Is global warming unstoppable?

In a provocative new study, a scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions -- the major cause of global warming -- cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Spitzer Telescope observes baby brown dwarf

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has contributed to the discovery of the youngest brown dwarf ever observed -- a finding that, if confirmed, may solve an astronomical mystery about how these cosmic misfits are formed.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Ethnic Background May Be Associated With Diabetes Risk

Fat and muscle mass, as potentially determined by a person's ethnic background, may contribute to diabetes risk, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Factors from common human bacteria may trigger multiple sclerosis

New research suggests that a common oral bacterium may exacerbate autoimmune disease. Multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease where the immune system attacks the brain and spinal cord, affects nearly 1 in 700 people in the United States. Patients with multiple sclerosis have a variety of neurological symptoms, including muscle weakness, difficulty in moving, and difficulty in speech.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Daycare may double TV time for young children, study finds

In a new study, the amount of television viewed by many young children in child care settings doubles the previous estimates of early childhood screen time, with those in home-based settings watching significantly more on average than those in center-based daycares.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Rescuing male turkey chicks

A novel approach to classify the gender of six-week-old turkey poults could save millions of male chicks from being killed shortly after birth, according to researchers. Their use of infrared spectroscopy to determine the gender of young birds shows that it is a fast and accurate method.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Pelvic Floor Muscle Exercises Can Help Manage Urinary Incontinence In Older Women

Researchers have found that a program of pelvic floor muscle exercises, combined with pelvic health education, can be an effective way to manage urinary incontinence in elderly women.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

Visual assistance for cosmic blind spots

Information field theory enables astronomers, medical practitioners and geologists to look into places where their measuring instruments are blind.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

Congo's 'mother lode' of gorillas remains vulnerable

A new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society says that western lowland gorillas living in a large swamp in the Republic of Congo -- part of the "mother lode" of more than 125,000 gorillas discovered last year -- are becoming increasingly threatened by growing humans activity in the region.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

Medical imaging technique identifies very common condition in women that often goes undiagnosed

In women with lower urinary tract symptoms, a medical imaging technique called dynamic MRI allows clinicians to diagnose pelvic organ prolapse -- a condition that often goes undiagnosed on static MRI and at physical examination, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Two main weather features were expected to bring active weather to the U.S. on Tuesday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:33 am

Big Bang atom smasher starts speeding proton beams (AP)

AP - Scientists running the world's largest atom smasher used the $10 billion machine's accelerator to speed up proton beams for the first time Tuesday, in a step toward experiments about the makeup of the universe.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:11 am

Australian PM urges parliament to approve carbon cuts (AFP)

AFP - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd urged parliament Tuesday to approve legislation aiming to slash carbon pollution by up to 25 percent by 2020 ahead of next month's global talks on climate change.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 2:49 am

Brainy performer

What happens in Fiona Shaw's brain when she acts?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Nov 2009 | 2:25 am

Audio slideshow

A look at the work of astronomers across the UK
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Nov 2009 | 2:21 am

Big Bang machine achieves first particle collisions

ZURICH (Reuters) -- Scientists have smashed together proton beams for the first time in a 27-kilometre tunnel under the French-Swiss border in an initial step toward discovering how the universe came into existence, they said on Monday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 1:45 am

Astronauts rest up after 3 spacewalks (AP)

AP - The astronauts aboard the orbiting shuttle-station complex are resting after their three successful spacewalks.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

Mankind using Earth's resources at alarming rate (AFP)

AFP - Humanity would need five Earths to produce the resources needed if everyone lived as profligately as Americans, according to a report issued Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm

US 'will announce climate target'

The US will give a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions ahead of next month's UN climate summit, officials say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Nov 2009 | 10:01 pm

CO2 curve ticks upward as key climate talks loom (AP)

AP - The readings at this 2-mile-high station show a troubling upward curve as the world counts down to crucial climate talks: Global warming gases are building in the atmosphere at record levels from emissions that match scientists' worst-case scenarios.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm

Coal-burning China invests in methane capture (AFP)

AFP - China, a massive consumer of fossil fuels and coal in particular, is trying to modernise its mines by containing emissions of methane and turning the toxic gas into a source of much-needed energy.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Nov 2009 | 9:21 pm

Global warming dangers 'alarming'

Leading UK scientists issue an unprecedented statement about the dangers of failing to cut greenhouse gases.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Nov 2009 | 9:04 pm

China to send two pandas to Australia (AP)

AP - China will send two giant pandas to an Australian zoo this Friday as part of a joint research program.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Nov 2009 | 8:55 pm

Belgian says he was alert but mute for 23 years (AP)

AP - For 23 torturous years, Rom Houben says he lay trapped in his paralyzed body, aware of what was going on around him but unable to tell anyone or even cry out.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Nov 2009 | 7:31 pm

Wild city

Photographer goes on the trail of urban deer populations
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Nov 2009 | 6:30 pm

Big bang simulator achieves first proton collisions

Scientists rejoiced last night when they managed to smash proton beams together for the first time in a £6bn giant machine designed to reveal clues about the origins of the universe.

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the nuclear research organisation near Geneva, hope their experiments can recreate conditions moments after the big bang. The machine, which occupies an almost 17 mile-long tunnel 100 metres beneath the French-Swiss border, achieved the collisions by sending two groups of sub-atomic particles around in opposite directions at the same time.

Collisions were recorded in all four of the main detectors during "experiments" in rooms the size of cathedrals.

"It's a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time," said Cern's director general, Rolf-Dieter Heuer.

Researchers waited eight years for the machine to be built, only to see it partially explode shortly after being switched on in September last year. Repairs and a new safety system cost an estimated £24m.

Earlier this month, work on the machine was again interrupted when a short circuit took out an electrical substation. The incident was blamed on a piece of bread dropped by a passing bird.

"This is great news, the start of a fantastic era of physics and, hopefully, discoveries after 20 years' work by the international community to build a machine and detectors of unprecedented complexity and performance," said Fabiola Gianotti, who represents the Atlas particle physics experiment at Cern.

The key aim of the project is to try to discover how the universe took shape, after the big bang 13.7bn years ago spilled out energy and matter at vast speeds that eventually became stars – including our sun – planets and then life itself.

The scientists plan to increase the beam intensity and accelerate the particles further. They hope the collider will help them see and understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter, antimatter and supersymmetry.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Nov 2009 | 6:05 pm

Op-Ed: Tornado Scientist Risks Life for Ph.D.

On June 17, 2009, we were out intercepting tornadoes just west of Aurora, Nebraska, as part of my doctoral research. We thought we were looking at weak tornadoes that day, but as it turned out, a freakishly intense storm almost cost us our lives even as it gave me the data I needed to complete my dissertation.

Thanks to a TV deal with the Discovery Channel, based on my recordings at TornadoVideos.net, we had been developing an armored vehicle designed to drive into tornadoes. The Dominator, as we semi-jokingly call it, is a modded 2008 Chevy Tahoe with bullet-proof Lexan windows, steel armor and a roll cage (in case things really get ugly inside a tornado).

The aerodynamic outer shell can drop to the ground via a hydraulic system, and is lined at the base with a rubber sheath to prevent wind from getting underneath and rolling the vehicle. On the roof, we installed a vertically oriented radar to measure the updraft winds inside the parent tornado and suction vortices contained within, and an anemometer to measure the horizontal rotational winds. We also mounted an HD camcorder on the roof inside a bulletproof glass bubble.

We were feeling pretty safe in the Dominator, but we knew the vehicle likely couldn’t handle wind speeds stronger than around 150 mph, so we’d visually assess the tornado’s strength before intercepting. Our worst-case scenario was driving into an initially weak tornado, which then intensifies rapidly with us inside the circulation. At high enough wind speeds, the storm could roll or loft the Dominator like a massive steel/Lexan kite.

And that’s almost what happened that day.

We’d been out intercepting some tornadoes spawned by an incredible supercell out on the plains. Most of them had weak ground circulations, so we weren’t too worried about them. Late that day, we approached a tornado that looked like the ones we’d been seeing, and positioned the Dominator just to the east of the funnel on a state highway.

We dropped the armored shell to the ground with the hydraulics to brace for what we thought would be a relatively weak impact. As the tornado drifted toward us, I reached out the driver’s side window to lift up and latch the bullet-proof glass. The window was stuck though, and instead of panicking and struggling with it, I just rolled up the regular glass window and fired up the instruments to record data. I thought the tornado would remain relatively weak.

As soon as the tornado hit us, my ears popped from the low pressure, and we were engulfed by the dusty debris cloud. I looked around and noticed the dust was moving faster and faster, and the sound of the strengthening wind became deafening like a jet engine or massive waterfall. At that moment, I knew we might be in trouble as this tornado was intensifying rapidly with us inside!

Ever since I got my driver’s license 12 years ago, I’ve devoted my life to seeing as many tornadoes as possible. Being within a few hundred yards of their violent winds is a feeling that’s hard to describe. They’re beautiful and powerful. As a poor meteorology student at the University of Oklahoma, the only equipment I could afford was a video camera and a beater car held together by duct tape. Juggling school and storm chasing, I would drive over 30,000 miles a year from Mexico to Canada to get as close as possible to this most powerful atmospheric force on the planet. I’ve captured over 150 tornadoes on camera since 1998.

For the last several years, I’ve been working on my Ph.D. in meteorology at OU, combining my passion for the science with my obsession for getting extremely close to tornadoes. In May 2007, we documented a strong, photogenic tornado in northwest Oklahoma from close range in HD video, and noticed the incredible mini-tornadoes rotating around the parent funnel pictured below.

University of Oklahoma meteorologist Brian Fiedler contacted me and said the helical structure and distinct “kink” in these mini-tornadoes, also called suction vortices, closely resembled what he had simulated with his high-resolution computer model, and he had never seen them so clearly photographed in real life.

Fielder said the winds inside these suction vortices theoretically could be two to four times that of the parent tornado with astronomical horizontal and vertical speeds, but they had never been directly measured. He said that a crucial piece of data for tornado science was to determine the true ratio of horizontal and vertical wind speeds between these mini suction vortices and the main tornado. This quickly became an obsession of mine and the ultimate goal of my research career.

Back in the center of the tornado, the wind dropped to an eerie calm for a few seconds that seemed like eternity. Then, a mini suction vortex developed right in front of the vehicle and rotated around to the left before surging in our direction. I yelled to Chris Chittick in the passenger seat and radar operator Mik Wimbrow in the backseat to hang on, and right before the suction vortex slammed the vehicle I looked away from the window just as it came crashing into my face. The driver’s side window also shattered, hitting Chris in the left side of the face. A 100 mph wind was blowing through the inside of the Dominator!

A second later the suction vortex and the backside of the tornado moved off to the east, we were in the clear. Chris and I both had blood streaming down the side of our faces. Thankfully, it was only from a few cuts from the shattered glass.

The horizontal wind speed and direction data recorded inside this tornado was very interesting, as seen in the plot below, with a minimum wind speed of 8 mph measured inside the “eye” of the tornado before quickly accelerating to near 140 mph a few seconds later as the suction vortex hit the vehicle. The wind speeds inside the parent tornado were relatively weak (averaging around 70-80 mph) but were substantially stronger inside the mini suction vortex that slammed into the Dominator.

While this situation was clearly very dangerous, the data recorded inside this tornado is a huge step toward accomplishing our research goal of measuring the winds contained in these suction vortices. Needless to say, we have some substantial improvements planned for the Dominator during the off season to prevent similar mishaps.

I’ve been in some intense storms — like the time we got covered in mud by an F5 tornado in Oklahoma, or the time our windshield was blown out by softball-sized hail in Texas, or the time we watched a tornado rip trees out of the ground a mere 100 yards away from us. However, none of those helped me finish my Ph.D. It might be risky, but documenting tornadoes at extreme close range is just what I love to do.

Images: Reed Timmer. Video: Discovery Channel/Reed Timmer.

See Also:

• The Tech War on Tornadogenesis
• Urban Sprawl, Climate Change Fueled Atlanta Tornado
• Wired Science’s Complete ‘From the Fields’ Series
• Op-Ed: Microbes May Be More Networked Than You Are
• Op-Ed: Why the Elevator Floor Is So Interesting
• Op-Ed: Stop Trying to Save the Planet
• Op-Ed: What Marmots Teach Us About Terrorism
• Op-Ed: Reversing the Congressional Science Lobotomy

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Nov 2009 | 6:00 pm

Appeal launched for Charles Darwin's Galapagos notebook

English Heritage calls for return of missing notebook on 150th anniversary of publication of On the Origin of Species

Today, on the 150th anniversary of a book that changed the world – the first edition of On the Origin of Species was published on 24 November 1859 – an appeal is being launched to recover a priceless notebook, probably stolen more than 30 years ago, in which Charles Darwin jotted down observations which would shape the rest of his life.

The book was full of notes taken as Darwin recorded the unique wildlife of the Galapagos Islands in 1835.

Temptingly pocket-sized, it was probably stolen in the late 1970s from the study table where he worked at Down House, near Biggin Hill in Kent, where he wrote Origin and all his later major works.

Fortunately the contents, including Darwin's first encounter with a giant Galapagos tortoise – "Met an immense turpin; took little notice of me" – were preserved on microfilm in 1969 and the public can now read them as English Heritage marks the anniversary by placing all 116,0000 words and 300 sketches and scribbles from Darwin's notebooks online.

The lost book recorded discoveries of fossils and a new species of frog, an attack by giant black bedbugs in Argentina, an escape from a snowstorm, his accurate prediction that the Falkland fox would soon be extinct – and his note that the ladies of Buenos Aires were thought to be the most beautiful in the world.

Even though the contents survive, Randal Keynes, author and great great grandson of the scientist, described the book itself as a unique treasure.

"The notebook with its immediate reflections of Darwin's impressions and thoughts at these critical moments for the history of human understanding of life on earth is surely a unique treasure that should surely be available for everyone to see at Down House, the place for understanding the man, his life and his science."

It was his father, the scientist Professor Richard Keynes, who realised the notebook had gone and raised the alarm, when he visited Down House in the early 1980s.

The house, with its surrounding landscape in which Darwin walked while working out his theories, is a shrine to scientists and historians, and was nominated as a World Heritage site this year by the government. After it became a museum in 1929 his descendants returned all 15 of the Beagle notebooks along with a wealth of other original items. It was successively cared for by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal College of Surgeons and the Natural History Museum, until English Heritage bought the house and contents in 1996.

Keynes doubts that a professional thief was involved. "It was so carelessly looked after that there was no need for a professional thief to remove it. I'd guess a Darwin collector or souvenir hunter took it one day when they found they were alone in the room. There has never been any sight or hint of it in the Darwin market. It's probably still sitting in the taker's collection and may surface at any time if it is found in or out of the collection by someone else and shown to an expert or dealer.

"There is a need to ensure that when it surfaces it is recognised at once that it left the collection at Down House without authorisation (it was the property of the Royal College of Surgeons – no person had any right to take it or give it away), and it must therefore be returned there where it belongs."

All his life Darwin carried small hard notebooks in his pocket, later transcribing thoughts and observations into larger books. He wrote: "Let the collector's motto be 'trust nothing to memory' for the memory becomes a fickle guardian when one interesting object is succeeded by another still more interesting."

He took a bundle of notebooks on the Beagle as the ship sailed around the world between 1831 and 1836, recording everything from the weather to the clothing and diet of the people he met.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Nov 2009 | 6:00 pm

Courtroom First: Brain Scan Used in Murder Sentencing

A defendant’s fMRI brain scan has been used in court for what is believed to be the first time.

Brain scan evidence that the defense claimed shows the defendant’s brain was psychopathic was allowed into the sentencing portion of a murder trial in Chicago, Science reported Monday. Brian Dugan, who had been convicted of the rape and murder of a 10-year old, was sentenced to death, despite the fMRI scans.

“I don’t know of any other cases where fMRI was used in that context,” Stanford professor Hank Greely told Science.

While the possibility of using fMRI data in a variety of contexts, particularly lie detection, has bounced around the margins of the legal system for years, there are almost no documented cases of its actual use. In the 2005 case Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court allowed brain scans to be entered as evidence to show that adolescent brains work differently than adult brains.

That’s a far cry, though, from using fMRI to establish the truth of testimony or that specific structures within an individual defendant’s brain are legally relevant.

It’s difficult to tell whether the Dugan case will be a watershed moment in the use of brain scan evidence in court, or if the evidence impacted the decision in this case.

“The penalty phase of a capital case … is a special situation where the law bends over backwards to allow the convicted man to introduce just about any mitigating evidence,” Greely noted.

Earlier this year, Wired.com reported on another attempt to use fMRI evidence in which Greely’s MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project was involved. In that case, fMRI evidence was entered into a juvenile sexual abuse case in San Diego, but was withdrawn without being admitted.

The debate over whether or not to use fMRI evidence has several dimensions. The first is whether reliable evidence can be obtained. On that score, fMRI appears to perform well. In a very small number of studies, researchers have identified lying in study subjects with accuracy ranging from 76 percent to over 90 percent (pdf). The real doubts begin to surface about whether the data will be good outside the laboratory in real settings.

“When you build a model based on people in the laboratory, it may or may not be that applicable to someone who has practiced their lie over and over, or someone who has been accused of something,” Elizabeth Phelps, a neuroscientist at New York University told Wired.com in March. “I don’t think that we have any standard of evidence that this data is going to be reliable in the way that the courts should be admitting.”

Even if the data isn’t perfect, some law theorists say it might be on par with traditional lie-detection carried out by human beings, if not better.

“It’s not clear whether or not a somewhat reliable but foolproof fMRI machine is any worse than having a jury look at a witness,” Brooklyn Law School’s Edward Cheng said. “It’s always important to think about what the baseline is. If you want the status quo, fine, but in this case, the status quo might not be all that good.”

Others like Greely argue that until studies are conducted under realistic settings, the technology should stay out of the courtroom.

One thing seems clear: If brain scan data has even a remote change of helping a defendant’s case, defense lawyers will keep to try to enter the evidence into court.

Via Greg Miller, Science

Image: flickr/foreverdigital

See Also:

• Scanning Dead Salmon in fMRI Machine Highlights Risk of Red Herrings
• MRI Lie Detection to Get First Day in Court
• Harvard Scientists Build a Device to Smoke Weed During Brain Scan
• Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your Brain
• Brain Scans Reveal What You’ve Seen

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Nov 2009 | 5:42 pm

Bottling-up anger 'bad for heart'

Men who do not openly express their anger if unfairly treated at work double their risk of a heart attack, researchers say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Nov 2009 | 5:38 pm

Pillars of science establishment release climate statement

This is a joint statement from the Met Office, the Natural Environment Research Council and the Royal Society on the state of the science of climate change ahead of the Copenhagen climate conference

The UK is at the forefront of tackling dangerous climate change, underpinned by world class scientific expertise and advice. Crucial decisions will be taken soon in Copenhagen about limiting and reducing the impacts of climate change now and in the future. Climate scientists from the UK and across the world are in overwhelming agreement about the evidence of climate change, driven by the human input of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

As three of the UK's leading scientific organisations involving most of the UK scientists working on climate change, we cannot emphasise enough the body of scientific evidence that underpins the call for action now, and we reinforce our commitment to ensuring that world leaders continue to have access to the best possible science. We believe this will be essential to inform sound decision-making on policies to mitigate and adapt to climate change up to Copenhagen and beyond.

The 2007 assessment report of the UN's climate change panel (the IPCC) – made up of the world's foremost climate scientists – provided unequivocal evidence for a warming climate, and a high degree of certainty that human activities are largely responsible for global warming since the middle of the 20th century. However, the IPCC process is based only on information already published and even since the last assessment report the scientific evidence for dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change has strengthened significantly:

• Global carbon dioxide concentrations continue to rise, and methane concentrations have started to increase again after a decade of near stability;
• The decade 2000-09 has been warmer, on average, than any other decade in the previous 150 years;
• Observed changes in precipitation (decreases in the subtropics and increases in high latitudes) have been at the upper limit of model projections;
• Arctic summer sea ice cover declined suddenly in 2007 and 2008, prompting the realisation that this environment may be far more vulnerable to change than previously thought;
• There is increasing evidence of continued and accelerating sea-level rises around the world.

We expect some of the most significant impacts of climate change to occur when natural variability is exacerbated by long-term global warming, so that even small changes in global temperatures can produce damaging local and regional effects. Year on year the evidence is growing that damaging climate and weather events - potentially intensified by global warming - are already happening and beginning to affect society and ecosystems. This includes:

• In the UK, heavier daily rainfall leading to local flooding such as in the summer of 2007;
• Increased risk of summer heat waves such as the summers of 2003 across the UK and Europe;
• Around the world, increasing incidence of extreme weather events with unprecedented levels of damage to society and infrastructure. This year's unusually destructive typhoon season in south-east Asia, while not easy to attribute directly to climate change, illustrates the vulnerabilities to such events;
• Sea level rises leading to dangerous exposure of populations in, for example, Bangladesh, the Maldives and other island states;
• Persistent droughts, leading to pressures on water and food resources, and the increasing incidence of forest fires in regions where future projections indicate long term reductions in rainfall, such as south-west Australia and the Mediterranean.

These emerging signals are consistent with what we expect from our projections, giving us confidence in the science and models that underpin them. In the absence of action to mitigate climate change, we can expect much larger changes in the coming decades than have been seen so far.

Some countries and regions are already vulnerable to climate variability and change, but in the coming decades all countries will be affected, regardless of their affluence or individual emissions. Climate change will have major consequences for food production, water availability, ecosystems and human health, migration pressures, and regional instability. In the UK, we will be affected both directly and indirectly, through the effects of climate change on, for example, global markets (notably in food), health, extent of flooding, and sea levels.

The accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will lead to long-term changes in the climate system that will persist for millennia. Our growing understanding of the balance of carbon between the atmosphere, oceans and terrestrial systems tells us that the greater the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the greater the risk of long-term damage to Earth's life support systems. Known or probable damage includes ocean acidification, loss of rain forests, degradation of ecosystems, and desertification. These effects will lead to loss of biodiversity and reduced agricultural productivity. Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases can substantially limit the extent and severity of long-term climate change.

Summary

The 2007 IPCC assessment, the most comprehensive and respected analysis of climate change to date, states clearly that without substantial global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions we can likely expect a world of increasing droughts, floods and species loss, of rising seas and displaced human populations. However even since the 2007 IPCC assessment the evidence for dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change has strengthened. The scientific evidence which underpins calls for action at Copenhagen is very strong. Without co-ordinated international action on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts on climate and civilisation could be severe.

• Prof Julia Slingo, chief scientist, Met Office; Prof Alan Thorpe, chief executive, Natural Environment Research Council; Lord Rees, president, the Royal Society

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

Philosophy hits the big screen

Can Examined Life, a movie featuring nothing but philosophers talking, really be an enjoyable cinematic experience. Surprisingly, yes

Early in the film Examined Life, literary theorist Avital Ronell asks the director Astra Taylor, "What are you getting me into here?" A pertinent question, because Taylor's new documentary makes for a grim outline: eight philosophers talking for 10 minutes each on anything from theories of justice to cosmopolitanism. The nearest we get to a car chase is a long, sweaty drive in an old Volvo to a lecture hall.

What it is, however, is an enjoyable experiment: moral philosophy – the motion picture. After all, your multiplex is more likely to show scenes of teenage devil worship than someone thinking. Film-makers have good reasons to avoid contemplation. For one thing, it is not a pretty business. As Oscar Wilde observed: "The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid."

That is less of a worry with Taylor's cast who, as American academics, are far better groomed than any troll to be found among the Bodleian library's stacks. But, more importantly, a medium of moving images will always struggle to depict thought, which often leaves film-makers inventing eureka moments. Think of that scene in Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon and his maths professor ecstatically scrawl on a blackboard.

Not only does Taylor avoid such hokiness, she also sidesteps the other elephant trap for documentaries of being too reverential towards their subjects. Each philosopher is presented without biography or bibliography, and filmed in transit – walking or rowing, and always, always talking.

The result is often exuberant. Slavoj Zizek – the world's first known cross between a Lacanian theorist and a grizzly bear – patrols a giant south London refuse centre and barks, "This is where we should start feeling at home," before blasting ecologists for their "conservative" notions of the environment.

As for the deconstructionist Ronell, she was right to be concerned. Teenagers who saw the crew filming in their park began chucking bottles. Yet the theorist was unruffled, reports Taylor: "She just said they reminded her of her students."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

Inside the mind of an actor (literally)

How does an actor engage with the part they are playing? Fiona Shaw undergoes a brain scan while reciting TS Eliot to help shed some light on the mystery

'My bra! My bra! I have to take off my bra!" yells Fiona Shaw, running past me into a changing room. She sounds like Richard III after the battle of Bosworth Field: "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" What a top thesp Shaw is: even when she's in a panic about her underwear she sounds Shakespearean, such is her actorly grasp of prosody.

And this is no small matter. Shaw has come to the basement of London University's psychology department to be analysed by cognitive neuroscientists. Today's experiment will find out what – if anything – goes on in actors' brains when they perform a role. "I'm sure there's some sort of muscle," says Shaw. "I'm sure I'm using the wrong word – some sort of muscle in an actor's brain which is extended."

But why does Shaw have to take off her bra? Because it's underwired. Metal plays havoc with the huge magnet used in the machine that is going to scan her brain. There have been accidents involving highly magnetised flying oxygen canisters – not here but in scanning rooms in other parts of the world.

Before Shaw is allowed into the operating room, she has to field queries from cognitive neuroscience researcher Carolyn McGettigan. "Do you have an Oyster card?" "No." Any piercings? "No." Removable dentures? "Not yet." And in she goes to the operating room, lies down on a bench that is winched up and then slowly reverses under the scanner.

Shaw has chosen to recite lines from TS Eliot's The Waste Land. She will recite two-line bursts from section two of the poem A Game of Chess. Why that section? "Because there's a shift between characters even in the middle of lines and because it's just a fantastically aggressive conversation between man and wife," says Shaw.

Shaw has acted in weirder circumstances. Two years ago she was buried up to her neck every evening, with just her head exposed, when she played Winnie in Beckett's Happy Days.

The rest of us observers cram into the room next door and watch her on a monitor. If I had a pound for every time someone said: "Rather her than me," I'd have enough for a ticket to see her at the National Theatre as Mother Courage. All we can see is her right eye, which looks – misleadingly – like a picture of terror, while the microphone strapped to her mouth makes her resemble Ving Rhames or Bruce Willis in the torture scene from Pulp Fiction.

Shaw, in her magnetised sarcophagus, intones the wife's words: "Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak / What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? / I never know what you are thinking. Think."

And then the husband's reply: "I think we are in rats' alley / Where the dead men lost their bones."

Between each couple of lines, she counts numbers on a screen in front of her face: "21, 22, 23, 24 . . ." Why has Professor Sophie Scott, the psychologist heading the experiment, decided that counting aloud should alternate with recited poetry in the experiment? "We wanted some speech that was semantically very empty but there's a grammar to it; a structure," she explains. "But counting aloud shouldn't engage emotional or memory parts of the brain in the way reciting poetry does."

The experiment is the latest in which Scott has explored the different ways our brains control our voices. "In the past, I've worked with impressionists to see what happens in their brains when they impersonate people's voices. The literature in psychology on faces is huge, but there's a lot less work on voices – partly because when we talk about speech, we go straight to focusing on language itself.

"Fiona is going to perform some lines from a text she's familiar with [Shaw performed Eliot's epic poem 13 years ago in a production directed by Deborah Warner, and will reprise that performance at Wilton's music hall in London next month]. She's conveying different people by the way they speak, and we're interested in finding out which parts of her brain are involved here."

The results will be displayed in new exhibition on identity at the Wellcome Trust. "Voices simultaneously convey a lot of different things about us," says Scott. "If you speak to someone on the phone you can tell if they're a man or a woman, roughly how old they are, roughly where they come from in the country, if they're ill, if they're in a bad mood – that's all there. But also voices change a great deal so I sound different speaking to you than if I'd just been arrested.

"I'm very interested in how we're doing that, how we're fitting our voices into different registers in different social settings. I'm starting to do this with people who vary their voices professionally. What I'd like to get at is understanding the normal variation in our voices on a minute-by-minute basis."

A few days later, Scott has the results of the scan. "I'm relieved," she says, "because Fiona was using more brain areas when she was reciting the poetry than when she was counting. I was worried that wouldn't happen."

But what really excites Scott is the parts of the brain Shaw was using for the poetry. "In addition to all the parts of the brain associated with motor skills, like moving the tongue or lips, she used a part of the brain associated with analysing or doing a complex transformation of a visual image. If I told you to imagine the figure 8, turn it through 90 degrees, and then think of it as a pair of glasses – that's the extra part Fiona was using when she was performing the text."

This part of the brain has the funtime name infra parietal sulkus. "Interestingly, it's not the part used by non-professionals when they try to produce a voice," Scott says. "Actors do it in a very different way from you or me. When I started doing this research I came from a phonetics background where you break speech down, analyse it and build it up again. But professionals don't. They're doing something much more visceral and bodily."

Indeed, Shaw had an intuition of what she did before Scott performed her experiment. "I think actors' brains are like musicians' in that they've been trained to learn enormous sections of language not by rote but by imaginative association," she told me before going into the scanner. "You're often in a visual architectural space in your head. In order to remember it, I need a visual image in my head."

Are all actors like that? "Probably, yes. And people who aren't actors certainly aren't like that because they say things like: 'How do you learn your lines?' Well, you don't learn your lines, you live in the imaginative moment and the line is inevitable in that situation."

Of course, that's not the whole story. Sir Ben Kingsley once told me through tears that, whenever he played a role, he always had a little phrase in his head that gave him the key to a character. When he played Anne Frank's father, it was the phrase, "Make me be the best dad in the world to that little girl."

"It's not remotely intellectual, what I do," Kingsley said.

The same may be true of Shaw. Even so, there's a great deal going on inside her head. She swivels around in her chair to look at the cross-section of her brain on the computer.

"What a beautiful brain!" she says, pulling on her coat and heading off to play Mother Courage. If Scott's experiment is right, it's certainly very different from that of ordinary mortals.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

Video: Inside an actor's brain | Fiona Shaw performs in a scanner

As part of a new exhibition on human identity, actor Fiona Shaw agreed to have her brain scanned while performing parts of TS Eliot's poem The Waste Land. Stuart Jeffries joined her at University College London

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

Plea to find lost Darwin notes crucial to theory of evolution

English Heritage launch an appeal to trace Charles Darwin's missing Galapagos notebook.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Nov 2009 | 5:01 pm

Teensy Chameleon Is New Species (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - A tiny chameleon species with a scaly horn atop its snout and blue dots on its limbs has been discovered in Tanzanian forests.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 23 Nov 2009 | 4:46 pm

Teensy Chameleon Is New Species

New chameleon species identified in threatened Tanzania forest.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Nov 2009 | 4:28 pm

Beams collide in Big Bang machine

Engineers operating the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have smashed together proton beams in the machine for the first time.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Nov 2009 | 3:44 pm

Adults Fooled by Visual Illusion, But Not Kids

Sometimes seeing means deceiving before believing, depending on your age. Children and adults size up objects differently, giving youngsters protection against a visual illusion that bedevils their elders, a new study suggests.

This unusual triumph of kids over grown-ups suggests that the brain’s capacity to consider the context of visual scenes, and not just focus on parts of scenes, develops slowly, say psychologist Martin Doherty of the University of Stirling in Scotland and his colleagues. Even at age 10, children lack adults’ attunement to visual context, Doherty’s team concludes in a paper published online November 12 in Developmental Science.

As a result, visual context can be experimentally manipulated to distort adults’ perception of objects’ sizes. But Doherty’s group finds that children, especially those younger than 7, show little evidence of altered size perception on a task called the Ebbinghaus illusion.

“When visual context is misleading, adults literally see the world less accurately than they did as children,” Doherty says.

This pattern holds for Scottish children and adults in the new study as well as for Japanese children and adults who participated in other investigations conducted by Doherty’s team.

Some researchers argue that East Asians focus broadly on the context of what they see while Westerners focus narrowly on central figures. Doherty says the new findings instead indicate that adults in both Scotland and Japan can’t help but track visual context, although this tendency was stronger in the Japanese adults.

Other investigators have noted that children with autism don’t succumb to visual size illusions, consistent with the idea that autism involves an excessive focus on details. But visual context largely eludes all young children, not just those with autism, Doherty asserts.

Even if the new findings hold up, it’s still possible that further research will show that children with autism develop a susceptibility to size illusions more slowly than those without it, remarks psychologist Danielle Ropar of the University of Nottingham in England.

Psychologist Carl Granrud of the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley calls the new study convincing but “somewhat surprising.” Children exhibit sensitivity to visual context on some other visual tasks, he says, such as one in which two equal-sized horizontal lines are perceived as differing in length when flanked by diagonal lines.

Earlier research has yielded conflicting evidence that children fall prey to the Ebbinghaus illusion, partly because of weaknesses in study designs, Doherty says.

His team studied 151 children, ages 4 to 10, recruited from a Scottish primary school and nursery school. Another 24 volunteers, ages 18 to 25, were college students.

Participants viewed a series of images containing pairs of orange circles in which one circle was 2 percent to 18 percent larger than the other. An experimenter asked participants to point to the circle that “looked bigger.”

Control images showed only two orange circles. In other images, each orange circle was surrounded by gray circles intended either to hinder or aid accurate size perception.

Misleading images showed the smaller orange circle surrounded by even smaller gray circles to boost its apparent size. Large gray circles surrounding the larger orange circle were intended to shrink its apparent size.

In helpful images, large gray circles surrounded the smaller orange circle to make it appear smaller than it actually was. Small circles surrounded the larger orange circle to magnify its apparent size.

Four-year-olds correctly identified the larger circle in 79 percent of control images. That figure rose with age, reaching 95 percent in adults.

For 4- to 6-year-olds, accuracy of size perception for misleading images remained at about what it was for control images. Misleading images increasingly elicited errors from older children and tricked adults most of the time. Adults made almost no errors on helpful images. Kids from age 7 to 10 erred on a minority of helpful images, while 4- to 6-year-olds performed no better than chance.

Below: (a) Most people see the further circle as being larger than the nearer one, though they are equal. (b) Adding surrounds, as in the Ebbinghaus illusion, increases the perceived size difference between the two circles. (c) The large element in the centre of the second row from the top may be seen as being larger than that arrowed below, but they are equal.

Images: Martin Doherty

See Also:

• Schizophrenic Brains Not Fooled by Optical Illusion
• Rubber Hand Trick Reveals Brain-Body Link
• The Best Visual Illusion of the Year
• Eye Flicker Explains ‘Enigma’ Optical Illusion
• Magic Tricks Reveal Inner Workings of the Brain

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Nov 2009 | 3:06 pm

Global warming rigged? Here's the email I'd need to see | George Monbiot

The leaked exchanges are disturbing, but it would take a conspiracy of a very different order to justify sceptics' claims

It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

But do these revelations justify the sceptics' claims that this is "the final nail in the coffin" of global warming theory? Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury man-made climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed. Luckily for the sceptics, and to my intense disappointment, I have now been passed the damning email that confirms that the entire science of global warming is indeed a scam. Had I known that it was this easy to rig the evidence, I wouldn't have wasted years of my life promoting a bogus discipline. In the interests of open discourse, I feel obliged to reproduce it here.

From: ernst.kattweizel@redcar.ac.uk

Sent: 29 October 2009

To: The Knights Carbonic

Gentlemen, the culmination of our great plan approaches fast. What the Master called "the ordering of men's affairs by a transcendent world state, ordained by God and answerable to no man", which we now know as Communist World Government, advances towards its climax at Copenhagen. For 185 years since the Master, known to the laity as Joseph Fourier, launched his scheme for world domination, the entire physical science community has been working towards this moment.

The early phases of the plan worked magnificently. First the Master's initial thesis – that the release of infrared radiation is delayed by the atmosphere – had to be accepted by the scientific establishment. I will not bother you with details of the gold paid, the threats made and the blood spilt to achieve this end. But the result was the elimination of the naysayers and the disgrace or incarceration of the Master's rivals. Within 35 years the 3rd Warden of the Grand Temple of the Knights Carbonic (our revered prophet John Tyndall) was able to "demonstrate" the Master's thesis. Our control of physical science was by then so tight that no major objections were sustained.

More resistance was encountered (and swiftly dispatched) when we sought to install the 6th Warden (Svante Arrhenius) first as professor of physics at Stockholm University, then as rector. From this position he was able to project the Master's second grand law – that the infrared radiation trapped in a planet's atmosphere increases in line with the quantity of carbon dioxide the atmosphere contains. He and his followers (led by the Junior Warden Max Planck) were then able to adapt the entire canon of physical and chemical science to sustain the second law.

Then began the most hazardous task of all: our attempt to control the instrumental record. Securing the consent of the scientific establishment was a simple matter. But thermometers had by then become widely available, and amateur meteorologists were making their own readings. We needed to show a steady rise as industrialisation proceeded, but some of these unfortunates had other ideas. The global co-option of police and coroners required unprecedented resources, but so far we have been able to cover our tracks.

The over-enthusiasm of certain of the Knights Carbonic in 1998 was most regrettable. The high reading in that year has proved impossibly costly to sustain. Those of our enemies who have yet to be silenced maintain that the lower temperatures after that date provide evidence of global cooling, even though we have ensured that eight of the 10 warmest years since 1850 have occurred since 2001. From now on we will engineer a smoother progression.

Our co-option of the physical world has been just as successful. The thinning of the Arctic ice cap was a masterstroke. The ring of secret nuclear power stations around the Arctic circle, attached to giant immersion heaters, remains undetected, as do the space-based lasers dissolving the world's glaciers.

Altering the migratory and reproductive patterns of the world's wildlife has proved more challenging. Though we have now asserted control over the world's biologists, there is no accounting for the unauthorised observations of farmers, gardeners, birdwatchers and other troublemakers. We have therefore been forced to drive migrating birds, fish and insects into higher latitudes, and to release several million tonnes of plant pheromones every year to accelerate flowering and fruiting. None of this is cheap, and ever more public money, secretly diverted from national accounts by compliant governments, is required to sustain it.

The co-operation of these governments requires unflagging effort. The capture of George W Bush, a late convert to the cause of Communist World Government, was made possible only by the threatened release of footage filmed by a knight at Yale, showing the future president engaged in coitus with a Ford Mustang. Most ostensibly capitalist governments remain apprised of where their real interests lie, though I note with disappointment that we have so far failed to eliminate Vaclav Klaus. Through the offices of compliant states, the Master's third grand law has been established: world government will be established under the guise of controlling man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.

Keeping the scientific community in line remains a challenge. The national academies are becoming ever more querulous and greedy, and require higher pay-offs each year. The inexplicable events of the past month, in which the windows of all the leading scientific institutions were broken and a horse's head turned up in James Hansen's bed, appear to have staved off the immediate crisis, but for how much longer can we maintain the consensus? Knights Carbonic, now that the hour of our triumph is at hand, I urge you all to redouble your efforts. In the name of the Master, go forth and terrify.

Professor Ernst Kattweizel, University of Redcar. 21st Grand Warden of the Temple of the Knights Carbonic.

This is the kind of conspiracy the deniers need to reveal to show that man-made climate change is a con. The hacked emails are a hard knock, but the science of global warming withstands much more than that.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pm

Climate change email hacking to be looked into by University of East Anglia

• Online publication seized on by denial bloggers
• No evidence that data was falsified, says Met Office

The University of East Anglia is to launch a review into the theft and online publication of hundreds of emails sent by scientists in its climate research unit.

Selected and unverified extracts from the emails have been used by climate change deniers to claim that the scientists colluded to manipulate climate data, causing a storm on deniers' blogs. The charge is rejected as "despicable" by those involved and as groundless by leading scientific bodies.

With less than two weeks before the crucial UN climate change summit in Copenhagen, climate scientists and campaigners are assessing the damage the incident has caused to the public understanding of global warming. Opinion was split last night over how to deal with the fallout.

Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, called for an investigation.

"Once appropriate action has been taken over the hacking, there has to be some process to assess the substance of the email messages as well," he said.

"The selective disclosure and dissemination of the messages has created the impression of impropriety, and the only way of clearing the air now would be through a rigorous investigation. "

However, others said an investigation would be a mistake, particularly as some climate sceptics were also calling for one.

Andy Atkins, Friends of the Earth's executive director, said: "Calls for an inquiry look suspiciously like an attempt to cast doubt on the science of climate change ahead of crucial UN negotiations.

"The overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe that climate change is happening, that it is man-made, and that it poses a major threat to people across the planet. We can't afford to be distracted from the need for urgent action."

George Marshall, founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network, said: "The UEA response has been frankly pathetic. One can only imagine that the UEA's communications team is totally out of its depth. A less charitable conclusion is that they are defending the interests of UEA and are not concerned about – or have not understood – the damage to climate science."

The Met Office, which jointly produces global temperature data with the climate research unit, said there was no need for an inquiry. "If you look at the emails, there isn't any evidence that the data was falsified and there's no evidence that climate change is a hoax," a spokesman said.

"It's a shame that some of the sceptics have had to take this rather shallow attempt to discredit robust science undertaken by some of the world's most respected scientists. It's no surprise, with the Copenhagen talks just days away, that this has happened now."

Michael Mann, director of the earth system science centre at the University of Pennsylvania, and a long-term target of sceptics, agreed the timing was suspicious.

"What appears to have happened is that going into this monumental climate summit in a couple of weeks the other side, which does not favour taking action to combat climate change, resorted to an illegal smear campaign," he said.

"They are going through them and cherry-picking them for any word they can find that is cited out of context and can appear incriminating. I think it's despicable."

He told the Guardian the emails – though embarrassing – did not undermine the body of science. "This doesn't make any difference at all in degree of consensus on climate change," Mann said. "I hope it boomerangs back on the criminals."

A joint statement from the Met Office, Royal Society and the Natural Environment Research Council said: "The scientific evidence which underpins calls for action at Copenhagen is very strong.

"Without co-ordinated international action on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts on climate and civilisation could be severe."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Nov 2009 | 1:42 pm

Grubby children get clean bill of health

For parents too stretched to make sure their offspring are perfectly turned out at all times, it may just be the scientific cover they've been waiting for.

They will now be able to answer the disapproving tuts of their more fastidious friends by pointing to research which gives biological backing to the old adage that the more germs a child is exposed to during early childhood, the better their immune system in later life

Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California found that being too clean could impair the skin's ability to heal. The San Diego-based team discovered that normal bacteria that live on the skin trigger a pathway that helps prevent inflammation when we get hurt.

These bugs dampen down overactive immune responses which can cause cuts and grazes to swell, or lead to rashes, according to research published in the online edition of Nature Medicine.

"These germs are actually good for us," said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are "good bacteria" when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation.

By studying mice and human cells, researchers discovered that they did this by making a molecule, called lipoteichoic acid (or LTA) , which acted on keratinocytes, the main cell types found in the outer layer of the skin.

The findings bear out the "hygiene hypothesis", first proposed in the 1980s, which suggests that early childhood exposure to bugs might "prime" the immune system to prevent allergies. It has been used to explain why increasing numbers of children in developed countries, where antibacterial sprays and wipes are common, suffer from allergies such as hay fever and eczema. "The exciting implication of the work is that it provides a molecular basis to understand the hygiene hypothesis," said Prof Gallo. "This may help us to devise new therapeutic approaches for inflammatory skin diseases".

According to Allergy UK, rates of allergy trebled in the UK in the last decade, with one in three suffering.

The pressure group Parents Outloud, which campaigns to stop children being "mollycoddled" and "oversanitised" by health and safety regulations, welcomed the research. "Hopefully research like this will help parents realise that it's natural and healthy for children to get outdoors and get mucky and that it doesn't do their health any harm," said a spokeswoman, Margaret Morrissey.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Nov 2009 | 1:16 pm

First Proton Collisions in the LHC

After the early announcement on Friday that CERN had successfully circulated the first protons around the 17 mile-long ring of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), really early news of the first ever particle collisions inside the LHC has been announced. ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Nov 2009 | 1:09 pm

Global Warming Emails Heat Up Debate

Thousands of e-mails hacked from a research center have provided fodder for climate skeptics.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Nov 2009 | 12:50 pm

Building a Better Alien-Calling Code

Alien-seeking researchers have designed a new, simple code for sending messages into space. To a reasonably clever alien with math skills and a bit of astronomical training, the messages should be easy to decipher.

As of now, Earthlings spend much more time searching for alien radio messages than broadcasting news of ourselves. We know how to do it, but relatively little attention has been paid to “ensuring that a transmitted message will be understandable to an alien listener,” wrote California Institute of Technology geoscientist Michael Busch and Rachel Reddick, a Stanford University physicist, in a study filed online Friday on arXiv.

According to Busch and Reddick, neither the Arecibo message, beamed at star cluster M13 in 1974, nor the Cosmic Calls sent in 1999 and 2003 were tested for decipherability. So the pair devised their own alien-friendly messaging system: Busch invented the code, and Reddick role-played the part of an alien trying to decode it.

Like the earlier codes, Busch’s used radio to send a string of ones and zeroes. But whereas those messages were meant to be translated into pictures, Busch’s code is supposed to be turned into mathematical equations.

Reddick received the code, minus a chunk at its beginning and fragments throughout its body, as if she’d tuned in late to a signal slightly distorted by its passage through space. Knowing nothing about the code, and using nothing but a pencil, paper and a computer’s search-and-replace function, she decoded its start: descriptions of gravity and atomic mass ratios, which are “dimensionless numbers that should be universally recognized.” Once Reddick worked those out, the rest of the message — descriptions of atoms, chemical formulas for the elements required for life on Earth, and details of our solar system — came quickly.

The code does presume that alien listeners have “at least an equivalent knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, and physics,” wrote Busch and Reddick. But even five undergraduate students needed only an hour to figure out a few of Busch’s mathematical and grammatical basics, so it can’t be that hard.

For now, it seems unlikely that the code will actually be sent into space. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence runs on a shoestring budget, and doesn’t directly receive national funding. But if it’s this cheap and easy to talk to aliens, perhaps humanity should try more often.

Images: 1) Flickr/armigeress. 2) A piece of the Cosmic Call mesage./NASA. 3) A snippet of Busch’s test code./arXiv

Citation: “Testing SETI Message Designs.” By Michael W. Busch, Rachel M. Reddick. arXiv, Nov. 20, 2009.

See Also:

• SETI@Home Wants You! More Volunteers Needed to Process New Data
• When Intelligent and Natural Design Collide
• The Surprising Spirituality of SETI
• Searching for Alien Neutrino Messages
• Nov. 20, 1984: SETI Seekers Find a Home

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecosystem and planetary tipping points.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Nov 2009 | 12:18 pm

Internet Intercedes to Make Solar Cheaper

While researchers have struggled for half a century to push down the cost of solar photovoltaic modules, an innovative web service is creating communities of customers who pay less for solar panels through collective bargaining with installers.

One Block Off the Grid collects groups of would-be solar purchasers in cities with good solar access and brokers a deal between them and a local installer. It’s internet-based environmental organizing, and it appears to be working.

In a campaign running in San Diego, their customers will pay just $5.29 per watt of power capacity. Even after paying for an inverter to convert the DC power the panels generate into the AC power appliances use, the total One Block Off the Grid price is substantially lower than the San Diego County average. According to California Energy Commission statistics, the average total cost of a solar photovoltaic system is almost $8 per watt.

Now, they are launching a new tool that will provide instantaneous solar price estimates, the first online tool to do so. The new interface went live Sunday.

“The power of the internet has not been harnessed by the solar industry,” said Brad Burton, who heads up products and strategy at 1BOG. “The components of viral growth and immediate person-to-person contact haven’t been explored at all.”

The Bay Area company Sungevity provides cost information via an online form, but they are ultimately parsed by a human being, so the quotes are not real-time. Sungevity’s solar price estimator does allow for a lot more system customization, while One Block Off the Grid’s setup is clearly designed for accessibility. Nonetheless, some questions in 1BOG’s tool require some knowledge about your house, such as the material out of which your roof is made.

The ease of either system, though, is impressive relative to earlier methods of getting solar panels. Usually, getting a quote required that a contractor come to your house. Not only was that a hassle for homeowners, but it cost the solar installers money, too. Many people asked about solar but few ended up installing it. One Block Off the Grid participants are different, said Scott Gordon, whose company Helio Power worked with the company on the San Diego project.

“The leads from One Block Off the Grid are probably twice as good,” Gordon said. “They have twice the close rate from the sales perspective of the leads you get from anywhere else.”

1BOG’s Burton claimed some of their installers are closing 25 percent of the leads that emanate from their company.

“We do eliminate a lot of their marketing costs and cost of acquisition and the other thing that we’re able to do is verify the quality of the deal as an independent objective third party,” he said.

The arrangement, all facilitated by the internet, helps squeeze some of the soft and difficult-to-quantify costs that help make distributed solar power more expensive than centralized fossil fuel-based electricity.

There are two big components to the cost of installing solar panels on a house. The one technologists talk about is the solar module itself, the hardware. Researchers can push that cost down by increasing the efficiency of the cells or using less or cheaper materials. Early solar cells were something like $200 a watt, not including installation costs. Now, the average solar module costs $4.34 per watt, according to SolarBuzz, a tracking service.

But all the other stuff that goes into putting that module at your house costs money, too. Solar people call this the “balance-of-system” cost and that’s where One Block Off the Grid is making an impact. By creating volume for solar installers and doing some of the sales and marketing work, they can get those installers to offer lower prices to their customers. The net result is cheaper solar power, even if the technology doesn’t shift at all.

“These costs do vary so it’s hard to say how real the cost savings might be, but their story is credible,” said Chris Marnay, who researches distributed energy systems at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in an e-mail to Wired.com.

Still, there’s a ways to go. Analysts estimate that to be as cheap as electricity coming out of the socket and produced by fossil fuels, the total installed cost of a photovoltaic system would have to be $3.50 per watt.

To get there, the solar industry will have to change. Much like home building before the 1950s, solar installations are put in one by one. The personalized service might be nice, but it’s a costly way of doing business.

After the war, major home building companies, like the iconic Levitt and Sons, rose to prominence. They standardized parts, equipment, procedures and marketing. It led to a lot of homes that looked the same, but were cheaper than anything that had been available before. Larger solar companies doing many, many installations would presumably benefit from similar economies of scale and push the total cost down.

Marnay said solar installing has been a cottage industry with many installers doing small amounts of business, but he expected that to change as solar installations grow.

Still, One Block Off the Grid isn’t big enough yet to change the economics for a whole region or state. It has only facilitated about 500 solar installations since they were founded in summer of 2008, though the company plans to “really, really scale up our operation,” Gordon said.

And that could be wise, too, because unlike most internet startups, One Block Off the Grid is already profitable.

Image: waynenf/Flickr

See Also:

• Ecosmackdown: Pets Versus Solar Panels
• Thin-Film Solar Startup Debuts With $4 Billion in Contracts
• Biggest Solar Deal Ever Announced — We’re Talking Gigawatts
• How to Make a Solar Cell With Donuts and Tea
• Top 10 Utilities for Solar Power
• Utilities Jumping Into the Solar Game

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

Cute New Chameleon Discovered While Being Eaten by Snake

A new species of chameleon, measuring just 6 inches from snout to tail, has been discovered in east Tanzania’s mountains.

Differentiated from other species by the pattern of scales on its head and the flat shape of its nose appendage, it was first spotted while being eaten by a tree snake. The snake dropped the reptile, and it was collected by scientists.

“I found it by chance doing conservation surveys looking at monkeys and threats to trees,” said Andy Marshall, an ecologist at the University of York. “While doing this work, I often see things that might be quite interesting, and this one turned out to be a new species.”

While some newly described species take their names from celebrities like James Brown, Marshall and his co-author Michele Menegon, gave the creature a more serious name, Kinyongia magomberae, after the forest where it was discovered.

The Magombera forest near the Udzungwa Mountains National Park in Tanzania is one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth. Marshall and the team there have discovered a multitude of new species from frogs and a shrew to mollusks and millipedes.

But the forest isn’t currently protected, and Marshall described it as “under threat” from further destructive development.

The description of the new species was published today in the African Journal of Herpetology.

Images: Andy Marshall.

See Also:

• Birth of New Species Witnessed by Scientists
• New Bald Bird Discovered in Laos
• Freaky New Ghostshark ID’d Off California Coast
• Even-More-Gigantic Giant Orb Spider Discovered
• 10 Strange Species Discovered Last Year
• Hobbits May Belong on New Branch of Our Family Tree

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 23 Nov 2009 | 11:42 am

The Lightning Planets

The Scoop: No matter what planet you're on, lighting is about storms, and about ice and rain -- even if it's not necessarily water rain.If you could see Jupiter's magnetic field, it would be the size of the full moon in the sky---the biggest object in the solar system (Saturn actually passed through Jupiter's...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Nov 2009 | 11:27 am

Carbon credit

Are children's futures going up in smoke?
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Nov 2009 | 11:10 am

Snake spits out new species of chameleon at scientist's feet

Latest find in natural world was result of reptile coughing up lizard as conservationist studied monkeys in the jungle

It was so nearly known as dinner. Instead, a small and not terribly impressive chameleon has become the newest discovery of the natural world, after a startled Tanzanian snake spat a still-undigested specimen at the feet of a British scientist, who identified it as a previously unknown species.

Dr Andrew Marshall, a conservationist from York University, was surveying monkeys in the Magombera forest in Tanzania, when he stumbled across a twig snake which, frightened, coughed up the chameleon and fled. Though a colleague persuaded him not to touch it because of the risk from venom, Marshall suspected it might be a new species, and took a photograph to send to colleagues, who confirmed his suspicions.

Kinyongia magomberae, literally "the chameleon from Magombera", is the result, though Marshall told the Guardian today the fact it wasn't easy to identify is precisely what made it unique.

"The thing is, colour isn't the best thing for telling chameleons apart, since they can change colour for camouflage. They are usually identified based on the patterning and shape of the head, and the arrangement of scales. In this case it's the bulge of scales on its nose."

Happily for Marshall, shortly afterwards he spotted a second chameleon, this time alive, and was able to photograph it. The two creatures were found about six miles apart, which he believes may be the full extent of the area colonised by the extremely rare species. Though he found the specimen in 2005, his paper on the discovery, published this week, puts the find formally on record. "It takes quite a long time to convince the authorities that you have a new species," he said.

Had Marshall hoped it might be named after him? "Oh crumbs, no. The thing is, if you work in an area of conservation importance and you can give a species the name of that area it can really highlight that area. By giving it the name Magombera it raises the importance of the forest." The tiny area of jungle is currently unprotected, he said, and he hopes the find will persuade the Tanzanian authorities to extend protection.

"When we presented our findings to the local village people they were just amazed that the world now knows an animal by the Swahili name Magombera," he said.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 23 Nov 2009 | 11:03 am

Designers speed ahead with 1,000mph car

The UK team aiming to smash its own land speed record by driving a car beyond 1,000mph settles on a final design for the vehicle.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 23 Nov 2009 | 10:36 am

It's Elemental, My Dear Watson

It's practically a cliche these days to compare scientific pursuits to unraveling a mystery, but it's an accurate description of the ongoing search for neutrinos. Neutrinos, the so-called "ghost particles," rarely interact with other particles, which makes them extremely difficult ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Nov 2009 | 10:05 am

Lightning Holds Fingerprint of Antimatter

Positrons, the antimatter equivalent to electrons, were detected in gamma ray bursts during lightning storms.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Nov 2009 | 10:05 am

Icebergs Surprise New Zealand

At least a hundred icebergs have trekked from Antarctica toward New Zealand.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Nov 2009 | 9:50 am

The mysteries of lightning

Scientists don't know everything they want to know about lightning, to be sure, or about the atmosphere over the tropical Atlantic, but on the face of it, it is fair to say that nothing about an airliner flying through the ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

App Monitors App Power Use on Android Smartphones

A new smartphone app can help you find out which apps are battery hogs.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Nov 2009 | 8:56 am

Color E-readers Inspired by Butterflies

Butterflies help inspire early color e-readers.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Nov 2009 | 8:41 am

Rare Darwin Drafts Go Online

Darwin Manuscripts Project will place Darwin's scientific manuscripts and notes online.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Nov 2009 | 7:50 am

New Chameleon Species Discovered

Meet Kinyongia magomberae (the Magombera chameleon), a new species of chameleon just found in Tanzania, East Africa. (Credit: Andrew Marshall, University of York) Its discovery was a happy coincidence, although not for one chameleon. Project leader Andrew Marshall, from the ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Nov 2009 | 7:19 am

Why Kids Ask Why

Kids ask questions for a reason.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Nov 2009 | 6:45 am

Computers Get Self-Healing Software

Software finds problems and creates patches without human input.
Source: Livescience.com | 23 Nov 2009 | 6:04 am

Drugs Could Reverse Down Syndrome Symptoms

Drugs could target a newly-found neurotransmitter link to Down syndrome's learning disability.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Nov 2009 | 4:30 am

First Signs of Melting Seen in East Antarctica

Earth's last great icy citadel, the East Antarctica Ice Sheet, is beginning to crumble under warming.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Nov 2009 | 2:20 am