Self-cleaning silicone gel insect wings

Researchers are flying the idea that insect wings could act as a model for making self-cleaning, frictionless, and superhydrophobic materials.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

Improving security with face recognition technology

A number of US states now use facial recognition technology when issuing drivers licenses. Similar methods are also used to grant access to buildings and to verify the identities of international travelers. Historically, obtaining accurate results with this type of technology has been a time intensive activity. Now, researchers have developed ways to make the technology more efficient while improving accuracy.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

Child psychology: tips on taming the 'boogie monster'

A study of about 50 4-, 5-, and 7-year-olds identified coping strategies by having children listen to short illustrated stories in which a child came into contact with something that looked like a real or an imaginary frightening creature. In situations in which a child's fear was caused by real creatures, the researchers found, children would rather do something than think positive thoughts. The study also highlights important sex and age differences in children's coping.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

Ancient penguin DNA raises doubts about accuracy of genetic dating techniques

Penguins that died 44,000 years ago in Antarctica have provided extraordinary frozen DNA samples that challenge the accuracy of traditional genetic aging measurements, and suggest those approaches have been routinely underestimating the age of many specimens by 200 to 600 percent.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

Runners: Train less and be faster

A new scientific study demonstrates that by reducing the volume of training by 25% and introducing speed endurance training, endurance trained runners can improve not only short-term but also long-term performance.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

Ideal nanoparticle cancer therapies surf the bloodstream

Researchers are studying blood using computer models that simulate how the fluid and the cells it contains move around. One new study shows how components in blood line up to prepare for healing; another demonstrates the best shape to use for man-made nanoparticles that target cancers -- a surfboard.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

Teenage Obesity Linked To Increased Risk Of Multiple Sclerosis

Teenage women who are obese may be more than twice as likely to develop multiple sclerosis as adults compared to female teens who are not obese, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Longevity tied to genes that preserve tips of chromosomes

Scientists have found a clear link between living to 100 and inheriting a hyperactive version of an enzyme that rebuilds telomeres -- the tip ends of chromosomes.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Genetic Changes Shown To Be Important Indicators For Disease Progression In Cervical Cancer Patients

Cervical cancer patients with specific changes in the cancer genome have a three- or fourfold increased risk of relapse after standard treatment compared to patients without these changes, according to a new study. The research suggests that specific genetic changes are crucial steps in the progression of the disease towards an aggressive and treatment-resistant state.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Lab Machine To Study Glacial Sliding Related To Rising Sea Levels Created

Researchers have created a glacier in a freezer that could help scientists understand how glaciers slide across their beds. That could help researchers predict how climate change accelerates glacier sliding and contributes to rising sea levels.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

In Asia, Obama, Medvedev see nuke pact progress (AP)

AP - President Barack Obama said Sunday the United States and Russia would have a replacement treaty on reducing nuclear arms ready for approval by year's end, an announcement designed as an upbeat ending to a summit with Asia-Pacific leaders.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 3:34 am

Apec leaders drop climate target

Asia-Pacific leaders say it will not be possible to reach a climate change deal ahead of the UN conference in Copenhagen.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Nov 2009 | 1:06 am

Nuclear energy high on Senate's climate agenda (AFP)

AFP - With crucial global climate talks less than a month away, US senators appear to be betting on nuclear energy as the key to finally passing sweeping domestic climate change legislation.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 12:54 am

Worms turned into hermaphrodites

With a surprisingly simple genetic tweak, researchers change female nematode worms into hermaphrodites
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 14 Nov 2009 | 5:19 pm

The Real Global Warming Disaster by Christopher Booker

Considerable effort has gone into Christopher Booker's definitive manual for sceptics. Shame he's talking bunk, says Philip Ball

Christopher Booker, Sunday Telegraph columnist and bete noir of climate campaigners, has here produced the definitive climate sceptics' manual. That's to say, he has rounded up just about every criticism ever made of the majority scientific view that global warming, most probably caused by human activity, is under way, and presented them unchallenged. If you share his convictions, you'll love it, and will dismiss the rest of this review as part of the cover-up.

Me, I was moved to a queer kind of admiration for the skill and energy with which Booker has assembled his polemic. Unlike other climate-sceptic diatribes such as the Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle or the writings of Nigel Lawson, this one cannot be dismissed with off-the-shelf knowledge. And some of it is true. But much, including the central claim, is bunk.

Some of Booker's stratagems are transparent enough. One is to introduce all climate sceptics with a little eulogy to their credentials, while their opponents receive only a perfunctory, if not disparaging, preamble. This reaches its apotheosis on the back cover with a quote from "the world's leading atmospheric physicist and 'climate scientist''', MIT professor Richard Lindzen. Unusually for sceptics, Lindzen does have significant academic status, but probably only his mother would endorse this description.

Another of Booker's techniques is to latch on to genuine flaws in the science or its dissemination with the tenacity of a bulldog. Predictably, he attacks the infamous "hockey stick" graph, a plot of global mean temperatures over the past 1,000 years produced by two scientists in 1998 which shows little change for the entire period until suddenly soaring in the 20th century.

It is now mostly accepted that the analysis that produced these data was wrong. The question, still unresolved, is "how wrong?" – have we experienced comparable warming in the historical past, in which case the argument that it is a natural fluctuation seems plausible, or is the current trend truly unusual? But Booker's implication that the entire edifice of the global-warming consensus rested on the shaky hockey stick is absurd: it was one strand among many. For a balanced critique of this episode, look instead to Richard Muller's Physics for Future Presidents (Norton).

In the end, the devil is in the detail. And therein lies the problem, for to dismantle Booker's case would require an equally long and citation-encrusted book. You are going to get nothing more (here at least) than my word for it that, say, the first of Booker's accusations about faulty science and procedural misdemeanour that I chose at random to investigate further – the resignation of hurricane specialist Chris Landsea from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2005, and the UK chief scientific adviser David King's trip to a bizarre climate meeting in Moscow the same year – proved to have a rather different complexion from the one presented here.

Yet some of the cracks become evident just from paying attention. When Booker commits the cardinal sin, for which climate scientists have often castigated alarmists, of making a swallow into a summer (or, here, winter) by using the cold snap of 2008 as a reason to doubt the warming trend, it's game over. And by claiming that the slight cooling trend since around 2003 undermines the IPCC's climate models, he fails to understand that different timescales demand different models: the projections for 2100 are hardly meant to predict whether next summer will be a scorcher. Don't even get me started about the graph on page 328 that shows this cooling; just take a look at http://tiny.cc/mpjJB and then tell me what you feel about it.

Besides, Booker admits that a climate model in which medium-term ocean circulation was included was able in 2009 to rationalise the current cooling (which may last until 2015). We are supposed to regard this result as suspiciously convenient, but even Booker can come up with no scientific reasons to discard it. Indeed, he later criticises the IPCC models for failing to simulate shifts in ocean currents. His aim is simply to sling enough mud and to hell with consistency.

Suppose you are genuinely undecided on climate change and determined not to be guided simply by what you'd like to believe. If unpicking the real story demands so much effort and insider knowledge, how can you possibly make up your mind? Here's an unscientific suggestion. Booker's position would require that you accept something like the following: 1) Most of the world's climate scientists, for reasons unspecified, decided to create a myth about human-induced global warming and have managed to twist endless measurements and computer models to fit their case, without the rest of the scientific community noticing. George W Bush and certain oil companies have, however, seen through the deception. 2) Most of the world's climate scientists are incompetent and have grossly misinterpreted their data and models, yet their faulty conclusions are not, as you might imagine, a random chaos of assertions, but all point in the same direction.

There's a third option: the world's climate system is hugely complex, hard to predict and constantly surprising; yet in the long term the world is getting warmer, for reasons we basically understand, and there is good reason to believe that humans are mostly responsible for it.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Nov 2009 | 5:06 pm

Scientists find key to creating clean fuel from coal and waste

'Gasification' process enhanced to save millions of tonnes of carbon and provide energy

Millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide could be prevented from entering the atmosphere following the discovery of a way to turn coal, grass or municipal waste more efficiently into clean fuels.  

Scientists have adapted a process called "gasification" which is already used to clean up dirty materials before they are used to generate electricity or to make renewable fuels. The technique involves heating organic matter to produce a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, called syngas.

However gasification is very energy-intensive, requiring high-temperature air, steam or oxygen to react with the organic material. Heating this up leads to the release of large amounts of carbon dioxide. In addition, gasification is often inefficient, leaving behind significant amounts of solid waste at the end of the process.

To find out how to make the process more efficient, researchers led by Marco Castaldi, at the department of earth and environmental engineering at Columbia University, tried varying the atmosphere in the gasifier. They found that, by adding CO₂ into the steam atmosphere of a gasifier, significantly more of the biomass or coal was turned into useful syngas.

The technique has a double benefit for the environment: it provides a use for CO₂ that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere and, after the hydrogen is siphoned off from the syngas, the remaining carbon monoxide can be buried safely underground.

Castaldi's results will be published this week in the Journal of Environmental Science & Technology. His team calculated that using CO₂ during gasification of a biomass fuel such as beechgrass, in order to make enough biofuel for a fifth of the world's transport demands, would use up 437m tonnes of the greenhouse gas. Preventing that from entering the atmosphere would be equivalent to removing 308m vehicles from the road.

Replacing 30% of the steam atmosphere of a gasifier with CO₂ ensured that all the solid fuel was turned into syngas. Castaldi's process reduces the amount of water that needs to be heated in the gasifier, thereby saving energy, and is 10 to 30% more efficient than standard gasification.

"You take a solid fuel like a biomass or a coal or even municipal waste and typically what you do is gasify it using steam, air or oxygen," said Castaldi. "In that typical oxidation process, the air reacts very quickly and forms a very recalcitrant carbon char that takes very high temperatures to get converted into gases.

"When you use steam, the problem is that it's not as reactive as oxygen but it's a little too slow." He added: "CO₂ is a little more reactive than steam but not as reactive as oxygen. The CO₂, as it's converting a solid fuel to a gas, also has the ability to react with the carbon char that is forming."

Working at the same temperature as a normal gasifier, using CO₂ means a better conversion of solid fuel into syngas.

"If I operate at 1,000C and don't use CO₂ I'll have some residual carbon left over, which could be a fuel – that's an efficiency penalty," said Castaldi. "Using about 30% CO₂, for that same 1,000C you get the complete gasification of the carbon into the syngas."

Applied to a modern IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle) power station, which gasifies coal, this can lead to an efficiency gain of up to 4%.

"While that may not sound like much, for a power plant producing 500 megawatts of energy, it is significant," said Castaldi. He added that energy researchers were already investigating the use of CO₂ in producing fuel.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

Authorities back down over UK drug users on benefits

Opponents halt plans to order them into treatment

Plans to order drug users who are on benefits into treatment have been dropped after overwhelming opposition from medical and legal experts.

The government's welfare reform bill would have given Jobcentre staff powers to "order" benefit claimants to undergo tests for drug addiction. But treatment agencies and charities, alarmed at the proposal, warned that it could deter addicts from confronting their problems.

Under a redrafted bill due to become law this month, benefit claimants will be asked to undergo an assessment but will not have to accept any proposed treatment.

Baroness Meacher, the crossbench peer who spearheaded opposition to the proposals, told the Observer: "The government's original intention to force drug users in the welfare system into mandatory treatment was flawed and unethical."

The plan was championed by the former work and pensions secretary James Purnell, but it is understood to have fallen out of favour under his successor, Yvette Cooper. This is embarrassing for the government, which made it a central plank of its efforts to tackle "benefits Britain". It is estimated that 100,000 heroin and crack cocaine addicts claim benefits but are not in treatment.

"These proposals should never have made it to the very latter stages of the bill process, and we are delighted that some of the worst of them have been dropped," said Claudia Rubin, head of policy at the campaign group Release.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

Hawaii's famed white sandy beaches are shrinking (AP)

AP - Jenn Boneza remembers when the white sandy beach near the boat ramp in her hometown was wide enough for people to build sand castles.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Nov 2009 | 3:17 pm

NASA readies space shuttle Atlantis for Monday launch (AFP)

AFP - The US space agency was readying for the launch Monday of the space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of seven astronauts to deliver equipment that will maintain the nearly completed International Space Station.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Nov 2009 | 1:46 pm

Brazil and France in climate deal

Brazil and France agree a common position on fighting global warming before the UN climate change conference.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 14 Nov 2009 | 12:35 pm

Sponges Recycle Carbon to Give Life to Coral Reefs

It's hard to think of a sponge as an animal, especially if you have a dried up non-synthetic one in your bathtub. Living sponges don't have circulatory, digestive or nervous systems, and they can often regenerate themselves from small fragments. ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Nov 2009 | 12:02 pm

Butterflies to Hitch Orbital Ride on Space Shuttle (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Butterflies are slated to get another shot at surviving life aboard the International Space Station. Thousands of students plan to join scientists in watching NASA's space shuttle Atlantis launch to the space station on Nov. 16 with a cargo of two butterfly species, apparently undiscouraged by last year's experiment where caterpillars in space failed to emerge from their cocoons.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Nov 2009 | 11:01 am

NASA on track for Monday space shuttle launch (AP)

AP - NASA has cleared space shuttle Atlantis for liftoff Monday on a trip to stock up the International Space Station with several years' worth of spare parts.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Nov 2009 | 10:40 am

Egypt's Darwin debates

Scientists from around the world gather in Alexandria to discuss evolution – but is religion getting in the way?

It was perhaps fitting, and more than a little fortuitous, that this weekend's conference on Darwin's legacy coincided with Egypt's crucial World Cup qualifier against Algeria. The British Council's chief executive Martin Davidson joked about natural selection and survival of the fittest, the audience tittered along. It was against a febrile backdrop of flag waving, horn honking and patriotism that more than 150 scientific minds attempted to unpack the issues around evolution and religion, a major theme of the event.

"We are in the Muslim world," declared Ismail Seragaldin, director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, "and there are many here who are questioning if there is a contradiction between their beliefs and Darwinian theory."

Like many of those appearing onstage in the Great Hall, Seragaldin saw no incompatibility between religion, namely Islam, and evolution. He illustrated his point with a roll call of famous Islamic scholars, telling delegates that Muslims had carried the tradition of science through the Dark Ages. He then quoted a hadith that stressed the value of knowledge – "The ink of scientists is equal to the blood of martyrs" – before turning to a 13th century scholar, Ibn Al-Nafis (pdf), who said: "When hearing something unusual, do not preemptively reject it, for that would be folly. Indeed, horrible things may be true, and familiar and praised things may prove to be lies. Truth is truth unto itself, not because [many] people say it is."

Delegates later heard Nidhal Guessoum, professor of physics and astronomy at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, say that only three Muslim or Muslim-majority countries out of a possible 22 taught evolution. Salman Hameed, professor of Integrated Science and Humanities at Hampshire College in Massachusetts says that students in Pakistan were able to learn about evolution because it was couched in religious language.

The stately Bridget Kendall, who was chairing the opening debate, to be broadcast next Saturday on the World Service, asked whether the root cause of this tension was that evolution threatened belief in a God. After all, if science provided an explanation for life on earth then God was irrelevant.

Dr Eugenie Scott, from the National Centre for Science Education, said science could tell people many things but it, too, had limitations. "We don't need to find God's hand in our ability to understand the natural world. It cannot tell us whether there is a God and whether God acts." She objected to science being viewed through a religious filter and said the two should not be confused. "A biologist who studies enzymes that cause cell division does not bring the Qur'an or Bible into it. It does a great violence to science to run your explanation through a religious filter for this understanding to be accepted."

At lunch delegates spoke hurriedly and through gritted teeth, although whether this was due to frustration or the glacial air-conditioning was unclear. First impressions were that there was no debate – people were merely presenting their opinions – and there was very little very little engagement with people fiercely opposed to evolution.

A British academic, Dr Francisco Diego, from University College London, railed against the hold of religion. Its very placing alongside evolution confused science, how it was taught and received. "How did religion start? With myths and traditions and superstitions. That came first and science came later. But there is an explanation for the natural world whether we like it or not."

Nobody talked about Isis or Osiris these days, he said afterwards. "Who knows if people will talk about our god in 1000 years time?"

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Nov 2009 | 10:30 am

Female Wild Horses Stick Together (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Wild mares that form strong social bonds with other mares produce more foals than those that don't, researchers have found, in what may be the first documented link between "friendship" and reproductive success outside of primates.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Nov 2009 | 7:20 am

Female Wild Horses Stick Together

Female friendships help wild mares cope.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Nov 2009 | 7:04 am

Beating the diabetes bulge

With cases of obesity-related type 2 diabetes due to double by 2030, we must – and can – do better than drug therapy

We often hear about diabetes as one of the downsides of obesity – and now the United Nations even has chosen to highlight the issue by endorsing World Diabetes Day, marked every year on 14 November. But there is still a lot of confusion about the disease, its causes and its treatment.

One of the odd things about diabetes is that it is, in some respects, more than one disease. Type 1 diabetes, or insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, is the sort that suddenly hits children and younger people when their body no longer produces insulin, produced in the pancreas to regulate blood sugar levels. This form used to be called juvenile diabetes.

If you are lucky, you learn to cope with daily injections of insulin for the rest of your life, and how long that is depends on a rigorously disciplined approach to control the diabetes. We tend to take insulin treatment for granted. But, in some parts of the world, it is a different story. If you are unlucky enough to be a child with diabetes in in sub-Saharan Africa, after being stricken with type 1 diabetes, the rest of your life can be as short as seven months. Type 1 diabetes can be a death sentence for many unfortunate young victims.

But type 2 diabetes is what we are really referring to when we talk about the consequences of overweight and obesity. It used to be called NIDDM – non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus – and it accounts for more than 90% of diabetes worldwide.

The theme of this year's World Diabetes Day is education and prevention. For the 1.6 billion people who are already overweight or obese globally – and who therefore provide the most eligible candidates for suffering from type 2 diabetes – the concept of education and prevention may have come a little late in the day. WHO research experts, including Dr Sarah Wild from Edinburgh University, have estimated that overall diabetes cases will double to 366m by 2030, compared with 171m in 2000.

This is why taking serious steps to address overweight and obesity is given so much emphasis. Recent research from Sweden is already signposting a way forward. A new analysis confirms that the size of abdominal fat cells and a waist-to-height ratio clearly predicted women who were likely to develop type 2 diabetes. There is ample evidence now type 2 diabetes can be avoided.

The latest follow up to the US Diabetes Prevention Program, published a fortnight ago in The Lancet, confirms how the remarkable effect of "intensive lifestyle intervention" (basically, changing diet and exercise habits) was more powerful that the commonly prescribed drug treatment with metformin. In the early stages, the lifestyle effect reduced the incidence of diabetes by 58%, compared with 31% for the drug. A decade later, researchers found that diabetes incidence was reduced by 34% among the lifestyle group, but by only 18% for the group receiving drug therapy.

This lends great strength to the theme set by the International Diabetes Federation for World Diabetes Day over the next five years. It may be too late for some, but it suggests that we need not accept that a doubling of diabetes is inevitable. Education and prevention – if it results in intensive lifestyle changes – can be a lifesaver, too.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am

Splash! NASA moon crash struck lots of water (AP)

AP - The lunar dud for space enthusiasts has become a watershed event for NASA.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Nov 2009 | 6:28 am

Mobile Power Plant

Mashing three thoughts together. 1. The idea of a paintable photovoltaic has been around for awhile; Tomeka Witherspoon reports solar ink is maybe five years from being commercially viable. 2. The third generation Prius has an optional solar roof (it ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Nov 2009 | 4:40 am