Chimp and human Y chromosomes evolving faster than expected

The first comprehensive comparison of Y chromosomes from two species sheds new light on Y chromosome evolution. Contrary to a widely held scientific theory that the mammalian Y chromosome is slowly decaying or stagnating, new evidence suggests that in fact the Y is actually reinventing itself through continuous, wholesale renovation.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

Captured by true crime: Why women are drawn to tales of rape, murder and serial killers

Women are more drawn to true crime books than are men, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

Spinal cement may provide real support for cancer patients

New technologies used to repair spinal fractures could soon be helping patients suffering from the bone marrow cancer multiple myeloma.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

Sniffing out terrorists

A new intelligent system has been developed to help identify terrorists carrying explosives. Sensitive electronic noses capture the smell of the explosives; the system processes the acquired data, correlates it with individuals' movements ... and ultimately tracks down the suspects.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

New finding in cell migration may be key to preventing clots, cancer spread

Researchers have discovered how cells in the body flatten out as they adhere to internal bodily surfaces, the first step in a wide range of important processes including clot formation, immune defense, wound healing, and the spread of cancer cells.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

Contaminated House Dust Linked to Parking Lots with Coal Tar Sealant

Coal-tar-based sealcoat -- the black, shiny substance sprayed or painted on many parking lots, driveways, and playgrounds -- has been linked to elevated concentrations of the contaminants polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in house dust. Apartments with adjacent parking lots treated with the coal-tar based sealcoat contained house dust with much higher concentrations of PAHs than apartments next to other types of parking lots according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

Blood test may aid in lung cancer diagnosis and reduce unnecessary invasive procedures

Of the nearly 150,000 abnormal chest X-rays performed each year in the United States, 25 percent of patients will display only benign lung pathologies on further surgical examination.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

Alligators breathe like birds, study finds

Scientists discovered that air flows in one direction as it loops through the lungs of alligators, just as it does in birds. The study suggests this breathing method may have helped the dinosaurs' ancestors dominate Earth after the planet's worst mass extinction 251 million years ago.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

Sky Map: Solar scientists use 'magnetic mirror effect' to reproduce IBEX observation

Ever since NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, mission scientists released the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system's edge in particles, solar physicists have been busy revising their models to account for the discovery of a narrow "ribbon" of bright emission that was completely unexpected and not predicted by any model at the time.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

Seeing a diagnosis: How an eye test could aid Alzheimer's detection

A simple and inexpensive eye test could aid detection and diagnosis of major neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's at an earlier stage than is currently possible, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

In Pictures: Spotting narwhals

Scientists can now follow individual narwhals, thanks to a new identification technique.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Jan 2010 | 3:15 am

Mystery Behind Solar System's Giant Ribbon Solved?

A comparison between the observation of the IBEX "ribbon" (left) and a Heerikhuisen et al. simulation of what the ribbon should look like considering an interstellar magnetic field (right). Credit: NASA/IBEX/Heerikhuisen et al. Last year, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 15 Jan 2010 | 2:39 am

'Blazing ring' eclipse races across Africa, Asia (AFP)

AFP - A solar eclipse that reduced the sun to a blazing ring surrounding a sombre disk plunged parts of Africa and Asia into an eerie semi-darkness on Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 2:37 am

Security at oil facilities in Bihar tightened (Reuters)

Reuters - India has deployed additional forces to guard energy facilities including an oil refinery in Bihar after police found maps of such units with a suspected militant from Bangladesh.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 2:33 am

Scientists warned Haiti officials of quake in '08 (AP)

AP - Scientists who detected worrisome signs of growing stresses in the fault that unleashed this week's devastating earthquake in Haiti said Thursday they warned officials there two years ago that their country was ripe for a major earthquake.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 15 Jan 2010 | 2:07 am

Radical sea defence rethink urged

"Radical thinking" needed to protect the UK's coastal communities from flooding in the future, a report warns.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 15 Jan 2010 | 1:48 am

Electric car road test planned for Quebec

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Quebec's power utility is teaming up with Mitsubishi Motors to road test the performance of up to 50 all-electric vehicles against the rigors of the Canadian climate and measure their infrastructure needs.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 14 Jan 2010 | 10:00 pm

No Sign of Superbugs in Isolated Polar Bears (HealthDay)

HealthDay - WEDNESDAY, Jan. 13 (HealthDay News) -- Scant evidence of antibiotic-resistant superbugs has been found in the droppings of Arctic polar bears that are isolated from humans, potentially suggesting that humans are responsible for the spread of such germs in the animal kingdom at large.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Jan 2010 | 9:49 pm

Cleanup ends at damaged BP-operated pipeline: officials (Reuters)

Reuters - ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) -- After weeks of work, crews have finished cleaning up the oil and oil-laced produced water that leaked out of a ruptured pipeline in November at the BP Plc-operated Lisburne field, company and state officials said Thursday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Jan 2010 | 6:40 pm

Feds search Chevron's Alaska facilities (AP)

AP - The Environmental Protection Agency has served search warrants on Chevron Corp. properties in Alaska, investigating air emission compliance.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Jan 2010 | 5:58 pm

New code as salmon season starts

Anglers on the River Tay are being asked to free every salmon they catch in an effort to conserve stocks.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 14 Jan 2010 | 5:44 pm

Ethiopia – country of the silver sickle – offers land dirt cheap to farming giants

Addis Ababa sells vast fertile swaths to international companies in effort to introduce large-scale commercial agriculture

This is a country of the bent back and the silver sickle, where virtually all the crops have felt the calloused fingers of the peasant farmer working his tiny parcel of state-owned land. The ox pulls the plough and the donkey the cart, and fertiliser counts as agricultural technology.

Chugging into this picture on a bright green John Deere tractor came Hanumantha Rao, a former sugarcane farmer from India who is at the forefront of a revolution sweeping through Ethiopian farming. He hurried up to a hilltop on his company's farm in Bako, four hours' drive from the capital, Addis Ababa, and swept out an arm to indicate the land he has leased from the government: 11,000 hectares to grow rice, maize and oil palms.

In the fields below, boreholes were being sunk and roads graded. An airstrip will soon allow for a crop-spraying plane. Besides the new tractor Rao had been riding on that morning, there were 30 more on site. That was not many, he insisted, and neither was the farm especially large.

Further west in Gambella, Karuturi Global, the listed Indian horticulture company that employs Rao, is bringing in 1,000 new tractors to work the 300,000 hectares it has leased – making it one of the biggest farms in the Horn of Africa, if not the continent. "It is 120 kilometres [75 miles] wide," Rao said proudly. "Three hours to cross by Jeep."

Ethiopia's great land lease project is moved swiftly ahead. In an effort to introduce large-scale commercial farming to the country, the government is offering up vast chunks of fertile farmland to local and foreign investors at almost giveaway rates. By 2013, 3m hectares of idle land is expected to have been allotted – equivalent to more than one fifth of the current land under cultivation in the country.

The move is part of a wider trend that has seen other African and Asian countries seek to take advantage of high global demand and the cost of crops by offering agricultural land to foreign companies, private equity funds and governments, particularly those of import-dependent Gulf countries.

If done properly, the investments have the potential to increase local food availability and create badly needed jobs. If not – as was the case with the attempt by the South Korean firm Daewoo to lease half of Madagascar's arable land to grow corn for export in 2008, a deal many saw as 21st- century colonialism – they could prove disastrous.

In a food-insecure country such as Ethiopia, where several million people rely on food aid, the idea of offering fertile land to outsiders has raised concerns. But government officials point out that Ethiopia has vast reserves of underused land – 60m hectares of the country's 74m hectares suitable for agriculture is not cultivated – and insist no local farmers will be adversely affected. Esayas Kebede, investment support co-ordinator at the agriculture ministry, said that foreign companies were essential for the move from subsistence to commercial farming, a key part of the country's development strategy.

"There is no crop that won't grow in Ethiopia but we cannot produce quantity and quality. Why? It's a vicious cycle of the lack of capital and technology," he said. "So leasing land is a real opportunity for us."

So too for Karuturi. The Bangalore-based company, which is the world's largest grower of roses, has negotiated an extraordinarily good deal with the government. For its farm in Bako, Karuturi is paying no rent for six years and then only 135 birr (£6.50) per hectare per year for the remainder of the 50-year lease. In Gambella, a remote and sparsely populated region close to Sudan, the rent is only 15 birr per hectare (73p).

The company believes the potential for large profits is so great that it plans to invest nearly $1bn in its Ethiopian agricultural operations, according to managing director Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi. Within eight years, he hopes to be producing 3m tonnes of cereals – mostly maize and rice – a year on the Gambella farm, as well as palm oil and sugar. Some of the produce will be sold in Sudan and Kenya – where the company is in talks with the US Agency for International Development to build grain silos at a border town. Like all the foreign land investors in Ethiopia, the company is free to export as much of its produce as it likes, but Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi said most would be sold domestically, where there is a ready market.

"Ethiopia is a food importer and will continue to be for some time. With the high cost of transportation in Africa, it does not make sense for us to try to export beyond the region."

As with land, labour is also extremely cheap. The minimum wage in Ethiopia is about 8 birr (39p) a day. Karuturi, which hopes eventually to employ 20,000 people on its two farms, says it pays 10 birr (49p) a day and provides meals to its workers.

Rao, general manager of the Bako farm, said there was no shortage of locals desperate for jobs. "People here are very poor. They would work for 1 birr, and no one else pays more than 5 birr. So we are paying double."

Outside the farm gates, the feeling about Karuturi among peasant farmers was mixed. The company's 11,000 hectares were fallow before it arrived – the black clay soil is rich in nutrients but difficult to work without a mechanical plough – but some locals had grazed their cattle there and used to cross the farm to the nearest river, which is no longer possible.

Teresa Agassa, a 38-year-old man in gumboots who works a one-hectare plot, said it was good that some local people now had jobs – even if the wage was too small. But he spoke enviously of Karuturi's tractors.

"They're only for the company's benefit. Maybe there can also be benefits for us – but we will only know in the future."

Ethiopia's farming revolution

In the late 1970s Ethiopia's communist regime nationalised all land, and private ownership remains outlawed. The millions of small-scale farmers work under licence from the state, and most plots are one hectare or less, which has hampered efforts to improve food security. But the centralised tenure system has made it easy for the government to offer hundreds of idle farms to investors at cheap rates. A detailed database contains information on soil types, weather patterns, the nearest rivers, and suitable crops. The agriculture ministry is advertising 1.68 million hectares of land in the Benishangul-Gumuz, South Omo and Gambella regions. The greatest interest has come from India and Saudi Arabia, including Saudi Star Agricultural Development, which is growing 10,000 hectares of rice in Gambella. Firms from other Arab countries, and from China, Japan and the US have also expressed strong interest in leasing land.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

Toxic waste facility rejects radioactive waste (AP)

AP - The largest toxic waste facility in the West rejected a proposal by Boeing Co. and NASA to accept tainted soil from the site of a partial nuclear meltdown.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Jan 2010 | 4:23 pm

Satellite Photos of Haiti Before and After the Earthquake

The pictures and video from on-the-ground reports in Haiti following the magnitude 7 earthquake Tuesday are truly heartbreaking. But it is difficult to imagine the full extent of the damage to that country and its capital, Port-au-Prince, in particular. These new satellite images released Wednesday by Google and GeoEye show the devastation from above, giving a new view of the severity of this disaster. We’ve posted some of the images here. You can also scan the entire city with Google Earth as well.

The satellite image above, captured by the GeoEye-1 satellite Wednesday morning, shows the National Palace after the quake. Below is an image from March 2008.

Images: Google/Geoeye

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 14 Jan 2010 | 4:07 pm

Cocaine Found in NASA Space Shuttle Hangar (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - NASA has launched an extensive investigation to determine how a small amount of cocaine ended up in a space shuttle hangar at the agency's Florida spaceport.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Jan 2010 | 4:00 pm

The Doomsday Clock moves one minute further from midnight

The Doomsday Clock, a barometer of nuclear danger for 55 years, moves one minute further away from midnight.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 14 Jan 2010 | 3:52 pm

Help from on high

How satellites are used to help after disasters
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 14 Jan 2010 | 3:27 pm

To Haiti's Long List of Curses, Add Pat Robertson

Comments by Pat Robertson suggested an ancient curse on Haiti was responsible for this week's earthquake.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jan 2010 | 3:16 pm

Alligators' Lungs May Explain Dinos' Dominance

The alligator's bird-like lungs may explain how the ancestors of dinosaurs breathed their way to global dominance.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jan 2010 | 2:55 pm

Looking for guns, bombs harder when risk is small

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Screeners searching for weapons like guns or bombs are more prone to error when the incidence of such threats is small, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 14 Jan 2010 | 2:26 pm

Bizarre Sea Sponge Compound Finally Synthesized by Humans

A 17-year-long intense competition to synthesize a fascinatingly weird and complex compound has finally ended.

The first 25-step process for building the compound, Palau’amine, out of molecular components was published in Angewandte Chemie last week.

You might think that the substance causing all the fuss is slated to be a medical miracle, and indeed it does have some fascinating antifungal, antibiotic and anticancer properties (.pdf). But the real reason dozens of chemistry Ph.D. students put their blood, sweat and tears into synthesizing it was simpler: glory.

Because the compound, called Palau’amine, is so strange and so difficult to make, it became a sort of Excalibur, with several labs around the world vying to be the first to build it. Many people had tried to synthesize the chemical, and many had failed until Phil Baran’s Scripps Research Institute team finally got it right.

“[Synthetic chemistry] is a voyage into finding out how little we know,” Baran said.

After this particular adventure, we now know a little more about how to join atoms together in exotic molecular structures. It might not change your life today, but the techniques developed to build it could one day be used create other medicinal compounds.

Palau’amine got its the name from its home island in the South Pacific. It was isolated from a marine sponge like the one in the photo above 17 years ago. The sponge produces the strange substance to kill anything trying to eat it. 

“It’s known by the indigenous people of Palau as the toxic sponge,” Baran said. “They know, don’t mess with that sponge. And part of the reason is that it makes crazy things like this.”

While the chemical synthesis of molecules may not be voted “Sexiest Field” in a scientific popularity contest, chemists like Baran and his competitors create the many drugs of modern medicine, among other things. The process of synthesizing molecules remains largely trial-and-error. Different substances are mixed at different temperatures and pressures in hopes of finding just the right transformations to create a desired configuration of atoms.

Some chemical structures are easy to create, while others possess attributes that make them particularly hard to build. Palau’amine represents the extreme end of the difficulty scale. Larry Overman, an organic chemist at the University of California, Irvine, told Chemical and Engineering News that “its nasty physical properties had undermined total synthesis endeavors in leading laboratories worldwide.”

So, Baran’s lab had to come up with some new ways of doing chemistry. First, they had to deal with its nine nitrogen atoms. Nitrogen atoms are extremely difficult to deal with at a molecular level. Baran said there’s an old joke that “every one nitrogen atom adds seven years” to the Ph.D.-student time necessary to learn to synthesize it. Most approaches to nitrogen components focus on covering them up with what Baran called “wet blanket” molecules that keep them messing up reactions.

“What we tried to do was take off the blanket and deal with the naked groups,” he said. And it worked.

Second, the actual structure of the compound is difficult to hold together. Two of its ring structures in particular cause problems.

“It’s a highly strained compound,” Baran said. “If you make a plastic model of the compound, it wants to pop open.”

The structure is so odd, in fact, that after years of study, the hypothesized structure of the compound had to be cast aside in 2007.

Despite the long history of synthesis failures, Baran’s lab kept at it. While the rest of the chemistry world had been working with a flawed model structure, his team’s work with other compounds produced by similar sponges led them to the right structure long before other scientists realized the errors in their ways.

Baran doesn’t expect to see Palau’amine commercialized, so don’t expect to see it curing disease anytime soon. Some of the tools his lab came up with to synthesize the compound, like a silver-based oxidizer, are already making their way into the chemistry world.

“The overriding goal is invention,” Baran concluded. “The general theme of our lab is to at least match, if not outdo, nature.”

Image: Carlos F. Barbas

Citation: “Total Synthesis of Palauamine” by Ian Seiple, Shun Su, Ian S. Young, Chad A. Lewis, Junichiro Yamaguchi, and Phil S. Baran

See Also:

• Synthetic Bazaar vs. Cathedral: Intellectual Property and the …
• Scientists Stop EPA From Pushing Toxic Pesticide
• Life’s First Spark Re-Created in the Laboratory
• Chem Lab: Shrooms Make Time Feel Slower
• In Search of New Fertilizer Tech (No, Really)

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 | 14 Jan 2010 | 2:12 pm

Bringing Connectivity to a Devastated Haiti

The scenes of destruction emerging from Haiti are, I think you will agree, heartbreaking. Amid the ongoing horror, we're hearing the usual litany of post-disaster needs: food, clean water, medicine, and sanitation. But in our connected world, you need to ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jan 2010 | 1:57 pm

'The real threat is mad scientist syndrome'

Remember the warnings of 65,000 dead? Health chiefs should admit they were wrong – yet again – about a global pandemic

Let me recap. Six months ago I reviewed the latest bit of terrorism to emerge from the government's Cobra bunker, courtesy of Alan Johnson, home secretary. Swine flu was allegedly ravaging the nation. The BBC was intoning nightly statistics on what "could" happen as "the deadly virus" took hold. The chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, bandied about any figure that came into his head, settling on "65,000 could die", peaking at 350 corpses a day.

Donaldson knew exactly what would happen. The media went berserk. The World Health Organisation declared a "six-level alert" so as to "prepare the world for an imminent attack". The happy-go-lucky virologist, John Oxford, said half the population could be infected, and that his lowest estimate was 6,000 dead.

The "Andromeda strain" was stalking the earth, and its first victims were clearly scientists. Drugs were frantically stockpiled and key workers identified as vital to be saved for humanity's future. Cobra alerted the army. Morgues were told to stand ready. The Green party blamed intensive pig farming. The Guardian listed "the top 10 plague books".

If anyone dared question this drivel, they were dismissed by Donaldson as "extremists". When people started reporting swine flu to be even milder than ordinary flu, he accused them of complacency and told them to "wait for next winter". He was already buying 32m masks and spending more than £1bn on Tamiflu and vaccines. Surgeries refused entry to those with flu symptoms, referring them to a government "hotline" where prescription drugs were ordered to be made available without examination or doctor's note. Who knows how many died of undiagnosed illness as a result? Lines were instantly jammed. It was pure, systematic government-induced panic – in which I accept that the media played its joyful part.

This week the authorities admitted that, far from a winter upturn in swine flu, there has been a slump. From 100,000 a week at the peak, there were just 12,000 last week. After the coldest winter for decades, when deaths might be expected to rise, the rate is below that of seasonal flu. In the UK, 360 people have died under its influence, most with prior "non-flu" conditions. Swine flu is not nice – I have had it – but bears no ­relation to the government hysteria.

I accept that anyone can make a mistake, and authority has some duty to err on the side of caution. As Alastair Campbell implied on Tuesday, Iraq might have had weapons of mass destruction, so Blair was right to go to war just in case. But it is reasonable to ask, as the Chilcot inquiry is doing, why precaution on such a colossal and potentially ­destructive scale was justified when those who questioned the need for it have since been proved right. Is anyone asking about flu?

Swine flu is not the first time we have suffered this nonsense. I have a stack of predictions by senior scientists on BSE/CJD in 1995. It would "lead to 136,000 deaths" – a spurious exactitude used to convey plausibility – and "could infect up to 10 million Britons". This led to an obscene £5bn campaign of cattle destruction and compensation. When the prediction proved wildly wrong, the government excused itself with a classic Rumsfeld-ism: "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence."

This was followed by Sars 2003, a "panic gripping the world". The World Health Organisation declared that "One in four Britons could die". The medical doom-monger, Dr Patrick Dixon, said that Sars had "a 25% chance of killing tens of millions", whatever that meant. The madcap Tory health spokesman, Liam Fox, demanded the arrest and quarantining of all recent travellers from Asia, including 30,000 Asian students.

In the event, some 800 people died with Sars worldwide, against 21,000 who died in Britain in the seasonal flu epidemic of 1999/2000.

Undaunted, within a year the same alarmists were at work on avian flu. With now habitual hyperbole, Donaldson predicted 50,000 deaths, with "an upper limit", graciously conceded, of 750,000. When one dead swan slumped on a beach in Scotland, BBC reporters went crazy as inspectors stumbled through the seaweed, clad in anti-nuclear armour. Within a year the horror had passed. The global mortality was put at 262, with not one death in Britain. Another fiasco was brushed under the carpet.

The Blair government, and now Brown's, have proved adept at using scare politics to divert attention from other troubles. During foot-and-mouth Blair was quick to don a yellow jumpsuit for photographers and intone as if he alone stood between an illness (that is in fact harmless to humans) and armageddon. This time the swine flu coincided with two other "mystery diseases", MRSA and C-difficile, which killed 10,000 Britons in 2007 alone. But those deaths lay squarely at the doors of unclean NHS hospitals. Hence there were no scary stories or predictions about them from Donaldson.

Donaldson and his eager virologists will doubtless stick loyally to their predictions since it is "too early to be complacent". His allies at the BBC did their bit on Wednesday with a Horizon programme that turned a serious study of virology into grotesque scaremongering, with solemn music and voices crying, "there's no escape", "this could take a devilish turn", and "we don't even know how many viruses there are!" Children writhed in agony from smallpox.

Mad scientist syndrome is rampant. Had these scares been disseminated by a private firm, a local authority or a newspaper (as was anti-MMR), they would be damned from on high with demands that heads roll. As it is, the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies sails gaily on, still graced by the presence of Sir Roy Anderson, who ­happens also to draw a six-figure salary as a non-executive director of GlaxoSmithKline, which made hundreds of millions from the government's panic. Anderson, and GSK, vigorously deny any conflict of interest.

The Council of Europe's head of health, Wolfgang Wodarg, is one of the few who have dared blow the whistle on the links between "Big Pharma" and national and ­supranational agencies. He this week persuaded the council to stage a debate on the "enormous gains" made by GSK and others from the swine flu pandemic. He seeks details of relations between the companies and the WHO, given that stockpile contracts kick in the moment that ­organisation uses the word "pandemic". It did so for the first time last year, with reckless alacrity.

I am not aware of the WHO or the General Medical Council or any of the medical colleges investigating these matters, or any check on conflicts of interest of government doctors who work for drugs companies. I am not aware of any Whitehall or Commons committee, any National Audit Office or competition inquiry into the supply of these drugs. All I know is that a huge amount of health money, time and effort was last year diverted from possibly critical therapies into what looked from the start to be yet more terror virology.

This is why people are ever more sceptical of scientists. Why should they believe what "experts" say when they can be so wrong and with such impunity? Weapons of mass destruction, lethal viruses, nuclear radiation, global warming … why should we believe a word of it? And it is a short step from don't believe to don't care.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Jan 2010 | 1:30 pm

Bird-Like Lungs May Have Helped Dinosaurs’ Ancestors Take Over Earth

Lungs with one-way air flow may have helped dinosaurs’ ancestors become dominant when oxygen levels dropped after the Permian-Triassic extinction. It was a period around 250 million years ago when most land-based life died off.

Air follows a one-way loop in alligator lungs, scientists found, a pattern also found in birds, which allows them to fly at high-altitude where oxygen levels are low. This similarity between bird and alligator lungs shows that one-way airflow emerged before the two groups split over 246 million years ago, said University of Utah evolutionary biologist C. G. Farmer, who led the study published Thursday in Science.

In turn, this lung structure may have enabled the common ancestors of dinosaurs and modern-day birds and alligators, the archosaurs, to thrive when oxygen levels dropped and killed off most other animals.

Before the extinction, synapsids, the ancestors to modern mammals, were the dominant group. But after the extinction, the archosaurs dwarfed the synapsids, Farmer said. Prestosuchids, for example, could reach 23 feet in length, while mammals’ ancestors maxed out at just a few feet.

“We think mammals were unable to compete in niches that require some athleticism and a good set of lungs,” Farmer said. “If you can’t run you better hide, and you better be small enough to hide.”

In mammals, air flows into the lungs through progressively smaller airways, stops in little sacs where oxygen is absorbed into the blood and then reverses course and is exhaled by the same route. In birds, air goes one way through small tubes called parabronchi that loop around to send the air back out.

This system allows modern birds to function in a low-oxygen atmosphere. For instance, bar-headed geese can fly over the thin air above Mt. Everest, Farmer said. A similar ability to squeeze out ample oxygen from thin air probably gave bird’s’ archosaur ancestors an edge over the synapsids.

To see how alligator lungs worked, the group sedated six alligators, put flow-meters in their lungs and measured air flow once they awoke. They also cut out the lungs of alligators that had died on a Louisiana wildlife refuge and pumped air through the lungs. Finally, they pushed salt water filled with tiny fluorescent beads through a set of lungs from a dead alligator (see video).

This showed that like birds, the air flows into the chambers of alligators’ lungs and follows a one-way path that loops back to the windpipe.

The findings on air-flow are convincing, said evolutionary biologist Elizabeth Brainerd of Brown University. “One of the strengths of the paper is the author used three different approaches to demonstrate the unidirectional air flow,” she said.

But the claim that this trait may have helped archosaurs edge out the synapsids is “highly speculative,” she said. To bolster thhe hypothesis, the group would need to show that this one-way flow is actually better at extracting oxygen.

Images: C. G. Farmer

See Also:

• Chinese Coal Formed During Earth’s Greatest Extinction Is Still Lethal
• Latest Extinction is the Greatest
• The Rise of the Dinosaurs was Slow Going
• Alligator Swamps Are Rife With Monogamy
• Bones Show Biggest Dinosaurs Had Hot Blood

Citation: “Unidirectional Airflow in the Lungs of Alligators”  by C. G. Farmer and Kent Sanders in Science, 15 January 2010, Vol 327.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 14 Jan 2010 | 1:06 pm

Scientists push "Doomsday Clock" back a minute

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Scientists pushed back the hands on the symbolic Doomsday Clock by one minute citing hopeful developments in nuclear weapons and climate change.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 14 Jan 2010 | 1:00 pm

Warming 'speeds' up gas emissions

Rising temperatures linked to global warming are not just a sign of climate change but are also a cause of it, a study suggests.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 14 Jan 2010 | 12:51 pm

Alligator Breathing Sheds Light on Rise of Dinosaurs (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Alligators breathe like birds, scientists have discovered.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Jan 2010 | 12:16 pm

Anti-malaria plant genes mapped

The global supply of a key anti-malaria drug is set to be boosted by a study of its genes, scientists say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 14 Jan 2010 | 12:07 pm

Gene map for malaria crop offers higher yield hope (Reuters)

Reuters - The first genetic map of a medicinal herb used in the best malaria treatments is being published to help scientists develop the species into a high-yielding crop and battle the killer mosquito-borne disease.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 14 Jan 2010 | 12:04 pm

Alligator Breathing Sheds Light on Rise of Dinosaurs

Alligators discovered to breathe like birds; could explain rise of dinosaur ancestor.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jan 2010 | 12:03 pm

Parasitic Wasps' Genome May Yield New Drugs

Although this parasitic wasp can kill insects, it could help save human lives.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jan 2010 | 12:01 pm

Arctic permafrost is leaking methane at record levels

Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame

Scientists have recorded a massive spike in the amount of a powerful greenhouse gas seeping from Arctic permafrost, in a discovery that highlights the risks of a dangerous climate tipping point.

Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame.

The discovery follows a string of reports from the region in recent years that previously frozen boggy soils are melting and releasing methane in greater quantities. Such Arctic soils currently lock away billions of tonnes of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, leading some scientists to describe melting permafrost as a ticking time bomb that could overwhelm efforts to tackle climate change.

They fear the warming caused by increased methane emissions will itself release yet more methane and lock the region into a destructive cycle that forces temperatures to rise faster than predicted.

Paul Palmer, a scientist at Edinburgh University who worked on the new study, said: "High latitude wetlands are currently only a small source of methane but for these emissions to increase by a third in just five years is very significant. It shows that even a relatively small amount of warming can cause a large increase in the amount of methane emissions."

Global warming is occuring twice as fast in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth. Some regions have already warmed by 2.5C, and temperatures there are projected to increase by more than 10C by 2100 if carbon emissions continue to rise at current rates.

Palmer said: "This study does not show the Arctic has passed a tipping point, but it should open people's eyes. It shows there is a positive feedback and that higher temperatures bring higher emissions and faster warming."

The change in the Arctic is enough to explain a recent increase in global methane levels in the atmosphere, he said. Global levels have risen steadily since 2007, after a decade or so holding steady.

The new study, published in the journal Science, shows that methane emissions from the Arctic increased by 31% from 2003-07. The increase represents about 1m extra tonnes of methane each year. Palmer cautioned that the five-year increase was too short to call a definitive trend.

The findings are part of a wider study of methane emissions from global wetlands, such as paddy fields, marshes and bogs. To identify where methane was released, the researchers combined methane levels in the atmosphere with surface temperature changes. They did not measure methane emissions directly, but used satellite measurements of variations in groundwater depth, which alter the way bacteria break down organic matter to release or consume methane.

They found that just over half of all methane emissions came from the tropics, with some 20m tonnes released from the Amazon river basin each year, and 26m tonnes from the Congo basin. Rice paddy fields across China and south and south-east Asia produced just under one-third of global methane, some 33m tonnes. Just 2% of global methane comes from Arctic latitudes, the study found, though the region showed the largest increases. The 31% rise in methane emissions there from 2003-07 was enough to help lift the global average increase to 7%.

Palmer said: "Our study reinforces the idea that satellites can pinpoint changes in the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from a particular place on earth. This opens the door to quantifying greenhouse gas emissions made from a variety of natural and man-made sources."

Palmer said it was a "disgrace" that so few satellites were launched to monitor levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. He said it was unclear whether the team would be able to continue the methane monitoring in future. The pair of satellites used to analyse water, known as Grace, are already over their expected mission life time, while a European version launched last year, called Goce, is scheduled to fly for less than two years.

The new study follows repeated warnings that even modest levels of global warming could trigger huge increases in methane release from permafrost. Phillipe Ciais, a researcher with the Laboratory for Climate Sciences and the Environment in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, told a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last March that billions of tonnes could be released by just a 2C average global rise.

More on methane

While carbon dioxide gets most of the attention in the global warming debate, methane is pound-for-pound a more potent greenhouse gas, capable of trapping some 20 times more heat than CO2. Although methane is present in much lower quantities in the atmosphere, its potency makes it responsible for about one-fifth of man-made warming.

The gas is found in natural gas deposits and is generated naturally by bacteria that break down organic matter, such as in the guts of farm animal. About two-thirds of global methane comes from man-made sources, and levels have more than doubled since the industrial revolution.

Unlike carbon dioxide, methane lasts only a decade or so in the atmosphere, which has led some experts to call for greater attention to curbs on its production. Reductions in methane emissions could bring faster results in the fight against climate change, they say.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm

Hubble Unravels Odd Galaxy’s History

Not all spiral galaxies look or behave alike, as this new image from the Hubble Space Telescope of the unusual galaxy NGC 2976 shows.

With this new detailed view, astronomers were able to use the brightness and color of its stars to reconstruct the galaxy’s history.

The galaxy, which is located 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, has been shaped by its interaction with the M81 group of galaxies. M81 set off star birth in the distant past, but about 500 million years ago, new stars stopped bursting into existence through the outer galaxy. Some of the galaxy’s gas was stripped away, and the rest collapsed to the center, leaving just a region 5,000 light-years wide near the core that is still making stars.

What look like grains of sand are individual stars. Blue giant stars highlight where the remaining active starmaking regions exist.

Image: NASA/ESA/J. Dalcanton/B. Williams. XXL image.

See Also:

• Hubble Is Back! With New Stunning Images
• Hubble Finds Farthest, Oldest Galaxies Ever Seen
• Hubble Snaps Sharpest Image Yet of Jupiter Impact
• Hubble Explains Nebula’s Ruddy Complexion
• Oh, Hubble, Can This Really Be the End?
• Hubble Detects Galactic X-File
• Hubble Captures Sparkling ‘Jewel Box’ Star Cluster

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 | 14 Jan 2010 | 11:47 am

Pat Metheny's New Band Members are Robots

This blog post brings together two of my favorite things: Pat Metheny and robots. Metheny's new album Orchestrion, due out January 25, is technically a solo act. That's because the members aren't human. Each instrument is a kind of robot ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jan 2010 | 11:30 am

Text-Message Donations Soar Amid Haiti Crisis

Text messaging donation to Haiti soar as SMS donating in general rises.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jan 2010 | 11:11 am

Do Animals have a 'Sixth Sense' About Earthquakes?

After earthquakes and tsunamis, stories often circulate of animals acting strangely or seeming to know of the disaster long before humans. Following the December 26, 2004, Asian tsunami, some (erroneous) news reports claimed that no dead animals had been killed ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jan 2010 | 10:24 am

Airport Security Unlikely to Spot Hard-to-Find Weapons

New research shows that when people think something will be difficult to find, they don't look as hard as when they think they're likely to see what they're searching for.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jan 2010 | 10:13 am

Text Messages Raise Millions for Haiti

Text “Haiti” to the number 90999 and donate $10 to the Red Cross. The donations are being managed by mGive, a foundation established in 2005. So far, the foundation, which has partnered with the State Department and the Red Cross, ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jan 2010 | 9:47 am

BBC joins international protests against Iranian TV interference

Corporation supports formal complaint after signal jamming and removal of Persian service from satellite

Iran is facing mounting international protests about its jamming of the BBC's Persian TV service (PTV) after the channel – which has millions of viewers and is hugely popular with opposition supporters – was taken off a satellite owned by Europe's leading operator.

The BBC said today it was "actively supporting" a formal complaint to the International Telecommunication Union, a UN-affiliated body, about "deliberate interference" from Iran. The ITU confirmed it had received representations from regulators in France, home to Eutelsat, owner of the Hotbird 6 satellite, which transmitted PTV until the end of last month.

The German state broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, said it too would protest about interference with its Persian-language radio broadcasts. Voice of America Persian TV programmes have also been jammed.

The BBC said it was telling viewers how to adjust their satellite dishes to receive programmes via two other satellites that are out of range of Iranian jamming.

Eutelsat says PTV was removed from Hotbird 6 "in agreement" with the BBC, though sources close to the affair say the operator caved in to commercial and legal pressures from other customers broadcasting on the same transponder.

Another Eutelsat satellite, Hotbird 8, provides capacity to Iranian state media channels, including English-language Press TV, which has offices in London.

Iranian opposition supporters are accusing satellite companies of "siding with dictators". Eutelsat and GlobeCast, a France Télécom subsidiary which leases bandwidth from Eutelsat — and which made the decision to take down PTV — refuse to say publicly that the Iranian government is responsible for the jamming.

"It makes me angry that we are the victims of jamming by the Iranian government and the Iranian government is still able to use Hotbird for its own programmes," said one BBC source. "We are the victims and they are the perpetrators."

PTV was launched a year ago this week to Iranian fury. Sporadic jamming began after last June's disputed presidential elections but intensified in late December, after the death of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a revered cleric associated with the opposition, which triggered a new round of demonstrations.

Tehran has repeatedly attacked PTV as an arm of the British government, which it accuses of seeking to foment a "velvet revolution".

Last week, it included the BBC on a list of 60 "subversive" international organisations. Britain and Iran are at odds over Iran's nuclear programme, Israel, and other Middle Eastern issues. The Foreign Office called the jamming "a clear attempt to infringe the right of Iranians to watch the TV channel of their choice".

The BBC said it was exploring other options with Eutelsat. "We will try every avenue to give our large audiences in Iran the television news services that they want," said Peter Horrocks, the BBC World Service director.

Iran has gone to extraordinary lengths to block TV broadcasts it considers hostile. Signals transmitted from the US, beyond reach of Iranian jamming, have occasionally been jammed from Cuban territory.

But hopes of a response from Tehran to these latest complaints are slim as the Geneva-based ITU has no enforcement power and is widely seen as toothless.

Iranian viewers are angry and frustrated. "We Iranians are now under repression," one PTV fan said. "We are passing another turning point in our history and we need unbiased news more than ever."

Another told the BBC: "People have been left with an utter lack of information … Perhaps you don't realise the extent of your influence on Iranian society."

"Iranians keep asking me why the west is so powerless," Sadeq Saba, head of PTV, wrote on his blog. "They say: 'This is a rogue government jamming international signals. How will the west stop Iran getting nuclear weapons if they can't deal with this?'"

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Jan 2010 | 9:37 am

Doomsday Deferred: End-of-World Clock Set Back 1 Minute

The minute hand on the Doomsday Clock just changed. Find out how close we are to midnight.
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jan 2010 | 9:08 am

China to Web Companies: Obey All Rules

As Google gains public support both in China and abroad, the Communist Party warns other Internet companies.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jan 2010 | 8:59 am

New Borneo bird species spotted

A new species of bird, the spectacled flowerpecker, has been spotted in the rainforests of Borneo.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 14 Jan 2010 | 8:25 am

Search and Rescue Dogs from Around the World Go to Haiti

Professionally trained "sniffer" search dogs from around the world have been recruited this week to aid rescue operations in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The effort appears to be unprecedented in scale, matching the devastation already documented in the Caribbean country. (Ron Weckbacher ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jan 2010 | 8:02 am

Rising Ocean Acidity May Deplete Vital Phytoplankton

Iron-poor oceans may cause phytoplankton -- a critical base of the marine food chain -- to decline.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 14 Jan 2010 | 7:55 am

Polar bear poo helps in superbug hunt

LONDON (Reuters) - Polar bear droppings are helping scientists shed light on the spread of deadly antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 14 Jan 2010 | 6:21 am

Obese Pregnant Women Should Gain Less, Experts Say

Should obese women gain less weight during pregnancy than new recommendations suggest?
Source: Livescience.com | 14 Jan 2010 | 6:21 am

Earth Watch

A dose of serious science at biodiversity school
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 14 Jan 2010 | 6:04 am

Which is best, brains or brawn?

The Guardian's Evolutionary Agony Aunt Carole Jahme shines the cold light of evolutionary psychology on readers' problems

Weedy but brainy

From Miss Wallace, no age given
Dear Carole, Here's an interesting quandary. I have an on-off boyfriend whom I care for deeply, but I am not sure if he is a good mate from a biological perspective. Physically, he is naturally very thin, prone to a limited diet, doesn't like to exercise, and smokes. However, mentally he is very intelligent, with a good memory, a constant interest in learning and teaching, and a liking for intellectual pursuits. From a modern human perspective, I prize his sharp mind, but the evolutionarily deeper rooted parts of me worry over his physical health and stature. Is he a fit mate? And if I started a family with him, would our offspring inherit his intelligence?

Carole replies:
Before humans lived in societies with written laws and law enforcers, naturally selected survival mechanisms such as brute strength and speed would have been crucial. But over countless generations as human civilisation has developed, traits such as a "liking for intellectual pursuits" have become sexually selected indicators of fitness.

Miss Wallace, your puny, nicotine-addicted boyfriend may not be able to intimidate reproductive rivals but he has nonetheless wooed you, on and off, with his excellent brain wiring.

With regard to the second part of your question, there are various forms of intelligence – including creative, emotional, and abstract reasoning – and these are all largely heritable through assortative mating. In addition, the "Flynn effect" has been observed where IQ increases in the young over generations as nutrition and cognitive stimulation steadily improve. In other words, environment (including the foetal environment) may have an impact on brain development. So in addition to his genetic contribution, your brainy partner may help to provide an excellent environment for nurturing the nascent intelligence of your offspring.

Genes reproduce themselves and as 50% of your progeny's genome will be maternal DNA, you need also to take into account the quality of the maternal genes – something you fail to include in your equation. In your mind there seems to be a single trade-off between paternal genes for intelligence pitted against genes for a weedy morphology (shape). Nothing in genetics is ever that simple.

Incidentally, are you the naturally very thin boyfriend (posing here as your girlfriend)?! Either way, I suggest you take a long hard look at the person with whom you are considering breeding, at their parents and at yourself in the mirror, and then ask yourself: "Do I really want to see further versions of these for the rest of my life?"

Plomin, R, (2000) Behavioural genetics in the 21st century. International Journal of Behavioural Development; 24: 30-34.
Miller, G, (2006) Mental traits as fitness indicators: expanding evolutionary psychology's adaptionism. Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Reproductive Behaviour, 907: 62-74.
Devlin, B, Fienberg, SE, Resnick, DP, & Roeder, K (eds) (1997). Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve. New York: Springer.

I want to be alone

From an anonymous and ageless female
Dear Carole, I am a fairly sociable person who enjoys making her friends, colleagues and family laugh. I go out often, whether it be to the local pub with my friends or for a meal with my family. However, I don't like people coming round to my house "for a drink" or anything similar. It sounds selfish I know, but it's just something I've always felt. Perhaps it's because they overstay their welcome? I just don't know.

Carole replies:
You are happy to play the clown, but not on your territory. Many people do not like spontaneous callers to their home, and may be guarded and controlling where their possessions are concerned.

All humans are located somewhere on the autistic spectrum. The closer your personality is to the autistic end of the spectrum, and disorders including Asperger's syndrome and full-blown autism, the more inflexible you are likely to be about people "coming around for a drink". The closer you are to the empathic end of the spectrum the more likely it is that you will exhibit a flexible social benevolence irrespective of reciprocity.

Simon Baron-Cohen theorises that the male mind is more likely to be socially aloof and wired for abstract thought, whereas the female mind is more likely to be empathically and communicatively inclined. However, you do not need to be a man to have a male mind or a woman to have a female-wired mind.

Simply put, it is very likely the male-type mind evolved to focus on designing tools and the female-type mind evolved to "mind-read" – empathise with – her infant.

From your description, it seems in the past people have "overstayed their welcome" at your home, but since hardening your resolve against them I guess you are now unlikely to be exploited by freeloading slackers who want to crash on your sofa and raid your larder.

You may discover that your laughing friends start to find you aloof. There may come a time when you will want a favour or perhaps desire deeper understanding from a friend, but these things may not be forthcoming because you have always kept your distance.

Simon Baron-Cohen (2003) The Essential Difference, Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain. Penguin Press.
Simon Baron-Cohen (2003) They just can't help it. Guardian.

You can email your questions to Carole by clicking here (they don't have to be about relationships). Please put "Ask Carole" in the subject line.

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We regret that Carole cannot answer all the mails we receive. We cannot provide urgent advice and suggest that if you need such advice you seek it immediately without waiting for a response from Carole. With regards to legal, medical or financial issues, we recommend seeking the advice of a listed professional. We will not be held liable for any loss, damage or injury you incur as a result of using this site or as a result of any advice given. We will not enter into personal correspondence via email.

Carole is UK-based and as such any advice she gives is intended for a UK audience only.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 14 Jan 2010 | 5:59 am

'Keep space station until 2020'

Esa boss Jean-Jacques Dordain wants a decision in 2010 on an extension of the life of the International Space Station.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 14 Jan 2010 | 5:44 am