|
|
|
|
Precision breeding creates super potatoThe skin is light brown, the meat luscious and yellow: from the outside alone, this new potato looks like any other. But on the inside, it is different. Its cells produce pure amylopectin, a starch used in the paper, textile and food industries. The new potatoes -- recently harvested and processed for the first time -- were developed with the aid of a new, especially rapid breeding process.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm Facebook (and systems biologists) take note: Network analysis reveals true connectionsTwo researchers have developed a universal method that can accurately analyze a range of complex networks -- including social networks, protein-protein interactions and air transportation networks. Their technique exploits the fact that all networks have groups in them and those groups are connected in many different ways. The researchers demonstrated the great potential of the method using five different networks, including predicting friendships in a social network and protein-protein interactions within a cell.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm Human umbilical stem cells cleared mice's cloudy eyesNew research from the University of Cincinnati (UC) may help in the recovery of lost vision for patients with corneal scarring.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm Most antidepressants miss key target of clinical depression, study findsMost current antidepressants do not address a key brain chemical, monoamine oxidase-A, according to a new study.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm Nearly one third of human genome is involved in gingivitis, study showsGingivitis, which may affect more than one-half of the US adult population, is a condition commonly attributed to lapses in simple oral hygiene habits. However, a new study shows that development and reversal of gingivitis at the molecular level is apparently much more complicated than its causes might indicate.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm Star power: Astronomers recreate stellar jet with laser blastWith the trillions of watts contained in one brief pop of a powerful laser, the universe became a bit less mysterious. Scientists recently used powerful laser beams to recreate, on a small scale, the highly supersonic velocities at work in newborn stars and simulated the fiery jets that burst from their poles.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm H1N1 more risky than seasonal flu in children with sickle cell diseaseInfection with the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, causes more life-threatening complications than seasonal flu in children with sickle cell disease, according to new research. The findings warn parents and caregivers that such children are more likely to need emergency treatment and stays in an intensive-care unit.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 9:00 am Pistachios may reduce lung cancer riskA diet that incorporates a daily dose of pistachios may help reduce the risk of lung and other cancers, according to new research.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 9:00 am Testosterone does not induce aggression, study showsNew scientific evidence refutes the preconception that testosterone causes aggressive, egocentric, and risky behavior. A study with more than 120 experimental subjects has shown that the sexual hormone with the poor reputation can encourage fair behaviors if this serves to ensure one's own status.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 9:00 am Snowflake chemistry could give clues about ozone depletionIce chemists are studying the surface structure of snow crystals and why sharp transitions in shape occur at different temperatures. The differences they see not only explain why no two snowflakes are identical, but also hold implications for their ozone research in the Arctic Ocean region.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 9:00 am Royal Institution in trouble: let's make sure it survivesThe world's oldest independent scientific research organisation could go out of business. It shouldn't Amid all our other troubles, did you notice that the recession has also helped place in jeopardy the Royal Institution. Founded in 1799 it is the world's oldest independent scientific research organisation but could go out of business. It shouldn't. I say that as an ignorant non-scientist who happens to be reading The Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes's wonderful book about late 18th century science, which features the RI. So I hope the cuttings are put on Alistair Darling's desk when he has a quiet moment after work this evening. Put it another way, did you read Ian Sample's terrific article in yesterday's Guardian? Followed up in today's Times and elsewhere, it explained how director Lady (Susan) Greenfield's expansionist plans to modernise the grand and hallowed institution in Mayfair have come a financial cropper. At a cost of £22m, Greenfield ordered a complete refit of the historic Faraday lecture hall and the installation of a bar and restaurant. You get the general picture, I'm sure. Unfortunately, the works overran their budget, fundraising targets were not met, and the refurb was late, so the Queen eventually reopened the RI in October when everyone was thoroughly immersed in financial gloom. The trustees reported that they could have coped with "any of the four negative factors in isolation" – but not all of them at once. That sounds a familiar story, confident firms with plans to expand not responding quickly enough to collapsing economic confidence and the collapse of credit, and failing to retrench in time. Gordon Brown is only the most conspicuous ostrich in this particular herd. In the RI's case things are complicated by Greenfield, an unusual figure in bureaucratised science of today. A distinguished neuroscientist who wears designer outfits for Vogue and Hello! magazine, she was clearly – as the old saying goes – "asking for trouble", intellectually speaking. You can imagine the usual suspects muttering into their test tubes, can't you? Sample reports that "according to documents circulating in the governing council 'the currently defined role of director … is unaffordable'" and needs to be redefined ie shrunk. This being Britain, none of the top bods appears willing to be quoted – at lest not on the record – and few figures have yet been published on the size of the problem, let alone Greenfield's salary. I doubt if it is in the banker's bonus league. There, there. These things happen. The Royal Academy, even older and more prestigious, went through nightmare "modernisation" years recently, though it now seems to have settled down. Officials who ought to know better stop talking to each other. It sounds worse than a university senior common room. Greenfield's project seems to have cost the endowment fund £3.2m it can't afford, creating an overdraft of the same size. It has promised the charity commissioners to repay the endowment money over 15 years – if it can. Let's hope the Treasury – or a banker with a bad conscience – can help tide the RI over. My own interest in reading about its plight stems from reading Holmes's award-winning Age of Wonder (Harper Press, £9.99). The Institution was founded in 1799 at the home – in Soho Square – of the great Sir Joseph Banks, South Sea explorer with Captain Cook, turned brilliant president and talent-spotter of the much-older Royal Society. Wealthy men, many interested in the newly emerging natural sciences for purely intellectual, not commercial, purposes, chipped in 50 guineas apiece – say, £5,000 in today's money – and funded Thomas Garnett to be its first professor of a study that was becoming known as chemistry. Garnett was quickly superseded by an improbable figure, the amazing Cornishman Humphry Davy (1778-1829), whose dramatic public experiments and lectures quickly turned him into a scientific rock star – pulling in huge crowds, especially young women, so his critics quickly noted. Gilray and Rowlandson quickly turned their Steve Bell-like talents towards mocking the whole show. But the money poured in and the Institution – later led by Davy's protege, Michael Faraday – pioneered discoveries of lasting importance to the world. You probably knew all this. I didn't. Two other omissions to my general knowledge especially surprised me in this context. One is the friendships, personal and intellectual, which then existed between the new men of science and the poets of the Romantic era: Coleridge, Southey, Shelley, Keats (who was a medical student), Byron. Davy wrote poetry that Coleridge published. They were (mostly) on the same side, imagination against authority and – by implication – the deity, though the scientists had to tread a careful path in their public lectures because the thought police were on their case. There was also a tussle, of less interest to the police, between Romantic imagination and Enlightment reason, another still-familiar complaint that "Newton destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow, by reducing it to a prism," as Keats famously put it at what became known as "the immortal dinner" of 1817. Clever chap that he is, Holmes (not to be confused with the military historian or the American actor) argues that Keats knew enough to know that Newton had expanded the poetic potential of the rainbow by proving it was not divine sign-writing, but a natural phenomenon. Never mind. It is a comfort to be reminded that such battles are eternal, not the brilliant insights of no-nothing mullahs or born-again American congressfolk. My other surprise is also a comfort of sorts. Davy is remembered for his miner's safety lamp, a great boon, and much else. But his early experiments with gas – deemed immoral – came close to making a major scientific discovery of immense importance to mankind: namely that gas's vital use would be to dull pain and enable operations to take place under anaesthetic. He noted the effect, Holmes writes, but did not draw the right conclusion, perhaps because pain was then accepted and doctors' skill measured by the speed of their amputations and psychological domination of their patients, the writer suggests. It took another 40 years of unimaginable pain in surgery before an American medic – they're so practical, aren't they? – mastered the medical use of gas. In 1811, after Davy's near-miss, the novelist Fanny Burnley underwent successful mastectomy in Paris (she lived another 30 years) without an anaesthetic – and, being a writer, bravely wrote up her experience. All of which is a far cry from the RI's current budget crisis. But it does serve to remind us all that science is often flamboyant, that scientists overspend – and even great ones miss important discoveries. But they also keep the lights on (good old Faraday) and will continue to do so if the Copenhagen summit gets the politics right. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 9 Dec 2009 | 3:36 am The nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 3:30 am Climate documents spark rich vs. poor clash (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 3:24 am Hubble telescope finds 'never-seen' galaxies (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Dec 2009 | 1:28 am New way to dieWill new form of execution in Ohio be more humane?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Dec 2009 | 12:24 am Epic Big Wave Surfing Contest Hits Oahu's North ShoreIt's possible that somewhere on the planet, something happened yesterday that was cooler than the Quicksilver Big Wave Invitational in Memory of Eddie Aikau, aka "the Eddie." It's possible, but I doubt it. The Eddie is named for the North ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:01 pm Poor trapped in poverty by diseaseA mathematical model that links health and economic development may have its limitations, says Philip Ball. But its consequences are too serious to ignore.Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:01 pm Copenhagen: the scientists' viewThe United Nations Climate Change Conference is mainly a political affair but it has drawn hundreds of scientists to the Danish capital. Jeff Tollefson finds out what they hope to gain.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/SUlWgTlkHbM" height="1" width="1"/>Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:00 pm Stem Cells May Hold Hope for Eye Disease (HealthDay)HealthDay - TUESDAY, Dec. 8 (HealthDay News) -- New research has found that a certain kind of stem cell from human umbilical cords helped restore transparency to the cloudy corneas of laboratory mice, raising the prospect that they could do the same for people.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:48 pm Gibbon 'dating agency' saves apesA gibbon dating agency is helping to successfully reintroduce once-captive apes into the forests of southeast AsiaSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Dec 2009 | 8:19 pm US Republicans vow to rain on Copenhagen parade (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Dec 2009 | 7:56 pm Germs May Be Good For You (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Exposing kids to nasty germs might actually toughen them up to diseases as grown-ups, mounting research suggests.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:56 pm EPA agrees to review oil, gas pollution standards (AP)AP - Federal officials have agreed to review air pollution standards for oil and gas operations to decide if they need to be updated.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:43 pm Letters: Darwin and Wallace inspired by MalthusIntellectual priority is often hard to establish (Letters 3 and 8 December). Evolution was very much "in the air" in the 1850s; the crucial question was "what is the mechanism?". (As it happened, both Darwin and Wallace found their inspiration in Malthus). Wallace's letter of 1858, succinctly setting out his mechanism, sent Darwin into a panic and we know that Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker took the matter out of his hands and arranged that miscellaneous evidence of Darwin's priority, with the letter, would be presented at the Linnean Society. This was an untidy and unusual process, but I am not convinced the alleged conspiracy went further than that. Thereafter Darwin fully acknowledged their discovery to have been a joint one and Wallace seemed happy throughout his long life to regard Darwin as the senior partner in the enterprise of Darwinism, the title of his own book on natural selection. Darwin was subsequently relieved to find that Wallace was an agreeable and generous man who harboured no resentment. The most likely reason for Wallace's subsequent demotion was probably his later pursuit (right up to 1913) of unpopular causes, including land nationalisation, socialism, spiritualism and anti-militarism. Emeritus professor David Collard University of Bath • Charles Darwin did not have the theory of evolution as we now understand it 20 years before publishing On the Origin of Species. His migration theory of 1844 still dominated his thoughts until Hooker damned it unreservedly in the summer of 1856. Only in the months which followed did Darwin's ideas begin to resemble those published by Alfred Russel Wallace in September 1855, September 1856 and those received in a private letter in January 1857, but which Darwin only admitted receiving in a letter he dated 1 May 1857. All this is made clear in The Darwin Conspiracy by Roy Davies. Professor Mark Brake University of Glamorgan guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:05 pm Germs May Be Good For YouResearch suggests that everyday germs may prevent diseases in adulthood.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:03 pm Crew sent to rescue up to 100 dogs in rural Ore. (AP)AP - The Oregon Humane Society on Tuesday sent a team to rescue as many as 100 dogs living without shelter in cold weather on rural property in Eastern Oregon.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:50 pm Geminid meteor shower to peak this weekend (AP)AP - The year's best meteor shower is coming to North America.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:18 pm Hubble spies never-before-seen galaxies (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:07 pm Barley + Space = Space Beer!
I love beer, and I love space. So how could I not love beer from space? I’m not usually one for beer gimmicks, but somehow Sapporo’s Space Barley is an exception. The beer was made with grains descended from barley that spent five months in the Zvezda Service Module on the International Space Station. The very limited results, just 250 precious six-packs, will be sold through a lottery for 10,000 yen ($110) each. But only people living in Japan are eligible. Sigh.
“This beer will be sold for charity, to contribute to the promotion of science education for children and the development of space science research in Japan and Russia, through donation of all proceeds to Okayama University,” Sapporo stated in a press release Dec. 3. And that sounds nice. But I think the real reason is: Space Beer! Also, what will astronauts drink on future extended spaceflight missions? They can’t take multiple years’ worth of beer with them, so clearly they will have to brew it themselves. But what about the hops, you say? Don’t worry, those were launched into space in August. Super Space Beer! Indeed, according to Sapporo, the space-barley research was done for “the purpose of achieving self-sufficiency in food in the space environment.” Because how self-sufficient could one really be without beer? Images: 1) NASA. 2) Sapporo. Story via On Orbit See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Dec 2009 | 2:42 pm New List Highlights Animals Threatened by Climate ChangeWe already knew polar bears were in high water due to climate change, but who knew some types of dolphins, lemmings, flamingoes and oxen were also threatened by global warming?Source: Livescience.com | 8 Dec 2009 | 1:39 pm A stroll around Pompeii, courtesy of Google’s Street ViewIf you can't be one of the 2.5 million tourists who wander through the streets of Pompeii every year, you now have another option: Google's Street View. Pompeii on Street View The 360-degree panoramic street-level service debuted last week in ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 1:27 pm Florida's space economy threatened by shuttle's endMIAMI (Reuters) - At El Leoncita Cuban & Mexican Restaurant near the Kennedy Space Center on Florida's "space" coast, a bar sign says it all:Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Dec 2009 | 1:25 pm Paper Batteries Could Power Almost AnythingTake ordinary office paper, a little carbon and a dash of nanomaterials, and you have a perfectly functional battery.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 1:15 pm Hungry Amoebas Spawn Biggest Viruses Ever
Made from a hodgepodge of genetic bits and pieces, the newly discovered Marseillevirus is the world’s largest virus. But fame is fleeting: It’s almost sure to be supplanted by another, even bigger virus. What’s really special about Marseillevirus is where it comes from. Like other giant viruses, it was found inside amoebas — lowly, single-celled organisms that devour anything they can absorb. Their voracious appetites make them incubators of genetic remixing among their prey, and may hint at processes that spawned complex life. “What we find is that inside the amoeba, a virus can meet bacteria, archaea and prokaryotes. A whole new repertoire of an organism can be composed,” said Didier Raoult, a microbiologist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France. Six years ago, Raoult and his colleagues described the mimivirus, a virus so big they originally thought it was a microbe. Then they found the mamavirus, which was even bigger — so big that it could be infected by other viruses, which wasn’t even known to be possible. The Marseillevirus, described Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is even bigger.
This string of discoveries — and there are many more that the researchers have yet to describe in the formal literature — shows that giant viruses are not an oddity, but a branch of the organismal tree that scientists are just starting to explore. And all the giant viruses have been found inside amoebas, a group of single-celled animals so common that it’s easy to overlook their uniqueness. The largest genome in the world, for example, belongs to an amoeba. “It’s 200 times bigger than the human genome,” said Raoult. Such size comes from their eating habits. Amoebas absorb just about anything they can, from viruses to bacteria to other simple single-celled animals, called prokaryotes. Sometimes their food survives inside them. Through the free-for-all mixing process known as horizontal gene transfer, amoebas and their residents swap genes, giving rise to massive amoeba genes, giant viruses and mutant bacteria. “It’s a whole world in there,” said Raoult. According to Raoult, the amoeba melting pots likely had analogues billions of years ago, when eukaryotes — complex cells, with a nucleus and other sophisticated machinery — had yet to evolve. How they evolved is a scientific mystery, but Raoult thinks that prokaryotic forerunners of modern amoebas may have provided the necessary incubators for eukaryotic evolution. Whether this actually happened may never be known, but Raoult added that it’s definitely continuing today. “We have this idea that everything is derived from something with very old roots. But there is still creativity going on, creating new origins,” he said. Image: An amoeba containing Marseillevirus in (a) and (b), a Marseillevirus replicates itself in (c) and (d), while (e), (f) and (g) are reconstructions of electron micrographs of Marseillevirus/PNAS. See Also: Citation: “Giant Marseillevirus highlights the role of amoebae as a melting pot in emergence of chimeric microorganisms.” By Mickael Boyer, Natalya Yutin, Isabelle Pagnier, Lina Barrassi, Ghislain Fournousa Leon Espinosa, Catherine Robert, Saïd Azza, Siyang Sun, Michael G. Rossmann, Marie Suzan-Monti, Bernard La Scola, Eugene V. Koonin, and Didier Raoult. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106 No. 48, Dec. 7, 2009. Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecosystem and planetary tipping points.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Dec 2009 | 1:09 pm Science body confirms reviewThe UK's Royal Institution has confirmed that it is reviewing the post of its director - currently held by Baroness Susan Greenfield.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Dec 2009 | 1:04 pm Shut down Ohio's machinery of death | Karen TorleyOhio has killed Kenneth Biros, a man I have written to for many years. How can a civilised country do this in the name of justice? After a botched attempt to execute a prisoner in the US state of Ohio in September caused international outrage, you might have thought Ohio would hesitate before pressing ahead with another execution. Not a bit of it. The US state that condemned Edinburgh's Kenny Richey to die and came desperately close to killing him is unfazed that its prison staff subjected an inmate called Romell Broom to a two-hour ordeal where they repeatedly shoved a lethal injection needle into various parts of his body – thigh, ankle, feet, muscles and bone. They've done it again, only this time piloting a new lethal injection on a death row inmate called Kenneth Biros, someone I've written to for many years. The variation is that they injected Biros with a large dose of a chemical called thiopental sodium, an anaesthetic. Mindful of repeating their earlier mistake, the state also had ready a "back-up procedure" in case a vein couldn't be found: the idea was that they could inject a combination of two chemicals (midazolam and hydromorphone) into a large muscle, like the thigh muscle. Some might say: so what? They botched one execution but that doesn't mean they should cancel all others. Well, after campaigning for justice in Kenny Richey's case for over a decade I can tell you that Ohio's killing machinery is not fit even for its already macabre purpose. Year after year Ohio botches executions. For example in 2007 the execution of Christopher Newton took more than two hours and 10 attempts. It went on so long that Newton was given a toilet break. Meanwhile, in 2006 the execution of Joseph Clark took an hour and a half. After he was injected he sat up and said: "It ain't working". He begged prison staff for a tablet to end his suffering. This is the point. Execution by lethal injection is supposed to be "humane and clinical". Ohio promises a "quick death". But there is nothing humane, quick or painless about any of it. Even when lethal injection "works" there's evidence that its cocktail of drugs paralyses the prisoner, trapping them in what Amnesty International calls a "chemical straitjacket". They're conscious, in pain, but unable to move a muscle or cry out. Leaving even this aside, prisoners taken into the execution chamber in the US have often been on death row for 20-plus years. This is psychological torture, plain and simple. Many prisoners will go to the very edge of the precipice before getting last-minute reprieves. In Kenny Richey's case he was once just 24 hours from death in the electric chair and prison guards were gloating about how he was going to "fry". Heartrendingly, he'd already said goodbye to his mother by phone: only then did the stay of execution notice come through. How can any civilised country put people through this in the name of justice? During my campaigning for Kenny I spoke to many of the men Ohio has since executed. Some were mentally ill. Some "volunteered" to die to escape the horror of life on death row. In 1999 a mentally ill man called Wilford Berry was executed, the first judicial killing in Ohio since the early 60s. I wrote to Berry begging him to reconsider: I reminded him that there were people like Kenny Richey on Ohio's death row who were probably innocent – Berry's death might open the floodgates. Sister Helen Prejean made several visits to the prison saying the same thing. It was all to no avail and the floodgates duly opened: in the last 10 years there have been 32 executions in Ohio alone. Kenny used to phone me every time there was an execution. It would shake him and the others, having to saying goodbye to someone they'd known for years. Supporters of capital punishment often close their eyes to the reality of death row and execution. If they actually knew the truth they might change their minds. Take Ohio's execution of Lewis Williams in 2004. Williams struggled with guards as they tried to inject him and his mother looked on. He begged to live and shouted over and over that he was innocent, calling on God to help. It took nine guards to hold down this 5ft 3in man. One guard, obviously distressed, pinned Williams down with one hand while stroking his head to comfort him with the other. I want to know: how can a prison officer go home to their family and act normally after something like this? Aren't they another victim of this barbaric, inhumane system? So after the fiasco of Broom's botched execution Ohio has killed Kenneth Biros, a man I've sent many cards to during the 18 long years he's been on death row. Remember: Biros had already served more time than many prisoners with a life sentence. And this is not just prison, it's imprisonment plus death. Capital punishment exceeds the calculated cruelty of the most heinous of murderers. It's like a criminal saying to his victim: "I'll kill you, but first I'll confine you for years ahead of that appointment with death." It's time for Ohio to shut down the machinery of death. And it's time the US came into the modern world and ended the grisly, inhuman business of warehousing people for death. The global picture shows a steady movement away from capital punishment: now only one in eight countries still executes people. The US is becoming increasingly isolated, left behind in a rump of hardcore death penalty countries that includes China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. As I can testify, campaigning against the death penalty makes a difference. The Orkney and Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael did great work on Richey's case and has recently visited a man called Troy Davis (who is very likely innocent) on death row in Georgia. Davis has a new legal hearing and may soon be the 140th person to be released from death row in the US in the past three and half decades. Killing someone to prove that killing is wrong is absolute madness. The sooner that Ohio and the rest of the US realises this, the better. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Dec 2009 | 12:33 pm Should Earth Scientists Take a ‘Hippocratic Oath’?
Two researchers think it’s about time their discipline made a public commitment not to harm the patient they study: Earth. Like the Hippocratic oath doctors swear, the “Oath for Earth Scientists” would provide a set of agreed-upon ethical norms for geoscientists, at a time when they are increasingly being called upon to pass judgment on massive human alterations to the Earth’s carbon, nitrogen, and water systems. “Grand proposals for ocean fertilization, orbiting mirrors, genetically engineering biofuels, painting rooftops white, cloud-generating ships and the like all point toward the future of Earth science as an applied discipline with the human future in the balance,” wrote Erle Ellis and Peter Haff, Earth scientists at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and Duke University, respectively, in Eos, the member newspaper of the American Geophysical Union. Ellis and Haff take their cue from Sir Joseph Roblat, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who argued “the time has come to formulate guidelines for the ethical conduct of scientists.” Their call to action is particularly timely with the Copenhagen climate negotiations focusing attention yet again on the difficulties of climate change and politically dealing with it. Hacked e-mails from a British research center have also brought increased scrutiny of the world of climate science in the past few weeks. “By formally recognizing our responsibilities as earth and environmental scientists in the Anthropocene, we hope to serve as better guides toward more successful stewardship of our planet,” Ellis wrote on his blog. So, if you’re a doctoral candidate studying something formerly obscure and dull-sounding like the stable oxygen and deuterium isotopes of lakes and rivers, you might soon be reciting something like this when you receive your degree:
Image: The Hippocratic Earth/NIH. See Also:
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 | 8 Dec 2009 | 12:31 pm Draft text divides climate summitDocuments leaked at the UN climate summit reveal divisions between rich and developing nations over the shape of a possible new deal.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Dec 2009 | 12:06 pm Lightning Strikes Could Help Map HurricanesThree-dimensional imaging of lightning bursts may improve forecasting of these deadly storms.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 12:05 pm Doctors query ability of Tamiflu to stop severe illnessReview published in British Medical Journal accuses flu drug manufacturer Roche of withholding evidence from trials Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, has made it impossible for scientists to assess how well the anti-flu drug stockpiled around the globe works by withholding the evidence the company has gained from trials, doctors alleged today . A major review of what data there is in the public domain has found no evidence Tamiflu can prevent healthy people with flu from suffering complications such as pneumonia. Tamiflu may shorten the bout of illness by a day or so, the investigators say, but it is impossible to know whether it prevents severe disease because the published data is insufficient. Roche has failed to make some of the studies carried out on the drug publicly available, the scientists say. "Governments around the world have spent billions of pounds on a drug that the scientific community now finds itself unable to judge," said Dr Fiona Godlee, editor of the British Medical Journal, which published the new review online and collaborated in a joint investigation with Channel 4 News, shown this evening . Roche has made a fortune out of the drug, with sales of £1.6bn this year alone. The British government has stockpiled enough for half the population. In the review, Professor Chris Del Mar, from Bond University in Australia, analysed 20 published trials that focused on prevention, treatment and adverse reactions. The authors say they were hampered by the "paucity of good data". The reviewers were forced to leave out eight trials because they had not been published, and Roche offered them "under conditions we thought unacceptable, and what was offered to us was insufficient to analyse properly." Because they did not have full access to all the trials, the reviewers say previous evidence on the effects of Tamiflu and other drugs of this class (the neuraminidase inhibitors) may be unreliable. They call on governments to set up studies to monitor the drugs for safety. A second review was carried out in the UK at Birmingham University by Professor Nick Freemantle and Dr Melanie Calvert, who analysed a series of observational studies Roche provided. (These are studies of people who took the drugs, but without a comparison group of people who did not take them. Although the reviewers had doubts about the data, they say it is possible Tamiflu reduced the risk of pneumonia. But if so, the benefit was small and there were side-effects to consider. Freemantle said he saw "very little evidence to support the widespread use of oseltamivir in the otherwise healthy population who are developing signs of influenza-like illness." He added: "We have remarkably few resources in this country to spend on pharmaceuticals on health, and it is surprising to see such widespread use of oseltamivir. But I suppose that once you've gone and bought lots of doses, then it's a bit like the situation with gun control in the US. If you have a gun in the house, it is much easier to use it. But it does not mean it's the right thing to do." Dr Godlee and Professor Mike Clarke, director of the UK Cochrane Centre, call in the BMJ for new global legislation to ensure all trial data on drugs that have been granted a licence must be published in full. Roche said in a response that it firmly believed in the robustness of the data. The company said governments and licensing authorities had been given access to all the trial information. Roche has now undertaken to put summaries of all the Tamiflu study data on a password-protected site. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm Earth WatchClimate: 'Secret agreement' leak causes chaosSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Dec 2009 | 11:03 am Car Catches Fire at Gas PumpOne of the video producers here at Discovery forwarded me a link to a car catching fire at a gas pump. In the video you see the guy fueling, getting in and out of his car and talking on his ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 11:00 am Guatemala pushes for DNA tests of kids adopted in U.S.GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - For three years Olga Lopez desperately searched for her baby daughter who was snatched from her home in Guatemala, until her face appeared in government paperwork for an international adoption.Source: Reuters: Science News | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:57 am Killer Petunias and Murderous Potatoes RevealedCarnivorous behavior in plants may be far more widespread in plants than commonly thoughtSource: Livescience.com | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:54 am A changing climate: UNEP maps extreme weather events worldwide | Felicity CarusFrom Atlantic hurricanes to Australian droughts, extreme weather events are more frequent and more violent In the run-up to Copenhagen, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published its Climate Change Science Compendium, a summary of 400 peer-reviewed research papers published since 2006. To illustrate some of the extreme weather events – which appear to be happening with increasing frequency over the past couple of years – it published a map based on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration (2007-09). We've added two notable recent events from this year – theCumbria floods and flooding in Bangladesh. The compendium also cites research published last year which identified nine "tipping elements" in the earth's weather systems that are considered vulnerable to possible abrupt and irreversible change. The tipping points1) Indian summer monsoon: The regional atmospheric brown cloud is one of the many climate change-related factors that could disrupt the monsoon. The predicted timescales for these tipping points vary from between one year and 300 years, and the temperature rises vary between 0.2C to 5C. But the Guardian's version of Unep's map shows extreme weather events – from Atlantic hurricanes to Australian droughts – are happening not just with greater frequency, but greater violence. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:51 am William Ganz obituaryCardiologist and co-inventor of the Swan-Ganz catheter William Ganz, who has died aged 90, was the co-inventor, with Jeremy Swan, of the Swan-Ganz balloon catheter, which brought simplicity and safety to a previously hazardous method of diagnosing heart conditions. In the 1960s there was a new interest in myocardial infarction – heart attack – and a new diagnostic technique, cardiac catheterisation. This involved the difficult and potentially dangerous manoeuvring of the tip of a relatively rigid catheter from a vein in the groin up to the heart, guided by a fluoroscope. It often disturbed the electrical activity of the heart, causing arrhythmias and sometimes death. In 1967, Ganz was approached by Swan, his immediate boss at the Cedars-Sinai medical centre, in Los Angeles. Two days earlier, Swan had performed a particularly difficult catheterisation on a woman with an enlarged heart. The next day, he stood on the beach at Santa Monica watching sailing boats, and thought how good it would be if the catheters could have sails to carry them through the bloodstream. He discussed the possibility with Ganz. They soon modified the idea to use a balloon at the tip of the catheter that could be deflated when it reached its destination. Swan and Ganz published the details of their catheter in 1970 in the New England Journal of Medicine and, not long afterwards, Edwards Lab- oratories began to manufacture it. The Swan-Ganz catheter was faster and safer than anything used before. By the 1990s 2m were sold worldwide each year. However, since 2000 the technique has been in decline as other imaging methods have been introduced. He was born Vilem Ganz in Kosice, Czechoslovakia, near the Hungarian border. Vilem, known as Vili, spoke fluent Czech, Slovak and Hungarian. His father, an accountant, died when he was a few months old and his mother took in lodgers to make ends meet. Ganz started medical studies at Charles University in Prague in 1937. However, the 1938 Munich agreement made Kosice part of Hungary (in 1945 it reverted to Czechoslovakia and is now part of Slovakia), so Ganz became a foreigner in Prague and was made to return to his home town, which had been renamed Kassa. As a Jew, he was detained in a Nazi labour camp, and in 1944 he was scheduled for Auschwitz, but, as he told Swan: "I refused the offer and went underground." After the end of the second world war, he completed his medical studies in Prague, graduating top of the class in 1947. For two decades he worked in Czechoslovakia, but he became disillusioned with communism. In 1966 he took his family ostensibly on holiday to Italy. When he reached Vienna, he applied for a US visa, which was granted because he had relatives in Los Angeles. Contacts got him a job at Cedars-Sinai, where he remained for the rest of his career, changing his name to William. His colleagues Dr Cory Franklin and Professor Krishna Somers confirmed that Ganz was widely believed to be the brains behind the Swan-Ganz procedure. Because of medical licensing regulations in California, Ganz had not been able to get a licence when he first arrived, so he confined himself to the laboratory and needed the patronage of Swan to launch himself in the US. By the 1970s, Ganz was developing general monitoring methods, measuring cardiac output and oxygen levels taken from the pulmonary artery, investigating lung and heart complications of other conditions, including pulmonary failure, septic shock and post-operative conditions in anaesthesia. By the time he co-operated with Swan on the "sail" idea, he was working on thermodilution concepts, measuring left-ventricular volume and cardiac output, and the relation of the right and left ventricles in heart-attack patients, techniques he developed in dogs and transferred successfully to the clinic. In 1982 he and Prediman Shah, the director of cardiology at Mount Sinai, did the first human trials. By pushing the Swan-Ganz catheter into narrow blood vessels near the heart, they found they could also use it to measure blood pressure in those vessels. Ganz also conducted, with Shah, the first studies into dissolving clots within the heart. Ganz was full of old-world charm and courtesy and was popular with patients and colleagues. "Medicine," said his son Tomas, "was his profession, love and hobby." His wife Magda, whom he married in 1945 in Budapest, died in 2005. He is survived by Tomas, a lung specialist, and Peter, a cardiologist. • Vilem (William) Ganz, cardiologist, born 7 January 1919; died 11 November 2009 guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:48 am Looking Deeply Into the Distant, Dim UniverseHow far is far? And how do you know when you get there? This is not a Dr. Seuss riddle, but a line of investigation being pursued by several international teams of astronomers who have gotten their hands on the ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:21 am Cloud Computing Poised to Transform CommunicationCloud Computing is becoming a popular buzzword and there's a reason why.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:05 am Met Office figures confirm noughties as warmest decadeThe past 10 years have been the warmest decade recorded in 160 years, despite 1998 being the warmest year on record The past 10 years have been the warmest in recorded history, according to the UK Met Office. Figures released today at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen show that despite 1998 being the warmest year on record, the noughties has been the warmest decade recorded in 160 years. The Met Office also released the raw data from around 1,500 global monitoring stations in an effort to satisfy critics who have demanded that researchers be more transparent with their data in the wake of the email hacking row at the University of East Anglia. In a separate announcement, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Geneva said today that 2009 will be one of the 10 warmest individual years recorded. The provisional figure for warming during the year is 0.44C above the long-term average of 14C. According to the Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, the figures "highlight that the world continues to see global temperatures rise, most of which is due to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and clearly shows that the argument that global warming has stopped is flawed". A third paper released today, from the German research group Germanwatch, showed that Bangladesh, Burma and Honduras were the three countries most affected in the past 20 years by extremes of climate. Also in the top 10 were Vietnam, Nicaragua, Haiti, India, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines and China. "We cannot attribute all extremes of weather to climate change but we are already recording an increase in frequency and intensity. It shows we are living in a globally warmed world," said Saleemul Huq, head of climate change at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London. With the Copenhagen talks intent on holding temperature rises to 2C, Huq warned that further extreme weather events and disasters were inevitable. "A 2C rise in temperatures is safe for some, but not for the poorest. A 1.5C rise gives a safer world for everyone, but there is a vast difference between the two." "The question is 'do we give up on the poor and most vulnerable?' If we declare war on climate change, then yes we can do it. It can be done," he said. Only four developed countries were in the top 20 of countries most prone to weather disaster: Italy at 12, Spain at 14, Portugal at 14 and the US at 18. The 2003 drought in southern Europe, which led to tens of thousands of deaths and huge insurance losses, as well as a series of category five hurricanes in the US are responsible for these rich countries being placed so highly in the league table. The figures from Germanwatch do not include African countries in the top 20 because they are based on death tolls and recorded financial losses, neither of which figure strongly in the prolonged droughts and desertification which are mainly seen in Africa. The Met Office data forms part of the HadCRUT record of global temperatures - one of three major analyses of global temperature that are part of the scientific information used in the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - the UN body that reviews climate change literature and reports back to world governments. It has made public more 150m temperature reading going back more than 100 years. Sir Brian Hoskins, director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London said the Met Office and WMO annoucements reconfirm the strong warming trend that scientists have observed over the last century. "Individual years can be warmer or colder than the last, just like individual days," he said. "However when we look at decades, the warming trend is striking. Each decade since the 1950s has been warmer than the previous one. The 'noughties' stand out as being by far the warmest decade since temperatures were first measured." Greenpeace climate change campaigner Joss Garman said: "This is an unmistakable climate signal that shows how humans are warming the Earth. The core of the sceptics' case was that we've been experiencing global cooling, but that claim was never justified by the science." "This won't stop some people pushing the conspiracy theory that climate change isn't happening, but here in Copenhagen the new data is being discussed by governments and is sure to focus minds." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:04 am Discouraging news from the distant pastGovernment scientists looking back to a time when Earth was as warm as it is expected to get by the end of this century have come away with a disquieting conclusion: In the long term, climate may be 30 to ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:59 am Battery made of paper shows future of energy storageBatteries made from plain copier paper could make energy storage simpler, lighter and cheaper, according to researchers.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:38 am Party in the Desert, Part 1You know it’s an unusual day when you wake up to poring rain in the Mojave Desert. About the only people who weren’t happy about it were the folks overseeing the rollout of Virgin Galactic’s first spaceship, the VSS Enterprise ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:29 am Monster Black Holes May Grow in Giant Star CocoonsThe biggest black holes in the universe are also the most perplexing. Scientists have long been confused about just how the earliest, most massive black holes formed, but new evidence now suggests they could have originated inside giant cocoon-like stars.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:28 am Hubble sees most distant galaxiesNasa's Hubble Space Telescope captures its deepest view of the Universe, revealing never-before-seen galaxies.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Dec 2009 | 8:46 am Humans Have Hidden Sensory SystemScientists have discovered a new sensory system in our skin that could explain why some people feel pain while others don't.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Dec 2009 | 8:34 am Forensic marketIs a free market in forensic science dangerous?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Dec 2009 | 7:49 am Alternative Medicine Took a Beating in 2009Many alternatives to traditional medicine have failed to live up to their purported benefits.Source: Livescience.com | 8 Dec 2009 | 7:15 am Ian Plimer's uncritical coverage in the hacked emails row is frustrating | Bob WardThe 'expert sceptic' is a mining geologist whose academic credibility is based on a book riddled with dodgy graphs One of the many frustrations for climate change researchers arising from the current hacked climate emails saga has been the way that so-called sceptics have been given so much uncritical coverage by journalists who are not properly scrutinising their misleading and inaccurate claims. Take Professor Ian Plimer, for instance, who is now wheeled out by many sceptic groups who are seeking a veneer of academic credibility. Prof Plimer helped the UK Independence party last week to launch its declaration of climate change denial and is a member of the academic advisory board of Lord Nigel Lawson's new lobby group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Plimer is gaining lots of new publicity as an "expert sceptic" from parts of the UK media, with numerous TV and radio interviews, full-page opinion pieces in The Mail on Sunday and even a splash on the front page of the Daily Express. The trouble is that Professor Plimer is not a climate researcher and has not published any scientific papers on the change in climate that we have been witnessing over the past century. He is an Australian mining geologist who gained fame in his native country for publicly tackling creationists over their denial of the evidence for evolution. But Prof Plimer has published a book, Heaven and Earth which has become the bible for many climate change sceptics. His book is riddled with inaccurate information about climate change. The very first graph in the book, for instance, purports to show temperature observations and projections between 1990 and 2025. One of the lines on this graph is labelled "HADCRUT", indicating that the data source was, allegedly, the Met Office's Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. However, almost none of the data points accurately reflect the official records from the source, and 2008 is completely misrepresented as the coldest year since 1993. Elsewhere in his book, Professor Plimer claims 2007 was the coldest year since 2005, contradicting his own graph, and also disagreeing with all of the official records of global temperature. But perhaps the most staggering inaccuracy is in the third graph in his book, which is supposed to show global average temperature between 1880 and about 2002. It appears to show that the amount of global warming prior to 1945 was much bigger than that since the late 1970s. This is in complete contrast to the official records maintained by the Met Office, Nasa and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which all show that the warming since the 1970s has been much greater. So what is the origin of Prof Plimer's alternative record of global temperatures? The book does not cite a source and Prof Plimer has so far refused requests to reveal its provenance. But one eagle-eyed blogger spotted that it was identical to a graph used in the very first broadcast of the discredited UK TV programme The Great Global Warming Swindle. Soon after it was broadcast in March 2007, the programme-makers admitted that the graph had been altered by taking an original graph (posted on a website to collect names on a petition against ratification of the Kyoto protocol by the United States), purporting to show global temperatures up to the mid-1980s. They had wanted a more up-to-date graph and so had simply stretched the bottom axis and relabeled it as if it extended up to the present. As a result they missed out all of the warming that has occurred since the mid-1980s, giving the false impression that more warming had occurred before 1945. When a UK newspaper revealed the maniupulation, the programme-makers dropped it from repeat broadcasts and the DVD version. But Prof Plimer appears to have revived it. Now he is being interviewed around the world as an "expert sceptic" on climate change with some newsworthy alternative views to "balance" the mainstream consensus among researchers. And his dodgy graphs and inaccurate claims about global temperatures are being portrayed by some parts of the media as a "different side of the story", when really they are just mistakes presented as fact. • Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:44 am This decade 'warmest on record'The first decade of this century is "by far" the warmest since instrumental records began, latest assessments show.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:26 am Feminine Appeal Can Be a Curse (for Fruit Flies)The most attractive female fruit flies can be harassed by males to the point where it inhibits feeding.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:21 am NASA Cooks up Ingredients for LifeHow does life take hold in the vacuum of space?Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:00 am MPs ask university to explain leaked climate emailsChairman of the House of Commons science and technology committee has requested a 'comprehensive note' on the university's response to the allegations The university at the centre of a row over leaked emails which sceptics claim show global warming data has been manipulated has been asked to explain the incident to the committee of MPs responsible for science. The material was taken from servers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit before it was published on websites run by sceptics, possibly in a bid to undermine the global climate summit in Copenhagen. Phil Willis, the chairman of the House of Commons science and technology committee, has written to Professor Edward Acton, the vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia, requesting a "comprehensive note" setting out what had happened. The letter also calls for the university to set out the steps taken to investigate the allegations and test the integrity of the data held by the unit, how the centre can "justify its commitment to academic transparency" and how the university proposes to restore confidence in the research. The committee, which said it may ask the university to appear to give oral evidence, also asked for an assurance that none of the data referred to in the emails which have been published has been destroyed. The University of East Anglia has already launched an independent review into the allegations, while the head of the UN's expert panel on climate change, Rajendra Pachauri, has said it will look into what has happened. The director of the Climatic Research Unit, Professor Phil Jones, has stood down while the investigation takes place, but has said he "absolutely" stands by the science the centre has produced. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:06 am Printable, Moldable Batteries Made From Paper and Nanotubes
Those who are quick to dismiss paper as old-fashioned should hold off on the trash talk. Scientists have made batteries and supercapacitors with little more than ordinary office paper and some carbon and silver nanomaterials. The research, published online December 7 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, brings scientists closer to lightweight printable batteries that may one day be molded into computers, cell phones or solar panels.
That performance is largely due to paper’s porous nature: at the nano scale, paper is a tangled matrix of fibers. This vast surface area helps inks stick, says Yi Cui of Stanford University, coauthor of the new work. This holds true for carbon nanotube ink as well. When carbon-nanotube ink touches paper, the nanotubes “get caught very tightly to the cellulose,” says Cui, probably just via good old electrostatic forces. The paper acts as a scaffold, and the carbon nanotubes act as electrodes that electrolytes in solution react with. This nanotube-paper combination offers a lightweight alternative to traditional energy storage devices that rely on metals.
Calculations suggest that conductive paper coated with a kilogram of the carbon nanotubes could power a 40-watt bulb for an hour, making the paper more efficient than plastic-based versions of flat energy-storage devices. The scientists also used the conductive paper to collect current inside lithium-ion batteries and were able to power a light-emitting diode, or LED. While previous work has used cellulose as a backbone for conductive materials, this demonstration is the first with ordinary office paper, says Cui. The next step is to take the technology to a larger scale, which might not be a huge hurdle, he says, since paper making and printing are well-developed technologies. Images: 1) Scanning electron microscope images of paper (left) and paper coated with carbon nanotubes (right)/Yi Cui. 2) Demonstrating the flexibility of the carbon-nanotube ink coated paper/Yi Cui. See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:00 am When two baboon troops go to warAn epic battle between hundreds of Hamadryas baboons is caught on camera by a BBC natural history film crew.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 8 Dec 2009 | 3:32 am
|
Why are the Russian Academy of Sciences, Okayama University and presumably Russia’s space agency Roscosmos aiding this scheme? Well, science of course. And charity.
By sandwiching a piece of untreated paper between two pieces inked with carbon nanotubes and then placing the layers in an electrolyte solution, the researchers made conductive paper that could be bent and rolled. When adhesive tape was applied to the paper and then pulled off, the ink didn’t peel off with the tape, a problem with other energy storage materials made with plastic films, the researchers note. Silver nanowires also made the paper conductive.