Battery-less radios developed

Scientists report a 2.4GHz/915MHz wake-up receiver which consumes only 51µW power. This record low power achievement opens the door to battery-less or energy-harvesting based radios for a wide range of applications including long-range RFID and wireless sensor nodes for logistics, smart buildings, healthcare etc.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Bird-from-dinosaur theory of evolution challenged: Was it the other way around?

A new study provides yet more evidence that birds did not descend from ground-dwelling theropod dinosaurs, experts say, and continues to challenge decades of accepted theories about the evolution of flight.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Sporting Prowess Through Brain Power

Expert sportsmen are quicker to observe and react to their opponents’ moves than novice players, exhibiting enhanced activation of the cortical regions of the brain. More experienced sports players are better able to detect early anticipatory clues from opposing players’ body movements, giving them a split second advantage in preparing an appropriate response.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Anorexics found to have excess fat -- in their bone marrow

Researchers have found that girls with anorexia, despite being emaciated, have strikingly high levels of fat in their bone marrow. This can be visualized in MRIs of the knee. The researchers believe that malnutrition causes hormonal alterations that push mesenchymal stem cells in the bone marrow to form fat cells rather than bone-forming cells. This may explain why patients with anorexia have bone loss.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Biological risks of eating reptiles

Reptiles are bred in captivity primarily for their skins, but some restaurants and population groups also want them for their meat. A study shows that eating these animals can have side effects that call into question the wisdom of eating this 'delicacy.'
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Butter leads to lower blood fats than olive oil, study finds

High blood fat levels normally raise the cholesterol values in the blood, which in turn elevates the risk of atherosclerosis and heart attack. Now a new study shows that butter leads to considerably less elevation of blood fats after a meal compared with olive oil and a new type of canola and flaxseed oil. The difference was stronger in men than in women.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Low IQ among strongest predictors of cardiovascular disease -- second only to cigarette smoking in large population study

While lower intelligence scores have been associated with a raised risk of cardiovascular disease, no study has so far compared the relative strength of this association with other established risk factors. Now, a large study has found that lower intelligence scores were associated with higher rates of cardiovascular disease and total mortality at a greater level of magnitude than found with any other risk factor except smoking.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Thirty-eight percent of world's surface in danger of desertification

Researchers have measured the degradation of the planet's soil using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a scientific methodology that analyses the environmental impact of human activities, and which now for the first time includes indicators on desertification. The results show that 38 percent of the world is made up of arid regions at risk of desertification.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Climate 'tipping points' may arrive without warning, says top forecaster

A new study by a top ecological forecaster says it is harder than experts thought to predict when sudden shifts in Earth's natural systems will occur -- a worrisome finding for scientists trying to identify the tipping points that could push climate change into an irreparable global disaster.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Research could lead to way to halt deadly immune response

Scientists have published new details of their research into the complement reaction, an immune system response that kills thousands annually. Researchers have teased out the molecular process that can shut down a marauding, often deadly immune response that kills thousands each year who suffer battlefield casualties, heart attacks, strokes, automobile accidents and oxygen deprivation, according to a new article.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Changes proposed to key psychiatry manual

Controversial revision alters diagnostic definitions.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/DMOYRE7s_go" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 10 Feb 2010 | 7:25 am

Finns host Baltic clean-up talks

Leaders from Baltic countries meet in Finland to discuss how to clean up what is said to be the world's most polluted sea.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Feb 2010 | 3:30 am

Solar observatory set for launch

The US space agency will attempt to launch its latest Sun probe on Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Feb 2010 | 3:27 am

NASA to Launch New Solar Probe Today (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - NASA's newest sun probe, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), is poised to launch Wednesday morning on a quest to study our closest star.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 2:46 am

Japan wants deal to scale down 'scientific' whaling (AFP)

AFP - Japan will propose scaling down its troubled annual whale hunt in Antarctica on condition it is allowed to whale commercially in its own coastal waters, a fisheries official said Wednesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 2:40 am

Toyota starts fixing Priuses recalled in Japan (AP)

AP - Prius owners in Japan are rushing to dealers for repairs a day after Toyota's president announced a global recall for a glitch in the car's antilock brake system.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 2:16 am

First video of clouded leopard

The Sundaland clouded leopard, a new recently described species of big cat, is caught on camera in the wild for the first time.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 10 Feb 2010 | 2:12 am

UK firm gets final green light for stem cell trial (Reuters)

Reuters - British biotech company ReNeuron and a team of doctors in Scotland have won final approval to start a pioneering clinical trial to assess whether stem cell therapy can help patients disabled by stroke.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 2:06 am

Space shuttle Endeavour pulls in at space station (AP)

AP - Shuttle Endeavour arrived to a warm welcome at the International Space Station early Wednesday, delivering a new room and observation deck that will come close to completing construction 200 miles above Earth.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 1:46 am

We need to realise Africa's potential on agriculture

African farmers must be able to access the knowledge and tools they need to unleash agriculture's full potential for the continent, says Sithembile Ndema

In the developed world, people often refer to sustainability in terms of what might be lost to future generations compared with what is enjoyed today. The threat of food insecurity, of a changing climate, of disrupted marketplaces all paint a picture of potential famine, drought and widespread poverty.

Yet in Africa, that future is already our present.

Climate change is exacerbating an already poor food supply in Africa, leaving farmers less capable of providing for themselves, let alone their communities. The problems vary across the continent – droughts, flash floods, early rains, late frosts – but they all threaten to make farmers' traditional planting knowledge obsolete. A recent report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) projects that wheat, rice and maize yields in sub-Saharan Africa are expected to drop by 34%, 15% and 10% respectively by 2050.

After years of neglect, agriculture must again be recognised as a fundamental driver of economic growth. Some 60% of Africans rely on agriculture for their livelihood, four-fifths of whom are women. And throughout sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture is a key source of foreign exchange (for example, about 80% of Malawi's foreign exchange comes from agricultural exports). Consequently, people are recognising that the relationship between climate change and agriculture must be addressed in tandem with other policy and programme outcomes.

African farmers must be able to access the knowledge and tools they need to unleash agriculture's full potential for the continent. Existing knowledge must reach more farmers, new research must focus on Africa-specific solutions and progressive policies must support infrastructure and education programmes to build capacity.

The winner of last year's World Food Prize is a good example of how African research can produce tangible results. Dr Gebisa Ejeta, an Ethiopian plant scientist, has worked for 30 years to develop improved varieties of sorghum for farmers. Sorghum, largely unknown in the developed world, is the key staple food for more than 500 million Africans.

Ejeta first developed a drought-tolerant sorghum variety, which boosted crop productivity by up to five times the average yield. Later, he enhanced this new variety even further by making it more resistant to Striga, a parasitic weed that devastates cereal crops and causes an estimated US$7bn in losses per year in Africa alone.

But African-born innovations do not have to come from science alone.

One of my responsibilities at FANRPAN is to coordinate a programme aimed at getting women farmers more involved in shaping policies that affect their daily lives, from the local distribution of subsidised seed to the regional coordination of export markets to enable trade. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the WARM project – Women Accessing Realigned Markets – is predicated on the simple fact that agricultural policies should reflect the behaviours and needs of the African farmers who are most impacted by them if they are to be successful.

And as African ability continues to develop, it can give us more opportunities to combine our efforts with other scientists, policy makers, NGOs and industry leaders worldwide. One such global collaboration is the Farming First coalition, comprised of more than 125 organisations whose goal is to work together to develop a locally sustainable value chain for global agriculture.

Why, for instance, are fertilizer prices in Tanzania 50% higher than they are in Thailand? Is there greater scope for irrigation to boost the 96% of African agriculture that relies solely on rainfall? And how can African soil be better used to capture carbon from the atmosphere, providing additional income to farmers and helping mitigate climate change in the process?

The green shoots of progress are already visible, but still more can be done. We must continue to translate knowledge into action.

Back in 2003, African leaders launched the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in an effort to boost agricultural growth rates by 6%. Later that year, they endorsed the Maputo Declaration, which builds on CAADP's framework by calling on African governments to commit at least 10% of their public expenditure to agriculture and rural development. Then, in 2006, leaders in Abuja called for an increased access to fertilizer from an average 8kg per hectare to 50kg per hectare (still less than half the amounts used throughout Asia).

Similarly, in the midst of the Copenhagen climate negotiations in December, a group of 21 developed countries, led by New Zealand, announced commitments to fund more research on agriculture-related emissions and on how to trap more carbon in the soil. New understanding in this area may help agriculture become part of carbon markets, including the Clean Development Mechanism itself.

Equally, a number of effective public-private partnerships, both large and small, are leveraging the skills and resources of various sectors to enhance outcomes for farmers. Among others, these include research programmes, farmer extension projects and entrepreneurship training to make markets more directly accessible to producers.

Africa's farmers have a wealth of expertise and potential; these need to be accessed, enhanced and expanded.

• Sithembile Ndema, from Zimbabwe, works at the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN). She is in London this week to attend the inaugural One Young World, summit, a global conference for young leaders under the age of 25, which ends today.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 10 Feb 2010 | 1:20 am

Shuttle Astronauts Make Midnight Docking at Space Station (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - The space shuttle Endeavour and its astronaut crew made a midnight docking at the International Space Station Wednesday to deliver NASA's last big room and a new set of windows to the high-flying laboratory.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 1:17 am

Penguin future looks perkier with marine zone: study (AFP)

AFP - A ban on fishing around a colony of threatened penguins in South Africa has brought swift benefits to the beleaguered birds, marine biologists reported on Wednesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 10 Feb 2010 | 1:10 am

Putting a value on nature could set scene for true green economy||Pavan Sukhdev

Much environmental damage has been caused by the way we do business. Is there a way of changing our economic models from being part of the problem into part of the solution?

The living fabric of this planet - its ecosystems and biodiversity - are in rapid decline worldwide. This is visible and palpable and is variously due to commercial over-exploitation, or population pressures, or a raft of unhelpful policies, or some combination. At a very fundamental human level, however, it is due to the lack of awareness that there is a problem with human society being disconnected from nature.

Economics is blamed for much of our woes these days and credited with little so two questions need to be asked: is economics part of the problem of ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss? And is it part of the solution?

The answer to the first question is a fairly obvious "yes". The economic invisibility of nature in our dominant economic model is both a symptom and a root cause of this problem. We value what we price, but nature's services - providing clean air, fresh water, soil fertility, flood prevention, drought control, climate stability, etc - are, mostly, not traded in any markets and not priced. These so-called "ecosystem services" are all "public goods" provided free. Our tendency to value private wealth creation over improving public wealth - creating a healthier natural world, for example - doesn't help.

We cannot manage what we do not measure and we are not measuring either the value of nature's benefits or the costs of their loss. We seem to be navigating the new and unfamiliar waters of ecological scarcities and climate risks with faulty instruments. Replacing our obsolete economic compass could help economics become part of the solution to reverse our declining ecosystems and biodiversity loss.

We need a new compass to set different policy directions, change incentive structures, reduce or phase out perverse subsidies, and engage business leaders in a vision for a new economy. Holistic economics – or economics that recognise the value of nature's services and the costs of their loss – is needed to set the stage for a new "green economy".

The crisis of biodiversity loss can only begin to be addressed in earnest if the values of biodiversity and ecosystem services are fully recognised and represented in decision-making. This may reveal the true nature of the trade-offs being made: between different ecosystem services (food provision or carbon storage), between different beneficiaries (private gain by some, public loss to many), at different scales (local costs, global benefits) and across different time horizons. When the value of ecosystem services are understood and included, what may have looked like an "acceptable" trade-off may appear quite unacceptable.

Conversely, benefits that were unrecognised become visible, and worth preserving. In Costa Rica, payments to farmers who conserve forests on their land rather than destroy them for low-earning pasture have become almost a national environment programme. Soil and water benefits flow to farmlands all around them. And this was funded by a small 3% tax on transport.

In India, ecological restoration and water harvesting is paid for by a national rural employment guarantee scheme, employing millions. In San Francisco and New York, ecological infrastructure is the reality: reservoirs and lake watersheds surrounded by well-managed forests provide cities with a freshwater supply. Meanwhile, biomimicry - using nature's methods to solve human problems, such as Velcro which was inspired by dog hair and burrs - is offering opportunities for innovative businesses across both developing and developed nations.

These are all examples of new economic models for government and business in which both private opportunity and "public goods" are being created and rewarded by a new partnership between business, citizens, and their government.

Teeb (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) has assembled a library of suggestions for policy-makers on how to use good economics to conserve wild nature (TEEB for Policy-Makers, November 2009). In June, TEEB will publish a parallel document on what role business can play in changing the rules of the game and herald a society that profits and progresses yet lives in harmony with nature.

• Pavan Sukhdev is a special adviser to the United Nations environment programme's green economy initiative and study leader for Teeb. He is speaking at the annual Earthwatch Oxford lecture tonight, co-hosted by environmental charity Earthwatch and strategy consultancy and thinktank SustainAbility

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 10 Feb 2010 | 12:00 am

Second big snowstorm slams East Coast (Reuters)

Reuters - The second major snowstorm in less than a week slammed the East Coast from Washington to New York on Tuesday, forcing the United Nations to close and Congress to curtail legislative action.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Feb 2010 | 11:30 pm

Shuttle Endeavour docks with space station

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The space shuttle Endeavour and its six astronauts arrived at the International Space Station on Tuesday, carrying the station's last two main components.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 9 Feb 2010 | 11:14 pm

Plans to expand Britain's space industry into £40bn a year business

Report proposes satellites to monitor greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and broadcast hi-tech television and internet services

A constellation of satellites that gaze down on Earth will be the centrepiece of Britain's space mission if plans being put before ministers today are adopted.

The proposals from the government-appointed "Space Innovation and Growth Team" lay out a 20-year strategy that aims to expand Britain's space industry sixfold into a £40bn a year business and create 100,000 new jobs by 2030.

But one critic has claimed the proposals show "underwhelming" scientific ambition.

Under the plans, the space-based observatories could be used to monitor activity in war zones and gauge the progress of construction projects, crop harvesting and deforestation. They could also be used to police greenhouse gas emissions from foreign countries and even individual cities, according to the report by industry experts.

It urges the government to double its spending on space projects to £550m a year by 2020, a move that would lift Britain into the top 10 space-funding nations in the world. Today, the UK ranks 21st globally in terms of government support for space missions.

"The ball is just starting to roll on Earth observation and other space-based technologies and we need to be at the front of this to capture the market," said the head of the team, Terry Coxall, at the European space company Astrium. "We need government and companies to think about what they will want from space not now, but in five to 10 years' time."

He added: "Suppose the government wants to plan and monitor a high-speed rail link between London and Edinburgh. On Google Earth the images are updated about once a year. With an Earth observatory, you could have a fresh view from space every day and monitor progress from the computer on your desk. You don't need to trudge down to the site in your wellies."

The private space sector is a rare success story of British industry, growing at a steady 9% a year since 1999. It now contributes £6.5bn to UK GDP. Industry experts believe that with shrewd investment, Britain can grab 10% of a global market expected to be worth £400bn by 2030.

The report says industry needs to boost funding for research and development and raise more than £5bn for public finance initiatives to make headway in satellite technology in anticipation of a surge in demand for high-definition and 3D television broadcasts via space. Broadcasting programmes via satellites reduces costs and carbon emissions because it can be powered by the sun instead of using energy-hungry ground-based transmitters.

Solar-powered satellites will increasingly be used as orbiting internet hubs, too, a move that many scientists believe will be necessary to keep the carbon footprint of the internet under control as usage soars.

The report does not recommend that Britain pays into the European Space Agency's astronaut programme, despite Tim Peake, a former army helicopter pilot, being selected as the first Briton to join the agency's astronaut corps last year. Instead, the UK should use its backing of other space projects to argue for places on human exploration missions.

Professor Mark Sims at Leicester University's Space Research Centre said government and industry funding was now critical to take the proposals forward. "If the UK doesn't exploit the space market someone else will and we will be left behind. We are in a good position because of our historical investment in space, but we are at a tipping point. We cannot live on our past glories."

But Ian Crawford, a planetary scientist at Birkbeck College in London, said the report was underwhelming in terms of its scientific ambitions. In 2007, 14 of the world's space agencies signed a "global exploration strategy" that coordinates robotic and potential human missions to planets in the inner solar system. "The report doesn't carry that momentum on. This was the UK's chance to push for a leading role in the strategy to explore space."

Lord Drayson, the science minister, announced last year that Britain will open its own space agency in Harwell, Oxfordshire, to coordinate future space missions. The report calls on the government to fight for leadership of three upcoming European Space Agency missions as a means of gaining crucial experience in managing space projects.

"We need to play hardball to get the lead on missions rather than leaving it all to France and Germany," Coxall said. "If you are leading a mission you learn so much more and that puts you in a strong position for doing the commercial work that can spin off from it."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 9 Feb 2010 | 11:00 pm

Sweet Tooth in Children May Be Linked to Alcoholism (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Most kids won't turn down a sugary treat, but it turns out some children prefer more intense sweetness than others. Those kids drawn to sweeter-than-cola drinks are also more likely to have a family history of alcoholism and depressive symptoms, a new study finds.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Feb 2010 | 10:25 pm

Welcome To Our Honeycomb-Centered Interstellar Cavity

A map of the Local Cavity (white region) with the sun located in the center. Dark regions represent dense interstellar gases and the small triangles represent the locations of the stars used in the analysis. From this perspective we are ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Feb 2010 | 10:18 pm

Sweet Tooth in Children May Be Linked to Alcoholism

Children who like intense sweet taste more likely to have family history of alcoholism.
Source: Livescience.com | 9 Feb 2010 | 10:18 pm

Genes Play Role in Prognosis With Non-Small Cell Lung Cancers (HealthDay)

HealthDay - TUESDAY, Feb. 9 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. scientists have discovered there are genetic profiles that play a part in prognosis with non-small cell lung cancers, and those profiles differ depending on the age and gender of the patient.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 9 Feb 2010 | 9:49 pm

Strategy to grow UK space sector

The UK space industry could be employing thousands more skilled workers and turning over up to £40bn a year, a report claims.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Feb 2010 | 9:05 pm

Badger culls 'not cost effective'

New research suggests that badger culling is unlikely to be a cost-effective way of controlling bovine tuberculosis in cattle.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Feb 2010 | 6:00 pm

Researchers find sex-specific lung cancer genes

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lung cancer is often dramatically different in women than it is in men, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday in another study that suggests ways to tailor treatment for cancer patients.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 9 Feb 2010 | 5:38 pm

Badger culls fail to halt spread of cattle tuberculosis

Widespread culls of infected herds has only short-term success, survey by Imperial College and Zoological Society of London finds

• Badger cull goes ahead in Wales
• Comment: The war on nature resumes

Badger culling is unlikely to halt the spread of tuberculosis in British cattle herds, according to a survey of disease in regions where culls were trialled.

Widespread and repeated culls reduced the numbers of infected cattle, but the disease returned to its original level four years after the programme ended, scientists found. Managing badger populations to stop them spreading TB to cattle cost more than the impact of the disease, researchers from Imperial College and the Zoological Society of London said.

Farmers have urged the government to permit a large-scale cull to deal with the effects of the cattle TB, but in England the measure has been ruled out. The Welsh assembly is poised to go ahead with a cull to tackle the disease in one of its hotspot areas. Professor Christl Donnelly, of Imperial College London, said that if a cull were to be undertaken, it would have to be widespread and repeated.

Donnelly led a team that checked for TB in cattle in and around 100 sq km areas where badger culling was trialled. Badgers were culled proactively at 10 sites and "reactively" at 10 others sites, where culling took place only when cattle fell ill with the disease. Badgers were not culled in a further 10 regions.

In areas where culling was repeated annually, cases of TB fell 23.2%, but in the area immediately surrounding the cull zone, disease rates rose by 24.5%. The rise was due to surviving badgers ranging farther as their territories expanded.

There was a net benefit of culling only if the area was sufficiently large for the fall in disease inside the cull zone to outweigh a rise around the edges.

After culling ceased, the number of infected herds in the areas was reduced by 42% between one and three-and-a-half years after the final cull, although the benefits had disappeared after four years.

A sustained five-year cull in an area of 150 sq km would prevent the infection of 22.6 herds, the study found, saving about £610,000. But a widespread cull over 150 sq km using trapping, snaring or gassing would cost between £1.35m and £2.14m, outstripping the savings, the researchers calculated. The study is published in the journal Plos One.

"If you are going to undertake culling, it should be widespread, co-ordinated and repeated," Donnelly said, adding that the Welsh assembly should "seriously consider" the prospect of a badger vaccine, which is being deployed in half a dozen TB hotspots in England this year.

Dr Christianne Glossop, the chief veterinary officer for Wales, said: "What we are proposing is to combine a limited cull of badgers with strict cattle control measures within a defined area over a sustained period. Although there are similarities between the [trial] and the pilot area, the differences are so significant to prevent true comparison of the results and we are confident of a much longer-term success rate as a result. In the last 10 years we have spent almost £100,000,000 on compensation alone in Wales. We can't let this situation continue unchecked."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 9 Feb 2010 | 5:05 pm

The future of European research

With a new research commissioner arriving in Brussels, and big policy changes on the cards, explains how scientists could be affected.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 9 Feb 2010 | 4:26 pm

Spain's vision for science

Science minister Cristina Garmendia outlines her plans for research across Europe, and at home.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 9 Feb 2010 | 4:24 pm

Snowmageddon Brings Icicles of Doom

Snowmageddon churns along here in the Washington, DC metro area, preparing to bring us a possible 6-16 inches more of the white stuff (argh, Snowverdose!) today and tomorrow. And as we prepare to break some snowiest winter records (just 10 ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Feb 2010 | 4:16 pm

IM Interview: Nuclear Energy and the Future of Humanity

Does human civilization need nuclear energy if it's to survive the next century? Michael Reilly chats with nuclear scientist Hae-Yong Jeong to find out.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm

How is Google Buzz Different from Facebook and Twitter?

Google announced Google Buzz today, a service intended for the social networking crowd that turns a normal Gmail account into a social media powerhouse.
Source: Livescience.com | 9 Feb 2010 | 3:17 pm

Haiti Facing New Phase of Health Crisis

Nearly a month after the quake, Haiti's people -- particularly children -- are vulnerable to malnutrition and severe illness.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Feb 2010 | 2:50 pm

Study shows why it is so scary to lose money

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People are afraid to lose money and an unusual study released on Monday explains why -- the brain's fear center controls the response to a gamble.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 9 Feb 2010 | 2:24 pm

3-D Movies are Harder to Pirate, for Now

The market for knockoff films in 3-D is currently nonexistent, because almost no one has the means to watch them at home.
Source: Livescience.com | 9 Feb 2010 | 2:07 pm

Underdog Theory Debunked

Favored teams work hardest when up against the underdog.
Source: Livescience.com | 9 Feb 2010 | 1:58 pm

Loud Music Linked to Pounding Headaches

Listening to one or two hours of music every day was associated with a pounding headache, study finds.
Source: Livescience.com | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:59 pm

World's Smallest Solar-Powered Sensor Runs Almost Forever

A tiny solar-powered sensor, smaller than Abe Lincoln's head on a penny, can supply almost perpetual energy.
Source: Livescience.com | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:43 pm

Testing time for stem cells

Industry turns to cell lines for drug screens.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:36 pm

Scientists find gene variant link to aging cells

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have found specific genetic variants which may explain why some people age earlier than others and say their findings have important implications for understanding cancer and age-related diseases.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:33 pm

Season shifts 'alter food chains'

The earlier arrival of spring in the UK appears to be throwing food chains out of synchronisation, a study suggests.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:32 pm

For the Big Storm, No Certain Terms

Meteorologists would like nothing better than to be able to tell you in no uncertain terms about the causes and effects of major weather events, but the truth is, day in and day out, the system they are trying to ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:15 pm

A Peek at Wired’s Ultra-Geeky Super Bowl Party

SAN FRANCISCO – More than 100 million Americans watched Sunday’s Super Bowl, but here at Wired.com, a couple dozen of our readers can probably brag they had the strangest viewing experience. They were strapped up with sensors that measured their body’s physiological reactions to what was happening during the game and commercials.

With the help of Boston-based research firm Innerscope, we converted Wired’s cafeteria into a makeshift sports bar complete with 6 HDTVs gathered from around the office and of course, Beer Robot and greasy pizza.

Participants in the study had to follow the rules laid down by Innerscope, which meant they couldn’t really get up during the game, except for bathroom breaks, and they had to turn off their phones. But they were all incredibly good sports, and the pizza and beer deliveries to their seats helped.

If you want the participants’ point of view, Andrew Mager, has already written up his experience at ZDNet.

Innerscope got a ton of data out of the study and they are furiously processing it now. The company’s president, Brian Levine, sent back a quick report from his flight back to Boston.

Google’s ad, particularly following on the heels of a dud of a U.S. Census ad, may have been the night’s winner with our audience, or at least in the top five. You can see the jump in the graph below.

But Levine cautioned that they still have some work to do and that these results are “like analyzing an election with only 20 percent of the precincts reporting.”

We’ll have the full results in the next week or two, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here are some scenes from the party.

The crowd was overwhelmingly pulling for the Saints, largely because in addition to being Wired fans, they were also human beings.

The sensor array is attached to a spandex-like belt that was worn on the rib cage. Almost all the participants seemed to think it was pretty comfortable, or at least tolerable.

While everyone else enjoyed the game, the Innerscope tech team was hard at work keeping everything running smoothly.

After the game, things got back to Apple-heavy normal. Here we see Dennis Pamlin, who came all the way from Sweden, getting a little work done.

Images: Jon Snyder/Wired.com.

See Also:

• How Your Biometrics Can Make Super Bowl Ads Better
• Come to Wired.com’s Biometric Super Bowl Party
• Make Your Own Scientific Super Bowl Snacks
• Good Super Bowl Sunday Ads = Richer Executives on Monday Morning

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 | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:03 pm

Thinking small

How communities can lead the way on climate change
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Feb 2010 | 11:50 am

Fastest Wings on Earth Show Extremes of Sexual Selection

With feathers that resonate at precisely 1,500 hertz, the male club-winged manakin is perhaps the bird world’s most perfectly tuned example of sexual selection.

By pinning down the frequency, researchers have completed a long investigation into the bird’s sonic physiology and showed just how far some guys go to impress the ladies.

“The fundamental anatomy of the wings has been completely reworked to play a sound for courtship,” said Cornell University ornithologist Kim Bostwick, who describes the wings in a paper published Monday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Evolution has given many birds showy plumage to attract members of the opposite sex, “but that’s sort of superficial,” she said. “Underneath all the feathers, it’s the still the same bird. How hard is it to be red instead of brown? Underneath the feathers, this is not the same bird.”

For more than a decade, Bostwick has studied these small, colorful songbirds, found on the western slopes of the Andes and nicknamed the “cricket bird” — but not because of their vocalizations. Male manakins are able to lift their wings over their back and shake them rapidly, producing a loud mechanical sound.

Bostwick’s early work focused on the anatomical peculiarities of the males’ wings. One odd middle feather has seven ridges, while an adjacent feather has an especially thick tip. She followed that research with high-speed video recordings of males making their trademark sounds by shaking their wings 107 times per second. That’s faster than a hummingbird’s wingbeats, and faster than was even thought to be possible in a vertebrate.

Bostwick suspected that the male manakin’s sound was produced when its thick-tipped feather shafts rubbed over its ridged feathers, like a spoon over wooden slats. In the latest study, she tested that hypothesis, putting feathers inside an apparatus that measured their acoustic resonance at high-speed vibrations. At 1,500 vibrations per second, and not a few more or less, the feathers’ resonance swelled.

That number is predicted by the feathers: seven ridge bumps, multiplied by two — the upstroke and downstroke — multiplied by 107 wingbeats per second equals a frequency of 1498 hertz, almost exactly what they measured in the lab.

According to Bostwick, these highly specialized feathers are accompanied by ultra-thick, vibration-damping breast muscles. Altogether, such features testify to the power of sexual selection, those evolutionary pressures exerted not on an animal’s ability to find food or avoid predators, but to attract mates.

“This has compromised many of the wing functions used to fly,” she said. “Sexual selection has challenged the naturally selected features of the bird, overtaken them and run away on a whole new trajectory. The changes are much more profound than is generally witnessed.”

Images: 1. A club-winged manakin male/Tim Laman 2. Club-winged manakin mates/Tim Laman

See Also:

• Female Ducks’ Twisty Tracts Defend Against Screwy Males
• Toucan Beak Is New Kind of ‘Heating Bill’
• Help Science: Build Your Own Bird Tracker, Cheap
• Birth of New Species Witnessed by Scientists

Citation: “Resonating feathers produce courtship song.” By Kimberly S. Bostwick, Damian O. Elias, Andrew Mason and Fernando Montealegre-Zapata. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Vol. 277 No. 213, March 22, 2010.

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 9 Feb 2010 | 11:43 am

Olympic Medals Made from E-waste

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Source: Livescience.com | 9 Feb 2010 | 10:41 am

Thousands of Dinosaur Tracks Discovered in China

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Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Feb 2010 | 10:27 am

The Dangers of Third-Hand Smoke Revealed

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Source: Livescience.com | 9 Feb 2010 | 10:09 am

Emerging Tech Could Make Tomorrow's Cars Safer

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Source: Livescience.com | 9 Feb 2010 | 9:51 am

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Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Feb 2010 | 9:46 am

'Climategate' is based on sceptics' lies

Claims based on email soundbites are demonstrably false – there is manifestly no evidence of clandestine data manipulation

In a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature.

As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of creating the definitive account of the controversy. This is an attempt at a collaborative route to getting at the truth.

We hope to approach that complete account by harnessing the expertise of people with a special knowledge of, or information about, the emails. We would like the protagonists on all sides of the debate to be involved, as well as people with expertise about the events and the science being described or more generally about the ethics of science. The only conditions are the comments abide by our community guidelines and add to the total knowledge or understanding of the events.

The annotations - and the real name of the commenter - will be added to the manuscript, initially in private. The most insightful comments will then be added to a public version of the manuscript. We hope the process will be a form of peer review. If you have a contribution to make, please email climate.emails@guardian.co.uk.

The anonymous commenting facility under each article will also be switched on so that anyone can contribute to the debate.

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Almost all the media and political discussion about the hacked climate emails has been based on soundbites publicised by professional sceptics and their blogs. In many cases, these have been taken out of ­context and twisted to mean something they were never intended to.

Elizabeth May, veteran head of the Canadian Green party, claims to have read all the emails and declared: "How dare the world's media fall into the trap set by ­contrarian propagandists without reading the whole set?"

If those journalists had read even a few words beyond the soundbites, they would have realised that they were often being fed lies. Here are a few examples.

The most quoted soundbite in the affair comes from an email from Prof Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, to Prof Mike Mann of the University of Virginia in 1999, in which he discussed using "Mike's Nature trick" to "hide the decline". The phrase has been widely spun as an effort to prevent the truth getting out that global temperatures had stopped rising.

The Alaska governor Sarah Palin, in the Washington Post on 9 December, attacked the emailers as a "highly politicised scientific circle" who "manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures". She was joined by the Republican senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma – who has for years used his chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee to campaign against climate scientists and to dismiss anthropogenic global warming as "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people". During the Copenhagen climate conference, which he attended on a Senate delegation, he referred to Jones's "hide the decline" quote and said: "Of course, he means hide the decline in temperatures."

This is nonsense. Given the year the email was written, 1999, it cannot be anything of the sort. At that time there was no suggestion of a decline in temperatures. The previous year was the warmest on record. The full email from Jones says: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith [Briffa]'s, to hide the decline."The decline being referred to was an apparent decline in temperatures shown in analysis of tree rings, which have historically correlated well with changes in temperature. That relationship has broken down in the past half century. The reasons are still debated.

The "trick" was a graphic device used by Mann in a 1998 paper in Nature to merge tree ring data from earlier times with thermometer data for recent decades. He explained it in the paper. Jones was repeating it in another paper. "This is a trick only in the sense of being a good way to deal with a vexing problem," Mann told the Guardian. Clearly, this problem with modern tree data raises questions about older data – at least until the reason for the divergence is nailed down. But it is not clandestine data ­manipulation, or, as claimed by Palin and Inhofe, a trick to hide global cooling. That charge is a lie.

While he was in Copenhagen, Inhofe made a link between the "trick" to "hide the decline" and the second most popular soundbite. He said that "of course [Jones] meant hide the decline in temperatures, which caused another scientist, Kevin Trenberth of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, to write: 'The fact is we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't.'"

The link is bogus. The two emails were 10 years apart. Unlike Jones, Trenberth's remark from October 2009 was indeed about the slackening of the warming trend that some like to interpret as cooling. That much is agreed. But Inhofe and other sceptics latched on to Trenberth's "travesty" phrase as a revelation that scientists were trying to keep cooling secret because it undermined their arguments about global warming.

Again this is demonstrably false. Nothing was hidden. For months, Trenberth had been discussing publicly his concerns about the inability of scientists to pin down the precise reason for the "absence of warming" since 1998. He had argued in the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Stability in early 2009 that "it is not a sufficient explanation to say that a cool year [he had 2008 in mind] is due to natural variability (pdf)". Such explanations "do not provide the physical mechanisms involved". This was the "travesty" he was referring to in his email. He wanted scientists to do better.He said the best way to improve the explanation and make it more specific was to make better measurements of the planet's energy budget. This would allow scientists to distinguish between any changes in the greenhouse effect, which would result in more or less heat overall in the atmosphere and oceans, and short-term natural cycles of variability, which merely redistribute heat. He was debating this with the former head of the Climatic Research Unit Tom Wigley, who took a different view. But their genuine scientific discussion has, since the publication of the emails online, been hijacked by ignorant or malicious invective.

Several other soundbites were subject to perverse or dishonest interpretations by commentators. Patrick Michaels, the climatologist and polemicist for the rightwing Cato Institute, published a long op-ed piece in the DC Examiner, slamming Mann for an email quote about keeping sceptics' papers out of the IPCC report "even if we have to redefine what the peer-reviewed literature is".

Michaels is an old foe of Mann's, but this genuinely damaging statement was actually made by Jones.

In another case George Will, celebrated in some circles as an intellectual, told ABC's This Week programme that Mann had said in an email that he wished to "delete, get rid of, the medieval warming period". No such words appear anywhere in the emails. What Mann said was that "it would be nice to try to 'contain' the putative 'MWP'". And an intellectual like Will should have known that, in this context, "contain" means to understand its dimensions – how warm it was and how long it was. Mann explained as much to anyone who asked. Verdict: not guilty.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 9 Feb 2010 | 9:21 am

India defers first GM food crop

India defers the cultivation of what would have been its first genetically modified vegetable crop because of safety concerns.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Feb 2010 | 6:48 am

Want Passionate Kids? Leave 'em Alone

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Source: Livescience.com | 9 Feb 2010 | 6:11 am

Antibiotics Inhibit Plant Growth

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Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Feb 2010 | 5:23 am

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Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Feb 2010 | 5:00 am

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Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Feb 2010 | 4:04 am

Evidence of Liquid Water on Saturn's Moon Enceladus

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Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Feb 2010 | 3:50 am

A warmer world 'will be more fragrant', researchers say

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Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 9 Feb 2010 | 2:49 am