Putting limits on vitamin E

Scientists have done the most comprehensive and accurate study of clinical data on vitamin E use and heart disease to date, and it warns that indiscriminate use of high-dose vitamin E supplementation does more harm than good.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Looking back in time 12 billion years with new instruments on Herschel Space Observatory

Astronomers have made the most detailed views yet of space up to 12 billion years back in time.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Young hunters most likely to be injured using tree stands

Young hunters between the ages of 15 and 34 are the most likely to suffer serious injuries in tree stand-related incidents, say researchers. The same researchers' findings, though, suggest that such injuries are preventable.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Champagne is good for your heart, study suggests -- but only in moderation

Research from the UK suggests that two glasses of champagne a day may be good for your heart and circulation. The researchers have found that drinking champagne wine daily in moderate amounts causes improvements in the way blood vessels function.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Moving video to 'captcha' robot hackers

Researchers have developed a synthesis technique that generates moving pictures of 3-D objects which will allow security developers to generate an infinite number of "emergence" images virtually impossible for any computer algorithm to decode.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Treating alcohol-use disorders and tuberculosis together

Treatment for alcohol use disorders and tuberculosis (TB) is rarely integrated, even though the two diseases have a high co-occurrence. American and Russian researchers have jointly designed and are monitoring an innovative program that will deliver alcohol treatment as part of routine TB care. The trial study is continuing.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Children more likely to catch swine flu, says new research

Young people aged under 18 years are more likely than adults to catch swine flu from an infected person in their household, according to a new study. However, the research also shows that young people are no more likely than adults to infect others with the pandemic H1N1 virus.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm

Short-term school closures may worsen flu pandemics

Closing schools for less than two weeks during a flu pandemic may increase infection rates and prolong an epidemic. The findings, developed from a series of computer simulations based on U.S. census data, indicate that schools may need to be closed for at least eight weeks in order to significantly decrease the spread of infection.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm

Chinese-American and Korean-American women at highest risk for diabetes in pregnancy

A new study found more than 10 percent of women of Chinese and Korean heritage may be at risk for developing diabetes during pregnancy. The first of its kind, the 10-year study of 16,757 women and 22,110 pregnancies in Hawaii found that Chinese-American and Korean-American women's gestational diabetes risk is one-third higher than average -- and more than double that of Caucasian and African-American women.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm

Lithium-air batteries could displace gasoline in future cars

In excess of seven million barrels of gasoline are consumed by vehicles in the United States every day. As scientists race to find environmentally sound solutions to fuel the world's ever-growing transportation needs, battery researchers are exploring the promise of lithium-air battery technology.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 31 Dec 2009 | 12:00 pm

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Wet and active weather was expected to develop across the Eastern U.S. on New Year's Eve.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 31 Dec 2009 | 2:56 am

Russia 'plans to stop asteroid'

The Russian space agency has said it will hammer out plans to divert an asteroid that will pass near the Earth in 20 years' time.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Dec 2009 | 2:18 am

Scary monsters and a space odyssey

The past year has seen momentous scientific discoveries, and a celebration of Apollo 11, one of humankind's greatest technological achievements

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 31 Dec 2009 | 1:27 am

To the head of the class: 2009's cleverest creatures show off

From decoy-building spiders, fabled rooks and music-loving chimps to coconut-carrying octopuses, Earth News presents 10 of the smartest species revealed in 2009.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 31 Dec 2009 | 1:27 am

Chavez disputes Spanish official's climate remarks (AP)

AP - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is trading barbs with Spain's environment minister over the Copenhagen summit on climate change.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Dec 2009 | 8:38 pm

Judge rules for Ringling Bros. in elephant case (AP)

AP - A federal judge Wednesday ruled in favor of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in a case brought by animal rights activists who accused the circus of abusing elephants.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Dec 2009 | 8:14 pm

Cost-cutting NASA eyes three cheap space missions (AFP)

AFP - NASA has named low-cost missions to Venus, the moon and an asteroid on a shortlist to become its latest space adventure, as the US agency faces astronomical political pressure to cut costs.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Dec 2009 | 8:01 pm

Russia may send spacecraft to knock away asteroid (AP)

AP - Russia's space agency chief said Wednesday a spacecraft may be dispatched to knock a large asteroid off course and reduce the chances of earth impact, even though U.S. scientists say such a scenario is unlikely.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Dec 2009 | 7:34 pm

The Problem With the Plan to Power the World

The Scientific American laid out a plan to power the world entirely with renewables by 2030. Sensing weaknesses in the plan, skeptical commentors closed in like a pack of wild Eeyores. It'll never work they said, trotting out opinions, facts ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Dec 2009 | 6:47 pm

Honour for top science educator

Science and technology educator John Holman is among several eminent scientists awarded New Year Honours.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Dec 2009 | 6:13 pm

We suffered, prospered, survived

Originally published on 31 December 1999

Tomorrow we salute the start of a new era in history. Today we say farewell to the turbulent 20th century

What would they make of us now, those cheerful, confident subjects of the old queen, secure in the certainty that Britain was great and progress would make it still greater, who launched us 99 years ago into the 20th century? In some ways, they would find our world reassuringly familiar. There is still a Queen on the throne and a parliament at Westminster and cricket at Lord's. But elsewhere, our lives would astonish them.

Most of these astonishments have something to do with science. The science is neutral; what makes it decisive for good or ill is the use to which we put it. In this century, we developed the means to destroy our planet. That it has been a time of unparalleled violence is not exclusively due to science. There was nothing very advanced about the technology of Auschwitz, or Cambodia, or Tutsi versus Hutu. But superior technology brought new pitches of destruction to war. In the Boer war, 20,000 British soldiers died, but three-quarters of those were due to disease. In the second world war, with a huge increase in airpower, perhaps 55 million people died. Nobody really knows. But in peace, we are safer than ever. Afflictions which in the first decade of this century were often fatal are now put right with a few convenient pills. Reading newspaper obituaries or even studying tombstones in graveyards, visiting Victorians would marvel at the ages we live to now.

The car transports us about our own country and the aeroplane takes us to lands to which only a privileged few once had access. Science has taken us to the moon. We have radio and television, and the greatest transformation of all: the world wide web. As they walked our streets, Victorians would be mystified by the spectacle of so many chattering away to themselves, in a way that was once thought demented. But life without a mobile is unimaginable today.

How should we account for ourselves, at the end of this century? In most senses, we are exceedingly lucky. We have survived; in a way that sometimes at the height of the second world war seemed in doubt. We may not be as rich as we wish to be, but by every previous standard, most people in Britain are swimming in money.

The huge success of the Jubilee 2000 campaign on world debt, the explosion of green thinking, the campaigns against genetically modified crops – all of these furnish abundant evidence that the great greedy western consumer society, prospering while millions starve, is breeding suspicion, fear and a taste for remedial action.

But that is hardly the general mood of the pubs, clubs and shopping precincts. There are sporadic outbursts of real generosity for suffering people whose plight is shown nightly on television. But a longer, deeper commitment to making the world a fairer and more hospitable place remains a minority taste. In the early years of this century a great radical politician born in the age of Victoria, David Lloyd George, looked forward "to that good time when poverty, wretchedness and the human degradation which always follows in its camp will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests". We are nearer to that today, but after almost a century, still nowhere as close as we ought to be. We have to embrace that aspiration again as a new era opens before us.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 Dec 2009 | 5:05 pm

2010: The year ahead

Is this finally the year that artificial life will be created?

The year ahead is shaping up to be one long celebration for the world's oldest science academy. The Royal Society formed on a dreary night in London 350 years ago, when the acquisition of scientific knowledge was little more than a hobby for amateurs and polymaths. As part of the celebrations, world-leading researchers have been invited to Britain to thrash out the most pressing questions facing science today: what is consciousness? Where did the universe come from? How are we ever going to feed everybody? Whatever the scientists decide, it will reflect the agenda for the next two decades.

Science and scientists have been transformed since the creation of the society and the year ahead will emphasise this. Modern science is more complicated and costly. It is dominated by huge groups, not individuals. It is more international, professional and specialised.

A decade ago, scientists from more than 80 countries began the world's first comprehensive census of sea life. In 2010, they will publish their results, giving us the first global snapshot of ocean life from the Arctic to the Antarctic, via corals, continental shelves and deep-sea vents.

The importance of the Census for Marine Life project is hard to overstate. It will help to predict the future health of the oceans; to spot species on the brink of extinction and highlight spectacular new species that had hitherto gone unnoticed. It will quantify the biodiversity of the oceans and give scientists unprecedented insight into these complex and fragile ecosystems.

The new year also marks the beginning of a critical period for physics. The Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the European Nuclear Research Organisation near Geneva, will go into full operation and begin crashing subatomic particles together at unprecedented energies. The future of physics hangs on what scientists find there. The long-sought-for Higgs boson, which confers mass on fundamental particles, is one hoped-for discovery. Before that, Cern scientists might create previously unseen particles that prove a theory called supersymmetry, which pairs every particle in the universe with a heavier twin. Some of these might make up the mysterious and invisible dark matter that accounts for a quarter of the mass of the universe.

If the optimists are to be believed, the year ahead will see tentative steps towards stem-cell-based medical treatments. Geron, the US biotech company, expects to launch its first clinical trial of embryonic stem cells in patients with spinal-cord injuries. Laboratories around the world are racing to make stem cells from patients' skin, a technique that raises the possibility of treating a person's illness with their own cells.

The steady advances in genetics are beginning to bear fruit and will continue in the coming year. The cost of reading a person's whole genome is falling almost by the month, making the technology cheap enough for mainstream use in hospitals. In the year ahead, doctors will use genetic sequencing machines to pinpoint the genetic defects that drive patients' cancers, information that should help them select more effective drug treatments.

Finally, this could be the year that Craig Venter, the American genetics pioneer, achieves his goal of creating artificial life. A mere microbe it may be, but if Venter pulls it off, he will have opened the door to a new and potentially powerful branch of science. Venter's forceful style and taste for competition have seen him cast as the bad boy of modern science but, more than anyone, he personifies the spirit of individualism that has underpinned the success of the Royal Society since its birth.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 Dec 2009 | 5:05 pm

Speedy Spacecraft Now Halfway to Pluto (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - A speedy NASA spacecraft is halfway to Pluto and on track for a 2015 rendezvous with the distant, icy world.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Dec 2009 | 4:00 pm

Storm 'Echoes' Could Break Up Ice Shelves

Global warming isn't the only reason why Antarctic ice shelves are falling apart.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Dec 2009 | 3:30 pm

Jellyfish Stings Man with 'Best Job'

Reading headlines today I came across this story about the man with the "Best Job in the World" getting stung by an Irukandji jellyfish. Ouch! What makes his job so great, you ask? Well, prior to getting the nasty sting ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Dec 2009 | 3:09 pm

Famous San Francisco sea lions leave in droves (AP)

AP - Two mysteries surround a huge herd of sea lions that were hanging out on a pier in San Francisco Bay: Why did so many show up, and why did so many leave at once?

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Dec 2009 | 2:08 pm

Popular Treatment for Low-Back Pain Doesn't Work (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Mild electric shocks supplied by a portable device, a process called TENS, have been used for years to treat chronic low-back pain.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Dec 2009 | 2:06 pm

Popular Treatment for Low-Back Pain Doesn't Work

Mild electric shocks, a process called TENS, is ineffective.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Dec 2009 | 2:00 pm

The mental cost of freedom

Hostage expert Dr James Thompson on how Peter Moore will have survived his captivity and how he is likely to fare after his release

"People always regret making certain choices in their lives. If they walk down the street to go to the shops and are hit by a meteor, that's a random event. But when other things happen, people wonder what they have done that has led to this terrible thing happening to them.

Regrets when bad things happen are often very damaging to the person, quite apart from the events themselves. Was there a family member who maybe said 'Don't go, I don't like the sound of Iraq' and did he perhaps say 'Don't worry, I will have bodyguards'?

The key issue, depending on how Peter Moore was treated, is his depletion of resources. If you have a psychological reverse in your career or personal life, like an argument after which you have an emotional reaction, you will probably be down for a few days and, once you have thought about it, you will recover.

But being a hostage involves a constant threat. This poor man has had two and a half years of not knowing whether the next knock on the door was him being moved to a new hiding place or to a place of execution. That's a very high demand on one's emotional capacities. Most of us can withstand a short period of threat, but very few people can withstand it for more than days or weeks.

In a situation of constant stress, with your coping resources depleted, you are running on empty and there's little you can do to keep functioning properly.

If he was held with others he would have had company and distractions. Being alone would have been worse because anyone, to sustain a reasonably normal psychological life, needs human contact, to be recognised as a person, and a variety of sensory inputs, like knowing when it's night and day. Being held alone would have been like being in solitary confinement on death row.

In a sense getting out is the start of the difficulty. Despite the lifting of the threat to your life, the person can face all sorts of mental hardship. Very few former hostages are immediately well, mentally speaking. It doesn't mean that they go psychotic or can't understand reality, but they tend to have significant adjustment problems. Typically they are much more fearful than before, one of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which he will have.

When the Kuwait Airways hijack ended in 1988, some of the people who had been on the plane for the 16 days it lasted had real difficulty in understanding that they had been freed. And a study of oil workers who spent time in the North Sea in 1980 when the Alexander Kielland platform collapsed – killing 123 men – showed that, 10 years later, they were still getting problems.

Peter Moore will probably initially look normal, because he will be overjoyed to have got out. He will probably say that he's fine and relieved that it's all over. If he's asked if he's going to go for counselling, he may well say no.

But there's a very high probability that in three months he will be seeking help because he has difficulty sleeping or is finding it hard to deal with other people, or is irritable all the time. That's because he's lost the capacity to deal with normal exchanges. Full recovery can take two or three years and there can be setbacks along the way."

Dr James Thompson is a senior lecturer in psychology at University College London and an expert in post-traumatic stress disorder in former hostages. Interview by Denis Campbell

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 Dec 2009 | 1:55 pm

NASA Narrows Robotic Missions to 3 Contenders

NASA on Tuesday selected three finalists to be the agency’s next cheap, robotic exploration mission. Depending on which wins, a probe will head for Venus, the moon, or a near-Earth object no later than 2018.

The latter two missions would include the return of samples, while the Venusian lander would test the planet’s composition much like the Phoenix Lander did on Mars. The NASA anointing means that the teams proposing the excursions will have some money to make more detailed plans.

The winning mission will be the next in a series of explorations under the New Frontiers program. New Frontiers missions have to run under $650 million and be ready to launch relatively quickly. In this case, the final pick will be made in 2011 and will launch just seven years later.

While NASA personnel will be digging into the proposals to come up with the official decision, we’d like to know which proposal you like. Read up on the contenders, and vote in the poll afterwards.

Name: The Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer (SAGE)
Destination: Venus
Principal Investigator: Larry Esposito of the University of Colorado in Boulder
Plan: The SAGE mission would release a probe that would descend through Venus’ thick atmosphere to its surface. There, it would dig into the crust and measure its composition, not unlike what the Phoenix Lander did on Mars.
Why: “Venus is like a twin sister of the Earth, and it’s gone terribly bad,” Esposito told Colorado Daily. Scientists want to know what happened.

Name: Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (Osiris-Rex)
Destination: A “primitive asteroid”
Principal Investigator: Michael Drake, of the University of Arizona in Tucson
Plan: Osiris-Rex would fly to a primitive asteroid, orbit it, and then land on it. After collecting two ounces of material, it would fly the samples back to Earth. It’s a bit like Russia’s planned Phobos-Grunt mission, which would return samples from a Martian moon. (Osiris is pictured above.)
Why: “A primary motivation for an asteroid sample return mission is the desire to both acquire samples with known geologic context and to return materials that are either unlikely to survive passage to Earth (e.g., friable, volatile-rich material) or would be compromised by terrestrial contamination upon their fall (e.g.,
extraterrestrial organics).” — according to a description of the mission plan [pdf]

Name: MoonRise
Destination: Aitken Basin, at the Moon’s south pole
Principal Investigator: Bradley Jolliff, of Washington University in St. Louis
Plan: The mission would place a lander in a south polar lunar basin, where it would excavate about two pounds of lunar material. The samples would be returned to Earth.
Why: The area where MoonRise would dig is believed to be composed of rocks from the moon’s mantle conveniently exposed by a massive meteorite strike. Understanding the interior of the moon could help explain a lot about the formation of the solar system.

Image: Osiris-Rex.

See Also:

• Craters Show 1970s Viking Lander Missed Martian Ice by Inches
• 40 Years After Apollo 11, NASA Maps Out the Future
• Scrappy Post-Apollo Lunar Science Sets Stage for New Missions …
• Deep-Sea Robot Roves the Unexplored Ocean Depths
• Scientists: It Once Rained on Mars
• Planetwide Smog Ebbs and Flows Across Venus
• MESSENGER’s Flyby View of Venus

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 | 30 Dec 2009 | 1:44 pm

Wind-power incentives remain popular in Nebraska (AP)

AP - The idea of expanding wind power remains popular among Nebraska lawmakers, but concerns about cost and preserving the strength of the state's public power system could limit any new wind-power incentives.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Dec 2009 | 1:07 pm

Michael Jackson, Muppets and Others Enter National Film Registry

The Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, has selected 25 movies and videos that will be preserved in the National Film Registry. This year's group brings the total number of films in the registry up to 525. Here are the ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Dec 2009 | 12:33 pm

Why the Powerful Lie, Cheat and Steal

Tiger Woods may have uncanny concentration when he's on the green, but that same focus doesn't appear to apply off the golf course. Credit: AP Photo Cheating, lying and stealing certainly aren't new social practices, but they were apparently fashionable ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Dec 2009 | 12:25 pm

Russia's Armageddon plan to save Earth from collision with asteroid

Space scientists in Russia are preparing to boldly go where no man has gone before, except for the actor Bruce Willis.

The head of the Russian space agency said today that it was considering a Hollywood-style mission to send a spacecraft to bump a large asteroid from a possible collision course with Earth.

Anatoly Perminov told the Russian radio station Golos Rossii: "People's lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people."

The mission would be aimed at an asteroid called Apophis, he said, which is expected to pass close to the Earth in 2029 and again in 2036. "Calculations show that it's possible to create a special-purpose spacecraft within the time we have, which would help avoid the collision. The threat of collision can be averted."

The Hollywood action films Deep Impact and Armageddon both featured space missions scrambling to avert catastrophic collisions, the latter led by Willis.

But the creation of a system to deflect asteroids has long been the subject of scientific debate. Some experts have proposed sending a probe to circle around a dangerous asteroid and gradually change its trajectory. Others suggested sending a spacecraft to collide with it and alter its momentum, or using nuclear weapons.

Perminov said details of the project still needed to be worked out. But he said the agency would invite Nasa, the European Space Agency and others to participate.

When Apophis was discovered in 2004, astronomers made headlines when they said there was a one in 37 chance that the 350-metre-wide rock would collide with Earth in 2029. Further studies ruled out such an impact, but there remains a one in 250,000 chance it could strike in 2036.

Perminov said he had heard from a scientist that Apophis is getting closer and may hit the planet. "I don't remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032," he said.

Nasa has estimated that if the asteroid hit the Earth, it would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square miles would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere.

Nasa experts have already discussed the option of landing an astronaut on an asteroid to test whether it could develop techniques to deflect a doomsday rock.

Breaking it up with an atomic warhead could generate thousands of smaller objects on a similar course, which could have time to re-form. Scientists agree the best approach, given enough time, would be to nudge the object into a safer orbit.

Matt Genge, a space researcher at Imperial College London, has calculated that something with the mass, acceleration and thrust of a small car could push an asteroid weighing a billion tonnes out of the path of Earth in just 75 days.

Perminov said: "We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical council, to look at what can be done. "There won't be any nuclear explosions. Everything will be done according to the laws of physics."

Mirrors, lights and even paint could change the way the object absorbed light and heat enough to shift its direction over 20 years or so. With less notice, mankind could be forced to take more drastic measures, such as setting off a massive explosion on or near the object to change its course.

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

Sharks, Zombies, Weird Clouds: The Most Popular Stories of 2009

This has been Wired Science’s most successful year, by far. We like to think this is the result of a combination of your excellent taste and our efforts to learn what you like to read.

We have often joked that the perfect Wired Science story is about robot sharks with lasers in space. While we haven’t gotten a chance to write that one just yet, looking at this list of our most popular stories of the year, we’ve come pretty close. Golden-silk-spinning spiders, the mathematics of zombies and weird clouds were all among your favorites.

10. Mysterious, Glowing Clouds Appear Across America’s Night Skies

Speaking of weird clouds, number 10 on our 2009 hit list is the mysterious appearance of noctilucent clouds in the night skies over the United States and Europe. These night-shining clouds typically form closer to the poles, but more frequent sightings in lower latitudes could be the result of human-caused climate change.

Image: The sky over Omaha on July 14, snapped by Mike Hollingshead at Extreme Instability

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 30 Dec 2009 | 11:02 am

Following a Childhood Dream: Discovering Dinosaurs

Randall Irmis talks about being a paleontologist and studying a childhood obsession, dinosaurs.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Dec 2009 | 10:51 am

10 New Year\'s Resolutions to Keep You Alive

Some of the best approaches to health care are cheap and within your grasp, if only you can find the will to make some lifestyle changes.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Dec 2009 | 10:32 am

Are Full Body Scanners an Invasion of Privacy?

In the Netherlands today, interior minister Guusje Ter Horst announced that the country's airports will begin using full-body scanners to screen passengers flying to the United States. It was at Schiphol airport, where the 23-year-old Nigerian man Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Dec 2009 | 9:26 am

San Francisco Sea Lions Move Out

If you're going to San Francisco, you're going to see some gentle sea lions leaving there.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Dec 2009 | 9:00 am

Story in Photos: Monkey Flosses Teeth

This week at Discovery News we told you about a Japanese macaque that flosses her teeth. Jean-Baptiste Leca, a post-doctoral fellow at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute, led the project and provided the photos. Note how the monkey uses three ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Dec 2009 | 8:40 am

Dinosaur National Monument Free to Campers This Winter

Dinosaur National Monument park officials announced this week that the Split Mountain campground in Utah will remain open through the winter, according to AP and other media reports. (Images: National Park Service) Three additional campgrounds at the monument will also ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Dec 2009 | 8:27 am

Top 10 Green Tech Stories of the Year

Happy New Year! It's time for a highly subjective list of my favorite sustainable tech news from the year. If you're looking for a decade rundown, I recommend the tech team's top stories here. Here's what recharged my batteries in ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 30 Dec 2009 | 7:56 am

Nasa picks three in space contest

Nasa has chosen three front runners among proposals for the next space mission in its New Frontiers programme.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Dec 2009 | 6:40 am

France to rethink carbon tax plan

A new carbon tax set for the new year in France has been struck down, in a blow to President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Dec 2009 | 6:33 am

College Linemen at Risk for Obesity, Diabetes

Study finds more linemen obese, insulin resistant than other college football players.
Source: Livescience.com | 30 Dec 2009 | 6:27 am

'Oldest duck' Edwina dies aged 22

A 22-year-old tea drinking mallard, thought to be one of the oldest recorded living ducks, dies at her Hampshire home.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Dec 2009 | 6:10 am

Animal magic: discoveries of 2009

From a new species of giant rat to ants that took over the world, 2009 was a striking year for new discoveries about wildlife.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Dec 2009 | 5:33 am

Angolan firm initials two deals for Iraq oil fields (AFP)

AFP - Angolan energy firm Sonangol initialled two deals with Iraq on Wednesday to develop oil fields in the north of the country, oil ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Dec 2009 | 2:38 am

The rise of 'fake science'

And the most embarrassing example has been the rise of 'fake science', which values naivety over facts – a bit like Sarah Palin

Much criticism – positive and negative – has already been ladled on Ego "James" Cameron's latest film, Dancing with Smurfs, aka Avatar. But one point that has not been discussed is how much Sarah Palin would enjoy it.

On the one hand, considering that this movie features the most simplistic racial stereotypes since Star Wars' Jar Jar Binks did his best Butterfly McQueen impression for George Lucas, Avatar is an obvious winner for Palin. After all, she is the woman who, according to her father, left Hawaii University because there were too many Asians there for her liking: "They were a minority-type thing and it wasn't glamorous, so she came home," said Chuck Heath.

On the other hand, as Avatar comes weighed down with anti-war sentiments, topped with some environmental awareness waffle (if discussions about trees having "energy" count as environmental awareness, as opposed to cod-spiritual ethno-tourism you might expect from Sting and Trudie Styler), this may not be the obvious festive outing for la famille Palin. Sarah, of course, doesn't really believe in silly-billy man-made "climate change", describing it instead as "doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood". Doomsday? Priesthood? Has someone been reading Dan Brown?

All of this dovetails with the most ^­ important issue of the week: how to define the past decade. After all, the 80s had bling (according to Jay McInerney), the 90s had grunge (according to Winona Ryder). The noughties, or whatever we end up calling them, were surely defined by fakery: fake celebrities (anyone who came from reality TV); fake "reality" (see previous); faked news stories (Balloon Boy, which has since been compared to Orson Welles's War of the Worlds stunt – although, as far as I know, Orson wasn't trying to regain the power he had when he appeared on Wife Swap, as Balloon Boy's father, Richard Heene, was); fake fashion designers (any celebrity who sewed their name into the back of a badly made dress); fake friends (Facebook); and fake communication ("social" networking sites which tend to involve people sitting at home, alone, and not speaking). Sure, some of these things were around before Millennium New Year. But it was only afterwards that they became so ubiquitous and were given so much leeway.

That this decade should be summed up with the epithet of Fake is not so surprising, though, considering that we entered it with a fake – or "New" – Labour government, and then followed this with the fake election of a fake American president in 2000.

Yet perhaps the most embarrassing, not to mention damaging, fakery has been the rise of "fake science", which stems entirely from a fear of science and leads inexorably to no science at all. We saw this on a terrifying scale when George W Bush banned federal funding for stem cell research, and we see it on a pathetically comical scale with Prince Charles selling Duchy Herbals Detox Tincture. Sales of these kinds of supplements rise exponentially every year, just as stories about acai berries/pomegranates/whatever-the-trendy-fruit-is-this-week curing diseases continue to make headlines in respectable and unrespectable papers every week.

Michael Specter writes about the rise of fake science in his gripping new book, Denialism. Although Specter generally keeps his palpable anger at bay, it breaks through in his chapter about the MMR jab furore, with particular ire reserved for certain well-known names connected to it; namely, the actors Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy, and Tony Blair. Yes, Blair is grouped with Ace Ventura and his girlfriend, the latter of whom has insisted that she knows the MMR jab causes autism because "there is an angry mob on my side". Specter writes (to Britain's shame): "What does it say about the relative roles that denialism and reason play in a society when a man like Blair, one of the democratic world's best-known and most enlightened leaders, refused at first to speak in favour of the MMR vaccine?"

That the MMR jab does not cause autism has been definitively proven by now, despite what McCarthy's angry mob maintains (she is said to be getting her own talk show, produced by that unfortunately frequent promoter of fake science, Oprah Winfrey). But fear of the jab has led to the rise of another illness: there were more cases of measles in 2006 and 2007 in England and Wales than in the previous 10 years combined.

Fake science values naivety over knowledge, as it harks back to a non-existent age of innocence before the so-called corrupting influence of modern medicine. Palin, too, has used this modus operandi: she is qualified to speak precisely because she is unqualified. She is untainted by biased things such as facts and experience. And that is why she would like Avatar: its depiction of "the noble savages" is, no doubt, a well-intended argument against the destruction of rainforests, but add in a couple of orange brush strokes and you have a Gauguin painting. It is patronising, simplistic and offensive, like Palin and fake science.

Last year, incidentally, Palin sneered at the allocation of federal funds to projects such as "fruit fly research". Unfortunately for her these silly fruit fly studies have led to a greater understanding of diseases such as, um, autism. Isn't science annoying?

• This article was amended on 30 December 2009

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 30 Dec 2009 | 2:05 am