MRSA on the rise in hospital outpatients, new study finds; Seven-fold increase in potentially lethal superbug

The community-associated strain of the deadly superbug MRSA -- an infection-causing bacteria resistant to most common antibiotics -- poses a far greater health threat than previously known and is making its way into hospitals, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

New cause for Alzheimer's disease?

Scientists have discovered that a precursor to nerve growth factor (pro-NGF) may play a pathogenic role in Alzheimer's disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

First-ever blueprint of 'minimal cell' is more complex than expected

What are the bare essentials of life, the indispensable ingredients required to produce a cell that can survive on its own? Can we describe the molecular anatomy of a cell, and understand how an entire organism functions as a system? Researchers are providing the first comprehensive picture of a minimal cell, based on an extensive quantitative study of the biology of the bacterium that causes atypical pneumonia. The study uncovers fascinating novelties relevant to bacterial biology and shows that even the simplest of cells is more complex than expected.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Overcoming barriers for organic electronics

Electronic devices can't work well unless all of the transistors, or switches, within them allow electrical current to flow easily when they are turned on. Engineers have now determined why some transistors made of organic crystals don't perform well, yielding ideas about how to make them work better.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Exposure to both traffic, indoor pollutants puts some kids at higher risk for asthma later

New research presents strong evidence that the "synergistic" effect of early-life exposure to both outdoor traffic-related pollution and indoor endotoxin causes more harm to developing lungs than one or the other exposure alone.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

Auditory illusion: How our brains can fill in the gaps to create continuous sound

It is relatively common for listeners to "hear" sounds that are not really there. In fact, it is the brain's ability to reconstruct fragmented sounds that allows us to successfully carry on a conversation in a noisy room.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

New device enables early detection of cancerous skin tumors

Researchers are developing a new device that detects cancerous skin tumors, including melanomas that aren't visible to the naked eye. The OSPI instrument (Optical Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging) revealed new textures of lesions that have never been seen before. Dermatologists and plastic surgeons typically diagnose skin tumors by their appearance with the naked eye and only rarely using a dermatoscope -- a magnifying tool that allows tumors to be examined in detail.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

Stem cells heal lungs of newborn animals: May lead to new treatments for lungs of premature babies

Scientists have demonstrated that stem cells protect and repair the lungs of newborn rats. The study finds that rats treated with stem cells ran twice as far, and had better survival rates. Currently, there is no treatment for the lungs of babies born too early. Scientists predict these results will lead to a new treatment for these babies within three years.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

Intensive land management leaves Europe without carbon sinks

A new calculation of Europe's greenhouse gas balance shows that emissions of methane and nitrous oxide tip the balance and eliminate Europe's terrestrial sink of greenhouse gases.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

New tool for helping pediatric heart surgery

A team of researchers has developed a way to simulate blood flow on the computer to optimize surgical designs. It is the basis of a new tool that may help surgeons plan for a life-saving operation called the "Fontan" surgery, which is performed on babies born with severe congenital heart defects.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

China leaders vow to tackle climate change: Xinhua (AFP)

AFP - China's Communist Party leadership pledged during a meeting Friday to "actively" tackle climate change and stick to its current fiscal and monetary policies, state-run media reported.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 3:25 am

Hammerhead shark mystery solved

A hammerhead shark's unusual shape gives it outstanding vision, according to a study which may solve a centuries-old mystery.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Nov 2009 | 3:11 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - The low pressure system off the New England coast was forecast to slowly lift northeast on Friday, while rain and high-elevation snow were expected to persist across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Appalachians.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 3:04 am

Climate debate heats up Caribbean summit (AP)

AP - An approaching global climate summit has raised the temperature at a typically low-key meeting of leaders from Britain's former colonial empire.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 2:49 am

Shuttle crew prepares for return to Earth (AFP)

AFP - Favorable weather conditions awaited the shuttle Atlantis and its seven-astronaut crew on their expected return to Earth Friday, after a successful 11-day mission to the International Space Station.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 2:45 am

Indonesia rejects Bali plan for turtle sacrifices (AP)

AP - Indonesia has rejected a push by the resort island of Bali for rare turtles to be legally slain in Hindu ceremonies, siding with conservationists of the protected reptiles against religious advocates, an official said Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 2:43 am

Shuttle Atlantis set for landing

The crew of the space shuttle Atlantis prepare to land in Florida after their 11-day mission to the International Space Station.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 27 Nov 2009 | 2:40 am

Space shuttle Atlantis aims for morning landing (AP)

AP - Space shuttle Atlantis is headed for a landing, weather permitting.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 27 Nov 2009 | 1:02 am

Our First Interstellar Destination: A Brown Dwarf?

We are on the verge of uncovering a “really cool” universe of potentially millions of never before seen objects. By “really cool” I’m not trying to sound hippy-dippy, but rather am talking about objects in space that are less than ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 27 Nov 2009 | 12:52 am

Secret of shark's bizarre head

The wing-like heads of hammerhead sharks with their widely spaced eyes give the creatures excellent binocular vision

The bizarre appearance of hammerhead sharks has led generations of marine biologists to ponder the same question: why the wide face?

Part of the answer may now be at hand. Eye tests on species caught off the coasts of Florida and Hawaii show that the wider the head the better the shark's binocular vision, and hence its perception of distance.

The fish are thought to have evolved their wide, wing-like skulls to enhance their sense of smell and ability to pick up electrical activity from other marine life, but the latest study is the first to investigate the role eyesight may have played.

"One of the things they say on TV shows is that hammerheads have better vision than other sharks, but no one had ever tested this," said Michelle McComb, a marine biologist at Florida Atlantic University.

Of the nine species of hammerhead shark, the aptly named "winghead" has the most pronounced cranial features, with a skull as wide as half its body length. The more inconspicuous bonnethead shark has the most narrow skull of all hammerheads.

The scientists caught hammerheads and other shark species, such as lemon sharks and blacknose sharks, and transported them back to the laboratory for eye tests. During the examinations, a low-intensity light was swept horizontally and vertically across the eye of each shark, while electrodes picked up electrical activity from the fishes' retinas.

The researchers then worked out the size of the visual field for each eye in the different shark species. This revealed any blindspots, but also highlighted regions where the visual fields from each eye overlapped to produce binocular or 3D vision.

The eye tests showed that the bonnethead shark had a modest 13 degree overlap in the visual fields of its eyes, while the winghead had an enormous 48 degree overlap, giving it a much broader field of 3D vision. The study appears in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

"When we first started the project we didn't think that the hammerhead would have binocular vision at all," McComb said. "We were out there to dispel the myth."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm

China to launch second lunar probe next October (AP)

AP - China is set to launch its second lunar probe next October in preparation for an unmanned moon landing by the end of 2012, space program officials were quoted Friday as saying.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Nov 2009 | 9:36 pm

China vows to dramatically slow emissions growth (AP)

AP - China promised to slow its carbon emissions, saying it would nearly halve the ratio of pollution to GDP over the next decade — a major move by the world's largest emitter, whose cooperation is crucial to any deal as a global climate summit approaches.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Nov 2009 | 9:31 pm

Islands Make Waves ... In the Sky

Islands don't move much, but they can still make waves.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 Nov 2009 | 7:19 pm

Rich 'should help Amazon forests'

Nine nations in the Amazon region call on rich countries to provide poorer nations with the funds to preserve forests.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2009 | 7:01 pm

Singing birds help with headcount

The chirps and whistles of birdsong can help to provide an accurate estimate of the size of bird populations.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2009 | 5:58 pm

MS 'blood blockage theory' tested

US scientists are testing a radical new theory that MS is caused by blockages in the veins that drain the brain.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2009 | 5:07 pm

India's final push to wipe out polio

Polio has almost been wiped out, but a few stubborn areas of resistance remain and India is on the frontline against the crippling disease

In a school courtyard in Lucknow on a dusty Sunday afternoon, the final push in a heroic campaign to drive a crippling disease from the planet is under way. Among scores of wide-eyed children, four-year-old Mohamed Yusuf is brought to the big wooden table under the yellow banners by his mother Afsar Jahan. Uncomprehending but compliant, he tilts his head back and opens his mouth to receive two drops of polio vaccine. His less fortunate sister Saba Banu, 12, comes across the open space to join them, strikingly beautiful in her bright blue sari, swinging her deformed limb this way and that on her crutches. Saba's right leg is stunted from polio, which she contracted when she was two.

This campaign in the most densely populated state of India is intended to stop polio blighting other lives as it has Saba's. Nobody knows how long it will last, how much more effort will be required or whether, in the end, we will get there at all.

In this country of desperate poverty and large families, disabled infants can be left in the rubbish or face a lifetime of begging on the street, but Afsar Jahan will not allow that to happen to Saba. "She has always gone to school," she says of her daughter. "I will give her the best education I can so she will be compensated." Like every other parent, she would like Saba to marry but she knows her daughter's prospects are damaged. Afsar Jahan helps spread the word about immunisation in her community. "I have suffered," she says. "Now I tell everyone, 'Please, do not make the same mistake.'"

The Lucknow schoolyard is on the frontline in the war against a virus that regularly used to maim children in Britain. Calliper and crutches were a common sight in the 1950s, when the UK had 45,000 cases. The arrival of the polio vaccine in the 1960s wiped out the disease in developed countries and triggered a remarkable aspiration – to eradicate it from the world. The job was supposed to have been finished at the turn of the millennium, but nearly a decade and $7bn on, polio eludes us still. Last year, there were 1,500 cases in the world – a tiny fraction of the 350,000 in 1985, but a real and present danger not only in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan, where polio is still endemic, but also to other countries where migrants and travellers can so easily take it. The numbers have hardly shifted in five years. But can it be defeated now? In 1979, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared smallpox eradicated. But 30 years on, polio presents a different set of problems.

Fetid grey rivers bubble the length of every street in Lucknow on their sluggish way to the river Gomti, carrying all kinds of domestic waste. In summer, the monsoon rains flood the streets, spreading raw sewage. Polio thrives in human faeces. Small children, dirty hands to mouths, are most at risk. The target of the eradication campaign is the under-fives.

Beside a major traffic junction, the clamour of car horns assaulting the ears, a cluster of middle-aged Britons in canary-yellow polo shirts bob about, waving and shouting at families in rickshaws with young children. In their hands they have droppers containing vaccine and pens to mark the little finger of the left hand of every immunised child. These are some of a group of 86 Rotarians from all over the UK who have flown in to help with the latest mass immunisation day in India's two remaining endemic states – Uttar Pradesh, of which Lucknow is the capital, and Bihar – as well as Delhi, where children are at risk from migration from both areas. Now and again a motorbike pulls up, a whole family on board, and the Rotarians race to reach a small child perched on the machine and squeeze drops in his mouth. They hand out whistles and pens and pull cardboard masks over bemused children's faces.

India is the key to a polio-free world, says Oliver Rosenbauer of the WHO's polio eradication initiative. In Nigeria, all the state governors committed to polio eradication at the start of this year. Kano, in the north, was the global polio epicentre, but there have been no cases of type 1 virus [the worst] for six months. Now India, Rosenbauer says, is "very, very close" to eradicating type 1 polio. Type 2 has already disappeared.

But there are huge challenges. "The quality of the immunisation campaign is very high," Rosenbauer says. "They reach upwards of 95% of kids. But there are half a million babies born in Uttar Pradesh every month, extremely poor sanitation and a tropical weather system that helps transmission."

The basic work now is wearisome. Every child in the endemic states must be immunised again and again. There are no records. No child can be crossed off a list. Every couple of months an immunisation day is scheduled by the government and all-out efforts are made to give the vaccine drops to 800,000 under-fives. Most will have been dosed five or six times a year. There is a danger that polio fatigue will set in.

"A lot of Indian Rotarians are sick to their gills by these frequent rounds," Deepak Kapoor, chairman of Rotary's all-India polio committee tells the British visitors. Their arrival will boost the morale of the Indian club members, whose work now is not vaccination, which the government has largely taken over, but endless awareness and mobilisation campaigns, organising rallies of children bearing home-made placards, recruiting celebrity cricketers to the cause.

This is why the Brits are in canary yellow. They are here to be noticed. Mike and Bernice Yates, who are leading the tour, have a business in Ahmedabad and have been coming on polio trips for six or seven years. "We have different clothes on and attract attention, especially in the villages," says Bernice. "We bring out a lot of people out of curiosity."

Down Lucknow's narrow residential streets, houses are marked and re-marked on their walls or doors in biblical style with what looks like an algebraic equation. "P" means protected from polio – any children within have been immunised. A number above a line denotes the number of the house in the street to have been checked. The number below identifies the team seeking out small children. An arrow shows which way the team went next.

As time has gone on, fewer and fewer families have brought their children to the 2,709 vaccination "booths" in the city. Most now wait for the immunisers to come to them in the five-day house-to-house hunt that follows.

But some are hard to find. Indian Rotarians talk of HRAs (high risk areas) – the brick kilns where migrant populations work, and the slums. But, jokes Ajay Saxeena of Rotary India's national PolioPlus committee, there is now another type of HRA – high rise apartments, the lofty dwelling places of Lucknow's rising middle class. They have had their children immunised. They don't see why they need to keep on doing it. At the vast, turreted, British-built railway station at the city's heart, where teams of yellow-vested government immunisers leap out to accost parents of small children, some of the more affluent just brush them away.

There are some 200 brick kilns in four areas on the outskirts of Lucknow, each marked by a towering chimney. Women sit on the ground, scooping mud from a watery pit, patting and rolling it into large rugby balls. Men press the mud balls into moulds and push out the brick shapes, marked with the name of the kiln on the top, which are sun-dried and fired. A man carries 24 bricks at a time on a yoke. A woman walks quickly, with 10 stacked on a piece of wood on her head and unloads them in pairs, reaching above her head with practised hands. Her face is covered in brick dust.

Their windowless houses could be mistaken for stacks of bricks, with just a curtain for a door. In summer, the kilns close for the rains and the migrant workforce trek back to their villages in one of the poorest parts of India. There is a high risk that the polio virus will trek with them.

Outside, a mother is cooking while her three-year-old hides in the cool semi-darkness. The little boy, Abishek Chohan, was given polio drops two months ago. If all goes well, a polio team will call again this week. The last visit to Jagdish Brick Field is recorded on the outside wall of the manager's office – "14/09/09". Three more babies have arrived since then – one has just been born and is lying under a blanket next to its exhausted mother on a wooden bed in a lightless brick hut.

But the next factory, Sunil Brick Field, appears to have missed out. People shake their heads. "No polio service," they say. These families are from Hamirpur, 200km away in the Himalayan foothills. Shanthi is three, Kajal is 18 months and Sadena is one year old. None of them has had the polio vaccine, the community says. No drops. There are no marks on the manager's office wall. Migrant workers like these are easy to miss.

Not so the people of the slums. The rag pickers' children are going nowhere. They live among the detritus of the city, their shacks made of sticks, sacking and the plastic bags their parents and older siblings collect all day long for packing and reselling. These are immigrant Muslims from Bangladesh and Assam. If they are happy today to allow their children to swallow the polio drops, it is largely thanks to an impressive Islamic scholar and leader, Khalid Rasheed, president of the Ulema Council of India.

"There were a number of misconceptions in the Muslim community about the disease: that there was a conspiracy on the part of the Americans and foreign powers, that this vaccine would make them impotent and infertile, so Muslim parents were not giving it to their children," says Rasheed at his madrassa in Lucknow, where a vaccination booth has been set up.

So a conference was called of Muslim scholars, who consulted Muslim doctors, and a consensus was reached that the vaccine, which has been universally given in Islamic states such as Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, did no harm. It's a message Rasheed and other Islamic leaders in India now promote. "We have been able to give all this information to people who are generally illiterate and have no knowledge of what the vaccine is," he says. They use everything from newspaper adverts to appeals during Friday prayers to reach Muslim families, who tend to be among the poorest communities. About a year ago, 70% of polio cases were among Muslims, who are only 30% of the population. Now, 30% of cases are in Muslim families. India's Islamic scholars plan a trip to Nigeria in 2010 to urge Muslims there to form a polio vaccine promotion committee, as they have in India.

Some of the British Rotarians, who have all paid their own passage, are stunned by what they see. The group includes businessmen, a judge, teachers and GPs. The Rotarians started it all in 1979, when Rotary International, based in Evanston, Chicago, linked up with the government of the Philippines to immunise its under-fives. Since then, through fetes, coffee mornings, donations and tin-shaking all over the well-to-do world, Rotary has raised $896m (£545m).

Most of the volunteers here have not been to India before. All will take back moving accounts of the work Rotary is involved in and urge those back home to keep the faith, even though the eradication target has been missed and missed again.

"It's been extremely worthwhile. I spent an hour last night writing a journal. I found it difficult to put into words what it meant," says Steve Martin from Merseyside, who trains police dogs to sniff out explosives.

They are amazed by the scale of the Indian eradication effort but also by the complexity of the problem. But Mike Yates says he is a lot more optimistic than he was two years ago. "I have been here three times and each time the city is improving," he says. Free housing is now being built to replace some slums.

The Rotarians will return to Britain to tour the clubs with their pictures and tell members why they must keep giving. It is a hard message, nearly a decade after the job should have been finished, and there are fears that funding from the G8 may be slipping. But, they will no doubt tell their colleagues, it just needs one more last push.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

Nuclear reactors contain safety flaws, watchdog reveals

• Major concerns over European and American designs
• Redesign required before plants can be approved for construction

In the race to provide energy for the nation's future, two multinational companies have led the way with designs for reactors that promised clean, green electricity with unprecedented safety.

But detailed reviews by the Health and Safety Executive highlight a series of shortcomings in security and safety systems in both reactors that must be fixed or redesigned before the power plants can be approved for construction.

Safety officials reviewed plans from the European companies, Areva and EDF, which make the EPR reactor, and similar documents for the AP1000 reactor built by the American multinational power company, Westinghouse, and ruled that both need to improve the safety of their power plants before they can be approved for construction.

British Ministers are thought to favour the European reactor design, two of which are under construction in Finland and France.

The review identified a flaw that involved a protection system being wired up the wrong way. The safety of the reactor relies on an electronic protection system that should be independent of the power station's computerised control circuit. In the case of an accident, the protection system takes over and brings the plant under control. The initial designs for the plant showed the two systems were interconnected, raising fears that a fault on one could disable the other.

Kevin Allars, head of the assessment team at the HSE's nuclear directorate said: "You could have the same fault occurring on both, so your protection system won't do what it's supposed to do. The company has proposed a way to fix the problem, but has yet to provide details."

The HSE's assessment of the reactor was delayed for months because staff with the correct security clearance were not on hand to exchange sensitive security documents on making the reactors strong enough to withstand a direct hit from an aeroplane. The reactors are required to be resilient to aircraft strikes, instrument failures and natural hazards, such as floods, fires, extreme winds and earthquakes.

The review was further hampered because the reactor was designed to French or European safety codes, which differ from those used by the Health and Safety Executive.

More problems were raised over the double steel-lined concrete shells that encase the nuclear reactor and prevent radioactive material escaping if the reactor core goes into meltdown.

In all other British nuclear power stations, the concrete is strengthened by steel cables that can be inspected and removed as the reactor ages, but in the European design, the cables are grouted over, making maintenance checks impossible.

Other criticisms included problems with the positioning and operation of fire doors and alarms, and unsubstantiated claims that components are unlikely to break while the reactor is running.

The issues will have to be addressed before the executive will approve the reactor, Allars said. The report adds: "We have yet to see the design modifications details and so it is not yet possible for us to conclude on the acceptability of them. For the other issues we have raised, it is too early to say whether they can be resolved solely with additional safety case changes or whether they may result in design modifications being necessary."

The review of the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor is more damning, concluding that Westinghouse needs to complete "significant additional work" to prove its reactor is safe across "the majority of the technical topic areas".

The HSE said its officials have been unable to complete their review of the reactor because Westinghouse failed to provide details of the power plant's ability to withstand environmental hazards and potential terrorist attacks.

The company's assertions that workers and others could not put the reactor at risk were also poorly documented, according to the executive, which has asked Westinghouse for more information.

A major criticism of the US design concerns a new type of valve that has yet to be developed, but plays a critical role in cooling the core of the reactor if it runs out of control. The report said that despite it raising the issue with Westinghouse, the company has made "minimal progress in addressing our concerns". It adds: "There is a significant risk that the depth of the issue and the resources and effort that are needed to address it have been underestimated."

The HSE review questions the design standards used to plan the reactor and the durability of individual components, which Westinghouse claims are so unlikely to fail the possibility can be discounted.

It adds that Westinghouse may still be able to satisfy the HSE's concerns, but needs to make major progress if the reactor review is to be completed by 2011.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

Air America

This is pretty stunning, and quite beautiful in its own way. Aaron Koblin, a graphic artist and game designer has produced a remarkable animation, built using real data, of a 24-hour stretch of commercial air travel into, out of, and ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 26 Nov 2009 | 2:14 pm

Spain's Repsol to invest $1.5 million in Bolivian gas (AFP)

AFP - Spanish oil company Repsol YPF will invest 1.5 million dollars over the next five years to boost natural gas production in Bolivia, the company announced Thursday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Nov 2009 | 1:40 pm

Virtual Museum of the European Roots launched on the Internet

A unique "Virtual Museum of the European Roots" will be launched next Thursday at an international conference in Rome. Accessible through their web site ( http://www.europeanvirtualmuseum.net), the virtual museum allows visitors to admire prehistoric art masterpieces in full 3D power. ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 26 Nov 2009 | 1:34 pm

Past climate anomalies explained

Unusually warm and cold spells in climate history are linked to how oceans responded to temperature changes, a study says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2009 | 1:30 pm

Beijing has seen the future and it's green

While China aims to hold the patents on tomorrow's clean technologies, the US remains in the climate change dark ages

China has finally put some numbers to its climate plans, a significant move in the multidimensional elaborate game of the Copenhagen climate summit. China, Hu Jintao promised yesterday, will deliver a 45% reduction in carbon intensity by 2020.

The announcement was greeted with a muted sigh of disappointment. The target will not bring a reduction in China's emissions: reducing carbon intensity means only that carbon emissions will grow at a slower pace than the economy – in theory allowing for growing prosperity without mounting damage.

China, as a developing country, is not obliged to cut its emissions. But without serious action by China, other efforts will fail. Assessing the offer depends both on delivery and on how much of a deviation it represent from business as usual. It certainly counts: according to a recent calculation from the International Energy Agency, if China reaches all of its 2020 targets more than 1bn tons of carbon dioxide emissions would be avoided – 25% of what the world needs.

There was disappointment, nevertheless, with the Chinese numbers. According to Nick Mabey of the environmental consultancy E3G, it looks like an opening bid, a small variation on the growth scenarios that Chinese officials have been working on. Two key questions remain: how much more are the Chinese keeping back for the negotiating table, and what will make them disclose it?

China's offer follows hard on President Obama's even less impressive contribution. Hamstrung by a Senate that remains in the climate dark ages and refuses even to address the issues before next spring, Obama has offered a 17% cut by 2020 on its 2005 emissions. If that looks small, the US offer shrinks to a miserly 4% when it is calculated on a 1990 baseline, the starting point for most developed countries. On that baseline, the EU has offered 20%- 30% and Japan's new government 40% cuts. Even Brazil, a country not obliged to cut its emissions, has matched the US offer. From the scientific perspective, the total of all these offers falls far short of what is required to keep the temperature rise below 2C and the catastrophic changes that could trigger.

There is little doubt that, had the US acted, China would have felt obliged to raise its own game. The world's two biggest emitters seem to have eyes only for each other, neither willing to lead yet both seeking to avoid blame. There are, though, important underlying differences. In the last three years the Chinese have taken important strategic decisions on climate change: they have recognised that it threatens China's future prosperity, that low carbon technologies are the key not only to climate security but to technological leadership, and that, if there is to be a future, it has to be green.

None of these insights are evident in the US, outside the relatively small circles of activists, scientists and policy makers whose arguments are routinely drowned out by the tendentious noise of Fox News. A sclerotic political system, in which legislators depend for election funding on fossil fuel and other lobbies, risks replicating on a national scale the fate of General Motors. Once the world's biggest car company, GM brought itself to bankruptcy by resisting every innovation from removing lead in petrol to the smallest steps in fuel efficiency. It spent its energy stuffing cash into Congress in a vain attempt to hold back the future instead of investing in the next generation technologies. It succeeded only in wrecking its own future as more agile Japanese competitors took over its markets.

China is investing in its vision of the future: Beijing wants to move the economy up the value chain and aims to hold the patents on tomorrow's clean technologies. Chinese officials are working out how to use China's unique advantages to achieve that ambition – the ability to deploy new technologies rapidly, the capacity to experiment at scale with major projects in nuclear and coal and the political habit of planning strategically, setting national goals that its bureaucracy is forced to accept. In the US, by contrast, the public debate seems stuck in the 50s and the political structures seem incapable of serving the nation's best interests. And so the US risks bringing about the future it fears most – one in which China will, finally, eat the American lunch.

What does this mean for Copenhagen? China has been criticised for sending confusing diplomatic signals, too cautious to lead, over-anxious about the US and careless of the complex multilateral landscape. In a process already shot through with mistrust, confusing signals do not help.

But for China, though the outcome in Copenhagen may affect the pace of change, it will not change the underlying strategy. Wen Jiabao will go to Copenhagen, and has the authority to raise the offer if others step up. There is room to increase its pledge and to open up to verification. In contrast, Obama will visit only for a day and at present is not planning to be there for the crucial closing sessions. He is limited in what he can offer, for fear of destroying the already fragile chances of convincing Congress to face up to its responsibilities.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 Nov 2009 | 12:30 pm

Video: The Chemistry of Thanksgiving

If you want to arm yourself with some nice science trivia for tonight’s dinner conversation, check out this lecture by Diane Bunce, a professor of chemistry at The Catholic University in Washington, DC. She gets off to a slow start, so you may want to skip the first two minutes.

See Also:

• Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos
• Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos
• Top 10 Scientific Music Videos
• Top 10 Amazing Biology Videos

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 26 Nov 2009 | 11:33 am

Saudi floods kill 77 while Muslims perform hajj (AP)

AP - Muslim pilgrims holding white umbrellas against the blazing sun clambered up a rocky desert hill for prayers Thursday during the annual hajj, a day after torrential rains that killed at least 77 people.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 26 Nov 2009 | 8:54 am

Americans Toss Out 40 Percent of All Food

A new study finds food waste per person has shot up 50 percent since 1974.
Source: Livescience.com | 26 Nov 2009 | 7:33 am

China unveils Copenhagen targets

China unveils its first firm target for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, two weeks before the Copenhagen climate summit.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2009 | 6:14 am

Stephen Hawking portrait unveiled at the Royal Society

The painting, by the London-based artist Tai-Shan Schierenberg, was commissioned by Dame Stephanie Shirley

The Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking arrived in London yesterday for the official unveiling of the portrait by Tai-Shan Schierenberg at the Royal Society, the UK's academy of science.

You can see more of the artist's work here.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 Nov 2009 | 5:28 am

Earth Watch

Copenhagen clouds clear with China's carbon pledge
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2009 | 5:05 am

Monster worm and sea star frenzy caught on camera

Deep under the Antarctic ice, a rare colourful burst of starfish and monster worms is filmed by BBC camera crew.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2009 | 2:56 am

The cost of adapting to climate change

Farmers in developing countries are already feeling the effects of climate change. What is needed to help them cope is an almost unprecedented shift of resources from north to south, says Anne Perkins

The gap between rhetoric and reality, the developed and developing worlds, is cruelly illustrated by the huge promises and meagre results of successive global gatherings on providing funds to help less developed countries adapt to the changing climate.

On Tuesday, Farm-Africa, one of the Guardian's partners in the Katine project, helped launch Climate Frontline, a collection of African voices reflecting on how their climate has already changed, and how they are adapting to it. It is full of practical ideas – new ways of making liquid compost from animal droppings, or growing maize in pits where moisture is better retained, to name just two.

But unless Copenhagen sets in train a colossal effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions, many African communities are going to have to do much more than get smart about soil improvement. Reforestation and irrigation, improved seeds, technology and education are all part of the answer to saving the continent's agricultural potential.

At the Climate Frontline launch at Westminster, Farm-Africa's chief executive, Christie Peacock, warned that despite the experience of generations of farmers in adapting to harsh conditions, "the pace of change is stepping up", while the reaction of the major polluters remained "depressingly poor".

Another speaker, Saleemul Huq, of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), warned that the loss of viable agricultural land could lead to mounting insecurity and the massive relocation of whole peoples, possibly across borders.

The failure of the rainy season is already bringing instability back to some parts of the Teso region of north-east Uganda, in which Katine is found. East of Katine, the Karamojong – whose region is even worse affected – have returned to cattle rustling to replace stock they have lost to drought.

Sub-Saharan Africa is only one of four global regions that will feel the impact of climate change most severely. Island states, coastal areas and the great Asian river deltas are all likely to experience devastating loss of land.

That is why, as long ago as 2001, the protocol agreed at Kyoto included a plan for an adaptation fund. The best feature about it was that it was to be funded by a levy on "clean development mechanism project activities" - that is, it was to depend on funding on the rate at which developed countries reduce their emissions. It was to have an independent source of income rather than relying on vulnerable national pledges of donations.

Sadly, it has taken until now to agree the governance and rules under which it would operate. And although they are hailed as a triumph for a new way of doing business, with developing countries having a majority on the board and the final say on the disbursement of funds, it is still waiting for a steady revenue stream.

Meanwhile other funds have proliferated. The Overseas Development Institute sponsors a site that lists dozens of them from the UN, the World Bank, the EU and some individual countries. As the Guardian reported last month, there is one common feature of the multilateral funds, like the UN's special climate change fund and its less developed countries' fund, and others like the World Bank's loan-based strategic climate fund: the money pledged by individual countries has not been delivered.

Yet the predicted cost of adaptation and mitigation is rising steeply. As the IIED reported in August, it is now estimated at something approaching $150bn a year.

In the likely absence of any deal on targets for emissions reductions at Copenhagen next month, all attention is going to focus on finding a way of guaranteeing that there are reliable, predictable, additional and equitable funds available to the countries that pollute the least and will suffer the effects of global warming the most.

What is needed is an almost unprecedented shift of resources from north to south. It is going to take something like a revolution to get it.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 26 Nov 2009 | 2:54 am

Humans 'hear' through their skin

Sensations on the skin, such as a puff of air, can alter how people hear speech, say Canadian researchers.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 26 Nov 2009 | 2:11 am