Tiny molecular 'trash' may tell big story about cardiovascular disease risk

Tiny bits of molecular "trash" found in circulating blood appear to be good predictors of cardiovascular disease and untimely death, say researchers.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

Doubling of childhood leukemia rates confirmed in southern Iraq

Childhood leukemia rates have more than doubled over the last 15 years in the southern Iraq province of Basrah, according to a new study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

New evidence that green tea may help fight glaucoma and other eye diseases

Scientists have confirmed that the healthful substances found in green tea -- renowned for their powerful antioxidant and disease-fighting properties -- do penetrate into tissues of the eye. Their new report, the first documenting how the lens, retina, and other eye tissues absorb these substances, raises the possibility that green tea may protect against glaucoma and other common eye diseases.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

Review highlights health benefits of flexible working arrangements: Blood pressure, sleep and mental health improve

There is evidence to suggest that flexible working might be beneficial for employees' health if they are allowed to have input into their own working patterns, a review suggests. The study may throw some light on potential health benefits associated with current trends towards more flexible working in the UK and Europe.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

Jurassic space: Ancient galaxies come together after billions of years

Astronomers have found the astronomical equivalent of prehistoric life in our intergalactic backyard: a group of small, ancient galaxies that has waited 10 billion years to come together. These "late bloomers" are on their way to building a large elliptical galaxy.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

Protein tether linked to touch perception

Humans and animals are able to perceive even the slightest vibration and touch of the skin. Mechanosensitive ion channels play a crucial role in the mediation of these sensations. Researchers have now discovered that the presence of a protein filament causes the ion channels to open and shut like a tethered gate.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

HIV: Increased HAART coverage associated with 50 percent drop in new infections

A comprehensive population-based study shows that expanded highly active antiretroviral therapy coverage was associated with a 50 percent decrease in new yearly HIV infections among injection drug users.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Exercise helps protect brain of multiple sclerosis patients, study suggests

Highly fit multiple sclerosis patients perform significantly better on tests of cognitive function than similar less-fit patients, a new study shows. In addition, MRI scans of the patients showed that the fitter MS patients showed less damage in parts of the brain that show deterioration as a result of MS, as well as a greater volume of vital gray matter.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Arctic glacial dust may affect climate and health in North America and Europe

New evidence shows that dust storms may exist in the arctic, possibly caused by receding glaciers, which may be making deposits similar to those transported from the deserts of Africa to the southern US and Caribbean.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Behold the violent history of Saturn's white whale moon

Like the battered white whale Moby Dick taunting Captain Ahab, Saturn's moon Prometheus surges toward the viewer in a new 3-D image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The image exposes the irregular shape and circular surface scars on Prometheus, pointing to a violent history. These craters are probably the remnants from impacts long ago.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 20 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

The nation's weather (AP)

AP - Active weather was forecast to move into the western portion of the country Saturday as a Pacific low-pressure system was to slam into the coast.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Feb 2010 | 2:58 am

Sex hormone trial for head injury

Progesterone - the sex hormone used in the first contraceptive pills - is to be tested on brain injury patients in a major US trial.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 20 Feb 2010 | 12:44 am

Endeavour undocks from International Space Station (AFP)

AFP - The space shuttle Endeavour undocked from the International Space Station after completing a nine-day mission, which consisted in delivering a module dubbed Tranquility.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 20 Feb 2010 | 12:22 am

Whaling in Australia's sights as Japan FM visits (AFP)

AFP - A row over whaling threatened to overshadow a visit to Australia by Japan's foreign minister on Saturday, a day after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd warned of legal action to stop Japan's annual whale hunt.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Feb 2010 | 10:44 pm

Gene Therapy Shows Promise Against HIV (HealthDay)

HealthDay - FRIDAY, Feb. 19 (HealthDay News) -- A new study is among the first to hint that gene therapy could become a weapon against the virus that causes AIDS.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Feb 2010 | 9:48 pm

Shuttle Endeavour Undocks From Space Station (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - NASA's space shuttle Endeavour cast off from the International Space Station late Friday, capping more than a week of orbital construction to add a phenomenal new lookout dome and room to the orbiting lab.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Feb 2010 | 8:00 pm

Shuttle Endeavour undocks from space station (AP)

AP - Shuttle Endeavour departed the International Space Station on Friday night and headed home, leaving behind an outpost that is nearly complete and now has the best windows ever on the world.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Feb 2010 | 6:33 pm

Space shuttle returning to Earth

Space shuttle Endeavour heads back to Earth after delivering the last major component of the International Space Station.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Feb 2010 | 6:24 pm

DNR: More Wis. power plants violate Clean Air Act (AP)

AP - At least five more state-run power plants are not in compliance with federal clean air regulations and need to install tighter pollution controls, Gov. Jim Doyle's administration acknowledged Friday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Feb 2010 | 6:22 pm

Chu: Energy initiatives could bring jobs to Colo. (AP)

AP - Promoting Colorado's renewable energy industry is key to generating jobs and easing dependence on foreign oil — but the U.S. is lagging behind China in its investment in renewables, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Friday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Feb 2010 | 6:21 pm

Shuttle leaves station as NASA plans last flights

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The space shuttle Endeavour sailed away from the International Space Station on Friday after delivering a final connecting hub and an observation deck, completing U.S. assembly of the orbital complex.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Feb 2010 | 6:21 pm

My nine to five: Kerry Spackman

The neuroscientist and author starts his day with a run and sometimes will continue until 3am if inspiration strikes

I always start my day with a run. I've bought a new house in a place called Kumeu, about 15 minutes' drive from Auckland, New Zealand – even though I'm close to the city, I'm surrounded by countryside and sheep. Starting my day with exercise gets me going: I have a very active mind and being able to stop working and thinking, and exercise is like pushing the reset button on the computer for me.

I'm my own boss, so my time is entirely my own. I'm quite disciplined about keeping my work space separate from my living space –that's why working from home works for me.

As a neuroscientist, I explore how the brain measures and computes movement. I ended up consulting athletes and sports professionals by accident - the aim is to improve mental performance and physical optimisation. It all started when a Formula One driver was having troubles, and his team approached me, saying, "You're a brain guy, can you help?"

What I do isn't self-help; I take exception to a lot of self-help books that aren't based on science and can be a bit trite. Telling a highly performing individual to "think positive" isn't going to make a difference – they know that already – but what I do gets behind the science of why or how performance has changed.

I have work meetings outside the house to get out from time to time for a coffee. At lunchtime I go to the gym – I get two big doses of exercise a day to keep going.

When I was writing The Winner's Bible, it took on a life of its own. I look back and I just don't know where it all came from. I've tried to give people the tools to rewire their brains themselves – how to find your intrinsic drivers or uncover your logical and emotional circuits.

There are four pillars to a person: your physiology, your psychology, your philosophy and your history. All the boxes loop together.

When I'm working with athletes, I need to know everything about them so that's what we concentrate on in the first session - the All Blacks call it the "Deep Dive"; they say, "We're going to do the Deep Dive with Kerry." Sometimes I'll have world-famous people come to me, and I think there's nothing possibly new to uncover about them, but there always is. I'll find what it is that really has an influence on them.

After a week, we'll have a second session, and that hopefully gives them the tools to improve – and then it's done. One lady was addicted to crystal meth for eight years; she saw me for two sessions, and hasn't touched them since.

In the evenings I go to restaurants with friends – the usual things. On the weekends I play tennis, or go motocross riding in the forests with my son. I live alone. Entertainment centres around my family and friends.

I can't draw a line at the end of my working day. I'm always thinking: I find real beauty in knowledge. Sometimes I wake up at 3am in the morning with an idea, and I have to get up and act on it. Sometimes those thoughts that occur in the middle of the night are the most poetic. I've got a big spa pool in my house, so if I'm up at 3am, I'll write down my ideas, then sit in the spa pool and look at the stars.

Dr Kerry Spackman is author of The Winner's Bible (Winner's Institute, £14.99).

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Feb 2010 | 5:07 pm

What I'm really thinking: The call centre worker

'Most of the ­customers are wound up before they even speak to me'

The first call of the day never goes well. I stutter my way through the inquiry, often getting the day wrong, then the system usually crashes. I can apologise in my politest tone, but the customer is already exhaling impatiently. He asks a question I can't answer. I put the phone on mute and hammer the table. I adjust the headset – a prickly itch has spread across my head. I get back to my customer. "I'm sorry to have kept you, sir."

"Right, this service has been ­totally unsatisfactory. I would like a word with one of your ­supervisors." Great. A complaint, and the day is five minutes old.

I work for a large transport ^­company, and most of the ­customers are wound up before they even speak to me. They know their problem probably won't get solved, so they shoot the messenger. I don't know if it makes them feel better, but it happens every day.

I can't field his inquiry for the ­simple reason that I don't know how to. I don't have the training or, on my ­salary, the inclination to help. Without hesitation, I put the phone down. He might have remembered my name to register a complaint, but I've learned to mutter it rather incoherently, so I probably won't be traced.

Sometimes our supervisors monitor a call at random. We also have targets to meet. But most of us are long past caring. People never stay in these jobs long. They try to motivate us with outings, but getting shot at with paint isn't my idea of a reward. Give me more money, I always think.

• Tell us what you're really thinking at mind@guardian.co.uk

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

Feynan Lodge community project, Jordan | Guardian Green Travel List 2010

This remote lodge manages to fuse tradition and tourism, thanks to an NGO dedicated to conserving the area's resources

Nearing Feynan Eco-lodge after a full day's hike, all I could think of was kicking off my walking boots and flopping on to a bed. But Nabil Tarazi, the lodge's new manager, had other ideas. As my mum and I trudged up the dusty path that led to the lodge, he came speeding up in his 4x4 to warn us not to arrive at Feynan before nightfall.

"It's much better to see it first in the dark," he said. "There's no electricity, so at night we light it by candles – it is magical." In the meantime, he suggested, we should watch the sunset. A short spin up a rough road took us past several Bedouin tents, long oblongs of thick blankets stitched together, patrolled by a rabble of goats and barefoot children.

Like most guests we had hiked down to Feynan from Dana Guesthouse, another eco-lodge that sits at the top of the Wadi Dana canyon in the Dana Biosphere Reserve. Both are operated by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN), an NGO dedicated to the conservation of Jordan's natural resources. It operates six national parks, five of which offer green accommodation.

Feynan is arguably the most eco-friendly of the RSCN lodges, entirely solar-powered, with natural ventilation, and all water coming from a local spring – plastic bottles are banned. To save having to power a fridge to chill meat, it's also vegetarian, and alcohol-free, to be culturally sensitive.

Nabil was right about arriving after dark. The sight of the lodge on our return from watching the sun set was jaw-dropping. Illuminated only by stars and flickering flames, it looked as impenetrable as the crusader forts we had visited all over Jordan, with similar slit windows and a heavy wooden door, decorated with dozens of ornate knockers.

We crept like thieves through shadowy communal areas hung with Bedouin rugs. The lodge is centred around a courtyard full of potted trees from which wrought-iron staircases curl up to a roof terrace, where piles of cushions and blankets wait for stargazers. Our room (there are 26) was huge, with roughly plastered cream walls, goatskin stools, a double and a single bed swathed in white netting, and candles in mirrored cornices.

The alcohol ban, and having no light to read by, could annoy some guests (although head torches are available), but the fact that the lodge is vegetarian shouldn't disappoint anybody. Dinner was a fantastic spread of Jordanian staples: flatbread, tahini, yoghurt sauce and salads, with delicious veggie stews and rice dishes, hibiscus juice to drink and amazing, sticky desserts. Afterwards local Bedouin musicians played spellbinding folk music by the fire.

Creating a source of income for local people that doesn't conflict with their traditional way of life is one of the primary aims of the RSCN. Bedouin who have lived in the area for centuries are employed from managerial level down, taxi-ing guests by 4x4 from the main road several miles away, working as guides and staffing the hotel. Unusually for Jordan, this includes women – this is a country where strict traditional values still hold true, particularly in rural areas. This has to be sensitively managed, and involves much discussion and education within the community. Feynan has a woman on its team of hotel staff, and all over Jordan, women make crafts such as soap, silver and goatskin products to sell in the RSCN lodge shops.

Mohammed, the wonderful local guide who had led us down the canyon from Dana the previous day, showing us birds and wildlife and the plants the Bedouin used to make shampoo or help diabetes, told us how tourism has improved the lives of his family. Pointing out the caves he had grown up in, and high rocky pinnacles where he'd herded the family's goats from the age of eight, he said: "Living here was really not easy. It is a life very close to death, with many big challenges."

The next day Mohammed took us mountain-biking around Feynan's incredible historic sites, including Roman copper mines, a reservoir and a neolithic village. Amazingly, they are left open, with no fencing, footpaths or signs to stop visitors stepping all over their walls and treasures. Something blue on the ground caught my eye at the Khirbet Feynan Roman town, and I stooped to pick up a curved piece of ceramic: "Probably a Roman bracelet," said Mohammed. Chunks of patterned pottery littered the ground, and we were asked not to take them, so easy would it have been to do so.

To encourage guests to stay for a few days, Nabil has developed adventure sports activities, including rappelling down waterfalls and rock climbing in nearby wadis, though as winter means an increased risk of flash flooding, we couldn't try those.

I asked the lodge manager, Hussein, if there was a fear that tourism would corrupt the Bedouin way of life, but he insisted not. "We don't care about money, because inside we are rich already. Tourism will never change us. Bedouin go away to the city, meet people from all over the world, but our hearts will never change."

Perhaps he wouldn't be so certain were he not working with such a sensitively managed scheme as the RSCN's.

• To organise travel to Feynan or any of the RSCN lodges and parks, contact Wild Jordan (+962 4616 523). Bales Worldwide (0845 057 0600) can arrange packages to include Feynan lodge, for example, a 10-day trip including flights costs from £1,795pp. BMI (0844 848 4888) flies from Heathrow to Amman from £438 rtn inc taxes.

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

Faith makes regulating herbal medicine difficult

A judge this week called for traditional medicine to be regulated, but it's not easy when practitioners make claims based on faith

You may have read about Ying Wu this week: a traditional Chinese medicine doctor operating out of a shop in Chelmsford, Essex, who for several years prescribed pills with high doses of a dangerous substance to treat the acne of senior civil servant Patricia Booth, 58. Following this, her patient lost both kidneys, developed urinary tract cancer, had a heart attack, and is on dialysis three times a week. Judge Jeremy Roberts gave Ying a two-year conditional discharge, saying she could not be blamed, because she did not know the pills were harmful and the practice of traditional Chinese medicine is unregulated in Britain, a situation that he suggests should be remedied.

This sounds attractive, and has been welcomed by alternative therapists, who see regulation as the path to legitimacy. It's worth noting that we do already have systems in place for dealing with dangerous substances and people who prescribe treatments that have dangerous side-effects.

But regulation for alternative therapists raises a simple problem: it's hard to regulate practitioners who make claims based on faith. Attempts at regulation have exposed these contradictions. The Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council has a code of conduct that forbids alternative therapists making claims without evidence. Blogger Simon Perry complained about every reflexologist on the register on the day they joined if they were claiming to treat things such as arthritis, infertility, babies with colic and so on. All were told off, but the CNHC decided that fitness to practise was not impaired because the practitioners would have honestly believed their claims to be reasonable, since they would have been trained to believe they could treat these diseases.

So is training the problem? The government's review into regulation of alternative therapists has recommended that it should be compulsory to have a university degree in alternative therapies, and that universities should run such courses. What is taught on these courses? You cannot know, because universities have gone to shameful lengths over many years to keep the contents of these science degrees a closely guarded secret.

Myself and Prof David Colquhoun of University College London have obtained course materials from students who thought they were going to be taught the scientific evidence base for alternative medicine, and have been dismayed by what they found. Handouts from the bachelor of science degree in Chinese medicine at Westminster University, for example, show students being taught – on a science degree – that the spleen is "the root of post-heaven essence" and is responsible for the "transformation of qi energy", "keeping the muscles warm and firm". We also see the traditional anti-vaccine spiel, as students are taught that vaccination is a significant cause of cancer.

A lecture by Niki Lawrence on "Herbal approaches for patients with cancer", meanwhile, discusses the difficulties of the Cancer Act, which was specifically designed to protect patients from the more dangerous extremes of alternative therapists' self-belief. "Legally you cannot claim to cure cancer" it begins, on a slide headed "Cancer treatment and the law". "This is not a problem because: 'we treat patients not diseases'." Lawrence then explains that poke root is "especially valuable in the treatment of breast, throat and uterus cancer", thuja occidentalis is "indicated for cancers of possible viral origin, eg colon/rectal, uterine, breast, lung" and centella asiatica "inhibits the recurrence of cancer".

It is a tragedy that someone has contracted a fatal condition and is on dialysis. What worries me is that when you try to slot the square peg faith-based medicine into the round hole of regulation and university teaching, you create more problems and confusion than you started with.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Feb 2010 | 5:00 pm

No miracle as brain-damaged patient proved unable to communicate

The 'medical breakthrough' was no such thing, says doctor who treated Rom Houben

It seemed to be a medical miracle: the car crash victim assumed for 23 years to be in a coma who was suddenly found to be conscious and able to communicate by tapping on a computer.

The sceptics said it was impossible – and it was. The story of Rom Houben of Belgium, which made headlines worldwide last November when he was shown to be "talking", was today revealed to have been nothing of the sort.

Dr Steven Laureys, one of the doctors treating him, acknowledged that his patient could not make himself understood after all. Facilitated communication, the technique said to have made Houben's apparent contact with the outside world possible, did not work, Laureys declared.

"We did not have all the facts before," he said. "To me, it's enough to say that this method doesn't work." Just three months ago the doctor was proclaiming that Houben had been trapped in his own body, the victim of a horrendous ­misdiagnosis, and only rescued from his terrible plight thanks to medical advances.

At that time Houben was pictured using the technology, which involves a speech therapist being guided by a patient to write words using a keyboard. A basic test appeared to prove it was indeed Houben who was communicating. "I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me," Houben apparently tapped. "It was my second birth. I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead."

"Just imagine," he purportedly typed. "You hear, see, feel and think, but no one can see that."

Laureys, leader of the coma science group and department of neurology at Liege University hospital, said a study he had done of three speech therapists working with minimally-conscious patients showed that in two cases, including Houben's, facilitated communication failed. "From the start, I did not prescribe this technique. But it is important not to make judgments. His family and care­givers acted out of love and compassion," he said.

The turnaround vindicates those doctors who had doubted Houben's apparent ability. "It's like using an Ouija board," said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bio­ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "It was too good to be true, and we shouldn't have believed it."

Facilitated communication can be used with some patients but should be avoided with patients such as Houben who are severely brain injured, said Tom McMillan, a professor of neuropsychology at Glasgow University. "It has an inter­mediary who can exert control and that can affect the outcome," he said.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Feb 2010 | 4:45 pm

Energy-Saving Tip: Don't Drive Like a Maniac

Road rage and impatience can occasionally take even the best of us, but don't give in to the energy-hogging monster within you.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 3:40 pm

Water-dwelling dinosaur breaks the mould

Spinosaurs' semi-aquatic habits helped them coexist with tyrannosaurs.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/LClm-DV8vio" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:47 pm

Off-Road Wheelchair Makes the Climb

I'm breaking my own informal rule and writing about yet another cool MIT innovation this week. After finding out about this off-roading wheelchair prototype, I think you'll forgive me. Amos Winter is a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering who founded ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:34 pm

Mr. Pringle Solves Crop Circle Mystery

It’s not every day that the solution to a worldwide “unexplained” mystery appears on prime time television—especially not in service of advertising potato chips. But a new television ad campaign from Pringles shows a group of fun-loving teens making crop ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:24 pm

U.S. "tweaks" stem cell policy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government broadened the definition of a human embryonic stem cell on Friday, helping qualify several corporate and academic experiments for federal funding.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:22 pm

U.S. "tweaks" stem cell policy (Reuters)

Reuters - The U.S. government broadened the definition of a human embryonic stem cell on Friday, helping qualify several corporate and academic experiments for federal funding.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:19 pm

Meditation May Boost Mood and Mental Toughness (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - Meditation exercises could boost mental toughness in soldiers readying for war, keeping them from becoming overly emotional, according to new research.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 19 Feb 2010 | 1:25 pm

Vancouver's Platinum Venue

The Vancouver games are in full swing by now, so it's time to check out one of the venues that led the city to boast its Olympics would be the "greenest games ever." The Vancouver Convention Centre, formally the Vancouver ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Feb 2010 | 12:32 pm

Final frontier beckons for researchers

Cheap spaceflight set to transform science, industry claims.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 19 Feb 2010 | 12:21 pm

Skiers Wear High-Tech Armor; Why Not Lugers?

Could the same armor that protects Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller also prevent serious injury among other Winter Olympics athletes?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Feb 2010 | 11:55 am

America’s Wind Energy Potential Triples in New Estimate

The amount of wind power that theoretically could be generated in the United States tripled in the newest assessment of the nation’s wind resources.

Current wind technology deployed in nonenvironmentally protected areas could generate 37,000,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, according to the new analysis conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and consulting firm AWS Truewind. The last comprehensive estimate came out in 1993, when Pacific Northwest National Laboratory pegged the wind energy potential of the United States at 10,777,000 gigawatt-hours.

Both numbers are greater than the 3,000,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity currently consumed by Americans each year. Wind turbines generated just 52,000 gigawatt-hours in 2008, the last year for which annual statistics are available.

Though new and better data was used to create the assessment, the big jump in potential generation reflects technological change in wind machines more than fundamental new knowledge about our nation’s windscape.

Wind speed generally increases with height, and most wind turbines are taller than they used to be, standing at  about 250 feet (80 meters) instead of 165 feet (50 meters). Turbines are now larger, more powerful and better than the old designs that were used to calculate previous estimates.

“Now we can develop areas that in [previous decades] wouldn’t have been deemed developable,” said Michael Brower, chief technology offier with AWS Truewind, which carried out the assessment. “It’s like oil reserves. They tend to go up not because there is more oil in the ground but because the technology for accessing the oil gets better.”

The new maps, above, are useful for would-be wind-farm developers who need to find promising sites on which to place their turbines. They want locations with high wind speeds, access to transmission lines, cheap land and a host of other smaller logistical concerns. If you purchase the best versions, the Truewind maps have a resolution of 650 feet (200 meters), which is less than the spacing between modern machines. That means they can be used to provisionally site individual machines on the ground.

Many estimates have been made of the wind energy potential of the United States and the Earth. John Etzler made one of the first way back in the 1830s. He used loose numerical analogies to sailing ships to calculate that “the whole extent of the wind’s power over the globe amounts to about … 40,000,000,000,000 men’s power.”

The water-pumping windmill industry flourished in latter half of the 19th century, but wind energy potential calculations did not advance past the back-of-the-envelope until after World War II. When Palmer Putnam attempted to find the best site in Vermont for the first-megawatt sized wind turbine in the early 1940s, his first line of analysis was to look at how bent the trees were.

The 1980s saw a boom in wind energy in the state of California, driven by a number of federal and state incentives as well as an active environmental culture. Back then, the only way to really know how hard and often the wind blew was to put up a tower covered in sensors and measure. So, wind-farm developers concentrated their efforts on three areas — Tehachapi, Altamont Pass and San Gorgonio — and covered the places with towers to measure the wind.

“I still have some databases from back then and you look at them and say, ‘Oh my, they had 120 towers up,’ or something crazy,” Brower said. “That’s not how it’s done anymore.”

Even low-resolution regional maps did not exist until the early 1980s and the first national map was only published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (née Solar Energy Research Institute) in 1986. As you can see from the map above, it was more of a general guide than a series of detailed local estimates.

The real boom in wind data came with the availability of cheap computational power in the late 1990s. It was then that Brower’s company began being able to marry large-scale weather models with small-scale topographic models. They created a parallel process for crunching wind data and ran it on small, fast PCs to get supercomputer-level power at low cost. Then, they refined their estimates with data from 1,600 wind measurement towers.

The result is a much more accurate forecast. Truewind’s estimates of wind speed at a location have an uncertainty margin of 0.35 meters a second. Good wind sites have average wind speeds of between 6.5 and 10 m/s, though most onshore areas don’t get above 9. Perhaps more importantly, their estimates for how many kilowatt-hours a turbine in a location will produce are accurate to within 10 percent, Brower stated.

The newest models are now sufficiently good that developers don’t need as much on-site data. They do still use towers to check the maps and models produced by companies like Truewind, but not nearly as many, which reduces the expense and time that it takes to execute a project.

“You might see 10 or 15 towers over an area that would have had 50 or 100 towers before,” he said.

The new data, including these maps and forecasting models, may not directly make wind farms cheaper, but the advances certainly makes them easier to plan for, develop and operate.

“I think of it more as greasing the wheels of the process more than producing a really big cost savings,” Brower said. “You reduce the friction, the transaction costs, and that enables you to get where you’re going faster.”

The better processes, along with state renewable-energy mandates, seem to be helping. In 2009, 10 gigawatts of wind capacity was installed in the United States to bring the nation’s total to 35 gigawatts.

The data plays a more subtle role, too. In helping make the case that wind energy can play a very substantial role in supplying electricity, the new maps and estimates could help convince industrial and political leaders to support renewable energy, particularly in windy heartland states like Kansas, Montana and Nebraska.

1. Images: NREL/Truewind. 2. NREL. 3. Chart background: Wayfinder_73/Flickr

See Also:

• DOE Report Says More Wind Than Coal Planned for U.S. Grid
• DOE Report: Wind Could Power 20 Percent of U.S. Grid by 2030
• High-Altitude Wind Machines Could Power New York City
• Teen’s DIY Energy Hacking Gives African Village New Hope

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Tumblr, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 19 Feb 2010 | 11:31 am

NASA Ponies Up for Commercial Suborbital Space Rides

Even at $200,000 a ticket, the lines for a suborbital ride into space may soon be growing longer. The U.S. government is proposing to spend $75 million over the next five years to send science experiments -- and presumably scientists ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Feb 2010 | 11:29 am

Bobsled Physics

See the complex models of airflow and turbulence that are giving a leg up to the U.S. Olympic bobsledding team.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 11:14 am

New Electric Car Pays For Itself

A new concept vehicle earns money for its driver instead of guzzling it up in gasoline and maintenance costs.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Feb 2010 | 10:34 am

Zebra Trots Down Highway and Other Circus Tales

You never know what you're going to see on your way to work, but nobody expects a scene from "Jumanji." Commuters in Atlanta late Thursday afternoon must have done a double-take when a zebra trotted by their cars on a ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Feb 2010 | 10:31 am

Throwing Your Weight Around Through Social Networking

I swear I didn't make up that title as a fat joke. Honest. Last Saturday, Kevin Smith (the writer and movie director) launched a series of angry messages on Twitter directed at Southwest Air. According to Smith, he had taken ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Feb 2010 | 10:24 am

I'm Not Home; Please Rob Me

If you haven't heard about this new Web site yet, pull up a chair. Because you might make the next list of "new opportunities" of empty homes available for pilfering. A new Web site, called PleaseRobMe.com, pulls information from social ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Feb 2010 | 10:23 am

Meditation May Boost Mood and Mental Toughness

Pre-deployment mindfulness training boosts working memory in soldiers, decreasing negative emotions and boosting positive ones.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 9:53 am

African Society Revealed in Early Animal, Human Figures

Eighty clay figures depicting both animals and humans have just been excavated in Northern Ghana, according to information provided to Discovery News by the University of Manchester. Tim Insoll of the university, along with Ghana's Benjamin Kankpeyeng, led the project. ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Feb 2010 | 9:47 am

Science Nation

Science for the People: Surprising discoveries and fascinating researchers.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 9:39 am

Hurricane Sleuth

Hurricane activity in the Atlantic is on the up-tick. By analyzing costal sediment cores, scientists have been able to decipher not just the intensity of hurricane seasons of late, but those as far back as far as 5,000 years.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 9:38 am

Google Won't Make Us Stupid, Experts Say

Experts reassure us that widespread Internet use will actually improve people's reading and writing skills.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 9:38 am

Archaeologists pinpoint site of Battle of Bosworth

Experts confirm spot three kilometres from the current visitor centre where Richard III became last English king to die in battle

Archaeologists announced today that they have located not just the site of the Battle of Bosworth, but the spot where – on 22 August 1485 – Richard III became the last English king to die in battle when he was cut down by Tudor swords.

Nearby Henry Tudor was crowned Henry VII, with the crown which had tumbled from the dying Richard's head.

The crucial evidence, including badges of the supporters of both kings, sword mounts, coins and 28 cannonballs, was found in fields straddling Fen Lane in the Leicestershire parish of Upton, where no historian had looked before.

The haul adds up to more than the total found on all other medieval battle sites in Europe.

"It took us five years to locate it, but there it is, there is the battle of Bosworth," said Glenn Foard, the internationally renowned expert who led the hunt, looking over the landscape of low snow-­covered hills, where on a hot summer day more than 500 years ago the course of English history changed.

The site was located by archaeologists using metal detectors across hundreds of acres, and poring over the evidence of medieval place names to match them to accounts of the battle. Their finds suggest a sprawling fight, with the two armies facing one another in straggling lines almost a kilometre in length.

Frank Baldwin, the chair of the Battlefields Trust charity, said: "This is a discovery as important to us as Schliemann discovering Troy." The military historian Professor Richard Holmes, who two years ago rode Henry's route from Wales to the battlefield in full Tudor costume, said: "This is certainly the most important discovery about Bosworth in my lifetime."

Farmer Alf Oliver was astonished at the discovery in his fields straddling Fen Lane, outside all the parishes which have vied for centuries to claim the honour and three kilometres south-west of the visitor centre on Albion Hill. Fen Lane was once a Roman road linking Leicester and Atherstone, the towns from which Richard and Henry approached the battle.

One of the crucial finds, the largest of the cannonballs nicknamed "the holy grapefruit" by the archaeologists, was found just behind one of Oliver's barns. Another key discovery was a silver boar no bigger than a thumbnail, battered but still snarling in rage after 500 years. It was found on the edge of a field still called Fen Hole, which in medieval times was a marsh that played a crucial role in the battle, protecting the flank of Henry Tudor's much smaller army. The marsh was drained centuries ago, but Oliver said it still gets boggy in very wet summers.

After a charge in which Richard came within almost a sword's reach of Henry, he lost his horse in the marsh, a moment immortalised in the despairing cry Shakespeare bestowed upon him: "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

"The fact that this little boar is Richard's personal emblem, and made in silver gilt, means that it can only have been given to one of the closest members of his retinue. The man who wore this would have fought and died at Richard's side," Foard said.

"If you were to ask me what was the one find I would dream of making, which would really nail the site, it would be Richard's boar emblem on the edge of a marsh."

Other finds include a gold ring twisted like a pretzel, and an inch of gilded sword mount from a weapon of such high status that it can only have belonged to one of the aristocrats who led the battle forces.

The search was launched as part of a Heritage Lottery funded revamp of the visitor centre, which is left with the consolation that it may well have been part of Richard's camp on the eve of the battle, and part of the rout as his troops were forced into desperate retreat by Henry's triumphant men.

Foard believes a more likely site now for the battlefield coronation is Crown Hill, a hillock near the newly identified site, which was renamed soon after the battle.

Local historian John Austin brought the team a further gift: he owns the domain title battleofbosworth.com, and today he presented it to them to mark the ­occasion.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Feb 2010 | 7:53 am

Iceland Promoted as Future Data Haven

Iceland may be the land of the future for information technology because of silicon.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 7:50 am

Do Vacations Boost Happiness?

We're happier looking forward to vacation than when we return.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 7:18 am

U.S. Bobsled Team Gets High-Tech Edge

Scientists are using complex models of airflow and turbulence to give a leg up to the U.S. Olympic bobsledding team.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 6:47 am

U.S. Gets Annual Health Checkup

An annual health checkup of U.S. residents shows we are living longer and healthier lives.
Source: Livescience.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 6:36 am

LHC set to re-start after break

The Large Hadron Collider will be re-started next week after shutting down late last year for the holiday period.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Feb 2010 | 6:24 am

Study shows how viruses changed human evolution

LONDON (Reuters) - Italian scientists said on Friday they had found evidence of how viruses helped change the course of human evolution and said their discovery could help in the design of better drugs and vaccines.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 19 Feb 2010 | 6:19 am

Meet a European woodmouse that eats like a dinosaur

The European woodmouse has a unique taste for ferns, a food once eaten by long-extinct dinosaurs, scientists discover.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Feb 2010 | 5:45 am

Dolphins offer clue to treating diabetes

Bottlenose dolphins can switch diabetes on and off – a trick that could be mimicked to treat humans with the condition

Scientists have discovered a biological quirk in bottlenose dolphins that could lead to a treatment for late-onset diabetes in humans. Studies on the marine mammals found that healthy dolphins switch into a diabetic-like state overnight when they are not feeding, but revert to a normal physiology when they eat the following morning.

The extraordinary finding has led scientists to suggest that dolphins have a "genetic switch" that allows them to mimic diabetes while they are fasting, without suffering any ill effects.

If researchers can identify a similar genetic pathway in humans, they may be able to develop drugs to effectively switch off diabetes.

Some 2.2m people in Britain have late onset, or type 2 diabetes, a figure that is expected to reach 4m by 2025 as a consequence of rising levels of obesity.

The tissues of people with type 2 diabetes have become resistant to insulin so they lose the ability to control sugar levels in their blood. The condition can damage the heart, eyes, kidneys and nerves and contributes to 5% of all deaths, according to the World Health Organisation.

Dolphins appear to mimic diabetes to maintain high levels of blood sugar when food is scarce. Like humans, dolphins need some sugar in their blood for their brains to function normally.

"It is our hope that this discovery can lead to novel ways to prevent, treat and maybe even cure diabetes in humans," said Stephanie Venn-Watson, director of clinical research at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego.

Venn-Watson's team analysed 1,000 blood samples from 52 dolphins while they fasted overnight and fed in the morning. At night time, the dolphins' metabolism changed dramatically and showed similar characteristics to that seen in people with type 2 diabetes.

"What's interesting about this is when you look at dolphins fed in the morning, they revert back to a non-diabetic state, indicating that these animals may have a genetic fasting switch that can turn diabetes on and off," Dr Venn-Watson told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego yesterday.

Humans and dolphins have the largest brains of all mammals and both have red blood cells that are exceptionally permeable to glucose and able to ferry large amounts of the sugar into the brain.

Scientists believe diabetes emerged in dolphins as an evolutionary adaptation to a high protein and low carbohydrate diet. No other animal apart from humans shows the same complex range of diabetes-like symptoms as dolphins.

"Maybe this is a vestige of something dormant that could be awakened and used as a therapy or cure," Venn-Watson said.

"There is no desire to make a dolphin a lab animal, but what we can do is compare their genes with human genes and look for evidence of a genetic switch," he added.

In 2007, scientists at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, identified a genetic switch in mice that lowers blood sugar levels, raising hopes that a similar mechanism exists in humans.

Mark Simmonds, international head of science at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, said the prospect of using dolphins to study diabetes was "a grave concern".

"Dolphins are intelligent and sophisticated animals which are vulnerable to stress and suffering when confined and removed from their natural environment and societies," he said. "The fact that dolphins in captivity experience ongoing stress adds to questions about the validity of studies of physiological processes that are intimately connected with the animals' well-being."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Feb 2010 | 5:26 am

Archaeologists reveal the correct location of the Battle of Bosworth

The true site of one of the most decisive battles in English history is revealed after a major study by archaeologists.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Feb 2010 | 4:31 am

Earth Watch

Climate chief's departure leaves many questions
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:51 am

Census finds 5,000 marine species

A preview of the Census of Marine Life has revealed that the project has discovered over 5,000 new species.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:37 am

Dolphins have diabetes off switch

A study in dolphins has revealed genetic clues that could help medical researchers to treat type 2 diabetes.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:18 am

Guns, Germs and Steel – and a ploughman's lunch

The world's inequalities began because some people had the means to make a meal of bread and cheese, while others did not. Tim Radford reviews Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

Oh, for more history written by biologists. The great thing about Guns, Germs and Steel is the detail: Jared Diamond starts with a proposition every good Guardian reader would wish to believe – that all humans are born with much the same abilities – and then proceeds to argue, through meticulous and logical steps, that the playing field of prehistory was anything but level.

The inequalities kicked off with the development of agriculture in one small part of the world, the so-called Fertile Crescent in what is now western Asia. Agriculture stimulates increasing population density, which means disease, which means acquired immunity. Civilisation requires the food surplus only agriculture can provide, but it also imposes a need for specialisation, for technology, for ingenuity. Competing civilisations (and they turned up soon enough in Europe and the Middle East) provoke an arms race.

So you start with stone tools and the raw materials for a Welsh rarebit and you end up with galleons, guns and measles, all of which helped 168 Spanish conquistadores in 1532 to overthrow an army of 80,000 Incas half way around the world.

But what was so special about the Fertile Crescent?

It had emmer and einkorn, species of grass with heavy seeds. Some individuals in these wild wheat ancestors had developed mutations that boded ill for their evolutionary survival. Instead of spilling their seed upon the ground, these doomed stalks kept their ears pricked, so to speak: their seed heads stayed neatly on the stem, long past ripening. This accident made them dish of the day for foraging nomads, and then ideal for the first, tentative plantations by the hunters and gatherers who so casually launched human civilisation some time after the end of the last ice age.

Pretty much the same mutation then occurred in certain wild pulses, which stayed in the pod, as a kind of packed lunch, rather than falling to the soil to multiply.

But it took more than one or two convenient plants that were ripe for the picking to get civilisation off the ground. The shuffling of the evolutionary pack dealt the hunter gatherers who happened to be living in eastern Turkey, the Levant and the valley of the Euphrates a whole suite of wild staples, all in that one huge curve of valley, hillside and floodplain: barley and lentils, olives, figs, sweet almonds, chickpeas, mustard and so on.

The seeds of wild wheat were not just big and easy to gather, they delivered the best nourishment. And not far away, contentedly chewing on a choice of the other wild grasses and pulses, were wild cattle, sheep and goats all suitable for domestication, and potentially docile swine as well.

So the groundbreaking farmers of the Fertile Crescent, with their makeshift mattocks, stone sickles and crude pestles and mortars, already had about them the makings of the first ploughman's lunch of bread and butter and cheese and beer; the first Mediterranean diet of wine, olive oil, peas and prosciutto; and everything for a beefburger except the tomatoes, ketchup and mayo.

Agricultural settlement also began independently in China and Mexico, because these places also had little packages of this and that – rice and soya, maize, beans and squash – from which to construct a cuisine and a culture.

Other places were not so fortunate. The entire continent of Africa produced a few scattered plants – coffee, millet, sorghum, groundnut and yams – but these species did not share the same climate so they could not all be grown in the same place. And not one large African mammal has ever been satisfactorily domesticated, even now. Meanwhile, the Fertile Crescent had four of them at the end of the last ice age, mooing and bleating and oinking for human attention.

And the same package of plants and animals that flourished in the Fertile Crescent could – with a bit of adjustment – do just as well on both sides of the Mediterranean, in the Alpine valleys, on the great European plain, and all the way to the Breton coast.

So the ploughman's lunch was not just a local meal: it could be exported from Nineveh to Nuneaton.

This is an exhilarating book. Not all the argument is quite as beautifully constructed as the passages that deal with plants and animals. Diamond's foray into human prehistory provoked the American Anthropological Association into devoting a whole session to examining the ideas he sets out in this book and more especially its sequel, Collapse.

The latter then became a scholarly Cambridge text which was reviewed in Science on 22 January. This particular issue of Science might have been edited with our club's choice in mind. The big feature focuses on evidence for permanent houses of stone, built by hunter-gatherers in the Fertile Crescent 14,500 years ago, long before the emergence of agriculture.

Another feature is devoted to the disappearance of Australia's giant marsupials, 40,000 years ago, around about the time the first bands of human hunters turned up. These extinctions – and similar megafaunal massacres happened in Eurasia too – left Australia and North America with no candidate creature for domestication, which is why the locals were better off with their old skills of hunting and gathering.

If I have a problem, it is with Diamond's prologue. On page 22 of Guns, Germs and Steel, he argues that people in New Guinea today who have never been exposed to passive televisual entertainment, and with every stimulus to think for themselves, might even be, because of their environment, mentally more able than Westerners. This seems to concede that some lineal groups can be innately "better" than others, which is the starting point for all racist claims.

Damn, can he have meant that? Surely it was to see off such thinking that prompted a club member to propose this book in the first place?

For March, something that really does add up. Ian Stewart, in a recent book, suggested that even his fellow scientists didn't really appreciate the profound importance of mathematics. Professor Stewart has recently delivered his own two-fisted mathematical punch with his Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities (2008) and Hoard of Mathematical Treasures (2009). Both are huge fun. Grab one and enjoy it. I'll look at both next month

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Feb 2010 | 1:44 am

Cat food used in fight against cane toads

Researchers find that cat food attracts meat ants which attack baby cane toads in attempt to curb toxic amphibians

Forget cricket bats, golf clubs or carbon dioxide, Australia has found a new weapon in its war on the cane toad: cat food.

University of Sydney researchers found that cat food left next to ponds in the Northern Territory attracted meat ants, which then attacked baby cane toads emerging from the water. The results were published in the British Ecological ­Society's Journal of Applied Ecology.

It is the latest idea in the battle against the cane toad, which was introduced from Hawaii in 1935 in a failed attempt to control beetles on sugarcane plantations. Their population, now in the millions, threatens many native species across Australia.

Early eradication methods included hitting the toads with golf clubs or cricket bats. In recent years, freezing or gassing them with carbon dioxide has been used.

The toads emit a poison that attacks the heart of predators. But meat ants are impervious to this.

Rick Shine, a professor of evolutionary biology who supervised the research, said: "A single toad can have 30,000 eggs in a clutch, so there's a heck of a lot of tadpoles turning into toads along the edge of a billabong. You can literally have tens of thousands of toads emerging at pretty much the same time. They are vulnerable to meat ants if the colony discovers there is a source of free food."

In 2008, researchers studied thousands of toads emerging from ponds lined with cat food and found that 98% were attacked by the ants within two minutes. Of those that escaped, 80% died within a day from ant-inflicted injuries.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 19 Feb 2010 | 1:35 am