Adults who use pet therapy while recovering from total joint-replacement surgery require 50 percent less pain medication than those who do not, according to new research. Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am
Researchers have found that previous influenza infections may provide at least some level of immunity to the H1N1 "swine" flu. Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am
Single layers of carbon atoms, called graphene sheets, are lightweight, strong, electrically semi-conducting -- and notoriously difficult and expensive to make. Now, scientists have invented a simple way to make graphene electrical devices by growing the graphene directly onto a silicon wafer. Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am
Researchers have discovered a genetic variation that may contribute to how empathetic a human is, and how that person reacts to stress. In the first study of its kind, a variation in the hormone/neurotransmitter oxytocin's receptor was linked to a person's ability to infer the mental state of others. Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am
New methods of studying avian influenza strains and visually mapping their movement around the world will help scientists more quickly learn the behavior of the pandemic H1N1 flu virus, Ohio State University researchers say. The researchers linked many powerful computer systems together to analyze enormous amounts of genetic data collected from all publicly available isolated strains of the H5N1 virus -- the cause of avian flu. Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am
Biologists offer new insights into a gene that plays a key role in modulating the body's circadian system and may also simultaneously modulate its metabolic system. Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am
Targeting the normal cells that surround cancer cells within and around a tumor is a strategy that could greatly increase the effectiveness of traditional anti-cancer treatments, say researchers. Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am
A powerful new breast cancer treatment could result from packaging one of the newer drugs that inhibits cancer's hallmark wild growth with another that blocks a primordial survival technique in which the cancer cell eats part of itself, researchers say. Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am
Infectious organisms that become resistant to antibiotics are a serious threat to human society. They are also a natural part of evolution. In a new project, researchers in Sweden are attempting to find substances that can slow the pace of evolution, in order to ensure that the drugs of today remain effective into the future. Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am
Titanium dioxide nanoparticles, found in everything from cosmetics to sunscreen to paint to vitamins, cause systemic genetic damage in mice, according to a comprehensive study. Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 17 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am
AP - Wintry weather was expected to persist over the Central U.S. on Tuesday because of a strong low pressure system over the Midwest. Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 17 Nov 2009 | 3:20 am
The diversity of animals already sighted by the IUCN expedition to study seamounts rising from the floor of the Indian Ocean. Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 17 Nov 2009 | 3:15 am
IUCN scientists sail into the southern Indian Ocean to unveil the mysteries of little-explored underwater seamounts. Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 17 Nov 2009 | 3:15 am
AFP - US President Barack Obama and China's Hu Jintao Tuesday pledged to apply their joint political might to the world's toughest problems, but friction was evident on Tibet, economics and Iran.
The world will come to an end. In approximately 4 billion years time, when the sun has depleted its supply of hydrogen in its core, our nearest star will swell like a balloon when it starts to burn heavier elements, ... Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 17 Nov 2009 | 12:41 am
AP - A team of 16 surgeons and nurses successfully concluded 25 hours of delicate surgery Tuesday to separate twin Bangladeshi girls who had been joined at their heads, sharing blood vessels and brain tissue.
Sand dams 'They transform lives and they transform fragile environments Simon Maddrell, executive director, Excellent Development'
Over one billion people lack access to safe drinking water with 84% of these people living in impoverished, rural areas. With water scarcity predicted to increase, now is the time to prioritise rural water supply, particularly in dryland regions that are on the frontline of climate change. Here an investment of $1bn dollars would give 100 million people a clean, local, sustainable water supply for life.
How is this possible? In two words: sand dams.
Over the past decade, Kenyan farmers with support from development organisations such as my own, have constructed hundreds of sand dams. Sand dams are reinforced concrete walls built across seasonal sandy rivers. During the intense rainy seasons, the dam fills with rainwater and sediment: silt flows over the dam whilst the heavier sand sinks. As the riverbed fills with sand, around 25-40% of the water by volume is stored in the voids. The sand filters the water and reduces contamination and evaporation. The dams also transform the local ecology. They raise the water-table, recharge the aquifer and increase downstream, dry-season flows.
Examples of sand dams are found throughout the dryland regions of the world but their wider adoption is limited by a lack of awareness, appropriate support and funding.
Sand dams are the cheapest form of rainwater harvesting -a typical dam costs less than £8,000 to build, requires negligible maintenance and provides water for life for around 1,200 people. They are cost-effective, community owned and sustainable. They transform lives and they transform fragile environments. What's not to like?
Global Water Partnership Fund 'This is a global issue and we need a global response' Tom Le Quesne, WWF-UK
Water scarcity is central to nearly all the challenges we face in the 21st century, from food security through to energy production. In many parts of the world, industrial expansion is restricted due to problems with access to freshwater. Despite the extent of the challenge, research states that there is enough water to meet the needs of the global population and those of planet, while supporting economic growth.
But, if there is enough water, how is it that we are experiencing such shortage? The answer is that this most precious of resources is appallingly neglected and managed. Shockingly, in many major rivers, we lack the basic information and monitoring which tells us how much water is available, and when.
We must invest in the organisations and institutions that manage the world's water to implement better management systems and increase awareness of the issue at hand, so that we cease to squander and waste this vital resource.
This is a global issue and we need a global response. Using the resources of this prize we should establish a global water partnership fund to which other sectors would contribute: energy and resource companies, development agencies, and global food producers. The fund could then provide the resources, manpower and equipment so badly needed across the world for water security.
Public awareness 'Potentially the greatest challenges are social and political' Professor Howard Wheater of Imperial College
The world faces a growing water crisis, exacerbated by population growth, climate change and the pollution of existing resources. The problems are multi-dimensional. Water scarcity has already led to local conflict, three quarters of the world's water use is for irrigated agriculture, hence water, land and food are inextricably linked. And water supply and sanitation is energy intensive, so energy and water are also inextricably linked.
There is no magic bullet. We must curb population growth and greenhouse gas emissions to limit future damage, but adaptation of water use is needed. This requires social awareness, technological development and potentially new political and legal structures to support integrated policy at national and international levels.
Technical solutions include:
• Managing water demand through public awareness, water efficiency and smarter urban water systems
• New technology to increase the available resource, e.g. rainwater harvesting, active management of groundwater recharge and storage
• Improved short and long term forecasting of floods and droughts
• Improved energy and resource efficiency in water and wastewater treatment, including energy recovery from wastes
• Appropriate technology for rural water supply, e.g. solar-based desalination
• Development of drought resistant crops and improved irrigation efficiency.
Potentially the greatest challenges are social and political. Public awareness is central to adaptation to a future where we will need to live with water scarcity and to address the political and legal problems which underlie many aspects of the unsustainable use of water.
Kill subsidies 'There would be a real incentive to reduce wastefulness with water' Robert Pendray, student at Merton College, Oxford
In most countries, water prices are heavily subsidised by governments. This means the price the consumer pays is not reflective of the actual cost needed to extract, clean and distribute the water. My idea is to remove this subsidy and allow privately operated water companies to charge an appropriate amount for water. This would free up a lot of money which I propose be redistributed via what I call "water allowances".
These water allowances would be an amount of money which people can use to purchase water. The amount would be set by the government and would aim to provide people with enough water for basic needs. If people want additional water, for whatever reason, they are free to purchase it with their own money but the price will obviously be many times higher than it is at present.
It is important to consider agriculture and business as they use the majority of water. They also currently receive subsidised water, although not always to the same degree as domestic use. With my idea, they would receive allowances based on what they are producing and how much. The government would judge how much water is needed in their operations, assuming they are working with water very efficiently. They would then receive a water allowance based upon that. This means organisations which are currently using water efficiently may see reduced costs, and those which are not may see increased costs.
There are two main reasons why this would work. Firstly, water companies would now be privately run which means they would likely operate a lot more efficiently and productively than at present. Secondly, and more importantly, there would be a real incentive to reduce wastefulness with water, as there would now be a significant financial cost for businesses and homeowners if they didn't.
AFP - Vietnam is expected to take a key step towards meeting its burgeoning appetite for electricity by paving the way for its first nuclear power plant, but debate is still raging over the controversial project.
AFP - NASA's Atlantis shuttle has blasted off with a haul of spare parts for the International Space Station and some microscopic worms that could explain muscle loss in space.
Unlike the World Series, which is inhabited largely by American (and one Canadian) baseball teams, the World Wide Web, is actually inhabited by people from lots of different countries. But since the Internet came online, it's domain name suffixes (.com, ... Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 16 Nov 2009 | 6:55 pm
SPACE.com - WASHINGTON — NASA hailed the flawless liftoff of space
shuttle Atlantis Monday, a space shot that marked the agency's fifth shuttle launch
of the year — a flight rate not seen since 2002, before the tragic Columbia
accident. Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 5:45 pm
David Kynaston's new book, Family Britain, represents a big shift in popular history
Just how upset were the British at King George VI's death in February 1952? Very, the figures suggest. More than 300,000 people came that week to see his tomb in chilly Westminster Hall and the popular press, dutifully grief-stricken, sold millions of extra copies. But others thought the mourning excessive, and were annoyed at the BBC scrapping its schedule for "gut-aching music". Nella Last, a housewife from Barrow-in-Furness, wrote in her diary that her husband "was so 'fidgety' [that he] wouldn't have a game of card patience."
Nella is one of the stars of David Kynaston's new book, Family Britain. As a historian, Kynaston doesn't rub shoulders with prime ministers, but records the views of dyspeptic civil servants and, yes, long-suffering housewives. He's not alone: Juliet Gardiner, Martin Pugh and Dominic Sandbrook are all at it, covering the view from the crowd rather than the stage.
This is a big shift in popular history, which has long been dominated by books about things, rather than people. We've had microhistories of sugar, cod – even of screwdrivers (titled, inevitably, One Good Turn). Before that came the fad for what-if histories – Tory historians musing over what might have happened if only Lenin had been shot on his return from Finland.
Rather than go further down this dead-end, Kynaston and others are returning to history from below. This was best sketched out more than 40 years ago by the great socialist historian EP Thompson, who set out to rescue history's losers from "the enormous condescension of posterity".
Thompson wanted to show how the working class made history; not so Kynaston, who believes people at the top shape events and others react. This is history from below without the politics, but it's nonetheless entertaining and sympathetic to its subjects. One of Kynaston's best stories is in an earlier volume, and is about a government minister telling the people of Stevenage that they will soon be living in a New Town. "Gestapo! Dictator!" cry the locals, and the politician beats a hasty retreat – only to find the tyres of his ministerial car have been deflated and that sand has been poured into the petrol tank.
How do you make a bottle to store antimatter in? Don't ask Dan Brown; ask Professor Mike Charlton of Swansea University, who is researching the complex world of particle theory, in Cern
When Tom Hanks's character, Robert Langdon, hunts down the secret Illuminati brotherhood in the film of Dan Brown's bestseller Angels & Demons, the cameras follow him tracking down stolen antimatter in a secret laboratory at Cern, the home of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research and the infamous Large Hadron Collider. There, Langdon meets in-house scientist Vittoria Vetra and we viewers get an insight into the complex world of physics housed at Cern, in Switzerland.
But for Swansea University professor Mike Charlton, the techy setting of Angels & Demons is just his own office. Every few weeks, Charlton, a senior research fellow in physics, heads to Cern to carry out experiments and develop his research into the complex world of particle theory. A world away from Dan Brown's findings – Angels & Demons is "science fiction but great for what it does to boost interest in science", says Charlton – he is leading Swansea's involvement in an international project on antimatter called Alpha.
It's a massive collaboration, Charlton says, of around 40 scientists from institutions ranging from the University of California, Berkeley to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil – but antimatter? I'm already a little lost. Luckily, he provides a potted physics lesson. Antimatter, I'm told, was formed in the Big Bang, when for every particle of matter created, a matching "antiparticle" was born, identical in mass but with the opposite electric charge. For the first few moments of its life the universe was balanced, but just a short time later the antimatter disappeared, leaving only matter to form the entire cosmos.
When Brown's plot arrives at Cern, a stolen gram of antimatter is sneaked out of the Geneva science base with the aim of being used as a devastating weapon. In reality, Charlton explains, that's impossible. The Alpha research project is currently working on finding a way to collect and then retain antimatter – moving it around just isn't possible right now.
"We're currently researching how to make and then store antimatter in order to research and study its properties," he says. "That means making a very special bottle for it – since antimatter will annihilate on contact with matter – and it's hardly portable. It is connected to a huge power supply, because we need an enormous magnetic field to make and hold the antimatter, for one thing. Even if you could move that, our storage bottle is huge – about the size of five filing cabinets, and 10 times as heavy – so it would take a day to move it only 10 yards. Plus, the contents are incredibly fragile."
Charlton also takes issue with the way Brown's novel suggests that physicists can create antimatter in amounts that could cause a destructive explosion. It's impossible, says Charlton. "If you wanted to make an explosion, you'd use materials that are ready at hand – which antimatter really isn't," he explains. "We're working on it, but the process means producing each atom individually, using an expensive machine which, every minute or so, can only make a few million anti-nuclei – the heavy parts we need to create the atoms of antimatter."
"To make an explosion, you'd need a massive amount more than that. And it would require so much power that it's well beyond the realms of reality."
The Cern project has been hitting the headlines over the last year or so, but it was back in 1986 that Charlton and a colleague started talking about prospects for making antimatter. They started to hear about a machine at Cern that might be able to help them out – but Charlton admits "it still took ages to get going".
He realised that there was "a massive problem with antimatter": its very existence contradicts the understanding of how the universe formed and exists. "So now we know it does exist, we have to try to answer the question as to why did all the antimatter disappear in the early universe, and allow it to evolve resulting in the formation of stars and planets – and us?"
On a day-to-day basis, however, Charlton says his work can be a lot more mundane. "When we're carrying out an experiment, it's almost entirely remote-controlled, since you can't go near the particle beams. So in between, we're focused on repairing or upgrading apparatus. Sometimes that involves software, other times it's just crawling around unbolting flanges – very unglamorous, but it has to be done!"
When an experiment throws up an interesting result, the team has to try to interpret the data. "Often it looks like I'm not working at all, just lost in thought," Charlton says. "Cern work can be tough," he explains. The work runs to a tight schedule, since "the antiproton beam time is rationed and we don't want to waste any".
Charlton and his fellow physicists work day and night shifts, and normally sleep nearby in one of the Cern hostels. "They have comfortable rooms, usually en suite," Charlton says. "And there are two canteens on the main Cern site, so if I'm busy I'll eat all three meals a day there. It can get quite draining. In the early days I once spent three weeks on site, without leaving Cern once. At the time I thought nothing of it – looking back I think I must have been crazy. On the whole, though, I love the work – I wouldn't want to be doing anything else."
You are to be congratulated for bringing to public notice the possible causes of birth defects and cancers among infants in Falluja (Report, 14 November). You mention radiation poisoning, but not depleted uranium munitions.
These munitions were used in the first and second Gulf wars, and in the Balkans. The then defence minister, Geoff Hoon, said in January 2001 that banning their use would put British service people's lives at risk, and that the weapons were "astonishingly effective". There are suspicions that they are now being used in Afghanistan.
Depleted uranium is "1.7 times denser than lead, and highly valued by armies for its ability to punch through armoured vehicles. When a weapon made with a DU tip or core strikes a solid object, like the side of a tank, it goes straight through it and erupts in a burning cloud of vapour. The vapour settles as dust, which is both chemically poisonous and radioactive" (BBC News, 4 January 2001).
On impact, a DU missile burns at 10,000C, 30% of the shell fragments into shrapnel, and the remaining 70% vaporises into three highly toxic oxides, including uranium oxide. Its target is left covered in black dust, while further particles remain suspended in the air and can travel over great distances, according to wind and weather.
Laws that are breached by the use of DU shells include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of the United Nations, the Genocide convention, the convention against torture, the four Geneva conventions of 1949, the conventional weapons convention of 1980 and the Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907.
David Wilson
London
• Air pollution and drug use do not produce infants riddled with tumours. The US military initially denied using white phosphorous, a banned substance. So why would they admit to using depleted uranium? These are 21st century crimes against humanity and the perpetrators should be brought to justice.
Alexandra Leaf
New York, US
• Your report contains only one reference to the health risks of depleted uranium warheads, which you tactfully referred to as "components of munitions". The worldwide community knows that radiation is a serious risk to health and specifically causes birth defects. And how astonishing to read that Professor Nigel Brown says there is no reliable evidence to show that the components of munitions cause birth defects, except for ionising radiation.
Do we have to wait until someone is brave enough to publish the research that shows the harmful effects of depleted uranium? Do we need to wait for some specific scientific proof before we put an end to this grossly irresponsible practice?
Helen Gillam
Ferwig, Cardiganshire
• Martin Chulov reports on birth defects in Falluja, and Denis Campbell discusses possible etiologies. In neither article is there a mention of the role of folate deficiency in those defects, but it is known to be responsible for about 200,000 children a year around the globe being born with spina bifida and anencephaly – also referred to as neural tube defects. Most of these defects can be prevented if all women of reproductive age consume enough folic acid. Mandatory fortification of wheat and corn flour has been required in the US and Canada since the late 1990s, and the incidence has dropped dramatically.
Godfrey P Oakley
Research professor of epidemiology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, US
• I looked at malformations of chromosomes in newborn children in Vietnam in 1971. The Vietnamese ascribed them to the exposure of their mothers to Agent Orange. The US army, which used it as a defoliant, denied the connection but eventually we found out that it contained dioxin, which causes mutations. What genetically "harmless" adjuvant will be found to be the cause of the Falluja malformations? Since our government took us into this lamentable war, we shall have to share the responsibility.
It was not the market that failed, but the policies that governed how it worked
Your article is profoundly disheartening (Carbon trading is useless, says Friends of the Earth report, 5 November). Instead of adding political pressure to commit to emissions reduction targets, FoE criticises carbon markets and investors, who are working to make this common goal a reality.
You report: "FoE says that to date cap-and-trade carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions… [and are] unfit for purpose." They are misinformed. Markets do not reduce emissions and were not created for that purpose. Technology, energy efficiency and behavioural changes deliver reductions. Markets incentivise and finance these by putting a cost-effective price on the carbon that is most cost-effective.
"FoE claims that the first phase of the European emissions trading scheme between 2005 and 2007 failed. And the second phase, from 2008 to2012, is likely to fail too." It was not the market that failed in the first phase, but the policies that governed how the market worked. The EU designed a system in which a large proportion of emissions allowances were given away, to defray costs for industry. Phase one was the test phase and, lacking precise data, they gave away too many allowances that could not be carried over into phase two. These two design elements caused the price crash in 2007.
But the second phase was designed much more prudently. Studies note that emissions fell in year one, and analysts agree that they continue to fall. Phase two is a success. It is important to look at the markets in the longer term, just as targets are set with a 2020 goal.
Misguidedly, FoE calls for governments to use more "reliable instruments", such as a tax to replace a market-based scheme. Yet a tax is anything but reliable; it does not allow for visible target-setting, and it does not guarantee that emissions will be reduced. A carbon tax is simply another cost of doing business; as production and profits grow, the tax is paid while emissions rise. By contrast, an emissions cap allows for a clear environmental goal and a measurable target, and incentivises further reductions.
You report the FoE's fears that markets could be "hijacked by speculators and financial markets". This fear displays a failure to understand that financial institutions participate in the market largely on behalf of businesses that do not have the capacity or expertise to do so themselves. Furthermore, there are no "complex" instruments creating "shadow finance" – carbon trading uses essentially the same simple market instruments as trading in gold, wheat and coal. They have been used over decades and during recent and historical financial cycles without causing crises.
Yet a carbon market is only as good as the cap. The more ambitious the emissions reduction targets, the more visibly and effectively a market performs its function. Market nay-sayers would make better use of their time by increasing the political pressure to set ambitious reduction targetsand recognise that markets help with the cost of achieving them. To criticise those who share their objective is to risk political inaction.
Nasa's Atlantis shuttle blasts off to deliver spare parts - and worms - to the International Space Station. Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Nov 2009 | 4:38 pm
When Pfizer launched Viagra in 1998 its share price doubled within days. Since then, the little blue pills have become a pillar of profit, earning the company more than £1bn a year.
Thanks to promotional campaigns, which included appearances by the footballing legend Pele, male impotence lost some of its stigma and 25 million men requested the pills. In England alone, GPs write about 6m Viagra prescriptions a year.
The drug started life in a lab in Sandwich, Kent, where it was developed to treat high blood pressure. Its transformation into a blockbuster treatment for impotence began when volunteers in a clinical trial reported a suspicious number of erections. The overnight success of Viagra prompted Pfizer to wonder if the drug had any effect in women. They raised awareness of a condition called "female sexual arousal disorder", an all-encompassing phrase for sexual dysfunction, and began clinical trials. The trials were a failure and the attempt to have Viagra licensed for the condition was abandoned.
Pfizer has been criticised for overstating the benefits of Viagra. It claims "more than half of all men over 40 have some difficulty getting and maintaining an erection". In 2004, the US Food and Drug Administration forced Pfizer to pull a series of advertisements because it made unsubstantiated claims about the drug's effectiveness.
Some psychologists warn Viagra has become a lifestyle drug that encourages people to neglect underlying mental or physiological problems that can cause impotence. The anti-obestity drug, orlistat, came under fire for similar reasons. Critics said it fostered the misconception that modern ills can be dealt with by a pill instead of living a healthier life.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The U.S. space shuttle Atlantis lifted off its seaside launch pad on Monday, loaded with spare parts to keep the International Space Station flying after the shuttles are retired next year.
Unlike most Western guys and gals looking for love, Africa’s Hadza foragers pair up without regard to each other’s size and strength, a new study finds. And that stature-may-care approach underscores the often unappreciated variety of human mating strategies, the researchers say.
Hadza marriages don’t tend to consist of individuals with similar heights, weights, body mass indexes, body-fat percentages or grip strengths, say behavioral ecologist Rebecca Sear of the London School of Economics and anthropologist Frank Marlowe of Florida State University in Tallahassee. Neither do Hadza couples feature a disproportionate percentage of husbands taller than their wives, as has been documented in some Western nations, the researchers report in the October 23 Biology Letters.
Almost no Hadza individuals mention height or size when asked to explain what makes for an attractive mate, Sear and Marlowe add.
People everywhere seek healthy, fertile marriage partners, Sear proposes. “But I suspect there may not be a preference for one particular signal of health in mates across every population,” she says.
Among the roughly 1,000 Hadza scraping out a living in rural Tanzania, knowledge of a potential mate’s health history may render that person’s height and weight irrelevant, the researchers suggest. Also, any health benefits of being big may get nullified by the difficulty of maintaining a large body during periodic food shortages endured by the Hadza.
Sear and Marlowe criticize evolutionary psychologists who have argued that physical size influences mating decisions in all societies. That argument rests largely on self-reports of Western college students and analyses of personal advertisements in U.S. newspapers for dating partners, they say.
Other researchers suspect that cultural evolution over the past 50,000 years, not genetic evolution during the Stone Age, has allowed human mating strategies to become increasingly diverse (SN: 5/23/09, p. 5).
“Cross-cultural data are hard to come by, and this is a valuable contribution,” comments psychologist Robert Kurzban of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. But he argues that the Hadza findings do fit with evolutionary psychologists’ proposal that genetically ingrained, universal mating strategies get triggered in different ways depending on social and ecological conditions.
In large societies, where people know little about one another’s health history and food is plentiful, height and weight may be reasonable initial indicators of a healthy mate, he suggests.
But increasing familiarity with a romantic partner breeds a more discriminating eye, remarks anthropologist Boguslaw Pawlowski of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Wroclaw.
Sear and Marlowe analyzed evidence for mating based on size and strength in 185 to 236 Hadza couples, the number of couples depending on the particular measure. A team led by Marlowe gathered this evidence from 2001 to 2006. Nearly all couples who were married during that period participated in the study.
Among the Hadza, women marry at around age 18 and men at age 20. After a sexual liaison, a couple will begin sleeping at the same hearth and is considered married. Only a small minority of men have more than one wife. Divorce is common, though, and most people get married many times.
In 8.2 percent of Hadza marriages, the wife was taller than the husband. That’s no different than the frequency of female-taller marriages expected to occur by chance, Sear says. In a 2006 investigation, she also found a random-chance level of female-taller marriages in an African farming community.
In contrast, the proportion of female-taller marriages in England is substantially lower than expected by chance, signaling a male-taller preference, she says.
The UN's nuclear watchdog says Iran must answer more questions about a recently declared nuclear site near the city of Qom. Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Nov 2009 | 2:16 pm
The retooled Jaguar supercomputer blew away the competition on the latest list of the 500 fastest computers in the world, clocking an incredible 1.759 petaflops — 1,759 trillion calculations per second.
The machine, housed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, added two more cores with the aid of almost $20 million in stimulus spending. With the new processors, the Cray XT5 plowed past the Top500 competition. It’s more than 69 percent faster than the previous record holder, Los Alamos National Laboratory’s IBM Roadrunner, and is more than twice as powerful as the third-fastest computer on the list.
But it’s not just how many calculations the machine performs that’s noteworthy. The new supercomputer also marks a turning point in the placement for funding of America’s computing resources.
Jaguar’s spot atop the list marks the first time a civilian Department of Energy computer has been the most powerful in the world. Instead of modeling nuclear explosions, which is Roadrunner’s primary job, Jaguar carries out scientific research on the globe’s climate and other computational-intensive problems.
“Supercomputer modeling and simulation is changing the face of science and sharpening America’s competitive edge,” said Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “Oak Ridge and other DOE national laboratories are helping address major energy and climate challenges and lead America toward a clean energy future.”
The Department of Energy has long been a chimera of different research components. The DOE was created out of the Energy Research and Development Agency in the late 1970s, which was itself formed largely out of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1974. The AEC managed the national laboratory system that developed during the Manhattan Project and was responsible for both civilian and military nuclear research.
Built on this strange mix and shaped by the ’70s energy crises, the agency’s roles managing nuclear weapons and civilian energy research have shared the same slice of the federal budget— and defense spending, or civilian research with military applications, tended to receive the lion’s share of that slice.
In recent years, research into clean energy has received increasing support, a trend which has accelerated under new secretary, Steven Chu, who has directed much of the stimulus spending into developing new energy technologies. The appearance of a civilian DOE computer in the top spot on the supercomputer list is a sign of the times.
It should be noted, though, that the split between military and civilian supercomputers hasn’t been hard and fast. Supercomputers built to study nuclear explosions have long allocated spare computing time for other types of science.
What’s special about Jaguar is that it’s operated entirely within the DOE’s Office of Science, so civilian science gets priority for the one billion processor hours that the machine can offer.
Jaguar is operated by the National Center for Computational Sciences, which is headed by James Hack, a climate modeler by training. He said Jaguar’s upgrades allow for progressively better climate models, continuing a trend that’s been at work for decades.
“From the early 80s it may be close to a million fold improvement in computational performance,” Hack said.
Back then, climate models had to break up the earth’s surface into chunks with an area of 3,900 square miles. Now, they can run simulations where each unit is just 10 to 20 square miles. In the old models, Lake Erie would have been two or three boxes. Now, it could be represented by more than 1,000 individual units that can more accurately reflect local conditions.
All that resolution is increasing the accuracy of the simulations. In July, a model run on the supercomputer became the first to accurately depict an abrupt climate change in the past.
“The speed and power of petascale computing enables researchers to explore increased complexity in dynamic systems,” Hack said in a press release.
In the Moore’s Law driven world of supercomputing, Jaguar — at least in its current incarnation — is not likely to lead the list for long. Several plans are afoot for computers that will carry out tens of petaflops that could be running in just a few years.
Image: A very high-resolution model of carbon flux as dawn breaks across the United States. The green represents carbon uptake, while the red shows carbon outflow/ORNL. Video: Climate model run on Jaguar.
LiveScience.com - Editor's Note: This is the last in a 10-part
LiveScience series on the origin, evolution and future of the human
species and the mysteries that remain to be solved. Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 2:01 pm
McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — A whirlwind of activity is under way to apply the findings of the $3 billion Human Genome Project to improve health care in the United States and around the world. Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 1:48 pm
The challenge of feeding billions of people as fuel supplies fall is staggering. And yet leaders' heads remain stuck in the sand
I don't know when global oil supplies will start to decline. I do know that another resource has already peaked and gone into free fall: the credibility of the body that's meant to assess them. Last week two whistleblowers from the International Energy Agency alleged that it has deliberately upgraded its estimate of the world's oil supplies in order not to frighten the markets. Three days later, a paper published by researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden showed that the IEA's forecasts must be wrong, because it assumes a rate of extraction that appears to be impossible. The agency's assessment of the state of global oil supplies is beginning to look as reliable as Alan Greenspan's blandishments about the health of the financial markets.
If the whistleblowers are right, we should be stockpiling ammunition. If we are taken by surprise, if we have failed to replace oil before the supply peaks then crashes, the global economy is stuffed. But nothing the whistle-blowers said has scared me as much as the conversation I had last week with a Pembrokeshire farmer.
Wyn Evans, who runs a mixed farm of 170 acres, has been trying to reduce his dependency on fossil fuels since 1977. He has installed an anaerobic digester, a wind turbine, solar panels and a ground-sourced heat pump. He has sought wherever possible to replace diesel with his own electricity. Instead of using his tractor to spread slurry, he pumps it from the digester on to nearby fields. He's replaced his tractor-driven irrigation system with an electric one, and set up a new system for drying hay indoors, which means he has to turn it in the field only once. Whatever else he does is likely to produce smaller savings. But these innovations have reduced his use of diesel by only around 25%.
According to farm scientists at Cornell University, cultivating one hectare of maize in the United States requires 40 litres of petrol and 75 litres of diesel. The amazing productivity of modern farm labour has been purchased at the cost of a dependency on oil. Unless farmers can change the way it's grown, a permanent oil shock would price food out of the mouths of many of the world's people. Any responsible government would be asking urgent questions about how long we have got.
Instead, most of them delegate this job to the International Energy Agency. I've been bellyaching about the British government's refusal to make contingency plans for the possibility that oil might peak by 2020 for the past two years, and I'm beginning to feel like a madman with a sandwich board. Perhaps I am, but how lucky do you feel? The new World Energy Outlook published by the IEA last week expects the global demand for oil to rise from 85m barrels a day in 2008 to 105m in 2030. Oil production will rise to 103m barrels, it says, and biofuels will make up the shortfall. If we want the oil, it will materialise.
The agency does caution that conventional oil is likely to "approach a plateau" towards the end of this period, but there's no hint of the graver warning that the IEA's chief economist issued when I interviewed him last year: "We still expect that it will come around 2020 to a plateau … I think time is not on our side here." Almost every year the agency has been forced to downgrade its forecast for the daily supply of oil in 2030: from 123m barrels in 2004, to 120m in 2005, 116m in 2007, 106m in 2008 and 103m this year. But according to one of the whistleblowers, "even today's number is much higher than can be justified, and the International Energy Agency knows this".
The Uppsala report, published in the journal Energy Policy, anticipates that maximum global production of all kinds of oil in 2030 will be 76m barrels per day. Analysing the IEA's figures, it finds that to meet its forecasts for supply, the world's new and undiscovered oilfields would have to be developed at a rate "never before seen in history". As many of them are in politically or physically difficult places, and as capital is short, this looks impossible. Assessing existing fields, the likely rate of discovery and the use of new techniques for extraction, the researchers find that "the peak of world oil production is probably occurring now".
Are they right? Who knows? Last month the UK Energy Research Centre published a massive review of all the available evidence on global oil supplies. It found that the date of peak oil will be determined not by the total size of the global resource but by the rate at which it can be exploited. New discoveries would have to be implausibly large to make a significant difference: even if a field the size of all the oil reserves ever struck in the US were miraculously discovered, it would delay the date of peaking by only four years. As global discoveries peaked in the 1960s, a find like this doesn't seem very likely.
Regional oil supplies have peaked when about one third of the total resource has been extracted: this is because the rate of production falls as the remaining oil becomes harder to shift when the fields are depleted. So the assumption in the IEA's new report, that oil production will hold steady when the global resource has fallen "to around one half by 2030" looks unsafe. The UK Energy Research Centre's review finds that, just to keep oil supply at present levels, "more than two thirds of current crude oil production capacity may need to be replaced by 2030 … At best, this is likely to prove extremely challenging." There is, it says "a significant risk of a peak in conventional oil production before 2020". Unconventional oil won't save us: even a crash programme to develop the Canadian tar sands could deliver only 5m barrels a day by 2030.
As a report commissioned by the US Department of Energy shows, an emergency programme to replace current energy supplies or equipment to anticipate peak oil would need about 20 years to take effect. It seems unlikely that we have it. The world economy is probably knackered, whatever we might do now. But at least we could save farming. There are two possible options: either the mass replacement of farm machinery or the development of new farming systems that don't need much labour or energy.
There are no obvious barriers to the mass production of electric tractors and combine harvesters: the weight of the batteries and an electric vehicle's low-end torque are both advantages for tractors. A switch to forest gardening and other forms of permaculture is trickier, especially for producing grain; but such is the scale of the creeping emergency that we can't afford to rule anything out.
The challenge of feeding seven or eight billion people while oil supplies are falling is stupefying. It'll be even greater if governments keep pretending that it isn't going to happen.
On one of the Galapagos islands whose finches shaped the theories of a young Charles Darwin, biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species splits in two.
In many ways, the split followed predictable patterns, requiring a hybrid newcomer who’d already taken baby steps down a new evolutionary path. But playing an unexpected part was chance, and the newcomer singing his own special song.
This miniature evolutionary saga is described in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s authored by Peter and Rosemary Grant, a husband-and-wife team who have spent much of the last 36 years studying a group of bird species known collectively as Darwin’s finches.
The finches — or, technically, tanagers — have adapted to the conditions of each island in the Galapagos, and they provided Darwin with a clear snapshot of evolutionary divergence when he sailed there on the HMS Beagle. The Grants have pushed that work further, with decades of painstaking observations providing a real-time record of evolution in action. In the PNAS paper, they describe something Darwin could only have dreamed of watching: the birth of a new species.
The species’ forefather was a medium ground finch, or Geospiza fortis, who flew from a neighboring island to the Grants’ island of Daphne Major, and into their nets, in 1981. He “was unusually large, especially in beak width, sang an unusual song” and had a few gene variants that could be traced to another finch species, they wrote. This exotic stranger soon found a mate, who also happened to have a few hybrid genes. The happy couple had five sons.
In the tradition of finches, for whom songs are passed from father to son and used to serenade potential mates, the sons learned their immigrant father’s tunes. But their father’s vocalizations were strange: he’d tried to mimick the natives, but accidentally introduced new notes and inflections, like a person who learns a song in a language he doesn’t understand.
These tunes set the sons apart, as did their unusual size. Though they found mates, it may only have taken a couple generations for the new lineage to ignore — or be ignored by — local finches, and breed only with each other. The Grants couldn’t tell for certain when this started, but they were certain after four generations, when a drought struck the island, killing all but a single brother and sister. They mated with each other, and their children did the same.
No exact rule exists for deciding when a group of animals constitutes a separate species. That question “is rarely if ever asked,” as speciation isn’t something that scientists have been fortunate enough to watch at the precise moment of divergence, except in bacteria and other simple creatures. But after at least three generations of reproductive isolation, the Grants felt comfortable in designating the new lineage as an incipient species.
The future of the species is far from certain. It’s possible that they’ll be out-competed by other finches on the island. Their initial gene pool may contain flaws that will be magnified with time. A chance disaster could wipe them out. The birds might even return to the fold of their parent species, and merge with them through interbreeding.
But whatever happens, their legacy will remain: New species can emerge very quickly — and sometimes all it takes is a song.
Images: 1) An example of Daphne Major’s native medium ground finches (left), differs from the new species’ original newcomer (right).
2) Top to bottom: A to F show successive generations of the hybrids, which now mate only with each other.
Citation: “The secondary contact phase of allopatric speciation in Darwin’s finches.” By Peter R. Grant and B. Rosemary Grant. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 46, Nov. 16, 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.
Microscopic worms taken from Bristol rubbish tip for study in space station lab
Britain's aspirations to become a spacefaring nation inched a little closer tonight as thousands of microscopic worms boarded the Atlantis space shuttle at Cape Canaveral for a mission to the international space station.
The diminutive space travellers are being flown into orbit as part of research that scientists hope will help explain how astronauts build and lose muscle as they circle the Earth.
The test subjects, from a rubbish tip in Bristol, will be studied in the weightless confines of the Japanese Kibo laboratory, one of the most recent additions to the $100bn space station. Predecessors of the latest batch of worms made news in 2003 when they survived the Columbia space shuttle disaster. They were discovered in a protective container several weeks after the craft was destroyed during re-entry.
Dr Nathaniel Szewczyk, a scientist at the University of Nottingham who has worked on three previous missions, said the nematode worms will be used to study biological signals that make muscle proteins degrade. He said the worms are the perfect substitute for examining the long-term effects of weightlessness on humans.
"We can learn things in space that we would not be able to learn on Earth," Szewczyk said. "If we can identify what causes the body to react in certain ways in space we establish new pathways for research back on Earth."
The worms have been carefully selected for the mission and will be exposed to conditions in space for four days and then frozen in preparation for the return journey. The effect of this journey on their muscle mass will be investigated once the worms are returned to the university's laboratories.
AP - Environmentalists on Monday said an international deal to reduce catches of Atlantic bluefin tuna didn't go far enough to protect the species from extinction. Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Nov 2009 | 12:30 pm
Solar power has been around for decades so I was surprised to discover that the industry lacks some standards. If the solar industry is still a Wild West, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory might just be the straight-shooting sheriff. NREL, ... Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 16 Nov 2009 | 12:27 pm
SANTA CRUZ, California — Four hundred years after Galileo’s telescope revolutionized humanity’s view of the universe, a gigantic telescope is in the works that could take us to a new, deeper level of understanding.
The enormous Thirty Meter Telescope, with a primary mirror the size of a blue whale, is part of a new generation of super powerful ground-based telescopes. Scheduled for completion in 2018, it will have nine times the collecting power of the Keck telescopes and 12 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. From its recently selected location atop the volcanic dome of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the pioneering telescope will provide an extremely detailed look at the universe.
“As we learn more, the cosmos become more mysterious and require more human ingenuity to get to the next step,” Jerry Nelson, UC Santa Cruz physicist and TMT project scientist, said at a public talk Thursday.
Once finished, the new telescope will allow astronomers to see faint objects clearer than ever before. It will be able to focus on and indentify extremely distant structures that currently appear as blurry smudges in the Hubble Deep Field. As yet, no one knows what these objects are.
This new resolution will provide insights into the both dark matter and dark energy. And it will widen the search for planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. For the first time, we will be able to routinely image direct light from these exoplanets, garnering information on their atmospheric chemistry and dynamics.
The new TMT will also be able to see further back in time than any previous telescope, all the way back to the formation of the first stars and galaxies that followed the universe’s “Dark Ages.”
An adaptive optics system will aid the telescope’s ability to see into deep space. Atmospheric turbulence usually distorts light coming from distant stars. So the adaptive optics system uses a sodium laser to probe current conditions, and information about the turbulence is fed into a small deformable mirror, which makes real-time corrections to the atmosphere’s quivering. The effect is sort of like putting glasses on to correct for blurred vision — the end result is a much crisper image.
Without adaptive optics, ground-based astronomy couldn’t compete with space-based projects such as Hubble. The system is considered so vital that Nelson refers to it as the “heart and soul of the mirror and telescope.”
Nelson has been called the father of the modern telescope, because it was his innovative design in the 1970s that allowed for the creation of big telescopes like the 10-meter Keck. His segmented mirrors have completely transformed the field of astronomy, leading UC Santa Cruz astronomer Sandy Faber to call him a modern day Galileo.
Previously, telescope mirrors larger than 5 meters were considered unfeasible because of many problems: They were hard to cast, their supports were delicate and breakable, and they would warp under their own weight.
Nelson realized that segmenting the main mirror into separate hexagonal pieces could solve all these problems. His design positioned the individual mirrors in a honeycomb-like arrangement and used an intricate computer guidance system to make them act as one, larger unit.
The first telescope to take advantage of this new plan was Keck, which has main mirrors composed of 36 individual pieces. The reflector on the Thirty Meter Telescope will be an order of magnitude leap above this with 492 small mirrors.
Telescopes have doubled in size every 30 years over the last century, and in the not-too-distant future, Nelson predicts we will see 50- and even 100-meter telescopes.
This is not to say that such undertakings will be easy. At an estimated cost of $970 million, the TMT will require an international consortium that includes the University of California system, Caltech, Canada, and Japan. Further funding will come from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which committed $200 million to the project.
“The discoveries we’re going to make from TMT will simply increase our thirst for even bigger telescopes with even greater capabilities,” says Nelson. “So as long as we retain our curiosity and have the wealth to build these kinds of things, I think we’re going to see bigger things.”
Melting Arctic sea ice isn't just about polar bears: If temperatures continue to warm over the far north, a new study suggests, California could be in for a long dry spell. A new profile of the climate at the end ... Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 16 Nov 2009 | 11:13 am
Tuesday is shaping into a big night for star gazers, since that's when the 2009 Leonid meteor shower will peak, giving those in Asia in particular something of a spectacular light show. The fireworks will be further helped by the ... Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 16 Nov 2009 | 11:06 am
Former wartime RAF pilot, he worked for the MoD helping to create the first radio approach system for planes
The great throng at the funeral of my friend Reg Windett, who has died aged 88, testified to an exceptionally well-lived life.
He was born in Finchley, north London, the only son of Bert and Connie Windett. After leaving Haberdashers' Aske's school, he joined the RAF and flew Wellingtons for Coastal Command in the Mediterranean, surviving three crashes and nearly falling through a door which "some fool had left open". After the war, he worked for the Ministry of Defence, helping to create the first radio approach system, which was adopted by all top airlines and is still a back-up for satellite navigation.
Reg was a keen walker and birdwatcher, a very good club cricketer, playing well into his 50s, a county badminton player and a scratch golfer. In 1996 he and Betty, whom he had married in 1951, came to live in Cedars retirement village near Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, where they became well-loved residents. They were also among the liveliest, but recently they both suffered severe disabilities, which they faced with cheerful fortitude.
They got on with life as best they could. Reg played golf until, or even after, he could no longer see the ball at his feet. Blind and arthritic, he conducted a keep-fit session weeks before his death. He had always been a lover of words and books, and the greatest pride of his old age was in the thriving poetry group he formed in 1996.
He was a prolific poet. His verses might not have always scanned perfectly but they were full of quirky humour and imaginative observation. Some were just fun – like his last, provoked by finding a marmalade jar on Mount Ararat – but others had a serious point, adroitly made. His incisive judgments also enlivened our book group, and one of his final acts was to award 10 out of 10 to Animal Farm, instead of his more usual two-and-a-half.
Reg was a true original: brave, humane, clever, a clear-eyed optimist, a devoted husband and a friend to many. It was typical that on his deathbed, he worried about whether his doctor had had lunch. He is survived by Betty, their son Michael, three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
As a former animal shelter worker, I was horrified to learn that five U.S. states require shelters to send animals that aren't adopted to research facilities. The states are: Iowa* Minnesota Ohio* Oklahoma Utah *If a research facility makes a ... Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 16 Nov 2009 | 10:54 am
A team of thirsty polar explorers will drill beneath the ice to reach Scotch whiskey 100 years old. Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 16 Nov 2009 | 10:49 am
Nazis and dinosaurs come together in "Dino D-Day," a recently announced video game from Digital Ranch Interactive. meets (Images: Library of Congress) Players take on the character of Sgt. Jack Hardgrave, a fictitious paleontologist who thought he put his career ... Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 16 Nov 2009 | 9:33 am
The final shuttle flight of the year took off today en route to the International Space Station. Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 16 Nov 2009 | 9:10 am
The new head of Greenpeace, South African Kumi Naidoo, tells BBC he will prioritise the impact of climate change on the world's poor. Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Nov 2009 | 8:13 am
Other researchers suspect that cultural evolution over the past 50,000 years, not genetic evolution during the Stone Age, has allowed human mating strategies to become increasingly diverse (
An adaptive optics system will aid the telescope’s ability to see into deep space. Atmospheric turbulence usually distorts light coming from distant stars. So the adaptive optics system uses a sodium laser to probe current conditions, and information about the turbulence is fed into a small deformable mirror, which makes real-time corrections to the atmosphere’s quivering. The effect is sort of like putting glasses on to correct for blurred vision — the end result is a much crisper image.