Single men, unhappily married men may have higher risk of fatal stroke

Single men and unhappily married men may face a higher risk of fatal stroke in later decades compared to happily married men. The data were taken from interviews done in Israel in the 1960s and follow-up through 1997. It did not include women.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Brightest star-forming region in Small Magellanic Cloud

Astronomers have taken a dramatic new image of NGC 346, the brightest star-forming region in our neighboring galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, 210,000 light-years away towards the constellation of Tucana (the Toucan). The light, wind and heat given off by massive stars have dispersed the glowing gas within and around this star cluster, forming a surrounding wispy nebular structure that looks like a cobweb.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Children can have recurrent strokes

Children can have strokes, and the strokes can recur, usually within a month, according to pediatric researchers. Unfortunately, the strokes often go unrecognized the first time, and the child does not receive treatment before the recurrence.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Surprise! Neural mechanism may underlie an enhanced memory for the unexpected

The human brain excels at using past experiences to make predictions about the future. However, the world around us is constantly changing, and new events often violate our logical expectations. Researchers have discovered that unexpected stimuli enhanced an early and a late electrical potential in the hippocampus and the late signal was associated with a memory for the unexpected picture.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Suffocating head lice works in new treatment

A new non-neurotoxic treatment for head lice has been found to have an average of 91.2 percent treatment success rate after one week, and to be safe in humans from six months of age and up.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

NASA unveils new space-weather science tool

When NASA's satellite operators need accurate, real-time space-weather information, they turn to the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) of the Space Weather Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The CCMC's newest and most advanced space-weather science tool is the Integrated Space Weather Analysis system.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

Torn apart by its own tides, massive planet is on a 'death march'

Astrophysicists have determined that a massive planet outside our Solar System is being distorted and destroyed by its host star -- a finding that helps explain the unexpectedly large size of the planet, WASP-12b. It's a discovery that not only explains what's happening to WASP-12b; it also means scientists have a one-of-a-kind opportunity to observe how a planet enters this final stage of its life.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Potential rehabilitation following 'mini stroke'

Researchers found that a modified version of cardiac rehabilitation was effective at reducing some symptoms of stroke in just six weeks following a transient ischemic attack (TIA) often referred to as "mini strokes." No post-TIA regimen exists to help prevent future strokes -- something that researchers say needs to change.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Laser surgery technique gets new life in art restoration

A laser technique best known for its use to remove unwanted tattoos from the skin is finding a second life in preserving great sculptures, paintings and other works of art. The technique, called laser ablation, involves removing material from a solid surface by vaporizing the material with a laser beam.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Urine protein test might help diagnose kidney damage from lupus

Simple urine tests for four proteins might be able to detect early kidney disease in people with lupus, researchers have found in an animal study.
Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Australia calls for an end to scientific whaling (AFP)

AFP - Australia called Thursday for an end to so-called "scientific whaling" and the phaseout over five years of harpooning in the Southern Ocean, in a move apparently aimed squarely at Japan.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 2:57 am

Development threat to Hong Kong bird haven (AFP)

AFP - Tens of thousands of birds, including rare and endangered species, flock each year to an unlikely haven sandwiched between high-rise Hong Kong and Shenzhen, the towering frontier of mainland China.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 2:33 am

Catlin Arctic team brave thin ice and polar bears to monitor acid oceans

Scientists to set up ice base in northern Canada to examine impact of ocean acidification on the region's animals and plants

Scientists and explorers will brave polar bears, thin ice and frostbite within the next fortnight as they embark on an Arctic expedition to examine the impact of an acidifying ocean on the region's animals and plants.

The Catlin Arctic Survey will set up an "ice base" in northern Canada for the scientists while a separate team of adventurers will undertake a 500km trek across sea ice off Greenland. Both will investigate the impact of ocean acidification on marine life, while the explorers will also measure variations in sea ice thickness. Last year's Catlin Arctic Survey showed the Arctic ice was thinner than expected.

The expedition will also be the first to take water samples from the sea ice in winter, as all previous Arctic measurements have been taken from ships in open water in summer.

As well as taking water samples, the scientists will collect plankton, sea butterflies, a type of swimming sea snail, and other local marine life and examine their reaction to increasing levels of acidity and also test how much CO2 passes through sea ice from the air into the sea.

Globally, oceans have seen an 30% increase in acidity on pre-industrial levels, the fastest rate of change in 55 million years. The Catlin scientists aim to establish the acidity of the Arctic ocean, which appears to be acidifying faster than the rest of the world's oceans because cold water absorbs more CO2.

Marine life that depends on calcification such as coral, crustacea and molluscs are particularly sensitive to changes in acidity because the calcium carbonate that form their shells or skeletons dissolves in more acidic water. A type of snail known commonly as sea butterflies (pteropods), which are an important part of the marine food chain, are among the organisms potentially at risk.

Pen Hadow, the director of the survey who also led last year's expedition, said the Arctic ocean's vulnerability motivated the trip. "We know that disappearing ice cover and the potential impacts of acidity are parts of some big ocean changes. Since ocean acidification is widely viewed as a bellwether for wider global change, it is important we understand better what is happening."

The ice base on the western shore of Ellef Rignes Island in Canada will be home to a team of six scientists who will work on the ice protected by two guides armed with guns and bangers to ward off curious polar bears attracted by the smell of humans. They will also face hazards such as breaking ice and the risk of frostbite as they undertake the fiddly work of drilling for water samples.

Helen Findlay of Plymouth Marine Laboratory, one of the international team heading to the base, admitted that although she had been to the Arctic before, she had never been in winter. "It's a challenging place to carry out science, though I've been too busy preparing to be nervous," she said.

The three-strong team of explorers led by Ann Daniels, who took part in last year's survey, will face even more extreme conditions with wind-chill bringing temperatures down to -75C. An analysis of the data collected will be published in late 2010 or 2011.

• See G2 on Friday to read Steven Morris' account of the explorers training for the cold on Dartmoor

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 25 Feb 2010 | 2:13 am

China says no emissions cap for now (AFP)

AFP - China's top climate change negotiator has said the world's biggest carbon polluter has no intention of capping greenhouse gas emissions for the time being, state media reported Thursday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 25 Feb 2010 | 12:02 am

Deep-Sea Bacteria Form Avatar-Style Electrochemical Networks

According to findings that could have been pulled from a deep-sea sequel to Avatar, bacteria appear to conduct electrical currents across the ocean floor, driving linked chemical reactions at relatively vast distances.

Noticed only when reseachers happened to test sediment leftovers from another experiment, the phenomenon may add a new mechanism to Earth’s biogeochemistry.

“The cycling of elements and life at the bottom of the sea, and in soil, and anywhere else you’re short of oxygen — this could help us understand those processes,” said microbiologist Lars Peter Nielsen of Denmark’s Aarhus University, co-author of the study, published Feb. 24 in Nature.

The original focus of Nielsen’s team wasn’t seafloor conductivity, but an especially interesting species of sulfur bacteria found on the floor of Aarhus Bay. To help quantify their chemical activity, the researchers kept a few beakers of seawater and sulfur bacteria-free sediment for comparison.

After those experiments ended, the beakers were almost forgotten. Then, a few weeks later, the researchers noticed strange patterns of activity. Changing oxygen levels in water above the top sediment layer were almost immediately followed by chemical fluctuations several layers down. The distance was so great, and the response time so quick, that usual methods of chemical transport — molecular diffusion, or a slow drift from high to low concentration — couldn’t explain it.

At first, the researchers were stumped. Then they realized the process made sense if bacteria in the top and bottom layers were linked. Anything that affected oxygen-processing bacteria up top would also affect the sulfide-eating microbes below. It would explain the apparent connection; and an electrical linkage would explain the speed. It would also boggle the mind.

“Such hypotheses would at one time have been considered heretical,” wrote Kenneth Nealson, a University of Southern California microbiologist, in an accompanying commentary in Nature. A half-inch gap “doesn’t seem like much of a distance. But to a bacterium it amounts to 10,000 body lengths, equivalent to about 20 kilometers (12 miles) in human terms.”

In recent years, however, scientists have found species of microbes with outer membranes covered by electron-transporting enzymes, or studded with conductive, micrometer-scale filaments. These are used in driving experimental microbial fuel cells, and are known to be found in the Aarhus Bay mud. Those sediments also contain trace amounts of pyrite, an electrically conductive mineral.

The top sediment layer also had a low concentration of hydrogen ions, something that could only be explained through an electrochemical reaction, with electrons conducted from a distance, said Nielsen.

Nealson called the findings “astonishing,” and said they “may be relevant to energy transfer and electron flow through many different environments.” They could eventually applied to bacteria-based schemes for bioremediation, carbon sequestration and energy production.

Asked if he’d seen the blockbuster movie Avatar, with its storyline involving electrochemically linked forests that stored the inhabitants’ souls in a planet-spanning biological computer, Nielsen said, “One of my colleagues saw this, and immediately sent me a message: ‘You’ve discovered the secret of Avatar! Go see it!’ The similarities are quite striking.”

He continued, “I don’t think there is much spirit in the networks we’ve seen here. It might be only about energy. But there are connections.”

Image: At left, Nielsen measures current in the sediment sample; at right, a close-up view of the sediment. Credit: Nils Risgaard-Petersen

See Also:

• Barely Alive, Seafloor Microbes Might Resemble Exo-Organisms …
• More Clues Found in Ocean Microbe Mystery
• World’s Freakiest Worm Gets Expanded Family Tree
• Deep-Sea Robot Roves the Unexplored Ocean Depths

Citations: “Electric currents couple spatially separated biogeochemical processes in marine sediment.” By Lars Peter Nielsen, Nils Risgaard-Petersen, Henrik Fossing, Peter Bondo Christensen & Mikio Sayam. Nature, Vol. 463, No. 7284, February 25, 2010.

“Sediment reactions defy dogma.” By Kenneth H. Nealson. Nature, Vol. 463, No. 7284, February 25, 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 | 24 Feb 2010 | 11:29 pm

World warming unhindered by cold spells: scientists

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The pace of global warming continues unabated, scientists said on Thursday, despite images of Europe crippled by a deep freeze and parts of the United States blasted by blizzards.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Feb 2010 | 11:26 pm

Argentina urges UN chief to intervene in Falklands row (AFP)

AFP - Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana pressed UN chief Ban Ki-moon to intervene in an ongoing row over oil drilling by a British firm in waters off the disputed Falkland Islands.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Feb 2010 | 10:09 pm

Heart Stem Cells Move Closer to Human Treatments (HealthDay)

HealthDay - WEDNESDAY, Feb. 24 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers are moving ahead -- although sometimes ploddingly -- toward the goal of using stem cell therapies to rescue people with cardiovascular disease, the leading killer of men and women in the United States.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Feb 2010 | 9:50 pm

Action call on flood protection

The chairman of the Environment Agency urges industry to work on developing products to protect homes against flood damage.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2010 | 8:16 pm

Concessions over science advice principles

Proposal that advisors should seek 'shared position' with government abandoned.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/OpmTD-4faL4" height="1" width="1"/>
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 24 Feb 2010 | 7:30 pm

Met Office wants re-examination of 150 years of climate data

Plan comes at a time when public conviction about the threat of climate change has declined sharply after questions over the science

The Met Office has called for a re-examination of more than 150 years of global temperature records as part of a new comprehensive approach for analysing temperature data – to better assess the risks posed by changes in extremes of climate.

The plan comes at a time when public conviction about the threat of climate change has declined sharply after questions over the science and growing disillusionment with government action.

In what is being viewed as a bid to regain public confidence, the Met Office submitted Proposal for a New International Analysis of Land Surface Air Temperature Data at a meeting in Turkey.

The document says the current sets of data, assembled in the UK and the US using different methodologies, agree that the world is warming. But the Met Office says there is room for improvement in the collection of data.

"To meet future needs to better understand the risks of dangerous climate change and to adapt to the effects of global warming, further development of these datasets is required, in particular to better assess the risks posed by changes in extremes of climate," the report states.

Worldwide, three centres currently calculate global average temperature each month, including the UK Met Office's ­collaboration with the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, which has been engulfed in controversy amid allegations that researchers manipulated the evidence supporting man-made global warming.

The other two, which are both based in the US, are the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is part of Nasa; and the National Climatic Data Centre, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The call for a reassessment of 150 years of data, which is expected to take three years, will be seen by many as an attempt to get beyond the hacked emails scandal that happened recently at the University of East Anglia.

However, the paper emphasises that it does expect any substantial changes in such an an exercise.

"It is important to emphasise that we do not anticipate any substantial changes in the resulting global and continental-scale multi-decadal trends. This effort will ensure that the datasets are completely robust and that all methods are transparent," the document says.

An Ipsos Mori survey published this week showed that the proportion of adults who believe climate change is "definitely" a reality dropped by 30% during the past year, from 44% to 31%.

Overall about nine out of 10 people questioned still appear to accept some degree of global warming.

But the steep decrease in those without doubts will raise fears that it will be harder to persuade the public to support actions to curb the problem, particularly higher prices for energy and other goods.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Feb 2010 | 7:05 pm

When a Killer Kills

The death of trainer Dawn Brancheau today at SeaWorld Adventure Park in Orlando, Florida at the hands of Tilikum, one of the largest killer whales in captivity, was a shocking, terrible tragedy. There are no words for her family and ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Feb 2010 | 6:37 pm

Could Hurricanes Spawn a Permanent El Niño?

An epoch of ancient time known as the early Pliocene 3-5 million years ago holds special fascination for climate scientists, because levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were about as high as they are in modern climate. What puzzles ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Feb 2010 | 6:26 pm

Underwater robot automates ocean testing

'Lab in a can' eliminates the middleman between sample site and lab.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 24 Feb 2010 | 5:30 pm

Bloom Energy Server Could Bring Microgrids Online

I'm seeing news everywhere about Bloom Energy's announcement today of its Energy Server, a new kind of fuel cell that can generate clean energy. So I did a little poking around and here's what I found. First, just a refresher: ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Feb 2010 | 5:22 pm

NASA Chief to Senators: Mars is the Ultimate Destination (SPACE.com)

SPACE.com - NASA chief Charles Bolden told senators Wednesday that sending astronauts to Mars is still the ultimate goal for U.S. human spaceflight, as he defended the agency's new space plan against criticism in a heated budget hearing.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Feb 2010 | 5:16 pm

Letters: Show some gratitude for science funding

John Dainton, Chadwick professor of physics at Liverpool University (Letters, 24 February), is the latest academic to add his voice to those decrying the cuts in funding of academic research in the UK. He is right to warn of the possible consequences, but his tone of "give us the money or else" is depressingly familiar and will not aid his cause. I worked for 34 years in the research councils (SRC, SERC and EPSRC) and experienced many ups and downs of funding. My final 10 years before retirement coincided with a decade of unprecedented investment in research by the current administration.

Regrettably, throughout that period there was almost no public acknowledgement of that funding by its recipients, which I know was a source of frustration to those engaged in securing and delivering the funds. That frustration is only compounded by the readiness of those same academics to rush into print condemning the government when funding has to be constrained. The universities must take their share of the coming misery, along with the rest of the public sector, until the next good time comes along, as it surely will.

If a degree of loyalty to this country, through thick and thin, is too much to ask, then I am sure Professor Dainton and others can go abroad in pursuit of the dollar, euro, or yen, returning when things here improve. They have done it before, so why not again?

Phil Burnell

Highworth, Wiltshire

• The complaint from Professor Dainton about the cutbacks in cutting-edge science will not affect government policy. The political class is tied up with the City, especially the Tories. To win an election, parties must appeal to key marginals in the south-east, wherein live many City workers.

Their argument will be that British consumers do not need British-made products. Advanced technologies can be developed in Europe, the US or east Asia, manufactured in some sweatshop elsewhere, then imported into the UK. All manufacturers, wherever located, will require management consultants, accountants, advertisers, investment capital and the like. The City can, for a large fee, provide these services. They will do that, just as soon as the present little hiccups are sorted out. The City is indispensable. Scientific research is a financial overhead that has not yet been removed.

Raymond Vickers

Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

• PV (photovoltaic) panels and solar hot water are exciting (Solar water heaters come to the boil as cash incentive is dangled, Money, 24 February). But do you think that a Conservative government will honour the feed-in tariffs? I don't want to invest and then find the tariffs stop or decrease.

Isobel Hart

Sheffield

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Feb 2010 | 5:05 pm

Senators to NASA chief: Go somewhere specific (AP)

AP - NASA needs to go somewhere specific, not just talk about it, skeptical U.S. senators told the space agency chief Wednesday.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Feb 2010 | 5:02 pm

Much-Touted Bloom Fuel Cell Still Too Spendy

A Silicon Valley startup that’s taken more than $400 million in venture funding finally unveiled its product today in a star-studded extravaganza.

In an event held at eBay’s headquarters in San Jose, California, Bloom Energy called on California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Google co-founder Larry Page, and retired general Colin Powell to push their solid-oxide fuel-cell box, which converts natural gas or other fuels into electricity. The company says its “energy servers” produce 60 percent less carbon dioxide emissions than a coal-fired power plant, and cost less than electricity produced on the grid.

“This is like the Google IPO,” said John Doerr, an investor in both Google and Bloom Energy with the legendary venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

“This technology is fundamentally going to change the world,” echoed Senator Diane Feinstein (D-California) during a promotional video shown at the press conference.

But is it really going to? Independent experts aren’t so sure.

The analyst firm Lux Research posted a note to its blog today noting that Bloom had confirmed their 100-kilowatt boxes are priced between $700,000 and $800,000 without subsidies of any kind.

In fact, a long-term R&D collaboration between the Department of Energy and multiple solid-oxide fuel-cell manufacturers, the Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance, estimates that fuel cells will need to cost $700 per kilowatt of peak capacity to compete unsubsidized with the grid. Bloom’s product costs 10 times that.

“The cost is about an order of magnitude higher than it needs to be, to be truly competitive,” said Michael Tucker, a fuel cell scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

When you do the math, the Bloom box’s electricity costs substantially more per kilowatt hour than the grid.

“Without incentives, we calculate electricity would cost $0.13/kWh to $0.14/kWh, with about $0.09/kWh from system cost and about $0.05/kWh coming from fuel cost,” Lux wrote. “Note that this is high compared to average retail U.S. electricity costs of roughly $0.11/kWh.”

Right now, a 30 percent Federal government tax credit and a $2,500-per-kilowatt California subsidy for fuel cells substantially lowers the price of the machine for Bloom’s customers. The company claims that with those incentives the life-cycle cost of electricity over 10 years could be as low as $0.08/kWh.

And over the next few years, it’s probable that, like many technologies, the unit cost of Bloom’s fuel cells will decrease as the scale of production increases, but it’s unclear how cheap the Bloom boxes can get.

Tucker, for his part, does not think ceramic-based solid-oxide fuel cells can become competitive with the grid. That’s why he’s working on a stainless steel version that would be coated with a thin film of ceramic material.

Tucker said that from what he’s heard, Bloom’s product is similar to fuel cells from UTC, Kyocera and other companies.

“From an outsider’s perspective, it sounds like their technology is relatively straightforward and similar to other technologies out there in this arena, but maybe their business approach is relatively unique,” Tucker concluded.

This is business after all, and if marketing counts, Bloom Energy certainly has a leg up on its industrial competitors like Siemens.

“They are certainly going to raise visibility for the industry,” Tucker said. “They are something of a PR leader in the market. If they can … ride that wave into an early market-share position, that could be huge. They will be getting experience with real-world customers.”

Indeed, they are: The firm’s beta testers include Walmart, Coca-Cola, Google and eBay.

Image: AP/Paul Sakuma

See Also:

• Green Fuel-Cell Makeover for Future Power Plants
• This Video will Make You Understand Fuel Cells and Catalysts in 10
• Cheap Catalyst Could Turn Sunlight, Water Into Fuel

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Feb 2010 | 4:51 pm

Study: High-fat diets raise stroke risk in women (AP)

AP - A moment on the lips, forever on the hips? A bad figure is hardly the worst of it. Eating a lot of fat, especially the kind that's in cookies and pastries, can significantly raise the risk of stroke for women over 50, a large new study finds. We already know that diets rich in fat, particularly artery-clogging trans fat, are bad for the heart and the waistline.
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Feb 2010 | 4:28 pm

Bacteria buzzing in the seabed

Nanowires growing from bacteria might link up distant chemical reactions in sediments.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 24 Feb 2010 | 4:23 pm

New High-Res Images of Luminous Star-Forming Region

Stars shine amidst a luminous, cotton-candy nebula in this new image of NGC 346, the largest star-forming region in our neighboring galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud.

The star cluster, located about 210,000 light-years away and measuring around 200 light years across, is home to a group of brilliant stars.

Many of the stars in the nebula are just a few million years old. These young suns were born when gusting winds from a massive star compressed a huge amount of matter, which then collapsed under its own gravity. The collapse created extremely dense hot spots that fueled the birth of new stars.

Light, wind and heat have whipped up gases in and around the cluster to form the pink-and-blue wispy cloud. Stars burning inside the nebula have made the surrounding gas hot enough to glow.

The new image was taken by the Wide Field Imager instrument on the 7.2-foot telescope at the at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The image was captured using blue, violet and red filters, in addition to a narrow-band filter tuned to see the light emitted by hydrogen in gas clouds.

Image: ESO

See Also:

• Massive Star Blows Fancy Hourglass Nebula
• New Telescope Captures Dazzling Image of Orion Nebula
• Glowing Hydrogen Highlights Cat’s Paw Nebula
• Hubble Explains Nebula’s Ruddy Complexion
• Star Factory Shows Off Three Kinds of Nebulae

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Feb 2010 | 4:02 pm

A land without Google?

A survey reveals how Chinese scientists could be affected by the stand-off between their government and the search-engine giant.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 24 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm

News briefing: 25 February 2010

The week in science.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 24 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm

Killer Whales Don't Usually Kill People (LiveScience.com)

LiveScience.com - News of a trainer being killed by a killer whale at SeaWorld Orlando today doesn't change the fact that these giants, while deadly predators, do not kill humans at sea.

Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Feb 2010 | 3:45 pm

iTunes Sells 10 Billionth Song

Apple's iTunes music store marked its 10 billionth song download today – the same day that Apple CEO Steve Jobs turns 55.
Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2010 | 3:43 pm

Killer Whales Don't Usually Kill People

Killer whales don't kill humans in the wild, though they've been known to hunt other marine mammals, such as seals and gray whales.
Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2010 | 3:41 pm

Piecing Together the Tiniest Galaxies

Radio survey of dwarf galaxies seeks to explain ongoing star formation.
Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2010 | 3:37 pm

Brainy Crows Finally Stumped by Intelligence Test

Maybe they’re not as smart as we thought: The New Caledonian crow, having passed so many other tests of animal cognition, has finally flunked an exam.

New Caledonian crows are valedictorians among corvids, a family of birds that includes ravens, jays and magpies. They’ve wowed scientists with their cognitive powers, even using wire as a food-fetching tool.

On one classic cognition test — retrieving a piece of food tied to a string — corvids perform so well that some researchers thought they didn’t just learn through rote trial and error, but envisioned problems in their head.

In a study published Feb. 22 in Public Library of Science ONE, researchers added a twist: They ran the string through a hole in a plywood platform. Crows could only see the food when directly above the hole. When they pulled back on the string, they’d lose sight of it. If they really did have a mental image of the task, it wouldn’t be a problem.

Twelve crows took the test: four who’d practiced on the old food-on-a-string setup, four who’d never seen it, and four who’d never seen it but could watch their reflection in a mirror.

Crows from the first group succeeded, but only after many attempts. Only one of the second group passed, also with difficulty. Two crows from the third group passed. It wasn’t the ace performance usually seen in crows.

“These results are not consistent with the hypothesis that the crows built a mental scenario,” wrote the researchers. “Our results raise the possibility that spontaneous string pulling in New Caledonian crows may not be based on insight but on operant conditioning mediated by a perceptual-motor feedback cycle.”

In other words, the crows relied on a simple trial-and-error approach. But the researchers did acknowledge that their sample size was limited, and that depth perception could be skewed in a confusing way by the experimental setup.

If nothing else, the crows did far better than finches. And even if they’re not good with spatial relationships, they’re certainly fast learners.

Images: 1) New Caledonian Crows on the old experimental setup at left, and on the new apparatus at right. Credit: University of Auckland.  2) Schematic of the new test design. Credit: University of Auckland.

See Also:

• Clever Critters: 8 Best Non-Human Tool Users
• Tool Use Found in Octopuses
• Clever Crows Prove Aesop’s Fable Is More Than Fiction
• Top 10 Incredible Animal Videos: Readers’ Choice

Citation: “An Investigation into the Cognition Behind Spontaneous String Pulling in New Caledonian Crows.” By Alex H. Taylor, Felipe S. Medina, Jennifer C. Holzhaider, Lindsay J. Hearne, Gavin R. Hunt, Russell D. Gray. Public Library of Science ONE, Vol. 5 No. 2, February 22, 2009.

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 | 24 Feb 2010 | 3:33 pm

Got a brainwave?

The search for exciting amateur scientific studies
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2010 | 3:30 pm

Bloom Energy press conference: Bloom box officially unveiled (The Christian Science Monitor)

The Christian Science Monitor - The veil has been lifted on Bloom Energy, the secretive energy start-up that has been quietly installing its fuel-cell servers that promise cleaner and cheaper energy at some of Silicon Valley’s biggest businesses
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 24 Feb 2010 | 3:06 pm

Earth science: The climate machine

A new generation of sophisticated Earth models is gearing up for its first major test. But added complexity may lead to greater uncertainty about the future climate, finds Olive Heffernan.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 24 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

SeaWorld Employee Killed by Whale

An orca whale attacked and killed a trainer during a performance at the theme park.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Feb 2010 | 2:20 pm

Olympic Medals Made from E-Waste

For the first time, Olympians will be wearing medals that contain gold, silver and copper recovered from old electronics. The metal supplier, Teck Resources, recycled household appliances, electronics and cables and recovered metals from computer parts and circuit boards through ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Feb 2010 | 1:40 pm

German paper chase to end

Funding agency cuts number of publications needed for grant applications.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 24 Feb 2010 | 1:30 pm

Launch of the Bloom box fuel cell generates a slice of Apple hype

What brings Arnold Schwarzenegger to eBay HQ? An ex-Nasa scientist's cheap energy invention made from sand inscribed with special inks

Not every company can boast Arnold Schwarzenegger, Colin Powell and the heads of Google and Walmart at its launch. Even more unlikely, the firm in question makes what some may regard as a less than sexy clean energy device.

But such was the razzmatazz that accompanied the unveiling of Bloom ­Energy's eagerly awaited "energy server" today at the California headquarters of one if its first customers, eBay.

A mini power station containing fuel cells that can run on anything from natural gas to the more renewable stuff, Bloom's device has received the level of hype in Silicon Valley normally reserved for a new product from Apple.

For the past week, newspapers and websites have been filled with rumours about Bloom boxes, as the devices have been nicknamed, invented by former Nasa scientist KR Sridhar.

Fuel cells, which convert hydrogen and oxygen into electricity by an electrochemical process, are a promising source of energy while emitting less CO² and other pollutants, as well as being much more efficient, than burning. But most modern designs use expensive materials, such as platinum, or corrosive chemicals that shorten their lifespan.

At the heart of Sridhar's device is a thin fuel cell made from a plentiful resource, sand. The size of a floppy disk, it is painted with proprietary inks that allow the fuels to react with oxygen from the air, a chemical process that produces electricity.

According to Sridhar, a single cell can produce about 25W, enough for a low-energy lightbulb, and a stack of cells the size of a brick will power an average home. A single Bloom box, a unit the size of a chest freezer and which contains several stacks of fuel cells, will produce 100KW, enough for 100 homes.

"Compared to the US national grid, this is about twice as efficient," said Sridhar. "So your carbon footprint is about half. If you use a renewable fuel, you're carbon neutral." Sridhar has spent eight years developing the fuel cells and has already sold the first units: the first customer was Google, which uses a Bloom box at its headquarters.

"Bloom fuel cells are powering a portion of Google's energy needs at our headquarters here in Mountain View — this is another on-site renewable energy source that we're exploring to help power our facilities," said Jamie Yood, a Google spokesman.

"We have a 400kW installation on Google's main campus. Over the first 18 months the project has had 98% availability and delivered 3.8 million kWh of electricity."

Other customers include Walmart, Federal Express and Coca Cola. The former US secretary of state, Colin Powell, sits on the board and Bloom has received $400m from venture capitalists.

Not everyone has been converted. Richard Miller, an innovation platform leader at the UK's Technology Strategy Board, said Bloom Energy had yet to provide data to allow a fully informed decision on the value of its technology. "Certainly, fuel cells are a hot prospect, but to make them a reality you have to make them reliable and perhaps this is what Bloom have done? Perhaps it's an engineering breakthrough? But there are already fuel cells on the market and for the home, notably from Ceres Power in the UK. I look forward to finding out more about Bloom Energy's product."

Keith Pullen, co-director of the centre for energy and the environment at City University in London, said: "Although Bloom Energy cites four advantages over existing technology – low material costs, high efficiency, multiple fuel sources and reversibility – these are attributes that all fuel cell developers seek to achieve. So, whether the technology is worthy of the hype will depend on further data emerging through future testing and deployments."

He added that, in niche markets such as off-grid power, fuel cells can now out perform other generator types, including internal combustion engines. "But this depends on the power demand being steady, as well as the unit size being a minor concern. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how Bloom Energy can move the technology away from these smaller markets and scale it to meet the more rigorous demands of business and domestic users."

Martin McAdam of renewable energy company Aquamarine Power was more sceptical. He said living off-grid with the Bloom Box would still require an infrastructure to move the fuels around. "It still produces CO2 – it may be more efficient but that's the question that needs to be asked, how much CO2 is emitted per MWh? If it's using natural gas, it's no different to a gas power station, even if it is more efficient."

So far, the Bloom Boxes cost around $700,000 but this is expected to fall as more of the units are built at commercial scale. Sridhar said that customers with should expect to see a payback time of 3-5 years through electricity. And he already has plans for the future boxes in the home. "In a few years, how we will use it is as a home energy server of the future - it simply has a solar panel and [Bloom Box], it will provide electricity day and night and also charge your automobile, you don't need a grid. This is a product of the future, a decade or so away."

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Feb 2010 | 1:17 pm

Who Said Tiger Was a Role Model?

As anyone who doesn’t live under a rock knows by now, Tiger Woods is sorry for stuff. He never explicitly stated just what, exactly, he was offering his “profound apology” for, though presumably it had something to do with the ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Feb 2010 | 12:52 pm

'Seek, test and treat' slows HIV

Studies in several nations show that treating people before they fall ill can curb the spread of disease.
Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 24 Feb 2010 | 12:41 pm

Biofuel power plant plan refused

An application to build a controversial biofuel power station at Avonmouth near Bristol is refused by councillors.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2010 | 12:16 pm

Chinese Scientists Say Losing Google Would Hurt Research

Google and China may not be fighting over science, but their feud could have unintended negative consequences for researchers in the country.

A Nature News survey of Chinese scientists found that 84 percent of them thought losing access to Google would “somewhat or significantly” hurt their work process. Like their American counterparts, Chinese researchers use Google and Google Scholar to find papers and related information.

“Research without Google would be like life without electricity,” one Chinese scientist told Nature.

In January, Google announced it would stop following censorship rules required by the Chinese government after its servers came under attack. It remains to be seen whether the Mountain View company will be thrown out of the country for that stance.

When Google’s initial announcement broke, media blogger Robin Sloan of Snarkmarket pondered the possibility of the splitting of the famously world-circling internet.

“Is the Chinese internet going to be largely parallel? The othernet?” Sloan asked.

If events do continue in that direction, truly global enterprises like science could suffer as information becomes harder — even if only moderately — to exchange.

Image: AP Photo/Vincent Thian. A Chinese Google user presents flowers to the Google China headquarters in Beijing, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010.

See Also:

• Google to Stop Censoring Search Results in China After Hack Attack
• China Stands Firm in Response to Google Threat
• TED 2010: Google Optimistic It Can Remain in China
• Timeline: Google’s Rocky Road Into China

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

Source: Wired: Wired Science | 24 Feb 2010 | 12:05 pm

Woman has 2 babies in first for ovarian transplant

LONDON (Reuters) - A woman has given birth to two children after her fertility was restored using transplants of ovarian tissue, the first time the complex treatment has produced two babies from separate pregnancies.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Feb 2010 | 11:30 am

Ocean robot 'plans experiments'

US scientists use an underwater vehicle that can "plan its own experiments" on the seafloor.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2010 | 11:19 am

Losing Google would hit Chinese science hard

LONDON (Reuters) - More than three-quarters of scientists in China use the search engine Google as a primary research tool and say their work would be significantly hampered if they were to lose it, a survey showed on Wednesday.
Source: Reuters: Science News | 24 Feb 2010 | 11:03 am

Brain's 'Fairness' Spot Found

Humans tend not to like unequal situations, and now scientists have found the first evidence that this behavior is reflected in the human brain.
Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2010 | 11:03 am

Sculpting With Stars

Your dose of space porn for today comes courtesy of the European Southern Observatory. It shows an amazing cosmic "sculpture" in NGC 346, a very bright star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The universe is the canvas. The materials ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Feb 2010 | 10:29 am

Heaviest Element Officially Named Copernicium

Heaviest element yet discovered named after Nicolaus Copernicus, who came up with heliocentric view of the solar system.
Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2010 | 10:21 am

Grizzlies are spotted encroaching on polar bear territory

Grizzly bears are being spotted in Manitoba, Canada, where biologists say only polar bears are usually found.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2010 | 10:08 am

Brain 'Hears' Sound of Silence

While we think of silence as the absence of sound, the brain detects it nonetheless.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Feb 2010 | 10:01 am

Star Devours Its Own Planet

The star is squeezing a planet 40 percent larger than Jupiter into the shape of a football.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Feb 2010 | 9:47 am

AT&T Outperforms Rivals in 3G Network Tests

AT&T much maligned 3G network has undergone a drastic makeover and now ranks first in a 13-city tests of wireless networks by PCWorld.
Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2010 | 9:24 am

Academic tries to take hot air out of climate science debate

Judith Curry aims to turn inflammatory debate of 'climategate' into reasoned online discussions to rebuild trust with the public

Professor Judith Curry, who currently chairs the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has embarked on what she's describing as a "blogospheric experiment". Having written a lengthy essay entitled Losing the Public's Trust which will be published later today, she decided to alert many bloggers across the climate change debate in "the hope of demonstrating the collective power of the blogosphere to generate ideas and debate them". She has asked the likes of Anthony Watts, Andrew Revkin, Roger Pielke Jr, among many others, to pitch in with their own thoughts about her essay with the goal of "bringing some sanity to this whole situation surrounding the politicization of climate science and rebuilding trust with the public". I genuinely hope she achieves her aims.

As and when other bloggers publish their own responses I will try and provide links to them below, but here are my own thoughts on Curry's article. First, I agree with her opening premise that "credibility is a combination of expertise and trust" and that the climate research establishment has failed to understand that the "climategate" furore is "primarily a crisis of trust".

In their misguided war against the skeptics, the CRU emails reveal that core research values became compromised. Much has been said about the role of the highly politicized environment in providing an extremely difficult environment in which to conduct science that produces a lot of stress for the scientists. There is no question that this environment is not conducive to science and scientists need more support from their institutions in dealing with it. However, there is nothing in this crazy environment that is worth sacrificing your personal or professional integrity. And when your science receives this kind of attention, it means that the science is really important to the public. Therefore scientists need to do everything possible to make sure that they effectively communicate uncertainty, risk, probability and complexity, and provide a context that includes alternative and competing scientific viewpoints. This is an important responsibility that individual scientists and particularly the institutions need to take very seriously.

If the "climate research establishment" is to take away one lesson from this sorry episode it will surely be the need to "effectively communicate uncertainty, risk, probability and complexity, and provide a context that includes alternative and competing scientific viewpoints".

Up to this point I strongly agree with Curry's sentiments, but I think she is a little complacent in her assessment of the "changing nature of scepticism about global warming". She correctly identifies that climate scepticism is a multi-headed and ever-shifting beast. There are as many flavours to the sceptics as there are to environmentalists. To label them all as flat-earthers and big oil deniers is just as ill-judged and lacking in subtlety as labelling all environmentalists as "eco-Nazis intent on taking us all back to the caves". Genuine climate science sceptics such as Climate Audit's Steven McIntyre are a world apart from the out-and-out denial pumped out by the likes of Prison Planet's Alex Jones. Somewhere in between are the likes of Anthony Watts who risks polluting his legitimate scepticism about the scientific processes and methodologies underpinning climate science with his accompanying politicised commentary. But Curry bags them up together and describes Watts and McIntyre both as "climate auditors":

They are technically educated people, mostly outside of academia. Several individuals have developed substantial expertise in aspects of climate science, although they mainly audit rather than produce original scientific research. They tend to be watchdogs rather than deniers; many of them classify themselves as "lukewarmers". They are independent of oil industry influence. They have found a collective voice in the blogosphere and their posts are often picked up by the mainstream media. They are demanding greater accountability and transparency of climate research and assessment reports… So how did this group of bloggers succeed in bringing the climate establishment to its knees (whether or not the climate establishment realizes yet that this has happened)? Again, trust plays a big role; it was pretty easy to follow the money trail associated with the "denial machine". On the other hand, the climate auditors have no apparent political agenda, are doing this work for free, and have been playing a watchdog role, which has engendered the trust of a large segment of the population.

I think Curry has misjudged this point a tad. If the "climate auditors" were exactly as billed above I would agree they are a most welcome addition to the debate. But to claim these blogs have no political agenda is naïve, I feel. Granted, both McIntyre and Watts do make regular efforts to tone down some of the very worst off-topic comments that follow their posts, but it doesn't take much analysis to know where the political heartbeat of these blogs lies. For right or wrong, they have attracted a particular crowd of followers – predominantly right-wingers in favour of the free-market and libertarianism – and it must be a difficult horse for McIntyre and Watts to ride at times without playing to the crowd.

Curry goes on to say:

There is a large group of educated and evidence driven people (eg, the libertarians, people that read the technical skeptic blogs, not to mention policy makers) who want to understand the risk and uncertainties associated with climate change, without being told what kinds of policies they should be supporting.

I think this is an important point. Some sceptics such as Bjørn Lomborgand Nigel Lawson have made a very conscious shift in their stance in recent years away from one that questioned the science to one that now largely focuses on questioning the policy responses to climate change. If we are to have a fierce, politicised debate let it lie here, surely. But let's keep the politics out of both the climate science and those that choose to try and audit it via their blogs.

And it is on this point that I think Curry makes her most powerful point:

While the blogosphere has a "wild west" aspect to it, I have certainly learned a lot by participating in the blogospheric debate including how to sharpen my thinking and improve the rhetoric of my arguments. Additional scientific voices entering the public debate particularly in the blogosphere would help in the broader communication efforts and in rebuilding trust. And we need to acknowledge the emerging auditing and open source movements in the internet-enabled world, and put them to productive use. The openness and democratization of knowledge enabled by the internet can be a tremendous tool for building public understanding of climate science and also trust in climate research.

I, too, think it would be a grave mistake not to make better use of the obvious open-source and crowd-source advantages enabled by blogs such as Climate Audit. Just as the SETI@Home project has made use of thousands of otherwise idle computers to scan radio telescope data for signs of extraterrestrial life, if people are willing and able to interrogate climate datasets in their spare time it would be strange in my view not to try and make use of this collective resource.

But the key for me is that word "trust" again. I think until those that frequent these sites come out from behind the cloak of anonymity that most of them choose to hide behind very few people, particularly climate scientists, will be willing to trust the motives of this army of DIY auditors. Anonymity allows for some spicy free speech beneath blogs such as this one, but it is not the right tool if we're seeking the "openness and democratization of knowledge". If we are to once again try and drive a wedge between science and politics, then all the participating actors – on both sides of the debate - need to be open about who they are and where their motives and vested interest, if any, lay.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Feb 2010 | 8:00 am

Spaceman

Making a 'carbon copy' of a spacecraft
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2010 | 7:56 am

How to Properly Care for Your Batteries

Here are a few ways to keep your batteries in tip-top shape.
Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2010 | 7:50 am

'Aquatic triffids'

Some pond plants need careful handling
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2010 | 7:37 am

Most Popular Baby Names in History

Parents are less likely to choose common names for their babies today. Here are lists of top baby names by year.
Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2010 | 7:37 am

Tiny Cell Motors Move Like Seesaws

New high resolution images of kinesin, a cell motor protein, reveal a better picture of how it moves.
Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2010 | 7:28 am

Bombard Iran ... with broadband | Reza Zia-Ebrahimi

If the west really wants to support the green movement it should shower the country in free satellite internet access

Washington and other western capitals seem to lack an efficient policy to support Iran's protest movement. They wish that the so-called green movement could replace the current military-messianic alliance at the country's helm with a more reasonable interlocutor that would be amenable to solve Iran's nuclear dossier, and co-operate in other arenas, chiefly Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, thanks to a number of systemic changes, direct logistical, financial or military assistance cannot be contemplated. Yet, there is one option that might prove a highly efficient way of supporting the green movement while avoiding any direct entanglement into Iran's affairs: bombarding the country with high-speed internet access.

The internet is a key element in the events currently unfolding in Iran. What has been dubbed the "Twitter revolution" makes extensive use of social networking platforms to disseminate the movement's messages and organise protests. In a country where fair journalistic reporting has become impossible because of government restrictions, Iran's citizen-journalists have used internet resources to provide the world with images of government violence. Similarly, the government seems to be aware of the power of images and information.

One of the pillars of its repressive policy has been media propaganda depicting protesters as vandals and stooges of foreign powers. In pursuing this policy, the government actively curtails alternative sources of information in the country (especially the BBC and VOA broadcasts in Persian), thoroughly filters sensitive websites used by protesters to communicate (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc) and reduces internet speed to just about nil to render video streaming or uploading impossible. It has even moved to ban Gmail.

The technology to overcome this already exists. Households and businesses in areas with poor infrastructure connect to the internet through satellites. A Japanese satellite, Kizuna, was launched in 2008 to provide mountainous areas of Japan and other parts of East Asia with the world's highest-speed internet connection using 45cm aperture antennas (the same size as existing communications satellite antennas widely used in Iran). The Japanese intend to expand this project into an international one.

A number of satellites currently covering Iran's territory can be used to provide internet access. Indeed, the US army, through private subcontractors, successfully provides its troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (where infrastructure is poor or inexistent) with near-high-speed satellite access.

The policy framework for such an endeavour is also in place in the US. Congress passed a rather secretive bill dubbed the Voice Act (Victims of Iranian Censorship) last summer. Most of its multimillion dollar appropriation has been earmarked "to expand Farsi language broadcasting into Iran". However, it involves a $20m budget for the "development of technologies that will enhance the Iranian people's ability to access and share information; counter efforts to block, censor, or monitor the internet in Iran; and engage in internet-based education programmes and other exchanges online".

President Barack Obama signed the act into law last October, but it is unclear if unrestricted internet access for Iranians is one of Washington's priorities at the moment. It should be. Showering Iran with satellite internet would allow Iranians to efficiently fight the regime's monopoly over information, further weakening its legitimacy. This in turn will grow the ranks of the green movement, as more citizens will be able to compare the state media with other sources, and it promises to deepen the rift within the regime itself and among the rank-and-file of the security apparatus. It will allow the Iranian citizen-journalists to wider circulate images and videos of government violence, and coordinate more efficiently their demonstrations.

This would be an invaluable help for a movement that the government can currently easily hinder with telecommunication cuts in the wake of large demonstrations. Most importantly, and from a US policy perspective, it would empower Iranians without committing troops or confronting the Iranian regime directly, solving the dilemma of American non-interference.

Complications might, of course, arise. The Iranian government can crack down on the use of satellite dishes, as it has consistently done in the past, or attempt to jam the signal. The whole project might prove costly, perhaps cost more than the Voice Act's $20m budget. But is a cyber war with Tehran's regime not a more palatable route than the other "options" that remain relentlessly on the table?

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Feb 2010 | 7:00 am

Vincent Van Gogh Painting Authenticated by Art Experts

Dirk Hannema, a discredited art curator, has the last laugh after a work by Van Gogh is discovered in his collection.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Feb 2010 | 6:45 am

Parents Choosing More Unusual Baby Names Now

Parents are less likely to choose common names for their babies today than in the earlier 1900s, a phenomenon that could indicate a society of narcissists.
Source: Livescience.com | 24 Feb 2010 | 6:16 am

Serious flaws in report on future jobs

The Shape of Jobs to Come with its headline-grabbing list of exotic new roles in science was based on flimsy research, says nanoscientist James Hayton

It's a big issue: how to stimulate interest in science and inspire the next generation to follow a scientific career. With the aim of doing just that, the government-backed Science: [So what? So everything] campaign last month released a list of 20 possible future jobs, based upon expected advances in science and technology.

The exotic list, from "body-part maker" to "space architect", generated huge media interest, and was publicly endorsed by prime minister Gordon Brown, science minister Lord Drayson, and Stephen Fry, who supports the Science: So What campaign.

The list was based on a lengthy commissioned report, entitled The Shape of Jobs to Come, researched and written by a futurist consultancy called Fast Future. Unfortunately, despite the best intentions of Science: So what? (SSW), there were major flaws in Fast Future's research.

My own attention was caught by the job of "nano-medic" in the list of 20 future jobs. The description claimed that "sub-atomic devices and treatments could transform personal healthcare so we would need a new breed of nano medicine specialists to administer these treatments." It is, and forever will be, impossible to make devices smaller than an atom.

Although this mistake has since been acknowledged and partially corrected, trying to trace the source of this job description revealed a huge amount about Fast Future's practices. For a whole page of information about nano-medicine, there is a single referenced source: a web page whose only mention of nano-medicine is the phrase "Nano-sized machines to deliver health. 'Nuff said."

This is indicative of the general quality of sources used in Fast Future's research. For the job of "memory augmentation surgeon", the sole source is an IT consultancy company – no reference to any neurological research into the physical basis of memory itself. Virtual clutter organisers? The only cited reference is a named head and neck surgeon who suggests the role. The job already exists anyway, but the use of informal suggestions as sole sources of information is pretty poor practice in any field of research.

Rohit Talwar, CEO of Fast Future and co-author of the report, gave the following explanation for the consultancy's choice of source information (you can see his full response here):

"[A] key approach in futures research is to look for 'weak signals'. Citing websites, news reports and blogs is an accepted best practice in horizon scanning where you are looking for these weak signals of what's coming next. These weak signals often pre-date any hard academic literature, which is why futures work deliberately draws on a range of sources not just published academic literature. In many cases there may only be one source or opinion from which you are working."

This is not the case for the jobs listed. Taking nano-medicine as an example, there are thousands of research papers and quality media reports about the role. In this instance, Fast Future is working from only one source of information not out of necessity, but out of choice. It could easily have referred to academic review papers, which provide expert summaries of peer-reviewed research, or consulted directly with scientists themselves.

It didn't, and the result is a report lacking in any real insight, because Fast Future doesn't seem to have looked at the subjects in any detail.

Worse still, where there is relevant information in the cited sources, it has been copied and pasted directly into the job descriptions that were the basis of all the publicity. Take this description of quarantine enforcer, a job that is unlikely to inspire kids to take up science and would probably never exist as a specialised career anyway:

"If a deadly virus starts spreading rapidly, few countries, and few people, will be prepared. Nurses will be in short supply. And as death rates rise, and neighborhoods are shut down, someone will have to guard the gates."

Compare this to the source, an article on Forbes magazine's website:

"If a deadly virus starts spreading rapidly, few countries, and few people, will be prepared. That'll be good for certain occupations. Nurses will be in short supply. And when people really start dying, and neighborhoods are shut down, someone will have to guard the gates."

This is not the only example of cut-and-paste. Reading the press release, or SSW's page, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the descriptions are Fast Future's own work, based upon extensive research from a number of reliable sources?

Independently of my own articles on this issue on the 10minus9 blog, EvidenceMatters put together a detailed and highly critical analysis of the future jobs report, revealing yet more flaws in Fast Future's methods. Meanwhile, Holford Watch asked the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which funds the SSW campaign, for a response to the various concerns raised. It stands by the report:

"This work is a speculative look to the future and does not inform policy or impact on government funding decisions. The report was checked by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and felt to be rigorous and credible for the purposes we required."

This standard of rigour and credibility shows a great deal about the department's attitude towards the promotion of science. If the purpose of the report was to inspire the next generation of scientists, or even to stimulate interest in science, it is essential to look at some of the incredible work being done by scientists and the real benefits we might gain. If promoting science is important, then so is the quality of the material commissioned to this end.

Personally, I find it deeply disappointing and frustrating that public money has been used to cobble together a report in such a sloppy manner. "That'll do" just isn't good enough.

James Hayton writes the 10minus9 nanoscience and nanotechnology blog

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Feb 2010 | 5:32 am

Vast online archive to celebrate British scientists and inventors

200 UK scientists are to be interviewed to create an audio archive of British science.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2010 | 5:04 am

'Rubbish patch' blights Atlantic

Plastic debris tends to accumulate in a well defined region of the western North Atlantic, scientists say.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2010 | 4:50 am

The stranglers: the five plants threatening Britain's waterways

Your pond could be harbouring a would-be killer, says Jane Perrone

Do you know what's lurking in your garden pond? OK, so it may well be frozen over right now, but have a look at the pictures above. See anything familiar? Although I think I could just about identify parrot's feather, having spent ages fishing it out of my own pond, but I wouldn't have had a clue about the others.

The government's new Be Plant Wise campaign (or scotland.gov.uk/beplantwise if you're in Scotland) is warning that five non-native aquatic bullies - floating pennywort, New Zealand pigmyweed, water-primrose, parrot's feather and water fern – are invading British waterways, wiping out native species and disrupting water sports and boating.

According to the charity Pond Conservation, two thirds of our garden ponds are harbouring one or more of these species (In wild ponds the figure drops to one in 10.) They can grow at a prodigious rate, too floating pennywort can grow up to 20cm a day in the wild and water primrose can double in size every 15-20 days, choking patches of water and crowding out native species. For instance, an infestation of New Zealand pigmyweed at the National Trust-owned Horsepond in Corfe Castle, Dorset is blamed for the loss of the great crested newt in that area. Another perhaps less obvious peril is that a thick mat of pennywort or water primrose on the surface of a pond can look like a solid surface to livestock (and your own children, come to that).

Even if your pond's in glorious isolation in your back garden miles from the nearest waterway, there are many ways these pernicious little devils can spread, particularly if you dispose of plants and pond or fish tank water carelessly. If you want to eradicate non-native plants from your plant, the compost heap seems the obvious place, but you need to make sure that the plant is absolutely dead and no fragments are left to spread themselves about. With land-based pernicious weeds, I'd usually recommend immersing them in a bucket of water for several months before composting, but clearly that isn't going to work for aquatic plants.

If you wait until the summer, you could remove the plants and spread them out in the baking sun next to the pond (hard to imagine right now, I know) which may also allow any creatures hiding within to escape back into the water, too. Once dry and dessicated, adding them to the centre of a hot compost heap should finish the job. I did wonder about adding them to your green waste bin, as municipal-scale composting techniques should kill such plants off with ease but I'm still trying to find out if that's permitted – I'll update this post once I find out.

Do you know what plants are growing in your pond? What's the best way of disposing of non-native invasive species like the water primrose? Have your say in the comments below.

Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 24 Feb 2010 | 4:49 am

Giant predatory shark unearthed

The fossilised remains of a huge clam-busting shark are found in Kansas.
Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 24 Feb 2010 | 2:58 am