Among apes, teeth are made for the toughest times

The teeth of some apes are formed primarily to handle the most stressful times when food is scarce, according to new research. The findings imply that if humanity is serious about protecting its close evolutionary cousins, the food apes eat during these tough periods -- and where they find it -- must be included in conservation efforts.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Scientists shed light on a mysterious particle, the neutrino

Physicists have begun looking deep into the Earth to study some of nature's weirdest particles -- neutrinos.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Twin study identifies factors associated with skin aging

Smoking, being heavier, not using sunscreen and having had skin cancer appear to be associated with sun damage and aging of skin on the face, according to a report based on a study of twins.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Pomegranates: Latest weapon in the fight against MRSA

Pomegranates have already been hailed as a super-food but a team of scientists has found a new use for the deep red fruit. The team has discovered that the rind can be turned into an ointment for treating MRSA and other common hospital infections.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Discrimination in the citations that scientists use

Science does not have to be altruistic. In fact, most of the time it is egotistic, according to a study by researchers in Spain that analyzes the discrimination that exists in citations of scientific articles in articles where researchers publish their results.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Microcephaly genes associated with human brain size

Scientists have shown that common variations in genes associated with microcephaly -- a neuro-developmental disorder in which brain size is dramatically reduced -- may explain differences in brain size in healthy individuals as well as in patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Fisheries and aquaculture face multiple risks from climate change

Marine capture fisheries already facing multiple challenges due to overfishing, habitat loss and weak management are poorly positioned to cope with new problems stemming from climate change, a new study suggests.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm

Genomes of identical twins reveal epigenetic changes that may play role in lupus

Identical twins look the same and are nearly genetically identical, but environmental factors and the resulting cellular changes could cause disease in one sibling and not the other. Scientists have studied twins discordant for the autoimmune disease lupus, mapping DNA modifications across the genome and shedding light on epigenetic changes that may play a role in the disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm

Next-generation lens promises wider view, greater detail

Engineers have created a new generation of lens that could greatly improve the capabilities of telecommunications or radar systems to provide a wide field of view and greater detail.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm

Compound found to safely counter deadly bird flu

A study suggests that a new compound, one on the threshold of final testing in humans, may be more potent and safer for treating "bird flu" than the antiviral drug best known by the trade name Tamiflu.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 22 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm

President Obama Gets His H1N1 Shot

On Monday, President Obama said that he and his wife Michelle had "just got the shots." The White House later confirmed that the Obama family were now all immunized against the H1N1 virus (Official White House photo by Pete Souza) ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Dec 2009 | 1:35 am

China rejects climate allegations

Beijing dismisses claims by UK Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband that it blocked progress at the Copenhagen talks.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 22 Dec 2009 | 1:28 am

Nazareth excavation reveals remains from time of Jesus

Israeli archaeologists have unveiled what could be the remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 22 Dec 2009 | 1:23 am

Obama has powerful tool to pressure Myanmar (AP)

AP - If talks with Myanmar over democratic reforms fail, the Obama administration could tie up large amounts of money that the country's ruling generals stash in international banks from the sale of natural gas.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 22 Dec 2009 | 1:03 am

Video: My day as a zoo keeper at Whipsnade

Rachel Holmes experiences what it is like to be an animal keeper at Whipsnade zoo: mucking out rhinos, feeding elephants and getting up close and personal with a Siberian tiger

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 22 Dec 2009 | 12:00 am

Australia to do 'no more and no less' on climate (AFP)

AFP - Australia will do "no more and no less" than other nations to fight climate change, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Tuesday, as he defended the outcome of global talks in Copenhagen.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Dec 2009 | 11:58 pm

Most of 47,000 Filipinos safe from raging volcano (AP)

AP - Almost all of the 47,000 residents living on the slopes of a rumbling volcano in the central Philippines have moved to emergency shelters, and lava and earthquakes Tuesday heralded what officials say could be a major eruption.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Dec 2009 | 10:01 pm

Australian rains bring kangaroos

Farmers in northern Australia say kangaroos are overrunning their land, as a cull is suspended further south.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Dec 2009 | 9:42 pm

First Jesus-era house discovered in Nazareth (AP)

AP - Just in time for Christmas, archaeologists on Monday unveiled what may have been the home of one of Jesus' childhood neighbors. The humble dwelling is the first dating to the era of Jesus to be discovered in Nazareth, then a hamlet of around 50 impoverished Jewish families where Jesus spent his boyhood.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Dec 2009 | 8:48 pm

Canadian woman spearheads only cobalt mine in the US (AFP)

AFP - Mari-Ann Green risked her life savings on setting up a mining company: it is now on course to produce three percent of the world's cobalt, a key element in the production of hybrid car batteries and jet engines.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Dec 2009 | 8:40 pm

Crime Drops Despite Recession

Why hasn't the sagging economy produced an expected increase in crime?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 21 Dec 2009 | 6:20 pm

The Control Knob

A little over fifty years ago, Charles David Keeling, then a postdoctoral student at the California Institute of Technology, began measuring levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As Spencer Weart notes in The Discovery of Global Warming, at the ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 21 Dec 2009 | 6:17 pm

Meddling in mosquitoes' sex life could cut malaria

LONDON (Reuters) - Interfering in mosquitoes' sex lives could help halt the spread of malaria, British scientists said on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 21 Dec 2009 | 6:01 pm

'Bumper year' for botanical finds

Almost 300 species - including giant trees and tiny fungi - have been described for the first time by UK botanists in 2009.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Dec 2009 | 5:06 pm

Kew gallery: Giants and midgets of the plant kingdom

Botanists at Kew unveil a bumper crop of new plant species they have identified and named during 2009

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 21 Dec 2009 | 5:04 pm

Kew discovers new plant species in one of its own glasshouses

Botanists at Kew unveil a bumper crop of new plant species for 2009 including one that had been growing under their noses for 50 years

The quest to catalogue Earth's rich flora has taken botanists to the farthest flung and most treacherous corners of the world, from the humid rainforests of the Amazon to the highest peaks of Borneo.

Which made it all the more surprising when Iain Darbyshire stumbled upon a species of plant unknown to science while taking a lunchtime stroll around the Royal Botanic Gardens in west London.

Darbyshire, an expert in African botany at Kew, happened upon the foot-tall plant in full bloom, its striking green and grey heart-shaped leaves set off by tiny white and pink flowers.

"I just happened to take a different route through the glasshouse that lunchtime and stumbled across it," Darbyshire told the Guardian. "I knew instantly that it was a new species. It was just sat there waiting for someone to study it."

Record books revealed the plants had been donated by Swedish botanists in the 1990s after an expedition to the Eastern Arc mountains of Tanzania. Unsuspecting gardeners had tended them for more than a decade, using them as tropical bedding in Kew's Princess of Wales Conservatory.

The plant was officially named Isoglossa variegata last month and is among more than 250 new plant and fungus species discovered and described by the gardens' botanists in the past year.

Almost a third of all the species are believed to be facing extinction as their habitats are eroded or destroyed by logging, climate change and other environmental disruption.

In western Madagascar, Kew botanists hiked across extraordinary landscapes of limestone pinnacles and discovered several new species of wild coffee plant, the most traded commodity in the world after oil.

This unique environment has given rise to coffee plants that look nothing like those found elsewhere. Some of the species are conspicuously hairy, and two, Coffea labatii and Coffea pterocarpa, have colourful winged fruit.

The region experiences torrential seasonal downpours that create ephemeral rivers and pools across the stoney forest floor. "These winged fruit float very well, so the feature might be an evolutionary adpatation to aid their dispersal," said Aaron Davis, a coffee expert and taxonomist at the Gardens.

Alternatively, the wings may ensure the fruit are scattered far and wide by making them more visible to lemurs, which feed on the coffee beans.

The hirsute coffee plants might have sprouted hair to protect against harsh ultraviolet rays in the dry season.

"There's a misconception that we've found all the plants there are to find, but we are still in a golden age of discovery," said Davis. "We don't know our planet well enough and we are running out of time. Species are going extinct before we even know about them."

Around 70% of wild coffee species are in danger of extinction.

Elsewhere in Madagascar, botanists noticed two new species of small flowering plants called Gymnosiphon. The bizzare plants draw their energy not from the sun, but from fungi that live underground.

Further expeditions to the rainforests of Cameroon led to the discovery of three giant trees that grow to more than 30m high. One, Berlinia korupensis, is a member of the pea family. The tree towers above its neighbours at 42m high and produces foot-long pods that explode when they ripen, propelling seeds far across the forest floor.

Among some of the smallest species identified this year are tiny wood-rotting fungi from Australia that are less than a millimetre wide and cover trees like a thin coating of paint.

"They are small, but they perform a vital role in decomposition of plant material and recycling of nutrients," said Brian Spooner, a Swedish fungus expert working with Kew researchers.

In South Africa, botanists spotted a plant with lumpy wooden tubers that grow up to a metre high. The species was identified as a yam, but only 200 or so are known to exist in the wild. It is under threat from local medicinal plant collectors who use it as a treatment for cancer.

Some 20 new species were discovered in Brazil alone, the most striking being a red passion flower that is probably pollinated by hummingbirds and produces edible egg-shaped fruit. The plant was spotted in an expedition to the Amazon rainforest in Mato Grasso, Brazil.

The largest haul of new species came from Mount Kinabalu, the highest peak in Borneo, where botanists Jeff Wood and Phil Cribb have identified 38 new species of orchid. Nearly 900 different species live in a 1,200sq km area of the island.

Each new species is identified by detailed visual inspections that are often backed up my genetic analyses. To identify all the world's flora could take another 50 years, but the effort is crucial for conserving rare species and reintroducing species that only exist in protected areas.

Stephen Hopper, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, said the speed of discovery and classification of new species is increasing under the organisation's Breathing Planet Programme.

"These new discoveries highlight the fact that there is so much of the plant world yet to be discovered and documented. Without knowing what's out there and where it occurs, we have no scientific basis for effective conservation," said Hopper.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 21 Dec 2009 | 5:00 pm

First Solar, fund manager in tussle over cab fare (Reuters)

Reuters - Solar power industry bellwether First Solar Inc and a fund manager who has wagered the company's stock will fall are locked in a tiff over a $9 cab fare, after the bear manager was invited to a meeting in Times Square and then asked to leave.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Dec 2009 | 4:30 pm

The Real Reason Cell Phone Use Is Banned on Airlines (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Airline passengers who sneak in cell phone calls, play with gaming devices or listen to their mp3 players during takeoff or landing probably won't cause a plane crash, but they may risk a confrontation with flight attendants. Federal agencies and airlines typically err on the side of caution - even though researchers and aircraft companies have found almost no direct evidence of cell phones or other electronic devices interfering with aircraft systems.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Dec 2009 | 3:33 pm

Bird-like dinosaur was 'venomous'

A bird-like dinosaur that prowled an ancient forest 125 million years ago used venom to subdue its prey, a new theory says.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Dec 2009 | 3:29 pm

Europe feels left out in cold on climate deal (AP)

AP - It's a climate deal that has Europe feeling left out in the cold.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Dec 2009 | 3:05 pm

Americans Delay Cell Phone Upgrades

Only 5 million cell phones were recycled in the United States and Canada in 2009.
Source: Livescience.com | 21 Dec 2009 | 3:04 pm

The Real Science of 'Avatar' (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - The science fiction blockbuster "Avatar" is set on a mysterious alien moon with out-of-this-world technologies. Its star director, James Cameron, has not only directed other science fiction epics like "Aliens, The Abyss" and the first two "Terminator" films, but was apparently the president of his high school science club, a physics major in college and has an engineer brother who has designed underwater robots.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Feathered Dinosaurs Were Venomous Predators

Early dinosaurs weren’t just covered in feathers. They were also poisonous.

Analysis of skulls belonging to different species of Sinornithosaurus, a group of feathered predatory theropods that lived 125 million years ago in what is now northeast China, shows skeletal features reminiscent of modern rear-fanged snakes and lizards.

Sinornithosaurus‘ rear teeth were long, with grooves connected to ducts running under their fangs to a pocket that could have housed a venom gland. “These features are all analogous to the venomous morphology of lizards,” wrote paleontologists in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers speculate that Sinornithosaurus‘ long teeth could have penetrated the feathers of its avian prey, penetrating just far enough to release their poison. Like most modern rear-fanged reptiles, the venom probably wasn’t lethal, but instead shocked prey into immobility.

Short front teeth were probably used “to pluck the feathers off their victims,” wrote the researchers, who suggest that other members of Sinornithosaurus‘ family, including the velociraptors of Jurassic Park fame, had the same venomous capabilities.

Images: 1. Sinornithosaurus skull at left and illustration at right/PNAS
2. A rear-fanged hognose snake scull/WikiMedia

See Also:

• Paleontologists Find Dinosaur Protofeather
• 4-Winged Fossil Bridges Bird-Dinosaur Gap
• Fancy Feathers Predated Flight in Dinosaur-Bird Hybrid

Citation: “The birdlike raptor Sinornithosaurus was venomous.” By Enpu Gonga, Larry D. Martin, David A. Burnham, and Amanda R. Falk. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106 No. 51, December 22, 2009.

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 21 Dec 2009 | 1:43 pm

Dinosaur Packed Venom in Fangs

The finding suggests lizard, snake and dinosaur venom all originated in a common species.
Source: Livescience.com | 21 Dec 2009 | 1:02 pm

Dinosaur Shocked Prey With Venom

A birdlike dinosaur related to Velociraptor took down prey with its fanglike teeth.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 21 Dec 2009 | 1:01 pm

Dinosaur with feathers and fangs prowled forests like a predatory turkey

Venom from the bird-like dinosaur's fangs may have sent victims into shock, hampering their chances of escaping

The remains of a venomous, feathered beast that terrorised prehistoric forests like a predatory turkey have been unearthed by fossil hunters in northern China.

Palaeontologists uncovered a well-preserved skull and partial skeleton of the bird-like dinosaur, Sinornithosaurus, that lived in the region 128 million years ago.

The creature, a close relative of the velociraptor, had fangs similar to those seen in modern poisonous snakes and venomous lizards, such as the Mexican gila monster.

Analysis of the dinosaur's fang-like teeth revealed grooves that could channel poison from glands set into each side of the creature's jawbone, researchers said.

"This is an animal about the size of a turkey," said Larry Martin, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of Kansas. "It's a specialised predator of small dinosaurs and birds."

The discovery, reported in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first evidence of a venomous relative in the velociraptor lineage.

The venom was probably not potent enough to be lethal, but may have sent victims into shock, hampering their chances of fighting back or escaping.

"You wouldn't have seen it coming," said co-author David Burnham. "It would have swooped down behind you from a low-hanging tree branch and attacked."

"Once the teeth were embedded in your skin the venom could seep into the wound. The prey would rapidly go into shock, but it would still be living, and it might have seen itself being slowly devoured by this raptor," Burnham added.

One of the beast's close relatives was the four-winged glider, the microraptor, which some scientists believe may also have been poisonous. Sinornithosaurus' fangs were long enough to penetrate thick feathers and pierce the skin beneath to a depth of half a centimetre, enough to get venom into the prey's bloodstream.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 21 Dec 2009 | 1:00 pm

Ancient animal bones may link Stonehenge to winter solstice feast

A huge winter solstice feast might have taken place around Stonehenge some 4,500 years ago. STONEHENGE THEORIES Located in the county of Wiltshire, at the center of England's densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments, Stonehenge consists of the ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 21 Dec 2009 | 1:00 pm

Sunlight Glints off Liquid Lake on Titan (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - A flash of sunlight reflecting off a hydrocarbon lake on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan has been spotted by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, confirming the presence of liquid on a part of the surface of the hazy satellite with many lake-shaped basins.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 21 Dec 2009 | 12:30 pm

Copenhagen's failure belongs to Obama | Naomi Klein

The American president has been uniquely placed to lead the world on climate change and squandered every opportunity

Contrary to countless reports, the debacle in Copenhagen was not everyone's fault. It did not happen because human beings are incapable of agreeing, or are inherently self-destructive. Nor was it all was China's fault, or the fault of the hapless UN.

There's plenty of blame to go around, but there was one country that possessed unique power to change the game. It didn't use it. If Barack Obama had come to Copenhagen with a transformative and inspiring commitment to getting the US economy off fossil fuels, all the other major emitters would have stepped up. The EU, Japan, China and India had all indicated that they were willing to increase their levels of commitment, but only if the US took the lead. Instead of leading, Obama arrived with embarrassingly low targets and the heavy emitters of the world took their cue from him.

(The "deal" that was ultimately rammed through was nothing more than a grubby pact between the world's biggest emitters: I'll pretend that you are doing something about climate change if you pretend that I am too. Deal? Deal.)

I understand all the arguments about not promising what he can't deliver, about the dysfunction of the US senate, about the art of the possible. But spare me the lecture about how little power poor Obama has. No president since FDR has been handed as many opportunities to transform the US into something that doesn't threaten the stability of life on this planet. He has refused to use each and every one of them. Let's look at the big three.

Blown Opportunity No 1: The Stimulus Package

When Obama came to office, he had a free hand and a blank cheque to design a spending package to stimulate the economy. He could have used that power to fashion what many were calling a Green New Deal – to build the best public transit systems and smart grids in the world. Instead, he experimented disastrously with reaching across the aisle to Republicans, low-balling the size of the stimulus and blowing much of it on tax cuts. Sure, he spent some money on weatherproofing, but public transport was inexplicably short-changed while highways that perpetuate car culture won big.

Blown Opportunity No 2: The Auto Bailouts

Speaking of the car culture, when Obama took office he also found himself in charge of two of the big three carmakers, and all of the emissions for which they are responsible. A visionary leader committed to the fight against climate chaos would obviously have used that power to dramatically re-engineer the failing industry so that its factories could build the infrastructure of the green economy the world desperately needs. Instead Obama saw his role as uninspiring downsizer-in-chief, leaving the fundamentals of the industry unchanged.

Blown Opportunity No 3: The Bank Bailouts

Obama, it's worth remembering, also came to office with the big banks on their knees – it took real effort not to nationalise them. Once again, if Obama had dared to use the power that was handed to him by history, he could have mandated the banks to provide the loans for factories to be retrofitted and new green infrastructure to be built. Instead he declared that the government shouldn't tell the failed banks how to run their businesses. Green businesses report that it's harder than ever to get a loan.

Imagine if these three huge economic engines – the banks, the car companies, the stimulus bill – had been harnessed to a common green vision. If that had happened, demand for a complementary energy bill would have been part of a coherent transformative agenda.

Whether the bill had passed or not, by the time Copenhagen had rolled around, the US would already have been well on its way to dramatically cutting emissions, poised to inspire, rather than disappoint, the rest of the world.

There are very few US presidents who have squandered as many once-in-a-generation opportunities as Obama. More than anyone else, the Copenhagen failure belongs to him.

• Read Naomi Klein's blog from Copenhagen at EnviroNation

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 21 Dec 2009 | 12:30 pm

East Coast Blizzard Seen From Space

The snowstorm that blanketed the East Coast this weekend was so big, it is even impressive from space. NASA’s Aqua satellite took this image centered on Washington, D.C., on Sunday with its MODIS instrument.

The blizzard shut down the federal government, stranded travelers, left hundreds of thousands without power and crushed the hopes of many retailers hoping for big sales during the weekend before Christmas.

The image covers 300 miles lengthwise. The two big rivers near the center are the Susquehanna (to the north) and Potomac rivers, which run into Chesapeake Bay. Washington, D.C., sits alongside the Potomac, just north of the river’s hook-shaped curve. The inlet to the north is Delaware Bay.

Higher-resolution image from NASA

See Also:

• Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space
• Eclipse Shadow on Earth Seen From Space
• Sydney’s Apocalyptic Dust Storm Seen From Space
• Asteroid Impact Craters on Earth as Seen From Space
• Erupting Volcanoes on Earth as Seen From Space
• Huge Holes in the Earth: Open-Pit Mines Seen From Space
• Out of the Blue: Islands Seen From Space

Follow us on Twitter @betsymason and @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 21 Dec 2009 | 12:09 pm

Discovery sheds light on Jesus' boyhood

Finds suggest Nazareth was an out-of-the-way hamlet of around 50 houses, populated by Jews of modest means

Israeli archaeologists today unveiled what could be the remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus – a find that could shed new light on what the hamlet was like during the period of Jesus's boyhood, according to the New Testament.

The dwelling and older discoveries of nearby tombs in burial caves suggest that Nazareth was an out-of-the-way hamlet of around 50 houses on a patch of about four acres. It was evidently populated by Jews of modest means, said archaeologist Yardena Alexandre, excavations director at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Based on clay and chalk shards found at the site, the dwelling appeared to house a "simple Jewish family", Alexandre said, as workers at the site carefully chipped away at mud with small pickaxes to reveal stone walls.

Nazareth holds a cherished place in Christianity. It is the town where Christian tradition says Jesus grew up and where an angel told Mary she would bear the child of God. "This may well have been a place that Jesus and his contemporaries were familiar with," Alexandre said. There was a logical possibility that a young Jesus could have played around the house with his cousins and friends, she added.

The discovery so close to Christmas has pleased local Christians.

"They say if the people do not speak, the stones will speak," said Rev Jack Karam of the nearby Basilica of the Annunciation, the site where Christian tradition says Mary received the angel's word. The discovery was made when builders dug up the courtyard of a former convent to make room for a new Christian centre, yards away from the Basilica.

It is not clear how big the dwelling is – the team have uncovered about 900 sq ft of the house, but it may have been for an extended family and could be much larger. Alexandre said her team also found a camouflaged entry way into a grotto, which she believes was used by Jews at the time to hide from Roman soldiers who were battling Jewish rebels for control of the area.

The grotto would have hid around six people for a few hours, she said. Alexandre said similar camouflaged grottos were found in other ancient Jewish communities of the lower Galilee such as the nearby Biblical village of Cana, which did witness battle between Jews and Romans.

At the site, Alexandre told reporters that archaeologists also found clay and chalk vessels which were likely to have been used by Galilean Jews of the time.

The scientists concluded that a Jewish family lived there because of the chalk, which was used by Jews at the time to ensure the purity of the food and water kept inside the vessels.

The shards also date back to the time of Jesus, which includes the late Hellenic, early Roman period that ranges from around 100 BC to AD100, Alexandre said.

The absence of any remains of glass vessels or imported products suggested the family who lived in the dwelling were "simple", but Alexandre said the remains did not indicate whether they were traders or farmers.

The only other artefacts that archeologists have found in the Nazareth area from the time of Jesus are ancient burial caves outside the hamlet, providing a rough idea of the village's population at the time, Alexandre said.

Work is now taking place to clear newer ruins built above the dwelling, which will be preserved. The dwelling will become a part of a new international Christian center being constructed close to the site and funded by a French Roman Catholic group, said Marc Hodara of the Chemin Neuf Community overseeing construction.

Alexandre said limited space and population density in Nazareth means it is unlikely that archeologists can carry out any further excavations in the area, leaving this dwelling to tell the story of what Jesus's boyhood home may have looked like.

Karam said: "For me it [the discovery] is a great gift."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 21 Dec 2009 | 10:59 am

Living (or Dying) With an Angry Volcano

Get out, now, or we will force you out! That's pretty much the difficult order the Philippine military is charged with delivering to farmers and other residents near the loudly growling Mayon volcano. It's a tough call. Already lots people ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 21 Dec 2009 | 10:36 am

Mayon Volcano Poised to Erupt

A major eruption from this Philippine volcano could trigger pyroclastic flows, vaporizing everything in their path.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 21 Dec 2009 | 10:30 am

Life's Origin May Have Been a Shallow Affair

New research, focusing on shallow hydrothermal vents, is shedding light on a possible location for where life on Earth began.
Source: Livescience.com | 21 Dec 2009 | 9:47 am

Jesus-era Home Found in Nazareth

Just in time for Christmas, a house dating back to the time of Jesus has been found at the town where he supposedly grew up.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 21 Dec 2009 | 9:40 am

Decade's Earth Top 10 - No. 10: $4 Gas

[Editor's note: See the entire Top 10 list here] Before the financial crisis took the global economy down a few pegs, soaring oil prices were among the biggest stories of 2008. A barrel of oil topped out at $147.50 that ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 21 Dec 2009 | 9:21 am

The Real Reason Cell Phone Use Is Banned on Airlines

Airline passengers should keep those cell phones off during flights out of courtesy for fellow travelers, but shouldn't worry about possibly crashing the plane.
Source: Livescience.com | 21 Dec 2009 | 9:13 am

When the Recession Hits Santa

The recession has affected all of us, with many families forced to cut back on holiday presents this year. But how do you explain the situation to kids, especially those who still believe in Santa Claus? Christy Buchanan, professor of ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 21 Dec 2009 | 8:39 am

DIY Bedbug Detector

INDIANAPOLIS — After trying some 50 arrangements of household objects, researchers have come up with a new low-cost, homemade bedbug detector.

To lure the bugs out of hiding, Wan-Tien Tsai of Rutgers University in New Brunswick put dry ice into an insulated, one-third-gallon jug, the kind available at sports or camping stores. Adding 2.5 pounds of dry ice pellets and not quite closing the pour hole allowed carbon dioxide to leak out at a bug-teasing rate for some 11 hours at room temperature, she said.

She stood the jug in a plastic cat food dish with a piece of paper taped on the outside of the dish as a ramp up to the rim. The bowl’s steep, slippery inside, with an added dusting of talcum powder, kept bugs from crawling out again.

In tests in real apartments, the homemade setup detected bedbugs as well, or better, than did two brands of professional exterminating equipment, Tsai said Dec. 16 at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America.

The parts, including the dry ice, cost $15 and don’t require any special skills for assembly. “Everyone can do it,” she said.

These days a growing number of people might want to. The tiny, night-crawling bugs that draw blood and can leave itching welts had dwindled to rarity in North America during most of the last century. But since the 1990s, outbreaks have surged. The bugs flatten themselves into crevices in furniture, fabric and even electrical devices, and can prove difficult to eradicate. Many of today’s bedbugs are resistant to pyrethroid insecticides, which account for much of indoor pest treatments.

Tsai worked with Changlu Wang, also at Rutgers, for six months on designing homemade devices that lure bedbugs out into a trap so residents can tell whether a home is infested. Like many insects that search for blood, bedbugs are attracted to plumes of concentrated carbon dioxide, good clues that an animal filled with liquid dinner is breathing somewhere nearby. In lab tests, carbon dioxide beat heat and several chemical attractants in drawing the bugs out of hiding, Wang reported at the meeting.

He has published on low-tech ways to attract bedbugs with carbon dioxide. For example, setting out dry ice in insulated travel mugs can work. Apartment dwellers don’t need to research supply companies for dry ice. Beverage companies, for example, may sell it by the pound.

To design a new low-tech detection system, Tsai experimented with various setups but says her breakthrough came when she discovered the one-third-gallon insulated jugs. They performed well in lab tests, so she decided to test them in apartments that had low levels of bedbug infestation. She searched for bedbugs herself to confirm that apartments were suitable. Then she set either her homemade detector or a commercial one in each apartment near a typical bug haven, such as the sofa.

Designing and testing a low-cost detector is a substantial contribution to the field, comments entomologist Stephen Kells of the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. During decades of low bedbug infestation, scientists didn’t study them much. “We have literally skipped a generation of knowledge with this pest,” he says.

Studies from early in the last century may not describe today’s bedbugs well, says entomologist Andrea Polanco-Pinzón of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Older generations of bedbugs weren’t resistant to pesticides and lived in tougher environments: houses without central heating.

On the bright side though, Polanco-Pinzón reported at the meeting that her survival tests found that a pesticide-resistant strain she collected from Richmond, Va., lived at most two months without feeding. That record, set by the fifth stage of the immature bugs, falls far short of the year and a half reported in the old literature.

Image: Flickr/Richard_Pluck

See Also:

• Scent of Fear Keeps Male Bedbugs From Mating With Each Other
• DIY Home Sleep Research With Cameras, Accelerometers, EEGs

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 21 Dec 2009 | 8:35 am

New Lens Could Produce Better Camera Images

A lens made with man-made materials could produce sharper wide angle images.
Source: Livescience.com | 21 Dec 2009 | 7:44 am

Chimps Master First Step in Controlling Fire

A chimp's capability to understand flames provides clues to how our distant ancestors first learned to control fire.
Source: Livescience.com | 21 Dec 2009 | 7:39 am

Drivers Who Text Are Six Times More Likely to Crash

Drivers who send text messages are six times more likely to crash, a new study finds.
Source: Livescience.com | 21 Dec 2009 | 7:09 am

Surprising Truths About Santa's Reindeer

Find out whether Santa's sled-pullers are all-male or just gals and other fun facts.
Source: Livescience.com | 21 Dec 2009 | 7:08 am

For Green Boris read Greed Boris | Dave Hill

The London mayor has not abandoned his core belief that capitalism can save the planet

David Cameron might disagree but Boris Johnson is an unusually reliable politician. I don't mean that in the sense of, say, dependably dodging awkward questions – something the London mayor excels at – but in terms of personal philosophy. He may be cunning, evasive, shameless, ravenous for power and a bare-faced populist, but all this is rooted in a deep intellectual consistency. There is a unity, a wholeness, about his ideology. In those senses of the word, Johnson has integrity.

His recent accommodations with campaigns against climate change illustrate the point well. Before running for mayor last year, he aligned himself with the sceptics, mocking environmentalists and applauding "Dubya" Bush for kyboshing Kyoto. He now attributes his conversion to the Stern report, though maybe he was influenced too by a wish not to be consigned to Conservatism's bufferish backwaters by the Age of Dave and by a recognition that young voters in London take the green agenda seriously.

But however deep your cynicism, at least concede that Johnson has made his transition without abandoning his bedrock beliefs. This is, crudely condensed, that if we'd all stop worrying and learn to love capitalism, without ifs, buts or 50p tax bands, there would be nothing – not even preventing the Earth's destruction – that humankind could not achieve.

That's pretty much what he said in Copenhagen last week. "We have to stop being so unremittingly negative and gloomy," he declared. "We need to warn people and be realistic about the peril we face, but we must also mobilise people's natural desire to better themselves." He spoke of advocating "a virtuous pattern of green consumerism. I want to appeal to people's naked financial self-interest."

It's all so jolly simple. Optimistic acquisitiveness can save the world. But it will only do so if Friedmanite principles apply rather than those of pious and frankly unnatural self-denial of the type Johnson mentioned in conversation with George Monbiot.

Hence the carbon-suppressing measures Green Boris has favoured in pursuing his commitment to reduce the capital's carbon emissions by 60% by 2025, and those he scorns. His London Development Agency plans a "home retrofit" programme: a bit of public investment designed to speak to a hardwired human impulse to lower electricity bills. Bouncing back from Olympics organisers choosing BMW over the greener Nissan to provide the Games's vehicle fleet, he's announced that 25,000 electric car charging points will be installed in London by 2015, demonstrating his preference for thrusting, entrepreneurial innovation over "hair-shirt abstinence".

He's also signed up City Hall to the 10:10 campaign, promising energy efficiencies such as different forms of lighting, the introduction of "smart meters" and, being a Tory, urging staff to be less wasteful. He's congratulated Ilford fire station on its solar panels. Yes, he's quite the eco-warrior when it comes to any drain on the public purse. But hint at private continence and from the deep blue corner storms a raging bull. Criticism of his "estuary airport" dream is dismissed as piffle: it would be better than a bigger Heathrow and, after all, businesses and people like to fly. To hit 4x4 drivers with a super-high congestion charge would be to merely gratify Guardianista prejudices. Invite him to consume less bloody British beef and he'll taunt you with talk of grease running down his chin.

His take on climate change provides a fine insight into Johnsonian ideals. For Green Boris, read Greed Boris. You might love it, you might hate it, but on its own terms it makes perfect sense.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 21 Dec 2009 | 6:52 am

In pictures

Seamount mission charts mysteries of the deep
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Dec 2009 | 6:00 am

Order or chaos?

Assessing the outcomes of the climate summit
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 21 Dec 2009 | 5:29 am