Copper-free click chemistry used in mice

Researchers have developed a unique, copper-free version of the molecular synthesis technique known as click chemistry to create biomolecular probes for in vivo studies of live mice.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 6:00 pm

Researchers find a treatment for deadly brain tumor

New research has identified a treatment in animal models for glioblastomas -- deadly brain tumors which, once diagnosed, offer a poor prognosis and relatively short life expectancy. Using a synthetic form of a naturally-occurring hormone combined with chemotherapy, researchers were able to inhibit tumor growth and achieve a 25 percent cure rate.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 6:00 pm

Our memory of time is shortened when we believe products and events are related

When we believe two events are connected -- such as drinking caffeine and getting a burst of energy -- we tend to compress time, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 6:00 pm

African sleeping sickness: Loosely coiled DNA helps trypanosomes make their escape

To escape the grip of the human immune system, Trypanosoma brucei, which causes African sleeping sickness, performs its acclaimed disappearing act. Every time the host's immune cells get close to eliminating the infection, a small number of trypanosomes avoid detection by changing their surface 'coat.' Now, after 30 years of contradictory and inconclusive findings, researchers reveal that trypanosomes' ability to strategically coil their DNA is part of the mechanism by which they make their stealthy escape.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 6:00 pm

Unusual snail shell could be a model for better armor

Deep within the Kairei Indian hydrothermal vent field, two-and-one-half miles below the central Indian Ocean, scientists have discovered a gastropod mollusk, whose armor could improve load-bearing and protective materials in everything from aircraft hulls to sports equipment.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 6:00 pm

Friendly bacteria love the humble apple

Why does an apple a day keep the doctor away? New research contributes to our understanding of why eating apples is good for you.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 6:00 pm

New theory on the origin of primates

New biogeographic evidence supports the origin of primates in the Jurassic and the evolution of the modern primate groups -- prosimians, tarsiers, and anthropoids -- by the early Cretaceous.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

Novel mouse model of demyelinating disorder

In a new study, researchers describe how mutation of a gene called ZFP191 leads to disordered central nervous system myelination in mice -- reminiscent of what is seen in human multiple sclerosis patients.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

Exotic symmetry seen in ultracold electrons

An exotic type of symmetry -- suggested by string theory and theories of high-energy particle physics, and also conjectured for electrons in solids under certain conditions -- has been observed experimentally for the first time.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

1918 and 2009 H1N1 flu probably not spread by birds

The two strains of the H1N1 influenza virus responsible for the 1918 and 2009 global flu pandemics do not cause disease in birds. It is unlikely that birds played a role in the spread of the H1N1 virus in these pandemics, according to new research.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

Orangutan acts as 'peacemaker'

In a never before seen behaviour, a captive Bornean orangutan acts as a peacemaker, resolving conflicts between other apes.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Jan 2010 | 3:17 am

UN: Himalayan glaciers might not melt by 2035 (AP)

AP - A U.N. warning that Himalayan glaciers may melt by 2035 appears not to be backed up by scientific evidence, an American scientist says — an admission that could energize climate change critics.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 3:15 am

Poachers threaten Malaysia's defence of tigers: WWF (AFP)

AFP - Conservationists called on Wednesday for a war on the poachers who are undermining Malaysia's ambitious goal to double its population of wild tigers to 1,000.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 2:57 am

Oxfordshire dinosaur tracks to get special protection

Dinosaur footprints discovered in Oxfordshire mudflats are to be protected as part of a geological conservation site.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Jan 2010 | 2:29 am

Indian scientist denies UN glacier melt date (AFP)

AFP - An Indian scientist at the centre of a new climate science storm has denied ever saying Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 -- an alarming date that was used by the UN's top global warming body.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Jan 2010 | 2:15 am

Plant loss 'leads to fewer bees'

The decline of honeybees seen in many countries may be due to reduced plant diversity, research suggests.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Jan 2010 | 1:40 am

UK returns nuclear waste to Japan

The first shipment of highly radioactive nuclear waste from the UK is leaving Sellafield later on Wednesday, the BBC learns.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Jan 2010 | 12:00 am

The real Himalayan scandal | Isabel Hilton

What's really shocking about research into the glaciers of the Himalayas is how little there has been

After the University of East Anglia's email scandal, climate sceptics now believe they have another cause for celebration. Some British papers claimed this week that climate change "theories" are in doubt because of the retraction of an unfounded claim in an Intergovernmental Panel on ­Climate Change ­report from 2007.

The item alleged that the glaciers of the Himalayas could disappear by 2035. It was drawn from a campaigning report by the WWF, which had taken it from an interview with an Indian glaciologist published years earlier in New Scientist. It was not based on peer-reviewed science and should not have been included in the IPCC's fourth assessment report.

However, what is really worrying about the report is how little it has to say about the future of the Himalayas-Hindu Kush, a region on which nearly 40% of the world's population depends for water. There was a striking lack of useful data on the possible fate of the largest store of fresh water outside the poles – and no available fieldwork, it would appear, on glaciers that feed all the major river systems of Asia.

There is a further worrying unknown: what impact might the loss of the Himalayan glaciers have on the monsoon, on which food security in south Asia depends? When the report was under preparation, it seems that the science of this region – one of the world's most ­sensitive and volatile – was a black hole.

There are reasons for this lack of data. There are tens of thousands of glaciers that are difficult and expensive to get to. They are scattered across three major weather systems and countless microclimates. The countries in which they lie are not good neighbours and have little history of scientific co-operation.

To be a glacier scientist in tropical and temperate zones requires both scientific training and mountaineering skills. In most of the Himalayas, those with mountaineering skills are tribal people, and those with scientific training middle-class and urban. Since the glaciers lie in some of the most sensitive security regions in the world, scientists from elsewhere can find their work frustrated by national security suspicions.

Studying the glaciers, until recently, was not a high priority. Unlike the Alps, the Himalayas has a patchy photographic record and the history of scientific glaciology is short. Climate modelling is unreliable across big variations in altitude, and in the Himalayas it needs to be tested against data collected on the ground. But the collection of even basic data is sparse: for instance, weather stations on the Qinghai–Tibet plateau were located in towns so as to be easy to read. The result was that nothing was known about precipitation at high altitude, where the glaciers are.

This is one of the most complex regions on earth, and there are confusing local variations, such as in the Karakoram, where glaciers are advancing. But this anomaly does not alter the overall picture of retreat that affects 80% of the region's glaciers, a retreat recorded by the Chinese Academy of Science's extensive inventory.

The people of the region know that climate change has long-term implications for their water and food security. In the short term, it threatens the energy supplies of all the nations that rely on hydropower to fuel their economies.

Farmers in Nepal are already ­reporting new pests and diseases. ­Kyrgyzstan, scientists predict, will lose 80% of its water supply. Pakistan and India's great rivers may become seasonal, and their monsoons erratic. The Yangtze and ­Yellow rivers will lose volume. The pace and pattern of ­glacier retreat is urgent, and needs to be ­understood through science – not ­dismissed by ignorant sceptics.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 20 Jan 2010 | 12:00 am

Surfing the Dragon: The Quest for the Longest Wave in the World

When the tide comes in on the China's Qiantang River in the city of Hangzhou, something unusual happens: seawater piles up in the funnel-shaped Hangzhou Bay and roars up the river in a massive wave that can be almost 30 ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Jan 2010 | 8:46 pm

Early queen's remains 'unearthed'

The skeleton of one of the earliest members of the English royal family may have been found in Germany, researchers are claiming.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Jan 2010 | 8:39 pm

Why Are Quark Stars So Strange?

What happens if a stellar remnant is too massive to be a neutron star, but not massive enough to become a black hole? Actually, until recently, astrophysicists didn't think there was a grey area between neutron stars and black holes; ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Jan 2010 | 8:35 pm

Buildings 'threaten carbon hope'

A dearth of skills and low uptake of known building technologies are threatening the UK's emissions targets, says a report.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Jan 2010 | 7:23 pm

Tevatron Sees Haiti Earthquake

The massive earthquake that hit Haiti last week has devastated the region, and captured the world's attention as relief efforts continue underway. Via Symmetry Breaking, I learned that the Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab actually detected the quake, despite being 2500 ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Jan 2010 | 7:06 pm

German scientists develop fast-acting germ killer

LONDON (Reuters) - A new fast-acting disinfectant that is effective against bacteria, viruses and other germs could help stop the spread of deadly infections in hospitals, German scientists said on Wednesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Jan 2010 | 5:06 pm

Nuclear energy risks are not exaggerated

Most scientists in this field agree that there is danger even in small doses of radiation

You reported the view that radiation risks are exaggerated, but left out vital information on radiation protection (Radiation health threat overstated – Oxford professor, 11 January). The article relied upon and extensively cited a retired ­professor of particle physics, Wade ­Allison, who is neither a radiation ­biologist nor an epidemiologist, and is not in my view an expert in radiation risks. Indeed, the other three scientists quoted in the article pointedly refrained from supporting Allison. His sole contribution to the literature is a self-published book.

An article alongside (Nuclear theory: the current consensus) states that "a single dose below 100 millisieverts (mSv) is usually considered safe", and later gives Allison's claim that "there is a threshold of about 200 mSv, below which the body can repair all DNA ­damage caused and, therefore, which is safe". But there is no safe dose of ­radiation: no matter how low it is, a small risk remains.

The linear no-threshold (LNT) theory is used by all the world's radiation authorities – the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the Health Protection Agency, etc – to estimate risks at low doses. It presumes that risks decline proportionately as you lower the dose all the way down to zero, and that the only dose with no effect is zero mSv.

And, yes, there is evidence that exposures to residents near nuclear facilities cause them harm. For example, a recent German government study found large increases in leukaemia (220%) and embryonal cancer (160%) among children living near all German nuclear ­reactors. Its results are supported by many other worldwide studies into child leukaemias near nuclear reactors.

Current radiation risks are based on an unsatisfactory dataset – the Japanese survivors of the US atomic bombs in 1945. Though relevant for estimating the risks of sudden blasts of powerful types of radiation, this data is irrelevant for slow, long-term exposures or for weaker types of radiation which are more common. And many studies point to the risks being higher than this data suggests.

Then there are the unusual non-­targeted effects of radiation. These cause changes in cells temporally and spatially distant from the cells hit by radiation. These effects challenge the present explanation of radiation's effects but are unknown by the public. They are hotly discussed by radiation biologists throughout the world, and are the ­subject of thousands of ­scientific articles. The older explanation had given considerable support to current estimates of radiation risks. The new effects strikingly do not do this, as they occur after very low doses of ­radiation. In other words, these new effects raise ­serious questions about whether ­existing dose limits should be tightened.

I do not think current radiation risks are overrated, and neither do most ­scientists in this field.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

Glaxo offers free access to potential malaria cures

Exclusive: GSK boss says drug companies must balance need to satisfy shareholders with social responsibility

The chief executive of the world's second biggest pharmaceutical company will today announce that he is putting into the public domain thousands of potential drugs that might cure malaria.

Andrew Witty, the British boss of Glaxo-SmithKline, will say in a major speech that multinational drug companies have to balance social responsibility alongside the need to make profits for their shareholders. There is, he will say, an "imperative to earn the trust of society, not just by meeting expectations but by exceeding them".

GSK will publish details of 13,500 chemical compounds from its own library that have potential to act against the parasite that causes malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, killing at least one million children every year.

It took a team of five investigators a year to screen the two million compounds in GSK's library – its entire collection of potential drugs and possibly the biggest such library in the world.

The move was given a cautious welcome by charities such as Médecins Sans Frontières, although Oxfam questioned whether other big drug companies would want to develop treatments from GSK patents.

Witty, though, believes scientists would and should seize the opportunity.

Speaking to the Guardian in advance of the announcement in New York, he said: "To my knowledge nobody's ever put confirmed-hit structures into the public domain. Universities have done stuff like this but on a much smaller scale.

"I think it's a significant contribution to give scientists around the world 13,500 new opportunities to start research."

Witty will also announce an $8m fund to pay for scientists to explore these chemicals or others in an "open lab" within its research centre at Tres Cantos, Spain, which is dedicated to work on malaria and other diseases of the developing world.

"It's trying to create a permissiveness around scientific research in an area where we know the marketplace isn't going to stimulate massive research," he said.

"Given that there is only a handful of big companies who focus on malaria, this is a chance to get thousands of researchers involved – just like software companies encourage thousands of people to contribute their new ideas for software – and we'll see what comes of it."

Witty's speech takes forward the agenda he set out nearly a year ago at Harvard University, when he pledged to put all the potential drugs for neglected diseases GSK holds in a "patent pool", waiving the company's intellectual property rights so that any scientists could investigate them. He also promised to cut the price of all GSK drugs in the world's poorest countries and to reinvest 20% of all profits it made there in projects to help local people.

He admitted he was disappointed other drug companies had not taken up the invitation he had held out to put their patents into the neglected diseases pool as well.

"I think they're just nervous. I don't think they have crossed … I crossed the bridge a year ago ... that you can have a [different] approach to the way you think about intellectual property and openness in an area like neglected tropical diseases. There is no financial market stimulating discovery so we need to find ways to stimulate discovery. This is a way to do it."

While it was pleased at GSK's new initiatives and praised the leadership the company had shown, Oxfam in effect accused Witty of naivety in thinking that other drug giants would come on board.

"Last year he announced some new, interesting ideas. But they stayed for a whole year as ideas. GSK should know how the industry works. As long as this is run by one company, others are not going to join in," said the charity's senior health adviser, Dr Mohga Kamal-Yanni. "I'm glad they realise now they need to do more than just put ideas on the table.

"It is quite exciting what they have decided to do, but we have to watch whether it becomes something interesting at the end of the day."

Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of Médecins sans Frontières' campaign for essential medicines, said: "The fact that they are opening up their compounds for malaria is a good step. It is something like we have been calling for for some years. It would be good if other companies would do the same thing, and for other diseases." But Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières and other NGOs are still very critical of GSK's reluctance to wholeheartedly embrace a patent pool for HIV drugs that is being set up by Unitaid.

Witty's view is that Aids is not a neglected disease. There is a lot of research and development going on because of a lucrative market for HIV drugs in Europe and the USA. But he told the Guardian that he might join in if he believed the pool would succeed in improving access for the poorest to HIV drugs.

"I'm not saying no but I need to see the detail," he said. GSK was now meeting and working with Unitaid. "We'd really like to be in the position of helping them work out detail that works."

His company has licensed its HIV drugs to generic companies to make cheap copies and allowed them to combine the drugs with those of other companies, which is what the Unitaid pool aims to do. But he said: "If Unitaid has a better mousetrap, we're happy to be part of a better mousetrap."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

Remains of Alfred the Great's granddaughter returned

• Tests expected to confirm woman lived in England
• Princess sent to Germany as diplomatic prize

The granddaughter of Alfred the Great came back to England yesterday – or at least fragments of a body returned, more than 1,000 years after the Wessex ­princess was packed off by her brother as a ­diplomatic gift to a Saxon king.

Tests in Bristol are expected to ­provide further proof that Eadgyth (roughly ­pronounced Edith) was indeed the woman found wrapped in silk and sealed in a lead coffin, inside a magnificent stone sarcophagus at Magdeburg Cathedral in Germany.

"Her brother Athelstan was the first king of a unified England, her husband became the first Holy Roman Emperor and her blood runs in the veins of every royal family in Europe," said Professor Mark Horton of Bristol University.

"Alfred's body disappeared long ago, bones of other members of her family are all jumbled up in Winchester Cathedral after [Thomas] Cromwell got his hands on them, so this may prove to be the oldest complete remains of an English royal."

There is no contemporary portrait of Eadgyth and few insights into her life. She was born in Wessex in 910 into one of the most powerful families in ­England, daughter of Edward the Elder, and half-sister to Athelstan, well on his way to being recognised as the first king of all England.

In 929 he sent her and her sister, Adiva, off to Otto and invited him to take his pick, sealing an alliance between two of the rising stars of the Saxon world: Otto chose Eadgyth. They had at least two children before she died in 946.

She was devoted to the cult of Saint Oswald, the 7th-century warrior king of Northumbria, and a scattering of ­monasteries and churches dedicated to St Oswald in Saxony may also map Eadgyth's lasting influence.

The monument in the soaring Gothic cathedral built centuries after her death was known as her tomb, but historians believed it was empty.

Then in 2008 it was opened by archaeologists during work on the building, revealing to their astonishment the beautifully preserved coffin. An inscription recorded that it was the body of Eadgyth, reburied in 1510.

"We know she was reburied," Horton said, "but the sarcophagus could have held nothing at all, or a few bits and pieces scooped up from roughly the area of her original grave. Instead we have the remains of one woman, of the right age. The smoking gun is what the tests tell us of where she came from." He hopes isotope tests on enamel from her teeth, and tests on bone fragments, will reveal a woman born and brought up in Wessex and ­Mercia, where her family moved between different ­palaces and strongholds. The water drunk or contained in food eaten in childhood laid distinctive traces which last for life and centuries beyond. Scientists will be measuring the bone and teeth fragments looking for strontium and oxygen isotopes which if strong enough should locate precisely the princess's first years.

The sarcophagus also held soil fragments and beetles, all being studied with the silk and the coffin itself by scientists, archaeologists and art historians, hoping to tease out more details of Eadgyth's history in life and death. Initial results are being presented at an international conference at Bristol University today.

Eadgyth's bones are believed to have been moved at least once before being reinterred in Magdeburg Cathedral in 1510.

The project to study them was led in Germany by Professor Harald Heller of the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte in Saxony-Anhalt. He said: "We are still not completely certain that this is Eadgyth, although all the scientific evidence points to this interpretation. In the Middle Ages bones were often moved about, and this makes definitive identification difficult."Other members of her family have proved remarkably elusive. Her spurned sister Adiva was later married off to another European ruler but the place of her death and burial are unknown and indeed the identity of her husband is uncertain.

Athelstan was buried at Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire. A tomb believed to be his survives, but there is no record of it being opened in centuries, and it is thought most probably to be empty.

Excavations were mounted some years ago in Winchester to find Alfred but although quantities of stonework were uncovered from the lost Hyde Abbey no trace of him was found.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jan 2010 | 5:05 pm

Safety Panel Backs NASA's Plans for New Rocket (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - WASHINGTON — As the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to propose changes to NASA's human spaceflight program in the president's 2011 budget request to lawmakers Feb. 1, an independent NASA safety advisory panel is warning the space agency against abandoning its current plans.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jan 2010 | 4:45 pm

Undersea Internet Cables Could Detect Electromagnetic Tsunami Signals

Tsunamis may be detectable with underwater fiber-optic cables, according to a new detailed model of the electrical fields the moving water generates.

The charged particles in the ocean water interact with Earth’s magnetic field to induce voltage of up to 500 millivolts in the cables that ferry internet traffic around. With relatively simple technology, those voltage spikes could serve as a tsunami-warning system for nations that can’t afford large arrays of other types of sensors.

“What we argue is that this is such a simple system to set up and start measuring,” said Manoj Nair, a geomagnetist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who led the research. “We have a system of submarine cables already existing. The only thing we probably need is a voltmeter, in theory.”

The salt in ocean water makes it a good electrical conductor. Positively charged sodium and negatively charged chlorine ions in the solution are free to move. In a large movement of ocean water, these ions are carried across the Earth’s magnetic field creating an electrical field.

Decades ago, Bell Labs researchers revealed that the movement of ocean water after the 1992 Cape Mendocino earthquake created “a large-scale motional electric field” that was detectable by an underwater cable. But the work wasn’t followed up because alternative technologies were available that could take better measurements.

Rich countries like the United States can install sea bottom pressure arrays like those used by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. These directly detect the motion of large amounts of water.

But some countries can’t afford to install and maintain those arrays, so it could be critical to have a lower-cost alternative.

Nair’s work, which will be published in February’s Earth, Planets and Space, quantified the physics of this lower-cost alternative by building a model of the catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. He and his team showed that the voltages induced in the submarine cables would be large enough to measure.

It’s a major step towards turning this speculative idea into a real system, and he stressed that other groups would have to confirm the results of their model through observations.

“We treat this as a novel idea that we’re putting forth, but it still needs to be taken seriously and verified by other groups,” Nair cautioned.

See Also:

• Tsunami Risk for West Coast Higher Than Expected
• 3-D Solar Tsunami Video Shows the Extreme Waves Are Real
• 5 Most Dangerous U.S. Earthquake Hot Spots Beyond California
• Scientists Scramble to Analyze Haiti’s Seismic Risk
• Scientists Drill a Mile Into Active Deep Sea Fault Zone
• Tidal Forces Trigger Tremors on San Andreas Fault

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 | 19 Jan 2010 | 3:54 pm

Europe's conquering heroes? Likely farmers: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The conquerors who spread their seed across Europe in ancient times were prosperous farmers who imported their skills from the Middle East, researchers reported on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Jan 2010 | 3:07 pm

Tornado warning in California as storm hits (AFP)

AFP - A rare tornado warning was issued for Los Angeles Tuesday as a storm slammed into southern California, dumping heavy rain and snow across the region and leaving thousands of homes without power.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jan 2010 | 2:59 pm

U.S. gasoline price falls from 15-month high: report (Reuters)

Reuters - After soaring to the highest level in 15 months, U.S. gasoline prices fell over the past week on cheaper crude oil costs, the Energy Department said on Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jan 2010 | 2:52 pm

Senate not seen passing climate bill in 2010 (Reuters)

Reuters - The Senate is unlikely to pass climate change legislation this year after going through the contentious health care debate, and will focus on a separate energy bill that has more bipartisan support, a key Democratic senator said on Tuesday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jan 2010 | 2:22 pm

Crater on the Moon Gets Stunning Close-Up (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - New photographs taken by a satellite in orbit around the moon have revealed one of its most prominent craters in a whole new light.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jan 2010 | 2:00 pm

Fish oil slows burn of genetic ageing fuse

Omega-3 fatty acids from fish oils have a direct effect on biological ageing, US research suggests

Fish oil may be the true elixir of youth, according to new evidence of its effect on biological ageing. Omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil preserve the genetic "fuse" that determines the lifespan of cells, say scientists.

The discovery, made in heart disease patients, may explain many of the claimed health benefits of omega-3.

Taking fish oil supplements is said to protect against heart disease, improve survival rates after a heart attack, reduce mental decline in old age and help to prevent age-related changes in the eye that can lead to blindness. Research has also shown that rodents live one-third longer when given a diet enriched with fish-derived omega-3.

Although omega-3 fatty acids have powerful anti-inflammatory properties and lower levels of some blood fats, the mechanisms behind these effects are poorly understood. The new research suggests that omega-3 has a direct effect on biological ageing by slowing down the rate at which protective caps on the ends of chromosomes shorten.

The caps, called telomeres, are made from copied strands of DNA and have a similar function to bookends or the plastic ends of shoelaces. They prevent the ends of chromosomes – the "packages" of DNA in the cell nucleus – becoming damaged and keep the DNA organised and contained.

Each time a cell divides, its telomeres get shorter until a critical point is reached. DNA then becomes damaged and the cell stops dividing, and may die. In this way, the telomere acts like a biological fuse.

The rate at which the fuse "burns" can vary both between individual people and individual cells. This is believed to have an impact on age-related diseases.

US scientists conducting the research looked at the effect of omega-3 fatty acids on telomere shortening in 608 hospital out-patients with heart disease. At the start of the study, measurements were taken of the length of chromosomal telomeres in the patients' white blood cells. Blood levels of the two fish-derived omega-3 fatty acids docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) were also measured.

The tests were carried out again after five years, and showed a clear correlation with omega-3 intake. Patients consuming the least omega-3 had the fastest rate of telomere shortening, while those in the top 25% of consumption levels had the slowest rate.

The scientists, led by Dr Ramin Farzaneh-Far of the University of California at San Francisco, wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association: "The present findings identify deceleration of telomere attrition as a potentially novel pathway for the anti-ageing effects of marine omega-3 fatty acids.

"In summary, among patients with stable coronary artery disease, there was an inverse relationship between baseline blood levels of marine omega-3 fatty acids and the rate of telomere shortening over five years ... These findings raise the possibility that omega-3 fatty acids may protect against cellular ageing in patients with coronary heart disease."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jan 2010 | 2:00 pm

Temple to Cat Goddess Discovered in Egypt

A limestone statue of the cat goddess Bastet discovered in Alexandria, Egypt. Photo: courtesy of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. The remains of a 2,200-year-old temple dedicated to an ancient Egyptian cat goddess have been discovered by archaeologists near Alexandria's ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Jan 2010 | 1:56 pm

Embryos Like to Be Rocked Like Babies (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Like babies that can be lulled to sleep with swaying, embryos also prefer to be rocked.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jan 2010 | 1:55 pm

Embryos Like to Be Rocked Like Babies

New in vitro fertilization technique rocks embryos, success rate soars for mice.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Jan 2010 | 1:47 pm

Fight to save dying plant species

A British botanist from Kew Gardens is on the island of St Helena to help save one of the world's rarest trees.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Jan 2010 | 12:43 pm

Poe Painting Presents Poet in New Light

Take a closer look at a painting of Edgar Allen Poe that shows the author's softer side.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Jan 2010 | 12:05 pm

Monkey Rivals Human at Nut-Cracking

Wild bearded capuchins in Brazil have been observed cracking tough palm nuts using hammer stones, with one particularly skillful monkey surpassing all others, according to a new study. (Illustration of (a) an adult female and (b) an adult male bearded ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Jan 2010 | 11:57 am

Underwater Treadmill: Immediate Payoff for Spinal Cord Victims

Sandra Stevens, a physical therapist at Middle Tennessee State University, is using an underwater treadmill to improve the lives of spinal cord patients. Some of them were only able to walk for a few minutes in their daily life, before ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Jan 2010 | 11:43 am

Insect Colonies Function Like Superorganisms

Entire insect colonies function in a manner similar to individual organisms, a new study says.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Jan 2010 | 11:35 am

Some Social Skills May Be Genetic

Social butterflies who shine at parties may get their edge from special genes that make them experts at recognizing faces. Scientists have found the strongest evidence to date that genes govern how well we keep track of who’s who.

The findings suggest that face-recognition and other cognitive skills may be separate from each other, and independent of general intelligence. This could help explain what makes one person good at math but bad at music, or good at spatial navigation but bad at language

“People have wondered for a long time what makes one person cognitively different from another person,” said cognitive psychologist Nancy Kanwisher of MIT, coauthor of the study published Jan. 7 in Current Biology. “Our study is one tiny piece of the answer to this question.”

The ability to recognize faces is not just handy for cocktail parties, it’s crucial for distinguishing friend from foe and facilitating social interactions. If face recognition increases our ability to fend off predators and find mates, there is an evolutionary drive to encode this ability in our genes.

To test this, Kanwisher’s team looked at whether the ability to recognize faces runs in the family. They found that identical twins, who share 100 percent of their genes, were more similar in their face-recognition ability than fraternal twins, who share only 50 percent of their genes. This suggests the ability to recognize faces is heritable.

“This is the strongest evidence for a role of genes in face recognition abilities in humans,” Kanwisher said.

Some scientists have proposed that IQ is a general factor: You are either smart at all mental abilities or weak across mental abilities. Others have suggested that each mental ability has its own separate hardware in the brain. The current results show that the latter is true, at least for face recognition.

“There’s an ongoing debate about whether the brain is divided into separate pieces that do completely independent things, or whether it’s a general-purpose device,” said psychologist Gary Marcus of New York University, who was not involved in the study. “This is some of the best evidence that genes could target a particular aspect of the mind.” 

It’s unclear how the genes affect recognition, Kanwisher said. One option is that they determine how well you measure distances between the eyes and mouth. Another possibility is that the genes may make you more extroverted, and spending more time with people helps you get better at recognizing faces.

“We just can’t tell which is true,” Kanwisher said. “Our study shows that genes exert a specific influence on face-recognition ability, but it does tell us which genes are involved, or how exactly they shape the relevant neural circuits.”

Though the new findings suggest that additional cognitive skills could be rooted in an independent set of genes as well, it may not be true for abilities. Language, for instance, evolved much later than face perception.

“This may mean that language depends less on genes that evolved specifically for language, and that it’s less separable from other aspects of the mind,” Marcus said.

Kanwisher and the study’s senior author, Jia Liu of Beijing Normal University, are planning future studies to examine the role of genes in language, spatial ability, math and a range of cognitive abilities.

Image: Flickr/sean_dreilinger

See Also:

• Think You’d Remember the Face of Your Torturer? Think Again
• Don’t Tell Geico: You May Be a Natural Born Bad Driver
• Human-Chimp Gene Comparison Hints at Roots of Language
• Double Hand Transplant Reawakens Brain Control

Follow us on Twitter @wiredscience, and on Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 19 Jan 2010 | 11:29 am

Climate body admits glacier error

The IPCC gave the wrong date for Himalayan glacier melt, but says it does not change the picture of climate change.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Jan 2010 | 11:10 am

Obituary: Hal Thirlaway

Head of Aldermaston's research into weapons testing underground

Hal Thirlaway, who has died aged 92, was the head of the British research group that made major contributions to the science of monitoring underground nuclear tests. By the late 1950s, nuclear-weapon states regularly tested weapons in the atmosphere, but public opinion was increasingly hostile to this highly polluting practice. A partial test ban treaty in 1963 banned atmospheric testing, but did not constrain underground testing, which continued unabated.

Underground tests, like earthquakes, generate seismic waves that may be detected far around the world, but seismology was still relatively primitive in 1960. So several nations invested in seismic facilities, to learn what they could about other nations' weapons programmes and to obtain valuable information for discussions on a comprehensive test ban treaty. In Britain, a group was set up at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, at Aldermaston, Berkshire. From 1961 to 1982 Thirlaway headed this group which, significantly, was located outside the security fence, at Blacknest, a nearby country house.

The unclassified nature of the programme meant that work at Blacknest could be discussed openly with seismologists from around the world, including the Soviet Union. The accessibility of the data ensured not just that Hal's staff could make excellent progress in working at the interface between science and diplomacy, but that universities could collaborate on seismological matters not directly related to treaty monitoring. In particular, Britain was the first to build phased arrays, which dramatically improved signal quality. An array was installed in Scotland, and, in co-operation with the host nations, in Canada, Australia and India. The data from these arrays was made widely available. Blacknest felt more like a university department than a government establishment.

A comprehensive test-ban treaty remained on the agenda for more than 30 years before agreement in 1996. During that time Thirlaway's group did major work on the seismic magnitude (the Richter scale) at which signals could be detected beyond the borders of a firing country; how magnitude relates to explosive yield; how to distinguish between explosions and earthquakes; how accurately they can be pinpointed, and whether there are ways of hiding the seismic signals.

Thirlaway was born at Morro Velho in Brazil, where his father was a mining engineer, but was educated in Newcastle upon Tyne, attending Gosforth primary and grammar schools and going on to Armstrong College, then part of Durham University, where he graduated in geology in 1938. At the start of the second world war, he went to radar school and enlisted in 1940, serving in a searchlight unit.

He volunteered for service overseas and was posted to Rawalpindi, in the Potwar Plateau near Islamabad, Pakistan. The unit was housed in a factory making mule packs for the north-west frontier. There he met his future wife, Billie, an army doctor in the Indian Medical Service. In 1943 he was posted to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Billie to Burma; she, by then a captain, successfully applied for a transfer to Ceylon to be with Thirlaway, still a lieutenant.

At the end of the war, Professor AW Mailvaganam, of Ceylon University, suggested Thirlaway contact Edward Bullard at the geophysics department at Cambridge University, where he completed his PhD in 1950 on a study of gravity across Ireland and Britain. While at Cambridge, Thirlaway accepted a post at Sydney University, but then moved to Pakistan to help Unesco establish a geophysical observatory in Quetta. He remained head of the observatory there until he moved to Blacknest.

One of Thirlaway's key contributions was the recognition of the importance of observing seismic waves from earthquakes and explosions 3,000-9,000km from the source, where signals are less complex than those recorded at short range. This concept of exploiting a relatively clean "window" on to the source has been a guiding principle at Blacknest.

Thirlaway's success can be attributed mostly to his ability to work effectively with people from different walks of life: his staff, university academics, and seismologists from abroad, as well as diplomats and politicians. At one test-ban conference I attended, there were numerous adjournments for participants to call their capitals for further instructions; Thirlaway was just strolling in the gardens. In recognition of his contribution to seismology he was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society's gold medal in 1972.

Away from work, he derived enormous pleasure from flyfishing. He served as president of the Flyfishers' Club and was a member of the Piscatorial Society, of which he was librarian and a water warden on the River Test. He is survived by Billie and two daughters.

• Henry (Hal) Ivison Shipley Thirlaway, seismologist, born 19 August 1917; died 30 November 2009

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jan 2010 | 11:06 am

Temple to cat god unearthed in Egypt

Ptolemaic-era building may have been dedicated to deity Bastet in city founded by Alexander the Great, say archaeologists

A 2,200-year-old temple that may have been dedicated to the ancient Egyptian cat god Bastet has been unearthed in Alexandria, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said today.

The ruins of the Ptolemaic-era building were discovered by Egyptian archaeologists in the port city founded by Alexander the Great around 331BC. Alexandria was the seat of the Greek-speaking Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt for 300 years until the suicide of Queen Cleopatra.

The council's statement said the temple was thought to belong to Queen Berenice II, wife of Ptolemy III who ruled between 246BC–222BC.

Mohammed Abdel-Maqsood, the Egyptian archaeologist who led the excavation team, said the discovery may be the first trace of the long-sought location of Alexandria's royal quarter.

The large number of statues depicting Bastet found in the ruins, he said, suggested that this may be the first Ptolemaic-era temple dedicated to the cat god to be discovered in Alexandria. This would indicate that the worship of the ancient Egyptian cat-god continued during the later, Greek-influenced, Ptolemaic period

Statues of other ancient Egyptian deities were also found in the ruins, he added.

Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist, said the temple may have been used in later times as a quarry as evidenced by the large number of missing stone blocks.

The temple was found in the Kom el-Dekka area near the modern city's main train station and home to a Roman-era amphitheatre and well-preserved mosaics.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jan 2010 | 11:06 am

Farming is in the blood of British men

The first farmers to arrive in Britain outbred the native hunter-gatherer men and have left their mark in modern males' Y chromosome

Most men in Britain are descended from the first farmers to migrate across Europe from the Near East 10,000 years ago, scientists say.

Ancient farmers left their genetic mark on modern males by breeding more successfully than indigenous hunter-gatherer men as they made their way west, a study has found.

As a result, more than 60% of British men, and nearly all of those in Ireland, can trace their Y chromosome back to the agricultural revolution, or more precisely the sexual success of the men behind it.

The farmers' Y chromosome becomes more common in the west of England and reaches a national peak of 78% in Cornwall, scientists found.

Men with surnames including Titchmarsh and Haythornthwaite are among the most likely to carry the farmers' Y chromosome, known as R1b1b2. The Y chromosome is passed down the male line only, from father to son.

"These farmers expanded into territories with small and sparse hunter-gather populations and moved on as time passed. The Y chromosome got caught up in that and it surfed the wave of expansion," said Mark Jobling, a geneticist at Leicester University and an author of the study.

The rise of farming is one of the most important cultural transformations in the history of modern humans. Increased food production allowed communities to settle rather than wander in search for food, a shift that heralded the huge expansion of the human population.

The first European farmers came from the "fertile crescent" that stretched from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, but experts have argued whether the westerly spread of agriculture was driven by the cultural transmission of ideas and technology, or by migrating farmers.

Researchers led by Jobling collected DNA samples from more than 2,500 men across Europe. Around 80% of the men had the R1b1b2 type of Y chromosome, making it the most common lineage on the continent.

A map showing the distribution of the chromosome across Britain reveals that it became increasingly common but less genetically diverse from the south east to the north west. The analysis, published in the journal PLoS Biology, suggests the R1b1b2 Y chromosome entered the country with the earliest farmers in the south east and gradually spread west as they migrated.

Genetic tests on women showed that most are descendants of hunter-gatherer females. "To us, this suggests a reproductive advantage for farming males over indigenous hunter-gatherer males during the switch from hunting and gathering to farming," said Patricia Balaresque, a co-author of the study.

"Maybe back then, it was just sexier to be a farmer."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jan 2010 | 11:00 am

Women's Earning Power Shifts Economics of Marriage

In a trend that bucks antiquated gender roles, more men are apparently marrying into money.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Jan 2010 | 10:50 am

Villagers clear up toxic rocket debris

Hydrazines may cause respiratory problems, nausea and organ damage as 2,000 villagers recruited to clear up in Guangxi

Questions are being asked about the environmental health impact of China's space programme amid allegations that thousands of villagers are being recruited to clear up booster rockets and other toxic debris.

According to the South China Morning Post, residents below the flight path of last Sunday's satellite launch were under financial and political pressure to collect the first-stage fallout of the Long March rocket, despite warnings of contamination by the carcinogenic rocket fuel, unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine, or UDMH.

The Hong Kong-based newspaper said the scavengers in Guangxi province were rewarded with a finders fee if they found pieces of fuselage or other items, and that the local Communist party had made retrieval a political mission.

"Many times the debris drops in a remote location in some deep forest," it quoted a member of the Civilian Air Defence in Guizhou saying. "There is no way to retrieve it with machines. We have no other choice but to rely on the hands and shoulders of farmers to transport debris to a more accessible location."

Hydrazines, which are used as a starter fuel, are highly toxic and can be absorbed through the skin. At low levels, they can induce respiratory problems and nausea. Prolonged exposure to larger quantities can damage the liver and reproductive organs, as well as causing tumours. Concerns about similar chemicals were one of the reasons why people were warned not to approach debris from the space shuttle Columbia after it exploded above Texas.

Officials in Guangxi were unavailable when the Guardian requested clarification of the clean-up measures, but the People's Daily has carried images of giant chunks of debris that landed in and around villages in the area.

According to the China News Agency, hunks of metal damaged a government office in Dadi town, fell into the kitchen of a local home and started small fires in the mountain forests near Renhe and Xiaoshui villages. It said 100,000 people had been evacuated before the launch, 2,000 personnel had been mobilised for the clear-up and compensation would be paid to farmers whose land was destroyed.

It did not specifically mention involvement by villagers in retrieving the debris, but said communist cadres and "civilian volunteer soldiers" played an important role in the operation.

More than 50 similar clear-up missions have been undertaken in the past despite calls for the launch area to be relocated away from such a densely populated area. The fallout area covers seven cities, 19 counties and more than 2 million people

Jiang Jianmin, Communist party chief of the Guizhou Civilian Air Defence Office told reporters last month that the military had handed over retrieval duties in 1987.

"The boosters and debris weigh up to several tonnes and fall from height of tens of thousands of meters. The power is just like a bomb," he told the Guizhou Daily. "We use civilian volunteer soldiers to patrol the area. Their job is to keep watch and make sure everyone have been evacuated, to look out for falling objects, fires and to listen for the explosion when the boosters start to fall from rocket."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jan 2010 | 10:28 am

NASA Builds Greenest Gov Building Ever

A green building called the Sustainability Base is being constructed at NASA’s Ames in Mountain View, Calif., and will serve as a testbed for intelligent systems that monitor and manage indoor conditions. The technology -- mostly software -- for the ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Jan 2010 | 10:07 am

Strong Green Reconstruction for Haiti

The overwhelming destruction in Haiti reminds one engineer of the shoddy buildings that collapsed during the massive 2008 quake in Sichuan, China. For him, it's not too early to think about sustainable reconstruction. Civil and environmental professor Yan Xiao at ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Jan 2010 | 10:04 am

Astrium develops space power idea

Europe's biggest space company, EADS Astrium, is seeking partners to fly a demonstration solar power mission in orbit.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Jan 2010 | 9:56 am

Love in London is as rare as finding aliens

LONDON (Reuters) - Romance may happen every day, but finding true love in London is as rare as aliens in the galaxy, says one London-based economist.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Jan 2010 | 8:47 am

Otter spotted up a tall tree

A teenage otter baffles experts with her tree-climbing tendencies.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Jan 2010 | 7:17 am

World's Smallest Hot Rod Made Using Nanotechnology

Researchers have built a new super-small "nanodragster" that improves on prior nanocar designs and could speed up efforts to craft tiny factories for making atomically precise products.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Jan 2010 | 6:58 am

Story of Newton's encounter with apple goes online (AP)

AP - It always falls down. That's how the apple helped Isaac Newton.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Jan 2010 | 6:03 am

Workplace Blame Is Contagious and Detrimental

Blaming others for mistakes is contagious.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Jan 2010 | 6:02 am

The French secret of fat | Agnès Poirier

We French eat four times as much butter and 60% more cheese than the average American, but we stay thin. How do we do it?

Never have I learnt so much about food's nutrient content and chemical formulas as in my years spent in Britain and North America. Revealingly, food in those two countries is reduced to unappealing scientific denominations such as "saturated fats", "fatty acids", "trans fats", "monounsaturates" and "TFAs", to name just a few mentioned in today's Guardian article about how more than a thin spread of butter a day is bad for you.

Growing up in France, I never thought about food in those clinical terms, and even as a teenager concerned with my looks, never did I view cuisine as the temple of the triumvirate protein-lipid-glucid. Food, to most of my compatriots, is a matter of colours, savours and flavours. The emergence of the terms gluten-free, fat-free and sugar-free in the 1980s was an Anglo-Saxon deformity. Why would you want to eat a tasteless fat-free pizza or a sugar-free blueberry muffin? Just don't eat them or eat the real thing. The notion of pleasure seemed to have never existed.

As a child and still now whenever I can get my hands on it, I'd eat spoonfuls of salted butter by Jean-Yves Bordier from St Malo: so good, it stands alone and doesn't need to be spread on bread. My huge daily intake of butter still baffles my British friends, who have graded it as "suicidal level".

However, since when has butter been bad for you? There is nothing I like more than half a loaf of quatre-quarts, a Breton recipe made of a quarter eggs, a quarter butter, a quarter flour and a quarter sugar. With cheese, I have a particular fondness for Chaource and Brillat-Savarin, a triple-cream creation from the famous Androuet brothers. Named after the great 18th-century epicurean and gastronome, it is so rich that they call it the "foie gras of cheese". The (English) man of my life used to scowl – while savouring it with delight – "do you want to kill me or what?" each time I brought Brillat-Savarin back from Paris. In Brittany, Kouig Amman, literally "butter cake", is a must. Need I go on? My diet is very rich and yet I am thin. So, is this what they call the French paradox? Could be.

Wikipedia says: "The average French person consumed 108 grams per day of fat from animal sources in 2002 while the average American consumed only 72. The French eat four times as much butter, 60% more cheese and nearly three times as much pork. Although the French consume only slightly more fat overall (171g/day v 157g/day), they consume much more saturated fat because Americans consume a far larger proportion of fat in the form of vegetable oil, with most of that being soybean oil. However, according to data from the British Heart Foundation in 1999, rate of death from coronary heart disease among males aged 35–74 years was 115 per 100,000 people in the US, but only 83 per 100,000 in France."

For the Franco-American guru Mireille Guiliano, the paradox lies mainly in smaller portions, the conviviality and sharing of food, and the pleasure taken from such experience. I guess she's probably right. The less obsessed you are with calories and the more you are with choosing the best and simplest products, the better you feel and the thinner you are. Essayez donc!

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Jan 2010 | 6:00 am