Iraq strikes deal with Lukoil over massive oilfield (AFP)

AFP - Iraq struck a deal with Russian energy giant Lukoil on Saturday to develop one of the world's biggest untapped oilfields as part of efforts by Baghdad to dramatically ramp up its crude output.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Dec 2009 | 3:19 am

Iraq oil deal auction a "success," sees huge output (Reuters)

Reuters - Iraq, emerging from the shadow of war, expects to boost its oil output to rival the level of top producer Saudi Arabia after awarding some of its most attractive oilfields to global oil companies this week.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Dec 2009 | 2:53 am

Global protests demand action on climate change (AFP)

AFP - A planetary chain of protests headed by a mass rally in Copenhagen on Saturday cranked up the heat on problem-plagued talks over a pact to roll back climate change.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Dec 2009 | 2:47 am

Antarctic nations plan tough new shipping controls (AP)

AP - Countries that manage Antarctica plan tough new controls on ships visiting the southern oceans and the fuels they use to reduce the threat of human and environmental disasters as tourist numbers rise, officials said Saturday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Dec 2009 | 2:20 am

Climate talks advance in Copenhagen amid protests (AP)

AP - With a draft agreement on the table, climate negotiators in Copenhagen are bargaining over emissions targets and financing — key issues that need to be resolved before world leaders can sign a pact to curb global warming.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Dec 2009 | 2:13 am

Melting pot

Copenhagen's other big battle - over money
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Dec 2009 | 2:03 am

Australia leads climate protests

Thousands of people march in Australia as part of global protests to demand action at UN climate talks in Copenhagen.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Dec 2009 | 1:35 am

Philippine youths demonstrate for climate action (AFP)

AFP - Hundreds of protesters wearing red shirts banged on drums and bamboo poles and sang songs outside Manila's City Hall on Saturday demanding global action on climate change.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 9:38 pm

Novel drug combo improves breast cancer survival (AP)

AP - Some women with very advanced breast cancer may have a new treatment option. A combination of two drugs that more precisely target tumors significantly extended the lives of women who had stopped responding to other medicines, doctors reported Friday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 6:36 pm

Old math reveals new thinking in children's cognitive development

Five-year-olds can reason about the world from multiple perspectives simultaneously, according to a new theory by researchers in Japan and Australia. Using an established branch of mathematics called Category Theory, the researchers explain why specific reasoning skills develop in children at certain ages, particularly at age five. The new theory shows that these reasoning skills have similar profiles of development because they involve related sorts of processes.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm

Super-massive black holes observed at the center of galaxies

An international team of scientists has observed four super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies, which may provide new information on how these central black hole systems operate.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm

RXR activation: Hope for new Parkinson's disease treatment

Researchers have investigated the potential of RXR ligands for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. In a new study, the scientists describe the use of two cellular models of Parkinsonian damage to explore the neuroprotective function of the two RXR ligands LG268 and XCT.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm

Pathological gambling may be successfully treated with medications for substance addiction

Pathological gambling can be successfully treated with medications that decrease urges and increase inhibitions, according to researchers. They found positive outcomes in gamblers treated with medications often used for substance addictions.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm

Astronaut balancing act: Training to help explorers adapt to a return to gravity

Challenges associated with long-duration spaceflight do not end with landing. Astronauts often suffer from balance problems that lead to dizziness and difficulty standing, walking and turning corners when they return to normal gravity. Researchers are developing techniques, using a treadmill and simulated balance disturbances, to help astronauts adapt to a new gravity environment. The techniques could also have benefits for Earth-bound populations such as the elderly.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm

Cataloging all that goes wrong in a cancer cell

A team of scientists has produced a systematic listing of the ways a particular cancerous cell has "gone wrong," giving researchers a powerful tool that eventually could make possible new, more targeted therapies for patients.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm

Extreme fear: could you handle it?

When disaster strikes, whether you live or die depends on how you react to the crisis…

If you suddenly found yourself in a life-or-death crisis and had to make a decision that would either save your life or end it, are you confident you'd make the right one? People in the state of Victoria, Australia, faced just such a decision in February and March this year. For five weeks, catastrophic brush fires swept across the state. Government policy held that when fire threatened a neighbourhood, homeowners were to make a choice: stay and fight to save their houses, or evacuate early. They were explicitly instructed not to wait until the flames were close. Trying to run from an advancing wildfire is the surest way to die in it.

The choice made sense in strictly rational terms. But in the wake of the devastation, a vociferous debate arose over the wisdom of the policy: can people be expected to make rational decisions, critics asked, when they're surrounded by 1,200C flames raging four storeys high?

Most people have never faced imminent, lethal danger, and so couldn't possibly know how they would react to the experience of extreme fear. But, as thousands of Australians found out, danger can overtake us with surprising speed.

Everyone in Melbourne knew that Saturday 7 February 2009 was going to be brutal. The southern summer had been a scorcher, with temperatures the previous week climbing above 43C (110F) three days in a row. That day the mercury was forecast to climb even higher. Winds were strong and a long drought had left the vegetation brittle and dry.

In Glenburn, a farming community outside the city, Victoria University professor Ian Thomas spent the day listening for weather updates on the radio. An engineer, Thomas specialised in calculating the risk of fire in buildings. His house and lawn were surrounded by trees on all sides and abutted the eucalyptus forest of Kinglake national park: "We didn't need the forecast to tell us that it was dangerous," he says.

At about 11am, high winds knocked down a power line that ran through pasture 25 miles to the north-west. Within hours, a roaring wall of flames was burning eastward. Then, at about 4pm, the temperature suddenly dropped. "We started to relax," Thomas says. "Nothing big had happened." Soon after, the power went out. Fifteen minutes later it came back on, then died again.

What the radio broadcasts had failed to report was that the wildfire had spread all the way to the town of Kinglake, less than 10 miles from Thomas's home. The cooler breeze had fanned the flames to new intensity, and was driving them towards Glenburn at freight-train speeds. The first inkling of trouble came when a couple who lived nearby, Lou and Cheryl Newstead, pulled into the Thomases' driveway. They brought news that their son had just called to tell them the fire was heading their way. As they talked, the wind that was blowing in from the south darkened with smoke. Ash and glowing embers started dropping out of the air.

"We went from not having any particular worries to having fire in our immediate vicinity very quickly," Thomas says. The decision point – stay or go – had arrived faster than anyone had anticipated. The neighbours decided to evacuate; the Thomases, to stay and defend. "My thinking was that they were foolish in driving off in that situation," Thomas says. "They didn't know what they were driving into." But his own situation was scarcely better. With the power out and the fire on their doorstep, the Thomases were entirely on their own. What they would not find out until much later was that the fire that was racing towards them had already become the deadliest single blaze in Australian history.

The fire exploded up the ridge at 80mph. Hardest hit was a tidy neighbourhood of homes along Pine Ridge Road, Kinglake, where a triangle of land was flanked on two sides by steep hillside. Topography that once provided fine views over the southern plain now exposed them to fire from two directions at once. The entire community was caught unawares. There was no time to contemplate the options.

Rob Richings, a service technician, decided to make a run for it once the windows of his house started to explode from the heat. "It's against the rules, but this wasn't a normal bush fire," he later said. As it was, he managed to drive through the flames and reach safety. Many others did not. Disoriented in the smoke, cars crashed into each other on the jammed road. Flames melted tyres and exploded fuel tanks. In one car, six people died together when their vehicle was consumed by fire.

Staying put was just as much of a gamble. Another neighbour, Tina Wilson, planned to take her three children to the nearby home of Paul and Karen Roland, who were holed up with their two daughters. "The house has got sprinklers on the roof and we'll be fine," Wilson told her partner over the telephone. "I'll call you soon." Soon after, Karen Roland phoned her sister. "It's too late!" she yelled over the roar of the fire. "We're trapped!" They all perished.

By the time the fire was burning its way through to the Thomases' tree line, 70 people were dead. Thomas had counted on his sprinkler system to protect his house and garden from the fire, but the pump was electric and the power lines were down. If he and his wife were going to fight the fire, they'd have to do it by hand, with buckets. The smoke grew so thick that it was impossible to see more than a few feet. "It was like a steam train coming at you," he says.

Soon the fire had surrounded the house. Thomas and his wife had committed themselves to their decision. Whether or not it was the right one, they had no way of knowing. All they could do was handle themselves as best they could.

The first step to dealing with a crisis is acceptance. Studies of disasters have found that many people remain in denial in the face of evident danger. Nightclub patrons continue to dance and order drinks as smoke fills a burning hall; passengers on a sinking ferry sit and smoke cigarettes as it lists ever more ominously to one side. This denial is driven by a mental phenomenon called "normalcy bias". Psychologists say that people who have never experienced a fatal catastrophe have difficulty recognising that one could be unfolding.

For those who do accept what's happening, the most terrifying part of a crisis is likely to occur at the very beginning, while the full scope of the danger remains unclear. Anticipatory fear is often worse than the experience itself. Performers who throw up before every performance never throw up on the stage itself. The scariest part of jumping out of a plane is the instant before you leave the door. Psychologist Seymour Epstein conducted a study in which novice jumpers were fitted with heart-rate monitors that measured their pulse as their plane climbed upward toward its release point. He found that their heart rates got faster and faster until just before they jumped, declining precipitously once they were actually out of the plane. The most stressful part of the experience was the anticipation.

Uncertainty in the face of danger magnifies stress by forcing a person to think about a wide range of possible outcomes and weigh the strategies for dealing with those outcomes. It also allows worst-case scenario thinking. A key early step to combating fear is to find out as much information as possible about the threat at hand.

When we're facing a life-threatening situation for the first time, one of the biggest uncertainties we face is what will happen inside our own minds. Having been in danger before can help. When Dave Boon's car was struck by an avalanche on a road near Denver, US, he benefited from having been in another, very different, life-threatening situation two years earlier. He'd been white-water rafting when his boat was swept by the force of a rapid below an overhanging rock. Boon didn't panic, and the force of the water eventually pulled him free. Two years later, as he found himself tumbling end-over-end inside the avalanche, he knew he wouldn't panic then, either. And that was a powerful piece of information.

The more control a person has over a threatening situation, the less anxiety it provokes. Numerous experiments have shown that being out of control of a negative situation leads to the release of the stress hormone cortisol. Engaged in useful activity, it's easier to stop thinking about your internal experience of fear and instead focus usefully on external things, such as improving your situation.

Some people, such as optimists and extroverts, are generally more prone to take an active approach in a crisis. So are people who see themselves as capable of shaping the outcome of whatever situation they find themselves in. A related concept is self-efficacy, a person's belief that he or she is capable of accomplishing a given task. People with these character traits tend to perceive and take advantage of opportunities to change the situations they find themselves in.

These are the sorts of people you want with you when the going gets hairy. In 1967, a raging winter storm trapped mountain climber Art Davidson and two friends in an ice cave near the summit of Denali, Alaska. Days went by as they slowly succumbed to hypothermia and starvation, nearly immobile in their tiny hole. They kept themselves going by making careful plans about the only thing over which they had any control, their meagre rations. When the food ran out, they managed to find another problem to grapple with: how to locate a cache of fuel that one of them remembered was hidden nearby. By stringing together a series of meagre hopes, they managed to survive six days, at which point the weather broke and they escaped down the mountain.

Reframe

An alligator can't make you scared. A skidding car can't make you scared. The only thing that can make you scared is your mind's interpretation of those things. Fear is a phenomenon that resides entirely within your brain. That's why the most powerful method of all for controlling fear is reappraisal. But some people are better at reappraisal than others. Studies have found that people who are able to think of events as challenging rather than threatening are able to cope better with their emotions, have more positive feelings, and are more confident.

Marc Taylor, in a study of military personnel undergoing hyper-realistic combat training, found that subjects who relied on positive reappraisal to cope with their situation had lower levels of stress hormone in their bloodstream. Contrast that useful kind of positive thinking with the negative appraisal that's common to people in the throes of social anxiety.

Sir Laurence Olivier was among the most gifted actors of the 20th century. But in 1964, when Olivier was 57 and had been performing for more than four decades, he was gripped by stage fright. On the opening night of Ibsen's The Master Builder, in which he had a starring role, he froze. It was the moment that actors dread.

For those of us who have not experienced stage fright, it's difficult to grasp the impact of such a moment. But the terror is equivalent to that aroused by actual, mortal danger. The sympathetic nervous system launches into full overdrive, generating a physiological response appropriate to a life-or-death crisis. Actors say the sensation is a good deal like plummeting from a great height.

Like a panic attack, stage fright often occurs in the wake of other stress in a person's life. And as with most forms of anxiety, once unleashed, it's a demon that continues to lurk in the margins of awareness, always threatening to reappear.

Cognitive behavioural therapy is a powerful tool in overcoming anxiety disorders. Patients are taught to recognise when they're thinking unrealistically negative thoughts, and then deliberately to reassess the situation in a more positive light. But one doesn't need to go to a professional therapist. Anyone who's trying to get a grip on their emotions in the heat of a crisis can simply find someone to share their feelings with – or even say them aloud to themselves – in order to regain some control over their mental systems.

As the fire raced toward the Thomases' home, they had no time to express their fear. They were too busy taking action. The fire swept through the trees surrounding their house until it was blazing around them in all four directions. With a crack, a huge gum tree shuddered and crashed on to their driveway, blocking them in. The fire kept creeping forward and the Thomases kept patrolling, checking their most vulnerable points, hurriedly lugging buckets of water to counter each new thrust. Keeping continuously active helped to keep fear at bay.

As time went on, their growing store of information about the fire also reduced the stressfulness of the crisis. "The longer it went on, in a sense the more comfortable we got with it," Ian Thomas says, "because we started to feel that we'd already been to some degree successful, and we stood a chance of continuing to be successful."

Finally, at around 2.30am, the situation appeared to stabilise. The fire had crept to within 15ft of the house, but the flames in the immediate vicinity were now out and the carpet of burned-out grass formed a protective barrier. Together, the weary couple collapsed and slept fitfully for three hours, keeping the blinds open so they could check for flare-ups.

But the fight was not over. With the coming of the dawn, the wind began to build, whipping smouldering embers back into flame. Pockets of unburned vegetation erupted like roman candles. Thomas staggered outside to douse the most threatening flare-ups, but he was weak from the night's fight and suffering from heat stroke. He could not take even a sip of water without throwing up. Gradually, the flare-ups became less menacing and the Thomases began to relax. Except for their house, their property had been incinerated. But they were alive.

The catastrophe of 7 February 2009 dwarfed any of Victoria's past wildfires. But it was just the beginning. The fire season in Victoria would ultimately claim 210 lives, destroy more than 2,000 homes and lay waste to a million acres of countryside. In the aftermath, the people of Victoria were left wondering whether the "stay or go" policy was to blame for unnecessary deaths. Some argued that the policy should be scrapped in favour of mandatory evacuation. Thomas disagrees – in his case, his and his wife's action had saved their house. "Being afraid puts you under stress, and that makes it much more difficult to make completely rational decisions," he concedes. "But in the end most people have a very strong survival instinct. They find ways to deal with the situation."

• This is an edited extract from Extreme Fear: The Science Of Your Mind In Danger, by Jeff Wise, published by Palgrave Macmillan on 19 January at £16.99. To order a copy for £15.99, with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Dec 2009 | 5:27 pm

Climate change? Well, we'll be dead by then

So as we career towards a mediocre outcome in Copenhagen, why do roughly half the people in this country not believe in man-made climate change, when the overwhelming majority of scientists do?

Firstly we have the psychological issues. We're predisposed to undervalue adverse outcomes which are a long way off, especially if we might be old or dead soon. We're inherently predisposed to find cracks in evidence that suggests we should do something we don't want to do, hence the enduring appeal of stories about alcohol being good for you.

Suggesting that personal behaviour change will have a big role to play, when we know that telling people to do the right thing is a weak way to change behaviour, is an incomplete story: you need policy changes to make better behaviour easier, and we all understand that fresh fruit on sale at schools is more effective than telling children not to eat sweets.

This is exacerbated because climate science is difficult. We could discuss everything you needed to know about MMR and autism in an hour. Climate change will take two days of your life, for a relatively superficial understanding: if you're interested, I'd recommend the IPCC website.

On top of that, we don't trust governments on science, because we know they distort it. We see that a minister will sack Professor David Nutt, if the evidence on the relative harms of drugs is not to the government's taste. We see the government brandish laughable reports to justify DNA retention by the police with flawed figures, suspicious missing data, and bogus arguments.

We know that evidence-based policy is window dressing, so now, when they want us to believe them on climate science, we doubt.

Then, of course, the media privilege foolish contrarian views because they have novelty value, and also because "established" views get confused with "establishment" views, and anyone who comes along to have a pop at those gets David v Goliath swagger.

But the key to all of this is the recurring mischief of criticisms mounted against climate change. I am very happy to affirm that I am not a giant expert on climate change: I know a bit, and I know that there's not yet been a giant global conspiracy involving almost every scientist in the world (although I'd welcome examples).

More than all that, I can spot the same rhetorical themes re-emerging in climate change foolishness that you see in aids denialism, homeopathy, and anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists.

Among all these, reigning supreme, is the "zombie argument": arguments which survive to be raised again, for eternity, no matter how many times they are shot down. "Homeopathy worked for me," and the rest.

Zombie arguments survive, immortal and resistant to all refutation, because they do not live or die by the normal standards of mortal arguments. There's a huge list of them at realclimate.org, with refutations. There are huge lists of them everywhere. It makes no difference.

"CO₂ isn't an important greenhouse gas", "Global warming is down to the sun", "what about the cooling in the 1940s?" says your party bore. "Well," you reply, "since the last time you raised this, I checked, and there were loads of sulphites in the air in the 1940s to block out the sun, made from the slightly different kind of industrial pollution we had then, and the odd volcano, so that's been answered already, ages ago."

And they knew that. And you know they knew you could find out, but they went ahead anyway and wasted your time, and worse than that, you both know they're going to do it again, to some other poor sap. And that is rude.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Dec 2009 | 5:06 pm

Sydney's latest hostel has fabulous harbour views

Sydney's new YHA has budget rooms with harbour views in the historic Rocks district – and it comes with its very own archaeological dig

The meaning of life, as Australian playwright David Williamson once wrote, is never debated in Sydney because we all know what it is: "Getting yourself a water frontage." Yet one of the quirks of the real estate-obsessed city is that some of the best views of the Opera House and Sydney harbour belong to the helplessly poor. Flanking the Harbour Bridge, among the billionaires' eyries and five-star hotels, are public housing towers with the best views money cannot buy. At their feet remain ancient terrace houses for welfare recipients.

And now, adding to this robust blend, is a spanking new YHA, which opened its doors just weeks ago, close to the Park Hyatt, the city's priciest hotel. For minimal cost, guests can rub their eyes in the morning to a view of the harbour, the Opera House, the Bridge, and Fort Denison. They can have a barbecue on the rooftop and play a part (albeit briefly) in the quest for which, Williamson wrote, locals "devote a lifetime". Like the housing department's clients, hostel guests can be very poor and feel rich.

We can thank history for this combination of architecture: the one-time clustering of the poor in the heart of the city, the supposedly unsanitary effects of living by water, and beyond that, Sydney's convict origins. The regeneration and gentrification of the Rocks area – the historic centre within a stroll of the harbour and Circular Quay – with high-end shops, galleries, restaurants and new residential developments, has not wiped out the past. Rather it has combined with it, layering the different eras within the square half-kilometre that was the Europe0an settlement's first home.

Even if it were a simple building on its own foundations, the YHA hostel would be the latest representative of this egalitarian mix. But that's just the start of the story. The hostel is built on a unique plot of land; the real interest here lies not so much out in the views as down in the dirt. For most of the 20th century, the angular block on which the hostel stands was occupied by light industry. Workers on the railways and Sydney Harbour Bridge used the site until it was buried under bitumen for a bus depot and, from the 1960s, a public car park.

In 1994, the New South Wales government decided to redevelop the site but not before investigating what colonial relics might lie beneath. Soon archaeologists discovered that the bitumen had been a perfect preservative for the pre-1900 relics.

It was known that workers' cottages and a pub, the Plymouth Inn, later called the Australian, had been demolished in the early 20th century, officially a response to deaths from bubonic plague but more likely a government land grab.

The archaeological dig recovered more than a million artefacts over the next 15 years, with the earliest remains from the house of first fleet convict George Legg and his wife Ann Armsden. Records showed they had arrived on the Lady Juliana, the "floating brothel", before building there in 1795.

The spade work also revealed the foundations of a slaughterhouse owned by George Cribb, a butcher and bigamist. Cribb's well, poisoned by run-off from the abattoir, became a dump for objects including an alcohol still, probably thrown into the well during a government inspection.

The Aussie Time Team discovered cauldrons from the site of Robert Berry's bakery, helping historians flesh out images of communal Sunday dinners when residents brought their meat to be cooked at the baker's fire. There were also earlier foundations of a house built in 1807 by Richard Byrne, an Irish rebel transported after the Vinegar Hill convict uprising, who eventually settled down to become one of the colony's leading stonemasons.

The items recovered are one thing – crop seeds, dead pets and fine china – but the stories are another, and often tragic. As well as plague deaths, records show local families were decimated by smallpox. It is a site of some haunting. At its peak in the late 1800s, there were some 300 residents crammed into more than 30 cottages. At its centre, the Australian Hotel – now rebuilt down the road – established its claim to being the pub with the longest continually-held license in the country.

The hostel has 106 rooms for up to 354 occupants, but although the population echoes the past, the architectural principles are somewhat different. The rooms – all en suites and many with harbour views – are spacious and well-appointed, and the common areas have all the usual facilities. But what distinguishes this structure is its being raised from the ground on posts that take up a small portion of the fragile site. In two wings, it sits above and around the archeological dig. Each wing has an atrium, with three stories of guest rooms surrounding the big internal courtyards. So while the windows face outwards, when you exit your room you are in a corridor looking down into the wells, cesspits and foundations of yesteryear.

Historic photographs and prints on each floor show aspects of the past, there is an education centre on site, and one-hour tours can be arranged with expert guides. Attractive two-storey screens have been erected to duplicate the street frontage from the 19th century. Local history is supplemented in the Susannah Place Museum across the road and the Rocks Discovery Museum five minutes' walk away. The dig is ongoing, and there will be days when guests return to their hostel after a day tramping around museums only to find archaeologists on their hands and knees rustling up the stuff that will fill those very same museum shelves.

A Brit coming to Sydney for the history may be like a Sydneysider travelling to Skegness for the beaches, but the counter-intuitiveness of the idea is rewarded by a unique hostel experience and inexpensive access to one of the richest (in every sense) and most essential cogs in a Sydney visit.

When I stayed at the hostel it had only been open for a few weeks, and bookings were still relatively light. I don't expect this to remain the case for long.

• Sydney Harbour YHA (0061 28272 0900, yha.com.au) has doubles from £66 per night (room only) and shared rooms from £23pp. Family rooms have TVs and there is a guest kitchen, laundry, dining room, internet and WiFi, coffee bar, and bike storage. Qantas (0845 7747 767, qantas.com) has return flights to Sydney from £1,056 including tax (£814 from April). For more information: australia.com.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Dec 2009 | 5:06 pm

Copenhagen climate conference: Money talks

Cash is the key to unlocking the grand climate bargain between the rich and poor world, as was apparent even before the brokering had got under way in Copenhagen. At the end of the first week of talking, this reality has become even starker, for a whole host of reasons.

For one thing, the first world is resisting moving things forward through the power of its own example. The European Council yesterday failed to make any immediate advance on its original offer of a 20% emissions reduction. This despite Gordon Brown's hope that Europe might soon firm up its more tentative talk of a 30% cut. In the absence of action, money will have to do even more of the talking. The indicative offers from developing countries are rather more encouraging – the environmental consultancy Ecofys suggests they are broadly in line with what the scientists demand – but these offers come with financial strings attached, making assistance still more important. Developing countries reject the rich world's tendency to brand such funds as aid, regarding them as reparations incurred by the globe's north for creating a problem which will do most damage in the south. The strength of the feelings showed, when a top negotiator on behalf of the poor countries dubbed Mr Brown worse than a climate-change denier for having squandered all the money on the banks.

It was thus a significant moment when the European Union put some real money on the table yesterday, even if it was not nearly enough in order to seal the deal. The first hurdle is to prove that the €7.2bn pledged over three years is genuine new money, and not – as so often happens when the west trumpets its virtue – the relabelling of existing funds. The second hurdle is persuading Japan and America to match the cash. Even after both obstacles are cleared, however, the bigger challenge will remain. Namely, establishing a funding stream that can be credibly banked on to increase its flow when the climate crisis tightens its grip.

Mr Brown, together with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, yesterday signalled this was understood by proposing a so-called Tobin tax on financial transactions to provide reliable transnational revenues for climate assistance. Paying the planet while throwing sand in the wheels of freewheeling finance is precisely the sort of imaginative leap that the moment demands. But asking the IMF to review the idea is a very long way from making anything practical happen. While the US treasury continues to oppose it, a new global tax is not going to happen. Either America must soften its stance, or it must devise its own means to raise the money. As so often before, an anxious world is warily casting eyes in the direction of Washington.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Dec 2009 | 5:05 pm

Virgin Galactic's Spaceship Party Crashed by High Winds (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - Talk about a party-crasher: Just hours after British billionaire Sir Richard Branson unveiled a gleaming new commercial spaceship in the California desert this week, hurricane-force winds leveled the gala event's tents. But luckily no one – or spaceship – was harmed.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 4:15 pm

Unexpected weakness in H1N1's method for evading detection by the immune system

The H1N1 influenza virus has been keeping a secret that may be the key to defeating it and other flu viruses as well. Researchers have found what they believe is a weakness in H1N1's method for evading detection by the immune system.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Nerve-cell transplants help brain-damaged rats fully recover lost ability to learn

Nerve cells transplanted into brain-damaged rats helped them to fully recover their ability to learn and remember, probably by promoting nurturing, protective growth factors, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Genetic variations indicate risk of recurrence, secondary cancer among head and neck cancer patients

Eighteen single-point genetic variations indicate risk of recurrence for early-stage head and neck cancer patients and their likelihood of developing a second type of cancer, researchers report.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

MRI detects breast cancer at earlier stage, study shows

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) coupled with mammography detects almost all cancers at an early stage, thereby reducing the incidence of advanced stage breast cancer in high-risk women.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Bad Traffic: The Illegal Trade in Wild Animals

Remember earlier this year, when smuggler Sonny Dong was caught with 14 birds stuffed in his pants at LAX? It seemed like a bizarre incident -- something so off the wall, it had to be completely out of the ordinary. ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Dec 2009 | 2:58 pm

New Device Makes Guns More Accurate (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - A new technology may make it easier for gun owners to improve their marksmanship.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 1:41 pm

Biotech Could Take Rabbits Off Lab Duty

When Ken Aldrich describes the cornea forming in a petri dish at his company's lab, it sounds crazy. But these little ball of cells might actually spare animals from lab testing and be used for transplants in humans. Aldrich is ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Dec 2009 | 1:39 pm

How Long is Time?

The cosmos was already nearly 10 billion years old when our Sun was born. Yet we're still quite a young universe.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Dec 2009 | 1:24 pm

Ep. 5: The End of Time - How the Universe Will Die

Another word for "time" is "change". When transformation stops, time ceases. Calculating the death date of the last black hole, which marks the end of Everything.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Dec 2009 | 1:21 pm

Ep. 4: On Deep Time - After Earth Ends

Humans may escape the death of their planet. But where do you run, in a universe where everything is expanding away from everything else?
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Dec 2009 | 1:20 pm

Ep. 3: On Cosmic Time

The Blueprint for Everything was cast in the first 100 microseconds of the Big Bang. But, 13.7 billion years later, the structure of the Universe is far from built - as the battle between energy and gravity continues to rage.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Dec 2009 | 1:20 pm

Ep. 2: On Earth Time

Seasons, ocean currents, ice ages, carbon production; these and many other cycles govern our planet's behavior. But humans can understand the progression of even longer and larger events.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Dec 2009 | 1:19 pm

Ep. 1: On Human Time

Earth's rotation is baked into our biology. But humans may be the first of Earth's species to conceive of events beyond our lifetimes. And to wonder: Does time move like an arrow?
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Dec 2009 | 1:17 pm

Spacewalking Astronauts Seen With a Backyard Telescope

With a big enough telescope and some good fortune, an amateur astronomer can look into the sky and see humans at the space station.

Here’s the proof. On March 21, 2009, astronaut Joe Acaba stepped into space for some extravehicular activity. Down on Earth, Ralf Vandebergh was in his backyard, pointing a 10 inch-telescope at the International Space Station as it passed over Europe.

In reviewing the photos he shot, he saw a few bright pixels appear precisely where the work was going on at exactly the moment it was being conducted. In other words, he was looking at an astronaut!

He posted this new video of his images to YouTube earlier this week.

“The best results occur mostly as a surprise when lighting angle, viewing angle, seeing, distance and other factors of the objects are favorable,” Vandebergh explains on his website.

We’re big fans, obviously, of photos of recognizable features on Earth taken from space, but here’s the reverse: a photo of a human in space taken from Earth. It’s a different kind of sublime, but just as awesome.

Images: Ralf Vandebergh.

See Also:

• Asteroid Impact Craters on Earth as Seen From Space
• Erupting Volcanoes on Earth as Seen From Space
• First-Ever Asteroid Tracked From Space to Earth
• Eclipse Shadow on Earth Seen From Space
• Comet Hunter’s Last Look at Earth Is Haunting
• How to Track Space Junk Online

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 | 11 Dec 2009 | 1:11 pm

Don't blame El Niño...

Like a cantankerous child, El Niño rightfully deserves a lot of blame for a lot of weather hardships around the world, but don't blame it for this woeful bout of cold temperatures gripping the United States. For this nasty weather, ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Dec 2009 | 12:49 pm

Science Nation

Science for the People: Surprising discoveries and fascinating researchers.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Dec 2009 | 12:34 pm

Tsunami Research

This huge new tool is helping scientists perform large scale studies on the impact of both hurricane and tsunami waves. The wavemaker is being used to better understand the effects of waves on steel, wood and brick.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Dec 2009 | 12:34 pm

Facebook Offers More Privacy

I saw a story this morning saying that critics are slamming Facebook for their new privacy settings. The critics, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, say that the new settings are actually designed to get people to open up more of ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Dec 2009 | 11:45 am

Panhandling Hits the Internet

It's a recession Christmas. Even though retail and online sales improved this year over last year, the unemployment rate in the country was at 10 percent as of November. During the same month, the average duration a person remained unemployed ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Dec 2009 | 11:23 am

New Device Makes Guns More Accurate

A new technology improves marksmanship with intuitive aim.
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Dec 2009 | 11:16 am

Draft Released for Copenhagen Climate Talks

The proposal calls for all countries together to reduce emissions by 50 percent to 95 percent by 2050.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Dec 2009 | 10:20 am

Nature or sinister design: what's going on in town with highest rate of twins?

In Candido Godoi rumours about tests on villagers by Nazi geneticist Mengele vie with theories about water supply

Staring out over the rolling pastures of Brazil's deep south, 65-year-old twin Cecilia Kunkel placed the blame squarely with her parents. "It's hereditary, isn't it," she said. "It's like an illness."

Across the valley, on the porch of his wooden farmhouse, Jose Ignacio Lunkes, 63, the father of identical twins, said it was all about nature.

"It's the water," he beamed, before adding: "Or perhaps it is a message from God."

Facts are as scarce as twins are common in Candido Godoi, a tiny agricultural town in southern Brazil that is said to boast the highest rates of twin births on earth. According to one Brazilian university study, 10% of births in one region of Candido Godoi between 1990 and 1994 were of twins, more than five times the state average. The same study showed nearly 50% of these twins were identical, far higher that normal rates.

And in the absence of any concrete scientific explanation, myth and rumour abound in this town of 6,400 inhabitants.

Many, like Lunkes, who is also the grandfather of twins, believe the town's twin boom is down to the water supply, extracted from the appropriately named rio Duvida, or Doubt river, that runs past his home. Others say minerals in the earth must be responsible. Recent years, however, have seen a more sinister explanation in this remote farming town where nearly 80% of residents are of German descent, shopfronts bear names like Danzer or Finkler and where an antiquated German dialect is still largely preferred to Brazil's official language, Portuguese.

According to these rumours Josef Mengele – a Nazi scientist often referred to as the "Angel of Death" – is the man behind what locals call the "twin revolution".

Mengele, thought to have died near Sao Paulo in 1979, is said to have visited the region in the 1960s, performing a number of obscure tests on local women who subsequently gave birth to twins, often with blonde hair and blue eyes. One of the town's former mayors has claimed that Mengele went about his work under the alias Rudolf Weiss.

Mengele, who fled to South America, was notorious for his obsession with creating an Aryan master race through genetic experimentation and his tests on twins in Auschwitz. Holocaust survivors say that the Nazi doctor routinely used twins – dubbed "Mengele's children" – as human guinea pigs. He is said to have diverted thousands of young children from the gas chambers to his operating tables, convinced that twins held the key to this master race.

Long-held suspicions about Mengele's activities in the region around Candido Godoi gained strength last year after the launch of a book by Argentine journalist, Jorge Camarasa, called Mengele: the Angel of Death in South America.

The book reiterated claims that Mengele had spent time clattering around Candido Godoi's dirt tracks in a mobile laboratory conducting genetic experiments on women.

Brazilian scientists and historians have dismissed such theories as spurious and scientifically impossible but with geneticists struggling to explain the "twin revolution", the Mengele theory still carries some weight.

Until the theory reappeared in Candido Godoi, locals saw the twin phenomenon as a major selling point. They built a fertility statue for tourists to visit, sold bottles of fertility water to women who hoped to bear twins. They continue to hold annual "twin parties" at which twins gather for a banquet.

Today many of Candido Godoi's residents still get a visible kick out of the outside attention from visiting academics and film crews ‑ but the Mengele theories have angered many.

One local historian was visibly upset and refused to talk to the Guardian this week, claiming he did not have enough time to discuss the situation.

"It's genetic," one local woman yelled one morning at the bus station. "Tell the world it wasn't the Nazi."

Osmar Mallmann, headmaster of the local school, agreed. "It's a myth, just like those old indigenous myths."

Lunkes, who says that Menegle was in the region but not performing genetic experiments, added that government persecution of Brazil's German communities following the South American country's allegiance with the allied forces during the second world war had left many locals reluctant to revisit the past. "It was a very complicated period. Nobody wants to relive that time," he said. "[Back then] anybody caught with any German symbol was punished. Everything was forbidden."

Alice Szinwelshi, Candido Godoi's education secretary, said: "I believe that Mengele really did pass through these parts. That is not being ruled out.

"But that he carried out experiments that resulted in the big rise in the number of twins – that is not true."

Others are not so certain. Ms Kunkel said her uncle had told her that Mengele, supposedly a visiting vet, had come to the region in the 1960s and did experiments on animals with what they later discovered were placebos.

Kunkel said she believed that Mengele's reputed ability to breed twin animals had caught the imagination of local families who, obsessed with the idea, became more likely to have twins. "It's about what is in the mind, not what is in the water," she claimed.

Lunkes, a retired teacher who lives in the Linha Sao Pedro community, a particular twin hotspot where 43 pairs have been born into little more than 80 families all living within a 4km radius, said he hoped a scientific explanation would be found, with one local university now preparing a study into the phenomenon.

"We want to be recognised around the world but not because of the Nazis," he said. "Nobody can really say what it is but it must be something to do with nature – the earth or the water. We just don't have any scientific proof."

Lunkes, a farmer, said the area around the Doubt river produced "twin manioc roots, twinned pieces of sugar cane, twinned corn. It makes me think that there is something in the earth."

Such theories fail to convince the area's younger generations, people such as Daiane, Daniele and Denise Spies, (left), aged 12, the first triplets to grace Candido Godoi's dusty streets.

"My parents say they don't really believe that it was the water," admitted Daiane. But why were there so many twins in Candido Godoi? The three girls shrugged, simultaneously.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Dec 2009 | 10:17 am

Launch of space mapping satellite delayed: NASA (AFP)

AFP - NASA has delayed the launch of a space mapping satellite because of problems discovered in a rocket booster steering engine, the US space agency said Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 11 Dec 2009 | 10:03 am

Sharing the Catch – and Saving the Fish

Some breaking news from our guest blogger Debbie Salamone of the Pew Campaign to End Overfishing in the Southeast: There may be a new catch to the way millions of fishermen are allowed to catch fish. A proposed policy issued ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Dec 2009 | 9:53 am

Gravestones Tell Climate Tales

Have an old graveyard nearby? Than you too can help sort out your local climate history. The Geological Society of America has a study underway called EarthTrek which, among other things, gets volunteer citizen scientists to record the weathering of ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Dec 2009 | 9:40 am

Shifting sands

Villagers in Mali seek to hold back Sahara's advance
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Dec 2009 | 9:27 am

Hopping Hadrosaurs Could Have Been Fastest Dinosaurs

Computer simulation suggests that hopping hadrosaurs could have moved faster than any other dinosaur, according to a new Palaeontologica Electronica study. (Hadrosaur Images: National Park Service) Hopping isn't a very comfortable or efficient way for most animals to move, aside ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Dec 2009 | 9:22 am

Titan: A Climate Out Of This World

Scientists are learning more about Saturn's moon Titan, including details of its weather and landscape
Source: Livescience.com | 11 Dec 2009 | 9:15 am

EU makes 7bn euro climate pledge

EU leaders agree to pay 7.2bn euros over three years to a global warming fund, in a deal they hope may boost world efforts.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Dec 2009 | 9:12 am

Space Fashions Vol. 1: Earth's Stupidest-Looking Space Suits

When taking a real life stroll through the airlock, sci-fi fashion generally takes a back seat to, oh, not dying a horrible death in the inky black void of space. Still, there's nothing stopping us from laughing at some of ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 11 Dec 2009 | 9:08 am

Christmas books for kids and chefs, plus Richard Wrangham on how cooking made us human

In a year when the economy is crunchier than the mince-pies, finding the right book to give is more important than ever.

In today's podcast, Guardian children's books editor Julia Eccleshare gives some expert advice on what to buy for young readers, while Susan Smillie, of our food and drinks team, offers her tips on the foodie books of the year.

We also ask the primatologist Richard Wrangham to explain why he believes that it was the act of cooking that made us human.

Reading list

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham (Profile, £15)

Game by Trish Hilferty and Tom Norrington Davies, Absolute press, £25

The Game Cookbook, by Norman Tebbit, JR Books, £14.99

The Forager's Handbook, Ebury Press, £30

Delia's Happy Christmas, Ebury Press, £25,

Nigella's Christmas, Chatto & Windus, £25

Traditional Food in Shropshire, by Peter Brears (Excellent Press, £19.95)

Sam Stern's Student Cookbook: Survive in Style on a Budget (Walker, £9.99)

For young readers

Little Book of Christmas Cooking, by Rebecca Gilpin, Leonie Pratt and Catherine Atkinson (Usborne, £5.99)

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by TS Eliot, illustrated by Axel Scheffler (Faber)

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by TS Eliot, audio version, read by John Gielgud and Irene Worth (HarperCollins Audio, £10.99)

Who Wants to be a Poodle? I Don't! by Lauren Child (Puffin, £10.99)

Grubtown Tales: Stinking Rich and Just Plain Stinky, by Philip Ardagh (Faber, £4.99)

What's for Dinner, Mr Gum? by Andy Stanton (Egmont, £5.99)

Duck, Death and the Tulip, by Wolf Ehrlbruch (Gecko Press, £10.99)

Nation, by Terry Pratchett (Corgi, £6.99)

What I Saw and How I Lied, by Julie Blundell (Scholastic, £6.99)

Exposure by Mal Peet (Walker, £7.99)

Poetry for children

Twinkle Twinkle Chocolate Bar by John Foster. (Oxford, £9.99)

The Usborne Book of Poetry for Children by Sam Taplin (Usborne, £11.99)

I Like This Poem by Kaye Webb (Puffin, £5.99)

The Orchard Book of Nursery Rhymes by Faith Jaques (Orchard, £12.99)

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Dec 2009 | 9:05 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 | 11 Dec 2009 | 8:52 am

Genetic 'map' of Asia's diversity

An international scientific effort has revealed the genetics behind Asia's diversity.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Dec 2009 | 8:38 am

Spaceman

Why UK space needs to be more like ice skating
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Dec 2009 | 8:18 am

Harrabin's Notes

A look at life inside the Copenhagen climate bubble
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Dec 2009 | 6:45 am

Stunning vistas from UK telescope

The world's largest survey telescope, Vista, reveals its first spectacular images of the Universe.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Dec 2009 | 6:17 am

'Cryo-egg' to predict sea levels

Bristol University experts will build a "cryo-egg" to help study sea level changes in Greenland.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Dec 2009 | 6:03 am

Science forgotten in climate change fuss

No one identifies any scientific flaws in Phil Jones's work, yet the 'fallen idol' narrative is too alluring for the media to resist

It is odd that we still don't take climate change seriously.

Judging from the acres of newsprint being devoted to the subject right now, you might find that remark surprising. But look at the furore over the University of East Anglia emails: environmentalists hand-wringing as if the end of the world had suddenly been brought forward; their opponents crowing that the whole of climate science has to start again from scratch.

Can you imagine this kind of response if the subject of the emails had been something we actually care about, such as health or the economy? The discovery of the HIV virus involved one of the murkiest incidents in the history of science. It's an insult to UEA's Phil Jones and his colleagues to even suggest the comparison, but it serves to make the point. Reporters on the HIV affair always scrupulously stressed that although the integrity of some of the individuals involved was called into question, the evidence that HIV causes Aids was unaffected. People might have died if the public had been misled on that point. Whereas if it's only about climate change …

A colleague working in astrophysics was expressing bemusement to me yesterday about why the reputation of British science was apparently under threat, given that no evidence had actually emerged of scientific misconduct. Her specific question was: "Has anyone found evidence of an error in a published paper or dataset?" If they had, then of course the error would need to be corrected, which happens in science all the time.

If it could be proved that figures had been deliberately altered to give a specific result then it would be very serious, but so far no evidence has emerged from these Climatic Research Unit (CRU) emails of any error in the HadCRUT instrumental temperature record at the centre of the row, never mind proof of deliberate intent to mislead. How often have you heard that repeated, clearly, by the mainstream press reporting on this incident? Even if they were reporting on Berlusconi's sex life they would be more careful. Berlusconi can afford better lawyers than Jones can.

Take, for example, the "trick" of combining instrumental data and tree-ring evidence in a single graph to "hide the decline" in temperatures over recent decades that would be suggested by a naive interpretation of the tree-ring record. The journalists repeating this phrase as an example of "scientists accused of manipulating their data" know perfectly well that the decline in question is a spurious artefact of the tree-ring data that has been documented in the literature for years, and that "trick" does not mean "deceit". They also know their readers, listeners and viewers won't know this: so why do they keep doing it?

What is particularly ironic is that a favourite graph in the climate sceptic community a few years ago entitled "Most accurate global average temperature" did precisely this. It stitched temperatures from the satellite-based temperature record from 1979 onwards together with the surface temperature record before then. At that time the satellite record showed no evidence of warming, so one might call this a handy trick to hide the recent warming in the surface temperature record. Did that make it evil? I wouldn't say so: there were concerns about the impact of incomplete coverage and something called the urban heat island effect on the surface temperature record, so combining the two data sources might have been legitimate, provided it was clear what was done and why. This particular figure has fallen out of favour since an error was discovered in the satellite data processing which, when corrected, revealed the satellites were actually showing warming after all.

Perhaps the most concrete example of journalists claiming to reveal "problems" with the CRU temperature record was a report on Newsnight (widely redistributed) in which a software engineer criticised computer code contained in the leaked email package. Neither of the two pieces of code Newsnight examined were anything to do with the HadCRUT temperature record at all, which is actually maintained at the Met Office. Newsnight's response, when I challenged them on this, was: "Our expert's opinion is that this is climate change code." Presumably, then, the quality of the code I use to put together problems for our physics undergraduates shows that we should not trust results from my colleagues who work on the Large Hadron Collider on the grounds that "it is all physics code". Newsnight have declined to retract the story.

One can understand the blogosphere reacting as it has done, but why has mainstream journalism collectively decided to treat the story in this way? The bottom line is that journalism deals not in facts, but in "narratives". And the narrative of the fallen idol is clearly a great way to fill the airwaves – witness the reality television industry.

So the narrative journalists have collectively decided upon is that a few scientists may have manipulated their data, and either (a) it doesn't matter because the evidence for human influence on climate is so strong or (b) this shows the whole edifice is now crumbling, depending on their editor's predilections. And George Monbiot laments that the high priests of his climate change religion have let him down. All without any evidence that any number, anywhere, is actually wrong. Journalists, who always find numbers irritating, are revelling in the fact that they are back in the driving seat. By making the story about the individual scientists, rather than scientific results, they can go back to reporting on the story as they see fit without being constrained by scientific evidence.

This is all particularly painful for those of us who know and have the deepest respect for Jones and his colleagues. Our instinct, of course, is to stand up and defend his integrity. But we know that if we do so, journalists weave this into their chosen narrative as "scientists circling the wagons to defend their own". The Times report accompanying the statement released yesterday by UK climate scientists was a case in point: rather than simply reporting the boring story that scientists agree there is nothing wrong with the data after all, they had to go and hunt out a "human interest" angle of some scientist who claimed that he felt pressured by the Met Office into signing the statement (ridiculously – many of us who signed spend our professional lives annoying the Met Office).

Even the senior figures in the World Meteorological Organisation are letting themselves get swept along, pointing out that even if we leave out the CRU dataset the evidence for human influence on climate is still strong. While true, this misses the point. If we allow personal attacks on individual scientists or criticism of irrelevant software to be used as an excuse to discount data that people don't like, it will be open season. Presumably they will be hunting through the emails of someone involved in the Nasa temperature series next, and so it will go on.

None of us can imagine what Phil Jones is going through, and all of us know that it might be our turn next. For all I know someone is already sorting through my emails on a Russian web server. But for the record, if they do decide to pick on me, I don't want people out there defending my integrity. I want people out there defending my results. Because we are scientists, and this is what we do.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 11 Dec 2009 | 5:30 am

Light it up

Why eco-bulbs aren't quite what they seem
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 11 Dec 2009 | 4:45 am