today. The Yangtze delta, which is home to about 400 million people, has been warming far faster than the global average for more than a decade and the implications for food security and biodiversity will worsen without remedial action, according to the study led by WWF China. The report found that in the first five years of this decade, temperatures along China's biggest river have increased by 0.71C, after a rise of a third of a degree in the 1990s. The consequences are already apparent, from the source to the estuary. The report's authors – which includes many of China's leading scientists – calculated that climate change was responsible for 81% of grassland degradation near the headwaters of the Yangtze on the Tibetan plateau. By the estuary near Shanghai, the sea level had risen by 11.5cm in the past 30 years. As well as having a dire impact on wildlife, particularly in wetlands, the report warned that people living on the delta would have to adapt or suffer from falling harvests, lengthening droughts and fiercer storms. If current trends continue, it predicted rice production in the Yantgtze basin would decrease by between 9% and 41% by the end of the 21st century, while harvest of corn and winter wheat would decline even more precipitously. Large areas of southern China are already experiencing a crippling drought. Chinese climatologists say rainstorms are growing more frequent and intense, raising the risks of floods. "Extreme climate events such as storms and drought disasters will increase as climate change continues to alter our planet," said Xu Ming, the lead researcher on the report, which included contributions from the China Academy of Sciences, the China Meteorological Administration and other academic bodies. The study – one of the most comprehensive ever undertaken of a major river basin – was cautious about the rate of glacier shrinkage. Despite the rising temperatures, it predicted the icefields near the headwaters would only shrink by 11.6% between 1970 and 2060. This is a slower rate of decline than previous studies. The authors urged the authorities to ease the impact on people and the environment by developing hardier crop strains, shifting from corn to rice, improving the management of the river and dams, and by reinforcing dykes and power supply systems. "Adaptation is a must for large developing nations such as China, which is particularly vulnerable to climate change because of its large population and relatively low economic development," said James Leape, director general of WWF International. "The report is a reminder that while the whole world rises to meet the challenge of climate change, we must prepare for impacts that are already inevitable," he said. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 10 Nov 2009 | 9:57 am Soyuz launches to space stationA Russian Soyuz rocket has launched from Kazakhstan carrying a new docking compartment for the International Space Station (ISS).Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Nov 2009 | 9:27 am Wild Solar System Spotted Around Distant StarPlanetary system around young star shows same chaotic dynamics as our early solar system.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Nov 2009 | 9:03 am New solar-sail mission planned after 2005 failureLOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Backers of a failed mission to launch the world's first solar-sail spacecraft unveiled plans on Monday to try again five years later with a smaller, swifter satellite to test the limits of sunlight propulsion.Source: Reuters: Science News | 10 Nov 2009 | 8:54 am Launch padWhy humanity needs a 'space race' for this planetSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Nov 2009 | 8:14 am California Decision Could Limit HDTV Choices NationwideNew energy regulations could hurt plasma TV sales.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Nov 2009 | 8:05 am Learning from creationism | Andrew BrownThe spread of creationism, and climate denialism is not the result of gullibility but of mistrust It's easy to suppose that the whole vast apparatus of modern creationism has taught us nothing at all. All those books, the endless arguments on usenet and then on the web, the museums, the theme parks, the teaching materials – all of it dedicated to teaching lies; none of it contributing so much as a moment's thought to the advance of knowledge. But I think there is one important thing which all these millions of hours of labour has shown that could not have been learned any other way. It wasn't intentional. But creationists have proved that most scientists have a very naïve and inadequate idea of evidence. In particular, they believe that the justification for believing scientific claims is that they are reproducible and produce irrefutable evidence. The creationists have shown this is mistaken. Of course the experiment must be reproducible. Of course the results must be clear. But it's just as important that we take both these things on trust. When scientists report results we take them at their word. Without a belief that they are trustworthy, nothing they do compels belief. That is why fakery, when detected, must be so severely punished. This was known before creationism was a problem. Richard Lewontin has written about the way in which even scientists cannot understand, still less reproduce and judge, experiments outside their fields. But he's a sort of Marxist and easy to ignore. In any case, his assumption was that scientists were on the whole interested in the truth. That is what the creationists, and their successors, now dispute. If you assume – as creationists do – that scientists are malevolent, incompetent, and stupid, then none of their arguments against creationism are compelling. The need to establish that they have this bad character does something to explain the extraordinary vehemence of creationist propaganda. Taken to a further extreme, this leads into the completely paranoid style of flat-earthers the truthers, and the people who believe the moon landings were faked. Closer to home and rationality, we get climate change denialists. What all these have in common is to a greater or lesser degree a mistrust of scientists. And once you have that in place, no scientific evidence will ever be compelling. Note that a distrust of some scientists is almost universal, even among people who believe that scientists in general deserve the utmost respect. Look for example at the work Ben Goldacre highlights about the apparent bias in work sponsored by drug companies, or the furious attacks on and by Stephen J. Gould for his view on IQ and its importance. Neither being a scientist nor admiring science will guarantee that you trust all scientists simply because of their profession. If you think they are wrong for political reasons, or simply corrupt in an old-fashioned way, you will find ways not to believe them. Even when you suppose your opponents are decent, you may resist their evidence as long as you live: as Poincaré is supposed to have said, progress in science is marked by tombstones. It is not a wholly rational way for knowledge to advance and can't be accounted for by strict devotion to the evidence. It's necessary that passionate, disinterested scholarship should be the ideal, but the ideal should illuminate reality, rather than dazzle us to it. In practice, the ideal of following the evidence sets limits to wishful thinking and bad faith but it doesn't abolish these faults, and it must be constantly policed. It certainly doesn't make scientists especially scrupulous outside their areas of expertise. I'm not sure what the answer is, but reasonably certain that it isn't the public understanding of science as most scientists understand that. What they mean by this is teaching people to think more or less as scientists do about the world. That's admirable in itself: reasonable numeracy, and some knowledge of statistics and of probability, would hugely improve almost everyone's life. But it won't solve the underlying problem of trust. In any case the trend in British and presumably American schools is entirely in the other direction, so that we now have science GCSEs without any maths in them at all and despite that fewer and fewer people taking them. That will give us a society in which the ability to judge or even to recognise scientific evidence becomes rare still. The only partial answer I can come up with is a demand for better science journalism. It was from working as a science journalist I learned about the importance of trust in this kind of communication. But I never did learn the way to make people trust me, or my better informed colleagues. 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 | 10 Nov 2009 | 7:47 am SpacemanLauncherOne: Virgin Galactic's other projectSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Nov 2009 | 7:37 am Yangtze 'facing climate threat'Environmentalists say China's Yangtze river basin faces a future of more extreme weather events, threatening its ecosystems.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Nov 2009 | 6:26 am S Korea joins carbon label schemeSouth Korea becomes the latest nation to adopt an international standard on carbon labelling.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Nov 2009 | 6:17 am Happiest States are Wealthy and TolerantThe happiest states also have the wealthiest residents and highest number of gays, research shows.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Nov 2009 | 6:09 am The Well-Being of 50 U.S. StatesHere's the list of the happiest U.S. states.Source: Livescience.com | 10 Nov 2009 | 6:08 am Turtles are 'right-flippered' when laying their eggs, study discoversLeatherback turtles prefer to use their right rear flipper rather than their left when laying eggs, scientists discover.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Nov 2009 | 5:18 am Close encounters of the faked kindPsychologist Chris French explains why he believes The Fourth Kind is dangerously misleading twaddle The Fourth Kind is, in so many ways, a really awful film. Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi and released in the UK over the weekend, it purports to be a dramatic reconstruction of events that took place in the city of Nome, Alaska, involving the disappearance of local residents. If you were to accept this film at face value, you would be left in no doubt whatsoever that these disappearances were the result of "close encounters of the fourth kind" – abduction by aliens. The film employs several far-from-subtle techniques in an attempt to convince viewers that what they are watching is based entirely upon documented evidence. Both the trailer and the film itself open with an assurance to that effect, direct to camera, from the film's star:
At least the latter statement is accurate, although not for the reasons intended by the filmmakers. Both trailer and film frequently cut between allegedly real footage of hypnotic regression sessions carried out by psychologist Dr Tyler on her patients and dramatic reconstructions of these same sessions, sometimes employing a split-screen technique to show both simultaneously to "prove" that the reconstructions are 100% accurate. This approach seems to have backfired badly on the filmmakers as most reviews of the film are highly critical of this unconvincing "archive footage". Kyle Hopkins wrote an excellent piece for the Anchorage Daily News debunking the movie. He conceded that there is a long history of disappearances and suspicious deaths in Nome. They have been investigated by the FBI who "mostly blamed alcohol and the cruel Alaska winter". Hopkins goes on:
Hopkins also points out that Nome is not, as portrayed in the film, a city surrounded by beautiful mountains but is instead "a flat tundra town at the shore of the Bering Sea". Let me be quite clear. I have no objections to the paranormal being featured in fiction. If it's good enough for Shakespeare, Dickens and The X-Files, it's good enough for me. But I do object to fiction being sold as fact. The reason I found this film so "disturbing" was because experience shows that no matter how obvious a hoax may be to those capable of critical thinking, there will always be many who will accept at face value the film's claim to be based on true events. What I found really worrying was that, even though the "case histories" featured in the film were almost certainly fictional, the accounts would not have looked out of place if they had appeared in my column last month on sleep paralysis – individuals with disturbed sleep patterns seeing strange creatures staring at them and being attacked by unearthly intruders. Sleep paralysis is a condition in which the sufferer experiences temporary paralysis when entering or emerging from sleep. It is sometimes accompanied by a strong sense of presence, terrifying visual and/or auditory hallucinations, and intense fear. Despite the fact that sleep paralysis is scientifically recognised and reasonably well understood, there are many self-appointed UFO experts or "ufologists" who insist that if you have ever suffered from the symptoms of sleep paralysis, you have probably been abducted by aliens and you cannot remember the rest of the event, either because you have repressed it due to its horrific nature or because the aliens have wiped your memory. These ideas, along with the equally mistaken notion that hypnosis provides a reliable means to retrieve such hidden memories, are uncritically promoted in this film. In 1992, ufologist Budd Hopkins, in collaboration with historian David Jacobs and sociologist Ron Westrum, commissioned a survey of around 6,000 American adults regarding unusual experiences. Included were five which Hopkins and colleagues claimed were often indicative of alien abduction (the percentages in brackets indicate those who said it had happened to them at least once):
Of the original sample, 2% met these criteria. Extrapolating to the American adult population as a whole, the authors claimed that 3.7m Americans have probably been abducted by aliens. This figure received very widespread media coverage, often being misquoted to the effect that "3.7m Americans believe they have been abducted by aliens." The survey didn't actually ask this question directly. A small minority of people who go to see The Fourth Kind will suffer from sleep paralysis but won't have heard of the scientific explanation for their condition. There is every possibility that some will believe that the film is based upon true events and that it provides a plausible explanation for their own bizarre experiences. They may decide that they should undergo hypnotic regression to "recover" the rest of their memory for this traumatic event and thus end up with detailed false memories of being abducted by aliens. For that reason, this film and the manner in which it has been promoted deserve to be condemned as totally irresponsible. Chris French is a professor of psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he heads the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit. He edits the [UK] Skeptic magazine 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 | 10 Nov 2009 | 1:53 am
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Those immense waves and large underwater landslides triggered by the impact stirred the ocean, bringing oxygenated waters from the surface down to the ocean floor, the researchers propose. Sediments deposited on the seafloor before the impact, including BIFs, contained little if any iron in its Fe(III) form but were high in Fe(II), a sign that most parts of the ocean were oxygen-free. But marine sediments deposited after the impact included substantial amounts of Fe(III) but very little Fe(II) — and, therefore, sizable amounts of dissolved oxygen. The team’s analyses suggest that after the impact, dissolved iron spewed into the deepest parts of the ocean by hydrothermal vents would have reacted with oxygen within a day or so, thereby choking off most of the supply of Fe(II) to shallower waters where BIFs typically accumulated.
