Research unlocks secrets of protein linked to spread of viruses

Researchers have unlocked some of the secrets of a viral protein, known as Rev, which plays an essential role in the propagation mechanism of certain types of viruses within an organism.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pm

New virus is not linked to chronic fatigue syndrome, suggests new research

New research has not reproduced previous findings that suggested chronic fatigue syndrome may be linked to a recently discovered virus. The authors of the study say this means that anti-retroviral drugs may not be an effective treatment for people with the illness.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pm

Few gender differences in math abilities, worldwide study finds

Girls around the world are not worse at math than boys, even though boys are more confident in their math abilities, and girls from countries where gender equity is more prevalent are more likely to perform better on mathematics assessment tests, according to a new analysis of international research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pm

Tipping elements in the Earth System: How stable is the contemporary environment?

New research presents the latest scientific insights on so-called tipping elements in the planetary environment. These elements have been identified as the most vulnerable large-scale components of the Earth System that may be profoundly altered by human interference. If one or more of those components is tipped -- especially in the course of global warming -- then the age of remarkably stable environmental conditions on Earth throughout the Holocene may end quickly and irreversibly.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pm

Early-warning system defends rare Jersey cows from disease spreading through Europe

Scientists from the Channel Islands are working on an early-warning system to help defend cattle against "bluetongue" disease, which can be carried from France by the wind.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pm

Sexual function does not continuously decline after radiation therapy treatments for prostate cancer, study finds

Sexual function in prostate cancer patients receiving external beam radiation therapy decreases within the first two years after treatment but then stabilizes and does not continuously decline as was previously thought, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pm

New figures on cancer in Europe show a steady decline in mortality but big variations

New figures on deaths from cancer in Europe show a steady decline in mortality between the periods 1990-1994 and 2000-2004. Deaths from all cancers in the European Union between these two periods fell by nine percent in men and eight percent in women, with a large drop among the middle-aged population.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 6:00 pm

Earliest Tyrannosauroid rediscovered in museum collection

A long forgotten fossil skull in the collections of the Natural History Museum in London has now provided crucial clues to the early stages of the lengthy evolutionary history of Tyrannosaurus rex and related large carnivorous dinosaurs.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 6:00 pm

Restaurant and packaged foods can have more calories than nutrition labeling indicates

Since people who are trying to reduce their weight are encouraged to choose meals labeled as "lower in calories" or "reduced energy" in restaurants and supermarkets, it is essential that the listed data are accurate. In a new study, researchers found that some commercially prepared foods contained more calories than indicated in nutritional labeling.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 6:00 pm

'Junk DNA' could spotlight breast and bowel cancer

Scientists have found that a group of genetic rogue elements, produced by DNA sequences commonly known as "junk DNA," could help diagnose breast and bowel cancer.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 6:00 pm

Japanese project aims to turn CO2 into natural gas (AFP)

AFP - Japanese researchers said Wednesday they hoped to enlist bacteria in the fight against global warming to transform carbon dioxide buried under the seabed into natural gas.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 3:02 am

Boats collide in anti-whaling clash in Antarctica (AP)

AP - A conservation group's boat had its bow sheared off and was taking on water Wednesday after it collided with a Japanese whaling ship in the frigid waters of Antarctica, the group said. The boat's six crew members were safely rescued.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 2:45 am

Iraq cabinet approves oil deals with foreign firms (AFP)

AFP - Iraq's cabinet has approved all pending deals with foreign energy firms and a signing ceremony for the nine contracts will be held soon, oil ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told AFP on Wednesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 6 Jan 2010 | 1:53 am

Science and magic of cheesemaking

Andy Connelly describes the heady combination of chemistry, cooking and adventure that is cheesemaking

When I think of cheese, my mind returns to a mountain farm in the French Pyrenees with a spectacular view across a green valley to the snow-covered peaks that mark the border with Spain. From the farm's small flock of dark-eyed Jersey cows, colourful goats and ignorant sheep came the most incredible cheeses.

I spent a month working on this farm. I took goats for walks with Iglo the farm's shaggy dog of disorder, milked cows with rough tongues that would scour your face if you were looking the wrong way, and made cheeses: soft goat's cheeses, gentle whey cheeses and beautifully round matured ewe's milk Tomme. It was amazing to feel the warm fresh milk in my hands as it transformed from gentle liquid to soft, solid curds and then, with time, witness the development of such an array of flavours and textures.

The transformation of milk into cheese is one of the most extraordinary of all human discoveries.

No one knows exactly when, but it is believed to have happened at about the same time as the domestication of animals such as goats in the fertile crescent region of the Middle East around 6,000-7,000BC. A forgetful shepherd might have noticed that his neglected milk turned acidic and curdled into a thick yoghurt. This yoghurt could then be separated into solid curd and liquid whey. The whey provided a refreshing drink on hot journeys. The fresh curd could be salted to produce a simple cheese, maybe the first ever cheese.

On that little farm where I worked in the Pyrenees, the sheep were milked by hand, the cows and goats by a combination of hand and machine. To taste this milk was to taste the flavour of the land on which the animals lived. This flavour imparted itself to the cheese, making it truly regional.

After the early morning milking the cheesemaking would begin. Our dirty farmyard clothes were exchanged for white coats and boots, our hair (and my beard) trapped behind hairnets. This was when the fun began, the mixture of cooking, chemistry and adventure that is cheesemaking. The basic stages are not complex but the variables are endless, which allows for the enormous variety of cheeses that can be found around the world.

Ripening or souring the milk

All of the cheese produced on the farm was made from unpasteurised milk. This meant that the first step happened all by itself. Bacteria naturally present in the milk would start souring it, converting lactose (milk sugar) into lactic acid. In cheese made from pasteurised milk these acidifying bacteria must be added.

Although pasteurised milk will acidify if left in the fridge too long, the bacteria that grow are unknown bacteria, possibly dangerous, certainly smelly. The types of bacteria added to acidify milk in cheesemaking are carefully controlled.

Pasteurisation was introduced, in part, due to urbanisation and the separation of people from the farms where milk was produced. Sources of milk became less reliable and illnesses such as tuberculosis were rife. Pasteurisation was a lifesaver. However, many cheesemakers (especially in France) argue that it is also a flavour-killing process because the bacteria, which persist into the drained curd, generate much of the flavour during ripening. But that is an argument for another time.

Curdling and coagulation

Getting up early in the morning to be faced with a giant cauldron of smooth, creamy, slightly soured milk from 60 ewes is an intimidating experience. But it was here that the cheesemaking really started. We needed Little Miss Muffet's curds and whey and we got them by separating or "curdling" the milk using enzymes found in rennet. Curdling occurs when certain milk proteins clump together forming a web or matrix that traps water and fat.

The use of rennet may have been humankind's first venture into biotechnology. Rennet was probably discovered when curd was observed in the stomachs of young animals during butchery, or possibly when the stomachs of certain animals were used as handy bags for carrying milk around.

Cheesemaking was either carried out in a calf's stomach or with a piece of stomach in a vessel. In time cheesemakers learned to extract the enzymes using brine and now we can produce vegetarian rennet in a laboratory.

The active enzyme in rennet is special because it only acts on one type of milk protein: casein proteins. These occur in milk as clumps known as micelles, held together by a calcium "glue". The micelles have negative charges over their surface which makes them repel each other and so they stay separated in the milk. To form curds, either rennet or an acid is used to overcome these negative charges and create a network of casein proteins.

If an acid is used (for example vinegar, lemon juice or bacterially produced lactic acid) the micelles are broken up, the negative charges removed, and some of the calcium "glue" is lost into the whey. This allows the casein proteins to join together but in a weak network, forming brittle curds that are deficient in calcium.

Acid-curdled cheeses, such as cottage cheese, are usually eaten fresh, with the whey drained off and some salt added. They tend to have little flavour because many flavour-producing enzymes do not work well in these acidic conditions.

By contrast, rennet removes the negative charge on the micelles but does not break them up, allowing them to join together in a much stronger network and form more elastic curds. Cheese made from these curds can be matured for long periods of time, developing complex flavours.

On the farm we saw little of this fascinating science as, after adding the rennet, we went off to drink a morning coffee and eat hunks of fresh bread with honey for breakfast, leaving the rennet to do its work.

Cutting and cooking

On our return, the slight buzz of strong coffee still in our veins, the first of many magical transformations had occurred. The pristine liquid milk had solidified into a rubbery, ivory gel. Now I had to "cut", or separate, the curds and whey by diving my (very clean) hands into the soft matter. I would grab handfuls of thick, custard-like curds and feel them break into tiny pieces in my hands, the warm, wet whey squirting out through my fingers.

Breaking up the curd helped remove the whey, giving a firmer cheese: the more was removed, the firmer the cheese. To make the farm's special Tomme cheese the curds were gently cooked in their whey, giving a slight rubbery texture. The very rubbery texture of cheeses like Gruyère comes from more intensive cooking.

The small gas stove was lit under the giant cauldron and the curds and whey were warmed. They were stirred by hand and as the mixture heated I could feel the curds become rubbery between my fingers as more whey was driven from the network of protein molecules.

Salt can be added at this point to provide not only taste but also to inhibit the growth of spoilage microbes and draw out yet more water. Along with salt, mould spores can be added in various ways depending on the type of cheese to be produced. For Roquefort, the Penicillium roqueforti fungi were traditionally added in the form of ground bread left to go mouldy in the famous Roquefort Caves in the south of France.

Moulding and pressing the curds

Moving your hand though warm curds and whey is a strange experience. I was acutely aware that they must not overheat, but also distracted by the mixtures of textures and sensations within the cauldron. After letting it cool I would plunge my hands back into the mixture, forming the firm grainy curds into a giant white wobbly ball which – fearful of dropping – I had to quickly transfer to the cheese cloth in the colander-like mould. Here, the whey drained away though the cheese cloth with the help of a little pressure from another moulded cheese.

This process of moulding the cheese is critical: the shape of the mould, the application of pressure and the proportion of whey removed all have major effects on the final cheese, especially on its texture.

If you want a really dry, hard cheese (for example cheddar) you must "mill" or "cheddar" the curds. This means breaking the curds into very small pieces, which reduces the moisture content still further. More salt may then be added and the cheese squeezed in a giant press to remove yet more whey. Such pressed curds end up as very dry cheeses such as Cheshire.

For softer cheeses more of the whey is left with the curds. They have a moist, open, airy texture and hence provide great conditions for the growth of moulds that require air for growth. This can be an advantage for mould-ripened cheeses such as the beautifully blue-veined Stilton, but can also mean they spoil more rapidly.

Maturing or ripening

This is the final and slowest transformation. Here we can see how milk and cheese live on a knife edge between life and decay. If the milk is not pasteurised then there is life and growth at every stage, from animal to milk to cheese. But in the end it is a form of decay that gives cheese its flavours and textures. As cheeses age and decay they develop flavour and character, mould and even personalities.

However, given too much time a cheese can become harsh and coarse.

The lives of soft cheeses like Brie and Camembert are meteoric: their prime comes and goes within weeks. The white surface mould that characterises them produces an enzyme that penetrates the cheese, breaking down the casein protein network and transforming the chalky curd into the runny, smelly substance that we enjoy. Left too long, however, and the protein structure collapses into an unpalatable, stinky mess.

For harder cheeses the ageing process is prolonged for a few months to a year, or even, for really dry cheeses like Parmesan, several years. With more time, the decay of the casein proteins allows more flavour-producing chemicals to form.

First, the proteins break into medium-sized pieces called peptides and then into smaller amino acids. These can in turn be broken down into various, highly flavoured molecules called amines. At each stage more complex flavours are produced. For example amines can have smells ranging from spoiling meat to sulphur-like smells, or even ammonia. Though these scarcely sound appetising, bare hints of them build the complexity and richness of cheeses' flavours and smells.

Alongside the breaking down of proteins, fats can also be degraded, particularly by blue-cheese moulds such as P. roqueforti. These fats become fatty acids, which in turn become smaller molecules with many of the characteristic smells and flavours of blue cheeses. Some fatty acids have a peppery effect on the tongue and an intense sheep or goat aroma.

The more diverse the cast of ripening enzymes, the more complex the resulting collection of protein and fat fragments and the richer the flavour. A flavour that is still of the land but has developed a life of its own.

Back on the mountainside in the French Pyrenees we would remove the cheese from the mould and transfer it to a cave kept at the correct humidity and temperature by the mountain air and a giant waterfall near its mouth. The cave smelled damp but clean. There was an earthy smell but also a background aroma of cheese that grew the longer you stood there, into an overwhelming, mouth-watering, nose-filling sensation. The walls, the shelves, the cheeses, everything was alive with enzymes, bacteria and moulds all working together to produce the incredibly complex flavours in cheese.

We would retire from work for the day to watch the sun set over the mountains with a glass of warm, fruity red wine and a slab of perfectly mature cheese on a piece of crisp French bread. All around would be the smell of spring, the sound of the cow bells as the animals came in for the night, and the gentle background rumble of the waterfalls that raced though the farm and gave it its name, La Ferme des Cascades.

Dr Andy Connelly is a cookery writer and researcher in glass science at the University of Sheffield

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Jan 2010 | 1:28 am

Pi calculated to 'record number'

The mathematical constant pi is calculated to a record 2.7 trillion digits using a desktop computer, a researcher claims.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 6 Jan 2010 | 1:24 am

Counting the animals in the annual stocktake

Adam Gabbatt observes London zoo's stocktake

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Jan 2010 | 1:09 am

Japanese survivor of two atomic bombs dies

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, only person certified as having endured both Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, dies aged 93

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only person officially recognised as a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings at the end of the second world war, has died aged 93.

Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip for his shipbuilding company on 6 August 1945, when a US B-29 dropped the first atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night in Hiroshima.

He then returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, about 190 miles southwest, which suffered a second US atomic bomb attack three days later. On August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered, ending the war.

Nagasaki's mayor today said "a precious storyteller" had been lost, in a message posted on the city's website. Yamaguchi died on Monday morning of stomach cancer, the Mainichi, Asahi and Yomiuri newspapers reported.

Yamaguchi was the only person to be certified by the Japanese government as having been in both cities when they were attacked, although other dual survivors have been identified.

"My double radiation exposure is now an official government record. It can tell the younger generation the horrifying history of the atomic bombings even after I die," Yamaguchi told the newspaper Mainichi last year.

In his later years, Yamaguchi gave talks about his experiences as an atomic bomb survivor and often expressed his hope the weapons would be abolished.

He spoke at the United Nations in 2006, wrote books and songs about his experiences, and appeared in a documentary about survivors of both attacks.

Last month he was visited in the hospital by the filmmaker James Cameron, director of Titanic and Avatar, who is considering making a movie about the bombings, according to Mainichi.

Immediately after the war, Yamaguchi worked as a translator for American forces in Nagasaki and later as a junior-high-school teacher.

Japan is the only country to have been attacked with atomic weapons. About 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki.

Yamaguchi is one of about 260,000 people who survived the attacks. Some bombing survivors have developed various illnesses from radiation exposure, including cancer and liver illnesses.

Certification as an atomic bomb survivor in Japan qualifies individuals for government compensation, including monthly allowances, free medical checkups and funeral costs.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 6 Jan 2010 | 1:02 am

Stem Cells Likely to Help Genetic Disorders First (HealthDay)

HealthDay - TUESDAY, Jan. 5 (HealthDay News) -- With new rules in place that lifted restrictions on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research, health-care advocates are looking down the line and wondering when the first medical advances based on stem cells might occur.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jan 2010 | 9:49 pm

Namibia's landmark trees dying from climate change (AFP)

AFP - An old man gently touches the trunk of the huge quiver tree with a worried look on his wrinkled face, as he points at several dead branches lying on Namibia's rugged terrain.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jan 2010 | 9:01 pm

Hubble's Galaxy Quest Approaches the Final Frontier

If today's big news announcement from the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Washington D.C. needed a theme song, I'd borrow lyrics from "Kansas City" (from the musical "Oklahoma") i.e. "They've gone about as fur as they c'n go!" Following ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Jan 2010 | 8:30 pm

1,000 people homeless on Solomons after tsunami (AP)

AP - Landslides and a tsunami destroyed the homes of about one-third of the population on one of the islands in the Solomons, but lives were likely spared as residents with memories of previous disasters fled quickly to higher ground, officials said.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jan 2010 | 8:16 pm

New 'strawberry' crab species found off Taiwan (AP)

AP - A marine biologist says he has discovered a new crab species off the coast of southern Taiwan that looks like a strawberry with small white bumps on its red shell.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jan 2010 | 7:45 pm

Hubble telescope shows earliest photo of universe (AP)

AP - The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the earliest image yet of the universe — just 600 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was just a toddler.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jan 2010 | 7:20 pm

Britain must launch GM food revolution, says chief scientist

Britain must embrace genetically modified crops and cutting-edge developments such as nanotechnology to avoid catastrophic food shortages and future climate change, the government's chief scientist will warn today.

In the clearest public signal yet that the government wants a hi-tech farming revolution, Professor John Beddington will say UK scientists need to urgently d evelop "a new and greener revolution" to increase food production in a world changed by global warming and expected to have an extra 3 billion people to feed by 2040.

"Techniques and technologies from many disciplines, ranging from biotechnology and engineering to newer fields such as nanotechnology, will be needed," writes Beddington in a paper, seen by the Guardian, to accompany his speech to the Oxford farming conference.

He warns that time lags for the use of new technology on farms means action is vital now and argues that it is no longer possible to rely on improving yields from crops in traditional ways. "Over the last 50 years improving yields has accounted for 75% of increase in output. However, yield growth rates are now slowing," he says.

Instead, he argues that new technologies such as GM will be critical in meeting economic, environmental and social goals. Beddington says the revolution is needed primarily to counter climate change and help provide food for the 9 billion people worldwide expected within 30 years.

"It is [also] predicted that demand for energy will rise by around 50%, and for fresh water by 50%, all of which must be managed while mitigating and adapting to climate change. This threatens to create a 'perfect storm' of global events," he says.

The government has wanted GM crops to be much more freely grown for many years but has been reluctant to reopen the debate following intense campaigns against the technology by environment and development groups in the 1990s.

Although Beddington has spoken in support of GM before, his keynote speech – to a conference of farmers and supermarkets – shows that ministers believe it is time to accelerate the debate on the issue.

Intense lobbying by food companies, the growing significance of climate change, recent international food crises and a major independent Royal Society report have all helped to give the government the authority to put GM back on the national agenda.

For six months the government has been preparing the way with a series of reports on consumer opinion. Announcements from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) over the summer also began to frame GM as a new moral imperative in feeding the world. The Cabinet Office strategy unit also highlighted GM as an urgent domestic issue back in the summer of 2008. It said: "Consumer confidence in UK regulations, regulators and food supplies might be prejudiced if GM feed was found in systems claiming to be GM-free or if non-authorised varieties were detected in the UK food chain. If non-authorised material is found, there are also significant cost implications associated with recall."

The assumption that new technology is the answer to the global food crisis is expected to be fiercely challenged by development and environmental charities campaigners who accuse the government of not having looked at the real causes of the global food crisis.

They point out that a UN-sponsored four-year review, involving more than 400 international scientists and chaired by Defra's own chief scientist, Professor Robert Watson, concluded in 2007 that GM technologies were unlikely to have more than a limited role in tackling global hunger.

According to the Watson-led review, the scientific evidence on the claimed benefits of GM suggests they are variable, with increases in yield in some areas but decreases in others, and both greater and lesser pesticide use in different contexts. But crucially it concluded that global hunger is as much to do with power and control of the food system as with growing enough food.

Yesterday, Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, launched the government's food strategy for the next 20 years. He told the Oxford conference that Britain must grow more food in a different way to respond to rising temperatures and world populations. "Food security is as important to this country's future wellbeing – and the world's – as energy security. We need to produce more food.

"We need to do it sustainably. And we need to make sure that what we eat safeguards our health," he said.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

Where's the beef?

Each January, as the rest of the country gloomily contemplates its new year's resolutions, the nation's leading farmers gather in Oxford to discuss their trade. A conference that opens with consecutive receptions sponsored by McDonald's and Agrovista reflects those global and industrial aspects of food production that some see as its biggest challenges. But it was the obvious platform for the vegetarian environment, food and rural affairs secretary, Hilary Benn, to unveil the government's strategy for achieving healthy, safe food produced in a sustainable and resilient way over the next 20 years.

The government has done a lot of thinking about food and farming over the past 10 years. There have been many initiatives, some of them good. (Let's hear it for the Food Standards Agency.) Food, in one form or another, is now on the agenda of the business, health and energy ministries as well as at Defra, where it has traditionally belonged. And that is Mr Benn's problem. Too many ministers, too many ideas, not enough focus, and big questions left unanswered. So, those searching for the long-awaited response from the government to the Competition Commission's call for an ombudsman to regulate relations between supermarkets and their suppliers can look in vain. The government long since missed the 90-day consultation deadline, which passed in early November, and shows no sign of taking a decision before the code by which supermarkets and producers are supposed to abide comes into force in February. The excuse is that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills wants its policy to embrace the Competition Commission's proposal for a competition test to be incorporated into supermarket planning guidance. But it looks more as if it would rather not take a decision at all. That left plenty of space in the political car park for the Conservatives' Nick Herbert to commit a Tory government to take the decision Labour has repeatedly ducked.

Others searching the strategy document for references to new technology found just one mention apiece of genetically modified organisms and nanotechnology. This is a more serious sleight of hand. It turns out that Mr Benn's speech was but window-dressing, a taster for the real substance to be delivered today not by a politician but by the more authoritative eminence of the government's chief scientific adviser, Professor John Beddington. As we report, he will insist that GM crops and other technologies are vital to expanding production to feed the world by 2030. This is becoming a familiar call from sources close to the government. It is the wrong way to do it. If ministers believe GM is necessary, they should say so themselves. They must explain how a technology thus far developed and aggressively marketed by the agri-chemical sector – and which (as far as can be told from research that emerges from behind the well-fenced labs) has mixed results that will chiefly benefit the sophisticated agribusinesses of the US and Europe – is a necessary precondition for the successful delivery of global food sustainability.

There are hard political choices to be made here. One course to providing the world with food might be a vast, technology-led increase in the yield of certain crops grown in the developed world which can then be exported. But that risks driving more small farmers in Africa and Asia off the land, unable to compete with global market prices. Even for the UK, which imports three times as much agricultural produce as it exports, it is not an obvious route to sustainability, nor to the resilience that climate change and erratic growing seasons will make necessary. It is fine for the scientists to acquaint us with the possibilities that science offers. It is not their job to discuss the politics of food: distribution, world trade and the stranglehold of global food wholesalers. That is the politicians' job. And that was what Mr Benn should have addressed yesterday.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

Letters: Insurers and cancer

In his otherwise admirable look at how he has dealt with cancer (Comment, 30 December), Mike Marqusee criticises insurers for overcharging cancer patients. Travel insurance exists to provide protection against unexpected events while travelling. It provides competitively priced cover to as many travellers as possible. But if you do have a pre-existing medical condition, such as cancer, then the increased likelihood of making a claim means that the price of travel insurance is likely to be higher. There are, however, several specialist insurers who provide travel insurance that includes medical cover for pre-existing conditions, including cancer. The ABI is working with several major charities, including Macmillan Cancer Support and Breast Cancer Care, to help improve access to and information about these insurers. It is important that people with a history of cancer who are seeking travel insurance shop around to get the best deal.

Nick Starling

Association of British Insurers

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

Doubt cast on chronic fatigue virus claim

UK study fails to find proof of headline-grabbing American study into test for ME/CFS

Serious doubt has been cast on the theory that made headlines around the world last October that chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME, is caused by a new retrovirus.

Scientists at Imperial and King's universities in London have attempted to replicate work carried out in the US and published in the journal Science last autumn. But they found not one of the 186 patients they studied had a trace of the novel virus, called XMRV, in their blood samples.

The theory, which made headlines around the world last October, gave hope to many. About three in every 1,000 people, possibly more, suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), formerly known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), which is a condition described one of the authors of the paper, Dr Anthony Cleare, reader in psychiatric neuroendocrinology at King's, as serious and debilitating and extremely frustrating for sufferers who do not know its cause.

The study in Science, by Vincent Lombardi and colleagues at a small private pathology laboratory in Reno, Nevada, sent many patients hurrying to doctors for tests and antiretroviral drugs.

Lombardi and his team reported that they had found the virus XMRV in 67% of the CFS patients they tested. Later they said they had found it in 95% of patients. Lombardi has devised and sells a test for the virus in north America.

Scientists around the world embarked on their own tests, and Dr Cleare and his colleagues are the first to publish results. "If this research is replicated, it is potentially a huge breakthrough in understanding this condition," he said.

King's College hospital runs a specialised CFS/ME clinic. The researchers selected blood samples from 186 patients who were, they said, typical of those who attend. They had suffered for years, were very disabled by the disease and more than 90% said their illness definitely or probably started after a viral infection.

They sent the samples to a team at Imperial's retrovirology labs. Professor Myra McClure, from the division of medicine at Imperial College London and one of the authors of the study published today by PloS One (Public Library of Science), said: "Our research was carried out under rigorous conditions. We used very sensitive testing methods to look for the virus. If it had been there, we would have found it.

"The lab in which we carried out the analysis had never housed any of the murine leukaemia viruses related to XMRV, and we took great care to ensure there was no contamination. We are confident our results show there is no link between XMRV and CFS, at least in the UK." The authors say there is no evidence to justify testing people with CFS for the virus or putting them on drug treatment.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

"Rift" Sucks Us In

Just when the media hysteria over doomsday scenarios relating to the Large Hadron Collider has died down, along comes a visually stunning short film from L Studio called Rift that explores just what such a scenario might look like. It's ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Jan 2010 | 4:05 pm

Hubble Telescope peers at oldest ever galaxies (AFP)

AFP - The refurbished Hubble Space Telescope has set a new record by discovering the oldest galaxies ever seen, dating back 13 billion years, or 600-800 million years after the Big Bang, NASA said Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jan 2010 | 3:45 pm

Study turns up 10 autism clusters in California

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. researchers have identified 10 locations in California that have double the rates of autism found in surrounding areas, and these clusters were located in neighborhoods with high concentrations of white, highly educated parents.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 5 Jan 2010 | 3:13 pm

Tombs to lift lid on Egypt's ancient middle class

CAIRO (Reuters) - Two 2,500-year-old tombs discovered at a necropolis near Cairo promise to reveal more about ancient Egypt's middle class, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 5 Jan 2010 | 3:01 pm

Strange Spinning Stars Could Help Prove Einstein Prediction (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - WASHINGTON — A newly discovered trove of strange spinning stars in our galaxy could help find evidence for Einstein's prediction of gravitational waves.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 5 Jan 2010 | 2:47 pm

Toxic Dust from Roads Travels into Homes

Could we be literally walking toxic compounds right into our homes? Find out here.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Jan 2010 | 2:00 pm

How Google's Nexus One Phone Compares

Does the Google Nexus One have the features to compete for best all around phone?
Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jan 2010 | 1:52 pm

Google's Nexus One: Unlocked and Loaded

I'll admit I'm a little out of my usual element here, writing about the oh-so-freshly released Nexus One smart phone from Google. After all, I usually leave the gadget writing to the gadget experts. In fact, if you want a ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Jan 2010 | 1:42 pm

Shimmer Me This

Back in September, a fascinating paper appeared on the arXiv about a new way to search for gravitational waves. It's called the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), and it relies on how pulsars stretch and squeeze as ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Jan 2010 | 1:08 pm

Galactic Dwarf’s Stardust Shines in Infrared

The Small Magellanic Cloud isn’t much to look at with the naked eye, even for visitors to the International Space Station. Former astronaut John Grunsfeld told reporters Tuesday about a stargazing experience he had on the station.

“At one point, I complained about a small greasy smudge on the window…. That was the Small Magellanic Cloud,” Grunsfeld, who three days ago was appointed deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, said during a teleconference at the American Astronomical Society annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

But now, Spitzer Space Telescope’s incredible infrared camera has transformed the little smudge into a beautiful space photo.

In the image above, old stars are blue, while young stars are lighting up the dust around them in green and red. The new images of this neighboring dwarf galaxy, which is located about 200,000 light-years away, are part of an effort to better understand the life cycle of galaxies through tracking stardust.

“We’re tracing how a galaxy evolves through the dust,” said Karl Gordon, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, who is leading the effort to study the formation of the Small Magellanic Cloud.

In the optical wavelengths, as Gordon noted, the cloud is just “this kind of faint cloud, but in the infrared all the pieces of the galaxy come out.”

That’s because infrared light has a longer wavelength than visible light. It can pass through dusty parts of the universe without being scattered. The upshot is that infrared astronomy lets scientists see through regions that would be nearly opaque to our eyes.

“Observations in the infrared give us a view into the birthplace of stars, unveiling the dust-enshrouded locations where stars have just formed,” Gordon said in a release.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI. XXL 8.9 megabyte version.

See Also:

• New Milky Way Image Shows Best of All Spectra
• Violent Star-Forming Nebula Caught by Spitzer Telescope
• Spitzer Spots Swirling Stars at the Center of the Galaxy
• Strange Eye-Shaped Galaxy Has Black-Hole Iris
• Infrared Telescope Warms Up to Star-Forming Cloud
• Cosmic-Ray Mystery Traced to Star-Birth Frenzy
• The Facts About Obama’s $3 Million Projector

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 | 5 Jan 2010 | 12:40 pm

Where is El Niño when we need him?

Just when we might be expecting the influence of unusually high Pacific ocean temperatures to warm us up -- or for global warming to bring relief -- along comes another wave of incredibly cold storms. How the season finally turns ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Jan 2010 | 12:28 pm

Tall Buildings Sway More Than You Think

Yesterday, the world's tallest building (for now) opened in Dubai. The Burj Khalifa has moved ahead of other tall buildings that have recently debuted and in the next decade or so, it will no doubt be eclipsed by even taller ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Jan 2010 | 12:27 pm

Amazon explorers uncover signs of a real El Dorado

Satellite technology detects giant mounds over 155 miles, pointing to sophisticated pre-Columbian culture

It is the legend that drew legions of explorers and adventurers to their deaths: an ancient empire of citadels and treasure hidden deep in the Amazon jungle.

Spanish conquistadores ventured into the rainforest seeking fortune, followed over the centuries by others convinced they would find a lost civilisation to rival the Aztecs and Incas.

Some seekers called it El Dorado, others the City of Z. But the jungle swallowed them and nothing was found, prompting the rest of the world to call it a myth. The Amazon was too inhospitable, said 20th century scholars, to permit large human settlements.

Now, however, the doomed dreamers have been proved right: there was a great civilisation. New satellite imagery and fly-overs have revealed more than 200 huge geometric earthworks carved in the upper Amazon basin near Brazil's border with Bolivia.

Spanning 155 miles, the circles, squares and other geometric shapes form a network of avenues, ditches and enclosures built long before Christopher Columbus set foot in the new world. Some date to as early as 200 AD, others to 1283.

Scientists who have mapped the earthworks believe there may be another 2,000 structures beneath the jungle canopy, vestiges of vanished societies.

The structures, many of which have been revealed by the clearance of forest for agriculture, point to a "sophisticated pre-Columbian monument-building society", says the journal Antiquity, which has published the research.

The article adds: "This hitherto unknown people constructed earthworks of precise geometric plan connected by straight orthogonal roads. The 'geoglyph culture' stretches over a region more than 250km across, and exploits both the floodplains and the uplands … we have so far seen no more than a tenth of it."

The structures were created by a network of trenches about 36ft (nearly 11 metres) wide and several feet deep, lined by banks up to 3ft high. Some were ringed by low mounds containing ceramics, charcoal and stone tools. It is thought they were used for fortifications, homes and ceremonies, and could have maintained a population of 60,000 – more people than in many medieval European cities.

The discoveries have demolished ideas that soils in the upper Amazon were too poor to support extensive agriculture, says Denise Schaan, a co-author of the study and anthropologist at the Federal University of Pará, in Belém, Brazil. She told National Geographic: "We found this picture is wrong. And there is a lot more to discover in these places, it's never-ending. Every week we find new structures."

Many of the mounds were symmetrical and slanted to the north, prompting theories that they had astronomical significance.

Researchers were especially surprised that earthworks in floodplains and uplands were of a similar style, suggesting they were all built by the same culture.

"In Amazonian archaeology you always have this idea that you find different peoples in different ecosystems," said Schaan. "So it was odd to have a culture that would take advantage of different ecosystems and expand over such a large region." The first geometric shapes were spotted in 1999 but it is only now, as satellite imagery and felling reveal sites, that the scale of the settlements is becoming clear. Some anthropologists say the feat, requiring sophisticated engineering, canals and roads, rivals Egypt's pyramids.

The findings follow separate discoveries further south, in the Xingu region, of interconnected villages known as "garden cities". Dating between 800 and 1600, they included houses, moats and palisades.

"These revelations are exploding our perceptions of what the Americas really looked liked before the arrival of Christopher Columbus," said David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z, a book about an attempt in the 1920s to find signs of Amazonian civilizations. "The discoveries are challenging long-held assumptions about the Amazon as a Hobbesian place where only small primitive tribes could ever have existed, and about the limits the environment placed on the rise of early civilisations."

They are also vindicating, said Grann, Percy Fawcett, the Briton who led the expedition to find the City of Z. Fawcett's party vanished, bequeathing a mystery and partly inspiring Conan Doyle's book The Lost World.

Many scientists saw the jungle as too harsh to sustain anything but small nomadic tribes. Now it seems the conquistadores who spoke of "cities that glistened in white" were telling the truth. They, however, probably also introduced the diseases that wiped out the native people, leaving the jungle to claim – and hide – all trace of their civilisation.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jan 2010 | 12:08 pm

Giant river fish faces extinction

The arapaima, a giant Amazon river fish that can grow longer and heavier than a human adult, is at risk of extinction, according to a new study. Overfishing and errors in classification are believed to have left the world's largest scaled freshwater fish critically endangered.

A report in the Journal of Applied Ichthyology, a branch of zoology devoted to fish, said there were four sub-species of arapaima – not just one, as previously thought – and that they were under severe pressure from fishermen. Arapaima mature relatively late and need specific habitats to live and reproduce. The fish's size – it can grow to more than 2m and weigh over 200kg – and need to surface to breathe have left it vulnerable to harpoons and gill nets, said the authors, Leandro Castello of the Woods Hole Research Centre in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and Donald Stewart of the State University of New York. "They have the curse of being tasty and of having to breathe air," Castello told the BBC. Much of what is known about the arapaima, also known as pirarucu or paiche, is based on a taxonomic review conducted over 160 years ago.

The researchers analysed nearly all preserved museum specimens of supposed arapaima and found only one specimen of Arapaima gigas. The others are suspected to be closely related species. "Our new analyses indicate that there are at least four species of arapaima," said Castello. "So, until further field surveys of appropriate areas are completed, we will not know if Arapaima gigas is extinct or still swimming about."

Fishermen ignore regulations intended to manage stocks, he said, and there is a lack of data about population numbers. "The present situation may be one in which one species of arapaima is recovering in certain areas, while unrecognised species are going extinct."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jan 2010 | 11:30 am

Denim May Guard Against Rattlesnake Bites

Wearing a sturdy pair of denim pants may be just what the doctor ordered when it comes to preventing rattlesnake bites, according to a study recently published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. It stands to reason that any kind ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Jan 2010 | 10:59 am

Hubble Finds Farthest, Oldest Galaxies Ever Seen

By pushing the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope to its very limits as a cosmic time machine, astronomers have identified three galaxies that may hail from an era only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. The faint galaxies may be the most distant starlit bodies known, each lying some 13.2 billion light-years from Earth.

Detecting galaxies at such a distance is at the very edge of what current technology can accomplish, comments Richard Ellis of Caltech, who was not part of the new study. It’s uncharted territory, he says.

If the researchers are correct in the preliminary determination, then Hubble is seeing light that reveals the galaxies as they first appeared just 480 million years after the birth of the universe. (That light traveled for billions of years to reach Earth.) The radiation from such early galaxies played a crucial role, theorists believe, in reionizing the universe. That process breaks apart neutral atoms into electrons and ions, a process that enabled light from the first generation of stars to stream freely into space.

The astronomers caution that because the galaxies they found with Hubble are seen at only one wavelength, it’s not certain that the bodies are extremely distant; they could just be red and faint. “We certainly don’t have smoking gun evidence,” says study coleader Rychard Bouwens of the University of California, Santa Cruz. “We just have tantalizing evidence that suggests we may be identifying a few [extremely distant] galaxies.”

Bouwens and Garth Illingworth, also of UC Santa Cruz , along with several collaborators, posted their findings online December 23 at the physics arXiv.org site (http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.4263). The team, like several others, went hunting for distant galaxies using Hubble’s newly installed Wide Field Camera 3, which in August took a long look in infrared wavelengths at a patch of sky known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Another Hubble camera had examined that field five years earlier in visible light, revealing many faint, faraway galaxies, but not the most remote galaxies, which can only be seen in infrared.

Ultraviolet and visible light emitted by the youthful stars in the earliest, most distant galaxies is shifted to much longer wavelengths — the infrared part of the spectrum — by the expansion of the universe. The more remote the galaxy, the greater the redshift.

In September, two teams, including Bouwens’, reported finding galaxies with redshift values of seven to eight, corresponding to an era about 700 million years after the Big Bang. Now, the researchers estimate that another three galaxies imaged by the camera have a redshift of about 10, which if confirmed would be the largest redshift ever measured. Bouwens says that several tests, including observations with the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope, indicate that the galaxies they spotted are likely to be truly remote, reducing the possibility that his team is being fooled by intrinsically faint, infrared-emitting galaxies that lie much closer to Earth.

Other teams, notably a group that includes Rogier Windhorst of Arizona State University in Tempe and Haojing Yan of Ohio State University in Columbus, reporting earlier on arXiv.org  (http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.0077), claimed to have found 20 galaxies at that same high redshift using the same data from the refurbished Hubble.

Garth and Illingworth note that most of the candidate distant galaxies identified by the Windhorst team lie near known, bright galaxies. They suggest that the team may have been confused by stray light from these bright galaxies. Other astronomers say it would be surprising if all 20 galaxies were from the same early era, since the Ultra Deep Field encompasses a narrow strip of sky. That would indicate that the early universe had a surprisingly high density of such galaxies.

Although the race is on to find more-convincing examples of distant galaxies, “redshift-10 galaxies are about the very edge that our current technology can push to,” notes Yan. It’s likely that none of the distant galaxy candidates can be confirmed until the launch of Hubble’s powerful infrared successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, around 2014, astronomers agree.

Image: NASA/ESA /Z. Levay (STScI)

See Also:

• Hubble Goes Deep, Finds Farthest Galaxies Yet
• Hubble Snaps Image of Triple Galaxy, as Ordered by the People …
• Hubble Catches Galaxies Stripping — Ram Pressure Stripping, That …
• Hubble Snaps Fantastic Galaxy Collision
• Hubble Captures Image of Strange Giant Galaxy
• Hubble’s New Camera Delivers Another Stunner
• ‘When Galaxies Collide’- 59 New Hubble Images Released

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 5 Jan 2010 | 10:43 am

'Grow your own' strategy unveiled

Plans to boost food production in Britain and reduce its impact on the environment have been unveiled.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jan 2010 | 10:07 am

So much for 'Sense' About Science, writes prospective MP

Perfectly sensible celebrity observations about science are being mocked by a group that's no innocent fact-checking service

Every few months, an organisation called Sense About Science (SAS) issues a pamphlet that makes fun of celebrities getting their science wrong. It is full of what it regards to be false assertions by celebrities about the benefits of homeopathy and so on, and ends with an offer by the organisation to act as a fact-checking service.

Newspapers always lap it up. The problem is that they have fallen into a trap again. While they quote Sense About Science with the kind of deference usually reserved for the Royal Society, the organisation is at best suspect.

Sense About Science is much more than an innocent fact-checking service. It is a spin-off of a bizarre political network that began life as the ultra-left Revolutionary Communist Party and switched over to extreme corporate libertarianism when it launched Living Marxism magazine in the late eighties. LM, as it was latterly known, campaigned against, among other things, banning child pornography.

During the 90s, Living Marxism campaigned aggressively in favour of GM food. In 2000, it was sued for falsely claiming that ITN journalists had falsified evidence of Serb atrocities against Bosnian Muslims, and was forced to close. It soon reinvented itself as the Institute of ideas, and the online magazine Spiked.

The chairman of this movement's latest incarnation, Sense About Science, is the Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Taverne. While he routinely fires off about non-scientists debating scientific issues, calling at one point for Prince Charles to be forced to relinquish the throne if he made any further statements critical of GM food, he doesn't have a background in science himself.

Sense About Science's director UK, Ellen Raphael, said "a little checking goes a long way". This is the same organisation that claimed, in response to concerns raised by various celebrities: that if cancer is increasing, "it's more common mostly because people are living longer". This is hard to substantiate for all kinds of reasons, not least the fact that according to the US National Cancer Institute, childhood cancers have been increasing by 1% every year since the 50s.

Not everything the new pamphlet says is nonsense. It can't be, or the newspapers would be embarrassed to run with it. Some examples of celebrities getting it wrong are spot on. They provide readers with the odd laugh, and more importantly, they give credence to the SAS critique of other, perfectly sensible celebrity observations.

Gwyneth Paltrow for instance is ridiculed for saying: "When I read about what pesticides can do to small animals, I thought, 'Why would I want to expose my child to that?'" It's a comment that resonates with many people. SAS, however, counters that "if studies produce doubt about the safety of a pesticide, it is not approved for use".

Perhaps SAS is unaware of the story of Atrazine, a pesticide that causes male frogs to grow ovaries in their testes living in water containing levels 30 times lower than those set by the US Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water. Like countless other dangerous chemicals, it slipped through the safety net and was only banned in 2004 by the EU – after years of campaigning by environmentalists.

A little fact-checking, indeed.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 5 Jan 2010 | 10:00 am

Tsunami Spares Solomon Islanders' Lives, Not Homes

A ten-foot-high tsunami crashed ashore in the Solomon Islands on Monday following a magnitude 7.2 earthquake. Some 200 homes were destroyed and1,000 people left homeless, and yet no one has been reported injured or missing yet. This is not a ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Jan 2010 | 8:47 am

Wrong Spoon Size Can Cause Medicine Mistakes

Kitchen spoons may not be the best device for measuring out cold medicine.
Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jan 2010 | 8:45 am

Two killer whale types identified

Scientists reveal there is not one but two types of killer whale living in UK waters.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jan 2010 | 7:40 am

Obesity Squashes Quality of Life

Obesity has matched and perhaps exceeded smoking as the No. 1 cause of preventable poor health in the United States.
Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jan 2010 | 7:19 am

Mystery of World's Biggest Beasts Possibly Solved

The ancestors of blue whales may have filtered food from the mud, suggesting the origin of filter-feeding.
Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jan 2010 | 6:39 am

What You Should Really Remember About Ginkgo

Once again ginkgo, when rigorously tested, proves ineffective in preventing dementia or improving cognitive function. Yet ginkgo advocates soldier on.
Source: Livescience.com | 5 Jan 2010 | 6:36 am

Relic of Antarctica's first plane found on ice-edge

CAPE DENISON, Antarctica (Reuters) - An Antarctic expedition has found what it believes to be remains of the first aeroplane brought to the frozen continent, on an icy shore near where it was abandoned almost a century ago.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 5 Jan 2010 | 5:49 am

Tidal Tremors May Predict Giant Quakes

Could the tides signal the approach of the next major earthquake?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Jan 2010 | 5:00 am

Crisis of belief

Where climate change is seen as God's will
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jan 2010 | 3:51 am

Elusive Supermassive-Black-Hole Mergers Finally Found

WASHINGTON — The universe is one big dance party for black holes. New observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Hubble Space Telescope found 33 merged galaxies in which pairs of supermassive black holes are “waltzing” around the galactic centers.

“Our result shows that such waltzing black holes are much more common than we previously knew,” said Julie Comerford of the University of California, Berkeley. Comerford presented her results on January 4 at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Finding pairs of black holes moving in a certain way can help estimate how often galaxy mergers occur in the universe. Observations have shown that nearly every galaxy has a supermassive black hole — a black hole with a mass of one million to one billion times that of the sun — at its center and that galaxies often collide and merge to create larger galaxies. Astronomers have expected to find many mid-merge galaxies by focusing on the two supermassive black holes, which should be orbiting each other in the middle. But so far, the dance floor has pretty much been empty.

“We expect the universe to be littered with these waltzing black holes,” Comerford said. “But until recently, only a few had ever been found.” Those missing black hole pairs posed problems for theories of how galaxies merge and grow.

Now, using two new observational techniques, Comerford and her colleagues have found 33 galaxies with dual supermassive black holes. The first technique found 32 black hole pairs in the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey conducted on the Keck II Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, by determining whether each black hole is moving toward or away from Earth.

Black holes are visible only when they can accrete gas and other material from the surrounding environment. Energy from the black hole heats the gas, lighting the gas up in visible wavelengths. When the black hole is moving away from Earth, the light from the accreted gas appears to be at a longer wavelength, or redshifted. When the black hole dances toward Earth, its light is blueshifted — meaning it has a shorter wavelength. The team identified waltzing pairs by looking for instances when one black hole was blueshifted and the other redshifted.

“It’s kind of the disco ball that tells you where the party is, where the black holes are dancing,” Comerford said.

The waltz is quick — both black holes are moving at velocities of about 200 kilometers per second. But the black holes are keeping “a chaste distance,” Comerford said. They are separated on average by about 3,000 to 8,000 light-years, or one-eighth to one-third the distance from the sun to the center of the Milky Way.

For the population of galaxies Comerford and her colleagues observed, which were mostly gas-poor galaxies 4 billion to 7 billion light years from Earth, galaxy mergers occur three times every billion years, Comerford said.

The final black hole duo was found serendipitously in a Hubble image of a galaxy called COSMOS J100043.15+020637.2. The galaxy sports a tidal tail of stars, gas and dust, a sure sign of a recent galaxy merger.

“It’s like a black eye, a sign that this galaxy has recently gone through a collision with another galaxy,” Comerford said.

The galaxy also has two bright nuclei, each of which could be a supermassive black hole surrounded by glowing dust and gas. Follow-up observations with the Keck II Telescope showed the telltale velocity shifts of dancing black holes.

But the black holes might not be two waltzers. Instead, the data could point to one black hole that is fleeing the galaxy. When two black holes merge together, they produce gravitational waves that carry momentum away from the resulting larger black hole. Gravitational waves pointed mostly in one direction can “kick” the black hole in the opposite direction. Black holes could wander through their host galaxies, or, if the kick is large enough, leave the galaxy behind.

Observations of the same galaxy by Francesca Civano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and colleagues suggest that the two bright sources are flying apart at a velocity of about 1,300 kilometers per second. Civano also presented her results at the American Astronomical Society meeting on January 4.

“For a merger, that is a bit high,” Civano said. “But this number is completely normal for a gravitational wave kick.”

“Whether this thing is a dual pair of waltzing black holes or an ejected black hole, this is definitely a merger,” Comerford said. “It’s just whether you’re seeing it before the black holes merge [with each other] or after.”

See Also:

• Supermassive Black Holes Collide to Become Even More Super and Massive 
• Yo Galaxy’s Mama Is a Black Hole
• Naked Black Hole Builds Future Galactic Dream Home
• Strange Eye-Shaped Galaxy Has Black-Hole Iris
• Spectacular New Image of Black Hole Jets
• Hubble Monitors Spectacular Black Hole Flare
• New Class of Black Holes Discovered

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 5 Jan 2010 | 3:30 am

UK launches boiler scrap scheme

A government scheme that gives households in England £400 off the cost of a new boiler has been launched.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jan 2010 | 3:23 am

Monster tuna sells for 16.28 million yen (£109,000) at Tokyo market

A tuna has been sold at auction in Tokyo for 16.28 million yen ($175,000), the highest price for nine years.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 5 Jan 2010 | 3:15 am