Science Headlines for November 16, 2009

More than half of cheerleading injuries in US due to stunts

Whether rallying the crowd at a sporting event or participating in competition, cheerleading can be both fun and physically demanding. Although integral to cheerleading routines, performing stunts can lead to injury. Stunt-related injuries accounted for more than half (60 percent) of US cheerleading injuries from June 2006 through June 2007, according to a new study. Nearly all of the reported concussions occurred when the cheerleader was performing a stunt.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Say yes to a clinical trial; it may be good for your health

A new study finds that heart failure patients willing to take part in clinical trials have a better prognosis than those unwilling to do so.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Birds lose color vision in twilight

The color vision of birds stops working considerably earlier in the course of the day than was previously believed, in fact, in the twilight. Birds need between 5 and 20 times as much light as humans to see colors.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

'Universal' programmable two-qubit quantum processor created

Physicists have demonstrated the first "universal" programmable quantum information processor able to run any program allowed by quantum mechanics -- the rules governing the submicroscopic world -- using two quantum bits (qubits) of information. The processor could be a module in a future quantum computer, which theoretically could solve some important problems that are intractable today.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Tiny particles can deliver antioxidant enzyme to injured heart cells

Researchers have developed microscopic polymer beads that can deliver an antioxidant enzyme made naturally by the body into the heart. Injecting the enzyme-containing particles into rats' hearts after a simulated heart attack reduced the number of dying cells and resulted in improved heart function days later.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Scientists take the lead out of piezoelectrics

By applying epitaxial strain to thin films of bismuth ferrite, researchers have produced a lead-free alternative to the current crop of piezoelectric materials.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Curry as cure? Spicing up the effectiveness of a potential disease-fighter

Scientists are reporting development of a nano-size capsule that boosts the body's uptake of curcumin, an ingredient in yellow curry now being evaluated in clinical trials for treatment of several diseases.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

Algae turned into high-temperature hydrogen source

In the quest to make hydrogen as a clean alternative fuel source, researchers have been stymied about how to create usable hydrogen that is clean and sustainable without relying on an intensive, high-energy process that outweighs the benefits of not using petroleum to power vehicles. New findings however, show that photosynthesis may function as that clean, sustainable source of hydrogen.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

Heart and bone damage from low vitamin D tied to declines in sex hormones

Researchers are reporting what is believed to be the first conclusive evidence in men that the long-term ill effects of vitamin D deficiency are amplified by lower levels of the key sex hormone estrogen, but not testosterone.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

Whooping cough immunity lasts longer than previously thought

Immunity to whooping cough lasts at least 30 years on average, much longer than previously thought, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

NASA fuels space shuttle Atlantis for liftoff (AP)

AP - NASA is fueling space shuttle Atlantis for its afternoon liftoff.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 3:29 am

Spelling Obama in Chinese not an easy task (AFP)

AFP - US President Barack Obama's first visit to China will undoubtedly be marked by difficult talks on trade and climate change, but another thorny issue has emerged: how to write "Obama" in Mandarin.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 3:12 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - The country's midsection could start the workweek with some active weather on Monday because of a storm system in the Southern Plains that is expected to move into the Mid-Mississippi Valley.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 3:09 am

OPEC head says $75-80 a barrel a 'good price' (AFP)

AFP - Seventy-five to 80 dollars a barrel is a satisfactory price for oil, the president of OPEC said on Monday, adding that the cartel may leave production unchanged at its meeting next month.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 3:03 am

New Greenpeace chief has fought apartheid, poverty (AP)

AP - A South African who battled apartheid as a teen, then went on to lead global campaigns to end poverty and protect human rights took over Monday as the new international head of the environmental group Greenpeace.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 2:23 am

Space shuttle Atlantis set for launch (AFP)

AFP - The space shuttle Atlantis and its seven astronauts lift off Monday on a mission to bring vital supplies and spare parts to the nearly-completed International Space Station (ISS).

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 1:43 am

Scottish park named one of world's best stargazing sites

Galloway Forest park awarded 'dark skies' status and praised for accessibility to public

A vast stretch of forest in south-west Scotland boasting unrivalled views of the millions of stars in the galaxy was today named as one of the best places in the world to stargaze.

Galloway Forest park, a 300 square mile tract of conifer forests and hills, became one of the first places outside the US to be given status as a "dark skies park" by astronomers at the International Dark Skies Association.

The organisation gave the park "gold status", the highest rank available. Until now, only one other site in Europe and three in the US, in Utah, Pennsylvania and Ohio, have been chosen.

Galloway Forest park was selected because of its darkness, its accessibility to the public and the determination of its owners, the Forestry Commission, to protect it against the light pollution that blots out the Milky Way to 90% of the British population.

The International Dark Skies Association tested levels of darkness in the park using a sky quality meter, which would give a photographer's darkroom 24 – the highest reading possible.

The park got 23, while the reading in cities such as Glasgow would be 15 or 16.

Martin Morgan-Taylor, the International Dark Skies Association's British board member, said the park's remoteness from the light pollution of large towns meant night clouds were darker than the night sky.

"The dark sky park concept is really about restoring and protecting the night sky," he said. "It's an award for effort and commitment as much as its quality as a dark sky."

The accessibility of Galloway Forest park to amateur astronomers and visitors living in northern England, central Scotland and Northern Ireland – the ferry port of Stranraer is close by – meant it was able to promote astronomy and the dark skies ethos more effectively than far more remote areas of Britain, he said.

"It's going to be beautiful and an incredible educational tool," he added.

"If schoolchildren can't see the night sky at home, they may never develop an interest in astronomy or any other science, because they can't look up and see something which will spark their interest."

Mike Alexander runs a B&B near Wigtown, which caters for amateur astronomers, and also runs "star camps" near Wigtown Bay.

He said the area benefited greatly from clean, unpolluted winds blowing in from the Atlantic.

The key issue was "the sheer lack of people," he said, adding: "Unfortunately, people pollute the sky with light: they want street lights, bright lights outside their houses."

Severin Carrell

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Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 16 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

Habitat banking is the future of nature conservation in the UK

Habitat banking is not a 'license to trach' – it's an opportunity to apply market-based conservation that can help biodiversity in the UK

We need to be far more intelligent in the way we use land. In truth, we need to pay the true cost of using it – and this applies to development as much as to growing crops. Currently, compensation for impacts to the environment through development planning is insufficient. But the adversarial approaches to development planning just exacerbate the problem. In fact, biodiversity and landscape conservation, together with the other "ecosystem services" that land provides, could be provisioned by a proper engagement with the development industry.

"Biodiversity banking" or "habitat banking" – similar to the conservation credit scheme favoured by the Conservatives in the UK – is an economic strategy that funds conservation actions intended to compensate for and mitigate the unavoidable environmental impact caused by development projects. By brokering arrangements between developers, landowners and planning authorities, a lot of money can be found to help create and manage habitats in the natural environment – something we all want.

Ecologists and conservation groups would, in many circumstances, release developers from the physical task of providing on-site compensation. This makes possible landscape conservation projects of much greater value. This is an extension of biodiversity banking, a successful mechanism that has been working effectively in the US for a couple of decades. Habitat banking can provide an abundance of new, high-quality natural habitats – thus supporting greater biodiversity, sustaining soils and water, and increasing the aesthetic and recreation value of the landscape.

Habitat banking has sustainable development as its core objective. It is not a "licence to trash". The planning system will still operate on the basis that acknowledged and protected sites of nature conservation value are protected by policy.

A key benefit of habitat banking is the pooling of credits from a range of development schemes. There would be agreements to monitor and manage habitats over the long term. In future it could, for example, be used for targeting areas of the country where landowners are already showing a commitment to nature conservation, biodiversity and landscape.

In the US, wetland mitigation banking alone was worth $3bn in 2008. There is no reason why we could not stimulate a similar system in the UK. The Environment Bank Ltd, which we run, is committed to introducing the benefits of habitat banking to the UK, and numerous developers and landowners have signed up to our proposed scheme. We have also assisted with the development of the conservation credit scheme advocated by the Conservative shadow environment secretary, Nick Herbert. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs also has positive things to say about biodiversity banking.

Here is an opportunity to apply market-based conservation that can deliver enormous long-term benefits to UK biodiversity. The evidence and expertise we require already exists in this country. We have to plan for the future of nature conservation and biodiversity in the UK, and this is the best option.

• Professor David Hill is the chairman and Rob Gillespie the managing director of Environment Bank Ltd

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Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Nov 2009 | 11:35 pm

Space Shuttle Atlantis Poised for Monday Launch (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - WASHINGTON — The space shuttle Atlantis is poised to soar into space Monday to ferry six astronauts and tons of spare parts to the International Space Station.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 10:45 pm

Jellyfish swarm northward in warming world (AP)

AP - A blood-orange blob the size of a small refrigerator emerged from the dark waters, its venomous tentacles trapped in a fishing net. Within minutes, hundreds more were being hauled up, a pulsating mass crowding out the catch of mackerel and sea bass.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm

Plastic Boat: The Building of a High-Tech Eco-Stunt

<< previous image | next image >>

Not all plastics are created equal — and to prove it, a rakish banking heir and a team of young adventurers have built a huge ship out of plastic.

Called Plastiki, the 60-foot catamaran’s hull is made of a newly developed plastic that’s easier to recycle than the standard man-made stuff. The boat, as well as the voyage it will eventually undertake across the Pacific, is the conceptual child of David de Rothschild, who toes the line between eco-playboy and serious environmentalist.

During a recent Wired.com trip to Pier 31 in San Francisco, where the boat was getting its finishing touches, de Rothschild waxed rhapsodically about the value of the plastic, srPET, which stands for self-reinforced polyethylene terephthalate.

“Dumb Plastic 1.0,” de Rothschild said should be reduced, regulated against and minimized, if not abolished. srPET, though, deserves your love and attention.

“This is PET supporting PET, so when it comes to the end of its lifecycle, it can go into a machine and can be respun and rewoven,” he said.

De Rothschild would like to see it replace fiberglass, which can’t be recycled. To prove its seaworthiness, de Rothschild’s Adventure Ecology will be broadcasting live via satellite phones to raise awareness about the problems of plastic in the Pacific.

“We’re not going out there saying we’re a scientific vessel,” he said. “This is an adventure that’s using innovative materials to catalyze support for an issue.”

And when it’s over, the boat’s cabin will be recycled in Sydney.

Whether the whole trip is an eco-stunt or something more important, the ship itself is marvelous to behold. Hulking inside the pier, it looks like a massive boat built from packing tape with two-liter plastic bottles stuck onto its sides.

Photo: McNair Evans

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm

Just Thinking of a Loved One Can Reduce Physical Pain (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - They say love hurts. But it can also make people feel better.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 7:50 pm

"2012" Sells Tickets, Sells-Out Science

Last night, my wife Deb and I went to watch the Roland Emmerich movie 2012. Deb fell asleep. She was the lucky one. I'm joking, it wasn't that bad, we just had to attend the midnight showing as the earlier ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Nov 2009 | 7:34 pm

Last Ditch Effort to Save Tasmanian Devils

Tasmanian devils are so close to extinction that conservationists are running out of long-term options. Swift and decisive action may be needed to prevent these carnivorous marsupials from disappearing off the face of the earth in our lifetime. You can ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Nov 2009 | 6:06 pm

Tory plans for 'conservation banks'

The Conservative party plans, which would fund nature protection through the sale of conservation credits to developers, have been met with caution by wildlife groups

Developers would be forced to buy credits from "conservation banks" as a condition of building permission under new Conservative party plans to revolutionise nature protection revealed exclusively to the Guardian.

The hundreds of millions of pounds which could be generated each year will lead to the creation of major new woodlands, wetlands and wildlife corridors, and would also earn money for farmers and charities, they say.

The plans, which have been sent for comment to Britain's major conservation groups by the shadow environment secretary, Nick Herbert, and seen by the Guardian, received a mixed welcome from green groups such as RSPB and Wildlife Trusts.

Many conservationists like the idea in principle if it leads to new funds, but fear that the entry of the free market into nature protection could be a licence to destroy habitats on the promise of compensatory ecological benefits elsewhere. In addition, there are fears that a market-based scheme, if successful, could encourage the government to withdraw public money from nature protection and rely on developers to protect Britain's most valuable wildlife sites.

"We do need a change in attitude to conservation. But there is a danger that it could be used to destroy something on a vague promise that it would be compensated for elsewhere. The devil is in the detail," said Tony Whitbread, chief executive of Sussex Wildlife Trust.

The "banks", which could be run by local communities, voluntary groups or companies, would issue credits to create or manage wildlife reserves or other conservation initiatives. An open market would be set up by the government, and developers would have to buy credits at the going market rate.

"The existing bureaucratic, regulatory approach has failed to halt biodiversity loss. We need radical new thinking to reverse the decline. Our natural ecosystems and the services they provide like carbon storage, water storage, habitat for wildlife are worth billions of pounds. We have to find a way to unlock this value", said Herbert, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. "With a market approach we can look forward to new ways of supporting wildlife, habitats and landscape."

He denied that the money raised would be a new tax on developers or would lead to companies owning nature reserves. "This is not the privatisation of nature. This will not affect the value of land. It's about opening up a new revenue stream. The market system is a new, additional way to achieve protection of wildlife, not a substitute. I believe there will be a flourishing of schemes across the country," Herbert said.

"We will rule out any proposals that would weaken the existing protection of endangered sites or species and ensure that any measures are in addition to existing safeguards regarding development on green spaces", said Herbert. "My goal is that the schemes would be managed by minimal bureaucracy. Protected land must remain off-limits to development. It is also essential that any new mechanism does not impose additional costs on businesses," he said.

But he declined to say whether the new banks would be run to make a profit or what it could cost to set up and maintain them.

"It's a new idea, and it needs more thinking through, but its definitely an idea worth thinking about," said Mark Avery, conservation director at the RSPB. "But we are perplexed how it would work in practice. The conundrum yet to be worked out is how does it produce lots of money without it being an unpopular tax on development? Also, how do you give local people a big say in how the money is spent whilst making sure that it delivers the greatest conservation benefit?"

"Government could generate a significant market mechanism for getting greater funding into the natural environment by implementing a policy for habitat banking in the UK. In the US wetland mitigation banking alone was worth $3bn in 2008 and there is no reason why we could not stimulate a similar system in the UK", said David Hill, a board member of Natural England and co-founder of the Environment Bank.

The idea was first floated in a speech in February by the Conservative leader, David Cameron. "Conservation credits are about placing a value on biodiversity for the first time, because only if you place a value on something can you truly compensate for loss. This is potentially an incredibly exciting idea to enhance biodiversity, but the practicalities need careful consideration," he said.

John Vidal

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 | 15 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

Letters: The shameful use of sedatives to keep elderly patients quiet

As a nurse with 20 years' experience, I am all too familiar with the use of sedatives to reduce the time and effort required for the care of elderly patients (Anti-psychotic drugs kill 1,800 dementia suffers every year, 13 November).

I recently lost a dear friend. At 96 years old, she was blind, profoundly deaf, mainly immobile and the proud owner of an agile mind and a uniquely funny and filthy vocabulary developed over many years as a street-market vendor. Admitted for a few days of hospital care for a leg ulcer, she responded to a perceived affront to her dignity with characteristic obstinacy and verbal fire. She was given a sedating anti-psychotic and never sat upright again, dying of a chest infection three days later.

The lack of dignity afforded to the elderly in care settings is a continuing disgrace in this country. It is too late for my friend, but it is to be hoped that, now it is recognised that abuse of sedative medication leads to so many unnecessary deaths, there will be a reduction in this shameful practice.

Hal Satterthwaite

London

• My father, a fit and strong man with mild dementia, died in May this year (in Australia) after 16 months of the relentless administration of anti-psychotic drugs. Drugs that took away all his cognitive abilities in just a few days.

When I first saw him about three weeks after he had been started on one of these "chemical coshes", he had drug-induced Parkinson's. He was incontinent and shuffling, had slurred speech, and he was already a shadow of his very recent former self. He was at great risk of falling over, and these drugs made him very agitated and confused. These side effects were being ignored and passed off as his condition.

Nothing will bring him back but I do hope that this debate about the systematic, unquestioned and indiscriminate use of these drugs does not go away and that future dementia sufferers do not have to face the undignified and hastened end to their lives that he suffered.

People with dementia need care, patience and understanding. The last thing they need is a drug that takes away all of what remains of their cognitive abilities. What is often misinterpreted as aggression is, in fact, frustration at not being able to express themselves or at not being heard. Dementia sufferers need a voice, and we as an advanced society need to be that voice.

Annie Watts

Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey

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 | 15 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

Science Weekly: Top 10 myths of ecological living

Duncan Clark, Guardian environment writer and author of The Rough Guide to Green Living, tells us about his top 10 eco myths. (1:25)

In the newsjam we look at Britain's renewable energy targets, a new technique to regrow breasts following mastectomy, a recent spate of cancer deaths among rescuers after 9/11, and the controversy over whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded. (13:59)

Guardian religious affairs correspondent Riazat Butt speaks to delegates at a summit at Windsor Castle as religious leaders are asked to help save the planet by the UN secretary general. (25:12)

We air some of your recent postings on our blog, Facebook page and twitter. (29:20)

Prof Graciela Chichilnisky, one of those who helped design the carbon market in the Kyoto Protocol, tells us what he believe needs to happen at the Copenhagen climate change summit in December. Her book Saving Kyoto is out now. (31:50)

The Observer's science and technology editor Robin McKie joins us in the pod to discuss Copenhagen and the week's other top stories.

Post your comments below.

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Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Nov 2009 | 5:01 pm

Fishing body agrees to cut in Atlantic tuna quota

RECIFE, Brazil (Reuters) - Fishing nations agreed on Sunday to cut by about a third the quota for Atlantic bluefin tuna, a giant fish prized by sushi lovers, numbers of which have been decimated by commercial catches.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 4:41 pm

Atlantis shuttle set to blast off

The space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to blast off from Florida to deliver equipment to the International Space Station.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Nov 2009 | 3:26 pm

Lawmakers used Genentech statements: report (Reuters)

Reuters - Lobbyists working for biotech company Genentech wrote statements for more than a dozen lawmakers in the official record of the House debate on the health care bill, The New York Times reported on Sunday, citing e-mails.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 12:15 pm

Vitaly Ginzburg obituary

Nobel prizewinning physicist who helped develop the Soviet hydrogen bomb

Vitaly Ginzburg, who has died aged 93, was a Nobel prizewinning Russian physicist and a father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. He was born in Tsarist Russia so long ago that even the calendar was different: his date of birth was 21 September 1916, according to the old Russian calendar, or 4 October in the western version.

The discovery of superconductivity – the ability of electric currents to flow in certain materials for years without resistance, whose theoretical explanation would lead to his Nobel prize – had occurred five years before his birth. Its mechanism remained a mystery for 40 years, until Ginzburg and Lev Landau produced their theory in 1950. With the phenomenon having defied explanation for so long, the Nobel committee seemed in no rush to recognise their success, and another half-century elapsed before Ginzburg shared the 2003 prize (with his fellow Russian Alexei Abrikosov and the Briton Anthony Leggett, Landau having died in 1968).

It is customary for Nobel laureates to produce a brief autobiography, which usually amounts to a few hundred words. Ginzburg's was different. Having lived through so much – born in pre-revolutionary Russia, maturing in Stalin's Soviet Union, and spending his latter years in the new Russia – he had a broad vision, rich experiences and much to say. The result was an epic, exceeding 14,000 words, the reason being that: "I am already 87 and will hardly ever have another occasion to write about myself and my views."

A member of a Jewish family, the son of an engineer and a doctor, he had lived through times of economic degradation, and hunger. One of his memories from early childhood was of "a wagon, loaded with half-covered coffins with dead bodies and pulled by a horse past our house in the centre of Moscow". He did not start school until the age of 11, as it was not obligatory and his parents were concerned at the state of Soviet schools. Four years after he eventually entered formal education, his school was abolished, leaving him "lost and unhappy". By chance, an acquaintance of his aunt was a professor of science in a higher educational establishment, and he helped get Ginzburg a job as a laboratory assistant. Ginzburg recalled: "I did not have any talent, but in physics I was at least interested."

He progressed rapidly, entering Moscow State University, graduating in 1938, receiving his PhD in physics in 1940 and DSc in 1942. In 1937 he had married a fellow student, Olga Zamsha, from whom he divorced in 1946, the same year that he married Nina Ermakova. In 1944 Nina had been arrested, allegedly for being part of a plot to kill Stalin. She was released in an amnesty the following year, but exiled to Gorky. Ginzburg was at that stage teaching in Gorky University, which is where they met.

From 1946 to 1953 Ginzburg was living in Moscow, but his requests for Nina to be released from exile to join him were refused. In turn, the paranoia of the Stalinist tyranny determined that he, as her husband, was "politically unreliable". So it is remarkable that, in 1950, Ginzburg was recruited to the team developing the Soviet hydrogen bomb.

Only after the story of the Soviet weapons programme was declassified did the importance of Ginzburg's contributions become known. Before those times the folk wisdom was that Andrei Sakharov had made, enigmatically, "the first idea", and Ginzburg "the second idea", which had opened the way to the H-bomb. The essential fuel is tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, which is a gas. However, a gas is hard to control in hydrogen bombs, and Ginzburg's insight was that it could be made, within the device, by bombarding solid lithium deuteride with neutrons.

Crucial though this idea had been, concerns about Ginzburg's "reliability" led to him being excluded from the weapon's actual test, and in 1951, during one of Stalin's antisemitic purges, he was removed from the project entirely. He feared that he was about to be put into a special prison for scientists, but was saved from this fate by Stalin's death in 1953. At this, Ginzburg was reinstated into the project, and also became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

At the same time that he was involved with the secret weapons programme, he was also working in fundamental pure research, producing his famed paper with Landau on the phenomenon of superconductivity in 1950.

In 1911, the Dutch physicist Heike Onnes had discovered that, when cooled to -269C, solid mercury suddenly lost all resistance to the flow of electric current. This phenomenon – "superconductivity" – was later found in other materials, such as tin and metal alloys. In a loop of wire made of superconducting material, electric currents can flow for years without needing any voltage to be applied. This astonishing phenomenon defied explanation for decades.

In the micro-world of atoms and particles, such as electrons, quantum mechanics applies. The phenomena are often weird, such as the well-known uncertainty principle – the inability to know precisely both the position and speed of an atomic particle. In the large scale, or macro-world, we are used to more "common sense" – the laws of Isaac Newton, which enable us to know both where we are and how fast we are travelling. However, even in the macro-world there are examples where quantum mechanics rules, one such being the phenomenon of superconductivity. There are two types of superconductors, one which completely rejects magnetic fields, and the other, known as "type 2", where superconductivity and magnetism can co-exist.

Landau and Ginzburg used quantum theory to produce a series of equations which successfully predicted that, under certain circumstances, superconductors can tolerate magnetic fields. This led to work by Abrikosov, who discovered how magnetic fields penetrate superconductors, and opened the way to many practical applications.

These breakthroughs led to many ways of achieving superconductivity, even in the presence of large magnetic fields, which today is widely used in science, industry and medicine. In 1962 the first commercial superconducting wire was made using a niobium-titanium alloy. Superconductivity has vast implications in technology, being used in powerful electromagnets, such as are found in MRI scanners in hospitals, in magnetic levitation systems for high-speed transport, and in the world's largest cryogenic facility – the 27km ring of superconducting magnets of the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator, at Cern in Geneva.

In addition to this seminal work on superconductivity, in a career that spanned seven decades Ginzburg authored several fundamental papers in a range of areas: quantum theory; the propagation of electromagnetic waves through the ionosphere; the origin of cosmic rays; radioastronomy and astrophysics. Several of his ideas were regarded as being of Nobel prize calibre.

He held passionate opinions about topics far beyond science, being a strong believer in the global triumph of democracy, and that "secular humanism" would overcome threats such as Islamic terrorism, poverty and Aids. He was one of a group of scientists that helped bring down Trofim Lysenko, whose beliefs about biological inheritance had impeded genetic research in the Soviet Union for decades.

Ginzburg was a vehement atheist, and strongly opposed the growing role of the Russian Orthodox church in state affairs after the 1991 Soviet collapse. He protested against attempts to introduce religious lessons in schools, telling a Russian newspaper in 2007 that "these Orthodox scoundrels want to lure away children's souls". As a result, several Orthodox Christian groups threatened to sue him for "offending millions of Russian Christians".

Having lived under Stalin's yoke, and seen Hitler ravaging Europe, he remained an optimist. "The forces of democracy have saved civilised society and nowadays both nazism and communism have almost sunk into oblivion," he wrote in his Nobel biography. He was certain that this proves that "we can hope for the ultimate triumph of the democratic system and secular humanism all over the world". All that are required, he said, are "the presence of historical memory, and the development of science".

He is survived by Nina, and by the daughter of his first marriage.

• Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg, theoretical physicist and astrophysicist, born 4 October 1916; died 8 November 2009

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Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Nov 2009 | 11:37 am

Anthony du Gard Pasley obituary

Garden designer, writer, teacher and lecturer

The landscape architect Anthony du Gard Pasley, who has died aged 80, was a skilled and highly respected, yet largely unnoted, designer responsible for the creation of many large private gardens in Britain, Switzerland, southern France and other parts of Europe. His control of space, combined with an extensive plant knowledge, allowed him to create significant gardens for his clients. Recognisable by his monocle and perfectly groomed moustache, which he insisted "should always turn upwards, thereby giving a pleasant countenance", he was a stickler for detail, for instance matching the colour of his potted hyacinths to the linings of the curtains at his French windows.

Anthony's grandfather was a successful inventor and engineer, his father a metallurgist. His parents lived near Sherborne, in Dorset, where Anthony grew up, although he had been born in Ealing, west London. After first sharing a governess, Anthony was educated in London, at King's College school, Wimbledon. He joined the army to complete his national service but always wanted to be a garden designer.

Through his father, and at the suggestion of the garden designer Milner White, he became a paying pupil of the landscape architect Brenda Colvin in Baker Street, central London, then for two years moved to the shared office of Colvin and Sylvia Crowe at 182 Gloucester Place. After this he moved on to the design department of the landscapers Wallace and Barr, learning for three or four years what did, and did not, work.

Although they had very little work, Colvin and Crowe then asked him back as an assistant to work mostly on gardens. The Colvin practice had such clients as the Astor family, Stowe, crematoriums in Salisbury, and schools in Hertfordshire. On retiring to her country home, Filkins, Colvin, author of the groundbreaking Land and Landscape (1947), wanted Pasley to join her, but he declined and instead became the first associate of Sylvia Crowe Associates, whose practice work was mainly on new towns, roads, power stations, and, with Michael Laurie, work for the American air force. Pasley saw Crowe's 1958 book on design principles, Garden Design, through to the publication stage, before she widened out into the realm of roads and power, and he became a member of the Institute of Landscape Architects.

By the time the Gloucester Place practice closed down in the 1960s, Pasley had built up his own clientele, working out of his home in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. He lectured at the polytechnic in Regent Street, at the Northern Polytechnic (now subsumed into London Metropolitan University), at the School of Architecture, Canterbury, and as a freelance lecturer. The garden designer and writer Susan Jellicoe encouraged him to write for Country Life, the Observer and Architectural Review.

In about 1972 he had begun teaching at the Inchbald School of Design in London with John Brookes, whom he had worked with in Gloucester Place. He continued with his own practice, bolstering up his income with writing and giving lectures, these accompanied by slides and delivered with never a superfluous word, while building up capital by decorating and selling his own houses in Tunbridge Wells. Among the gardens he designed that on occasion are open to the public are Old Place Farm, in Kent; Parsonage Farm, in West Sussex, and Pashley Manor Gardens, in East Sussex.

Pasley was on the panel of judges for the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show gardens, was an active member of the Garden History Society, and after moving to Scotland, joined the Royal Caledonian Society. In 1983, he was instrumental in helping me set up the English Gardening School based at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London.

Anthony was a very private person, always impeccably dressed, whatever the weather, in thorn-proof tweed plus-fours, cape or kilt, and with a mischievous sense of humour. The last 17 years of his life were divided between homes in Groombridge, near Tunbridge Wells, and Moffat in Scotland. His other interests were interior decoration, book collecting, architecture, opera and travel, and latterly, cruises. His books were Summer Flowers (1977) and, with me, The English Gardening School (1987).

• Anthony du Gard Pasley, garden designer, born 10 August 1929; died 2 October 2009

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Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Nov 2009 | 11:36 am

Sheila Unwin obituary

At the age of 86 Sheila Unwin fulfilled her lifelong ambition and wrote a book called The Arab Chest

My mother, Sheila Unwin, who has died aged 89, was an expert in Swahili and Arab culture. At the age of 86 she fulfilled her lifelong ambition and published The Arab Chest, a personal yet academic account of her quest into the origins of these brass-studded wooden pieces of furniture found all over the Gulf and East Africa.

This fascination began as long ago as the late 1940s when, after the second world war, she and my father went to Tanganyika to work on the ill-fated Groundnut Scheme, the British government plan for the large-scale cultivation of peanuts. There they lived in a tent for the first two years of their married life.

During the revolution in Zanzibar in 1964, Sheila rescued an Arab family and, in return, was given first option on a shipment of 60 chests, for which she paid the sum of £600, borrowed from a trusting bank manager. From that moment on, she had to know their provenance and she became a latter-day Freya Stark, travelling alone in the 1960s and 70s through Ethiopia, Yemen, the Gulf States, Pakistan, Iran, India and Turkey; in the 1980s she joined successive expeditions to Baluchistan as a cultural adviser.

She was born Sheila Mills in Scotland and grew up in Norfolk; her father, Findlay, whom she revered, was a first world war hero and won a DSO. After leaving school, where she had excelled academically, she went to St James's secretarial college in London, where she was very proud of achieving 150wpm shorthand. Her greatest regret was that the war prevented her from going to university.

She was a second officer in the WRNS during the war, most of which she spent in Egypt. In 1945 she was posted to Germany, where she met my father, Tom. They married the following year.

After their divorce in 1970, she returned to East Africa and, hard up, undertook a soul-destroying job with the United Nations as a stenographer; but in her leisure time she went on archaeological digs with Neville Chittick, her soulmate, whom she had first met in the 1950s; she participated in historic digs in the Manda, Pate and Lamu islands, off the coast of Kenya, where she and Neville bought a house. She also started collecting tribal handicrafts, many examples of which are now in the Exeter Museum.

She returned to Britain in the 1970s. She was a warm and popular person, with a vast array of friends from all over the world, many of whom turned up for her book launch, where she sat resplendent and elegant in a gold jellaba, at the zenith of her remarkable life.

I survive her, along with her two grandchildren, Tommy and Louise, her sister, Rosemary, and Tom, with whom she remained on good terms.

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Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Nov 2009 | 11:31 am

Man-made ponds linked to arsenic in Bangladesh water

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Man-made ponds and rice fields irrigated using groundwater may be responsible for arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh, a study has found.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 11:22 am

Mutant genes linked to Parkinson's in some: study

HONG KONG (Reuters) - People of Japanese and European descent who have mutant versions of five genes may be at higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease, two large teams of researchers have found.

Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Nov 2009 | 11:20 am

Evolution's classroom crisis

Surveys show that, around the world, teachers and students are rejecting evolution. The results are likely to be dire

Questions abound in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina on the second day of a conference on Darwin's legacy. Where can I get a coffee? Is this seat taken? Is religion compatible with evolutionary theory? Delegates search for answers.

Jason Wiles, a former creationist, chaired a discussion featuring Salman Hameed, Joshua Rosenau and Saouma Boujaoude. The focus was Islam. Each time the Americans said Qur'anic, it sounded like they were saying chronic.

They showed to what extent evolution was accepted among students and teachers in Muslim-majority countries. Not much. But then the US was no better, observed Rosenau. It languished in the bottom five of industrialised countries accepting evolution. The others were Turkey, Cyprus, Latvia and Lithuania. Wiles said he and colleagues at the Evolution Education Research Centre (EERC) were studying attitudes towards evolution in countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, Indonesia and Pakistan. In Indonesia there was open resistance, said Wiles. The leader of one student body objected to EERC's very presence on campus. "Don't give the survey here! How can you believe we are from apes?" he cried. The students rallied behind him. Most of the Indonesian teachers surveyed used the works of Harun Yahya in science classes. In Egypt and Lebanon, said Boujaoude, Muslim and Christian students were influenced by their religious beliefs. Around half of the Egyptian teachers surveyed opposed evolution and all Egyptian biology teachers opposed evolution. Claims that science and Islam are compatible look shaky against such findings. Boujaoude pointed out that objections were based on limited understanding on the nature of evidence and the nature of science. The narrowness was hardly surprising given the lack of investment and activity in the scientific field, said Hameed, using Nature data as proof. The scarcity of knowledge and resources was one of the reasons that Saudi Arabia needed outside help to deal with swine flu, he surmised.

But untangling the issue went deeper than what happened in the classroom, it was also about what teachers and governments accepted and understood about science. "Muslims have been using fragments of science and fragments of religion to make them more compatible," said Hameed as he pulled out quotes from a pair of Peshawari muftis, one who attacked the Met Office for providing moon sighting data and another who praised Islam's scientific legacy.

There was some good news. There was no clear doctrinal opposition to evolution and Muslims were looking to appropriate theologically palatable aspects of it. The bad news was the absence of debate between scholars and scientists. Anti-western feelings and the blurring of lines between evolution and secularism would make that harder. "If it's presented as a dichotomy, it's going to be religion. It depends on who is going to shape the narrative."

Nidhal Guessoum intervened to say that Islamic creationism was a "fuzzy mosaic of ideas" and not the same as US creationism, which was peddled by Harun Yahya. Islamic creationism used scripture, he said, it was all about Adam, Adam and clay. There were more references to hadith and the Qur'an, which is what set it apart from the Christian-influenced movement.

The vacuum meant someone more mainstream could finish off Yahya's work, someone who appeared more credible, to use the internet and solidify the message of Islamic creationism.

To people wondering why creationism was getting any kind of platform, Anglican priest Michael Roberts offers a reminder. Creationism is totally untrue. It exposes people of the book – many of whom, among them distinguished speakers at this conference, see no contradiction between evolutionary theory and their faith – to ridicule. And if it gains traction with governments or other authorities, then the public practice of science and research will be hindered.

Riazat Butt

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Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Nov 2009 | 10:00 am

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