Mosquito hunters invent better, cheaper, DIY disease weapon

Researchers believe they have come up with the cheapest, most efficient way yet to monitor adult mosquitoes and the deadly diseases they carry, from malaria to West Nile Virus.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

'Weekend effect' makes people happier regardless of their job, study says

From construction laborers and secretaries to physicians and lawyers, people experience better moods, greater vitality and fewer aches and pains from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, concludes the first study of daily mood variation in employed adults. And that "weekend effect" is largely associated with the freedom to choose one's activities and the opportunity to spend time with loved ones, the research found.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

Scientists create super-strong collagen

Scientists have created the strongest form of collagen known to science, a stable alternative to human collagen that could one day be used to treat arthritis and other conditions that result from collagen defects.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

Identifying thoughts through brain codes leads to deciphering the brain's dictionary

Two hundred years ago, archaeologists used the Rosetta Stone to understand the ancient Egyptian scrolls. Now, a team of scientists has discovered the beginnings of a neural Rosetta Stone. By combining brain imaging and machine learning techniques, neuroscientists and computer scientists determined how the brain arranges noun representations. Understanding how the brain codes nouns is important for treating psychiatric and neurological illnesses.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

'Missing link' between heart failure and environment discovered

Scientists have found what they believe is the "missing link" between heart failure, our genes and our environment. The study could open up completely new ways of managing and treating heart disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

Obesity linked to common form of kidney cancer and each extra BMI point increases risk

Being obese could lead to a greater risk of developing the most common form of renal cell cancer, according to a study of 1,640 patients. Researchers discovered that obese patients with kidney tumors had 48 percent higher odds of developing a clear-cell renal cell cancer than patients with a body mass index of less than 30. And the odds increased by 4 percent for every extra BMI point.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

Plastic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) linked to cardiovascular disease in adults, analysis confirms

Researchers in the UK have found more evidence for a link between bisphenol A exposure (BPA, a chemical commonly used in plastic food containers) and cardiovascular disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

Green tea could modify the effect of cigarette smoking on lung cancer risk

Green tea can reduce the risk of lung cancer in smokers. Benefits were also seen in non-smokers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

Melanoma stem cells' evasive talents

Melanoma, if not detected in its early stages, transforms into a highly deadly, treatment-resistant cancer. Although the immune system initially responds to melanoma and mounts anti-tumor attacks, these assaults are generally ineffective, allowing more advanced melanomas to win the battle and spread beyond the primary site. Now, researchers shed light on how melanomas stimulate, yet ultimately evade, a patient's immune system.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

'Longevity gene' helps prevent memory decline and dementia

Scientists have found that a "longevity gene" helps to slow age-related decline in brain function in older adults. Drugs that mimic the gene's effect are now under development, the researchers note, and could help protect against Alzheimer's disease.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Active weather was expected to continue over the Pacific Northwest on Wednesday as a strong low pressure system over the Pacific Ocean advanced onshore and pulled in a cold front with abundant moisture.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 Jan 2010 | 3:27 am

Haiti quake

Why this was the worst of places for a big tremor
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 Jan 2010 | 3:07 am

Study says Europe's 12 million cocaine users risk lives

LONDON (Reuters) - More than three percent of sudden deaths in Europe are related to cocaine use and many of them are brought on by a "lethal cocktail" of the drug, alcohol and cigarettes, scientists said Wednesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 13 Jan 2010 | 1:02 am

Seeing the forest for the trees

From out of the western forest comes a new study that challenges one of the more comforting assumptions about our changing climate -- as carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere, trees will absorb more of it. Several studies of individual ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jan 2010 | 10:56 pm

Astronauts urine clogs space station water recycler

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA is finding it is not just mechanical glitches that make the International Space Station a tough place to operate.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 9:29 pm

Astronauts urine clogs space station water recycler (Reuters)

Reuters - NASA is finding it is not just mechanical glitches that make the International Space Station a tough place to operate.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 9:29 pm

Scientists link plastics chemical to health risks

LONDON (Reuters) - Exposure to a chemical found in plastic containers is linked to heart disease, scientists said on Wednesday, confirming earlier findings and adding to pressure to ban its use in bottles and food packaging.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 7:21 pm

Ecuador minister resigns over Amazon oil project (AP)

AP - Ecuador's foreign minister resigned Tuesday after President Rafael Correa criticized his handling of negotiations to prevent oil drilling in a pristine Amazon reserve.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 6:03 pm

Iranian Scientist's Final Papers Add to Assassination Mystery

Iranian scientist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, a particle physicist at the University of Tehran, was assassinated today, according to multiple media reports. The Guardian said that "the manner of his death was as meticulous as it was disturbing." A remote control bomb ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jan 2010 | 5:48 pm

Weird Object Zooming by Earth Wednesday is Likely an Asteroid (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - A weird object that left some observers wondering if it was a piece of space junk is most likely just a small asteroid, and will zoom close by Earth Wednesday, NASA scientists say. It may be visible to seasoned amateur astronomers as it passes harmlessly by the planet.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 5:46 pm

Feds to set aside habitat for jaguar recovery (AP)

AP - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday it will set aside critical habitat for the endangered jaguar and develop a recovery plan for the elusive animal once thought to have disappeared from the United States.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 5:41 pm

Some blood pressure drugs may cut risk of dementia

LONDON (Reuters) - Medicines commonly used to treat high blood pressure and heart disease may cut the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and dementia, U.S. scientists said on Wednesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 5:35 pm

Dirty air: Utah officials urge limit on kids' play (AP)

AP - Schools in parts of Utah kept students inside for sports and recess Tuesday after soaring pollution levels prompted state health warnings on driving and outdoor activity.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 5:09 pm

Blood pressure drugs can halve the risk of dementia

Study in British Medical Journal says angiotensin receptor blockers play key role in delaying symptoms

Millions of older people who take drugs for high blood pressure or heart problems can more than halve their risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and dementia, according to research.

Use of angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) is linked to a "striking decrease" in the chance of getting the condition or of it progressing, especially in men, says a study published in the British Medical Journal. The drugs play a key role in delaying the symptoms of dementia and so may reduce the number of people dying early or needing to enter a nursing home, the study finds.

Patients taking ARBs had up to a 50% lesser risk of getting dementia, the journal reports. While ARBs are only one of the types of drugs used to treat high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, the research pinpoints their usefulness in tackling dementia. In 2008, a total of 14.5m doses of ARBs were prescribed to patients in England at a cost of £272m.

About 700,000 Britons have some form of dementia, and more than half have Alzheimer's disease. The number of sufferers is predicted to rise to a million in the next decade and to 1.7 million by 2051. One in three Britons aged over 65 is likely to die of dementia.

Professor Benjamin Wolozin and colleagues at Boston University studied 819,491 people in the US aged over 65 who had heart disease, of whom 98% were men.

Alzheimer's campaigners welcomed the findings. "We have known for a while that it is important to control blood pressure from mid-life to reduce the risk of developing dementia," said Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer's Society. "The prospect of using already existing drugs to help in the fight against dementia is attractive."

"This adds further weight to the adage that what is good for the heart is good for the head," said Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust. "It could be that ARBs protect brain cells from injury caused by damaged blood vessels." Further trials were needed to see how far ARBs could help ward off the disease, Wood added.

Meanwhile, the loss of ability to smell could be an early warning sign of Alzheimer's and prompt earlier diagnosis, separate research suggests. It is known that Alzheimer's can lead to the loss of a sense of smell, although why that happens is unclear. A study in the Journal of Neuroscience, by American scientists working on mice, links the failing ability to smell to the buildup of amyloid, a toxic protein that is an indicator of the disease. Experts said the findings suggested loss of smell could be used as an early indicator of the condition and thus ultimately improve medical care.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

'My job is to give people hope'

It is half a century since she began her seminal work studying chimpanzees in Africa. But Jane Goodall says her work is far from finished

Jane Goodall, grey in complexion but resplendent in a red shawl, is sitting on the sofa in a dimly lit room in west London. The scientist-turned-environmentalist has just arrived from Bournemouth, had a rotten journey, has a hacking cough, but accepts it all stoically, rejecting the suggestion that the heating be turned up.

She is here with her talisman, a stuffed monkey called Mr H, given to her by the blind magician Gary Haun ("the Amazing Haundini"), who thought it was a chimp. Goodall, who has a childlike quality, sees a metaphorical significance in a blind magician who is able to pull the wool over the eyes of the sighted. The letter H, standing for Hope, also attracts her.

The world seems to divide into people who are besotted with Goodall and people who have barely heard of her. She is more prominent in the US, where the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) is headquartered, than in the UK, despite being born here in 1934 and, after half a lifetime spent documenting the lives of chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park overlooking Lake Tanganyika in the far west of Tanzania, now living with her sister Judy in their old family home in Bournemouth.

Our meeting takes place at a flat in Notting Hill that belongs to Mary Lewis, a JGI employee with a cut-glass English accent who appears to run Goodall's life as if it were a military operation. The trigger is a book Goodall has written with two fellow environmentalists: a collection of stories of survival called Hope for Animals and Their World, the written-by-committee feel of which must of course be forgiven because of its subject matter.

Even I, an intermittent eco-worrier, was moved by the battle to save the California condor, and I feel doubly guilty for criticising the book because at the end of the interview she insists on signing it for me: "For Stephen. ­Together we can make this a better world for all. Thank you for helping." Can is underlined, all is both underlined and capitalised.

These days, in her mid-70s, Goodall is more shaman than scientist. She has set aside a planned companion volume to her seminal study The Chimpanzees of Gombe, and instead tours the world preaching the need for sustainability, harmony and respect for the natural world (this makes me worry about the size of her carbon footprint).

It was in 1986 that, at a conference on chimps, she realised the extent of the crisis affecting them across Africa and determined, overnight it seems, on a life as an environmental evangelist. One journalist who has followed her career likens her to a "peripatetic Mother Teresa", and it's a good description: she combines stateliness with a kind of holiness, her religion a predominantly green one.

The message of her new book, with its stories about black-footed ferrets, American crocodiles and whooping cranes, is surprisingly upbeat. "My job seems to have increasingly become giving people hope, so that instead of doing nothing and sinking into depression, they take action," she tells me. "It's very clear to me that unless we get a critical mass of people involved in trying to create a better world for our great-grandchildren, we'd better stop having children altogether."

Goodall has chosen to focus on the heroes fighting – and occasionally winning – individual battles, in the hope of attracting others to participate in a war she does not yet accept is lost. "I've seen areas totally despoiled that have been brought back to life. Animals that were almost gone have, with captive breeding or protection in the wild, been given another chance. If we stop now, everything's going to go. So we have to keep on doing our best for as long as we can, and if we're going to die, let's die fighting." The apocalypse is conjured up in a croaky and curiously detached monotone.

Do governments understand the scale of the crisis? Goodall argues that many are still in hock to "dark forces" – vested interests such as the fossil fuel industry and agribusiness. Politicians, she says, should stop parroting the myth of limitless expansion. "Unlimited economic growth on a planet of finite resources is not possible; it doesn't make sense. I thought this financial ­crisis would help people realise that, but it seems very much like, 'Oh, let's get back to business as usual.'"

Much of her evangelising is directed at the young. Her institute – set up to protect chimps and their habitats ­almost 10 years before that Damascene moment in 1986 – has a dynamic youth wing called Roots and Shoots, which started in 1991 when 16 young Tanzanians met on the porch of her home in Dar es Salaam to discuss environmental issues affecting their lives. Twenty years later, there are groups in 114 countries, with hundreds of thousands of youngsters involved in community projects. After a slow start, it has taken off in the UK in the past couple of years, with 700 groups now participating. But apart from the HQ in Arlington, Virginia, which has 20-plus staff, most of the JGIs that coordinate these projects are shoestring operations, and the institute has been hit hard by the credit crunch. "We're in a financial hole in the US because of the downturn," Goodall admits. "Money that should have come in has been cut."

The organisation had just held a meeting in Belgium to discuss how to dig itself out, and one priority is to recruit an executive director. Is that recognition of a time when someone will need to take over from her? "Of course," Goodall says. "It will probably be a collection of four people taking over from me." Despite the holiness, she is not guilty of false modesty.

The institute today is not just concerned with her beloved chimps. "To me, it was obvious to grow from wild chimps to saving their forest to seeing about their conditions in captivity to working with local people and kids," she says. "You can kill yourself saving forests and chimps, but if new generations aren't going to be better stewards there's no point. That's why I'm so ­passionate about Roots and Shoots."

Until the 1986 conference, she had assumed she would spend her life studying chimps. "It was wonderful out in the forest collecting data and ­analysing it, giving a few lectures, writing books." In her 1999 book, Reason For Hope: A Spiritual Journey, she says that as a Bible-reading teenager, she "fantasised about becoming a martyr". In a way she has achieved that ambition, sacrificing the paradise of Gombe for a succession of airport lounges.

When I ask if she is still a Christian, she gives a somewhat ­ambiguous ­answer. "I suppose so; I was raised as a Christian." She says she sees no contradiction between evolution and a belief in God. Nor does she blame the Bible and the idea in Genesis that man has dominion over plants and animals for our exploitation of the natural world (she says "dominion" is a mistranslation; what is meant is "stewardship"). These might seem academic points, but perhaps they are a key to understanding her transition from scientist to eco-evangelist – and the resonance of her message in the more spiritually aware US.

"I realised that my experience in the forest, my understanding of the chimpanzees, had given me a new perspective," she writes in Reason for Hope. "I was ­utterly convinced there was a great ­spiritual power that we call God, Allah or Brahma, although I knew, equally ­certainly, that my finite mind could never comprehend its form or nature."

This year is significant for Goodall and her institute, marking 50 years since she began studying chimps at Gombe. As well as the new book, there will be a BBC documentary in the spring and a German-made film, Jane's Journey, to be premiered at Cannes, in which Angelina Jolie has a walk-on part. It is indeed a remarkable journey, from a middle-class home in Bournemouth to secretarial work in London and then, thanks to the patronage of paleontologist Louis Leakey, to Gombe and beyond.

"I loved animals as a child, read the Tarzan books, and decided at the age of 11 that I would go to Africa, live with animals and write books about them," she says. "Everybody laughed at me except my amazing mother, who said, 'If you work hard and really want something and never give up, you will find a way.'"

In 1957, after earning the money for the boat fare by working as a waitress and a secretary, Goodall went on an extended visit to a schoolfriend in Kenya. Someone suggested she get in touch with Leakey, a formidable figure who was then curator of the Coryndon museum of natural history in Nairobi. He barked at her down the telephone when she called on spec, but she kept her nerve, got an appointment to see him, was given an admin job and, in 1960, was given the chance to move to Gombe to start collecting data on chimps. Leakey also despatched Dian Fossey to Rwanda to study gorillas and Birute Galdikas to Borneo to observe orangutans; the three women were patronisingly known as Leakey's angels or Leakey's trimates, but each made significant contributions to primatology.

What did Leakey see in Goodall that made him choose her for Gombe? "I think he was amazed that a young girl straight out from England with no university degree knew so much," she says. "I'd spent hours in the Natural History Museum in London, and could answer most of his questions."

Goodall had planned to spend only a year in Africa but was there more than 30. She still has a home in Dar es Salaam, and makes the long trek to ­Gombe when she can. She learned her science in the field, but Leakey was keen for her to get academic training and, in the mid-60s, she did a PhD at Cambridge in ethology, the study of animal behaviour. She needed the qualification to counter critics who attacked her approach as unscientific and anthropomorphic – she gave the chimps she studied names, and prided herself on getting to know them as individuals.

"I was told at Cambridge I shouldn't have named the chimps and that they should have had numbers," she says. "I wasn't allowed to talk about them having personalities, and certainly not about them thinking or having ­emotions. But then I thought back to my childhood teacher who taught me that this wasn't true – my dog."

The scale of Goodall's observational data eventually silenced her critics. She was the first scientist to observe an animal, her favourite chimp David Greybeard, not just using a tool (a stem of grass poked into a termites' nest to dig out the insects) but fashioning it for that purpose. When she telegraphed a report of what she had seen to Leakey, he replied: "Ah! Now we must redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as human."

We haven't quite accepted chimps as human, but the work showed that the distance from one to the other was far less than previously thought. In his introduction to a revised edition of Goodall's most famous book, In the Shadow of Man, the biologist Stephen Jay Gould called her work "one of the western world's great scientific achievements".

In 1964, she married the Dutch-born wildlife photographer Hugo van Lawick, and their son (also called Hugo, but known as Grub) was born three years later. In her books there are several sweet pictures of Grub growing up at Gombe, but the relationship of mother and son has not always been smooth. At one point he was engaged in commercial fishing, of which she as a committed vegetarian disapproved, but is now developing an eco-tourist project in Tanzania and they are getting on much better. Goodall and Van Lawick divorced in 1974 and she married Derek Bryceson, director of national parks in Tanzania, who died of cancer in 1980.

Is she one of those naturalists, as Fossey supposedly was in her dark ­final years, who prefers animals to ­people? "I'm not one of those people who says let me go and live with chimps for ever or dogs for ever," she says. "I certainly prefer a lot of animals to a lot of people, but then I prefer some people to some animals too."

And does she miss the chimps? "All the chimps I knew so well have gone now," she says sadly. "Fifi, the last of the real old-timers, died four years ago. It's not the same as it was." But she still enjoys returning to Gombe. "When I get up on to my peak where I sat for so long, I can get back into the skin I had and remember just what it felt like – the excitement of never quite knowing what you'd see and what you'd find."

Hope for Animals and Their World is published by Icon Books (£17.99). For more information see janegoodallhopeforanimals.com or janegoodall.org

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

In praise of … Neanderthal man

It seems we have all been guilty of defaming Neanderthal man. Research by a team based at the University of Bristol suggests that, far from being a lumbering, witless no-hoper, he was capable, 50,000 years ago, of producing forms of cosmetic adornment and even of primitive jewellery. In 1985, finds in Murcia, Spain, had suggested that this might be so; and now an expedition led by Professor João Zilhão of Bristol has uncovered a shell which shows "a symbolic dimension in behaviour and thinking that cannot be denied". All of which suggests some decent equivalence with the hitherto far more highly rated early modern man a whole 10 millennia later. Palaeolithic archaeologists will not be alone in returning to their drawing boards. It has long been the practice in pubs and clubs and the media to use the word Neanderthal to condemn attitudes considered less than enlightened than one's own. Trade union leaders reluctant to take the advice of the Daily Mail or Daily Express have frequently found themselves assigned to this class. Sluggish footballers have come in for similar treatment. "It was a very, very worrying performance," one pundit wrote of a Republic of Ireland display against Cyprus last autumn, "with tactics that bordered on the Neanderthal." Primitive, uncivilised, ultraconservative, reactionary – all are offered as meanings of Neanderthal in current dictionaries. In the light of these latest findings, it would surely be Neanderthal (old meaning, of course) not to amend them now.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

Doomsday Clock Due for Reset, But Which Way?

How much longer does humanity have before total destruction? Five minutes, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the group responsible for the infamous Doomsday Clock. Figuratively speaking, of course. The Doomsday Clock is a symbol for how close human ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jan 2010 | 4:34 pm

Strong Quake Rocks Haiti (UPDATED)

UPDATED (21:00 Eastern): A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti just ten miles from the country's capital city, Port-au-Prince, this evening. This is a strong one, folks, and its proximity to a major population center in an impoverished nation doesn't bode ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jan 2010 | 4:29 pm

Massive Quake Rocks Impoverished Haiti

A magnitude 7.0 quake struck near the capital of Port-au-Prince.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jan 2010 | 3:47 pm

Texas town welcomed drilling, now fears pollution (AP)

AP - Like thousands of other Texans living atop one of the country's most productive natural gas fields, folks in this tiny town were giddy when drillers started offering up the fat checks.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 2:57 pm

PETA pulls ads featuring Michelle Obama (AP)

AP - The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said Tuesday it is pulling an ad campaign that used the likeness of first lady Michelle Obama without her permission.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 2:50 pm

Thicker Thighs Could Lead to a Longer Life

Hanging on to a little extra winter weight could keep you healthy.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jan 2010 | 2:35 pm

Earth to Get Close Shave Wednesday From Newly Discovered Asteroid

An asteroid 30 to 50 feet across will pass by the Earth at just more than one-third the distance between the Earth and the moon on Wednesday. That’s the closest near-Earth object approach currently known between now and the flyby in 2024 of a similar-size object known as 2007 XB23.

The new asteroid, called 2010 AL30, was discovered by the NASA-funded Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program, and announced Monday by the Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

The short amount of time between the spotting of the object and its near intersection with Earth is a good reminder that humans don’t know every object that could come hurtling out of space and collide with our planet.

“Visitors frequently ask me if I worry about the NEOs that I measure,” wrote Dr. P. Clay Sherrod of the Arkansas Sky Observatories, on a forum thread discussing the asteroid. “My response: ‘I don’t worry about those that we keep up with…. I am more concerned about the ones we never see coming.”

To see how close the asteroid will get, check out this animation of the asteroid’s Earth approach (.avi) by Gerhard Dangl, an Austrian astronomer.

It should be noted that an asteroid this small probably would not cause major damage were it to impact Earth’s atmosphere, and would probably burn up before it reached the planet’s surface.

The new object will remain about three times farther away from Earth than Apophis, which has been the subject of much recent discussion, will in 2029.

Images: Ernesto Guido & Giovanni Sostero

See Also:

• Video: The Asteroid That Will Almost Hit Earth
• Saving Earth From an Asteroid Will Take Diplomats, Not Heroes
• To Deflect an Asteroid, Try a Lasso, Not a Nuke
• Asteroid Impact Craters on Earth as Seen From Space
• The Real Twitpocalypse: Asteroid Alerts Come to Twitter
• How to Defend Earth Against an Asteroid Strike
• Hunting Arctic Asteroid Impact With Hovercraft

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 | 12 Jan 2010 | 2:16 pm

Politicians Say Cell Phones Cause Cancer

Politicians in Maine want to place warning on cell phones that they may cause cancer. Yet unnecessary warnings will cause fear, which makers of fraudulent "radiation absorbers" will take advantage of. And moose and lobsters from Maine are far more likel
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jan 2010 | 2:01 pm

Surprising Sea Slug Is Half-plant, Half-animal (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - A green sea slug appears to be part animal, part plant. It's the first critter discovered to produce the plant pigment chlorophyll.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 1:40 pm

Hawaiian Moon Rocks Found, Most Others Still Missing

A set of rare moon rocks turned up in a cabinet in the Hawaii governor’s office last Friday, a small but significant victory for the lunar enthusiasts who’d like to know where Apollo’s legacy resides on this planet.

The rocks weren’t technically lost, the Honolulu Advertiser reported, in that they remained within the possession of the state government, but the exact location of the samples was not known until an annual inventory of gifts given to the state was conducted.

The find was good news for Joseph Gutheinz, a Houston moon rock hunter who has dozens of his students at the University of Phoenix working on investigating the whereabouts of moon rocks gifted to countries and states after the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 moon missions.

“This is great news,” Gutheinz told the Advertiser. “This makes my day.”

That’s because finding an AWOL moon rock is nearly as rare as the moon rocks themselves. Back when the rocks were gifted, they became the property of the gift recipients. As time passed, administrations changed, rocks were lost or stolen or locked in dark basements.

And so many of these rare — but not quite as rare as you might think — moon rocks are now lingering in the purgatory between lost and found. Space historians, archivists and collectors have valiantly attempted to build spreadsheets of the rocks and track them all down, but they remain disturbingly sparse.

Of the 193 rocks distributed after Apollo 11, Robert Pearlman’s CollectSPACE website has only ascertained the locations of 42. The Apollo 17 moon rock situation is not much better with space lovers having pinned down the whereabouts of 61 of the precious rocks.

The moon rock situation finds NASA in the awkward position of losing control of its own legacy. Though the rocks and their presentation are a fascinating moment in the agency’s history, the legions of bureaucrats and politicians who received them do not appear to have quite the same level of interest in space-age history.

One reason to track them down is that they appear to be remarkably valuable. The Hawaii rocks, Gutheinz estimated, could be worth $10 million. Pearlman, though, who specializes in collecting space memorabilia, noted “there are very few examples by which to judge the market.”

In any case, we’re sure the bits of moon aren’t the only pieces of scientific history that have gone missing over the last couple hundred years. We’d love to get a good thread going with other examples of missing memorabilia, evidence, or instruments.

Photo of Moon rock at the Smithsonian (it’s still there): NASA

See Also:

• Invertebrate Astronauts Make Space History
• John Glenn At Unveil of New HD Space History Footage
• Space Travel: Major Milestones
• For Sale: Slightly Used Spacesuit, $500K OBO
• Skywalking Heroes: Best Spacewalks of All Time
• Russians Deny Sex-in-Space Stories. Again.
• Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: NASA’s Lost Female Astronauts
• From the NASA Archive: Astronaut-Butt Molds

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 | 12 Jan 2010 | 1:04 pm

Watching Too Much TV Could Kill You

Tune in to find out how yet another of life's simple pleasures could lead to an early grave.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jan 2010 | 11:55 am

Mystery object to whizz by Earth Wednesday (AP)

AP - A mystery object from space is about to whizz close by Earth on Wednesday. It won't hit our planet, but scientists are stumped by what exactly it is.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 11:52 am

The Great Pyramids’ Amazing Non-Mysteries

A recently discovered set of tombs outside of Cairo is believed to be the final resting place for many who built Egypt’s Great Pyramids. The workers’ skeletons were discovered with their heads pointing West and their feet to the East, ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jan 2010 | 10:58 am

Mars lander's survival 'unlikely'

Nasa listens for signals from the Phoenix Mars lander, but says it is unlikely to have survived the Martian winter.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Jan 2010 | 10:56 am

Cobra Venom Erases Arthritis Symptoms

A cobra venom ointment to treat arthritis could soon hit store shelves.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jan 2010 | 10:49 am

Neanderthals Enjoyed Surf and Turf Meals

Recently at Discovery News I told you about Neanderthal-made shell jewelry that suggests these hominids were as smart and creative as modern humans were at the time the jewelry was made, 50,000 years ago. University of Bristol archaeologist Joao Zilhao, ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 Jan 2010 | 10:26 am

Global geo-engineering summit convened

Meeting in California in March will discuss possible field trials of schemes that would tackle climate change by reflecting sunlight or fertilising the ocean with iron

Scientists are to hold a high-level summit to discuss how the world could take emergency measures such as blocking out the sun to slow dangerous global warming.

Experts from around the world have been invited to attend the meeting in March in California, which will examine possible field trials of so-called geo-engineering schemes, such as pumping chemicals into the air and oceans to combat climate change.

The move follows the failure of the recent Copenhagen climate talks to set meaningful carbon reduction targets, and comes amid mounting concern that such controversial techniques may be the only way to curb rising temperatures.

Mike MacCracken, a global warming expert at the Climate Institute in Washington DC, who is organising the conference's scientific programme, said: "Most of the talk about these geo-engineering techniques say they should be saved until we get to an emergency situation. Well the people of the Arctic might say they are in an emergency situation now."

He added: "It is hard to see how mitigation [carbon cuts] can save the Arctic and losing the Arctic is a tremendous risk, not just for the region but for the rest of the world. So are there other ways to save it?"

Without significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, scientists say global average temperatures could rise by 4C within many of our lifetimes, which could devastate wildlife and threaten the water and food supplies of hundreds of millions of people.

Geo-engineering techniques, such as filling the sky with shiny dust to reflect sunlight, could curb such temperature rises without the need to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. The meeting aims to assess risks and benefits, establish ground rules for research and plan experiments that would be needed before a full scale geo-engineering attempt.

Calls for such research have increased as pessimism grows about the likely course of global warming.

In an influential report last year, the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific academy, concluded that geo-engineering methods that block out the sun "may provide a potentially useful short-term back-up to mitigation in case rapid reductions in global temperature are needed". The society stressed that emissions reductions were the primary solution, but recommended international research and development of the "more promising" geo-engineering techniques.

Bob Watson, chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, told the Guardian in November he backed such research. "We should at least be looking at it. I would see what the theoretical models say, and ask ourselves the question: how can we do medium-sized experiments in the field," Watson said. "I think it should be a real international effort, so it isn't just the UK funding it."

MacCracken said: "If there is going to be funding for this kind of research and you are someone in the UK government, then what kind of safeguards do you want to have in place that nothing can go wrong? Because if something does go wrong then you could be up before parliament or worse."

He added: "We also have to be mindful about how we communicate these ideas to the public because some of them can sound a little like Doctor Strangelove."

He said the March meeting was based on a landmark gathering of scientists involved in research with genetically modified (GM) organisms in 1975, which established voluntary guidelines to protect the public, and paved the way for breakthroughs such as the mass production of synthetic insulin in GM bacteria. The geo-engineering conference will take place at the same Asilomar centre, on the Monterey Peninsula.

Some scientists have criticised the upcoming conference because its funding is being arranged by a US group called the Climate Response Fund, which promotes geo-engineering research, and is run by Margaret Leinen, a marine biologist. Leinen's son, Dan Whaley, runs a firm called Climos, a company set up to profit from geo-engineering by selling carbon credits generated by fertilising ocean plankton with iron. Leinen was formerly chief scientific officer with Climos, but told Science magazine she has taken all possible steps to avoid a conflict of interest, and no longer holds a position, shares or intellectual property in the firm.

MacCracken said one aim of the conference was to judge which techniques could work on a global scale, which could count against ocean iron fertilisation. "We don't want to go out and test approaches that could not be scaled up enough to be useful. Would we risk doing anything in the ocean that would only have a small effect? Almost certainly not."

The push towards geo-engineering research has not pleased everyone. A recent report (pdf) for the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation by the ETC group called geo-engineering an act of "geo-piracy" and warned that the "the world runs a serious risk of choosing solutions that turn out to be new global problems".

There are also concerns about how to regulate geo-engineering and whether its techniques could be developed and unleashed by a single nation, or even a wealthy individual, without wide international approval.

The House of Commons science and technology committee will tomorrow open an inquiry into the regulation of geo-engineering, with David MacKay, chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, among those due to give evidence.

From artificial trees to giant space mirrors: Possible geo-engineering solutions

Stratospheric aerosols

Spray shiny sulphur compounds into the high atmosphere to reflect sunlight. Relatively cheap and easy to do, though the chemicals gradually fall back to earth. The most likely option, though possible side effects include changes to global rainfall.

Ocean fertilisation

Dump iron into the sea to boost plankton growth and soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Hard to do on a significant scale, and doubts about how deep the plankton would sink have raised doubts about how long the carbon would be secured.

Cloud whitening

Fleets of sailing ships strung across the world's oceans could spray seawater into the sky to evaporate and leave behind shiny salt crystals to brighten clouds, which would then reflect sunlight back into space. Could be turned off at any time, but might interfere with wind and rain patterns.

Space mirrors

A giant orbiting sunshade in space to block the sun. More likely to be a collection of millions or even trillions of small mirrors rather than a giant orbiting parasol. Very expensive and impractical with current technology.

Artificial trees

Devices that use a chemical process to soak up carbon dioxide from the air. Technically possible but very expensive on a meaningful scale.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Jan 2010 | 9:58 am

Surprising Sea Slug Is Half-plant, Half-animal

A green sea slug appears to be part animal, part plant, as it's the first critter discovered to produce the plant pigment chlorophyll.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jan 2010 | 9:47 am

Cannibal Galaxies Gobble the Little Guys

Scientists have just discovered new signs of cannibalism in nearby galaxies, including our closest neighbor, Andromeda.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jan 2010 | 9:28 am

Mystery Behind Galaxy Shapes Solved

Galaxies come in many shapes and sizes, but until recently astronomers have been at a loss to explain why.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jan 2010 | 9:28 am

Alien Dust Kicked Up By Baby Planet Collisions

Strange dust from planetary collisions and disks around massive stars point to very alien extrasolar systems.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jan 2010 | 9:27 am

A First: Cricket Pollinates Flowers

Wingless cricket pollinating orchid caught on video.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jan 2010 | 8:40 am

Rare Occurrence: Cricket Pollinates Orchid

This night-vision video captures this first-known occurrence of a cricket acting as a pollinator. This newly discovered species carries pollen as it retreats from orchid flowers. [Reunion Island, Indian Ocean]
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jan 2010 | 8:00 am

Physicist death blamed on US and Israel

Iran's state media accuse Israel and the US of being involved in a bomb attack which killed an Iranian physicist in Tehran.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Jan 2010 | 7:39 am

Study: Running Shoes Could Cause Joint Strain

Running shoes may put more strain on your joints than running barefoot or even walking in high heels, a recent study suggests.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jan 2010 | 7:36 am

Millions of Americans in Pain Without Meds

People with chronic and other pain are not getting the pain medications they need.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jan 2010 | 7:27 am

Florida airport gets commercial spaceport license

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The sky's no longer the limit for Cecil Field airport in Jacksonville, Florida.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 12 Jan 2010 | 6:07 am

Fat Butts May Be Healthy

Find out how fat around the hips and thighs could protect you against heart disease.
Source: Livescience.com | 12 Jan 2010 | 5:51 am

The solar cell that builds itself

Researchers have used a property of salad dressing to get electronics to self-assemble on a range of surfaces.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Jan 2010 | 5:20 am

Stonehenge on 'most threatened' world wonders list

Britain's failure to deal with road traffic around the prehistoric stone circle is condemned as 'a national disgrace'

The traffic-choked roads still roaring past Stonehenge in Wiltshire have earned the world's most famous prehistoric monument a place on a list of the world's most threatened sites.

The government's decision to abandon, on cost grounds, a plan to bury roads around Stonehenge in a tunnel underground and the consequent collapse of the plans for a new visitor centre, have put the site on the Threatened Wonders list of Wanderlust magazine, along with the 4x4-scarred Wadi Rum in Jordan, and the tourist-eroded paths and steps of the great Inca site at Machu Picchu in Peru.

Lyn Hughes, editor in chief of Wanderlust, said the A303 and A344 junctions near Stonehenge meant the site was "brutally divorced from its context". She said: "Seeing it without its surrounding landscape is to experience only a fraction of this historical wonder. The fact that the government and various planning bodies cannot agree on implementing a radical solution to this problem is a national disgrace."

The first great earth banks and ditches of the monument date back 5,000 years, and it was then repeatedly remodelled, with the addition of the circle of sarsen stones the size of doubledecker buses, and smaller bluestones brought from west Wales, and said to have healing powers.

Hughes was echoing the words 21 years ago of the parliamentary public accounts committee, which in 1989 damned the presentation of the site and the facilities for tourists as "a national disgrace".

Since then millions have been spent on alternative road plans and architectural designs for the visitor centre, on exhibitions, consultations and public inquiries, without a sod of earth being turned.

Argument about how to care for the site raged throughout the 20th century: the circle itself is in the guardianship of English Heritage, while the National Trust owns thousands of acres of surrounding countryside, studded with hundreds more henges, barrows and other prehistoric monuments.

At the moment the best hope is that a much simpler and cheaper visitor centre can still be created, two kilometres from the site, in time for London's hosting of the 2012 Olympics.

Wanderlust has also named three places that need more visitors and their spending power: Zimbabwe, north-east Thailand and Madagascar.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Jan 2010 | 5:19 am

Goodbye to a not-so-good scientist

Though she was successful and dynamic, the Royal Institution is better off without Susan Greenfield's unfounded claims

Hearing the news that Susan Greenfield has lost her job at the Royal Institution threw me back 40 years to when she and I both went up to Oxford, to the same college and to read the same subject. This was the tail-end of the hippy era, an age of wearing wild clothes, smoking cannabis and taking LSD, listening to Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd.

We got on well but were not close friends: we were so very different. I was obsessed with investigating the paranormal and consciousness, and cared little for fame or career. She was ambitious from the start. In later years, we were often confused with each other (two Susans talking about brains on TV), although I worked at the fringes of respectable scientific topics – out-of-body experiences, memes, consciousness – without grants and usually without a job – while she went for the big time.

In some ways, she made the big time. She ended up as an Oxford professor, a baroness, a university chancellor, and director of the Royal Institution. Yet she neither did any significant scientific research nor gained the respect of most scientists. Indeed, in 2004, Greenfield was involved in another stir when several fellows of the Royal Society threatened to resign if she was elected a fellow, saying that "her work is too insubstantial and that she is too interested in self-promotion". "Self promotion" is a common accusation.

I feel sorry for my old friend and colleague, but I can only conclude that she is, in both her successes and her failures, the architect of her own fate. In her determination to get to the top, she may be an example of a woman having to fight even harder than a man to achieve such goals. So she has proved not only that you can be both a woman in chic suits and a scientist, but also that a female scientist can be just as competitive and ambitious as any man.

But what bothers me, and other scientists, is that she does not seem much to value science itself. The absolute heart of what it means to care about science is that you care about the evidence – that your opinions are based not on what you would like to be true but on what is found by research to be true.

Greenfield has, for instance, been vocal about the harms of drugs, the way they damage the brain and destroy lives. She campaigned against the reclassification of cannabis to Grade C, making meaningless comparisons with alcohol (such as that only 0.7 mg affects the brain whereas you need 2,000 mg of alcohol) – meaningless because you smoke tiny amounts of one and drink large glasses of the other. She scared people by claiming that cannabis changes who you are – but so does alcohol, so does falling in love, so does making scientific discoveries. She claimed that cannabis damages living human brain cells based on evidence from lab studies on isolated rat neurons. Worst of all, she ignored evidence on the actual harms of each drug, so painstakingly collected by Colin Blakemore, David Nutt and others.

These studies clearly showed cannabis to be less harmful than either tobacco or alcohol. We need this reliable evidence to give truthful drugs education and to create a less damaging drugs policy, but such progress is set back by Greenfield's evidence-free, high-profile pronouncements.

Then there are her dire warnings about the harms of playing computer games. This story would be funny if it were not so serious. I heard her speak last summer at the Cheltenham Science Festival, where the brochure described her "outspoken views. Praised and criticised in equal measure". There she claimed that our brains could be physically damaged by playing too many computer games. Ironically, she was simultaneously promoting her own commercial brand of brain-training device – "MindFit" – basically a simple computer game advertised as "based on scientific studies of the adaptability of the adult human brain" and "clinically proven to help you think faster, focus better and remember more". When I was recently asked to write about the evidence for brain-training games of this sort, I learned that there is no proper peer-reviewed evidence to suggest that any of them, including her own, actually improve brain function any more than playing Scrabble, chess or other computer games. And to cap it all, there is now evidence that playing fast-moving, first-person perspective computer games improves reaction times and some measures of intelligence. So she has been endorsing one unproven computer product while claiming that others do harm.

I applaud Susan for her dynamism and her many successes, but I wish she had behaved more like a real scientist.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 12 Jan 2010 | 3:30 am

Science explains the wrinkly dog

The genetic cause of the Shar-pei dog's wrinkled skin is explained by scientists.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 Jan 2010 | 3:27 am