|
|
|
|
Research may lead to better UV/radiation blocking in eye glassesAdding cerium oxide to phosphate glass rather than the commonly used silicate glass may make glasses that block ultraviolet light and have increased radiation damage resistance while remaining colorless, according to researchers. These cerium-containing phosphate glasses have many commercial applications for use in windows, sunglasses and solar cells.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm Sucker-footed bats don't use suction after allIn first-time experiments in the wild, a researcher has discovered that a species of bat in Madagascar uses wet adhesion to attach itself to surfaces. The finding explains why the bat -- unlike almost all others -- roosts head-up. It also helps to explain how it differs from a similar head-up roosting species.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm The importance of attractiveness depends on where you liveDo good-looking people really benefit from their looks, and in what ways? Researchers found that yes, attractive people do tend to have more social relationships and therefore an increased sense of psychological well-being.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm Reproductive germ cells survive and thrive in transplants, even among speciesReproductive researchers have succeeded in isolating and transplanting pure populations of the immature cells that enable male reproduction in two species -- humans and mice. The germline stem cells, taken from testis biopsies, demonstrated viability following transplantation to mouse testes, providing hope to prepubescent men risking infertility due to cancer treatment.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm Biological catch-22 prevents induction of antibodies that block HIVScientists seeking to understand how to make an AIDS vaccine have found the cause of a major roadblock. It turns out that the immune system can indeed produce cells with the potential to manufacture powerful HIV-blocking antibodies -- but at the same time, the immune system works equally hard to make sure these cells are eliminated before they have a chance to mature.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm New bacterial behavior: Puzzling 'dance' of electricity-producing bacteria near energy sourcesGeobiologists have observed a new behavior of metal-metabolizing bacteria, with implications for design of microbial fuel cells. The bacterial 'dance' has been dubbed the electric slide, officially named electrokinesis.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm Scientists uncover protective mechanism against liver cancerScientists have identified a protein switch that helps prevent liver damage, including inflammation, fibrosis and cancer. The findings suggest that a better understanding of how the protein, TAK1, works could lead to new insights into the development of liver disease and cancer.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 9:00 am Gene identified as cause of some forms of intellectual disabilityA gene involved in some forms of intellectual disability has been identified. The gene is called TRAPPC9 and may be associated with hundreds of thousands of cases of intellectual disability world-wide.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 9:00 am Accelerated aging: Researchers identify traits of people with rare syndromeResearchers have provided the most extensive account to date of the unique observable characteristics seen in patients with an extremely rare premature aging syndrome.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 9:00 am Secrets of mysterious 'night-shining' clouds unlocked by NASA's AIM satellite and modelsNASA's Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere satellite has captured five complete polar seasons of noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds with an unprecedented horizontal resolution of 3 miles by 3 miles. Results show that the cloud season turns on and off like a "geophysical light bulb" and they reveal evidence that high altitude mesospheric "weather" may follow similar patterns as our ever-changing weather near the Earth's surface.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 9:00 am Protesters march on climate talksHundreds of protesters march on the deadlocked UN climate talks in Copenhagen as ministers begin talks there.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Dec 2009 | 3:29 am Protesters try to disrupt UN climate talks (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 3:04 am Ministers flex for final climate deal push (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 3:00 am Scientists send Christmas baubles on an icy missionUK researchers use small electronic spheres to study the water channels under the Greenland Ice Sheet.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 16 Dec 2009 | 2:23 am Securing climate deal will be 'very difficult': PM (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 1:44 am Video: Scientific Drones Take Flight at Earth’s Icy Poles
The earth’s polar regions are incredibly difficult places for human beings to do science, so researchers are increasingly turning to unmanned aerial vehicles to make the observations they need to understand important environmental changes. “Everyone knows researchers who have died trying to get data. Hopefully the worst we’re going to have with our unmanned aircraft is we lose a vehicle or two,” polar scientist Betsy Weatherhead of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at UC Boulder, said Tuesday here at the American Geophysical Union meeting. Important but poorly understood features of the polar landscape are areas of open water surrounded by sea ice called polynyas. Scientists know that polynyas are key spots for energy transfer between the water, ice and land. They are also “incredibly important for biological activity,” Weatherhead said. “Most of the primary productivity occurs right at the polynya and the ice edge.” But despite their importance, key data about what happens in and above them is missing. For example, no atmospheric measurements had been made over the Terra Nova Bay polynya in Antarctica during the winter time. During that season, manned flights are impossible. In fact, said CIRES polar scientist John Cassano, the only way to measure how the air and water interact over the polynya is to use an unmanned aerial vehicle. And because some scientists have all the luck, the particular unmanned vehicle Cassano uses must be launched from the roof of a speeding pickup truck.
In September 2009, Cassano’s team sent Aerosonde UAVs on 16 flights, including eight over Terra Nova Bay. In 130 hours of flying, the planes, which have a wingspan of about 10 feet and weigh under 35 pounds, covered 6,800 miles. Norwegian and British teams have flown UAVs in Antarctica, but nowhere near as far as Cassano’s team. “These are by far the longest duration flights completed,” Cassano said. It’s one of a series of polar research projects made possible by the tiny, unmanned planes. The British Antarctic Survey owns four UAVs and Norwegian researchers are studying albedo in the Arctic with unmanned planes. The Characterization of Arctic Sea Ice Experiment made extensive use of UAVs leaving from Svalbard Island and the Arctic MUltisensor Cryospheric Observation eXperiment (MUSCOX) sent UAVs winging over Greenland to study glacial waters. “We really kicked the door down in the last few years [on UAV use],” said Whitehead. “I think it’s the technologies and now we can get funded doing these things.” In the old days, Whitehead said, UAVs were not a major part of polar scientists’ programs. Now, though, the excellent early scientific returns from UAV research have convinced an increasing number of scientists that the technology is ready. “UAVs are proving themselves, from the start, to be a valuable asset. We’re getting science on our first time out with these vehicles,” Whitehead said. “And that’s primarily because we can’t have the data any other way.” UAVs come with a variety of price tags, from kits that only cost a few hundred dollars to fancy military-style drones that can run a million dollars, said Ute Herzfeld, a mathematician at UC Boulder. Cassano said his team actually rented the Aerosondes. The bill for the entire month-long trip was just $150,000. Image: CIRES. Videos: 1) John Cassano. 2) Betsy Weatherhead. Citation: “UAV Observations of an Antarctic Polynya During Winter” by J. Cassano; J. A. Maslanik; S. Knuth. AGU 2009. 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 | 16 Dec 2009 | 1:04 am Philippine volcano rumbles with fresh explosions (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 16 Dec 2009 | 12:12 am Activists dodge Japan whaling fleet after skirmish (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Dec 2009 | 11:24 pm 'Jesus-era' burial shroud foundScientists find an ancient burial shroud in Jerusalem which they say is very different from the controversial Turin Shroud.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Dec 2009 | 10:44 pm Copenhagen Meetings Create Own CO2According to this article from the Telegraph, all of the transportation associated with the climate change meetings in Copenhagen will emit as much CO2 as a city the size of the UK’s Middlesbrough would over the same period of time. ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Dec 2009 | 7:00 pm Boeing Dreamliner completes first flightSEATTLE (Reuters) - Boeing Co completed the long-delayed first test flight of its new 787 Dreamliner on Tuesday, heralding a new era of plastics-based aircraft that promise to save airlines millions of dollars in fuel costs.Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Dec 2009 | 6:59 pm Climate conference emits its share of carbon (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Dec 2009 | 6:42 pm Let's All Play the Cosmic Slot Machine!Earlier this year I blogged about Galaxy Zoo 2, an updated version of the original Galaxy Zoo project that launched on February 17th. From that post: The original Galaxy Zoo asked members of the public to access galleries of galactic ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Dec 2009 | 6:23 pm Robotic Planes Capture Detailed Images of Remote Antarctic (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - SAN FRANCISCO - Unmanned planes flying over one of the most forbidding regions of Antarctica have captured the first close-up images of the area, where the cold, dense seawater that drives the ocean's circulation is formed. These unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are proving a boon to scientists who study the frozen regions at Earth's poles, many parts of which simply aren't reachable to humans. ...Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Dec 2009 | 5:26 pm Robotic Planes Capture Detailed Images of Remote AntarcticUnmanned planes are being flown over unreachable polar regions.Unmanned planes are being flown over unreachable polar regions.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Dec 2009 | 5:17 pm The murky origins of evolution by natural selectionSuch generalisations (Letters, 11 December) only serve to fuel the Darwin myth. Let's be specific. Darwin's claim that he had understood the concept of natural selection for 20 years was dishonest. Darwin's use of the term natural selection in his essay of 1844 bears no relation to the way it is used in The Origin of Species. The difference is crucial and has been known for 30 years. The scholar Dov Ospovat realised, after going through all Darwin's notes and papers, that in 1844 Darwin saw natural selection as a force operating only as an organic response to changed (geological) conditions rather than, as used in 1859, an ongoing process, working constantly at the improvement of organisms in every environment at all times. Moreover, there is no hint in the essay of 1844 of a concept of divergence meaning descent with modification – nor was there one with such a specific meaning anywhere in Darwin's manuscripts until after he received Wallace's Ternate essay on 3 June 1858. So, who first realised its absence from Darwin's essay? Well, that was his biographer son, Francis, in his introduction to the first publication of his father's trial essays in 1909. An honest man, Francis Darwin. Your correspondents must be aware that the scientific approach they call for has been in process for all that time and yet few in our universities seem prepared to accept the fact that the picture which now emerges is not the one they had in mind when they began the painting process. Roy Davies Author, The Darwin Conspiracy • Dr Alfred Venables et al (Letters, 3 December), in seeking to make the case that there was a conspiracy on Darwin's part to hide when he actually received the Wallace manuscript in June 1858, write: "It seems that Darwin wrote to Joseph Hooker on 8 June, saying he had found the "missing keystone" that enabled the completion of his evolution theory." What Darwin actually wrote was: "I will try to leave out all allusion to genera coming in & out in this part, till when I discuss the 'principle of Divergence', which with 'Natural Selection' is the keystone of my Book & I have very great confidence it is sound." Clearly there is no reference to anything having been "missing". A dispassionate discussion of this conspiracy theory can be found in the introduction to the correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume 7: 1858-1859 (www.darwinproject.ac.uk/correspondence-volume-7). Allen Esterson London • Not only were Darwin and Wallace beaten to the idea of natural selection by the Scottish arboriculturalist, Patrick Matthew (Letters, 8 December), but also by the American loyalist and doctor William Charles Wells. Both published the idea before Darwin even voyaged on the Beagle. Professor Milton Wainwright University of Sheffield 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 | 15 Dec 2009 | 5:05 pm Letters: Our voice needs to be heard at CopenhagenAs representatives of people from the developing world who are most affected by climate change, we are still fighting to ensure our voices are heard in Copenhagen. We are alarmed about the potential failure of the talks (Report, 15 December). People in many of our countries in the global south are already experiencing the destructive effects of climate change. It is these people, who have not contaminated the planet, who hold the solutions in their hands. It is the rural farmers, indigenous, and the poor people of the world that can teach us how to sustain life on the planet through learning from and living in harmony with nature. We urgently hope that in the few days left Copenhagen changes the status quo which continues to damage the natural world. We hope that the global north recognises its ecological debt to the world's impoverished peoples; that it begins to repair our villages and ecosystems and reaches substantial agreements to ensure greenhouse gas emissions are curbed. Enough funds should be provided to southern countries to support this socio-environmental restoration: the climate debt to the world's poor must be settled. If Copenhagen achieves nothing, the resulting delay to securing these vital agreements will be a terrible sentence for all human beings and the planet. The earth is a unique global ecosystem in which everything is interrelated. Today, misery afflicts many peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Tomorrow other countries will face extinction too. Innocent Hodzongi Programmes director, Environment Africa, Zimbabwe Lloyd Simwaka Progressio country director, Malawi José Ramon Avila Director of the National Association of NGOs, Honduras António Pacheco Director, Social and Economic Development Association of Santa Marta, El Salvador María Elena Salas Dias Director, Cajamarca Ideas Centre, Peru Dinorah Granadeiro Executive director, NGO Forum, Timor-Leste Victor Ochoa President, Campamento Environmental Movement, Honduras Dr Angel Ibarra Director, Salvadorian Ecological Union, El Salvador Ego Lemos Founding director, Permaculture Timor-Leste, East Timor María Elena Mendez Director, Centre for Women's Studies, Honduras Anna Zucchetti Director, GEA Group, Peru Kevin Ndemera Progressio Country Director, Zimbabwe Antonio Gaybor Executive secretary, National Water Resources Forum, Ecuador Manuel Ernesto Cruz Director, Youth Development Foundation, El Salvador Deometrio do Amaral Executive director, Haburas Foundation, Timor-Leste Carmen Medina Progressio country director, El Salvador Larry José Madrigal Rajo General co-ordinator, Bartolomé de las Casas Centre, El Salvador Dulce Marlen Contreras Co-ordinator of Rural Women's Association of La Paz, Honduras Luís Camacho Progressio country director, Ecuador Lidia Castillo Director, Centre for the Investigation and Promotion of Human Rights, El Salvador Roque Rivera Executive director, Popol Nah Tun, Honduras Jesús Garza Co-ordinator of the Honduran Coalition for People's Action, Honduras Marianela Gibaja Progressio country director, Peru Dr Juan Almendares Bonilla Founding director, Mother Earth Movement, Honduras Xiomara Ventura Progressio Country Director, Honduras Maximus Tahu Researcher, La'o Hamutuk, Timor-Leste Juvinal Dias Researcher, La'o Hamutuk, Timor-Leste Jesus Garza Coordinator, The Honduran Coalition for People's Action, Honduras Tibor van Staveren Progressio country director, Timor-Leste Dr Jeannette Alvarado Director, Maquilishuat Foundation, El Salvador • As one who was at Seattle to see the WTO's open-market blitzkrieg temporarily halted, I wholeheartedly agree with Madeleine Bunting's perceptive bookending of the noughties with Seattle and Copenhagen (Protesters in Seattle warned us what was coming, but we didn't listen, 14 December). However, she is not correct to imply that the movement "differed dramatically" over alternatives to economic globalisation. There was a general consensus that to control finance and global corporations there needed to be a return to countries having the will and the ability to protect, nurture and rebuild their local economies. This would also entail the political control of such damaging corporate forces and a change in the end goal of trade and financial rules that have allowed big business and banks to prosper, while trashing local economies and the environment. The twin towers and the wars on terror diverted attention from these priorities. Tackling the global economic crisis presents new opportunities for this "protect the local, globally" approach to solve the triple credit, climate and oil-supply crunches. An example of this is the Green New Deal proposal. This emphasises a massive £50bn-a-year local jobs and business programme to decarbonise the UK economy. It involves comprehensive measures to gut the power of finance and details a fairer global taxation system to fund such programmes in poorer countries. It is the latest step along the path that first received global coverage in Seattle. Indeed to compensate for the disaster of the last 10 years, the Green New Deal needs to become a key blueprint for campaigns and government policies in the 2010s. Colin Hines Convener, Green New Deal Group • Reading George Monbiot's article (This is bigger than climate change. It is a battle to redefine humanity, 15 December), I felt a Freudian subconscious must have been at work. He managed to refer to "our crowded planet", the human race being "hedged in" by the consequences of its own actions, that we are acting in "defiance of natural constraints", that we are no longer able to "swing our fists regardless of whose nose might be in the way", and that "perpetual growth cannot be accommodated on a finite planet". As if to ram home the point, he even concludes with a reference to "another great unmentionable". Was he, I thought, going to join other leading environmentalists like Jonathan Porritt and David Attenborough, and agree that we should all be treating population growth as a serious issue? Alas, no. The particular "unmentionable" turned out to be the folly of searching for more oil at a time when we should be phasing out its use. The real unmentionable remains, in his world, just that. Chris Padley Market Rasen, Lincolnshire • George Monbiot again attempts to make the subliminal link between those who disagree with the consensus view on climate change and Holocaust deniers (Comment, 8 December). However, he fails to admit the real scandal of the leaked emails. As Karl Popper taught us, scepticism is a cardinal virtue, and this is particularly true in sciences that rely upon the interpretation of historical data and the output of theoretical models. In this respect climate science is similar to my own subject, financial economics, and there are important lessons to learn from the way that discipline has developed. In the 1970s the Chicago School dominated finance, and leading journals would not accept articles contradicting the rational expectations/market efficiency paradigm. Over the subsequent decades, counter-evidence and alternative theoretical explanations of market behaviour began the emerge at the margins of the discipline. Now, the contrary view has become so persuasive that the certainties of 40 years ago appear naive. However, the academic lockout put back the development of the subject for a generation. My reading of this affair is that climate science, like finance in the 1970s, is at an immature stage of development. There are heavy consequences when scientists forget Popper's dictum that good science seeks to refute, not confirm. With climate science the stakes are high, and so we need the very best of science. That is why I am on the side of the sceptics. Emeritus Professor Bob Ryan Nettleton Shrub, Wiltshire 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 | 15 Dec 2009 | 5:05 pm Relatives hear about climbers' chance of survival (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Dec 2009 | 4:43 pm Boeing Dreamliner in first flightBoeing's new 787 Dreamliner passenger aircraft successfully completes its first test flight in the US.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Dec 2009 | 4:39 pm Electrolux: Put Household Appliances on the Climate AgendaGlobal home appliance company urges nations to immediately reduce CO2 emissions.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Dec 2009 | 2:57 pm Hole in Ionosphere Reveals Clues About North Korean Missile Launch
In April of this year, the country launched a Taepodong-2 missile with the intent of placing a satellite in orbit. It does not appear to have done so, though the North Korean government claims it did. As the missile flew up and over Japan, it punched hole in the ionosphere, the upper-most layer of the Earth’s atmosphere. Using the more than 1,000 GPS receivers in Japan, Kosuke Heki, a geodesy specialist at Hokkaido University, was able to compute the trajectory of the rocket by looking at the interactions between its exhaust and the charged oxygen ions in that part of the earth’s atmosphere. While the results don’t dispute the conclusion that the launch was a failure, the work does provide some interesting data about the relatively mysterious North Korean missile program. For one, Heki said, their missiles have gotten better since the Taepodong-1 launch 11 years ago, which was recorded with the same dense network of GPS sensors. Based on the holes the two missiles made in the ionosphere, the Taepodong-2 had eight times as many water molecules in its exhaust. “This perhaps reflects improvement in the thrust of the Taepodong series,” Heki wrote in the abstract for the presentation.
The work is made possible by the sensitivity of the GPS array to reductions of electrons in the ionosphere. Water molecules introduced by rocket exhaust [pdf] become positively charged by the ionosphere’s oxygen ions. These H20 molecules then combine with free electrons, depleting the total number of electrons in the area. This is the hole Heki measured, and the bigger it is, the more water was introduced, the larger the rocket. Geoff Forden, an expert on missile tracking and weapons systems at MIT, said that the technique for tracking ballistic missiles was “very interesting” and probably unprecedented. That said, it’s not superior to what government satellites can accomplish. “Their determination is still very helpful for analysts outside of the US government in determining the trajectory and therefore the missile’s capabilities and characteristics, but it is not any better than the U.S. can do with its infrared satellites that observe the exhaust of the rocket during its entire powered trajectory,” Forden wrote in an email. ” So their method is very exciting for us [non-governmental-organization] people but not so important for governments in determining the missile’s capabilities.” Though he emphasized the importance of the technique for people outside the government, Forden also questioned how accurate the GPS-array technique ultimately could be. His own analysis of the projectile’s flight, based on direct observation of a satellite image of the missile’s contrail, is one major piece of evidence that the North Korean missile didn’t even attempt to reach space. Instead, it took a more horizontal trajectory, consistent with a weapon, not a space launch. Image: Alaska Department of Military and Veteran Affairs. Ground-based ballistic missile interceptor at the Missile Defense Complex at Fort Greely, Alaska. Citation: AGU Poster. “Determination of the Trajectory of Ballistic Missiles Using a Dense GPS Array” by K. Heki; M. Ozeki. 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 | 15 Dec 2009 | 2:48 pm Aussie scientists find coconut-carrying octopus (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Dec 2009 | 2:38 pm An atomic catastrophe | Jim Al-KhaliliA £40m cut for nuclear physics research will reverberate way beyond the nation's laboratories Look up into a clear night sky through a telescope and almost everything you see will be the result of nuclear processes. Closer to home, our understanding of nuclear physics lies at the heart of vital healthcare services in diagnosis and treatment of cancers, approaches to protecting the environment, power generation, our ability to deal with nuclear waste ... the list goes on. Ernest Rutherford's discovery of the atomic nucleus 100 years ago was the take-off point for so much we have come to rely on. I wonder what he would make of the sorry state of the funding of British nuclear physics today. The academic community of nuclear physicists, together with particle physicists, astronomers, astrophysicists and space scientists, is waiting for the axe to fall on its research funding in an announcement to be made tomorrow. But why should our howls of protest over budget cuts be heard above everyone else in the public sector? The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which funds our basic research in UK universities, must claw back a longstanding shortfall of about £40m that arose because it failed to convince government in 2007 of the vital importance of research in astronomy, particle and nuclear physics. All this before taking into account the impending cuts foreshadowed in the chancellor's pre-budget announcements. Compared with bailing out the banks or footballers' salaries, this £40m might seem like peanuts; but the situation for whole areas of science is likely to be catastrophic, and physics and astronomy departments will be surveying the damage to their research income. Nuclear physics is particularly vulnerable. Its academic community of nuclear physicists is small by international comparison – Romania spends twice as much on its basic research – but world-leading in terms of impact. Despite gross underfunding over many years, we have continued to make an outstanding contribution to the field. But it is becoming progressively more difficult for British nuclear scientists to remain internationally competitive in their research. The question is not only whether our science is as important and exciting as other areas, but whether its continued funding stands up against the wider needs of society in health, education or defence. A recent report on nuclear physics and engineering, commissioned by Research Councils UK, stresses the need to maintain a healthy nuclear science base in Britain, and makes it clear that nuclear physics has applications across fields such as healthcare, the environment, the nuclear industry and national security. The report states that "further funding cuts could be terminal, resulting in the loss of an important skill set which would impact the delivery of masters courses". Many university research groups run and support masters courses that provide graduates with the skills needed for the nuclear, health and radiological sectors and which are underpinned by our basic nuclear physics research. The supply of skilled workers for the nuclear industry is a high priority for the UK since we must, even if we no longer design and build nuclear power stations, be intelligent customers for reactors commissioned from abroad. We must also have the expertise to decommission old reactors and to deal with nuclear waste. A secure route for the training of this much-needed generation of scientists must be agreed by STFC, along with other research councils and stakeholders, and be clearly visible. In medicine, proton and carbon-beam cancer therapy is driven largely by the nuclear physics community. What is likely to suffer in the funding crisis is the UK's involvement at international accelerator research labs such as GSI in Darmstadt, Germany, where a multinational nuclear research project is being built. It is also where carbon-beam therapy for tumours has been pioneered. What must be addressed now is how the academic community of nuclear physicists and the research councils can best work together to ensure the survival of the best science and those areas of expertise that are essential for the nation's future. This will require constructive thinking and new partnerships; simply lobbying to reverse decisions may be counterproductive, given the number of likely "don't cut my area" lobby groups. We must therefore start working with all the stakeholders in agreeing a sensible national policy on the academic provision required in healthcare and for nuclear energy sources. Ministers might reflect on how they will explain in the future their failure to support nuclear physics at the level of a couple of Premier League footballers' wages. Rutherford will be turning in his grave. 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 | 15 Dec 2009 | 2:00 pm Scientists Still Waiting to Hear From Journalists Covering Copenhagen
Sounds great, right? When I heard about this service, organized by members of the American Geophysical Union which holds its annual meeting in San Francisco this week, I thought it would be a way to make the job a little bit easier for those of us covering Copenhagen. The problem is, the scientists’ email inbox is far emptier than they hoped, save for perhaps some cyber crickets. “I suppose the pagentry and intrigue of Copenhagen is more mediagenic than a few hundred scientists waiting by their computers,” said Mark Henderson, who studies climate and land use in China at Mills College in Oakland, California, in an email. “But explaining the science is important. How will the public judge whether their leaders have done a good job in Copenhagen if they don’t know the likely results on the climate of the agreement reached there?” So many journalists are in Copenhagen (unfortunately Wired Science couldn’t be among them) that the U.N. had to stop issuing credentials at one point because there was no more room in the building. But the AGU scientists only heard from around 20 media outlets during the first week of the talks, and some days there were almost no inquiries at all.
Of the many possible explanations for this, one that comes to mind is that journalists may be unaware of the service. This may be part of the problem, but I don’t think it’s the whole reason. AGU is particularly adept at handling press and routinely attracts a couple hundred journalists and public information officers to its annual meeting, being held this week in San Francisco. I heard about the service from an AGU press release earlier this month, and was reminded of it by one volunteer scientist, Katherine Hayhoe, who was twittering about it. We can be fairly certain it’s not because the science is easy, and journalists don’t need much help with it. Though some of us have covered the subject to the point of having a pretty good understanding of the science, none of us understand it all. And there are plenty of journalists who understand very little. Maybe it’s possible that the science is so hard to understand that most journalists covering Copenhagen aren’t even bothering with it. One good sign is that the journalists that are taking the scientists up on their offer seem motivated by the possibility of improving the accuracy of climate science coverage in the press, said Stacy Jackson, a climate scientist at UC Berkeley who helped organize the project. Whatever the reason for the low turnout, I hope it won’t discourage the scientists who volunteered to help from reaching out to the media in new ways in the future. “It’s frustrating to spend my days working with data that show clear and alarming trends, then to read that a substantial number of people think that “climate change” is either a hoax or not of concern,” Henderson said. “Even after this week is up, I hope the lines of communication between scientists and journalists, and on to the public, might be kept open.” Journalists inquiries should be made here: cop15science@agu.emailcenterpro.com Image: Press conference at the Copenhagen climate talks./Flickr/UN_Climate_Talks
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Dec 2009 | 1:49 pm Superstars Blaze to Life in Companion Galaxy"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." This well-publicized passage from Hindu scripture ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Dec 2009 | 1:48 pm First Global Map of Mercury
The map combines new observations from the Messenger spacecraft with earlier images captured by Mariner 10 in the 1970s. Messenger completed the last of its three flybys of the planet on September 29th. The release of the map marks a new phase of the mission for the spacecraft, which will now orbit the sun’s innermost planet for a year. The U.S. Geological Survey built the map from 917 images of variable resolution and lighting conditions, but sophisticated software was able to match up planetary features from different images to create the near seamless mosaic. Citation: AGU Poster. “Near Global Mosaic of Mercury” by K. J. Becker; M. S. Robinson; T. L. Becker; L. A. Weller; S. Turner; L. Nguyen; C. Selby; B. W. Denevi; S. L. Murchie; R. L. McNutt; S. C. Solomon. 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 | 15 Dec 2009 | 12:51 pm Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Radioactive Longer Than Expected
Reinhabiting the large dead zone around the accident site may have to wait longer than expected. Radioactive cesium isn’t disappearing from the environment as quickly as predicted, according to new research presented here Monday at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Cesium 137’s half-life — the time it takes for half of a given amount of material to decay — is 30 years, but the amount of cesium in soil near Chernobyl isn’t decreasing nearly that fast. And scientists don’t know why. It stands to reason that at some point the Ukrainian government would like to be able to use that land again, but the scientists have calculated that what they call cesium’s “ecological half-life” — the time for half the cesium to disappear from the local environment — is between 180 and 320 years. “Normally you’d say that every 30 years, it’s half as bad as it was. But it’s not,” said Tim Jannick, nuclear scientist at Savannah River National Laboratory and a collaborator on the work. “It’s going to be longer before they repopulate the area.”
In 1986, after the Chernobyl accident, a series of test sites was established along paths that scientists expected the fallout to take. Soil samples were taken at different depths to gauge how the radioactive isotopes of strontium, cesium and plutonium migrated in the ground. They’ve been taking these measurements for more than 20 years, providing a unique experiment in the long-term environmental repercussions of a near worst-case nuclear accident. In some ways, Chernobyl is easier to understand than DOE sites like Hanford, which have been contaminated by long-term processes. With Chernobyl, said Boris Faybishenko, a nuclear remediation expert at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, we have a definite date at which the contamination began and a series of measurements carried out from that time to today. “I have been involved in Chernobyl studies for many years and this particular study could be of great importance to many [Department of Energy] researchers,” said Faybishenko. The results of this study came as a surprise. Scientists expected the ecological half-lives of radioactive isotopes to be shorter than their physical half-life as natural dispersion helped reduce the amount of material in any given soil sample. For strontium, that idea has held up. But for cesium the the opposite appears to be true. The physical properties of cesium haven’t changed, so scientists think there must be an environmental explanation. It could be that new cesium is blowing over the soil sites from closer to the Chernobyl site. Or perhaps cesium is migrating up through the soil from deeper in the ground. Jannik hopes more research will uncover the truth. “There are a lot of unknowns that are probably causing this phenomenon,” he said. Beyond the societal impacts of the study, the work also emphasizes the uncertainties associated with radioactive contamination. Thankfully, Chernobyl-scale accidents have been rare, but that also means there is a paucity of places to study how radioactive contamination really behaves in the wild. “The data from Chernobyl can be used for validating models,” said Faybishenko. “This is the most value that we can gain from it.” Image: flickr/StuckinCustoms Citation: “Long-Term Dynamics of Radionuclides Vertical Migration in Soils of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Exclusion Zone” by Yu.A. Ivanov, V.A. Kashparov, S.E. Levchuk, Yu.V. Khomutinin, M.D. Bondarkov, A.M. Maximenko, E.B. Farfan, G.T. Jannik, and J.C. Marra. AGU 2009 poster session. 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 | 15 Dec 2009 | 12:32 pm 'Super-Earths' orbit nearby starsPlanet-hunters discover two "super-Earths" - rocky planets orbiting two nearby Sun-like stars.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Dec 2009 | 12:12 pm Cosmic Christmas Spotted in Space (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a festive view of the cosmos in time for the holiday season, with some saying the picture of a star nursery looks like a wreath, maybe a Christmas tree, or even Santa.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Dec 2009 | 11:45 am Satellites weigh California waterA Nasa satellite mission has weighed the water lost by the US State of California's heartland since 2003.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Dec 2009 | 11:17 am Geeks Drive Girls Out of Computer ScienceWomen may steer clear of computer science because they don't feel like they fit in.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Dec 2009 | 11:15 am Children's Swine Flu Vaccine RecalledAlmost 800,000 swine flu shots have been recalled because the vaccines weren't strong enough.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Dec 2009 | 10:49 am Swiss geologist in quakes trialThe Swiss head of a geothermal drilling company appears in court in Basel accused of causing earthquakes.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Dec 2009 | 10:29 am UK science principles criticisedScientists and campaigners raise questions about how the UK government plans to engage with scientific advisers.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Dec 2009 | 10:06 am Mammoths Were Alive More Recently Than ThoughtWoolly mammoths and other large beasts in North America may not have gone extinct as long ago as previously thought.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Dec 2009 | 9:59 am Men Think Their Dance Moves Improve with AgeThe older a man gets, the more he impresses himself with his own dancing, according to a new British study conducted by the University of Hertfordshire's "Doctor of Dance." (Credit: Babzy) The dancing doc, Peter Lovatt from the University's School ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Dec 2009 | 9:43 am Black Soot May Speed Himalayan Glacier MeltThe rapid melting of glaciers in the Himalayas threatens the water supply of more than a billion people.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Dec 2009 | 9:40 am Nearsightedness Increasing in U.S.
It looks like nearsightedness is on the rise in the United States. Researchers tapped into a wide-ranging health survey to rate vision in the population in the early 1970s and roughly 30 years later. They compared eyesight information for more than 4,400 people tested in 1971 and 1972 with data from another set of 8,300 people tested from 1999 to 2004.
Myopia severity also increased, with moderate nearsightedness doubling between the two time periods and severe cases, although uncommon, also rising sharply. Mild myopia cases increased slightly, from about 13 percent to 18 percent. This group included some people who did not need corrective lenses, says study coauthor Susan Vitale, an epidemiologist at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Md. Among blacks, the overall myopia rate was lower than in whites but still jumped from 13 to 34 percent over the three-decade span.
When analyzing the more recent eye-exam data, the scientists used only diagnoses that were made with the same technology used in the 1970s — mainly standard eye tests and trial lenses. Including diagnoses made with more advanced technology that has become available only recently might have biased the comparison, Vitale says. The cause of nearsightedness is poorly understood. Past research has linked added risk to both a genetic predisposition to nearsightedness and to excessive amounts of near work, the kind of tasks that require peering at written words or small objects. “Some people would say near work is a reasonable explanation,” Vitale says, particularly with the advent of video games and other electronic devices. Children also spend less time outdoors than they once did, she says. And some researchers contend that more outdoor time means seeing in better light, focusing farther. The nature of near work has changed dramatically in the past 30 years, says Jane Gwiazda, a psychologist at the New England College of Optometry in Boston who researches vision problems. But while near work probably accounts for some of the myopia increase, it’s been difficult to pinpoint the specific detrimental aspect of near work that’s to blame because the nature of such close work varies. Some people take frequent breaks or have better lighting than others. “There are lots of factors there,” Gwiazda says. Meanwhile, compelling data link a lack of outdoor time with increased myopia risk, she says, with questionnaire-based surveys finding that children with myopia spend less time outdoors. “Some people think that more distance viewing sends a signal to the eye to stop growing,” she says. Nearsighted eyes tend to be elongated. Natural light might also stimulate dopamine production, which is known to inhibit eye growth, she says, and extra vitamin D from the sun might contribute to regulating eye growth. As for hereditary factors, research shows some added risk for children born to nearsighted parents. “It might be that somehow the population has changed and that there are more people floating around that have more genetic risk,” Vitale says. Editor’s note: This post was updated to include comment from a researcher not involved with the study. Image: Flickr/Stitch See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Dec 2009 | 9:35 am How Bats Stick to SurfacesA sucker-footed bat uses its adhesive pads on the wrists and ankles to walk up a smooth surface. When its pads are dragged along the surface, they hold tight in one direction, but when loaded the other way they detach easily.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Dec 2009 | 8:44 am World's First Venomous Animals IdentifiedA paleobiologist has identified conodonts—a large group of tiny extinct marine animals that lived up to 500 million years ago—as likely being the world's first venomous animals. These animals, which lived until about 200 million years ago, are considered to ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Dec 2009 | 7:42 am Scientists Follow Earthquakes on TwitterSocial media site could be new source of earthquake data for seismologists.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Dec 2009 | 7:26 am NFL Tries to Get Serious on ConcussionsA new PSA may signal that the NFL is sort of, maybe, almost getting serious about concussions.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Dec 2009 | 7:16 am Why Humans Outlive ApesOur meaty diet may be the underlying reason for humans' long lifespans, scientists say.Source: Livescience.com | 15 Dec 2009 | 6:27 am BBC's climate change maverick Justin Webb strikes again on Radio 4 | Leo HickmanAfter an unquestioning interview with Ian Plimer, radio presenter now queries 'dissent among scientists' with David King Justin Webb has only been in his new job as a presenter of Radio 4's flagship Today programme for a few months and he's already building himself a reputation for being something of a climate change maverick. First came Webb's now-notorious interview with Ian Plimer last month in which he failed to adequately challenge any of the feted climate sceptic's claims. Had Webb just not done his homework, one wondered, or did he simply accept Plimer's now widely debunked views at face value? But this morning Webb moved it up a gear during his interview with Sir David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser who is currently the director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University. King was on the programme arguing that a climate scientist should be given a seat on the Bank of England's monetary policy committee (MPC). King said he believes that the Bank of England and Treasury display "no or little attention on the business of lowering our carbon footprint", and that it's a "massive disappoint" that "very little" of the stimulus packages have been used to promote a low-carbon economy. And then Webb interjected… Webb: So, it's someone being there constantly lobbying? (You can hear the whole interview on iPlayer. Go to 1:53.30.) It's a pity really that the Today Programme editors didn't get Justin Webb to interview Peter Hill, the editor of the Daily Express, this morning and ask him to explain the paper's frontpage story: Climate Change is Natural: 100 reasons why. 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 | 15 Dec 2009 | 5:48 am Green visions from Copenhagen | Video | Marly Winckler, president of the Brazilian Vegetarian SocietyGreen vision video: Marly Winckler in Copenhagen: More than 80% of the Amazon's destruction is caused by cattle rearing. To mitigate emissions in Brazil we must address this issue Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Dec 2009 | 5:30 am Bad Wine Makes for Good EnergyA bad bottle of wine could drop your electrical and gas bills.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Dec 2009 | 5:00 am Birds' Emergency Calls Signal Friends, FoesWhen predators approach, some birds sound the alarm to let these unwelcome animals know they've been spotted.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Dec 2009 | 5:00 am Video: Coconut shelters prove octopuses use toolsScientists film octopuses building shelters from coconut shells, citing it as the first evidence of invetebrate creatures using tools Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 15 Dec 2009 | 4:57 am Little green and yellow bird is a new speciesScientists confirm a small green and yellow warbler living in Vietnam and Laos is a new species.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Dec 2009 | 4:41 am DIY Home Sleep Research With Cameras, Accelerometers, EEGs
If you sleep like a princess, and wonder what keeps you tossing and turning at night, perhaps there’s a gadget that can find the pea under your mattress. Companies have begun selling electronics directly to consumers that can help anyone monitor their sleep and adjust their bedtime routine, and some people have invented their own tracking systems. Slip on a wireless wristband or headband and focus your camcorder before you hit the sack, and the next morning you’ll wake up to a mound of data. At a Quantified Self meetup at Wired’s San Francisco offices Dec. 7, around 100 people gathered to share their data-driven sleep habits. The founders of the Wakemate startup were on hand to talk about their wristband that keeps track of your sleep patterns. It’s equipped with an accelerometer and a Bluetooth transmitter that connects with a free smartphone app. The accelerometer is the same one that’s in the highly popular (and backordered) Fitbit exercise tracking device. The Wakemate will be very hackable and cost just $50, but won’t ship until January. So, if it’s a Christmas gift for a sleepy friend you’re after, you might want to check out the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach, an alarm clock that records electrical signals from your brain with a headband. In the morning, it returns a chart of how much time you spent in light, deep and REM sleep, as well as a personal sleep score (which they call your ZQ). It can also make waking up easier to wake you if you ask it to, by choosing a lighter sleep moment to rouse you. Techology investor Esther Dyson gave the Zeo a mixed review at the meetup. For example, the headband has little pads that wear out quickly, and must be replaced. But the biggest problems are on the software side: Zeo does not allow more than one user to share the device, and makes it hard to extract the raw data. Despite those flaws, Dyson said she plans to experiment with it some more. If you want an even better picture of your sleep, you can follow the example of San Francisco resident, Matt Bell. After years of feeling drowsy all day and not knowing why, he set up a bedside camcorder with an infrared illuminator in search of an answer. The footage was revealing. “The biggest thing that surprised me was seeing how much I moved around while sleeping,” Bell said at the meetup. “It was fascinating to glimpse at the workings of this hidden unconscious world that occupies close to a third of our lives.” In his quest for a perfect night of rest, Bell experimented with the lighting in his bedroom, his diet, his sleeping positions and lots of drugs. He even kept a daily log of how well he slept, his mood during the following day, and how much excitement he experienced during the prior day. Photos: Wakemate, Zeo Video: Matt Bell/YouTube See Also:
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 15 Dec 2009 | 4:00 am Cisco, NASA launch climate monitoring ventureCOPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Technology firm Cisco Systems and the NASA space agency launched a $100 million plan on Tuesday to monitor the earth's resources, aiming to boost transparency of national commitments under a new climate treaty.Source: Reuters: Science News | 15 Dec 2009 | 3:20 am Shell shock! Octopus spotted using coconuts as shelterResearchers 'gobsmacked' after watching species off Indonesia collecting and adapting shells for use as hiding place Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter, unusually sophisticated behaviour that researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal. The scientists filmed the veined octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, selecting halved coconut shells from the sea floor, emptying them, carrying them under their bodies up to 65ft (about 20 metres), and assembling two shells together to make a spherical hiding spot. Julian Finn and Mark Norman of Museum Victoria in Melbourne observed the activity in four creatures during dives at North Sulawesi and Bali between 1998 and 2008. Their findings were published today in the journal Current Biology. "I was gobsmacked," said Finn, a research biologist at the museum who specialises in cephalopods. "I've seen a lot of octopuses hiding in shells, but I've never seen one that grabs it up and jogs across the sea floor. I was trying hard not to laugh." Octopuses often use foreign objects as shelter. But the scientists found the veined octopus going a step further by preparing the shells, carrying them long distances and reassembling them as shelter, an example of tool use, which has never been recorded in invertebrates before, Finn said. "What makes it different from a hermit crab is this octopus collects shells for later use, so when it's transporting it, it's not getting any protection from it," Finn said. "It's that collecting it to use it later that is unusual." The researchers think the creatures probably once used shells in the same way. But once humans began cutting coconuts in half and discarding the shells into the ocean, the octopuses discovered an even better kind of shelter, Finn said. The findings are significant, in that they reveal just how capable the creatures are of complex behaviour, said Simon Robson, associate professor of tropical biology at James Cook University in Townsville, northern Queensland, Australia. "Octopuses have always stood out as appearing to be particularly intelligent invertebrates," he said. "They have a fairly well-developed sense of vision and they have a fairly intelligent brain. So I think it shows the behavioural capabilities that these organisms have." There is always debate in the scientific community about how to define "tool use" in the animal kingdom, Robson said. The Australian researchers defined a tool as an object carried or maintained for future use. Other scientists could define it differently, which means it is difficult to say for certain whether this is the first evidence of such behaviour in invertebrates, Robson said. Still, the findings are interesting, he said: "It's another example where we can think about how similar humans are to the rest of the world. We are just a continuum of the entire planet." 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 | 15 Dec 2009 | 2:45 am Face in the crowdThe queue to beat all queues at climate summitSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Dec 2009 | 2:21 am
|
SAN FRANCISCO — Space is not the only place where special craft can boldly go where no man has gone before.
SAN FRANCISCO — North Korean missile tests may sometimes flop, but their program continues to make strides in building bigger, more powerful projectiles, according to new research presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting Tuesday.
Around 650 climate scientists have signed up to assist journalists covering the Copenhagen climate talks through an on-call email service. For three different shifts, day and night every day from Dec. 7 to Dec. 18, between three and six 
